Farewell (46 page)

Reed even made a point to give the credit to President Reagan, explaining that many in his entourage did not know what he knew about the Soviet vulnerability: “As it was they remained ignorant while the president was playing his trump card: SDI/Star Wars. He knew the Soviets could not compete in that league because he knew the Soviet electronics industry was infected with bugs, viruses, and Trojan horses placed there by the U.S. intelligence community.”
⁹

The disclosure of those events, which had remained secret until fairly recently, unquestionably puts Vladimir Vetrov’s role in accelerating the course of history in perspective. One can only be taken by the coincidences that precipitated the collapse of the Soviet Union. Would Vetrov’s actions have had the same impact had he chosen to begin his betrayal a few years earlier, during détente, instead of the very month when a new American president, determined to put an end to the Cold War, was elected? In that regard, the end of the Soviet Bloc seems to have been written by an invisible hand.

Many will consider that this affair is just one aspect of the end of the Cold War, and they will be probably right. “Reagan himself did not consider that he won the Cold War,” reminds Richard Allen. “He believed that it was linked to a correlation of widely different factors, including people protests in Eastern Europe, and, above all, the fundamental corruption of the communist system.”
¹⁰

It is more than likely that the corruption Vetrov intended to avenge by giving himself to the DST was less fundamental and more concrete than the one Reagan was talking about. The target of his revenge was the KGB, but we have to admit that he committed to it with such a destructive determination and passion that it shook the entire edifice.

Among the American protagonists who had developed the “take-down strategy” toward the Soviet Union, many had access to the Farewell documents, but very few had heard of Vladimir Vetrov, let alone of the French connection at the source of those documents.

This makes it difficult to assess accurately the impact of the Farewell dossier on the end of the Cold War. There is enough material available, however, for deductive reasoning and clue analysis. We saw in chapter 28 that the NSC directive NSDD 75 was used as a road map for strangling the Soviet economy. Reagan in person launched this strategy soon after his arrival at the White House in January 1981. Among the NSC members who were the first to work on the plan under Richard V. Allen’s leadership were Richard Pipes, Norman Bailey, and the indispensable Gus Weiss.

Thus “Monsieur Farewell,” as he was known by the American administration, was closely associated with the elaboration of a plan that led to the end of the Cold War. This in itself gives a more precise idea of the unprecedented historical significance of this espionage affair.

In a very witty and rich memoir written soon before his death in 2003,
¹¹
Gus Weiss emphasized, using his own imagery, the key role played by the dossier in the peaceful outcome of the Cold War: “Farewell’s curtain call never caught the attention of the Marine Band or the Rawalpindi String Trio (there were no curtain calls). Nonetheless, at stake were weapons and industrial superiority in an era dominated by technology, Moscow Center’s campaign and Farewell’s counterpoint dance macabre performing at the center of all-out virtual combat. Were it not for Vetrov, Mitterrand, some outlandish coincidences and odd characters, part of the Cold War would have taken a different and darker course.”

Executing traitors, Vetrov included, always has a whiff of political or ideological assassination. Under the Soviets, this was the best method to show contempt for and rejection of individuals who had dared to give preference to values other that those instilled by the State. It was also an efficient way to dissuade others from choosing this path. A more pragmatic society would not have allowed itself such a wasteful policy. One of the new executives at the SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service), the agency that replaced the PGU, considers it a professional mistake, more than a crime, to kill spies in peacetime. Every year, new facts are disclosed that only very few individuals can shed light on. The arrest of a secret agent abroad, the deciphering of a coded wire, the testimony of a man who eventually decides to talk, all are new elements which only those great moles can help confirm. Without them available in a jail somewhere, this new information with the potential of being extremely valuable runs the risk of remaining unusable forever. Had he stayed alive a few more years, Vetrov would probably have been pardoned, as were so many of his colleagues.

