The Craft of Intelligence

by Allen W. Dulles

  Without guidance and direction, intelligence officers in different parts of the world could easily spend much of their time duplicating each other’s work or there could be serious gaps in our information. The intelligence officer at his post abroad cannot fully judge the value of his own operations because he cannot know whether the information he is procuring has already been picked up somewhere else, or is known from overt sources, or is of too low a priority to be worth the effort or the expense.

  Our government determines what the intelligence objectives are and what information it needs, without regard to obstacles. It also establishes priorities among these objectives according to their relative urgency. Soviet ICBMs will take priority over their steel production. Whether or not Communist China would to go war over Laos will take priority over the political shading of a new regime in the Middle East. Only after priority has been established is the question of obstacles examined. If the information can be obtained by overt collection or in the ordinary course of diplomatic work, the intelligence service will not be asked to devote to the task its limited assets for clandestine collection. But if it is decided that secret intelligence must do the job, then it is usually because serious obstacles are known to surround the target.

  In preparing its directives for the intelligence mission in a particular area, the headquarters will first of all consider the factors of political and physical geography and the presence of persons within the area who have access to the desired information. Obviously, contiguous and border areas around the great periphery of the Communist world serve as windows, though darkly shaded ones, on that world. The presence of sizable delegations from the Sino-Soviet bloc in many countries not necessarily contiguous to it offers quite another kind of opportunity for information on the bloc. Also, citizens of peripheral countries may not have the difficulties an American would have in traveling to denied areas and enjoying more freedom of movement and less close scrutiny while there. All these are factors in the problem of “access” and therefore play a role in the framing of guidance.

  Hypothetically speaking, if our government wanted information on a recent industrial or technical development in Red China, where the U.S. has no diplomatic mission and no unofficial representation either, the intelligence service could assign the collection task to those free areas close to China which receive Chinese refugees from time to time, or to a free area halfway around the world from China where the latter had a diplomatic mission, or to still another free area which had commercial relations with China and whose nationals could travel there. It would not assign the task to an area where none of these conditions existed, nor would it indiscriminately flash out its requirement world-wide, setting up a scramble of intelligence officers to go after the same information by whatever means they could devise.

  When Khrushchev made his secret speech denouncing Stalin to the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956, it was clear from various press and other references to the speech that a text must be available somewhere. The speech was too long and too detailed to have been made extemporaneously even by Khrushchev, who is noted for lengthy extemporary remarks. An intelligence “document hunt” was instituted, as the speech, never published in the U.S.S.R., was of great importance for the Free World. Eventually the text was found—but many miles from Moscow, where it had been delivered. It was necessary in this case for headquarters to alert many kinds of sources and to make sure all clues were followed up. I have always viewed this as one of the major coups of my tour of duty in intelligence. Since the text was published in full by the State Department, it also was one of the few exploits which could be disclosed as long as sources and methods of acquisition were kept secret.

  Usually the means of getting the information once a task has been assigned is left to the ingenuity of the intelligence officer in the field. My source in the German Foreign Office already mentioned brought out or secretly smuggled to me in Switzerland during 1943–45, choice selections of the most secret German diplomatic and military messages, over two thousand in all. For various technical reasons, he could send only a fraction of the total available to him, and he had to pick and choose on his own initiative.

  As the war in Europe was drawing to a close, the possibility of a protracted conflict with Japan still loomed ahead. I then received from headquarters a request that our source concentrate on sending me more reports from German missions in the Far East, particularly in Tokyo and Shanghai. Even though I agreed with headquarters that this window on the Far East should be opened wider, it was no easy task to carry out the instruction speedily.

  My source was in Berlin and I was in Switzerland. He was able to travel out only rarely, I might not see him for weeks, and the matter was too urgent to let go until our next meeting. Normally we never communicated with each other across the Swiss-German border because it was too dangerous, but we did have an emergency arrangement based on a fictitious girl friend of the source who was supposedly living in Switzerland. Since postcards seem more innocent to the censor than sealed letters, the “girl friend” sent to the source’s home address in Berlin a beautiful postal card of the Jungfrau. “She” wrote on it that a friend of hers in Zurich had a shop which formerly sold Japanese toys but had run out of them and couldn’t import them because of wartime restrictions; in view of the close relations between Germany and Japan, couldn’t he help her out by suggesting where in Germany she could buy Japanese toys for her shop? My source got the point immediately since he knew all messages from the Swiss “girl friend” were from me. The next batch of cables to the German Foreign Office which he sent me were largely from German officials in the Far East and told the plight of the Japanese Navy and Air Force.

  Sometimes for diplomatic or other reasons an intelligence headquarters gives out negative guidance, i.e., instructions what not to do. An enterprising intelligence officer may run into some splendid opportunities and learn to his disappointment after corresponding with his headquarters that there are good reasons for passing them up. He may or may not be told what these good reasons are.

