Modin,
Yuri Ivanovich, with Jean-Charles Deniau and Aguieszka Ziarek. Tr., Anthony
Roberts. My Five Cambridge Friends: Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt, and Cairncross by Their KGB Controller. London: Headline, 1994. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1994.
The author "was initially the Five's deskman in Moscow Centre during World War Two, and after 1948, he became the London controller of John Cairncross,... Guy Burgess,... and Anthony Blunt." (p. 2)
According to Chambers (see also IWRQ 2.1), there are "no major revelations" in Modin's biographic sketches of the members of the ring "except to give credit to the veterans Deutsch and Maly for recruiting the ring, and to support the view that Morris Dobb was a talent spotter rather than a recruiter, and his opinion that the prime mover in the formation of the ring was Burgess.... The overall tone of the book is that of an old soldier who did his duty and who is proud of his service.... Praise must go to the translator (Anthony Roberts) for his role.... This book may not be the very last word on the Cambridge ring, but it is a significant contribution and a highly entertaining one that is strongly recommended." Click for Chambers' full review.
Surveillant 3.6 says Modin "reveals previously unknown details.... Burgess, he tells us, was far more an important player than previously thought.... [He] admits that most of the book comes from his memory." For Kerr, I&NS 11.3, "Modin's book gave the general impression that he was closely connected to the Cambridge network throughout their careers ... from the 1930s to 1951.... When Modin's career is juxtaposed with the movements of the Cambridge network this general impression of omniscience fades away.... Modin's access to ... these agents fluctuates from being a firsthand witness to ... relying upon secondary source material.... [Nevertheless,] Modin is a valuable source but ... in Mclean's case he has marginal value."
See also, Jamie Bisher, "Colonel Modin on Philby, Burgess, and Blunt," Foreign Intelligence Literary Scene 12, no. 6: 1-2.
Nechiporenko,
Oleg Maximovich. Passport to Assassination: The Never-Before-Told Story of Lee Harvey Oswald by the KGB Colonel Who Knew Him. Secaucus, NJ: Birch Lane Press, 1993.
Surveillant 3.4/5: Nechiporenko was "named -- as Oswald's KGB 'Manager' in Mexico City -- in John Barron's 1974 book The KGB and in the 1978 book by Hugh MacDonald and Robin Moore." He says "that the KGB had no such tie to Oswald." This book is "timely and of considerable interest." Those "who cling to the idea of a conspiracy" will probably "adjust their theories to incorporate this account..., deeming it a deliberate bit of disinformation."
Pavlov,
Vitaly. Memoirs of a Spymaster: My Fifty Years in the KGB. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1994.
"General-Lieutenant Vitaly G. Pavlov is a former high-ranking official of the KGB foreign intelligence service. In that capacity, he oversaw Soviet espionage in the West during the 1930s." From https://files.nyu.edu/th15/public/pavlov.html.
Shvets, Yuri B. Tr., Eugene Ostrovsky. Washington Station: My Life as a KGB Spy in America. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994.
Clark comment: Shvets, a KGB First Directorate officer, worked under TASS cover in Washington, DC, from 1985 to 1987. He describes his main function as trying "to recruit U.S. citizens to acquire secret information about U.S. domestic and foreign policy."
Chambers notes that Shvets' "task was made more difficult by very aggressive FBI counterintelligence.... He was able to develop one very useful political source (called Socrates) who was a well-connected member of the Carter administration.... This book is a useful addition to intelligence literature primarily because of the insights it gives into the internal politics of the KGB and the support it gives to the model of the organization as one that is strongly polarized between bureaucrats and working agents." Click for Chambers' full review.
According to Warren, Surveillant 4.3, Shvets does not name his recruit, Socrates or his wife, but "Herbert Romerstein has analyzed the background data and concluded ... that they are 'journalist Claudia Wright and her husband, former Carter Administration official John Helmer.'" [Helmer denied this in a 5 March 1995 "60 Minutes" broadcast.] This is "a short book which reads fast and which may or may not be part of a Russian disinformation effort."
See also, Dmitry Radyshevsky and Nataliya Gevorkyan, "The Memoirs of a Soviet Intelligence Officer Have Created a Big Panic," Moscow News, 22-28 Apr. 1994, 14 (cited in CWIHP 6-7, p. 289).
Sudoplatov, Pavel. Click for reviews and discussion.
Tumanov, Oleg. Tr., David Floyd. Tumanov: Confessions of a KGB Agent. Chicago, IL: Edition Q, 1994.
Surveillant 3.4/5 notes that from 1966 to 1986, Tumanov worked for Radio Liberty, posing as a Russian dissident. Valcourt, IJI&C 7.4, comments that Kalugin's The First Directorate casts Tumanov as "a defector who offered his services to the KGB as part of a deal to return to the USSR years after deserting the [Soviet] navy." Kalugin also says it was he who directed Tumarov to plant a bomb at Radio Liberty's Munich headquarters in 1981. Tumarov campaigned against Kalugin's candidacy for the Congress of People's Deputies in 1990.
Werner, Ruth. Sonjas Rapport. Berlin: Verlag Neues Leben, 1977. Sonya's Report: The Fascinating Autobiography of One of Russia's Most Remarkable Secret Agents. London: Chatto & Windrus, 1991.
Surveillant 2.1 identifies Sonya's Report as the autobiography of a "Soviet agent and associate/lover of Richard Sorge." It is the "professional memoir of a Communist intelligence agent.... Her greatest coup: the passing of British A-bomb secrets from Klaus Fuchs to Stalin."
Ruth Werner (born Ursula Ruth Kuczynski in Berlin in 1907) died in Berlin on 7 July 2000 at the age of 93. Her obituary, "Ruth Werner," Times (London), 10 Jul. 2000, 27, termed her "[o]ne of the most effective agents for the Soviet Union in the early, tension-filled years of the Cold War." Werner's skills as a Soviet agent are illustrated by the continuation of her work dispatching Klaus Fuchs' take to Moscow for two years after her cover had been blown to British security. After fleeing the United Kingdom in 1949, she became "a key member" of the bureaucracy of the East German Communist Party, "in which she served for several decades."
See David Binder, "Ruth Werner, Colorful and Daring Soviet Spy, Dies at 93," New York Times, 23 Jul. 2000, 27; "Cold War Spy Ruth Werner," Washington Post, 9 Jul. 2000, C6; "Ruth Werner, Soviet Spy, Died on July 7th, Aged 93," The Economist, 13 Jul. 2000, 26; and Michael Hartland, "Sonia, The Spy Who Haunted Britain," Sunday Times, 15 Jul. 2000, 1, 3.
For more on Werner's life in the world of Communist espionage, read Benjamin B. Fischer, "Farewell to Sonia, the Spy Who Haunted Britain," International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 15, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 61-76. Fischer notes that, strictly speaking, Werner "was not ... a spy. As a GRU ... agent and illegal who served as liaison between the Moscow Center and the real spies, she was rather a spy-handler." As SONIA of the Venona transcripts, she handled both Klaus Fuchs and Melita Norwood, work that "put[s] her in the superstar category" in espionage history.
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