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Copyright (c) 1984 by Viktor Suvorov
ISBN 0-02-615510-9
OCR: MadMax, May 2002
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To the memory of Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky
Contents
Introduction
PART ONE
1 The Triumvirate
2 History
3 The Pyramid
4 The GRU and the Military Industrial Commission )
5 But Why is Nothing Known about it?
6 The GRU and the 'Younger Brothers'
7 The GRU and the KGB
8 The Centre
9 The Procurement Organs
10 Fleet Intelligence
11 The GRU Processing Organs
12 Support Services
PART TWO
1 Illegals
2 The Undercover Residency
3 Agents
4 Agent Recruiting
5 Agent Communications
6 The Practice of Agent Work
7 Operational Intelligence
8 Tactical Reconnaissance
9 The Training and Privileges of Personnel
Conclusion
For GRU Officers Only
Appendix A: Leaders of Soviet Military Intelligence
Appendix B: The GRU High Command and Leading GRU Officers
Appendix C: Some Case Histories of GRU Activities
Index
Introduction
There is but one opinion as to which country in the world possesses the
most powerful secret intelligence service. Without the slightest doubt that
country is the Soviet Union, and the name of the monstrous secret
organisation without precedent in the history of mankind is the KGB. But on
the question as to which country possesses the second most powerful secret
organisation, the opinions of specialists differ. Strange as it may seem,
the country to which this organisation belongs is also the Soviet Union, and
the organisation itself is called the Chief Intelligence Directorate of the
General Staff.
This book was written in order to confirm this simple fact.
At first it was conceived as an instructional manual for a narrow
circle of specialists. Subsequently it was revised by the author for a wider
public. The revision was confined mainly to the excision of certain
definitions and technical details which would be of little interest. Even
after this, there remained in the book many details of a technical nature,
which may sometimes make for difficult reading. But though I may apologise,
there is nothing to be done. In order to understand a disease (and the
desire to understand a disease implies a desire to fight against it), one
must know its pathology as well as its symptoms.
For one of their very first chosen myths, the communists decided to
record that the organs of enforcement of the new State were not created
until the nineteenth of December 1917. This falsehood was circulated in
order to prove that Soviet power, in the first forty-one days of its
existence, could dispense with the mass executions so familiar to other
revolutions. The falsehood is easily exposed. It is sufficient to look at
the editions of the Bolshevist papers for those days which shook the world.
The Organs and subsequent mass executions existed from the first hour, the
first minute, the first infantile wail of this Soviet power. That first
night, having announced to the world the birth of the most bloodthirsty
dictatorship in its history, Lenin appointed its leaders. Among them was
comrade A. I. Rikov, the head of the People's Commissariat for Internal
Affairs which sounds less innocuous in its abbreviation, NKVD. Comrade Rikov
was later shot, but not before he had managed to write into the history of
the Organs certain bloody pages which the Soviet leadership would prefer to
forget about. Fifteen men have been appointed to the post of Head of the
Organs, of which three were hounded out of the Soviet government with
ignominy. One died at his post. One was secretly destroyed by members of the
Soviet government (as was later publicly admitted). Seven comrades were shot
or hanged, and tortured with great refinement before their official
punishment. We are not going to guess about the futures of three still
living who have occupied the post. The fate of the deputy heads has been
equally violent, even after the death of comrade Stalin.
The paradox of this endless bloody orgy would seem to be this. Why does
the most powerful criminal organisation in the world so easily and freely
give up its leaders to be torn to pieces? How is the Politburo able to deal
with them so unceremoniously, clearly not experiencing the slightest fear
before these seemingly all-powerful personalities and the organisations
headed by them? How is it that the Politburo has practically no difficulties
in displacing not only individual heads of State Security but in destroying
whole flocks of the most influential State Security officers? Where lies the
secret of this limitless power of the Politburo?
The answer is very simple. The method is an old one and has been used
successfully for thousands of years. It boils down to the principle: 'divide
and rule'. In the beginning, in order to rule, Lenin divided everything in
Russia that was capable of being divided, and ever since the communists have
continued faithfully to carry out the instructions of the great founder of
the first proletarian state.
Each system of governing the State is duplicated and reduplicated.
Soviet power itself is duplicated. If one visits any regional committee of
the Party and then the Regional Executive Committee one is struck by the
fact that two separate organizations having almost identical structures and
deciding identical prob1ems nevertheless take completely contradictory
decisions. Neither one of these organisations has the authority to decide
anything independently.
This same system exists at all stages and at all levels of the
Government. If we look at the really important decisions of the Soviet
leadership, those which are published in the papers, we will find that any
one of them is taken only at joint sessions of the Central Committee of the
Party and the Council of Ministers. I have in front of me as I write the
last joint resolution on raising the quality and widening the range of
production of children's toys. Neither the Council of Ministers of the
gigantic State structure nor the Central Committee of the ruling Party is
able, since neither has the power and authority, to take an independent
decision on such an important matter. But we are not talking here just about
Ministers and First Secretaries. At all lower levels the same procedure is
to be observed. For example, only a joint decision of the Central Committee
of the Communist Party of a republic and the Council of Ministers of the
same republic, or the Provincial Committee and the Provincial Executive
Committee, is valid. At these levels of course, such crucial problems as the
quality of children's toys are not decided; but the principle remains that
no separate and independent decisions can be taken. In shape and form,
Soviet power is everywhere duplicated, from the planning of rocket
launchings into space to the organisation for the burial of Soviet citizens,
from the management of diplomatic missions abroad to lunatic asylums, from
the construction of sewers to atomic ice-breakers.
In addition to the governing organs which give orders and see that they
are carried out, there also exist Central Control Organs which are
independent of the local authority. The basic one of these is of course the
KGB, but independently of the KGB other powerful organs are also active: the
innocent-sounding People's Control for example, a secret police organisation
subordinated to a Politburo member who exercises almost as much influence as
the Chief of the KGB. In addition to the People's Control, the Ministry of
the Interior is also active and this is subordinated neither to the KGB nor
to Control. There is also the Central Organ of the press, a visit of which
to a factory or workshop causes hardly less anger than a visit of the OBHSS,
the socialist fraud squad. On the initiative of Lenin, it was seen as
essential that each powerful organ or organisation which is capable of
taking independent decisions be counter-balanced by the existence of another
no less powerful bureaucratic organisation. The thinking goes: we have a
newspaper Pravda, let's have another on a similar scale - Izvestia. Tass
created, as a counter-balance to it, APN. Not for competition but simply for
duplication. In this way the comrades in the Politburo are able to live a
quieter life. To control everybody and everything is absolutely impossible,
and this is why duplication exists. Everybody jealously pursues his rival
and in good time informs whoever he should inform of any flashes of
inspiration, of any deviation from the established norm, any effort to look
at what is going on from the standpoint of a healthy critical mind.
Duplication in everything is the prime principle and reason behind the
terrifying stagnation of all walks of life in Soviet society. It is also the
reason for the unprecedented stability of the regime. In duplicating the
Organs, the Politburo was able to neutralise any attempt by them to raise
the standard of revolt against their creators, and thus it has always been.
The creation of a system of parallel institutions began with the
creation of the Tcheka, an organisation called into existence to
counter-balance the already growing powers of the People's Commissariat for
Internal Affairs. During the course of the whole of the civil war these two
bloody organisations existed independently, and as rivals, of each other.
Their influence grew to immense proportions, and Lenin suggested the
creation of yet another independent organ to carry out the task of control
and retribution, the Rabkrin. This organ, known today as the People's
Control, is still waiting for somebody to research into its history. The
Rabkrin was Lenin's love-child, remembered by him even on his deathbed. The
Rabkrin or, more formally, the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate was not
created as an organ of repression for the whole population, but as an
organisation for the control of the ruling Bolshevik elite and, above all,
the Tcheka and the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs.
In the meantime the tentacles of the Tcheka had spread out over the
frontiers and the Bolkshevik leaders were forced to create yet another
parallel organisation to the Tcheka, capable of counterbalancing its
external activities. Neither the People's Commissariat nor the Rabkrin was
able to fulfill this role. On the personal order of the indefatigable Lenin
on 21 October 1918, an external intelligence service, completely independent
of the Tcheka, was created under the meaningless title of the Registered
Directorate of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. At the present time it
is called the Chief Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the
Soviet Army, and also known by its military classification as 'unit 44388'.
In history there is a number of examples of similar organisations within
repressive regimes. The most obvious of these is of course Hitler's Germany.
The SS and the SA and, on the front, the Wehrmacht Divisions and the
Divisions of the SS, all existed under the same duplication principle, as
did the two Intelligence Services, the Gestapo and the Abwehr.
This multiplication of institutions can only be explained by the desire
of the ruling class to guarantee the stability of its regime. It is
important to clarify this, so that one can understand the role of Soviet
military intelligence in Soviet society and in the international arena, and,
in addition, the reason why this organisation has remained throughout Soviet
history largely independent from the KGB, in spite of the many ordeals it
has been subjected to.
There were many elementary errors and failures in the work of these
early field officers who had no experience whatsoever. For example, the
counter-intelligence officers of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which at the
time were independent states, simply told any suspicious person who claimed
to be a fugitive Russian officer, or engineer or doctor, to tie a necktie.
In 1920, by this method alone, more than forty GRU agents were unmasked in
these three countries. The GRU was unperturbed by these failures,
however, its philosophy being that if it could not have quality it would go
for quantity. It was an astute calculation. If one agent in a hundred sent
abroad showed himself to be talented, and his natural talent made up for his
lack of education, then that was enough. Nobody was worried about the agents
who were discovered. Let them get out of the mess if they could. The Soviet
Union will never admit that the people it sends out belong to Soviet
intelligence.
This large-scale attack was highly successful. Out of the thousands of
intelligence agents sent abroad, some dozen began to give positive results.
The help of communists abroad also began to tell. Gradually quality began to
creep into the work of the GRU. One of the first outstanding successes was
the creation of the so-called 'Mrachkovski Enterprises' or, as it was
officially called in GRU documents, 'the network of commercial
undertakings'. Jacob Mrachkovski (his brother was a member of the Central
Committee) was sent to Germany where he organised a shop and then a
factory. Subsequently he bought, in fictitious names, several
factories in France, Great Britain, Canada, the United States and finally
China. The money put into these undertakings quickly grew and, after several
years, the Mrachovski undertakings began to show profits of tens of millions
of pounds. The money earned was used by the GRU as its chief source of
'clean' money, that is, money which had never been on Soviet territory and
consequently could be used for agents' operations. In addition to obtaining
money the Mrachkovski undertakings were widely used for the legalisation of
newly posted intelligence officers who by now were beginning to be better
trained. Journeying from country to country, they found help and support
from the Mrachkovski network. They got themselves jobs and after some months
received the most laudatory references and went off into other countries
where the same thing took place. This went on until the agent was able to
stand on his own two feet. The security of the network was so tight that no
undertaking ever suspected the existence of another. Mrachkovski himself
travelled all over the world, buying up new enterprises, installing one or
two of his own people and obtaining perfectly legal and highly lucrative
licences and patents.
Relations with the Tchekists were gradually stretched to their limit.
The Party was striving to inflame the hostility between the GRU and the
Organs of State. Lenin made a great success of this, as did his successors.
The next conflict broke out in the spring of 1920. Both Lenin and Trotsky
considered themselves outstanding thinkers, theoreticians and practical men;
men of deep knowledge as regards military affairs and international
relations. Naturally neither one nor the other took any notice of evaluated
intelligence. They both demanded that the intelligence material should be
laid before them 'grey' and unevaluated: they would then draw their own
conclusions and analyse the material on the basis of Marxist doctrine. But
Marxism had very precisely and categorically foretold that there would be a
world war in Europe which would be the last war of mankind. The imperialist
war would develop into a worldwide revolution, after which a golden age
would begin. Yet the war had finished two years before and no worldwide
revolution had happened. Intelligence reported that there were no signs of
this revolution coming about, so both Lenin and Trotsky were either
compelled to admit that Marxism was wrong or to take measures to bring the
revolution about. They decided to trigger off a revolution in Europe,
starting with Poland. Intelligence assessments were ignored, and naturally
the adventure ended in complete failure. Both the organisers immediately
started to hunt for a scapegoat. The only possible explanation for the
scandal was that the intelligence service had done its work badly. Lenin
announced to the rank and file of the Party, 'We have suffered this defeat
as a result of the negligence of the intelligence service.' But the GRU was
a completely unknown entity, even to some of the highest representatives of
the Soviet bureaucracy, and much more so to the rank-and-file Party members.
All eyes turned towards the Tchekists. Their unpopularity among the people,
even before this, was evident. After Lenin's announcement their authority
finally fell. Dzerzhinsky caused a scandal in the Kremlin and demanded
explanations from the Politburo. In order to calm the Tchekists and to
support his own version of the story, Lenin permitted the Tchekists to purge
the GRU. The first bloody purge took place in November 1920. On Lenin's
orders hundreds of intelligence officers who had allegedly failed to
evaluate the situation correctly were shot.
Up to this time there had been no need to account for the GRU's
activities, but now information was made available to some Party members.
This has led some specialists to the mistaken conclusion that the GRU did
not exist until this time.
However, the GRU did not take long to recover from the 1920 Purge. This
may be explained mainly by the fact that the overseas organs of the GRU were
practically untouched, and this for eminently sound reasons. Neither Lenin
nor Trotsky had any idea of shooting the intelligence officers who were
overseas, not only because they were manifestly innocent, but also because
their deaths would have absolutely no salutary effect on others since nobody
would hear about them, not even the many members of the Central Committee.
The other reason for the quick recovery of the GRU was that its agent
intelligence network in the military districts was also left untouched. At
the end of the civil war, the fronts were tranformed into 'military
districts', but the chain of command in the new districts did not undergo
any essential changes. A 'registration' department was included on the
strength of the staff of each district which continued in peace-time to
carry on agent intelligence work in countries where the district would have
to carry out military activities in any future war. Up to the time of the
1920 purge there were fifteen military districts and two fleets in the Red
Army. They all carried out, independently from each other, agent
intelligence work of a very intensive nature.
The internal military districts were no exception. Their intelligence
centres were moved out to the frontiers and it was from there that the
direction of agents was undertaken. Each internal military district also has
its tasks in wartime, and its intelligence work is based around these tasks.
The direction of activities of a frontier district is very precisely
defined; at the same time the internal district, independent of
circumstances, may operate in different directions. Consequently its agent
network in peacetime operates in different directions, too. For example, in
1920 agents of the Moscow military district operated on the territories of
Poland, Lithuania (at that time still independent) and Finland. This system
has prevailed in all respects, except that the districts and fleets have
become more numerous, as also has money available for intelligence. We are
richer now than we were then.
After 1927 Soviet military intelligence began to blossom. This was the
year in which the first five-year plan was drawn up, which aimed (as all
subsequent five-year plans have) exclusively at the growth of the military
potential of the country. The plan stipulated the creation and speedy growth
of the tank, ship-building, aviation and artillery industries. The Soviet
Union set itself the target of creating the most powerful army in the world.
The Soviet leadership made haste and demanded from its designers not only
the creation of new kinds of weaponry and military technology, but also that
Soviet armaments must be the best in the world. Monumental sums of money
were spent to attain this aim: prac-tically the whole of Russia's gold
reserves was thrown into the task. At Western auctions the Soviet
authorities sold off Russian corn and wood, pictures by Rembrandt and
Nicholas II's stamp collection. A tidy sum of money was realised.
All GRU residents received book-length lists of foreign military
technology which they would have to steal in the near future. The lists
included equipment for bombers and fighters, anti-aircraft and anti-tank
guns, howitzers and mortars, submarines and torpedo boats, radio valves and
tank engines, the technology for the production of aluminium and equipment
for boring out gun barrels. Yet another GRU tradition first saw the light of
day in this period: that of stealing analogous kinds of armaments at the
same time in different countries and then studying them to select the best.
Thus, at the beginning of the 1930s, Soviet military intelligence succeeded
in stealing samples or plans of torpedoes in Italy, France, the United
States, Germany and Great Britain. It was hardly surprising that the Soviet
torpedo, manufactured in the shortest possible time, conformed to the
highest international standards. Sometimes Soviet copiers selected the best
assemblies and components and constructed out of them a new type which often
turned out to be the very best in the world. Luck too was on the side of
Soviet military intelligence. Nobody took very seriously the efforts of the
Soviet Union in the military sphere, and few countries went to great pains
to hide their secrets from it. Communists the world over were obsessed by
the idea of helping Soviet intelligence, Soviet residents were able to throw
their money round, and finally the great depression threw into the arms or
Soviet intelligence thousands of opportunists who feared losing their
factories, workshops or offices. Soviet intelligence, by the beginning of
the 1930s, had attained unprecedented heights of power. Within Soviet
territory the GRU had practically no political influence. In the
international sphere it did not very much seek to enter into the political
life of parties and states, but in the field of clean espionage the GRU
already clearly occupied the leading position in the world, having by far
overtaken the political intelligence work of the OGPU. At the beginning of
the 1930s the GRU budget was several times larger than the overseas budget
of the OGPU. This situation remains true today.
The system in use today of recruitment and running of agents had
already fully developed by the end of the 1920s. In agent organisations
directly subordinated to the GRU the recruitment and running of agents was
in the hands of 'illegals', that is, GRU officers posted abroad undercover
with forged documents and offices, posing as Soviet diplomats, consuls,
trade representatives, correspondents and so on. In agent organisations
subordinated to military districts and fleets the recruitments of agents was
carried out from the territory of the Soviet Union. Only rarely did certain
officers of the intelligence directorates of districts travel abroad with
forged documents for short periods. Before diplomatic recognition of the
Soviet Union, emphasis was concentrated on the activities of illegals, but
after its recognition, undercover residencies were added to the numerous
illegal residencies. The GRU illegals and undercover residencies acted
independently from each other but in the pre-war period the communications
of illegals from GRU residencies with the Centre were frequently
accomplished through the Soviet embassies. This was a very serious mistake.
With the beginning of the war when the embassies were closed or blockaded,
the communication with illegals was disrupted. The mistake was subsequently
rectified. Military district intelligence always operated independently of
the GRU illegals and Soviet embassies, and for this reason at the beginning
of the war it was practically unharmed. Gradually a tendency became
noticeable in the operations of military district intelligence services to
limit the use of Soviet officers even for short trips abroad. Faced with
wartime conditions the military district intelligence services began to
recruit and run their agents only from Soviet territory. The recruitment of
new agents was carried out either on Soviet territory or on the territory of
neighbouring countries by means of agents who had been recruited earlier.
There is an interesting story to be told about the recruitment of
agents at this time, whose moral holds as true today. In the pre-war period,
recruitment took up little time. The Comintern simply made a decision and
immediately scores, sometimes hundreds of communists became Soviet secret
agents. In the interests of successful agent work, the GRU always demanded
from them that they should publicly resign from the communist party. The
vast majority accepted this without demur. After all, it was only a
camouflage, a Bolshevik manoeuvre to help defeat the lass enemy. Sometimes
however, there were communists who were unwilling. In Germany, one group
agreed to the GRU's demands only on condition that it was accepted into the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The demand was a simple one, for it is
not difficult for the GRU to write out a dozen new party cards, and as the
new agent group was working so successfully, the GRU did not want to refuse.
At a routine meeting the GRU case officer, an employee of the Soviet embassy
in Berlin, informed the group's leader that their demands had been met. He
congratulated the group on becoming members of the CPSU and informed them,
in conclusion, that the General Secretary of the Party himself, comrade
Stalin, had written out the party cards. As an exceptional case, the German
communists had been accepted without going through the candidacy stage.
Their party cards were naturally to be kept in the Central Committee.
At this news the group's productivity redoubled. It was supposed to
receive a certain sum of money for its work, but the group members refused
to accept the money. More than that, they began to hand over to their case
officers sums of their own money, in order to pay their membership fees to
the Soviet communist party. Punctually they handed over to their case
officers all documents and payslips concerning their earnings together with
their party subscriptions. This took up a great deal of time during the
agent meetings, but the Germans were working very productively and nobody
wanted to offend them.
Some time later, the Gestapo got on their trail, but all the members of
the group managed to escape into Austria, then to Switzerland and finally
through France to Spain where the civil war was going on. From Spain they
were brought to Moscow, Terrible disappointments awaited them in the capital
of the Proletariat of all the world, the chief of which was that nobody into
at any time written out their party cards, or accepted them into the Soviet
communist party. The GRU officials had of course assumed that the agents
would never set foot in the Soviet Union on that therefore it would be very
easy to dupe them. However, on their arrival in Moscow, the first thing the
agents did was to declare a hunger strike and demand a meeting with the
higher leadership of the GRU. The meeting took place and the GRU leadership
did all in its power to help the Germans join the party, after going through
the candidate stage, naturally. But foreigners can only be accepted in the
CPSU through the Central Committee, and the natural questions arose: 'Were
you ever members of the communist party? Why did you leave it?' The fanatics
told exactly what had really happened but were damned out of their own
mouths. To burn one's party card is a cardinal sin - and the Central
Committee threw out their application. The Germans again declared a hunger
strike and demanded a meeting with Stalin in person. At this point the NKVD
offered its help to the Central Committee, but the GRU intervened, being in
no way desirous that its agents should fall into the hands of the NKVD. So
the ex-agents ended up in the GRU cellars.
In the meantime, the political situation had changed sharply. Hitler
had become Stalin's best friend and the communists likewise friends of the
fascists. There ensued an exchange of gifts - the most up-to-date German
military aeroplanes for Stalin (including the top secret ME109, JU87, JU88,
DO217, HElll and even the ME110) in exchange for the surrender of all German
communists who had taken political asylum in the Soviet Union. Hitler's
calculation was very simple. In the short time before war broke out, the
Russians would not be able to copy the planes, but he would have the heads
of his political opponents. It was a fruitful deal for Stalin too. He was
bored with the German communists and now he would be able to give them to
the Gestapo in exchange for the best German aeroplanes. In addition to the
ordinary members, there were members of the German Central Committee and the
Politburo, together with the editors of the communist newspaper. These were
not taken to Germany, but the Gestapo was told it could shoot them in situ,
in the Moscow area. However, as far as the former GRU agents were concerned,
the decision had been taken not to hand them over. They knew too much. The
German embassy in Moscow was informed that they had all died in Spain and
had never got as far as Moscow. The fascists did not object but suggested
they would present one more aircraft at the same price. Unfortunately, the
former agents, not knowing anything about the bargaining that was going on,
again declared a hunger strike, and this decided their fate. The Soviet side
now admitted to the fascists that they were in Moscow and proposed a
compromise. The fascists could shoot their victims in the Soviet Union
without talking to them. The execution took place among the huge coal
bunkers of the Kashierski Electric Power Station. Beforehand, the Gestapo
men had personally identified each of the people to be executed and
photographed them; then, under cover of protracted whistling of locomotives,
they shot them all. Afterwards, joint detachments of the GRU, the Central
Committee of the Soviet communist party and the Gestapo burnt the bodies in
the furnaces of the power station.
The Germans' mistake was threefold: they believed too quickly in the
promises of the GRU; they insisted too strongly on the GRU's fulfilling its
promises; and they forgot that if somebody puts a high enough price on the
head of an agent, however good he may be, the GRU will sell him without
hesitation.
In the meantime the Party, under the leadership of Stalin, arrived face
to face with the ultimate necessity of subjugating all layers of Soviet
society and utterly eradicating dissension. The decision was taken by the
Party to purge the whole country of potential dissidents. Today we have
irrefutable proof that the 'Great Terror' was carefully planned and
prepared. On the testimony of A. Avtorhanov the Central Committee of the
Party had, as long ago as 13 May 1935, taken the decision to create a
special security commission for carrying out mass repressions in the
country, which took place in 1937 to 1938.
For almost two years the Special Commission prepared the most bloody
page in the history of mankind. Its members were Stalin, Zhdanov, Yezhov,
Shkiriatov, Malenkov and Voyshinski. It is interesting to note that the then
head of NKVD, Yagoda, was not a member of the Commission, and this was a
sensible move. Before carrying out its massive blood- letting of the whole
of society, the Party took pains to purge the surgical instrument itself,
the NKVD organs. The purge began secretly as early as 1935 and at that stage
concerned only the organs and the overseas residencies of the NKVD. In order
not to frighten anybody, it was carried out secretly and without public
trials. Naturally it was the GRU which was entrusted with the task of
purging the NKVD overseas organs. In 1935 Yan Karlovich Berzin, the GRU's
chief, travelled to the Far East with special powers and a group of trusted
helpers. Secret orders appointing one I. S. Unshlikht and later S. T.
Uritski as chief of the GRU were issued. But no order was issued for Berzin
to relinquish his post. In other words, the appointment of Uritski was
simply a cover-up for the long absence of Berzin. In the Far East Berzin and
his assistants secretly liquidated the leading illegals of the NKVD. In the
following year Berzin, with his assistants, appeared in Spain. His official
job was Chief Advisor to the Spanish Government, a post in which he was
extremely active. Firstly, he endeavoured to direct the activities of the
Spanish Government along lines favourable to Moscow. Secondly, he personally
ran from Spain the whole of the overseas network of the GRU. And finally, he
did not forget his most important task. The head of the Foreign Directorate
of the NKVD, Slutski, was also in Spain, also personally supervising the
activities of all his overseas agents. In all probability Slutski was aware
that Berzin and the GRU had some connection with the mysterious
disappearance of NKVD illegals. Evidence has been preserved which shows that
Slutski and Berzin had clashes practically every day in Spain. However, at
the same time, the intelligence chief of the NKVD was finding himself
increasingly subject to the chief of Soviet military intelligence. At the
end of September 1936 the NKVD chief, Yagoda, was dismissed from his post
and the secretary of the Central Committee of the Party, Ezhov, was
appointed in his place. Ezhov himself began a most cruel purge of the NKVD -
and he no longer required the assistance of the GRU. More than 3,000
Tchekists were shot on Ezhov's orders, including Yagoda and Slutski
themselves. It is interesting to note that Yagoda's death followed an open
trial, but Slutski was murdered secretly, in the same way as his best
illegal residents had been executed previously. After the Party, in the
person of Ezhov and with the help of the GRU, had purged the NKVD, the time
came for the Army to be dealt with. This purge began with the liquidation of
the general staff - and the complete destruction of the GRU. Among those
military leaders first executed together with Marshal Tukhachevski were army
commanders Yakir and Uboreevich and Corps Commander Putna, the Soviet
military attache in London. As might be expected, all military attaches are
GRU officers; but Putna was not simply a military attache. Until his
appointment to London he had been deputy chief of the GRU. His execution
served as an extra excuse for the NKVD to carry out a special purge in the
ranks of the GRU. Hatred which had been collecting for many years at last
came out into the open. In the course of the purge first the acting head of
the GRU, Uritski, was arrested and shot, and after him all the rest. The
NKVD and GRU now exchanged roles. NKVD men with special powers went around
the world destroying both GRU illegals and also those intelligence officers
of the GRU and NKVD who had refused to return to the Soviet Union and
certain destruction. In the course of the 1937 purge the GRU was completely
destroyed- even down to the lavatory attendants and cooks on its payroll.
Berzin, back from Spain, had to re-create the GRU from scratch.
By the autumn of 1937, by a special effort of the Comintern
-particularly in Spain with the help and coercion of the International
Brigades - the GRU had somewhat recovered its strength. A year later Soviet
military intelligence had returned to its stormy activities. But in the
summer of 1938, in the course of a second wave of terror, the GRU was again
destroyed, losing its entire strength. This time Berzin himself, one of the
cleverest and most successful leaders the GRU has had, was among the
victims.
The blow delivered automatically meant a blow to all organisations
subordinate to the GRU, that is to the intelligence directorates of the
military districts. Here the death-dealing whirlwind came twice, literally
destroying everything. During the pre-war years, in the areas of western
military districts the intelligence directorates had extended the existing
reserves of underground armies in case of the occupation of these areas by
an enemy. Secret depots and stores of weapons and explosives had been
established, radio sets had been secreted and refuges for partisans and
intelligence officers had been set up. In the terror, all this was
destroyed, and tens of thousands of trained partisans and saboteurs, ready
to meet the enemy, were shot or perished in prisons and concentration camps.
Military intelligence ceased to exist. And not only military intelligence;
the Army had been bled white, and military industry, too. But Ezhov, the
head of the NKVD, had made a fatal mistake in taking Berzin's place when he
was executed on 29 July 1938. The very next day, Stalin received only one
report on both GRU and NKVD activities, instead of the usual two. The
implication was clear: a monopoly of secret activity had begun, and Stalin
now had no way to balance the power of the NKVD. With his customary
precision and deliberation he realised that his control of Soviet
intelligence was slipping away and the same day, 30 July, he set in train
the events which would lead to Ezhov's removal and execution.
In the winter of 1939/40 there occurred an improbable scandal. The Red
Army, whose strength at the moment of the attack was more than four million
men, was unable to crush the resistance of the Finnish Army, whose strength
was only 27,000 men. Reasons for this were quickly found. Of course there
was the cold. (The German Army's right to claim the same reason for its
defeat in the winter of 1941 was unanimously denied.) The second reason was
the intelligence service. In all Soviet historical works (which may be
published only with the permission of the Propaganda Department of the Party
Central Committee), even to this day, the cold and poor intelligence are the
reasons always given. The Party forgets to specify that from 1937 to 1939
Soviet military intelligence was practically non-existent, at the Party's
own wish.
After the Finnish scandal, Stalin did not order a purge of the GRU. It
is probable that at that time there was nobody to purge, but he still
ordered the execution of General Proskurov, the new head of the GRU, and his
staff because of Proskurov's disagreement with him over the Hitler-Stalin
pact. In June 1940 General Filipp Golikov was appointed chief of the GRU.
Under Golikov the GRU was reborn amazingly quickly into an effective
intelligence force. There has been much speculation about this period. Did
the GRU know of the plans for Germany's attack on the Soviet Union or not?
The best answer to the question must lie in Golikov's own survival. Seven
leaders before him and two after him were murdered, yet he went on to become
Stalin's Deputy of Personnel and Marshal of the Soviet Union. The political
leadership may not take the right decision, even with the best information
that Golikov could give, but it will not bite the hand that feeds it.
The war had begun with a catastrophic defeat for the Soviet Union. In
the first few hours the German Army succeeded in securing a strategic
initiative. Thousands of serviceable aircraft were destroyed on their
airfields and thousands of tanks burned in their own parks.
