I listened to Coast to coastam last night, the show had on a "former" KGB Oleg Kalugin. From the show description:
"Spying & Espionage
Host:
Ian Punnett
Guests:
Oleg Kalugin, Peter Lance
Former KGB agent and intelligence expert Oleg Kalugin (book link) discussed Soviet propaganda, including mysterious disappearances and cover-ups, as well as provided an insider account of what it was like to be a spy working behind the Iron Curtain. More details forthcoming."
It was an interesting show, though I was only listening half-heartedly while enjoying some music. I overheard him make a few statements which I felt were inconsistent of a true soviet defector, so it occurred to me that I should call in during the last hour and get his take on Anatoliy Golitsyn. Here's the transcript:
Ricardo: Hi, nice to meet you two. My question is,uh, about another KGB defector named Anatoliy GolitsynHe wrote two books, New Lies for Old and Perestroika Deception, he argued that the fall of the soviet union was a controlled collapse and part of a greater strategy of the KGB to uh, pretty much world domination. I wanted to know what Mr. Kalugin has to say about Golitsyn?
Kalugin: Well, unlike Mr.Golitsyn I am not a defector, heh, let's put it plainly. Now Mr. Golitsynstories are not entirely reliable, as you know they led to some confusion in the Western community, and that happened often to defectors, they exaggerated portions of their knowledge and access to information, and since the intelligence community did not have good sources at that time Goltsyn's stories were taken at face value.
Ian: And so, this is interesting because, Ricardo couldn't pick up on this but I did, you think it is very important, I mean, God bless you for this, I think it's interesting, that you thinkit is very important that you were not a defector and that in fact whereas you helped peoplpebetray the U.S you held people who betrayed Russia in very low esteem, that they were the lowest of the low, the people who were traitors.
Kalugin: Well, when I worked as Chief of foreign counter intelligence one of the missions of that organization was to look for defectors and that we would never carry out the verdicts, that was not our mission -- that did not happen ever on the territory of the United States. (Edit: Did not carry out executions he said, wasn't fast enough to write it, there was more to this statement.)
Ian: You helped people betray the U.S, and you admired them and worked for them, and you became a friend of Kim Phelby, you held him in very high esteem, but you think very poorly of anyone who betrayed the Soviet Union. You yourself pride yourself on not being a defector.
Kalugin: That's correct, I am not a defector. I have some problems with the current russian leadership, Putin who is now PM -- he at some point was my subordinate in St.Petersburg, how he came to power is a different story, and atsome point he publically called me traitor and I publically called him war criminal. -------
Mr. Kalugin dismissed Golitsyn so easily! Here is some interesting reading to learn a bit about this wild man Golitsyn!: http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/archived/looking.htm
"The first round of interrogations took place at the US Army defector center outside of Frankfurt. Golitsyn was required to write out by hand his entire career in the KGB from the day he joined in 1948 to the day he defected-- listing all the positions he held, promotions he received and KGB officers with whom he came in contact. Unlike most previous defectors, who had field agents with limited knowledge about the central apparatus of the KGB, Golitsyn claimed to have been assigned to the KGB's headquarters in Moscow and also to its "think tank", the KGB institute, where intelligence operations were related to overall Soviet strategy.
To determine if his story was true, Golitsyn was next strapped into a stress-analyzing machine, used by the CIA as a lie-detector , and relentlessly quizzed about various details of his story -- a process known in the CIA as "fluttering". After each session, counterintelligence experts also compared each bit of information he provided with what was already known. By the end of the first week, the CIA was fully persuaded that he was a bona fide defector who had indeed held the positions in the KGB he claimed. Arrangements were then made to bring him and with his family to the United States.
In February 1962, in an isolated and heavy-guarded CIA compound overlooking the Choptank River in Talbot County, Maryland, he began an extensive debriefing. To the amazement of his debriefers, he not only revealed knowledge of a wide range of secret NATO documents -- but he identified them by their code numbers. He explained that for convenience the KGB used the NATO numbering system to request specific documents, which would than arrive from its source in France in 72 hours. "
Golitsyn wasn't a mere quack with wild stories he fed to a gullible CIA, it was quite clear the man was privy to high level information and proved reliable to Western Intelligence. The confusion came because other defectors, or "former" KGB like Kalugin, tended to contradict him. Kalugin in the show complemented Gorbachev and seemed to acknowledge him as a legitimate statesman. Meanwhile, Gorby is today calling for a world wide "perestroika", in other words, world wide socialism: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/its-time-for-a-second-american-revolution-in-the-spirit-of-perestroika-20090609-c25z.html?page=1
What Gorby would like to see is world wide "convergence" under a socialist world government system. I'd like to ask Mr.Kalugin, isn't that what Golitsyn predicted would be the end result of KGB deception? A world wide Convergence on "Soviet Terms", a joining together of the world with all the good commies running the show? One wonders what position Kalugin will come to have if such a thing comes to pass? After all, on more than one occasion he has criticized the soviet regime, but yet instead of being killed or sent for reeducation, they merely stripped him of medals or positions, then gave them back later on, or stripped them again and promised to jail him, while he lived the good life in the USA selling books and getting CIA protection. None of the defectors Kalugin helped capture ever faired so well!
