Unraveling a Secret KGB Investigation That Separated a Father and Son

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Secure every identity at paloaltonetworks.com slash I-D-I-R-A. That's paloaltonetworks.com slash I-D-I-R-A. Welcome to SpyCast, the official podcast of the International Spy Museum. I'm your host, Sasha Ingber, and each week I take you into the shadows of espionage, intelligence, and covert operations. Across the globe. The Kremlin is not a fan of Alex Goldfarb. He left the Soviet Union as a scientist, becoming a prominent author and human rights activist. In 2006, he was in the room with ex-FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, reading his dying words, which accused Vladimir Putin of assassination by radioactive polonium. But today, Alex Goldfarb. Alex's memoir, Refusenik's Son, traces a complicated family history, made clear decades later. His father, David, was a Jewish scientist denied permission to leave the Soviet Union, one of the so-called Refuseniks. David had been a prominent microbiologist in the 70s and 80s, when Moscow's secret bioweapons program was developing. But only after an ex-KGB officer, contacted Alex in 2010, did the whole reason for his father's confinement become clear. It's a winding story involving an anthrax accident and a media leak, a Soviet scientist and a U.S. journalist trying to help him. Two men pulled unknowingly into a tide of suspicion. Hey, Alex. Thanks for coming on virtually. Thank you for having me, Sasha. Nice to meet you. So, you were born into a prominent Jewish family in Moscow. You went to top universities. Why did you decide to leave the Soviet Union? Oh, that was a time of turmoil. It was about 10 years after Stalin's death, and there was what was called a thaw in Russia, and particularly in the intellectuals, the intellectual circles and in the top tier of the scientific community. There was a lot of, I would say, turmoil. And my parents were pretty liberal, and the atmosphere in the university and in the laboratory that I joined after graduating, that was the Atomic Energy Commission-lead institute, people were actually. quite free, unlike the rest of the Soviet people. On top of that, my grandfather had been arrested and imprisoned in the Stalin's time. So, the kind of negative attitude to the regime, it ran in the family. And on a personal level, there was also this sort of love triangle that could have ultimately led to some retribution against you. That's right. At some point, I got involved in some sort of a romantic triangle with a very prominent functionary in the scientific hierarchy. My future wife happens to be a graduate student of a very powerful figure in the Soviet scientific establishment. It was the vice president of the Soviet Academy for Biology, Professor Yuri Ovchinnikov, who was rumored to be behind the secret biological weapons program. So, he was very powerful, and he was pursuing my girlfriend at the time. And we kind of felt quite helpless against his advances, and decided that it would be better for both of us to leave the country. And what did your father do? Who was also a scientist, say, when you told him that you wanted to leave? Well, my father, he said, "Because your girlfriend was his graduate student, you may be refused." So, we applied for a visa, and in the short term, we were refused initially. And I did join the ranks of the dissident movement, and in about two years, we got the permission to leave and we left. So, you moved to Israel, then to Germany, and you eventually moved to the United States in 1981. And in New York City, you receive an unexpected and rather notable visitor, someone who you think is likely from the CIA. What did that person ask you? It was the time of a very, very difficult time. It was a very big debate within the American intelligence and political leadership with regard to the suspected Soviet biological warfare program. And that was triggered by an outbreak of anthrax, which happened in 1979 in the rural city of Yekaterinburg. There was a leak from the biological weapons facility. And about 100 people died because of those spores being spread through the wind, through the air. And there was a debate here in the United States where the intelligence community insisted that the Soviets violated the International Biological Weapons Convention, while a very prominent group of biologists argued against that. They said that this is the sort of a ploy by the military and the CIA to restart the program, which was not going on in the United States. And they accepted the Soviet explanation that that outbreak was of natural origins. So there was a debate, and the CIA was desperate to find out what was going on, and through the grape wine. And it became known that there was a new arrival from the Soviet Union, me, who is a biologist. So this guy came to me and started to ask whether I or my father know anything about that. And I told them, quite honestly, that we know nothing about biological secrets. Otherwise, I wouldn't be sitting here. And he left. I was quite disappointed that I couldn't provide any information. But that visit prompted me to write a letter to Professor Ovchinnikov, the ex-boss of my wife, whom everybody suspected to be involved in that weapons program, to ask him to help my father. Because by that time, my father was already also asking for permission to leave and was refused. Of all the people in Russia, he is the best to know that my father had no knowledge of any secrets. And what did he say? He called my father in, into his office at the Academy of Sciences, and said, "Tell your son to stop this, because he may hurt himself, me, you, and