The World Was Going Our Way (46 page)
Read The World Was Going Our Way Online
Authors: Christopher Andrew
Tags: #Biographies & Memoirs, #True Accounts, #Espionage, #History, #Europe, #Ireland, #Military, #Intelligence & Espionage, #Modern (16th-21st Centuries), #20th Century, #Russia, #World
Through the Beirut residency the KGB also established contact with two other terrorist groups which gained publicity after attacks on Israeli civilians in the spring of 1974: the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), led by Nayif Hawatmeh (codenamed INZHENER),
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a Greek Orthodox Christian; and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), a breakaway from the PFLP headed by a former Syrian army officer, Ahmad Jibril (codenamed MAYOROV).
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The Beirut residency arranged meetings with Hawatmeh two or three times a month (for how long is unclear) and planted Service A disinformation in the DFLP journal
Hurriya
at a cost of 700 Lebanese pounds per page.
34
Mitrokhin’s notes contain no details of KGB contacts with Jibril.
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a Greek Orthodox Christian; and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), a breakaway from the PFLP headed by a former Syrian army officer, Ahmad Jibril (codenamed MAYOROV).
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The Beirut residency arranged meetings with Hawatmeh two or three times a month (for how long is unclear) and planted Service A disinformation in the DFLP journal
Hurriya
at a cost of 700 Lebanese pounds per page.
34
Mitrokhin’s notes contain no details of KGB contacts with Jibril.
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The most spectacular terrorist operation of the mid-1970s, of which the KGB was almost certainly given advance notice by Haddad, was a PFLP Special Operations Group raid on a meeting of OPEC oil ministers at its Vienna headquarters in December 1975 by a group of Palestinian and German gunmen led by Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, better known as ‘Carlos the Jackal’.
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Carlos was the spoiled son of a millionaire Venezuelan Communist who had named his three sons Vladimir, Ilich and Lenin in honour of the leader of the October Revolution. The KGB had first encountered Carlos when he was given a place in 1968, with his brother Lenin, at the Lumumba University in Moscow for students from the Third World. According to a Venezuelan Communist leader, Carlos paid little attention to his studies: ‘There was no control over him. He received a lot of money, he played the guitar, and he ran after young women.’
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The KGB, it is safe to conclude, did not regard him as a suitable recruit.
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In 1970 he and his brother were expelled from Lumumba University for ‘anti-Soviet provocation and indiscipline’. After his expulsion Carlos flew to Jordan and joined the PFLP, later becoming one of its leading hitmen in London and Paris. Though he claimed to be a Marxist revolutionary, his passion for terrorism derived chiefly from his own vanity and bravado as ‘the great Carlos’. ‘Revolution’, he declared in a characteristic transport of self-indulgent rhetoric, ‘is my supreme euphoria.’
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Carlos was the spoiled son of a millionaire Venezuelan Communist who had named his three sons Vladimir, Ilich and Lenin in honour of the leader of the October Revolution. The KGB had first encountered Carlos when he was given a place in 1968, with his brother Lenin, at the Lumumba University in Moscow for students from the Third World. According to a Venezuelan Communist leader, Carlos paid little attention to his studies: ‘There was no control over him. He received a lot of money, he played the guitar, and he ran after young women.’
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The KGB, it is safe to conclude, did not regard him as a suitable recruit.
38
In 1970 he and his brother were expelled from Lumumba University for ‘anti-Soviet provocation and indiscipline’. After his expulsion Carlos flew to Jordan and joined the PFLP, later becoming one of its leading hitmen in London and Paris. Though he claimed to be a Marxist revolutionary, his passion for terrorism derived chiefly from his own vanity and bravado as ‘the great Carlos’. ‘Revolution’, he declared in a characteristic transport of self-indulgent rhetoric, ‘is my supreme euphoria.’
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The early stages of Carlos’s attack on the poorly defended Vienna OPEC headquarters in December 1975 went remarkably smoothly. All the oil ministers were taken hostage and the Austrian government gave in to Carlos’s demands for a plane to fly them out of the country. Haddad had instructed Carlos to fly around the world with the hostages, liberating most of the oil ministers one by one in their respective capitals in return for declarations of support for the Palestinian cause, but gave orders that the Saudi Arabian and Iranian ministers were to be executed as ‘criminals’. Carlos, however, failed to kill either and freed both in exchange for a large ransom. An outraged Haddad told Carlos that he had disobeyed orders, and dismissed him from his ‘operational teams’.
