Mitrokhin Archive

The KGB sword and shield emblem appears on the covers of the six published books by Mitrokhin and Christopher Andrew.

"The Mitrokhin Archive" refers to the collected notes taken by Vasili Mitrokhin over 30 years. They became public following his 1992 departure from Russia to the United Kingdom. The notes purportedly contain Soviet intelligence operations details obtained from KGB archives. Mitrokhin was a Major and senior archivist for the Soviet Union's foreign intelligence service and the First Chief Directorate of the KGB. He co-wrote several books with Christopher Andrew. "The Mitrokhin Archive" claims to represent a major body of historical evidence regarding Soviet operations and personnel assets during the Cold War. The publication of Mitrokhin's material has launched parliamentary inquiries in the United Kingdom, India and Italy.

Christopher Andrew was chosen to collaborate with Vasili Mitrokhin due to specialization in espionage and because he had signed the Official Secrets Act.

Content of the notes

The papers disclosed that more than half of Soviet weapons were based on designs stolen from the United States, that the KGB had tapped the telephones of American officials such as Henry Kissinger, and it had spies in almost all the country's big defence contractors. In France, at least 35 senior politicians were shown to have worked for the KGB during the Cold War. In Germany, the KGB was shown to have infiltrated all the major political parties, the judiciary and the police. The papers also include preparations for large-scale sabotage operations by the KGB against the US, Canada, including hidden weapons caches, several of which were removed by police based on information provided by Mitrokhin.

Prominent KGB spies in the files

• Melita Norwood, (code named Hola), a British Civil Servant who had access to nuclear secrets while working at the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association.
• John Symonds (code-named Scot), a former Detective Sergeant at New Scotland Yard who had left the UK under suspicion of corruption.
• Tom Driberg (code-named Lepage), a former elected Labour Party Member of Parliament who had visited Moscow with Guy Burgess.
• Raymond Fletcher (code-named Peter), a former elected Labour Party Member of Parliament.
• Robert Lipka, former clerk at the United States National Security Agency. Lipka denied his guilt until the very last moments before his trial was to begin when it was revealed that the prime witness against him was a former KGB archivist with proof of his relation with the KGB.
• Claude Estier, former leader of the French Socialist Party and confidant of former president François Mitterrand

National leaders who cooperated with the KGB

• Salvador Allende provided political intelligence to the Soviet Union through "his own emissaries" in Latin American countries. He also reorganized Chile's intelligence on the KGB orders. Historian Christopher Andrew argued that financial support through the KGB channels probably played a decisive role for Allende victory during the Chilean presidential election, 1970
• Daniel Ortega agreed to "unofficial meetings" with KGB officers. He gave to Nikolai Leonov, head of First Chief Directorate's analytical department, a secret program of Sandinista movement, which stated the intention of FSLN to lead class struggle in Central America, in alliance with Cuba and the Soviet bloc

KGB operations revealed in the files

• attempts to incite racial hatred in the U.S. by mailing forged hate letters to militant groups
• bugging MI6 stations in the Middle East
• bugging Henry Kissinger when he was serving as US Secretary of State
• leaked documents from defence contractors including Boeing, Fairchild, General Dynamics, IBM and Lockheed Corporation, providing the Russians with detailed information about the Trident and Peacekeeper ballistic missiles and Tomahawk cruise missiles.

Accused but unconfirmed

• Richard Clements, ally of Neil Kinnock, former leader of the British Labour Party, who denied the allegation, saying that it was an over-inflated claim and "complete nonsense".
• Romano Prodi (see Mitrokhin Commission).
• Carlos Fonseca Amador of the Sandinista National Liberation Front

Disinformation campaign against the United States

Christopher Andrew described the following active measures against the United States:

• Promotion of false John F. Kennedy assassination theories, using writer Mark Lane. Mark Lane denied this allegation and called it "an outright lie".
• Forged letter from Oswald to E. Howard Hunt attempting to incriminate Hunt in Kennedy Assassination.
• Discrediting the CIA using historian Philip Agee.
• Spreading rumors that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was a homosexual.
• Attempts to discredit Martin Luther King, Jr. by placing publications portraying him as an "Uncle Tom" who was secretly receiving government subsidies.
• Stirring up racial tensions in the United States by mailing bogus letters from the Ku Klux Klan, placing an explosive package in "the Negro section of New York" (operation PANDORA), and spreading conspiracy theories that Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination had been planned by the US government.
• Fabrication of the story that AIDS virus was manufactured by US scientists at Fort Detrick; the story was spread by Russian-born biologist Jakob Segal.

