The Farewell Dossier

Farewell is a recent Cold War espionage movie, based on the actual case of Vladimir Vetrov, an engineer who worked at the KGB's Directorate T. The 2009 movie was shown at several film festivals and is recently released.

The real story of Farewell begins at the end of the 1960's, when Soviet R&D in the field of electronics and computers trailed the West by a decade. In 1970, a new organisation, called Directorate T, was established within the KGB to start an aggressive intelligence collection of Western science and technology. Line X was it's operational section with many KGB and GRU officers covertly operating in foreign Rezidentura across the world.

The Line X operations were most successful and produced thousands of high quality R&D documents that could enable the Soviets to close the gap with the West, if it wasn't for their inability to organise the required corresponding industry and economy. Nevertheless, Line X provided crucial information that enabled the development and copying of Western technology on a large scale. It saved them billions of Russian Ruble.

Vladimir Vetrov

In 1981, French President Mitterand personally informed US President Ronald Reagan that the French intelligence service DST had a source within Directorate T. KGB Colonel Vladimir Vetrov, codenamed Farewell, was stationed as Line X officer in France during the 1960's and supervised later on in Moscow the evaluation of all intelligence, collected by Line X.

He revealed the names of more than 200 Line X officers, many of their recruited agents, and provided information about the Line X targets. Although Western intelligence suspected the Soviet collection of R&D, they were astonished by its size and success.

Farewell initiated one of the most important deception operations of the Cold War. Instead of dismantling the Line X operations, US intelligence decided to feed Line X with false information that appeared genuine but would fail later on, when actually applied. Knowing exactly what Line X was looking for, the CIA and FBI supplied the KGB with all kinds of flawed technology. A remarkable aspect of the operation was that, if discovered by the Soviets, it would still be a success, as the Soviets would be suspicious about anything that was collected by its Line X officers.

Farewell enabled the US to keep ahead of Soviet military technology, economics and industry, and played an important role in the aggressive US arms build-up to lure the Soviets into keeping pace with the American military industry. The Soviet efforts to close that gap eventually lead to the bankruptcy and collapse of the Soviet Union. Reagan called Farewell one of the most important espionage cases of the 20Th century. You can read the full story on the Farewell Dossier on the CIA's Studies in Intelligence. The Mitrokhin Archive (see my book reviews) also contains information on Soviet science and technology espionage, the Farewell case and on Vetrov.

In the movie, Colonel Vetrov's name is changed into Grigoriev. As for the rest of the story, any resemblance with real persons and events is not a coincidence. Farewell is not a flashy action movie but one in the genre of the The Lives of Others (see its trailer, make sure to get the original with subtitles) or The Russia House, about ordinairy people who get involved in espionage and how it profoundly changes their lives.

Farewell - Movie Trailer

KP4EU Enigma Video

Angel Saavedra (KP4EU) from Puerto Rico, one of the Enigma Challenge competitors, compiled a nice video about the Enigma Machine. The video is a tribute to the famous cipher machine and it even shows my Enigma software.

The radio Hams among us should take a pencil and paper as there's also a Morse message to copy. The message is Angel's way to say thanks for my Enigma Challenge and the Enigma simulator. Muchas gracias, Angel!

Enigma Machine

U.S. - Russian Spy Exchange

On July 9, 2010, the sensational case of the 10 Russian illegal agents, arrested in the United States, has come to an end with the largest spy exchange since the end of the Cold War.

During the July 8 Southern District of New York court hearings they all pleaded guilty to conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government. Under the plea agreements, they had to disclose their real identities, all their assets were confiscated and they were expelled immediately from the United States. They are transferred to the Russia. In exchange, Russia agreed to release four individuals that were jailed for their alleged contact with Western intelligence services. This solution to the spy case was arranged after extensive negotiations between the U.S. and Russia to avoid any tensions in relations between the two countries.

Andrey Bezrukov (a.k.a. Donald Howard Heathfield) and Elena Vavilova (a.k.a. Tracey Lee Ann Foley), the couple with two sons age 16 and 20, Mikhail Anatonoljevich (a.k.a. Juan Lazaro) and Peruvian born Vicky Pelaez who have a son together, Vladimir Guryev (a.k.a. Richard Murphy) and Lydia Guryev (a.k.a. Cynthia Murphy) who have two daughters age 9 and 11, Mikhail Kutsik (a.k.a. Michael Zottoli) and Natalia Pereverzeva (a.k.a. Patricia Mills), Mikhail Semenko (who operated under his real name) and Anya Kushchenko (a.k.a. Anna Chapman) were all deported by airplane on July 9. Christopher Metsos, whose real name remains unknown, disappeared in Cyprus after being bailed. The spy exchange took place at the tarmac of the Vienna's Schwechat airport in Austria, with the Russian and U.S. airplanes next to each other (photo AP).

