A Soviet Spy's Secret Shame Nearly Stopped World War III
In 1981, a senior KGB officer in Tehran walked into MI6 and offered to spy — not for money or ideology, but because he believed the West could cure his erectile dysfunction. The intelligence he handed over led the US and Britain to give the Soviets' coup plan to the Iranians.
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A spy story that has never been told
Ben Macintyre's new book Redwood tells a Cold War story that had never been made public before: in 1981, a senior KGB officer in Tehran, Vladimir Kuzichkin, walked into MI6 and offered to spy, becoming a double agent codenamed Redwood. The intelligence he provided revealed that the Soviets were plotting a coup through the Iranian communist Tudeh Party to overthrow Khomeini, after which the Red Army would cross into Iran from Afghanistan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. The Pentagon's answer to that was nuclear strikes — because conventional forces were not enough to stop a full Soviet invasion. What makes the story so strange is that Kuzichkin's motive for defecting was intensely personal: he suffered from erectile dysfunction and believed Western medicine could cure him.
— Dan Snow1981 came closer to nuclear war than the Cuban Missile Crisis
Ben Macintyre points out that 1981 was one of the closest moments of nuclear confrontation in the Cold War, second only to the Cuban Missile Crisis. After the Iranian Revolution, every faction — nationalists, liberals, communists and Islamists — was fighting for power, and Tehran became a boiling cauldron of spies. The CIA, MI6 and the KGB all poured in at once. The Soviets had just invaded Afghanistan and were making good progress, while the US was desperate to re-establish a foothold in the Middle East. If the Soviets took Iran, they could control warm-water ports and oil fields and win the Cold War. So the Pentagon was already drawing up nuclear options, including using portable nuclear weapons to blow up mountain ranges and block Soviet armored columns.
— Ben McIntyreThe CIA was blind in Tehran; MI6 stayed illegally
After the Iran hostage crisis, the CIA was thrown out of Tehran and had no human intelligence in Iran at all, leaving it ignorant of a possible Soviet coup. The only service still capable of operating was MI6, but Britain's condition for maintaining a diplomatic mission in 1981 was that it conduct no espionage whatsoever. MI6 sent in Ian McCready anyway, under commercial counselor cover — a huge gamble by the British government. McCready's instructions were to do nothing, recruit no one and keep a low profile, because if he was caught the Iranians would take the entire embassy hostage. He could only communicate with London using a World War II-era cipher machine called RockX, an extremely cumbersome device of which only two existed in the world.
— Ben McIntyreHis motive was impotence, not money or ideology
Kuzichkin was a senior officer at the KGB residency in Tehran, responsible for illegal spy programs across the entire Middle East, and the only defector who understood how the illegal system worked. He walked into MI6 and offered to spy for the West. The intelligence world has an acronym, MICE — money, ideology, coercion, ego — but Kuzichkin fit none of the categories. Part of it was alienation from the regime, but the root cause was that he suffered from erectile dysfunction and believed the West had a drug that could cure him. He had just married, loved his wife deeply, and could not reveal the secret to his KGB colleagues or to Soviet doctors. McCready did not mock him or exploit him; he took him with the utmost seriousness, even sending MI6 headquarters an unprecedented telex: "Help. What do I do with a spy who has erectile dysfunction?"
— Ben McIntyreHe photographed every KGB file in the Middle East
For nearly a year, McCready ran Kuzichkin with old-fashioned tradecraft: dead drops, brush contacts, miniature cameras. He gave Kuzichkin a Minox miniature camera to carry into the office every day and photograph every document he could get his hands on. In the end the Redwood archive filled four truckloads. MI6 gave him the codename Redwood — because he was six foot four, and because they could not resist the pun: Red for communism, Wood for his problem. Kuzichkin's core intelligence was that the Soviets were plotting a coup through the Tudeh Party, that the money and weapons were already in place, that the Tudeh had a secret military underground, and that Kuzichkin himself was the coordinator between the KGB and the Tudeh.
— Ben McIntyreThe US and Britain handed the coup plan to the Iranians
After Kuzichkin fled to Britain, MI6 debated internally whether to use the intelligence. Chris Cohn, who ran the operations directorate and later became chief of MI6, argued that it had to be used. If they did not use it, he said, intelligence about a Tudeh communist coup was meaningless. So MI6 sent Redwood to Islamabad, Pakistan, under diplomatic cover, to meet Iranian intelligence. The meeting lasted three days; Kuzichkin laid everything out, and MI6 handed the Iranians all four truckloads of intelligence. It was also an attempt to open a secret channel to Iran at a time when relations with the West were at rock bottom. It was deeply illegal, and if it had come out it would have been a huge scandal — the British and American governments acting to protect the Islamic Revolution.
