The World Was Going Our Way (22 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
The chief opposition to Golbery’s support for democratic reforms at home and better relations with the Soviet bloc came from military hard-liners led by General Octávio Aguiar de Medeiros, the current chief of SNI. Golbery also opposed the austerity programme of the Minister of Economy, António Delfim Neto. In August 1981 he resigned in protest at the failure to prosecute military extremists involved in bomb attacks against the political opposition. Golbery was replaced as head of Figueiredo’s civilian staff by João Leitão de Abreu, a lawyer more acceptable to military hard-liners .
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Since the Brazilian files noted by Mitrokhin end in 1981, there is no indication of whether or not the meetings arranged by Golbery between Figueiredo and a KGB officer went ahead.
77
Since the Brazilian files noted by Mitrokhin end in 1981, there is no indication of whether or not the meetings arranged by Golbery between Figueiredo and a KGB officer went ahead.
The KGB sought to compensate for the declining success of its operations against the priority targets established in 1974 by trying to make new ‘confidential contacts’ among ‘progressive’, anti-American political leaders. Among its targets in the mid-1970s was Alfonso López Michelson (codenamed MENTOR), leader of the Colombian Movimiento Revolucionario Liberal (MRL), who was elected President in 1974, declared an economic state of emergency and announced that Colombia would henceforth reject US economic assistance because ‘foreign aid breeds an unhealthy economic dependency and delays or undermines measures that should be taken for development’.
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In March 1975 the Politburo approved a KGB operation, codenamed REDUT, aimed at establishing ‘unofficial relations’ with President López.
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A senior KGB officer was despatched to Bogotá, met López on 29 May and gained his agreement to future meetings. Though Mitrokhin’s notes do not identify the officer concerned, he was almost certainly the head of the FCD Second (Latin American) Department, Vladimir Tolstikov, who also met López on subsequent occasions. As in his earlier meetings with Perón, Tolstikov identified himself during visits to Bogotá as Sergei Sergeyevich Konstantinov, a senior Latin American specialist in the Foreign Ministry, and claimed to be able to provide a direct confidential channel to the Soviet leadership. At his first meeting with Tolstikov, unaware of his KGB connection, López handed him an album of pictures of Colombia which he asked to be presented to Brezhnev with a personal message from himself - a minor diplomatic gesture which was doubtless given an enhanced significance when reported to Brezhnev.
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In March 1975 the Politburo approved a KGB operation, codenamed REDUT, aimed at establishing ‘unofficial relations’ with President López.
79
A senior KGB officer was despatched to Bogotá, met López on 29 May and gained his agreement to future meetings. Though Mitrokhin’s notes do not identify the officer concerned, he was almost certainly the head of the FCD Second (Latin American) Department, Vladimir Tolstikov, who also met López on subsequent occasions. As in his earlier meetings with Perón, Tolstikov identified himself during visits to Bogotá as Sergei Sergeyevich Konstantinov, a senior Latin American specialist in the Foreign Ministry, and claimed to be able to provide a direct confidential channel to the Soviet leadership. At his first meeting with Tolstikov, unaware of his KGB connection, López handed him an album of pictures of Colombia which he asked to be presented to Brezhnev with a personal message from himself - a minor diplomatic gesture which was doubtless given an enhanced significance when reported to Brezhnev.
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The Centre’s exaggerated hopes of establishing ‘unoffical relations’ with López derived from his distrust of the United States which, like many other Latin Americans, he blamed for the economic exploitation of Latin America. After Jimmy Carter’s election as US President in November 1976, López was reported to have dismissed him as ‘a provincial politician with a pathological stubbornness and the primitive reasoning of a person who produces and sells peanuts - an accidental figure on the American political horizon’.
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Operating under his diplomatic alias, Tolstikov established good personal relations with López, who in 1976 awarded ‘Sergei Sergeyevich Konstantinov’ the Order of San Carlos ‘for active participation in strengthening relations between the USSR and Colombia’.
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A rather more substantial achievement of the Bogotá residency was to establish covert contact at a senior level with the Colombian intelligence service, the Departamento Administrativo de Securidad (DAS) and, it claimed, to influence its intelligence assessments.
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A rather more substantial achievement of the Bogotá residency was to establish covert contact at a senior level with the Colombian intelligence service, the Departamento Administrativo de Securidad (DAS) and, it claimed, to influence its intelligence assessments.
83
Alfonso López was the first Colombian President to visit the neighbouring Republic of Panama, which had split from Colombia in 1903 after an uprising engineered by the United States. The new Republic had promptly been bullied into accepting a treaty leasing the Panama Canal Zone in perpetuity to the United States. López gave public support to the campaign for the abrogation of the treaty by the President of Panama, General Omar Torrijos Herrera (codenamed RODOM by the KGB), and agreed to Tolstikov’s request to arrange a meeting for him with Torrijos.
