CIA Support for Resistance in Ukraine in the early Cold War ©

 

On June 22, 1955, an internal report made to CIA’s Chief of Foreign Intelligence (FI) gave an evaluation of its ongoing projects involving Ukraine. The cryptonym was AERODYNAMIC. Excerpts from the evaluation report included:

In 1948 a survey was conducted by CIA of the various Ukrainian Emigre organizations for the purpose of selecting from among these groups the most bona fide, best organized, most representative, legitimate, etc. group to be used in exploiting the Ukrainian Resistance Movement in the Ukraine in anti-Soviet activity.

As a result of this survey, the ZPUHVR (the Foreign Representation of the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council-- Українська головна визвольна рада) was selected and an agreement was entered into between it and CIA whereby a joint effort would be made to develop operations into the Ukraine, the ZPUHVR to supply agent personnel, contact and other operational data, etc., and CIA to furnish the technical support, i.e., training facilities, supplies, air dispatch, communications equipment, etc.

Following this initial working agreement with the ZPUHVR, Project AERODYNAMIC was further developed to,

·      Provide supplies through airdrops to the Ukrainian Resistance to enable it to expand its organization and hot war potential.

·      Provide supplies and communication equipment for burial by the Ukrainian Resistance Forces for use in a hot war.

·      Coordinate with the Ukrainian Resistance war plans for sabotage, escape and evasion, and guerilla warfare.

·      Maintain adequate communications with the Ukrainian Resistance Forces via overland couriers, wireless transmission /W/T) and secret writing (S/W).

·      Train and infiltrate agents to Ukraine for intelligence gathering purposes.

The evaluation highlighted previous CIA contacts with the Resistance Movement:

1.     Airdrop of agent personnel into Ukraine was made in 1949 but no contact with Ukrainian Resistance Forces was realized.

2.     Airdrop of agent personnel was made in 1950 with contact with Resistance Forces Headquarters established.

3.     One successful overland courier mission from Ukraine to the West was accomplished in 1950 that provided material from the Underground that contained  valuable intelligence to CIA

4.     Airdrop of agent personnel was made in 1951 resulting in successful contact with Resistance Headquarters and subsequent W/T communications which continued to the all of 1953 

5.     Airdrop of agent personnel was made in 1952 resulting in successful contact with Resistance Headquarters and subsequent WIT and S/W.

Through a concentrated effort, the MVD (Soviet Security Service) apparently has dealt a serious blow to the Ukrainian Resistance Movement and especially to our operations and is now engaged in attempting to penetrate the ZPUHVR via its agents for the purpose of building up a notional underground which it would control.

In 1970, AERODYNAMIC was redesignated QRPLUMB, and CIA support for ZPUHVR lasted until 1991.

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.”  

"American Friends for Russian Freedom" in the early Cold War ©

In 1948, an association of American intellectuals and literary personalities was formed New York under the name Friends of Russian Freedom (FRF) as an organization "entirely independent of the United States government and policy." However, beyond some organizational meetings and public statements, the group otherwise was not actively engaged. 

 

Another group consisting of prominent Americans was formed in New York on February 18, 1951, under the name Friends of Fighters for Russian Freedom (FFRF), with Mrs. Henry Hadley as Chairwoman of the Organizing Committee and Mrs. Ivan Tolstoy as Secretary and Treasurer. 

The New York Times reported on forming the FFRF with this headline, "To Aid 'Russian Freedom’; New Anti-Red Unit to Stress Amity for the People.” Local newspapers in the U.S. also covered the formation of FFRF by quoting from the press announcement: "There can be no lasting peace and no source of freedom for any people until the Russian people have regained their freedom and returned as free and equal partners to the community of nations. It revealed that it already had begun to send financial aid and guidance to runaway Soviet citizens now in central Europe.” 

 

A Washington Post newspaper editorial of April 5, 1951, “Friendship for Russians”, listed two objectives of FFRF: “To mobilize American support for anti-Communist elements inside Russia and to provide material aid for refugees from that land and for Red Army deserters.”

 

The group's name was changed or superseded by the American Friends of Russian Freedom (AFRF) in late 1951. The president was retired Foreign Service Officer Felix Cole, the American Consul in Archangel, Russia, during the Russian Revolution. Other members included Mrs. Ivan Tolstoy, Eugene Lyons, Albert (Bert) Jolis, and William (Bill Casey). 

Eugene Lyons was editor of Reader’s Digest magazine and the first president of the American Committee for the Liberation from Bolshevism, responsible for Radio Liberty. Bill Casey was a former member of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and a future CIA Director in President Ronald Reagan’s administration. 

