Farewell Dossier
Encyclopedia
The Farewell dossier was the collection of documents that Colonel Vladimir Vetrov
, a KGB
defector (code-named "Farewell"), gathered and gave to the French
DST
in 1981–82, during the Cold War
.
An engineer, Vetrov had been assigned to evaluate information on Western hardware and software gathered by the "Line X" technical intelligence
operation for Directorate T, the directorate for scientific and technical intelligence collection from the West. He became increasingly disillusioned with the Communist system and decided to work with the French at the end of 1980. Between the spring of 1981 and early 1982, Vetrov gave almost 4,000 secret documents to the DST, including the complete list of 250 Line X officers stationed under legal cover in embassies around the world.
Western nations undertook a mass expulsion of Soviet technology spies. The CIA also mounted a counter-intelligence operation that transferred modified hardware and software designs to the Soviets. Thomas Reed
alleged this was the cause of a spectacular trans-Siberian pipeline disaster
in 1982.
Vetrov's story inspired Bonjour Farewell: La vérité sur la taupe française du KGB (1997) by Serguei Kostine. It was adapted loosely for the French film L'affaire Farewell
(2009) starring Emir Kusturica
and Guillaume Canet
.
made the information available to the United States
and NATO by the KGB
defector in place. Vetrov's information provided the means by which the United States used the Central Intelligence Agency
to turn Directorate T into a weapon against the Soviet Union itself.
Vetrov was a 53-year-old engineer assigned to evaluate the intelligence collected by Directorate T. He had volunteered his services to France for ideological reasons. He supplied a list of Soviet organizations in scientific collection and summary reports from Directorate T on the goals, achievements, and unfilled objectives of the program. Farewell revealed the names of more than 200 Line X officers stationed in 10 KGB residences in the West, along with more than 100 leads to Line X recruitments.
The French president François Mitterrand
told President Ronald Reagan of the United States of the spy Farewell and his information. On July 19, 1981, in a private meeting associated with the July 1981 Ottawa economic summit, Mitterrand told Reagan of Farewell and offered the intelligence to the United States.
William Safire said Mitterrand described the man as belonging to a section that was evaluating the achievements of Soviet efforts to acquire western technology. Reagan expressed great interest in Mitterrand's revelations and thanked him for having the material sent to the United States government. It was passed through Vice President Bush and then to CIA.
Reagan passed this on to William Casey
, his Director of Central Intelligence
. Casey called in Gus W. Weiss
, then working with Thomas C. Reed
on the staff of the National Security Council
. After studying the list of hundreds of Soviet agents and purchasers (including one cosmonaut) assigned to this penetration in the US and Japan, Weiss counselled against deportation." "The Farewell Dossier also identified hundreds of case officials, agents at their posts and other suppliers of information through the West and Japan. Besides identifying agents, the most useful information brought by the Dossier consisted of the ‘shopping list’ and its aims in terms of acquisition of technology in the coming years."
The dossier, under the name of Farewell, reached the CIA in August 1981. It demonstrated that the Soviets had spent years carrying out their research and development activities.
Safire was writing a series of hardline columns denouncing the financial backing being given Moscow by Germany and Britain for a major natural gas pipeline from Siberia to Europe. That project would give control of European energy supplies to the Communists, as well as generate US$8 billion a year to support Soviet computer and satellite research.
The CIA mounted a counter-intelligence operation that transferred modified hardware and software designs over to the Soviets. They instigated an operation of disinformation
and faulty technology transfer.
DST
, including the complete list of 200 Line X officers stationed under legal cover in embassies around the world.
It also led to the death of Vetrov. "Vetrov fell into a tragic episode with a woman and a fellow KGB officer in a Moscow park. In circumstances that are not clear, he stabbed and killed the officer and then stabbed but did not kill the woman. He was arrested, and, in the ensuing investigation, his espionage activities were discovered; he was executed in 1983. CIA had enough intelligence to institute protective countermeasures."
In 1985, the case took a bizarre turn when information on the Farewell dossier surfaced in France. Mitterrand came to suspect that Vetrov had been a CIA plant set up to test him to see if the material would be handed over to the Americans or kept by the French. Acting on this mistaken belief, Mitterrand fired the chief of the French service, Yves Bonnet. The details of the operation were declassified in 1996.
wrote in a 2007 article that the campaign of countermeasures based on Farewell's dossier was an economic war; that although no lives were lost in the gas pipeline explosion, the Soviet economy was significantly damaged; and that between 1984 and 1985, the United States and its NATO allies had put an end to the technology spying operation, which had destroyed the capacity of the USSR to capture technology when Moscow was caught between a defective economy on one hand and a US President determined to prevail and end the cold war on the other.
