Marines Snared in 1950s, Defector Says : Ex-KGB Agent Tells About Blackmailing of Two Homosexuals

NEW YORK —  The Soviet KGB, in separate incidents in the 1950s, blackmailed two homosexual U.S. Marines guarding the American Embassy in Moscow, a KGB defector said today.

The defector, Ilya Dzhirkvelov, said the Marines were blackmailed in the early 1950s after KGB agents photographed them in compromising positions with a male KGB agent.

“I saw the dirty pictures,” Dzhirkvelov, who worked for the KGB from the end of World War II until 1980, when he defected in Switzerland, told reporters.

The U.S. Marine Corp insists that until the recent sex-spy scandal erupted at the Moscow embassy earlier this year, there were no cases of U.S. Marines collaborating with the Soviets.

While working for the KGB, Dzhirkvelov had served in both the First and Second Chief Directorates of the KGB. The First Directorate engages in espionage abroad and the Second engages in counterintelligence against Russians and foreigners in Moscow.

Dzhirkvelov, who lives in England, met with reporters at a press conference set up by the Washington-based National Strategy Information Center, a private think tank.

He made his comments about the 1950s cases when asked questions about the current Marines sex-spy scandal, in which three U.S. Marines are accused of cooperating with the Soviets after being enticed by female KGB agents.

Dzhirkvelov said the first case occurred in 1950-51 and the second in 1954-55.

He said he did not know what information the men provided but he said it could not have been as serious as the recent case because in order to gain access to embassy files, one would need the cooperation of two Marine guards at once.

Dzhirkvelov said in the first case, the Marine guard cooperated with the KGB when he was in the Soviet Union but, “then he left and disappeared.”

In the second case, a Soviet agent was dispatched to the United States in 1961 to restore contact with the Marine but failed to persuade him to continue working for the Soviets.