SALT
RESEARCH
RUSSIAN ‘ILLEGALS’ MOLES AND SLEEPER SPIES
1. Excerpt from an interview with Alexander Kousminov by the California Literary Review
Alexander Kouzminov was an intelligence operative in the 1980s and early 1990s for the KGB and its successor, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. He is the author of Biological Espionage, an inside account of his work within the top secret “Directorate S” where he helped implement Russia’s plans for biological espionage and biological warfare. He currently lives in New Zealand with his wife and family.
Directorate S
The elite inner ore of the RUSSIAN FORGEIN INTELIGENCE SERIVE (FIS) which carries out special operations in target countries which carries out special operations in target countries primarily through the activities of ‘illegals. ’‘Illegals’ are a network of Russian intelligence operatives, who are secretly deployed to the West and covertly operate under assumed names, masquerading as citizens. The illegal’s are prepared for work in target countries for a period normally of 15-20 years (or even more).
In the period of the 1980s and early 1990s the key tasks of Department 12 were:
international biological espionage;
1. running of ‘illegals’
2. cultivation, development, recruitment and running of agents (citizens of the Western target countries).
3. planning and preparation for acts of biological terrorism and sabotage on the territory of target countries, carrying them out in an event of a war and/or a large-scale military conflict between the Soviet Union (then Russia) and the West.
4. supporting the then existent Soviet and then Russian biological weapons program.
Definitition of ‘sleeper’ agent in Direcotrate S
A ‘sleeping agent’ is one who has lost his or her intelligence opportunities, but who is still important for Directorate S, and with whom contacts have been stopped, but may be recalled even after a long period of non-operation.
Running ‘Ilegals’
Each residency (rezidentura) of the Soviet (Russian after 1991) Foreign Intelligence Service overseas has a so-called ‘Line N,’ meaning ‘support of illegals.’ There are ‘Line N’ officers in each KGB and then each SVR residency whose prime task is to support the operations of Directorate S that are carried out by ‘illegals.’ It included numerous important tasks and activities, for example, clandestine meetings with ‘illegals,’ their surveillance, financial support, checking their contacts, and many other trade-craft activities.
Examples of Illegals countroled by Kouvminov
I can give you a few examples:First, two ‘illegals’ codenamed TREFY. They operated in Western Europe, especially in Western Germany. One of their tasks was to gather information about classified and secret military medical and biological labs in Western Europe, especially in Germany, and the research experiments that were carried out in them. Their other task was to seek out people who were involved in secret medical/biological experiments or who had access to them, who could be approached for co-operation with Russian Foreign Intelligence.
In the UK was a husband-and-wife team codenamed ROSA and ROMAN. ROSA operated in England from the end of the 1970s under cover as a research-microbiologist. She worked in a scientific research institute in a town near London. The institute was involved in experiments with potentially dangerous pathogens of lethal human and animal diseases, and we justly presumed that it was also involved in England’s covert biological warfare program. Copies of reports about the results of experiments in her lab came from ROSA regularly. She also sent ‘live stuff’: test tubes and ampoules with cultures of new strains, media, samples of new vaccines, etc. ROMAN, a molecular biologist by training, was sent as her back-up. He completed his PhD in one of London’s universities, and became a member of the young scientific research community. His primary task at this stage was to help ROSA gain intelligence information about secret microbiological research experiments, and the secret study and cultivation of research-biologists and government officials with good prospects in areas of interest to Department 12. ROMAN died in a car accident in 1984, shortly after finishing his PhD while both ‘illegals’ were on holiday in Italy.
I helped to train an ‘illegal’ codenamed ANVAR who was deployed to Western Europe to work in Scandinavian countries and in the UK. His primary tasks were biological espionage and support in the development and cultivation of agents.
One of my agents, codenamed RIO, was born in Brazil. He operated in Portugal and in France. His long-term assignment as a young research microbiologist included penetration into the Pasteur Institute in France, one of Department 12’s main targets in that country. We also planned to use RIO in the USA.