It may have been that Stalin spared Golikov in order to give him a
testing assignment. He was certainly told to take himself abroad and revive
and renew the GRU agent network which had been cut off immediately. He went
first to England and then to the United States and, to give him his due,
this time he succeeded in carrying out his work in an exemplary manner. For
his visits to Great Britain and the United States he naturally did not use
faked documents. He came, with a numerous entourage, as the head of an
official Soviet military delegation to obtain American and British
armaments. For the chief of the GRU and his colleagues the doors of secret
factories and laboratories were opened - the very places Soviet intelligence
had been trying for decades to penetrate. This historical visit was the
beginning of intense penetration by Soviet military intelligence of the
armaments industries of America and Britain. Golikov also succeeded, albeit
only temporarily, in establishing communications with GRU illegals who were
functioning on territory occupied by Germany; but this also signalled the
beginning of GRU penetration of the German general staff from many different
quarters. The consequences of this were that, beginning with Stalingrad,
even top secret plans of the German High Command were known to Soviet
front-line generals before they were known to the German field commanders.
And the Soviet military leadership was equally enlightened as to the plans
of its allies, the Americans and the British. Churchill bears witness to the
fact that Stalin enumerated several points as to the contents of British top
secret plans, though he attributes such enlightenment to Stalin's genius in
foreseeing the future. The only thing that is not clear is why Stalin did
not display a similar clairvoyancy with regard to Hitler's intentions in
1941 and the beginning of 1942.
In the autumn of 1941 Golikov returned from the United States, an
another exceptionally successful visit. He could not, of course, expect to
keep his post, but he stayed alive, and even kept his General's rank. On 13
October he was relieved of the command of the GRU and appointed commander of
the 10th Army.
Later, in 1944, Stalin gave Golikov yet another chance to expiate his
guilt with regard to the sudden German attack. In October he was appointed
plenipotentiary of the Council of People's Commissars on Questions of the
Repatriation of Soviet Citizens. At the same time as he was occupied with
this task several of the former residents of the GRU in Europe were assigned
to him. He acquitted himself again with great credit and, being able to
count on the help of the GRU, succeeded in returning to the Soviet Union
several million people who were practically all shot on arrival. Golikov's
career was on the up and up, and he eventually reached the rank of Marshal
of the Soviet Union.
In the autumn of 1941, after Golikov had relinquished his post, the GRU
was divided into two. One of the newly-created organisations was directly
answerable to Stalin and entitled the Chief Intelligence Directorate of the
Supreme High Command. In the hands of this organisation was concentrated the
agent network controlled by illegals and undercover residencies of the GRU
in a number of Soviet embassies. The 'other' GRU was subordinated to
the general staff and preserved its former name of Chief Intelligence
Directorate of the General Staff. But now this junior branch of the GRU
co-ordinated the efforts of intelligence officers on all Soviet fronts in
action against Germany. This new set-up was fully justified at that time.
The GRU general staff was freed from having to make decisions on global
problems which at that moment had lost their importance for the Soviet Union
and instead was able to concentrate all its attention on carrying out
intelligence operations against German forces. In order to distinguish
between the two GRU's; the term 'strategic intelligence' was introduced for
the first time and applied to the GRU of the Supreme Command, and the new
title of 'operational intelligence' was given to the Intelligence
Directorate of Fronts and the GRU of the general staff which controlled
these directorates. Both the strategic and operational intelligence services
of the Red Army conducted themselves with great distinction in the course of
the war. The finest achievements of the strategic agent network were of
course the penetration of the German general staff through Switzerland (via
the illegal residency 'Dora') and the theft of American atomic secrets by
way of Canada (through the residency 'Zaria'). Operational intelligence
meanwhile developed activities unparalleled in scale. Besides its agent
intelligence, a very large role was allocated to diversionary intelligence.
Groups of guard-minelayers were formed in the intelligence units of the
fronts and armies whose basic purpose was to hunt down the German military
staff. Parallel with these diversionary elements of the GRU, analogous
groups of NKVD men were in action at the rear of German forces. Between
these two groups the traditional enmity fostered by the Party continued.
Now once more the post of chief of the GRU was held by a member of the
KGB, Ivan Serov. Henceforth everything would go according to Lenin's
teachings. Serov, on his appointment, automatically turned into an arch-
rival and enemy of the KGB, and was not in the least interested in the
fusion of these two organisations. But since he had been a general of the
KGB, the Army could not exploit him against the Party and the KGB. That was
not all. In order to control the Army in the interests of the Party, General
Golikov, the former chief of the GRU, was appointed chief of the Political
Directorate of the Soviet Army. Golikov was a former Tchekist and political
worker and he was ready to serve anybody who desired his services and to
report only the data which would please the leadership. Such a person was
eminently suitable as far as the Party was concerned.
Serov's successor as chief of the GRU was Colonel-General of the KGB,
Petr Ivashutin. General Yepishev, who had been from 1951 to 1953 Deputy
Minister of State Security, succeeded Golikov as chief of the Political
Directorate of the Soviet Army. In a word, the crocodile was again firmly on
the leash.
Chapter Three
The Pyramid
If we approach the term GRU in a formal way in order to explain
everything that is covered by those three letters, we shall get a very
impressive picture but one that is far from complete. To look at the GRU in
isolation from its subordinate organisations is to look at Gengis Khan
without his innumerable hordes.
The GRU may formally be described as an immensely powerful intelligence
organisation forming part of the general staff and acting in the interests
of the higher military command of the Soviet Union. On its strength there
are more than five thousand senior officers and generals who have specialist
academic qualifications in intelligence matters. The GRU has its illegal
representatives in every country of the world. In addition, officers of the
GRU operate under cover in every country of the world as diplomats, military
attaches, trade representatives and so on. Both the illegals and the
undercover officers independently from each other carry out the recruitment
of agents, who then, under the direction of the GRU steal top-secret
documents, axe governments and kill statesmen. The central apparatus of the
GRU processes espionage information coming from a thousand secret agents and
it also carries out cosmic, electronic, air and sea intelligence on a global
scale.
But we have not mentioned the most important point yet. Up to now we
are talking about Gengis Khan but not his hordes. What is more important is
that, in addition to all this, in addition to carrying out intelligence work
in the interests of the general staff, the GRU is also the superior
directing organ of the gigantic formation called Soviet military
intelligence.
Organisationally, the Soviet Army consists of sixteen military
districts, four 'groups of forces' - in Germany, Poland, Hungary and
Czechoslovakia - and four fleets - the Northern, Pacific, Black Sea and
Baltic fleets. On the staff strengths of each district, group and fleet
there are intelligence directorates. In all, these directorates number
twenty-four. They are all subject to the GRU and are, in effect, a GRU in
miniature. Each of these mini-GRU's utilises its own facilities. With all
the forces at their disposal, they gather information on the enemy, both in
peace-time and wartime.
When we speak of an intelligence directorate of a district, group or
fleet as a mini-GRU, this does not in the least mean that the intelligence
directorate is or weak. We only mean that the intelligence
directorates (RU) of staffs are er than the chief directorate of the
general staff. But each of these twenty-four intelligence directorates is
sufficiently strong to be able to recruit agents independently in the
territories of countries or groups of countries which are in the sphere of
interest of the given district, group or fleet. Each intelligence
directorate possesses sufficient power to be able, without assistance, to
disrupt life in any contiguous country or group of countries. There is only
one form of intelligence possessed by the GRU which the intelligence
directorates do not possess, and this is cosmic or space intelligence. At
the same time, instead of this, they have a perhaps no less important means,
which are the diversionary Spetsnaz units. In addition to ordinary agents
providing secret information, the intelligence directorates recruit special
agent- terrorists destined to murder statesmen or senior military officers
and to carry out general terror in the country or group of countries. Thus
each district, group of forces or fleet has its own two independent secret
agent networks, the first being the ordinary espionage network, and the
second the espionage-terrorist network called Spetsnaz. To visualize the
strength of one intelligence directorate, it is sufficient to remember that
each one controls an entire Spetsnaz brigade: 1,300 professional cut-throats
continually in readiness to penetrate the territory of a contiguous state
and go to the assistance of the agent-terrorists.
One can best imagine Soviet military intelligence in the form of a
powerful, feudal state - the GRU - with a first-class army. There are
twenty-four lesser satellite states, the intelligence directorates (RU),
subordinated to the head of this state, and each of these in its turn has
its own army, and a strong one at that. But each satellite also has its
vassals each of whom has his own army and his own vassals, also with armies,
and so forth. The only difference as regards this pyramid form of
subordination is that Soviet military intelligence does not operate on the
principle that 'the vassal of vassal is not my vassal'. The GRU fully and
without delegating authority controls every step of the pyramid. These steps
need to be examined.
Each military district and group of forces consists ot armies. Each
fleet consists of flotillas which are equivalent to the armies of the land
forces. On the staff of each army there is an intelligence department (RO)
which is in effect a full vassal of the superior intelligence directorate
and the still superior chief intelligence directorate. The intelligence
department (RO) of an army or flotilla does run an agent network of its own.
On the strength of each intelligence department, and there are in the Soviet
armed forces at least fifty, there is a Spetsnaz company. This company,
which numbers 115 saboteurs and cut-throats, is capable of penetrating into
the enemy's territory to murder and kidnap people, blow up bridges, electric
power stations, dams, oil pipelines and so on. And these Spetsnaz units are
supplemented by the intelligence department's wide choice of electronic, air
and other types of intelligence.
An army in the Soviet Union consists of from four to six divisions. In
peace-time there are in the Soviet armed forces about 180 tank and motorised
divisions. In the interests of simplification we can omit the eight
divisions of airborne forces (VDV), the brigades of marine infantry
belonging to the fleets and still many more branches of the Soviet Army
which have intelligence units subordinated directly to the GRU of the
general staff. On the strength of the staff of each division there is a
chief reconnaissance officer. He has his own troops, a reconnaissance
battalion, and his vassals, the heads of regimental reconnaissance and their
troops. The reconnaissance battalion of each division, apart from tank and
electronic reconnaissance, has a sabotage company which is also staffed with
cut-throats capable of successful operations in the enemy's rear. In the
interests of accuracy it is necessary to add that not all of the 180 tank
and motorised rifle divisions have a full complement of personnel in
peace-time; many of them have a complete technical staff and full officer
strength, but only a partial complement of soldiers and NCOs. However, this
rule does not apply to reconnaissance units. All the Spetsnaz brigades and
companies of the military districts and armies, all the reconnaissance
battalions (180) of the divisions, all the regimental reconnaissance
companies (more than 700), are always kept at full strength and staffed by
elite officers and NCOs.
Everything that we have listed comes under the indivisible control of
the GRU, although none of it is called by this name. The researcher who
studies the GRU but does not take into consideration the GRU's vassals will
have overlooked twenty-four separate espionage organisations, each of which
is as powerful as the intelligence service of one central European country.
He will have overlooked 100,000 elite troops possessing as many fighting
vehicles as a well-equipped Western European country. But even that is not
all. In addition to its official vassals the GRU also has unofficial vassals
who carry out the orders of the GRU as precisely and with as much jealous
zeal as do the intelligence directorates of military districts, the
intelligence departments of armies and the chief reconnaissance officers of
divisions and regiments. These are the military intelligence services of
Cuba, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Mongolia and
a number of other countries. These countries are satellites and in the full
meaning of the word vassals of the Soviet Union. Their secret police forces
are under the complete control of the Soviet KGB and take the form of a
miniature copy of the KGB. Their armies are in thrall to the Soviet Army and
their military intelligence services are full vassals of the GRU, with all
their agents, illegals, military attaches, sabotage agents, diversionary
troops and so on. But of these later.
Chapter Four
The GRU and the Military Industrial Commission )
When we use the term 'army' with regard to the Soviet Army we must have
in mind not only the Ministry of Defence, but also the twelve other
ministries whose sole function it is to produce weapons and military
technology. Together all these ministries form the high-powered monolith
headed by the military industrial commission ). Included in the
collegium of the military industrial commission are: one of the first
deputies of the chairman of the council of ministers, thirteen ministers,
and the chief of the general staff and the chief of the GRU. The military
industrial commission is the Army and the Army is the military industrial
commission. When we talk of a struggle between the Army and the Party and
the KGB we have in mind the struggle of the whole military industrial
commission, whose fortunes wax and wane in perfect harmony with the Army's
own.
The economic and financial might of the military industrial commission
can only be compared with the might of the Soviet Union itself.
Theoretically the Soviet Union spends, in the interests of defence, the
improbably sum of nineteen billion roubles a year. This nineteen
billion, however, is the budget of the Ministry of Defence alone. The
budgets of the remaining twelve ministries which produce armaments are kept
secret. The Soviet system is constructed in such a way that the Ministry of
Defence does not buy; it receives the armaments necessary to it. For
example, an aircraft carrier is under construction in the Soviet Union. The
Ministry of Defence does not bear any of the cost of this. The price of the
ship is paid to the Ministry of Shipbuilding by the Council of Ministers
under the debit item shipbuilding industry'. This Ministry, by the way, has
never constructed any non-military vessels. Non-military vessels are,
without exception, bought for the Soviet Union in Poland, East Germany,
Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Italy, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark - it is
difficult indeed to list all of them. It is probably true that only
Switzerland is an exception to this list. The same thing is true of
aircraft, tanks, rockets, nuclear bombs, military electronics, every item of
hardware. Nobody in the Soviet Union knows exactly how much the military
industrial commission swallows up, but in any case it is an astronomical
figure.
At the heart of any Soviet five-year plan for economic development -
not the propaganda plan which appears in all the newspapers, but the
genuine, secret plan - will be found the military industrial commission's
plan. For all the other branches of the Soviet economy, metallurgy, machine
tool construction, energy, transport, agriculture, have no independent
significance but only provide for the activities of the military industrial
commission. Soviet science is another organ providing for the military
industrial commission. Officially it is allocated about sixty billion
roubles a year, three times more than defence. But what sort of science is
it, if the Soviet Union can produce the first automatic satellite destroyer
in the world but cannot produce an ordinary compact, -engined car? The
Soviet Union has had to buy all its technology for the production of
cars from Italy. What are Soviet scientists up to if the Soviet Union has
first-class military poisons but has to buy fertiliser technology from the
United States? What are the sixty billion roubles spent on if the USSR
constructs gigantic trans-norizontal radar, ultra-high frequency
transmitters for communications with submarines whose underground aerials
amount to thousands of kilometres in length - but has to buy the technology
for the production of ordinary household television sets from France? Sixty
billion roubles on science is yet another means of camouflaging Soviet
military expenditure and the true might of the military industrial
commission.
What has the GRU to do with this? The connection is this: the budget of
the GRU is many times greater than the budget of the KGB. But the KGB is
much bigger than the GRU, it has a vast apparatus within the country and its
political influence is colossal. So why is the financial might of the GRU
many times greater than that of the KGB? (Some specialists consider it to be
several tens of times greater.) The business may be explained as follows.
The KGB has its budget, which is without doubt enormous, and the GRU also
has a moderate budget. Both form a part of State expenses and naturally the
State tries to limit these expenses. But in addition to its 'clean' budget
the GRU has colossal orders from the military industrial commission and from
Soviet science which provides for the military commission. These orders are
incalculably greater than the actual 'clean' budget of the GRU. For example,
on receiving an order from the military industrial commission to steal a
tank engine, the GRU receives money allocated as a debit item to 'science'
or 'industry'. With this money the GRU will recruit an agent without
spending a single cent of its own money, industry and science will receive
the engine they want and save enormous expense, and finally the GRU's 'free'
agent will continue to work on its behalf for the rest of his life. All
twelve ministries of the military industrial commission, plus all of
military science, are ready to place money with the GRU if only they can
obtain the technology which is essential to them. Designers and factory
directors receive medals and prizes for copying foreign samples of armaments
in the same way as they would if they worked out their own examples. The KGB
depends only on its actual budget, but the GRU draws on the budget of all
Soviet armament industries and science. In the course of a major GRU
operation, such as the theft of all the technological documentation for the
American nuclear submarine George Washington (which enabled the Soviet Union
to build a perfect copy -nicknamed ' George'), the GRU will not spend a
single dollar of its own budget. Other memorable examples were the copying
of the American missile 'Red Eye' and the Anglo-French Concorde, among many
others.
Why does the KGB not carry out orders for the armaments industry? This
is very simple. The chairmen of the Council of Ministers and Gosplan [The
State planning committee] are responsible for the Soviet economy. They plan
how much money to allocate, to whom and for what purpose. To the chairman of
the Council of Ministers are subordinated both the armaments industry and
the Minister of Defence with the general staff and the GRU. The KGB, alas,
is not answerable to the chairman of the Council of Ministers. Having given
money to the GRU to obtain something interesting, the chairman of the
Council of Ministers or the chairman of the military industrial commission
may bang on the table and demand that delivery be speeded up. But if they
give money to the KGB then they will have to wait quietly until the KGB is
ready to deliver the goods. The KGB is not usually in much of a hurry, even
when it has been handsomely and generously paid. The KGB is a vain and
arrogant courtier, having the right to speak at the King's council, but
without a sou in his pocket. The GRU is an ugly hunchback: a moneylender,
ready to serve anybody and making millions in the process. The courtier
hates the moneylender. The courtier would kill the moneylender were it not
for the fact that he serves the King himself.
Chapter Five
But Why is Nothing Known about it?
In the Soviet Union the registration plates of certain cars from
Georgia end with the letters GRU. This amusing coincidence goes unnoticed by
almost everybody, including the police, for the GRU is unknown in the Soviet
Union except to a circle of enlightened ones. Even in the general
staff, of which the GRU is a part, thousands of colonels simply consider
that 'military department 44388', whence comes all espionage information, is
a branch of the KGB. Moreover, KGB officers who guard Soviet embassies
overseas but are not members of the KGB intelligence organisation consider,
in many cases, that there is only one residency in the embassy, that of the
KGB.
Much is known about the GRU by Western specialists, but the ordinary
Western man in the street has practically no idea at all about it. His
attitude is analogous to his attitude to the mythical animal from a Scottish
loch: either it exists, there have been photographs published of it, or then
again perhaps it does not exist. Some believe, others do not, but decidedly
nobody is frightened of the animal. Nevertheless, how can so little be known
about the GRU, given that it certainly exists and certainly possesses
colossal power?
There are quite a few reasons, so let us discuss the most important
ones. Firstly, having established their bloody dictatorship, the communists
had to announce to the people the existence of an 'extraordinary' organ of
the dictatorship of the proletariat which was permitted to deal in whatever
way it pleased with the people - including the mass executions of millions.
They did this through the mouth of Lenin when he informed the people about
the birth of the V. Tcheka. Later Lenin's successors informed people of all
the changes in the names of the Organs, underlining that it was only the
nomenclature that changed. The essence remained as before. Traditions live,
and it is still forbidden to complain about the Organs. The GRU did not need
such publicity and therefore nothing official was given out about its
existence. Secondly, the main function of the Organs is to exert pressure on
the people themselves. Consequently in the people's consciousness everything
that is dark, underground and secret is connected with the KGB but not at
all with the GRU. In practical terms the GRU did not take part in the
struggle against the people. Not because it was full of humanity and love
for its fatherland, but simply because nobody had given it this function.
Naturally people remember the KGB (on any pretext), but never the GRU.
Thirdly, in his struggle for power, Kruschev made known to a stunned world
some of the crimes of his predecessors and honourable Tchekists. The effect
was so shattering that from that moment the whole world unreservedly saw the
leadership of the KGB in all spheres of secret criminal activity. Kruschev
by no means revealed everything, but only that which at a given moment might
bring him undoubted political capital. He pointed to the mass executions in
Stalin's time but forgot to mention the mass executions in Lenin's time. He
mentioned the destruction of the communist leaders in 1937 but omitted the
destruction of the peasants in 1930. He demonstrated the role of the NKVD
but completely forgot the role of the communist party as the main, leading
and directing force. Kruschev was interested in showing up the crimes of the
Organs within the country and he did show up several of them. Revelations of
crimes committed overseas did not enter into Kruschev's plans. They could
not bring him any political advantage. He was therefore silent in this
regard and did not mention the overseas crimes of the KGB and, of course,
those of the GRU. Fourthly, the struggles against dissent, emigration, and
western radio stations broadcasting to the Soviet Union are the sole
responsibility of the KGB but not the GRU. Naturally the most talented
representatives of liberation movements and immigration address their best
efforts to enlightening the KGB itself. It is the same as regards radio
station broadcasting to the Soviet Union and the Western organs of mass
information in general. They certainly devote to the KGB significantly
greater attention. Fifthly, any unpleasant things which happen to foreigners
in the Soviet Union are first and foremost connected with the KGB and this
gives rise to a corresponding flow of information about the KGB. Lastly,
having made rivers of blood from the people, the KGB strove to whitewash
itself at all costs advertising the 'attainments' of the Tchekists. In this
connection all intelligence officers, KGB or GRU, were categorised as
Tchekists, and this at a time when GRU intelligence officers hated the
Tchekists many times more than they did the Gestapo. The GRU did not object
to this. It preferred to maintain silence, not only about its crimes and
mistakes, but also about its successes. The spying breed of animal keeps
itself in the depths; muddy water and darkness are more to its liking than
publicity.
Chapter Six
The GRU and the 'Younger Brothers'
The state structure of any communist country strikingly resembles the
structure of the Soviet Union. Even if it finds itself in conflict with the
Soviet Union or has been able to escape from its influence, it is much the
same in character. The cult of personality is a general rule for all
communist countries, and any 'big brother' needs an all-powerful secret
police force to preserve that cult. Then there must be another secret
organisation to counter-balance the power of the first one.
It is usually military intelligence which fulfils this counterbalancing
role, the more so since all communist countries, regardless of the kind of
communism they adopt, are warlike and aggressive. In a number of communist
countries there would appear to be only one secret police organisation, but
in these cases closer inspection will clearly show a minimum of two mutually
hostile groupings. Sooner or later the dictator will be forced to split his
secret service into two parts. In the countries within the orbit of the
Soviet Union that separation has already been carried out, for all of them
have been created in the image of the elder brother.
The military intelligence services of the satellite countries show
great activity in the collection of espionage material, and all such
material obtained is sent directly to the GRU. The fact is that the
intelligence services of the satellite countries are even legally answerable
to the Ministry of Defence of the Soviet Union. The military intelligence
service of each Warsaw Pact country is subordinate to its chief of the
general staff, but the chief of staff is in his turn subordinate to the
chief of staff of the Warsaw Pact. Theoretically a general from any country
of the Warsaw Pact may be appointed to this position. In practice of course
there have only ever been Soviet generals appointed. One of them is already
well known to us: the former chief of the GRU, General Shtemyenko. After the
fall of Kruschev, Brezhnev, trying to please the Army, recalled the
disgraced general from exile and reinstated him as a full general. As chief
of staff of the Warsaw Pact, his direct superior was (and is) the High
Commander of the United Armed Forces of the member-countries. To this post
it has always been a Soviet marshal who has been appointed. First it was
Konyev, then Grechko, after him Yakubovski and finally Kulikov. But the
official title of all these marshals during the time they commanded the
united forces was 'First Deputy of the Minister of Defence of the USSR -
Commander-in-Chief of the United Armed Forces of the member countries of the
Warsaw Pact'. In other words, the armies are the armies of several states
subordinated to a deputy minister of defence in one of those states. There
is sovereignty for you. The USSR Minister of Defence, through his deputy,
directs all the forces of staffs of the 'fraternal countries', including, of
course, the military intelligence services of those countries, and we are
not talking of close co-operation, but of direct subordination in the legal
sense.
This is all very well, some sceptics will object, but after what
happened in 1939, every Pole had a fierce dislike for the Soviet communists,
and their intelligence services would hardly work their best in the
interests of the GRU, would they? After 1953 the East Germans fully shared
the feelings of the Poles. In 1956 Hungary joined them, and in 1968 the
Czechs and Slovaks. Surely the intelligence services of these countries
would not work hard in the interests of Soviet military intelligence?
Unfortunately this is a delusion which has gained too wide an acceptance. In
practice everything contradicts it. It is a fact that the peoples of all
countries in thrall to the Soviet Union hate the Soviet communists; but none
the less their intelligence services work to the full extent of their powers
in the interests of the elder brother. The solution to the riddle is this.
By means of harsh economic treaties the Soviet Union has enchained all its
'younger brothers'. For Soviet oil and coal, electric energy and gas they
all have to pay very heavily. The Soviet Union proposes to its satellites
that 'you may pay by means of your own wares or you may pay by providing the
secrets of other people'. This alternative offer is a very tempting one, to
which the general secretaries have unanimously responded by ordering their
intelligence officers to redouble their efforts. So the intelligence
services of all countries tied economically to the Soviet Union make the
greatest possible efforts. By stealing Western secrets and transmitting them
to Soviet military or political intelligence they reduce their countries'
indebtedness and raise their peoples' standards of living. Western states
have been surprised by the extent of the intelligence interests of communist
states. Why should Mongolian intelligence be interested in atomic reactors,
or Cuban intelligence in high-powered rocket engines? These questions are
easily answered as soon as one realises that they are all part of one
gigantic formation. In the ranks of officials of Soviet state institutions
overseas it is almost impossible to find one 'clean' one. All Soviet
citizens, from ambassadors to cleaning staff, in one way or another
co-operate with the KGB or the GRU. The same thing is true of the official
institutions of the 'fraternal countries'. There it is also difficult to
find a single 'clean' official. All of them are to some extent co-operating
with the Soviet KGB or GRU - even though frequently they themselves do not
realise it.
Chapter Seven
The GRU and the KGB
The working methods of the GRU and the KGB are absolutely identical. It
is impossible to tell their signatures apart. But their functions differ
essentially one from the other. The basic function of the KGB may be
expressed in one guiding phrase, not to allow the collapse of the Soviet
Union from inside. Every specific function stems from this. To enumerate
some of those functions: the protection of communist VIPs; the suppression
of any clashes or dissent among the population; the carrying out of
censorship and disinformation; the prohibition of any contact between the
people and the outside world - including the isolation of foreign visitors -
and the cutting off of any contacts already established with them; and the
guarding of frontiers (there are ten districts of KGB frontier forces). The
KGB also acts overseas but its activities rotate around the same main axis -
to prevent the collapse of the USSR from within. This task can be divided in
the same way into its parts: the struggle with emigration and efforts to
diminish its influence on the internal life of the Soviet Union; the
struggle with Western radio stations broadcasting to the Soviet Union and
other means of mass information which give a correct picture of the
situation 'within the state of workers and peasants'; the struggle with
religious organisations which might exert influence on the Soviet
population; observing the 'fraternal' communist parties with the aim of
nipping in the bud any heresy which might emerge from them; the surveillance
of all Soviet citizens abroad, including KGB officers themselves; the
seeking out and destruction of the most active opponents of the communist
regime. The KGB also has other functions, but these are all either a part of
the main function or not of prime importance.
The function of the GRU may also be stated in one parallel, but quite
different phrase: to prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union from an
external blow. In the opinion of the general staff such a blow may be struck
at the Soviet Union in peace-time, even in the course of routine Soviet
military adventures in Asia, Africa or Europe. This, the most important
function of the GRU, is undertaken on four fronts. On the military front,
literally everything is of interest to the GRU. Of prime importance, of
course, are the composition, quantity and deployment of the armed forces of
all countries of the world; the plans and thinking of the military
leadership and staffs; mobilisation plans in case of war; the type and
direction of military training of forces; the organisation of forces; the
means of supply; morale and so on. Of prime importance on the military-
political front are the relations between the different countries of the
world: overt and covert disagreements; possible changes in political and
military leadership of military and economic blocs; new alliances; any, even
the slightest, change in the political and military orientation of armies,
governments, countries and whole blocs and alliances. On the military-
technologica front the GRU handles intelligence related to the development
of new kinds of armaments and military technique in the countries of a
probable enemy; the carrying out of trials and tests; new technological
processes which might be utilised for military ends. And the
military-economic front presents exceptional interest for the GRU. First and
foremost it is fascinated by the capacity of such and such a state or group
of states to produce modern types of weapons, but it is also extremely keen
to learn about industrial potential, energy, transport, agriculture, the
presence of strategic reserves, vulnerable areas of economy, and energy. The
general staff considers that if the GRU can give accurate information in
good time from every country in the world on these four fronts, then it can
count it impossible to destroy the Soviet Union by means of a blow from
outside.
In many instances the interests of the KGB and the GRU are
diametrically different. For example, a demonstration of White Russian
emigres is of absolutely no interest to the GRU, but an object of the
greatest possible interest to the KGB. And vice-versa: no military exercises
are of any interest to the KGB residents, but they are of great interest to
GRU residents. Even in those fields where the GRU and the KGB have what
would seem to be interests in common, for example in politics, their
approach to a particular problem would differ in essence. For example, the
personality of President Carter from the very beginning provoked almost no
interest from the side of the GRU, for on the most superficial possible
examination of the President's personality the GRU infallibly decided that
he would never be the first to carry out a pre-emptive strike against the
Soviet Union. But that same man, from the point of view of the KGB, appears
to be the most dangerous opponent possible, because his human rights
policies are a weapon which could destroy the Soviet Union from within. In
another case, the GRU displayed exceptional interest in the changes of
personnel in the Chinese political and military leadership. For the KGB this
question posed practically no interest at all. The KGB very well knows that
after sixty years of communist power the Soviet population will not be in
the least interested in any communist ideology from China or Korea or
Yugoslavia; it is also quite convinced that not one defector from the Soviet
Union will ever seek refuge in China. China is, for the KGB, almost an empty
place.
In examining mutual relations between the GRU and the KGB we have to
return to the question of the GRU's dependence on the KGB. In the chapter on
history we endeavoured to show the character of these mutual relations in
the past. The same mutual relations have been preserved up to the present
day. The GRU and the KGB are ready at any moment to destroy each other.
Between them exist exactly those mutual relations which perfectly suit the
Party. The jealousy and mutual hatred between the GRU and KGB are familiar
to the police of every country where the Soviet Union has an embassy, and it
is precisely this enmity, noticeable even to 'unarmed eyes', which provides
proof of the independence of the GRU.
