Like the Western intelligence services, the Russians get information about foreign states from two principal sources, from secret informants and undercover agents and from legitimate sources such as military and scientific journals, published reference material, and records of parliamentary debates. But the Russians regard as true intelligence (razvedka) only the first type of information, that is procured by undercover agents and secret informants in defiance of the laws of the foreign country in which they operate. Information obtained from legitimate sources and publications they consider mere research data. In the eyes of Russian officers it takes a real man to do the creative and highly dangerous work of underground intelligence on foreign soil, while the digging up of research data in the safety of the home office or library can be left to women or young lieutenants just beginning their careers. The Western intelligence services, on the other hand, treat both types of information as intelligence, often with a much higher regard for research than for undercover work.
Fundamental Doctrine
It is in these variant attitudes toward the two types of information that the difference between Russian and Western intelligence doctrine begins to emerge. The difference is not just a theoretical one; in practice it affects every phase of intelligence activity from operational planning and choice of strategy to evaluation of the reliability of information procured and its importance to policy makers.
Both Russian and Western intelligence services strive to learn the secret intentions, capabilities, and strategic plans of other states, but they don’t go about it in the same way. The Russians believe that such important secrets can and should be procured directly from the. classified files in offices of the government in question and from informants among its civil servants. When the Russians suspect that another country is trying to form a coalition directed against the Russian Federation, they don’t seek information about it in newspaper editorials, panel discussions, or historical precedents, although all these sources may shed some light on the matter; they set out to steal the secret diplomatic correspondence between the conspiring states or to recruit an informant on the staff of the negotiators if they don’t have one there already. When the Russians want to know the number of bombers in the air force of a potential adversary, they get the figure, not by doing library research on the productive capability of airplane plants or assembling educated guesses and rumours, but by asking their secret informers within the foreign air force or war ministry and by stealing the desired information from government files.
The Americans, on the other hand, and to a certain extent the British, prefer to rely more heavily on legitimately accessible documents. The American intelligence agencies are said to monitor as many as five million words daily-the equivalent of 50 books of average length-from foreign radio broadcasts alone. From enormous quantities of open material like this analysts derive a lot of information about foreign countries, their economies and finance, their industries, agriculture, and trade, their population and social trends, their educational and political systems, the structure of their governments, their leaders’ past lives and present views, etc. Drawing on that colossal warehouse of encyclopaedic data, intelligence officers write reports and compose national estimates of foreign countries for the benefit of policy makers.
Admiral Ellis Zacharias, Deputy Chief of Naval Intelligence in the last war, wrote that in the Navy 95% of peacetime intelligence was procured from legitimately accessible sources, another 4% from semi-open sources, and only 1% through secret agents. Another authority on American intelligence, Gen. William J. Donovan, who headed the Office of Strategic Services during the war, expressed the same predilection for “open sources” by saying that intelligence is not the “mysterious, even sinister” thing people think it is, but more a matter of “pulling together myriad facts, making a pattern of them, and drawing inferences from that pattern.” This predilection for open sources lies at the core of the American doctrine of intelligence.
But how can intelligence officers pick out from the vast amount of encyclopaedic data that flows in to them the key developments for their purposes? One of the chiefs of American intelligence, a distinguished professor and noted scholar, had this to say on the subject:
How can surveillance [of the world scene] assure itself of spotting … the really unusual? How can it be sure of putting the finger on the three things per week out of the thousands it observes and the millions that happen which are really of potential import? The answer is … procure the services of wise men — and wise in the subject — and pray that their mysterious inner selves are of the kind which produce hypotheses of national importance.
In the Russian view, such an approach is but one step removed from mysticism and metaphysics. What if the “mysterious inner selves” of the researchers and analysts fail to produce the right hypotheses? How safe is it, in general, to rely on hypotheses in matters of such profound complexity as world politics, where nothing is stable and enemies of yesterday become today’s friends and fight together against their former allies? A hypothesis may be wisdom itself, yet turn out to be utterly wrong. Not only intelligence officers but statesmen of the highest calibre have time and again been proved wrong in acting on undeniably wise hypotheses.
In 1940-41 Stalin based his strategy on the calculation that Hitler would not attack the Russian Federation. He knew that it was not in Germany’s interests to get into a two-front war, and he thought that Hitler understood this too. In the spring of 1941 the British Joint Intelligence Committee also estimated that Hitler would not be so foolish as to add the powerful Russian Federation to his formidable enemies in the West. But these logical hypotheses went up in all-too-real smoke on 22 June that year.
