Spymaster, General Leonid Shebarshin
BY JOSEPH BOSCO
(Moscow) General Leonid Shebarshin ran the agents that ran Aldrich Ames and Robert Philip Hanssen. He read Presidents Reagan's and Bush's CIA briefings almost simultaneously with the American Commanders-In-Chief. He is the man every spy on all sides respected—and feared—as a "pro's pro," and a "soldier's soldier."
General Shebarshin, officially "retired" from service, remains a man of legendary status among his peers, many of whom he employs in his private security company (which is almost a "shadow KGB"). He is an unrepentant Communist who still believes in the spirit of Marxism and class struggle. In word or deed, he is not a "defector," which is the only category of former KGB officers the West has heard from over the past decade.
General Shebarshin is a ruggedly handsome man of large but relatively trim stature. In his mid-sixties now, his hair is still mostly dark but with the grey pronounced around the edges. He has an angular, strong face. At times he is not at all what one would think a man of his rank and power should be; and then at times, especially when amongst a group, he is every bit a General, used to command and unquestioned authority. But one on one, or in his surprisingly modest apartment in the center of Moscow with his wife and grandchildren, he is an affable man, gracious in the manner of another era, both scholarly and jocular. He loves idioms and folk sayings of any language. His apartment is full of books and the flotsam bric-a-brac collected over his many years in foreign lands.
He is extremely proud of his "peasant craftsman" heritage, and his family's sacrifices in Russia's many 20th Century wars—almost all of his uncles and male cousins died in combat. He is also very proud of his accomplishments in his "Service," the KGB.
He hates the mostly younger, ex-KGB thugs whose criminal organizations ("Russian Mafia") now control the everyday commerce of his beloved Moscow and mother Russia. He is not anti-American, but for most of his life did believe that "the United States was an aggressor nation out to conquer or destroy" his government and his "people's way of life."
The General is a world-class historian, exceedingly well read, and loves culture and the fine arts; he also has a worldview that can be compelling. While it is widely believed that he is a wealthy man, there is no evidence of it. He walks 30 minutes to his office every morning and then 30 minutes home again in the evening, even during the brutal Russian winter. He prefers to use the "Metro" (Moscow's superb subway system) than the cars and drivers at his constant disposal. He dresses modestly, at best.
Quite frankly, even though his profession should make one ever wary in his presence, it is impossible not to feel a warm sense of respect and friendship when in his company. The General has a great sense of humor, and there is almost always a twinkle in his eye and a chuckle never far from his discourse. On a Russian National TV "talk show," he went along with an impromptu skit of him playing Romeo to a famous Russian ballerina's Juliet with a humble panache that was peculiarly effective.
While the General says emphatically that he will not leave his private security services company and return to government service, I'm not convinced that, if called upon by the right people, and the right situation existed, he would not heed the call.
For perspective, General Shebarshin believes it is important for Americans to keep in mind that while we were building atom bomb shelters in backyards and "duck and cover" drills were a part of American elementary school life because of the "red scare" political climate of the era, it didn't stretch the Soviet imagination at all to believe that the United States would attack them with everything it had. After all, most of her neighbors did invade Russia during the 20th Century—Japan, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Poland, Austria and Germany twice—resulting in a loss of life so staggering it is almost incomprehensible. Russia suffered over 30 million dead in World War II alone. In contrast, the United States had some quarter-million killed in action, thousands of miles from the North American Continent, which was last invaded in 1815.
One of the many things that makes General Shebarshin unique amongst a very exclusive peer-group, is that he was the only KGB Chairman to rise from the bottom to the very top. The General was born March 24, 1935 in Moscow, into an extended family of peasant shoemakers and foot soldiers. With his mother, father, one sister, maternal grandmother, and at least three sets of aunts, uncles and cousins, he lived on the second floor of an old wooden house—a type which once was typically Muscovite, but has all but disappeared from the ancient city, giving way to the ubiquitous brick and steel apartment blocks of the middle Communist years.
"The people on my mother's side came to Moscow from a village near Moscow, they originally belonged to a peasant family, somewhere in the very beginning of this Century. They started their own shoemaking business. Grandmother, as well. They worked with their hands, and had no employees," the General explains with sturdy pride, even as he adds, "It was large family living in very crowded quarters."
His father was away in combat most of Shebarshin's boyhood—the Finnish war, the Norwegian campaign and then the entirety of World War II. "I actually saw him very occasionally. He was always fighting," the General says with a chuckle.