Vladimir Vetrov
Vladimir Ippolitovich Vetrov was a high-ranking KGB spy during the Cold War, who decided to covertly release to France and NATO valuable information on the Soviet Union's clandestine program aimed at stealing technology from the West.Vetrov was assigned the code-name Farewell by the French...
, a 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 (code-named "Farewell"), gathered and gave to the French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
DST
Direction de la surveillance du territoire
The Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire was a directorate of the French National Police operating as a domestic intelligence agency. It was responsible for counterespionage, counterterrorism and more generally the security of France against foreign threats and interference...
in 1981–82, during the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
.
An engineer, Vetrov had been assigned to evaluate information on Western hardware and software gathered by the "Line X" technical intelligence
Technical intelligence
In a pure military context, Technical Intelligence is intelligence about weapons and equipment used by the armed forces of foreign nations .The related term, scientific and technical intelligence, addresses information collected at the strategic level.Technical intelligence is intended primarily...
operation for Directorate T, the directorate for scientific and technical intelligence collection from the West. He became increasingly disillusioned with the Communist system and decided to work with the French at the end of 1980. Between the spring of 1981 and early 1982, Vetrov gave almost 4,000 secret documents to the DST, including the complete list of 250 Line X officers stationed under legal cover in embassies around the world.
Western nations undertook a mass expulsion of Soviet technology spies. The CIA also mounted a counter-intelligence operation that transferred modified hardware and software designs to the Soviets. Thomas Reed
Thomas C. Reed
Thomas Care Reed was the 11th Secretary of the Air Force from January 2, 1976 - April 6, 1977 under Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.-Early life:...
alleged this was the cause of a spectacular trans-Siberian pipeline disaster
Siberian pipeline sabotage
The Siberian pipeline sabotage refers to the alleged 1982 sabotage of the Soviet Urengoy–Surgut–Chelyabinsk natural gas pipeline by the CIA as a part of a policy to counter Soviet theft of American technology.- Background :...
in 1982.
Vetrov's story inspired Bonjour Farewell: La vérité sur la taupe française du KGB (1997) by Serguei Kostine. It was adapted loosely for the French film L'affaire Farewell
L'affaire Farewell
L'affaire Farewell is a 2009 French film directed by Christian Carion, starring Guillaume Canet and Emir Kusturica. The film is an espionage thriller loosely based on actions of the high-ranking KGB official, Vladimir Vetrov. It was released in the United States in June 2010, under the title...
(2009) starring Emir Kusturica
Emir Kusturica
Emir Nemanja Kusturica , is a Serbian filmmaker, actor and musician, recognized for several internationally acclaimed feature films...
and Guillaume Canet
Guillaume Canet
Guillaume Canet is a French actor and film director.Canet began his career in theatre and television before moving to film. He starred in several films like Joyeux Noël, Love Me If You Dare and The Beach...
.
Background
French President François MitterrandFrançois Mitterrand
François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was the 21st President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra, serving from 1981 until 1995. He is the longest-serving President of France and, as leader of the Socialist Party, the only figure from the left so far elected President...
made the information available to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and NATO by 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...
defector in place. Vetrov's information provided the means by which the United States used 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...
to turn Directorate T into a weapon against the Soviet Union itself.
Vetrov was a 53-year-old engineer assigned to evaluate the intelligence collected by Directorate T. He had volunteered his services to France for ideological reasons. He supplied a list of Soviet organizations in scientific collection and summary reports from Directorate T on the goals, achievements, and unfilled objectives of the program. Farewell revealed the names of more than 200 Line X officers stationed in 10 KGB residences in the West, along with more than 100 leads to Line X recruitments.
The French president François Mitterrand
François Mitterrand
François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was the 21st President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra, serving from 1981 until 1995. He is the longest-serving President of France and, as leader of the Socialist Party, the only figure from the left so far elected President...
told President Ronald Reagan of the United States of the spy Farewell and his information. On July 19, 1981, in a private meeting associated with the July 1981 Ottawa economic summit, Mitterrand told Reagan of Farewell and offered the intelligence to the United States.
William Safire said Mitterrand described the man as belonging to a section that was evaluating the achievements of Soviet efforts to acquire western technology. Reagan expressed great interest in Mitterrand's revelations and thanked him for having the material sent to the United States government. It was passed through Vice President Bush and then to CIA.
Reagan passed this on to William Casey
William J. Casey
William Joseph Casey was the Director of Central Intelligence from 1981 to 1987. In this capacity he oversaw the entire United States Intelligence Community and personally directed the Central Intelligence Agency ....
, his Director of Central Intelligence
Director of Central Intelligence
The Office of United States Director of Central Intelligence was the head of the United States Central Intelligence Agency, the principal intelligence advisor to the President and the National Security Council, and the coordinator of intelligence activities among and between the various United...
