Russians Among Us. Gordon Corera
Yasenevo. That was because Leonid Shebarshin was not one of the plotters. A few weeks earlier, Shebarshin had stood next to KGB chairman Kryuchkov as they addressed the new political leaders—men like Boris Yeltsin, who had just been elected president of Russia by popular vote. Russia was still part of the Soviet Union. But the control that the center exerted over its empire was crumbling as republics—including Russia itself—were flexing against the Communist Party that ruled over them. Shebarshin sensed that day that the politicians were more interested in their own power struggles than the warning he was there to deliver about the “main enemy”—the United States. “What was not changed was the ambition of the US to weaken the Soviet Union and deprive it of the status of a great power,” he told his restless audience. Washington’s “new world order” meant American dominance. The Cold War had not really been an ideological struggle, he believed. It was really about Western resistance to the idea of Russia as a great power. Shebarshin’s worldview had surprisingly little to do with communism. As that faded, what remained was a resilient core of nationalism. The Soviet Union covered nearly a sixth of the world’s surface. But size was also weakness. Western spies had been supporting separatist forces trying to fray the bonds of the USSR, Shebarshin explained. He was frustrated that no one seemed to be listening. But he had not realized how far the man next to him would go. A few weeks later, the KGB chairman and other hard-liners feared a treaty that was about to be signed would break up the USSR and so launched their coup. Now, from his spacious office in Yasenevo, Shebarshin watched on Monday morning as the tanks rolled into the city. But they stopped at red traffic lights. That hardly looked ruthless. The spymaster was hanging back—not committing either way. Ironically, the man in charge of the KGB’s international espionage operations then turned on CNN to find out what was happening in his own country.
Thousands of miles away on that same Monday in August, there was proof that Shebarshin’s First Chief Directorate was still in the game. An American intelligence officer went for a walk to a park only a few miles from the headquarters of the CIA in Virginia. He liked Mondays as he knew there were fewer FBI surveillance teams operating. Underneath a footbridge he left a package containing highly classified information about intelligence operations the United States was mounting against the Soviet Union. He retrieved another package containing twenty thousand dollars in cash and a message. He was one of two spies the KGB had deep inside its opponent’s intelligence services. This spy had been active for more than a decade but not even the KGB knew his real name. And the pair were not the only spies the KGB had in America—they also had their own officers, living as sleepers.
HIGH IN YASENEVO’S tower, those who controlled the KGB’s most prized spies had also been watching the tanks. Floors fourteen to twenty on the main tower were home to Directorate S. Its work was kept secret even from other colleagues in the building because this was where the KGB ran deep-cover agents who lived abroad under false identities—illegals. Traditional spies work under diplomatic cover in a foreign country—posing as something like a second counselor for trade. If such a spy is caught, they have diplomatic immunity and can only be expelled. Other spies work under nondiplomatic cover, as, say, a businessman. They have no diplomatic immunity. In the Russian terminology, they are “illegal.” Many countries undertake this kind of spying but Directorate S takes things a step further. A deep-cover Russian illegal can be not just operating under cover of a different occupation but can take on an entirely different nationality. The Russian will not—to all appearances—be Russian but instead be German or Canadian or even American. They can spend decades undercover in a different country, burrowing deep into their target society—sleepers. Some will live and die in a foreign land, buried in a graveyard under a name that was never truly their own. Illegals are the pride of Soviet and then Russian intelligence—having assets deep inside enemy territory provided a sense of power and reassurance and an edge over their adversaries. Were they worth the vast investment? “My experience tells me that this practise quite justified itself,” Leonid Shebarshin said.
When the 1991 coup began, a legendary figure made a surprise reappearance in the corridors of Directorate S. Yuri Drozdov had retired a few months earlier as the head of the directorate. But in August as the tanks rolled, he returned to the duty room, with a sparkle in his eye. “We’ll restore order in the country! We’ll clear up the mess. It’s about time!” he told surprised staff. Lean, with a long face, Drozdov had entered Berlin with the Red Army at the end of World War II and by 1962 was a KGB illegal in Germany. Drozdov escorted American lawyer James Donovan across East Berlin to organize one of the most famous spy swaps of the Cold War, when the illegal Rudolf Abel was exchanged for captured American U2 pilot Gary Powers. He then spent four years in New York before in 1979 becoming head of Directorate S, where he ran the illegals for more than a decade. But in his final months in charge, he had found the uncertainty and confusion surrounding the Soviet Union deeply unsettling.
The illegals around the world had become agitated as they watched news of the political divisions and disarray back home. These men and women had dedicated their lives to an idea that communism would transform the world. But what if that was now disintegrating? At an operational meeting before his retirement Drozdov had revealed the depth of their concern. A few illegals, he said, had broken every rule and written directly to him asking what was going on. “Personal letters are being written to me,” he told his astonished subordinates. “They ask what is happening in our motherland. They say they can’t understand anything! They ask who it is they are working for. Is it for the Soviet Union or for Russia? For the Communists or for the ‘new democrats’?” He explained that the illegals feared that the new political leaders might betray them. Some said they would not maintain contact with the center for their own safety until the situation was resolved. They would continue with their long-term missions but avoid short-term scheduled contacts. “I have received not just one letter like this but several,” an exasperated Drozdov explained. “What have they been doing? Have they held their own Party congress?” he joked.
The illegals were the glory of the KGB. Drozdov’s greatest nightmare was that this intelligence capability—so prized and so patiently built—could be lost. He was sufficiently worried that he began destroying some of the documentation so it could not fall into the wrong hands. Fear may have driven him to back the August coup. But Drozdov’s return, like the coup itself, would be short-lived.
Out in the city, the CIA officers sent out by their chief of station began reporting back. They realized their KGB minders were absent and so for the first time, they took the risk of meeting contacts quickly on street corners without the usual careful preparation. They visited the airport and TV stations—all the places you would seize first in a well-planned coup. But no one had secured them. The whole thing was starting to look like something a group of desperate men had cooked up quickly after too many vodkas rather than a well-oiled operation. Crowds of ordinary people were taking to the streets as a light drizzle fell. Barricades were going up. The plotters had failed to arrest Boris Yeltsin and he would become the focal point of opposition. After decades of the tightest control, everything seemed to be unraveling at bewildering speed. The CIA officers could see the army waver. The coup was a last, desperate attempt to prevent the demise of the communist system. Instead the plotters had hastened its death. Gorbachev flew back to Moscow to reassert control. The plotters were arrested. But the chaos did not end as the state seemed to unravel.
Shebarshin was summoned to see Gorbachev. He was offered the temporary chairmanship of the KGB. As he walked out of the meeting, he could hear protesters outside. He knew what a revolution sounded like from his time in Iran in 1979. He took an underground tunnel to the Lubyanka in central Moscow—the imposing headquarters of the KGB. It was eerily quiet inside. As the light faded, Shebarshin could see Dzerzhinsky Square out of the window. After the 1917 revolution Felix Dzerzhinsky had led the Cheka. Its mission had been to use whatever means necessary to preserve the hold of the Communist Party against domestic and foreign counterrevolutionary forces. Dzerzhinsky led a “Red Terror” in which countless were killed and yet the KGB had built a cult of personality around him. To this day his successors—who portray themselves as guardians of the state battling against subversion—are known as “Chekists.”
That August evening protesters gathered around the ten-ton statue of Dzerzhinsky in the square. For them it was the symbol of oppression. There were excited speeches and slogans, an air of the