The "Mitrokhin Archive" is a collection of handwritten notes which were secretly made by the
KGB archivist
Vasili Mitrokhin during the thirty years in which he served as a KGB archivist in the foreign intelligence service and the
First Chief Directorate. When he
defected to the United Kingdom in 1992, he brought the archive with him, in six full trunks. His defection was not officially announced until 1999.
The official historian of
MI5,
Christopher Andrew, wrote two books, ''The Sword and the Shield'' (1999) and ''The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World'' (2005), based on material in the archives. The books purport to provide details about many of the
Soviet Union's clandestine intelligence operations around the world. They also provide specifics about
Guy Burgess, a British diplomat with a short career in MI6, said to be frequently under the influence of alcohol; the archive indicates that he gave the KGB at least 389 top secret documents in the first six months of 1945 along with a further 168 in December 1949.
In July 2014, the Churchill Archives Centre at
Churchill College released Mitrokhin's edited Russian-language notes for public research. The original handwritten notes by Vasili Mitrokhin are still classified.
Origin of the notes
Vasili Nikitich Mitrokhin originally started his career with the
First Chief Directorate of the
KGB (Foreign Espionage) in Undercover operations. After Nikita Khrushchev's
Secret Speech, Mitrokhin became critical of the existing KGB system and was transferred from Operations to the Archives. Over the years, Mitrokhin became increasingly disillusioned with the Soviet system, especially after the stories about the struggles of dissidents and the 1968
Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, which led him to conclude that the Soviet system was un-reformable.
[Christopher Andrew]
"Vasili Mitrokhin"
''The Guardian'', 4 February 2004.
By the late 1960s, the KGB headquarters at the
Lubyanka Building
The Lubyanka ( rus, Лубянка, p=lʊˈbʲankə) is the popular name for the building which contains the headquarters of the FSB, and its affiliated prison, on Lubyanka Square in the Meshchansky District of Moscow, Russia. It is a large Ne ...
became increasingly overcrowded, and the Chairman of the KGB,
Yuri Andropov, authorized the construction of a new building outside of Moscow in
Yasenevo, which was to become the new headquarters of the First Chief Directorate and all Foreign Operations. Mitrokhin, who was by that time the head of the Archives department, was assigned by the director of the First Directorate,
Vladimir Kryuchkov, with the task of cataloging the documents and overseeing their orderly transfer to the new headquarters. The transfer of the massive archive eventually took over 12 years, from 1972 to 1984.
[""](_blank)
''Los Angeles Times'', 3 February 2004.
Unbeknownst to Kryuchkov and the KGB, while cataloging the documents, Mitrokin secretly copied documents by hand, making immensely detailed notes, which he smuggled to his dacha and hid under the floorboards. Mitrokhin made no attempt to contact any Western intelligence service during the Soviet Era. After the
dissolution of the Soviet Union
The dissolution of the Soviet Union, also negatively connoted as rus, Разва́л Сове́тского Сою́за, r=Razvál Sovétskogo Soyúza, ''Ruining of the Soviet Union''. was the process of internal disintegration within the Sov ...
(in 1992) he traveled to
Latvia
Latvia ( or ; lv, Latvija ; ltg, Latveja; liv, Leţmō), officially the Republic of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Republika, links=no, ltg, Latvejas Republika, links=no, liv, Leţmō Vabāmō, links=no), is a country in the Baltic region of ...
with copies of material from the archive and walked into the American embassy in
Riga
Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the Ba ...
.
Central Intelligence Agency officers there did not consider him to be credible, concluding that the copied documents could be faked. He then went to the
British embassy and a young diplomat there saw his potential. After a further meeting one month later with representatives of MI6, operations followed to retrieve the 25,000 pages of files hidden in his house, covering operations from as far back as the 1930s.
Content of the notes
Notes in the Mitrokhin Archive claim that more than half of the Soviet Union's weapons are based on US designs, that the KGB tapped
Henry Kissinger's telephone when he was
US Secretary of State, and had spies in place in almost all US defense contractor facilities. The notes allege that some 35 senior politicians in
France worked for the KGB during the
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
. In
West Germany, the KGB was said to have infiltrated the major political parties, the judiciary, and the police. Large-scale sabotage preparations were supposedly made against the US,
Canada, and elsewhere in case of war, including hidden weapons caches; Mitrokhin's books claimed several have been removed or destroyed by police relying on Mitrokhin's information.
Prominent KGB spies named in the files
*
Melita Norwood (1912–2005), codenamed HOLA, a British civil servant who had access to state secrets while working at the
British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association which was involved in developing atomic weapons.
