Turkish warlord Enver Pasha (1881-1922) was not only the architect of the Armenian genocide, but also a key player in the early twentieth-century Great Game. A consummate intriguer, Enver attempted forging a Pan-Turkic empire in Central Asia, where he would meet his death at the hands of the Red Army.

The assassination of Enver Pasha cannot be called a special operation in the full sense of the word. It was sooner a special military operation carried out by the forces of the army and special services. But we can form a conception of how Soviet power was established in Central Asia, and by what methods, on its example.

The biography of Enver Pasha, an international adventurer and leader of the Basmachi, merits detailed description. He was born on November 23rd, 1881, in Istanbul in the family of Ahmed-Bey, a minor official from the Ministry of Social Work. Choosing for himself a military career, he began his service as a junior officer in a small provincial garrison in Macedonia. The situation in Turkey’s hinterlands during that period was complex. Albanians, Bulgarians, Greeks, and Macedonians no longer wished to be under Turkish power and waged guerrilla war against the Sultan’s forces. Captain Enver-Bey distinguished himself in battles against partisan units, for which he was rose early to the rank of major.

But in the summer of 1908, when Enver’s fellow officer Lieutenant Niyazi-Bey initiated a rebellion against the Sultan, Enver joined in. Consequently the Sultan capitulated, and members of the party Unity and Progress, later receiving the sobriquet of the Young Turks, came to power. Enver’s participation in the revolt changed his fate radically. After the Young Turks’ ascent to power, he was appointed the military attaché in Berlin, where he acquired wide-ranging ties in German military circles and even became a personal friend of Kaiser Wilhelm. In 1911 Enver Pasha returned to Istanbul and almost immediately left for North Africa, where the Turkish-Italian war had begun. And although Turkey suffered defeat in this war, this didn’t reflect on Enver Pasha’s career: he received the rank of general and continued to remain one of the leaders of the Young Turks.

Enver Pasha’s moment of glory came after Turkey’s defeat in the First Balkan War. On January 23rd, 1913, at the head of a detachment of officers, he burst in upon a session of the government and made the grand vizier request the dismissal of the entire cabinet to the Sultan. Consequently, already a year later he became the leader of the triumvirate that had seized power in the country (Enver Pasha, Talaat Pasha, and Jemal Pasha), the head of the Young Turks Party, war minister, and simultaneously chief of the general staff. It was then that Enver was able to successfully resolve personal matters, becoming husband to the Sultan’s niece. Yet his triumph was short-lived. Having drawn Turkey into the First World War on Germany’s side, the Enver and the Young Turks miscalculated. The nations of the Quadruple Alliance suffered defeat in the war, and after Turkey’s capitulation in Moudros Harbor on the island of Lemnos on October 30, 1918, Enver Pasha and the two other members of the triumvirate were forced to flee to Germany.

Turning up in a Germany seized by revolution, Enver Pasha soon understood that his old friends now had no time for him. And when a Turkish tribunal delivered a death sentence to the members of the triumvirate in absentia in June of 1919, he decided on an unexpected move – he proposed his services to Moscow. Having established contact with Karl Radek, who was in Berlin at the time, Enver expressed the wish to take part in the liberation of the peoples of the East from the colonizers’ yoke, first and foremost that of the British. The proposals made by Enver Pasha, who had great authority among Muslims of the East, evoked no small amount of interest in Moscow, and soon an agreement on cooperation was concluded. Jemal Pasha went to Soviet Russia first, while Enver Pasha, remaining in Germany, declared himself a supporter of the ideas of the Comintern and at the beginning of 1920 published a number of articles calling for struggle against the colonizers.

At that time Enver Pasha undertook several attempts to travel to Soviet Russia, but he was twice unlucky. The first time the airplane on which he was flying made a forced landing in Lithuania, and Enver, taken as a spy, ended up in a Vilnius prison, whence he was deported to Germany after two months upon the insistent requests of General Von Seeckt. The second attempt was also non-successful – he was arrested in Latvia and spent three months in jail. And only in August of 1920 did he finally reach Moscow through Belostok, where the so-called Polish Revolutionary Committee was located. That Enver Pasha’s telegrams presented enormous interest to the Bolshevik leadership is demonstrated by Dzerzhinsky’s August 11th, 1920 telegrams to Lenin and Revolutionary Military Council member for the western front I. Smiegel. Dzerzhinsky reported to Lenin the following:

Enver Pasha arrived from Turkey tonight with two Turks and a pilot, Leo, who has been here…I am directing them to Smiegel today.

Smiegel was sent a telegram of the following content:

Tonight Enver Pasha arrived from Turkey with two Turks…We are sending them to you through Grodno. Lenin has been informed.[i]

In Moscow Enver Pasha and his “staff” were provided a mansion of the Golitsyn princes for living, while his so-called “Ali-Bey Mission” received diplomatic status, though it didn’t represent any government. Moreover, he was periodically issued loans of 500 thousands marks, which were used to maintain the staff and also support the political organization “Karakol,” active in Istanbul and under Enver’s influence. At that very time, with Radek’s help, Enver Pasha established contacts with a number of individuals in the Soviet leadership and was received by Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Chicherin, Sklyansky, and Karakhan.

It must be noted that the East occupied an important place in the plans of the Bolsheviks and Comintern. They intended to unite the efforts of the proletarian communist movement in developed capitalist countries with the national liberation movements in the East. In connection with that, contacts were slated to be established with the Kemalists in Turkey and Amanullah-Khan in Afghanistan, who were in conflict with the English, for use of Kabul and Turkestan (then an autonomous republic part of the RSFSR) as a platform to advance on India.

For the execution of this design, it was first of all necessary to reorganize the Afghan army. With this objective in mind, Enver’s colleague Jemal Pasha was sent to Kabul already in 1919, and his activity received a high evaluation among the military leadership. And so, in the Turkestan Front intelligence department’s summary for 1922, it was stated that his “influence was felt in each of the organization’s measures and met hospitable ground for his work, but the basic elements of army reorganization, undertaken with regard to reforming the country’s entire political structure, have not been ultimately enacted.” Jemal Pasha was in Afghanistan right until 1922, when he traveled to Tiflis for a time. There he was killed by an Armenian nationalist.

Concerning Enver Pasha, in September of 1920 he went to Baku, where the First Congress of Oppressed Peoples of the East took place. At the Congress Enver spoke in the name of a certain “Union of Revolutionary Organizations of Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, Arabia, and Indonesia,” and in his speech he expressed sympathy with Soviet Russia, announcing his readiness to wage struggle against a common enemy – world imperialism.

After the completion of the Congress, Enver Pasha settled in Batumi, most likely intending to return to Turkey and squeeze its new leader, Kemal Ataturk, out of power. But such a development of events obviously didn’t suit Kemal, and he addressed the Soviet leadership with a demand to remove Enver from Batumi. The Kremlin, not wishing to quarrel with Kemal, applied maximum efforts to send Enver to Bukhara, where he was to render assistance to Jemal Pasha, who was temporarily in Moscow.

On October 4th, 1921, Enver Pasha arrived in Bukhara. Taking stock of the situation, he began to search out ways that would give him the possibility of standing at the apex of power. He finally decided to break with the Bolsheviks and join the Basmachi movement in Turkenstan. To that end he made contact with Turkish officers with whom he was familiar from his time as Turkey’s war minister. At the beginning of November 1921, with their help and under the cover of a hunting party, he set out for eastern Bukhara, where in January of 1921 he met with the Emir of Bukhara and concluded an agreement with him on joint action against the Bolsheviks. Initially Enver had only a small unit of about 30 men, but already after their first skirmishes with units of the Red Army, the detachment grew to 300 well-armed and trained combatants. Enver released proclamations signed, “Deputy Emir of Bukhara, Son-in-Law of the Caliph, Sayid Enver.” And when in March of 1922, by order of the Emir of Bukhara he was declared Supreme Commander of Muslim Forces and Deputy Emir, he ordered himself a seal with the title “Supreme Commander of All Armies of Islam, Son-in-Law of the Caliph and Prophet Muhammad.” Then he sent Moscow a letter demanding the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Turkestan.

Enver Pasha’s defection to the Basmachi side gave another impulse to anti-Soviet actions in Central Asia. In his report to Moscow, deputy general consul in Dushanbe Nasyrbaev wrote:

In all the areas not occupied by the Red Army the authority of the begs, the field staff has begun military training, new weapons workshops have opened, and regular communications have been reestablished with the Emir of Bukhara and Afghanistan, whence they receive material supplies and manpower. Communications have been established with the Basmachi in Ferghana. At the present moment Enver has ten thousand soldiers along with 16 machine guns. The field staff is located in the village of Kasrerun…12 miles from Baisun…With every day Enver grows stronger, and it is necessary to liquidate this adventure as quickly as possible, for in the not-far-off future it could assume an extremely serious character.[ii]

While at the end of May 1922, the Soviet Turkestan Front intelligence department reported:

The ever-growing organized character of Enver Pasha’s detachments has been noted by our agent networks. Enver Pasha is not only the factual commander of all rebel armed forces, but also the ideological leader of a pan-Islamic organization for all Turkestan. Our agent networks have noted the arrival to Enver’s group of detachments of Ferghana and Samarkand Basmachis and the maintenance of uninterrupted communications with the Emir of Bukhara. Enver receives Afghanistan’s moral and material assistance. The rebel movement goes under the slogan of liberation from the Russians.[iii]

In all, according to the information of the All-Russian Main Staff, in January of 1922, 97 bands composing 20,342 men all together were active against units of the Turkestan Front, while by May their number grew to 116, within which there were around 25,000 men.

Because of the escalation of the situation in Bukhara, tough measures were decided upon in Moscow. The Bukhara Group of Forces, composed of two infantry regiments, two special cavalry regiments and a cavalry brigade, was again created. At the beginning of June 1922, the Group went on the offensive and smashed Enver Pasha’s main force at Baisun. Suffering defeat, Enver Pasha withdrew into the interior of eastern Bukhara, but sometime later was overtaken near Baldzhuan, where his detachments were ultimately scattered on August 1st. How the operation to liquidate Enver Pasha was completed was described in detail by Y. Melkunov, who at that time commanded the First Turkestan Special Cavalry Brigade:

Brigade Commander (of the Eighth Turkestan Special Cavalry Brigade that defeated Enver near Baldzhuan – authors) Bogdanov sent the 16th Cavalry Brigade to Khalaving with the mission to destroy Chara-Yesaul’s band. Simultaneously there was formed a joint squadron, into which were taken the most experienced soldiers and best horses from both regiments. Bogdanov set experienced commander Ivan Savko at the head of the squadron. They were tasked with finding and killing Enver Pasha. The 15th Cavalry Regiment, drained of blood from the battle for Baldzha, as well as mountain-horse battery along with the brigade staff, stayed in Baldzhuan.

Savko’s squadron left Baldzhuan from the north, conducting thorough intelligence, and on August 3rd set up camp near a small settlement. A neighboring farmer’s family was picking apricots in their garden, and several Red Army men went to help them.

Soon one of them returned, called the squadron commander aside, and informed him that according to the farmer, Enver Pasha and Dovlyatman-Bey were in the Chagan village. Savko himself spoke with the farmer, who said that his brother had returned from Chagan and saw Enver there with his own eyes.

In the large and wealthy village of Chagan, set 25 kilometers northeast of Baldzhuan, there was a mosque visited by all the surrounding population for prayers. And Enver Pasha, staying in Chagan, still held out the hope of manipulating the religions feelings of the farmers to fill his ragged bands and again lead them in the fight against Soviet power. The village lay away from major roads, and Enver felt completely safe here.

In order not to frighten Enver off, Savko maintained camp until evening, and only with the onset of darkness did the squadron move forward. At dawn they approached Chagan. Concealing the horses in surrounding orchards, the soldiers literally crawled on their bellies to the village. The muezzin called the believers to morning prayers.

The armed dzhigit raiders from Enver’s personal bodyguard, set out on their horses by the mosque, drew into their robes from the shivering morning wind coming down from the mountains. Savko ordered for the machine guns to be trained on the square in front of the mosque, but not to open fire.

But then the morning prayers had finished, and the raiders began coming out of the mosque. Pushing aside local residents, they formed a living corridor. At the threshold of the mosque appeared Enver Pasha, accompanied by Dovlyatman-Bey and other commanders. Unhurriedly they went to their horses. And here Savko ordered his machine-gunners to open fire on this group.

Panic ensued. The cavalrymen quickly spurred their horses, and the squadron attacked. In a few minutes the square in front of the mosque had emptied. Local residents identified Enver Pasha and Dovlyatman-Bey among those killed. Both of them had been cut down by machine-gun fire.[iv]

After Enver Pasha’s death, however, anti-communist actions under the flag of Islam in Central Asia didn’t cease – only their form changed. And the reason for that was an incautious and adventurist Soviet foreign policy in the East (Enver’s invitation alone was of great cost), resulting in eastern Bukhara remaining the arena of a guerrilla war for a long time to come.

[i] Гиленсен В. Энвер Паша и его «бросок на юг» Служба безопасности. 1996, No. 1-2. С. 70.

[ii] Там же. С. 71.

[iii] Там же.

[iv] Агабеков Г. Секретный террор. М., 1996. С. 392-393.

Work Translated: Колпакиди, А. И. и Прохоров, Д.П. КГБ: Спецоперации советской разведки. М: Издательство АСТ, 2001.

Translated by Mark Hackard.

Retired KGB Colonel Vladimir Usoltsev shares his psychological portrait of “Volodya” – his one-time subordinate and current Russian President Vladimir Putin, from their time serving together in a KGB intelligence group in Dresden, East Germany, during the 1980s. 

The supply of episodes I remember, ones which I could expound without the risk of fabrication, is gradually being exhausted. I could still recount much, resting on foggy glimpses, but I’d fear to be accused of lying. And the goal itself of my story is not only to tell of our life in Dresden and fill in the gap in the biography of an extraordinary Russian politician, but also to clear up any fantasies and lies.

It seems that the reader may remain unsatisfied with what he has read so far. Some chaotic facts, circumstances, but where is the person of the future president himself? What kind of man was he? Something from my explanation can be extracted, but I’m afraid that’s too little. Therefore, I’ll try to write a straightforward psychological portrait of my fellow officer, as I have done in relation to those people who have been fortunate – or, rather, weren’t so lucky – to fall into Soviet intelligence’s field of vision through my eyes.

To compose such a portrait, I do not need to recall concrete facts; it’s sufficient for me to remember my impressions from his personality, and they have been fortified sufficiently solidly in my memory.

Let’s begin with his type of temperament. There is well-known a classical classification of four types of temperament (choleric, phlegmatic, sanguine, melancholic), which often prove useful for the description of a personality’s psychological characteristics. Every type has its pluses and minuses. As an ideal for an intelligence officer, not one single selection from these types is suitable, but there are few representatives of each in their pure form. And so Volodya represented a rare mix of all these types. Dominant among them was the sanguine type. Also present in this temperament was a shade of the choleric. He was also a little bit of a phlegmatic, and from occasionally he’d dip into melancholy. One meets such a combination of temperaments, in my view, extremely rarely. Consequently, we can speak of Putin’s exceptional balance while maintaining the emotion and ardor of the sanguine, the persistence and tenacity of the choleric, and the unhurried thoroughness of the phlegmatic, with the melancholic’s caution brake. One will agree that a better combination of psychological qualities for life and political activity would be hard to wish for.

Such men as he are easy-going, but you can’t tempt them with a grand adventure. They are capable of enduring the blows of fate and not surrendering under the first difficulties. Meeting failure, they won’t start to search out a noose and soap to hang themselves with, but will philosophically take a lesson for the future from their defeat and begin a new round with a continuing thirst for life. His dominant sanguinity manifested in him primarily when he was in an elevated mood. Often one could observe how, rubbing his hands together with enjoyment, he would pronounce some joking phrase, for example: “Well then, let’s take the sharpest weapon and wrap up this dirty business.” Often he would pour down racy, funny jokes in the course of tedious paperwork. I won’t risk reproducing them on paper, but I’ll just note that they were completely original, fun, and not vulgar. I never heard any whining or groaning over the necessity of doing boring work.

A pair of personality characteristics in relation to others can be used here: introvert and extrovert. In their pure form, neither type is satisfactory for work in intelligence. Here Volodya also represented a successful mix: simultaneously he was both. He was communicative, felt easy around others, but along with that he was unforced, calm, and collected. He didn’t let others get too close to his heart, and he avoided excessively close socializing.

There is still another pair of personality characteristics that’s understandable to everyone: optimist or pessimist. Volodya was undoubtedly an optimist, but a “grounded” one. His optimism wasn’t the triumphant, uncritical optimism of a youth, to whom it seems that the world is at his feet, but rather a grown man’s confidence in his strength and his ability to correctly assess the situation. He didn’t set himself unattainable goals, but those goals he did set he’d achieve without fail.

His confidence was sensed by everyone. He also inspired a feeling of confidence in those around him – to everyone it became clear that behind his words and aspirations, a solid base was concealed and he would meet his aim. Along with that no one had a shadow of assumption that he was excessively cocky. The presence of such qualities is very important for “working with people,” which was our work first and foremost.

He knew how to control himself, and when necessary he could express no emotion, or rather, give his emotions free reign. Self-composure is an essential element of an intelligence officer’s psyche, as well as that of any man of action. For a politician this quality is no less important. It seems to me that Volodya had self-control at quite a high level. I can’t remember whether he told me about getting tested on the lie detector. At the Red Banner Institute some training groups were put through the process for the purpose of familiarization.

The group in which I trained was lucky. I went through the machine and almost drove the instructor mad. As much as I remember, conclusions from the detector’s measurements were based on a sum of points tabulated from fixed deviations from the body’s parameters during the interrogation, with provocative questions posed. The less the point sum, the better the result. The best result was considered 25 points, average, in my opinion, was 35-40 points, and 50 or more points was already “failure and exposure.” I got 15 points. The instructor couldn’t believe it and repeated the test. For the repeat test I picked up 13 points. There wasn’t any such thing in the detector’s history. My self-composure proved extremely high. It didn’t help me, however, because soon the question on my suitability for intelligence work arose – over my not understanding that the wisest men in the country were gathered namely in the Politburo.

And so, by my evaluation, Volodya wouldn’t have picked up more than 25 points, but would have doubtless collected more than I did.

Having analyzed the purely physiologically conditioned particularities of his psyche, let us move on to his moral principles. First of all it’s necessary to note that he is sooner an individualist than a collectivist. There’s nothing shameful in that. In my view, it’s an absolutely natural quality: being a social creature, one is oriented most of all on oneself. One needn’t mention this characteristic at all, but it was an obligatory attribute in Soviet times. If someone was called a collectivist, it was thought of as the highest praise. But a collectivist strikingly expressed is, in my opinion, just a fool; I wouldn’t go on a mission with such a man. But with an individualist like Volodya, I’d always go. The fact of the matter is that healthy individualism doesn’t contradict other moral imperatives such as, “I can die, but I’ll save my comrade.” And that imperative was wholly characteristic of Volodya.

During the years of building communism, we forgot about such moral categories as honor and conscience. These words almost never turned up, neither in official profiles, nor even in more thorough operational documents describing a person from all angles. But they are, after all, central to evaluating someone. And so Volodya was a man of honor. Although in our work there weren’t any situations that I could use as a shining example for confirmation of my words, many nuances of Volodya’s behavior are definitely convincing. Volodya treated service and the oath he gave more seriously than all of us. In many discussions he often recalled that we were officers who took an oath of loyalty to the Motherland, and his words always sounded earnest, without a hint of ostentation. Even with all his conformism, there remained in him a touch of pride in belonging to a generational line of defenders of the Fatherland, something the Tsar’s officers also once had. And Volodya could defend his personal honor, but in front of me there were never any situations where that was necessary.

Volodya’s conscience was also not in a dormant state. In Dresden he rarely had to experience pangs of conscience, but it did happen. I clearly remember such moments, but, alas, I can’t remember what they came to. Overall, our work, tied to the fates of men, was such that reasons were often found for worrying and getting nervous for others.

Moral rules are tightly connected to those of one’s worldview, and I have already written of Volodya’s worldview. Volodya’s main moral imperative was to follow the law. And the law must correspond to the principles of what is right. And as soon as what was right was far from our vision in the country, Volodya gave full freedom to his individual rules: living for his family and extracting the optimum from the situation that had unfolded.

Volodya was a pleasant person socializing, and he enthusiastically gave gifts and rendered friendly assistance. That made him glad. I’ll again note that this in no way contradicts my assertion that he’s an individualist. An individualist doesn’t automatically translate to a miser. The Germans have a saying in circulation that signifies a life principle – leben und leben lassen (live and let live). This principle is undoubtedly characteristic of Volodya, as well. Hidden in that short formulation are more than a few important nuances: tolerance and magnanimity, for example.

It especially stands to highlight his charm in the broadest sense of the word. He got on well with both his colleagues and especially the older generation. His cultivation, typical for Leningraders, his ability to comport himself respectfully without signs of servility, his tactfulness and foresight were organically characteristic and never evoked the suspicion he was specially trying to “suck up.” I am absolutely convinced that precisely his unique charm in the eyes of the elderly had a decisive influence on his rise from the moment he came into Boris Yeltsin’s field of vision. In the art of bureaucratic-administrative work, hardly had an advantage over others in Yeltsin’s inner circle. But in his charm he was indisputably superior to them all.

A lawyer to the marrow of his bones, Volodya in no degree resembled a dry, soulless solicitor who saw nothing but paragraphs of the law. But readers should not form the opinion that he was a flabby “nice guy.” Volodya could be both principled and tough. I didn’t have the opportunity to see Volodya in a leadership role, but from all of my representation of him, it would follow unambiguously that slovenliness, negligence, and ineffectiveness would cost his subordinates dearly. His universal poise contains a significant charge of severity and decisiveness. He can also just become uncompromising if circumstances require so. Here we have come upon an oft-used feature of character – his “firmness” or “softness.” In that sense Volodya possesses a firm character, but not a “petrified” one.

And one could depend on Volodya, and boldly so. Such a man wouldn’t disappoint. His dependability is visible from his countenance, and I also have concrete examples of that. If only one such: one time I had a not-so-minor emergency occur. The specter of harsh punishment hung over me. My partner in this unhappy affair – one of the lucky Berlin officers with the right of entry into West Berlin – sat right down at Volodya’s desk and wrote an explanatory note that he had no part in it and wasn’t guilty of anything. First of all our Berlin Operational-Technical Section officer who supplied us with defective equipment could be punished, but I took all the responsibility on myself. Volodya and Sergei, unlike my fair-weather partner, immediately declared their readiness to help me get out of the situation by all accessible means. Moreover, Volodya was clearly the initiator of this effort. Until late at night he sat with me in the office to be around if needed. I was able to resolve the situation, not only extinguishing the unpleasantness, but also turning the whole business to our benefit. If there couldn’t be happiness, unhappiness helped. In this episode Volodya’s remarkable qualities as a comrade shined through brightly. Our chief, Lazar Lazarevich, also behaved greatly in this story, again confirming his morality. He would have also been threatened with unpleasantness in the case of failure, but he gave me full carte-blanche and didn’t demonstrate any signs of hysteria, which could be expected from any other chief.

Volodya was modest in behavior and didn’t thrust himself forward, but it would be a mistake to think of him as someone demure who suffered from low self-esteem. He knew his worth and possessed a high sense of his own dignity. Volodya had a healthy ambition, but didn’t aspire to leadership at any price. True, he also didn’t want to be an outsider. That he participated in our firearms training, although he overall shot fine, certainly underlines that. Sergei and I shot noticeably better, and he didn’t want to be a weakling among us. It would be a mistake to find Volodya’s ambition a demonstration of vanity, which was completely alien to him. Being a high-class athlete, he never boasted of his athletic titles and his outstanding form and enviable musculature.

The level of pretensions in Volodya’s career was wholly realistic. He understood that he’d never become a general, and he didn’t manifest any zeal in boosting his career upward. He worked conscientiously, and not more than that. Volodya distinguished himself from us by his ability to work collectedly and deliberately, progressing toward the objective in undeviating fashion. Volodya’s characteristic carelessness in maintaining files and overall order on his desk and in his safe would seem a certain contrast to my claim. Sergei, who stood out among us in his neatness, often waxed ironic over the mess that was Volodya’s papers. Therein was a certain paradox: poise in thought and chaos in paperwork. Because of this paradox I even deceived a German reporter when answering his question on Volodya’s neatness with the claim that his files were totally in order. Only later did I remember that there was no order at all.

