'ACTIVE MEASURES'

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403000006-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 12, 2012
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: June 14, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RD P90-00965R000403000006-2
CHRISTIAN SCTFNCF MONITOP
14 June 1985
JOHN HUGHES Recently, for example, the soviets tried to sabotage
US-Spanish relations with a forged letter from Presi-
d to offend
d
I
`Active measures'
e
nten
dent Reagan to the Kmg of Spam.
Spanish sensitivities, the letter implied heavy-handed
residential meddling in Spain's internal affairs. This
p
with correct White House
uite skillful
was
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,
q
orgery
N recent days we have been witnessing dramatic stationery and typescript. But it backfired. Mailed
revelations about the extent of Soviet espionage. the Spanish press, it was in fact exposed by journalists as a forgery.
An Anmerican spy ring run by the Soviets has In 1983, a fake airgram surfaced in Lima, Peru,
apparently passed major American military secrets to suggesting that the US was planning to sell nuclear-
being A number of men have been arrested and are tipped cruise missiles to Chile.
being charged with involvement. The extent of the The previous year a forged letter appeared in Ath-
leakage has spurred calls for harsher punishment ens purporting to be from William Clark, then deputy
against spying, including execution. secretary of state, to the American ambassador to
Mehmet Ali Agca, who shot and wounded the Pope Greece. The forgery suggested US support for the con-
in 1981, is spilling forth a story of Bulgarian and So- servatives in forthcoming Greek elections and alluded
viet complicity at a hearing in Rome. It remains to be to a possible military coup if Socialist leader Andreas
determined whether these are the ramblings of a Papandreou won at the polls, which he later did. The
clever liar or perhaps of a deranged man. But if they letter was published by a small Athens daily, which
turn out to be true, and Moscow was involved in an as- described it as of doubtful authenticity, probably at-
sassination attempt on the Pope, the implications for tributable to a "third country" intelligence service.
East-West relations are chilling. One of the most interesting forgeries, in light of the
While these are particularly dramatic chapters in Agca trial, involves two faked telegrams from the
the history of Soviet espionage, Moscow is also in American Embassy in Rome in 1982. Although the ca-
t in a lower-level but constantly ongoing effort at bles contain some technical and format errors, they
subversion generally known as disinformation. This is read very much like authentic State Department ca-
the responsibility of what was formerly Department D bles. They suggest that the US has orchestrated the
within the First Chief Directorate of the KGB, but arrest of a Bulgarian intelligence officer, Antonov, to
which was later renamed the Active Measures blame the Bulgarians and Soviets for the papal assas-
Department. ,
Soviet active measures directed at the
noncommunist world are either "gray" or "black."
Gray measures involve the use of pro-communist
fronts, local communist parties, or traditional media
outlets. Black measures specialize in spreading ru-
mors, planting false stories, and surfacing forgeries.
In recent years, the Soviets have become much
more sophisticated at forging documents misrepre-
senting Western, and particularly, US, policies and
falsely implicating Washington in bizarre schemes.
Some of this activity involves the acquisition of
genuine American government documents and their
alteration and publication to cast the United States in
an unfavorable light.
It would not be surprising if some of the documents
passed to the Soviets in the recently uncovered spy
case were to turn up later in altered form.
sination attempt.
The cables are forged, and in fact the State Depart-
ment has taken a restrained and hands-off approach
to the Italian investigation. Indeed, some critics have
charged that the State Department has attempted to
cover up alleged Soviet complicity to prevent jeopar-
dizing improvement in US-Soviet relations.
John Hughes, who won the 1967 Pulitzer Prize
for international reporting, was assistant secre-
-taiy of state for public affaiuslrom 1982-to 1984.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000403000006-2