Actions Speak Louder than Words

by

Elizabeth Clare Prophet

In the last year there have been astounding developments in the Soviet bloc. Each was "unthinkable" until it happened. We saw the opening of the Berlin Wall, the resignation of the entire Czechoslovak Politburo, and the legalization of Solidarity in Poland followed by the election of a non-Communist-led government. Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze announced that the large phased-array radar in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, was indeed a violation of the ABM Treaty as United States officials had maintained for several years.

Gorbachev announced that he would unilaterally cut Soviet conventional military forces in Eastern Europe. The Soviets pulled their troops out of Afghanistan. Shevardnadze called the 1979 invasion "ill-conceived" and "immoral." Americans concluded that it was a Soviet "Vietnam." Many Americans now believe that the Cold War is over--and that we've won.

On May 17, long before the electrifying events of November, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., published an editorial in the Wall Street Journal entitled "Somebody Tell Bush We've Won the Cold War." Schlesinger argued that the new Soviet Union is not the old Soviet Union. "Glasnost, to put it simply, means the end of Soviet totalitarianism," 1 he wrote.

Apparently Bush got the message. On November 22, in a televised address which set the stage for his shipboard meeting at Malta with Mikhail Gorbachev on December 2 and 3, President Bush said, "As we begin the new decade, I am reaching out to President Gorbachev, asking him to work with me to bring down the last barriers to a new world of freedom. Let us move beyond containment, and once and for all end the cold war." 2

On December 3, President Bush and President Gorbachev buried the Cold War at sea, reporters proclaimed. Gorbachev said, "We stated, both of us, that the world leaves the one epoch, of Cold War, and enters another epoch. This is just the beginning." 3 Has the Soviet Union changed? That's the conventional wisdom reinforced by the media.

In its November 6 issue Time magazine said, "As an ideological earthquake rocks the Soviet empire, fracturing the social, political and economic arrangements that have guided East bloc relations since 1945, the first impulse is to check its force on the Richter scale....Once unified by Moscow's tight grip, the countries of Eastern Europe are breaking free unevenly." 4

The liberation of Eastern Europe has always been viewed as the awaited sign that Soviet Communism was dead and that real change, leading to peace, was at hand. Today there is a growing perception that the Soviet threat is diminished. A recent New York Times/CBS News Poll found that 58 percent of Americans polled said the Soviet Union was not seeking world dominance, while 34 percent said it was. The shift in attitude has taken place largely over the last six months.

In May, 50 percent of those polled had said the Soviets were seeking world domination. In addition, 30 percent of Americans now say they look favorably on the Soviet Union and 54 percent are neutral. The New York Times reported that "only 13 percent say their feelings toward the Soviet Union are generally unfavorable, compared with 41 percent who said they felt that way only two years ago, in September 1987." 5

Disinformation

Whatever Americans may now believe, an analysis by Anatoliy Golitsyn, a defector from the KGB, says that the West has been a victim of deception. Golitsyn predicted false liberalization in Eastern Europe in 1984. By his method of analysis we are watching political theater, orchestrated on a gigantic scale, designed to mislead the governments and people of the West. Is he correct? Look at the evidence he presents and decide for yourself.

The Soviets have been able to convince much of the Western public that they are no longer a military threat and that Mikhail Gorbachev has ushered in an era of irreversible change. Golitsyn says we shouldn't be fooled. This kind of deception has been going on since Lenin.

Few people understand the primary objective of Soviet intelligence agencies like the KGB. Most people assume the major work of the KGB is to control domestic dissent, recruit spies, steal state secrets and technology and carry out assassinations in defense of the Soviet Union. The KGB does all of this. But its major goal is to defend the Soviet Union and advance its interests through deception.

All deception is based on self-deception, as the following case histories make clear. And this is what you should note for your own psychology. You can learn something about yourself and something about Americans and the American leadership through the psychology of deception and self-deception. You will see that those who have been deceived have in some way desired to be deceived. If you've ever been deceived by anyone or by any situation in your life, you will have to go to the core of the subconscious and the unconscious to focus on and to excise your desire to be deceived.

Lenin, who was the architect of Soviet deception, understood this principle. His formula for deceiving the West was simple: Tell them what they want to hear. Sounds like Madison Avenue advertising, doesn't it?

Deception, as it is used in Soviet intelligence, is almost synonymous with disinformation. Most people think of disinformation as the art of planting a false story in the press or communicating other inaccurate information. Disinformation as it is used by the Soviets is the art of painting a false picture about the Soviet Union in the minds of opposing intelligence services.

Edward Jay Epstein, an investigative writer with a Ph.D. in government from Harvard, is the author of Deception: The Invisible War Between the KGB and the CIA. In it he tells how James Jesus Angleton, former head of counterintelligence for the CIA, used the example of the firefly and the assassination beetle to explain disinformation.

The female firefly signals her availability to male fireflies by flashing a particular Morse code-like signal. Over time, the firefly's natural predator, the assassination beetle, has learned to mimic the pattern of the female firefly's flashing signal. When a male firefly responds to the blinking pattern of the assassination beetle, instead of finding a mate it is eaten by the assassination beetle. It has been provoked into acting in its own worst interests by disinformation.

"The essence of disinformation is provocation, not lying," Angleton said. 6 "The assassination beetle did not lie when it sent out its flashes of light--they were what they appeared to be--but it nevertheless provoked the firefly, keyed to responding to this signal, into flying into the fatal trap," 7 Epstein wrote, summarizing Angleton. According to Angleton, "When disinformation becomes the art of the state...nations use their intelligence services to paint, brush stroke by brush stroke, a picture that will provoke its adversaries to make the wrong judgments." 8

Most of the information on Soviet deception that I will present comes from two sources: Anatoliy Golitsyn, a major in the KGB who defected in 1961, and Edward Jay Epstein. Golitsyn is the author of New Lies for Old. 9 While with the KGB, Golitsyn was an expert in counterintelligence and worked primarily against the United States and NATO.

From 1955 to 1959 he was assigned to a Soviet think tank, the KGB Institute, where he was privy to the inner workings of the KGB and intelligence operations related to overall Soviet strategy. From 1959 to 1960, a time when the KGB was being reorganized and a new aggressive long-range policy for the Soviet bloc was being developed, he was senior analyst in the NATO section of the KGB's Information Department.

Both Epstein's Deception and Golitsyn's New Lies for Old are well worth reading. In addition to having a Ph.D. in government from Harvard, Epstein has taught political science at Harvard, MIT and UCLA and written numerous books and articles on the little-known role that intelligence agencies have played in the events of our time.

Past Soviet Deceptions

Throughout its history the Soviet Union has undertaken many deception operations. The prototype Soviet deception was "the Trust." According to Raymond Rocca, former chief of research for CIA counterintelligence, "The Trust was the basic deception operation the Soviet state was built on." 10 The Trust began in August of 1921 when, as Golitsyn explains,

Soviet Russia faced imminent collapse. Industry lay ruined by war; agriculture was in crisis. The Russian people, disillusioned by the rigid policy of "war communism," were on the brink of revolt; the policy of terror was proving ineffective; there were peasant uprisings in Siberia and along the Volga; nationalist movements in the Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia and Central Asia were openly proclaiming separatism and posed a serious threat to national unity....

