These top secret internal directives
also reveal that in 1973 there was a sudden increase in
the CIA's confidence in its ability to run and service agents
in hostile territory. Up until 1973, the CIA considered
such contacts behind enemy lines to be a very difficult--and
dangerous--enterprise. Not only did the KGB maintain a full-court
press of surveillance, especially around the embassy, but
it was known to use double-agents to entrap intermediaries
that might be used as couriers. In January 1973, there was
a dramatic change in the CIA's appreciation of this situation.
On January 9th, in a top secret cable, The CIA`s Soviet
Bloc division, code named BK Herald, informed all stations
abroad:
BK Herald can and does run many resident
agents inside the REDTOP countries. We have the capability
to mount and support such operations over an indefinite
period, and we currently are able to exfiltrate agents,
in most cases with their families, from the REDTOP countries
when it is time for them to leave.
In other words, the new CIA took the
position that it could not only recruit untested REDTOP
walk-ins at foreign embassies but, after they returned to
Moscow, it could contact them with impunity, employ them
as "resident agents" (or moles), and then, if necessary,
smuggle them, and their families, out of Russia. ( Volume
53, p.29) This fearless bluster, presumably had been based
on doubts about the efficiency of the Soviet security services--
"The KGB is not 10 feet tall" -- proved to be disastrously
short lived. By 1978, the KGB had arrested a large number
of the CIA's "resident agents" in Moscow, including Anatoli
Filatov, Alexandr Ogorodnik and Vladimir Kalinin, and had
used other CIA recruits, such as Sanya Lipavsky, as provocateurs
to discredit the dissident movement.
The Teheran documents also provide a
surprisingly lucid picture of the basic exercises involved
in espionage. The "first imperative", according to the January
9th 1973 directive, is to discourage any potential REDTOP
dissident from actually defecting. If he does, it will be
known to the Soviets, and they can be expected to take measures
to nullify the value of his information. Instead, he should
be persuaded to return to his post, and maintain secret
contact. In CIA parlance, this is a "turn around". In cases
where the REDTOP is not a position of access, the CIA explains
"we are prepared to guide and assist him in his career [in
the Soviet government], running him in place until he develops
the access we need". The CIA, in other words, operated on
the premise that it could promote Soviet personnel in their
careers in the Soviet foreign office, Armed Forces and KGB
through supplying them with information and, by doing so,
maneuver them into positions where they could steal or intercept
secrets that were valuable to the United States. The idea
is to develop a mole. "Our ultimate objective is to have
the walk-in return to his home country and continue his
agent relationship while working inside"(Vol 53, p.28-9)
These directives also include the nuts
and bolts details of espionage. There are, for example,
step-by-step instructions for recruiting for the job of
a mole a Soviet Bloc official who contacts a US Embassy
( If the officer on duty doesn't speak his language, there
are convenient cards in Russian and Chinese ). First, the
walk-in is told to return to his comrades, and say nothing
to them about the contact. Then, he is handed a chemical
Secret Writing kit [SW] (which allows him to develop invisible
addendum to letters). He is also assigned his "Indicator",
or code word, which signals that an otherwise innocuous-looking
letter contains a message. In return, the Soviet Bloc official
is asked to supply a home mailing address or to address
an envelope to himself. He is told he can" expect a letter
(mailed securely in his own country by a BKHERALD officer)
containing an SW message with instructions two to three
months after his return"(Vol 53 p.30) Next, the CIA sends
a so-called "ops package" to the Soviet Union (or wherever)
"containing covert communications materials, reporting requirements
and other instructions" for the agent-to-be which is "dead
dropped" --IE, stashed in a safe location such as a tree
trunk. Finally, a message in secret writing is mailed to
him telling the walk-in where to pick up this "ops package".
Once he receives this equipment, the recruit becomes a full
fledge spy-- photocopying requested documents, answering
CIA questionnaires, etc and depositing the data in his dead
drop.
Other documents in the archives show
that the CIA did not merely sit around waiting for REDTOP
walk-ins to stray into the embassy. It sets up operations
( "ops") to approach, tempt, compromise and recruit their
diplomats and intelligence officers. To begin these "ops",
U.S. intelligence officers poured through "biographical"
research reports, prepared by U.S. and allied embassies,
on Soviet diplomatic personnel in Iran and sifted out from
them possibly vulnerable REDTOPS. For example, it was reported
that one recently transferred Soviet diplomat's wife had
been President Nikolai Kosygin's mistress. If true, it might
make him amenable to betraying his country. As it turned
out, the report was false (she had merely been Kosygin's
secretary), and the "op" was scrapped.(volume 52, pp32-36)
After a "target" is finally found, the "op" frequently employed
intermediaries, called "access agents" to approach him.
