THERE'S A TROJAN HORSE BUILT EVERY MINUTE, PARADING LIES AS TRUTH

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605150007-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 19
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 1, 2012
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: February 26, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
'
! 4
' JIM 26 Feby uary 1985
re's a Trojan horse. built every
parading lies ~ truth
By Elizabeth Pond
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Washington
ISINTFORMATION has been around ever
since the serpent sold Eve on'that fateful
apple.
It has led, -say history and legend. to the
concjuering of a city (Troy, via the Trojan
horse); the defaming of Richard III as a
murderer (by Sir Thomas More, no less,
and then by Shakespeare); the toppling of a gov-
ernment (Britain's Ramsay MacDonald in 1924);
and, more positively, the success of the Allied in-
vasion of Normandy in.1944.
It has led as well to miscellaneous pogroms,
wars, rejection of diplomats, and apathy in the
face of danger.
Most recently it has inspired mutual accusa-
tions of "disinformation" by right and left in the
United States on every conceivable issue. And it is
currently being dramatized in the trial in Norway
of Arne Treholt, charged as a Soviet spy and agent
of influence.
Disinformation, then, is not just historical. It is
Dresent tv av as a svstematized function of the
KGB, the Soviet secret police, as well as Soviet-
bloc secret services. It is present whenever govern-
rnents exercise "news management" that sup-
presses unpleasant facts. It is present when public
relations iri agemaking goes :beyond putting the
best face on a political candidate to present a to-
tally artificial picture of that candidate 1 or to
smear a rival.
Just what is disinformat ion?
Simply put, it is the deliberate planting of false
or misleading political information to influence ei-
ther public or elite opinion. It is not just misinfor-
mation, or mistaken information.. It is deliberately
false.
It is not overt propaganda,.-in which the true
speaker is identified, however outrageous his
viewpoint. It is planted information, with the
source secret or disguised.
It could be especially distorting in our much-
vaunted Information Age, dependent as it is on all
those facts stored in the computers. -
Disinformation is both more and less pervasive
than the man in the street wants to acknowledge
today. On the one hand, the democrat who trusts
in the free market of ideas instinctively shrinks
from thinking he can be manipulated by disinfor-
mation he doesn't detect. On the other hand, the
patriot who is vexed by intractable world prob-
lems instinctively would like to blame all his coun-
try's troubles on this easy single-cause theory of
conspiracy.
The 'first point to be made about disinfor-
mation, then, is that the phenomenon does exist,
and that it can be used to devastating effect, espe-
cially in . character assassination of targeted
.persons.
The second point is that disinformation is no
magic key.. It doesn't begin to explain the icom-
plexities of Soviet-American conflict, say, or pre-
scribe what foreign policies one should follow.
The. third point is that disinformation is ulti-
mately vulnerable to truth, since exposure can
only reveal its divergence from reality. This axiom
might seem banal, were it not for the frequent re-
flex of governments to. fight disinformation not
with truth ibut with counterdisinformation of their
own.
At this point some examples might help-clarify
'how disinformation works.
The classic case in terms .of longevity and, dam-
a90 must be the fake ".Protocols of the Learned El-
ders of Zion." This turn-of-the-century Russian
account of a purported Jewish conspiracy to en-
slave the Christian world was used by Russians to.
blackmail Jews 'in World War I. In 1921 the Times
of London -exposed the Protocols as having been
plagiarized from a .19th-century. anti-Semitic
novel. But that didn't prevent Hitler from picking
them up to help his persecution and attempted
annihilation of Jews.'
Today,- 60 years after the Protocols were de
bunked, they are still sometimes cited as authentic
in the Arab world.
Usually disinformation is less brazen than the
Protocols. The more common variety is a partial
lie tucked into truthful- surroundings to enhance
credibility. Or it is a fact falsely attributed. Or it is
extreme exaggeration designed to mislead by sup-
pressing all contrary evidence. Or it-is a red her-
ring to lure. the unwary away from what they
should be paying attention to.
Highly effective use was made - apparently -
of the partial he in the 1924 election in Britain. To
this day historians are not satisfied that they
know the full story about the letter purportedly
written by Grigory Zinoviev, Soviet president of
the Communist International, to the tiny British
Communist Party with instructions to set up cells
in the British Army. Aino Kuusinen, widow of
longtime Soviet Politburo member Otto Kuusinen,
Gpritii ug
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wrote many years later that there was such a letter
originally but that the public version was a forg-
ery:
What is known is that the letter was printed in
the pro-Tory Daily Mail four days before the elec-
tion - and that it triggered a wave of fear and hys-
teria among voters that toppled Labour Prime
Minister Ramsay MacDonald. As a result Labour
was out of office for the next five years.
The origins of modern disinformation are
disputed. Lenin certainly extolled the virtue of the.
lie. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels was no
slouch at it in Nazi Germany.
.
the 1970s. Israel was apparently willing to practice
disinformation even on its main ally when it
strafed and torpedoed the USS, Liberty, an elec-
tronic monitoring ship, during the 1967 war, then
tried to cover it up through all channels as a case
of mistaken identity. By now the general assump--
lion seems to he that any secret service worth its
salt will engage in manipulation of public and elite
opinion in other countries.
