S8 Ep51: How the KGB and the FSB attempt to subvert Western democracies with Mark Hollingsworth

[00:00:01] Due to the themes of this podcast, listener discretion is advised. Lock your doors. Close the blinds. Change your passwords. This is Secrets and Spies. Secrets and Spies is a podcast that dives into the world of espionage, terrorism, geopolitics and intrigue.

[00:00:34] This podcast is produced and hosted by Chris Carr. On today's podcast I'm joined by author and journalist Mark Hollingsworth and we discuss his excellent book Agents of Influence, which is all about how the KGB during the Cold War

[00:00:48] attempted to subvert Western democracies and how its replacement agency, the FSB, is trying to do the same thing. Just before we begin, if you're enjoying this podcast please consider supporting us directly by becoming a Patreon subscriber.

[00:01:02] All you need to do is just go to patreon.com forward slash secrets and spies and depending on which level you pick you'll get a free coaster or coffee cup and also you'll get access to our Patreon exclusive show Extra Shot, which comes out twice a month after

[00:01:16] every espresso martini. I hope you enjoy this episode. Take care. The opinions expressed by guests on Secrets and Spies do not necessarily represent those of the producers and sponsors of this podcast. Mark, welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much. It's great to have you on.

[00:01:48] So for the benefit of the audience, please can you just tell us a little bit about yourself? Well, I'm an investigative journalist, historian and author. I've been writing books and articles and making TV documentaries since 1983, 84.

[00:02:04] And I currently focus on reporting and writing about Russia and the Middle East and the intelligence services. So you must be a busy man then? Yes, there's a lot of turmoil in the world unfortunately but it's a fascinating situation and there's plenty to write about. Yeah, indeed. Indeed.

[00:02:24] Well, your new book Agents of Influence looks at how the KGB and their replacement, the FSB have been attempting to subvert Western democracies. And it's a fascinating book. My first question really is what inspired you to write this book?

[00:02:37] And for the benefit of aspiring authors out there, how did you kind of go about researching this topic? My idea for writing this book came about during the, or just after the 2016 US presidential election campaign where there were allegations of Russian intelligence interference during the 2016 US election.

[00:02:58] And then you had the investigation by Robert Mueller, the former FBI director into Russian interference during the election and disinformation and dirty tricks basically. So I thought to myself, okay, it's being alleged it happened in 2016. Did it happen before?

[00:03:17] Did the KGB and Russian intelligence attempt or interfere in previous US presidential elections and the political process and UK politics, European politics? So I soon found relatively easily, I found just through public records and reading that actually they tried to influence almost every US presidential election since 1944.

[00:03:48] And every single US presidential election, they tried to either influence it by attempting to even recruit presidential candidates or compromise them or destabilize or find a way of disrupting that US election or as I say, even recruiting or attempting to recruit presidential candidates.

[00:04:11] So it showed a sort of pattern, historical pattern of behavior by the KGB. And then I started to look at other countries and then just all the different operational techniques that they used, disinformation, recruitment of agents, fake documents, compromise.

[00:04:34] So it showed a historical pattern which then they are still using today in the war in Ukraine. Yeah, yeah, indeed, indeed. Well in your book you observe that throughout the Cold War, the KGB was used as a ruthless

[00:04:52] instrument of power rather than just a mere intelligence gathering agency, which is I think a lot of academics and historians of espionage sometimes can look at the KGB just as an intelligence service.

[00:05:05] Now you mentioned that its roots can be traced back to the Tsar's secret police force of the 16th century. Can you talk to us a little bit about this historical roots that led to the KGB?

[00:05:16] I think you can trace the historical roots of the KGB back to 17th, 16th century. Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, all the Tsars of Russia during that period and since. What's very clear is that the rulers of Russia, whether it was a communist or Tsars or dictators,

[00:05:39] used their intelligence service as a political weapon as opposed to preserving the security of the state and gathering intelligence on behalf of the state. It was used as a political secret police to serve and preserve and to damage the enemies of the political power at that time.

[00:06:03] That's the big distinction and that's what I've noticed in Russia is that they've always been used as a ruthless vehicle to suppress political dissent, harass opponents, destroy opponents as a political weapon, as opposed to investigating spies in their country, security threats in whatever form that takes.

[00:06:29] So there's a clear distinction there. And obviously the MI6 and CIA are no angels and they've been involved in all kinds of operations, notably in organizing coups. But I think that's the main difference.

[00:06:46] An interesting thing also came up in that chapter of your book, the KGB and then the FSB sort of saw the Cheka as a badge of honour for Russian spies. And the Cheka was the agency that was set up just after the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, isn't it?

[00:07:01] And that was sort of used as a tool for suppression, espionage gathering, etc. Yes, I mean the Cheka, which was set up by Lenin after the 1917 Russian revolution, and he's almost quite openly, and the head of the Cheka openly stated that it was used

[00:07:21] as a ruthless weapon to suppress counter-revolutionaries, any political dissent, any opponents of their regime. And by whatever means, lying, cheating, I mean there was no real rule of law. It was completely politicized. And so, again, it was used as a political weapon.

[00:07:45] And in effect, each period of Russian history with different rulers and dictators and czars and the communists and now Putin, basically it's like a private police force. Really the KGB has been used as a private police force, like a secret private army for whoever's been in power.

[00:08:06] And after the 1970 revolution, it was particularly brutal and bloodthirsty. And that happened, well, it's always happened, but it was particularly bad when Cheka was in power and then under Stalin. Yeah, yeah. On a slightly side note, I realized that Peter the Great visited my hometown in 1698, the

[00:08:29] hometown of Godalming. It's a bit of a sort of weird claim to fame in the town. There's a small plaque on the hotel he stayed in. So it's kind of interesting to have that kind of connection to Peter the Great and to myself.

[00:08:43] What's interesting about Peter the Great is that Putin worships him as one of his favorite czars, if you want to call him that. And Peter the Great, although he was, and the irony there is that Peter the Great was very interested and promoted European integration.

[00:09:00] And he wanted to modernize Russia and make it part of Europe almost and to model the Russian economy on Europe, which is, of course, what Putin completely opposes. But Peter the Great was also, you know, absolutely ruthlessly used his intelligence service to

[00:09:19] suppress political dissent and spend their time harassing political opponents as opposed to investigating foreign spies in Russia or securing the border, you know, in terms of real what they should have been doing in terms of as a security service.

