Glenn Michael Souther also known as Mikhail Yevgenyevich Orlov (30 January 1957 Hammond, Indiana-22 June 1989 Moscow Soviet Union), was a U.S. Navy photographer who defected to the Soviet Union in 1986. He later committed suicide in 1989 at 32 years of age.
Graduating from high school in Cumberland, Maine, in 1975, he enlisted in the United States Navy and was trained as a photographer. He served in the USS Nimitz (CVN-68) form July 1976 to November 1978. From April 1979 to 1982 he was stationed in the United States Sixth Fleet in Italy, where he married an Italian woman. It was in Italy in 1980 that he was recruited as a Soviet spy by experienced KGB officer Boris Solomatin, who had earlier recruited and handled John Anthony Walker. According to Solomatin, Souther was an ideological spy and not motivated by money.[1]
In 1982 he was given an honorable discharge from the Navy with a rank of petty officer first class, so that he could study Russian literature in Old Dominion University. Simultaneously he worked as a reservist at the Atlantic fleet intelligence center in Norfolk where he was assigned to a laboratory processing satellite-reconnaissance photos and also might have been privy to sensitive communications intercepts. In 1981, his estranged wife approached a Navy officer to report Souther as a spy. These allegations were not taken seriously until the arrest of John Anthony Walker in 1985, only after which he was interrogated by the FBI but not charged due to a lack of evidence.[2] Shortly thereafter, in May 1986, Souther defected to the Soviet Union.[3]
He did not publicly resurface until July 20, 1988, when a television program featuring interviews with him was broadcast on Soviet Central Television. In the program, he spoke about his own disillusionment with American nuclear policies and his love for the works of Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. He also discussed and criticized several American intelligence operations in which he took part, including the 1986 bombing of Libya and the analysis of the Chernobyl disaster.[4] While in the Soviet Union, he married a Russian woman named Lena and had a daughter.[5] He had been awarded an Order of Friendship of Peoples. He was also one of the few foreign agents or defectors to be given officer rank in the KGB, being made a Major after his defection.[6]
On 22 June 1989, at the age of 32, he reportedly committed suicide by asphyxiation after shutting himself in his garage and starting his car. Russian newspapers suggested he had been disappointed by aspects of Soviet life after defecting in 1986 and was prone to depression. His death was announced in Krasnaya Zvezda and he was eulogized by KGB chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov who considered him an important spy.[7] He was buried in Kuntsevo Cemetery.