Anatoliy Golitsyn
Encyclopedia
Anatoliy Mikhaylovich Golitsyn CBE
is a Soviet
KGB
defector and author of two books about the long-term deception strategy of the KGB leadership. He was born in Piryatin, Ukrainian SSR
. He provided "a wide range of intelligence to the CIA on the operations of most of the 'Lines' (departments) at the Helsinki
and other residencies, as well as KGB methods of recruiting and running agents." He is an Honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) and, as late as 1984, was an American citizen.
in the rank of Major. In 1961 under the name "Ivan Klimov" he was assigned to the Soviet embassy in Helsinki
, Finland
as vice counsel and attache. He defected with his wife and daughter to the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) via Helsinki
on December 15, 1961 taking a train
to Haaparanta in the Finnish-Swedish
border town where he was flown to the United States
via Stockholm
and was interviewed by James Jesus Angleton
, CIA counter-intelligence
director. In January 1962, the KGB sent instructions to fifty-four Rezidentura throughout the world on the actions required to minimize the damage. All meetings with important agents were to be suspended. In November 1962, KGB head Vladimir Semichastny
approved a plan for assassination of Golitsyn and other "particularly dangerous traitors" including Igor Gouzenko
, Nikolay Khokhlov
, and Bogdan Stashinsky. The KGB made significant efforts to discredit Golitsyn by promoting disinformation that he was involved in illegal smuggling operations.
Golitsyn provided information about many famous Soviet agents including Kim Philby
, Donald Duart Maclean
, Guy Burgess
, John Vassall
, double agent Aleksandr Kopatzky who worked in Germany, and others. It was only with the defection of Golitsyn in 1961 that Philby was confirmed as a Soviet mole.
, and the former CIA counter-intelligence director James Angleton
identified Golitsyn as "the most valuable defector ever to reach the West". However, the official historian for Britain's MI5
, Christopher Andrew, described him as an "unreliable conspiracy theorist". Andrew believes that although intelligence data provided by Golitsyn were reliable, some of his global political assessments of the Soviet and KGB strategy are questionable. In particular, he disputed the Golitsyn claim that the "Sino-Soviet split was a charade to deceive the West". Golitsyn's claims of widespread KGB double agent infiltration in the CIA also contributed to Angleton's growing paranoia which ultimately led to Angleton's dismissal from the CIA.
(then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
) was a KGB informer and an agent of influence
. This encouraged pre-existing conspiracy theories within the British security services concerning Wilson. During his time as President of the Board of Trade in the late 1940s, Wilson had been on trade missions to Russia and cultivated a friendship with Anastas Mikoyan
and Vyacheslav Molotov
. He continued these relationships when Labour went into Opposition, and according to material from the Mitrokhin Archive
, his insights into British politics were passed to and highly rated by the KGB. An "agent development file" was opened in the hope of recruiting Harold Wilson, and the codename "OLDING" was given to him. However "the development did not come to fruition," according to the KGB file records. Golitsyn also accused the KGB of poisoning Hugh Gaitskell
, Wilson's predecessor as leader of the Labour Party, in order for Wilson to take over the party. Gaitskell died after a sudden attack of lupus erythematosus
, an autoimmune disorder, in 1963. Golitsyn's claims about Wilson were believed in particular by the senior MI5
counterintelligence officer Peter Wright
. Although Wilson was repeatedly investigated by MI5 and cleared of this accusation, individuals within the service continued to believe that he was an agent of the KGB, and this belief played a part in the coup plots against him.
was an operation masterminded by Kekkonen together with the Soviets.
After the defection Golitsyn claimed also that the President of Finland
Urho Kaleva Kekkonen was a KGB-agent codenamed "Timo" since 1947. Nowadays the most common view among historians is that Kekkonen was highly engaged with the KGB
.
