AN ANNOYANCE FOR THE KGB

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000100050003-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 5, 2010
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: April 23, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/05: CIA-RDP90-00806R000100050003-2
ARTICLE AP) ED
ON PACE 2C-_ WASHINGTON POST
23 April 1984
Rowland Evans and Robert Novak
An Annoyance for the KGB
A KGB alert to Soviet agents around i
the world has confirmed the cautious
hopes of an odd couple-AFL-CIO presi-
dent Lane Kirkland and conservative Re-
publican Sen. Orrin Hatch-that they are
getting under the Kremlin's skin.
Kirkland and Hatch 'disagree about
nearly everything, particularly the merits
of Ronald Reagan. But on April 6 here,
they were observed in affable conversation
emerging from,a board meeting of the six-
month-old National Endowment for
Democracy. They and other members of
the board are among the very few Amer-
icas aware that the creation of the new
organization marks belated US. 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-.
meat money. But neither the odd couple
nor the Reagan administration anticipated
the Kremlin's angry response after Con-
gress established the ? endowment last
November.
The flash-alert late last year to KGB
agents coincided witha harsh attack on
the Reagan administration and Kirkland
by Tass, 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.
Tan branded Kirkland as part- of the
"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
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-
gress. 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.
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-Brown-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 US.
"intelligence activity," the endowment's
bylaws put no restraints on efforts to build
and protect free labor unions. .
Congress has voted $18 million for the
current fiscal -year to finance such nongov-
ernmental intrusions into ideological battle-
grounds, with the funding going to $32 mil-
lion next year. Besides Poland, targets eyed
by the endowment include the Philippines,
to shore up opposition parties before dicta-
torial President Ferdinand Marcos' re-
election campaign; Guatemala, to strengthen
a system 6f free political parties to stand up
against extremism of both the right and left,
and Chile, 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 US.-Soviet
balance-military, economic, political and
in what he calls "social movements."
The only U.S. "social movement" wor-
thy of Ponomarev's attention has been Ir-
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.
c1964, News Group Chlesao, Inc
STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/05: CIA-RDP90-00806R000100050003-2