Ekho Moskvy: Interview of Alexander Bondarenko, Soviet Intelligence Historian (Part 2)

On February 6, 2016, the liberal Russian radio station Ekho Moskvy invited intelligence historian Colonel Alexander Bondarenko to talk about his biography of Pavel Fitin, the WWII Soviet intelligence chief, and the WWII Soviet intelligence operations in general. The interview was conducted by Vladimir Ryzhkov. This is the second part of the interview. Below is my translation available only on this blog.

Intelligence Historian Alexander Bondarenko: Soviet Intelligence During WWII (Part 2)

Ekho Moskvy February 6, 2016

The Part 1 of the interview is available here.

Part 2

V. Ryzhkov - Good evening. Once again hello to the audience of the Ekho Moskvy radio station, I am Vladimir Ryzhkov and the program “The Price of Victory” is on the air. Today we are revealing an absolutely amazing story. Pavel Mikhailovich Fitin, a completely unknown name, unfortunately, the head of Soviet foreign intelligence from 1939 to 1946, a person who made a significant contribution to our Victory. And before we took the news break, we talked about one of the most important topics - whether Stalin knew or not, that on June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany would attack the Soviet Union.

And before the news break, my guest Alexander Bondarenko, a historian, author of a book about Pavel Fitin, the head of Soviet intelligence during the war years, said that in June 1941, on June 17, a report was prepared based on the reports from the Red Orchestra [spy network] from Berlin and also other intelligence reports, and that Fitin brought this report to Stalin. And then what happened?

This was 5 days before the war.

A. Bondarenko - The report was sent earlier with the set of messages from the Berlin station, which clearly stated when the attack would begin, what was being done, how Germany was getting ready, and so on. And then Fitin was summoned ...

V. Ryzhkov - Was he with Stalin by himself or was someone else there?

A. Bondarenko - No, Fitin was summoned together with [Vsevolod] Merkulov, the People’s Commissar for State Security.

V. Ryzhkov - That is, they came in together?

A. Bondarenko - They came in together. Stalin asked for the report on the situation and Fitin did the talking. Merkulov was mostly silent, or completely silent.

V. Ryzhkov - How do we know about this conversation?

A. Bondarenko - First of all, Fitin himself wrote about this conversation in his semi-classified notes. Secondly, others wrote about it somewhat inaccurately based on the words of Fitin. Why somewhat inaccurately - I will say a little bit later. Many memoirs of the period mentioned it.

After Fitin spoke, Stalin took the report which was in a bound folder and asked who the source was. Fitin said that this was a reliable source because he himself was in Germany a year before, and he personally knew the people who were based there. Interestingly, I came to the conclusion that, while in Germany, Fitin came under the surveillance of the Gestapo.

V. Ryzhkov - I don’t even doubt it.

A. Bondarenko - But what could they do? They couldn’t arrest him, couldn’t they?

V. Ryzhkov – They monitored and followed him.

A. Bondarenko – Everything turned out to be fine. And he described the source as very reliable. Stalin replied: this was disinformation. Check it out properly. And he returned the folder to Fitin. And then the myths began.

The first myth is that Stalin wrote an obscenity on this report. First, that this is not a source, but disinformation, and then even worse - send him to hell, pardon me. It is officially believed that this was so, but it seems to me that this was a falsification done in the 1990s, when we were proving that everything Soviet was absolutely bad.

V. Ryzhkov - Is the original of this report preserved?

A. Bondarenko - Yes, the report has survived, it is in the archives, and there is this resolution, but it is clearly falsified. In my book, I asked an elementary question: when could Stalin write this resolution? Before Fitin’s talk? Then, why did he listen? After the talk? Did he say something like - Wait, guys, I’ll write something down for you. It’s really funny. [In my opinion] he simply gave this document back to Fitin.

V. Ryzhkov - Or could it be that he read it, was angry, and wrote this down? Then, still harboring some doubts, he invited Fitin to present his case. Could this be?

