From hotel surveillance to brutal assassinations, discover the most sinister operations conducted by the Soviet Union's notorious security agency. These declassified operations reveal the dark underbelly of Cold War espionage, including shocking murders, elaborate spy schemes, and terrifying plots that thankfully never came to fruition.
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00:00I think that this really has to be cleared up before one can see a new Bulgaria.
00:05Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're examining our picks for the most
00:09terrible operations conducted by the Soviet Union's security agency,
00:14from 1954 until 1991. Of course, these are just the ones we know about.
00:19They noticed he'd meet a Russian, and then there'd be a deposit. He'd meet him,
00:25then there'd be a deposit. So something's wrong here.
00:29Bugging a whole hotel
00:38When you check into a hotel, you're likely assuming that you're not being secretly monitored
00:43in your room. Yet, if you were a guest at the Sokos Hotel Viru in Tallinn, Estonia,
00:48during the Soviet era, your deeds may have been recorded. The hotel's 23rd floor held a secret
00:53KGB room that took note of the goings-on in 60 rooms and the restaurant with listening devices.
00:59The USSR had controlled Estonia since the year 1940, and the KGB didn't leave the hotel until
01:06Estonia's independence in 1991. In 1994, the secret listening room was discovered. Since then,
01:12the hotel has converted it into a museum where people can explore its espionage history.
01:24Targeting writers
01:27The KGB targeted many writers for perceived dissidence, censoring their work, and sending
01:32some to labor camps. Andrei Sinayovsky and Yuli Daniel are well-known examples. Both were Soviet
01:39writers who published novels in the West under pseudonyms, shining a light on the harsh realities
01:44of living in the USSR. After the KGB discovered their real identities, they arrested both in 1965,
01:50resulting in an infamous show trial as they were charged with anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.
01:56Unlike similar trials at the time, Sinayovsky and Daniel both pleaded not guilty. However,
02:02both were sentenced to labor camps, Sinayovsky getting seven years and Daniel receiving five
02:07years. Sexpionage. During the Cold War,
02:20the KGB used sexpionage, deploying female swallows and male ravens to seduce targets.
02:27One notable case in the 1950s involved Maurice Dejean, French ambassador to the Soviet Union
02:33and a close ally of French President Charles de Gaulle. The KGB used actress Larissa Kronberg
02:38to seduce Dejean, luring him into a trap. Inside this room, the KGB placed a listening device,
02:45which continued working for years. In the 60s, intelligence agencies would recruit sex spies
02:53made up of ordinary women. Kronberg's fake husband burst in, attacked him and staged a scandal,
03:00leading Dejean to seek help from a Soviet friend who secretly worked for the KGB. This gave the
03:05Soviets substantial leverage over him. In 1964, Dejean was fired after the British discovered
03:12the plan from defector Yuri Krodkov and informed the French. The assassination of Lev Rebet.
03:25Writer and politician Lev Rebet served as deputy prime minister and later acting prime minister
03:31of Ukraine. However, he was arrested in 1941 by the Gestapo and sent to a Nazi concentration camp.
03:37After the war, Rebet focused on writing about Ukrainian nationalism and anti-communism,
03:42bringing him into conflict with the USSR, who occupied Ukraine at the time. In 1957,
03:49while in Munich, West Germany, Rebet was approached by KGB agent Bodan Stashinsky,
03:54who sprayed the writer with a poison gas, killing him. In 1959, Stashinsky used the same method to
04:02assassinate Rebet's friend, Stepan Bandera. The agent would later fall in love with an
04:07East German woman, leading to the KGB spying on him before he defected in 1961. Infiltrating the FBI.
04:27Just three years into his FBI career, Robert Hansen contacted the Soviet Union and offered
04:33to spy against the U.S. From 1979 to 2001, with some breaks, he sold thousands of classified
04:39documents to the KGB and its successors, exposing U.S. intelligence operations and compromising
04:45agents. The FBI spent $7 million to acquire KGB files from defector Alexander Shebakov,
04:52ultimately leading to Hansen's arrest. He communicated with the Russians in writing.
04:57This is a copy of one of his actual letters sent in 1985 to his handler, Victor Cherkashin.
05:04Soon, I will send a box of documents to Mr. Degtyar. In 2002, he was sentenced to 15 consecutive
05:10life terms. He died in 2023. Meanwhile, the KGB had also infiltrated the CIA with Aldrich
05:17Ames, who began spying for them in 1985. Aldrich was caught in 1994 and sentenced to life
05:24imprisonment. Ames was sentenced to life in prison, and he's currently in a medium security
05:30prison in Indiana. Operation Cedar Preparations. While this covert mission thankfully never came
05:36to be, the scale at which this plan was coordinated and organized is undeniably terrifying.
