Espionage and underground networks were ingrained in the character of the Soviet regime, it seemed. For years prior to the 1917 revolution the leaders operated secretly; once the Bolsheviks seized power they made espionage and a secret police force important elements in their own government. This force shifted names many times, from the OGPU to the NKVD, the NKGB, and the MGB before it became the KGB; through all the nomenclature changes it retained the same dread character while its power increased until it was a dominating force in Russian society. By the i94os the organization encompassed border guards, railroad police and forest patrolmen as well as men who peered over the shoulders of Russians inside the country and those who spied on foreign countries. The KGB became the entity closest to what George Orwell described in 1984 as the "thought police." It was believed to have massive dossiers on Russian citizens and on all members of foreign Communist Parties. It controlled the "Gulag archipelago" and the whole of Siberia. Its functions included and went far beyond those performed inside the United States by the FBI, Immigration Service, Customs Department, border patrols and the National Guard, and outside the United States by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The KGB virtually controlled the embassies as well as the various trading corporations, press service offices and other Soviet links to the outside world. It was known to have an experienced assassination division.

In the late 1940s we in the FBI had only partial glimpses of what later arrests and defections would document about the KGB. But we knew even then that there were KGB rings operating inside Germany, Switzerland, France, Holland, Belgium, Sweden, England, Australia, Canada and the United States just to cite cases that have subsequently been made public. Consider the example of Sweden: all during the 1940s five KGB networks there worked to pass to the U.S.S.R. every single detail of Sweden's national defenses. When some of the spies were caught, it was learned that the Soviets also had saboteurs and explosives hidden inside Sweden, and in case war broke out between the two countries, the Soviets could have immediately knocked out the Swedish railroads and communications facilities to gain a decided advantage in the conflict.

Gradually, in my mind, the image of an amorphous, omnipotent KGB began to resolve into that of a dangerous adversary that operated with specific human beings as agents-some of whom had brushed very close to the FBI. In a later period there were 400,000 employees and 90,000 officers of the KGB worldwide, but most were concentrated inside Russia. As might be imagined, only the most trusted and experienced officers were sent to such sensitive areas as the United States.

It seemed clear from our files that much of the KGB's espionage in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s could be traced to two Soviet "residents," Vassili Zubilin and Gaik Ovakimian. When I was a young agent, I read up on them, and later - indeed, throughout my whole career in the FBI-I spent my time chasing after their handiwork. These men became something like totems for me, symbols of the adversary whom we were forever trying to locate and eliminate. Although they were people of the shadows, they were not faceless; I learned their faces, and tried to discern what I could about their characters.

The one who troubled me most was Gaik Badalovich Ovakimian, whom the FBI had pinpointed as head of the KGB's activities in the United States from 1933 to 1941. He had vanished before I even came into the game, but for many years I tracked the agents he had put into place. He was often referred to as "the wily Armenian," and it was a measure of his slipperiness that it was never completely clear whether or not he really was an Armenian.

The official documents showed that Ovakimian was born on August 11, 1898, in Russia. Rather small and stocky - five foot seven, 165 pounds - he had a medium-dark complexion with dark-brown hair and blue eyes. He was educated as an engineer, and spoke somewhat broken English as well as German, French and Russian. He was married to a woman named Vera, and they had a daughter, Egina. In the 1930s the FBI had uncovered an extensive industrial espionage operation tied to a man named Armand Labis Feldman, who was connected to Ovakimian. Then his name cropped up in conjunction with a case that originated in England with a man who had a false passport in the name of Willy Brandes.

As we later learned, Ovakimian's recruits were scattered as far afield as Mexico and Canada; some of his exploits involved forged passports and attempts on Leon Trotsky's life while the former Soviet leader was in exile in Mexico. Americans whom Ovakimian recruited or controlled described him as charming, serious, sympathetic, well read in English literature, knowledgeable in science, and a man who inspired loyalty in his agents. He must also have been agile and politically aware, for he survived the great purges of the late 1930s which decimated the upper ranks of the Russian espionage services.

