The KGB, the Soviet secret police and espionage agency, is the world's largest information-gathering organization and certainly its most mysterious. For this week's cover story on the shadowy secret service that nurtured the Soviet Union's new leader, Yuri Andropov, TIME correspondents employed their own resourceful information-gathering techniques. In a dozen capitals, they pieced together anecdotes and insights from intelligence agents, diplomats, academic specialists and members of the Russian emigre community. In London, TIME'S Frank Melville met with Defector Vladimir Kuzichkin, a former KGB major. Washington Correspondent Christopher Redman talked with past and present members of U.S. intelligence and found them wary about revealing too much knowledge of KGB operations, lest it tip off Soviet spies to U.S. capabilities. Moscow Bureau Chief Erik Amfitheatrof probably had the most delicate assignment. "Soviet citizens are usually leery of talking about the KGB," he reports. "But those willing to be interviewed provided insights available nowhere else. One person told me, 'If you walked down the street with a sign reading GLORY TO COMMUNISM, the KGB would detain you, because all unauthorized action is prohibited.' That said something very real to me about the KGB's pervasive power." In New York, on the receiving end of the gleanings from correspondents, were Senior Editor Donald Morrison, and Staff Writer John Kohan, who wrote the story.

Part of the cover package is a report on Bulgaria, written by Associate Editor Jim Kelly, which examines that Balkan nation's reputation as an espionage surrogate for the Soviets, perhaps even in the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II. Rome Correspondent Barry Kalb has followed the scenarios that have speculated on various countries' possible roles in the affair. In Washington, Correspondent Ross H. Munro canvassed the intelligence community and pored over the Soviet press. Rome Bureau Chief Wilton Wynn went to Turkey to assess "the amazing Bulgarian involvement in arms and drugs, and Bulgarian activities aimed at destabilizing Turkey." Eastern Europe Bureau Chief Richard Hornik traveled to Sofia, Bulgaria's capital, and gained a different perspective. "The country has been in the news because of an assassination plot," Hornik says. "But with its ancient culture, beautiful scenery and relatively prosperous economy, Bulgaria is in itself a subject worthy of separate journalistic analysis." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.