A. Bondarenko – Stalin was always in control of himself. Would he write down something like this? Well, there are no other resolutions of Stalin that contain obscenities. Immediately Fitin gave this report to Zoya Ivanovna Rybkina, later the famous writer Zoya Ivanovna Voskresenskaya, saying (already somewhat softening what he heard) that Stalin said that they needed to do more work on it. Zoya Ivanovna writes about this and how Fitin returned upset, but she does not mention any of Stalin’s written statements.

V. Ryzhkov – So, Fitin was convinced that the information was reliable, that is, he had no doubts?

A. Bondarenko – That’s correct. Fitin had no doubts.

V. Ryzhkov - Was he sure that the war would begin?

A. Bondarenko - Vladimir, it is clear that Stalin also had no doubts. But there was general Yelisey Sinitsyn, Fitin’s friend from the Central School [of the NKVD] and from the intelligence service. Fitin told him in July, when Sinitsyn returned from Finland, that Stalin said: check it more carefully. Why did Fitin say this to Sinitsyn? Because to say that Stalin said that this was disinformation when the war had already started was not appropriate. Therefore, he decided to smooth it out.

But, as I understand, there were also some secret agreements between Stalin and Hitler, which we still do not know about. In the same way, we do not know about the agreements that [Rudolf] Hess brought to England. They are still classified. Therefore, we do not know what was really going on. Stalin treated Fitin with great respect.

V. Ryzhkov – But this episode with the report was on Stalin’s mind later when Fitin was fired?

A. Bondarenko - Wait, wait, he hardly remembered, there was no point in saying: well, sorry, my dear ...

V. Ryzhkov - Well, yes.

A. Bondarenko - And, all the same, these (in my opinion) heavily redacted Stalin’s visitors’ logs still revealed a secret. On that very day, only in the evening, Stalin (and this is written down) was again visited by the People’s Commissar Merkulov, one of his deputies, and the head of the Personnel Department of the Ministry of State Security. But this time without Fitin. And here I concluded that they planned to transfer him to some other position. The personnel officer was not a part of Stalin’s chain of command; he had no reason to meet with Stalin.

V. Ryzhkov – Why would that be? Stalin did not believe Fitin?

A. Bondarenko - No, on the contrary. There were secret agreements [with Hitler]. And there was this honest guy who unambiguously reported: there will be a war.

V. Ryzhkov - He did his job.

A. Bondarenko - Yes. Military intelligence was doing the same thing but a bit more delicately. They provided [Stalin] with original documents, all with their own “innocuous” observations: perhaps this is disinformation by the English or the Germans...

V. Ryzhkov – And the foreign intelligence service reported everything as it was.

A. Bondarenko – Yes, they did. Fitin reported everything very directly. And [Stalin] probably said that he was a good guy, but that he did not understand. Find him another position. Because if they wanted to get him arrested, then they did not need the personnel officer at the meeting. And, if they wanted to exile him somewhere, he was also not needed. Stalin could have said to Merkulov: well, send him to some district to be an operative. But what they wanted to do is to find him a good position, to let him gain experience, because he was so young and inexperienced, and to remove him in this way.

V. Ryzhkov – He was only 33 then?

A. Bondarenko - Yes, he was 33 years old. He was born on December 28, 1907, that is, at the very end of the year.

V. Ryzhkov - Ok, let’s move on. He warned Stalin, the agent network was doing a great job, he raised the status of the foreign intelligence service. How about the situation with the Battle of Kursk - I read that it seems like they got the information from the British. We know that the British were already able to decipher the secret German codes, and this was their famous Enigma machine. Here I have a question - it seems to me that the British sometimes distorted the information on purpose, so as not to expose their decryption machine, but they still wanted to let the allies know what was going on. This was something like…

A. Bondarenko – something like a game.

V. Ryzhkov – No, not a game. Here the “game” may not be a right word, because we were allies after all. How were these interactions worked out?

