Dezinformatsia: Active Measures in Soviet Strategy

...One such technique is the use of forged documents which, after dissemination, lead to false news stories in the international media...

...In drawing on his secret sources to traverse this still largely unexplored terrain, Barton demonstrated a courageous willingness to take on a subject that many in the West, finding it too painful to consider, simply reject--sometimes mockingly...

...It is Sir James' position that in pursuance of these policies, the Soviets made a conscious decision to seek to discredit the West German politician Dr...

...When Barron focused primarily on Soviet espionage, as in his first book, he was not engaged in a particularly shocking task...

...Dezinformatsia authors Shultz, a widely recognized Tufts University expert on warfare, and Godson of Georgetown University, perhaps the leading Activist with Political /Direct Mail experience...

...Wilmers, it should be noted, continues to insist that the magazine remains "not conscious of having been used in the manner mentioned by Sir James Goldsmith...

...And there are also "agents of influence"-men and women, frequently working either in journalism or in government, who carry out their duties with Soviet needs in mind...

...It is in KGB Today that the full, fascinating, and distressing stories of Levchenko and other major defectors are recounted...

...Don't believe it for a moment...

...munist press--the value of which is limited since the sources are publicly known--there is a major and continuous effort to plant propaganda covertly through well-placed agents of influence who themselves may be either conscious or unconscious of the role that they are playing...

...others sophisticated alterations of genuine documents-have found their way into establishment media outlets...

...In part, perhaps, because the entire matter is frightening...

...scholarship...

...S h u l t z and Godson, and John Barron, have labored long and hard to alter the climate of opinion in the West with regard to d i s i n f o r m a t i o n . Another valiant soldier in this effort is Sir James Goldsmith, the AngloFrench publisher of L"Express...

...John Barron, a senior editor at Reader's Digest, is one such journalist...

...It should also be said, however, that many of the most effective ones do...

...During the campaign to block the deployment of American nuclear missiles in Europe late last year, a Soviet diplomat is alleged to have boasted to a Dutch journalist: " I f Moscow decides that 50,000 protestors should take to the streets of Amsterdam this week, then 50,000 there will be...

...Ed...

...Why this ostrich-like disposition...

...But just now, in October, the Spiegel publishers have withdrawn the action...

...In the same way that two centuries ago the mercantilists misunderstood wealth to be gold or natural resources, the current crop of economists-professional doomsayers--locate it in infrastructures, national industrial policy, anything but the people who create it...

...It was immediately picked up by Tass and relayed around the world...

...It seems that the Spiegel management is no longer anxious to litigate this issue...

...Involved here, also, is a degree of gullibility--and embarrassment...

...that the German magazine was a victim of KGB intrigue--of disinformation...

...Wilmers, representing the magazine, is himself disposed to concede that "Soviet intelligence seeks to operate in the way stated by my learned friend" (Lord Rawlinson...

...Many rank-and-file members of such groups--the World Peace Council, for example--do not realize that their activities are orchestrated by the Soviets, or by Moscow's domestic surrogates...

...Send resume to...

...Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick in which she predicted the "balkanization" of India, and the eventual reduction of India's influence in the Third World, were published first in a series of Ind i a n newspapers, then later throughout the Third World...

...He meant to say, andsaid, that Der Spiegel might well have been penetrated, used...

...Shultz and Godson interviewed both Levchenko and Bittman in great depth...

...Strauss' political views and regularly pnblished articles expressing that opposition...

...Activists working to elect conservatives in 1984 election are encouraged to apply...

...and other Western intelligence agencies, to come to terms more fully with this element in our adversary's arsenal, determined--and intellectually courageous--scholars and journalists are another essential ingredient...

...and several others--we know an enormous amount more than we did, say, a decade ago...

...Barron's "recent work, KGB Today: The Hidden Hand,' a successor volume to KGB: The Secret Work oJ Soviet Secret Agents, established him as one of the foremost students of Soviet intelligence in the free world...

...But disinformation is another mat'Reviewed by Curtis Cate in the October 1983 American Spectator...

