The Sword and the Shield Read online

  The Sword and the Shield

  Christopher Andrew

  Vasili Mitrokhin

  The Sword and the Shield is based on one of the most extraordinary intelligence coups of recent times: a secret archive of top-level KGB documents smuggled out of the Soviet Union which the FBI has described, after close examination, as the “most complete and extensive intelligence ever received from any source.” Its presence in the West represents a catastrophic hemorrhage of the KGB’s secrets and reveals for the first time the full extent of its worldwide network.

  Vasili Mitrokhin, a secret dissident who worked in the KGB archive, smuggled out copies of its most highly classified files every day for twelve years. In 1992, a U.S. ally succeeded in exfiltrating the KGB officer and his entire archive out of Moscow. The archive covers the entire period from the Bolshevik Revolution to the 1980s and includes revelations concerning almost every country in the world. But the KGB’s main target, of course, was the United States.

  Though there is top-secret material on almost every country in the world, the United States is at the top of the list. As well as containing many fascinating revelations, this is a major contribution to the secret history of the twentieth century.

  Among the topics and revelations explored are:

  • The KGB’s covert operations in the United States and throughout the West, some of which remain dangerous today.

  • KGB files on Oswald and the JFK assassination that Boris Yeltsin almost certainly has no intention of showing President Clinton.

  • The KGB’s attempts to discredit civil rights leader in the 1960s, including its infiltration of the inner circle of a key leader.

  • The KGB’s use of radio intercept posts in New York and Washington, D.C., in the 1970s to intercept high-level U.S. government communications.

  • The KGB’s attempts to steal technological secrets from major U.S. aerospace and technology corporations.

  • KGB covert operations against former President Ronald Reagan, which began five years before he became president.

  • KGB spies who successfully posed as U.S. citizens under a series of ingenious disguises, including several who attained access to the upper echelons of New York society.

  Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin

  THE SWORD AND THE SHIELD

  The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB

  IN MEMORY OF “MA”

  ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS

  AFSA — Armed Forces Security [SIGINT] Agency [USA]

  AKEL — Cyprus Communist Party Amtorg American-Soviet Trading Corporation, New York

  ASA — Army Security [SIGINT] Agency [USA]

  AVH — Hungarian security and intelligence agency

  AVO — predecessor of AVH

  BfV — FRG security service

  BND — FRG foreign intelligence agency

  CDU — Christian Democratic Union [FRG]

  Cheka — All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage: predecessor KGB (1917-22)

  CIA — Central Intelligence Agency [USA]

  COCOM — Coordinating Committee for East-West Trade

  Comecon — [Soviet Bloc] Council for Mutual Economic Aid Comintern Communist International

  CPC — Christian Peace Conference

  CPC — Communist Party of Canada

  CPCz — Communist Party of Czechoslovakia

  CPGB — Communist Party of Great Britain

  CPSU — Communist Party of the Soviet Union

  CPUSA — Communist Party of the United States of America

  CSU — Christian Social Union [FRG: ally of CDU]

  DCI — Director of Central Intelligence [USA]

  DGS — Portuguese security service

  DGSE — French foreign intelligence service

  DIA — Defense Intelligence Agency [USA]

  DLB — dead letter-box

  DRG — Soviet sabotage and intelligence group

  DS — Bulgarian security and intelligence service

  DST — French security service

  F Line — “Special Actions” department in KGB residencies

  FAPSI — Russian (post-Soviet) SIGINT agency

  FBI — Federal Bureau of Investigation [USA]

  FCD — First Chief [Foreign Intelligence] Directorate, KGB

  FCO — Foreign and Commonwealth Office [UK]

  FRG — Federal Republic of Germany

  GCHQ — Government Communications Head-Quarters [British SIGINT Agency]

  GDR — German Democratic Republic

  GPU — Soviet security and intelligence service (within NKVD, 1922-3)

  GRU — Soviet Military Intelligence

  GUGB — Soviet security and intelligence service (within NKVD, 1943-43)

