Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 04:32, 12 January 2007

Anatoliy Mikhaylovich Golitsyn (b. August 25, 1926 in Piryatin) is a KGB defector who supplied information about many important Soviet agents working in the West and revealed long-term startegy of the KGB leadership.

Golitsyn worked in the strategic planning department of the KGB in the rank of Major. He defected with his wife and daughter to the CIA via Helsinki in December 1961. He was flown to the United States and interviewed by James Angleton, CIA counter-intelligence director. In January 1962 KGB Centre sent instructions to fifty four residents throughout the World on the actions required to minimized the damage. All meetings with important agents were to be suspended. . In November 1962 KGB head Vladimir Semichastny approved a plan for assassination of Golitsyn and others "particularly dangerous traitors" including Igor Gouzenko, Nikolay Khokhlov, and Bogdan Stashinsky .

Golitsyn was a figure of considerable controversy within the Western intelligence community with a small faction (most prominently James Jesus Angleton) believing him to be a genuine defector but with others concluding that he was a disinformation agent. A few years after Golitsyn defected, Yuri Nosenko also defected, and the information provided by Nosenko contradicted Golitsyn on many points. Not surprisingly, those who believed Golitsyn to be genuine, believed Nosenko to be the fake and vice versa.

Perhaps Golitsyn's most notorious claim was that the Rt Hon. Harold Wilson (then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom) was a KGB agent.

In his book New Lies For Old published in 1984, Golitsyn warned of a coming spectacular disinformation offensive by the USSR to lull the West into a false sense of security . Among other things, Golitsyn claimed :

• "The 'liberalization' would be spectacular and impressive. Formal pronouncements might be made about a reduction in the communist party's role; its monopoly would be apparently curtailed."
• "If should be extended to East Germany, demolition of the Berlin Wall might even be contemplated."
• "The European Parliament might become an all-European socialist parliament with representation from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. 'Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals' would turn out to be a neutral, socialist Europe."

Author Mark Riebling stated that of 194 predictions made in New Lies For Old, 139 had been fulfilled by 1993, 9 seemed 'clearly wrong', and the other 46 were 'not soon falsifiable'.

Golitsyn published book The Perestroika Deception in 1995 where he claimed :

• "The strategists are concealing the secret coordination that exists and will continue between Moscow and the 'nationalist' leaders of 'independent' republics"
• "The power of the KGB remains as great as ever.... Talk of cosmetic changes in the KGB and its supervision is deliberately publicized to support the myth of 'democratization' of the Soviet political system."
• "Scratch these new, instant Soviet 'democrats,' 'anti-Communists,' and 'nationalists' who have sprouted out of nowhere, and underneath will be found secret Party members or KGB agents."

The 1996 movie Mission Impossible featured a fictionalized character based on Anatoliy Golitsyn named Alexander Golitsyn, played by actor Marcel Iures.

References

1. ^ Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin (2000). The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West. Gardners Books. ISBN 0-14-028487-7.

His books

• Anatoliy Golitsyn. New Lies for Old G. S. G. & Associates, Incorporated, 1990, ISBN 0-945-00113-4
• Anatoliy Golitsyn. The Perestroika Deception : Memoranda to the Central Intelligence Agency Edward Harle Ltd; 2nd Ed edition (1998) ISBN 1-899-79803-X

External links

• The New American interview with Christopher Story, editor of The Perestroika Deception; part I, part II, part III
• Anatoliy Golitsyn, Spartacus Educational website by John Simkin
• Bombs Away, interview with J.R. Nyquist, 18 December 2004
• Unmasking Spies, Then and Now, by J. R. Nyquist, Geopolitical Global Analysis, 01.06.2005
• Memorandum to the CIA: 26 August 1991, by Anatoliy Golitsyn

This Russian biographical article is a stub. You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it.

• v
• t
• e

• Russian people stubs
• Living people
• KGB officers
• Cold War spies