Word: rovno
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...only his socks. West German counterintelligence foiled the plot by extracting a promise from the newspapers not to publish the photos. The KGB tried to snare U.S. Assistant Military Attaché James Holbrook in a similar "honey trap" of seductive female agents during a visit to the Ukrainian city of Rovno in 1981. He reported the misadventure to U.S. officials and was sent home...
...left Moscow one day last January for a routine reconnaissance trip deep into the western Ukraine, he had no intention of partying along the way-particularly not at a bacchanal funded (and photographed) by the Soviet secret police. But just hours after arriving in the small city of Rovno (pop. 167,000), sources say, Holbrook's traveling companion-a fellow U.S. Army attaché-was drugged, and Holbrook himself obliged to fend off an incipient blackmail scheme. The uncompromised pah- returned to Moscow immediately. In keeping with U.S. procedure in such matters, Holbrook was whisked back...
Most of the details of Holbrook's Ukrainian misadventure-and exactly how far the entrapment attempt progressed before Holbrook grew suspicious and fled the party scene-remain top secret. (The Soviets claim he was caught with a woman in his Rovno hotel room.) Nor is there any firm consensus about Soviet motives In attempting to compromise Holbrook, or pretending to attempt to compromise him. The leading theory among U.S. officials is that the Soviets considered Holbrook an especially acute pest: he speaks perfect Russian and had made many friends among the Soviet military. The Soviets regard the dozen...
Intriguingly enough, just weeks before the Rovno incident, Holbrook was one of four Army officers recommended for a job as Vice President George Bush's aide-de camp. Was Holbrook the target of a long-shot plot to slip a Soviet "mole" into the White House? An attractive speculation, but doubtful. Says a State Department ex pert: "The KGB can be much slyer than this when it is really recruiting...
Last week Joseph Stalin confirmed what Berlin had unhappily admitted two days earlier: the fall of Równe (Rovno) and Luck (Lutsk), an 85-mile thrust into old Poland. Vatutin had bypassed the German-held roads, sent his men into the hub-deep mud of swamps and forests. Outflanked, the Germans retreated...