*
John Symonds
John Symonds (12 March 1914, Battersea, London – 21 October 2006) was an English novelist, biographer, playwright and writer of children's books.
Biography
Early life
He was the son of Robert Wemyss Symonds and Lily Sapzells. At the age ...
(b. 1935), codenamed SKOT, a former
Detective Sergeant at
New Scotland Yard, who had left the UK under suspicion of corruption in the early 1970s only to be recruited by KGB abroad.
*
Raymond Fletcher
Leopold Raymond Fletcher (3 December 1921 – 16 March 1991) was a Labour Party politician.
Early life and military career
Fletcher served in the British Army (1941–48) in East Asia, Southwest Asia and the British Army of the Rhine. He subseq ...
(1921–1991), codenamed PETER, a British journalist and subsequently MP; also alleged to have been recruited by the Czech secret police
StB and the
Central Intelligence Agency.
*
Iosif Grigulevich
Iosif Romualdovich Grigulevich (russian: Иосиф Ромуальдович Григулевич; May 5, 1913 – June 2, 1988) was a Soviet secret police (NKVD) operative active between 1937 and 1953, when he played a role in assassination plots ...
(1913–1988), an
NKVD assassin who under a false identity served as ambassador of
Costa Rica
Costa Rica (, ; ; literally "Rich Coast"), officially the Republic of Costa Rica ( es, República de Costa Rica), is a country in the Central American region of North America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the no ...
to both
Italy and
Yugoslavia from 1952 to 1954, and was put in charge of an aborted plan to assassinate the Yugoslav leader
Josip Broz Tito
Josip Broz ( sh-Cyrl, Јосип Броз, ; 7 May 1892 – 4 May 1980), commonly known as Tito (; sh-Cyrl, Тито, links=no, ), was a Yugoslav communist revolutionary and statesman, serving in various positions from 1943 until his deat ...
*
(1945–2013), a former clerk at the
National Security Agency who passed on classified documents to the KGB in the late 1960s. Lipka had denied his involvement until the last moments before his trial was to begin 30 years later, when prosecutors revealed that the prime witness against him was a former KGB archivist.
*
Salaad Gabeyre Kediye (1933–1972), codenamed OPERATOR, member of Somalia's
Supreme Revolutionary Council which took over the country following the
1969 coup d'état, officially styled as "Father of the Revolution" before ending up executed in the ensuing power struggle three years later.
Latin American leaders accused of being informants or agents of the KGB
Christopher Andrew states that in the Mitrokhin Archive there are several Latin American leaders or members of left wing parties accused of being KGB informants or agents. For example,
FSLN
The Sandinista National Liberation Front ( es, Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, FSLN) is a socialist political party in Nicaragua. Its members are called Sandinistas () in both English and Spanish. The party is named after Augusto Cé ...
leader
Carlos Fonseca Amador
Carlos Fonseca Amador (23 June 1936 – 8 November 1976) was a Nicaraguan teacher, librarian and revolutionary who founded the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). Fonseca was later killed in the mountains of the Zelaya Department, Nicar ...
was described as "a trusted agent" in KGB files.
Nikolai Leonov
Nikolai Sergeyevich Leonov (russian: Николай Сергеевич Леонов; 22 August 1928 – 27 April 2022) was a Russian politician, senior KGB officer, and Latin America expert in the Soviet Union.
Biography
He studied Spanis ...
was Sub-Director of the Latin American Department of the KGB between 1968 and 1972. In 1998 he gave a lecture where he made statements that contradicted these claims. For instance he said that the KGB was not allowed to recruit members from Communist or other left wing parties.
Daniel Ortega
José Daniel Ortega Saavedra (; born 11 November 1945) is a Nicaraguans, Nicaraguan revolutionary and politician serving as President of Nicaragua since 2007. Previously he was leader of Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990, first as coordinator of the ...
agreed to "unofficial meetings" with KGB officers. He gave Nikolai Leonov a secret program of the
Sandinista movement (FSLN), which stated the FSLN's intent to lead class struggle in
Central America, in alliance with
Cuba and the
Soviet bloc
The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed du ...
. However, Leonov stated that he became friends with many Latin Americans including some leaders, and that he and other Soviets supported the struggles of left wing groups. But he clarifies that he did not let people know that he was a KGB agent and that his relationships with them did not involve intelligence.
Middle Eastern figures accused of being informants or agents of the KGB
In September 2016, a work by two researchers (DR.