In a certain way, his inclination to slowly, unhurriedly get ready – he was a typical “slowpoke” – was joined to this inclination of Volodya’s. He ate slowly and often turned up in a position when everyone else was made to wait until he’d finally finish his steak. Why do I mention this? The fact of the matter is that, already executing the duties of the President of Russia, he somehow joked with a woman correspondent who asked him who was an example to him, his model for imitation. Volodya then slyly indicated Napoleon (don’t ask dumb questions). It proved entertaining that some journalists took this as the real thing, and so was born the myth of Volodya’s Napoleon complex. I hope that the reader who gets through my book will understand that Volodya doesn’t have a trace of this complex.

But let us return to his unhurried manner. This particularity of his, undoubtedly, is a manifestation of the phlegmatic side of his temperament that kept him from adventurism. Volodya’s intellectual capabilities were altogether good. He wasn’t a bad rhetorician, though at the level of dialogues. To speak from the podium with beautiful improvisation, like his boss Sobchak, probably wouldn’t work out for him. But in arguments, it was hard to get the best of him. He tenaciously defended his position, finding unexpected and therefore especially effective arguments. Objections didn’t knock him off course, and he’d find counter-arguments within a moment. In debates with equals, his combative, aggressive character was clearly demonstrated. He wisely didn’t get into disputes with those senior by rank and position. But in no case could he could be called a hard-headed and stubborn. He’d always agree with reasonable objections.

A unique feature of Volodya’s personality is his irony. The Napoleon story is a striking example of that. One could point out a multitude of such stories. An ironic frame of mind, by the way, is found only among intelligent people. He loves to joke about others and is not insulted when they joke about him – within the limits of decency, of course. To verbal barbs he can answer with ones of his own, and no less sharp.

It especially stands to note, in connection with recent circumstances, another personality aspect of my book’s protagonist: is he a religious believer? A religious KGB officer sounds like “liquid rock.” It definitely follows from my observations that Volodya in Dresden was the same type of atheist that I was. Yet…I already wrote above that that Volodya could have preserved within himself some germ of faith that could sprout fourth due to the shocks of the past decade and a half. But however well I knew him, I cannot categorically say whether he genuinely believes, or if faith for him is a tactical fallback.

In the psychological portrait I’ve written, only positive aspects have turned up, and no negative ones have been found. Let the reader believe me that I haven’t concealed anything, nor have I embellished. I am simply not in the position to qualify what could be allotted to definite personal vices. He and I are different people, and in much we don’t resemble each other, but I can’t consider his dissimilarity with me to be a minus.

Somewhere I’ve read the conclusion of one psychologist who found a serious flaw: the absence of a sense of danger (brave unto folly). I simply laughed at this latest claim taken from nowhere. Volodya is brave in moderation, just as he is cautious in moderation – like all normal people. Whoever saw him on the shooting range, to the contrary, would think that he was excessively cautious, since he very distinctly followed the rules of behavior on the firing line. He also watched his neighbors and got nervous when someone began to non-arbitrarily gesticulate with a loaded pistol in their hand. You’ll agree, my readers, that such behavior is wholly reasonable. But there are few who can be so collected in conditions of danger as he was.

I didn’t discover either secret or overt fascinations or hobbies with Volodya. Beer sessions, reading books, visits to concerts or the movies – these weren’t shaded with any captivation, but he did have one passion. That was sports, in which he reached a very high level. One can confidently assert that he was one of the most erudite and well-rounded men among masters of sport, but in Dresden he wasn’t engaged in it.

Work Translated: Усольцев, В.В. Сослуживец. М: Изд-во Эксмо, 2004

Translated by Mark Hackard.

The Soviet Union’s first ambassador to Egypt, Nikolai Vasilievich Novikov, recounts his pioneering role in establishing diplomatic relations in 1944 with Syria. Novikov provides a rich context to the genesis of Russo-Syrian partnership, describing the geopolitical arena and its attendant intrigues conducted by rival great powers like Britain and France. Novikov’s passage serves as an excellent background to an alliance between Russia and Syria that has regained strategic significance in the Great Game of our own day. 

One hellishly hot day, June 15, when all the thoughts of Cairo’s residents—charred from heat—turned if not toward the relaxing beaches of Alexandria, then toward a cool bath or a shower, a respectable-looking stranger from Syria showed up at the Soviet Embassy. Met by advisor Daniil Solod, he introduced himself as Naim Antaki, a member of Syria’s parliament from Damascus, and the former Syrian Minister of Foreign Affairs. Naim Antaki confided that he had arrived in Cairo with a secret message from the Syrian government and can only discuss it with the Ambassador.

I met Naim Antaki. After introducing himself to me the same way he did to the advisor, he handed a letter of recommendation from Syria’s Foreign Minister, Jamil Mardam Bey, in which he notified me that Naim Antaki is invested with the full confidence of the government and is authorized to make an important confidential proposal on behalf of the latter.

This proposal, given to me verbally, was indeed important. The Syrian government intended to establish diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, seeking to hold preliminary talks. It considered Damascus a convenient place for these talks, where the designated Soviet representative would be given a fitting welcome and provided diplomatic immunity. Expressing hope that the Soviet government agrees to these negotiations, the Syrian counterpart also requested to consider this initiative as being confidential. A similar request concerned the Soviet representative’s visit to Damascus, but only until the negotiations were complete. Naim Antaki wanted to receive Moscow’s answer in Cairo, where he often conducted certain business operations and where, therefore, his presence did not generate unwanted speculations.

I was not very surprised by the safety measures on the part of Jamil Mardam Bey.

Prior to the war, Syria, like Lebanon, was part of the French Mandate. In other words, it was a thinly-veiled colony. Formally, they had national autonomy, their own parliaments and governments, but the full power of the government belonged to the French High Commissioner.

After France’s loss in 1940, Syria and Lebanon formally maintained the Vichy collaborationist government for some time. However, in practice it was the German-Italian Control Commission that stayed in power. Germany’s conquest of Greece, including Crete and the Aegean islands in the immediate vicinity of Syria and Lebanon—insecurely protected by the remnants of Weygand’s army—prompted London to take decisive action. In June of 1941, British troops supported by Free France defeated Vichy forces and occupied Syria and Lebanon. What emerged as a result was a period of interregnum, when the French Mandate virtually lost all power, whereas the peoples of Syria and Lebanon gained the prospect of attaining independence.

But for now this was only a prospect. The status of these countries was very fragile. Even after declaring Syria and Lebanon sovereign republics in autumn of 1941, the commander of Britain’s occupation troops held the real reins of power in both countries. De Gaulle’s representative tried to challenge his power. Garrisons of Weygand’s former army were stationed in the cities of Lebanon and Syria, hastily repainted into the troops of Free France and continuing to be a threat to the independence of these countries.

Under the circumstances, Soviet recognition of Syria as a sovereign state would serve as solid support for its people in their struggle for genuine independence. But a premature disclose of the fact that negotiations about this subject were ongoing would allow the enemies of this young state to thwart their successful completion. Hence the emphasis on confidentiality on the part of the Syrian government. Of course, this fact could only be concealed for a short period of time, and even then, not from everyone. For the British authorities, for example, whose intelligence network flooded the capitals throughout the Middle East, it would not be much of a secret at all. De Gaulle’s intelligence in the Middle East stood at a lower level. Thus, an attempt to hide from it for the time being could actually work. It was likely that it was the French authorities that the Syrian government feared first and foremost. I asked Naim Antaki whether this was the case. He did not deny the fact that this is what concerned Syria the most at the given moment.

– But I suspect – he added with a deferential smile – that my friend Mardam Bey has another significant reason forcing him to be secretive. I will be quite frank with you. We have no guarantee that the Soviet government would positively interpret our initiative, even though I am highly optimistic myself. And a potential misfire and consequent publicity would undermine the government’s prestige. Naturally, the Prime Minister would prefer to avoid such an outcome.

*****

I assured Naim Antaki that I would immediately contact Moscow and let him know about their answer. On the same day, I informed the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs (NKID) about the proposal and said that I support it. The Commissar’s answer came two days later. Vyacheslav Molotov was giving me the authority to convey to Naim Antaki that the Soviet government, in principle, was ready to establish diplomatic relations with Syria and granted his permission to hold talks in Damascus instructing me to lead them. Invited to the Embassy, Naim Antaki gladly listened to Moscow’s response and said that he would immediately leave for Damascus to discuss—with Mardam Bey—and organize the duration and other details of my visit. On July 7, he turned up in Cairo once again with the news that they are waiting for me in Damascus in the next few days if this is convenient for me. We agreed that I would leave on Monday, July 10.

*****

This is what happened in terms of keeping things secret. I instructed Embassy staff to tell anyone who asked for me that I was away with no further details. This included members of the diplomatic corps, journalists, and acquaintances in Cairo. However, I did inform the State Secretary of the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, Mohammed Salaheddin Bey, over the telephone that I was heading to Syria for a few days, but, of course, without disclosing the purpose of my visit. A diplomatic representative cannot leave a country in secret like some smuggler. The British Embassy was aware of my visit, too: it was the British military authorities that gave me permission to travel through Palestine. Thus, the only “clandestine” aspect of my mission was its purpose in the limited sense mentioned above. Funny thing is, none of the informed organizations said a single word about my trip to the media hungry for such news. As a result, the official communiqué on the talks in Damascus published later took the media by complete surprise.

*****

At about five o’clock in the evening, our limo pulled up to the Umayyad hotel—very modern and comfortable. Here, Naim Antaki said “goodbye” to us, passing us onto the representative of the Foreign Ministry Protocol Department—a young man named Hussein Marrash. Bypassing the receptionist, he took us to our suites, timidly apologizing for the lack of honors that foreign-government envoys deserve. We took two of the three suites booked for us. Dneprov and Matveev stayed in the same suite for the sake of greater security of the “encryption department.” The other—a two-room suite—was mine. This was to be my office and home. Hussein Marrash wished for us to enjoy our stay, and said, leaving, that in the morning I will be meeting with Jamil Mardam Bey. After he left, we carefully washed off the layer of road dust, changed, and the three of us had dinner in my suite. In the evening, we naturally wanted to walk through this famous ancient city, but had to be mindful of Marrash’s request not to do so to maintain our incognito status. Therefore, we were left to admire the dimly-lit central part of the city from the window of the hotel, located near the Martyrs’ Square. It was named in honor of Syrian patriots, who rebelled against Turkish rule during the First World War and were executed by the Turks as a result.

On the morning of July 12, I checked the local and Beirut newspapers (in French) and found no mention of our visit: either as a report on politics, or news on social events. The government’s concern for secrecy was a success.

My meeting with Jamil Mardam Bey did not take place at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as I expected, but rather in an impressive mansion in the style of European architecture. I never found out whether it was inhabited or served any other purpose, for instance, protocol receptions. In any case, I only saw the butler, who opened the massive front door for Hussein Marrash and me, and Jamil Mardam Bey, waiting for me in the living room.

The Syrian Minister of Foreign Affairs was already older than fifty, but looked youthful. Following mutual greetings and Mardam Bey’s well-mannered questions about our trip and hotel, Hussein Marrash left us alone. We began to discuss business.

Upon the request of the Minister, I explained to him the positive attitude of the Soviet government on the question of establishing diplomatic relations between the USSR and Syria. At the same time, I stressed that these relations will be established upon the foundation of broadly accepted international law, recognizing the full equality of both sides. I made this self-evident clarification in order to eliminate any possible concerns on the part of Mardam Bey. After all, I did not rule out the fact that he and his colleagues in the Cabinet—having experienced on their own skin the cunning policy of “great” imperialist powers more than once—shared a certain lack of confidence toward the new international partner of Syria, the Soviet Union, whose policy was too often distorted in the circles hostile to us, as we all know.

When I finished speaking, the Minister stated that the agreement by the Soviet government is a very significant factor for Syria’s independence. Naim Antaki’s initial message already generated great enthusiasm among his higher-ups.  All that was left was to formalize the relationship between our two countries.

“Here is my letter for Mister Molotov,” he said. “Please read it and give me your opinion.”

I carefully read the document composed in the French language. Translated, it sounded like this (citing it incompletely):

Moved by admiration for the Soviet people, whose efforts and successes in the great struggle of democracies against the spirit of conquest and domination provide the basis for legitimate hopes for future freedom and equality of all nations large and small; encouraged, on the other hand, by the foreign policy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which, from the beginning of its existence, proclaimed the abolition of all privileges, capitulations, and other advantage that imperial Russia used, and that was incompatible with the equality of nations that the Soviet government recognized, Syria, which, after much effort and massive casualties, recently witnessed solemn recognition of its international existence as an independent and sovereign state…would be happy to maintain in this capacity friendly diplomatic relations with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics… 

In conclusion, Mardam Bey requested the exchange of ambassadors with the Soviet government.

Having read the letter, I said that it fully meets the main objective of our negotiations, and I am very impressed with its spirit of friendliness, piercing it from the first to the last line. I expressed my conviction that the Soviet government would review it with the greatest amount of goodwill and will promptly respond in a positive manner.

*****

I thoroughly reread the letter in my hotel room. In its content and spirit, it indeed met the purpose of the talks, as I had mentioned to Mardam Bey. Yet furthermore—this was very characteristic for the letter—certain phrases mentioned an equal relationship, the rejection of Tsarist Russia’s privileges by the Soviet Union, etc. It is as if the Syrian government invited the Soviet counterpart to officially declare once again the well-known principles of Soviet foreign policy. This, of course, was reassurance, and an unnecessary one, in my opinion. But the final decision about the content of our answer was with Moscow.

I translated the letter into Russian, wrote a message about our conversation with Mardam Bey, and handed everything to our “encryption department” in order to send it all off to the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs.

*****

On Saturday, July 15, around noon, Jamil Mardam Bey visited Bloudan.  Our attentive guardian Hussein informed me about his visit in the morning. He told us that the Minister wants to introduce me to Shukri al-Quwatli, the President of the Syrian Republic, which I gladly accepted.

The President lived next to us in his own estate in the valley of Zabadani. His residence had little resemblance to a palace of the head of state. It was an ordinary manor house, no different from the others that I have seen in the Bloudan area. The ceremonial rooms of the house were furnished half in the European, half in the Arabic style, and said more about the well-being rather than wealth of their owner.

The President of the Syrian Republic and the leader of the ruling National Bloc was an aging, sickly-looking man. It did not escape my attention that he barely managed to overcome physical fatigue or, perhaps, acute pain.

He was quite cordial, but without any pomp, in the presence of one other person, Mardam Bey, consistently maintaining secrecy. I suspected that by inviting the Soviet representative, the President was not guided by protocol, but by the desire to determine the reliability of the steps undertaken by the Syrian government through personal contact. The nature of our conversation after breakfast confirmed my guess even more. In practice, here, in this country estate, we were holding the second round of negotiations initiated on July 12 in Damascus.

Assessing the friendly gesture by the Soviet government—that gave consent to the establishment of diplomatic relations with Syria—in the most flattering way and praising my meeting with the Foreign Minister, Shukri al-Quwatli continued:

I am extremely interested in one thing that may seem anachronistic to you, but for us, Syrians, has not lost its relevance. What I mean is capitulation and other special privileges that the Great Powers, including tsarist Russia, had enjoyed in the East. I know full well that Soviet Russia, from the very moment of its birth, has officially rejected them. However, I would be very happy to hear from you that now, after almost three decades, this principle remains valid.

Thus, my concerns about the question of inequality emerged once again. This means that I was unable to convince Mardam Bey about this issue fully when I met him. And if I did, then these concerns remained in the heads of other Syrian leaders.

As in the conversation with Mardam Bey, I outlined the Leninist principles of Soviet foreign policy, thoroughly focusing on the policy towards the countries of the East. I reminded him of signing equal treaties with Afghanistan, Turkey, Iran, Mongolia, and China after the October Revolution. These agreements embodied such principles. If the confirmation of their validity now required new facts, then the recent establishment of diplomatic relations with Egypt met this goal perfectly. On an absolutely equal footing, I did not fail to emphasize once again. The President thanked me for this clarification and no longer brought up this subject.

*****

In the afternoon of July 18, Jamil Mardam Bey once again visited the mountainous resort of Bloudan and invited me to his suite. He was not alone. Next to him on the couch sat a man unknown to me, around the age of fifty, wearing horn-rimmed glasses, and slightly balding in the forehead. Mardam Bey prepared a big surprise for me by introducing this stranger as Lebanon’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Selim Taqla.

*****

Selim Taqla did not beat around the bush and revealed the purpose of his meeting me. Lebanon’s government, he said, is aware of the negotiations between the Syrian counterpart and the Soviet Union. It has been following their progress with both empathy and interest and also intends to propose the establishment of diplomatic relations to the Soviet Union.

“I would truly appreciate it,” Selim Taqla concluded his brief speech, “if you were to inquire about the opinion of the Soviet government on this matter. If it agrees, then I am authorized to officially invite you for negotiations in Lebanon once your business in Syria allows you to do so.”

I responded that I warmly welcome the friendly intentions on the part of the Lebanese government and would immediately send a request to Moscow. I had no doubts about the fact that the Soviet government would agree, however, this time around I refrained from ensuring him of Moscow’s prompt response.

*****

Vyacheslav Molotov’s telegram for Jamil Mardam Bey finally arrived in the evening of July 23.  If any of Syria’s leaders really expected broad declarations about questions that had long since been decided by life, then their hopes did not materialize. I will quote it fully:

The Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics truly appreciates the sentiments expressed by you about the great struggle of the Soviet people against Nazi Germany and its accomplices. The Soviet Government was pleased to accept the offer of the Government of Syria to establish friendly diplomatic relations between the USSR and Syria.

The Soviet Government is ready, as soon as possible, to accredit the Envoy Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the USSR for the President of the Syrian Republic and receive the Envoy Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Syria, who will be accredited by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. 

Familiarizing myself with the telegram, I asked Hussein to immediately inform the Minister of Foreign Affairs that Moscow’s answer had been received, that it was rather positive, as was expected, and that I could hand it to the Minister in person tomorrow morning.

On the morning of July 24, our group arrived in Damascus. Bypassing the hotel, I headed directly to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs where Mardam Bey welcomed me immediately. I congratulated the Minister with completing our negotiations and handed to him the message text translated by me into the French language along with my accompanying note—Hussein diligently retyped both documents on a typewriter. Skimming the message and note texts, Mardam Bey said:

I will always be proud of the fact that I participated in the historical act of establishing diplomatic relations between our countries. This act is a great milestone in the history of the Syrian Republic because it means that the most powerful nation in the world had recognized our young state. For my part, I also congratulate you and cordially thank you for your assistance in this matter.  

He shook my hand and added:

Today we will make this great event public. Let all Syrians and the whole world learn about it.

*****

Approximately six hours remained until the evening ceremony at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We fully dedicated them to walking through Damascus. Hussein Marrash, one and the same, was our knowledgeable and sensible guide. He came up with the route of our improvised tour so skillfully that our first day of being in Damascus—the first day free from any “secretive” limitations—allowed us to obtain a pretty clear idea about this ancient city.

*****

Chief of the protocol nervously hurried the Minister to open the reception. With a worried look on his face, he took me and Jamil Mardam Bey into a vast conference hall, cleared of tables and chairs and buzzing from a variety of voices.

Walking with me and making way through the applauding crowd of guests, Mardam Bey stopped in a relatively free end of the hall, waited until there was silence, introduced me to the audience, briefly spoke about the negotiations, and announced the preliminary communiqué twice—in Arabic and French. Each reading was accompanied by applause that seemed to have no end.

*****

In addition to diplomats and consuls, foreign guests included Colonel MacGarrett, the personal representative of the British Envoy in Syria and Lebanon, General Edward Spears. Forgetting about traditional British reserve, he shook my hand for a long time and, in a soulful voice, congratulated me on my diplomatic success on his own behalf and that of the General. In contrast, the French government delegate, Châtaignot, showed noticeable dryness as did his deputy, Colonel Oliva-Roget, although they, too, shook my hand and congratulated me with a diplomatic success.

*****

Selim Taqla wanted to hear my news from Moscow. After all, he did not just come from Beirut to attend the ceremony, but also to have a business meeting with me. I was glad to inform him that the response to the proposal of the Lebanese government had been received: the Soviet counterpart agreed to hold negotiations in Lebanon and authorizes me to do so for this purpose.

Nikolai Novikov, Memoirs of a Diplomat (Vospominaniia diplomata)

Part II. The Middle East.

“Mission to Syria”

Excerpts

http://phmdvy.atspace.biz/str19_0.html

Translated and edited by Nina Kouprianova

The dark arts of espionage share more in common with historically-rooted secret societies than the media would care to admit. Using decades of experience and observation, KGB First Chief Directorate Col. Stanislav Lekarev (1935-2010) takes us into the murky netherworld of globalist powerplayers, occult orders, and state intelligence services.

In the “Masonic-intelligence” complex, it’s difficult to say who’s more central – who’s the real “leader,” and who’s being “led.” This has taken shape in various ways. It’s well-known that through its men in the Masonic lodges, the CIA is able to channel the work of the international business community into directions needed by the United States. But Masons who work in the CIA are also capable of setting the tone they require.

In any case, Masonic techniques have been adopted in the CIA, MI6, the BND, and Mossad. With all conditions equal, during officer selection preference is given to Freemasons. Masonic lodges serve not only as a personnel reservoir, but as their own type of guarantor of a given officer’s reliability. In contemporary conditions, the setting out of agents of influence and the use of blackmail; bribery; intimidation; and defamation of one’s enemies have entered soundly into the arsenal of these kindred organizations. Consequently, the leaderships of the Masonic lodges and NATO intelligence services were spliced together.

A classic example of this is the founder of the CIA, Allen Dulles. Having become the director of the CIA, he would remain a Mason until the end of his life.

Medals awarded to all prominent leading officers of the CIA, beginning with its founder William Donovan, who in 1945 received a Grand Maltese Cross of the Order of St. Sylvester from the hands of Pope Pius XII in 1945, bear witness to the successes in joint actions between the CIA and Freemasonry.

CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton received the same award “for counterintelligence work.” He was active in the field working with Soviet defectors amongst officers of the KGB and GRU.

In the fall of 1948, the “Knights of the Church” presented the highest award of the Maltese Order – the Great Cross – to General Reinhard Gehlen, the chief of West German intelligence, for his services. At that time the BND was merely a branch of US intelligence. In recent years, judging by their obituaries, all Cold War era CIA directors and their deputies were Knights of Malta.

In many cases US intelligence services consider Masons a reliable mainstay in their secret work. Establishing contacts with the necessary individuals is carried out along “fraternal” lines.

An International Coordination Center for NATO Intelligence Services

To direct the branches of a secret society scattered across many continents and countries, a special center for assuring cooperation and coordination is needed. The CIA has such a center. It’s situated in the homeland of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem – Valletta. In the best traditions of intelligence services and Masonic lodges, its activities are not publicized.

During 1987 and 1988 in Paris, Masons from the CIA created the Commonwealth of Russian Masons, uniting around 100 Freemasons. Along with that, Radio Liberty regularly transmitted exhortations to citizens of the USSR to join Masonic lodges.

One of the main support points for acquiring agents of influence was the “Alexander Pushkin” lodge. Later it was namely this lodge, and the Pushkin Association that arose on its foundation, that would become initiators for creating the lodges “Novikov” (Moscow), “Geometry” (Kharkov), and also “Sphinx” (St. Petersburg) in the post-Soviet space. Relying on the solid financial support of the CIA, the Scottish-Rite Freemasons also stretched their tentacles into the provinces. Today we know of the existence of Scottish Rite lodges in Nizhniy Novgorod, Voronezh, Kursk, Orel, Novosibirsk, Vladivostok, Kaliningrad, Rostov-on-Don, and even in Novocherkassk. From 1992 to 1996, several similar lodges formed in the Army and Internal Forces (two are documented). They are composed mainly of the middle and upper officer corps. According to some information, from the middle of the 1990s a Masonic lodge closely tied to the Pushkin Association is functioning, and it’s allegedly made up of only officers of the Ministry of Defense and General Staff.

The Trilateral Commission

In 1973 the CIA created an international organization, the Trilateral Commission, as cover for operations to recruit agents of influence. It united representatives of the capitalist powers from politics, science, and business, who were engaged in seeking ways to consolidate Western power.