[00:09:36] Well, after World War Two, Stalin grew fearful of growing American and British influence, posing a threat to Soviet sovereignty and its great power ambitions. Can you talk to us about how that shaped the focus of Soviet intelligence and the newly formed KGB in 1953?

[00:09:56] Well, Stalin was always paranoid and neurotic and obsessed with conspiracy theories. And he would rather than objectively assess the situation, you know, he would have his own view on what reality was. And the problem with that is that, you know, he would then always think that Russia was

[00:10:17] under attack and it was going to be invaded or there's going to be a nuclear attack by the West. Sounds familiar. And so, you know, he marshalled the KGB. I mean, the KGB was officially launched just after Stalin died.

[00:10:40] But it was his mindset after the beginning of the Cold War that influenced them. And so it became, again, it became an instrument of trying to destabilize and damage the West as opposed to just gathering intelligence for the benefit of Russia.

[00:11:03] And so they had a preconceived view that the West was going to invade. And obviously you can understand it to some extent in the history of Russia, constantly being invaded, whether it was Napoleon or Hitler.

[00:11:16] And Russia has always had this sort of threat or always feeling that they're being under threat. So that colored their intelligence operations. And it was all about, so then it was all about trying to destabilize and diminish and destroy

[00:11:34] the West through what they call active measures, which is primarily what the book is about. Yeah. Yeah. And you mentioned that these sort of active measures and covert operations are kind of the chief weapon of Soviet foreign policy during the Cold War, even though officials

[00:11:51] denied that the country spies at all. Yeah. I mean, officially, I think Khrushchev, when he was president of the Soviet Union, even denied that they hadn't spies and they were just gathering information. But the evidence is overwhelming in the sense of, you know, the forgery of documents, putting

[00:12:11] out disinformation, hiring, recruiting of agents, secretly funding political organizations, honey trapping and whatever. Well, whatever that, you know, they had no limits on their covert operations, whatever works they would do. And there was no restraint. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:12:32] I find it interesting, actually, because we talk a lot about imperialism today and obviously Western imperialism. And there are some sort of academics and figures on, shall we say, the left or the far left

[00:12:42] who sort of believe that Soviet Russia wasn't really an imperial power, but it definitely behaved like one, didn't it? Well, I think there's some substance to that in the sense that obviously it was an imperial

[00:12:54] power in that immediately after Second World War, you know, they annexed and effectively had their empire in Eastern Europe, you know, controlling Romania, Czechoslovakia, East Germany. And so in that sense, but I think my view is that the KGB was used really to attack the

[00:13:17] West and try and destabilize and destroy the West as a sort of defense mechanism because they were, you know, in their paranoia and conspiracy minded theories. And, you know, based on history, they always felt the West was going to take them over.

[00:13:36] So I think in terms of I have some sympathy with that view in some. So I never really thought that the Soviet Union was an imperialistic power. I mean, you could argue, you know, they invaded Afghanistan in the 80s.

[00:13:53] But their interventions in Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, in a sense was preserving their power base rather than trying to expand as an imperial power. Okay. Thank you for that. You mentioned in your book that in Soviet Russia, KGB officers were regarded and portrayed as sort of heroic figures.

[00:14:16] And as a result, many of them grew to have access to privileges that ordinary citizens could only dream of. Can you sort of just talk to us a bit about this and how it influenced, should we say, the attitude of KGB officers?

[00:14:29] So in Russia and the Soviet Union, KGB officers and intelligence officers were regarded as heroic figures and somehow superior citizens. And it was massively encouraged that this was a noble, honorable position, job to have.

[00:14:49] And so if you look at Soviet films and novels and books and artwork, certainly really from the, I would say maybe even going back to the 1930s, it promotes this image of a spy, Russian spy being heroic and patriotic and part of the elite.

[00:15:12] Whereas in the UK and even maybe in the US, espionage has always been regarded as a bit grubby and there's lots of material about Harold Macmillan when he was prime minister thinking that being a spy was rather vulgar and middle class. You shouldn't be involved in it.

[00:15:32] It was always seen as obviously an important role. But Putin himself joined the KGB because of seeing these films and reading books about it. So if you're a KGB officer in Russia, you did have an elevated status. Financially, you were looked after better. You had a better life.

[00:15:55] Whereas I think in the UK, it's always espionage and being in the MI5 or MI6 or CIA, it's always been a little bit thinking, well, that's a rather grubby profession, as they say. Yeah, yeah.

[00:16:10] Certainly away from, should we say, the James Bond image, if you go to like John Le Carre, he certainly doesn't represent espionage as a particularly positive or glamorous profession. Yeah. And if you look at Soviet films and books, they, in contrast with James Bond films, they

[00:16:32] don't really go in for showing KGB officers trying to seduce women or having lots of gadgets. It's much more their role as a sort of warrior on behalf of Russia to attack the West and using that sort of rat-like cunning and brain and intelligence rather than having access

[00:16:53] to lots of guns and gadgets and being in gambling casinos. It was a much more serious-minded profession, being in the KGB. And so therefore, and it was elevated to, if you were in Russian society or Soviet society, you were regarded as a more superior being almost. Interesting.

[00:17:19] Well, let's look at some of the methods the KGB used against their main enemy, America and Britain. Can you talk to us about what is an agent of influence and how they have been used by the Russian intelligence services?

[00:17:33] So an agent of influence is not necessarily a spy or even an intelligence officer. They are individuals who are recruited as agents, and they could be academics, journalists, politicians, officials, secretaries, anyone who was in an influential position.

[00:17:51] They could either gather intelligence or promote things that the KGB wanted to be promoted or to be involved. But they were, and they may well have been paid, but they were never actually officially a spy.

[00:18:05] They were using their professional status or their political position to be agents of influence. So they were an agent of the KGB, and they used their position to influence political events or whatever the KGB's agenda was at the time.

[00:18:21] And so in my book, I describe three examples of this. And one was an Austrian Marxist who was a foreign correspondent, moved to London, and he was recruited by Kim Philby to work for what was then the NKVD, which was the predecessors of the KGB.

