Creating Chaos: Covert Political Warfare, from Truman to Putin

Creating Chaos

© 2018 Larry Hancock

All rights information: [email protected]

Visit our website at www.orbooks.com

Published by OR Books for the book trade in partnership with Counterpoint Press.

Distributed to the trade by Publishers Group West.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher, except brief passages for review purposes.

First printing 2018

Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress.

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-944869-87-8 paperback

ISBN 978-1-944869-88-5 e-book

Typeset by Lapiz Digital Services, Chennai, India.

Contents

Introduction

Chapter One: The Games of Queens, Kings, and Presidents

Chapter Two: Going Dark

Chapter Three: Containment

Chapter Four: Political Action

Chapter Five: Regime Change

Chapter Six: Hybrid Warfare

Chapter Seven: Active Measures

Chapter Eight: Privatization

Chapter Nine: Role Reversals

Chapter Ten: Sovereignty Issues

Chapter Eleven: Pushing Back

Chapter Twelve: Beachheads

Chapter Thirteen: Shaping

Chapter Fourteen: Fragmentation

Chapter Fifteen: Consequences

Endnotes

Introduction

Diplomacy, foreign relations, and the conduct of both political and actual warfare between states are addressed within the academic discipline of political science as well as being part of the education and training of Foreign Service and diplomatic personnel. Beyond academia, the practices of the darker and covert side of statesmanship and foreign relations are of practical concern in the day-to-day work of national intelligence communities around the world.

Creating Chaos focuses on and explores the dark side of statecraft, the covert use of power in international relations. It specifically deals with activities and practices by which one nation targets another—considered as an adversary or as a threat—with practices of secret, deniable political warfare. Elements of this darker side of foreign relations can be found in one of the earliest treatises on statecraft, The Prince, a sixteenth-century work by diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli. Much of Machiavelli’s analysis offers direct, highly pragmatic and notably immoral recommendations for successful rulers. As an example, he maintains that the first priority of any ruler should be a continual study of the art of war; its practice represents the sole art mandatory for a ruler.¹

While Machiavelli discusses certain aspects of deniable action, such as the suborning of nobles (whom he then describes as obviously unreliable, to be dealt with cautiously or eliminated once their aid is no longer needed) much of his rather infamous reputation derives from his avocation that a successful ruler must know both right and wrong—and choose to do wrong whenever circumstances dictate: Hence it is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong and to make use of it or not according to necessity.…It will be found that something that looks like virtue, if followed would be his ruin, whilst something else which looks like vice, yet followed, brings him security and prosperity.²

We will find that particular attitude appearing continually in this exploration of both historical and contemporary political warfare—as relevant to the decisions of presidents as to princes, kings, and queens. However, other of his admonitions appear to have been more often ignored than not. Machiavelli cautions that no ruler can ever securely govern a hostile populace, simply because those in opposition will outnumber those content with his leadership. Also, a ruler who obtains sovereignty through the assistance of foreign nobles will always be dealing with those who consider themselves his equals; such a ruler will govern with far more difficulty than if he had acquired sovereignty by popular favor. The most successful ruler can maintain himself easily, simply by ensuring the people are not oppressed.³

As we will see in our exploration of political warfare during the Cold War era, those particular points often seem to have been ignored—even if they were highlighted by the individuals directly involved in successful operations. One of America’s first covert foreign regime change efforts during the Cold War was overseen by Kermit Roosevelt Jr., the senior Central Intelligence Agency officer in its Middle East division. Roosevelt was deemed to have directed what was at the time considered to be an extremely successful project—the Iranian coup of 1954.⁴ When debriefed on the operation, Roosevelt was adamant that the CIA must never attempt another such covert project unless both the army and the majority of the people in the targeted nation wanted what the United States itself desired as the outcome. Roosevelt pragmatically concluded that if that were not certain, then covert political warfare should not even be considered as an option—the president should just send in the Marines. Pragmatic advice, given by someone in a position to know, which seemingly fell on deaf ears.

Creating Chaos is not a book about Cold War espionage, deniable military operations, or military warfare. Instead it is first a detailed examination of covert political warfare as it was conducted both by both the United States and Russia during the twentieth century, the era of the ideological Cold War between the Eastern and Western Blocs. It then moves into the twenty-first century, exploring the transition period which followed the collapse of the Soviet Union and contemporary political warfare practices in what has become a role reversal in the activities of the two nations.

