KGB Defector's Trove of Cold War Secrets Made Public
October 14, 2020 | News | No Comments
The near complete collection of transcribed notes of Vasili Mitrokhin, a senior KGB official who defected to the UK with a trove of gathered Soviet intelligence information in the early nineties, have finally been made public.
After being held under lock and key by the Churchill Archives Centre at Cambridge University, the Mitrokhin files detail years of Soviet intelligence operations during the height of the Cold War, some of which led to high-profile espionage charges on both sides of the Atlantic.
Described by the FBI as ‘the most complete and extensive intelligence ever received from any source,’ the archive is viewable to the public for the first time on Monday.
“Mitrokhin dreamed of making this material public from 1972 until his death; it’s now happening in 2014,” said Professor Christopher Andrew, the only historian to date allowed access to the archive. “The inner workings of the KGB, its foreign intelligence operations and the foreign policy of Soviet-era Russia all lie within this extraordinary collection; the scale and nature of which gives unprecedented insight into the KGB’s activities throughout much of the Cold War.”
According to the Associated Press:
And the Guardian adds:
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