05:42During the Cold War, the KGB plotted to interrupt the United States' power supply
05:47through the destruction of key oil pipelines, major dams, and the Port of New York. The
05:52preparations for Operation Cedar were allegedly carried out over a span of 13 years from 1959
05:59through 1972. What's the next move when you don't know what the game is? The level and quantity of
06:06intelligence gathered for this operation exhibits just how dedicated the KGB had been to its
06:12follow-through. Clearly, had it occurred, it would have been a massive calamity, crushing the
06:17Hungarian Revolution of 1956. He had wanted a less hardline version of communism, but Moscow's
06:24tanks crushed the revolt, and he was arrested and hanged on the 16th of June in 1958. Imre Nagy was
06:31a Hungarian communist who worked as an informer for the NKVD secret police, a predecessor of the
06:37KGB. He later rose through the ranks of the Hungarian government, becoming prime minister in
06:421953. His attempts to reform Stalinist policies led to his ouster in 1955 under pressure from
06:49Soviet-aligned hardliners. During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Nagy was reinstated,
06:56pledged to make democratic reforms, and withdrew Hungary from the Warsaw Pact. In response, the
07:01Soviet Union invaded, crushing the revolution with KGB support. Nagy sought asylum but was arrested,
07:08secretly tried, and executed for treason in 1958. And so for us, it's all over. Yet in a way, it's
07:18only the beginning. Communist regimes are a kind of constant civil war between the rulers
07:25and the people. A brutal solution to a hostage crisis. Terry Anderson's exit marks the end of
07:31the American hostage ordeal in Lebanon. All of us had a lot of problems when we came home. During
07:36the Lebanese Civil War, 104 foreigners were taken hostage between 1982 and 1992. In 1985, four Soviet
07:46diplomats were kidnapped in Beirut by the Islamic Liberation Organization, ILO. Days later, one of
07:52the captives was killed. But a month later, the remaining three were unexpectedly released. The
07:57meetings were fruitless and it seems that at this stage, the kidnappers only wanted to hand back
08:02two hostages, keeping the third as a guarantee that the French would stick to the deal. According
08:07to reports, the release came after the KGB captured the relative of a Hezbollah leader, murdered him,
08:14and mailed parts of his body to the leader, with the message that other relatives would follow.
08:19This brutal response is believed to have pressured the kidnappers into freeing the
08:23diplomats. Though widely reported, the Soviet Union never officially confirmed the operation.
08:32The umbrella gun assassination. I remember walking into the cubicle and
08:46Yogi Markov was on the trolley, sitting up. He was hot, toxic. He had a rapid pulse rate.
08:53Georgi Markov was a Bulgarian writer and dissident who often found his works censored by the communist
08:58government. Markov managed to defect from Bulgaria in 1969, eventually relocating to London, where he
09:05worked for the BBC World Service and continued to criticize the Bulgarian regime. On September 7th,
09:111978, on his way to work at the BBC, Markov felt a sting on his leg. Markov was waiting for a bus
09:19here on Waterloo Bridge when someone brushed past him. He felt a sharp stab in his leg, but at the
09:25time thought nothing more of it. When he turned, a man was picking up an umbrella before walking
09:30off. Just days later, the writer passed away. Many years later, former KGB General Oleg Kalugin
09:38claimed that the assassination had been a joint operation between the KGB and the Belgian Secret
09:43Service. This document allegedly shows the former Bulgarian leader paid $50,000 to have Markov killed.
09:50Other Bulgarian communist officials and Soviet KGB officials were implicated.
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10:11Operation Pandora. Anybody who is a Soviet agent from 85 or earlier can never sleep comfortable
10:18again. In 1992, Vasil Mitrokhin defected to the UK, bringing with him a trove of KGB documents,
10:25later known as the Mitrokhin Archive, which became public in 1999. Among its revelations was
10:31Operation Pandora, a KGB program in the 1970s aimed at stirring racial tensions in the US.
10:38The mission plans to send fake pamphlets and letters to various groups, including the Black
10:43Panthers, the Ku Klux Klan and the Jewish Defense League, to provoke a race war. The KGB was also
10:50going to bomb a historically black college in New York City and blame the JDL. Fortunately,
10:55in the 1980s, US authorities dismantled a KGB spy ring where the plan could well have been enacted.
11:02Though the FBI knew that the Soviets were intercepting US communications,
11:07Mitrokhin's files provided vivid details of some of what the KGB actually got.
11:12What other terrible KGB incidents did we miss? The group's involvement in Lithuania's January
11:18events in 1991, attempting to overthrow the Soviet government in 1991, or something else?
11:25Let us know below!