Filip Kovacevic: Riddle of the Crimean Bridge: Ex CIA Officer Edward Ellis Smith’s Never Completed Movie Script

This is the first of two short articles based on the papers of a former CIA officer Edward Ellis Smith (1921-1982) deposited in the Hoover Institution Library and Archives at Stanford University.[1] The aim of each article is to document an obscure or previously unknown aspect of Smith’s enigmatic life trajectory and, in this way, shed more light on the murky world of Cold War secret intelligence. Taken together, the articles will provide a more complete biographical portrait of Smith than previously available in print.[2]

Introduction

In the late 1950s, Edward Ellis Smith, a former CIA officer who served in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, moved from Washington, DC to San Francisco, California. At the time of his move, Smith was employed as an “analyst and contract employee on Soviet affairs” by the CIA-funded Joint Publication Research Service operating out of the U.S. Department of Commerce.[3]

Soon afterwards, while residing at 753 Bush Street, just two blocks away from San Francisco’s famed Union Square, Smith wrote an outline for an espionage movie script which was never completed.[4] In the section below, I provide a detailed discussion and analysis of Smith’s outline, linking it to the documented events in the history of CIA operations. This is the first time Smith’s movie script is discussed in a public forum.

The Spy Movie That Never Was

There are two main protagonists in Smith’s spy movie script and, just like him, they were both World War Two veterans and U.S. intelligence officers. However, while Smith served as an infantry officer in Europe in 1944 and 1945, the two fictional veterans were Navy PT boat officers in the Pacific. At the beginning of the plot, Lieutenant Sherman [no first name given] is a 30-year old student of diplomacy at Georgetown, while Lieutenant Commander Terrence Riddle is a 35-year old professor of Russian history at the University of Virginia. Given Smith’s biography, it seems evident that Sherman rather than Riddle was much closer to being the representation of his alter ego. It is also likely that Riddle had a real life equivalent, perhaps an older colleague of Smith’s from the CIA.

The film’s opening is set in the early 1950s during the Korean war. Sherman and Riddle are recalled to active duty in the Special Operations unit of the U.S. Pacific Fleet stationed in Yokosuka, Japan. Their task is to transport trained South Korean volunteers to North Korea for infiltration and sabotage. One night their PT boat is attacked and capsized. Riddle is wounded but somehow reaches the shore where he is arrested by Chinese soldiers. Sherman, on the other hand, is successfully rescued.

Riddle is interrogated by Chinese counterintelligence and when his captors learn of his Russian language skills and expertise [Smith does not explain how], he is surrendered to Soviet intelligence. The Soviets transport him to the state security headquarters at Lubyanka in Moscow where he is subjected to further and, apparently, more brutal interrogation. He eventually breaks down - in Smith’s words, “interrogated, beaten, half dead, [Riddle] finally confesses to espionage” - and is sentenced to 25 years of hard labor in Siberia.

However, the year is 1953 and Stalin’s death in March leads to radical changes in the Gulag labor camp system. Thousands of camp inmates are released and there are massive riots among those who remain behind the barbed wire. Riddle uses the chaotic situation to escape.

In the style of Alexander Dumas’ Count of Monte Cristo, Smith had an elderly prisoner give Riddle some gold coins before dying in the camp. Now on the run from Beria’s counterintelligence, these coins make it possible for Riddle to acquire the identification papers of a deceased person of Jewish ethnicity who was registered as a manual laborer in Moscow.

Riddle then moves to Moscow but is unable to approach any U.S. diplomats, or even the building of the U.S. Embassy, in fear of being caught by Soviet state security and sent back to Siberia or worse. Incredibly, Smith wrote that this state of affairs lasted for several years. Riddle resigns himself to his fate (and manual labor, which must have been especially difficult for a former professor), but resolves to attend the opening night of the Red Army Choir at the Moscow Conservatory every year hoping to encounter somebody from the U.S. Embassy.

In 1959, this finally happened. And it’s not just anybody that Riddle saw at the Conservatory but his old comrade-in-arms Sherman. After the end of the Korean war, Sherman had returned to the U.S. and, for some reason, perhaps to make the plot more melodramatic, Smith had him marry Riddle’s “widow.” Sherman then left the Navy, joined the State Department, and was sent to a diplomatic post in Moscow, bringing his wife with him. Though they were both together that night at the Conservatory, Smith only had Sherman notice and later communicate with Riddle. In fact, the wife never learned that Riddle was still alive.

It is at this point that the plot of the movie seems to come closest to reflecting real life events. According to the accounts of several CIA veterans,[5] Smith was sent to Moscow by the CIA in 1954 to provide the conditions necessary for the uninterrupted clandestine communication with the CIA’s first agent-in-place, GRU Lieutenant Colonel Pyotr Popov.[6] The consensus of the CIA memoirists is that Smith was not up to the task. Smith’s CIA colleagues Peer de Silva and Tennent ‘Pete’ Bagley wrote that Smith was compromised by the KGB in a sex trap. They claimed that he had an extra-marital affair with his Russian maid, was secretly photographed in corpus delicti, and blackmailed by the KGB.

Bagley even believed that the KGB’s blackmail operation was successful and that Smith betrayed CIA’s secrets. However, he provided no evidence for his claim, basing it on the enigmatic posting of two high-level KGB counterintelligence officers to the U.S. in the late 1950s (reported to the CIA by the KGB defector Anatoly Golitsyn) and his post-Cold War conversations with KGB General Sergei Kondrashev, a former top official of Soviet intelligence.[7]

On the other hand, as expected, Smith vehemently rejected the claim that he was ever recruited by the KGB and was particularly incensed at the way his work for the CIA was portrayed in de Silva’s posthumous memoir published in 1978. In a letter to his friend and confidant Joseph D. Douglas, Jr., a specialist on Soviet military strategy who later authored Red Cocaine: The Drugging of America and the West (1999) and Betrayed (2002), Smith wrote that de Silva’s memoir was “garbage [that] among other things serves to obfuscate the truth, of which we have so little.”[8] He also stated his suspicions that de Silva was assisted by other unnamed CIA officers in putting the memoir together. Referring to the CIA as “the Pickle Factory,” Smith told Douglas that he believed that “the Pickle Factory censors did their ‘thing’ on the books [sic] before publication.” He also seemed to threaten to file a lawsuit against the CIA: “What ‘they’ and Peer did in ‘blowing’ me (assuming, weakly, that the KGB did not already know my real status), is unconscionable and borders on the criminal - something, I will explore, of course, in due course.”[9]

