Supreme Soviet Approves Security Chief; Reforms for KGB Promised

The head of the KGB, publicly grilled by lawmakers about the activities of the Soviet Union’s super-secret security agency, pledged Friday to make it a more open organization, responsible to Parliament and fully observant of the country’s laws.

Vladimir A. Kryuchkov won confirmation from the Supreme Soviet, the country’s national legislature, as the chairman of the State Security Committee, as the KGB is formally known, but not before he underwent what he called “the most difficult examination in my life.”

Legislators, who for the first time are closely examining the qualifications and policies of government ministers before approving their appointments, questioned Kryuchkov for almost the entire morning about the KGB’s past and present activities, demanding that he prove the agency no longer operates as a law unto itself.

Answerable in Forum

And as Kryuchkov stood before the lawmakers, answering their questions and listening to their criticisms, President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s political reforms took a significant step forward: For the first time in Soviet history, the head of the state security service had been made answerable in a public forum to a popularly elected Parliament.

Kryuchkov, 65, who has headed the KGB since last October after a decade as the deputy chairman in charge of foreign intelligence, did not always satisfy the legislators, as he sometimes sidestepped questions about past practices with broad promises of better behavior in the future.

He drew a titter of laughter when he declared that the KGB does not tap telephones, maintain files on ordinary Soviet citizens or have more than a small number of “helpers” collecting information for it.

There were many other frowns of frank disbelief and open murmuring among the lawmakers--all shown in the lengthy excerpts broadcast on national television Friday evening--as he dodged some of the tougher questions, including one on the KGB’s budget and the number of its officers and men.

Yeltsin on Attack

In one of the sharpest attacks on the KGB during the session, Boris N. Yeltsin, the radical populist who won election to the new Soviet Parliament with a massive vote in Moscow, characterized the agency as busying itself with collecting “special information” on Soviet citizens through “an army of many thousands of informers,” but unable to catch foreign spies.

“In a period of democratization, this is not permissible,” Yeltsin asserted, demanding that the KGB’s power be sharply curtailed by dividing it into two agencies, one with responsibility for gathering intelligence abroad and the other, much diminished, to be in charge of counterintelligence and security at home.

The KGB had done too little, Yeltsin contended, to reorganize itself for the new political era here and to break with the murderous purges its predecessors conducted for the dictator Josef Stalin in the 1930s and its persecution of dissidents from the 1960s into the 1980s under the late President Leonid I. Brezhnev.

The KGB had done “great moral damage” to Soviet society, Yeltsin said, and Kryuchkov’s answers, however pleasing they may have seemed, had been “insincere.”

But Kryuchkov, with his acceptance of full legislative supervision of the organization and his pledge of strict observance of Soviet law and constitutionally guaranteed rights, won confirmation with only six votes against him and 26 abstentions, including Yeltsin, from the 542-member Supreme Soviet.

“This is one of the most exciting moments of my life, both emotionally and politically,” he said after the session, noting that the KGB for the first time in its history had presented a full report on its policies, activities and plans to Parliament.

Gorbachev, who chaired the session, tried to speed the debate along and move to a quick vote, but members refused, demanding that Kryuchkov answer their questions and hear out their criticisms of an organization that only a few years ago was so feared that people would only whisper its name.

The KGB has moved in recent months both to open itself to some public scrutiny in line with Gorbachev’s broader political reforms and to improve its image, both at home and abroad. After a policy review in May, the KGB leadership announced its intention to speak more frequently and candidly about its activities, and the agency recently established an office to handle press inquiries.

“We have covered only a half of the way,” Kryuchkov said of his efforts to reform the KGB and encourage glasnost, or political openness. “But the Soviet people and the world public should know more about us. We want to show everyone that the State Security Committee, although it is not an ideal organization, is motivated by the most human goals.

“We have a bitter past, but this is not only our past. It is the past of the party and of the country.”

“Truth and legality will remove even the shadow of 1937,” Kryuchkov said Friday, referring to one of the worst years of the Stalinist terror.

He reaffirmed the KGB’s desire to take part in the rehabilitation of the victims of those bloody purges, which he described as “a crime against humanity” because of their brutality and scope. “Never again should this be allowed to happen.”

In other comments, he said that telephone wiretapping was limited to intelligence and counterespionage cases, that the KGB was now moving against organized crime and that 30 Western spies had been detected in the past three years.

Willing to Cooperate

Questioned sharply by deputies about the recent development of nationalist fronts in most of the Soviet Union’s constituent republics, Kryuchkov said that he was sympathetic to them and, despite considerable criticism by others in the leadership, saw them as more positive than negative. He denied assertions, common among conservative officials here, that they are creations of Western intelligence services. “They result from our own problems,” he said.

He reiterated Soviet willingness to cooperate with Western intelligence agencies, notably the U.S. CIA, in combatting terrorism, organized crime and drug smuggling, noting that several joint operations had already been carried out to halt the flow of drugs and that information was being shared on potential terrorist threats, particularly one involving stolen enriched uranium to make an atomic weapon.

All of the questions would be studied and given a fuller response, he said, and the KGB is resolved to cooperate with the Supreme Soviet.

He said he would support new internal security legislation, a law spelling out, for the first time, the authority of the KGB and further guarantees of political and civil liberties. “The review of the KGB role in Soviet society is already in full swing,” he said, and the new legislation would complete the process.

Kryuchkov also asked for legislation that would permit the KGB to open its archives, which contain millions of documents essential to understanding Soviet history.

The KGB’s traditional secrecy, he continued, should be reviewed and relaxed, but it could not be eliminated.

“If we tell everything about what we are doing, then we will probably weaken ourselves and strengthen those whom we must, unfortunately from time to time, try to counter,” he said.