The brief biography of KGB defector Nikolay Khokhlov (1922-2007) can be found here. Khokhlov was interviewed by the writer and anti-Soviet political activist Andrey Okulov in 2004 for his book The Cold Civil War: KGB Against the White Russian Emigration (2006). Together with a brief introduction by Okulov, this interview was re-published by the Russian online media magazine Negosudarstvenaya sfera bezopasnosti [Non-Governmental Security Sphere] on January 23, 2006. Below is my translation available only on this website.
Andrey Okulov: An Interview of Nikolay Khokhlov - "The Man Disliked Both by the KGB and the CIA"Negosudarstvenaya sfera bezopasnosti January 23, 2006
On the night of January 11, 2006, the second channel of Russian state TV showed a documentary film about the life of the intelligence officer Nikolay Yevgeniyevich Khokhlov. In 1954, he was given the assignment to kill one of the leaders of the [Russian] emigre organization NTS [The National Alliance of Russian Solidarists], but he refused and went over to the side of the “enemy.”
A TV recording is a tricky thing. The man himself says certain things and, it seems, what can be more objective than that? But the impression [the film makes] is that the Cold War never ended.
The National Alliance of Russian Solidarists (NTS) was one of the oldest [anti-Soviet] organization founded by the Russian White emigres in 1930. But the authors of the film boiled down everything to the claim that it was a branch of U.S. intelligence. And one of its leaders, Georgy Okolovich, whom Khokhlov was supposed to kill, was portrayed as no more than an “American spy.” Why Khokhlov refused to kill Okolovich remained outside of the film’s concern: he changed his mind and that was that. But Khokhlov was influenced by the NTS documents given to him for review at the Lubyanka. The influence of his wife Yanina, a believing Catholic, was also of great importance.
In the late 1950s, Khokhlov was an adviser to South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. If Khokhlov’s proposals had been taken seriously, the Vietnam War could have had a different ending. However, the filmmakers presented this period in his life as focusing solely on the “sabotage activities” [in South Vietnam] and made it into another point of accusation. In addition, the comments of the retired KGB officers [included in the film] were an exercise in the character assassination. Probably, the next film they make will be about Solzhenitsyn’s “anti-Soviet activities” with the commentaries of the KGB personnel who tried to poison him.
The subtitle of the film is also laden with negativity: “The Confessions of a Traitor.” However, Khokhlov does not consider himself a traitor. His “betrayal” consisted of the fact that, risking his own life and the lives of his family members, he refused to carry out the criminal order of the criminal authorities.
About two years ago, this author conducted an interview with N.E. Khokhlov. This interview contains all the elements taken out from the film by its creators.
Fifty years ago, the name of Nikolay Yevgeniyevich Khokhlov was on the front pages of many newspapers in the West. In the Soviet Union, the name was a taboo until the very end of the communist system. Khokhlov was a professional intelligence officer who, during the war, participated in the elimination of Hitler’s Gauleiter of Belarus, Wilhelm Kube. In 1954, he thwarted an operation to assassinate one of the leaders of the NTS [Georgy Okolovich]. As a result, his wife was arrested, and he saw her again only in the early 1990s. In addition, his former colleagues from the KGB tried to poison him. He is the only defector in the history of Soviet intelligence services who was personally pardoned by President [Boris] Yeltsin.
Fifty years later, it turns out that it was not only the KGB that tried to hide the truth about this man. It turns out that he “knows too much” for the CIA, too ...
- Nikolay Yevgeniyevich, how did you get into intelligence service?
- At the end of September 1941, German troops came close to Moscow. I was eager to go to the front, although I was “excused” from military service. Even before the war, I applied to the GITIS [The State Institute for Theater Studies] and the VGIK [The State Institute of Cinematography] to study film directing. As a poor student, I earned money as an artistic whistler at the All-Union Studio for the Variety Arts.
But right at the very beginning of the war, I left the [theater] stage and took part in the shooting of [Mark] Donskoy’s film “How the Steel Was Tempered” in Ulyanovsk. I have never had anything to do with the state security. But in September 1941, the state security service summoned me from Ulyanovsk to Moscow. At the Lubyanka, they told me that the capture of Moscow by the Germans was imminent and that partisan groups had to be prepared for sabotage operations in the occupied capital. They asked me to return to the [theater] stage and become a member of the artistic brigade, which in fact would be an [undercover] group of militants. I was 19 years old at the time and a job in intelligence seemed romantic.
