54 VOLUME LIST OF US AGENTS

pakistani officer brigadier tirmizi who was defence attache in tehran and read these documents states that the documents stated that many senior pakistani officials including the foreign minister ,custodian of pakistani war plans the DGMO afzaal all were paid US agents.

refers

Profiles in Intelligence

Brig Tirmizi

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Secrets of the Teheren Archive


ORBIS
Spring 1987

by Edward Jay Epstein


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The heart of the intelligence business is the an illegal enterprise: the

surreptitious theft of state secrets from other nations. The

surreptitious part of the equation is crucial since it provides unexpected

knowledge. This endeavor also requires air-tight secrecy because the

usefulness of the intelligence derived from this data depends on the

other side not realizing that it is missing or compromised. Once an

adversary realizes that a particular secret is known, it can take

effective action to diminish its value. For example, if a nation finds out

that one of its diplomatic codes has been broken, it can either change

the code or use it as a channel to transmit messages it wants its

adversary to read.

To maintain their flow of unexpected secrets, intelligence service have a

double job. First, they must steal secrets of value, which is the easy

part. Second, they must conceal all traces of the theft for as long as

they want the information to remain valuable. To meet this latter

requisite, espionage agents are instructed to photocopy documents in

place rather than tampering with them or removing them ; and, in

situations where this is not possible, intelligence services employ

technical staffs of experts to obliterate any clues that the documents

gave been tampered with, or temporarily removed to be copied. The

security problem does not end, however, with hiding the original theft.

Intelligence services must protect the secret that they have stolen

valuable information, such as a code, even after it is put to use-- so it can

be of future use. This final task of intelligence often requires the

creation of a set of alternative false, through plausible sources, to

prevent the adversary from figuring out from the use of the intelligence

what--or who-- could possibly have compromised or supplied it. The

protection of sources and methods involves not only keeping a secret but

also fabricating "red herrings" to divert, confuse and overload enemy

investigations with extraneous and false information. When British

intelligence learned of German military operations in the second world

war through its intercepts of coded signals, it protected the secret by

creating fictional human agents who could be plausibly assigned the

credit for the coup. In the same manner, human sources are often

hidden by behind a screen of fictional scientific devices.

This necessary practice of intelligence services protecting truths with

bodyguards of lies or red herrings has also resulted in the systematic

pollution of public knowledge about espionage through

deliberately-planted fictions. Intelligence services employ entire covert

actions staffs to muddy the waters around important cases by leaking

selected bits of information. For example, the "story" of Oleg

Penkovskiy, a Soviet GRU officer in contact with British intelligence in

the mid 1950s and then again in the early 1960s, has been put out in

different versions by three intelligence services-- the CIA, the KGB and

the British. The CIA indeed fabricated a diary for him which became a

best-selling book in the United States. Although both CIA and British

counterintelligence had grave suspicions about the information

Penkovskiy supplied, especially during his latter career, the CIA's public

version gave him credit for events to which he had no connection. While

such sprinklings of untruths into the historic record may be justifiable

from the point of view of protecting sources and methods, and therefore

vital to the integrity of the intelligence organization, the distortions that

they produce may it virtually impossible for outsiders to understand the

intelligence business (which may not be entirely unintentional). Indeed,

even in the United States, except for the rare glimpses provided by

Congressional hearings, such as those of the Church Committee, the

public perception of the secret world of intelligence has always been

closely controlled by the intelligence services themselves either through

contract employees who write books they submit for review or

defectors, under contract to the CIA, FBI or DIA, who, after being

briefed, contact journalists or Congressional staffs.

