The Center For Security Policy
Publications of the Center for Security Policy No. 92-D 12

DECISION BRIEF

28 January 1992   KGB MAJOR GENERAL OLEG KALUGIN: 'RED HERRING' ACROSS THE 'P.O.W.-GATE' TRAIL?

(Washington, D.C.): In testimony this week before the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, the KGB's former head of counter-intelligence, Major General Oleg Kalugin, delivered extraordinary testimony. He reaffirmed under oath statements made earlier to the effect that, at his direction, a KGB officer travelled to Hanoi to interview several American POWs well after all U.S. prisoners of war were supposed to have been repatriated.

It is impossible at present to establish the truth of this claim. The man General Kalugin purports to have sent on this mission, a Mr. Nechiporenko, denies having undertaken it. There is reason to believe he said so under orders from his present employer -- the Russian successor to the KGB. The government in Hanoi has denounced Kalugin as a liar and the Bush Administration maintains it has no reason to believe that there were U.S. POWs in Vietnam when the general says his operative interrogated them.

The Whole Truth?

Even so, General Kalugin may well be telling the truth. Indeed, he made a number of revelations in his testimony that confirm what has long been believed (e.g., subversive Soviet covert activities, assassinations, the power of the KGB and the important role of the GRU -- the USSR's military intelligence organization) but what has heretofore generally been steadfastly denied by officials of the former Soviet Union. Interestingly, at one point in his testimony, Gen. Kalugin explicitly pointed to the truth of several statements he had made to lend authority to his contention about the POW interviews in Vietnam.

On the other hand, it is quite possible that the General is merely engaging in one of the oldest tricks in counter-intelligence tradecraft: liberally salting disinformation with truth so as to encourage acceptance of what is not true. To paraphrase Whittaker Chambers -- a man who knew Soviet communists and their practices intimately -- it is a matter of protecting a central lie with a bodyguard of truth.

This is not to say that the Soviets held no interrogations of U.S. POWs in Vietnam after 1973; certainly it is not to suggest that there were no such Americans incarcerated in Vietnamese prisons after the Paris peace accords went into effect. Rather, it is to say that General Kalugin's testimony was calculated to divert attention from the far more important story -- that of U.S. POWs and MIAs who were reportedly taken to the Soviet Union and held there long after the war ended. Certainly, the central (if implicit) thrust of the general's contention that KGB operatives went to Hanoi to extract information from American prisoners was that they had to do so because Moscow lacked any other access to them.

The "Moscow Bound" Testimony

In that respect, Gen. Kalugin's testimony runs counter to recent statements from other sources -- sources whose motivations are substantially less suspect. For example, two former U.S. intelligence analysts, Jerry Mooney and Terrell Minarcin, appeared before the Select Committee the day after Kalugin did. They painted a very different picture: Not only were Americans still held by communist Vietnam after all such prisoners were supposed to have been returned. There were also, according to some radio intercepts, an undetermined (but seemingly significant) number of U.S. POW/MIAs spirited away to the former USSR, where their captivity continued. There are reportedly a number of other American intelligence officials who are prepared to confirm these assertions.

Although Gen. Kalugin's testimony in effect confirms the validity of the first of Messers. Mooney and Minarcin's charges, his denial of the second -- far more explosive -- allegation should be viewed with some skepticism. After all, the successors to the KGB and the old Soviet guard would presumably still have a powerful interest in concealing the existence of a program which, according to Mr. Mooney was well known by U.S. intelligence under the code name "Moscow-bound."

For one thing, its revelation would complicate present relations between Moscow and Washington. Perhaps more importantly, it might even oblige the United States to insist on a wholesale dismantling of the KGB apparatus as a quid pro quo for desperately needed aid. Interestingly, a number of American officials who were allegedly aware of the Soviets' transfer of U.S. POW/MIAs, but kept it secret, may have a similar interest in seeing the truth suppressed.

Flaws in Kalugin's Testimony

The Center for Security Policy believes that before General Kalugin's testimony is accorded sufficient weight to impeach that provided by Messers. Mooney and Minarcin on the "Moscow-bound" program, the self-serving and/or implausible quality of some other aspects of his representations before the Select Committee should be carefully assessed. For example:

* Extolling Primakov's Virtues: Yevgeny Primakov is one of the most prominent of the Soviet Union's unreconstructed communist thugs to retain a powerful position in the Russian government. (Before he became head of the former KGB's foreign intelligence organization, he was a senior Middle East specialist to whom Mikhail Gorbachev entrusted the job of saving Saddam Hussein. Due to Primakov's eleventh hour machinations, the U.S.-led ground war was very nearly derailed.)

It speaks volumes about where Kalugin believes his bread is buttered that he gushed before the Select Committee about Primakov's sophistication and openness. "Mr. Primakov is an intelligent, flexible, easily adjustable gentleman who could survive in various circumstances....Mr. Primakov would be more willing to talk and disclose things which are of public interest."