  General Marshall, in the letter to Governor Dewey mentioned earlier, emphasized the sensitivity of operations involving enemy codes and ciphers by telling him of an uncoordinated attempt by American intelligence to get a German code in Portugal. The operation misfired and so alerted the Germans that they changed a code we were already reading, and this valuable source was lost.

  I had no knowledge of this incident at the time when I received a radio message from headquarters at my wartime post in Switzerland not to get any foreign codes without prior instructions. Shortly after this, in late 1944, one of my most trusted German agents told me that he could get me detailed information about certain Nazi codes and ciphers. This put me in quite a quandary. Though I had confidence in him, I did not wish him to deduce that we were breaking the German codes. If I showed no interest, this would have been an indication that such was the case. No intelligence officer would otherwise reject such an offer. I told my friend I wanted a bit of time to think over how best this could be worked out. The next day I told him that as all my traffic to Washington had to go by radio—Switzerland was then surrounded by Nazi and Fascist forces—it would be too insecure for me to communicate what he might give me. I said I preferred to wait till France was liberated—the Normandy invasion had already taken place—so I could send out his code information by diplomatic pouch. He readily accepted this somewhat specious answer.

  The best planning and the best guidance cannot, of course, foresee everything. No intelligence service and no intelligence officer rules out the possibility of the random and unexpected and often inexplicable windfall. Sometimes a man who has something on his mind feels safer talking to a Western intelligence officer ten thousand miles from home and so waits for the opportunity of a trip abroad to seek one out. A Soviet scientist or technician visiting Southeast Asia, for example, might talk in a more relaxed manner than if he were behind the Curtain
or even if he were visiting in New York. The Kremlin’s instruction to a Soviet official in Egypt, if it came to our attention, might throw some light on Soviet policy toward Berlin.

  In 1958 an Arab student from Iraq who had been taking some advanced studies in Arizona received a letter from Baghdad which caused him to leave immediately for home. As he departed, he hinted to an American friend of his that the reason for his sudden leave-taking was that important political events were impending in his home country. A few weeks later came the Iraq coup d’état which astounded the Western world and left some intelligence officers with red faces. This bit of information about the student’s hasty departure, and the reason for it, thanks to some good work of field collection in Arizona did in fact reach headquarters in Washington quite promptly. Unfortunately, there it was viewed at the desk level, and quite naturally, as only one straw in a wind which seemed to be blowing in a different direction.

  This story also illustrates how important it is for the field officer, without any directives or headquarters administration, to send in bits and pieces of intelligence. If, for example, in the Iraq case, headquarters had received three or four messages that persons at “outs” with the Iraq government were converging toward Baghdad, a quiet alert should have been sounded.

  Some years ago, when the Moscow meetings of the Central Committee of the Communist part were often held in great secrecy, they could sometimes be predicted by noting the movements of the many committee members serving in diplomatic or other posts or traveling abroad. If they quietly converged on Moscow, as they did just before the ouster of Khrushchev, something was likely to be about to happen. Here the travel pattern of Soviet officials was a type of information which field officers were alerted to follow.

  Headquarters guidance is necessary but it is no substitute for such field initiative as was taken in Arizona.

  7

  The Main Opponent —The Communist Intelligence Services

  Most totalitarian countries have, in the course of time, developed not just one but two intelligence services with quite distinct functions, even though the work of these services may occasionally overlap. One of these organizations is a military intelligence service run by the general staff of the armed forces and responsible for collecting military and technical information abroad. In the U.S.S.R. this military organization is called the GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate). GRU officers working out of the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa operated the atomic spy networks in Canada during World War II. The other service, which more typically represents an exclusive development of a totalitarian state, is the “security” service. Generally such a service has its origin in a secret police force devoted to internal affairs such as the repression of dissidents and the protection of the regime. Gradually this organization expands outward, thrusting into neighboring areas for “protective” reasons, and finally spreads out over the globe as a full-fledged foreign intelligence service and much more.

  Since this security service is primarily the creation of the clique or party in power, it will always be more trusted by political leaders than is the military intelligence service, and it will usually seek to dominate and control the military service, if not to absorb it. In Nazi Germany the “Reich Security Office,” under Himmler, during 1944 completely took over its military counterpart, the Abwehr. In 1947, the security and military services in Soviet Russia were combined, with the former dominant, but the merger lasted only a year. In 1958, however, Khrushchev placed one of his most trusted security chiefs, General Ivan Serov, in charge of the GRU, apparently in order to keep an eye on it. It was Serov, one of the most brutal men in Soviet intelligence history, whom Khrushchev called upon to direct the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution and the Soviet “reconquest” of Hungary in November of 1956. There are, incidentally, indications that things have not gone too well for Serov, that he was caught up in one of the dramatic housecleanings that so often sweep through the Soviet security services.