Abroad, the hopes of world revolution had faded after communist defeats in Germany, Poland, and Hungary. The major European powers, although not united, were individually hostile to communism and to the new Soviet state; a huge Russian émigré movement, spread across Europe, was plotting the overthrow of the regime. Soviet Russia was in complete political and economic isolation. 11

In August of 1921 while in Estonia, Aleksandr Yakushev, a high-ranking Soviet official, sought out an anti-Soviet exile he had known prior to the Revolution and told him exciting news: the Bolshevik regime would collapse in the next few months! The exile asked Yakushev if he was going to defect. Yakushev said it was unnecessary. He was in league with a group of officials and technocrats who planned to seize power when the Bolsheviks collapsed. His group had no reason to fear the police and government and had, in effect, become a de facto government.

The anti-Soviet exile immediately reported Yakushev's astonishing information to other exile groups, who passed it on to British and French intelligence and the intelligence services of other nations engaged in anti-Soviet activities. These intelligence agencies thought that much of Yakushev's report seemed reasonable since it dovetailed with their own assessments and their conventional wisdom. It seemed plausible that the Soviet economy was failing and that the Bolsheviks were in disarray.

Lenin had just launched the New Economic Policy (or NEP), which appeared to reverse communism and bring back free enterprise. A number of underground antigovernment newspapers had emerged. According to Epstein, "The issue [for the intelligence services] was whether the Yakushev conspiracy was as far-reaching as he claimed--or whether he had exaggerated its power." 12

They didn't have to wait long for corroboration. Within the next few months a half-dozen other Soviet officials made contact with anti-Soviet exiles in Europe and told the same story about conditions in the Soviet Union and claimed to be part of the same conspiracy. Epstein says, "Bit by bit, it also emerged from these temporary defectors that they used as a cover for their conspiratorial activities an office building in downtown Moscow called the Municipal Credit Association Building, and, in case they were overheard, the group was referred to as 'the Trust.'" 13

Yakushev became the Trust's ambassador to anti-Soviet groups throughout Europe. In 1922 Yakushev went to Berlin and suggested to the leaders of the anti-Soviet movement that the Trust could act as their "service organization" inside Russia.
It could smuggle out their relatives, other dissidents and secret documents. Some exiles were skeptical of the Trust and demanded proof of its influence.

According to Epstein:

To demonstrate its worth, the Trust smuggled families of dissidents out of Russia. It also delivered arms and supplies to their partisans inside Russia and contracted to undertake sabotage and assassination missions for them in Moscow and Petrograd. It even furnished exile leaders with fake passports and visas, which allowed them to sneak back into Russia and participate in these clandestine missions. As they saw with their own eyes police stations blown up and escapes arranged from prisons, these exiled leaders came to accept the Trust. 14

The Trust arranged tours for exiled writers to visit the underground and talk to the editors of dissident journals and began to provide the anti-Soviet exiles with secret documents on the Soviet military and economy. These were passed on to Western intelligence. By the mid-1920s eleven Western intelligence agencies had become almost completely dependent on the Trust for information on what was happening in Russia. Writes Epstein:

When fitted together, the pieces of intelligence gathered through the Trust reinforced the view that communism was over in Russia and that, whether by Yakushev's awaited coup or through a less dramatic accommodation, such as the New Economic Policy, the Soviet Union would abandon its revolutionary goals.

By the late 1920s, however, problems developed with the Trust. Exile leaders were suddenly kidnapped or vanished on their missions to Moscow. Top agents...brought back to Russia under the protection of the Trust, were arrested, given show trials, and executed. Secret documents proved to be unreliable--or false--the New Economic Policy faded away, and the underground journals disappeared. The Soviet regime, instead of collapsing as predicted, turned out to have consolidated
its power. 15

In 1929 Edward Opperput, a high-ranking Trust official, defected to Finland. Opperput told his debriefers that he had organized the Trust. But Opperput was not a dissident. He had taken his orders directly from Feliks Dzierzhinski, head of the Cheka, the Soviet secret police. Opperput said that Yakushev and all of his coconspirators had only feigned disloyalty. All of them were his agents working under the direction of the secret police.

The Trust building was a secret police headquarters. The secret police fed out the secret documents that ended up in the West, made travel arrangements for the exiles to visit Russia, briefed the false defectors, published the dissident newspapers and blew up Soviet buildings in order to make the operation credible. Since the secret police arranged the jail breaks, smuggling and assassinations, it could guarantee their success.

Opperput said that the money the Trust received from Western intelligence agencies for the documents was used to finance espionage in the West and forced labor camps. He provided so many details that there was no question that the Trust was a sting operation run by Soviet intelligence. After Opperput delivered this information to the West, he redefected to the Soviet Union. He had been a dispatched defector working for Soviet intelligence.

According to Rocca, Soviet intelligence exposed its own operation in order to "focus the attention of the West on this past fiasco, so as to distract it from the operations that replaced it." 16 Rocca says that Soviet intelligence learned a number of important lessons from the Trust. It demonstrated that it could create future deceptions, control double agents in foreign countries over an extended period of time and orchestrate events for nearly a decade, enough time to turn controlled agents into valued sources for the West.

But of greatest importance, the Soviets learned they could use a network of double agents to feed the West secret documents and other information in order to paint a false picture of what was going on in the Soviet Union. They had used disinformation to convince Western intelligence services that the Bolshevik Revolution was dead and that the Soviet Union was no threat. Britain, France and other European nations, based on this perception, gave the Soviets credits, technology and diplomatic recognition because they thought the Soviet Union would quickly evolve into a non-Communist state.

That was what they wanted to believe. They were deceived.

The Trust shows that massive deceptions that would be impossible to execute in democratic societies are possible for totalitarian states. It is reminiscent of the "Brotherhood" in 1984, George Orwell's novel about Oceania, a totalitarian state that bears a strong resemblance to Soviet Russia. The ruling Inner Party creates a multitude of deceptions, among them a false dissident movement, the Brotherhood. Its purposes are twofold (1) to direct its citizens' discontent away from the Inner Party and (2) to smoke out genuine dissidents and either eliminate them or co-opt them for the state's propaganda purposes.

The Brotherhood is an elaborate falsehood, complete with an alleged leader, "Emmanuel Goldstein," and a book purportedly written by him but really written by members of the Inner Party. The novel's protagonist, Winston Smith, is successfully enticed into joining the Brotherhood and soon after is arrested and tortured. In the Ministry of Love his mind is remolded and he is released.

Orwell, drawing on his understanding of Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, depicted how a false opposition movement could be used to quell dissent in a totalitarian state. As the Trust experiment showed, it could also be effective in neutralizing enemies outside the country. And, as the CIA found out, the Soviets had more Trusts up their sleeve.

Following World War II, U.S. policy was to roll back Soviet influence in Eastern Europe using covert action. In order to carry it out, the CIA's paramilitary arm was directed to develop anti-Communist undergrounds in Eastern Europe. These groups would have their own guerrilla forces and political fronts and would be coordinated by the CIA, which hoped they would undermine Soviet control by disrupting the economy and communications and provoking general strikes.

The Polish underground, known by the acronym WIN, was the centerpiece of this effort. WIN claimed it had widespread support in Poland and even said it could mobilize 30,000 guerrilla fighters. Initially the CIA was skeptical of WIN's claims, but WIN earned its credibility by attacking police stations. It even fought a pitched battle against Soviet tanks and provided photos of burned-out tank hulks. Then it began to provide reports on Soviet military capabilities in Eastern Europe that were apparently stolen by WIN moles in the Defense Ministry.

Then the CIA began to build WIN's capacity to carry out their mission. They put ex-German counterintelligence agents in contact with WIN and parachuted in clandestine radios, sophisticated explosives and timers. WIN sent out reports that suggested that Stalin, who was having troubles in Russia, was losing his grip on his Eastern European satellites. Yet there were a number of disconcerting developments. James Jesus Angleton, head of CIA counterintelligence, began to suspect that WIN was another Trust. Intelligence garnered from WIN didn't square with aerial reconnaissance and other sources of information. Emigré agents who had been put in contact with WIN began to disappear. WIN radio reports became more and more suspect.