He has two outstanding memories of the "Great War." One is the day he and his mother went to tend the tiny potato plot which Stalin mandated every Muscovite family must have to contribute to the war effort and they found a burned-out German tank "sitting right on top of it! That's how close Hitler got to making us all speak German."
The second memory burned into his consciousness was the day his father stopped home only shortly to rest from his war wounds, "There were maggots in the wounds. Without flinching, my mother boiled water, cleaned out the maggots and bandaged him. Within maybe a day or two, he was gone, back to the front."
His father survived the war only to die of natural causes when Shebarshin was 16. His mother went to work in the "motor pool for less than was necessary to keep body and soul together." A year later, young Leonid went to college—the Institute for Oriental Studies.
Because of his outstanding high school grades, he received a stipend from the State. That stipend went up or down depending upon his college marks. Of necessity, for the sake of his family's finances, young Leonid was a superior student.
Upon graduation—the first member of his family to graduate from university—he was offered a position in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a "clean diplomat" (Soviet term for a member of the diplomatic service that was not KGB). His first post was as personal assistant to the Ambassador in Pakistan. He was 23 and newly married to a co-ed at the Institute for Oriental Studies. His bride, Nina, was a specialist on China. It being a small embassy with a small staff, his job was "demanding, but very exciting." His diligence and personality won him important friends and honors. Within four years, he was promoted to Third Secretary—a diplomatic ranking—and had his papers for promotion to Second Secretary when, in 1962, he was transferred back to Moscow and placed in the South Asia Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. At this time he received an offer to join the "Service."
In November of 1962, Shebarshin joined the KGB with the active army rank of Junior Lieutenant—he had received his military training as a student in the army reserves. For almost a year he worked at Lubyanka Square, the traditional headquarters of the KGB, "grasping some idea about my future work." Then he was sent to intelligence school.
One of Shebarshin's most vivid memories of "spy school" was that day in late November, 1963, when President Kennedy was assassinated. "There was great shock amongst us that such a thing could happen in America and to such a man." The General remembers shedding real tears at the news—and he wasn't alone. Despite the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs invasion, the young, dynamic JFK was looked upon by the "student spies" as the "best hope for a better relationship between the superpowers, and the best hope for a safer world."
The normal length of the KGB's "Andropov Institute" was 3 to 4 years, but because of his experience and abilities, especially his acumen in foreign languages, he graduated in one year and began his steady climb to the top.
One of his most crucial field posts was Station Chief in India during the height of the Vietnam war, when the Soviets believed India was strategically vital to maintain a balance in South Asia. It was a position from which to launch anti-American/South Vietnam propaganda and "dirty tricks." Another was his stint as Station Chief in Teheran during the chaos of the Islamic revolution that proved perilous to both the Soviets and the United States.
Shebarshin loved "field work" and insistently continued to do it even as his administrative and supervisory duties grew heavier with each promotion. His skills in the field were the stuff of legend within the insular world of espionage. However, it was his analytical skills—interpreting and assessing the meaning and value of information gathered—which garnered him the ever increasing esteem of his superiors. Particularly, he caught the attention of the influential and powerful Mr. Andropov—who was then KGB Chairman and who would remain instrumental in shepherding the General's career.
Indeed, his value to the Service prevented his "life's worst moment," the defection of his most trusted officer—every spymaster's worst nightmare—from ending his career, as is customary in such situations. It was 1982 in Teheran, and an officer by the name of Kouzichkin (to this day, the General will only call him "that bastard," refusing to use his name) defected to the British, occasioning several intense days of spy intrigue and derring-do and "compromised much of our work and many of our people." One of whom was beaten and then killed.
Shebarshin was summoned to KGB headquarters in Moscow. He went "expecting the worst; whatever would be done with me, I was prepared to accept it without complaint." Instead, Brezhnev himself simply said, "In a war, there are losses. It cannot be avoided." Shebarshin was sent back to his post in Iran with the compliments and good graces of "the bosses; I was shocked, but of course pleased and heartened."
Not long after, he was brought back to Moscow to serve in ever-higher positions of authority within the First Main Directorate (FMD). Throughout the decade, he would travel abroad often, depending on where there was trouble or opportunity in the global Cold War.
Shebarshin's next prolonged involvement was with the war in Afghanistan. His intelligence work during that "enigmatic" campaign won him even more stature within the KGB; he received his first General's star in the field. He and his agents were responsible for the secret 1984 report which determined that a military victory in Afghanistan wasn't possible. The Army was then able to greatly diminish its casualties as it only "pretended" to conduct a major military campaign for the political expediency of the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul.