So, traitor or hero? The answer to this question cannot be the same from the French or the Russian perspectives. A traitor and a totally amoral murderer on one side, a freedom hero on the other, even thirty years after the facts, it seems still difficult to reconcile those two views. Patrick Ferrant, who broke his silence mainly to rehabilitate his friend, proposed the following analysis:
¹²
“True, he committed treason, but to me he is, in fact, a patriot. A traitor would have run down his country and would have defected. Here you have a guy with his dacha, his friends, his Russian homeland. His grudge was against the KGB. He was a patriot who wanted to protect his country, the population of his country, against evil people. Was Klaus von Stauffenberg accused of being a traitor after his assassination attempt on Hitler?”

Almost thirty years later, Jacques Prévost also remains astonished by what Vetrov accomplished: “I knew a lot of Soviet people, and I was certain that one day or another, one of them would take the plunge and blow up everything. But I would never have thought it would be Volodia; I did not imagine him having the courage of doing such a thing. It takes a lot of guts. It’s quite remarkable what he did.”
¹³

To those who see Vetrov only as a common murderer one can reply that, having acquired a historical dimension, this man can no longer be judged in the sole light of a trivial crime, cruel though it may be for the victims. Strangely, moral judgments often lose their weight when applied to historical figures who have been eventually proven right by events. When reflecting upon Vladimir Vetrov’s path, one is reminded of Madame de Staël’s words: “If the Russians do not hit the mark, it is because they overshoot it.”
¹⁴
Farewell, with his Russian excessiveness, unquestionably overreached his goal, since the KGB was dismantled in 1991.

Yet the man whose name will remain in the history of secrets services, if not in History with a big “H,” was a man of his time with an inglorious end. Will he ever be rehabilitated in his country? This is doubtful. For the Russians, betraying one’s caste and homeland is inexcusable.
¹⁵

Introduction

1
Gus W. Weiss, “The Farewell Dossier: Strategic Deception and Economic Warfare in the Cold War” (unpublished essay, 2002, “
for the sophisticates and esthetes desirous of the consummate espionage experience of the Cold War
”).

Chapter 1. Proletarian Beginnings

Source: Svetlana Vetrova’s memories.

1
Happily, they died with this belief; Ippolit Vasilevich died in 1970, and Maria Danilovna in 1973. They are both buried in the old village cemetery in Nikolo-Arkhangelskoe, near Moscow.

Chapter 2. Svetlana

Source: Svetlana Vetrova’s memories.

1
Pavel Barashkov was far from being the “very high-ranking military man” described in Marcel Chalet’s book
Les Visiteurs de l’ombre
(Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1990), 158. Barashkov died in 1965.

2
The date differs (May 12) in the false labor booklet delivered to Vetrov later by the KGB. Similarly, the plant is referred to as “organization 991.” It must have definitely acquired its status of “mail box,” meaning “official secret,” at the time when Vetrov needed to have cover papers.

Chapter 3. Joys and Hopes of Ordinary Soviet Citizens

Source: Svetlana Vetrova’s memories.

1
Chalet,
Les Visiteurs de l’ombre
, 145.

2
Alexander Khinshtein, a Russian journalist, published a long article about Vetrov under the title “The Lubyanka Werewolf” (
Oboroten s Lubyanki
) in
Moskovski Komsomoletz
22 (September 13, 1998). Khinshtein, clearly, had access to internal details of the criminal investigation, which he often quotes. The version he refers to confirms some of the sources we have and invalidates others. Differences are about points of detail that may seem insignificant at first glance. Since the purpose of this book is to bring together the maximum information about Vetrov, and to report rigorously, we quote the relevant information from Khinshtein’s article throughout this work. The disclosure of other facts may give more emphasis to seemingly minor points.

3
Both documents are kept by Vetrov’s family.

4
Felix Dzerzhinsky (1877–1926), founder of the Bolshevik secret police, the Cheka (a precursor of the KGB).

5
Since Kutuzov Avenue (Kutuzovsky Prospekt) remains to this day a thoroughfare for government officials’ autocades, one cannot become a tenant in that building without going through a security investigation. One could indeed decide to become a sniper and, from behind a curtain, shoot at the armored limousines driving by at breakneck speed, with the head of state on board.