The “world government” under the Trilateral Commission was joined by George H.W. Bush, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, Robert MacNamara, Olaf Palme, David and Nelson Rockefeller, Baron Edmund de Rothschild, Willi Brandt, Helmut Kohl, Hans Merkel, Helmut Schmidt, Axel Springer, Franz Josef Strauss, Ludwig Erhard, and yet around another two hundred permanent members. This organization has consultative status under the UN Economic and Social Council.

We know that in December of 1989, on the home island of the Knights of Malta, a meeting between Mikhail Gorbachev and George H.W. Bush took place. There the presidents officially declared the end of the Cold War. Problems relating to disarmament, regional conflicts, and also economic relations were discussed at the meeting. Gorbachev was elected a member of the Trilateral Commission, which was engaged in global issues of relations between Europe, America, and Japan. Soon the USSR was no more…

Was Yeltsin a Mason?

It’s known that in November of 1991, Boris Yeltsin was accorded the rank of a Knight of Malta. At the Kremlin he was awarded the cross of a Knight-Commander of the Maltese Order. From times long ago, the Maltese Order has been known as a supporting structure of the international Masonic organization. More than a few of its secrets are tied to the mystery of the murder of Russian Emperor Paul I, who had received in his time the same regalia awarded to the first president of Russia. After the initiation ritual, Yeltsin posed in full knightly attire for press photographers.

A year later he signed Order No. 827 “On the Restoration of Official Relations Between the Russian Federation and the Maltese Order.” The Russian Foreign Ministry charged its emissary at the Vatican to represent Russia’s interests to the Knights of Malta.

And nonetheless, arguments for Yeltsin’s membership in Freemasonry only amount to photographs in which the first president of Russia is depicted sporting the attributes of the Maltese Order. But first of all, this is a knightly organization that maintains official relations with Russia and formally has no relation to Masonry. Second, these medals were awarded to Boris Nikolaevich by quite an extravagant personality – Dzhuna Davitashvili, who has also called her self a colonel-general of the astral forces. It stands to reason that she isn’t a member of the Sovereign Military Order of the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta, if only because women are not admitted. It’s also known that Dzhuna is a member of a certain social organization to which the present order relates quite negatively.

After the Yeltsin regime’s establishment of official relations with the Maltese Order, a branch of Catholic Knights of Malta appeared in St. Petersburg. It was founded by V. Feklist, “plenipotentiary of the World Parliament of the Knightly Maltese Order.” Aside from the Catholic Maltese Order, an “Orthodox Maltese Order” became active, founded by Archbishop Makarios. The Order is directed from London and enjoys the financial support of rich Greek Masons in the United States. The method of doubling in intelligence practice is a usual phenomenon. As is the counterintelligence technique by which a suspect is alternately interrogated by a “good cop” and a “bad cop.”

Work Translated: Лекарев, С.В. “Мальтийский центр ЦРУ.” Аргументы Недели, 5 ноября 2008.

Translated by Mark Hackard.

Former KGB General Filipp Bobkov was a veteran counterintelligence officer and chosen by Yuri Andropov to head the Fifth Chief Directorate (Ideological Counter-Subversion), which he led from 1969 to 1983. Bobkov recounts the twilight war of counterespionage waged between the CIA and KGB – a contest with deadly consequences. 

In the Cold War, as in any other war, there were successes and defeats – failures and miscalculations that at times led to inescapable consequences. Any intelligence service will suffer the blows of the enemy with difficulty, and the KGB also had to undergo not a few such blows. Betrayals by apparatus officers – those with whom you spend all day, whom you see in the elevator and at meetings, with whom you’re connected by constant engagement in shared matters – these were taken especially painfully.

KGB central apparatus officer Major Viktor Sheymov never had to go out on service matters, and he spent the entire working day, often stretching deep into the night, in his office, which wasn’t easy to reach. He locked himself in and didn’t open the door to just any knock, and if he went out for lunch or, say, to the brass, without fail he’d turn the levers of his encoded lock and would again jiggle the doorknob to check whether it was well-locked.

So it was when Sheymov worked in Poland, and he also kept such a regime during his period of work in several African countries as well as upon his return to Moscow. And there wasn’t anything surprising in that; such was his profession – a cryptographer.

One time Sheymov didn’t arrive to work, and everyone decided that he had fallen sick, since they knew him as a disciplined, effective person for whom duty was everything.

He also didn’t show up the next day, and no one answered the telephone calls to his home. Sheymov’s colleagues became worried and went to his apartment. But they didn’t uncover any signs of life there; neither could the neighbors say anything. With the help of apartment maintenance, the officers entered the apartment – nobody was there. It wasn’t that the rooms were in ideal order, but everything was seemingly in place.

They dropped by Sheymov’s parents. It turned out they didn’t know anything, either. The state security officers became even more alarmed, noting how strangely the old people were behaving. It would have seemed they’d be worried: he wasn’t at work, neither was their son at home with their beloved granddaughter and daughter-in-law. But Sheimov’s parents only shrugged their shoulders in surprise, as though they had no clue where he could have gone.

To our great shame it was soon established: Sheymov and his family were neither in Moscow nor the country overall. They left. They themselves, of course, couldn’t do that. All three were obviously extracted with their agreement. KGB officers had almost no doubts remaining, but they could believe in betrayal only with difficulty.

A thorough investigation was undertaken, and soon another blow awaited us.

Usually when an agent of a foreign intelligence service leaves his country where he was staying and returns to the Motherland, he won’t make contact with that intelligence service for some time, even a long time, since he might be under surveillance. He only has the right to begin work after he receives a signal from his masters. This signal was given to Sheymov – he was sent a letter. Not to his name and address, of course, and it wasn’t written in open text. But there were no doubts left: Sheymov was working for the enemy, and he hadn’t begun doing so just yesterday.

This was a critical failure; after all, Sheymov was a cryptographer, and with his help our codes made it into enemy hands. That meant that everything our agents were transmitting had been intercepted and decoded by Western intelligence services. It wasn’t known how long this had gone on for.

One can imagine what we endured! Most of all it was a feeling of terrible humiliation – he had us wrapped around his finger, and also, of course, anger seethed among everyone from recognition of our own helplessness and powerlessness.

And so Sheymov was extracted along with his wife and children. In what manner? Counterintelligence couldn’t answer this question, and apparently wasn’t striving to answer it. It’s difficult to admit one’s failures!

After all, the most minor signals on the possibility of any person’s ties to foreign intelligence services were subjected to the most scrupulous vetting, and then there’s your own officer…All the investigation’s evidence in the Sheymov case were received hostilely, and all kinds of possible exculpatory versions were thought up. Even the leadership, sure of a failure by their subordinates, tried to conceal certain details, and, it stands to reason, didn’t make the necessary conclusions from what had transpired.

Many of our tragedies, as I have already written, took place due to an unwillingness to deeply analyze the reasons for various phenomena inhibiting the development of the state and leading to ruinous consequences. The state security organs also didn’t escape this vice. Who knows, if the necessary conclusions had been made from the Sheymov case, perhaps another “fighter for the liberation of the USSR,” Gordievsky, wouldn’t have been able to escape the country right in front of everyone.

Reciprocal penetration into the systems of foreign intelligence services is a natural process; we infiltrated Western intelligence services, and they did the same to ours. But the possibility of the opponent penetrating our special services was underestimated, both in intelligence and counterintelligence. Defectors do come about, we’ve had such, but for a CIA agent to work alongside you at the desk right next to you at Lubyanka is impossible for one to imagine. Running penetrations of foreign intelligence services, we didn’t even permit ourselves the thought that a Western agent could be infiltrated into our ranks. Even knowing of some details that would put us on guard, the security organs allowed for negligence. At all levels of the KGB, no one wished to seriously think that such a thing could happen.

When our officer remained in the West, the case was of course thoroughly investigated, with those guilty of the omission punished. Perhaps precisely fear of such punishment fettered the actions of officers, who weren’t looking to uncover and expose agents infiltrated into our ranks. It’s true – there were a few of them.

The exposure of several KGB officers working for the opponent – men such as Polishchuk, Motorin, Varenik, and Yuzhin – was perceived as an incredible emergency situation. But that was in intelligence. Counterintelligence matters were going along calmly. And suddenly, like thunder amidst a clear sky: our major is a CIA agent! Deputy section chief of the Moscow Directorate Vorontsov was caught red-handed passing secret information to a CIA officer who was working under US embassy cover in Moscow. With the permission of the investigator, as one of the KGB leadership I spoke with Vorontsov after his arrest.

He told the story of his downfall. In his words, no one recruited him, and until a certain moment he didn’t have any connections with the CIA. He himself decided to cross over to the enemy. An experienced intelligence officer, he knew how to avoid surveillance and establish contact. Vorontsov threw into a US embassy employee’s vehicle a letter in which he offered his services. No answer followed. This didn’t trouble Vorontsov, since he knew from his own practice that not just anyone would take the bait he was tossing them. Sometime later he put a second letter into an embassy car. The Americans established contact with him after the third attempt. They were convinced that this person could be useful, as he wasn’t coming to them, of course, with his hands empty. They agreed to accept his services for $30,000 – 30 pieces of silver!

We knew well all the officers of the CIA station in Moscow, as well as the “clean” diplomats who weren’t of interest to us. We followed the actions of the station chiefs attentively, about which they doubtless knew well. Not one contact, nor one route, could get by us, and we didn’t even require constant surveillance or special observation – we knew our “colleagues” by their faces. Neither switching cars, nor changing taxis for buses or the metro, could change anything. As a rule, American agents are high-class professionals. Without a doubt they sensed our “tutelage,” as they simply couldn’t allow the thought that it wasn’t there. And this time they thought up an amusing stunt.

“Clean” diplomat John was indistinguishable by height and build from Brown, the station chief. Brown put on an artfully made rubber mask that imitated John’s face, and then serenely went where he needed to go. He was sure that John didn’t interest us, and that no one would be following him. Recognizing this mask was impossible even at a close distance, and if the person was in a car, even slowing exiting the embassy gates, then the CIA officers had nothing to worry about.

However, we rather quickly were able to unravel the “illusion.” It helped keep namely those agents who could wreak the most damage within our field of vision. The American intelligence officers, meanwhile, proud of their ingenuity, continued to think they were fooling us.

This method was described in the KGB counterintelligence Information Bulletin, devoted to the practical techniques, methods, and tactics for fighting Western intelligence services. Vorontsov passed the Bulletin to the Americans. The CIA officer who was detained during the meet with Vorontsov wasn’t in a mask, but rather was wearing a wig and adhesive mustache.

Vorontsov gave the enemy important secret information and betrayed his comrades at work and people cooperating with the state security organs. He also revealed the operational methods of our counterintelligence tracking CIA officers in Moscow.

I was struck by the frankness with which Vorontsov told of his treachery. There was the sense that this man wasn’t tormented by his conscience. But he also didn’t resemble a dedicated opponent; he just wanted to earn more money, and kept whining how he, the poor devil, had been wronged by the brass. It’s true – as a matter of fact, he was hurt by the brass when it was discovered he was wasting official funds on personal needs.

The sums were minor, and he was shamed and lowered in rank. So then he got revenge, entering into the Americans’ service.

Vorontsov’s fellow officers saw much – how he wasn’t living according to his means, luxuriating, and readily giving loans, although until recently before then he himself couldn’t get out of debt.

Vorontsov caused a feeling of disgust; in every way he would suck up and try to evoke sympathy. It was difficult to look at a young man who had been ruined by a desire for profit.

Yes, these were our defeats that signified losses in the Cold War. We didn’t resolve to speak of our failures to the people, and in such a way we lost the right to speak on others’ mistakes. However, the very fact that spies were exposed did honor to our Foreign Counterintelligence [First Chief Directorate], at the helm of which stood honorable and highly professional specialists such as Anatoly Kireev and Leonid Nikitenko.

One must also give due to the chief of Foreign Intelligence [First Chief Directorate], Vladimir Kryuchkov, who was not afraid to blemish the prestige of his unit. He didn’t conceal the presence of agents who were working for Western intelligence services among us, and he subjected all cases of their exposure to thorough analysis.

Work Translated: Bobkov, Filip D. КГБ и власть.  Eksmo, 2003.  Moscow.

Translated by Mark Hackard. 

Before the murder of John F. Kennedy on November 22nd, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald – or even possibly a double – visited the Soviet embassy in Mexico City. Retired KGB Lt. Gen. Nikolai Leonov, then on assignment in Mexico’s capital as an intelligence officer, met Oswald that day, and he has little doubt the young American was just a pawn in a much wider plot. 

An intelligence officer’s workdays were full of work with active agent networks, with those who had been brought into partnership with Soviet intelligence by previous shifts of our colleagues, and with agents arriving from other countries, etc.

Most simply, that’s if the environment in a country allows you to meet personally with an agent somewhere in a cafe or restaurant. There one could unhurriedly discuss all accumulated issues, take verbal, and sometimes written, information, transfer money for operational expenditures, and set the conditions for future meetings. Though if the local counterintelligence service is well equipped technologically, then you had to be extremely attentive. When working with Americans, we had to almost immediately refuse such comfortable conditions of communication and cross over to the use of dead drops or a system of momentary meetings.

Only to the deeply profane would it seem that US intelligence doesn’t keep its citizens under control. FBI representatives recruited agents among Americans and made all their officials report in obligatory order on every contact with Soviet citizens and conducted regular interviews. Frequent and continuous meetings with Americans were dangerous.

It was much more dependable to train an agent to work through dead drops that excluded any personal contact and brought risk to a minimum. But it was even better to supply an agent with special sheets of writing paper, which were soaked in a special compound and could be used as carbon paper for taking down invisible text. These very simple forms of impersonal communication were quite reliable in practical work, although there are many others, about which it’s still too early to speak.

Working the American line in Mexico was always active and lively. Well-wishers among US citizens would often drop in to us on their own initiative with proposals for secret cooperation. A few months before my arrival in the country, two Americans came to our embassy, both of them employees of the super-secret organization known as the National Security Agency (NSA). This agency was engaged in the development of codes and decryption. With genuinely American scope and industry, tens of thousands of people systematically dissected the codes and ciphers of all the world’s states. As was usual, at that time the socialist countries occupied a priority spot in this work. Both visitors expressed a resolute desire to leave for the USSR for political and moral-ethical reasons. Our friends were covertly extracted to the Soviet Union, where they reported very valuable information on the NSA’s work, and for many years they worked together with Soviet specialists on similar problems. Such “disappearances,” of course, raised the alarm in the US intelligence system. Sooner or later they were groping for the channel by which their secrets were departing.

From the beginning of the 1960s, US intelligence began to actively send fake well-wishers – provocateurs – to our embassy. On the one hand, they wanted to load us down with unnecessary and useless work, and on the other, they were counting on compromising true friends and sowing distrust towards everyone.

One must admit that the Americans sometimes succeeded. To this day I acutely relive the tragedy of one of the soldiers from an American missile base in the south of the United States who came with an offer for partnership. Either our colleague didn’t have the sensitivity, or his interlocutor couldn’t convince us of his honesty, but we made the decision to decline the proposal and say farewell. What regret we had when several days later this serviceman was arrested as a deserter by the Americans in Panama and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

In the vast majority of cases, we managed – if not immediately – to separate the wheat from the chaff, those who wished to work with Soviet intelligence from the decoys. We even developed a type of technological instruction memo for work with such people. In the most complex cases, when our human possibilities didn’t allow us to bring forth a final judgment on who was in front of us – an ally or a provocateur – we resorted to the lie detector. More accurately, not to the detector itself, but we announced the possibility of its application. Just the mention of this device turned out to be sufficient for provocateurs to immediately flare up in indignation and anger and refuse from any further contacts. American propaganda had convinced its citizens of the total power of this technical adaptation to such a degree that they were not in a condition to withstand it. Those who weren’t lying calmly agreed to any vetting.

Among the many visitors to the embassy from among Americans, there were also people who would later become widely well-known. Once on a Sunday in the autumn of 1963, several weeks before the assassination of John F. Kennedy, I was playing volleyball with my colleagues at the embassy’s athletic field. Suddenly a somewhat agitated duty officer appeared and began to ask me to receive an American visitor and speak with him. Swearing under my breath, I ran over in my track suit, hoping that I could get off with a request for him to come on a workday. Entering the reception room for foreigners, I saw a young man with an unusually pale face. A revolver lay on the table, its cylinder loaded with bullets. I say nearby and asked him how I could be of assistance. The young man said his name was Lee Oswald, that he was an American, and that he was currently under constant surveillance and wanted to return immediately to the USSR, where he had earlier lived and worked in Minsk, and be delivered from the constant fear for his life and for the fate of his family.

The question of restoring citizenship was extremely complicated. One had to write a well-founded request to the USSR Supreme Council Presidium and then wait without any great hope for a long time. And if a positive decision came, then bureaucratic red tape would a lot of time. With the softest, most calming tone I could use, I informed our unusual visitor of this. He began to write a request, but his hands were trembling strongly. Suddenly he set the pen aside and firmly stated:

I’ll shoot them all today. In the hotel everyone is following me: the manager, the maid, the doorman…

His eyes shone feverishly, and his voice became unsteady. Images and scenes unknown to me had obviously set upon him. It was clear that behind the table sat a man with an overstimulated nervous system that was on the verge of breakdown. There was no purpose to speaking with a person who was in such a state. We had only to calm Lee Oswald down as much as possible, try to convince him not to do anything that could hinder a positive resolution to his question of restoring USSR citizenship, and accompany him out of the embassy. I let the embassy consular department know of what had occurred.

When some time later I learned that namely Lee Oswald was accused of assassinating US President John Kennedy, I saw on television the moment of his murder in a Dallas jail. It was a murder camouflaged as a random assassination, and it became clear to me that he was an obvious scapegoat. Never could a man with such a shaken nervous system, whose fingers couldn’t steadily hold a pen, calculatingly and in cold blood produce the fatal shots accurately from long distance. I say this firmly and with conviction, because in my youth, as a student at MGIMO, I was involved in sport shooting and steadily passed the requirements for a marksman – I was even a member of the Moscow shooting team. Many times I had to shoot from a combat rifle in competitions, and I know that the foundation of success lies most of all in a trained and forged nervous system. And I recall that in his conversation with me, Oswald not once spoke negatively of the president or US government. All his fears were tied to someone from nearby, although he couldn’t definitively explain who was after him and why. It’s a pity for such people – hounded through life and made the victims of a greater political game.

Work Translated: Леонов, Н.С. Лихолетье: Записки главного аналитика Лубянки. М: Эксмо, 2005.

Translated by Mark Hackard.

Retired KGB Major General Boris Ratnikov has a story to tell – about the Soviet and Russian intelligence services’ use of psychic espionage in the Great Game. While Ratnikov’s story may sound fantastic, the details on Cold War-era remote viewing programs in both the United States and Soviet Union are very real. With that in mind, perhaps the general’s claims aren’t so far-fetched after all. In this 2006 interview with state newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta (RG), Ratnikov (BR) reveals some aspects of his mysterious work that no less than mirror the popular film Inception.

Dossier

Major General Boris Ratnikov, 62 years old. Worked in the UKGB [Upravlenie – Directorate] for Moscow and Moscow Oblast. From 1991 he was the first deputy chief of the Russian Federation Main Protection Directorate (GUO). From 1994 to 1997 he was the main consultant to the Russian Federation Presidential Security Service (SBP) and Advisor to the chief of the Federal Protection Service (FSO). Today he is Advisor to the Chairman of the Moscow Oblast Duma. 

Magic Secrets from the KGB

RG: Boris Konstantinovich, why was your service enclosed in a shroud of secrecy?

BR: Probably because we were engaged in matters directly tied to control of both societal consciousness and the consciousness of wholly real individuals. And also searched for possibilities of defending a person from an unsanctioned intrusion into his consciousness.

RG: So the Chekists as well studied occultism here in Russia?

BR: There’s nothing paradoxical that such a subject matter was within the security organs’ field of vision. From ancient times humanity has been interested in what the consciousness represents. The powerful of this world used various technologies for influencing the psyche.

In the twentieth century, the magical practices of ancient shamans entered the scientific level of research, which immediately fell into the intelligence services’ field of vision. Special attention was devoted to this problem in Great Britain, Germany, and the Soviet Union. In our country, for example, practically all the people who possessed supernatural capabilities were under the control of the KGB.

You can’t even conceive what sort of war of minds was unfolding in this field in the first half of the twentieth century. I’d hardly be exaggerating if I say that sometimes real “astral” battles were waged. And all of this was classified and camouflaged, probably no less than the nuclear project.

RG: Publicly science has stigmatized such research as obscurantism, while secretly scientists were seriously studying it in special laboratories and closed institutes?

BR: In the middle of the 1980’s, problems of creating psychogenerators and remotely acting on the human psyche were studied practically in all developed countries. Serious scientific experiments were conducted, and the circle of ones that succeeded in comparison with the beginning of the century expanded significantly.

In the USSR, the importance of this problem was generally realized, as well as the danger concealed in the possibility of invading and manipulating another’s consciousness. Around 50 institutes in our country studied the possibilities of acting on the psyche remotely. Expenditures for these goals were counted in the hundreds of millions of rubles. And although the investments justified themselves, the results we got were not developed.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, all this work was shuttered, and specialists in the area of subtle psycho-physical fields were scattered throughout the country and engaged in other matters. By my data, purposeful research on these subjects isn’t being conducted in the country today.

Accessing the Secretary of State’s Mind

RG: After research was shut down, you ended up in the Federal Protection Service (FSO) for the first president of Russia. And what did you do there?

BR: We understood perfectly well that the new state formation was undergoing the painful period of its establishment. And during disease, the state organism, just like the human body, is very vulnerable. We needed to shield our head of state from attempts to manipulate his consciousness. And there were not just a few such attempts. I’m confident we succeeded in that task.

RG: And you yourselves didn’t try to manipulate President Yeltsin’s consciousness?

BR: In no cases. The task of the structure that I headed within the FSO was to protect top figures from attempts at external influence on their consciousness. Putting my hand on my heart, I can say that we never manipulated Yeltsin’s consciousness, nor Kozyrev or Gaidar’s.

RG: Then tell us, from what were you protecting Yeltsin and Russia?

BR: Perhaps from war with China. We aborted Yeltsin’s first visit to Japan. It should have taken place in 1992. As it became known to us, the president was being strenuously “programmed” to hand over a number of the Kuril Islands to Japan. But that was only the first move in a multi-party game by forces laying claim to world hegemony.

While after the transfer of the islands to Japan, China, which was also part of the program, should have begun to actively demand the return of disputed territories, of which there were enough at the time. The matter could’ve escalated to armed conflict. And immediately a wave of protest would be raised in the world against Chinese expansion. Russia, incited by the international community, could well have declared war on China. Today such a development of events is unlikely, inasmuch as all border disputes between China and Russia are regulated. But 14 years ago, armed conflict was wholly real.

The FSO couldn’t guarantee the president’s security in Japan, and the Security Council recommended postponing the visit until a better time. Yeltsin was terribly indignant, but he was forced to subordinate himself to state rules.

RG: And your fears weren’t exaggerated? How much could you believe your informants?

BR: Heads of state in Western Europe and the United States were unwittingly our informants.

RG: Are you joking?

BR: In no way! I told you that the USSR rather successfully studied the development of technologies for entering into another person’s consciousness. And we made powerful advances.

At the beginning of the 1990’s, I had a meeting with one particular CIA officer. We received him well, and as a result the American announced that nothing on our nuclear missile submarines was a secret for the US. As if their specially trained psychics were tracking each of our submarines, “observing” the actions of the crew and the condition of the strategic weaponry. Along with that he presented us evidence that, however paradoxical, indeed confirmed the rightness of his words.

Then we told him that their “viewing” our nuclear submarines was impressive, but that we could, even better, calmly “take a stroll through the minds” of the American president and his inner circle. After which we gave him information that could only be known by a head of state. The CIA officer connected with his people, and then said, “Why should we hide anything from each other? We’re entering into an open society; let’s be friends and exchange information.” We agreed, but after that all contacts with US intelligence in the area of psychotronics ceased.

Why Maksim Galkin Got Lucky

RG: And can you provide examples of reading information from the subconscious of the US leadership?

