Spy Handler

by Victor Cherkashin

  A typical Party apparatchik, Gorbachev had few ideological goals of his own. Unable to find a quick fix to resolve the state’s looming chaos and overcome by praise from Reagan and Thatcher, he surrendered communism without a real fight. Miners began staging strikes and Mafia-style protection rackets took over in the nascent private sector. The political situation followed suit as some of the Soviet Union’s fifteen republics called for greater independence. In January 1991, blood was spilled in Lithuania and Latvia after Soviet troops seized media outlets and the Interior Ministry headquarters, respectively, to repress secessionist agitation. Meanwhile, Gorbachev allowed tens of thousands of demonstrators to protest in Moscow.

  He pinned his hopes on a referendum to preserve the Soviet Union. It took place in nine of the union’s fifteen republics in March. Over 76 percent of participants supported the union. The people’s overwhelming support of the USSR’s continued existence was clear, but that didn’t stop Gorbachev from announcing plans to draft a new union treaty in direct defiance of the vote. The proposal would have put an end to the USSR by setting up a confederation in which each republic would exercise separate rights.

  In August, Gorbachev met with Yeltsin and Kazakhstan’s Party boss, Nursultan Nazarbayev, to make a last push to launch the new treaty. They scheduled Russia and Kazakhstan to sign on August 20. Gorbachev then left for his dacha in the Crimean Black Sea resort town of Foros. The details of the union treaty were kept secret, but the KGB had surreptitiously recorded the talks. On August 17, Kryuchkov gathered eight men, who soon became known as members of the GKChP, for a secret meeting in Moscow. The following day, a delegation went to Foros to persuade Gorbachev to abandon the treaty and agree to a state of emergency. Gorbachev refused. The tanks rolled into Moscow two days later.

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  General Leonid Shebarshin, my old colleague from India, learned about the GKChP on August 18, while the delegation was in Foros pressuring Gorbachev. Shebarshin had been appointed FCD chief in 1988, when Kryuchkov took up the KGB chairmanship. Kryuchkov now summoned Shebarshin to ask whether he’d take part in the emergency committee. Shebarshin shared many of his boss’s sympathies, but didn’t want to compromise the FCD’s future by cooperating too closely with the possibly rash actions of a few leaders. He politely declined, saying he would instead put the FCD’s intelligence at Kryuchkov’s disposal. He also agreed to deploy a crack KGB combat unit called Vympel in central Moscow that night. His decision to largely sideline the FCD helped save Soviet intelligence.

  Others cooperated with the GKChP, including Shebarshin’s deputy, Major General Vladimir Zhizhin. He helped draft the directive signed by Kryuchkov calling for the emergency committee’s assumption of power. It blamed the national crisis on Gorbachev.

  Officially, Vice President Gennady Yanayev led the GKChP. As I was driving into Moscow past the tanks on August 19, the country was waking up to the news on Channel 1, the main state television station. It announced that new leadership had taken over to prevent “chaos and anarchy” and save the Soviet Union.

  The effort began failing from the start. Yeltsin and his like-minded colleagues and supporters weren’t arrested. Instead, they were allowed to gather at the “White House,” the Russian Republic’s 1980s-style parliamentary building on the Moscow River. No measures were taken to prevent deputies from entering or leaving the building. The telephones lines weren’t cut. Yeltsin read a public appeal denouncing the putsch. “Storm clouds of terror and dictatorship are gathering over the whole country,” he said. “They [the GKChP] must not be allowed to bring eternal night.”

  Yeltsin supporters gathering outside the White House stopped the tanks advancing on the building. The site soon became the center of protest against the GKChP, whose members holed up in the Kremlin. The protesters littered the streets with the carcasses of gutted buses, iron rods, concrete blocks and anything else that could be ripped up to construct flimsy “barricades” that were significant symbolically but couldn’t stop a single armored vehicle. Persuaded to “join” Yeltsin, a division of unarmed tanks stood with their guns pointing away from the building. In what became the incident’s enduring image, Yeltsin climbed onto one, from which he made an appeal to the “citizens of Russia” (as opposed to the Soviet variety).

