SOMEWHERE IN VIRGINIA -- Yuri Shvets steps out of his compact car onto the blistering hot parking lot in front of the suburban Taco Bell restaurant and announces proudly, "I wanted to come here because my son works here. He's saving money for a trip back home."
"Home," though, is not quite the right word for the former major in the Russian KGB. Because a year after Shvets, 42, published his acid tale of Moscow's spying in Washington, he is no longer welcome in Russia.
And that would be an understatement.
Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR, formerly an arm of the KGB,virtually put a price on Shvets's head, he says.
That was even before his book, "Washington Station: My Life as a KGB Spy in America," came out last winter.
He cited the remark of an SVR spokesman in Moscow who said in an interview with Moskovskiye Novosty: "This guy is risking his life, both there and here."
So, Shvets went underground in Virginia -- sort of.
His address is guarded by friends, his telephone is unlisted, and he demands that his exact whereabouts not be published as the terms of an interview.
But he also recently started a new, highly visible career, as a regular contributor to the satirical Fox Network news show, "TV Nation." And he has plans to start a newsletter on activities of the Russian mafia in the United States.
The contrasts are part of Shvets' strange life in the United States, which at first denied him asylum because he had divulged classified information -- Russian classified information -- in the unpublished manuscript he sent in with his application.
There is no question that his former colleagues in Moscow regarded him as an important agent in his role as chief of the overseas intelligence bureau based in Washington for the former KGB.
Oleg Tsarev, a former KGB spokesman and currently a consultant on KGB history, said in an interview from Moscow that there was serious discussion in the agency over his defection.
A former senior FBI counterintelligence agent, who declined to be identified, said: "Shvets is entirely credible, at least in terms of his service with the KGB. He was in Washington, we certainly knew that, working for the KGB but undercover with TASS."
Shvets, who joined the KGB in 1980 but fell under suspicion a decade later, said he got out of Russia last year by buying a forged passport and bribing a border guard in a country he declined to name.
Next, he walked into a U.S. Embassy in the Baltics and applied for a visa, he said.
"I filled out the application. There was a question, 'Have you ever been to the United States?' I wrote yes. Then it asked, 'In what capacity?' and I wrote, 'KGB.'
"The guy goes, 'Uhhh,'" Shvets says.
Shvets laughs, wide-eyed. "He was about 25 years old. He didn't know what to do."
When the clerk came back he said the embassy would need four days to process the application.
Shvets was astounded. If the KGB had handled Aldrich Ames this way the former CIA official who spied for Moscow might still be sitting on a curb outside the Soviet Embassy in Washington.
"In four days, there was still no response," Shvets says, shaking his head. "I could imagine the cables flying back and forth across the ocean."
Finally, on the fifth day, they gave him a visa; "with a stone face."
He laughs when he mimics the revulsion of the young American diplomat handing over the passport like it was a dead mouse.
"I was amazed. I was amazed," Shvets chuckles. "Working for 10 years with the KGB, I assumed they were just as inefficient, but to actually see it."
More rude awakenings came, though, when his request for political asylum in the United States was turned down.
The April 21, 1994, letter from the Immigration and Naturalization Service is a masterpiece of bureaucratese. Despite calling his story "believable, consistent and sufficiently detailed," and despite judging him personally "credible," the INS declared: "By divulging classified information on the KGB ... it appears that you have violated laws of your country with regard to state secrets known to you as a former KGB agent."
The INS told him to leave.
But Shvets hired a well-connected Washington lawyer, Jack Blum, who started making representations on Shvets' behalf.
About the same time, The New York Times published an article about Shvets' manuscript, suggesting it could rock U.S.-Russian relations.
Shortly after that, Shvets said he got a second letter from the INS, which made no reference to the first letter. This one, dated May 16, 1994, now said, "It has been determined that you have a well-founded fear of persecution were you to return to Russia."
It granted him permanent political asylum.
Shvets laughs out loud. Bureaucrats the world over, he jokes, must come from the same strain of DNA.
Shvets seems to relish heaping scorn on his former employer.
His book portrayed KGB agents in Washington not as shrewd and tough operatives -- as Americans are used to hearing from the FBI and CIA -- but lazy, incompetent slobs riven by bureaucratic factions.
His fellow KGB agents in Washington, where he served in the mid-1980s, Shvets said, sat around and rewrote stories from The Washington Post or The New York Times and sent them back to the Kremlin as "diplomatic analysis" from their own "informed sources."
Shvets said he recruited a former low-level White House consultant as a spy, code-named "Socrates."
Otherwise, he said, none of them tried to hire their own secret agents. Any U.S. spies the KGB ever put on the payroll just walked in and presented themselves, like Ames.
Shvets' tale of KGB ineptitude, though, was out of tune with an America that was reeling from the arrest of Ames.
The FBI and Congress were sending up alarms about the relentless Federal Security Service, successor to the KGB.
At first, a number of New York publishers had even turned down Shvets' manuscript. They wondered if he was the real thing.
Finally, Simon & Schuster decided he was.
"The real scoop in my book was that the enemy that you believed was the most powerful, the most shrewd, sophisticated, was just not," Shvets says.
