"This is part of their gathered intelligence information. These are items of regimental issue and things of that sort. You know, some are from the dead, some are from the living. A lot of it was first-line pickups, documents from dead or captured Soviet soldiers."
"Americans too. `5 January 1946. Dear Mr. Kisewalter'-this is a letter from Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler's 'friend,' thanking you and Colonel Shimkin for the Christmas presents. And we have `Kiss-walter' again, with the w instead of the v. Is it just me, the former secretary of state, and the Nazis who pronounce your name Kiss-walter?"
"Gehlen was the chief of intelligence for the West Germans; he is now dead. At one time he was working for Hitler but Hitler did not like him, nor did he Hitler."
"How did you learn German? I understand that you could speak better German than Ferdi?"
"Dartmouth. The dialect of German spoken by the Austrians is so extreme that one loses all rules of grammar. Now, Ukrainian is a Russian dialect, but they have their own rules of grammar. I also have a fundamental knowledge of Serbian and the languages spoken in former Yugoslavia because they are derived from Russian. It is easier to understand the languages in that part of the world than it is for an Englishman to understand some of those in the British Isles. Welsh, of course, is impossible, and Scots speaking English are almost as bad. I remember one time sitting in an airport, waiting for a plane in Glasgow. There was a group of Scottish soldiers sitting around and talking with one another. They talked constantly. I do not believe that I understood a word that was said in almost an hour."
"Okay, who is this fellow?"
"Henning Christiani. He was the son of Christiani of Christiani and Neilson, famous builders. Do you see how those associations link up?"
"You keep saying that, associations, associations. What is the story here? It has to do with trains."
"I built that factory in Galesburg, Illinois; it was a transfer point for the Chicago-Burlington. This was a mixing and milling station for grain."
"The alfalfa business was quite profitable for you, wasn't it?"
"It is not the financial rewards in life that are important. I spent my life fighting Communism. That was important to me."
"Your father and mother came out of Russia. Who else among the family came to America?"
"Later on my first cousin made it. He was a White Army officer who fought with General Yudenich against the Reds in trying to recapture Petrograd. As you may recall, his father, my godfather, Alexander Alexandrovich Andreev, was a member of Russian hereditary nobility and a general in the Tsar's Army. Andreev also was my uncle, being married to my father's sister, Raisa Georgievna Kisevalter."
I later learned that during the Napoleonic invasion of Russia, at the Battle of Borodino in September of 1812, there was a Russian artillery officer by the name of Andreev. Of course, Napoleon won that conflict, with much loss of life on both sides, and then entered Moscow. After Napoleon was driven out of Russia, Andreev was promoted to general and was made a member of the Russian hereditary nobility as a reward for his exemplary service during that campaign. So, following that, the eldest son of every Andreev, all of whom were named Alexander, then became an artillery officer in the tsarist armies.
George told me, "General Andreev was the commanding general of an artillery proving ground on the island of Poligon, which sits in the harbor of St. Petersburg. Physically, it relates to St. Petersburg similarly to the way that Governors Island relates to Manhattan, in New York." George could vaguely remember visiting the facility when he was a very young boy, less than five years of age. The aunt and uncle had a very large estate with servants, gardens, and animals, much like a large park. In the summertime, the grounds were accessed by ferry; in the wintertime, when the body of water was frozen, one would take a sled mobile to the estate. Men skaters pushed along the sled. Passengers wore great fur coats for warmth as they breezed along very rapidly across the ice. I
George's aunt and uncle raised nine children. The oldest was Alexander Alexandrovich Andreev. He was twelve years older than George. By the time of George's departure from Russia in 1915, Alexander had entered the military, first as a cadet, then as a soldier in artillery. He did well in various assignments during the First World War. In December of 1917, right after the glorious October revolution, his mortar battery was dissolved, and in February of 1918 he was demobilized from army service. He returned to his parents' home at Poligon. To placate the Bolsheviks, since they were a threat his parents, he joined the Red Army. He was assigned to the artillery forces associated with an old naval fortress on the island of Kronstadt just outside of Petrograd, in the Gulf of Finland. He served as an assistant to the commander in chief of the facility. A year later, however, his father was executed by the Bolsheviks, who used some trumped-up charges of conspiracy. The general was accused of harboring weapons illegally, notwithstanding that managing the weapons facility was his job. Actually, General Andreev's servants had been soldiers in the Tsar's Army. They lived in a small house next to the general's home, where they kept their rifles, etc. The Bolsheviks found these weapons and accused the general. According to George, under Lenin's orders, his uncle was "machine-gunned down."
