Red Cocaine by Joseph Douglass part 30

These arrangements provide an illustration of a few of the mechanisms by which the Soviets maintain control of their satellites. Operations such as drug-trafficking, assassina- tions, and strategic espionage are not undertaken except by Soviet direction. Formulation of the one-, five and 15-year plans is, overall, among the most important control mechanisms, insofar as all activities are planned well in advance, and even new, 'emergency' actions need to be approved in the same manner as the regular plans before they can be implemented43.

Cuban intelligence, which had worked closely with Czechoslovak and other Soviet satellite intelligence services since the early 1960s, was de facto incorporated into the integrated intelligence system in 1967, Sejna reported. The one-year intelligence plans were formulated and approved in the fall. It was during this review process in November

1967 that Sejna recognised that the Cuban intelligence plan was not independent but had been incorporated into the Warsaw Pact integrated intelligence system.

As such, then, Cuban operations were coordinated and controlled by the Soviets. Previously, control had been more indirect, provided by the presence of advisers and spies. These are the informal controls that are present within all Marxist-Leninist control structures - the combinations of Soviet advisers and both intelligence and counter-intelli- gence agents who are covertly positioned at critical places in satellite and surrogate organisations. These people provide both an advisory control and a covert reporting mechanism employed to keep the Soviets informed.

The mechanisms described by Sejna can be seen in operation in the testimony of numerous defectors and other intelligence sources. For example, former Cuban intelli- gence agents have testified that since about 1970, the Cuban intelligence service has been under the direct control of the Soviets. They have also testified that all plans are sent to the Soviet Union for approval. Cubans and Nicaraguans described the controls over Nicaraguan intelligence in similar terms. Cuban advisers hold key positions and wear

uniforms indistinguishable from the Nicaraguans.

There are also some 100 Soviet military security advisers, along with 25 Bulgarians,

40-50 East Germans, 25 PLO specialists and a few Libyans within the Nicaraguan service44. Similar controls with respect to the PLO have also been reported. According to the Defense Intelligence Agency [DIA], the Kuwaiti News Agency published a long interview with the PLO's Moscow representative, who said: 'We have a signed a treaty that requires that before

we take any kind of serious action, we sit down and discuss it with the Russians and coordinate our activities'45. Senator Alfonse D'Amato (R-NY) cites other US intelligence studies showing that 'the KGB controls most of the operating sections of the DS, which is the Bulgarian secret police. The Soviets have used the Bulgarians as surrogates'. He also cites DEA estimates that 25 percent of the heroin reaching the United States comes through Bulgaria46.

These are but a few of the many relevant instances of Soviet control, especially with respect to the East European satellites, but including quasi-satellites and surrogates as well47. In some countries where autonomy still exists, for example, Vietnam, Laos and Suri-name, there are uncertainties. But insofar as Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, East Germany and Czechoslovakia are concerned, the presumption should be that the Soviets are not only involved, but at least until recently were fully responsible.

The only serious question, then, is why, when the activities of these key Soviet satellite

intelligence services are brought out into the open, the behind-the-scenes role of the

Soviets is rarely discussed? The answer to that question is implicit in the preceding chap

ter and in the preceding discussion of General Sejna's debriefing process. People simply do not want to know - as Angleton explained, for reasons of 'political convenience'. It would perhaps be reassuring if this were the only reason. Unfortunately, that does not appear to be the case. While 'political convenience' is certainly a factor, there also seem to be much more sinister and deadly possibilities at work - possibilities that suggest the need for a detailed investigation into the reasons why General Major Jan Sejna was never debriefed. But who would conduct the investigation?

References to Chapter 10:

1. See for example, the initial debriefings of Golitsyn and Nosenko at the Frankfurt facility, notwithstanding the very important nature of both defectors, in Epstein, Deception, op. cit., pages 59,67. The facility, which is referred to as Westport Station, is described in William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento, and Joseph J. Trento, Widows (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1989), pages 167,415-416.