BR: I think that today we can do that. Back at the beginning of the 1990’s, we “worked” with Robert Strauss, the new US ambassador in Russia. Having read his thoughts, we came to the conclusion that within the embassy there was a device for psychotronic influence on Muscovites, but it was deactivated. We also received other information from his subconscious. A couple weeks before the start of the bombardment of Yugoslavia by American aviation, we held a seance to connect with the subconscious of Secretary of State Madeline Albright. I won’t begin to recount all her thoughts; I’ll note only the most characteristic moments that were confirmed already after the beginning of NATO’s aggression in Serbia.

First of all, within Madame Albright’s thoughts we discovered a pathological hatred for Slavs. She was also incensed that Russia possessed the largest reserves of minerals in the world. In her opinion, in the future not just one country should dispose of Russian reserves, but all humanity under the supervision, of course, of the United States. And she saw the war in Kosovo only as the first step in establishing control over Russia.

Second, it followed from Albright’s thoughts that the US Army would use a certain mix of chemical and biological weapons along with warheads containing radioactive elements.

Later it was found out that the Americans used chemical compounds that would alter the structure of blood cells within minutes. People who were subjected to the effects of such weaponry completely lost their immunity for some amount of time and could die from any minor sickness.

Then it also later became known that US aviation used shells with depleted uranium. Moreover, in the Tomahawks they used a radioactive iodine that would totally disintegrate in the course of a month, but which would wreak serious damage to people’s health and the environment within that time.

RG: And you directly reported the information you removed from the minds of US leaders to Yeltsin?

BR: Of course not. This information became a base for the continuing work of our analytical centers. When what came from SVR and GRU lines and diplomatic sources was applied to it, then a full picture emerged that would already form the basis of analytical reports to the country’s higher leadership.

RG: You mentioned psychotronic weapons. Do they really exist?

BR: At least they did exist. We had them, as did the US and other countries. It’s true, to use them is very dangerous. One can get the desired result, but along with that the weapon’s operator and even the man who orders its use can lose their health and even lives in a totally unpredictable way. The sphere of actively intruding into the human consciousness is nevertheless something beyond the outer limits, and psychotronics are not worth joking around with.

RG: And what are your colleagues who worked on genuinely outer-limits subjects doing now?

BR: Many are on their pensions. Some continue to research subtle physical fields, although there’s already no financial support from the state. Sometimes we render consultative services. Sometimes you start to look the people around you through a professional lens, and things become very interesting.

Take, for example, the public’s favorite impersonator Maxim Galkin. This person possesses unique and quite interesting psychic abilities, about which, I’m sure, he doesn’t even suspect. In past years he would have immediately ended up on the radar of the special services, from whose proposal he could hardly refuse. But today he’s a completely free man and does the stage business he prefers.

Original article from Rossiiskaya Gazeta

Translated by Mark Hackard

Colonel Aleksei Mikhailovich Kozlov (1934-2015) was a deep-cover intelligence officer in the KGB’s elite Directorate S, the Illegals, during the height of the Cold War. Posing as a traveling German businessman, he was captured by South African counterintelligence in 1980, but not before passing onto Moscow Center shocking information on joint South African-Israeli nuclear weapons tests. This December 20th, 2009 interview with the newspaper Izvestia provides another fascinating inside look at the global-scale operations of KGB Directorate S.

Izvestia: How did you get into Illegal Intelligence?

Kozlov: In 1953 I arrived in Moscow from Vologda to go to the Moscow State Institute for International Relations (MGIMO). My character brought me to humanities, and I very much loved the German language. I had wonderful teacher in school – Zelman Shmulevich Pertsovsky. He was a Polish Jew who in 1939, when the Germans entered Poland, crossed the Bug River and turned up on our side. He was simply in love with the German language and quoted Schiller and Goethe by heart. He called me a “slacker” and helped a lot with preparing for higher education.

When I had returned from practice in Denmark during my last year, I received a proposal to work in intelligence. I answered that I would with pleasure, but I wanted to do only operational work – although I didn’t understand anything about it. The main thing was not to do any paperwork. “Operational work” is how I got this knot on the finger of my right hand! Soon – the only time in my life – I was summoned to Lubyanka. There they asked me:

Have you read The Lone Warrior in the Field (Yuri Dold-Mikhailik’s novel on illegals – Isvestia)? Do you want to work like that?

I answered that I did, and so they sent me to training.

Izvestia: How much time did it take?

Kozlov: It took me three years. I arrived on August 1^st, 1959, and went on assignment on October 2^nd, 1962. I knew only German and Danish. During training in East Germany, I picked up a Saxon accent. And when I found myself in West Germany, I immediately fell into a situation. I was given a temporary Austrian passport for transit, and in the city of Braunschweig I went into a café. Next to me sat down a young man who turned out to be an inspector for the criminal police. And suddenly he says, “But you’re not from around here.” I answered that I was Austrian, and he declared, “I’d bet my life you’re from Saxony!” I had to disentangle myself – well, my mother is from Saxony, but my father is Austrian. It was good that this guy was more interested in the local girls!

Izvestia: And what was your main “legend?”

Kozlov: I traveled with a West German passport. My profession was that of a technical drafter, which I hated. I was sent first to Lebanon, and then to Algiers, where I was supposed to settle for a long time. I arrived in Algiers on the day when President Ahmed Ben-Bella took his oath. Only recently it had been a French colony where everyone spoke French, even Arabs, and I didn’t know that language. But I successfully found employment in an architectural firm where Swiss engineers were working. The main thing was that they turned out to be acquainted with Algeria’s top leadership. Although Ben-Bella was a genuine Muslim, along with that he had very leftist views. His secret political council consisted solely of Trotskyists, overall Swiss ones. And through my new acquaintances I found out many interesting things on the sessions of this council. I consider it a service of mine, by the way, that a year later Ben-Bella would become a Hero of the Soviet Union.

Izvestia: And you worked all this time alone?

Kozlov: My wife came to me in Algiers. She had undergone training and could carry out technical work – secret writing, reception of radio transmissions. When she got pregnant, it was difficult for her to bear the local climate. So the decided in the Center that it was time for us to get genuine passports.

Izvestia: You were legalized in West Germany?

Kozlov: I travelled to Stuttgart and left my wife in France. Who knew how my trip to West Germany with a false passport could end. It was August – vacation month. I had nothing else to do but to start working at a dry-cleaning service. I became a qualified worker within two months and could support my family. Then I called up my “fiancé” so that she’d come over, and Tatiana and I got married for the second time. Soon she bore me a son.

Izvestia: That means that your spouse passed the “Radio Operator Kat Test.”

Kozlov: Twice, moreover. Already in twelve months our daughter was born – we weren’t wasting any time! After the children’s birth we submitted a request for passports and obtained genuine documents, while we burned the “fake” ones in the oven. It was a shame parting with them; they were much better than the ones I was issued later. Either they’ll sew it unevenly, or they’ll glue the photo on crooked.

Izvestia: When did your children find out that their parents were Russians?

Kozlov: When they came to Russia once and for all. Our son was five, and our daughter four. Before that they hadn’t suspected anything. We spoke German at home. When I got an assignment to go to a certain French-speaking country, the children began speaking French. Now I can say that it was Belgium. The entire staff of NATO moved with me there from France. At that time in Belgium, the Council of Ministers for the Common Market had formed.

Izvestia: And where did you find employment?

Kozlov: At a dry-cleaner’s again, in the Hilton Hotel. Then a year later, a millionaire proposed that I become general director of the largest dry-cleaner business in Belgium. In addition to all the recommendations, I was a “German.” The owner reasoned in such a way: if he’s German, that means he’ll work.

Izvestia: Business was good for this Soviet intelligence officer!

Kozlov: Only it hindered my main business. I was forever occupied with the damn dry-cleaners, since I had branches in various cities. Although I wasn’t fooling around. The Cold War was at its height. Our service was interested primarily in information of a military character. But when Yuri Andropov became the KGB chairman, a restructuring began in intelligence. Andropov realized that we had to think how to build economic and cultural relations with various countries. That meant that multifaceted information was needed. This crossover didn’t happen so simply. I then understood that the man who doesn’t respect the customs of another country cannot be an illegal. Work experience in the Middle East had confirmed that.

Izvestia: In what period was this?

Kozlov: In the 1970’s, after we had already returned to the Motherland. My wife became gravely ill, and she was put in the hospital. We had to hand the children over to a boarding school – what else could we do…I remember how I was sewing strips with their names on them onto their clothes all night. And then I again departed on concrete assignments for the Center. Dry-cleaning came to my rescue again, by the way. I received an offer to become representative for sale of equipment in various countries. I traveled to crisis spots – the Arab states and Israel. The situation there wasn’t simple, although I had enough difficulties later in South Africa.

Izvestia: Is it true that thanks to you the USSR obtained information on the Republic of South Africa’s nuclear arsenal?

Kozlov: Yes, that is so. At the end of the 1970’s I made a “tour” of Africa and stopped in Malawi. There were a lot of whites who had close connections to South Africa. I was sitting with some company, and the talk turned to the atomic bomb. At that time a mysterious flash in the south of Africa had occurred, one that resembled an atomic explosion. And I said, “And where could they get an atomic bomb from?!” Suddenly one old woman, quietly dozing, opened her eyes and gave it away: “In December of 1976 we doused it with champagne together with the Israelis!” The woman turned out to be the former secretary of the general director of Pelindaba, South Africa’s nuclear center. I immediately informed Moscow. Yuri Drozdov, head of the Illegals Directorate, called down all the department chiefs in the middle of the night, who practically arrived in their pajamas!

Izvestia: How did it happen that you were arrested?

Kozlov: That took place in 1980, when I had come to South Africa for a third time. Then it was a country of brutal apartheid. I was in transit in Namibia and it was there I first noticed surveillance on me. But there was nowhere to go. I flew out to Johannesburg. The plane had hardly landed when I saw a black car with siren. I understood immediately it was for me. Out of the car walked the deputy director of South African counterintelligence, Major General Broderik. He showed me his identification and told me I was under arrest. He, by the way, wasn’t a bad guy; he was an intellectual. But aside from him there were plenty of people who wanted to bash my head in. I was sent to the security police’s internal prison. My interrogator, Colonel Gloy, was an authentic Nazi, an admirer of Ernst Kaltenbrunner. A portrait of Hitler was hanging in his office.

Izvestia: Did you continue to stick to your legend?

Kozlov: The South Africans didn’t know anything about me. Even when they were beating me, they didn’t understand why. Then came the Germans from the BfV and intelligence. The interrogations continued for a week. I wasn’t allowed to sleep for one minute. They pulled things you wouldn’t believe. Finally they showed me photo cards of when I was still very young. I turned one over, and there it was written: A.M. Kozlov. There was no further reason for disavowal. I said I was a Soviet citizen, but they didn’t find out one more damn thing from me. Soon I was transferred to the Pretoria Central Prison.

Izvestia: Were you in an isolation cell?

Kozlov: I was on death row. The cover of the door slit was torn off, and I could see how the corpses of the hanged were carried by. Every Friday morning they conducted executions. And although they had the same time of apartheid in the prisons – whites and blacks separated – everyone was hanged together. Before death they were served their last breakfast. So a white was given a whole fried chicken, while a black received half that. The hanged men fell downward through a hatch. And there stood the great scoundrel Dr. Malherbe, who gave them a last injection into their hearts.

Izvestia: How long did they not know anything about you in the Center?

Kozlov: Six months. They continued to send telegrams, and several were intercepted. The South Africans demanded I decode them. I lied that I wasn’t able to without a cipher pad. I said: “You stripped me down to my underwear at the airport. But I attached the microfilm with the cipher to my underwear, and then later I chewed it up and flushed it down the toilet.” I made that up, of course. A half year later, Prime Minister Peter Willem Botha announced that a Soviet intelligence officer had been arrested in South Africa. They started taking me out for walks. There were no political prisoners there – all murderers, thieves and rapists. And suddenly I heard from all sides: “Hold on, man! You’ll get exchanged soon!” That’s how they cheered me up.

Izvestia: In 1982 you were indeed exchanged.

Kozlov: For ten West German agents and one South African officer. The chief of the prison came up to me with a suit told me to get my things together. For some reason I took with me a piece of green soap that reeked of carbolic, a belt from my prison pants and a device for rolling cigarettes that the prisoners had given me. Major General Broderik warned me: “We are transferring you to our intelligence service for an exchange. I don’t know what they’ll do with you, but you stay silent as if you don’t know anything.” And Colonel Gloy said as a farewell, “I apologize for everything that happened to you. Now we know you’re a normal guy and a real man.” He shook my hand, and in my palm there remained a South African counterintelligence badge granting right to arrest – “for the memories.”

And their intelligence service was truly infamous. They sat me down on a cliff overlooking Pretoria and told me they were going to shoot me. Then they pushed me back into the car and drove me to the airport. From Frankfurt we already had flown to a border post by helicopter. Those for whom I was exchanged had a whole bus full of things, while I stood with one bundle. When we were crossing the border, I was somehow prostrate. Then I saw the familiar faces of my intelligence officer colleagues. We embraced, kissed each other on the cheek and went to Berlin. A grave silence reigned for thirty minutes. And then I said, “Guys, I’ve returned home! We need to wash this case away!” We stopped at the first cafeteria, got 100 grams of vodka each and a beer, and after that we were no longer silent.

Izvestia: Is it now known why you were discovered?

Kozlov: We understood that only in 1985, when our resident in London, Oleg Gordievsky, defected to the West. We were acquainted back at the Institute; he was two years behind me. And then he found out about my time in Denmark. He has admitted this betrayal of his as fact, by the way, by making mention of me in his book.

Izvestia: That you returned to operational work is also from the realm of the incredible.

Kozlov: It is truly a unique case. And I’m proud that after my imprisonment I again went out on illegal work. For four years I had sat around in Moscow. And suddenly it became so dreary for me that I couldn’t take it and went to Yuri Ivanovich (Drozdov). Right at the threshold he said to me: “I know what you want, Leshka. But how do you conceive this?” And then he said,

Why shouldn’t we take a risk? After all, you’re not wanted anywhere. And who would get it in their head that you’d return to your previous work?

And I did return, for another ten years. And these were really strong Center assignments.

Izvestia: When did you receive the star of the Hero of Russia?

Kozlov: In the year 2000. But I can’t say for what.

Izvestia: This year you have a double anniversary – your 75th birthday and half a century in intelligence.

Kozlov: And since a year abroad for us is counted as two and a year in prison as three, then reckon that I’ve been in intelligence from the age of four!

Izvestia: What do you wish our intelligence officers for today?

Kozlov: I can wish them only one thing: that they worked all their life and didn’t leave for anywhere from this work. Because their business is exceptionally important not only for our service, but for the entire country.

“Stirlitz Was on the Brink of Exposure”

There were quite a few funny moments. Somehow in Jerusalem I went into a cafe during the evening, and there were no empty chairs. I saw that three old men were sitting down. I asked them in German, “May I sit with you?” And suddenly one said to me, “During the war I served in Soviet military intelligence. And when they dropped me behind German lines, I let you dogs have a light!” And he pronounced it with such feeling! Or another such case. My wife and I went to an Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington concert. I very much love jazz, especially classical. We had only gotten ourselves situated in the first row when I heard a wild shout from across the hall: “Lekha, get over here!” Guys from our embassy were sitting there, and with them the correspondent of a certain newspaper, with whom I had studied at the Institute. I told my wife, “You’re lucky, you can stay and watch. But I’m leaving, and maybe I’ll be lucky.” And I ran off into a pub…

Interview Text in Russian 

Translated by Mark Hackard

GRU Maj. Gen. Dmitry Polyakov (1921-1988) was a decorated veteran of the Great Patriotic War (World War II) and an old-line Stalinist. Yet beginning in 1959, when on assignment under diplomatic cover at the UN Mission in New York, he was also a US intelligence asset after he volunteered his services to the FBI. Until his arrest in 1986, Polyakov shared the GRU’s most guarded secrets on its international agent networks with Washington, making him the highest-ranking and most damaging mole in the history of Soviet intelligence. Polyakov was finally brought to heel in 1986, when the KGB tracked him down thanks to leads from their own moles – CIA officer Aldrich Ames and FBI special agent Robert Hanssen. The KGB’s Third Chief Directorate, military counterintelligence, swung in to action.

From the last decade of the Soviet Union presented in the FSB Museum’s “Spy Gallery,” it especially follows to turn our attention to a photograph of an elderly man sitting in the dock of the accused in the proceedings hall of the Supreme Court’s Military Collegium.

He knew his punishment beforehand and wasn’t hoping for leniency. Almost 25 years of work for the FBI and CIA could not be atoned for by his candid admissions. On the conscience of former General Dmitry Feodorovich Polyakov was the blood of Soviet secret intelligence officers, the shattered fates of his colleagues in intelligence, and the most important state secrets betrayed to the adversary. 

Polyakov crossed his Rubicon when he was working in New York. He himself offered US intelligence his services. Later, explaining his acts in Lefortovo Prison, he was clearly dissembling:

The basis of my treachery was my aspiration to openly state my views and doubts somewhere, as well as the constant drive to work beyond the edge of risk. And the greater the danger, the more interesting my life became.

Over a quarter century of work for the Americans, his pseudonyms were changed several times. Among them – Top Hat, Bourbon, and Donald F. Former CIA chief James Woolsey spoke of the unmasked general:

Of all the US secret agents recruited in the years of the Cold War, Polyakov was the jewel in the crown.

Polyakov betrayed 19 illegals, more than 150 agents among foreign citizens, and exposed 1,500 officers’ membership in Soviet military intelligence. From New York the trail of treachery to the new places of his service – Burma, India, the General Staff central apparatus, and the Soviet Army’s Military-Diplomatic Academy.

“During one of the interrogations,” recalls counterintelligence officer Y.I. Kolesnikov, who had a direct relation to the Polyakov case, “Investigator Aleksandr Dukhanin and I asked the former general a question: ‘Dmitry Fedorovich, did you not feel bad for the people you betrayed, our illegals that you yourself trained for this complex work abroad? So much effort and time was contributed. And primarily their fate. After all, after this only one thing awaited them, and you understood perfectly well what that was. These were illegals who for the sake of their Motherland went out for the highest cause. No one ever envied them. People bowed their heads before them. They evoked a sense of the highest respect and pride. Did you understand all that when you were betraying them?'”

“That was my job” Polyakov answered with his characteristic cynicism. “May I have a cup of coffee?”

“I recall these words for all my life. I had seen a whole galaxy of traitor-spies, but Polyakov, in spite of all the repulsiveness of his nature, stayed in my memory for a long time. It’s worth only looking more attentively at his photograph with his saccharine smile on his face, to look into his eyes, and everything will be clear.”

The fruits borne by the traitor to the Motherland were not sweet. “From practically the very beginning of working with the CIA, I understood that I had committed a fateful mistake, a most grave crime.” Polyakov gave such an evaluation to his activity during one of the interrogations. “Endless torments of the soul that lasted this whole period harried me so much that several times I was ready to turn myself in. And only the thought of what would happen to my wife, children, and grandchildren, as well as fear of shame, stopped me, and I continued my criminal ties and to stay silent in order to only somehow delay the hour of reckoning.”

“That is all crap and the pathological lies of a traitor and betrayer,” Kolesnikov thinks. “There was no fateful mistake, and Polyakov knew this well. He was a professional intelligence officer and realized his actions. No one compromised him, and no one set him up in any honey traps. He himself went to the Americans and already then understood that in the course of working with them he’d be selling human lives. He had no other ‘goods.’ He also understood that the information he handed over, which he searched out with some kind of diabolical perseverance, would wreak colossal harm to his country. Not the fear of shame, but the destructive fear of exposure, prevailed over him all those years.”

Why did Polyakov act with impunity for such a long time? He was a cold-blooded, cynical, and intelligent professional who had perfectly mastered the lessons of our Fatherland’s school of intelligence and counterintelligence, which he used in operations to communicate with the CIA, rejecting out of hand instructions in this area from the Americans. So it was from the very beginning of his espionage career, and so it would continue along its entire length. He refused large sums of money, for example, understanding perfectly well that extra cash would inevitably attract the attention of those around him and counterintelligence, of which he was wary for his entire life of treachery.

Polyakov knew well how one should work in Moscow’s conditions, and he categorically ignored communications by dead drop, fearing their vulnerability, and therefore chose an impersonal means of communication with the Americans, using special radio devices after becoming sure of their reliability. Getting on a trolley by the US embassy, with a transmitter he’d “shoot out” into the CIA station’s windows and receive an answer. There were also apartment buildings where station officers lived. Building No. 45, for example, on Leninsky Prospect. Walking across the street, he’d “shoot” a coded message on the go into the window of an intelligence officer’s apartment. In such a manner just a few seconds were spent on the whole session of communications. Sophisticated, is it not? Sophisticated but for one thing…

Counterintelligence was constantly on Polyakov’s trail, and there were moments when the general sensed them breathing down his neck. But somewhere good luck accompanied him, and somewhere there were reasons, both of an objective and subjective character, by which he was able to remain undiscovered. At a certain moment he even destroyed all of his espionage instructions, expecting his coming arrest. Yet at that time the storm clouds also passed him by.

Long before his final exposure, military counterintelligence officers reported to the leadership on the necessity of vetting Polyakov. However, one of the KGB’s deputy chairmen, upon whom sanction for a deeper check depended, declared: “An intelligence general cannot be a traitor.”

And nonetheless counterintelligence managed to track down Polyakov. US intelligence’s system of communications proved capable of ensuring the security of its especially valued source only from time to time…

Work Translated: Lubyanka 2: Iz Zhizni Otechestvennoi Kontrrazvedki. Mosgorarkhiv, 1999. Moscow.

Translated by Mark Hackard

Using his unique access to the Kremlin, German journalist Alexander Rahr shares the inside story on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s formative years in Leningrad and his path to the KGB. 

Putin never concealed his background. Spiridon, his grandfather on the father’s side, was a cook, but not a regular one. Initially, he prepared meals for Lenin, then—for Stalin. A person working in such a position and in such proximity to the Kremlin’s leaders could not not be a staffer at the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD), KGB’s predecessor. Spiridon served the dictator daily, and it is beyond any doubt that he was being watched much more closely than any Politburo member.

*****

Portraits of Politburo members decorated the pages of textbooks and posters. As a result, their faces were familiar to any Soviet student. Leonid Brezhnev, the leader of the Communist Party and the head of state, was listed first. Then came Aleksei Kosygin, the Chair of the Council of Ministers, Defense Minister Dmitriy Ustinov—at one point both had direct links to the Leningrad military-industrial complex—and Mikhail Suslov. In terms of the Kremlin Olympus, the latter had the reputation of a “gray cardinal” responsible for the purity and consistency of the Communist ideology. But Vladimir Putin probably remembered the face of the 50-year-old Yuri Andropov best. In 1967, the latter was appointed as the head of the KGB. Five years later, he became a member of the Politburo upon Brezhnev’s insistence: this was a sure sign that the political influence of the organization that he headed—which at one point became the dark symbol of Stalin’s dictatorship—had grown. Of course, at that point Putin could not even imagine that 30 years later he would take over Andropov’s place at Lubyanka KGB headquarters in Moscow.

At one point in the summer of 1970, 17-year-old Vladimir knocked on the massive door of building #4 located on Liteynyi Avenue. Most Leningrad residents tried to approach this building as rarely as possible, since the KGB Administration was located there. Putin’s future boss described his visit in an interview to Komsolskaia Pravda newspaper as follows: “Putin’s wish to work for the KGB appeared if not in his childhood, then, in the very least, in his youth. Immediately after graduating high school, he visited our Administration and announced right there in the doorway: ‘I want to work here.'”

According to Putin, at first he dreamt of becoming a pilot, but by the age of 16, he definitively decided that he would wear the epaulettes of a KGB officer without any doubt. Of course, the fact that his grandfather at one point worked in the system was not an insignificant factor. Yet Putin’s future colleagues were somewhat surprised because no one approached them with this kind of request in quite some time. They immediately explained to the young visitor that this would only be possible after serving in the military or graduating from university. “What university is preferable?”, asked Vladimir. “Law school,” they responded. Thus Putin used every opportunity to get into law school at the Leningrad University, which was located on the 22nd line of the Vasilyevsky Island, that is in the central part of town. This was not easy. He had to overcome his parents’ resistance, who were hoping that their son would choose the profession of an engineer. But in the end, Vladimir got his way. Then it turned out that in order to attend law school, one had to receive recommendation letters from the District Party Committee or the Young Communist League (Komsomol). Exceptions were made for those, who graduated high school with excellent grades. It paints Putin in a positive light that he managed to overcome all the hurdles and was admitted to his faculty of choice upon the very first attempt.

