The Sword and the Shield
Page 101
109. t-7,12.
110. See below, chapter 10.
111. k-16,518.
112. k-2,354.
113. Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3, pp. 100-1.
114. k-2,369. The head of the Mexican secret police, General Leandro Sánchez Salazar, later reached the same conclusion. Though able to identify Grigulevich only as FELIPE (his codename within the assault group), Sánchez Salazar described him as “the real instigator of the attack.” Sánchez Salazar believed the multilingual Grigulevich to be “a French Jew,” partly as a result of discovering some of his underwear, which had been purchased in Paris on the Boulevard Saint Michel. Sánchez Salazar, Murder in Mexico, pp. 48-9.
115. Sánchez Salazar, Murder in Mexico, p. 45.
116. k-2,369.
117. Sudoplatovs, Special Tasks, p. 74. Cf. Deutscher, Trotsky, vol. 3, p. 488.
118. Deutscher, Trotsky, vol. 3, pp. 487-9.
119. Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3, p. 101.
120. Released on bail, Siqueiros escaped from Mexico with the help of the Chilean Communist poet Pablo Neruda. Sánchez Salazar, Murder in Mexico, pp. 211-14.
121. k-2,369,354; vol. 6, ch. 5, part 1.
122. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 183-5.
123. Levine, The Mind of an Assassin, chs. 5-9; Deutscher, Trotsky, vol. 3, ch. 5.
124. Note by Enrique Castro Delgado, the Spanish Communist Party representative at Comintern headquarters, on a conversation with Caridad Mercader, in Levine, The Mind of an Assassin, pp. 216-22.
125. See below, chs. 22, 23.
Chapter Six
War
1. k-27,app.
2. Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3, p. 247.
3. The visiting lecturers included Academicians I. M. Maisky, A. M. Deborin and A. A. Guber, and ambassadors A. A. Troyanovsky, B. Ye. Shteyn and Shenburg. k-27,appendix.
4. Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3, p. 248.
5. On June 5, 1943 SHON was reorganized as the Intelligence School (RASH) of the NKVD First (Foreign Intelligence) Directorate, and the training course extended to two years. By the end of the war about 200 foreign intelligence officers had graduated from it (k-27,appendix). During the Cold War it was known successively as the Higher Intelligence School (codenamed School no. 101), the Red Banner Institute and the Andropov Institute. In October 1994 it became the Foreign Intelligence Academy of the Russian Federation (Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3, ch. 23).
6. Slutsky, Pasov and Shpigelglas had been liquidated during 1938. Beria’s acolyte, Vladimir Georgyevich Dekanozov, who briefly succeeded Shpigelglas, became Deputy Foreign Commissar in May 1939.
7. Fitin’s career is summarized in Samolis (ed.), Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii, pp. 153-5, which acknowledges that he owed his promotion to “the acute shortage of intelligence personnel.”
8. vol. 7, ch. 2, para. 1. A somewhat inaccurate hagiography of Gorsky’s career (which, inter alia, attributes intelligence supplied by Cairncross to Maclean) appears in Samolis (ed.), Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii, pp. 31-2. There is no mention of Gorsky’s disgrace in 1953 (Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 304). The SVR historians, however, indirectly give some indication of the extent of the disgrace when they acknowledge that they have been unable to establish the date of Gorsky’s death.
9. Interview with Blunt cited in Cecil, A Divided Life, p. 66.
10. Bentley, Out of Bondage, pp. 173-7.
11. See above, chapter 5.
12. Borovik, The Philby File, pp. 153-4, 166-7. On SOE see Foot, SOE.
13. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 303-12. Though the identity of ELLI appears not to have been established by British intelligence for many years after the Second World War, it was in fact one of a number of somewhat transparent Soviet codenames of the period. In Russian ELLI means “Ls,” an appropriate codename for Leo Long, whose initials were LL.
14. vol. 7, ch. 9, para. 22. The defector was Walter Krivitsky, codenamed GROLL. On King’s arrest, see Andrew, Secret Service, pp. 606-7.
15. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 272.
