0465014453-Kalugin.qxd 11/24/08 10:25 AM Page i SPYMASTER 0465014453-Kalugin.qxd 11/24/08 10:25 AM Page ii This page intentionally left blank 0465014453-Kalugin.qxd 11/24/08 10:25 AM Page iii SPYMASTER My Thirty-two Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West OLEG KALUGIN Basic Books A Member of the Perseus Books Group 0465014453-Kalugin.qxd 11/24/08 10:25 AM Page iv Copyright © 2009 by Oleg Kalugin Published by Basic Books, A Member of the Perseus Books Group Originally published in 1994 in the United States by St. Martin’s Press as The First Directorate Published in 1994 in the United Kingdom by Smyth Gryphon as Spymaster All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Basic Books, 387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016-8810. 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ISBN-13: 978-0-465-01445-3 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0465014453-Kalugin.qxd 12/3/08 12:52 PM Page v CONTENTS PROLOGUE vii 1 A Stalinist Boyhood 1 2 Initiation 9 3 America 27 4 Washington Station 65 5 Philby 135 6 The Spy Game 167 7 Collision 271 8 Exile 335 9 Rebirth 385 10 KGB on the Run 417 EPILOGUE 435 INDEX 449 v 0465014453-Kalugin.qxd 11/24/08 10:25 AM Page vi This page intentionally left blank 0465014453-Kalugin.qxd 11/24/08 10:25 AM Page vii PROLOGUE The ones whose souls and hearts are filled with high purpose, these are living ones. VICTOR HUGO The sun was going down as I finished my meal in a posh eatery on the edge of Montego Bay in eastern Maryland. Mesmerized by the changing glow of the sunset, I fell into a pensive mood, sad and yet inwardly con- tent. My thoughts wandered to my youthful years and then returned to the chores of my new life. Matthew Arnold’s lines of poetry, recalled from yesteryear, cheered me: “Is it so small a thing to have enjoyed the sun, to have lived light in the spring, to have loved, to have thought, to have done?” My journey through time is not over, and yet ...My God! Did I ever think or imagine that I, a devout Communist and KGB general, would turn against the Soviet system, confront and challenge it openly, and then come to live in America and stay here for the rest of my life? How did it happen? Why? In the summer of 1959, I found myself in New York City, having just completed a year of study at Columbia Journalism School. For a twenty-four-year-old Soviet kid, it had been a dream year, capped by a vii 0465014453-Kalugin.qxd 11/24/08 10:25 AM Page viii viii PROLOGUE three-week trip across America. My presence in the United States at the height of the cold war had generated a lot of interest. The New York Times even wrote a profile of me entitled “A Popular Russian.” The piece described me as “a real personality kid” and went on to say that I was the son of a Leningrad city clerk and was chosen for the Fulbright student exchange by my professors at Leningrad University and “Soviet educational authorities.” I had to chuckle, of course. It was all a lie. The Soviet educational establishment had not sent me to America for a year. The KGB had. I was not, as the article described, a bright young Soviet journalist. I was a green KGB officer, the son of a man who also had worked for the Soviet secret police. And in August 1959, I was on the verge of plunging into my first espionage case, a tangled affair that would launch my career in the spy game but would later re- turn to haunt me, eventually leading to a falling out with the KGB. That August, just a few weeks before my return to the USSR, Soviet officials asked me to host an exhibit of Soviet achievements in technol- ogy and culture. I was happy to do it, in part for the money, but also be- cause I was a true believer in Communism and the Soviet cause. It was the peak of Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s liberalization of Soviet society. Our military might was growing, and our sciences were roaring ahead. Just two years before, we had launched the world’s first satellite, Sputnik. This achievement convinced us and the world that we were closing fast on Khrushchev’s oft stated goal of catching and overtaking America. The exhibit at the Columbus Circle Coliseum on 59th Street fea- tured luxurious Soviet limousines, the latest furs, fashionable footwear, and row upon row of radios, tape recorders, and cameras. I knew the show was something of a Potemkin village, but I overlooked that and figured it would demonstrate to America what the Soviet Union, just fourteen years after the war that had devastated our coun- try, was capable of doing. I was assigned to the cultural section where, surrounded by books and paintings, I was to expound on the glories of socialist realism. One of my first visitors was Vice President Richard Nixon. He came on opening day and wandered into my sec- tion, a jowly, glum-looking man who was not particularly friendly. 0465014453-Kalugin.qxd 11/24/08 10:25 AM Page ix PROLOGUE ix Once I overcame my confusion at seeing this celebrity, I buttonholed him and began my spiel. Soon, however, I was elbowed aside by a pha- lanx of aides, bodyguards, and Soviet officials. I spent several weeks preaching the Soviet gospel to an occasionally hostile American public, and by the end I was worn out and hoarse. One hot, muggy evening in late August, I shuffled out of the exhibi- tion hall and began making my way up Broadway, heading for my dwelling. It was about seven o’clock, and I was barely two blocks from the coliseum when a bespectacled, gray-haired man accompanied by an attractive Chinese woman approached me. “We saw you at the exhibition,”said the man.“May we talk to you?” With those words began my fateful relationship with the spy the KGB soon came to call “Cook.” Cook spoke to me in English, but I immediately recognized his Russian accent. Though I was exhausted and hardly wanted to be- come embroiled in another debate, I answered in Russian that I could talk with them. And when this tall stranger, who introduced himself as Anatoly, began to speak, my interest was piqued. After compli- menting me on my English, he criticized me for not being staunch enough in my defense of Communism. “Don’t you feel the Soviet Union is going astray, trying to emulate America?” Anatoly asked, as the three of us stood on the Manhattan sidewalk in the summer twilight. “Your country is a great one. It has its own path. Socialism should be free from all this bourgeois stuff.” It was a rarity, of course, to hear someone in America criticizing Soviet Communism for being insufficiently orthodox. Nevertheless, I was not interested in listening to his political philosophy, so I decided to steer the conversation in a different direction, more in line with my professional training. “What do you do?” I asked. “I work for Thiokol,” Anatoly responded, referring to the giant chemical company. “Really?” I said. “And what’s your line of work?” “I am a rocket engineer,” he replied. 0465014453-Kalugin.qxd 11/24/08 10:25 AM Page x x PROLOGUE My fatigue disappeared immediately. “Why should we stand here talking on the street?” I said. “Let’s go to a cafeteria.” We drank coffee and ate pastry at a cafeteria on 63rd Street, and I tried to appear nonchalant as I questioned Anatoly and his wife. He told me he was from a peasant family in the Kuban region of south- ern Russia. After working as a translator for the German army, he had retreated with Nazi forces and eventually emigrated to America. He studied to be a chemical engineer and landed a job at Thiokol. His wife, the daughter of the vice president of the Chinese Acad- emy of Sciences, was a Maoist who had convinced her husband of the righteousness of the Communist cause. She had persuaded him that it was repulsive to work for a company so closely tied to the military-in- dustrial complex. My hopes were rising steadily, and then Anatoly dropped this piece of news: Thiokol was involved in the production of solid rocket fuel, and he was working on the project. I could barely contain myself as I got their phone number and sug- gested that we meet again. But before we parted, I returned to Ana- toly’s critical remarks about Khrushchev’s reforms. “You denounce the Soviet leader for deviating from the true path of socialism,” I said. “But look, the Soviet Union is way behind the United States in eco- nomic might, scientific and technological prowess.