2. Even the Czechoslovak emigre press, including so-called CIA proprietary operations, was utilised in this smear campaign, which continued for many years.

3. Rank in Communist countries can be misleading. What is important is position, not rank. Sejna's rank was General Major, equivalent to a US Brigadier General. In terms of the positions Sejna held, he outranked most four-star generals. In his position as Secretary of the Defence Council, Sejna participated in the annual reviews of all the most sensitive plans: the operations plan, the technical espionage plan, the weapons systems development and acquisition plan, the training program and schedule, the special (secret) budget, the intelligence plan, the

materiel and supply plan and the mobilisation plan. He also participated in the review, evaluation, and future

planning of deception operations. All these plans were coordinated with Soviet and other Warsaw Pact force planning which gave General Sejna substantial insights into the Soviet counterpart plans. See also endnote 7.

4. For example, Sejna was not a Stalinist. Indeed, he was the first Czechoslovak leader openly to denounce Stalinist practices at a meeting of the Central Committee in 1954. His impromptu speech led to the removal of the Minister of Defence, Alexei Cepicka, who was widely feared because of his Stalinist tactics. Sejna was not a public

school dropout; the public school was closed when the Germans invaded Czechoslovakia. Sejna did not lead a

coup against the new 'Liberal' leadership; he was working against Soviet interference with the developments inside Czechoslovakia.

Indeed, this is what led to his defection. The KGB had learned that Sejna was warning Dubcek about Soviet plans to tighten up (a process that peaked with the invasion in mid-August). His Party committee was denounced in the newspaper Obrana Lidu (Defence of the People), the official party newspaper, in a manner that was

tantamount to a charge of treason. Sejna recognised immediately that a web intended to trap him was being

woven. Later in the morning, a friend warned him that his immunity as a member of the Presidium was to be lifted on Monday, two days hence, so that he could be taken into custody and implicated in black market fraud charges that had been brought against one of Sejna's staff five weeks earlier. From his knowledge of police operations and their ability to manufacture evidence, Sejna knew that if the Secret Police had been told to bring charges and obtain a confession, they would succeed. He defected the next day, Sunday, when he reasoned that the border guards would be least alert. Sejna was not promoted through favouritism. The military units of which he was deputy commander as political commissar consistently achieved the highest merit ratings. Nor was he not liked by his colleagues, who applauded the informal announcement of his promotion to General.

5. 'Czechoslovakia: Tip of the Iceberg', Newsweek, March 18,1968.

6. The commissar is an official of the Communist Party within the military. Consider, for example Henry Kissinger's description of the Party: The small group of votaries who arrogate to themselves superior insight into the processes of history derive from this conviction the monomaniacal intensity required to make revolution. But once they are firmly established in power, what is their function? They are not needed to run the government or the economy or the military'.

They are guardians of a political legitimacy that has long since lost its moral standing as well as its revo- lutionary elan. They specialise in solving internal crises that their centralised system has created and external crises into which their rigidity tempts them. The Party apparatus duplicates every existing hierarchy without per- forming any function. Its members are watchdogs lacking criteria, an incubus to enforce order, a smug bastion of privilege inviting corruption and cynicism'. Years of Upheaval (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1982), page

244.

7. Colonel Penkovskiy, who spied for the CIA from April 1961 until his arrest during the Cuban Missile Crisis, referred to the head of the Administrative Organs, General Major Nikolai Mironov, as 'an all powerful tsar and god over the GRU and KGB, one before whom even General Serov [then head of the GRU] stood at attention'. John J. Dziak, Chekisty: A History of the KGB (Lexington, Massachusetts: Lexington Books, 1988), page 151.

8. The Defence Council is the highest decision-making party body with authority over defence, national security, intelligence, counter-intelligence, foreign policy, and the economy. It is a far more important organisation than the Politburo.

