Paul Simpson - A Brief History of the Spy

The CIA did score one notable success within the Soviet bloc during this time, after a GRU officer, Pyotr Semyonovich Popov, slipped a note into an American diplomat’s car in Vienna in January 1953, stating: ‘I am a Soviet officer. I wish to meet with an American officer with the object of offering certain services.’ With the experienced George Kisevalter as his case officer firstly in Austria and then later in Berlin, Popov proved to be a highly effective asset for the fledgling Agency, providing the CIA with details of the organization of the Soviet military command, the structure of the GRU, and the names and operations of Soviet intelligence agents in Europe. He was also able to alert the CIA to spies entering the US, and it was after the FBI frightened one of these off that Popov came under suspicion, since he was one of the few on the Soviet side who knew the illegal agent’s travel plans. Popov was recalled to Moscow in November 1958 — although the CIA tried to persuade him not to go — where he was able to pass a coded message back to the Agency to say that although he was safe, he had been transferred out of the GRU and was unable to leave the USSR.

It became clear from the standard of material that Popov was passing once he was back in Moscow that he had been turned by the KGB. Although for a time it was believed that Popov was betrayed by KGB agent George Blake, it has also been claimed that a Russian mole within the CIA passed on the information, and that poor tradecraft by the CIA in Moscow meant that a letter designed for Popov reached the KGB. In September 1959, Popov was able to pass a message surreptitiously to his Moscow CIA handler, Russell Langelle, confirming he was now a double agent, and saying that he hoped to be posted to Berlin once more, from where he could escape to the West. His note concluded: ‘Could you not ask your kind President Eisenhower to see if he might cause restitution to be made for my family and my life?’

Unfortunately for him, the KGB decided to wrap up the operation before Popov could be transferred, arresting and expelling Langelle. Popov was tried and executed the following year.

One aspect of the CIA’s activities that began during the fifties about which much has been written, a lot of it sensationalist, was Project MKULTRA, the agency’s top secret behavioural research programme. Everything from the assassination of President John F. Kennedy to the death of singer John Lennon has been blamed on test subjects either being controlled by the CIA, or struggling to deal with the after-effects. Many of the ideas behind the Bourne Identity trilogy of films were inspired by MKULTRA: original director Doug Liman’s father was one of those responsible for revealing other CIA dirty tricks during the Iran-Contra scandal of 1986.

MKULTRA was set up in response to the belief that the Communist nations were making great steps in the fields of brainwashing and mind control, as evidenced by the ‘voluntary’ testimony being given by captured American soldiers during the Korean War. The thinking was that Western agents and soldiers should therefore be prepared to deal with the effects of such techniques.

The Technical Services staff at the CIA were authorized to begin MKULTRA in April 1953; it became the responsibility of the Chemistry Division, headed by Dr Sidney Gottlieb. As an internal CIA report from 1963 explained, MKULTRA was ‘concerned with the research and development of chemical, biological and radiological materials capable of employment in clandestine operations to control human behaviour’. It had wide-reaching aims — everything from finding ways to make alcohol more or less effective, as required, to creating instantly acting knock-out drops, to locating substances that would help people’s ability to resist brainwashing.

The project tried many different methods to achieve its goals. Initially, hypnotism was tried. In February 1954, Gottlieb was able to implant a post-hypnotic suggestion into a woman who was normally loath to handle a weapon. Under the command, she was told to try to wake another woman up by any means possible, and ‘failing in this, she would pick up a pistol nearby and fire it’. According to the declassified report, she ‘carried out all these suggestions to the letter including firing the (unloaded pneumatic pistol) gun… and then proceeding to fall into a deep sleep… [On waking] she expressed absolute denial that the foregoing sequence had happened.’

The substance with which MKULTRA is most associated is lysergic acid diethylamide, better known as LSD. To begin with, the subjects of the experiments gave their consent, but Gottlieb needed to know how people who were not aware that they were being drugged would react. This would lead to many people’s rights being violated, and in some extreme cases, to death — the most notable case being army scientist Dr Frank Olson, who was given LSD in November 1953 without his knowledge or consent and jumped from a hotel room to his death a few days later. Eventually, as they had with hypnosis, the MKULTRA scientists dismissed LSD as being too unpredictable in its results — although not before many Americans were tested, including the author Ken Kesey, who would become of the great proselytizers of the drugs culture.

Less well known are some of the side-products of the MKULTRA research — including the CIA’s investigations into magic. It was all very well coming up with secret drugs that would have the desired effect, but pointless if there was no way of administering them to the chosen target. John Mulholland, one of the most highly respected American magicians of the time, was brought on board, and applied the secrets of sleight of hand to the problem. His 1954 paper entitled ‘Some Operational Applications of the Art of Deception’ formed the basis of a training manual for agents, and the agency picked his brains further to investigate possible methods of covert signalling.

MKULTRA’s days were numbered when the CIA’s own internal monitor, the Inspector General, reported in 1963 that the controls over its operations were inadequate, and that the moral and ethical implications were too great. Much as many of those who would like to believe that the CIA’s quest to create the perfect unwitting assassin — usually referred to as a Manchurian Candidate, after the Richard Condon 1959 novel, which featured a serviceman programmed by the Communists to commit murder — continued (and perhaps continues to this day), MKULTRA was disbanded by the end of the sixties. However, the revelation of its existence would have a critical effect on the CIA in the seventies; perhaps the best epitaph on it came from Senator Edward Kennedy in 1977: ‘The Agency itself acknowledged that these tests made little scientific sense.’

Downgrading the organs of State Security in the Soviet Union from a Ministry to a Committee when the KGB was set up in 1954 did not mean that the organization’s power would be any the less effective. This was amply shown by the extremely pro-active stance taken by its leader during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, its first major test — with the Chairman of the KGB, Ivan Aleksandrovich Serov, going undercover himself.

Just as the Americans were concerned about protecting any area into which Communism might spread, so the Kremlin wanted to make sure that all parts of the Soviet bloc were toeing the party line. After the split with Yugoslavia (which didn’t heal after the death of Stalin) and the rising in East Berlin in 1953, the Presidium wanted to nip any potential activity in the bud. Trouble began to foment in Hungary, following a speech by Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev that denounced Stalin’s cult of personality, and those — like the Hungarian First Secretary Mátyás Rákosi — who followed in its footsteps. Rákosi was pressured into resigning but was replaced by a hardliner, rather than by the popular Imre Nagy. A revolution began on 23 October when a crowd demonstrating outside the Radio Building were shot by AVH (Hungarian State Security) troops.