, a KGB officer working out of Geneva
, Switzerland
, insisted that he needed to defect to the USA, as his role as a double-agent had been discovered, prompting his recall to Moscow
. Nosenko was allowed to defect, although his credibility was immediately in question because the CIA was unable to verify a KGB recall order. Nosenko made two extremely controversial claims: that Golitsyn was not a double agent but a KGB plant; and that he had information on the assassination
of President
John F. Kennedy
by way of the KGB's history with Lee Harvey Oswald
in the time Oswald lived in the Soviet Union.
Regarding the first claim, Golitsyn had said from the beginning that the KGB would try to plant defectors in an effort to discredit him. Regarding the second claim, Nosenko told his debriefers that he had been personally responsible for handling Oswald's case and that the KGB had judged Oswald unfit for their services due to mental instability and had not even attempted to debrief Oswald about his work on the U-2 spy planes
during his service in the United States Marine Corps
. Under great duress, Nosenko failed two highly questionable lie detector
tests but passed a third test monitored by several Agency departments.
Judging the claim of not interrogating Oswald about the U-2 improbable, given Oswald's familiarity with the U-2 program, and faced with further challenges to Nosenko's credibility (he was thought to have falsely claimed to be a lieutenant colonel, a higher rank than it was thought he held), Angleton did not object when David Murphy, then head of the Soviet Russia Division, ordered him held in solitary confinement for approximately three-and-a-half years. This solitary confinement included 16 months in a tiny attic with no windows or furniture, heat or air conditioning. Human contact was completely banned. He was given a shower once a week and had no television, reading material, radio, exercise, or toothbrush. Interrogations were frequent and intensive. He spent an additional brutal four months in a ten-foot-by-ten-foot concrete bunker in Camp Perry. He was told that this condition would continue for 25 years unless he confessed to being a Soviet spy.
James Angleton came to public attention in the United States when the Church Commission (formally known as the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities), following up on the Warren Commission
, probed the CIA for information about the Kennedy assassination. The Nosenko episode does not appear to have shaken Angleton's faith in Golitsyn, although Helms and J. Edgar Hoover
thought otherwise. Hoover's objections are said to have been so vehement as to curtail severely counterintelligence cooperation between the FBI and CIA for the remainder of Hoover's service as the FBI's director. Nosenko was found to be a legitimate defector, a lieutenant colonel and became a consultant to the CIA.
in Canada. It is believed that Viktor Vladimirov, the head of KGB assassination and sabotage section during those days, was behind the operation.
strategy designed to lull the West into a false sense of security, and finally economically cripple and diplomatically isolate the United States
. Among other things, Golitsyn stated:
Angleton and Golitsyn reportedly sought the assistance of William F. Buckley, Jr.
(himself once a CIA man) in writing New Lies for Old. Buckley refused but later went on to write a novel about Angleton, Spytime: The Undoing of James Jesus Angleton.
Deception which claimed:
stated that of 194 predictions made in New Lies For Old, 139 had been fulfilled by 1993, 9 seemed 'clearly wrong', and the other 46 were 'not soon falsifiable
'.
According to Russian political scientist Yevgenia Albats
, Golitsyn's book New Lies for Old claimed that "as early as 1959, the KGB was working up a perestroika
-type plot to manipulate foreign public opinion on a global scale. The plan was in a way inspired by the teachings of the sixth-century B.C. Chinese theoretician and military commander Sun Tsu, who said, "I will force the enemy to take our strength for weakness, and our weakness for strength, and thus will turn his strength into weakness." Albats argued that the KGB
was the major beneficiary of political changes in Russia, and perhaps indeed directed Gorbachev. According to her, "one thing is certain: perestroika opened the way for the KGB to advance toward the very heart of power" in Russia. It has been said that Mikhail Gorbachev
justified his new policies as a necessary step to "hug Europe to death", and to "evict the United States from Europe".
