AP, 29 June 2010: One of the Cold War’s most famous defectors says Russia may have as many as 50 deep-cover couples spying inside the United States. Oleg Gordievsky, a former deputy head of the KGB in London who defected in 1985, said Russian President Dmitry Medvedev would know the number of illegal operatives in each target country.
The 71-year-old ex-double agent told The Associated Press on Tuesday that, based on his experience in Russian intelligence, he estimates that Moscow likely has 40 to 50 couples operating under cover in the U.S. “For the KGB, there’s usually 40 to 50 couples, all illegal,” said Gordievsky, who defected to Britain after supplying information during the Cold War to the U.K.’s MI6 overseas spy agency.
Gordievsky said he spent nine years working in the KGB directorate in charge of illegal spy teams. “The president will know the number, and in each country how many — but not their names,” Gordievsky said. . . .
. . . . Countries often have a number of intelligence officials whose identities are declared to their host nation, usually working in embassies, trade delegations and other official posts. Gordievsky said he estimates there are 400 declared Russian intelligence officers in the U.S., and likely 40 to 50 couples charged with covertly cultivating military and diplomat officials as sources of information.
He said the complexity involved in training and running undercover teams means Russia is unlikely to have significantly more operatives than during his career. “I understand the resources they have, and how many people they can train and send to other countries,” Gordievsky said. “It is possible there may be more now, but not many more, and no more than 60.” . . .
Daily Telegraph, 5 March 2010: . . . . The obituaries mentioned that, in 1995, Michael Foot won libel damages against The Sunday Times, for saying he had been an agent of the KGB during the Cold War. These accusations came from Oleg Gordievsky, the KGB officer who defected from the Soviet Union to Britain in 1985, our most important Cold War catch. Note that Foot did not sue Gordievsky for his book of memoirs (Next Stop Execution) from which the claims derived.
Some years ago, I discussed these claims with Gordievsky. He also told me about the even more serious accusations against Jack Jones, the most powerful trade union leader of the 1970s. After Jones died last year, Christopher Andrew’s official history of MI5 confirmed that Jones had been a knowing KGB agent. Gordievsky was also proved right about other KGB contacts, such as Richard Gott, of The Guardian, who admitted that he had taken “Moscow gold”. Without the benefit of KGB and MI6 files, Gordievsky’s evidence is hard to corroborate, but his record is sound.
This week, Gordievsky gave me his full account. At the end of the 1940s, he said, when Foot was editor and managing director of the Left-wing paper Tribune (he continued in the latter role until 1974), the KGB decided that he was “progressive”. By this they meant that he was sympathetic to the Soviet Union, at that time run by the mass-murderer Joseph Stalin. Their officers in London, describing themselves as diplomats, approached Foot. He readily agreed to see them in Tribune’s offices. There they chatted to him and praised the paper, which was always short of money. They left a £10 note (about £250 in today’s values) in his jacket pocket.
For nearly 20 years, these meetings continued, roughly monthly. Foot did not conceal them, exactly, but they were not publicly known. He accepted the money, which was slipped into his pocket in a way which allowed him to ignore it, each time the KGB came. Foot freely disclosed information about the Labour movement to them. He told them which politicians and trade union leaders were pro-Soviet, even suggesting which union bosses should be given the present of Soviet-funded holidays on the Black Sea.
A leading supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Foot also passed on what he knew about debates over nuclear weapons. In return, the KGB gave him drafts of articles encouraging British disarmament which he could then edit and publish, unattributed to their real source, in Tribune. There was no protest by Foot to the KGB over the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, and he quite often visited the Soviet Union to a top-level welcome. The KGB classified him as an agent, codenamed BOOT. . . . .
Next Stop Execution
KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev
The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB
♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 205–National Security Policy and Counterintelligence Implications of Denial and Deception Practices