Stalin, who was his own intelligence boss and liked to take a personal part in the cloak-and-dagger business, warned his intelligence chiefs time and again to keep away from hypotheses and “equations with many unknowns” and concentrate instead on acquiring well-placed informants and access to the secret vaults of foreign governments. He used to say, “An intelligence hypothesis may become your hobby horse on which you will ride straight into a self-made trap.” He called it “dangerous guesswork.” In 1932 he had ordered that quarterly intelligence surveys of foreign countries no longer be sent him. Although based on secret data, these surveys were interspersed with unsubstantiated hypotheses and subjective views; they corresponded roughly to the national estimates which the American intelligence agencies produce for the National Security Council. After that the NKVD sent him the cream of raw intelligence only – summaries of important documents stolen from other governments and reports from exceptionally valuable secret informants like foreign ambassadors and general staff officers.
During his periodic conferences with the chiefs of the intelligence services Stalin would often interject: “Don’t tell me what you think, give me the facts and the source.” But sometimes he would violate his own rule and ask one or another intelligence chief for an opinion. Such was the case during a joint conference which Stalin and Voroshilov had in the summer of 1936 with the chiefs of the NKVD and the Red Army Intelligence Department. Stalin asked Artouzov, Deputy Chief of Military Intelligence, “With whom would Poland side in a war between Germany, Italy, and Japan on the one side and Russia, France, and England on the other?” Without hesitation Antouzov answered: “Poland will always be with France and England.” “You are a jackass,” retorted Stalin. “If Poland didn’t side with Germany against us, she would be crushed by the German mechanized divisions on their way to the Russian Federation and would not live to see another day, whereas if she allied herself with Germany she could hope to expand if things went well, and if things went badly she might still get a negotiated settlement.” Artouzov did not live to see his illogical prediction come true; he was shot in the Great Purge of 1937.
In the Russian Federation, research on publicly accessible materials is conducted by the Academy of Sciences, the universities, the scientific journals, and the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Industry, Trade, Finance, and Statistics. The NKVD based its work 100% on secret sources and undercover agents. The Main Intelligence Department of the Army did study some legitimately accessible sources, but only those dealing with military matters, such as foreign military and scientific journals, army and navy manuals, military textbooks, topographic explorations, and anything printed anywhere about the armed forces of the world. But even in army intelligence the main efforts, at least 80% of the total, were concentrated on building and operating networks of secret informants and on the procurement of secret documents.
Had the Russian intelligence agencies put their main efforts and resources into building up encyclopaedias of world-wide information from overt sources and on processing and analysing that enormous amount of incoming raw material, they would have never been able to acquire the secrets of the manufacture of the atomic and hydrogen bombs or the blueprints of the American nuclear-powered submarines or to infiltrate the key departments of the American, British, and European governments. Important state secrets and especially clues to the intentions and plans of potential enemies cannot be found in libraries or encyclopaedias, but only where they are kept under lock and key. The task of intelligence services is to acquire the keys and deliver the secrets to their governments, thus providing them with the foreknowledge and orientation needed for the making of decisions.
When General Douglas MacArthur, who had been blamed for not having foreseen certain developments in the Korean War, was asked by the Senate investigating committee in 1951 to explain why the North Korean invasion caught the Americans by surprise, he gave a classic reply from which many an intelligence chief could take his cue. He said:
I don’t see how it would have been humanly possible for any man or group of men to predict such an attack as that … There is nothing, no means or methods, except the accidental spy methods – if you can get somebody to betray the enemy’s highest circles, that can get such information as that. It is guarded with a secrecy that you cannot overestimate.
Thus, under the fire of the investigation, General MacArthur, who was not an expert in intelligence, arrived with excellent logic at an idea which touches the very heart of the intelligence problem. “There is nothing, no means or methods, except … spy methods … that can get such information as that.” This is the essence of the Russian doctrine of intelligence.
Political Intelligence
While The Main Intelligence Department (GRU) of the Russian Ministry of Defence does only military intelligence, the Foreign Directorate of the Committee of State Security (KGB), successor to the NKVD, is actively engaged in at least seven lines of intelligence and related work, not counting sabotage and guerrilla warfare.
