Book Review | Walter G. Krivitsky: MI5 Debriefing & Other Documents on Soviet Intelligence

CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence

Studies in Intelligence, 2005

Walter G. Krivitsky: MI5 Debriefing & Other Documents on Soviet Intelligence

Gary Kern, ed. Riverside, CA: Xenos Books, 2004. 229 pages, bibliography, glossary, index.

Reviewed by Hayden B. Peake, curator of the CIA's Historical Intelligence Collection

In 1939, Walter Krivitsky, one of the first GRU defectors to the United States, wrote a book on Soviet espionage and testified before Congress on the subject. In both cases, he named some Soviet agents and indicated he knew others in America. The State Department debriefed him on passport matters, but the FBI declined to investigate his counterintelligence claims. Had they done so, Alger Hiss, the atom spies, the Cambridge Five, and many other moles in our government, all of whom were neutralized after the war—would have been identified. Krivitsky made the same offer to the British, and they had him sent over in early 1940. He gave them more than 100 agents, at least two of whom were code clerks. Before he could testify again before Congress, Krivitsky was found shot dead in the Bellevue Hotel (now, The George) near Union Station, Washington, DC.

The British waited more than 60 years to declassify the report of Krivitsky’s debriefing, done by MI5 officer, Jane Archer. Author Gary Kern obtained a copy of the Krivitsky debriefing and has reproduced it in this book together with his congressional testimony and some material related to Krivitsky’s stay in France after his initial defection.[13] The MI5 debriefing contains the sketchy references to the Philby and Maclean (some say Cairncross) so often mentioned in the literature. There are also specific references to NKVD Gen. Alexander Orlov, already in the United States. Neither MI5 nor the FBI followed up. The case of Orlov is particularly maddening since he had helped recruit Philby (and handled him in Spain), Burgess, and Maclean. Furthermore, several of the KGB agents who would become atom spies in America had worked for Orlov. Yet he remained in hiding until 1953. Besides the MI5 debriefing, Kern has included Krivitsky’s views on analysis, and his testimony before Congress.

These are primary source documents. One can learn from them how an interrogation is conducted, what items should be covered, and how they should be reported. They should be of great interest and real value to students, counterintelligence analysts, and all those who continue to marvel at the early days of counterintelligence in America.

[13]Gary Kern, A Death in Washington: Walter G. Krivitsky and The Stalin Terror (New York: Enigma Books, 2004). This is the most complete and well-written case study on a Soviet defector ever to be published in English. If reading only one counterintelligence case study, this is the one to chose.