I. Ginor and G. Remez) stated that
Mahmoud Abbas
Mahmoud Abbas ( ar, مَحْمُود عَبَّاس, Maḥmūd ʿAbbās; born 15 November 1935), also known by the kunya Abu Mazen ( ar, أَبُو مَازِن, links=no, ), is the president of the State of Palestine and the Palestinian Natio ...
(also known as 'Abu Mazen'), the
President of the Palestinian National Authority, worked for the Soviet intelligence agency. According to a recently released document from the Mitrokhin Archive, entitled "KGB developments – Year 1983", Abbas apparently worked under the code name "Krotov", starting early 1980s.
Alleged KGB operations revealed in the files
* Blackmailing
Tom Driberg (code-named Lepage), British
MP and a member of the executive committee of the
Labour Party in the 1950s. Driberg had spied on the
Communist Party of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPG ...
for MI5 in the 1930s. In 1956, while visiting
Moscow to interview his old friend
Guy Burgess for a biography, he was blackmailed by the KGB into removing references to Burgess' alcoholism, due to their having photos of him in a homosexual encounter.
* Attempts to increase racial hatred in the US by mailing forged hate letters to militant groups
* Bugging
MI6 stations in the
Middle East
* Bugging
Henry Kissinger when he was serving as
United States Secretary of State
* Obtaining documents from defense contractors including
Boeing,
Fairchild,
General Dynamics
General Dynamics Corporation (GD) is an American publicly traded, aerospace and defense corporation headquartered in Reston, Virginia. As of 2020, it was the fifth-largest defense contractor in the world by arms sales, and 5th largest in the Uni ...
,
IBM, and
Lockheed Corporation, providing the Soviets with detailed information about the
Trident and
Peacekeeper ballistic missiles and
Tomahawk cruise missile
A cruise missile is a guided missile used against terrestrial or naval targets that remains in the atmosphere and flies the major portion of its flight path at approximately constant speed. Cruise missiles are designed to deliver a large warhe ...
s
* Supporting the
Sandinista movement. The leading role in this operation belonged to the
General Intelligence Directorate of Communist
Cuba.
*KGBs direct link to Prime Minister of India,
Indira Gandhi
Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi (; Given name, ''née'' Nehru; 19 November 1917 – 31 October 1984) was an Indian politician and a central figure of the Indian National Congress. She was elected as third prime minister of India in 1966 ...
(code-named Vano). "Suitcases full of banknotes were said to be routinely taken to the Prime Minister's house. Former Syndicate member S. K. Patil is reported to have said that Mrs. Gandhi did not even return the suitcases". Systematic control of the Indian Media was also revealed- "According to KGB files, by 1973 it had ten Indian newspapers on its payroll (which cannot be identified for legal reasons) as well as a press agency under its control. During 1972 the KGB claimed to have planted 3,789 articles in Indian newspapers - probably more than in any other country in the non-Communist world. According to its files, the number fell to 2,760 in 1973 but rose to 4,486 in 1974 and 5,510 in 1975. In some major NATO countries, despite active-measures campaigns, the KGB was able to plant little more than 1 per cent of the articles which it placed in the Indian press"
Accused but unconfirmed
*
Richard Clements, journalist and editor of the ''
Tribune'', and later an advisor to
Michael Foot and
Neil Kinnock as leaders of the British Labour Party. Clements was not named in Andrew and Mitrokhin's book in 1999, but an article in ''
The Sunday Times'' made the allegation that he was the unidentified agent of influence codenamed DAN. According to the Mitrokhin Archive, DAN disseminated Soviet propaganda in his articles in the ''Tribune'', from his recruitment in 1959 until he severed contact with the KGB in the 1970s. Clements denied the allegation, saying that it was an over-inflated claim and "complete nonsense", and that the allegation was not subsequently repeated. Those defending Clements against the charges included
David Winnick and
Andrew Roth.
*
Romano Prodi (see
Italian Mitrokhin Commission).
Disinformation campaign against the United States
Andrew described the following
active measures
Active measures (russian: активные мероприятия, translit=aktivnye meropriyatiya) is political warfare conducted by the Soviet or Russian government since the 1920s. It includes offensive programs such as espionage, propaganda ...
by the KGB against the United States:
[Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin (2000). ''The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West''. Gardners Books. .]
* Promotion of false
John F. Kennedy assassination theories, using writer
Mark Lane. Lane denied this allegation and called it "an outright lie".
* Forged letter from
Lee Harvey Oswald to
E. Howard Hunt
Everette Howard Hunt Jr. (October 9, 1918 – January 23, 2007) was an American intelligence officer and author. From 1949 to 1970, Hunt served as an officer in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), particularly in the United States involvem ...
