Evgeny Georgievich Golubev: The CIA’s Frustrated Frogman in the Early Cold War, Part One ©

ByRichardH. Cummings onAugus t22, 2022

On July 24, 1951, the CIA’s Project Approval Board approved Project WSBAKERY and notified the Far Eastern Branch:

The object of this project is the establishment of two reception and training centers, one within the continental limits of the United States and a second in a more forward area (possibly Alaska or the Aleutians) for the reception training and forward movement of selected Russian agents to be employed in Far Eastern operations presumably Eastern and Northern Siberia.

The Board has been impressed with the thoroughness and careful thought embodied in WSBAKERY. The Board is also most strongly of the opinion that no effort should be spared in developing early penetration of Communist Russian territory and that Siberia provides a hitherto little developed but potentially fruitful field for such operations.

WSBAKERY was then integrated into Basic Plan AEACRE in February 1952. Basic Plan AEACRE was to “provide for the establishment of a Domestic Operations Base in or near Washington for the interrogation, assessment, training, briefing, and preparation for dispatch of agents for infiltration into the USSR.”

One agent selected for agent penetration training was Evgeny Georgievich Golubev, a Russian national born in 1923 in Kizlyar, Grozny region, USSR. In June 1947, Golubev deserted the Soviet Army in the Azerbaijan SSR and illegally crossed the Soviet border into Iran. He was immediately arrested by the military authorities and imprisoned. He contacted the British Intelligence Service in August 1948 and offered information. He told an employee of the British Embassy about the airfields, weapons, and command personnel of the military units he served in the Soviet Union.

At the beginning of 1949, having arrived from Isfahan to Tehran, he contacted a British intelligence officer named Jarvis, who was working under the legal cover of a representative of a British company in Tehran. Golubev supplied him with information for money: the deployment, formation, and command personnel of the 103rd rifle cadet brigade, 84th naval brigade, 414th Georgian division, and 513th separate auto battalion, in which he served.

During one of the meetings with Jarvis in 1949, the British intelligence officer suggested that Golubev undergo special training in an English intelligence school for a later drop him into the Soviet Union. Golubev agreed to undergo intelligence training at an English school and then carry out intelligence missions on behalf of the British.

Shortly after this conversation with Jarvis, however, Golubev was arrested by the Iranian police for theft and sentenced to six months in prison. For this reason, his espionage relationship with Jarvis ended, and after leaving prison, he did not cooperate with British intelligence.

Through a translator at the American embassy, Golubev met American “diplomat” Ronald Otto Bollenbach. During 1946 and 1947, Bollenbach was the Assistant Air and Naval Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Golubev passed on information he knew about the location of military-industrial facilities on the territory of the Soviet Union, Soviet military units, their numerical strength, weapons, and the material situation of the population in the USSR.

Bollenbach offered him the chance to undergo espionage training at an American intelligence school. In August 1951, Golubev and three other agent trainees flew from Iran to West Germany.

After arriving in Munich, he was placed in a safe house on the city's outskirts. In the first half of September, he was taken to the intelligence school in Bad Woerishofen, Bavaria. On the instructions of Bollenbach and another American intelligence officer in Munich using the name "Vasily," Golubev was photographed and subjected to a medical examination. He then received a CIA preliminary clearance.

At the intelligence school, Golubev studied reconnaissance methods, radio communications, parachuting, firearms training, topography, the structure of various branches of the Soviet Army, photography, document forgery, and sabotage. The head of this school was Harold Fiedler, listed as a major in the U.S. Army. The teaching staff were all Americans except for one instructor.

In February 1951, Golubev went to Landsberg, where he received practical exercises on the explosion of rails, pipes, telephone poles, and other objects.

Golubev was sent to the United States for further reconnaissance training at the CIA's Domestic Operation Branch (DOB). While at a CIA safe house near Washington, D.C., under the guidance of CIA officer Mike Ogden, he studied topography, radio, and photography and trained in shooting using various types of weapons. He also studied the Soviet Primorsky Territory for future operations.

Under the guidance of Americans who called themselves "Rad," "Tony," and "Georges," Golubev went skiing, hunting, and mountaineering. At the same time, he was trained in making huts in the forest and maintaining fires in the snow.

