Bruno Breguet: From International Terrorist to CIA Spy ©

Bruno Breguet was born on May 29, 1950, in Coffrane, Switzerland. In 1970, when he was 19 years old, Israeli authorities arrested Breguet as he attempted to smuggle two kilograms of explosives into that country from Lebanon. He aimed to blow up a high-rise building in Tel Aviv on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). He was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment but was pardoned in 1977 and released from prison. He returned to Switzerland and joined the Swiss terrorist group "Prima Linea." Breguet wrote the book La scuola dell'odio (The School of Hate), published in 1980 in Milan, Italy.

Breguet joined the "Carlos" terrorist group in September 1980 in Budapest, Hungary, and was given the code-name "Luca." On the night of September 24 to 25th, he attended a planning session to bomb RFE/RL. The bombing took place on February 21, 1981. This is his first known activity with the "Carlos" Group. He became the "bomb expert" for the group.

 

Almost one year to the day after the bombing of RFE/RL, Magdalena Kopp ("Lilly") and Breguet were arrested in Paris on February 16, 1982, while preparing another "Tango," a car bombing of the building, where the office of the Lebanese magazine Al Watan Al- Arabi was located. 

 

Breguet arrived in Paris on January 2, 1982, to conduct surveillance of the magazine office and editors. Kopp had flown on February 6, 1982, to Paris from Bucharest with a false Austrian passport and driver's license produced by the Romanian intelligence service in the name Doris Berger. The Basque terrorist group ETA provided a white Peugeot 504 automobile with explosives in the trunk, which she was to drive to the targeted building. She received the keys from the Belgian-born ETA terrorist Luc Edgar Groven ("Eric"); Breguet was to detonate the explosives.

 

Kopp and Breguet were arrested outside a parking garage on the Champs Elysees after being confronted by security guards, who had challenged them about what they were doing in the garage--she had difficulty opening the car. They could not produce a parking ticket. Brequet reportedly pointed a pistol at the guards. He and Kopp then ran from the garage but were immediately arrested by French police outside -- Brequet aimed the gun at a policeman and pulled the trigger, but it jammed, and he was subdued.  

 

In the car, police found a map of Paris, a Belgian-made GP35 pistol, 2 kilos of Pentrite explosives, two Czechoslovak hand grenades, an alarm clock set for 10:30 PM that night, and a battery complete with electrical wiring. According to later testimony of Magdalena Kopp, the magazine's office was to be bombed on a "contract" to "Carlos" from the Syrian government because of its previous anti-Syrian articles. In fact, on December 19, 1981, police diffused a dynamite explosive one minute before it was due to explode just outside the magazine's office. The Syrian Embassy in Paris was traced to that bombing attempt. "Carlos" had visited Damascus in December and then was given the contract to bomb the magazine's office.

 

Although this was the unsuccessful bomb attack in February, on April 22, 1982, the day the trial of Kopp and Breguet began in Paris, a car bomb exploded in front of the office building where the magazine Al Watan Al- Arabi was located, killing one and wounding over 60 other persons--10 seriously. 

 

The car was an orange-colored Opel Kadett with Austrian license plates. French investigators believed that German terrorist Christa-Margot Froehlich ("Heidi" in the Carlos group) rented and drove the car from Ljubljana, then Yugoslavia. Investigators also believed that she handed the car over to Johannes Weinrich, who then drove the car to the building housing the Al Watan Al-Arabi magazine office.

 

Froehlich had joined the Carlos group in 1981 from the German terrorist group "Revolutionary Cells"--apparently recruited by Weinrich. Italian police arrested her at Rome airport on June 16, 1982. Froelich was traveling from Bucharest, Romania, under a false German passport and carrying a specially adapted suitcase that contained over three kilos of explosives, detonators, and an alarm clock. She was later convicted and sentenced to six years imprisonment.

 

Officially, the French court was not intimidated and sentenced Kopp to four years imprisonment and Breguet to five. Yet, after Carlos' arrest, controversy broke out in France over whether they were given lesser sentences because of Carlos' bombing attacks. "Carlos" and his group continued their terrorist activity against French interests in December 1983: a suitcase bomb exploded at the Marseilles railroad station, killing two and wounding 45. The same month, a bomb exploded aboard the French "bullet train" that killed three and injured four. The following month, a bomb blast at the French Cultural Center in Tripoli, Lebanon, killed one person.

 

Magdalena Kopp was released on May 4, 1985, and flew to Damascus, Syria, to be reunited with "Carlos."

 

Bruno Breguet was released from French prison on September 17, 1985, and returned to Switzerland. Reportedly, after his release, Breguet gave up his terrorist career, yet in 1987/1988, Breguet reportedly was in meetings with the "Carlos Group" in Damascus, Syria.

 

For unknown reasons, in the fall of 1991, Breguet walked into the American Embassy in Berne and offered his services to the CIA. He was given the cryptonym FDBONUS/1 and paid $3,000 per month for his services and information about international terrorists, including Carlos:

[H]as provided unique information and may continue so; he is not proactive, is protective of friends/contacts and information on current activities of such …. and views himself as retired

 

We asked …to obtain current information on Greek terrorists by getting in touch with former friends and contacts. He traveled to Greece, and we know about the Italian border incident. He is not actively involved in any terrorist planning for any group that we know of. He has told us about overtures from Carlos to engage in some planning and rejoin the group, but FDBONUS/1 has avoided committing himself. He has provided some information on current plans of Carlos to move from Damascus. However, he obtains such information secondhand. 