Some readers may be surprised to find that it was the United States, rather than Russia, which most frequently turned to major covert political action projects during the Cold War, focusing on reversing Soviet geopolitical influence first in Eastern Europe and then globally. Beginning in the late 1940s and continuing through the 1980s, American political warfare was highly focused, conducted by special task groups with relatively short term, disruptive missions.

Initially such projects involved specific activities intended to create internal chaos and destabilize Eastern European nations which had come under Russian control following World War II. Specialized CIA psychological warfare and paramilitary groups were formed to conduct deniable operations, with the intent of encouraging and supporting internal resistance movements, and creating schisms which would undermine Russian influence. Following that early period of containment efforts, operations became much more far ranging, responding to what were perceived as potential Soviet beachheads in nations around the globe. Much more aggressive practices, including regime destabilization, surrogate warfare, and actual regime change came into play to remove any such beachheads that did come into place.

The full story of American deniable political warfare has become visible through the massive release of both State Department and Central Intelligence Agency documents, the most covert elements being forced into public scrutiny by a series of congressional inquiries and supplemented by aggressive citizen use of the Freedom of Information Act of 1966, by which agencies are forced to respond to public records requests.

It is now possible to examine and describe the decision process which led America to commit to practices in which it had little experience, practices totally outside the rule of law and international legal agreements. Beyond that, the practices themselves can be dissected, illustrated by specific intervention projects and traced though the evolutionary process which in many cases led from simple economic and political action intended to destabilize targeted regimes to formal projects intended to bring about actual regime change. In several instances this involved covert paramilitary action using deniable American military assets and surrogate agents and fighters.

In contrast to the American turn to the dark side and covert regime change projects, during the Cold War the Soviet Union enjoyed the foreign policy advantage of simply following along behind a global wave of anti-colonialism and an explosion in nationalist politics within Dutch, French, and British global empires. Russia was able to move openly in supporting newly independent nations, many of them avowedly neutral or openly opposed to the prior dominion of European powers. In the context of a strongly expressed anti-colonialist foreign policy, Russian support for newly independent nations was generally quite overt; mutual trade pacts were signed, diplomatic agreements completed, weapons shipments initiated and, as necessary, Russian military advisors appeared in-country. The Soviet Union was also able to take advantage of growing Western fears over what was depicted as an almost unstoppable wave of global communist expansion, the red menace. In a number of instances, American fears led to a rejection of appeals for neutral relationships, forcing nations firmly into the Soviet bloc, dependent on both economic and military support from Russia.

Yet, as we now know, the Soviet Union did continue its own active and highly focused program of political warfare, targeting Western Bloc nations they considered their primary military adversaries—the United States, Britain, and to a lesser extent France. Immediately following World War II the Soviets also conducted a number of economic and psychological warfare actions intended to block neutral Scandinavian nations from moving fully into the Western Bloc.

But overall, Russian Cold War-era political warfare activities against its primary adversaries were much more subtle and generally far less visible. They are revealed in FBI documents, by information (and documents) from former KGB officers, and by the investigations of counterintelligence units in Western nations including Canada, Mexico, and Britain. Creating Chaos examines and illustrates the ongoing Russian active measures practices—including the manipulation of individuals through financial coercion and blackmail and a variety of psychological/information warfare activities.

Soviet active measures were intended to covertly and subtly shape American public opinion and political policy. They were supported by the use of forged and planted documents as well as the insertion of false news and misinformation into the Western media. Historically, examples of Russian success in document fabrication can be found long before the Soviet era. One striking example comes from the first years of the 20th century, in the form of the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion. That document, first published in Russia in 1903, was created with the intent of enabling a domestic Russian government campaign of anti-Semitism. It purported to be a historical record of a meeting in which Jewish leaders laid out their plans for global economic control and cultural hegemony, to be achieved through the subversion of Gentile morals. While created for internal political purposes, the document was convincing enough to find its way into campaigns against Jews around the world. In the United States, Henry Ford paid for the printing and distribution of half a million copies in the United States; it also became a political tool for the Nazis during their rise to power in Germany.

Active measures also involved the ongoing recruitment of both knowing and unknowing agents of influence, and individuals which Russian intelligence personnel described as useful idiots—those who could facilitate the distribution of information through particular connections and associations and potentially make introductions to more significant targets.⁵

As a fundamental part of its exploration of political warfare, Creating Chaos offers a tutorial on the tools and tradecraft of covert practices, showing the evolution of both, and in particular their rapid evolution when the internet emerged in the initial decades of the twenty-first century. While many of the basic practices have not changed since their development and formalization during the imperial competitions of the first global empires, recent events suggest that they have actually become both more deniable and more successful. One of the goals of this work is to provide the history and context required to recognize political warfare practices in contemporary affairs.