. Casey called in Gus W. Weiss
Gus W. Weiss
Gus W. Weiss was a former White House policy adviser on technology, intelligence and economic affair and worked primarily on national security, intelligence and concerns on technology transfer to communist countries.- Education :...
, then working with Thomas C. Reed
Thomas C. Reed
Thomas Care Reed was the 11th Secretary of the Air Force from January 2, 1976 - April 6, 1977 under Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.-Early life:...
on the staff of the National Security Council
United States National Security Council
The White House National Security Council in the United States is the principal forum used by the President of the United States for considering national security and foreign policy matters with his senior national security advisors and Cabinet officials and is part of the Executive Office of the...
. After studying the list of hundreds of Soviet agents and purchasers (including one cosmonaut) assigned to this penetration in the US and Japan, Weiss counselled against deportation." "The Farewell Dossier also identified hundreds of case officials, agents at their posts and other suppliers of information through the West and Japan. Besides identifying agents, the most useful information brought by the Dossier consisted of the ‘shopping list’ and its aims in terms of acquisition of technology in the coming years."
The dossier, under the name of Farewell, reached the CIA in August 1981. It demonstrated that the Soviets had spent years carrying out their research and development activities.
CIA response
While Vetrov was recruited by the French, the Western counter-reaction came from the US.Safire was writing a series of hardline columns denouncing the financial backing being given Moscow by Germany and Britain for a major natural gas pipeline from Siberia to Europe. That project would give control of European energy supplies to the Communists, as well as generate US$8 billion a year to support Soviet computer and satellite research.
The CIA mounted a counter-intelligence operation that transferred modified hardware and software designs over to the Soviets. They instigated an operation of disinformation
Disinformation
Disinformation is intentionally false or inaccurate information that is spread deliberately. For this reason, it is synonymous with and sometimes called black propaganda. It is an act of deception and false statements to convince someone of untruth...
and faulty technology transfer.
Counterintelligence response
Another result was that the United States and its NATO allies later "rolled up the entire Line X collection network, both in the US and overseas." Weiss said "the heart of Soviet technology collection crumbled and would not recover." "Mikhail Gorbachev became furious when arrests and deportations of Soviet agents began in various countries, since he was unaware that the contents of the Farewell dossier were in the hands of the main heads of NATO governments. In a meeting of the Politburo on October 22, 1986, called to inform colleagues about the Reykjavik Summit, he alleged that the Americans were "acting very discourteously and behaving like bandits". Even though he showed a complacent face to the public, privately Gorbachev would refer to Reagan as "a liar".Discovery
An engineer, Vetrov was assigned to evaluate information on Western hardware and software gathered by spies ("Line X") for Directorate T. However, he became increasingly disillusioned with the Communist system and defected at the end of 1980. Between the spring of 1981 and early 1982, Vetrov handed over almost 4,000 secret documents to the FrenchFrance
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
DST
Direction de la surveillance du territoire
The Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire was a directorate of the French National Police operating as a domestic intelligence agency. It was responsible for counterespionage, counterterrorism and more generally the security of France against foreign threats and interference...
, including the complete list of 200 Line X officers stationed under legal cover in embassies around the world.
It also led to the death of Vetrov. "Vetrov fell into a tragic episode with a woman and a fellow KGB officer in a Moscow park. In circumstances that are not clear, he stabbed and killed the officer and then stabbed but did not kill the woman. He was arrested, and, in the ensuing investigation, his espionage activities were discovered; he was executed in 1983. CIA had enough intelligence to institute protective countermeasures."
In 1985, the case took a bizarre turn when information on the Farewell dossier surfaced in France. Mitterrand came to suspect that Vetrov had been a CIA plant set up to test him to see if the material would be handed over to the Americans or kept by the French. Acting on this mistaken belief, Mitterrand fired the chief of the French service, Yves Bonnet. The details of the operation were declassified in 1996.
Further analysis
Fidel CastroFidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
wrote in a 2007 article that the campaign of countermeasures based on Farewell's dossier was an economic war; that although no lives were lost in the gas pipeline explosion, the Soviet economy was significantly damaged; and that between 1984 and 1985, the United States and its NATO allies had put an end to the technology spying operation, which had destroyed the capacity of the USSR to capture technology when Moscow was caught between a defective economy on one hand and a US President determined to prevail and end the cold war on the other.
Further reading
- Gordon Brook-Shepherd, The Storm Birds: Soviet Post-War Defectors (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, New York, 1989) pp. 311–327
- Paul Kengor, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (Regan/HarperCollins, New York, 2006)
- Sergei Kostin and Eric Raynaud, Adieu Farewell (Laffont, Paris, 2009, in French); "Farewell" (AmazonCrossing, Aug. 2011, in English). First complete investigation of the Farewell Dossier and its international impact.
- Michel Louyot, Le Violon de neige (Publibook, Paris, 2008; soon to be available in English).