In July 2016, the man who was Russia’s number one target was reported dead. Russia’s Interfax news agency reported that Alexander Poteyev had passed away, basing its report on “informed sources.” “Good riddance,” was the response from Andrey Bezrukov. “It is known that people do not live long in such a state,” Bezrukov went on to say. “A person who has committed treason is under enormous stress. He lives with it every day. He is lonely. . . . Such people often take to drink. They commit suicide. They lose the purpose of life.”
But Poteyev was not dead. One theory is that it was an American ruse to keep assassins off his trail. Or perhaps a lie by the Russians to show their public that a traitor had met with what he deserved. Another theory is that the Russians were putting out the story in the hope he would break cover to contact relatives, providing potential intelligence on his whereabouts. Poteyev, though, was not hard to find and already had a habit of calling people back home despite repeated warnings from his CIA minders of the risks, according to one official. At the start of 2018, a senior US intelligence official warned against asking too many questions about the former SVR man’s whereabouts. When, two months later, Skripal was nearly killed, it became obvious why the warning was so stern.
THE SKRIPAL ATTACK might have been an indication of how far the Russians were willing to go, but even before it there had been warning signs that Poteyev had not been forgotten. More than three years earlier, the FBI picked up a Russian operative entering the United States. He was traveling on a visa rather than operating out of the embassy, but the United States was aware of his identity and able to follow him. Surveillance teams realized he was looking for Poteyev. The operative traveled to the former spy’s house. It was part of an established but increasingly aggressive Russian program to establish the location of defectors and there was a debate about how worried to be. Some voiced doubts as to whether Putin would actually do anything on American soil. At the time, the judgment was that the mission was reconnaissance rather than a planned hit and the Russian was watched rather than stopped to gather intelligence about his activities, even as he approached the home. But it may have been a closer call than has been previously understood.
After Skripal’s poisoning, the British government revealed it had received highly sensitive intelligence that pointed clearly to Russian involvement in Salisbury. They had learned that from the 2000s Russians had begun training special teams of assassins to deliver chemical weapons. This program later looked specifically at smearing nerve agents on door handles. This intelligence, it can be revealed, came from the United States. One national security official says that it came because the Russians had been spotted trying to do something similar to Salisbury inside the United States. Another official describes Russia going so far as carrying out what they call a “dress rehearsal” for the Salisbury poisoning in the United States. A nerve agent was not used but operatives wanted to see if they could approach a door to be able to smear something on and carry out such an attack. The target may well have been Alexander Poteyev—although it was possible it was another individual in the US. The FBI and other US officials decline to comment on the details, citing security sensitivities. Whatever the case, it seems as if warning signs about Russian targeting were not well shared or understood among allies. One US counterintelligence official concedes that in the aftermath of Salisbury, they have been ratcheting up the assessments of Russia carrying out such an attack in the United States and preparing for what they describe as the day “when—not if” it comes.
IN THE WAKE of Salisbury, Poteyev, as with others who had been swapped, vanished. And so the man who began the Ghost Stories investigation and helped find Moscow’s spies in the suburbs is now himself a Russian living somewhere in America and hovering between real life and an already-reported death. Another Ghost.
BUT ARE THERE illegals still out there?
THE GHOST STORIES investigation did real damage to Russian spying. It wasted decades of investment and led to the SVR expending energy on a program under FBI control. It helped the United States understand Russian tradecraft and helped allies around the world pursue leads in their countries. It damaged the prestige of the SVR. More important was what the investigation made sure did not happen. If Donald Heathfield or Cynthia Murphy had managed to recruit a next generation who could pass background checks and get jobs within the American intelligence community or government, then the damage could have been enormous—perhaps comparable to the pain inflicted by the Cambridge spies recruited by illegals in the 1930s. “We believe we eviscerated that [program] back in 2010,” Bill Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, said of the illegals in April 2018.
US spy-catchers working in the wake of the 2010 arrests say they saw a shift away from illegals. The verdict from Putin, they believe, was that the old illegals had not justified their cost and the program had embarrassed him. It is certainly getting harder for them. A check on a database can spot a dead double. There are many new alternatives now—cyber illegals, Special Agent illegals, and others—to carry out their missions. But that does not mean the old illegals have vanished.
Putin was asked on TV in 2017 if he had a message for illegals serving abroad. He first made a reference to his own work supporting illegals when he was a KGB officer back in Dresden. Then he went on to address directly those living under deep cover: “I know what kind of people these are. These are special people, people of special qualities, of special conviction, with a special character. To give up their life, their nearest and dearest and leave the country for many years, and to dedicate one’s life to the Motherland, not everyone is capable of doing that.” Putin’s performance was a deliberate attempt to tap into the mythology surrounding the illegals and to associate himself with it as an election approached. His comments revealed how illegals were still rooted deep within the psyche of Russian intelligence and popular culture. Do I think the Russians need them? one US counterintelligence official asks rhetorically. No. But will they still use them? Yes, because it is part of their culture, they argue. “This is what the Russians do—they will always do it,” says Alan Kohler, who supervised the Ghost Stories investigation. “It may take different forms and use different technologies, but this is always what we are going to face.”