Installation and support of Communist governments

According to the notes, Soviet security organizations played key role in establishment of puppet Communist governments in Eastern Europe and Afganistan. Their strategy included mass political repressions and establishment of subordinate secret police services at the occupied territories.

KGB director Yuri Andropov took suppression of liberation movements very personally. In 1954, he became the Soviet Ambassador to Hungary during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. After these events, Andropov suffered from a "Hungarian complex": "he had watched in horror from the windows of his embassy as officers of the hated Hungarian security service were strung up from lampposts. Andropov remained haunted for the rest of his life by the speed with which an apparently all-powerful Communist one-party state had begun to topple. When other Communist regimes later seemed at risk - in Prague in 1968, in Kabul in 1979, in Warsaw in 1981, he was convinced that, as in Budapest in 1956, only armed force could ensure their survival".

Andropov played a key role in crushing the Hungarian Revolution. He convinced a reluctant Nikita Khrushchev that military intervention is necessary He deceived Imre Nagy and other Hungarian leaders that the Soviet government did not order an attack on Hungary at the very moment of this attack. The Hungarian leaders were arrested and Nagy executed.

During the Prague Spring events in Czechoslovakia, Andropov was main proponent of "extreme measures". He ordered to fabricate false intelligence not only for public consumption, but also for the Soviet Politburo. "The KGB whipped up the fear that Czechoslovakia could fall victim to NATO aggression or to a coup". At this moment, Soviet intelligence officer Oleg Kalugin reported from Washington that he gained access to "absolutely reliable documents proving that neither CIA nor any other agency was manipulating the Czechoslovak reform movement". However his messages have been destroyed because they contradicted the conspiracy theory fabricated by Andropov. Andropov ordered a number of active measures, collectively known as operation PROGRESS, against Czechoslovak reformers.

Political assassinations

• Attempted poisoning of the second President of Afghanistan Hafizullah Amin on December 13 1979. Department 8 of KGB succeeded in infiltrating the illegal agent Mitalin Talybov (codenamed SABIR) as a chef of Amin's presidential palace. However, Amin switched his food and drink as if he expected to be poisoned, so his son-in-law became seriously ill, and ironically, was flown to a hospital in Moscow.. The poison was manufactured in the secret KGB laboratory that prepared ricin for assassination of Bulgarian writer Georgi Markov in London in 1978

• Preparations to assassinate president of Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Josip Broz Tito. In the late 1940s, the same KGB laboratory manufactured a powdered plague for use in a small container and where the assassin was vaccinated against plague . This assassination was prepared by famous KGB agent Iosef Grigulevich, who previously organized the assault on villa of Trotsky . However Grigulevich was recalled at the last moment, due to sudden death of Stalin.

• Plans to assassinate several "particularly dangerous traitors" including Anatoliy Golitsyn, Igor Gouzenko, Nikolay Khokhlov, and Bohdan Stashynsky have been approved KGB head Vladimir Semichastny in 1962 Khoklov was poisoned by radioactive tallium for his refusal to work himself as a KGB assassin and kill George Okolovich, a chairman of National Alliance of Russian Solidarists

Penetration of Churches

The book describes establishment of the "Moscow Patriarchate" on the order from Stalin in 1943 as a front organization of NKVD and later the KGB All key positions in the Church including bishops have been approved by the Ideological Department of CPSU and by the KGB. The priests were used as agents of influence in the World Council of Churches and front organizations, such as World Peace Council, Cristian Peace Conference, and the Rodina ("Motherland") Society founded by the KGB in 1975. The future Russian Patriarch Alexius II said that Rodina has been created to "maintain spiritual ties with our compatriots" as one of its leading organizers. According to the archive and other sources, Alexius has been working for the KGB as agent DROZDOV and received an honorary citation from the agency for a variety of services . Priests have also recruited intelligence agents abroad and spied on Russian emigrant communities. This information by Mitrokhin has been corroborated by other sources.

