On March 29, 2020, the Russian state-owned newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an interview with Mikhail Vasenkov (aka Juan Lazaro), a KGB/SVR illegal intelligence officer arrested in the FBI counterintelligence operation codenamed Ghost Stories in June 2010 and later exchanged. The interview was conducted by Nikolay Dolgopolov, a well-known journalist and intelligence history author whom I called “the storyteller of Soviet intelligence history” in my recently published article in Intelligence and National Security. Below is my translation of the interview available only on this blog.
Nikolay Dolgopolov: Interview of Mikhail Vasenkov
Rossiyskaya Gazeta March 29, 2020
Introducing My Interviewee
Mikhail Anatolyevich Vasenkov was born in 1942. He began working as an illegal intelligence officer in the second half of the 1970s. According to his cover story, Juan Jose Lazaro Fuentes was a citizen of one of the countries in Latin America. Then he received the citizenship of Peru and married the local journalist Vicky Pelaez. He also adopted her son from her first marriage. Then the couple had another son, and the whole family moved to New York in the mid-1980s. He worked as a photographer and made extensive connections. Then he taught at a university [Baruch College in NYC]. His work in the field was so successful that he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for courage and heroism displayed in the line of duty by a secret decree dated January 12, 1990.
Having been betrayed [to the FBI] by Colonel [Alexander] Poteyev, Vasenkov was arrested at his home in NYC in 2010. Together with a group of our other illegal intelligence officers [arrested at the same time], he was exchanged for American spies arrested in Moscow and taken by plane to Russia.
Clarification
In some publications, Colonel Vasenkov is described as a major general. However, the authorities confirmed to me: Mikhail Vasenkov is a retired colonel.
The Real Latino from Kuntsevo
He is of medium height. Lean. Of athletic build. It was not for nothing that our mutual friend Valery told me that, while studying at the intelligence school, Mikhail was a champion both in long-distance running and in swimming. When he was sent abroad, he became interested in martial arts and attained a great deal of success.
The decades of living in foreign lands did their part. Vasenkov does not look like a Russian boy born in the Moscow district of Kuntsevo. He looks Spanish or Hispanic. In other words, a typical Latino.
He limps. He apologizes right away: doctors forbade him to stand on his feet for any extended period of time: “Let’s sit down. It’ll be okay soon. I will soon get this over with and walk again without limping.”
- Mikhail Anatolyevich, what’s wrong with your leg?
- Nothing. It’s a trifle. I had a surgery and now I have to walk with a crutch. Don’t think that the Americans broke my leg in 2010! They are not stupid. They immediately saw that I was a professional of the old school. The interrogation was relatively correct. They did not try to recruit me.
- But what really happened in 2010?
- We were betrayed. If it were not for that, I would not have been arrested. Nobody knew who I was. Like Kozlov (Alexey Mikhailovich Kozlov, Hero of Russia, was arrested after being betrayed by the traitor [Oleg] Gordievsky and spent two years on death row in South Africa in the 1980s. South Africa and the USSR had no diplomatic relations at the time. - ND), I communicated with no other operative. I worked on my own all the time.
[Vladimir] Kryuchkov sent me. (During that period, Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kryuchkov was the head of the First Main Directorate of the KGB – the Soviet foreign intelligence. - ND) Do you know how it was at that time? They would send officers for a very long time, sometimes forever, for life. And Kryuchkov told me: “Keep in mind that perhaps you will never come back home.” And I knew that. And it seemed that this would be the case with me. Yes, I was not supposed to come back.
I have never seen, or heard of, any of those people arrested in the United States with whom I sat on the court bench. And they didn’t know me - they never saw me. I was the tenth person and completely unknown to them. But the Americans knew who I was.
- How come?
- In 1991, a lot of outsiders infiltrated all areas of our life [in Russia], they infiltrated everything. They pushed, they imposed their agenda, they took up places [in the government]. Some of them are still there. And these outsiders betrayed us.