Golubev was given the CIA cryptonym CACIOSO and was trained for nearly three months (from March 3, 1952, to May 23, 1952). He and Mike Ogden flew to Tokyo, Japan, for more training. There he met another American intelligence officer named “Bill,” who took Golubev by car to a safe house near Yokohama. During this time, Golubev daily went to the seashore, accompanied by the American trainers, and swam for three to four hours.

In the same safe house, he began to study the legend developed for him by American intelligence, connected with the upcoming transfer to Sakhalin. According to the legend, he was Alexander Mikhailovich Vorobyov, who was demobilized from the Soviet Army in 1948, after which he lived in Lviv, Dnepropetrovsk, Voroshilovgrad, Kizlyar, and the village Pravda on Sakhalin..

Book of Interest: Cold War Camera

 

Cold War Camera explores the visual mediation of the Cold War and illuminates photography’s role in shaping the ways it was prosecuted and experienced. The contributors show how the camera stretched the parameters of the Cold War beyond dominant East-West and US-USSR binaries and highlight the significance of photography from across the global South. 

 

Among other topics, the contributors examine the production and circulation of the iconic figure of the “revolutionary Vietnamese woman” in the 1960s and 1970s; photographs connected with the coming of independence and decolonization in West Africa; family photograph archives in China and travel snapshots by Soviet citizens; photographs of apartheid in South Africa; and the circulation of photographs of Inuit Canadians who were relocated to the extreme Arctic in the 1950s. Highlighting the camera’s capacity to envision possible decolonialized futures, establish visual affinities and solidarities, and advance calls for justice to redress violent proxy conflicts, this volume demonstrates that photography was not only crucial to conducting the Cold War, it is central to understanding it.

 

Table of Contents

 

List of Illustrations  ix
Acknowledgments  xv

Cold War Camera: An Introduction / Thy Phu, Andrea Noble, and Erina Duganne  1

Visual Alliances
1. Ernest Cole's House of Bondage, the United States Information Agency, and the Cultural Politics of the World War / Darren Newbury  33
2. Icon of Solidarity: The Revolutionary Vietnamese Woman in Vietnam, Palestine, and Iran / Thy Phu, Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandi, and Donya Ziaee  67
3. Group Material's "Art for the Future": Visualizing Transnational Solidarity at the End of the Global Cold War / Erina Duganne  113
4. Interrogating the Cold War's Geo-Politics from Down South: Chile from Within (1990) and the Construction of a Situated Visuality / Ángeles Donoso Macaya  143
5. Decolonization and Nonalignment: African Futures, Lost and Found / Jennifer Bajorek  167
Photo Essays
6. Bifurcated and Parallel Histories / Tong Lam  195
7. Preservation of Terror / Eric Gottesman  203

Structures of Seeing
8. Ending World War II: The Visual Literacy Class in Cold War Human Rights / Ariella Aïsha Azoulay  213
9. “Planted There Like Human Flags”: Photographs of the High Arctic and Cold War Anxiety, 1951–1956 / Sarah Parsons  239
10. Urban Albums, Village Forms: Chinese Family Photographs and the Cold War / Laura Wexler, Karintha Lowe, and Guigui Yao  263
11. Travel, Space, and Belonging in Soviet Domestic Photo Collections of the Cold War Era / Oksana Sarkosova and Olga Shevchenko  293
12. Exhibiting Ethnic Minorities, Democratizing History: Cold War Legacies and the Jews in Poland's Visible Sphere / Gil Pasternak and Marta Ziętkiewicz  327

Bibliography  359
Contributors  389
Index  395

 

Author/Editor Bios

Thy Phu is Professor of Media Studies at the University of Toronto, Scarborough, and author of Warring Visions: Photography and Vietnam, also published by Duke University Press.

Erina Duganne is Professor of Art History at Texas State University and author of The Self in Black and White: Race and Subjectivity in Postwar American Photography.

Andrea Noble (1968–2017) was Professor of Latin American Studies at Durham University and author of Mexican National Cinema.

 

Duke University Press

New Book of Interest published in Finland

 A new book of interest has been published in Finland. Here are some details in English.

INTELLIGENCE AND ESPIONAGE: TRAINING, OPERATIONS, AGENTS

A good spy doesn't go to the safe, he searches and recruits people who have the key to the safe.

