He was a clerk with the KGB. He was never the head of it.
He worked in a mayor’s office, and worked his way up from there. There is a myth of a KGB secret agent running Russia.
Go down the your city clerk’s office. See the guy running that? Yeah…that was Putin in the KGB.
Putin was a decorated Lt. Colonel in the KGB, not a clerk and he headed the FSB which replaced the KGB.