If the fate or career of a GRU resident were to depend even slightly on
his colleague from the KGB, he would never in his life dare to differ with,
still less quarrel or brawl with, the Tchekists: he would be like a cowed
lap-dog with his tail between his legs, not even daring to bark for the lady
of the house, like the 'clean' diplomats in all Soviet embassies. But
officers of the GRU do not do this. They have guarantees of their
independence and invulnerability from the KGB. Some specialists are inclined
to consider the GRU as a branch of the KGB, usually adducing in defence of
this opinion two arguments. Firstly, they say that the chief of the GRU is
always a former KGB general, but this has always been the case, beginning
with Aralov, and has never prevented the GRU from actively opposing the
efforts of the KGB to swallow it, and even sometimes on the order of the
Party striking the Tchekists sudden and heavy blows. The second argument is
that everybody joining the GRU has to be vetted by the KGB. This argument
appears convincing only at a first glance. The fact is that ea«jh new
official of the Central Committee of the Party also undergoes the same
vetting by the KGB, but it certainly does not follow this that the Central
Committee is under the control of the KGB or is a branch of the KGB. Both
the Central Committee and the GRU select for themselves the people necessary
to them, and in this connection consult the KGB, for any person until he
becomes a Central Committee official or joins the GRU is under the control
of the KGB and possibly the KGB may have some unfavourable information on a
given person. The KGB in this case plays the part of a filter. But once
having passed this person through its filter the KGB no longer has the right
to interfere with him, either inside the Central Committee or inside the
GRU. The KGB is like a guard at the gate of a secret installation. The guard
may refuse entry to an engineer who has forgotten his pass at home, but he
has no right to examine the contents of that engineer's safe. If it so
desires, the KGB may, of course, discredit any unwanted official of the GRU
or the Central Committee. However, this is fraught with potential reciprocal
measures.
There exists still another irrefutable indicator of the independence of
the GRU from the KGB. In the GRU there is no 'special department'. The
security of the GRU is assured by its own forces, and always has been. The
Party is very keen that this should continue, because it knows that if the
KGB were to organise its own 'special department' in the GRU, a similar
department would swiftly be introduced into the Politburo.
To illustrate the uneasy peace and the paradox of the independence that
exists within the triangle of Party - KGB - GRU, let us consider a real
confrontation. The working day of the GRU chief usually begins at seven
o'clock in the morning, sometimes earlier. At that time he personally reads
all telegrams which have come during the night from illegals, from
undercover residencies, and from the intelligence directorates of military
districts, groups of forces and of the fleet intelligence. In the next-door
office, the first deputy to the GRU chief and the chief of information of
the GRU are doing the same thing. If any questions have been raised by any
of the higher commanders, from the chief of the general staff upwards, their
opinions will be heard separately, independent from the opinions of the GRU
chief.
This day began for the GRU leadership at the unusually early hour of
3.30 in the morning, when it was informed by the command point that the
aircraft from Paris had landed at the central airport and taxied up to the
GRU building. The day before, at Le Bourget airport, the Soviet supersonic
passenger aircraft Tupolev TU144 had crashed. The whole of the Paris
residency had been at the show and the majority had had cine cameras. The
moment of catastrophe had been photographed from different points by
different officers, and the GRU had at its disposal no fewer then twenty
films showing the same moment. The films had not been developed in Paris but
brought straight to Moscow. Now the operational technological institute of
the GRU would develop them immediately. At nine o'clock in the morning the
Politburo session was to begin, at which they would hear evidence from
Tupolev, his deputies, the minister of aviation production, the director of
the Voronesh aviation factory, directors of subsidiary concerns, test pilots
and of course the GRU and the KGB. But at seven, the telephone rang and it
was Andropov, at the time head of the KGB. 'Peter Ivanovitch, how are you?'
Peter Ivanovitch Ivashutin (present chief of the GRU) did not hasten to
match the friendly tone. 'Well. How are you, comrade Andropov?'
'Peter Ivanovitch, don't be so official. Have you forgotten my name?
Peter Ivanovitch, there is something I want to talk to you about. I hear you
have got some films showing the catastrophe.' Peter Ivanovitch said nothing.
'Peter Ivanovitch, would you be very kind and give me just one little film?
You know yourself that I have to make a report to the Politburo but I have
no material. These shows are not of great interest to my chaps and
unfortunately not one of them was there with a cine camera. Help me to get
out of this mess. I need that film about the catastrophe.'
All service telephone calls to the GRU chief are relayed through the
GRU command point. The duty shift of operators is always in readiness to
prompt their chief with a necessary figure or fact, or to help him over a
mistake in conversation. At this point the entire duty shift was frozen to
the spot. Their help was not called for at all. The GRU chief remained
silent for some time. The duty operators were quite certain that in a
similar situation, the KGB would undoubtedly refuse if the GRU asked for its
help. But what would be the decision of the GRU chief, an ex-colonel-general
of the KGB and ex-deputy chairman of the KGB? Finally, in friendly, even
tones he answered Andropov.
'Yuri Vladimirovich, I won't give you one film, I'll give you all
twenty. Only I will show them at nine o'clock in the Politburo, and at ten
o'clock I'll send my chaps over to the Central Committee to give you all the
films.'
Andropov angrily slammed down the receiver. A concerted roar of
laughter shook the walls of the underground command point. The senior
operator, choking with laughter, entered the conversation in the log book.
(After Andropov became General Secretary of the Communist Party and
Soviet Leader, Ivashutin still survived as GRU chief, because any attack
from Andropov could easily have upset the fragile Party-Army balance with
unpredictable consequences for Andropov himself.)
Chapter Eight
The Centre
Unlike the KGB, the GRU does not try to advertise itself, and its head
office does not rise in the centre of the capital on its most crowded
square. The head office of the GRU, although it is in Moscow, is by no means
easy to find. It is enclosed from three sides by the central airport, the
old Khodinka field. The aerodrome is surrounded on all sides by restricted
buildings, among which are the offices of three leading aviation firms and
one rocket construction firm, and the military aviation academy and the
aviation institute. In the centre of these secret institutes the aerodrome
carries on with its life as if half-asleep. Very, very rarely, in the middle
of the night, a covered-up fuselage of a fighter aircraft is taken out of a
hangar, loaded onto a transport aeroplane and transported somewhere into the
trans-Volga steppe for testing. Sometimes another transport aircraft lands,
goes up to the GRU building and unloads a foreign tank or rocket, after
which everything becomes peaceful again. For two months of the year
preparations are carried out for the grandiose military parades, and the
roar of tank engines can be heard on the airfield. The parades finish, but
the guarded area remains guarded, an empty field in the centre of Moscow
patrolled by watchdogs. Not one civil aircraft or helicopter disturbs the
quiet of Khodinka, only the watchdogs howl at night like wolves. How many of
them are there? One loses count. No, from three sides it is impossible to
get to the GRU. From the fourth side, too. On the fourth side there is the
Institute of Cosmic Biology, with more dogs and electric barbed wire. A
narrow little lane leads through a blind wall ten metres high, behind which
is the 'Aquarium'. In order to penetrate into the inner fortress of the GRU
one must negotiate either the area of the secret aerodrome or the area of
the top secret institute.
The head office of the GRU is a nine-storey extended rectangle. On all
sides the building is surrounded by a two-storey structure, the windows of
which give onto the central courtyard. The external walls have no windows at
all. The fifteen-storey building adjacent to the area also belongs to the
GRU, although it is situated outside its external walls. Many families of
GRU officers live here, and the building has a completely normal appearance
and looks like an ordinary block of flats. Only a certain number of the
flats, however, are used for living purposes; the others are used by the
service for official purposes. The whole of the area, centimetre by
centimetre, is under surveillance from the tele-cameras and patrolled
continuously by gentlemen with big, fat faces. But even if it were not thus,
a stranger there would be apprehended immediately. Any of the little old men
seated on benches (minimum twenty years' service in the GRU) would
immediately inform the necessary people if he saw something untoward. Nobody
is allowed to bring a car into the GRU's inner area, not even the Minister
of Defence or General Secretary. One is only admitted after passing through
a special inspection and sophisticated electronic equipment. Nobody may
bring in so much as a cigarette lighter, still less a briefcase. There must
be no metallic object on your person, not even a belt-buckle - the GRU
recommends braces. All necessities for work and life are to be found inside,
including cigarette lighters and fountain pens. The GRU gives them out -
after they have been checked, of course.
The chief of the GRU is subordinate to the chief of the general staff
and is his deputy. Directly subordinate to the chief of the GRU are the
GRU's command point, the deputy chief and a group of advisers. The
organisational units constituting the GRU are directorates, directions, and
sections. In units which are not directly concerned with the acquisition and
processing of information there exist the divisions of directorates,
departments and sections. The military rank of the chief of the GRU is Army
General. Under him are a first deputy and deputies. In the case where the
deputy has several directorates under his command, his military rank will be
colonel-general. If he only has one directorate, lieutenant-general. Chiefs
of directorates are lieutenant-generals. The deputies of heads of
directorates, heads of directions and departments are major-generals. The
deputy heads of directions and departments, the heads of sections and their
deputies are colonels. The rank-and-file members of sections are called
senior operational officers and operational officers. The military rank of a
senior operational officer is colonel, of an operational officer
lieutenant-colonel.
An overwhelming number of GRU officers hold the military rank of
colonel. This, however, does not at all mean that they are equal amongst
each other. Between the colonel who fulfils the duties of a senior
operational officer and the deputy head of a direction who is also a colonel
there is a wide gulf. The high service ranks existing in the GRU do not
preclude the appointment of a very young captain or senior lieutenant to the
post of senior operational officer, either. The system adopted by the Soviet
Army permits this. A captain may be an acting major, or a senior lieutenant
may be an acting colonel. Seniority is judged not by the pips on the
officer's shoulder, but by the position he holds.
In total the GRU has sixteen directorates: most of them have a number
from one to twelve. Certain numbers do not exist and the directorate is
simply called by its name, as for example the personnel directorate.
Directions and departments forming parts of a directorate have numbers, for
example '41 Direction' means the first direction of the fourth directorate.
Directions and departments not forming part of a directorate have a single
number with the letters GRU added, for example, the first department GRU.
The hierarchy in the GRU is as follows. The chief of the GRU has one first
deputy and seven deputies beneath him. He controls:
i The Illegals Section. With the help of this section he personally
directs effective illegals and agents about whom nobody knows. He also
directs his own first deputy.
ii First Deputy Chief of the GRU (colonel-general), beneath whom are
all the procurement organs which provide information.
iii The Chief of Information (colonel-general) in charge of all the
processing organs of the GRU.
iv The Chief of the Political Section (lieutenant-general).
v The Chief of the Electronic Intelligence Directorate (lieutenant-
general).
vi The Chief of Fleet Intelligence (vice-admiral).
vii The Chief of the Cosmic Intelligence Directorate (lieutenant-
general).
viii The Head of the Soviet Army Academy (colonel-general),
ix The Head of the Personnel Directorate (lieutenant-general).
Chapter Nine
The Procurement Organs
All units of the GRU are divided in their designations into
procurement, processing and support. The great majority of the procurement
organs, the providers of information, are controlled by the first deputy
chief of the GRU. They include the first directorate, which carries out
agent intelligence on European territory, and consists of five directions,
each of which carries out agent intelligence on the territories of several
countries (each direction consists of sections which direct undercover
residencies in one of the countries concerned); the second directorate with
an analogous organisation carrying out agent intelligence in America, both
North and South; the third directorate, which carries out agent intelligence
in Asia; and the fourth directorate, dealing with agent intelligence in
Africa, and the Middle East. Each directorate contains about 300
high-ranking officers in the Moscow centre, and about 300 abroad. Besides
these four directorates, there are also four directions which undertake the
same duties. These directions do not form parts of directorates but are
answerable to the first deputy chief. The first GRU direction carries out
agent intelligence in the Moscow area and it has its influential
representatives in all Soviet official institutions used by the GRU as
cover: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of External Trade,
Aeroflot, the Merchant Navy, the Academy of Sciences and so forth. These
representatives fit their young officers into slots in the institution
serving as cover and guarantee their smooth progress in their future
activities. In addition some GRU officers, on their return from overseas,
continue to work in their covering organisation and not in the head office.
Using these officers, the first direction recruits foreign military
attaches, members of military delegations, businessmen and representatives
of aviation and steamship companies. The second direction carries out agent
intelligence in the area of East and West Berlin, a gigantic organisation
which again does not form part of a directorate. The third direction is
concerned with agent intelligence in national liberation movements and
terrorist organisations. Its favourite child until recently was the
Palestine Liberation Organisation. The fourth department carries out agent
intelligence work from Cuban territory against many countries, including the
United States. In many respects the fourth direction duplicates the activity
of the second directorate. It has unlimited power in the ranks of the Cuban
intelligence service and with its help actively penetrates and endeavours to
direct the activities of unaligned movements.
The GRU adheres to a different principle in running its illegals from
the principle adopted by the KGB. Among its procurement organs there is no
separate unit for directing illegals, and the GRU does not consider such a
unit necessary. Each of the directorate heads and several of the direction
heads have under their command sections of illegals. This permits them to
run illegals and residencies under cover at the same time in the territories
of groups of countries or entire continents. The directorate or direction
head may at any moment use his illegals for carrying out a secret check of
the undercover residencies. The first deputy to the chief of the GRU also
has an analogous section under his command. Naturally, he has very
high-quality illegals. The first deputy may use his own illegals for secret
checks on undercover residencies, and also the illegals under the command of
directorate and direction heads. Finally, the absolute cream of the illegals
are run personally by the chief of the GRU through his own illegals section.
He can use his illegals for the checking of everything and everybody,
including illegals under the command of the first deputy.
There is a fifth GRU directorate, which is also concerned with
procurement and controlled by the first deputy. However, its functions
differ from those on the four directorates and four directions listed above.
The fifth directorate does not carry out independent agent intelligence work
but directs the activities of the intelligence directorates of military
districts, groups of forces and fleets. This directorate is a kind of
controller of vassals. Directly under its control are twenty intelligence
directorates belonging to the military districts, groups of forces and fleet
intelligence, the latter having in its turn four more fleet intelligence
directorates beneath it. The number of secret agents and diversionary agents
ultimately controlled by the fifth directorate exceeds the number of all the
agents controlled by the first four directorates and four directions, and
these agents operate on all the same territories where illegals, undercover
residencies and agents of the above-mentioned directorates and departments
operate. With their help the first deputy, or indeed the chief himself, may
secretly check on the activities of his directorate. This arrangement works
in reverse too: with the help of agents of the first four directorates and
four directions he can check the activities of the secret agents of military
districts, fleets and groups of forces.
In addition to the proliferation of units outlined above, there are two
more GRU directorates which are concerned with the procurement of
information: the sixth directorate and the cosmic intelligence directorate.
These directorates procure and partly process information, but they do not
go in for agent intelligence, so they are not considered as purely
procurement directorates and are not subordinate to the first deputy chief
of the GRU. The chiefs of both these directorates answer to the chief of the
GRU and are his deputies, but not first deputies.
The GRU sixth directorate is concerned with electronic intelligence.
For this purpose its officers are posted to undercover residencies in the
capitals of foreign states and there form groups which intercept and
decipher transmissions on governmental and military networks. There are also
many regiments of electronic intelligence on the territories of the Eastern
bloc and Soviet Union, and these are integral parts of the sixth
directorate. Furthermore, this directorate controls the electronic
intelligence services of the military districts, groups of forces and fleets
which in their turn have their own regiments, special ships, aircraft and
helicopters for electronic espionage. The electronic espionage services of
each military district, group and fleet correspondingly control similar
services in the armies and flotillas, and these in their turn control those
of the divisions. And so it goes on. All the information acquired from the
electronic companies of divisions, electronic battalions of armies,
regiments of military districts and groups of forces and spy ships of the
fleet, is collected in the sixth directorate and analysed there.
The GRU cosmic intelligence directorate is no less powerful. It has its
own cosmodromes, a number of research institutes, a co-ordinating computer
centre and huge resources. It works out the technical details for spy
satellites independently and prepares them in its own works. The Soviet
Union has sent into orbit more than 2,000 cosmic objects for different
purposes, and one in three of them belongs to the GRU. The vast majority of
Soviet cosmonauts, with the exception of those who undertake only
demonstration flights, work for half their time in space in the interests of
the GRU. The KGB lies far behind the GRU in this respect.
Chapter Ten
Fleet Intelligence
The GRU fifth directorate directs twenty intelligence directorates of
military districts and groups of forces directly, and four intelligence
directorates of fleets co-ordinated by an organisation known as fleet
intelligence. Fleet intelligence was introduced because each military
district and group of forces has a very strictly denned sphere of
responsibility in time of war, whereas the ships of the four Soviet fleets
operate in widely scattered areas of the world's oceans and each ship must
continuously have full information on the enemy. The chief of fleet
intelligence comes under the GRU chief as a deputy, and he controls the four
intelligence directorates of naval staff- Northern, Pacific, Black Sea and
Baltic- and the fleet cosmic intelligence directorate and information
service. In his day-to-day activities he is under the orders of the GRU
fifth directorate.
Fleet intelligence directorates have a structure similar to that of the
directorates of military districts. There are differences caused by
maritime factors, which for our purposes are insignificant, and the fleet
intelligence directorates together with those belonging to military
districts will be examined in detail in Part II under the heading of
'Operational Intelligence'.
The GRU chief has at his disposal two independent cosmic intelligence
services. One is beneath him directly, the GRU cosmic intelligence
directorate, and the other through the chief of fleet intelligence. The
Soviet High Command quite reasonably considers that, bearing in mind the
tasks to be fulfilled, the fleet must have its own cosmic intelligence
service. This of course does not exclude the GRU chief controlling his own
cosmic intelligence service with the help of the other and vice-versa.
Considering that not only the GRU cosmic intelligence service, but also that
of the fleets has its own spy satellites, we may say that out of all the
satellites put into orbit by the Soviet Union, about half are directly or
indirectly subordinated to the GRU.
Chapter Eleven
The GRU Processing Organs
The GRU processing organs are sometimes called the information service
or more frequently simply 'information'. The chief of information has the
rank of colonel-general and is a deputy to the GRU chief. The following are
under his control:
i the information command point; ii six information directorates; iii
the institute of information; iv the information services of fleet
intelligence; v the information services of intelligence directorates of
military districts and groups; vi all the organisations of military
intelligence listed below which are concerned with the processing of secret
material acquired.
The information command point is second only to the GRU central command
point. It receives all intelligence material coming from illegals,
undercover residencies, agents, from cosmic and electronic intelligence and
also from the intelligence directorates of military districts, fleets,
groups of forces, and from the military intelligence services of the
satellite countries. It has full power to ask any resident, agent or
illegal, in fact any source of intelligence information, to give more
precise details or to re- check information submitted. The information
command point works without breaks, without days off, without holidays. It
carries out all preliminary processing of all the material submitted; each
morning at six o'clock it publishes a top secret 'Intelligence Summary'
destined for members of the Politburo and the higher military command, and
in the morning all material which has come to hand during the previous
twenty- four hours is transmitted to the informational directorates of the
GRU for detailed analysis.
In all, there are six directorates plus the information institute on
the strength of the information service. The numbering begins of course with
the seventh directorate which is concerned with a study of NATO in all its
aspects. The directorate consists of six departments, each of which consists
of sections. Each department and each section carries responsibility for the
study of individual trends or aspects of NATO activities. The eighth
directorate carries out studies of individual countries worldwide,
irrespective of whether that country belongs to NATO or not. Special
attention is paid to questions of political structure, armed forces and
economies, and special emphasis is put on a study of the personal activities
of statesmen and military leaders. The ninth directorate studies military
technology. It is very tightly connected with the Soviet design offices and
with the armaments industry, as a whole. It is the only link between the
Soviet armaments factories copying foreign weapons and the residents of
Soviet intelligence who obtain the necessary secrets. The tenth directorate
studies military economics worldwide, carefully watching arms sales,
studying production and technological developments, strategic resources and
vulnerable points. The idea of an oil embargo first saw the light of day in
this directorate as a suggestion in the 'Locomotive Report' of 1954, when it
was pointed out that, to wreck the 'locomotive of capitalism' it was not
necessary to smash the engine, only to deprive it of a crucial ingredient.
Immediately after this the Soviet penetration of the Arab nations began.
Happily this stunning idea of the tenth directorate has not as yet been put
into practice. The eleventh studies strategic concepts and strategic nuclear
forces of all countries who possess such capabilities, or may in the future
possess them. This directorate carefully monitors any signs of increased
activity, any change in emphasis in the activities of strategic nuclear
forces in any region of the globe. The officers of this directorate form the
backbone of Soviet delegations to the SALT talks. Unfortunately we do not
possess reliable information on the activities of the twelfth directorate.
The gigantic information institute functions independently of the
directorates. It is controlled by the chief of information but operates
outside the walls of the GRU. As opposed to the directorates, which base
their analyses of the situation exclusively on secret documents obtained by
agent, electronic and cosmic intelligence, the institute studies overt
sources: the press, radio and television. The Western press is a veritable
treasure house for Soviet intelligence.
The activity of each information directorate in many respects
duplicates the activity of its neighbour directorates. The advantage of such
a set-up is that it prevents a one-sided view and a subjective approach to
problems. Directorates and sections look at problems in a narrow, parochial
manner, giving their opinions not on the whole question but only on a part.
A unified opinion is worked out by the head of information with the help of
his best experts and the command point. Many reports from the procurement
organs of the GRU are analysed simultaneously by several or even by all
units of the information at the same time. Let us suppose, for example, that
a case officer belonging to an undercover residency receives a short verbal
report from an agent to the effect that a new jet fighter is in the process
of being developed in the United States and no official announcement has as
yet been made. Immediately after the meeting with the agent the case officer
would send an enciphered telegram, one brief sentence, to Moscow. But the
information command point has no other report on this question, nor any
evidence to support it. The report would be published in the 'Intelligence
Summary' under the heading 'unchecked and unconfirmed report'. The next
morning all members of the Politburo and the higher military command would
receive the volume printed during the night. At the same time all branches
of information would be studying the report. The seventh directorate, trying
to put itself in the shoes of NATO leaders, would endeavour to calculate
what present and future value this fighter would have for NATO and, if it
were really to be taken into service, how it would affect the balance of
power in Europe and in the world. The question of which country of the
United States' allies would be likely to buy such an aircraft would also be
studied. Units of the seventh directorate would immediately start searching
their archives for information on what NATO leaders have said about the
future development of aviation. Simultaneously with this the eighth
directorate responsible for individual countries including US studies would
thoroughly research the question as to who insisted on the decision to
develop a new aircraft; what forces in the country might come out against
such a decision; which aviation companies might be drawn into the
development of the aircraft by tendering for the contract; who would be
likely to win and who to lose. The ninth directorate, on the basis of an
analysis of the latest American achievements in the sphere of engine
building, aerodynamics, aviation electronics, might be able to foretell the
basic technical parameters of the aircraft. The tenth directorate would
unerringly tell, on the basis of an analysis of military orders, military
budgets and the budgets of the country's main corporations, which aviation
companies would actually be involved and to what extent. The eleventh
directorate would study the problem from the angle of the aircraft's
potential use as a carrier of nuclear weapons. It would be able to draw
conclusions without knowing very much about the new aircraft, simply on the
evidence of existing carriers of atomic weapons, their replacement in
service, the quantity of nuclear weapons and plans for their utilisation. At
the same time, the information institute would call up all overt
publications which might have some bearing on the problem and present its
own opinion to the information command point. And all residents, illegals,
independently operating agents, intelligence directorates of military
districts, fleets and army groups would receive appropriate orders to
increase their activity with regard to the question. Such an order would
also be received by the 'younger brothers'. By the evening reports of all
the branches would be collected at the command point and be printed that
night in the routine 'Intelligence Summary', amongst hundreds of similar
reports already confirmed.
The GRU lays great stress on questions of training specialists for the
information directorates. Alongside professional intelligence officers work
the best specialists from a wide range of scientific, technical and
industrial fields. The GRU has the right to co-opt any specialist from
cosmic research or atomic energy, microbiology or computer technology,
strategic planning or international relations. Such a right was accorded to
the GRU by the Central Committee on the principle that it is better for the
Soviet Union to be in the know about the most modern achievements of the
United States, Japan, Great Britain, France and the Federal Republic of
Germany than to work out its own. In conformity with this the GRU, during
the most dramatic moments of the space race of the sixties, unceremoniously
co-opted the leading Soviet specialists in the field of piloted cosmic
flights and, with their help, monitored every step of the Americans'
progress. It is evident that every Soviet programme was based on an American
model, but launched days or even months before the Americans carried out
theirs. As a result every record, including the first orbital flight, the
first multi-seater spaceship, the first entry into outer space went to the
Soviet Union. This state of affairs continued right up to the time when the
adventurism of the Soviet programme produced a series of tragic accidents.
The information directorates of the GRU have at their disposal the
highest quality electronic equipment produced by the best American firms,
and the GRU leadership, not without reason, considers that the technical
equipment of the processing organs of the GRU is vastly superior to that of
comparable units within the CIA - in spite of the fact that some Western
specialists have said that the GRU information service is not as effective
as it should be. They base this on two facts: that in 1941 the GRU had all
the data on the forthcoming German invasion but was unable to evaluate
correctly the information it had, and secondly, that much of the
intelligence material was reported to the higher command in a 'grey'
unprocessed state. It is impossible to deny either of these facts, although
one may complain that they belong to past history and not the present. If
the GRU information service is truly less effective than it should be, the
answer lies in the communist system itself. General Golikov did possess
detailed German plans for the invasion, but Stalin was not of a mind to
believe them. Two years before, he had twice liquidated the whole staff of
Soviet military intelligence from the chief of the GRU downwards. So what
more was Golikov to do? Thirteen years later, the new chief of the GRU,
General Shtemyenko, found the solution. He ordered the publication of an
intelligence summary each night, which would include 'grey', unprocessed
information and unsubstantiated data. In this way the gallant general
implied that 'this is not my opinion, it is the opinion of my residents'.
The GRU chief and the head of information would only give their own opinion
twenty-four hours later in the next issue of the summary. (This stroke of
genius on the part of the GRU was immediately adopted by the KGB too, which
in the same way began to print 'grey' information each night and save its
judgements for the following day.)
In a totalitarian state, every lower level is completely dependent on
its superior, and there is no organ which can defend it from the caprices of
its superior. This is the very essence of the Soviet Union, and this is why
it is necessary for the leaders of Soviet intelligence to have recourse to
such cunning. The system has been well-tried up to the present time and
serves as a kind of lightning conductor. The chief of the GRU camouflages
his own opinion, always adopting the position adopted by the general
secretary of the Party at a given moment, and at the same time he is able to
present the developing situation to the leadership in a most objective way,
thus transferring all responsibility from his shoulders to the shoulders of
his subordinates. The overseas intelligence organs, separated by thousands
of kilometres from Moscow, cannot possibly know what opinion their rulers
hold at a given moment. They are therefore forced to give simply objective
material which can be directly reported to the higher command. Only in this
way can the intelligence leadership exert any influence on its stubborn
masters when the latter do not wish to listen to any opinion which
contradicts their own.
But the totalitarian system still exerts a crushing influence on all
branches of society, including the intelligence services. Nobody has the
right to object to, or contradict, the supreme command. Thus it was under
Lenin and Stalin and Kruschev and Brezhnev, and thus it will be in the
future. Should the supreme command have an incorrect view of things, then no
intelligence or information service can convince it otherwise; it does not
dare. Nor does first-class American equipment help, nor the very best
specialists. It is not the fault of the intelligence services, it is the
system's fault. In cases where the supreme command is frankly deluded, as
Stalin was in 1941, intelligence has absolutely no chance of influencing him
and its effectiveness at that moment is nil.
However, it is not always like that. If the desires of the dictator and
his intelligence service coincide, then the latter's effectiveness grows
many times greater. In this case, the totalitarian system is not a brake but
an accelerator. The dictator does not care at all for moral sides of a
question. He is not at all answerable before society for his actions; he
fears no opposition or discussion; and he is able to supply his intelligence
service with any amount of money, even at a moment when the country is
suffering from hunger. The GRU has carried out its most brilliant operations
at exactly such moments, when the opinions of the dictator and the
intelligence service coincided. And the information service has played a
first-class role on these occasions.
Let us consider one example. During the Second World War a section of
the tenth directorate (economics and strategic resources) was studying the
trends in the exchange of precious metals in the United States. The
specialists were surprised that an unexpectedly large amount of silver was
allocated 'for scientific research'. Never before, either in America or in
any other country, had such a large amount of silver been spent for the
needs of research. There was a war going on and the specialists reasonably
supposed that the research was military. The GRU information analysed all
the fields of military research known to it, but not one of them required
the expenditure of so much silver. The second reasonable assumption by the
GRU was that it was some new field of research concerning the creation of a
new type of weapon. Every information unit was brought to bear on the study
of this strange phenomenon. Further analysis showed that all publications
dealing with atomic physics had been suppressed in the United States and
that all atomic scientists, fugitives from occupied Europe, had at the same
time disappeared without trace from the scientific horizon. A week later the
GRU presented to Stalin a detailed report on developments in the USA of
atomic weapons. It was a report which had been compiled on the basis of only
one unconfirmed fact, but its contents left no room for doubt about the
correctness of the deductions it made. Stalin was delighted with the report:
the rest is well known.
Chapter Twelve
Support Services
All GRU organs which are not directly concerned with the provision or
processing of intelligence material are considered as support services. It
is not possible for us to examine all of these, but we will simply take
briefly the most important of them.
The Political Department is concerned with the ideological monitoring
of all GRU personnel. The military rank of the head of the political
department is lieutenant-general and again he is a deputy to the GRU chief.
As opposed to any other political departments the GRU political department
is made up not of party officials but of professional intelligence officers.
There are also several other differences. All political directorates and
departments of the Soviet Army are subordinated to the chief political
directorate of the Soviet Army, which is at the same time one of the Central
Committee departments. The GRU political department, however, is
subordinated directly to the Central Committee administrative department.
The political department of the GRU has considerable weight in Moscow,
especially as regards staff movements, but it has no right to interfere in
intelligence work. It exerts practically no influence on the activities of
overseas branches of the GRU. Overseas the residents are personally
responsible for the ideological monitoring of their officers.
The Personnel Directorate is directly beneath the chief of the GRU. The
head of the directorate, a lieutenant-general, is also a deputy to the chief
of the GRU. The directorate is staffed only by intelligence officers who, in
common with officers of the procurement and processing organs, the political
department and other branches of the GRU, regularly go abroad for a period
of several years and then return to work at domestic postings.
The personnel directorate has exceptional influence both in the GRU and
outside. It directs the movements of all officers, not only inside the GRU,
but in a number of satellites, in fleet intelligence, intelligence
directorates of military districts and groups of forces too, and also in the
intelligence services of Eastern bloc countries.
The Operational/Technical Directorate is concerned with the development
and production of all espionage equipment and apparatus. Within its dominion
fall several scientific research institutes and specialised undertakings. On
the orders of the procurement organs the directorate prepares equipment for
secret writing and micro-photography, several kinds of dead letter-box,
radio appliances, eavesdropping material, armaments and poisons, to name but
a few. Its head is a lieutenant- general, although he is not classed
officially as a deputy.
