Nikita Khrushchev and Radio Free Europe, Part 2: "The Truth Message" ©

President Eisenhower met with executives from Radio Free Europe, the Crusade for Freedom and CIA Director Allen Dulles at the White House on February 16, 1960. During the meeting, Eisenhower told the group, “Khrushchev had told him that if the United States would avoid trying to separate the Russian people from the Russian government, he would not block or jam the broadcasts.  He said he had no objection to news, music, etc. even where these convey a point of view different from that of the Soviet Union.”

Eisenhower added, “Khrushchev had said that things have changed greatly since Stalin’s time.  There has been only one execution for political cause – that of Beria – since Khrushchev came to power and that no people whatsoever have been sent to Siberia for political reasons.”

The Advertising Council’s 1960 fund-raising campaign for Radio Free Europe began with the question and answer: “What is our best weapon against Communism? The answer was, “Our best weapon is the truth. The Communists fear the truth because they know it could destroy them. Now you can hit them where it hurts—with the truth! With your own truth!"

Similarly to the first "Truth Broadcast" contest the previous year, the Ted Bates Agency prepared advertisements that were sent to newspapers and magazines nationwide. The statement contest was also advertised as the Truth-cast and Truth Message. The entrant was to complete the sentence: “I believe the most important thing people behind the Iron Curtain countries should know is....” The postmark deadline for the contest entry was April 30, 1960.

The March 1960 issue of Reader’s Digest carried an advertisement that included a photograph of Nikita Khrushchev, with the message:

IF YOU DISAGREE WITH MR. KHRUSHCHEV ...

·      Capitalism is a worn-out old mare while Socialism is new, young and full of energy

·      The so-called free world constitutes the cruel exploitation of millions ... for the enrichment of a handful...

·      Now it is American imperialism which is forcing its way ... to world domination

·      Your grandchildren will live under Socialism in America.

Here’s how to put your beliefs to work

If you lived behind the Iron Curtain, you would have to “eat” words like those above about the United States. But you can help give people throughout Europe a better diet of truth and freedom-in your own words. And you may go to Europe to broadcast them personally.

Enter the 1960 RADIO FREE EUROPE Truth Message Contest. Just write what you think people in Communist countries should know about America or freedom. Winning   messages will be beamed over Radio Free Europe to millions who want to hear what you, as an American, have to say

The writers of the six best messages would win free trips to Europe for two persons. Other prizes include 50 complete sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica and 200 Hallicrafters Short-Wave Radios.

Nikita Khrushchev visited the United States for a second time in September-October 1960 for meetings of the United Nations General Assembly. Reportedly, at one point he angrily stood up with a shoe in his hand and banged the shoe on the table at which he was sitting. I use the word “reportedly” because there is no photo or film of Khrushchev banging on the table with a shoe -- although the Assembly auditorium was packed with photojournalists, film and television crews. There is one classic photo of Khrushchev giving his speech at the podium supposedly showing him waving a shoe (out of focus), but in a second shot (either just before or just afterwards), the shoe is not there. The incident, in any event, has become another bit of Cold War folklore.

On October 9, 1960, he gave his only US interview in a WNTA television program Open Air that was moderated in New York by television personality David Susskind.  The program was broadcast on a delayed, syndicated basis over more than 250 TV and radio stations of the NTA network (National Telefilm Associates). Hundreds of viewers phoned the studio to protest Khrushchev's appearance.

And, other viewers called to complain about spot announcements during the program, which extolled the work of Radio Free Europe: the time ordinarily given to sponsored commercials was devoted to filmed announcements about Radio Free Europe. One of which depicted a soldier smashing a radio set belonging to a family presumably listening to Radio Free Europe

Khrushchev reportedly "just got rigid with anger,” when an aide passed him a note during the show telling him about the Radio Free-Europe spot announcements, Susskind said later.

Victor Sukhadrev, his interpreter relayed Khrushchev's comment in the next station break: "How dare you!" But after a few seconds the Soviet leader calmed down and smiled. "Well, do anything you like. We will win. We will win." Susskind later apologized to Khrushchev saying he knew nothing of the RFE commercials.

According to a UPI report published on October 11, 1960, Khrushchev said that his aide handed him a note during the Sunday television appearance to tell him commercials for Radio Free Europe were being broadcast during station breaks: “I spoke to my partner (moderator David Susskind) about it. I told him what you are trying to do—you are trying to stick a pinprick into an elephant—a mighty elephant, the Soviet Union.”

