64 . Agee, Inside the Company, pp. 522-3, 628.
65 . vol. 6, app. 1, pp. 610a, b. Echeverría’s successor, José López Portillo, was faced with an immediate economic crisis to which he responded by announcing an economic policy based on austerity and monetarism. In January 1977 he signed a three-year agreement with the IMF which was heavily criticized by the left. Abroad, however, he expressed public sympathy with a number of revolutionary causes. The files noted by Mitrokhin claim that the Mexico City residency ‘used its contacts and its agents to conduct conversations of influence’ with López (k-8, 525), but imply less easy access than under Echeverría. The residency was criticized, for example, for providing inadequate intelligence on Mexican-US relations in 1978-79 and on President Carter’s visit to Mexico in 1979 (k-22, 176).
66 . k-22, 116.
67 . k-22, 128. Since Mitrokhin had no access to the KGB Sixteenth (SIGINT) Directorate, he was unable to note the contents of any decrypts.
68 . IZOT is the highest-ranking Brazilian agent identified in the files noted by Mitrokhin. He provided recruitment leads on three fellow diplomats, including the ambassador of a NATO country in Prague. IZOT had himself been talent-spotted for the KGB by another Brazilian ambassador, an agent codenamed ALEKS; k-22, 235-7.
69 . k-22, 235-7; k-8, 551.
70 . Skidmore, ‘Brazil’s Slow Road to Democratization’, pp. 9-19.
71 . Alves, State and Opposition in Military Brazil, pp. 48-9, 142, 170-71, 173.
72 . In May 1980 Prestes was succeeded as leader of the Brazilian Communist Party by Giocondo Dias. In December Dias sent his thanks to Moscow, via the Brasilia residency, for allowing him, like his predecessor, to nominate Party members for free visits to Soviet sanatoria and holiday homes; k-26, 399.
73 . Golbery do Couto e Silva, Conjuntura politica nacional, section ‘Geopolítica do Brasil’, p. 52; Alves, State and Opposition in Military Brazil, pp. 24-5.
74 . k-22, 1, 3.
75 . vol. 6, ch. 5, part 5.
76 . Miller, Soviet Relations with Latin America, 1959-1987, pp. 174-8.
77 . Skidmore, ‘Brazil’s Slow Road to Democratization’, pp. 25-7; Alves, State and Opposition in Military Brazil, p. 222.
78 . Dix, The Politics of Colombia, p. 198.
79 . k-22, 91. The Centre was doubtless privately embarrassed by the fact that, like President Echeverría of Mexico, López had previously been the target of a KGB active measure; Agee’s Inside the Company (pp. 190-91) had claimed that López’s party, the MRL, had been financed by the CIA’s Bogotá station.
80 . k-22, 91. On Tolstikov’s meetings with Perón see above, pp. 98-9.
81 . k-22, 91, vol. 6, ch. 5, part 5.
82 . k-22, 376.
83 . k-22, 181.
84 . vol. 6, ch. 5, part 5. In 1978 López was succeeded as President by Julio César Turbay Ayala, who followed a very different foreign policy and actively blocked Cuba’s attempts to secure a Security Council seat.
85 . Leonov, ‘La inteligencia soviética en América Latina durante la guerra fría’.
86 . vol. 6, ch. 5, part 5.
87 . Leonov, ‘La inteligencia soviética en América Latina durante la guerra fría’.
88 . Torrijos admitted in a meeting with Graham Greene in 1979 that he had been visited by a KGB officer who was ‘very cultivated’ and spoke ‘excellent Spanish’; Greene, Getting to Know the General, p. 179. Leonov has acknowledged that the reference is to him; Leonov, ‘La inteligencia soviética en América Latina durante la guerra fría’.
89 . vol. 6, ch. 5, part 5.
90 . vol. 6, misc. footnote material, p. 20.
91 . The two main US accounts of the negotiation of the treaties and subsequent struggle to secure ratification are: Vance, Hard Choices, ch. 8; Carter, Keeping Faith, pp. 152-87.
92 . Koster and Sánchez Borbón, In the Time of the Tyrants, pp. 199-200.
93 . In his memoirs, published in 1982, Carter continued to insist that the charges against Torrijos were false; Carter, Keeping Faith, p. 167.
94 . vol. 6, ch. 5, part 5.
95 . Hearing of US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, 10 Feb. 1988. Koster and Sánchez Borbón, In the Time of the Tyrants, pp. 185, 288-9.
96 . Carter, Keeping Faith, p. 173.
97 . vol. 6, ch. 5, part 5.
98 . Carter, Keeping Faith, p. 179.
99 . vol. 6, ch. 5, part 5.
100 . Koster and Sánchez Borbón, In the Time of the Tyrants, p. 235.
101 . vol. 6, ch. 5, part 5.
102 . Kempe, Divorcing the Dictator, p. 73.
103 . vol. 6, ch. 5, part 5. For details of Torrijos’s cigars, see Greene, Getting to Know the General, p. 30.
104 . vol. 6, ch. 5, part 5.