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In the event, the Centre selected for the meeting an even more senior officer operating under diplomatic cover, Nikolai Leonov, who over twenty years earlier had been Castro’s first KGB contact and had since risen to become head of FCD Service No. 1 (Analysis and Reports). On 28 June 1977 Torrijos sent his personal aircraft to Bogotá to fly Leonov to a former US airbase in Panama, where they continued discussions for four days. Though Leonov brought with him gifts valued by the Centre at 1,200 rubles, he initially found Torrijos in a difficult mood. A few days earlier Guatemala had broken off diplomatic relations with Panama after Torrijos had incautiously told an American journalist that he rejected Guatemalan claims to sovereignty over Belize. He told Leonov angrily, ‘I’m not going to receive any more foreigners - not even the Pope!’
84
In the event, the Centre selected for the meeting an even more senior officer operating under diplomatic cover, Nikolai Leonov, who over twenty years earlier had been Castro’s first KGB contact and had since risen to become head of FCD Service No. 1 (Analysis and Reports). On 28 June 1977 Torrijos sent his personal aircraft to Bogotá to fly Leonov to a former US airbase in Panama, where they continued discussions for four days. Though Leonov brought with him gifts valued by the Centre at 1,200 rubles, he initially found Torrijos in a difficult mood. A few days earlier Guatemala had broken off diplomatic relations with Panama after Torrijos had incautiously told an American journalist that he rejected Guatemalan claims to sovereignty over Belize. He told Leonov angrily, ‘I’m not going to receive any more foreigners - not even the Pope!’
Torrijos’s anger, however, quickly refocused on the United States. He told Leonov that he was determined to restore Panama’s sovereignty over the Canal Zone and eliminate every trace of the American presence. ‘This’, he declared, ‘is the religion of my life!’ He gave Leonov a film entitled
The Struggle of the People of Panama for the Canal
which he asked him to pass on to Brezhnev. In return Leonov presented Torrijos with a hunting rifle and a souvenir selection of vodkas, and gave his wife an enamel box. Torrijos declared his willingness to continue ‘unofficial contact’ with Soviet representatives and gave Leonov the direct phone numbers of his secretary, through whom future meetings could be arranged. He also gave orders for Leonov to be given a visa allowing him to visit Panama at any time over the next year. Leonov gave Torrijos his home telephone number in Moscow - a somewhat irregular proceeding which, as Leonov later acknowledged, disconcerted both the Centre and those members of his family who took calls from Torrijos.
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Shortly after he returned to Moscow, Torrijos phoned him, said that he wanted to check that he had returned safely and discussed with him the negotiation of a Soviet-Panamanian trade treaty.
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Torrijos believed his phone conversations with Leonov were probably intercepted by NSA, the American SIGINT agency, but - according to Leonov - looked on them as a way of putting pressure on the Carter administration, which he knew to be nervous about his Soviet contacts.
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The Struggle of the People of Panama for the Canal
which he asked him to pass on to Brezhnev. In return Leonov presented Torrijos with a hunting rifle and a souvenir selection of vodkas, and gave his wife an enamel box. Torrijos declared his willingness to continue ‘unofficial contact’ with Soviet representatives and gave Leonov the direct phone numbers of his secretary, through whom future meetings could be arranged. He also gave orders for Leonov to be given a visa allowing him to visit Panama at any time over the next year. Leonov gave Torrijos his home telephone number in Moscow - a somewhat irregular proceeding which, as Leonov later acknowledged, disconcerted both the Centre and those members of his family who took calls from Torrijos.
85
Shortly after he returned to Moscow, Torrijos phoned him, said that he wanted to check that he had returned safely and discussed with him the negotiation of a Soviet-Panamanian trade treaty.
86
Torrijos believed his phone conversations with Leonov were probably intercepted by NSA, the American SIGINT agency, but - according to Leonov - looked on them as a way of putting pressure on the Carter administration, which he knew to be nervous about his Soviet contacts.
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Despite the diplomatic cover used by Leonov, there is no doubt that Torrijos realized that he was a KGB officer.
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After reviewing the results of Leonov’s mission, the Centre decided to arrange meetings with Torrijos every six to eight months, chiefly in an attempt to influence his policy (mainly, no doubt, to the United States). A KGB officer operating under cover as a correspondent with Tass, the Soviet news agency, was given responsibility for making the detailed arrangements for these meetings. In order to flatter Torrijos another operations officer, also under Tass cover, was sent to deliver to him a personal letter from Brezhnev.