According to Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky
, "In 1992 I had unprecedented access to Politburo and Central Committee secret documents which have been classified, and still are even now, for 30 years. These documents show very clearly that the whole idea of turning the European common market into a federal state was agreed between the left-wing parties of Europe and Moscow as a joint project which Gorbachev in 1988-89 called our 'common European home'." (interview by The Brussels Journal
, February 23, 2006).
On June 8, 1995, the British
Conservative
Member of Parliament
Christopher Gill quoted The Perestroika Deception during a House of Commons
debate, saying: "It stretches credulity to its absolute bounds to think that suddenly, overnight, all those who were Communists will suddenly adopt a new philosophy and belief, with the result that everything will be different. I use this opportunity to warn the House and the country that that is not the truth"; and: "Every time the House approves one of these collective agreements, not least treaties agreed by the collective of the European Union
, it contributes to the furtherance of the Russian strategy."
According to Daniel Pipes
, Golitsyn's publications "had some impact on rightist
thinking in the United States
", including political writer Jeffrey Nyquist and Joel Skousen
, as well as the John Birch Society
.
Golitsyn's views are shared by leading Czech dissident and politician Petr Cibulka
, who has alleged that the 1989 Velvet Revolution
in Czechoslovakia
was staged by the communist StB
secret police.
featured a fictionalized character based on Anatoliy Golitsyn named Alexander Golitsyn, played by actor Marcel Iures
.
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
is a Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
defector and author of two books about the long-term deception strategy of the KGB leadership. He was born in Piryatin, Ukrainian SSR
Ukrainian SSR
The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic or in short, the Ukrainian SSR was a sovereign Soviet Socialist state and one of the fifteen constituent republics of the Soviet Union lasting from its inception in 1922 to the breakup in 1991...
. He provided "a wide range of intelligence to the CIA on the operations of most of the 'Lines' (departments) at the Helsinki
Helsinki
Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...
and other residencies, as well as KGB methods of recruiting and running agents." He is an Honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) and, as late as 1984, was an American citizen.
Defection
Golitsyn worked in the strategic planning department of the KGBKGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
in the rank of Major. In 1961 under the name "Ivan Klimov" he was assigned to the Soviet embassy in Helsinki
Helsinki
Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...
, Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
as vice counsel and attache. He defected with his wife and daughter to the Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
(CIA) via Helsinki
Helsinki
Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...
on December 15, 1961 taking a train
Train
A train is a connected series of vehicles for rail transport that move along a track to transport cargo or passengers from one place to another place. The track usually consists of two rails, but might also be a monorail or maglev guideway.Propulsion for the train is provided by a separate...
to Haaparanta in the Finnish-Swedish
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
border town where he was flown to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
via Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
and was interviewed by James Jesus Angleton
James Jesus Angleton
James Jesus Angleton was chief of the Central Intelligence Agency's counterintelligence staff from 1954 to 1975...
, CIA counter-intelligence
Counter-intelligence
Counterintelligence or counter-intelligence refers to efforts made by intelligence organizations to prevent hostile or enemy intelligence organizations from successfully gathering and collecting intelligence against them. National intelligence programs, and, by extension, the overall defenses of...
director. In January 1962, the KGB sent instructions to fifty-four Rezidentura throughout the world on the actions required to minimize the damage. All meetings with important agents were to be suspended. In November 1962, KGB head Vladimir Semichastny
Vladimir Semichastny
Vladimir Yefimovich Semichastny was the head of the KGB from November 1961 to April 1967....
approved a plan for assassination of Golitsyn and other "particularly dangerous traitors" including Igor Gouzenko
Igor Gouzenko
Igor Sergeyevich Gouzenko was a cipher clerk for the Soviet Embassy to Canada in Ottawa, Ontario. He defected on September 5, 1945, with 109 documents on Soviet espionage activities in the West...
, Nikolay Khokhlov
Nikolay Khokhlov
Nikolai Evgenievich Khoklov was a KGB officer who defected to the United States in 1953. He testified about KGB activities...
