Rossiyskaya Gazeta: Interview of Mikhail Vasenkov aka Juan Lazaro, Veteran KGB/SVR Illegal Intelligence Officer

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.

 

Nikolay Dolgopolov: The Story of Mikhail and Elizabeth Mukasey, Veteran KGB Illegal Intelligence Officers

Veteran journalist Nikolay Dolgopolov, now deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Russian state-owned daily newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta, is one of the most popular writers on intelligence history in contemporary Russia. He has written the biographies of Kim Philby, Rudolf Abel (Viliam Fisher), Nadezhda Troyan, and Gevork Vartanyan. In early 2020, he published his memoir From Dolgopolov’s Notebook: From Francoise Sagan to Rudolf Abel.

Nikolay Dolgopolov’s text was published in the November 22, 2017 issue of the joint Russia-Belarus weekly newspaper Soyuz. Belarus-Rossiya. Below is my English translation available only on this website.

Nikolay Dolgopolov: The People With A Cover Story

Soyuz. Belarus-Rossiya November 22, 2017

On various assignments for 22 years, illegal intelligence officers [codenamed] “Elsa” and “Zephyr” have never been exposed

Illegal intelligence officers, the husband and wife Mikhail (1907-2008) and Elizabeth Mukasey (1912-2009) worked for 22 years in the “special conditions” in Western Europe. "Elsa” and “Zephyr" - their operational pseudonyms - lived a long, happy life together and were never exposed.

Now, after their deaths, it is possible to say more about the extraordinary lives of Colonel and Lieutenant Colonel Mukasey. But, then, are there any illegal intelligence officers whose life one can call ordinary? I would never have met them if it were not for their family members. The son, cameraman Anatoly Mukasey and his wife, film actress and director Svetlana Druzhinina, who were greatly proud of them, suggested that the leadership of the Foreign Intelligence Service [SVR] reveal their identities.

In Mikhail’s native village of Zamostye, there were 350 houses.  He was the son, the nephew, and the grandson of blacksmiths and from the time he was 10 years old, he assisted his elders in the forge. Then he went to St. Petersburg [Leningrad]. He dreamed of studying at the university and was hoping he would get admitted. He cleaned steamboat boilers – a hellish occupation, but then he enrolled at the workers’ university and became an engineer. He was soon recruited by the state security [NKVD]. In the late 1930s, nobody could turn that down.

After the war, the Mukaseys became illegal intelligence officers. They worked under false names in different countries. How did they get into Western Europe? Mukasey invented, as intelligence officers say, a cover story himself.

“That cover story was really difficult,” Mikhail Isaakovich told me. – I don’t want to brag, but I’ll say that not even every experienced intelligence officer could live it. In my [assumed] family, more than 30 people were killed during the Nazi occupation. There were very few people who survived, you could count them on your fingers. I was in that village, I knew it, I saw it. And before I started using that cover story, I found a man [from there]. He really went through hell. With his permission, I used his biography as my own. And with my help and the assistance of the authorities, he left for Israel. His father went there, too. But that’s all I can say.

Under this cover story, Michael and Elizabeth Mukasey, now called Michael and Betsy, settled in one of the countries of the Socialist bloc. And from there, they moved into Western Europe. They went through a lot. But the resident “Zephyr” and the radio operator “Elsa” coped well. They looked for illegal intelligence officers who suddenly stopped contacting the Center. They transmitted the information about the secret plans of NATO. They had Western European passports and used them to travel to nearly one hundred countries. They very often visited the countries with which the USSR did not have diplomatic relations. Yes, this could have been deadly, but was often done time and again. In the event of exposure, Michael and Betsy could hardly count on any help from their own.

And I would like to describe one of the episodes, which, in the language of intelligence professionals, would be called operational. A comparatively young illegal intelligence officer K., who had established himself in Paris, stopped all contact. And the Center ordered the Mukaseys: find out what happened by any means necessary.

This was one of Mikhail’s first trips from a new country of residence [in the Socialist bloc] to another country. A rather risky trip from Bern to Paris, where the traces of an unmarried - according to the KGB cover story - illegal intelligence officer K. were lost. And the discovery of a tragic explanation for the absence. The owner of a small store [the officer K.] had died. It was later that Mukasey learned that when K. went on a [long-awaited] vacation to the USSR, he was recommended to undergo a surgery. But because he had so many things waiting for him to do [in France], he did not follow through. Not without difficulty, Michael found his apartment and learned that Mr. K. had become ill and was taken to the hospital where he died.