And yet, notwithstanding Smith’s angered protests, his movie script contained a subplot involving Sherman’s sexual affair with his maid described as a KGB agent. While Smith described the maid’s motivation (she was blackmailed by the KGB due to her father’s involvement in anti-Soviet politics in the U.S.), he remained strangely silent on Sherman’s own motives. He did not explain what led Sherman to violate the terms of his employment, trample upon the loyalty to his country, and cheat on his wife. Even if Sherman ultimately remained firm in the face of the KGB blackmail attempt, why did he let himself end up in this situation in the first place? Was it sexual passion, stupidity, or self-destructiveness? Smith seems unwilling to delve into these issues in the script, which makes him not only an inept writer of fiction (and is perhaps one of the reasons the script was never completed), but might also indicate the existence of a repressed guilty feeling about what happened in Moscow.

In addition, just as Smith may have endangered Popov with his incompetent tradecraft, Sherman bungled the operation to rescue Riddle in the script. The exfiltration plan, approved by the national security leadership in Washington, DC, involved covertly passing to Riddle the money necessary to bribe his exit out of the Soviet Union. The money transfer was supposed to take place on a bus going over the Crimean Bridge in Moscow (hence the title). However, due to Sherman’s inattention to the presence of undercover KGB counterintelligence officers on the bus, both he and Riddle got arrested. Because Sherman had diplomatic immunity, he was soon released but was expelled from the Soviet Union as a persona non grata. Riddle was not so lucky. He was dispatched to the Gulag for (another) 25 years. 

It is evident that the bus scene repeats almost exactly the arrest of Pyotr Popov and Russell Langelle, Smith’s CIA successor in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Popov’s and Langelle’s arrest took place in October 1959, and Smith dated his script “Winter, 1959” which indicates that it was written shortly after the real life events. It is likely that by having this scene in the film, Smith wanted to signal his own connection to Popov. In any case, at the time he completed the script, Smith could not have known about the ultimate fate of Popov who was put on trial and, according to the official account, executed in 1960.

There was a lot of self-scrutiny and introspection in the CIA after the loss of Popov. However, Smith seemed not to be overly concerned about that in the script. He appeared to care more about exacting his revenge on the maid. The final scene had her sentenced to a prison camp in Siberia for failing to recruit Sherman. He obviously wanted the script to vindicate his version of the events. However, there is nothing in his papers to suggest that he wrote anything beyond the outline. It appears that he decided that writing spy film scripts (and spy fiction in general) was not for him. In 1960, he enrolled as a graduate student in the Political Science Department at Stanford and began researching the files of the Tsarist secret police [Okhrana] at the Hoover Library and Archives. But that’s another story.

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NOTES

^[1] See “Inventory of the Edward Ellis Smith Papers,” Hoover Institution Library and Archives, https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt8p303667/entire_text/ (12 manuscript boxes). Accessed on May 10, 2024.

^[2] For the most detailed published presentation of Smith’s biography, see Richard Harris Smith, “The First Moscow Station: An Espionage Footnote to Cold War History,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence 3:3 (1989), 333-346. However, due to the opposition from the State Department, the first official CIA Station in Moscow was not set up by Edward Ellis Smith in 1954 but by Paul Garbler in 1961.

^[3] “List of Employment, 1950-1962,” The Edward Ellis Smith Papers, Folder 24, Box 7, Hoover Institution Library and Archives. I gratefully acknowledge the Hoover Institution Library & Archives as an essential resource in the development of these materials. The views expressed in this publication are entirely my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the fellows, staff, or Board of Overseers of the Hoover Institution.

^[4] “Riddle of the Crimean Bridge,” The Edward Ellis Smith Papers, Folder 14, Box 11, Hoover Institution Library and Archives.

^[5] See, for instance, Peer de Silva. Sub Rosa: The CIA and the Uses of Intelligence (1978); William Hood, Mole: The True Story of the First Russian Intelligence Officer Recruited by the CIA (1982, 1993); Tennent H. Bagley, Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games (2007); David E. Murphy, Sergei A. Kondrashev, and George Bailey, Battleground Berlin: CIA v. KGB in the Cold War (1997); John Limond Hart, The CIA’s Russians (2003); and Clarence Ashley, CIA Spymaster: George Kisevalter, the Agency’s Top Case Officer Who Handled Penkovsky and Popov (2004).

^[6] I have already written on the Popov case from another angle. See Filip Kovacevic,  “A New Twist in the Old Case: A Document from the Lithuanian KGB Archive and the Cold War Espionage of GRU Officer  Pyotr Popov,” Sources & Methods: A Blog of the Wilson Center’s History and Public Policy Program, April 28, 2022, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/new-twist-old-case-document-lithuanian-kgb-archive-and-cold-war-espionage-gru-officer. Accessed on May 14, 2024.

^[7] Tennent H. Bagley. Spymaster: Startling Cold War Revelations of a Soviet KGB Chief. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2015, 208-209. Bagley also provided a reference to a Russian language publication on the history of Soviet Intelligence. However, the publication in question - Aleksandr Kolpakidi and Dmitry Prokhorov. Внешняя разведка России [Russian Foreign Intelligence]. Moscow: Olma Press, 2001 - selectively restated the information taken from U.S. sources. It added nothing new to the understanding of the case. See also Aleksandr Kolpakidi and Dmitry Prokhorov. Дело Ханссена. “Кроты” в США [The Hanssen Case. “Moles” in the U.S.]. Moscow: Olma Media, 2002, 129-131 (in the e-book). 

^[8] “A Letter to Joseph D. Douglas, Jr.,” January 13, 1982, The Edward Ellis Smith Papers, Folder 18, Box 7, Hoover Institution Library and Archives.

^[9] Ibid.

Filip Kovacevic: Agent GRANITE: A KGB Fake Defector in Early Cold War Germany

 At an unspecified date in the early 1960s, the First Department of the Lithuanian Republican branch of the Soviet Committee for State Security (KGB) responsible for foreign intelligence operations produced a 6-page summary of what it considered to have been a successful case of infiltrating the Lithuanian emigre and U.S. intelligence circles in West Germany.[1] Analyzing this original KGB document offers valuable insights on how Soviet intelligence ran fake defector operations during the first decade of the Cold War.

