This misstep gave the Venona cryptanalysts the break they needed to solve the problem. The number of messages that were eventually decrypted was directly tied to the number of defective OTP pages used to encipher the messages. The analysts could decrypt very few of the 1942 messages because there was very little duplication of OTP pages used in those messages. The number of duplicate pages apparently increased in 1943 and then even more in 1944, and the success rate of deciphering messages from these years improved accordingly.7
In his role as SIS liaison with US intelligence agencies, Philby had participated in several discussions on Venona with the American cryptanalysts working on the project. He also received regular reports with summaries of the Soviet messages that the American analysts were decoding.8 A number of messages from 1944–1945 showed that Soviet intelligence was receiving regular updates on exchanges between the US and British governments at the time, and in particular exchanges between Roosevelt and Churchill. They indicated that the information was coming from a highly placed source, which the Soviets variably referred to as G, G., GOMER, GOMMER, and HOMER.
Philby knew that all these codes referred to Donald MacLean, his fellow Soviet intelligence conspirator, who had been first secretary at the British embassy in Washington between 1944 and 1948. MacLean’s codename had been Homer, which the Soviet cables writers routinely spelled by replacing H with its Cyrillic equivalent, G since the Cyrillic alphabet has no letter representing the sound “H” of the Roman alphabet.
Philby and his Soviet contact in the US agreed that the FBI and MI-5 would eventually zero in on MacLean by a process of elimination as content from more and more cables was becoming readable. With MacLean’s exposure a certainty, they decided to cause his defection on their own terms rather than allow the British to capture and interrogate him. In spring 1951, the British had indeed narrowed the list of possible suspects to six individuals and MacLean was on it. In his autobiography, Philby says that he wrote a memo to London providing the hints that led MI-5 to MacLean’s trail.9 It was part of the plan put in motion by the Soviets in order to provide Philby with a credible cover against accusations of being an associate of MacLean. They expected the British to raise these issues because it was widely known that Philby and MacLean were old associates since their Cambridge years.
As soon as the British received Philby’s letter, they revoked MacLean’s access to highly sensitive documents and placed him under surveillance while MI-5 began to gather evidence of his culpability. At this point, Philby and his Soviet handlers took the second step in the orchestrated defection of MacLean. Guy Burgess, the third Soviet spy inside British government structures, who at the time was working at the British embassy in Washington and living in Philby’s house, engaged in a series of flagrant acts that caused the US authorities to label him persona non grata and ask for his return to the UK.
It was an act put on by Burgess to give him a reason to return to London, where he would make contact with MacLean and the Russian handlers there and arrange MacLean’s defection to the Soviet Union. Given his own close association with Burgess, Philby knew that he was the Achilles’ heel in the plan. His last words to Burgess at Union Station in Washington were, only half-jokingly, “Don’t you go too.”10 However, upon his return to London, Moscow ordered that Burgess flee together with MacLean for reasons that are not entirely clear, perhaps because the Russians found Burgess too unstable to face the MI-5 inquiries that would inevitably follow MacLean’s disappearance.
On Sunday, March 25, 1951, three days before he was due to appear in front of an inquiry commission to respond to evidence from MI-5 and the FBI, MacLean celebrated his thirty-eighth birthday at home with his eight-month pregnant wife and two young children. Then Burgess arrived and picked him up in his car for what was supposed to be a short ride in the countryside. They drove to Southampton, took a ferry across the Channel to France, and then traveled by train to Paris and Moscow in one of the most spectacular spy escapes of the Cold War.