"Despite these disturbing difficulties," writes Epstein, "WIN began in 1952 escalating its requests for weapons, radios, money, and names of agents it could contact in Poland. It even asked the CIA to parachute an American general into Poland to lead the uprising." 17 However the CIA, beginning to be wary of WIN, declined to send the general. Frank Wisner, head of the CIA's paramilitary branch, clung to the hope that WIN was a legitimate resistance organization even though he recognized that it could be a Soviet operation.

Writes Epstein:

That December the question of WIN was definitely settled in a way that shocked even Angleton. In a move that was reminiscent of the purposeful blowing of the Trust twenty-three years earlier, the Polish government told the story of WIN in a two-hour radio broadcast. It explained that the real Polish Home Army had been eliminated by security forces in 1947.

In its place had been substituted the fictitious WIN, staffed by Communist officers. So that there could be no doubt that WIN had been a deception from the outset, the broadcast gave a full accounting of all the monies and weapons that had been sent to WIN from the first contact on. Then it went on to mock the CIA for its misplaced trust in this sham organization. It turned out that Polish security forces had staged mock battles, leaving burnt-out tank hulks to be photographed, to give WIN credibility. They had also taken over and operated the clandestine radios that the CIA had supplied, and used the CIA's gold coins to finance the deception. 18

By 1953 the CIA discovered that, like WIN, six other anti-Soviet movements were the creations of Soviet intelligence. In hindsight, Angleton concluded that WIN was designed to draw U.S. attention away from the real weaknesses the Soviets had in their control of Eastern Europe and to redirect it to false weaknesses.

The Reorganization of the KGB

Some intelligence agents believe that Anatoliy Golitsyn was the most important Soviet spy to defect in modern times. One of his most shocking revelations is that in 1959 the KGB was reorganized. Under Stalin the KGB had become a more or less conventional espionage organization and concentrated largely on maintaining internal security, protecting state secrets, and so on.

Golitsyn had been one of a small group of analysts at a KGB think tank who advocated subordinating conventional espionage to deception and returning to old Soviet methods based on the Trust. Their plan was accepted. The new KGB would allow the CIA and other Western intelligence services to recruit agents and then use these channels to feed disinformation to the West.

This plan had one intrinsic weakness: its deceptions might be exposed. As Epstein explains: "KGB officers had to be in continuous contact with CIA officers, either as bait to attract their attention, as postmen to deliver messages, or as double agents pretending to defect. This gave the CIA the opportunity to compromise, entrap, recruit, or even drug the disinformation agent." 19 The Soviets came up with a simple but ingenious plan to compensate for this vulnerability. They divided the KGB into two separate entities, an inner and an outer KGB. According to Epstein:

The "outer" KGB was made up of a personnel who, of necessity, had to be in contact with foreigners and were therefore vulnerable to being compromised....Since they had to be in touch with Westerners, if only to attempt to recruit them as spies, they were assumed to be "doomed spies." A certain percentage of them, by the law of probability, would be compromised--and talk. Golitsyn compared "doomed spies" to pilots sent on raids over enemy territory during World War II who not only were restricted from knowing any state secrets but were purposefully misbriefed in case they were captured and interrogated.

The "inner" KGB was to be where the deceptions were planned, orchestrated, and assessed. It was limited to a small number of trusted officers, under the direct supervision of the Politburo, who planned, orchestrated, controlled, and analyzed the operations. A "China Wall" existed between these two levels [of the KGB.] No personnel from the outer service would ever be transferred to the inner service, or vice versa. Nor would any personnel in the outer service ever be exposed to strategic secrets other than what had been prepared for them to divulge as disinformation. 20

Angleton understood the implication of Golitsyn's statement. He said, "If Golitsyn was correct, it meant that we knew virtually nothing about the KGB's capacity for deception." 21 It also meant that years of intelligence work, recruiting sources behind the Iron Curtain, had been of marginal value. They knew nothing about the KGB's true intentions or they had been misbriefed. To make matters worse, Angleton, who seemed more than anyone to understand what the Soviets were really up to, was fired from the CIA in 1974.

The year before, the CIA had radically changed the way it regarded "REDTOPS," that is, Soviet bloc officials who volunteer to help the West. The CIA recognized that any Soviet official who offered to help the West might be a "dangle," that is, a KGB-controlled agent who could feed them false information or lead them on a wild goose chase. REDTOPS had to prove their bona fides, that is, that they were genuine defectors rather than double agents.

Angleton's counterintelligence staff had been in charge of determining which agents were or were not bona fide. But in 1973 the CIA reversed course and declared in the instructions to their station chiefs, "We are confident that we are capable of determining whether or not a producing agent is supplying bona fide information." 22 The new policy meant that a case officer in the Soviet bloc division of the CIA could recruit a REDTOP without any prior determination of whether he was a bona fide agent on the assumption that his bona fides could be determined by the material he produced!

The CIA had just moved its king into check. Golitsyn, in case you are wondering, is one defector whose bona fides were established. We're going to take a look at his analysis of the events now taking place in Eastern Europe. It goes back to a long-term strategy developed in 1957-60.

Soviet Long-Term Strategy for Deception

Golitsyn's primary revelation is that following Stalin's death the Communist world formed a united front but feigned disunity in an attempt to deceive the West. He gives numerous examples of what he believes to have been disinformation operations. However, most intelligence experts question some of his conclusions, including those about current events in Eastern Europe. They say that his information based on personal experience until his defection in 1961 is accurate but that his conclusions about post-1961 events are only his informed analysis. I believe he makes a good case and so I have set forth his arguments so that you can consider them.

Golitsyn says that in the 1950s both Soviet and Chinese officials developed an intense interest in the ancient Chinese book on strategy and deception, Sun Tzu's The Art of War.

Some of Sun Tzu's maxims were:
"All warfare is based on deception. Therefore, when capable, feign incapacity; when active, inactivity."
"Offer the enemy a bait to lure him; feign disorder and strike him."
"Pretend inferiority and encourage his arrogance."
"When he is united, divide him."
"Attack where he is unprepared; sally out when he does not expect you." 23

Golitsyn, summarizing Sun Tzu's thought, writes, "One who wishes to appear to be weak in order to make his enemy arrogant must be extremely strong. Only then can he feign weakness." 24 Golitsyn says that following Stalin's death in 1953 there was a genuine period of disunity and crisis in the Communist bloc. However, this was largely hidden from the West by a pattern of disinformation called "facade and strength" designed to conceal the existence of a crisis. This pattern is used when a regime is weak to make it appear strong. "In the facade and strength pattern," Golitsyn writes, "information damaging to the regime is suppressed and information favorable to it is exaggerated." 25

For example, on March 5, 1956, a mass demonstration for independence took place in Tblisi, the capital of Georgia. "On Khrushchev's order the special troops were put on the streets, with orders to fire on the crowds," Golitsyn writes. "Many were killed and wounded. Many students were arrested." 26

Golitsyn compares the massacre to "Bloody Sunday," January 9, 1905, when the czar's troops opened fire on a mass demonstration. However, there was one difference. In 1905 the massacre was on every front page in Russia. In 1956 it was ignored. This was part of the facade and strength disinformation operation. When you are weak, appear strong. Information damaging to the regime, such as the presence of large demonstrations for independence, is suppressed. In June 1957 Khrushchev triumphed over his opponents. But instead of setting up a personality cult as Stalin had, he determined to return to Leninist ideals. Golitsyn writes:

By the end of 1957 reconciliation between the leaders of all the communist states had been achieved. At a conference in Moscow in November 1957, they all agreed that Stalin had been responsible for damaging distortions of communist theory and practice....But all (including the Yugoslavs, whose presence at the conference was deliberately concealed) were prepared to cooperate on a Leninist basis in a partnership of equals....The conference took an unpublicized decision to formulate a new, Leninist program for world communism that was intended to imbue the movement with the sense of purpose and direction it so badly needed. The next three years were a period of intense research and consultation....

