Sasha was an alleged

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...

mole Mole (or Molé) may refer to: Animals * Mole (animal) or "true mole", mammals in the family Talpidae, found in Eurasia and North America * Golden moles, southern African mammals in the family Chrysochloridae, similar to but unrelated to Talpida ...

in the

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

during the Cold War.

Manhunt

In 1961,

Anatoliy Golitsyn Anatoliy Mikhaylovich Golitsyn CBE ( Russian: Анатолий Михайлович Голицын; August 25, 1926 – December 29, 2008) was a Soviet KGB defector and author of two books about the long-term deception strategy of the KGB lead ...

, a major in the KGB, was assigned to the embassy in

Helsinki Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the capital, primate, and most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of Uusimaa in southern Finland, and has a population of . The city ...

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

, under the name "Ivan Klimov." On 15 December, he defected to the US, along with his wife and daughter, by riding the train to the Swedish border. Golitsyn's defection so alarmed the KGB that orders were sent out to cancel all meetings with field agents out of fear that they would be identified. Golitsyn was flown to the US and interviewed by David Murphy, the head of the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

's Soviet Russia Division. After some time, Golitsyn began making increasing demands of the US and complaining about his treatment. Considering him to be unreliable, Murphy passed him on to

James Jesus Angleton James Jesus Angleton (December 9, 1917 – May 11, 1987) was chief of counterintelligence for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 1954 to 1974. His official position within the organization was Associate Deputy Director of Operations for ...

, the CIA's director of counterintelligence. Golitsyn's description of a traitor in the CIA, whom he knew only as "Sasha", led Angleton to embark on a multiyear manhunt that accused many members of the CIA of being the spy. The entire affair is still highly controversial.

Reparations

Under United States Public Law 96-450, passed in 1980 and commonly known as the "Mole Relief Act", C.I.A. employees who have been accused unfairly of disloyalty (e.g. Sasha) and who have had their careers subsequently ruined were allowed to receive government compensation.

List of accused CIA employees

This is a partial list of CIA employees accused of being Sasha. All were later cleared. *

Serge Karlow Serge "Peter" Karlow was born circa 1921 in New York, NY and died November 3, 2005 in Montclair, NJ He was a CIA Technical Officer from 1947-1963 who was falsely accused of treason and forced to resign. The allegations against Karlow were made ...

* Richard Kovich * Alexander ″Sasha″ SogolowDavid Wise, ''Molehunt'', passim Others CIA employees, though not suspected to be ″Sasha″, were suspected to be moles in the course of the Sasha molehunt: * Paul Garbler * George Goldberg * David Murphy * Vasia C. Gmirkin

In popular culture

* In Robert Littell's novel '' The Company'', the alleged existence of Sasha is an important element of the plot.

Footnotes

References

* Martin, David C. ''Wilderness of Mirrors: Intrigue, Deception, and the Secrets that Destroyed Two of the Cold War's Most Important Agents''. New York: The Lyons Press, 2003. . * Wise, David. ''Molehunt: The Secret Search for Traitors That Shattered the CIA''. New York: Random House, 1992. .

External links

"Of Moles and Molehunters"
by

Cleveland Cram Cleveland C. Cram (December 21, 1917, Waterville, Minnesota – January 9, 1999) was a station chief and historian for the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Cram studied at Saint John's University and Harvard and served as a naval o ...

, Center for the Study of Intelligence, October 1993.
"C.I.A. Dug for Moles but Buried the Loyal"
by David Johnston, ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'', March 8, 1992. Cold War spies Counterintelligence {{espionage-stub