, attempting to incriminate Hunt in the
Kennedy assassination.
* Discrediting the
CIA using the ex-CIA case officer and defector
Philip Agee.
* Spreading rumors that the
FBI director
J. Edgar Hoover was a
homosexual
Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to peop ...
.
* Attempts to discredit
Martin Luther King Jr. by placing publications portraying him as an "
Uncle Tom" who was secretly receiving government subsidies.
* Stirring up racial tensions in the United States by mailing bogus letters from the
Ku Klux Klan
The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and ...
, by placing an explosive package in "the Negro section of New York" (
operation PANDORA
Operation PANDORA (Russian: операция Пандора) is the name used by Russian defector Vasili Mitrokhin for an alleged active measure by the KGB against the United States during the Cold War. The intention was supposedly to start a ra ...
),
[''KGB in Europe'', page 310] and by spreading conspiracy theories that the
assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr., an African-American clergyman and civil rights leader, was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, at 6:01 p.m. CST. He was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he died at 7 ...
had been planned by the US government.
* Fabrication of the story that the
AIDS virus
The human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV) are two species of '' Lentivirus'' (a subgroup of retrovirus) that infect humans. Over time, they cause acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in which progressive failure of the immu ...
was manufactured by US scientists at the US Army research station at
Fort Detrick. The story was spread by Russian-born biologist
Jakob Segal.
Installation and support of communist governments
According to Mitrokhin's notes, Soviet security organizations played key roles in establishing puppet Communist governments in
Eastern Europe and
Afghanistan. Their strategy included mass political repressions and establishing subordinate
secret police services at the occupied territories.
The KGB director
Yuri Andropov took suppression of anti-Communist liberation movements personally. In 1954, he became the Soviet Ambassador to
Hungary, and was present during the
1956 Hungarian Revolution
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (23 October – 10 November 1956; hu, 1956-os forradalom), also known as the Hungarian Uprising, was a countrywide revolution against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic (1949–1989) and the Hunga ...
. After these events, Andropov had a "Hungarian complex":
Andropov played a key role in crushing the Hungarian Revolution. He convinced reluctant
Nikita Khrushchev that military intervention was necessary.
[''The KGB in Europe'', p. 327.] He convinced
Imre Nagy
Imre Nagy (; 7 June 1896 – 16 June 1958) was a Hungarian communist politician who served as Chairman of the Council of Ministers (''de facto'' Prime Minister) of the Hungarian People's Republic from 1953 to 1955. In 1956 Nagy became leader ...
and other Hungarian leaders that the Soviet government had not ordered an attack on Hungary while the attack was beginning. The Hungarian leaders were arrested and Nagy was executed.
During the
Prague Spring
The Prague Spring ( cs, Pražské jaro, sk, Pražská jar) was a period of political liberalization and mass protest in
the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. It began on 5 January 1968, when reformist Alexander Dubček was elected First Sec ...
events in Czechoslovakia, Andropov was a vigorous proponent of "extreme measures".
He ordered the fabrication of false intelligence not only for public consumption, but also for the
Soviet Politburo. "The KGB whipped up the fear that Czechoslovakia could fall victim to
NATO aggression or to a coup." At that moment, Soviet intelligence officer
Oleg Kalugin reported from Washington that he had gained access to "absolutely reliable documents proving that neither
CIA nor any other agency was manipulating the Czechoslovak reform movement." But, Kalugin's messages were destroyed because they contradicted the conspiracy theory fabricated by Andropov. Andropov ordered many
active measures
Active measures (russian: активные мероприятия, translit=aktivnye meropriyatiya) is political warfare conducted by the Soviet or Russian government since the 1920s. It includes offensive programs such as espionage, propaganda ...
, collectively known as operation PROGRESS, against Czechoslovak reformers.
Assassinations attempts and plots
* Attempted poisoning of the second President of
Afghanistan Hafizullah Amin on 13 December 1979. Department 8 of
KGB succeeded in infiltrating illegal agent Mitalin Talybov (codenamed SABIR) into the presidential palace as a chef. However, Amin switched his food and drink (as if he expected to be poisoned), and his son-in-law became seriously ill; he was flown to a hospital in Moscow.
[''The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World'', pages 400-402] The poison was manufactured in
the secret KGB laboratory which had prepared
ricin
Ricin ( ) is a lectin (a carbohydrate-binding protein) and a highly potent toxin produced in the seeds of the castor oil plant, ''Ricinus communis''. The median lethal dose (LD50) of ricin for mice is around 22 micrograms per kilogram of body ...
for the attack on Bulgarian writer
Georgi Markov in London in 1978.
