One of the recurring sub-themes of the literature on intelligence systems in the West in the past decade has been the status of the claims made by KGB defector Golitsyn. Until recently all the book-reading public knew about Golitsyn was (a) that he has exposed some (relatively minor) Soviet operations; (b) made a series of quite bizarre sounding claims to the effect that the divisions within the Communist bloc were a device to mislead the capitalist states in the West; and (c) that the KGB had achieved high-level penetration of all the West’s intelligence services.
Golitsyn’s views were apparently accepted by some intelligence officers in the West – notably James Angleton, until 1974 head of CIA’s Counter Intelligence division – and mole hunting became the order of the day. In America, for example, this was reflected by Edward Epstein (one of Angleton’s most devoted followers) in his book Legend; in this country via the likes of MI5 channels like Chapman Pincher, the ‘Fourth Man’ episode, and the so-called Hollis affair.
The book itself is appalling, turgid, repetitive, barely documented and, most of all, a lot of bloody nonsense. I can’t claim to have read it all (to do that I would need a large bribe), and for any one who wants an accurate sample of it, the extracts published in the Sunday Times (11th and 18th March 1984) are entirely representative of the larger work.
Golitsyn offers a gigantic conspiracy theory the like of which is rarely found outside the fantasies of the loony right-wing (or parodies of that, such as Wilson/Shea’s spoof Illuminatus trilogy). That was written through a series of stupendous giggling fits: Golitsyn means it, or, at any rate, pretends to mean it.
Golitsyn’s thesis is simple. The Soviet Union’s ruling elite are totally clever, in control, and totally devious. Nothing is what it seems. Anti-party group are really disguised party group. The ‘Prague Spring’ was organised by the Soviet party: the Sino-Soviet, Yugoslav-Soviet, Albania-Soviet, Rumanian-Soviet splits are all phoneys, part of some long-range disinformation strategy to con the West. And so on. As soon as you get Golitsyn ‘s drift the book becomes immensely wearisome and predictable. Here’s a beautiful example of his ‘methodology’ (his word), from the Sunday Times extract 11th March 1984.
Solidarity, Golitsyn says, “while carefully controlled by the Government, had to appear to have been set up from below. The origins of the Solidarity in the shipyard bearing Lenin’s name, the singing of the Internationale, the use of the old slogan ‘workers of the world unite’ by Solidarity members, are all consistent with concealed Party guidance of the organisation.”
This ‘technique’ is applied to everything. The main reason he appears to give for his disbelief in the reality of the ‘Prague Spring’ is that Dubcek and co. didn’t go far enough in ridding themselves of the old guard. The fact that they left many of them in place isn’t indicative of any anxiety to forestall a Soviet invasion, but, for Golitsyn, a sure sign that the Party, the old guard, are still in control. And so on. The European Communist Parties used to show their loyalty to the Soviet Union by their willingness to accept constantly changing ‘lines’ issued from the Kremlin. Golitsyn has gone one better: he is following the development of ‘lines’ that only he can perceive.
The odd thing about all this is that it rarely seems to have dawned on our friends in Counter Intelligence that Golitsyn might have been sent from the Soviet Union precisely to spread these ridiculous fantasies of the omnipotence of the Soviet Union in general, and the KGB in particular, announce the certain existence of KGB ‘moles’ in all the West’s intelligence services, and set everybody off tearing themselves into bits looking for that elusive Soviet ‘mole’.
That this has been Golitsyn’s main achievement is demonstrable; that it was the intention is unproven.
In a recent essay, The Shadow of The Mole (in Harper’s (US) October 1983), Ron Rosenbaum presents an elegant version of the thesis of Golitsyn as plant. Or, more accurately, he presents Golitsyn as part of an older, more complex game designed to mess up James Angleton’s head. Boiled down, Rosenbaum suggests that way back in the 1950s, Philby was the sharp end of a plan to confirm and exacerbate Angleton’s paranoia about the omnipotence of the KGB, a plan whose climax was exposing Angleton’s already powerful paranoid tendencies to Golitsyn – who confirmed every one of them, in spades.