, and Bogdan Stashinsky. The KGB made significant efforts to discredit Golitsyn by promoting disinformation that he was involved in illegal smuggling operations.
Golitsyn provided information about many famous Soviet agents including Kim Philby
Kim Philby
Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby was a high-ranking member of British intelligence who worked as a spy for and later defected to the Soviet Union...
, Donald Duart Maclean
Donald Duart Maclean
Donald Duart Maclean was a British diplomat and member of the Cambridge Five who were members of MI5, MI6 or the diplomatic service who acted as spies for the Soviet Union in the Second World War and beyond. He was recruited as a "straight penetration agent" while an undergraduate at Cambridge by...
, Guy Burgess
Guy Burgess
Guy Francis De Moncy Burgess was a British-born intelligence officer and double agent, who worked for the Soviet Union. He was part of the Cambridge Five spy ring that betrayed Western secrets to the Soviets before and during the Cold War...
, John Vassall
John Vassall
William John Christopher Vassall was a British civil servant who, under pressure of blackmail, spied for the Soviet Union....
, double agent Aleksandr Kopatzky who worked in Germany, and others. It was only with the defection of Golitsyn in 1961 that Philby was confirmed as a Soviet mole.
Controversies
Golitsyn was a figure of significant controversy in the Western intelligence community. Military writer, the British General John HackettJohn Winthrop Hackett Junior
General Sir John Winthrop Hackett GCB, CBE, DSO & Bar, MC was an Australian-born British soldier, author and university administrator.-Early life:Hackett, who was nicknamed "Shan", was born in Perth, Western Australia...
, and the former CIA counter-intelligence director James Angleton
James Jesus Angleton
James Jesus Angleton was chief of the Central Intelligence Agency's counterintelligence staff from 1954 to 1975...
identified Golitsyn as "the most valuable defector ever to reach the West". However, the official historian for Britain's MI5
MI5
The Security Service, commonly known as MI5 , is the United Kingdom's internal counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its core intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service focused on foreign threats, Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence...
, Christopher Andrew, described him as an "unreliable conspiracy theorist". Andrew believes that although intelligence data provided by Golitsyn were reliable, some of his global political assessments of the Soviet and KGB strategy are questionable. In particular, he disputed the Golitsyn claim that the "Sino-Soviet split was a charade to deceive the West". Golitsyn's claims of widespread KGB double agent infiltration in the CIA also contributed to Angleton's growing paranoia which ultimately led to Angleton's dismissal from the CIA.
Accusing Harold Wilson
Golitsyn claimed that Rt Hon. Harold WilsonHarold Wilson
James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, KG, OBE, FRS, FSS, PC was a British Labour Member of Parliament, Leader of the Labour Party. He was twice Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the 1960s and 1970s, winning four general elections, including a minority government after the...
(then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the Head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Sovereign, to Parliament, to their political party and...
) was a KGB informer and an agent of influence
Agent of influence
An agent of influence is a person whose political actions and arguments are alleged to serve the interests of a foreign power, and to be directed or manipulated by the intelligence agency of that power...
. This encouraged pre-existing conspiracy theories within the British security services concerning Wilson. During his time as President of the Board of Trade in the late 1940s, Wilson had been on trade missions to Russia and cultivated a friendship with Anastas Mikoyan
Anastas Mikoyan
Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan was an Armenian Old Bolshevik and Soviet statesman during the rules of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, and Leonid Brezhnev....
and Vyacheslav Molotov
Vyacheslav Molotov
Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov was a Soviet politician and diplomat, an Old Bolshevik and a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s, when he rose to power as a protégé of Joseph Stalin, to 1957, when he was dismissed from the Presidium of the Central Committee by Nikita Khrushchev...
. He continued these relationships when Labour went into Opposition, and according to material from the Mitrokhin Archive
Mitrokhin Archive
The Mitrokhin Archive is a collection of notes made secretly by KGB Major Vasili Mitrokhin during his thirty years as a KGB archivist in the foreign intelligence service and the First Chief Directorate...
