by Eric Raynaud
2 Igor Prelin, interview by Sergei Kostin, March 30, 2007.
3 The date is indicated in Khinshtein’s article, “The Lubyanka Werewolf.”
4 Ibid.
Chapter 27. A Disconnected French Connection
1 Chalet, Les Visiteurs de l’ombre, 184.
2 Raymond Nart, interview by Eric Raynaud, April 7, 2009.
3 This date is based on Svetlana’s memories. Based on the investigation file, this happened shortly before Vetrov’s transfer to Irkutsk, which means in March 1983.
4 According to the investigation file, the message also contained the names of two agents working for the KGB. By doing so, Vetrov was trying to prove to his French masters that he still could provide lots of information from memory. Svetlana denies it categorically.
5 Marcel Chalet, interview by Eric Raynaud, February 5, 2003.
Chapter 28. The Cold War, Reagan, and the Strange Dr. Weiss
1 Richard V. Allen, e-mail message to Eric Raynaud, January 31, 2009.
2 Ibid.
3 See Q&A for details on Sam Donaldson’s question at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=44101 See also Martin Anderson and Annelise Anderson, Reagan’s Secret War: The Untold Story of His Fight to Save the World from Nuclear Disaster (New York: Crown Publishers, 2009), 60.
4 Richard V. Allen, interview by Eric Raynaud, March 12, 2009.
5 Richard V. Allen, “The Man Who Changed the Game Plan,” The National Interest (Summer 1996).
6 Giles Slade, Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 230 and following.
7 Ibid.
8 Gus W. Weiss, “Duping the Soviets: The Farewell Dossier,” Studies in Intelligence, #5. Available at https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/96unclass/farewell.htm. Downloaded in January 2003.
9 Studied in detail in Industrial management in a key sector of Soviet economy: The gas industry by Catherine Cauvin-Higgins (1986), University of Houston-University Park, Department of Political Science.
10 This episode is reported in various articles and books, such as Anderson and Andserson, Reagan’s Secret War, 65.
11 L’affaire Farewell: L’espion de la vengeance, documentary film by Jean-François Delassus, broadcasted on the German-French TV channel Arte in 2009.
12 For the entire paragraph, refer to General Jean Guyaux, L’Espion des Sciences. Les arcanes et les arnaques scientifiques du contre-espionnage (Paris: Flammarion, 2002), 133.
Chapter 29. The Gulag Prisoner
Sources: Vladimir Vetrov’s letters and his family’s memories.
1 Igor Prelin, interview by Sergei Kostin, March 30, 2007.
2 Khinshtein, “The Lubyanka Werewolf.”
3 Inmates have the right to petition for parole after they served half of their sentence. This point of Vetrov’s letter contradicts what he said earlier, which is not a rare occurrence with him.
4 Yasnov was a high-ranking functionary with the Moscow town council; Rogatina did not know him, for that matter. Vetrov clearly keeps looking for ways to have someone influential intervene in his favor.
5 Words from a love song by Konstantin Simonov, very popular during WWII.
6 Lyrics from a song.
7 Legendary hero of the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945), who sacrificed himself; having run out of grenades during an attack, Matrosov threw himself onto a German pillbox, blocking the machine gun with his own body to allow his unit to advance.
8 Very strong brewed tea, with a euphoriant effect similar to the effect of alcohol. It is closely associated with the prison system of Russia and is typically drunk by inmates.
9 Nina Ruslanova was a popular singer in the thirties, forties, and fifties, and a victim of Stalinist repressions.
10 Another wartime song by Konstantin Simonov.
11 Apparently, there was a temporarory tightening of the camp rules. The following line proves that Vetrov did not expect to be transferred.
12 Svetlana does not remember what this refers to.
13 It is traditional for the guests at a wedding banquet to cry out, “Gorko, gorko…” (meaning “bitter”). The newlyweds must then stand up and kiss so the food no longer taste bitter.
