KGB MOLE: “The Soviets were desperate to know about [US defence facility] Pine Gap and to know what the CIA assessments of the USSR were.”
His name was Ian George Peacock.
"For at least two years in the late 1970s, the ASIO mole was the feared Russian spy agency’s only back door to American and British intelligence secrets."
In reality, he was the Canberra station chief for the KGB.
On paper, Lazovik was the embassy’s second secretary for press info. Gregarious and confident, he dressed smartly in Western fashion and cultivated contacts among Canberra’s public servants, journalists and diplomats.
"Lazovik sent the mole’s package to Moscow where it landed on the desk of the notorious KGB spymaster Oleg Kalugin, whose department handled highly sensitive penetration operations against Western intelligence agencies."
🚩 US CITIZEN Oleg Kalugin
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleg_Kalu…
In Moscow, Kalugin showed the docs to the Soviet Union’s prized British defector Kim Philby, a member of the infamous Cambridge spy ring who had escaped to the USSR in 1963. Philby confirmed the docs were genuine.
They gave their mole a codename: MIRA.
It translates to “peace”.
Shmatkov would retrieve the documents and leave large wads of cash as payment.
The money paid to the mole was regularly dispatched from Moscow in a diplomatic pouch.
It was labelled “TOBACCO”.
“It was very large amounts about every five or six weeks.
Hunting a mole: While rumours of a traitor had circulated for years, ASIO received its first concrete tip in 1980.
It was informed by the British... MI6 that Gerontiy Lazovik had received an award for “an intelligence recruitment in Canberra” when he returned to Moscow in 1977.
#Mitrokhin Archives 💥 Unmasked
It was only in the mid-1990s, after the end of the Cold War and multiple KGB defections, that ASIO finally discovered the identity of its mole.
The most critical information came from KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin, who defected to the UK in 1992.
Vasili Mitrokhin
#MitrokhinArchive
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitrokhin…
🚩 "Soviet intelligence code-names of many Russian orthodox priests dispatched over the years to the World Council of Churches"
#Mitrokhin Archives
Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East ❓️
#WorldCouncilofChurches
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Cou…
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.