* Preparations to assassinate
Josip Broz Tito
Josip Broz ( sh-Cyrl, Јосип Броз, ; 7 May 1892 – 4 May 1980), commonly known as Tito (; sh-Cyrl, Тито, links=no, ), was a Yugoslav communist revolutionary and statesman, serving in various positions from 1943 until his deat ...
, the president of the
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In the late 1940s,
the same KGB laboratory manufactured a powdered
plague for use by an assassin who had been vaccinated against plague.
[''KGB in Europe'', pages 464–466][Vadim J. Birstein. ''The Perversion Of Knowledge: The True Story of Soviet Science''. Westview Press (2004) .][ Ken Alibek and S. Handelman. '' Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World—Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran it'' 1999. Delta (2000) ] This assassination was prepared by the famous KGB agent
Iosef Grigulevich
Iosif Romualdovich Grigulevich (russian: Иосиф Ромуальдович Григулевич; May 5, 1913 – June 2, 1988) was a Soviet secret police (NKVD) operative active between 1937 and 1953, when he played a role in assassination plots ...
, who had previously organized the assault on
Leon Trotsky's villa in Mexico. However, Grigulevich was recalled at the last moment, due to the sudden death of
Joseph Stalin.
* In 1962, plans to assassinate several "particularly dangerous traitors," including
Anatoliy Golitsyn,
Igor Gouzenko,
Nikolay Khokhlov
Nikolai Yevgenievich Khokhlov (Cyrillic: Николай Евгеньевич Хохлов; 7 June 1922 – 17 September 2007) was a KGB officer who defected to the United States in 1954. He testified about KGB activities. The KGB unsuccessfully ...
, and
Bohdan Stashynsky were approved by the KGB head
Vladimir Semichastny. Khoklov was poisoned by radioactive
thallium, allegedly due to his refusal to work as a KGB assassin and kill George Okolovich, chairman of the
National Alliance of Russian Solidarists.
Penetration of churches
The book describes establishing the "
Moscow Patriarchate
, native_name_lang = ru
, image = Moscow July 2011-7a.jpg
, imagewidth =
, alt =
, caption = Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, Russia
, abbreviation = ROC
, type ...
" on order from Stalin in 1943 as a
front organization
A front organization is any entity set up by and controlled by another organization, such as intelligence agencies, organized crime groups, terrorist organizations, secret societies, banned organizations, religious or political groups, advocacy gro ...
for the
NKVD, and later, for the
KGB. All key positions in the Church, including bishops, were approved by the Ideological Department of CPSU and by the KGB. The priests were used as
agents of influence
An agent of influence is an agent of some stature who uses their position to influence public opinion or decision making to produce results beneficial to the country whose intelligence service operates the agent. Agents of influence are often the ...
in the
World Council of Churches and in front organizations such as
World Peace Council, Christian Peace Conference, and the ''Rodina'' ("Motherland") Society founded by the KGB in 1975. The future Russian
Patriarch Alexius II
Patriarch Alexy II (or Alexius II, russian: link=no, Патриарх Алексий II; secular name Aleksei Mikhailovich Ridiger russian: link=no, Алексе́й Миха́йлович Ри́дигер; 23 February 1929 – 5 December ...
said that ''Rodina'' was created to "maintain spiritual ties with our compatriots" and to help organize them. According to the archive, Alexius worked for the KGB as agent DROZDOV, and received an honorary citation from the agency for a variety of services.
Support of militant organizations and terrorists
The Andrew and Mitrokhin publications briefly describe the history of the PLO leader,
Yasser Arafat, who established close collaboration with the Romanian
Securitate service and the KGB in the early 1970s.
[''The KGB and the Battle for the Third World'', pages 250–253] The KGB provided secret training for
PLO
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO; ar, منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية, ') is a Palestinian nationalist political and militant organization founded in 1964 with the initial purpose of establishing Arab unity and s ...
guerrillas. However, the main KGB activities and arms shipments were channeled through
Wadie Haddad of the PFLP organization, who usually stayed in a KGB
dacha BARVIKHA-1 during his visits to the Soviet Union. Led by
Carlos the Jackal
Ilich Ramírez Sánchez (; born 12 October 1949), also known as Carlos the Jackal ( es, link=no, Carlos el Chacal) or simply Carlos, is a Venezuelan convicted of terrorist crimes, and currently serving a life sentence in France for the 1975 murder ...
, a group of PFLP fighters carried out a spectacular raid on the
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries office in
Vienna in 1975. Advance notice of this operation "was almost certainly" given to the KGB.