The general was murdered in October of 1919. Alexander requested and was granted some time off to attend his father's funeral. While on leave, he deserted the Red Army and traveled south to join the Northwest Army of Gen. Nikolai Yudenich. Again, he served in an artillery battalion. Yudenich, at that time, was in Estonia, attempting to seize Petrograd. With the help of Western allies, his army advanced as far as they could. The British tried to be of aid, but they bungled things. They had agreed to sell tanks to Yudenich's army, but they inadvertently delivered them to the Red Army at Liepaja, a seaport in Latvia, to the rear of the White Army. This paralyzed what might otherwise have been a successful attack by the White forces at Petrograd, and the group retreated back into Estonia in early 1920, never again to be effective. The Red Army wasn't strong enough to capture Estonia, and the allied armies would have stopped them had the Reds tried. They did try to seize Poland, however, but the dictator of Poland, Pilsudski, was very effective in stopping their invasion near the gates of Warsaw. The Reds were chased back into Russia. They then sued for peace with Poland. The agreement reached also ensured the independence of the Baltic States.2
George continued, "Aunt Raisa died from a chill, some months after her husband was murdered. All of the Andreev children, except for Alexander, were scattered throughout the Soviet Union into different orphanages and never heard from since. All track of them was lost. Alexander was in Estonia when the army was dissolved. He married an Estonian girl who was working with the Red Cross at the time, a very fine lady by the name of Linda Treff. They had twins. One died at birth; the other was named Alexander Alexandrovich Andreev. A couple of years later they had another son. His name was Alexis Alexander Andreev.
"My father corresponded with Alexander and brought him to this country in 1928. When he entered the U.S., the spelling of his name became Andreiev. He came on a student visa, attended Columbia University, and studied chiropractic medicine. His wife and two sons followed in 1936. They came on a special visa (outside of the quota system), which was obtained through an appeal to Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, who interceded on their behalf. He became a caviar salesman with the Makaroff Caviar Company, and he spent much of his life's work at that enterprise. He labored at many jobs in New York, eventually working in the shipping department of Macy's. He was very accurate in accounting and very thorough; he was very careful with his money. He never smoked and he drank only on special occasions. He lived in Queens, where his boys were raised; all of them were very quickly Americanized.
"In the late thirties, a strange thing happened. Alexander's wife invited her mother to come from Estonia for a visit with them in New York. She came and while she was there, Hitler invaded Poland and started World War II. The Baltic States were partitioned by the Soviets; she could not go home as these countries became doorm
ats for both Hitler and Stalin. So, here she was, with a return ticket in hand. She stayed here until she died. I got a refund for her return ticket in 1946.
"The two boys grew up and, like their dad, joined the army, served in the Second World War, performed well, were discharged after the war, and then used the GI bill to go to college. Alexander studied architecture at Columbia University and Alexis studied electrical engineering at Columbia University and at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. Their father, Alexander, died in 1971 of a stroke and then their mother, Linda, died in 1972. They would be very proud of their sons. Alexander became a very successful architect in New York and had two daughters; he died just last May. Alexis is the only reasonably close relative that I know who survived that era. I keep in touch with him. He has two daughters and a son. I have met all five of my first cousin's grandchildren. Alexis became a senior engineer with Grumman and was one of the original contributors to the LM, the Lunar Module, Descent Stage of the Apollo program. At the Kennedy Space Center in Florida he was group leader for the LM Support Group, serving from the first Apollo launch through Apollo 17, the sixth and final Scientific Lunar Expedition. This series, of course, includes Apollo 11, during which Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin landed on the moon, while Mike Collins orbited. The members of the launch team signed a document, which was photographed and etched on a copper plate that was left on the moon. His name is now on the moon.