(This account does Rosenbaum little justice. His essay is extremely clever and runs through all the possible permutations of the Philby/Angleton relationship: Philby as KGB, pretending to be MI6; Philby as MI6 pretending to be KGB while pretending to be MI6; Angleton as KGB; and so on. The whole ‘wilderness of mirrors’ is laid out in acute detail.)
What Rosenbaum singularly fails to point out – what almost everyone fails to point out – is that none of this really matters a jot. The intelligence ‘game’ is just that, a game. If those authors close to the US/UK intelligence services are to be believed, the Angleton/Golitsyn/mole hunt episode has paralysed chunks of British and US intelligence for much of the past 20 years. Yet what has happened? The real world seems to have gone on without them. During this period, say 1960-1975 when (apparently) the West’s counter intelligence services were penetrated by the KGB, Western Europe and the US, far from being ‘Finlandized’ or GDR-ized, far from drifting slowly into the Soviet orbit, saw the beginning of the right-wing moves which now see Thatcher, Kohl and Reagan in power.
To this mere book-reading outsider one of the odder features of the great ‘mole hunt’ has been the contrast between the wilder stories told by Golitsyn and those of another ex Soviet bloc intelligence defector, Goleniewski.
Golitsyn defects, blows some Soviet operations, tells his new allies that they have been penetrated by the KGB, and then, as the final chapter pulls out some version of his Super-Cunning-USSR number. Most (apparently) don’t buy the latter thesis – although Angleton and some others in counter intelligence do. No matter, the rest of his claims are believed and the ‘mole hunt’ commences.
Goleniewski defects, blows some (perhaps a great many) Soviet operations, tells his listeners that the KGB has penetrated everything, and then adds (a) that Henry Kissinger is a Soviet agent and (b) he, Goliniewski, is in fact the surviving son of the last Czar of Russia, and that contrary to all reports the Russian Royal family weren’t murdered by the Bolsheviks.
This latter claim, dismissed by almost everybody, Angleton in particular, and the CIA in general, consigns Goleniewski to the outer darkness as a probable disinformation agent.
It would be interesting to know why, for on the face of it, of the two competing sets of claims it is Golitsyn’s which is the harder to swallow. Goleniewski’s claims are not that bizarre in retrospect. Kissinger was just a minor American academic on the fringes of Washington when he was identified as KGB by Goleniewski; and why not a deal between the Czar and the Bolsheviks? The Summers/Mangold book certainly makes a plausible case for it happening. (1)
The threads of this story crop up all over the place, even in staid British party politics, for Jeremy Thorpe and Peter Bessell got involved in the hunt for the Czar (and the presumed Czarist millions.) Mae Brussel, for one, learning of the Thorpe/Bessell/Scott episode, immediately jumped to the conclusion that it had something to do with the Czar thing – a delightful idea for which, alas, there is not a shred of evidence.(2)
‘The great mole hunt’ makes fascinating reading, but its real significance is not obvious. What is significant is the fact that a number of senior MI5 and CIA men could actually bring themselves to even consider Golitsyn’s thesis, telling us that they are (or were – most of them seem to have retired or been retired) a bunch of paranoid fruit-cakes. But then a group which has persuaded itself that the British left is worth surveillance and disruption will believe anything. Meanwhile, somewhere on the outskirts of Moscow, groups of Soviet government officials will be meeting to have a good laugh over Golitsyn’s book, demonstrating their dedication to the cause of ‘world communism’ with conspicuous consumption of Marlboro cigarettes, designer jeans, coke and video tapes of Michael Jackson’s Thriller – just like their US counterparts.
RR
- Anthony Summers and Tom Mangold The Hunt for The Czar (London 1976)
- Some of the ramifications of the Goleniewski case, touching the assassination of JFK, for example, are discussed in Jonathan Marshall’s ‘Notes on..’ Part 2, which will be in Lobster 6.