After training, he was sent to the United States, where he enrolled as a journalism student at Columbia University on a Fulbright scholarship in 1958, along with Aleksandr Yakovlev.
"[3] He continued to pose as a journalist for a number of years, eventually serving as the Radio Moscow correspondent at the United Nations.
In 1965, after five years in New York City, he returned to Moscow to serve under the cover of press officer in the Soviet Foreign Ministry.
Kalugin was accused of recruiting an agent 20 years prior who was actually an American spy (though the KGB probably believed incorrectly).
His unbridled public criticism led to reassignment to Security Officers posts first in the Academy of Sciences in 1987 and then at the Ministry of Electronics in 1988.
Kalugin became a firm supporter of Boris Yeltsin, the president of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.
One of the allegations in his 1994 book, The First Directorate: My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West,[8] stated that the death of Sean Bourke, who had helped traitor George Blake to escape prison, was caused by poisoning ordered by the KGB.
[9] Another allegation was that the KGB "virtually controlled the Russian Orthodox Church through the blackmail of its many gay priests", according to a review of the book.
In June 2001, Kalugin testified at the espionage trial of George Trofimoff, a retired Colonel of the United States Army Reserve who was charged with spying for the KGB in the 1970s and the 1980s.
"[13] Kalugin testified that Metropolitan Bishop Iriney (Susemihl), the Russian Orthodox hierarch of Austria, had recruited Trofimoff into the service of the KGB.
The operation to lure Trump had begun with an overture in March 1986 by Soviet Ambassador to the United Nations Yuri Dubinin.
In The Art of the Deal, Trump brags about how they talked about his proposal to build a hotel in Moscow across from the Kremlin, "in partnership with the Soviet government."
Viktor Suvorov alleges that the Soviet authorities often used Intourist prostitutes as bait to develop kompromat, particularly of a sexual nature.
Kalugin says: “I would not be surprised if the Russians have, and Trump knows about them, files on him during his trip to Russia and his involvement with meeting young ladies that were controlled [by Soviet intelligence].”[21][22]