As mentioned in the previous article, the former Soviet Union, with the cooperation of spy and missile forces, successfully launched an invading American U2 high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft on May 1, 1960, and pilot Francis Gray Bower parachuted and was captured. In order to find out how the U2 plane was shot down, the United States did not hesitate to exchange the Soviet ace spy "Thousand Faced Man" Colonel Abel for Gray Bower.
At this time, the Glenny Kyle Iron Bridge in Berlin at the time of the exchange of prisoners of war
The US government's move also caused strong dissatisfaction among the domestic people, and the director of the US Central Intelligence Agency, Aaron Dulles, had to come forward to explain, he said: "A secret agent like Colonel Abel, like a pistol that can only be fired once, when it is fired, it is destroyed, Abel can never be sent abroad to carry out espionage activities, and Bowa can still fly in the United States, and even send out reconnaissance over Cuba and China. Why not exchange a useless agent for a pilot who is still useful? ”
It can be seen that this Soviet spy Colonel Abel has "weight" in the hearts of the American people.
Today, let's get to know Colonel Abel, the ace spy of the former Soviet Union known as the "Man with a Thousand Faces".
Abel, whose full name was Rudov Ivanovich Abel, was born on July 2, 1902 in St. Petersburg, Russia, where his grandfather served in the Tsarist government and belonged to a middle-class and upper-class family. His father joined the League for the Liberation of the Working Class and, at a very young age, helped his father distribute leaflets and deliver Bolshevik documents.
Abel showed a gift for languages at a young age, teaching English, German and Polish at a School in Moscow in his twenties. In 1922, he joined the Communist Youth League, and at the same time developed a hobby of engaging in wireless telegraphy, and practiced a good kung fu.
In 1925, Abel joined the Soviet Red Army and served in the Radio Battalion, where he worked on radio intelligence research. This cheerful and sociable young man had innate traits and skills, and was soon favored by Soviet intelligence agencies.
In 1927, he joined the predecessor of the KGB , the General Directorate of Political Defence ( GEB ) , where he received professional intelligence training and began his career as a spy.
Abel spoke Very fluent English, with a slight irish accent, and his German, French, and Italian were equally great, so he was a natural foreign spy worker, and it was rare that anyone as proficient as he was in five or six foreign languages, and spoke exactly like the man of the country, without any flaws.
As a result, before World War II, he was sent to Germany by the Intelligence Bureau of the Red Army. He was easily mixed up among the Germans in Riga on the Baltic Sea. After the outbreak of World War II, he went deep behind enemy lines as an espionage agent and repeatedly accomplished miraculous feats. By the end of the war, he was a major-level officer in the Ministry of the Interior.
Behind German "enemy lines," Abel served as Hitler's car driver, thus sending the most critical information of the German army back to Moscow. At the beginning of the Soviet-German War, he became a first-class soldier in the German Army and was awarded an award by Hitler for his outstanding performance. Undoubtedly, Abel was a brave spy in Germany, so he was promoted after the war and later became a colonel officer in the KGB.
Abel's nickname of "The Man with a Thousand Faces" is not unreasonable, he does not need to change his disguise when performing his mission, but he acts in various different capacities, and even the Gestapo cannot figure out his details, which is indeed something that only the Man with a Thousand Faces can do.
After the war, he was ordered to infiltrate the United States for nine years, changed his identity several times, and if it were not for another spy who betrayed him, he might have been lurking in the United States for a longer period of time in various false identities.
After Germany's surrender, he continued to live in Germany for two more years. The reason why he continued to stay was that he was preparing to infiltrate the United States.
In 1947, he planned to enter Canada first, and then from Canada to the United States. Because it was at the height of McCarthyism in the United States, it was extremely difficult to send spies directly into the United States.
He first managed to blend into a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany to help the homeless after the war, pretending to be a German named Andrei Cadydice, who wanted to move to Canada.
