KGB

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP86M00886R000700200001-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 15
• Document Creation Date: December 21, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 14, 2008
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: June 8, 1984
• Content Type: MEMO

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EXECUTIVE SECRETARIAT
ROUTING SLIP
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SECRET
8 June 1984
MEMORANDUM FOR: Deputy.Director for Intelligence
FROM: Director of Central Intelligence
SUBJECT: KGB
c xecu i':e r +is?ry
84. .2b59
1. Pursuant to our discussion this morning, I'd like to ask for drafts
of two statements. One would be on what we face in the KGB and the satellite
agency that it controls. That subject is dealt with quite well in an article
which I attach by Donald Jameson writing in the Strategic Review
of Winter 1983. I also at ac an intelligence report on the Cuban apparatus.
I would like group and the NIO?to see what they can add in
additional and updated information as well as any additional ideas. The
basic theme of this statement was expressed in a report I sent to the President
in January from which I extract the following:
Special Activities
CIA is the organization in the free world most capable of following
and dealing effectively with the enormous apparatus for propaganda,
political destabilization and insurgency.which is in place around the
world through the combined and coordinated efforts of the KGB, some 70
non-governing communist parties, the many peace and friendship organi-
zations directed from Moscow, plus the associated and coordinated
capabilities of the East German, Cuban, Polish, Czechoslovakian and
Bulgarian and other hostile intelligence services as well as the people
to people movements sponsored by their governments. Add it all together
and it's awesome and skillfully directed. Based on the best available
information, our conservative estimate of the current overseas personnel
strength of major hostile intelligence services totals nearly 7,500.
The Soviet Union alone has an estimated 4,500 intelligence personnel
overseas with the surrogate services of Eastern Europe accounting for
1,500 more, and the Chinese 1,400. In support of these operatives
roaming the world are additional thousands at their respective head-
quarters components.
A recent study of Castro's propaganda apparatus shows tiny Cuba,
with its ten million people and impoverished economy, running a news
service operating 36 offices around the world, transmitting stories
in four languages, and publishing a variety of magazines and news
periodicals that are disseminated to readers in numerous Western and
Third World nations. Cuba's broadcast facilities include eight
transmitters on the island and two transmitters in the Soviet Union.
Shortwave broadcasting alone exceeds 400 hours weekly in eight languages
to Europe, Africa, and the Western Hemisphere, Cuba sponsors 113 friend-
ship organizations throughout the world, not to mention sophisticated
25X1
25X1
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cultural institutions, convention facilities, publishing houses turning
out books and pamphlets distributed in more than 60 countries. The
Salvadoran insurgents, with some 10,000 fighters and minimal popular
support in their own small country, have some 60 representatives
developing support and propaganda in other countries around the world.
The Soviet Union has a much, though not proportionately, larger worldwide
operation. As an example, it spends more money jamming US informational
broadcasts than we spend originating and transmitting them.
2. The second thing I?want is an elaboration of the above in terms of
propaganda, active measures, destabilization, and support of insurgents. You
could also build and elaborate on the material under the heading "Soviet Domination
in Covert Action" beginning on page 26 of the attached article on "The Clandestine
Battlefield."
William J. Casey
Attachments:
(1) Winter 1983 Strategic Review
article, "The Clandestine Battlefield:
Trenches and Trends," by Donald Jameson
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STRATEGIC REVIEW - WINTER 1983
UNITED STATES STRATEGIC INSTITUTE - WASHINGTON,
THE CLANDESTINE BATTLEFIELD:
TRENCHES AND TRENDS
DONALD JAMESON
C.)
THE AUTHOR: Mr. Jameson is Vice President of Research.
Associates International, Ltd., a risk-assessment and political
analysis firm. Some years ago he retired from the Central
Intelligence Agency, where he specialized in Soviet affairs
during two decades of service. He has lectured widely on
Soviet politics, history, culture and intelligence organiza-
tions, and is the author of "Soviet Covert Action" in Intelli-
gence Requirements for the 1980s, published by the Na-
tional Strategy Information Center (1982).
IN BRIEF
The rise of Yuri Andropov and other KGB career officers to the peak of leadership in Moscow has
placed a new spotlight on the question of comparative Soviet and U.S. capabilities in the critical
arena of intelligence and covert operations. A "net assessment" of this arena is prohibited not only
by paucity of available data but also by incomparables: e.g., those inherent in the KGB's role and
sanctified status in Soviet society and policy and in the tightly closed shutters of the Soviet system.
