The Sword and the Shield

by Christopher Andrew

  Having greatly exaggerated its success in 1973, the Centre was also confident of its ability to influence the outcome of the May 1974 presidential election. It informed the Central Committee that the Socialist leader, Franáois Mitterrand, standing as the candidate of all the main left-wing parties, had a real chance of victory,71 and mounted a major active measures campaign against his chief right-wing opponent, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing (codenamed KROT—“Mole”). In one week during the campaign, ten officers of the Paris residency Line PR carried out fifty-six allegedly “significant operational measures.”72

  A leading part in the active measures against Giscard was taken by one of the residency’s most highly rated and longest-serving agents, BROK, then a well-connected journalist. Originally recruited as an ideological agent in 1946, BROK had begun working for money within a few years to supplement his income as a journalist and to purchase a Paris apartment. In the mid-1970s he was paid over 100,000 francs a year.73 As well as having a total of at least ten case officers,74 BROK was so highly regarded that he had meetings with five heads of the FCD Fifth Department, whose responsibilities included operations in France.75 During the 1974 presidential election campaign, BROK was provided, on Andropov’s personal instructions, with a fabricated copy of supposedly secret campaign advice given to Giscard d’Estaing by the Americans on ways to defeat Mitterrand and Jacques Chaban-Delmas, Giscard’s unsuccessful Gaullist rival for the right-wing vote during the first round of the election. The forged document was then shown to Chaban-Delmas and others, doubtless to try to make collaboration between him and Giscard more difficult at the second round, when Giscard was the sole candidate of the right.76

  The only other operation to discredit Giscard d’Estaing during the 1974 presidential election which is described in detail in Mitrokhin’s notes was a somewhat bizarre active measure which reflected the obsession of the KGB’s many conspiracy theorists with Zionist intrigues. In France, as in the United States and elsewhere, the Centre believed that a powerful Jewish lobby was at work behind the scenes, manipulating much of the political process.77 The KGB decided to exploit the murder of a female relative of Giscard d’Estaing in October 1973 to mount an extraordinary operation designed to embroil him with the Jewish lobby. Service A concocted a forged document supposedly distributed by a (non-existent) French pro-Israeli group, claiming that she had been killed by Zionists in revenge for Giscard’s part in the prosecution of Jewish financiers while serving as finance minister some years earlier. The Centre was unaccountably proud of the whole absurd operation.78 In the second round of the presidential election, Giscard defeated Mitterrand by less than 2 percent of the vote. There is no evidence that KGB active measures had the slightest influence on the result.

  IN THE MID-1970S Le Monde (codenamed VESTNIK—“Messenger”—by the KGB)79 became embroiled in a controversy over its alleged left-wing, anti-American bias. The most distinguished of its leading conservative critics, Raymond Aron, contrasted Le Monde’s readiness to mention US bombing raids on North Vietnam in the same breath as Nazi wartime atrocities with its reluctance to engage in serious, detailed criticism of Soviet abuses of human rights.80 Solzhenitsyn, whose Gulag Archipelago provided the best-documented evidence of those abuses, received particularly unfair treatment. In July 1975 Le Monde used a distorted account of a speech by Solzhenitsyn in the United States to smear him as a Nazi sympathizer:

  Alexander Solzhenitsyn regrets that the West joined forces with the USSR against Nazi Germany during the last world war.

  He is not alone. Westerners of a previous generation like [the leading French collaborator] Pierre Laval had the same ideas, and people like [the French fascists] Doriot and Déat welcomed the Nazis as liberators.81

  Two months later, Le Monde reported—also inaccurately—that Solzhenitsyn had accepted an invitation to visit Chile from the brutal military dictatorship of General Pinochet.82 There is no proof that either of these smears was planted by the KGB. Both, however, were entirely in line with disinformation which the KGB was seeking to plant on the Western press.83 In 1976 a former member of Le Monde’s editorial staff, Michel Legris, published a detailed analysis of what he claimed was its equally biased reporting in favor of the Portuguese Communists, the Cambodian Khmer Rouge and the Palestinian PLO.84

