YUGOSLAVIA: TITO'S SPIES FALLING OUT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP87R00529R000300260007-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 5, 2011
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: October 16, 1985
• Content Type: MEMO

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/08/05: CIA-RDP87ROO529ROO0300260007-7
RE
The rector of Centra me igence
Washington, D.C. 20505
MEMORANDUM FOR: Director of Central Intelligence
Deputy Director of Central Intelligence
THROUGH: National Intelligence Officer for Europ
NIC No. 05146-85
16 October 1985
Assistant National Intelligence for Europe
SUBJECT: Yugoslavia: Tito's Spies Falling Out
1. Introduction: Yugoslavia is undergoing one of the most revealing
public examinations of the founding days of its regime ever to take place
in the Communist world. A breakdown in self-censorship norms and a
growing understanding of the obsolesence of the old conspiratorial ways
started the process even prior to Tito's death five and a half year ago.
But his passing accelerated the trend toward candor and freer expression
which inevitably has led to revisionist attacks on the most sacred myths
of the partisan era.
2. More recently, however, the pace has quickened as his old
comrades rush to perserve their place in history by publishing memoirs
which tell all and attack their rivals. Most significantly, secret
archives are increasingly being opened to public view--albeit in
unauthorized leaks and usually in the pursuit of personal and ethnic
vendettas. The upshot is a hyper-polemicized atmosphere in which the
distant past is used as a launch pad for forces essentially arguing the
nature of the federation--as it is now and should be.
3. Discussion: Over the past few years, there has been a steady
increase in memoirs from ex-members of Tito's entourage--including an
increasing number by his onetime spymasters and secret police henchmen.
(None have been published in English as yet.) Most tend to provide new
and more solid data for reevaluating the past and thereby establishing a
more mature attitude on contemporary and future policy issues. But an
increasing number of the revelations also stir up old passions and revive
contentious issues by selective leaks from classified archives.
CL BY SIGNER
DECL OADR'
DERV MULTIPLE
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/08/05: CIA-RDP87ROO529ROO0300260007-7
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/08/05: CIA-RDP87R00529R000300260007-7
4. The memoirs of his intelligence and internal security officers
are noteworthy as most of these first-time authors in seeking to
establish their personal roles in history also settle old scores with an
unmatched vengeance. Their resulting publications have caused a few mini
sensations in exposing secret struggles behind post-war developments, and
revealing the roots of continuing ethnic and political strains among the
men who Tito left in power.
5. This wave of historical revisionism has no precedent in
Yugoslavia and its long term impact still is difficult to assess.
-- For the short-term, there is an apparent numbing effect of
too many myths crumbling at the same time. With the public
airing of dirty laundry routine, the public pays little
evident attention to each new revelation and low
blow--despite extensive media hype.
-- Most Yugoslavs are inclined to take a perverse pleasure in
seeing the once mighty--and feared--locked in undignified
mud-slinging but few dare to use the exposes to demand the
real facts or reforms.
But the youth, already cynical about partisans'
self-proclaimed "brotherhood and unity" may be more
inclined to feel justified in pursuing new answers of their
own.
6. The intensity and implications of the revelations has caused some
concern recently. On 8 September NIN, the national weekly published in
Belgrade, gave a brief overview of the spies' squabbles and questioned
the propriety of their self-serving and divisive essays. The article
also criticized aspects of the system which allow its secret agents to
willfully abuse their trust and circumvent the will of the people and the
party.
7. The tangle of accusations and counter-accusations is too complex
to relate fully in a brief overview. A fuller discussion of the hottest
dispute of the moment will serve to convey a "feel" for the scope and
bitterness at work in the exposes.
8. The Hebrang Affair: The case receiving the most attention now is
a purported effort to rehabilitate Andrija Hebrang, Tito's post-war
economic czar, who was arrested for siding with Stalin after the 1948
break with Moscow. (He died in jail without trial under still mysterious
circumstances.)
9. The various exposes, have suggested that forces in Zagreb--some
infer that Croat party leader Vrhovec is the prime mover--want to restore
Hebrang's good name in order to prove a record of ideological purity for
the Croat Communist party which it does not deserve.
III Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/08/05: CIA-RDP87R00529R000300260007-7
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/08/05: CIA-RDP87R00529R000300260007-7
with excellent access says Serb
liberals already talk about "neo-Stalinism" in the Croat
party under Vrhovec.
Those attacking the Hebrang rehabilitation drive argue it is a veiled
attack on Tito's reputation and a plot to force Belgrade to reevaluate
the split with Stalin. The exchanges in this dispute are vicious.
10. Josip Kopinic, a pre-war Tito confidant who controlled the
NKVD's wartime communications center for the Balkans in Zagreb, first
aired the issue in a biography in 1982. (Kopinic's biography was written
by an. ex-SDB officer Vlado Cencic.) Kopinic argued that Hebrang had
became a Gestapo agent in 1942 and that Kopinic dutifully relayed that
fact to Moscow. Kopinic says that the Soviets hid that knowledge from
Tito, used it to make Hebrang their agent and that NKVD agents in
Yugoslavia after the war exterminated everyone who had firsthand
knowledge of Hebrang's earlier treason.
11. Kopinic himself has become the target of repostes and smear
attacks mostly in journals based in Croatia.
-- In a recent interview, Ivan "Stevo" Krajacic, Tito's most
intimate confidant in the Croat party, bristled at
Kopinic's claim that Krajacic served as a Soviet military
intelligence agent in Yugoslavia. Krajacic returns the
favor by accusing Kopinic of serving "who knows what
foreign interests" and making some sweeping accusations
about Serbian nationalist machinations during the Rankovic
era.
Another secret police officer, a Croat, recently suggested
that Kopinic was a dupe of the Gestapo throughout most of
the war.
Yet a third former internal security offical in Zagreb has
argued in print that Hebrang was absolved of the Nazi spy
allegations after the war by a secret police investigation
in Croatia. He accused Kopinic of "shooting the
dead"--i.e. defaming a leader who can no longer defend
himself.
In turn, Kopinic has threatened to dip into his records from the
war--including operational cables to and from "Uncle" (Stalin's
codename)--to "unmask" the forces defending Hebrang.
12. The Dedijer Link. Vladimir Dedijer, Tito's official biographer,
has taken Kopinic's side. Drawing on secret archives and information
made available to him by top party and police officials who oppose the
Croats' rehabilitation effort, Dedijer describes the Croat Communist
?1 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/08/05: CIA-RDP87R00529R000300260007-7
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/08/05: CIA-RDP87R00529R000300260007-7
leaders as cowards and opportunists who Tito had to intimidate into
fighting the Germans. Dedijer reveals secret documents which assert that
top Croat Communists wavered when Stalin tried to set up an independent
Croat Communist Party--under Soviet not Tito's control--during the early
days of the war. Dedijer also argues that Hebrang's protectors murdered
People's Hero Ivan Milutinovic at the end of the war. He also has
attacked Stevo Krajacic complaining that in 1984 Krajacic--Dedijer calls
him "some Soviet agent"--tried to censor the third volume of Dedijer's
biography of Tito.
13. In interviews for scandal-mongering journals in Yugoslavia,
Dedijer also has asserted that he has become the target of death threats
and claimed several arson attempts against his personal archives. For a
time last year, he moved to Italy and gave interviews to the Italian
press claiming that his life was in danger from a still powerful ring of
unnamed ultraconservatives. We have no good sense of the accuracy of
these assertions but he has since returned to Yugoslavia presumably on
the basis of guarantees of his safety. He has not retracted the earlier
allegations but then he never does.
-- Dedijer is an enfant terrible in Yugoslavia. He is
respected but not fully believed because of his long
affinity for ultra-revolutionary causes and his eclectic
ideology which often generates frictions with the fanatics
he befriends.
-- Two of his sons died under mysterious circumstances in the
1950s but, despite friends with good access, he has never
been able to supply convincing proof to explain the plots
that he says led to their untimely deaths.
Dedijer, however, remains undaunted and the the third volume of his
biography of Tito, published last year, adds more controversy as it
covers in detail the period from 1945 to 1955. He is currently working
on the fourth volume which will probably extend into the mid 1960s an era
which saw the rise of many current leaders.
14. Where does it all lead? These disputes of themselves need not
lead to any major political developments. There is no official plan or
apparent desire to formally reopen the Hebrang case or investigate
proliferating changes and countercharges. Moreover, public outrage is
unlikely as in-bred caution is still likely to make most Yugoslavs keep a
safe distance during a falling out of the powerful.
15. The exposes nevertheless seem to have an unrestricted horizon as
each author with a special axe to grind also has support from factions
within the badly fractured political system. Efforts to reinstitute a
measure of editorial self-restraint--including attempts by the central
committee to restore some base-line taboos--have come to naught. Only a
-4-
CFCRFT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/08/05: CIA-RDP87R00529R000300260007-7
 11i
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/08/05: CIA-RDP87R00529R000300260007-7
new consensus among those leaders who sleep badly now at the thought of
the next day's revelations could reinstall the self-censorship which
previously kept these issues from surfacing. But with self-preservation
giving way to a penchant for spiteful quarrels, we expect more of the
same and at a steadily intensifying pace.
16. If unchecked, the trend is likely to lead to;
express calls for de-Titoization, perhaps beginning with
more demands to rehabilitate those he purged on all sides
of the political spectrum.
-- sharpening diatribes which aggravate differences between
advocates of reform and recidivist Stalinists within the
leadership.
of the early Tito years.
If this comes to pass, Yugoslavia's gradual evolution of more durable
democratic institutions could accelerate more dramatically. And there
would be attendant risks of a counterreaction and a last hurrah of the
old guard who probably would seek a regression toward the oppressive rule
-5-
SECRE1
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/08/05: CIA-RDP87R00529R000300260007-7
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/08/05: CIA-RDP87R00529R000300260007-7
SE9RET)
NIC No. 05146-85
16 October 1985
MEMORANDUM FOR: Director of Central Intelligence
Deputy Director of Central Intelligence
THROUGH: National Intelligence Officer for Europe
Assistant National intelligence for Europe
SUBJECT: Yugoslavia: Tito's Spies Falling Out
Distribution:
1 - DCI
1 - DDCI
1 - Ex.Dir.
1 - ER
1 - C/NIC
1 - VC/NIC
1 - D/DDI/EURA
1 - C/DDO/SE
1 - C/DDO/EUR
1 - C/DDO/PPS
1 - DDS&T/FBI SSR-EE
1 - NIO/EUR chrono
1 - NIO/EUR 3.8
1 - A NIO EUR
A/NIO/EUR 160CT85
1 - SRP
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/08/05: CIA-RDP87R00529R000300260007-7
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/08/05: CIA-RDP87R00529R000300260007-7
ROUTING AND RECORD SHEET
SUBJECT: (Optional)
Yugoslavia: Ti'ta's Spies Falling Out
FROM:
EXTENSION
NO.
NIC No. 05146-85
Assistant NIO/EUROPE
DATE
16 October 185
TO: (Officer designation, room number, and
building)
DATE
OFFICER'S
COMMENTS (Number each comment to show from whom
RECEIVED
FORWARDED
INITIALS
to whom. Draw a line across column after each comment.)
NIO/EUROPE
16 o,cSe tss
~
2.
VC/NIC
to
/fl
~4
3.
C/NIC
2 10(
',-1 1985
4. ER
1
985
5.
DDCI
7.
8.
A-
DCI
q?~u
9.
4d
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
,;
FORM 61 O USE PREVIOUS
1-79 EDITIONS
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/08/05: CIA-RDP87R00529R000300260007-7