Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency personality file on Soviet official Nikolay Sergeyevich Leonov (201-132139), with material dated 1953 to 1963, compiles cables, FBI documents, surveillance reports, press photos and passport copies. It records his Soviet Embassy service in Mexico City, the finding of his calling card in Fidel Castro's address book in 1956, and his role as Castro's interpreter in the USSR in 1963. A source identified him as a KGB officer, and a DIA item alleged he was planning Latin American insurgency.
COUNTRY DERSA/Austria SUBJECT Soviet Personalties in USM DATE OF INFORMATION Up to December 1954 PLACE ACQUIRED Germany REFERENCES: HS-2805 ## THIS IS UNEVALUATED INFORMATION ## SOURCE DS-623, a Soviet electrical engineer, born in 1914, is a graduate of the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute. From May 1920 to January 1933, he was General Director of the USIV Siemens-Schuhert plant in Budapest. From January 1953 until his defection in January 1955, he was General Director of the USIA AG Union plant in Vienna. During the war he became a member of the Communist Party and was always active in Party affairs, primarily because he found much participation expedient in furthering his career. He defected to the West because he feared that lengthy imprisonment would result from a forthcoming investigation of production of faulty transformers at his plant. Source is a well-educated, intelligent, and shroud individual. Source was relatively reluctant to provide date on personalities known to him personally. Following are biographic sketches of USIA Soviet personalities known to sources. For further information on the duties of these individuals, see the above referenced report.
Not linked to a story yet.
FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 165 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.