Spycraft: The Great Game

The Unlikely Collaboration Between the KGB and the CIA and Disclosure

I know. Not another post about a video game. However, this one is unique. You are about to see why.

Intelligence work has one moral law: it is justified by results.

In 1995, Oleg Kalugin and William Colby came together to create a video game about spycraft. These two were notorious enemies during the Cold War. They were two of the most decorated, and detested, cold warriors of their time. Both were also disavowed by the agencies they worked for and ostracized for speaking out about the abuses and crimes of their respective agencies.

This game represented an unlikely partnership and a belief in a turning point for the world and a common goal. Peace between the United States and Russia. The total disarmament of the world's nuclear weapons.

The plot of the game is simple. Russia and the United States are on the verge of permanent nuclear disarmament. But some people don’t want that to happen. A fresh CIA recruit Thorn travels the globe, fighting assassins, tries to stop the sale of nuclear secrets, and also tries to stop the assassination of two presidents. All of these events threaten to destroy the world’s fragile peace and future.

This is a world of the back rooms of espionage, where torture and death were a matter of bureaucracy. In this endless conflict, information would be gained or traded away for seemingly incremental and minor benefits.

Spycraft had multiple endings based on the player's decisions. Just like in the real world of intelligence, none of the multiple endings are clear-cut victories.

Glasnost

In 1986, Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and his advisers adopted glasnost as a political slogan.

"Glasnost" roughly translates to "openness." It is a Soviet policy permitting open discussion of political and social issues and freer dissemination of news and information. This meant an increased openness and transparency in government institutions and activities in the Soviet Union (USSR).

To put this in simple terms, it was disclosure.

Major General Oleg Kalugin was the head of the foreign counterintelligence or K branch of the First Chief Directorate within the USSR.

Oleg Kalugin began criticizing the KGB from within. He wrote letters to Soviet publications condemning the organization's methods and pursued internal corruption more vigorously. But when he tried to pursue it all the way to high-ranking party bosses, he met resistance. He was demoted and forced out of the KGB. He was later tried and convicted of treason in absentia in 2002.

The system to which I had devoted my life, the system to which I had been boundlessly loyal, now suspected me of betrayal. I had been sullied by unproven allegations, allegations so amorphous that I didn’t even know how to fight back. I increasingly began to feel like millions of other Soviets who had been unjustly accused of crimes, though most of them had experienced a far worse fate. In our system, everyone was a suspect, including someone as fanatically loyal as myself. From that day forward, I realized that the system was essentially vicious.

As someone once said, the Revolution devours its own children.
— Oleg Kalugin

Glasnost started to expose corruption within the old regime of the USSR. But uncontrolled exposure leads to one result. Collapse.

The USSR was formally dissolved on December 26, 1991.

The CIA's Family Jewels

William Colby became the Director of Central Intelligence in 1973 under President Nixon. The outgoing CIA director James Schlesinger had ordered an extensive report. The report was an investigation into the activities, both present and past, of activities which might be construed to be outside the legislative charter of this agency. In other words, illegal activities.

Colby inherited over 600 pages detailing the CIA’s global crimes with his new position. The report was dubbed “The Family Jewels.” This report was promptly locked it in a safe in his office. That didn't stop the report from being leaked in 1974. As you can imagine, this was a disaster for The Agency.

What was in this report?

The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media.
— William Colby

It detailed how the CIA was spying on Americans, funding domestic propaganda, MKULTRA, COINTELPRO, kidnapping charges, assets being paid within the MSM, Project RESISTANCE, Project MERRIMAC, Project SHAMROCK, Operation CHAOS, and committing assassinations worldwide.

In response to these documents being leaked, Congress initiated the Church Committee, led by Idaho senator Frank Church in 1975.

UNNAMED REPRESENTATIVE: Do you have any people being paid by the CIA who are contributing to a major circulation American journal?

WILLIAM COLBY: We do have people who submit pieces to other, to American journals.

Colby would end up testifying before the committee 32 times. This was a problem. He spoke openly, honestly, and transparently about the activities going on within the intelligence community. Ex-director Schlesinger was quoted as telling President Ford that Colby was “too damned cooperative with the Congress."

William Colby was later dismissed by President Ford. George H.W. Bush was chosen to replace him.

After more than 30 years, most of the documents would be later released on June 25, 2007.

Intelligence Gathering

Spycraft: The Great Game isn't a first person shooter. In fact, you can play the whole game without firing a shot. It is a game about deception, questionable morals, and intelligence gathering.

Every single puzzle, every single decision that the player is forced to make, is taken from events right out of Colby and Kalugin’s career.

A game released in 1996 introduced the concepts of deep fakes, tracking plane routes, making connections, signal intelligence, and so on. Topics you and I are very familiar with today. Things you and I may have experience in either creating or detecting. Things that would not even become talked about until 25 years later.

Colby's Death

Spycraft: The Great Game was released on March 5, 1996.

Two months later, on April 27th, 1996, William Colby went on a solo canoeing trip on the Wicomico River near his vacation home in Maryland. Colby was a frequent boater and was deeply familiar with the area’s waterways. He disappeared. His body was found a week later on May 6, 1996.

The official autopsy ruled Colby's death an accident. His son thinks Colby committed suicide.

Colby’s disappearance made international news. There were a lot of speculation and conspiracies on both sides of the aisle regarding his disappearance and death. Colby was hated.

The Great Game: The Making of Spycraft Documentary (2024)

In 1995, former KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin and ex-CIA Director William Colby collaborated in an unexpected way. They made a video game.

The Great Game traces how both men rose to the tops of their fields following World War II, before falling out of favor with their respective agencies — on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain. For Kalugin, a growing discontent with the KGB’s treatment of Russians radicalized him against the institution. Meanwhile William Colby, an OSS operative and the CIA’s man on the ground in Vietnam, was fired by President Ford after testifying before Congress about controversial CIA programs like MKULTRA and CoIntelPro.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, both living on American soil, Colby and Kalugin played themselves in Spycraft, a multi-million dollar game that was among the most advanced of its time — and is now almost entirely forgotten.