 that disinformation is absolutely central to Soviet strategy for defeating what they call the main enemy, what the KGB calls the main enemy, that is, the United States, without firing a shot. So practically every Soviet citizen abroad who is an official mission is involved in intelligence gathering information or active measures activity one way or other. I have to admit that I'm an author of a number of forgeries, for example. Czechoslovak intelligence service produced at the time a number of forgeries leaked, for example, to Egyptian government proving that the American government was planning an assassination against the Egyptian president. Forgery, bribery, agents of influence, disinformation and overall dirty tricks are all part of a broad range of Soviet activities called active measures. This program is about these Soviet active measures. We will hear from journalists like Newsweek's former chief correspondent Arnaud de Borgraff and French author Jean-François Ravel and from former Soviet KGB officer Stanislav Levchenko and former Czechoslovakian intelligence officer Ladislav Bitman. We will also talk with the man at the United States State Department whose job it is to respond to these active measures. In the mid-1960s, Ladislav Bitman was deputy director of the Czechoslovakian intelligence service department of disinformation. In 1968, after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, he defected to the United States. Disinformation is actually a deliberately distorted or manipulated information that is leaked into the communication system of the opponent with the expectation that it would be accepted as genuine information and influence either the decision-making process, for example, to influence or manipulate public opinion. Jean-François Ravel was director of France's leading news magazine, L'Express, for a number of years. Today, he is the author of a long list of books on politics and philosophy. Disinformation is not simply lies or falsifications. It is the art of having your enemies say what you want them to say. This consists in conditioning Western journalists by the USSR in such a way that in perfectly good faith or sometimes for different reasons, even sometimes financial reasons, these journalists would write what the Soviet Union would like them to write, after which TASS takes their text and says, you see, even the Western press is saying this. Active measures, and these go even further, consist in making up completely false documents which they try to have distributed as authentic Western documents. We have many famous examples from the Festler Report of 1952 to the so-called fake letter of Ronald Reagan to the King of Spain, Juan Carlos, in which Reagan said Spain must join NATO or else you will see what will happen to you. This was a fake. Both techniques have enormous importance in the strategy of mental destabilization of the West by the Soviet Union. Stanislav Levchenko is an expert in the field of Soviet active measures. In the middle 1970s he was a major in the KGB, the Soviet Union's intelligence service. He formerly worked with a major Soviet front group. Afterwards he was in the International Department of the CPSU which plans and oversees active measures for the Soviet Union internationally. Finally, he was chief of the active measures section of the KGB's office in Tokyo using his cover and assignment as a correspondent. In 1979 he defected to the United States. At any given moment the Soviets are involved in active measures all over the world and practically in any country of the world. The number of operations which they are running can be counted only in thousands. We are talking about many thousands of people probably somewhere at least 15,000 people who in the Soviet Union and outside of the Soviet Union are involved in that kind of actions on regular and daily basis. On the very top tip of the pyramid is the Soviet Politburo which approves the most dramatic and large scale global or regional active measures. But daily business in this field is being run by the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union International Department is responsible for planning, coordination and implementation of the Soviet active measures abroad. The main difference between covert types of operations in this field is that when Soviets are running some clandestine active measures operation like for instance planting some major story in the newspaper in France, West Germany, United States, elsewhere Japan, elsewhere. That kind of article normally would be written by a local in many cases prominent journalist who will express as if his own or her own opinion. These kind of things normally won't be traceable back to the Soviet Union. About 40-45% of the Soviet citizens stationed abroad are either KGB, full-time KGB officers or GRU military intelligence officers. Another 50% are cooperating either with KGB or GRU. So practically every Soviet citizen abroad who is an official mission is involved in intelligence gathering information or active measures activity one way or other. In 1964 and 1966 the Czechoslovak service was involved in number of operations mainly against the United States undermining American foreign policy in Western Europe in developing