Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (105 page)

The flawed agent networks and ideological witch hunts that bedeviled
the KGB's operations in America were not the only problems faced by
station chiefs or their Moscow bosses. In espionage literature a certain romance has developed about "The Great Illegals," a group of KGB officers
of the late 19206 and 19306 who achieved remarkable success moving
from country to country, fitting into foreign societies, finding successful
cover jobs, and recruiting valuable sources in half a dozen governments.
But many of the KGB's officers in America fell short of the sophistication
and flair attributed to these legends and had their share of personal problems and human failings.

Station chief Gutzeit glumly reported in 1935 that work infiltrating
White Russian organizations had been in abeyance for nearly two months
because "Leonid," who oversaw several agents on this line, had suffered
a severe heart ailment and been ordered by doctors to refrain from even
discussing work. Due to some unspecified breakdown in financial support, one illegal officer, Chivin, was reduced to borrowing money from
Gutzeit in 1938 and, as a result of his travails, also suffered a heart attack. Another illegal, "Richard," had come to the United States with his wife from Harbin in 1939 as tourists on a diplomatic visa. Unable to get
the visa extended and legally barred from working, they had been reduced to penult' and forced to take temporary jobs that put them at risk
of deportation. Living with her mother in California, they still had "a
cheerful attitude" but needed immediate help. Another illegal, Leo Helf-
gott, died of cancer after arriving in the United States.68

Moscow Center had worried about the reliability of Valentin Markin's
girlfriend at the time of his death in 1934, and he was not the only KGB
officer whose romantic attachments occasioned concern. Gregory Kheifets, San Francisco station chief, had an affair with Louise Bransten, a
KGB source and a well-known socialite. When Moscow Center sent
Stanislav Shumovsky, a specialist in aviation intelligence, back to the
United States in 1941, it instructed his station chief, Zarubin, "`In the
course of a friendly conversation, Maxim [Zarubin] should warn Blerio
[Shumovsky] to be prudent when meeting with women."' Presumably,
Moscow Center had a reason for issuing the warning. One KGB source
even had an affair with the Soviet ambassador. Alice Barrows worked for
the U.S. Office of Education in the Interior Department from 1919 to
1942. A secret Communist, she also maintained contact with the KGB,
steering Hede Massing to diplomat Laurence Duggan. The KGB gave
her the cover name "Young Woman." Barrows had an affair with Boris
Skvirsky, an Amtorg employee who served as the USSR's unofficial representative in Washington before the establishment of diplomatic relations. She later took up with Ambassador Aleksandr Troyanovsky, prompting Ovakimyan to complain that she had "`fallen into a kind of habit of
associating with Soviet representatives."' Barrows gave Troyanovsky some
political information she had obtained from the justice Department, and
in 1938 the ambassador suggested she be handled by the KGB. The KGB
New York station was agreeable, but Moscow Center thought her links
with the CPUSA were too well known and ordered contact with her sev-
ered.69

One unstable KGB officer also caused considerable damage. J. Edgar
Hoover received an anonymous letter in Russian in August 1943 that
identified Vasily Zarubin as the chief of KGB operations in the United
States. It also tagged eleven other KGB officers operating under diplomatic cover at Soviet offices in the United States, Canada, and Mexico
and named one American agent, Boris Morros (see chapter 8). The
anonymous author also accused Zarubin of a multitude of sins, including involvement in the Soviet murder of thousands of Polish prisoners of
war at Katyn, and made a bizarre claim that he and his wife were actu ally spies for Germany and Japan, urging American authorities to reveal
their treachery to Soviet officials. An investigation eventually convinced
the Bureau that those identified were, indeed, Soviet intelligence officers. FBI surveillance of those named in the letter led to identification
of some of their sources and, in the case of Andrey Shevchenko, turning
three of them into double agents (see chapter 6). Boris Morros also
agreed to work for the FBI, and his information later resulted in the exposure, prosecution, and imprisonment of members of the Soble spy
ring (see chapter 8). And surveillance of Semen Semenov was so obtrusive that he was unable to meet with his sources and returned to
Moscow. The FBI was never certain who sent the letter, but internal evidence in the letter suggested it was Vasily Mironov, one of Zarubin's
subordinates.70