Certainly the Soviets - put enough stock in
disinformation to institutionalize it in 1959 in De-
partment D of the KGB. And a decade later they
upgraded the operation by assigning it to Service..,
A of the First Directorate,. responsible for all co-
AN Nowak of the Polish resistance during
World War II believes his organization in-
vented many of today's disinformation
techniques as it harassed the German occu-
piers . Considerable , testimony,. about
disinformation from the American Central
Intelligence Agency came out in the US
in
9
ISINFORMATION .is, most ef-
fective in a very. narrow con-
text," says Frank. Snepp in an
interview
"It's most effective when it
pertains to something the press
has no access to, or information
which is exclusively-in the intelligence
community: radio intercepts, spy
photos."
Mr. Snepp is a disillusioned former
CIA agent who honed his expertise in
disinformation while briefing reporters
in Vietnam. He became a center of con-
troversy in the United States when he
pub s - wit out CIA clearance -
a book about the fall of Saigon. . -
"You take a fraction of reality and
expand on it. It's very seldom totally at
odds with the facts," Snepp says of one
approach to disinformation.
"We were trying to suggest to Con-
gress in 1974 that more aid was neces-
sary because the Communist threat
The object was to -convince Congress
that-the cease-fire would not hold, he
says.-
"What we did was to:take very scat-
was increasing, so we talked about in-.. tered, questionable intelligence; intelli-
-filtration of Communist forces to the gene that seemed to fit our 'theory,
south and led everyone to believe they pieced it together, and made a mosaic,
had been expanded by 60,000. But we not indicating a lot -of countervailing
neglected to tell -them 60,000 had been evidence. Thoughthere were plans for
killed, captured, or dispatched back. a road, for example, there-was no evi-
It's shaving a piece of reality off." . dente that they were really building it;
Snepp continues: "Di infor-, . they were just contemplating this....
mation in the CIA sense is not false in- I That was disinformation. It wasn't a
ha
th
t is
e grossest k
and that is e kind you can usually
aught out on. When the CIA does it,
it's nothing so gross. It's information,'
which keys off of reality, Like docu.-!
drama. But that's the CIA definition,
which is not to . e an untruth, b to
take a piece of truth-"
Asked for an example from 1973, he
describes feeding a story to the Econo-
mist magazine "to create the impres-
sion that the Communists were trying
to build a third Vietnam on the western
border of South Vietnam, where they
could set up airfields, antiaircraft, a
fortified separate- Communist entity."
vert and overt "active measures" for influencing
foreign opinion.
On a less grand scale the word "disinfor-
mation" has been sufficiently popularized . in
America in the past five years to serve as an all-
purpose epithet. Democrats accuse the Reagan ad-
ministration of disinformation in waiting until just
after election day to discover that the federal defi-
cit is roughly $30 billion larger than previously
thought. Outgoing US Ambassador to the United
Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick accuses political adver-
saries of disinformation in presenting her as
some kind of right-wing extremist."
Accuracy in Media, Inc., accuses CBS and
NBC of spreading Soviet propaganda. Author
Russell Braley, in -a book excoriating the New
York Times, begins his chapter on Vietnam war
reporting with a barbed quote about treason. 'he
Center for National Security Studies sees`a? oten
ti "serious affront to the democratic process" in
a Nicaraguan insurgent's allegation thatCIA o - _
vials have coached insurgents to misrepresent
their policy to the American press and to Con--
gress.
CBS charges that Gen. William C. Westmore-
land practiced deception in reporting enemy troop ..
strengths in the Vietnam war. General Westmore-
land. countercharges that CBS deliberately dis-
torted '- interviews in the program alleging
deception.
So modish has the concept of disinformation
become that it is perhaps time to'pause for an as=
sessment, at least of its internationaldimensions.
. It may be too late to rehabilitate Richard .III -
but it's not too late to help ourselves.,--,
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N May 13, 1981, Mehmet Ali Agca shot Pope
John Paul II in St. Peter's Square in Rome.
In fall 1981 forgeries and other disinforma-
tion that bore marks of the KGB handiwork be-
gan to appear in West German and Turkish
newspapers and were cycled through the Soviet
news media, and. back into the international
press. The disinformation had two aims: first, to ab-
solve the Bulgarian secret service from any links with
Agca, and second, to implicate the CIA in the shooting.
Some of the recycling relied on the "credulity and
predisposition to believe of Western and -third-world
;ournalists, writers, and intellectuals," says Paul
Henze, a former American National Security Council
;staffer. Some depended on "the readiness of reporters to
accept cash or other favors."
At first, the West dismissed out of hand the idea that
`Moscow might be behind the attempted assassination. garians argue .that the Italian and US intelligence ser-
.Even the CIA joined in ruling-out any probable KGB. vices must have primed Agca in jail - a contention the -
i
l
`
nvo
vement, despite Soviet dislike .of the Polish Pope
:Italian judge in the case does not credit.''
and his protege Solidarity trade union.' Such action ` .. E. P.
ri
k
ld
bh
--
s
I oo 111U1.11 wor
a
orrence should 1L become
known, it was thought. Besides, the job had been unpro-
fessionally bungled, and Agca had a record as a right-
wing hit man in his native Turkey.
