FP: What are some of the differences between the KGB and FSB?

Buchar: During the Soviet era, the KGB operated under the strict supervision of Communist Party Politburo, which limited its power. Today, FSB powers are without limits. About 80 percent of the top positions in the country are occupied by former KGB or active KGB officers. Russia today became a perfect KGB state. Ronald Reagan believed that communism was incompatible with freedom and was ultimately going to have to be destroyed. That, of course, never came even close to happen.

Both CIA and MI6 admit that FSB/SVR/GRU activities today are higher then ever. The whole foreign policy of the Soviet-bloc states, indeed its whole economic and military might, revolved around the larger Soviet objective of destroying America from within through the use of lies. A couple of years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the intelligence services of Eastern Block countries initiated a major reorganization.

KGB started to build around the world a system that, like the Nazis after 1943, would activate new generation of agents in the future. For this purpose, enormous amounts of money, some experts estimate $50 billion, were transferred to the West and placed in some 7,000 secret bank accounts in Europe, Latin America, and Cyprus. Money is frozen in accounts and waiting. Nobody dares to investigate. Gorbachev and Lukjanov were overseeing these transfers. Just on Cyprus alone there are 110 Russian corporations and around 2,000 secret bank account owned by Russians.

According to A.Craig Copestas, the author of Bear Hunting With the Politburo, $2,600,000,000 was transferred from Russia to Cyprus between January 1991 and April 1992. On May 29, 1993 there was a meeting in Moscow. The topic was “KGB yesterday, today, and tomorrow.” Former KGB officers testified about the infiltration of political parties during  the 1990 election. As a result, 2,756 KGB agents ended up in the Russian legislature. Should we believe that Western world governments are not infiltrated as well? Since the late 90’s Russia sent so many spies to Germany that now it is full of Russian agents. The KGB is also very influential in countries like Finland, Hungary, the Yugoslavian Republics, Bulgaria, Austria, and is also fairly influential in Italy and France.

There is no doubt that KGB elements are continuing their work. For example, when the Soviet regime collapsed, it made no difference whatsoever — as one can see through their handling of spies or moles within American intelligence. Namely Aldrich Ames, who was not discovered until three years after the fall of the Soviet Union, and he was still actively collaborating with them and was actively exploited by them. Then you have Robert Hanssen in the FBI. It made no difference. They were continuing the fight against the old enemy and it continues to this day – as we see in the latest FBI arrests of Russian spies in America. The Russians today are aiding our enemies in the Middle East, maintaining relationships with them, perhaps two ends of the thing in Iran and its assets in Iraq, in Syria, and in other countries.

FP: Can you speak a bit about the recent arrests of Russian spies in the U.S.? This very much confirms your main thesis.

Buchar: It is a bit relieving to hear, after so many years of total silence, that our counter-intelligence still exists and is somewhat functioning. I believe this latest incident is just a tip of the iceberg. As I mentioned before, Russians always used “revolutions” for sending waves of spies to the West. They did that in 1968 and again during and after Perestroika. Also there is a direct link between the influx of Russian emigrants to the US and the significant increase in organized crime activities here.

Oleg Gordievsky talks in my book about some four hundred KGB agents operating in the United States and our government doing nothing about it. And that number, of course, doesn’t even include “sleepers” and “illegals.” I think we may hear more about cases like this in the future. The problem is that the Russians are able to cover up these connections and create what is called “plausible denial.”  By having enough separation between KGB (SVR) and direct illegal activities, it’s very difficult to make a court ordered case on it. And, of course, it’s momentarily politically incorrect even to think of it.

FP: Can you talk a bit about organized crime?

Buchar: Ah yes, the organized crime phenomenon. That took place particularly in the 1990-1991 period. That’s when part of the KGB deliberately went into operation with organized crime. It wasn’t done because of a lack of control. It was a decision. For the KGB, it became a question of both survival and enrichment. So the fusion with organized crime on one hand and with the administrative apparatus on the other became almost complete.  It is a crime syndicate, which in this case is also governmentally controlled and protected. It has become one big criminal division. There should be no doubt that the connections between the KGB and organized crime are systemic and pervasive. So we simply have got to realize that this is the case. We shouldn‘t marvel at it. This is the way it is. The KGB has international connections to organized crime, especially in Europe and the United States.

According to Joseph Douglass, organized crime was a major strategic operation under the control of the KGB beginning in 1955. It was the operation designed globally, more or less for its political effect in terms of increasing their ability to influence politics in countries around the world because of the close connection they saw between organized crime and politics in addition to the connection between organized crime and financial operations, which the Soviets were also very heavily engaged and interested in. This was, of course, heavily influenced by the narcotics mafias because they had a lot of money and they needed to launder it.

