Russia Orders U.S.-Based Ex-Spymaster Home to Face Charges

The Russian secret service has ordered a former Soviet KGB spymaster now living in Washington to return immediately to Moscow to face charges, reportedly for his role in helping U.S. authorities identify and convict a former Soviet spy in Florida.

A Russian Embassy consular official in Washington hand-delivered a subpoena Monday to Oleg Kalugin, who directed KGB foreign intelligence operations at the height of the Cold War. Kalugin is now a media commentator, author and consultant on espionage and counterintelligence.

Paul Joyal, Kalugin’s business partner in Washington, said the former KGB major general intended to ignore the summons.

“He does not plan to go,” Joyal said. “It’s ridiculous, utterly ridiculous.”

The document demanded that Kalugin appear for questioning “as a defendant” at the Moscow office of the Federal Security Service, the domestic successor agency to the KGB, at 10 a.m. Thursday. Under Russian law, the subpoena said, “should you fail to appear without adequate explanation, your appearance may be compelled by force.”

Russian news reports said Kalugin, a Russian who is seeking U.S. citizenship, faces charges of high treason.

According to NTV television, Kalugin was charged because of his role in the federal trial last June in Tampa, Fla., of George Trofimoff, a retired Army Reserve colonel who is the highest-ranking U.S. military officer charged with espionage.

Subpoenaed as a prosecution witness, Kalugin identified Trofimoff as a prized KGB agent who had provided top-secret U.S. documents to Moscow for 25 years. Kalugin’s testimony helped convict Trofimoff, who is serving a life sentence.

Yevgeniy Khorishko, a Russian Embassy spokesman in Washington, said he could not confirm that the charges were based on the Trofimoff case.

“He is being accused, but we don’t know of what,” Khorishko said.

The Russian security service appears to have scant legal leverage to force Kalugin to return. Khorishko said Russia had not decided whether to seek extradition.

A Justice Department spokesman said that information on the case was still sketchy and that she could not comment. Kalugin was out of town Tuesday and could not be reached.

Kalugin, now 67, served for 12 years as a Soviet spy in Washington before returning home to run the KGB’s foreign intelligence program. He was forced out of the spy service in 1990 for criticizing it publicly. Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the last Soviet president, restored Kalugin’s rank and honors in 1991.

Kalugin did not stay long in Russia, but unlike many former intelligence officials now in the West, he did not defect. Instead, he took advantage of the collapse of the Soviet Union to move to Washington in 1995, write his memoirs and earn a prosperous living off his former profession.

In recent years, he has taught and consulted on counterintelligence for U.S. intelligence agencies, national nuclear laboratories and private companies. As a sideline, he has helped lead bus tours of espionage sites used since the 1950s by well-known spies in Washington.

Kalugin is known to be widely disliked within the Federal Security Service, known as the FSB. In 2000, acting Russian President Vladimir V. Putin--himself a former KGB officer--denounced Kalugin as a “traitor.” In response, Kalugin wrote Putin a letter insisting that he had not been convicted of any crime and should be presumed innocent. Afterward, Kalugin applied for political asylum in the United States, according to NTV.

Kalugin made headlines in the early 1990s with assertions that KGB officers had interviewed American POWs in Vietnam after 1973, when Hanoi was insisting that none remained in the country. In 1993, British police detained Kalugin in London for questioning about his role in the 1978 poisoned umbrella assassination of a BBC correspondent. He was released after less than 24 hours.

Konstantin G. Preobrazhensky, a former KGB lieutenant colonel who left the service in 1991, said the FSB’s attempt to press treason charges against Kalugin appeared to be a form of retribution for Kalugin’s revelations over the years.

“It is an open secret that Kalugin was one of the people who helped bring about the collapse of the KGB system and is widely considered a traitor by many KGB officers, both retired and in active service,” Preobrazhensky said.

Boris Kuznetsov, a Moscow lawyer with expertise in extradition cases who is also an acquaintance of Kalugin, said that even though Kalugin is not a U.S. citizen, the FSB is unlikely to win his extradition.

“In fact, the subpoena from Moscow, worded in such a strong language, will do Kalugin more good than harm,” Kuznetsov said. “The subpoena will provide sufficient grounds for granting Kalugin political asylum. In fact, Kalugin will look like a victim--he can easily prove that he is persecuted in Russia and is persecuted by the organization that he used to criticize, the KGB.”

Reynolds reported from Moscow and Drogin from Washington. Alexei V. Kuznetsov of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.