Farewell (50 page)

14
Traditional wishes at weddings, “Soviet and liubov.”

Chapter 30. Portrait of the Hero as a Murderer

1
We owe many insightful suggestions and indications to three eminent Russian experts in criminal psychology: Valentina Nikolaeva, professor in the Department of Psychology, Lomonosov University, Moscow; Sergei Enikolopov, head of the Department of Clinical Psychology at the Center for Psychological Health, at the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences; and most of all, Mikhail Kochenov, head of the Department of Psychology at the Institute of Criminology, and a member of the Commission on the Question of Amnesty under the president of the Russian Federation.

2
Incidentally, many in the KGB thought that the French were deliberately providing Vetrov with liquor which was extremely difficult to find in the Soviet Union. It supposedly increased his subordination to the DST so he could be better controlled. It is difficult to share such an opinion, since evidence shows that the more a man drinks, the more out of control he becomes. It was in the DST’s interest to keep the operation going as long as possible. If, as claimed in the KGB, “Paul” was regularly bringing Vetrov one or two bottles of hard liquor, he was acting as a “wise spouse.” Such a spouse would know that her husband, being an alcoholic, will look for, and find, something to drink. An alcoholic in withdrawal, like a drug addict, is a danger to himself and to others. So, she might as well let him drink at home. By providing Vetrov with his supply of “hooch,” the theory goes, Ferrant avoided more serious risks to Vetrov and the entire operation. Besides, we now know that those “gifts” were largely used to organize happy hours at the office and to probe PGU internal counterintelligence’s attitude toward Vetrov.

3
He played a major role in gathering intelligence about advanced weaponry and, more specifically, about nuclear weapons. Sentenced to a thirty-year imprisonment in 1957, he was exchanged in 1962 for the American U2 pilot Francis Gary Powers. See James B. Donovan,
Strangers on a Bridge: The Case of Colonel Abel
(New York: Atheneum, 1964).

Chapter 31. Unveiled

1
Vladimir Kryuchkov, interview by Sergei Kostin, March 29; Igor Prelin, interview by Sergei Kostin, March 30, 2007.

2
Wolton,
Le KGB en France
, 405–408.

3
Andrew and Gordievsky (
KGB: The Inside
Story, 455) claim that the French discovered the interception of diplomatic messages between Moscow and Paris thanks to Farewell’s disclosures.

4
It is interesting to see when the DST dated Vetrov’s execution. In his book
Le KGB en France
(p. 415), Thierry Wolton wrote that Farewell suddenly disappeared in November 1982, not to be heard from ever again. We know this is not true, since Patrick Ferrant saw him last on January 26, 1982. Likewise, Gordon Brook-Shepherd (
The Storm Birds
, 326) apparently had access to a DST source. His argument is clear: “The Soviet agents were expelled in early of April 1983 because, the month before, Raymond Nart and his colleagues had received firm confirmation of Farewell’s death.” Thierry Wolton (ibid.) wrote along the same lines that in early 1983, French counterintelligence had become convinced that they would not hear from Farewell ever again. This assumption is not modified in Marcel Chalet’s book
Les Visiteurs de l’ombre
(p. 186) despite the obvious error concerning the date of Farewell’s arrest.
What beats everything, though, is what is revealed in Guisnel and Violet’s book (
Services secrets
, 316). The journalists tell the story of the March 1985 TV reports covering the DST, in collaboration with the French channel TF1. The date on the famous Smirnov dossier—the very one Ameil photocopied, and three pages of which had been shown to the Soviet ambassador Afanasievsky by the French minister of foreign affairs—had been “doctored”: the French spy hunters had typed 1983 instead of 1981 to make the Soviets believe that they still had a mole within the KGB. Deception is a standard technique in the test of strength between secret services. What is astounding is the following clarification, to which nobody paid attention, apparently. Explaining this setup, one of the brains behind the operation, thus a DST member, declared, “We knew Farewell had been executed in 1981.”
At the time, the affair was still classified; information leaked in the media could, therefore, only be truncated or wrong. Raymond Nart, who served as the head of the DST for the entire duration of the operation and is, therefore, the most concerned, is more nuanced. Over twenty years after the facts, Nart tried above all to restore the context: “It’s true, we were groping in the dark a little, although the Americans shed some light. Personally, I thought the mistress had betrayed Vetrov, since she was sending us documents. Some were coming from her office.”
The fact that so many contradictory dates were coming from the same source, the DST, is an indication of the state of confusion and ignorance the French counterintelligence was in with respect to its mole’s fate.

5
Vladimir Kryuchkov, interview by Sergei Kostin, March 29, 2007.

6
Igor Prelin, interview by Sergei Kostin, March 30, 2007.

7
Ibid.

8
La Taupe
, Tierce and Brusini (TV film).

9
Yves Bonnet,
Contre-Espionnage: Mémoires d’un patron de la DST
(Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 2000), 94.

10
Raymond Nart, interview by Eric Raynaud, February 3, 2003.

11
For this entire episode, the source is an interview with Madeleine and Patrick Ferrant conducted by Eric Raynaud on January 29, 2003.