Italian Mitrokhin Commission

Main article: Italian Mitrokhin Commission

In 2002 the Italian Parliament, then led by Silvio Berlusconi's right-wing coalition, the Casa delle Libertà, created a commission, presided by senator Paolo Guzzanti (Forza Italia) to investigate alleged KGB ties to opposition figures in Italian politics. The commission was shut down in 2006 without any new concrete evidence beyond the original materials of the Mitrokhin archive. However, former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko said that he had been informed by FSB deputy chief, General Anatoly Trofimov (who was shot dead in Moscow in 2005) that "Romano Prodi is our man (in Italy)". A British Member of the European Parliament for London, Gerard Batten of United Kingdom Independence Party, demanded a new inquiry into the allegations.

Preparations for large-scale sabotage in the United States and Canada

The notes describe extensive preparations for large-scale sabotage operations against the United States, Canada and Europe in the event of war, although none were actually carried out beyond creating weapons and explosives caches in the foreign countries This information has been corroborated in general by GRU defectors, Victor Suvorov and Stanislav Lunev . These operations included the following:

• A plan for sabotage of Hungry Horse Dam in Montana.
• A detailed plan to destroy the port of New York (target GRANIT); most vulnerable points of the port were marked at maps.
• Large arms caches were hidden in many countries for the planned terrorism acts. They were booby-trapped with "Lightning" explosive devices. One of such cache, which was identified by Mitrokhin, exploded when Swiss authorities tried to remove it from woods near Berne. Several others caches (probably not equipped with the "Lightnings") were removed successfully.
• FSLN leader Carlos Fonseca Amador was described as "a trusted agent" in KGB files. "Sandinista guerrillas formed the basis for a KGB sabotage and intelligence group established in 1966 on the Mexican US border".
• Disruption of the power supply in the entire New York State by KGB sabotage teams, which would be based along the Delaware river, in the Big Spring Park.
• An "immensely detailed" plan to destroy "oil refineries and oil and gas pipelines across Canada from British Columbia to Montreal" (operation "Cedar") has been prepared, which took twelve years to complete.

Reception and Relevance

The FBI described Mitrokhin Archive as “the most complete and extensive intelligence ever received from any source”.

Historian Joseph Persico described the revelations as “far more sensational even than the story dismissed as impossible by the SVR (Sluzhba Vneshnei Razvedki)” when the first dismissed early reports of the existence of the archive and commented that Mitrokhin's archives may be the only references to a large volume of material that has since been destroyed by the KGB. Similarly, a review in the Central European Review described Mitrokhin and Andrews work as “fascinating reading for anyone interested in the craft of espionage, intelligence gathering and its overall role in 20th-century international relations” offering “a window on the Soviet worldview and, as the ongoing Hanssen case in the United States clearly indicates, how little Russia has relented from the terror-driven spy society it was during seven inglorious decades of Communism”.

David L. Ruffley, from the Department of International Programs, United States Air Force Academy, said that the material “provides the clearest picture to date of Soviet intelligence activity, fleshing out many previously obscure details, confirming or contradicting many allegations and raising a few new issues of its own” and “sheds new light on Soviet intelligence activity that, while perhaps not so spectacular as some expected, is nevertheless significantly illuminating.”

In a review of the book for the Intelligence Forum, a web site specializing in intelligence matters, Reg Whitaker, commented that the text of the book "is remarkably restrained and reasonable in its handling of Westerners targeted by the KGB as agents or sources. The individuals outed by Mitrokhin appear to be what he says they were, but great care is generally taken to identify those who were unwitting dupes or, in many instances, uncooperative targets." [2]

According to Jack Straw (then Home Secretary to British Parliament in 1999, "In 1992, after Mr. Mitrokhin had approached the UK for help, our Secret Intelligence Service made arrangements to bring Mr. Mitrokhin and his family to this country, together with his archive. As there were no original KGB documents or copies of original documents, the material itself was of no direct evidential value, but it was of huge value for intelligence and investigative purposes. Thousands of leads from Mr. Mitrokhin's material have been followed up world wide. As a result, our intelligence and security agencies, in co-operation with allied Governments, have been able to put a stop to many security threats. Many unsolved investigations have been closed; many earlier suspicions confirmed; and some names and reputations have been cleared. Our intelligence and security agencies have assessed the value of Mr. Mitrokhin's material world wide as immense."[3]

Author Joseph Trento commented that "we know the Mitrokhin material is real because it fills in the gaps in Western files on major cases through 1985. Also, the operational material matches western electronic intercepts and agent reports. What MI6 got for a little kindness and a pension was the crown jewels of Russian intelligence."

