A pamphlet on the former KGB, published for the first time in English, revealed how Soviet spies were able to infiltrate Western governments in the context of the "cat and mouse" game that usually characterizes the operations of global intelligence agencies.

The American "Daily Beast" news site published an extensive report that included details of the process of recruiting spies in Western countries for the benefit of the Soviet Intelligence, whose hero was a triple agent who, with skill, skill and training, was able to fully carry out the tasks entrusted to him in the period following World War II.

According to the report - which was prepared by the Ukrainian writer Anton Shekhovtsov and the American journalist Michael Weiss - that an Austrian financial expert named Jan Marsalik disappeared on June 18, the same day he was dismissed from his job as he was the operations officer of the German payment processing company Wirecard ).

An independent auditor discovered that 1.9 billion euros was missing from the accounts of Wirecard, and that the finger of blame indicated that Marsalik was responsible for this.

The British investigative site Blingcat reported that Marsalik fled from Germany to Belarus (Belarus) via Estonia, and from there the Russian Federation's Foreign Military Intelligence Agency (GRU) transferred him to Russia.

And a report by the British Financial Times newspaper showed that Marsalik had close links with Russian military intelligence, which appeared very active recently.

The Daily Beast report states that among the confidential information - which Marsalik was in possession of before he fled - a set of papers related to the investigation conducted by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons into the chemical used in the attempt to poison former Russian spy Sergey Skripal and his daughter Yulia on March 4, 2018 in the city of British Salisbury.

The international organization was able to trace the source of the papers in Marsalik, as it turned out that they had been leaked to him by Austrian ministries.

If confirmed, Marsalik's connection to Russia would be one of a long list of Austrian citizens working for Russia, intentionally or unintentionally.

Dale Best recalls that - in the late 1950s and early 1960s - there was a foreign affairs advisor in the Austrian president's office, Hans Adolf Baumgarten.

Soviet agents initially tried to recruit him by offering him money in exchange for information.

But their attempt was unsuccessful. Baumgarten refused to cooperate with the Soviets, who were about to abandon his enlistment, only to reconsider the matter when they realized that they had misjudged and used the wrong way in dealing with him.

The reconsideration came after the Soviet agents discovered that Baumgarten was an opponent of the German Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, and that he believed that liberal democracy would help Germany achieve leadership in the world, and that Austria should join it to that end.

It seemed to the Soviet agents that this was the thread that would lead them to their destination, so they decided to enlist Baumgarten for West German Intelligence.

This was a recruitment process by following a policy that was termed the "fake flag," a method used by the perpetrator to conceal his true identity, in the light of which it turned into a double or even triple identity.

In 1965, the KGB published a guide titled “The Adviser: A Survey of False Flag Recruitment” distributed to employees by the Yuri Andropov Red Banner Institute, now called the Foreign Intelligence Academy, which is one of the main educational institutions for the intelligence services in Russia and the former Soviet Union.

The guide - one of the intelligence service's spy training manuals - provides first-hand information on the moods, mentalities, and behaviors of Soviet agents in the field of work, and their views on a high-value Western goal they have caught in their ropes.

Sappho

The Daily Beast article then - quoting from the booklet "The Consultant: A Survey of Recruitment ..." - touched upon a man called "SAVO" in his mid-sixties, who worked in the service of 3 different intelligence services, but was devoted to only one of them.

Sappho (a codename mentioned in the booklet) was born into a family of Volga Germans who settled on the banks of the Volga River in southeastern Europe near the city of Saratov, between Russia and present-day Kazakhstan.

He was on the verge of retirement in 1960. Before that, he was recruited by the Soviet Military Intelligence, where he worked as a journalist loyal to the Communist Party during the Soviet-Finnish War in 1939.

He was soon transferred to the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) - a Soviet institution that at the time combined the activities of the police and secret police - where he was assigned the task of penetrating the spy networks of Nazi Germany disguised as a pro-fascist journalist.

After World War II ended, Savo became an Austrian citizen by law with the help of his Soviet officials.

He resumed his disguise as a journalist, this time in a pro-American and anti-Soviet newspaper in the Austrian city of Salzburg.

He then joined the West German intelligence service, which placed him in a very good position from which to hunt an important figure in the Austrian chancellery.

That person was Hans Adolf Baumgarten, the foreign affairs advisor in the Austrian president’s own office.

Sappho used sophisticated deception techniques to entrap Baumgarten.

To carry out the KGB plan, he was able to recruit Baumgarten for West German intelligence, or so he wanted the new agent to believe.

The other obstacle in the way of convincing Baumgarten - to believe that he was spying for West Germany - was to ask him to hand over important information to the Germans, especially those dealing with Austria's relations with the Eastern Bloc countries, which Moscow hardly needed, instead of the one specialized in Austria's relations with The West, which Russia considers most in need.

Through various paths of cunning and savvy, Sappho was able to recruit Baumgarten into the KGB.

But it is not known whether Austrian counterintelligence services managed to capture Baumgarten, or if he retired from the KGB at some time after 1965, as did many spies like him.

As for Sappho, it was smuggled through a complex scheme from Austria to Canada, and then returned to Russia.

The Daily Beast recounted how Moscow used the Baumgarten recruiting process to consolidate its influence in Austria, which had gained its independence from Germany after the end of World War II.

However, that independence was not actually real, according to the American news site article.

Austria was occupied by American, British and Soviet forces until 1955, when Sappho joined West German intelligence.

In that same year, the foreign occupying forces finally agreed to withdraw from Austria and allow it to become a free, democratic and sovereign country.

However, the Soviets made a condition for their withdrawal that Austria remain neutral, which implies that it will not be able to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Austria's neutral status was included in the articles of its constitution, which made it dependent in its dealings with NATO on the relations of the Soviet Union, and then Russia with the alliance itself.