Anatoliy Mikhaylovich Golitsyn CBE (Russian: Анатолий Михайлович Голицын; August 25, 1926 – December 29, 2008) was a Soviet KGB defector and author of two books about the long-term deception strategy of the KGB leadership. He was born in Pyriatyn, USSR. He provided "a wide range of intelligence to the CIA on the operations of most of the 'Lines' (departments) at the Helsinki and other residencies, as well as KGB methods of recruiting and running agents." He became an American citizen by 1984. Defection Golitsyn worked in the strategic planning department of the KGB in the rank of Major. In 1961 under the name "Ivan Klimov" he was assigned to the Soviet embassy in Helsinki, Finland, as vice counsel and attaché. He defected with his wife and daughter to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) via Helsinki on December 15, 1961. They flew "with a CIA escort from Finland to Sweden and thence to the United States via Frankfurt am Main, Germany, arriving on 18 December 1961". He was interviewed by James Jesus Angleton, CIA counter-intelligence director. In January 1962, the KGB sent instructions to fifty-four Rezidentura throughout the world on the actions required to minimize the damage. All meetings with important agents were to be suspended. In November 1962, KGB head Vladimir Semichastny approved a plan for assassination of Golitsyn and other "particularly dangerous traitors" including Igor Gouzenko, Nikolay Khokhlov, and Bogdan Stashinsky. The KGB made significant efforts to discredit Golitsyn by promoting disinformation that he was involved in illegal smuggling operations. Golitsyn provided information about many famous Soviet agents including Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, John Vassall, double agent Aleksander Kopatzky who worked in Germany, and others. While unable to identify some agents like Philby specifically by name, Golitsyn provided sufficient information that SIS was able to determine the culprits. Thus, Golitsyn's defection in 1961 set in motion the process that definitively confirmed Philby as a Soviet mole. Controversies Golitsyn was a figure of significant controversy in the Western intelligence community. The military writer General Sir John Hackett and former CIA counter-intelligence director James Angleton identified Golitsyn as "the most valuable defector ever to reach the West". However, the official historian for MI5, Christopher Andrew, described him as an "unreliable conspiracy theorist". Andrew believes that although intelligence data provided by Golitsyn were reliable, some of his global political assessments of the Soviet and KGB strategy are questionable. In particular,