A. Bondarenko - Again, this was definitely a kind of game, because even if we were allies… [for example] if I have an agent, it does not mean that I will pass him on to you.

V. Ryzhkov - Well, yes. But, on the other hand, the British, of course, gave us some information, they leaked.

A. Bondarenko - Naturally.

V. Ryzhkov - Whenever they understood that the victory hung in the balance.

A. Bondarenko - They had to pass on secret information, there was an agreement among the allies.

V. Ryzhkov - Was there really?

A. Bondarenko - Of course.

V. Ryzhkov - And so, Fitin worked with the British and he worked with the Americans, right?

A. Bondarenko - Under Fitin, the contacts between the intelligence services were first established.

V. Ryzhkov – That’s what I wanted to ask. Did they have official contacts?

A. Bondarenko – Yes, Fitin even met with them. I think [William J.] Donovan flew to Moscow, they met in various safe houses. And the Americans especially loved it because they were welcomed in the Russian manner.

V. Ryzhkov - Well, of course - with pancakes ...

A. Bondarenko - … with cognac, caviar and so on.

V. Ryzhkov – As one would expect.

A. Bondarenko― Previously, under Yezhov, for contacts and communication with enemy intelligence services, one could get arrested and shot. It is [under Fitin] that these contacts began.

V. Ryzhkov - How effective was this interaction? Did the British help in the Battle of Kursk?

A. Bondarenko - The “Cambridge Five” helped much more.

V. Ryzhkov - That is, our own agents, after all.

A. Bondarenko - Our agents participated in those decryption efforts. That is, our people knew.

V. Ryzhkov - We recently had another guest on the air, who said that Churchill had guessed that our people knew but he did not really want to interfere with it - after all, we were allies. Have you come across this point of view?

A. Bondarenko – I don’t know, I never spoke to Churchill and he never spoke to me.

V. Ryzhkov - I also haven’t seen him for a long time either [laughter].

A. Bondarenko - Well, yes, the old man died, by the way.

V. Ryzhkov - If anyone did not know.

A. Bondarenko - Yes. And the situation was such that whatever they wanted to give us, they did.

V. Ryzhkov – That’s what I wanted to know.

A. Bondarenko - Yes, yes.

V. Ryzhkov - This was significant help in the period of the Battle of Kursk, as I understand it, right? In 1943.

A. Bondarenko - Again, intelligence services are not limited to just one source of information.

V. Ryzhkov - Naturally.

A. Bondarenko - Therefore, what the “Cambridge Five” sent, those decrypted materials, that was one thing. They sent the performance characteristics of German tanks.

V. Ryzhkov - This is when the new “Tigers” appeared for the first time, right?

A. Bondarenko - Yes. But, at the same time, our military intelligence was also doing a good job, and the Germans made us a wonderful gift - they took the “Tiger,” this heavy think, and sent it to the wooded and swampy regions of the Leningrad front.

V. Ryzhkov – It got stuck.

A. Bondarenko – It got swallowed up by the swamp.

V. Ryzhkov - And we pulled it out.

A. Bondarenko - Naturally. And we processed it as best we could. In addition, the partisans were also doing a great job.

V. Ryzhkov – And here’s my question, Alexander: how were the relations among our various intelligence services organized during the war years? How did you call them - the neighbors - did they help each other out? Did jealousy get in the way? Did the military intelligence help out? Did the information converge to some center, was it processed by Fitin or by Merkulov, or by some else?

A. Bondarenko - The information was exchanged, but there were also some clear boundaries.

V. Ryzhkov – The boundaries which established who was responsible for what?

A. Bondarenko - Yes. Because in this kind of situation, one could easily begin to work at cross-purposes. For instance, those well-known radio espionage “games.” In the end, they were handed over to the SMERSH, which was headed by [Viktor] Abakumov. That is described in detail in my book Military Counterintelligence, 1918-2010. And there I dispute to some extent the words of [Pavel] Sudoplatov, who wrote that Abakumov took over the control of the “games” and that this was not appropriate. No, [I say] it was necessary that only one service be in charge. Well, a couple of radio “games” did remain under the purview of the foreign intelligence service...

