Berlin Crisis of 1961 - KGB Subversion and Disinformation Plan

KGB Subversion and Disinformation Plan

On 29 July 1961, KGB chief Alexander Shelepin sent a memorandum to Khrushchev containing an array of proposals to create a situation in various areas of the world which would favor dispersion of attention and forces by the USA and their satellites, and would tie them down during the settlement of the question of a German peace treaty and West Berlin. The multifaceted deception campaign, Shelepin claimed, would show to the ruling circles of Western powers that unleashing a military conflict over West Berlin can lead to the loss of their position not only in Europe, but also in a number of countries of Latin America, Asia and Africa.

Khrushchev sent the memo with his approval to his deputy Frol Kozlov and on August 1 it was, with minor revisions, passed as a CPSU Central Committee directive. The KGB and the Ministry of Defense were instructed to work out more specific measures and present them for consideration by the Central Committee.

The first part of the deception plan must have pleased Khrushchev, who in January 1961 had pledged, before the communists of the whole world, to assist movements of national liberation. Shelepin advocated measures to activate by the means available to the KGB armed uprisings against pro-Western governments.

The destabilizing activities started in Nicaragua where the KGB plotted an armed mutiny through an internal revolutionary front of resistance; in coordination with Fidel Castro's Cubans and with the Revolutionary Front Sandino. Shelepin proposed to make appropriations from KGB funds in addition to the previous assistance $10,000 for purchase of arms. Shelepin planned also the instigation of an armed uprising in El Salvador, and a rebellion in Guatemala, where guerrilla forces would be given $15,000 to buy weapons.

The campaign extended to Africa, to the colonial and semi-colonial possessions of the British and the Portuguese. The KGB promised to help organize anti-colonial mass uprisings of the African population in British Kenya, the British Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland and Portuguese Guinea, by arming rebels and training military cadres.

Shelepin suggested to bring to attention of the USA through KGB information channels information about agreements between the USSR, the People's Republic of China, North Korea and North Vietnam about joint military actions to "liberate" South Korea, South Vietnam, and Taiwan in case of the eruption of armed conflict in Germany. The Soviet General Staff, proposed Shelepin, together with the KGB, should work out the relevant disinformation materials; and reach agreement with Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese friends about the demonstration of military preparations in those areas.

Shelepin also planned to cause uncertainty in government circles of the United States, the United Kingdom, Turkey, and Iran about the stability of their positions in the Middle and Near East. He offered to use old KGB connections with the chairman of Kurdistan Democratic Party, Mustafa Barzani, to activate the movement of the Kurdish population of Iraq, Iran, and Turkey for creation of an independent Kurdistan that would include the provinces of aforementioned countries. Barzani was to be provided with necessary aid in arms and money. Given propitious developments, noted Shelepin, it would become advisable to express the solidarity of Soviet people with this movement of the Kurds. The movement for the creation of Kurdistan, he predicted, will evoke serious concern among Western powers and first of all in the UK regarding their access to oil in Iraq and Iran, and in the United States regarding its military bases in Turkey. All that will create also difficulties for Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abdul Karim Kassim who had begun to conduct a pro-Western policy.

The second component of the Shelepin's grand plan was directed against NATO installations in Western Europe and aimed to create doubts in the ruling circles of Western powers regarding the effectiveness of military bases located on the territory of the Western Germany and other NATO countries, as well as in the reliability of their personnel. To provoke the local population against foreign bases, Shelepin contemplated working with the East German and Czechoslovakian secret services to carry out "active measures" to demoralize servicemen in Western Europe (by agents, leaflets, and brochures), and even by terrorist attacks on depot and logistics stations in West Germany and France.

One of the more imaginative strands in the web of Soviet strategic deception concerned the number and even existence of new types of arms and missiles. Along with the General Staff, the KGB long practiced a dubious combination of super-secrecy and bluffing, thereby producing a series of panicky assessments in the West about a bomber gap and then a missile gap. This time Shelepin asked Khrushchev to assign to his organization and the military the task of making the West believe that the Soviets were absolutely prepared to launch an attack in retaliation for Western armed provocations over West Berlin. The disinformation package included the following tasks:

• to convince the West that Soviet land forces were now armed with new types of tanks; equipped with tactical nuclear weapons;
• to create a conviction among the enemy about a considerable increase of readiness of Rocket Forces and of the increased number of launching pads-produced by the supply of solid liquid ballistic missiles of medium range and by the transfer from stationary positions to mobile launching positions on highways and railroads which secure high maneuverability and survivability;
• to spread a false story about the considerable increase in the number of nuclear submarines with solid-fuel SLBMs;
• to bring to Western attention information about the strengthening of anti-aircraft defense;
• to disorient the enemy regarding the availability in the Soviet Air Forces of new types of combat-tactical aircraft with air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles with a large operational range.

On November 10, Soviet Defense Minister Rodion Malinovsky and KGB Deputy Chief Peter Ivashutin asked the CPSU Central Committee Secretariat to approve, in addition to the crisis contingency planning by the military forces, deceptive steps directed at producing in the adversary's mind "a profound conviction that the Soviet Union firmly intends to use force in response to military provocations of Western powers and has at its disposal all necessary combat means".The KGB took upon itself the task to inform Western intelligence through unofficial channels that the Soviet Union has taken necessary measures to strengthen its troops in Eastern Germany and to arm them with more modern tactical missiles, newer tanks, and other armaments sufficient for the delivery of a quick and crushing response strike on the adversary. Through the same channels KGB intended to increase the adversary's belief in the high maneuverability and mobility of Soviet armed forces and their readiness, in case the West unleashes an armed conflict in Germany, to move within a minimal time up to the battle lines of the European theater and to convey as a proof thereof that this summer, during the exercises in the Near-Carpathian and other military districts, some divisions demonstrated an average speed of advancement of about 110–130 km per day.

Along the lines of Shelepin's proposal, the KGB's military-industrial consultants suggested other disinformation steps. Perhaps echoing Khrushchev's boast that his missiles could hit a fly in the sky KGB proposed to convey to U.S. intelligence the information that during its recent series of atomic tests—in September–October 1961—the Soviet Union successfully tested a super-powerful thermonuclear warhead, along with a system of detecting and eliminating the adversary's missiles in the air.

The KGB laboratories fabricated evidence for U.S. intelligence about the solution in the Soviet Union of the problem of constructing simple but powerful and user-convenient atomic engines for submarines which allow in the short run increasing considerably the number of atomic submarines up to fifteen.

Finally, the KGB received instructions to promote a legend about the invention in the Soviet Union of an aircraft with a close-circuited nuclear engine and its successful flight tests which demonstrated the engine's high technical capacities and its safety in exploitation. On the basis of the Myasishchev M-50 bomber, with consideration of the results of those flight tests, according to this disinformation, a strategic bomber with nuclear engines and unlimited range had been designed.