Vladimir Kryuchkov diplomatic service, stationed in Hungary until 1959. He then worked for the Communist Party Central Committee for eight years, before joining the KGB in 1967 together with his patron Yuri Andropov. He was appointed head of the First Chief Directorate (FCD) in the summer of 1971 (upon the order of Andropov)(See Vladimir Kryuchkov, 1996) (the KGB Foreign Operations) and Deputy Chairman in 1978. In 1988, he was promoted to the rank of General of the Army and became KGB Chairman. In 1989–1990, he was a member of the Politburo. A political hard-liner, Kryuchkov was among the members of the Soviet
KGB "agents provocateur" pretending "sympathy to the cause", smear campaigns against prominent dissidents, and show trials; once imprisoned, the dissident endured KGB interrogators "and" sympathetic informant cell-mates. In the event, Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost policies lessened persecution of dissidents; he was effecting some of the policy changes they had been demanding since the 1970s. According to declassified documents, the KGB aggressively recruited former Nazi intelligence officers after the war. The KGB used them to penetrate the West German intelligence service. In the 1960s, acting upon the information of KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn, the CIA counter-intelligence chief James Jesus Angleton believed KGB had