16. West and Tsarev, The Crown Jewels, pp. 214-17; Michael Smith, “The Humble Scot who Rose to the Top—But Then Chose Treachery,” Daily Telegraph (January 12, 1992). Cairncross’s KGB file corroborates the recollection of a former head of the Centre’s British desk that he provided “tons of documents” (Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 272). Confident that his file would never see the light of day, Cairncross denied that he provided anything of significance to the London residency until after the Soviet Union entered the war. He admitted, however, that he had “no difficulty in having access to the secret papers in Hankey’s office” (Cairncross, The Enigma Spy, pp. 90-1). When new War Cabinet regulations in June 1941 limited the circulation of diplomatic telegrams to Hankey, Cairncross as well as Hankey complained personally to the Foreign Office. The restrictions were quickly lifted. (G. L. Clutton (Foreign Office) to Cairncross (June 6, 1941); Sir Alexander Cadogan to Hankey (June 17, 1941). Hankey Papers, Churchill College Archives Center, Cambridge, HNKY 4/33.)
17. vol. 7, ch. 2, para. 7.
18. Samolis (ed.), Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii, pp. 63-5. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, pp. 78-81. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 266. (Costello and Tsarev wrongly compute the period when the Center was out of touch with Harnack as fifteen rather than twenty-eight months.)
19. Samolis (ed.), Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii, p. 64; Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, pp. 82-5; Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 266-7; Tarrant, The Red Orchestra, chs. 17-19.
20. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 286.
21. Samolis (ed.), Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii, p. 64.
22. Samolis (ed.), Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii, p. 154. Some of the intelligence warnings of the preparations for BARBAROSSA are printed as appendices to Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3.
23. The report and Stalin’s comment on it were published in Izvestia of the Central Committee of the CPSU (April 1990). Cf. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, p. 86.
24. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 275, 282. Prange et al., Target Tokyo, chs. 42-7.
25. JIC(41)218(Final), CAB 81/102, PRO. On Churchill’s warnings to Stalin, see Gorodetsky, Stafford Cripps’ Mission to Moscow 1940-42, chs. 2-4. Exactly which JIC reports reached Stalin, and in what form, cannot be determined at present. But, given both the volume of highly classified intelligence from London and the numerous JIC assessments which contradicted Churchill’s belief that Hitler was planning an invasion of Russia, Stalin must surely have been aware of the JIC view. The files noted by Mitrokhin show that Stalin had access to at least some of the telegrams exchanged between the Foreign Office and the British ambassador in Moscow, Sir Stafford Cripps. vol. 7, ch. 2, para. 10.
26. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 274.
27. vol. 7, ch. 2, para. 11.
28. Whaley, Codeword Barbarossa, pp. 223-4, 241-3. An important new study by Gabriel Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion: Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia, was published just as this volume was going to press. It performs a valuable service by demolishing the main conspiracy theories (in particular those surrounding Hess’s flight to Britain and Stalin’s alleged preparations for an attack on Germany) which have confused some recent interpretations of the background of operation BARBAROSSA. Though there are some gaps in his analysis of Soviet intelligence, Professor Gorodetsky also adds much interesting detail from newly accessible Russian archives. His portrait of Stalin as “rational and level-headed” is, however, difficult to reconcile with, inter alia, Stalin’s obsessive pursuit of Trotsky and his foreign supporters. Grand Delusion is, none the less, a major work.
29. Vaksberg, The Prosecutor and the Prey, p. 220.
30. One of the files noted by Mitrokhin records
that Zarubin had been appointed deputy director of INO in 1937 (vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2). Over the next two years, three successive heads of INO were liquidated, and Zarubin only just escaped a similar fate. It is not clear precisely what position he held in the Center at the beginning of 1941.
31. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2. On December 18, 1940 Hitler had ordered the completion of preparations for BARBAROSSA by May 15, 1941.
32. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.
33. Samolis (ed.), Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii, p. 154.
34. See below, chapter 7.
35. Interview with Shebarshin, Daily Telegraph (December 1, 1992). Even in the year before the abortive coup of August 1991, both the public rhetoric and inner convictions of the KGB leadership were influenced by crude anti-Western conspiracy theories. Andrew and Gordievsky (eds.), Instructions from the Center, pp. 218-22. Andrew and Gordievsky (eds.), More Instructions from the Center, pp. 125-8.
36. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 249-50, 281-3. Kahn, “Soviet Comint in the Cold War,” pp. 11-13. PURPLE had been introduced in 1939. Soviet codebreakers had also broken the earlier and less complex Japanese RED cipher. On the breaking of PURPLE by US military cryptanalysts, see Kahn, “Pearl Harbor and the Inadequacy of Cryptanalysis.” Mitrokhin did not have access to the archives of the KGB Sixteenth Directorate, which—together with those of the GRU—contain the main SIGINT files of the Great Patriotic War.
37. Erickson, The Road to Stalingrad, p. 329; Overy, Russia’s War, p. 118.
38. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 282.
39. On recruitment to Bletchley Park, see Hinsley and Stripp (eds.), Codebreakers; Andrew, “F. H. Hinsley and the Cambridge Moles”; Smith, Station X.
40. See below, pp. 156, 159. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 312-13.
41. Sudoplatovs, Special Tasks, p. 130. After the German invasion, Sudoplatov’s Directorate for Special Tasks and Guerrilla Warfare (officially entitled Diversionary Intelligence), the successor of the pre-war Administration for Special Tasks, was officially removed from the NKVD First (Foreign Intelligence) Directorate as a new Fourth Directorate. Though the two directorates remained formally independent until April 1943, there was a constant interchange of personnel between them. Murphy, Kondrashev and Bailey, Battleground Berlin, pp. 28-9.
42. The official Soviet guide to the Museum of Partisan Glory is Balatsky, Museum in the Catacombs. At the time of writing, the Museum is still open daily with guided tours in Russian and Ukrainian catacombs.
43. Samolis (ed.), Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii, p. 101.
44. For details of the reconstruction, see Balatsky, Museum in the Catacombs.
45. vol. 5, sec. 13.
46. Samolis (ed.), Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii, p. 102-3. This account of Molodtsov’s capture and execution is neither confirmed nor contradicted by Mitrokhin’s notes on the Odessa file.
47. vol. 5, sec. 13.
48. vol. 5, sec. 13.
49. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 1.
50. Dear and Foot (eds.), The Oxford Companion to the Second World War, pp. 1240-1.
51. Dear and Foot (eds.), The Oxford Companion to the Second World War, p. 1240. Probably the best study of the eastern front, by Professor Richard Overy, concludes that, “…Where the NKVD did intervene the effect was to wound the war effort, not to invigorate it.” One part of the complex explanation for increasing success of the Red Army was the demotion, under the pressure of war, of the political apparatchiks at the front in the autumn of 1942 and the new freedom given to officers to take decisions without being constantly checked for political correctness. Overy, Russia’s War, pp. 329-30.
52. There was no legal residency in Argentina. At the outbreak of war no Latin American state had diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. In October 1942 Cuba established diplomatic relations with the USSR. By the beginning of 1945 another eight Latin American republics had followed suit. Argentina did not establish diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union until 1946.
53. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 1. Mitrokhin’s notes, which identify ARTUR as Grigulevich, provide the solution to a major unsolved problem in the VENONA decrypts. Though the decrypts contain frequent references to ARTUR, his identity was never discovered by NSA or the FBI (Benson, VENONA Historical Monograph #5, p. 5).
54. Humphreys, Latin America and the Second World War, vol. 1, pp. 154-6.
55. Macdonald, “The Politics of Intervention”; Newton, “Disorderly Succession.”
56. Wartime Soviet agents with access to US policy documents on Argentina included Laurence Duggan, a Latin American expert in the State Department, and Maurice Halperin, chief of the Latin American division in the OSS RA branch (Peake, “OSS and the Venona Decrypts,” pp. 22, 25-6).
57. k-16,477.
58. k-13,370.
59. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 1; k-16,477.
60. Argentina did not declare war on Germany until March 1945.
61. Grigulevich’s couriers to New York included the Chilean Communist Eduardo Pecchio and a member of the Latin American section of the Columbian Broadcasting Service, Ricardo Setaro (GONETS). VENONA decrypt, 2nd release, p. 26; 3rd release, part 2, p. 101.
62. VENONA decrypts, 5th release, pp. 11-12, 14-17, 20-1, 24-6, 31-2.
63. k-16,477.