After that, Abel came to Canada smoothly. After entering Canada, the United States opened the U.S.-Canada border to allow workers who were willing to work in Canada to travel freely. Taking advantage of this opportunity, Abel blended into the United States as he wished, and he was designated by the KGB as the head of espionage in the Americas.
After entering the United States, he did not immediately start working, but spent three years traveling around the United States to familiarize himself with the environment. In 1950 he settled in New York, abandoned the name he had used for three years, and began to use the name of a baby who had been "prematurely dead" years earlier, just two months before, and changed his name to Emer Golfs, preparing himself for espionage.
Abel chose to use photography and painting as a professional cover for his beginnings as a spy, as he showed a mature talent for both photography and painting. In the course of frequent artistic activities, he became acquainted with some artists in New York's Block Forest.
In addition to photography and painting, he is well versed in music and literature. Therefore, as an artist, he is quite famous in the circle.
He made only a few artist friends, and in the eyes of his friends and neighbors he was a polite, well-behaved, studious man who mastered all kinds of knowledge very quickly. He also cooks a good dish and enjoys visiting museums and listening to concerts. To the surprise of his friends, he was also a telegraph expert and Soviet agent.
In this way, he quietly carried out espionage work in the United States for nine years, managing many spy networks throughout North America, Mexico, and even Central America. On weekdays, he is not very well dressed, not trim, like a debauched artist, and other artists also regard him as a fellow believer, and if he is not at home for a while, he will go to debauchery. Artists do not interfere in the private lives of others, which gives Abel more room for activity.
He sent the intelligence he had gathered, especially military intelligence, back to Moscow in a short-wave transmitter in ciphers, and he and his agents used hollow screws and silver coins to collect miniature films with secrets. Sometimes the hollow screw is left under a stone under a street lamp, or the code is nailed to the road sign with a pushpin to pass on a secret message...
He never met with his agents, but gave them orders in various ways, and the other agents had no idea what the boss looked like.
In 1953, kgB decided to send a lieutenant colonel-level agent, thirty-two-year-old Finn Renault Hehhanan, to the United States as Abel's assistant. It turns out that he is not an ideal spy, he is completely different from Abel, without Abel's strict self-discipline, lack of organizational discipline, and even the basic skills such as telegraph cryptography are not skilled.
Seeing such an assistant, Abel was very careful, did not trust him, and did not even tell him his real name, only using the pseudonym "Mark". Haihanan is an alcoholic, which is a big taboo for spies, and he also has unclean hands and feet and steals a KGB activity fund.
Abel was very unhappy with Haehhanan's misdeeds, and for safety reasons, he took advantage of his vacation to arrange a trip to Europe in 1955 and took the opportunity to return to Moscow to report to the KGB headquarters, expressing his suspicions about Khahanan. The strange thing is that the KGB does not listen to him and does not care about his opinions at all.
This may be related to Abel's long-term mission abroad, because he has been away from his homeland for so long, KGB headquarters may have become suspicious of him, and sending him an assistant actually has consideration for him to monitor him.
When Abel returned to the United States in 1956, he was surprised to find that after his departure, Haehran not only did not work hard according to his requirements, but also did not bother to change the news point, did not go to collect intelligence, and even closed the shops opened as a cover, and knew how to eat, drink and have fun all day long.
Seeing this, Abel was very angry and worried that something would go wrong, so he suggested that Haihanan return to China for a vacation to reduce the risk of their exposure.
The cunning Haihanan suspected that Abel had beaten his little report in Moscow, and he himself knew his own performance, fearing that he would have to suffer after returning home, and it would be difficult to get out of the way, so he became rebellious. But he didn't know that the KGB letter was still a little more than the letter Abel.
Haihanan dragged his feet and refused to return to China until May 1957, when he abruptly agreed to return to Moscow to report on his work. Only at this time had he strengthened his determination to defect and made a plan for defection. When he arrived in Paris, he was supposed to transfer to Moscow, but he turned himself in to the Paris police station and demanded political asylum in the United States.