There is no question that in terms of sheer volume of intelligence harvest the Soviets, and the satel-
lite services controlled by them, hold massive advantages over their Western counterparts. These
advantages are redressed somewhat by U.S. proficiency in technical intelligence and, probably, by
better analysis of the overall intelligence yield. As recent events have dramatized, however, the most
pronounced Soviet edge lies in the area of covert action-an area in which, moreover, the United
States still labors under self-inflicted damage.
he remarkable ascent by Yuri Andropov
from Chairman of the Committee on
Security (KGB) to Central Committee
Secretary and thence to General Secretary of
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
(CPSU) has put new emphasis on some old
questions regarding the real place of the KGB
in Soviet society. The answer to the questions
becomes somewhat obvious, at least in the cur-
rent context, when we observe that in addition
to Andropov a career KGB officer has now been
promoted to First Deputy Premier and yet an-
tL';nter .983
other to Minister of Internal Affairs. These de-
velopments hold incalculable implications for
Soviet evolution and for the future of the U.S.-
Soviet relationship. In the first instance, how-
ever, they direct attention to a particular arena
of that relationship: the murky battlefield of
intelligence and covert operations.
The past four decades of U.S.-Soviet strug-
gle have venerated many comparisons of 'burs"
and "theirs": military power, economic strength,
educational systems and even competence at
basketball. Don Quixote was not the first to say
u
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that comparisons are odious; nevertheless the
temptation to make them endures..
In the field of intelligence, comparisons be-
tween the Soviet services and those of the West
have been adduced more or less as asides in
books and articles devoted to particular cases or
topics. Efforts at overall comparisons or "net
assessments" are rare. Perhaps that is so be-
cause many aspects of intelligence work in the
United States and in the Soviet Union are simply
incommensurable, and others require for an in-
formed judgment data that, very probably, are
beyond the reach of any one person anywhere.
Before essaying a comparison, therefore, we
must discuss the incomparable.
Milieu and Missions of the KGB
The Committee on State Security (KGB) of
the Soviet Union comprises the Soviet equiva-
lents, in large part, of the following organiza-
tions in the United States: the Immigration
Service, the Secret Service, the FBI, the investi-
gative organs of state and local police systems,
the military counter-intelligence and security
services, large elements of NSA and much of
the CIA. The KGB's missions include those of
all of these U.S. organizations.
Even this contrast misses the key point. The
KGB is the "sword of the Revolution," the coer-
cive force of last resort in the preservation and
expansion of a vast imperial despotism. Stalin
called the Communist Party machine the "gears"
of the system. The KGB is the foundation upon
which it rests.
Besides Andropov and the Deputy Prime
Minister, one full and one candidate member
of the Politburo, the fourteen-man ruling body
of the CPSU, and three of the top leaders of
union republics have been career "chekisti," or-
served in the equivalent elements of the Min-
istry of Internal Affairs. Three Soviet Supreme
Court justices in recent years have been ex-State
Security officers, as have the deputy chairmen
of the Chamber of Commerce and the Soviet
office for the protection of copyrights and
patents.
There is no public discussion in the Soviet
Union of the budget of the KGB, nor of its activi-
ties, except for its own press handouts and sto-
ries planted in Soviet journals by its own staff
of writers and their friends. Foreign media
critical of the KGB are not allowed in the Soviet
Approved
Union. Shortly after the passage of legislation
restricting the CIA's scope of operation and the
executive orders curbing the collection of in-
formation on American citizens, the Soviet
Union promulgated a law that made it the legal
duty of all organizations and individuals in the
USSR to fulfill any request of the representa-
tives of the KGB or others engaged in investiga-
tions. Although it is perhaps redundant in view
of the other means of coercion available, this.
law makes it a criminal offense to refuse to in-
form on friends and relatives.
Beyond the direct concerns of the KGB itself,
there is the rest of Soviet society, in which every
official act-indeed every notable event-is
considered secret unless declassified. Fires in
buildings, for example-even those in Moscow
and witnessed by foreigners-have been classi-
fied. The same applies to airplane crashes.
Most ordinary government records are not avail-
able to the public. Detailed budgets and popula-
tion statistics and even good road maps are
state secrets.
Finally, there is the leadership of the Com-
munist Party: the Politburo and its administra-
tive staff, and the apparatus of the Central Com-
mittee. The International Department of this
staff directly runs many of the international
front organizations and supervises Soviet in-
volvement in terrorist and insurgent groups, in
addition to communist parties around the world.
The KGB is thus relieved of the task of manag-
ing and funding these enormous organizations.
Much of the horde of newspapers, magazines
and radio stations that serve Soviet purposes
around the world receives support that origi-
nates with the Central Committee apparatus
and wends its way through fronts, and fronts
of fronts, to the groups and media at the end of
the line. And in all of this the KGB plays only
a monitoring role.
Organization for Foreign Operations
Within this huge machine, the KGB alone has
some 500,000 members, most of them border
guards. The majority of the rest are engaged in
the domestic operations of the "Committee":
seeking out foreign agents, harassing dissidents
and religious believers, investigating major
cases of bribery and embezzlement, checking
on the military, etc. Only relatively few are
dedicated to foreign operations: these are
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mainly in the First Chief Directorate, which di-
rects the activities of agents abroad. The total
personnel of the First Chief Directorate prob-
ably numbers less than 10,000,.or 2 per cent of
the whole.