Over the next two years, Haddad suffered two humiliating defeats. In July 1976 PFLP Special Operations Group terrorists hijacked an Air France Airbus with over a hundred Israelis on board to the Ugandan airport of Entebbe. The hostages, however, were rescued and the terrorists killed in a daring Israeli commando raid. In October 1977 a Lufthansa Boeing 737 was hijacked to Mogadishu and its eighty-six passengers taken hostage. Though the captain was killed by the mentally unstable leader of the hijackers during a stop-over in South Yemen, the plane was stormed at Mogadishu by West German commandos and the remaining hostages freed.
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Despite these débâcles, Haddad remained in close contact with the KGB. In 1976 ten of his terrorists were sent on a three-month course at the FCD Red Banner Institute (later known as the Andropov Institute), which included training in intelligence, counter-intelligence, interrogation, surveillance and sabotage. Further courses were run in 1977-78.
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In March 1977 Haddad visited Moscow for operational discussions with the head of the FCD ‘special tasks’ department, Vladimir Grigoryevich Krasovsky, and his deputy, A. F. Khlystov. The assistance given to Haddad included $10,000 and ten Walther pistols fitted with silencers. At the KGB’s request, Haddad agreed to act as intermediary in making contact with the Provisional IRA representative in Algiers, codenamed IGROK (‘Gambler’), who was believed to have useful information on British intelligence operations.
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From 1974 the KGB had a second agent within the PFLP leadership, Ahmad Mahmud Samman (codenamed VASIT), an Arab born in Jerusalem in 1935. Mitrokhin’s brief notes on Samman’s file record that he supplied the KGB with information on PFLP operations, but give no details.
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In March 1977 Haddad visited Moscow for operational discussions with the head of the FCD ‘special tasks’ department, Vladimir Grigoryevich Krasovsky, and his deputy, A. F. Khlystov. The assistance given to Haddad included $10,000 and ten Walther pistols fitted with silencers. At the KGB’s request, Haddad agreed to act as intermediary in making contact with the Provisional IRA representative in Algiers, codenamed IGROK (‘Gambler’), who was believed to have useful information on British intelligence operations.
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From 1974 the KGB had a second agent within the PFLP leadership, Ahmad Mahmud Samman (codenamed VASIT), an Arab born in Jerusalem in 1935. Mitrokhin’s brief notes on Samman’s file record that he supplied the KGB with information on PFLP operations, but give no details.
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In 1978 the Centre lost both its main agents within the PFLP. Haddad died of a brain haemorrhage while staying in East Germany. His KGB file records that, despite their earlier quarrel, the PFLP leader George Habash declared in an emotional oration at Haddad’s funeral in Baghdad, ‘Let our enemies know that he did not die, but is alive; he is in our hearts, and his name is in our hands; he is organically bound to our people and to our revolution.’
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Samman, according to Mitrokhin’s note on his file, was ‘liquidated by the PFLP as the result of internal dissension [probably following Haddad’s death] and the activities of the Syrian special services’.
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The Beirut residency also lost probably its most important confidential contact in the PFLP, Ahmad Yunis, head of the PFLP security service in Lebanon. In 1978 Yunis was found guilty by a PFLP tribunal of the murder of one of his colleagues and the attempted murder of another, and executed.
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Samman, according to Mitrokhin’s note on his file, was ‘liquidated by the PFLP as the result of internal dissension [probably following Haddad’s death] and the activities of the Syrian special services’.
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The Beirut residency also lost probably its most important confidential contact in the PFLP, Ahmad Yunis, head of the PFLP security service in Lebanon. In 1978 Yunis was found guilty by a PFLP tribunal of the murder of one of his colleagues and the attempted murder of another, and executed.
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The final entry in Haddad’s file noted by Mitrokhin was a decision by the Centre to make contact with his successor.
