REF ID:A44443 

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REF ID:A44443 

omCBSOFTHE 

SENIOR UNITED STATES LIAISON OFFICER 

LONDON, ENGLAND 

U. L MAIL ADDUD 

AMlllCAMSMMSl'I 

IQIC<IO, NAVY llO 

F.P.O., NliW 'IO .. N. Y. 

UNlftD ICINeDOM MAIL ADDRISS 

AMlllCAN IMIASSY •IOl'f&NO• IQllAll& 

LONDON,Y.I 

Vice Aad.l'aJ. la. B. heat 

Direeter 

lat:t.al SecuritJ" Agmq 

F•rtr 8eorge &. Ifaad.e, Jl&r.rland 

Bear Ati1ml.ral Frost: 

!he ~an et the t. planted dee~ (.Ujee\ et :ar m 1885) 

Bl impil'ed ,.. iate:NatDa press ~ 'Whiea JM Jd&ht can to 

:read. 

I!a 1pc:'Jas1ng an articl.e trea the Jleacl!Lest,er Guard1aa ~JS Jazaarr 

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letter,Jwere .11m tea repnoter in tile P&r1s etflce et tJle &. York Tima. 

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Best regarda, 

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REF ID:A44443 

• • rl •"' ' ' I • 

:··".TOPJ SECRET FORGERIES 

: ·, .... , ···:By .. RUSSIA 

• 

\ 

~ttempts to create bad· bloo~ 

between Governments 

By VICTOJt ZORZA 

A Secret Service headquarters in 

,. , Moscow, with a main branch in East 

Germany, and. sub-branches in 

·:'.'. .' places as far apart ~s Tokio, New 

Delhi, Accra, · and Havana, has 

1 .• , planted in the newspapers of these 

· • : and other cities over the past few 

· · years some fifty "confidential," 

'. " secret,'' and " top secret " docu-

.. , , ments which , were presented as 

1 • '.revealing some. of the most embara& 1 ! sing,· • and· · potentially expiosi'{e, 

Western Government secrets. · I , 

• In almost all cases the first publka· '· ;! .. Uon of these documents outside the 

' ' Soviet block was followed by concerted 

camP.aigns designed to secure, throu11h ,. · •. · J\tosc:Ow raclio and other Communist 1 ·1·• news distributing agencies, the widest " . .r publicity for these documents in the 

.•., ,countries or areas for which they were , ·, "anlled." · 

··' 

' ' : Some of the forgeries were so blatant 1

'' and so clearly <'e&lgned for pol-ltical .' '" . effect that. the l•est place far them, ~ f • • : 

The. first 'article 

. ' . in ~· seI:ies on·. Soviet 

diplomatic forgeries 

trouble these forgeries are designed 

to start Is usually nipped in the bud. 

But the documents are usually so framed thst, If for instance an American " document"• reaches the 

l•'rench Foreign Office, and if the 

latter believes that it could conceivably be genuine, then it might not" be too 

eager to disclose to the State Department Its knowledge of the· contents, 

and the Americans might then not be 

in a position to prove to the French 

that the document is a forgery. This was one of the difficulties In the first 

stages of the Soviet operation, but it 

has now been oven:on1e. 

A notable example of this kind of 

document which was not Intended for 

the press and never reached it was the 

photographic copy of an aneiled letter 

sent to the State Department under the 

signature of Mr mlm O'Shaughnessy, chief of the political division of the 

American Embassy In Bonn. The copy of the letter was malled through the 

ordinary post in Munich on July 5 to a hil!h French official, in the full know· 

ledge that he would not himself try to 

check with the Americans whether It was genuine, but would pass it on for 

information to the appropriate French 

Government agency. · i' · 'l'he expectation was that it would 

take some time before the Fren~ 

Foreign Office and Intelligence Senice 

got to grips with the dorument and In 

' the meantime its " relations " would 

b e g l n to t r a v e l, uncontradicted, 

through the French official grapevine, · • · \. when their reproductions were flaunted causing r e s e n t m e n t against the .,. ' in some of the newspapers in which Americans. • v' 1. they had been 'Planted, appeared to be Phan'om 1 : ·a r· subsection In ·my . filing system " 

·' ', 'marked "Falsies." But now that the The "letter• called the attention of , '

1 

• operation, which ha<t been largely con- the state Department to the activities . . '·'' ' ' . fined to countries with a gullible · " · , ' publlc, appears to have gained more of reactionary ultranatlonalist organ!-