The First's efforts are supplemented, how-
ever, by those of others. Within the KGB, per-
sonnel of the Second Chief Directorate, which
is basically dedicated to counter-intelligence,
put much energy into the recruiting of for-
eigners in the Soviet Union. Since' World War
11, French and Canadian ambassadors, among
others, have been compromised; foreign news-
men by the score have succumbed; tourists and
businessmen by the hundreds have also felt the
arm of the Second Chief Directorate. When
such recruited foreign nationals leave the
USSR, their direction is assumed by the First.
The Fifth Chief Directorate, which deals
with religious and political dissent, has also
been involved in operations involving the coop-
tion of foreigners. Beyond that, there is a direc-
torate for communications intelligence, equiva-
lent to a part of the U.S. National Security
Agency (NSA). Finally, the GRU, the Chief In-
telligence Directorate of the Soviet Armed
Forces, conducts its own foreign operations,
parallel to those of the KGB. The GRU alone is
larger than any Western intelligence service ex-
cept the CIA.
When we add all this up, we can begin to
grasp that the KGB is remarkably different from
the CIA or other Western intelligence services.
In the Soviet Union it is second only to the
Communist Party in authority and has been
hailed as the Party's political arm. It is not :sig-
nificantly restrained by law, although the .`)o-
viet passion for bureaucratic procedures (red
tape in the U.S. vernacular) infests it along with
the resC'of Soviet society. Critics of the KGB
are usually jailed, often harassed, sometimes
murdered and always silenced. The idea of a
Soviet citizen bringing suit against the KGB for
violation of civil rights is tantamount to subver-
sion in the Soviet legal sense of the term.
Soviet leaders, who boast decades of experi-
ence in running the country, are always close
to the KGB leadership and think in operational
terms. Thus, Khrushchev played a direct, per-
sonal role in building up the reputation of the
recruited Canadian ambassador in the hope
that, upon returning to Ottawa, the latter would
receive a high post in the Foreign Ministry. Key
"'tttter 1983
The Clandestine Battlefield
Politburo members probably have a better
knowledge of the KGB than any of the -non-
career Directors of Central Intelligence in the
United States have ever acquired of the CIA.
More facts.could be cited, but the basic point
is crystal-clear. The KGB is comparable to West-
ern intelligence organizations in only a very
limited way, even with respect to foreign opera-
tions. The raccoon and the Kodiak bear may be
related, but they are not of the same genus.
Milieu and Missions of Western
Intelligence Organizations
Western intelligence organizations entered
the postwar era with reputations of glamor and
prestige derived from the exploits, real or fabri-
cated, of the OSS and other derring-do out-
fits. Even though it had little to do with in-
ternal security, exercised no police powers and
was entrusted with basically a defensive mis-
sion, the CIA had elan under the directorships
of Bedell Smith, Allen Dulles and John A. Mc-
Cone-that is, from the Korean War to the end
of the Kennedy Administration.
In that early decade the CIA was an exciting
environment, enjoyed high social status in
Washington, disposed over ample treasure and
suffused the capital with a sense of tough-
minded dedication to enlightenment and patriot-
ism. People were proud to be "there," and their
friends envied them. On matters that really
counted, however, CIA directors and their
agency carried little political influence beyond
immediate intelligence concerns. (My impres-
sion is that CIA directors then-and since-
rarely sought a larger role. In any event, they
rarely played one. By way of contrast, note
the ambitions and careers of Beriya, Shelepin
and Andropov.) It is one of the sharper ironies
of history that Soviet propagandists over the
years have portrayed the CIA largely as the
sinister octopus the KGB actually is, and in
time much of the Western world has come to
believe this deception.
Intelligence Personnel East and West
Tmman
Eisenhower Administrations, many able and am-
bitious men-and some women-were attracted
to the Agency to serve with the OSS hold-
overs, sharing with the latter pretty much the
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same style .and background. There were few in
either category, however, who had serious ex-
perience in peacetime espionage and covert ac-
tion operations. With the rapid expansion of
the service in those days, many from both these
"generations" rose quickly to senior positions,
learning as they went.
Continuity in the Soviet services was cur-
tailed when Stalin killed off most of the great in-
telligence officers from the Comintern genera-
tion during the purges of the late 1930s. The
CIA had no continuity to interrupt. Perhaps
because of that lack of tradition and of an
established place in society, the CIA used to be
prone to self-advertisement, ultimately with
tragic results. When the tide of public opinion
turned against it, beginning in the late 1960s,
its leaders were often ill-prepared to defend the
Agency and themselves. Had the Agency stayed
out of the limelight all along, the anti-CIA cam-
paign might have exacted less disabling con-
sequences.