  Gulag — Labour Camps Directorate

  HUMINT — intelligence from human sources (espionage)

  HVA — GDR foreign intelligence service

  ICBM — intercontinental ballistic missile

  IMINT — imagery intelligence

  INO — foreign intelligence department of Cheka/GPU/OGPU/ GUGB, 1920-1941; predecessor of INU

  INU — foreign intelligence directorate of NKGB/GUGB/MGB, 1941-54; predecessor of FCD

  IRA — Irish Republican Army

  JIC — Joint Intelligence Committee [UK]

  K-231 — club of former political prisoners jailed under Article 231 of the Czechoslovak criminal code

  KAN — Club of Non-Party Activists [Czechoslovakia]

  KGB — Soviet security and intelligence service (1954-1991)

  KHAD — Afghan security service

  KI — Soviet foreign intelligence agency, initially combining foreign intelligence directorates of MGB and GRU (1947-51)

  KKE — Greek Communist Party

  KKE-es — breakaway Eurocommunist Greek Communist Party

  KOR — Workers Defence Committee [Poland]

  KPÖ — Austrian Communist Party

  KR Line — Counter-intelligence department in KGB residencies

  LLB — live letter box

  MGB — Soviet Ministry of State Security (1946-54)

  MGIMO — Moscow State Institute for International Relations

  MI5 — British security service

  MI6 — alternative designation for SIS [UK]

  MOR — Monarchist Association of Central Russia (“The Trust”)

  N Line — Illegal support department in KGB residencies

  NATO — North Atlantic Treaty Organization

  NKGB — People’s Commisariat for State Security (Soviet security and intelligence service, 1941 and 1943-6)

  NKVD — People’s Commisariat for Internal Affairs (incorporated state security, 1922-3, 1934-43)

  NSA — National Security [SIGINT] Agency [USA]

  NSC — National Security Council [USA]

  NSZRiS — People’s [anti-Bolshevik] Union for Defence of Country and Freedom

  NTS — National Labour Alliance (Soviet émigré social-democratic movement)

  Okhrana — Tsarist security service, 1881-1917

  OMS — Comintern International Liaison Department

  OSS — Office of Strategic Services [USA]

  OT — Operational Technical Support (FCD)

  OUN — Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists

  OZNA — Yugoslav security and intelligence service

  PCF — French Communist Party

  PCI — Italian Communist Party

  PCP — Portuguese Communist Party

  PFLP — Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine

  PIDE — Portuguese Liberation Organization

  PLO — Palestine Liberation
Organization

  POUM — Workers Unification Party (Spanish Marxist Trotskyist Party in 1930s)

  PR Line — political intelligence department in KGB residences

  PSOE — Spanish Socialist Party

  PUWP — Polish United Workers [Communist] Party

  RCMP — Royal Canadian Mounted Police

  ROVS — [White] Russian Combined Services Union

  RYAN — Raketno-Yadernoye Napadenie (Nuclear Missile Attack)

  SALT — Strategic Arms Limitation Talks

  SAM — Soviet surface-to-air missile

  SB — Polish Security and intelligence service

  SCD — Second Chief [Internal Security and Counter-Intelligence] Directorate, KGB

  SDECE — French foreign intelligence service; predecessor of DGSE

  SDI — Strategic Defense Initiative (‘Star Wars’)

  SED — Socialist Unity [Communist] Party [GDR]

  SIGINT — intelligence derived from interception and analysis of signals

  SIS — Secret Intelligence Service [UK]

  SK Line — Soviet colony department in KGB residencies

  SKP — Communist Party of Finland

  SOE — Special Operations Executive [UK]

  SPD — Social Democratic Party [FRG]

  Spetsnaz — Soviet special forces

  SR — Socialist Revolutionary

  S&T — scientific and technological intelligence

  Stapo — Austrian police security service

  Stasi — GDR Ministry of State Security

  Stavka — Wartime Soviet GHQ/high command

  StB — Czechoslovak security and intelligence service

  SVR — Russian (post-Soviet) foreign intelligence service

  TUC — Trades Union Congress [UK]