  The extent of bias in Le Monde reporting during the 1970s still remains controversial, as do claims that it was far readier to condemn American than Soviet policy.85 KGB files, however, provide some support for the charges of pro-Soviet bias made by Le Monde’s critics. Mitrokhin’s brief notes on KGB contacts with Le Monde identify two senior journalists and several contributors who were used, in most cases doubtless unwittingly, to disseminate KGB disinformation.86 During the 1970s and early 1980s the Paris residency claimed to have influenced Le Monde articles on, inter alia, US policy in Iran, Latin America, the US bicentennial, the dangers of American influence in Europe, the threat of a supranational Europe, US plans for the neutron bomb, causes of East-West tension and the war in Afghanistan.87 In July 1981 Andropov received a message from the leadership of the French Communist Party, urging him to arrange for an invitation to visit Afghanistan to be sent to a named journalist on Le Monde, whose reporting, it claimed, would be “sympathetic.”88 Some years earlier the same journalist had been generous in his praise of Colonel Muhammar Qaddafi. Le Monde’s susceptibility to KGB disinformation probably derived chiefly from naivety about Soviet intelligence operations. In the aftermath of Watergate and the revelations of abuses by the US intelligence community, Le Monde showed itself—like some other sections of the media—acutely aware of the sins, real and imagined, of the CIA but curiously blind to the extensive active measures program of the KGB.89

  Unlike Le Monde, the main news agency, Agence France-Presse, attracted little public controversy. It was, however, successfully penetrated both in Paris and abroad. Mitrokhin’s notes identify six agents90 and two confidential contacts91 in the agency recruited between 1956 and 1980. The most senior, LAN, was recruited under false flag by the businessman DRAGUN in 1969 and paid 1,500 francs a month, which he was told came from the Italian company Olivetti, supposedly anxious to have inside information on French government policy.92

  Perhaps the most ambitious active measure begun by the KGB during the presidency of Giscard d’Estaing was the launching of the fortnightly newsletter Synthesis (codenamed CACTUS) by its agent of influence Pierre-Charles Pathé (MASON). The first issue of Synthesis, ostensibly left-wing Gaullist in tone, appeared in June 1976 and was sent free of charge to 500 opinion-formers,93 among them 70 percent of the Chamber of Deputies, 47 percent of the Senate and 41 journalists.94 The seventy issues published over the next three years, at a cost to the KGB of 252,000 francs,95 covered a series of well-worn Service A themes. France was portrayed as the victim of an “underhanded” American economic war in which the US balance of payments deficit allowed Washington to act as a parasite on the wealth of other states.

  Giscard d’Estaing was portrayed as an “Atlanticist” who was failing to protect French interests against American exploitation. The United States was a sinister “police democracy” which employed systematic violence against its black minority and all others who stood in its way. The assassination of President Kennedy was “an essential aspect of American democracy.” By contrast, Pol Pot’s massacres were either played down or explained away and the Vietnamese boat people dismissed as middle-class emigrants.96

  Pathé’s downfall began in 1978 when the DST started tailing his case officer at the Paris residency, Igor Aleksandrovich Sakharovsky (alias “Kuznetsov”), son of a former head of the FCD. After Sakharovsky reported his suspicions that he was being followed to his superiors, his meetings with Pathé were temporarily suspended. When they resumed two months later, Sakharovsky inadvertently led his watchers to Pathé. On July 5, 1979 the radio-intercept post in the Paris residency, while listening into a frequency used by a DST surveillance team, heard its leader announce, “The acto
rs are in place. Let’s start the show!” Immediately afterwards Pathé was arrested in the act of receiving money and documents from Sakharovsky.97 In May 1980 Pathé became the only Soviet agent of influence ever convicted in a Western court. He was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment but was released in 1981. During his trial Pathé admitted to having received small sums of money for articles written on Moscow’s behalf. His KGB file reveals that, in reality, by the time of his arrest he had received a total of 974,823 francs in salary and expenses.98

