The Craft of Intelligence

by Allen W. Dulles

  In 1947, President Truman had proclaimed the doctrine which bears his name and applied it particularly to the then present danger of subversion facing Greece and Turkey. The doctrine, in effect provided that where a government felt that its “free institutions and national integrity” were threatened by Communist subversion and desired American aid, it would be our policy to give it. A decade later, this policy was restated in more precise language with respect to the countries of the Middle East in what became known as the Eisenhower Doctrine.

  But these doctrines contained the general proviso that action would be taken if our aid were sought by the threatened state. Such was the case in Greece in 1947 and in Lebanon ten years later. In both instances, our assistance was invited in by a friendly government. The Truman and Eisenhower doctrines did not cover, and possibly no officially proclaimed policy could cover, all the intricacies of situations where a country faces imminent Communist take-over and yet sends out no cry for help.

  There have been occasions, as in Czechoslovakia in 1948, when the blow was sudden. Then there was no time for the democratic Czechs to send us an engraved invitation to help them meet that blow. We knew that the danger was there, that well over one-third of the Czech Parliament and several members of the Cabinet had Communist leanings and that the regime was seriously infiltrated, but the free Prague government of the day was overconfident of its own ability to resist. Between daylight and dusk, the Communists took over without firing a shot.

  In Iran, a Mossadegh, and in Guatemala, an Arbenz had come to power through the usual processes of government and not by any Communist coup as in Czechoslovakia. Neither man at the time disclosed the intention of creating a Communist state. When this purpose became clear, support from outside was given to loyal anti-Communist elements in the respective countries—in the one case, to the Shah’s supporters; in the other, to a group of Guatemalan patriots. In each case, the danger was successfully met. There again no invitation was extended by the government in power for outside help.

  During Castro’s take-over of Cuba, we were not asked by him for help to keep the Communists out; he was the very man who was bringing them in. Such crises show the danger of a slow infiltration by Communists and fellow travelers into a government where the last thing the infiltrators wish is outside intervention to check Communism.

  What are we to do about these secret, underground creeping techniques such as were used to take over Czechoslovakia in 1948 and Cuba in recent years under the cloak of a Castro? Because Castro in one of his rambling and incoherent speeches has boasted about early Marxist views, the hindsight specialists are now saying that this should have been recognized years ago and action taken. Exactly what action, they do not specify except for those who advocate open military intervention. But thousands of the ablest Cubans, including political leaders, businessmen and the military, who worked hard to put Castro in and were risking their lives and futures to do so, did not suspect that they were installing a Communist regime. Today most of them are in exile or in jail.

  First, I propose to review the main assets which the Kremlin can marshal for the tasks of subversion.

  To simplify a complicated subject, I shall address myself solely to the apparatus of the U.S.S.R. Communist China, it is true, has similar aggressive purposes, but in the decade since they consolidated their position on the mainland, they have had neither the time nor the resources to develop a technique of subversion which is today comparable to that of the Soviet Union. This is one of the reasons for the emphasis they place on direct military action, as they have shown in the cases of Korea, Taiwan, India and Tibet. It may also be one of the reasons for the policy rift between them and the Soviet Union. The Chinese Communists feel that in their own case they cannot now rely on the more subtle techniques activated by the Soviets and would like to induce the latter to support direct military action. So far this is a policy that the Kremlin finds too dangerous, although it is not averse to using “nuclear blackmail” as a threat to intimidate other countries. In this way, Soviet military power influences the psychology of the situation, particularly in trying to soften up countries within easy range of its missiles and air force.

  The first element of the Kremlin’s nonmilitary apparatus of subversion is the galaxy of world-wide Communist parties. Here is Khrushchev’s boast made as late as April, 1963:

  The international Communist movement has become the most influential political force of our epoch. . . . Before World War II Communist parties existed in 43 countries and counted in their ranks a total of 4,200,000 members. Today, Communist parties number 90 and the total number of their members exceeds 42,000,000.1

  1 New York Times, April 22, 1963.

  Most of these ninety parties are outside the Communist bloc but respond to discipline from the parent party in Moscow; in a limited but growing number of cases they look to the Chinese Communist party in Peking. Khrushchev’s total numbers include only those who are actually party members and not the large numbers who vote the Communist ticket—where voting is permitted.

  The most powerful Communist parties, numerically, outside the bloc are the parties in France, Italy, India and Indonesia, but numerical strength is not always the real test. For the purpose of subversion, an effective hard core of dedicated, disciplined members may be a more important factor than actual party membership. Wherever there is an organized Communist party, and that means in about every important country of the world and in many of the less important, there is generally a nucleus of dedicated Communists which can become an effective spearhead for subversive action.

