There are two basic types of "active measures" (deceptive influence operations) and disinformation that Russian specialists engage in – one aimed at public opinion and the other aimed at decision makers and leaders.

There is an enormous amount of public information about the former, but very little about the latter.

KGB disinformation specialists used a variety of methods to try to influence the decisions of foreign leaders, particularly relying on invented disinformation claims that played on the deepest fears of these leaders.  There is no reason to believe that the same basic techniques are not being used by Russian foreign intelligence services today.

Perhaps the best document on clandestine Soviet disinformation aimed at decision makers was written by Vasili Mitrokhin, the former head archivist of the KGB’s foreign intelligence branch, the First Chief Directorate (FCD).  He based it on the top-secret KGB documents he managed.

Mitrokhin served for almost 30 years in the KGB FCD archives before retiring in 1984 and defecting to the United Kingdom in 1992.  When KGB Foreign Intelligence moved from downtown Moscow to the suburbs, he supervised the selection of documents that would be moved between 1972 and 1984, secretly making detailed notes on tens of thousands of top-secret documents.  (Photo credit: BBC News)

After he died in 2004, an obituary in The Telegraph described Mitrokhin’s activities:

Given the responsibility of checking and sealing about 300,000 files, he began making notes on the documents, which he smuggled out of the building in his shoes, trousers or coat. At weekends, he took the bundles of notes to his dacha and, after copying them out in longhand, buried them in tins and milk churns beneath the floor. Had he been caught, he would almost certainly have been executed.

When he defected to the United Kingdom in 1992, his archive was smuggled out as well.  The Telegraph reported, “six MI6 officers dressed as workmen … unearthed six trunks of material and loaded them into a van. On September 7, 1992, Mitrokhin, his family and his archive, arrived in Britain.” 

His unparalleled information, the “Mitrokhin Archive,” has been described by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation as “the most complete and extensive intelligence ever received from any source.”

Mitrokhin wrote “KGB Active Measures in Southwest Asia in 1980-82,” a paper that provides the best available public information about KGB disinformation aimed at decision makers.  It describes deceptive influence operations that were pursued after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979.  It was published in the Cold War International History Project Bulletin No. 14/15, Winter 2003/Spring 2004. 

(Photo: Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, President of Pakistan from 1978 to 1988.  Credit: newsru.com)

Mitrokhin said the goal of “disinformation” was “to mislead … the ruling circles of capitalism, in order to induce them to act in a certain way, or abstain from actions contrary to the interests of the USSR ….”

One common technique was to try to convince foreign leaders that nightmare scenarios they feared would supposedly occur if they pursued policies the Soviets opposed, using messengers the foreign leaders trusted to communicate the false themes.

For example, KGB disinformation specialists sought to convince then-Pakistani President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq that the United States was secretly seeking to replace him:

In Bangkok, information is to be conveyed to the Pakistan Mission to the effect that within the Carter Administration there are doubts about the utility of further increases in military assistance to Pakistan, given the Zia-ul-Haq regime's unpopularity in the country. [US] Secretary of State [Cyrus] Vance and his assistants consider that, in order to avert another major failure of US foreign policy, it is imperative to seek to replace the dictatorship with another regime which would guarantee stability in Pakistan.

The message the KGB sent to Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi played on some of India’s deepest fears about Pakistan:

In India, information is to be conveyed to Prime Minister Gandhi to the effect that Pakistan is not satisfied with the insignificant scope of American military assistance and the condition imposed on it to abstain from exploding a nuclear device while the American assistance program is in force. The leaders of Pakistan intend to continue to whip up hysteria over the events in Afghanistan in order to obtain a significant increase in military assistance from the US and the lifting of restrictions on the development of the nuclear program.

Alarmist messages were also conveyed to Iranian leaders:

Through the UN leadership, information is to be conveyed to representatives of Iran to the effect that, in return for growing military assistance to Pakistan, the US is seeking to be granted military bases on Pakistani territory, including in Baluchistan, in close proximity to the Iranian frontier. The leaders of Pakistan are inclined to make concessions to the Americans on this issue.

