Oleg Kalugin - Exile in The United States

Exile in The United States

According to Kalugin, he has never betrayed any Soviet agents except those who were already known to Western intelligence. He criticized intelligence defectors like Gordievsky as "traitors."

In 1995 he accepted a teaching position in The Catholic University of America and has remained in the United States ever since. Settling in Washington, D.C., he wrote a book about Cold War espionage entitled The First Directorate: My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West, a more recent book Spymaster in 2008, and collaborated with former CIA Director William Colby and Activision to produce Spycraft: The Great Game, a CD-ROM game released in 1996. He has appeared frequently in the media and given lectures at a number of universities. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States on August 4, 2003.

With the return to power of elements of the KGB, most notably Vladimir Putin, Kalugin was again accused of treason. In 2002 he was put on trial in absentia in Moscow and found guilty of spying for the West. He was sentenced to fifteen years in jail, in a verdict he described as "Soviet justice, which is really triumphant today". The US and Russia have no extradition treaty.

Kalugin currently works for the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies (CI CENTRE) is a member of the advisory board for the International Spy Museum. He remains a critic of Vladimir Putin, a former subordinate, whom he called a "war criminal" over his conduct of the Second Chechen War.