  UAR — United Arab Republic

  UB — Polish security and intelligence service; predecessor of SB

  UDBA — Yugoslav security and intelligence service; successor to OZNA

  VPK — Soviet Military Industrial Commission

  VVR — Supreme Military Council [anti-Bolshevik Ukranian underground]

  WCC — World Council of Churches

  WPC — World Peace Council

  X Line — S&T department in KGB residencies

  THE EVOLUTION OF THE KGB, 1917-1991

  The term KGB is used both generally to denote the Soviet State Security organisation throughout its history since its foundation as the Cheka in 1917 and, more specifically, to refer to State Security after 1954 when it took its final name.

  THE TRANSLITERATION OF RUSSIAN NAMES

  We have followed a simplified version of the method used by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names and BBC Monitering Service. Simplifications include the substitution of “y” for “iy” in surnames (Trotsky rather than Trotskiy) and of “i” for “iy” in first names (Yuri rather than Yuriy). The “y” between the letters “i” and/or “e” is omitted (for example, Andreev and Dmitrievich—not Andreyev and Dmitriyevich), as is the apostrophe used to signify a soft sign.

  In cases where a mildly deviant English version of a well-known Russian name has become firmly established, we have retained that version, for example: Beria, Evdokia (Petrova), Izvestia, Joseph (Stalin), Khrushchev, Nureyev and the names of Tsars.

  FOREWORD

  I have written this book in consultation with Vasili Mitrokhin, based on the extensive top secret material (described in Chapter 1) which he has smuggled out from the KGB foreign intelligence archive. For the past quarter of a century, Mitrokhin has passionately wanted this material, which for twelve years he risked his life to assemble, to see the light of day. He wished to reveal “how thin the thread of peace actually was during the Cold War.” From that passion this book has been born. I have felt it my duty to ensure that this material, which offers detailed and often unique insights into the workings of the Soviet State and the history of the Soviet Union, achieves the level of public awareness and recognition that it deserves.

  Like all archives, those of the KGB require interpretation in the light of previous research and related documents. The end notes and bibliography provide full details of the additional sources used to place Mitrokhin’s revelations in historical context. These sources also provide overwhelming corroborative evidence for his genuineness as a source.

  Codenames (also known as “worknames” in the case of KGB officers) appear in the text in capitals. Many KGB codenames were used more than once. In such cases, the text and index make clear which individual is referred to. It is also important to note that, although certain individuals were targeted by the KGB, and may have been given codenames, this does not mean that the persons named were conscious or witting agents or sources—or even that they were aware that they were being targeted for recruitment or political influence operations. Similarly, the fact that an individual may have endorsed a position that was favorable to the Soviet Union does not necessarily mean that this person was working as an agent, or agent of influence, for the KGB. The KGB frequently gave prominent policymakers codenames in order to protect the identity of their targets, and to order recruited KGB agents to target such individuals.

  For legal reasons, some of the Soviet agents identified in KGB files can be referred to in this book only by their codenames. In a limited number of cases, chiefly because of the risk of prejudicing a possible prosecution, no reference can be made to them at all. These omissions do not, so far as I am aware, significantly affect the main conclusions of any chapter.

  Christopher Andrew

  INTRODUCTION TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION

  On October 17, 1995, I was invited to the post-modern London headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service (better known as SIS or MI6) at Vauxhall Cross on the banks of the Thames to be briefed on one of the most remarkable intelligence coups of the late twentieth century. SIS told me how in 1992 it had exfiltrated from Russia a retired senior KGB archivist, Vasili Mitrokhin, his family and six large cases of top-secret material from the KGB’s foreign intelligence archive. Mitrokhin’s staggering feat in noting KGB files almost every working day for a period of twelve years and smuggling his notes out of its foreign intelligence headquarters at enormous personal risk is probably unique in intelligence history. When I first saw Mitrokhin’s archive a few weeks after the briefing, both its scope and secrecy took my breath away. It contained important new material on KGB operations around the world. The only European countries absent from the archive were the pocket states of Andorra, Monaco and Liechtenstein. (There was, however, some interesting material on San Marino.) It was clear that Mitrokhin had had access to even the most highly classified KGB files — among them those which gave the real identities and “legends” of the Soviet “illegals” living under deep cover abroad disguised as foreign nationals.[1]

