Mitrokhin Archive

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"The Mitrokhin Archive" refers to the collected notes taken by Vasili Mitrokhin over 30 years. They became public following his 1992 departure from Russia to Great Britain. The notes contain Soviet intelligence operations details obtained from KGB archives. Mitrokhin was a Major and senior archivist for the Soviet Union's foreign intelligence service and the First Chief Directorate of the KGB. He co-wrote several books with Christopher Andrew. "The Mitrokhin Archive" claims to represent a major body of historical evidence regarding Soviet operations and personnel assets during the Cold War.

Christopher Andrew was chosen as to collaborate with Vasili Mitrokhin because of specialization in espionage and he had signed the Official Secrets Act ^[1]. However, the primary sources the archive is based upon have never been seen by independent historians. [2]

Contents 1 Revelations 2 Praise for the Mitrokhin Archive 3 Criticism of the Mitrokhin Archive 4 Italian Mitrokhin Commission 5 Notes 6 Books 7 Online library 8 External links

[edit] Revelations

Among other revelations, the papers disclosed that more than half of Soviet weapons were based on designs stolen from the United States, that the KGB had tapped the telephones of American officials such as Henry Kissinger, and it had spies in almost all the country's big defence contractors. In France, at least 35 senior politicians were shown to have worked for the KGB during the Cold War. In Germany, the KGB was shown to have infiltrated all the major political parties, the judiciary and the police.

Spies exposed as a result of the defection include:

• Melita Norwood, (code named Hola), a British Civil Servant who had access to nuclear secrets while working at the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association^{[citation needed]}.
• John Symonds (code-named Scot)^{[citation needed]}
• Tom Driberg (code-named Lepage), a former elected Labour Party Member of Parliament who had visited Moscow with Guy Burgess^{[citation needed]}.
• Raymond Fletcher (code-named Peter), a former elected Labour Party Member of Parliament^{[citation needed]}.
• Robert Lipka, former clerk at the United States National Security Agency. ^[2] Lipka denied his guilt until the very last moments before his trial was to begin when it was revealed that the prime witness against him was a former KGB archivist with proof of his relation with the KGB.
• Claude Estier, former leader of the French Socialist Party and confidant of former president François Mitterrand^{[citation needed]}

National leaders revealed to have cooperated with the KGB include:

• Salvador Allende, who, aside from his more visible role as a friend of Cuban communist leader Fidel Castro, accepted financial support in the election of 1970 and took counsel and advice from his KGB case worker to reorganize Chile' military and intelligence service along lines suggested by the Soviet Union. ^[3]

KGB operations revealed in the files include:

• attempts to incite racial hatred in the U.S. by mailing forged hate letters to militant groups^{[citation needed]}
• bugging MI6 stations in the Middle East^{[citation needed]}
• bugging Henry Kissinger when he was serving as US Secretary of State^{[citation needed]}.
• leaked documents from defence contractors including Boeing, Fairchild, General Dynamics, IBM and Lockheed Corporation, providing the Russians with detailed information about the Trident, Peacekeeper and Tomahawk cruise missiles^{[citation needed]}.

Accused but unconfirmed were:

• Richard Clements, ally of Neil Kinnock, former leader of the British Labour Party, who denied the allegation, saying that it was an over-inflated claim and "complete nonsense".
• Romano Prodi (see Mitrokhin Commission).
• Carlos Fonseca Amador of the Sandinista National Liberation Front ^[4]

[edit] Praise for the Mitrokhin Archive

The FBI described it as “the most complete and extensive intelligence ever received from any source”^[5], the publication of Mitrokhin's material has launched parliamentary inquiries in Great Britain, India and Italy ^[6]

