by Paul Simpson
However, as many, if not more, of State Security’s operations would be directed internally. Stalin believed that the break between Russia and Yugoslavia was simply part of a wide-ranging imperialist conspiracy to undermine the Soviet power bloc, and agents were on the hunt for conspirators. The Hungarian Minister of the Interior, László Rajk was accused of being part of a grand Titoist conspiracy against the Soviets and was subject to a show trial in Budapest in 1949. An anti-Semitic witch-hunt began after Stalin perceived links between the new state of Israel and the USA, and switched Soviet support to Israel’s Arab enemies. This was to form the last great purge of Stalin’s life, with all Jewish officers (bar a number of so-called ‘hidden Jews’ who were officially part of other ethnic groups) removed from positions of power, and from the MGB. A perceived plot against the state by doctors saw the dictator’s rage vented on those who ‘trampled the sacred banner of science’ — agents of British and American intelligence working through ‘a corrupt Jewish bourgeois nationalist organisation’.
Josef Stalin died in March 1953, and during the inevitable power struggle in the Kremlin, Beria expanded the power of the state security organs under his control, bringing the MGB into the Ministry of the Interior (the MVD). Perhaps unwisely, he ordered a reorganization of the MVD network in East Germany, and in the absence of nearly a thousand officers, an uprising took place that the newly promoted General Fadeykin failed to handle properly.
Beria had overplayed his hand, and on 26 June he was accused of being an ‘imperialist agent’ by the ruling Presidium. He was tried, convicted and executed for working for British intelligence, supposedly ever since he had worked in Baku in 1919 when the area was under British control.
While the MGB still formed part of the MVD, a foreign assassination mission went disastrously wrong. Operation Rhine was designed to eliminate Georgi Sergeevich Okolovich, a Ukrainian émigré living in West Germany. Instead of killing him, however, the assassin, Nikolai Kholkov, defected to the West; he was one of five agents who would transfer allegiance in the first few months of 1954, with defections from the Tokyo and Vienna residencies, as well as two in Canberra in April 1954.
By that time, the KGB had been reorganized one last time. Removed from the MVD, but downgraded to committee status, the KGB was attached to the Council of Ministers to keep it under some form of control — the post-Stalin leadership was determined that it would never have the unbridled power that its predecessors had enjoyed. That wouldn’t stop it from becoming one of the most ruthless intelligence agencies in the world.
5
CAT AND MOUSE
In the press, in Parliament, in the United Nations, from the pulpit, there is a ceaseless talk about the rule of law, civilized relations between nations, the spread of democratic processes, self-determination and national sovereignty, respect for the rights of man and human dignity.
The reality, we all know perfectly well is quite the opposite and consists of an ever-increasing spread of lawlessness, disregard of human contract, cruelty and corruption. The nuclear stalemate is matched by the moral stalemate.
It is the spy who has been called on to remedy the situation created by the deficiencies of ministers, diplomats, generals and priests.
Men’s minds are shaped of course by their environments and we spies, although we have our professional mystique, do perhaps live closer to the realities and hard facts of international relations than other practitioners of government. We are relatively free of the problems of status, of precedence, departmental attitudes and evasions of personal responsibility, which create the official cast of mind. We do not have to develop, like Parliamentarians conditioned by a lifetime, the ability to produce the ready phrase, the smart reply and the flashing smile. And so it is not surprising these days that the spy finds himself the main guardian of intellectual integrity.
That’s the way that MI6 regarded the work of the spy in the late fifties, in this circular by George Young, who was part of the joint MI6/CIA operation to remove Mossadegh from Iran, as well as the abortive coup against Egyptian President Nasser, and would later become Vice Chief of the service. It’s the background against which Ian Fleming created master spy James Bond. It wasn’t a world of glamour or mystique, just people doing their jobs to gain the information necessary to keep the world on an even keel.