With that in mind our exploration will pay particular attention to the tactics of deniability, in particular the uses of economic, trade, and finance networks as both covers and enablers for covert political and paramilitary activities. That story begins during the Cold War, with the CIA’s involvement with America’s post-World War II global economic reach and the business leaders associated with its trade networks. The voluntary and undocumented, covert use of trade and financial networks is actually nothing new. It has always been—and remains—a key to deniable political warfare. That continues to be as true now as it was during the centuries of jousting among the first global empires.

Accommodation and cooperation by those in charge of major commercial business networks appear to be a key enabler in much of the deniable warfare activity of first the United States under Roosevelt though Reagan and more recently the Russian Federation’s destabilization and hybrid warfare actions under Putin. The activities of a particularly close personal associate of Vladimir Putin, Yevegeny Prigozhi, illustrate the power of deeply layered financial networks. Initially Prigozhi, known as Putin’s chef, was best known as a member of a Putin clique described in the Russian media as a frequent recipient of major government contracts, a path to considerable wealth in the new Russia. In turn, he became one of the individuals whose business enterprises served as major conduits for funds going into deniable Russian political warfare, ranging from the insertion of paramilitary personnel into the Ukrainian conflicts, the funding of information warfare against the United States, and most recently the support of private Russian military firms operating within Syria.⁶ The use of Prigozhi and his business connections as covers for deniable action is within the best traditions of the commercial cover practices developed by the Central Intelligence Agency in the earliest years of the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

The American Cold War experience with the use of covert economic and financial networks offers an important insight into both the risks and negative consequences associated with such commercial entanglements, including the criminal activities which continually develop during ostensibly deniable activities. When leaders decide that their best options include, as Machiavelli put it, making use of the wrong, their immediate purposes may indeed be achieved, though the ultimate consequences might be extremely negative and long-lasting.

It would be comforting to find that America and Russia have learned something from the decades of the Cold War, from the negative consequences of destabilizing targeted governments to the covert intervention to replace them with preferred regimes. Reality has shown that hope to be woefully optimistic. Perhaps that should have been no surprise given the personal warnings of some of those most directly involved in the earliest engagements of the Cold War. One was George F. Kennan, whose insights as a Foreign Service officer date back as early as 1960.

In 1946 Kennan had served as the chargé d’affaires in Moscow. Based on his own firsthand experience and certain recent and alarming speeches by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, Kennan cabled an extended warning to his superiors in Washington. The 8,000-word message pointedly described the Soviet view of world affairs as being neurotic.⁷ His assessment as the professional on the scene in Moscow fueled the fears that led to the first major postwar American covert political action programs. He portrayed the Russians as obsessed by centuries of foreign incursion and driven to use every possible means of undermining any potential external threat. It was a deeply pervasive fear of the outside world, a fear exponentially magnified by the extensive destruction inside Russia and millions of casualties in the recent war.⁸

Kennan pictured that fear as driving the Soviets to undermine and destabilize Western powers. He anticipated that future Soviet international policy would be one of unremitted political warfare—involving extensive psychological warfare, massive propaganda efforts, and covert destabilization actions designed to increase Western political uncertainties and tear apart wartime alliances. He also anticipated that the Soviets would constantly probe and push to exacerbate fears and political chaos in adjacent nations. He painted a picture of a unique and terrifying confrontation, equivalent to war. His conclusion was that there could be no peaceful coexistence between the West and Soviet Russia. His cable produced an uproar in Washington and was circulated by Secretary of Defense James Forrestal to a variety of senior officers in all the armed services.⁹

Time and further experience led Kennan to modify his initial dramatic assessment of the political warfare between East and West. With twenty-five years of foreign relations service, built largely on his Cold War experience, his final observations are especially meaningful in setting the context for our exploration of covert political warfare. Kennan pointed out that ...international life normally has its strong competitive elements. It did not take the challenge of communism to produce the current situation…I think there is no international relationship between sovereign states which is without its elements of antagonism, its competitive aspects. Every government is in some respects a problem for every other government and it will always be this way as long as the sovereign state, with its supremely self-centered rationale, remains the basis for international life.¹⁰

Such insights extend from Machiavelli to Kennan, over the centuries. The histories of kingdoms, empires and nations demonstrate that political warfare is a constant; it appears to be a temptation that simply cannot be resisted regardless of its long-term consequences. From that perspective, we would all be well served by being continually alert to its practices.