[00:18:43] And his name was Hans-Peter Smolka. And he was very much an agent of influence because he was head of the Russian desk of the Ministry of Information during the Second World War. And then I also referred to Robert Maxwell, former owner of the Mirror newspapers, who

[00:19:00] was also recruited as a sort of basically an agent for the KGB. And then finally, a Russian, again, foreign correspondent called Victor Louis, who was used by the KGB to promote, you know, to write stories on their behalf or attack opponents

[00:19:22] of the Soviet Union through his privileged status as a newspaper correspondent. And then they would recruit agents and secretaries in the House of Commons. And that's what agents of influence are really. Fantastic. And the Smolka story in particular is really interesting because of his connection to the

[00:19:40] film The Third Man, and he may or may not have influenced the plot of that film. Well, there's certainly evidence. There's no doubt that Graham Greene, who wrote the screenplay for The Third Man, that he

[00:19:52] spent a lot of time with Hans-Peter Smolka in the late 1940s when he went to Vienna. And they spent a lot of time together. And there's no doubt that at least some of the script was influenced by Smolka.

[00:20:06] And if you watch the movie, there are actually even one or two references to Smolka in the film as a way of thanking him for his influence. And what's interesting is that, as I recall, in the original script, there was a scene

[00:20:26] which was seen as a sort of anti-Soviet. And Smolka managed to persuade Greene to remove that from the movie. So Smolka is a very interesting character and played a very important role, very much

[00:20:40] as an agent of influence, working with Philby and Burgess during the late 30s and throughout the Second World War. Neil McEvoy Excellent. And also, you mentioned earlier Robert Maxwell. I still remember as a kid seeing the news of him dying mysteriously on his ship.

[00:20:59] And obviously, there's been a lot of speculation he may have worked for Mossad. And obviously, now you've mentioned the KGB and stuff. I mean, I'm assuming there's no Russian connection to his death that we know of, is there? Richard Pinchot There's no Russian connection that we know of.

[00:21:13] Obviously, many people are still very skeptical about whether he committed suicide or whether it was an accident. There's several former KGB directors who are on the record saying that Maxwell was a KGB agent and was useful to them.

[00:21:30] But obviously, these terms, agent, you have to be quite careful. I mean, because it's not as if he was a full-time intelligence officer. Obviously, he was not. But he was used by them to either promote Soviet foreign policy or they would pay him

[00:21:48] a huge amount of money to publish very sycophantic biographies of communist leaders in East Europe and basically help them in any way he could as a major publisher. Neil McEvoy Yeah. And I'm assuming with a few agents of influence, they can sort of cross over into that term

[00:22:07] that we call useful idiot, where they don't necessarily know that they're being used to sort of push an ideology or information. Richard Pinchot Yeah. And MPs are a good example of that. But throughout the Cold War, several Labour MPs were in touch and had meetings with officials

[00:22:23] from the embassy, the Soviet Embassy in London. And they became in varying degrees, as you say, useful idiots. They'd come from the background of the 1930s, where the very left wing and socialist supported the Soviet Union as much because they were so opposed to fascism and the Nazis.

[00:22:49] And then during the Cold War, there were some Labour MPs who I referred to, who remained supportive of communism and Soviet Union to varying degrees. And they couldn't bring themselves to admit the brutality and the oppression of the communist regime.

[00:23:08] And they hung in there hoping that the aspirations of communism would finally come through and it'll be worth supporting and overlooking the brutalities and the oppression. So they would provide information, these MPs, to KGB officers or undercover diplomats.

[00:23:31] It wouldn't necessarily be that sensitive, but it would be information that they could not get, mainly on sort of political inside track on what was happening. And so there's no question that several Labour MPs during the Cold War were KGB agents of

[00:23:48] influence, but you just have to be a bit careful in terms of how you categorize them. Yeah, yeah, because it'd be very easy to sort of paint them as like sleeper agents or somebody actually trying to destabilize the UK when that most likely was not the case.

[00:24:04] Yeah, I mean, just because a Labour MP, the classic example is Michael Foot, the former leader of the Labour Party. There were allegations that he was a KGB agent. But the reality is that he was not.

[00:24:17] I mean, he may have met a KGB officer in the UK because they saw his... He used to be editor of the Tribune newspaper, a left-wing newspaper, and he may have met them. But big deal.

[00:24:34] I mean, I know for a fact that Denis Healey, who was hardly a left-wing MP, Denis Healey, when he was Shadow Foreign Secretary, he met KGB officers and he knew that they were KGB officers.

[00:24:46] But that doesn't make Denis Healey an agent of influence, doesn't make him a traitor or an agent. So I think you have to be very careful and forensic on how you categorize agents of influence.

[00:24:58] Yeah, and there's a funny irony in all that too, because I think in your book and certainly in Oleg Gordievsky's biography, he mentions how the KGB ironically didn't really like far left or left-wing politicians.

[00:25:11] They found them a little bit unreliable or figures on the left and they actually slightly preferred to the people on the right. Yeah, I mean, that's what's interesting is that the KGB thought that left-wing Labour MPs or any really particularly right-wing, particularly like social democrats or right-wing

[00:25:28] Labour MPs who regard themselves as socialist, but the KGB saw them as kind of duplicitous and not really beholders of the faith, of the socialist faith. So they actually preferred dealing with conservatives in a way because they knew what they were dealing with.

[00:25:44] It was conservative with a small C, it was clear cut. But with Labour MPs, there's sort of ambiguity in terms of, you know, are they really true followers of the communist faith or it was slightly sort of betraying communism by being

[00:26:01] social democratic or, you know, a Neil Kinnock type socialist. So they preferred dealing with conservatives because it was more clear cut. And you have to remember that the Soviet Union, even under communism, is a very conservative state.

[00:26:20] And even under communism, in a sense, it's one level, it's a conservative with a small C society. You know, it's very organised, restricted. They don't like change, you know. And so that's what in some ways why they prefer dealing with conservative politicians in the UK.

[00:26:43] They kind of see a similar ground. Yeah, yeah. I think I remember actually a comment that was in your book, but the KGB frowned upon extramarital affairs and things like that. They were very, not that I'm saying that's a good thing, but they were very conservative

[00:26:57] on issues like that and preferred their officers to be married and so on. So yeah, I can see that. You could argue Putin is a very conservative person. You know, he's definitely not a Marxist or a communist and there probably never was.

