Showing posts with label G. Show all posts
Showing posts with label G. Show all posts
Sunday, October 31, 2010
GUNNERSIDE
The code name assigned by the Special Operations Executive to a plan to infiltrate saboteurs into Norway in February 1943 to destroy the hydroelectric plant at Vermork upon which the Nazis were dependent for the production of heavy water, a commodity thought to be an essential moderator in an atomic pile when achieving a chain reaction.
GUNMAN
An American code name for the investigation conducted in 1984 into the discovery that a consignment of IBM Selectric typewriters had been intercepted by the KGB while consigned to the U.S. embassy in Moscow and fitted with miniature transmitters that recorded each keystroke. The typewriters were used in the embassy until the transmitters were found and removed.
GUILLAUME, GUNTER
Aclose friend and one of three personal assistants to German chancellor Willi Brandt, for whom he worked in his private office; he was also a long-term mole run personally by Markus Wolf, the legendary chief of the East German Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung (HVA), who had recruited him and his wife Christel 18 years earlier.
Guillaume had arrived in West Germany as a refugee in 1956, four years after he had joined the East German army as a loyal Communist party member and had served as an officer with the rank of captain. He had also been trained as an agent, and when he settled in Frankfurt, supposedly as an authentic refugee, Guillaume joined the Social Democratic party (SDP) as a voluntary worker before becoming a full-time party functionary. In 1970 he expressed the wish to become a civil servant in Bonn and, having sailed through a security check that failed to reveal his service as an officer in the East German army, was appointed to the economic and social affairs staff of the Chancellery. Soon afterward, Brandt had picked him to act as his link to the SDP, and he maintained an office both in the party’s headquarters and in the Palais Schaumburg. For the next three years Guillaume enjoyed access to the very highest classifications of secret information and passed it back to Wolf, who shared it with Moscow. As well as material about West Germany’s foreign policy and relations with NATO, Guillaume passed on details of Brandt’s rather exotic extramarital affairs which, at that time, were completely unknown to the public.
The spy’s run of luck ended when suspicions were raised about the existence of a top-level mole with direct access to Brandt, and the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV) launched an investigation. Exactly how the BfV got onto Guillaume remains a matter of speculation, and much of what has been written about the case, including by Wolf himself, has suggested that the BfV initiated an investigation after a study of illicit East–West communications found traces of an illegal code-named GEORG who had completed several missions in the 1950s. Allegedly a detailed analysis of contemporary decrypted East German wireless traffic had revealed a message, dating back to April 1957, in which a source known as “G.G.” had been sent birthday greetings. Supposedly this clue had led the BfV mole hunters to conduct a lengthy trawl for anyone with the same birthday, and eventually the field had narrowed to Guillaume’s son Pierre. “G.G.” was somehow linked to the missions undertaken by GEORG, and both agents were tentatively identified as Guillaume, who was placed under intensive surveillance.
Gunter Nollau, the BfV’s counterintelligence chief briefed his interior minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, on 29 May 1973 and informed him that Guillaume was the subject of an investigation. Wolf was probably told about this much later by his star mole in the BfV, Klaus Kuron (who had offered to spy for the HVA in 1982 and continued undetected until the collapse of East Germany in 1989), but instead of moving Guillaume away from access, no action was taken, and this inertia led to Nollau’s subsequent resignation. Thus, much to everybody’s embarrassment, Guillaume was allowed to continue spying for 11 months before he was finally confronted and was even allowed to accompany Brandt on his holiday to his hideaway retreat at Hamas, Norway. During these final months Christel reported that she thought she was being watched, but Wolf did not take much notice of this warning, on the assumption that agents often develop a healthy degree of paranoia, and failed to extract his two agents before they were finally confronted by the BfV. Wolf was also influenced, he admitted later, by Christel’s new job as an aide to Georg Leber, Brandt’s defense minister. Whatever the source of the initial tip, Guillaume came under intensive surveillance, which he also spotted. He was arrested by the BfV on 24 April 1974, provoking a major political scandal that led to Brandt’s resignation just 12 days later. When the police burst into his house, Guillaume did not attempt to deny he was a spy—indeed, he identified himself proudly as an officer and citizen of the German Democratic Republic and demanded the appropriate, respectful treatment! He was sentenced to 13 years’ imprisonment in Rheinbach prison, outside Bonn, and Christel received eight. Suffering from kidney disease, he was released in October 1981 in a spy swap and returned as a hero to East Germany, where he died in April 1995.
According to the KGB rezident in Karlshorst, Sergei Kondrashev, the information from Guillaume, whose code name was HANSEN, was “of such extraordinary importance” that the KGB’s chairman, Yuri Andropov, often passed it personally straight to Andrei Gromyko, Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev’s foreign minister. An officer messenger then waited for him to read the material, “information of the best quality on the situation in Germany and on discussions with the Western powers,” and returned it to the KGB’s headquarters. After Guillaume’s exposure Brezhnev wrote a personal note to Brandt denying any personal knowledge of the espionage, but few believed him because he too must have been one of his recipients and beneficiaries.