14 Traditional wishes at weddings, “Soviet and liubov.”
Chapter 30. Portrait of the Hero as a Murderer
1 We owe many insightful suggestions and indications to three eminent Russian experts in criminal psychology: Valentina Nikolaeva, professor in the Department of Psychology, Lomonosov University, Moscow; Sergei Enikolopov, head of the Department of Clinical Psychology at the Center for Psychological Health, at the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences; and most of all, Mikhail Kochenov, head of the Department of Psychology at the Institute of Criminology, and a member of the Commission on the Question of Amnesty under the president of the Russian Federation.
2 Incidentally, many in the KGB thought that the French were deliberately providing Vetrov with liquor which was extremely difficult to find in the Soviet Union. It supposedly increased his subordination to the DST so he could be better controlled. It is difficult to share such an opinion, since evidence shows that the more a man drinks, the more out of control he becomes. It was in the DST’s interest to keep the operation going as long as possible. If, as claimed in the KGB, “Paul” was regularly bringing Vetrov one or two bottles of hard liquor, he was acting as a “wise spouse.” Such a spouse would know that her husband, being an alcoholic, will look for, and find, something to drink. An alcoholic in withdrawal, like a drug addict, is a danger to himself and to others. So, she might as well let him drink at home. By providing Vetrov with his supply of “hooch,” the theory goes, Ferrant avoided more serious risks to Vetrov and the entire operation. Besides, we now know that those “gifts” were largely used to organize happy hours at the office and to probe PGU internal counterintelligence’s attitude toward Vetrov.
3 He played a major role in gathering intelligence about advanced weaponry and, more specifically, about nuclear weapons. Sentenced to a thirty-year imprisonment in 1957, he was exchanged in 1962 for the American U2 pilot Francis Gary Powers. See James B. Donovan, Strangers on a Bridge: The Case of Colonel Abel (New York: Atheneum, 1964).
Chapter 31. Unveiled
1 Vladimir Kryuchkov, interview by Sergei Kostin, March 29; Igor Prelin, interview by Sergei Kostin, March 30, 2007.
2 Wolton, Le KGB en France, 405–408.
3 Andrew and Gordievsky (KGB: The Inside Story, 455) claim that the French discovered the interception of diplomatic messages between Moscow and Paris thanks to Farewell’s disclosures.
4 It is interesting to see when the DST dated Vetrov’s execution. In his book Le KGB en France (p. 415), Thierry Wolton wrote that Farewell suddenly disappeared in November 1982, not to be heard from ever again. We know this is not true, since Patrick Ferrant saw him last on January 26, 1982. Likewise, Gordon Brook-Shepherd (The Storm Birds, 326) apparently had access to a DST source. His argument is clear: “The Soviet agents were expelled in early of April 1983 because, the month before, Raymond Nart and his colleagues had received firm confirmation of Farewell’s death.” Thierry Wolton (ibid.) wrote along the same lines that in early 1983, French counterintelligence had become convinced that they would not hear from Farewell ever again. This assumption is not modified in Marcel Chalet’s book Les Visiteurs de l’ombre (p. 186) despite the obvious error concerning the date of Farewell’s arrest.
What beats everything, though, is what is revealed in Guisnel and Violet’s book (Services secrets, 316). The journalists tell the story of the March 1985 TV reports covering the DST, in collaboration with the French channel TF1. The date on the famous Smirnov dossier—the very one Ameil photocopied, and three pages of which had been shown to the Soviet ambassador Afanasievsky by the French minister of foreign affairs—had been “doctored”: the French spy hunters had typed 1983 instead of 1981 to make the Soviets belie
ve that they still had a mole within the KGB. Deception is a standard technique in the test of strength between secret services. What is astounding is the following clarification, to which nobody paid attention, apparently. Explaining this setup, one of the brains behind the operation, thus a DST member, declared, “We knew Farewell had been executed in 1981.”
At the time, the affair was still classified; information leaked in the media could, therefore, only be truncated or wrong. Raymond Nart, who served as the head of the DST for the entire duration of the operation and is, therefore, the most concerned, is more nuanced. Over twenty years after the facts, Nart tried above all to restore the context: “It’s true, we were groping in the dark a little, although the Americans shed some light. Personally, I thought the mistress had betrayed Vetrov, since she was sending us documents. Some were coming from her office.”
