Christopher Andrew - The Sword and the Shield

IN THE MID-1970S Le Monde (codenamed VESTNIK—“Messenger”—by the KGB) 79became embroiled in a controversy over its alleged left-wing, anti-American bias. The most distinguished of its leading conservative critics, Raymond Aron, contrasted Le Monde ’s readiness to mention US bombing raids on North Vietnam in the same breath as Nazi wartime atrocities with its reluctance to engage in serious, detailed criticism of Soviet abuses of human rights. 80Solzhenitsyn, whose Gulag Archipelago provided the best-documented evidence of those abuses, received particularly unfair treatment. In July 1975 Le Monde used a distorted account of a speech by Solzhenitsyn in the United States to smear him as a Nazi sympathizer:

Alexander Solzhenitsyn regrets that the West joined forces with the USSR against Nazi Germany during the last world war.

He is not alone. Westerners of a previous generation like [the leading French collaborator] Pierre Laval had the same ideas, and people like [the French fascists] Doriot and Déat welcomed the Nazis as liberators. 81

Two months later, Le Monde reported—also inaccurately—that Solzhenitsyn had accepted an invitation to visit Chile from the brutal military dictatorship of General Pinochet. 82There is no proof that either of these smears was planted by the KGB. Both, however, were entirely in line with disinformation which the KGB was seeking to plant on the Western press. 83In 1976 a former member of Le Monde ’s editorial staff, Michel Legris, published a detailed analysis of what he claimed was its equally biased reporting in favor of the Portuguese Communists, the Cambodian Khmer Rouge and the Palestinian PLO. 84

The extent of bias in Le Monde reporting during the 1970s still remains controversial, as do claims that it was far readier to condemn American than Soviet policy. 85KGB files, however, provide some support for the charges of pro-Soviet bias made by Le Monde ’s critics. Mitrokhin’s brief notes on KGB contacts with Le Monde identify two senior journalists and several contributors who were used, in most cases doubtless unwittingly, to disseminate KGB disinformation. 86During the 1970s and early 1980s the Paris residency claimed to have influenced Le Monde articles on, inter alia, US policy in Iran, Latin America, the US bicentennial, the dangers of American influence in Europe, the threat of a supranational Europe, US plans for the neutron bomb, causes of East-West tension and the war in Afghanistan. 87In July 1981 Andropov received a message from the leadership of the French Communist Party, urging him to arrange for an invitation to visit Afghanistan to be sent to a named journalist on Le Monde, whose reporting, it claimed, would be “sympathetic.” 88Some years earlier the same journalist had been generous in his praise of Colonel Muhammar Qaddafi. Le Monde ’s susceptibility to KGB disinformation probably derived chiefly from naivety about Soviet intelligence operations. In the aftermath of Watergate and the revelations of abuses by the US intelligence community, Le Monde showed itself—like some other sections of the media—acutely aware of the sins, real and imagined, of the CIA but curiously blind to the extensive active measures program of the KGB. 89

Unlike Le Monde, the main news agency, Agence France-Presse, attracted little public controversy. It was, however, successfully penetrated both in Paris and abroad. Mitrokhin’s notes identify six agents 90and two confidential contacts 91in the agency recruited between 1956 and 1980. The most senior, LAN, was recruited under false flag by the businessman DRAGUN in 1969 and paid 1,500 francs a month, which he was told came from the Italian company Olivetti, supposedly anxious to have inside information on French government policy. 92

Perhaps the most ambitious active measure begun by the KGB during the presidency of Giscard d’Estaing was the launching of the fortnightly newsletter Synthesis (codenamed CACTUS) by its agent of influence Pierre-Charles Pathé (MASON). The first issue of Synthesis, ostensibly left-wing Gaullist in tone, appeared in June 1976 and was sent free of charge to 500 opinion-formers, 93among them 70 percent of the Chamber of Deputies, 47 percent of the Senate and 41 journalists. 94The seventy issues published over the next three years, at a cost to the KGB of 252,000 francs, 95covered a series of well-worn Service A themes. France was portrayed as the victim of an “underhanded” American economic war in which the US balance of payments deficit allowed Washington to act as a parasite on the wealth of other states.

Giscard d’Estaing was portrayed as an “Atlanticist” who was failing to protect French interests against American exploitation. The United States was a sinister “police democracy” which employed systematic violence against its black minority and all others who stood in its way. The assassination of President Kennedy was “an essential aspect of American democracy.” By contrast, Pol Pot’s massacres were either played down or explained away and the Vietnamese boat people dismissed as middle-class emigrants. 96

Pathé’s downfall began in 1978 when the DST started tailing his case officer at the Paris residency, Igor Aleksandrovich Sakharovsky (alias “Kuznetsov”), son of a former head of the FCD. After Sakharovsky reported his suspicions that he was being followed to his superiors, his meetings with Pathé were temporarily suspended. When they resumed two months later, Sakharovsky inadvertently led his watchers to Pathé. On July 5, 1979 the radio-intercept post in the Paris residency, while listening into a frequency used by a DST surveillance team, heard its leader announce, “The actors are in place. Let’s start the show!” Immediately afterwards Pathé was arrested in the act of receiving money and documents from Sakharovsky. 97In May 1980 Pathé became the only Soviet agent of influence ever convicted in a Western court. He was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment but was released in 1981. During his trial Pathé admitted to having received small sums of money for articles written on Moscow’s behalf. His KGB file reveals that, in reality, by the time of his arrest he had received a total of 974,823 francs in salary and expenses. 98

At almost the same time as the Synthesis active measure came to an ignominious end, the Paris residency took the decision to cease funding La Tribune des Nations, founded by its agent André Ulmann (DURANT) in 1946. Since Ulmann’s death in 1970, further KGB subsidies to the Tribune, totaling 1,527,500 francs by 1978, had been channeled through agent NANT, a former associate of Ulmann. In the mid-1970s NANT was considered one of the residency’s dozen most valuable agents, providing intelligence obtained from his contacts in official circles as well as carrying out active measures. According to his file, from 1970 to 1978 he supplied 119 intelligence reports, published 78 articles on topics devised by Service A and helped to cultivate 12 potential agents. In the late 1970s, however, the KGB began to suspect him of “dishonesty” and of being in contact with the DST. Contact with NANT was broken off in 1980. Thus ended the longest and most expensive active measures operation ever run by the Paris residency. The KGB files on DURANT, NANT and three agents closely associated with them—VERONIQUE, JACQUELINE and NANCY—fill 26 volumes, totaling over 8,000 pages. 99

Each year the Paris residency, like other KGB stations abroad, sent the Centre somewhat crude statistics on its active measures. Those for 1979 totaled 188 articles in the press (despite the demise of Synthesis ), 67 “influence conversations;” 19 operations to convey disinformation by word of mouth; 7 operations involving forged documents ; the organization of 2 public meetings; 4 speeches at public gatherings; 2 books; and 4 leaflets. 100In 1980, largely as a result of the breach with NANT, the number of press articles for which the Paris residency claimed the credit fell to 99. “Influence conversations,” however, increased to 79 and operations to convey disinformation verbally to 59. The residency also reported two active measures involving forged documents, and claimed the credit for organizing two public meetings, inspiring sixteen conference speeches and arranging one leaflet distribution. 101