The World Was Going Our Way (15 page)
Read The World Was Going Our Way Online
Authors: Christopher Andrew
Tags: #Biographies & Memoirs, #True Accounts, #Espionage, #History, #Europe, #Ireland, #Military, #Intelligence & Espionage, #Modern (16th-21st Centuries), #20th Century, #Russia, #World
Mosolov and Figueres agreed on regular secret meetings to be arranged through the intermediary of a confidant of the President. Before each meeting, the confidant would meet Mosolov at a pre-arranged rendezvous in San José, then drive him in his own car to see Figueres.
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Some of Mosolov’s reports on these meetings were considered sufficiently important by the Centre to be passed on to the Politburo. The KGB’s motives in doing so probably had less to do with the intrinsic importance of the reports’ contents than with the further evidence they provided of the high level of its foreign contacts. As in Peru and Bolivia, the Centre wished to demonstrate to the Soviet leadership that in a continent formerly dominated by American imperialism, it now had direct access even to presidents and juntas. It claimed, probably with some exaggeration, that the KGB was able ‘to exert useful influence’ over Figueres.
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Some of Mosolov’s reports on these meetings were considered sufficiently important by the Centre to be passed on to the Politburo. The KGB’s motives in doing so probably had less to do with the intrinsic importance of the reports’ contents than with the further evidence they provided of the high level of its foreign contacts. As in Peru and Bolivia, the Centre wished to demonstrate to the Soviet leadership that in a continent formerly dominated by American imperialism, it now had direct access even to presidents and juntas. It claimed, probably with some exaggeration, that the KGB was able ‘to exert useful influence’ over Figueres.
49
As well as providing confidential reports on other countries in Central America and the Caribbean, Figueres discussed his own political future with the KGB residency, probably in the hope of obtaining further Soviet financial support. He told Mosolov that he intended to stay in control of his political party and influence government decisions even after he ceased to be president in 1974. ‘In order to do this’, Mosolov reported, ‘he has acquired a radio station and television channel, and is preparing to publish his own newspaper.’ All were regarded by the KGB as useful vehicles for active measures.
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The Soviet ambassador in San José, Vladimir Nikolayevich Kazimirov, like his colleagues in a number of other capitals, deeply resented the fact that the resident’s political contacts were superior to his own. While on leave in Moscow in August 1973, he demanded a meeting with Andropov and complained that Mosolov did not even bother to inform him about his contacts with Figueres. On one occasion he had called on the President, only to discover that Mosolov had met him an hour earlier. Kazimirov claimed that American agents in Costa Rica were seeking to use the President’s contacts with the KGB to compromise him.
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The ambassador’s objections appear to have had little effect. KGB meetings with, and subsidies to, Figueres continued. The Centre informed Brezhnev in January 1974: ‘In view of the fact that Figueres has agreed to publish materials advantageous to the KGB, he has been given 10,000 US dollars under the guise of stock purchases in his newspaper. When he accepted this money, Figueres stated that he greatly appreciated Soviet support.’
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The ambassador’s objections appear to have had little effect. KGB meetings with, and subsidies to, Figueres continued. The Centre informed Brezhnev in January 1974: ‘In view of the fact that Figueres has agreed to publish materials advantageous to the KGB, he has been given 10,000 US dollars under the guise of stock purchases in his newspaper. When he accepted this money, Figueres stated that he greatly appreciated Soviet support.’
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Relations with Figueres, however, gradually cooled. In 1976 Manuel Piñeiro, head of the Cuban Departamento de América (DA), told a senior KGB officer that Figueres was ‘an arrant demagogue’, who kept a private armoury of weapons including machine guns and bazookas at his villa outside San José.
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A KGB assessment concluded that Figueres’s ‘views and actions’ were inconsistent.
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A KGB assessment concluded that Figueres’s ‘views and actions’ were inconsistent.
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By far the most important of the KGB’s confidential contacts in South America was Salvador Allende Gossens (codenamed LEADER by the KGB),
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whose election as President of Chile in 1970 was hailed by a Moscow commentator as ‘second only to the victory of the Cuban Revolution in the magnitude of its significance as a revolutionary blow to the imperialist system in Latin America’. Allende was the first Marxist anywhere in the world to win power through the ballot box. His victory in Chile, following the emergence of ‘progressive’ military governments in Peru and Bolivia, was cited by
Pravda
and other Soviet official organs as proof of ‘the multiplicity of forms within the framework of which Latin America is paving its way to true independence’.
