Aleksander Kopatzky

Who is Aleksander Kopatzky?

Aleksander Grigoryevich Kopatzky was a Soviet double agent, who was unmasked in 1961 by Anatoliy Golitsyn. A.k.a. Igor Orlov, Aleksandr Navratilov, Calvus; his Soviet code names were Erwin, Herbert and Richard.

In 1941, after the start of the German-Soviet war, Kopazky attended a Soviet training school for agents of the NKVD. In October 1943 he was on a parachute jump over occupied Kresy where the German Wehrmacht arrested him and he was taken prisoner of war. From 1944 he acted as an agent of the Department of Foreign Armies against the Red Army in Vlasov. In 1945, he came into American captivity and came into contact with the Gehlen Organization, which he was recruited into by 1948.

He married Eleanor Stirner, the daughter of a former SS functionary.

From 1949 Kopazky was recruited by the KGB and became one of its most important double agents. The CIA sent him to Berlin in 1951 under the name Franz Koischwitz. He was officially shut down in late 1951 as an agent, but still kept his jobs. On 7 November 1951 he kidnapped the Estonian CIA agent Vladimir Kivi from West Berlin to East Berlin on behalf of the KGB. In 1954, with the help of the CIA, he changed his name to Igor Orlov.