...No one disputes the fact that both "we" and "they" undertake espionage...

...So long as Goldsmith is willing to depict the magazine only as an unhappy, unwitting victim--hardly a flattering circumstance--Mr...

...academic authority in America on the field of intelligence, display a kindred courage in treating a subject which many would wish to deny as worthy of scholarly inquiry...

...At that time, our understanding of this area of endeavor amounted to roughly zero...

...This was not empty arrogance...

...State Department cable, containing "remarks" by U.N...

...Spiegel sought "to refute any such suggestions and to ensure that their journalistic and editorial independence is not in question...

...It seems fairly obvious that Goldsmith never suggested any of the above...

...Before charges of "redbaiting" and "McCarthyism" are hurled, let it be said that many, if not most, political groups engaged in combating American foreign policy have no ties whatever to the Soviets or their allies...

...Espionage, it is well to note, does not fall into the category described here...

...economy is in danger of "overheating...

...The media thus used are not intended to realize that they are participating in KGB orchestrated campaigns...

...Goldmith's triumph could not have been more complete...

...Sir James's counsel, Lord Rawlinson, Q.C., offered an eloquent and concise statement of Goldsmith's stance: Sir James' position is that in pursuance of their policies, the Soviets conduct massive and continuous propaganda campaigns both OVERT and COVERT--the former through overtly controlled Communist media throughout the world, the latter consisting of the dissemination and planting of stories, many of which are based on forgeries and deliberate falsehoods known as "disinformation . . . . " In pursuance of their aims the Soviets make use of unwitting western media...

...And here, perhaps, is the thorniest aspect of the d i s i n f o r m a t i o n phenomenon...

...acknowledging the errors of the Cultural Revolution, the ostensible will envisaged a return to some variant of Sino-Soviet alliance...

...Thus for our purposes, a given front organization is best described as a disinformation phenomenon, as would be a forged State Department cable...

...It is not a happy thing for journalists to recognize, for example, that since the mid-1970s, three to four KGB forgeries a year--some manufactured out of whole cloth...

...In 1975, the KGB produced a "last will and testament" of the late Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai...

...And right now, a Greek journalist, Paul Anastasi, is appealing a libel judgment against him stemming from a book in which he argued that the reason Ethnos, the most profitable daily in Greece, frequently assumes an editorial posture akin to that of Pravda, is that its start-up in 1981 was aided by KGB funds--and that its publisher, George Bobulas, is a Soviet "agent of influence...

...Dezinformatsia demonstrates that certain methods of deception are central--not incidental-elements of Soviet statecraft...

...More than three years ago, Goldsmith spoke at a House of Commons meeting of the Conservative party's Media Committee...

...46 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1984...

...controlled nuclear weapons so as to counterbalance the growing Soviet threat...

...Others, including Richard H. Shultz, Jr...

...What Barton, the master story-teller, and Shultz and Godson, careful conservative political scientists, endeavor to expose is a realm of deception in which much--if not most--is legal or quasi-legal (albeit dishonorable...

...Consequently, those entrepreneurs so vividly portrayed here are more than just interesting cases in the recovery...

...He intended to demonstrate, first, that disinformation, as an aspect of Soviet statecraft, was a concrete reality...

...It is Sir James' position that against that background the Soviets decided to make use in that campaign of the fact that Der Spiegel was well known as opposing Dr...

...they are the recovery...

...Disinformation encompasses deceptions the other side may easily practice on us--making use, for example, of a free press--but which we, for obvious reasons, never will be able to practice in kind on them...

...Franz Josef Strauss was Minister of Defence in Chancellor Adenauer's government when he made a speech in the Bundestag calling for the deployment on German soil of U.S...

...But for the public at large, and even for U.S...

...In this lucid study, they analyze these aspects of Soviet foreign policy with the precision and rigor of top-flight THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1984 45 ter...

...And disinformation, it would seem, is less and less easily to be characterized as a paranoid fantasy nurtured by those whom the Daily World tends to describe as "anti-Sovieteers...