  At almost the same time as the Synthesis active measure came to an ignominious end, the Paris residency took the decision to cease funding La Tribune des Nations, founded by its agent André Ulmann (DURANT) in 1946. Since Ulmann’s death in 1970, further KGB subsidies to the Tribune, totaling 1,527,500 francs by 1978, had been channeled through agent NANT, a former associate of Ulmann. In the mid-1970s NANT was considered one of the residency’s dozen most valuable agents, providing intelligence obtained from his contacts in official circles as well as carrying out active measures. According to his file, from 1970 to 1978 he supplied 119 intelligence reports, published 78 articles on topics devised by Service A and helped to cultivate 12 potential agents. In the late 1970s, however, the KGB began to suspect him of “dishonesty” and of being in contact with the DST. Contact with NANT was broken off in 1980. Thus ended the longest and most expensive active measures operation ever run by the Paris residency. The KGB files on DURANT, NANT and three agents closely associated with them—VERONIQUE, JACQUELINE and NANCY—fill 26 volumes, totaling over 8,000 pages.99

  Each year the Paris residency, like other KGB stations abroad, sent the Centre somewhat crude statistics on its active measures. Those for 1979 totaled 188 articles in the press (despite the demise of Synthesis), 67 “influence conversations;” 19 operations to convey disinformation by word of mouth; 7 operations involving forged documents ; the organization of 2 public meetings; 4 speeches at public gatherings; 2 books; and 4 leaflets.100 In 1980, largely as a result of the breach with NANT, the number of press articles for which the Paris residency claimed the credit fell to 99. “Influence conversations,” however, increased to 79 and operations to convey disinformation verbally to 59. The residency also reported two active measures involving forged documents, and claimed the credit for organizing two public meetings, inspiring sixteen conference speeches and arranging one leaflet distribution.101

  If Paris residency reports are to be taken literally, the “influence conversations” achieved some striking successes. Several leading French politicians from across the political spectrum as well as a few well-known academics, whom it would be unfair to name, are said to have adopted views on the threat posed by American defense policy, the future of East-West relations and the menace to French national sovereignty from a “supranational Europe.” Some of these individuals may well have been imprudent in their contacts with individuals from the Soviet embassy whom they might reasonably have suspected were KGB officers. It seems probable, however, that in many instances the Paris residency merely claimed the credit for policy statements which were relatively favorable to Soviet positions but which it had, in reality, done little to influence. Among the residency’s more absurd claims was the boast that KGB active measures “compelled” two of de Gaulle’s former prime ministers, Michel Debré and Maurice Couve de Murville, the latter the current head of the Foreign Affairs Commission in the National Assembly, to “defend France’s independence from the United States”—a policy to which both were already committed. Though the KGB also claimed to have brought influence to bear on close advisers of the President, Giscard d’Estaing, the Prime Minister, Raymond Barre, the Foreign Minister, Jean Franáois-Poncet, and the Socialist leader, Franáois Mitterrand, this supposed “influence” had no discernible effect on their policies.102

  KGB policy during the 1981 presidential election campaign was less clear-cut than during the election seven years earlier. At the end of the 1970s the left-wing alliance including both Socialists and Communists, which had supported Mitterrand in 1974, had broken down, and on the first round of the election he had to face opposition from the PCF leader, Georges Marchais, as well as from candidates of the right. Though KGB active measures in 1981 reflected greater hostility to Giscard d’Estaing and the candidates of the right than to Mitterrand, they were no longer, as in 1974, guided by the simple strategy of securing a Mitterrand victory. (It was clear from the outset that Marchais, who won only 15 percent of the vote, had no chance of winning the election.) The individual active measures recorded in the files noted by Mitrokhin suggest that bringing pressure on all the leading candidates was considered a more important objective than ensuring the victory of any one of them. As in 1974, however, the Centre seriously exaggerated its ability to influence the course of events.

