[Valin]

Excerpts, click on links below

Indira's India and the KGB
by Christopher Andrew
A charm offensive against Mrs Gandhi, agents in the media and the government, attempts to buy influence in Congress — in the second volume of the astonishing Mitrokhin archive Christopher Andrew reveals how the KGB targeted India
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,923-1782367,00.html

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How 'weak' Allende was left out in the cold by the KGB
In the second exclusive extract from The Mitrokhin Archive Volume II, the historian Christopher Andrew and KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin reveal how the Soviet Union influenced the rise and fall of the first democratically elected Marxist leader

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1786802,00.html

[traviskicks]

very interesting, especially the link on Allande.

I read a book a few years ago on the Venona files, very interesting and shows how top aids to FDR were soviet spies, including, I believe, the vice president was under some influence.

Very scary time.

[nopardons]

BTTT

[Tailgunner Joe]

Interesting tidbits:

Aside from Kashmiri civil servants around Indira Gandhi, her Left wing party colleagues were cultivated, the book claims: ‘‘Another leading figure in the Congress Forum for Socialist Action was recruited in 1971 as Agent RERO and paid about 100,000 rupees a year for what the KGB considered important political intelligence as well as acting as an agent recruiter.’’ By 1978, the book reports KGB’s ‘‘Directorate K’’, responsible for penetration of foreign intelligence/security agencies, as running over 30 agents in India, ‘‘10 of whom were Indian intelligence officers’’. - LINK

The Indian diplomat PROKHOR was recruited, probably in the early 1950s, with the help of a female swallow, condemned NEVEROVA, who presumably seduced him. The KGB was clearly pleased with the material which PROKHOR provided, which included on two occasions the embassy codebook and reciphering tables, since in 1954 it increased his monthly payments from Rs 1,000 to 4,000. Another Indian diplomat, RADAR, was recruited in 1956 also with the assistance of a swallow, who on this occasion claimed (probably falsely) to be pregnant. A third KGB swallow persuaded a cipher clerk in the Indian embassy, ARTUR, to go heavily into debt in order to make it easier to compromise him. He was recruited as an agent in 1957 after being trapped (probably into illegal currency dealing) by a KGB officer posing as a black-marketeer. As a result of these and other penetrations of the embassy, Soviet codebreakers were probably able to decrypt substantial numbers of Indian diplomatic communications. - LINK