  The handful of men who’d seized power weren’t acting decisively. Shebarshin was getting no orders from the GKChP, which clearly signaled a leadership crisis. In an absurd reflection of their indecision, the tanks belching black diesel fumes on Moscow’s streets were stopping at red traffic lights. Even the television programming was wrongheaded—ballet instead of military marches and war films that would have rallied the people by reminding them of the Party’s illustrious past. Late in the morning on August 19, Shebarshin ordered his Vympel paramilitary unit to stand down.

  When Yanayev, the self-proclaimed acting Soviet president, addressed the people during a live news conference, I realized the GKChP was doomed. Four other GKChP members took part. At one point during the conference, a young Nezavisimaya Gazeta reporter disdainfully asked Yanayev, “Could you please say whether or not you understand that last night you carried out a coup d’état?” As Yanayev mumbled an incoherent reply, a Channel 1 camera lingered on his shaking hands. They became a key symbol of the bungled attempt to take power.

  Throughout the first night and into the next day, more people came to defend the White House. Prior to the second night, the GKChP imposed a curfew. Rumors leaked from the KGB that the parliamentary building would be stormed and those inside began to fear the worst. That night, three men were killed near the U.S. embassy while trying to stop the armored vehicles moving through the city. The civilian deaths shocked even GKChP members. The following morning, Defense Minister Yazov ordered troops to begin pulling out of the city. By the evening, the GKChP was on the run.

  I showed up for work each day of the attempted coup. My department continued its work as usual, and we stayed late. Most KGB people reacted calmly to the events. The prevailing view, which included my own, was that the GKChP wasn’t actually staged against Gorbachev, but, perversely, in concert with him. It seemed naive to believe that Gorbachev would leave Moscow on vacation at such a sensitive moment as the eve of the new treaty signing. Most likely, it was a cunning maneuver, part of a double-sided game he was playing to keep his presidency alive. He must have known a coup d’état would be doomed. However, he went along with it, apparently to appease the plotters—but really to frame them. He knew Yanayev, Kryuchkov, Pavlov and the others wouldn’t have the guts or the backing to take the decisive measures needed to carry out such a scheme. Instead, they walked into a trap and did nothing for three days beyond ordering those tanks into the streets.

  The day after he returned from Foros, Gorbachev summoned Shebarshin to the Kremlin to make him temporary KGB chairman and ordered him to prepare reports on the week’s events. In the shortest chairmanship in KGB history, Shebarshin occupied the post for a single day, until Kryuchkov’s permanent successor was appointed.

  On Thursday, August 22, criminal charges were filed against Kryuchkov and the other GKChP members. That evening, a crowd collected outside the statue of secret police founder Felix Dzerzhinsky at the KGB’s old central Lubyanka offices. As night fell, under the glare of television cameras that broadcast the indelible images around the world, city authorities delivered a crane to the site. To the joyful shouts of onlookers, a man climbed up the statue and attached a cable around its neck. The crane pulled Iron Felix down.

  I was at work at that moment. Watching the event on television later, I realized I was seeing the symbol of Soviet power topple. I knew it meant the end of my career and my old way of life. It was a senseless act—no better than the destruction of churches after the 1917 Revolution. The Soviet Union had to change, but I couldn’t accept the destruction of my country’s heritage. Thank God at least the mobs didn’t tear down the famous statue of Karl Marx near the Bolshoi Theater.

  The following day, Yelts
in called a session of Russia’s Supreme Soviet and forced Gorbachev to condemn the Communist Party. With a theatrical flourish, ignoring Gorbachev’s entreaties, Yeltsin signed a decree suspending the Party in the Russian Republic and confiscating its property. Gorbachev stayed on as Soviet president, but the state of which he was head disappeared from under him on December 21. That day, the leaders of the republics of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine met in Belarus to replace the Soviet Union with the toothless Commonwealth of Independent States.

  After the failure of the GKChP, it was clear to me that things would get worse. Now the collapse of Soviet society was inevitable. The KGB would, of course, be among the first to change. Public opinion had shifted, so that officers who’d spent their careers serving their country were now seen as enemies of the people. If the KGB was considered an immoral organization, I no longer wanted to be part of it. Ten days after the end of the so-called coup d’état, I cleaned out my files, tied up loose ends, and told my deputy I wouldn’t be showing up for work the next day.