Two American writers, however, Mr. Henze. and
Claire Sterling _- along with the Italian magistrate in- . think the West should be very careful when
vesti
atin
the crim
d
dl
f
ll
d l
d
g
g
e
ogge
y
o
owe
ea
s that. receiving documents that are not originals.
implicated the Bulgarian secret service (and thereby the That-.-is the first suspicious signal," says
KGB, given Moscow's close control of its clients' secret Ladislav Bittman in an interview?:He is a spe-
services) cialist who honed his expertise m-forgery as
In.1982, when Mrs. Sterling published her findings of deputy chief of the Czechoslovak Disinforma -."
a Bulgarian connection' that had been carefully -camou .,. tion Department before his defection to the `
flaged as a far-right connection, the.. Soviet, media.-at---- : West in .1968.
.tacked her, scoffed at any Bulgarian involvement and- The- Soviets and Czechs, he says, 'hare hun
pressed ahead with the CIA charge: Even after the Ital dreds of genuine Western documents. Most forger-
' ians arrested Sergei Antonov and indicted two other ies today-are actually rewritten originalAnierican
Bulgarians (with the prosecutor Pointing 'a finger-at the documents: [The forgers take] a -document speak-
KGB), the Soviet press-continued its vehement denials I ing about something. totally different; and they use `.-
sorrie -parts - of the document and insert only three
or :.four.:' new paragraphs that= are .,really _.'
incriminating.
"It's much easier because the whole format is
preserved and looks genuine. The language is ve
important.. American governmental language is
very special to bureaucrats."
Besides forgeries ."there is a great variety' of
tactics" in "active measures," Bittman continues.
The Soviet phrase "active measures"', encom-
passes the gamut of attempts to influence opinion
in foreign countries. It includes both overt and co-
vert propaganda.
`.`The Soviets have a great advantage over the.
West- (which of course uses the same. tactics)', a--
highly centralized system makes.it possible to co-
ordinate and orchestrate. these.measures, to use
both the official propaganda channels, agents, or-
ganizations; semiofficial channels, agents, organi-
zations; and the secret channels, agents, organiza-
tions. In the West the [United States Information
Agency], CIA, American press, and hundreds of
business organizations involved in international
relations," all speaking with different voices,
make the US much less effective in influencing
other countries. -E .R
of Bulgarian complicity - and stayed- silent about
Agca's earlier visits to Bulgaria, his notably good treat-
ment there, and his training with Palestinian guerrillas. :
Mr. Antonov was ostensibly an official of the Bulgarian
airlines but was reputedly also a secret police, officer.
Forgeries of State Department cables, lurid rumors
of Agca's sexual exploits, and other disinformation that
supported the Soviets' thesis -continued to circulate in
Europe and formed the basis of reports in the Dublin
Sunday Press, the Madrid weekly El Tiempo, and Ital-
ian and other European newspapers, -Henze says.. The
Dublin articles were expanded into a: book and pub
lished in New York, he adds.
The indicted Bulgarians have not yet been tried. The._
.case against: them rests largely on Agca's confessions
which have been verified in some remarkable details but.
_on other points are inconsistent. The-Soviets and' Bul-=.
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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
;,?rzCLE AFFZAR
27 February 1985
Second of a four-part series
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Egypt.
A forged document purportedly issued by the US I
State Department surfaces in Peru, saying that Wash-
ington has authorized the sale of nuclear missiles to
Chile.
Latin American journalists; at a conference orga-
nized by the Nicaraguan Journalists' Union, discuss
creating a "front against imperialist disinformation in '
Central America."
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor:
By Eliizabeth Pond
nationalist hostilities with neighbors
and by intervention in-regional poli-
tics by more. distant powers, there is
an open invitation to rumor and
disinformation.
Allegations of disinformation,
abound.
A Communist-owned Indian news-
paper implicitly links the CIA to..the
assassination of Indian Prime Minis-
ter Indira Gandhi. _
"American officials" concede -'to
the New York Times that the -US is-'
behind the clandestine anti-Khomeini
ISINFORMATION is. at its most rampa n t m
the third world.
Disinformation anywhere depends- on credu
lity. And-credulity tends.to be high in develop-
ing countries. Politics is often. volatile; civic tra
ditions . frequently include authoritarian . rule,
colonialism, hierarchical relationships, and
fierce familial or tribal rivalries in once-static societies
that have now-been wrenched _oudof-their old certain-.'.
ties. In such an atmosphere truth is not at a premium.
Moreover, the institutions that industrial democra-
cies depend on to protect themselves against disinfor-
mation - including strong opposition parties; a vigor-
ous pluralist- press, and an . educated,- literate..
population are generally weak in the, third world.
When this situation is aggravated by---
Free Voice of Iran broadcasts out of
4
''The Bahamian prime- minister, 'caught in am oiunt'
ing political storm, charges that a US diplomat trig-
gered "a disinformation campaign" to smear his gov-
ernment with allegations that drug :traffickers bribed
Bahamian officials.
