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erronis

(19,005 posts) Thu Apr 10, 2025, 04:14 PM Apr 10

'I am not who you think I am': how a deep-cover KGB spy recruited his own son -- The Guardian - Long read

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/apr/10/deep-cover-kgb-spy-recruited-son-peter-herrmann-illegals
By Shaun Walker

For the first time, the man the KGB codenamed ‘the Inheritor’ tells his story

This is an in-depth reporting of a very long effort by the USSR/Russia to infiltrate Canada and then the US. Hard to excerpt to give a full flavor. If you're interested please read the whol article.

Rudi Herrmann took a deep breath and asked his son Peter to sit down. “I have a story to tell you,” he said. Rudi had been preparing for this conversation for several years, running over the words in his mind. He was about to tell his 16-year-old son that everything Peter thought he knew about their family was a lie.

. . .

After the conversation, Rudi excitedly messaged his handlers that his son had agreed to sign up. From Moscow, a reply came: the family should travel to the Soviet Union that summer, to formalise Peter’s induction into the KGB and begin his training.

More than 50 years later, the man who was once known as Peter Herrmann sat opposite me on a sofa at his house in the suburbs of Washington DC. In the half-century since the conversation in Lima, he had only told the full story of how he was dragged into the KGB twice: once to his wife, shortly before they got married, and once in a series of interviews with me over the past few years.