16.1 Active Measures

A week later, Colonel Ram received a fairly large package from Moscow. As a very methodical person, he cut open the package with extreme care and examined its contents. There were three separate wrappings inside the package. First one contained an appendage of photos and illustrations to support KGB’s secret operation on Alexey since 1952 and categorically after his move to Budapest following the Hungarian Revolution. His name entered in the White Books where western collaborators were listed. These clandestine operations carried out globally by the KGB for intelligence gathering or surveillance of potential targets, to create sabotage or propaganda, track down on spies or rebels under the term ‘active measures’, staged several front organisations and campaigns to achieve the objectives of spreading the communist dogma or waning a nation or influencing the course of a world event. They believed defectors and dissidents could be rehabilitated to use for counterintelligence. Active measures therefore carried out more derogating schemes in political warfare like supporting an underground revolutionary movement or an assassination or terror, unparallel to any counterintelligence organisation. Active measures fashioned the buttress of the Soviet Intelligence and executed plans for a number of covert operations.

According to the Mitrokhin Archive – operations of active measures are implemented from the Directorate 1 at the KGB dealing with foreign intelligence. Later in the 60s, this unit was moved to a new building in Yasenevo due to overcrowding at Lubyanka.

Aleksandre Giorgashvili entered the White Books and codenamed Lexicon which proved he was a person of interest, either with doubt or not, rehabilitated. He served the KGB in counterespionage. The Lexicon file contained hundreds of loose photographs and a summary of sixty-nine pages prepared by someone at the bureau who left the initials of L V at the bottom of the pages.

Minister Ram sat flabbergasted to find the level of penetration and infiltration carried out extensively by undercover agents on both sides of the Iron Curtain. For those without an audience, either side was a stage. They followed his steps from Ibiza to the Bahamas, from Sofia to Skopje, from Italy to Hungary. Alexey travelled far and wide and his errands described in the file. They included a picture of one of his passports stamped from corner to corner.

Alexey or Lexicon was a submarine commander who got stuck in Switzerland when the war broke out in 1939. He decided to stay with a relative in Geneva whose name was Yaroslav Metreveli, a real estate agent for many years residing in Switzerland. Metreveli also represented himself as a middleman to many Russians who wished to save their wealth in Swiss banks renowned for reliability and confidentiality worldwide. When the war started, his real estate business impacted seriously but many wealthy Russians and Georgians approached to open accounts in private banks and deposit their wealth, some saved in his own accounts. He made trips to France and Spain. Alexey became his righthand man and joined him on these trips rolling down suitcases full of cash and jewellery. Alexey opened his own accounts and began to bridge the gap on his own.

When war was over, Alexey returned to Georgia wearing Rolex watches with a cigar on his lips and suited in Louis Vuitton – a company that collaborated with the Nazis but a fact little known. He became a very rich man. In a matter of weeks, Alexey had to travel back and forth to Switzerland, Spain, France and Germany to connect the underground of Cominform with the European markets. Several rich Georgians, particularly members of Tbilisi Aircraft State Association, asked for his support to open accounts in Swiss banks. Everyone would apparently call him to join on a trip for he was well versed in the West.

In 1952, Georgia made him a Board Member of TAM Aviation Group – JSC Tbilaviamsheni. That brought the KGB on his tail. While Alexey was connected to many influential people, his work was not appreciated by the Politburo. In 1957, Alexey settled in Budapest because it was the ideal crossroads in the Eastern Bloc for the most domineering transport, trade and financial routes. There were frequent engagements he undertook out of which rerouting the rutile ore through Armenia, via Georgia, to America became the most momentous operation. He met counterparts from Spain and the United States in places like Ibiza, the Canary Islands, Madrid, Zurich and Rome. The Lexicon file contained numerous photographs where these meetings took place and people involved. Soon, the KGB discovered the true American source and contacted Alexey directly with their interest demanding him to pull out some secrets from the Pentagon.

Alexey told Lieutenant Melville Bradley that if he wished to continue getting rutile ore and in bulk load, he should pass some highly classified information. He learnt from the KGB that Bradley worked for Lockheed Corp and stationed at a secret facility for flight testing in Nevada. Alexey told Bradley that he would be rewarded and keep this pledge outside the rutile ore contract made between Catai Tours and Arizona State Teachers College. Though Jair Sivils suspected at some point that Alexey formed an alliance with Bradley, he knew not its nature.

Bradley introduced an American by the name of Robert Maxwell and passed his business card who would forward secrets and collect the reward. Even the KGB was unable to identify this man. Alexey then set an operative employed at the Embassy of the Soviet Union at 1125 16^th Street NW, Washington DC.

In the early days, Bradley passed pretty accurate charts and layouts of Area 51 on the southern shores of Groom Lake. He passed photographs as well though none of those charts and images were included in the package sent to Minister Ram. Bradley also passed some diagrams stolen from the OXCART project of model types tested to minimise the radar cross section of the aircraft and other information like the choice of engines of Pratt & Whitney turboramjet and the trial of new materials. Again, he was not able to pass technical details or it wasn’t included in the Lexicon file.