"But when I brought this message, they said, 'It looks like you're trying to lull us.' And then they said, 'What about Ames?' And I said, 'For me, it means your intelligence service is even worse than ours.'"
"Home," though, is not quite the right word for the former major in the Russian KGB. Because a year after Shvets, 42, published his acid tale of Moscow's spying in Washington, he is no longer welcome in Russia.
And that would be an understatement.
Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR, formerly an arm of the KGB,virtually put a price on Shvets's head, he says.
That was even before his book, "Washington Station: My Life as a KGB Spy in America," came out last winter.
He cited the remark of an SVR spokesman in Moscow who said in an interview with Moskovskiye Novosty: "This guy is risking his life, both there and here."
So, Shvets went underground in Virginia -- sort of.
His address is guarded by friends, his telephone is unlisted, and he demands that his exact whereabouts not be published as the terms of an interview.
But he also recently started a new, highly visible career, as a regular contributor to the satirical Fox Network news show, "TV Nation." And he has plans to start a newsletter on activities of the Russian mafia in the United States.
The contrasts are part of Shvets' strange life in the United States, which at first denied him asylum because he had divulged classified information -- Russian classified information -- in the unpublished manuscript he sent in with his application.
There is no question that his former colleagues in Moscow regarded him as an important agent in his role as chief of the overseas intelligence bureau based in Washington for the former KGB.
Oleg Tsarev, a former KGB spokesman and currently a consultant on KGB history, said in an interview from Moscow that there was serious discussion in the agency over his defection.
A former senior FBI counterintelligence agent, who declined to be identified, said: "Shvets is entirely credible, at least in terms of his service with the KGB. He was in Washington, we certainly knew that, working for the KGB but undercover with TASS."
Shvets, who joined the KGB in 1980 but fell under suspicion a decade later, said he got out of Russia last year by buying a forged passport and bribing a border guard in a country he declined to name.
Next, he walked into a U.S. Embassy in the Baltics and applied for a visa, he said.
"I filled out the application. There was a question, 'Have you ever been to the United States?' I wrote yes. Then it asked, 'In what capacity?' and I wrote, 'KGB.'
"The guy goes, 'Uhhh,'" Shvets says.
Shvets laughs, wide-eyed. "He was about 25 years old. He didn't know what to do."
When the clerk came back he said the embassy would need four days to process the application.
Shvets was astounded. If the KGB had handled Aldrich Ames this way the former CIA official who spied for Moscow might still be sitting on a curb outside the Soviet Embassy in Washington.
"In four days, there was still no response," Shvets says, shaking his head. "I could imagine the cables flying back and forth across the ocean."
Finally, on the fifth day, they gave him a visa; "with a stone face."
He laughs when he mimics the revulsion of the young American diplomat handing over the passport like it was a dead mouse.
"I was amazed. I was amazed," Shvets chuckles. "Working for 10 years with the KGB, I assumed they were just as inefficient, but to actually see it."
More rude awakenings came, though, when his request for political asylum in the United States was turned down.
The April 21, 1994, letter from the Immigration and Naturalization Service is a masterpiece of bureaucratese. Despite calling his story "believable, consistent and sufficiently detailed," and despite judging him personally "credible," the INS declared: "By divulging classified information on the KGB ... it appears that you have violated laws of your country with regard to state secrets known to you as a former KGB agent."
The INS told him to leave.
But Shvets hired a well-connected Washington lawyer, Jack Blum, who started making representations on Shvets' behalf.
About the same time, The New York Times published an article about Shvets' manuscript, suggesting it could rock U.S.-Russian relations.
Shortly after that, Shvets said he got a second letter from the INS, which made no reference to the first letter. This one, dated May 16, 1994, now said, "It has been determined that you have a well-founded fear of persecution were you to return to Russia."
It granted him permanent political asylum.
Shvets laughs out loud. Bureaucrats the world over, he jokes, must come from the same strain of DNA.
Shvets seems to relish heaping scorn on his former employer.
His book portrayed KGB agents in Washington not as shrewd and tough operatives -- as Americans are used to hearing from the FBI and CIA -- but lazy, incompetent slobs riven by bureaucratic factions.
His fellow KGB agents in Washington, where he served in the mid-1980s, Shvets said, sat around and rewrote stories from The Washington Post or The New York Times and sent them back to the Kremlin as "diplomatic analysis" from their own "informed sources."
Shvets said he recruited a former low-level White House consultant as a spy, code-named "Socrates."
Otherwise, he said, none of them tried to hire their own secret agents. Any U.S. spies the KGB ever put on the payroll just walked in and presented themselves, like Ames.
Shvets' tale of KGB ineptitude, though, was out of tune with an America that was reeling from the arrest of Ames.
The FBI and Congress were sending up alarms about the relentless Federal Security Service, successor to the KGB.
At first, a number of New York publishers had even turned down Shvets' manuscript. They wondered if he was the real thing.
Finally, Simon & Schuster decided he was.
"The real scoop in my book was that the enemy that you believed was the most powerful, the most shrewd, sophisticated, was just not," Shvets says.
"But when I brought this message, they said, 'It looks like you're trying to lull us.' And then they said, 'What about Ames?' And I said, 'For me, it means your intelligence service is even worse than ours.'"
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