The World Was Going Our Way (34 page)
Read The World Was Going Our Way Online
Authors: Christopher Andrew
Tags: #Biographies & Memoirs, #True Accounts, #Espionage, #History, #Europe, #Ireland, #Military, #Intelligence & Espionage, #Modern (16th-21st Centuries), #20th Century, #Russia, #World
Though operations officers under diplomatic cover in the Tehran residency were barely able to operate, KGB illegals succeeded in 1977 in hiding a secret weapons cache of twenty-seven Walther pistols and 2,500 rounds of ammunition in a dead letter-box (DLB) in the Tehran suburbs.
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In accordance with common KGB practice, the DLB was probably fitted with a Molniya (‘Lightning’) booby-trap which was intended to destroy the contents if any attempt was made to open it by non-KGB personnel. Since the KGB is unlikely to have taken the risk of trying to retrieve the arms later, the cache may still be there and in a dangerous condition. (A booby-trapped KGB communications equipment cache in Switzerland whose location was identified by Mitrokhin exploded when fired on by a water cannon. According to the Swiss Federal Prosecutor’s Office, ‘Anyone who tried to move the container [in the cache] would have been killed.’)
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Though the purpose of the arms cache is not recorded in Mitrokhin’s brief note on the illegal operation which put it in place, the arms were probably intended for use in the event of a popular rising against the Shah’s regime. In the spring of 1978 a Line PR officer at the Tehran residency under diplomatic cover, Viktor Kazakov, confidently told an American contact that the Shah would be toppled by ‘oppressed masses rising to overthrow their shackles’.
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The still banned Tudeh (Communist) Party, operating through front organizations, began to show renewed signs of life, distributing anti-Shah leaflets and a news-sheet covertly produced with the help of the Tehran residency and Tass, the Soviet news agency.
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During the summer of 1978, however, most Middle Eastern experts in the Centre still believed that the Shah’s regime was too strong to be overthrown in the foreseeable future.
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In July 1978, at a meeting in Moscow with the Tehran resident, Ivan Anisimovich Fadeykin, Andropov was less concerned by the possible consequences of toppling the Shah than by the threat posed to the southern borders of the Soviet Union by the Shah’s alliance with the United States. Andropov instructed Fadeykin to step up active measures designed to destabilize the Shah’s regime and to damage its relations with the United States and its allies.
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In accordance with common KGB practice, the DLB was probably fitted with a Molniya (‘Lightning’) booby-trap which was intended to destroy the contents if any attempt was made to open it by non-KGB personnel. Since the KGB is unlikely to have taken the risk of trying to retrieve the arms later, the cache may still be there and in a dangerous condition. (A booby-trapped KGB communications equipment cache in Switzerland whose location was identified by Mitrokhin exploded when fired on by a water cannon. According to the Swiss Federal Prosecutor’s Office, ‘Anyone who tried to move the container [in the cache] would have been killed.’)
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Though the purpose of the arms cache is not recorded in Mitrokhin’s brief note on the illegal operation which put it in place, the arms were probably intended for use in the event of a popular rising against the Shah’s regime. In the spring of 1978 a Line PR officer at the Tehran residency under diplomatic cover, Viktor Kazakov, confidently told an American contact that the Shah would be toppled by ‘oppressed masses rising to overthrow their shackles’.
56
The still banned Tudeh (Communist) Party, operating through front organizations, began to show renewed signs of life, distributing anti-Shah leaflets and a news-sheet covertly produced with the help of the Tehran residency and Tass, the Soviet news agency.
57
During the summer of 1978, however, most Middle Eastern experts in the Centre still believed that the Shah’s regime was too strong to be overthrown in the foreseeable future.
58
In July 1978, at a meeting in Moscow with the Tehran resident, Ivan Anisimovich Fadeykin, Andropov was less concerned by the possible consequences of toppling the Shah than by the threat posed to the southern borders of the Soviet Union by the Shah’s alliance with the United States. Andropov instructed Fadeykin to step up active measures designed to destabilize the Shah’s regime and to damage its relations with the United States and its allies.
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As the Shah’s position worsened, he increasingly resorted to conspiracy theories to account for his misfortunes. KGB active measures probably had at least some success in strengthening his suspicions of the United States. ‘Why do [the Americans] pick on me?’ he plaintively asked his advisers in the summer of 1978.
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The KGB fed disinformation to the Shah that the CIA was planning to create disturbances in Tehran and other cities to bring him down and that Washington was searching for a successor who could stabilize the country after his overthrow with the help of the army and SAVAK.
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There were moments when the Shah did indeed fear that Washington intended to abandon him and turn instead to Islamic fundamentalism to build a barrier against Soviet influence in the Middle East. Not all the Shah’s conspiracy theories, however, conformed to those devised by Service A. At times he feared that the United States and the Soviet Union were jointly conspiring to divide Iran between them. Some of the Shah’s family had even more bizarre theories. According to his son and heir, Reza, the Americans bombarded the Shah with radiation which brought on the malignant lymphoma that eventually killed him.
