193. The KGB in Iran: Defecting to MI6 with Ben Macintyre (Ep 1)

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0:25Gordon:KGB officer is recruited by MI6 in Iran at a time of revolutionary upheaval. His intelligence helped shape the Cold War. But how far is Agent Redwood motivated by some rather personal difficulties? Well, welcome to The Rest is Classified. I'm David McCloskey. And I'm Gordon Carrera. And welcome to a very special series as we delve into the amazing story of an MI6 agent known as Redwood. His real name is Russian, Vladimir Anatolyevich Kozichkin. He's a man who embodies, I think it's fair to say, some of the very complex human motivations of those who end up spying for other countries. I would wager that Kuzichkin's name is not particularly well known among espionage history aficionados.

1:13Gordon:The story's pretty shadowy up until this point, but the amazing tale has finally come out or is coming out, hasn't it, Gordon? That's right. Thanks to the writer Ben McIntyre, author of many wonderful books, including on Gordievsky, as well as others, Second World War onwards, and the author of the new book, Redwood, which is out now. We're very pleased to say Ben is with us to talk about this story. Welcome, Ben. Delighted to be here. It is a very unusual story. It's fair to say, as we kind of teased at the top, come for the spying, stay for the discussion of erectile dysfunction. We shall get to that later.

1:48It's a fascinating story, Ben. And it's also one which is amazing as a human drama, but also, I guess, even resonates up to today in terms of Iran and its importance. Yes, I mean, it has huge, and to me, when I started this project, entirely unexpected modern echoes. Some of the main characters in this story on the Iranian side are the same people who are still in control in Tehran. And this, in a way, is the origin story, one of the origin stories of the Iranian regime, it is one of the reasons why the Iranian regime is the way it is today, is down to this one spy. And in a way, that's why I love this story.

2:29It has both a kind of huge macro significance. It is a globally important story. That's something, as you guys well know, that you can't say of many spies, that they actually strategically change the dials of history. but Redwood really does and yet it boils down in a way to a highly personal very private, very secret personal problem that he himself had. So it combines I loved writing it because it combines both the human and the global political in a way that is when it happens in Spyworld pretty magical

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5:14Gordon:So then, I mean, maybe we start with the human. Can you set up who Redwood was, is? Who is this Vladimir Kozichkin? Kozichkin was a classic recruit to the KGB, or appeared to be in the 1960s. His father, or the man he thought was his father, was a KGB officer. So he'd been brought up in that very closed, rather privileged world of a Soviet KGB family. He was in the army for his national service. He was then classically recruited by the KGB. But right from the beginning, Kozichkin was slightly different from his fellow recruits into the KGB. He was always somewhat alienated from the Soviet regime.

5:54He had his doubts about it from the beginning. And one of the things that happened to him very early in life was that he discovered that the man who had brought him up as his father, a brutal, alcoholic, wife-abusing, violent man, was not his father at all. He wasn't related to him at all. His real father, it turned out, was someone else who had died when Kuzichkin was about in his early 20s. And his mother sort of confessed that she had brought him up as someone that he wasn't. And that, I think, had a profound effect on him in the sense that he realized you could be somebody on the outside and yet be someone completely different on the inside.

6:35And that, I think, is, in a way, that's the track on which his future life would run. But initially, he appeared to be a perfectly loyal and patriotic and determined and ambitious and very good KGB officer. I mean, he was selected for the illegals section of the KGB, Department S. Which we should explain, if people might know this from previous podcasts we've done, but that's the bit that sends people under deep cover abroad, not under diplomatic cover, so the Russians call it illegal. But it is the elite, isn't it? I mean, that's what he'd been picked for. It is. And in the 1960s and 70s, it was one of the most powerful departments in the KGB.

7:13It was certainly one of the best funded. And from the Western point of view, it was also one of the most mysterious. The West did not understand how the KGB planted illegals abroad. And it was a huge operation. I mean, nobody, to coin a phrase, nobody does it better than the Russians. and planting these people under completely fake identities in foreign countries was what Kuzichkin did. So there's a sort of irony here too. So his first major job for the KGB was manufacturing people who didn't really exist, creating false identities for people and then planting them abroad. And he excelled at it.

7:48He was really, he was very, very good at it. His degree was at the Oriental Studies faculty in Moscow, and he spoke very, very good Farsi, the language of Iran. So he was always destined for a posting in Iran. And he was destined for high things. He was marked out right from the beginning as a real high flyer within the KGB. And also as being quite tall. Yes. This is the other one of many distinguishing features of Vladimir Kuzitskin, was that he was six foot four going on six foot five. How tall are you, David? I'm six foot five. Okay. So you could have gone toe to toe with him. I don't think you'd have been able to go toe to toe with him in breadth.

