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Anatoliy Mikhaylovich Golitsyn CBE (born August 25, 1926 in Piryatin, Ukrainian SSR) is a Soviet KGB defector and is described by Professor Christopher Andrew, the Official Historian of the Security Service (MI5), as "an unreliable conspiracy theorist." Golitsyn supplied information about many important Soviet agents working in the West. He is an Honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) and is now an American citizen.

Defection

Golitsyn worked in the strategic planning department of the KGB in the rank of Major. In 1961 under the name "Anatole Klimov" he was assigned to the Soviet embassy in Helsinki, Finland. He was completely fluent in English, and had great familiarity with contemporary American literature . He defected with his wife and daughter to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) via Helsinki in December 1961. He was flown to the United States and interviewed by James Jesus Angleton, CIA counter-intelligence director. In January 1962, the KGB sent instructions to fifty-four residents throughout the world on the actions required to minimize 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 other "particularly dangerous traitors" including Igor Gouzenko, Nikolay Khokhlov, and Bogdan Stashinsky .

Golitsyn provided information about many famous Soviet agents including Kim Philby, Donald Duart Maclean, Guy Burgess, John Vassall, double agent Aleksandr Kopatzky who worked in Germany, and others . It was only with the defection of Anatoliy Golitsyn in 1961 that Philby was confirmed as a Soviet mole.

Controversies

Golitsyn and Nosenko

In 1964, Yuri Nosenko, a KGB officer working out of Geneva, Switzerland, insisted that he needed to defect to the USA, as his role as a double-agent had been discovered, prompting his recall to Moscow Nosenko was allowed to defect, although his credibility was immediately in question because the CIA was unable to verify a KGB recall order. Nosenko made two extremely controversial claims: that Golitsyn was not a double-agent but a KGB plant; and that he had information on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy by way of the KGB's history with Lee Harvey Oswald in the time Oswald lived in the Soviet Union.

Regarding the first claim, Golitsyn had said from the beginning that the KGB would try to plant defectors in an effort to discredit him. Regarding the second claim, Nosenko told his debriefers that he had been personally responsible for handling Oswald's case and that the KGB had judged Oswald unfit for their services due to mental instability and had not even attempted to debrief Oswald about his work on the U-2 spy planes during his service in the United States Marine Corps. Although other KGB sources corroborated Nosenko's story, he repeatedly failed lie detector tests. Judging the claim of not interrogating Oswald about the U-2 improbable given Oswald's familiarity with the U-2 program and faced with further challenges to Nosenko's credibility (he also falsely claimed to be a lieutenant colonel, a higher rank than he held in fact), Angleton did not object when David Murphy, then head of the Soviet Russia Division, ordered him held in solitary confinement for approximately three-and-a-half years.

James Angleton came to public attention in the United States when the Church Commission (formally known as the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities), following up on the Warren Commission, probed the CIA for information about the Kennedy assassination. The Nosenko episode does not appear to have shaken Angleton's faith in Golitsyn, although Helms and J. Edgar Hoover took the contrary position. Hoover's objections are said to have been so vehement as to curtail severely counterintelligence cooperation between the FBI and CIA for the remainder of Hoover's service as the FBI's director.

Accusing Harold Wilson

Golitsyn was a figure of significant controversy within the Western intelligence community. He claimed that Rt Hon. Harold Wilson (then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom) was a KGB informer and an agent of influence. Harold Wilson had very friendly relations with Joseph Stalin's henchmen Anastas Mikoyan and Vyacheslav Molotov. He had conversations with them and other Soviet officials on numerous occasions. According to Mitrokhin Archive, his information on British politics was highly rated by the KGB. An "agent development file" was opened in the hope to recruit Harold Wilson, and the codename "OLDING" was given to him. However "the development did not come to fruition" according to the KGB file records . Golitsyn also accused the KGB of poisoning Hugh Gaitskell, Wilson's predecessor as leader of the Labour Party, in order for Wilson to take over the party. Gaitskell died after a sudden attack of lupus erythematosus, an autoimmune disorder, in 1963. Golitsyn's claims about Wilson were supported by the senior MI5 counterintelligence officer Peter Wright.

