ALL ABOUT ANDREI' S FATHER, VALENTIN BEREZHKOV, THE 'DIPLOMAT'

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000100260021-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 20, 2010
• Sequence Number: 21
• Publication Date: September 14, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/20: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100260021-1
ARTICLE PEAM
ON PACE (~ -
As a consequence of the esca-
pade of his teen-age son, the
first secretary of the Soviet
Embassy' in Washington,
Valentin Berezhkov, was precipitately
recalled to the U.S.S.R. With his son,
Andrei, and his wife, Valeria, he left by
air on Aug. 18. His diplomatic career, it
was said, was ruined.
I should like your indulgence to sav a
few words about Valentin Mikhaylovich
Berezhkov, my former colleague.
The press described V.M. Berezhkov
as a professional diplomat. He is a pro-
fessional. all right. As I can testify from
personal knowledge. Berezhkov is a vet-
eran spymaster, one who has spent over
40 years in the ranks of the Soviet secret
police, the KGB.
"Diplomat" is hardly the word for
this 67-year-old tiger of the KGB, pro-
tege of Stalin, Molotov, Beria and
Dekanozov. His tasks in Washington
were sophisticated tasks'for the KGB,
not for the Soviet Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, which has plenty of young first
secretaries available.
When Soviet Embassy _atrongmen '
paraded their captive . 16-year-old Andrei in front of American television
cameras, they offered a hint of the
staged trials of past decades and a chill-
ing reminder that fear and lies still gov-
ern the land the Soviets rule.
I never knew Berezhkov personally,
although we met without being intro-
-duced, in the KGB in which we both
served. (Its earlier designations, in our
time, were NKVD, MGB and MVD). He
worked mostly outside the precints of
the headquarters on Dzerzhinsky
Square.
But while managing KGB secret
work in Germany, I not only studied
files on his activities - and worked
under his old colleague there, KGB'
Gen. Aleksandr M. Korotkov - but I
have also read Soviet books, never
translated in the West, which describe
highlights of Berezhkov's career. This
old secret agent "wears a long tail" as
For example, he helped Stalin help
Hitler. As a "technical engineer" in the
Soviet trade mission in Berlin, he
helped negotiate the trade treaty signed
on Feb. 11, 1940, which made it possible
for Hitler to -circumvent the British
blockade.
Stalin thus assured Hitler .the essen-
tial supplies for Nazi conquest of
France, Belgium, Holland, Yugoslavia
and Greece. He sent vast quantities of
oil from Baku, iron and chrome ores,
phosphate, grain from the Ukraine -
and safe passage over the Trans-
Siberian Railway of rubber from the
Far East.
At the sametime, Berezhkov was spy-
ing - using.his good command of Ger-
man in secret. meetings with spies in
Poland, Belgium and Holland during
travels in 1940 '.'on trade matters" (as
his autobiography puts it). And in Ger-
many he was in contact with members
of the network later to become famous
as "The Red Orchestra"
In the fall of 1940, Berezhkov was
called back from' Berlin.to change his
cover from foreign trade to diplomacy
and to join Foreign" Minister Molotov
-sand some of Stalin's top spies - Deputy
State Security Chief Vsevolod Mer-
kulov and former head of the foreign
operations directorate, Vladimir
Dekanozov in a mission to Berlin to
exploit Stalin's relations with Hitlerand
pave the way for bloody deportations
from Poland, Bessarabia and the Baltic
Dekanuzov stayed on in Berlin as
Stalin's ambassador to Hitler, with
Berezhkov as his "first secretary"
Berezhkov was still spying, of course.
He claims in his memoirs that he
even used his social contacts with
Americans to meet useful German!'Mili-
tary men. When Hitler invaded the
U.S.S.R. on June 22, 1941, the Soviet
mission was interned.
But Berezhkov.(using the alias' :Kurt
Huesker") bribed an'SS oberleutnant to
permit them a last excursion to town.
There they eluded him, took a subway
to meet and give final instructions and
a radio set to an agent. of the "Red
Orchestra,"-Greta Kuckhoff:
After the interned Soviet and Nazi
diplomatic missions were exchanged,
Berezhkov -worked in Moscow and
accompanied the Soviet delegation to
the 1943 Tehran conference as an
interpreter-.
There he wrote in his memoirs, he
incurred Stalin's displeasure when,
caught with his mouth full of juicy
steak, he couldn't translate a -question
Churchill asked Stalin. "I sat there like
al'ool, my face red as a lobster. Everyody
stared, then laughed. Stalin leaned over,
his eyes gleaming and said through grit-
ted teeth,'. - this is disgraceful!"
But his presence at Tehran permitted
him, many years later, to perpetuate a
famous Soviet lie: their alleged discov-
ery of a German plot to assassinate Roo-
sevelt at Tehran..Although by the time
Berezhkov -wrote his memoirs, this
canard had long since been discredited,
Berezhkov insisted that the NKVD had
uncovered the plot The fact is that Sta-
lin and the NKVD invented it to induce
Roosevelt -to move over to the Soviet
embassy - to Soviet microphones and
away from Churchill_
Berezhkov-came to the United States -
in 1944 -as "interpreter" for theDum-
barton oaks Conference drafting.the
United Nations Charter. ` : '
After the war- Berezhkov again
changed his cover- and entered a field
which has probably been his specialty
to this day. He became a "journalist"
and used his "diplomatic" experience
and contacts for KGB tasks -of secret
political influence. -
He was assigned as special corre. .
spondent and deputy editor of New
Times (Novoye Vremya),. a magazine
they say. I
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/20: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100260021-1