The process culminated in the Eighty-one-Party Congress held in Moscow in November 1960. The leaders of all eighty-one parties committed themselves to the program set out in the conference's statement, or--as is sometimes described--Manifesto. From that day to this the main binding force in the communist movement, inside and outside the bloc, has not been the diktat of the Soviet Union, but loyalty to a common program to which the leaders of many communist parties had made their contribution." 27

Under this new long-range policy, each nation was to be allotted a specific role in the general effort to deceive the West. They followed Lenin's suggestion that "we need a great orchestra; we have to work out from experience how to allocate the parts, to give a sentimental violin to one, a terrible double-bass to another, the conductor's baton to a third." 28 They committed to "unity of will and action." But, says Golitsyn, not necessarily of words. They determined that "the aim of a worldwide federation of communist states would be pursued...by an agreed variety of different strategies and tactics to be followed by different parties, some of which would appear to be at loggerheads with one another." 29

False factionalism would disguise the fact that the long-range policy had, according to Golitsyn, "firmly established the principle of collective leadership, put an end to real power struggles, provided a solution for the problem of succession in the leadership, and established a new basis for relations between the different members of the communist bloc." 30

The long-range policy would follow the precedent of Lenin's NEP, which had brought Western trade and credits and even diplomatic recognition. Golitsyn says that the Communist strategists determined to make use of factors that had tended in the past to undermine Western unity: moderation in official Soviet policy and emphasis on the conflicting national interests of communist countries and parties. 31

Following this congress, Golitsyn argues, Communist strategists created spurious dissident movements along the lines of WIN, staged factional rivalries and power struggles in government along the lines of the Trust, instituted false liberalization following the pattern of the NEP and fabricated splits and disunity among Communist nations. After 1958, Golitsyn says, the Communist bloc, having overcome its weakness, dropped the facade and strength pattern and used a second disinformation pattern, "weakness and evolution," to conceal its long-range policy. This pattern had been successfully used by Lenin in the 1920s.

The major role of disinformation in the weakness and evolution pattern is to conceal and misrepresent the real nature, objectives, tactics, and techniques of communist policy.... Efforts are made to conceal or understate the actual strength and aggressiveness of communism. Factual information favorable to communist regimes is withheld or downgraded; unfavorable information is disclosed, leaked, or invented....The major feature of this pattern is the projection of alleged splits and crises in the communist world and the alleged evolution of communist states into independent, conventional, nation-states motivated like any others primarily by national interests. 32

As part of this disinformation operation, Golitsyn claims that Communist nations engineered a number of false splits. He believes that the 1948-53 split between Stalin and Josip Tito, the Communist leader of Yugoslavia, was the only genuine split within the Communist world and that future fake splits were patterned after it.

The Soviet-Albanian Split

For example, Golitsyn argues that his own personal experience shows that the Soviet-Albanian split of 1959-1962 was a fake. As a KGB officer, he knew that "relations between all the communist states, including Albania and China, had been normalized by the end of 1957; that the Soviets had successfully mediated [differences] in the secret reconciliation of the Yugoslav and Albanian leaders in 1957-58; and that, from late 1959, the KGB's disinformation department was actively collaborating with...the Yugoslav and Albanian security services" and they were cooperating in "joint disinformation operations." 33 In fact, two of Golitsyn's senior colleagues in the KGB said in 1959 "that a disinformation operation on Soviet-Yugoslav and Soviet-Albanian relations had been planned during 1958-59." 34

The West accepted as conclusive evidence published reports that the Soviets had traded furious polemics with Chinese and Albanians at various international meetings. In October 1961 Khrushchev denounced the Albanian leaders publicly at the Twenty-second Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union for dogmatic Stalinism and rejection of peaceful coexistence. The Chinese delegate withdrew from the congress in an apparent gesture of support for the Albanians. The Albanian president Enver Hoxha responded with bitter criticism of Khrushchev. In December 1961 Soviet-Albanian relations were broken off and Albania refused to attend Warsaw Pact meetings.

Golitsyn says that the argument over Stalinism was spurious since the issues involved in Stalinism had been resolved to the satisfaction of all Communist parties by 1958. After 1958 "Stalinism...was deliberately and artificially revived and used for the projection of a false image of warring factions among the leaders of the communist bloc," 35 Golitsyn writes. He says that fictitious factions were created, such as "Stalinists," "neo-Stalinists," "Maoists," "dogmatists," "hard-liners," "diehards," "militants" or "conservatives," as opposed to "anti-Stalinists," "pragmatists," "revisionists" and "national," "liberal," "progressive" or "moderate" Communists. 36

"There are no liberals, moderates, or conservatives in the Soviet leadership; there are only communists whose actions are determined by the requirements of the long-range policy. They may take on a public guise of liberals or Stalinists, but only if required to do so by the Presidium of the party in the interests of that policy," 37 Golitsyn writes. In addition, Golitsyn gives evidence of continuing Albanian cooperation with the rest of the bloc and shows how it diverges from the genuine Tito-Stalin split. During the Tito-Stalin split, members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) received daily briefings on the subject. Golitsyn, a member of the party, says that no such briefings were given in the Albanian situation. Furthermore, he writes:

In contrast with the Tito-Stalin split, there was no formal condemnation of Albania by any bloc or international communist meeting or conference. There was no systematic, overall communist bloc boycott of Albania.... No economic pressure was brought to bear on Albania....After the split, as before, 90 percent of Albania's trade was with other communist countries. The main difference was that China replaced the Soviet Union as Albania's principal supplier. So smooth was the transition that it might well have been jointly planned by the Soviets, Chinese, and Albanians in advance. 38

Golitsyn contends that the Albanian split could not have been genuine because "true, systematic dissent on the part of any one communist country could only lead to its expulsion from the communist bloc and its ostracism by all other communist countries." 39

The Sino-Soviet Split

Far more significant than the Soviet-Albanian split was the Sino-Soviet split which began in 1959. Evidence for the split is as follows: In 1959 there was a reported deterioration in party and diplomatic cooperation and a termination of Soviet military and nuclear collaboration with the Chinese. In 1960 the Soviets reportedly ceased economic aid to China. In 1963 an ostensible talk to settle differences apparently failed and public polemics between Chinese and Soviet leaders began.

Beginning in 1969, troop levels were built up on the Sino-Soviet frontier. Border incidents took place. In the 1970s the Soviets and Chinese backed opposite sides in the conflict between rival Communist factions in Cambodia. In 1979 the Chinese briefly invaded the territory of Soviet-backed Vietnam. 40 Golitsyn believes the split is fictitious. He points out that genuine differences had existed between the Soviets and Chinese between 1949 and 1955, but these had been hidden from the West and resolved at meetings in 1957 to 1960. In a 1957 speech to Communist parties, Golitsyn says, Mao "argued in favor of using the whole potential of the bloc, especially its nuclear missile potential, to swing the balance of power in favor of the communist world." 41

Most experts believe the Sino-Soviet split is genuine. And since the split had barely begun when Golitsyn defected, the experts believe he is wrong about it. After all, they argue, he doesn't have personal knowledge that it was staged; he merely has a handle on Soviet strategy and thinking. The split has become an article of faith in America and few people are willing to question it. However, I think Golitsyn has made some interesting points which are worth considering.