As a result, they basically had a cooperative working relationship with global international finance to help manage the whole money laundering process, which, by the mid-60s, was substantial. Organized crime grew so much that within a mere 10 years the small state of Czechoslovakia organized, or was in control of 35 different organized crime groups. By 1968, Soviet intelligence services had penetrated something like 80 percent of the organized crime groups around the world.

FP: Are you serious? This is scary.

Buchar: Yes Jamie. And let me continue painting the scary picture: the Soviets had agents in over 60 percent of the Latin American banks that covered the total cost of organized crime activities and 40 percent of American and Canadian banks. The size of international organized crime was first estimated in 1994 by the World Bank at about 1.2 trillion dollars a year. In 1996-97 a study from the UN identified it as 1.6 trillion dollars per year. An Interagency U.S. study on international crime said that the money laundering component alone was estimated at no less then 900 billion and possibly in excess of 2 trillion dollars a year. Over the same period the interest on investments and holdings alone was estimated at one trillion dollars a year as early as 1994.

FP: So what can be drawn from these figures?

Buchar: It’s really very simple –  there is a massive amount of money out there. And for the KGB, it’s perfectly adequate to achieve all the corruption at high political levels, the highest, and to influence all the elections you want around the world with absolutely no trouble at all. And not only this, but the amount of money is so large that you really don’t care what the precise figures are because it doesn’t really matter. It’s that large.

There was an article published recently in Moscow Times reporting that Russian groups, which include some “300,000 compatriots,” secured their spheres of influence in the world of organized crime globally, even using submarines purchased as “scrap metal” from Ukraine and repaired in Romania for drug trafficking from South America to Mexico.

In Spain, Russian criminal groups control 90 percent of the drug and illegal arms flows. In Poland, there are as many as 20,000 Russian criminals operating in the country. National Prosecutor of Italy concluded that the most profitable activities of Russian criminals abroad is money laundering, with the Russian mafia “laundering” funds in the United States, Marianas, and Guam. In addition, he added, they are charging Mexican drug lords 30 percent for laundering drug profits from sales in the United States.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the head of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, has stated:  “Yes, people from the former Soviet Union really occupy an important position in the international crime community, but many of these people already have been living abroad for a long time and have exchanged Russian passports for foreign ones. They are now more the representatives of West and not of our culture.”

Who would believe that? The point is to retain control, not who you retain control through.

FP: So where does all of this leave us?

Buchar: Well Jamie, I guess the main thing I would tend to go back to is the question: “Is communism dead?”

Most people believe that it is dead. Some people, particularly in the United States, believe that the idea of global socialism is dead. But it is not. If you look at its development in Europe and Latin America, you see that there is now more socialism than ever before. Because of public opinion, or rather, the media, political parties, political movements, parliaments, and institutions are all becoming more and more socialist. The European Parliament is a socialist organization. The Spanish government is a socialist organization. Even the so-called “bourgeois” French government is practically a socialist organization. You can see it in the press, in academia, and in the Universities. There is no sign, even in the United States, that socialism is decreasing. On the contrary, there is even more of it. Unfortunately, the social democratic, Western European idea of socialism is growing.

Communists know how to hide, lie, and wait. There is the prospect of some kind of mix between Communism and Fascism rising up. It’s already happening, this strange symbiosis. In other words, we have more of a change in strategy and tactics on the Russian side and not necessarily any change in goals. But this itself gets no attention, and, in many respects, it may be a stronger threat to us because of this.  The United States is facing a major strategic assault on its system. Yet, because of denial and the deceptive activities of countries like Russia and China, it is ill prepared to counter these activities. It will take tremendous leadership. It will take leadership that is willing to divide our national interest from our diplomatic interest. It is about a political mindset and it’s going to require that the United States come to grips with the fact that its bureaucratic system of government is severely broken, severely damaged, and is ultimately working against the national interest of the United States.

The center for “spreading” of communism was transferred from Moscow to the socialists in the West, who are in control of more than many know or want to believe. So, in some way, Russia has a strategy. I don’t think that America has a strategy to counter-balance that strategy.

Anatoily Golitsyn wrote in 1984 in his book New Lies For Old:

“The dialectic of this offensive consists of a calculated shift from the old, discredited Soviet practice to a new, ‘liberalized’ model, with a social democratic facade, to realize the communist planners strategy for establishing a United Europe. At the beginning they introduced a variation of the 1968 Czechoslovakia ‘democratization.’ At a later phase they will shift to a variation of the Czechoslovakia takeover of 1948.”

“Those who cannot learn from the history are doomed to repeat it.”
George Santayana

FP: Robert Buchar, thank you for sharing your knowledge with us today.

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