Spy swap at Vienna's Schwechat airport
Souce photo: AP

Another airplane, coming from Moscow, carried the four men who were released by the Russian Federation. They are all Russian citizens who allegedly cooperated with intelligence services in the West: Igor Sutyagin, a Russian arms control and nuclear weapons specialist was sentenced to 15 years in 2004 for passing information on nuclear submarines and other weapons systems to a British firm that, according to Russia, was a CIA cover. Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence colonel was serving a 13 years sentence since 2006 for passing the names of dozens of Russian agents to the British Foreign Intelligence Service MI6.

Alexander Zaporozhsky, a former colonel in the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service SVR (Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki) was convicted for passing information on Russian agents that operated in the US. He served an 18 years sentence since 2001. The last one is Gennady Vasilenko. His background is unclear but he appears to be a former KGB officer who had contact with the CIA. He was arrested in 2005, while working as security officer at NTV television, and charged with illegal possession of arms and resistance to arrest. Apparently, he was not convicted for espionage.

After the exchange, the Russian airplane returned to Moscow’s Domodedovo airport with the 10 expelled SVR agents. The other airplane flew from Vienna to the RAF base in Brize Norton, United Kingdom, to drop off Igor Sutyagin and Sergei Skripal, and then continued to Washington Dulles International with Andrey Bezrukov and Alexander Zaporozhsky. The exchanged spies will surely undergo extensive debriefing in Russia, the UK and the United States.

The big spy swap was announced officially by a US Department of Justice statement. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder stated that "this was an extraordinary case, developed through years of work by investigators, intelligence lawyers, and prosecutors, and the agreement we reached today provides a successful resolution for the United States and its interests."

More details and court documents are found in my blog on the Russian Spy Ring in the United States. As part of the plea agreement the 10 agents are not allowed to release any information on the spy case in the media, although this is stuff for many books and movies. Nevertheless, we will undoubtedly learn more details later on. The investigation and the extensive surveillance took 10 years and not all of the results were disclosed in court. Who were their contacts? Did they recruit people? Are U.S. citizens involved? Case not closed...

Update November 12, 2010: Case obviously not closed. Four months after uncovering this spy ring, the true reason of its failiure surfaces: the 10 agents were betrayed from the inside. More to read in U.S. Spy Ring betrayed by Defecting SVR Colonel.

Update: on a more frivolous note, Anya Kushchenko (a.k.a. Chapman) has some difficulty to keep herself out of the media, as seen on  English Russia. Well, it's hard to live up to you Bond-girl status.

Update November 3, 2011: The FBI release a large number of documents, photos and videos from operation Ghost stories, the investigation and arrests of the ten illegal SVR agents. All information is released through the FBI records webpage The Vault.

Update October 1, 2018: Sergei Skripal, the former GRU officer (Russians military intelligence) who was convicted in Russia for cooperating with British foreign intelligence service MI6, was released by the Russian Federation in the 2010 spy swap. On March 4, 2018, Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned in Salisburg, England with a military-grade nerve agent. More about the poisoning on BBC News. The two suspects were later identified as two GRU officers. The Russian government denied any involvement, but the case resulted in the expulsion of 150 diplomats in 29 countries, the largest ever expulsion of Russian intelligence officers.

Overview of this Spy Case

• Large SVR Spy Ring Arrested in the U.S. 
• U.S. Russian Spy Exchange
• Spy Ring Betrayed by SVR Colonel
• FBI releases 2010 SVR Spy Ring information

Peace Ambassador in the Cold War

Samantha Smith

The story of Samantha Reed Smith is both amazing and tragic. She became a symbol of hope and friendship during the Cold War era and she managed to obtain an answer about the nuclear threat, straight from her source inside the Kremlin.