By virtue of his association with Burgess, Philby fell immediately under suspicion and was recalled to London. The CIA performed a counterespionage assessment of Philby’s career and contacts that concluded he was a Soviet agent. Upon receiving the report, the director of Central Intelligence, Walter B. Smith, forwarded it to his British counterpart, the head of the SIS, Stewart Menzies, commonly referred to as “C,” with a forceful demand that “C” fire Philby or Smith would sever all links between the SIS and the CIA.11 In July 1951, Philby, facing almost certain dismissal, resigned from MI-6. He had to forgo his pension, but “C” agreed to give him a lump sum of two thousand pounds and four installments of five hundred pounds every six months as a severance package.12
* * *
Philby’s hasty exit from Washington under a cloud of suspicion led the CIA to review the access that the SIS had to its operations. Henceforward, CIA director Smith pushed to restrict access to OPC offices in Washington by SIS representatives. Project Fiend came to the forefront of scrutiny, given its unique character among OPC projects in the close liaison with the British and the fact that certain phases of the operation had depended to some degree on British good will.
On August 28, 1951, Yatsevitch wrote a memo summarizing the nature of the relationship with the British on Project Fiend, which was operational independence in the field but close cooperation with respect to policy and sharing of intelligence garnered from the operation. Then, Yatsevitch described the arrangements that existed between the British and American liaison officers in the operation. In Washington, the OPC commander—McCargar until April 1950 followed by Yatsevitch—and Philby as SIS representative had established a system for prompt action on all matters of mutual concern to Fiend and Valuable. They met in the Joint Policy Committee office at the Pentagon that had been established from the beginning to minimize SIS access to the CIA work environments.
In London, the OPC liaison officer handling Fiend-Valuable relations held an SIS pass, which gave him free access to SIS headquarters at all times and allowed him to come and go as he pleased. SIS headquarters personnel dealing with Fiend met him in their regular offices and gave him ready access at their environment as well as operational and other information relating to Valuable activities in Albania. He also dealt directly with the British on certain matters outside the scope of Fiend itself, such as the recruiting of Polish crews and personnel for miscellaneous OPC needs in the Balkan area and in Germany. Because of the close personal relationship he had established, he had been able to receive numerous favors and assistance that was extremely useful to OPC.
Therefore, Yatsevitch warned, if the agency was planning to restrict SIS access to OPC offices in Washington as a reaction to the doubts about Philby, they should do this carefully to avoid retaliatory treatment in London that could interfere with the smooth course of Fiend-Valuable relations and affect the work of the Fiend liaison officer there.13
CHAPTER 11
Propaganda and Psychological and Economic Warfare
In April 1950, when Michael Burke was appointed to a full-time position with the CIA and assigned to run the German section in Frankfurt, the NCFA leaders in Rome threw a farewell lunch party for him. An eight-course meal was served, complete with Valpolicella, burgundy, and cognac. At the end, they gave him as a souvenir the lunch menu in a specially designed and bound folder, in which the Albanian eagle was prominently displayed and the following message from the Sons of the Eagle, as Albanians often refer to themselves, was inscribed in red and black—the colors of Albania’s flag:
To our dear friend Michael Burke,
Parting is not merely an occasion for sad rituals.
For us this temporary parting is also an occasion for recalling your many acts of kindness and your devotion to our cause and your continuing efforts in our behalf.
In return for your priceless gift of friendship, we extend our heartfelt gratitude to you and yours.
Our wish is that your lives may be brightest in the
days ahead as you have brightened the lives of those you have left behind.1
It was a touching gesture that must have left an impression on Burke, because he saved the folder for the rest of his life in a collection of personal memorabilia still preserved today. In return, he wrote a brief note of appreciation to his “dear friend Abas Kupi” that said:
It is with deep regret that I relinquish my place beside you in our common fight, but I remain emotionally bound and constantly devoted to the cause to which we dedicated ourselves and so long worked for together in basic harmony.
As we separate momentarily, I carry with me something of the splendid spirit of the Sons of the Eagle and an indelible memory of each one whom I have grown to know so well and love; I hope in turn that some small part of me rests with them.
