ASHINGTON, Aug. 23 — As a fervent Communist at home in
the Soviet intelligence service, Oleg Kalugin never dreamed that he might
one day embrace America.
"After all," Mr. Kalugin said, "I was one of the cold warriors."
Oleg Danilovich Kalugin was not just a warrior. He was one of the
generals of the cold war, a K.G.B. leader who did his best to undermine
Western capitalism by recruiting Americans to work for Moscow. His
greatest recruiting coup was probably John A. Walker Jr., a Navy warrant
officer who offered his services while Mr. Kalugin was stationed in
Washington in 1966. Mr. Kalugin said in a 1991 interview that Mr. Walker
was paid more than $1 million before the F.B.I. caught him in 1985.
On Aug. 4, Mr. Kalugin, the son of a member of Stalin's secret police,
was sworn in as a United States citizen.
As a senior member of the K.G.B., Mr. Kalugin spied on Americans for
years before losing faith in Communism. He was ultimately convicted of
treason in Russia. That verdict makes him liable to a 15-year prison
sentence if he returns to Russia.
His new citizenship confirmed his place in his adopted country, where
he has been at home in the Washington suburb of Silver Spring, Md., for
nearly a decade. It also completed a personal journey.
Mr. Kalugin, 68, has made a comfortable living in the land he once
plotted against. He is a professor at the Center for Counterintelligence
and Security Studies, a consulting service in Alexandria, Va., that was
founded in 1997. The center provides expertise and advice in
counterintelligence, counterterrorism and security for the government and
companies. Mr. Kalugin has lectured widely on intelligence issues and is a
frequent television commentator.
In a recent interview, Mr. Kalugin wore a tiny American flag — "pinned
on me by one of my C.I.A. friends," he said proudly — on the lapel of his
blazer as he talked about Russian politics and reminisced about what was
and what might have been.
He wondered aloud what might have become of him if his superiors in
Moscow had sent him to Cairo in the late 1950's, as was considered,
instead of the United States. Once in America, he spied.
As he told it, he also grew to like the nation he was spying on. "I
watched this country's progress," he said, recalling the tragedies and
triumphs of the civil rights era. Even at the height of the cold war, he
said, he found Americans "exceptionally friendly, wherever I went."
Even his F.B.I. tailers were friendly. One night in 1968, while he was
vacationing with his family in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., his car broke down.
"An agent came along and gave us a lift to a Howard Johnson's," he
said.
Mr. Kalugin's relationship with America began in the late 1950's, when
Communist officials noticed his skill with languages. He was a K.G.B.
trainee when he was sent to Columbia University as an exchange
student.
He spied at the United Nations from 1960 to 1964, under his cover role
as a correspondent for Soviet radio and television. After a stint in
Moscow, he returned to the United States under the cover of press
secretary at the Soviet Embassy.
The columnist Jack Anderson exposed Mr. Kalugin as a spy in 1970, and
Mr. Kalugin went back to Moscow. From 1973 to 1980, he headed the Soviet
Union's counterintelligence operations. After falling out with the
K.G.B.'s top leaders, he was demoted and exiled to Leningrad from 1980 to
1987.
Although he lost stature in the K.G.B., he retained the wary respect of
the American intelligence community. "Smooth as silk, the smoothest guy
I've seen in years," William E. Colby, the former director of central
intelligence, once said. "With his own agenda, of course."
Mr. Kalugin has said he was a handler and friend of Kim Philby, the
British double agent who defected to Moscow. John le Carré wrote in 1995
that Mr. Kalugin coolly described helping plan the assassination of a
Bulgarian in London with a poison-tipped umbrella.
In recruiting John Walker, Mr. Kalugin had a chance to tip the cold war
balance. At Mr. Walker's sentencing in 1986, the government said his spy
ring had allowed the Soviet Union to read secret communications from the
time of the Vietnam War to the early 1980's, revealing Navy tactics,
covert operations and procedures for deploying nuclear weapons.
Mr. Kalugin said his devotion to Communism and its ideals waned as he
saw that the Soviet system had been "built on the corpses of millions of
people."
He retired from the K.G.B. in 1990. That year, he was accused of
leaking secrets, and President Mikhail S. Gorbachev stripped him of his
rank, decorations and pension. Mr. Kalugin was elected to the Soviet
Parliament that year, giving him a measure of immunity from
prosecution.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he continued to criticize the
government and the successor to the K.G.B., the F.S.B. In 1994, his book
"The First Chief Directorate: My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage
Against the West" was published by St. Martin's Press, to the annoyance of
Moscow. The next year, Mr. Kalugin settled in the United States.
In 2001 in Tampa, Fla., he testified in the espionage trial of George
Trofimoff, a retired Army Reserve colonel, saying that Mr. Trofimoff had
been considered one of the K.G.B.'s top American agents. But Mr. Kalugin
denied that he had exposed him or any other agents. (Mr. Trofimoff was
convicted of spying.)
Last year in Moscow, Mr. Kalugin was convicted of treason, in absentia,
and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
"I feel proud to be a Russian," he said. "I was born there."
But, he added, "I will not go back under the present circumstances." He
said he meant not only the treason verdict but also the presence of
Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin.
Mr. Putin has called Mr. Kalugin a traitor, accusing him of disclosing
secrets about sources and methods used by Russia's special overseas
intelligence unit, an accusation that Mr. Kalugin has denied.
Mr. Kalugin describes Mr. Putin as a colorless, unimaginative man.
Mr. Kalugin's wife, Lyudmila, died of cancer in 2001 after 47 years of
marriage. Mr. Kalugin has two daughters; one lives in Moscow and the other
in New York City.
If he ever revisits Russia, he may get a welcome from Mikhail
Gorbachev. The two have reconciled, Mr. Kalugin said.
Mr. Kalugin sent the former Russian leader a copy of his book inscribed
"To the man who liberated Russia from serfdom and made me a free man."
Mr. Gorbachev sent a note back: "To Oleg, with my heart full of
friendly thoughts."