A true espionage bible from an expert in the shadow world. Jukka Rislakki, who has closely followed the topic for decades, has written a thorough work on the history, present and future of espionage. He comprehensively presents the industry's key actors, methods of operation and legendary spies both in Finland and internationally. 

Pseudonyms, poisons, assassinations, shadowing and kidnappings In the world of espionage and intelligence, many methods are the same, but a lot has also changed. A thorough work on the history of espionage and intelligence and the present day from a Finnish perspective. It tells about the most central players in the industry, legendary spies and what methods they use.

The book tells incredible stories, both sad and unintentionally comical, including answers to questions such as these:

·      What is intelligence and what is espionage? 

·      What is code and cipher? 

·      Who were Sorge, Sonja and Zoja?

·      What was operation Ryan? 

·      What does MKULTRA mean? 

·      Who was agent "Lassila"? 

·      Why did Hohlov have to learn to whistle well? 

·      What did the "home Russians" do? 

·      How did Finland abandon its agents in Estonia? 

·      What was Britain's legendary SIS really like? 

·      What impossible task did Veera Tervaoja get? 

·      What are KGB, FSB, CIA, NSA, MI6, Vkoel, Supo, NKVD? 

·      What mistakes did the intelligence services make in Barbarossa 1941 and Ukraine 2022? 

·      What does the Secret Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) Agency do? 

·      How die the CIA help Armi Kuusela become Miss Universe? 

·      What did Reino Hallamaa do in Pori jazz? 

·      What was the "half-burnt codebook"? 

·      What was the Secret Police Chief Titlinen list of agents  ? 

Jukka Rislakki is a former editor and investigative journalist who has written, among other things, spy novels and non-fiction books. In addition to Finland, his books  have been published in the Baltic countries, Ukraine, and the United States.

CIA's Operation Easter Bunny in the early Cold War ©

The Fighting Group against Inhumanity (Kampfgruppe gegen Unmenschlichkeit; KgU) began in Berlin in 1948 and was at first a U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) operation. It was then subsidized and guided by the CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) as Project DTLINEN, approved on May 24, 1949. responsible for nom-attributable Soviet Zone operations. DTLINEN was initially conceived to expose to the residents of both East and West Germany the conditions existent in prisoner-of-war and concentration camps in the Soviet Zone. A secondary purpose was to provide a source of helpful information concerning the psychological situation within East Germany.

Cryptonyms included CAJERSEY for the KgU, EARTHENWARE, DTLINEN, and GRAVEYARD for the CIA projects.DTLINEN was divided into an overt and covert operation in Berlin; the former carried out all attributable-type activities, while the latter was responsible for nom-attributable Soviet Zone operations. 

The KgU covert section (for which support the majority of the CIA subsidy was used) had a staff of 15, five in the central office in Berlin and two in each of the five field divisions. To these field divisions (one for each of the East German States), a total of 125 East German co-workers regularly reported giving positive intelligence and receiving administrative harassment and propaganda material for infiltration and distribution. 

At one point in the 1950s, funding for the overt side of KgU came from Radio Free Europe as a grant for the working arrangement between the KgUin in Goettingen, West Germany, and RFE for collecting information from refugee camps used in programming. The Ford Foundation acted as a financial conduit for the CIA and provided grants to the NCFE. For example, in 1951, the Ford Foundation granted NCFE $150,000. NCFE then made three grants of $50,000 to RFE, which then paid KgU $7,500 monthly for “humanitarian and welfare purposes” – the overt side of the KgU. 

During an average month in 1954, in addition to twenty administrative harassment operations, the KgU distributed 700,000 propaganda items in the Soviet Zone, mainly by balloon launchings. The KgU, under CIA guidance, distributed Russian-language propaganda material aimed at inducing defection among Soviet military personnel. KgU distribution costs due to this activity were reimbursed by the CIA project CATIDAL. 

In January 1955, for example, the Frankfurt Chief of Mission reported to CIA headquarters, “Over the past 12 months, the KgU carried out 157 major administrative harassment operations, including: 

·      False instructions and invitations (70)

·      Countermanding of East German governmental and party instructions (16)

·      False information (41)

·      Warnings to governmental and party functionaries (6)

·      True anti-communist information under false letterheads (16)

·      Demands for payment of notional accounts (6)

·      Falsified orders for materials (8)

·      Forged postage stamps and documents (4)”

Time, The New Yorker, The New York Herald Tribune, New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, and other leading American and European newspapers and periodicals carried positive articles on the KgU. 