And that’s how it all began. But I was made a career intelligence officer only in 1951 when I had already been employed for 10 years. First, I worked in German uniform on the territory occupied by the Germans, and then [after WWII], I worked abroad, using various cover identities.
- During the war, you participated in the assassination of the Gauleiter of Belarus, Wilhelm Kube. How did you manage to enter into the identity of a German military officer and complete the assignment so brilliantly?
- The preparation took more than a year and was very intensive. I lived in a safe house with a German anti-fascist, Karl Kleinjung [1912-2003]. My assignment was to play the role of a senior lieutenant of the Secret Field Police [GFP – Geheime Feldpolizei], and Karl was supposed to be my adjutant. This type of secret police had a right to operate in civilian clothes, and this helped us a lot on the occupied territory. However, it was also necessary to get used to wearing the military uniform and going through the German drill habits. Not only did Karl and I speak exclusively German (he almost did not know any Russian), but we also regularly visited the POW camp in Krasnogorsk and observed the behavior of the captured German soldiers and officers. I also had lessons with specialists in German culture and the history of fascism and its rituals. I was even taught to play the piano and hum “Lily Marlene.”
In the end, we were sent as German prisoners of war to the Obolovsky camp, where we lived for a month among the Germans. My cover remained intact. Nor was my cover blown in Minsk, where, in order to gain even more confidence, Karl and I spent a whole evening at the officers’ club. As my adjutant, he was allowed to accompany me, though [according to the rules] he was supposed to sit at a separate table for junior officers. In general, everything worked out perfectly and became “history” when Kube was assassinated. I think that I was helped by my careless attitude to danger that is so natural in early youth.
- After the war, you received the assignment to kill [Alexander] Kerensky. Why was this assignment cancelled?
- In February 1952, Kerensky was supposed to be appointed the chairman of the Joint Committee of Russian Emigration to coordinate the struggle against the Bolsheviks. Stalin got scared and ordered, through [Semyon] Ignatyev, the head of the state security service at the time, General [Pavel] Sudoplatov to immediately assassinate Kerensky, who was then living in Paris. And among all Sudoplatov’s foreign experts – the officers familiar with Paris, speaking the language, able not only to get there easily, but also to move around freely - I was the only one at hand. And Sudoplatov, without much thinking, mentioned my name to Stalin.
But Sudoplatov did not take the main thing into account - I would never accept such an assignment. True, during [partisan] operations on the occupied territory I had to shoot a German soldier, but that had to be done; otherwise, he would have betrayed us to the occupiers. Not only our [partisan] detachment, but also the entire village that sheltered us would have been destroyed.
Now, there were some issues with my identification documents on the name of an Austrian Hoffbauer, my fake cover identity, on my return from Switzerland to Austria. But such incidents were a common occurrence in the life and work of Austrian businessmen, one of whom I impersonated. At that time, I was already trying to leave the intelligence service and I therefore exaggerated the importance of this minor incident.
Sudoplatov did not know that I had resolved the problem with the Austrian authorities. So, when he gave me the order to assassinate the “man in Paris” (he did not name the intended victim), he also informed me that his operatives had managed to obtain a genuine Swiss passport and that it would have nothing to do with the identity of Hoffbauer. But I flatly refused the assignment. Such an act under normal circumstances would have meant my execution and the [Siberian] exile of my family. But I made the decision to refuse in tandem with my wife, Yana Khokhlova. We were ready to take that risk. As my supervisor for many years, Sudoplatov was responsible for my loyalty with his own head. If he had revealed [to Stalin] the real reason for the disruption of the operation, we would have perished, and not only would his career in intelligence be over, but he himself would hardly have stayed alive. And so, Sudoplatov decided to lie to his ruthless master. This sounds incredible, but it was exactly what happened. He told Stalin that, as it suddenly turned out, my Austrian documents could not be used to travel around Europe because of the unfortunate incident I had with the customs. The lie was extremely dangerous, but Sudoplatov, apparently, could not think of anything else. However, this primitive lie worked and his life, my life, the lives of my family members, and the life of Kerensky were all saved.
- In 1953, a decision was made in Moscow to assassinate one of the leaders of the NTS, Georgy S. Okolovich. Who made this decision, why were they so afraid of the NTS in the [Soviet] Politburo, and what role was assigned to you in this operation?