; , " sophisticated Western outlets, tile time satlons in West Germany-which were , .," . has clearly come to examine the ftle largely a matter of public record-and . . , • for the light It can shed on this recommended, wlU1 what appeared to . .. fascinating subject. 1 be the full authority of· the Bonn 

· ... •'Not: the first: Embassy, that the United States 

' The " secret" documents bearing Government should support these 

•ithe · signatures of.' Mr Herter, the groups and use them for· its own ends. • · This ' was at a time when French .Secretary of State, and Mr Bruckei;, the public opinion, and even ofUclal 

Secretary of the Army, which the quarters, had been much disturbed by . •. , " Daily Eltpres11 " says have been sent a whole series of letters, mailed from 

; .. · , .. through · the ordinary post to , an the same Paris post office on behalf of 1 f~!,i · 'unauthoriaed person in London," are an alleged German neo-Fasclst group, · demanding the return of Alsace- • 

1

• • .:not the first of their kind to have been Lorraine to Germany. This group, 1 

1 :r ·aimed at th1\I ~untry. In February. which went under the name of Kamp- • 11,?ir1195S. copier of•a.lette~ attributed to verband fllr ein unabhllngiges Deutsch-

,·,.: 1 Mr• David Bruce. then• United States land has since been shown to be a ,:· :"Amba-8dQr •in · West Germany, "phantom" organisation existing only '· · • !designed to · show · that · American· in the flies of the East German IDtelll· 

I 111 policle•· were being deliberately con· gence Service whose agents In West 

! • .Ii''~ ducted ;. In' a 'way detrimental to ·Germany anl in France distributed · , Britain, were malled from France to nco-Fascist and irredentist material , • '' journalists and politicians In London. with a view to sowing distrust between ' 1 

1

' After creating something of a diplo· the 1'"rench and the Germans . • , matic flurry, the letter was exposed as The service concerned In this 

i a· forgery· and failed to. make the··operation is the Foreign Intelligence 1 

I · headlines . for .. which it had bee~ branch of the East German llflnistry of · t ·\ intended. · . State Security, known by the initials ' 

In ·fact, however, the forgeries which UVA. which stand for Jlaupverwaltung • do not·flnally appear in the press·can, Aufklllrung and it works with a Soviet !' '.: ',, In a way, .. be more dangerous paten· "adviser.,. who co-ordinates its actlvi· 1' • tlally than those which receive pub· ties with tile wider operations directed I ,'~· · ' llcity' and are· exposed 1

for ~JVhat th~y from th,e Moscow"\ headquarters. An · · .. ·.-•re. ·Only one prong of•Foperation HVA agent.who has defected to the ~o , .• ;•• Falslea ~ ls!dealgned for the pepetra·.··west has identlftecl ' the Alsace- • 1. ·, • tion • lof i the press. · ·Another prong Lorraine leaftets al!_ the .Pr~uct of this · · · . consists· of .,the feeding· of' deliberate oritanlsation. , ·· . ' 

.; \. : misinformation . by the' Soviet Intelli· By comparing 'lyJ?ewritten forgeries •: ; gence · Senice to its Western counter· known to have originated from the 1 •"' ·: 'parts-llD operation which, sometimes llVA ·with tH~ O'Shaughnessy letter, it ~···#assumes such vast proportions that the ls possible tll establish that a whole · ·" :'.Western senlces Ond I it more than series of· these "documents" was l~•J.: usually' difficult to separate the; grain produced on the 1 safl\e typewriter. :;;i· from the chaff. ;1- • ·,· ' Another HVA ope~atlon was deshmed 

i'i , < But the third and .sharpest prong Is 1 to exploit by means of forged letters • · ,., · the delivery to high Western Gqvern· some of the suspicions a~d Ill feeling 

•, ·;:• ment officials of ·alleged letters from that ocraslonally Oare up between ~Is 

; :.,: the secret •rchlv~ of their allied country and West Germany. . , · opposi~ numbers. These are usually i · ... ·.:more skilfully framed than the Atom c weapons 

''· • forgeries designed for. an ,imP.resslon·. , This took the rorip of letters' pt'o- 1-· 111 . able public opinion, ·~d on 'several I tlllced on the forged letterheads or 'the ~ · occasions they have succeeded In pro· BBC office In Berlin. The photo-copies ' dtlclng bad blood . between Western .. .. , ·. Governments before' they were finally of the BBC letters were so drawn 

\ .• .• nailed down • up as to Indicate to the recipients-who \' • • •• • • • " • 1 "· '• Included the '\Vest German 1''orelgn 

·;· -..c;onsultation . secretary-that the British Foreign , : · There now " exists a .system of Office hacl directed the HBC to support .. , .. ,.consultation .. whereby· the emergence the "Wlttlngen declaration," In which · • "Of any such document ls brought by 18 lending West Oennan nuclt•ar . ·the recipient Government to the ph3•sldsts stated their opposition to the 

' ti f h G t supposecl possible arming of the llnmleswehr at~en on o .t e overnmen with atomic wea11011s. Slm:1• it was well to have originated It, and the kind or. . . . .. .. . 