The visibility that the CIA acquired in the
1950s and 1960s made it a tempting target for
the press and a focus for envy in some elements
of the federal bureacracy that resented the large
appropriations for, rapid promotions in, and
glamorous reputation of the Agency. The con-
sequences of the attacks were most obvious in
the restrictions on operational activities that
placed certain categories of people (e.g., clergy
and journalists) beyond reach of recruitment
or even discussion, marked certain countries
off-limits for covert action and required a clear-
ance procedure for others that virtually assured
that any serious plans would be exposed in the
press before their execution.
Perhaps the most significant of the conse-
quences, however, was in the change in person-
nel. Many of the leaders of the preceding
twenty years left the Agency in early retirement;
others, to some degree, retired in place. The
shift from accolade to opprobrium, from broad
authority and confidence to rigid restrictions
and bureaucratic management, made the game
no longer worth playing. The extent of the ex-
pertise as well as elan that left with that exodus
is a question still to be reckoned.
In the KGB, meanwhile, personnel procure-
ment and training have followed a consistent
pattern since the end of World War II. The
Institute of International Affairs in Moscow,
and from time to time other schools, have been
the service academies for young, and usually
well-connected, Soviet citizens aspiring to
careers involving long assignments abroad in
the diplomatic corps, foreign trade, journalism,
the KGB, etc. Intensive area and language
training has been part of this system since the
beginning. Students are assessed during the
five-year program by the organizations that ex-
pect to hire them, and each is normally ear-
marked by one of the organizations in his sec-
ond year.
The system provides a steady, consistent
harvest of young talent for all its clients. The
KGB's First Chief Directorate receives the cream
of the crop: young men from the families of
high officials who feel as part of a self-con-
scious and self-perpetuating elite dedicated to
strengthening the communist system-and en-
joying the delights of the capitalist world while
doing so. They are cynics, by and large, bereft
of idealism, but loyal and capable in advancing
the cause, not perhaps with the flare of a Rich-
ard Sorge or an Ignatz Reiss, but effective never-
theless.
Strengths and Weaknesses: Technical
Intelligence
Having touched on the fundamental differ-
ences and the qualities of personnel in the KGB
and CIA, we come to the areas of intelligence
activities that are comparable to an extent.
Judging by what is openly said and printed
on the subject, U.S. technology in the critical
fields of overhead reconnaissance and signal
interception remains superior to that of the So-
viets. The commanding American lead in com-
puters and micro-miniaturization, among other
fields, should be reflected in image-enhance-
ment, system reliability and many other key
aspects of technical intelligence collection and
analysis.
In the Soviet Union the strong operational
tradition of the Soviet services that has put such
great emphasis on spies has, until recently,
probably fostered a relative neglect of technical
intelligence systems. The CIA (and other U.S.
intelligence organizations) appear to have
profited in this respect by their lack of experi-
ence in agent-handling. Another goad for ad-
vanced technical operations on the part of the
United States has been the enormous difficulties
involved in running spies in a totally controlled
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state such as the Soviet Union. Conversely, the
very accessibility of the United States and West-
ern Europe to conventional in telligence-gather-
ing techniques may well have held back Soviet
development of technical innovations.
Relative Prowess in Analysis
The other principal field in which U.S. intelli-
gence agencies probably enjoy a lead is analysis.
Again, Soviet tradition and continuity, com-
bined with the abundance of fresh information
available on the United States and its allies,
apparently inhibit the development of refined
analytical and estimative processes in the KGB
-and even, it appears, in the Central Commit-
tee apparatus. The Soviet managers are accus-
tomed to demanding hard facts, preferably in
documentary form? someone's informed guess
about, say, developments in Washington is not
nearly so interesting. The nature of the Soviet
system is hostile to speculation, as well as to an
objective weighing of the evidence. Prediction
of the opponent's behavior, which is what esti-
mating boils down to, seems to be the preroga-
tive of Politburo members.
In June 1941 Stalin had the facts concerning
an impending German invasion, but he did not
analyze them accurately. In 1967, the avail-
able facts in Moscow apparently did not em-
brace the possibility of a preemptive Israeli air
strike against Egypt. The U.S. Government has
thousands of analysts and estimators who are
striving not only to foresee political and diplo-
matic developments, but also to explore the
possible significance of each scrap of technical
data received. The Soviets obviously conduct
technical analysis as well. Given the vastly
greater amount of information on the U.S. sys-
tem avail able to them than vice-versa, they must
know more about us than we do about them.
Yet,-in those cases-and they may be among the
most crucial-where the hard information will
take one only so far, the U.S. apparatus probably
does a better job at extrapolating from the facts.
The KGB lacked, and probably still does, an
equivalent of the CIA's Intelligence Directorate,
where the analysis and estimation are con-
ducted. The First Chief Directorate receives
reports from its agents, evaluates their reliabil-
ity, writes them over in clear form and sends
them off to the Central Committee and Polit-
buro.