Certainly, in political terms, Guillaume was in a position to reassure the Soviet bloc that détente was not a ruse and to supply crucial reports in 1973, when a potentially damaging political split had developed over policy between the Nixon administration in the United States and Washington’s European partners in NATO. The case established Wolf’s almost mythological reputation, and in January 1974 he was awarded East Germany’s most coveted decoration, the Karl Marx medal, while his minister of state security, Erich Miekle, was appointed to full membership of the Politburo.
Guillaume had arrived in West Germany as a refugee in 1956, four years after he had joined the East German army as a loyal Communist party member and had served as an officer with the rank of captain. He had also been trained as an agent, and when he settled in Frankfurt, supposedly as an authentic refugee, Guillaume joined the Social Democratic party (SDP) as a voluntary worker before becoming a full-time party functionary. In 1970 he expressed the wish to become a civil servant in Bonn and, having sailed through a security check that failed to reveal his service as an officer in the East German army, was appointed to the economic and social affairs staff of the Chancellery. Soon afterward, Brandt had picked him to act as his link to the SDP, and he maintained an office both in the party’s headquarters and in the Palais Schaumburg. For the next three years Guillaume enjoyed access to the very highest classifications of secret information and passed it back to Wolf, who shared it with Moscow. As well as material about West Germany’s foreign policy and relations with NATO, Guillaume passed on details of Brandt’s rather exotic extramarital affairs which, at that time, were completely unknown to the public.
The spy’s run of luck ended when suspicions were raised about the existence of a top-level mole with direct access to Brandt, and the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV) launched an investigation. Exactly how the BfV got onto Guillaume remains a matter of speculation, and much of what has been written about the case, including by Wolf himself, has suggested that the BfV initiated an investigation after a study of illicit East–West communications found traces of an illegal code-named GEORG who had completed several missions in the 1950s. Allegedly a detailed analysis of contemporary decrypted East German wireless traffic had revealed a message, dating back to April 1957, in which a source known as “G.G.” had been sent birthday greetings. Supposedly this clue had led the BfV mole hunters to conduct a lengthy trawl for anyone with the same birthday, and eventually the field had narrowed to Guillaume’s son Pierre. “G.G.” was somehow linked to the missions undertaken by GEORG, and both agents were tentatively identified as Guillaume, who was placed under intensive surveillance.
Gunter Nollau, the BfV’s counterintelligence chief briefed his interior minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, on 29 May 1973 and informed him that Guillaume was the subject of an investigation. Wolf was probably told about this much later by his star mole in the BfV, Klaus Kuron (who had offered to spy for the HVA in 1982 and continued undetected until the collapse of East Germany in 1989), but instead of moving Guillaume away from access, no action was taken, and this inertia led to Nollau’s subsequent resignation. Thus, much to everybody’s embarrassment, Guillaume was allowed to continue spying for 11 months before he was finally confronted and was even allowed to accompany Brandt on his holiday to his hideaway retreat at Hamas, Norway. During these final months Christel reported that she thought she was being watched, but Wolf did not take much notice of this warning, on the assumption that agents often develop a healthy degree of paranoia, and failed to extract his two agents before they were finally confronted by the BfV. Wolf was also influenced, he admitted later, by Christel’s new job as an aide to Georg Leber, Brandt’s defense minister. Whatever the source of the initial tip, Guillaume came under intensive surveillance, which he also spotted. He was arrested by the BfV on 24 April 1974, provoking a major political scandal that led to Brandt’s resignation just 12 days later. When the police burst into his house, Guillaume did not attempt to deny he was a spy—indeed, he identified himself proudly as an officer and citizen of the German Democratic Republic and demanded the appropriate, respectful treatment! He was sentenced to 13 years’ imprisonment in Rheinbach prison, outside Bonn, and Christel received eight. Suffering from kidney disease, he was released in October 1981 in a spy swap and returned as a hero to East Germany, where he died in April 1995.
According to the KGB rezident in Karlshorst, Sergei Kondrashev, the information from Guillaume, whose code name was HANSEN, was “of such extraordinary importance” that the KGB’s chairman, Yuri Andropov, often passed it personally straight to Andrei Gromyko, Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev’s foreign minister. An officer messenger then waited for him to read the material, “information of the best quality on the situation in Germany and on discussions with the Western powers,” and returned it to the KGB’s headquarters. After Guillaume’s exposure Brezhnev wrote a personal note to Brandt denying any personal knowledge of the espionage, but few believed him because he too must have been one of his recipients and beneficiaries.
Certainly, in political terms, Guillaume was in a position to reassure the Soviet bloc that détente was not a ruse and to supply crucial reports in 1973, when a potentially damaging political split had developed over policy between the Nixon administration in the United States and Washington’s European partners in NATO. The case established Wolf’s almost mythological reputation, and in January 1974 he was awarded East Germany’s most coveted decoration, the Karl Marx medal, while his minister of state security, Erich Miekle, was appointed to full membership of the Politburo.
GT/VILLAGE
Central Intelligence Agency code name for an undisclosed spy who, after being betrayed by Aldrich Ames, was recalled to Moscow from the Soviet consulate in Surabaya, Indonesia, in March 1986 and executed.
