Aleksander Kopatzky

Aleksander Grigoryevich Kopatzky (Александр Григорьевич Копацкий; b.1923, d.1982) was a Soviet double agent, who was unmasked in 1961 by Anatoliy Golitsyn. A.k.a. Igor Orlov, Aleksandr Navratilov, Sasha, 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 keep 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. In 1957 he attended agent training in the USA and was reinstated in 1958 to Europe. In 1960 he was transferred back to the U.S.

As a result of the defection of the former KGB agent Anatoliy Golitsyn, the FBI sought Kopazky. After a house search in 1965, he fled for a short time in the Soviet consulate. He refused a flight to the Soviet Union, left his wife, and remained in the United States. Until his death in 1982 he lived there unmolested and was the owner of an art gallery.