OPERATION SPLINTER FACTOR

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01350R000200160010-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 20, 2004
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: April 21, 1974
• Content Type: NSPR

WASHINGTON POST
Releas*104$?1(h/f~ CIA-RDP88-013
STA1
the Americans with a vast spy network riddle that the author cannot document.
e that did not exist. Swiatlo's reports, Ste- for, as in so many espionage books. no
ven said, went straight to Stalin, and the written evidence is produced, and the
Russians became convinced that Field sources the author talked to wish to re-
was was an important spy who had infiltrated main anonymous.
OPERATION SPLINTER FACTOR. the highest levels of East European gov- In an exciting and well-told narrative.
1By, Stewart Steven. Lippincott.-'249 pp. ernments. Mr. Steven has convinced me that there
'.47.9.5 . Noel Field disappeared in Prague on really was an Operation Splinter Factor
May 11, 1949. His wife Herta, who came organized bythe CIAto drive a wedge be-
looking for him, vanished in August, as tween the satellites and Russie. Bue he
-By TED MORGAN did his brother Hermann. His adopted has failed to convince me that it was the
German daughter, Erica Glaser Wallach, primary cause of Stalinist repression in
I CAN GO ALONG with Stewart Steven who went to East Berlin in 1950 to look for: the Eastern bloc, or that it led to the ao-
Field, also vanished. - ."- reap war and the people's uprisings in
part of the way. I can believe that a Lieu-
tenant Colonel in the Polish secret police Once the bait was swallowed, the Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
.
named Jozef Swiatlo, who wanted to de- purges began. Anyone in Eastern Europe The real nature of such ill-conceived op-
feet for reasons less ideological than in- unfortunate enough to have had the most erations is that they become impossible
tramural (he was involved in a dispute fleeting contact with Field was suspect. to control, adn that it becomes increas-
with a superior), contacted British intelli- "Fieldists" were rounded up everywhere, ingly difficult to see who is holding-the!
And that the British passed and.many of those arrested confessed and weapon's cutting edge. G
A
-noe in 1948
i
.
-
him onto the CIA, or more specifically, to implicated their colleagues an super
Allen Dulles, then a lawyer with the firm ors. The important liberal leaders of
of Sullivan & Cromwell. But, says the au- Eastern Europe were the victims of what
:thor, Dulles was already deeply involved Dulles chose to call "Operation Splinter
Factor."
n espionage operations behind the iron
curtain. Lazio liajk, the Hungarian foreign min-
At this point my credulity began to ister, and Traicho Kostov, deputy prime
the CIA until minister of Bulgaria, were arrested, con-.
t
d
d
TED MORGAN, a veteran foreign corre-
spondent, as Sanche de Gramont is the
author -of many books, including The
'French, Lives to Give and The Memoirs of
Count Gramont.
Join
no
i
-.Strain. Dulles
X1950. Why was he in charge of what was to demned to death, and hanged in 1949. Jo-
become. the most important intelligence zef
1951. Most of the accused confessed af-
operation of the cold war., And why
would Swiatlo, "the most successful West- ter long and dehumanizing interroga-
ern agent in the history of the Cold War," tions. The worst purge took place in
be persuaded to remain at his post at high Czechoslovakia, where 169,000 Commu-
personal risk, rather than defect at once? nists, or 10 per cent of the party member-
the number two man Ru-
din
l
i
hi
g
u
nc
. But let us suspend disbelief and move s
p,