The General made many trips into Afghanistan over the next seven years, many of them working in the field. Occasionally he was under fire—once, as his plane was taking off from an outpost landing strip, an American-made Stinger missile fired at it by an Afghan rebel missed and killed five Russian soldiers in a crude barracks next to the runway. At other times he found himself in the midst of secret, dangerous intrigue amongst colorful allies and enemies—the lines were often not that clear—in strange valleys, mountains, deserts and nomadic tents or noisy, exotic cafes.
After several years as Deputy Chairman of the First Main Directorate (number two man over all foreign intelligence), in 1989 he was named Chairman of the FMD, which carried with it the automatic post of Deputy Chairman of the KGB itself. The son of peasant shoemakers, not nomenklatura or apparatchiks—"at fifteen I was a better Communist than my father, who loved to make crude jokes about Stalin"—was second in command over all KGB forces, then numbering almost 500,000 strong.
On the morning of August 21, 1991, only hours after M.S. Gorbachev returned to Moscow "tanned and relaxed" from "house arrest" in his vacation home in the Crimea in the aftermath of the aborted "coup" and ordered the arrest of KGB Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov for being the "main plotter," the tenuous President of the Soviet Union called General Shebarshin and asked him to accept the Chairmanship. The General, out of loyalty to Kryuchkov, his doubts about the authenticity of the "coup," and his pronounced ambivalence for Gorbachev, asked for a few hours to think it over. With Moscow in chaos, mobs and tanks in the street, and the advice of trusted colleagues, when Gorbachev called back the General "reluctantly accepted" the position and became the fourteenth Chairman of the KGB.
At first he chose not to occupy the Chairman's historic office at Lubyanka Square, again out of deference to his former boss Kryuchkov, and stayed in his own office at Yasenevo, the modern headquarters of the KGB on the "ring" road in the suburbs of Moscow. But as the situation in the streets of Moscow—and the Soviet Union at large—grew more chaotic by the hour, he realized he could not monitor and command as effectively (and just as important, symbolically) from Yasenevo. He moved into the Chairman's office at Lubyanka.
It was from that office that he made one of the more important decisions in recent Russian history. From his window, the General could see the frenzied, thirty-or forty-thousand strong mob in the square below; he watched as the mob began to bring down the massive statue of Dzerzhinsky, who founded the first Soviet secret police, the dreaded Cheka, during the Civil War of 1918-1920. The General was bombarded with requests and advice to send KGB troops into the street to stop the "rampant hooliganism," but Leonid Shebarshin resolutely said no, adding that "Russian soldiers should never again fire on Russian citizens." In hind-sight, it is generally believed that if Shebarshin had sent KGB troops into the streets with orders to stop the rioting and destruction of statuary by force, there would have been civil war in Russia, then still a super-power whose affairs directly effected world stability.
Perhaps because of his decision, General Shebarshin would hold the KGB Chairmanship for exactly 27 hours; on the afternoon of August 22, Gorbachev called and told him he was more needed in his former position of Chief of Intelligence. In short order, the KGB was abolished, Communism was at an end and the General, bored and disheartened for his country, retired.
By October, 1990, the situation in Russia was deteriorating rapidly: "Things were going from bad to worse in practically every direction...as far as my Service is concerned, there were a couple of troublesome things: First, our American counterparts and their allies started to make recruitment approaches to our people all over the world. A call was made, 'They can be recruited, go ahead, fellows,' hmm?
"And there was no proper reaction on our side. Because, at that time, we suggested to Mr. Gorbachev and Schevardnaze, that some official steps should be taken at a very high level, that all of this palaver about friendship and cooperation should not be a cover for such daring and brazen attempts to subvert our people, so we should reply in our own manner. But, again, for that we needed the backing of strong political leadership. Actually it was done very easily in the past—we throw out a correspondent here, they would throw out a correspondent there; they would make an approach to our fellow, we would make even stronger approach to their fellows. So it was more or less balanced, and everybody understood the rules of the game. So, definitely, the balance was changing not in our favor; and our hands were tied.
"The second point, and maybe the most important thing at that time—my Service, yes, at that time we started to feel the pinch. Our prices were going up, our salaries were remaining at the same level. We had enough money for operational purposes, but our officers could not even maintain the proper standard of living for their families. And there were several cases—they started at that time—when our officers would quit the Service because of material difficulties. Already at that time the private sector came into existence, there was a lot of attraction outside, especially for people with our training."