- Such as [Oleg] Kalugin?
- No, I’m not really talking about people like him. These moles, these traitors were sitting right here [in Moscow]. And, I think, they were in the intelligence service, too. If it hadn’t been for [Yevgeny] Primakov (the first director of the SVR. - ND), our intelligence service would have been destroyed, many wanted to be in charge of it. But Primakov saved it. And yet, some traitors stayed on, too. They betrayed us. One of these people betrayed me. I figured it out in the jail cell. A man came to my cell and ask me to confess that I was a spy. He showed me a file folder with my name on it. And in addition to that, he told me his real name, but said that he did not intend to say anything else. When you are shown your photograph taken in Moscow, everything becomes clear. I didn’t want to speak to that person. It was disgusting. I admitted: yes, that was me. And that was the end of it.
- How did you manage to settle down abroad?
- It took a long time and it would take a long time to describe it. I had great identity papers. My Spanish was good. I lived in Latin America. I was constantly learning something new. Both in my youth and when I became a university professor which was relatively recently. By the way, I taught at a very prestigious school.
- But you were also a photographer?
- Yes, I was a photographer as well. And I was close to the president of the country in which I was based. I traveled around the world. And I was suspected by no one.
- How did you send information to the Center? And how did you recruit?
- Now, that’s something different. Over the years, recruitment became less and less relevant. I knew a lot myself and did not need sources. That was how far I was able to get. Still, that wasn’t the top. I kept moving and climbed even higher. I was well known even beyond Latin America.
- Did your wife assist you?
- I tell you firmly: my wife did not know anything about it. And yet she was accused of [being an accomplice]. They wanted to imprison her. But she didn’t do anything. She is a good journalist and writes articles even at this time which expose all their deals over there. You know, it’s not easy for me to answer your questions.
- I heard that one of your sons is a musician?
- Yes. A great one, he graduated from the Juilliard School. But I am not his real father. That made no difference to me and I adopted him when I got married. He was very young, and I consider him my son. And my younger son is in Moscow and works as an architect.
The Spanish Sadness
Mikhail Anatolyevich speaks Russian with a Spanish accent. It seems as if he thinks in Spanish and then translates it into Russian. From several Spanish synonyms, he chooses one necessary Russian word with some difficulty. Sometimes he switches to English. His French is also not bad.
Sometimes I noticed this loss of our native tongue among his other comrades in this rarest branch of the intelligence profession [i.e. illegal officers]. It does not seem surprising for somebody like Vasenkov who lived outside Russia for decades.
His conversation includes a lot of references to the Spanish classics, which he knows perfectly and constantly quotes. I am not a specialist in Spanish literature, and I told him that right away. He almost seemed offended:
- Why not?
- Well, it so happened.
He has an affinity for philosophy. I noticed this in many people in his unique profession. Probably in one’s isolation that is the only way out: to think. Because thinking will definitely not give you away. According to Vasenkov, the essence of his profession is loyalty to one’s Homeland. It doesn’t matter where you live. Homeland is still the same. It’s yours. And it is for its sake that you chose this kind of life path.
He addresses me in an informal manner - you, Nikolay. He is not being rude. It is easier for him to use informal address because he does not make so many mistakes. It was the same with the American, later decorated as Hero of Russia, Morris Cohen (aka Peter Kroger), whom I also met.
Vasenkov told me: “You wrote well about [Rudolf] Abel, I read it. You did it with a lot of respect. But I didn’t like your book on [Gevork] Vartanyan.” This was so because I wrote in detail about his final days and his death. According to Mikhail Anatolyevich, to discuss such matters in print is to cross the line.
Then we remembered our mutual friend Valera K. He had told me about the early years of his friend Mikhail. They graduated from the intelligence school together. He had told me that Mikhail was an athletic guy and that he was a runner and a swimmer. And when he realized that some other guys were faster than him, he trained so hard and with such a determination that soon nobody could keep up with him, either in cross-country running or in the pool.