GT/EASTBOUND
Central Intelligence Agency code name for an undisclosed spy betrayed by Aldrich Ames. The spy was presumed arrested after his CIAcontact, Erik Sites, was ambushed in May 1986 as he attempted to make contact with him in a Moscow park.
GRU
Originally known as the Third Department of the Red Army’s General Staff, the Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravlenie—the Soviet military intelligence service—was created in October 1918 but adopted that title only in June 1942. Like its NKVD counterpart, the GRU operated parallel foreign intelligence collection channels, one based on local rezidents, usually working under cover posts in the military attaché’s offices, with another reliant on illegals. The West’s knowledge of this organization was revealed by a defector, Walter Krivitsky, who had been the GRU’s illegal rezident in The Hague until September 1937. Further information was imparted by Vladimir Rezun, who defected to the Secret Intelligence Service in June 1978 while under United Nations cover in Geneva; later he was to write several not entirely accurate accounts of the GRU under the pseudonym Viktor Suvorov, leading some to suspect that he had not been their only author.
GROUPEMENT DE CONTRÔLES RADIOÉLÉCTRIQUE (GCR)
France’s signals intelligence organization, based at Domme in the Dordogne, with intercept stations located at French military installations overseas. During the Cold War there were others at Bahrsdorf in the Harz mountains, at Appen in Hamburg, and at Landau. The French did not share their product with the U.S. National
Security Agency, with the exception of data collected at a station at Berlin’s Tegel airport, which was also shared with the German Bundesnachrichtendienst.
Security Agency, with the exception of data collected at a station at Berlin’s Tegel airport, which was also shared with the German Bundesnachrichtendienst.
GRENADA
The invasion of this Caribbean island in October 1982 by a supposedly multinational force led by the United States to restore democracy was an intelligence-led event following the arrival of Cuban troops and an expansion of the airport. Aerial reconnaissance showed the runway was being extended with Cuban support to 9,000 feet, and the suspicion was that Grenada had been earmarked as a regional base for long-range Soviet aircraft. The assassination of Marxist prime minister Maurice Bishop acted as the catalyst for American
intervention and a large U.S. naval task force seized the island, much to the dismay of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, whose government had not been informed of the plan to occupy a Commonwealth country.
The U.S.-led invasion was supported on the ground by a single Central Intelligence Agency officer, a woman who distinguished herself by taking a sample of the runway to measure the depth and determine whether it could sustain landings by heavy-lift aircraft. The operation succeeded, but at a cost of 19 killed and 115 wounded, some by friendly fire, and the loss of three helicopters shot down by unexpectedly efficient antiaircraft fire.
intervention and a large U.S. naval task force seized the island, much to the dismay of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, whose government had not been informed of the plan to occupy a Commonwealth country.
The U.S.-led invasion was supported on the ground by a single Central Intelligence Agency officer, a woman who distinguished herself by taking a sample of the runway to measure the depth and determine whether it could sustain landings by heavy-lift aircraft. The operation succeeded, but at a cost of 19 killed and 115 wounded, some by friendly fire, and the loss of three helicopters shot down by unexpectedly efficient antiaircraft fire.
GREAT BRITAIN
Although Britain’s various intelligence organizations can be traced back to the Elizabethan era, the modern security and intelligence structure is based on the separation of responsibilities established during World War I when the Home and Foreign departments of the Secret Service Bureau evolved into the Security Service (MI5) and the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), leaving the Admiralty with the supervision of signals interception and decryption. In 1919 signals intelligence was passed to the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) and continued under SIS’s umbrella until 1946 when, as the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), it moved from Bletchley Park to Eastcote and was placed under the control of the Foreign Office. Accordingly, the United Kingdom now maintains three principal intelligence agencies—MI5, SIS, and GCHQ—with a total budget in excess of a billion pounds. Now based at Benhall in Cheltenham, GCHQ employs more staff than the other two agencies combined, although exact strengths are not published.
During World War II numerous other agencies enjoyed a brief existence, including the Special Operations Executive (SOE), which conducted resistance and sabotage operations in Nazi-occupied territory, and British Security Coordination, which acted as an umbrella for MI5, SIS, SOE, and the Political Warfare Executive in New York.
None survived significantly into the postwar era, although regional representative organizations were maintained in the Middle East (Security Intelligence Middle East and the Inter-Services Liaison Department), Far East (Combined Intelligence Far East), Iraq (Combined Intelligence Centre Iraq), and the Aden Intelligence Centre.
During World War II numerous other agencies enjoyed a brief existence, including the Special Operations Executive (SOE), which conducted resistance and sabotage operations in Nazi-occupied territory, and British Security Coordination, which acted as an umbrella for MI5, SIS, SOE, and the Political Warfare Executive in New York.
None survived significantly into the postwar era, although regional representative organizations were maintained in the Middle East (Security Intelligence Middle East and the Inter-Services Liaison Department), Far East (Combined Intelligence Far East), Iraq (Combined Intelligence Centre Iraq), and the Aden Intelligence Centre.
