The KGB in Iran: Appeasing the Ayatollah with Ben Macintyre (Ep 2)

The Rest Is Classified

This episode explores the true story of Redwood, a Soviet KGB officer who defected to MI6 during Iran's revolutionary upheaval. As he secret

Key takeaways

• Redwood's defection provided MI6 with unprecedented access to the KGB's illegal operations network, including details on false identities and global assets.
• The Soviet Union was actively planning a coup in Iran via the Iranian Communist Party, aiming to install a pro-Soviet regime and potentially trigger nuclear conflict.

Main topics

• KGB defector operations in Iran
• Cold War espionage during Iranian Revolution

Notable quotes

"The Soviet Union was... backing the Communist Party, the Iranian Communist Party, then still pretty powerful, growing, tolerated by the Ayatollah's regime at this point."

Conclusion

Redwood's story illustrates how one defector's intelligence reshaped Cold War

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:03) For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter, and discounted books, join the Declassified Club at therestisclassified.com. Speaker 2 (0:25) A KGB officer who has secretly gone over to work for MI6 in revolutionary Iran. But will MI6 Speaker 6 (0:32) be able to get him out of the country when things go wrong? Speaker 2 (0:35) Well, welcome to The Rest Is Classified. I'm David McCloskey. And I'm Gordon Carrera. And we left off last time in this two-part series about a wonderful new book that is just out, Redwood. We left off with Redwood, this... Russian KGB officer who's been recruited or really volunteered to work for MI6 in Iran, in part because of some ideological motivation, in part because of some very personal problems. He's begun to pass intelligence to MI6, and we are still joined by Ben McIntyre, who is with us today to speak about Agent Redwood and his wonderful new book of the same name. So Ben, thank you so much for being back with us. Thank you both. So this is a chance, I think, Ben, to look Speaker 3 (1:22) at how Redwood is run in Iran and will also get to him getting out, but also his legacy, which is fascinating, isn't it? Because I think it tells us a lot about how Iran is going to change and how the Ayatollah is going to cement his hold on power, but particularly the Revolutionary Guards in Iran and how they are going to come to power and exert Speaker 4 (1:45) increasing influence over the country. Absolutely. I mean, I think... And understanding modern Iran, the nature of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, how that regime came to be the way that it is, this is one of those hidden stories that actually helps to explain why the West is locked in conflict with Tehran a generation later. But what makes it so interesting, I think, is that very, very few people know the role played by the West in that. Speaker 3 (2:16) Yeah, and Speaker 4 (2:16) that's what's so remarkable Speaker 3 (2:17) about your book, which is really bringing to light this story, which I think was not just misunderstood, but not really known about in any way before. Speaker 2 (2:29) This episode is brought to you by HP. In intelligence, you quickly learn that you are only as strong as the network around you. It's rarely a single major event that undermines an operation. It's the gaps between systems. That's where information leaks. It's the same in business. Speaker 3 (2:45) Leaders face a constant battle against strict timelines, mismatched tools, and the worry their security... Speaker 2 (2:53) isn't as tight as they think it is. Which is why HP approaches technology not as a collection of gadgets, but as an integrated system. And crucially, that protection is Speaker 3 (3:02) built in at hardware level. It runs quietly in the background, blocking threats without requiring constant specialist oversight. Speaker 2 (3:10) With a team of business advisors, HP helps businesses of all sizes find technology that fits their needs and budget. To see how HP helps Speaker 3 (3:19) businesses work securely and productively, visit hp.com forward slash classified. Trick listeners also benefit from 10 % off HP business technology with the code TRICK10. Speaker 3 (3:35) So, Ben, let's talk a little bit about the context. So he's now working for MI6. We left with that in the last episode. Kazichkin has been recruited by McCready or volunteered to work for MI6. And he's being run and he's passing intelligence at an important moment in Iran at this time, isn't he? Speaker 4 (3:55) Absolutely. I mean, he is able to crack open the illegals network for the West. I mean, he is able to explain how Department S, the largest department