Wiki: Putin joined the KGB in 1975 upon graduation, and underwent a years training at the 401st KGB school in Okhta, Leningrad. He then went on to work briefly in the Second Chief Directorate (counter-intelligence) before he was transferred to the First Chief Directorate, where among his duties was the monitoring of foreigners and consular officials in Leningrad.[29][30] From 1985 to 1990, the KGB stationed Putin in Dresden, East Germany.[31] During that time, Putin was assigned to Directorate S, the illegal intelligence-gathering unit (the KGBs classification for agents who used falsified identities) where he was given cover as a translator and interpreter.[32] One of Putins jobs was to coordinate efforts with the Stasi to track down and recruit foreigners in Dresden, usually those who were enrolled at the Dresden University of Technology, in the hopes of sending them undercover in the United States. Despite this, Putin biographer Masha Gessen disputes the KGB Spymaster image that has been built around him and instead says that Dresden was essentially a backwater job that Putin himself resented: [Directorate S of Dresden]s job was to collect information about the enemy, which was the west, meaning West Germany and, especially the United States military bases in West Germany, which were hardly more accessible from Dresden than they would have been from Leningrad. Putin and his colleagues were reduced mainly to collecting press clippings, thus contributing to the mountains of useless information produced by the KGB Former agents estimate they spent three-quarters of their time writing reports. Putins biggest success in his stay in Dresden appears to have been in drafting a Colombian University student, who in turn connected the Soviet agents with a Colombian student at a school in West Berlin, who in turn introduced them to a U.S. Army Sergeant, who sold them an unclassified Manual for 800 marks. [32] — Excerpt from The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin by Masha Gessen en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vladimir_Putin_in_KGB_uniform.jpg
Posted on: Thu, 06 Mar 2014 08:18:39 +0000
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