[00:27:15] But, you know, in a sense he's a conservative nationalist authoritarian. And so in that sense, they quite like dealing with, you know, the conservatives in the West because they felt, you know, that they knew what they were dealing with and they sort

[00:27:32] of shared to some extent their values. That's the irony of it really. Indeed. Well, thank you for talking about agents of influence. And you talked to us about the KGB's use of fake news and why they found it so effective.

[00:27:47] So the KGB had a clear policy that in order to destabilize the West, disrupt them, damage the West in any way they can, they thought that it was more effective to flood the West with fake news and disinformation.

[00:28:06] It's mainly related to fake documents, forging documents, spreading false information, recruiting agents. But the main thing was, which I found in my research for the book, was they had a whole unit inside the KGB where they were literally faking documents on an industrial scale.

[00:28:26] And they had a whole unit devoted to this task. And this was during the Cold War where it was a bit more difficult to check whether they were fake documents or now we have artificial intelligence. So it's a different challenge. But the basic policy was twofold.

[00:28:46] Forge documents and release them either anonymously or to targeted politicians or journalists or diplomats. And secondly, just spread disinformation, mainly how horrific the West was and how the CIA were evil and the Western politicians were corrupt or racist.

[00:29:10] And they didn't care if even like 80 or 90 percent of this fake news was regarded as a hoax because that's still, if you're talking about thousands or hundreds of thousands of forged documents and fake stories every year, if you just have like 10 percent or 5 percent

[00:29:32] being accepted, they were happy with that because then that would have an impact. And there's evidence that in some countries these fake news were as accepted because what they did was that they focused mainly on third world countries who had a strong Communist Party.

[00:29:52] So they were particularly interested in spreading fake news through India. So they would start with a relatively, you know, a country, not the US or the UK or Western Europe. They would plant a fake story about, you know, CIA planning a coup or something in a country

[00:30:12] like India or in Africa with a left wing newspaper and then they would let it be published and then they would wait a few months and then they would call, they would telephone The

[00:30:25] Washington Post or The London Times or Le Monde in Paris and say, you know, the CIA is planning this coup. And if the journalist said, well, how do you know? And they said, well, we're just, it's been published already.

[00:30:36] You know, look at this obscure newspaper in Ghana or something. And so the mainstream just would then take it more seriously. So that was a particular operation that they employed by planting fake news in obscure

[00:30:52] journals and then sort of laundering it almost to try and get it out into the mainstream Western press. One other thing I found very, very interesting was that Sun Tzu's The Art of War apparently

[00:31:05] was the favourite author and book of the Russian intelligence officers and the best way to win a war was through influence operations. I don't know if there's anything you can sort of talk to us a bit about that.

[00:31:16] Well, so the strategy of the KGB and to this day, the FSB is that they believed that an information war, in other words, spreading disinformation, recruiting agents, destabilisation through the intelligence services was much more, was actually as important, if not more important and effective than a military operation.

[00:31:42] And Putin himself has said publicly that what he found when he was a KGB officer in East Germany was that their operations in some ways were more effective and more important than a military operation.

[00:31:59] Because if you have an operation where you're using disinformation and fake news, it has the effect of destabilising the opposition militarily and thinking that they're losing. It can bolster the support of the morality of your troops, where you're thinking that you win the war even if you're not.

[00:32:22] And also it helps to keep the support of ordinary Russian citizens back home. And I think that's happening today in the war in Ukraine, where all the fake information, all the false stories and documents and fake news is having a military impact.

[00:32:43] And so the famous book, the Art of War by Sun Tzu, that was really like a Bible for the KGB because he argued that military operation, you know, that deceiving the enemy was as important as having the best weapons and the best troops and the best generals. Yeah.

[00:33:05] And I was fascinated when you mentioned in some figures that apparently 75% of KGB efforts were devoted to ideological subversion or active measures, whilst then 25% of their efforts are actually directed towards traditional espionage. I found that fascinating. Yeah.

[00:33:21] I mean, that's really the essence of the book is that it shows that their priority and focus was to destabilize and destroy the West rather than do what most security services do, which is checking, monitoring the security of the state by monitoring foreign spies inside Russia

[00:33:42] or any threats to the nation's security. They were more interested in attacking the West and destabilizing on a political level. It was almost like an ideological war against the West rather than being an intelligence gathering operation.

[00:34:00] And the main problem really was that they would have preconceived views of what the West was doing and then trying to find the intelligence to prove this preconceived conspiracy theory. And the main example of that was in the early 1980s, where the KGB launched an operation

[00:34:21] called Operation Ryan, where the Soviet Union believed that the West was going to launch nuclear war and that Reagan and Thatcher was literally going to launch nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union. So they sent KGB officers out to try and find evidence that this was the case.

[00:34:37] And there wasn't any. And often they would just make it up. But again, it was a sort of preconceived notion of reality. And then you try and find the facts to prove your preconceived notion. That happens in all aspects of human life.

[00:34:53] We often think, oh, we think this is true. Let's go and try and find out to prove a preconceived view. And that happens everywhere, obviously. But it was very apparent during the Cold War when they did this. Yeah.

[00:35:07] It sounds a bit like our man in Havana who would talk about Graham Greene. Yeah. And it's a human trait sometimes, not just for the KGB, is that human beings often have a preconceived view of what the truth is.

[00:35:26] And then they try and fit the facts to prove this view rather than go out with an open mind and try and find out what the situation is and be open minded and objective about it. And then sometimes the facts don't always get your theories.

[00:35:46] And that's what they should have been doing. But the KGB was under such strict control by the Kremlin and they were given orders and they would follow those orders regardless. Yeah. And I think it may have been John Cipher you mentioned in your book.

[00:36:07] It was either John Cipher or a CIA officer mentioned that the KGB didn't really have much of an analytical department whilst the CIA, I think half of it's devoted to analysis of intelligence. Exactly.

[00:36:22] I think the KGB were very good technically and they were very good at recruiting agents, surveillance, honey trapping. The operational side, I think they were very good. Where they were bad is analyzing that intelligence.

[00:36:36] So they would gather it in whatever form and then they would send it back to Moscow. But then the problem was that because the Russian state was so ideological and so it was based on, you know, the intelligence needed to meet the ideological communist view of the world.