? 2Ric'r 1983
The Clandestine Battlefield
Some have alleged that the task of political
analysis is conducted in the Soviet Union by
academic institutions such as the Institute for
the Study of the United States and Canada and
the Institute of World Economics and Interna-
tional Politics. Those best informed among
former Soviet officials known to this author
maintain that the principal function of these in-
stitutions is to assert influence in the outside
world. While esteemed by the leadership as
excellent channels for influencing foreigners,
they are given scant attention as contributors
to the formation of Soviet policy. The Inter-.
national Department of the Central Committee
staff, a group of perhaps two hundred people,
is probably the focus of such political analysis
as is carried on-that and the Foreign Ministry
staff that does Gromyko's homework.
Before leaving this topic, one must note that -
tenure in office among the leaders of the Soviet
Union is so much longer than it is in the United
States or Western Europe-and the amount of
time available really to focus on the issues each
day is so much greater-that the Soviet com-
mand level probably needs much less detailed
briefing. They have learned the game over dec-
ades, not years, and they do not need to be in-
formed of the same thing over and over again.
Agents in Place
When we turn to clandestine operations-
espionage, counterespionage and covert action
-we come to a subject where the data neces-
sary for an accurate assessment do not exist.
Presumably nobody on either side knows how
many agents of what quality both sides com-
mand. We can talk about individual cases that
have come to light, and we can compare sizes
of effort to a degree, but we will never know
(nor should we) how this part of the struggle
is unfolding.
In terms of numbers, the West is outmanned
by large proportions. The total Soviet official
presence in the United States amounts to some
1,200 people. Experience over the years has
shown that something more than half of that
total are intelligence officers in the KGB or the
GRU-more numerous, by a substantial margin,
than the FBI surveillance squads that keep track
of them. In many other countries the same
numbers, proportionately adjusted, apply. To
this one must add the officers of satellite services
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from Eastern Europe and Cuba: in the case of
the United States, these would amount to on
the order of 800. The total numbers thus look
overwhelming-to both the local security ser-
vices which must maintain tabs on the intruders
and to the tiny bands in the Western services
that try to run spies against the Soviet Union.
This "legal" presence of overt Soviet officials,
moreover, is supplemented by a cadre of "il-
legals": Soviet intelligence officers who pose as
natives of the countries in which they operate or
of other benign, non-communist nations. Coun-
ter-intelligence services never know even what
to look for with respect to "illegals." Guesses by
former Soviet intelligence personnel about the
number of "illegals" infiltrated into the United
States every year have ranged from ten upward.
No accessible source has known the figure with
any degree of accuracy, but it could be in the
hundreds.
If, as I presume, there are U.S. operational
intelligence officers stationed in the USSR, their
number at any given time must be less than one-
hundredth of the number of Soviet intelli-
gence personnel positioned in the United States.
The U.S. officers may be one hundred times
abler than their Soviet counterparts; neverthe-
less the circumstances favor the latter. Soviet
intelligence officers can move around Washing-
ton at will, under only slight surveillance. In
the Soviet Union the teams of watchers out-
number the watched by as much as a thousand-
to-one. Although each nation restricts the
other's diplomatic personnel in travel, Soviet in-
telligence officers on the U.N. staff in New York
are hampered by no such limitations.
But then the matter of travel restrictions for
Western intelligence operators in Moscow may
be somewhat academic, because they cannot
.expect to carry on a meaningful conversation
with a Soviet citizen without it being observed
and action against the Soviet citizen being taken
by the authorities. Recruitment of spies is ex-
tremely difficult under these circumstances. Ac-
tually, judging from the cases in which U.S.
officials have been expelled from the USSR for
serious reasons, our personnel there appear to
serve only as communication links, relaying
messages, films and other material to and from
"dead drops- for agents who were recruited in
other countries. Needless to say, the United
States has no "illegals" in the Soviet Union to
perform these types of missions.
Add to all of this the secure base of the KGB,
Moscow-untroubled by. investigative journal-
ists, Congressional committees, Internal Reve-
nue Service regulations, leaking bureaucrats,
bank inspectors or TV paparazzi-and the in-
herent advantages of the totalitarian state over a
democracy in marshalling resources for clandes-
tine operations become monumentally evident.
The first article of the real, but unwritten, So-
viet bill of rights is that nothing shall inhibit
the state in the pursuit of its enemies, authentic
or imagined. When a society sacrifices every-
thing to state security, it certainly can make
spying against itself more difficult. The con-
sequences of this obsession with security need
not be imagined; they are seen in the stultified
life of the average Soviet citizen.
The Pivotal Variable of Access
The ultimate factor in the value of agent
operations, however, is not numbers but access.