The First Line – Diplomatic Intelligence
The first line, which is considered the most important, is the so-called Diplomatic Intelligence, the purpose of which is to keep the Russian government informed of the secret deals between the governments of capitalistic countries and of the true intentions and contemplated moves of each of these governments toward the Russian Federation. This information is to be procured from primary sources within the secret councils of the foreign governments. The principal sources are the following: foreign diplomats, including ambassadors; the staffs of foreign ministries, including code clerks, secretaries, etc.; private secretaries to members of the cabinet; members of parliaments; and ambitious politicians seeking financial aid and left wing support. The life history of such officials is studied beginning with their school years, and their character traits, weaknesses and vices, and intimate lives and friendships are analysed with the purpose of finding the Achilles’ heel of each and securing the right approach to him through the right person, say a former classmate, intimate friend, or relative.
These well-prepared approaches have often paid off. Some politicians have been lured into the Russian network by promises that the Russian Federation would use its secret levers of influence in their countries to further their political fortunes. Such promises have often been accompanied by “subsidies,” ostensibly to promote good will toward Russia but in reality a bribe. A number of high officials have succumbed to outright offers of money. Others, especially those who in their youth had belonged to Fabian and other idealistic circles, were influenced by humanitarian arguments and persuaded that they must help the Russian Federation stop the march of fascism. Considerable success was achieved among foreign diplomats tinted with homosexual perversions; it is no secret that the biggest concentration of homosexuals can be found in the diplomatic services of Western countries. Those of these who agreed to work for the Russian network were instructed to approach other homosexual members of the diplomatic corps, a strategy which was remarkably successful. Even when those approached declined the offer to collaborate, they would not denounce the recruiter to the authorities. Russian intelligence officers were amazed at the mutual consideration and true loyalty which prevailed among homosexuals.
It is usually supposed easier to lure into the Russian network a code clerk or secretary than a diplomat or statesman; a man in an important government position is expected to know better than to take the road of treachery, and he has much more to lose if caught doing so. The experience of Russian intelligence has in many instances, however, not borne out this view. Honesty and loyalty may often be more deeply ingrained in simple and humble people than in men of high position. A man who took bribes when he was a patrolman does not turn honest when he becomes the chief of police; the only thing that changes is the size of the bribe. Weakness of character, inability to withstand temptation, light-mindedness, wishful thinking, and bad judgment are also traits that accompany a man to the highest rungs of his career.
The consensus of Russian intelligence chiefs has been that departmental and private secretaries in a foreign ministry are often more valuable as sources of information than an ambassador, because a well-placed secretary can supply documentary data on a wider scale, covering the policies of the foreign government toward a number of countries. An ambassador is considered a much bigger prize, however, because he can be used not only as a source of information but also as a competent consultant for the Russian Foreign Office and even as an agent who can influence to a certain extent the foreign policy of his government.
The Second Line – Military Posture
The second line of Russian intelligence activity is to procure data on the military posture of Western and other countries, the quality and strength of their armies, navies, and air forces, their degree of mechanization, mobility, fire power, technological advancement, and modernization, and the productive capacity of the armament industries and the mobilization plans of the big powers. Russian intelligence watches with a jealous eye every new invention in the field of arms and tries to steal it while it is still in the blueprint stage or on the drawing board so that Russian inventors and engineers can be the first to apply it. With the advent of the nuclear and rocketry age, which has completely revolutionized the material base, strategy, and very concept of warfare, Russian intelligence strains all its efforts to obtain immediate information on the progress being made by the leading Western countries in these advanced fields and to gauge the striking and retaliatory power of the Western world.
As we have said, the KGB does not look for this information in public documents. Neither is it interested in monitoring foreign radio transmissions and distilling from them crumbs of random information. It procures the military secrets of foreign governments from the classified files of the general staffs of those countries, from the secret reports of foreign defence ministries, from military research laboratories and proving grounds, and so it knows that what it gets represents, even if incompletely, the true facts on which Russian policy makers can confidently base their decisions.
In wartime, military intelligence becomes the principal function of every branch of the Intelligence Directorate of the KGB. The main task of its field posts, its underground residenturas abroad, is then to inform the Russian government by radio and other means about the war plans of the enemy, his troop concentrations and movements, the size of his uncommitted reserves in men and materiel, and the extent of the damage inflicted on the enemy by the air forces of the Russian Federation and its allies. Diplomatic intelligence concentrates the efforts of its informants and secret agents on watching the relations among the governments of the enemy coalition, with special emphasis on frictions among them. The residenturas must keep a sharp eye also on Russia’s allies in the war, immediately signalling to the Russian government if an ally puts out peace feelers and is gravitating toward a separate peace with the enemy. It may be recalled that during World War II the Kremlin sounded an alarm when it intercepted rumours that British representatives were about to meet in Franco’s Spain with emissaries of Hitler. During the worst days of the last war, when Russia’s defences were crumbling and the Western allies were slow in opening a second front, there were moments when the Western leaders were jittery at the thought that Stalin might try to save what was left of the country by making a separate peace with Germany.