The main protagonist in this particular operation was an individual codenamed GRANITE (in Lithuanian, GRANITAS). According to the document, GRANITE was born in 1922 and joined the armed anti-Soviet Lithuanian resistance during World War Two. He was arrested by Soviet state security in 1948 and recruited to work against his former comrades in the resistance. The details of his activities during this period were not described in the document, but it was stated that GRANITE proved to be “capable, courageous, decisive, honest, and loyal,” which recommended him for more “complex” assignments beyond the Soviet borders.

With the approval of Moscow Center, GRANITE was trained for a foreign intelligence mission in West Germany. In addition to practical operational training (presumably, foreign intelligence tradecraft, such as communicating via secret writing, receiving instruction via radio, and servicing dead drops), he also received advanced German language lessons.

The task given to GRANITE was to cross into West Germany illegally and report to the nearest West German police station or U.S. military post that he was an agent of Soviet intelligence who wanted to defect. He was to reveal that he was sent to infiltrate the Lithuanian emigre circles, more specifically the ranks of the Lithuanian emigre organization named the Supreme Committee for the Liberation of Lithuania (VLIK) based in Reutlingen. The cover story he was supposed to share with the VLIK was that he was a member of the Lithuanian resistance movement sent to arrange the shipments of Western aid and provide secure site locations for aid air drops.

In addition, GRANITE was to set up a one-on-one meeting with Martynas Gelžinis, described as the head of the VLIK’s Press Department.[2] He was to “remind” Gelžinis of his obligations before Soviet intelligence whose agent Gelžinis had agreed to become in 1941 in exchange for release from the NKVD prison and safe transit to Germany. GRANITE was to tell Gelžinis that his Soviet handler expected to see him in Berlin and to give him 200 West German marks for the trip expenses. To convince Gelžinis that he knew of his hidden past, GRANITE was to show him a photocopy of his 1941 agreement to collaborate. Since Soviet intelligence was convinced that Gelžinis would never actually spy for them, it used this maneuver to compromise Gelžinis in the eyes of his German and American allies and cast suspicion on his anti-Soviet activities and statements.

According to the document, GRANITE’s illegal crossing into West Germany took place on October 26, 1956, in the region of the East German town of Sonneberg.[3] After crossing, GRANITE showed up at the U.S. military headquarters in the West German town of Coburg about 12 miles southwest from Sonneberg. He was put under arrest and transported to the U.S. military prison in the town of Kronberg near Frankfurt where he was held in solitary confinement until January 11, 1957.[4]

In a later testimony to his Soviet handlers, GRANITE claimed that after being arrested, he was stripped naked and all his personal items, including money, were taken from him. He was interrogated daily by U.S. intelligence officers and was sometimes woken up in the middle of the night and taken to interrogation. He alleged that there were cases of his interrogators showing up drunk and verbally insulting and threatening him, but there was no physical contact or abuse. He reported that his interrogators were convinced that he was a fake detector sent by Soviet intelligence to deceive them [and they were correct], but he held firm and stuck to his story.

According to GRANITE, during the interrogations, U.S. intelligence officers used the so-called lie detector tests. However, it turned out that answering some simple, elementary questions led to GRANITE’s strong and unexpected physiological reactions and the use of the lie detector had to be abandoned as ineffective. The document did not state whether GRANITE was trained by Soviet intelligence to react in this way, but there was a strong hint in that direction. The possibility that already in the mid-1950s the KGB knew how to crack the lie detector is troubling.

On January 11, 1957, GRANITE was taken to Reutlingen to meet with the representatives of the VLIK. He was soon transferred to Frankfurt, given a spacious apartment (4 rooms plus kitchen), and assigned a monthly stipend of 400 West German marks. However, he was kept under U.S. intelligence surveillance and prohibited to contact anybody from the Lithuanian emigre circles on his own. He was also prohibited from contacting his sister who allegedly lived in the U.S.

Several months later, GRANITE was taken by U.S. intelligence officers to meet with Gelžinis and confront him with the ‘evidence’ that he had agreed to collaborate with the NKVD in 1941. According to the document, Gelžinis panicked, having realized that the U.S. military discovered his deeply held ‘secret.’ The goal of Soviet intelligence thus appeared to have been accomplished. Gelžinis was compromised and, according to the document, subsequently had many “unpleasant” interactions with the anti-Soviet diaspora.[5]

At the same time, the ‘generous’ treatment of GRANITE by U.S. intelligence also had a clear goal. According to the document, U.S. intelligence officers wanted to persuade GRANITE to return to Lithuania and work for them as an agent in place. They promised him that he would be remunerated via packages sent from the UK to one of his acquaintances there.[6] Thus, ironically, a Soviet intelligence fake defector was now being asked by U.S. intelligence to fake defect back. And, as if to underscore the Cold War’s “wilderness of mirrors,” GRANITE agreed. Well, fakely.

Under U.S. intelligence instruction, GRANITE contacted his Soviet intelligence handler and arranged a face-to-face meeting. He was to ask the handler to assist him in his return to Lithuania. However, the handler convinced GRANITE that returning to Lithuania and pretending to work for U.S. intelligence would not justify the time and investment that Soviet intelligence had already put into his training. Instead, he was to try to stay in West Germany at any cost. He was to return to Frankfurt and tell his U.S. handlers that the Soviets did not want him back [which was true].

To address the ever-present Soviet intelligence suspicion that their agent might have actually begun working for the adversary, GRANITE seemed to have been asked to confirm his full allegiance to the Soviet Union. The document had him quoted as saying: “In Lithuania, I was one of the best Soviet intelligence agents, and now, working abroad, I will not push my face into the dirt.”

Needless to say, U.S. intelligence personnel in Frankfurt were hardly happy to hear about GRANITE’s lack of success in returning to Lithuania and they continued to keep him under surveillance. They asked him to write and publish anti-Soviet articles and take part in anti-Soviet radio programs. However, GRANITE rejected this using the excuse that he feared his family living in Lithuania would suffer as a result. 

