Illegals: who they are and how they were caught

No immunity, a borrowed name

Many intelligence officers work abroad under diplomatic cover. If they are caught, immunity protects them: the host state can at most expel them. An illegal has no such protection. The International Spy Museum glossary describes an illegal as an officer operating in a foreign country without diplomatic immunity, under a new identity, and associates the term with the KGB and the SVR.¹

In a criminal complaint of 27 June 2010, the US Department of Justice describes SVR illegals as covert agents who assume false identities and live in the United States for years on long-term, deep-cover assignments, hiding any ties to Russia. The complaint adds that a subset operate abroad under their true names, with shorter training but roughly the same tradecraft.⁵

Legend and training

An illegal’s fictitious life story is a legend. The International Spy Museum describes it as an invented biography, usually backed by documents and memorised details. According to the 2010 complaint, illegals receive extensive SVR training before deployment; among the skills it lists are agent-to-agent communications, invisible writing and the use of a cover profession.^1,5

The aim is not to grab a secret document quickly but to put down roots. The FBI writes of agents who settled into American life, married, bought houses and raised children, some of them using stolen identities. According to the criminal complaint, one of their tasks was to seek out and develop ties in US policymaking circles.^4,6

Illegal, sleeper, mole: not the same thing

Three terms are often confused. A sleeper, according to the International Spy Museum glossary, is an agent who lives in a foreign country as an ordinary citizen and becomes active only when a conflict arises. An illegal may be a sleeper but need not be – according to the FBI, the illegals of 2010 actively collected information and looked for sources.^1,4

A mole, in turn, is someone who penetrates an adversary’s institution by taking a job there. An illegal usually does not work inside the institution being targeted; the strength of the role is that from the outside the illegal looks like any other resident. In the three cases below, detection came from people on the other side – defectors – and long surveillance, not from a slip at work in an office. Moles such as Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen are covered on separate cards.^1,2,3,4

Rudolf Abel: the split coin

Rudolf Abel, whose real name was William Fisher, entered the United States in 1948 as Andrew Kayotis. The CIA recalls that he was an Englishman who moved to Russia as a child, and that his true identity became known only after his death.⁷

The first clue was an accident. According to the FBI, in 1953 a Brooklyn newspaper boy dropped a nickel that split in half, revealing a tiny photograph of rows of numbers. Laboratory work and local enquiries led nowhere, and the coin was filed away.²

The breakthrough came from a person, not a technique. Four years later the Soviet spy Reino Häyhänen came over to the US side as a defector. He revealed that the Soviets had given him hollowed-out objects, led agents to a dead drop containing a hollow bolt, helped crack the code in the coin and pointed to his case officer, “Mark”. The FBI established that “Mark” was Colonel Rudolf Abel.²

Abel was arrested on 21 June 1957; in his hotel room and office the FBI found what it calls a treasure trove of espionage equipment. Convicted of espionage and given a long prison term, he was exchanged in 1962 for the U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers.²

The Portland ring: a tip-off from Poland

In London, Konon Molody operated in the guise of a small-time Canadian businessman, “Gordon Lonsdale”. MI5 writes that, by his own account, he joined the KGB in 1940 and rose to the rank of colonel in its illegals branch. He ran Harry Houghton and Ethel Gee from the naval establishment at Portland, while Helen and Peter Kroger, ostensibly antiquarian booksellers, handled the ring’s communications from a bungalow in Ruislip.³

According to MI5, the case came to light in 1960 thanks to a Polish defector, whose information identified Lonsdale as Houghton and Gee’s contact. MI5 does not name him on that page. A sustained surveillance operation followed.³

Houghton, Gee and Lonsdale were arrested near the Old Vic theatre in London, and the Krogers in Ruislip on the same day. Houghton and Gee each received 15 years. In 1964 Lonsdale was sent back to Moscow in exchange for Greville Wynne, a British citizen held by the Russians as a spy; the Krogers too were exchanged before serving their full sentences. MI5 counts the case among its most important post-war counterintelligence successes.³

Ghost Stories: a decade of surveillance

The best-documented modern case is Operation Ghost Stories. According to the FBI, the investigation of the SVR illegals went on for more than a decade; using surveillance and sophisticated techniques, agents and analysts worked out the spies’ identities, the threat they posed and their tradecraft.⁴

The 2010 criminal complaint shows what this looked like in terms of evidence: surveillance of meetings under judicial orders, video recordings, calls intercepted with court authorisation, contacts with undercover agents, and a 2009 message from Moscow Center that the FBI had decrypted. The material released later includes a 2004 photograph of a brush pass.^4,5

Ten people were arrested on 27 June 2010. On 8 July all of them pleaded guilty to conspiring to act as agents of a foreign government and were to be removed from the country; the United States agreed to transfer them to Russia, and Russia to release four people imprisoned there. The FBI stresses that the illegals never got their hands on classified documents, but they did gather information, send it to Russia and look for potential sources.^4,8,9

What the cases have in common

In none of the three cases was the illegal given away by the legend itself. Abel was named by a defector, the Portland ring by information from a Polish defector, and the 2010 case was solved by years of court-authorised surveillance. In all three, counterintelligence needed years of patient work before any arrests.^2,3,4

The ending is shared too: an exchange. Abel went back to the USSR for Powers in 1962, Lonsdale for Wynne in 1964, and the ten illegals of 2010 for four people imprisoned in Russia. The places in these stories, from Brooklyn to the Glienicke Bridge, are collected on the route On the trail of the illegals.^2,3,9

Pop culture likes the figure of the illegal – from the film “Bridge of Spies” about the Abel case to Vincent V. Severski’s novel “Nielegalni” (The Illegals). We compare them with the facts on separate cards.^10,11