As an agent, a colonel on the general staff may
be worth a hundred, perhaps a thousand, pri-.
vates. The CIA and British M16 shared such a
colonel twenty years ago. If there is another
colonel in harness today, I can see no evidence
of it. The CIA also had coopted a Soviet Mili-
tary Intelligence major as a spy, in the 1950s,
as has been revealed in William Hood's recent
book, Mole. Both these men were great sources
of military, technical and political intelligence.
Of a certainty, they were not the only agents of
Western intelligence services in the USSR.
Yet, Soviet intelligence coups in the United
States in earlier periods clearly were more sig-
nificant. The Assistant Secretary of the Trea-
sury for International Affairs, an Assistant to
the President and a senior official in the Depart-
ment of State simultaneously working as Soviet
spies make for quite a trio, and they were far
from alone in that metier in Washington before
and during World War II. All three were be-
lievers in a communist world order. Since then,
the Americans discovered to have been re-
cruited as Soviet agents are of a different type.
Every one of them sought money, some plied
personal grudges or conceits, but none, it ap-
pears, has cared about the World Revolution,
the triumph of social justice, the defeat of im-
perialism or other great causes. Nevertheless
they have supplied Moscow at one time or an-
other with the most sensitive documents on war
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plans and related matters for the defense of Eu-
rope, data on the operations of the communi-
cations interception and code-breaking efforts
of NSA, performance specifications and tech-
nical data on U.S. overhead reconnaissance
vehicles, the identities of hundreds of CIA agents
and personnel under cover, and many other
subjects.
A Systemic Soviet Weakness: Defection
Judging by the available evidence, the great-
est vulnerability of the Soviet security system
to being breached is through the defection of
Soviet officials and those from satellite coun-
tries. The KGB probably has the best security
in the world, but it cannot stop its officers
abroad from deciding not to go home. Over the
past thirty-plus years, KGB officers in important
posts in other countries regularly have sought
refuge in Western countries, mostly the United
States and Britain. In addition, senior Soviet
cfficials and diplomats, scientists and other
major intelligence sources have changed sides,
bringing with them a wealth of information. In
the eyes of its secret agents, the Soviet Union
may be a great place for which to spy, but not
in which to live. Poor Colonel "Kim" Philby of
the KGB must sometimes yearn for life again in
a decently civilized society.
The defection rate. of Soviet intelligence offi-
cers and agents mirrors a broader vulnerability.
Repression provokes resentment. The attrac-
tion of a rich, open society for those from na-
tions steeped in oppression and poverty is great,
even among the oppressors themselves. In my
opinion, the most cost-effective operational pro-
gram the CIA could adopt now would be a better
system for handling defectors, including im-
provements in the long-term planning and
assistance of new careers in the West. More
problems are involved in defector handling than
would appear to the inexperienced, but a more
comprehensive, sustained program should yield
high rewards.
Albeit in the absence of precise knowledge, I
suspect that on balance the Nest, and the CIA
in particular, are not as far behind the Soviet
opposition as the factors of numbers and en-
vironments would indicate. The massive size
of the Soviet efforts surely means a greater
harvest of information, much of it undoubtedly
of first-rate quality. Yet, in terms of the infor-
The Clandestine Battlefield
mation's utility to Soviet policymakers two prob-
lems obtrude. First, if the analytical aspect of
their work is (as I believe it to be) neglected, the
full significance of much of the intelligence
harvest may be lost through lack of adequate
machinery to fit all the pieces of the puzzle to-
gether and fathom their significance. Second,
the very size of the effort may engender preoc-
cupation with quantity of reporting, a curse in all
intelligence-gathering organizations. Perhaps
the better quality of Western intelligence analy-
sis redresses somewhat the imbalance, but there
is no question that in sheer volumes of relative
intelligence flows the West is clearly outclassed.
Allied Services: Cooperation Versus Control
There remain two areas of intelligence opera-
tions in which some comparisons can be made.
The first of these is the use of allied or subservi-
ent services. NATO and other international
arrangements provide channels for liaison, co-
operation and even joint operations between
American and certain foreign intelligence or-
ganizations. At times these relations have
proved of great value, but they have always
been between independent services, no matter
how close the ties.
The Soviet KGB, by contrast, runs the services
of the Eastern European countries and Cuba
directly as, in effect, separate branches of the
KGB. Soviet officers sit in key positions; all
major decisions are taken by the KGB. Thus,
for example, a KGB general is the chief of the
Cuban Direccion Ceneral de Intelligencia-an
arrangement that adds greatly to the reach of
the KGB. amazingly so in light of the record of
twenty years, Cubans still tend to be regarded
in much of the world as independent of So-
viet control. They can approach targets for
recruitment, without raising undue suspicion,
in New York, Paris, Rio de Janeiro and many
other parts of the world. The DGI's principal
missions are not concerned with liberation
wars, revolution or the Third World: rather, its
central task is to garner military and political
information on the United States, with the exact
requirements written in Moscow and passed on
to Cuba for Execution. Cuba does have some
latitude in the type of support given to guerrilla
groups, terrori :ts and the like in Latin America,
but the men in \ioscow reserve ultimate author-
ity for themsel es.
fIt'
d
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In 1981 a Polish intelligence officer was ar-
rested in the United States for running a net en-
gaged in stealing technical information in Cali-
lornia. His mission was very helpful to the So-
viet military, but had nothing really to offer
his own country.