  Then I went to see the deputy head of Directorate RT—a man I’d known for forty years—to hand in my letter of resignation.

  “Do you think you’re the only person who feels that way about the KGB?” he demanded. “You can’t resign. We all feel this way!”

  “In that case, you should all resign too,” I said. “Why would you remain part of an organization that can no longer function properly?”

  The deputy was outraged. “Do you really think you’re smarter than everyone else? This is a political statement you’re making.”

  “What do I care about political statements? What do you want me to do? Submit another letter that simply states I want to retire, without giving my reasons? Please—I’m happy to do it.” I took out a piece of paper and wrote “I’ve reached retirement age and would like to leave.” Signing my name, I left it on the deputy’s desk.

  “How dare you!” he hissed.

  “Okay then, since I haven’t taken a holiday yet this year, think of my absence as an extended vacation.”

  Then I walked out.

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  Loud chest thumping resounded in the United States about winning the Cold War. In the sense that the American system emerged as the world’s single superpower while the Soviet Union crumbled, it was justified. But even though Washington pressured Moscow in various ways, the Soviet Union ultimately collapsed under its own weight.

  The CIA conducted many successful operations against the KGB and the Soviet Union, among them TAW and IVY BELLS. But they were exceptional, if vastly interesting. Monitoring naval communications between Vladivostok and Kamchatka exposed only a tiny part of the whole system. Among many other channels of communication, the most sensitive messages were relayed by telegrams in sealed envelopes. And although the CIA network of agents was impressive, the information they betrayed hardly brought Moscow to its knees.

  Although the general public clamors for plots about vital issues of national security, most spying has actually made little difference. More significant were the CIA agents of influence in the democratic movement in the Soviet Union’s last years. CIA funding and training of mujahideen in Afghanistan also helped turn the tide of the war against us. The economic and human losses struck hard at the Soviet Union’s prestige. But that didn’t bring the system down any more than the Vietnam War brought down American democracy.

  The Soviet Union collapsed because it could no longer support itself. The end was largely triggered by the corruption and mistakes of leaders who didn’t try to solve problems lying in plain sight. Responsible for running everything, the Party wasn’t held accountable for anything. When Gorbachev came to power, the system was too leaky to withstand his shaking the boat. Once the administrative control of its vertical power structure was undermined, the whole deck of cards collapsed.

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  WILD CAPITALISM IN NEW RUSSIA

  1

  On August 23, 1991, Yeltsin appointed Vadim Bakatin KGB chairman, ending Leonid Shebarshin’s day-long tenure. Bakatin was a liberal, a former interior minister whom Gorbachev had recently fired. No one I knew in the KGB took his elevation to the head of the organization as a good sign. His first move, an order to leave the KGB archives untouched, bore out most fears. It prevented officers from destroying highly classified information that could potentially compromise sources and operations. No doubt a lot of dirty laundry was also being removed, but that was secondary to security. The archives contained the names of agents and operations that had remained secret for decades. Keeping them classified was imperative.

  Bakatin set about stripping the KGB’s services and firing members of the top leadership, who were denounced as communist ideologues. Decades of hard work were thereby wasted. Perhaps the most visible blow concerned a 1980s operation to install hundreds of eavesdropping devices in a new building the Americans were building in their Moscow embassy complex. The construction crew had riddled the structure with highly sophisticated bugs where they’d be hard to detect, such as inside prefabricated concrete slabs and steel beams. The State Department found the bugs during a security check and halted construction on the building in 1985, leaving its red brick exterior to stand forlornly over the complex.

