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International agencies, including the U.N., are another favorite KGB cover. European intelligence experts estimate that 105 to 135 KGB agents are assigned to the U.N. in Europe. One is Alexander Benyaminov, appointed in 1976 to the data processing section of the International Atomic Energy Agency, a post that puts him in contact with those who possess nuclear secrets. Often the Soviet ambassador to a country is a full-fledged KGB agent. In Greece, he is Ivan Udaltsov, who, while serving as counselor at the Soviet embassy in Prague, helped to crush the Czech reform regime of Alexander Dubcek in 1968. Three months after he arrived in Athens in 1976, Ambassador Udaltsov was accused of funneling $25 million to the Greek Communist Party; unfazed, he called a press conference to declare: "I was not upset by those reports. The KGB is a highly respected organization set up by Lenin to protect the socialist revolution and the Soviet state."
Indeed it is. The KGB center, as its command complex of buildings is called, is located only a few blocks from the Kremlin—at 2 Dzerzhinsky Square. The dour, ocher-colored buildings look down on the Bolshoi Theater and the entrance to Red Square. The agency has a huge network of informers within the U.S.S.R., and it can often veto applications for new jobs, visas and university admissions. It operates prison camps and mental hospitals and directs the Soviet campaign against dissidents. Lubyanka Prison, where victims of Stalin's purges, such as Grigori Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, were executed, is part of the 2 Dzerzhinsky Square complex of buildings.
The KGB (the Russian abbreviation for Committee for State Security) is a descendant of secret police agencies maintained over the centuries by anxious Russian czars; after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the Communists called their secret police, successively, the CHEKA, GPU, OGPU, GUCB/NKVD and MGB, the KGB'S forerunner. Today the agency has a force of 300,000 men under arms to guard Soviet borders, as well as a corps of customs agents. Intourist too works closely with the KGB; tourist guides can steer chosen visitors to restaurants that have hidden microphones.
The KGB'S boss, Yuri Andropov, took command in 1967, and in 1973 became the first KGB head since Stalin's dreaded Lavrenti Beria to join the ruling Politburo. Andropov, 63, is said to admire modern art and to be a witty conversationalist who speaks fluent English—a portrait that contrasts with his harsh actions as Moscow's Ambassador to Hungary during the 1956 uprising. Under Andropov, says one Western analyst, "the thugs are being weeded out of the KGB."
The KGB recruits from the elite of the Soviet Union's managerial class by means of an Old Boychik network. Picked for loyalty, intelligence, presence and family connections to the party and the agency, KGB recruits are often sent to Moscow's prestigious Institute for International Studies for intensive courses in foreign cultures and languages. KGB agents are given preference for scarce apartments in
Moscow and buy such rare foreign goods as stereos and Scotch at giveaway prices. They socialize with each other and often intermarry.