KGB

The Audacious Escape of George Blake

by Steve Vogel

George Blake was the most notorious double agent in Cold War Britain, which makes the story of his amateurish (but successful) escape from prison all the more remarkable. 

50 Years ago, the KGB weaponized the fire at Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque to sow discord between Israel and the United States

by Oren Nahari

This discovery comes from a document obtained by historians Isabella Ginor  and Gideon Remez. A rent-a-crowd protest in India was aimed to affect the Egyptian-Israeli War of Attrition.

National Security Archive Releases New Briefing Book on Chernobyl through the Eyes of the Soviet Politburo, KGB, and U.S. Intelligence

Declassified documents detail highest-level reactions, cover-ups, critiques using sources never before translated into English.

4,141 Latvians Were Just Outed as K.G.B. Informants

For many Latvians. the appearance of their names, code names and dates of recruitment in a recently released K.G.B. archive has come as a traumatic surprise.

Video of the Week: Meet the KGB Spies Who Invented Fake News

by Adam B. Ellick and Adam Westbrook

We reveal how one of the biggest fake news stories ever concocted — the 1984 AIDS-is-a-biological-weapon hoax — went viral in the pre-internet era.

Russian historians use Nazi photo to locate Stalin-era mass graves

Soviet secret police covered up its executions by planting trees over killing fields in Moscow’s forested Kommunarka area.

Long Before Facebook, The KGB Spread Fake News About AIDS

Back in the 1980s, the rumor that AIDS was human-made was based partially on a report written in 1986 by Russian-born biophysicist Jakob Segal.

Diana West says the Washington Post wouldn’t publish her rebuttal

by Diana West

Contrary to an article published by the Post, she argues that "KGB Deception Is No Myth."

The Secret KGB Manual for Recruiting Spies

The document is from the Cold War. But the material it teaches is still being used today by Vladimir Putin’s clandestine cadres.

The Hidden History of Trump’s First Trip to Moscow

by Luke Harding

In 1987, a young real estate developer traveled to the Soviet Union. The KGB almost certainly made the trip happen.

A Clue to Raoul Wallenberg’s Fate

It was buried in a hidden KGB memoir that’s just come to light.

Danish historian takes KGB claims to EU court

A Danish historian fined for claiming a journalist was a KGB agent at the height of the Cold War will take the case to the European Court of Human Rights, his lawyer said Tuesday.

UK Files Reveal Fears Over Soviet Spy Fallout

He was one spy who left many others out in the cold.

KGB Documents Detailing Who's Who In Soviet Spying Have Finally Been Published

The papers spent years hidden in a milk churn beneath a Russian dacha and read like an encyclopedia of Cold War espionage.

Soviet-era listening stations still operating

The world has been somewhat surprised by recent reports of the National Security Agency's massive electronic spying operations around the globe. But they're not the only ones with their ears to the proverbial ground. Just about every nation is engaged in some sort of electronic espionage. Russia, for example, still has an array of massive listening stations, ready to snoop on whoever's talking.It's a legacy of the Soviet Union, which  ran one of the largest of those electronic eavesdropping networks as it tried to gain any intel it could on the U.S. and its allies. Those old Soviet eavesdropping stations still exist. Some are rusting away in former Soviet countries. Others are still operational.Intelligence historian Matthew Aid just got ahold of a recently declassified CIA document listing the locations of 11 KGB strategic radio interception stations throughout Russia and the rest of the old Soviet Union....

Moving New Play on the Rosenbergs and 1950s Atomic Secrets

by Bruce Chadwick

Ethel Sings: Espionage in High CWalker Space Theater46 Walker StreetNew York, N.Y.The summer of 2013 is the 60th anniversary of the execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, accused of selling American atomic secrets to the Soviet Union from about 1943 to the early 1950s. Even though it was later proved that they were guilty, the pair remains political celebrities today.Ethel Sings, by Joan Beber, is a moving drama about the couple, who died in their mid-30s (Ethel was 38, Julius 35), leaving behind two small children, Michael and Robert. Their case brought on several rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court, several delays of execution and even a last minute plea to President Dwight Eisenhower. Beber paints a fine portrait of the couple, who went from joining the Communist Party to organizing labor and political rallies to espionage. They were, like some other ultra-liberals of the era, convinced that world was in better hands with the Soviets than the Americans. So they decided to do what they could to help the Soviets. That was their downfall.

Anya Schmemann: Life Under the KGB's Watchful Eye in 1980s Russia

Anya Schmemann, is the director of editorial strategy, and the director of the task force program, at the Council on Foreign Relations.Last week, Russia expelled an American diplomat, accusing him of being a spy for the CIA. Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said that U.S. Embassy Third Secretary Ryan Fogle had been caught red-handed with disguises, spy equipment, and wads of cash, trying to recruit a Russian agent.The episode -- complete with cheap looking wigs, fake glasses, a compass, a street map, and a laughable "Dear Friend" letter -- seemed straight out of the Cold War.For me, it caused a wave of nostalgia and catapulted me back to the 1980s when I was an expat child in Soviet Russia.Our family moved to Moscow in 1980, at the height of the Cold War, when President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev faced off across a great iron divide. My father was an American reporter, a fluent Russian speaker, the son of a Russian Orthodox priest, and the grandson of White Russian refugees, and he was instantly considered highly suspicious.

Peter Pomerantsev: Russia is Dying of Conformity

Peter Pomerantsev is a television producer and nonfiction writer. He lives in London.