Tumanov: Confessions of a KGB Agent

In his foreword, edition q editor-in-chief Henno Lohmeyer wonders whether ``the KGB was guiding the author's hand.'' Readers on their part will speculate that Tumanov, who emerges as preening and self-important, has so little of substance to say because he was a transmitter of low-level intelligence. Primarily, the book lobbies for shutting down Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe--a debate that garnered attention these past months before congress approved funding for the Board of International Broadcasting, the independent agency under whose aegis the station now operates. Tumanov maintains that he was a KGB plant at the station; after his staged defection from the U.S.S.R. in 1965, he settled in Munich and worked at Radio Liberty. In 1969, this sleeper agent was activated; by the time he was recalled home and retired in 1986, he had become news editor. The station, Tumanov reveals, operated under the direction of the CIA, which is hardly news--and according to a recent New York Times article, the CIA tie was severed in 1971. Photos. (Feb.)