The Sword and the Shield
Page 104
3. VENONA decrypts, 5th release, part 3, pp. 206-7.
4. vol. 8, ch. 2. Burdin served as resident from 1951 to 1953. In the records of the Canadian Ministry of External Affairs his name is transliterated as Bourdine. In 1952 Burdin recruited Hugh Hambleton, who later became one of the KGB’s most important Canadian agents; see below, chapter 10.
5. vol. 8, ch. 10, paras. 7-8.
6. VENONA decrypts, 5th release, part 2, pp. 263-5, 272-3, 275.
7. The most reliable account of this episode is in Brook-Shepherd, The Storm Birds, ch. 4, which corrects a number of inventions in Philby’s version of events.
8. Philby, My Silent War, pp. 114-15.
9. vol. 5, ch. 7.
10. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 379.
11. Philby, My Silent War, p. 120.
12. vol. 5, ch. 7.
13. vol. 7, ch. 6, para. 6.
14. Modin, My Five Cambridge Friends, pp. 137, 155; Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War, pp. 86-8.
15. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 375-6.
16. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 377, 396.
17. West and Tsarev, The Crown Jewels, p. 222.
18. Letters from Geoffrey A. Robinson to Christopher Andrew, October 19, 1997, September 14, 1998. Cairncross’s memoirs are as unreliable about his post-war career as about his earlier work as a Soviet agent. He claims that he had virtually no access to secret material in the Treasury (The Enigma Spy, pp. 124-7). According to Robinson, though, “That is totally untrue. The TUBE ALLOYS [nuclear weapons] files themselves were many inches thick, let alone all the other Secret and Top Secret files.”
19. Modin, My Five Cambridge Friends, p. 150. Cf. West and Tsarev, The Crown Jewels, pp. 222-6; Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 406.
20. vol. 7, ch. 6, para. 4.
21. vol. 7, ch. 6, para. 1.
22. Mitrokhin’s notes do not give the exact dates of the surveillance team’s presence at the London residency. It arrived late in the war and remained “for several years.” vol. 7, ch. 2, para. 1; ch. 6, para. 5.
23. vol. 7, ch. 10, para. 11.
24. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 398-9; Boyle, The Climate of Treason, pp. 305, 341, 346-8. Mayhew, Time to Explain, p. 109.
25. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 397. Modin, My Five Cambridge Friends, p. 201. Modin was unable to reveal Rodin’s real name and refers to him by his alias “Korovin.”
26. VENONA decrypts, 3rd release, part 3, pp. 150, 153.
27. Benson and Warner (eds.), VENONA, pp. 61-71. Hoover did not identify Bentley as his source. “At the present time,” he wrote, “it is impossible to determine exactly how many of these people had actual knowledge of the disposition being made of the information they were transmitting.”
28. Weinstein, Perjury, p. 357.
29. Bentley, Out of Bondage, pp. 204-7, 266-7.
30. If the Centre believed Gorsky to have been compromised by Gouzenko’s defection, he would probably have been recalled earlier. By March 1946 the FBI was convinced that Bentley’s defection was known to Silvermaster. Bentley, Out of Bondage, p. 267.
31. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2. On Bentley’s contact with Pravdin’s wife, see Bentley, Out of Bondage, p. 329.
32. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.
33. Modin, My Five Cambridge Friends, p. 133.
34. See below, chapter 9.
35. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 383.
36. See above, chapter 2.
37. Benson and Warner (eds.), VENONA, introduction. Two further studies of the decrypts were published just as this volume was going to press: Haynes and Klehr, VENONA; and West, VENONA.
38. Interview by Christopher Andrew with the late Dr. Cleveland Cram, October 2, 1996. Dr. Cram was one of the first CIA officers to be indoctrinated into VENONA in November 1952. Some of his recollections were included in the BBC Radio 4 documentary VENONA (written and presented by Christopher Andrew; producers: Mark Burman and Helen Weinstein), first broadcast on March 18, 1998.
39. Andrew, “The VENONA Secret.”
40. Weisband had been recruited in 1934. From 1945 to 1947, however, contact was broken with him as part of the security measures which followed the defection of Elizabeth Bentley. Weinstein and Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood, p. 291.
41. Interviews with Cecil Phillips and Meredith Gardner broadcast in the BBC Radio 4 documentary VENONA (March 18, 1998).
42. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 388-9; Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War, pp. 87-8.
43. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 1. Though initially made subordinate to the Council of Ministers, the Committee of Information was transferred to the Foreign Ministry in 1949; Murphy, Kondrashev and Bailey, Battleground Berlin, pp. 40-1.