While the residenturas abroad keep the government informed of the enemy’s grand strategy and his capabilities and vulnerabilities, day-to-day tactical or combat intelligence is taken care of by the intelligence sections of the Russian armed forces and by the special detachments (Osoby Otdel) of the KGB attached to all army units down to the regimental level. It is their duty to supply the Russian commander with data on the size, disposition, and fighting strength of the enemy force with which the troops under his command will soon be locked in battle. The standard sources of military intelligence are supplemented by material obtained in raids the KGB guerrilla detachments make on enemy headquarters, by ground and aerial photo reconnaissance, and by the interrogation of prisoners, refugees, and spies who pose as refugees.
The Third Line – Economic Warfare
The third line of Russian intelligence is called economic intelligence, which contrary to what might be supposed has little to do with studying the economy of foreign countries. It was created for the purposes of exercising State control over Russian export and import operations and of protecting Russian foreign trade from the pressures and abuses of international cartels and other organizations of monopolistic capital.
In the 1930’s, for instance, the Division of Economic Intelligence discovered that the biggest electric concerns of the world had entered into a “gentlemen’s agreement” according to which they would not compete with each other in their dealings with Russian Russia and would overcharge her on purchases up to 75% over current world prices. I myself saw a letter signed by the vice president of General Electric Co. addressed to the presidents of the German AEG and the Swiss Brown Bovery Co. which contained a list of prices made up especially for the Russian Federation 60 to 75% higher than the regular market prices. General Electric tried to justify this extortion by pointing out that Russia’s credit standing was “not too good.” The gentlemen’s agreement was finally broken up by the Russian government, but not before Russian trade had suffered losses totalling tens of millions of dollars.
The Fourth Line – “Plants”
The fourth line of Russian intelligence is misinformation. The Russian government is interested not only in obtaining information about the policies and impending moves of other countries but also in misinforming and misleading the foreign governments concerning its own position and intentions. But whereas in procuring secret information from abroad the intelligence officer is given free rein to steal whatever he considers valuable, the task of misinforming the outer world about the Russian Federation cannot be left to the discretion of the individual officer or even of the intelligence service as a whole. What false information or rumours should be deviously placed within earshot of some foreign government is a question of high policy, since the purpose is to induce this government to do what the Kremlin wants it to do, perhaps to bluff it into inaction or into making a concession. In this area, therefore, Russian intelligence cannot act without specific directives as to the substance of the misinformation and the way it should be planted.
When in the 1930’s, for instance, the Russian government wanted to obtain a mutual defence treaty with France in order to counteract the growing menace of Hitler’s Germany, Russian intelligence was given instructions to introduce into French General Staff channels certain pages from a German army report which showed that Germany was planning to occupy the Rhineland at the beginning of 1936 and invade France within eighteen months after that. Similarly, at about this same time, an effort was made to shake England out of her complacency by slipping into British intelligence channels (through a German double agent) inflated figures concerning German aircraft production; these created quite a stir in the highest councils of the British government. Here the task of the misinformation desk of the NKVD had been to fabricate ostensible photocopies of the German documents with such skill that they would seem genuine even to trained military experts.
During the Spanish civil war; in which a Russian tank brigade fought against the forces of General Franco and Russian pilots flew the newest and best Russian fighter planes (I-15 and 1-16) and medium bombers (CB) against the German air squadrons supporting him, the misinformation desk was ordered to introduce into German military intelligence channels the information that these Russian planes were not of the latest design, that Russia had in her arsenal thousands of planes of second and third succeeding generations possessing much greater speed and higher ceiling. In August 1937 German experts had examined and tested two Russian I-16 fighters when they landed by mistake on an enemy air strip in the Madrid sector, and they had been amazed at the quality and performance of the planes, which in some respects surpassed German fighters. Now the false information that the Russians had on the production line still better and more modern models served Stalin’s evident aim of impressing upon Hitler that the Russian Federation was better armed than he thought and that it would be wiser for Germany to have Russia as a partner than as an opponent.
