Espionage against the West

About

General Oleg D. Kalugin, former head of KGB operations in the US, will discuss “Espionage against the West,” on 17 September 2014, 2:30 to 4:00 pm, in Belfer Center Library (rm L369), Harvard Kennedy School.

Oleg Danilovich Kalugin was the youngest intelligence officer to be promoted to Major General in the Soviet KGB’s history and at one time during the Cold War he supervised all KGB operations in the United States. Early in his thirty-two year KGB career, he worked undercover as a journalist while attending Columbia University and then conducted espionage and influence operations as a Radio Moscow correspondent with the United Nations.

General Kalugin played a major role in the John Walker spy ring as Deputy Chief of the KGB station at the Soviet Embassy in Washington, DC. Serving at the center of some of the most important espionage cases of his period, he quickly became known for his aggressive operational methodology. He returned to KGB headquarters in Moscow to become head of foreign counterintelligence (K branch of the First Chief Directorate).

During the 1980’s, General Kalugin became disillusioned with the KGB and eventually became public in his criticism, denouncing Soviet security forces as "Stalinist" domestic political police. For his criticism, he was stripped of his rank and pension in 1990 but, after the fall of the Soviet Union, these were reinstated. He was elected a member of the Soviet parliament during Gorbachev’s administration and became one of the first reformers of the KGB.

In 1994, General Kalugin published his first book about Cold War espionage entitled The First Directorate: My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West. In 1995, he accepted a teaching position in The Catholic University of America and has remained in the United States ever since. In 2008, he published his most recent book, Spymaster.

In 2002, General Kalugin was put on trial in absentia in Moscow and found guilty of spying for the West. He was sentenced to fifteen years in jail, in a verdict he described as "Soviet justice." On August 4, 2003, General Kalugin became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He is currently a professor at The Center for Counterintelligence and Security Studies in Alexandria, Virginia and a member of the advisory board for the International Spy Museum.

This seminar is off the record and comments cannot be published without the consent of the speaker.

The seminar is open to Harvard students, fellows, faculty, and ID card holders on a first come first served basis.

If you have any questions, please contact me at kevin_ryan@hks.harvard.edu or 617-495-7747.