The longest such case involved the use of an American doctor,
who worked with Soviet doctors in a hospital in Teheran--
for the task of befriending the targets. (Vol 52, pp 44-75)
The code name for the agent was "Larry Giel". If the "op"
then went well, the REDTOP was then maneuvered into a meeting
of the CIA recruiter, who would then attempt to trick or
induce him into cooperating. As it turned out, despite persistent
efforts by the CIA and Air force intelligence, these "ops"
against REDTOPS rarely, if ever, succeeded in Iran (at least
not in the published documents). The CIA had more apparent
success in recruiting Iranian diplomats in the period following
the overthrow of the Shah in 1978. An entire volume of CIA
documents is devoted to the intriguing arrangements necessary
for clandestine contacts with two such Iranian officials,
code named SDLURE and SDROTTER (Volume 9)
Beyond such espionage activities, this
archive also provides a measure not ordinarily available
of the quality of the diplomatic reporting. This cable traffic
between U.S. Embassies and Washington-- which is in effect
daily, if unpublished, journalism, was based mainly on conversations
with foreign diplomats from both friendly and unfriendly
nations. In Iran, for example, U.S. political officers regularly
sought out their counterparts in the Soviet Embassy, and,
while treating them to dinner at the Teheran Steak House,
pressed them with questions about Soviet intentions in countries
around the world. The answers were presumed to be the quasi-official
Soviet line. (In return, the Soviets invited Americans to
the Sauna in the Soviet Embassy). (Volume 50, pp 43-88)
These messages from foreign sources,
reviewed in the hindsight of history, show the extent to
which nations used diplomatic contacts to test, manipulate
and control their adversaries. The way the Soviet Union
used diplomatic channels to de-sensitize the United States
to it planned coup in Afghanistan in October 1979 is a case
in point. The Soviets were, up until that point, facing
a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. The Socialist
government of Taraki and Amin, backed by the Soviets, had
seized power in April 1978. But despite over one billion
dollars in Soviet economic and military aid, and some 4000
Soviet military advisors, it had been unable to deal with
the growing Moslem insurgency, was financed secretly by
Saudi Arabia. (Volume 30, pp142-3)
The Soviet Union decided in the summer
of 1979 to suppress the rebellion, which meant replacing
the Afghan leaders (who still retained some claim of independence
from Moscow). In preparing this coup, the Soviets sent a
series of messages to the American embassy, beginning in
June, through both its own Minister, V.S. Safronchuk and
the East German Ambassador, Dr. Hermann Schwiesau. As the
American Ambassador reported in the secret section of a
July 18th cable to Washington. "Over the last 3 weeks, we
had hints of a Soviet assisted internal coup both from GDR
Ambassador Schwiesau and from...Safronchuk". He explained
that Schwiesau had become the "One of our most important
sources of.. Moscow's thinking". The message from the East
German ambassador was that Moscow would not allow the socialist
coup to interfere, even if it meant direct intervention.
He explained: "Safronchuk had been given the task, by Moscow,
to bring about a `radical change' in the Government" of
Afghanistan. Then, spelling out the course of action-- and
even giving the approximate date, he "indicated that a military
intraparty coup, deposing of Amin and perhaps others, is
what the Soviets intend". (Volume 29, pp 180-181) The message
of Moscow's plan to pull a coup was pointedly repeated on
at least three other occasions that month. In addition,
there were reported in the cable traffic numerous instances
of undisguised Soviet military moves to support its intervention
in Afghanistan. (Volume 30)
Finally, the Teheran archive reveals
something about US intelligence against its allies, notably
Israel. The CIA left intact in the embassy archives in Teheran
an extremely damaging 47-page report on Israeli intelligence,
called Israel: Foreign Intelligence and Security Services.
The March 1979 report was not only classified "SECRET,"
"NOFORN" ( not releasable to foreign nationals) "NOCONTRACT",
( not releasable to contract employees) and "ORCON" ( originator
of the report, the CIA`s counterintelligence staff, controlled
who in the American government saw it.) (Volume 11, pp.
1-2) Such labels were necessary because it reveals sources
and methods of Israel's most secret intelligence services--
including Mossad and Shin Beth. The report closely defines
its foreign targets, its tactics, including "false-flag"
recruitments (where Israeli agents pose as NATO officers
and "surreptitious entry operations" (for example, break
into embassies) and its table of organization, personnel,
budgets and liaisons with foreign intelligence services
with nations with which Israel does not have diplomatic
relations such as China.)
The CIA explained "Most of the information
in this publication has been derived from a variety of sources
including covert assets of the Central Intelligence Agency."
And "covert assets" means, in CIA speak, spies, it becomes
evident how the CIA obtained at least a portion of Israel's
secret documents. It used its moles and other "covert assets"
in Israel to furnish it with these documents. They were,
it appears, which from the data t provided, would have to
be Israeli government employees with access to the most
closely held intelligence secrets. These agents in turn
had to be recruited and managed by the CIA, which is the
essence of espionage. So the CIA was therefore engaged in
espionage operations against Israel from 1976-9, when the
report in the Teheran Archives was prepared. And, from this
espionage, it knew about similar Israel espionage activities
against the U.S. The report states, for example, that Mossad
routinely "collects" intelligence in the United States through
its eighth department. (Volume 11, p.17-18)
From a point of view of keeping secret
the legitimate workings of U.S. national security mechanism,
it would have been better if these documents had been destroyed
before the embassy was surrendered. But since these documents
have been published, they cannot be ignored. For just as
the archive of Soviet documents at Smolensk, captured intact
by the German Army in 1941, and subsequently taken from
them by the Americans in 1945, gave rise to an new perspective
on the governmental operations of the Soviet Union, the
Teheran documents provide missing pieces in a multitude
of jigsaw puzzles. (Original draft, Updated )
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