* Extolling Gorbachev's Virtues: Gen. Kalugin actually made with a straight face the preposterous contention that nothing like a "Moscow-bound" program could have occurred in Mikhail Gorbachev's Soviet Union -- thanks to glasnost and perestroika. As he put it: "There are no secrets today in the USSR. Anything that happens, particularly when it concerns a foreign person, would be known all over the world....Can you imagine an American, or a British or a French citizen kept in the Soviet Union without that [becoming] public knowledge? That's impossible today. It was possible in Stalin's times, yes...but not in the past ten years, at least, or probably not ten, seven years, let's put it more correctly...the perestroika period, so to speak."

It strains credulity that a man with his self-proclaimed knowledge of the KGB's power as a "state within a state" would maintain that it could not have covertly run a sensitive, compartmentalized operation -- even if the Soviet Union had been perfectly transparent. In fact, of course, Gorbachev's USSR was no such thing.

Indeed, in Gorbachev's USSR many things that were not supposed to happen routinely did. To name but a few: It is now a matter of record that illegal biological warfare production occurred; billions in Western aid and credits were diverted to Communist Party accounts and subversion overseas; militarily relevant high technology was stolen from the West; and police state surveillance and harassment of innocent citizens persisted. "Moscow-bound" could just as easily have been undertaken, glasnost -- such as it was -- notwithstanding.

* Laos: Gen. Kalugin's categorical denials that American prisoners could have been brought to the Soviet Union from Vietnam without his knowledge stands in peculiar contrast to his position with respect to the possibility that U.S. POW/MIAs might have been relocated from Laos, unbeknownst to him. When asked by Senator Kerry whether "It is possible that Soviet military intelligence could have conducted interrogations of downed pilots in Laos without you knowing it," Kalugin responded "Oh yes, I would not know about it."

* Current Status of the KGB: While on several occasions, General Kalugin painted a picture of a new reformed KGB, which had withdrawn all of its agents from the United States, he contradicted himself by stating that "Soviet intelligence, unfortunately -- despite the new chief, Mr. Primakov appointed recently -- has not changed in substance. It's just the organization, which for years and years lied, and if necessary, destroyed documents."

* The GRU's Autonomy: Similarly, the general conceded that the GRU was the lead agency for handling the interrogations of prisoners of war for military-related information. He also acknowledged under cross-examination that the GRU could have undertaken certain activities through compartmented channels to which he did not have access. These remarks, too, would appear to belie the categorical assurance Kalugin gave the committee that "Moscow-bound" never happened.

In fact, when challenged by Sen. Hank Brown (R-CO), Kalugin admitted that Americans with technical knowledge were far more valuable to the GRU than the KGB and that he did not know the extent of GRU involvement with U.S. POWs. After the hearing, Minarcin pressed Kalugin "As one professional to another, tell me the truth: The GRU took our prisoners to the USSR, didn't they?" According to Minarcin, Gen. Kalugin lowered his head and replied, "Yes."

Establish Gen. Kalugin's Bona Fides

In the absence of such an admission by Gen. Kalugin on the public record, however, an effort must be made to shed additional light on General Kalugin's reliability as a witness -- and the completeness of his break with his previous employer. Toward these ends, the Select Committee should ask him a straightforward question: Will he reveal the names of those Americans recruited by him or his subordinates during his tenure with the KGB? In particular, he should be willing to disclose those enlisted during his first operational assignment when he posed as a student in the Columbia School of Journalism during the late 1950s.

Should he refuse to do so, it will be clear that his professions of affection for this country and his commitment to the truth being told are insincere; it would be reasonable to conclude that his loyalties remain with a hostile intelligence service that still operates from the old Soviet Union. Should he say he maintain that he recruited no one during his time at Columbia, the Senate would be well advised to be suspicious of other aspects of his testimony. After all, it seems most unlikely that a man with his successful career in Soviet intelligence (1) could have utterly failed in the principal task of his first mission. If, on the other hand, he did choose to come clean, it would be most interesting to discover exactly who among his contemporaries at Columbia have taken up positions in the Fourth Estate while being in the service of the KGB.

What About the U.S. Government's Role?

In addition, the Select Committee would do well to examine as part of its inquiry just what the U.S. government knew and when it knew it about a "Moscow-bound" program. Clearly, some committee members are unsettled by what appears to be a chronically shifting party line.

Sen. Bob Smith (R-NH), for example, expressed his frustration after the Kalugin hearing noting that "For seven years, [the U.S. intelligence agencies] said that no Americans were ever interrogated by Soviets in Vietnam. On the eve of Kalugin's testimony, they changed their story." Apparently, they did so only after the Vietnamese changed theirs. The CIA now acknowledges that two of its employees were interrogated by Soviet personnel in Vietnam, one in 1973 and one in 1975.

The Center for Security Policy has found that even these reluctant admissions are hiding the full truth. By way of evidence, the Center has obtained a recently declassified 1971 CIA document offering detailed descriptions of a Soviet-Chinese interrogation team assigned to extract information from captured U.S. pilots in the Lam Thao district in North Vietnam in 1965, 1966 and 1967.

As Senator David Boren (D-OK), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee recently stated, "The truth [about American POW/MIAs left in prison in 1973 and U.S. government efforts to conceal their continued detention] has to come out -- and it will. " The Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs must see to it that the truth does come out.

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1. By his own description, General Kalugin rose to direct the KGB's "worldwide operations...trying to penetrate hostile intelligence and security services -- the United States being the primary target."


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