American opponents of US military intervention in
Nicaragua and El Salvador accuse the Reagan admin-
istration of disinformation in alleging that MIGs were
being brought into Nicaragua. American, fans of Maj.
Roberto d'Aubuisson say he is the victim of disinfor-
mation in being linked to the Salvadorean death
squads.
Angola alleges that the United States is involved in
Israeli and South African nuclear bomb projects.
US Attorney-General William French Smith ac-
cuses the KGB, the Soviet secret police,.of fabricating
"classic examples of Soviet forgery" in sending threat-
ening, racist letters purporting to have been written by
the-Ku Klux Klan to athletes in 20 Asian and African-
countries on the eve, of the 1984 Olympics in Los.. i
Angeles.
Egypt stages a sham murder of the target of a Lib-
yan hit squad, then when Libya boasts of the assassi-
nation, produces the. "victim" alive. to make a .
laughingstock of Cairo's adversary.
"I think disinformation is on the upswing, on many
level
"
,
says Paul Henze, a former National Security
s
Council staffer who, is now a consultant with the Rand
Corporation. "True, some of the more obvious cases
have been very unimpressive, but it's cumulative.
I
n Turkey there have been some spectacular examples.
ca~
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I think there .has been a considerable effect on the edu.
cational process in many countries. You find [Soviet
forgeries about US scheming and plotting] turning up
in books for universities and schools."
In Latin America there are persistent accusations in
the Brazilian press that the US "is "somehow poisoning
13
``One .active measure ... which ..backfired totally
was.the Ku Klux Klan [forged letter threatening third-
world athletes who were coming to the Los Angeles
Olympics]. These were received.by-any number of
Ol
i
ymp
c committees in Africa.and Asia. Just about
every one of them brought them around to our embas-
Brazilian Indians," says a United States Information. sies for discussion. No one took them really seriously;
Agency official dealing with Soviet bloc "active mea no one.proceeaea to boycott the Olympics."
sures" and disinformation. He believes that "a.lot of Dimitri Simes, a Soviet emigre and :foreign-policy
Union's] Cuban surrogate."
Lucian Heichler, State .:Department chairman of
Washington's interagency, working group' on "active
measures,'' adds, "It seems.to us that the volume.of.
active. ;measures has ' been -on the . increase, m. recent
He characterizes the :repetition of Soviet claims of a,
CLA. connection' to the assassination of Indira Gandhi.,;
disinformation actually has in the third world.
"It's usuall y successful in areas.where there is very
strong emotional anti-Americanism," he points .outer -
`.`so I would be: interested to know-to what extent so-
`called Soviet successes are :Soviet -successes and to ;
what extent it'sjust;normal anti-American stuff that appears.anywhere.,,
and of _ an alleged spy . mission of the
Korean airliner the Soviets shot down
in 1983, as :"psychology based on the
old adage; that where there's smoke,
there's-fire.
"People'. tend to 'think that. the
more the Soviets are able to recycle
and replay -[these accusations in the
third-world press], the more a sticky
residue "of credibility -attaches in peo-
ple's,minds to-the point where they
begin to wonder if it's really so."
.. In _ particular 'disinformation ..can
be devastating in blackballing'.;
targeted individuals.
`A friend. of mine was hurt by
this,''. states one American diplomat.
-
"George Griffin was assigned as political counselor to-
New Delhi but rejectedby the Indian government]. He
wanted .to.'go. =: ie. is a real.India hand. - He was "in..-
Bangladesh`and Afghanistan:.
"Patriot and Blitz, the-pro-Soviet papers'[in-India],
kept saying he had been doing secret work during the
Bangladesh war. Actually they were mad .because, on
trips to Delhi, he was doing briefing on Afghanistan.
This active-measures activity changed the opinion of
the government to which we wanted to send him, to the
detriment of his . career and I think. US-Indian
relations."
Heichler. .. sums up, ? "The effectiveness [of
disinformation] is, I think, on the way down in some
cases. At least I think we have had some telling effect
in our last. two years, in_causing specific active mea-
sures to backfire... Even [in the third world] the
credibility is beginning to go down."
Third-world newspapers are less likely now than a
couple of years ago to rush a sensational anti-Ameri-
can story into print without checking with the US first,
he explains....
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^ of
Planting propaganda
times when it really: works."
