conversations only revived her resentment. Once in Paris, according to malicious gossip, she did not have anything else to learn, but had a lot of catching up to do.
As far as caviar and gems trafficking was concerned, it had become a more and more common practice, especially popular among Soviet diplomats. Holders of a green passport, they were exempted from the draconian customs checks at Moscow Sheremetyevo Airport. The Vetrovs, on the other hand, had blue service passports, given to the nondiplomatic staff of Soviet organizations abroad and to the members of important delegations. In many situations, this blue passport was a better deal than the red passports delivered to foreign cooperation specialists, teachers, tourists, and other small-fry individuals, but not to go through customs. If caught smuggling goods, the holder of a blue passport, betraying the higher trust the government had placed in him, was exposed to a harsher punishment, at least in theory. In reality, things were much simpler. Astute people were always carrying a nice-looking pen or cigarette lighter they would hand out, along with their declaration of goods, to the customs officer as a souvenir. If facing a tougher inspector, they would get waved on by leaving behind a carton of American cigarettes or a pair of jeans. The main thing was not to carry any book by Solzhenitsyn or other dissident author in one’s suitcase.
Even though KGB members and their families appeared to live a freer life, in many respects they were subjected to stricter constraints. The wives of “clean” civil servants, whether diplomats or administrative officers, often bought what they needed through well-placed acquaintances befriended in stores, who sold them items at a discount. This behavior was strictly prohibited among the spouses of intelligence officers. It would have made the wife easy prey for agents from the other side, who could try to get her involved in illegal business. From there, the intelligence service of the opposite side could attempt to recruit her husband or to compromise him in order to expel him from the country.
Likewise, an intelligence officer living above his means immediately got the counterintelligence thinking. It was even one of the most reliable clues that there was something in the wind. A more recent example was provided by Aldrich Ames, the KGB mole inside the CIA, identified and sentenced in 1994. In the PGU, the intelligence service of the KGB, internal investigations were performed by the Second Chief Directorate’s internal security department (counterintelligence). This was the very same department where Stanislav Sorokin worked.
The topic is worth a digression. In theory, the Second Chief Directorate, which was represented in each of the KGB residencies abroad, was in charge of both infiltrating enemy services and preventing infiltration of its own ranks and of the Soviet colony as a whole. This effort, far more complex than political or scientific/technological intelligence, required not only well trained but also talented human resources.
As everywhere else, talent was scarce. One could not expect to find many talented individuals in the most despised service, regarded as a department of rats. For this reason, although essential to any intelligence agency, internal security services had a fairly mediocre managerial staff. The informants recruited in France by the Second Directorate were not government employees working for the USSR section of the DST, who were trying to infiltrate the KGB residency in Paris, but Russian saleswomen working at the embassy store or the guards’ wives who would rush back home to tell their husbands who they saw shopping at Tati’s. Instead of tracking alarming signs, such as the lavish lifestyle of certain KGB members, they were listening to gossip. Naturally, when one was caught in the bickering between neighbors, there was no time left to go after potential moles.
As a final note to this
As far as caviar and gems trafficking was concerned, it had become a more and more common practice, especially popular among Soviet diplomats. Holders of a green passport, they were exempted from the draconian customs checks at Moscow Sheremetyevo Airport. The Vetrovs, on the other hand, had blue service passports, given to the nondiplomatic staff of Soviet organizations abroad and to the members of important delegations. In many situations, this blue passport was a better deal than the red passports delivered to foreign cooperation specialists, teachers, tourists, and other small-fry individuals, but not to go through customs. If caught smuggling goods, the holder of a blue passport, betraying the higher trust the government had placed in him, was exposed to a harsher punishment, at least in theory. In reality, things were much simpler. Astute people were always carrying a nice-looking pen or cigarette lighter they would hand out, along with their declaration of goods, to the customs officer as a souvenir. If facing a tougher inspector, they would get waved on by leaving behind a carton of American cigarettes or a pair of jeans. The main thing was not to carry any book by Solzhenitsyn or other dissident author in one’s suitcase.
Even though KGB members and their families appeared to live a freer life, in many respects they were subjected to stricter constraints. The wives of “clean” civil servants, whether diplomats or administrative officers, often bought what they needed through well-placed acquaintances befriended in stores, who sold them items at a discount. This behavior was strictly prohibited among the spouses of intelligence officers. It would have made the wife easy prey for agents from the other side, who could try to get her involved in illegal business. From there, the intelligence service of the opposite side could attempt to recruit her husband or to compromise him in order to expel him from the country.
Likewise, an intelligence officer living above his means immediately got the counterintelligence thinking. It was even one of the most reliable clues that there was something in the wind. A more recent example was provided by Aldrich Ames, the KGB mole inside the CIA, identified and sentenced in 1994. In the PGU, the intelligence service of the KGB, internal investigations were performed by the Second Chief Directorate’s internal security department (counterintelligence). This was the very same department where Stanislav Sorokin worked.
The topic is worth a digression. In theory, the Second Chief Directorate, which was represented in each of the KGB residencies abroad, was in charge of both infiltrating enemy services and preventing infiltration of its own ranks and of the Soviet colony as a whole. This effort, far more complex than political or scientific/technological intelligence, required not only well trained but also talented human resources.
As everywhere else, talent was scarce. One could not expect to find many talented individuals in the most despised service, regarded as a department of rats. For this reason, although essential to any intelligence agency, internal security services had a fairly mediocre managerial staff. The informants recruited in France by the Second Directorate were not government employees working for the USSR section of the DST, who were trying to infiltrate the KGB residency in Paris, but Russian saleswomen working at the embassy store or the guards’ wives who would rush back home to tell their husbands who they saw shopping at Tati’s. Instead of tracking alarming signs, such as the lavish lifestyle of certain KGB members, they were listening to gossip. Naturally, when one was caught in the bickering between neighbors, there was no time left to go after potential moles.
As a final note to this
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