- The decision to assassinate Okolovich was made personally by Khrushchev, and he submitted it to the Politburo. At that time, Khrushchev tried to create an image of himself as an active and energetic figure, because he was aiming at the place of Malenkov, who was then the General Secretary. The Politburo unanimously approved Khrushchev’s creative proposal because after the uprisings in the “people’s democracies” and the capture of several of Okolovich’s people on the territory of the Soviet Union, the leaders were VERY MUCH [capitalized in the original] worried that the [ordinary] Russians would eventually wake up and that the Politburo would have to flee in panic, just like their colleagues in East Germany. The decision was made at the end of the summer of 1953.
At that time, Khrushchev was taking the state security service into his own hands. Hating Sudoplatov for his outspoken statements about his [Khrushchev’s] leading role in the terrorist actions of state security [in the 1930s], Khrushchev nominated [Alexander] Panyushkin for the role of the foreign intelligence chief and, in close contact with him, came up with a plan to get rid of Okolovich.
For some reason unknown to me, Colonel [Lev] Studnikov, who replaced Sudoplatov, decided that as somebody who was well acquainted with Western Europe and had been there many times, I would be the right person for such an operation. I think that Colonel [Yevgeny] Mirkovsky, Hero of the Soviet Union, and the immediate supervisor of my work in Austria, recommended me. Poor Mirkovsky, he was a very good and honest man and he had to pay dearly for his trust in me! But I knew that Mirkovsky despised the activities of intelligence and state security services, calling all of us, including himself, the “garbage collectors of the revolution.” He was probably relieved when in 1954, after the failure of the [Okolovich] operation, he was told to resign.
I was given all the secret materials on the NTS that the state security service had. From the numerous, thick folders, there emerged an ominous image of a dangerous and active enemy of the Soviet regime. Later, when I was already in the West, I realized that the Chekists deliberately exaggerated the threat from the NTS in order to obtain more powers, resources, and money to fight this enemy organization.
As the head of the foreign component of the operation, I was responsible for the selection of operatives and their supervision both in the Soviet Union and abroad. And even though when they were later brought to Moscow, Studnikov himself gave them the order to kill [Okolovich], their direct “curator” [supervisor] was Captain Joseph, that is, me. And they had known me from Berlin where I analyzed and tested the personnel for the future guerilla groups in West Germany. So, they were well known to me. They were cynical, hardened criminals and murderers, who proved themselves already in Spain [during the Civil War] where they carried out acts of terrorism under the leadership of General Kotov (the cover name of [Leonid] Eytingon, an associate and a friend of [Pavel] Sudoplatov). I chose them because such a working “collective” allowed me to hide my real intentions from the leadership more reliably. I realized that I would be directly responsible for the death of Okolovich and that I was obliged to prevent it; otherwise, all my assurances to Yana and to myself that I was categorically against this murder would turn into empty bravado.
- The KGB has not forgiven you for disrupting the operation to kill Okolovich. What do you know about their attempts to assassinate you? How many were there?
- Of course, I have no direct information about all such attempts, but two of these special assignments turned out to be quite successful.
In the spring of 1957, I moved to Paris to finish my book there. Among my acquaintances in Paris, there was also a certain Khristina Kratkova, whom I met in New York. A likeable elderly lady from the first wave of [Russian] emigration quickly won the trust of my friends as well. Then, many years later, I learned that she was actually a Soviet intelligence operative who had successfully participated in the murder of the defector [Viktor] Kravchenko. By the way, she turned out to be a specialist in unique poisons and even had a scientific degree in this exotic field of knowledge.
Having received the assignment to assassinate me, Kratkova approached it scientifically. I had to die naturally, that is, from a serious, but generally known disease. Khristina Pavlovna, who followed me to Paris, began to poison me gradually. The process was similar to ordinary food poisoning. Of course, I did not suspect anything, but every day my health was getting worse, and only a lucky chance saved me from death. My friends in Germany suggested that I move there. As soon as I left France, all the symptoms of a “severe gastric disease” immediately stopped. The [assassination] attempt failed.
But Kratkova [and her superiors] were not about to give up. The approach was changed. I had to die from a newly invented poison, so camouflaged that the autopsy results would show that I died from an industrial poison used to kill rodents. However, this poison - thallium - could only kill a person with very poor health. In Moscow, the specialists from the secret KGB laboratory turned a grain of thallium into a radioactive isotope. The [Soviet] operatives managed to toss it into my cup of coffee. The idea was that thallium would internally bring about radiation sickness and then quickly disappear. The thallium effect, however, would remain and confuse the doctors. This is exactly what happened. In fact, I was condemned to death and, despite the fact that the U.S. doctors at the Frankfurt military hospital worked for many weeks to save my life, why I survived in the end still remains a mystery.