Chapter One:

The Games of Queens, Kings, and Presidents

Covert political warfare, a practice of empires and nations, of kings, queens, and presidents—warfare without armies, combat without body counts, victory at little to no expense with virtually no risk. Whether used for offensive economic and territorial gains or for the defense of national sovereignty and interests, it’s a temptation few leaders have successfully resisted.

We will examine its twentieth and twenty-first century appearances in great detail, in specific projects and operations by both the United States and Russia, as well as in the routine active measures conducted primarily by individuals from both nations, at times working under diplomatic cover, and operating out of embassies, consulates, and legations. The tools and tradecraft used in deniable activities are also important topics given that they evolved specifically to obfuscate and conceal political warfare of all stripes. Yet while the tools have evolved dramatically over time, many of the basic practices remain much the same.

Operatives recruit agents of influence within the targeted nation, to be used in both knowing and unknowing actions which are intended to favorably shape foreign policies from within—as well as to disrupt established political and military alliances. Various types of propaganda, disinformation, and misinformation are used in psychological warfare to undermine public confidence in the targeted nation’s governance, in its military—or in both. Surrogates are recruited for those same activities, and in the most extreme instances are used in conjunction with covert paramilitary operations and even overt military pressure to bring about actual regime change.

These basic practices have a very long history, but their scope expanded dramatically during the eras of global exploration and empire building. Numerous examples are found in the eighteenth and nineteenth century competitions among imperial powers; they are especially well-illustrated in the confrontation between imperial Russia and Great Britain in their struggles for economic domination and political control across the Balkans, Arabia, and into Asia and the Indian sub-continent.

As early as 1791, nearing the end of her reign, Catherine the Great of Russia secretly considered plans to take control of India from the British, as part of Russian military action against the Persians intended to regain control of territories in the Caucasus for the Russian Empire. In what might be considered a classic act of psychological warfare, Catherine added the Crimean Khanate to her empire with no overt use of force at all, simply by declaring it as a fact.¹ She ordered posters placed at key public locations throughout the region, declaring to the Crimeans’ that she was happy to receive them as Russian subjects. Having long been dissatisfied with the less than benevolent attentions of the Turkish Empire, the locals accepted this announcement by the empress as fact and raised no objections.

A sampling of other activities from the era of The Great Game provides an introduction to certain elements of the basic tradecraft and tools which reoccur in contemporary times. For example, a common strategy for both the Russians and the British was to begin the political shaping process though the use of economic influence, offering technologies and luxury goods which were only available from the more developed European nations. Trade pacts became the entrée for establishing personal contacts, extending political influence, and building alliances with local rulers. They also served as tools to recruit willing local agents in the pursuit of subtle economic and political influence.

Russian political agents were repeatedly sent into virtually unexplored tribal regions on highly dangerous missions. For the purposes of travel, they disguised themselves as local tribesmen or traders from adjacent territories. Ultimately their goal was to contact local rulers to offer gifts, messages of friendship, and promises of military and economic alliance. The bait was commerce, and the agents were carefully instructed to observe and prepare not only notes on the strengths of the local defenses but also as much economic intelligence as possible. Another constant, a standby in all such covert activities, was the admonition that if they failed in their mission and were imprisoned or even executed, the Russian government would completely disavow and disown any relationship with them.²

In later years Russia would turn to the use of scientific expeditions as covers for covert political missions. The British preferred to detach military or political officers from active duty, allowing them to go on shooting leave—which also provided a measure of deniability. A number of dynamic and enterprising young officers were lost on such hunting expeditions. Others proved quite successful, on occasion establishing alliances and pacts exceeding both expectations and their instructions.

