THEY STOP AT NOTHING

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000100260037-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 21, 2010
• Sequence Number: 37
• Publication Date: February 15, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/21 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000100260037-4
NATION
15 February 1986 FILE ONLY
They Stop at Nothing
Remember the "Spetsnaz"? They were popular with the
U.S. disinformation industry before the Los Angeles Olym-
pics, when it was still assured that the Soviet Union would
attend. The usual swarm of "high intelligence sources" and
"recent defectors" let it be known that the Soviet athletes
would contain in their ranks highly trained saboteur-
commandos, known as Spetsnaz, who would sneak out of
the Olympic Village and busy themselves in the greater Los
Angeles area with unspecified missions designed to promote
the international Communist conspiracy.
The Russians never came to Los Angeles. The Spetsnaz
were forgotten, until late January, when Jane's Defence
Weekly announced that since 1983 the Russians have been
training and deploying female Spetsnaz at Greenham Com-
mon, the U.S. cruise missile base in England. Their mission:
mingle with the regular protesters and then sneak through
the fence and plant sonar devices on the U.S. cruise missiles,
thus allowing the Russians to trace them wherever they
might be deployed.
The story, datelined Washington and under the byline of
Yossef Bodansky, gave no sources for these amazing allega-
tions, beyond the usual vague "defectors" and "intelligence
sources." But Jane's.let it be known that Bodansky was a
defector and could not be interviewed, since he feared for his
life. Eagerly credulous and encouraged by U.K. government
contacts, the British media, most notably Independent
Television News, ran the story.
Quite aside from many intrinsic absurdities-Bodansky
claimed there were always between three and six Spetsnaz,
all presumably with impeccable accents, at Greenham Com-
mon, even though overall attendance there had, by late
last year, fallen as low as seven-British journalists in
Washington trying to check the story soon ran into further
difficulties. Bodansky had no security clearance at either the
Pentagon or the State Department, was not an accredited
journalist and, far from lurking in clandestine fear, was liv-
Lag openly with his Russian wife in suburban Baltimore. He
himself has never defected from the Soviet Union and is an
Israeli citizen. I would add that British journalists are more
susceptible to drivel than their American colleagues,
but given the popularity of the K.G.B. Pope plot and
STAT
"yellow rain," it is impossible to make this claim.
Footnote: I am grateful to Leigh Hauter, apiarist in
Virginia, for sending me some specimens of yellow rain. As
reviewed by trained Nation investigators (JoAnn Wypi-
jewski and myself), these specimens consisted of fragments
of yellow-spotted leaf. Hauser reports: "They were collected
from the area round my house. It was a warm day, just as
the fall nectar flow was ending. I have about thirty-five
beehives. One of the weaker hives was being robbed by the
others [l], and several hunc'ced thousand bees were swarming
around the area trying to gk' into it. The next day I noticed
that everything was coated v.:h drops of bright yellow."
I had intended to forwa -' ti.' fragments to Bob Bartley,
editor of The Wall Street Jo. and virtually the last sur-
viving believer in yellow rain, b ,-t :mistook them for crumbled
bay leaf and threw them in a stew which I consumed with
relish last Sunday.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/21 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000100260037-4