Russian Spies Alma Mater: brief history By Vladimir Sergevnin, Ph.D. Assosiate Professor, Director of the Center for Applied Criminal JusCce, WIU hp://www.wiu.edu/users/cacJ/ Editor of the Law Enforcement ExecuCve Forum Journal, hGp://www.iletsbei.com/lee_forum/ CHEKA/OGPU/NKVD/KGB/FSB • KGB (КГБ) is the commonly • The KGB was formed in used acronym for the Russian: 1954, taking up the duOes Комитет государственной of a series of state security безопасности (Komitet agencies that grew out of gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosO the Russian RevoluOon, or Commiee for State including the Security). It was the naonal • Cheka (1917 to 1922) security agency of the Soviet • Union from 1917 unOl 1991, GPU/OGPU (1922 to 1934) and was the premier internal • NKVD (1934 to 1946) security, intelligence, and • MGB (1946 to 1954) secret police organizaon • KGB (1954 to 1991) during that Ome. • FSB (1991 – present) CheKa • The All-Russian • The Cheka was established to ensure Extraordinary the Bolshevik regime's survival, the Commission for Cheka suppressed counter- Combang revoluOonary acOvity with domesc Counter-RevoluOon terror and internaonal decepon. and Sabotage, • The scope of foreign intelligence • December 20, 1917 operaons prompted Lenin to authorize the Cheka's creaon of the INO (Innostranyi Otdel—Foreign- intelligence Department)—the precursor to the First Chief Directorate (FCD) of the KGB. “Iron Felix” – CheKa chief, 1917-1926 Lenin’s assassinaon aempt • On August 30, 1918 Lenin An official decree for Red spoke at a Moscow factory Terror was issued only hours called "Hammer and aer the Kaplan shooOng, Sickle". As Lenin lew the calling for "a merciless mass building and before he terror against all the entered his car, Kaplan enemies of the revoluon". called out to him. When “Do not look in the file of Lenin turned towards her, Vladimir Lenin incriminang evidence to see she fired three shots with a whether or not the accused rose up against the Soviets with arms or Browning pistol words. Ask him instead to which class he belongs, what is his background, his educaCon, his profession. These are the quesOons that will determine the fate of the accused. That is the meaning and essence of the Red Terror.” Mar$n Latsis, chief of the Ukrainian Cheka, Fanny Kaplan 1918 Red Terror • The mass repressions were • Others beheaded their vicOms by conducted by the Cheka twisOng their necks unOl their • VicOms were skinned alive, scalped, heads could be torn off. "crowned" with barbed wire, • The Cheka staoned in Kiev impaled, crucified, hanged, stoned reportedly would aach an iron to death, Oed to planks and pushed tube to the torso of a bound slowly into furnaces or tanks of vicOm and insert a rat into the boiling water, and rolled around other end which was then closed naked in internally nail-studded off with wire neng. The tube barrels. was then held over a flame unOl • Chekists poured water on naked the rat began gnawing through prisoners in the winter-bound the vicOm's guts in an effort to streets unOl they became living ice escape. statues. • InvesOgaon discovered corpses whose lungs, throats, and mouths had been packed with earth The Rise: Purges From 1934 to 1938 Stalin conducted a series of purges– millions died in labour camps, execuOons or mass killings. The instrument for this was the secret police – NKVD under first Yagoda (1934-36) and later Yezhov, the ‘poisoned dwarf’, (1937-38). December 1, 1934 – Decree against Terrorist Acts – gave NKVD unlimited power to hunt down enemies of the state (on the same day as Kirov’s murder which Josef Stalin triggered the Purges). Sergey Kirov The Rise: Purges A series of ‘show trials’ of prominent Communists and military leaders jusOfied the purges – Kamenev, Zinoviev, Rykov and Bukharin all admied to plong against the Stalin, becoming ‘Trotskyite’ scapegoats for the USSR’s Leon Trotsky Ramón Mercader troubles. August 20, 1940, Coyoacán, México city: Trotsky, heavily wounded but sOll conscious, On 24 May 1940: Trotsky ordered guards to spare his aacker's life shouOng survived a raid on his home by "Do not kill him! This man has a story to tell.“ armed assassins led by GPU Awer 20 years in jail in 1961, Mercader moved to agent Iosif Grigulevich, Mexican the Soviet Union and was subsequently presented painter David Siqueiros, and the Hero of the Soviet Union, the country's highest Vitorio Vidale. decoraon, by the head of the KGB Alexander Shelepin. The Rise: Richard Sorge – Russian James Bond • Richard Sorge (October In October 1941, informed Kremlin 4, 1895 – November 7, that Pearl Harbor would be aGacked 1944) was a German in sixty days. Moscow had then communist and spy informed him that this had been who worked for the passed on to the US. This info was Soviet Union. He ignored. worked as a Journalist The date of 20 June had been given in both Germany and to Sorge by