Criticism and Defense

Historian J. Arch Getty of the UCLA in the American Historical Review (106:2, April 2001): found Mitrokhin's material to be “fascinating," but he also questioned plausibility that Mitrokhin could have smuggled and transcribed thousands of KGB documents, undetected, over 30 years. Former Indian counter-terrorism chief Bahukutumbi Raman pointed out that Mitrokhin did not bring either the original documents or photocopies. Instead, he brought handwritten/typed notes of the contents of the documents. [4]

Scholar Amy Knight described the book as "the latest example of an emerging genre of spy histories based on materials from the KGB archives." She believes that the book does not reveal anything really new and significant: "While "The Sword and the Shield" contains new information ... none of it has much significance for broader interpretations of the Cold War. The main message the reader comes away with after plowing through almost a thousand pages is the same one gleaned from the earlier books: the Soviets were incredibly successful, albeit evil, spymasters, and none of the Western services could come close to matching their expertise. Bravo the KGB." [5].

Knight's comments ignore a fundamental conclusion the books make about the efficacy of Soviet intelligence. Their "incredible" successes are noted, but these are, by far, mostly found in the days of the Great Illegals and the Magnificent Five, and were made in the areas of penetration of foreign governments, compromising of key staff, and gathering of raw intelligence. Despite their cooption of the Western governments, Soviet paranoia and addiction to conspiracy theory basically paralysed their ability to interpret the information they gathered to useful effect. Stalin's purges of the late 1930s left a tradition of toadyism in KGB staff, who tended to submit reports which fed the various paranoid trends in Kremlin circles. This tradition echoed throughout the remainder of the life of the Soviet Union.

The books also detail the near zero-effect of KGB penetration of the United States during the post-Philby years, when most American traitors acted according to mercenary principles. Here again, Mitrokhin's files spell out the difficulty with which Moscow approached meaningful interpretation of political intelligence, leaving Scientific and Technological (S&T) information the area in which the Soviet Union made best use of KGB resources.

Knight's article contains a simple explanation of the inherent paradox in determining what is accurate and true when dealing with issues related to espionage, that of verifiable facts[6].. However, one standard by which the article judges the Archive, that of redundant facts, is a primary tool for examining whether or not a document is genuine[7]..

At the same time, Knight and Getty speculate on the veracity of Mitrokhin's ability to transcribe such a great amount of KGB files, and Knight makes a blanket statement regarding KGB security, "Incredibly, given the rigorous security rules in all Soviet archives, no one noticed what Mitrokhin was doing all day or checked him when he was going home at night [8].." This is not inconceivable, nor is it "incredible," considering the open, trusted access through which Kim Philby acted, with near impunity, for roughly the same amount of time.

The Knight article contains a "bravo," for the KGB, and makes extraordinary claims on its effectiveness according to the same inherently murky principles of evidence by which it dismisses the bulk of the Archive's import. The generally better-documented inefficiency and institutional dysfunction of the KGB seems by it to be redeemed by its select opinion, at the expense of the Archive's credibility[9]..

Books

• Andrew, Christopher (1999). The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB. Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-00310-9. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Andrew, Christopher, Vasili Mitrokhin (1999) The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West. Allen Lane. ISBN 0-713-99358-8.
• Andrew, Christopher (2000). The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West. Gardners Books. ISBN 0-14-028487-7. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Andrew, Christopher, Vasili Mitrokhin (2000). The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB. Basic Books. ISBN 0-4650-0312-5.
• Andrew, Christopher (2005). The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World. Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-00311-7. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Andrew, Christopher, Vasili Mitrokhin (2005). The Mitrokin Archive II: The KGB and the World. Allen Lane. ISBN 0-713-99359-6.

Online access

The Questia Online Library hosts The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB. (Login required) The entire work is complete with linked footnotes and references.

Google Scholar hosts selected portions of the books without a fee.

• The Sword and the Shield
• The World Was Going Our Way

External links

• Intelligence and Security Committee: The Mitrokhin Inquiry Report (Report of the British SIS to Parliament)
• Summary of press coverage
• The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars' Cold War International History Project Virtual Archive section dealing with the Mitrokhin Archive. Includes primary sources.