, his insights into British politics were passed to and highly rated by the KGB. An "agent development file" was opened in the hope of recruiting Harold Wilson, and the codename "OLDING" was given to him. However "the development did not come to fruition," according to the KGB file records. Golitsyn also accused the KGB of poisoning Hugh Gaitskell
Hugh Gaitskell
Hugh Todd Naylor Gaitskell CBE was a British Labour politician, who held Cabinet office in Clement Attlee's governments, and was the Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition from 1955, until his death in 1963.-Early life:He was born in Kensington, London, the third and youngest...
, Wilson's predecessor as leader of the Labour Party, in order for Wilson to take over the party. Gaitskell died after a sudden attack of lupus erythematosus
Lupus erythematosus
Lupus erythematosus is a category for a collection of diseases with similar underlying problems with immunity . Symptoms of these diseases can affect many different body systems, including joints, skin, kidneys, blood cells, heart, and lungs...
, an autoimmune disorder, in 1963. Golitsyn's claims about Wilson were believed in particular by the senior MI5
MI5
The Security Service, commonly known as MI5 , is the United Kingdom's internal counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its core intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service focused on foreign threats, Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence...
counterintelligence officer Peter Wright
Peter Wright
Peter Maurice Wright was an English scientist and former MI5 counterintelligence officer, noted for writing the controversial book Spycatcher, which became an international bestseller with sales of over two million copies...
. Although Wilson was repeatedly investigated by MI5 and cleared of this accusation, individuals within the service continued to believe that he was an agent of the KGB, and this belief played a part in the coup plots against him.
Accusing Urho Kekkonen
Golitsyn revealed after his defection that Note CrisisNote Crisis
The Note Crisis was a political crisis in Finland relations in 1961. The Soviet Union sent a diplomatic note on October 30, 1960, citing an article of the FCMA treaty referring to the threat of war....
was an operation masterminded by Kekkonen together with the Soviets.
After the defection Golitsyn claimed also that the President of Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
Urho Kaleva Kekkonen was a KGB-agent codenamed "Timo" since 1947. Nowadays the most common view among historians is that Kekkonen was highly engaged with the KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
.
Golitsyn and Nosenko
In 1964, Yuri NosenkoYuri Nosenko
Lt. Col. Yuri Ivanovich Nosenko was a KGB defector and a figure of significant controversy within the U.S. intelligence community, since his claims contradicted another defector, Anatoliy Golitsyn, who believed he was a KGB plant...
, a KGB officer working out of Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, insisted that he needed to defect to the USA, as his role as a double-agent had been discovered, prompting his recall to Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
. Nosenko was allowed to defect, although his credibility was immediately in question because the CIA was unable to verify a KGB recall order. Nosenko made two extremely controversial claims: that Golitsyn was not a double agent but a KGB plant; and that he had information on the assassination
John F. Kennedy assassination
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States, was assassinated at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas...
of President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
by way of the KGB's history with Lee Harvey Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald was, according to four government investigations,These were investigations by: the Federal Bureau of Investigation , the Warren Commission , the House Select Committee on Assassinations , and the Dallas Police Department. the sniper who assassinated John F...
in the time Oswald lived in the Soviet Union.
Regarding the first claim, Golitsyn had said from the beginning that the KGB would try to plant defectors in an effort to discredit him. Regarding the second claim, Nosenko told his debriefers that he had been personally responsible for handling Oswald's case and that the KGB had judged Oswald unfit for their services due to mental instability and had not even attempted to debrief Oswald about his work on the U-2 spy planes
Lockheed U-2
The Lockheed U-2, nicknamed "Dragon Lady", is a single-engine, very high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft operated by the United States Air Force and previously flown by the Central Intelligence Agency . It provides day and night, very high-altitude , all-weather intelligence gathering...
during his service in the United States Marine Corps
United States Marine Corps
The United States Marine Corps is a branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for providing power projection from the sea, using the mobility of the United States Navy to deliver combined-arms task forces rapidly. It is one of seven uniformed services of the United States...
