Rather than accept any share of responsibility for the failure to make efficient use of much of the ST acquired from the West, the VPK chairman, L. V. Smirnov, blamed the KGB for not obtaining enough of it. In a letter to the KGB chairman, Semichastny, in April 1965, Smirnov complained that over 50 percent of the top priority ST tasks assigned to the KGB between two and four years earlier had still not been fulfilled. Semichastny replied that steps had been taken to improve the KGB’s ability to meet its assignments, but criticized the VPK for underestimating the current difficulty of collecting ST from American targets. Since some of the same scientific and technological developments were taking place in Britain, France, Japan and West Germany, the VPK should pay greater attention to targets in these countries. 76 In the following year groups of Line X officers operating against American targets were stationed in residencies in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, India, Israel, Lebanon, Mexico, Morocco, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Arab Republic and a number of other Third World countries.77
Despite Smirnov’s criticisms, the KGB’s performance in ST collection was, on balance, a success story. As Smirnov himself acknowledged, the FCD fulfilled almost half of the VPK’s demanding tasks against the Main Adversary with a few years at most. Measured against the spectacular successes of twenty years earlier, however, when the Centre had received the plans of the atomic bomb—the world’s greatest scientific secret—from two different agents and important nuclear intelligence from several more, even the successes of the early 1960s were bound to seem somewhat disappointing. The decline was irreversible. Most of the Soviet spies who penetrated every major branch of the Roosevelt administration had been ideological agents, seduced by the myth-image of Stalin’s Russia as the world’s first worker-peasant state, pointing the way to a new Socialist society. During the early Cold War, even among American radicals, the vision faded. Most of the successors to the wartime ideological moles were mercenary walk-ins and corrupt employees of defense contractors willing to sell their companies’ secrets.
Though the KGB could not bring itself to accept it, the golden age of the high-flying American ideological agent had gone, never to return.
APPENDIX
SOME FAVORITE KGB YAVKAS (MEETING PLACES) IN THE 1960’S
Baltimore: by the Clayton men’s clothing store on North Avenue.
Boston: the music hall; by the State Hilton Hotel.
Chicago: the Chicago Institute of Fine Arts buildings; by the movie theater on State Street; by the Lake State movie theater; and by the men’s tie store on Randolph Street.
Cleveland: by the Khipp movie theater.
Indianapolis: by the notice board on Market Street.
Los Angeles: by the newspaper stand “Out of Town Papers” on Las Palmas Avenue; by the entrance to the movie theaters Viltern and Star Theater; by the display windows on Hollywood Boulevard, the furniture store MacMahon Brasses; near the entrance to the Hotel Roosevelt.
Newark: by the Newark train station, on the bench by the monument to Sergeant Donan A. Bazilone.
New Haven: by the Taft Hotel; by the Sherman movie theater.
New York (Bronx): by the David Marcus movie theater; by the restaurant Savarin; by the display windows of the store Wilma’s Party Center; under the awning of the Middletown Inn Restaurant at 3188 Middletown Road.
Philadelphia: by the Randolph and Stanton movie theaters; by the Silvanna Hotel.
Portland: by the parking lot on the main street; by the Parker movie theater.
Rochester: by the Randolph movie theater.
Sacramento: by the Tower movie theater, and near the advertisements at the café Camilia Lodge.
St. Paul: by the display windows of the St. Paul Hotel; by the Strand movie theater.
San Francisco: by the Metro movie theater on Union Street; by Fosters Restaurant, Simms Café, and Comptons Café (in the downtown area); the Canterbury Hotel.
Seattle: by the movie theater Orpheum Cinema on Fifth Avenue; by the City Motel on Queen Anne Avenue.
Syracuse: by the Cates movie theater.
Union City, New Jersey: by the AP supermarket.
Washington area: the telephone booth by the entrance to the Hot Shoppes Restaurant in the center of Hyattsville, a Washington suburb; by the entrance to the grocery store in the Aspen Hill Shopping Center on Georgia Avenue in Maryland, six miles north of Washington.
TWELVE
THE MAIN ADVERSARY
Part 3: Illegals after “Abel”
In 1966 the lack of high-grade political intelligence from the United States led the KGB Collegium, a senior advisory body headed by the Chairman, to call for a major improvement in intelligence operations against the Main Adversary. The chief method by which it proposed to achieve this improvement, however, was one which had already been attempted unsuccessfully during the 1950s: the creation over the next few years of a network of illegal residencies which would take over the main burden of intelligence operations from the legal residencies in New York, Washington and San Francisco.1
Not until six years after the arrest of “Rudolf Abel” in 1957 did the KGB succeed in establishing another illegal residency on the territory of the Main Adversary. Though there were brief missions to or through the United States by a number of illegals, the first to have taken up residence who is recorded in the files noted by Mitrokhin was KONOV, a Muscovite of Greek origin born in 1912, who took the identity of Gerhard Max Kohler, a Sudeten German born in Reichenberg (now part of the Czech Republic) in 1917. KONOV was a war veteran and radio specialist who worked as head of a laboratory in Leningrad until his recruitment by the KGB in April 1955. He spent the next four years in East Germany, working as an engineer, establishing his German cover identity and studying both his next destination, West Germany, and his ultimate target, the United States. The KGB, which specialized in arranged marriages for its illegals, found him a German wife and assistant previously employed by the Stasi, codenamed EMMA, who took the identity of Erna Helga Maria Decker, born on September 2, 1928 near Breslau (now in Poland).2
In October 1959, posing as East German refugees, KONOV and EMMA crossed to the FRG, where KONOV found work as a radio engineer. In 1962 he began corresponding with American radio and electronics companies and obtained several job offers. After visiting the United States as a tourist, he accepted employment in a company which in 1963 enabled EMMA and himself to obtain immigrant visas. KONOV seems to have been the first post-war illegal sent to the United States to concentrate on scientific and technological intelligence (ST). Specializing in electronic measuring devices, he took part in a number of international exhibitions and—according to his file—made several inventions. KONOV’s ST was so highly rated by the Centre that it won him two KGB awards. On June 20, 1970, after living for seven years in the United States as Gerhard and Erna Kohler, KONOV and EMMA became American citizens, swearing their oaths of allegiance in Newark Courthouse. 3
By the time KONOV entered the United States in 1963, two other KGB illegals were already established in Canada, both intended by the Centre for subsequent transfer to the Main Adversary. Nikolai Nikolayevich Bitnov (codenamed ALBERT) had arrived in Canada in 1961. The basis of the legend painstakingly constructed for Bitnov was a fabricated version of the life history of Leopold Lambert Delbrouck, who had been born in Belgium in 1899, emigrated to Russia with his family at the age of eight and died there in 1946. In the fictitious version of Delbrouck’s career constructed by the Centre, however, Delbrouck had married a Romanian woman, set up home in Gleiwitz in Germany (now Gliwice in Poland) and then moved to Romania, where he died in 1931. While in Gleiwitz, the couple had supposedly had a son, Jean Leopold Delbrouck, whose identity Bitnov assumed. Bitnov’s wife, Nina (codenamed GERA), took over the identity of a “dead double,” Yanina Batarovskaya, who had been born in France in 1928 and died in Lithuania in 1956.4
Early in 1956, now age thirty, Bitnov moved with his wife to Romania to establish his legend with the help of the
Romanian intelligence service, the DGSP. In April 1957, using identity documents forged by the Centre, they succeeded in obtaining passports from the Belgian diplomatic mission in Bucharest.5 Six months later, they moved to Geneva so that Bitnov could enroll in a business school and learn how to operate as a businessman in the West. From late 1958 to the summer of 1961 the couple lived in Liège, establishing Belgian identities and obtaining new passports which, unlike those issued in Bucharest, made no reference to their residence in Romania and were thus less likely to arouse suspicion in North America. In July 1960, the Bitnovs emigrated to Canada.6
The Centre probably intended that Bitnov should move on after a few years to the territory of the Main Adversary. Initially, however, he was ordered, like Brik (HART) a decade earlier, to establish himself under business cover in Canada. Despite his course in Geneva, however, Bitnov proved a hopeless businessman. First, he invested 2,000 dollars of KGB funds in a business which bought up land with mineral rights and sold them to mining companies. After two years the company went bankrupt. Then Bitnov spent 2,000 dollars purchasing a directorship in a car dealership which went into liquidation only two months later. Unwilling to pour good money after bad into any more of his investment schemes, the Centre ordered him to look for paid employment. After a period on unemployment benefits, Bitnov found a poorly paid job as a bookkeeper which, he complained, left him little or no time for intelligence work. Having achieved nothing of any significance as an illegal, he was recalled to Moscow in 1969.7 The following year, he was given a pension and sent into early retirement at the age of only forty-five.8 The fact that the Centre persevered with Bitnov for so long was further evidence of the strength of its determination to establish a network of illegal residencies in North America.