The carefully managed strategy to make heroes of Russia’s spies continued. News broadcasts as well as dramas are filled with positive stories about the work of the FSB (a prize was created in 2006 for the most positive depictions of the work of a state security officer in culture). As a result, the percentage of Russians approving of the work of their own intelligence services went from 35 percent in 2001 to 66 percent in 2018. After the success of a Western TV drama on the Chernobyl nuclear disaster that focused on the lies pushed by the government, a state-backed Russian TV channel announced plans for its own version in which the hero was a Russian counterintelligence officer tracking down a CIA agent operating around the plant. Andrey Bezrukov and Elena Vavilov began to appear on talk shows to discuss their lives. In one case they appeared alongside their parents, friends, a Russian actor who had starred in the drama The Americans, and an actress who had starred in the drama Seventeen Moments of Spring and who expressed her admiration for the modern-day illegals. The audience lapped it up. The only time the couple appeared uncomfortable was when they were asked what it felt like to have been watched by the FBI the whole time and basically achieve next to nothing in their years abroad.
In the West, Russian espionage and influence has also been front-page news and center stage on-screen, not least thanks to election interference and assassination attempts. And there are risks to that. Because just like those Western spies trained to watch out for Russian operatives on their heels as they walked through Moscow, the danger is that everyone becomes hyperaware and begins to see “ghosts”—the hand of Russia’s spies—everywhere even when they are not actually present or as powerful as portrayed. But the old hands inside the intelligence agencies who h
ave spent their careers watching their adversary know this attention does not always last. The media and the public’s focus fades. New threats emerge. But even when that happens, they understand that, as the Ghost Stories investigation showed, Russia is patient and persistent in its espionage. “The same thing has always been going on and will continue to go on whether or not people are paying attention to it,” says Maria Ricci of the FBI. Whatever the diplomatic niceties are, whatever resets come and go and whether or not public attention diminishes, the Russian drive to spy and to use intelligence to influence will remain. But Ghost Stories also showed that the techniques by which this is carried out do change. The old ways of building cover and legends are harder thanks to biometrics and databases and there are other ways now to achieve their goals. But finding a well-trained illegal remains an enormous challenge, a Western spy-catcher explains, and they offer something that a cyber spy cannot. That means despite the blow the Ghost Stories investigation dealt, there is no reason to think Moscow Center will give up on the illegals that they have run for a century. At least not while Vladimir Putin is in power.
On the evening of June 28, 2017, Putin went to Yasenevo for a special gala to celebrate ninety-five years of illegals. Standing at a podium in the main auditorium, he paid tribute to Directorate S as a “legendary unit” and gave a roll call of its heroes, adding that after he had finished speaking there would be a closed ceremony in which he would be conferring one of the nation’s highest honors on an illegal who had “displayed valor and courage while fulfilling special missions in life-threatening circumstances.” It was no accident, he said, that the motto of the illegals was “without the right to glory but for the glory of the nation.” Other states might have spies, he said, but Russia had the illegals. They were needed more than ever, and he wanted to thank everyone who had preserved their traditions in what he said were “difficult years”—most likely a reference to the bust of 2010. Putin ended with a call to arms for those in front of him and for “the agents who are now serving abroad.” “I wish you good health, good luck, and new victories for the greater good of Russia.”
MAKE NO MISTAKE, somewhere—living in suburbia, picking up their children from parties, smiling at the neighbors as they water the hydrangeas—illegals are still out there. “We don’t consider ourselves heroes,” Elena Vavilova said looking back, nearly a decade after she had been swapped in Vienna. “We just honestly did our duty.” Her husband also plays down his role. “I am an average undercover agent. Hopefully not the worst, definitely not the very best. You have never heard about the best ones. And never will.”
Acknowledgments
THIS BOOK IS the result of two decades of reporting on intelligence agencies in the West and Russia. Many individuals have shared their stories and thoughts, but often anonymously. This is my chance to express my gratitude to them. I would also like to thank my agent, Georgina Capel, and her team for their support and encouragement. My two editors, David Highfill in New York and Arabella Pike in London, have expertly guided me in the writing of this book and the teams at HarperCollins have been of enormous assistance. My greatest debt is to my family for their patience and understanding.
Notes
INTRODUCTION
“The Western world can’t bring itself”: Alexander Kouzminov, Biological Espionage (London: Greenhill Books, 2005), p. 109.
1: THREE DAYS IN AUGUST
They could end up dead: The account of events surrounding the coup is based on conversations with a number of individuals serving in Moscow at the time.
The bulk of its half-million personnel: J. Michael Waller, Secret Empire: The KGB in Russia Today (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994), p. 10.
But there was something tentative about the move: British ambassador Rodric Braithwaite’s telegram to FCO, “Moscow, August 19: The First Day of the Coup,” of August 20, 1991, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB357/index.htm.
At the moment the coup began, the man in charge of the First Chief Directorate: Leonid Shebarshin’s own account is published in The Intelligence, a collection of memoirs of spy chiefs edited by Todor Boyadjiev and published in Bulgaria by Libra Scorp in 2006.