. Under great duress, Nosenko failed two highly questionable lie detector
Polygraph
A polygraph measures and records several physiological indices such as blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and skin conductivity while the subject is asked and answers a series of questions...
tests but passed a third test monitored by several Agency departments.
Judging the claim of not interrogating Oswald about the U-2 improbable, given Oswald's familiarity with the U-2 program, and faced with further challenges to Nosenko's credibility (he was thought to have falsely claimed to be a lieutenant colonel, a higher rank than it was thought he held), Angleton did not object when David Murphy, then head of the Soviet Russia Division, ordered him held in solitary confinement for approximately three-and-a-half years. This solitary confinement included 16 months in a tiny attic with no windows or furniture, heat or air conditioning. Human contact was completely banned. He was given a shower once a week and had no television, reading material, radio, exercise, or toothbrush. Interrogations were frequent and intensive. He spent an additional brutal four months in a ten-foot-by-ten-foot concrete bunker in Camp Perry. He was told that this condition would continue for 25 years unless he confessed to being a Soviet spy.
James Angleton came to public attention in the United States when the Church Commission (formally known as the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities), following up on the Warren Commission
Warren Commission
The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known unofficially as the Warren Commission, was established on November 27, 1963, by Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963...
, probed the CIA for information about the Kennedy assassination. The Nosenko episode does not appear to have shaken Angleton's faith in Golitsyn, although Helms and J. Edgar Hoover
J. Edgar Hoover
John Edgar Hoover was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States. Appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation—predecessor to the FBI—in 1924, he was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director until his death in 1972...
thought otherwise. Hoover's objections are said to have been so vehement as to curtail severely counterintelligence cooperation between the FBI and CIA for the remainder of Hoover's service as the FBI's director. Nosenko was found to be a legitimate defector, a lieutenant colonel and became a consultant to the CIA.
Assassination attempt
In 1967 there was a failed plot against Golitsyn by the KGBKGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
in Canada. It is believed that Viktor Vladimirov, the head of KGB assassination and sabotage section during those days, was behind the operation.
New Lies for Old
In 1984, Golitsyn published the book New Lies For Old, wherein he predicted the collapse of the communist bloc orchestrated from above. He warned about a long-term deceptionDeception
Deception, beguilement, deceit, bluff, mystification, bad faith, and subterfuge are acts to propagate beliefs that are not true, or not the whole truth . Deception can involve dissimulation, propaganda, and sleight of hand. It can employ distraction, camouflage or concealment...
strategy designed to lull the West into a false sense of security, and finally economically cripple and diplomatically isolate the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Among other things, Golitsyn stated:
- "The 'liberalization' [in the Soviet Union] would be spectacular and impressive. Formal pronouncements might be made about a reduction in the communist party's role; its monopoly would be apparently curtailed."
- "If [liberalization] should be extended to East Germany, demolition of the Berlin WallBerlin WallThe Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin...
might even be contemplated." - "The European ParliamentEuropean ParliamentThe European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...
might become an all-European socialist parliament with representation from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. 'Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals' would turn out to be a neutral, socialist Europe."
Angleton and Golitsyn reportedly sought the assistance of William F. Buckley, Jr.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
William Frank Buckley, Jr. was an American conservative author and commentator. He founded the political magazine National Review in 1955, hosted 1,429 episodes of the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999, and was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. His writing was noted for...
(himself once a CIA man) in writing New Lies for Old. Buckley refused but later went on to write a novel about Angleton, Spytime: The Undoing of James Jesus Angleton.
The Perestroika Deception
In 1995 he published a book containing purported memoranda attributed to Golitsyn entitled The PerestroikaPerestroika
Perestroika was a political movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during 1980s, widely associated with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev...