Many notable operations are alleged to have been conducted by the KGB to support international terrorists with weapons on the orders from the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
"Hymn of the Bolshevik Party"
, headquarters = 4 Staraya Square, Moscow
, general_secretary = Vladimir Lenin (first) Mikhail Gorbachev (last)
, founded =
, banned =
, founder = Vladimir Lenin
, newspaper ...
, including:
* Transfer of about one hundred machine-guns, automatic rifles,
Walther pistols, and cartridges to the Marxist
Official Irish Republican Army by the Soviet intelligence vessel ''Reduktor'' (operation SPLASH) in 1972, supposedly to fulfill a personal request for arms from
Cathal Goulding, relayed through Irish Communist Party leader
Michael O'Riordan. He has denied the allegations.
* Transfer of anti-tank grenade
RPG-7 launchers, radio-controlled SNOP mines, pistols with silencers, machine guns, and other weaponry to the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine through
Wadi Haddad
Wadie Haddad ( ar, وديع حداد; 1927 – 28 March 1978), also known as Abu Hani, was a Palestinian leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine's armed wing. He was responsible for organizing several civilian airplane hi ...
, who was recruited as a KGB agent in 1970 (operation VOSTOK, "East").
According to
Peter-Michael Diestel
Peter-Michael Diestel (born 14 February 1952 in Prora) is a German lawyer and former politician (independent, formerly DSU, CDU). He was the last Interior Minister of East Germany, under Prime Minister Lothar de Maizière (1990). As such, he re ...
, East Germany became "an Eldorado for terrorists".
The KGB aided the Stasi in supporting the
Red Army Faction, which perpetrated terrorist attacks such as the
1985 Rhein-Main Air Base bombing
The Rhein-Main Air Base bombing was a terrorist car bomb attack against the American Rhein-Main Air Base near Frankfurt am Main in West Germany on 8 August 1985. Two Americans were killed and more than 20 people were injured. The blast was powerful ...
.
Other Stasi contacts included the
Provisional IRA, the Basque
ETA, and previously mentioned "Carlos the Jackal".
Active measures in South Asia
In 1981 the Soviets had launched "Operation Kontakt", which was based on a forged document purporting to contain details of the weapons and money provided by the ISI to Sikh militants who wanted to create an independent country.
In November 1982,
Yuri Andropov, the
General Secretary
Secretary is a title often used in organizations to indicate a person having a certain amount of authority, power, or importance in the organization. Secretaries announce important events and communicate to the organization. The term is derived ...
of the Communist Party and leader of the Soviet Union, approved a proposal to fabricate Pakistani intelligence documents detailing ISI plans to foment religious disturbances in Punjab and promote the creation of
Khalistan as an independent Sikh state.
Indira Gandhi's decision to move troops into the Punjab was based on her taking seriously the information provided by the Soviets regarding secret CIA support for the Sikhs.
The KGB role in facilitating
Operation Bluestar was acknowledged by
Subramanian Swamy who stated in 1992 “The 1984 Operation Bluestar became necessary because of the vast disinformation against Sant Bhindranwale by the KGB, and repeated inside Parliament by the Congress Party of India."
Preparations for large-scale sabotage
Notes in the archive describe extensive preparations for large-scale sabotage operations against the United States, Canada, and Europe in the event of war, although none was recorded as having been carried out, beyond creating weapons and explosives caches in assorted foreign countries. This information has been corroborated in general by
GRU defectors,
Victor Suvorov and
Stanislav Lunev
Stanislav Lunev (russian: Станислав Лунев; born 1946 in Leningrad) is a former Soviet military officer, the highest-ranking GRU officer to defect from Russia to the United States.
Biography
Stanislav Lunev was born in Leningrad, to ...
. The operations included the following:
* A plan for sabotage of
Hungry Horse Dam in
Montana.
[''The KGB in Europe'', page 473]
* A detailed plan to destroy the port of New York (target GRANIT). The most vulnerable points of the port were determined and recorded on maps.
* Large arms caches were hidden in many countries to support the planned acts. Some were booby-trapped with
"Lightning" explosive devices. One such cache, identified by Mitrokhin, was found by Swiss authorities in the woods near
Fribourg. Several other caches in Europe were removed successfully. A KGB radio equipment cache was found in woods outside of
Brussels in 1999.
* Disruption of the power supply across
New York State by KGB sabotage teams, which were to be based along the
Delaware River
The Delaware River is a major river in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. From the meeting of its branches in Hancock (village), New York, Hancock, New York, the river flows for along the borders of N ...
in
Big Spring Park.