Ovakimian was known to be in close contact with Jacob Golos, the head of World Tourist, Inc., a Communist-dominated organization in New York. In May 1941, the FBI closed in on Ovakimian and arrested him; he was charged with being a foreign agent who had not registered as such with the Department of Justice. At that point the Bureau had identified a number of his agents, and might possibly have rolled up several of his networks - including Golos and other people at World Tourist - but international considerations intervened. The State Department knew that a half-dozen Americans were being detained in Russia, and struck a deal whereby they would be exchanged for Ovakimian. As a result, the KGB man was allowed to leave the United States in July 1941.

Ovakimian might well have laughed at us over that one, for by the time of his deportation Germany had attacked its former ally, Russia, and several of the Americans in the deal were captured by the advancing Third Reich and never reached the United States. As I recall, none of the Americans in Russian hands had been spies, and in any event, the Russians welched on other parts of the deal and did not return to us the Americans whom the Germans missed. The whole affair was a mess, and my colleagues in New York who handled the case were thoroughly disgusted with the State Department over it. Later, reading over the 164-page summary report on Ovakimian, I was impressed by how much the FBI had been able to find out about the man - and was depressed by the fact that we had been forced to let him go.

In August 1939, however, political intelligence operations in the United States, as in Britain, were partially disrupted by the signature of the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Laurence Duggan broke off contact with Akhmerov in Protest. Others who had serious doubts included Michael Straight. At a meeting in October in a restaurant below Washington's Union Station, Akhmerov tried to reassure him. "Great days are approaching!" he declared. With the beginning of the Second World War, revolution would spread like wildfire across Germany and France. Straight was unimpressed and failed to attend the next meeting." Duggan and Straight are unlikely to have been the only agents to break contact, at least temporarily, with the NKVD.

Further disruption to NKVD operations in the United States followed Akhmerov's recall, soon after his last meeting with Straight, to Moscow, where he was accused by Beria of treasonable dealings with enemies of the people. Though, for unknown reasons, the charges were dropped, Akhmerov was placed in the NKVD reserve and remained under suspicion for the next two years while his record was thoroughly checked. For the first time, the centre of NKVD operations in the United States was moved, after Akhmerov's recall, to the legal residency headed by Gayk Ovakimyan, later known to the FBI as the "wily Armenian". Ovakimyan found himself terribly overworked, all the more so since he was also expected to take an active part in the complex preparations for Trotsky's assassination in Mexico City. He would sometimes return home exhausted after meeting as many as ten agents in a single day.

Ovakimyan's main successes were in scientific and technological (S&T), rather than political, intelligence. He was unusual among INO officers in holding a science doctorate from the MVTU (Moscow Higher Technical School) and, since 1933, had operated under cover as an engineer at Amtorg (American-Soviet Trading Corporation) in New York. In 1940 he enrolled as a graduate student at a New York chemical institute to assist him in identifying potential agents.'' Ovakimyan was the first to demonstrate the enormous potential for S&T in the United States. In 1939 alone NKVD operations in the United States obtained 18,000 pages of technical documents, 487 sets of designs and 54 samples of new technology."

Ovakimyan was probably also the first to suggest using an INO officer, under cover as an exchange student, to penetrate the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The first such "student", Semyon Markovich Semyonov (codenamed TVEN), entered MIT in 1938. The scientific contacts which he made over the next two years, before changing his cover in 1940 to that of an Amtorg engineer, helped to lay the basis for the remarkable wartime expansion of S&T collection in the United States. One of his colleagues in the New York residency was struck by Semyonov's "large eyes which, while he was talking to somebody, revolved like parabolic antennae". By April 1941 the total NKVD agent network in the United States numbered 211, of whom forty-nine were listed in NKVD statistics as "engineers" (probably a category which included a rather broader range of scientists). In the same month the Centre for the first time established separate departments in its major residencies to specialize in scientific and technological intelligence operations (later known as Line X), a certain sign of their increasing priority.

