The Craft of Intelligence (30 page)

Representatives of the Communist parties in the Free World regularly attend the party congresses in Moscow, of which the twenty-second was held in 1961. Here they are received as honored guests of the Congress and often are given special briefings. At the Twenty-first Party Congress held in 1959, the Communist delegates from Latin-American countries were given special attention. They were gathered together as a group and given secret guidance as to their methods of operation. At this particular time, to mislead the rest of the world and particularly the United States, they were told to play down Marxism and Communism and their relations with Moscow and to build their ranks by appealing to nationalism and using anti-American slogans. All this was not lost on Castro.

The Kremlin has always been willing, within bounds, to permit local Communist parties to take positions which differ from the official Moscow line. Sometimes this has been done by prearrangement with Moscow. On the other hand, the Kremlin has always had to cope with tendencies toward autonomy in other Communist parties. In recent years, as the Sino-Soviet schism has broadened, it has been increasingly difficult for the Kremlin to control the positions of all the other parties that were once subservient to it.

The tasks assigned by Moscow to Communist parties in Free World countries, and to the other elements of the Communist apparatus, are tailored to the estimated capabilities of the particular parties of “fronts,” to the “softness” of the countries where they operate and to the general program of the Kremlin, i.e., the order of precedence for eventual take-over set by Moscow. For example, in the case of the Communist party of the U.S.A., where they have little hope of converting the country to Communism in the foreseeable future, the objectives assigned to the Party are relatively modest. They are told to stress propaganda against armaments in general and nuclear tests in particular; against American policy in Latin America; against NATO and our other alliances and our overseas bases. In England, it is much the same; “ban the bomb” is a chosen rallying theme. Such pacifist appeals are used to disguise real Soviet intentions and to soften the defenses of the Western world. In the spring of 1963, the “ban the bomb” movement achieved a level of unusual insidiousness through the publicity it achieved when it gave away the location of certain classified government centers prepared for emergency use in case of nuclear attack.

In countries where Communism has better prospects and more power, the horizon of objectives is raised. In France and Italy, the Communist party and its allies poll a vote which generally represent between 10 and 30 percent of the voters and, to the dismay of many who mistakenly believed that economic recovery alone would eliminate or at least weaken Communism, the Communists gained over a million votes in the Italian general elections of 1963. Here and in Indonesia, Japan, and in several countries of this hemisphere, as well as in Asia, the Communist parties take more aggressive positions. So far, in Africa, both north and south of the Sahara, Moscow’s activities, both direct and through the local Communist parties, have been misconceived and ill-concealed.

Communist front organizations supplement the work of the local parties and are used as tools for reaching specialized objectives. For example, the Communists, through the World Federation of Trade Unions and its multiple branches, control the strongest labor organizations in many countries of the world—France, Italy and Indonesia in particular—and are able to manipulate significantly the unions in Japan, in many countries of this hemisphere and in certain countries of Africa and Southeast Asia, where trade unions are in their infancy. In the area of labor relations, the party makes particular use of its ability to “hitchhike” on popular local issues and to exploit them. Sometimes even where they do not actually control a union, well-organized and activist Communist minorities in unions can provide vocal and riotous leadership for mass demonstrations, and force a hesitant majority to engage in strikes and walk-outs, which are not openly attributable to any Communist initiative. Such activity at crucial times may paralyze the economy of an entire country.

Other Communist front organizations include the World Peace Congress, various youth organizations, women’s organizations and organizations of specific professions. These they try to surround with a degree of respectability and to lure into membership the unsuspecting and the gullible, particularly on their “peace” and “ban the bomb” issues.

At various intervals, the Soviets at great expense to themselves have held “Youth Congresses,” to which the youth of the world have been invited, but only the Communist youth get their way paid. Initially these meetings were held in areas behind the Iron Curtain—Moscow, East Berlin and Prague—but after that the Soviet managers of these affairs became bolder, and the last two meetings were held outside the bloc, first in Vienna and then in Helsinki. However, they found the climate of opinion so unfavorable in these capitals that they are now reconsidering whether to repeat the experiment.

Moscow’s directing hand can help to guide and manipulate all these diverse assets of the Communist “presence” in a particular country through the State Security Service (KGB) personnel located in Soviet embassies and trade missions. The KGB, in addition to its regular intelligence function, can direct the activities of the local “
apparat
” set up in country X to promote a subversive program; they can act as Moscow’s paymaster for the operations of the local party and fronts and keep Moscow advised of progress.

Valerian Zorin, who later became Soviet Ambassador to the UN, masterminded the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia in 1948 from within the Soviet embassy in Prague. The Soviet embassy in Havana was apparently also the center from which the early phases of the Communist infiltration of the Castro movement were directed.

Wherever possible Soviet tacticians will maneuver Communists or their sympathizers into key government positions and attempt to penetrate the target country’s military and security structure with the idea of eventually taking them over. In the Allied Control Commissions which were set up in most of the Eastern European countries at the end of World War II immediately after the Germans had withdrawn, the Soviet contingents consisted largely of intelligence personnel. While the British and American representatives, specialists in military government and civil affairs, were trying to create some semblance of order and liberty and to restore the public utilities and the economy in devastated countries like Rumania and Hungary, their Soviet “colleagues” on the control commissions were spending their time working with reliable native Communists. Thus the conspiracies were organized which were shortly to emerge as “united fronts” dominated by Communists and supported by an efficient political police under KGB tutelage.