The Administrative/Technical Directorate is in charge of foreign
currencies and other items of value, gold and diamonds, for example. This
directorate is the currency middle-man between the military industrial
commission and the operational users. It controls all the currency resources
of the GRU and also carries out secret speculative operations on the
international market. Possessed of colossal currency resources, it
frequently uses them in order to exert secret pressure on individual
businessmen, statesmen and sometimes even on whole governments. No less
important, it is responsible for the growth of capital belonging to the GRU
and for the acquisition of 'clean' currency.
The Communications Directorate deals with the organisation of radio and
other communication between the GRU and its overseas units. Needless to say,
it controls several powerful reception and transmission centres of its own,
but should the need arise to secure special channels of communication, in
case of a worsening of operational conditions, for example, then it can make
use of the services of the cosmic intelligence directorate, communicating
with illegals and agents by means of GRU satellites.
The Financial Department: unlike the administrative/technical
directorate, the financial department deals only with Soviet money, not with
foreign currency. The financial department carries out legal financial
operations in the Soviet Union.
The First GRU Department (Passport) studies passport regulations
worldwide. In the pursuit of this esoteric duty it has the greatest
collection in the world of passports, identity cards, driving licences,
military documents, passes, police documents, railway, air and sea tickets.
The department keeps maps of many thousands of frontier posts, customs and
police posts, and so on. The department can at any moment say what documents
are required at any given control point in the world, what sort of questions
are asked, and what stamps are to be put on the passports and other
documents. Within a few hours, it can forge the passport of any country to
conform with the latest changes in the passport and visa regulations of that
country, having at its disposal hundreds of thousands of blanks for new
passports, identity cards and driving licences for every country in the
world. In my experience, the preparation of the papers which will preserve
one's true identity can be done in a very short time.
The Eighth GRU Department is the most secret of all the top secret
units of the GRU. The eighth department possesses all the GRU's secrets. It
is here that the enciphering and deciphering of all incoming and outgoing
documents is carried out.
The Archives Department is possibly the most interesting of all the
departments. In its cellars are millions of personal details and files on
illegals, domestic officers, undercover residencies, successful recruitment
of foreigners (and unsuccessful ones), material on everyone from statesmen
and army heads to prostitutes and homosexuals and designers of rockets and
submarines. In every file lies the fate of an individual, in every file
there is an unwritten novel.
Chapter One
Illegals
We can define an illegal as an officer of strategic intelligence
performing the tasks of the Centre on the territory of a foreign state, who
passes himself off as a foreigner but not as a Soviet citizen. Illegals are
frequently confused with agents, but these are completely different things.
The crucial difference is that the agent is an inhabitant of a foreign
country who has been recruited by, and works in the interest of, Soviet
intelligence, whereas an illegal is first and foremost a Soviet officer
passing himself off as a foreigner. Sometimes some of the most valuable and
deserving agents receive Soviet citizenship as an incentive and are awarded
the rank of an officer of the GRU or the KGB, but even so, an agent remains
an agent. However, in the occasional case when a foreigner has been
recruited by Soviet intelligence and for some reason or other changes his
appearance or name and continues his activities with false documents, then
he is called an illegal agent.
Both the GRU and the KGB have their own illegal networks, but these are
completely independent one from the other. Each organisation selects,
trains, prepares, deploys and utilises its illegals as it sees fit. In the
same way each organisation separately works out principles, methods of work
and technical details of the illegal system separately. The system of
running illegals is entirely different in the two services. In the KGB there
is a special directorate of illegal activities. In the GRU, all illegals are
trained in a training centre under the leadership of Lieutenant-General V.
T. Guryenko. After their training, the illegals are put at the disposal of
the heads of the four geographical directorates and are controlled
personally by them. Thus each directorate head supervises a number of
directions and separately a group of illegals. In order to help him, the
directorate head can call on a group of advisers consisting in the
main of former illegals (though not 'blown' ones) who are ready at any
moment, using false papers, to go to the target country and 'fine-tune' and
help the activities of the illegal networks. Directorate heads themselves
frequently travel abroad for the same reasons. A number of the more
important illegals are directly controlled by the first deputy head of the
GRU, and there is a cream who are under the personal supervision of the head
of the GRU. Thus both one and the other have groups consisting of the
most experienced and successful illegals who have returned from abroad and
who exercise supervision over the daily running of the illegals. If a young
illegal begins to acquire really interesting information he is transferred
from the control of the head of a directorate to that of the first deputy
or, in the case of even greater success, to that of the head of the GRU
himself. This is, of course, a very high honour, granted only to those who
return information of a very high calibre -unprecedented or highly
classified material which produces an intelligence breakthrough. Equally an
illegal may be demoted for failing to produce the goods. In certain cases
his grade may fall below that which is supervised by the head of a
directorate and he will be supervised only by the head of a direction. This
is a very critical stage for the illegal, although he may not even be able
to guess that it has happened. If he is demoted to direction head level -
and he is, of course, not informed about this -the next step could well be a
recall to the Soviet Union, regarded by all intelligence personnel as the
direst form of punishment. Recall to the Soviet Union is a particularly
effective measure against any Soviet citizen serving abroad. It is all the
same to them whether they are in Paris or in Pnom Penh. The only important
thing is that they should not be in the Soviet Union, and transfer to the
Soviet Union, even on promotion, is regarded as the tragedy of a lifetime.
The selection of potential illegals is carried out by each of the four
geographical directorates independently. Candidates are selected on the
basis of future requirements. In basic terms, officers of the Soviet Army
and Navy are used who as yet may know nothing about the GRU. Sometimes
experienced officers of the GRU are used, those who have completed the
Military-Diplomatic Academy and have already worked in intelligence or in
the information processing departments. Sometimes the GRU will select for
illegal activities young Soviet citizens, mainly those who have completed
linguistic courses in higher education. Higher education is an essential
requirement, therefore the minimum age at which a recruit will begin his
training is 21 to 23 years.
Although General Guryenko's organisation is called the Training
Centre', not one Soviet illegal who has defected has ever been able to say
exactly where it is. The name Training Centre seems simply to reflect the
existence of one organisation occupied with one task. Either the
organisation is constantly on the move, or a secluded little place is
selected for each individual trainee, normally in the Moscow area where
there are great numbers of dachas. The dachas for the training of illegals
are well concealed among other governmental buildings, where outsiders are
not to be seen on the streets and unnecessary questions are not asked, but
gentlemen of sporting appearance may be seen walking in pairs in the quiet
shady avenues. The dacha provides an ideally isolated territory for
training. In addition to the candidate and his family, two or three
instructors also live in the dacha where they can immerse him completely and
supervise him very carefully all the time. His wife is also trained but the
children lead normal lives and will be held eventually as hostages. The
internal fittings of the dacha are prepared very thoroughly and carefully.
From the first day the candidate becomes accustomed to the circumstances in
which he will be living and working probably for many long years. In this
connection he wears the clothes and shoes, and eats the food, even smokes
cigarettes and uses razor blades procured from overseas. In each room a tape
recorder is installed which runs twenty-four hours a day while he is
occupying the dacha. These tape recorders continuously broadcast news from
the radio programmes of his target country. From the first day of his
training he is supplied with the majority of papers and magazines. He sees
many films and descriptions on video tapes of television broadcasts. The
instructors, for the most part former illegals, read the same papers and
listen to the same radio programmes and spend their time asking their pupil
the most difficult questions imaginable with regard to what has been read.
It is quite obvious that after a number of years of such training, the
future illegal knows by heart the composition of every football team, the
hours of work of every restaurant and nightclub, the weather forecasts and
everything that is going on in the realm of gossip as well as current
affairs, in a country where he has never been in his life. The instructional
programme is tailor-made for each trainee, giving due consideration to his
knowledge, character and the tasks which he will be called upon to perform
in the future. Attention is obviously paid to the study of the language of
the target country, to working methods and to a cover story.
Often, the illegal's wife also undergoes training. She as a rule works
as the radio operator. The posting of a husband and wife together, leaving
their children behind as hostages, is a very frequent occurrence. It is
considered that maternal feelings are much the stronger and, with the wife
posted, hostages are that much more effective. Perhaps more surprisingly,
the wife also acts as a control for the GRU on her husband. She scrutinises
his behaviour and sometimes may warn the GRU about his excessive interest in
women or alcohol. On their return to the Soviet Union, husband and wife are
subjected to a detailed individual debriefing on all aspects of their life
abroad. If the husband and wife have decided to keep something secret from
the GRU, their stories will eventually differ.
After as much as three or four years of intensive training, the illegal
passes a state commission of top GRU and Central Committee personnel, and
goes abroad. Usually his journey to the target country is effected through a
number of intermediary countries. For example, a journey to the USA would go
from the Soviet Union to Hungary to Yugoslavia to Cyprus, Kuwait, Hong Kong
and Hawaii. At each stage, or most of them, he destroys documents with which
he has entered the country and goes on under new documentation which has
been prepared for him, either by other illegals or by the residencies under
cover. The illegal will find these documents in a reserved hotel or a
steamship cabin or in a letter through the post. At each stage he goes on to
another cover story, becoming another man. He may have to live in one place
for some months and study it so he can use his knowledge of the country in
future cover stories. He does not stop over at all in some of the countries,
only using his visit to cover his tracks. After some months he arrives at
the country where he is to work. The first thing he does is to visit the
city where he is supposed to have been born, gone to school, and married. He
gets a job and works for a time, after which he returns to the Soviet Union,
having finished the second stage of his training - the illegal probationary
period abroad. This probationary period is divided as a rule into one or two
years, after which the third stage begins. On the basis of the experience he
has gained, and the shortcomings which have come to light in the training,
the illegal and his instructors work out a programme of training for a
period which lasts another one or two years. After this he again undergoes
state examinations, at which the head of the GRU or his first deputy have to
be present. Then the illegal is placed at the disposal of one of the heads
of directorates and again commences the operation for his roundabout journey
to the target country. For operational purposes (though not for
instructional purposes) much use is made of Finland as a window to the West.
In the course of his operational journey, the illegal's stay in one of the
intermediate countries may continue for several years. This stage goes by
the name of the 'intermediate legalisation'. To take the case of an illegal
whose target destination is Washington: he might pretend to be a refugee
from Hungary escaped in 1956; this would mean periods of residence in
Hungary to begin with, then Austria and Germany before he arrives finally in
America. An eventual French illegal would be likely to make the journey via
Armenia and Lebanon. Both would consolidate their nationality every step of
the way. In the course of the 'intermediate legalisation', the illegal
endeavours to acquire as many friends as possible, to go to work, to get
hold of genuine papers and character and work references. At the end of
these years of preparation, he at last appears in the country where he is to
spend so many more years endeavouring to do it as much harm as possible.
The minimum age of an illegal clearly cannot be less than twenty-seven
to twenty-nine, but usually he is older, on average about forty. This age
suits the GRU very well for a number of reasons. A man of forty has a
balanced, conservative approach to life. The stormy passions of youth have
disappeared and he is less inclined to take ill-considered decisions,
especially if he ever suffers the dilemma of whether to continue working or
to go to the police. His children are sufficiently old to be able to live
without their parents in the complete care of the GRU, but not old enough to
live independently, and so they are ideal hostages. And in the event of
mobilisation in the target country, he may well be able to avoid being
called up for the army which would mean the breaking-off of relations and an
end to his active working life.
On his arrival at his objective, the illegal sets about basic
legalisation. He has been provided with good papers by the best forgers of
the GRU on genuine blank passports. At the same time he is extremely
vulnerable if he is not registered with the police or the tax departments.
Any check may give him away and for this reason he endeavours to change jobs
and places of work often to get his name onto as many company lists as he
can and to acquire character references signed by real people. The ideal
solution is for him to obtain new documentation from the police department
under some pretext or another. Often he will marry another agent (who may
already be his wife); she will then be given a genuine passport, and he will
'lose' his false one to have it replaced with a real one on the production
of his wife's genuine document. The acquisition of a driving licence, credit
cards, membership documents of clubs and associations are a vital element in
'legalising' the status of an illegal.
A vital role in the lives of illegals is played by cover stories, in
other words concocted life stories. The basic or ground cover story is
created on the basis of real events in the life of the illegal, only
changing a few details. He keeps the date of his birth but of course changes
the place of his birth. The dates of birth of his parents and relatives are
also accurately recorded, usually along with the professions of his parents,
dates of weddings and other details. The illegal is thus not telling an
out-and-out lie but only a half-truth. He will not bat an eyelid when he
tells you that his father served all his life in the army. The only thing is
that he will not tell you in which army he served.
There is also the emergency cover story, which is the last line of
defence of the illegal on having been arrested by the police. As its name
suggests, this cover story is only to be used as a last resort when the
illegal perceives that the police no longer believe his basic cover story.
Designed to be used only when the illegal is in the hands of the police
department, it is concocted in such a way that the details it gives should
be impossible to check. For example, one illegal was arrested by the police
while he was trying to obtain a new driving licence because a mistake had
been found in his old one. He was subjected to questioning, as a result of
which his basic cover story was found to be inaccurate. Then he went over to
his emergency cover story and informed the police that he was a Polish
criminal who had escaped from prison and bought a passport on the black
market. During this time the GRU, not having received from the illegal his
routine communications, informed the Polish authorities about the
'criminal'. The Poles published photographs of the criminal and applied to a
number of countries for his extradition. However strange it may seem, the
police believed the story and handed him over to the Polish Consul. It would
have been easy to break the emergency cover story, if the police had only
thought to invite a real Polish immigrant for a ten-minute chat with his
supposed fellow countryman. Of course he would not have known more than ten
words of the language. But for the police it was sufficient that he spoke
their language and did not object to being handed over to the Polish Consul.
No less important than the cover story is the cover or the place of
work and the type of employment which the illegal takes up in his life
overseas. Soviet propaganda paints a grave picture of the intelligence
officer playing the role of a colonel in the enemy general staff. But this
is pure disinformation. Such a cover is unacceptable to an illegal for a
number of reasons. Firstly, he must keep himself away from
counter-intelligence and the police. He must be a grey, inconspicuous 'man
in the street' such as millions would hurry past without noticing. Any
officer on any Western general staff is continuously under scrutiny.
Secondly, he must be professional in his field. In the general staff he
would be exposed almost immediately. Thirdly, for such a cover his
legalisation would have to be unacceptably protracted. He would certainly be
asked about the military schools and academies where he is supposed to have
been, the regiments in which he has served, and his acquaintances among the
officers and staff. Fourthly, an illegal needs plenty of time and
opportunity to meet whoever he wants to meet. If a colonel on the general
staff consorted with prostitutes, homosexuals, stockbrokers, atomic
submarine workers and bootblacks - all those multifarious people he needs to
cultivate - he would be exposed within forty-eight hours. Finally, and
perhaps most importantly, the requirements of the GRU change with great
rapidity. Today they are interested in documents from a certain department
of the general staff and tomorrow from another. But our illegal is working
in yet another department and all his attempts to have talks with officers
of the first two departments have been met with a blank wall or cold
suspicion. No, the kind of cover offered by such a role is neither feasible
nor a great deal of use.
Much better for him to be an independent journalist like Richard Sorge,
or an independent artist like Rudolph Abel, coming and going as he pleases.
Today he is talking with the Prime Minister, tomorrow with prostitutes, the
next day with professional killers and then with atomic weapon workers. If
he doesn't want to work for three months, there is no problem. If he gets
many thousands of dollars through the post, again no problem. It is part of
his cover. There are better, of course. A garage owner, for example. He
hires his staff and himself goes wherever he wants and for as long as he
wants, or he stands at the window and takes the money. Thousands of people
pass him every day -ballerinas and artists, senators and scientists - and
colonels of the general staff. To one he gives money and instructions
written in secret writing, from another he receives reports. For the basic
task of the illegal is not himself to penetrate secret targets, but to
recruit agents for this purpose. This is his raison d'etre.
An illegal residency is an intelligence organisation comprising a
minimum of two illegals, usually the resident and a wireless operator, and a
number of agents (at least one) working for them. We already know that
illegals themselves, without agents, are not able to obtain anything.
Gradually, as a result of recruiting new agents, the residency may increase
in size. More illegals may be sent out to the resident, one of whom may
become his assistant. The GRU considers it counter- productive to have large
residencies. Five illegals and eight to ten agents are considered the
maximum, but usually the residencies are much er than this. In cases
where the recruitment of new agents has gone well the GRU prudently divides
the residency in two parts. Thereafter any contact between the two new
residencies is of course forbidden, »o that if one residency is discovered
the other does not suffer.
Chapter Two
The Undercover Residency
The undercover residency is one of the basic forms of intelligence
set-up for the GRU abroad. (It should be remembered that the undercover
residency and the illegal residency are completely separate entities.) In
every country where official Soviet representation exists there is a GRU
undercover residency. It exists in parallel with, and is analogous to, the
KGB undercover residency. Thus every overseas Soviet colony is invisibly
divided into three organisations: the 'clean ones', that is the genuine
diplomats and correspondents, and the representatives of external trade,
civil airlines, the merchant navy, and Intourist, headed by the ambassador;
the undercover residency of the GRU; and the undercover residency of the
KGB.
Very often, the 'clean' personnel make no distinction between the KGB
and the GRU and call them both dirty, 'savages', 'Vikings' or 'neighbours'.
The more enlightened staff, like for example the ambassador, his senior
diplomats and the more observant people, understand the difference between
the two organisations, dividing them up as close neighbours (the KGB), who
continually meddle in the day-to-day affairs of each person in the colony,
and distant neighbours who take absolutely no interest at all in the
day-to-day life of the Soviet colony (the GRU).
For the GRU undercover residency lives a secluded and isolated life. It
contains significantly fewer employees than either of the other
organisations. Normally in Soviet colonies up to 40 per cent of the people
may be considered in the 'clean' category. (This of course does not prevent
the majority of them, to a greater or lesser extent, from co- operation with
both the KGB and the GRU; but they are not to be considered as professional
intelligence officers.) Up to 40 or 45 per cent are officers of the KGB and
only 15 to 20 per cent, in rare cases up to 25 per cent, are officers of the
GRU. This does not however mean that the intelligence potential of the GRU
apparatus is less than that of the KGB. The larger part of the KGB personnel
is occupied with questions of security, that is with the collection of
compromising material on Soviet people, 'clean' people including the
ambassador, and their own colleagues in the KGB who have contact with
foreigners and frequently with officers of the GRU. Only a proportion,
in optimum cases half of the KGB personnel, are working against foreigners.
The GRU, on the other hand, directs its entire potential against foreigners.
When one adds to this the unequalled financial power of the GRU, vastly in
excess of that of the KGB, it becomes clear why the most outstanding
operations of Soviet intelligence have been mounted not by the KGB but by
the GRU.
The minimum number of staff for any GRU undercover residency is two —
the resident and a combined radio/cipher officer. Such a theoretical minimum
exists also for the other organisations, the KGB and the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs. Theoretically the Soviet colony in a very country may consist
of six people, three of whom, the ambassador and two residents, are
diplomats, and the other three radio/cipher officers. Each of the three
branches of the Soviet colony has its own enciphering machine and completely
independent channel of communication with Moscow. Equally, each has its own
boss in Moscow—the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the chairman of the KGB or
the head of the GRU. Supreme arbitration between them can only be carried
out in the Central Committee, which in its turn has an interest in fanning
the flames of discord between the three organisations. The Central Committee
has the right to recall any ambassador or resident and this same Central
Committee has to decide questions as to which slots, and how many, should be
accorded to each of the three organisations. This is a difficult task, as
the Committee must not offend the KGB on questions of security, on the
shadowing of its own diplomats above all, nor must it offend the GRU, for
without the acquisition of data on present-day technology the quality of the
Soviet Army would remain static. Finally it must not offend the 'clean
ones'. They also must have a sufficient complement to serve as a screen for
the dark activities of the two residencies.
This is why Soviet embassies, consulates, trade representations and so
on grow and multiply and swell. As the residency grows, the resident
acquires several deputies in place of the one he had at first. The number of
radio/cipher officers increases. A technical services group is organised, an
operational group, a tech-ops group, a radio monitoring station on the
networks of the police and counter-intelligence. The number of operational
officers engaged directly in recruiting and running agents increases. In the
very biggest residencies of the GRU, such as that in New York, there may be
from seventy to eighty officers. Medium-sized residencies like that in Rome
would contain between thirty and forty officers. All officers on the staff
of a residency are divided into three categories - operational staff,
technical-operational staff and technical staff. The operational staff are
those officers who are directly concerned with recruiting and running
agents. In the operational staff are included residents, deputy residents
and operational officers. To the technical- operations staff belong those
officers who are directly concerned with and responsible for the production
of intelligence, but who do not have personal contact with agents, nor often
with foreigners at all. These are radio/cipher officers, officers of the
technical services and operational technical services and the operators of
the radio monitoring post. To the technical staff belong chauffeurs, guards
and accountants.
The Resident
He is the senior representative of the GRU in any given place, and
answerable only to the head of the GRU and the Central Committee. He is the
boss of all GRU officers and has the right to send any of them, including
his own deputies, out of the country immediately. In this case he does not
even have to justify his decision, even in front of the head of the GRU and
the Central Committee. The resident is completely responsible for security,
both as regards the work of each of his individual officers and recruited
agents, and the security of the residency as a whole. He is chosen from
among the most experienced officers and as a rule must have a minimum of
three to five years of successful work as an operational officer and three
to five years as the deputy resident before his appointment. A resident in a
large residency will hold the military rank of major-general, in medium and
residencies that of colonel. This does not mean that a
lieutenant-colonel cannot be appointed resident, but then, according to the
GRU system, he will be paid a full colonel's or major-general's salary and,
if he copes successfully, will have to fill posts commensurate with the
higher rank. He is not afterwards permitted to return to a post ordinarily
filled by a lieutenant-colonel.
The deputy resident serves as the resident's assistant and assumes his
responsibilities when he is absent. He undertakes the duties given to him by
the resident and carries on recruiting work in the same way as all other
operational officers. Frequently a deputy resident heads teams of officers
working in one or another specialised field. Sometimes the resident himself
supervises the most experienced operational officers and the deputy
residents the younger, less experienced officers. In some very large
residencies, and also sometimes where there is great activity on the part of
GRU illegals, there is a post called deputy resident for illegals. The
undercover residency and the illegal residency are completely separate and
the undercover residency has no idea how many illegals there are, or where
or how they work. At the same time, on instructions from the Centre, the
undercover residency continually gives them help and support, placing money
and passports in dead-letter boxes, emptying dead-letter boxes for them,
studying conditions and clarifying certain important questions. Very often
the undercover residency is used to rescue illegals.
The military rank of any deputy resident is full colonel. At the same
time the same rules apply as apply to residents. The deputy resident may be
a lieutenant-colonel or even a major; however, from the administrative and
financial points of view he is a full colonel with full rights.
The Operational Officer
This is a GRU officer who carries out the recruitment of agents, runs
them and through them receives or acquires the secret documents and samples
of weaponry and military technology. Every operational officer from the
moment of his arrival in the country is obliged to recruit a minimum of one
agent, as well as often having to take charge of one or two other secret
agents who have previously been recruited by his predecessors. He must keep
these agents and increase their productivity. An identical burden is placed
on the deputy resident at the same time as he is fulfilling the obligations
of a deputy. This system is applied in all residencies. In
medium-sized residencies, the resident himself may take a direct interest in
recruitment or not as he wishes. The residents of very large residencies are
exempted from personal recruitment.
Alongside his recruitment work, the operational officer carries on with
the acquisition of intelligence material by all possible means. He converses
with foreigners, travels around the country and reads the press avidly.
However, the GRU's over-riding view is that recruitment work is the most
important part of an officer's duty, and it calls it number one (in addition
to certain other colloquial words). All other work- support and the
performing of operations for others, however important- is known as zero.
One may be added to zero if a 'zero' agent manages to recruit a foreigner,
in which case he becomes a '10', which is clearly the best number to be. For
this reason an operational officer who has been abroad for three years and
not recruited a single agent, even if he has achieved outstanding success in
collecting the most interesting intelligence material, is considered to be
idle. According to the standards of the GRU, he has sat for three years
doing absolutely nothing and therefore hardly merits consideration for
another overseas posting.
The military rank of an operational officer is lieutenant-colonel or
colonel but in practice he may be a major (as I was) or captain, or even a
senior lieutenant. If he is successful in his recruitment work he stays on
at this level receiving automatic promotion according to the length of time
served. If he does not manage to recruit any agents, he is deprived of all
his colonel's privileges and again becomes an ordinary senior lieutenant or
captain and has to compete for promotion in the ordinary way, as automatic
promotion is not granted to unsuccessful officers.
The military ranks prescribed for undercover residencies are also
applicable for illegal residencies, with the sole difference that the
illegal resident may be a major-general having many fewer people under his
command than the resident of the undercover residency.
The Radio/Cipher Officer
Although he is an officer of technical operational staff, and his
military rank is not usually higher than that of major, the radio/ cipher
officer is the second most important person in the residency. He is not only
responsible for cipher matters, the storage and use of ciphers and cipher
machines, but also for the transmission and reception of enciphered cables
and the storage of all secret documentation in the residency. The
radio/cipher officer possesses all the secrets of the residency and since he
deciphers communications from Moscow he knows the news even earlier than the
resident. Nobody, including the ambassador and the KGB resident, at any time
or under any pretext has the right of access to his room. They do not even
have the right to know the number and types of cipher machines installed
there. These restrictions also apply to GRU deputy residents. Even during
periods when the resident is away and the deputy resident is acting for him
he does not have the right to go into the radio/cipher operator's room or to
ask him any specific questions which have a bearing on his work. Only the
resident may exercise any control over the cipher officer, and he pays for
the privilege because the cipher officer is the only man in the residency
who is entitled to communicate with Moscow without the knowledge of the
resident. He can send a cable containing an adverse report about the
resident of which the resident himself will know nothing. It is the duty of
the cipher officer to exercise silent watch over the behaviour of the
resident, and if there is any shortcoming he must report it. In
residencies, where there is only one radio/cipher officer, only the resident
may replace him should he become incapacitated for any reason. If both the
resident and the cipher officer should become incapacitated at the same time
then the deputy resident and the whole residency will remain completely cut
off from the Centre. Naturally the ambassador's and the KGB's channels of
communication can be used, but only in order to inform the GRU in a very
general way. It is natural therefore that great care is taken of cipher
officers (this is just as true of the KGB as the GRU). Draconian living
conditions are imposed on all cipher officers. They are only allowed to live
in official Soviet embassy accommodation guarded around the clock. Neither
the cipher officer nor his wife is allowed to leave the guarded territory
independently or unaccompanied. They are at all times led by an officer who
enjoys diplomatic immunity. Neither the officer nor his wife is allowed near
places where foreigners are to be found. Even if these foreigners are
Bulgarians or Mongolians and are on guarded territory belonging to a Soviet
embassy, the restriction remains in force. The cipher officer is not allowed
in the same room with them even though he may be silent and in the company
of his resident. He and his family must have a diplomatic escort on their
journey out from the Soviet Union and on their return. During the time of
his assignment abroad, he is forbidden all leave. It is easy to see why
cipher officers are not posted abroad for longer than two years.
Of course those cipher officers who have served their whole lives on
the territory of the Soviet Union deeply envy those who have had postings
abroad, no matter where; and those who have been abroad will give their
right arms to get another posting abroad, no matter where - Calcutta,
Shanghai or Beirut. They will agree to any conditions, any climate, any
restrictions on their family lives, for they have learnt with their mother's
milk the rule that overseas life is always better than in the Soviet Union.
Technical Services (TS) Officer
They are concerned with electronic intelligence from the premises of
official Soviet premises, embassies, consulates, and so on. Basic targets
are the telecommunications apparatus of the government, diplomatic wireless
communications, and military channels of communication. By monitoring radio
transmissions, secret and cipher, technical services groups not only obtain
interesting information but also cover the system of governmental
communications, subordination of the different components of the state and
the military structure.
The military ranks of technical services officers are major and
lieutenant- colonel.
Radio Monitoring Station Officers
In contradistinction to TS officers, these are concerned with
monitoring the radio networks of the police and security services. The
technical services and the radio monitoring station are two different
groups, independent of each other, both controlled by the resident. The
difference between them is that the technical services work in the interests
of the Centre, trying to obtain state secrets, but the monitoring station
works only in the interests of the residency trying to determine where in
the city police activity is at its highest at a given moment and thus where
operations may be mounted and where they should not be mounted. Groups for
the study of operational conditions are made up of the most junior officers
who will eventually become operational officers arid be sent out on
independent recruitment work. These are groups who continually study
the local press and police activities, endeavouring to obtain by means of
isolated snippets a general picture of the police work in a given city and
country. Besides their scanning of police reports for an ultimate overview,
they also minutely study and analyse, for example, the numbers of police
vehicles which appear in newspaper pictures or the surnames of police
officers and detectives. Sometimes this painstaking work brings unexpected
results. In one country a keen journalist on a newspaper reported a
police plan to install secret television cameras in order to survey the most
highly populated parts of the city; this was enough for the GRU to become
interested and to take corresponding measures. Within a month the GRU
resident was able to say with conviction that he was fully informed with
regard to the police system of control by television and this enabled the
whole residency successfully to avoid traps laid for them for several years.
The military ranks of officers of these groups are senior lieutenant and
captain.
The Operationa] Technical Group
This is concerned with the repair and maintenance of photographic
apparatus, photocopying equipment and the like. At the disposal of the group
there are dead-letter boxes of all types, radio transmission stations, SW
(secret writing) materials, microphoto-graphy and micropantography. The
officers of this group are always on hand to give the necessary explanations
to operational officers and to instruct them on the use of this or that
instrument or method. These officers continually monitor television
programmes and collect useful items on video tape, giving to Moscow material
it could not get from any other source. The officers of the group, together
with the officers of the group for the study of operational conditions, are
widely used for the security of agent operations, the carrying out of
counter-surveillance, signals organisation, dead-letter box operations and
so on.
Technical Personnel
Only the very largest residencies contain technical personnel. Drivers
are only allocated to residents who hold the rank of general. However, many
generals, in an effort to be indistinguishable from other diplomats,
dispense with the services of drivers. The military rank of a driver is an
ensign. However, sometimes an operational officer is to be found in the
guise of a driver and he, of course, has a much superior rank. This is a
widespread method of deception, for who would pay attention to a driver?
Some residencies, especially those in countries where attacks on the
embassy cannot be excluded, have a staff of guards besides the KGB guards
who are responsible for the external protection of the building. The GRU
internal security guards consist of young Spetsnaz officers in the rank of
lieutenant or senior lieutenant. The internal security guards of the
residency may be deployed at the request of the resident in countries where
KGB attempts to penetrate the GRU get out of hand. The internal security
guards answer directly to the resident or his deputy. Naturally they do not
take part in agent handling operations.
