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He and other KGB agents were often seen with "medical advisers" at the mission. Their jobs were to acquire as much information as possible about American medicine. Some were epidemiologists. The agent who was later expelled had spoken with relish about the possibility of demolishing New York's electric-power systems. Perhaps he was working out plans of an even more sinister nature with the poison and plague specialists.
A policy of violence, intimidation and death has been a historic Kremlin method of quieting opposition, from the assassination of Leon Trotsky to attempts on the lives of foreign figures like Dag Hammarskjold and Anwar Sadat. Soviet ties to guerrilla groups are so well known that the Kalashnikov submachine gun has become the symbol for international terrorism. The U.S.S.R. continues training terrorists within and beyond its borders to subvert stable nations and particularly to feed upon unrest in the Third World.
In the Third World, and at the U.N., the KGB cooperates with intelligence services of the Soviet-bloc countries. Closest to the Soviets are the Bulgarians, Cubans and East Germans. Bulgarian intelligence was the most obedient Soviet servant in terrorist operations and had widely penetrated Southern Europe and the Middle East. The Bulgarians worked on the Arabs and Turks. I saw an example of this when KGB recruitment of a Turkish diplomat in New York was accomplished with Bulgarian help.
I also heard from KGB officers in New York that they were outraged when Ludmila, the Oxford-educated daughter of Bulgarian Party Chief and President Todor Zhivkov, tried to reawaken Bulgarian cultural identity in the late 1970s. They considered her activity an "undue liberty." Ludmila became a political figure and a member of the Bulgarian Politburo. She died suddenly at the age of 38. I always wondered whether this was another "wet affair" carried out by the KGB's Bulgarian agents.
It is probably no exaggeration to count over half of the more than 700 Soviets in New York City as either full-time spies or co-opts under orders or influence of the KGB and GRU (the Defense Ministry's military intelligence arm). The KGB has cemented its place in the U.S.S.R. to a point where its power is unshakable. Although I escaped from it once, I never underestimate its reach or its savagery.