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                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 22, 1992                   TAG: 9201220261
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

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KGB AGENT: POWS SEEN AFTER WAR

A former KGB officer said Tuesday that a fellow Soviet agent questioned American prisoners of the Vietnam War several years after the conflict ended in hopes of recruiting the Americans as spies.

Oleg Kalugin told a Senate committee that a subordinate traveled to Vietnam in 1976 or 1978 "to recruit Americans to work for the Soviet Union in the United States."

"At least one gave a definite [answer] to cooperate with the Soviet Union," Kalugin told the Select Committee on POW-MIA Affairs, which is investigating whether any of the 2,273 Americans listed as missing in the war were held after the conflict.

But the former KGB major general said the Soviets were unable to contact the American who had agreed to cooperate because of an incorrect telephone number.

"The whole affair flopped," Kalugin testified.

The subordinate, Oleg Nechiporenko, has disputed Kalugin's statements, saying earlier this month that he interviewed only one American, in 1973, the year the North Vietnamese released American POWs.

Earlier Tuesday, the Vietnamese government said KGB agents interviewed American prisoners in Vietnam once before the war ended in 1975. Vietnam previously had denied an allegation that Soviet agents had questioned Americans in Vietnam.

- Associated Press

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