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The Shadow Dossier — The Mitrokhin Archive · The Shadow Dossier

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  the shadow dossier act i the archivist who stopped
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  believing for nearly 30 years vasili maitrikin
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  worked inside the kgb's first chief directorate
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  its foreign intelligence arm as an archivist
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  responsible for the physical files documenting
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  decades of soviet espionage operations around
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  the world It was, by design, a quiet, unglamorous
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  position, the kind of job that put a man in daily
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  contact with the agency's most sensitive secrets
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  without ever putting him in a room where those
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  secrets were used. Mitrakin's disillusionment
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  with the Soviet system built slowly over years,
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  sharpened by the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
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  which he came to view as a moment that clarified,
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  for him personally, exactly what kind of state
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  he was working for. What made Mitrekin genuinely
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  unusual among Soviet defectors, though, wasn't
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  his disillusionment. It was what he did with
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  the years of access his archival role granted
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  him, long before he ever approached a Western
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  intelligence service. Twelve years of patient,
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  secret copying. Beginning in the 1970s and continuing
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  for roughly 12 years, Maitrekin quietly transcribed,
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  and in many cases hand -copied details from thousands
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  of classified KGB files as he processed them
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  in the course of his ordinary work, smuggling
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  his handwritten notes out of KGB headquarters
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  a little at a time. hidden in his shoes and clothing,
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  and eventually burying much of the material in
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  milk churns and containers beneath the floor
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  of his family's country house outside Moscow.
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  This was not a single dramatic act of theft.
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  It was a sustained... Act 3. The Defection the
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  West Almost Missed. Mitrakin retired from the
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  KGB in 1984, and it was not until after the Soviet
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  Union's collapse in 1992 that he finally approached
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  Western intelligence, initially the American
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  CIA station in one of the newly independent Baltic
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  states, offering samples of his archive as proof
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  of what he had. Britain's MI6 responded differently.
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  recognizing quickly what Mitrekin was actually
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  offering. In 1992, British intelligence exfiltrated
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  Mitrekin, his family, and the full contents of
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  his buried archive out of Russia, an operation
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  whose full details remain only partially declassified
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  even now. The material Mitrakin brought out amounted
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  to one of the largest single intelligence troves
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  ever obtained by a Western agency from a Soviet
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  source, documenting KGB operations across decades
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  and dozens of countries. Networks of agents and
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  informants operating inside Western governments,
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  media organizations, and universities. Details
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  of Soviet efforts to influence foreign elections
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  and public opinion through disinformation campaigns
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  and information connecting the KGB to a range
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  of activities, including support for various
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  militant and terrorist organizations during the
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  Cold War. Working with British historian Christopher
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  Andrew, Mitrekin spent years organizing and contextualizing
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  the material, eventually published across two
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  volumes beginning in 1999. Act V, a legacy still
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  being sorted through. Not every claim in the
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  Mitrekin archive has aged equally well under
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  scrutiny. Historians and intelligence researchers
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  have noted that Mitrekin's notes, while extraordinarily
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  detailed, were still copied by hand from files
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  he could access only within the constraints of
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  his own role and reading speed, and some identifications
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  made from the archive were later disputed or
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  only partially substantiated by other evidence.
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  The material's sheer scale means it continues
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  to be studied, cross -referenced, and in some
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  cases reassessed by historians even now, decades
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  after Mitrokin's exfiltration. What the archive
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  demonstrated beyond any individual revelation
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  was the sheer scope of what a single patient
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  insider, over enough years and with enough access,
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  could ultimately smuggle out of one of history's
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  most secretive intelligence services. Maitrekin
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  died in London in 2004, having spent the last
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  12 years of his life in the country that had
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  recognized. when others hesitated, exactly what
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  his decade of quiet, buried copying was actually
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  worth. This concludes declassified file number
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  0034 of the Shadow Dossier, the Mitrekin Archive.
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  What dangerous secrets await in our next file?
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  RSS .com, and YouTube so you never miss an official
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  declassification. This is the Shadow Dossier.
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  Thank you for listening.