*****

A few weeks later, Putin celebrated his 18th birthday, and the next day he heard on the radio that Alexander Solzhenitsyn received the Nobel Prize in literature. In all likelihood, by then Putin had read Solzhenitsyn’s novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. At that time, what was known about Gorbachev—who held the post of the First Secretary of the Stavropol Regional Party Committee—was that he treated dissidents with a certain level of sympathy. In contrast, the First Secretary of the Sverdlovsk (today’s Yekaterinburg) Regional Committee of the Communist Party, Yeltsin—who in the middle of the 1970s ordered the demolition of the Ipatiev House, the basement of which witnessed the murder of the tsar’s family in 1918—avoided all contacts with conformists. In general, his manners and management style resembled those of the First Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Party Committee, Grigory Romanov, in many ways.

What did Vladimir Putin think when he heard the news of Solzhenitsyn’s award? It is highly unlikely that he was either disappointed or pleased. The only thing that disappointed Putin was the fact that he, as he later said, was unable to work for the KGB due to being too young. In one interview, Putin defended the existence of the so-called “informants” and stated that the state has the right to use secret agents to receive the necessary information. However, it is highly unlikely that Vladimir Putin wanted to work in the senseless and unenviable field of going after dissidents. There is no doubt that Putin was attracted to a different kind of activities within the KGB. It was during that memorable year that Willy Brandt’s government began to carry out his famous Ostpolitik, and the relationship between the Soviet Union and the West seemed to shift toward détente. As a result, The Federal Republic of Germany became the main European trade partner of the USSR. In February of 1970, Moscow and Bonn signed the first agreement on natural-gas supplies. In August, Federal Chancellor Brandt and Leonid Brezhnev signed an agreement in Moscow establishing the framework for future relations between the two countries.

Did Vladimir want to become a Soviet James Bond? Hardly. First, he lacked the necessary training. He did not serve in the military. However, all faculties at the university had military departments, so Putin, much like the other students, did not need to wear epaulettes and carry a gun. Of course, Putin had to attend military training in his final year. However, he and his peers likely interpreted them as a kind of gym class with a somewhat greater load. After graduating university, Putin was given the title of lieutenant in the reserve.

*****

In 1974, in the middle of his fourth year, the long-time dream of Putin as a student had come true. A KGB officer called him at home and offered to meet. The next day, Vladimir, burning with impatience, waited at the appointed place. The man who called him did not show up, and Putin decided that he was not coming at all. Finally, the KGB officer arrived after all, immediately offered a job in his organization to Putin, and pointedly noted that they did not need just any law student, but only promising “cadres.” Indeed, only three students from the Faculty of Law received this kind of offer in addition to Putin. Working for the KGB was considered prestigious not only because of the high salary. Many were attracted by the prospect of getting unusual training.

*****

Putin had to wait for an entire year before receiving an official invitation to the personnel department of the Leningrad branch of the all-powerful KGB.

*****

In October of 1975, Putin turned 25. His thesis on the subject of establishing a system most favorable to international trade earned the highest grade. Now he had the full right to call himself a lawyer. Vladimir’s cherished dream also came true: he started working for the KGB.

*****

What lay ahead was a very stressful life. Of course, Putin had no idea just how exciting and interesting it would be.

Excerpted, translated, and edited from the Russian version of Alexander Rahr’s A German in the Kremlin (Alexander Rahr, Wladimir Putin: Der ‘Deutsche’ im Kreml [Munich: Universitas, 2000]) by Nina Kouprianova

Major General Yuri Drozdov, the legendary last chief of Directorate S (Illegals) within the KGB’s First Chief Directorate (FCD – Foreign Intelligence) tells of working with KGB Chairman and future General Secretary Yuri Andropov. Andropov was known for his sophisticated approach to intelligence matters, and was a generous patron to Directorate S.

There were many leaders with whom I was to meet and work: Yuri Andropov, Andrei Gromyko, Boris Ponomarev, Viktor Chebrikov, Vladimir Kryuchkov, and others. On these meetings and conversations I could speak much and for a long time. I’ll say just a few words on Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov.

In recent times more is being written about Yuri Vladimirovich – as a KGB chairman, diplomat, and man overall – both here in Russia and abroad. 

In all my life I haven’t seen one nice politician. If a politician wants to be nice both to his own people and to others, he’s obviously in the wrong profession. Any state actor defends the interests of his state. Every state has its own history, occupies a certain place in the world, and has a traditional type of relationship with one or another country. Yuri Andropov knew that well and understood it. He was a son of his country and his time, and he acted in the spirit of that time.

I will speak of Yuri Andropov only as the head of the Committee for State Security (KGB), who directly ran the activities of illegal intelligence.

Our first acquaintance relates to the winter of 1964. I was called to the Center for a report about work on China and Southeast Asia.

After the report KGB Chairman Semichastny called Andropov at the CPSU Central Committee and reported that the intelligence resident had arrived from Beijing. Andropov requested for me to be sent to him immediately for a discussion.

I still remember that office on Staraya Square. I remember how he stood up from behind the desk and came toward me with a smile. We introduced ourselves, said hello, and he asked me, “Sit down; tell me of all your impressions that have formed after a half a year’s arrival there in China…”

I noted that much time would be required for that, which would hardly be permissible to take away from a secretary of the Central Committee. Smiling, he “ordered:” “Start in, tell me…For China we have sufficient time…”

The meeting continued around four hours. Yuri Vladimirovich knew how to listen and ask questions, how to always be active, and he brought others who came into his office into the conversation to participate.

He treated attentively the impressions of a “fresh” man who had been transferred to the Far East after many years of work in Germany, to a country that began to present a serious concern for us. To a country in which our intelligence service, our army, and our state figures still recently, during the “friendly” period and during the period of civil war had rendered substantial assistance in the resolution of political and military questions. I don’t know how valuable the information I reported in that conversation was. But Andropov was interested namely in my impressions, observations, and point of view on how to cut the knot of Soviet-Chinese contradictions.

Knowing the essence of the matter, I noted jokingly: “Clearly it follows to rely on Marxism-Leninism, then Maoism, and then enlighten everything, and everything aside from Marxism can be cut away.” He smiled and answered that they had already tried that…To his offer to go to work in the Central Committee apparatus I answered with a refusal. Again he smiled: “Well think about it, think about it…” And when in a few years he would fly with Aleksei Kosygin to China, Yuri Vladimirovich would remind me of our conversation on the staircase at the embassy and “warned” me that we’d see each other again.

The next time we met was in 1968, when I had returned home, and he had already become chairman of the KGB. “So we meet again, and we’ll be working together,” he said.

Clearly my notes “Four Years in China” brought him to send me to the FCD’s Chinese Department and then return me to Directorate S.

How he and FCD chief Aleksandr Sakharovsky decided my fate is unknown to me until this day. Calling me in, Sakharovsky passed on the KGB chairman’s decision on my nomination as the new chief of illegal intelligence. I acceded, but I warned him that the process of getting “broken in” to a new leadership group could be difficult over friction that had taken place in 1963 over questions of organizing work. Sakharovsky asked me to carefully acquaint myself with Andropov’s views on the activity of illegal intelligence. He emphasized that the period of searching for a way was over and summed it up: “Inside the Directorate you can try things out, search, change, and do what you want, but Directorate S should find its place. Andropov asked me to pass that to you.”

So occurred my return to illegal intelligence. I am quite grateful to the collective of the whole Directorate for help – although with resistance at times – in resolving the most acute issues of intelligence work.

Andropov was not inaccessible. He lived the problems of illegal intelligence and thought together with us about the paths of its development. Much of what he spoke about we attempted to make a reality. From his past in the war, he knew how complex and dangerous the craft of intelligence was. He lived the lives of illegals and met with them. He brought all the participants of a meeting into conversations, chided those who stayed silent, and allowed us to argue and not agree with him. Yuri Vladimirovich didn’t always like when he met objections, but he knew how to provide the person who objected with the possibility of proving their correctness through consequent actions. He accepted objections that were, as we say, materialized and confirmed by convincing arguments, the results of serious work.

Andropov was deeply interested in the cultivation of perseverance, loyalty, and stoicism among intelligence officers in risky situations, in the case of capture by the enemy. After all, each of them would experience the state that was familiar to partisans who went behind enemy lines: you can act and risk your life, or you can just sit around. So it was.

One time we invited him to go and award the Order of the Red Banner to a foreign illegal who had to undergo a lot while carrying out his mission. He agreed. An interesting and lively conversation took place between them. Andropov somehow departed away from his high post, and having awarded the order, simply congratulated him as a comrade. On the way back in the car he suddenly asked:

“Tell me, Yuri Ivanovich, why does a foreigner, a former ideological enemy, serve the cause of socialism more loyally than our compatriot?”

“He serves in illegal intelligence, Yuri Vladimirovich,” I answered. “It’s not customary for us to tell an illegal an untruth and deceive him. He himself has the right to express everything, even the most unpleasant things. Without that there wouldn’t be any trust.” Andropov was silent, and then uttered, “Yes, there is much for us to correct.”

Andropov attentively followed the course of illegal operations, and some he knew in detail. Sometimes he couldn’t wait to find out something new, but he stopped himself, subordinating his wishes to rules of communication and the most stringent tradecraft.

I remember that when one of our illegals successfully completed a complex operation, the information we found out about the designs of our adversaries against the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries perturbed him. Be began to approach information from illegal intelligence with even greater attention. Before his departure from the KGB to Staraya Square again, to his last state-political post, he met with the leadership of illegal intelligence. He was already seriously ill, but considered it his duty to say farewell to us. Being tremendously well-informed on the situation in the world and in our country, he was able in sparse, though weighty words to set tasks, the execution of which has confirmed his conclusions to this day.

From his name Andropov requested that we radio all active illegal intelligence officers on his pronouncement of gratitude for their work. Our radio operators and cryptographers transmitted his last message for almost a whole month, and they received responses that went immediately to him at Staraya Square.

He departed from life impermissibly early.

***

And so in the second half of October 1979, we said farewell to New York and returned to Moscow. It was a golden autumn. I thought that while I my position was being formalized, I would be able to take care of my apartment and the dacha on which I “wasted” all my accumulated money.

A few days after my return, I was in KGB Chairman Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov’s reception room. Usually with an appointment to one’s previous position, having a conversation at this level wasn’t presumed. My briefing had already been written in New York, the question of my work resolved, and I simply needed to begin my job.

Andropov was clearly satisfied by the results of the residency’s work and immediately crossed over to a new problem. He said that the KGB’s leadership decided to bring changes into the plans for my use. “Vadim Kirpichenko is being transferred to other work. He’s on a trip right now, by the way. But we’re offering you the position of chief of Directorate S, all the more so since you’ve undergone the path from a rank-and-file officer to deputy chief, and you know everything therein.

He briefly described the situation; defined the basic operational directions of our work; clarified the mission of Directorate S; warmly said goodbye and advised me to “gear up.” Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kryuchkov, present during the discussion, asked me to turn my attention to Afghanistan.

After the conversation with Andropov, I returned to office no. 655 at Lubyanka, now my office, overflowing with directives from the KGB chairman and chief of intelligence, as well as my own thoughts induced by this appointment.

What did Andropov say? He again emphasized that the determination of and search for illegal intelligence’s role in the intelligence system, protracted for many years, were long finished. He was satisfied with the practical results achieved by illegals over the last 10 years in the directions of combat work determined for them (active intelligence to prevent a surprise nuclear missile attack on our Motherland). A number of operations begun in the 1970’s were developing positively. We could not deviate from this direction, whatever changes happened in other units. Andropov advised me to carefully relate to the past experience of illegals’ activities – to cast away everything that became known to the opponent from traitors and as a result of failures, and ever to search out the new, but also the brave and bold, not forgetting tradecraft and diversionary maneuvers. It was then he recalled still another set of cases that we started well before my departure to the United States.

In conclusion Andropov stressed that illegal intelligence should live and work by its laws and rules and be maximally autonomous in the general foreign intelligence system, and he provided us the right to independently inform him and the Politburo (Instantsiya) in cases when this would be dictated by the security interests of illegals and their agents. (How thankful I was to him for all those years for this decision, although it sometimes also complicated our relations with the FCD’s Information Service, since we had begun to “acquaint” it with our data that gradually acquired an ever more weighty and substantive character.)

Afterward I had to act independently myself, leaning on the leadership and operational staff of Directorate S – illegal intelligence – which during my absence had strengthened thanks to the efforts of Vadim Kirpichenko.

On November 14th, 1979, I was confirmed in my new position, and for a good 12 years I bound my life to the tense and permanently restless life of illegal intelligence.

Work Translated: Дроздов, Ю.И. Вымысел исключен. Записки начальника нелегальной разведки. Артстиль-полиграфия. М: 2009.

Translated by Mark Hackard.

This presentation was read by Aleksandr Leonidovich Dvorkin, president of the Irinaeus of Lyons Center for Religious Research Studies, on January 26th, 2016, at a conference run by the Orthodox St. Tikhon University for the Humanities. (Translator’s note: While we wouldn’t claim that the Church of Scientology is an integral element of the US Intelligence Community, Dvorkin’s lecture is an excellent expose of the nexus between the Western power structure, its intelligence apparatus and dangerous cults).

The topic of Scientology’s connection to the CIA became commonplace long ago. It’s mentioned in a mass of articles, interviews, and television programs. But when I referred to this in passing during a conversation with one journalist several months ago, he took interest: do I have irrefutable evidence of or clues to this connection? Could I, so to say, point to a “smoking gun?”

The question interested me, and I decided to try and collect materials on this topic. So can we bring irrefutable evidence?

It’s understandable that if I could point to a “smoking gun,” my name would be Edward Snowden, and I would be hunted by US intelligence services, who (like any intelligence services) never disclose the names of organizations that cooperate with them, and for obvious reasons. However, open information on when the US government began to openly and publicly lobby the interests of Scientology (this occurred in 1993) could compose an entire arsenal of smoking guns. It knew full well about the cult’s activity in legally and illegally collecting information on various people and organizations.

From documents published today, we know that already in 1957 the CIA began investigating the activities of L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology. But the collated data that was the result of the investigation has still not been published up to this time. I don’t think we should expect the publication of these materials in the near future.

All his life, Hubbard himself was quite actively and constantly fascinated with two things: occultism and intelligence activities. For example, as a still wholly young man he entered the Rosicrucian order, undertook occult seances, and experienced certain otherworldly meetings.

Already as head of the Scientology cult, with pride he called Aleister Crowley, the most famous Satanist of the twentieth century, his “very good friend.” We can bring a multitude of other facts, but that wouldn’t fit into the parameters of the current presentation. I’ll remind you that John Atack’s excellent article “Hubbard and Occultism” was published in my Russian translation. [1]

Scientology’s official biography of the cult’s founder furiously denies Hubbard’s ties to occultism, but then it exaggerates his special relationship with the intelligence services on a cosmic scale. And so with pride the Scientologists inform us that during the war Hubbard worked in the US Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), where he heroically proved himself in “catching foreign spies and rendering aid to US forces surrounded by the enemy on the island of Bataan.” As a matter of fact, we know that while working in ONI, Hubbard was just a rank-and-file clerk in the mail department, where he mainly censored the correspondence of servicemen – there’s certainly nothing heroic in that. Not once during the entire war did he take part in combat action.

Scientologists also invented the legend justifying Hubbard’s postwar time in the Pasadena lodge of the Satanic Ordo Templi Orientis (the “Order of the Eastern Temple” headed by Crowley) and his fascination with sex magic rituals, which he conducted together with lodge head Jack Parsons. According to the cult’s legend, Hubbard, you see, was sent into the Satanic cult by a certain intelligence agency as a mole and destroyed it from within. There is no need to speak about this version not withstanding factual criticism.

Hubbard’s enthusiasm for occultism also left its mark in the symbols of Scientology he and his followers developed.

Here, for example, is a Scientology flyer published during Hubbard’s life, called “The Golden Dawn” (so was called the occult lodge whence came Aleister Crowley).

Here is a contemporary audio and video publication of Hubbard’s works, also called “The Golden Dawn.”

And here’s what a speech by the current head of Scientology, David Miscavige, looks like. The occult symbology of a previously thought-out stage interior doesn’t need any clarification. Temple columns, the theme of “Golden Dawn and the Moon (an extremely widespread occult symbol) over the “high priest.”

Here is the Scientology cross well-known to all, borrowed from the deck of Taro cards developed by Crowley. I’ll remind you that this is in fact a crossed-out cross. Also pay attention to another detail: the eight-pointed star, on which is set the image of the cross. We’ll come back to it again.

Now we will note that there is something in common between Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and the US Intelligence Community – a passion for occultism.

For a start, here are a few facts:

In 1989 in London former CIA officer Miles Copeland’s memoirs, The Game Player, were released, in which he told of a scheme set into action during the early-mid 1950s by his colleague Bob Mandelstam. The scheme was called “Occultism in High Places.” Its idea was simple: since some leaders and heads of governments had the habit of consulting with astrologers and other occult advisors, American intelligence officers were to “work with” these occultists and make them conduits of their agency’s influence.

This scheme worked, for example, when a “clairvoyant” sent by the agents convinced Ghana’s President Kwame Nkrumah to make a visit to China, during which a coup inspired by the CIA overthrew the absent leader. In Copeland’s words, the US intelligence community influenced Indonesian President Sukarno “quite solidly” through occult “seers” and “fortune tellers.”

Mandelstam also used the spiritual-political movement “Moral Rearmament,” which, according to Copeland, gave agents the opportunity to influence not only African and Asian political figures through secret channels, but also European leaders. It is there that Copeland also mentions a special agreement, which, in his words, the CIA concluded with Scientology, although he is silent about what was contained therein. Inasmuch as I was able to find out, no one aside from the chatty Copeland mentions this agreement (clearly established in the 1960’s) in open sources.

Copeland tells of another interesting case:

We sent into the Scientology cult our agent, who under the direction of Ron Hubbard himself became “clear,” but then he demanded and started to receive ever more “monetary compensation for operational expenditures,” which together with his savings he gave over to Dianetics.

So we will hardly find out who was ultimately manipulating whom: the CIA Scientology, or Scientology the CIA.

In the same way the work of US intelligence officers with a variety of occultists hasn’t gone unnoticed: we can presume that influence disseminated to both sides, and someone among the intelligence officers began practicing occultism. The set of images used by the secret services gives certain bases for making such presumptions concrete.

Here is the emblem of the United States Intelligence Community:

We see the same eight-pointed star, just like the one placed on the Scientology cross. Let’s return to the image of the Scientology cross. Its crossing out can also be viewed as the union of four daggers. And so the daggers cross out the symbol of Christianity. But the dagger is a famous symbol of intelligence, and precisely the star of the Intelligence Community is composed of them.

In the center of the Intelligence Community’s star is a rose with five petals. But this – the five-petaled rose – is the symbol of the Rosicrucian order. Is that a coincidence? Hardly: after all, even the image of the sharp leaflets between the petals is repeated.

And then there’s the most interesting thing: we’ll read the description of the seal that is found on the official site of the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The eight points of the polar star symbolize the six departments and two independent agencies of the Intelligence Community. They are combined with the 15 stars around the circumference [sic] represent the elements of other agencies that are also part of the Intelligence Community [3].

The problem is that there aren’t 15 stars. There are 16. Count them yourself. So what then is the unnamed sixteenth organization, an element of which is part of the US Intelligence Community? Can we build suppositions?

Now we will finally bring some circumstantial evidence that can easily be found in open sources.

At the beginning of the 1990’s, the Greek police executed raids in the Athens Scientology office and confiscated a multitude of the cult’s internal documents, a part of which were published. In some of them are contained references to assistance that the CIA rendered to Scientology’s foreign branches.

Already in 2001 in the magazine Le Monde Diplomatique was published an article by the famous journalist Bruno Fuscero “Cults: a US Trojan Horse for Europe” [4], in which he quite reasonably wrote on the use of a whole set of cults, including Scientology, by US intelligence and diplomacy. Despite the sensational character of the article, no lawsuits followed after it.

Hardly anyone can deny that the US State Department lobbies the interests of Scientology in various countries: France; Germany; Italy; Greece; Russia; Hungary, etc. Even among the published Wikileaks documents, a report slipped by that after US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s arrival in Germany, German Scientologists were invited to the US Embassy for a briefing. Inasmuch as I know, no other cult enjoys such attention and such privileges from the United States government. I also understand that nothing is given for free in this world. So what can Scientology offer the US government that the latter would so actively lobby the interests of a comparatively not large cult with far from the most spotless reputation, and whose secret doctrine the whole world laughs at?

One of Scientology’s main objectives is the collection and storage of a large mass of information, so that with its help it can compromise and establish control over whomever: from a simple member of the cult who has gone astray to the powerful of this world, control of whom would give unlimited possibilities. 25 years ago the former head of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office said that Scientology “has one of the most effective intelligence services, which can even compete with the FBI.” From that time the cult’s capital has increased several times over, if not exponentially. It can afford to hire many more lawyers and private detectives, which significantly raises the cult’s potential for carrying out complex special operations.

Now a little history. In 1993, after a 25-year war it waged against Scientology, the US Internal Revenue Service de facto surrendered: having conducted secret negotiations with cult head David Miscavige, it signed an agreement with the group, according to which it recognized Scientology and all related organizations a religion and totally freed them from taxes. Namely after this agreement the State Department began to lobby Scientology’s interests in all the world’s countries. Moreover, a secret protocol was attached to the agreement (a new one, not the one mentioned by Copeland), and it hasn’t been published to this day. What could the content be?

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk (who many years ago, as director of Aval Bank in Kiev, possibly underwent several Scientology courses) is an example of a man about whom personal information would be extremely interesting not only to Scientology, but also to the US Intelligence Community. I think that we could continue a list of people occupying high posts in various countries, people who are of interest to US intelligence, for a sufficiently long time. And if Scientology has such information and is ready to share it, then why wouldn’t an intelligence service use such an opportunity?

Yet in what way can the cult obtain such data? Scientology’s information collection is generated through several methods.

The first of them is auditing, presented by the cult as a kind of confession. But during this “confession,” everything that a person – in a state of light hypnotic trance – might report over a three-to-four hour session is picked up on audio and video and kept forever (I’ll remind you that this is conducted with the help of the so-called “E-Meter,” i.e. a primitive lie detector). Those who conduct the auditing are not obliged to keep the secrets of this “confession.” Rather, they collect the most intimate information about a person in order to turn him into an obedient slave. Let’s recall that during a raid of the Taganskaya Scientology “Ideal Org” by Moscow law enforcement, spy equipment for audio and video recording was found built into the walls of the auditing room. By the standards of the cult, such equipment should be present in all auditing facilities.

The second method is the “targeted” collection of information on a person who interests the cult. Specialists are hired for this, and specially instructed cult members help them. Either compromising materials are found, or they are fabricated. Among those who interest the cult could be famous personalities; figures in show business; law enforcement; officers of the security services; political figures; and of course, enemies of the cult.

We can and must emphasize that both methods of collecting and using information are flagrantly amoral. The cult uses the obtained data for self-advancement and self-expansion. I wonder, has it ever crossed the minds of American intelligence officers that receiving such information from the cult and using it is deeply amoral? Scientologists themselves think that the opportunity to control people in such a way serves a higher goal that brings the cult’s victory closer, meaning the victory of “good” in all the world. But if US intelligence, in no way believing in Scientology’s good and progressivism, finds it necessary and permissible to use this information, then we need to honestly admit that it considers getting information acquired by a quite dubious organization through deceit, bribery, theft, torture, and confidential confessions normal.

Finally, even if we believe that Scientology has absolutely no ties with any of the agencies of the US Intelligence Community, it could still absolutely and unmistakably be called a foreign intelligence organization active in the Russian Federation. And this intelligence organization sends personal and deeply confidential data on Russian citizens to its headquarters in the United States. That means we must approach such an organization in corresponding fashion.

But of course, it seems to me that we can claim with an enormous degree of confidence that Scientology has a multitude of connections with the US Intelligence Community. The evidence I’ve brought forth in this presentation, quite weighty if circumstantial, indicates precisely that. Almost two years ago, US President Barack Obama publicly announced that international religious freedom (read: its American version) is a vital factor of US national security [5]. I this that this announcement, striking in its cynical frankness, just admitted what had been an obvious fact for years. And we can probably suppose which organization hides behind the unnamed sixteenth star on the US Intelligence Community’s coat of arms.

