SOMERTON MAN: KGB COVER NAMES AND TACTICS

KGB COVER NAMES

Our recent posts have been in large part based on the work of Alexander Vassiliev whose notebooks on the KGB and its operational methods have provided valuable information to all Cold War researchers.

There are many interesting and I think pertinent facts in the notebooks and what you see below is I think, amongst the most valuable. It is a description of the way that cover names were used and sometimes reused by KGB operatives in those times.

VASSILEIV'S NOTEBOOKS & KGB COVER NAMES

 Cover names are often changed.  Julius Rosenberg, for example, had three different cover names during his association with the KGB.  Each cover name has its own entry with citations to the pages where it appears.  The real name entry cites where the real name appears and repeats the cover name citations as well.

 Cover names are reused.  Four different persons, for example, had the cover name “Smith” at one time or another.  When more than one person had the same cover name this index attempts to separate out the different “Smiths”.  Usually, this is without difficulty because the multiple uses are well separated by time or activity.  Occasionally, however, it is difficult and in those cases, the lack of certainty is indicated in the entry.

Identifying the real name behind a cover name.  Often this is without difficulty because the text of Vassiliev’s notebooks or the deciphered Venona messages simply provides the real name without ambiguity.  Where the real name is not provided by the text, then the description of that person’s activity, where he or she worked, where they lived, or what trips they took at a particular time may make identification possible.  In the case of the Venona decryptions, when the text did not provide a real name, most of the work of identification was done by the FBI whose field agents used the information about the activities of a cover name to pin down the real person behind it.  Often, however, the information was insufficient to establish identification.  Consequently, more than half of the cover names in this index are unidentified.  When the evidence about a cover name suggests an identification but is not conclusive, the uncertainty is noted.

Two separate but overlapping set of documentation.  Vassiliev’s notebooks contain long quoted extracts and summaries he made of KGB archival material on KGB activities in the United States from the early 1930s to the early 1950s with some scattered later material as well.  The deciphered cables of the Venona project dated from 1941 to 1950 with the bulk in the period 1943 to 1945.  Most are also about KGB activity in the United States although there are also decoded cables of other Soviet agencies as well.  There is, consequently, a considerable overlap in the two sets of material for KGB activity in the United States in the 1940s.  In a number of cases, a passage in Vassiliev’s notebooks turns out to be the complete text of a Venona cable that was only partially decoded.  Vassiliev’s notebooks and the Venona decryptions have identical real-name identification for nearly two hundred cover names.  Vassiliev’s notebooks provide the real names for more than sixty cover names that were unidentified in the Venona decryptions.  The Venona decryptions provide the real names behind nearly thirty cover names that are unidentified in Vassiliev’s notebooks.  Vassiliev’s notebooks correct misidentification of four cover names in the Venona decryptions.

Partial decoding and partial names.  In the case of the Venona decryptions, while some messages were fully decoded, most had passages that were indecipherable and sometimes names were only partially spelled.  These partial spellings are indexed with eclipses indicating the missing letters.  In both the Venona cables and Vassiliev’s notebooks often only the surname of a person is given in the text.  When originally written, this would have been perfectly understandable to those reading the message or document because they were aware of the identifies of the persons being discussed.  And even today, often the context of the name allows one to attach a given name to a surname without difficulty.  Still, however, there remain numerous surnames where the lack of information about the person prevents the attachment of a given name and leaves the person named only partially identified.  A question mark, ?, indicates that a given name or, occasionally, a surname, is missing.

You can download the complete set of Vassiliev's notebooks here..