Bitnov was unaware that in February 1962, only seven months after his own arrival in Canada, another illegal, codenamed DOUGLAS, had landed with his wife and four-year-old son at Montreal airport. DOUGLAS was Dalibar Valoushek, a 33-year-old Czech border guard recruited by the KGB with the assistance of its Czechoslovak counterpart, the StB.9 He took the identity of a Sudeten German, Rudolf Albert Herrmann, who had died in the Soviet Union during the Second World War. According to Valoushek’s legend, Herrmann had survived the war and made his home in East Germany, then taken refuge in the West to escape the Communist regime. His wife, Inga (codenamed GERDA), a Sudeten German whose family had moved to the GDR, took the identity of Ingalore Noerke, a “dead double” who had been killed during the wartime bombing of Stettin. At the end of 1957 the Valousheks fled to the West, loudly proclaiming their hatred of the East German regime. They spent the next four years strengthening their legends as anti-Communist refugees while Valoushek learned how to run a small business.10
Once in Canada, Valoushek proved a much better businessman than Bitnov—though not quite as successful as published accounts of his career (which do not give his real identity) have suggested. Soon after his arrival in Canada he bought Harold’s Famous Delicatessen in downtown Toronto, which he and Inga, as “Rudi” and “Inga Herrmann” made a popular rendezvous for staff from the nearby studios of the Canadian Broadcasting Company. After two years Valoushek sold the delicatessen, got a job as a CBC sound engineer and took courses in film-making. His first major assignment was on a film advertising campaign for the Liberal Party. By the mid-1960s he had a reputation as a popular and successful film-maker. At the 1967 Liberal convention, which elected Pierre Trudeau as party leader, Trudeau leaned off the stage and playfully popped grapes into “Rudi Herrmann’s” mouth.11 Though Valoushek’s business appeared prosperous, however, his KGB file reveals that the Centre had to provide 10,000 dollars to cover trading losses.12
In 1967 Valoushek became the controller of the KGB’s most important Canadian agent, Hugh Hambleton (RADOV).13 After losing his job at NATO on security grounds in 1961 (though without any charges being brought against him), Hambleton had spent the next three years taking a PhD at the London School of Economics, returning to Canada in 1967 to become a professor in the economics department at Laval University in Quebec. Once back in Quebec, Hambleton’s contact with the KGB dwindled. He met an officer from the legal residency three times in Ottawa, on each occasion talking to him in a car parked near the main post office. Hambleton, however, disliked his new controller, who tried unsuccessfully to persuade him to apply for a job in External Affairs. After an interval during which Hambleton failed to turn up for meetings in Ottawa, Valoushek was sent to Quebec to renew contact with him. During a congenial dinner at the Cháteau Frontenac overlooking the Saint Lawrence river, the two men established a mutual rapport and Hambleton agreed to resume his career as a Soviet agent.14 Over the next few years, he traveled to a great variety of destinations, combining research on academic projects with work for the KGB. He remained in touch with Valoushek until 1975, meeting him in Trinidad and Haiti, as well as Canada and the United States. But Hambleton’s travels were so far flung that it required a considerable number of KGB officers to maintain contact with him.15
In 1968, a year after becoming Canadian citizens, Valoushek and his family were transferred to the United States to found a new illegal residency in the New York area. His first KGB contact was IVANOVA, a young Russian woman who, having formerly worked as an agent of the KGB Second Chief Directorate inside the Soviet Union, had been allowed (perhaps even encouraged) to marry an American visitor and had moved to the United States. IVANOVA gave Valoushek 15,000 dollars to establish himself and had several further secret meetings with him to pass on instructions from the Centre and letters from his Czech relatives.16 With the funds provided by IVANOVA, Valoushek made a 12,000 dollar downpayment on a secluded house fifteen miles north of New York, in Hartsdale,17 joined the New York Press Club and began work as a freelance cameraman and commercial photographer. His first major assignment from the KGB was to penetrate the Hudson Institute, a leading New York think tank. The Centre had been excited by a report from Hambleton giving information on the Institute’s members and believed it to be a major potential source of intelligence on American global strategy and defense policy.18