The fact that so many contradictory dates were coming from the same source, the DST, is an indication of the state of confusion and ignorance the French counterintelligence was in with respect to its mole’s fate.
5 Vladimir Kryuchkov, interview by Sergei Kostin, March 29, 2007.
6 Igor Prelin, interview by Sergei Kostin, March 30, 2007.
7 Ibid.
8 La Taupe, Tierce and Brusini (TV film).
9 Yves Bonnet, Contre-Espionnage: Mémoires d’un patron de la DST (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 2000), 94.
10 Raymond Nart, interview by Eric Raynaud, February 3, 2003.
11 For this entire episode, the source is an interview with Madeleine and Patrick Ferrant conducted by Eric Raynaud on January 29, 2003.
12 Still out of scrupulousness, we report here about another possible source of Farewell’s downfall. If, one day, his involvement in this affair is confirmed, it will only prove the large-scale operation launched by the KGB, even if the three proofs already gathered were sufficient to confound Vetrov.
Karavashkin, the former head of the France section in KGB counterintelligence, is convinced that there was also a leak within the CIA. The American department dealing with Soviet counterintelligence was surprisingly well informed about the Farewell case. Indeed, Vetrov could have been denounced by Edward Lee Howard (see Molehunt, 294, 298). Recruited by the KGB, Howard was then implanted in the Soviet section of the CIA in 1981. The KGB has never officially admitted to it. However, defector Vitaly Yurchenko’s testimony, and the excellent organization of Howard’s exfiltration, confirm it beyond any shadow of a doubt. Howard was supposed to be appointed to the CIA station in Moscow, but he failed the polygraph tests (lie detector). Fired, he was placed under FBI surveillance. In 1985, he managed to fool his tailers and fled to the Soviet Union. Howard claims that in 1981–1983, he knew of two CIA agents in the USSR, but did not know their identity (see article by Leonid Kolosov about Howard in the Russian monthly journal Sovershenno Sekretno [Top Secret] N°6/1995, p. 15). In 1989, in another confession to an American journalist (David Wise, The Spy Who Got Away, New York: Random House, 1988), Howard asserted he did not pass secrets to the KGB prior October 1983; at that time Vetrov had already been uncovered by Soviet counterintelligence. Assuming Howard told the truth, and nothing proves otherwise, since in 1989 he had already fled to Moscow, it is very doubtful that he contributed to Vetrov’s identification. Leonid Kolosov, however, who was less a journalist than he was a former PGU officer, declared in an interview with Sergei Kostin on August 29, 1995, that Howard had denounced a dozen Soviet CIA informants (the fact that arrests of Western moles within the PGU in the eighties were caused by Howard’s disclosures has been confirmed by Oleg Kalugin, Proshchai, Lubyanka [Farewell, Lubyanka], Moscow: Olimp, 1995, 194). This figure is more in line with the scandal caused by Howard’s defection. The director of central intelligence, William Casey, was forced to resign, while Howard himself was sentenced to the electric chair in absentia.
13 Chalet, Les Visiteurs de l’ombre, 220.
14 Wolton, Le KGB en France, 258.
15 Khinshtein, “The Lubyanka Werewolf.”
Chapter 32. The Game Is Up
1 Valery Dmitrievich Sergadeev was still alive when Kostin was investigating the case, but unfortunately he declined to meet with the journalist.
2 Igor Prelin, interview by Sergei Kostin, March 30, 2007.
3 Anecdotally, here is another authentic episode demonstrating the efficiency of these tactics.
Sometime later, in January 1986, Vladimir Kryuchkov invited foreign intelligence executives to a meeting. This was after the Ames scandal broke in the United States, and after two KGB officers from the USA department were uncovered as a consequence of Vetrov’s disclosures. The biggest of the two Yasenevo meeting rooms had been chosen. Kryuchkov declared in plain language, “I must tell you that we are about to expose traitors in our ranks. I even know some are in attendance here. I would like to warn them before it’s too late. Change your mind. Come see me and confess, make amends. If you do, I guarantee you to spare your life. But if you don’t, you’ll be executed.” Only one officer, a certain Yuzhin, operating in the United States and collaborating with the CIA, went to see his boss. Kryuchkov kept his word: Yuzhin was sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment. He served eight before being pardoned by President Yeltsin.
