Active measures: Soviet disinformation from the inside

Where the name comes from

In its report of August 1987 (Publication 9627), the US Department of State explained that the term is a literal translation of the Russian aktivnyye meropriyatiya and denotes covert or deceptive operations conducted in support of Soviet foreign policy. In short: “Deception is the essence of active measures” (see deception).¹

The report distinguished them from propaganda. Propaganda is information that reflects the perspective of a government – in this case the Soviet one – and does not hide its sender. Active measures are deceptive operations that attempt to manipulate the opinions or actions of individuals, publics or governments. The two were closely integrated: propaganda was often the vehicle for active measures.¹

Writing in the CIA journal Studies in Intelligence (2009), Thomas Boghardt explains that disinformation (dezinformatsiya) in this vocabulary meant false or misleading information leaked into foreign media. It was thus one of the tools, not a synonym for the whole.²

Who was in charge

According to the State Department, the Politburo provided overall direction. The International Department of the CPSU Central Committee played a particularly important role in planning, coordinating and guiding active measures, and the Propaganda Department also had an implementing role. Covertly implemented active measures were the responsibility of Service A of the KGB First Chief Directorate, its foreign intelligence arm.¹

Boghardt states that by 1985 Service A reportedly had about 80 officers at the foreign intelligence headquarters in Yasenevo and 30–40 at the offices of the Novosti agency. East Germany’s Stasi had its own disinformation unit, Department X of the foreign intelligence directorate (HVA), from the early 1960s; Colonel Rolf Wagenbreth headed it throughout its history.²

The toolkit: from forgery to front organisation

The 1987 report describes disinformation as a deliberate attempt to deceive public or governmental opinion, oral or written. Forgeries were increasingly used for this: authentic letterheads and accurate signatures were combined with fake text. A typical theme was that the United States was establishing a military presence abroad in order to destabilise other nations; as an example of the genre the report cites a forgery accusing the United States of plotting to assassinate a foreign leader.¹

Among the documents that, according to the report, had surfaced since the summer of 1986 were a purported National Security Council policy paper, a “Weinberger Report”, a State Department cable and a memorandum from President Reagan. Even an exposed forgery could live on: its content would be repeated by Novosti, an official propaganda and information organ.¹

The second pillar was front organisations. The International Department coordinated, among others, the World Peace Council and the World Federation of Trade Unions. In the United States, the report stated, front groups were the primary tool of active measures.¹

The third was agents of influence: people in government, politics, the press, business, labour or academia who concealed their KGB connection and tried to turn their influence into gains for the USSR. The report adds that the Soviets achieved similar results through unwitting contacts.¹

The case of India: the Patriot newspaper

The State Department described the Indian daily Patriot as a pro-Soviet newspaper set up by the KGB in 1962 as a vehicle for spreading disinformation.¹

Boghardt illustrates the scale of activity in that country with Vasili Mitrokhin’s account: according to the KGB archivist, in 1975 alone the KGB planted 5,510 stories in the Indian media and controlled ten Indian newspapers and one news agency.²

The most notorious operation: AIDS from the Pentagon

The campaign that East German intelligence ran under the codename INFEKTION is covered in our article on disinformation and FIMI. According to Boghardt, it began on 17 July 1983 with an anonymous letter in the Patriot claiming that AIDS was the result of US biological weapons experiments. The letter went unnoticed; on 30 October 1985 Literaturnaya Gazeta took up the theme, citing the Patriot. By the end of 1987 the story had circulated in the media of 80 countries, in more than 200 periodicals in 25 languages.²

The 1987 State Department report noted that the claim was not credible even to the top Soviet scientist working on the AIDS virus, Dr Viktor Zhdanov. According to Boghardt, in October 1987 Secretary of State George Shultz confronted Gorbachev over the false AIDS stories; soon afterwards the Soviet Academy of Sciences, in Izvestia, disavowed the claim that the virus had been artificially created. Moscow did not publicly acknowledge authorship at the time; in 1992 the KGB’s role was confirmed by the head of the SVR, Yevgeny Primakov.^1,2

How the West responded

In 1981 an interagency Active Measures Working Group was set up, chaired by the State Department. According to Boghardt, it monitored Soviet campaigns, contacted editors and confronted Soviet officials with the evidence.²

The 1987 report updated a 1986 document prepared in response to legislation passed in 1985. Its purpose was to reveal and describe Soviet influence activities that are deceptive and illegitimate. On the AIDS campaign, Boghardt writes, Herbert Romerstein and Todd Leventhal played key roles on the American side.^1,2

Did Gorbachev change anything? The 1987 report recorded important changes in the International Department and a more accommodating image sought by the Soviet Peace Committee, but stated that the CPSU doctrine guiding its activities had not changed. Boghardt writes that Gorbachev generally supported the KGB’s active measures agenda and did not interfere with it.^1,2

The Mitrokhin archive

Much of what we know today comes from one man’s notes. From 1972 to 1984 Vasili Mitrokhin was a senior archivist in the KGB’s foreign intelligence archive, and from 1972 to 1982 he oversaw the move of the files from the Lubyanka to the new headquarters at Yasenevo. He made handwritten notes from the files and took them out of the building every evening – first in his shoes, later in his jacket pockets – and at weekends buried them at the family dacha outside Moscow.³

In 1992 the British SIS brought him, his family and his archive to the United Kingdom (see defector and exfiltration). On 7 July 2014 the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge opened his edited Russian-language versions of the notes; the original manuscripts remain closed. The only historian given access to the archive was Christopher Andrew, co-author of two books with Mitrokhin.³

In a House of Lords written answer of 13 June 2000, on the publication of the report of Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), the British government stated that the authenticity of Mitrokhin’s information had been proved beyond doubt.⁴

What remains

The language has changed: EU and NATO documents now speak of disinformation and FIMI rather than active measures. Yet the techniques described in the 1987 report – forged documents, planted sources, front organisations – illustrate well what today’s definitions are about: deliberate, coordinated manipulation with a concealed sender (see black propaganda).^1,5,6