 

According to a biography of Bill Casey, he recruited Frank R. Barnett as director of the New York AFRF office in 1951. Barnett had been a Russian interpreter for the U.S. Army in World War II. He later described AFRF: “The idea was to get Red Army personnel in Berlin and Vienna to desert, to get them papers, find them jobs, resettle them in the West and make propaganda hay out of their defections.” 

 

Barnett later wrote about the opening of a new AFRF “Friendship House” in Munich in November 1951 as: “[T] he first reception center in West Germany exclusively for the use of escapees from the Soviet Union. Activities in a new and larger hostel include: language classes in German, English, and Portuguese; chess, ping pong, motion pictures, and a library of Russian, English, and German books; legal counseling and, of course, hot meals, not only for residents but transients en route to some technical training center or to the AFRF center at Kaiserlautern for job placement with U. S. Army installations in that area.” 

 

Mckinney Russel was the first director for the AFRF center in Kaiserslautern from 1953-1955. He later described his experiences in an oral interview:

 

[A]t that time, there was a significant NATO build-up, and consequently, there were lots of jobs for drivers, plumbers, electricians, security guards, and so on. As Center Director, I was in charge of finding jobs for the escapees and running the Center, a rather challenging job because I was still younger than most of the people I was responsible for. They would arrive speaking barely any German, and it was my job, through the German Labor Office, to persuade the Germans to give them a reference to the American office that was hiring for the U.S. Forces build-up. It turned out to be a very tough job. There were some rowdies and drunks among the Russians who were very hard to manage. 

 

McKinney Russell left AFRF after two years and first took a job as a manager at Radio Liberation in Munich in 1962 and then became a career State Department Foreign Service Officer. 

 

For more information, see Chapter 3 in 

 

 

When CIA launched manned-balloons on espionage missions into the Soviet Union in the early Cold War ©

A Chinese balloon, believed to be on an espionage mission, was recently discovered over the United States and eventually destroyed.  Below is a copy of a declassified CIA document showing how CIA and the Danish Intelligence Service (DIS) intended to launch a manned balloon on an espionage mission in the early Cold War. 

1 August 1955

 

Memorandum for: Deputy Director Plans/COP                                            

Via: Chief Foreign Intelligence

From: Chief, Soviet Russia Division (SR)

Subject: REDSOX * Mission to Estonia with Support of DIS

1. The Baltic Branch (SR/2) of SR Division has plans for a REDSOX mission to Estonia in the spring of 1956. These plans call for the infiltration of two black agents into the Estonian SSR for the purpose of recruiting resident agents therein for carrying out clandestine operations. 

2. The inception of these plans took place about one year ago. Coincidental with that time, SR/2 had successfully mounted a REDSOX infiltration mission into Northwest USSR by means of a personnel-carrying free balloon. That balloon was launched from a fishing vessel manned by Norwegian Intelligence Service personnel from a bay in the Barents Sea. 

3. The proven capability of a small ship as a launching platform for personnel balloons suggested a similar type might be successfully employed in the Baltic Sea. The employment of a balloon as an infiltration vehicle was considered at the time to resolve to a great degree the problem of security connected with the vulnerability to detection of aircraft overflights of Soviet territory. 

4. Since independent Agency maritime facilities were unavailable to us in the Baltic waters, it was decided to approach a friendly intelligence service that would provide such facilities for our use under natural conditions of cover. The Danish Intelligence Service (DIS) was such a service. For some time, SR/2 has been collaborating with the DIS, via the (redacted) and West European Division, for procurement of intelligence via personnel of Danish flag shipping. 

5. In the spring of this year, SR/2 sent an SR Division balloon operations officer to (redacted) to discuss the feasibility of mounting personnel-carrying free balloon operations into the Baltic states of the USSR from a DIS-controlled boat west of the line 30 miles off the Baltic states' coastline. The results of this mission were positive. Our balloonist and the (redacted) reported that the DIS was genuinely interested in cooperating to the extent of their ability. Subsequent negotiations with the DIS suggested it would be willing and able to provide us with a requisite vessel and the necessary operational, logistic, and meteorological support for mounting the desired operation.

6. In order to stimulate an even greater enthusiasm on the part of the DIS in such undertakings, it was concluded to be in the best interests of the Agency to train two DIS officers in the techniques of balloon operations. Peripheral conversations on this matter suggested the DIS may be willing to assign two of their officers for such training. Prior to extending a firm invitation to the DIS, SR Division examined the possibility of training these officers both in the United States and in Denmark. 

