The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB

117. Yeltsin, The View from the Kremlin, appendix B, pp. 306-9. Among those former KGB officers who continue to propagate the old JFK conspiracy theories is Oleg Nechiporenko, who twice met Oswald in Mexico City in October 1963 and was later concerned with active measures involving Philip Agee. After his official retirement from the KGB in 1991, Nechiporenko made a number of appearances on the American lecture circuit, published his memoirs in English and was interviewed by Dan Rather in a CBS special on the JFK assassination. Nechiporenko, however, has become confused by the distinction between the original version of the KGB conspiracy theory of the assassination involving oil magnate H. L. Hunt and a later version which targeted Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt. His book, Passport to Assassination, which argues that the “billionaire E. Howard Hunt played a special role” in the assassination, confuses the two Hunts. Nechiporenko also claims that the CIA was probably involved. Passport to Assassination, p. 135.

Chapter Fifteen Progress Operations Part 1

1. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, ch. 9.

2. Leonhard, Child of the Revolution, p. 303. Leonhard accompanied Ulbricht back from Moscow.

3. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, ch. 9.

4. Szász, Volunteers for the Gallows, p. 105.

5. Flocken and Scholz, Ernst Wollweber.

6. After being expelled from the Party in 1958, Wollweiser lived in obscurity until his death in 1967. Childs and Popplewell, The Stasi, pp. 64-5.

7. Kopácsi, Au nom de la classe ouvrière, pp. 119-22. Mikoyan and Suslov, who also arrived secretly in Budapest at the beginning of the revolution, reported to Moscow on October 24, “One of the most serious mistakes of the Hungarian comrades was the fact that, before twelve midnight last night, they did not permit anyone to shoot at participants in the riots” (“Soviet Documents on the Hungarian Revolution,” p. 29).

8. Kopácsi, Au nom de la classe ouvrière, pp. 122, 240-8.

9. The best account in English of the repression of the Hungarian Revolution, based on full access to Hungarian archives and limited access to Soviet sources, is contained in a volume edited by Professor György Litván, Director of the Institute for the History of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, The Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

10. k-19,136.

11. t-7,299.

12. k-19,136.

13. t-7,299.

14. k-19,136.

15. Kalugin, Spymaster, p. 313.

16. Dawisha, The Kremlin and the Prague Spring, p. 16. In March 1968 Novotný was also forced to resign as president.

17. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 485-6.

18. Dubček, Hope Dies Last, p. 139.

19. Dobrynin, In Confidence, p. 179.

20. Pikhoya, “Chekhoslovakiya 1968 god,” part 1, pp. 10-12.

21. See below, chapter 15.

22. Litván, The Hungarian Revolution of 1956, p. 58.

23. Shevchenko, Breaking with Moscow, p. 104.

24. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 434-5.

25. k-16,250. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 1. vol. 7, ch. 7, 68.

26. k-19,299.

27. t-7,280.

28. Their names are listed in k-20,93,94.

29. GROMOV was Vasili Antonovich Gordievsky, who at different times assumed the identities of Kurt Sandler, Kurt Molner and Emil Frank (t-7,279). SADKO was an Estonian, Ivan Karlovich Iozenson, who posed successively as a Canadian of Finnish origins, Valte Urho Kataja, and as the Germans Hans Graven and Pobbs Friedrich Schilling (vol. 8, ch. 8; k-8,23,167,574). SEVIDOV’s real name is not recorded in Mitrokhin’s notes. When traveling in the West, he usually carried a West German passport in the name of Heinrich Dremer or Kurt Ernst Tile; he also possessed an Austrian passport in the name of Dremer. At one stage a Swiss passport was also held in reserve for him at the KGB residency in Vienna. When traveling in Poland, he posed as the East German Willi Werner Neumann (k-16,455). VLADIMIR was a Soviet ethnic German, Ivan Dmitryevich Unrau, who obtained his first West German passport under an assumed identity in 1961; he used at least two different names, Hans Emil Redveyks and [first name unknown] Maykhert. His wife Irina Yevseyevna was the illegal BERTA (k-16,61). VLAS was a Soviet Moldavian (real name unrecorded) who posed as the West German Rolf Max Thiemichen. His wife LIRA was also an illegal (k-11,6; k-8,277). The aliases of all five illegals, like others, were noted by Mitrokhin in the Cyrillic alphabet; their retranslation into the Roman alphabet may in some instances produce spelling errors.