Shadowland
July 30th, 2009 | Photography | Posted by Chris Maddaloni
Former deputy chief of the KGB station at the Soviet embassy in Washington, DC, KGB Maj. Gen. Oleg Kalugin (Ret.) – reflected in a window – speaks at the Spy Museum about his 32-year long career in the intelligence trade. He oversaw Moscow’s spy network in the United States, and as head of KGB foreign counter-intelligence, he directed the KGB’s most valuable clandestine agents inside the United States, most notably the Walker case.
John Walker was a Navy communications specialist who gave the Soviets significant intelligence for almost twenty years – and was recruited simply when he walked into the Soviet embassy in DC, looking to sell a radio cipher.
Kalugin’s book has just been reissued, and Kalugin – now a U.S. citizen and a professor at the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies – spoke about one of the differences between Russian & Chinese spy services versus the U.S. “We would recruit young students, and invest in a long term view. One of my students eventually joined the State department…..they take a long view of the trade, and don’t worry about the money being spent on that investment. Here, it’s like a Starbucks culture, you have to have instant results when the CIA spends money.”