in the KGB, works, how they make people's false identities. And bear in mind that this area of KGB activity was very mysterious to the West. And it was kind of the last big secret, if you like, about the KGB, that they'd never had an officer from the illegals department as a double agent before. They literally did not know how it operated. And Kuzichkin, who had a phenomenal memory, was able to give them chapter and verse on not just how the whole thing was organized, but where these different illegal agents were. And they weren't just in the Middle East. I mean, Kuzichkin was so senior that he knew of other names of other people around the world. And he knew of various KGB assets in the West. So he was incredibly useful. He was also able to explain that the Soviet Union was... backing the Communist Party, the Iranian Communist Party, then still pretty powerful, growing, tolerated by the Ayatollah's regime at this point. And what Kozichkin revealed was hair-raising because he was able to tell McCready, the MI6 officer, not only were the Soviets growing in power in Iran, they were actually planning and had a blueprint for a coup that they were seriously plotting. to set up the Iranian Communist Party in an armed insurrection, overthrow the Ayatollah's fledgling government, and then get backing from the Red Army, which would then roll across the border. Now, for the West, this was the nightmare scenario, because if Iran fell to the Soviet Union, Moscow would have control of the warm water ports, the Strait of Hormuz, and the oil fields. The Soviet Union would win the Cold War. Now, the Pentagon had contingency planning for this. And the response, one of the main responses, would have been nuclear. There were not enough conventional forces in that theater to be able to repel a full-scale Soviet invasion, which was being considered. And one of the responses would be, there were various levels of nuclear response. One of them was to send in special forces with... things called man-packed nukes, which were portable mini nuclear weapons, and bring down the mountain ranges in the north of the country, collapse the mountains into the passes and try to block Soviet armor from coming in. That was how serious it was going to be. So, you know, a nuclear response by America would undoubtedly have triggered a nuclear response from the Soviet Union. So this was what the West was terrified of. Bear in mind that the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union had just taken place. December 1979. December 1979, a communist regime in Afghanistan was bolstered by the Red Army coming in and taking over the country. It seemed entirely feasible from the West that the next domino to fall would be Iran. You know, there is a 1,400-mile border. between Iran and the Soviet Union, or there was now because of the takeover of Afghanistan, this seemed like a very, very real possibility. And the key thing that Kuzichkin revealed was that he personally was the linchpin. He was the person who had been contacting on the KGB's behalf, the Communist Party members, funneling money to them, organizing the arms dumps. making sure that this potential coup, as he described it himself, was ready to go. Now, whether it would have happened, we don't know, but the planning was undoubtedly in place for it. And for MI6, this was a game changer. I mean, this was intelligence of operational intelligence of such strategic importance that it was too valuable to use for the moment. There's Speaker 2 (8:10) also a very interesting character who's just taken over the CIA. Bill Casey, a notable Cold Warrior, Speaker 4 (8:17) mumbler. It's helpful sometimes if you Speaker 2 (8:19) don't know what you're saying. It can be interpreted in multiple ways. But he is also deeply worried about Iran. And I mean, he's deeply worried about Afghanistan. I mean, famously, he'll oversee the covert action program to send weapons and sticker missiles to the Mujahideen. But you have this sort of confluence of British fears of a new great game. the Central Intelligence Agency, the Americans involved looking at Iran in the wake, of course, of the hostage crisis in 79. Talk a little bit about the connection between the Redwood case and the Americans and kind of how they swirled together. Speaker 4 (8:57) For Casey and for Reagan too, this was both an opportunity and a nightmare. You know, this was what various... American administrations had always feared might happen. It would absolutely swing the course of the Cold War. And you've got an administration in Washington that could see this as the next domino. You've got MI6 thinking, we've got really, really important operational intelligence