GRAY DECEIVER
The Federal Bureau of Investigation code name for the mole thought to have existed within the U.S. counterintelligence community following the arrest of Aldrich Ames in February 1994. The FBI investigation, code-named GRAY SUIT, was convinced that the spy was a veteran Central Intelligence Agency counterintelligence officer, Brian Kelley, but he turned out to be Kelley’s neighbor, Robert Hanssen.
GOUZENKO, IGOR
A GRU cipher clerk based at the Soviet embassy in Ottawa, Canada, Gouzenko defected in September 1945 and delivered 109 documents from the referentura to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) identifying a large number of GRU spies active in Canada. A royal commission was appointed to review the documents, cross-examine Gouzenko, and take evidence from the suspected spies, and its report was subsequently published.
Seventeen members of the exposed GRU network were prosecuted, of whom nine were convicted of espionage. Gouzenko, his wife, and children were resettled in Canada and occasionally made public appearances to defend themselves from criticism. With help from his RCMP interpreter, he wrote Fall of a Titan and his wife published Before Igor, and their story was turned into a movie.
Seventeen members of the exposed GRU network were prosecuted, of whom nine were convicted of espionage. Gouzenko, his wife, and children were resettled in Canada and occasionally made public appearances to defend themselves from criticism. With help from his RCMP interpreter, he wrote Fall of a Titan and his wife published Before Igor, and their story was turned into a movie.
GOTT, RICHARD
Aleft-wing British journalist and author of several books on the liberation movements of Latin America, Gott, the son of a World War II general, was identified by Oleg Gordievsky as a long-standing agent of influence run by the London rezidentura.
Then working as the literary editor of the Guardian, Gott acknowledged that he had held clandestine meetings with KGB officers in London and Vienna and had failed to declare payments from them. He resigned from his newspaper but continues to contribute articles periodically.
Then working as the literary editor of the Guardian, Gott acknowledged that he had held clandestine meetings with KGB officers in London and Vienna and had failed to declare payments from them. He resigned from his newspaper but continues to contribute articles periodically.
GORDIEVSKY, OLEG
A “line PR” political reports specialist of the Third Department of the KGB’s elite First Chief Directorate, which covered Scandinavia and Great Britain, Gordievsky was disillusioned after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and had been warned of his future behavior because of his affair with his secretary.
Gordievsky had been a member of Mikhail Luibimov’s rezidentura in Copenhagen since October 1972, on his second tour of duty in Denmark as press attaché, and was pitched by the Secret Intelligence Service station commander, Robert Browning, whom he had encountered casually at a local squash club.
Quite apart from producing a veritable bonanza of highly relevant information from the very heart of the Third Department, Gordievsky’s survival represented SIS’s essential integrity, proving that the organization could run a successful penetration into the KGB without fear of compromise. Gordievsky was responsible for a series of Soviet expulsions. The first to go, in December 1982, was a naval attaché, Capt. Anatoli Zotov of the GRU, and he had been followed a month later by Vladimir Chernev, ostensibly a translator at the International Wheat Council. Finally, in April 1983, three diplomats and a correspondent, Igor Titov, had been expelled. All had been fingered by Gordievsky, who had given the SIS a comprehensive analysis of the KGB’s rezidentura, thus allowing MI5 to concentrate its limited resources on the best targets.
Gordievsky’s knowledge extended far beyond the Third Department, and he revealed that his brother had trained as an illegal for deployment by Directorate S into West Germany. He also knew where his contemporaries had been posted, and his information was a contributor to the West’s efforts to curb the KGB. The positive identification of a Soviet diplomat as an intelligence professional can be of immense value to an overstretched security apparatus unsure of which target to concentrate on, and the statistics of Soviet expulsions worldwide began to escalate markedly in 1983, when 111 officials were declared persona non grata from 16 countries during the first eight months of that year. Between 1978 and August 1983 a total of 316 espionage suspects were removed from 43 countries, a figure that might have indicated to a vigilant analyst in Moscow that the KGB had sprung a leak. If the tips had been traced back to the SIS, doubtless the KGB would have conducted a mole hunt to trace the culprit.
On 17 May 1985, having been named the rezident designate, Gordievsky was unexpectedly summoned home to Moscow, supposedly for consultations, but he was very suspicious and agreed only when he had been assured by his SIS handler at an emergency meeting that there was no reason to believe he was in any danger. However, upon his arrival he realized his apartment had been searched, and when he reached KGB headquarters at Yasenevo, he was accused of being a spy. He denied the accusation and resisted his interrogators, who used drugs in an attempt to extract a confession, but although the KGB had been tipped off to his dual role, there was apparently not sufficient evidence to justify an arrest. Although under heavy surveillance, Gordievsky was able to shake off his watchers while jogging in a park at the end of July and make contact with the SIS, sending an emergency signal requesting a rescue. The ostensibly innocuous signal was nothing more elaborate than Gordievsky appearing on a prearranged street corner, at a particular time, carrying a shopping bag, but it was received and promptly relayed to London.
The distress signal prompted the SIS chief, Christopher Curwen, to fly to Scotland immediately to brief Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who was then staying with the queen at Balmoral, while the Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe was visited at Chevening in Kent.