How can Golitsyn argue that a deception of such mammoth proportions was carried out for nearly thirty years? He points out that the Soviets and Chinese Communists worked together from 1935 to 1949 all the while concealing their collaboration from the rest of the world. Other evidence led him to conclude the split was a fake. The Soviet Communist party was not briefed on the supposed dispute with China as it had been during the split with Tito. 42

Rather, material on the Sino-Soviet split was first distributed by the Soviet propaganda organ Novosti press to Western journalists before even the Soviet and Chinese public had been made aware the split existed. Golitsyn asks, "Why would the Soviet and Chinese leaders deliberately draw Western attention to the existence of a dispute that they were at pains to conceal from their own parties and populations unless by so doing they could serve their mutual interests in promoting their recently agreed upon long-range policy?" 43

Golitsyn believes that the polemics between the Soviets and Chinese concerning Stalinism and other subjects were phony since, "by June 1957, the Soviet and Chinese leaders had reached an agreed assessment of Stalin and his distortions of communist doctrine. The Chinese contribution to this assessment is to be found in two articles by Mao, which were published in the Soviet press in April and December 1956." 44 Golitsyn contends that Sino-Soviet polemics taken as evidence of their bitter rivalry erupted only when they could be of use; for example during negotiations with the West.

In 1963 in Moscow, the Soviets were negotiating the Atomic Test Ban Treaty with the British and Americans at the very same time they were negotiating with the Chinese to resolve their apparent differences. "Soviet warmth toward the Western delegations contrasted sharply with their coolness toward the Chinese." 45 The talks with the Chinese apparently failed but the test ban treaty was successfully signed. Sino-Soviet polemics also erupted just before further Soviet-American negotiations in 1966-67.

Golitsyn also claims that the border incidents were staged; their only purpose was to convince the West that the split was real. He says that faking border incidents in a remote corner of the world would not be difficult. Even if some soldiers were killed in the incidents, that does not make them genuine. During the 1920s the Soviets assassinated their own men and blew up their own police stations in order to convince the West that the Trust was for real.

Golitsyn claims that the various explanations set forth for the Sino-Soviet split are not valid. It is argued that the split occurred over military differences, specifically "a decision by the Soviets in 1959 to withhold assistance to China over nuclear weapons," 46 Golitsyn writes. However, he demonstrates that the KGB was still providing advice to China on the physical protection of nuclear installations as of November 1961 and that the Soviets continued to cooperate with the Chinese in the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

Golitsyn speculates that nuclear weapons assistance could have been ongoing under cover of alleged assistance with peaceful uses of nuclear energy. And he points out that "several years of virtually open Sino-Soviet military collaboration followed [Soviet "denial" of nuclear assistance to China] over the supply of military assistance to North Vietnam." 47 In addition, Soviet economic assistance to China was not completely stopped after the alleged split. It was simply reduced and specialized.

Some argue that the split occurred over differences in national interest. Golitsyn says that this "fails to take into account the nature of communist theory and the distinction that must be made between the motives of a communist regime and the sentiments of the people which it controls." 48 Golitsyn contends that Soviet-Chinese disagreements on detente, peaceful coexistence, Stalinism and the inevitability of war should be seen as window dressing and not as fundamental disagreements.

As evidence of unity of purpose among the members of Communist nations, Golitsyn points to the exchanges of visits between leaders of the Soviet Union and of countries that have "split" from it, including China, Romania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. "For the duration of the genuine Tito-Stalin split, it would have been more than Tito's life was worth for him to have attempted to visit the Soviet Union; but since 1961, Tito, until his death, and other Yugoslav leaders have been almost annual visitors." 49 During the alleged Sino-Soviet split there have been abundant visits by delegations between the two nations. For example, says Golitsyn, citing the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia,

In January 1963 a delegation from the Supreme Soviet, led by Andropov, at that time the secretary of the central committee responsible for bloc countries, visited China.... From November 5 to November 14, 1964, a party and government delegation led by Chou En-lai was in the Soviet Union; it had meetings with Brezhnev, Andropov, Kosygin, Podgornyy, Gromyko, and others and signed an agreement. The reference to Gromyko's presence indicates that the meeting dealt with the coordination of foreign policy. 50

Golitsyn says that many Western observers dismissed these meetings as futile attempts to patch up relations. But he says that his analysis in terms of long-term strategy shows the meetings could easily have been for planning deceptions. For those who value official pronouncements by Communist leaders, Golitsyn cites Chinese statements at the death of Soviet president Brezhnev. A high-level Chinese delegation headed by Foreign Minister Huang Hua attended the funeral. He referred to the "loss of Brezhnev, a great statesman." 51

This statement, says Golitsyn, "ignores the fact that the worst hostilities with China--if one accepts the conventional point of view--took place under Brezhnev. Such a favorable assessment of Brezhnev seems accurate and sound, however, if one accepts Sino-Soviet hostilities as strategic disinformation." 52

Golitsyn says that the purpose of the Sino-Soviet split was to feign disunity in order to promote real disunity in the non-Communist world. The Chinese and Soviets act as two blades of a scissors, he says.

Each blade of the communist pair of scissors makes the other more effective. The militancy of one nation helps the activist detente diplomacy of the other. Mutual charges of hegemonism help to create the right climate for one or the other to negotiate agreements with the West....In Western eyes the military, political, economic, and ideological threat from world communism appears diminished. In consequence Western determination to resist the advance of communism is undermined. At a later stage the communist strategists are left with the option of terminating the split and adopting the strategy of "one clenched fist." 53

We may already be seeing the first hints of reunification with the recent normalization of relations between the Soviet Union and China. On May 16, 1989, the New York Times reported that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping "formally announced the normalization of relations between their two nations and Communist parties to end their 30-year split." 54 The announcement was paid little heed in the West since it was combined with disagreements over Cambodia. But on May 15, despite the disagreements, Tass reported that the Soviets had officially begun withdrawing troops from Mongolia and planned to withdraw three-fourths of their troops by the end of 1990. 55

The Final Phase

Golitsyn says that the long-range policy outlined at the Eighty-one-Party Congress in 1960 had three phases. The first two phases overlap and interact. They are (1) the creation of favorable conditions for the implementation of the policy and (2) the exploitation of Western misunderstanding of the policy to gain specific advantages. 56 In 1984 he wrote that "the communist strategists are now poised to enter into the final, offensive phase of the long-range policy, entailing a joint struggle for the complete triumph of communism." 57

He said that the beginning of the final phase would be "marked by a major shift in Communist tactics in preparation for a comprehensive assault on the West." 58 In New Lies for Old, published in 1984 (pre-Gorbachev), he predicted many of the current developments in Eastern Europe and said that these would mark the beginning of the final phase. He was able to do this not because he was privy to actual planning sessions but because he is familiar with the methodology and long-range goals of the Communists.

In an incredibly prescient chapter, he foretold "the introduction of false liberalization in Eastern Europe and, probably, in the Soviet Union and the exhibition of spurious independence on the part of the regimes of Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Poland." 59 Golitsyn said that liberalization in Eastern Europe would begin with Poland, where a coalition government would be formed "comprising representatives of the communist party, of a revived Solidarity movement, and of the church.

