[1] Mitrokhin, who had worked at KGB headquarters in Moscow from 1956 to 1985, first offered his material to the US' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Latvia, but they rejected it as possible fakes.
They also provide specifics about Guy Burgess, a British diplomat with a short career in MI6, said to be frequently under the influence of alcohol; the archive indicates that he gave the KGB at least 389 top secret documents in the first six months of 1945 along with a further 168 in December 1949.
After Nikita Khrushchev's Secret Speech in February 1956 which denounced the previous regime of Joseph Stalin, Mitrokhin became critical of the existing KGB system and was transferred from Operations to the Archives.
[6][7] Notes in the Mitrokhin Archive claim that more than half of the Soviet Union's advanced weapons were based on US designs, that the KGB tapped Henry Kissinger's phone during the time he was US Secretary of State (1973–77), and had spies in place in almost all US defense contractor facilities.
Christopher Andrew states that in the Mitrokhin Archive there are several Latin American leaders or members of left wing parties accused of being KGB informants or agents.
I. Ginor and G. Remez) stated that Mahmoud Abbas (also known as 'Abu Mazen'), the President of the Palestinian National Authority, worked for the Soviet intelligence agency.
According to a recently released document from the Mitrokhin Archive, entitled "KGB developments – Year 1983", Abbas apparently worked under the code name "Krotov", starting early 1980s.
[20][21][22] Andrew described the following active measures by the KGB against the United States:[37] According to Mitrokhin's notes, Soviet security organizations played key roles in establishing puppet Communist governments in Eastern Europe and Afghanistan.
At that moment, Soviet intelligence officer Oleg Kalugin reported from Washington that he had gained access to "absolutely reliable documents proving that neither CIA nor any other agency was manipulating the Czechoslovak reform movement."
[59] The Andrew and Mitrokhin publications briefly describe the history of the PLO leader, Yasser Arafat, who established close collaboration with the Romanian Securitate service and the KGB in the early 1970s.
Led by Carlos the Jackal, a group of PFLP fighters carried out a spectacular raid on the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries office in Vienna in 1975.
[64] The KGB aided the Stasi in supporting the Red Army Faction, which perpetrated terrorist attacks such as the 1985 Rhein-Main Air Base bombing.
[64] In 1981 the Soviets had launched "Operation Kontakt", which was based on a forged document purporting to contain details of the weapons and money provided by the ISI to Sikh militants who wanted to create an independent country.
[65] In November 1982, Yuri Andropov, the General Secretary of the Communist Party and leader of the Soviet Union, approved a proposal to fabricate Pakistani intelligence documents detailing ISI plans to foment religious disturbances in Punjab and promote the creation of Khalistan as an independent Sikh state.
[66] Indira Gandhi's decision to move troops into the Punjab was based on her taking seriously the information provided by the Soviets regarding secret CIA support for the Sikhs.
"[68] Notes in the archive describe extensive preparations for large-scale sabotage operations against the United States, Canada, and Europe in the event of war, although none was recorded as having been carried out, beyond creating weapons and explosives caches in assorted foreign countries.
considered schemes for breaking the legs of the ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev for defecting to the West was first reported in a book written six years ago."
The main message the reader comes away with after plowing through almost a thousand pages is the same one gleaned from the earlier books: the Soviets were incredibly successful, albeit evil, spymasters, and none of the Western services could come close to matching their expertise.
"[77] That same year, Reg Whitaker, a professor of Political Science at York University in Toronto, gave a review at the Intelligence Forum about the book where he wrote that "The Mitrokhin Archive arrives from a cache under a Russian dacha floor, courtesy of the British intelligence community itself, and its chosen historian, Chris Andrew", and that the book "is remarkably restrained and reasonable in its handling of Westerners targeted by the KGB as agents or sources.
"[79] That same year, the Central European Review described Mitrokhin and Andrew's work as "fascinating reading for anyone interested in the craft of espionage, intelligence gathering and its overall role in 20th-century international relations", offering "a window on the Soviet worldview and, as the ongoing Hanssen case in the United States clearly indicates, how little Russia has relented from the terror-driven spy society it was during seven inglorious decades of Communism.
"[80] In 2002, David L. Ruffley, from the Department of International Programs, United States Air Force Academy, said that the material "provides the clearest picture to date of Soviet intelligence activity, fleshing out many previously obscure details, confirming or contradicting many allegations and raising a few new issues of its own", and "sheds new light on Soviet intelligence activity that, while perhaps not so spectacular as some expected, is nevertheless significantly illuminating.
[87] After the first book (Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, 1999) was published in the UK, an inquiry was held by the House of Commons' Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC).
In addition, ISC thought that "misleading stories were allowed to receive wide circulation", and the Committee found that SIS had handled neither the publication nor related media matters appropriately.
[88] In Italy in 2002, Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right coalition, the House of Freedoms, established the Mitrokhin Commission, presided over by Paolo Guzzanti (senator of Forza Italia) to investigate alleged KGB ties to figures in Italian politics.
"[92] In April 2006, Gerard Batten of the UK Independence Party, at the time a British member of the European Parliament for London, demanded a new inquiry into the Italian and Prodi allegations.
[94] In India, L. K. Advani, a senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party, requested of the government a white paper on the role of foreign intelligence agencies and a judicial enquiry on the allegations in The Mitrokhin Archive II: The KGB and the World.
Ironically, the KGB-trained National Security Service (NSS), the SRC's intelligence wing, had carried out Kediye's initial arrest.