An accountant, in the rank of captain or major, is employed only in
those residencies where the normal monthly budget exceeds one million
dollars. In other cases the financial affairs are the concern of one of the
deputy residents.
In our examination of the undercover residency, we have naturally to
examine its cover, the official duties used by KGB and GRU officers to
camouflage their secret activities. Without exaggeration it may be said that
any official duty given to Soviet citizens abroad may be used to mask
officers of intelligence organisations: as ambassadors and drivers, consuls
and guards, dancers, writers, artists, simple tourists, guides and
stewardesses, heads of delegations and simple section heads, UN employees
and priests, intelligence officers conceal their true functions. Any person
who has the right of official entry and exit from the Soviet Union may be
used for intelligence tasks, and the vast majority of these are in fact only
occupied in intelligence work. Some types of cover provide better
possibilities, some worse. Some are used more by the GRU, some more by the
KGB. Let us look at the basic ones.
The embassy is used to an equal extent by both organisations. Both
residents and their deputies are in possession of massive amounts of
information which would expose them to an un-acceptably high risk of arrest.
For this reason the KGB resident and his colleague from the GRU, and usually
their deputies too, are bearers of diplomatic passports, that is, they work
officially in the embassies. Other officers of both organisations give
themselves out as embassy diplomats too. They all prefer to concern
themselves with technological and scientific questions, and questions of
transport and communications; they are rarely found in cultural sections.
The consulate is entirely KGB. You will almost never find officers of the
GRU there and only very rarely genuine diplomats. This is because all exit
and entry from and to the Soviet Union is in the hands of the KGB. KGB
officers in the consulate issue visas, and the frontier forces of the KGB
then control them later on. Every aspect of immigration and of flight and
defection has some connection with consular affairs, which therefore rank
extremely high in the KGB's sphere of interest. So it follows that the
percentage of KGB officers in consulates is unusually high, even by Soviet
standards. (There do exist very rare instances of GRU officers working in
consulates. The KGB only agrees to this on the grounds of practical
considerations, and so that it should not appear to be too one- sided an
organisation.)
Aeroflot, the Soviet civil airline, is the exclusive domain of the GRU.
This can be explained by the fact that aviation technology is of extreme
interest to the Soviet armaments industry, and there is huge scope for any
Aeroflot employee to inform himself about the progress of the West:
international exhibitions, meetings with representatives of the leading
aviation and space corporations, perfectly justifiable meetings with
representatives of firms producing aviation electronics, oils, lubricants,
fuels, high-tension materials, heat isolators and aero-engines. Usually the
firms which produce civil aircraft also produce military aircraft and
rockets, and in this field lie the GRU's richest pickings. Happily, those
officers whom the GRU selects at advanced aviation institutes for work in
Aeroflot do not need lengthy specialist instruction. Sometimes Soviet
military and civil aircraft have identical parts. KGB officers are only
rarely employed at Aeroflot, and then for the same reasons as the GRU in
consular affairs. The merchant navy is almost identical, the only difference
being that the officers there are selected to study cruisers and submarines
and not strategic aviation. An organisation of exceptional importance to
both services is the Trade Representation, that is the organ of the Ministry
of External Trade. Literally swarming with KGB and GRU officers, this
organisation provides exceptional access to business people whom both strive
to exploit for their own ends. Representation in Tass, APN, Pravda and
Izvestia are almost forbidden ground for the GRU. Even the KGB in this field
has very narrow powers. Press matters are very carefully kept in the Central
Committee's own hands, therefore KGB officers and officers of the GRU do not
occupy key posts in these organisations. This does not mean of course that
their secret activities suffer in any way.
Intourist is in the KGB's hands, so much so that it is not just an
organisation strongly influenced by the KGB, but an actual branch of the
KGB. Beginning with the construction of hotels and the putting of
advertisements in the papers, and ending with the recruitment of foreigners
in those same hotels, it is all run entirely by the KGB. GRU officers are
found in Intourist, but rarely. There does exist, however, one rule which
admits of no exceptions. Anything to do with the military attaches is
staffed exclusively by officers of the GRU. Here there are no genuine
diplomats, nor KGB. The naval, military and air attaches are regarded by the
GRU as its particular brand of cover. In the West one is accustomed to see
in these people not spies but military diplomats, and one assumes that this
has spread to one's Soviet colleagues. This deep misapprehension is fully
exploited by the GRU. Whenever you talk to a Soviet military attache,
remember always that before you stands at the very least an operational
officer of an undercover residency who is faced with the problem of
recruiting foreigners and who, if he does not recruit a single foreigner,
sees all his other work become insignificant and all his hopes of a shining
career crash to the ground. Look into his eyes and ask him how much longer
he has to serve in this hospitable country and if in his answer you perceive
a note of anguish, then be on your guard, for he will recruit you if he can.
But perhaps he is happy with life and his eyes express pleasure. This means
he has recruited one of your fellow- countrymen. Possibly there even stands
in front of you a deputy resident or the GRU resident himself. Fear him and
be careful of him. He is dangerous. He is experienced and cunning like an
old hand should be. This is not his first time abroad, and that means he has
already chalked up a significant number of successful recruits.
Every GRU officer in an undercover residency, whatever his official
duties may be, and under whatever cover he masquerades, has his place in the
general structure of the secret hierarchy. What we see in daily life is only
the performance the GRU wishes to show us. Internal relations in an
undercover residency have no bearing whatsoever on external, official ranks.
Military ranks play an insignificant role. The important role is the actual
job of the officer in the residency. There have been cases where residents
with an eye to cover have occupied completely insignificant posts within
embassies. At the same time the resident remains the resident and his
authority is unshakeable. Within the residency he remains the strict,
tyrannical, frequently wilful boss who during his briefings will frequently
attack the military attaches - even though in his life as seen by the
outside world he plays the part of doorman for those same attaches. The
second most important person, the deputy resident, may only be a
lieutenant-colonel with operational officers who are colonels but this does
not prevent him from talking to them as he would to captains or lieutenants.
They are only operational officers, while the GRU has decreed that he, a
lieutenant-colonel, is better than them, full colonels though they may be,
and has given him full powers to dispose of them and order them about.
Official cover again plays absolutely no part. An operational officer may
assume the official duty of assistant to a military attache or military
attache himself, but still have the deputy resident as his own personal
driver. The deputy resident is no way suffers from this. His situation is
analogous to that of the Sicilian waiter who, off duty, is senior in rank to
the restaurant owner within the Mafia hierarchy.
All operational officers are legal equals, from senior lieutenants to
full colonels. Their seniority in the residency, however, is established by
the resident exclusively on the basis of the quantity and quality of their
recruitments. Recruitment work is the sole criterion for all GRU officers,
regardless of age, rank or official duties. Their relations with each other
in the residency might be compared with the relationships existing between
fighter pilots in time of war. They also, in their own circle, pay little
attention to length of service or military rank. Their criterion of respect
for a man is the number of enemy aircraft he has shot down, and a lieutenant
who has shot down ten aircraft may patronisingly slap on the shoulder a
major who has not shot down a single aircraft. The attitude of the
operational staff engaged in recruitment work to other officers may be
summed up by comparison with the attitude of the fliers and the ground staff
at a fighter base: 'I fly in the sky and you shovel shit.' The only
exception to this attitude is the radio/cipher officer, to whom all show the
greatest respect, because he knows much more about intelligence matters
concerning the residency than the deputy resident.
Let us take a typically large residency as an example and examine it.
Everything is factual. The resident is a Major-General A and his official
cover (relatively unimportant), is First Secretary, Embassy. Directly
beneath him are a group of five radio/cipher officers, three very
experienced operational officers (one of whom runs an agent group, and two
others who run especially valuable agent-sources), and four deputy
residents. They are:
Colonel B, cover Deputy Trade Representative. He has twelve GRU
officers below him, all working in the Trade Representation. He is in
contact with one agent. One of his officers runs an agent group of three
agents. Another is in contact with two agents and a third officer has one
agent. The remaining officers have as yet no agents.
Lt-Colonel C, cover Assistant to the Naval Attache. He has many
operational officers beneath him, two of whom work in the Merchant Navy
Representation, three in Aeroflot, five in the Embassy and ten in the
departments of the Military, Naval and Air Attaches. All three of the
military departments are considered to be a diplomatic unit independent from
each other and from the Embassy. However, in this case, all officers
entering the three military departments including the three attaches are
beneath one assistant military attache. The deputy resident is in contact
with one agent. Twelve other operational officers subordinate to him have
one agent each. The remainder have acquaintances who are to be recruited
within one to two years. In addition to his agent-running work, this deputy
resident is responsible for information work in the whole residency.
Colonel D, cover First Secretary, Embassy (deputy resident for
illegals). This deputy resident has no agent and does not carry out
recruitment work. He has no officers beneath him, but when he is carrying
out operations in the interests of illegals, he can make use of any of the
best officers of the first and second groups.
Lt-Colonel E, cover Second Secretary, Embassy. He is in contact with
one agent. One operational officer is subordinate to him, disguised as the
military attache's driver, and this officer runs an agent group. In
addition, this deputy resident controls the following: one technical service
group (six officers), one group for the study of operational conditions
(four officers), one group of operational technique (two officers), the
radio monitoring station (three officers), five officers of the internal
security guards for the residency and one accounts officer.
In all there are sixty-seven officers in the residency, of whom
forty-one are operational staff, twenty operational technological staff and
six technical staff. The residency has thirty-six agents, of whom
twenty-five work independently of each other.
In some cases part of the undercover residency, under the command of
one of the deputy residents, functions in another city permanently detached
from the basic forces of the main residency. This is true, for example, of
Holland, where the undercover residency is located in The Hague but part of
the residency is in Amsterdam. Such an arrangement complicates work to a
considerable degree but in the opinion of the GRU it is better to have two
residencies than one big one. In this case any failure in one of the
residencies does not reflect on the activities of the other. Everywhere it
is possible, the GRU endeavours to organise new, independent residencies.
For this it has to observe two basic conditions: the presence of official
Soviet diplomatic representation - an embassy, consulate, military attache's
department, military communications mission or a permanent UN mission; and
the presence of an officially registered radio station in direct contact
with Moscow. Where these two conditions obtain, residencies can be quickly
organised, even the very est possible, consisting of two men but
independent and self-contained.
Apart from the security angle, this practice also ensures parallelism,
as the GRU can control one resident by means of another. Such possibilities
are open to Soviet intelligence in many countries. For example, in Paris
there is one of the most expansionist undercover residencies of the GRU.
Independent of it in Marseilles there is another, er residency. Their
performance is vastly enhanced by the fierce competition between them. In
West Germany the GRU has been able to create five residencies. Wherever
there is official Soviet diplomatic representation with radio transmission,
there is also an undercover residency of the GRU. In many cases there is
also an undercover residency of the KGB. But while the residencies of the
GRU are organised in any official mission - civil, military or mixed - those
of the KGB are not. In Marseilles, New York, Amsterdam, Geneva and Montreal
the Soviet missions are clearly civil, and in all these cities there are
undercover residencies of both KGB and GRU. But where the mission is clearly
military, as for example the Soviet observation mission in West Germany, the
KGB may not have a residency. This also applies to the numerous missions of
Soviet military advisers in developing countries. The KGB presence there is
only for the maintenance of security among the genuine military advisers.
In speaking about the undercover residency we must not forget to
mention another category of people participating in espionage activities -
co-opted personnel. These are Soviet citizens abroad who are not officers of
the GRU or the KGB, but fulfil a number of tasks set them by these
organisations. The co-opted person may be of any rank from doorman to
ambassador and he carries out very different tasks, from studies of the
foreigners surrounding him to clearing dead-letter boxes. The KGB has always
been interested in the exploitation of co-opted persons; following the
principle of 'don't stick your own neck out if you can get somebody else to
stick it out for you'. The GRU is not so keen, using co-opted persons only
in exceptional cases. Its guiding principle is: 'don't trust even your best
friend with your motor car, girlfriend - or agent'. The rewards for a
co-opted person are monetary ones which, unlike the basic salary, are not
subject to tax. Usually in every embassy, consulate and trade
representation, out of every ten 'clean' officials, seven are co-opted onto
the KGB staff, one onto the GRU staff; only the remaining two are clean.
Either they are complete idiots, or the sons of members of the Central
Committee whom wild horses could not force to have anything to do with
intelligence. In other words, in Soviet official institutions, it is a very,
very tricky matter indeed to meet a man who has no connections with
intelligence.
Chapter Three
Agents
In present-day Soviet intelligence terminology the term 'agent' has
only one meaning. An agent is a foreigner recruited by Soviet intelligence
and carrying out secret tasks on its behalf. All agents, irrespective of the
group or section of the GRU to which they belong, are divided into two
groups: the basic agent and the supplementary agent. Basic agents fall into
four categories: they are residents or group leaders; they are providers of
information; they are executive agents whose main task is to kill; or they
are recruiting agents. In the supplementary group are wireless operators,
legalising agents, documentalists, the owners of safe houses, addresses,
telephones and radio transmission points.
Head Agents
Head agents are the leaders of agent groups and agent residents. Head
agents are selected from the most experienced agents available, men and
women who have had long years of service and have given proof of their
devotion to duty. They are invested with wide powers and possess significant
financial independence. In cases where the organisation entrusted to them
collapses, the head agent must take the decision to do away with unwanted
people who pose a threat to it. In this and other emergencies he can always
count on the full support of the GRU.
The difference between the group leader and the agent resident is that
the group leader may take a whole range of important decisions concerning
the group entrusted to him, but he may not recruit agents at all. The agent
resident has a wider range of interests, the most important being
recruitment. The group leader may be subordinate to the residency, to the
illegal, undercover or agent residency or directly to the Centre, but the
agent resident may only be subordinate to the Centre.
Sources
These are agents who directly obtain secret information, documents or
samples of military technology and weaponry. In the recruitment of such
people, it is first and foremost their access to political, military,
technological and other secrets which is taken into account. It is clearly
unnecessary to recruit an officer from the Ministry of Defence if one can
recruit his secretary. In other words, the GRU has contact with people
occupying relatively unimportant posts but with possibly greater knowledge
than their superiors. With this in mind, apart from secretaries, the people
of special interest to the GRU are workers in printing and typing offices
which produce secret documents, cipher officers, diplomatic couriers,
computer operators, communications clerks, draughtsmen and other technical
personnel.
Executive Agents
These are agents recruited to carry out assassinations, diversions or
sabotage. The recruitment of executive agents is not usually carried out by
the central GRU, but by the local organs of the GRU—the military district
departments. Sometimes even strategic intelligence needs similar
specialists, but in er number.
Executive agents are recruited from criminal elements and from that
band of naturally brutish characters who, with passing time, become
accustomed to executing any orders they are given. Frequently agents who
have been acting as providers of information are transferred by both the
strategic and operational branches of the GRU to the category of executive
agent, in cases where they may have lost their access.
Agent Recruiters
These are the most devoted and thoroughly tested agents, people who
either never had access or who have lost it. As their name suggests, the GRU
uses them solely for the recruitment of new agents. The most successful will
eventually become group leader or sometimes agent resident.
Agent Legalisers
These are subsidiary agents. They work in the interests of illegals and
as a rule are recruited and run only by illegals. Candidate for this
category of agents are sought among officials of the police land passport
departments, consular clerks, customs and immigration officials, and
employers of labour. Agent legalisers are subjected to especially thorough
vetting, because the fate of illegals is entrusted to them. When a Soviet
illegal arrives in a country the task of the legalising agent is to ensure
the issue of documents by making the necessary entries in the registration
books and to ensure that the illegal is in possession of the necessary
documentation.
In the history of the GRU quite a few priests carrying falsified
documents and registers of baptism and death have given immense service to
illegals who, on the basis of false entries, have been able to obtain the
necessary documents. A similar role to that of the legalising agent is
played by the documentation agents. These are recruited by the undercover
residency and their job is to obtain passports, driving licences and samples
of official police forms. In contradistinction to the legalising agents,
documentation agents do not have any direct contact with illegals. Although
they obtain tens and sometimes hundreds, even thousands of passports, they
have no direct knowledge of how and when the GRU is going to use them.
Frequently the GRU uses the passports obtained through the good offices of
documentation agents only as a sample for the preparation of similar
falsified copies. Documentation agents may be recruited from among criminal
classes who are occupied with the forging and selling of documents on the
black market and also from clerks concerned with the production, inventory,
storage and issue of passports. Frequently documentation agents have
successfully worked among poor students, persuading them, for a financial
consideration, to lose their passports.
Couriers
These are supplementary agents engaged in transporting agent materials
over state frontiers. Obviously it is not necessary to employ special
couriers to transport the material into the Soviet Union or its satellites.
The basic flow of agent material which is not subject to particular
suspicion goes from countries with hard regimes into countries with more
soft regimes. In the opinion of the GRU, an opinion fortified by the
experience of many years, the hardest country is Great Britain, followed by
France, the United States, the Federal Republic of Germany, Belgium and
Holland. As soft countries the GRU includes Finland, Ireland and Austria
among others.
The GRU also makes very wide use of countries of the Third World for
this purpose, and couriers may sometimes make very long journeys before the
material finally arrives in the hands of the GRU. Examples are known of
material obtained in the United States going first to Latin America, then to
Africa and only from Africa being conveyed to the Soviet Union. In
recruiting couriers, the GRU pays particular attention to the drivers and
guards of long-distance trains, commercial travellers and sailors of
merchant fleets. When hi-jacking of aircraft became more frequent and
controls at airports became stricter, the GRU virtually gave up recruiting
the crews of airliners. If it uses these at all, it is only for transporting
-sized non-metallic objects.
The Owner of a Safe House or Flat
He is a supplementary agent occupying a position of great trust,
usually recruited from among house-owners, concierges and hotel owners, in a
word, all those who possess not one but several flats or dwelling places.
The term 'safe flat' should be understood not only in its generally accepted
meaning but also as a well-equipped cellar, attic, garage or store. For safe
flats the GRU selects quiet secluded places where they may want to be able
to hide a man sometimes for a length of several months; to carry out
meetings, briefings and de-briefings; to change clothes and change
appearances; and to hide stolen materials and photograph stolen documents.
The owner of a safe house or flat is known in the colloquial language of the
GRU by the abbreviation 'KK'.
The Safe Address Owner
He is an agent who receives and transmits secret messages for the GRU,
usually recruited from among those people who receive copious correspondence
from abroad; the work is normally restricted to inhabitants of 'soft'
countries. Sources who have obtained information and intelligence in hard
countries send letters in SW to these addresses and the owners transmit the
correspondence to officers of the undercover residency. One interesting
aspect of recruitment is that the GRU prefers middle-aged people who would
not be affected by general mobilisation in the country, so that the chain of
communication is not interrupted.
The possessors of secret telephones and, more recently, teleprinters
are recruited by the same rules applied to the owners of secret addresses.
In GRU language these types of agent networks and their possessors are known
by the abbreviations 'KA', 'KT', 'KTP'.
The owners of transmitting points are used for transmitting agent
materials within the limits of one city or area. Usually they are street
sellers in kiosks, stalls or paper stalls. An agent who has acquired
intelligence will stop and hand over the material to the owner. Hours later,
sometimes days, GRU officers will visit the stall to collect the material
and hand over money for the agents together with new instructions. This
avoids direct contact between the GRU and the agent. Increased security
might mean the source agent using a dead-letter box which the stall holder
will empty, not knowing who has filled it. The GRU will announce the
dead-letter box's whereabouts to the transmitting point only after it has
been filled. A different one will be used for each operation, and so even if
the police discover that the GRU has a special interest in the shop or
stall and subsequently establishes that this stall serves as a transmitting
point, it will still be very difficult to discover the source agent. To
mount a surveillance operation in the neighbourhood of the dead-letter box
is impossible since the transmitting point only acquires its location after
it has been filled; the agent himself has disappeared long before. The
transmitting point is known by the abbreviation 'PP'.
In examining different kinds of agents, people from the free world who
have sold themselves to the GRU, one cannot avoid touching on yet another
category, perhaps the least appealing of all. Officially one is not allowed
to call them agents, and they are not agents in the full sense of being
recruited agents. We are talking about the numerous members of overseas
societies of friendship with the Soviet Union. Officially, all Soviet
representatives regard these parasites with touching feelings of friendship,
but privately they call them 'shit-eaters' ('govnoed'). It is difficult to
say where this expression originated, but it is truly the only name they
deserve. The use of this word has become so firmly entrenched in Soviet
embassies that it is impossible to imagine any other name for these people.
A conversation might run as follows: Today we've got a friendship evening
with shit-eaters', or Today we're having some shit-eaters to dinner. Prepare
a suitable menu'.
Officers of both the GRU and the KGB have very much more respect for
their agents than for the shit-eaters. The motives of agents are clear - an
easy life and plenty of money. If you take risks and lose, then no money and
no easy life. To the end of his life the agent will not be able to tear
himself away from this servitude - as is the case in the criminal world. But
the behaviour of the numerous friends of the Soviet Union is utterly
incomprehensible to Soviet people. In the Soviet Union everybody without
exception wishes to be abroad, to go absolutely anywhere, even if only with
one eye to look at Mongolia or Cambodia. Oh! to be abroad, is the cry, led
by the children of Brezhnev, Gromyko and Andropov. When Soviet people want
to say that a thing is outstandingly good, they say, 'Really, this must be
foreign.' It does not matter which country it comes from, or what its
quality or age - it has to be foreign. But suddenly one finds these friends
of the Soviet Union, who enjoy all the fruits of civilisation down to
Gillette razor blades, who can buy anything they want in the shops, even
bananas, and yet they praise the Soviet Union. No, these people are nothing
but shit-eaters according to Soviet intelligence. The contempt felt for them
does not prevent the GRU and KGB from using them whenever they can. They do
everything free, and they will even come to meetings in secure places like
the Soviet Embassy.
The recruitment of such people is not recommended by the Central
Committee, but why bother to recruit them when they bring such advantages
without being recruited? The GRU usually makes use of the shit-eaters 'in
the dark', in other words not saying what they are used for or how much they
benefit from their services. They usually ask from them information about
their neighbours, friends, acquaintances, fellow workers and so on.
Sometimes one of them is asked to organise an evening party with one or
another of his acquaintances, after which the GRU thanks him and tells him
to forget what has happened. They are very good people, they forget
everything.
Chapter Four
Agent Recruiting
Agent recruiting is the most important task of both strategic and
operational intelligence. No real problems can be solved without agent
penetration in basic government, military and technological centres of the
enemy.
In the previous chapter we examined the types of secret agents and also
the various differences between them. It would not be an exaggeration to say
that any citizen of the West, having been recruited by the GRU, may be used
very effectively for intelligence purposes, some for the acquisition of
secret documents, some for assassinating people, and some for the
transporting of agent materials. No citizen of any age and either sex would
be idle for long once he or she fell into the hands of the GRU.
Nevertheless, basic importance is attached to the provider of information.
Long experience has persuaded the GRU that it is essential above all to
recruit sources, and only after the GRU has acquired through these sources
all possible material may the source himself be used for other purposes, as
a recruiter, head agent or supplementary agent. The GRU is convinced that a
former source who is now working, for example, as the owner of a
transmitting point will never on his own initiative go to the police; but
the same cannot be said of agents who have never provided secrets for the
GRU, who have not had firm contacts with them. The search for suitable
candidates is implemented at the same time in certain different ways: the
scrupulous collection of information on persons of interest to the GRU
including government institutions for staffs, military bases, design bureaux
and people connected with these targets; the study of all foreigners without
exception who have any contacts at all with officers of the GRU; and the
gradual widening of circles of acquaintances among foreigners. If an
operational officer has a hundred acquaintances, one of these must surely be
a potential provider of information which will be of interest.
A candidate for recruitment must fulfil the following conditions: he
must have agent potential, that is he must be in the position to provide
information of real use to the GRU, either to steal or copy secrets, to
communicate secret information by word of mouth, or to recruit new agents.
There must exist motives by means of which he may be recruited - displeasure
with the regime or other political motives, personal financial problems, or
private motives like a desire for revenge on somebody or secret crimes which
he is trying to hide. It is desirable that he be sympathetic to communism
without being a communist. Communist parties everywhere have been
compromised to a certain extent by their contacts with the KGB and the GRU,
and it is always recommended that agents recruited from communist parties
should leave the party.
After the selection of a candidate for recruitment, the second stage -
tracing and vetting - commences. Details are collected about the candidate,
details which may be obtained through reference books, telephone directories
and the press; the task of obtaining all available information about the
candidate may well be given to other agents. The GRU may equally want a
surveillance on him to collect extra data about his daily life. This process
sometimes gives very gratifying results. Up to now the person himself does
not suspect that the GRU exists and he has had no contact with its
representatives, but it already has a considerable wealth of detail on him.
Subsequently the GRU enters the process of cultivation, which consists in a
further definition of motives which will be used in the actual recruitment
of the person. It also tries to exacerbate his weaknesses: for example, if
the man experiences financial problems, the GRU will endeavour to make them
worse. If he is displeased with the political regime, the GRU will endeavour
to turn his displeasure into hatred. The cultivation process may be carried
out after the establishment of an acquaintanceship with the candidate. The
whole process, from the beginning of the search for a candidate to the
completion of a cultivation period, normally extends for not less than a
year; only after this does actual recruitment take place.
There are two principal methods of recruitment, the gradual approach
and the crash approach. The crash approach is the highest class of agent
work. The GRU may authorise the resident to mount such an operation only if
the resident has been able to provide good arguments for the taking of such
a risk. Quite a few examples are known of recruitment at the first meeting,
of course following the secret cultivation which has gone on for many
months. It was in this way that many American creators of the first atomic
bomb were recruited. Their subsequent argument was that it was as a mark of
protest against the bombing of the Japanese cities that they, on their own
initiative, established contact with Soviet intelligence. However, for some
reason they forgot to add that this contact had been established long before
the first experiments with the bomb, when there was no cause for protest.
They also evaded the question as to how several people, simultaneously and
independently from one another, established contact with the undercover
residency of the GRU in Canada, but not with the undercover residency of the
KGB in Mexico, for example.
The crash approach, or 'love at first sight' in GRU jargon, has a
number of irrefutable advantages. Contact with the future agent takes place
only once, instead of at meetings over many months, as is the case with the
gradual approach. After the first contact the newly recruited agent will
himself take action on his own security. He will never talk to his wife, or
tell her that he has a charming friend in the Soviet military attache who is
also very interested in stamp collecting.
In the gradual approach method, this sort of thing happens very, very
often. The candidate has as yet not felt the deadly grip of the GRU, has not
yet understood what it wants from him. He still nourishes his illusions, and
naturally he will not hide his good friendship with such charming people.
However, the gradual approach method, despite its shortcomings, is
frequently used. The fact is that the GRU is not always, indeed not even in
the majority of cases, able to collect a sufficient amount of material about
the candidate without his knowledge to prepare him sufficiently for
recruitment. In many cases it is necessary to establish contact and to use
each meeting with the candidate to study his motives and to carry out
vetting and cultivation.
Having established contact, the operational officer tries by every
possible method to avoid 'blowing' the candidate; that is, he tries to hide
the connection from the police, from friends and acquaintances of the man
himself, and also from his own fellow countrymen. The only people who should
know anything about an agent and therefore about candidates for recruitment
are the resident, the deputy resident and of course the cipher officer and
the Centre - nobody else. In order that he should not blow the candidate
from the very first meeting, the operational officer will try to carry out
meetings in secluded restaurants, cafes, bars far from the place where the
candidate lives and far from his place of work. At all costs he will try to
avoid the candidate telephoning him either at home or in the embassy. He
will try to avoid the candidate visiting Soviet official institutions and
places where Soviet people gather together. He will decline invitations to
meet the candidate's family or visit his home. (The particular pretexts I
used were that my office was far too busy, or I was never there, so the
candidate would not ring; at home, I would tell him, there was a baby
who slept badly. Of course, in order to appear serious, I had to give him
the telephone numbers with my business card.) After the acquaintanceship has
ripened, the GRU officer will try to make every subsequent meeting as
interesting and useful as possible for the candidate. If they exchange
postage stamps, then the Soviet, by apparent mistake or out of friendship,
will give the future agent a very valuable stamp. The officer may then ask
for a very innocent and insignificant favour from the man and pay him very
generously for it. During this stage the most important thing is that the
future agent becomes accustomed to being asked favours and fulfilling them
accurately. It does not matter what sort of favours or services. Maybe he
will be asked to accept at his address and forward to the officers letters
ostensibly from his mistress, or to buy a complete set of telephone
directories and give them to the officer as if he did not know how or where
this could be done. By degrees the tasks become more complicated, but the
payment for them grows equally. Perhaps he will be asked to acquire in his
name some works of reference which are not on sale and are distributed only
on signature, or he will be asked to talk about and describe his friends who
work with him. In many cases the actual recruitment proposal is never made,
as the candidate gradually becomes an agent of the GRU without having fully
realised it. He may consider that he is simply doing his business and doing
favours for a good friend. Then, much to his surprise, the man will one day
find that all ways of extricating himself have been cut off, and that he is
deeply ensnared in espionage work. After he has become aware of this for
himself, the GRU informs him what the affair is all about and there begins a
new stage. The tasks become more serious but the payment for them gradually
decreases. This is done on the pretext of his own security. What can he do?
Go on strike?
There exists yet another method of recruitment, perhaps the most
effective and secure. This method was worked out by the GRU in the first
decade after the war and seems not to be used by the KGB. It can only be
used at exhibitions and only against the owners of firms which produce
military material. In spite of the fact that the method has so many
limitations, including the impossibility of recruiting generals and their
secretaries, and equally its complete unacceptability for illegals it does,
however, give positive results. It is very similar to the direct approach,
but is distinct from the classical 'love at first sight' in that a lengthy
search for a candidate, his tracing, vetting and cultivation are absent.
Before the opening of exhibitions of military electronics, armaments
and military technology, ship-building and engine-building conferences, air
shows and so on, hundreds of which take place every year, a scientific
delegation appears at the GRU residency with a list of everything which is
essential for the Soviet military and the armaments industry. The experts of
course know that at the exhibition there will be demonstrations of models
whose sale to the Soviet Union is categorically prohibited. None the less,
the delegation will carry suitcases crammed full of money, with full powers
to spend it as they wish. All expenditure is approved and justified. The
examination and construction of such samples as they have been able to
obtain in the Soviet Union will occupy much more time and money. The
delegation visits the exhibition and looks at the stands of the big
corporations only to disguise its real object. At each of these stands these
are several salesmen and guides, any one or all of which may be from the
security services. The delegation is only really interested in the stands of
firms where the explanations are carried out by the owner or a
director himself. The delegation gets into conversation with him and an
officer of the local GRU residency acts the part of interpreter. The experts
pass themselves off as an official Soviet delegation. At the same time they
manage to let the operational officer know that they have arrived at just
such a firm as could be of use to them and that the exhibit is not just a
model, but an actual piece. 'Is it really forbidden to buy such a piece? Oh!
