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history dating back to the era of the czars, Russian intelligence had
perfected the technique of false flag recruitment, through which it
assumes an identity to fit the ideological bent of a potential recruit.

Russian intelligence was well experienced with false flags. It first
used this technique following the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 to
control dissidents both at home and abroad. The centerpiece, as later
analyzed by the CIA, was known as the “Trust” deception. It began
in August 1921 when a high-ranking official of the Communist
regime in Russia named Aleksandr Yakushev slipped away from a
Soviet trade delegation in Estonia and sought out a leading anti-
Communist exile he had known before the revolution in Russia. He
then told him that he represented a group of disillusioned officials in
Russia that included key members of the secret police, the army, and
the Interior Ministry. Yakushev said that they all had come to the
same conclusion: the Communist experiment in Russia had totally
failed and needed to be replaced. To effect this regime change, they
had formed an underground organization code-named the Trust,
because the cover for their conspiratorial activities was the Moscow
headquarters of the Municipal Credit Association, which was a trust
company. According to Yakushev’s account, it had become the equiv-
alent of a de facto government by 1921.

The exiled leader in Estonia reported this astonishing news to
British intelligence, which, along with French and American intel-
ligence, helped fund this newly emerged anti-Communist group.
Initially, British intelligence had doubts about the bona fides of the
Trust, as did other Western intelligence services sponsoring exile
groups. But they gradually accepted it after they received intelli-
gence reports confirming its operations from many other sources,
including Russian officials, diplomats, and military officers who
claimed to have defected from the Soviet government. Because these
reports all dovetailed, they recognized the Trust as a legitimately
underground organization.

Once the Trust had been established in the minds of the West-
ern intelligence services, it offered them as well as exile groups the
services of its network of collaborators. These services included
smuggling out dissidents, stealing secret documents, and disbursing
money inside Russia to sympathizers. Within a year, exile groups in

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