* An "immensely detailed" plan to destroy "
oil refineries and oil and gas pipelines across Canada from
British Columbia to
Montreal" (operation "Cedar") was prepared; the work took twelve years to complete.
Reception and reviews
The historian
Joseph Persico Joseph Edward Persico (July 19, 1930August 30, 2014) was an author and American military historian. From 1974 to 1977, he was primary speechwriter to Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. At the time of his death, he lived in Guilderland, New York.Uni ...
wrote that "several of the much-publicized revelations
rom the book
Rom, or ROM may refer to:
Biomechanics and medicine
* Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient
* Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac
* ...
however, hardly qualify as such. For instance, the authors tell how the K.G.B. forged a letter from Lee Harvey Oswald to E. Howard Hunt, the former C.I.A. officer and later Watergate conspirator, in order to implicate the C.I.A. in the Kennedy assassination. Actually, this story surfaced in Henry Hurt's ''Reasonable Doubt'', written 13 years ago. Similarly, the story that the K.G.B. considered schemes for breaking the legs of the ballet dancer
Rudolf Nureyev for defecting to the West was first reported in a book written six years ago." And he added that "it does seem odd that a key K.G.B. archivist never had access to a copying machine, but had to copy thousands of pages in longhand. Still, the overall impact of this volume is convincing, though none of the material will send historians scurrying to rewrite their books."
The ''Central European Review'' described Mitrokhin and Andrew's work as "fascinating reading for anyone interested in the craft of espionage, intelligence gathering and its overall role in 20th-century international relations," offering "a window on the Soviet worldview and, as the ongoing
Hanssen case in the United States clearly indicates, how little Russia has relented from the terror-driven spy society it was during seven inglorious decades of Communism."
David L. Ruffley, from the Department of International Programs, United States Air Force Academy, said that the material "provides the clearest picture to date of Soviet intelligence activity, fleshing out many previously obscure details, confirming or contradicting many allegations and raising a few new issues of its own" and "sheds new light on Soviet intelligence activity that, while perhaps not so spectacular as some expected, is nevertheless significantly illuminating."
Reg Whitaker, a professor of Political Science at
York University in
Toronto, gave a review at the ''
Intelligence Forum
Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it can be des ...
'' about the book where he wrote that "The Mitrokhin Archive arrives from a cache under a Russian dacha floor, courtesy of the British intelligence community itself, and its chosen historian, Chris Andrew" and that the book "is remarkably restrained and reasonable in its handling of Westerners targeted by the KGB as agents or sources. The individuals outed by Mitrokhin appear to be what he says they were, but great care is generally taken to identify those who were unwitting dupes or, in many instances, uncooperative targets."
Jack Straw (then
Home Secretary) stated to the
British Parliament in 1999: "In 1992, after Mr. Mitrokhin had approached the UK for help, our Secret Intelligence Service made arrangements to bring Mr. Mitrokhin and his family to this country, together with his archive. As there were no original KGB documents or copies of original documents, the material itself was of no direct evidential value, but it was of huge value for intelligence and investigative purposes. Thousands of leads from Mr. Mitrokhin's material have been followed up worldwide. As a result, our intelligence and security agencies, in co-operation with allied Governments, have been able to put a stop to many security threats. Many unsolved investigations have been closed; many earlier suspicions confirmed; and some names and reputations have been cleared. Our intelligence and security agencies have assessed the value of Mr. Mitrokhin's material world wide as immense."
The author
Joseph Trento commented that "we know the Mitrokhin material is real because it fills in the gaps in Western files on major cases through 1985. Also, the operational material matches western electronic intercepts and agent reports. What MI6 got for a little kindness and a pension was the crown jewels of Russian intelligence."
Scholar
Amy Knight said that "While ''The Sword and the Shield'' contains new information ... none of it has much significance for broader interpretations of the Cold War. The main message the reader comes away with after plowing through almost a thousand pages is the same one gleaned from the earlier books: the Soviets were incredibly successful, albeit evil, spymasters, and none of the Western services could come close to matching their expertise. Bravo the KGB."
Investigations after publication of the books
The publication of the books prompted parliamentary inquiries in the UK, Italy, and India.
UK inquiry
After the first book (Andrew and Mitrokhin, ''The Sword and the Shield'', 1999) was published in the UK, an inquiry was held by the House of Commons' Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC). Its findings, "The Mitrokhin Inquiry Report", were presented to Parliament in June 2000.
The Committee expressed concern that the
Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...
