KGB’s most dangerous officer unveils secrets of Soviet intelligence
Q: Is it true that Soviet ambassadors in different counties of the world were afraid of the KGB security officers, especially those with the Directorate K?
A: Unfortunately, many Soviet ambassadors and their accountants were involved in the embezzlement of the state property and funds at the embassies. Those ambassadors would take their accountants to another country in case of a new assignment. They would try to pay off security officers, to make them part of a scheme. If security officers refused to compromise with their principles, those swindlers took steps to get rid of them as soon as possible.
The ambassadors who performed their duties in line with the rule and did everything in all reason and fairness had no trouble in working with security officers assigned to their embassies. In the embassies that fell under the above category, security officers were instrumental in providing security to all the personnel of a Soviet diplomatic establishment. The work of a security officer always yielded necessary results to prevent recruitment of an embassy staff or an officer with the First Chief Directorate. There were numerous cases when ambassadors and their sidekicks behaved as if they had absolute power within the embassy. If no control was in place, they at times took to drink; they embezzled funds and committed adultery in every imaginable way. Those cases were promptly reported to Moscow by security officers and their superiors, legal residents’ deputies responsible for counterintelligence, who were also part of the Directorate K.
Q: There were defectors in any intelligence service, and the KGB was not an exception to the rule either. Oleg Gorgievsky, deputy head for political intelligence at the British legal residency, was one of those who caused damage to the operations of the KGB’s First Chief Directorate.
In 1985, he was recalled to the Soviet Union, where he would have gone on trial if had not managed to flee the country right from the noses of his KGB surveillants. Was Gordievsky exposed through the efforts of the Directorate K?
A: That’s correct. It is the Directorate K that carried out the work to expose Oleg Gordievsky as a British mole. Personnel of the Directorate not only managed to identify a mole within the KGB legal residency in London, they also succeeded in safely transporting Gordievsky and members of his family to the Soviet Union. As far as I am concerned, the then chief of the KGB Counterintelligence Directorate was to blame for Gordievsky’s subsequent escape from the KGB sanatorium near Leningrad. The British managed to smuggle Gordievsky into a safe house by putting him in the trunk of a car of the British Embassy. It was not the kind of a getaway the Soviet counterintelligence service was ready to foil at the time. I believe it would be interesting for Gordievsky to know that I was quite flattered after coming across “the grimmest and most dangerous man within the KGB” – the way he characterizes Budanov in his book. His description helped me back then and it still helps me do my today’s work. His compliment is especially dear to me because I got it from an enemy agent who was identified by me personally among hundreds of officers serving with the First Chief Directorate of the KGB.
Q: The Directorate K had full information with regard to Gordievsky’s whereabouts in Britain. The same applied to the location of a GRU officer who compromised all the agents of an illegal residency in Vienna, and later wrote several books under an alias of Suvorov. However, the KGB has not assassinated defectors since the early 1960s, according to members of the Soviet and Russian intelligence and security services. Do you agree to this statement?
A: Lots of scary stories were made up about the atrocities allegedly committed by the Directorate K. Traitors and defectors, those mentioned above inclusive, were kept under surveillance, it is a fact. But they did not know that we were watching them. Contrary to sensational reports spread far and wide by the so-called “democratic media” in perestroika times, the KGB has never carried out any assassination operations against the Soviet defectors.
Viktor Budanov was interviewed by Ilya Tarasov
Translated by Guerman Grachev
Pravda.ru