[00:37:03] And so it would get distorted or it would get, you know, Stalin certainly destroyed, you know, inconvenient truths. And I think that happened all the way through and still does today in Russia. And obviously it's happened in the West. I think we have to be realistic.

[00:37:20] The obvious example being the Iraq war when Blair was prime minister and they fitted the intelligence to make the political impetus of invading Iraq. So we're not, the West is not blameless or innocent in all this.

[00:37:39] But I think during the Cold War it was such a rigid structure of the KGB, certainly the Kremlin not being very good at assessing and analyzing the intelligence coming in. He certainly, with the war in Ukraine, just going into the present, there's certainly

[00:38:00] with I think Putin believed that this war would be winnable in a very fast manner. I think some people have sort of jokingly said he believed it to be a three day war. And it does suggest that the Russian intelligence picture of potential victory in Ukraine was

[00:38:16] somewhat distorted. Yeah, I think that again, you know, Putin uses the FSB as his sort of private police force, private army really. And again, it's used as a political weapon. And the problem with that is that, you know, the senior members of the FSB will tell Putin

[00:38:39] what he wants to hear as opposed to what the truth is. And that's the problem. And that's why he got it so wrong about the invasion, how long it would take to succeed in Ukraine.

[00:38:53] Because he was told by the FSB and his ministers and officials, don't worry, it's not going to, you know, take a few days. But that's a classic view, a classic example of intelligence being manipulated or distorted to keep your political master happy.

[00:39:15] And that had definitely happened during the Cold War. And it's continued under Putin. Indeed, indeed. Well, let's take a quick break and then we'll be right back. Can you talk to us about the KGB use of Kompromat?

[00:39:49] So the KGB had a very organised operational strategy of gathering Kompromat, which mostly involved having agents to seduce and compromise Western diplomats or politicians or officials. So they actually had a training operational centres in Russia and Eastern Europe where

[00:40:18] they would train women, attractive women, and actually some men as well, to go move to the West and target key politicians or officials, secretaries, and have a relationship with them, particularly if they were married.

[00:40:41] And the whole purpose was to sleep with them and their relationship, you know, usually in a hotel room would be secretly filmed and recorded and photographed. And so they will be compromised. Hence the word Kompromat.

[00:40:57] The KGB would then use those photographs or recordings or information to blackmail the Western diplomat or spy or politician, wherever it is, to either become a spy for the Soviet Union and the KGB.

[00:41:15] Or, you know, there's a chapter in my book about a conservative MP called Anthony Courtney. And he was honey-trapped. He was a conservative MP that went to Moscow a lot, and he was very critical of the Soviet Union, very outspoken in his criticism.

[00:41:36] So they honey-trapped him in a hotel in Moscow, and he was married and they had photographs of him. But what they did was kind of interesting is that they did not immediately try to blackmail him and say, we've got photographs of you having an adulterous affair.

[00:41:53] If you don't work for us, we're going to release it to your wife or to your family. They kept the material. And then when he became more publicly critical of the Soviet Union and the KGB, they then

[00:42:06] anonymously released the material, the photographs, to Ted Downing Street, to MPs, to his family, to destroy him. I won't go into all the details. There's a whole chapter in the book about this MP. And the KGB destroyed the career of this conservative MP.

[00:42:28] And so they'll either use it to blackmail individuals to work for the KGB as a spy or agent, or literally just to destroy their career. So a compromise in terms of, you know, using attractive women. They hired men as well.

[00:42:48] East Germany, Stasi, for example, had a whole training camp where they would have male agents who were trained how to seduce lonely secretaries at NATO or who were secretaries to the presidents of Western countries to then have a relationship with them.

[00:43:14] And then those secretaries, you know, had all the access to all the sensitive documents would then leak documents to their boyfriend or whoever they, you know, their lover. And so it was a very important, very important operational tool and compromise.

[00:43:31] You can argue Putin became president because of a compromise operation. Yeah, that's very interesting. I won't go into all the detail. But when Putin was head of the FSB, there was a prosecutor general who was investigating

[00:43:45] corruption when Yeltsin was president and Putin was head of the KGB, FSB at the time. This is 1999. And the prosecutor general was named Moskuratov. And he was getting too close to finding evidence of corruption in the Kremlin in 1999.

[00:44:06] Putin was head of the FSB, so they did a honey trap operation against him. And they launched an investigation and they really went after him and smeared him through Russian TV. And the point is, he was this particular individual, Moskuratov, who was the prosecutor general

[00:44:27] was very close to a political rival of Putin. So his career was destroyed and damaged, Moskuratov. And Yeltsin was very grateful because the investigation was into corruption in Yeltsin's inner circle. That helped, made Putin as sort of the successor to Yeltsin in 1999, anointed as his preferred successor.

[00:44:51] And then when they had the election in Russia in early 2000 or late 1999, Putin's rival, who was very close to Moskuratov, was damaged by this. So you can argue very, I think very clearly that Putin only became president of Russia because of a honey trap operation.

[00:45:12] And that's why I start the book with a description of this Compromat operation that Putin was directly involved in. And that led to Putin becoming president of Russia. Yeah, powerful stuff when it's used, isn't it?

[00:45:26] I think the main point about Compromat is it's not just about blackmailing people, but it's used as a weapon to destroy people in different ways. It's not just saying, oh, here's the photographs, you know.

[00:45:45] So and they were very clever in keeping the files, keeping the evidence, and then using them at the right time. Yeah, yeah, indeed. So in 1991, the KGB was officially disbanded, which many assumed meant the end of the tactics used during the Cold War.

[00:46:05] But did things really change in the FSB, which was created as its replacement? When the FSB was created in 1991 under Yeltsin, after the end of the Cold War, people sort of assumed that the bad old days were gone. That Russia would become a more Western liberal type democracy.

[00:46:25] And of course, the truth is that never happened. The FSB, operationally, the FSB continued their methods. Nothing changed. I think the only difference is that they weren't as politically powerful. They weren't used as much in terms of operations. They did the same.

