While talks were continuing with O’Riordan, the illegal PAUL was instructed to explore the possibility of using extremist Quebec separatists in special actions against the United States.24 Given the violence of the terrorist methods employed by the FLQ (Front de Libération du Québec) and its apparent interest in Cuban and Soviet Bloc assistance, the hopes placed in it by the Centre were by no means fanciful. In 1969 the FLQ bombed both the home of the Montreal mayor and the National Defense Headquarters in Ottawa. During 1970 it failed in its attempts to kidnap the American and Israeli consuls-general in Montreal, but succeeded in kidnapping British trade official James Cross and Quebec labor minister Pierre Laporte. Cross was eventually released in return for a promise of safe conduct to Cuba for his kidnappers, but Laporte was murdered—strangled by the chain of the crucifix he wore around his neck.25
Though PAUL probably succeeded in making at least indirect contact with the FLQ, the Centre almost certainly decided that the risks of establishing a direct KGB—FLQ connection were too great. The KGB did, however, seek to cover its own tracks by circulating forged documents indicating that the CIA was involved with the FLQ. On September 24, 1971 the Montreal Star published a photocopy of a bogus CIA memorandum dated October 20, 1970:
Subject Quebec. Sources advise that urgent action be taken to temporarily break contact with the FLQ militants since the Canadian government’s measures may have undesirable consequences.
Questions followed in the Canadian parliament. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau declared that if the CIA was operating in Canada, it was “without the knowledge or consent of the government.”26 Twenty years later the forged memorandum was still being quoted in Canadian publications, even by some academic authorities.27 Further forgeries suggesting CIA involvement with Quebec extremists were circulated on the eve of the visit to Canada by President Nixon in 1972.28
ANDROPOV’S FRUSTRATION AT the difficulty of mounting peacetime special tasks which would leave no trace of the KGB’s involvement was heightened by his mistaken conviction that the CIA was pursuing its own series of special tasks against KGB officers and other Soviet citizens living abroad. In a letter to Brezhnev of May 21, 1970, headed “of special importance,” Andropov gave three instances of actual or attempted “abductions” by the CIA: the unsuccessful attempt to abduct the KGB officer Georgi Petrovich Pokrovsky in Tokyo on March 17, 1966; similarly, Yuri Sergeevich Pivovarov of the GRU in Buenos Aires on March 29, 1970; and the disappearance without trace of a Novosti correspondent in Delhi, Yuri Aleksandrovich Bezmenov, on March 9, 1970.29
Andropov’s allegations derived not from any real CIA program of covert action but from his own addiction to conspiracy theory. Pivovarov had been the victim of an attempted kidnap and assassination by the right-wing Argentinian terrorist group Mano (“Hand”), which claimed to be avenging the kidnapping of a Paraguayan diplomat by left-wing terrorists.30 Most other cases of alleged CIA special actions against KGB officers were in reality cases of actual or attempted defection. Some FCD officers realized—as Andropov did not—that “abductions” were convenient fictions used by residencies to conceal the shameful reality of defection. Such was the case, for example, in the disappearance of Bezmenov. Anxious to save face, the Delhi residency had reported that he had been abducted, and his son (the closest surviving relative) was given financial compensation.31 In reality, as Bezmenov later admitted:
I decided to stay in India to become a kind of hippie and get to now the country. Unfortunately, I started reading local newspaper and found out the Indian police were looking for me. I panicked. I tried to make a deal with smugglers to take me out of the country, but they either wanted too much money or didn’t trust me.