- Soon after that you ended up in South Vietnam. How and why did this happen?
- The thallium effect led to my losing all my hair, both on my body and on my head. Bald, with a face covered with scars from the ulcers that were bleeding due to radiation sickness, I went to the U.S., where I gave lectures in many cities. By the spring of 1958, I returned to Germany, where an acquaintance of mine who often visited South Vietnam informed me that I was invited there for a series of lectures on the Soviet Union.
At the Saigon airport, instead of a lecture organizer, a man in a white civilian suit met me and said that he had been ordered to take me to a meeting with an important person. He took me straight to the presidential palace. In the far corner of the office stood a large piano, covered with the skin of a tiger with bared teeth, which was hanging over a man in a national costume. This man got up and I saw that he was rather short. Approaching me with an outstretched hand, he said: “I am Ngo Dinh Diem, the president of this country. Bienvenue, Monsieur Nicolas.”
During all the years of my work in Vietnam, I remained “Monsieur Nicolas.”
Of course, this was not about giving lectures. Diem needed a personal adviser, a staunch anti-communist, but not dependent on the CIA. His contacts in the U.S. recommended me. I asked the president why he was so sure that I was not dependent on the CIA. It turned out that the CIA characterized me as an honest and committed anti-communist but warned that I was impossible to control. The President said with a laugh that it was precisely this warning that provided a kind of recommendation he was looking for. Diem clearly did not trust the CIA.
Diem and his brother were subsequently killed. The killings were organized by the CIA agents on the orders of President Kennedy’s envoy, [Henry] Cabot Lodge, Jr. All these maneuvers by Kennedy’s envoys in South Vietnam and the political machinations of the CIA led to the shameful defeat of the U.S. military in South Vietnam and the complete victory of the Communists. But the roots of this failure were already clear in those summer days of 1958, when Diem told me about the alarming news from the rural areas near the 38th parallel, the border between North and South Vietnam: the reports of people in unusual military uniforms appearing in these villages for unknown reasons. Diem instructed me, as a former Soviet intelligence officer and a former partisan fighter, to analyze these incidents and develop a plan for the necessary countermeasures. I did this and soon the Bin Min Plan appeared, which announced the beginning of the [North Vietnamese] Communist aggression with the aim of taking over South Vietnam and proposed the measures to counteract the aggression. This plan failed due to the blindness, either accidental or intentional, of the CIA station chief in Saigon and his superiors in Washington. If this clique had not misled President Kennedy, the Northern Communists would not have been able to capture South Vietnam. The Bin Min Plan would have prevented that.
I talk about this in the new version of my book as an eyewitness who was there and received information directly from Diem and his entourage. And precisely because I not only present the facts, but also name the names of those who are to blame [for the defeat], the U.S. publishing company Ballantine refused to re-publish my book with a new chapter on Vietnam and South Korea. The contract had already been signed, I even received an advance, but when the officials from the U.S. intelligence community (as they call themselves) learned about the additional chapter, the publication was blocked. And this is in a country where, as they say, there is freedom of the press. I learned about the CIA intervention directly from one of the chief editors of the publishing house. I think something similar is happening now with other U.S. publishers. They initially react enthusiastically to my book, then quietly tone down their reaction, and, after a long silence, simply return the manuscript without any further explanation. And what can they say? They are ashamed of the truth.
- Is it true that you were preparing the Vietnamese anti-communist partisans to be sent to North Vietnam?
- The deployment of guerrillas to North Vietnam as a response to the deployment of Viet Cong in South Vietnam was a logical part of the Bin Min Plan. In general, the CIA did not like that for the realization of the Plan, I relied on the idealists, and not on the paid mercenaries, as was the habit of the CIA. The CIA officer once told me that Vietnamese idealists were unreliable. The U.S. policy could change, and they would go their own way. They couldn’t allow that. In general, a typical CIA nonsense.
When I left Saigon in 1961, promising Diem that I would return if the Americans ever got wiser, it was already clear to all of us that the U.S. government would not let the Vietnamese cope with the aggression from the North on their own. President Kennedy was sidetracked by his treacherous advisers. The nonsensical policies continued under [President] Johnson until they led to the infamous defeat of the U.S. and its “intelligence community.”
- Why did you talk about your wife’s role in disrupting the operation to murder Okolovich and what happened to your family afterwards?
- First of all, I didn’t “go over” to the NTS, but only approached Okolovich in order to warn him. I have never asked for a political asylum. If the Americans had not grabbed me, I intended to go back. And then nothing would have happened to my family.
