KGB Cold War Foreign Operations

CHST 540

May 26, 2005

‘The Main Adversary’First Chief Directorate = KGB foreign intelligence; 16 departmentsAfter WWII, US considered the main threat; then UK and France Atomic espionage a high prioritySoviet intelligence managed atomic bomb projectChief scientist Igor Kurchatov

IllegalsRenewed emphasis on illegals in 1950sIllegals run by the Fourth DirectorateCanada used as staging post to the USVilyam (Willie) Fisher (codename MARK) rebuilt Soviet intelligence in New York

Walk-ins and legal residenciesWalk-in: someone who approaches an intelligence agency and offers their servicesTed Hall (Manhattan Project); William Martin and Bernon Mitchell (National Security Agency); John Walker (US Department of Defense)Legal residencies: KGB stations run under legal cover (i.e. staff worked in Soviet embassies and also gathering intelligence, etc.)

Defections from Soviet intelligence

To defect: ‘to forsake one cause, party, or nation for another’

1945: Igor Gouzenko, cipher clerk in Ottawa

5 major defections in early 1954 (Khokhlov, Deryabin, Rastvorov, and the Petrovs)

1985 Oleg Gordievsky; 1992 Vasili Mitrokhin

MolesDefinition: A spy who operates from within an organization, especially a double agent operating against his or her own government from within its intelligence establishment.

Soviet moles in Britain: the Cambridge Five, George Blake, Melita Norwood (‘the spy who came in from the Co-op’)

Soviet moles in US: Harry Dexter White, Alger Hiss, Aldrich Ames (CIA)

‘Wet affairs’Euphemism for sabotage, kidnapping, assassinationTargeted defectors and dissidents- Stalin’s political opponents (until 1953)- Ukrainian nationalists and Russian émigrés- former military officers who defected, especially from the KGB Assassination of Georgi Markov in London (died Sept. 11, 1978) Many failures in ‘wet affairs’

‘Wet affairs’ (cont’d)

Also targeted other defectors, especially cultural icons

Some famous targets:

Rudolf Nureyev

and Natalia Makarova

Technical intelligence

Technology used narrowly: to monitor and keep people under control

Less able to report on major developments in politics, etc.

Technical gap between US and USSR

Support for ‘freedom fighters’ and terrorist groups

Convenient proxies; less immediate political risk

Provided funding and weapons to IRA, Sandinistas (Nicaragua), Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), etc.

Very cautious at outset

Upstaged by Cuban intelligence (DGI)

‘I think if we compare Hitler to Stalin, and the Gestapo to the KGB, the KGB was far more ruthless -- not because they killed far more people, but because they were indiscriminate in the selection of victims. The Nazis concentrated on Jews; the Soviet KGB under Stalin’s directions was an internationalist organization: it would kill anyone who would stand in the way of Stalin and his leadership.’

~ Oleg Kalugin, retired head of KGB foreign counterintelligence

‘After Stalin’s death, the KGB underwent serious reforms, but not serious enough to declare it a legitimate organization abiding by the laws of the state… the Soviet system was a lawless system, and the KGB was a tool of lawlessness.’

~ Oleg Kalugin, retired head of KGB foreign counterintelligence

For further info:http://www.cwihp.si.edu (Cold War International History Project)

Christopher Andrew and Julie Elkner, ‘Stalin and Foreign Intelligence’ pp. 84-9 in Harold Shukman, ed. Redefining Stalinism (Frank Cass, 2003)

Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (Basic Books, 1999)