Sasha was an alleged

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

mole Mole (or Molé) may refer to: Animals * Mole (animal) or "true mole" * Golden mole, southern African mammals * Marsupial mole Marsupial moles, the Notoryctidae family, are two species of highly specialized marsupial mammals that are found i ...

in the

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...

during the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

Manhunt

In 1961,

Anatoliy Golitsyn Anatoliy Mikhaylovich Golitsyn Order of the British Empire, CBE (Russian language, Russian: Анатолий Михайлович Голицын; 25 August 1926 – 29 December 2008) was a Soviet KGB defector and author of two books about the lon ...

, a

major Major most commonly refers to: * Major (rank), a military rank * Academic major, an academic discipline to which an undergraduate student formally commits * People named Major, including given names, surnames, nicknames * Major and minor in musi ...

in the KGB, was assigned to the embassy in

Helsinki Helsinki () is the Capital city, capital and most populous List of cities and towns in Finland, city in Finland. It is on the shore of the Gulf of Finland and is the seat of southern Finland's Uusimaa region. About people live in the municipali ...

Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...

, under the name "Ivan Klimov." On 15 December, he defected to the US, along with his wife and daughter, by riding the train to the Swedish border. Golitsyn's defection so alarmed the KGB that orders were sent out to cancel all meetings with field agents out of fear that they would be identified. Golitsyn was flown to the US and interviewed by David Murphy, the head of the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...

's Soviet Russia Division. After some time, Golitsyn began making increasing demands of the US and complaining about his treatment. Considering him to be unreliable, Murphy passed him on to

James Jesus Angleton James Jesus Angleton (December 9, 1917 – May 11, 1987) was an American CIA officer who served as chief of the counterintelligence department of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1954 to 1975. According to Director of Central Intelligence ...

, the CIA's director of counterintelligence. Golitsyn's description of a traitor in the CIA, whom he knew only as "Sasha", led Angleton to embark on a multiyear manhunt that accused many members of the CIA of being the spy. The entire affair is still highly controversial.

Reparations

Under United States Public Law 96-450, passed in 1980 and commonly known as the "Mole Relief Act", C.I.A. employees who have been accused unfairly of disloyalty (e.g. Sasha) and who have had their careers subsequently ruined were allowed to receive government compensation.

List of accused CIA employees

This is a partial list of CIA employees accused of being Sasha. All were later cleared. *

Serge Karlow Serge "Peter" Karlow ( in New York, NY – November 3, 2005, in Montclair, New Jersey) was a CIA technical officer from 1947 to 1963 who was falsely accused of treason and forced to resign. The allegations against Karlow were made by KGB defector A ...

* Richard Kovich * Alexander ″Sasha″ SogolowDavid Wise, ''Molehunt'', passim Others CIA employees, though not suspected to be ″Sasha″, were suspected to be moles in the course of the Sasha molehunt: * Paul Garbler * George Goldberg * David Murphy * Vasia C. Gmirkin

In popular culture

* In Robert Littell's novel '' The Company'', the alleged existence of Sasha is an important element of the plot.

Footnotes

References

* Martin, David C. ''Wilderness of Mirrors: Intrigue, Deception, and the Secrets that Destroyed Two of the Cold War's Most Important Agents''. New York: The Lyons Press, 2003. . * * * Wise, David. ''Molehunt: The Secret Search for Traitors That Shattered the CIA''. New York: Random House, 1992. .

External links

"Of Moles and Molehunters"
by Cleveland Cram, Center for the Study of Intelligence, October 1993.
"C.I.A. Dug for Moles but Buried the Loyal"
by David Johnston, ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', March 8, 1992. Cold War spies Counterintelligence {{espionage-stub