The Farewell Dossier was the collection of documents that Colonel Vladimir Vetrov, a KGB defector "en place" (code-named "Farewell"), gathered and gave to the Direction de la surveillance du territoire (DST) in 1981–82, during the Cold War.
Vetrov was an engineer who had been assigned to evaluate information on NATO hardware and software gathered by the "Line X" technical intelligence operation for Directorate T, the Soviet Union directorate for scientific and technical intelligence collection from the West. He became increasingly disillusioned with the Soviet system and decided to work with the French at the end of the 1970s. Between early 1981 and early 1982, Vetrov gave almost 4,000 secret documents to the DST, including the complete list of 250 Line X officers stationed under legal cover in embassies around the world.
As a consequence, Western nations undertook a mass expulsion of Soviet technology spies.
Vetrov's story inspired the 1997 book by Sergueï Kostine. It was adapted in the French film (2009) starring Emir Kusturica and Guillaume Canet.
Background
Vetrov was a 52-year-old engineer assigned to evaluate the intelligence on capitalist hardware and software collected by spies ("Line X") for Directorate T. He became disillusioned, and at the end of 1980 volunteered his services to France for ideological reasons. French intelligence gave him the codename "Farewell" — an English word so that the KGB would assume he worked for the CIA if they learned of the code-name.
Between early 1981 and early 1982, Farewell supplied the DST with about four thousand secret documents, including a list of Soviet organizations in scientific collection and summary reports from Directorate T on the goals, achievements, and unfulfilled objectives of the program. He revealed the names of more than 200 Line X officers stationed in 10 KGB residences in the West, along with more than 100 leads to Line X recruitments.
The dossier, under the name of Farewell, reached the CIA in August 1981. It demonstrated that the Soviets had spent years carrying out their espionage of research and development activities.
CIA response
While Vetrov was recruited by the French, the Western counter-reaction came from the US.
Safire was writing a series of hardline columns denouncing the financial backing being given to Moscow by Germany and Britain for the Trans-Siberian Pipeline, a major natural gas pipeline from Siberia to Europe. That project would give control of European energy supplies to the Communists, as well as generate US$8 billion a year to support Soviet computer and satellite research. Critics have contested the authenticity of the account.
Information from Vetrov also led to the arrest in New York of the spy Dieter Gerhardt, a South African naval officer who had been passing secrets to the Soviets for 20 years. His handler, Vitaly Shlykov, was arrested and subsequently imprisoned in Switzerland while attempting to meet with Gerhardt's wife, Ruth, who was acting as his courier.
Counterintelligence response
According to Reed, another result was that the United States and its NATO allies later "rolled up the entire Line X collection network, both in the US and overseas." Weiss said "the heart of Soviet technology collection crumbled and would not recover".
Discovery
Eventually, Vetrov's defection led to his death. "Vetrov fell into a tragic episode with a woman and a fellow KGB officer in a Moscow park. In circumstances that are not clear, he stabbed and killed the officer and then stabbed but did not kill the woman. He was arrested, and, in the ensuing investigation, his espionage activities were discovered; he was eventually executed in 1985. CIA had enough intelligence to institute protective countermeasures."
Reception
First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba Fidel Castro wrote in a 2007 article that the campaign of countermeasures based on Farewell's dossier was an economic war; that although there were no deaths in the gas pipeline explosion, the Soviet economy was significantly damaged; and that between 1984 and 1985, the United States and its NATO allies had put an end to the technology spying operation, which had destroyed the capacity of the USSR to capture technology when Moscow was caught between a defective economy on one hand and a US President determined to prevail and end the Cold War on the other.
Notes
References
Further reading
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- First complete investigation of the Farewell Dossier and its international impact. June 2014: publication of The Snow Violin by French author Michel Louyot, Leaky Boot Press, U.K. A gripping evocation of Farewell/Vetrov and his handler. Gives more insight into the character.