P.S. Thank you to my friend Jerry Armstrong for help in gathering materials for this article. 

^[1] http://iriney.ru/knigi/kapkan-bezgranichnoj-svobodyi.-sbornik-statej-o-sajentologii,-dianetike-i-l.-r.-xabbarde/xabbard-i-okkultizm.html

^[2] Miles Copeland. Confessions of the CIA Original Political Operative, London, 1989.

^[3] http://www.dni.gov/index.php/intelligence-community/seal

^[4] Русский перевод см. тут: http://www.entheta.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?id=2780. Мой сокращенный перевод: http://iriney.ru/sektyi-i-kultyi/sektovedenie/novosti-sektovedeniya/evropa-soprotivlyaetsya-amerikanskim-religioznyim-sektam.html

^[5] http://www.voanews.com/content/president-obama-religious-freedom-matters-to-national-security/1845717.html

Translated by Mark Hackard.

The Soviet KGB’s elite Ninth Directorate was responsible for leadership protection and well as guarding the Kremlin, Communist Party headquarters and other special sites. Learn how the KGB created not only the world’s top intelligence and counterintelligence services, but also a first-class bodyguard unit. 

A study of the history of personal protection in the USSR shows a clear tendency: if a good relationship developed between the principal and the chief of a detail, then the latter stayed loyal to him to the end, even after his death. And the other way around: arrogance, fault-finding, and ingratitude in communication with officers of the security detail could, at a tough moment, leave the leader of a vast country alone with his problems and his enemies.

The Era of Fancy Funerals

On November 15th, 1982, in the Column Hall of the USSR House of Unions, the ceremony for Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev’s final farewell took place. On that day was established a tradition significant for all present in the country’s main hall of mourning. First out of the “special zone” and to the coffin of the departed CPSU General Secretary would come his successor. Without exception all those present awaited this moment with the greatest trepidation, including leaders of top world powers who considered it necessary to personally come to the funeral of the Soviet head of state.

Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov’s funeral took place on February 14th, 1984. George Bush Sr., still US Vice President at that time, came, as did British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Both were present that day in the Column Hall. Now-president of NAST Russia (National Bodyguard Association) Dmitry Fonarev was responsible for meeting high-level guests at a special entrance at the House of Unions and their accompaniment to the place of farewell in the Column Hall. In his words, Margaret Thatcher, having seen that Konstantin Chernenko (chief of security Viktor Ladygin) appeared first out of the open door in a corner of the hall opposite her, said to those escorting her, “I’ll be back here again in a year.”

And so it happened. Thatcher kept her promise on March 13th, 1985, and this time saw that the first to walk out – namely walk out and not appear – of the “sacral” room to Konstantin Chernenko’s coffin was Mikhail Gorbachev (chief of security Nikolai Zemlyansky).

To give the reader an opportunity to better sense the scale of such mourning events, it is sufficient to tell what sort of workload was placed on the KGB’s Ninth Directorate during these four unhappy days for the nation.

And so by invitation of the CPSU Central Committee, there arrived the leaders of 35 countries. The number of delegations represented by other individuals composed up to 170. In obligatory fashion every head of a foreign state was provided a detail of officers from the 18th Section and a basic GON (Garazh Osobogo Naznachenia – Special Purpose Garage) automobile. Higher-level delegations from socialist countries were secured with living quarters in state mansions, and the rest were placed in their embassies and representations.

According to the plans of the protective service, which were composed back for Josef Stalin’s funeral, the rest of the mourning ceremonies also went in just the same manner.

Structure & Personnel

By 1985 the Ninth Directorate of the USSR KGB represented a magnificently tuned system that wholly corresponded to the requirements of the time. In a rough outline its basic structure can be described as follows:

First Department: Personal Protection

18th Section: Reserve Section for every principal under guard

Second Department: Counterintelligence (internal security service)

Fourth Department: Construction & Engineering

The Fifth Department unified three sections:

• First Section: Protection of the Kremlin and Red Square
• Second Section: Protection of Routes of Travel
• Third Section: Protection of Principals’ City Homes

Sixth Department: Special Kitchen

The Seventh Department brought together two sections:

• First Section: Protection of Country Dachas
• Second Section: Protection of State Mansions in Lenin Hills

Eight Department: Economic

Commandant’s Office of the Moscow Kremlin:

• Protection of the 14th Kremlin Corpus
• Kremlin Regiment

Protection of CPSU Central Committee Buildings on Staraya Square

Commandant’s Office for Protection of the Council of Ministers

Special-Purpose Garage (GON)

Cadres Department

Department of Service & Combat Training (Directorate Headquarters)

The personnel of the Ninth Directorate composed slightly more than 5,000 men, including officers, warrant officers, and civilians. Candidates for an officer position in the directorate underwent standard half-year personnel vetting by the KGB and then the “Young Combatant’s Course” at the Kupavna special training center. According to the established order, with little exceptions, officers who had worked in exemplary fashion in the directorate for no less than three years were permitted into the First Department. Chiefs of detail [American terminology: Agent-In-Charge, AIC] as a rule were appointed from officers of the 18th Section who had a minimum work experience of ten years.

The First Department was headed by a veteran of the Great Fatherland War, Maj. Gen. Nikolai Pavlovich Rogov, whom officers with love and respect called “the White General” for his noble gray streak. Nikolai Rogov was replaced by the legendary Mikhail Vladimirovich Titkov, who undertook his entire professional path, from warrant officer to general, in the Ninth Directorate.

By the middle of the 1980’s, the KGB Ninth Directorate essentially presented a powerful and rigidly centralized system, the leader of which had direct access to the head of the state. Alongside that at his “disposal” was all the might of both the Soviet KGB and MVD. Concerning the army, by his position the minister of defense was also a member of the Politburo, and therefore he was also protected by officers of the KGB Ninth Directorate. Moreover, officers on the USSR minister of defense’s detail worked in military uniforms as majors – corresponding to their KGB rank – and one could imagine how many curious situations arose in their work when they put multi-starred army generals in their proper place…

Original Article: Моисеев, Александр. “Охрана генсеку не указ.” Военное обозрение, 19 декабря 2015-го года. 

Translated by Mark Hackard. 

Directorate K (Kontrrazvedka: Counterintelligence) of the KGB’s First Chief Directorate (FCD – Foreign Intelligence) was responsible for protecting the FCD from infiltration as well as penetrating hostile intelligence services. A decorated veteran of “Line KR,” KGB Colonel Viktor Ivanovich Cherkashin, shares his insights and experience in this interview.

1985 was christened Year of the Spy, when as a result of of the treachery of a number of officers, Soviet intelligence suffered significant losses among its agent networks, but simultaneously it was able to recruit high-level American intelligence officers overseas. Reserve Colonel from the KGB First Chief Directorate’s (FCD) Directorate K (Foreign Counterintelligence) Viktor Cherkashin tells us about this and a number of other major spy scandals.

Viktor Ivanovich, as a witness to the work of the Soviet and US intelligence services of that time, how do you evaluate the situation in 1985? 

What was happening in our country at that time was taken by many, first of all the United States, as the beginning of the weakening of Soviet power. Although no one, including Ronald Reagan, assumed that in only six years a great power would disintegrate. Overall, this year turned out unsuccessful for the KGB First Chief Directorate. The FBI arrested several valued sources of information in various US intelligence agencies at once – the Walker cryptography family and Ronald Pelton from the NSA. CIA officer Edward Lee Howard was exposed. Senior FCD officer Vitaly Yurchenko crossed over to the side of US intelligence. The KGB’s intelligence, however, rather quickly gained the opportunity to not only analyze the reason for our agents’ arrest, but also reveal the guilty in our midst, moreover: uncover agent penetrations of various units of the KGB, the GRU and Foreign Ministry.

All of this information was received from the chief of the CIA’s Soviet Counterintelligence Division Aldrich Ames and the high-ranking FBI agent Robert Hanssen? 

Yes, for a long time this hasn’t been a secret. Thanks to Aldrich Ames we managed to expose over twenty CIA agents in various Soviet state structures. In 1985 our counterintelligence officers also arrested seven American agents – Valery Martynov, Sergei Motorin, Gennady Smetanin, and later Dmitry Polyakov and others. People who worked in USSR state institutions became easy prey for enemy intelligence services due not only to mercenary motives, but also from the loss of patriotic convictions and faith in one’s country.

In such a case what were Aldrich Ames’ and Robert Hanssen’s motivations for betrayal? They were good analysts and saw that the USSR was beginning to lose its position in the world. 

Aside from purely financial interests, Ames was pushed to cooperation by his qualification of the US leadership’s drive to present a weakened Soviet Union as the source of a threat, which he treated as a betrayal of American national interests. He viewed this as an attempt to obtain additional funds for the Defense Department and intelligence agencies, but not as actions dictated by the true vital interests of his country. Believe me, Ames was no fool. He analyzed policy and understood well where America was headed.

What do you think of Edward Lee Howard? Many consider him a loser, an alcoholic and drug addict who was fired over this from the CIA’s East European Division. 

I can only judge Howard by my period of work in the United States. His case is indeed not completely normal. As a CIA officer he was preparing for work in the Soviet Union. Moreover, he had already come to the Soviet Embassy with a request to provide him a visa for entry into our country, where he was to work under diplomatic cover. The arrival didn’t take place. The FBI detected his use of narcotic substances, and then there came information that he stole some woman’s wallet in an airplane. In my view, if he was possibly in a state of euphoria he wanted to demonstrate his readiness to work as a spy. Such things happen even with people with a stable psyche. Nonetheless, Howard’s journey to the USSR was cancelled.

He was being trained for work with Adolph Tolkachev? 

Yes. Tolkachev was part of a closed bureau of a scientific research institute for radar and possessed information on friend-foe identification devices meant for Soviet air force planes. The information was very important, top secret, so to say.

In general the story itself is unprecedented – how Tolkachev tried to establish contact with the Americans. At first he threw a note with information on how he was a Russian patriot and could facilitate the destruction of the Soviet Communist Party, since it was supposedly leading our country to ruin, into a US Embassy car with diplomatic plates. That option didn’t work. Again Tolkachev made an attempt at contact when he walked up to a CIA employee’s car at a gas station and proposed cooperation. The latter simply ran off.

Why didn’t they make contact with a potential agent? 

At that time on USSR territory, not the best environment had developed for CIA work. The KGB had just uncovered agent Trigon, recruited in Columbia – Foreign Ministry employee Aleksandr Ogorodnik, who committed suicide during his arrest. CIA officer Martha Peterson was captured at that time during a dead-drop operation. It’s understandable that everyone was afraid of provocations. Nonetheless, the CIA station chief in Moscow, a decisive and quite brave man, risked making contact with Tolkachev.

Who, thanks to Edward Lee Howard, was arrested in 1985… Viktor Ivanovich, did you meet with Howard personally?

Yes, in 1986, when I returned from my tour in the United States. Howard, despite all that had happened to him, was a very smart person and a well-versed operative. When US intelligence received information on him from Vitaly Yurchenko in 1985, the FBI placed surveillance on him. Noticing this, Howard and his wife, also quite an experienced intelligence officer, drove away from their house, and at an intersection Howard jumped out of the car while his wife put a mannequin in the front seat. The surveillance team didn’t suspect anything, and Howard managed to cross the US border with Mexico, travel from there to Europe, and then to the USSR.

How closely were you acquainted with Oleg Kalugin, who was one of the first to speak openly of the omnipotence of the KGB’s Second Chief Directorate? 

I knew Oleg Danilovich very well; we studied together at the KGB Institute for Foreign Languages in Leningrad. From the point of view of erudition, he was an extraordinary person. A very active and successful operations officer, upon whose fate acted two circumstances: his relationship with the leadership of the KGB FCD, most of all Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kryuchkov, and the era of so-called democratization of the Soviet system, when on the grounds of personal enmity toward the KGB leadership, Kalugin crossed over into politics and began to denounce the work of the entire structure of the special services, betraying professional secrets.

How right was Kalugin when he said that the work of counterintelligence officers was easy and amounted to arresting and detaining both intelligence officers from various countries and USSR citizens? Or is the search for the enemy nonetheless difficult business?

Before moving over into intelligence, I worked seven years in the KGB Second Chief Directorate, in a department engaged in counteracting British intelligence on the territory of our country. I was well-informed on the methods used for exposing foreign agent networks. And I know well how hard it is to uncover a person working for a foreign intelligence service, all the more among my fellow-officers. Over a few decades KGB counterintelligence had discovered just one agent on the basis of failures in organizing espionage activity – GRU Colonel Oleg Penkovsky. The wife of an employee of the British Embassy’s consular department was meeting with Penkovsky in some kinds of stores and other crowded places during the daytime. For intelligence work, that’s primitive. Overall the scenes where an officer crosses paths with an agent and passes him a suitcase with money, and the latter slips an envelope with secret information into the other’s pocket is from movies. As a rule, there is no personal contact – the materials are placed into a dead drop, the place of which is selected so that no third person could detect the package. And its removal occurs in just as thorough a fashion. I’m already not speaking of electronic means of communication, with which there’s no necessity for the intelligence officer to meet with his agent. Exposure is a long, complex, and painstaking matter. As a rule, an agent is only exposed by another agent.

What happened after getting information that such-and-such a USSR citizen was a CIA agent?

Information provided to us by, let’s say Ames, didn’t contain any kind of intelligence; he just reported that the person was an agent of the CIA. To bring person to justice for betrayal of the Motherland, we were required to obtain data confirming it. And that already relates to the category of “hellish labor.”

How did it occur that GRU General Dmitry Polyakov could work for the US CIA more than 15 years, moreover even after retirement, when he began teaching in intelligence school?

It’s a complicated matter with Polyakov. A general, intelligence resident in India… The first information on him appeared in the 1970s, when Edward Epstein’s book Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald came out, and in which were mentioned the codenames of CIA agents in Soviet intelligence services – TOPHAT (Polyakov) and FEDORA (officer of the KGB FCD New York residency Aleksei Kulak). James Angleton, who at that time was directing the work of the CIA’s Counterintelligence Division, considered anyone who freely wanted to cooperate with intelligence a “dangle.” For him both FEDORA and TOPHAT were provocateurs, and he therefore gave information on them to Epstein. Even deputy chief of the First Department of the KGB’s Second Chief Directorate Major Yuri Nosenko, who escaped from Switzerland to the United States in 1964, was held by Angleton in solitary confinement, where he was subjected to strict and intensive interrogations. For several years Angleton didn’t believe that Nosenko was genuine and not a KGB dangle.

Do you agree with the opinion of your colleague Viktor Ivanovich Andrianov with regarding that in the 1970’s and 1980’s Directorate K and the entire KGB FCD residency in New York simply physically couldn’t keep 24-hour control over the entire Soviet colony there? 

Yes, such total control was impossible and simply pointless. Just take the USSR Embassy in Washington, D.C. Construction of the living quarters for Soviet diplomatic employees was completed only in 1979. Before that nearly a hundred official employees of the embassy along with their families were scattered around various areas of this large city. To put surveillance on every one of them was an unthinkable business.

The Soviet colony was controlled by the Fifth Department of the Foreign Counterintelligence Directorate. The security officer tracked irregular behavior of employees – if someone among them, for example, came to work drunk, fought with his wife, or went out into the city with unknown objectives.

How correct was Gennady Shevchenko, the son of Soviet diplomat and defector Arkady Shevchenko, when he stated that if his father had arrived in Moscow in 1978 to receive a reprimand for abusing alcohol, then KGB FCD resident in New York Yuri Drozdov wouldn’t have had any proof of his treachery? 

Drozdov didn’t have any documentary evidence at that time since we could obtain proof of the recruitment of UN Deputy Secretary-General Arkady Shevchenko by US intelligence only from the FBI. The remaining operation bore an operational character.

All of time staying in the United States, Shevchenko was very visible. His certain types of passions and prejudices were known to our officers. Soviet intelligence personnel in New York also knew of US intelligence’s interest in him. Of course, about the fact of his recruitment and meetings with representatives of American intelligence in safe houses, when he passed them information, no one knew until a precise moment.

Viktor Ivanovich, please clarify, how could Shevchenko’s meetings with his FBI handlers happen?

The meetings at safe houses were set up so that as few third parties knew about them as possible. But Soviet intelligence officers had information that there was something not right with Arkady Shevchenko, and that US intelligence was possibly actively working around him. KGB FCD resident in New York Yuri Ivanovich Drozdov also possessed that information.

To analyze everything happening around Shevchenko, a special officer of the KGB arrived in the United States from Moscow. Clearly his arrival proved to be not wholly successfully organized, and it could have put on guard not so much Arkady Shevchenko as the FBI agents who gave him the command to leave.

Only in 1985 did the KGB First Chief Directorate have the opportunity to receive reliable documented information regarding how Arkady Shevchenko voluntarily began cooperating with US intelligence. As much as I remember, Aldrich Ames was working with Shevchenko from the CIA.

How would you comment on Gennady Shevchenko’s words that because of Ames, 12 Soviet citizens were shot, while not one person suffered because of his father, neither in the US, nor in the USSR?

The consequences of betrayal of one’s country by individual persons can vary. And the punishment for betrayal of the Motherland can also vary, depending on the gravity of these consequences. But the essence of what was committed doesn’t change over that: activity to damage the interests of one’s country is treason.

Original Interview

Translated by Mark Hackard

In his analysis of the modern world, French Traditionalist thinker René Guénon noted that the true masters of revolutions, materialism and secularism were not actually ends in themselves, but only the initial phases in the occult processing of society. The ultimate end of the cryptocratic elites, Guénon believed, was the destruction of sacred tradition and the enthronement of infernal forces in a new counter-religion. With the experience of the Bolshevik Revolution and early-period Soviet intelligence’s forays into the realms of the esoteric, we have a powerful example of Guénon’s thesis in action, as recounted by contemporary Russian journalist Georgy Filin.

Sami sorcerers and Buryat shamans, connoisseurs of cryptography and ancient poisons, hypnotists and psychics, telepaths and clairvoyants – who wasn’t brought in to work in the OGPU [Unified State Political Directorate] Special Department directed by one of Lenin’s closest colleagues, Gleb Bokii. The Special Department was consulted by luminary of Soviet psychiatry academic Vladimir Bekhterev, and one of its key officers was none other than the famed terrorist Yakov Blumkin, a favorite of Cheka head Felix Dzerzhinsky and the prototype of Maksim Isaev, Stierlitz. And Bokii himself possibly served as the prototype of another well-known personage – Bulgakov’s Woland. It was said that at the Chekist’s dacha events frequently took place akin to the ball described in Master and Margarita.

At the beginning of the Great Fatherland War [World War II], on Hitler’s personal orders, Abwehr agents searched for surviving officers of the NKVD’s Special Department, disbanded by that time, and offered fantastic money – 50,000 Reichsmarks to only answer in detail two or three dozen questions. In current evaluations that’s half a million dollars. That was the value accorded officers of Gleb Bokii’s Special Department!

Before the revolution Bokii had succeeded in making a career as a convicted bandit. Over 15 years he stood before the court 12 times, including for murders. But every time by some miracle he was able to escape, or he was acquitted and released. It’s notable that no small sums for bail were brought for the bandit Bokii at various times by the mystic and hypnotist Gurdjieff, medium and clairvoyant Pavel Mokievsky, and also the Tibetan healer Pyotr Badmaev, who treated Emperor Nicholas II’s family. Gleb Bokii’s fighters were engaged in so-called expropriations – stripping property from rich people for the use of the Social Democrats and Bolsheviks. Long before the revolution the future head of the State Security Special Department became friends with Vladimir Lenin, whom he for some reason always called by his mother’s maiden name – Blank. And only once did Bokii call the leader of the world proletariat the name now etched onto the Mausoleum, on the day of his arrest. “What is Stalin to me?” the arrested Chekist stated to NKVD chief Nikolai Yezhov. “I was appointed by Lenin!”

The Mystical Special Department Birthed by Two Atheists – Lenin & Dzerzhinsky

In the first edition of the Bulgakov Encyclopedia, its editor Boris Sokolov brings proof that namely Gleb Boky – and no one else – acted as the prototype of Woland from Master and Margarita. The former chief of the 2nd Section of the Special Detachment, a certain Klimenkov, confessed during his interrogation:

He (Bokii – editor) created a ‘dacha commune’ in Kuchino. Arriving for a weekend day at the dacha, Bokii’s guests got drunk the entire day off and the night before the next workday. Drunken orgies were often accompanied by fights that segued into a general melee. The reason for these fights was that the husbands noticed the debauchery of their wives with the men present. After an extraordinary bender, everyone would go to the bathhouse to engage in sexual perversion. The women were made to drink until drunk, stripped, and used one after another. All members of the “commune” participated in this, including Bokii’s daughters. The debauchery led to several suicides on the basis of jealousy.

Bulgakov supposedly found out about the commune’s mores from the poet Andrei Bely, who had lived there in Kuchino. “The Chekists possibly seemed to Bulgakov contemporary analogues of the demonic,” wrote Boris Sokolov. And indeed, the orgies of Bokii and his subordinates even exceeded what happened at Satan’s ball, as birthed through the writer’s fantasy.

But in Soviet history Bokii remained not only as a possible prototype of a famous literary personage and the arranger of debauched entertainments. In the summer of 1918 – already after the assassination of German Ambassador Von Mirbach, but before his flight to Ukraine – Yakov Blumkin, the chief of Trotsky’s personal security, introduced Gleb Bokii to academic Vladimir Bekhterev and Aleksandr Barchenko, an employee of Bekhterev’s Brain Institute. It turned out that all four believed in otherworldly forces, practiced occultism, and were not against pressing their esoteric knowledge into the service of the young Soviet state. It’s incredible that these four different men managed to interest the head of the Cheka, Felix Dzerzhinsky, with a proposal to create a special department that would research various types of mystical phenomena. And in 1921 Dzerzhinsky, absolutely not a believer in any such thing and an atheist to the marrow of his bones, would sign alongside another atheist – Vladimir Lenin – a resolution on creating a special department under the OGPU. For tradecraft it was termed a cryptographic department – why would you openly call it the Department of Mysticism, Mind-Reading and Sorcery?

Agents of the Special Department Knew Tibet Better Than Nicholas Roerich 

It was proposed to Gleb Bokii to head the Special Department; Bokii’s deputy for “scientific research” was Aleksandr Barchenko. At the beginning of the 1920’s, Barchenko organized his first expedition to the center of the Kola Peninsula. The objective: study of mass hypnosis, “polar madness,” which the Pomors called “hysteria,” and the Eskimos termed the “call of the North Star.” Many researchers of the North encountered this phenomenon, including the famous Roald Amundsen. Members of Northern expeditions would hear “voices” summoning them to carry out seemingly insane actions, and they even attacked each other with axes and ice picks, “called by the North Star.” Until this day the materials of this expedition remain classified, yet in all probability Barchenko and his companions met with success. Immediately after his debriefing report at the Brain Institute, Bokii’s deputy was offered the seat of academic consultant in the Main Science Directorate.

For their research, Bokii and Barchenko obtained colossal funds for the time – the average cost of one operation by the Special Department comprised around 100,000 rubles (in conversion to today’s valuation, that’s approximately $600,000). There followed several more expeditions to the Kola Peninsula, and in the surrounding areas of the Sami’s Lake Seidozero, Barchenko uncovered ancient pyramids. The find confirmed Barchenko’s version that ancient Hyperborea existed namely in these places. The Special Department’s next expedition was to head to Tibet, but Bokii’s plans became known to OGPU Foreign Department (INO) chief Meer Trilisser, who related to the heavy-spending Special Department with extreme jealousy. Trilisser convinced Dzerzhinsky to entrust the Tibetan mission to his men. But at the last moment, the omnipresent Yakov Blumkin was “clasped on” as an “addition” from the Special Department. The terrorist disguised himself as a Tibetan lama and followed Nicholas Roerich incognito – it was namely to the latter that Trilisser had entrusted direction of the mission to Lhasa. Upon their return, neither Roerich nor Trilisser “made their mark” – the information they collected was considered “of little significance.” Meanwhile, high government decorations awaited Blumkin, Bokii, and Barchenko. For what were they awarded? For Blumkin presenting certain proof of the existence of the mythic Shambhala. What kind of proof will become clear after the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) declassifies archive materials on the Tibetan expedition. This was planned to be done in 1993 and again in 2000, but for some reason these materials still haven’t been declassified.