Another of my agents, YAN, was a young medical doctor from East Germany who operated in Western Germany. We planned to use him for the secret study of Western specialists – medical researchers, biologists and officials – with the ultimate goal being their recruitment. He was also directed to obtain information about German genetic-engineering research with dangerous pathogens, and the protective and preventive measures against them that existed in Germany. YAN was to learn the addresses of research laboratories, institutes, centers and military facilities in the countries of Western Europe that were undertaking covert experiments with recombinant micro-organisms, and to develop relationships with their researchers and officials.
In addition, I would like to mention a few ‘illegals’ who I did not control, but about whom I write in my book. It is hard to name all of them in the interview, but if a reader is interested in more details about how Directorate S works with ‘illegals’ and valuable agents, he may find more details in my book.
Another husband-and-wife team of illegals, Elena and Dmitry Olshevsky, operated in Canada in the 1990s. They were arrested in 1996 and sent back to Moscow in 1998. In Toronto, they lived under the names of Ian and Laurine Lambert.
The ‘illegals’ Igor and Natalia Lyuskow, were documented as citizens of the UK under the names of James Peatfield and Anna Marie Nemeth. They were arrested with British passports during their training assignment in Western Europe in 1992.
Before my time there was the famous husband-and-wife team of Moris and Leontina Cohen, aka Peter and Helen Kroger (codename DACHNIKI). They operated at the start of the 1940s in the USA and made enormous contributions to the Soviet efforts to obtain atomic secrets. Moris Cohen also was the head of an agent-network codenamed VOLONTERY (Volunteers) in the USA. Later, in the 1950s - till 1961, under new cover they operated in England. In England, this husband-and-wife agent team was put under the control of Gordon Lonsdale, aka Konon Molody, of the KGB Illegal network. Until 1961, these illegals gathered and transferred to the Soviet Union Britain’s most valuable secrets about the creation of biological weapons.
Day X
The formula ‘Day X’ in our documents meant the beginning of a large-scale war against the West. Our Department 12 (together with Department 8, - in charge of preparing acts of sabotage and terror on the enemy’s territory in an event of war and/or a large scale military conflict) had to participate in this through so-called ‘direct actions,’ which were clandestine acts of biological sabotage and terrorism against ‘potential strike targets’ on the enemy’s territory.
The ‘potential strike targets’ were:
1. army targets, including classified military biological and medical research labs/centers; biological warfare ammunition stockpiles; military garrisons and bases; and military biological (and other) defense commands, including those that were looking after surveillance of biological weapons activities;
2. civil (or so-called ‘soft’) targets, including public drinking-water supplies, food stores, and processing plants; water purification systems; vaccine, drug and toxin repositories; pharmaceutical and biotechnological plants, etc; and
the economy of a potential enemy.
3. The list of potential targets could be extended.
Terrorist ‘illegals’ who were trained for ‘direct actions’ were to be used in the event of ‘Day-X.’ Among the ongoing tasks of Department 8 were the training of deep-core agents, ‘illegal’ terrorists, and fighters responsible for the preparation and carrying out of single and massive terrorist acts, acts of sabotage and diversion, and the assassination of key officials in important positions in various target countries in the event of a large-scale war or a local military conflict of the Soviet Union.
The close partnership of Department 12 and Department 8 began some years before they were joined. We (some officers of Department 12) were requested to advise them (Department 8) of vulnerable targets on foreign territory, the kind of targets the destruction of which - or even short-term disruption of which - could have severe ecological, agricultural and public health consequences. More details about our partnership I provide in my book.
Our ‘tools’ for these actions included first and foremost, terrorist ‘illegals’ whom we had planted in the target countries. These were the most reliable, well-trusted special agents.
2. The Sword and the Shield, by Christopher Andrew & Vasili Mitrokhin, page 8
Mitrokin thus found himself spending more time with files of directorate S, the most secret in the FCD. The illegal’s maintained a curious mystique within the KGB. Before being posted abroad every illegal would be required to swear a solemn, if somewhat melodramatic oath:
Deeply valuing the trust placed upon me by the party and the fatherland, and imbued with a sense of intense gratitude for the decision to send me to the sharp edge of the homeland, I would rather parish than betray the secrets entrusted to me or put them in the hands of the adversary materials which could cause political harm to the interests of the state. With every heartbeat, with every day that passes, I swear to serve the Party, the homeland and the Soviet people.