  Unfortunately, also, the local Communist parties in many countries have been able to establish themselves as the major party of protest against the regime in power. Thus they draw to their ranks, not necessarily as party members but as fellow travelers, on such issues as nationalism, anticolonialism “reform,” and “ban the bomb,” a large number of supporters who are really not Communists at all or who know and care little about Marxism and all its theories. At election time, the Communist party apparatus rallies together all these people and many others who are merely seeking a change and naïvely believe that the Communist party represents their best or sometimes their only vehicle for effecting a change.

  Representatives of the Communist parties in the Free World regularly attend the party congresses in Moscow, of which the twenty-second was held in 1961. Here they are received as honored guests of the Congress and often are given special briefings. At the Twenty-first Party Congress held in 1959, the Communist delegates from Latin-American countries were given special attention. They were gathered together as a group and given secret guidance as to their methods of operation. At this particular time, to mislead the rest of the world and particularly the United States, they were told to play down Marxism and Communism and their relations with Moscow and to build their ranks by appealing to nationalism and using anti-American slogans. All this was not lost on Castro.

  The Kremlin has always been willing, within bounds, to permit local Communist parties to take positions which differ from the official Moscow line. Sometimes this has been done by prearrangement with Moscow. On the other hand, the Kremlin has always had to cope with tendencies toward autonomy in other Communist parties. In recent years, as the Sino-Soviet schism has broadened, it has been increasingly difficult for the Kremlin to control the positions of all the other parties that were once subservient to it.

  The tasks assigned by Moscow to Communist parties in Free World countries, and to the other elements of the Communist apparatus, are tailored to the estimated capabilities of the particular parties of “fronts,” to the “softness” of the countries where they operate and to the general program of the Kremlin, i.e., the order of precedence for eventual take-over set by Moscow. For example, in the case of the Communist party of the U.S.A., where they have little hope of converting the country to Communism in the foreseeable future, the object
ives assigned to the Party are relatively modest. They are told to stress propaganda against armaments in general and nuclear tests in particular; against American policy in Latin America; against NATO and our other alliances and our overseas bases. In England, it is much the same; “ban the bomb” is a chosen rallying theme. Such pacifist appeals are used to disguise real Soviet intentions and to soften the defenses of the Western world. In the spring of 1963, the “ban the bomb” movement achieved a level of unusual insidiousness through the publicity it achieved when it gave away the location of certain classified government centers prepared for emergency use in case of nuclear attack.

  In countries where Communism has better prospects and more power, the horizon of objectives is raised. In France and Italy, the Communist party and its allies poll a vote which generally represent between 10 and 30 percent of the voters and, to the dismay of many who mistakenly believed that economic recovery alone would eliminate or at least weaken Communism, the Communists gained over a million votes in the Italian general elections of 1963. Here and in Indonesia, Japan, and in several countries of this hemisphere, as well as in Asia, the Communist parties take more aggressive positions. So far, in Africa, both north and south of the Sahara, Moscow’s activities, both direct and through the local Communist parties, have been misconceived and ill-concealed.

  Communist front organizations supplement the work of the local parties and are used as tools for reaching specialized objectives. For example, the Communists, through the World Federation of Trade Unions and its multiple branches, control the strongest labor organizations in many countries of the world—France, Italy and Indonesia in particular—and are able to manipulate significantly the unions in Japan, in many countries of this hemisphere and in certain countries of Africa and Southeast Asia, where trade unions are in their infancy. In the area of labor relations, the party makes particular use of its ability to “hitchhike” on popular local issues and to exploit them. Sometimes even where they do not actually control a union, well-organized and activist Communist minorities in unions can provide vocal and riotous leadership for mass demonstrations, and force a hesitant majority to engage in strikes and walk-outs, which are not openly attributable to any Communist initiative. Such activity at crucial times may paralyze the economy of an entire country.

  Other Communist front organizations include the World Peace Congress, various youth organizations, women’s organizations and organizations of specific professions. These they try to surround with a degree of respectability and to lure into membership the unsuspecting and the gullible, particularly on their “peace” and “ban the bomb” issues.

  At various intervals, the Soviets at great expense to themselves have held “Youth Congresses,” to which the youth of the world have been invited, but only the Communist youth get their way paid. Initially these meetings were held in areas behind the Iron Curtain—Moscow, East Berlin and Prague—but after that the Soviet managers of these affairs became bolder, and the last two meetings were held outside the bloc, first in Vienna and then in Helsinki. However, they found the climate of opinion so unfavorable in these capitals that they are now reconsidering whether to repeat the experiment.

  Moscow’s directing hand can help to guide and manipulate all these diverse assets of the Communist “presence” in a particular country through the State Security Service (KGB) personnel located in Soviet embassies and trade missions. The KGB, in addition to its regular intelligence function, can direct the activities of the local “apparat” set up in country X to promote a subversive program; they can act as Moscow’s paymaster for the operations of the local party and fronts and keep Moscow advised of progress.

