BULGARIA'S SPY MASTERS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000404610008-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 19, 2010
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: January 3, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/19: CIA-RDP90-00552R000404610008-0
NEWS WEEK
3 JANUARY 1982
ben 5erry.m... . Aast.n Aw.,,on sue n
A little knock on the door. Had 'we: afairs'turned into murder by proxy?
Bulge's Spy Masters
The headquarters of the Durzhavna Sigurnost. the Bulgarian
state-security police. is a modern yellow structure that occupies
half a block at 30 Genera] Gurko Street in downtown Sofia. No
identifying signs hang outside, and the first-floor windows are
barred. Only an occasional dark car passes through the locked
gates, where a lone Bulgarian militiaman stands guard. The
building looks innocent enough, but it is one of the world's
clearinghouses for espionage and dirty tricks.
Officially, the DS lies buried deep in the Bulgarian bureaucra-
cy. Since 1971 it has been part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs,
which also oversees the militia and border police. The man in
charge is Internal Affairs Minister Dimitur Stoyanov, a former
Army officer who worked for the KGB in several foreign posts
and studied at the KGB Higher Intelligence School in Moscow.
During that time, Stoyanov became a protege of Soviet leader
Yuri Andropov, then head of the KGB.
The DS has seven divisions, including intelligence, counterin-
telligence and military counterintelligence, which keeps tabs on
top party leaders and military officers. Armed units of one
division are charged with guarding President Todor Zhivkov
and thwarting any coup attempts. DS agents deliberately keep
their distance from the Bulgarian elites. "They have a large
degree of autonomy," says one Western source in Sofia. "It is not
STAT
unlike
yip arcs
might not know what they are up to."
Only the KGB knows what Bulgaria's spies
are doing all the time. Like other East Europe-
an intelligence agencies, the DS must submit a
yearly account of its activities to Moscow. It is
also crawling with KGB-appointed advisers,
known as "uncles," who oversee operations,
recruit local agents-and are not above spying
on each other. Most DS men are graduates of
Moscow's Institute for International Rela-
tions. "They spend six or seven years in the
Soviet Union," says Vladimir Sakharov, a for-
mer KGB agent. "They have a lot of friends
among the KGB. They feel obliged."
Trust In other Eastern-bloc agencies, the
degree of Soviet control varies. But in the DS,
Soviet influence remains powerful and con-
stant, reinforced by the Kremlin's close rela-
tionship with the Bulgarian government. It
may be one measure of Soviet trust that-the DS
does have a small margin of independence,
particularly in the Balkans. But the KGB re-
tains a clear, final say on all DS operations with
international repercussions.
A hit on the pope wotild surely have fit that
particular category. The Soviets themselves have a history of
"wet affairs"-their term for clandestine killings. But the
KGB is believed to have renounced direct involvement in
murder in the early 1960s, after a KGB agent named Bogdan
Stashinsky defected to the West and began telling the world
how the Soviets carried out assassinations. At that point, the
Soviets may have chosen to give hit lists to subcontractors. One
KGB defector, Yuri Nosenko, told the CIA that the Soviets
did not decide to give up wet affairs-only to begin using
foreigners as proxies.
If the Soviets did want front men for an attempt on the pope,
they would have had strong reasons for choosing the Bulgarians.
The DS has had recent experience in wet affairs-including the
1978 murder of Bulgarian defector Georgi Markov, who was
killed in London by a poison pellet fired from an umbrella. Of all
the satellite agencies the DS is the most loyal to Moscow, has had
the fewest defections and would offer the lowest risk of leaks.
Even so, many Western intelligence experts consider the DS in-
ept and think that if the Soviets had wanted to order such a del-
icate mission they would have called on more sophisticated East
German or Czech agents. At this point, the DS would probably
like to encourage such skepticism. But if Bulgaria's spies have
suddenly become the object of worldwide suspicion, they clearly
haveonly their past record-,and themselves-to blame-
MARK W}flTAKER with ZOFU SMARDZ in Sofia and
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/19: CIA-RDP90-00552R000404610008-0