AN USUAL, THE K.G.B. HAS ITS KNUCKLES BARED

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000706630007-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 7, 2011
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: September 14, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/07: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706630007-6
ARTICLE AP N LW YORK TIMES
ON PAGE -P _sb... 14 September 1986
As Usual, the K.G.B. Has Its
Knuckles Bared
_
By PHILIP TAUBMAN
Moscow
HILE Mikhail S. Gorbachev is reform-
minded on many issues, he showed no sign of
W V softness when it?came to letting the K.G.B.
handle, with its customary hard-line efficien-
,c , the arresj and indictment on espionage charges of
-Nicholas S. Daniloff, a correspondent of U.S. News &
World Report.
The Soviet intelligence and secret police agency, offi-
ctl-lly known as the Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopas-
msti, or Committee for State Security, clearly was the
diiving force behind Mr. Daniloff's 14-day detention,
W ich, at least temporarily, threw a sudden chill into
r ations between Washington and Moscow.
,,,.; That the Kremlin was willing to let the K.G.B. jeop-
#rdlze ties with Washington at a particularly delicate
time - Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Foreign
Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze are scheduled to meet
this week - was renewed evidence, if any was needed,
that the agency has long since bounced back from trou-
bled days in the 1950's and 1960's to become again a
major force in Moscow. "The arrest of Nick Daniloff was
not the action of a rogue K.G.B, but rather the deliberate
decision of the Soviet leadership to support the desire of
the K.G.B. for revenge," a Western diplomat said last
week.
The K.G.B. is the world's largest intelligence and po-
lice agency, according to Western diplomats, operating
on an annual budget equal to billions of dollars and em-
ploying more than 700,000 people.
It is responsible for diverse domestic and foreign se-
curity functions handled in the United States by a num-
ber of organizations, including the Central Intelligence
Agency, the.Federal Bureau of Investigation,'the Border
Patrol, the Secret Service and the National Security,
Agency.
The K.G.B. is also a state of mind. For Russians it is
the embodiment of the authoritarian nature of the Soviet
system. "The committee," or the "G.B." as many Rus-
sians refer to the agency, is the hand that raps on the
front door at midnight. Its roots stretch back across the
decades to Stalin's terror, Lenin's consolidation of power
and even before that to czarist secret police forces. The
modern Soviet secret police was founded undir Lenin by
Felix Dzerzhinsky and over the years it has been known
successively as the Cheka, G.P.U., O.G.P.U, N.K.V.D.,
N.K.G.B., M.G.B and, since 1954, the K.G.B.
Overseas, the K.G.B. is the primary Soviet spying ap-
paratus, fielding thousands of agents and informants to
collect information about foreign governments, pene-
trate their intelligence services, conduct covert opera-
tions, obtain advanced Western technology and attempt
to influence public opinion. What the K.G.B. lacks in so-
phisticated spy technology compared with the United
States, it more than makes up with manpower, according
to Western experts. '
Domestically, it is the overlord of a vast system of in-
ternal controls and the enforcer of political orthodoxy.
Although the days of mass terror ended with Stalin, the
K.G.B. still manages a system of labor camps and
prisons - the Gulag described by Aleksandr I. Solzheni-
tsyn - used to incarcerate political dissidents like
Anatoly F. Shcharansky, who was freed earlier this year
after nine years of confinement. Every sizable enter-
prise - from factories to movie studios to athletic teams
- has a K.G.B. unit to watch.it from within, as if, in
American terms, an F.B.I. agent were assigned to a regu-
lar job with the Washington *edskins, to check con-
stantly on their political beliefs, patriotism and produc-
tion quota fulfillment. Among the agency's myriad func-
tions is an effort to prevent the introduction and circula-
tion of foreign video cassettes in the Soviet Union.
It controls the flow of people across Soviet borders,
keeps tabs on foreign diplomats, correspondents,
scholars and other visitors and processes and analyzes a
huge volume of intelligence information gathered over-
seas. As the Daniloff case showed, the K.G.B. spares little
effort to maintain surveillance of Western correspond-
ents and surround them with Russian sources who can be
persuaded to lead the foreigners into a trap. In this case,
the K.G.B. apparently used a Russian named Misha, who
had befriended Mr. Daniloff four years ago in Frunze, the
capital of Soviet Kirghizia.
The influence of the K.G.B. fell to a low following
Stalin's death and the failed attempt of his secret police
chief, Lavrenti Beria, to seize power. Its return to re-
spectability and power was sealed by the selection of
Yuri V. Andropov, head of the K.G.B. for 15 years, as
Soviet leader in 1982. Its head now is Viktor M. Chebri-
kov, whose status as a key power broker is confirmed by
his full membership in the Politburo.
Mr. Gorbachev, whose rise to the top was acceler-
ated by Mr. Andropov, may have benefited from K.G.B.
help in his final push to become Communist Party Gen-
eral Secretary. Many of his rivals, including Grigory V.
Romanov and Viktor V. Grishin, were removed from the
Politburo by Mr. Gorbachev after reports of their for-
ruption were widely circulathd, presumably by the
K.G.B.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/07: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706630007-6