And BTW, it's Brainerd with an "e", and they do catch a lot of fish (up) there.
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/ dave /
(FWD)
An Intelligence Coup
Former KGB Archivist Smuggles Soviet Secrets to the West
Vasili Mitrokhin is viewed as one of the West’s most spectacular espionage finds
By John McWethy ABCNEWS.com
W A S H I N G T O N, Sept. 9 — He worked at KGB headquarters, a quiet bookworm. Now Vasili Mitrokhin is viewed as one of the West’s most spectacular espionage finds.
Mitrokhin — who worked from 1972 to 1984 in the KGB’s top-secret archives — has dumped on Western intelligence agencies six trunkloads of notes and copied archive material exposing the KGB’s espionage activities against the West during the Cold War.
Among the startling revelations: Mitrokhin’s highly classified notes describe how the Soviet spy agency tried unsuccessfully to recruit Cyrus Vance, who later became U.S. secretary of state, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was President Carter’s national security adviser.
The KGB began operations against Ronald Reagan some five years before he became president, according to the material. Intelligence officials say the material in many instances either confirmed things they already suspected but couldn’t prove, or filled in missing pieces to puzzles they hadn’t solved.
“This is probably one of the most, if not the most, important defector that I’ve seen in the 20th century,” says David Major, a former FBI counterintelligence agent.
KGB Activities Detailed
Mitrokhin’s material explains how the KGB stashed weapons, radios and money in secret hiding places in the United States. U.S. law enforcement never found the stashes, believed to be located near Brainard, Minn. But Mitrokhin last year was able to lead police to similar hiding places in Switzerland. The sites were booby-trapped with explosives.
The archives also describe attempts by the KGB to discredit U.S. civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr. For instance, the KGB planted stories in the press that King was secretly working with President Lyndon Johnson and that he had sold out to the white establishment. Ironically, at the same time, the FBI was trying to discredit King by claiming he had ties to the communists.
“[Mitrokhin] is really making a massive contribution to our understanding of Soviet activities going back a very long time,” says former Justice Department prosecutor John Martin. “We knew that they did one or two things here and there, but to find out that dozens and hundreds and even thousands of such operations were, in fact, successful is quite surprising,” says Ron Kessler, author of numerous books on U.S. Intelligence and law enforcement.
Fuel For Espionage Cases
Sources say the defector’s detailed information, covering Soviet activities from the Bolshevik Revolution to the 1980s, has energized at least a dozen espionage cases, some of which had been gathering dust for decades.
“There were hundreds of cases or leads opened,” says Robert “Bear” Bryant, deputy director of the FBI. Though only one of these cases has yet to reach the courts, officials say anyone who has spied for the Soviets and thinks he is safe should guess again.
Mitrokihn’s information helped the Justice department in 1996 convict Robert Lipka. He had spied for the Soviets in the late 1960s when he worked as a clerk at the U.S. National Security Agency, the NSA. The FBI had followed his trail, but could never identify him until they had Mitrokhin’s information. Lipka is now serving an 18-year sentence. Officials say other cases could soon reach the courts.
The KGB was disbanded in 1991, shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was divided into a number of successor agencies, the main one being the Federal Security Service, or FSB.
Smuggled Scraps of Paper
Disillusioned with his government, Mitrokhin defected with the material to Britain in 1992. Working as the head of the KGB’s archives, Mitrokhin had taken notes on major KGB operations against the West. He hid scraps of paper in his shoes or trousers as he left work and buried the accumulating records in metal trunks under his house. Mitrokhin said he was angry with his government’s constant lies to its people.
“It was great. This very simple Russian, this bureaucrat, was so disgusted with the evil and immoral regime under which he operated. He was not recruited by Western intelligence, he was not paid. For over a decade he diligently and studiously copied KGB files. What a swell kick in the ass,” says Martin.
Plans for Sabotage
Western officials say it is like reading your adversary’s diary: The materials paint a detailed picture of what the Soviets did, tried to do and even thought about doing. The Soviets listened to phone calls of U.S. officials like Henry Kissinger, tapped into the telephones and fax machines of U.S. defense contractors, and embedded spies in big companies like General Electric and IBM according to the documents.
The papers show that the KGB estimated more than half of all Soviet weapons were based on stolen American designs. The KGB also had files showing detailed plans for sabotaging major dams in the West, including the Flathead and Hungry Horse dams in Montana. The Port of New York was another major target, with KGB files showing massive detail of work schedules and weak points in security.
Mitrovkhin’s material also revealed a vengeful scheme. Stung by the publicity surrounding a number of high-profile defections, including that of Rudolf Nureyev in 1961, the KGB devised a plan to end the ballet dancer’s career by breaking both his legs. The plan was never carried out.
Originally Turned Away by CIA
Mitrokhin had tried to defect at the U.S. embassy in Riga, Latvia in 1992. But he was turned away. CIA officials who handled defectors, overwhelmed at that time by hundreds of Russians trying to get to the West, said they were not interested. After all, Mitrokhin was not a spy, he was essentially a librarian.
Paul Redmond, then head of CIA counter-intelligence, argued to bring Mitrokhin in, but no one listened. “It was in my view a breathtakingly stupid thing,” says Redmond.
So Mitrokhin went to the British embassy in Latvia where after a long discussion, he was allowed to defect. The British helped Mitrokhin smuggle the six trunks of material out of Russia.
Mitrovkhin now lives in a safe house in Britain. Officials assume he still has a price on his head, but the former KGB archivist insisted that some of his work be made public, in a book to be published next week.