The KGB apparently didn’t try to recruit David Cameron – It was just a ‘gay pick up’
The KGB apparently did not try to recruit David Cameron when he was 19, and instead, experts say he was probably just the target of a gay pick-up.
The Prime Minister first told the story in 2006 of KGB agents attempting to recruit him as a Cold War spy when he was 19 on his travels through the Soviet Union.
Speaking on the BBC Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs, Mr Cameron said: “I travelled on the Trans-Siberian railway… and then met a great friend in Moscow. We went down to the Black Sea and were on the beach in Yalta.
“These two Russians who spoke perfect English sort of turned up on the beach, which was mainly reserved for foreign tourists, and took us out to dinner, and interrogated us in a very friendly way about life in England and politics.”
The claims have been denied, however, as Russian paper Komsomolskaya Pravda reports.
According to the newspaper, an author and intelligence historian Gennady Sokolov, said he had it on good authority that there was no record of a bid to recruit Mr Cameron.
He said: “If the KGB had a task to work with a 19-year-old unknown young man Cameron, there would have remained certain paperwork on this matter.
“We have cautiously asked well-informed people if there is a file on Cameron in KGB archives. We got a definite reply that there is no such file in the archives, and there was no such file earlier. The KGB was not working on Cameron.”
Going on, Mr Sokolov said he had tracked down the men and that they had been black-market salesmen, and that they had hoped to buy items such as jeans from the West, which were then banned under Soviet law.
“The pair planned to buy some foreign stuff like jeans to resell them later and, after all, to make friends with two nice looking British guys.” He added: “There was also a gay motive.”