44. vol. 7, ch. 6, para. 4.
45. The most detailed available account of the organization and development of the KI is a 24-page report based on information obtained during the debriefing of Vladimir and Yevdokia Petrov, following their defection in 1954: “The Committee of Information (‘KI’) 1947-1951” (November 17, 1954) CRS A6823/XR1/56, Australian Archives, Canberra.
46. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2; vol. 6, appendix 2, part 7.
47. Dzhirkvelov, Secret Servant, p. 138.
48. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 389. Panyushkin was ambassador in Washington from 1947 to 1951 and head of the FCD from 1953 to 1956.
49. Gromyko, Memories, pp. 318-19.
50. “The Committee of Information (‘KI’) 1947-1951” (November 17, 1954) CRS A6823/XR1/56, Australian Archives, Canberra.
51. “The Committee of Information (‘KI’) 1947-1951” (November 17, 1954) CRS A6823/XR1/56, Australian Archives, Canberra. According to vol. 7, ch. 11, para. 7, the GRU illegal section was not withdrawn from the KI until 1949.
52. t-7,187; vol. 6, ch. 5, part 4, n. 8; vol. 7, ch. 11, para. 5.
53. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 1; vol. 7, ch. 11, para. 7; vol. 7, app. 3, n. 62. On Korotkov’s pre-war career, see Sudoplatovs, Special Tasks, p. 48. The official SVR version of Korotkov’s career makes no mention of his post-war role as head of the Illegals Directorate; Samolis (ed., Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii, pp. 63-5.
54. Officers are not to be confused with agents, such as Philby.
55. His name appears on his birth certificate as Wilhelm August Fisher. His father, though Russian, came from a family with German origins. On the family background, see Saunders, “Tyneside and the Russian Revolution,” pp. 280-4. Fisher’s true identity was not revealed until after his death in 1971, when Western journalists noticed the name carved on his tombstone.
56. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2 and n. 6. Cf. Samolis (ed.), Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii, pp. 156-9.
57. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2 and n. 6. Fisher’s entry in Samolis (ed.), Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii (pp. 156-9) refrains from mentioning any of the charges made against him.
58. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.
59. vol. 6, ch. 5, parts 1, 2.
60. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.
61. Recollections of MARK’s New York friend and fellow artist, Burt Silverman; Bernikow, Abel, pp. 7-20.
62. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.
63. Samolis (ed.), Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii, pp. 68-70. Albright and Kunstel, Bombshell, pp. 179-85.
64. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2. (Mitrokhin’s note mistranscribes MLAD as MLADA.)
65. Albright and Kunstel, Bombshell, pp. 176-8.
66. Tchikov and Kern, Comment Staline a volé la bombe atomique aux Américains, p. 205.
67. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.
68. Samolis (ed.), Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii, pp. 158-9.
69. Samolis (ed.), Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii, p. 159.
70. OREL was Sixto Fernandes Donsel; FISH was Antonio Arjonilla Toriblo. vol. 6, app. 1, part 41.
71. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.
72. Interviews with Ted Hall and former FBI agent Robert McQueen, first broadcast in the BBC Radio 4 documentary VENONA (written and presented by Christopher Andrew; produced by Mark
Burman and Helen Weinstein, March 18, 1998). Albright and Kunstel cite information from “confidential sources” that Hall had four or five meetings in New York with a Soviet agent whom he knew as “Jimmy Stevens” in 1952-3, before finally breaking contact with Soviet intelligence (Bombshell, ch. 25). Hall acknowledges that he had several meetings with a Soviet contact, but insists that he provided no information during this period (interview with Christopher Andrew, March 11, 1998).
73. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.
74. See below, chapter 17.
75. vol. 6, ch. 11, part 2. Kopatzky later claimed to have been born in Kiev on New Year’s Day, 1922 (Wise, Molehunt, p. 183).
76. Wise, Molehunt, p. 184. Save for recording Kopatzky’s date and place of birth, Mitrokhin’s notes from his file contain nothing before 1946.
77. vol. 6, ch. 11, part 2.
78. Wise, Molehunt, pp. 182-3, 199.
79. Murphy, Kondrashev and Bailey, Battleground Berlin, p. 248. The SVR made available to the authors (David Murphy, head of the CIA Berlin station, 1959-61; Sergei Kondrashev, former deputy head of the FCD; George Bailey, former Director of Radio Liberty) a substantial number of files on KGB operations in Berlin before the building of the Wall. Its statement that no Kopatzky file exists—rightly dismissed by the authors as “obviously disingenuous”—is thus all the more extraordinary. The SVR claims that its only record of Kopatzky concerns his visit, under his new name Orlov, to the Soviet embassy in Washington in 1965 when he inquired about possible asylum in the USSR and complained that the FBI was “attempting to obtain an admission that he collaborated with Soviet intelligence while he was in Germany during the 1940s and 1950s.”