105 . Ibid. Torrijos’s moves towards parliamentary democracy in the final years of his dictatorship were largely cosmetic; Koster and Sánchez Borbón, In the Time of the Tyrants, ch. 8.
106 . vol. 6, ch. 5, part 5.
107 . Koster and Sánchez Borbón, In the Time of the Tyrants, pp. 140-47.
108 . vol. 6, ch. 5, part 5.
109 . Koster and Sánchez Borbón, In the Time of the Tyrants, pp. 233-5, 248-9.
110 . Ibid., pp. 236-9.
111 . vol. 6, ch. 5, part 5. Mitrokhin’s notes wrongly give the date of Torrijos’s death as 2 Aug. 1981 (possibly the date of the KGB report on it). The claim, doubtless encouraged by KGB active measures, that the CIA had killed Torrijos was also widely believed in Panama; Hollander, Anti-Americanism, p. 363.
6. Revolution in Central America
1 . Quirk, Fidel Castro, pp. 794-5.
2 . k-22, 153. Later in 1979, del Valle was replaced as Interior Minister by the tough Ramiro Valdés (himself a former Interior Minister), probably because Castro believed him better capable of coping with public discontent. Both del Valle and Valdés were purged in 1985. Quirk, Fidel Castro, pp. 794-5, 825.
3 . Gates, From the Shadows, pp. 123-4.
4 . Crozier (ed.), The Grenada Documents, pp. 39-40; Romerstein, ‘Some Insights Derived from the Grenada Documents’.
5 . k-18, 323.
6 . Gilbert, Sandinistas, p. 11.
7 . Miranda and Ratliff, The Civil War in Nicaragua, p. 13. The basis of the FSLN reunification was the creation of a National Directorate of nine comandantes representing the three main factions: Humberto Ortega Saavedra, Daniel Ortega Saavedra and Victor Tirado López of the Insurrectional Tendency (Terceristas); Jaime Wheelock, Carlos Núñez, Luis Carrión of the Proletarian Tendency; Tomás Borge, Henry Ruiz and Bayardo Arce of the Prolonged Popular War Tendency.
8 . Miranda and Ratliff, The Civil War in Nicaragua, p. 99; Gates, From the Shadows, pp. 126-7; Brown, The Real Contra War, p. 80. The KGB residency in San José reported that 280 Costa Rican Communists joined the victorious Sandinista offensive; k-26, 379, 395.
9 . Quirk, Fidel Castro, p. 795.
10 . Speech by Castro, 26 July 1979.
11 . Gates, From the Shadows, pp. 127-8.
12 . vol. 6, ch. 12, part 4.
13 . Opening speech by Castro at Havana conference of Non-Aligned Movement, 3 Sept. 1979.
14 . Leonov, ‘La inteligencia soviética en América Latina durante la guerra fría’.
15 . See above, pp. 37-8, 45.
16 . Leonov, Likholet’e, pp. 227-9.
17 . The other leading Sandinistas with whom Leonov had talks were Victor Tirado López, Sergio Ramírez, Bayardo Arce, Alfonso Robelo and Miguel D’Escoto; vol. 6, ch. 5, part 5.
18 . vol. 6, ch. 5, part 5.
19 . Miranda and Ratliff, The Civil War in Nicaragua, pp. 4-5, 14-15, 73. The ‘Seventy-Two-Hour Document’ was drawn up by the nine comandantes of the FSLN National Directorate.
20 . k-26, 397.
21 . k-26, 396.
22 . Miller, Soviet Relations with Latin America, 1959-1987, p. 192.
23 . Geyer, Guerrilla Prince, p. 355. Speech by Castro in Managua
, 19 July 1980.
24 . Miranda and Ratliff, The Civil War in Nicaragua, pp. 116-17.
25 . Miller, Soviet Relations with Latin America, 1959-1987, p. 192.
26 . vol. 6, ch. 5, part 5. In 1970, inspired by the example of the Vietnam War, Carpio had left the PCS and founded the breakaway Fuerzas Populares de Liberación (FPL), with the intention of beginning a popular war of liberation based on the Vietnamese model.
27 . vol. 6, ch. 5, part 5.
28 . Bracamonte and Spencer, Strategy and Tactics of the Salvadoran FMLN Guerrillas, p. 4.
29 . vol. 6, ch. 5, part 5.
30 . Ibid. Handal’s travel notes on his arms-collection mission were captured and published by the State Department in 1981 (Waller, The Third Current of Revolution, pp. 31-2, 95-7). Though Salvadoran revolutionaries and their supporters, backed by KGB active measures, claimed that the notes were forged, the corroboration provided by the KGB file on the mission noted by Mitrokhin shows that they were genuine.
31 . vol. 6, ch. 5, part 5.
32 . Waller, The Third Current of Revolution, pp. 32-3.
33 . k-20, 92.
34 . Haig, Caveat, ch. 6.
35 . Miller, Soviet Relations with Latin America, 1959-1987, pp. 192-3.
36 . Miranda and Ratliff, The Civil War in Nicaragua, p. 117.
37 . k-20, 113.
38 . Miranda and Ratliff, The Civil War in Nicaragua, p. 117.