According to the document, in February 1957,[7] a Lithuanian emigre newspaper in Brazil published an article about GRANITE as a Soviet intelligence agent who defected in West Germany. Soviet intelligence took the publication of this article as a sign that U.S. intelligence accepted GRANITE’s defection as genuine. By publicly acknowledging his identity, U.S. intelligence could no longer use him as a clandestine agent in Lithuania.

Indeed, GRANITE seemed to have been given more free reign in how he conducted his daily life in the months following the publication of the article. He was able to get employment as a member of the Lithuanian brigade engaged in unloading U.S. weapons and ammunition in a suburb of Kaiserslautern, a regional center about 60 miles southwest of Frankfurt. According to the document, GRANITE’s job enabled Soviet intelligence to gain valuable information about U.S. military capabilities in West Germany.

Soviet intelligence communication with GRANITE involved the use of several different techniques, including face-to-face meetings with handlers and couriers, secret writing correspondence using safe house addresses in Berlin and Lithuania, dead drops, and coded radio instructions.

In the early 1960s, GRANITE seemed to have requested to return to Lithuania ostensibly to reunite with his family and was successfully repatriated via “a neutral country” in May 1962.

Several recently released documents indicate that GRANITE’s work for the Lithuanian KGB may have continued into the 1970s and even the 1980s, but the specific details of these operations require more research.

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NOTES

^[1] “Вывод на длительное время агента ‘Гранитаса’ за кордон” [Sending Agent GRANITE Abroad for an Extended Period of Time], Undated, Lithuanian Special Archives, F. K-35, ap. 2, b. 1, l. 26-31, first published by The Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania, https://www.kgbveikla.lt/docs/show/5278/from:538. Accessed on May 9, 2024.

^[2] For a biography of Martynas Gelžinis (1907-1990), see “A Biography [in Lithuanian],” Mažosios Lietuvos enciklopedija, https://www.mle.lt/straipsniai/martynas-gelzinis. Accessed on May 9, 2024.

^[3] The document mistakenly provided the name of the town as Sonnenberg. However, the town in question was Sonneberg located in Thuringia rather than Sonnenberg, a suburb of Wiesbaden.

^[4] Another typo in the document. The year was 1957, not 1956.

^[5] Interestingly, according to Gelžinis’s publicly available biography, during the same year in which his meeting with GRANITE took place, he left West Germany and immigrated to the U.S. He continued being involved in the VLIK’s activities, but perhaps with less intensity. His book on the relations between the Lithuanians and the Germans in the Klaipeda region was published posthumously in 1996.

^[6] The full name of this person was included in the document, but there were no details on her subsequent fate.

^[7] This date seems unreliable in the context of the narrative. It seems more likely that the article was published at a later date.

Filip Kovacevic: KGB on Israeli Intelligence Activities in 1959

In my research of the Lithuanian KGB files at the Hoover Institution, I have paid particular attention to KGB archival documents on foreign intelligence agencies perceived by the KGB as adversarial. This is complicated by the fact that the files at Hoover do not contain the records of the First Department of the Lithuanian KGB, the branch of the Lithuanian KGB directly in charge of operations outside of the Soviet Union. However, Hoover has the files of the Second Department/Directorate of the Lithuanian KGB tasked with counterintelligence, which also participated in the operations beyond Soviet borders. For example, I have documented a foreign-oriented counterintelligence operation codenamed Operation HORIZON in an article I wrote for the Wilson Center’s Source and Methods blog.[1]

In this article, I want to address my findings concerning KGB reports on Israeli intelligence activities in the late 1950s. While examining the files of the Second Directorate of the Lithuanian KGB for the years 1959 and 1960, I came across a document marked top secret [совершенно секретно] titled “Information Summary [справка] on the Subversive Activities of Foreign Zionist Organizations against the USSR."[2]

This 16-page document was accompanied by a cover letter from General Yevgeny Pitovranov (1915-1999). Pitovranov, who under Stalin briefly headed the Soviet foreign intelligence service and was also imprisoned for a short time, remains one of the most enigmatic figures in the history of the KGB.[3] At the time of the document’s creation, on December 12, 1959, Pitovranov was the head of the Fourth Department of the KGB, the KGB version of the Chekist Secret-Political Department. The main task of the Fourth Department was to monitor and intercept the activities of individuals and groups perceived to be critical or, in the terminology preferred by the KGB, “subversive” of the Soviet regime. The so-called “Zionist” organizations were high on the Fourth Department’s list of priorities as reflected by this document (and numerous others still held indefinitely under the lock and key at the Central Archive of the FSB in Moscow).

Pitovranov’s cover letter was addressed to the chairmen of the KGBs of the Soviet Republics as well as to the heads of the regional KGB branches within Russia. Pitovranov recommended that the contents of the attached 16-page document be shared with those KGB operational officers who were tasked with targeting “Jewish bourgeois nationalists and clergy” in order to use them in their “practical work.”

While most of the document dealt with what KGB counterintelligence claimed to know about the meetings and activities of the Jewish international organizations, such as the World Zionist Organization and the World Jewish Congress, which it considered the enemies of the Soviet Union, there is a short section of the document that mentioned the Israeli foreign intelligence service.[4] That section will be the focus of my analysis here.

The section dealt with the allegations of Israeli intelligence activities in Vienna. Based on what it called “agent information” without, however, naming any agents or offering any documentary evidence, KGB claimed that Israeli intelligence had established a “special intelligence center” in Vienna directed against the Soviet Union and other Socialist countries in Eastern Europe. According to the KGB, the head of this center was a certain Karmil [Кармиль] described as the “former head of Israeli intelligence.” Furthermore, KGB alleged that Karmil’s first name was Moshe. It is unclear whether this was a reference to an Israeli politician and military commander Moshe Carmel (1911-2003).[5] There is nothing in Carmel’s publicly available biography to suggest that he was active as a coordinator of Israeli intelligence in Vienna at this time. Therefore, this is either a hitherto unknown fact from his life, or the person in question was another individual with the same name. Or it could be a case of mistaken identity by a KGB agent on the ground in Vienna.