Eventually Bezmenov approached the CIA, who exfiltrated him first to Greece, where he was debriefed, then resettled him in Canada.32 The KGB abandoned the myth of Bezmenov’s abduction after he was seen visiting an exhibition in Montreal in 1974, and ordered his bewildered son to return all the money they had paid to him.33
The conspiracy theorists in the Centre, however, remained convinced that the CIA was out to abduct KGB officers, as well as to induce them “to commit treason” (in other words, to defect). That belief survived until the end of the Cold War. When Kryuchkov became the first head of the FCD to visit Washington in 1987, Robert Gates, then deputy DCI, found it impossible to persuade him that a Soviet scientist, Vladimir Valentinovich Aleksandrov, who had gone missing in Spain, had not been physically abducted by the CIA.34
In his letter to Brezhnev of May 21, 1970, Andropov insisted that the CIA dared to engage in “brazen” provocations towards the KGB only because of “the lack of appropriate measures on our part.” It was, he argued, high time to retaliate in kind and abduct a CIA officer to teach the Americans a lesson. To avoid the risk that a KGB special action might go wrong and become publicly known, Andropov asked Brezhnev’s permission to use a proxy.
The precedent set by the previous use of Sandinista guerrillas against American targets in central and north America.35 encouraged both Andropov and Department V to consider the use of Palestinian terrorists as proxies in the Middle East and Europe. The man chiefly responsible for exporting Palestinian terrorism to Europe was Dr Wadi Haddad, deputy leader of the Marxist-Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), headed by Dr George Habash. In 1968-9 Haddad had attracted favorable attention in the Centre with a spate of aircraft hijackings and attacks on Israeli offices and Jewish businesses in European capitals. In 1970 he was recruited by the KGB as agent NATSIONALIST. Andropov reported to Brezhnev:
The nature of our relations with W. Haddad enables us to control the external operations of the PFLP to a certain degree, to exert influence in a manner favorable to the Soviet Union and also to carry out active measures in support of our interests through the organization’s assets while observing the necessary conspiratorial secrecy.36
Andropov sought Brezhnev’s approval to use Haddad for a special action against the CIA:
It appears expedient to carry out an operation to abduct the deputy CIA resident in Lebanon… and to have him taken to the Soviet Union both as a retaliatory measure and with the aim of possibly obtaining reliable information [from him] about the plans and specific operations of the USA in the Middle East. It is planned to carry out the operation through a reliable agent of the Beirut residency, NATSIONALIST [Haddad], who directs the sabotage operations of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and is experienced in carrying out aggressive measures.
The essence of the operational plan is that [the CIA officer] would be abducted by NATSIONALIST’s reliable fighters in Beirut or its surroundings and would be delivered illicitly to a place which we selected in the Damascus region, where he would be handed over to our operational officers. From Damascus, he would be taken illegally to the USSR on one of our special aircraft or on board ship.
Bearing in mind that the Palestinian guerrilla organizations have recently stepped up their activities in Lebanon against American intelligence and its agents, the Lebanese authorities and the Americans would suspect Palestinian guerrillas of carrying out the above operation. The ultimate purpose of the operation would be known only to NATSIONALIST, on the foreign side, and to the KGB officers directly involved in planning the operation and carrying it out, on the Soviet side.
I request your authority to prepare and carry out the above operation.
Brezhnev gave his consent on May 25, 1970. The Beirut residency then passed on to Haddad a detailed dossier on the CIA officer (codenamed VIR), his home address (a fourth-floor apartment), car (a light blue Ford Comet with diplomatic numberplates), route to and from work at the US embassy and personal habits. It was noted, for example, that VIR regularly went for walks accompanied by his black poodle.