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whose election as President of Chile in 1970 was hailed by a Moscow commentator as ‘second only to the victory of the Cuban Revolution in the magnitude of its significance as a revolutionary blow to the imperialist system in Latin America’. Allende was the first Marxist anywhere in the world to win power through the ballot box. His victory in Chile, following the emergence of ‘progressive’ military governments in Peru and Bolivia, was cited by
Pravda
and other Soviet official organs as proof of ‘the multiplicity of forms within the framework of which Latin America is paving its way to true independence’.
56
Allende had first attracted KGB attention in the early 1950s when, as leader of the Chilean Socialist Party (Partido Socialista), he had formed an alliance with the then banned Communist Party. In 1952 he stood with its support at the presidential election but won only 6 per cent of the vote. Though there was as yet no KGB residency in Chile, a Line PR (political intelligence) officer, Svyatoslav Fyodorovich Kuznetsov (codenamed LEONID), probably operating under cover as a Novosti correspondent, made the first direct contact with Allende in the following year .
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At the presidential election of 1958, standing as the candidate of a left-wing alliance, the Frente de Acción Popular (FRAP), Allende was beaten into second place by only 35,000 votes. What Allende’s KGB file describes as ‘systematic contact’ with him began after the establishment in 1961 of a Soviet trade mission in Chile, which provided cover for a KGB presence. Allende is reported to have ‘stated his willingness to co-operate on a confidential basis and provide any necessary assistance, since he considered himself a friend of the Soviet Union. He willingly shared political information . . .’ Though he became a KGB ‘confidential contact’, however, he was never classed as an agent. The KGB claimed some of the credit for Allende’s part in the campaign which led to the establishment of Soviet-Chilean diplomatic relations in 1964.
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The new Soviet embassy in Santiago contained the first KGB legal residency on Chilean soil.
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At the presidential election of 1958, standing as the candidate of a left-wing alliance, the Frente de Acción Popular (FRAP), Allende was beaten into second place by only 35,000 votes. What Allende’s KGB file describes as ‘systematic contact’ with him began after the establishment in 1961 of a Soviet trade mission in Chile, which provided cover for a KGB presence. Allende is reported to have ‘stated his willingness to co-operate on a confidential basis and provide any necessary assistance, since he considered himself a friend of the Soviet Union. He willingly shared political information . . .’ Though he became a KGB ‘confidential contact’, however, he was never classed as an agent. The KGB claimed some of the credit for Allende’s part in the campaign which led to the establishment of Soviet-Chilean diplomatic relations in 1964.
58
The new Soviet embassy in Santiago contained the first KGB legal residency on Chilean soil.
59
At the 1964 presidential election, standing once again as the candidate of the FRAP alliance, Allende was further from victory than six years earlier, being soundly beaten by a strong centrist candidate in what became virtually a two-horse race. But, with 39 per cent of the vote, he did well enough to show that, if the anti-Marxist vote were to be divided at the next election, he would stand a good chance of victory.
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The glaring social injustices of a country in which half the population lived in shanty towns or rural poverty also seemed to favour the electoral prospects of the left. The Archbishop of Santiago told the British ambassador that, ‘considering the appalling conditions which the mass of the population had to put up with, it was not surprising that there were many Communists in Chile; what was . . . surprising was that the poorer classes were not Communist to a man.’ The high birth-rate and level of immigration added to Chile’s social tensions. During the 1960s the population grew by nearly a third.
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The glaring social injustices of a country in which half the population lived in shanty towns or rural poverty also seemed to favour the electoral prospects of the left. The Archbishop of Santiago told the British ambassador that, ‘considering the appalling conditions which the mass of the population had to put up with, it was not surprising that there were many Communists in Chile; what was . . . surprising was that the poorer classes were not Communist to a man.’ The high birth-rate and level of immigration added to Chile’s social tensions. During the 1960s the population grew by nearly a third.
