The Road to Afghanistan - George Washington University

But even the “special people,” in particular many leaders of the First Directorate ofthe KGB (Foreign Intelligence), in their conversations with me, never said with certaintythat U.S. special services had recruited Amin. They allowed for the possibility of it, but nomore. Their position, more often than not, was that it made little sense to speculate aboutwhether Amin was a CIA agent. The essence was that, objectively, he damaged the outcomeof the April Revolution, along with our interests, by committing his actions. That was whatplayed the decisive role behind making the decision to liquidate him and replace him withthe more loyal and predictable Babrak Karmal.Valery Samunin:Do you really think that “special people,” particularly senior intelligence leaders,would ever tell the whole truth to a journalist or a historian, and would go so far as toreference the source of the information? This is impossible. Even I, your co-author, haveleft a lot of information out of this book, as if I’ve “forgotten” it altogether. A lot of it willfollow me to the grave.However, I can assure you that the operatives of the KGB Residency who wereworking in Kabul then, including Alexei Petrov, who worked with Hafizullah Amin prior tothe April Revolution on an assignment from the CPSU’s Central Committee, suspected thatAmin was a traitor and a CIA agent. There were many signs of this. Moreover, this personwas watched by KGB intelligence long before he emerged as one of the leaders of the PDPA.His biography was scrupulously researched. There was one vague moment in it inparticular. Before leaving for his studies in America, Amin published nationalistic and evenanti-Soviet articles in Kabul newspapers. Judging by those articles, he had absolutely no722