Espionage: The Stupid Spy

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Thompson says that once back in the U.S. he reneged on the Russians and did no more spying while in service. He got an honorable discharge in December 1958 and went to Detroit. There he was approached by a Russian named Boris Karpovich, a Soviet embassy counselor in Washington who was kicked out of the U.S. in January. Boris told him to get a job with the FBI. Thompson, a high school dropout, said with rare perspicuity that he doubted the FBI would hire him. For nearly two years thereafter the Soviets left him alone.

"Not Even Gas Money." Then, in mid-1961, Fedor Kudashkin, former chief of Russian translators at the U.N., arrived in Detroit and put on the pressure. Frightened, Thompson moved to Long Island. Kudashkin tracked him down in November 1961, threatened to expose Thompson's sleazy spy work, and Thompson agreed to help out where he could. "He wanted me to supply information about water reservoirs on Long Island, on the gas lines between New York and Long Island, on the power plants in these areas."

Sometimes Kudashkin asked for "background investigations" on people living on Long Island, and Thompson would "pose as an insurance man and question a man's neighbors and credit agents and so forth." Thompson met Kudashkin dozens of times—sitting in Thompson's oil truck in parks, beneath water towers, in railroad parking lots. Whatever Thompson's information was worth to Kudashkin, it wasn't worth much to Thompson. "I never even made my gas money," said Thompson.

Finally in the spring of 1963, Thompson realized the jig was up when he saw two men in a nearby car taking pictures of him and Kudashkin. "I knew it was the FBI; Kudashkin was sloppy in his work," Thompson explained. Shortly after that Kudashkin went back to Russia for "imperative family reasons." FBI men continued to watch Thompson for 15 months, finally picked him up in August 1964, and he began to spill his story to agents. Most of it was not news to them. The FBI had been spying on Thompson's spying ever since he came back to the U.S. in 1958.

After he pleaded guilty last week, sentencing was postponed until May. The maximum penalty is death, but Thompson said to newsmen: "I want to take what's coming to me. I made a bad mistake when I was 22. I was stupid." No one could fault him on that.