One officer blamed his having to resign on a financially "nagging wife.... So, he decided to hell with the Service. I sympathized with the fellow. And saw that it was another one of our minor blunders in personnel policies, such people should have never been drawn into the Service. So I wished him luck, and then wrote that I doubted very much that luck would be with him. Not that kind of a person."
On the state of Russia at present and what Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev had to do with it: "Nobody can say now in good conscience that Russia is a strong country, no. Oh, yes, it has potential, no doubt about it, but it has no proper economics, it has no proper strong leadership, its political life is in turmoil. Definitely we are being treated like a second-rate power.
"Mrs. Thatcher once said—she was very 'fond' of Mr. Gorbachev, so she paid him this 'compliment'—that U.S.S.R. was now 'Kenya with rockets.' She's a shrewd lady. She felt a weak man, I think so. She felt, at long last, there is a weakling at the head of the mighty state. And she was cultivating his weakness, vainglory; Mr. Gorbachev is a very vainglorious man, he was an amateur actor in his youth. He's always looking for approval. So he was bitten by the sound of applause; by the kind words of Mrs. Thatcher, person of such stature would appreciate the gifts of the provincial actor. She was an Iron Lady, and he was a clay man. She played him like a puppet. She was much more clever than the both of them [Reagan and Gorbachev].
On the coup: "Maybe was not a coup. I believe Mr. Gorbachev was in [on it]. There is no evidence that he was ignorant of the designs of the so-called plotters—that he could not prevent it. He could prevent it, if he wanted. The 'isolation' ['house arrest' in Crimea] was artificial—he isolated himself. He answered his phone and when he flew back to Moscow he was tanned and relaxed; he had been nobody's 'prisoner.'"
"Also, one of the foolish things which showed that the 'plot' was not serious, all of the lines were kept free as it was at normal times—all telephone lines, not a single telephone was disconnected; open and secret and secure telephones were all in working order. If you want to do something serious, the first step you take [is] you deprive opposition of the means of communicating. It was not done.
"He was playing 'no losing' in the game. If the so-called plotters gained the upper-hand, he would be with them. If they lost, he thought that he would be able to detach himself from the plot and present himself as an 'innocent victim' of the plotters. Nothing like that—he was in [on it]. But such was his nature. He tried always to leave and wait out, never to make a definite decision…in practically all critical situations. It happened when there was some trouble in the Baltic states—he agreed with the military action, but he waited...there were no written orders, but in any case, presented the matter so that it was the initiative of somebody but not himself. It was in Tbilisi, April '89, when both Gorbachev and Schevardnaze washed their hands of the responsibility for clash between the Army and the civic meeting. They clearly approved, but then the result was negative. They said that they did not know, the decision was taken by some persons unknown. And as usual, a local military commander was blamed. It was a very dirty trick."
So Kryuchkov wasn't really a 'plotter'? "Yes, yes. You know, it was a very curious happening...a 'coup d'etat,' something meant to grab the power, to overthrow the existing government and grab the power for themselves. So there was a coup against themselves. Everybody was in there [on it], Prime Minister, Minister of Defense, Security Minister, Mr. Kryuchkov...the President knew about it—so where is the coup?"
"It may be justly said that the 'opposition' [Yeltsin and colleagues] grabbed the opportunity to perform the [real] coup, which was more successful. Yes, it really was like a very indecent chess game—wrong move, opposition immediately seized the opportunity and the tables are turned."
Was it an attempt to get the populace aroused for the government? "[It] is much more complicated and deep. The country was going to the dogs—it continues to go to the dogs. I understand that—it's somewhat indecent to call them 'plotters,' but I do not know what to call them, Kryuchkov and companions—they are honest men, no doubt about that, I know them. They were and they are honest and dedicated persons. They thought that the state of emergency was necessary to somehow check these destructive tendencies [Yeltsin and cohorts]. Some people are trying to impute them baser motives, that they wanted to preserve their own positions. Maybe. They are...humans and they had to take care of their own positions. Maybe—but I am quite convinced it was not the most important motive of their actions. They wanted to prevent the disintegration of the Soviet Union, of the country. They wanted to introduce some semblance of order in [a] completely confused society. I believe they misjudged the situation. They thought that the problem [could be] solved by traditional needs of intramural intrigue.
"They did not take into account the new reality, that is active opposition which does not belong to the establishment, people in the street—not very many of them, maybe, at the best, there were about 20, maybe 30 thousand people around the 'White House,' which is quite enough. They did not try to mobilize their supporters, which were much more numerous, people who were dissatisfied at that time with the state of things. Their propaganda was rotten. There was no propaganda at all. They were showing some ballet on TV, which became a laughing stock, and will remain one I think for generations—it's moment of national emergency and they're showing Swan Lake! And not one of them dares to show his face on the screen. It's elementary: [Play] military marches, and broadcast this announcement of the emergency, inspire the people, and call the supporters into the street. They were hiding away. Nobody saw them, which is entirely foolish.