It wasn’t just those in the West who saw it that way. Interviewed by CNN in 1998, after the collapse of Communism, East German spy chief Markus Wolf pointed out:
At that stage of the twentieth-century European history, developments at times bordered on a hot war, and that’s why I think that if something positive can be said about the work of the intelligence services, it’s that through their work they may have avoided this going over the threshold to a hot war…
I’m pretty sure that the intelligence services on the whole, and the spies both in the East and the West, tended towards a more realistic assessment of the balance of power than that of politicians and military leaders; so that actions, or even adventurous actions which could easily have led to an escalation [of tension] or even to a war, would have been desisted from.
The CIA were still intent on blocking Communism wherever they thought that it might gain a foothold. Building on their perceived successes in Italy, Iran and Guatemala, they sought to take a lead role in Vietnam, following the 1954 United Nations resolution that divided that country in preparation for national elections in 1956. The difference between their previous operations and working in Vietnam derived primarily from the nature of the country. As the CIA’s own history points out: ‘In the territory south of the 17th parallel, which Americans at first called Free Vietnam, there existed neither a sense of nationhood nor an indigenous administration… The 17th parallel designated a truce line, not an international boundary, and the entirely provisional entity lying south of it was supposed to disappear after national elections in 1956.’ Effectively, rather than backing one side against another, they were trying to create a country.
The CIA had been active in Vietnam since 1950, trying to boost French efforts against the Communist insurgent organization, the Viet Minh, and now they put Colonel Edward Lansdale in as a ‘kingmaker’, much the same role as he had played in the Philippines where his actions had helped stave off the Communist political movement, the Hukbalahap, from taking power. Lansdale told CIA Director Allan Dulles that his goal was to build a ‘political base’ in Indochina which, if successful, would ‘give CIA control [of the] government and change [the] whole atmosphere’. This would be focused around Ngo Dinh Diem, a certified anti-Communist and Catholic who had lived in New York from 1951–53.
The CIA put a lot of effort into backing Ngo Dinh Diem, who became prime minister in 1954. Lansdale helped to train the Vietnamese National Army, and ran a propaganda campaign to encourage the country’s Roman Catholic population to move into Diem’s part of Vietnam, using the slogan ‘God has gone south’.
Diem called a referendum in October 1955, the campaign for which was characterized by dirty tricks. Even though his advisers were convinced that Diem would win comfortably and oust the sitting head of state, former Emperor Bao Dai, there was still massive electoral fraud, with Diem winning 133 per cent of the vote in Saigon. (The US State Department congratulated him on running the referendum ‘in such an orderly and efficient manner’!) Diem went on to proclaim himself president of the Republic of Vietnam — and, at least initially, it did seem as if this was another job well done by the CIA.
Things weren’t doing so well in the heart of Communism itself. There wasn’t a CIA officer stationed at the Moscow embassy for the first six years of the Agency’s life, and when the State Department finally reluctantly agreed for one to be put in place in 1953, the first head of station, Edward Ellis Smith, was seduced by his MGB maid. (He wasn’t well regarded by his peers, ‘his work was not only worthless, but much had been fabricated’, the CIA’s chief of operations in the Soviet bloc division would later comment.) According to the KGB, a dozen embassy p
ersonnel admitted succumbing to the temptations of State Security’s ‘swallows’ before being sent home in disgrace over the next few years. The KGB didn’t need to worry that much about the Americans’ activities anyway: during the building of the new US embassy in 1953, key rooms were bugged during the night when no American guards were keeping watch on the building site.
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The CIA did score one notable success within the Soviet bloc during this time, after a GRU officer, Pyotr Semyonovich Popov, slipped a note into an American diplomat’s car in Vienna in January 1953, stating: ‘I am a Soviet officer. I wish to meet with an American officer with the object of offering certain services.’ With the experienced George Kisevalter as his case officer firstly in Austria and then later in Berlin, Popov proved to be a highly effective asset for the fledgling Agency, providing the CIA with details of the organization of the Soviet military command, the structure of the GRU, and the names and operations of Soviet intelligence agents in Europe. He was also able to alert the CIA to spies entering the US, and it was after the FBI frightened one of these off that Popov came under suspicion, since he was one of the few on the Soviet side who knew the illegal agent’s travel plans. Popov was recalled to Moscow in November 1958 — although the CIA tried to persuade him not to go — where he was able to pass a coded message back to the Agency to say that although he was safe, he had been transferred out of the GRU and was unable to leave the USSR.