As an illustration, the Soviets "can mobilize peace
groups and convince a- given audience of the warlike
intentions of the Pershing II, etc." (though that is not
disinformation -per .se). Or, if they want to convince
someone. of a';;specific intention. of the-.US to
-. overthrow-a government, they can doit if::there is, a.,,
,,
small enough; unsoDhisticated enou
h audien, '
g
-o-away propaganda into jne. late Indira Gandhi was a '"very interesting"
the papers that took then- line, -even though they were example. She was _"a lady brought up in.an anticolo=
identified with [them] niahst,background very she grew.,
"One could often spot an item whic s
h erved" Soviet j gned, she awell me muoe paransoid about
interests in a small procommunist paper which later Western intelligence ore nnto
turned up in a larger sheet in Europe; India; or Latin activities agencies. Shehad-observed their ,
America. And they clearly intended that over a eriod played that Very hand _foey kn o arly. years. The Soviets
of time there would be. a crescendo of replays,''espe y chological basis.. They feed that preconception even
cially in the more credible European news media: The ..when they know its not true"
hope, says the official, was that eventually _
and readers would think . "." . Is there any difference between the West and "Mos-
" `OK, .this is the fact, the . CO in Practicing disinformation in the Mideast? :
truth:' Then its no longer-traceable to this "little paper he means are not- all that different. Maybe the
it originally appeared`in Soviets put a little more effort into. But maybe
The West undoubtedl it. did the same i` - that's essentially because the basic Western message
A more specific procedure might mean
,s so effective
i
favorable materialthat-one's-own side had already in
served into the media:-to="keep it ali ve""by_ contro-
versy. Another might:be . supplying subtle forgeries,
even. to opposition -papers, just to get a detail into
print. The Soviets played such games 1 with Islamic
and pro-Western papers.:. -.
And how well did these tricks work?
"The down-to-earth -answer is that they are not so
'successful in most cases. But -there are times when
something gets accepted as fact on. the analytical
side.. .
`"The more specific, the more fruitful. An effective
ambassador or intelligence operative, for instance,
might be hurt by a disinformation effort.
"The broader the objective, the more difficult?it is ..~
to have a lasting success.:...
"There are three`situations when "disinformation
can be useful- .1. A very secifically targeted situ-a-.-
]
Lion, when the mindset is such that .,it merely rein-
. , forces attitudes. 2.: Constant and long-term repetition
has an impact. 3. When decisions have to be made
about ongoing situations, the balance can be tipped if
there is not much information. These are the only
oviets and the West.
"All ,_~
71
the Mideast news Media
EIRUT in the old days was a "wide-open city,"
according to one knowledgeable Western offi-
cial who served there. "There. were -some 30 pa- pers, . almost all influenced or financed by one
or another international party. .It_was very easy
to find a propaganda outl
t
rid
t
e
a
.,no
tembl
dangerous. Disinformation was hea on both
sides" - ie th S vY
n the overt sense.". - . E. P.
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A Communist campaiLm.
-that backfired __
NE of the great coups of the Czech
Disinformation Department - or so it seemed
at first to Ladislav Bittman - was Special Op- -
eration Palmer.
The year, was 1964. The Czechs had estab-
lished a channel for disinformation in an Indo.
nesian ambassador whom-they were supplying ;
with girls: He funneled to Jakarta the anti-American
documents the Czechs gave him including material
alleging that 'one William.Palmer, director of. the As
sociation of American Film Importers in Indonesia,
was the CIA's most important; agerit in the country.;-
The Czechs "had no, direct::and persuasive:-evi-
d ence that Palmer was .a CIA employee and - could
only'suspect him to-be-one," wrote Bittman; deputy-..'
director of Czech .disinformation operations until his-
defection to the Westin 1968, in his book, "The De-.
ceprrion Game." Nonetheless, the Czechs patched to
gether an incriminating dossier on Palmer.
Indonesia, "torn by economic chaos, inflation, in-
ternal tension,'and hatred for_Malaysia,'was a,ready_
victim . for Communist intelligence-activities;" mused
Bittman in 'the- 1972 book. "It was
possible to _claun
:hat all past, present, and;, future difficulties, real or
imagined, were the result of American-imperialism.".
In December, student demonstrators ransacked the
US Information Agency -libraries-in Jakarta and Su
rabaja..In February 1965 students attacked the-resi-,:!='
dence of the US ambassador...Shortly thereafter the
Indonesian women's movement, bowing to its com-
munist branch, demanded the expulsion of-Palmer. -
- In the meantime the Soviets, impressed by. the
Czech campaign, joined in. General Agayants, head
of the Soviet disinformation-service,. visited.Indonesia
to supervise the next stage of the operation himself.:.,-
In March .a mob. attacked the American Motion
Picture Association in Indonesia: In April rioters
broke into Palmer's (unoccupied) villa. In mid-April
the Indonesian government ordered the American
Peace Corps out of the country.
At this point, according to Bittman, the Czechs and
Soviets forged a report from the British ambassador 1
in Jakarta to London about a purported British- .
American plan to invade Indonesia from neighboring
Malaysia. American and British denials_were brushed.-,.
off by the Indonesian government.'
"For almost -a year, with only the most primitive
means and a few agents, the Czechoslovak and Soviet
intelligence services influenced - Indonesian public
opinion and leadership," wrote Bittman. "The rea-
sons were inherent in the extremely favorable objec-
tive curctunstances. Operation Palmer was initiated
at the proper time. It succeeded in riding the crest of a
wave of anti-Americanism. It corroborated the exist-
ing views.
