Attache Case: Assistant Army Attache James Holbrooke

A night in the Ukraine, a fast goodbye to Moscow

Anight in the Ukraine, a fast goodbye to Moscow

When Assistant Army Attaché James Holbrook, 41, 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...

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