The KGB in Europe and the West (Penguin press history) Kindle Edition by Christopher Andrew (Author), Vasili Mitrokhin (Author) "For years KGB operative Vasili Mitrokhin risked his life hiding top-secret material from Russian secret service archives beneath his family dacha. When he was exfiltrated to the West he took with him what the FBI called 'the most complete and extensive intelligence ever received from any source'." The Mitrokhin Archive 2: The KGB and the World by Christopher Andrew, Vasili Mitrokhin "In 1992 the British Secret Intelligence Service exfiltrated from Russia a defector whose presence in the West has remained secret until the publication of this book. Vasili Mitrokhin worked for almost 30 years in the foreign intelligence archives of the KGB, when in 1972 he was made responsible for moving to a new HQ just outside Moscow. He was congratulated by the head of foreign intelligence, Vladimir Kryuchkov(later the ringleader of the 1991 Moscow coup), for his success in transferring the archives and his devoted "service to the state security authorities." Unknown to Kryuchkov, however, Mitrokhin--a secret dissident--spent over a decade noting and copying highly classified files which, at enormous personal risk, he smuggled daily out of the archives and kept beneath his dacha floor. "Few KGB officers have ever spent so much time reading, let alone noting, foreign intelligence files", writes Christopher Andrew. "Outside the Archives, only the most senior officers shared his unrestricted access, and none had time to read more than a fraction of the material noted by him." Mitrokhin's archive, which extends from the Lenin era to the 1980s, has been described by the FBI as "the most complete and extensive intelligence ever received from any source."