ABSTRACT
By way of definition, a defector is an individual who is either an intelligence officer, or has worked as a cooptee for an intelligence agency, or has sufficient knowledge of intelligence significance to be a valued asset and merit political asylum. Thus Arkadi Shevchenko, although a regular diplomat at the United Nations, should be counted as a defector, partly because he had acted as a spy for the CIA for several months prior to his defection, but also because his knowledge included information concerning the KGB’s rezidentura in New York, and its operations. Equally, the Soviet pilot Viktor Belenko qualifies for inclusion as his MiG-25, which he flew to Japan, amounted to an impressive technical intelligence coup. Similarly, George Blake and Edward Lee Howard, who were not intelligence officers at the time of their defections, deserve the description, even if their settlement in Moscow was as a consequence of a fear of imminent arrest.
