The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB

89. The same disproportion in the treatment of KGB and CIA active measures is evident, on a somewhat smaller scale, in the generally valuable history of Le Monde by Jacques Thibau. Thibau concludes, for example, that one notorious forgery published by Le Monde, the so-called “Fechteler report,” which purported to reveal outrageously belligerent US designs in the Mediterranean, was almost certainly fabricated by the CIA and French intelligence. He does not consider the far more probable hypothesis that it was a KGB forgery (Thibau, Le Monde, 1944-1996, pp. 214-18). For an assessment of the revelations in the mid-1970s of malpractice by the US intelligence community, see Andrew, For the President’s Eyes Only, ch. 10.

90. SIDOR was recruited in 1956 but later suspected of working for the DST (k-14, 3). JACQUES, an AFP correspondent in a number of Asian countries, was a KGB agent from 1964 to 1973; during that period he had seven different controllers (k-6, 53). MISHA was recruited during a visit to the Soviet Union in 1965; Mitrokhin’s notes do not reveal how long his work as an agent continued (vol. 2, app. 1, para. 46; vol. 2, appendix 2, para. 68). LAN was an agent from 1969 to 1979, mostly—if not exclusively—in France (k-4, 85; k-27, 291). MARAT was an agent in Paris and abroad from c. 1973 to 1982 (k-6, 42). GRININ was recruited in 1980 (k-14, 379).

91. PIERRE, a confidential contact in the 1960s (k-14, 111, 134), and JOSEPH, a confidential contact from 1974 to 1977 (k-6, 84).

92. k-27, 291.

93. vol. 9, ch. 6, para. 33.

94. Shultz and Godson, Dezinformatsia, p. 134.

95. vol. 9, ch. 6, para. 40.

96. Shultz and Godson, Dezinformatsia, pp. 135-49.

97. k-5, 560.

98. vol. 9, ch. 6, paras. 37, 39-40. Sakharovsky was referred to at Pathé’s trial by his alias, “Kuznetsov.” The Paris residency believed that the DST had not succeeded in identifying him as the son of the former head of the FCD; k-5, 560.

99. Like DURANT, NANT, VERONIQUE, JACQUELINE and NANCY are identified in Mitrokhin’s notes, but cannot be named for legal reasons; vol. 9, ch. 6, paras. 43-9; k-6, 3.

100. vol. 9, ch. 6, para. 11.

101. vol. 9, ch. 4, para. 33.

102. vol. 9, ch. 6, para. 28; vol. 9, ch. 2, paras. 25-30; vol. 9, ch. 6, paras. 13-15.

103. L’élection présidentielle, 26 avril-10 mai 1981, p. 34. Kahn, “Soviet Comint in the Cold War,” p. 18.

104. vol. 9, ch. 3, para. 20. The “affair of the diamonds” had begun with the publication by one satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné on October 10, 1979 of an order placed by Bokassa six years earlier for the purchase of a diamond plaquette for Giscard d’Estaing. The Élysée tried to fend off this and similar stories over the next year and a half until it finally announced on March 23, 1981, just over a month before the first round of the presidential election, that diamonds given to Giscard in 1973, 1974 and 1975 had been valued at 115,000 francs and that this sum had been donated to the Red Cross and other good causes in the Central African Republic.

105. vol. 9, ch. 2, para. 31.

106. Le Monde reported during the campaign, “C’est incontestablement le parti socialiste qui a la meilleure image de marque dans l’électorat juif.” L’élection présidentielle, 26 avril-10 mai 1981, p. 73.

107. vol. 9, ch. 2, para. 31.

108. Mitrokhin’s notes give no details of the inside information provided by GILES; k-6, 128.

109. vol. 9, ch. 6, para. 3.

110. k-3, 81. BROK was not the only French journalist on whom the KGB radically revised its views. In 1979 the Centre concluded that LAN was providing “material not qualitatively different from material published in the press,” and broke off contact with him. k-27, 291.

111. vol. 9, ch. 6, para. 3.

112. The statistics for Line X operations in European residencies in 1975 were as follows (figures for Line X officers certainly refer to 1975; those for agents are for approximately—probably exactly—1975):

Residency Line X Officers [k-5, 420] Line X Agents [k-5, 423]

Belgrade 3 ? Berne 3 ? Bonn 15 9 Brussels 7 4 Copenhagen 6 7 Geneva 3 2 The Hague 3 1 Helsinki 6 2 Lisbon 2 ? London 9 9 Oslo 3 0 Paris 22 22 Rome 9 10 Stockholm 7 1 Vienna 19 29