The KGB was governed by a rigid bureaucratic machine, which could sometimes hinder certain missions. View of the archives of the Stasi, the political police of the GDR, with which the KGB actively collaborated • BONESS / SPIA Interview with Rémi Kauffer, historian of the secret services History &Civilizations: Compared to other secret services, does the KGB have any specificities? RÉMI KAUFFER:The first characteristic of the KGB – let's call it that for simplicity, because it has had different names since 1917 – is to unite within it external intelligence and internal intelligence. If we put aside the border guards, foreign intelligence represents only a tenth of the workforce. Most of the work done by the KGB therefore concerns surveillance of the Soviet population. Inside the USSR, the KGB has a first obvious specificity compared to the internal intelligence services of Western countries, which is that it is a political police. It has considerable resources to closely monitor the population and hunt down dissidents. Any Soviet citizen is liable to be wiretapped or spied on from a neighbor's apartment. To obtain information about an individual, the KGB also regularly blackmails relatives, to the point that the wife can inform about her husband and vice versa. The KGB also made a reign of terror:the submission of the Soviet population was obtained through fear. Even when the systematic executions and mass deportations to gulag camps cease, the threats to dissidents remain very heavy. In the 1970s, they were thus locked up in psychiatric hospitals to be “re-educated”. This allows us to say that there is no "political repression" in the USSR and that we only "treat crazy people". And outside, how does Soviet espionage work? Two types of intelligence officers work for the USSR overseas. The first are the "legal", that is to say spies who, officially, work in a diplomatic representation. In truth, they are not diplomats and have the task of learning about the country in which they are established. In an embassy or consulate, spies sometimes represent half of the staff, which is very important compared to the intelligence services of other countries. There are so many bogus diplomats that it is impossible to keep track of them all. On the other hand, they apply techniques that make it very difficult to shadow them. When they join an informant, they multiply the comings and goings through the city, take different means of transport, enter and leave several buildings with double entrances, and this for hours, so that it is almost impossible to find them. follow. The “illegals” are introduced into a foreign country under a false identity. They are asked to integrate as perfectly as possible into this foreign society so as not to arouse suspicion. They can then engage in their espionage work. The most famous of these “illegals” is undoubtedly William Fischer. An English communist, he spent his youth in Newcastle and therefore has a perfect command of English. Sent to the United States in 1948, he became a neighborhood photographer in New York. For ten years, he was the head of the Soviet spy services in the United States. Finally, he was arrested by the FBI in 1957, before being exchanged for an American pilot in 1962. During his captivity, William Fischer managed not to give any useful information to the FBI, to the point that it does not even know his true identity when he is released. Back in the USSR, he became a trainer for "illegals". To train future spies, he has at his disposal a dummy American city built in the middle of the Soviet Union, where one must speak in English and behave like in America... It is among the elites that the KGB recruits to obtain the most valuable information. If political convictions are not enough, corruption, compromise or sexual blackmail are also very effective… To obtain information, how do the agents, “legal” or “illegal”, proceed? They have to recruit informants, and on this point too we can note a specificity of the KGB compared to other intelligence services. The KGB can indeed rely on informants who inform it by ideological adherence to the communist project. He therefore relied on the Comintern (the Communist International) by recruiting foreign communist militants, starting in the 1920s. An eloquent example is that of Jean Cremet. A member of the political bureau of the PCF, he was also a municipal councilor in Paris and informed Soviet intelligence until his actions were discovered and he was forced into exile in the USSR. Initially, Marxist-Leninist ideology pushed the KGB to turn to workers like Cremet. Nevertheless, he quickly realizes that much more interesting information can be obtained by recruiting among the elites. This is how he will manage to infiltrate the US and British intelligence services, for example. Recruitment of informants based on ideological adherence nevertheless tends to decrease as more is learned in the West about the realities of the Soviet Union. From the 1960s and 1970s, these recruitments became exceptional. It should also be noted that the KGB carries out certain ideological recruitments thanks to the argument that the USSR defends world peace. Non-communists thus help the Soviets, who appear as a counterweight to “American imperialism”. The French Georges Easter, who works for NATO, is an example. Does the KGB have other methods of recruiting informants? Yes, but these are much more ordinary and do not really distinguish the KGB from other intelligence services. First, there is corruption:we identify individuals in financial difficulty and we ask them for information in exchange for money. Sexual blackmail is also a classic; the Soviets call this the "Swallow Blow". A very beautiful young woman, working for the KGB, is introduced to an interesting personality, for example a diplomat. She then makes sure to seduce him and attract him to a place decided in advance. There, the sexual intercourse is filmed or photographed in secret by the intelligence services. The images are then shown to the person concerned, indicating that they will be sent to his wife or his superiors if he refuses to give certain information. In general, the technique of kompromat , that is to say “compromise”, is regularly used:we identify a weakness in an individual and then threaten to reveal it publicly if he does not cooperate. The KGB, but also the East German Stasi, also use the “Romeo” technique. We spot the secretary of a high-ranking person and put a handsome young man in her path. He marries her, sometimes has children with her. He then begins to ask her to inform him about the activity of the personality for whom she works or to photocopy documents that she has to process. Was the KGB an intelligence service particularly effective? Probably not, but that is mainly due to the fact that his information, sometimes excellent, was badly exploited by the Soviet bureaucracy. The KGB nevertheless managed to obtain vital information. To develop the atomic bomb, the USSR gained years by successfully spying on the US program. The KGB has also succeeded in spectacular recruitments. In the late 1980s, one of the top CIA officials, Aldrich Ames, and an FBI agent, Robert Hanssen, worked for him. The fall of the USSR is imminent, but the KGB remains capable of brilliant blows... Find out more Masters of Spying, by Rémi Kauffer, Perrin (Tempus), 2020.Women in the shadows. The hidden story of spies, by Rémi Kauffer, Perrin, 2019. The role of technology If human intelligence has a fundamental place in the activities of the KGB, it also relies heavily on technology. To monitor foreign countries and find out the intentions of enemy armies, the Soviet services got down to deciphering radio communications very early on. In the 1980s, computer hacking became increasingly important. For the KGB, it is a way to obtain information or destabilize adversaries without being detected. The ending USSR thus ensures the training of excellent computer scientists. This legacy continued after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, as Russia is today one of the most active countries in cyberspace. In December 2020, the US government claimed to have been the victim of a cyberattack for which Russia was responsible. Box written by Cyprien Mycinski