The vigor with which such tactics may be applied will depend as a general rule upon the circumstances in the target country: the extent of local unrest and of the local hostility to the regime in power, the capacity of the Soviet Union or Communist China to exploit latent vulnerabilities and suborn local political leaders and, finally, upon the strength of the Communist apparatus in the country in question.

Operating in countries which have recently obtained their freedom from colonial status, the Communist movement endeavors to present itself as the protector of the liberated peoples against their former colonial overlords. In support of these activities, promising young men and women from the target areas are invited to Moscow for education and indoctrination in the expectation that they may become the future Communist leaders in their homelands. Also they bring to the bloc for training in intelligence and subversion individuals of a different type who on their return will help to direct the local Communist party apparatus.

As a part of the
apparat
, Moscow also vigorously uses all the instrumentalities of its propaganda machine. In one year, according to the Soviet Ministry of Culture’s report, the Soviets published and circulated approximately thirty million copies of books in various foreign languages. This literature is widely and cheaply distributed through local bookstores, made available in reading rooms and in their information and so-called cultural centers. In many countries throughout the world, they control newspapers and have penetrated and subsidized a large number of press outlets of various kinds which do not present themselves openly as Communist.

With some of the most powerful transmitting stations in the world, they beam their messages to practically every major area of the world. They step up their propaganda to the particular target areas which they consider to be the most vulnerable, and adjust it as their policy dictates. An organization known as the All Union Society for Cultural Relations Abroad, which poses as an independent organization but is strictly controlled by the Communist party of the Soviet Union, endeavors to establish cultural ties with foreign countries, supply Soviet films and arrange programs to be given by Soviet artists.

Then the foreign news agency of the Soviet Union, well known as Tass, a state-controlled enterprise, has offices in more than thirty major cities of the Free World. It adjusts its “news” to meet Soviet objectives in the recipient country. All these instruments of propaganda are part and parcel of what is called the
agitprop
.

These organizations and assets teamed together are, in a sense, Moscow’s orchestra of subversion. Many of these instruments, and in some cases all of them, can be and are used under Moscow’s careful supervision to bring pressure on any country they are seeking to subvert, or as a background to prepare for future subversion. They keep the orchestra playing, even to those countries like the United States, where the burying process, even by their estimation, is far removed.

Such is the apparatus of subversion we face today in the cold war the Communists have forced upon us, and I have added a glance at the history of the immediate past in dealing with it. To meet this threat we will need to mobilize assets and apply them vigorously at the points of greatest danger and in time—before a take-over, that is before a new Communist regime becomes firmly installed. Experience so far has indicated that once the Communist security services and the other elements of the
apparat
get their grip on a country, there are no more free elections, no way out.

Our assets against this threat are first of all our declared foreign policy, for which the State Department under the President has the burden of responsibility. Second, by our defense posture we can convince the Free World that we and our Allies are both strong enough and ready enough to meet the Soviet military challenge, and that we can protect, and are willing to protect, the free countries of the world, by force if need be; and that meanwhile we will aid them to build up their security against subversion. If the free countries feel that we are militarily weak or unready to act, they are not likely to stand firm against Communism.

A third element our intelligence service must help to provide: (1) it must give our own government timely information as to the Communist targets, that is to say, the countries which the Communists have put high on their schedule for subversive attack; (2) it must penetrate the vital elements of their subversive apparatus as it begins to attack target countries and furnish our government an analysis of the techniques in use and information on the persons being subverted or infiltrated into local governments; (3) it must, wherever possible, help to build up the local defenses against penetration by keeping target countries aware of the nature and extent of their peril and by assisting their internal security service wherever this can best be done, or possibly only be done, on a covert basis.

Many of the countries most seriously threatened do not have internal police or security services adequate to the task of obtaining timely warning of the peril of Communist subversion or of preparing to thwart it. For this they often need help, and they can only get it from a country like the United States, which has the resources and techniques to aid them. Many regimes in the countries whose security is threatened welcome this help and over the years have profited greatly from it. On the other hand, in some cases, especially in South America, a dictator has later taken over an internal security service previously trained to combat Communism and has diverted it into a kind of Gestapo to hunt down his local political opponents. This happened in Cuba under Batista.

Too often a threatened country feels that it can go it alone and sometimes too late awakens to the danger or comes quickly under the effective control of those who are promoting a Communist take-over. In these situations, there is no easy answer if no resistance is made and no call for help is sent out before the Communist apparatus crushes freedom. Often the apparatus uses its access to democratic processes, the ballot box and a parliamentary system, to infiltrate with what are called “popular front” governments. Then the mask falls away, the non-Communist participants in the coalition are eliminated and a Communist dictatorship has hold of the land and the secret police take over. Then it is too late indeed for protective action. Czechoslovakia is an example of this pattern.

Wherever we can, we must help to shore up both the will to resist and confidence in the ability to resist. By now we have had a good many years of experience in combating Communism. We know its techniques, we know a good many of the actual “operators” who run these attempts at take-over. Whenever we are given the opportunity to help, we should assist in building up the ability of threatened countries and do it long before the Communist penetration drives a country to the point of no return.

Fortunately for the Free World, because of the nature of the subversive activities in which the disparate Communist parties are engaged and the large numbers of untrained personnel involved, it is difficult for them to maintain adequate security and secrecy. It is revealing no secret to state that a very large number of the Communist parties and front organizations throughout the world have been penetrated. Often their plans and the personnel can be known. Dramatic information has already been published in regard to the effective work of the FBI in its penetration and neutralization of the Communist party of the United States and its various appendages.