A few so-called liberals might also be included." 60 He said that if the events in Poland were "successful and accepted by the West as genuine, they may well be followed by the apparent withdrawal of one or more communist countries from the Warsaw Pact to serve as the model of a 'neutral' socialist state for the whole of Europe to follow." 61

In New Lies for Old, Golitsyn predicted that the following steps would be taken by Brezhnev's successor, who ultimately turned out to be Gorbachev:

1. The condemnation of the invasion of Afghanistan and Brezhnev's harsh treatment of dissidents
2. Economic reforms to bring Soviet practice more into line with Yugoslav or even, seemingly, with Western socialist models
3. Decentralization of economic control
4. Creation of individual self-managing firms
5. Increase of material incentives
6. Apparent diminishment of the party's control over the economy
7. Spectacular and impressive "liberalization" and "democratization," including formal pronouncements about a reduction in the Communist party's role; an ostensible separation of powers between the legislative, executive and judiciary; separation of the posts of president of the Soviet Union and first secretary of the party; "reform" of the KGB
8. Amnesty of dissidents
9. Inclusion of Andrei Sakharov in the government in some capacity
10. More independence given to writers, artists and scientists
11. Alternative political parties formed by leading dissidents
12. Relaxation of censorship, publication of controversial books
13. Greater freedom of travel given to Soviet citizens.

Golitsyn says, "'Liberalization' in Eastern Europe would probably involve the return to power in Czechoslovakia of Dubcek and his associates. If it should be extended to East Germany, demolition of the Berlin Wall might even be contemplated." 62
Alexander Dubcek, who had been removed from office in 1969 for introducing democratic reforms, returned to prominence in Czechoslovakia on November 23, although it remains to be seen whether he will actually be returned to power. And, as we all know, on November 9, 1989, the East German government opened new gates in the Berlin Wall and announced that people would be allowed free travel through it.

Some of Golitsyn's predictions have not come to pass, for example, that "`liberalization' in the Soviet Union could well be accompanied by a deepening of the Sino-Soviet split." 63 But he was about 90 percent right. Virtually every other prediction has come true under Gorbachev. And remember, Golitsyn was writing before anyone had ever heard of Gorbachev's glasnost or perestroika. His further predictions are that "united front governments under strong communist influence might well come to power in France, Italy, and possibly other countries....Pressure could well grow for a solution of the German problem in which some form of confederation between East and West Germany would be combined with neutralization of the whole and a treaty of friendship with the Soviet Union." 64

Golitsyn predicts that dissolution of the Warsaw Pact may occur: "The Czechoslovaks, in contrast with their performance in 1968, might well take the initiative, along with the Romanians and Yugoslavs, in proposing...the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in return for the dissolution of NATO." 65 However, he warns that it is not an even trade: "The disappearance of the Warsaw Pact would have little effect on the coordination of the communist bloc, but the dissolution of NATO could well mean the departure of American forces from the European continent and a closer European alignment with a 'liberalized' Soviet bloc." 66 Why would the Communists go to the immense trouble of opening the Berlin Wall, et cetera if they weren't really serious about reform? Writing in 1984, Golitsyn said:

Certainly, the next five years will be a period of intensive struggle. It will be marked by a major coordinated communist offensive intended to exploit the success of the strategic disinformation program over the past twenty years and to take advantage of the crisis and mistakes it has engendered in Western policies toward the communist bloc. The overall aim will be to bring about a major and irreversible shift in the balance of world power in favor of the bloc as a preliminary to the final ideological objective of establishing a worldwide federation of communist states. 67

Golitsyn says that false liberalization in Eastern Europe serves to undermine resistance to Communism inside and outside the Communist bloc. It causes the need for massive defense expenditure to be questioned in the West. And it increases the likelihood of splitting Western Europe away from the United States. He believes that the events in Eastern Europe are a calculated attempt to put pressure on the West to

1. Cut defense budgets
2. Reduce commitment to NATO
3. Make concessions at arms control talks

Even the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact would not hamper the capability of the Communist nations to continue their long-range strategy, Golitsyn says. Part of the strategy, he writes, has been "the development of an effective political, economic, diplomatic, and military substructure under which the communists can continue to coordinate their policies and actions on a bilateral basis through a system of friendship treaties [rather than on a multilateral basis through a pact]." 68

So if false liberalization extends to the breakup of the Warsaw Pact, he believes we should not take it as a genuine sign of change. This is not to suggest that the hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating in the East Bloc are knowingly participating in a sham. Their aspirations for freedom are genuine. But do the concessions granted by their leaders make any difference? Whether the ouster of a government indicates lasting change when Communists still control the military, secret police, and foreign policy remains to be seen. At least we should view it with caution.

Under the circumstances, it defies the imagination that George Bush, former head of the CIA, is taking Soviet liberalization at face value. In his address on November 22, he said that he is reaching out to President Gorbachev to end the Cold War. He continued, We can make such a bold bid because America is strong, and 40 years of perseverance and patience are finally paying off. More recently, quiet diplomacy, working behind the scenes, has achieved results.

We can now dare to imagine a new world, with a new Europe, rising on the foundations of democracy. This new world was taking shape when my Presidency began with these words: "The day of the dictator is over." During the spring and summer, we told the people of the world what America believes and what America wants for the future.

America believes that liberty is an idea whose time has come in Eastern Europe. America wants President Gorbachev's reforms, known as perestroika, to succeed. And America wants the Soviets to join us in moving beyond containment to a new partnership. Some wondered if all this was realistic. Now, though we are still on the course set last spring, events are moving faster than anyone imagined or predicted.

Look around the world--in the developing nations, the people are demanding freedom. Poland and Hungary are now fledgling democracies--a non-communist Government in Poland, and free elections coming soon in Hungary. And the Soviet Union itself, the forces of reform under Mikhail Gorbachev are bringing unprecedented openness and change. But nowhere in the world today--or even in the history of man--have the warm hearts of men and women triumphed so swiftly, so certainly, over cold stone as in Berlin. Indeed, in all of East Germany. 69

Is Bush tremendously out of touch? Or is he bowing to Western business interests who want to trade with the East bloc? Whatever he's doing, he's making a big mistake according to Golitsyn. Because the next move could be check mate when the communist nations gang up on the U.S.A. Golitsyn makes the following prediction for the future:

Probably, as the final stroke, the scissors blades [of the Soviets and the Chinese] will close. The element of apparent duality in Soviet and Chinese policies will disappear. The hitherto concealed coordination between them will become visible and predominant. The Soviets and the Chinese will be officially reconciled. Thus the scissors strategy will develop logically into the "strategy of one clenched fist" to provide the foundation and driving force of a world communist federation. 70

We see confirmation of Golitsyn's revelations on Soviet goals and methods in a statement by Dmitri Manuilsky, who was speaking at the Lenin School of Political Warfare in 1931:

War to the hilt between Communism and capitalism is inevitable. Today, of course, we are not strong enough to attack. Our time will come in 20 or 30 years. To win we shall need the element of surprise. The bourgeoisie will have to be put to sleep, so we shall begin by launching the most spectacular peace movement on record. There will be electrifying overtures and unheard-of concessions. The capitalist countries, stupid and decadent, will rejoice in their own destruction. They will leap at another chance to be friends. As soon as their guard is down, we shall smash them with our clenched fist. 71

Soviet Military Buildup Continues Despite Glasnost

Whether or not you believe Golitsyn, something fishy is going on in Moscow. Whether it's Gorbachev or "hard-liners," somebody is building and exporting a lot of weapons. The title of my address is "Actions Speak Louder than Words." Let us
look at Soviet actions. Both conventional wisdom and Soviet spokesmen say that the Soviets need to reduce military spending in order to meet consumer demands. But that argument just doesn't hold up. Since Gorbachev came to power in 1985, Soviet military spending has increased.