Most recently we have witnessed the appal-
ling spectacle of an attempt to kill the Pope
under the direction of the Bulgarian service.
The Bulgarians have experimented with cer-
tain ingenious weapons for the covert assassina-
tion of hapless emigres from their unhappy
land, weapons that I suspect were designed in
Moscow. Now we must face what so far the
Western press, and Western governments, have
avoided facing: namely that Sofia has no plausi-
ble interest in killing the Pope, but Moscow
surely does. The advantages of having a satel-
lite willing, or compelled, to do the dirtiest work
are substantial.
Soviet Dominance in Covert Action
Finally we come to the area where the So-
viets, through the KGB and many other means,
clearly surpass the CIA, all other parts of the
U.S. Government, and equivalent institutions,
public and private, in the Western world: the
area of covert action.
The Soviet regime began as a covert action
operation, and it has continued to resort to
that approach whenever possible. As E.H. Carr
suggested in The Bolshevik Revolution, propa-
ganda and other forms of opinion-influencing,
most of them covert action in one form or an-
other, probably saved the revolution from de-
struction in its early days. The entire Soviet
effort, from overt propaganda to the most subtle
agent of influence, must cost much more than
the entire budget of the CIA's Operations Direc-
torate: the Soviet effort is estimated at about
three billion dollars annually. If one includes
all the outlays for USIA, Radio Liberty and
Radio Free Europe along with the CIA funds
for covert action (if there are any still), one
could hardly find one billion dollars among
them.
The Soviet covert action program is not only
the KGB's creature; in fact, the direction is
mainly in the hands of the Central Committee's
International Department, with the KGB as one
of many instruments for its execution. The
Central Committee directs and funds the front
groups, and the broadcast and print media. The
KGB infiltrates these organizations to use the
opportunities they offer for contacting agents
and targets for recruitment. It also monitors
the personnel to identify hostile penetrations
and other improprieties.
In addition, the KGB runs a large stable of
agents of influence, persons who can affect
policy or opinion in their own countries, with-
out their connection to the Soviets being per-
ceived. Such agents are active in almost every
country on the globe. Ministers, parliamen-
tarians, military officers, writers, journalists,
clergymen, businessmen and many others have
served in the ranks of the covert fellow-trav-
elers. Often the agent of influence is not re-
quired to collect intelligence, but some in key
positions have combined the two-functions. So-
viet agents, for example, may have played criti-
cal roles in the beginning of the war between
Japan and the United States triggered at Pearl
Harbor. As John Barron pointed out in the Sep-
tember 1982 issue of Reader's Di
t
ges
, giving
names and instances, the current campaign for
a nuclear freeze and the parallel movement for
disarmament are significantly infiltrated by the
KGB and manipulated through other Soviet
channels. It is an effort, partly overt and partly
clandestine, that is unique in history. The only
comparable campaign was that waged by the
Nazis in Europe before World War II. Fortu-
nately their campaign was in the beginning
stages when war cut it short.
Open societies are not equipped to undertake
programs of this scope. The United States did
a fair job in countering some of the major
prongs of the Soviet covert offensive until the
late 1960s. Unfortunately, in 1967 the whole
mechanism was exposed in the press, mainly
by a magazine whose editor allegedly received
financial support from Czechoslovakia. As a
consequence, the effort to maintain organiza-
tions to oppose the major communist fronts
was abandoned. Since then Congressional op-
position and a hostile press have rendered the
recreation of such countering forces virtually
impossible.
The full complexity and ramifications of the
Soviet covert action program would require far
more space than is available here. One aspect,
however, is worth a final note. Beginning with
the attacks on the CIA in the 1960s, which
are documented in Ladislav Bittman's book,
The Deception Cattle, Soviet covert action. allied
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The Clandestine Battlefield
with some critics of Western intelligence or-
ganizations, has waged a disturbingly success-
ful campaign against the CIA, the FBI and for-
eign services in Canada, Australia, Great
Britain and elsewhere. There have been coun-
ter-exposures, of course, that have succeeded in
making the threat of the KGB better understood
in the West. It is noteworthy, however, that
virtually all these efforts have been indepen-
dent, non-governmental initiatives. In any
event (and almost needless to say), the legal
and operational restrictions that have been im-
posed on Western services in the wake of the
attacks on them have found no counterpart in
limitations on the KGB and its subsidiaries.