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To reinforce Torrijos’s suspicion of the Carter administration he was also given a bogus State Department document forged by Service A which discussed methods of dragging out the Panama Canal negotiations and removing Torrijos himself from power.
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After reviewing the results of Leonov’s mission, the Centre decided to arrange meetings with Torrijos every six to eight months, chiefly in an attempt to influence his policy (mainly, no doubt, to the United States). A KGB officer operating under cover as a correspondent with Tass, the Soviet news agency, was given responsibility for making the detailed arrangements for these meetings. In order to flatter Torrijos another operations officer, also under Tass cover, was sent to deliver to him a personal letter from Brezhnev.
89
To reinforce Torrijos’s suspicion of the Carter administration he was also given a bogus State Department document forged by Service A which discussed methods of dragging out the Panama Canal negotiations and removing Torrijos himself from power.
90
On 7 September 1977 Torrijos and President Jimmy Carter met in Washington to sign two treaties: a Canal Treaty transferring the Canal Zone to Panamanian control in stages to be completed by 2000 and a Neutrality Treaty providing for joint US-Panamanian defence of the Canal’s neutrality. At another meeting in Washington on 14 October, however, Carter told Torrijos that the administration had only about fifty-five of the sixty-seven Senate votes required for ratification of the treaties.
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For the next few months Torrijos had to spend much of his time acting as a jovial host in Panama to US senators whom he privately detested. According to the US diplomat Jack Vaughn:
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For the next few months Torrijos had to spend much of his time acting as a jovial host in Panama to US senators whom he privately detested. According to the US diplomat Jack Vaughn:
[Torrijos] had an uncanny ability, looking at a VIP, to know whether he was the raunchy type who wanted girls around or if he was prudish and straitlaced, or maybe he wanted a more intellectual presentation. And, where do you want to go, what can I show you? He’d take them in a helicopter for short sightseeing trips, and they’d get off and go around and meet the natives. A very carefully orchestrated, devastatingly effective show . . . The effect on a gringo politician was, ‘This guy has real power, he can make things happen.’ He really did a job on the Senate.
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Ratification remained in doubt until the last moment. At the end of 1977, Torrijos asked for a meeting with Leonov to discuss the state of the negotiations with the United States. What probably most concerned him were the charges by leading Republican senators opposed to ratification that he was involved in drug trafficking. Carter, however, was convinced that the charges were false. In mid-February 1978 the Senate went into secret session to hear evidence from the Senate Intelligence Committee refuting the charges.
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Ironically, the KGB believed the charges which Carter and the Senate Intelligence Committee dismissed.
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Ironically, the KGB believed the charges which Carter and the Senate Intelligence Committee dismissed.
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There is little doubt that the charges were correct. According to Floyd Carlton Caceres, a notable drug smuggler as well as personal pilot to Torrijos and his intelligence chief, Manuel Noriega Morena (later President), Torrijos had made contact with drug traffickers almost as soon as he took power. By 1971 his diplomat brother Moisés ‘Monchi’ Torrijos was providing drug couriers with official Panamanian passports to enable them to avoid customs searches.
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In 1992 Noriega was to become the first foreign head of state to face criminal charges in a US court; he was sentenced to forty years’ imprisonment on eight counts of cocaine trafficking, racketeering and money laundering.
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In 1992 Noriega was to become the first foreign head of state to face criminal charges in a US court; he was sentenced to forty years’ imprisonment on eight counts of cocaine trafficking, racketeering and money laundering.
Had the drug-trafficking charges against Torrijos stuck in 1978, there would have been no prospect of ratifying the treaties with the United States. On 16 March, however, the Neutrality Act passed the Senate by one vote more than the two-thirds majority required. Carter later recalled, ‘I had never been more tense in my life as we listened to each vote shouted out on the radio.’
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Apparently unknown to Carter and US intelligence, Leonov arrived in Panama City on 22 March for six days of talks with Torrijos, bringing with him presents for the Torrijos family with a total value of 3,500 rubles. Torrijos used the secret talks with Leonov partly to get off his chest in private the loathing of the
Yanquis
which he dared not express in public. ‘I hate the United States’, he told Leonov, ‘but my position forces me to tolerate a great deal. How I envy Fidel Castro!’
96
Apparently unknown to Carter and US intelligence, Leonov arrived in Panama City on 22 March for six days of talks with Torrijos, bringing with him presents for the Torrijos family with a total value of 3,500 rubles. Torrijos used the secret talks with Leonov partly to get off his chest in private the loathing of the
Yanquis
which he dared not express in public. ‘I hate the United States’, he told Leonov, ‘but my position forces me to tolerate a great deal. How I envy Fidel Castro!’