Western diplomats may think the Soviets and
Czechs were in fact just "riding the crest," rather than
strengthening it, in the pro-Chinese, virulently anti-
American Communist Party. But Bittman and his fel-
low'operatives.considered their campaign "quite suc-
cessful, 7. he. recalled in an . interview. :`.`It stirred up- a kind of anti-American hysteria in Indonesia.'.' -
But then._suddenly. a violent reversal snatched all
the, gains .away; from Moscow, Prague,: Peking, and
the 'Indonesian .Communist Party. =Emboldened -by
the swell of -anti-Americanism, the Indonesian Com-
munists launched an-attack-on their `political oppo-
nents with the tacit consent _of President Sukarno and
killed six generals. The armed forces fought back and
won, and some 300,000 suspected -Communists and
fellow travelers were -slaughtered.-- The Indonesian'
Communist Party, once the largest per population in'-
any non-Communist country, was driven . under-
ground. Sukarno was replaced by the anticommun
GeneraI'Suharto..: Malaysia and Indonesia _became
friends
"In August and the beginning September 1965, Operation Palmier was still being hailed as a tour de force , I
by the Czechoslovak and Russian intelligence.- ser- `.I
O
Ly
c:wuer, no one willingly mentioned it. E. P
6-7
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D ? m by co l Sion
as well: as- intention
ND then there's Vietnam For A
mericans Vieth a story'; rve
,nam is peraps the suecory was not," he went on.a
peme test of information, misinformation and Nor was the fact that the Viet Cong in their all-out news management in the third world in the last push for, the final offensive had upped the village rice
generation. tax and conscri
ti
h
p
on t
atth hd pevi
..eyarously kept
It is in the United Star s tha+ f,:, a relativelvmnriPrnff __ ~. ~ ~L___ _,?
-,,,, 1 agt= - -- -~ -u Ldius auenatecl villagers
- and still simmers. But the feud has always If . this former Vietnam reporter imay be:.allowed a
been bout -the proper int
PersonalnoteI th
erpretation of
ink `that Mesist
a.s Zorhian'"and
kaleidoscopic third-world country and war in which Braestrup are both right but that there is another
any -reporter with a,thesis could always. find facts to level at which Braestrup is wrong. US reporting may
substantiate thatthesis. have `inisjidged the aftermath of the Tet o,
The remote American reader or TV viewhadno ,... When the ffensive
er
National Liberation Front and-North Viet-
way of corroborating' what journalists said and ; naihese got pushed back from populated areas-'b the
when most=of the leading news media m the :U d . '-South Vietnamese and y
turned diinencau pacification ; pro
agame the Vietnam war, conservatives ., - ~ ' But the general media-conclusion that. America
blamed the media.for Vietnam
war. More recently, could not win in Vietnam and therefore should getout
that -controversy' has ' turned .-into, a-dispute about-{ ea conclusion that helped reverse US
policy, still
"disinformation: ". -seems to me to have been correct.
Was there m fact deliberate disinformation on the Vietnamwas a land in which-it was fiendishl diffi
part of American journalists covenn9 Vietnam?One- 'cult to gain. -an overall.. Perspective. My own judgment
time US press spokesman in Saigon Bang.Zorthian is that governmental and journalistic reporting pro
says the skeptical American:_press actually "was more ably b
was distorted: by,deliberate disinformation in in-
ofncial accurate in (US covering-the situation in Vietnam than the ' by sheaf cases - but that It was distorted much more
Q
] bovernmentpublic reports", in the
years by ;. sheer confusion chaos the fog of war, ",and fixed
preconce
ti
p
ons Preceding the Communist Tet offensive of 1968. E
On theother h
d
a
of the ,` journalist Peter Braestrup-(then
Washington' Post, now of the Wilson Quarterly)
indicts the American - press
sips for getting the Tet of eIn-
nom and enon a its " aftmaelfrumath unction,, all
;,of "a wrong. He -term s the- phe rare in the
annals of - American - crisis journalism" Tet was .
widely reported as a-,--.ctorY Braestru I for the Communists
P argues; -while the fact was it set the Corn' back for-sever
al years: Once they made an
all-out gamble and failed; they alienated peasants and
got pushed back farther than they had been pre-Tet.
But Mr. Braestrup argues that it was more a preoc-
cupation with the shock and "melodrama" in the very
streets of Saigon than a guided disinformation that
distorted much post-Tet reporting This Preoccupa-
tion reinforced an "ethnocentric':'. or "hometown"
bias, Braestrup contends.
"As the fog of war lifted an
ebbed d the Communisttide`.j
(during the years .of setback];: the managers of - I
the press and especially of TV put the accent on more
melodrama rather than on trying to update the
tably melodramatic first impressions," Braestrup told
a 1983 conference. "Disaster, real or impending was
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Ri\1J 11ti1V bUIL1Vl;L NUiN11UBC
ARTICr. 28 r'ebruary 1985
Qlp pRGE
- Third of a four part series..
By Elizabeth Pond
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Washington
IVE years. ago. the best seller "The
Spike" created a sensation. Its thesis -
"so explosive it can only be told.: as fic-
tion," as the blurb had it - was that ma-
::-jar American news media-were manipu-;
lated by Moscow
buzzword.. The 'authors of "The - Spike,'
Arnaud de,Borchgrave and Robert Moss,>along I
with a few other crusaders, were out to .make
They-succeeded.
- Congress opened hearings . on disinfor
mation.. The State Department set up a section.