 

It is not known how long Breguet was cooperating with the CIA. One CIA document from March 1994 mentions a monthly meeting with him concerning a bombing of interest to the Swiss Federal Police Counter-terrorist Unit. But he had no information.

Carlos settled in southern Yemen. Civil war erupted in Yemen in 1993, and Carlos learned that Palestinian factions protecting and supporting him would be transferred to Gaza and Jericho to take part in the Palestinian autonomy.  Carlos decided to seek refuge in Sudan, which was listed for years by the U. S. State Department as one country that harbored international terrorists. In the circumstances still unclear, Carlos was arrested in August 1994. French officials took him into custody, flew him to Paris, and placed him in a maximum-security prison.

 

On November 11, 1995, after traveling from Greece to Italy on the ferryboat "Lato," Italian authorities refused Breguet entry and returned him on the same ship. He did not disembark when the ferryboat arrived in Greece on November 12, 1993. Since then, Breguet has not been seen in public. He was 45 years old.

 

The myth about Bruno Breguet continued when one story surfaced in late 1996 that Breguet was in French custody in Budapest, Hungary. He was being confronted with witnesses and documents, particularly concerning the implication of high French authorities in arms traffic to Algeria. This traffic supposedly involved high French ministerial and regional officials in Nice. Reportedly, French DST (counter-espionage) found him in Croatia and passed the information to the DGSE (French foreign intelligence service), which sent members of its Special Forces to capture Breguet and take him to Budapest. Breguet reportedly cooperated with French intelligence and justice officials.

 

In February 2009, "Carlos" wrote an appeal letter on behalf of Bruno Breguet to US President Barack Obama:

 

Mister President, Your decision to close secret CIA jails honours you.

 

Our Comrade Bruno Breguet, a Swiss citizen, was abducted on November 11, 1995, from a ferryboat between Italy and Greece, in a special operation with NATO naval support.

 

We pray you have Bruno released.

 

We were informed unofficially that Bruno died accidentally during interrogation at a US base in the south of Hungary. If Bruno truly is dead, we need his body back, so his relatives, friends, and comrades may mourn in neutral Switzerland; this hero of the Palestinian Cause and his eternal soul join our martyrs in heaven.

 

Do not hesitate to have your services contact my Swiss attorney Marcel Bosonnet, my defense team's coordinator, and dearest wife, Maître Isabelle Coutant (Peyre), of the Paris Bar.

 

To erase the infamy attached to the Guantanamo base, return that occupied territory to its rightful owners, the Cuban people, on this 50th anniversary of their revolution.

 

I pray, God Almighty, that one day the peoples of our continent, free at last, may shout with one voice: "God bless our America!"

 

And as your grandfather would say:

«ALLAHOU AKBAR!»

 

         I remain, Mister President, yours in revolution.

 

For more detailed information about Bruno Breguet and his CIA cooperation, see the recently published book (in German):

 

70 Years Ago: Radio Liberty began broadcasting on March 1, 1953 ©

“Radio Liberation” (Radiostantsiya Osvobozhdeniye) was first broadcast from transmitters in Lampertheim, Germany, on March 1, 1953, with a 20-minute program that was rebroadcast 12 hours. It opened with Soviet émigré Sergey Dubrovsky giving the station’s broadcast times and frequencies. This was followed by a political and moral proclamation read by Boris Vinogradov that began: 

"Listen! Listen! Today, a new radio station, Liberation, begins broadcasting. (Слушайте! Слушайте! Сегодня начинает свои передачи новая Радиостанция Освобождени)

 

The program continued with, “The radio would advocate “complete freedom of conscience and the right to religious preaching,” as well as “the elimination of exploitation of man by a party or the state. Listen to the first program here: 

World news followed and was read by Ekaterina Goby and Sergei Dubrovsky. The program ended with a historical program read by Sergi Dubrovsky that focused on the anniversary of the 1921 Kronstadt Rebellion when disillusioned revolutionary sailors, soldiers, and workers rose against Bolshevik power.

RL in 1953

Because of the two low-powered 10 KW transmitters purchased from Radio Free Europe, only the Soviet armed forces in Germany and Austria were targeted. There was no record that the first broadcast was actually heard in the target area. Yet, within ten minutes, the Soviet Union started jamming the broadcasts, and the jamming of Radio Liberty’s broadcasts continued uninterrupted until 1988. It has been estimated that the Soviet Union and other communist countries spent four US dollars for each dollar RL expended on broadcasting.

The American Committee for Freedom for the Peoples of the USSR was founded in the United States on January 18,1951, in the state of Delaware. Newspaper columnist Eugene Lyons was the first president. Unlike the National Committee for a Free Europe, the American Committee for the Freedom of the Peoples of the USSR decided not to raise public funds in the United States, which would have “aided in providing plausible cover for its true sponsorship”—the CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination directed by Frank Wisner. Eventual funding from the U.S. Government for Radio Liberty was almost $160 million.