9. For example, Sejna's debriefers did not understand how socialism worked, as evidenced by their asking him for the names of his family lawyer and family doctor, which do not exist as such in the Communist system.

Nor did they believe that the high quality suit he wore when he defected could have been purchased in Prague. Evidently they were unaware of the special stores available to high-ranking officials. They had only vague knowledge about the existence of the Defence Council and no appreciation of its true function or importance, and no knowledge of how promotions are organised through the system known as nomenclature. Additionally they had many false impressions of how the system operated - for example, the idea that promotions and positions were generally the result of nepotism and that selection and training were of little importance, a mis-impression that still characterises the Western perception of the Soviet system.

10. This point was also recognised by Claire Sterling in The Terror Network: The Secret War of Interna- tional Terrorism (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981), page 290. 'Debriefed at length in Washington, he [General Sejna] had been questioned only about military matters regarding the Soviet and Warsaw Pact armies- terrorism was not a Western worry in 1968, and nobody even asked him about it'. Sejna had identified the role of the Soviet Union in international terrorism in roughly 1971 when he was under the control of Angleton's counter- intelligence division, but was not debriefed on the subject. He provided the first detailed information on the subject, in an interview conducted by Michael Ledeen in 1980, and was subsequently debriefed in detail by Defense Intelligence Agency [DIA] analysts. Throughout this process, the CIA officials with responsibility in the area continued attempts to discredit Sejna and his information - which was confirmed by their own most sensitive sources in nearly all respects, and by court testimony taken in Italy.

11. Similar frustrations (debriefings by the Soviet Bloc Division related to trivia ratherthan to items of importance) are reported by Epstein to be the reason Major Anatoliy Golitsyn requested resettlement in Great Britain. Epstein, Deception, op. cit.

12. General Sejna brought with him detailed analyses which had been conducted by the Czechoslovak

Ministry of Defence of the Czech Air Force, ground forces, personnel management, mobilisation system and Military Intelligence; an analysis of developments in the world and the Warsaw Pact in the future, by the Main Political Administration and Science Administration and, based on these analyses, military policy after the 13th Party Congress; and Presidium analyses of the Czechoslovak economy.

13. The failure to make such information available is, in reality, not unusual. Important material is often not made available to intelligence analysts, and the reason is not security - examples being Golitsyn and Pacepa.

Even worse, false information is often distributed, without the knowledge of the analytical side of the intelligence community, Penkovskiy being a case in point.

14. This Soviet plan was transmitted to the East European satellites in 1967 for them to use as the basis for their development of their own coordinated long-range plans. Distribution was tightly controlled. Only two copies were available within Czechoslovakia. Sejna had one copy. It was his responsibility to ensure that the Ministry of

Defence's planners received proper instruction and that their work fully complied with the requirements of the

Soviet plan.

15. There has been a continuing effort, especially within US policymaking circles, to ridicule the notion of Soviet planning or grand strategy, an awareness and understanding of which is a sine qua non for meaningful and relevant strategic analysis. For example, as Henry Kissinger explained: 'I sent the President an analysis of Soviet policy at the end of 1969, which I prepared with the help of Hal Sonnenfeldt and Bill Hyland of my staff. It began by rejecting the proposition that Soviet policy necessarily followed a master plan'. Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown & Company, 1979), page 161. Hyland was previously a senior CIA analyst. John Ranelagh, The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), page 509. While what is meant by a 'master plan' is not explained here by Kissinger, the detailed layout of Soviet

revolutionary objectives, strategy, tactics and assignments was contained in the 'Long-Range Plan for the Next Ten to Fifteen Years and Beyond' that General Sejna identified to his debriefers.