— Ben McIntyreIran used the intelligence to execute eight thousand communists
Once the Revolutionary Guard had the intelligence, it arrested eight thousand Iranian communists within two months, and about half of them were executed. This became a cornerstone of Iran's modern theocratic state. From that moment on, Khomeini tolerated no opposition at all; everyone was purged, including people already in prison, and it turned into a massacre. It also reinforced two convictions of the Islamic Revolution: first, that all opposition must be destroyed, because fifth columns were everywhere; second, that whatever happens, the British are behind it. MI6 and the CIA inadvertently consolidated the Iranian regime and created a monster — almost an exact replay of Afghanistan, where money poured in to Islamic guerrillas fighting the Soviets and ultimately produced al-Qaeda, ISIS and 9/11.
— Ben McIntyreHistory is often driven by perception, not fact
Ben Macintyre stresses that it is impossible to know whether the Soviets would actually have carried out the coup, but everyone involved believed they would. McCready believed it, Kuzichkin believed it, and MI6, the CIA, the KGB and the Tudeh themselves all believed it. That was enough — nuclear war can break out on the basis of perception rather than fact, and the same was true of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Would Khrushchev really have used those weapons? We do not know, but everyone believed he might. The story was never told because none of the participants wanted it told: not the Iranians, because it meant the West had outsmarted them again; not the KGB, because it was a humiliation — they had failed to spot the defector, 18 Soviet diplomats were expelled from Iran as a result, the entire Tudeh operation was dismantled, and agent networks across the Middle East and even in Canada were exposed.
— Ben McIntyreIn their own words · checked verbatim
his main reason, his absolutely fundamental reason for wanting to spy for the West and wait for it, is because he suffered from erectile dysfunction and believed that the West had medicines that would cure it.
Ben McIntyre13:32
he took him up to the bathroom, believe it or not, of his house inside the compound, turned on the taps in the bath and the sink, turned on the radio to try and baffle any of the bugs, and began this debriefing process
Ben McIntyre16:42
sent a telex back to MI6 headquarters, the like of which has never been written before or since I suspect, which is help. How do I deal with a spy with erectile dysfunction?
Ben McIntyre17:45
all the elements were in place for World War Three. Everybody involved in this story believed, perhaps wrongly, but genuinely believed that the Soviets were going to carry out this coup. It's just a matter of time.
Ben McIntyre23:57
within two months, they had arrested 8,000 Iranian communists, of whom roughly half, we believe, were executed. And that is the foundation stone of Iran's modern theocratic state.
Ben McIntyre31:05
nuclear wars can start on perception as much as anything else. The same was true of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Was Khrushchev ever really going to activate those weapons? We don't know, but everyone believed he could.
Ben McIntyre38:11
there's something here about the sort of hidden advantages of the Western system that perhaps we take for granted that can give a more authoritarian, a cruel or more barbarous system lethal vulnerabilities like this.
Dan Snow40:17
Figures
| Kuzichkin's height | six foot four | 13:32 |
| Size of the Redwood archive | four truckloads | 21:52 |
| Number of communists arrested in Iran | eight thousand | 31:05 |
| Share of communists executed | about half | 31:05 |
| Number of Soviet diplomats expelled | 18 | 38:11 |
| Time Kuzichkin had left before fleeing | 12 hours | 29:05 |
| Drive to the border | 14 hours | 28:05 |
| Days held in the hostage crisis | 444 days | 8:18 |
Glossary
- MICE
- The classic acronym for the four motives behind spy recruitment: Money, Ideology, Coercion, Ego.
- RockX
- A British cipher communications device used in World War II, cumbersome to operate, of which only two existed worldwide.
- Minox
- A miniature camera commonly used by spies during the Cold War to photograph documents.
- Tudeh Party
- The Iranian communist party, still tolerated by Khomeini's regime in 1981 before being purged on a massive scale.
- brush contact
- A spycraft technique in which two agents exchange intelligence or items while quickly passing each other in a public place.
- dead drop
- A secret location used by spies to pass intelligence, where the two sides never appear at the same time.
How to listen
Listeners interested in Cold War spy history, the Iranian Revolution and intelligence operations; readers who like Ben Macintyre's narrative style; anyone who wants to understand how intelligence work accidentally shaped the modern Middle East.
The sponsor read at the top and the promo at the end can be skipped; the episode proper starts at 3:01.