4 See the title, catering to the French public, in the article by Philippe Labi in VSD magazine: “La taupe du KGB qui aimait trop la France” [The KGB mole who liked France too much].
5 Igor Prelin, interview by Sergei Kostin, March 30, 2007.
6 Khinshtein, “The Lubyanka Werewolf.”
7 See Pierre Marion, La mission impossible: À la tête des services secrets (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1991), 59: “It is rumored that Farewell would be living happily ever after with his wife in Leningrad.”
8 See the barely romanticized account by Daniil Koretsky, former police boss for the Rostov-on-Don region, in Privesti v ispolnenie [Executive Action] (Saint Petersburg: Ed. VIS, 1995).
9 In the mid-eighties, a shady businessman from Roston-on-Don, a decorated veteran, died in a camp from an illness. His son illegally bought his body back, heavily greasing the camp management’s palm. He gave his father a funeral with great ceremony in the cemetery Heroes Alley and erected a magnificent monument for his tomb. When the story broke, it caused a huge scandal. The entire Soviet prison system felt threatened. If inmates were to obtain a single right, if only the right to a personal grave, they could ask for more!
Chapter 33. “The Network”
1 Vadim Kirpichenko, “Les traîtres dans le renseignement: Anatomie d’un phénomène,” article in Les nouvelles du renseignement et du contre-espionnage, Nºs 3–4, 1995.
2 Nikolai S. Leonov, Likholetie [Troublesome Time] (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye Otnosheniya, 1995), 281–284.
3 Oleg Kalugin, Proshchai, Lubyanka (Moscow: Olimp, 1995), 194. Igor Prelin (interview by Sergei Kostin, March 27, 2007) reported a typical story involving this same Kalugin. In the mid-seventies Prelin, along with two of his subordinates, went to see the head of internal counterintelligence following a failed operation. Only four people knew about it: two in Yasenevo, and two in the target country; the rezident and his deputy. Prelin and his men wanted to launch an internal investigation. “Wait,” replied Kalugin, “surely, you’re not insinuating there may be traitors among our officers?!” In everyone’s mind, intelligence officers were the most dedicated men, “of crystal honesty,” as the expression goes.
4 On the Yurchenko case, see the journalistic investigation by Vladimir Snegiryov in the journal Trud, issues dated August 13, 15, and 18, 1992.
5 Kalugin, Proshchai, Lubyanka, 228.
6 Ibid., 227–228.
7 Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story, 645; Kalugin, Proshchai, Lubyanka, 238.
8 See Chalet, Les Visiteurs de l’ombre, 186, and Gordievsky, Le KGB dans le monde, 622 [KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev].
9 Igor Prelin, interview by Sergei Kostin, March 30, 2007.
Chapter 34. The Farewell Affai
r Under the Magnifying Glass of the KGB and DST
1 Vladimir Kryuchkov, interview by Sergei Kostin, March 29, 2007.
2 He was at the time an army general (four stars), KGB first deputy chairman, and head of the Fifth Chief Directorate. Although somehow respected for being a veteran, Bobkov was not a hero in the eyes of intelligence officers because his action was aimed at repressing dissidents and other “anti-Soviet elements.”
3 Refers to the conspiracy by French, British, and American diplomats and secret agents to overthrow the Bolshevik regime in 1918. French ambassador in Moscow, Joseph Noulens, General Consul Fernand Grenard, military attaché General Lavergne, and other French individuals took part in this adventure which was, to a great extent, a manipulation by the Soviet secret services. See Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev (New York, HarperCollins, 1990).
4 There are also Vetrov’s personal file, work file, and an operational file documenting his espionage activity, with the name of agents, clarifying episodes that had remained obscure in the investigation file, and so forth. Besides being top secret, those documents are strictly internal to the PGU. Even to the Military Chamber of the USSR Supreme Court, supposed to investigate the espionage case, the PGU sent only a sanitized version of the investigation Department 5K had conducted for its own purposes. This version contained no information revealing how the PGU had learned about Vetrov’s collaboration with the DST, and no clues to the working climate in the service that would have explained his treason.