V. Ryzhkov - Did they work together on deciding which political objectives disinformation they provided was supposed to achieve?

A. Bondarenko – No, not in terms of political objectives. That was the responsibility of the military leadership. And this made it much easier on the military counterintelligence service [SMERSH] because of the clear chain of command. So, everything was thought out very clearly.

V. Ryzhkov – You mean, everything necessary for the disinformation of the enemy?

A. Bondarenko - Yes. And this information was collected and checked. Military intelligence provided some of it, foreign intelligence some as well, but unfortunately, there were also failures to connect all the pieces, for instance, the failure of the Red Orchestra…

V. Ryzhkov - Did our people actually set them up for failure?

A. Bondarenko - Yes. They lost operative contact with the group. The foreign intelligence service weakened [by the purges] and the inexperience of Fitin led to the fact that at the start of the war we lost all contact with our agents [in Germany]. It was believed that because we have radio transmitters in the Minsk region, everything was going to be fine. And then, a week later, the Germans were in Minsk, the transmitters went dead… After that, the foreign intelligence service tried to communicate with these agents from England, through Scandinavia. That is to say, had Fitin become the head of intelligence several years earlier, I think there would have been no such failures, and the successes and, perhaps, the victory itself, would have come sooner. At first, however, he had to learn a lot and gain trust. But our people kept working. Still, these contacts with the allies [the British] cannot really be said to have been very fruitful, on the one hand. On the other hand, when they ask me who our best intelligence officer was, I honestly say: I don’t know.

V. Ryzhkov – What do you mean by “our”?

A. Bondarenko – I mean, in the Soviet Union.

V. Ryzhkov - Why? Because everyone was so good, or because everyone was so bad? Or because nothing can be known for certain?

A. Bondarenko - Yes, let’s say the person completed his assignment, he had some contacts, he went to some place and did something there, and so on. Then he returned, and maybe was even awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, like [Gevork] Vartanyan – we were lucky that they were declassified, this wonderful couple [Gevork and Goar Vartanyan]. But, generally speaking, the intelligence officer returned and then disappeared. Some letters might still come to his address, but no one would be able to guess that he worked in the foreign intelligence service, that he had important contact abroad…

V. Ryzhkov - Do you mean that this is because the secrecy regime is very strict?

A. Bondarenko - Absolutely. Because otherwise...

V. Ryzhkov - Nobody knows anything. And we are not telling anything we shouldn’t right now, correct? I’m kidding, of course. These things about Fitin… they are no longer secret?

A. Bondarenko (laughter) - I don’t know how Walter Schellenberg will react to this, but as far as I know, the old man died a long time ago.

V. Ryzhkov – A bit earlier, you said a very interesting thing that at the beginning of the war we lost contact with our key intelligence agents in Europe. Here I have a question: did Fitin and Soviet intelligence work with somebody in Berlin during the war? Was there a conditional Shtierlits [the fictional hero of a popular spy TV series], who drove a horch [a German car brand] and wore the uniform of a German colonel. Did we work with Paris occupied by the Germans? Did we have our people in Bucharest, in Budapest and so on? Or, throughout the entire war, we can say that these places were like a black hole, that nothing was coming through? What was really going on?

A. Bondarenko - It is officially known that our only agent in the Gestapo had a codename Breitenbach and his real name was Willy Lehmann. He was exposed and later executed precisely because of the problems in the relations between our two intelligence services. We sent our people to Germany, to Berlin, and we also worked with the British, but all that was not very effective. That is, our agents were working. Volunteers would pop up here and there.