:.to deal with Soviet disinformation abroad. {
Publicity and the State Department-'s -me- =-
ticulous documentation of forgeries - even
steeled the Netherlands, Portugal, and Den-
mark to. expel some of the most blatant Soviet
operatives. A storybook example'-of .the phe-:..
nomenon is on stage now in a Norwegian court
as Arne Treholt - ex-Foreign Ministry spokes-
man, left-wing Social Democrat, : and onetime
political star'- is being tried as a Soviet spy.
All this -fact and fiction ' .
about Soviet disinformation in
the' West has. been much. more ..I
alarming -to 1Westerners than
shadowy intrigue in volatile
third-world politics.
In the 1980s, then, disinfor-
mation in the politically stable.
industrialized world has be-
come an issue in its own right
- but one hard to pin down.
"I'm afraid you won't have
much to write about," sympa-
thized a Western intelligence
official when asked about it. _ .
s-
estwakesu
-He noted there have been
only two ranking Soviet-bloc
defectors who dealt directly with
disinformation in -their former secret-service
jobs: Stanislav Levchenko of the.KGB's Tokyo
"residency" before he fled to the United States
in 1979, .and Ladislav Bittman, deputy chief of
the Czechoslovak Disinformation Department-
before his defection- in the fall of 1968..-
Bittman's information is old; -Levchenko was;:
involved in disinformation only "on the.penph=..
e y" the official observed. Nonetheless, enough is known by now to:
venture at least . an initial .assessment of:
disinformation.in the industrialized world.
First off, there is probably minimal Western
disinformation inside the Soviet Union.- West-
.. ern intelligence : services see little - point in
targeting Soviet public opinion (apart from.
overt radio propaganda), since public-opinion
has so-little impact on Soviet policy. Nor-would -
they normally have any hope of influencing the
Soviet political elite. k -high-ranking asset like
Col. Oleg Penkovsky in the early 1960s is much I
more valuable as a spy than as a persuader.. .
Presumably there is more room for Western.
disinformation in a relatively -open.Eastern Eu-
ropean country like. Poland, with its vigorous underground press and large emigration-Even
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viu" auu Lue sl'uooorn maepenaence west while sparing the Soviet Union-. And they:
of indigenous socia;iolitical movements like seek to gain legitimacy for communists by their,
the now-outlawed-So-hdarity trade union -the association with these movements:;-
West is,, better served by-reinforcing the-Poles'
penchant "for truth ~than'in circulating lies that HOW successful they are -is debatable:
could easily, be exposed and backfire. Bittman detects a "tendenc -to to?'
Y g ~Y
West West disinformation=is- practiced, espe successes" in disinformation services.
dally in buying :placement _of articles in the _ Some signs suggest- the Soviets think.
press. Among Western allies any differences their overt and -covert opposition to the
-over such matters are generally settled:amica- neutron warhead in the late 1970s played
bly, however, and do not raise the same kind of a key role in killing NATO plans for it.
alarms as Soviet-bloc disinformation does. Probably a more., accurate generalization,
The major question in probing disinfor- though, would be that Soviet "active mea-
-.mation in stable industrialized societies,' then, sures" find little resonance when they istray too -
is how effective covert Soviet-bloc efforts are in far from public opinion (as in charges-of germ
influencing opinion in-open Western societies. warfare in Korea) - but that, when they join al-
According to . rough -Central Intelligence ready popular protests, especially in. Europe,
Agency- estimates :presented in -US congres- the communists' strong organizational skills
sional hearings - in 1980 and 1982, Moscow amplify the appeal of these movements.
spends some $4 billion a year on overt and co- . Agent-of-influence operations are best repre-
vert .propaganda,- with some $3 billion of this sented by the one Westerner who has been con-
going to Pravda, Tass, and other overt activi- victed on this count, Pierre-Charles Pathe.
ties and the residual $1 billion presumably go- From 1961 to 1979 Pathe served as a paid So-
ing into. covert disinformation. Georgetown viet agent in France, disseminating generally
University Prof. Roy Godson, coauthor with anti-American and pro-Soviet views in public
Richard H. Shultz of the book articles and in a private newsletter.
`Dezinformatsia" says the So- A more ambitious and convoluted operation -
viets employ 15,000 in "active with agents of influence- has been attributed to
measures." the KGB by Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn
".Active measures" - the and ex-CIA head of. counterintelligence, James
term came into use in the So- Angleton. In this scenario, the whole Soviet-
.viet Union in the 1950s in- Chinese split of the past quarter century is a
elude international front orga- sham - and the Soviets have succeeded : in
nizations, agent-of-influence fooling all Western foreign ministries and most
operations, and forgeries. academic scholars with their pretense.'
Front organizations. straddle In this thesis - presented in, detail in Mr.
overt and covert measures, Golitsyn's 1984 book "New Lies for Old" - the
Godson and Shultz explain. Kremlin has fed a number of bogus defectors
The International Department into the CIA to persuade the US that the split
of the Soviet Communist was .real. So convinced of --_Golitsyn's theory
..