everybody else he doesn't know what he's dealing with." Now, did the CIA ever approach your father in Moscow directly? No. No, no, no, no. They never approached my father. Although the KGB, the Soviet intelligence and counterintelligence people, believe that they did. Meanwhile, the KGB was searching for who might have leaked this information on the Anthrax accident to a newspaper in West Germany. And so your father ultimately was part of where the suspicion lay. But really, it was years later when you were contacted by an ex-KGB officer named Sergei in 2010, that some of these pieces start to come together. What did he initially say when he reached out to you? This person, his name was Sergei Bezrukov. It was 10 years after my father died. And he wrote to me saying that he wanted to correct. The story. And everybody in the press were saying that my father was totally innocent bystander. Whereas Sergei said, it's all not true. He said, had investigated my father back in 1982-83 on suspicion of being a CIA spy. And they genuinely believed that he was spying for the CIA. And he was betraying those biological. Weapons secrets to the Americans. Did you have any concern that maybe this was some Kremlin plot to try to lure you to another country, that there was some ulterior motive here? Well, he reached me 20 years later when the Soviet Union had already collapsed and relatively kind of relaxed times started in Russia. So I didn't see any danger. And Sergei told me that he is a defector, that he has left the service and defected to the Americans and was settled in Germany, in Dusseldorf. And he wanted to tell me the story. So I just hopped on the plane and flew to Dusseldorf and met him. And he told me the whole thing. Tell us more about who Sergei was. What he was doing when he was working with the KGB. Well, Sergei was about my age. And he started his career in the KGB as a field officer in the Moscow regional KGB administration. And my father's case was his first case, actually. He did everything that he was taught. In the spy school, he planted the listening devices in my father's apartment. He checked his mail. They opened all his mail. He moved known informers into my father's immediate circle. And he started building a file with the aim of collecting proof that my father is actually an American spy. So this story of what Sergei did in terms of investigating your father, David, is now unfolding. And you learn that your father unknowingly introduced Vasya, your friend who's secretly working for the KGB, to Nick Donalov, this U.S. journalist who is working in Moscow. And this is a special position because correspondents can use American diplomatic pouches to transfer mail. He ends up being the go-between between your father and you as you're waiting for your father to hopefully get out of the Soviet Union. And Donalov ends up ultimately getting caught in the crosshairs between the KGB and the CIA based on a letter. Can you tell us about that letter and how this unfolded? Donalov received the letter. It was dropped into his mailbox in Moscow. He was the bureau chief for U.S. News and World Report. The envelope was addressed to the U.S. ambassador. And Nick opened the envelope and found some notes there, which obviously were of technical nature related to the Soviet missile program. So he was contemplating what to do with it, but eventually he brought it to the embassy, gave it to the diplomats, and wanted to forget all about this. But in a couple of months, he was called into the embassy and interviewed by a CIA station chief, actually. His name was Nurat Natyrbov. So the station chief told Nick that these notes were in the same handwriting of a person whom the CIA was trying to contact for a few years by then. Three or two years before, that same source sent out a notebook filled with missile information about the Soviet missile program through a different American correspondent, and the CIA was never able to contact that source. But that source, they concluded, was a very knowledgeable and well-placed scientist. It was a total screw-up by the Moscow station. They contacted the wrong person, which they believed was the source of the envelope. And in doing so, they compromised Nick Danilov, because in that letter that the CIA delivered to the priests, they mentioned Nick Danilov. Two years later, in 1986, when Nick was finally arrested in Moscow, the KGB produced that CIA letter that they gave to the priests compromising him, and that was the evidence against Nick. And Nick, obviously, as a correspondent, he didn't have any diplomatic immunity. And the KGB threatened to jail him for the next 25 years for being a go-between between the CIA and a suspected Moscow source. all identities, human, machine, and AI. Secure every identity right now at paloaltonetworks.com slash I-D-I-R-A. Before Danilov is arrested, your father refuses to be part of a plan to incriminate Danilov. Well, at one point in 1984, my father was contacted by the KGB. And he was told, you want to get a visa out of the Soviet Union? Here's the deal. You call Nick Danilov to your apartment and you give him an envelope that we provide and then you'll get your visa. And my father said, no, no, no, I won't do it. He's my friend. Now, from speaking with Sergei, you also learned that you yourself could have gotten very much caught up in the crosshairs between the CIA and KGB as well through a letter. And this also relates to Vasya, your friend. Can you tell us about that letter? So in parallel to all of the Nick Danilov developments, there was another kind of line which I learned about from Sergei. My old friend Vasya, who ended up being