no supporting evidence. Vladimir Kryuchkov, Chairman of the KGB and orchestrator of the 1991 coup plot, alleged that in his time in counterintelligence, Kalugin failed to discover a single US agent, but his successor would allegedly find over a dozen. Former CIA mole Karl Koecher made unsupported claims that for his eventual arrest, Kalugin was responsible. The unsubstantiated accusations did not stop him from criticizing the agency's policies and methods. He complained that the KGB overlooked corruption in the highest circles of Soviet society while it terrorized common people. His unbridled public criticism led to reassignment to Security Officers posts first in the Academy of Sciences in 1987 and then at the Ministry of Electronics in 1988. His career at the KGB ended with his forced retirement on 26 February 1990. As the Soviet Union underwent changes under Mikhail Gorbachev, Kalugin became more vocal and public in his criticism of the KGB by denouncing Soviet security forces as Stalinist domestic political police, but he never disputed the importance of espionage abroad. Finally, in 1990, Gorbachev signed a decree stripping Kalugin of his rank, decorations, and pension. In August 1991, Gorbachev returned his rank, decorations, and pension. Despite opposition from the KGB, he was elected in September 1990 to the Supreme Soviet as a People's Deputy for the Krasnodar region. Countering the Soviet coup attempt Kalugin became a firm supporter of Boris Yeltsin, the president of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. During the abortive Soviet coup attempt of 1991, led by KGB Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov, he led crowds to the Russian White House, the center of anticoup efforts, and induced Yeltsin to address the crowds. After the coup, he became an unpaid adviser to the new KGB chairman, Vadim Bakatin. Ever vocal, Kalugin told the press that in the future, the KGB should have no political functions and no secret laboratories to manufacture poisons and secret weapons. While Bakatin succeeded in dismantling the old security apparatus, he did not have the time to reform it before he was fired in November 1991. Exile to the United States According to Kalugin, he has never betrayed any Soviet agents except those who were already known to Western intelligence. He called intelligence defectors like Oleg Gordievsky "traitors." One of the allegations in his 1994 book, The First Directorate: My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West, stated that the death of