10 Dastardly Secret Operations Of The KGB
Like the CIA, the Soviet (and now Russian) spy agency known as the KGB has engaged in decades of secret operations across the world, ranging from blackmail to kidnapping. Most of the secrets that we know about the KGB today are because of one man Vasili Mitrokhin. Mitrokhin was an archivist for the KGB for 30 years before he defected to the UK and handed over his 25,000-page archive of secret KGB files. Here are some of the KGB’s most disturbing and outlandish secret operations.
10 Attacks On America’s Infrastructure
From 1959–72, the KGB began to photograph US power plants, dams, oil pipelines, and infrastructure for a nefarious operation that would disrupt the power supply to all of New York. Once they picked targets that they thought were vulnerable, the KGB set up a safe house near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. From there, KGB agents sought to plan and carry out a series of attacks on America’s power systems.
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1 Cold war: A defector like Mitrokhin had to please his hosts to stay useful for his settlement in a foreign country. iStock
Vappala Balachandran
Ex-Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat
On March 7, a leading Indian columnist quoted KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin’s ‘Archives’ (1999-2005) to say that India is the most ‘penetrated’ country since the days of Indira Gandhi. He was making this reference while ridiculing the NDA government’s paranoia over the alleged anti-India ‘conspiracy’ by three young women and Indian farmers.
Yet, he said, our government is unable to detect clear signs on what constitutes the real national danger, such as China’s hacking of our power plants. While agreeing with his conclusion, I am doubtful whether we should consider Mitrokhin’s version as true since his chief Leonid Shebarshin, who was handling India-Pakistan during 1964-77, had denied it. In December 2001, he told Vlast, a Russian weekly, that while Indira Gandhi va
Toolkits? We need to worry about Chinese hackers March 6, 2021, 8:49 PM IST
Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar is consulting editor of The Economic Times. He has frequently been a consultant to the World Bank and Asian Development Bank. A popular columnist and TV commentator, Swami has been called India s leading economic journalist by Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution. Swaminomics has been appearing as a weekly column in The Times of India since 1990. In 2008, The Times of India brought out the book The Benevolent Zookeepers - The Best Of Swaminomics . LESS. MORE
Both Mumbai and Telangana may have been hacked by China, causing electric blackouts. The power minister denies a Chinese hand. But a US company, Recorded Future, claimed that Chinese hackers had targeted 10 entities of India’s power grid plus two maritime ports when the company first notified the Computer Emergency Response Team on February 10 of the hacking. India is hardly alone: even the
KGB Operations in North America | History of the Soviet Secret Service
The KGB (Russian: Комите́т госуда́рственной безопа́сности / КГБ; translated in English as Committee for State Security), was the main security agency for the Soviet Union from 1954 until its break-up in 1991. Formed in 1954, as a direct successor of such preceding agencies as the Cheka, NKGB, and MGB, the KGB was attached to the Council of Ministers. It was the chief government agency of “union-republican jurisdiction”, acting as internal security, intelligence, and secret police. Similar agencies were instated in each of the republics of the Soviet Union aside from Russia and consisted of many ministries, state committees, and state commissions.
How the KGB secretly discredited Chile’s dictator Augusto Pinochet Getty Images; Reuters; Yuri Abramochkin/Sputnik; Kena Lorenzini/Museum of Memory and Human Rights The clandestine KGB operation codenamed ‘Toucan’ aimed to discredit U.S.-backed Augusto Pinochet in the eyes of the American public.
Prominent American investigative journalist Jack Anderson had a history of bad blood with state agencies like the FBI and the CIA and even with the White House. When he learned that Chile’s dictator Augusto Pinochet, backed by Washington, was planning an assassination campaign against his political opponents in various countries, he was only too happy to reveal it in his highly popular column in the New York Times.