When informed of the need for their permission to undertake the perilous act of removing Gordievsky from Moscow under the watchful eyes of the KGB, both approved the plan, and arrangements were made for him to be exfiltrated to Finland by the Moscow station commander, Viscount Asquith, in his Saab. He acted as a good Samaritan, escorting a pregnant member of the embassy staff for medical treatment in Helsinki, while Gordievsky climbed aboard at a rendezvous outside Leningrad and was driven over the frontier at Viborg. Once in Finland he was greeted by the Helsinki commander, Margaret Ramsay, and then driven to Tromsø, Norway, for a flight the next day from Oslo to London. He was then accommodated briefly at a country house in the Midlands, where he was visited by Curwen, and then put up at Fort Monkton for a lengthy debriefing, lasting 80 days, conducted by the SIS’s principal Kremlinologist, Gordon Barrass. Among Gordievsky’s other visitors was Director of Central Intelligence William Casey, who was flown down to the
fort for a lunch hosted by Curwen.
Gordievsky had been a member of Mikhail Luibimov’s rezidentura in Copenhagen since October 1972, on his second tour of duty in Denmark as press attaché, and was pitched by the Secret Intelligence Service station commander, Robert Browning, whom he had encountered casually at a local squash club.
Quite apart from producing a veritable bonanza of highly relevant information from the very heart of the Third Department, Gordievsky’s survival represented SIS’s essential integrity, proving that the organization could run a successful penetration into the KGB without fear of compromise. Gordievsky was responsible for a series of Soviet expulsions. The first to go, in December 1982, was a naval attaché, Capt. Anatoli Zotov of the GRU, and he had been followed a month later by Vladimir Chernev, ostensibly a translator at the International Wheat Council. Finally, in April 1983, three diplomats and a correspondent, Igor Titov, had been expelled. All had been fingered by Gordievsky, who had given the SIS a comprehensive analysis of the KGB’s rezidentura, thus allowing MI5 to concentrate its limited resources on the best targets.
Gordievsky’s knowledge extended far beyond the Third Department, and he revealed that his brother had trained as an illegal for deployment by Directorate S into West Germany. He also knew where his contemporaries had been posted, and his information was a contributor to the West’s efforts to curb the KGB. The positive identification of a Soviet diplomat as an intelligence professional can be of immense value to an overstretched security apparatus unsure of which target to concentrate on, and the statistics of Soviet expulsions worldwide began to escalate markedly in 1983, when 111 officials were declared persona non grata from 16 countries during the first eight months of that year. Between 1978 and August 1983 a total of 316 espionage suspects were removed from 43 countries, a figure that might have indicated to a vigilant analyst in Moscow that the KGB had sprung a leak. If the tips had been traced back to the SIS, doubtless the KGB would have conducted a mole hunt to trace the culprit.
On 17 May 1985, having been named the rezident designate, Gordievsky was unexpectedly summoned home to Moscow, supposedly for consultations, but he was very suspicious and agreed only when he had been assured by his SIS handler at an emergency meeting that there was no reason to believe he was in any danger. However, upon his arrival he realized his apartment had been searched, and when he reached KGB headquarters at Yasenevo, he was accused of being a spy. He denied the accusation and resisted his interrogators, who used drugs in an attempt to extract a confession, but although the KGB had been tipped off to his dual role, there was apparently not sufficient evidence to justify an arrest. Although under heavy surveillance, Gordievsky was able to shake off his watchers while jogging in a park at the end of July and make contact with the SIS, sending an emergency signal requesting a rescue. The ostensibly innocuous signal was nothing more elaborate than Gordievsky appearing on a prearranged street corner, at a particular time, carrying a shopping bag, but it was received and promptly relayed to London.
The distress signal prompted the SIS chief, Christopher Curwen, to fly to Scotland immediately to brief Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who was then staying with the queen at Balmoral, while the Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe was visited at Chevening in Kent.
When informed of the need for their permission to undertake the perilous act of removing Gordievsky from Moscow under the watchful eyes of the KGB, both approved the plan, and arrangements were made for him to be exfiltrated to Finland by the Moscow station commander, Viscount Asquith, in his Saab. He acted as a good Samaritan, escorting a pregnant member of the embassy staff for medical treatment in Helsinki, while Gordievsky climbed aboard at a rendezvous outside Leningrad and was driven over the frontier at Viborg. Once in Finland he was greeted by the Helsinki commander, Margaret Ramsay, and then driven to Tromsø, Norway, for a flight the next day from Oslo to London. He was then accommodated briefly at a country house in the Midlands, where he was visited by Curwen, and then put up at Fort Monkton for a lengthy debriefing, lasting 80 days, conducted by the SIS’s principal Kremlinologist, Gordon Barrass. Among Gordievsky’s other visitors was Director of Central Intelligence William Casey, who was flown down to the
fort for a lunch hosted by Curwen.