It became clear from the standard of material that Popov was passing once he was back in Moscow that he had been turned by the KGB. Although for a time it was believed that Popov was betrayed by KGB agent George Blake, it has also been claimed that a Russian mole within the CIA passed on the information, and that poor tradecraft by the CIA in Moscow meant that a letter designed for Popov reached the KGB. In September 1959, Popov was able to pass a message surreptitiously to his Moscow CIA handler, Russell Langelle, confirming he was now a double agent, and saying that he hoped to be posted to Berlin once more, from where he could escape to the West. His note concluded: ‘Could you not ask your kind President Eisenhower to see if he might cause restitution to be made for my family and my life?’
Unfortunately for him, the KGB decided to wrap up the operation before Popov could be transferred, arresting and expelling Langelle. Popov was tried and executed the following year.
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One aspect of the CIA’s activities that began during the fifties about which much has been written, a lot of it sensationalist, was Project MKULTRA, the agency’s top secret behavioural research programme. Everything from the assassination of President John F. Kennedy to the death of singer John Lennon has been blamed on test subjects either being controlled by the CIA, or struggling to deal with the after-effects. Many of the ideas behind the Bourne Identity trilogy of films were inspired by MKULTRA: original director Doug Liman’s father was one of those responsible for revealing other CIA dirty tricks during the Iran-Contra scandal of 1986.
MKULTRA was set up in response to the belief that the Communist nations were making great steps in the fields of brainwashing and mind control, as evidenced by the ‘voluntary’ testimony being given by captured American soldiers during the Korean War. The thinking was that Western agents and soldiers should therefore be prepared to deal with the effects of such techniques.
The Technical Services staff at the CIA were authorized to begin MKULTRA in April 1953; it became the responsibility of the Chemistry Division, headed by Dr Sidney Gottlieb. As an internal CIA report from 1963 explained, MKULTRA was ‘concerned with the research and development of chemical, biological and radiological materials capable of employment in clandestine operations to control human behaviour’. It had wide-reaching aims — everything from finding ways to make alcohol more or less effective, as required, to creating instantly acting knock-out drops, to locating substances that would help people’s ability to resist brainwashing.
The project tried many different methods to achieve its goals. Initially, hypnotism was tried. In February 1954, Gottlieb was able to implant a post-hypnotic suggestion into a woman who was normally loath to handle a weapon. Under the command, she was told to try to wake another woman up by any means possible, and ‘failing in this, she would pick up a pistol nearby and fire it’. According to the declassified report, she ‘carried out all these suggestions to the letter including firing the (unloaded pneumatic pistol) gun… and then proceeding to fall into a deep sleep… [On waking] she expressed absolute denial that the foregoing sequence had happened.’
The substance with which MKULTRA is most associated is lysergic acid diethylamide, better known as LSD. To begin with, the subjects of the experiments gave their consent, but Gottlieb needed to know how people who were not aware that they were being drugged would react. This would lead to many people’s rights being violated, and in some extreme cases, to death — the most notable case being army scientist Dr Frank Olson, who was given LSD in November 1953 without his knowledge or consent and jumped from a hotel room to his death a few days later. Eventually, as they had with hypnosis, the MKULTRA scientists dismissed LSD as being too unpredictable in its results — although not before many Americans were tested, including the author Ken Kesey, who would become of the great proselytizers of the drugs culture.
Less well known are some of the side-products of the MKULTRA research — including the CIA’s investigations into magic. It was all very well coming up with secret drugs that would have the desired effect, but pointless if there was no way of administering them to the chosen target. John Mulholland, one of the most highly respected American magicians of the time, was brought on board, and applied the secrets of sleight of hand to the problem. His 1954 paper entitled ‘Some Operational Applications of the Art of Deception’ formed the basis of a training manual for agents, and the agency picked his brains further to investigate possible methods of covert signalling.
