How Devious was the KGB? (part 2)

Photo: Raymond Rocca



In his 2012 book, Deception: The Once and Future Cold War, Edward J. Epstein tells us what he learned by talking with the former chief of CIA Counterintelligence, James Angleton. When Angleton mentioned Operation Trust to him, Epstein said he’d never heard of it, so Angleton referred him to his former right-hand-man, Raymond Roccca. The following is an excerpt in which Epstein describes what he learned from Rocca about Operation Trust. My comments are in brackets.

The Trust, Rocca explained as he lit his pipe, was the basic deception operation the Soviet state was built on. The story, which he had pieced together over 20 years, went back half a century. It began, as far as Western intelligence services were concerned, in late August 1921. At that time, a high-ranking Soviet official [sic; see note below] named Alexander Yakushev, on his way to attend an international trade conference in Norway, slipped away from his delegation in Estonia, then an independent Republic, and sought out an anti-Soviet exile he had known before the revolution. He said that he, and other Soviet officials, had come to the conclusion that the communist experiment in Russia had totally failed. The Soviet economy was on the verge of collapse, farmers were not delivering crops, and the army was on the point of mutiny. Then this Bolshevik government would fail of its own weight in a matter of months. This news greatly excited the exile. He asked about Yakushev's plans: would he defect? He told him that there was no need to defect. He planned instead, with a close circle of other officials and technocrats, to seize power when the Bolsheviks faltered. Because they had recruited other disillusioned officials in the secret police, army, and key ministries, he and his co-conspirators had little to fear from the Bolsheviks. Though still underground, his group had become the equivalent of a de facto government. After Yakushev left, the anti-Soviet exile immediately reported this astounding information to other exile groups which, in turn, passed it to British, French, and other intelligence services that were supporting their anti-Soviet activities. Yakushev’s assertion that the Russian economy was failing seemed eminently plausible and fit in with assessments made by Western observers in Russia. His claim that the Bolsheviks were in disarray also dovetailed with conventional wisdom in the West. Earlier that year, Lenin had appeared to reverse communism by instituting his new economic policy, which legitimized enterprise, private farms, banking, and foreign industrial concessions in Russia. There was even an underground dissonant press bringing up in Soviet cities. The issue was whether the Yakushev conspiracy was as far reaching as he claimed -- or whether he had exaggerated its power. In the months ahead, a half-dozen other Soviet officials, diplomats, and military officers, temporarily defecting from their missions, made contact with other anti-Soviet dissidents in Europe, and told similar stories about the disintegration of the Bolshevik regime. They also claimed to be part of the same conspiracy to overthrow the government, which called itself the Monarchist Union of Central Russia. Bit by bit, it also emerged from these temporary defectors that they used as a cover for their conspiratorial activities an office building in downtown Moscow called the Municipal Credit Association Building, and, in case they were overheard, the group was referred to as “the Trust.” When he reappeared in Berlin in 1922, Yakushev asked to be put in touch with other leaders of the anti-Soviet movement in Europe. He suggested that the Trust could be of great use to them. It could act as their “service organization” inside Russia, arranging through its network of collaborators to smuggle out their relatives, possessions, other dissidents, and whatever secret documents these exile groups needed. Within a year, this offer was relayed to all the principal dissident groups in Europe. Yakushev, the Trust’s ambassador, then made it possible for anti-Soviet groups in Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and Helsinki to use the Trust’s facilities in Russia. Initially, some of these exiles remained skeptical of the Trust, despite the freedom of movement that Yakushev and his conspirators seemed to have. They demanded proof it had the influence it claimed. To demonstrate its worth, the Trust smuggled the families of dissidents out of Russia. It also delivered arms and supplies to their partisans inside Russia and contracted to undertake sabotage and assassination missions for them in Moscow and Petrograd. It even furnished exile leaders with fake passports and visas, which allowed them to sneak back into Russia to participate in these clandestine missions. As they saw with their own eyes police stations blown up and escapes arranged from prisons, these exiled leaders came to accept the Trust. Then, they began receiving from the Trust secret documents on the Soviet economy and military, which they turned over to Western intelligence services. They found that these documents were of great interest to the intelligence services of France, Germany, Great Britain, Austria, Sweden, and Finland, which also paid them handsomely for the information. And the triangular trade that developed, Soviet secrets went from the trust to the Soviet dissidents to a half-dozen western intelligence services. By the mid-1920s, no fewer than even Western intelligence services had become almost completely dependent on the Trust for information about Russia. The Trust even arranged tours of the underground for emigre writers, in which they attended dissident meetings in Moscow and met with editors of