CIA and the Penkovsky Affair

Abstract

In an enlightened foreword to the October 1963 issue of Holiday Magazine, an issue devoted entirely to Russia, the editors observed that “there is a constant pressure here by a loud and rabid minority, including many in high places, who want no words said or written about Russia unless they are loaded with hate and provocation.”The editors could hardly have foreseen that some two years later, under C.I.A. auspices, the American public would be exposed to the so-called Penkovsky Papers (Doubleday, 411 pp., $5.95), a book which is literally “loaded with hate and provocation” and which unfortunately became a best-seller overnight. The book's appearance at a time when U.S.-Soviet relations were already strained over the muddled situation in Vietnam may be purely accidental or it may be simply another case of “the right hand of government not knowing what the left is doing” as was amply illustrated in The Invisible Government.