- How could you go back when the assassination did not take place?
- It’s very simple. Both operatives [tasked to carry out the assassination] were well-known in West Germany, where they were from and had family ties. One of them could be easily “identified” [by the police]. Then I could “get away.” I could have been blamed for the selection of [unreliable] operatives, but that wouldn’t have been that bad. After all, I wasn’t the first who dealt with them. Well, they could scold me. But if Okolovich had kept his mouth shut, I would have gotten off easy. Unfortunately, he hadn’t.
The Americans grabbed me and took me to one of their safe houses and photographed me. That made it impossible to go back. When this became known to the KGB, I was automatically sentenced to death, but this worried me much less than the inevitable fate that awaited my wife.
In the case of “special assignments,” ordinary Soviet laws did not apply. So, the laws in the books would not have been applied to Yana and our son in 1954 after I was declared a traitor. I had no reason to expect a merciful attitude towards the wife of the officer of the “special assignments” service, a woman who undoubtedly knew too much. That is why I agreed to give a press conference in Bonn and decided to reveal my wife’s role in preventing the assassination. My strategy was simple, although it seemed inexplicable to many at that time: it was to turn my wife into a public celebrity. This seemingly risky strategy worked out very successfully.
I can only quote Yana’s words to me in 1992, when, after Yeltsin’s pardon, I was finally able to meet her in Moscow: “Why are you so worried about the past? Everything was done right. And, as you can see, everything turned out well.”
- Are you the only defector from the intelligence services who has been rehabilitated?
- I was not rehabilitated, but I still managed to return to Moscow. In 1991, after the failed putsch, the press wrote a lot about the special forces of the state security service, which refused to go to the [Moscow] White House and attack the legitimate government. After the defeat of the conspirators, no one punished those disobedient officers. On the contrary, they were all promoted in ranks and many even received awards. The reason for this unusual reaction of the authorities was explained in the following way: the refusal to comply with a criminal order is not a crime.
I remembered this statement and wrote a letter to the KGB, in which I asked a mocking question: why were those state security officers who abandoned their criminal assignments, or who thwarted them, automatically sentenced to death in the past? I mentioned my case. I recalled that both General [Pavel] Sudoplatov and General [Leonid] Eytingon, as well as the other high officials of state security service, were sentenced to the long terms of imprisonment for organizing such criminal deeds, one of which was entrusted to my department and for the disruption of which I was sentenced to hang... Well, I had the audacity to say that it would be logical if the KGB chairman asked this question of the President of Russia himself.
Imagine my surprise when a week later, I received a letter from the KGB. It politely informed me that the KGB chairman had read my letter and intended to discuss it with the President. I considered this letter a bureaucratic delaying tactic.
However, shortly after the KGB letter, the Department of Psychology at California State University [in San Bernardino] where I had long served as Full Professor of Psychology and Computer-Based Scientific Research, received a letter via the fax from a certain Nicholas Bethel, a member of the British House of Lords. He said he would like to meet with me in Moscow to learn from Yana and me the details of our story.
Just in case, I contacted the [Russian] consulate with a “stupid” question as to whether they would give me a visa to visit Moscow. The consulate replied that, in general, such a thing would not be difficult, but that, in my case, they must first obtain a special permission from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and that they have not received anything yet. If they do, they will let me know.
And, suddenly, something completely unexpected happened. Not only did the consulate send me a visa valid for a month, but [they also included] a copy of the presidential decree in my name, in which Yeltsin announced he granted me a pardon and legally closed my case. I didn’t expect that at all. Moreover, having dictated the text of the decree in the morning, Yeltsin did not allow it to be stamped with his signature stamp, but ordered for the final text to be prepared, so that after lunch, after he returned to his office, he could check it once again and personally sign it. I don’t know what he thought or felt, but it is quite possible that I owe my life to Boris Nikolayevich.
In mid-May, I met [Nicholas] Bethel at Frankfurt airport, and on that same day, our plane landed in Moscow.
- Recently, a member of the intelligence service said that an intelligence officer has no right to think independently, that he must follow orders. How could you answer him?
- During the trial of the Nazis in Nuremberg, the fascist criminals kept claiming that they were just “following orders.” Both the judges and the international public opinion have recognized that the execution of a criminal order is also a crime. The criminals were severely punished. If your acquaintance from the intelligence service does not understand this, then perhaps he will someday also be sentenced like that. Whether in this life or in the next, it does really matter. In peacetime, an honorable intelligence officer is obliged to think independently.