Haddad agreed to select three of the “most experienced and reliable” gunmen to kidnap VIR. As soon as he had been seized, his captors would press over his mouth and nose a mask impregnated with a general anaestheti
c supplied by Department V. While VIR was unconscious, he would be given an injection (also provided by the KGB) which would leave him disoriented and unable to resist when he recovered consciousness. The PFLP would then drive VIR, dressed in fedayeen clothes, into Syria along a route carefully reconnoitered by the KGB and hand him over to Line F officers from the Damascus residency in a hamlet near Zabadani. From there he was to be exfiltrated by the KGB to the Soviet Union.37
One of Haddad’s probable reasons for agreeing to work as a Soviet agent was to obtain arms for the PFLP. In July 1970 Brezhnev agreed to an initial request from Andropov that Haddad be supplied from the KGB arsenal with five RPG-7 handheld anti-tank grenade launchers for terrorist operations. The head of Department V, Nikolai Pavlovich Gusev, and his assistant, Aleksei Nikolayevich Savin, then met Haddad to discuss the handover of further arms supplies which it was agreed to deliver under cover to darkness in an inflatable rubber boat at a pre-arranged spot near Aden. Control of the operation, codenamed VOSTOK (“East”), was entrusted to the deputy head (later head) of Department V, Aleksandr Ivanovich Lazarenko. On the orders of the defense minister, Marshal Ustinov, the arms for Haddad were loaded on an intelligence-gathering vessel of the Pacific Fleet, the Kursograf, at Vladivostok. With S. M. Grankin from Department V on board to supervise the handover, the Kursograf then set sail for the gulf of Aden to rendezvous with Haddad’s motor launch at a point 12°34′ north and 45°12′ east, at 2100 hours local time. As arranged, Haddad signaled his presence with a 360-degree red signal light. The Kursograf extinguished its lights, locked on to the launch’s radio beacon and signaled its presence with two brief flashes, repeated after a short interval. On receiving the answering signal (four brief flashes) from Haddad, the Kursograf launched the rubber boat containing the arms supplies and gave the agreed signal “Load launched” (three brief flashes) twice. Haddad’s launch gave the same signal in reply, then made a “dot-dash” signal twice as soon as it had picked up the arms.
The arms supplied to Haddad consisted of 50 West German pistols (10 with silencers) and 5,000 rounds of ammunition; 50 captured MG-ZI machine guns with 10,000 rounds of ammunition; 5 British-made Sterling automatics with silencers and 36,000 rounds of ammunition; 50 American AR-16 automatics with 30,000 rounds of ammunition; 15 booby-trap mines manufactured from foreign materials; and 5 radio-controlled SNOP mines, also assembled from foreign materials. The two varieties of mine were considered some of the most sophisticated small weapons in the Soviet arsenal, and, like some of the silencers given to Haddad, had never previously been supplied even to other members of the Warsaw Pact. The SNOP mines could be detonated by radio signal at distances of up to two kilometers in cities and fifteen to twenty kilometers in the countryside.
The successful completion of operation VOSTOK was greeted in the Centre as a major triumph. On the recommendation of the FCD, and with the approval of Rear Admiral Radchenko, head of the KGB Special Department in the Pacific Fleet, VOSTOK souvenirs (each valued at 600 roubles) and cash bonuses of 600 roubles were awarded to seven of the naval commanders who had taken part: Captain V. P. Lebedev, commander of the Kursograf; Captains (First Rank) A. G. Shtyrov and E. P. Lopatin; Captains (Second Rank) G. S. Babkov and V. I. Avramenko; and Lieutenant Commanders A. V. Garnitsky and A. S. Klimchuk. The Centre also sent a formal letter of thanks to the Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral of the Fleet N. D. Sergeyev.