There were direct threats to Pakistan:

Through KGB SCD [Second Chief Directorate] assets, a warning is to be conveyed to the Pakistan Mission in Moscow to the effect that if a sensible line does not prevail in [Pakistani leader] Zia-ul Haq's political course, and Pakistan agrees under pressure from the US and China to turn its territory into a base for permanent armed struggle against Afghanistan, the Oriental Studies Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences will be instructed to study ways of exploiting the Baluchi and Pushtun movements in Pakistan, as well as internal opposition to the country's military regime, in the interests of the security of the frontiers of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.

KGB disinformation specialists sought to play on U.S. fears that the United States would be demonized in Pakistan if President Zia was overthrown, as had happened in Iran after Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi fled in the late 1970s:

Through the possibilities of India and of the UN Secretary [General], convey information to the US to the effect that the Reagan administration's plans to expand military and other assistance to Pakistan will provoke an extremely negative reaction within the democratic opposition to the Zia-ul Haq regime. If the precarious Zia-ul Haq dictatorship is overthrown, the US would be faced with rising anti-American feelings in that country on the same scale as in Iran.

Mitrokhin says the goals of the KGB active measures in Southwest Asia from 1980 to 1982 were wide-ranging and comprehensive.  They included, as Mitrokhin recorded them:

• compromise the Zia-ul Haq regime [in Pakistan]
• weaken the positions of the US and China in Pakistan
• exacerbate relations with Iran
• intensify and deepen disagreements between India and Pakistan on existing disputed issues
• inspire new irritants in Indo-Pakistan relations
• reinforce the antipathy and suspicion felt by Indira Gandhi and other Indian leaders towards Zia-ul-Haq personally
• compromise [Zia] in the eyes of the Muslims of India and other countries in the world
• induce the government of India to seek to secure the end of Pakistan's support for the Afghan rebels
• step up the activities of Pakistani émigrés and of the nationalist movement, particularly in Baluchistan
• disrupt Afghan émigré organizations
• intensify the local population's hostility towards Afghan refugees.

Mitrokhin records other disinformation instructions:

• Information was to be conveyed to India and Iran to the effect that by building up its military potential Pakistan was in fact preparing for aggression not only against Afghanistan, but also against India and Iran.
• Disseminate disinformation in the Pakistani community to the effect that, in reality, the Zia-ul Haq regime is not seeking to solve the Afghan refugee problem and would like to turn it into a permanent feature.
• In Delhi, convey information to the effect that the US and NATO have plans to set up an anti-Indian alliance in South Asia in which Pakistan would plan a key role.
• In Tehran, regularly supply the Iranian leadership with disinformation about Pakistan's use of Afghan émigrés to pass arms to Baluchistan and Arab separatists in Iran and to instigate mass disorders and anti-government incidents in the provinces of Khuzestan [in southwestern Iran], [and] Sistan  and Baluchistan [in southeastern Iran].

Instructions were given to create forgeries, including one called “The Haig Memorandum,” supposedly written by then-U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig.  It included the false claim that “there must be no let-up in joint efforts in the Washington-Peking-Islamabad triangle to destabilize the Indian government.”

Instructions were given to “prompt some Baluchi groups to engage in armed clashes with Afghan armed detachments.”

KGB planners also:

considered the question of creating a new irritant —the problem of setting up an Azad-Kashmir independent of Pakistan and India, and the notional formation of a Free Baluchistan government-in-exile in Afghanistan. But in view of the extreme complexity and uncertainty of many aspects of the situation, this question was postponed indefinitely.

Mitrokhin described “disinformation” as “an integral, indispensable, and secret element of intelligence work.”  He explained:

The main value of all Active Measures lies in the fact that it is difficult to check the veracity of the information conveyed and to identify the real source. Their effectiveness is expressed as a coefficient of utility, when minimum expenditure and effort achieves maximum end results.