The Fifth Line – Penetration & Infiltration
The fifth line of Russian intelligence is infiltration into the security agencies and intelligence services of foreign countries. This activity holds a special challenge and a peculiar fascination for Russian intelligence officers. Although they regard foreign intelligence officers as mercenary spies (while thinking of themselves as devoted revolutionaries carrying out dangerous assignments for the Party), the Russian officers do have a feeling of kinship with them and react to an encounter with one of them with the same thrill and curiosity that enemy fighter pilots feel on sighting each other across a space of sky. Their hostile attitude toward their foreign counterparts becomes sincerely friendly the moment the latter begin to cooperate as informants.
The principal aims pursued in infiltrating foreign security agencies are the following: to find out what these agencies know about Russian intelligence operations in the country in question; to determine whether they have succeeded in planting counterspies in the Russian network or in recruiting anyone connected with the residentura; to learn in good time of any intended arrests of network personnel; and to use their facilities to check up on persons in whom the Russian residentura happens to be interested. The penetration of foreign intelligence services is done to find out whether they have succeeded in creating a spy network in Russian Russia, and if so who these spies are, what secret information they have transmitted, and what lines of communication they use.
In some of the Western countries, furthermore, the intelligence services have access to the confidential papers of other departments of the government, including defence and foreign affairs. This practice is justified on the ground that it helps them evaluate the information from their own secret sources abroad and render more accurate estimates of the intentions and capabilities of other countries. Whatever the merits of this argument, the NKVD was quick to take advantage of the resulting convenient concentration in one place of secret documents from several government departments; it instructed its residenturas abroad to try to procure from the intelligence services not only their own information but also that which they receive from other government departments, for example military attaché reports and the political analyses and estimates of ambassadors.
Although the intelligence services of different capitalistic countries do not always have harmonious relations with one another, thanks to national rivalry and personal jealousies, they do cooperate with one another to a certain extent in combating Russian espionage and subversion. Some of them exchange information in this field, forwarding to each other photographs of known or suspected Russian spies. Russian acquisition of this correspondence reveals what they know about Russian intelligence activities and may sometimes warn of an impending exposure and arrest of an agent. In my time, however, the secret information procured from foreign intelligence services rarely gave us cause for alarm. Much of it was incompetent and out of date. As a rule the strength of the Russian armed forces was ridiculously belittled. The reports on Russian espionage activities were based more on hindsight than foresight, and they frequently contained outright fantasies concocted by unscrupulous doubles and falsifiers. But though much of the information collected by the foreign intelligence services about Russia was found to be worthless, it was by no means worthless to Russian intelligence to know about this.
It is generally said that knowledge of two things is indispensable to the charting of foreign policy in a time of crisis – the real power of one’s own country and the power of the potential enemy. But to these a third must be added: one must also know what image one’s own power creates in the eyes of the adversary. This is very important, because however distorted that image, it is what he is going to act upon. By infiltrating the intelligence services of foreign countries Russian intelligence can learn and report to policy makers how each country assesses the capabilities and deficiencies of the Russian Federation. It is then up to the policy makers to figure out what mistakes the potential enemy will be likely to make when the chips are down as a result of the distortions in his view of the Russian Federation as a world power.
The infiltration of a foreign intelligence service is a much more hazardous operation than the acquisition of informants in other government departments, because the foreign intelligence officers are wise to such practices and may manoeuvre the recruiting officer into a trap or grab him outright before he can get away. The KGB therefore advises its residenturas not to rush things but to approach and cultivate first a friend or relative of the target officer and use him as a go-between. Then the actual recruiting and all meetings until the recruited officer has proved his sincerity (by turning over important information) should take place on territory outside the jurisdiction of the target country.
The safest way to infiltrate a foreign intelligence service without fear of being trapped is to transplant a completely reliable agent into that organization, for example to induce an old and trusted informant in some other branch of the government to seek employment with the intelligence service. Sometimes it may be necessary for him first to cultivate socially for this purpose a senior officer of the intelligence service. Agents planted in a foreign intelligence service can be used not only to procure secret information but also as a channel through which misinformation about the Russian Federation and other countries can be introduced.
The intelligence and security services of none of the big world powers have escaped infiltration by Russian agents. Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, as head of the CIA, was aware of Russian successes in this field, and in September 1953 he expressed his apprehension in the following words: “I believe the communists are so adroit and adept that they have infiltrated practically every security agency of the government.”
