Photo By Erin Thompson | Sfc. George Trofimoff at 525th Military Intelligence Service Group headquarters, Fort...... read more read more
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by Erin E. Thompson, USAICoE Staff Historian
INTEL OFFICER TURNED SPY ARRESTED IN FLORIDA
On 14 June 2000, retired U.S. Army Col. George Trofimoff was arrested in Tampa, Florida, after details of his vast espionage career were exposed by a Russian defector. During the Cold War, Trofimoff had served as a U.S. Army interpreter, interrogator, and attaché, culminating in his service as chief of the U.S. Army Element at the Nuremberg Joint Interrogation Center (JIC) in 1969.
Born on 3 March 1927 in Berlin, Germany, George Trofimoff was raised as a foster child amongst former members of the Russian aristocracy. He was drafted into the German army in late 1944, but evaded conscription by fleeing to Czechoslovakia. At the end of the war in Europe, he became an interpreter for U.S. Army units stationed along the Danube River on the Czech-German border. When the American unit left for the Pacific Theater, Trofimoff moved to Paris, France. Soon after, in late 1947, he emigrated to the U.S. on a visa sponsored by the Society of Friends (Quakers).
Trofimoff enlisted in the U.S. Army on 19 July 1948. After basic training, he was assigned to a Russian language class at the Army Language School at Monterey, California, where he was promoted to corporal and became an assistant instructor. In early 1949, he was assigned to a new unit at Fort Bragg (known as Fort Liberty since 2023), the 525th Headquarters Intelligence Detachment (later the 525th Military Intelligence Group). Corporal Trofimoff was trained in advanced aerial photography interpretation, prisoner of war interrogation, and order of battle. In late 1949, he was sent to Frankfurt, Germany, on temporary assignment to interrogate Soviet military deserters in East Germany.
Having successfully applied for American citizenship, Trofimoff further applied for a military commission. On 9 March 1953, he was promoted to second lieutenant, Military Intelligence, U.S. Army Reserves. By the end of 1953, he was the senior member of his interrogation unit on the East-West German border. He returned to instructor duties at Fort Bragg in 1954 and then became a military intelligence observer attached to an advisory group in Laos in 1956. While stationed there, Trofimoff was honorably discharged as a colonel and became a civilian attaché to the Laotian Embassy until returning to the U.S. in 1958.
Over the next decade, Trofimoff obtained jobs in various intelligence positions within the U.S. Army, including with the 66th MI Group and as chief of the Nuremberg JIC in 1969. Back in Germany, he rekindled many relationships with friends and family from his childhood, including his foster brother, Igor Susemihl, a Metropolitan in the Russian Orthodox Church, who heavily supported Trofimoff personally and financially. Trofimoff began supplying classified intelligence materials collected by the JIC to his brother, who in turn passed them along to the Soviet security agency (KGB).
Suspicion fell on the brothers in 1994 after Soviet defector Vasili Mitrokhin supplied thousands of documents to the British Intelligence Service, including information on an American informant identified as “Markiz,” who supplied intelligence through a Russian clergyman. Trofimoff and Susemihl were arrested in Nuremberg but were released due to Germany’s statute of limitations on espionage. Trofimoff and his fifth wife, Jutta, then retired to a gated community in Melbourne, Florida.
Despite walking free in Germany, Trofimoff eventually disclosed his extensive working relationship with his brother and the KGB to an undercover Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, Dimitry Droujinsky. At their scheduled meeting on 14 June 2000, Trofimoff was arrested for espionage. His trial began a year later and, found guilty, he was sentenced to life in prison, making him the highest-ranking military officer ever convicted of espionage. He died in prison on 19 September 2014.
(For more information about George Trofimoff, see Andy J. Byers’ The Imperfect Spy: The Inside Story of a Convicted Spy.)
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| Date Taken: | 06.11.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 06.11.2024 10:39 |
| Story ID: | 473615 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 455 |
| Downloads: | 2 |
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