EX-SPY, IN HUB, TELLS ABOUT THE KGB

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000403660001-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 18, 2010
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: June 17, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/18: CIA-RDP90-00552R000403660001-3
By Gloria Negri
Globe Staff
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE
He is not the suave, steely eyed man central
casting would choose to play a Soviet spy in a
James Bond movie. Fiftyish and graying, avun-,
cular in manner and pudgy around the -waist i
line, Imants Lesinskis looks more like a prosper
ous businessman than the spy with the Soviet
KGB he once was
For survival purposes, Lesinskis discarded
his.old name with his old life. That chapter. he ,
tells you iri-heavily accented English, ended in
1978 when, while a senior official with the Rus-'
scan delegation to the United Nations, he defect
ed and was given asylum in the United States.
He says he had been a spy for the KGB, the
Soviet secret police, for more than 20 years and.
at the time of his defection was a KGB lieuten-.
ant colonel getting paid, he said, an annual sal-
ary of $30,000 by the United Nations Secretar
tat.
"My job." he said, "was to build up an espio-
nage and intelligence network on the basis of,
ethnicity." During his KGB incarnation. he said
he was also sent on spy missions to the Olympic:
games in Italy in 1960, in Austria in 1964 and
in Munich in 1972. "leading a so-called delega-:
tion of Soviet cultural workers."
Lesinskis was in Boston recently to address the Latvian community and in Auburn to talk,'`'
to the New England Society of Newspaper Edi-
tors. He told them the KGB sends spies into po-
litical emigre communities in the noncommun
1st world in the guise of scientific and intellectu-
al exchanges or as peace emissaries to thwart
efforts of the exiles to work to free their home-
lands from Russian rule. He said church groups
are similarly misled by Soviet peace groups.
' . The Baltic countries. of Latvia. Estonia and'-'
.Lithuania were annexed. by the -Soviet Union
- Lesinskis said well meaning 'but naive
groups and Individuals In the US high-tech and''.
scientific communities invite counterpart Rus-
sian groups here and that a KGB agent is al
ways among them for purposes of industrial es
BOSTON GLOBE
17 June 1984
He said he knows how KGB front groups
work from experience. In 1956 he got a job with
the Latvian Friendship Society in Riga. "It's a
branch of the Latvian KGB and my work there
?? was to spy on western friendship delegations,"
he said
Might not have graduated
? A student at Moscow State Institute for For-
eign Relations at the time, Lesinskis said he
was blackmailed into becoming a spy when the
KGB found out he had concealed the fact on his
academic record that his father had served in
The German army. The knowledge would have
prevented him from graduating, he said.
In 1970, Lesinskis was chairman of the Com-
mittee for Relations with Latvians Abroad, "an-
other KGB front organization whose aim was to
infiltrate and then subvert exiled communities-
in Europe and America."
While spying by the KGB is done on a world-
wide basis, Lesinskis said the United States and
Canada are "principal targets, based on their
ethnic communities. There were documents in
my safe in Riga signed by Yuri Andropov [the
late Soviet premier and former head of the
KGB). Identifying the-two countries that way,"
Lesinskis said. - An example of the KGB's ethnic espionage,
Lesinskis said, was the Armenian KGB officers
from the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic be-
ing "extremely active" among the large Arme-
nian community In Beirut. "I suspect that part
of.that mess In Lebanon is probably a result of
those cultural ties between the Armenian KGB
and.the Armenian community there,". he said....
L,'T'heie `was no` dodbt In. his mind, he said,
that the RGB was active in Central America. -
Latvian by birth, Le.a,zskis was accompa-
nied in Boston by Arisi.ids Lambergs
vice
r
i
,
p
es
-
dent of the American-Latvian Assn. in the Unit-
ed
States and di
t
rec
or of the Baltic-American
iona a, information about America's.
p g gaining .: Freedom L_-ague. Because Lesinskis has as-
prog
It was "common ress in those fields. , sumed a new identity as a United States citizen
Ri a, the capital of Latvi a 1 and he scow , tliin ' he refused to be photographed, nor would he say
g [ ) where he and his wife Rasma live or what work
the Soviet Union was behind the West in laser' he does.
and computer technology, and so espionage was
He was, he said, aware of the dangers of his
considered the best way to narrow the gap." Le- defection but said he did not live In constant'
sinskis thinks the Soviet Union has developed fear of the KGB tracking him down. "I am a fa--
..serious military capabilities" in antis?atellite talist as is my wife. We feel there is a danger;
weaponry "while the US is doing nothintnow I OK, but I don't feel frightened or paranoid. We
but talking about it." live a full and generally successful-life in this
coun'try," he said.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/18: CIA-RDP90-00552R000403660001-3