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PERSON FILE · 10 October 1932 – 23 January 1985

Vladimir Vetrov (FAREWELL)

KGB technology-intelligence officer who in 1981–82 gave French counterintelligence thousands of documents on the Soviet Line X network. Arrested for a killing in 1982, he was exposed as a spy and shot in 1985.

1932–1985

3 min read · 5 sources, 2 primary

Vladimir Vetrov was never a model officer, and that is part of why his betrayal worked. A KGB engineer whose career had stalled and who drank heavily, he chose an unusual partner, France's domestic counterintelligence service, and for about a year gave it the inner workings of Soviet technology theft. The material became known as the Farewell Dossier1,2.

Engineer to Line X officer

Vetrov was born in Moscow on 10 October 1932 to a working-class family. He trained as an electronics engineer at Moscow's technical university (MVTU), worked in industry, and joined the KGB's foreign intelligence arm, which in the post-Stalin years was recruiting technically trained men5,2.

He was assigned to Directorate T, the part of the KGB First Chief Directorate that collected Western science and technology, and to its field arm, Line X. His first foreign posting, from 1965 to 1970, was Paris, under cover at the Soviet trade mission. There he cultivated French engineers, including a contact at the electronics firm Thomson-CSF who would matter later5,4. A posting to Montreal from 1974 ended early and badly. Back in Moscow he ended up evaluating the intelligence Line X sent home, a desk job that let him see the whole program4,1.

FAREWELL

Around the end of 1980 or early 1981, Vetrov let a French acquaintance know that he wanted to work for French intelligence4,2. He did not want the foreign service, the SDECE. The contact went instead to the Direction de la surveillance du territoire (DST), which was not expected to operate inside the Soviet Union and so, he judged, would not be watched2. The DST took him on, with President Mitterrand's knowledge, and chose an English cover name, FAREWELL, to steer any KGB inquiry toward the CIA or MI62.

Between early 1981 and early 1982 he passed what Gus Weiss, who handled the American end, described as about 4,000 documents. They included Directorate T's own assessments, the names of more than 200 Line X officers in ten Western residencies and more than 100 leads to their agents1. The handovers took place in Moscow through French civilians and a French military attaché's family, not trained case officers3. The French shared the material with Washington after the Ottawa summit in July 19811.

Accounts differ on his motive. Weiss said Vetrov volunteered for ideological reasons1. The fullest study, by Sergei Kostin and Eric Raynaud, describes professional frustration, drinking, an affair and a need for money; he did accept payments2,4. The French handler Raymond Nart called him an "uncontrollable" man3.

The killing and the confession

On 22 February 1982 Vetrov, drinking with his mistress in a parked car in Moscow, stabbed her during a quarrel; she survived. When a man approached the car he stabbed and killed him, apparently believing his spying had been discovered4,5. He was tried for murder and in late 1982 sentenced to twelve years4.

In prison he wrote that he had been involved in something important before his arrest. The KGB's suspicions hardened, he was interrogated, and he confessed to espionage. His written statement, "Confession of a Traitor," attacked the Soviet system. He was promised his life in return for the confession. He was instead tried for treason and executed on 23 January 19854,2. French accounts place the execution at Lefortovo prison in Moscow5.

Afterward

His documents led to the expulsion of 47 Soviet officials from France on 5 April 1983 and to roll-ups across NATO that Weiss estimated at about 200 officers and sources4,1. Gus Weiss's 1996 article misdates his execution to 19831. The story has since been told in Kostin's books and in the 2009 French film L'affaire Farewell4.

Key dates

  1. August 1965 Posted to Paris under trade cover as a Line X officer.
  2. April 1974 Posted to the Soviet trade mission in Montreal.
  3. February 1981 Begins supplying documents to the French DST, which gives him the code name FAREWELL.
  4. July 1981 Mitterrand tells Reagan about the source at the Ottawa summit.
  5. 22 February 1982 Kills a man and wounds his mistress in Moscow; arrested for murder.
  6. 5 April 1983 France expels 47 Soviet officials identified through his documents.
  7. 23 January 1985 Executed for treason.

Sources

  1. CIA Duping the Soviets: The Farewell Dossier (Studies in Intelligence, 1996), Central Intelligence Agency, Center for the Study of Intelligence (Gus W. Weiss) (1996).
  2. CIA The Intelligence Officer's Bookshelf, June 2012 (review of Kostin and Raynaud, Farewell), Central Intelligence Agency, Studies in Intelligence 56, no. 2 (Hayden Peake) (2012-06).
  3. Other How the Cold War was won by the French, The Independent (John Lichfield) (2009-09-17).
  4. Wikipedia Vladimir Vetrov, Wikipedia.
  5. Wikipedia Vladimir Vetrov (French), Wikipédia.
  6. Wikipedia English Wikipedia article (used for cross-checking).

Elsewhere in the files

Read next

February 1981 – 23 January 1985 The Farewell Dossier In 1981–82 a disaffected KGB officer, Vladimir Vetrov, gave French counterintelligence thousands of documents on Soviet technology theft. The West expelled scores of Soviet officers and fed Moscow doctored technology. France · 1946–1982 SDECE and DST (French intelligence) France's Cold War pair: the SDECE, its foreign intelligence and action service from 1946 to 1982, and the DST, the police counterespionage directorate that ran the KGB defector-in-place known as FAREWELL. Soviet Union · 1954–1991 KGB The Soviet Committee for State Security, 1954–1991: foreign intelligence, counter-intelligence, border troops and political police under one roof, from Khrushchev's reforms to the failed coup of August 1991. 16 April – 25 November 1985 1985, the Year of the Spy In 1985 the FBI arrested a string of Americans spying for Moscow, Beijing and Israel, a KGB officer defected and re-defected, and the CIA lost almost every agent it had inside Soviet intelligence.