While the British initially focused on expanding their territorial and economic control on the Indian subcontinent, Russian political action proved quite successful in expanding the czar’s broader reach. In 1836 British diplomat John McNeill forcefully brought that Russian imperial success to the attention of the British public in a booklet titled The Progress and Present Position of Russia in the East. It contained maps that dramatically illustrated that the Russian Empire had increased the number of its subjects from fifteen to fifty-eight million, advancing its borders some five hundred miles towards Constantinople and one thousand miles towards Tehran.³

Efforts by the British Empire to push back against Russian territorial expansion peaked when it began to seem likely that Russian political manipulation might spur a major Afghan incursion into India, triggering a general uprising by Muslim co-religionists. Historically India had suffered through several similar incursions coming out of Afghanistan through the Khyber and Bolān Passes in the Pamir mountain ranges. British diplomatic messages of the time reflect the actions which would be required, introducing a term which will become quite familiar, even in contemporary times: We have long declined to meddle with the Afghans, but if the Russians try to make them Russian, we must take care that they become British.⁴

British political, and later direct military, involvement in Afghanistan was often opposed by the governor-generals of India, especially since they were forced to bear the economic and military burdens of such actions. Any turn towards forward policies became a matter of great internal debate among the British leadership.⁵ Interestingly, we will find similar debates over a hundred years later during the Cold War, with little change in terminology—advocates of preemptive covert political action during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations would declare themselves for forward leaning policies to block the spread of political influence by the Soviet Union.

Another Great Game gambit from the days of the czars provides further insight into practices which will become familiar over time. British India was not the only target of economic and political opportunity for Imperial Russia. Indeed, Czar Nicholas II focused on the concept of Russia developing itself as an economic power as well as a military force to be reckoned with in world affairs. In support of that idea, his finance minister Count Sergei Witte offered a plan that would enable Russia to achieve economic hegemony from the shores of the Pacific to the heights of the Himalayas. The plan would allow Russia to dominate the affairs of both Asia and Europe. Overtly it would involve the construction and economic leveraging of the world’s longest railroad, some 4,500 miles from Moscow to Vladivostok and Port Arthur on the Pacific. Such an accomplishment would offer overland shipping competition to Britain’s control of the sea lanes.

While construction of this Trans-Siberian Railway proceeded, an additional but covert element was added, initiating basic political warfare against China and Tibet under the cover of a new commercial trading company. The trading company and its secret political objectives had been proposed to Czar Alexander III shortly before Nicholas’s ascension to the throne, and Witte felt it would be an ideal complement to the railway effort.⁶ The trading company would conduct its operations along the route of the rail line but with the secret objective of creating wide-scale revolt against Manchu dynasty domination of the outlying areas of the Chinese Empire. The political destabilization effort would place pressure on the Chinese throne, generating Russian leverage for concessions from the region’s Manchu governors. In addition, the trading company was to extend its efforts not only to areas of Mongolia but towards establishing Russian political influence in Tibet.

To what extent this particular covert political action program was successful will likely remain a matter of speculation. It is known that the trading company was established and capitalized with two million rubles. British sources in India also began to report a number of suspected Russian agents, all apparently associated in some fashion with the operators of the trading company, traveling between Saint Petersburg and Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. During the same period Russia did indeed obtain Chinese concessions to establish its first warm water naval facility at Port Arthur; it also obtained territorial control of the area around Port Arthur. Even more important, the Chinese acceded to the Russian connection of the Trans-Siberian Railway to Port Arthur, a major strategic gain for the czar’s empire.

It is important for our understanding—and identification—of covert political action practices to appreciate that the practices themselves change relatively little over time. The tradecraft is modified, the tools evolve with technology, but the practices remain basically the same. That continuity is illustrated in the political warfare directed against British India after the fall of Imperial Russia and the establishment of the new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Driven by ideology and with the full support of Russia’s communist leaders, the new Asian initiative was a very public Soviet undertaking. In 1917 the Council of People’s Commissars declared a major goal of creating revolutions in all countries, regardless of whether they are at war with Russia, in alliance with Russia, or neutral.⁷ In support of that effort, even while faced with immense internal challenges to support its citizens, the Council allocated two million gold rubles to that revolutionary agenda.

One of the most obvious targets for the revolutionary communist initiative was the British Empire, in particular India, the jewel in the British crown. India continued to provide vast economic support to the empire but had revolted against foreign rule before and might well do so again. In pursuit of that goal, the Soviet leadership turned to what is commonly the first practice in any course of covert political action—psychological warfare. It began with a series of planted rumors that hundreds of trained Indian agitators had already been dispatched into the country to inflame long held objections to foreign rule, and spread the message of communist empowerment of the local peoples. Other warnings were quoted to a Comintern (Communist International) official, reportedly disclosing that a special training school in Samarkand was preparing hundreds of native revolutionaries to be sent into India.⁸

To be effective, false stories like these need to make it into the popular news, and indeed they did, appearing in major Indian and British newspapers and provoking widespread concern. In fact, such schools would later be developed and native agitators would eventually be dispatched into India, but that would take time. The rumors and gossip, the stories planted in the press, all worked much more quickly and offered a far broader public impact.

