KGB: SOVIET STATE'S MOST POWERFUL ARM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000201310001-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 23, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: February 24, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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i Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/23: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201310001-7
A1RT1CLE Ai APEf
ON PAGF -
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
24 February 1987
KGB: Soviet state's most powerful arm
The Now Kati: Engine of Soviet
Po m,, by William R. Corson Rob-
ert T. Crowley. New Yo c: it am Mor-
row & Company. 582 pp. $10.95.
It was a "bitter gray Thursday"
in December 1917 when Lenin es-
tablished the Extraordinary Com-
mission to Combat Counterrevolu-
tion, Speculation and Sabotage, or
Cheka, whose "raison d'ette was
and is to establish and maintain
rigid control over the entire Rus-
sian populace."
Seventy years later, little has
changed except the name. Now it is
known as the KGB (Committee for
State Security), and "nothing
starts or stops in the USSR without
the KGB retaining the power to
intervene." That is the conclusion
of authors William R. Corson and
Robert T. Crowley, former highly
placed United States intelligence
officers. Their book, "The New
KGB: Engine of Soviet Power," de-
scribes, explains, and analyzes this
most powerful arm of the Soviet
state.
From its beginning as Lenin's
avenging death squad, the KGB
has been responsible for securing
the USSR's borders, controlling its
population, upholding loyalty in
the Red Army, riming the gulag,
directing international spying,
BOOKS
stealing and d
buying Western h high-
technology, t p ,.
exterminating counter-
revolutionaries," and more re-
cently, managing the Soviet nu-
clear arsenal. It has terrorized the
masses, "creating an atmosphere
in which all persons, especially
friends and close relatives, became
suspect provocateurs."
Stalin's OGPU (State Political
Administration), which succeeded
the Cheka in 1922, was "the most
feared of Soviet agencies." Its
members, called "guardians of the
state," did what they were told
without revulsion or pause.
Corson and Crowley accurately
gulge Stalin's reign of terror: "The
CPU's unequaled capacity for con-
ving the death of millions was
fully functional 10 years before
Hitler came to power. At no subse-
quent time did the Nazi death
squads under Himmler exceed the
Soviet organs in the systematic de-
struction of humans."
In fact, the authors report that
extrapolations of reliable census
data say that the Soviet Union's
Population should be 400 million,
not the 262.4 million reported in
1979. They conclude that the or-
gans are responsible for the dispar-
ity (At one time, they exterminated 60 to 70 percent of the Red
Army's most gifted leadership and
reduced its ranks by 30 percent.)
Not only did the organs terror-
ize Soviets at home, but they also ,
took the Bolshevik revolution
.Q!111fiUd~
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e.
abroad. Thus began the Bykovo spy training school,
designed to prepare agents to infiltrate the United
States. In a location resembling the set of an Andy Hardy
movie, agents learned the "necessary social skills" - how
to jitterbug, roller skate, and play football and softball.
They listened to recordings of American radio and
learned batting averages of baseball heroes, all on a diet
of hot dogs and apple pie.
The Bykovo school was run by the NKVD (Soviet
People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs) the OGPU's
successor. It eventually evolved into NKGB, the MGB,
and finally the KGB.
Perhaps, the authors suggest, the KGB's most success-
ful ongoing project has been the acquisition of US high-
technology. Using foreign business concerns such as the
American Trading Organization, "a fully-integrated So-
viet foreign intelligence station," the KGB has stolen or
purchased America's most valued technological secrets.
Not only has American technology been used in 150 of
the Soviets' main weapons s stems but
TRW by her Boyce and Andrew Dalton Lee (the
Falcon and the Snowman) have been used by the Soviets
to blind US surveillance satellites.
The most salient points in "The New KGB" are those
about US-Soviet diplomatic and commercial relations
and how they are used by the Soviets to deceive the
West. Otherwise intelligent men still play the "confi-
dence game" of trading with the Soviet Union, conclud-
ing "that commercial relationships are the most effective
means of taming Soviet aggressive attitudes." If there
were only more consumer goods available in the USSR,"
many believe, "perhaps the contentment that comes
with owning a toaster would begin to subdue the urge to
destroy Afghanistan.,"
Official American indulgence of Soviet aggression,
usually answered with an American plea for reinvigor-
ated arms control talks, belies complete ignorance of
Bolshevik history. The philosophy of the American gov-
ernment, Corson and Crowley write, seems to be a
"repetition of the guiding motto of Father Flanagan's
Boys Town -'there is no such thing as a bad boy.'"
Such naivete led to the provision of no less than $5
million by US taxpayers to refurbish Soviet prison ships
headed for the gulag under the Lend-Lease program
during World War II. More recently, ex-KGB chairman
Yuri Andropov was described by the Washington Post as
a "closet liberal" when he was "elected" Soviet leader.
While the Western press was reporting that An-
dropov drank scotch, read Jacqueline Susann, and lis-
tened to Glen Miller, this old Cheldst was busy grabbing
power for the KGB. "Andropov's men are clearly in
charge and control of the Soviet State," the 'authors
write, and none have been purged by Mikhail Gorbachev.
Authors Corson and Crowley weave world events and
thrilling spy stories into a highly interesting profile of
the "sword and shield" of the Communist Party.
Their fundamental concern is that the American gov-
ernment has no "clearly defined Soviet policy" or "co-
herent strategy" for dealing with the Soviets.
Although "The New KGB" will earn the wild applause
of anticommunist hardliners of the I-told-you-so variety
everywhere, it doesn't grind a rhetorical ax. It is literate,
grade-A scholarship - a compelling study of reality. The
KGB is the "engine of Soviet power."
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/23: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201310001-7