7. We would like to train the Danes in the United States. We envisage two advantages to this. First, the availability of proper facilities specially equipped to handle this training. And second, by providing hospitality to the D1S officers in the United States, we anticipate developing in then a sense of favorable obligation to the Agency. But should DIS find itself unable to spare Its officers for a sojourn here, we are prepared to carry out the training in Denmark. 

8. On 13 July 1955, Chief FI, authorized us to proceed with the invitation; on receipt of this, we took immediate steps to assure us of the availability of facilities for such training in the near future. As soon as a favorable reply is received at this Division, we will go ahead and extend a formal invitation to the Danes.

9. The training course designed to qualify two Danish representatives as balloon launching officers will take approximately four weeks. Sometime after the conclusion of that course, it is anticipated that an SR balloon operations officer will proceed to Denmark to participate with the DIS in balloon launching trials from a DIS fishing vessel of the type planned for dispatch operations next spring.

10. It may also be found advisable, at some time prior to the REDSOX infiltration mission, to take the DIS boat to the operational waters in order that the operational personnel may become familiar with conditions in that area. And should it be consistent with policy at that time, we might take advantage of the vessel's presence there to launch propaganda leaflet-carrying balloons to the Baltic states. An ancillary PP mission of that type may serve to provide the participating personnel with a taste of clandestine operations, which would serve to make them a little more familiar with an operational atmosphere and instill in them a certain degree of confidence in carrying out hazardous missions.

In February 1956, CIA decided to discontinue the planned operation. One of the reasons was: “Information received late in 1955 through interrogation of a confessed Russian Intelligence Service (RIS) agent indicates that the pool of existing operational support assets in the Estonian SSR are either under RIS control, or RIS monitored, and planned contacts through these channels can no longer be considered operationally secure for the REDSOX agents.”

* REDSOX refers to "Operations involving the illegal return of defectors and emigres to USSR as agents."

Graphic taken from a USA Today newspaper article.

CIA and Early Cold War Sexspionage in Austria ©

 

Instead of a means of gleaning secrets, sex is now used as a method of subverting the loyalty of the individual. Painstakingly constructed sex snares are devised to produce evidence that can then be used as blackmail evidence to force the victims to work against their country’s best interests. Such entrapments are frequent in Soviet bloc countries. They are often complicated and costly, involving scores of skilled operatives and the most advanced electronic and photographic equipment. They are always carried out with a cynical disregard for the feelings of those involved. Usually, they are successful. This modern, technologically sophisticated use of an age-old espionage technique has been called “sexpionage.”    After the war the SIS employed prostitutes in Germany and Austria to wheedle pillow secrets from Russian soldiers, but the value of this intelligence was minimal, and the British were never enthusiastic about such operations. The French, on the other hand, set considerable store by it and, according to a former British intelligence officer, there were at one time more than 400 prostitutes in the pay of French military intelligence “doing their best on their backs in the Vienna Woods.”*

In 1951, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) launched Operation REDCAP as a "systematic and concentrated program of penetration and defection inducement operations directed at Soviet official installations outside the USSR." 

 

The program included:

·       Agent recruitment in place for local intelligence and counterintelligence coverage. 

·       Agent recruitment in place for USSR coverage. 

·       Immediate defection for intelligence procurement. 

·       Agent recruitment for return to the USSR under official cover. 

·       Immediate defection for employment as an agent to be dispatched under illegal cover to the USSR. 

The program focused on individual Soviet officials and military posted outside Soviet territory, especially in occupied Austria and Berlin. Specifically, the CIA station in Vienna was tasked with learning; 

·       characteristics, 

·       habits,

·       weaknesses (whether sex or alcohol), 

·       places of residence, 

·       restaurants they frequent, 

·       shops they patronize, and 

·       names and addresses of their secretaries and mistresses, if any.

    We should eventually be able to find those in real trouble who are fearful of being recalled. Once we spot them, we can approach them and win their confidence. We must first find out which of them are in a mess, whether in the embassy, consulate, or purchasing mission. Each must be dealt with on his own merits, per his character, temperament, mental equipment, and background. They must be approached individually by our best-trained men who have all the imagination, personality, ingenuity, and linguistic ability to contact these men after we have found out all we possibly can about them. 

CIA chose Rostislov Lvovich Antonov, born in Leningrad, USSR, on November 30, 1920. CIA used the cryptonyms CATARATA, CACHINO-4, and GRALLSPICE 1 to identify him.