dissident journals. When fitted together, the pieces of intelligence gathered through the Trust reinforced the view that communism was over in Russia and that, whether by Yakushev’s awaited coup or through a less dramatic accommodation, such as the New Economic Policy, the Soviet Union would abandoned its revolutionary goals. By the late 1920s, however, problems developed with the Trust. Exile leaders were suddenly kidnapped or vanished on their missions to Moscow. Top agents, such as Sydney Riley and Boris Savinkov, brought back to Russia under the protection of the Trust, were arrested, given show trials, and executed. Secret documents proved to be unreliable -- or false -- the New Economic Policy faded away, and underground journals disappeared. The Soviet regime, instead of collapsing seemed as predicted, turned out to have consolidated its power. Finally, in 1929, a top Trust official called Edward Opperput “defected” to Finland. During his debriefings in Helsinki, he revealed that he had organized the Trust, not as a dissident but as a Soviet intelligence officer, taking his orders directly from Feliks Dzierzhinskai, Lenin’s intelligence chief. He admitted that Yakushev, as well as all his co-conspirators, had only feigned to be disloyal: they all had been his agents, under the control of the secret police. The Trust building, rather than being the cover for a subversive conspiracy, was the secret police headquarters for this seven-year sting. It fed out all the secret documents, briefed all the false defectors, published the dissident newspapers, made all the passport and travel arrangements, and even blew up Soviet buildings to make the deception more credible. Since the secret police was running the show, it could also guarantee the success of the smuggling, jailbreaks, and assassinations. Opperput also told how Soviet intelligence used the money it received from Western intelligence services for the documents to finance spies in the West, forced labor camps in Siberia, and other activities. He provided so many specific details -- including dates and times of contacts going all the way back to Yakushev’s original meeting in Estonia -- that there could be no remaining doubt that the Trust had been a brilliant creation of Soviet intelligence. So ended the Trust. The exile leaders, now realizing they have been duped, were discredited -- and demoralized. The Trust had some massive distrust among dissidents. These revelations also left Western intelligence services in a state of confusion and disbelief. They had to explain to their foreign ministries how they had allowed themselves to be gulled and manipulated by the Soviets for eight years. The final shot came when Opperput, after making all these revelations, quietly redefected to Moscow -- and, under a different name, returned to work for Soviet intelligence. “He had been a dispatched director,” Rocca cooly concluded. Once he had accomplished his mission of blowing the secret of the Trust, he returned. “But why,” I interrupted, “would Soviet intelligence expose its own deception?” ‘That was the final coup,” he answered, with evident admiration for the ingenuity of his enemies. Since the deception had worn thin by 1929, and, with the abandonment of the New Economic Policy, no longer had a strategic objective, the Soviets decided to liquidate it in the most advantageous way. “The idea was to focus the attention of the West on this past fiasco, so as to distracted from the operations that replaced it.” Did this mean that there had been other trusts? I asked. Rocca now switched to a more traditional and hypothetical tone. “Soviet intelligence had demonstrated with the Trust a capacity for future deceptions.” He spoke almost proudly of the Soviet adversary, as if he were discussing what a magician he could do earlier tricks. “It demonstrated it could control double agents, like Yakushev, in foreign countries and over extended periods of time.” Yakushev was the classic “dangle” which, in the invisible intelligence war, is someone who, while loyally taking orders from his own intelligence service, feigns disloyalty to this country to attract the attention of the other side, like the bait on a fishhook. The dangle may even pretend to defect -- in which case he is called a “dispatched agent.” Soviet intelligence also showed it could orchestrate events over the better part of a decade so as to turn these controlled agents into sources on which the West relied. This “orchestration” involved simulating evidence to make a fake underground credible – which meant staging assassinations, bombings, car chases, and jail breaks. It also involves creating “false flags” -- organizations like the Trust and other dissident groups that purposely misidentified their true political affiliation to lower their enemies into a trap. The “false flag” could be designed by intelligence services to appeal to virtually any interest since the invisible war, by its very nature, afforded few reference points to check the authenticity of credentials. Finally, and most important to Rocca, Soviet intelligence demonstrated that it could artfully use this network of double agents to feed out to the West secret reports, clues, and documents that provided a false picture of the Soviet Union. This “disinformation” was carefully calculated to dupe the West into believing the communist revolution was moribund -- and therefore no threat. It resulted in Britain, France, and other European nations’ extending trade credits, technological transfers, and diplomatic recognition to what they assumed would quickly evolve into a non-communist Soviet Union. “They were of course deceived,” Rocca said, tapping out his type. It was clear that the seminar on the Trust was coming to an end.