V. Ryzhkov - That is, we had people in Paris, in Bucharest, in Belgrade, even in Warsaw?

A. Bondarenko― Yes, yes.

V. Ryzhkov - They were in those places, right?

A. Bondarenko - Yes. But it’s difficult to say how much they helped. I will repeat what I said before: intelligence is perhaps the only sphere of human activity where they do not boast of their successes. If in other areas of political life, they say: wow, we did this and that, in intelligence, everything is kept secret. That is, things are done quietly, behind the scenes, and that’s it. Nothing to talk about.

Therefore, as one intelligence officer once said to me: look, even if we had someone in the leadership of Hitler’s Reich, we would never admit it, because then it would be necessary to share some of the responsibility for the crimes of the Reich. Therefore, people had their assignments, they completed them, then disappeared or perished or whatever, but we can’t reveal everything, because it could harm our reputation.

V. Ryzhkov - But there is a disadvantage to that. Because, on the one hand, if the intelligence service does not boast of its successes, that may be great and praiseworthy, but on the other hand, it leads to the creation of a heroic myth, a kind of a halo. Because, if we do not know what they really did, we can attribute all kinds of accomplishments to them, which in fact never took place. These are the two sides of the same coin.

A. Bondarenko - Well, that’s how it should be. They should work without attracting attention.

V. Ryzhkov – And they do.

A. Bondarenko – And let others say whatever they want ...

V. Ryzhkov – Ok, then. Here’s another question about Fitin. When I was preparing for this program, I read his biography. It struck me how badly everything turned out for him after the war. He lost one position after another and fell lower and lower in the political and military hierarchy...

A. Bondarenko - Yes.

V. Ryzhkov - Well, why? After all…

A. Bondarenko - Vladimir, that’s not true, that’s a legend.

V. Ryzhkov - Well, look, he was the head of the foreign intelligence service of the Soviet Union. And then he was sent to Sverdlovsk, and then to Kazakhstan, then somewhere else. Why didn’t he become a minister in the government, for instance? Why didn’t he advance?

A. Bondarenko - He became a minister.

V. Ryzhkov - In Kazakhstan?

A. Bondarenko - Yes.

V. Ryzhkov - But not at the level of the Soviet Union.

A. Bondarenko - Sorry, Kazakhstan was the largest republic of the Union [after Russia].

V. Ryzhkov - So, you don’t think that his postwar fate was tragic? Tell us why.

A. Bondarenko - We are very fond of legends. Our history is falsified with great pleasure both from below and from above. Especially from above. And Khrushchev’s point of view that Beria was a scoundrel who hasn’t done anything good prevailed. However, in the Urals - I have flown there three times while working on my book - Beria is remembered very fondly due to his involvement in the atomic project. People there have a very high opinion of him. And when we talk about Beria, let’s also consider who was best organized when the war started. The border guards, the border troops of the NKVD. That is, Beria was not at all such a bad person as some like to claim. But a legend has been created in the Khrushchev period that Beria demoted Fitin because Fitin informed Stalin about the beginning of the war, and that’s what Stalin did not want to hear. But, as I said, first Beria and then Merkulov signed all these documents submitted by Fitin. Another later version, the post-Khrushchev version is that Khrushchev demoted him. But in fact, well, our system, we all know, was good that way [Bondarenko is being sarcastic]. Now, it’s even better. Everything is being decided by the very few and their friends.

V. Ryzhkov – And so…

A. Bondarenko: The real story is that in 1946, the People’s Commissar of State Security Merkulov was replaced by the tough [leader of the SMERSH] Abakumov. Comrade Stalin did that. The Doctors’ plot was “uncovered” and then the plot of the Leningrad party leadership, and so on and on.

V. Ryzhkov - Well, what about Fitin? He was working in foreign intelligence.

A. Bondarenko - But Fitin was a member of Merkulov’s clan. In reality, he was in Beria’s clan. Beria was engaged exclusively in the atomic project, and, moreover, received a lot of assistance from Fitin, which we can talk about later. But Beria was no longer the chief. The chief was Merkulov, and when he was replaced, his entire clan was replaced, too. Abakumov brought his own people. The foreign intelligence service began to drift.