What a pity. Nothing to be done, but tell us, how much does it cost? 20,000?
How cheap! We would pay twenty times that much for such a piece! Great pity
that it is not for sale.' All this in a light-hearted way, as if incidental.
The conversation turns to another subject. After a few minutes the
delegation takes its leave in a friendly way. The interpreter stays behind
for a few seconds. 'It was so nice meeting you. Could we not continue our
talk over dinner this evening? No? You're busy? What a pity. Many thanks. It
was very nice to make your acquaintance.' And that is all, nothing criminal,
just a short, friendly conversation. The Soviet delegation did not propose
anything to anybody. It did not ask, it did not demand. It was merely
interested. In the meantime the delegation goes on with its inspection. The
exhibition is huge, hundreds of firms, and the list of essential things is
too long. Another stand, another firm, the same result, it does not matter.
Not everything has been lost. There are still more stands. 'How much does
this piece cost? 25,000? Only 25,000, we would give half a million for that.
Great pity that it's not for sale.' The delegation goes on. The interpreter
stays for a few seconds. 'Could I not invite you to dinner this evening in
the restaurant?' 'I don't know whether that would be all right. We hardly
know each other.' And that is all. Recruitment is accomplished. The
delegation continues its inspection. New interpreters are provided. Drinking
martinis in the bar, they wait their turn. The exhibition is huge. Hundreds
of firms and the list of equipment wanted by their government is very long.
The GRU's calculation has shown itself to be unfailing. The owner of a
firm, even a very successful one, is always at great risk, always keen
to strengthen his situation. When he receives a proposal to sell his own
wares at a price fifteen to twenty times the highest normal price, he thinks
to himself: this is a matter of industrial espionage, which in several
countries is not even considered a criminal offence. From the first moment
he knows what is wanted from him and carefully evaluates the step that he
decides on. In any case, if he sells his product he can hide the fact from
the authorities. It is equally easy for him to hide the money he has
received. The only thing he has not taken into consideration is the wolf-
like greed of the GRU. He hopes to dispose of the products of his firm,
supposing that this will be sufficient. He is deeply mistaken. Having bought
the first model or set of documents, certainly at a staggering price, the
GRU will later on lower the prices and finally dictate them. One might
object that the really big secrets are all in the hands of the big firms,
but this is not absolutely true. Very often Soviet designers are not
interested in the whole rocket or the whole aircraft, but only in some
part - an engine, a steering system or some particular instrument (in many
cases not even an important part but only a membrane, a heat sink or some
such thing) - exactly the sort of thing that would be produced by a
components manufacturer. And of course recruitment in firms does not
in any way hinder the GRU's attempts to penetrate large firms. Far from it.
After he has been milked, the owner of a components manufacturing firm, now
turned agent, must turn his attention to the recruitment of other agents in
the big firms to which he supplies his parts. Then suddenly in the Soviet
Union an aircraft exactly like Concorde appears. (To blame the GRU for the
trials and difficulties of the TU144 Concordski is not justified. Weak
Soviet industry, using antediluvian technology, was simply not able to copy
the aeroplane properly, despite having all the necessary drawings and
documents.) Recently, the number of exhibition recruitments by the GRU has
steadily increased. They have been facilitated by the fact that in these
recruitments the GRU does not spend one rouble of its own money. The money
which the delegation brings with it to the exhibition comes out of the
budget of the armaments industry which is ready to spend as much money as it
has to in profitable business. For its money the armaments industry receives
essential documents and samples, and the GRU, without paying a penny,
receives an agent who will serve it for long years afterwards. Exhibition
recruitments are also attractive because they can be carried out with
complete impunity. Only one case of detection is known, an air show at Le
Bourget when the assistant Soviet military attache was detained for
endeavouring to carry out just such a recruitment. He was detained, but not
for long because a military diplomat cannot be held. Declared persona non
grata, after three years he went to another country in another official
capacity as a deputy resident. The only thing which is not clear in all
these stories is the attitude of those countries who joyfully accept these
supposed 'diplomats'.
As for GRU illegals, they basically use the first two methods. The work
of illegals of course is made easier by the obvious simplification of the
search for candidates and their tracing and vetting. Since they very often
play the part of bona jide business people they come into frequent contact
with the owners of firms producing military material, and by means of
proposing advantageous deals, they gradually attract these people to play
the part of agents. There is another very important factor. Illegals hardly
ever recruit in the name of Soviet intelligence. They always assume another
guise. In Japan, for example, they may pass themselves off as American
industrial spies, in Northern Ireland as an organisation going in for
terrorist activities against the English military presence, in Arab
countries as anti-Zionists. In countries with dictatorial regimes GRU
illegals recruit people in the name of anti-government organisations
carrying on the underground struggle against tyranny. A method often used by
illegals is to pass themselves off as supporters of separatist movements. It
is only necessary for the illegal to know some of the important political
views in order to be able to adopt them for himself and begin recruiting.
Sometimes such recruitments are implemented very quickly and without
problems. 'We are representatives of such and such a liberation army, this
or that red brigade. Can't you help us? If you can't we ask you not to let
anybody know about our visit.' The candidate is then recruited in the name
of an organisation for which he feels sympathy and he gratifies his
conscience all his life with the thought that he is a revolutionary and
defends ideals near to his heart, not even suspecting the existence of the
GRU and its illegals. He is so full of pride that he has been selected for
such secret work that he may not even tell those who think likewise about
it.
There is one last method of recruiting. This is when a foreigner comes
in and says, 'Please recruit me.' However strange it may seem, every year
hundreds of such people come into Soviet embassies and the same answer
awaits them all. This is a diplomatic representation and not an espionage
centre. Be so kind as to leave the building or we will call the police.' The
police are usually not called but the embassy staff chase the would-be agent
out quickly. Even if the GRU (and the KGB, for that matter) is sure that the
caller is not a young reporter anxious to publish a sensational article or
somebody purporting to sell secret documents but really only selling some
nonsense, how can they be sure that the caller is not a police agent who
wants to know who in the embassy is concerned with secrets? Thus the answer
to all is the same. 'You have got the wrong address. We are not concerned
with such things.' This does not mean that it would not be interesting to
have a look at what the caller has brought, but long experience has shown
that the person who really wants to be recruited and really has something to
sell does not say very much but simply hands over the material, together
with instructions as to where he can be found, and leaves. He might add a
note to the effect that 'this is not all the material I have but only a
part, if you are interested.'
Elementary psychological analysis shows that this is perhaps the only
way to convince the GRU that they can trust the person. Indeed if a person
has decided to entrust his life and the happiness of his family to such dark
and unknown personalities, why on earth should he not hand them some papers?
By such a gesture he not only draws attention to himself but he gives time
for reflection on his proposals and for the necessary checking with higher
authorities and checking of the material. However, if the visitor brings
papers and documents to the embassy and begins to demand immediate financial
reward, this leads one to think, 'If, after careful consideration, he has
decided on this step, if he is really ready to entrust his life to us, why
does he think that we would deceive him and not return the papers if they
were of no use to us? And where is the guarantee that the papers which he
has brought are not forgeries? Who would carry the can if we paid him money
for papers which afterwards turned out to be forgeries? No, we are not
interested in such things.'
That these 'walk-ins' are an extremely unpredictable form of
recruitment is perhaps best illustrated by two examples, both of which
occurred at the same residency in West Germany. An American sergeant came to
one of the Soviet observation missions in West Germany (each of which is a
GRU residency), bringing with him the block of a cipher machine used in one
of the American bases. The sergeant announced that for a certain sum he
could bring a second part of the machine and added that there could only be
a deal on condition that the GRU would not subsequently attempt to recruit
him. The residency immediately accepted both proposals. The sergeant got his
money and an assurance that the GRU would forget all about him immediately
after the deal was done.
The cipher machine which was obtained, or more accurately two of its
basic blocks, enabled the technical services of the GRU to decipher
thousands of American radio communications which had been intercepted
earlier but remained undeciphered. They also enabled them to study the
principles of cipher work in the American Army and in the armies of its
allies and, by exploiting the American principles, to create more complete
Soviet examples. What about the sergeant? Of course he was immediately
recruited....
On another occasion a couple of years later an American major
approached the same Soviet residency proposing to sell an American atomic
artillery shell. In proof of his good intentions he handed over free of
charge to the residency detailed plans of the atomic depots and instructions
on checking procedures and standing orders for work with atomic equipment.
These documents by themselves were of great value, although the major's main
proposal was of vastly greater interest. The major announced that he would
demand a substantial sum for the shell, and imposed the condition that the
Soviet side, having studied the shell, must return it after two months. Some
days later, the specialists of the GRU information service confirmed the
genuineness and very great importance of the documents which had been
acquired. The GRU leadership decided to buy the atomic shell and to pay the
price demanded for it by the American. A number of the senior officers of
the residency were called to Moscow and given a crash course in American
atomic technology. A week later, on a dark rainy night in a clearing in the
middle of a forest, two motor cars met. In one was the American major, in
the other three operational officers. There were two more Soviet cars hidden
nearby, ready to intervene if necessary. Many people did without sleep that
night. The Soviet Consul dozed by his telephone, in full readiness to come
tearing out to the wood and in the name of the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics to defend the military diplomats. On the orders of the Central
Committee, many highly placed officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
and Tass were also on alert. Of course they did not know what was going on
or where, but they were ready to announce to the world that the imperialists
had mounted yet another provocation against the Soviet Union. In fact, the
Tass and Ministry of Foreign Affairs announcements were already prepared.
But everything went according to plan. The American and the three Soviets
transferred the shell from one car to the other, and a thorough check was
carried out. The operational officers knew beforehand the serial number, the
level of radiation, the exact weight and the markings which would identify
it as a genuine shell. All was as it should be. The Soviets handed over a
briefcase full of banknotes to the American and agreed to meet in two
months' time for the return of the shell. Once the shell was in the Soviet
car with diplomatic number plates, it was tantamount to being on Soviet
territory. The police could stop the car, but they did not have the right to
search it nor remove anything from it. Diplomatic immunity is not to be
trifled with. In the event nobody stopped the officers, and the car drove
peacefully into the courtyard of the Soviet diplomatic mission. Later the
shell was transported in a diplomatic container under armed guard to the
Soviet Union.
The GRU chief joyfully informed the Central Committee of the successful
outcome of the operation. 'Where is the bomb?' asked a voice on the
telephone. 'We have it in GRU headquarters.' 'In Moscow!?' 'Yes.'
A long and largely unprintable tirade ensued, whose import was roughly
as follows: 'And what happens if there is a little spring inside this shell
and it explodes right in the middle of the Soviet capital and turns Moscow
into Hiroshima?'
The GRU had worked out the whole operation with the maximum number of
precautionary measures and the plan to acquire the shell had been confirmed
by all departments from the chief to the general staff up to the Central
Committee. However, nobody had foreseen the possibility that there could be
a timed device in the shell and that the Central Committee, the Politburo,
the KGB, the GRU, all the Ministers and departments of State, the general
staff, all the Military Academies, all the principal design bureaux, in a
word, everything which constitutes Soviet power, could be instantaneously
destroyed. There was no answer. No defence was possible. One shell and the
whole system could have gone up, because everybody and everything is
controlled from Moscow. The possibility of such an occurrence had only been
realised in the Central Committee when the shell was already in Moscow.
Instead of the expected decoration, the GRU chief received a 'service
incompetence note' - a strong warning that in the future even the most
trivial mistake would lead to dismissal.
The shell was taken for the time being to the central aerodrome and a
military transport aircraft speedily transported it to Novaya Zemlya. The
shell did not explode. At the same time there was no guarantee that it would
not explode while it was being dismantled and destroy the leading Soviet
specialists who were working on it, so the dismantling was conducted in a
special pavilion hurriedly constructed on the atomic testing ground.
Preliminary work on the shell had already disquieted the Soviet specialists,
as it was much more radioactive than it should have been. After protracted
arguments and consultations, the shell was dismantled with the greatest
possible care. Only then was it found that it was not a shell at all - but a
beautifully executed copy.
The American major from the depot for atomic armaments had known to the
last detail how to do this. He had taken a written-off practice shell or, as
it is called, a 'standard weight equivalent', had painted it as a real shell
and put on a corresponding marking and number. Inside the shell he had put
some radioactive waste which he had obtained. Of course he was not able to
regulate this to the extent that the level of radiation would conform to the
level of radiation of a genuine shell, but this was not necessary. At the
time when it was first checked after having been handed over to the
operational officers, there had been no attempt to determine the exact level
of radioactivity. The officers had only been interested to see whether there
was radiation or not. After all that had happened the officers who had taken
part in the operation, of course, received no decorations but at the same
time they were not punished and neither was the GRU chief. The Special
Commission of the General Staff and Central Committee established that the
forgery had been very skilfully and thoroughly executed and that there had
been little possibility of exposing it at the time of the hand-over. All the
same the GRU was not happy about it. It began a search for the American
major. The first attempts proved unsuccessful. It was established that he
had been posted to the USA immediately after the sale of the forgery, and it
would not be so easy to find him there. He had apparently known of the
imminence of his posting and chosen his moment perfectly. Steps were taken
to find him in the United States, and at the same time the GRU asked for
permission to murder him from the Central Committee. However, the Central
Committee turned down the request on the basis that the major was incredibly
cunning and could well outwit the GRU a second time as he had outwitted them
earlier. They were ordered to forget about the major and stop searching for
him. Now, whenever a 'walk-in' appears at a Soviet embassy and suggests the
purchase for an exorbitant price of technical documents of exceptional
importance, GRU residents always remember the American major.
That it is extremely difficult to find real volunteers is a simple
fact. It is much, much harder to discover a volunteer than an agent whom the
GRU has spent a year and more in processing. But real volunteers, however
warmly they may be welcomed, do not take into consideration another simple
thing. The Soviet operational officer, having seen a great deal of the ugly
face of communism, very frequently feels the utmost repulsion to those who
sell themselves to it willingly. Even amongst those few who still believe in
communism, the intelligence officer will make a great distinction between
the agent he has recruited by using a whole arsenal of tricks and traps, and
the volunteer. And when a GRU or KGB officer decides to break with his
criminal organisation, something which fortunately happens quite often, the
first thing he will do is try to expose the hated volunteer.
Chapter Five
Agent Communications
GRU theoreticians officially admit that agent communications -that
complex of channels for transmitting instructions and material - is the
weakest link in the chain. It is the fault of communications, they say, that
there are so many failures, and to some degree they are right. Whatever the
theoreticians say, however, we in the field know that by far the greatest
damage to Soviet intelligence is caused by the defection of GRU officers.
Enormous damage was done when Igor Gusenko went over to the West. By this
one gesture the whole powerful current of technological intelligence on the
production of atomic weapons, which was flowing like a river into the hands
of Stalin and his blood-thirsty clique, was stopped dead. And historians
will remember with gratitude the name of the GRU Colonel Oleg Penkovsky.
Thanks to his priceless information the Cuban crisis was not transformed
into a last World War. Nevertheless, it is indisputable that after the
phenomenon of willing and mass defection to the side of the enemy, which was
clearly absent in the old Russian intelligence service of the
pre-revolutionary period, agent communications is the most vulnerable sector
of Soviet intelligence.
All agent communications are divided into personal and non-personal.
Personal contact is the most vulnerable element, and preference is always
given to non-personal contact. At the same time, in the first stages,
especially during cultivation, recruitment and vetting, personal meetings
are an inescapable evil with which one has to come to terms. Later on, as
agents gain experience and involvement in their work, personal contacts
gradually give way to non-personal ones. Many of the most experienced agents
have not had a personal meeting with their case officer for several years.
If such meetings are absolutely unavoidable, the GRU prefers that they
should take place either on its own or on neutral territory.
Routine meetings are organised between agents, however. For example an
illegal will meet his agent or officers of the undercover residency their
agents. The details for these meetings are worked out previously. Whoever is
the senior man will give instructions to the junior as to where, when, and
in what circumstances they will meet. Experienced agents are often given a
programme of meetings for six months ahead, sometimes a year, and in some
cases even five years or more. Routine meetings usually take place in cafes,
restaurants, cinemas, night clubs or parks. Both parties try to give the
impression that it is a normal meeting between ordinary people discussing
important topics. Frequently they will try to give the impression that they
are collectors of such items as postage stamps, postcards or coins and will
have these objects spread out in front of them in the restaurant or cafe
where they are meeting. Sometimes these meetings take place in cinemas or
public conveniences. Longer meetings, especially during the vetting stage of
agents, will take place in hotels and camping places, caravans, yachts or
boats which either are the property of the agent or are hired by him. In all
cases, and this also applies to other operations involving agents, GRU
officers will try to avoid city quarters which are known to be the haunt of
criminals or prostitutes, and railway and police stations, airports, guarded
state military or commercial undertakings - in other words all those places
where police activity may be expected to be at its highest. The alternative
meeting is a carbon copy of the main meeting for which arrangements are made
at the same time as the main meeting: 'If one of us should be unable to get
to the meeting we will meet in the same place in a week's time'. A
complicated system of alternative meetings is set out for experienced
agents, and there may be up to three or four alternative meetings for each
main meeting. With so many alternatives it is essential that places and
times are changed.
This system of alternative meetings is introduced by GRU officers long
before recruitment. A man who has as yet done nothing for the GRU, who does
not even suspect its existence, is already being indoctrinated into secrecy
and is already being introduced to the system of agent communications.
Usually the subject is introduced in various quite innocent ways; for
example, the officer says, 'I shall be very pleased to meet you again but I
simply don't know whether I shall be able to be on time. The life of a
diplomat contains so many unexpected happenings. If I am late, then don't
wait for me more than ten minutes. In any case we will meet again in three
days' time.' If you have a good friend in the Soviet embassy and he says
that sort of thing to you, and at the same time has a hundred reasons why he
cannot use the telephone in such a simple case, be sure that the GRU has a
thick file on you and that sooner or later you will receive a proposal of
recruitment and notice with astonishment that all ways out seem to be
blocked.
At the other end of the spectrum there is the emergency meeting. This
access is accorded only to the most experienced agents, and those who may
communicate information of such outstanding importance that it brooks no
delay at all. The agent is told how he should go about calling the officer
on stipulated telephones or telegrams or signals. In the same way the agent
is also given the possibility of communicating danger. For example, if he
rings up on the telephone and says, 'I need John,' then the officer will
come immediately. If the agent says, 'Ring John,' then they will reply that
he has made a mistake. If the agent uses the second variant, then he is
showing the GRU that he has been arrested by the police who are trying to
get to the case officer through the agent.
Brush contacts are for handing over material, instructions, money and
so on. The officer and the agent carry out only one contact, in very
populous places, in the underground, on full buses, at peak hours and when
the crowds come out of stadiums, for example. Brush contact must be carried
out with great precision otherwise the crowd may separate those taking part.
On the other hand the transmission of the material must not attract
attention especially if one of the participants is under strict
surveillance. The check meeting is carried out in the same conditions as the
routine meeting. However, the most junior of those taking part must not
suspect that it is not a routine meeting and that he is in fact being
checked. A number of GRU officers take up position before the meeting, in
places where they can easily observe what is going on (for example, on
observation platforms for tourists where there are powerful binoculars and
telescopes installed). The entry of the agent to the meeting place is
checked from a great distance. They check his punctuality, his behaviour,
they watch for anybody who follows him, they observe the presence of any
suspicious movement in the area of the meeting place prior to the meeting.
After the agent has realised that nobody is going to come and meet him, the
GRU officers may observe what he does, where he goes after the aborted
meeting and what action he takes.
The secret rendezvous (Yavka) is often confused with the secret house
or Yavotchnaya Kvartira. At the present time the term 'secret house' is not
used in the GRU. It has been replaced by the term 'secret flat' or KK but
the word Yavka is used to mean a meeting between two men who are unknown to
each other, for example two illegals, or an agent with his new case officer.
The secret rendezvous as an element of agent communications is given to all
agents without exception - they are given the place, time, recognition
signals, password and answer - because the secret rendezvous is essential
for re-establishing lost contacts. For example, if in extreme circumstances
the whole of the Soviet embassy was declared persona non grata and had to
leave the country, the agent who had lost contact with his case officer
would be obliged to go to a certain place on the 31st of every month which
has thirty-one days, that is seven times a year, having previously agreed
recognition signals (brief case in left hand, book in right hand, and so
on). In the appointed place another person will come towards him and will
give the previously arranged password to which the agent gives the proper
reply. In giving the correct reply the agent shows to his new leader that he
has not made a mistake and secondly that the agent acknowledges the
authority of his new case officer. If nobody comes to the pre-arranged
place, the agent is obliged to repeat the process until such time as
somebody does appear to re-establish contact.
As the agent becomes more and more involved in his work, elements of
non-personal contact gradually take the place of personal contact. The most
experienced agents have only one element of personal contact - the secret
rendezvous or Yavka -and several elements of non-personal contact. Let us
examine these. First there is the long-range two-way radio link, generally
imagined as a special portable radio set which may transmit information
directly to the receiving centre on Soviet territory or to a Soviet ship or
satellite. This classical element in all spy films is in practice only used
in wartime. Instead agents and illegals are issued with written
instructions containing several types of ordinary current components which
may be bought in any radio shop, and the means whereby they may be put
together to make a long-range two-way set. This solves two problems at the
same time. If an agent is arrested there is only to be found in his flat a
pair of good Japanese receivers, a tape recorder and other components which
can be bought in any shop. There is therefore no way that he can be
suspected of any criminal activity. And secondly the problem of the
transportation and secret storage of a radio set of comparatively large
proportions is avoided. The GRU is continually looking at the market as
regards radio sets and components, and working out new recommendations as to
how they should be assembled. In times of war, however, quick-acting and
ultra-quick-acting sets are used, exploiting technical means of radio
transmission in seconds or micro- seconds. Satellites are used in
conjunction with these sets and this makes it possible to transmit
information on a narrow radio beam vertically overhead. The long-range
one-way radio link does not replace, but augments the two-way link. The most
convenient, reliable and secure type of link is inevitably the one by which
the agent receives from the Centre. One-way radio links are usually
broadcast by Soviet radio stations or special ships or polar stations to be
received anywhere in the world by ordinary radio receivers. Instructions to
the agent are transmitted in the form of previously agreed phrases or
numbers in ordinary radio programmes, or as a simple numerical code. Even if
a police force should by some means or another guess that the transmission
they are hearing is not a coded transmission for cosmonauts or warships,
they cannot possibly determine for which spy it is destined, or even which
country. The agent who hears such a transmission is also not exposed to any
great risk. However, for the GRU it is often necessary that the agent
himself transmits. For this the short-range radio link exists. The agent
transmits information to the Soviet embassy with the help of
transmitters, like the sort of walkie-talkie sets which can be bought in any
shop and which are used for guiding model aeroplanes and ships (one cannot
help noticing how many aerials there are on the roof of the Soviet embassy).
In this type of radio exchange the GRU takes the cover of a fireman,
ambulance driver, construction worker or a policeman. All radio
conversations within the city limits are thoroughly studied by GRU
specialists and any of them may be used by the GRU for its dark ends. A
short-range special link is an alternative to short-range radio links. In
connection with increasing the monitoring of radio exchanges, the GRU
frequently undertakes the transmission of signals under water. One fisherman
will transmit signals by means of a rod put in the water and another several
kilometres distant from him will receive the signal by using the same
method. Or water and gas pipes can be used. Significant research is also
going on in the field of electro-optical communications.
Dead-letter boxes are the favourite GRU means of contact. They have the
most universal application and in addition to communications they may be
used for the storage of everything that has to do with a spy's work -
documents, money, radio sets, special photographic equipment, for example.
Thousands of types of dead-letter boxes are known, from cracks in
gravestones and brickwork to specially devised magnetic 'letter boxes' in
the form of metal nuts. Applied to the structure of a bridge among thousands
of similar nuts and rivets this device is easily hidden and just as easy to
undo. The GRU also makes wide use of boxes constructed in the form of a
plastic hollow wedge with a lid. These can very easily be pushed into the
ground in any public park. Underwater dead-letter boxes are also widely
used.
Their selection is always a complicated and responsible business. The
primary criterion is that as far as possible they must not be prone to
accidental discovery. They are threatened by many possible happenings: they
may be found by children, by the police, even by archaeologists. There may
be floods, or the heat of summer may affect them. Someone may start building
on the site. All this must be taken into account. Equally important is that
the dead-letter box's location must be easy to describe to another person,
even by somebody who only knows about it at secondhand. It must also be
located in a place where it is possible for the case officer to go at any
time with a plausible cover story for his presence there. Some random
examples from GRU practice are worth describing.
As a general principle of security, each dead-letter box (DLB) may only
be used once. Documents on all DLBs are stored in the GRU command point and
after the completion of a DLB operation the document is stamped 'used' and
transferred to the archives. An officer at a command point, working in a GRU
top secret archive, once discovered the description of a DLB on which there
was no 'used' stamp. The document was very old, pre-war. The DLB has been
selected in 1932 and three years later some material had been put in it -
money and valuables for the use of the illegal residency in case of
emergency, apparently 'in various currencies to a total sum of 50,000
American dollars'. The officer carefully inspected the document again, but
there was nothing on it to show that the DLB had been emptied. The officer
informed his chief of what he had found and he in his turn informed the GRU
chief, who decided on an investigation. The affair was not complicated and a
week later the investigation disclosed that the dead-letter box had belonged
to the Hamburg illegal residency which in 1937 had been recalled to Moscow
lock, stock and barrel for 'instructions', and shot. All the materials of
the residency had been handed in to the archives, together with the document
about the unused DLB. The new officers who took the place of those who had
been shot were completely inexperienced and started work with new sets of
documents. There was no time, in any case, to look into the old documents.
Then the new GRU staff was also liquidated. So there were many documents
which were completely forgotten and simply collected dust in the archives.
The GRU chief took two decisions, firstly, to nominate a group of
specially trusted officers for permanent archive work- perhaps something
else of interest might be discovered - and secondly, to give an order to one
of the GRU residencies in West Germany to find this old unused DLB. Suppose
it was still there. If it was, then the value of its contents would have
increased many times.
In fact the DLB had survived, in spite of the war, the fierce bombing
of Hamburg, the rebuilding of the city after the war, and the enormous
expansion in the development of the city. The DLB consisted of a
hermetically sealed container, about the size of a suitcase, which had
been buried at the bottom of a lake in a quiet park. For greater security it
had been covered with an old tombstone which had been sprinkled all over
with sand and silt. The container was removed to Moscow and opened there.
Much to the disappointment of all those present, all that was inside was a
few dozen old-fashioned silver watches of very little value, a hundred or so
American dollars and a few thousand crisp German Marks of the time of the
Third Reich.
The second dead-letter box was in the very centre of the American
capital. At the beginning of his lunch break, the agent would go into a park
and hide top secret documents in the hollow of a tree. Some minutes later a
Soviet 'diplomat' would appear, remove the documents and with the help of
two other 'diplomats' copy them in his car which was parked at the Capitol.
The operation was an especially daring one, and succeeded several
times—after the GRU chief had sanctioned repeated use of the DLB. The
copying of the documents in the car did not take more than twenty minutes,
and the agent, on his return from his lunch break, was able to walk in the
park for a few minutes longer and retrieve his documents. One day the case
officer was making his way towards the dead-letter box. Suddenly his
attention was attracted by a sheet of white paper blowing about with the
first yellow and red leaves. The officer picked it up and, horrified, saw
the stamp 'top secret'. He looked around. All over the park were dozens of
similar sheets of paper. The officer realised that squirrels getting ready
for winter had taken up residence in the hollowed-out tree; the pieces of
paper had got in their way and they had thrown them out. He immediately set
about picking up the pieces, many of which were torn by the sharp teeth and
claws of these lovable little animals. At that dramatic moment a policeman
appeared in the park. He evidently took the Soviet diplomat for one of the
White House workers who had had his papers blown out of his hands by the
wind. Without a word, the policeman also started to collect the papers.
Having gathered a considerable number, the policeman held them out to the
embarrassed case officer. The latter took them and smiled in the most
foolish way, even forgetting to thank his saviour and helper, who saluted
and withdrew. Nevertheless the situation remained highly critical. There was
absolutely no time, as the agent had already appeared on the opposite side
of the park. The case officer hurried to meet him, although this was
strictly forbidden. Quickly outlining the situation, the officer suggested
two possible ways out: either the agent should tell his department that he
had in error torn up the papers and thrown them into the waste-paper basket
but then had remembered in time; or he should wait for four days. The agent
chose the second option. Within hours, an officer with diplomatic rank had
made two changes of aircraft in Europe and arrived in Warsaw where a fast
fighter interceptor was waiting for him. Again only hours later, the GRU had
carried out a complete forgery of the documents, and a day later they were
returned to the agent. Of course, all this time he had been threatened with
exposure, but the GRU's swift action had saved him.
A third dead-letter box was in a drainage pipe on the embankment
of a river in northern Europe. The officer had to lower into the pipe a
metal box with a magnet attached. The magnet was very strong and
normally there would have been no risk that the box would come unstuck.
Pretending to tie up his shoe-lace, the officer carefully lowered the little
box into the drainage pipe with the magnet and took out his hand. But the
first frosts had started and the officer had not taken into account the fact
that the interior of the pipe was covered with a thin layer of ice. The box
slid down the pipe, giving out a harmonious ringing noise, and after a few
seconds flew out into the river, which was unfortunately also covered with a
thin sheet of ice. Had the river not been iced over, the box would have sunk
and that would have been that. But instead it skidded on the ice right to
the middle of the river. The ice was too thin to walk on, and nor was it,
possible to throw things at the box across the ice to send it to the other
side. In the box was a film with instructions for an agent. There was only
one way out. The officer ran into a shop and bought a fishing rod; then, for
an hour and a half, to the astonishment of passers-by, he cast his hook onto
the ice until it was taken by the magnet. By carefully winding in his line,
he succeeded in retrieving the valuable box. This happened in the heart of
one of the Western capitals in broad daylight.
Signals, too, are a means of exchanging information which is highly
favoured by the GRU. Office pins are used as signals stuck in a
predetermined place, dots, bands, crosses, signals are made with chalk,
pencil, paints, lipstick. A car parked in a pre-arranged place at a pre-
arranged time may serve as a signal or a doll placed in a window of a house.
