RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA MAGAZINE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000201180111-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 9, 2010
• Sequence Number: 111
• Publication Date: April 1, 1981
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/09: CIA-RDP90-00806R000201180111-6
V
ARTICLE AP
ON PAGE
N THE SIXTEENTH of March,
1978, Aldo Moro, the President
of Italy's ruling Christian
.Democratic Party and a former Pre-
mier, was snatched from his auto-
mobile on a busy Roman street by des-
peradoes who gunned down his five
bodyguards and carried him off into
hiding. The kidnappers were quickly
identified as members of the notorious
Red Brigades.
The Italian government spurned
offers to release the famous man in re-
turn for 13 terrorists who were then on
trial: On May 9, Moro's body with 13
bullet holes in it was left in- a car
parked near his party's headquarters.
There had been hundreds of recent
personal attacks attributed to the Red
Brigades, an international band of ex-
tortionists believed to have Commu-
nist connections through the Soviet se-
cret police, the KGB. This time, the
eminence of the victim and daylight
bc! 3ness of the crime focused world-
wide attention and brought on'a politi-
cal crisis in Italy. After hastily passing
Draconian anti-terrorism legislation,
the government fell.
The Kremlin's farsighted propagan-
da apparatus, however, was in no dis-
array. For openers, on March 1.6, the
very day of the kidnapping, Radio Mos-
cow in a worldwide broadcast in.En-
glish called it a "crimeof reaction" and
just another "attempt by a right-wing
force to aggravate the situation hi Ita-
ly." In an Italian language broadcast
on March 18, Moscow' quoted the
French- Communist Party newspaper,
L'Humanite, as reporting-that, "Secret
Services whose activity is connected
with the NATO military base in Na-
ples," were involved.
SOVIETS ACCUSE THE CIA
After hinting that the CIA must be in-
volved because the operation was too
complex for local talent (teaching the
Red-Brigades the art of kidnapping
would be something like-teaching the
Swiss how to' make -watches), the
Soviets got to the point.. Moscow
Radio's commentator, Anatoly
Ovsyannikov, stated, "Well, to call a
.spade a spade, that service (master-
THE RETIRED OFFICER
APRIL 1981
By Cdr Merle Macbain, USN4
foreign power that it belongs to is
United. States of America."
This charge was, of course, con
erect ridiculous by America, since
U.S. looked favorably on Moro's effd
to provide Italy with a stable, fa
centrist government. but Mosco
immediate target now was NATO
Italy. And they had another shoe
drop.
Back in 1975, a communist ag
had secured a copy of U.S. Army Fi
Manual FM 30-31 A, a routine classi~
document which, like -other s
manuals, bore the signature of 1
Army Chief of Staff, Gen William Wesr-
moreland. With this authentic manual
in hand, complete with Westmore-
land's well-known signature, it re-
mained only to rewrite 'the contents,
duplicate the typeface and label it FM
30-31B.
The text of the fake document sur-
faced first in a small, left-wing Turkish
newspaper in March 1975. In Septem-
ber 1976, a photocopy of FM 30-31B
was tacked up on the bulletin board of
the Philippine Embassy in Bangkok,
Thailand, by a "concerned citizen." It
reappeared again in 1978 when, with
some unassuming help from a Cuban
intelligence officer, it was-made avail-
able to two Spanish newspapers. At
this point patience and a well-covered
trail paid off. The spurious- manual
together with articles concerning it tt
appeared in newspapers in more than
20 countries including Italy and the
United States.
The forged contents of this
far-traveling pamphlet provided pur-
ported guidance to U.S. Army intelli-
gence officers for the subversion of host
country officials. Specifically, it i
charge that the CIA was an agent pro-
vocateur in the murder of Moro. They
merely used one lie to lend credence to
another. -
The U.S. State Department received
some disturbed inquiries from friendly
governments about FM 30-31B. The
forgers, thinking perhaps-to enhance
its attention value, had classified it as
Top Secret. It was: then, only necessary
for the U.S. to"point out that no Amer-
ican Army Field Manual was ever given
that higk a classification. -
But the truth never quite catches u p
to an interesting lie.
"DEZINFORMATSIYA"
This bit of history is retold as an ex-
cellent and not unusual example of the
Soviet Union's unique disinformation
program. The Russian word for it is
"dezinformatsiya," and the "dreaded
Cheka'=-the first Soviet state security
apparatus, and all of its several descen-
dants down to the current KGB-have
bad a Disinformation Desk. In 1959 the
KGB established a full-fledged Disin-
formation Department known as De-
minding the Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/09: CIA-RDP90-00806R000201180111-6 trv.