  In September, newly appointed U.S. ambassador Robert Strauss asked Bakatin to turn over the blueprints indicating the bugs’ locations. The KGB chairman agreed. Ironically, the request was first suggested by Aldrich Ames to Milt Bearden, by then the CIA’s SE chief, who was in Moscow for the meeting with Bakatin. The KGB’s acquiescence was a stunning, highly unnecessary move. It reflected the mistaken feeling many Russians now held that the demise of the Cold War signaled the end of geopolitical competition between Moscow and Washington. How naive to believe the fall of the Soviet Union meant foreign intelligence would no longer be needed! Bakatin’s idiotic decision told the Americans how we operated and what technology we used for eavesdropping. That information, once exposed, could never be made secret again. In return, he got nothing.

  Stepping down as acting KGB chairman, Shebarshin retained his position as FCD chief. He held the post for almost a month, until Bakatin announced on September 18 that an SCD colonel named Vladimir Rozhkov would be nominated as the FCD’s first deputy director—Shebarshin’s number two. Shebarshin, who wasn’t consulted, promptly wrote two resignation letters—one to Gorbachev and another to Yeltsin. Two days later, Gorbachev issued a decree dismissing him from his post.

  On October 1, Yeltsin appointed Yevgeny Primakov to head the FCD—this time a brilliant choice. Primakov was a longtime intelligence veteran and Middle East expert who worked as a Pravda correspondent before heading the prestigious Institute of World Economy and International Relations. He spearheaded Soviet efforts at shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East in the 1960s and 1970s. Primakov managed to preserve the structure of post-Soviet foreign intelligence, saving the organization by keeping it apart from politics. He would go on to become foreign minister and then prime minister.

  More changes were coming. On October 24, Gorbachev signed a decree nominally abolishing the KGB. Yeltsin then set about splitting the organization, separating the FCD from the SCD, the border guards, signals intelligence and other branches. The newly independent FCD was renamed the Central Intelligence Service, then the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). The SCD became the Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia’s internal intelligence agency. The end of the unified KGB meant the position of chairman no longer existed. In January 1992, Yeltsin finally fired Bakatin from his second post as head of the FSB, appointing another former interior minister, Victor Barannikov, in his place. Meanwhile, Kryuchkov was languishing in prison for his part in the GKChP, but his stamp on the KGB’s successor organizations remained, with Kirpichenko staying on as a top special adviser to the SVR.

  I cut my ties to the KGB residue, only rarely attending meetings of the intelligence veterans organization. I’d also split with Kalugin, whose open criticism of the KGB in 1989—after he aligned him
self with the new democratic forces—I couldn’t condone. By then, Kryuchkov and Kirpichenko were looking for someone to directly blame for the agents Ames exposed, and Kalugin emerged as the easiest target. Soon after his retirement in 1990, he was accused of exposing state secrets. Gorbachev stripped him of his rank, awards and pension. Kalugin promptly campaigned for a seat in parliament, the Supreme Soviet, and won. His new post gave him immunity from prosecution, and he continued to criticize the KGB. After the Soviet collapse, the charges against him were dropped, and he became adviser to Bakatin before leaving for the United States in 1995.

  Under President Vladimir Putin, however, the accusations against Kalugin resumed with new force. Trying him in absentia in 2002, a Russian court found him guilty of treason and sentenced him to fifteen years in prison. Part of the accusation concerned his testimony against U.S. Army Reserve Colonel George Trofimoff, a former military intelligence officer convicted of spying for the Soviet Union and sentenced to life in prison in 2001. Trofimoff worked in Germany as a debriefer of Soviet defectors. He was exposed after KGB officer Vasily Mitrokhin—who served in the KGB archives for many years—defected to England in 1992, bringing copious notes of KGB documents. In a book based on the “Mitrokhin archive,” historian Christopher Andrew described Trofimoff’s activities without naming him. The information, however, led the U.S. government to him—and to subpoena Kalugin, then living in the United States, to testify at his trial. Despite his part in the events, Kalugin denied that he’d fingered Trofimoff. Putin has since called Kalugin a traitor.

  Meanwhile, Shebarshin teamed up with his friend Nikolai Leonov, the former head of the KGB analytical department, to found a company that would use their knowledge and connections. They joined a group of enterprising young bankers who asked them to provide security. Calling their new organization the Russian National Economic Security Service, they opened offices in the formerly KGB-affiliated Dinamo soccer stadium, where they still operate.