No one could have imagined such a premature departure. And here Mukasey showed not just official, but also humane interest and care. He found out all the circumstances of the death of the officer who was completely unknown to him. The nurse at the Catholic hospital said: “Your friend died completely alone and fully conscious. He called the priest, kissed the Catholic cross, and before he died, a pure, dew-like tear rolled down from his eye, and [then] he fell silent forever."

Mukasey felt grief for his colleague. Even on his deathbed, he did not betray himself, and took away the secrets of his homeland to the grave. Until his last breath, he held firm to his cover story. Well, whoever remains faithful to the state oath can never fail, even when he is dead. The Russian man was buried under a foreign [Catholic] rite, having done everything to depart with dignity. Mikhail Isaakovich found his grave. It was in the place where the homeless and the dogs were buried. And Mukasey got the body to be re-buried in a different place.

In Paris, K. lived as a lonely man, but, in his homeland, in Moscow, he had a wife and two daughters. Close relatives and friends remember him. But the simple Russian family name of this illegal intelligence officer as well as his accomplishments are still classified under the stamp “top secret.”

In the memory of his deceased colleague in illegal intelligence, Mukasey erected a marble headstone on his grave. And, for more than 20 years that he lived on the other side of the “curtain,” he has taken care of the grave. On the headstone, there was a portrait of K. with his year of birth, according to the cover story, and the real year of death.

However, even in death, K. was of service to the Motherland. His grave served as a secret meeting place of other intelligence officers, both legal and illegal, and as a dead drop for secret documents. Doesn’t this sound like a plot for a spy thriller? And for many years after the couple returned to their homeland, someone – it’s no secret who - brought flowers to the grave with a false name on the headstone. What is its condition now? Did the headstone remain in its place or, as is often the case in France, was it already turned into the grave of another person? I do not know...

What is the most important to an intelligence officer? Glory? But glory, if it comes, is a result of exposure. So maybe the best reward is obscurity?

 

Russian TV Report: The Story of Vladimir Lokhov, Veteran KGB Illegal Intelligence Officer

On March 28, 2020, the Russian state TV (Rossiya 24) program “News on Saturday” aired a 12-minute report about the KGB illegal intelligence officer Vladimir Yosifovich Lokhov (1924-2002). The TV crew visited Lokhov’s family and reported on the recently declassified aspects of his biography. Below is my English translation of the report’s transcript available only on this website.

The “News on Saturday” program reveals one of the greatest secrets in the history of Soviet and Russian foreign intelligence. The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) declassified the real name of Colonel “K” [in January 2020] and we were allowed to visit his family. However, the journey to his home as well as to [the discovery of] his true identity took a long time.

An icy road covered with snow. The footprints in the snow, our local guides joke, are probably made by Bigfoot. Then a village appears with a name that sounds wonderful for the Russian ear – Pichidzhyn. We see a male figure in the distance. When we get to him, we find out that the man’s name is Boris. He and his wife are now the only people living in the village. But it is in the tradition of the Caucasus region to know even the genealogy of the long-gone neighbors. They lead us to the cemetery. They show us the grave of the father of our hero. This place is very remote. It’s not just in the Caucasus, it’s not just in Ossetia, it’s in South Ossetia.

The separation between the people like our hero and their families formed the basis of the famous movie episode [from the 1970s TV series Seventeen Moments of Spring]. So, he is from South Ossetia. And where is she [the wife] from? Let’s get to know her. Let’s look at her facial features. She is from the natives: from those who, after the revolution, fled from the Bolsheviks to the south, to Baku, and then settled there. [They met] in Azerbaijan. He came to study at the university, at the law faculty, and from there, was recruited into the KGB security apparatus [before it was called the KGB]. Our hero - the future legend of Soviet illegal intelligence - was nine years older than the one to whom he proposed to become his wife. But since she was from the aristocracy, as a KGB officer, he needed a special permission to marry her. But soon ...

Soon, they were both asked to travel abroad as a pair of illegal intelligence officers. Well, finally, it's time to reveal his name. Colonel, not “K,” but Vladimir Iosifovich Lokhov. In the future, he was not only an illegal intelligence officer in the field, but also the head of the 1^st Department of the entire Directorate of Illegal Intelligence [Directorate “S”]. By the way, it is interesting that, in addition to his native Ossetian, as a child, he easily mastered Georgian, Russian, and German, which, of course, was noticed by those who selected personnel for the special KGB assignments. It turns out that no good thing passes by unnoticed.

In Lokhovs’ home, there is still a Japanese radio tuned to the frequencies on which it was possible to receive encrypted messages from the Center. But, first, while still Soviet citizens, though with different family names, they were sent to that eastern country, whose natives they were to impersonate [in their intelligence work]. Much later, this turned out to a shocking surprise to their daughter who was born there.