countries. At the time the Czechoslovak television was thinking about making a documentary about black and devil's legs in Czechoslovakia the Czechoslovak-West German borders and that actually brought the Czechoslovak Disinformation Department with the idea to use it to put something in one of the lakes and then the television would discover it and we actually prepared a series of documents for that purpose. Originally we dropped four chests at the bottom of the black lake. They were actually empty. There were no documents at that time because we still didn't have these documents. We were still searching for the documents and then came the Czechoslovak television team and I was one of the divers. They didn't know that I was an intelligence officer. They thought that I was one of the Czechoslovak officials at Ministry of Foreign Affairs. So I actually led the diving team to the area where these chests were placed on the bottom and they were discovered and the Czechoslovak Ministry of Interior announced at a special press conference that historically important documents were discovered in that lake and that was the beginning of a campaign that lasted for about two years. The purpose was to revive the threat of Nazism and to point a finger at West Germany and say, look, they are still there and West Germany is still a great potential danger for you. One of the major and most effective forms of disinformation is forgery. Letters, telegrams, memoranda are forged on a regular basis. Dr. Bitman explains. I would say that the major successes were in developing countries where the governments didn't have the expertise to analyze properly these operations and for example, sometimes in very cheap forgeries are accepted anti-American forgeries, forgeries of American documents are accepted in developing countries as a genuine proof of American conspiracy. For example, in some ways the most damaging story one of these active measures of disinformation and one almost uses the term interchangeably here. We've occurred in Ghana in the last day of March of 83 where the number two men in the government and the key advisor to President Rawlings got up, held a press conference and waved a document around and said, I have the proof. This document, a report of the West German embassy of a conversation with the American ambassador, Thomas Smith in which he explained how and why the Americans were going to overthrow the Rawlings government. This led to a sharp deterioration of relations between the United States and Ghana. It took some time to work that out. Eventually the Ghanaians accepted our and the West German explanations of why this was a fake document. Letters and telegrams are not the only forgeries. During this time, for example, the Czechoslovak and East German intelligence service, intelligence services started a worldwide campaign to undermine, to paralyze the operations of CIA and at the time the East Germans came with the initiative to publish a book called Who Is Who in CIA. The information came from Czechoslovak and East German archives and of course under the Soviet supervision. It is a classical example of a disinformation product. The book contains a number of names, supposedly CIA operatives. About 50 percent of the names in that book are truly CIA agents, CIA operatives. And then there is a number of names of various American diplomats, public officials, judges, journalists who never worked for the CIA. In the case of US Army Field Manual, 3031B, which goes back to the middle 70s and is supposed to be a manual on how to destabilize countries. This has appeared in about 20 different countries. I do remember that I, myself, actually had to keep white gloves in one of the drawers of my desk because time and again when diplomatic pouch will arrive and the secret packages will be brought in my office, almost each time there will be some forgery there. Like in spy movies, sometimes spy movies saying right things. You are not supposed to leave any traces that somebody was working on such documents, so sometimes for hours they had to read and to work on some forgery wearing gloves. Another example took place more recently in Italy. As you know, the Soviets and the Bulgarians have had terrible publicity because of their possible implication in the assassination of the Pope, the arrest of Antonov, the Bulgarian connection. Well, there appeared in Rome, indeed in this magazine, Pace Aguera, a story based on, this was July of 83, based on two telegrams, supposedly written by the American Embassy in Rome to the Department of State, to Washington, proposing how the U.S. could take advantage of the Papal assassination to orchestrate the press in Europe in such a way that the Soviets and the Bulgarians would be criticized. Our embassy was asked for comment. Fortunately, they were on their toes and they were able to knock this down as two fake telegrams and show the press why they were fake and this effort didn't work. Now, in the case of the Rome telegrams, there were a number of mistakes that were made. Number one, they forgot to put cable number on it and all American Embassy telegrams have a number on it, as you know, or USIA telegram. That was the first mistake. The second mistake was in the Addressee line in