Item BRINK OF APOCALYPSE 3/4 - Interview with Oleg Kalugin, KGB General, Leningrad, [2007]

Typescript transcript of interview with Oleg Kalugin, KGB General, Leningrad. Subjects include his role as second in command at the KGB in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg); working close to the Finland border; his role within the United States as an intelligence officer in the KGB, then his role as chief of Foreign counter intelligence; reforms within the KGB from 1950s-1980s ;relationship with Yuri Andropov; Kalugin’s views on Dmitriy Ustinov, and Andrei Gromyko; the rivalry between Leonid Brezhnev and his Generals with Andropov; Andropov’s ‘tough’ persona; Andropov’s survival within the USSR power infrastructure due to his perceived intellectuality; Brezhnev’s clique’s promotion of Andropov only to remove him for the KGB; Andropov’s paranoia; emergence of Operation RYAN, Ronald Reagan and his “Evil Empire” speech 1981; spotting signs of Operation RYAN, following western press reports during the early 1980s; USSR relationship with Presidents Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon during Detente; USSR’s relationship with Henry Kissinger; the monitoring of the White House and Western Europe by KGB intelligence officers, the cynicism felt by officers about Operation RYAN; head of KGB, Vladimir Kryuchkov, his anti-western views, his relationship with Mikhail Gorbachev and Kryuchkov’s role in the failed 1991 USSR coup d'état attempt; Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech, May 1945; The USSR economy; shooting down of Korean Airlines Flight KAL 007, 1 Sep 1983; the presence of Operation RYAN; USSR ageing leadership. 61pp