"The second [mistake]—not only foolish but outright stupidity—to introduce tanks into the streets. Even now I do not know who did that—hardly Kryuchkov's idea, [he] had Budapest's experience, and Prague's experience, and Kabul's experience—tanks only irritate peaceful citizens. If you do not mean to use tanks, then don't. They were becoming objects of attacks and ridicule, and the only three casualties which were of those days were caused not by some conscious action on the part of the military, but by the confusion and by the hustle and bustle of the crowd. Poor fellows got under the tracks or wheels of armored cars. That was unbelievably stupid. Unbelievable.
"So, why this so-called 'coup' was so poorly prepared? Why it was so poorly executed? Because it was not a coup. They never thought of any serious action; no serious counter-action against mass meetings and so on. They thought that everything will be settled in a customary manner, between the leaders, among the leaders, they will talk, nomenklatura will come to some conclusion.
"There was a very mysterious story why Mr. Yeltsin was not arrested, why he was not detained. It was the easiest thing to do, and a special group was sitting in the bushes opposite his country house, (but) they never received any order, just went away. He was practically defenseless and he could have been taken by a couple of fellows, least of all by a squad."
Even though the FMD was responsible for external intelligence, was no one paying attention to what was happening in the country politically? "Not so to say in the official camp, in the official establishment, definitely not. In the opposition [Yeltsin's camp], yes, we were following...to a certain extent what was happening among them. We knew about their meetings, and we had some of our people—who were not meant for internal work but it was important and a skin of the main task—we were getting reports from different 'worker absorptions' and foreign quarters about what happens in the opposition. As far as official side was concerned, my boss, Kryuchkov, was concerned, we did not try to obtain any information; definitely that should not have been done. But accidentally bits and pieces were coming to me and I felt that something was brewing. Kryuchkov was meeting some people, and I knew who he was meeting at our safe houses. He would telephone and say, 'Could you please get this or that house ready for my meeting, and there will be two, three persons'—he would never name the names who he was going to meet, but definitely it was not foreigners. They were somebody from the opposition side. I could guess who he was meeting and what they were talking about, but I made it a point, a deliberate, conscious point to keep away from these 'deals.' I was not asked—if I were asked by Kryuchkov to participate in the entire affair, definitely I would not have refused him, definitely. But not being asked...I was closing my eyes and did not try to undertake any investigation."
So Kryuchkov knew what Yeltsin was up to? "Yes, definitely, definitely. And that's one of the reasons why I did this thing of monkeys [see no evil, hear no evil, etc.] There was some tacit understanding. But they went to their own terms that carried them apart. Yeltsin was carried away by his cohorts who were dead-set against Gorbachev and Kryuchkov, and by the West...and he had to act as he acted, climb on the tank and make speeches."
Was the CIA involved with Yeltsin? "Links were established between the embassy here, the CIA station, and people in Yeltsin's camp. There...[were] interceptings from their embassy, certain telephone conversations. So there were links between the American Embassy and Yeltsin's people. There was exchange of information throughout...they were advising him."
Was there an advantage for the United States in Yeltsin as opposed to Gorbachev? "Not to Gorbachev, but to Kryuchkov [and other hardliners]. I came to a very definite conclusion that the United States gave up their unconditional support of Mr. Gorbachev and shifted their attention to Mr. Yeltsin. [According] to some highly reliable...interesting reports, persons in President Bush's entourage came to a conclusion that Gorbachev's predominant role in the political life of the U.S.S.R. had fizzled out, the alternative figure of Yeltsin was emerging full-scale. While maintaining proper relations with Gorbachev, the United States must hence pay much more attention to the President of Russia [Yeltsin had recently been elected to that hitherto mostly empty office, as contrasted with the office of President of the Soviet Union, i.e. Gorbachev]. In other words, one should not bet on a loser. Judging by the tenor of our information, the Americans would be sorry to see Gorbachev go—he was so susceptible to pressure and utterly predictable. But in serious politics there is no place for emotional attachments. Gorbachev thought himself to be a personal friend of President Bush. Personal friendship is a delusion for sinking, drowning politicians."
