Their man in Moscow

_ Oleg Gordievsky SPYMASTER: MY 32 YEARS IN INTELLIGENCE AND ESPIONAGE AGAINST THE WEST by Oleg Kalugin Smith Gryphon, £15.99, pp. 262 Ihave known Oleg Kalugin for almost 20 years. When I first met him in the corridors of KGB headquarters he was only 40 years Old,but already a general, head of the foreign counter-intelligence, one of the most sinister departments at the KGB. I witnessed how in 1980, as a result of envy and internal intrigues, he was moved from foreign intelligence to the KGB depart- ment for Leningrad, which for him was like being exiled to Siberia. He served to full pensionable age, whereupon his relations with the KGB irrevocably broke down and he began to attack it, crossing over to the democrat camp. The communist regime and a vengeful KGB stripped him of his title of general, deprived him of his pension and inflicted surveillance and slander cam- paigns on him. Kalugin sided with Yeltsin, and after his victory in 1991, the latter returned Kalugin his title and pension. As I read this book I found myself asking many questions: what were the activities of Kalugin's department, and what were the results of its work against the USA and Britain? How effective was the KGB between 1970 and 1980, and to what extent was it uncorrupt? How strong were Kalug- in's democratic and liberal feelings and if he is a typical 'born-again democrat', what is the nature of Russia's new regime, made up as it is of people such as Kalugin? To all of these questions I found eloquent and exhaustive answers.

Kalugin, already a KGB officer, spent some time in America as a Fullbright Exchange student in 1958. By 1960 he was a full member and at the end of the 1960s was second in the KGB hierarchy in the US. In 1967 he organised, albeit indirectly, but in the capacity of supervisor, the recruitment of John Walker. It has to be said that Kalugin considers him to be 'one of the most daring and damaging American spies in the history of the Cold War'. The amount of information obtained from him was 'staggering', documents concerning the activity of the US Atlantic Fleet, the Unit- ed States codes, documents from the CIA and the State Department. Kalugin organ- ised the work with Walker as well as the transferral of his materials and compiled reports on their content. He also distin- guished himself by managing to organise 'a brazen attempt' to bug the House Armed Service Committee.

He was spurred on by his promotion to general on his return to Moscow and soon became the head of the foreign counter- intelligence department. The years spent serving in this capacity were the most important of Kalugin's life. The young gen- eral turned his talent and energy towards the destruction of the fabric of American society, in particular its intelligence com- munity. His years of study in America and service in New York and Washington do not appear to have caused any softening of his anti-Western views. He sent hundreds of his officers to recruit CIA officials at any price and himself travelled to India, Aus- tria and Finland with the same aim in mind. Fortunately for the US, most of the attempts to win over Americans were unsuccessful. Nevertheless, the author boasts that during his time at the KGB it succeeded in infiltrating the secret services of Canada, Australia, France and Scandi- navia. And as for his own personal friends And I was only unfaithful after the marriage had irretrievably broken down.' the Stasi officers, they, under the leader- ship of the brilliant Marcus Wolf (who was more intelligent by far than any Soviet boss), were able to bring the KGB any government secrets from West Germany, at the same time giving Kalugin detailed accounts to read of their sexual encounters with West German secretaries, which they set up to further their espionage activities.

Having encountered serious difficulties with the recruitment of Western govern- ment officials, Kalugin and his department were attracted by the widespread corrup- tion of officials in the third world. Of India, for example, he writes:

It seemed like the entire country was for sale — using bribes, confidential ties, and liberal financing of election campaigns, the KGB played an important role in keeping India among the Soviet Union's friends.

Kalugin's other dirty tricks included the setting up of honeytraps, double agents and preparing to murder defectors from the KGB and GRU (military intelligence). True, Andropov at the last minute decided against giving permission for these mur- ders. But in 1975 Kalugin was allowed to kidnap a deserter: the former naval officer Nikolai Artamonov. However, when this operation had been carried out and he was being illegally transported from Austria to Czechoslovakia, the poor man died from an overdose of sedatives which the kidnap- pers had injected into him. This had not been planned, and Kalugin was not pleased.