a KGB informer, one day sent me a letter through Nick Danilov asking to send him a particular biological reagent which he needed for his work. And whether this reagent, which was not available, in the Soviet Union, could be somehow obtained in the United States and sent to him again via Nick Danilov's mail. And I contacted the manufacturer and the manufacturer told me that, no, no, no, you cannot send it to Russia because it's a dual-use material and it's prohibited for export to the Soviet bloc. And the next day I had two CIA people on my, on my door at Columbia University and they said, "We hear that you tried to obtain something prohibited and send it to the Soviet Union." Obviously, the manufacturer contacted them. I said, "Yes," and they kind of interviewed me and asked me what it was all about and who sent the request that I communicate with that person by passing the normal customs and so on and so forth. And I told them the whole story about Vasya and about our channel of communications, courtesy of Nick Danilov, and that I didn't send it because I was told it's prohibited. And they wanted the name of my correspondent who asked for that reagent. And I said, "No, I can't give it to you because if I give it to you, you will go in Moscow, try to recruit him, and then he'll be caught and executed. And I will be responsible. So, no, I'm not giving you the name." And they left. And then 20 years later, I learned that Vasya was actually a KGB informer. And it was kind of a belated chills down my spine because had I agreed to the CIA request, they would go on and try to recruit him. And then all of us, myself, my father, Nick Danilov, would be accused by the Soviets of spying for the CIA. And that's what Sergei actually told me 20 years later in Dusseldorf, that we had listening devices that confirmed all these conversations and plans. And actually he said, "I was ready to arrest your father and Nick Danilov and put them all in jail." And that's what Sergei said. And that's what Sergei said. equivalent to an American journalist being arrested on espionage charges, which are fabricated in Moscow, he insists that more people be added to the swap, which means that your father now has a chance to leave the Soviet Union. And he is finally out of the Soviet Union with his wife. I read that you were there holding pink roses. Danilov was with you at the airport. What was it like to finally hug your father after all of that time? And when you think about it now with how much more you know, what is it like to revisit that moment in your memory? Well, looking back, I must say that apart from the obvious emotion of a reunion with your parents after almost 10 years of separation, and fears that you may never, never see them again, that was emotionally a very, very high moment for me. But on the top of that, I must say that this whole saga of our family, leaving and moving to the United States was also a part of a high drama and that feeling that you were involved in historical events and had your five minutes of fame being on the front page of the New York Times, which happened when my father arrived. Also added another dimension to my memories when as an old man, I'm now trying to, you know, I'm trying to, you know, I'm trying to rethink and relive my life. When you think about what Sergei told you and the amount of time that you lost with your father, this was a time before we had video calls, text messaging. What does it mean to you? I was separated from my family and believed that I would never see them again. When I was able to go back to those times and relive all those events, both on the good side and the bad side, now I see my life in a much better way. Usually those things that happened to you and your family 20, 30, 40 years ago, they fade into memory, but now it's very, very vivid in front of me. I know you did everything you could to try to get your father, out of the Soviet Union. And if you'd had more information, I wonder if that would have changed it. I guess as a last point here, before Danilov died in 2024, he reportedly said, quote, when I left Moscow in 1986 after a five-year assignment, I warned not to expect democracy to take hold in Russia for two generations or 40 years. I guess I was too optimistic. Of course, under Putin, we have seen Americans, including journalists, still be taken as pawns for future negotiations. You have to put this story in the context of everything that happened since. The greatest sin of Mr. Putin and his regime is not, of course, harassing journalists, but starting a horrific war. So everything that we've seen, everything that we've seen, everything that we've seen, everything that Mr. Putin does, actually, is very much reminiscent of what happened in the Soviet regime. And I don't know where it would end, whether Russia would return to those brief periods of relative democracy, which enabled me to meet my informant, Sergei, or whether it will be back into the Soviet times. But maybe younger people who are trying to deal with Russia now may find these stories very useful. Very complex story that you're weaving here. And I really appreciate you taking the time, Alex. Thank you. You're welcome. Thanks for listening to this episode of Spycast. If you liked the episode, give us a follow on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And leave us a rating or review. It really helps. If you have any feedback or you want to hear about a particular topic, you can reach us by email at spycast at spymuseum.org. I'm your host, Sasha Ingber, and the show is brought to you by N2K Networks, Goat Rodeo, and the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C.