British counter-intelligence officials debriefed Sejna in 1970 on Soviet strategy in various regions of the

world, especially Europe. One of the areas they concentrated on was the ease with which Czechoslovak and Soviet intelligence services had penetrated the British Labour Party and UK Government structures - particularly the Foreign Office, the Colonial Office and the intelligence services. A copy of their write-up of Sejna's data was provided to US counter-intelligence. The regions that received the least attention in the British debriefings were the United States and Latin America. Yet there was no CIA counter-intelligence attempt to follow up and extend this work for the United States and Latin America. This was the only analysis that dealt with the Soviet long-range plan, but it did not begin to cover the important objective and policy objectives element of the plan. A project to debrief General Sejna on the whole plan was begun in 1978 under Dr Gene Durbin, in the US Defense

Department's Office of Net Assessment. Dr Durbin left the office shortly after the project was started. After the first section of the plan, the political objectives element, had been completed, the funding was cut off and the project terminated.

Editor's Note: A detailed summary of the long-range plan as described by General Sejna diverges, but is

nevertheless paradoxically dialectically complementary to, the long-range plan as unfolded by Anatoliy Golitsyn in his two books, New Lies for Old and The Perestroika Deception [op. cit.]. However Golitsyn's analysis focused primarily upon strategic deception, identified as the core of the plan, and on long-term preparations for the dis- mantling of the Stalinist model of control ahead of its replacement, following Gorbachev's perestroika (meaning reformation, as in a military formation), by an upgraded and revitalised Leninist model of global revolution. By contrast, Sejna's long-range strategy was plainly formulated within a neo-Stalinist framework, even though Sejna himself denounced Stalinism. This suggests that- as would be expected among Leninists, for whom the dialectical modus operandi, or dualism, is routine practice - the coexistence of two or more long-range strategic

plans. They would not have been intended to be, nor would they have been conceived as being, mutually exclusive. While General Sejna's version has been superseded, the 'general line' (strategy) remains unchanged.

CHAPTER 10: Questions of Intelligence                    131

16. Lord Chalfont's articles in The Times (London) were: 'Moscow's Brutal Reality' (July 28,1975); 'How Israel Fits into the Jigsaw of Soviet Power' (August 4,1975); and 'How Britain's Economic Difficulties Help the Soviet Grand Strategy' (September 1,1975).

17. Walter Hahn, 'A Soviet Game-Plan?', Strategic Review, Spring 1983.

18. As explained by Aleksandr Yakovlev, chairman of the Foreign Commission of the Central Committee of the CPSU and a top adviser to President Gorbachev, on November 18,1988, with reference to glasnost, there was to be no change in the basic values and strategic aims and intentions of Soviet foreign policy. Only the tactics were to be changed.

'USSR's Yakovlev Answers Questions in Prague', FBIS-EEU-88224, November 21,1988, page 11.

19. In 1988, the Politburo must have reversed their decision, insofar as the Czechoslovak Party newspaper

began referring to him as General Sejna once again.

20. The United States is unique in this respect. During the early 1970s, Sejna was permitted to travel abroad to discuss his knowledge of Soviet strategy with officials of friendly foreign countries, where he met and exchanged views with many high-ranking officials. In all instances, where there was operational knowledge, it confirmed what General Sejna had to say.

21. After every change in the Soviet leadership, there is a attempt in the West to identify change in the

Soviet Union/'former' Soviet Union. As Harriet Fast Scott and William F. Scott explained in Soviet Military Doctrine: Continuity, Formulation and Dissemination (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1988), page 47: 'Khrushchev's ouster in 1964 had been greeted with a sigh of relief. It was felt that Brezhnev was more sensible and reasonable. Therefore, when the third edition of Military Strategy appeared in 1968, very little changed from earlier editions, this was not welcomed abroad by those seeking an arms control agreement with Moscow'. As an example of how this book was handled, consider the following passage in a letter dated September 11,1968 from CIA deputy director Vice Admiral Rufus L. Taylor to the Commander of the Air Force Foreign Technology Headquarters: 'I have browsed through it [the book] and found parts of it to be of some interest. Our people, as do I, have mixed

feelings about the validity and influence of him [Marshal V. D. Sokolovskiy] in Soviet military circles'. At the time, Ambassador Thompson was one of the leading proponents of the changes taking place in the Soviet Union. He was also, on directions received earlier from Secretary of Defence McNamara, engaged in arms control talks with the Soviets on ballistic missile defence in an attempt to head off US deployment of an anti-ballistic missile defence system. Phyllis Schlafly and Chester Ward, Kissinger on the Couch (New Rochelle, New York: Arlington House,

1975), page 315. Thompson died on 6th February 1972.

