The KGB: Eyes of the Kremlin

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O'Malley claimed that KGB officers have recently instructed their contacts "to devote serious attention to the antiwar movement in the United States." He pointed out that a Communist-front group, the U.S. Peace Council, was among the organizers of last June's huge peace protest in New York City, and reportedly tried to direct criticism away from the Soviet Union. One Soviet diplomat posted in Washington, who is involved in active-measures work, frequently speaks at disarmament meetings across the country. But so far, according to O'Malley, the KGB has not manipulated the American movement "significantly."

Moscow has also tried to exploit the groundswell of popular feeling against nuclear weapons in Western Europe for its own ends. After mass demonstrations were held in West Germany in 1981, an official investigation turned up circumstantial evidence but no absolute proof of KGB involvement. It is widely rumored, however, that money for peace groups has come from East Germany and that leaflets and handbills may even have been printed in the Soviet Union. West Germany's more than 48,000-member Communist Party has had an influence on the peace movement disproportionate to its size. During a meeting held in Bad Godesberg last April to plan a protest rally scheduled to coincide with President Reagan's visit to Bonn two months later, leaders of the Protestant and environmental groups that had been at the forefront of the peace movement were repeatedly shouted down by an audience packed with Communists and fellow-travelers.

Counterespionage agents have turned up more compelling evidence of the KGB role in the Soviet peace offensive. For several years, Danish intelligence monitored numerous secret meetings between Arne Petersen, a Danish peace activist and writer, and three KGB agents. According to the Danish Ministry of Justice, the KGB promised to help finance advertisements officially sponsored by Petersen and signed by prominent Danish artists who wanted Scandinavia to be declared a nuclear-free zone. In November 1981, Norway expelled a suspected KGB agent who had offered bribes to Norwegians to get them to write letters to newspapers denouncing the deployment of new NATO missiles.

Sometimes the Kremlin tries to influence public opinion by outright deception. In an attempt to damage U.S.-Egyptian relations and scuttle Carter Administration Middle East peace efforts in the late 1970s, the KGB circulated a number of ingenious forgeries, some on U.S. State Department stationery, suggesting that U.S. officials had serious doubts about Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. One phony dispatch from the U.S. embassy in Tehran spelled out Iranian-Saudi plans to overthrow Sadat with American complicity. Soviet agents also distributed inflammatory "letters" from U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Hermann Eilts and a fictitious press interview in which then Vice President Walter Mondale expressed concern about Sadat's leadership.

The KGB can count on considerable help from sister security organizations in the East bloc. After World War II, the KGB organized intelligence networks in all the satellites. KGB liaison officers are still posted in the security services of each Warsaw Pact nation. Some intelligence experts believe that the KGB may have taken direct control of the Cuban security apparatus.

The satellite services all have a