GOLITSYN, ANATOLI
A KGB officer working under diplomatic cover at the Soviet embassy in Helsinki, Golitsyn defected to the Central Intelligence Agency in December 1961 and proved to be one of the most influential defectors of the Cold War. As well as identifying several Soviet spies active in the West—including Hugh Hambleton, Georges Pacques, and Elsie Mai, a Finn inside the local British consulate—and extensive penetration of the Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage (SDECE) in France with a spy ring code-named SAPPHIRE, he also revealed the existence of a sophisticated disinformation scheme intended to mislead the West about the Kremlin’s long-term objectives. His interpretation of Moscow’s Machiavellian strategy was articulated in his book New Lies For Old, and Leon Uris based his novel Topaz on Golitsyn’s revelations of the SAPPHIRE network. Under the sponsorship of the CIA’s Counterintelligence Staff, he was resettled in Florida and encouraged to visit Allied security and intelligence agencies to advise on countermeasures.
Golitsyn was to become controversial because the adherents of his theories, including James Angleton, gave him unprecedented access to operational files in a search for moles, and the subsequent investigations disadvantaged the careers of several intelligence professionals, including Peter Karlow, David Murphy, and Alexander Sogolow, who came under suspicion. Golitsyn also propagated the idea that the KGB would dispatch false defectors to discredit him, and acceptance of this led to the lengthy interrogation of Yuri Nosenko in 1964, although the only evidence to suggest the KGB ever adopted such a risky tactic was the example of PROLOGUE.
After his daughter died in 1974, Golitsyn contemplated suicide, but then pursued his theories with even greater vigor. He denounced Courtney Young and Guy Liddell of MI5 and Harold Shergold of the Secret Intelligence Service as Soviet moles and claimed that Oleg Penkovsky had been a skillful KGB manipulation from the outset.
He also identified Isaiah Berlin, Sir Rudolf Peierls, and Victor Rothschild as British VENONA spies and named Averell Harriman and the veteran CIA case officer George Kisevalter as long-term KGB agents.
Furthermore, he named the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire’s deputy chief as a spy, code-named GARMASH, and insisted Dmitri Polyakov (TOP HAT) and Aleksei Kulak (FEDORA) had been deliberately planted on the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Originally from the Ukraine, Golitsyn had met Josef Stalin and Georgi Malenkov in 1952 when he was a 26-year-old lieutenant and had undergone a political transformation when Nikita Khrushchev exposed Stalin’s crimes in February 1956. Two years later, after a spell in a counterintelligence section dealing with the United States, he participated in the abduction in Vienna of Tremmel, the leader of an émigré organization, and in 1960 was posted to Helsinki, whence he eventually defected.
Golitsyn was to become controversial because the adherents of his theories, including James Angleton, gave him unprecedented access to operational files in a search for moles, and the subsequent investigations disadvantaged the careers of several intelligence professionals, including Peter Karlow, David Murphy, and Alexander Sogolow, who came under suspicion. Golitsyn also propagated the idea that the KGB would dispatch false defectors to discredit him, and acceptance of this led to the lengthy interrogation of Yuri Nosenko in 1964, although the only evidence to suggest the KGB ever adopted such a risky tactic was the example of PROLOGUE.
After his daughter died in 1974, Golitsyn contemplated suicide, but then pursued his theories with even greater vigor. He denounced Courtney Young and Guy Liddell of MI5 and Harold Shergold of the Secret Intelligence Service as Soviet moles and claimed that Oleg Penkovsky had been a skillful KGB manipulation from the outset.
He also identified Isaiah Berlin, Sir Rudolf Peierls, and Victor Rothschild as British VENONA spies and named Averell Harriman and the veteran CIA case officer George Kisevalter as long-term KGB agents.
Furthermore, he named the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire’s deputy chief as a spy, code-named GARMASH, and insisted Dmitri Polyakov (TOP HAT) and Aleksei Kulak (FEDORA) had been deliberately planted on the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Originally from the Ukraine, Golitsyn had met Josef Stalin and Georgi Malenkov in 1952 when he was a 26-year-old lieutenant and had undergone a political transformation when Nikita Khrushchev exposed Stalin’s crimes in February 1956. Two years later, after a spell in a counterintelligence section dealing with the United States, he participated in the abduction in Vienna of Tremmel, the leader of an émigré organization, and in 1960 was posted to Helsinki, whence he eventually defected.
GOLENIEWSKI, MICHAL
In 1961 Goleniewski, a senior Polish intelligence officer, defected to the Central Intelligence Agency, providing the most spectacular information. As a self-motivated spy, he had supplied information anonymously, and when he finally fled Poland with his girlfriend, he came with an impressive “meal ticket”
because he had knowledge of KGB operations as well as Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa (SB) activities. The key to his success had been his dual role as a KGB asset inside the SB, trusted implicitly by both. As a consequence of his information, several spies were arrested in the West, including the Secret Intelligence Service turncoat George Blake, and Harry Houghton, then working on highly classified submarine detection systems at the Royal Navy’s Underwater Weapons Research Establishment at Portland. Unfortunately Goleniewski’s value rapidly diminished upon his arrival in the United States in January 1961 with his demand to be known as the tsarevich, Prince Alexei Romanov, son of Tsar Nicholas II. Realizing his credibility would plummet if he were allowed to give evidence to the Senate’s Internal Security Subcommittee, as had been requested, the CIA humored his eccentricities and kept him away from Congress.