8:26I mean, he was a big guy. He was about three and a half foot wide as well as be. I mean, he was an enormous man. And at the time, six foot five was was a was a height. Imagine trying to do counter surveillance when you're six foot five. It's not easy. You will know, David. I mean, in America, you would you would blend in much easier with all those basketball players. But but at the time, you know, in the in the 1960s and 70s, that was hugely taught, particularly in Soviet Russia. So he was distinctive in that way as well. Extremely handsome. In a way, sort of the perfect KGB officer. You're actually right, Kusichkin was a shy, awkward young man, as tall people sometimes are in your book.

9:06I mean, I was thinking that it's exactly like you, David. Yeah, president. Shy, shy, awkward. Retiring. Yeah, exactly. Except when drunk. So he also liked to drink. Boy, did he like to drink. I mean, again, not unheard of in the Soviet era, and for tall people. But filling his boots. Tall, shy. Awkward drunk. There we go. McCluskey.

9:31Gordon:Word association. He sort of covered his innate shyness and awkwardness with alcohol. And I'm afraid the alcohol is a recurrent theme in his story. But he gets married as well, doesn't he? He does. He met and fell in love with a woman called Galina, who was a young, very pretty, very patriotic Soviet citizen, really. And theirs was a kind of perfect marriage in lots of ways. or appeared to be, you know, to be appointed abroad as a KGB officer, you had to be married. It was one of the rules that the KGB laid down because they believed, perhaps rightly, that a KGB officer was much less likely to defect if he was out there with his family.

10:12It's just going to be harder for him to do. So in a way, she was his passport to a foreign posting and he was her passport to a life of glamour abroad as the wife of a serving KGB officer. Now, that was like joining the absolute elite of the Soviet Union. So theirs appeared to be the perfect partnership. I was struck as I was reading the book in thinking that Galina and Kozichkin would be

10:40Gordon:quite simpatico in their feelings toward the Soviet state because her family had been really ravaged during the terror. but she doesn't seem to share much of his sort of interior life and really dissent about the Soviet state. She's kind of happy to put it in the past and move on. That's right, David. But in a way that is not unknown as well. I mean, it's, you know, her reaction to the sort of horrors of the past was not to think about them, really. I mean, she was not a political person. She was in no way stupid, but she was not engaged in the world in that way. She was quite a happy person. I think she was quite a sort of simple person in lots of ways and Kozitskin did not share with her his anxieties and his growing disillusionment we don't want to jump too far ahead in this story because this does happen sort of later but his he was dubious from the start about the party the ideology and to some extent the KGB and but that disillusionment is gradual and spreading for him And he never told Galina about it.

11:43So in a strange way, their story already had a secret in the middle of it. And they go to Iran. So he's posted to Iran in 1977, I think? That's right. That's right. So let's maybe paint a bit of a picture of Iran at that time, because it's still the Shah's time, backed by the West. But it's starting to disintegrate, isn't it? Yeah. And he arrives at what appears to be the height of the Shah's power. You know, the money is pouring in. The oil is pouring out. that Tehran is filled with expatriates. There are lots of Americans. There are lots of Brits. It's a great cosmopolitan churning city. And underneath the surface, there is this growing fury, popular fury about the sort of excesses and the greed of the ruling class in Tehran focused on the Shah.

12:30There's a boiling opposition movement. And it's very inchoate. I mean, looking back in history, you'd imagine that it was just pure Islamic rebellion boiling underneath. And there was a lot of that. But actually, lots of sectors of Iranian society were turning against the Shah. And there was also taking place a kind of vigorous and vicious spy war, because Tehran was a sort of crucible of the Cold War. It was the Soviets were in there, and the West were in there, and they were vying for control. The Soviet Union had one of the largest KGB stations in the world based in Tehran, and they were running lots of illegals and they were locked in battle, really, with the Western intelligence services.

13:17And the Western intelligence services were backing the Shah's intelligence services. So SAVAK, the brutal security service of the Iranian monarchy, was clamping down on opposition brutally with help from the West, it has to be said. And so you've got this churning spy war going on into which Kozichkin is sort of plunged overnight. And it's stressful. It is highly difficult. And he begins running his illegals in Tehran and outside the country as well. He knows a lot by this point, Kozichkin. I mean, he's been privy to some of the key secrets of the KGB. And he's now essentially in charge of running its illegal sections in the Middle East.

