Interview with Robert Lou Benson, NSA

Interviewer: Tell me in your own words about the sabotage school in Barcelona, during the Civil War. What was that really?

Lou Benson: Well the sabotage school was apparently supervised by the KGB which was then called the NKVD.

Interviewer: And what was the point of it?

Lou Benson: Well, this was in the course of the Spanish Civil War; the Russians were supporting the loyalists. The patriotic or rather the legally elected Government of Spain in 1936 there was a rising against the Republic by General Franco's Forces. And the Civil War resulted. There was an intervention by the left and the right, so to speak. The Soviets came in on the side of the Republic, and the Nazis and the Italians on the side of what became called the Nationalists, Franco's Government.

Interviewer: If the KGB were basically running the sabotage school in Barcelona?

Lou Benson: Yes.

Interviewer: What was their gain? What was the point?

Lou Benson: Well, it was, I mean, to fight Franco's Forces, and that was one technique, of course sabotage, operating behind Franco's lines. But that was the military purpose of it. It undoubtedly gave them an opportunity to process people from the International Brigades who might be invited in. But its purpose was fight against Franco's forces and on behalf of the Republicans.

Interviewer: But also there's a good, a good opportunity -- to, to recruit.

Lou Benson: To recruit. I would think so, yes.

Interviewer: Now moving back to the United States. Um, the Soviet's, um, had -- what part did the American Communist Party play in selecting, screening, recruiting Americans who might be useful to the Soviets? To the KGB?

Lou Benson: If we look at the spy scene in Venona, and the agents, let's call them, Soviet Agency scene in Venona, they were essentially all Communists, or very closely allied with Communist Party members, called "the travellers," and that sort of thing. The party did in fact provide candidates who would recommend the specially trusted Communists to the Soviet Intelligence Services. For instance, Earl Browder, who was the leader of the American Communist Party, in Venona we see him from time to time discussing candidates and the KGB coming to him to discuss candidates. The party used a man named Bernie Schuster, again seen in Venona, as a liaison between the party and the KGB. Then Schuster would conduct what would be called background investigations. If a particular party member seemed like a good candidate to work for the KGB because of his access to classified information, or for some other reason the KGB wanted a person in a certain place, Schuster would check them out. We can only guess from the messages, Venona messages, but he apparently would check party records, and he would interview other party members and then make a recommendation as to whether this person would be suitable for the KGB.

Interviewer: And the KGB used these Americans to do it's work for it?

Lou Benson: The KGB used American Communists. Yes.

Interviewer: Now they were front organisations, legitimate organisations but with a covert purpose, TASS and Amtorg. In your own words could you tell me what those were and what they did?

Lou Benson: TASS was the Soviet Press Organisation in the United States, and in other countries where they were accredited. It served as a legitimate press relations and news service purpose and provided a cover for the KGB and GRU. So on the staff of any TASS unit in any country was KGB and GRU officers. The same could be said for Amtorg, which was the Soviet Government's trading organisation in the Western Hemisphere. There were similar trading organisations in other areas that had different names. Amtorg existed to further Soviet economic interests and legitimate trade purposes. Once again it provided a front, a cover, under which the KGB and GRU officers could operate.

Interviewer: Before the war they were interested in commercial intelligence or industrial intelligence. What kind of things did they collect?

Lou Benson: In the inter-war years there's no question, at least in the United States, the KGB and GRU had a great interest in what might be called industrial espionage, collecting trade secrets and so forth. I feel some of the targets were very mundane, but it was important to the Soviet Union and the Soviet economy. Things like synthetic rubber, sugar refining, processors, patrolling and refining processes, automobiles, automobile engines and, in a more, much more secret area of course, the development of American military aircraft. The espionage against these kinds of targets could be carried out in any number of ways. It could be the using the KGB and GRU officers under the cover of TASS and Amtorg but they could also be under the cover of the Embassy or the Soviet legations.

Interviewer: What do the term's legal and illegals mean?

Lou Benson: In Soviet intelligence usage, a legal would be a KGB or GRU Officer, intelligence officer, operating under a legal cover, let's say in the United States, perhaps on the staff of the Ambassador, -- perhaps on the staff of TASS or Amtorg, or the Consulate, as a First Secretary of the Consulate. That person, the legal, is concealing his true purpose, but he has a legal connection to the Soviet mission in the United States or in another country. An illegal traditionally was also a sworn KGB or GRU officer who would enter the target country, illegally, using false documentation, and then would assume a certain identity and perhaps might work as a salesman, which is what Colonel Akhmarhov, the illegal Chief in the United States did. He worked, I think, selling furs.

Interviewer: Tell me how Colonel Akhmarhov operated?

Lou Benson: Lieutenant Colonel Isak Akhmarhov was the Chief of the KGB illegals in the United States during the World War II. He was in this country on a second tour as an illegal, from 1942 to 1945. He'd also been here during the 1930s. He entered the United States illegally, using false documentation, and he was called the illegal resident. Resident is the Soviet term for station chief the United States, and in Britain you would use the term station chief perhaps for CIA or British Secret Service. They call that person a resident; he was the illegal resident. There were legal residents under diplomatic cover in New York, Washington, and San Francisco. So in theory he had parallel networks. You had a network run by the illegal resident, and you had multiple networks run by the legal residents. Of course it was all illegal. It was all against the law, but these were the terms of the time. And the terms are still in use.

Interviewer: How many kinds of code names did Akhmarhov have?

Lou Benson: Akhmarhov is his true name. In the United States he used four or five aliases at different times, such as, I believe, Michael Green, and perhaps Michael Adamack. He had a communications cover name, which is what we see in the Venona messages. That was Albert. When he met his agents he used what one might call a street name. Just a first name, Bill, John. His agents didn't know his alias. They didn't know his real name. They just knew him as Bill, and they knew his wife as Catherine.

Interviewer: Was Colonel Abel another illegal?

Lou Benson: Colonel Abel was an illegal. He was also a KGB officer, a sworn officer, of that service. I don't know how he entered the United States; I don't know if we do now. He certainly was using an alias in the United States, and he had a front, a cover business as a photographer

Interviewer: Now tell me about Venona. What exactly was Venona?

Lou Benson: Venona's just a made-up code word. Made up by the United States and Great Britain. It was the third of a series of code names. Earlier it was called Drug and Bride. It stood for the fact that we were able to read a certain set of Soviet Intelligence Service communications that had been sent during the 1940s.

Interviewer: Now where were these sent from? And how were they collected?

Lou Benson: The messages were between the KGB and GRU establishments abroad and the Centre in Moscow. For the most part they were passed by commercial international radio, by legitimate commercial companies, but of course they were turned into the message company, the cable company in cipher. So Western Union then would radio to Moscow a cipher telegram which they were told was perhaps of the Embassy, or the Consulate to Moscow. In other words a legitimate diplomatic communications. There were in fact diplomatic communications. There were trade communications. But there were also the communications of the GRU, the KGB and Naval Intelligence, the intelligence services operating in the United States.

Interviewer: How were these cables collected, as copies from Western Union?

Lou Benson: In general, yes. During the war, generally speaking, these messages were acquired through censorship. On the day after Pearl Harbour certain emergency laws and regulations went into effect, and every cable going to or from the United States a copy had to go to the censor. The censor would turn over these messages to Arlington Hall. There were occasionally messages that were intercepted, on different circuits, for instance, between the KGB in Tokyo and the KGB in Moscow. Of course that had to be intercepted but it turns out none of those were read anyway.

Interviewer: What exactly was Arlington Hall? What were they trying to do there?

Lou Benson: Arlington Hall is just a convenient name for the Army Signal Intelligence Service. It had formally been in the War Department building in downtown Washington, but with the onset of war larger quarters were needed. A girl's school was acquired in Arlington, Virginia, and then a couple of large temporary buildings were put up behind the girls' school. Army Corp engineers worked day and night, and during 1942, army signal intelligence moved into Arlington Hall. We just tended to call that organisation Arlington Hall, though it was merely the name of the former school.

Interviewer: Is that where they were trying to crack Venona?

Lou Benson: All Army, I should say. Most Army code breaking work was done at Arlington Hall. It was the Headquarters for the Army's world-wide signal intelligence operations. So Venona, what became called Venona was being worked on at Arlington Hall. Yes. It was a small effort to begin with.

Interviewer: The first break in cracking the code or one of the first breaks was Cecil Philips. Can you describe what happened?

Lou Benson: Well, Cecil Philips came to Arlington Hall in 1943. I think it was when he was eighteen years old, after he had finished two years at college. He went onto the Russian program surprisingly or worked on Mayday, 1944, and in November, 1944, he made some observations in studying Russian diplomatic traffic that essentially was the basic break in Venona. He made the basic solution that led to this whole thing unravelling. The reason was the material he was studying turned out to be KGB. He did not know that at the time. He found a way to exploit this material, or to identify it to make what we would call matches. The fact that it happened to be KGB was -- is one of the most important parts of this whole story.