He managed to get a lot done in his work on Britain. However, he admits that after the KGB officer Oleg Lyatin switched to the side of London in 1971 and more than 100 Soviet spies were expelled, 'our intelli- gence gathering activities in England suf- fered ,a blow from which they never recovered'. He consoles himself with the thought that 'our strength in other coun- tries helped make up for that loss'.

Kalugin considers his most important service while working in this position to be the rehabilitation of Kim Philby. When he first met him he was

a wreck of a man, reeking of vodka, who mumbled something unintelligible to me in atrocious, slurred Russian.

Kalugin improved his material position, finding him meaningful work. Philby became especially valuable whenever the work concerned dirty tricks, helping forge CIA and State Department documents. Soon Philby was drinking less and begin- ning to feel useful again. Kalugin was pleased with this, but disappointed that he did not manage to persuade Andropov to make Philby a general.

When Kalugin met Maclean he found him

a bitter, acid-tongued man battling alcoholism, personal demons, and disillusion- ment with life in the Soviet Union.

He managed to help even him.

He also met George Blake. He found him a shy, religious man. Less sophisticated than the other British defectors, he felt content, drank little and had a loving wife and son. Studying the files on Blake, Kalu- gin found out that the Irishman Sean Burke, who had helped Blake escape from prison, had practically been killed by order of KGB high command. He was in the USSR in the 1960s, but was thoroughly dis- illusioned with his life there and wanted to leave. The KGB, not wanting Burke to be available for questioning by British intelli- gence, gave him a brain-damaging drug. Soon after his return to England he died from a stroke. Kalugin and Blake were to become family friends.

Another 'exploit' concerning Britain was the assassination in London in 1978 of the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov. Kalug- in clearly has mixed feelings about this affair. On the one hand, it seems he did not want the truth about the crime to become public knowledge. He writes angrily of the defector from his department, Vitali Yurchenko, who in 1985 revealed to the West the background to the assassination of Markov, the disappearance of Arta- monov and other information. On the other hand, he is too vain a man to deny his involvement in such a well-publicised scandal. Clearly, this is why he gave a boastful interview to the Mail on Sunday in the spring of 1993 about his role in organis- ing the murder of the Bulgarian dissident.

The newspaper came to the conclusion that his was the central role in the affair, and on the basis of their publication Scot- land Yard arrested him on 30 October 1993 at Heathrow Airport when he was in London for an appearance on Panorama. The charge was conspiracy to murder. Kalugin was handcuffed and taken to a police station where he was strip-searched and spent the night in a cell. The following day he was questioned by Superintendent Bird, as a result of which the decision was taken that he would not be charged in the Markov case. Kalugin felt 'cold anger' and protested at the 'heavy-handed tactics of the police'. What a pity that he did not think back a few years to the night when his people were shoving Artamonov into a car in a dark street in Vienna and pressing a chloroformed cloth to his face.

The London episode must have fright- ened Kalugin, as he takes great pains in his book to prove that his role in the organisa- tion of the assassination was peripheral. He heaps most of the blame on the KGB high command and on one Sergei Golubyev, who ordered the poison for the weapon (the famous umbrella), took both poison and umbrella to Sofia, and instructed the Bulgarians how to operate. I know Gol- ubyev well. It was he, when I was seized by the KGB in 1985, who laced my food with a powerful truth serum and questioned me for the next five hours. He is a cowardly, insignificant man who, being answerable to Kalugin, would not dare do anything with- out his permission or on his instructions. After the 'physical removal' of Markov, Kalugin received a hunting rifle from the head of the Bulgarian KGB. He neglects to mention whether or not he received an Order of the Red Banner on this occasion, as he had done after the kidnapping of Artamonov.