(MI6) knew the names of some spies years before the publication of the book, but took a decision, without informing the proper prosecuting authorities, not to prosecute them. This decision, ISC believed, was for the Law Officers to take, not the SIS. The ISC interviewed Mitrokhin. He was not content with the way the book was published, he told them, and felt he had not accomplished what he intended when writing the notes. He wished that he had retained "full control over the handling of his material".
SIS stated that they were clearing the UK chapters with the Home Secretary and the Attorney General, as required before publication of the book, but, the Committee found, they did not do so. In addition, ISC thought, "misleading stories were allowed to receive wide circulation", and the Committee found that SIS had handled neither the publication nor related media matters appropriately.
Italy inquiry
In Italy in 2002,
Silvio Berlusconi's center-right coalition, the ''
Casa delle Libertà
The House of Freedoms ( it, Casa delle Libertà, CdL) was a major centre-right political and electoral alliance in Italy, led by Silvio Berlusconi.
History
The CdL was the successor of the Pole of Freedoms/Pole of Good Government and the ...
'', established the
Mitrokhin Commission The Mitrokhin Commission was an Italian parliamentary commission set up in 2002 to investigate alleged KGB ties of some Italian politicians.
Set up by the Italian Parliament, then led by Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right coalition, the '' Casa dell ...
, presided over by Senator
Paolo Guzzanti (''
Forza Italia
Forza ItaliaThe name is not usually translated into English: ''forza'' is the second-person singular imperative of ''forzare'', in this case translating to "to compel" or "to press", and so means something like "Forward, Italy", "Come on, Ital ...
'') to investigate alleged KGB ties to figures in
Italian politics. The commission was criticized as politically motivated as it was focused mainly on allegations against opposition figures. The commission was shut down in 2006 without having developed any new concrete evidence beyond the original information in the Mitrokhin Archive. However, former
FSB officer
Alexander Litvinenko allegedly said that he had been informed by FSB deputy chief, General
Anatoly Trofimov
Anatoly Vasilyevich Trofimov (russian: Анато́лий Васи́льевич Трофи́мов; July 14, 1940 – April 10, 2005) was a head of the Soviet KGB investigation department. He personally supervised all Soviet dissident cases includ ...
(who was shot dead in
Moscow in 2005), that "
Romano Prodi is our man
n Italy
N, or n, is the fourteenth Letter (alphabet), letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the English alphabet, modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is English alphabet# ...
. The allegations were rejected by Romano Prodi. Litvinenko also said, "Trofimov did not exactly say that Prodi was a KGB agent, because the KGB avoids using that word."
In 2006, a British
Member of the European Parliament for
London,
Gerard Batten of
United Kingdom Independence Party, demanded a new inquiry into the Italian allegations.
India inquiry
In India, a senior leader of the
Bharatiya Janata Party,
L. K. Advani, requested of the Government a white paper on the role of foreign intelligence agencies and a judicial enquiry on the allegations in The Mitrokhin Archive II. The spokesperson of the Indian Congress party referred to the book as "pure sensationalism not even remotely based on facts or records" and pointed out that the book is not based on official records from the Soviet Union. L.K Advani raised his voice because in this book is written about ex-prime minister Indira Gandhi (Codenamed VANO) relations with KGB.
Notes
Books
*
* Andrew, Christopher, Vasili Mitrokhin (1999) ''The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West''. Allen Lane. .
*
https://books.google.com/books?id=-fJXtQEACAAJ&dq=The%20Mitrokhin%20Archive --> google books
* Andrew, Christopher, Vasili Mitrokhin (2000). ''The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB''. Basic Books. .
* Vasiliy Mitrokhin (2002), ''KGB Lexicon: The Soviet Intelligence Officer's Handbook'', Frank Cass & Co. Ltd, 451 pages,
*
* Andrew, Christopher, Vasili Mitrokhin (2005). ''The Mitrokhin Archive II: The KGB and the World''. Allen Lane. {{ISBN, 0-7139-9359-6.
External links
(Report of the British SIS to Parliament)
The Mitrokhin Archivefrom the Cold War International History Project, includes primary sources.
The Mitrokhin Archive - A Note on Sourcesfrom the Cold War International History Project
*
ttps://web.archive.org/web/20120908072842/http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/4071 Interview on Mitrokhin with Christopher Andrewson ''
Charlie Rose
Charles Peete Rose Jr. (born January 5, 1942) is an American former television journalist and talk show host. From 1991 to 2017, he was the host and executive producer of the talk show '' Charlie Rose'' on PBS and Bloomberg LP.
Rose also co-an ...
''
KGB
Cold War
Non-fiction books about espionage
1992 non-fiction books
2005 non-fiction books