Party "coordinates the activi- were parts of the CIA -in the 1970s. that one So
ties of these organizations," viet defector whom Golitsyn deemed an agent
but -"the fronts actively at- of disinformation was kept in solitary confine-- -.
tempt to maintain an image of independence.". ment for 3'/z years in a -cell-in a building con-
.. The flagship of these fronts is the World strutted solely to jail him until he confessed. -
Peace Council. The longtime president of the In the late 1970s, when CIA directors
WPC is Romesh Chandra, a senior member of Wiliam Colby and Stansfield Turner "discov-
the ..-Indian Communist- Party, one ,,.of. _the. .-_ered this . treatment of a human-being - as:well
-. nonruling communist parties: most-,,:loyal - to as the- paralysis wrougl t in the CIA by the con
Moscow Other. WPC :executives; the authors start suspicion :and search forapresumed_ So-
write,...come-_primarily,, from other. eonimumst .. -uiet "mole" - they-dropped Angleton and sev=
Soviet-backed -guerrilla movements; eyed Golitsyns_ links -with the agency. As the-
.-,Parties and other Soviet-controlled international fronts --. onduct of the Golitsyn camp then l ecainepub=
"Moscow provides-the bulk of the funds for. lic'knowledge, it added to Americas post-Viet
WPC activities;'aithosgh' how- these:- rrange-' ream= revulsion toward 'the--CIA. "Today the
ments_operate is:not completely.cleai;".accord: mainstream of academics (and: CIA analysts)
uig-.to `:Dezmformatsia. dismisses Golitsyn's thesis as wild fantasizing:;
:--The World Peace Council has campaigned As for forgeries, these have been used:by the
against NATO; against American "germ - war- Soviets since soon after 'the 191-7 revolution.
fare" in the Korean war; American, British, The most elaborate in recent years was :"US
and French bases abroad; American- involve- Army Field Manual 30-31B," anentire:manual
ment in the Vietnam war; the American neutron - that urged American officers to spy on their
warhead; and the NATO Euromissiles that be- host countries and in some cases subvert their
gan deployment a year ago. governments. The fake manual first-appeared
The WPC and other front organizations-ea-,- in Turkey in 1975: It was later circulated in
gerly.join in popular Western peace campaigns. - some 20 countries to try to implicate-the. CIA in
Various Western officials have asserted : that the Red Brigades' murder 'of Christian Demo-
such front organizations also generously. fund _ crat leader Aldo Moro in Italy-iri 1978.
these campaigns (though :public-proof has been .. This much is clear then: The Soviets take
skimpy). Front organizations try to steer these their disinformation seriously
a
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may be mother's fr
London and Hamburg
RANZ Josef.t Strauss and the:
magazine Der Spiegel quite . a few West Germans 'think - de-'
serve each other. Both are con-
vinced of their own importance,
and of their --own rightness. Nei-
suffers critics gladly.
ther
Mr. Strauss has long been a hero of
the right and a bogeyman ,of the left. Der
Spiegel's publisher, Rudolf Augstein,--
has been a hero of the iconoclasts and a.
bogeyman of the establishment.
The "Spiegel Affair" that pitted these
two -giants against each- other came in
1962. In the past year it has been widely
presented in -Britain and- the US as a
classic exhibit of Soviet disinformation.
But is it?
Certainly West German conserva-
tives do not refer-to'it as such. And'an -
exploration of the donvolutions of the af-
fair . suggests considerable difficulties',,
with the thesis of disinformation.
...Back in 1962 the magazine had 'been ,
carrying- on a vendetta- against Strauss
for some time. But the article that pre=`'
. cipitated the 'storm was less a personal
attack than :a report on'the, inadequacies
of the fledgling German` armed forces as
displayed in the fall exercises just past.
Conventional forces could not hold in
case of a. Warsaw Pact attack, Defense
Ministry evaluators wrote in internal
studies. This judgment reinforced the
conclusion of an earlier supersecret in-
istry-.report, commissioned by Strauss,
speculating that a preemptive nuclear at-..
tack. by the West might be.needed to re-
duce. West~German losses in a war -
and that Bonn should be able to trigger
that nuclear preemp-
tion if the US lacked
nerve.
The weak about the
fall exercises was given
to Der Spiegel by. a J
north German Army
colonel who mistrusted
Strauss's Bavarians
(and the Air Force) and
thought mistakenly..
th4 the ministry's'
musings- about a pre-
emptive` nuclear" strike
had never been shown
to the West German
chancellor.
After a'-lag' ,of two weeks Der Spiegel
was.charged with revealing -17 official se-
crets. There was a night :raid on the
weekly; Augstein and editors were ar-
rested:: The. main author of the article,...
Conrad Alleys, was in.Spain on, vaca= I
tion, 'and Strauss telephoned the West"
German military_attache in Madrid after
'midnight on. a weekend to arrange for his
arrest. Strauss said he was calling on the
authority of 'the chancellor and the for-
eign minister--(neither of whom knew
about; the,; call) and that the .proper .
Interpol '-warrant was on.. its way. {even
though the international police. organiza-
tion -had .not been contacted). Ahlers was
_ picked .up at his hotel at 3 a.m. and sent
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 back to West Prm a.,