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Mitrokhin found no evidence, however, that the KGB ever again established links with any major Palestinian terrorist as close as those which it had maintained with Haddad. Carlos, who had been expelled by Haddad from the PFLP Special Operations Group, used Haddad’s death as an opportunity to found his own terrorist group, the Organization of Arab Armed Struggle, composed of Syrian, Lebanese, West German and Swiss militants, and to pursue his quest for international stardom as the world’s leading revolutionary practitioner of terror. He obtained a diplomatic passport from the Marxist-Leninist regime of the People’s Democratic Republic of [South] Yemen in the name of Ahmad Ali Fawaz, which showed his place of birth as Aden, and increased his credit with the Yemeni authorities by falsely claiming that he was a fully trained KGB officer operating on missions approved by the Centre. In February 1979, according to his KGB file, Carlos also began regular contact with the security agency of the PLO. During the remainder of the year he went on an extraordinary tour of the Soviet bloc, beginning in the spring in East Berlin, in order to make contact with the local intelligence agencies. Though Carlos was allowed to set up bases in East Berlin and Budapest, however, he was held at arm’s length by the KGB. When Erich Mielke, the East German Minister of State Security, passed on to Moscow Carlos’s claims, as reported to him by his South Yemeni counterpart, that he was working for the KGB, he received an official denial from Mikhail Andreyevich Usatov, the deputy head of the FCD, and Yakov Prokofyevich Medyanik, then head of the African Department.
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Carlos eventually became an embarrassment to his Soviet-bloc hosts. According to Markus ‘Mischa’ Wolf, the head of the HVA, the Stasi’s foreign intelligence arm, ‘Carlos was a big mouth, an uncontrollable adventurer. He spent his nights in bars, with a gun hanging at his belt, surrounded by girls and drinking like a fish.’ He was eventually expelled from his East Berlin and Budapest bases in 1985 and moved to Damascus in Syria, the most steadfast of his Arab allies.
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Mitrokhin found no evidence, however, that the KGB ever again established links with any major Palestinian terrorist as close as those which it had maintained with Haddad. Carlos, who had been expelled by Haddad from the PFLP Special Operations Group, used Haddad’s death as an opportunity to found his own terrorist group, the Organization of Arab Armed Struggle, composed of Syrian, Lebanese, West German and Swiss militants, and to pursue his quest for international stardom as the world’s leading revolutionary practitioner of terror. He obtained a diplomatic passport from the Marxist-Leninist regime of the People’s Democratic Republic of [South] Yemen in the name of Ahmad Ali Fawaz, which showed his place of birth as Aden, and increased his credit with the Yemeni authorities by falsely claiming that he was a fully trained KGB officer operating on missions approved by the Centre. In February 1979, according to his KGB file, Carlos also began regular contact with the security agency of the PLO. During the remainder of the year he went on an extraordinary tour of the Soviet bloc, beginning in the spring in East Berlin, in order to make contact with the local intelligence agencies. Though Carlos was allowed to set up bases in East Berlin and Budapest, however, he was held at arm’s length by the KGB. When Erich Mielke, the East German Minister of State Security, passed on to Moscow Carlos’s claims, as reported to him by his South Yemeni counterpart, that he was working for the KGB, he received an official denial from Mikhail Andreyevich Usatov, the deputy head of the FCD, and Yakov Prokofyevich Medyanik, then head of the African Department.
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Carlos eventually became an embarrassment to his Soviet-bloc hosts. According to Markus ‘Mischa’ Wolf, the head of the HVA, the Stasi’s foreign intelligence arm, ‘Carlos was a big mouth, an uncontrollable adventurer. He spent his nights in bars, with a gun hanging at his belt, surrounded by girls and drinking like a fish.’ He was eventually expelled from his East Berlin and Budapest bases in 1985 and moved to Damascus in Syria, the most steadfast of his Arab allies.
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Moscow had also become cautious about collaborating with the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi, probably the most active state sponsor of terrorist groups ranging from the PFLP to the Provisional IRA. In 1979 a secret Soviet-Libyan agreement had been signed on intelligence and security, followed by the posting of an FCD liaison officer to the Tripoli embassy. The KGB provided training for Libyan intelligence officers in Moscow, gave advice on security and surveillance inside Libya, and supplied intelligence on US activities in the eastern Mediterranean. In return, Libya provided intelligence on Egypt, North Africa and Israel, as well as assisting the KGB in targeting Western diplomatic missions in Tripoli. Collaboration, however, steadily declined as Moscow became increasingly concerned by Qaddafi’s reputation as the godfather of international terrorism. Qaddafi’s first visit to Moscow in 1981 further lowered his reputation. In the Centre his flamboyant posturing and extravagant uniforms were interpreted as an attempt to contrast his own virility with Brezhnev’s visible decrepitude. At a private briefing for Soviet diplomats and KGB officers in London in 1984, Aleksandr Bovin, chief political commentator of
Izvestia
, denounced Qaddafi as ‘a criminal and a fascist’ .