[00:46:51] The only difference is they changed the name and the technology was different. But I think, I don't think, I mean, I think the truth is they didn't have as much political influence or power. But operationally, they carried on exactly the same in the 1990s. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:47:14] Can you talk to us about Russian espionage efforts in the UK? And if much has really sort of changed since the days of the Cold War? Well, the Russian intelligence and East European intelligence regarded as UK as the second

[00:47:27] most important focus for intelligence gathering, you know, disinformation, destabilization. And so, you know, they were very active here and in the UK. And that's where they focused on MPs. They would target the secretaries of MPs, say an MP was chairman of the House of Commons

[00:47:50] Foreign Affairs Select Committee. They would focus on the secretary and try and seduce her or persuade her, try and recruit her because the secretary had access to all the documents and information. And so in the UK, it was done in a slightly more subtle way.

[00:48:12] I mean, they had KGB officers would go to drinks parties. And even though, you know, they're undercover as a diplomat and people wouldn't necessarily know that they were KGB, they thought they were, you know, a foreign correspondent or

[00:48:26] a diplomat, you know, and obviously the Soviet newspapers TASS and Pravda, you know, they on the surface, they were journalists. But in reality, they were working for the KGB in London.

[00:48:39] And I think they it was a bit more subtle in the UK in terms of recruiting of MPs. And they were quite clever in the way they did that. And so I think whether they how much impact they had, I mean, they certainly destroyed

[00:48:57] the career of one particular Conservative MP. And they certainly tried to influence elections in the UK at every turn. And they saw left-wing Labour MPs as their way of doing that. But I'm not sure to what extent they were successful.

[00:49:17] I mean, the main thing was to create some kind of chaos and disruption on the British political scene. And obviously, historically, they recruited lots of agents. So they were successful like Philby, Burgess, Maclean. So they were successful in that way. And historically, I think they're probably more effective.

[00:49:41] But you know, they're very active. Yeah, yeah, indeed. One interesting couple of interesting things that have popped up in your book that are in the news at the moment. So you've got Seacox Heath, which is this sort of house in Tunbridge Wells.

[00:49:58] And it was just recently in the news because the building has diplomatic status. And I believe that's being withdrawn now. And there's a few expulsions sort of going on currently. I don't know if you have any sort of thoughts on Seacox House.

[00:50:08] Yes, I mean, what's interesting in London is how there are several properties that the KGB use either as safe houses or where the KGB officers lived pretending to be diplomats. And they use these as a place for where Western intelligence could cross the line.

[00:50:32] There's a house on Holland Park in London where the KGB officers have lived. And there was a fairly famous former MI5 officer called Bettany. And he wanted to cross the line and become an agent for the KGB in the 1980s.

[00:50:50] And he physically went to this house in Holland Park and put through the letterbox some secret documents. And the KGB thought this was a plant. They didn't take it seriously. It's a classic example of KGB conspiracy mind-ninedness. But properties in the UK are obviously very important.

[00:51:12] And the importance of the house in Sussex called Seacox Heath, which is a huge country estate near Tunbridge Wells, is that it no longer has diplomatic status so that whatever those individuals, the KGB officers who are based there, if they do something illegal, they can't plead diplomatic immunity.

[00:51:34] But it was used for many years as a kind of a base for training of agents in the UK. This huge Victorian mansion with large gardens and now that its diplomatic status has been removed so it's vulnerable. Yeah, yeah. I mean, do you think that means the Russian...

[00:51:58] Because that property has been owned by the Russian government since I think 1946. So it has a lot of history here. Yeah. And it's not been well known until recently. I write about it in my book and I've written a separate article about the property.

[00:52:13] And it's an amazing Gothic almost 19th century, originally 19th century house. And local people down there I think realized, knew what was going on, but they could do nothing about it. But I think there are other properties, certainly in London, in Kensington, Chelsea, South Kensington,

[00:52:39] Holland Park particularly is where they like having properties. And it's more extensive than people realize. And if the British government is going to freeze the assets of the Russian state, they should look at property because that's where it's going to be easier to identify these

[00:53:06] properties which they could seize and sell. And that's a huge amount of property which has been used by KGB agents in London. Yeah. Do you think Seacox Heath could become a luxury hotel in the near future? Definitely.

[00:53:20] If you go onto Google and you type in Seacox Heath, you look at the photographs, it's got tennis courts, huge gardens. Amazing. It's an amazing, stunning property, very large. And if they decide to confiscate this property and take ownership of it, which legally may

[00:53:41] be a bit contentious, they could sell it easily for, I don't know, 20 million. So they could certainly convert it. That money could go to the Ukraine. You know, at the end of the day, it's an illegal war.

[00:53:59] So that would be the justification for confiscating that state, that property. Yeah, yeah, indeed, indeed. Well, what have you learned about Russia's use of disinformation today? That's possibly quite a wide question. Well, the mindset is the same. So there's no restraint on disinformation.

[00:54:18] They are told that the West is the enemy and it could invade Russia at any moment, and the West is morally decadent and corrupt and hates Russia. So they're told, these are the messages they're told. And so there's no limit.

[00:54:39] Point about disinformation is that they are given a license, the Russian agents are given a license to spread as much disinformation as possible. There's no limits. They can lie as much as they like, fake and forge.

[00:54:52] But now it's at a more frightening, much larger scale now, obviously because of the technology and obviously with artificial intelligence and hacking and people using social media, the capacity and potential for disinformation is much bigger than it used to be.

[00:55:11] The old days during the Cold War, it was restricted to telephoning journalists or putting out fake leaflets or forging documents and leaking material that way. Now you've got the whole information highway where you can really release vast amounts of data.

[00:55:36] And so I think it's much more important, pervasive, expensive now, not just in the Ukraine war, but in daily lives. And the Russians are very, very good at it. They're very good on the technological side of things. And to them, there's no limit.

[00:55:56] There's no, they really don't care. Doesn't matter how, you trace this back to Lenin and Stalin and Trotsky. They're quite openly talked about lying and cheating and deception as a weapon against the West and preserving the Soviet Union, saving the communist regime.

[00:56:24] I'm pretty sure that Putin believes the same thing. I mean, the old cliche, you know, the ends justify the means. Yeah, I think that's a good example of where we live today. Yeah, I think there was some recent reporting that I read that estimated that Russia spends

[00:56:42] about $1 billion per year on disinformation efforts directed at the West. And apparently China spends $6 billion. I don't know if you've seen anything about the scale and sort of expense that they pay to do these things.

[00:56:59] Well, during the Cold War, there was a CIA report detailing how much money the Soviet Union was spending on what they call active measures, which is just a term for disinformation and fake news and recruiting of agents.