Comparative Capabilities in Perspective
The KGB and its allied services represent an
enormously more massive intelligence effort
than that of the Western services. It is worth
pointing out that Cuba, for example, hosts a
larger intelligence establishment than does any
European NATO power. The only area featur-
ing an approximate equality of effort is in the
acquisition of intelligence through technical
means. The communist system is also weaker,
but to an unknown degree, in the fields of in-
telligence analysis and" estimation.
In the operational aspect of intelligence work,
the tradition of Soviet intelligence that goes
back to thP Comintern and prerevolutionary un-
derground political and terrorist organizations
has led the Soviet Union to dedicate a much
greater proportion of its resources to intelli-
gence than would be acceptable in the West.
The obsession of the totalitarian state with se-
curity has also led to this hypertrophy of opera-
tions and manpower which provides a uniquely
protected base for the whole clandestine net-
work:-Some commentators trace the origins of
Soviet intelligence to the Tsarist Okhrana, but
this is absurd when one looks at the revolu-
tionary organs that emerged immediately after
1917.
Leninist tradition places political conspiracy
and other aspects of covert action at the front
of techniques to solve any problem, domestic or
foreign. From its inception the Soviet Union
has relied on such methods to deceive, confuse
and thus weaken its opponents in preference to
seeking genuine ag-reement through negotia-
tion. Marxism-Leninism is a universal creed,
and the network of communist parties and al-
lied organizations, combined with the secure
base from which to operate, provide for the So-
viet leadership a uniquely powerful and effec-
tive apparatus for covert action in all its aspects.
Despite the disparity in size and scope, West-
ern organizations-some public, some private-
have at times been able to counter certain Soviet
actions effectively. The CIA used to run a pro-
gram that limited the influence the Soviet Union
has sought to assert, but much of the Western
counter-effort appears to have been dissipated
in the past twelve or so years.
Admiral Bobby Inman, recently retired as a
Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, esti-
mates that since 1965 the United States intelli-
gence effort has been reduced by 40 per cent.
One factor in this decline clearly has been the
attacks on the intelligence community and the
ensuant restrictions placed upon it. The Agent
Identities Protection Act of 1982 and the serious
attention being given by Congress to revision
of other hampering legislation provide hope
that things may improve. Modification of the
Tort Claims Act to provide better protection to
government employees against damage suits for
actions performed in their official capacities and
the removal of certain categories of documents
from those accessible under the Freedom of In-
formation Act are among the goals of legisla-
tive proposals now in Congress. These actions
evince encouraging trends that may lead to the
growth of a real concern among the voters that
the cost to national security of weak intelli-
gence organizations is too high to pay.
Meanwhile, the greatest advantage of the
West on the clandestine battlefield relates not
so much to its own inherent capabilities as to
the other side of the Soviet system's strength.
To achieve the control it has established and
must sustain in the interest of its survival, the
Soviet leadership has stifled ambition, dedica-
tion and idealism to the point where its own
personnel-particularly those professionals
with available windows to Western life-styles-
pose the greatest danger to the system.
Beyond that, the skills and experience ac-
cumulated by Western intelligence services, not-
withstanding past debilitations, should make it
possible to maintain a level of awareness of So-
viet intelligence operations sufficient to prevent
truly vital damage to our security. The greatest
threat they pose must, however, be constantly
tVinter 1983
2r
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borne in mind: that is, a vast and able appa-
ratus for clandestine action in all of its forms
that is considered in Moscow the first echelon
A NOTE ON SOURCES
The best work available on the KGB is KGB by John
Barron (New York: Reader's Digest Press, 1974). Bar-
ron's articles in the March 1982, and September 1982,
Reader's Digest on KGB illegals and covert action are
parts of a forthcoming book on the Service.
The closest Soviet equivalent is Ts.R.U. Protiv
S.S.S.R. (CIA versus the USSR) by N.N. Yakovlev
(Moscow: 1981), an interesting volume that makes
wide use of almost everything written on the CIA in
the United States in the past twenty years. Perhaps I
missed them by reading too rapidly, but I found no
references to the KGB anywhere in the book.
Soviet Covert Action, Hearings before the Subcom-
mittee on Oversight of the House Intelligence Com-
mittee, February 6 and 19, 1980, is a most informative
document.
of attack and the first line of defense for an
empire still dedicated to the goal of global
hegemony.
The Role of Cuba in International Terrorism and
Subversion, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Se-
curity and Terrorism of the Senate Judiciary Commit-
tee, February 26, March 4, 11 and 12, 1982, is the best
source I know on the Cubans.
The five-volume series, Intelligence Requirements
for the 1980's, edited by Roy Godson and published by
the National Strategy Information Center, Inc., New
York, is an indispensable source of fact and opinion on
all aspects of intelligence work. The articles on Soviet
Counterintelligence in Volume Three are of particular
interest. My remarks in this article on Soviet covert
action are largely a condensation of my contribution
on the subject in Volume Four.
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