Although Kalugin had, throughout his long career, been by no means the least (and indeed, possibly the most) firm and conscientious defender of the communist system and opponent of the West, he was on the whole undervalued by a KGB who did not understand him. During the era of Brezhnevite stagnation, the Soviet system rested on grey mediocrities and rejected non-mediocrities who shone. Young, intel- ligent and successful, he aroused jealousy and suspicion in the bureaucrats. Not suprisingly, he ended up in conflict with the head of espionage at the KGB, Vladimir Kruchkov, who was later to play an impor- tant role, having become head of the KGB, directing the coup in August 1991 against Gorbachev and Yeltsin.

It would be an understatement to say that Kalugin did not like Kruchkov. In his words, nobody in the KGB was as 'schem- ing, slippery and duplicitous' as Kruchkov. He was 'a wily communist party bureaucrat with little business being in intelligence', and also a coward in the face of physical danger. How did such a mall pluck up the courage for a coup against the President? The author's view is that he considered himself to be in no danger, with the sup- port of the military and police depart- ments, and 'he was genuinely appalled by the continuing collapse of the Soviet Empire that he felt he had no choice but to act'.

Why did Gorbachev trust and promote Kruchkov? Because both were Andropov's men, their careers owing much to his patronage, and besides, provincial commu- nist apparatchiks like Gorbachev 'tradition- ally placed great faith in the KGB, viewing the organisation as an astute shaper and interpreter of events'.

At the same time Kalugin is most effec- tive at debunking the myth that Andropov was a secret liberal and reformer. Knowing a good deal about Kruchkov, Andropov and other figures in the KGB, I can only agree with their characterisation as given by Kalugin.

It's your wife. She wants the last word.' Finding himself in a position of virtual exile as a high-ranking official in the Leningrad KGB, Kalugin did all he could to return to his former roles. But the sys- tem had already spurned him. He served to full pensionable age, then allied himself with the emerging democratic groups and declared war on the KGB. It goes without saying that he, like other Soviet `democrats', rebelled only when the gov- ernment (ie Gorbachev) allowed them to rebel in 1989. During the turbulent years of revolutionary change, 1989-1991, Kalugin made a name for himself with the public both in Russia and abroad as a 'people's deputy' opposed to communist power, a severe critic of the KGB, and a victim of slander and harassment by the secret police.

It is with this reputation that Kalugin travels the world, appearing on television in America and Europe. But many people in Russia and elsewhere frequently express their doubts: can this Kalugin really be trusted? Why are so many things he says left unfinished? Why is he so inconsistent in his criticism of the KGB? Maybe his appearances are simply a KGB publicity stunt?

Spymaster gives the answer. Yes, Kalugin is perfectly sincere, but there is very little of the democrat or liberal about him. On the other hand, he has a great fondness for the old KGB, in which he was young and successful, and a great hatred for the KGB of recent times, which did not value him. Even now, in a book written in 1994, when the whole world knows about the crimes of communism, he admits to liking the Englishmen and Americans who worked for the KGB and holds in contempt those Soviet officers who risked their lives to help the West. He boasts that in his time as head of foreign espionage there were only two defections, and says with quiet glee that after him the number of defectors (he, incidentally, calls them 'turncoats') grew into a rapid flow. He speaks with pride of his success in strengthening espionage against the West and the CIA, and with a feeling of satisfaction writes about the execution of CIA contacts in Moscow, betrayed by American traitors. He identi- fies the KGB with the Russian people, as official Soviet propaganda always did, and regrets the fact that Andropov refused him permission to murder defectors abroad. The inevitable conclusion is that Kalugin crossed over to the democratic camp and started criticising the KGB for revenge and from wounded vanity. If there is a path which a former Soviet official must tread to change his psychology from communist autocrat to liberal democrat, then Kalugin has not even managed to go half way clown it. But neither has it been completed by the vast majority of contemporary Russian democrats. And it is for this reason that Russia is experiencing far greater difficul- ties with democratisation than any other East European country.