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Though recognizing the advantages of electoral alliance with Allende, the leadership of the Chilean Communist Party made clear to the KGB that it regarded him as both ‘a demagogue’ and ‘a weak and inconsistent politician’ with Maoist sympathies:
His characteristic traits were arrogance, vanity, desire for glorification and a longing to be in the spotlight at any price. He was easily influenced by stronger and more determined personalities. He was also inconsistent in his attitude to the Communist Party. LEADER explained his attitude to the Communist Party by referring to his position as leader of the Socialist Party to which, as a party member, he was bound to be loyal. He had visited China a number of times and ranked Mao Zedong on the same level as Marx, Engels and Lenin.
The Santiago residency also reported that Chilean Communists were concerned by Allende’s close connections with Freemasonry. His paternal grandfather had been Serene Grand Master of the Chilean Masonic Order, and Allende himself had been a Mason since before the Second World War. His Masonic lodge, the Communists complained to the KGB, had ‘deep roots among the lower and middle bourgeoisie’.
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Allende was unlike any existing stereotype of a Marxist leader. During his visits to Havana in the 1960s, he had been privately mocked by Castro’s entourage for his aristocratic tastes: fine wines, expensive objets d’art, well-cut suits and elegantly dressed women. Allende was also a womanizer. The Nobel laureate in literature, Gabriel García Márquez, described him as ‘a gallant with a touch of the old school about him, perfumed notes and furtive rendezvous’. Despite the private mockery which they aroused in Allende’s Communist allies, however, his bourgeois appearance and expensive lifestyle were electoral assets, reassuring middle-class voters that their lives would continue normally under an Allende presidency. As even some of Allende’s opponents acknowledged, he also had enormous personal charm. Nathaniel Davis, who became US ambassador in Santiago in 1971, was struck by his ‘extraordinary and appealing human qualities . . . He had the social and socializing instincts of a long-time, top-drawer political personality.’
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Allende was unlike any existing stereotype of a Marxist leader. During his visits to Havana in the 1960s, he had been privately mocked by Castro’s entourage for his aristocratic tastes: fine wines, expensive objets d’art, well-cut suits and elegantly dressed women. Allende was also a womanizer. The Nobel laureate in literature, Gabriel García Márquez, described him as ‘a gallant with a touch of the old school about him, perfumed notes and furtive rendezvous’. Despite the private mockery which they aroused in Allende’s Communist allies, however, his bourgeois appearance and expensive lifestyle were electoral assets, reassuring middle-class voters that their lives would continue normally under an Allende presidency. As even some of Allende’s opponents acknowledged, he also had enormous personal charm. Nathaniel Davis, who became US ambassador in Santiago in 1971, was struck by his ‘extraordinary and appealing human qualities . . . He had the social and socializing instincts of a long-time, top-drawer political personality.’
63
In 1970 Allende stood again for the presidency as the candidate of an enlarged left-wing coalition: the Unidad Popular (UP) of the Communist, Socialist and Radical parties (and three smaller left-wing groups - the API, MAPU and SDP). His chances of success were strengthened by the division of the anti-Marxist vote between rival Christian Democrat and National Party candidates. Allende’s original KGB case officer, Svyatoslav Kuznetsov, then serving in the Mexico City residency, was sent to Chile to maintain contact with him throughout the election campaign and co-ordinate covert operations designed to ensure his success.
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Both the CIA, acting on instructions from the White House and the 40 Committee (which oversaw US covert action), and the KGB spent substantial amounts of money in an attempt to influence the outcome of the election. Though the CIA spent $425,000 trying to ensure Allende’s defeat,
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its money was targeted far less effectively than that of the KGB. The 40 Committee approved a covert propaganda campaign ‘to alert Chileans to the dangers of Allende and a Marxist government’ but forbade support for either of the candidates opposing Allende. The Director of Central Intelligence, Richard Helms, was sceptical of the effectiveness of a CIA operation based on the assumption that it was possible to ‘beat somebody with nobody’.
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KGB money, by contrast, was precisely targeted. Allende made a personal appeal, probably via Kuznetsov, for Soviet funds.
67
Like other ‘fraternal’ parties around the world, the Chilean Communists received annual subsidies from Moscow, secretly transmitted to them by the KGB. Throughout the 1960s they were paid more than any other Communist Party in Latin America. Their original allocation for 1970 was $400,000.
68
However, doubtless on KGB advice, the Politburo made an additional allocation to the Party on 27 July to assist its role in the election campaign. It also approved a personal subsidy of $50,000 to be handed directly to Allende.