These are used as warnings of danger, requests for meetings, confirmation of
the reception of radio instructions and for hundreds of other intentions.
Usually an agent who has worked for some years with the GRU will have
as a minimum the following elements of communication: the secret rendezvous,
long-range one-way radio link, short-range radio line or special link and a
system of dead-letter boxes and signals. An agent group in addition is
obliged in every case to have a long-range two-way radio link.
Chapter Six
The Practice of Agent Work
So our agent has been recruited, trained during long routine meetings
(perhaps in a hotel off the beaten t), and there has been worked
out for him a complicated system of agent communications including both
personal and non-personal forms of communication and also the actions to be
taken in case of a sudden break of all channels of communication. Elements
of non-personal communication have been gradually introduced and have
gradually superseded the personal meetings. In these meetings the agent has
handed over photocopies of secret documents and has received in exchange
sums of money. Attempts by the agent to protest or refuse to work have
been successfully suppressed. The material received from him has been
thoroughly compared and checked with analogous material received from other
sources. So far, all is going well. What happens next is a new stage, the
thinking behind which includes the segregation of the agent from the Soviet
embassy and from all meetings with official Soviet representatives.
Up till the Second World War not only the agents of undercover
residencies, but also illegals and agents subordinate to illegals, were tied
to the embassies. With the outbreak of war, when the embassies were closed,
all contact with the powerful agent network was lost. The flow of agent
information was cut off at the very moment when it would have been of the
greatest value. The deputy head of the GRU was sent into occupied Europe
with several radio officers and unlimited powers. Within a short time he had
successfully organised a illegal resident network on the territories
of Belgium and Holland. Subsequently, by means of secret rendezvous, he was
able to re-establish contact with all the illegal residencies. However, the
agent radio station by the name of 'Sever', which had been established
before the war, proved useless. Nobody had supposed that the advance of the
Nazis would be so precipitate, and the radio station had not been designed
to deal with such long distances. The ships of the Soviet Baltic fleet were
blockaded in their own bases and could not be used for the reception of
agent transmissions. Then the GRU organised a receiving centre on the
territory of the Soviet embassy in Sweden. Information from all the illegal
residencies came to the illegal residency network and from there was
transmitted directly to the Soviet Union. This was perhaps the only possible
solution at the time and of course it had many disadvantages. First of all,
the agents, their case officers and the illegals found themselves in one
gigantic residency, a state of affairs which compromised many hundreds of
men. It could not be long before it collapsed, and the collapse began in the
most vulnerable place, deep in the nerve centre of this most unprecedently
powerful underground organisation. One of the illegal radio operators,
wishing to obtain the favours of a girl, boasted to her that he knew all the
latest news in the world, as he regularly listened to the radio (which was,
of course, forbidden on occupied territory). The girl, in her turn eager for
the favours of a certain German corporal, informed him of this fact. So the
most powerful underground intelligence organisation in history was
discovered - this organisation which had penetrated many of Germany's most
sensitive secrets. Referred to by the Germans as 'the Red Orchestra', the
organisation was completely neutralised and all the agents and illegals of
this gigantic octopus arrested.
The GRU learnt its lessons very quickly. Already, only a few months
after what had happened, illegal residencies were functioning on the
territories of its true 'allies', the United States, Great Britain and
Canada which were completely separate from the embassies. This now cast-iron
rule is observed by the GRU everywhere. Undercover residencies support
illegals, but only on instructions from the Centre without having any idea
for whom they are working. All operations in support of illegals are worked
out in such a way that the officers of the GRU undercover residency do not
have one crumb of information which is not necessary. Operations are planned
in such a way that there is no possibility of the illegals becoming
dependent on the actions of the undercover residency. Another lesson learnt
from the arrest of the 'Red Orchestra' is the division of residencies into
even er independent parts, especially insofar as this concerns
illegals. And, thirdly and significantly, there is the separation of agents
from the embassy which is our present concern.
The recruited, tested and trained agent must be kept separate from
official Soviet institutions abroad. The process of separating the agent is
undertaken only after he has handed over to the GRU a significant quantity
of secret material, that is, made it impossible for himself to go to the
police. The separated agent comes in three guises: the separated acting
agent, the agent group and the agent residency.
The most valuable agents, those that provide specially important
material, are taken out of residencies very quickly. The moment the Centre
feels that such and such an agent is handing over material of exceptional
importance, it will immediately demand that no more information or documents
are taken from him. All attention is switched from questions of obtaining
information to questions of security and training. The GRU will then take
the step of sending him immediately to a soft country to undergo his
training there - during a 'holiday', perhaps. If circumstances permit, he
may be transferred from the soft country to the Soviet Union. Thence he will
go back to his own country, but as an independently acting agent. He will be
run exclusively by the Centre, in concrete terms the head of a section,
even, in special cases, the head of a directorate and in extreme cases the
deputy head of the GRU or the head himself. The running of such an agent is
thus carried out exactly as the running of illegals is.
A complex system of non-personal communications and contacts must be
worked out for an independent agent. Usually he will transmit his material
by means of dead-letter boxes. The residency which was responsible for the
agent's recruitment may receive the order to empty such and such a numbered
dead-letter box of films. It will not know from whom it is receiving these
films, whether from a local illegal or a transiting illegal, an 'artist on
tour' as they are still called, or from an agent who has been recruited by
that particular residency. The processing of films (which are called
schtchit - the Russian word for shield) is carried out only in the Centre.
The film will be a dual-purpose one. Firstly a pseudo-secret document is
photographed on the film by the GRU, then the film is given to the agent and
he photographs genuine secret material on it. Any attempt to develop the
film outside the walls of the GRU Technical Operations Scientific Research
Institute leads to the real secret text being destroyed and only the
pseudo-secret text appearing, which is designed to lead the police on a wild
goose chase.
The Scientific Research Institute of the GRU has done much important
work in developing films of the schtchit type. Hundreds, or even possibly
thousands, of formulae have been worked out. In each case, for each and
every valuable agent, a separate and unrepeatable formula is used. The GRU
tries by all possible means to limit the number of personal contacts with
independent agents, which is why they are taken out of the residencies. If
personal meetings have to take place, they are only carried out in soft
countries or secretly in the Soviet Union. In any case, they are carried out
extremely rarely.
Other agents recruited by residencies are gradually organised into
agent groups of three to five men each. Usually, agents working in one
particular field of espionage are put together in one group. Sometimes a
group consists of agents who for various reasons are known to each other.
Let us suppose that one agent recruits two others. A group automatically
organises itself. The GRU obviously considers family groups containing the
head of the family and his wife and children to be more secure and stable.
The members of such a group may work in completely different fields of
espionage. The leader of an agent group is called a gropovod, and only he is
in contact with Soviet officers. Thus to a certain extent the members of
agent groups are completely isolated from Soviet diplomatic representation.
The agent group is in contact with the undercover residency for a period of
time, then gradually the system of contact with the residency comes to an
end and orders begin to be received directly from Moscow. By various
channels the group sends it material directly to Moscow. Finally the contact
with Moscow becomes permanent and stable and the agent group is entirely
separated from the residency. With gradual changes in personnel at the
residency, like the resident himself, the cipher officers and the
operational officers with whom there was once direct contact, nobody outside
the Centre will know of the existence of this particular group. Should it
happen that operating conditions become difficult, or that the embassy is
blockaded or closed down, the group will be able to continue its activities
in the same way as before.
The GRU tolerates personal contacts with group leaders only in
exceptional circumstances and where there is favourable security. Agents
going into agent groups do not by any means always know each other, nor is
it necessary that they should. They may know the group leader alone, not
guessing at the existence of other agents.
An agent group may gradually get bigger as the group leader or his
recruiting agent continues to recruit other agents. If the Centre permits a
group leader to recruit agents independently, his agent group, even if it
consists of only two men, acquires the status of an agent residency, and the
group leader becomes the agent resident. This status was acquired by one of
the American nuclear physicists whom the GRU permitted to recruit his
colleagues at his discretion. Interestingly this agent resident never made a
mistake.
Sometimes the GRU will post one or more illegals to an agent residency.
The presence of even one Soviet illegal (he is of course considered as the
leader) in an agent residency of any size automatically transforms that
residency from an agent residency into an illegal residency. This process of
increasing the numbers and the gradual self-generation of independent
organisations continues endlessly. The process is similar to the spread of a
fearful illness, with the difference that, in this case, surgical
intervention always gives excellent results. Hundreds of examples have
proved this.
If the GRU feels that there is likely to be a clampdown and that
operating conditions will become more difficult at any moment, it takes
measures to ensure that it does not lose the agent network which has already
been recruited but not as yet separated from the undercover residency. With
this aim in mind some of the most experienced officers of the undercover
residency are in a continual state of readiness so that at any moment, on
the order of the Centre, they may go over to illegal status and run the work
of their agents. These officers are in possession of previously prepared
documents and equipment, and gold, diamonds and other valuables which will
be of use to them in their illegal activities will have been hidden in
secret hiding-places beforehand. In case of war actually breaking out, these
officers will unobtrusively disappear from their embassies. The Soviet
government will register a protest and will for a short time refuse to
exchange its diplomats for the diplomats of the aggressive country. Then it
will capitulate, the exchange will take place and the newly fledged illegals
will remain behind in safe houses and flats. Afterwards they will gradually,
by using the system of secret rendezvous, begin to establish the system of
contacts with agents and agent groups which have recently been subordinated
to the undercover residency. Now they all form a new illegal residency. The
new illegals never mix and never enter into contact with the old ones who
have been working in the country for a long time. This plainly makes life
more secure for both parties. The formation of new illegal residencies where
there were already old ones in action is yet another example of the constant
striving for duplication.
However important the problems of recruiting agents, training them and
organising agent networks may be, there is still one overriding objective:
the acquisition of secrets belonging to an enemy or a probable enemy. The
material acquired by the GRU breaks down into information, documents and
specimens or samples. Information includes commentaries and reports.
Documents are not the subjective opinions or observations of agents but
official secret papers, books, drawings or copies of them. Specimens or
samples are self-explanatory: actual weapons, examples of military
technology, instruments and equipment which the GRU uses for study and
copying.
The photographing of documents and eavesdropping on conversations are
in real life exactly as they are portrayed in spy films. But how does the
agent contrive to steal secret equipment and remain undetected? Many ways
and means exist: we have already examined one of them when we discussed the
recruitment of the owners of private companies producing military
equipment. The owner of a firm has not much difficulty in producing
one extra specimen of an instrument or a gadget and it is very advantageous
for him to sell it to the GRU. But what about really big objects like a
tank, an aeroplane or an atomic reactor? Not only does one have to obtain
such an object without its loss being noticed, but it also has to be
transported to the Soviet Union. There is, perhaps surprisingly, a number of
solutions to these problems. Samples of objects which can only be used once
-rockets, torpedoes, shells, cartridges - are usually stolen during
instructional periods, military displays or tests. An entry may be made, for
example, in the official accounting documents that there were a hundred
launchings of a certain anti-tank rocket whereas in actual fact there were
only ninety-nine. The hundredth rocket will have been quietly sold to the
GRU without anybody noticing. Very often written- off equipment is able to
be sold because there exist official documents certifying that it has been
written off or destroyed. One agent suggested to the GRU that he should
obtain for them a lateral scanning radar for aircraft which permitted the
aircraft to carry out intelligence work on the territory of the enemy while
it was actually over its own territory. The GRU, of course, agreed to the
suggestion, although the agent said that he did not know exactly when he
would be able to acquire the apparatus. It might be within a day or two, it
might take years. The GRU agreed to wait. Several months later the agent
obtained the apparatus, and a year later it was taken into service with the
Soviet Army. The agent worked in an experimental training ground, and when
an aircraft equipped with the required apparatus crashed, the agent, in
spite of very strict control, was able to steal a broken radar. This was
quite sufficient for the Soviet Army to catch up with the United States in
that particular field. Frequently agents go as far as deliberately damaging
secret arms and equipment so that they can be written off and then sold.
Wide use is made of countries of the Third World which receive equipment
from Western countries, as was made clear in the GRU's (unsuccessful)
attempt to acquire a French Mirage III from the Lebanon. Any armed conflict
or change of government is usually accompanied by intense GRU activity,
because this is the most favourable time for stealing military technology
and armaments.
The diplomatic mail is the most often-used method of transporting
specimens to the Soviet Union. The main problem is to transport the specimen
into the Soviet embassy. From that time onwards, of course, it crosses all
frontiers in sealed packing cases and accompanied by armed diplomatic
couriers. Sometimes the difficult problem arises of a specimen weighing
several tons which cannot be accommodated in the diplomatic post. This
happened when, in one of the countries which had bought Leopard tanks in the
Federal Republic of Germany, GRU agents were able to steal a written-off
tank engine — an item of exceptional interest to Soviet industry. The theft
went unnoticed but the engine weighed more than a ton and there was no way
it could be accommodated in diplomatic containers. The Soviet consulate then
bought an old cruising yacht. The yacht was straight away sent for a refit
and, for a very substantial sum, the repair workshop installed the
heavy tank engine in the yacht. The yacht went to sea on a number of
pleasure trips and during one such trip fortuitously met a Soviet trawler. A
special team of fitters literally tore the tank engine out of the yacht in a
few minutes. The yacht put to sea several times after this to maintain its
cover, before being sold.
Another, more reliable method of transporting heavy equipment exists.
After an item has been acquired, GRU officers in the guise of a trade
delegation will poach from a firm some completely unnecessary item of quite
innocent nature. The important thing is that the quantity of containers and
their weight approximate to the packing of the secret equipment.
Subsequently the markings on the packing cases are changed and they make
their way innocently through customs control. So items of exceptional
importance are transported to the Soviet Union in the form of equipment for,
say, a canning factory. Sometimes, too, specimens are sent to a safe address
in one of the Third World countries where they can be loaded onto Soviet
ships without any trouble.
In general terms the GRU leadership is quite confident that it is
capable of obtaining any technological secret from the West provided it has
been allocated a sufficient sum of money. Only one technological secret
exists which the GRU is incapable of obtaining. Even if it did obtain it,
the Soviet system would not be able to copy it since for that, the whole
structure of communism would have to be changed. Yet this technological
secret is of vital importance to the Soviet system. It is the Achilles' heel
of socialism - strike at it and socialism will fall to pieces, all invasion,
nationalisation and collectivisation will cease. This secret is nothing more
than the means of producing bread. Socialism, for all its gigantic
resources, is not capable of feeding itself. How easy it would be, one
sometimes thinks, to place an embargo on the supply of bread to the Soviet
Union, until Soviet forces no longer found themselves in occupied
Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, until such time as the Cubans
no longer held sway in Africa, until the Berlin Wall disappeared. It would
only be necessary to withhold supplies of grain for a few months, and the
whole edifice of socialism might fall to pieces.
Chapter Seven
Operational Intelligence
Operational intelligence marks a complete departure from the kind we
have talked about until now. It embraces intelligence organisations
subordinated to operational units - fronts, fleets, groups of forces,
military districts, armies, flotillas - whose job is to aid in the
implementation of the military activity. Organisationally, the Soviet Army
consists of sixteen military districts and four groups of forces in Germany,
Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. In war, or at the time of preparations
for war, the groups of forces and military districts are transformed into
fronts and army groups. Each military district, groups of forces and front
has a staff, each with its own intelligence directorate (called RU or Second
Directorate of the Military District Staff). The chief of the Second
Directorate of the Military District Staff is the chief of all intelligence
units of the military district. He is officially called the head of military
district intelligence. All twenty heads of military district intelligence
and groups of forces are under the command of the head of the GRU Fifth
Directorate. The GRU Fifth Directorate supervises the activity of the
intelligence directorates, carries out the posting of senior officers of
operational intelligence, collates the work experience of all operational
intelligence and issues corresponding recommendations and instructions. In
addition, the head of intelligence is subordinated to the chief of the
military district staff. The chief of staff directs the daily activity of
the head of intelligence. The head of intelligence of a military district
works exclusively in the interests of his military district, in conformity
with the orders of the chief of staff and the commander of the military
district. At the same time, all information obtained is forwarded to the GRU
too. The role the GRU plays is to collect information from all heads of
intelligence and forward to them information obtained by other intelligence
organs. Sometimes, the intelligence directorate of the military district may
work directly in the interests of the GRU but this must be done only with
the agreement of the military district commander. The chief of the general
staff is the supreme arbiter in disputes between the commander of the
military district and the head of the GRU. However, in practice such
disputes occur extremely rarely.
Each front, group of forces and military district consists of armies.
Normally a front has an air force, a tank army and two to three all-arms
armies. Each army consists of four to seven divisions. Sometimes a corps is
included - two to three divisions. Each army and corps has a staff, among
whose members is an intelligence section which is called RO [Razvedyvatelnyi
otdel] or Army Staff Second Department. The head of the army intelligence
section is the head of all intelligence units belonging to a given army. He
also ranks below two other officers: the chief of staff of his army, and the
chief of intelligence of the military district.
His relationship with his chiefs is based on similar lines. He works
exclusively in the interests of his army, obeying the orders of the army
commander and the army chief of staff. At the same time, all information
acquired by him is also forwarded to the intelligence chief of the military
district. A reciprocal arrangement exists whereby the intelligence chief of
the military district forwards information to his heads of army intelligence
which he has received from other armies, the intelligence directorates of
the military districts and the GRU.
The Soviet navy consists of four fleets, the Northern, Pacific, Black
Sea and Baltic fleets. Each of the fleets is the equal of a military
district, group of forces, and front, and has a staff which includes an
intelligence directorate or Naval Staff Second Directorate. Its head is the
chief of Naval Intelligence. The naval directorates have the same
organisation as those in military districts, fronts and groups of forces.
The difference lies in the fact that while the army directorates are
subordinated directly to the Fifth Directorate of the GRU, the four naval
directorates fall under an organisation called naval intelligence. In its
turn naval intelligence comes under the head of the GRU and is controlled by
the Fifth Directorate. The reason for this extra organisational step is that
ships of all four fleets frequently operate in all oceans as combined
squadrons. For this reason the ships need information, not about a narrow
sector like the troops of a military district, but on a much wider scale.
Naval intelligence was created to co-ordinate naval information from
every ocean of the world, and is a component of the High Staff of the Navy
of the USSR. In addition to its normal powerful apparatus for gathering
information, there is also the naval cosmic intelligence department. The
Soviet Union therefore possesses two independent cosmic intelligence
organisations, the GRU's own and the Navy's cosmic intelligence
organisation. Although naval cosmic intelligence works in the interests of
the High Commander of the Soviet Navy, all information from it is handed
over to the GRU. The co-operation between the two cosmic services is
co-ordinated by the chief of the General Staff. Should a very serious
situation arise, the same task may be set at the same time to both services
and the results arrived at then collated and compared.
The organisation of intelligence directorates (RUs) on the staffs of
military districts, groups of forces, fronts and fleets is standardised. The
intelligence directorate consists of five departments and two groups:
First Department or Department of Reconnaissance directs the activities
of the reconnaissance units of the tactical wing, that is, reconnaissance
battalions of divisions and reconnaissance companies of regiments. In naval
terminology this department is called the Ship Reconnaissance Department. It
directs the collection of information which comes directly from serving
surface vessels and submarines at sea, bearing in mind that what is meant
here are normal warships and not special intelligence collecting ships. The
training of officers of First Departments is carried out in the intelligence
faculty of the Frunze Military Academy and the corresponding faculty of the
Naval Academy. The officers of First Departments are usually experienced
army and navy officers who have considerable experience of service in
reconnaissance units.
Second Department or Department of Agent Intelligence is concerned with
the recruitment of secret agents and the obtaining through them of
intelligence information of interest to the staff. The recruitment of agents
and the creation of agent networks is carried out on the territories of
contiguous countries where the military district concerned would expect to
operate in war-time. Naval Intelligence is interested in recruiting agents
from all territories, especially in large ports and naval bases. An
intelligence centre and three or four intelligence points are subordinated
to the Second Department which is directly concerned with agent work.
The centre is concerned with the recruitment of agents in the
contiguous state, whereas the intelligence points only recruit agents in
specific sectors and areas. They work independently from one another,
although they are co-ordinated by the chief of the Second Department. The
training of officers for work in the Second Departments and also in centres
and points is carried out by the Third Faculty of the Military-Diplomatic
Academy (the Academy of the Soviet Army).
The Third Department or Spetsnaz Department is concerned with the
preparation and carrying out of diversionary acts on enemy territory, the
liquidation of political and military leaders, the destruction of lines of
communication and supply and the carrying out of terrorist operations with
the aim of undermining the enemy's will to continue fighting. A Spetsnaz
intelligence point is subordinated to this department and this carries out
the recruitment of agent-terrorists on the territory of any possible future
enemy. There is also a Spetsnaz brigade which consists of 1,300 cut- throat
soldiers. The officers who work in the Spetsnaz intelligence points and
those who direct their activities in the Third Department are trained,
rather incongruously, in the Third Faculty of the Military-Diplomatic
Academy, although for the Spetsnaz brigade and the officers connected with
it training takes place in the Frunze Academy. Analogous organisations can
be seen in the Navy, with this difference: the brigades are called Spetsnaz
naval brigades (not to be confused with Naval infantry brigades) and the
same 'diplomats' direct the activity of all agent- assassins in the fleets.
The Fourth Department or Information Department carries out the
collection and collation of all intelligence coming into the intelligence
directorate.
The Fifth Department is occupied with electronic intelligence, and this
department directs two regiments, the Radio Intelligence Regiment and the
Radio-Technical Intelligence Regiment. Radio Intelligence carries out the
interception of radio signals and Radio-Technical Intelligence is concerned
with tracking emissions from the enemy's radar.
The Intelligence Directorate Technical Facilities Group is occupied
with the interpretation of air photographs. The training of specialists for
such work is carried on at the Second Kharkov Higher Military Aviation and
Engineering School.
The Interpreters' Group or 'the Inquisition' deals with the deciphering
and translation of documents obtained, and with the interrogation of
prisoners of war. Specialists for this group are prepared at the Military
Institute (of Foreign Languages).
The Intelligence Department of the Army Staff
This may be seen as an intelligence directorate in miniature. It has
very similar organisation: First Group or Reconnaissance Group: analagous to
the First Department of an Intelligence Directorate and concerned with
directing tactical reconnaissance, the difference being that it is only
responsible for the divisions of one army, whereas the First Department of
an Intelligence Directorate is responsible for all the divisions of its
military district; Second Group or Secret Intelligence Group; Third Group or
Spetsnaz Group: responsible for terrorist acts in the area of operations of
its army - a specialist company of 115 cut-throat soldiers is part of it;
Fourth Group — Informational; Fifth Group which commands two battalions,
radio intelligence and radio-technical intelligence -the Intelligence
Department likewise has its own interpreters.
It would be a mistake to think that operational agent intelligence is a
kind of second-class citizen compared with strategic intelligence. Every
intelligence directorate is a kind of GRU in miniature with its electronic
facilities, information services, secret agents and even, where the fleet is
concerned, its independent cosmic service. During the course of a war, or
immediately before war breaks out, the power of an intelligence directorate
is immeasurably increased by the infiltration in the enemy's rear of
thousands of Spetsnaz saboteurs. The intelligence directorates taken
altogether form a very powerful intelligence conglomerate, in no way
inferior in its scope to strategic intelligence. In other words the GRU, in
the form of strategic and operational intelligence, has created two agent
networks independent of one another and each duplicating the other. In
countries like Norway, Sweden, West Germany, Austria, Turkey, Afghanistan
and China the operational intelligence agent network by far exceeds
strategic intelligence in strength, effectiveness and invulnerability. This
can be confirmed by examining the task of the different intelligence
directorates:
Northern Fleet - covering Norway, Great Britain, France, Spain,
Portugal, Canada and the USA. There is no doubt that Northern Fleet
intelligence is mainly restricted to targets on the sea shore or coastline,
although this certainly does not preclude deep agent penetration of the
whole territory of the country being investigated, including the central
government organs.
Baltic Fleet - covering Sweden, Denmark, West Germany.
Black Sea Fleet - covering Turkey and the whole Mediterranean
coastline.
Pacific Fleet - covering the USA, Japan, China, Canada and all
countries of the Pacific Basin.
Leningrad Military District - Norway and Sweden. Agent intelligence
work is not carried out on Finnish territory, since this country is well
inside the Soviet sphere of influence, and its behaviour pleases the Kremlin
much more than that of certain Warsaw pact countries, for example, Romania.
Baltic Military District - Sweden, Denmark.
Soviet Groups of Forces in Germany, the Northern Group of Forces in
Poland, the Byelorussian Military District - all are concerned with the
study of the German Federal Republic.
Central Group of Forces in Czechoslovakia - covering the German Federal
Republic and Austria.
Southern Group of Forces in Hungary - Austria.
Carpathian Military District - covering Greece and Turkey from
Bulgarian territory.
Kiev and Odessa Military District - Turkey, Austria.
Trans-Caucasian Military District — Turkey, Iran.
Turkestan Military District - Iran, Afghanistan.
Mid-Asian Military District - Afghanistan, China.
Trans-Baikal and Far Eastern Military Districts - China.
Moscow, Northern Caucasian, Volga, Ural and Siberian Military Districts
- these do not run agent networks in peace time.
Taking two countries, West Germany and Turkey, as examples, let us
analyse the strengths and facilities of strategic and operational
intelligence networks and likewise the KGB networks:
West Germany has been infiltrated by: the GRU strategic agent network;
several illegal residencies and agent groups; five undercover residencies in
Bonn and Cologne, and three Soviet-controlled missions in British, American
and French sectors; the Berlin direction of the GRU; it is also covered by
the GRU operational agent network. Here, completely independently, work is
also carried out by the intelligence directorate of the Baltic Fleet, Soviet
troops in Germany, and the Northern and Central groups of forces in the
Byelorussian Military District. In other words West Germany is subject to
the attentions of: the agent networks of five intelligence centres; fifteen
to eighteen intelligence points plus five intelligence points belonging to
the Spetsnaz group; five Spetsnaz brigades and up to fifteen to twenty
separate Spetsnaz companies belonging to the same organisation which are at
full alert to carry out terrorist acts (the total number of cut-throats is
up to 8,000 men). This accounts only for GRU activities. The KGB agent
network also runs several illegal residencies and agent groups and two
undercover residencies in Bonn and Cologne.
Turkey contains a similar proliferation of Soviet espionage: a GRU
strategic agent network in the form of an illegal residency and two
undercover residencies in Ankara and Istanbul; a GRU operational network in
the form of five intelligence centres belonging to the Carpathian, Odessa,
Kiev and Trans-Caucasian Military Districts, and the Black Sea fleet;
fifteen to twenty intelligence points, plus five Spetsnaz intelligence
points and a corresponding quantity of Spetsnaz brigades. The KGB provides a
strategic network (one illegal residency and two undercover residencies);
and a KGB operational network. This network is subordinated to the KGB
frontier troops.
These two examples provide a blueprint for intelligence activity in
many other countries, especially those having common frontiers with the
Soviet Union or its satellites.
The basic difference in working methods between strategic and
operational intelligence in the GRU is that officers of operational
intelligence do not in peace-time work on the territories of target
countries. All operations concerning the identification of suitable
candidates, their vetting, testing, recruitment, training and all practical
work are carried out on the territories within the Eastern bloc or from
inside its frontiers. It may be thought that operational intelligence does
not have the range and potential of the strategic branch, whose officers
mainly work abroad, but this is not so. Without the possibility of
recruiting foreigners in their own countries, operational intelligence seeks
and finds other ways of establishing the necessary contacts. Its officers
exploit every avenue of approach to attract foreigners visiting the Soviet
Union and its satellites into their network. Prime attention is paid to
students undergoing instruction in Soviet higher educational institutes, and
to specialists visiting the Soviet Union as members of delegations. Naval
intelligence actively works against sailors from foreign ships calling at
Soviet ports, and operational intelligence is equally careful to study the
affairs of Soviet and Eastern bloc citizens who have relatives in countries
of interest to it.
Operational intelligence is quite unceremonious in using methods of
pressurising its candidates, seeing that the recruitment of foreigners is
taking place on its own territory. Having recruited one foreigner, the
intelligence directorate then uses him for selecting and recruiting other
candidates without a Soviet officer taking part. Frequently, one recruitment
on Soviet territory is sufficient for the agent who has been recruited to
return to his country and recruit several more agents. Contact between
agents who have been recruited and their case officers in the Soviet Union
is usually carried out by non-personal channels - radio, secret writing,
microdots, dead-letter boxes - and couriers are greatly used, too, people
like train drivers and conductors, crew members of aircraft and ships and
lorry drivers. Personal contact with operational intelligence agents is only
carried out on Soviet bloc territory. There exist numerous examples where
meetings with agents take place only once every five to seven years, and
cases are known where agents have never met their case officer and have
never been either on Soviet or satellite territory. A useful example is that
of a lorry driver belonging to a large transport company who was recruited
by Soviet operational intelligence whilst visiting Czechoslovakia.
Subsequently, having returned to his own country, he recruited a friend who
worked in an armaments factory and his brother who lived not far from a very
large military airport. The lorry driver only occasionally visited eastern
Europe and rarely had contact with Soviet officers because there was always
a driver's mate with him. However, every time a journey to eastern Europe
was planned, he notified his case officers in good time by means of
postcards. Postcards with pre- arranged texts were sent to different
addresses in the Eastern bloc and every time the driver crossed into
Soviet-controlled territory, officers met him either at customs, or in the
restaurant or even the lavatory, to give him short instructions and money.
The meetings were carried out in the shortest possible time so that the
driver's mate would not suspect anything.
The absence of contact with agents outside territory under the control
of the Soviet Union gives GRU operational intelligence exceptional
advantages. Firstly, it is extremely difficult to unmask and expose such
agents; secondly, and perhaps more important, the Soviet officers of
operational intelligence have no chance to defect to the West and expose the
activities of the agents recruited by them. (In strategic intelligence this
occurs quite regularly but we have as yet not one example of it happening
amongst operational intelligence officers.)