12
Still out of scrupulousness, we report here about another possible source of Farewell’s downfall. If, one day, his involvement in this affair is confirmed, it will only prove the large-scale operation launched by the KGB, even if the three proofs already gathered were sufficient to confound Vetrov.
Karavashkin, the former head of the France section in KGB counterintelligence, is convinced that there was also a leak within the CIA. The American department dealing with Soviet counterintelligence was surprisingly well informed about the Farewell case. Indeed, Vetrov could have been denounced by Edward Lee Howard (see
Molehunt
, 294, 298). Recruited by the KGB, Howard was then implanted in the Soviet section of the CIA in 1981. The KGB has never officially admitted to it. However, defector Vitaly Yurchenko’s testimony, and the excellent organization of Howard’s exfiltration, confirm it beyond any shadow of a doubt. Howard was supposed to be appointed to the CIA station in Moscow, but he failed the polygraph tests (lie detector). Fired, he was placed under FBI surveillance. In 1985, he managed to fool his tailers and fled to the Soviet Union. Howard claims that in 1981–1983, he knew of two CIA agents in the USSR, but did not know their identity (see article by Leonid Kolosov about Howard in the Russian monthly journal
Sovershenno Sekretno
[Top Secret] N°6/1995, p. 15). In 1989, in another confession to an American journalist (David Wise,
The Spy Who Got Away
, New York: Random House, 1988), Howard asserted he did not pass secrets to the KGB prior October 1983; at that time Vetrov had already been uncovered by Soviet counterintelligence. Assuming Howard told the truth, and nothing proves otherwise, since in 1989 he had already fled to Moscow, it is very doubtful that he contributed to Vetrov’s identification. Leonid Kolosov, however, who was less a journalist than he was a former PGU officer, declared in an interview with Sergei Kostin on August 29, 1995, that Howard had denounced a dozen Soviet CIA informants (the fact that arrests of Western moles within the PGU in the eighties were caused by Howard’s disclosures has been confirmed by Oleg Kalugin,
Proshchai, Lubyanka
[
Farewell, Lubyanka
], Moscow: Olimp, 1995, 194). This figure is more in line with the scandal caused by Howard’s defection. The director of central intelligence, William Casey, was forced to resign, while Howard himself was sentenced to the electric chair in absentia.

13
Chalet,
Les Visiteurs de l’ombre
, 220.

14
Wolton,
Le KGB en France
, 258.

15
Khinshtein, “The Lubyanka Werewolf.”

Chapter 32. The Game Is Up

1
Valery Dmitrievich Sergadeev was still alive when Kostin was investigating the case, but unfortunately he declined to meet with the journalist.

2
Igor Prelin, interview by Sergei Kostin, March 30, 2007.

3
Anecdotally, here is another authentic episode demonstrating the efficiency of these tactics.
Sometime later, in January 1986, Vladimir Kryuchkov invited foreign intelligence executives to a meeting. This was after the Ames scandal broke in the United States, and after two KGB officers from the USA department were uncovered as a consequence of Vetrov’s disclosures. The biggest of the two Yasenevo meeting rooms had been chosen. Kryuchkov declared in plain language, “I must tell you that we are about to expose traitors in our ranks. I even know some are in attendance here. I would like to warn them before it’s too late. Change your mind. Come see me and confess, make amends. If you do, I guarantee you to spare your life. But if you don’t, you’ll be executed.” Only one officer, a certain Yuzhin, operating in the United States and collaborating with the CIA, went to see his boss. Kryuchkov kept his word: Yuzhin was sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment. He served eight before being pardoned by President Yeltsin.

4
See the title, catering to the French public, in the article by Philippe Labi in
VSD
magazine: “La taupe du KGB qui aimait trop la France” [The KGB mole who liked France too much].

5
Igor Prelin, interview by Sergei Kostin, March 30, 2007.

6
Khinshtein, “The Lubyanka Werewolf.”

7
See Pierre Marion,
La mission impossible: À la tête des services secrets
(Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1991), 59: “It is rumored that Farewell would be living happily ever after with his wife in Leningrad.”

8
See the barely romanticized account by Daniil Koretsky, former police boss for the Rostov-on-Don region, in
Privesti v ispolnenie
[
Executive Action
] (Saint Petersburg: Ed. VIS, 1995).

9
In the mid-eighties, a shady businessman from Roston-on-Don, a decorated veteran, died in a camp from an illness. His son illegally bought his body back, heavily greasing the camp management’s palm. He gave his father a funeral with great ceremony in the cemetery Heroes Alley and erected a magnificent monument for his tomb. When the story broke, it caused a huge scandal. The entire Soviet prison system felt threatened. If inmates were to obtain a single right, if only the right to a personal grave, they could ask for more!

Chapter 33. “The Network”

1
Vadim Kirpichenko, “
Les traîtres dans le renseignement: Anatomie d’un phénomène
,” article in
Les nouvelles du renseignement et du contre-espionnage
, Nº
^s
3–4, 1995.

2
Nikolai S. Leonov,
Likholetie
[
Troublesome Time
] (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye Otnosheniya, 1995), 281–284.

3
Oleg Kalugin,
Proshchai, Lubyanka
(Moscow: Olimp, 1995), 194. Igor Prelin (interview by Sergei Kostin, March 27, 2007) reported a typical story involving this same Kalugin. In the mid-seventies Prelin, along with two of his subordinates, went to see the head of internal counterintelligence following a failed operation. Only four people knew about it: two in Yasenevo, and two in the target country; the
rezident
and his deputy. Prelin and his men wanted to launch an internal investigation. “Wait,” replied Kalugin, “surely, you’re not insinuating there may be traitors among our officers?!” In everyone’s mind, intelligence officers were the most dedicated men, “of crystal honesty,” as the expression goes.