Interviewer: What was the nature of the break through?

Lou Benson: What he did is he took the first few groups of messages and the last few groups of a message. I think it took some hundreds of messages and studied them and wrote them down. He found in one set of messages that there appeared to be too many sixes. If these were truly random numbers, one-tenth of the numbers in these groups should have been sixes. In fact there it was more than that, much more than that. After further study and discussion, what Cecil realised was that these numbers were what's called free key, that they were not encrypted. That they had been taken directly from a one-time pad and not added to anything not added to the code groups. Had these numbers been added to code, this bias in favour of sixes would have disappeared. We cannot explain why there was this bias in favour of sixes, because these were essentially random numbers, but they weren't absolutely random. His noticing it led to the unravelling of the whole thing.

Interviewer: The person who made the break through, I think, in language is Meredith Gardner. What did he do?

Lou Benson: Meredith Gardner was a -- a linguist, a linguistic genius, who during World War II had worked on Japanese Army problems, particularly military attaché. He spoke or could read a dozen or so languages and he had taught himself Russian. After the second world war, he was assigned to the Russian section, and taking advantages of the cipher breaks that had been made by Cecil Philips, and a large modest sized group of people, he was able to start attacking the underlying code. Now here was a codebook that the United States had never seen and has never seen to this day. But using his understanding of the Russian language, he reconstructed that codebook. The code group had ten thousand groups, probably by mid 1948, through analysis, he recovered ninety per cent of those code groups.

Interviewer: And what did that enable them to, to do?

Lou Benson: Well that enabled him then, to put the code groups into the messages, and translate, and then you would have the text of a Russian espionage message. So first you have to deal with that cipher, which is from the one-time pad. You have to strip the cipher off. Then you get down to the code. Then you've had to figure out what the code means. That code or code book is a dictionary really with -- with numbers.

Interviewer: One of the first great discoveries Gardner made was he saw this list of names appear. What list of names was this?

Lou Benson: During 1946, Meredith Gardner was able to decrypt to some extent, oh, a handful of messages, maybe four or five. In one of these messages that he translated he broke out from the code and so forth, he found a list of names which he recognised as people who had been involved in the atomic bomb program of the United States. Also it did include some foreign names such as Eisenberg I believe.

Interviewer: Who was he?

Lou Benson: He was, as I recall, a German Physicist who the US believed was probably heading the Nazi atomic bomb effort. So this was a list of physicists, involved in the development of this new weapon.

Interviewer: What could that tell American Intelligence?

Lou Benson: It was suggested that there was a Soviet agent inside the Manhattan Project.

Interviewer: Doing what?

Lou Benson: This agent was supplying the Soviet Union with classified information concerning the Manhattan project and the development of the atomic bomb.

Interviewer: What conclusion was drawn from the existence of this list of names?

Lou Benson: When Meredith Gardner saw this list of names, he recognised a number of names of famous physicists who were involved in the Manhattan Project. Meredith realised that this message was dated in, I believe, 1944, perhaps early '45. Now in 1944, any association of people with the Manhattan Project was at that time top secret. So it suggested to him somebody had acquired top secret information and had passed it on to Soviet intelligence.

Interviewer: So the Manhattan project was no longer secure?

Lou Benson: Correct.

Interviewer: Now, what further discoveries did this cracking the code as it were, lead to? For example did was Fuchs tracked down?

Lou Benson: Klaus Fuchs is found in Venona under a couple of cover names such as Charles or Rest. A particular message that Meredith Gardner solved was sent by the KGB in New York in 1944 to Moscow Centre, and it referenced a particular document, a particular study, that had been produced at Los Alamos in the Manhattan Project. It was learned that the author of that particular study was Klaus Fuchs, so that at least entered Klaus Fuchs' name into the tracking of Soviet agents. It began the investigation into atomic bomb espionage. As other messages were studied, it became apparent that the cover name Charles was a Soviet agent, and the cover name Charles was Klaus Fuchs. Fuchs was subsequently interrogated by security service and by FBI. He made confessions to both. His confessions then led in to other people and further confessions and the break up of a particularly important espionage network. Now the people who were rolled up here are also all in Venona so the investigation proceeds in a couple of directions. Studying these people later learned about Harry Gold, the Greenglasses and the Rosenbergs. Studying them in Venona, but then also taking Klaus Fuchs' confession and going after the next person, getting a confession from Harry Gold, then getting the identification of the Greenglasses, and then getting their confession and the identification of the Rosenbergs.

Interviewer: Did the Russians have any agents who had access to Venona? Who could feed back to them what was going on?

Lou Benson: A man named William Wiesband, who had been in Army signal intelligence during the second world war, and was assigned to Arlington Hall from the Mediterranean Theatre Operations later 1944. He was a Russian speaker. He spoke quite a number of languages. In 1945, probably the very beginning of 1945, he was assigned to the Russian Program which we speak of it as Venona. In those days, it simply would have been called the Russian Program if it were spoken of at all. He had the opportunity to observe certainly the early developments in this program. Meredith Gardner upon breaking out the atomic scientist's message called Wiesband over and said take a look at this message. He was subsequently determined from the investigation of a man named Jones York, found in Venona, that Wiesband apparently was a veteran KGB agent who had handled Mr. York and perhaps others.

Interviewer: So it was penetrated almost from day one?

Lou Benson: If in fact Wiesband was still working for the Soviets in the beginning of 1945, he could have reported on the progress of the attack on Russian diplomatic communications which of course included the KGB's communications.

Interviewer: Now of course Kim Philby also had access to Venona?

Lou Benson: Kim Philby was assigned to MI6 in Washington. In 1949, and he continued in that post until 1951. Part of his legitimate duties were to receive and study Venona translations. We know that from 1949 to '51, perhaps monthly, perhaps every couple of weeks, he did receive Venona translations. Kim Philby also visited Arlington Hall a couple of times. There was nothing particularly notable about the visits. Allegedly, he didn't pay much attention to what was being said. The important thing is he was receiving the translations. He was also undoubtedly was learning from the FBI about the progress of the investigations. Of course he liased with his counterpart in the Security Service. So he would have had full knowledge of the privacy investigations as well as the progress of the code breaking, and the discovery of new cover names from circumstances.

Interviewer: And how could he use that knowledge?

Lou Benson: Presumably Philby would have passed this information back to the Soviets by whatever channel he was using. It's a certainty that information Philby got from Venona led to the tip-off of Burgess and Donald Maclean and their flight to the Soviet Union. Maclean's cover name was Homer in Venona. He was identified, but before the next move could be made, he and Burgess fled. This is probably the most important counter intelligence development of the Venona story. Regardless of the fact that they supposedly got away with it, in fact, it broke up the most important espionage group any country could ever have had. Maclean's access to UK and US secrets was without parallel. It went far beyond just diplomatic matters, military and so forth. So when they fled, of course, we know the story that people began looking at Philby. Effectively that was the end of that group.

Interviewer: So it's seen as a kind of a victory that they fled, but in reality it was felt the end of the whole enterprise. It was a defeat for them?

Lou Benson: As a matter of fact, yes. It's hard to imagine how anything could have been more disappointing to the Soviets. They had extraordinary agents in the highest places, and they lost them.

Interviewer: Did the knowledge of what was going on in Venona help the Soviets tip off people, like possibly the Cohens, that they should flee?

Lou Benson: It's very hard to say until the Soviets tell their side of the story. How they made use of the information they got from Philby in tipping off and extracting their agents, we know, in the case of Burgess and Maclean what happened. They certainly had ample opportunity to tip off other people, such as the Rosenbergs, Cohens and so forth. They did tip off the Rosenbergs late in the game, and Julius Rosenberg tried to get his network out of the United States. Some got out. Some didn't. Lona Cohen's cover name was probably Lesley. She appears just in a single message of, I believe, early 1945, where KGB New York says they have not been in touch with Lesley for several months and are thinking of reactivating her to do some support work. I don't recall if it was as a courier, or it could be the keeper of a safe house. Morris Cohen is definitely not identified in Venona. He was, after all, in the army at that time. KGB would have had trouble contacting him. Some people think that the unidentified cover name, Volunteer, is Morris Cohen, but we don't know.

Interviewer: Now, we know that Lona Cohen was acting as a courier going down to Los Alamos, or out to Albuquerque where she met a scientist. Who was she meeting? Does Venona tell us the name of the person?

Lou Benson: There is nothing in Venona to really say anything about what the Cohens were doing. Because the single message concerning Lona Cohen as cover name Lesley simply refers to the fact the KGB has not been in touch with her in recent months, but they were going to reactivate her for some type of courier duties or to be the keeper of a safe house. So from Venona we would really not learn much about what Lona Cohen is doing. If Morris Cohen is the unidentified cover name Volunteer, there's a little bit more, but even there the references to Volunteer don't tie to atomic bomb espionage. So Venona is a very modest source of information on the Cohens.