IN MAY 1962, three months after Valoushek’s arrival, BOGUN, another Soviet illegal, had landed in Canada. The Centre intended that, after establishing himself in Canada, BOGUN, like DOUGLAS, should transfer to the territory of the Main Adversary. BOGUN was Gennadi Petrovich Blyablin, a 38-year-old Muscovite who had taken the identity of Peter Carl Fisher, born in Sofia in 1929 of a German father and Bulgarian mother. Like Valoushek, he perfected his German legend by living in East Germany, then moved to the West in 1959, posing as a refugee. The Centre allowed him three years to settle, legalize his status and find work in West Germany before sending him to Canada. On March 9, 1961 Blyablin married his KGBAPPROVED partner, LENA, in Hanover. In December they obtained their West German passports before setting off for Canada five months later.19
While Valoushek found cover as a film-maker, Blyablin established himself as a freelance press photographer—a profession which provided numerous opportunities and pretexts for traveling around Canada and further afield. In February 1965, following the Centre’s instructions, Blyablin and his wife moved to the United States on immigrant visas. His main task over the next three years was photographing and providing intelligence on major military, scientific and industrial targets around the United States.20
In 1968, however, Blyablin attracted the attention of the FBI during his investigation of major targets in the United States and had to be hurriedly recalled, together with his wife, to Moscow.21 It was later discovered that some of his correspondence with the Centre, routed via agent SKIF, had been intercepted. SKIF was Karo Huseinjyan, an ethnic Armenian born in Cyprus in 1919 was Karo Huseinjyan, an ethnic Armenian born in Cyprus in 1919 who owned a jewelry shop in Beirut and provided a forwarding service for a number of illegals. A Centre investigation disclosed that letters from Blyablin, dated April 7 and July 27, 1968, sent via Huseinjyan, had been steamed open.22
A year before Blyablin’s sudden recall, RYBAKOV, another Soviet illegal, had arrived in the United States. RYBAKOV was Anatoli Ivanovich Rudenko, whose early career was strikingly similar to Blyablin’s. Like Blyablin, Rudenko was a Muscovite born in 1924 who had assumed a bogus German identity, spent several years in East Germany working on his legend and then moved to the West. Rudenko was given the identity documents of Heinz Walter August Feder, born in Kalisch on November 6, 1927.23 While in East Germany he had trained as a piano tuner and repairer. After crossing to West Germany in April 1961, posing as a refugee from Communism, he found a job with the world-famous piano manufacturers Steinway in Hamburg. Though Rudenko was told that his ultimate destination was the United States, in 1964 he was sent to work with a musical instrument company in London, probably in order to accustom him to an English-speaking environment.24
Rudenko’s period in London almost ended in disaster. Once, while returning from Brussels, where he had received his maintenance allowance from a KGB operations officer, he was stopped at Heathrow and 500 pounds were found on him which he had failed to declare. Rudenko was fortunate to find a sympathetic customs officer. The money, he pleaded, was his life savings, the product of many sacrifices over the years. He was allowed to keep the 500 pounds and no action was taken against him.
In 1966 he went to New York on a tourist visa and visited the Manhattan showrooms of Steinway Sons on West 57th Street, who offered Rudenko a job with a salary of 80 dollars a week. With Steinway’s assistance, he gained a work permit and traveled to the United States on his German passport in July 1967. In New York Rudenko became piano tuner to a series of celebrities—among them Nelson Rockefeller, Governor of New York, unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination in 1964 and future vice-president of the United States.25 Rockefeller was regarded in Moscow as the “patron” of Henry Kissinger, who in January 1969 became President Nixon’s National Security Adviser (and later Secretary of State).26 While professor at Harvard during the 1960s, Kissinger had served as Nelson’s paid part-time adviser and speechwriter, receiving a severance pay gift of 50,000 dollars when he joined the Nixon administration. “He has a second-rate mind but a first-rate intuition about people,” Kissinger once said of Rockefeller. “I have a first-rate mind but a third-rate intuition about people.”27
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