During World War Two, 1941-1942, Antonov surrendered as a prisoner to the Germans in the region of the city of Rostov on the Don. Later he entered into service with the Russian Liberation Army (ROA), which was created to fight against the Soviets under General Andrei Vlasov's leadership. He eventually became the confidential assistant to General Vlasov. 

After the war, he was on the Soviet list of “War Collaborators.” He avoided the Soviet army and settled in Kempten, Germany. He avoided forced repatriation to the USSR, bx using the name of a fellow ROA officer Sergei Froehlich for several weeks in May or June 1945. Froehlich was later active with American and German intelligence agencies. 

Antonov legally changed his name to Sergei Lvovich Shebalin, which he used for the rest of his life. He also used the aliases: Tonny CHZIMEK and Alfred DELLINGER.

From 1945 to 1951, Shebalin was in a displaced persons (D.P.) camp in Kempten and Memmigen, Germany. He also became involved with the local black market. He was arrested in November 1945 on a charge of being a "Russian Nazi" and was found not guilty. In 1947 he again was arrested for possession of false documents but released without a trial.

On the recommendation of Froehlich, Shebalin was recruited from the Memmigen DP camp and began working for the CIA in June 1951. One CIA officer wrote, "Shebalin loves adventure and interesting deals, loves the black market and plays it with rare skill, and was a combination of a sincere anti-Bolshevik and black marketeer."

His first assignment was to examine the possibility of establishing a net of exiled Russian agents who could release propaganda balloons into Iron Curtain countries. He succeeded in organizing this net and did preparatory work for the CIA, but both of these projects were abandoned due to a lack of funding. Shebalin's second assignment was to train agents to penetrate the Soviet Zone of Germany.

One CIA cryptonym for operations in Austria was GROOVY. Shebalin was sent to Vienna as a spotter with the specific tasks:

·     Exploration of Vienna black market channels for Redcap possibilities. Soviet citizens dealing in the black market would be relatively easy to approach and, with careful planning, to blackmail.

·     Exploration of the Vienna underworld for possible REDCAP contacts. The use of Vienna prostitutes for possible contacts has thus far fallen through mainly because we have been unable to find a reliable Austrian to exploit this possibility; other contact means may also be gambling, drug addiction, etc.

His cover was that of a businessman working for a Munich company LINDEX, co-run by Sergei Froehlich.

At a meeting on July 29, 1952, Shebalin and his CIA contact discussed various possibilities of successfully finding Russian-speaking Austrian girls for potential operational use, including newspaper advertisements. He explained, "In attempting to find an Austrian girl with a knowledge of Russian, he had tried a number of gimmicks, none of which seemed to offer any hope of concrete results. He hoped that sooner or later, he would come up with some idea that would enable us to find the type of girls necessary for successful operations against the Soviets."

In March 1953, during a meeting with his CIA case officer, Shebalin casually mentioned that he might have to go to the Linz area in Austria to operate in the black market to find targets against the Soviets. The case officer noted Shebalin's suggestions that girls could profitably be used in such work. The case officer mentioned in passing, "it should be borne in mind that in any dealings with such girls, the necessary precautions should be taken against contracting any disease. The warning was presented in general terms so as not to make the agent think it was directed solely at him (although it actually was). "  

Shebalin was unsuccessful for the CIA in Vienna, and the operation was terminated. Shebalin moved to Salzburg to await emigration. before leaving with his wife and child for the United States in February 1954 under CIA sponsorship. The rationale for CIA sponsorship was:

Subject, a former captain of the Soviet Army and later General VLASSOV'S adjutant, has been utilized under various projects of the S.R. Division since November 1951. Subject perforated the groundwork in two of the projects, but due to a lack of funds, these projects were abandoned. At present, the Subject is still connected, although indirectly, with REDCAP and counter-espionage operations. Reports from the field by the Subject's case officers speak well of his capabilities, motivation, and suitability for intelligence work. The Subject will be employed as an interrogation specialist by the Assessment and Recruitment Section of the S.R. Domestic Operations Base in this country. It is felt that his immigration to the United States is desired to assure his valuable services indefinitely and to secure his continued allegiance to American interests. 

He was under contract with the CIA until October 31, 1954, when the CIA decided that his operational usefulness to the Agency was minimal, and he became a" disposal/resettlement "case. While in Washington, D.C., he and his wife attended the “Americanization School“ to learn English for U.S. citizenship. They then moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1960 he became a U.S. citizen. 

On January 11, 1977, Shebalin reportedly died in an automobile accident and was buried in the Oakland cemetery in Philadelphia.

* David Lewis, Sexpionage: The Exploitation of Sex by Soviet Intelligence 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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