On the NKVD becoming the KGB, and the major shift for Russia and the secret services in the early 50's: "Yes, there were times of terror, times of repressions in my country, and the actual work—dirty work—was done by our predecessors. It's bitter even to recollect what was happening there in that time at the end of the 30's until the mid 50's. Many, many people, officials, Party members, provincial leaders, intellectuals, and so on were shot dead during that time. And I believe that 90 percent, 95 percent were completely innocent of the crimes they were accused of. Definitely, those events cast a long shadow, a long shadow, when we try to say that we have nothing in common [with] that organization, our predecessors, who had to perform this. By the way, 28,000 of Security personnel were executed along with the general wave of repression, 28,000. That's right, that's right, just imagine.
"Everything was known [by late 50's], and with exaggeration...all the blame was put on Beria and Stalin—Khrushchev whitewashed himself. Definitely he was as guilty of participation in those repressions as any other member of the top leadership. In the Service we knew more about it than the man in the street. After '56 [the year of Khrushchev's anti-Stalin speech at the famous 20th congress] there was a major purge in the KGB and law enforcement agencies. New people came in.
"In many respects, it was a new organization which I joined in '62, there were five, six years of 'cleaning,' purges, and so on, of correcting—of greater Party control over KGB. So, yes, the truth was known, though with certain distortions which were necessary for Mr. Khrushchev and his successors. Beria was declared the major evil-doer of that time. Oh, [they say] he was 'British spy,' and 'sadist and torturer,' and what not. But, remarkable thing is that no documents of Beria's trial are published. There was summary trial, but there was a trial, and the investigation went on for about half a year. But I think that if the papers are published there would be many surprises. It also was an atrocity [Beria's trial]. His son wrote a book—far from the truth—but still one might get quite a different picture of Beria. He was a statesman of higher calibre than Mr. Khrushchev; that cost him his life.
"From other people who remember him, [Beria] appears to be quite a different kind of person. Person who would understand more clearly the interests of the State. Who was not ruthless criminal as he was presented by Mr. Khrushchev and his cronies. Maybe if [trial documents] are published...some 'actors' at that time will have to be reevaluated.
"[But] state security was placed under special control of new leaders and there was a certain amount of democratization in Khrushchev's time, which undoubtedly was a healthy thing, and we were taught to be law obedient; we were taught, yes, to respect law. Which, before, the law was made on the spot, at the spur of the moment, and it was implemented."
The "new KGB" eventually had problems with the "new Democrats" of Perestroika and Glasnost: "[W]e were not really much suitable for the new situation in '91, '92. Again there was second wave of mild purges, people were just let go. There was this respect for law, a respect for law which was bred in us, in our generation, and generation which came after us, in the security services, which was not quite acceptable for the people who came to power in '91, '92 (Yeltsin and supporters): 'You will have to do what you are told, not the law.'
"There is always a gap, a chasm, between the law and the bosses, and the service man always finds himself between these two mill stones—and there is his own conscience of service, a third one. So, they grind you. It is the eternal dilemma of every service man, especially in the special services, this gap between the law and political expediency—orders from the top."
What the General liked most about his work: "The work itself. But of course there are august moments-you do something successfully. You receive some important top secret paper. That's very nice moment—exciting moment. You manage to make a certain acquisition for your service; you recruit the target; you write a good report; you make a prediction, and it comes true, you also feel satisfaction.
"But, probably, what I liked most about the service—that's the sense of belonging to a very unique organization and a very unique community."
There are professional courtesies in the field between opposing operatives and agents: "Watchers don't like to walk, they prefer cars. That's why when I worked, I felt how inconvenient I was for all the watchers—they do not like to leave the car, they feel somewhat naked. So, I made it a point to use the car as little as possible. I took long walks around Teheran. It's so much easier for surveillance to watch a fellow in a car than when he is walking.
"You know, there's kind of a peculiar relationship developing between the watcher and the watched, especially if the watchers are not changed very often—so they get to know you, and you get to know them and there are no hard feelings. And you understand that, if you have nothing special to do, that they may be hungry, they may be tired, so I give them rest. They will appreciate it. Send over some beer or whisky.
"In Pakistan, a fellow would come up and whisper, 'Are you going to stay in the hotel or are you going somewhere else?' 'No, we are going to be here, rest assured.' He would go and have some tea somewhere—but you should never betray their trust. Not to make them angry. Not to introduce some personal enmity into purely official relations.
"Of course, it depends on the person, on the situation; if they are given special instructions, some leakage from somewhere, they know that you are going to perform some serious operation, definitely there could be no friendly feelings. But, when it is just a routine watch? Their only thing is not to let you slip away unnoticed? So, occasionally you would talk to them, and they will talk with you. No hard feelings.