Deception which claimed:
- "The [Soviet] strategists are concealing the secret coordination that exists and will continue between Moscow and the 'nationalist' leaders of [the] 'independent' republics."
- "The power of the KGB remains as great as ever... Talk of cosmetic changes in the KGB and its supervision is deliberately publicized to support the myth of 'democratization' of the Soviet political system."
- "Scratch these new, instant Soviet 'democrats,' 'anti-Communists,' and 'nationalists' who have sprouted out of nowhere, and underneath will be found secret Party members or KGB agents."
Reactions
In his book Wedge - The Secret War between the FBI and CIA (Knopf, 1994), Mark RieblingMark Riebling
Mark Riebling is a U.S. historian, essayist, and policy analyst. He has written on national security, the history of ideas, and Vatican foreign policy during Cold War and Second World War, and is the author of Wedge: The Secret War between the FBI and CIA....
stated that of 194 predictions made in New Lies For Old, 139 had been fulfilled by 1993, 9 seemed 'clearly wrong', and the other 46 were 'not soon falsifiable
Falsifiability
Falsifiability or refutability of an assertion, hypothesis or theory is the logical possibility that it can be contradicted by an observation or the outcome of a physical experiment...
'.
According to Russian political scientist Yevgenia Albats
Yevgenia Albats
Dr. Yevgenia Markovna Albats is a Russian investigative journalist, political scientist, writer and radio host. As of year 2011, she workes as a chief editor of The New Times magazine.-Early life and education:...
, Golitsyn's book New Lies for Old claimed that "as early as 1959, the KGB was working up a perestroika
Perestroika
Perestroika was a political movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during 1980s, widely associated with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev...
-type plot to manipulate foreign public opinion on a global scale. The plan was in a way inspired by the teachings of the sixth-century B.C. Chinese theoretician and military commander Sun Tsu, who said, "I will force the enemy to take our strength for weakness, and our weakness for strength, and thus will turn his strength into weakness." Albats argued that the KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
was the major beneficiary of political changes in Russia, and perhaps indeed directed Gorbachev. According to her, "one thing is certain: perestroika opened the way for the KGB to advance toward the very heart of power" in Russia. It has been said that Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
justified his new policies as a necessary step to "hug Europe to death", and to "evict the United States from Europe".
According to Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky
Vladimir Bukovsky
Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovsky is a leading member of the dissident movement of the 1960s and 1970s, writer, neurophysiologist, and political activist....
, "In 1992 I had unprecedented access to Politburo and Central Committee secret documents which have been classified, and still are even now, for 30 years. These documents show very clearly that the whole idea of turning the European common market into a federal state was agreed between the left-wing parties of Europe and Moscow as a joint project which Gorbachev in 1988-89 called our 'common European home'." (interview by The Brussels Journal
The Brussels Journal
The Brussels Journal is a conservative blog, founded by the Flemish journalist Paul Beliën. It was founded in 2005, and has both an English language section with various international contributions, and a Dutch section...
, February 23, 2006).
On June 8, 1995, the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
Conservative
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
Christopher Gill quoted The Perestroika Deception during a House of Commons
British House of Commons
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also comprises the Sovereign and the House of Lords . Both Commons and Lords meet in the Palace of Westminster. The Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 650 members , who are known as Members...
debate, saying: "It stretches credulity to its absolute bounds to think that suddenly, overnight, all those who were Communists will suddenly adopt a new philosophy and belief, with the result that everything will be different. I use this opportunity to warn the House and the country that that is not the truth"; and: "Every time the House approves one of these collective agreements, not least treaties agreed by the collective of the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
, it contributes to the furtherance of the Russian strategy."
According to Daniel Pipes
Daniel Pipes
Daniel Pipes is an American historian, writer, and political commentator. He is the founder and director of the Middle East Forum and its Campus Watch project, and editor of its Middle East Quarterly journal...