Beyond illustrating the ease of media manipulation for psychological warfare, the effort illustrates what is one of the most important foundations of covert action in general, that of deniability. One of the most basic types of deniability—and one especially preferred by national leaders during both the Cold War and in more contemporary times—is that of separation, distancing the acts of individual citizens and groups from official government policy and sanctioned actions.

It was impossible for the Soviet Union to deny the goals and actions of the Comintern, those were quite open and publicly proclaimed. But when other nations challenged that it represented an aggressive action, the Soviet response was that the Comintern was an international organization, its actions reflected an ideological movement.⁹ Even though its leaders and officials were Soviet government officers, in regard to their actions as members of the Comintern, they were simply acting freely within their rights as private citizens.

Such blatant deniability deceived few people and no foreign nations. The immediate British response was forthright and uncharacteristically direct in diplomatic terms. The British Foreign Minister, Lord Curzon, was quoted as stating that when the Russian government desire to take some action more than usually repugnant to normal international law and comity they ordinarily erect some ostensibly independent authority to take the action on their behalf…the process is familiar and ceases to beguile.¹⁰

A very accurate assessment in 1921. Yet in terms of official foreign policy the Russian denial tactic proved viable, if disingenuous. In retrospect it might even seem somewhat laughable, but in terms of deniability that sort of bipolar government stance would continue to surface repeatedly in both American and Soviet covert actions during the Cold War. And while not totally beguiling, it continues as a quite obvious element of contemporary political warfare in the early twenty-first century.

Although initial planted rumors regarding trained, native infiltrators and agitators were largely untrue, in time the Soviets did prepare and insert a number of surrogate agitators into India. Given the nature of covert action and in order to establish both separation and deniability, the use of indigenous surrogates (either actual locals or political exiles) is a standard practice when political warfare takes the final step, moving beyond manipulation and shaping of the adversary’s foreign policies to actively attempting to bring about a change in governance and political rule—what today is referred to as regime change.

Beginning in the summer of 1921 trainees from the Moscow-based Toilers of the East communist training program began to move into India, using Persian passports. More were sent the following year, with an estimated two dozen attempting entry through 1923. In addition, large quantities of revolutionary literature were mailed into India and considerable funds were channeled through the Soviet diplomatic legation and trade missions in Kabul, Afghanistan. The British actually recovered a large number of hundred pound notes issued through Lloyd’s bank in London, which they were able to trace back to a Russian trade official.¹¹

With advance warning of the Comintern’s intentions, the British and Indian authorities began a program of aggressive interrogations and mail interceptions, successfully exposing the Russian effort and producing headlines in the Times of London, calling out the Bolshevik Plan for India and A Revolutionary Programme.¹² The combination of openly announcing a regime change agenda while attempting to carry it out with secret agents proved not to be a particularly effective approach—a historical lesson which the American government totally failed to appreciate in launching certain of its own regime change activities during the Cold War.

The covert activities of the Russian diplomatic and trade personnel illustrate another tactic routinely used in covert political action. It was certainly not something unique to the Russians; the British would use the same practice extensively. It is simply one of the first steps in any political action program. As one British intelligence memorandum describes, the ideal covert political operative should be a trader, a salesman, traveling extensively in the pursuit of his business. Of course the identities of such agents would be extremely closely held, and such agents would be totally disavowed.¹³ Commercial actors could never be connected to official diplomatic missions or be treated differently than any other business person, but they proved to be far more effective and certainly more deniable than personnel associated with government affairs or with a diplomatic mission, who would of course normally be suspected and very likely held to some level of observation.

Trade and commercial activities clearly offer initial points of personal contact, establishing channels for recruiting agents of influence and developing potential leverage for manipulating relationships. When policies proceed to more aggressive, and necessarily even more deniable activities, commercial and financial entities may also be used as covers for personnel, to secretly move funds for operations and to establish critical and covert logistics mechanisms. To illustrate how complex such commercial enabling activities can be, and how subtly they come into play, we can move forward in time, to before the Cold War and just prior to World War II.

By 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was faced with a quandary that would become familiar to many of his successors—dealing with national adversaries he perceived to be an imminent threat but which the American public had no desire to militarily engage. He had been able to turn to long-established relationships with the British to move against the threat from Germany,