Tag Archives: Active Measures

Italian Job: The KGB, Mafia & Red Brigades

Leonid Sergeevich Kolosov (1926-2008) was a Soviet international correspondent for Izvestia and also attained the rank of lieutenant colonel in the KGB First Chief Directorate (FCD). Kolosov was stationed in Italy, his country of specialization, in the 1960s and 1970s under journalistic cover. In this interview he recounts his work with Sicilian mafia boss Nicola Gentile and penetrating the Red Brigades.

Leonid Sergeevich, how did you get into intelligence work?

I got into intelligence work by accident, but the secrets of this service’s techniques were revealed to me by my instructor when I was learning the mysteries of this complex but rather fascinating and interesting, work in Balashikha, a town outside Moscow, at the 101st School. In this school there were one-year and three-year training courses for intelligence officers. I made it into the one-year course.

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Who Was Yuri Bezmenov?

Over the past several years, the testimony of a previously obscure Soviet defector has grown ever more potent as America unravels into chaos. Should we trust him?


The late Yuri Bezmenov (1939-1993), styled a man who turned his back on the KGB and a “fighter against totalitarianism,” has gained exalted status among independent media commentators and has even found currency in the mainstream. Bezmenov, the son of a Red Army officer and trained in oriental languages, was a journalist for the Soviet news agency Novosti and scored a posting to India in the late 1960s. In 1970 he vanished from the USSR embassy colony disguised as a hippy and made his way to the West, where he would rail against the Soviet system, writing pamphlets like Love Letter to America; No Novosti is Good News; World Thought Police; and Black is Beautiful, Communism is Not.

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Did Russia Hack the Election?

Did Russian intelligence sway the outcome of the 2016 United States presidential race? Ask the CIA and mainstream Western media organs, and they’ll have you believe that yes, it was none other than Moscow’s shadowy operatives who managed to infiltrate Donald Trump into the newly gold-bedecked Oval Office. Blame the Russians, our betters declare, rather than a year of skewed coverage and loaded polls. While the theory has become popular among opposition to the new administration, it is based on exactly zero evidence – which means we should designate it under the establishment’s own rubric as “fake news.”

To bolster the charge, the US Intelligence Community (of Iraq WMD fame) has released a public report intimating that Vladimir Putin “hacked the election.” Through cyberwarfare, agents of influence and information campaigns, we are told, the Kremlin pulled off the unthinkable and effectively ran a regime-change operation in America. Warmongering neoconservatives and virtue-signaling liberals alike commenced their reenactment of Red Dawn. Piling on, CNN and Buzzfeed unveiled a sloppy, error-ridden and highly dubious dossier detailing Trump’s alleged Russian ties and sexual blackmail material (kompromat). None of these claims have been backed by a shred of credible proof presented to the public, so why should they be taken as an article of faith? Continue reading Did Russia Hack the Election?

Deception & “Active Measures”

KGB Lt. General Vitaly Gregorievich Pavlov (1914-2005), a senior officer of the First Chief Directorate (Foreign Intelligence), responds to charges made by Soviet defectors to the West regarding disinformation campaigns in the Cold War. Pavlov notes that disinformation is a normal tool for ensuring the secrecy of ongoing intelligence operations by any espionage service, and that Anatoly Golitsyn’s claims of a “grand deception” were proven as fantasy by the historical record.


Now I’d like to speak a bit on the so-called active measures of Soviet foreign intelligence – those very active measures over which Anatoly Golitsyn, Stanislav Levchenko, Vladislav Bittman, and still others among the traitors, launched into their hysterics after having left for the West. In their portrayal, such measures represent calculated, wide-scale activity to deceive a world audience and lead it into confusion regarding the true goals and motives of Soviet foreign policy.

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