Alexander Principalov

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Alexander Kirilowitsch Prinzipalow ( Russian Александр Кириллович Принципалов ; * 1949 ; † 9. April 1997 in Moscow ) was a Soviet intelligence officer of the KGB and is regarded as one of those responsible for the purchase of Rosewood files (Rosewood) by the CIA after the dissolution of the Stasi in autumn 1989.

activities

Since 1977, Prinzipalow was disguised as a diplomat at the Soviet embassy in Oslo . In the early 1980s, he was arrested there on short notice on suspicion of espionage and expelled from Norway . From 1985 onwards, the KGB employed him as a liaison officer to the MfS department head office intelligence under the then local head in East Berlin Iwan Kusmin.

Rosewood files

In December 1989 he was appointed as the KGB station chief based in Berlin-Karlshorst commissioned by the Stasi by the Lieutenant Colonel of the Stasi Rainer Hemmann passed HVA mobilization index (a collection of about 350,000 records of all clear and top names of the agents of the HVA) to Moscow to be able to keep them there in the supposedly safe country of friendship. He is suspected of having copied this on microfilm together with KGB Colonel Alexander Syubenko and then selling it to the CIA in 1992 during the KGB's disintegration. The courier is said to have been the CIA agent Charles Atwood , disguised as a military historian , who is said to have been an adjutant to General Lucius D. Clay during the time of the Berlin Airlift .

Unexplained death

On April 9, 1997, Prinzipalov died of a mysterious heart attack while sitting in his car right on his doorstep. The exact circumstances of his death have never been clarified and therefore provide enough material for numerous speculations, especially since Syubenko also died in 1995 while driving a car under unexplained circumstances.

literature

personal data
SURNAME Principalov, Alexander
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Принципалов, Александр Кириллович (Russian spelling); Principalov, Alexander Kirilowitsch
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Soviet secret service official
DATE OF BIRTH 1949
DATE OF DEATH April 9, 1997
Place of death Moscow