On October 17, 1960, television station WNTA apologized for carrying anti-communist announcements during the interview with Khrushchev. An apology by NTA was carried at the start of the next "Open End" program. The announcer noted that “last night that many viewers had questioned the propriety of the Radio Free Europe announcements.” He added, “While we believe that the content of these announcements, an eloquent plea for free speech, is worthy of exposure on our radio and TV stations we wish to express our regret al their unfortunate placement on the particular program on which Mr. Khrushchev was a guest."

WNTA station manager Ted Cott afterwards said that he had approved the RFE spots: “The intent of putting this on was to dramatize the fact that we in the United States were giving Mr. Khrushchev unlimited time to say whatever he felt, on American television, whereas they were jamming all our broadcasts in the Soviet Union—and this was the editorial point we were trying to make.”

Yuri Marin, Code Name "Kit": From Defector to KGB Denouncer of Radio Liberty ©

In February 1966, a 125-foot-long Soviet intelligence gathering ship, which looked like a fishing trawler, was first spotted at the mouth of the Klamath River heading south near Eureka, California. On February 16, 1966, newspapers carried an Associated Press story along with a photograph of the ship named “Deflektor.” One newspaper headline read, “Navy Watches Russ Trawler off California.” The ship was in international waters, i.e., beyond the 3-mile limit. A Navy spokesman said, “She has every right to be where she is.”

On board the “Deflektor” was Yuri Mikailovich Pyatakov, born on October 15, 1929 in Irkutsk, USSR, where he attended elementary and high schools. In 1948, he entered the military school for foreign languages, specializing in Korean. Later he attended the Institute of Foreign Languages in Irkutsk, specializing in English. He served eleven years in the Red Army, reaching the grade of Captain. In 1966, he apparently was an officer on board the ship.

On February 18, 1966, Pytakov jumped overboard and was picked up by a U.S. destroyer, which was then engaged in surveillance of the "Deflektor." 

He was brought ashore and debriefed about his and the ships activities until March 1966. Because his bona fides appeared to be excellent, and a polygraph examination tended to confirm his credibility, he was granted permanent residence in the U.S. in July 1966.  He then used the name Yuri Michael Marin and was relocated to Washington, D.C.

As the story goes, the KGB operation began, when Marin was in Washington. He was "spotted" and recognized by a Soviet Officer from the Soviet Embassy. Apparently, there were difficult "control problems,” either surveillance or in finding Marin's residence and place of work. The KGB headquarters ordered the KGB Residency in Washington to make a direct approach to Marin.

The first contact took place in a Washington D.C. art museum. Marin agreed to continue the contacts. By the third or fourth meeting, a counterintelligence officer was meeting Marin at his home. Afterwards they moved the relationship to clandestine meetings that lasted for about a year. He was given the code name “Kit.”

In September 1967, Marin was hired by the U.S. Army Russian Institute in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, West Germany -- about an hour’s ride south of Munich. During his briefings by U.S. Army personnel. Marin reportedly said he was warned that he faced execution if he ever returned to the Soviet Union.  To his Army colleagues he appeared to accept this as fact and was not intimidated by it. From Garmisch-Partenkirchen, he made frequent trips to Munich, apparently for personal reasons.

Marin reportedly was run in place by the KGB representation in East Berlin-Karlhorst.

In May 1970, he became considerably upset when he learned that he would not be granted U.S. citizenship in 1971 after the five—year period normal for regular applicants. His former membership in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union made it mandatory that he wait ten years before naturalization. He requested that a special private bill in his behalf be introduced in Congress, but that was refused.

          

Radio Liberty (RL) then hired him in June 1971 as an announcer and occasional scriptwriter. A year later, he married a Radio Liberty employee. Sometime in 1973, he again sought to work at the U.S. Army’s Russian Institute, but this time he was turned down for unknown reasons. At the KGB Direction, Marin continued working for Radio Liberty.  

Marin reportedly was well paid for his services: KGB had set up a Moscow Bank Account for him and paid circa 3,000-4,000 Rubles monthly into it.

In 1973, Directorate K changed its objective of the “KIT Operation” to "active measures" to expose of Radio Liberty as a CIA "tool." One KGB section also began planning the exfiltration or ”redefection” of Marin to USSR via Austria and Budapest. Marin was scheduled to be transferred to work for Radio Liberty in New York in November 1973, but he instead departed Munich in his own automobile on October 14, 1973 for an unknown destination.

