Bruce Allyn: Negotiating with the KGB (B)

This case picks up (from the end of the "A" case) the detailed story of the KGB's high-pressure negotiations with Harvard doctoral student Bruce Allyn to recruit him as a secret asset for the Soviet spy agency. The "A" case describes how, at the tense height of the Cold War, with CIA agents systematically being exposed and executed in Russia, Allyn participated in an unusual joint U.S.-Soviet study that alternated between the two countries. Going about his doctoral research, meeting and making friends with Russians, he accepted a low-key invitation from a trusted Russian friend to meet for lunch somewhere on the outskirts of Moscow. After hours of warm conversation, great food, and endless alcohol with a group of Russians, all but one of this group drifted out of the room. Suddenly the sole remaining man, "Vladimir," looked straight at Bruce and stated: "I am a high-ranking KGB officer. I have been commissioned to make to you a proposal." Drunk, isolated, and highly vulnerable, Allyn must negotiate with this sophisticated KGB counterpart. To recruit Allyn to secretly work for the KGB, the agent tries many approaches: barely veiled threats, offers of money, and the promise of high level access and Soviet documents that would enable Allyn over time to become the top U.S. Sovietologist. Should Allyn accept the offer, the agent stresses how Allyn could have a much better life and far more effectively advance the shared goals of reducing the risks of nuclear war and improving relations between the two hostile superpowers. At the end of the "A" case, Allyn must figure out what to do. The "B" case recounts subsequent episodes in the negotiation as well as its conclusion.