The biggest strain of all had been dealing with the US Senate:
From November of last year up to March of this year, there have been 50 senators in Panama at our invitation. I worked with all of them personally, and it was a heavy cross for me to bear. Almost all of the senators are crude, arrogant, and unwilling to listen to any arguments from the other side . . . They are cavemen whose thought processes belong to the previous century.
Torrijos also had a personal scorn for Carter, whose inadequacy as President was ‘a painful thing to see’.
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Carter, by contrast, had a somewhat naive admiration for Torrijos. ‘No one’, he believed, ‘could have handled the affairs of Panama and its people more effectively than had this quiet and courageous leader.’
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Carter, by contrast, had a somewhat naive admiration for Torrijos. ‘No one’, he believed, ‘could have handled the affairs of Panama and its people more effectively than had this quiet and courageous leader.’
98
Though the KGB flattered Torrijos skilfully, they did not share Carter’s unreciprocated respect for him. Torrijos’s KGB file contains a description of him by Allende as ‘a lecher’.
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Given his own promiscuity, Allende presumably intended to imply that Torrijos’s sexual liaisons were conducted with less dignity than his own. Torrijos’s current girlfriend at the time of his sudden death in 1981 was a student friend of one of his own illegitimate daughters.
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The Torrijos file also includes Cuban intelligence reports about his involvement, along with some members of his family and inner circle, with the drug trade and other international criminal networks.
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Torrijos’s Panama began to rival Batista’s Cuba as a magnet for Mafia money-laundering, arms smuggling and contraband.
102
The KGB regarded many of Torrijos’s personal mannerisms as somewhat pathetic imitations of Castro’s. Like Castro, he dressed in military fatigues, carried a pistol and smoked Cuban cigars (presented to him by Castro, each with a specially printed band inscribed with his name). Also like Castro, he kept his daily schedule and travel routes secret, and pretended to make spontaneous gestures and decisions which were in reality carefully premeditated. Torrijos regularly sought Castro’s advice on his negotiations with the United States, though the advice was so secret that it was concealed even from the Panamanian ambassador in Havana. The KGB reported that Noriega flew frequently to Havana in a private aircraft. As the KGB was aware, however, Noriega was also in contact with the CIA.
103
99
Given his own promiscuity, Allende presumably intended to imply that Torrijos’s sexual liaisons were conducted with less dignity than his own. Torrijos’s current girlfriend at the time of his sudden death in 1981 was a student friend of one of his own illegitimate daughters.
100
The Torrijos file also includes Cuban intelligence reports about his involvement, along with some members of his family and inner circle, with the drug trade and other international criminal networks.
101
Torrijos’s Panama began to rival Batista’s Cuba as a magnet for Mafia money-laundering, arms smuggling and contraband.
102
The KGB regarded many of Torrijos’s personal mannerisms as somewhat pathetic imitations of Castro’s. Like Castro, he dressed in military fatigues, carried a pistol and smoked Cuban cigars (presented to him by Castro, each with a specially printed band inscribed with his name). Also like Castro, he kept his daily schedule and travel routes secret, and pretended to make spontaneous gestures and decisions which were in reality carefully premeditated. Torrijos regularly sought Castro’s advice on his negotiations with the United States, though the advice was so secret that it was concealed even from the Panamanian ambassador in Havana. The KGB reported that Noriega flew frequently to Havana in a private aircraft. As the KGB was aware, however, Noriega was also in contact with the CIA.
103
On 18 April 1978 the Canal Treaty finally passed by the US Senate by the same slim majority as the Neutrality Act a month earlier. Doubtless after prior agreement with the Centre, Leonov suggested to Torrijos that the best way of depriving the United States of any pretext for claiming special rights to defend the Canal would be to turn Panama into ‘a permanently neutral state on the model of Switzerland, Sweden, and Austria’. Torrijos was hostile to the idea - chiefly, Leonov believed, because he feared the effect of neutrality on his own authority. ‘Would [a neutral] Panama be able to conduct its own foreign policy?’ he asked Leonov. ‘Would it be possible to assist the anti-imperialist movement? Would I become a political eunuch?’
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Though Torrijos was succeeded as President in 1978 by Education Minister Aristedes Royo, he retained real power as head of the National Guard, resisting gentle pressure from Leonov to end military rule. He gave three reasons for being reluctant to follow Leonov’s advice to set up his own political party:
104
Though Torrijos was succeeded as President in 1978 by Education Minister Aristedes Royo, he retained real power as head of the National Guard, resisting gentle pressure from Leonov to end military rule. He gave three reasons for being reluctant to follow Leonov’s advice to set up his own political party:
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