"So, that accounts for all of the relatives that I have in this worldat least the blood relatives from Russia that I know. The rest of these people are difficult to account for because of the revolution, the ravages of war, and the consequences of being non-persons in a Communist country."
"All of your uncles and aunts perished in the revolution?"
"Right, the details of which are totally unknown. How can one know? There are no transcribed details of these actions. They were all, you might say, acts of violence with passion and unpredictability."
"Irrational."
"Well, that oversimplifies it, but when you ask for a specific detail, how can I know?"
"I just thought that you might know of certain ones that did survive for some period of time. I mean, what purpose is there to killing old people?"
"Well, if you can understand mass murder by the Communists of anyone who is not subject to their beliefs, then you can understand why mass elimination has some sort of philosophical value. I don't know of any, but in this world that has happened many times in many areas for many reasons.
"Ironically, it was the revulsion against this sort of thing that precipitated an ill-conceived, pro-Communist campaign called the Cambridge Movement, which is a generic term, meaning nothing specific. It was a protest by intellectual Englishmen such as Kim Philby and others who were famous spies for the Soviets: George Blake, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, and so forth. Some of these were homosexuals; most of them were nuts. They were people who would run away from things rather than stay around to fix what might be wrong. All of them had gone to Cambridge or Oxford, had met one another, and had become Communists. Kim Philby went to work for the British Secret Intelligence Service and became their chief liaison with the CIA in Washington for MI 6. He probably would have been made the chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service had he stayed with his job.3
"Actually, the Cambridge Movement had its beginnings during World War I by individuals who had great moral objections to the concept of war. The clarion call for their actions, you might say, was the life story of a man who represented the antithesis of their beliefs, a world figure, Sir Basil Zaharoff. This man had controlling stock in the Krupp works of Germany, the famous Schneider works in Dijon and other areas of France, the Skoda works in Czechoslovakia, and the Vickers plant in England. He wore the Victoria Cross and the Knight of the Grand Cross of England, the Iron Cross of Germany, and the Legion of Honor of France. He was so powerful, making money on munitions, that he had World War I stopped so his train could pass through the front lines while on his way from Paris to visit Berlin. Is that enough influence for one man?
"Well, for this unparalleled wealth in those days we in America had an expression, a 'Pittsburgh millionaire,' meaning that he was in the steel business, making money from munitions. This caricature was the sort of thing that contributed to the establishment of the Cambridge Movement. One specific World War I incident was the most glaring example of all. There was a small plant in a small town in England where guns were manufactured: field artillery, the rolling kind. As the result of a particular very painful and disastrous battle in Belgium, the casualties were very high. Finally, at great cost, the British took a significant position and captured artillery pieces of the Germans. These implements of war were brought home in triumph and mounted in the Town Square as a trophy of war, as if to say, `Here's artillery, captured from the German enemy.'