80. vol. 6, ch. 11, part 2.
81. vol. 6, ch. 11, part 2. On Kopatzky’s recruitment by the CIA, see also Murphy, Kondrashev and Bailey, Battleground Berlin, pp. 110-12.
82. vol. 6, ch. 11, part 2.
83. See below, chapter 11.
84. Kopatzky’s case officers were Komarov, Galiguzov, Krasavin, V. V. Grankin, Krishchenko, Borisov, Komev, Fedorchenko, Melnikov, Chaikovsky, P. A. Shilov, Govorkov, Ye. P. Pitovranov, V. G. Likhachev, V. M. Biryukov, A. Ya. Zinchenko, Ya. F. Oleynik, M. I. Kuryshev, Yu. I. Arsenev, G. G. Fedorenko, Makarov, Myakotnykh, Sevastyanov, and the illegal DIMA. vol. 6, ch. 11, part 2.
85. Andrei Zhdanov told the founding meeting of Cominform (the post-war successor of Comintern) in September 1947 that “the principal driving force of the imperialist camp is the USA. Allied with it are Britain and France.” Zhdanov, The International Situation.
86. k-11,112-13; k-7,84.
87. Buton, Les lendemains qui déchantent; Mortimer, The Rise of the French Communist Party, chs. 9, 10; Wolton, La France sous influence, chs. 1, 2.
88. vol. 9, ch. 1.
89. Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War, p. 15.
90. vol. 9, ch. 1.
91. k-11,112-13; k-7,84.
92. vol. 9, ch. 1.
93. vol. 9, ch. 1, para. 86. Mitrokhin’s notes contain very little information on the content of reports from the post-war Paris residency.
94. Dewavrin had resigned as head of SDECE in February 1946.
95. Vosjoli, Lamia, ch. 6; Porch, The French Secret Services, ch. 11.
96. vol. 9, ch. 1, para. 17.
97. k-6,91. WEST’s other “contacts” in the DGER/SDECE, included members of the Italian and Spanish sections, and PASCAL who in 1946 was posted abroad.
98. k-6,92.
99. Recollection of the KGB defector Peter Deriabin: Schecter and Deriabin, The Spy Who Saved the World, p. 237n.
100. Wolton, La France sous influence, pp. 78-9; Buton, Les lendemains qui déchantent, p. 259.
101. t-1,24; t-2,25. Manac’h’s other case officers were M. M. Baklanov, Tikhonov, Kiselev, Nagornov and S. I. Gavrilov.
102. k-4,32,176,179; t-1,42.
103. vol. 9, ch. 1, para. 6.
104. vol. 9, ch. 1, paras. 18-19.
105. vol. 9, ch. 1, para. 31.
106. vol. 9, ch. 1, para. 51. The Paris residency, however, complained of continuing staff shortages. In 1948 the Paris residency had a total of eighteen operational officers and technical support staff. Nine further intelligence officers whom the Centre had intended to send to Paris were refused visas. Attempts were made, with only limited success, to make good the shortfall both by setting up a new illegal residency and by coopting residency translators and typists as well as staff from the Soviet embassy, trade and other missions for operational intelligence work. vol. 9, ch. 1, para. 50.
107. See below, chapter 27.
108. Modin, My Five Cambridge Friends, pp. 159, 165. 109. Rees, A Chapter of Accidents, p. 7; Penrose and Freeman, Conspiracy of Silence, pp. 324-7.
110. vol. 7, ch. 10, para. 9.
111. vol. 7, ch. 10.
112. Cecil, A Divided Life, chs. 6, 7.
113. The Times (January 2, 1951).
114. Minute by Maclean (December 21, 1950), PRO FO 371/81613 AU 1013/52.
115. Philby, My Silent War, p. 134.
116. Though six telegrams in 1945 referred to Philby under the codename STANLEY, they appear not to have been decrypted until some years later; VENONA decrypts, 5th release, part 1, pp. 263-7, 272, 275-6. A total of thirty telegrams exchanged between the Centre and the London residency, mostly in 1945, were eventually decrypted in whole or in part by Anglo-American codebreakers.
