The Life of KGB Defector Vladimir Vetrov

The most important spy of the 20th century. Who helped Reagan bring the Soviet Union down. Plus: How Reagan ended the Soviet Union. 

 Michael Flores Apr 4, 2024

In his young years, Vladimir Vetrov was a model Soviet citizen – an ardent Communist and good patriot. He belonged to that “sons of the people” generation which the USSR dutifully promoted. The new officer is lucky enough to be sent to Paris, beyond the iron curtain. There, he discovers the affluence and freedom of the West, which comes as a genuine shock. He works as an accomplished spy, but his attraction to luxury and the high life turns his head and gets him into trouble. He is called back to Moscow. Returning to the routine life of a KGB employee in the gloomy Moscow of the Brezhnev years is all the more unbearable to Vladimir Vetrov that he is not granted the promotion that the quality of his service in Paris should have brought him. His disgust leads him to revenge - by means of treason...............

 And he was no ordinary spy. Think Aldrich Ames, to the power of ten. Vladimir Vetrov oversaw the entire KGB directorate charged with a critical program: Line X, which surveilled western R&D and passed its fruits back to Mother Russia. In the 1960s and 1970s, Line X stole jaw-dropping volumes of military, computer, and industrial advances........... “The Soviet military and civil sectors were in large measure running their research on that of the West, particularly the United States,” ......... “Our science was supporting their national defense.”..........The Farewell dossier exposed the entirety of the Soviet technology-stealing infrastructure, with a couple of enormous consequences. ...........

By feeding Soviet agents promising but subtly flawed technology, the Americans infiltrated sabotage points into the USSR — a Trojan Horse for the information age. In 1982, software running the Soviet Trans-Siberian Pipeline allegedly escalated gas pressure fatally on the Urengoy-Surgut-Chelyabinsk pipeline, triggering an explosion so large (three kilotons) that some foreign monitoring stations initially suspected a nuclear detonation............“Pseudo-software disrupted factory output. Flawed but convincing ideas on stealth, attack aircraft and space defense made their way into Soviet ministries.” Suddenly, the Russians couldn’t know which Line X acquisitions were dependable and which were time bombs. ................

In January 1982, President Ronald Reagan approved a CIA plan to sabotage the economy of the Soviet Union through covert transfers of technology that contained hidden malfunctions, including software that later triggered a huge explosion in a Siberian natural gas pipeline, according to a new memoir by a Reagan White House official...............To Read More....