Soviet allies for more than a decade. As an active duty and recently
retired army senior sergeant, Conrad had access to highly classified
information about NATO and American war plans. He also was able
to recruit a number of other American noncommissioned officers.
Conrad and other members of his ring were paid over $1.5 million for
division, corps, and army-level operational plans. The first lead to
Conrad’s ring came from Vladimir Vasilev, a GRUofficer serving in
Budapest. Vasilev informed his Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
case officer of the danger of the spy ring, noting with little exagger-
ation that it was the biggest Soviet military intelligence case in the
Cold War. Conrad became the target of a joint CIA and military in-
telligence investigation that led to the arrest of 11 men and women
working for MNVK/2 in Germany, Sweden, and Austria. Conrad was
tried for espionage in a German court; the post-Soviet Hungarian
government provided some evidence for the prosecution. He was
sentenced to life imprisonment and died in a German prison in 1998.
Because Conrad was not convicted by an American court, he contin-
ued to receive his military pension until he died in jail.CONSTANTINI, FRANCESCO (c. 1900–?). An Italian employee of
the British embassy in Rome, Constantini served as a Soviet agent for
more than a decade. Under the code name “Duncan,” he provided his
Soviet handlers with British code material and diplomatic dispatches.
In 1935 more than 100 British documents that he stole were trans-
lated and presented to Joseph Stalin. Francesco’s brother Secondo
also spied for the Soviet Union with the code name “Dudley.” Like
his brother, he was highly valued by the British diplomatic commu-
nity and in 1937 was given an all-expenses paid vacation to London
to witness the coronation of King George VI.
The British embassy in Rome did not have a security officer in the
years between World War I and World War II. Local employees,
such as the Constantinis, were given access to the ambassador’s safe.
They were even given responsibility for locking the embassy at night.
The benefit to Moscow from the Constantinis’ spying was immense:
it gave Soviet signals intelligencethe ability to read British coded
material for more than a decade. The Constantinis were, however,
more entrepreneurial than Moscow would have liked: they also sold
British diplomatic dispatches and codes to the Italian government.CONSTANTINI, FRANCESCO (c. 1900–?)•5506-313 A-G.qxd 7/27/06 7:55 AM Page 55