Oleg Kalugin

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Oleg Kalugin

Oleg Danilovich Kalugin (In Russian Олег Данилович Калугин), (born September 6, 1934) is a former KGB spy. He was the longtime head of KGB operations in the United States and later a critic of the agency.

Born in Leningrad and son of an officer in the NKVD, Kalugin attended Leningrad State University and, subsequently, was recruited by the KGB under the aegis of the First Chief Directorate (Foreign Intelligence). After training he was sent to the United States, where he enrolled as a journalism student at Columbia University on a Fulbright scholarship in 1958, along with Aleksandr Yakovlev. He continued to pose as a journalist for a number of years, eventually serving as the Radio Moscow correspondent at the United Nations. In 1965 — after five years in New York — he returned to Moscow to serve under the cover of press officer in the Soviet Foreign Ministry.

Kalugin was then assigned to Washington, D.C., with the cover of deputy press officer for the Soviet Embassy. In reality he was deputy rezident and acting chief of the Rezidency at the Soviet Embassy.

Rising in the ranks he became one of the KGB's top agents operating out of the Soviet embassy in Washington: it led to his being promoted to general in 1974, the youngest in its history. He returned to KGB headquarters to become head of the foreign counterintelligence or K branch of the First Chief Directorate.

In 1980 Kalugin was demoted to deputy head of the Leningrad KGB because of his growing condemnation of the corruption of the KGB and the entire Soviet system, leading to differences between him and the KGB leadership. His critics, including most of the surviving members of the KGB, countered and alleged that he was seen as a security risk and suspected as acting for the CIA. Vladimir Kryuchkov, later Chairman of the KGB, has alleged that in his time in counter intelligence he failed to discover a single American agent while his successor would find over a dozen. He was also blamed for compromising several important agents, most notably Karl Koecher, the only mole to ever penetrate the CIA.

This, however, did not stop him from criticising the agency's policies, methods and "demonization" of the U.S.: this caused him to be dismissed from the KGB by then-Chairman Viktor Chebrikov in 1987.

As the Soviet Union underwent changes under Mikhail Gorbachev, Kalugin became more vocal and public in his criticism of the KGB, denouncing Soviet security forces as "Stalinist". Finally, in 1990, Gorbachev signed a decree stripping Kalugin of his rank, decorations, and pension. Despite this, as well as opposition supported by the KGB, he was elected in September 1990 to the Supreme Soviet as a people's deputy for the Krasnodar region.

Kalugin became a firm supporter of Boris Yeltsin, the president of the Russian SFSR. During the abortive Soviet coup attempt of 1991 he led crowds to the Russian White House, center of anticoup efforts, and induced Yeltsin to address the crowds.

After the coup he became an unpaid adviser to the new KGB Chairman Vadim Bakatin. While Bakatin succeeded in dismantling the old security apparatus, he did not have the time to reform it before being fired on November 1991. Ever vocal, Kalugin told the press that in the future, the KGB would have no political functions, no secret laboratories where they manufacture poisons and secret weapons.

With the return to power of elements of the KGB, most notably Vladimir Putin, Kalugin was again accused of treason. In 1995 he accepted a teaching position in The Catholic University of America and remained in the United States ever since. Settling in Washington, D.C., he wrote a book about Cold War espionage entitled The First Directorate: My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West and collaborated with former CIA Director William Colby and Activision to produce Spycraft: The Great Game, a CD-ROM game released in February 1996. He has appeared frequently in the media and given lectures at a number of universities. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States on August 4, 2003.

In 2002 he was put on trial in absentia in Moscow and found guilty of spying for the West. He was sentenced to fourteen years in jail, but the United States has refused to extradite him.

Kalugin currently works for CI Centre, a counterintelligence consulting and training firm in the Washington, DC area.

[edit] Books by Oleg Kalugin

The First Directorate: My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West by Oleg Kalugin and Fen Montaigne. 1994.374 pages. St Martins Pr. ISBN 0312114265
Spymaster: The Highest-ranking KGB Officer Ever to Break His Silence by Oleg Kalugin and Fen Montaigne. 1995. Blake Publishing Ltd. ISBN 185685101X
(Russian) Proshchai, Lubianka! (XX vek glazami ochevidtsev) by Oleg Kalugin. 1995. 347 pages. "Olimp" ISBN 573900375X
Window of opportunity: Russia's role in the coalition against terror. An article from: Harvard International Review. September 22, 2002. Vol. 24 Issue 3 Page 56(5).