KGB further claimed that in January 1959 “under the leadership of Shaika Dan [Шайка Дан] who came for this reason from Tel Aviv,” there had been a major meeting of Israeli intelligence officers held in Vienna. The focus of this meeting was the question of “legal and illegal” Jewish immigration from the Socialist Bloc countries to Israel. Those present at the meeting included two unnamed Israeli intelligence officers based in Hungary and Czechoslovakia as well as the alleged station chief [резидент] of Israeli intelligence in Warsaw named Netser [Нецер].[6] According to the KGB, Netser operated under the cover of a cultural and information officer at the Israeli diplomatic mission in Poland.

Netser was also mentioned in connection with his meetings with Soviet citizens acting as agents of the KGB during their visits to Poland.[7] As an illustration, the document provided the details of his meeting with a Soviet citizen who was an agent of the KGB branch in the Mogilev Region [today’s Belarus]. According to the document, Netser’s questions ranged from the living conditions of the Jews in the Soviet Union and their participation in the leadership of the Communist party and the industrial enterprises to the existence of Jewish theaters in Bobruisk [Belarus] and the attitudes of Soviet Jewish youth toward the state of Israel. The document also noted that Netser often met with other agents of the KGB visiting Poland. Presumably, Netser was unaware of their clandestine affiliation, but no evidence of that was provided.

Lastly, the document listed several locations in Vienna as allegedly frequented by Israeli intelligence officers and used for meetings with their sources.[8] The first on the list was the Hotel de France located at Schottenring 3. The hotel was described as a preferred place for debriefing Soviet and Eastern European citizens wanting to immigrate to Israel.[9] The second on the list, evidently a much smaller facility, was the Pension Cosmopolite located at 23 Alser Street. According to the document, the Pension was owned by a Jewish woman who knew several languages and was on the building’s second floor.[10]

Another hotel mentioned was the Hotel Pension Atlanta located in the Währing District of Vienna near the Vienna Woods. This hotel was described as the place of choice for the visiting Israeli diplomats and diplomatic couriers from other parts of Europe as well as for the officials of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs visiting Austria. According to the document, when Israeli diplomats and intelligence officers wanted to relax outside of Vienna, their preferred location was the old-fashioned aristocratic style hotel Grand Panhans, Semmering located in the mountains about 100 kilometers south of Vienna.[11]

The last but probably not the least important place on the list was Kazakov’s Cabaret, apparently a night club frequently visited by “Moshe Karmil and other intelligence officers.”[12] The repertoire of the Cabaret was unfortunately not included.

Postscript

After I published the article above, I was contacted by the intelligence historian Nati Cantorovich who provided me with additional biographical information regarding some individuals mentioned in the KGB document, for which I am very grateful. Cantorovich wrote: “This report deals with Nativ/Lishkat ha-Kesher (The Path, or The Liaison Bureau in Hebrew), a special Israeli governmental agency which managed and led the struggle for the Jews behind the Iron Curtain. Moshe Karmil (previously, Chervinskii) in 1958-1961 was indeed the head of Nativ front office in Viena responsible for communication with the East European Jews. Yeshaayahu Shayke Dan (previously, Trachtenberg), Karmil’s predecessor in Vienna, since 1958 was the director of operations in the Nativ’s Headquarters in Tel Aviv. Zvi Netzer (previously, Melnitzer) in 1957-1961 was Nativ’s envoy in Warsaw. Since the mid-1960s, he became the head of ‘Bar,’ Nativ’s division responsible for communication with the Western Jewish communities.”

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NOTES

^[1] See Filip Kovacevic, “Operation HORIZON: A KGB Counterintelligence Operation against the West,” Sources & Methods, June 30, 2021, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/operation-horizon-kgb-counterintelligence-operation-against-west. Accessed on April 27, 2024. I have recently obtained more archival materials dealing with this operation and plan to revisit it in one of my future articles.

^[2] Fond K-1, Inv. 3, File 569, pp. 20-36. Lietuvos TSR Valstybės Saugumo Komitetas [Lithuanian KGB] Selected Records, Hoover Institution. I gratefully acknowledge the Hoover Institution Library & Archives as an essential resource in the development of these materials. The views expressed in this publication are entirely my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the fellows, staff, or Board of Overseers of the Hoover Institution.

^[3] There are, for instance, allegations from well-informed sources that, after his official retirement from the KGB, Pitovranov ran a clandestine Soviet intelligence branch within the Soviet Chamber of Commerce under the KGB chairman Yuri Andropov’s direct supervision. See, for instance, a recent book by a former KGB officer Vladimir Popov who immigrated to Canada in the 1990s and has become a vocal critic of the Putin regime. Vladimir Popov. Заговор негодяев: записки бывшего подполковника КГБ [Conspiracy of Scoundrels: Notes of a Former KGB Lieutenant Colonel]. Kyiv: Gordonua.com, 2020.

^[4] Fond K-1, Inv. 3, File 569, pp. 28-29.

^[5] See Lawrence Joffe, “Moshe Carmel,” The Guardian, October 16, 2003, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/oct/17/guardianobituaries.israel. Accessed on April 27, 2024.

^[6] An Internet search in English and Russian language did not uncover any publicly available information about the individuals named Dan Shaika and Netser.

^[7] Fond K-1, Inv. 3, File 569, pp. 31-32.

^[8] Fond K-1, Inv. 3, File 569, pp. 28-29.

^[9] Hotel de France is still in business and the average room cost is about 200 dollars per night. See “Hotel de France Wien,” https://de-france-hotel-vienna.hotel-ds.com/en/. Accessed on April 27, 2024.

^[10] While the Pension Cosmopolite appears to have shut its doors forever, today the same building houses the University of Vienna’s Department of Nursing Science, Department of Philosophy, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, and Institute Vienna Circle. See “University of Vienna Locations,” https://www.univie.ac.at/en/about-us/locations-maps/university-of-vienna-locations/. Accessed on April 27, 2024.

^[11] See “Hotel Grand Panhans Semmering,” https://book.austria.info/en/a-panhans. Accessed on April 27, 2024.

^[12] Fond K-1, Inv. 3, File 569, p. 29. I could find no publicly available information on Kazakov’s Cabaret, but it must have been a very interesting place to spend an evening, perhaps a bit like Rick’s Cafe Americain from the classic film Casablanca.