  Whether or not the security service of a totalitarian state succeeds in gaining control of the military service, it inevitably becomes the more powerful organization. Furthermore, its mandate, both internal and external, far exceeds that of the intelligence services of free societies. Today the Soviet State Security Service (KGB) is the eyes and ears of the Soviet state abroad as well as at home. It is a multipurpose, clandestine arm of power that can in the last analysis carry out almost any act that the Soviet leadership assigns to it. It is more than a secret police organization, more than an intelligence and counterintelligence organization. It is an instrument for subversion, manipulation and violence, for secret intervention in the affairs of other countries. It is an aggressive arm of Soviet ambitions in the Cold War. If the Soviets send astronauts to the moon, I expect that a KGB officer will accompany them.

  No sooner had the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia than they established their own secret police. The Cheka was set up under Feliks Dzerzhinski in December, 1917, as a security force with executive powers. The name stood for “Extraordinary Commission against Counter-Revolution and Sabotage.” The Cheka was a militant, terroristic police force that ruthlessly liquidated civilians on the basis of denunciations and suspicion of bourgeois origins. It followed the Red armies in their conflicts with the White Russian forces, and operated as a kind of counterespionage organization in areas where sovietization had not yet been accomplished. In 1921 it established a foreign arm, because by that time White Russian soldiers and civilian opponents of the Bolsheviks who could manage to do so had fled to Western Europe and the Middle and Far East and were seeking to strike back against the Bolsheviks from abroad.

  Almost at once this foreign arm of Soviet security had a much bigger job than ever confronted the Czar’s Okhrana. It had not only to penetrate and neutralize the Russian exile organizations that were conspiring against the Soviets, but also to watch, and wherever possible to influence, the Western powers hostile to the Bolsheviks. It thus became a political intelligence service with a militant mission. In order to achieve its aims, it engaged in violence and brutality, in kidnaping and murder, both at home and abroad. This activity was directed not only against the “enemies of the state,” but against fellow Bolsheviks who were considered untrustworthy or burdensome. In Paris, in 1926, General Petlura, the exiled leader of the Ukrainian nationalists, was murdered; some say it was by the security service, others claim it was personal vengeance. In 1930, again in Paris, the service kidnaped General Kutepov, the leader of the White Russian war veterans; in 1937 the same fate befell his successor, General Miller. For over a decade Leon Trotski, who had gone into exile in 1929, was the prime assassination target of Stalin. On August 21, 1940, the old revolutionist died in Mexico City after being slashed with an Alpine climber’s ice ax by an agent of Soviet security. The list of its own officers and agents abroad whom it murdered during this same period, many of whom had tried to break away or were simply not trusted by Stalin, is far longer.

  Lest anyone think that violent acts against exiles who opposed or broke with the Bolsheviks in the early days were merely manifestations of the rough-and-tumble era of early Soviet history or of Stalin’s personal vengefulness, it should be pointed out that in the subsequent era of so-called “socialist legality,” which was proclaimed by Khrushchev in 1956, a later generation of exiled leaders was decimated. The only difference between the earlier and later crops of political murders lay in the subtlety and efficacy of the murder weapons. The mysterious deaths in Munich, in 1957 and 1959, of Lev Rebet and Stephen Bandera, leaders of the Ukrainian émigrés, were managed with a cyanide spray that killed almost instantaneously. This method was so effective that in Rebet’s case it was long thought that he had died of a heart attack. The truth became known only when the KGB agent Bogdan Stashinski gave himself up to the German police in 1961 and acknowledged that he had perpetrated both killings.

  For the first murder, Stashinski reports he was given a fine
banquet by his superiors in the KGB; for the second he received from them the Order of the Red Banner.

  Since the earliest days of the Soviets, secret assassination has been an official state function assigned to the apparatus of the security service. A special “Executive Action” section within the latter has the responsibility for planning such assassinations, choosing and training the assassin, and seeing to it that the job is carried out in such a way that the Soviet government cannot be traced as the perpetrator. That this section is still today a most important component of Soviet intelligence is borne out by the fact that General Korovin1 has been serving as its chief. While counselor of the Soviet Embassy in London from 1953 until early 1961, he was in charge of two key Soviet spies in Britain, George Blake and William John Vassall. After the apprehension of the latter, the ground got too hot for the General and he was recalled and reassigned to the “Executive Action” branch of the KGB.

  1This was the alias used by the General while in London. His real name is Nikolay B. Rodin.

  EVOLUTION OF SOVIET SECURITY SERVICES

  In 1922 the Cheka became the GPU (State Political Administration), which in 1934 became part of the NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs). This consolidation finally brought together under one ministry all civilian security and intelligence bodies—secret, overt, domestic and foreign. As the foreign arm of Soviet security was expanding into a world-wide espionage and political action organization, the domestic arm grew into a monster. It is said that under Stalin one out of every five Soviet citizens was reporting to it. In addition, it exercised control over the entire border militia, had an internal militia of its own, ran all the prisons and labor and concentration camps, and had become the watchdog over the government and over the Communist party itself. Its most frightening power as an internal secret police lay in its authority to arrest, condemn and liquidate at the behest of the dictator, his henchmen or even on its own cognizance, without any recourse to legal judgment or control by any other organ of government.