Here are extracts from a declassified CIA document: 

 

Memorandum                                                                                                  March 1951

Subject: DTLINEN OPERATION EASTER BUNNY

As the opening gun for a series of operations that will aim at the disruption of the HBREBEL (Russian Occupation Zone) administrative system, an operation was mounted in BGQUEEN (East Berlin) and HBREBEL directed against the H.O. (Handels- Organization). Purportedly originating with the H.O., leaflets advertised a substantial lowering of prices starting March 22 as an Easter present to the HBBEBEL population. 

This operation was carried out in two phases:180 envelopes purporting to come from the District Head Administration of' the H.O. were mailed to all leading H.O. stores, each containing several hundred leaflets and "special instructions" demanding that these leaflets be brought to the attention of the customers immediately. It further stated that it was highly desirable that all employees of all branch stores be instructed to discuss with the population these notable price reductions, which proved that the DDR is doing everything to raise the standard of living and to show the tremendous advantages vis-a-vis the imperialistic countries of the West. These leaflets were mailed from the state capitols and distributed in HBREBEL and BGQUEEN in a blow-like operation. 

It can be stated that this was one of the most successful DTLINEN operations ever undertaken. We give credit to the successful reorganization of DTLINEN's Department II B, which is in charge of all operations mounted in HBREBEL or BGQUEEN. A verbal report from BGHABIT (U.S. Army CIC)  in WSCORMY IBerlin)  states that several of their sources reported the success of this operation.

The KgU activites ceaaed in 1959.

 

# 

Ukrainian Anti-Soviet Resistance in the Early Cold War ©

 

Excerpts from a declassified April 1953 CIA Internal Report entitled “Ukrainian Resistance”:

 

The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) was created in 1942-1943 for the purpose of fighting the Nazis and for the protection of the Ukrainian population. It is the military force of the underground government of the Ukrainian Supreme Council of Liberation (UHVR). The UPA represents the only important resistance group operating at present in the Ukrainian SSR.

 

The numerical strength of the Ukrainian Underground Resistance Movement today is considerably reduced from what it was at the close of World War II, when it numbered in the tens of thousands and even, according to some figures, 100,000 active armed members.

A fair estimate of the number of illegal-living armed partisans within the Western Oblasts of the Ukraine is 1,000 men and it is certain that many more live legally and maintain some sort of contact with the illegal-living underground units.

 

It is anticipated that by Fall, 1953, CIA will have been able to establish basis of its future relation with the Ukrainian underground.

 

Ukrainian Resistance Forces Killed in Action:

 

The following is a compilation of known insurgents killed in Ukraine between 1944 and 1950. These figures are not complete, but will give some indication of the amount of underground activity which took place during this period:

 

Area                                        1944    1945    1946    1947    1948    1949    1950

 

Kozlovski Raion                      26         7          3         13          4                 

Mikulinetski                            28       34         8         11          8                 

Veliko-Borkovski Raion          22       37        21         8           8                 

Veliko-Glubochetsk Raion      43       40        37        14         16                 

Zalozhtsevski Raion               40       72        34         9         23

Zborovski Raion                     34      105      13          7          5             

Bukachevski Raion                                                                                 5         3

Burshtyanksi Rion                                                                                  2         1                              

Peremyshlyani Raion                                                                              8         2

Bogatinski Raion                                                                                  10         6

Vilaivski Raion                                                                                       8         1

 

“Armed clashes with Soviet Security Forces took place in the following areas. In each case an average of five UPA partisans were involved: Drohobych Raion, Pidbuzh Raion, Samborski Raion, Turka Raion, Strilkiv Raion, Rozhnitiv Raion, Wygoda Raion.”

When Henry Kissinger supported Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty ©

 
 Henry Kissinger died on November 29, 2023; he was 100-years-old.