 

Filip Kovacevic: The Burned Books of the KGB Training School in Vilnius

When the KGB closed down its training school in Vilnius in 1960, many top secret publications from the library stacks were incinerated. The KGB "book burning" committee typically consisted of three officers, including the officer in charge of the special section of the library that housed top secret publications. The "book burning" was authorized by Article 90 of the executive order of the Chairman of the KGB No. 00705 from October 31, 1954. 

Based on my research of the Lithuanian KGB documents at the Hoover Institution, I am now able to reconstruct the list of the titles of the destroyed publications.

In the list below, I have translated the titles from Russian into English. For many publications on the list, this is their first public mention. Prior to this post, there was no public record that they ever existed. 

1.  Nikitinsky and Safonov. Collection of Documents on German Espionage in Tsarist Russia.

2. Nikitinsky. Collection of Documents on the History of Russian Counterintelligence.

3. Svatikov. The Foreign Agent Networks of the Department of Police.

4. The Diagram of the Anti-Soviet and Nationalist Political Parties Active in Lithuania until 1940.

5. Toropov. Methodology of Seminar and Practical Assignments for the Special Discipline No. 1.

6. Bokov. A Methodological Report on the topic "Methodology of Administrating the Written Papers of Students on the Assignments of Special Disciplines."

7. Nadiradze. Report on the topic "On Some Questions on the Methodology of Conducting Consultations."

8. Safiullin. Report on the topic "Methodology of Administrating Practical Assignments on the Spoken Analysis of Operational Tasks."

9. Vorozheikin. Report on the topic "On the Extracurricular Activities with Students of Special Disciplines."

10. Zakharov. Overview of the Case of American Agents-Parachuters Osmanov and Sarantsev.

11. Grishaev et al. Training Manual on the topic "Interrogation of Witnesses."

12. Lisov. Lecture on the topic "Content and Structure of the Course on the Fundamental Principles of the Counterintelligence Activities of State Security."

13. Chistov. Lecture on the topic "Forms and Methods of Subversive Activities against the USSR by the Intelligence Agencies of Bourgeois States and Other Enemies of the Soviet State."

14. Myzin. Lecture on the topic "Forms and Methods of Subversive Activities against the USSR by the Intelligence Agencies of Bourgeois States and Other Enemies of the Soviet State."

15. Aleksandrov. Training Manual on the topic "Running Agents and Their Training."

16. Neboliubov. Lecture on the topic "Running Agents and Their Training."

17. Sorokin. Training Manual on the topic "Methods of External Surveillance."

18. Mikhailov. Lecture on the topic "Perlustration (PK)."

19. Smoliakov et al. Training Manual on the topic "Perlustration (PK)."

20. Sholokov. Overview on the topic "Methods of Contact with the Agents of State Security in the Rural Areas."

21. Kanishchev et al. Training Manual on the topic "Radio Counterintelligence Activities of State Security."

22. Tankaev. Lecture on the topic "Radio Counterintelligence Service."

23. Koval. Lecture on the topic "Operational Records."

24. Gribanov. Transcript of Lecture on the topic "Agent-Based Combination and Its Significance in the Counterintelligence Activities of State Security."

Note: General Oleg Gribanov was the head of the KGB Second Chief Directorate from 1956 to 1964. This is the first public mention of this lecture. For more on Gribanov, see Filip Kovacevic, "'An Ominous Talent': Oleg Gribanov and KGB Counterintelligence" (2022).

25. Training Manual on the topic "Providing Agents for Operational Cultivation."

26. Vasilchenko. Lecture on the topic "Operational Documentation in the Process of Cultivation. Finding and Collecting the Evidence."

27. Vasilchenko. Example of the Operational Documentation of the Criminal Activities of the Suspects at the End of Cultivation.

28. Vasilchenko. Lecture on the topic "The End of Cultivation."

29. Yermakov. Lecture on the topic "Secret Records Keeping and Operational Accounting in the Work of State Security."

30. Blokhin. Overview of the Operation SLAVES OF ZION.

31. Blokhin. Information Summary of the Overview of the Operation SLAVES OF ZION.

32. Shestoboev. Collection of Examples for Spotting, External Surveillance, Perlustration, and Running Numbered Measures.

33. Safiullin. Collection of Examples on the topic "Agent-Based Combination and Cover Stories."

34. The Program for the Studies of Soviet Criminology.

35. Vasilchenko. Operational Assignment on the topic "Record Keeping for Checking and Studying a Candidate for Recruitment."

36. Vasilchenko. Solution for Operational Assignment on the topic "Record Keeping for Checking and Studying a Candidate for Recruitment."

37. Safiullin. Collection of Examples on the topic "Recruiting Agents."

38. Neboliubov. Assignment on the topic "Writing the Report and the Plan for Agent Recruitment."

39. Neboliubov. Solution for Assignment on the topic "Writing the Report and the Plan for Agent Recruitment."

40. Igumnov. Assignment on the topic "Selection of a Candidate for Recruitment. Drafting the Report and the Plan of Recruitment."

41. Igumnov. Solution for Assignment on the topic "Selection of a Candidate for Recruitment. Drafting the Report and the Plan of Recruitment."

42. Neboliubov. Collection of Examples and Plans for Agent Entry into Cultivation [разработка].

43. Bokov. Assignment on the topic "Selection of a Candidate for Recruitment. Drafting the Report and the Plan of Recruitment."

44. Bokov. Solution for Assignment on the topic "Selection of a Candidate for Recruitment. Drafting the Report and the Plan of Recruitment."