The 1994 memoir of retired KGB general Pavel Sudoplatov first
threw light on the mysterious communication. Sudoplatov knew nothing
of the anonymous letter to the FBI (not made public until 1995). But he
wrote that Mironov sent a letter to Stalin in 1943 denouncing his boss as
a double agent for the Axis powers, and after a lengthy investigation, the
KGB cleared the Zarubins and arrested Mironov. According to Sudoplatov, Mironov was found to be schizophrenic and hospitalized. Documents
in Vassiliev's notebooks discuss Mironov's letter to Stalin in some detail.
The overlap between Mironov's letter to Stalin and the anonymous letter
to Hoover are such that it is clear that Mironov authored both.71

A March 1944 report by Fitin and Ovakimyan to Vsevolod Merkulov
explained that a thorough investigation had cleared the Zarubins and
"`determined that this matter is a case of far-fetched and false provocation that was instigated by a former worker of the Amer. station, Vasily
Dmitrievich Mironov, and his accomplice, a former worker of the Amer.
station, Vasily Georgievich Dorogov, who took advantage of their official
positions while working abroad, and who blatantly violated the principal
rules of konspiratsia and Chekist secrecy."' Fitin and Ovakimyan recommended firing Mironov, "`send[ing] him to work in one of the far regions
of the Soviet Union for a period of 5 years,"' and evicting his family from
KGB housing (a perk of the security services). They also wanted Dorogov fired and handed over to the Red Army for assignment to the combat front. To "rehabilitate" (that is, shake up) the American station, they
suggested recalling the Zarubins, Semenov, and KGB officer Konstantin
Chugunov to Moscow and investigating "`indiscreet behavior by individual employees of the Amer. station, both at work and in private life."'
Merkulov reduced Dorogov's punishment, directing a reprimand, trans fer from the prestigious foreign intelligence branch of the KGB to the
less desirable internal security branch, and assignment to an "`outlying
district with a demotion in rank."' Nothing more about the incident appears in Vassiliev's notebooks. But KGB archival material brought to the
West by Vasili Mitrokhin indicated that Mironov had been sent to a Gulag
labor camp and executed in 1945, when he attempted to smuggle out a
letter to the U.S. Embassy about the Katyn massacres.72

Unstable officers were an exception, but other KGB staff covered the
full range from highly skilled to incompetent. Moscow sent Leonid Kvasnikov to New York in 1944 to set up a semi-independent technical intelligence station, and the KGB New York station promptly sloughed off to
him two of its ne'er-do-wells, Alexander Feklisov and Anatoly Yatskov.
Kvasnikov reported that Feklisov had a poor reputation: he had "heard
nothing but low opinions about him as an inept and irresponsible person. For that reason no assignments, especially serious ones, were given
to him and he was used, to put it crassly, as an errand boy, without a
chance to grow." Given responsibilities and guidance, however, he had
flourished: "He is highly responsible in how he approaches assignments
that are given and he bleeds for his area of work. He is turning into a fine
operative, who can be relied on in his work." Yatskov also had not been
highly regarded, although this was partly due to "frequent changes in his
area of work; essentially he was working on every line." While concentrating on technical intelligence had greatly improved his work, still "he
is somewhat scatterbrained and at times not responsible enough. He can
be late to a meeting, fail to check a camera before taking pictures, forget
an assignment that has been given, and so forth. For example, after
"Goose" [Harry Gold] was transferred to him, he lost him a couple of
times, forgot the location of an arranged meeting, missed meetings, and
G. was forced after that to travel to G.'s city and establish contact with
him." Both Feklisov and Yatskov would in time be regarded as successful KGB field officers, and Feklisov in particular became a senior officer
with a distinguished record of work in the United States and Great
Britain, eventually returning to the United States as KGB station chief in
the 196os.73

Grigoiy Kheifets, the KGB's station chief in California, earned the
scorn of his superiors. In June 1942 Gayk Ovakimyan, by then a senior officer in Moscow, sent the New York station chief a sarcastic evaluation of
Kheifets's competence: "`Charon [Kheifets] does not understand his assignments, even though the XY [technical intelligence] is primary in his
area.... Apparently, what interested him most was studying the climate in his vicinity. Now, apparently, he has looked into it and concluded that
the climate is fully acceptable to him and his family-and therefore he
asks that they be sent over."' After Moscow recalled Kheifets in 1944, a
report castigated him for having "'failed to organize himself and the station's operative to carry out the task set for them.' '174

