Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin believed as early as 1936 that Richard Sorge, a Soviet spy based in Japan, was a double agent for Nazi Germany and warned that he was not to be trusted, according to an ex-KGB official.
Sergei Kondrashev, 77, a former top official of the KGB, the Soviet secret police and intelligence agency, said recently that Stalin's suspicions caused him to ignore a report from Sorge, a German national, warning of Germany's plan to invade the Soviet Union in June 1941.
Kondrashev was the author of a 1964 KGB report that exonerated Sorge and rehabilitated his reputation as a spy for the Soviet Union.
Stalin, upon receiving Sorge's report from a Red Army intelligence unit with which the spy was affiliated, is said to have written on the report, "I ask you not to send me any more German disinformation."