His books

New Lies for Old

In 1984, Golitsyn published the book New Lies For Old, wherein he predicted the collapse of the communist bloc orchestrated from above. He warned about a long-term deception strategy designed to lull the West into a false sense of security, and finally economically cripple and diplomatically isolate the United States. Among other things, Golitsyn stated:

• "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'.

The Perestroika Deception

In 1995 Golitsyn published another book The Perestroika Deception 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."

These views have been supported and promoted by American conservative groups. However Perestroika was a much bigger event than merely a disinformation campaign. . GRU defector Stanislav Lunev sees this slightly differently: "The Cold War is not over; the new Cold War is between the Russian mafia and the United States" (he considers the FSB as a part of Russian mafia).

The beginning of Perestroika was decided at the meeting of the Soviet Politburo on March 26, 1987. Mikhail Gorbachev justified his new policy as a necessary step to "hug Europe to death" and "evict the United States from Europe." These words have been excluded from his published books.

On June 8, 1995, the British Conservative Member of Parliament Christopher Gill quoted The Perestroika Deception during a House of Commons debate, saying "It stretches credulity to its absolute bounds to think that suddenly, overnight, all those who were Communists will suddenly adopt a new philosophy and belief, with the result that everything will be different. I use this opportunity to warn the House and the country that that is not the truth," and "Every time the House approves one of these collective agreements, not least treaties agreed by the collective of the European Union, it contributes to the furtherance of the Russian strategy."

Vladimir Bukovsky said: "In 1992 I had unprecedented access to Politburo and Central Committee secret documents which have been classified, and still are even now, for 30 years. These documents show very clearly that the whole idea of turning the European common market into a federal state was agreed between the left-wing parties of Europe and Moscow as a joint project which Gorbachev in 1988-89 called our "common European home." (interview by The Brussels Journal, February 23, 2006).

Miscellaneous

Golitsyn's views are shared by leading Czech dissident and politician Petr Cibulka, who has alleged that the 1989 Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia was staged by the communist StB secret police.

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

The 1992 PC adventure game KGB (Titled Conspiracy in The United States) by Cryo Games is based around the investigation into the murder of a man named Golitsin.

Angleton and Golitsyn reportedly sought the assistance of William F. Buckley, Jr. (himself once a CIA man) in writing New Lies for Old. Buckley refused but later went on to write a novel about Angleton, Spytime: The Undoing of James Jesus Angleton.

References

1. Christopher Andrew, Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries and Deadly Games By Tennent H Bagley Reviewed by Christopher Andrew, The Sunday Times, June 24, 2007
2. Arnold Beichman, New lies for old: the communist strategy of deception and disinformation. - book reviews, National Review, September 7, 1984
3. ^ Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin (2000). The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West. Gardners Books. ISBN 0-14-028487-7.
4. Mangold, Tom. Cold Warrior: James Jesus Angleton: The CIA's Master Spy Hunter. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991. ISBN 0-671-66273-2.
5. Wright, Peter (1987). Spycatcher. New York and London: Viking Penguin Inc.
6. Yevgenia Albats and Catherine A. Fitzpatrick. The State Within a State: The KGB and Its Hold on Russia--Past, Present, and Future. 1994. ISBN 0-374-52738-5.
7. Stanislav Lunev. Through the Eyes of the Enemy: The Autobiography of Stanislav Lunev, Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1998. ISBN 0-89526-390-4
8. New edition of documents of Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Interview with Pavel Stoilov. (Russian) - by Radio Free Europe
9. Christopher Gill MP, House of Commons Hansard Debates for 8 Jun 1995, Column 370
10. Buckley, William F., Jr. Spytime: the Undoing of James Jesus Angleton: A Novel. New York: Harcourt, 2000. ISBN 0-15-100513-3.

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 Jeffrey Nyquist, 18 December 2004
• Unmasking Spies, Then and Now, by Jeffrey Nyquist, Geopolitical Global Analysis, 01.06.2005
• Memorandum to the CIA: 26 August 1991, by Anatoliy Golitsyn

• 1926 births
• Cold War spies
• Defectors
• KGB officers
• Living people
• Russian writers
• Soviet defectors
• Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
• Conspiracy theorists
• Historical revisionism (political)