13:56So he's he's rising through the ranks very quickly. But as he rises, the pressure levels are beginning to tell on him. And he finds this job, it's not an easy job that he's doing. It's also extremely dangerous. I mean, people are being picked up by SAVAC all the time. The KGB is finding it extremely difficult to plant its spies in Tehran. And there's, you know, there is real danger here. SAVAC are tough and brutal. These are, you know, some of them torturers and killers.

14:24Gordon:And one of his main jobs, I guess, is to build up contacts and presumably run assets inside the Iranian Communist Party, Tudor. Talk a little bit about that, because I think in sort of the sweep of the revolution, we lose sight to your earlier point, that there actually was a sort of underground Marxist opposition to the Shah. There is, and there was, and it's very fragmented. I mean, there are Marxist groups, there are Islamic Marxist groups, there are Marxist-Islamic groups. You know, it's a real hodgepodge. And the Soviets are trying to work out which horse to back. Some of the Marxist groups are so wild and kind of uncontrollable, but they're pretty heavily armed, a lot of them.

15:10But the key focus for the Soviet Union was the Tudeh Party, which is the formal Communist Party of Iran. Long and distinguished history, being kicked out by the Shah. And after the Iranian Revolution, which, of course, Kozichkin witnessed, I mean, he was there for the revolution, watching that bloody uprising in which Savak were wiped out and the Shah was sent packing. And there are groups fighting in the streets. There are gun battles. But the Soviet Union is backing the Tudé Party, which was then still quite powerful, particularly after the revolution, 1979 revolution. The Tudé Party in exile had come back into the country.

15:50They were armed. They'd been enabled. They had, in fact, sacked quite a lot of the sort of weapons, the arsenals of the existing regime. So these were important groups. And it is worth saying, isn't it? Because I think in our minds, the Chagos and Ayatollah Khomeini comes in. But it's actually a much more fluid, messy period in which different factions are fighting for control after the Shah goes. There's this period of kind of political fluidity, which you get in the late 70s and early 80s. That's absolutely right, Gordon. It's also very unpredictable. It's not at all clear for a few years that the Ayatollah is going to be able to control this exploding country with all these different factions fighting it out.

16:33So at least for the first few years of the revolution, there's everything to play for. Now, as you guys know, you know, in a world in flux, that's when the spies really get purchased. That's when the spy war really begins to heat up. So even though the CIA is kicked out, even though we see the occupation of the American embassy, that appalling, catastrophic kind of traumatic experience for America, which I think we are also seeing playing out today, the legacy of that is still very much alive. There's no formal American presence, but nonetheless, they're trying to get their spies in. So are MI6.

17:14MI6 still have a kind of skeletal operation going there. But it is absolutely a world in bloody flux, and the different parties are fighting it out on the streets. And the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, then a fledgling organization, is trying to get control on behalf of the Islamists.

17:35Gordon:And Kuzichkin in this period of turmoil, I mean, this has to look like an incredible opportunity for the Soviet Union, right? Because it's not at all clear exactly whether Khomeini is going to take over or what form his government will take. There's a Marxist party, a two-day party that's coming back into the country. I mean, for Kuzichkin, this kind of looks like maybe an opportunity to build his career. Absolutely. And that is certainly the way it was seen by the Central Committee of the Communist Party back in the Soviet Union. This was a game changer for the Soviet Union. What they hadn't quite realized was that the Ayatollah hated communism almost as much as he hated the West.

18:12And that therefore, a small thing, you know, that his whole policy was neither East nor West. But certainly initially, he was tolerant of the left-wing party. He didn't have much choice, the Ayatollah. So the Tude party was growing. The Communist party was well armed. This look to the Central Committee and therefore to Kozichkin and his KGB backers, this was a golden opportunity. They were going to be able to right, as it were, the wrongs of the Shah era and get, at the very least, get a foothold in Iran. So that's Kazichkin in revolutionary Iran. But how does he end up as MI6's Agent Redwood?

18:52We'll take a break and afterwards we'll find out. Star Wars The Mandalorian and Grogu is now streaming on Disney+. What are you waiting for? Hop on. The must-see galactic adventure comes home on Disney+. This is the way. Our only chance is to work together. I like this kid. Always wear your seatbelt. Star Wars, The Mandalorian and Grogu. Now streaming on Disney+. Read PG-13. This episode is brought to you by ChatGPT. Hey, it's Bill Simmons from the Bill Simmons Podcast. Have you guys heard about ChatGPT work? It's the new way to use ChatGPT for bigger multi-step projects. And when you need more than just answers, give ChatGPT work access to your apps and files and it can create real work documents like spreadsheets, slides, and structured reports.