Abel's sudden disappearance the day after Haehran's departure was a precaution he had taken, and perhaps the sensitivity of his spy's profession had made him aware of the danger. He hid in Florida, where he spent three weeks.
His premonition of imminent danger was not merely a hunch, and the threat to him was not only due to The Rebellion of Haihanan, but also to the bane sown by Haihanan's negligence four years earlier.
At that time, a hollow silver coin containing a secret message that he handed to Hahanan was used as a real coin due to Hachanan's negligence. The silver coin fell in the hands of a newsboy named Jamey Poseidon in 1953, who accidentally dropped the silver coin down the stairs while carrying the money downstairs, and when he bent down to pick it up, he found that one of the silver coins had split in half, and there was a small piece of microfilm with some numbers in it.
The newsboy sent the silver coins and film to the police station and to the FBI for cryptographers to study, but was never able to unlock the code. It was not until Hahaihanan turned himself in that the mystery of the fake silver coin was solved. This silver coin, minted in 1948 with Jefferson's head printed on it, has a small pinhole at the letter R, and when you poke it with a needle, the silver coin can be separated.
When Abel returned to New York three weeks later, he remained cautious not to return to his original residence, but to open a room at the Blue Lantern Hotel in Manhattan with a fake ID in the name of Martin Collins.
Abel's fear is well-founded, because after Haihanan's defection, he flew back to the United States with CIA agents and began to arrest Abel everywhere.
When Abel was arrested
It took the U.S. agents two weeks to finally track down Abel, alias Collins, with the assistance of Hachanan, and the FBI arrested Abel that night. Early the next morning, he was taken by plane to Texas and imprisoned to prosecute him for illegal entry with a fake passport.
Abel, who had been in the spy sea for thirty years, was well aware of his situation, but he was very calm and did not panic at all. The FBI was also well aware of the man's weight, treated him very thoughtfully, provided him with good food and good use, and wanted to win him to serve the United States, and even offered to give him an annual salary of ten thousand dollars.
Abelian prisoner photograph taken by the FBI in 1957
Abel just smiled and didn't answer. Later, the FBI learned that Abel was not rare in this little salary, and the KGB gave him a salary that was more than ten times higher than this.
On October 23, 1957, Abel was found guilty and sentenced to thirty years in prison. He didn't defend himself at all, he didn't implicate anyone, he wrapped everything up on his own. Although Abel and Khahanan are both KGB agents, they are two different types, one is loyal and the other is corrupt and depraved; one is shrewd and witty, the other is careless; one is tall and thin, the other is short and fat; one is loyal and the other is opportunistic.
Abel who walked out of the courtroom
Even CIA Director Dulles couldn't help but be impressed by Abel, saying, "I wish we had two people like him in Moscow." ”
Abel's arrest not only caused a great shock in the KGB, but even the kremlin's top brass met to discuss countermeasures. The head of the KGB was severely criticized by the Politburo for this. And did everything he could to save this wonderful spy.
Finally, in May 1960, the U2 plane incident occurred, and the U2 spy pilot Frances Gray Bauer was exchanged for Colonel Abel.
After returning to the Soviet Union in 1964, Abel worked with KGB personnel in research
Abel returned to Moscow in February 1962 and was awarded the Order of Lenin for his long-term dedication to duty.
Later, Abel served as a KGB officer to general, and in 1966 he published a memoir in Young Communists, calling on Soviet youth to join the KGB. Since then, he has been in charge of the command of the American Spy In the KGB.
On November 15, 1971, the Soviet Union officially announced the death of General Abel at the age of 68.
Undoubtedly, Abel is the true king of spies in the modern Soviet Union.
Extend your connection:
In 1960, the Soviet Union used a conspiracy to shoot down the U.S. U2 high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, and it was five years before the United States learned the truth