MKULTRA’s days were numbered when the CIA’s own internal monitor, the Inspector General, reported in 1963 that the controls over its operations were inadequate, and that the moral and ethical implications were too great. Much as many of those who would like to believe that the CIA’s quest to create the perfect unwitting assassin — usually referred to as a Manchurian Candidate, after the Richard Condon 1959 novel, which featured a serviceman programmed by the Communists to commit murder — continued (and perhaps continues to this day), MKULTRA was disbanded by the end of the sixties. However, the revelation of its existence would have a critical effect on the CIA in the seventies; perhaps the best epitaph on it came from Senator Edward Kennedy in 1977: ‘The Agency itself acknowledged that these tests made little scientific sense.’
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Downgrading the organs of State Security in the Soviet Union from a Ministry to a Committee when the KGB was set up in 1954 did not mean that the organization’s power would be any the less effective. This was amply shown by the extremely pro-active stance taken by its leader during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, its first major test — with the Chairman of the KGB, Ivan Aleksandrovich Serov, going undercover himself.
Just as the Americans were concerned about protecting any area into which Communism might spread, so the Kremlin wanted to make sure that all parts of the Soviet bloc were toeing the party line. After the split with Yugoslavia (which didn’t heal after the death of Stalin) and the rising in East Berlin in 1953, the Presidium wanted to nip any potential activity in the bud. Trouble began to foment in Hungary, following a speech by Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev that denounced Stalin’s cult of personality, and those — like the Hungarian First Secretary Mátyás Rákosi — who followed in its footsteps. Rákosi was pressured into resigning but was replaced by a hardliner, rather than by the popular Imre Nagy. A revolution began on 23 October when a crowd demonstrating outside the Radio Building were shot by AVH (Hungarian State Security) troops.
Serov flew to Budapest, but was simply introduced to the Hungarians as a new Soviet adviser, rather than as head of t
he KGB. He was present as the situation worsened — Nagy was brought in as Prime Minister, but this didn’t stop the popular uprising, as workers united with students against the Soviet-backed government. It reached the stage on 30 October, a day after the AVH had been abolished, where Kremlin representatives agreed to the removal of Soviet troops, and Nagy announced he was forming a multi-party government.
Soviet Ambassador Yuri Andropov, later to become chief of the KGB and Soviet leader himself, was responsible for countering this counter-revolution. He ordered fresh Red Army units to enter Hungary, while reassuring Nagy that they were only there to safeguard the security of the units that were supposed to be leaving. On 3 November, the Hungarian minister of defence was invited to Soviet military headquarters — and at midnight he, along with the rest of the national delegation, was arrested by Serov and a group of KGB officers. When the Red Army launched its assault the next day, Nagy made a desperate plea for help before seeking asylum in the Yugoslav embassy. At this point, Serov identified himself to the Budapest police chief, Sándor Kopácsi, who had stood up to him initially, and took open charge of the operation. Unsurprisingly, when Nagy and his colleagues left the Yugoslav embassy believing the guarantees of safe conduct they had been given by the new Soviet-backed government, they were arrested by the KGB, taken for trial. Two of them died, or were killed, during the interrogation process; Nagy’s other colleagues were shot. Nagy himself was taken to Romania, then returned to Hungary and tried in secret. He was hanged in June 1958.
Not long before the Hungarian Revolution, the KGB also claimed another success in Europe, although this time with considerably less bloodshed, and much less negative publicity in the outside world. According to the KGB themselves, one of their greatest foreign coups was the rise to power of the Finnish politician Urho Kaleva Kekkonen, who became President of Finland in 1956, a post he held until 1981. While there is no doubt that Kekkonen had good relations with the KGB, and often acted in a way that benefited the Soviets, it seems far more likely that rather than being an active Soviet agent, he was a very pragmatic man who saw the relationship with Moscow as a good way to maintain an independent Finland. The Soviets certainly assisted him by pressurising other candidates to withdraw from elections against Kekkonen, but the number of KGB and GRU agents who were caught by the Finnish Security Police without Kekkonen’s intervention would suggest that, for once, it was the KGB who were being manipulated.