Interviewer: What does Venona tell us about the man that Lona Cohen was meeting in Albuquerque?

Lou Benson: Reportedly, but not from Venona, Lona Cohen was meeting with Ted Hall who was a young physicist at Los Alamos. He's very prominent in Venona. In 1944 he got in touch with the Russians, and was recruited by the KGB by an officer, an agent officer, named Sergei Kurnakov. He is seen in a number of Venona messages. Now the first message where there's a description of Kurnakov's meeting with Hall, his true name is used. The Venona message speaks of Kurnakov having a meeting with Theodore Hall. It says he's nineteen-years-old and a physicist. That he's involved in the Manhattan Project, and how he got in touch with the Soviets through a couple of tries, he and a friend of his made contact with the Soviets. Thereafter we see messages that refer to that meeting, and they speak of a cover name Mollad, and the equation was immediately made that Mollad and Hall were the same person. United States and the UK, therefore, had the identification of Hall, and Hall equals Mollad by the end of 1949 and certainly not later than probably the first half of 1950.

Interviewer: Does that mean that Hall's effectiveness ceased?

Lou Benson: Yes, in the case of Mr. Hall. I would have to draw on some recent books, particularly Joe Allbright's Commercial Consuls Book, Bomb Shell, where by 1950 Hall was not working for the government. I mean he had left what became the Atomic Energy Commission, shortly after the war. According to information, apparently, Hall may have provided to Mr. Allbright, he may have had further contact with the Russians, but he's not working for the US Government at that time. He's perhaps a graduate student at the University of Chicago at the time he comes under investigation.

Interviewer: How many code names are there in Venona? And how many people are still unidentified?

Lou Benson: If we consider the Venona messages that are to and from the United States, it would probably appear that there are at least just say one hundred and twenty-five Americans who were Soviet Agents to the KGB or the GRU. In other words their names are known in or through Venona, either directly from the messages or by analysis and investigation. Some of these people have cover names. Some of these people appear by their true names. Then we have an additional, let's say, a hundred cover names that have not been identified, a hundred cover names that appear to be Americans. That's, approximate. One of the reasons cover names cannot be identified is if they only appear in a couple of messages. So there is no context. It might suggest the person wasn't all that important. And that's hard to say. There are a few unidentified cover names that would appear to be important.

Interviewer: Are these important in terms of the atomic bomb program?

Lou Benson: Among the unidentified Venona cover names is one Pers, who appears in about five Venona messages. Pers is apparently a physicist. He's definitely working on the atomic bomb, or he might be at Oak Ridge, he has never been identified. There are others, other figures that appear in some of the messages concerning the atomic bomb espionage, but it's hard to know quite what to make of them.

Interviewer: Is Pers, probably a significant plan?

Lou Benson: I think Pers probably was a significant espionage figure for the Soviets. But again we only have five messages. But he does provide technical data, or he has access to technical data. In just a modest number of messages the Russians themselves have said that Pers was an important agent, but, of course, they declined to give the name of that person.

Interviewer: So Pers could still be alive?

Lou Benson: It's possible. We really don't know who Pers is.

Interviewer: And he's still not caught?

Lou Benson: If he's alive, he or she is not caught.

Source: Red Files: Secret Victories of the KGB

New Light on Old Spies - A Review of Recent Soviet Intelligence Revelations - part 6

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Part 4

Part 5

Soviet Motives

As is often true of Russian policy, the objectives to be served by the surfacing of Soviet espionage activities abroad are not immediately evident. The reasons for the adoption of such a policy are difficult to disentangle. Perhaps the interplay of personal ambitions and jealousies among Party and government leaders has played its part. Although no evidence on the point is available, this unusual Soviet frankness may reflect the growing influence of Alexander Shelepin, former chief of the KGB who has played an increasingly prominent role in Soviet affairs since the overthrow of Khrushchev. It may be assumed, in any case, that the decision to admit to the Soviet people that their government also engages in actions hitherto credited only to bourgeois and fascist states was not lightly reached on the spur of the moment. Undoubtedly it was made at the highest Party levels, after lengthy and possibly acrimonious discussion. Party leaders must have agreed that the advantages of such a revelation outweighed any ill effect on the Soviet population.

What are the possible advantages of the revelation?

Such foreign espionage operations as have been surfaced up to this time are related to the Germany of Hitler and the second world war. The work of Manevich, if that was in fact his name, is presented as having been done in Eastern Europe, probably in Germany or a German-occupied area, and in a Nazi concentration camp. A series of paperbacks on the frontier guards and wartime partisan operations continue the anti-Nazi defense theme. Abel, it is said, worked against the Germans; his postwar activities were motivated by a desire to get at former Nazis who were active in the West. Lonsdale is made to admit the same motivation. Although Sorge's prewar operational activity cannot be denied, his intelligence targets were obvious--the German embassy in Tokyo and Japan, Germany's ally. Work against the Nazi, at whatever time it was undertaken, would be applauded by Soviet citizens. Such espionage operations, although carried on abroad, can be interpreted as defensive in intent and purpose. The Soviets, it must be noted, have not yet admitted that their postwar operations were directed primarily against the British and Americans.

The Soviet authorities may believe that revelations of Western espionage against the Soviet Union in recent years call for defensive action. Operations such as the U-2 flights and the Popov and Penkovskiy penetrations have certainly resulted in talk and speculation within the USSR. The Powers and Penkovskiy show trials must have convinced even optimistic Soviets that, despite official disclaimers, some harm had been done to Soviet security. Many must have asked, why don't our people do that same thing? It is possible, therefore, that several terminated espionage operations have been surfaced to assure the Soviet people that their government is also active in such operations abroad. The first line of Soviet defense, they are being told, is in good hands.

The new publicity is probably designed to improve the image and morale of military intelligence and the state security service. The Penkovskiy case (and the Popov case as well, although it received little publicity) must have been disastrous to the morale of military intelligence officers. State security officers must have been affected adversely by previous efforts of the Soviet authorities to create a bland image of their service. Public acclaim of service heroes, even of those who at first glance appear to have failed in their missions, has undoubtedly improved the tone and morale of both services.

Such revelations can also be made to serve operational purposes. It will be noted that the Soviets use fictionalized biographies to surface both operations and intelligence agents. Fictional techniques permit the telling of a lively story without need to adhere to the facts of the case. Embarrassing aspects and significant operational details may be distorted or omitted without endangering the seeming integrity of the account. Even though not so labeled--possibly because they were intended for foreign consumption--the Lonsdale "memoirs" are largely fictional. The Soviets have enlisted fiction as an intelligence weapon.

Although at first glance it would seem to be a pointless task, these fictionalized memoirs and biographies should be subjected to expert counterintelligence analysis. Such accounts must contain at least a substratum of fact. This may be discovered through analysis. Significant omissions and distortions may be ascertained by comparison of the fictionalized versions with data available in counterintelligence files. But the most important purpose of such analysis is the discovery of the disinformation objectives that these accounts may serve. We must assume that all memoirs, biographies, and historical studies of the Soviet intelligence services are prepared with the aid of disinformation experts.

A careful watch must be kept on this new Soviet program of controlled intelligence revelations. Although their goals are not yet clear, for the Soviets it is a new technique and one that may do serious injury to Western morale. It must be analyzed and closely followed.

Source

New Light on Old Spies - A Review of Recent Soviet Intelligence Revelations - part 5

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Other Chekists

Few other officials of state security have been honored with biographies. I. V. Viktorov's rather sparse and matter-of-fact biography of Mikhail Sergeyevich Kedrov, an old Bolshevik and associate of Dzerzhinskiy, is unusual in that it covers in part the period of the great purges. According to Viktorov, Kedrov's son Igor and a friend, one Volodya Golubev, both employed by state security, discovered in early 1939 that Beriya and his associates were betraying the USSR in the interest of Hitler. The two young Chekists, after consulting the elder Kedrov, who by then was out of the service, decided to make the facts known to Stalin and the Party Control Commission. When the young men were arrested, as they anticipated being, M S. Kedrov was to approach Stalin, reveal the facts of the matter, and call Stalin's attention to a letter accusing Beriya that he (Kedrov ) had written to Dzerzhinskiy in 1921.

But Igor Kedrov and Golubev were arrested in late February 1939 and shot. The elder Kedrov was arrested several months later. Despite the fact that he succeeded in proving his innocence, he was not freed, and in late 1941 Beriya disposed of him also. This story, which also serves to denigrate Stalin, is reported without details or substantiating facts. Viktorov's book perhaps serves to rehabilitate M. S. Kedrov, but it adds little or nothing to our knowledge of the state security service.