According to an SVR official history, the sheer number of agents with whom Ovakimyan was in contact "blunted his vigilance". In May 1947 he was caught by the FBI in the act of receiving documents from agent OCTANE, briefly imprisoned, freed on hail and allowed to leave the country in July. But for the remarkably lax security of the Roosevelt administration, the damage to NKVD operations might have been very much worse than the arrest of Ovakimyan. On 2 September 1939, the day after the outbreak of war in Europe, Whittaker Chambers had told much of what he knew about Soviet espionage in the United States to Adolf Berle, Assistant Secretary of State and President Roosevelt's adviser on internal security. Immediately afterwards, Berle drew up a memorandum for the President which listed Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White and the other leading Soviet agents for whom Chambers had acted as courier. One of those on the list was a leading presidential aide, Lauchlin Currie (mistranscribed by Berle as Lockwood Curry). Roosevelt, however, was not interested. He seems to have dismissed the whole idea of espionage rings within his administration as absurd. Equally remarkably, Berle simply pigeon-holed his own report. He did not even send a copy to the FBI until the Bureau requested it in 1943.

On January 18, 1941, bureau agents were tailing an espionage suspect, a secretive Russian named Gaik Ovakimian. They observed him meet Golos, a convicted Soviet agent, on a Manhattan street. Over the next few weeks, the agents saw Golos meet Ovakimian several times, and even watched the two men exchange documents.

The meetings intrigued FBI officials who were trying to uncover Soviet spy networks in America. The bureau had not shown much interest in Soviet espionage before the Nazi-Soviet Pact, but in 1940 agents began to piece together a picture of Russian intelligence in this country. They quickly identified Ovakimian, a Soviet who nominally worked for the Soviet trading firm, Amtorg, as a possible spy. Although they did not know it at the time, Ovakimian was actually the head of Soviet espionage in the United States from 1933 to 1941.

Based on his numerous meetings with Ovakimian, Golos fell under bureau suspicion as well. The FBI began sporadically tailing Golos and filing reports on his movements from the winter of 1941 until September of that year. Agents observed him going to the offices of the U.S. Service and Shipping Corporation, where Elizabeth worked, and an apartment at 58 Barrow Street, where she lived. It became apparent that Golos, though he kept a hotel room elsewhere, was living with this woman. The agents wondered if she might be a Soviet spy as well. On May 23, 1941, shortly after they arrested and deported Ovakimian, bureau agents began tailing her.

Elizabeth grew terrified that she might be arrested at any time. She tried desperately to ensure that the tails never witnessed her meeting with important contacts. Very quickly, she "developed an incredible number of ruses" for shaking a tail, including sneaking out of fire exits, abruptly changing direction, and boldly walking up to her pursuer and asking him for directions."

Her tactics worked. The FBI found nothing interesting in her activities. The surveillance was stopped on August 20, 1941, after just a few months.

Starting in 1933 and into 1945, Browder rendered the NKGB... and the GRU... help, recommending to our representatives in the U.S. Communist Party for agent work. At Browder's recommendation, eighteen people were drawn to agent work for the NKGB and... people for GRU. In addition, through the Central Committee's functionaries controlling illegal groups.

At Browder's recommendation, eighteen people were drawn to agent work for the NKGB and... people for the GRU. In addition, through the Central Committee's functionaries controlling illegal party groups, Browder knew about illegal members of the U.S. Communist Party working for the Soviet Union through the NKGB of the USSR - more than twenty-five people and for the GRU of the General Staff of the Red Army... people.

In connection with the Canadian case (Igor Gouzenko's defection) and betrayal by an agent of the NKGB... in the U.S. that was reported to you on November 14, 1945, by message # 7698 (Elizabeth Bentley's defection), we temporarily halted agent work in America and conserved the main group of agents who became known to American authorities due to this agent's betrayal. Among the agents conserved, the majority were recommended to us either personally by Browder or were known to him as working for us through top-level functionaries of the Central Committee of the American Communist Party.

The link to Browder in our work from 1933 to 1945 was maintained occasionally by senior operatives of the NKGB of the USSR three Soviet citizens from the NKGB in the United States were known to him...

The NKGB of the USSR believes that Browder's expulsion from the party may lead him into a transition toward extreme means of struggle against the Communist Party and may inflict damage to our interests. Therefore, the NKGB of the USSR considers it expedient to allow Browder's arrival in the Soviet Union. We should see if it is possible to recommend... to the Executive Committee of the American Communist Party that Browder be reestablished in the party under a convenient pretext and that the American Communist Party adopt a more tactful line of behavior with regard to him.