AN ANNOYANCE FOR THE KGB

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000301900019-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 8, 2012
• Sequence Number: 19
• Publication Date: April 23, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/11/08 :CIA-RDP90-009658000301900019-2
ON PAGE~I' ,~,~~ WASHINGTON POST
23 April 1984
.Rowland Evans and Robert Novak
A KGB alert to; Soviet agents around i
the world has ccinfbmed the cautious ~~
hopes of an odd coupl~AFL-CIO preai- ''
dent Lane Kirkland and conservative Re-
publican Sen. Orrin Hatch-that they are
getting under the'Kremlin's akin.
Kirkland and Hatch disagree about
nearly everything, particularly the merits
of Ronald Reagan. But on April 6 here,
they were observed in affable conversation
emer~gin~g from~a board meeting of the sia-
month-old National Endowment for
Democracy. They and other members of
the board are among the very few Amer-
icana aware that the creation of the new
organization marks belated U.S. financing
of open ideological combat with Soviet
communism by private U.S. institutions.
The Endowment for Democracy is in-
tended to promote democracy in general,
and free labor unions in particular,
throughout the world. Private institutions,
not the CIA or Pentagon, will use govern-?
mart money. But neither the odd couple
nor the Reagan administration antiapated
the Kremlin's angry response after Con-
gress established the ? endowment last
November.
The flash-alert late last year to K_GB
agents coincided with a harsh attack on
the Egan administration and Kirkland
by Tess, the official Soviet news agency.
That betrays deep Soviet vulnerability and
suggests the contour of a new Cold War,
offering better prospects for the United
States than are found today in Central
America or the Mideast.
A:n Annoyance f or the .KGB
many of his conservative Republican allies
are one with Kirkland,
The AFL-CIO's foreign operations de-
partment, headed by Irving Brown, for
years has been the only nongovernmental
American attempt at ideological warfare
against the Soviet system. After operating
on the thinnest shoestring for .decades,
Brown now has $11 million as a first in-
stallment in endowment funds from Con.
grass. Thanks to Hatch and Democratic
Rep. Dante Fascell, the other congressional
member of the endowment's board, there's
a lot more for Kirkland where that came
from.
.
e
"corrupt top crust of the AFL-CIO"-
words conceivable for Hatch himself to
throw at Kirkland if the context were do-
mestic. But in the ideological war between
Moscow and Washington Hatch and
Tess branded Kirkland as part
of th
'
Uncle Sam's funding big labor worries
the Kremlin, where memories remain vivid
of Kirkland's bold effort to help Solidarity
leader Lech Walesa and safeguard Po-
land's budding free labor union in 1980.
Walesa and Solidarity's still potent under-
ground remnant are at the top of the Kirk-
land-Broom-Hatch-Fascell list for immedi-
ate assistance: transistor radios, printing
presses, other tools needed for under-
ground struggle. While ruling out support
for "violent" change or the use of any U.S.
"intelligence activity," the endowment's
bylaws put no restraints on efforts to build
and protect free labor unions.
Congress hew voted $18 million for the
current fiscal year to finance such nongov-
emmental intrusions into ideological battle-
grounds, with the funding going to $32 mil-
lion neat year. Besides Poland, targets eyed
by the endowment include the Phclippines,
to shore up opppsition parties before dicta-
torial President Ferdinand Marcos' re-
election campaign; Guatemala, to strengthen
a system of free political parties to stand up
against extremism of both the right and left,
and ChBe, where authoritarian President
Augusto Pinochet is driving labor leaders
into the Communist Party.
But Moscow is the real target, and the
Kremlin knows it. Concern is centered in
the International Department of the Cen-
tral Committee's Secretariat, headed by
Boris Ponomarev. One of Ponomarev's key
functions is guidance for Soviet agents and
propagandists abroad on the U.S: Soviet
balance-military, economic, political and
in what he calls "social movements."
The only U.S. "social movement" woi-
thy of Ponomarev's attention has bean U-
ving Brown's worldwide but money-short
operations at the AFL-CIO. Thus, U.S. in-
telligence agencies, analyzing Soviet inter-
nal rhetoric, say privately that the Kremlin
views all this as Ronald Reagan's "devilish
scheme"-a new, bigger ideological offen-
sive based on Brown's record of success.
When Reagan made his memorable
House of Commons speech in June 1982,
predicting that Marxism would wind up on
"the ash heap of history," the Endowment
for Democracy was not even a gleam. It has
now racked up two improbable achieve-
ments: it brought together Kirkland and
Hatch, who was targeted for a purge in
1982 by the AFL-CIO, and-more notably
-it has frightened the Kremlin.
~E1BB1,New~GroupChfc~o,Ine.
Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/11/08 :CIA-RDP90-009658000301900019-2