6
Yuri Ivanovich Nosenko, officer of the KGB’s Second Chief Directorate (counterintelligence), offered his services to the CIA in June 1962. In February 1964, he defected to the West. Later, suspected of being a “decoy,” he spent four years, under atrocious conditions, in a special CIA jail. Rehabilitated by the agency in October 1968, he became the CIA adviser for Soviet affairs.

7
In the jargon of Soviet special services, the term
residency
(
rezidentura
) refers to all the secret agents settled in a country under various covers (the French use the word
post
, the Americans use the word
station
). The station chief is called the
resident
.

Chapter 4. The Good Life!

Source: Svetlana Vetrova’s memories and those of Vladimir Vetrov’s colleagues.

1
Chalet,
Les Visiteurs de l’ombre
, 160.

2
Stanislav Sorokin, interview by Sergei Kostin, March 29, 2007.

Chapter 5. The Mysteries of Paris

1
Bernard Lecomte,
Le Bunker
(Paris: Jean-Claude Lattès, 1994), 60–61.

2
Ibid., 72, 269.

3
Thierry Wolton,
Le KGB en France
(Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1991), 408.

4
We cannot reveal any details about this man, whose existence was mentioned to us by one of the interviewed witnesses, since there is a possibility that up to now he has remained unknown to the DST. At least, the witness had never heard of this mole being arrested and, for obvious reasons, we do not wish to be the cause of such an arrest as a result of this book being published.

5
Chalet,
Les Visiteurs de l’ombre
, 160.

6
Raymond Nart, interview by Eric Raynaud, February 3, 2003.

7
Depending on the sources, this episode has widely differing versions, despite a common thread. The story was first reported by Gordon Brook-Shepherd in
The Storm Birds: Soviet Post-War Defectors
(New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989), 313. By the end of his posting in Paris, “drunk at the wheel of an official car, Vetrov smashed it up one night in the Paris streets.” There were no casualties, but there was significant damage to the car. Vetrov faced serious trouble if the embassy were to find out. He turned in desperation to one of his contacts, “a businessman who held a senior position in France’s advanced electronics industry…The latter, whether out of kindness or calculation, duly paid for a complete repair and, moreover, arranged for it to be done within hours. When he saw his resuscitated car, Farewell’s Russian soul got the better of his Communist indoctrination. The businessman later described how his friend had dissolved into tears of gratitude and literally thrown himself on his knees to thank his benefactor. His career as a Western spy, though still some years ahead, can in essence be dated from that moment.”
Marcel Chalet adds that this “business executive’s kind gesture was probably not entirely without an ulterior motive” (
Les Visiteurs de l’ombre
, 160). He attributes it only to Prévost’s willingness to “get a member of the [Soviet] Trade Delegation in his pocket…Our compatriot initially had no way to know that Vetrov was a KGB member.”
A documentary film (which received the Albert Londres Prize for best journalism) entitled
La Taupe
(
The Mole
) was broadcast in December 1990 on the French TV channel Antenne 2 for the series
Envoyé spécial
. In their film, Hervé Brusini and Dominique Tierce let Jacques Prévost tell the story (identifiable only by his voice, he is not named, and his face is blurred for privacy). According to him, Vetrov ran into a lamppost on the Invalides Bridge, at six in the morning.
Other sources added more specific details. Vetrov’s family had allegedly returned to Moscow ten days earlier (which is not true). “Seriously drunk,” the officer, “others” say, had the accident in the Vallée de Chevreuse, southwest of Paris (Lecomte,
Le Bunker
, 72). The car was fixed, supposedly, by mechanics in Levallois (reported by Philippe Labi in the magazine
VSD
, N° 693/1990).