...This forgery, designed to sow unrest in Japan about Tokyo's developing relationships with China, was published in the Sankei Shimbun, a leading moderate (nonleftist) Japanese daily...

...For we are dealing not only with the planting of forged documents, but also with large organizations that are certainly legal and "legitimate," notwithstanding their hidden agendas--and with influential journalists and journals, also rewarded with genuine scoops in exchange for services...

...S h u l t z and Godson are pioneers...

...Some two years ago, photos of a purported...

...The world of disinformation is necessarily peppered with somewhat vague terms like "agent of influence...

...The corporate entity "Spiegel Verlag" promptly sued Goldsmith, in Great Britain, for libel...

...In the course of a general discussion of Soviet disinformation techniques, Goldsmith reported that a Czech defector, General Jan Sejna, the former Secretary of the Czech Communist party's Defense Committee, had acknowledged that a campaign in the West German news magazine Der Spiegel to discredit Franz Josef Strauss--the Bavarian statesman and opponent of Ostpolitik--was orchestrated by the KGB...

...For the issue at hand is t h e ability of the world's foremost totalitarian power, and its satellites, to use the free institutions of free societies in a concerted effort to undermine and ultimately destroy the latter...

...Position requires ability to write fundraising letters for Conservative /Political Groups...

...In advancing our grasp of disinformation, key defectors are a condition sine qua non...

...Throughout Western Europe, and in the United States, large organizations have been created, or are directed by, activists operating at the behest of Moscow, determined to serve Soviet foreign-policy interests...

...Franz Josef Strauss and mounted a campaign of defamation, disinformation and provocation against him...

...rubric of "Active Measures"--a KGB term translated directly from Russian--or "Dezinformatsia" (disinformation...

...For the same reason, perhaps, so many of the great books on wealth, from the Wealth of Nations to The Spirit of Enterprise, have not been written by economists...

...In that the entrepreneur is much like the driven members of other professions, be they poets, painters, athletes, or teachers, all those for whom "good enough" isn't quite good enough: The larger point, of course, is that the driven members of any group define that group: Art flourishes because of creative artists and business thrives because of creative businessmen...

...That is why economists are so unnerved by it and why they keep to their warnings that it is not going to last...

...In the plaintiff-defendant joint declaration of settlement, Spiegel's counsel, John Wilmers, Q.C., explained that the plaintiff had taken exception to t h e implication that the magazine was "under the control" of the KGB, that it "knowingly" employed "journalists who are Communist intelligence agents," and finally that it is, in fact, a "KGB front organization [my italics...

...Front organizations are but one element in a broad range of deception techniques that fall under the general Eric M. Breindel is adjunct professor at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service...

...That point is worth pausing over the next time you read some economist's gloomy prediction that the U.S...

...Goldsmith was prepared to call witness after witness--foremost among them Soviet and East Bloc defectors--from Great Britain, West Germany, and the United States...

...In addition to the overtly controlled Com...

...But thanks in large measure to high-level defectors-Stanislav Aleksandrovich Levchenko, a former KGB officer responsible for intelligence activities in Japan...

...With regard to the semantic issue, some authorities hold that disinformation, defined in the Russian language dictionary of the Soviet Academy of Sciences as a "false, inaccurate announcement [made] with the aim of confusing someone," is but one component in a larger Active Measures arsenal...

...We in the West know precious little about these techniques...

...He was then prepared to show that meetings were held at which plans were approved--several participants were ready to describe these sessions--to discredit Strauss via Der Spiegel...

...Ladislav Bittman, formerly a ranking Czech intelligence official...

...Lenin would have termed these idealistic innocents "useful idiots...

...the edited interviews appear as appendices in Dezinformatsia...

...and Roy Godson, authors of Dezinformatsia: Active Measures in Soviet Statecraft, deem it appropriate that the two terms be used interchangeably...

...On a different occasion, even the (left-leaning, but still for many decades highly prestigious) New Statesman, a London weekly, was also taken in by a forgery involving Ambassador Kirkpatrick...