An Estonian official of the Cheka, Viktor E. Kingisepp, has also been honored with a biography. Kingisepp took a prominent part in the investigation of the attempt on Lenin's life in August 1918. Memoirs of old Chekists are rare in Soviet literature. The memoirs of F. T. Fomin, a retired member of state security, were published in 1962 in an original edition of 350,000 copies, certainly a very large printing for a book of this type. A second, revised edition appeared in 1964. Fomin, it is interesting to note; admits that Chekists could misuse their authority for personal goals, citing the activities of a Baltic baron in the Ukrainian Cheka to prove the point. Perhaps it is significant that the miscreant was of noble birth. It is also noteworthy that Fomin presents a highly favorable picture of V. R. Nlenzhinskiy, DzerzhinskiyIs successor as chief of state security, a weak man whose tour at the head of the service is considered an interregnum between Dzerzhinskiy and G. G. Yagoda. Fomin, however, does not mention the much more significant Yagoda, whose role in state security until he was purged by Stalin was considerable.

Operations

Histories of the state security service and its operations have been even more rare. When they do appear, such volumes cover the early period of the service, the time of the Cheka. The most significant historical study of the Cheka to appear in recent years is P. G. Sofinov's volume, Historical Sketches, published in 1960.

The Soviets have also seen fit to surface in part the highly successful TRUST operation of the mid-twenties. This counterintelligence operation, which was mounted by state security, was designed to neutralize the anti-regime activities of Russian émigrés and the intelligence operations of European services. Using as decoy a national organization, the "Monarchical Organization of Central Russia," usually called TRUST, Soviet state security was able to deflect and control the attempts of its enemies to overthrow the Soviet regime during the time of its greatest weakness. A new and untested service thus succeeded in misleading the most experienced intelligence services of Western Europe and in almost completely neutralizing the dedicated work of its émigré opponents.

Not the least of its achievements was the enticement into the Soviet Union and seizure in 1925 of Sidney George Reilly, an able British intelligence officer who had operated in Russia with Robert Bruce-Lockhart in 1918. Lev Nikulin has described the enticement and seizure of Reilly in an article in Nedelya. Not unnaturally, Nikulin shows great pride in this achievement of the security service and its young officers. He undertakes to smear the image of Reilly, however, quoting what purports to be Reilly's offer to Dzerzhinskiy to give full information on the organization and staff of the British intelligence service, members of the Russian emigration with whom he had worked, and--significantly--the American intelligence service. Since U.S. intelligence was moribund by the middle twenties, any information thereon supplied by Reilly, if indeed he wrote such a letter to Dzerzhinskiy, would have been historical.

Nikulin's article was described as a chapter from his forthcoming "novel-chronicle" on TRUST. This book, Mertvaya Zyb (The Swell) apparently has not been published up to this time.

Continue reading - Soviet Motives

New Light on Old Spies - A Review of Recent Soviet Intelligence Revelations - part 4

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Part 3

Dzerzhinskiy

For several decades the Soviet regime has endeavored to justify the counterintelligence activity of its security service, calling it the "punishing sword of the Revolution," the defender of the Soviet nation and state against foreign and domestic enemies. Its intimate relationship to the party leadership was deliberately blurred; its full role in intra-party struggles for power has been concealed.

The participation of the security service in these struggles and the purges they brought forth, events that are well remembered by the Soviet people, made difficult the task of investing it with any sort of glamour. In practice it was necessary to concentrate on the earliest period of its history, the period of revolution, civil war, and early post-revolutionary years, when it was headed by Feliks Edmundovich Dzerzhinskiy, the Polish revolutionary idealist, friend and associate of Lenin, who died before Stalin began his purges. The Dzerzhinskiy period of the service is portrayed as a time of high idealism, a golden age.

The exigencies of Soviet internal politics have made it impossible to glorify Dzerzhinskiy's successors, who were either nonentities (Menzhinskiy), mere tools of Stalin (Yagoda, Yezhev) or latter-day villains in their own right (Beriya). Soviet party leaders will do nothing that might undermine the effectiveness of the security service as the defender of the regime, hence the history of the service under Stalin's dictatorship is not likely to be revealed. Their efforts to refurbish its image will never be allowed to endanger its internal efficiency. It is unlikely, therefore, that any detailed history of state security will appear in the foreseeable future.

Historical material on the service nevertheless continues to appear. As noted above, much attention is given to the life and personality of Dzerzhinskiy, so much in fact that something of a cult of personality seems to have grown up around him. In 1956, selections of his diary and family letters, all pre-revolutionary in date, made their appearance. P. G. Sofinov published during the same year a popular biography of Dzerzhinskiy that made use of certain hitherto unpublished archival material. In the following year, a selection of Dzerzhinskiy's writings that emphasized his work in other components of the Soviet government such as the Commissariat of the Interior, Commissariat of Transportation, and Supreme Council of the National Economy made its appearance. A more rounded view of his career is thus now available.

During recent years Soviet authors have continued to mine the ore of Dzerzhinskiy's life and career. A. Khatskevich published a careful biographical study of him in which he uses his subject's prerevolutionary documentary files. On the other hand, N. Zubov has produced another popular biography repeating well-worn facts and stories. Dzerzhinskiy's eighty-fifth birthday was commemorated by the appearance of a rather barren volume of reminiscences that adds little or nothing to our knowledge of the man.

Perhaps the most interesting volume on Dzerzhinskiy to appear in recent years is Mme. Dzerzhinskiy's memoirs, published in 1964. She gives the texts of letters never before published or previously published only in part. She also provides an interpretation of her husband's background and development based on an association of many years that should contribute significantly to an understanding of the man. It will be interesting to see whether Soviet historians produce additional significant material on Dzerzhinskiy's career as chief of state security. If, as one authority contends, the Cheka archives were destroyed, that task may be difficult.

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New Light on Old Spies - A Review of Recent Soviet Intelligence Revelations - part 3

Part 1

Part 2

State Security: Abel

The admission to the Soviet people that the state security service, long portrayed as a defensive, counterintelligence arm of the state, does in fact engage in peacetime espionage abroad is equally dramatic. By virtue of its internal, repressive activity, the security service is only too well known to the Soviet population. Few Soviet citizens can have avoided some brush with the heavy hand of the security component, but equally few of them have known until recently what every literate Westerner has long known, that the state security service is also a principal arm of Soviet espionage abroad. In keeping with the dogma that only aggressive imperialist states engage in espionage, the existence of the First Chief Directorate of the security service, the foreign arm, was never admitted. The surfacing of its espionage in foreign countries, therefore, represents a major shift in Soviet intelligence policy.

This policy shift was signaled by an article on the career of Col. Rudolf Abel that appeared in Nedelya (The Week) during May 1965. According to its author, Abel was born in a city near the Volga, entered the state security service about 1927, and worked before and during World War II as an intelligence agent against Germany, being covered as a member of the German minority in Latvia. It is significant that Abel's espionage activity after the war is shown as motivated by a personal desire to neutralize the activity of "fascist criminals" who had taken refuge in the West. The theme of working against Nazi criminals presumably would be popular with the Soviet people and fits the time-honored portrayal of state security as a defensive organization.

Colonel Abel is also the hero of a novel by Vadim Kozhevnikov now being serialized in Znamya, the organ of the Union of Writers. Kozhevnikov's novel has not yet appeared in book form in the USSR. It is also being serialized in the Yugoslav newspaper Borba.

According to the author, Abel's true name is Aleksandr Ivanovich Belov. Since the work is frankly fiction, however, none of the data it contains can be accepted without verification. The significant fact is that the Soviet government has thus belatedly chosen to portray Abel as a hero Chekist employed in espionage abroad.

The theme of work against postwar Nazis, it is interesting to note, also appears in the purported memoirs of Gordon Lonsdale (Conon Molody), the state security officer who was convicted of espionage in the United Kingdom and later exchanged for Greville Wynne, a British subject involved in the Penkovskiy trial. Lonsdale claims that he wished to operate against former Nazis who were employed in the United Kingdom. The Lonsdale "memoirs," which have been serialized in the British press but not published in the USSR are clearly designed as a deception operation. Their accounts of his Canadian birth, a childhood spent in Poland, and intelligence work with Colonel Abel in the United States before going to the United Kingdom are, from evidence on hand, complete fabrications. They are designed to confuse Western intelligence services, sow dissension between the British and American governments, and denigrate both British security and British justice. Any truth they may contain is merely incidental to these purposes.

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New Light on Old Spies - A Review of Recent Soviet Intelligence Revelations - part 2

Part 1

Other GRU Cases

Soviet authorities have also seen fit to give publicity to an obscure officer of the GRU surfaced under the name of Colonel Lev Yefimovich Manevich. This man was made posthumously a Hero of the Soviet Union in early 1965, presumably for wartime services. He is credited in the Soviet press with service in an unidentified foreign country, possibly Germany or German-occupied Europe. According to the Soviet accounts he was betrayed through the cowardice of an assistant and imprisoned in German concentration camps, where he was known under the name Ya. N. Starostin. Before his death from tuberculosis at the Ebensee camp in Austria on 12 May 1945, he is said to have confided to a fellow inmate, one Grant Gregoryevich Ayrapetov, that his cryptonym was Etienne and to have asked that the Soviet authorities be notified.

