Saturday, March 31, 2012

Ex-Soviet KGB Chief Found "Suicided?"



This can't be good news.

Another top boss "suicided?"

What is going on (or getting ready to be announced) that these type people want nothing to do with?

(And doesn't he look an awful lot like one of the agents in Smiley's People?)

Former Soviet KGB spy chief commits suicide
Ex-Soviet KGB foreign intelligence chief Leonid Shebarshin was found dead in his Moscow apartment on March 30 in an apparent suicide, Russian investigators said.

Former Soviet KGB Spy Chief Commits Suicide

Yesterday at 19:31| Reuters

MOSCOW - Ex-Soviet KGB foreign intelligence chief Leonid Shebarshin was found dead in his Moscow apartment on March 30 in an apparent suicide, Russian investigators said.

Shebarshin, 77, who headed the First Chief Directorate, a foreign intelligence service within the KGB during 1989-1991, appeared to have committed suicide, the Investigative Committee said on its website www.sledcom.ru. A gun, which he was awarded upon retirement, was discovered near his body.

Police also found a suicide note on the scene, Interfax news agency quoted a police official as saying.

The ex-spy, fluent in Urdu, worked on assignments in Pakistan, India and Iran in the 1950s-1970s. He was appointed deputy chief of foreign intelligence in 1987, and promoted to head the service in 1989.

Shebarshin briefly occupied the KGB's top post after the failed August 1991 hardline coup, intended to halt president Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms paved the way for the collapse of the communist party, the end of the Soviet Union and the creation of the present-day Russian state.

He resigned from active service shortly after the coup.

The KGB fragmented after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Its once-mighty foreign intelligence service, crippled by underfinancing and corruption in the 1990s, suffered damage to its reputation in a number of embarrassing spy failures abroad.

The U.S. intelligence services exposed a group of 10 Russian spies operating on their territory in 2010, which was followed by a Cold war era-type spy swap between the two ex-foes.

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Thanks to Paul Krugman's blog for this Friday night (now Saturday morn) moving suggestion:





2 comments:

Tom Harper said...

An ex-KGB chief committing "suicide," hmmm. Seems to be a common occurrence in Russia. In the U.S., for that matter, this type of "suicide" is probably a lot more common than we'd like to acknowledge.

Cirze said...

Yeah, baby.

Along with plane crashes and lots of unexplained sudden cancers taking them out but pronto.

Thanks for commenting. I love to read your prose. You rock.

S