Soviet spy chief ran U.S. station

They were known as the illegals, men and women who adopted the identities of the dead, worked as priests, poets, actors and inventors, and quietly gathered intelligence for the Soviet Union during the long years of the ColdWar.

Based in nondescript American suburbs and bustling European capitals, they spent up to two decades developing the trust of their neighbors and employers while stealing secret information about nuclear weapons, missile systems, Western intelligence efforts and political intrigue.

At the helm of their organization, a secretive wing of theKGBknownas Directorate S, was Yuri Drozdov. A square-jawedWorldWar II veteran who led assaults in Afghanistan and helped arrange a high-profile spy exchange in 1960s Berlin, diedWednesday at 91.

The Foreign Intelligence Service, a KGB successor agency known as the SVR, announced his death but did not provide additional details.

Gen. Drozdov oversaw the KGB’s illegals program — its name distinguished it from the agency’s “legal” spy program, in which agents maintained diplomatic connections to the Soviet motherland — from 1979 until 1991, shortly before the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It was the capstone of an intelligence career that spanned nearly the entire ColdWar, from a stint on the “bridge of spies” in Berlin to an undercover position in China at the start of Mao Zedong’s bloody Cultural Revolution.

Yet despite spending much of his career behind the scenes, Drozdov was not afraid to involve himself in “wet affairs,” the euphemistic KGB term for assassinations, beatings, poison-tipped umbrella murders and similar acts of hand-dirtying.

It was Drozdov who led KGB forces in the December 1979 assault on the palace of Afghan President Hafizullah Amin, a 43-minute surprise attack that resulted in Amin’s death and launched a Soviet invasion of the country.

Drozdov came to the United States in 1975, where he took charge of the Soviet intelligence station in New York before being named head of Directorate S. He seemed to retain a fondness for Americans, with whom he collaborated in business partnerships after the fall of the SovietUnion.

His company, Namacon (sometimes spelled Namakon), provided political analysis. At one point it also manufactured airplane tires before seeming to find a niche at finding office space and performing background checks for Western businesses in Russia.