22. It is startling, to an outsider, how many Czechoslovak emigres or defectors (at least four, according to my count) were enabled by the CIA to interact with Sejna and assist him in various phases of his debriefings and relocations. My concern is the difficulty in establishing bona fides beyond a doubt, especially given the evident ease with which trained Communist agents can pass the CIA polygraph. In general, defectors are reluctant to interact with other defectors forthis very reason. In the late 1970s the FBI identified a Czechoslovak defector, Karl F. Koecher, as a Czechoslovak intelligence service officer who had penetrated the CIA.

Koecher passed the CIA polygraph, was hired by the CIA, and assigned to the Operations Directorate to translate cables from  agents,  an  extremely sensitive assignment. Another example of  a  defector with  an extremely sensitive assignment was Paul Bellin - a Soviet defector, who became a CIA polygraph examiner! Corson, Trento and Trento, Widows, op. cit, pages 48-49,125. See also Ronald Kessler, Moscow Station (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1989, page 195). While the CIA is notorious for its mishandling of defectors (that is, treating them like dirt), it is clear that this is not a consistent policy and, indeed, that some defectors are given inside jobs of the highest sensitivity.

23. Richard Eder, 'Anti-Dubcek Role Denied by General Who Fled Prague', New York Times, August 26,1968, and 'Sejna Says Novotny's Errors Led to Liberalisation in Prague', New York Times, August 28,1968. It was a Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) employee, not the CIA, who brought the articles to Sejna's attention, translated them for him, and then helped Sejna call Eder and complain about the articles.

24. At the same time, if one wanted to perform a general debriefing outside the normal debriefing process, that is, without any follow-up questions and without the material finding its way into the Intelligence Reports that are produced during the debriefing process, this might be an excellent approach. The basic concept of having a defector write down a detailed history of his activities as an integral part of the debriefing process is a normal and excellent technique, but this does not appear to have been the approach in the case of Sejna.

25. The Reader's Digest was also used by the CIA to provide a mechanism for the Soviet defector Yuri Nosenko to 'tell his story' about Lee Harvey Oswald and the Kennedy assassination. In this case, the Reader's Digest proposed the book idea to Edward Jay Epstein, and offered to put him in contact with Nosenko in 1976. Nosenko had been the focus of a major dispute within the CIA. His bona fides were not established, at least not until after Angleton's counter-intelligence organisation was broken up. As Epstein described the situation, almost every intelligence official involved with the Nosenko case had his career wrecked. Epstein, Deception, op. cit, page 62.

26. General Jan Sejna, 'Russia Plotted the Pueblo Affair', Reader's Digest, July 1969.

27. Ibid., page 75.

28. Epstein, Deception, op. cit, page 282.

29. In roughly 1962, Czechoslovakia signed an agreement with North Korea to provide North Korea with technology and intelligence in return for North Korea serving as a transit point for the covert movement of people to Eastern Europe.

30. The individual identified as making the suggestion was Colonel Karel Borsky, who, as identified in

Chapter 2, was the Zs chief in charge of the drug-trafficking training centres. See pages 27 and 31.

31. He also asked Sejna to misrepresent certain aspects concerning Soviet deception planning so that

Angleton would find the information more acceptable. Sejna refused to compromise his integrity in this and other similar episodes.

32. See, for example, Epstein, Deception, op. cit, pages 70-74.

33. Vladimir Sakharov, High Treason (New York: Ballantine Books, 1980).

34. Lt. General Ion Mihai Pacepa, Red Horizons: Chronicles of a Communist Spy Chief [Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 1987).