39 . Quirk, Fidel Castro, pp. 811-12.
40 . k-20, 113.
41 . k-20, 99.
42 . k-20, 113.
43 . Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, pp.528-32. In December 1982 the Polish Deputy Prime Minister, Mieczysław Rakowski, visited Cuba and briefed Castro personally on the situation in Poland since the declaration of martial law a year earlier. ‘The PUWP [Communist Party]’, he acknowledged, ‘could not fulfil its role; the army therefore occupied a dominant position in the country’. k-19, 323.
44 . k-20, 118.
45 . k-20, 113.
46 . vol. 6, ch. 5, part 5.
47 . The Challenge to Democracy in Central America; Ashby, The Bear in the Backyard, pp. 130-31.
48 . Crozier (ed.), The Grenada Documents, p. 64.
49 . Bracamonte and Spencer, Strategy and Tactics of the Salvadoran FMLN Guerrillas.
50 . vol. 6, ch. 5, part 5.
51 . Waller, The Third Current of Revolution, pp. 23-37. On KGB contact with the CPUSA leadership, see Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, pp. 288- 93.
52 . Waller, The Third Current of Revolution, pp. 38-9.
53 . The public relations disaster was compounded by Washington’s ignorance of the internal peasant-based resistance movement against the Sandinistas, the Milicias Populares Anti-Sandinistas (People’s Anti-Sandinista Militia) or MILPAS, which had begun in Nicaragua’s remote central highlands as soon as the Sandinistas took power in July 1979. The CIA made contact instead, on Reagan’s orders, with far less numerous groups of exiled former members of Somoza’s Guardia Nacional. Even when the exiles allied with MILPAS in the Fuerza Democratica Nicaragüense (FDN), the dominant world-wide media image of the Contras was of former Guardia Nacional thugs of the Somoza dictatorship. Brown, The Real Contra War.
54 . Reagan, An American Life, p. 471.
55 . Andrew, For the President’s Eyes Only, pp. 466-7, 470-71; Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, pp. 288-9.
56 . Miller, Soviet Relations with Latin America, 1959-1987, p. 199; Gilbert, Sandinistas, p. 170.
57 . Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield , pp.213-14, 457; Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 584-99; Andrew and Gordievsky, Instructions from the Centre, ch. 4.
58 . Andrew, For the President’s Eyes Only, p. 475.
59 . Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, pp. 214- 15; Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 599-603; Andrew and Gordievsky, Instructions from the Centre, pp. 85-90. Remarkably, though its priority was downgraded, operation RYAN continued until November 1991, when it was cancelled by Yevgeni Primakov, first head of the SVR, who described it as ‘a typical anachronism’; Primakov, Russian Crossroads, p. 97.
60 . Miranda and Ratliff, The Civil War in Nicaragua, ch. 9; Glenn Garvin, ‘We shipped weapons, Sandinistas say’, Miami Herald, 18 July 1999. There is some evidence that the leading hard-liner in the Politburo, Marshal Ustinov, who died in December 1984, remained in favour of supplying the MiG-21s.
61 . Gilbert, Sandinistas, p. 170.
62 . Andrew, For the President’s Eyes Only, pp. 478-80. The text of Gates’s memo of 14 Dec. 1984 was published in the New York Times, 20 Sept. 1991, p. A14.
63 . Andrew, For the President’s Eyes Only, pp. 480-93, 497.
64 . Volkogonov, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire, p. 495.
65 . Miller, Soviet Relations with Latin America, 1959-1987, pp. 215-16.
66 . Glenn Garvin, ‘We shipped weapons, Sandinistas say’, Miami Herald, 18 July 1999.
67 . Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 642.
68 . Interview with Major Aspillaga on Radio Martí, 7 August 1987.
69 . Quirk, Fidel Castro, pp. 824-36; Balfour, Castro, pp. 162-8.
7. The Middle East: Introduction
1 . Gromyko and Ponomarev (eds.), Soviet Foreign Policy, vol. 2, p. 393.
2 . Hollander, Anti-Americanism, p. 364.
3 . Rubinstein, Moscow’s Third World Strategy, p. 237.
4 . On KGB SIGINT operations, see Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, ch. 21.
5 . Ibid., p. 337.
6 . Mitrokhin had no access to the files of either the Eighth Chief Directorate (Communications and Cryptography) or the Sixteenth Directorate (SIGINT). The FCD files to which he had access, however, included some documents from both directorates.
7 . Dzhirkvelov, Secret Servant, pp. 211-14.
8 . See below, pp. 202-3.
9 . See below, p. 155.
10 . It is impossible, however, to exclude the possibility that there may have been some major KGB penetration in Saddam Hussein’s Baghdad which was not recorded in the files seen by Mitrokhin.
11 . Nasser’s tribute was proudly quoted in the official history of Soviet foreign policy; Gromyko and Ponomarev (eds.), Soviet Foreign Policy, vol. 2, p. 289.
12 . See below, p. 153.
13 . See below, p. 151.
14 . Taubman, Khrushchev, p. 610.
15 . See below, pp. 175, 178, 201-2, 208-10.
The World Was Going Our Way Page 67