Gennadi Varenik was a KGB major working in Bonn under cover as a correspondent for TASS, the Soviet news agency, when he was suddenly recalled to Moscow in November 1985. Four months earlier, Aldrich Ames had told the Soviets that Varenik was spying for the cia. He was charged with that crime, tried and executed. This was a murderous tragedy, mentioned briefly in David Wise's book. It also represented a significant setback for the U.S. TIME's investigation of the Varenik case over the past three months reveals that he was one of the most promising KGB double agents the cia ever recruited.
In the seven months before he was caught, Varenik, code-named GTFITNESS, provided American intelligence with detailed information about 170 agents and operations of the KGB and the GRU (the Soviet military intelligence arm). He tipped off the cia that the Soviets had a plan to create anti-German sentiment in the U.S. by planting explosives in bars and restaurants frequented in Germany by American service members (Varenik's role in the KGB scheme was to find places where the explosives could be hidden). "Gennadi," says one insider, "saved American lives."
Varenik was a KGB brat--the son of a KGB colonel--and a graduate of the Andropov Red Banner Institute, which trains intelligence agents. He spent a year working at the TASS offices in Moscow preparing for his cover job. His first contact with the cia came a year after his arrival in Germany in 1981. A colleague introduced him to a CIA officer, and for more than a year, each believed he was cultivating the other as a possible double agent. Varenik abruptly broke off discussions in 1983, but the cia had passed him a secret telephone number.
In March 1985, Varenik called from a pay phone. There was an arrangement that he call back in an hour. When he did, he set up a meeting with a CIA case officer in a Bonn-area hotel. A dark, quiet man, 32 at the time, Varenik described his situation. He had used $3,500 from the KGB station's operational funds for personal expenses, and an auditor was expected shortly from Moscow. Moreover, he owed another $3,500 to colleagues. His second daughter had just been born, but he was flat broke and couldn't even pay his rent. Worst of all, Varenik had learned that a German he had recruited to spy for the U.S.S.R. was in fact a double agent working for German intelligence. Could the CIA, he asked, help fake a recruitment that would put him in the good graces of the KGB?
His internal KGB pseudonym was Lothar, he said, and he was a Directorate "S" staff member serving as a case officer for "illegals," Soviet agents working in Germany who did not have diplomatic covers and so were not protected by diplomatic immunity. In addition, he attempted to recruit agents, mostly among German university students and members of the German peace movement. Varenik described the discord and tensions in the local kgb station and decried the petty politicking and corruption. He was clearly fed up with the existing Soviet system, and he was repelled by the idea of bombing Americans. He was not primarily motivated by ideology, however; he simply saw no way out of his financial problems. He was not a big spender, had no alcohol problems and was happily married. But the kgb paid miserly salaries, and Varenik didn't fabricate expenses like his colleagues.