Dubious Research Was Financed for a Decade and a Half

In 1926 on Dzerzhinsky’s personal orders, Barchenko undertook an expedition to Crimea. The objective was the search for entrances to the ancient cities of abandoned civilizations and the excavation of Scythian Naples and Mangup-Kale. In two years an expedition to Altai would follow – there they would conduct observation of unidentified flying objects (for the first time in Soviet history!), and then Barchenko awaited a return to the Kola Peninsula. There Barchenko searched for a certain “stone from Orion” or “Grail stone” supposedly accumulating and transferring psychic energy at a distance and securing contact with the cosmos. Nonsense? Then why are the materials of this expedition still top secret? Also, Barchenko’s findings only became known just 25 years ago from declassified documents of Hitler secret organization, the Ahnenerbe. We also know that over the 15-year history of Bokii’s Special Department’s existence, it was refused financing one time only. In those somewhat naive times, such a practice as “budget cuts” in principle didn’t exist, just like the practice of all sorts of “skimming.” It’s impossible to allow even the notion that tremendous funds were allotted by the Soviet leadership to a purposely hopeless cause. Does that mean that the results of the Special Department’s expeditions were nevertheless convincing?

In 1935, right after the creation of the Ahnenerbe, its general secretary Wolfram Sievers signed an order on studying the results of expeditions organized by Boky’s institution. But how did the Germans even find out that the Soviet Union was conducting analogous esoteric research? It’s possible a leak occurred during Bokii and Barchenko’s contacts with Professor Karl Haushofer in the mid-1920’s. According to rumors, Barchenko and Haushofer were even in the same Masonic lodge, but we can only guess whether this was indeed so. Haushofer and Sievers seriously thought that he who masters Tibet – the “heart of the world” – would also become master of the entire world. And Boky’s Special Department possessed such secrets. However it was, the Germans came across not a few secret materials – either from Barchenko himself, or through some other channels. And in the war years, the German intelligence services genuinely set out to hunt down officers of the disbanded department, driving to fill their knowledge at the cost of the latter.

Bokii and Barchenko were arrested in 1937 – it’s not excluded from the signal of Trilisser, who treated the Special Department extremely covetously. In that year Bokii was shot, and Barchenko was executed just a year later, after he had left a detailed description of the work performed by the Special Department. Out of 189 officers of the “cryptographic” department, by the beginning of the war, not more than 50 remained alive.

Original Article

Translated by Mark Hackard

In late 1943 SS commando Otto Skorzeny, known as “the most dangerous man in Europe,” was tasked by Hitler with a daunting mission: kill Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill, the Big Three, in Tehran, Iran. The bold plan, code-named Unternehmen Weitsprung (Operation Long Jump), might even have succeeded but for the efforts of Allied intelligence services. Below is the story of Ivan Agayants, Soviet NKVD resident in Tehran, who played a key role in foiling Berlin’s assassination plot. 

In the old Soviet action film Tehran-43, the fearless and sexy intelligence officer sent from Moscow to Iran’s capital with a special mission dashingly neutralized Hitler’s terrorists, who were preparing the assassination of Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill. In that film there are three truths. The first: At the end of 1943 in Tehran, the Big Three Conference took place. The second truth: the fascists were preparing an assassination attempt on the leaders of the USSR, USA, and Great Britain. And the third: Soviet intelligence liquidated the terrorists.

But there’s one untruth in the film: this antiterrorist operation, which became a classic one, was executed not by a Fatherland-style James Bond, but by our intelligence resident in Tehran, Ivan Ivanovich Agayants. A man who by his outer appearance in no way looked like a super-spy: thin, tall, worn out by tuberculosis, with a quiet voice and hurried gait, he sooner looked the part of a professor, musician, or lawyer. He had a Walther with his name engraved on it, and also shot excellently at the range, but not once in life did he use his pistol for “business.” His weapon was a thorough knowledge of the art of intelligence, the ability to orient oneself at a moment’s notice in any circumstances, and to profoundly analyze them from all angles, evaluate, and make the most rational decision. And his achievements aren’t limited to his Tehran period.

***

On an August day in 1943, Soviet intelligence resident in Tehran Ivan Agayants received an order from Moscow to immediately fly out to Algiers under the passport of a USSR representative on the Repatriation Commission with the name Ivan Avalov and participate in organizing USSR representations attached to the French National Committee (Comité national français – CNF).

This was the official version of the trip, or, as they say in intelligence, the legend. In reality the Soviet intelligence officer was given the assignment to figure out what the FNC under de Gaulle represented, what real powers stood behind it, and what were the chances of de Gaulle becoming France’s national leader. It was also necessary to clarify the general’s views on the postwar arrangement of Europe and the character of his relations with the Americans and British. And also, of course, to take interest as to what US and British intelligence were doing in Algiers and what were there positions in the CNF.

Who are You, General de Gaulle? 

The immediacy of the assignment, just as its importance, were explained sufficiently simply. In another month the Big Three Conference would open in Tehran – with Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill. And one of its key issues was considered the postwar ordering of Europe.

Stalin possessed reliable intelligence information on how postwar France would be envisioned in Washington and London. He also knew that the Americans were placing their bets on General Giraud, and with his help they were attempting to gain control of the French Resistance and establish military and political control over North Africa – Algeria, Tunis, and Morocco, French colonies. The Americans considered the main obstacle on the path to reaching these objectives to be General de Gaulle. And therefore, with the English, they did everything possible and impossible, as Anthony Eden expressed, to “not give de Gaulle the slightest chance of creating a unified French government before the Allied landing in France, moreover to form a government, since by that time he’d be unable to remove from power.”

Stalin knew all of this. But he had hazy representations about General de Gaulle himself, his real possibilities, and his attitude toward the Soviet Union, the United States, and Great Britain. It behooved Agayants to fill in this essential blank spot.

On September 3rd, 1943, I visited General de Gaulle upon his invitation. At the beginning of the conversation he took interest in the situation on the Soviet-German front, and attentively hearing me out, noted that the Germans still possess sufficiently large reserves. And right then he emphasized that he was sure of the Red Army’s victory, since it had many advantages.

In relation to the landing of Allied forces in Calabria, de Gaulle noted, not without irony, that military action there was conducted in a fashion not shabby or shoddy, since there were ‘very high mountains.’ And already in full seriousness he continued that allied forces for the first time had to clash with German divisions. And although those divisions had recently been subjected to powerful blows in Sicily, they were obviously still strong enough to oppose Anglo-American forces.

Concerning the CNF, de Gaulle quite optimistically evaluated its current position and near-term prospects. Along with that, he added that the opening of a Soviet representation attached to the Committee bore witness to the genuinely friendly intentions of the Soviet government with respect to France, facilitated the strengthening of French unity, and provided the Committee and opportunity to decisively oppose American interference in its affairs. Frankly recognizing the presence of serious disagreements with Giraud, the general expressed firm resolution to remove all his political opponents from their posts, including Giraud. In his words, just today a Committee session had taken place, and the decision had been taken to hand over Petain and his supporters to justice at the first opportunity. ‘Let’s see now if the Americans and Giraud would dare do bring the Vichy men to Algeria,’ de Gaulle concluded.

Then he crossed over to the matter of principals of Europe’s political organization after the war. He thought that Europe should be based on friendship between the USSR, France, and Britain. But the primary role should have been played only by the USSR and France. But Britain, as a great power, had its interests mainly outside of Europe. Therefore, it should be engaged first and foremost in non-European problems. Concerning the United States, in the general’s words, they also could not stand aside from the resolution of international issues. ‘Nonetheless, Europe’ – as if he were summing it up – ‘should define itself. We should also organize organize postwar Europe. Jointly, it will be easier for us to decide Germany’s fate.’

Already bidding farewell, de Gaulle acquainted me with one of his relatives, a young French intelligence officer who had recently arrived from Germany, where he met with an officer who had been in the German concentration camp in Lubeck. In his words, Josef Stalin’s son is confined in this camp. He was holding up well, although he has been subjected to mockery and torture. According to de Gaulle, there is the possibility of setting up correspondence with Stalin’s son through his people. I thanked de Gaulle for this message.

Avalov

Two days later a second information report from “Avalov” arrived in Moscow. Then a third, a fourth, a fifth… And each of them were accounted for not only in the position of the Soviet delegation at the Tehran Conference, but also, what is much more important, during the identification and development of Soviet-French relations after the war.

Returning to Tehran from Algiers, as the head of the residency, Ivan Agayants had already been included into preparations for the meeting of the Big Three, first and foremost for ensuring its security.

Preparing to Jump

Long Jump. Such was the code name of the commando-terrorist operation that was developed in the strictest secrecy at a top-secret SS base in the Danish capital of Copenhagen.

“We’ll repeat the jump in Abruzzo. Only this will be a long jump! We’ll liquidate the Big Three and turn the course of the war. We’ll kidnap Roosevelt so that it will be easier for the Führer to reach terms with America,” boastingly announced one of the designers of the operation, SS Sturmbannführer Hans Ulrich Von Ortel. The designation of this difficult-to-reach place in the Italian Alps circulated the entire world press after Mussolini, overthrown by the Italians, was whisked away and brought to Germany in a special Fieseler Storch airplane in July of 1943.This operation, unique in its own way, was brilliantly executed by SS Sturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny, whom Nazi propaganda called an idol of the Germanic race. When the idea for “Long Jump” was born in Berlin, the choice naturally fell upon Otto Skorzeny. But here the idol of the Germanic race didn’t get lucky. He was outplayed by Ivan Agayants.

“On November 20th, 1941, packing all our things into our suitcases, we got onto an old bomber that was to bring us to Tehran,” Elena Ilyinichna, Agayants’ spouse and partner in battle.

However, sitting down in the plane was an elastic conception. Since I was expecting a child, I situated myself on that the accommodating pilots had set in the bomb compartment. Ivan say Turkish-style over the bomb bay, which caused no small number of jokes and enlivened the flight. Over the Caucasus our plane was shot at, but everything came out safely.”

The first month we lived in the house of Andrei Andreevich Smirnov, the Soviet ambassador in Tehran. We were placed in a somewhat dark entryway where an old couch stood. On it was born our daughter, Acha. Ivan Ivanovich and Kolya, my son from my first marriage, slept on the floor. The ambassador invited Ivan Ivanovich to his quarters, but he didn’t want to leave me alone. Finally we were allotted two rooms and everything shook itself out.

Agayants began his activity as Soviet intelligence resident in Tehran with the detailed study of the local situation, and he went to the intelligence leadership with a proposal to fundamentally reevaluate all of the residency’s work. “Our apparatus,” he wrote in his report to the Center, “is loaded down with work with materials and agents that nevertheless don’t shed light on issues of political intelligence and don’t answer to the everyday needs of our diplomatic and political work in the country. Neither political information on phenomena of the country’s internal and external life nor work on these materials are the main content of the “office’s” activity… Here we are occupied primarily with matters of security and counterintelligence, which bring our agent-operational work closer to the tasks of our internal organs.”

The critical analysis of the residency’s activity was reinforced in the report by an extensive plan for its reorganization and shift toward offensive intelligence work. The resident’s initiative caused an ambiguous reaction in the Center. After all, in Tehran residency alone there were several dozen operations officers, and just as many in the eight sub-residencies active in other Iranian cities. And Agayants was proposing re-making this machine all over again. Was Agayants, who had barely just turned 32, up for it? Nonetheless, although with some qualifications, the resident’s proposals were approved.

Receiving the “go” from the Center, Agayants undertook a stringent “revision” of the agent apparatus he inherited. Due to a lack of need, many agents were excluded from the network. However, a decision on each of them was taken after a thorough weighing of all pros and cons. For example, Vera, recruited in Stockholm and the wife of a high-level official at the Iranian embassy there, was part of the agent apparatus. At that time in Sweden, she rendered Soviet intelligence tangible assistance. When she returned to Tehran, she confirmed her readiness to continue the partnership. Her intelligence possibilities, however, were seen as extremely insignificant by the residency. By the time of Ivan Ivanovich’s arrival, the time had come for a decision to refuse Vera’s services. In particular, the intelligence officer who handled her case insisted upon this during the “revision.” Agayants spent several evenings with him before convincing him to use Vera’s proximity to the Shah’s family, especially to the older princess, in the interests of Soviet intelligence, as well as the official position of her husband, who occupied a rather high post in the Iranian foreign ministry and was under his wife’s thumb. His urging, as it turned out, wasn’t in vain. Soon important information on the Shah’s foreign policy plans began flowing from Vera, as well as operational intelligence that facilitated the acquisition of agents in the leaderships of the leading political parties, the state bureaucracy, and even in the Shah’s inner circle.

Agayants dedicated special attention to the creation of dependable agent positions in the higher echelons of Iran’s army. “We cannot and must not limit ourselves only to sources of information. It is important to access development targets, who, aside from information we need, would also possess significant influence in the army and officer corps and would be courageous and decisive in practical action,” he instructed the residency’s staff. And soon “their people” appeared next to the war minister, in the leadership of army intelligence and other special services, and among the Shah’s advisors. Henceforth reliable information not only on the plans and intentions of the Iranian government went to Iran, but also information on the measures planned by the residency to ensure the security and integrity of strategic shipments (tin, rubber, etc.) flowing to the Soviet Union from the Persian Gulf region through the ports of Dampertshah, Bushehr, and Qar. Reliable agent control was established over all key points on Iran’s borders with the Soviet Union, Turkey, and Afghanistan.

The British intelligence station was also taken under firm control; as was ascertained, it was engaged in activity far from friendly in relation to the Soviet Union. It was headed at that time by Oliver Baldwin, the son of Great Britain’s former prime minister. The British demonstrated an enviable activism in building bridges with anti-Soviet nationalist organizations active in the deep underground on the territory of Soviet Armenia. With that objective they sent the experienced intelligence officer Phillip Thornton across the Turkish-Soviet frontier into Armenia. He was ordered to make contact with the leadership of the Dashnaktsutyun and make an agreement on cooperation. The British didn’t suspect that this visit allowed the Tehran residency to discover the chieftains of the Dashnaktsutyun, establish their places of residence, and get a clear idea of this organization’s structure, the principles of joint action among its branches, and its communications channels. The rest, as it’s said, was a technical matter for the USSR state security organs’ internal units.

Jump, Interrupted

Agayants was dealt a special headache, of course, by Germany’s intelligence services, which had firmly entrenched themselves in Iran largely thanks to the elderly Shah’s sympathies for Hitler.

In the Tabriz region, in particular, Berthold Schultze-Holtus’ group was active. This Abwehr station chief at first acted as the German consul in Tabriz in a fully official capacity. But then he went underground, transforming into a mullah with a beard red from henna. In the summer of 1943, not long before the meeting of the Big Three, from Berlin he received the order to settle in with the Qashqai tribes around Isfahan. Soon paratroopers from Otto Skorzeny’s team were dropped there, and they were equipped with a radio transmitter, explosives, and an entire arsenal of all possible weaponry.

Almost simultaneously with Schultze-Holtus, Gestapo station chief Franz Meyer, who group was active in direct proximity to Iran’s capital. Meyer himself turned from a German businessman into an Iranian farmhand working as a gravedigger at an Armenian cemetery. On the eve of the Tehran Conference, he was also sent six of Skorzeny’s SS paratroopers.

Schultze-Holtus and Meyer maintained constant communications with Berlin and between each other, while they coordinated their everyday work with Müller, the Abwehr’s main station chief in Tehran.

Such were the main links of the mechanism intended to ensure the successful execution of Operation Long Jump. Otto Skorzeny, of course, didn’t suspect that his every move was tightly monitored by Ivan Agayants, and that with the coming of “Day X,” Schultze-Holtus and Meyer’s groups would be taken out of the game at lightning speed. And there wouldn’t be any jump.

With Müller such a story came to be: Possessing information that this Abwehr ace had long been studied by Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), Agayants offered the British to combine their efforts. From a mutual consensus it was decided to not touch Müller a while longer in order to discover his agent network and all his connections in the Iranian establishment. This gentlemen’s agreement, however, was violated by the British, who, not even informing their Soviet colleagues, seized Müller literally a day before the Tehran Conference began its work.

Information on Long Jump was brought by Vyacheslav Molotov to Averell Harriman, then-US ambassador in Moscow, who was part of the American delegation in Tehran. Simultaneously Stalin’s offer for Roosevelt to stay in the Soviet embassy – for security considerations – was relayed. The American president accepted the proposal, to Churchill’s obvious dissatisfaction. Roosevelt, after all, had been offered to stay in the British embassy, the territory of which adjoined the Soviet one. But the British proposal remained without an answer.

In the course of one night several rooms were furnished for Roosevelt and his service personnel in the Soviet embassy’s main building, to where he immediately moved. “During the Tehran Conference,” recalls Elena Ilyinichna, “Stalin, Molotov, Voroshilov, and Mikoyan were situated in our rooms and the ambassador’s apartment. A special facility was prepared for Roosevelt. Our family moved over to the apartments where the Shah’s harem was at one time. It was around 500 meters to the house in which the sessions were underway. I worked at the conference as a stenographer…”

On one of the days we were brought to our feet. During the negotiations in the conference hall, Roosevelt wrote something on a sheet of paper and through his assistant passed it to Churchill. Churchill read it, wrote an answer, and then passed the note to Roosevelt. Stalin didn’t show dissatisfaction, but immediately after the negotiations, he called in Ivan Ivanovich and ordered him to move heaven and earth to get a hold of the accursed note in order to uncover the ‘secret correspondence.’ They found the paper and reported immediately. ‘Sir! Your fly is unzipped,’ was written in Roosevelt’s handwriting. Churchill answered: ‘The old eagle won’t fall out of the nest.’ Stalin was very pleased that the Anglo-American collusion was limited to such an innocent subject. Roosevelt, by the way, didn’t once go to Churchill’s residence. The entire time he stayed on the territory of the Soviet embassy.

From November 28th to December 2nd, the Tehran residency was working 24 hours a day. The entire agent network was activated. All information meriting attention Ivan Ivanovich expeditiously reported to “Uncle Joe” himself.  Soviet intelligence officers solved their professional problems themselves. “Even I had to participate in dramatic measures to liquidate enemy agents,” admitted Elena Ilyinichna. Elena was not just the wife of the resident, but also an operations officer who completed her 20 years of service in foreign intelligence at the rank of colonel.

One such operation was carried out jointly with our military. I remember how one of the most malignant foreign agents who was acting against us in Tehran suddenly began enthusiastically courting me. Our military intelligence received the assignment to take him out of the game. We jointly developed a plan for my ‘date’ with him, during which I was supposed to throw a specially sewn bag over my admirer and tie him up. Then I was to deliver him where he needed to be by automobile, which was also done.

Ivan Agayants worked in Iran until the spring of 1946. Periodically he would travel to Algeria for meetings with General de Gaulle and his closest fellow officers. He also carried out Moscow’s other assignments, including rather delicate ones. In particular, he had the occasion to visit Kurdish-populated regions of Iran several times incognito. The Kurds had raised a rebellion against the Shah’s regime, and at the same time had declared Moscow their enemy, as the USSR was friends with the Shah. As a result of substantive and skillfully executed discussions with influential elders and religious leaders from the Kurdish tribes, Agayants completely cured an unnecessary “headache” for Moscow.

Work Translated: Жемчугов, Аркадий. Шпион в окружении Андропова: Разведка в лицах и событиях. М: Вече, 2004.

Translated by Mark Hackard. 

KGB Colonel Stanislav Lekarev (1935-2010) was an especially apt observer of the interplay between intelligence, culture and deep politics. While we know about the CIA’s extensive ties with Hollywood, the KGB had its own assets in the USSR film industry. Here Lekarev, an officer of the KGB First Chief Directorate, goes undercover as a Soviet film executive in 1970’s London, where he crosses swords with British counterintelligence, MI5. 

SovExportFilm wasn’t a cover for everyone – you could crash and burn quickly here. A three-month probation period in State Cinema before my departure gave me little to work with. Moscow negotiations with Western commercial representatives didn’t allow me to delve into the nuances of SovExportFilm’s specifics. Viewing Western productions also didn’t help me any. And it was so obvious their quality was higher. Only on the job do you understand that you have to figure out the details of film production – be able to precisely determine the worthiness of reels from the point of view of mastery by scenarists, directors, cameramen, actors, as well as the quality of the film. It’s additionally useful to know the basics of the Stanislavsky System; this impresses those conversing with you. Along with all of that, you need accounting knowledge and the ability to write reports. If you don’t go the distance, the question of your replacement will be raised. So it happened – people wishing to replace you will always be found.

British Counterintelligence

England is a country with police traditions and a high culture of counterintelligence. You’ve yet to arrive in the country, while a file on you – more accurately the skeleton of a future dossier – is already in a counterintelligence officer’s safe. Usually this is a form, photograph, and a detailed recording of your discussion with the consular officer at the British embassy in Moscow, as well as a report by the MI6 Moscow station. The latter may collect initial data on the intelligence officer through its sources in State Film. Further, sewn into the dossier are checks through all possible records of British intelligence and the intelligence services of nations where the intelligence officer managed to make official visits.

During the first phase, such a set of data is obligatory, but insufficient. Bosses everywhere are the same. They require determining “who is who” in order to not waste valuable funds on “clean” clients. A “skinny” dossier provokes special attention from agents and surveillance. That’s why an intelligence officer strives to help his colleague from the opposition’s counterintelligence fill his file with information that corresponds to the position he holds, which is beneficial to the intelligence officer.

“Natural Cover” 

My biography made this cover fully “natural.” My parents tied their whole life to the theatre. My father, Valery Petrovich Lekarev, a people’s artist of Russia, worked in the Ermolovsky Theater from the day of its founding and acted in movies. My mother, Marianna Vasilievna Khoroshko-Levkareva, was an actress of the same theater, an actress, and acting instructor. I couldn’t follow in their footsteps. However, in the Cold War thaw period, when the romanticism of work in Soviet intelligence attracted many, I imagined that this profession would enable me to combine my multiple “ambitions” with my natural inclination towards my parents’ profession. Indeed, if one were to take a peek, within intelligence we have our own playwrights; directors; actors; extras; makeup artists; costume designers; lighting specialists responsible for props and staging. Everything with the exception of applause.

In timely fashion through London connections, MI5 received the authentic and vetted information that SovExportFilm’s new representative was the son of a people’s artist who had played several roles in film and was one of the favorite actors of USSR Minister of Culture Yekaterina Furtseva. Indeed, my father’s name and his artistic biography were included in the Soviet Encyclopedia of Theatre. Meanwhile, connections in the USSR (blat), as we know, were a grand affair.

There remained the trifling matter of knowledge of the English language. I obtained it in our country’s best institute – the Institute for Foreign Languages. My colleagues taught me the rest. For clothes you should choose the European style. Avoid similarity to “Soviet commissars” in your appearance and behavior. If you’re working with emigres – and there are plenty in British films – pepper your speech with a selection of expressions such as, “How may I be of service to my lady?” “On my honor.” “Be so kind,” and “Russian representation” instead of Soviet embassy.

Experienced colleagues recommended that I demonstrate full independence from the USSR embassy. At the beginning I almost never went around there. Aside from that, it followed to “signal” a complete absence of ties with KGB officers, including their wives and children.

Show Business

A mark of an intelligence officer’s work as a representative of Sovexportfilm was the sum of foreign currency gained from sales of Soviet movies. Another was the use of films as a means of propaganda for the Soviet way of life.  It’s hard to say what could be more difficult. In State Theatre the former was valued, while in the Foreign Ministry it was the latter. Therefore, we had to try to please both. Several times in England I had to run film festivals (on the 30th anniversary of the victory over Germany) and Soviet film weeks (in Leeds and Dublin), as well as organize premiers of our movies (Solaris, Carmen Suite) and arrange thematic showings in British universities. Such political measures were quite welcome in Moscow, so I could check that off. The embassy reported to the Foreign Ministry with excerpts of news from the local press. In similar fashion Sovexportfilm reported to State Theatre. “At the London premiere of Tarkovsky’s Solaris were present so many viewers.” Go and check.

It’s true that any such activity was inevitably accompanied by protest demonstrations. Local Jewish, Ukrainian, and Polish organizations stood out, setting up pickets with slogans condemning concrete human rights violations in the USSR. Someone invited a group of young Jewish female activists who had been standing by the theater entry with signs “for free exit to Israel” to a viewing of Solaris. I took them into the gallery, and they enjoyed the movie. They not only fulfilled their mission, but they were also culturally enriched.