This was the situation up until November 1979 when Iranian students

seized an entire archive of CIA and State Department documents, which

represented one of the most extensive losses of secret data in the

history of any modern intelligence service. Even though many of these

documents were shredded into thin strips before the Embassy, and CIA

base, was surrendered, the Iranians managed to piece them back

together. They were then published in 1982 in 54 volumes under the title

"Documents From the U.S. Espionage Den", and are sold in the United

States for $246.50. As the Teheran Embassy evidently served as a

regional base for the CIA, The scope of this captures intelligence goes

well beyond intelligence reports on Iran alone. They cover the Soviet

Union, Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq. There are also

secret analysis of arcane subjects ranging from the effectiveness of

Israeli intelligence to Soviet oil production. Presumably, these thousands

of documents, which include cryptnyms and routing instructions from and

to concerned agencies of the United States government, have been

extensively analyzed by the KGB and other intelligence service

interested in the sources and methods used by the CIA.

The most revealing documents are the CIA's own internal directives that

span a twenty year period. When these are read in chronological order,

they trace a remarkable conceptual changes in the way the CIA

conceived of its job-- and enemy. It indeed casts an entirely new light on

the bitter battles that tore the CIA apart in the mid-1970s, and it

explains some of its more recent failures to properly evaluate

intelligence defectors.

The watershed year was 1973-- just after the retirement of Richard

Helms. That year there was an 180 degree switch in the crucial policy

concerning the recruitment of Soviet Bloc officials, called appropriately

RED TOPS. At issue, was the way that these RED TOPS, primarily

Communist diplomats, intelligence officers, or military attaches stationed

abroad, were to be treated if they "walked in", and surreptitiously

approached American officials and offered either to defect or to remain

in place and supply U.S. intelligence with Soviet secrets. Would they

assumed to be sincere defectors, and enrolled in American espionage? Or

would they be suspected of being KGB disinformation agents, and held in

limbo? This conceptual determination is central to the spy business.

Up until 1973, the CIA had assumed that Soviet intelligence services

commonly used "provocations" as a technique to test and manipulating its

opponents in the intelligence game. As bait in these provocations, the

KGB would order Soviet embassy officials to make contact with U.S.

officials and feign disloyalty. In fact, over the years, the CIA had found

that a large number of RED TOP officials who contacted the CIA,

ostensibly to defect, turned out to be under the control of the KGB; and

used to confuse American intelligence with disinformation, lead it on a

wild goose chase, expose its sources or methods, or simply embarrass it

by contriving an incident. As early as 1959, to guard against

KGB-controlled provocateurs, the CIA had insisted that the bona fides

of a RED TOP walk-in be established through a counterintelligence

investigation before he is treated as a source of intelligence. This

procedure was explicitly defined in "Director of Central Intelligence

Directive 4/2", signed by Allan Dulles. It states:

The establishment of bona fides of disaffected persons will be given

particular attention because of the demonstrated use of defector

channels by hostile services to penetrate or convey false or deceptive

information to U.S. Intelligence services. (Volume 53, p.8)

The responsibility for making this determination of "bona fides" had

been assigned to the chief of the counterintelligence staff, James

Angleton, and it obviously gave him great power over the recruitment of

REDTOPS. It also led to considerable rivalries within the CIA, and

especially with the Soviet Russia Division, which wanted to control its own

recruitments among Soviet officials.

In 1973, William E. Colby, the son of a Jesuit missionary, whose main

experience in the CIA had been in paramilitary and political activities,

became first the comptroller, then Director, of Central Intelligence. It

was the beginning of a revolution. As he explains in his autobiography, he

rejected the complicated view of KGB strategic deception. Instead of

worry about such enemy tricks, he saw the job of the CIA as a straight

forward one of gathering intelligence for the President. And, to

accomplish this, he believed "walk in" defectors should be encouraged

and given the benefit of the doubt, rather than suspected. He

complained that in the past the CIA "spent an inordinate amount of time

worried about false defectors and false agents." What now emerges

from the Teheran archive was how far Colby went in abruptly revising

this doctrine on REDTOPS. A top secret order, entitled "Turning Around

REDTOP walk ins", which went out to all CIA stations in 1973, advised:

Analysis of REDTOP walk-ins in recent years clearly indicates that

REDTOP services have not been seriously using sophisticated and serious

walk-ins as a provocation technique. However, fear of provocations has

been more responsible for bad handling than any other cause. We have

concluded that we do ourselves a disservice if we shy away from

promising cases because of fear of provocation...We are confident that

we are capable of determining whether or not a producing agent is

supplying bona fide information. ( Volume 53, p.32)

Instead of holding in abeyance REDTOPS until their bona fides could be

established, this new doctrine gave case officers in the Soviet Bloc

Divisions carte blanc to recruit "producing agents" on the assumption

that their worth would be established after the fact by the quantity and

quality of information they furnished. This new order changed the entire

philosophy of the CIA in a single swoop. By effectively eliminating the

prior task of establishing bona fides, it undermined Angleton's position in

the CIA, and made superfluous his counterintelligence staff. In light of

this change, it is not surprising that Angleton, after bitterly fighting this

new policy, which contradicted the empirical findings of the past 20

years, was forced out. Although Angleton was fired in December 1974,

after Colby first planted a Pulitzer Prize news leak with the NY Times,

the full dimensions of this power struggle only became known through

the documents in the Teheran archive.

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These top secret internal directives also reveal that in 1973 there was a

sudden increase in the CIA's confidence in its ability to run and service

agents in hostile territory. Up until 1973, the CIA considered such

contacts behind enemy lines to be a very difficult--and

dangerous--enterprise. Not only did the KGB maintain a full-court press

of surveillance, especially around the embassy, but it was known to use

double-agents to entrap intermediaries that might be used as couriers.

In January 1973, there was a dramatic change in the CIA's appreciation

of this situation. On January 9th, in a top secret cable, The CIA`s

Soviet Bloc division, code named BK Herald, informed all stations abroad:

BK Herald can and does run many resident agents inside the REDTOP

countries. We have the capability to mount and support such operations

over an indefinite period, and we currently are able to exfiltrate agents,

in most cases with their families, from the REDTOP countries when it is

time for them to leave.

In other words, the new CIA took the position that it could not only

recruit untested REDTOP walk-ins at foreign embassies but, after they

returned to Moscow, it could contact them with impunity, employ them as

"resident agents" (or moles), and then, if necessary, smuggle them, and

their families, out of Russia. ( Volume 53, p.29) This fearless bluster,

presumably had been based on doubts about the efficiency of the Soviet

security services-- "The KGB is not 10 feet tall" -- proved to be

disastrously short lived. By 1978, the KGB had arrested a large number

of the CIA's "resident agents" in Moscow, including Anatoli Filatov,

Alexandr Ogorodnik and Vladimir Kalinin, and had used other CIA

recruits, such as Sanya Lipavsky, as provocateurs to discredit the

dissident movement.

The Teheran documents also provide a surprisingly lucid picture of the

basic exercises involved in espionage. The "first imperative", according

to the January 9th 1973 directive, is to discourage any potential

REDTOP dissident from actually defecting. If he does, it will be known

to the Soviets, and they can be expected to take measures to nullify the

value of his information. Instead, he should be persuaded to return to

his post, and maintain secret contact. In CIA parlance, this is a "turn

around". In cases where the REDTOP is not a position of access, the CIA

explains "we are prepared to guide and assist him in his career [in the

Soviet government], running him in place until he develops the access we

need". The CIA, in other words, operated on the premise that it could

promote Soviet personnel in their careers in the Soviet foreign office,

Armed Forces and KGB through supplying them with information and, by

doing so, maneuver them into positions where they could steal or

intercept secrets that were valuable to the United States. The idea is to

develop a mole. "Our ultimate objective is to have the walk-in return to

his home country and continue his agent relationship while working

inside"(Vol 53, p.28-9)

These directives also include the nuts and bolts details of espionage.