My dear Abas Aga, I salute you as a great soldier of Albania and look for the day when we will be joined again in final victory.2
Joseph C. Lieb took Burke’s place as the Fiend field commander and Rome OPC station chief. Lieb came from a public relations and advertising background—he had been a Madison Avenue executive in New York City before World War II. During the war, Lieb served as a US Army major in the Pacific theater, where he conducted propaganda operations against the Japanese and later served in the Combined Chiefs of Staff, the precursor of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Lieb returned to New York City after the war and went back to his advertising career until 1950, when OPC officers familiar with his work in propaganda during the war reached out and recruited him to conduct similar operations against the Iron Curtain.
Like Burke, Lieb worked as a contract officer for the CIA. He traveled to Germany in September 1950, where he met Burke at the Schwarzer Bock Hotel in Wiesbaden for a thorough debriefing on the Albanian operation and the NCFA. Then he traveled to Rome, where he settled under the cover of a Parade magazine reporter. While much of Lieb’s work in Rome focused on the Albanian operation, he was also involved in other OPC and CIA projects, working closely with the Italians and the Vatican.3
Building upon his experience in advertising and public relations, Lieb pushed forward a number of operational activities in the areas of propaganda and psychological warfare. He expanded the circulation of Shqipëria (Albania), the semi-monthly NCFA newspaper in the Albanian language, and pushed to disseminate it in major cities in Europe and the United States. Lieb encouraged all the members of the NCFA to support the newspaper, to improve its content, and in general to make it a worthy representative journal of the committee.
In Rome, he established a subcommittee of the NCFA to expand on the work that NCFA members in New York had done in preparing propaganda material. For several months in 1950, they had drafted propaganda leaflets under the guidance of E. Howard Hunt, who at the time worked in the Paramilitary and Propaganda Warfare division of the OPC, in his first assignment as a CIA officer.4 The covert OPC aircraft and British Royal Air Force planes dropped about five hundred thousand leaflets approximately once a month over the principal population centers of Albania. The timing of leaflet drops coincided with important dates, such as Enver Hoxha’s birthday, the anniversary of the October Revolution, or Albania’s Independence Day. The design and content of the leaflets conveyed messages related to those historical markers. Because a majority of the Albanian population was illiterate, most of the leaflets were nothing more than humorous cartoons with brief captions.
CIA leaflet about Soviet aid to Albania: “The conductor [USSR] promises the donkey [the Albanian people] more food because he is weak and slow.” Leading the donkey is the Albanian government.
In this CIA leaflet, Nastradini, the sage in Albanian folklore, says to the villager on the right: “This beast may look like a donkey but he is not one because he has not joined the Communist Party.”
As a further means of implementing the psychological warfare phase, OPC staff installed camouflaged short-wave and medium-wave radio transmitters aboard a yacht, called Juanita, which they operated under a Panamanian flag in the Mediterranean. The cover for the boat was a scientific expedition in the field of marine biology. The transmitter was scheduled to begin beaming covert propaganda into Albania by spring 1951.5 However, a series of operational tests throughout spring and summer showed that it was impossible to broadcast radio transmissions from a moving yacht in the middle of the sea. The OPC abandoned the plan to use Juanita in August 1951 and transferred the operations and support staff to a broadcasting facility in Athens. The yacht, purchased for $80,000 in August 1950, was sold in May 1953 for $10,037.50.6
The clandestine radio Voice of Free Albania began regular short-wave broadcasts from Athens at 10:00 p.m. on September 18, 1951, on the 43-meter band. The programs reached various European cities and were praised by NCFA committee members who heard them. The station received considerable publicity from VOA, BBC, Radio Free Europe, and the New York Times.7
A powerful radio transmitter in Salonika established by the Americans and jointly run with the Greeks amplified the anti-Communist propaganda broadcasts beamed to Greece, Albania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia. The operation, with the code name Dora, had some hiccups before it finally got off the ground. When the Americans shipped the first packing cases of equipment marked with “Dora,” the Greek authorities refused to allow them through. A short time before their arrival a new clerk with the name Dora had arrived at the US consulate in Salonika. She brought some things with her and said some more personal things were to follow. When a few weeks later, steel towers and dynamos for Dora arrived, the customs officials opened their eyes wide. They said they would have to know more about Dora before allowing the shipment. Only after some delay did they agree to release the cases, once they had received an official, signed, sealed, and certified statement stating that Dora was a code name for a government project and that the cases marked “Dora” had no relation whatsoever with the personal effects of the recently arrived American clerk at the consulate.8
