Aleksey Kulak

Aleksey Isidorovich Kulak (; 27 March 1922 – 25 August 1984), code name FEDORA, was a KGB Colonel who offered his services to the FBI and CIA between 1962 and 1977. Kulak's assertion that there was a KGB mole within the FBI led to a decades-long mole hunt that seriously disrupted the agency. Kulak's information was taken seriously by American intelligence, but some have claimed that he was a KGB double agent meant to sow chaos within the FBI. Prior to his work in intelligence, Kulak was decorated as a Hero of the Soviet Union for his heroism as a Red Army officer on the Eastern Front. He was posthumously stripped of his awards and rank in 1990, five years after Aldrich Ames ostensibly revealed Kulak's betrayal.

Early life and career

Aleksey Isidorovich Kulak was born on March 27, 1922 to Belarusian parents in Moscow. He was drafted into the Red Army in August 1941, and completed an accelerated artillery officer's training course in Odessa in 1942, after which he entered frontline service. By April 1945, he held the rank of Senior Lieutenant and was artillery battalion commander in the 5th Shock Army of the 1st Belorussian Front. He distinguished himself in the Battle of Berlin, providing artillery cover even after being wounded. For his heroism on the battlefield, he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union with the presentation of the Order of Lenin and Gold Star Medal on May 15, 1946. Kulak was awarded many other decorations for his wartime service.

After serving as a commandant during the occupation of Germany, Kulak was discharged from the Soviet Army into the reserves in 1947 with the rank of Captain. He went on to study chemistry at the D. Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology, receiving a Candidate of Chemical Sciences degree in 1953. After working as a chemist for some years, Kulak joined the KGB in 1960. He was sent by the KGB to New York City in the early 1960s, with a cover of being assigned as a consultant to the United Nations on the effects of radiation. When asked whether he was worried about having been spotted walking into an FBI office, Kulak immediately offered a tantalizing clue that he knew of a mole in the FBI, telling agents that the KGB's agents were occupied meeting an FBI agent who was spying for the Soviet Union. Kulak referred to this unidentified FBI double-agent as "Dick".

Questions about Kulak's loyalty

Due to the enormous amount of distrust and tumult within the ranks of the FBI inspired by Kulak's claims that a KGB mole was operating at the agency, questions have been raised about whether Kulak was an authentic source of information, or whether he was under the control of the KGB, deliberately feeding false information to the FBI. During his years of service, Kulak was considered a legitimate source by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, but doubted by CIA's director of counter-intelligence James Angleton.

When Kulak approached the FBI, he was overweight and a heavy drinker. Often during his interviews with FBI agents, Kulak drank from a bottle of scotch, and his frequent inebriation has been cited as evidence that he was a genuine volunteer for the FBI. author John M. Newman, and author Edward J. Epstein have argued that one of the reasons the KGB may have sent Fedora to the FBI was to convince the Bureau and the CIA a few months later that Yuri Nosenko (who "walked in" to the CIA in Geneva, Switzerland, late May 1962 and physically defected to the U.S. in February 1964) was a true defector.

One argument made for Kulak's possibly being a KGB double-agent is that he avoided prosecution upon his return to Russia, unlike Dmitri Polyakov, who was executed when his work with the FBI was discovered by the KGB. In 1995, former KGB general Oleg Kalugin said in an interview that not only was Kulak an authentic source, but the KGB did indeed have a mole operating in the FBI at the height of the Cold War. Kalugin said that many in the KGB suspected Kulak of working for the Americans, but his status as a war hero, and recipient of the Hero of the USSR award, protected him.