8
In the documentary film
La Taupe
by Dominique Tierce and Hervé Brusini.

9
Raymond Nart, interview by Eric Raynaud, February 3, 2003.

10
Ibid.

11
Jacques Prévost, interview by Eric Raynaud, April 9, 2009.

Chapter 6. Return to the Fold

1
Marcel Chalet claims (
Les Visiteurs de l’ombre
, 157) that the minister of the Radio Industry, Valery Kalmykov, was an “uncle” of Svetlana’s and was the “good fairy” over Vetrov’s cradle. He would have encouraged Vetrov to become a KGB member, and he would have pulled strings for him until his death, which would have thus put an end to the officer’s career. Kalmykov’s “niece” found this legend very entertaining, since she had never seen the man. He was, in fact, a remote and indirect superior for Vetrov. Vladimir came under the authority of the KGB. If the two men eventually met, in particular on the occasion of delegation visits, their relations were strictly formal.
Same with Kosichkin, Kalmykov’s deputy and “one of Brezhnev’s sons-in-law,” who, according to Chalet, “intervened in [Vetrov’s] decision to work for the KGB” (ibid., 159). One will have to understand Chalet’s statement: “I unfortunately am not able to be more specific” regarding the conditions and circumstances of this intervention. When “Kositkin,” as Chalet calls him, and Vetrov met, the latter already had been a KGB member for eleven years.

2
Ludmila Ochikina’s testimony; she had seen the document in the investigation file. Ochikina appears later in the story.

3
What Chalet writes about the couple’s life in Moscow has the same strange mix of true facts and unwarranted or intentional errors. It goes without saying that the Vetrovs could not afford furniture at thirty thousand rubles apiece, as the head of the DST claims; this would be the equivalent of five Lada cars. Here is another example: the Vetrovs never had a red Zhiguli, to “be distinguished from the surrounding dullness” (Chalet,
Les Visiteurs de l’ombre
, 163). When he returned to Moscow in 1970, Vladimir bought an old model white Volga. Then he replaced it with a new model, a dark gray Volga. In 1974, Vetrov and his colleague Kirilenko managed to each get one new Volga, very dark, almost black. The police thought it was an official car and never pulled him over. Finally, after he returned to Moscow from Canada, Vladimir bought a dark blue Lada 2106.

4
Even Soviet citizens who had worked abroad were not allowed to have foreign currencies. They deposited part of their salary in the accounting department of their place of employment, the trade mission in Vetrov’s case. The accounting department would then buy the currency they needed (francs, dollars, dinars, piasters, or any other foreign currency), would convert the money to “transferable” rubles at the official exchange rate, and then deposit the corresponding amount in the interested party’s account in Vnesheconombank. The account holder could receive, in exchange, coupons called
certificates
and use them to pay for purchases made in special stores, the Beriozkas, selling imported goods that cannot be found anywhere else. There was a lot of trafficking going on around these certificates: Soviet people who did not receive such certificates would buy them on the black market at four or five times the official price.

5
Svetlana Vetrova, interview by Sergei Kostin, 1996.

6
Marcel Chalet, for his part, declares that “during the year 1972, there were some talks about sending him to Italy” (
Les Visiteurs de l’ombre
, 157). We were not able to find any trace of such a project. Furthermore, Vetrov did not speak a word of Italian. The boss of French counterintelligence also mentions Vetrov’s intention to come to France for a short stay, adding that “the DST did not authorize it for reasons I won’t comment here” (ibid.). This is plausible. The KGB used to apply for this kind of visa, much easier to get than a long-term residence permit, to probe counterintelligence attitude in the country of interest. If the visa was refused, it meant the individual was suspected or even identified as an intelligence officer, in which case there was no need to apply for the permit.
As for Chalet’s refusal to comment on the nondelivery of the visa to Vetrov, we now know it was because of a red tape blunder.

Chapter 7. In the Shade of the Maple Trees

1
The fact has been confirmed by Marcel Chalet, who said about Vetrov: “From the moment we identified him as a likely KGB officer, this label followed him in all NATO countries where he might be posted” (
Les Visiteurs de l’ombre
, 162).

2
We owe a lot to Peter Marwitz, former officer of the RCMP secret service (which later became the CSIS, or Canadian Security Intelligence Service), for the numerous explanations he provided and astute remarks he made regarding the Vetrovs’ life in Canada. He contacted Sergei Kostin through the publishing house Robert Laffont in May 1997, soon after the release of the book
Bonjour Farewell
. The correspondence which followed shed a lot of light on many remaining unclear points, or at least cast a new light on this affair.