Manevich is portrayed as a devoted intelligence agent who continued his work despite serious illness. According to Ayrapetov, Manevich compiled files on Soviets in Vlassov's unit, on followers of Bandera, the Ukrainian nationalist leader, and on other collaborators, all of which he turned over to one F. N. Dontsov for transmittal to the Soviet authorities. Interviews with Manevich's sister and Ayrapetov have appeared in the Soviet provincial press. The reason for surfacing Manevich in particular is unclear, unless the script called for an intelligence agent whose activities could be related to the second world war. This criterion could also be applied to Sorge.

One former chief of Soviet military intelligence, a victim of the great purge, has recently been rehabilitated, apparently as part of this publicity campaign. Yu. Geller has written a brief account of the career of Semen Petrovich Uritskiy, chief of the GRU between 1935 and 1937 until he was purged and executed by Stalin. Only the most general information on Uritskiy's career is given. His intelligence work is passed over with the excuse that it cannot yet be made public, but he is credited with having directed officers of the caliber of Sorge and Manevich.

The German portion of the loosely connected Soviet wartime espionage operation now known as Rote Kapelle has been surfaced in the guise of a German resistance movement. Through the device of an interview with Greta (Margareta) Kuckhoff, a member of the group and presently a banking official in East Germany, the Soviet authorities have lifted a corner of the veil that still covers their wartime military intelligence operations in Europe. Rote Kapelle (the Nazi origin of this name is admitted by the Soviets) is portrayed as an antifascist group that began to take shape before the Hitler dictatorship was established. Although the upper-class origin of its leaders, Arvid Harnack and Harro Schulze-Boysen, and of other members is admitted, a determined effort is made to show that it also contained many persons of working-class origin. The espionage role of the group is presented in rather incidental fashion, without emphasis. No mention is made of the GRU networks that existed in France, Belgium, Holland and Switzerland. Greta Kuckhoff presents East Germany as the heir to the cause for which the Rote Kapelle fought.

Continue reading - State Security: Abel

New Light on Old Spies - A Review of Recent Soviet Intelligence Revelations

Note - language is not corrected. Keep in mind that this article was written during the Cold War era.

Espionage is needed by those who prepare for attack, for aggression. The Soviet Union is deeply dedicated to the cause of peace and does not intend to attack anyone. Therefore it has no intention of engaging in espionage.--Nikita Khrushchev to Saneo Nozaka, Chairman of the Japanese Communist Party, 1962.

The average Soviet citizen, had he been asked, would have denied that his Government engaged in espionage against other states. Such a dirty practice, he could have added if he faithfully followed the official propaganda line, was employed only by the imperialists, with the USSR as their target. Had not the Soviet Union been compelled to create and maintain a state security service to protect itself from just such imperialist machinations?

The average Soviet, if he was ever so naive, is now disabused of his illusions. His government has reversed a policy in force since Lenin's day to admit that it has been practicing espionage abroad all the time. For reasons not yet clear, it has created a new hero: the intrepid intelligence agent spying abroad in peacetime for the Soviet fatherland at great personal sacrifice and danger.

By this action the Soviet regime has in effect surfaced the military intelligence service (GRU) to its own citizens. The hero intelligence operative has joined the hero Chekist in the Soviet pantheon. Moreover, the hero Chekist, hitherto portrayed as the valiant defender of the regime against foreign and domestic enemies, has now become an aggressive collector of intelligence abroad. For the first time since the Revolution the espionage exploits of the Soviet military intelligence service and state security have been officially acknowledged. True, the official accounts of these exploits must seem inadequate to any Soviet mind bold enough to reflect on the matter, but their quality is not the point at issue. The crucially significant fact is that Soviet espionage activities were surfaced at all. An official policy dating back to the Revolution has been dramatically and unaccountably revised.

Richard Sorge

When surfacing the GRU, the Soviet authorities chose to highlight Richard Sorge, the German citizen whose exploits for Soviet military intelligence in China and Japan before the second world war, although never revealed in the Soviet Union, have been known in the West for almost two decades. Sorge's career in espionage, and especially his penetration of the Japanese government and the German embassy in Tokyo, had been earlier examined in detail by General Charles Willoughby, Hans Otto Meissner, and Chalmers Johnson. Their works, although differing in detail and interpretation of events, are largely based on reports of the Japanese investigation of the Sorge network and certain memoirs and secondary publications. All are inaccurate in varying degrees. The Japanese investigation, the principal non-Communist source on the case, was inadequately handled and left many unanswered questions but did supply the broad outlines of the affair. David Dallin, it should be noted, has barely mentioned the case. As of 1965, little had been added to our knowledge of the operation.

Richard Sorge has been surfaced in the Soviet Union by means of a series of newspaper articles and popular books. His glorification was begun in late 1964 with an article by Viktor Mayevskiy in Pravda. Written after a visit to Sorge's grave in Tokyo, this article is an unrelieved panegyric on its subject. Other articles on Sorge in the Soviet central and provincial press quickly followed. Ya. Gorev, who is said to have served in the GRU with Sorge in Berlin, presented what seems to be an official account of Sorge's career. Gorev claims to have helped prepare Sorge for his Far East assignment and to have operated near him there. His use of Sorge's letters and messages indicates that he had access to official files, but he has furnished little new data on the case. Sorge is presented as a paragon of virtue; his weakness for alcohol and women is ignored. Gorev's version of the Sorge operation generally corresponds to that presented by Meissner and Willoughby. In all probability he drew heavily on these sources.

Although Moscow has for some reason suppressed Gorev's account, the glorification campaign has continued unabated since late 1964. Persons who knew Sorge even slightly have given interviews for publication. On occasion, these individuals have admitted they did not know Sorge was engaged in intelligence work. Gerhardt Eisler has contributed a short memoir. V. Kudryavtsev, a Tass correspondent in Tokyo during 1931-1937, told of meeting Sorge and Branko Vukelic in Japan. He had no knowledge of their intelligence work at the time. Gerhard Stuchlik and Horst Pehnert, East German journalists, wrote a series of articles drawing on those by Mayevskiy and Gorev, interviews with Max Klausen, Sorge's radio operator, and with Gerhardt Eisler, and such Western sources as Meissner and Willoughby. Except for certain details on Sorge's early life, these add relatively little.

Several people living outside the Soviet Union have recently contributed reminiscences of Sorge. Kai Moltke and Richard Jensen, former Communists, have written of Sorge's stay in Denmark during 1928. Sorge's wife Christine has published a short and uninformative memoir in a Swiss periodical. None of these accounts makes any significant contribution to an understanding of the Sorge operation.

A popular, semi-fictional version of Sorge's career was carried by the Soviet periodical Ogonek, beginning on 28 February 1965. Its authors, Sergey Golyakov and Vladimir Ponosovskiy, fail to throw new light on the case. They present Sorge as declaring himself a Soviet citizen to his Japanese jailers. A sizable paperback edition of this series (300,000 copies) was published early in 1965.

It is clear that the Soviet authorities wish to present Sorge as a popular hero but have no desire at this time to publish an accurate history of his intelligence operation. By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, on 5 November 1964 he was posthumously awarded the title, Hero of the Soviet Union. In January 1965, Max Klausen was awarded the Order of the Red Banner and his wife Anna received the Order of the Red Star. Branko Vukelic was posthumously awarded the Order of the Patriotic War (First Degree). The East German Government has conferred on Max and Anna Klausen the Gold Medal of Merit of the National People's Army. But perhaps the most significant honor bestowed on Sorge was the issuance, early in 1965, of a Soviet stamp bearing his portrait. He thus joins Nathan Hale as an intelligence agent who has been paid philatelic honors by his government. No further proof is required of the intention of the Soviet authorities to add Sorge to the Soviet pantheon.

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The Cold War Atomic Intelligence Game, 1945-70 - From the Russian Perspective - part 2

Part 1

Personnel Isolation

The isolation of construction workers and facility personnel to prevent potential recruitment by foreign spies was another critical security task. The construction force was particularly difficult to control. At least 15 of 114 GULAG camps supported the construction of nuclear facilities. In late 1947, over 20,000 prisoners were working in Ozersk, and about 10,000 were in Sarov. There were over 18,000 prisoners in Novouralsk during 1950-51. Over 27,000 were in Zheleznogorsk in 1953.

The Soviet government adopted several measures to minimize the security risk posed by the prison labor force. The KGB's policy was not to send prisoners with sentence terms of less than five years or those with sentences expiring in less than three years to nuclear sites. After completing nuclear construction projects, the prisoners finished their terms at the Vorkuta camps in Siberia, which were famous for their remoteness and harsh conditions. When released from the camps, the prisoners were sent to far away regions in the north and to Central Asia. Only in 1955, after several cooling-off years, were some of them allowed to return to central Russia. According to a journalist's account: "[T]he news spread quickly throughout all GULAG camps that [a nuclear construction assignment] was effectively the same as a death sentence."