because he had knowledge of KGB operations as well as Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa (SB) activities. The key to his success had been his dual role as a KGB asset inside the SB, trusted implicitly by both. As a consequence of his information, several spies were arrested in the West, including the Secret Intelligence Service turncoat George Blake, and Harry Houghton, then working on highly classified submarine detection systems at the Royal Navy’s Underwater Weapons Research Establishment at Portland. Unfortunately Goleniewski’s value rapidly diminished upon his arrival in the United States in January 1961 with his demand to be known as the tsarevich, Prince Alexei Romanov, son of Tsar Nicholas II. Realizing his credibility would plummet if he were allowed to give evidence to the Senate’s Internal Security Subcommittee, as had been requested, the CIA humored his eccentricities and kept him away from Congress.
GLADIO
The code name for the NATO stay-behind organization that had been trained and equipped to collect intelligence and generally harass the enemy in the event of a Soviet invasion and occupation of Italy. Similar contingency plans had been prepared across Central Europe, and they became controversial for two reasons. First, in the Italian example, the vetting procedures employed to screen the volunteers had necessarily excluded leftists, and the candidates accepted for the program included some radical right-wing extremists who were suspected of having allowed weapons and matériel to pass to terrorist groups with whom they were sympathetic. For example, the Bologna Railway Station bombing in August 1980, in which 85 people died, is an atrocity believed to have been carried out by terrorists using GLADIO explosives. In Belgium, too, there was evidence of similar equipment falling into the wrong hands and being used for criminal and political purposes.
The second embarrassment was the extension of NATO’s training program to volunteers from neutral countries, including Finland, Sweden, Austria, and Switzerland. Each country had its own stay behind arrangements, but the issue was to prove controversial in Helsinki, where the organization was a cell-based structure known as Stella Polaris; in Stockholm, where an arms cache was discovered stored in the cellars of a radio station owned by a right-wing political activist; and in Bern, where the military unit designated P-26 had been authorized and controlled by the chief of staff without the knowledge of his ministers or the Conseil d’Etat.
The second embarrassment was the extension of NATO’s training program to volunteers from neutral countries, including Finland, Sweden, Austria, and Switzerland. Each country had its own stay behind arrangements, but the issue was to prove controversial in Helsinki, where the organization was a cell-based structure known as Stella Polaris; in Stockholm, where an arms cache was discovered stored in the cellars of a radio station owned by a right-wing political activist; and in Bern, where the military unit designated P-26 had been authorized and controlled by the chief of staff without the knowledge of his ministers or the Conseil d’Etat.
GIDEON
Canadian Security Service code name for a KGB illegal posted to Montreal, posing as a photographer named David Soboloff, who surrendered himself to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in November 1953 because he had fallen in love with the wife of a Canadian soldier and wanted political asylum. He was persuaded to act as a double agent, revealing the identity of his handlers, but when he was recalled to Moscow in October 1955 he failed to hold a rendezvous, as arranged. with his British contacts. He had been betrayed by an RCMP mole, Gilles Brunet, and disappeared for 15 years into Lefortovo prison. In 1990 he walked into the British embassy in Vilnius, Lithuania, and was exfiltrated by Secret Intelligence Service and Canadian Security Intelligence Service personnel to Ottawa, where he was given $1 million compensation and resettled with his Russian wife.
GIBRALTAR
ABritish possession since the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, the Rock of Gibraltar occupies an important strategic position at the entrance to the Mediterranean and has a large dockyard and, since 1941, an airfield. During World War II Gibraltar was a vital link on the sea route to Malta and Alexandria and accommodated both an MI5 defense security officer and a Secret Intelligence Service station. It acted as a base for Special Operations Executive activities overland into southern Spain or by caique to southern France, and MI9 received evaders at the frontier for transfer to England.
After World War II the interior of the Rock, extensively tunneled over many decades, provided secure accommodation for a SOSUS terminal that monitored Eastern Bloc submarine transits and surface movements through the natural choke point.
After World War II the interior of the Rock, extensively tunneled over many decades, provided secure accommodation for a SOSUS terminal that monitored Eastern Bloc submarine transits and surface movements through the natural choke point.
GERMANY
Prussian military doctrine emphasized the necessity of collecting good intelligence, and in 1866 Wilhelm Stieber, then editor of the Prussian Police Journal, was appointed Emperor Friedrich Wilhelm’s chief spymaster; he undertook a secret mission to London to investigate the activities of émigré radicals, among them Karl Marx. His request for assistance from Scotland Yard was met with a horrified rejection.
It was the kaiser’s spymaster Walther Nicolai who is often credited with having established the first modern European intelligence agency, and it was certainly as a consequence of concerns about the activities of his agents that Great Britain and France established counterespionage departments. He and Gustav Steinhauer, a former Pinkerton detective, pioneered modern intelligence collection techniques and gained considerable notoriety following the publication of numerous books in the interwar period describing their exploits.
