DEFECTION HURT IRANIAN COMMUNISTS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000706950079-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 13, 2012
• Sequence Number: 79
• Publication Date: April 3, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/11/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706950079-2
ART I C u3 APP-ARM
D]r PAG!
WAS111NG70N POS
3 April 1985
JACK ANDERSON AND DALE VAN ATTA
Defection Hurt Iranian Communists
A true spy story worthy of John le Carre can
now be told. It's the tale of a rising young
KGB agent who defected to the British and
brought about the bloody extinction of Iran's
communist Tudeh Party a few months later.
The central figure in this story of intrigue and
betrayal was Vladimir Andreyevich Kuzichkin. a
37-year-old KGB major operating out of the Soviet
Embassy in Tehran. Fluent in Farsi, the language
of Iran, Kuzichkin had been recruited at 28 into
Directorate S, the most secret of all the KGB
directorates and the one responsible for espionage,
sabotage and assassination around the world.
Assigned to Tehran in 1977. Kuzichkin helped in
several communist efforts to overthrown the shah.
None succeeded. But when Ayatollah Ruhoilah
Khomeini's Islamic fundamentalists seized power
early in 1979, Tudeh leaders, with prodding from
Kuzichkin, declared their unswerving support for
the revolution.
Khomeini never really trusted the Iranian
communists, but he used their administrative
expertise in middle-level government positions, iust
as he accepted Soviet KGB advisers to help his own
intelligence service.
Despite two promotions while in Tehran,
Kuzichkin grew disenchanted with the KGB. In.
early 1982, he contacted the British and became a
double agent.
In June 1982, things got too hot for Kuzichkin.
and he defected to the British. We don't know his
whereabouts from June until October, but in the
latter month he was finally spirited to London for
extensive debriefing by British intelligence.
It was a stunning coup for the British-the first
known defection of a staff officer in Directorate S.
And like any clever defector, Kuzichkin had brought
along his "passport" to the West: two trunks full of
documents on the Soviets' total domination of the
Iranian Communist Party.
Some of Kuzichkin's documents detailed
Soviet-Tudeh plans to overthrow Khomeini-by
assassination, if necessary.
The British showed a talent for manipulative
treachery that would have made George Smiley
blush. They secretly turned the information over to
Khomeini. : '
Khomeini put the purloined KGB information to
deadly use. Late in 1982, he began a ruthless
crackdown on the Tudeh Party. In January 1983,
Radio Tehran was boasting of widespread
executions of Tudeh members, as many as 22 in a
single day.
In May 1983, Khomeini took a leaf from Stalin's
primer and produced Tudeh Party leaders to
confess publicly that they had been spies for
Moscow. The party's secretary-general, Nureddin
Kianuri, outdid himself, claiming to have spied for
the Soviets since 1945. ,,. , -. -
On May 4, Khomeini summoned Soviet.
Ambassador Vil K. Boldyrev and gave him 'a h6t of
18 embassy personnel who had been identified as
KGB agents. They were given 48 hours to leave
Iran.
The Soviets didn't have to ask who was
responsible for their diplomatic embarrassment and
the Tudeh Party's disaster. They knew it was
Kuzichkin.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/11/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706950079-2