TEHRAN-43: WRECKING THE PLAN TO KILL STALIN, ROOSEVELT AND CHURCHILL
RIA Novosti, Russia
Oct 16 2007
Interview with Russian intelligence veteran Gevork Vartanyan.
The historic significance of the Big Three conference in Tehran, Iran,
was enormous – at stake were the destinies of millions of people and
the future of the world. The deadline for the opening of the second
front was the main issue on the agenda.
Fully aware of this, the Nazi government instructed the German
intelligence service, the Abwehr, to assassinate Joseph Stalin,
Theodore Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. The number one Nazi saboteur,
Otto Skorzeny, planned an operation code-named Long Jump.
The security of the Soviet, American and British leaders was mostly
the responsibility of Soviet troops and security agencies. Acting
under the Russian-Persian Treaty of Friendship of 1921, the Soviet
Union sent troops into Iran’s northern regions in August 1941 to curb
the operations of German agents. Britain deployed troops in the south
of the country to guarantee the flow of British-American land-lease
supplies to the U.S.S.R. from the Persian Gulf.
The conference itself was held in the Soviet Embassy. It was the
perfect site for secret talks – a big mansion surrounded by a stone
wall, with buildings of light-colored brick scattered across the
park. One of these was converted into the U.S. president’s residence.
For security reasons, Roosevelt accepted Stalin’s invitation to
stay there. The U.S. diplomatic mission in Tehran was located on
the city’s outskirts, while the Soviet and British embassies were
(and still are) located across the street from one another. Soviet
soldiers broke down the walls, blockaded the street with six-meter
shields and built a temporary passage between the two diplomatic
missions, guarded by anti-aircraft- and machine-gunners. Four rings
of security surrounded the embassies. Nobody could break in.
If Roosevelt had stayed at the U.S. diplomatic mission, either he,
or Stalin and Churchill, would have had to travel to the talks through
Tehran’s narrow streets, where Nazi agents could easily have concealed
themselves in a crowd.
On his return to Washington D.C., Roosevelt said that he had stayed in
the Soviet Embassy because Marshal Stalin told him about a German plot.
Nazi intelligence learnt of the time and place of the conference in
mid-October in 1943, after cracking the American naval code. In 1966,
Skorzeny confirmed that he had been instructed to abduct or kill the
three leaders in Tehran.
Moscow received a cable about the plot against the allied leaders from
Dmitry Medvedev’s guerrillas operating in the Rovno forest [in Ukraine
– ed.]. Among them was the legendary Soviet intelligence officer
Nikolai Kuznetsov. Posing as a German Oberleutnant by the name of Paul
Siebert, Kuznetsov became friendly with SS Sturmbannfuehrer Ulrich
von Ortel, who even promised to introduce him to Skorzeny. Heavily
inebriated, Ortel boasted that he was going to Iran for the meeting
of the Big Three: "We will repeat the Abruzzi jump [a daring airborne
operation in which Skorzeny rescued Mussolini – ed.]! But it will
be the Long Jump! We will eliminate Stalin and Churchill and turn
the tide of the war! We will abduct Roosevelt to help our Fuehrer to
come to terms with America. We are flying in several groups. People
are already being trained in a special school in Copenhagen."
Following this report the [intelligence] center made us responsible
for security at the conference.
Tehran at that time was flooded with refugees from war-ravaged
Europe. For the most part, these were wealthy people trying to escape
the risks of the war. There were about 20,000 Germans in Iran, and
Nazi agents were hiding among them. They were aided by the pre-war
patronage extended to the Germans by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi,
who openly sympathized with Hitler. The German field station in Iran,
headed by Franz Meyer, was very powerful.
Long before the conference – from February 1940 to August 1941 –
our group of seven intelligence officers had identified more than
400 Nazi agents. When our troops entered Iran, we arrested them all.
Meyer went deep underground. It took us a long time to find him –
he had grown a beard and dyed it, and was working as a grave-digger
at an Armenian cemetery.
Our group was the first to locate the Nazi landing party – six radio
operators – near the town of Qum, 60 km from Tehran. We followed them
to Tehran, where the Nazi field station had readied a villa for their
stay. They were travelling by camel, and were loaded with weapons.
While we were watching the group, we established that they had
contacted Berlin by radio and recorded their communication. When
we decrypted these radio messages, we learnt that the Germans were
preparing to land a second group of subversives for a terrorist act
– the assassination or abduction of the Big Three. The second group
was supposed to be led by Skorzeny himself, who had already visited
Tehran to study the situation on the spot. We had been following all
his movements even then.
We arrested all the members of the first group and made them make
contact with enemy intelligence under our supervision. It was tempting
to seize Skorzeny himself, but the Big Three had already arrived
in Tehran and we could not afford the risk. We deliberately gave a
radio operator an opportunity to report the failure of the mission,
and the Germans decided against sending the main group under Skorzeny
to Tehran. In this way, the success of our group in locating the
Nazi advance party and our subsequent actions thwarted an attempt to
assassinate the Big Three.
After the conference, Stalin went with Kliment Voroshilov and
Vyacheslav Molotov to the Shah’s palace in order to thank Mohammad
Reza Pahlavi for his hospitality. This was a very smart and important
step, which had a big effect on Iranian society. It did not occur
to either Roosevelt or Churchill to do so. The Shah was moved by
Stalin’s attention. When the Soviet leader entered the throne room,
the Shah ran up to Stalin and tried to kiss his hand. But Stalin did
not let him and raised him to his feet.
At that time, Stalin’s authority in the world was absolute – everyone
understood that the outcome of the war was being decided on the
Soviet-German front. Both Roosevelt and Churchill admitted this.
Churchill recalled in his memoirs that everyone stood up when Stalin
entered the hall of the conference. He resolved not to do so again.
Yet, when Stalin entered the hall on another occasion, some unknown
force again brought Churchill to his feet.
Gevork Vartanyan was not even 16 when he went into intelligence. His
farther was sent to Iran by Soviet intelligence in 1930 and worked
there for 23 years.
Gevork was declassified only on December 20, 2000. He and his wife
Goar, a member of his group, immediately received five decorations:
the orders of the Great Patriotic War, Battle Red Banner and Red
Star. The Gold Star Medal of the Hero of the Soviet Union was conferred
on Gevork in 1984 for his performance during the Great Patriotic War
(1941-1945) and the Cold War. He received the Order for Services to
the Fatherland when he turned 80.
Vartanyan believes that his biggest achievement was his and his wife’s
45 year-long record of successful service and safe return home.
"We were lucky – we never met a single traitor. For us, underground
agents, betrayal is the worst evil. If an agent observes all the
security rules and behaves properly in society, no counter-intelligence
will spot him or her. Like sappers, underground agents err only once."
Transcript by Yury Plutenko.
22320.html