45. Likhachev. Assignment No. 2 on the topic "Agent Recruitment."

46. Likhachev. Solution for Assignment No. 2 on the topic "Agent Recruitment."

47. Griaznov. Assignment on the topic "Agent Recruitment."

48. Griaznov. Solution for Assignment on the topic "Agent Recruitment."

49. Safiullin. Assignment on the topic "Drafting the Report and the Plan of Agent Recruitment."

50. Safiullin. Solution for Assignment on the topic "Drafting the Report and the Plan of Agent Recruitment."

51. Bodrov. Assignment on the topic "Analysis of Agent Reports."

52. Bodrov. Solution for Assignment on the topic "Analysis of Agent Reports."

53. Kanishchev. Collection of Basic Operational Document Forms for the Section "Agents of State Security."

54. Starostin. Assignment on the topic "Agent Recruitment."

55. Starostin. Solution for Assignment on the topic "Agent Recruitment."

56. Bodrov. Assignment on the topic "Drafting the Plan for Agent Entry into Cultivation."

57. Bodrov. Solution for Assignment on the topic "Drafting the Plan for Agent Entry into Cultivation."

58. Griaznov. Assignment on the topic "Planning Agent-Operational Measures for Cultivation."

59. Griaznov. A Model Solution for Assignment on the topic "Planning Agent-Operational Measures for Cultivation."

60. Marakushev. Collection of Assignments on Agent Entry into Cultivation.

61. Bodrov. Assignment on the topic "Agent Entry into Cultivation."

62. Bodrov. Solution for Assignment on the topic "Agent Entry into Cultivation."

63. Ovcharenko. Assignment on the topic "Agent Entry into Cultivation."

64. Ovcharenko. Solution for Assignment on the topic "Agent Entry into Cultivation."

65. Marakushev. Solution for Assignment on the topic "Agent Entry into Cultivation."

66. Bodrov. Assignment on the topic "Agent Tasking."

67. Bodrov. Solution for Assignment on the topic "Agent Tasking."

68. Bodrov. Assignment on the topic "Agent Tasking."

69. Neboliubov. Assignment on the topic "Agent Tasking in Writing."

70. Neboliubov. Solution for Assignment on the topic "Agent Tasking in Writing."

71. Vasilchenko. Collection of Examples of Plans of Agent-Operational Measures for Cultivation (for practical exercises).

72. Tebenkov. Assignment on the topic "Planning Agent-Operational Measures for Cultivation."

73. Tebenkov. Solution for Assignment on the topic "Planning Agent-Operational Measures for Cultivation."

74. Griaznov. Collection of Document Forms for Operational Accounting and Informing the Party Leadership.

75. Collection of Assignments on the topic "Drafting Emergency Report."

76. Solutions to Assignments on the topic "Drafting Emergency Report."

77. Klochko et al. Collection of Assignments on the topic "Analysis of Agent Reports."

78. Klochko et al. Solutions to Assignments on the topic "Analysis of Agent Reports."

79. Bodrov and Lebedev. Assignment on the topic "Agent Exit from Cultivation."

80. Vasilchenko and Pushkarev. Solution to Assignment on the topic "Agent Exit from Cultivation."

81. Sherstoboev. Collection of Document Forms for Operational Accounting and Information for the Party Leadership.

82. Bodrov. Assignment on the topic "Drafting the Plan of Agent-Operational Measures for Cultivation."

83. Bodrov. Solution for Assignment on the topic "Drafting the Plan of Agent-Operational Measures for Cultivation."

84. Sivakov. Assignment on the topic "Interception of Penetration Channels of Agents of Foreign Intelligence Services into the Territory of USSR and Infiltration of KGB Agents into the Intelligence Centers of Imperialist States." (Based on Operation LINK)

85. Sivakov. Solution for Assignment on the topic "Interception of Penetration Channels of Agents of Foreign Intelligence Services into the Territory of USSR and Infiltration of KGB Agents into the Intelligence Centers of Imperialist States." (Based on Operation LINK)

86. Khodin. Assignment on the topic "Interception of Channels of Communication between Foreign Intelligence Service and Its Agents in the USSR."

87. Khodin. Solution for Assignment on the topic "Interception of Channels of Communication between Foreign Intelligence Service and Its Agents in the USSR."

88. Odintsov. Assignment on the topic "Dangling Agents of State Security to the Representative of a Foreign Anti-Soviet Organization."

89. Odintsov. Solution for Assignment on the topic "Dangling Agents of State Security to the Representative of a Foreign Anti-Soviet Organization."

90. Fotin. Document Form of Agent's Personal File.

91. Neboliubov. Lecture on the topic "Subversive Activities of American Intelligence."

92. Vasilchenko. Lecture on the topic "Combat of State Security against Subversive Activities of British Intelligence."

93. Miakotnykh. Teaching Materials on the topic "Subversive Activities of British Intelligence and Combat against it by State Security."

94. Pushkarev. Lecture on the topic "Subversive Activities of French Intelligence."

95. Pushkarev. Lecture on the topic "Combat of State Security against Subversive Activities of Agents of Bourgeois States among Orthodox Church priests and clergy."

96. Dubas. Teaching Materials on the topic "Finnish Intelligence."

97. Davidian. Teaching Materials on the topic "Subversive Activities of Iranian Intelligence against the USSR and Combat against It by State Security."

98. Davidian. Teaching Materials on the topic "Subversive Activities of Turkish Intelligence against the USSR and Combat against It by State Security."

99. Kniazev. Teaching Materials on the topic "Japanese Intelligence."

100. Pushkarev. Lecture on the topic "Combat of State Security against Subversive Activities of Foreign Anti-Soviet Centers and Their Agents on the Territory of USSR."

101. Vasilchenko. Lecture on the topic "Combat of State Security against Subversive Activities of Intelligence Services of Bourgeois States. Offensive Tactics of KGB in Combat against Bourgeois Intelligence Services."

102. Guliaev. Overview of "The Search for and Capture of American Spy Novinsky."

103. Tatarinov & Pushkarev. Overview of "The Search for & Capture of American Agents, Representatives of Foreign Nationalist Organization 'Hawks of Dvina' [Hawks of the River Daugava Daugavas Vanagi]

104. Tatarinov & Pushkarev. Information Summary of Overview of "The Search for & Capture of American Agents, Representatives of Foreign Nationalist Organization 'Hawks of Dvina' [Hawks of the River Daugava - Daugavas Vanagi]."

105. Mamaev. Teaching Handbook on the topic "Anti-Soviet Activities of Jewish Nationalists and Combat against Them by State Security."

106. Safiullin. Lecture on the topic "Combat of State Security against Subversive Activities of Bourgeois Nationalists."

107. Boichenko. Teaching Materials on the topic "Belarus Bourgeois Nationalists."

108. Polubinsky. Overview of Operation INITIATIVE.

109. Khamaziuk and Kasatkin. Overview of Operation INTERCEPT.

110. Guliaev. Overview of the Search Case for Agent of West German Intelligence Postnikov.

111. Khodin. Overview of the Case DWARF.

112. Vasilchenko. Overview of Agent-Based Combination for Infiltrating Intelligence Services of the Adversary.

113. Shuliak. Teaching Materials on the topic "Combat of State Security against Agents of the Vatican."

114. Lutov. Teaching Handbook on the topic "Combat of State Security against Subversive Activities of Agents of Bourgeois States among Orthodox Church priests and clergy."