MI5 Stalks the Receptions

The main index in an intelligence officer’s work was always recruitment and his circle of operational connections. It’s understood that the former directly depends upon the latter. Connections are made at receptions. That is, with one particularity. Official receptions are attended by people well known to counterintelligence, which uses this in its interests. At London premiers for cinematic events, there was always a photographer from the “Timeline” section of the popular magazine Film Review. In the period this story is told, this work was diligently performed by a 30-year-old woman who looked the image of British intelligence’s Moneypenny from the James Bond movies. She shot a lot, then published short notes on the event in the weekly magazine. The remaining material on contacts and individuals went into MI5 dossiers, where data on KGB ties at official receptions was accumulated. A detailed analysis of such photographs can give a counterintelligence officer rich food for thought. At one reception I was able to “treat” the lady counterintelligence agent to dinner, and afterwards escort her to the hotel room of her magazine. There we had a “heart to heart.” She spilled some details, but apparently reported to her superiors. She would no longer appear at the receptions. She was replaced by an elderly, non-drinking cameraman. Zero results, but as a famous NKVD chief once said, “trying isn’t torture.”

MI5 didn’t limit itself to surveillance. They also sent agents who acted at premiers, freely searching for whoever they could hook. I remember how at one such gathering an elderly representative of a minor English firm approached me. He turned out to be a combat veteran and swore his love to the victorious Soviet Union. To get me to like him, he had the habit of opening a bottle of whisky with a characteristic crunch of the fastened stopper, pronouncing his death sentence: “The German’s neck!” He studied my inclination to drinking and my relation to British actualities. Just as we did – when the objectives are similar, the techniques are the same.

Concentric Circles of Connections

One can understand that at such receptions you wouldn’t snag a useful connection, since everything was under MI5 control. Accounting for this situation, the residency developed a concept of so-called concentric circles. Among those present at an official reception, you choose an individual who doesn’t present interest to MI5 and establish personal contact by inviting them to your home for a domestic celebration. Then a return invitation would usually follow. That’s how the second circle of connections is accessed, where MI5 presence is almost excluded. Acting by the same principle, acquaintance with a new contact is realized, which leads to the desired “third circle,” which MI5 has no possibility of reaching.

During one such meeting I accessed the former director of British military counterintelligence during the war. An old anticommunist, full of malice for SMERSH, Moscow, and the Kremlin. Moreover, his wife was a charming 45-year-old Scotswoman who periodically arranged expositions of contemporary Soviet avant-garde artists, complementing them with showings of Soviet films.

Valued Contacts

In the London residency, contacts with Americans were especially valued. The main adversary was also the main one in film. At an American movie premier, there’s a crowd of politicians, businessmen, and military – all yet to be recruited by Soviet intelligence. Contacts with the haute bohème were always attractive. To make it to such a get-together, one had to excel. Joint film expositions were in fashion; I decided to grab onto that. During meetings with representatives of the film companies 20th Century Fox, United Artists, Universal, and Warner Brothers, I began to push “killer” plots. The first was constructed on a virtual story of the joint fight of James Bond and the KGB against world evil embodied by a Triad connected to Chinese intelligence.

The second plot was even cooler – it actually took place. This fact was confirmed by the acting USSR military attache in London. In the Second World War in winter, a Soviet rifle regiment became surrounded north of besieged Leningrad. The deep snow didn’t allow the Germans to destroy the surrounded men, who for the same reason couldn’t receive reinforcements. The Wehrmacht’s anti-aircraft guns wouldn’t let our air force in. They awaited an outcome. Then the commander of the surrounded regiment proposed that the General Staff drop paratroopers, ammunition and food from a low altitude into the snow without parachutes. They carried out the landing. Many, they didn’t fall on the slope covered by snowdrifts, perished. The regiment, if with losses, was relieved. Famous British actor Peter O’Toole was to play the German general, while the no less famous American of Russian origin, Yul Brynner, was to be the Soviet colonel.

Men of Quality

The work of State Cinema’s London office was going successfully. High-ranking diplomats from the socialist countries (Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Poland, Bulgaria) came to Sovexportfilm’s receptions. With them they brought connections from among foreign diplomats. Living legends of Broadway and Hollywood were periodically at our agency:

Peter O’Toole – A man of tremendous personal charm and humor, in an elegant suit, aristocratic and confident of his infallibility in acting. He was planning to play do Uncle Vanya on the London stage and came to us with a request to watch Smoktunovsky in this role. O’Toole arrived in an open Rolls-Royce, in which a no less film-worthy chauffeur in a uniform cap sat with a stone face.

Peter Ustinov – The great nephew of the famed Russian artist Aleksandr Benois, and one of Great Britain’s best theatre directors. Imposing and tragicomic, he at once resembled Pierre Bezukhov and Ilya Oblomov. With a light, ironic grin, he loved to watch the film versions of Chekhov’s plays. He told how his father, a former German army officer, came to Russia at the height of the Revolution to find out the fate of his parents. He stayed for a week in Saint Petersburg, where he fell in love and was joined in lawful marriage. When his parents left Russia in 1920, Peter Ustinov was already “in development.”

Sean Connery – A star of the first order, he managed to appear in the USSR in The Red Tent. At receptions he’d appear with bodyguards. He combined a feeling of his own style, confidence, masculinity, and an attractive appearance. He was considered the ideal man: energetic; handsome; clever; flawlessly attired; and always behind the wheel of a sports car. I had to train for the preparation of James Bond’s favorite cocktail, the Martini – the same one that’s shaken, not stirred.

But more than anyone else, I was especially interested by the son of a family of Russian emigres, the incomparable Yulii Borisovich Brynner. Everyone should remember him from the film The Magnificent Seven. The fact is that his father, Boris Yulevich Brynner, the Far Eastern Republic minister of trade and industry, was married through his second marriage to my grandmother’s cousin, MKHAT actress and Stanislavsky pupil Yekaterina Ivanovna Kornakova. It was she who gave her stepson a letter of recommendation to Mikhail Chekhov, who went over to the United States and opened a school of master acting. Many Hollywood film stars were his students. The contact with Yul Brynner didn’t get any development. He held a fierce hostility to the USSR, something he didn’t hide. Let the reader not be surprised. In the KGB they didn’t know that I was the grandnephew of his stepmother. In those times only close relatives were vetted; otherwise I wouldn’t have been representing Soviet cinema in London.

A Natural Blonde

The closest connection of Sovexportfilm’s London office was the British movie star Ingrid Pitt, an Anglo-Jewish/Polish-German actress and natural blonde. She played vampires in films by Hammer Studios. Because of her showy appearance, she was invited to USSR embassy receptions for November 7th and May Day. She was a walking honey trap, walking the halls of the embassy and ready to smother any Soviet intelligence officer with her bust. At one of the receptions, ending up at the same table with a descendant of Leo Tolstoy, Pitt didn’t pay him any attention at first. Yet when his relation to the great classic author was announced, she tilted toward him with the words, “Why didn’t you immediately say that you’re the writer of the movie War and Peace?” She wanted to be clever and turn attention to herself, but everyone thought that the owner of the luxurious bust had posed the question in seriousness.

The Ambassador

In those years the USSR ambassador in London was CPSU Central Committee Revision Commission member Nikolai Mitrofanovich Lunkov. Because of his [Cyrillic] initials H.M. (English acronym “Her Majesty”) he was called “His Mitrofan Highness” behind his back. Such things aren’t forgiven. Neither he nor his diplomats came to Sovexportfilm receptions. The expensive company dining ware and our neighboring office, its interior decked out in purple tones, annoyed him.

He disliked the Sovexportfilm office. Soviet film viewings were being attended by all-too-sophisticated guests; such people didn’t drop by the embassy. He received reports that we were watching Color of Pomegranates by Parajanov, who was under investigation at the time. It was also reported that the South Korean military attache wanted to buy a copy of the documentary film Forcing of the Dniepr. This didn’t fit the CPSU Central Committee’s line. God forbid that the North Koreans find out about Moscow’s contacts with South Korea; there would be a scandal. As the Sovexportfilm representative, I’d be threatened with recall to the USSR at minimum. Lubyanka didn’t take offense, and I got off with a spoken admonition.

Original Articles: Part I Part II

Translated by Mark Hackard

Veteran chief of the KGB’s elite Alpha Group Maj. Gen. Gennady Nikolaevich Zaitsev recounts the 1977 operation to arrest CIA intelligence officer Martha Peterson, who worked out of the US Embassy under diplomatic cover. Peterson had been handling a valuable agent – Aleksandr Ogorodnik, code-named Trigon, a highly-placed staffer at the Soviet Foreign Ministry. Little did Peterson know at the time that Ogorodnik had already been arrested and committed suicide in custody with poison supplied from Langley. The trap carefully laid by the KGB’s Second Chief Directorate was set…

It so happened that I had the opportunity to participate in an arrest of a spy even before joining the spetsnaz Alpha Group. At that time, I served in the Seventh Directorate of the KGB of the USSR. Do you remember the film TASS is Authorized to Declare …? It told the story of how the KGB exposed Trigon, an enemy agent. In reality, this was Alexander Ogorodnik (Trigon), a staff member at the American Department of the Directorate for Planning Foreign Policy Measures at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He committed suicide during arrest.

Yet the games with the Americans continued. We decided to catch them at the scene of the crime. The events in question took place on Krasnoluzhskii Bridge in the Luzhniki area of Moscow. The Vice Consul of the U.S. Embassy, Martha Peterson, was on her way to a meeting with Trigon. We followed her from the Embassy, but she managed to change her clothing, drastically transforming her appearance.

It happened like this. On the evening of July 15, she parked her Embassy vehicle next to the Russia (Rossiia) movie theater and walked in. The theater was featuring The Red and The Black based on the novel by Stendhal with the same name, and the final screening of the day already started. Outside intelligence monitored her from a distance, since this spy was wearing a white dress with a large flower print, which was easy to spot from afar.

“The Woman in White” sat down in a chair next to the emergency exist and pretended that she was watching the movie for ten minutes. Making certain that everything was calm next to her, Peterson pulled black pants over her dress along with a jacket of the same color, buttoning up tightly and let loose her hair that was pulled into a bun earlier.

She, however, had the foresight not to return to the car and instead first caught a bus, then rode the trolleybus and the subway—she was checking if she were being followed. Only then did she catch a cab and arrive at the Krasnoluzhskii Bridge. Even though this area looked completely deserted at this late hour, there were approximately 100 operatives from different units. They were secretly observing everything.

When Peterson climbed the stairs that led to the railway tracks, we—this was night time—could not determine who this was, since Martha resembled a man when she was wearing pants. It’s a good thing that our group included specialists who knew the walking style of every U.S. Embassy staff member. These experts determined that the person stuffing things into the secret hiding place was indeed Peterson.

She needed to walk through a number of arches cut in the giant pillars of the bridge. At this time, she disappeared from sight, staying longer than necessary inside one of the arches. We came to the conclusion that she left a package there. When Peterson turned around and started walking back halfway through the bridge, then began going down the stairs, she was caught red-handed. In order for her to understand that we were not street thugs but rather the authorities, I had to wear the uniform of a police officer.

Madam Peterson bravely fought our operatives—who were searching for a small reconnaissance receiver attached to her body—while screaming loudly, so as to warn the agent responsible for picking up her package.

Seeing that the arrest was taking longer than necessary, I helped the guys by firmly grabbing her hand, squeezing it at the wrist. As a result, I broke the bracelet of her watch, which, as it turned out, contained a microphone connected to a recording device on her body. While riding in the car, I repaired her bracelet. Nevertheless, later the U.S. Embassy sent a complaint to our Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the broken watch and bruises on her hands.

What were we supposed to do? After all, when she was being detained, Madame Vice Consul demonstrated brilliant knowledge of profanity and karate (in terms of classification, she ranked sixth dan). And was it really necessary to scream like that?

Peterson was taken to Lubyanka, where the staff of the U.S. Embassy were summoned for the purpose of her identification. In her presence, we unsealed a container disguised as a rock. We found instructions, a questionnaire, specialized photographic equipment, gold, money, and two capsules with poison.

U.S. Ambassador Malcolm Toon, who arrived at the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs immediately after Martha Peterson’s deportation back to America, insisted that these events not be given public attention, which “would be greatly appreciated by the government of the United States of America.”

They say that my fleeting acquaintance (we were not introduced to each other) later taught at one of CIA’s intelligence schools, instructing future spies about behavior tricks during detainment that she herself experienced.

Excerpted from Hunting Spies article

By Gennadii Nikolaevich Zaitsev, Hero of the Soviet Union, Alpha Group commander in 1977-1988 and in 1992-1993.

In Spetsnaz Rossii (Russia’s Spetsnaz) journal, 3 (174), March 2011.

Source: http://www.specnaz.ru/article/?1846

Translated by Nina Kouprianova

How did the KGB train its deep-cover officers to pose, operate and live under the guise of foreign nationalities? Former KGB Chairman Vladimir Efimovich Semichastny (1924-2001) describes how the KGB First Chief Directorate’s elite Directorate S processed, prepared and deployed illegal officers for work abroad in the field – without the protection of the Soviet embassy or Moscow Center.

Our nation’s intelligence was distinguished by one particularity that could be discovered only extremely rarely in the practices of other secret services. This concerns the training and use of so-called “illegals” – Soviet citizens who settled in other countries under assumed names, thereby allowing us to create the consummate agent network. Such a network couldn’t be uncovered by the Western counterintelligence services that were orbiting mainly around our embassies; representations; trade missions; bureaus; and press agencies.

Inasmuch as I am aware, illegal agents who themselves recruited information sources were written about in relation to the GDR [German Democratic Republic – East German] intelligence service and its actions against the West Germans. Yet there, with the presence of two German states, the situation was much more simple than with us.

I don’t know whether the Germans in Berlin trained their illegals the same way we did. I only know that their secret agent networks were managed on the basis of the same principle we used when directing a network of our illegals. Concretely this meant the use of agents directly from the Center, and not at all through the residency in Bonn.

Along with that, the agent – a West German – used neither another name, nor another’s biography.

I myself wouldn’t begin a conversation on such a topic, because I don’t share the opinion that with the collapse of the Soviet Union there’s come an end to competition between particular secret services. Many technologies must be used in the future, if in different political conditions.

The secret of our illegals was one of our most scrupulously guarded treasures. However, in recent times, several former Chekists have spoken in the Russian media, revealing the training technology for our illegals in order to make some extra money. I don’t think it follows to keep everything a great secret as it was done earlier, but we must remember the security of our own colleagues who work or simply live in the West, and also remember that disclosing the secrets of espionage could prove a detriment our special services. Instead of helping to understand history, it could turn out to be a successful instruction for terrorist organizations or various mafias, of which there are rather many today. Therefore I will stop only on that which has come to the surface in other print publications.

The training of illegal agents was not a mass affair, and all of it represented a very complex, expensive, and at times drawn-out process. The task was set to prepare a Soviet intelligence officer for human intelligence work so that he didn’t distinguish himself in any way from residents of one or another Western country, particularly the United States, Great Britain, France, or Germany. Beginning with polished speech without any accent and ending with such minor details such as the habit of tying the laces on one’s boots, for example. A Russian, as we know, usually conducts this simple operation by squatting, while a foreigner will first off look for where to set his foot, only then leaning down to his shoes.

Our conventional residents responsible for supplying human intelligence from a given territory were not informed about our illegal agents. An illegal was directed from Moscow Center. Meetings with him were undertaken during either his secret visits to the USSR or in some other state, but not where he lived permanently. Understandably, only a narrow circle of people at Lubyanka itself knew about them.

Work with each selected candidate was purely individual. It was best of all to begin training before the person would turn 30. Then, after training and resettlement to a different country, the intelligence officer could still work for a long period. But on the other hand, it was impermissible to begin training too early: a twenty-year-old person would still be too young for us to choose him. To determine whether he’d be suitable to the forthcoming work or not could only be done around 30 to 40 percent of the time.

A person who became a candidate should have already demonstrated beforehand quickness of intellect, high erudition, an ability to study languages, and other key capabilities. During training we controlled and corrected almost every one of his moves. A large number of potential illegals, and perhaps even the majority, ultimately didn’t reach the final objective.

It was bitter when a person, in whom we had invested much time, funds, and efforts, didn’t vindicate our hopes. Yet a minor thing such as speaking Russian in one’s sleep was sufficient for us to have to reject a candidacy. In addition, a future illegal was not to have loved drinking or chasing skirts too much.

The instructors and teachers of future illegals were both psychologists and pedagogues. For example, language instructors. The time for training was not standard: for one person four years was enough, while another needed six or seven. We trained “authentic” Americans and Englishmen on Soviet territory. Habits of how to fill out forms in a London post office; how to pay for an apartment in New York; where in Bonn to drop in on one’s own, and where one could ask for help; how tax declarations in Paris are filled out – all of this we taught right in the capital of the Soviet Union or on its outskirts.

While future illegals were diligently studying, our residencies abroad were also not sleeping. A trained illegal was to become one in actuality, not turn into an emigre or the usual agent. Only a flawless legend could make our man such an “Englishman from birth,” and its roots could reach back decades.

Abroad it followed to first find a suitable basis for a legend. One of the possible solutions was to find the grave, of a child, we’ll say, who died in infancy. Then the future illegal would receive the name that was on the child’s gravestone, and along with it a concrete date and place of birth. Then we needed to ensure the disappearance of the infant’s name from the registry of the departed in the corresponding church book. The best option was when the child was born in one place but died in another. In such a way several church books with records on the given person would turn up, and their comparison was practically impossible. If a Western counterintelligence service suddenly wanted to check concrete information about the suspect, then by all means, it was noted that such-and-such was indeed born in the given place. Who would search for whether this person randomly died in a completely different place and in a different state of the country?

Erasing the corresponding record in a church book was usually just a question of the sum required. Of course, with that we conducted business with the most simple and understandable motivation. Every move was based on one or another well-thought-out legend: in one case the matter concerned an inheritance and big money, while in another something most suitable would be thought up at the given moment. Here fantasy played the role, and technique acted it out. But primarily, a legend had to be absolutely natural, and there would be no room left for romantic stratagems.

However, more than once it happened we were unable to get to the appropriate documents, the planned biography didn’t take, and under closer examination, it could have been uncovered by Western security agencies. However difficult it was, we nevertheless had to start from the beginning again. There couldn’t be another solution – founded on underestimation of the opponent – otherwise, many months or years later, we’d have to pay a dear price for failure. And there wasn’t anything terrible that out of ten attempts, only one succeeded. This was more proof that illegals didn’t appear off of an assembly line.

When all the facts were prepared how they should have been, and the candidate proved sufficiently capable and could start working, the time came for our technical service to show itself. The preparation of necessary documents began.

The new citizen, say an American, received a birth certificate that was impossible to differentiate from other similar documents: this related both to the type and age of the paper, as well as the ink used.

Our intelligence got the paper of American paper mills, and then, with special barrels plus chemical additives and complex technologies, this paper began to artificially age. In such a way any other forged documents were produced: a copy from a French birth certificate, just like Finnish driving documents, couldn’t be produced on paper from a factory in 1960’s Archangel.

At the end of this whole long process, the illegal would hold in his hands an old, worn passport with a multitude of stamps and visas, although the document was actually brand new.

The time came to unite the man and the legend in practice. To imagine that the illegal would move to a new place, buy himself a new house and arrange fancy parties with influential, ranking people is totally naïve.

In appearance an illegal would often look like a failure who at first would be unlucky; he could go bankrupt, raise his head above water and then plunge downward again. Incrementally he’d connect with people who would help him – somewhere they’d give him a recommendation, somewhere else they’d move him forward. (We found ways to help with respect to finances.) And only some time later, our man would stand on his own legs, and then would begin the period of his agent-running activity.

Work Translated: Семичастный, В. Е. Беспокойное сердце. — М.: Вагриус, 2002.

Translated by Mark Hackard.

The Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 was to prove advantageous for Japan and its Western maritime backers Britain and the United States, while the conflict was a multifaceted disaster for Russia. Amidst the bloodshed, however, were found moments of chivalry exemplified by the warriors of each side. Here is one such account:

Hunter and scout Vasilii Timofeevich Riabov was born in 1871 and grew up in the village of Ivanovka outside Penza. Almost a century and a half has gone by, yet his memory persists through the centuries.

After his discharge from active military duty and joining the reserve, Riabov relocated to the neighboring village of Lebedevka. He was a brave and active man, he loved the theater and his wife, even though he sometimes hit her after drinking. And sometimes he used other people’s things without permission. That happened too. But he atoned for all his sins with his act of bravery.

From the beginning of the [Russo-Japanese War], Riabov enlisted as a volunteer in the 284^th Chembarskii Infantry Regiment. It was in its ranks that he participated in the battles that took place in Manchuria. He served on the hunting team, which is what they called volunteer scouts in those days. With the help of gestures, facial expressions, and gait, he could imitate the Chinese locals, which often amused his friends.

Following the battle of Liaoyang, in the autumn of 1904, the Russian command badly required new information about the location of enemy units. On 14 (27) September of 1904, Vasilii Riabov volunteered to go on a reconnaissance mission disguised as a Chinese peasant wearing a false braid attached to the back of his head.

The Japanese did not discover this Russian reconnaissance scout, and Riabov was already on the way back to his unit. However, an officer passing by ordered him to give water to his horse. Riabov, who did not know the Chinese language, perhaps did not understand the order or carried it out inaccurately. As a result, the irate Japanese officer pulled his braid, which…fell off. That’s how everything became clear.

The military scout was tried as a spy and sentenced to death. Vasilii Timofeevich met his death with dignity with the name of the Motherland on his lips, while remaining faithful to his military oath. The courage of this Russian soldier made such a deep impression on the enemy that they began to consider him a “Russian samurai.”

A day later, the patrol of the 1st Orenburg Cossack Regiment came across a letter left near a lonely oak tree on neutral territory. The letter read:

Reserve soldier Vasilii Riabov, 33 years old, from the hunting team of the 284th Chembarskii Infantry Regiment, born in the province of Penza, Penza uezd, Lebedevka village, dressed as a Chinese peasant, was captured on September 17, 1904 on the frontlines by our soldiers. According to his oral testimony, it became clear that he was sent to us on a reconnaissance mission to discover the location and actions of our army upon his own wish and made his way toward our troops through Yantai on September 14 following the southeastern direction. After reviewing the case in proper order, Riabov was sentenced to death. The latter was carried out on September 17 with a rifle shot.

In bringing this event to the attention of the Russian Army, our Army cannot but express our sincere wishes to your respected Army so that it rears more of such wonderful soldiers like the aforementioned Riabov, who is worthy of complete respect. Our sympathy for this truly brave man—overwhelmed by his sense duty—and an exemplary soldier reaches the utmost limit.

Respectfully,

Staff Captain of the Japanese Army.

There was a note in the Chinese language attached to the letter, which warned local residents against destroying it along with the diagram of the area, where the execution to place, and the hero’s remains rested.

Tsar Nicholas II learned about the Penza scout and used his highest command to establish a committee on immortalizing the hero. Donations came from all across Russia. Gymnasium students sent anywhere from four to 25 kopecks. In total, donations to help his family comprised seven thousand rubles along with an additional 2,569 rubles for the construction of a school.

By the order of the Tsar, Riabov’s family received a thousand rubles, and his children were sent to state schools.

This warrior-scout was forever enlisted in the 284th Chembarskii Regiment, as was stated in the order: “For the edification of posterity.” After the merger with the 216th Insarskii Regiment, he was listed as part of the 5th Company of the 2nd Battalion.

On October 6, 1909, Riabov’s remains were transferred from Manchuria to the village of Lebedevka, where he was buried with all the military honors near a school built in the memory of Vasilii Timofeevich.

Crowds carrying icons and flowers met the train transporting the hero’s remains starting from Chita. A military orchestra met the coffin in Penza along with a half-Company from the local garrison, priests, and countless civilians.

The original Church of Christ the Savior in Moscow was considered to be the main military cathedral in Russia. Among the numerous marble slabs, featuring carved names of generals and officers, who died in various wars, there was only one memorial plaque dedicated to the ordinary soldier. It had only 17 names. And among them was Vasilii Timofeevich Riabov.

Excerpted and translated by Nina Kouprianova

Original