The KGB, or Committee for State Security, is the principal instrument through which the Soviet Union is ruled and Soviet foreign policy is executed. As such, it impinges on the lives of nearly 250 million individuals in the Soviet Union and countless others in nations affected by the Soviet Union’s presence. However, until now, there has been no definitive book that explains precisely what the KGB is, all that it does, and precisely how it exercises its largely unseen influence upon the world. Therefore, this comprehensive work, the result of four years of research, fills a significant void in the literature of contemporary affairs.
The author has enlisted the cooperation of numerous Western security services and former KGB officers, many of whom had never before talked to any journalist. As a consequence, KGB is filled with unique information and factual revelations of headline proportions. The book discloses:
• how the KGB repeatedly entered one of the most guarded of all American installations and stole hundreds of secret documents so important they were rushed to Moscow for Khrushchev’s personal perusal;
• how a Soviet diplomat intimately involved in intrigues aimed at establishing Soviet control of the Middle East turned out to be an American spy;
• how a beautiful blonde seductress was assigned to penetrate the White House, and was stopped after she began to make alarming progress in official Washington circles;
• how the KGB secretly manipulated Egyptian president Nasser by recruiting his most trusted adviser, and how it tried to depose Fidel Castro but was thwarted by a system it had helped to build;
• how a Soviet attempt to take over Ghana ended with the murder of eleven KGB officers;
• how KGB agents have broken into most major embassies in Moscow, and how they have sexually entrapped many Western diplomats, including a French ambassador;
• how the KGB has initiated a vast new campaign to intimidate Jews and silence dissent within the Soviet Union;
• how an ultra-secret KGB department deploys saboteurs and assassins to develop a capability for paralyzing foreign nations in the event of a future international crisis.
The book also contains considerable data, much of it new, that makes it indispensable to students of Soviet affairs. It reveals the internal organization of the KGB, identifying every division and subdivision and describing its mission. It reproduces verbatim the bulk of a remarkable top secret textbook (taken from a KGB school by a Western intelligence service) that instructs Soviet agents in methods of subverting Americans. These spectacular disclosures aside, the book is important for its clear delineation of the KGB’s extraordinary role in Soviet internal and external affairs, for its lucid explanation of each type of KGB activity, and for its analysis of the Soviet leadership’s continuing dependency upon a clandestine apparatus such as the KGB. The book not only explains the KGB’s functions and immense power, but also makes current Soviet behavior more comprehensible.
Author(s): John Barron
Publisher: Reader’s Digest Press
Year: 1974
Language: English
Pages: xiv+462
City: New York
INTRODUCTION by Robert Conquest, vii
AUTHOR’S PREFACE, xi
I. INSTRUMENT OF POWER, 1
II. SECRETS FROM THE DESERT, 29
III. SWORD AND SHIELD, 63
IV. BEHIND THE GUARDED GATES, 70
V. HOW TO RUN A TYRANNY, 91
VI. SURVEILLANCE AND SEDUCTION, 114
VII. DANGEROUS LITTLE BROTHERS, 141
VIII. DISINFORMATION: POISONING PUBLIC OPINION, 164
IX. THE ART AND SCIENCE OF ESPIONAGE, 187
X. TREASURES FROM THE VAULT, 199
XI. THE PLOT TO DESTROY MEXICO, 230
XII. THE SPY WHO CHANGED HIS MIND, 258
XIII. THE DARK CORE, 306
XIV. A CHOICE FOR THE WORLD, 332
APPENDIX A. HISTORY OF THE STATE SECURITY APPARATUS, 338
APPENDIX B. THE GRU: SOVIET MILITARY INTELLIGENCE, 343
APPENDIX C. “THE PRACTICE OF RECRUITING AMERICANS IN THE USA AND THIRD COUNTRIES”, 346
APPENDIX D. SOVIET CITIZENS ENGAGED IN CLANDESTINE OPERATIONS ABROAD, 379
CHAPTER NOTES, 416
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, 436
BIBLIOGRAPHY, 439
INDEX, 447