115. Collection of Overviews on the Search for State Criminals.

116. Solovev. Lecture on the topic "The Search for State Criminals."

117. Terekhov. Lecture on the topic "The Search for State Criminals."

118. Pushkarev. Lecture on the topic "Combat of State Security against Subversive Activities of Agents of Intelligence Services of Bourgeois States Among the Sect Members."

119. Teaching Handbook on the topic "The Search for Authors and Distributors of Anti-Soviet Anonymous Documents."

120. Izmailov. Collection of Examples on the topic "The Search for Authors and Distributors of Anti-Soviet Anonymous Documents."

121. Evteev. Overview of Operation CLOSED CIRCUIT.

122. Evteev. Analysis of the Overview of Operation CLOSED CIRCUIT.

123. Kazantsev. Lecture on the topic "Organization of Counterintelligence Work on Defense and Other Facilities of Special Importance."

124. Bushuev. Lecture on the topic "Organization of the Search for Enemy Agents Entering the Territory of the USSR from the Air, the Sea, and the Land."

125. Pushkarev. Lecture on the topic "Organization of the Search for Enemy Agents Entering the Territory of the USSR from the Air, the Sea, and the Land."

126. Vedernikov. Lecture on the topic "Organization of Counterintelligence Work on the Rail and Water Transport."

127. Butorov et al. Teaching Materials on the topic "Organization of Counterintelligence Work on the Rail and Water Transport."

128. Ostriakov. Lecture on the topic "Organization of Counterintelligence Work of the Special Departments in the Soviet Army and Fleet."

129. Mironov. Lecture on the topic "Organization of the Leadership of the Special Departments of State Security."

130. Kisminas. Lecture on the topic "Interrogation of the Suspect."

131. Borisenko. Overview of the Search Operation AESCULAPIUS. 

132. Borisenko. Analysis of the Overview of the Search Operation AESCULAPIUS. 

133. Kalistratov. Overview of the Search Operation TROTTER.

134. Kalistratov. Analysis of the Overview of the Search Operation TROTTER.

135. Materials on Obtaining Permission to Do Secret Work.

136. Solution Regarding the Materials on Obtaining Permission to Do Secret Work.

137. Kisminas. Lecture on the topic "Termination of Preliminary Investigation."

138. Verdiev. Teaching Materials on the topic "Termination of Preliminary Investigation."

139. Teaching-Investigation Case Regarding the Charges Against I. P. Reshetnikov.

140. Collection of Documents on the History of VChK-OGPU (1917-1924).

141. Skitov. Overview - Investigation of Sabotage (based on the Investigation Case of Diachuk and Zaitsev).

142. Tikhonov. Lecture on the topic "Investigation of Espionage Cases."

143. Marakushev. Lecture on the topic "Investigation of Wrecking Cases."

144. Kariabkin. Lecture on the topic "Investigation of Group Cases."

145. Beliansky. Lecture on the topic "Investigation of Sabotage Cases."

146. Petrov. Collection of Assignments-Examples of Analysis of Indictments (for oral examinations).

147. Marakushev. Overview of "Documentation of Criminal Activities of the Anti-Soviet Element in the Process of His Cultivation and During the Investigation of Emergency Situations."

148. Melnikov. Overview of the Investigation Case of the Agent of American Intelligence Asadzaki.

149. Maklakov. Collection of the Forms for Investigation Documentation. 

150. Kovalenko. Assignment on the topic "Investigation of Sabotage Cases."

151. Kovalenko. Solution for the Assignment on the topic "Investigation of Sabotage Cases."

152. Album "Subversive Activities of Intelligence Services of Capitalist States against the Soviet Union and Some Measures of Soviet State Security to Stop Them."

153. Vasilega. Overview of the Materials on the Eliminated Bandit Groups of the Lithuanian Nationalist Underground.

154. Sample Plans of Courses for the Second-Year Students on the First and Second Special Discipline. 

155. Petrov. Assignment on the Search Operation for the Agent of American Intelligence K. P. Dirzhis (for oral examinations). 

156. Photographs of the Hidеouts оf the Belarus Anti-Soviet Nationalist Underground (one album, 22 photographs).

157. Senichev. Overview of the Cultivation Operation POISONOUS. 

158. Photo Album of the Bunkers/Hideouts of the Lithuanian Nationalist Underground.

159. Griaznov. Methodological Report on the topic "On Measures for Eliciting Collegial Discussions During Seminars on Chekist Disciplines." 

160. Azarov. Assignment on the topic "Seizure of the Channels of Communication of the Agents of Intelligence Services of Bourgeois States.

161. Fedotov. Lecture on the topic "Combat of State Security Against the Subversive Activities of Foreign Intelligence Services Against the USSR."

162. Pushkarev. Lecture on the topic "Obtaining and Using Safe Houses in Practical Work with Agents."

163. Pochkai. Teaching Handbook on the topic "Combat of State Security Against the Subversive Activities of the Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian Anti-Soviet Nationalist Underground."

164. Kazakov. Lecture on the topic "Combat of State Security Against the Subversive Activities of the Agents of the German Fascist Intelligence Service and the Intelligence Services of West Germany."

165. Diagram on the topic "Main Intelligence and Counterintelligence Agencies of Great Britain."

166. Safiullin. Methodological Report on the topic "Concluding Remarks of Instructor at the End of Training Seminars."

167. Zavyrylin. Lecture on the topic "Moral Qualities of the Soviet Intelligence Officer."

168. Diagram on the topic "Foreign Centers of Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian Bourgeois Nationalists."

169. Bulgakov. Teaching Materials on the topic "Documentаtion Equipment."

170. Milkamanovich. Transcript of Lecture on the topic "Preparation and Management of Seminars and Practical Exercises in the KGB."

171. Beliaev. Methodological Instructions on the question of organizing a seminar for operational officers on the topic "Recruitment of Agents."  

This list will be periodically updated as I add more titles from the KGB files.