The New York Times described the revelations as “far more sensational even than the story dismissed as impossible by the SVR (Sluzhba Vneshnei Razvedki)” when the first dismissed early reports of the existence of the archive and commented that Mitrokhin's archives may be the only references to a large volume of material that has since been destroyed by the KGB. ^[7] Similarly, a review in the Central European Review described Mitrokhin and Andrews work as “fascinating reading for anyone interested in the craft of espionage, intelligence gathering and its overall role in 20th-century international relations” offering “a window on the Soviet worldview and, as the ongoing Hanssen case in the United States clearly indicates, how little Russia has relented from the terror-driven spy society it was during seven inglorious decades of Communism” ^[8]

David L. Ruffley, from the Department of International Programs, United States Air Force Academy, said that the material “provides the clearest picture to date of Soviet intelligence activity, fleshing out many previously obscure details, confirming or contradicting many allegations and raising a few new issues of its own” and “sheds new light on Soviet intelligence activity that, while perhaps not so spectacular as some expected, is nevertheless significantly illuminating.” ^[9]

[edit] Criticism of the Mitrokhin Archive

Historian J. Arch Getty of the UCLA in the American Historical Review (106:2, April 2001): found Mitrokhin's material to be “fascinating," but he also questioned the tenuous plausibility that Mitrokhin could have actually smuggled and transcribed thousands of KGB documents, undetected, over 30 years. Other historians have raised questions about Mitrokhin's material, as his claims about the Soviet Union are unverifiable. Mitrokhin himself only took notes, not original documents. The archive itself is thus not a primary source for historians. According to Getty "Mitrokhin was a self-described loner with increasingly anti-Soviet views... Maybe such a potentially dubious type (in KGB terms) really was able freely to transcribe thousands of documents, smuggle them out of KGB premises, hide them under his bed, transfer them to his country house, bury them in milk cans, make multiple visits to British embassies abroad, escape to Britain, and then return to Russia, and carry the voluminous work to the west, all without detection by the KGB... It may all be true. But how do we know?" Former Indian counter-terrorism chief Bahukutumbi Raman also questions both the validity of the material as well as the conclusions drawn from them. [3]

Scholar Amy Knight has been skeptical about the story of Mitrokhin^[10]

In 1972, for some inexplicable reason, Mitrokhin, who never achieved a rank above major in his entire KGB career, was given the sensitive job of overseeing the transfer of the KGB's entire foreign intelligence archive to its new headquarters outside Moscow. According to Andrew, Mitrokhin had two private offices and unlimited access to the KGB's darkest secrets. With the goal of getting back at his employers by telling the West about the KGB's foreign operations, Mitrokhin spent the next 12 years scribbling thousands upon thousands of notes from the files he saw. Incredibly, given the rigorous security rules in all Soviet archives, no one noticed what Mitrokhin was doing all day or checked him when he was going home at night.

[edit] Italian Mitrokhin Commission

Main article: Italian Mitrokhin Commission

In 2002 the Italian Parliament, then led by Silvio Berlusconi's right-wing coalition, the Casa delle Libertà, created a commission, presided by senator Paolo Guzzanti (Forza Italia) to investigate alleged KGB ties to opposition figures in Italian politics. The commission was shut down in 2006 without any concrete evidence given to support the original allegations of KGB ties to Italian politicians ^[11]. Following various events, including the arrest in December 2006 of Mario Scaramella, a consultant of Paolo Guzzanti, for defamation, as well as the April 2006 general election won by Romano Prodi's left-wing coalition, L'Unione, the Italian parliament instituted a new commission to investigate the Mitrokhin Commission and allegations of manipulation for political purposes.

[edit] Notes

[edit] Books

• Mitrokhin, Vasili; Christopher Andrew (1999). The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB. Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-00310-9. 
• Mitrokhin, Vasili; Christopher Andrew (2005). The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World. Basic Books. ISBN 0465003117. 
• Mitrokhin, Vasili; Christopher Andrew (2000). The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West. Gardners Books. ISBN 0-14-028487-7. 

[edit] Online library

The Questia Online Library hosts The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB. (Login required) The entire work is complete with linked footnotes and references.

[edit] External links

• Summary of press coverage
• Doubts about the material by B. Raman, Rediff.com India Ltd.
• Book Review by Getty, American Historical Review.