The records of Directorate S revealed some remarkable individual acheivements. KGB illegal’s successfully established identities as foreign nationals in a great variety of professions ranging from Costa Rican Ambassador to piano tuner.to the Governor of New York. Even in the Gorbachev era KGB propaganda continued to depict the Soviet illegal as the supreme embodiment of the chivalric ideal in the service of secret intelligence. The retired British KGB agent George Blake wrote in 1990:
Only a man who believes very strongly in an ideal and serves a great cause will agree to embark on such a career, though the word “calling” is perhaps appropriate here. Only an intelligence service which works for a great cause can ask for such a sacrifice from it’s officers. That is why, as far as I know, at any rate in peacetime, only the Soviet intelligence service has “illegal residents.”
The files of Directorate S noted by Mitrokhin reveal a quite different kind of illegal. Alongside the committed FCD officers who maintained their cover and professional discipline throughout their postings, there were others who could not cope when confronted by the contrast the Soviet propaganda image of capitalist exploitation and the reality of life in the West.
3. Book: U.N. Nuke Watchdog Spies for Russia, Wired
By Noah Shachtman January 21, 2008 | 10:48:00 Am
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/01/book-un-nuke-wa.html#comments
Another great catch by CQ's Jeff Stein: "The top U.N. official responsible for monitoring the clandestine nuclear programs of Iran and Pakistan is a Russian spy, according to a new book on Moscow’s espionage operations in the United States and Canada."
The official is identified only by his Russian code name, ARTHUR, but other sources identified him as Tariq Rauf, 54, a Pakistani-born Canadian who is chief of verification and security-policy coordination at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The job “puts him in direct contact with both inspectors and countries around the globe,” a Canadian online magazine reported last year. “Rauf is responsible for ensuring IAEA scientists get into countries such as Iran and negotiating the access they need to completely verify the use of nuclear material.”
The allegations appear in “Comrade J: The Untold Secrets of Russia’s Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War” by former Washington Post reporter Pete Earley, author of two previous books on Russian spying in the United States.
The book amounts to a blistering memoir by Sergei Tretyakov, a former top Russian intelligence operative stationed in New York and Canada during the 1990s, first with the communist-era KGB and then its successor, the SVR...
Rauf called Tretyakov’s allegation “nonsense.”
He had “never” worked “for any intel types whatsoever. I am a impartial loyal international civil servant,” he said by e-mail from the IAEA’s headquarters in Vienna on Friday.
But in the first of two telephone conversations earlier in the day, Rauf was far less dismissive, declining an opportunity to flatly deny the allegations. He refused to say whether he knew or had ever met Tretyakov, who worked under diplomatic cover.
4. Vasiliy Mitrokhin, The KGB in Afghanistan, CWIHP Working Paper No. 40, February 2002, Note 100, pp. 93-95.
Directorate S
http://www.trust-us.ch/cryptome/01-Cryptome-061213/spy-illegal.htm
Directorate S was the most important branch of intelligence, namely the Illegal branch. It consisted of 13 departments:
1. Work with trainer-Illegals, work relating to the Socialist countries under the codename 'PROGRESS', one-time assignments abroad, and the selection of trained individuals as dangles under the auspices of the FCD, the SCD, the 3rd Directorate, and the KGB of individual republics.
2. Documentation of Illegals.
3. Training of the Special Reserve. [Osobyy Rezerv - O.R.]
4. Work from Illegal positions on the American continent.
5. European countries, Australia and New Zealand.
6. The Chinese People's Republic, Japan and Asia.
7. African countries and countries in the Near and Middle East.
8. Conduct of special operations.
9. Security Department.
10. Training and deployment of Special Agents through the German, Jewish and Armenian emigration channel.
11. Strategic communications.
12. Department P - work under cover of the USSR Chamber of Commerce.
[In addition]
Group R - carried out analytical work for the leadership.
First Section - handled language training.
Second Section - handled photography and radio, SW, fabrication of documentation and seals.
Third Section - handled clandestine premises, villas, postal addresses within the
The 8th Department was integrated in the Directorate S structure in 1976. Before that it had been an autonomous section attached to the FAD (the 13th Department, or Department V). The defection of an officer of the Department, Lyalin, to the West and the British Government's subsequent expulsion of 105 KGB officers and agents in September 1971 placed the Department and the Residency in an exceptionally difficult situation. The London Residency was compelled to switch entirely to work from official positions. The process of re-establishing the agent network went on until the end of 1975.