35. David B. Funderburk, Pinstripes and Reds: An American Ambassador Caught Between the State Depart- ment and the Romanian Communists, 1981-85 (Washington, D.C.: Selous Foundation Press, 1987).

36. Ibid., page 46.

37. For example, areas on which General Sejna had detailed knowledge that I am personally aware of and on which, with a few notable exceptions, there was no systematic effort to debrief him include:

•  Organisation, role, and function of the Defence Council

•  Penetration of foreign governments and bourgeois political parties, notably the Social Democrats.

•  Soviet interests in hiding missile development/deployment.

•  Methods of covert military research and development.

•  Mobilisation mechanisms and planning.

•  Use of terrorism in revolutionary war strategy.

•  Training of international terrorists.

•  Soviet Bloc strategy for penetrating/using organised crime.

•  Details of Soviet long-range strategy.

•  Mechanism for development and use of 1-, 5- and 15-year plans.

•  Peaceful coexistence deception strategy.

•  Military technology requirements and acquisition process.

•  Details on intelligence planning and plans.

•  Soviet Bloc infiltration and use of Western news media.

•  Soviet Defence Council policy and directives on use of news media.

•  Intelligence penetration of religions and financial institutions.

•  Training, organisation and use of special operations forces.

•  Soviet Bloc sabotage networks in Europe and war plans.

•  Principles for the recruitment of the Western elite.

•  Intelligence penetration of the French Government.

•  Intelligence penetration of NATO structures.

•  Role and importance of operational ideology.

•  Communist control and discipline process.

•  Secrecy in economic planning and the nature of the budget process.

•  Soviet narcotics trafficking strategy.

•  Special propaganda employed against military and civilians.

•  Special analytical teams within departments and ministries.

•  Coordination of civilian and military intelligence operations.

•  Deception and maskirovka organisation and oversight.

•  Organisation and operations of strategic intelligence agents.

•  Organisation and role of Special Propaganda organs.

•  Role and function of key Central Committee Departments.

•  Errors in clandestinely obtained 'Soviet' documents.

•  Hierarchical organisation of deception and its oversight.

•  Formulation of deception and management of constituent parts.

•  Operations of foreign intelligence services (both Communist and non-Communist).

•  Maintenance of smuggling routes and preparations for sabotage.

38. Chapman Pincher, The Secret Offensive (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985), pages 32-55.

39. Roy Godson, editor, Intelligence Requirement for the 1990s (Lexington, Massachusetts: Lexington Books, 1988), page 153. For an especially revealing account of the extent of security problems throughout the US Government, particularly the Department of State, see William J. Gill, The Ordeal of Otto Otepka (New Rochelle, New York: Arlington House, 1969).

40. Michael Hedges, 'Customs Chief Blasts Just About Everybody', Washington Times, July 28,1989, page A10.

41. Epstein, Deception, op. cit, page 290.

42. Ibid., page 282.

43. For a more extensive discussion of planning and emergency decisions, see Jan Sejna and Joseph D.

Douglass, Jr., Decision-Making in Communist Countries: An Inside View (Cambridge, Massachusetts and Wash- ington, D.C.: Institute for Foreign Policy Analyses and Pergamon-Brassey's, 1986).

44. Writers and Speakers for Freedom, Nov/Dec. 1987, page 5, citing interview with Miguel Bolanos, a former official from Nicaraguan intelligence, at the Heritage Foundation, June 16-17,1986.

45. Workman, International Drug-trafficking, op, cit, page C3, citing a DIA report, The International Terrorist

Network, op. cit.

46. Peter Samuel, 'State Dept. Said to Slight Drug Enforcement to Preserve Detente', New York City Tribune, April 7,1989, page A3.

47. See, for example, Chapman Pincher, The Secret Offensive (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985). Also, with respect to Poland, see Corson, Trento and Trento, Widows, op. cit, page 172.