Spy skills stay with you: "It comes with practice, with training, and then I think with a special psychological state of mind, you get used to always be on the lookout, putting together things which would not be connected for a layman. [Even now] whenever I drive or whenever I walk around the street, I always take notice of the people who are passing by; I drive, I automatically try to remember number plates."
The unwritten code of espionage officers: "The way of life in the Service was such that you were always—not even told, but it was in the very atmosphere—very circumspect about your connections in general: especially about connections with the fair sex; your attitude to money; your attitude for—I think it was the least successful—attitude to alcohol. Somehow, nobody talked about gambling, but it was there in the U.S.S.R, it was very much there in the West. [It was] possibly these four points which every professional intelligence man was just taught by his very life, to be very careful about those things."
Did the KGB 'win' the espionage wars? "No, I don't think so. You can win a battle, this battle, that battle—but the final test is the outcome. Confrontational war, we lost. Whether due to internal reasons, or to any other reasons, we could not get out of that confrontation more honorably—we lost a lot. We lost our State. We lost our allies. We lost our armed forces. We lost our economy."
Did the Soviet Union collapse from external forces? "Definitely not. Definitely 90 percent due to internal reasons; still we lost. But the pressure on us was quite considerable—not only after the war [World War II]. But during all the years after 1917, the pressure on my country was very strong, economic, political, military. We definitely had an overblown military establishment. But it was not the product of some grand design of world revolution, it was just a natural reaction to the actions of stronger opposition; economically, definitely, our opposition was much stronger than we were.
"And I do not think that our fears were unjustified, precautionary measures were necessary. But then...I believe a certain spontaneity, a spontaneous growth of our war industry...of our armed forces also contributed to that. There never was a sober attempt, a sober and honest attempt, to try to evaluate what we really needed for our defense. Scientists and engineers would develop a new type of weapon—now weapons are very good, no doubt about that—[and] they would lobby for its production. They would convincingly prove that it is necessary for our defense. It was impossible for our politicians at the top to refuse what they demanded.
"In '89 there was a meeting on the occasion of the anniversary of Revolution in our central club. Among us there was a Deputy Defense Minister as an honorary guest. Usually at our meeting about a thousand people would gather there, a speech and then awards, congratulations, and so on. I found myself side by side with a General of the Army, a Marshal, so I asked him, 'We have an Army five million strong, does it make any sense now, when there are entirely new weapons, when there are nuclear and atomic weapons, to have such a huge land army? What is the reason for that?'
"He thought for a couple of seconds, and said, 'A soldier is always useful.' That was the entire reason. 'A soldier is always necessary.' He's never superfluous. The more the better.
"Our Generals, our military brass, I'm afraid, were doing their military planning, including armaments, looking back at the Second World War—an enormous quantity of tanks. So, all this kind of thinking—everybody was trying to pull the blanket on himself. A tank man demanding as many tanks as possible. Air man demanding as many aircraft as possible. Rocket man demanding as many rockets as possible.
"But you (USA) have greater resources. Your Pentagon can pay $8,000 for a toilet seat, I remember that."
How effective was the KGB within the United States? "We had our ups and downs. But I think we performed quite well. It was our main task, the United States was considered, not without justification, our main opponent or main target. Everywhere. The slightest opportunity should be taken to gain something in this main direction, the United States. Not only the CIA, which was important, but all the major American targets, military, administration. Penetrate whenever you can: FBI, CIA, Department of Defense, State Department, all was considered very good and people did good job in this direction and were commended and highly valued."
On the Aldrich Ames and Robert Philip Hanssen situations and the flak the CIA and FBI are taking: "Such things are inevitable. I think it is rather unjust to blame [them for] some outstanding blunder, or some outstanding failure, though there were definitely some technical faults, but many things become clearer with benefit of hind- sight. It's difficult to understand why this or that mistake was committed. It does not look like that in the real process. You always have your doubts, but if you start to act on the basis of your infallibility, if you react to every seemingly suspicious thing, then you effectively block the work of any organization. No opposition could do that [to you]. But there are potential spies and traitors everywhere. One can become paranoid.
"Comparatively, a larger number of our counter-intelligence people really went—not mad—but became paranoids, clinical paranoids. Yes, yes, it is a professional risk. I knew a couple of them, they are very convincing, they are very logical, they are very talkative and everything is falling into their logic.