  Soon after my first examination of the archive, I met Vasili Mitrokhin over tea in a conference room at SIS headquarters and discussed collaborating with him in a history based on his material. Mitrokhin said little about himself. Indeed it later required some persuasion to convince him that it was worth including his own story at the beginning of our book. But Mitrokhin was passionate about his archive and anxious that as much of it as possible be used to expose the record of the KGB.

  Early in 1996 Mitrokhin and his family paid their first visit to Cambridge University, where I am Professor of Modern and Contemporary History. I met them outside the Porters’ Lodge at Corpus Christi College, of which I’m a Fellow, and we had lunch together in a private room overlooking the medieval Old Court (the oldest complete court in Cambridge). After lunch we went to the College Hall to look at what is believed to be the only surviving portrait of the College’s first spy and greatest writer — the Elizabethan dramatist Christopher Marlowe, who had been killed in a pub brawl in 1593 at the age of only twenty-nine, probably while working for the secret service of Queen Elizabeth I. Then we walked along the Backs through King’s and Clare colleges to visit Trinity and Trinity Hall, the colleges of the
KGB’s best-known British recruits, the “Magnificent Five,” some of whose files Mitrokhin had noted.[2] Mitrokhin had long ago mastered the art of being inconspicuous. The friends and colleagues whom we met as we walked round Cambridge did not give him a second glance.

  In March 1996 the then Foreign Secretary, Malcolm Rifkind, gave approval in principle (later confirmed by his successor, Robin Cook) for me to write a book based on Mitrokhin’s extraordinary archive.[3] For the next three and a half years, because the archive was still classified, I was able to discuss none of it with colleagues in Corpus Christi College and the Cambridge History Faculty-or even to reveal the nature of the book that I was writing. In Britain at least, the secret of the Mitrokhin archive was remarkably well kept. Until The Mitrokhin Archive went to the publishers, who also successfully avoided leaks, the secret was known, outside the intelligence community, only to a small number of senior ministers and civil servants. Tony Blair was first briefed on Mitrokhin while Leader of the Opposition in January 1995. Three years later, as Prime Minister, he endorsed the publication project.[4]

  The secret of the Mitrokhin archive was less rigorously preserved by some of Britain’s allies. But though there were a few partial leaks by foreign governments and intelligence agencies which had been given access to parts of the archive, none had much resonance in Britain. In December 1998, I received out of the blue a phone call from a German journalist who had discovered both the codename by which Mitrokhin was known in Germany and the contents of some fragments of Mitrokhin’s German material. He told me he knew I was completing a first volume based on the Mitrokhin archive and had already planned a second. For the next few months I expected the story to break in the British press. Somewhat to my surprise, it did not do so.

  On Saturday, September 11, 1999, after three and a half years of secrecy and silence, The Mitrokhin Archive suddenly became front-page news when serialization began in The Times. Between Friday night and Saturday morning I moved from a long period in which I had not talked at all about The Mitrokhin Archive in public to a month in which I seemed to talk about little else. Unsurprisingly, the revelations which captured media attention were human-interest stories about Soviet spies in Britain rather than the more important but less parochial disclosures about KGB operations against NATO as a whole and against democratic dissent within the Soviet Bloc. Hitherto the media stereotype of a major Soviet spy in Britain, modeled on Kim Philby and his friends, had been of a bright but subversive Cambridge graduate, preferably from a good public school and with an exotic sex life. In September 1999 the stereotype changed almost overnight with Mitrokhin’s unmasking of Melita Norwood, an 87-year-old great-grandmother from Bexleyheath memorably described by The Times as “The Spy Who Came In from the Co-op” (where, for ideological reasons, she does most of her shopping), as the longest-serving of all Soviet spies in Britain.