


                              ***** GRU FACTS *****


                    GRU (Glavnoe Razvedyvatelnoe Upravlenie)

        "The chief intelligence directorate of the Soviet General Staff -
        i.e., the Soviet military intelligence group. For foreign  intel-
        ligence, GRU far surpasses KGB, both in money and manpower -  and
        quite  probably  in accomplishments. Its alumni  include  Richard
        Sorge, who spied in Tokyo under cover as a pro-Nazi German  jour-
        nalist  just before World War II, and the atomic spies  who  has-
        tened along Soviet nuclear development.

        GRU is headquartered in an anonymous two-story building near  the
        old  Khodinsk field at Moscow's Central Airport.  Perhaps  appro-
        priately, all windows face inward toward a courtyard. No one, not
        even  a ranking official, is permitted to carry a briefcase  into
        the building, and leashed ferocious watchdogs roam the  premises.
        GRU  is identified only as "Military Department 44388"; the  let-
        ters GRU (and their meaning) are unknown to the ordinary  Soviet.
        GRU's  main  spy school on Militia Street in Moscow,  a  pleasant
        building  with  Georgian  columns and an iron  lattice  fence  is
        simply :Military Department 35576."

        GRU's  foreign  spying  is done primarily  through  its  military
        attaches abroad, supplemented by the industrial espionage  opera-
        tions  of its Military-Industrial Commission, or VPK by its  Rus-
        sian  initials. The VPK's annual "requirements book" is  said  to
        number  at  least 600 pages, chiefly running to  electronics  and
        space equipment sought in the West. Its budget for such  acquisi-
        tions is said to be bottomless.

        GRU and KGB are unfriendly rivals; they work in tandem only under
        duress. GRU maintains its own communications system from  foreign
        embassies  to  Moscow, and GRU agents have their  own  "rezident"
        (although  in smaller embassies economy dictates closer  coopera-
        tion).  Such  Soviet enterprises as AEROFLOT, the  USSR  airline,
        provide  cover.  At one time in the late 1970's, nine  of  eleven
        Aeroflot  employees  in the United States  were  GRU  operatives,
        according to FBI sources.

        GRU  runs  its own assassination squads abroad.  Neither  service
        (GRU or KGB) can kill the other's agents - with sanction."


            SOURCE: The Dictionary Of Espionage by Henry S.A. Becket
                    ---------------------------
                    Stein And Day Publishers, New York, 1986.