The Committee on the Present Danger, an organization of distinguished former U.S. government officials, conducted an extensive study. It concluded that since 1985 "overall Soviet military spending has been rising at an average annual rate of 7 percent. (By contrast, U.S. defense spending has fallen roughly 12 percent, in real terms, over the last 5 years.)" 72

The committee speculates that Soviet promises to cut their defense budget mean cuts in planned future growth, not in actual spending. The committee's analysis differs from most estimates because it takes into account items in the Soviet budget which are not included in the official defense budget but which are most assuredly defense. These include most military research and development, 300,000 KGB troops, all Soviet military pensions, premilitary training and civil defense. *

Civil defense alone consumes over 2 percent of the Soviet GNP. 73 Although the U.S. government does not go as far as the committee, it does admit that the Soviets have not slowed down their spending on long-range nuclear weapons. On November 12 Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said, "The fact of the matter is, the Soviets have continued to modernize their strategic [long-range nuclear] forces." 74

Cheney said the Soviets are deploying a new model of the SS-18 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that has greater accuracy and explosive power, have deployed two new mobile ballistic missiles, the SS-24 and SS-25, and have launched two new ballistic missile submarines. 75 In fact, in 1988 the Soviets increased the number of nuclear warheads in their arsenal by 16 percent, according to FPI International Report, published by former CIA officers. 76

The increase came mostly from their deploying 130 rail-mobile SS-24 ICBMs with 10 warheads apiece. In the same period of time the United States produced virtually none. The SS-24s and SS-25s cannot be seen as a response to the MX, deployed between 1986 and 1988, which was the first new U.S. ICBM in fifteen years. 77 Between 1977 and 1986 the U.S.S.R. produced 1,720 ICBMs and the U.S. only 95. 78
___________________
* A system of warning devices and underground fallout and blast shelters which can protect most of the Soviet population in the event of a nuclear war.

(The U.S. concentrated on submarine-launched nuclear weapons, which are considered a second-strike weapon since they are less accurate than the land-based ICBM, a first-strike weapon.) If Gorbachev were serious about developing greater political and economic freedom, he would have spent Soviet money on "butter," that is, consumer goods, but instead he spent it on "guns"--the biggest guns of all, ICBMs.

In addition, Soviet conventional preparations demonstrate their commitment to military goals. If Gorbachev wants peace, why has he increased Soviet conventional forces 25 percent since coming to power? That increase is equal to the combined German and French armies! > Gorbachev promised to cut tank production, but he has added 13,300 tanks to the Soviet arsenal. Average annual tank production is higher now than it was at the height of the Cold War.

In 1979, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, it was 3,000. It dipped to 2,000 in 1981 and rose to 3,000 by 1985 when Gorbachev came to power. In 1986 it jumped to 3,300, 3,500 in 1987, and 3,500 in 1988. He could cut tank production 12 percent and it would be the same as under Brezhnev. In fact, just since 1985 Gorbachev has built over twice as many tanks as Reagan built from 1981 to 1988. 79

We might ask why the Soviet Union needs more tanks. They already have a 3-to-1 tank advantage over NATO. Hitler invaded Russia with 2,500 tanks; the Soviets have 53,000. If the Soviets aren't planning to invade Europe, why do they still have 27,000 meters of bridging equipment stockpiled on the East-West border? 80 If their strategy is defensive, why are 3 million metric tons of ammunition still stored in the Warsaw Pact's Western theater? If you have a defensive strategy, that isn't a very good place to store ammunition.

We've all heard the argument that it takes time to turn off faucets of military spending and we've heard that it's difficult to slow down a military bureaucracy. We've heard that factories are trying to use up their inventories of spare parts before the spending freeze hits. Well, it's been four years now, Mikhail, and we'll believe it when we see it!

Despite Soviet announcements that they have changed to a defensive strategy, other evidence points to their preparation for a blitzkrieg-type attack on Western Europe. Dr. Albert L. Weeks, professor of politics and history at New York University, cited a study by Dr. Charles Cutshaw, a graduate of the Pentagon Defense Intelligence College and chief of the U.S. Army's Foreign Systems Division of the Foreign Science and Technology Center at Aberdeen. Cutshaw "maintains that his agency's classified data indicate that the Soviets are perfecting tactics and the weapons necessary to win a lightning-fast war against the West," 81 Weeks wrote. If the Soviets are interested in peace, why are they already violating the INF Treaty?

The Washington Times reported that the treaty requires the Soviets cut at least 0.85 meters (33.46 inches) [of the SS-23] missile transporter body off aft of the rear axle so that the vehicle cannot again be used to transport the missile. [Pentagon] officials said that the Soviets have been cutting off this section as the treaty requires, but that on-site inspections revealed sections were later welded back onto 25 of the transporter vehicles. 82 The INF Treaty was supposed to be the best treaty yet negotiated because of its "intrusive" on-site inspection provisions. So we negotiate this wonderful treaty that allows unprecedented levels of on-site inspection--and then when we find a violation, what do we do about it? Nothing.

Gorbachev Continues Arms Exports

When faced with evidence of massive deception it is best to take the advice of defense expert Angelo Codevilla: "In times of trouble keep your eyes on the guns." 83 > Let's keep our eyes on the Soviet-supplied guns being flown from Nicaragua to arm the leftist rebels in El Salvador. 84 Let's keep our eyes on the 3,800 planeloads of military equipment that have been delivered to the Soviet puppet government in Afghanistan since the Soviets "pulled out" in February 1989. 85 Why--when they desperately need money for their consumer economy--do the Soviets continue to export costly weapons to their client states, unless militarism is guiding the Kremlin's policy?

The Soviets shipped $515 million worth of military equipment to the Sandinista government of Nicaragua in 1988, a year in which the U.S. suspended aid to the Contras. 86 In May 1989 Gorbachev promised to halt Soviet weapons shipments to Nicaragua. However, there is no evidence of a halt or even a slowdown. In September 1989, U.S. intelligence agencies photographed Soviet torpedo-carrying boats and Mi-24 Hind helicopters being loaded on a Nicaraguan ship at a Cuban port. The weapons were delivered to Nicaragua. U.S. intelligence officials also said they believe that 33 weapons shipments totaling 11,500 tons were made from the Soviet bloc to Nicaragua in the first half of 1989. 87

The Soviets continue to ship massive amounts of weapons to Cuba. The State Department confirmed on November 15 that the Soviets are beginning shipment to Cuba of 14 of their most advanced fighter planes--the MiG-29 Fulcrum, equivalent to the American F-16. 88 The Soviets are delivering $250 million to $300 million worth of military equipment to the Communist government of Afghanistan each month, according to officials of the Bush administration quoted in the New York Times on October 10. 89

What About Some Butter?

While all of this money is being spent on weapons, living conditions for the average Soviet citizen have gotten worse. According to Mortimer Zuckerman, editor of U.S. News & World Report:

Forty million Soviet citizens live in poverty, even by Soviet standards. Every sixth hospital bed is in an institution with no running water; 1 in 3 Soviet hospitals has no indoor toilets; a 950-bed hospital gets an average of one or two hypodermic needles a day. Half the schools have no central heating, running water, or indoor toilets. Soviet citizens have a worse diet than did Russians under Czar Nicholas II in 1913. Then, Russia was the world's largest food exporter. Now, it is the largest importer. 90

Zuckerman also points out that "The leading Soviet economists are predicting famine, catastrophe, and destabilization of the entire system within a year....One day this year the daily shipment of bread failed to come into Leningrad, a condition not experienced since the German siege [World War II]." 91 This corroborates what one defense expert told us, "As I understand it the system has internally broken down to the point where it's not that they don't have food or clothes or things like that, they just can't get things distributed. Their transportation system is kaput." 92 If this is correct, no amount of economic aid will solve the Soviet economic problems. Their only solution will be a military solution.