At the time, few realised that what she learned from her source were the real Soviet strategic intentions, recently backed by declassified interviews with Soviet policy makers and high ranked Soviet military. An achievement even the CIA could not match. The amazing thing about her is that she was only 10 years old and her source was none other than Soviet leader Yuri Andropov.

Letter to the Soviet Leader

The early 1980's brought a new rise in tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States. After years of so-called détente, a new build-up of strategic nuclear weapons started in both East and West. In November 1982, ten year old American Samantha Smith took the bold decision to write a letter to the newly appointed Soviet leader Yuri Andropov. Driven by the fear for a global war, she wanted to ask him whether he had peaceful intentions or that he wanted war, as some media wrote. Here's her actual letter to the Soviet Leader:

"Dear Mr. Andropov,

My name is Samantha Smith. I am ten years old. Congratulations on your new job. I have been worrying about Russia and the United States getting into a nuclear war. Are you going to vote to have a war or not? If you aren't please tell me how you are going to help to not have a war. This question you do not have to answer, but I would like to know why you want to conquer the world or at least our country. God made the world for us to live together in peace and not to fight.

Sincerely,

Samantha Smith "

The Soviet newspaper Pravda published her letter but she did not receive any reply. Therefore, she wrote to Soviet Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Dobrynin, asking him whether Andropov would answer or not, and he did!

Samantha with Andropov's letter

On April 26, 1983, she received a response from President Yuri Andropov himself, and he explained her that the people of the Soviet Union wanted to live in peace and would never ever be the first to use nuclear weapons or start a new World War.

He also invited her to visit the USSR, meet children of her own age and visit an international children's camp. She attracted massive media attention in the USSR and the US, and she became known as America's youngest ambassador.

Touring in Russia

Samantha at the Artek Pioneer camp

On July 7, 1983, Samantha flew to Moscow with her parents. During the two week trip, she visited Moscow, Leningrad and the Artek Young Pioneer camp on the Black Sea. She was struck by the friendliness of the people and told on a Moscow press conference that the Russians were "just like us".

Five months later, she visited Japan as child goodwill ambassador. Others followed in her footsteps, including eleven year old Katya Lycheva from the Soviet Union, who visited the United States. Samantha also became a media celebrity, hosted a special on Disney Channel, wrote the book "Journey to the Soviet Union", interviewed politicians and co-starred with Robert Wagner in the television series "Lime Street".

Her innocently naive, yet noble initiative resulted in a written statement from Soviet leader Andropov that the Soviet Union would never start a nuclear war. It might sound naive but, as the records have shown, he told the truth. Her noble intentions to bring people together should be an example to all of us, never to be forgotten.

Two years later, on August 25, 1985, tragedy struck when Samantha Smith and her father died in a plane crash. Their small Beechcraft 99 crashed just before landing, killing all six passengers and two crew on board.

Samantha's Legacy as Symbol of Hope

Commemorative stamp

She was mourned by millions of people at home and in the Soviet Union. Vladimir Kulagin from the Soviet Embassy, who attended the funeral, read a personal message of condolence from Mikhail Gorbachev, and President Reagan sent his condolences in writing to her mother.

The Soviet Union issued a commemorative stamp, built a monument in Moscow and even named an asteroid to her. Manchester, her hometown in Main, honored her with a statue and the first Monday in June of each year is officially named "Samantha Smith Day" in Maine. In 1985, Samantha's mother also founded the Samantha Smith Foundation, which fostered student exchanges between the US and USSR.

"When Samantha Smith was killed in a plane crash, millions of people all over the world grieved as if for their own child. For, in a way, she was a child of the world - a symbol of childhood itself, a guardian of our dreams and hopes for children everywhere" (from Citizen Diplomats: Pathfinders in Soviet American Relations)

The Samantha Smith website brings the story of this little girl that, in her own way, brought East and West a bit closer and sparked a glimmer of hope, something many diplomats and politicians could not achieve back then. On her website you find Andropov's letter, read about the foundation, view many images (use "next page" at the bottom of each page) and visit her Youtube channel with videos about her visit to the USSR and interviews. The U.S. Embassy in Russia also had a tribute page on Samantha.

Update: New podcast about Samantha Smith, including interview with childhood friends, her Russian buddy during het tour in the Soviet Union and actor Robert Wagner with whom she played in the TV series Lime Street.

Below the 60 Minutes special by WGAN/CBS, aired on July 27, 1983. From the SamanthaSmithInfo Youtube channel.

To Russia With Love