The Committee would undergo names changes to American Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of the USSR, American Committee for Liberation from Bolshevism in March 1953, and, finally, in 1964, Radio Liberty Committee. The American Committee’s position was that the most effective psychological war against the Soviet regime would be conducted by former Soviet exiles united in speaking out against Communism. However, there were difficulties in the way of accomplishing this aim: one was the extreme hostility between Great Russian groups and non-Russian nationalities of the USSR. The other difficulty was the basic political differences between Marxist and non-Marxist exiles, regardless of their nationality.

After long and arduous negotiations among the émigré groups at meetings held throughout Germany, an agreement was finally reached in October 1952, forming a Coordinating Center composed of four Great Russian and five nationality groups. This was not a unified émigré agreement:  certain Great Russian émigrés (NTS, for example) and representatives of important minority groups in the USSR, including Ukrainians and Byelorussians, did not join the Coordinating Center.

On June 30, 1953, a Presidential Commission issued a Top Secret report to President Eisenhower on International Information activities ("Jackson Commission”). The Commission's recommendations are very revealing:

In a situation short of war, the project can probably make its greatest contribution by de-emphasizing its political activities and devoting its major effort to improving broadcasts from Radio Liberation.

This station should use Soviet émigrés in an effort to weaken the Soviet regime and should concentrate on the Soviet military, government officials, and other groups in the population which harbor major grievances against the regime.

The American Committee for Liberation from Bolshevism, Inc., should concentrate on improving Radio Liberation and reduce expenditures on the émigré coordinating center.

By the summer of 1953, the Coordinating Center was dissolved, and any idea that the émigré groups would run their own radio station faded into history.

Ukrainian, Belarusian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Turkmen, Uzbek, Tatar-Bashkir, Armenian, Azeri, Georgian, Chechen, and Ingush language broadcasts were added to RL’s programming. From 1955 to 1973, Radio Liberty broadcasted from Pa Li, Taiwan, to eastern parts of Siberia and the Maritime Provinces of the Soviet Union. RL’s signal was capable of geographically covering, at various times, 90 percent of the USSR.

One of the first, if not the first, newspaper accounts of Radio Liberation appeared in the Christian Science Monitor on February 2, 1955.  The article, written by George W. Neill, began by quoting from a RL program:

Attention!

This is Radio Liberation.

Listen to the free voice of your brother fighters from abroad.

Listen to our true information, which the Kremlin tyrants and their lackeys conceal from you.

Pass along what you hear on Radio Liberation to your relatives, friends and acquaintances.

This is Radio Liberation.

The radio station’s name was changed to Radio Liberty in 1959.  Former US Presidents Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower were “honorary chairmen” of Radio Liberty at that time. The Committee press release gave the ideological justification for the existence of Radio Liberty:

Radio Liberty’s broadcasts analyze events and developments in the Soviet Union and the acts and policies of the Soviet government from the point of view of the best interests of the peoples of the Soviet Union. Radio Liberty’s writers and speakers seek to give expression to the innermost feelings, thoughts, and repressed aspirations of their fellow countrymen.

In January 1964, Howland Sargeant, former Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and now president of the Radio Liberty Committee, issued a prepared statement giving the main task of the committee:

To sponsor efforts to communicate with the people of the Soviet Union in order to achieve the long-range goal of a fundamental change in Soviet policies and practices, which will reflect the will of the Soviet people for genuine peace and freedom.

On March 23, 1959, Radio Liberty transmitted its first broadcast from the beautiful beach Playa de Pals, on the Mediterranean coast, north of Barcelona, Spain. Shortwave broadcasting from this site would continue until May 25, 2001. Exactly 27 years after the first broadcast, on March 23, 2006, the huge transmitter towers, some of which reached a height of over 500 feet, were demolished in a live Spanish television broadcast.

The collapse of Communism and the Soviet Union was hastened in August 1991 when government officials illegally attempted to oust Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.  President Gorbachev publicly recognized the role played by Radio Liberty in informing the Soviet people.  Gorbachev said he relied on its broadcasts for news while held under house arrest in his Black Sea vacation home during the attempted coup.

Shortly afterward, Russia's first President Boris Yeltsin enthusiastically, if not fully accurately, said, “During the 3-4 days of this takeover, Radio Liberty was one of the very few channels through which it was possible to send information to the whole world and, most important, to the whole of Russia, because now almost every family in Russia listens to Radio Liberty -- and that was very important.”

A few weeks later, he signed a Presidential Decree giving RFE/RL special status, which allowed it for the first time in its history, to officially operate a news bureau in Moscow. Ten years later, Russian President Putin repealed this decree in October 2002. 

On March 20, 1993, Mikhail S. Gorbachev was an invited guest at RFR/RL’s 40th-anniversary celebration in Moscow of the first Radio Liberty broadcast; Gorbachev told the assembled audience of diplomats and journalists, "In the dark years of Communist rule before my own perestroika (reconstruction) reform program began, Radio Liberty told the truth.”