, Golitsyn's publications "had some impact on rightist
Right-wing politics
In politics, Right, right-wing and rightist generally refer to support for a hierarchical society justified on the basis of an appeal to natural law or tradition. To varying degrees, the Right rejects the egalitarian objectives of left-wing politics, claiming that the imposition of equality is...
thinking in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
", including political writer Jeffrey Nyquist and Joel Skousen
Joel Skousen
Joel M. Skousen is an American conservative political commentator non-fiction Survivalist author, and retreat consultant who specializes in preparedness topics, particularly survival retreat and fallout shelter design and construction, as well as in what he calls "strategic relocation." Skousen is...
, as well as the John Birch Society
John Birch Society
The John Birch Society is an American political advocacy group that supports anti-communism, limited government, a Constitutional Republic and personal freedom. It has been described as radical right-wing....
.
Golitsyn's views are shared by leading Czech dissident and politician Petr Cibulka
Petr Cibulka
Petr Cibulka is a Czech politician and former dissident.As one of signatories of Charter 77 Cibulka was repeatedly imprisoned for various fabricated offenses and spent a total of 5 years in prison before the Velvet revolution in 1989...
, who has alleged that the 1989 Velvet Revolution
Velvet Revolution
The Velvet Revolution or Gentle Revolution was a non-violent revolution in Czechoslovakia that took place from November 17 – December 29, 1989...
in Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
was staged by the communist StB
STB
STB is an acronym that can mean:* Sacrae Theologiae Baccalaureus – Bachelor of Sacred Theology* Set-top box – a television device that converts signals to viewable images* Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP -- a law firm...
secret police.
In popular culture
The 1996 American film Mission: ImpossibleMission: Impossible (film)
Mission: Impossible is a 1996 action thriller directed by Brian De Palma and starring Tom Cruise. Following on from the television series of the same name, the plot follows a new agent, Ethan Hunt and his mission to uncover the mole within the CIA who has framed him for the murders of his entire...
featured a fictionalized character based on Anatoliy Golitsyn named Alexander Golitsyn, played by actor Marcel Iures
Marcel Iures
Marcel Iureş is a Romanian stage and screen actor.Iureş was born 2 August 1951 in Băileşti, Romania and is one of Romania's most acclaimed stage and film actors. Iureş entered the Institutul de Arta Teatrala si Cinematografica in Bucharest in 1974 and graduated in 1978...
.
Books
- Anatoliy Golitsyn. New Lies for Old G. S. G. & Associates, Incorporated, 1990, ISBN 0-945001-13-4
- Christopher StoryChristopher StoryChristopher Edward Harle Story FRSA was a British writer, publisher and government adviser specialising in intelligence and economic affairs, who is best known for his collaboration with KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn on the 1995 book The Perestroika Deception.Christopher Story, the son of Colonel...
(Editor). ("by Anatoliy Golitsyn") The Perestroika Deception : Memoranda to the Central Intelligence Agency, Edward Harle Ltd; 2nd Ed edition (1998) ISBN 1-899798-03-X
External links
- Interview with Christopher StoryChristopher StoryChristopher Edward Harle Story FRSA was a British writer, publisher and government adviser specialising in intelligence and economic affairs, who is best known for his collaboration with KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn on the 1995 book The Perestroika Deception.Christopher Story, the son of Colonel...
, editor of The Perestroika Deception; part I, part II, part III - Anatoliy Golitsyn, Spartacus Educational website by John Simkin
- Bombs Away, interview with Jeffrey Nyquist, 18 December 2004
- Unmasking Spies, Then and Now, by Jeffrey Nyquist, Geopolitical Global Analysis, 01.06.2005
- Memorandum to the CIA: 26 August 1991, by Anatoliy Golitsyn
- Did Communism Fake Its Own Death in 1991?, by Jason McNew, article referencing Anatoliy Golitsyn's books and predictions