Soldiers comprised the other large segment of the nuclear construction force. Once they completed their service, they all had to sign a 25-year non-disclosure agreement. The KGB, the agency in charge of construction, was directed to retain discharged soldiers and to hire them as civilians to work on other special projects.

German and Austrian scientists and engineers, who became involved in the Soviet nuclear program after World War II, presented the Soviet security apparatus with a particularly delicate problem. The program needed their expertise. Yet, it was clear that most of them eventually would go home and become accessible to Western intelligence organizations. Moscow decided to concentrate them to the extent possible at NKVD-run facilities (such as the Sukhumi laboratory on the Black Sea); to exclude German scientists from work that was directly related to nuclear weapons R&D and production; and to institute a two-year cooling-off period prior to repatriation. Even so, German scientists gave the West much of the initial data on the facilities, personalities, and technical directions of the Soviet project.

Tens of thousands of workers and engineers were required to operate the newly built facilities. Personnel selection was under the control of the Communist Party's Central Committee, the Council of Ministers, and regional party organizations. There was a process of double selection of personnel based on recommendations by those already working in the program and background investigations by the KGB and its predecessor organizations.

Closed cities made the job of insulating and controlling nuclear workers relatively straightforward. Upon arrival, new residents received instruction in security procedures and signed a nondisclosure agreement, which, among other things, prohibited them from disclosing information about the city and the nuclear facility; the names of nearby towns, rivers, lakes, and other landmarks; the transportation routes to the area; and other information that could help in locating the city. New workers were also encouraged to limit correspondence and social contacts with people outside the closed cities. Personal phone contacts with the outside world were prohibited. All correspondence was censored. Generally, people lived and worked behind barbed wire, all aspects of their lives penetrated and controlled by the security services. According to Yuli Khariton, a famous warhead designer from Sarov, "Beria's people were everywhere."

Initially, closed-city residents could leave their areas only for business. On rare occasions, they could go to sanatoriums for medical treatment or leave for family emergencies. Every such trip had to be approved by the security director, and its duration was checked by security officers.

In the 1950s, these security rules were somewhat relaxed. By 1954, facility directors, in coordination with the KGB, could grant permission to selected workers to leave their cities for vacations, medical treatment, or study. Nonetheless, workers willing to spend their vacations inside a city received bonuses amounting to 50 percent of their monthly salaries. All travelers still had to have their travel routes approved and sign nondisclosure agreements. Blanket permission to leave the cities was not issued until 1957, when all residents were issued passes permitting them to leave for one day any time they wanted. By that time, the Soviet Union already possessed a credible nuclear deterrent (including nuclear-armed medium-range ballistic missiles) against the West.

Keeping Technology Secret

Secrecy was a hallmark of Soviet nuclear science and technology. As late as the 1980s:

[C]lassification stamps Secret and Top Secret concealed everything even remotely connected with our activities and achievements in high technologies . . . . The stamp For Official Use (DSP) was on every piece of conceivably interesting science and technology information. Only after the Chernobyl disaster . . . was the censorship system forced into permitting publications in the open literature about the real state of the nation's atomic industry.

Even within this generally secretive environment, the nuclear weapons program existed inside a cocoon of secrecy of its own. Nuclear materials and operations had codenames, which were different at different facilities and which were changed periodically. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, for example, natural uranium was assigned such names as strontium, lead, tar, phosphorus, bismuth, titanium, kremnil, A-9, Azh-9, BR-10, and P-9, while HEU had the codenames of kremnil-1 and moist kremnil.

Compartmentalization of information and operations was near absolute. Mikhail Gladyshev, former chief of the plutonium purification shop at the Mayak complex in Ozersk, has remarked:

[A]ctivities of the "regime services," headed by Beria, were very stern and bordered on insanity . . . . Often, there was a threat to the safety of workers . . . . As you see, our work had double risks—losing health and losing freedom. This was the difficult fate of those who made the atomic bomb.

Information about production outputs was particularly sensitive. According to Gladyshev:

[W]e put the [plutonium] paste in a box and transferred it to the consumer plant. How much plutonium was in that box we didn't know and it was not recommended for us to know. Even later, when I was the plant's chief engineer, the plans for plutonium production were known only to the facility's director, and all documents were prepared in single copies.

Supported in large part by the fear of punishment—an important consideration, given Stalinist repressions and campaigns to unmask spies and saboteurs—the regime of secrecy was further cemented by genuine patriotism and the sense of purpose among nuclear workers.

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The Cold War Atomic Intelligence Game, 1945-70 - From the Russian Perspective

Since its inception in the early 1940s and through much of the Cold War, the Soviet atomic project was the focus of a massive intelligence effort by the United States and its allies. Of primary interest were the issues of uranium availability; the production of highly enriched uranium (HEU) and plutonium; nuclear warhead R&D and testing; and the nuclear weapons production and management infrastructure.

Washington needed such information to assess the Soviet nuclear strike capability. Estimates of the Soviet inventories of HEU and plutonium when put together with data on warhead designs would allow CIA analysts to gauge the size and composition of the Soviet nuclear weapons stockpile. Information on Moscow's knowledge of nuclear weapons effects was needed to evaluate the capability of the Soviet Union to design warheads for air-defense and anti-missile missiles and to develop hardened warheads capable of surviving US ballistic missile defenses. Analysis of the impact on the Soviet nuclear weapons program of testing moratoriums and the proposed limited test ban treaty was critical when Washington was developing its position on these issues in the 1950s and 1960s.

In pursuing these objectives, the US atomic energy intelligence effort was global in scope. It involved a wide range of covert operations, exploitation of open source materials, and the use of technical collection systems. While much has been written about US operations against Soviet targets (including in Studies in Intelligence), relatively little attention has been given to the USSR's elaborate countermeasures intended to prevent the West from learning about its nuclear program. Based on public information, this article seeks to examine the Soviet nuclear denial and deception (D&D) campaign from 1945 until 1970.

This period is of particular interest. The 1950s and 1960s were the formative years of the Soviet nuclear program. By the end of this period, Moscow had a mature nuclear weapons technology base and a thoroughly integrated and redundant weapons complex, the configuration of which remained largely the same until the end of the Cold War. In many ways, these were also the most dangerous years of the Cold War. The 1962 Cuban missile crisis and other dramatic events of that period were of critical significance in shaping approaches to national defense, foreign policy, and intelligence that served each country for the balance of the Cold War confrontation.

Protecting Nuclear Secrets

The nuclear weapons program, the crown jewel of Soviet military power, has always been a closely guarded secret. During its early years, the program was directed by the Special Committee chaired by Lavrenti Beria, the head of the Soviet NKVD (People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs). State security generals were appointed to key management positions at nuclear research institutes and production facilities. The NKVD, which eventually became the KGB, played a key role in nuclear safeguards and the physical protection of nuclear facilities. The NKVD also was charged with nuclear construction and had the power to establish and run its own nuclear R&D and production facilities. For example, the Bochvar Institute of Inorganic Materials (VNIINM), responsible for the development of plutonium production and processing technologies, was established in 1944 as the NII-9 research institute in the NKVD system—it was not transferred to the broader nuclear program until October 1945.

The pervasive role of state security organizations in the Soviet atomic effort was due to the program's high priority for national security; the requirement for absolute secrecy; the ability of nuclear managers with state security backgrounds to get things done; and the NKVD's vast resources, which included funding, materiel, and a workforce drawn from the GULAG prison network.

Beria was executed following the death of Stalin in 1953, and subsequent purges of many former and active NKVD/KGB officers reduced the state security presence in the nuclear complex. The program itself was reorganized in June 1953 to become the USSR Ministry of Medium Machine Building (Minsredmash, the predecessor of today's Ministry of Atomic Power, Minatom), and it started to resemble other ministries of the Soviet military-industrial complex.

The emphasis on secrecy and security in the nuclear area remained, however. To thwart foreign intelligence operations, the Soviet Union built an elaborate, multi-layered system of denial and deception, the main elements of which included the restriction of access to nuclear facilities and personnel, strict information protection measures, an enhanced counterintelligence posture, and technical countermeasures.

Denial of Access

Secrecy considerations were paramount in the development of the nuclear infrastructure. While some research and design laboratories were established in Moscow and other open cities, the more critical fissile material production centers and nuclear weapons research and production facilities were built in 10 closed nuclear cities, which are now known by their Russian acronym ZATO. The construction of the first-line nuclear weapons R&D center (Sarov) and fissile material production facilities (Ozersk, Novouralsk, and Lesnoy) began during 1946-47. Subsequently, they were joined by a cluster of second-line facilities (Snezhinsk, Trekhgorny, Seversk, Zheleznogorsk, Zelenogorsk, and Zarechny), most located in the Urals and western Siberia.

