Thursday, March 17, 2016

Soviet Operations: Chile

Some information from Ladislav Bittman's "The KGB and Soviet Disinfornation" on Chile (pages 204-205).

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"Even more interesting than the International Peace Research Institute is the Institute for Policy Studies, a research organization described by Rael Jean Isaac as an “enormous intelligence operation practicing both covert action and subversion. It is itself an adaptation of the multinational corporation, and serves as an ‘imperial’ nerve center, with endless subsidiary operations that in turn influence and shape a whole series of ostensibly independent groups.” Isaac argues that the institute perceives no distinction between research and political action. “Major targets of IPS have been [U.S.] government intelligence agencies for their spying, covert action, and subversion; the Corporation, especially the multinational corporation; and US. imperialism.” These targets and long-term objectives obviously coincide with the goals of active measures conducted by the Soviet bloc against the United States. 

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Is there convincing evidence of a connection between Communist intelligence and the institute? Radical leftist bias does not mean, of course, that most Fellows serve on the KGB payroll and that every IPS research study is inspired and approved by the KGB. The influence is more subtle. 

The case of Orlando Letelier, a former Chilean foreign minister who served in the Allende government, lived as a political exile in the United States, and worked as Director of the Transnational Institute (the international arm of the Institute for Policy Studies) can serve as an example. 

In September 1976, Letelier and an IPS staff member named Roni Moffrtt were assassinated in Washington. D.C., by Chilean secret agents. Documents found in his briefcase and his apartment revealed that Letelier had received a lump sum and regular payments of $1,000 a month from Cuba through Beatriz Allende Fernandez, the wife of a Cuban intelligence officer. An internal memorandum dated September 9, 1976, by Transnational Institute suggested that this sensitive fact should not be entered on the books. Although the institute explained later that these funds had been collected by the Chilean Socialist party in Western Europe and deposited in Havana, the explanation is not convincing. From documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, Accuracy in Media Report offers this analysis of the Letelier case: 

FBI intercepts of telephone conversations between Letelier and Julian Rizo, then Castro’s top intelligence agent in the US. , revealed that Letelier had been asked to arrange meetings for Rizo with the Institute for Policy Studies’ people. Moreover, at the time he was killed, Letelier was about to depart on a trip to Cuba, and he was carrying in his briefcase a letter from one of his IPS associates, Saul Landau, to be delivered to a friend in Cuba.“ 

Accuracy in Media Report’s analysis of the connection between the Institut for Policy Studies and Cuban intelligence has been ignored or pushed aside h most American mass media as a product of new McCarthyism". 

Soviet Operations in Portugal

The role of Portuguese Communist  Party as a Soviet proxy during the Carnation Revolution years in Portugal, according to former Czech agent Ladislav Bittman in his book "The KGB and the Soviet Disinformation" - pages  41-42.

"Nevertheless, the Soviets suffered a series of setbacks in their worldwide offensive during the 1970s. In Western Europe, Portugal emerged as the key Soviet target country. After the coup by General Antonio de Spinola’s military junta in 1974, Alvaro Cunhal, the Secretary General of the small but well disciplined pro-Moscow Communist party, became a minister without portfolio in the new government. The Soviets hoped that the Portuguese Communist party would gradually gain dominant inliuence and the country would be- some loosely associated with the Soviet bloc. Permission to establish military bases in Portugal would give the Kremlin a major strategic advantage vis-a-vis the United States and Western Europe. Squeezed and threatened by the Soviets from two sides, the remainder of non-Communist Europe would live under growing psychological and political stress and eventually break completely with the United States. Despite intensive diplomatic maneuvering and massive covert Operations, the Soviets were unable to divert Portugal’s align. ment with the West. In Africa, the Soviets show a mixed balance sheet of successes and failures. With the help of East European satellites and Cuba, they expanded their influence in Angola, EthiOpia, and Mozambique, but they suffered major setbacks in Sudan, Somalia, and particularly Egypt, once considered the key to controlling North Africa and the Middle East. Amerilcan defeat in Vietnam and the Communist coup in Cambodia appeared for a time as another Soviet victory, but Pol Pot’s bloody regime preferred China to the Soviet Union as its major protector. The Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1978 resolved the problem but imposed additional pressure on the 
Soviet economy".