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The Chilean Communist Party provided Allende with an additional $100,000 from its own funds.
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The KGB also gave $18,000 to a left-wing Senator to persuade him not to stand as a presidential candidate and to remain within the Unidad Popular coalition. Given the closeness of the result, even the small vote which he might have attracted could have tipped the balance against Allende. That, at least, was the view of the KGB.
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its money was targeted far less effectively than that of the KGB. The 40 Committee approved a covert propaganda campaign ‘to alert Chileans to the dangers of Allende and a Marxist government’ but forbade support for either of the candidates opposing Allende. The Director of Central Intelligence, Richard Helms, was sceptical of the effectiveness of a CIA operation based on the assumption that it was possible to ‘beat somebody with nobody’.
66
KGB money, by contrast, was precisely targeted. Allende made a personal appeal, probably via Kuznetsov, for Soviet funds.
67
Like other ‘fraternal’ parties around the world, the Chilean Communists received annual subsidies from Moscow, secretly transmitted to them by the KGB. Throughout the 1960s they were paid more than any other Communist Party in Latin America. Their original allocation for 1970 was $400,000.
68
However, doubtless on KGB advice, the Politburo made an additional allocation to the Party on 27 July to assist its role in the election campaign. It also approved a personal subsidy of $50,000 to be handed directly to Allende.
69
The Chilean Communist Party provided Allende with an additional $100,000 from its own funds.
70
The KGB also gave $18,000 to a left-wing Senator to persuade him not to stand as a presidential candidate and to remain within the Unidad Popular coalition. Given the closeness of the result, even the small vote which he might have attracted could have tipped the balance against Allende. That, at least, was the view of the KGB.
71
On 4 September 1970 Allende won the presidential election with 36.3 per cent of the vote; his Nationalist and Christian Democrat opponents gained, respectively, 35 and 27.8 per cent. In its report to the Central Committee, the KGB claimed some of the credit for Allende’s victory.
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Though it doubtless did not underestimate the importance of its role, the closeness of the result suggests that the KGB may indeed have played a significant part in preventing Allende being narrowly beaten into second place. Allende won by only 39,000 votes out of a total of the 3 million cast. Given the failure of any candidate to gain 50 per cent of the vote, the election of the President passed to a joint session of the two houses of the Chilean Congress on 24 October. Though precedent dictated that Allende would be elected, Andropov remained anxious about the outcome. He reported to the Central Committee on 23 September:
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Though it doubtless did not underestimate the importance of its role, the closeness of the result suggests that the KGB may indeed have played a significant part in preventing Allende being narrowly beaten into second place. Allende won by only 39,000 votes out of a total of the 3 million cast. Given the failure of any candidate to gain 50 per cent of the vote, the election of the President passed to a joint session of the two houses of the Chilean Congress on 24 October. Though precedent dictated that Allende would be elected, Andropov remained anxious about the outcome. He reported to the Central Committee on 23 September:
As the question of the election of the President will finally be decided by a vote in Congress on 24 October, Allende is still faced with a determined struggle with his political opponents, and substantial material resources may still be required for this purpose. With the aim of strengthening confidential relations with Allende and creating conditions for continuing cooperation with him in the future, it would be expedient to give him material assistance amounting to 30,000 dollars if the need arises.
At the same time, the Committee of State Security [KGB] will carry out measures designed to promote the consolidation of Allende’s victory and his election to the post of President of the country. The International Department of the CPSU Central Committee (Comrade V. V. Zagladin) supports this proposal.
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The KGB’s anxiety about parliamentary confirmation of Allende’s electoral victory was understandable. The result of the presidential election left President Richard Nixon, according to his National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, ‘beside himself’ with rage. Having berated the Democrats for over a decade for allowing Cuba to go Communist, Nixon now faced the prospect as a Republican President of seeing Chile follow suit. There was, he angrily told Kissinger and the DCI, Richard Helms, ‘only a one in ten chance, perhaps’ of preventing Allende’s confirmation, but the attempt must be made in order to ‘save Chile’ from Communism. The CIA drew up a two-track plan. Track I was to find some method of persuading the Chilean Congress not to vote Allende into office. Track II was to engineer a military coup.
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Both failed. On 24 October Allende was formally elected President by vote of the Chilean Congress.
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Both failed. On 24 October Allende was formally elected President by vote of the Chilean Congress.
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