Spycraft - Melton [181]
More insidious than the criminals peddling false intelligence for a quick profit were the Soviet and Eastern Bloc intelligence services that produced a steady stream of forgeries in an effort to discredit American foreign policy and leadership. In contrast to Walker or the paper mills of post-World War II Europe, these schemes were not the product of intelligence outsiders motivated by money or a personal political agenda. These were professional enterprises backed by the resources of a sponsoring government’s intelligence service. Timed to coincide with political events and executed with precision, these forgeries were specifically aimed at creating a political advantage for the Soviets.
Forgeries as a political weapon have a rich heritage. Author, printer, scientist, diplomat, and signatory to the Declaration of Independence Benjamin Franklin played the role of forger and fabricator during the Revolutionary War. Franklin skillfully created a fictional letter in 1777 from Germany’s Frederick II of Hesse Kassel to King George III advocating more aggressive use of German mercenaries in combat against the colonists.
The Franklin forgery complained that not enough Germans were being killed to turn a decent profit, since the British paid bonuses to German royalty for each fatality. Perhaps, the spurious document suggested, it would be more humane to deny the wounded mercenaries medical attention and let them die, rather than live as invalids. Combined with offers of amnesty and farmland from the American side, Hessian soldiers deserted en masse. According to records, 5,000 of a reported 30,000 Germans put down their arms.29
As the Cold War’s geopolitical battlefield widened beyond Europe during the early 1950s, the KGB turned to forgeries and fabrications as an intelligence and foreign policy tool. A well-placed forgery could effectively strain diplomatic relations between otherwise friendly nations.30 When such documents appeared in the media, they could also weaken support for a government’s policies among its citizens or turn the tide of public opinion.
The KGB inherited an appreciation and expertise for disinformation from its predecessor organization, the Okhrana, which in 1903 published The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The ambitious fabrication claimed existence of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy to create an “intensified centralization of government” and monopolies, and “revealed” the practice of ritual sacrifice of Christian children in religious ceremonies.31 A masterpiece of disinformation, the Protocols reportedly sparked anti-Jewish pogroms across Czarist Russia.
Although later analysis of the document placed it as a combination of an 1865 work opposing Napoleon II and a piece of fiction by a Prussian postal employee, the Protocols became an enduring “bestseller” of political forgeries.32 Eventually spreading beyond Russia’s borders to the West, it was later adopted by Hitler as a propaganda tool. Remarkably, Protocols continues to have credibility—more than a hundred years after its appearance—particularly in Middle Eastern countries as well as with a handful of extremist groups in Europe and the United States.33
Political forgeries intensified with Soviet rule. Beginning with a program of forgeries in 1923, these actions would eventually become known as “active measures” (aktivnyye meropriyatiya).34 By the 1950s, Soviet forgeries were primarily crafted to discredit the West in general and the