the deputy military Japan, where he was aaché, Lieutenant-Colonel Erwin imprisoned for spying Scholl, at the German embassy in and eventually hanged. Tokyo. His GRU codename was Sorge advised the Red Army on "Ramsay" (Russian: September 14, 1941, that the Рамза́й). Japanese were not going to aGack the Soviet Union "Sorge was the man whom I regard as the most formidable spy in history." - Ian Fleming. The Rise: "Atomic spies" In December 1944, Beria's • Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and NKVD was assigned to Ethel's brother David Greenglass and Morris Cohen – Americans - supervise the Soviet designers of the Soviet atomic bomb atomic bomb project got piles of technical documentaon ("Task No. 1"), which built straight from the secret laboratory and tested a bomb by 29 in Los Alamos August 1949. • Theodore Hall - American, who had been a developer on the bombs "Atomic spies" are various dropped in Japan people in the United • Klaus Fuchs was a German-born States, Great Britain, and BriOsh physicist who was sent to Canada who are thought to America to work on the atomic have illicitly given project where he became one of the informaon about nuclear lead scienOsts. Klaus provided the Soviets with detailed informaon on weapons producOon to the the gas phase separaon process. Soviet Union. The Rise: Creaon of the KGB • ExpecOng to succeed Joseph • March 13, 1954. The Stalin as leader of the USSR, the MGB was renamed ambiOous head of the MVD KGB, detached from the (Ministry of Internal Affairs), MVD, and demoted Lavreny Beria, merged the from Cabinet to MGB and the MVD on Stalin's Commiee level. death in 1953. • AnOcipang a coup d'etat, the Presidium swiwly eliminated Beria with treasonous charges of "criminal anO-Party and anO- state acOviOes" and executed him. Illegals: Rudolph Abel (Hollow Nickel Case) • Renewed • Vilyam "Willie" emphasis on Genrikhovich illegals in 1950s Fisher was exchanged for (spy ring run by captured Elizabeth Bentley, • American U-2 she turn herself pilot Gary in to the FBI in Powers 1945) Fall: DefecOons from Soviet intelligence • 1945: Igor • Oleg Kalugin, is a former KGB Gouzenko, cipher general. He was a longOme head clerk in Otawa of KGB operaons in the United • 5 major defecOons States. in early 1954 • According to Kalugin, he has never (Khokhlov, betrayed any Soviet agents except Deryabin, those who were already known to Rastvorov, and the Western intelligence. He criOcized Petrov) intelligence defectors like • 1985 Oleg Gordievsky as "traitors." Gordievsky; • In 1995 he accepted a teaching • 1992 Vasili posiOon in The Catholic University Mitrokhin of America and has remained in the United States ever since. Moles: KGB Agent Aldrich Ames • Aldrich Ames (born May In April 1985, Ames 26, 1941) is a former provided informaon to Central Intelligence Agency the Soviets that he counter-intelligence officer believed was "essenOally and analyst, who, in 1994, valueless" but that would was convicted of spying for establish his credenOals as the Soviet Union and a CIA insider. He also asked Russia. UnOl the revelaon for $50,000, which the of the extent of Robert Soviets quickly paid. Ames Hanssen's spying seven received $4.6 million from years later, Ames the Soviets compromised more CIA Betrayed more than 10 CIA assets than any known agents in Russia Soviet mole in American history. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0Gcpu0zatk&feature=related ‘Wet affairs’ • Euphemism for Alexander Litvinenko was a former officer of sabotage, kidnapping, the Russian Federal Security Service, FSB and assassinaon KGB, who fled from court prosecuOon in Russia • Bureau N 1 & N 2 of and received poliOcal asylum in the United Kingdom. On 1 November 2006, Litvinenko “acve acts” - targeted suddenly fell ill. Earlier that day he had met two defectors and dissidents former KGB officers, Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitri • Assassinaon of Georgi Kovtun. Lugovoi is a former bodyguard of Markov in London Russian ex-Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar (also "Umbrella reportedly poisoned in November 2006). Murder" (died Sept. 11, 1978) The end of “Iron Felix” days? ‘I think if we compare Hitler AVer Stalin’s death, the to Stalin, and the Gestapo KGB underwent serious to the KGB, the KGB was reforms, but not serious far more ruthless -- not enough to declare it a because they killed far more people, but because legi$mate organiza$on they were indiscriminate in abiding by the laws of the selecon of vicms. the state… the Soviet The Nazis concentrated on system was a lawless Jews; the Soviet KGB under system, and the KGB Stalin’s direcons was an was a tool of interna$onalist lawlessness.’ organiza$on: it would kill anyone who would stand in Oleg Kalugin, rered the way of Stalin and his 1991, “Iron Felix” head of KGB foreign leadership.’ monument counterintelligence .