: enough known fo West Germany that 

thi11 prospect was not viewed enthusl· . astlcally In Britain, some recipients of 

the letter may have concluded that 

perfidious Albion was up to Its tricks 

again. · , While all these " letters " were care- fuiy prepared to mislead Western. · 

officials, the · " secret" documents 

planted In the press show evidence of more hasty preparation, for they were often timed for publication In order to 

produce the greatest Impact on public opinion in the wake · of some major : political event. · · · · · · , A study of the fifty or so documents, 

of the way in which they were " sur- faced " and " replayed "-to use the 

terms coined "by . ··the~ ·intelligence 

experts for this .new branch' of their .. 1 

activity-reveals a ·fascinating ' back· · ground of human gullibility and low 

cunning, of complex' ·and highly efficient organisation •OD a world scale 

that Is nevertheless subject to the 

crudest kind of humsn error, of clever- ness aml sl1eer stupldltf that form t11e 

Ingredients of any go0< and true story that deals with espionage or Its fringes. 
REF ID:A44443 

, 

1 ·Us ·sECRETS. 

' 

~'FORGED"·· 

_Sto1.Y rejected 

·by embassy 

By VICTOR ZORZA 

, The American Embassy in London 

j yesterday described as " fabrication 

i from start to finish " an alleged 

I " secret " State De p a r t m e n t 

· document which was the subject of 

· the main news story in a . London 

newspaper yesterday. 

Two documents which figured in the 

story were supposed to have . been 

signed by Mr Herter, the Secretary 

of State, and by Mr Brucker, the Army 

Secretary. They refer to alleged 

American efforts to induce Soviet 

·citizens to· take refuge in the West 

. by various underhand methods,· and·~ 

recruit spies. 

The American Embassy said that its 

investigations had failed to reveal the 

1 existence of ~ either document. The J alleged Herter document examined by it bears a serial number and a · date 

which shows it, to the satisfaction of 

-American officials, to be a forgery. 

I " It calls to mind," the Embassy said, ' 

" numerous other forgeries of official 

' documents circulated during the last 

few years.''. 

Intelligence· activity 

The plantJng of such documents is In 

fact a. well-established activity of 

C o m m u n i s t intelligence services, 

designed to discredit Western Govern· 

ments or even to sow dissension 

between them. The documents in 

question were accompanied . by an 

anonymous letter. 1 

In thds case it a.ppears that the 

plianting of the document&' is primarily intended to enable illhe Soviet press and 

mdio to reproduce them and thus to 

show to the Soviet publi<:-ilnd to such 

sections of Western opinion as will be 

impressed by them - lflhat the 

Americans witl stop at nothing to 

undermine the Soviet system .. The alle.:ed letiter iirom Mr Herter 

to American Embassie6 'll·broad, wmch 

purports to show the concern of the 

State Dep·artment at the failure to 

obtain' suitable "defectors," is so 

d-rawn up as to suggest tbat trhe 

Americans are anxiou11 to increase the 

flow in order to use the defectors' 

revelat'ion.s for anti-Soviet propagand·a. While the Americans are naturally concerned . at the use of official 

stationery for the forgeries and would ' 

like to know how it got into the 

forgers' hands, they are not investigat- ing any "leakage1

" of the documents 

nor-- published, because no ,such documents have ever existed. : They 

are, however, concerned at the con· 

tlnued publication of the alleged details, because . this would give them 

the appearance of verisimilitude .and 

could be exploited by the Russians in 

exactly the way they had intended . 

. Investigating 

While the American Embassy dented 

the authenticity of the documents outright, the- State Department spokesman 

in Washington, pending the receipt of 

fuller details from ,London, said that 

the Department was " looking into " the 

report and thus proyided some fuel.for . those who may wish to argue that there 

is no smoke without a fire. 

The published " secret r• State Department document bears the serial number 

CA-974 and is dated June 10. There 

had indeed been a document of, that 

number, _the Embassy said, but it was 

issued on July 29, 1959, to request the 

Embassy to extend the usual courtesies 

and assistance to an American 

clergyman travelling abroad. ·· 

["Top secret" forgeries, page 11] --~ ..... _____ ,, - -- '