Ladislav Kubizňák

"´Imagine that you are an agent and describe your journey to your home.´ I began with my description: ´You go to the Budějovická station, get on the bus 206, ride that bus and get off at the bus stop Modrá škola.´ Then something ringed a bell for me and I told this bearded man: ´I get off and you continue in the bus.´ (...) ´How do you know that I stay in the bus?´ - ´Just now I realized that I know you from the bus.´ It turned out that he was the chief of that surveillance school. This sparked his interest in me. I realized that his face was familiar to me. (...) You win their interest in strong moments like this, and it was my intention to get them interested in me. (...)"

"I was given an assignment from headquarters as a resident representative to find out the US estimate of the 1988 grain harvest in the Soviet Union. Because the Russians were going to America and buying that hard wheat for quite a lot of money. Now what about this. So I went, I remembered that I had a good contact at the World Agricultural Organization, which was based in Switzerland but had a branch in New York. I had a contact there with the Japanese. And because I had accompanied Crown Prince Naruhito before he sent me to the U.S., and he gave me shirt pins in their imperial emblem, I took them and went to the meeting. When the Japanese guy saw it, he immediately understood what was going on, so I told him about the Crown Prince, which he found very interesting. He tried to help and found out a lot of information from the world agricultural organization that was doing the analysis, the crop forecasts for the next year. He also told me exactly what the system was. They distinguish black soil, that's Ukraine. That they differentiate brown soil somewhere in the centre of Russia. That they differentiate Kazakhstan, where at that time the huge fields were ploughed. He gave me an indication of what the average yield would be, which at that time was about eighteen hundred kilos per hectare. We had about twenty-three like Czechoslovakia. I put all this together, wrote a report, sent it off, and to my surprise a good assessment came from the KGB.

"We were given at that time that we should obtain so much and so much information of the area of political intelligence, of the area of scientific and technical intelligence, the subject on which were the measures in the area of counterintelligence. That was the outline plan, and now everybody was trying to contribute in their own way to that information system. There were actions leading up to that, because you have to meet the agent, you have to extract the agent, you have to process the information that you got, and send it to Prague. That Prague gave you a grade on a scale of one to six. A six was for firing, a five was bad, a four was bad, a three was okay. So a two or a one, they took that. That's how they computerized how much information you sent in a year and what it was worth. Average of two, three, whatever. And how much money that one piece of information was worth. Because sometimes you'd go out to lunch or dinner with a confidential contact. Or you had to go somewhere. You had to pay for all that out of something. And that was the cost of getting that information. So it was limited. How much information, at what value, and for how much one."

"It was very piquant and interesting that we were accompanied in Boston, of course, by an FBI surveillance group, and when we went up to Boston, there's an exit right, there went, I don't know the number, that led to our hotel where we slept. But then when you go back up that highway, that opposite exit was not there. So I took the exit there somewhere and then I got stuck, lost. So I'm driving, I'm driving, and behind me these FBI cars were going around in these alleys. So I just pulled over, opened the window, waved my hand. So they understood, he drove in front of me and I drove behind him and he drove me out to get to the hotel. So my brother was looking at me like crazy, what's going on. We got to the hotel, I did a time out and I said, 'Brother, we just said goodbye to the FBI surveillance team. At least you can see where I'm making my money, and we're not going anywhere else because I showed them we're done for the day so they can have a break too.' That was on a Saturday."

"As I speak about the important things, we are now finally coming to the issue of sources. We don’t speak about our sources. This is part of our ethics, and difficult to speak about – this topic is usually not discussed. The main activity was gathering confidential information from all areas of life. Especially issues related to politics, economy and science and technology. We had to work on protection against the penetration of counterintelligence, who were on their home field, and well trained and qualified. Moreover, they had such technical devices in their equipment that we could only dream about."

"Drabík was my cover name, it originated from the name of the street. (...) Cover name Drabík, number 169 765. Cipher messages were signed with number only. When the National Security Institute did a background check on me, I told them: ´The Czechoslovak State had given me a different identity. There was certain Drabík with this number, but I am Láďa Kubizňák, so don't confuse the two. It was not of my own will, it was the will of the State, of which the Czech Republic is now the successor. (...) There was Drabík, so deal with him. (...) Show me any cipher message that is signed with the name Láďa Kubizňák. There isn’t any. That’s just a hypothetical question."

"I was dispatched to New York. I flew there in September in relation to the beginning of the UN General Assembly. That was because my legal function was a diplomat and my agenda included the 5th committee of the UN General Assembly, which covered issues like budget, peace forces financing, retirement fund, and similar personal and administrative agenda related to the activities of the United Nations."