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Izvestia
, denounced Qaddafi as ‘a criminal and a fascist’ .
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By the early 1980s the Centre seems to have abandoned the hopes it had placed a decade earlier in collaboration with the PFLP and its breakaway groups. Its contacts with the PLO (in particular with Arafat’s dominant Fatah group), however, had somewhat improved. In June 1978 Abu Iyad (codenamed KOCHUBEY), a member of the Fatah Central Committee and head of Arafat’s intelligence service, visited Moscow for talks with the KGB and the International Department.
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Abu Iyad complained of the blunt, tactless behaviour of Lev Alekseyevich Bausin, the KGB officer under diplomatic cover at the Beirut residency who was responsible for contacts with the PLO and other Palestinian groups. Unusually, the Centre showed its desire for better relations by recalling Bausin and replacing him with Nikolai Afanasyevich Kuznetsov, who at his first meeting with Arafat identified himself as a KGB officer.
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Abu Iyad complained of the blunt, tactless behaviour of Lev Alekseyevich Bausin, the KGB officer under diplomatic cover at the Beirut residency who was responsible for contacts with the PLO and other Palestinian groups. Unusually, the Centre showed its desire for better relations by recalling Bausin and replacing him with Nikolai Afanasyevich Kuznetsov, who at his first meeting with Arafat identified himself as a KGB officer.
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Moscow welcomed Arafat’s increasing attempts to win international respectability. In 1979 he was invited to a meeting of the Socialist International in Vienna and began a successful European diplomatic offensive. By 1980 the countries of the European Community, though not the United States, had agreed that the PLO must be party to peace negotiations in the Middle East. The British Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington, declared: ‘The PLO as such is not a terrorist organization.’ Arafat’s success in driving a wedge between the United States and its European allies further enhanced the Centre’s interest in him.
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The military training courses provided by Moscow for the PLO, however, caused some ill feeling on both sides. A report on a course in 1981 for 194 officers from ten different PLO factions suggests serious deficiencies in both Soviet training and the quality of many PLO recruits. According to the PLO commander, Colonel Rashad Ahmad, ‘The participants in the courses did not correctly understand the political aspects of sending military delegations abroad. As a result, the upper echelon of the delegation, namely the participants in the battalion officer courses, refused to study and asked to return, using all sorts of illogical excuses.’ Ahmad reported that he had been forced to expel thirteen officers from the training course for offences which included alcoholism, passing counterfeit money and sexual ‘perversion’. Had he enforced the code of conduct strictly, he would, he claimed, have been forced to send home more than half the officers. Ahmad appealed for a higher standard of recruits for future courses in the Soviet Union.
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East Germany provided additional training for the PLO in the use of explosives, mines and firearms with silencers.
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East Germany provided additional training for the PLO in the use of explosives, mines and firearms with silencers.
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In 1981 Brezhnev at last gave the PLO formal diplomatic recognition. The limitations of Soviet support, however, were graphically illustrated in the following year when Israel invaded Lebanon in an attempt to destroy the PLO as an effective force and establish a new political order headed by its Maronite Christian allies. Moscow, complained Abu Iyad, responded with ‘pretty words’ but no practical assistance.
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In the early stages of the Israeli assault, the Soviet embassy and the Beirut residency were almost unable to function. According to Markus Wolf:
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In the early stages of the Israeli assault, the Soviet embassy and the Beirut residency were almost unable to function. According to Markus Wolf:
With Beirut in ruins, there was an interval during which Moscow lost contact with its embassy and its KGB officers in the Lebanese capital. Our officers were the only ones able to maintain radio and personal contact with the leaders of the PLO and, acting as Moscow’s proxies, our men were instructed to pass on the PLO’s reaction to events. They ventured forth, risking their lives among the shooting and the bombings to meet their Palestinian partners.
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There were no clear winners in the war. After seventy-five days of savage fighting, the PLO was forced to leave Lebanon and establish a new base in Tunisia on the periphery of the Arab world. Israel, however, failed to achieve its aim of establishing a new pro-Israeli political order in Lebanon. By the time its troops withdrew in the summer of 1983, the war had weakened Israel’s government, divided its people, and lowered its international standing. An official Israeli commission concluded that Israel bore indirect responsibility for the massacre of Palestinians by Christian militia in the Lebanese refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. Far from relegating the Palestinian problem to the sidelines, as Israel had intended, the war focused international attention on the need to find a solution.
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