There are, for example, step-by-step instructions for recruiting for the

job of a mole a Soviet Bloc official who contacts a US Embassy ( If the

officer on duty doesn't speak his language, there are convenient cards in

Russian and Chinese ). First, the walk-in is told to return to his comrades,

and say nothing to them about the contact. Then, he is handed a chemical

Secret Writing kit [SW] (which allows him to develop invisible addendum

to letters). He is also assigned his "Indicator", or code word, which

signals that an otherwise innocuous-looking letter contains a message. In

return, the Soviet Bloc official is asked to supply a home mailing address

or to address an envelope to himself. He is told he can" expect a letter

(mailed securely in his own country by a BKHERALD officer) containing

an SW message with instructions two to three months after his

return"(Vol 53 p.30) Next, the CIA sends a so-called "ops package" to

the Soviet Union (or wherever) "containing covert communications

materials, reporting requirements and other instructions" for the

agent-to-be which is "dead dropped" --IE, stashed in a safe location such

as a tree trunk. Finally, a message in secret writing is mailed to him

telling the walk-in where to pick up this "ops package". Once he receives

this equipment, the recruit becomes a full fledge spy-- photocopying

requested documents, answering CIA questionnaires, etc and depositing

the data in his dead drop.

Other documents in the archives show that the CIA did not merely sit

around waiting for REDTOP walk-ins to stray into the embassy. It sets

up operations ( "ops") to approach, tempt, compromise and recruit their

diplomats and intelligence officers. To begin these "ops", U.S.

intelligence officers poured through "biographical" research reports,

prepared by U.S. and allied embassies, on Soviet diplomatic personnel in

Iran and sifted out from them possibly vulnerable REDTOPS. For

example, it was reported that one recently transferred Soviet

diplomat's wife had been President Nikolai Kosygin's mistress. If true, it

might make him amenable to betraying his country. As it turned out, the

report was false (she had merely been Kosygin's secretary), and the "op"

was scrapped.(volume 52, pp32-36) After a "target" is finally found, the

"op" frequently employed intermediaries, called "access agents" to

approach him. The longest such case involved the use of an American

doctor, who worked with Soviet doctors in a hospital in Teheran-- for the

task of befriending the targets. (Vol 52, pp 44-75) The code name for

the agent was "Larry Giel". If the "op" then went well, the REDTOP was

then maneuvered into a meeting of the CIA recruiter, who would then

attempt to trick or induce him into cooperating. As it turned out, despite

persistent efforts by the CIA and Air force intelligence, these "ops"

against REDTOPS rarely, if ever, succeeded in Iran (at least not in the

published documents). The CIA had more apparent success in recruiting

Iranian diplomats in the period following the overthrow of the Shah in

1978. An entire volume of CIA documents is devoted to the intriguing

arrangements necessary for clandestine contacts with two such Iranian

officials, code named SDLURE and SDROTTER (Volume 9)

Beyond such espionage activities, this archive also provides a measure

not ordinarily available of the quality of the diplomatic reporting. This

cable traffic between U.S. Embassies and Washington-- which is in

effect daily, if unpublished, journalism, was based mainly on

conversations with foreign diplomats from both friendly and unfriendly

nations. In Iran, for example, U.S. political officers regularly sought out

their counterparts in the Soviet Embassy, and, while treating them to

dinner at the Teheran Steak House, pressed them with questions about

Soviet intentions in countries around the world. The answers were

presumed to be the quasi-official Soviet line. (In return, the Soviets

invited Americans to the Sauna in the Soviet Embassy). (Volume 50, pp

43-88)

These messages from foreign sources, reviewed in the hindsight of

history, show the extent to which nations used diplomatic contacts to

test, manipulate and control their adversaries. The way the Soviet Union

used diplomatic channels to de-sensitize the United States to it planned

coup in Afghanistan in October 1979 is a case in point. The Soviets were,

up until that point, facing a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. The