Junior KGB officer Aleksey Prokhorov, questioned about the operations of the American station after he returned to Moscow in 1944, accused Pavel Pastelnyak, acting station chief in 1941, of periodic drinking
binges with Robert Soblen, a KGB illegal. They "`drank together very
often; apparently, they could relate through their egos, seeing as both of
them liked to talk about themselves. One time it almost ended in a fight
outside."' Prokhorov also confirmed rumors that Moscow Center had
heard that Pastelnyak beat his wife. Moreover, "`he thought he was better than everyone else and acted haughtily toward everyone around
him,"' demeaning them by saying, "`You don't understand anything,
you're still boys, I have experience, I've won awards, and so forth."' He
also failed to effectively oversee Prokhorov's work with Jacob Golos, "`in
view of the fact that he didn't know the working conditions, didn't know
the network, or home's [Moscow's] requirements. "'7 5

Sometimes KGB officers incurred envy or became too noticeable
within the Soviet diplomatic community. Moscow sent a set of instructions that all officers were required to sign in 1943. It complained, "By
their behavior both at work and in private life, our employees abroad are
revealing their identities to the Soviet colony and to foreign governments'
counterintelligence agencies."' Some officers had insisted they were too
busy to participate in public activities, behaved differently from those
holding equivalent jobs who were not in the KGB, "`leased expensive
apartments and bought items that exceeded their official financial capabilities and in conversations with other workers did their best to stress
that they were `special' workers."' In particular, their "`automobiles are
frequently of a better make than the ambassador's automobile."' To deal
with these breakdowns in security, officers were instructed to behave in
accordance with their cover jobs, eschew special privileges, participate
in party and pubic life within the Soviet colony, and recognize the authority of the ambassador when working in their cover jobs, while confining discussion of their KGB business to the station chief and his
deputy. Finally, "`the station's automobile should not be of a better make
than the car of the ambassador or of other embassy workers who are of
equal or higher rank than the station chief.' "76

After Zarubin's recall, Moscow sent Anatoly Gorsky to take over as the KGB Washington station chief and as overall head of operations in the
United States. Gorsky complained in a letter to Moscow that several of
the young KGB officers at the Washington station were still being trained
and "`for the time being, they are all completely helpless."' Having arrived before Gorsky, "`they got it into their heads that they were 'diplomats' and tried in the most serious manner to convince me that it was
impossible for `diplomats' to do anything else. It's up to me to knock this
foolishness out of them."' Gorsky singled out Mikhail Sumskoi and "`his
better half,"' presumably his wife, for criticism. Eight months later, things
had not improved. In a telegram, Gorsky blamed "`the careless organization of inventories and poor quality of photography of the probationer
[source] materials"' on "`the irresponsible attitudes of Bogdan' [unidentified] and `Makar' [Sumskoi], especially 'Bogdan.' Given that this is not
the first time 'Bogdan' has damaged valuable materials, we think it necessary to impose a disciplinary penalty on him."'"

KGB officers also varied in their skill and conscientiousness with some
basic espionage tradecraft. Legal officers working out of Soviet diplomatic offices in particular had to assume that they were subject to FBI
surveillance and were supposed to take elaborate measures to evade tails
before meeting with sources. Alexander Feklisov explained in his autobiography how he would take a series of buses and subways, duck in and
out of stores, and zigzag around New York, often for an hour or more, to
shake any surveillance. Semenov stopped servicing his contacts because
he judged he was unable to evade increased numbers of FBI watchers.
But other officers were less scrupulous or less competent. Kheifets led
the FBI to Amadeo Sabatini and Martin Kamen, while Ovakimyan exposed Jacob Golos and Maurice Cooke. Elizabeth Zarubin was rather
blase about dealing with possible surveillance. Leonid Kvasnikov told
Moscow that he had "`major doubts"' about her assertion that she was
not being followed, fearing "`that she simply does not notice it."' Late in
1943 he ran into her while she was on the way to meet Golos and was
startled that she was not wearing her glasses, "`without which she sees
quite poorly,"' hindering her ability to pick up surveillance. She cavalierly
responded that "`people who have been working a long time, such as her,
develop a sixth sense, which unerringly lets them know whether or not
they are under surveillance.' -78