Another psychological warfare program at this time used letters and messages to arouse suspicions within the ranks of government officials against one another and to frame Communist personalities by accusing them of corruption or secret relations with the West. Knowing that all mail from abroad was opened and inspected, CIA case officers in Rome and Athens prepared and sent gift packages, fake bank statements, and confirmation of deposit transactions into foreign accounts to prominent Communists and their family members, including Enver Hoxha, whose CIA pseudonym was Nelson J. Murat. At the end of June 1951, Lieb informed headquarters that “two such gift packages had been sent to Mrs. Nelson J. Murat,” referring to Hoxha’s wife, Nexhmije. They also prepared character assassination and denunciation letters against other party, military, and government officials that were carried across the border by agents infiltrated from Greece, who mailed them to the authorities from inside Albania to create the appearance that they were coming from concerned and vigilant citizens.9
* * *
On September 13, 1951, Hasan Dosti, president of the NCFA, sent the following commercial cable to Enver Hoxha offering aid to oppressed Albanians in the form of food, clothing, and medicine:
As you well know, the National Committee for Free Albania has long been dedicated to the overthrow of your regime and the re-establishment of a free and independent Albania. While we are making every effort to hasten the day of your demise, which is not far off, we want to help our people and to ease their suffering in the meantime. In view of the widespread poverty and lack of foodstuffs, medicines, and other household necessities, we, the National Committee for Free Albania, therefore make the following offer to your Government:
Starting immediately, this Committee will supply aid to our people on a continuing basis each and every month if your Government will agree to distribute such aid equitably and impartially to our needy brothers and sisters regardless of their political affiliations. Will you agree to accept foodstuffs, medicines, and household necessities not now available to our people, and will you agree to distribute
them?
May we have your early reply to this offer by commercial cable?
(Signed) The National Committee for Free Albania10
The telegram marked the opening of the propaganda program to supply token aid to Albania. The text of this telegram, together with the fact that Hoxha didn’t even have the decency to reply to the offer, was incorporated in leaflets and other NCFA propaganda materials addressed to the Albanian people. CIA and State Department officials discussed preparations to drop thirty thousand one-pound bags of white flour over Albania by the end of the year11 but eventually abandoned the idea for fear they might hurt someone on the ground or that the Communists might poison them. Instead, they opted for lightweight envelopes and tin cans filled with NCFA propaganda materials together with badly needed supplies to provide a token relief to the impoverished Albanian population, such as thread, needles, cloth, socks, scarves, soap, and razor blades. According to its records, between 1950 and 1955 the agency dropped 33 million propaganda leaflets and over thirty thousand care packets over Albania.12
* * *
As Lieb and Yatsevitch began considering economic warfare activities against Albania, they saw mercantile shipping as one of its greatest vulnerabilities. Other economic warfare actions, such as devaluation of currency, black market activities, and encouraging hoarding, were useful but had limited, if not questionable effect against Albania. It was a small country where there was not much to be hoarded, where trading was done by barter rather than with money, and whose primitive form of economy would not be greatly affected by black market activities.
Lieb raised the possibility of burning on the high seas two Albanian vessels sailing between the ports of Durrësi and Trieste. To a small country like Albania, with very limited resources, a successful action of this character would constitute a significant psychological and economic blow. It would also have far-reaching psychological effect on the Albanians who were involved in other Fiend activities—it would provide concrete proof that the Americans were conducting tangible actions with concrete results. Even if the operation failed, the loss would be small and it would be worth the effort if only for the experience it provided.13
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