He thereafter communicated with his wife in Munich using various addresses in the USSR.  

The December 5, 1973, issue of the Soviet newspaper Izvestia reported that Marin had recently returned to the USSR and "wished to share with Soviet Society 'information' he had acquired about Radio Liberty activities." He did not appear publicly and there was no mention further of him until February 1976, when Radio Moscow reported about a article in his name that appeared in the newspaper Literaturnaya Gazeta, "Radio Liberty: Who is Who and What is What." Numerous Radio Liberty employees were mentioned by name. The U.S. Embassy in Moscow reported on the article, with this comment: "The article intended implications for the Soviet reader seems to be that listening to RL is itself close to a treasonous act. The article's length, and the strong language it contains suggest that Soviet authorities continue to be seriously concerned over RL's impact within the USSR."

Marin published a book on his deeds as a KGB Agent in Radio Liberty. Other articles under Marin’s name were published in the USSR, wherein various "CIA spies" at Radio Liberty were exposed. Photographs of employees and photocopies of various Radio Liberty memoranda also appeared in the Soviet media.

In addition to denouncing Radio Liberty and the CIA, in one of Marin’s television interviews he said that his mission had been to penetrate the “U.S. spy school” in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. And he could confirm the “anti-Soviet” nature of the school that trained “American espionage agents.” 

At a multilateral Meeting of the East Bloc Intelligence Services in Prague, Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, February 12-13, 1976, intelligence officers exchanged experiences on the active measures taken and being prepared against both Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. KGB General Oleg Kalugin chaired the meeting and made an introductory speech.

One of the agreed upon points was:

Examine the possibilities and conditions of holding a public tribunal against Liberty and FREE EUROPE on the territory of a socialist country. For this tribunal, former employees of these centers will be used who were ordered back from the West (CZECHOWICZ, LJACH, SMOLINSKI, -- Peoples Republic of Poland, MARIN – USSR, MINARIK—Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and others). Also former employees of the radio stations, selected citizens who came under influence of the radio stations, as well as by using documentary materials from all socialist intelligence services will be used.

                                      

In 1977, Marin was featured in two propaganda books printed in Moscow that “exposed” CIA activities at Radio Liberty: A Dangerous Game: CIA and the Mass Media and Caught in the Act. He was also mentioned in the 1983 book published in Moscow, The CIA in the Dock: Soviet Journalists on International Terrorism.

Yuri Marin reportedly resettled in Latvia or Estonia and was not seen or used in any propaganda campaign afterwards. He never surfaced after the collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union; his fate is unknown.

Murder Attempt on Vladimir Kostov in Paris, France, on August 26, 1978 ©

Vladimir Kostov

Below we will briefly look at the murder attempt on Vladimir Kostov, a Bulgarian émigré living in Paris, ten days before the attack on Georgi Markov in London.

Vladimir Kostov arrived in Paris in April 1974 as the Paris correspondent of Bulgarian Television and Radio. He was also an experienced intelligence officer with the rank of Major. On 27 July 1977, he and his wife Natalya sought and received seeking political asylum in France.

Immediately, the First Main Directorate (FMD) of the Bulgarian Secret Service began an investigation into his defection. Kostov’s code name “Krastev”, which was used while he was working as an intelligence officer in Paris, was changed to “Judas”.

On 5 May 1978, a Sofia Military Court in closed session sentenced Kostov to death and his wife Natalia to six and a half years in prison as “traitors to the Motherland.” According to Bulgarian journalist Hristo Hristov, the FMD appointed a Bulgarian agent living in Algeria to perform the operation to liquidate “Judas”. The agent had been trained for operations in Turkey, but now he was charged with the mission to carry out the death sentence.

After doing freelance work for Radio Free Europe’s Bulgarian Service, Kostov became a staff member in the RFE Paris news bureau on 1 August 1978. He was scheduled for transfer to the Munich headquarters of the radio station in October as a full-time employee.

Vladimir Kostov describes in his memoirs The Bulgarian Umbrella what happened to him in Paris about 2 PM on 26 August 1978:

There were crowds of people in the Metro corridors. A few seconds before stepping off the escalator, I felt a sharp pain in the small of my back, just above my waist. At the same moment, I heard a sound like the rattle of a stone hitting the ground. Natalya heard it, too, without suspecting that anything had happened to me. My first thought was that I had been struck by a stone slung with great force, as though from a catapult.