Washington. This was supposedly a suggestion from Embassy Rome to USIA in Washington. What the telegram said was USIS Washington. Well, no telegram would go out if it was a USIS telegram. You know, many mistakes, civil servants, bureaucrats can make, but they get the name of their organization right. Forgery is only one type of active measure. Another is the Soviet front. Soviets also have more than 60 years of experience of running so-called Soviet fronts. By France, they understand organizations which claim to be public independent organizations, but actually they are being run primarily by international department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The most spectacular example is the World Peace Council, which has headquarters in Helsinki. And whatever World Peace Council does, each step of leadership of World Peace Council is approved or disapproved directly by Moscow. For example, here in the United States, you remember in June of 1982, we had the largest demonstration since the Vietnam War, up in New York, on the nuclear issue. Well, in the steering committee that organized that demonstration, there were 28 members of that. Of that 28, five were members of the Communist Party or members of the US affiliate of the World Peace Council. The five were able to convince the other 23. The real problem is with NATO missiles, and the focus is not on the Eastern missiles. And so this was a further reinforcement for them of the line that they have been trying to push very, very hard. Another type of active measure is the agent of influence. Mr. Levchenko has firsthand knowledge of this activity. They use practically any kind of, any type of actions to try to get people's cooperation, but normally they, first of all, they're trying to recruit so-called agents of influence. Without agents of influence, Soviets will never be able to implement any active measures at all. The most recent classic example came in West Germany where the special assistant to Willy Brandt turned out to be an East German spy. In many cases, the agent of influence is not used for collection of intelligence. But he is supposed to be able to influence public opinion or business circles or government circles or public organization in his country, one way or another. For instance, in Japan, the most important Soviet agent of influence was basically recruited because of his ego problems. By the time Soviets approached him, he already at least one time was a member of the Japanese government. He started to publish Monthly Ability and he started to exchange the delegations between the Japanese parliament and the parliamentarians and the Soviet parliamentarians. That's exactly also what Soviets wanted. And Soviets were using him to plant all kinds of disinformation. One technique of active measures that often remains undetected is the use of rumors. For example, at the time of the tragedy in Mecca, the Holy Mosque in Mecca in 1979 when it was attacked, Soviet diplomats throughout the Middle East were spreading the story that the United States CIA was behind it. And indeed, at the time, there was a test match, a cricket match, between India and Pakistan taking place. And one of the broadcasters on that cricket match, test match, which is listened to all over India and Pakistan, sort of like the American World Series or football championship, mentioned on the radio this report that he had heard a report that the United States was behind the attack of the mosque in Mecca. And as you know that the next day, the United States embassy in Islamabad was attacked and burned. Some questions remain unanswered. What is the effect of all these active measures and why do the Soviets engage in these activities? Of course, we cannot, they are not so naive to think that one successful disinformation operation can totally change the balance of power, but they believe that these operations have cumulative effect. One way of looking at the impact of these activities and they've gone on for many, many years, since the 1950s, so that you're speaking of 30 or so years of such activities, is to think of drops of water falling on a stone. Five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, one hour, one day, nothing happens. But five years, 10 years, 15 years, you've worn a hole in the stone. You know, it's very hard for journalists to accept that this has been going on, because otherwise they have to admit almost in the same breath that they've been ripping off their readers and viewers and listeners. It's very hard to do. It's very important to educate people about these techniques. I would say particularly people who are involved in international relations, international communication, reporting foreign affairs, to make them aware of the basic elementary techniques of disinformation and active measures, so that they develop certain protective devices. So it makes it more difficult for the Soviets to misuse these people, because in many cases, the messengers even don't know that they are misused. If the democracies don't regain their self-confidence, I am very pessimistic, because the Soviet Union is extremely skilled in its propaganda techniques. So I think that the reality of our future lies in what I would call the reconquest of the truth.