“My experience tells me that this practise quite justified itself”: Leonid Shebarshin, “The Illegals,” Inside Story, BBC TV, June 10, 1992.
When the 1991 coup began, a legendary figure made a surprise reappearance: Kouzminov, Biological Espionage, p. 130.
destroying some of the documentation so it could not fall into the wrong hands: This is according to Vasili Mitrokhin, as recounted in the obituary of Yuri Drozdov, Times, July 26, 2017.
There was at least one undercover CIA officer among the crowd: Milton Bearden and James Risen, The Main Enemy (New York: Century, 2003), p. 506.
“Moscow is silent”: Chris Bowlby, “Vladimir Putin’s Formative German Years,” BBC News, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-32066222.
Shebarshin opened his safe and pulled out incriminating papers: Milton Bearden, “Requiem for a Russian Spy,” Foreign Policy, June 18, 2012.
The “insular subculture didn’t want to let go of the Cold War”: Bearden and Risen, The Main Enemy, p. 454.
“Sorry, trip’s off, young man”: Sulick’s account was published by the CIA in its Studies in Intelligence in 2007. https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol50no2/html_files/CIA_Lithuania_1.htm.
“How naïve to believe the fall”: Victor Cherkashin, Spy Handler (New York: Basic Books, 2005).
“The Soviet Union is no more but eternal Russia remains”: Shebarshin’s account in Boyadjiev, The Intelligence.
Dzerzhinsky’s picture was still up on the walls: Waller, Secret Empire, p. 33.
Shebarshin, decades later and in ill health, shot himself: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-spy-suicide/former-soviet-kgb-spy-chief-commits-suicide-idUSBRE82T0WZ20120330.
“For me, my country”: Details of Heathfield and Foley and quotes by them come from emails from Foley and their interviews with Russian TV and newspapers. In this case https://tvzvezda.ru/news/qhistory/content/201931106-ftYfe.html.
2: THE BIRTH OF AN ILLEGAL
never left the family: Details of the real Heathfield and Foley families from https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2010/06/29/stolen_identity_shakes_brampton_family.html and Michael Friscolanti, “The Russian Spies Who Raised Us,” Maclean’s, August 10, 2017.
“It was considered a big success”: Kouzminov, Biological Espionage, p. 114.
Roughly one in ten attempts would: https://espionagehistoryarchive.com/2016/06/03/kgb-directorate-s-training-an-illegal/.
“For me to forget this is to be left with nothing”: Bezrukov interview, “Why Spies Are Like Scientists,” Russian Reporter, October 11, 2012, https://expert.ru/russian_reporter/2012/40/pochemu-shpionyi-pohozhi-na-uchenyih/.
Rudenko’s career: Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West (Penguin, London 2000), p. 253.
“You would not have to waste your time chasing after girls”: John Barron, KGB Today (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1984), p. 307.
Yelena Borisnovna and Dimitry Olshevsky: “Deported Spies Return to Russia: Ex-Soviet Spy Chief Tells How They Would Be Handpicked,” Toronto Star, June 12, 1996.
“Andrey offered me something out of the ordinary”: Russian NTV interview, April 2019, “Новые русские сенсации”: “Их сдал предатель.”
“I believe we were selected”: Email from Elena Vavilova, 2019.
evade a polygraph lie-detector test: Elena Vavilova interview on Tomsk TV, posted December 2018, first broadcast July 2017.
Each illegal required a staggering investment: Kouzminov, Biological Espionage.
“You do not train illegals . . . in the classes”: Interview with Vladimir Semichastny for PBS Red Files, http://www.pbs.org/redfiles/kgb/.
Moscow had developed its specialty in illegals after the 191
7 revolution: Nigel West, The Illegals (London: Hodder, 1993), provides an excellent overview of illegals.
atomic spies: Directorate S is believed to have been named after its founder Pavel Sudoplatov, who was given the mission during World War II of carrying out special operations and obtaining atomic secrets.
One of his first jobs in East Germany in the 1980s: Masha Gessen, The Man Without a Face (New York: Riverhead, 2012), p. 64; Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy, Mr. Putin (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2005), p. 276; and https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-39862225.
The CIA and MI6 have never had quite the same capability: In the Cold War some US companies regularly passed the CIA details of young men they recruited to work overseas to see if any could be of use. C. D. Edbrook, “Principles of Deep Cover,” Studies in Intelligence 5 (Summer 1961).
“We trained authentic Americans and Englishmen on Soviet territory”: https://espionagehistoryarchive.com/2016/06/03/kgb-directorate-s-training-an-illegal/ and also https://espionagehistoryarchive.com/2015/05/15/inside-kgb-directorate-s-the-illegals/.
When one illegal returned to Moscow: Kouzminov, Biological Espionage, p. 62.
even given a truth drug: Kouzminov, Biological Espionage, p. 107. Illegals were normally also sent on a training assignment abroad. These can last from weeks to months. They will cross borders in order to develop their cover story—perhaps by attending a short course undercover at a Western university—and undertake a set of tasks that also may help build up cover.
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