The NKVD corrective labor camps hold a large number of extremely dangerous counterrevolutionaries: spies, terrorists, and other anti-Soviet and anti-party elements, who are bitter enemies of the Soviet regime with nothing to lose and who are always ready for the most intense counterrevolutionary actions. Available operative information shows that the internal and foreign White Guard scum are very aware of the weaknesses of the camp regime and the guards and of the number of counterrevolutionary contingents in the camps and perceive the camps as a potential beachhead in organizing an insurgent movement in the USSR. There have been registered specific attempts by foreign White Guardsmen to establish connections to the camps and to prepare them for planned attacks on the guards by subversive gangs at camps near the border.

In view of this very feasible danger of intense counterrevolutionary activities by the White Guard and other counterrevolutionary elements, all but a few camp bosses and heads of third departments

Third department—a subdivision within the secret police hierarchy that occupied itself with intelligence and operational work in the camps.

remain passive and neglect to work with the [undercover] agents. These administrators fail to realize that the lack of a reliable agent network and their personal inactivity in working with the agents lead to the escape of the most dangerous terrorists and spies, as well as the creation of counterrevolutionary groups that organize subversive acts in the camps. The lack of experienced agent managers leads to a situation in which double agents provoke the assistant representatives assigned to them, generate “cases” that, upon verification, turn out to be the most insolent fraud, make the third departments and UGB [Administration for State Security] do unnecessary work, and, at the same time, manage to conceal their counterrevolutionary activity. […]

Besides the lack of serious work with agents, some camps have not created a sufficiently harsh regimen for imprisoned counterrevolutionaries. The UGB liquidates the most dangerous criminals, but puts them in camps where they are left without any oversight. Suffice it to say that those convicted for counterrevolutionary crimes are allowed to work in vital areas of camp administration, like the URO. Heads of camps fail to realize that counterrevolutionaries, capitalizing on their carelessness and negligence, assign their people to facilitate practical counterrevolutionary activities.

I order: