HOW WE GET INSIDE INFORMATION ON WORLD LEADERS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75B00380R000300050011-6
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 31, 2005
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: June 17, 1973
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release 2005/0-ff/O. IA-9P75B0038OR000300050011-6
A SPECIAL JACK ANDERSON REPORT
WASHINGTON, D.C.
resident Nixon will know enough
about Leonid Brezhnev to write a
biography when the two leaders fi-
nally sit down together at the sum-
mit. Brezhnev's health? The President
will have a complete medical report.
Brezhnev's temperament? A detailed
psychological profile will be available.
Brezhnev's beliefs? The President-will
have transcripts of private Kremlin
conversations.
Intimate information
'spent' Castro also observed that [Chil-
ean] leaders live too well and are not
under sufficient tension to take the
offensive."
The CIA not only keeps Communist
leaders under scrutiny; it also checks on
friendly leaders. The financial difficul-
ties of Costa Rica's respected President
lose Figueres, for example, were quietly
relayed to Washington. The CIA quoted.
a family member as complaining that
"all the members of the President's
family are deeply concerned with fam-
ily financial matters."
The French confrontation
The CIA also gleefully reported
an awkward confrontation between
France's President Georges Pompidou
and West Germany's Chancellor Willy
Brandt a few months ago. "A heated
exchange took place after the Brandt-
Pompidou dinner," said the CIA. A
secret account of the encounter
claimed Johann Baptist Schoellhorn, a
German economics official, "told Pom-
pidou that France was profiting from
and encouraging the inflation afflicting
other European countries ... Accord-
ing to members of Brandt's party,
Brandt stood by and visibly enjoyed
Pompidou's discomfiture. Schoellhorn
supported his accusations with details
which Pompidou was unable to refute."
The world's two most celebrated
women leaders, Israel's Golda Meir and
India's Indira Gandhi, are reported by
the CIA to have a long-distance feud
brewing. According to the CIA account,
.Mrs. Meir regards Mrs. Gandhi as "neu-
tral ... on the side of Egypt," while Mrs.
Gandhi sees Israel as a "warmonger."
The dossiers on Arab le._ders are
loaded with CIA tidbits. Egypt's Presi-
dent Anwar Sadat, "when threatening
Israel with an all-out war, was 'luffing,"
reported the CIA. Jordan's Kin Hussein
threatened "to go on a ghazou" unless
he received more American aid. A gha-
zou, it was explained, "is a Bedouin
raid against neighbors for the purpose
of looting." Syria's President Hafez-al-
Assad was portrayed by the CIA as an
outspoken militant who doesn't "expect
too much from Egyptians." As sad uses
the Arabic word "lamma" '.vhen he
speaks of war with Israel. 'lamma"
means "when" not "if," exl'I.uned a
CIA report.
with locker-room language. He likes to
relax at a place Soviet leaders call the
"Clinic" near the Kremlin. This is the
Soviet equivalent of a private health
dub.
The profile also contains incidents
and insights from CIA intelligence re-
ports. During the 1968 Czechoslovakian
crisis, for example, the man. Brezhnev
ousted as Premier, Nikita Khrushchev,
suddenly showed up at the Kremlin and
demanded to see his successor. Khrush-
chev loudly warned that the Czech in-
vasion could turn into a disaster unless
Nixon even has the name of Brezh- Soviet troops were pulled out at once.
nev's favorite masseuse. in the privacy Brezhnev gruffly refused to see Khrush-
of the Kremlin, Brezhnev confided to chev and ignored his advice.
Soviet President'Nikolai Podgorhy that
he was looking forward to a rubdown
from a masseuse named Olga. Ameri-
can spies were listening when Pod-
gorny answered, with a knowing
chuckle: "Oh, ho! Olga!"
In the rarefied atmosphere of inter-
national power politics, such intimate
information can be it powerful bargain-
ing chip. Thick dossiers on 'world
leaders are compiled by the Central
Intelligence Agency, which gathers its
information by every method, from
electronic eavesdropping to routine
research.
The secret profile of Leonid Brezh-
nev, according to those who have seen
it, portrays him as an amiable, robust,
hard-drinking outdoorsman. He likes to
gossip about his colleagues in the
Kremlin, and he engages in the con-
stant bickering and backbiting that goes
on behind those Byzantine walls. His
private conversations are heavily laced
A profile of Castro
The profile on Fidel Castro contains a
CIA report that the Kremlin has asked
the Cuban dictator "to try to regain
control over Latin American revolution-
ary movements" and has promised to
"pay all the costs involved."
The CIA also reported Castro's pri-
vate opinion of the Marxist regime in
Chile and its leader, President Salvador
Allende. Castro correctly predicted a
year in advance "a breakdown in pub-
lic order." This, he said, could come
about at any time because the opposi-
tion, especially the middle class, had
lost its fear of government. Castro
opined that a government must have
fear if it is to control the country.