The Department was engaged in what is known in the criminal jargon as wet jobs, i.e. murder, sabotage, arson, explosions, poisoning, mechanical breakdowns and terrorism. Its main base was located in the Moscow-region township of Balashikha, in the premises of the former Higher Intelligence School. The training grounds were dispersed throughout the country. Parachute training from aircraft took place at a training ground near Kaunas.
The Department trained sabotage and Intelligence groups. The daring lads and fly-by-nights selected for the purpose underwent basic sabotage training, according to the timetable, they were called up for 45 days for training, and were grouped in small detachments. From time to time, emergency call-outs were arranged, when in response to a given signal the members of the group were to gather with their essential kit at a prearranged place.
The sabotage and intelligence groups were trained for operations in a specific area of a country. The Department monitored practically all the most important enterprises, hydro-electric stations, nuclear stations, tunnels, depots, bridges, oil pipelines and cables. It studied suitable landing places -- the seashore, aircraft landing strips, the topography of the locality, the settlements within reach, climatic conditions at various times of the year, the direction of the wind in various seasons, characteristic landmarks, and routes from the landing place to the target of sabotage. The route to be taken by sabotage intelligence groups and the sabotage targets were photographed and located on the map.
In order to disguise sabotage and intelligence groups as local inhabitants, the necessary kit was acquired -- samples of military uniforms, badges of rank for officers and other ranks, in mountain rifle units, those of railway track men, forestry officials, police and gendarmerie officers, and articles of civilian clothing worn by the population in the landing areas were purchased.
The language and phonetic peculiarities of the given area were studied, as was the timing and nature of state and religious festivals and popular celebrations. Ahead of time storage places were sought and prepared, and weapons and radio transmitter-receivers were pre-positioned in them. Arms were acquired abroad by various means and were accumulated gradually for eventual use.
There were occasions when the KGB resorted to compromising a foreign state. Thus, on the eve of the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet forces in 1968, the operational group V of the KGB plenipotentiary apparatus in the GDR consisting of G. T. Panasyuk, A. Botyan and V. P. Ryabov, built a cache on Czech territory and placed West German and American weapons within it. They led the Czechoslovak Security Service to this cache. The suggestion was that the BND and CIA were preparing their people for armed insurrection against the Socialist achievements of the people. The KGB drafted the text of an article for the press. To his credit, the Minister of Internal Affairs of Czechoslovakia, (codename 'Pavel'), doubted the plausibility of the version put forward.
The idea of setting up and discovering a cache of American arms in Afghanistan on the border with Iran was being developed by the Intelligence agencies in order to accuse the USA publicly of interfering in the internal affairs of a sovereign state.
In 1982, a 'training center for Afghanistan' was set up at Balashikha; an officer of the 8th Department, Kikot, who had been recalled from Havana, was appointed to head it. The Department was fully engaged in developing methods of sabotage and terrorism in the Afghan theatre. Israeli experience against Palestinian camps in Lebanon and Palestinian methods against the Israelis were used in the Afghan refugee camps and in heavily populated areas of Pakistan.
At Balashikha, there were also courses for frontier guard officers and a 100-hour program designed to raise the combat qualifications of young KGB officers.
The Department painstakingly studied the organization and structure of guerrilla detachments, the development of a resistance movement, and methods and means ofarnied struggle abroad.
For the purpose of training foreigners, there were special 'Vystrel' courses for officers at Solnechnegorsk (near Moscow) on the theme of 'Military leadership personnel'. The participants became commanders of armed formations operating against their own government.
Agent groups of foreign nationality generally consisted of a Special Agent, a support point agent, an agent who was the keeper of a post-box, and agents who carried out the actual operations. The support point agents were intended to ensure the combat effectiveness, security and viability of intelligence and sabotage detachments on the territory of foreign countries. The keepers of post-boxes were used by the intelligence service for clandestine postal communication with the sabotage and intelligence groups.
All files on agents of foreign or Soviet nationality which for some reason were consigned to archives were examined by the 8th Department with a view to selecting people for its purposes.