64. See below, chapter 22.
65. The Center instructed the Montevideo residency on February 4, 1956:
Do not re-establish contact [with Verzhbitksy]. Arrangements for his entry to the USSR must be made under MFA auspices in the usual way; do not get involved in the process and make no promises, including financial ones. Make a one-time payment of 1,500 pesos and we will then make no further monetary payments.
(k-16,477)
66. k-16,477.
67. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 259-64.
68. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 259-64; Overy, Russia’s War, pp. 232-3.
69. Volkogonov, Stalin, pp. 444-7.
70. k-4,204. The total number of sources was substantially greater than those accorded agent status by the Center. According to KGB files, the nationality of the agents was: 55 Germans; 14 French; 5 Belgians; 13 Austrians, Czechs and Hungarians; 6 Russians; and 16 others. The principal leaders, according to the same files, were: Belgian section: Leopold Trepper; German section: Harro Schulze-Boysen; French section (except Lyon): Henry Robinson; Lyon: Isidor Springer; Dutch section: Anton Winterinck; Swiss section: Sandor Rado.
71. Central Intelligence Agency, The Rote Kapelle; Milligan, “Spies, Ciphers and ‘Zitadelle’”; Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 285-9.
72. Glantz, Soviet Military Intelligence in War; Jukes, “The Soviets and ‘Ultra’”; Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 289.
73. Beevor, Stalingrad, pp. 166-75, 201.
74. Under lend-lease agreements with Britain and the United States in 1941, the Soviet Union was supplied with 35,000 radio stations, 380,000 field telephones and 956,000 miles of telephone cable. Overy, Russia’s War, pp. 193-4.
75. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 315-20; Milligan, “Spies, Ciphers and ‘Zitadelle.’”
76. Kahn, “Soviet Comint in the Cold War,” p. 14.
Chapter Seven
The Grand Alliance
1. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 241-2. At least in the early 1930s, the Fourth Department was probably primarily interested in the United States as a base from which to collect intelligence on Germany and Japan. Mitrokhin did not have access to Fourth Department files on its American agents and did not note references to these agents in KGB files. The case against Hiss, which has been strong but controversial ever since his conviction for perjury in 1951, is now overwhelming as a result of new evidence revealed during the 1990s from the VENONA decrypts, KGB files made available to Weinstein and Vassiliev which refer to his work for military intelligence, and Hungarian interrogation records of Hiss’s fellow agent Noel Field. These sources also do much to vindicate the credibility of Hiss’s principal public accuser, the former Fourth Department courier Whittaker Ch
ambers. The best accounts of the Hiss case are the 1997 updated edition of Weinstein, Perjury, and Weinstein and Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood, chs. 2, 12.
2. Wadleigh, “Why I Spied for the Communists,” part 7, New York Post (July 19, 1949).
3. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2; vol. 6, ch. 8, part 1, n. 2.
4. Massing, This Deception, p. 155. The fact that Massing defected from the NKVD in 1938 makes her tribute to Bazarov all the more impressive.
5. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.
6. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.
7. The details in Mitrokhin’s notes on “19” (date of birth, work in the Latin American division of the State Department, later transfer to the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) clearly identify him as Duggan; vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2. By 1943, at the latest, however, Duggan’s codename had been changed to FRENK (or FRANK); VENONA, 2nd release, pp. 278-9.
8. Weinstein, Perjury, pp. 182-3.
9. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.
10. See above, p. 84.
11. Straight, After Long Silence, pp. 110, 122-3, 129-36; Newton, The Butcher’s Embrace, pp. 20-2.
12. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 240-3, 290. On Whittaker Chambers, see his memoir, Witness, and the biography by Sam Tanenhaus, Whittaker Chambers.
13. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.
14. Others recalled from the United States to be interrogated and liquidated in Moscow included the illegal CHARLIE, whose file was destroyed and whose identity is now unknown. Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3, pp. 180-1.
15. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2. Significantly, material on Morozov’s denunciation of two successive residents was among that excluded from the documents selected by the SVR for the recent study of Soviet espionage in the United States in the Stalin era by Weinstein and Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood. While obliged to acknowledge the purge of many loyal foreign intelligence officers, the SVR is generally reluctant to reveal cases where they were denounced by their own comrades. Despite such examples of SVR censorship, for which Weinstein and Vassiliev are not, of course, responsible, The Haunted Wood is a very valuable contribution to the history of Soviet intelligence operations.