"Another factor listed by Castro,"
continued the secret CIA report, "was
the possible deterioration of Allende's
health. Castro said he is worried about
Allende because the latter i,$, physically
Approved For Release 2005/06/06 : CIA-RDP75B0038OR000300050011-6
 Spying on foreign r ed io r,Re 3~ 0d$~061~&yp61d>f 1~Z 03$$ Q pQ00 can 001 J. 6te a liver prob-x
operation, involving CIA agents in the the portrait of the person. _
field and researchers at headquarters. The "Geographic Office" report on lem
Through long-range observation, the
Reports from diplomats and military at- Mao Tse-tung, for instance, noted that CIA learned of the late Egyptian Presi-
taches also go into the dossiers. If Wash- he traveled as a beggar through the dent Nasser's heart condition and of the
ington suddenly wants more informa- country in his youth, seeing firsthand late Indonesian President Sukarno's vis-
tion about a certain dignitary, say in the poverty and corruption. This pro- its to a Viennese specialist. (Surveillance
advance of a summit meeting, he be- foundly affected the young Mao and of Sukarno, incidentally, revealed he
comes "targeted." Then the full re- helped ignite the revolutionary fire that ' liked his hosts to have a woman for him
sources of the clandestine agency are caused him to help found the Chinese on state visits.)
trained upon laying his life bare. Communist Party in the early 1920's.
The first step in the daily spying Today, intelligence reports confirm that Photographic evidence
process is known as the "library Mao is still the purest of revolutionaries.. Long t
search," Researchers routinely clip -range photography settled a
se h and magazine articles about Medical diagnosis rumor, back before the Chinese-Ameri-
foreign notables and send them into the The can detente, whether Mao Tse-tung wa-
CIA also directs its agents to sick and using .a double for public ap-
CIA's "Biographic Registry" computer. dredge p all possible medical informa- pearances. A photograph was taken of
As part of the "library search," field Lion for the medical researchers to diag- Mao in public. By measuring the length
agents are asked to fill out forms on nose. Once, agents tapped into wash- of the earlobe and by determining that,
foreign leaders, which resemble job pipes in one of Monte Carlo's his facial wart was in exactly the right
applications. To the extent possible, most glamorous casinos to get a urine place, the agency certified him as genu-
relatives, friends and acquaintances are sample from the oil-rich King of Saudi ine. Then by closely examining the pic-
casually contacted. information is gath- Arabia, who was rumored to be ailing. ture, CIA analysts learned that the aging
ered helter-skelter, with rumor and fact inside the washroom, crouched behind leader was not critically ill as had been
carefully noted. It is left to the experts a commode door, an agent waited with rumored.
in Washington to assemble the jigsaw an electronic signaling device. The King, For all the sophisticated methods the
pieces and make the final distinctions: a heavy drinker and addicted gambler, CIA uses to gather intelligence on
finally entered in a swirl of white robe. world leaders, however, nothing is
Nothing taken for granted The agent alerted his colleague in the quite as revealing as a face-to-face
Even the most rudimentary facts, plumbing closet, and the nozzle was meeting. More can be learned from one
however, are not taken for granted. "in turned on the pipe tapped into the tough negotiating session than from a
.many foreign societies, the leaders washroom plumbing.
10,000-page report prepared by the
mask their backgrounds asmuch as pos- But the greatest coup in the annals CIA. For it's not the juicy tidbits so
sible," a CIA man told us. "It's not like of the CIA's medical espionage oc- much as the basic attitudes that matter
in the United States where you have curred during Nikita Khrushchev's state in the world of power politics.
everything from FBI files to job applica- visit, to the United States in 1959. CIA
tions to track down a personal history." men managed to isolate and bore tri-
An astonishing amount of informa- umphantly to the labs the Soviet lead-
tion can be picked up quite legitimately er's solid waste for medical analysis.
by America's observers overseas. For Sophisticated photographic tech-
example, a military attache in Moscow niques are also used to observe leaders
became great friends with the Soviet at long distance. Called "targets of 'op-
Defense Minister during thq Khrush- portunity" in CIA jargon, the photos are
chew years. While the stuffy Soviet big- compared with old ones for signs of
wigs would shuffle about at official re-, stress, aging and disease. A blotchy skin,
ceptions, the attache and minister
would toss down vodka and swap sto-
ries about their superiors.
Of course, electronic eavesdropping
is often used. In Belgium a CIA opera-
tive learned that the Chinese Corn-
'munist embassy was planning to move.
He quickly located the new site and
rented the house next door. Bugs were,
placed in the new embassy before the
Chinese moved in. The CiA picked up
an earful before the bugs were eventu-
aliy discovered.
While the field operatives are poking
into every dark corner of the subject's
life, academics back at the CIA com-
pile anthropological and sociological
data on the area in which the subject
grew up. This is done in the CIA's
"Geographic Office." The structure of.
'the society, its mores an pprtwQ0 ror Release 2005/06/06 CIA-RDP75B00380R000300050011-6