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The KGB fed disinformation to the Shah that the CIA was planning to create disturbances in Tehran and other cities to bring him down and that Washington was searching for a successor who could stabilize the country after his overthrow with the help of the army and SAVAK.
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There were moments when the Shah did indeed fear that Washington intended to abandon him and turn instead to Islamic fundamentalism to build a barrier against Soviet influence in the Middle East. Not all the Shah’s conspiracy theories, however, conformed to those devised by Service A. At times he feared that the United States and the Soviet Union were jointly conspiring to divide Iran between them. Some of the Shah’s family had even more bizarre theories. According to his son and heir, Reza, the Americans bombarded the Shah with radiation which brought on the malignant lymphoma that eventually killed him.
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The Tehran residency remained resolutely hostile to Khomeini. He had, it reported, denounced Iranian Communists as unpatriotic puppets of Moscow and was incensed by the Communist coup in Afghanistan in April which he believed had cut short its transformation into an Islamic regime. Though noting increasing popular support for Khomeini, the residency believed that he did not plan to step into the shoes of the Shah himself.
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It was badly mistaken. Though Khomeini had started his revolt against the Shah without political ambitions of his own, fourteen years of exile had changed his mind. His aim now was to preside over Iran’s transformation into an Islamic republic ruled by Shia religious scholars.
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The KGB’s failure to understand Khomeini’s intentions derived not from any lack of secret intelligence but from the fact that it had not bothered to study his tape-recorded sermons which drew such an emotional response in Iranian mosques. The CIA made the same mistake.
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The middle-class Iranian liberals who had wanted to be rid of the autocracy and corruption of the Shah’s regime were equally surprised by the consequences of his overthrow.
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It was badly mistaken. Though Khomeini had started his revolt against the Shah without political ambitions of his own, fourteen years of exile had changed his mind. His aim now was to preside over Iran’s transformation into an Islamic republic ruled by Shia religious scholars.
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The KGB’s failure to understand Khomeini’s intentions derived not from any lack of secret intelligence but from the fact that it had not bothered to study his tape-recorded sermons which drew such an emotional response in Iranian mosques. The CIA made the same mistake.
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The middle-class Iranian liberals who had wanted to be rid of the autocracy and corruption of the Shah’s regime were equally surprised by the consequences of his overthrow.
On 16 January 1979 the Shah left Iran for Egypt, vainly hoping that the military would take control and enable him to return. Instead, on 1 February Khomeini returned in triumph from exile in Paris to a delirious welcome from 3 million supporters who thronged the airport and streets of Tehran. Within a week Khomeini’s supporters had taken control of the police and administration in a number of cities across the country. On 9 February a pro-Khomeini mutiny began among air-force technicians and spread to other sections of the armed forces. The Tehran residency was able to follow the dramatic transfer of allegiance to the new Islamic regime by monitoring the radio networks of the police and armed services. While on duty in the residency’s IMPULS radio interception station on 10 February, Kuzichkin listened to government and rebel-controlled police stations exchanging sexual insults over the air. Next day, it became clear that the rebels had won. The government resigned and Khomeini’s nominee, Mehdi Bazargan, became acting Prime Minister.
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Among the most prominent early victims of Khomeini’s revolution was Amir Abbas Hoveyda, who was sentenced to death by a revolutionary tribunal headed by the ‘Hanging Ayatollah’, Hojjat al-Islam Khalkhali, in May 1979. Khalkhali kept the pistol used to execute Hoveyda as a souvenir. The front pages of Tehran newspapers carried gruesome pictures of his bloodstained corpse.
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The FCD officer who closed Hoveyda’s file in the Centre wrote on it, ‘A pity for the poor man. He was harmless and useful for us.’
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Among the most prominent early victims of Khomeini’s revolution was Amir Abbas Hoveyda, who was sentenced to death by a revolutionary tribunal headed by the ‘Hanging Ayatollah’, Hojjat al-Islam Khalkhali, in May 1979. Khalkhali kept the pistol used to execute Hoveyda as a souvenir. The front pages of Tehran newspapers carried gruesome pictures of his bloodstained corpse.
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The FCD officer who closed Hoveyda’s file in the Centre wrote on it, ‘A pity for the poor man. He was harmless and useful for us.’