Socialist government of Taraki and Amin, backed by the Soviets, had

seized power in April 1978. But despite over one billion dollars in Soviet

economic and military aid, and some 4000 Soviet military advisors, it had

been unable to deal with the growing Moslem insurgency, was financed

secretly by Saudi Arabia. (Volume 30, pp142-3)

The Soviet Union decided in the summer of 1979 to suppress the

rebellion, which meant replacing the Afghan leaders (who still retained

some claim of independence from Moscow). In preparing this coup, the

Soviets sent a series of messages to the American embassy, beginning in

June, through both its own Minister, V.S. Safronchuk and the East

German Ambassador, Dr. Hermann Schwiesau. As the American

Ambassador reported in the secret section of a July 18th cable to

Washington. "Over the last 3 weeks, we had hints of a Soviet assisted

internal coup both from GDR Ambassador Schwiesau and

from...Safronchuk". He explained that Schwiesau had become the "One

of our most important sources of.. Moscow's thinking". The message

from the East German ambassador was that Moscow would not allow the

socialist coup to interfere, even if it meant direct intervention. He

explained: "Safronchuk had been given the task, by Moscow, to bring

about a `radical change' in the Government" of Afghanistan. Then,

spelling out the course of action-- and even giving the approximate date,

he "indicated that a military intraparty coup, deposing of Amin and

perhaps others, is what the Soviets intend". (Volume 29, pp 180-181) The

message of Moscow's plan to pull a coup was pointedly repeated on at

least three other occasions that month. In addition, there were reported

in the cable traffic numerous instances of undisguised Soviet military

moves to support its intervention in Afghanistan. (Volume 30)

Finally, the Teheran archive reveals something about US intelligence

against its allies, notably Israel. The CIA left intact in the embassy

archives in Teheran an extremely damaging 47-page report on Israeli

intelligence, called Israel: Foreign Intelligence and Security Services.

The March 1979 report was not only classified "SECRET," "NOFORN" (

not releasable to foreign nationals) "NOCONTRACT", ( not releasable to

contract employees) and "ORCON" ( originator of the report, the CIA`s

counterintelligence staff, controlled who in the American government

saw it.) (Volume 11, pp. 1-2) Such labels were necessary because it

reveals sources and methods of Israel's most secret intelligence

services-- including Mossad and Shin Beth. The report closely defines its

foreign targets, its tactics, including "false-flag" recruitments (where

Israeli agents pose as NATO officers and "surreptitious entry

operations" (for example, break into embassies) and its table of

organization, personnel, budgets and liaisons with foreign intelligence

services with nations with which Israel does not have diplomatic relations

such as China.)

The CIA explained "Most of the information in this publication has been

derived from a variety of sources including covert assets of the Central

Intelligence Agency." And "covert assets" means, in CIA speak, spies, it

becomes evident how the CIA obtained at least a portion of Israel's

secret documents. It used its moles and other "covert assets" in Israel

to furnish it with these documents. They were, it appears, which from

the data t provided, would have to be Israeli government employees with

access to the most closely held intelligence secrets. These agents in turn

had to be recruited and managed by the CIA, which is the essence of

espionage. So the CIA was therefore engaged in espionage operations

against Israel from 1976-9, when the report in the Teheran Archives

was prepared. And, from this espionage, it knew about similar Israel

espionage activities against the U.S. The report states, for example,

that Mossad routinely "collects" intelligence in the United States

through its eighth department. (Volume 11, p.17-18)

From a point of view of keeping secret the legitimate workings of U.S.

national security mechanism, it would have been better if these

documents had been destroyed before the embassy was surrendered.

But since these documents have been published, they cannot be ignored.

For just as the archive of Soviet documents at Smolensk, captured

intact by the German Army in 1941, and subsequently taken from them

by the Americans in 1945, gave rise to an new perspective on the

governmental operations of the Soviet Union, the Teheran documents

provide missing pieces in a multitude of jigsaw puzzles. (Original draft,

Updated )