KHAFAJI, JABBAR AL-• 287KGB.The Committee for State Security (Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Be-
zopasnosti) was the principal Soviet intelligence agency from its for-
mation in 1954, under the leadership of Ivan Serov, to its
replacement in 2001 by the SVR, the Russian Federation’s Foreign
Intelligence Service. The KGB represented a formidable adversary
for British Intelligence, running operations in London through both
therezidenturaat the Soviet Embassy in Kensington Palace Gardens
and a parallel organization headed by an illegalrezident. Britain was
the target of the Third Department of the KGB’s First Chief Director-
ate, and its embassy in Moscow was kept under surveillance by the
Third Chief Directorate.
The headquarters of the KGB in Moscow has always been known
as ‘‘Moscow Center’’ or ‘‘the Center’’ and its respected personnel
have been known as ‘‘Chekists’’ as direct descendants of the Bolshe-
vik tradition during the period when the Soviet Union’s security and
intelligence apparatus was known as theCheka.
KGB ARCHIVES.In 1993 the publication ofDeadly Illusionsby John
Costello and Oleg Tsarev marked the beginning of a declassification
program sponsored by the SVR with an American publisher to allow
five Western authors access to selected files in the oldKGBarchives
to write on specific topics with a KGB coauthor. The result was the
publication ofOne Hell of a Gambleby Tim Naftali and Aleksandr
Fursenko;Battleground Berlinby David Murphy and Sergei Kon-
drashev;The Haunted Woodby Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vas-
siliev; andThe Crown Jewelsby Tsarev.
Since this project, negotiated by the Cambridge-educated historian
Costello, further disclosures from the Illegals Directorate archive
have been made by adefector,Vasili Mitrokhin, who reached En-
gland in 1992 with a vast quantity of documents he had copied at
the KGB First Chief Directorate’s headquarters at Yasenevo, an illicit
undertaking that resulted in the release ofThe Mitrokhin Archivein
1999.
KHAFAJI, JABBAR AL-.A member of the Iraqi National Accord,
political opponents of Saddam Hussein, Jabbar al-Khafaji acted as a
conduit for a jointCentral Intelligence Agency–Secret Intelligence
Serviceoperation based in London to prevent the Iraqi military from