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The KGB in Canada: Prying eyes to the North

By WARREN PERLEY

MONTREAL -- The Soviet jogger with the bionic biceps drew stares and shivers as he loped along the frigid, snowslick streets, wearing only a pair of blue silk shorts, ankle socks, black gloves and running shoes.

The sight of bare-chested Boris Balashov, 47, exercising in minus 12 F temperatures merits attention, even from winter-weary Canadians.

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'I've never seen anything like it,' said a woman who lives in the downtown Montreal apartment building where Balashov resides. 'He looks bullet-proof. Every angle on him is square. If you hit him with a tank, the tank would crumble. He has the most incredible body.'

Balashov, who works as an economist with the Soviet delegation at the International Civil Aviation Organization, studies karate, lifts weights twice a week and jogs shirtless every day, no matter how cold.

Aside for his penchant for jogging in sub-zero temperatures, what makes Balashov newsworthy is that he is part of the Soviet diplomatic mission in Canada which western security experts say is engaged in highly sophisticated spying aimed at the United States.

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Balashov, an open and engaging man, laughed when asked whether he works for the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Besopasnosti -- the Soviet state security police better know by the initials KGB.

'No, I don't work for the KGB,' he said. 'I have no military background.'

When asked whether western security experts are accurate when they say that a high percentage of Soviet diplomats in Canada spy for the KGB, he replied: 'Maybe some. I don't know exactly. It's only idle talk.'

Western security agents say it is more than idle talk and that Canada, especially Montreal, is rife with KGB agents.

'The Soviets feel more secure in Canada than in the United States,' a contract operator for several Western intelligence services told United Press International. 'This is where a lot of KGB agents come to get groomed before moving on to more sophisticated espionage and subversive operations in the United States.'

The operator, who said he had done numerous jobs worldwide for the CIA in the last 20 years, spoke on condition he not be identified by name.

He described Montreal as 'a major center for clandestine KGB activities involving espionage, subversion, terrorist training and communications with enemy agents.'

The KGB's primary target is always the United States, he said. 'They like Montreal because they can communicate easily with their U.S.-based agents from here. It's very easy for them to cross the border over I-87 using phony identities.'

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The Soviet sensitivity about their Canadian operation in was never so clear as on a wintry day last month when they let their consulate burn rather than admit Montreal firefighters.

The result was a gutted three-story building and a very public suggestion that there was more going on inside than arranging tourist visas.

When the minor electrical fire erupted Jan. 14 consulate officials barred firemen for 15 minutes while they removed documents. When firemen were finally allowed onto the grouds, they attempted to break out some third-floor windows to make way for their hoses -- only to find them bricked up from the inside.

And when the firefighters were admitted to the structure, they were still refused access to certain rooms.

Afterward, Soviet embassy official Igor Lobanov blunted questions about spying: 'I won't say anything about that.'

And the bricked up windows?

'Redecoration.'

And the documents that were more precious than the building?

Shrugged Lobanov: 'You know, Western embassies in Moscow don't keep copies of Playboy Magazine in their files.'

What the West had was a tacit admission of what it has known for years -- that the KGB was running a very active operation out of Montreal.

Canadian security sources, for instance, said the third floor of the consulate contained a microwave communications center that maintained contact with agents in the Washington-New York-Boston areas. A rooftop satellite dish concealed in a wooden shed monitored phone calls to and from the U.S. and British consulates and U.S. defense contractors in Montreal.

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The bricks in the third-floor windows likely were to block the laser microphones of Canadian agents trying to record Soviets conversations, a Canadian counter-intelligent specialist said.

Jean-Louis Gagnon, a spokesman for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service -- Canada's counterintelligence equivalent of the American FBI -- acknowledges Montreal is 'an important area' for foreign espionage.

Montreal-area companies do research and build weapons systems for NATO and the U.S. Defense Department.

Of the $145.9 billion in defense contracts signed by Defense in fiscal 1986, $644.6 million went to Canadian companies.

'Those are classified materials that would logically be of interest to those people (KGB),' Gagnon said. 'Montreal is an important area for our counterintelligence operations.'

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