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KGB Cold War Foreign Operations

KGB Cold War Foreign Operations. CHST 540 May 26, 2005. ‘The Main Adversary’. First Chief Directorate = KGB foreign intelligence; 16 departments After WWII, US considered the main threat; then UK and France Atomic espionage a high priority Soviet intelligence managed atomic bomb project

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KGB Cold War Foreign Operations

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  1. KGB Cold War Foreign Operations CHST 540 May 26, 2005

  2. ‘The Main Adversary’ • First Chief Directorate = KGB foreign intelligence; 16 departments • After WWII, US considered the main threat; then UK and France • Atomic espionage a high priority • Soviet intelligence managed atomic bomb project • Chief scientist Igor Kurchatov

  3. Illegals • Renewed emphasis on illegals in 1950s • Illegals run by the Fourth Directorate • Canada used as staging post to the US • Vilyam (Willie) Fisher (codename MARK) rebuilt Soviet intelligence in New York

  4. Walk-ins and legal residencies • Walk-in: someone who approaches an intelligence agency and offers their services • Ted 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.)

  5. 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

  6. Moles • Definition: 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)

  7. ‘Wet affairs’ • Euphemism for sabotage, kidnapping, assassination • Targeted 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’

  8. ‘Wet affairs’ (cont’d) • Also targeted other defectors, especially cultural icons Some famous targets: Rudolf Nureyev and Natalia Makarova

  9. 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

  10. 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)

  11. ‘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

  12. ‘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

  13. 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)

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