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The Ayatollah Khomeini (codenamed KHATAB by the KGB)
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was even more prone than the Shah to conspiracy theories. All opposition to the Islamic revolution was, he believed, the product of conspiracy, and all Iranian conspirators were in the service of foreign powers. He denounced those Muslims who did not share his radical views as ‘American Muslims’ and many left-wingers as ‘Russian spies’. Since Khomeini claimed to be installing ‘God’s government’, his opponents were necessarily enemies of God Himself: ‘Revolt against God’s government is a revolt against God. Revolt against God is blasphemy. ’
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At least during the early years of the new Islamic Republic, the KGB found Iran even more fertile ground for active measures than under the Shah. Its chief targets included both the US embassy in Tehran and members of the new regime who were judged to have ‘anti-Soviet tendencies’.
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KGB operations against the US embassy, however, paled into insignificance by comparison with those of the new regime. On 4 November 1979 several thousand officially approved militants, claiming to be ‘students following the Imam [Khomeini]’s line’, overran the American embassy, declared it a ‘den of spies’, and took hostage over fifty US diplomatic personnel. But if the United States was denounced as the ‘Great Satan’ by Iran’s fundamentalist revolutionaries, the Soviet Union was the ‘Small Satan’. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan at the end of the year, Leonid Shebarshin (codenamed SHABROV), who had become Tehran resident a few months earlier,
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feared an attack on the Soviet embassy. A first incursion on New Year’s Day 1980 did little damage and was repulsed by the local police. By the time a second attack took place on the first anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan, so many bars and metal doors had been fitted to the embassy that it resembled, in Shebarshin’s view, ‘something between a zoo and a prison’. No hostages were taken and no documents seized.
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The world’s attention remained focused on the American hostages, who were finally freed in January 1981.
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was even more prone than the Shah to conspiracy theories. All opposition to the Islamic revolution was, he believed, the product of conspiracy, and all Iranian conspirators were in the service of foreign powers. He denounced those Muslims who did not share his radical views as ‘American Muslims’ and many left-wingers as ‘Russian spies’. Since Khomeini claimed to be installing ‘God’s government’, his opponents were necessarily enemies of God Himself: ‘Revolt against God’s government is a revolt against God. Revolt against God is blasphemy. ’
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At least during the early years of the new Islamic Republic, the KGB found Iran even more fertile ground for active measures than under the Shah. Its chief targets included both the US embassy in Tehran and members of the new regime who were judged to have ‘anti-Soviet tendencies’.
71
KGB operations against the US embassy, however, paled into insignificance by comparison with those of the new regime. On 4 November 1979 several thousand officially approved militants, claiming to be ‘students following the Imam [Khomeini]’s line’, overran the American embassy, declared it a ‘den of spies’, and took hostage over fifty US diplomatic personnel. But if the United States was denounced as the ‘Great Satan’ by Iran’s fundamentalist revolutionaries, the Soviet Union was the ‘Small Satan’. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan at the end of the year, Leonid Shebarshin (codenamed SHABROV), who had become Tehran resident a few months earlier,
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feared an attack on the Soviet embassy. A first incursion on New Year’s Day 1980 did little damage and was repulsed by the local police. By the time a second attack took place on the first anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan, so many bars and metal doors had been fitted to the embassy that it resembled, in Shebarshin’s view, ‘something between a zoo and a prison’. No hostages were taken and no documents seized.
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The world’s attention remained focused on the American hostages, who were finally freed in January 1981.
The large cache of diplomatic and CIA documents discovered in the US embassy, many painstakingly reassembled by the Iranians from shredded fragments, provided further encouragement both for the new regime’s many conspiracy theorists and for Service A. Among the victims of the conspiracy theorists was the relatively moderate first President of the Islamic Republic, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, one of Khomeini’s former companions in exile. Captured CIA cables and reports showed that the Agency had given him the codename SDLURE-1 and tried to ‘cultivate and recruit’ him in both Tehran and Paris. Though there was no evidence that Bani-Sadr ever had any conscious dealings with the CIA, the mere fact of its interest in him damned him in the eyes of many militants.
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Bani-Sadr was simultaneously a target for KGB active-measures operations.
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Though Mitrokhin’s notes give no details, the purpose of the operations was probably to reinforce suspicions that he had been a US agent. Bani-Sadr was forced to step down as President in June 1981.
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Bani-Sadr was simultaneously a target for KGB active-measures operations.
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Though Mitrokhin’s notes give no details, the purpose of the operations was probably to reinforce suspicions that he had been a US agent. Bani-Sadr was forced to step down as President in June 1981.
Not content with the compromising documents plundered by Iranian militants from the US embassy, the KGB conducted a joint operation (codenamed TAYFUN, ‘Typhoon’) with the Bulgarian intelligence service during 1980, using a series of far more sensational forgeries purporting to come from a (fictitious) underground Military Council for Salvation plotting the overthrow of Khomeini and the restoration of the monarchy. The Centre claimed that the Khomeini regime was taken in by the forgeries and blamed the non-existent Military Council for a number of attacks on its supporters. Further disinformation on plots against the Islamic revolution (including an alleged attempt to assassinate Khomeini) by the CIA, SIS, Mossad, the French SDECE and the German BND was fed by the KGB resident in Beirut, codenamed KOLCHIN,
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to the leader of the PLO, Yasir Arafat. According to KGB reports, Arafat personally passed the disinformation on to Khomeini. Service A fabricated a report to the CIA from a fictitious Iranian agent providing further apparent evidence of an Agency-sponsored attempt on Khomeini’s life.