“Here’s the story. I lost my birth certificate, which stated that I was born in Moscow. At that time, I intended to apply to a university and was preparing the relevant documentation. And then they said to me at the registry office: but you were born in ...”, explained Lokhov’s daughter. It is not by chance that we “beeped” the name of the city and the country where she was born. It is still a state secret, under the identity of a native of which country, Colonel “K” hunted for the secrets, as they said then, of the main enemy [U.S.].

I looked at the photos from the family album. There are deserts, and palm trees, and European cities. Under the guise of a native of the country in question, Lokhov worked all over the world.

Only there were no [covert] meetings with his wife as in the case of Stierlitz [a fictional character from Seventeen Moments of Spring]. Lokhov went to work across the “curtain,” but she was not allowed to join him due to the unfavorable conclusions of the medical board. He had to go by himself.

The children would receive greetings from their father in the form of postcards and gifts, which, as it turned out later, were often actually sent by their mother. And their neighbors would sometimes whisper: “No father.”

“Once when my father arrived, I went out, took his hand, and told everybody: here he is, my dad,” said Lokhov’s daughter.

It appears that the daughter resembles the mother, while the son Igor, who is stricter in character, resembles the father. But he begins his recollections with a funny story. What does the movie “Dog Barbos and Unusual Running Race” [1961] have to do with Soviet intelligence? The fact is that the cover for Colonel “K” was that of the owner of a cinema theater. And he, a risk-taker with a sense of humor, began to get ahead of the competition by making his film screenings longer and showing this [10-minute] film, among others, for free. “But his main feature film was ‘Cleopatra,’” recalls Igor Lokhov.

- So, he attracted the local audience with a Soviet film?

- The risk was justified. Who would have thought of the intelligence connection? Then he sent the money he earned back home, including to his so-called mother,” said Igor Lokhov.

Who’s that? Well, that is [another] amazing story! Remember the Ossetian Pichidzhyn, where our hero was born, and its modest inhabitants? Abroad, Lokhov’s cover was to impersonate a native of a similar village from that [unnamed] country: he used the identity of a real person who had died. But there was a moment when Lokhov had to prove that he was in fact that person. So, he told the Center that he would visit his alleged birthplace. The intelligence historian Nikolay Dolgopolov, who was the first to reveal this story in the press even before Lokhov’s identity was declassified, explains: “The risk was not just big, it was huge. I think it was so because the only one person who could prove his identity was “his” old mother who was still alive. And here the smallest thing could lead to failure. The woman was already blind. She got up and said: “My son is coming.” And then he fell at her feet. She felt his head, his eyes and said: “You came to me, you returned, you are my son.”

- Not everyone can keep his cool in the situation like this, not even a professional artist. And he was just a simple, ordinary person recall the Lokhovs.

- By the way, a professional artist has it easier. He goes on the stage, plays his part, returns to his dressing room, takes off his make-up, and is himself again. And here you have to play 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. “I said to him: wasn’t this a cruel deception?” “No,” he replied, “it actually had a very humane side.” Until the end of her days, Soviet intelligence sent money to the old woman’s account. Everyone was happy, they rebuilt her house, repaired the old roof. Maybe because of this, she lived to a ripe old age” concluded Nikolay Dolgopolov.

Lokhov was not as lucky. He died at 78 [1924-2002]. But he accomplished a lot during his illegal work abroad and when he returned to Moscow, he headed the 1^st Department of the Illegal Intelligence Directorate.

- “Find a statement of the deputy head of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee in 1990 when he said, regarding one of our operations: “If Russian intelligence is behind this event, then they far outplayed us, this is a higher mastery. And, indeed, Russian intelligence was behind that event” said Lokhov.

“Russian [intelligence]”? Lokhov was Ossetian and his subordinates and closest friends, the husband and wife Vartanyan were, for example, Armenian. The husband [Gevork Vartanyan] is Hero of Russia, the one whom Igor Kostolevsky played in the film “Tehran-43” about how the [Soviet] intelligence officers prevented the Germans from assassinating Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill. And after the war, the Vartanyans worked in other regions under the direction of Colonel “K.”

Also, for example, the illegal intelligence officer Konon Molody was of Russian-Even descent. Illegal intelligence officers are often recruited among those who, in addition to perfect linguistic skills, do not look Russian too much. Well, they are also recruited among those who approach their work as the priority number one.

- He was a very modest person. He was friends with all his subordinates. He was very attentive to the families of “his” illegal intelligence officers. He knew what it was like when they were leaving for their assignments, he lived through it all” Lokhov’s family members emphasized.