Fedora (KGB Agent)

Fedora was the codename for Viktor Metchislavovich Lessiovski, a KGB-agent that infiltrated the United Nations during the Cold War, from where he very successfully sabotaged American intelligence agencies by supplying false information. His cover was his work as a Soviet ambassador in the United Nations' headquarters in New York. Fedora was also a close associate and special assistant of the Secretary General of the United Nations, U Thant.

uccesses

The American FBI Agency regarded Fedora as one of their most important and most productive spies ever recruited, without knowing Fedora was actually a KGB-colonel spreading disinformation. As such, Fedora was among the most successful Soviet KGB-agents of the Cold War, his faulty intelligence being directly communicated to the White House. On one occasion, President Nixon and Henry Kissinger unconditionally believed Fedora's false information that a complete set of the so-called Pentagon Papers had ended up on the Soviet embassy in Washington. He also played an important role in guaranteeing the authenticity of other KGB-agents who claimed to be switching sides, notably Yuri Nosenko.

In 1981, when Fedora had already returned to the Soviet Union, the FBI admitted they had been misled for more than a decade by this Soviet agent, brilliantly fulfilling his task of supplying false information.

References

* Brian Freemantle, "De KGB", (Amsterdam 1985), Dutch translation of origingal title: Brian Freemantle, "The KGB", (London 1982), Ch. 7: "Fedora en de Verenigde Naties" p. 154-166.