In the 2006 television documentary, Umbrella Assassin, Vladimir Kostov takes the viewer through what happened as he was leaving the Metro station:

Two hours later, Kostov and his wife went to the Nanterre Surgery. Kostov was examined by the doctor on duty, who reportedly told them, “I can’t feel any lump in the place where you think you were hit. I suppose some insect - a wasp perhaps - got in under your shirt”. Kostov asked about the possibility that someone had deliberately attacked him. The French doctor skeptically said, “It’s quite obvious that you have not been shot or stabbed. As for poison, it’s more than two hours now, so you’d either be dead or critically ill. Go home. If it gets worse, come back and see me”.

Over the next forty-eight hours Kostov’s condition worsened: he had a high fever and the right side of his back was swollen. On Monday, he was still in pain and went to another hospital and another doctor told him that his wound was not an insect bite but the cause remained unknown. The swelling went down and the pain stopped.

 

Kostov, who had remained in close contact with French authorities since his defection, immediately reported the incident to the police on Monday, 28 August. An officer told him after their first analysis that, although they knew of the existence of more than 3,000 different kinds of toxins, it appeared they were dealing with something completely new or different. Kostov has been told he would receive a final analysis from the French police by 15 September. He described the man as tall, athletic-looking, and not French. An officer made a composite drawing.

On 11 September 1978, Georgi Markov died in London. Radio Free Europe’s Bulgarian Service in Munich called Vladimir Kostov and told him the tragic news. The following day he called a friend at BBC, who told him that Scotland Yard was investigating. Kostov learned that as Markov lay dying, he repeatedly said agents of the Bulgarian Intelligence Service had poisoned him. Because of his intelligence background, Kostov had maintained contact with French intelligence officers. He called French intelligence authorities, DST, which then started an investigation to determine if the attack on Kostov and the attack on Markov were related. DST immediately assigned Kostov twenty-four-hour protection and contacted other interested French government agencies, as well as British authorities.

positive image of pellet

On 15 September 1978, Kostov said on Radio Free Europe: “Yesterday and today I underwent a medical examination. The x-ray photograph showed that in the place of the injury between the skin and ribs there is a small pellet of about two millimeters in diameter”

Kostov wrote what happened next:

On the 25th September 1978, the two Scotland Yard inspectors arrived in Paris. They contacted the surgeon who was to perform the operation on me. The next day my wife and I went to the surgical clinic on “L’Avenue de la Republique”. There were two Englishmen waiting for us there, as well as representatives of the French criminal police, a total of ten persons. The French police inspector who was to be present in the operating theatre put on a white gown. The radiographer localized the position of the pellet and gave me a local anesthetic. The surgeon excised from my flesh a piece as big as a thumb, which he placed immediately in a glass dish." 

Immediately following the operation, one Scotland Yard detective flew back to England and submitted to Dr. Robin Keeley of the Scotland Yard forensic laboratory the small metallic object and skin sample that had been removed from Kostov’s body. According to Dr. Keeley, the pellet from Kostov matched that taken from Markov: 152mm (0.060 inches) in diameter, an alloy of 90% platinum and 10% iridium.

 In a 1978 statement to Scotland Yard, Dr. David Gall said: "There is some evidence that the blood of Mr.Kostov, Markov’s compatriot contained small amounts of antibody to ricin, consistent with the administration of a small amount of ricin sometime previously."

In an interview for the 2012 documentary film Silenced, Dr. Christropher Green said, "Kostov's pellet when surgically removed by a qualified dermatologist in Paris was dissected to be found inside two facial planes, where it was inaccessible to blood circulation.. it had been determined the waxy material was found in a quantitative laboratory test to melt at exactly 98.6 degrees. In Markov it was in muscle and fat, heavy with arteriolar blood supply and hot; between connective tissue layers there are no arterioles, 

it remained cool. The wax didn't all melt and the pellet still had sufficient wax to be tested…"

Bulgarian President Zhelyu Zhelev pardoned Kostov in 1990.

For more information

Vladimir Kostov, The Bulgarian Umbrella: The Soviet Direction and Operations of the Bulgarian Secret Service in Europe, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1988

Kostov re-enacts the physical attack in the television documentary Secrets of the Dead: Umbrella Assassin can be viewed at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8985637335577767956