Mitrokhin describes the work of “agents of influence” in the paper.  In his book KGB Lexicon: The Soviet Intelligence Officers Handbook, Mitrokhin defined an “agent of influence” as:

An agent operating under intelligence instructions who uses his official or public position, and other means, to exert influence on policy, public opinion, the course of particular events, the activity of political organizations and state agencies in target countries.  (p. 3)

(Image credit: goodreads.com)

In “KGB Active Measures in Southwest Asia in 1980-82,” Mitrokhin notes:

Through their agents, the KGB Residencies in Delhi and Colombo [Sri Lanka] established channels for conveying FCD [First Chief Directorate] Service A information directly to highly placed officials in India. In Delhi, a reliable agent (codenamed ‘VANO'), who was a journalist, passed information to the Prime Minister, I. Gandhi.

… In Colombo, an agent of the Residency among Sri Lankan journalists had access to the Indian High Commissioner in Sri Lanka, T. Sri Abraham. He passed on to Abraham information supplied by Service A of the FCD, and the latter expressed unfailing interest in this. Thus, at a regular meeting on 10 January 1981, the agent passed on information on a US plan covering a 20-year period to establish its domination in the Indian Ocean to the detriment of India's interests. Abraham said that he would discuss this information with E. Gonsalvez, the Secretary of the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who was due to visit Sri Lanka on 12 January.

Conveying information in this manner is termed “the method of special positive influence.” It involves passing slanted information of various kinds and content, and disinformation, in conversations designed to influence governments, parties, individual political, public and state personalities, through agents, foreign confidential contacts, intelligence officers, and agents or co-optees of Soviet nationality. “Special positive influence” presupposes continuous work for the purpose, constant study of its results and of the reaction to the measures which are taken.

Mitrokhin’s paper reveals extraordinarily active, creative, and unscrupulous KGB efforts to manipulate decision makers and others.  It describes sophisticated forgeries and a public disinformation campaign that led to the closure of “the world's largest laboratory dealing with malaria control,” in Pakistan, because of false claims that it was creating biological weapons. (See GEC Counter-Disinformation Dispatches #5 for more information on this persistent Russian disinformation theme.) 

Mitrokhin says the KGB noted with satisfaction that, because of the disinformation, “the Indian government cancelled a joint Indo-American commission on healthcare and an Asian conference on intestinal diseases which were to take place in India,” in addition to the closure of the laboratory in Pakistan.  He says then-KGB head Yuri Andropov presented a special award to the KGB head in Pakistan for this “complex Active Measure codenamed ‘TARAKANY' [Cockroaches].”

(Photo: Yuri Andropov (center) with Mikhail Gorbachev in Stavropol, Russia when Gorbachev was party boss there.  Credit: The Gorbachev Foundatiion)

For more, see:

• “KGB Active Measures in Southwest Asia in 1980-82,” Vasili Mitrokhin
• "THE MITROKIN ARCHIVE - A NOTE ON SOURCES," Cold War International History Project
• "Vasili Mitrokhin," Spartacus Educational
• Soviet Agents of Influence by Herbert Romerstein

Next issue: “The Extraordinarily Broad Scope of Russian Propaganda and Disinformation"

Past issues: (also available in Russian, Spanish, French, and Arabic)

• #1: A Counter-Disinformation System That Works, January 8, 2020
• #2: Three Ways to Counter Disinformation, February 11, 2020
• #3: The Myth that Debunking Doesn’t Work, March 25, 2020
• #4: What Works in Debunking, April 14, 2020
• #5: The Coronavirus and Disinformation: Russia Remains True to Form, May 27, 2020
• #6: Using Pseudo-Academic Online Journals to Amplify Fringe Voices, September 28, 2020
• #7: Building an International Disinformation Network, November 10, 2020
• #8: What Can We Learn from the Active Measures Working Group?, December 1, 2020

To contact us, email: GECDisinfoDispatches@state.gov