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to the leader of the PLO, Yasir Arafat. According to KGB reports, Arafat personally passed the disinformation on to Khomeini. Service A fabricated a report to the CIA from a fictitious Iranian agent providing further apparent evidence of an Agency-sponsored attempt on Khomeini’s life.
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Among the chief targets of KGB active measures within the Khomeini regime, besides Bani-Sadr, was Sadeq Qotbzadeh, who had also been in Khomeini’s inner circle during his years in exile and became Foreign Minister soon after the occupation of the US embassy. In the spring of 1980 Qotbzadeh told Moscow that if it failed to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, Iran would give military assistance to the Mujahidin. In July he ordered the Soviet embassy in Tehran to cut its staff.
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Though neither of these episodes was mentioned in the Soviet press, Moscow took a secret revenge. Service A forged a letter to Qotbzadeh from US Senator Harrison Williams, who had met him twenty years earlier while Qotbzadeh was a student in the United States. The letter advised Qotbzadeh not to release the American hostages in the immediate future and also contained information intended to compromise Qotbzadeh personally. In July 1980 the Iranian ambassador in Paris was fed further disinformation alleging that Qotbzadeh was plotting with the Americans to overthrow Khomeini. Qotbzadeh was also said to have received a bribe of $6 million for helping to smuggle out of Iran six American diplomats who had taken refuge in the Canadian embassy in Tehran.
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Though proof is lacking, these active measures probably helped to bring about Qotbzadeh’s dismissal in August.
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Though neither of these episodes was mentioned in the Soviet press, Moscow took a secret revenge. Service A forged a letter to Qotbzadeh from US Senator Harrison Williams, who had met him twenty years earlier while Qotbzadeh was a student in the United States. The letter advised Qotbzadeh not to release the American hostages in the immediate future and also contained information intended to compromise Qotbzadeh personally. In July 1980 the Iranian ambassador in Paris was fed further disinformation alleging that Qotbzadeh was plotting with the Americans to overthrow Khomeini. Qotbzadeh was also said to have received a bribe of $6 million for helping to smuggle out of Iran six American diplomats who had taken refuge in the Canadian embassy in Tehran.
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Though proof is lacking, these active measures probably helped to bring about Qotbzadeh’s dismissal in August.
The KGB considered Qotbzadeh such an important target that its attempt to discredit him continued even after he ceased to be Foreign Minister. Fabricated evidence purporting to show that he was a CIA agent probably contributed to his arrest in April 1982 on a charge of plotting to assassinate Khomeini. Service A continued to forge documents incriminating him after his arrest. The Tehran residency regarded as the ‘final nail in his coffin’ a bogus CIA telegram prepared by Service A in an easily broken code and addressed to an agent readily identifiable as Qotbzadeh.
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He and about seventy army officers accused of conspiring with him were shot in September. Another target of KGB active measures, Grand Ayatollah Kazem Shari’atmadari,
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a senior religious scholar seen as a rival by Khomeini, was also accused of complicity in the plot. Threatened with the execution of his son, Shari’atmadari was forced to humiliate himself on television and plead for Khomeini’s forgiveness. Subsequently he became the first Ayatollah ever to be defrocked, and spent the last four years of his life under house arrest.
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He and about seventy army officers accused of conspiring with him were shot in September. Another target of KGB active measures, Grand Ayatollah Kazem Shari’atmadari,
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a senior religious scholar seen as a rival by Khomeini, was also accused of complicity in the plot. Threatened with the execution of his son, Shari’atmadari was forced to humiliate himself on television and plead for Khomeini’s forgiveness. Subsequently he became the first Ayatollah ever to be defrocked, and spent the last four years of his life under house arrest.
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Despite its success in incriminating a number of senior figures in the new Islamic Republic, however, the KGB had only a minor influence on the bloodletting as a whole. The impact of the bogus conspiracies devised by Service A was far smaller than that of the actual attempt to overthrow the Khomeini regime in June 1981 by the Iranian Mujahidi yi Khalq (Holy Warriors), who drew their inspiration from both Islam and Marxism. Of the 2,665 political prisoners executed by the Revolutionary Tribunals between June and November 1981, 2,200 were Mujahidi and about 400 members of various left-wing groups - a total seven times as great as that of the monarchists, real and alleged, executed over the previous sixteen months. The Mujahidi death toll continued to mount over the next few years.
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