[00:57:17] And from memory, that was hundreds of millions a year in the 1970s and 80s, which is a huge amount of money. And so that tells you how important it is for them. And, you know, a lot of it's very crude.

[00:57:34] But again, they have this view that, you know, you launch this operation of disinformation on a huge scale. Some of it's going to stick, some of it's going to work. And even if 10% or 5% is effective, then that's good enough.

[00:57:52] They don't care that most recipients of this fake news will understand it to be fake news. But, you know, some people are gullible or don't check or accept it. And I think we're living in a period where with artificial intelligence particularly,

[00:58:13] it's getting worse and it's a huge, huge issue. So I hope governments, you know, have units, I think they do, to monitor it and try and counter it in some way. But it's like a monster you can't really control.

[00:58:31] I often think it's as much about education and educating people, even at school, about there's a very simple thing about don't accept at first glance what you read or what comes through your computer or a link or an email or a website.

[00:58:49] Just don't accept it at face value. And unfortunately, human beings, particularly if they have a preconceived view of the world, they will just, you know, it reinforces their worldview, even if it's a crazy, you know, source. Definitely, definitely.

[00:59:04] And I think, yeah, I think that should be a priority in education today. I don't know whether I think I have heard in some schools, they do make an effort to talk about that.

[00:59:14] But I don't know across the board on a national level whether there is enough being done on that. So, you know, I think as I was saying to you off air, you know, I was a victim myself of

[00:59:26] falling for conspiracy theories for many years in the early 2000s. And what I found quite interesting is some of those conspiracy theories do have their roots in Russian misinformation. And obviously, more contemporary conspiracy theories definitely do have roots in Russian misinformation efforts.

[00:59:45] And there are certain figures who appear on Russia Today or various other Russian-based platforms who spread sort of lies about the West and try and I think their goal is just to make people sort of doubt their governments, doubt the institutions in the country, and

[01:00:04] sort of create some sort of infighting. And I was fascinated that the Information Research Agency, I believe it is, have literally offices of people and teams of people within those offices who sort of study different sort

[01:00:17] of cities and towns and countries and try and understand what the kind of, shall we say, the touch points are that can create debates online that could go in Russia's favour. I found that really fascinating. Yes.

[01:00:29] I mean, I think also, I don't want to get into sort of cultural stereotypes, but I think there's some evidence that Russians and East Europeans are more prone to conspiracy theories than Western people. Although I think it's hard to gauge.

[01:00:45] And that's based on a fear of, you know, constantly feeling that they're under threat. For me, look, and maybe that's based on a historical track record of them being invaded and always feeling insecure. And so when you're feeling insecure, you latch onto conspiracies and conspiracy theories.

[01:01:06] And so that, certainly in terms of people who believe in, Western people who believe in conspiracy theories, you know, it gives them a sense of certainty. I think it's a very complicated psychological mindset. And people who believe in conspiracy theories, it's not just because they're being influenced

[01:01:26] by Russia. It could be, I think, something to do with their own either personalities or the situation in their life. It gives a certain certainty, explains the world in a simplistic way. It gives you certainty. And it's also exciting. You know, conspiracy theories are exciting and it's fun.

[01:01:46] And, you know, it's much more entertaining and interesting than the boring reality. And the boring reality of human beings and the world is it's complicated and it's difficult and it's subtle and it's not clear cut.

[01:02:05] And human beings and the world is, you know, is a complicated place and always will be, always has been. But conspiracy theories gives you a certain sense of security. Historical research is that there was this constant propensity to have a view of the world.

[01:02:21] I mean, the West has done this as well, to some extent, Western people. You have a view of the world and then you go out there and you try and find a website that will reinforce your preconceived view of the world.

[01:02:33] And it doesn't matter if that website is some lunatic, crazy, you know, the guy in America, the obvious example is Alex Jones, a very good example of that. And he's a conspiracy theorist with a grotesque conspiracy that the shooting of the school

[01:02:54] children was a false flag and fake news. But people, you know, believed it. I mean, I think in his case, it was a money making operation. So if you more conspiracy theories you put out there, you get more hits. And I think it was a money making thing.

[01:03:11] But, you know, he had a lot of success. He had a lot of people believing him. And in America now, a lot of people support Trump, our conspiracy theorists. So it's not just because they're fed by Russian intelligence, but I think with technology, that's definitely an influence.

[01:03:31] Yeah, yeah, indeed. With Alex Jones, I read he was making something like $3 million a month through his online efforts, which is, I wish I was making $3 million a month through my efforts. But unfortunately, you're restricted by the truth and trying to be accurate. Exactly.

[01:03:48] Open minded and not as sexy or commercial. No, sadly not. Yeah, I think that's a problem. And it's getting worse because of technology. You know, and people will go onto websites, reinforce their view of the world.

[01:04:09] Whereas before the internet, you had old fashioned books and newspapers and, you know, human beings. Yeah, yeah. You'd have to go to a library. Yeah, yeah, indeed, indeed. Well, let's quickly move to Vladimir Putin.

[01:04:24] So it looks like you can take the man up the KGB, but you can't take the KGB out of the man. Can you talk to us a bit about sort of how Putin's actions and goals appear to come from a kind of KGB view of the world?

[01:04:37] So Putin was a KGB officer throughout the 1980s. He started in St. Petersburg, where he was a pretty relatively junior officer, you know, harassing dissidents in the early 1980s in the Soviet Union. And, you know, I don't think he was that operational.

[01:04:57] I think it was more of a desk officer. He was then transferred to Dresden in East Germany, where he was much more operational, more senior, more involved in, again, this is, I haven't studied this. In great detail, but getting harassing, putting Western people under surveillance.

[01:05:18] And he was a senior KGB officer. But the importance of his time in the KGB is what happened at the end of the Cold War, where he first hand witnessed in East Germany, the end of the Cold War, the Berlin Wall coming

[01:05:33] down and Western people literally taking over East German cities like Dresden, where he was. And he famously made a phone call to Moscow and said, you know, I'm in the KGB office in Dresden. We're under attack. We need support. We need help.

[01:05:53] Otherwise, we're going to be taken over. And there was silence. And that's been a huge, that was a huge influence on Putin because he basically thought that the old regime was weak and not supportive of the KGB. And, you know, the West had triumphed as a massive influence.

