Christopher Andrew - The Sword and the Shield

The most highly rated French agent in the mid-1970s was also the longest-serving: JOUR, the cipher clerk in the Foreign Ministry (codenamed ELITA) recruited thirty years earlier, who was singled out for the largest bonus. During the period 1968-73 he provided intelligence on the cipher machines in the French embassy in Moscow and at NATO headquarters which enabled the Sixteenth (SIGINT) Directorate to decrypt a probably substantial amount of diplomatic traffic. In 1973 JOUR was posted to a French embassy abroad, where contact with him was maintained through dead letter-boxes. 53Intelligence provided by JOUR probably assisted the bugging of the new teleprinters installed in the Moscow embassy between October 1976 and February 1977. All, remarkably, were left unguarded for forty-eight hours during their journey by rail to Moscow. The bugs secretly fitted to the teleprinters during this period transmitted to the KGB the unenciphered text of all incoming and outgoing embassy telegrams for over six years. 54The head of the bugging operation, Igor Vasilovich Maslow, was awarded the Order of Lenin and later promoted to head the Sixteenth (SIGINT) Directorate. 55

Until 1983, thanks to JOUR and Maslov, the Centre had far better information on French policy to the Soviet Union than that of any of France’s NATO allies. JOUR simultaneously continued to talent-spot other Foreign Ministry cipher and secretarial personnel. In 1978-9 he cultivated “L” (identified only as a member of the ministry “support staff”), obtained his private address, carried out a background check on his home and facilitated his recruitment by a residency operations officer. 56During the period 1978-82 no less than six cipher personnel at the Quai d’Orsay were under active KGB cultivation. 57

A majority of the most highly rated French agents in the mid-1970s (six of the ten who received New Year bonuses in 1973-5: ANDRÉ, 58BROK, 59ARGUS, 60NANT, 61MARS 62and TUR 63) were journalists or involved with the press: a clear indication that, whatever the real effectiveness of KGB disinformation campaigns against French targets, the Centre regarded active measures as one of the main strengths of the Paris residency. Of the three other most valuable French agents, FYODOR held a major position in a foreign policy institute and provided documents on the USA, NATO and China; 64LAURENT was a scientist in a NATO aeronautical research institute; 65and DRAGUN was a businessman and agent-recruiter. 66LAURENT and DRAGUN were probably Line X (ST) agents. Pathé (MASON), one of the leading agents of influence in the 1960s, had declined in importance and did not figure on the list of most valuable agents in 1973-5. His career, however, was to revive during the second half of the decade.

The Centre’s probably exaggerated confidence in the agents of influence run by the PR Line of the Paris residency led it to undertake an ambitious series of active measures throughout the 1970s. According to KGB files, ANDRÉ, a senior journalist, “had access to President Georges Pompidou,” who had succeeded de Gaulle in 1969, and to some of his senior ministers, including Pierre Messmer, who became prime minister in 1972, and Foreign Minister Maurice Schumann. 67Reports from the Paris residency claimed that ANDRÉ was used to pass to Pompidou’s office “slanted information” calculated to increase the President’s suspicion of the United States. 68In this, as in most influence operations, it is difficult to estimate the level of success. Given ANDRÉ’s access to the highest levels of the Pompidou administration, it is difficult to believe that he was simply ignored. It is equally difficult to credit, however, that he had more than—at best—a marginal influence on French foreign policy. The Centre’s reports to the Central Committee tended to claim more credit than it probably deserved for provoking, or worsening, tension within the Atlantic Alliance.

The limitations of KGB active measures in influencing French policy were clearly illustrated by the failure of the LA MANCHE (“English Channel”) operation, designed to sow distrust between Pompidou and the British prime minister, Edward Heath, to persuade the President to maintain de Gaulle’s veto on British entry into the European Community. 69

Though the journalist ARGUS appears to have had no direct access to Pompidou, he was in even closer contact than ANDRÉ with Messmer. According to reports from the Paris residency he had regular discussions with the Prime Minister during the campaign for the March 1973 general election and continued to advise him afterwards. The main aim of the KGB disinformation channeled through ARGUS was to damage the electoral prospects of the Gaullist-led ruling coalition by sowing distrust between the Gaullists and their allies. ARGUS falsely alleged to Messmer that Michel Poniatowski, general secretary of the Independent Republicans, and the Reformist Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber had secretly agreed to cooperate in undermining the position of Gaullist candidates. On KGB instructions, ARGUS also planted similar disinformation in the press. Other active measures devised by Service A to damage “Atlanticist” (pro-American) candidates included planting false reports that the campaigns of Servan-Schreiber and the Christian Democrat leader, Jean Lecanuet, were being financed by American money. In Servan-Schreiber’s constituency of Meurtheet-Moselle, letters were posted to local notables purporting to come from a neo-Nazi group in the FRG which called on all those “with German blood flowing in their veins” to vote for Servan-Schreiber. 70While such operations may well have impressed the Centre, it is difficult to believe that they had a significant influence on French voters. Though the vote of the left increased at the general election, the Gaullist-led coalition retained a comfortable majority of seats.

Having greatly exaggerated its success in 1973, the Centre was also confident of its ability to influence the outcome of the May 1974 presidential election. It informed the Central Committee that the Socialist leader, Franáois Mitterrand, standing as the candidate of all the main left-wing parties, had a real chance of victory, 71and mounted a major active measures campaign against his chief right-wing opponent, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing (codenamed KROT—“Mole”). In one week during the campaign, ten officers of the Paris residency Line PR carried out fifty-six allegedly “significant operational measures.” 72

A leading part in the active measures against Giscard was taken by one of the residency’s most highly rated and longest-serving agents, BROK, then a well-connected journalist. Originally recruited as an ideological agent in 1946, BROK had begun working for money within a few years to supplement his income as a journalist and to purchase a Paris apartment. In the mid-1970s he was paid over 100,000 francs a year. 73As well as having a total of at least ten case officers, 74BROK was so highly regarded that he had meetings with five heads of the FCD Fifth Department, whose responsibilities included operations in France. 75During the 1974 presidential election campaign, BROK was provided, on Andropov’s personal instructions, with a fabricated copy of supposedly secret campaign advice given to Giscard d’Estaing by the Americans on ways to defeat Mitterrand and Jacques Chaban-Delmas, Giscard’s unsuccessful Gaullist rival for the right-wing vote during the first round of the election. The forged document was then shown to Chaban-Delmas and others, doubtless to try to make collaboration between him and Giscard more difficult at the second round, when Giscard was the sole candidate of the right. 76

The only other operation to discredit Giscard d’Estaing during the 1974 presidential election which is described in detail in Mitrokhin’s notes was a somewhat bizarre active measure which reflected the obsession of the KGB’s many conspiracy theorists with Zionist intrigues. In France, as in the United States and elsewhere, the Centre believed that a powerful Jewish lobby was at work behind the scenes, manipulating much of the political process. 77The KGB decided to exploit the murder of a female relative of Giscard d’Estaing in October 1973 to mount an extraordinary operation designed to embroil him with the Jewish lobby. Service A concocted a forged document supposedly distributed by a (non-existent) French pro-Israeli group, claiming that she had been killed by Zionists in revenge for Giscard’s part in the prosecution of Jewish financiers while serving as finance minister some years earlier. The Centre was unaccountably proud of the whole absurd operation. 78In the second round of the presidential election, Giscard defeated Mitterrand by less than 2 percent of the vote. There is no evidence that KGB active measures had the slightest influence on the result.