The Centre was to make what it considered successful use of Haddad and the PFLP in a number of special actions in the Middle East, particularly against Israel (which will be covered in the next volume of this book). But operation VINT, the attempt by the PFLP to abduct the deputy head of the CIA station in Beirut, ended in failure. VIR varied his daily routine and Haddad’s gunmen found it impossible to implement the original plan for his abduction. During 1971 Department V devised a number of alternative plans to kidnap VIR. One simply proposed that Haddad arrange VIR’s assassination. All failed. So did operation INTIKAM, an attempt to use PFLP terrorists to kill two Soviet defectors, P. S. Branzinkas and his son (codenamed PIRATY, “Pirates”), who in 1970 hijacked an Aeroflot aircraft and escaped to Turkey. The operational file records that NATSIONALIST did not realize how difficult the assignment would be, and overestimated his capabilities.”38
Plans to make larger use of the PFLP to hunt down Soviet defectors were largely abandoned. Andropov’s decision to use Haddad for special actions, and Brezhnev’s approval for it, none the less marked a turning point in the history of KGB operations. Henceforth, other Soviet Bloc intelligence services were to follow the Soviet lead in using, or conniving in the use of, terrorist groups.39
LIKE THE OPERATIONS of the Thirteenth Department during the Khrushchev era, those of Department V were seriously compromised by defections. The most important defector was the Line F officer in the London residency, Oleg Adolfovich Lyalin, an expert in hand-to-hand combat as well as a highly proficient marksman and parachutist who had been recruited by MI5 as a defector-in-place in the spring of 1971. During the six months before he defected in September, Lyalin provided details of KGB sabotage plans in London, Washington, Paris, Bonn, Rome and other Western capitals. In addition to compromising preparations for a number of peacetime special actions, he revealed Department V’s hair-raising contingency plans for operations during periods of international crisis or conflict which would be carried out by illegals, local agents and sabotage and intelligence groups (DRGs) who would infiltrate each target country.40
In Washington, according to Oleg Kalugin, head of Line PR and deputy resident, Line F “did everything from plotting ways to poison the capital’s water systems to drawing up assassination plans for US leaders.”41 Projected sabotage in Britain included plans to flood the London Underground, blow up the early-warning station at Fylingdale, North Yorkshire, and destroy V-bombers on the ground. Some of Department V’s schemes were as bizarre as any of those devised by the CIA in its unsuccessful attempts to kill Castro a decade earlier. One plan revealed by Lyalin was for KGB agents posing as messengers and delivery men to scatter colorless poison capsules along Whitehall corridors of power which would kill all those who crushed them underfoot. Though the British government released few details about Lyalin after his defection, the Attorney General told the Commons that he was charged with “the organization of sabotage within the United Kingdom” and “the elimination of individuals judged to be enemies of the USSR.”
The Centre was caught completely off-guard by Lyalin’s defection and the almost simultaneous action against the London residency taken by the British government. On September 24, 1971 the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Sir Denis Greenhill, summoned the Soviet chargé d’affairs, Ivan Ivanovich Ippolitov (a KGB agent), and informed him that 90 KGB and GRU officers stationed in Britain under official cover were to be expelled and another fifteen, then on leave in the Soviet Union, would not be allowed to return, making a grand total of 105 expulsions.42 Many of the Soviet intelligence officers concerned had been known to MI5 and SIS for some time, but over the past six months Lyalin had confirmed a number of probable identifications and added new names to the list.43 Preparations for operation FOOT, as the mass expulsion was codenamed in Whitehall, had been under secret discussion throughout that time. In a joint memo to the Prime Minister, Edward Heath, on July 30, the Foreign and Home Secretaries, Sir Alec Douglas Home and Reginald Maudling, argued that the sheer numbers of KGB and GRU officers in London were “more than the Security Service can be expected to contain.”44 The horrendous nature of some of the Department V sabotage plans revealed by Lyalin added weight to the arguments for expulsion.
Almost immediately after Ippolitov’s return from the FCO on Friday September 24, the MI5 surveillance team near the Soviet embassy in Kensington Palace Gardens reported that a KGB officer had been seen sprinting across the road from the residency opposite, no doubt summoned by telephone for an urgent briefing on the mass expulsion.45 In the short term Lyalin’s defect
ion probably caused even greater concern than operation FOOT. Over the weekend the Centre informed the Soviet leadership that Lyalin was likely to compromise Department V operations in other countries. On Monday September 27 Brezhnev cut short a tour of eastern Europe for an emergency meeting of the Politburo in the VIP lounge at Moscow airport. Shortly afterwards most Line F officers were recalled from Western capitals, leaving Department V effectively crippled and unable to fulfill its task of coordinating sabotage operations abroad in time of crisis.46 The Centre investigation into the London débécle, which, as was traditional, emphasized the alleged personal depravity of the defector, claimed that Lyalin had seduced the wives of a number of his Soviet colleagues in London, and heavily criticized the former resident, Yuri Nikolayevich Voronin, for covering up Lyalin’s misdeeds to avoid a scandal .47 The head of the FCD Third Department, whose responsibilities included operations in Britain, was among those senior KGB officers who were demoted or sacked as a result.48
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