A fake Russian handler drew out the secrets of an American interrogation chief

The supposed Russian visitor offered George Trofimoff a chance to talk about the past. The FBI was recording. At Trofimoff’s trial in Tampa, jurors saw a videotaped 1999 meeting in which the retired Army Reserve colonel described taking classified papers from his office, photographing them at home and selling the film to the KGB. ABC News reported that the recording became key evidence. On June 26, 2001, the jury found him guilty after deliberating for less than two hours.

Trofimoff had headed the Army element of the Joint Interrogation Center in Nuremberg, a place where Western intelligence questioned defectors and refugees from the Soviet bloc. An Army historian’s later account describes a career as an interpreter, interrogator and intelligence officer that culminated in that position in 1969. Information from such a center offered Moscow a window into what defectors were telling the West. The historian identifies the conduit as Igor Susemihl, a Russian Orthodox cleric and Trofimoff’s foster brother.

The case was contested at trial. Trofimoff denied being a spy and testified that he had invented the story he told the undercover agent because he wanted Russian money. Prosecutors said Susemihl had recruited him; a former KGB officer testified that he had met Trofimoff in the 1970s to discuss espionage. ABC’s contemporaneous report preserves that defense alongside the guilty verdict. His account to the supposed handler was evidence for jurors to evaluate, rather than a substitute for the court proceeding.

The Army retrospective traces the inquiry to information supplied by defector Vasili Mitrokhin. German authorities arrested Trofimoff and Susemihl in 1994 but released them because of Germany’s espionage limitation period. Trofimoff later retired to Florida, where FBI agent Dimitry Droujinsky approached him undercover. Agents arrested him at a scheduled meeting on June 14, 2000. Conviction brought a life sentence, and he died in prison on September 19, 2014. The earlier German release had not closed the American investigation.