Peter Deriabin
Peter Sergeyevich Deriabin (Russian: Петр Сергеевич Дерябин; 1921 – 20 August 1992) was a KGB officer who defected to the United States in 1954. After his defection, he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency, and wrote several books on the KGB. He died in 1992 at the age of 71.[2]
Pre-defection life and career
Deriabin was born in Siberia's Altai region.[3] In his book The Secret World, he gave his date of birth as 13 February 1921. The KGB Wanted List for 1979 gave his date of birth as 1919.[4]
Deriabin was a member of the
Defection and subsequent career
Defection
In 1953 following
Work with the CIA
Deriabin went to graduate school at the University of Michigan and the University of Virginia,[2] and joined the CIA.
A few days after the assassination of President Kennedy, Deriabin wrote a lengthy memorandum for the CIA, in which he theorized that Lee Harvey Oswald was a KGB agent who either was dispatched to kill Kennedy or was sent to the United States on a different mission and then committed the assassination on his own.[10] Deriabin contended that the Soviets would have accomplished several objectives by eliminating Kennedy. Among them was removing the West's preeminent cold warrior from the scene, constraining US covert actions against Cuba, which would be stigmatized as acts of vengeance, as well as diverting the Soviet people's attention from their many domestic problems.
He was also involved in the
Deriabin was considered an asset when the NSA ramped up operations in the 1970s, and entered the agency's ranks during a visit to Fort Meade in 1973. A detailed report of his visit was declassified in 2012.[12]
Deriabin retired from the CIA in 1981.[2]
Death
Deriabin died following a stroke on 20 August 1992 in Northern Virginia.[6] At the time of his death, he was survived by family members whose names were kept secret by the CIA.[2] According to the CIA, Deriabin's knowledge and understanding of the KGB was "the foundation for the West's knowledge of the agency."[6]
Books
He co-authored several books.
- The Secret World, with Frank Gibney, Doubleday, 1959
- Watchdogs of Terror, 1984, University Publications of America[13]
- KGB, Masters of the Soviet Union, with Tennent H. Bagley, Hippocrene Books, 1990[14]
- Schecter, Jerrold L; Deriabin, Peter S;
- Inside Stalin's Kremlin, Brasseys Publications, 1998 [16]
- Deriabin gave a detailed account of his views on the Nosenko case to Tennent H. "Pete" Bagley, which were published in Bagley's book Spy Wars, released in 2007.[5]
References
- ^ a b c d e f Peter Deriabin, 71, A Moscow Defector Who Joined C.I.A. Published: August 31, 1992, New York Times
- ^ a b c "Obituary: Peter Deriabin". The Independent. 1992-09-10. Archived from the original on 2022-05-25. Retrieved 2020-08-13.
- ^ Corley, Felix. "The KGB Wanted List 1979: Death Penalty for Defectors?".
- ^ a b c Bagley, Tennent H. (2007), Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games, Yale University Press (also available on audio, read by Bagley)
- ^ a b c d e Service, New York Times News (September 1992). "PETER DERIABIN, DEFECTOR FROM KGB". chicagotribune.com. Retrieved 2020-08-13.
- ^ ISBN 9781574882353. Retrieved 7 July 2022.
- ^ A Soviet Defector at NSA Archived 2013-09-18 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Postwar Soviet Espionage, a Bibliography, vol 6 n 2. Center for the Study of Intelligence, CIA, p A35
- ^ "DCI John McCone and the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, p. 3. Studies in Intelligence vol. 57, no. 3 (September 2013)" (PDF).
- ^ Shapira, Ian. "'Foul traitor': New JFK assassination records reveal KGB defector's 3-year interrogation". Washington Post. Retrieved 2020-08-13.
- ^ https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/declassified-documents/cryptologic-spectrum/assets/files/soviet_defector_nsa.pdf [bare URL PDF]
- ^ Watchdogs of terror: Russian bodyguards from the tsars to the commissars, Peter Deriabin, University Publications of America, 1984. google books
- ^ The KGB: Masters of the Soviet Union by Peter Deriabin with Tennent Bagley, 1990
- ^
Schecter, Jerrold L.; Deriabin, Peter S. (1992). The Spy Who Saved the World: How a Soviet Colonel Changed the Course of the Cold War. New York: C. Scribner's Sons. pp. 284. ISBN 978-0-684-19068-6.
- ^ Inside Stalin's Kremlin, Brasseys Publications, 1998