Yet another important advantage of operational intelligence, and one
which gives it exceptional invulnerability, is its diversification. A
defecting officer from strategic intelligence can say a lot about the
activities of the central apparatus of the GRU, but an officer of the
operational network who did succeed in defecting would be able to reveal
only one or two intelligence points or centres - and there are more than a
hundred of these in the Soviet Army. Each of them is carefully isolated from
the others and, to a great extent, camouflaged. Centres and points are
mostly found on the premises of military buildings of exceptional
importance, and consequently with the maximum possible protection. Even if
an officer did succeed in disclosing the true significance of a particular
building, he could only say that it was, for example, a store for nuclear
weapons or a rocket depot; it would be almost impossible to determine that
in addition there was also an intelligence point. Cases are known where
intelligence points have been located on the premises of the personal
country houses of important generals or the well-guarded premises of
punishment battalions (in other words, military prisons). And the
diversification of the operational networks in no way indicates the absence
of co-ordination. All these organs and organisations are included in a rigid
pyramid system headed by the Fifth GRU Directorate (in turn, of course,
subject to the head of the GRU). However, in the activities of the
intelligence directorates there exists a certain freedom which invariably
engenders useful intiative. The GRU central apparatus prefers not to
interfere in the daily running of the intelligence directorates provided
that they work in a productive manner and toe the line. The GRU will
occasionally interfere, in cases where two different directorates have
recruited the same agent, although it will always encourage a situation
where different intelligence directorates recruit agents for the same
target. For example, the intelligence directorate of a group of forces once
recruited an agent for an important scientific research target. Unwittingly
the intelligence directorate of another group of forces recruited another
agent for the same target. Both agents provided almost identical information
which was eventually received in Moscow where it was carefully analysed. The
moment one of the agents began to provide false information, it was spotted
by the Fifth Directorate which demanded that work should stop with one agent
and that there should be greater vigilance in the work with the other agent.
Independent penetration is, as we know, practised at all levels in the GRU.
The head of an intelligence point may check his agents and reveal negative
aspects in their work in good time. The heads of intelligence in military
districts check the heads of points and centres and the head of the GRU
checks his heads of military district intelligence. An illegal agent network
may be used to check the agents of the undercover residencies and
operational agent networks and vice-versa. Of course nobody suspects that he
is engaged in checking somebody else. All anybody knows is that he is
procuring material for the GRU.
Spetsnaz intelligence is the sharpest and most effective weapon in the
hands of the heads of intelligence directorates or departments. It consists
of two elements - Spetsnaz agents and Spetsnaz detachments. Spetsnaz agents
are recruited by an intelligence point, and the whole process of recruiting
and running agent-saboteurs is identical to the work with ordinary agents of
operational intelligence. However, their tasks differ in essence. The basic
task of the procurement agent is to provide necessary information. The task
of the Spetsnaz agent is to carry out terrorist acts. Intelligence
directorates try to recruit these agents from within the most important
economic and transport targets. On receipt of orders, they must be able and
willing to carry out acts of sabotage upon these targets. For the GRU the
most important thing is to render unserviceable power and transport targets,
electric power stations, electric power lines, oil and gas pipelines,
bridges, tunnels and railway equipment. Great stress is placed on carrying
out acts of sabotage which will have a strong effect on the morale of the
inhabitants over a wide area, such as the blowing up of a large dam or the
burning of oil storage tanks. Spetsnaz agents form the so-called 'sleeping'
agent network which does no work in peace-time but springs into action the
moment hostilities break out. Operational intelligence tries to limit its
meetings with these agents to exceptional cases.
The Spetsnaz detachment is quite different. It is the true elite of the
Soviet armed forces. Its members are crack soldiers and officers. On Soviet
territory they wear the uniform of airborne troops, on satellite territories
they are disguised as auxiliary detachments, normally signals units. (Of
course they have no connection with airborne troops or signals. Eight
divisions of airborne troops are subject to the commander of airborne
forces, who in his turn is answerable only to the Minister of Defence. The
airborne forces form a strategic element acting exclusively in the interests
of the higher command.) Spetsnaz detachments are an organ of the operational
field and act in the interests of fronts, fleets and armies. The Soviet Army
includes four naval Spetsnaz brigades (one to each fleet); sixteen Spetsnaz
brigades - one to each group of forces and the basic military districts; and
forty-one separate companies.
A Spetsnaz brigade consists of a headquarters company, three or four
airborne battalions and support detachments. In all there are 900 to 1,300
soldiers and officers ready to carry out terrorist operations in the rear of
the enemy. A Spetsnaz naval brigade is similar, containing a headquarters
company, a group of midget submarines, a battalion of parachutists and two
or three battalions of frogmen. Sometimes the Spetsnaz naval brigade is
confused with the brigade of the fleet marine infantry, mainly because naval
Spetsnaz use the uniform of marine infantry to disguise their soldiers and
officers. Spetsnaz companies in armies and tank armies consist of three
platoons of saboteurs and one communications platoon. This means that, all
told, there are in peace-time alone 27,000 to 30,000 first-class saboteurs
available. During mobilisation this number can be increased by four- or
five-fold by recalling reservists who have previously served in these
detachments.
The deployment of saboteurs in the enemy's rear is normally carried out
by parachute, though in the fleets frogmen also take part. Spetsnaz hardly
ever use helicopters, because the deployment generally takes place at a
considerable distance from the front line. groups of Spetsnaz brigades
are dropped at a depth of 500 to 1,000 kilometres to act in the interests of
the frontal forces who will be attacking through areas cleared by atomic
action, air attacks and sabotage activities. Simultaneously with the
dropping of the front brigade, each army taking part carries out the
dropping of its own Spetsnaz companies. These are also dropped in
groups, a maximum of fifteen consisting of five or six men each, at depths
of 100 to 500 kilometres. There are usually three or four armies and one
tank army in each front, so in the course of an attack at a frontal level
there are one brigade and four or five separate companies operating at a
depth from 100 to 1,000 kilometres in the rear of the enemy. In other words
around 250 groups totalling 1,500 to 1,700 men. It must be added that, on
West German territory for example, preparations are in hand for not one, but
four or five fronts to operate. At the same time the Spetsnaz agents are
activated.
The Spetsnaz detachments have two basic duties: the destruction of the
system of the State government and its armies, that is the destruction of
staff, command points, networks and lines of communication; and the
destruction of nuclear weapons and the means of supplying them - attacks on
depots and stores of nuclear weaponry and rockets, aerodromes, rocket
launchers and launching pads. Simultaneously with these two basic tasks, the
Spetsnaz detachments strive to disorganise the internal life of the State
and Army and to sow uncertainty and panic.
In carrying out the first task, the leading role is allocated to the
staff companies of the Spetsnaz brigades. These companies differ from other
detachments of Spetsnaz in that they are not manned by soldiers who are
serving their time, but by professional men, 'ensigns'. These Spetsnaz staff
companies are specially trained for the kidnapping or destruction of State
leaders of the enemy, members of the government and senior military
commanders. Their existence is cloaked in the very strictest secrecy.
Frequently, many officers and sergeants of Spetsnaz brigades do not even
suspect the existence of such companies in their brigades. They are kept
apart from the normal brigade and camouflaged as parachutists, boxers,
wrestlers, unarmed combat experts, marksmen, even sports teams of the
military district. The staff company of the Spetsnaz brigade is the only
unit which carries out its tasks not in camouflaged uniform but in civilian
clothes or in the military or police uniform of the enemy. These companies
are also the only ones amongst the Spetsnaz detachments which, in the course
of military operations, may establish contact and act together with the
agent-saboteurs of Spetsnaz. All the remaining units of saboteurs undertake
night flights, mine-laying and the seizure of prisoners in order to obtain
information. Tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles (AFVs) belonging to
the enemy are of special interest for saboteurs, and all groups have the
task of making sudden attacks on AFVs with the aim of stealing them for
future use in attacks against given targets. Several groups may take part in
an attack on a certain target, and after the attack they will disperse and
go their own ways. There is a constant alternation between the collecting of
information and the carrying out of sabotage acts. A group may collect
information on enemy troop movements in a certain region and transmit the
information to its staff, then it may destroy a rocket launcher in another
area, then go on to collect more information on troop movements. Everything
depends on the tasks set to the group and the initiative of the group
commander. When prisoners are taken, the saboteurs know no laws or humanity
in their methods of interrogation; nobody who has been in any way connected
with Spetsnaz will deny their brutality, which extends even to their own
members, because speed of results is paramount. They will kill their own
wounded -the group cannot transport a wounded man, nor can it let him fall
into the hands of the enemy. And if a rocket launcher or an aircraft
carrying nuclear weapons is ready for action, they will attack it even if it
means the inevitable destruction of the entire group.
Let us examine one case study which underlines both the importance and
effectiveness of operational intelligence. The greatest interest for the
staff of military districts is not the political situation or technology but
pure military information: the deployment, numbers, equipment and plans of
the troops of a probable enemy in sectors where an attack by Soviet forces
is likely. An agent who had been recruited by the second department of the
intelligence directorate of the Byelorussian Military District on West
German territory selected places for parachute landings by the Spetsnaz
groups. He photographed these locations and made diagrams. Obviously, since
the prime motive was sabotage, his choices were near important bridges, dams
and narrow passes in lakeland areas. His photographs were transported by
courier into East Germany to one of the intelligence points of the
Byelorussian Military District. Copies were also sent to the third and
fourth departments of the Byelorussian Military District intelligence
directorate. While they were being studied, an officer noticed a group of
American soldiers who kept on appearing in close-up. The soldiers were doing
something at a kind of metal hatchway on the side of the road, and the
suggestion was put forward that they were laying a cable for military
communications. This was scotched by officers of the fifth department who
had been invited for consultations and who said categorically that the
Americans would not have a cable in that region. The laying of military
cable on West German territory would in any case be discovered by agents of
the military district. In the opinion of the signals officers, the
photographs showed that the soldiers' work was unlikely to be concerned with
cables. The photographs were immediately dispatched to the GRU information
service, where a new suggestion was put forward. Could these not be
anti-personnel land mines which are prepared in peace-time where Soviet
sabotage units might be active in the event of war? This suggestion greatly
alarmed the GRU leadership. The fifth directorate immediately gave orders to
all intelligence directorates running agents in West Germany to pay
particular attention to the activities of groups of soldiers in the
neighbourhood of important bridges, dams, railway stations and crossroads.
At the same time, the first GRU directorate gave similar orders to all its
residents in West Germany. A month later, the information service of the GRU
had at its disposal thousands of photographs of groups of soldiers working
at metallic hatchways. Every hatchway that had been discovered was marked on
a map. This alone did not permit a final conclusion to be drawn about the
significance of the hatchways, and the GRU had a series of enlargements
taken from a distance of not more than one metre. The photographic
interpreters were interested to see that the thickness of the hatchways was
no greater than that of the wall of a good safe, but the locks would have
been the envy of any bank. This led to the opinion that the land mines were
of a more complicated design. Further analysis showed that the mine-shafts
were very deep, and sometimes placed at some hundreds of metres from the
object which they were supposed to destroy in case of war. It was this which
finally convinced the specialists that it was not a case of ordinary land
mines, but of a nuclear variety, whose purpose was not to counter a
parachute attack but to halt all Soviet troops in case they began an attack
on Europe. Simultaneously, one of the GRU residencies on West German
territory acquired documentary evidence confirming the conclusions of the
information service.
The possibility of nuclear land mines being used completely disrupted
all Soviet plans for a blitzkrieg attack on Europe. The general staff, the
Ministry of Defence and the Central Committee would now have to find new
ways of attack, new methods of employing their troops and ways and means of
surmounting strong radioactive fallout caused by the underground explosions.
In a word, all tactics, operational methods and strategic plans would have
to be changed. All this was thanks to the fact that the new NATO tactics had
become known to the general staff in good time.
Chapter Eight
Tactical Reconnaissance
There is yet another level to the practice of military intelligence.
Intelligence organs and detachments subject to tactical units and formations
of divisional strength and below, which facilitate their military
operations, come under the heading of tactical reconnaissance. Their
activities are under the full control of operational intelligence, which of
course comes under the control of the GRU central apparatus. So all tactical
reconnaissance organs have, in exactly the same way as operational
intelligence organs, a twofold subordination. The head of reconnaissance of
a division is subordinated to the chief of army intelligence, more
accurately the first group of the Army Intelligence Department. The chief of
regimental reconnaissance is subordinate to the regimental chief of staff
and the chief of divisional reconnaissance. Each motorised-rifle and tank
division has on its strength an independent reconnaissance battalion. The
word 'independent' shows that the battalion does not form part of the
regiment but is directly subject to the divisional staff. Each of the four
motorised-rifle and tank regiments on the strength of a division has a
reconnaissance company. Reconnaissance companies are controlled by the
regimental reconnaissance chiefs. Artillery and anti- aircraft missile
regiments are not included as their reconnaissance detachments are not
active in the enemy's rear.
A divisional independent reconnaissance battalion consists of a
headquarters, a deep reconnaissance company, two reconnaissance companies, a
company electronic reconnaissance and auxiliary services.
Deep Reconnaissance
The deep reconnaissance company is the est but the best of all the
companies and batteries of the division. There are twenty-seven men in the
company including six officers and an ensign. It has a headquarters of
the commander and a sergeant-major, and five reconnaissance groups of four
men, each with an officer at its head. There is a total of six jeeps, each
group having one and one for the commander.
The company's task is to discover and destroy enemy rocket launchers in
its divisional sector. Deep reconnaissance groups are deployed in the
enemy's rear by helicopter, either with or without their jeeps, to depths of
from thirty to 100 kilometres.
On discovering an enemy rocket installation, the group immediately
reports it to the staff. Should the rocket be ready for launching, the group
must attack it. However, unlike the Spetsnaz groups, the group will not kill
its wounded unless the action is on foot - a rare occurrence. The deep
reconnaissance company may also be called upon to kidnap staff officers and
to hunt for their staffs, but only in cases where the commander of a
division is certain that there are no enemy nuclear facilities in his
divisional sector.
The Reconnaissance Companies of the Battalion have exactly similar
organisation. In each company there are three tanks, seven reconnaissance
vehicles and ten motorcycles.
The Electronic Reconnaissance Companies have eighty men and thirty
vehicles with electronic equipment. The company operates only from its own
territory. Among its tasks are intercepting and deciphering radio
conversations of the enemy, taking bearings on radio stations and radio
locators, and monitoring the extent to which its own side observes radio
security regulations.
Each motor-rifle and tank regiment has its own reconnaissance company.
Regimental companies operate at a depth of up to fifty kilometres as against
the battalion company's operation to eighty kilometres. All these companies
penetrate enemy territory under their own power, using gaps in the enemy's
defence. The basic method of obtaining information is the capture and cruel
interrogation of prisoners.
The Soviet army has approximately 180 motor-rifle and tank divisions.
Many of these, especially those deployed in the rear, are under strength.
Undermanning is never allowed, however, in the case of reconnaissance
detachments. There is about the same number of independent reconnaissance
battalions, and there are also about 700 regimental reconnaissance
companies. In other words there are about 95,000 men directly under GRU
command in tactical reconnaissance. We have not included in this number the
strength of chemical, engineering and artillery reconnaissance companies
independent of these.
Chapter Nine
The Training and Privileges of Personnel
These are the educational institutions which take part in the training
of personnel for Soviet military intelligence: the Intelligence Faculty at
the General Staff Academy; the Training Centre of Illegals; the Military-
Diplomatic Academy; the Reconnaissance Faculty of the Frunze Military
Academy; the Reconnaissance Faculty of the Naval Academy; the Special
Faculty of the Military Signals Academy; the Military Institute of Foreign
Languages; the Cherepovetski Higher Military Engineering School for
Communications; the Special Faculty of the Higher Military Naval School of
Radio Electronics; the Spetsnaz Faculty of the Ryazan Higher Parachute
School; the Reconnaissance Faculty of the Kiev Higher Military Command
School; and the Special Faculty of the Second Kharkov Higher Military
Aviation and Engineering School.
This list gives an impression of the extent of the training of
specialists for the GRU system. Some of these educational establishments are
devoted exclusively to this work, others have only one faculty. However, in
any case, we are talking of many thousands of first-class specialists who go
into military intelligence every year. All the higher military schools give
instruction at university level to their students. The best of these
subsequently enter the academies which provide a second university
education.
Students entering the Soviet Army's higher military training
establishments undergo a period of instruction which lasts for four to five
years. The minimum age is seventeen, maximum twenty-four. Candidates must
have finished secondary education and be of normal mental and physical
development with a suitable ideological background. They sit an entrance
examination and are interviewed by a medical commission; they then take a
competitive examination. The vast majority of them have no idea of the true
character of the educational establishment they have chosen. In some cases,
the name of the school gives a reasonably exact idea of the subjects studied
in it. The Ulyanov Guards Higher Tank Command School leaves little to the
imagination. But what does a name like the Serpukhovski Higher Command
Engineering School tell us? If a candidate chooses it, he may be surprised
to find himself learning about strategic missile troops. Signals schools are
largely the same - the candidate has little idea of exactly what subjects
are studied there. He selects one of them, the Cherepovetski school, say,
and finds himself in strategic intelligence. The point is that there is no
choice.
Graduates of higher command schools receive the rank of lieutenant and
a university diploma on graduating. Graduates of higher military engineering
schools receive the rank of engineer lieutenant and an engineering diploma.
After graduation, the officer is posted to a unit on the instructions of the
General Staff, and from the first day of his service his fight with his
fellow officers for the right of entry to the academy begins. The academy is
the passport to the higher echelons of the Army. Without passing through the
academy, the officer may serve on until major or lieutenant-colonel level at
the most. Success in the academy opens wide horizons and speeds up progress
on the promotion ladder. The officer may submit his first application to the
academy after three years of service. The application is confirmed at every
level of command, beginning with his immediate superior. Any higher
commander may hold up the application under any pretext: that the officer is
too young; too old; too stupid; or too clever. In which case the officer
will put off his application until the next year ... and the next year, and
so on possibly for all his twenty-five years of service.
There are more than fifteen military academies in the Soviet Army, but
for most officers it does not matter which one he gets into. The important
thing is to get into one of them. If his commanders decide that an officer
is suitable, he must still pass examinations and undergo a rigorous entrance
competition. The period of study at all the academies is three years, and
they are all similar bar one, the General Staff Academy. To enter it there
is no competition and no examinations, nor are there applications for entry.
Candidates are selected by the Central Committee from the number of the most
successful and dedicated colonels and generals up to and including
colonel-general, who have already completed their study at one of the
military academies.
The General Staff Academy is the passport to the very highest levels of
Soviet military leadership. The colonel or general continues to serve and
never suspects that he may suddenly receive from the Central Committee an
invitation to attend yet a third spell of university education. The General
Staff Academy is the highest dream of the most eager careerists.
Let us examine the progress of an intelligence officer on the promotion
ladder. As a graduate of the intelligence faculty of the Kiev Higher Command
School, for example, he will be posted to the command of a reconnaissance
detachment of a regiment or division. Here begins the officer's gradual
upward movement on the service ladder, from platoon commander to company
commander to commander of regimental reconnaissance and deputy commander of
reconnaissance battalions. To secure further promotion, the officer must now
enter the reconnaissance faculty of the Frunze military academy. This same
faculty is also open to graduates of the Spetsnaz faculty of the Ryazan
Higher Parachute School. All officers study there together and then return
to their own units, only this time with a higher command.
So far all this is straightforward, provided that the officer's
superiors co- operate in signing the necessary documents. But one institute,
the Military Institute instructing in foreign languages, is rather peculiar.
This is a privileged establishment for the children of the highest echelons
of the Soviet Army. The Institute exists on the same basis as the Military
Academy, although young people enter it according to the rules laid down for
military schools. This means, in fact, that a candidate's father has only to
worry about placing his little son on the first rung of the military ladder
and the ladder itself will move upwards.
The period of study in the institute is from five to seven years
depending on the faculty. The student receives education to the level of
that of the military school and the rank of lieutenant; he then proceeds
with his training as he would in a normal military academy. That is to say,
these scions of the military aristocracy are spared the rigours of genuine
military service as well as the cruel competition between officers for the
right of entry to a military academy. Everything proceeds automatically.
The Institute is not only a stepping-stone to the highest Army ranks,
but to the highest ranks of the KGB too. The conditions of acceptance are
naturally graded according to rank: for the children of colonel-generals and
higher, there are no examinations; the children of lieutenant-generals
undergo a very cursory examination; and the children of major-generals
undergo the most rigorous examination. However, in order to soften this
clear class distinction, the Institute every year accepts a ten per cent
intake of 'non-aristocrats', sons of colonels and majors, sometimes even of
workers and kolkhozniks.
Discipline and competition are fearsome. Should any student commit the
slightest offence, he is speedily expelled from the Institute in disgrace.
But there is a deeply-entrenched set of privileges too. For the sons of
lieutenant-generals, and colonel-generals even more so, the special entrance
provides for the appointment of individual tutors and the taking of
examinations privately at home, so that the candidate does not get nervous.
For colonel-generals and above, there exists the privilege of being able to
send not only their sons to the Institute, but also their daughters, who
constitute a special little group. The girls are given instruction in French
for the sake of prestige and in English for obvious commercial reasons.
They, together with everybody else, receive officer's rank. They will find
their way into the Ministry of Defence.
After the Institute's final examinations, interested organisations
carry out their selection of the graduates. The first selection is carried
out by the KGB and the GRU according to the principle of 'one for you, one
for me'. There is no friction, firstly because the system has been laid down
for many years and secondly because KGB and GRU have different interests.
The KGB is quite happy to choose the sons of high-ranking, serving KGB
officers, but the GRU devotes its attentions largely to the proletarian ten
per cent. For two principal reasons the GRU has had a long-standing rule
that it will not admit the sons of high-placed parents into its
organisation, nor will it admit children of GRU officers whatever post they
occupy. Only after a father retires from the GRU can his son be considered
for admission. The reasoning goes that if a son is refused something the
father may refuse the same thing to all his subordinates. Secondly, there is
no father who really wants to risk his own career by linking it with that of
a son who is on agent work and to whom anything could happen. This principle
of the GRU's has to a very great extent eradicated corruption in the
selection of officers, although corruption flourishes in other GRU fields of
activity. (The KGB has adopted diametrically opposed principles. Everywhere
within it are the children of Tchekists, frequently under the direct
supervision of their fathers. This is justified by the false notion of
handing down traditions from father to son.)
BORISOV, Gennadi Alekseevich
BORODIN, Viktor Mikhailovich
BOROVINSKI, Petr Fedorovich
BUBNOV, Nikolai Ivanovich
BUTAKOV, Ilya Petrovich
DEMIN, Mikhail Alekseevich
DORONKIN, Kirill Sergeevich
EGOROV, Anatoli Egorovich
ERMAKOV, Aleksandr Ivanovich
ERSHOV, Yuri Alekseevich
EVDOKIMOV, Sergei Vasilevich
FEKLENKO, Vladimir Nikolaevich
FILATOV, Anatoli
FILIPPOV, Anatoli Vasilevich
GENERALOV, Vsevolod Nikolaevich
KAPALKIN, Sergei Vasilevich
KASHEVAROV, Evgeni Mikhailovich
KOZYPITSKI, Gleb Sergeevich
LOVCHIKOV, Vasili Dmitrievich
LAVROV, Valeri Alecseevich
LEMEKHOV, Dmitri Aleksandrovich
LOBANOV, Vitali Ilich
LOGINOV, Igor Konstantinovich
MOROZOV, Ivan Yakovlevich
MYAKISHEV, Aleksei Nikolaevich
NEDOZOROV, Valentin Viktorovich
NOSKOV, Nikolai Stepanovich
OSIPOV, Oleg Aleksandrovich
PAVLENKO, Yuri Kuzmich
PETROV, Nikolai Kirillovich
PIVOBAROV, Oleg Ivanovich
POLYAKOV, Boris Alekseevich
POPOV, Gennadi Fedorovich
POTAPENKO, Leonid Terentyevich
POTSELUEV, Evgeni Aleksandrovich
PUTILIN, Mikhail Semenovich
RATNIKOV, Valentin Mikhailovich
RADIONOV, Aleksandr Sergeevich
ROMANOV, Anatoli Aleksandrovich
RUBANOV, Aleksandr Nikolaevich
SALEKHOV, Yuri Nikolaevich
SAVIN, Viktor Grigorevich
SELUNSKI, Valentin Ivanovich
SEMENOV, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich
SERGEEV, Yuri Pavlovich
SHEPELEV, Viktor Petrovich
SHIPOV, Vladilen Nikolaevich
SOKOLOV, Viktor Aleksandrovich
STRELBITSKI, Vladimir Vasilevich
STUDENIKIN, Ivan Yakovlevich
SUKHAREV, Georgi Nikolaevich
SUVOROV, Georgi Borisovich
UMNOV, Valentin Aleksandrovich
VETROV, Yuri Pavlovich
VILKOV, Boris Nikolaevich
VINOGRADOV, Feliks Vasilevich
VOLNOV, Vladimir Grigorevich
VOLOKITIN, Vladimir Ivanovich
VOTRIN, Sergei Ivanovich
VYBORNOV, Ivan Yakovlevich
YAKUSHEV, Ivan Ivanovich
YURASOV, Viktor Vladimirovich
ZHELANNOV, Vladimir Mikhailovich
ZHEREBTSON, Aleksandr Vasilevich
ZHERNOV, Leonid Andreevich
ZHURAVLEV, Ivan Mikhailovich
ZOTOV, Viktor Nikolaevich
Appendix C
Some Case Histories of GRU Activities
Rather than sprinkling the text with examples I have put together a
representative sample of GRU officers uncovered in the course of operations
abroad, as reported in the press. The number of GRU officers caught and
expelled and the nature of their activities is indicative of the power and
scale of the GRU.
Canada and the United States
In June 1980 the Canadians announced that they had requested the
withdrawal of three Soviet officials from the Embassy, Captain Igor A.
Bardeev, Colonel E.I. Aleksanjan and the chauffeur Sokolov. The case
involved an unnamed individual employed in a sensitive position in the USA,
who had been in contact with the Soviet Embassy and been given the task of
obtaining information. Soviet officials had maintained clandestine contact
with the American citizen over a period of some months.
France
In October 1979 the Naval and Air Attach6 of the Soviet Embassy in
France, Vladimir Kulik, was expelled from the country. He was an officer of
the GRU working in French military circles and had been in contact with
firms specialising in military supplies. In 1979, at a reception in another
embassy, he had met by chance a young Frenchman employed in the armaments
department of an important organisation who was carrying out studies on
behalf of the Ministry of Defence. Kulik sought to maintain contact with the
Frenchman, and in due course offered him a large sum of money for documents
from his place of work. He also sought to find out details about other staff
at the organisation where the Frenchman worked. Kulik was arrested at the
moment when he was about to receive from the Frenchman a document about a
French weapon.
In February 1980 the Soviet Consul and No. 2 in Marseilles was
withdrawn. He had been detained by the French authorities between Toulon and
Marseilles with plans of the Mirage 2000 fighter aircraft in his briefcase.
They had just been handed to him by an agent.
Travkov had arrived in 1977. The area of Marseilles and the Bouches du
Rhone contains many installations and objects of defence interest. Travkov
was officially concerned with 'scientific subjects connected with the port
and airport', and these interests enabled him to meet people involved in the
aeronautical field and to visit firms and installations. Travkov obtained
copies of files on staff working on defence contracts and used the details
thus revealed to build up a network of informers. Four Frenchmen were taken
into custody at the time of Travkov's arrest. Travkov had also been
interested in the twin-jet Mirage 4000 which used the same engine as the
2000.
The Soviet Press Attache declared the French action a 'provocation by
the police' but the documents were, of course, genuine. A few days later
Frolov, himself a KGB officer, was required to leave France too. He had been
in Marseilles for two years and had earlier had a posting to Paris. His job,
like Travkov's, had given him opportunities to meet all sorts of people and
he had made the most of it. Both Travkov and Frolov were personable,
charming individuals who made many friends.
Great Britain
Anatoliy Pavlovich Zotov, the Soviet Naval Attache in London, was
expelled in December 1982 after trying to set up a network of agents to
gather information about weapons systems and electronic hardware used by the
Royal Navy during the Falklands campaign. His interests had also extended to
the Royal Navy's nuclear submarines.
Japan
A retired Japanese major-general, Yukihisa Miyanaga was arrested in
Tokyo in January 1980. He was a GRU agent whose case officer at the time of
his arrest was Colonel Yuriy N. Koslov, Military and Air Attache at the
Soviet Embassy. Miyanaga had been recruited as an agent in 1974 by one of
Koslov's predecessors. He was equipped with and instructed in various means
of clandestine communication, including particular ciphers for use with
radio. Miyanaga and two other officers of the Japanese Ground Self-Defence
Force were subsequently sentenced to long terms of imprisonment for passing
military secrets to the GRU.
Norway
Valeriy Moiseevich Mesropov served in Norway as an engineer with a
Russian firm in Drammen, as a representative of Stankoimport, from 1968 to
1970. Mesropov, who was not a diplomat, was arrested in 1970 on suspicion of
intelligence activity and finally expelled from Norway for security reasons
in September 1970.
Igor Ivanovich Zashchirinsky served in Norway from 1974 to 1977 as
representative at the Soviet Trade Delegation of a number of Soviet
import/export organisations. He was engaged on clandestine operations to
obtain information and products of a scientific/technical nature including
material classified as Top Secret. He too was declared persona non grata on
28 January 1977.
In June 1983 Lt-Colonel Zagrebnev was expelled from Norway. He was
Military Attache at the Embassy in Oslo, and had visited a military area in
the north of Norway, where he had attempted to bribe a Norwegian officer to
hand over secret information.
Spain
Oleg Churanov, Director of Aeroflot in Madrid, was arrested in February
1980, accused of espionage for the Soviet Union. His case was part of
another expulsion of six officials who had already left. It was alleged that
Churanov had bought plans of certain aviation electronic equipment. The
'seller' was a member of the Spanish Secret Services who purported to be a
member of a Spanish firm. Churanov was an engineer who had been Aeroflot
representative in Canada before coming to Spain. He was very popular with
staff and pilots at Madrid airport where he had shown interest in radio
frequencies and the security regulations at the airport. He had also tried,
on one occasion, to get a Spanish pilot to introduce him into the American
airport at Tarrejon. The Spanish security authorities themselves claimed
that Churanov was a member of the GRU.
In May 1982 the Aeroflot Director in Spain was again expelled for
spying, this time with another official. Vasiliy Fedorin and Vladimir
Tertishnikov were accused of trying to obtain information on the supply of
US military materials to Spain and on Spanish weapons manufacturers.
Sweden
In March 1979 Stig Bergling, a Swedish police inspector and reserve
officer, was arrested in Israel. He had been an agent of the GRU for some
ten years. In January 1969 he had begun service with the Police Board, and
from 1971-75 was given leave of absence to serve in the Defence Ministry and
to do duty with the UN. Bergling had access to information about security
police personnel and counter-espionage organisations; and about defence
establishments and Swedish defence plans. He was equipped with radio to
receive messages from the GRU, and also made use of micro-dots. He kept in
touch with his case officers in a number of countries, particularly in the
Middle East, having been trained in East Berlin.