Evgeny Georgievich Golubev: The CIA’s Frustrated Frogman in the Early Cold War, Part Two ©

In mid-June 1952, Golubev was taken from Yokohama to an island 25 kilometers away. He and Ogden lived in tents on the island for about two months. All this time, he was engaged in physical training and practicing practical techniques associated with dispatching into Soviet territory and conducting subversive work in the USSR. He was periodically taken out into the open sea at 700-1000 meters from the beach, launched into the water in a swimming suit on a rubber raft, and offered to independently get to the beach, from where, in the course of training, he kept radio contact with the boat, and then returned to it. 

During the night of August 17-18, 1952, Golubev disembarked from a speedboat about 700 meters on the southern coast of Sakhalin near the village of Kuznetsovo. His tasks were to 

·       photograph objects on the coast in the area of the Kuznetsovo settlement; 

·       recruit an agent for subsequent use by American intelligence against the USSR; 

·       obtain Soviet documents, including passports, party, Komsomol, military cards, and various certificates. 

Golubev possessed two waterproof bags, two radios that worked on different frequencies, a rich set of chemicals, painkillers (morphine derivatives, sleeping pills, poisons of both instant and delayed action), 25,000 rubles in small banknotes, 100,000 rubles in large denomination bills, and 25 gold "ducats" from royal coins. He also had two submachine guns and three combat knives, one of which had a serrated blade. In addition, he was given fictitious documents in the name of Vorobyov. Golubev was now tasked with: 

·       infiltrating the vicinity of the Chelyabinsk-40 nuclear plant; 

·       conducting surveillance of the facility; 

·       obtaining documents from the soldiers guarding the closed city; and 

·       collecting and storing water and soil samples outside the protected perimeter. 

Golubev was expected to stay on Soviet territory for two or three days. He was then to use his radio to contact the American intelligence center in Japan, report on the completion of the mission, call for an American boat to enter Soviet territorial waters, and return him to Japan. 

Soviet border guards arrested him immediately after arriving on the beach. He was still wearing the wet suit with a mask and fins. 

On December 26, 1952, Golubev was interrogated from 2 AM to 6 AM, during which he admitted everything. He was then flown to Moscow for further interrogation. On December 30, 1952, a copy of the interrogation was sent to Joseph Stalin, who wrote on the first page, “Read.” 

Golubev was subsequently found guilty in a closed trial and sentenced to death. In January 1960, the Soviet Information Bureau in Moscow published a propaganda book, Caught in the Act: A Collection of Facts on U.S. Espionage and Other Subversive Activities Against the USSR. The book listed 23 Western agents who infiltrated the Soviet Union from August 1951 to June 1959 on 14 missions. Names and details were given, including that of Golubev. The photograph above is from the book with this caption: “To overcome water obstacles, American intelligence supplied spies thrown into the territory of the USSR with swimming suits. Such a suit was seized from agent Golubev.” 

The Chicago Tribune national syndicated columnist Don Oberdorfer wrote a book review published in newspapers throughout the United States in May 1961. He included the Golubev story: “They say ‘frogman’ E.G. Golubev swam from a high-speed launch to the beach of Soviet-held Sakhalin Island near Japan on August 17, 1952.”