Word: kgb
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...KGB loses out in a double-agent sting...
...intelligence operation. Clandestine meetings were arranged by passing filmed instructions that were stuffed inside a hollow stick or in a specially designed pack of Marlboro cigarettes. There were coded passwords and complex secret-signal systems. Using these elaborate precautions, the Soviet mission in Ottawa must have felt secure as KGB agents within the embassy seemed to have recruited a spy from Canada's equivalent of the FBI, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. For nine months, in fact, a Mountie had pocketed KGB bribes totaling $30,500 in exchange for what appeared to be highly sensitive information...
Last week the plot blew up in the KGB's face. Thirteen Russians, most of them diplomats in Ottawa, were unmasked as spies and banned from Canada. It was clear, moreover, that from the start it was the Mounties who had been fielding the classic textbook operation: a sting by a double agent. The KGB appeared so deceived by the Mounties' ruse that one astounded Canadian official said, "One wonders-do they assign their better people here? They seem to have been incredibly crude, gauche and maladroit...
...Mountie immediately told his superiors about the offer. He was instructed to take the money, turn it over to the government and, according to Jamieson, begin passing "carefully screened nonsensitive information or completely fabricated material" to his KGB contact. The contact was Igor Vartanian, who as First Secretary for Sports and Cultural Affairs at the Soviet mission in Ottawa traveled widely around the country, especially in connection with the annual Canada-U.S.S.R. hockey matches...
...KGB has posted its last tape...