A Surprise Attack

Many people, even people who know about Soviet deception, don't think the Soviets will start a nuclear war. They think that any Communist takeover would come about by a gradual expansion of the Soviet sphere of influence. Yet the continued Soviet commitment to a large ICBM force argues against that. The ICBMs the Soviets are building are first-strike weapons. If they were planning to take over gradually with conventional forces, why would they have deployed over 1,400 new ICBM warheads in 1988 when they already had over 6,400? Warheads aren't cheap.

It only makes sense when considered in light of Golitsyn's revelations on deception and General Jan Sejna's revelations on Soviet strategy. Sejna, the highest-ranking military official ever to defect from the Soviet bloc, was head of> the Czechoslovakian Defense Council, which is the chief military decision-making body in the country. He says that since 1963 Soviet military strategy has been to launch a surprise nuclear attack on the United States. Western Europe would either surrender or be overrun by conventional, chemical and biological forces. 93

Soviet strategic doctrine stresses surprise, preemptive first-strike attacks, deception and the need to attack military targets. Based on continued Soviet military buildup, particularly of highly accurate ICBMs, which are designed to destroy military targets, we must conclude that a Soviet first-strike attack on the United States is a very real possibility.

As I've stated before, the Soviets think they can win a nuclear war for three reasons:

1. In a surprise first strike they can destroy almost two-thirds of our warheads.
2. They are rapidly completing a defense network to stop the rest of our warheads from hitting them. 94
3. They have civil defense for their leadership and most of their urban population. 95

The Soviet commitment to defense against nuclear weapons underscores their commitment to a first strike and shows that they don't believe in the strategy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) and don't intend to abide by it. Why should defenses be viewed as evidence of a first-strike intent? Under MAD, neither side should have defenses against nuclear weapons because nuclear war is best deterred by each side's capability of inflicting unacceptable damage on the other.

If one side builds defenses against nuclear weapons while the other has none, it is destabilizing because the side with defenses has an incentive to attack. Once the Soviets have a defense system, they will have a first-strike capability. And given the magnitude of Soviet deception, we may never know when they have an adequate defense against nuclear weapons. But we do know that in the last two decades they have devoted half of their strategic forces budget to defenses. 96

Furthermore, they have been breaking out of the ABM Treaty for years by deploying a dual-capable air defense system that can shoot down ballistic missile warheads as well as defend against bombers. The Soviet Union has deployed more than 9,000 strategic surface-to-air missile (SAM) launchers; the United States, zero. 97 While it is unclear how many of these SAMs are ABM-capable, we do know that at least the SA-10 and SA-12 are capable of destroying some types of incoming nuclear warheads as well as cruise missiles. 98

The Soviets have deployed an estimated 2,400 SA-10 launchers throughout the Soviet Union, each of which can fire four missiles. They recently increased the power to their air defense radars, making each SA-10 launcher capable of defending 310 square miles. 99 (Ten of these mobile, nuclear-tipped missiles have recently been deployed for the first time in Bulgaria and 10 in East Germany, according to the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency. 100 If the Soviets were really worried about East Germany breaking away and pursuing its own military agenda, why would they deploy such important, modern missiles in an "unstable" nation?)

A powerful nationwide radar network is essential to a nationwide ABM defense. The Soviets have 7,000 strategic air defense radars while the U.S. has 118. 101 They have 9 large phased-array radars, including the one at Krasnoyarsk, which blanket the most populated areas of Russia. Even if they dismantle Krasnoyarsk, it won't make much difference unless they get rid of the other radars as well. In addition, some reports indicate that they are mass-producing certain ABMs and ABM radars and internetting them with their large phased array radars. 102

Let's look at the prospect of a surprise attack. The United States military does not accept the possibility. As James P. Konzak writes, "They believe, almost as an act of faith, that if an attack ever comes, it will be preceded by days or weeks of warning in the course of some sort of geopolitical crisis." 103 Given Soviet strategy, the very fact that our generals don't believe in surprise attack and don't plan for it makes it a virtual certainty that it will happen. The United States believes it will have at least several hours' warning of a nuclear attack during which bombers could be loaded and alerted and submarines in port could be put to sea. This is folly for four reasons:

1. Surprise attack is an integral part of Soviet strategy. Soviet military strategy is characterized by preemptive, surprise attacks, often in peacetime and often accompanied by deception (such as military exercises or ongoing negotiations) to disguise their activities.

2. The United States has a history of being surprised because it is unwilling to believe the warning signals. For example, America was unwilling to accept and act on available data that indicated a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. As a result, they achieved complete surprise, catching the bulk of the U.S. Pacific Fleet in harbor.

3. The Soviets have a big incentive to pull off a surprise attack. In a surprise attack they could destroy about 7,500 U.S.warheads by catching our ICBMs and bombers on the ground and our submarines in port. In an attack following a period of generated alert, they could only destroy about 3,700 warheads since more of our submarines would be at sea and decision makers would be ready to launch our ICBMs and bombers on warning. 104 Thus the Soviet incentive for surprise attack is about 3,800 warheads. In other words, in a surprise attack they can destroy twice as many warheads as if they warn us ahead of time.

The prevailing notion in our military today is that we will have adequate warning to prepare for a Soviet attack. Our military planners are deceived because they want to be deceived. They want to believe they will have warning. They want to believe there will be no surprise attack. They want to believe there will be no war at all. And so they are deceived, which leads to the final reason:

4. The United States is not prepared for a surprise attack. Our military leaders think that a surprise attack would be too complicated for the Soviets to carry out and too difficult for them to conceal. General Sejna says the Soviets plan a simultaneous surprise nuclear attack on the United States and conventional invasion of Europe. Yet some U.S. intelligence experts recently concluded that we are likely to have a month or more of warning of a conventional attack in Europe--far more than previously thought. The New York Times reported that the conclusion is based on an assumption that "the increased openness of Soviet society, Soviet cuts in conventional arms and improved American capabilities for intelligence gathering would now give the Pentagon about a month to three months of warning of a full-scale Soviet attack on Europe." 105

This would involve monitoring such things as troop movements. However, defense expert William Van Cleave says, "The Soviets probably would forego attack preparations that might improve their military strength if those preparations would also deny them the element of surprise. At the very least, the Soviets should be expected to conceal or obscure such preparations by a combination of political and military deception." 106

In conclusion, given what we know about Soviet deception and the purpose of false liberalization in Eastern Europe, we have to keep our eyes on the guns. And those guns are still pointed in our direction, something we should remember at the negotiating table. We should take our own lesson from Sun Tzu: "When the enemy's envoys speak in humble terms, but he continues his preparations, he will advance." 107

Keepers of the Flame and Lightbearers of the world:
I have warned you through prophecy.
I have warned you through astrology.
I have warned you through Mother Mary's predictions at Fátima and Medjugorje.
I have warned you through the words of Jesus recorded in the Gospels and the Book of Revelation.
I have warned you through Saint Germain's interpretations of Nostradamus.
I have warned you in the dictations of the Ascended Masters.
And I have warned you with the cold, hard facts of our research.
If you do not heed the warning, God pity you, God pity us and God pity the future of Saint Germain's golden age of Aquarius on planet earth.


Based on a lecture by Elizabeth Clare Prophet delivered on Monday, January 4, 1988, at the Royal Teton Ranch, Montana, updated for print as this week’s Pearl. For Part 1, see 1988 Pearls of Wisdom, vol. 31 no. 9, pp. 95-116.

Copyright © 1981, 2001 The Summit Lighthouse. All rights reserved.