  Valerian Zorin, who later became Soviet Ambassador to the UN, masterminded the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia in 1948 from within the Soviet embassy in Prague. The Soviet embassy in Havana was apparently also the center from which the early phases of the Communist infiltration of the Castro movement were directed.

  Wherever possible Soviet tacticians will maneuver Communists or their sympathizers into key government positions and attempt to penetrate the target country’s military and security structure with the idea of eventually taking them over. In the Allied Control Commissions which were set up in most of the Eastern European countries at the end of World War II immediately after the Germans had withdrawn, the Soviet contingents consisted largely of intelligence personnel. While the British and American representatives, specialists in military government and civil affairs, were trying to create some semblance of order and liberty and to restore the public utilities and the economy in devastated countries like Rumania and Hungary, their Soviet “colleagues” on the control commissions were spending their time working with reliable native Communists. Thus the conspiracies were organized which were shortly to emerge as “united fronts” dominated by Communists and supported by an efficient political police under KGB tutelage.

  The vigor with which such tactics may be applied will depend as a general rule upon the circumstances in the target country: the extent of local unrest and of the local hostility to the regime in power, the capacity of the Soviet Union or Communist China to exploit latent vulnerabilities and suborn local political leaders and, finally, upon the strength of the Communist apparatus in the country in question.

  Operating in countries which have recently obtained their freedom from colonial status, the Communist movement endeavors to present itself as the protector of the liberated peoples against their former colonial overlords. In support of these activities, promising young men and women from the target areas are invited to Moscow for education and indoctrination in the expectation that they may become the future Communist leaders in their homelands. Also they bring to the bloc for training in intelligence and subversion individuals of a different type who on their return will help to direct the local Communist party apparatus.

  As a part of the apparat, Moscow also vigorously uses all the instrumentalities of its propaganda machine. In one year, according to the Soviet Ministry of Culture’s report, the Soviets published and circulated approximately thirty million copies of books in various foreign languages. This literature is widely and cheaply distributed through local bookstores, made available in reading rooms and in their information and so-called cultural centers. In many countries throughout the world, they control newspapers and have penetrated and subsidized a large number of press outlets of various kinds which do not present themselves openly as Communist.

  With some of the most powerful transmitting stations in the world, they beam their messages to practically every major area of the world. They step up their propaganda to the particular target areas which they consider to be the most vulnerable, and adjust it as their policy dictates. An organization known as the All Union Society for Cultural Relations Abroad, which poses as an independent organization but is strictly controlled by the Communist party of the Soviet Union, endeavors to establish cultural ties with foreign countries, supply Soviet films and arrange programs to be given by Soviet artists.

  Then the foreign news agency of the Soviet Union, well known as Tass, a state-controlled enterprise, has offices in more than thirty major cities of the Free World. It adjusts its “news” to meet Soviet objectives in the recipient country. All these instruments of propaganda are part and parcel of what is called the agitprop.

  These organizations and assets teamed together are, in a sense, Moscow’s orchestra of subversion. Many of these instruments, and in some cases all of them, can be and are used under Moscow’s careful supervision to bring pressure on any country they are seeking to subvert, or as a background to prepare for future subversion. They keep the orchestra playing, even to those countries like the United States, where the burying process, even by their estimation, is far removed.

  Such is the apparatus of subversion we face today in the cold war the Communists have forced upon us, and I have added a glance at the history of the immediate past in dea
ling with it. To meet this threat we will need to mobilize assets and apply them vigorously at the points of greatest danger and in time—before a take-over, that is before a new Communist regime becomes firmly installed. Experience so far has indicated that once the Communist security services and the other elements of the apparat get their grip on a country, there are no more free elections, no way out.

  Our assets against this threat are first of all our declared foreign policy, for which the State Department under the President has the burden of responsibility. Second, by our defense posture we can convince the Free World that we and our Allies are both strong enough and ready enough to meet the Soviet military challenge, and that we can protect, and are willing to protect, the free countries of the world, by force if need be; and that meanwhile we will aid them to build up their security against subversion. If the free countries feel that we are militarily weak or unready to act, they are not likely to stand firm against Communism.

  A third element our intelligence service must help to provide: (1) it must give our own government timely information as to the Communist targets, that is to say, the countries which the Communists have put high on their schedule for subversive attack; (2) it must penetrate the vital elements of their subversive apparatus as it begins to attack target countries and furnish our government an analysis of the techniques in use and information on the persons being subverted or infiltrated into local governments; (3) it must, wherever possible, help to build up the local defenses against penetration by keeping target countries aware of the nature and extent of their peril and by assisting their internal security service wherever this can best be done, or possibly only be done, on a covert basis.