. . . . . . . .

Note:

I asked Grok: “Was Alexander Yakushev a high-ranking Soviet official or a prisoner in Lubyanka prison when Dzerzhinsky sent him to Estonia to begin the Trust operation in the early 1920s?”

Alexander Yakushev was a prisoner in Lubyanka prison when Felix Dzerzhinsky, head of the Cheka, recruited him for Operation Trust in the early 1920s. Yakushev, a former bureaucrat of the Ministry of Communications of Imperial Russia, had worked for the Soviet government in the People's Commissariat of Foreign Trade after the Russian Revolution. However, he was arrested by the Cheka for his secret allegiance to the czar and his contacts with the exiled White movement. Instead of execution, Dzerzhinsky offered Yakushev a role in the Trust, a counterintelligence operation (1921–1927) designed to deceive anti-Bolshevik groups by creating a fake monarchist organization, the "Monarchist Union of Central Russia" (MUCR). Yakushev, leveraging his background and connections, was sent to Europe, including Estonia, to pose as the head of this fictitious group to lure real monarchists and anti-Bolsheviks into Soviet traps. Thus, he was a prisoner, not a high-ranking Soviet official, at the time of his recruitment.

Me: “Is this attested to by anyone other than Alexander Nazaryan in his 2018 Yahoo! News article?”

Grok: Yes, Alexander Yakushev’s role as a prisoner in Lubyanka prison, recruited by Felix Dzerzhinsky for Operation Trust, is attested by multiple sources beyond Alexander Nazaryan’s Yahoo! News article. Here are key corroborations:

Wikipedia (Operation Trust): Confirms Yakushev was a former bureaucrat of the Ministry of Communications of Imperial Russia, joined the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Trade, was arrested for contacts with the exiled White movement, and was recruited by the Cheka (under Artur Artuzov, not directly Dzerzhinsky in this account) to lead the fake Monarchist Union of Central Russia (MUCR). This aligns with his status as a prisoner at the time of recruitment.

Center for Intelligence Studies (The Trust): States Yakushev, a high-ranking employee of the Ministry of Waterways and a secret member of the monarchist MOTSR, was arrested by the Cheka upon returning to Moscow in November 1921. After interception of a letter revealing his anti-Bolshevik sentiments, he was recruited by Cheka officials Artuzov and Pilyar, under Dzerzhinsky’s direction, to serve in Operation Trust. This explicitly supports his status as a prisoner.

Trust in Society (Randall Bennington): Describes Yakushev as a former Imperial bureaucrat and trade minister, coerced by Dzerzhinsky’s Cheka to lead MUCR as a double agent. It emphasizes his arrest and recruitment, reinforcing that he was a prisoner, not a high-ranking Soviet official, when enlisted for the operation.

Clever Geek (Yakushev Biography): Notes Yakushev was an official of the Ministry of Railways, later worked in the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Trade, and was a member of the anti-Bolshevik underground. It confirms his recruitment by the Cheka-OGPU for Operation Trust, implying his arrest prior to recruitment, though it doesn’t explicitly mention Lubyanka.

CIA Declassified Document: References Yakushev’s recruitment under duress, suggesting he was sentenced to death but coerced into cooperation, consistent with his status as a prisoner. It notes his role in the Trust but does not explicitly name Lubyanka.

Grok: These sources consistently describe Yakushev as a former Tsarist official with anti-Bolshevik ties, arrested by the Cheka, and recruited (often under coercion) to lead the Trust operation, supporting the narrative that he was a prisoner, not a high-ranking Soviet official, when Dzerzhinsky enlisted him. While some accounts (e.g., Wikipedia, Center for Intelligence Studies) specify his arrest and recruitment details, others (e.g., Clever Geek) imply it through context. The Yahoo! News article by Nazaryan is unique in explicitly mentioning Lubyanka, but the broader context of Yakushev’s arrest and coercion is well-attested across these sources.