DRUGS FOR GUNS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000606510002-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 2, 2010
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: November 1, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/02 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000606510002-3
ARTICLE ED READER'S DIGEST
ON PAGE _A~S NOVEMBER 1983
Like a plague, drug addiction has swept through much of the
world, destroying lives, sowing crime. For years the prime engine
of drug trafficking has been the criminal underworld. But recently
a new and far more menacing powerhouse has moved into the
international drug world, one motivated not simply by greed but
by a determination to destabilize Western society.. Its method:
trade guns for drugs. Its central operator: Bulgaria.
Today, over 50 percent of the heroin consumed in Europe and
much of that in the United States flows across Bulgaria's
borders with the full knowledge and direct participation of high-
ranking government officials. The drugs come originally from
such gun-hungry Middle Eastern nations as Lebanon, Iran and
Iraq,'from the Palestine Liberation Organization and from various
terrorist groups. Paid for with Warsaw-pact weaponry, the drugs
are eventually sold to the addicts of New York or Paris or
Hamburg. The profits are invested in more arms, to be sold for
still more drugs.
Drawing on intelligence data compiled by eight nations in
North America, Europe and the Middle East, and interviewing
narcotics traffickers, international arms brokers and former Bul-
garian operatives, Reader's Digest Senior Editor Nathan Adams
has uncovered a story whose full dimensions have never before
been revealed. Here is his report:
7' EXACTLY 4 P.M. on the sleety
afternoon of February to,
1971, at a slut where the river
liistritza Slowing south in Bulgaria
briefly parallels the frontier before
plunging intoGreece,a stocky, uni-
formed figure slipped out of the
undergrowth. The ntan was Stefan
Sverdlev, a colonel in the Koinitet
1)arzhavrta Sigurnost (K1)S), the
Bulgarian C onunitice for State Se-
curity, a sister urganizatiun to the
S~,virt K(;1i. Sverdlev was ah?ut to
beiuluc one of .the highest-level de-
lectors ever to flee the Soviet bloc.
'Clutching his five-month-old
son in one powerful arm and lead-
ing his wife and daughter by. the
other, he slipped into the frigid,
chest-deep current. Within 15 min-
utes the family had reached a
Greek-border outpost. In Sverd-
lev's l)usSesslon: Some 500 sensitive
K1)S documents.
News of Sverdlev's defection
sent shuck waves all the way to
KGB headquarters in Moscow. In
the uiuntIn ahead Bulgarian net-
works in Greece began to collapse
as Sverdlev talked and analysts
pored over the top-secret docu-
mcnts. Ironically, one document-
#M-120/00-0050-drew only
modest attention. Its subject: the
destabilization of Western society
through, among other tools, the
narcotics trade.
For eight years, Sverdlev
worked for Greek intelligence.
Then, a victim of Greece's recent
courtship of the Warsaw Pact, he
was expelled, to resettle, at last, in
West Germany. The documents he
defected with remain in Athens. I
interviewed Sverdlev in, Munich,
where he lives today in fear. Could
he shed light on repeated reports
that his former employers in Bul-
garia were playing a key role in
struggling heroin to the United
States and western Europe?
Yes, he certainly could. Sverdlcv
then told me about KDS Direc-
tive M-1211/00-0050, and revealed
the series of events that led to the
drafting of that document. In 1967,
Sverdlev recalled, the heads of the
Warsaw Pact security services met
in Moscow. Among the subjects
discussed was how best to exploit
and hasten the inherent "corrup-
.&ion" of Western society. A fol-
low-up meeting among top KDS
officials in Sofia, Bulgaria's capital,
then mapped strategy, to be implc-
mented over the next three years.
The directive-dated July 16,
1970-was the direct result of the
new policy.
"We all knew what it meant,"
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/02 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000606510002-3