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20:29Gordon:Well, welcome back. We're with Ben McIntyre talking about his amazing new book, Redwood, Vladimir Kuzichkin. And we last left him in Tehran in this kind of broiling spirit of revolution. One of the things I love about the book, Ben, was you go into a lot of great detail. I don't want to give too much away, but a lot of great detail about the KGB's operations in Iran, in Tehran, in this kind of revolutionary period. I mean, could you give us some sense of what Kuzichkin is actually kind of doing? these operations where he's drinking, he's trying to prepare himself for this kind of tense environment.

21:09Gordon:I mean, maybe walk us into one of those, if you wouldn't mind, for kind of what he's doing nuts and bolts on the ground as he's in his job as a KGB officer. So he quite quickly becomes head of the illegal section, line N, as it was known within the KGB. So that's running the illegals, the sort of the undercover agents, not just in Tehran, but around it. But actually, he sort of becomes even more powerful than that because he becomes effectively deputy resident there. He becomes the second guy in charge. So the KGB at this point is trying to recruit people within the regime. It is supporting the Iranian Communist Party.

21:44It is channeling funds and guns to them. But Kozichkin's main job is creating undercover agents. And he has dozens of them. I mean, he's got a very wide network and he's very good at this stuff. I'll His two main agents were codenamed Conrad and Evie, and they were lifelong KGB officers. One was East German, one was Latvian. They had been trained in Moscow, and they had been married in Moscow as a fake couple. The KGB often did this. I'm sure some of your listeners will have seen The Americans, that TV series. Well, that's not a million miles away from what the KGB really did. In this case, what I find so fascinating about it is they were thrust together in a spy marriage and then they fell in love with each other.

22:32And the relationship endured. So they were deeply implanted in Tehran society. He was a sewage engineer. She was a housewife. They went to all the coffee mornings. They went to the whole expatriate thing. They joined the drama circle. But they were top-level KGB spies. So they were gathering really useful intelligence both before and after the revolution. And one of their best covers was they were both incredibly boring. They never said anything.

23:00Gordon:I would have thought every sewage engineer that I know took the life of the party. Normally, they're just such fun. I agree. No offense to sewage engineers who might be listening. But, you know, it is actually a great cover. I mean, if you are gray and colorless and you can turn up at the drama reading circle and nobody knows who you are and nobody follows you. But yet they were producing some really high grade stuff. They were considered by the KGB to be among their top spies. And they had a long history, too. So they were only one example. I mean, Kozichkin had dozens of these. And he was having to meet them when he did meet them in deep secrecy.

23:36Because, of course, if the Iranian regime had found out that the Soviets had planted these people all over the country, they'd all have been taken in and executed. And so probably would Kozichkin. So, again, because it's important to the story and we'll come back to it, the stress level is building all the time as he gets more and more responsibility. And he's having to meet these people at brush contact sites in Tehran. He's having to leave dead letter box sites for them. He's having to, you know, all of that spy craft is incredibly tense. I mean, the Soviets have one big advantage in this is that they had a radio interception unit inside their embassy, codenamed Impulse, which was able to pick up the radio frequencies of the security service, the police.

24:23And so they knew when they were under surveillance. Now, the Iranian authorities didn't know that. The West didn't know that either. But it meant that every time Kozichkin went out to meet one of his agents, Impulse would do a kind of search to make sure or to try and establish whether or not he was under surveillance. But it wasn't foolproof because the Iranian security service could simply switch off its radios. For the first four years that Kozichkin was there, he never knew whether he was clean. He never knew whether he was fully safe. So every day carried with it the terror, really, that he was going to get caught and killed.

25:01Gordon:I think the stress level, it's so important structurally to understand the business and the people in it. Because if you're in finance or venture capital, you can be wrong nine times out of 10. But if you're right once and you get the payoff, it's great. So there's sort of this portfolio. If you're in a normal corporate job, you can tend to be wrong occasionally. and move on and move up in a company. You can't be wrong. If you think you're free of surveillance and you're not, and your illegals are killed and rolled up, arrested and killed or disappeared, that's it. You're done. You have to be perfect every time.

25:41That is absolutely right. I mean, the worst that would happen to Kozitskin if his network unraveled was... I mean, the best that would happen to him was that his career would be over. Yeah. He'd be sent home. That's the best case scenario. That's the best... The worst is that they're all killed and so is he. I can't overemphasize this. This is the most hostile circumstance to operate as a spy in because everybody's out to get you. And particularly because it's such a fragmented situation, there are lots of different groups competing. They all have checkpoints. They all have different forms of surveillance.