Vladimir Ippolitovich Wetrov

Wladimir Ippolitowitsch Wetrow ( Russian Владимир Ипполитович Ветров ; * October 10, 1932 in Moscow ; † January 23, 1985 ibid) was a Soviet KGB officer who worked under the alias Farewell in 1981 and 1982 a large part of the Soviet technology spies betrayed the USA to the French secret service DST . The passing on of the Soviet technology program contributed significantly to the destabilization of the Eastern Bloc. He was discovered and executed.

Life

Wetrow was born in Moscow in 1932. He studied at Baumann University in Moscow and became a computer technology specialist. He then worked as an engineer at the Moscow Computing Technology Plant (ZAM). In 1957 he was recruited by the secret service. From 1965 he was stationed in France as Line X officer of the KGB Directorate T (specializing in information gathering in the fields of science and technology). A French businessman he knew at the time, Jacques Prévost, helped him out of a tight spot when he took over the damage to an official limousine. Wetrow stayed in contact with Prévost, even after his return to the Soviet Union in 1970. At this time he made a career in Directorate T and was responsible for evaluating the incoming information and distributing it.

His friend Prévost was now working in Moscow himself, and the two continued to meet. Dissatisfied with his position in the agency and inwardly turning away from communist ideology, Wetrow handed over 4,000 internal KGB documents to Prévost, then later to a French secret service member, from the spring of 1981 to the beginning of 1982. In addition to the names of 250 KGB agents from Line X , these also contained lists of researched technologies, budgets, desiderata, etc. He allegedly did not ask for any money for his services, but he did receive benefits in kind in return.

The busy document deliveries worried the DST , and longer pauses should be taken to avoid detection. Wetrow himself became nervous because he believed himself caught by his lover, who was also employed by the KGB . Wetrow was first arrested in February 1982 for attempted manslaughter of her and manslaughter of an auxiliary policeman, and in the fall of that year he was sentenced to twelve years in a camp. He kept his work as a double agent secret. During his detention he became careless, disclosed his documents to the French and was sentenced to death and executed in 1985.

Wetrow exposed the extent of economic and arms espionage in the Soviet Union, which prompted the heads of government of the western countries to take extensive countermeasures. This included, for example, the disinformation of Directorate T, the surrender of faulty plans, defective deliveries to the Soviet Union and the discontinuation of economic cooperation. In addition, based on the information provided by Wetrow, around 150 Soviet technology spies worldwide were exposed and expelled. 47 Soviet diplomats were expelled from France alone.

literature

• RCS Trahair: Encyclopedia of Cold War espionage, spies, and secret operations . Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004, p. 318f ( ISBN 0313319553 )
• Jeffrey T. Richelson: A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century . Oxford University Press US, 1997, p. 376ff ( ISBN 9780195113907 )
• Farewell, Agent of Vengeance - TV documentary, 54 minutes. France / Canada 2008. German first broadcast in 2009 via Arte ( Memento from December 13, 2009 in the Internet Archive )

Web links

• CIA dossier on Farewell and the countermeasures taken by the CIA after its exposure
• William Safire: The Farewell Dossier. In: The New York Times . February 2, 2004, accessed August 18, 2009 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Farwell Dossier: The Story of Vladimir Wetrov - the agent who destroyed the Soviet industrial espionage system (Russian) (accessed September 3, 2011)