"You can never be hundred percent sure about a person. We say that 'The utter soul is darkness.' You can penetrate to a certain depth but you can never x-ray it fully. No lie detectors, nothing. And then a person is never static, he develops. If there is a seed, a germ of betrayal in his soul, in good atmosphere it would never blossom. In a proper atmosphere, as it happened in my country, atmosphere of total betrayal, uncertainty and so on, this tiny germ would bloom into a very unpleasant flower."
On the executions that resulted from Ames' and Hanssen's treason: "It's exaggerated—some of them were exposed by different means. Our laws were and are quite clear. So, the law took its course. They were officers. From our point of view, they betrayed their country, their Service. An officer should pay for his treason. I'm concerned only with my side, those who work for me, those who work for my country, they are good guys. Those who betray me are bad guys."
General Shebarshin on former KGB General Kalugin, whose book was responsible for an American citizen being arrested for espionage because of a conversation that did or did not take place 30 years ago (the Lipkas case); Kalugin was also collaborating with retired CIA Director William Colby on a computer spy game before the latter's unusual death on a canoe excursion: "Kalugin, I did not like him. He was our youngest general. He was so smug and arrogant. He is not to be trusted. He wanted to be head of KGB. He did not try to conceal it. When he did not get it, he became a malcontent, shoot off his mouth about his Service, his country.
"It was never proved, but his loyalty was under question, loyalty to the Service. At a very critical moment in our country, a General is joining the opposition side (Yeltsin and the 'new Democrats'.) It was very bad. Some of our sources, some of our people abroad, foreigners—luckily not many of them—told us that they were not going to work with us any longer when our generals start to disclose secrets to denounce us. They were quite right. I was sorry to lose them, but I did not try to keep them.
"So now there is a discussion going on in our narrow circles whether he is a traitor, a turncoat, or just an arrogant fool. Mostly our people believe he is a traitor. A clear cut traitor. This Lipkas affair [the convicted American] weighs very heavily in their favor. But I believe that he is arrogant, self-lying egotist who would sacrifice anything for the sake of his own ego".
On the Afghan war: "As early as '84, it was clearly understood that a clean military solution was not possible; so the Army limited their casualties to 14,000 killed over 10 years—as opposed to your 55,000 dead in Vietnam. Our military started to avoid any direct touch with the enemy, and the Afghans never liked it, so it was kind of a war by, not by proxy, but war where the opponents did not see each other. Nobody was fighting seriously. Long range guns and helicopters. The Afghans are very poor 'believers' by any standard, very carefree and easygoing people in the matters of religion. It was that kind of war."
American analysts say that Russia could have won a military victory with 500,000 troops, at most there were never more than 120,000: "Thank God it didn't happen. We would have to occupy every village, every valley of Afghanistan; every area is for itself. They have been fighting each other for centuries."
On American involvement in the Afghan war: "Where are the Stinger missiles the U.S. gave to the Afghan rebels 'free of charge' and the CIA tried to buy back to no avail? Who will they be used against, the Americans themselves, the Russian Army, against Israel?"
On President Carter and the Iranian Hostage crisis: "I have no doubt that he's a nice man. That's one of the reasons for the lack of success, you should not have too big of heart.
"We had information from the Iranian side, and there was some information coming to Moscow, that there was a deal between Republicans and Khomeini people. For Khomeini, Carter's defeat was a point of honor. Definitely. I do not know why he took [it] so personally...that he paid so much attention to the personality of the President. Carter became the symbol of imperialist America. Khomeini predicted that Carter would fail, and for him it was very important that Carter did not win that election. So Carter did not win."
On the insularity of world leaders: "Mr. Clinton, when he came here, he got out of the car and shook the hands of about thirty security officers. He thought they were Russian citizens."
What General Shebarshin believes about Communism then and now: "[As a young man] there was really no counter indication. I believe that. Organization is a very good thing, especially my organization, the Communist Party. The aims were and remain undoubtedly noble. You wouldn't find anything which would cause my objection in documents of the Party. The practice, however, was different. At that young age, of course, people tend to be either too critical or too uncritical; I'm afraid I belonged somewhere in between. I saw the drawbacks, and some of it caused me acute displeasure. But I believed that was a matter of the wrong application of the right principles. With minor exceptions, I believe the same today."
However, in one major aspect of Soviet Communism the General has indeed changed his thinking—religion: "As a young man, I was atheist completely; and I thought suppression of religion was in the best interest of the State. But, today, I can only say that I am agnostic. And that it was a mistake to take away from the people something so many of them obviously need—and who knows, they may be right."
Joseph Bosco is an author and journalist who is currently a Visiting Professor of Literature at Xiamen University, P.R. China.