Espionage "Top Hat"

By Lisa Beyer

By all accounts, Donald F. was a first-class spy. For nearly 30 years, the well-placed Soviet diplomat was said to have fed precious secrets about his nation's defense to the U.S., making him one of the intelligence community's most valued assets. He used all the tricks: cipher pads, invisible ink, dead- letter drops in Moscow's Gorky Park, coded advertisements in the New York Times. Never short on chutzpah, he even transmitted radio messages to the U.S. embassy in Moscow from a passing trolley bus. Though Soviet agents reportedly suspected his disloyalty for years, he repeatedly managed to wriggle out of trouble. Until just recently, that is. Last week Pravda revealed that Donald F. had at last been snared and sentenced to die.

The affair seemed both a throwback to the cold war and an illustration of growing openness in the Soviet Union. Rarely have the Soviets acknowledged that a secret agent has so seriously compromised their security. Pravda disclosed that Donald F. -- code-named "Top Hat" by his American patrons, who say he worked for Soviet military intelligence -- passed on diplomatic codes, nuclear-weapons doctrine, civil-defense blueprints and plans for coping with chemical and biological warfare. It was not clear when Top Hat was apprehended or whether he has been executed yet.

The timing of the announcement was odd, considering that Mikhail Gorbachev is in the midst of numerous crises, including growing separatism in Lithuania and untamed ethnic violence in Azerbaijan. But cloak-and-dagger experts in the West believe Moscow may have publicized the spy's downfall to warn foreign espionage agencies not to take advantage of the tumultuous times in the Soviet Union. "The Top Hat revelation," said a senior British intelligence officer, "would appear to be a very sophisticated maneuver."

Another theory is that Moscow had been on to Donald F. for some time; his cover may have been blown by several references to his existence that have appeared in the U.S. press over the years. Soviet officials may have decided to expose the affair now in an effort to rehabilitate the reputation of KGB Colonel Alexander Dukhanin, whom Pravda credited with breaking the case. Last year Dukhanin was implicated in a corruption investigation of Politburo member Yegor Ligachev and KGB officers.

According to U.S. officials, Top Hat and another Soviet, code-named "Fedora," first offered their services to the FBI in the early 1960s, when both were attached to the Soviet mission to the U.N. in New York City. Despite suspicions that the two were "dangles," double agents actually working for the Soviets, Top Hat went on to spy for the Americans in posts in Burma, India and the Soviet Union. When in 1978 it became clear to the U.S. that Fedora probably was a fraud, doubts about Top Hat's authenticity resurfaced.

By Pravda's account, Donald F. was the real thing, motivated by ideology, vaulting ambition and derring-do. Upon arrest, the paper said, he showed no fear, telling his captors, "I was used to walking the knife's edge and could not imagine any other life for myself."

With reporting by Ann Blackman/Moscow and Jay Peterzell/Washington