117. Benson and Warner (eds.), VENONA, pp. xxvii-xxviii.
118. Fuchs told his interrogator that his last contact with Soviet intelligence had been in February or March 1949. That may have been his last meeting with his controller. Williams, Klaus Fuchs, Atom Spy, p. 186. See also Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion, ch. 12.
119. Benson and Warner (eds.), VENONA, pp. xxvii-xxviii. The US government lacked the evidence to prosecute Weisband for espionage, but he was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment for contempt after failing to attend a federal grand jury hearing on Communist Party activity.
120. vol. 7, ch. 10, para. 7.
121. Philby, My Silent War, p. 146.
122. See above, chapter 9.
123. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2. It is unclear from Mitrokhin’s notes whether Philby refused contact with the legal residencies from the moment of his arrival in the United States in 1949 or in the following year. Unsurprisingly, Philby made no mention in his memoirs or published interviews of the failings of the American residencies.
124. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2. Modin, My Five Cambridge Friends, pp. 186-7.
125. Philby, My Silent War, pp. 151-2. Burgess arrived at the Washington embassy as second secretary in August 1950. On Philby’s house at 4100 Nebraska Avenue, NW, see Kessler, Undercover Washington, pp. 93-5.
126. Newton, The Butcher’s Embrace, pp. 305-11; Knightley, Philby, pp. 167-8.
127. According to HARRY’s KGB file, the out-of-date passport in the name of Kovalik was no. 214595, issued by the State Department in Washington on April 29, 1930. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.
128. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.
129. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2. On the use of the Batory to transport Soviet agents to the United States, cf. Budenz, Men Without Faces, pp. 19, 64, 68.
130. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.
131. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2. There is no suggestion that either Senator Flanders or his family were aware that HARRY was a Soviet illegal.
132. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.
133. Newton, The Butcher’s Embrace, p. 281.
134. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.
135. Newton, The Butcher’s Embrace, pp. 281-2.
136. Philby, My Silent War, pp. 152-4.
137. Cecil, A Divided Life, p. 118.
138. VENONA decrypts, 3rd release, part 1, pp. 240-1.
139. This is acknowledged by Yuri Modin (Modin, My Five Cambridge Friends, p. 199).
140. Philby, My Silent War, p. 156. The KGB claim that the escapades which led to Burgess’s recall were pre-planned is not corroborated by Mitrokhin’s notes; they were much in line with
similar, unpremeditated “scrapes” over the previous few years.
141. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.
142. Modin, My Five Cambridge Friends, pp. 199-201.
143. Modin, My Five Cambridge Friends, pp. 202-3.
144. Modin, My Five Cambridge Friends, pp. 203-4; Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, pp. 338-9.
145. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 404; Cecil, A Divided Life, pp. 135ff.
146. vol. 7, ch. 10, para. 16.
147. vol. 7, ch. 10, para. 17.
148. vol. 7, ch. 10, para. 19.
149. Modin, My Five Cambridge Friends, p. 251.
150. vol. 7, ch. 10, para. 19.
151. vol. 7, ch. 10, para. 18.
152. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.
153. Philby, My Silent War, pp. 157-9.
154. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.
155. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2. In 1953 the illegal VIK also lost a hollow coin containing a microfilm message.
156. vol. 7, ch. 10, para. 19.
157. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 406; Modin, My Five Cambridge Friends, pp. 213-18. Modin is apparently unaware that Colville had recorded his 1939 meetings with Cairncross in his diary, and is wrongly skeptical of his ability to identify Cairncross as the author of a note describing one of those meetings, found in Burgess’s flat.
158. Modin, My Five Cambridge Friends, pp. 221-4, 229-32; Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 406-7. Blunt finally confessed in 1964 in return for a guarantee of immunity from prosecution. He was not publicly identified as a former Soviet agent until 1979.
159. Philby, My Silent War, ch. 12; Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 407-8; Knightley, Philby, pp. 147-8; Modin, My Five Cambridge Friends, pp. 224, 228-32.
160. Borovik, The Philby Files, p. 284.
161. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 24-6.
Chapter Ten
The Main Adversary
Part I
1. t-7,12; k-13,267; vol. 6, ch. 5, part 1. Mitrokhin’s notes omit to record Grigulevich’s alias as a Costa Rican diplomat, but the other details he provides (for example, the fact that on May 14, 1952 Grigulevich presented his letters of credence as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of Costa Rica in Rome to the Italian president, Luigi Einaudi) clearly identify Grigulevich as “Teodoro B. Castro.” The members of the Costa Rican delegation to the Sixth Session of the UN General Assembly are listed in United Nations, Official Records of the General Assembly Sixth Session, Plenary Meetings, p. xiv.