V. Ryzhkov – So, it was not a fall from grace, it was simply the change of the leader who was in charge?

A. Bondarenko – Yes, that’s right. Well, all the time this is described as a fall from grace, but for some reason, I don’t know why, people don’t have enough patience to read the fourth volume of Essays on the History of Foreign Intelligence, written mostly by intelligence officers in the 1990s, of whom I know a few, and republished in 2015. And there are some of Fitin’s notes - they are not all declassified - and they end like this: I was engaged in the atomic project for another 5 years after I left the foreign intelligence service.

V. Ryzhkov - That is, until 1951.

A. Bondarenko - Yes. Here it’s important to take a pause and try to understand what he meant by being engaged and analyze what he did. First, for a short period of time in 1946, he was our deputy representative in Germany. What was Germany at that time? First of all, the uranium mining, the uranium mines, the famous Bismuth Joint Stock Company. After that, he was transferred to Sverdlovsk as the deputy head of the state security department for the Urals.

V. Ryzhkov – Yes, and then to Kazakhstan.

A. Bondarenko – Wait a moment. When I came to the Urals for the first time and was doing the research for my book on Fitin, they gave me some documents about what he was doing there, and when I later said to them that he was also involved in the atomic project, they said “Ok, we’ll look for that, too.” And now they want me to publish the third edition of my book with all the newly uncovered documents on how the atomic project was implemented and Fitin’s role in it.

And after he served as the deputy head of state security in the Urals until 1949, he was then appointed to the position of the People’s Commissar of State Security in Kazakhstan. The second largest Soviet republic.

V. Ryzhkov - And, by the way, that’s the place with all the uranium mines and other rare metals.

A. Bondarenko - And the site for nuclear testing.

V. Ryzhkov - Yes, that’s right, in Semipalatinsk. This is also not a coincidence, right?

A. Bondarenko – Of course not. He was transferred there and was elected a delegate to the 19^th Communist Party Congress. And that was then the highest party authority. In other words, his career was going well. After Stalin’s death, the People’s Commissariat for State Security ceased to exit. But then Beria, who they say hated him, appointed him to what position? The Head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Department for the Sverdlovsk Region. Again, the Urals being the stronghold of the Soviet state, he did a very important work there. But then after the arrest of Beria, he was removed from this office. That is, everything had been going well for him, and he could have gone up even higher. He was only 45 years old and already a lieutenant general. But he was fired without a right to a pension because he had only 15 years of service! So, it was the change of the person in command [from Beria to Khrushchev] that knocked him down ...

V. Ryzhkov - And after that – we only have very little time left - as I understand it, he only worked in the economic sphere.

A. Bondarenko - Then he successfully defended himself from the charge that he was an enemy of the people, and they could not pin it on him. After that, he worked for the Department of Economic Planning, and then he was in charge of the factory run by the Society for the Friendship of the Peoples of the USSR and Foreign Countries. There is also information that he kept his contacts with intelligence officers. Unfortunately, after the book was already published in the book series Lives of Remarkable People and followed by the second edition after only 3 months, which does not happen so often, a lot of new materials came my way. For instance, about his meetings with [Rudolf] Abel, who returned from abroad [after the famous spy exchange], and about the atomic project and much, much more. So, God willing, I may be able to do another edition of the book and include all that.

V. Ryzhkov - Thank you very much. It seems to me that this was a very interesting story about a very interesting person named Pavel Fitin, the head of Soviet intelligence during the World War II. My guest today was Alexander Bondarenko, a historian. You can read about Fitin in his book published in the Lives of Remarkable People series.

And to you, Alexander, I wish you the very best in your upcoming investigations. Please bring out from obscurity more important figures from our history. Thank you very much!

A. Bondarenko - Thank you, I will try.

V. Ryzhkov - Thank you!

A. Bondarenko - Goodbye.

 

Russian Online Magazine: Interview of Nikolay Khokhlov, KGB Defector Who Survived Poisoning Twice

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 38^th 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.