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KGB retains awesome power. Andropov performs the functions of CIA Head Richard Helms, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and Secret Service Chief James J. Rowley rolled up into one—and then some. His budget is unknown. He commands an army of 300,000 that protects the Soviet leadership (and spies on some factions in behalf of others), tries to keep military units ideologically pure with a network of 80,000 political commissars down to the battalion level, ferrets out domestic dissidents, guards factories, railways, airports and border posts, and runs prisons and labor camps. It keeps hundreds of foreigners in Moscow under surveillance; and on occasion it has even bugged the seal of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow—an act that the U.S. publicized during the U-2 affair of 1960.
All this internal security is in the hands of the KGB's second chief directorate. The heart of the organization's foreign-intelligence operation is the first chief directorate, whose functions are roughly equivalent to the CIA's. Its boss was last known to be—and may still be—Alexander Sakharovsky. He is now about 70, and Washington experts speculate that he may have been retired, but they are not certain and do not know who his replacement might be.
Of his 9,000 officers, about 3,500 are stationed abroad. They may be assigned to an embassy or to newsgathering outfits such as Tass or Pravda, or to any of a host of other organizations —Soviet Export Films, the Moscow Narodny Bank, the Russian Lumber Import Co., Intourist, Aeroflot, Black Sea Baltic Insurance, Morflot Shipping. The Soviet government is totally integrated, without neat divisions between diplomats, intelligence officers and journalists. That helps explain why the Soviets and East Europeans almost automatically regard Western journalists as agents of the CIA or Britain's D16 (for Defense Intelligence, 6th Section, formerly MI-6).
Young Russians are recruited with promises of an exciting career, travel abroad, such perquisites as autos and expense accounts, and early retirement at 55. As for foreign talent, the Soviets after World War II relied on a succession of ideologically convinced Communists in the West as their principal undercover agents. Today the Russians are usually forced to recruit foreigners through blackmail or money.
Jumbled Numbers
As many as 50% to 75% of all Soviet officials stationed abroad are estimated by U.S. sources to be KGB agents. The percentage is lower in big industrial countries, where Moscow has many legitimate interests to oversee and services to perform, and much higher in underdeveloped lands. These estimates do not include the far smaller but vital contingents of KGB officers who function as undercover "illegals" under assumed names and do not operate through their embassies but report to "controllers" or directly to Moscow.
Their activities cover a wide range. They collect military and political information. They engage in industrial espionage, which has become an important part of their work. They keep rival spy networks under surveillance and strive to infiltrate them. They also engage in "wet stuff," the Soviet euphemism for violence (see glossary, page 44), although less frequently than in earlier times. Most wet-stuff activity in West Germany has been conducted