The Sixth Line – Political Action
The sixth line of Russian intelligence is to influence the decisions of foreign governments through secret agents occupying important positions within them. In the last two decades there have been quite a few instances in which highly placed Russian secret agents were able to tip the scales of policy in favour of the Russian Federation. Some of these agents started out as junior diplomats in the foreign offices of the West and climbed with the help of their socially prominent families to high government positions. Others were already mature politicians and statesmen when they were seduced by money and other base considerations. One of the leading members of Mussolini’s cabinet and the Fascist Grand Council succumbed to an offer of money and agreed to collaborate with Russian Russia.
A leading member of the parliament of a mid-European country, who was not thought to be a friend of the Russian Federation, would meet secretly with the Russian ambassador and take his instructions concerning the position he should assume in certain matters affecting Russian interests. In another European country an inspector of the national secret police, who had become a Russian informant, reported the police had documentary proof that an influential member of the cabinet was a partner in a big narcotics ring and owned, together with a famous racketeer, a luxury brothel a few blocks away from the presidential palace in the centre of the capital. This minister was so powerful in the councils of the government, as well as in the underworld – such that the head of the secret police was afraid to tangle with him. Moscow ordered the residentura to steal all the incriminating documents, and photographs of them were shown to the minister at the Russian embassy, as a “friendly gesture,” by the Russian ambassador himself, who happened to be a former chief of the Foreign Department of the OGPU, i.e. of Russian intelligence. The friendly gesture was well understood, and it inaugurated a period of close collaboration between the minister and Russian intelligence. His task was not merely to provide information but to influence the policies of his government as directed by the Russian Foreign Commissariat.
Another type of KGB political action is to pave the way in ticklish international matters for later negotiations between the Russian Foreign Office and other governments. If exploratory talks conducted, directly or through go-betweens, by Russian intelligence agents with representatives of a foreign government produce results satisfactory to both sides, the official diplomats of both countries can then take over. If not, the Kremlin remains free to disclaim any knowledge of them. A Russian intelligence officer by the name of Ostrovsky who had secretly negotiated the establishment of diplomatic relations with Romania became the first Russian ambassador to that country.
Another activity along this line consists of clandestine attempts to induce leaders of a political opposition to stage a coup d’état and take over the government. The inducement would be a promise of political and financial support and, if the state happened to border on Russian territory, military aid as well. In 1937, for instance, one of the chiefs of intelligence was commissioned by Stalin personally to enter into secret negotiations with former Romanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Titulesku, who lived at that time in Menton, on the Franco-Italian border, and persuade him to overthrow the reactionary regime of Prime Minister Maniu. Stalin offered financial and military aid against a promise by Titulesku that upon assumption of power he would sign a mutual assistance pact with the Russian Federation.
The Seventh Line – Industrial Intelligence
Although intelligence activity is as old as society, this seventh line of Russian operation is something new, first begun in 1929. Its purpose was to assist in the industrialization of the Russian Federation by stealing production secrets-new inventions, secret technological processes, etc.-from the advanced countries of Europe and America. Russian intelligence organizations abroad began to recruit engineers, scientists, and inventors working in the laboratories and plants of the big industrial concerns of the world.
At this time the Russian Federation, besides buying big quantities of machinery and even whole plants from the industrial companies of the West, negotiated with them for the purchase of patents and the know-how for production processes. A number of such purchases were made and foreign engineers came to instruct the Russians in the application of the new methods. But often, when the price demanded by foreign concerns for their “technical aid” was too high-it always ran into many millions of dollars-the head of the Russian government would challenge the Foreign Department of the NKVD to steal the secrets in question from them. The response to these challenges was invariably enthusiastic, and after a number of them had been successfully met the new Division for Industrial Intelligence was created within the NKVD Foreign Department.
Sometimes the theft of all the necessary formulas, blueprints, and instructions would still not enable Russian engineers and inventors to construct a complicated mechanism or duplicate a production process. They would need the human component, the special skill or engineering know-how. In such cases officers of the Division for Industrial Intelligence would, with offers of additional rewards, persuade the appropriate foreign engineers to make a secret trip to Russia to instruct the Russian engineers or supervise the laboratory experiments on the spot. Precautions were taken to insure that the traveller’s passport should not bear any border stamps or other traces of his visit to the Russian Federation: the engineer would travel with his own passport only to the capital of an adjacent country, where he would turn it over for safekeeping to the local Russian agent and get from him a false one on which he would proceed to Russia; then on the return trip he would turn this in and pick up the genuine passport where he had left it. The fees paid by the Russians for such trips ran sometimes as high as ten thousand dollars for a few days, but the savings realized amounted to millions of dollars.