here. You've got a sort of elderly leadership in Moscow, Brezhnev, who are completely... unpredictable. They've just invaded Afghanistan. It seems highly possible that the next stage will be Iran. And you've got people in the Central Committee in Moscow who are dead keen on this operation. Backing the Iranian Communist Party, perhaps 30,000 members, heavily armed, seems like another throw of the dice. It seems like a really... Everybody in this story, from Kazichkin to McCready to... Moscow to Washington believes this is a very real probability. So Kozichkin Speaker 3 (10:07) is right at the centre of this fascinating global moment. And as we talked last time, he is under pressure himself. Now he's living this double life. He's working for MI6. I think they start giving him pills to deal with Speaker 4 (10:19) his problem, but still not quite working out. Well, as we said in the last... episode, Kozichkin's motivations are both ideological and medical. He suffers from erectile dysfunction. He is desperate to save his marriage. He believes, wrongly, that the West has medicines that will cure it. I mean, one of the fascinating things about this story is that in a kind of spy film, if, you know, somebody revealed a secret as intimate as this, you know, a wicked spy master would use that as a way of blackmailing him into kind of... cooperating and it would become a lever. That's not what happened in this case. MI6 dealt with this very human and very common problem with extraordinary sensitivity. McCready said to him, look, Vladimir, we will do our best. We will try to help you. We will get the top medical people that we can find and we will try and help you with your problem. And that is what they did. The chief medical officer of MI6 wrote out... Advice to him now, of course, there was no magic cure. There was no Viagra had not been invented There was no pill that was gonna make this better because it can believe there was but there wasn't Nonetheless tell him that did they did? They made it clear that there's no- But they gave him some Speaker 3 (11:33) kind of herbal pill or something? They gave him vitamin pills. They gave Speaker 4 (11:36) him little red vitamin pills. They gave him advice. They said, you know, cut down on the drink. I mean, one of the ironic pieces of advice they gave him was, you know, try and cut down on the stress. Or work into MI6. They were adding to Speaker 3 (11:48) the Speaker 4 (11:48) stress. McCready says very, you know, feelingly, you know, we made his problem worse. You know, he was not only spying for the KGB against the Iranians. He was not spying for Speaker 2 (11:57) MI6 Speaker 4 (11:57) against Speaker 2 (11:58) the KGB. It's hard enough to try to orchestrate. a communist coup in Iran, but also to be working for MI6 at the same time. That's stressful. Yeah, that's highly Speaker 4 (12:05) stressful. So as you know, they made the problem worthwhile trying to make it, but they did take it seriously. They didn't, this was not a laughing matter in MI6. They knew that they had a very human problem here. And as you guys know, people who are recruited as spies, as double agents, are not... necessarily made of heroic material. People come to this world for complicated motives, not all of them creditable, sometimes bizarre. Sex is quite frequently a motivating factor in these stories. It's not unknown for a sex addiction or a breaking down marriage or secret homosexuality, or these things can all be part of something that drives you to the other side. And Kaczynski's story is, as I say, not uncommon. And they took it very, very seriously. They could not cure it. They couldn't do it. The placebo effect of these little red pills seems to have had some kind of marginal effect for him. But the marriage was disintegrating. It was coming apart. So you've got him at the same time as producing this gold standard level of intelligence to the West. You've got his own private life disintegrating. Speaker 2 (13:17) I guess his posting in Tehran is due to end in the middle of 1982, where presumably he's going to go back to Moscow and have some kind of desk job, which would be hugely valuable to MI6, were he able to produce intelligence from inside the Soviet Union. But he's kind of thinking at this point, there's no way I'm going into that. cooker and working for you. I want out. Speaker 4 (13:44) Well, you're absolutely right. I mean, you know, the thing that you most want as an intelligence agency is to have your own spy deep inside the enemy's camp in head office able to, you know, that's absolute gold dust. And a lot of pressure was put on Kozichkin to try to persuade him. I mean, McCready repeatedly