To conceal operations from foreign spies and increase survivability against an atomic bombardment, nuclear cities were built in densely forested areas deep inside the USSR's land mass. The cities did not appear on maps. In non-secret documents, they were assigned the names of nearby towns and a numerical suffix. The use of post-box numbers continued until the early 1990s.

D&D considerations at times were decisive in determining the design and location of new nuclear facilities. For example, secrecy was the main factor in moving the first plutonium production complex (now the Mayak complex) from the initially proposed remote location near the Ufa River to its current location in Ozersk, near Lake Kyzyltash. According to a letter from the atomic project's science director Igor Kurchatov to Beria:

[I]n considering issues related to the construction of Plant 817 [the code-name of the Mayak complex] it was established that water in cooling towers would have a temperature of about 80o C. The resulting steam, which would be inevitably produced in large quantities (especially during winter), would thereby compromise the concealment . . . siting the plant near a lake would simplify the problem considerably because large quantities of water would allow cooling without cooling towers . . . and steam formation would be avoided . . . . The site near Lake Kyzyltash was proposed to the Special Committee. The [main] argument against this site . . . is that the lake could serve as a navigation landmark for aerial reconnaissance. I consider this argument unconvincing because the site is located in the part of the Urals, which, within a small area, contains a very large number of similarly shaped lakes. I therefore urge you to consider moving Plant 817's site to Lake Kyzyltash.

This was how the closed city of Ozersk and the plutonium complex, a source of several major environmental disasters in the Urals, was established.

The closed cities represented an integral part of the layered security system built around nuclear weapons facilities. Each city occupied a large restricted area—232 square kilometers in the case of Sarov, for example—that was surrounded by double fences. Inside the restricted area were a town for the facility workforce, large wooded areas, and several isolated technical areas that housed primary research and production facilities, testing areas, and support infrastructure. Technical areas within the restricted area were surrounded by their own double or triple fences, which were patrolled by armed guards.

A layer outside the perimeter was designated as a special regime zone, where every resident had to have a permit and a passport. Temporary residence—even overnight accommodation of non-residents—was prohibited. Non-residents could not even pick mushrooms and berries or hunt in the zone. Ex-criminals and other undesirable elements were prevented from residing in the special regime zones.

Critical nuclear facilities were on the government's priority list for "active air defense measures."5 All military and civilian over-flights were prohibited. The U-2 plane piloted on 1 May 1961 by Gary Powers over the plutonium complex in Ozersk (and shot down shortly thereafter by an SA-2 surface-to-air missile near Yekaterinburg) was the first airplane over this facility in the almost 15 years of its operation.

Continue reading - Personnel Isolation

Soviet Use of Assassination and Kidnapping - part 4

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

II. Radio Free Europe:

The New York Times reported on an attempt to poison the staff of RFE on November 21, 1959, by placing atropine in the salt shakers of the cafeteria used by RFE personnel. Atropine is a derivative of the deadly nightshade plant; it can cause paralysis of death if taken in sufficient quantity. The amount of poison in each salt shaker was said to be 2.36% by weight of the contents. White crystalline alkaloid is indistinguishable from salt.

III. Stein:

In March 1955, Lisa Stein, an interviewer with RIAS, the American propaganda radio station in West Germany ("Radio in American Sector"), was fed candy containing the highly dangerous poison scopolamine. (Scopolamine is used in the so-called "twilight sleep." Given in small doses it induces a kind of euphoria; in larger doses it is supposed to be a deadly poison.) It was intended that Frau Stein would become ill and would be abducted. The plan was that the agent-someone whom Frau Stein trusted and with whom she was meeting in a West Berlin cafe-would offer the poisoned candy toward the end of the meeting. The lady was expected to become ill while walking from the caf6 to her nearby residence. On becoming unconscious, she was to be picked up by a waiting car which would appear to be passing by chance. The plot was not carried to fruition, however, because Frau Stein did not become ill until she was near her apartment, at which point neighbors came to her aid and she was moved to a hospital. She was severely ill for 48 hours, after which an antidote was found. (Unclassified, from the testimony of Theodor Hans, formerly with U.S. Military Intelligence, Germany, September 21, 1960, before a Congressional investigating committee.)

IV. Other:

Another weapon used is described as a noiseless gas pistol, powered by a 300-volt battery, which fires a lethal, odorless, unidentified gas. The gas acts in two or three seconds, and is effective up to 15 or 20 meters. The pistol has three buttons: one for arming, one for firing, and the third for recharging the battery. (After 50 firings the battery may be recharged by plugging a transformer into normal house power source.) The piston is normally fired 20 times, very rapidly and automatically-" Bzzzd." (Although one squirt could kill, 20 squirts are emitted in order to saturate the area, inasmuch as the gun is fired at a silhouette, rather than at a point.) The gas shot by the pistol would penetrate the victim's clothing and enter the skin. There is allegedly no danger to the user.

Trends

Since World War II, and especially in the years since Stalin's death, assassination attempts abroad have become increasingly rare. Currently the emphasis in the executive action field is placed on sabotage and sabotage planning, rather than terrorism against individuals. The Soviets now apparently resort to murder only in the case of persons considered especially dangerous to the regime and who, for one reason or another, cannot be kidnapped. A kidnapped person is obviously more valuable inasmuch as the Soviets may be able to extract from him information of interest, as well as use him for propaganda purposes by making it appear that he defected to the Soviet side of his own fee will. This course was followed in the case of Dr. Trushnovich. It is also likely that the Soviets find it increasingly difficult to find persons willing to undertake murder assignments, while the same may not be true of abduction operations. It can further be conjectured that the Soviets are now more concerned about the adverse publicity generated by Soviet assassinations in general than they were in previous years.

In this connection, comments made by state security defectors Petr Deryabin and Yurv Rastvorov in 1954 about what the Soviets would or would not do are still of interest. Both believed that the Soviets would murder one of their officials on the verge of defecting if that were the only way of preventing the act. The same would apply to a Soviet official who had just defected, if thereby state secrets could be preserved, and if they believed that killing him would not bring about a more adverse situation in terms of politics and propaganda than already existed. Deryabin and Rastvorov doubted, however, that the Soviets would murder an official who had been in non-Communist hands long enough to have been exploited for intelligence and propaganda purposes. While both granted that in particular cases the Soviets might go to any extreme, they both believed, generally speaking, that the adverse propaganda resulting from such an act would negate its original purpose. On the other hand, Khokhlov, who might have been in a better position to know, has stated without qualification that the Soviets would continue to assassinate defectors in the future. The threat of Soviet executive action against defectors is also considered a real one by Reino Hayhanen, who defected from the KGB in 1957. A still more recent Soviet intelligence source also believes that standard Soviet practice is to mount a kidnapping or assassination operation "through all intelligence opportunities" against defectors from the Soviet intelligence services.

Deryabin and Rastvorov further agreed that the Soviets, without hesitation, would forcibly return to the USSR someone on the verge of defecting at a mission abroad. This was borne out by the aforementioned Strygin and Zelenovskiy cases. Deryabin and Rastvorov also believed that the same policy would apply to a Soviet official who had just defected, or one who had been in non-Communist hands long enough to have been exploited for intelligence and propaganda purposes, if the capability existed for returning him physically to the USSR.

Lastly, Deryabin believed that the assassination of an Allied official would be highly unlikely and probably unprofitable. He also doubted that the Soviets would attempt to kidnap any U.S. officials unless they were particularly knowledgeable. Such an incident would not be worth the trouble for an average official, but an important person conceivably would have sufficient information to make it worthwhile.

Source

Soviet Use of Assassination and Kidnapping - part 3

Part 1

Part 2

Techniques

Many known or suspected executive action cases in the post-war period have involved the use of poison rather than guns or explosives. It is conceivable that the Soviets tend to favor poisons because murders can be accomplished more surreptitiously in this manner and in some instances without leaving easily recognizable traces of foul play. Drugs are also used to incapacitate a person temporarily for abduction purposes, as reportedly happened in the Trushnovich case and in the kidnapping of another NTS member, Valeri P. Tremmel, from Linz, Austria in June 1954. There are, however, many unknown, uncontrollable factors in the use of poisons and drugs which limit and often preclude their usage. Probably the most important is the narrow span between a dose that will cause disability and one that will cause death. Dosages vary from one individual to another depending on weight, state of health, and how the poison enters the body. The type used obviously is determined by the result desired. It is no problem to cause death, but often difficult to control dosage successfully when the objective is to incapacitate an individual only temporarily.

There appears to be no consistency in the use of poisons by Soviet intelligence to cause disability or death, or in the repetitious use of any one drug. Chemicals which have been used in cases known or suspected to be Soviet-instigated include arsenic, potassium cyanide, scopolamine, and thallium. Other likely substances are atropine, barbiturates, chloral hydrate, paraldehyde and Warfarin. Combinations of two or more substances may also be used, which further complicates diagnosis and tracing.

