Home > Vasili Mitrokhin
Vasili Mitrokhin (born 1922) is a former General and head archivist for the Soviet Foreign Intelligence service, the First Chief Directorate of the KGB, and co-author with Christopher Andrew of The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West, a massive account of Soviet intelligence operations based on copies of material from the archive. Work on the second volume, The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in the World, continues.Mitrokin was born in central Russia in 1922 and entered the MGB as a foreign intelligence officer in 1948. His first foreign posting was in 1952. Between 1972 and 1984 he supervised the move of the archive of the First Chief Directorate from the Lubyanka to the new KGB headquarters at Yasenevo . He retired in 1985.
In 1992 he traveled to Latvia with copies of material from the archive and walked into the US embassy. CIA officers there didn't consider him to be credible, concluding that the copied documents could be faked. He then went to the British embassy and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) officer there saw his potential and following consultations with London accepted him as an agent. Operations followed to to retrieve the 25,000 pages of files hidden in his house, covering operations from as far back as the 1930s. He and his family were then exfiltrated to Britain.
Richard Tomlinson, the MI6 officer imprisoned in 1997 for attempting to publish a book about his career, was one of those involved in retrieving the documents from empty milk cartons hidden under the floor of the dacha.
Spies exposed as a result of the defection include:
- Melita Norwood
- John Symonds (code-named Scot)
- Tom Driberg (code-named Driberg), a former elected Labour Party Member of Parliament who had visited MoscowMoscow ( Russian: Moskva capital of Russia, located on the river Moskva, and encompassing 878. The city's population is rapidly increasing, with 11. 2 million inhabitants counted in 2004. The city is in the federal district called Central Russia (which is with Guy BurgessGuy Francis De Moncy Burgess (1911-1963) was a flamboyant, homosexual, British-born intelligence officer and double agent who worked for the Soviet Union, was part of the Cambridge Five spy-ring within MI5. Chronology 1911 Born in Devonport, England Studi.
- Raymond Fletcher (code-named Peter), a former elected Labour Party Member of Parliament.
- Robert Lipka , former clerk at the US National Security AgencyThis article is about the NSA government agency. For other uses, see NSA (disambiguation). The National Security Agency (NSA is a United States government agency responsible for both the collection and analysis of message communications, and for the secur (NSA)
- Claude Estier , former leader of the FrenchThe French Republic or France ( French: Republique francaise or France is a country whose metropolitan territory is located in western Europe, and which is further made up of a collection of overseas islands and territories located in other continents. Socialist Party and confidant of former president François MitterrandFrancois Mitterrand Became President May 10 1981 Predecessor Valery Giscard d'Estaing Date of Birth October 26 1916 Place of Birth Jarnac Political party French Socialist Party Francois Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand ( October 26, 1916 January 8, 1996) w
KGB operations revealed in the files include:
- attempts to incite racial hatred in the US
- bugging of MI6 stations in the Middle EastThe Middle East is a geographical and cultural area comprising the lands around the southern and eastern parts of the Mediterranean Sea, a territory that extends from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. The Middle East is a subregion of Afr
- bugging Henry Kissinger when he was serving as US Secretary of State.
- leaked documents from defence contractors including Boeing, Fairchild, General Dynamics, IBM and Lockheed Corporation, providing the Russians with detailed information about the Trident, MX (Peacekeeper) and Tomahawk cruise missiles.
Accused but unconfirmed were
- Richard Clements , ally of Neil Kinnock, former leader of the British Labour Party, who denied the allegation, saying that it was an over-inflated claim and "complete nonsense".