  In May 1980, Giscard d’Estaing had become the first Western leader to hold talks with Brezhnev since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, thus helping to rescue the Soviet Union from its pariah status in the West. In preparing for the meeting, Brezhnev’s advisers must have been greatly assisted in their continuing access to all the diplomatic traffic exchanged between Paris and the French embassy in Moscow. On Giscard’s return to Paris, he announced, perhaps somewhat naively, that the Soviet Union had agreed to withdraw one of its divisions from Afghanistan.103 Though Giscard’s attitude to the Soviet Union subsequently appeared to harden, the Paris residency embarked on active measures designed to persuade him that he would increase his chances of reelection by presenting himself as “the advocate of dialogue with [eastern Europe] against American domination.” Disinformation was sent to a member of Giscard’s staff which it was hoped would convince him that the most damaging scandal of his presidency, that of the diamonds given him by “Emperor” Jean Bédel Bokassa of the Central African Republic, had been engineered by the CIA.104 The residency also claimed the credit for “inciting” attacks by the unofficial Gaullist candidate, Michel Debré, on alleged “departures from Gaullist principles” and pro-American tendencies on the part of the official Gaullist candidate, Jacques Chirac. Other active measures included schemes “to expose pro-Atlantic and pro-Israeli elements” in the policies of Mitterrand and one of his future prime ministers, Michel Rocard.105

  According to an opinion poll during the campaign, 53 percent of Jewish electors intended to vote for Mitterrand as compared with only 23 percent for Giscard d’Estaing. 106 The KGB was predictably suspicious of Mitterrand’s popularity with Jewish voters. As in 1974 the active measures devised by Service A reflected the KGB’s anti-Zionist conspiracy theories, in particular its belief in the power of the French Jewish lobby. The most absurd of the residency’s operations during the election was probably its attempt to “compromise the Zionists” by passing bogus information to the French authorities purporting to show that they were planning “extremist measures” to disrupt the campaigns of Giscard d’Estaing and Debré.107 It is highly unlikely that this or any other active measure had any significant influence either on the main candidates or on the outcome of the presidential election.

  Mitterrand’s success in May 1981 was followed by a landslide Socialist victory in the legislative elections a month later. Though the career of the veteran Socialist Party agent GILES, recruited a quarter of a century earlier, was by then almost over, he remained in touch with his case officer, Valentin Antonovich Sidak (codenamed RYZHOV), who was stationed in Paris from 1978 to 1983 under diplomatic cover as second secretary at the Soviet embassy. He continued to provide Sidak with what the Centre considered inside information from “the close entourage of F[rançois] Mitterrand.”108

  The arrest of Pathé in 1979 and the decision to break off contact with NANT in 1980 caused a major change of strategy in KGB active measures to influence the French press after Mitterrand’s election as president in May 1981. An unusually frank enquiry by the FCD Fifth Department concluded—probably correctly—that Synthesis, La Tribune des Nations and other periodicals funded by the KGB h
ad had “practically no influence on public opinion.” In future the Paris residency was instructed to concentrate on the cheaper and more productive task of acquiring agents in established newspapers and magazines.109 The value of some of its existing media agents, however, was called into question—among them BROK, probably the KGB’s longest-serving journalist recruit. During the 1970s BROK had been one of the best-paid and most highly regarded French agents. A subsequent review of his work concluded, however, that he was “insincere, untruthful in his contacts with operational officers, exaggerating his information and operational possibilities, inflating the value of his information, and developing mercenary tendencies, lack of discipline and failure to carry out assignments.” In 1981 BROK’s 35-year service as a Soviet agent was abruptly terminated.110 The Centre continued to seek new agents among French journalists, but concluded that, in a television age, the Western press lacked the influence on public opinion which it had possessed twenty years earlier.111

  AT THE BEGINNING of the 1980s, partly as a result of the KGB’s declining confidence in its Paris agents of influence, the Centre probably regarded ST as the most successful part of its French operations. By the mid-1970s (if not sooner), the Paris residency had twice as many Line X officers and agents (over twenty of each) as any other residency in the European Community.112 Line X operations continued to expand during the late 1970s and—probably—the early 1980s. ST documents sent to the Centre (835 in 1973, 829 in 1974, 675 in 1975) rose to a record 1,021 in the first half of 1977.113 A total of 36 Line X officers served in Paris for all or part of the period 1974 to 1979, far more once again than in any other EC country.114 By 1980, if not before, France had become the KGB’s third most productive source of ST, providing 8 percent of all ST received by the Soviet Military Industrial Commission (VPK).115