Not less than 4-6 targets a year were processed by the Department for the F Line, i.e. sabotage.
The landing of a sabotage and intelligence group was arranged by night, or by day in foul weather or fog. Each group consisted of 15-25 individuals, but the sabotage network could also consist of individual intelligence officers, Illegals or agents. The activities of a sabotage or intelligence group were similar to guerrilla operations, but differed in that the guerrillas relied on contact with the population, with the masses, and were conducting permanent armed struggle. The sabotage people, on the other hand, were sent in from somewhere outside or were recruited individually on the spot and carried out specific sabotage assignments. Kutusov included guerrilla warfare in his strategic plan for a military campaign. The people of Afghanistan provided a unique example of the conduct of guerrilla warfare on a wide scale. Alone, without an army, without modern weapons, and almost without support, the Afghan people successfully waged war exclusively by guerrilla methods against the army of a superpower, which used inhumane methods of waging war, and with the government forces of its own country. Before the eyes of the whole world, the Soviet nomenklatura spent 7 years destroying a nation, while in its annual adverse resolutions the UN did not even name the bandits, feebly repeating calls for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan. The League of Nations was more decisive, as for its aggression against Finland the USSR was expelled from its ranks as an aggressor.
The term 'diversion' was introduced in Russia under Peter I. The 1716 military manual relating to the 'Corps Volant' -- mobile corps -- specified: "It is to go into [the enemy's] rear or enter his territory and cause a diversion."
The meaning of the term has evolved. At one time it was considered to be a maneuver on the enemy's flanks or rear o distract attention from the main operations. Later on it came to mean the activities of small secret detachments or groups designed to distract attention from the main operations. Later on it came to mean the activities of the small secret detachments or groups designated to weaken the enemy side whenever it could be reached in order to prepare the ground for major blown in another location.
On the eve of the Second World War, diversion came to mean subversive activities, wrecking designed to damage the enemy's economic and military might. Diversion is an extreme form of an intelligence service's subversive activity: it consists of wrecking or damaging enterprises, installations, transport and communications, or any other Property through explosions, arson or other means, causing mass poisoning, spreading epidemics and epizootics with the aim of wrecking and undermining a state and causing panic. Diversion causes casualties and has a negative effect on the population's morale.
The Cheka made skilful use of diversionary methods against the White Guards, the Russian emigration foreign organizations. Preparation for a large-scale diversionary warfare was begun in 1925. Thousands of diversion specialists were trained and new diversion devices were produced. In 1929 ajoint work-shop/laboratory was set up in Kiev under the diversion school to devise and test diversion devices. New types of explosives were invented, together with delayed-action mines and toxic chemical compounds; experiments were carried out on the long-term storage of these [devices] as well as weapons, ammunitions, foodstuffs and medicines in caches (in the ground and under water); compact mines for use against railways were produced, as well as mines camouflaged as ordinary everyday objects -- coal, flux, waste metal, logs, peat, coke -- and also delayed-action grenades with a charge consisting of 75% potassium chlorate and 20-25 powdered sugar.
All this was tested in combat conditions in the Spanish Civil War. Mines camouflaged as a load of coal were put on boar steamships in Latin-American and European countries. Two admittedly not very successful attempts were made to set fire to the Polish passenger liner "Stefan Batory."
Diversionary detachments operated within the republican Army. Towards the end of 1937 a number of diversion brigades were formed into the 14th Partisan Corps under the command of D. Ungri. H. D. Marnsurov was attached to him as a diversion specialist.
In 1938 the Cheka placed in caches over 2,000 tons of explosives, weapons and ammunition, using foreign markings and materials.
The term "ideological diversion" is now widely used to cover radio, press and television propaganda. The Cheka considers objective information from the West to be most dangerous as it acts as an instrument of political influence in all spheres of Soviet society; it deprives the nomenklatura of its monopoly right to interpret events; the struggle is waged on Soviet grounds; it gives the population the illusion that there is a growing understanding between the USSR and the West; it contains elements of incitement and it stimulates dissidence.
The nomenklatura will therefore not tolerate the free exchange of ideas, information and ordinary people. For its part, it exploits subversive forces, and the communist parties operate as a subversive fifth column in the rear of the democracies.
