From KGB eavesdropping chief to head of leadership security, the man who pulled the coup's trigger
Gorbachev recalled: "Yeltsin felt uneasy, as if someone were eavesdropping. His instinct was correct. Plekhanov, head of the 9th Directorate, had prepared the room."
Andropov's personal secretary who rose to command the KGB 12th Department (eavesdropping, phone taps, mail interception) for thirteen years before heading the 9th Directorate guarding the party leadership. On Kryuchkov's orders, he pre-wired the Novo-Ogaryovo meeting room for 29 July 1991, and the recording of Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Nazarbayev agreeing to purge the hardliners reached the plotters, detonating the August coup. On the day of the coup he flew to Foros and physically admitted the conspirators into Gorbachev's dacha; arrested when it collapsed, he was amnestied in 1994.
Career Timeline
- 1965–1967Secretary to CPSU Central Committee Secretary Andropov
- 1970–1983Head, KGB 12th Department: eavesdropping, phone taps, mail interception
- 1983–1990Head, KGB 9th Directorate: protection of party and state leadership
- 1990–1991Head, KGB Protection Service; Collegium member
- 1991.7.29Wired the Novo-Ogaryovo meeting room; recording leaked to plotters
- 1991.8–1994Joined coup at Foros; arrested; Matrosskaya Tishina; amnestied