PO BAG 1: Churchill Archive

Showing posts with label Churchill Archive. Show all posts

7 July 2014

Soviet defector's trove of KGB secrets made public

This undated image made available by the Churchill Archive Centre shows Vasili Mitrokhin's handwritten copy of the KGB First Chief Directorate Lexicon. Original documents from one of the biggest intelligence leaks in history - a who's who of Soviet spying - were released Monday, July 7, 2014, after being held in secret for two decades. The files smuggled out of Russia in 1992 by senior KGB official Vasili Mitrokhin describe sabotage plots, booby-trapped weapons caches and armies of agents under cover in the West - the real-life inspiration for the fictional Soviet moles in TV series "The Americans."

The papers spent years hidden in a milk churn beneath a Russian dacha and read like an encyclopedia of Cold War espionage.

Original documents from one of the biggest intelligence leaks in history — a who's who of Soviet spying — were released Monday after being held in secret for two decades.