Victor Cherkashin, the KGB colonel who nurtured moles like Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, has published a memoir with the title Spy Handler. It is worth reading if only to see how a successful spymaster colors and updates his work 15 years later. Striking a disillusioned pose for the sake of foreign consumption, Cherkashin's memoir differs from that of an authentically disillusioned mole-hunter like Britain's Peter Wright (whose 1987 book was banned in England). Wright's book was painfully honest, exposing the author to legal proceedings. Spy Handler is not as forthcoming, and therefore avoids scandalous revelations as well as legal difficulties. As Cherkashin explains in his preface, "I don't intend this chronicle to be published in Russia, where intelligence professionals are now generally seen more as suspicious 'spies' than dedicated officers serving the interests of their country." That is a curious remark, given the fact that Russia's "elected" president was once a "suspicious spy."
It is also odd that a KGB officer should write a memoir that is specifically addressed to an American audience. For anyone familiar with the emotionally charged and unresolved issues of Cold War history, it is impossible to miss the fact that this book is deceptively crafted in its frankness, careful in its revelations, with a studied regard for its intended readership. Admittedly, the book presents authentic feelings and facts. At the same time, however, Cherkashin subtly mocks the notion that the Soviet Union was evil, that its objectives were contrary to the happiness of mankind, that its leaders were gangsters and its official ideology a form of madness. Cherkashin claims that he "tried to avoid falling into the trap of polemics." Apparently he did not try hard enough, since he portrays the Soviet Union as "mismanaged" instead of malignant.
As with the memoir of KGB Gen. Oleg Kalugin (The First Directorate: My 32 Years in Intelligence), the bureaucratic villain of the piece is the KGB's head of foreign intelligence, Vladimir Kryuchkov (who later became KGB chairman). Of course, Cherkashin admits that a "wave of joy" washed over him when Kryuchkov's motley eight-man crew declared a state of emergency in August 1991, taking power on the pretext that Gorbachev had fallen ill. The August coup, says Cherkashin, was not really a coup. "It was a last attempt to keep the Soviet Union together despite Gorbachev's moves to dismantle it."
Cherkashin laments the fall of communism. "The Soviet Union had to change," he admits. "Thank God at least the mobs didn't tear down the famous statue of Karl Marx near the Bolshoi Theater." He thereby hints that something has been salvaged. All is not lost. It is not the same despair we find in Peter Wright's memoir. Cherkashin is not forsaken in the "wilderness of mirrors." He is not presenting "the final morsel" in his country's long postwar "feast of decline." He is not embittered like the broken-down Britsh spycatcher, descended to Tasmania, stewed in the suspicion that his boss at MI5, Sir Roger Hollis, was a Soviet agent (a claim supported by William West, who presented his findings in a book titled Spymaster: The Betrayal of MI5.) Wright's memoir sought to shatter the complacency of the West's cold warriors. Cherkashin's memoir flatters and reassures that complacency. Cherkashin's memoir adopts the disinformation line of his colleague, KGB Gen. Leonid Shebarshin, who once complained that the CIA had beaten the KGB during the Cold War - that the KGB was unable to penetrate the CIA or FBI. We now know that the KGB not only penetrated the CIA and FBI, but the penetrations lasted for many years and involved the total neutralization of the CIA's spy network in Russia.
The question of who won the "war of the moles" is no longer up for debate. We know who won. The KGB defeated the CIA just as it defeated Britain's MI6 (by way of Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and Anthony Blunt). The West refuses to come to terms with these revelations, always sidestepping the issue of lax security and poor counterintelligence. Cherkashin is perfectly aware of the West's aversion to tight security. He cunningly flatters its many conceits. For example, he writes that "the level of mistrust" at KGB headquarters in the 1980s "only made it easier for the CIA to recruit our men." In other words, wariness, distrustfulness, readiness to fire suspected double agents is somehow a hindrance to intelligence security. Consider, as well, Cherkashin's version of the CIA's failings: "CIA paranoia about double agents reached its peak in the 1950s and 1960s under counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton, who was convinced that the agency had been penetrated by Soviet spies."
Reciting a longstanding indictment against Angleton, Cherkashin says that Angleton "all but destroyed the agency's ability to recruit and handle agents." Cherkashin then attacks a controversial KGB defector by stating that Angleton's "natural suspicions were reinforced when a KGB defector called Anatoly Golitsyn told Angleton in 1961 that every Soviet defector after him would be a double agent."
To tell the other side of the story, Angleton and Golitsyn believed the Soviet Union was preparing a massive deception to disarm and overtake the West. This deception would only work if KGB moles within the CIA could provide the "feedback" necessary to maintain the deception's credibility. "Deception begins and ends with intelligence," Angleton explained in a 1985 interview with Edward Jay Epstein (see page 106 of Deception: The Invisible War Between the KGB and CIA). The process for deception was described by Angleton as "a loop" consisting of two lines of communication: (1) The KGB passes false information to the CIA through agents of influence, diplomats and journalists; (2) the mole within the CIA reports on how this false information is received. This allows the KGB to adjust its disinformation for CIA consumption. According to Epstein's account: "This feedback ... was essential to building up the adversary's ... commitment to the sources in the disinformation part of the loop. Without it, the deceiver is working in the dark."
In 1985 Angleton and Golitsyn believed the Soviet Union was preparing a false democratization. Golitsyn wrote an entire book on this subject in 1984, titled New Lies for Old. Angleton was fully aware of the Russian practice of infiltrating dissident groups in order to hijack them for strategic purposes. This is how the Soviets would introduce false democracy and false reforms into Eastern Europe.
By slandering Golitsyn and Angleton, Cherkashin perpetuates a set of myths about the Cold War. These myths divert from the fact that the collapse of the Soviet Union was not a straightforward happening. Just as Angleton feared, the CIA was penetrated and Aldrich Ames was not the only penetration. Cherkashin's book is tailor-made to sweep these strategic realities under the rug. He is writing for the benefit of American intelligence officials who oppose a strict security regime within their own ranks, who despise Golitsyn and Angleton, and refuse to consider the possibility that Moscow has been duping them in a big way.
The penetration of the West by the KGB is a fact of history. The West never penetrated Russia in the same way, and this must be taken into account when we look at Eastern Europe today (especially in the context of Angleton's idea of a disinformation "feedback loop"). KGB Col. Cherkashin is advancing Russia's disinformation strategy. His book does not scandalize us, as Peter Wright's revelations once did. Cherkashin's book anesthetizes as it soothes the furrowed brows of CIA officers and managers confronting the grim specter of internal reform.
Cherkashin's book hides the fact that the Cold War continues. Describing Russia's intelligence problems as "deep-seated," Cherkashin tells us what we want to hear. He says that "intelligence work is less politically important than it may seem."
This nonsense promises to animate many dupes.