"It turned out this artillery was manufactured in that very town in England. It had been sold to the Dutch, who were neutral and not involved with the Germans or the French or the British or us or anyone else in World War I. These materials were purchased through Holland, then resold at a profit, of course, to the Germans, who always wanted extra, heavy artillery. Such an example of the evil nature of people, making money on somebody else's blood in such horrible activities as war, gave credence to the fundamentals of the Cambridge Movement. This incident provided some justification, in the minds of some, for the rise of Communism. They blindly believed that Communism could be a better way, morally, for a civilized world, particularly an Anglo-Saxon world. That was the justification for these traitors' disloyalty. Ironically, Philby, who I consider to have been completely deluded, philosophically, sacrificed his own successful career when he chose this Communist pathway as the correct direction for his life. But there is more philosophical justification for what Philby did, treasonable though it may be to the nth degree, as contrasted with what Aldrich Ames did to our country, which also was high treason. Ames condemned ten men to death, just for the money. Philby and Ames' actions represent a different kind of morality. It is the difference between being a traitor for ideological reasons and selling someone else's life and blood for money, like Judas-Jesus and thirty pieces of silver. Both are evil, both are treasonable, and we detest both, but their nature is not quite the same."4
"Did you know Philby?"
"I had nothing to do with him. When he was the SIS liaison man to the CIA he spent his time with James Jesus Angleton, the chief of our counterintelligence, lapping up steaks and martinis at expensive Georgetown restaurants."
"Who is this fellow?"
"Ed Snow. He was an old friend of mine. He was one of the best case officers that we ever had. He died not long ago. These pictures are all in Japan. This is a Russian girl who turned out to be a Soviet agent who was in Okinawa. Snow thought that she was a White Russian. She did him in; got him fired. He became vice-president of a big outfit, however. Allen Dulles got him the job when he booted him from the Agency."
"She really was a Red Russian?"
"Well, she was under subordination. She was protecting her relatives, who may have been White. Of course, the Korean War was on. Before that, a family named Yankovsky came out of the Vladivostok area and came down through North Korea into South Korea. They had originally been in Harbin; they were White Russians fleeing from the Soviets. Snow married one of them. This got him fired."
"What does Harbin have to do with it?"
"Harbin is a city in Manchuria that was occupied by the Imperial Russians for some time. It still shows distinct Russian influence. The city grew up when the railroads in the area were built. Many of them connect there. This was long before the Bolshevik Revolution. All of that area of Manchuria was very Russian at one time. When the White Russians were fleeing Russia after the revolution, many of them went to Harbin in Manchuria, worked there in China for a few years, and then came to America with Chinese passports. Snow's parents were among them. He was born in the U.S. and went to UCLA."
"Po
int out some of the significant things to me."
"Here is a picture of part of the Berlin tunnel, and these were taken in Munich. I was dropping off something during the Popov operation."
"You really loved that guy, didn't you?"
"We had great affection for, and deep understanding of, one another."
"This is the car that Ferdi was going to drive and get into trouble?"
"Correct; that is a QP car."
"Who is this?"
"This is Dickie Franks; he was the SIS chief for London during the Penkovsky operation. Later he became chief of SIS. I hope that we got that story straight."
"You mean Penkovsky? I'm very confident on that one; I was an analyst with the missiles, you know. This says 1964. What was the occasion for your being there?"
"It was on a trip to Bonn for a lecture that I was giving to the West German intelligence organization, Gehlen's group. I have been very lucky with the people that I know, wonderful associations. This one is of Dick Kovich, a very nice guy; but I repeat myself. I only know nice guys. These are bears at Regents Park in London. You always see bears at Regents Park."
"This is somebody's christening?"
"That is Deriabin and his wife."
"He was Orthodox Christian?"
"Yes he was, but he was KGB also. He's dead now. Deriabin: KGB."
"This is Peer de Silva then, I'll bet?"
"You're right, and this is Saigon. He was our chief of station in Saigon until the Viet Cong bombed our embassy. Ultimately he died because of the wounds that he sustained there. This is Frank Levy and me drinking Molson Beer. These are my Agency medals."
"This is the Distinguished Intelligence Medal: 18 May 1959. You received this for the Popov operation. It says here that this was awarded `for performance of outstanding services or for achievement of a distinctly exceptional nature in a duty or responsibility.' You did all of that, for sure. Here is a picture of Allen Dulles giving you an award. Is he giving you the Distinguished Intelligence Medal?"
CIA Spymaster_George Kisevalter Page 31