A major turning point in RFE/RL’s history occurred in 1967 when Ramparts magazine publicly revealed the RFE-CIA relationship, which would subsequently lead to a congressional decision that the CIA would no longer finance RFE and RL:
 
Within the United States there are many elements, including large ethnic groups with close ties to many of the countries to which the Radios broadcast, for whom cessation of broadcasting would seem a serious and incomprehensible decision, especially in light of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. The attitudes of the ethnic groups would probably add significantly to the likelihood of adverse publicity attendant on termination, and would lend themselves to domestic political exploitation. Strongly negative Congressional reactions were encountered when the Director of Central Intelligence discussed the possibility of termination with key members of Congress in late 1967. A number of Congressmen are likely to show particular concern for the fate of RFE and RL because of their traditional responsiveness to the interests of domestic European ethnic groups, and because of their considerable knowledge of and belief in the work of the Radios.
 
On March 20, 1970, there was a meeting in the White House, with President Nixon, Richard Helms, the director of the CIA, and Henry Kissinger, the president’s national security advisor. The future of Radio Free Europe was one of the topics discussed. After the meeting, Helms wrote: “With respect to black operations, the President enjoined me to hit the Soviets, and hit them hard, any place we can in the world. He said to ‘just go ahead,’ to keep Henry Kissinger informed, and to be as imaginative as we could. He was as emphatic on this as I have ever heard him on anything. He indicated that he had had a change of mind and thought that Radio Free Europe should be continued.
 
In response to this meeting, the CIA wrote a paper entitled Tensions in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe: Challenge and Opportunity. The paper, which was describe as “excellent” by Henry Kissinger in a note to President Nixon, supported the continuation of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, which “represent a 20-year investment of over $400, 000,000.”

President Nixon appointed a commission in August 1972 to study international radio broadcasting to review alternative arrangements for funding RFE and RL. In his letter to Dr. Milton Eisenhower confirming his appointment as Chairman, Nixon wrote:

As you are undoubtedly aware, the operations of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty have been thoroughly debated by Congress during the past year. Throughout this period of intense review, the radios have continued to receive overwhelming sup- port from the majorities of both houses of Congress, the news media, and many of our leading citizens from all walks of life.... [I] believe the Commission should undertake a critical examination of the operation and funding question and recommend methods for future maintenance and support of the radios, which will not impair their professional independence and, consequently their effectiveness. 
 

CIA ended financial support to RFE and RL on June 30, 1971, and all supervision and other involvement on March 30, 1972. The US State Department took over funding of the radios until 1975, when the Board for International Broadcasting was created. Final physical and administrative consolidation of the two radio stations in Munich took place in 1975–76, as RFE/RL, which moved to Prague, Czech Republic in 1995 and continues to broadcast from there.

Henry Kissinger as Secretary of State wrote a letter to David M. Abshire, Chairman, Board for International Broadcasting, on August 28, 1976.  In part, it read:
 
Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty broadcasts can admirably serve “to facilitate the freeer and wider dissemination of information of all kinds. The comprehensive coverage, quality reporting, and objective news analysis of the broadcasts are a uniquely meaningful and often vital source of information and encourage the “constructive dialogue with the peoples of Eastern Europe and the USSR” …  The Radios are independent, highly professional operations which make a vital contribution to the free flow of information between peoples.
 

New Book of Interest: The Umbrella Murder: The Hunt for the Cold War's Most Notorious Killer

 

An interesting new book is about to hit the market—pre-order only now. It is due out in July 2024.

From Ebury Publishing: 

"In 1978 the Bulgarian author and dissident Georgi Markov was assassinated by a poisoned umbrella on Waterloo Bridge in London. His murder is the most iconic killing in almost five decades of the Cold War, and no one has ever been prosecuted for it. 

"The Umbrella Murder reveals the real architect and hit man behind this spectacular killing: a spy code-named Piccadilly who worked for the Bulgarian secret service and the KGB, who has been hiding for more than forty years. 

"Written as a modern-day thriller, and drawing on an incredible thirty-year cache of original documents and recordings and never-before-seen archive material -- some not even seen by police or secret services -- this is a jaw- dropping and page-turning search for justice in the murky underworld of intelligence and across the shifting sands of spycraft. 

"Ulrik Skotte is a Danish journalist who has been chasing the truth about the umbrella murder and the mysterious agent Piccadilly for more than 25 years. He eventually managed to track down Piccadilly and met him face to face in an apartment in Austria in 2021. A month later, Piccadilly was found dead in the same apartment."