Following the Treaty of Versailles, Germany’s intelligence activities were restricted to counterespionage conducted by the Abwehr, but following Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, Capt. Konrad Patzig and his successor, Adm. Wilhelm Canaris, supervised the development of a decentralized collection agency based on Germany’s military districts, each assigned overseas targets; Hamburg concentrated on Great Britain and the United States. However, the Abwehr became a refuge for anti-Nazis and in February 1944, following a series of embarrassing high-level defections, Canaris was placed on permanent leave and the Abwehr was absorbed into the Reich Security Agency, which included the parallel Nazi intelligence service, the Sicherheitsdienst (SD). Following the 20 July plot to assassinate Hitler, Canaris was arrested, along with several of his Abwehr subordinates and later he was executed, most probably at Flossenburg in February 1945.
After the German surrender, the Allies expressed considerable interest in maintaining the German military intelligence networks in Eastern Europe, managed by Gen. Reinhard Gehlen; his offer to continue his organization’s operations under American sponsorship was eagerly accepted and led to the establishment of the Federal German Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) at Pullach, outside Munich, in April 1956. The BND is presently headed by Dr. August Hanning, who replaced Dr. Hans-Georg Geiger in 1998. A corresponding internal security apparatus, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), had been established in Cologne in December 1950 under Dr. Otto John, and both organizations remain in existence despite having experienced significant hostile penetration from the KGB and the East German Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung. The BfV is headed by Heinz Fromm, who replaced Peter Frisch in June 2000.
It was the kaiser’s spymaster Walther Nicolai who is often credited with having established the first modern European intelligence agency, and it was certainly as a consequence of concerns about the activities of his agents that Great Britain and France established counterespionage departments. He and Gustav Steinhauer, a former Pinkerton detective, pioneered modern intelligence collection techniques and gained considerable notoriety following the publication of numerous books in the interwar period describing their exploits.
Following the Treaty of Versailles, Germany’s intelligence activities were restricted to counterespionage conducted by the Abwehr, but following Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, Capt. Konrad Patzig and his successor, Adm. Wilhelm Canaris, supervised the development of a decentralized collection agency based on Germany’s military districts, each assigned overseas targets; Hamburg concentrated on Great Britain and the United States. However, the Abwehr became a refuge for anti-Nazis and in February 1944, following a series of embarrassing high-level defections, Canaris was placed on permanent leave and the Abwehr was absorbed into the Reich Security Agency, which included the parallel Nazi intelligence service, the Sicherheitsdienst (SD). Following the 20 July plot to assassinate Hitler, Canaris was arrested, along with several of his Abwehr subordinates and later he was executed, most probably at Flossenburg in February 1945.
After the German surrender, the Allies expressed considerable interest in maintaining the German military intelligence networks in Eastern Europe, managed by Gen. Reinhard Gehlen; his offer to continue his organization’s operations under American sponsorship was eagerly accepted and led to the establishment of the Federal German Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) at Pullach, outside Munich, in April 1956. The BND is presently headed by Dr. August Hanning, who replaced Dr. Hans-Georg Geiger in 1998. A corresponding internal security apparatus, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), had been established in Cologne in December 1950 under Dr. Otto John, and both organizations remain in existence despite having experienced significant hostile penetration from the KGB and the East German Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung. The BfV is headed by Heinz Fromm, who replaced Peter Frisch in June 2000.
GERHARDT, DIETER
A South African naval officer, Commander Gerhardt was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in January 1983 while attending a mathematics course at Syracuse University and was flown to Pretoria, where he was convicted of treason and sentenced in December to life imprisonment. He had been a walk-in to the Soviet embassy in London in 1960, volunteering to sell NATO secrets while on attachment to the Royal Navy, and had been recruited by the GRU. At the height of his naval career, Gerhardt had commanded the Simonstown naval base near Cape Town.
His second wife, Ruth Johr, who was Swiss and supposedly had been provided by the GRU, was convicted of having acted as his courier and sentenced to 10 years.
The existence of a mole in South Africa had been suspected since the KGB illegal Yuri Loginov had been dispatched to the country, but he had been intercepted and arrested in 1967. At the time of his recruitment, Gerhardt, who claimed to have been motivated by the internment during World War II of his German father, had been married for eight years to an Englishwoman, Janet Coggin, with whom he had three children. In 1999 she wrote an account of her experiences, The Spy’s Wife, in which she claimed that she had refused her husband’s invitation to become a spy, too, and had divorced him before moving to Ireland.
His second wife, Ruth Johr, who was Swiss and supposedly had been provided by the GRU, was convicted of having acted as his courier and sentenced to 10 years.
The existence of a mole in South Africa had been suspected since the KGB illegal Yuri Loginov had been dispatched to the country, but he had been intercepted and arrested in 1967. At the time of his recruitment, Gerhardt, who claimed to have been motivated by the internment during World War II of his German father, had been married for eight years to an Englishwoman, Janet Coggin, with whom he had three children. In 1999 she wrote an account of her experiences, The Spy’s Wife, in which she claimed that she had refused her husband’s invitation to become a spy, too, and had divorced him before moving to Ireland.
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