One well-publicized poisoning case involved the defector Nikolay Khokhlov. Khokhlov suffered a sudden and severe illness while attending an anti-Communist meeting in Frankfurt, Germany in September 1957. A positive diagnosis was precluded by the initial treatment given him at a German hospital, but there was evidence of his having been poisoned by a thallium derivative of arsenic and/or other chemical agents, and a strong possibility that the poison had been administered at RIS instigation. Khokhlov himself believed, and allegedly had supporting medical opinion, that he had been poisoned by radio-activated thallium. He believed that the poison was of Russian origin because it was such a complicated substance that it was difficult to analyze and had been carefully prepared to leave virtually no trace. A unique mechanism for administering poison was described by a knowledgeable source as a pneumatically operated poison ice "atomizer" which leaves no wound or other evidence of the cause of death. The equipment and techniques used in the poisoning of Rebet and Bandera are treated below in some detail as examples of the most recent and sophisticated methods in use by the KGB.

Specific Cases

I. Stashinskiy:

In November 1961 a Soviet intelligence officer, Bogdan Stashinskiy, surrendered to the West German police, stating that he had, acting under official orders, assassinated two individuals during the previous few years: Lev Rebet, a Ukrainian emigrr6 writer, and Stepan Bandera, a leader of the Ukrainian Nationalist movement. In both cases, a similar type of weapon had been used: a gun which fired vaporized poison which killed almost instantly upon being inhaled. The properties of the killing agent were such that, until the defection of the assassin, both victims were officially believed to have died from heart attacks. In the case of Bandera, however, there was some unconfirmed suspicion of potassium cyanide poisoning, although there was insufficient evidence to prove it.

The Weapon: The weapon used to assassinate Rebet was a light-weight aluminum cylinder, 15 to 18 cm. long and approximately 3 cm in diameter, weighing about 200 grams. The cylinder was divided into three separate chambers, one of which contained liquid poison sealed hermetically into a plastic-type ampoule container under low pressure. (At normal temperatures the poison would evaporate, disappearing without trace in about two minutes.) The three components could be assembled by means of a thread which allowed one part to screw into the other. The first component was the poison ampoule portion, the front end of which had a fine metallic screen. The poison ampoule fitted solidly against the walls of the metal cylinder. The center component contained a piston and a piston arm which extended into the third or activating component. The latter contained a spring-mounted activating arm which, when drawn back, armed the weapon. The releasing arm was appended to the third component at an angle, and was attached to the activating arm by means of a releasing catch. A small safety arm permitted the weapon to be placed in the safety position. The third component also contained a few grams of powder.

The maximum effective range of the weapon was about one-half meter; at one and one-half meters the effect of the vapors would be questionable; and at two and one-half meters, the vapors would be totally ineffective. (The assassin was instructed to fire the weapon only inches from the face.)

The weapon was activated as follows: The activating arm was pulled back and the safety released. The weapon was then activated. It was held in the palm of the hand in such a fashion that it fired when the user pressed the releasing arm towards the activating arm. The releasing arm, when pressed, acted upon the releasing catch, permitting the spring-held activating arm to fly forward against the small charge of powder. The exploding powder (which made a noise approximating the sound of a loud handclap with the hands cupped) drove the piston arm forward, causing the piston to strike against the poison ampoule. The poison was thus driven out through the fine screen in the form of a liquid spray.

The weapon used for the second assassination was similar, except that it was double-barreled. Each barrel contained a charge of poison similar to that contained in the single-barreled weapon. The two barrels could be discharged separately, or together as a unit. Thus, in the event the first charge did not kill the victim, a second attempt could be made. The two barrels were welded together, and the weapon had two releasing arms, two releasing catches, two safeties, and two activating arms. The effect of the poison was the same.

Utilization of the Weapon: For maximum effective results it is recommended that the liquid poison be shot directly into the face of the victim, in order to introduce the vapors most quickly into the respiratory system. Since the vapors rise upward very rapidly, the poison is still effective when aimed at the chest; conceivably, this would give sufficient time to allow the victim time to scream.

Effects of the Poison: The effect of the poisonous vapors is such that the arteries which feed blood to the brain become paralyzed almost immediately. Absence of blood in the brain precipitates a normal paralysis of the brain or a heart attack, as a result of which the victim dies. The victim is clinically dead within one and one-half minutes after inhaling these poisonous vapors. After about five minutes the effect of the poison wears off entirely, permitting the arteries to return to their normal condition, leaving no trace of the killing agent which precipitated the paralysis or the heart attack.

Allegedly, no foreign matter can be discovered in the body or on the clothes of the victim, no matter how thorough an autopsy or examination. The liquid spray can be seen as it leaves the nose of the weapon, however, and droplets can also be seen on the face of the victim.

Stashinskiy claimed that before using the weapon on his first victim, he tested it on a dog. He fired the gun directly into the dog's face, holding his hand approximately one and one-half feet from its nose. Almost immediately after the liquid spray had hit its face, the dog rolled over, without making any sound whatever. It continued to writhe for almost three minutes, however. Stashinskiy was told that the poison affected a human much sooner, causing death within one and one-half minutes.

Safety Precautions for the User: Stashinskiy was told that neither the poisonous liquid nor the fatal fumes affected any portion of the body other than the respiratory system, and that, since it could not enter the body through the skin or the pores, one could safely place his hands into a pail of the poison. Inasmuch as the weapon was held at arm's length when fired and the liquid spray ejected forward in a conical pattern, the user, under normal conditions, is safe from the effects of the poisonous vapors. Nevertheless, as an extra precaution, Stashinskiy was provided with counteractive agents to use if he so desired.

Concealment Methods: For transportation, the weapon was transported hermetically sealed in a container, and inserted between sausages in a can which was itself hermetically sealed. It was suggested to Stashinskiy that he should carry the weapon to the site of the planned assassination wrapped in a light newspaper, in which he had torn a small hole to enable him to reach the safety quickly just before using the weapon.

Method of Attack: In the first assignment, Stashinskiy observed Rebet debarking from a streetcar at about 0930 hours. Observing that the victim was heading for his office, the assassin preceded him into the building and climbed the circular staircase to the first floor. On hearing Rebet's footsteps on the staircase, Stashinskiy turned and started walking down, keeping to the left, and carrying the weapon, wrapped in newspaper, in his right hand. The two met about halfway between the two floors. Firing directly into Rebet's face from a distance of approximately one-half meter, Stashinskiy continued walking downstairs without even breaking his pace. The victim lurched silently forward and fell on the staircase. While still in the building, Stashinskiy shook off the liquid drops from the weapon and put it in the breast pocket of his suit. (A laboratory examination of the suit later revealed nothing of significance.) Although he had no reason to believe that he had inhaled the poisonous fumes, he used the counteractive measures provided. He later disposed of the murder weapon in a shallow canal in the city.

In carrying out his second mission, Stashinskiy used a similar approach. Having previously abandoned an attempt to corner Bandera in the latter's garage, the assassin gained entry to the victim's apartment house by reproducing a key which he had observed being used in the front door lock. On the day of the assassination, having seen Bandera drive into his driveway, Stashinskiy let himself into the apartment building and waited. Bandera, carrying several packages of fruit and vegetables in his right hand, entered the front door with the aid of a key which was on a key ring together with other keys. As he was attempting to disengage the key from the lock, Stashinskiy moved away from the elevator, where he had been standing, toward the front door. The weapon was in his hand with the safety released. As he walked past the victim, who was still trying to extricate the key from the lock, the assassin took the door handle with his left hand, as if to assist Bandera, asking him "Doesn't it work?" By this time, Bandera had succeeded in pulling the key out of the lock. Almost at the instant he replied "Yes, it works," Stashinskiy fired both barrels simultaneously into his face at almost point-blank range. Seeing the victim lurch backward and to the side, the assassin walked out of the apartment building and closed the front door. Although he (lid not wait to see Bandera drop to the ground, Stashinskiy is certain that, contrary to press reports, the man did not scream or otherwise call for help. Stashinskiy later threw the murder weapon into the same canal in which he had discarded the first weapon.

Although the press reported that Bandera had been attacked physically before he was poisoned, Stashinskiy insisted that he had used no force, since it had not been necessary to do so. Some newspapers also reported that Bandera had died of potassium cyanide poisoning. Stashinskiy claimed that he was told, and believes, that the chemical was not potassium cyanide, since (1) he thinks that substance could not have been introduced into the body by the method employed, and (2) he believes the RIS would have no reason to deceive him on this matter, especially since he had to be provided with counteractive precautions. Stashinskiy claimed that one of his Soviet contacts was pleased to learn that the police suspected potassium cyanide, as this allegedly indicated that the true cause of the victim's death was not evident.

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