[01:06:18] He spent most of his final days in the KGB officer destroying and burning and shredding documents. So for him, it was a huge influence. I think what it did, as I said earlier, is a famous quote that he said, a spy can do

[01:06:35] more to influence events than any politician. I'm paraphrasing, but that's an on the record quote from Putin. And so the importance and the preeminence of the FSB when Putin became president of Russia is that, you know, he regarded based on his own experience, the KGB being incredibly important.

[01:07:00] And they are effectively his own private army and massively politicized. And they obviously were during the Cold War, but I think it would become more politicized. So he uses them as his own private political army and police force. Indeed.

[01:07:16] So many years leading up to the invasion of Ukraine, many in the West regarded concerns about an increasingly aggressive Russia and its intelligence services as outdated Cold War paranoia. Do you believe we should be concerned about Russian intelligence activities targeting the West today?

[01:07:35] I think with technology, Russian intelligence operations are even more active in the West than they used to be. And obviously with the Ukraine war, but I think under Putin, they've become much more active. It's not outdated.

[01:07:50] It's not old school or out of date to say that they are just as preeminent. There's been lots of cases of FSB and Russian intelligence operations in the West. The obvious examples being the murder of Litvinenko, the attempted assassination of Skripal,

[01:08:09] the former Russian intelligence officer in the UK, and efforts to influence British politics. And there's been lots of cases. And even today, there's still a case that it will come up for trial of some Bulgaria intelligence agents in London who were charged with espionage.

[01:08:34] And the evidence is that they were recruited and tasked by the FSB. And that's a historical, well-known trick, trick, an operation by the KGB and now the FSB of using East European Bulgarians, Czech Republic, Romanians, Albanians, whatever, as fronts to do UK espionage.

[01:08:59] These Bulgarian individuals have been charged and it's going to come up for trial. And there've been lots of other cases of Russian intelligence. So I think it's very much a current, live issue. And it's going to get worse rather than better.

[01:09:18] There's been some recent open cases that have been investigated about potential sabotage efforts in the UK and across Europe. There's certainly some fears about that. Yeah, I think with technology particularly, I think they're probably even more active now than during the Cold War.

[01:09:34] So people who say, oh, it's sort of spying is out of date. Well, actually, I think it's even more important. I mean, I think that the Cold War is back. We're living in a Cold War situation.

[01:09:47] And I think maybe in the 1990s, there was a period when in Russia, they were more interested in the Russian oligarchs running Russia. That was the priority there. But as soon as Putin became president, I mean, he's basically restored the Cold War. And that's where we are now.

[01:10:09] Yeah, yeah. And I'm always surprised and amazed when in the circle of friends of mine, I meet people who I think are very well informed. And I mentioned I had this spy podcast. And one of the comments that comes up occasionally is, do we even need spies anymore?

[01:10:25] And I always find that really fascinating, especially in the day and age that we're in right now. Well, it's a bizarre, it's a very strange, it's a bizarre comment. And I'm afraid quite ignorant, really, because obviously, all governments need secret intelligence

[01:10:42] to inform themselves on what's happening in the world. I mean, you need to know what the real truth is inside foreign governments or agents or whatever the world agency you're looking at to find out so that you can govern and influence

[01:11:02] your own foreign policy based on what's really happening as opposed to what you read on the internet or newspapers. So, you know, intelligence agencies play a really legitimate important role because they need, they are spies. Okay.

[01:11:22] And they have to, their job is to get inside foreign governments or agencies or whatever it is, or the business community to find out what's really happening. Yeah. And that's a legitimate role to preserve the security of the state.

[01:11:41] And so if you don't have spies, if you don't have intelligence agencies, well, how are you going to base your decision making on? On what basis, you know, are you going to do it on the basis of what you read in newspapers

[01:11:55] or on the internet or on TV? I mean, that would be ludicrous, ridiculous thing, even though I say that as a journalist. But, you know, I think intelligence agencies, even though they've been involved in some very controversial, illegal, and they've done some terrible things in many ways.

[01:12:15] I think they also form a really important function in a democracy or regime to, so that we're all informed and the governments are informed of what the true situation is. The problem is when they're used as a political weapon, which happened with the KGB in the

[01:12:33] Cold War and Blair did it during the Iraq War. Yeah. And the Americans have done it. So, you know, that's where the problem lies. Yeah. And it's a slippery slope when it does do that. Yeah. Well, Mark, thank you for your time today.

[01:12:45] Do you have any sort of final thoughts you wish to include before we wrap up? Is there anything you want to discuss that we haven't discussed today that's important to you? I think the only point I would make is that people have, when my book was published,

[01:12:56] people said, well, you know, it doesn't really demonstrate that they have subverted or destroyed Western democracy. But the point is there is evidence of where they did, particularly with this operation against a conservative MP who was anti-Soviet and anti-KGB. They destroyed his career. It's as simple as that.

[01:13:20] So it does have some impact. But I think, you know, you have to understand that the sheer scale of Russian intelligence operations against the West is phenomenal. Yeah. We'll never be able to discover the scale of it and the intensity of it. But it is phenomenal.

[01:13:37] And most experts and analysts would agree with that. They can't necessarily assess the scale of it. And so, again, even if 10% of what they're doing has an impact, that is also huge.

[01:13:52] So I would say that this is why we have to take it seriously and that's why it's important. Yeah, indeed. Indeed. Well, myself and my colleague Matt run a show every two weeks called Espresso Martini, where we look at the current spy stories.

[01:14:06] And frequently, Russia comes up almost every other episode. There's something that they're involved with that they're trying to do that's particularly targeting the West. So I think, you know, it is important that we're aware of this. And obviously, Russia are constantly trying to do things.

[01:14:23] How successful they are or they're not is another matter, really. But they are trying. That's for sure. Well, Mark, where can listeners find out more about you, your work and your excellent book? Well, my book is called Agents of Influence, How the KGB Subverted Western Democracy.

[01:14:41] As you can buy the book. It's in paperback now and you can obviously get it on Amazon or any bookshops, Waterstones. And in terms of my other articles, you can read my work on my website, which is www.markollingsworth.co.uk

[01:15:00] and that's probably the best way to access my work. Fantastic. Well, Mark, thank you for joining me today. I really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you very much. Thanks for listening. This is Secrets and Spies.