In the Shadow of the KGB: Legacy of Czechoslovak Intelligence (1948–1989)

Abstract

Although Czechoslovak foreign intelligence operated in dozens of countries throughout the world between 1948 and 1989, interfering significantly in their political development in some cases, it is still a neglected actor in the history of the secret services. The aim of this study is to clarify the nature of Czechoslovak foreign intelligence and to assess its activities and the types of intelligence work on which it focused. In addition to the organizational structure and its changing face during the various phases of the Cold War, this study also focuses on the most important intelligence operations run by Czechoslovak intelligence abroad, its links to the Soviet State Committee for Security, and its collaboration with other Eastern bloc intelligence services. The second part of this study focuses on the processes leading to the declassification of intelligence documents after the collapse of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia and outlines how to critically interpret and evaluate these surviving archive materials in Cold War history research.

The Cold War era brought with it a great expansion in the intelligence services on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Their activities were interlinked with the political, military, economic, and human rights dimensions of this conflict, which lasted over 40 years, and became an integral part of its history. Whereas research into Western intelligence services attracted scholars while the Cold War was still going on, little was known about the activities of the Eastern bloc countries’ intelligence services until the first archives of the former communist countries were opened in the 1990s. The decentralized approach to Cold War research that has developed in the last two decades has shown that the smaller East-Central European socialist states entered the fray not only through their political and economic activities, but also their intelligence operations.¹

The communist coup in Czechoslovakia in 1948 brought with it a close adherence to the Soviet Union and its foreign policy. The Czechoslovak intelligence services also began to be used for the geopolitical ambitions of the USSR, which adjusted its goals and interests in this regard. Because of its location on the boundary between the two rival blocs, Czechoslovakia became a prominent location for intelligence activities. The declassified documents point to a hitherto under-researched aspect of the Czechoslovak security services’ operations not only in neighboring states and other Western European countries, but also in non-European areas. Some recently published studies on human intelligence have aroused debate in the public sphere over Czechoslovak foreign intelligence’s goals, intentions, and achievements, as well as the influence of the Soviet Union on its activities.² It was notable during these discussions that many researchers and the general public are not yet very clear regarding what was basically behind the operations of the former Eastern bloc intelligence services and the process leading to the declassification of their documents, which began with the collapse of the communist regimes in 1989. In the case of the former Czechoslovak foreign intelligence archive materials, their authenticity has been called into question or misrepresented for political purposes on several occasions.³

There have now been several studies on Czechoslovak foreign intelligence, focusing on specific operations in particular countries, but a summary assessment of these activities has not yet been properly drawn up. Although Jiřina Dvořáková’s work provides a basic factual summary of the structure behind the intelligence services, it does not provide a proper interpretation and account of individual intelligence actions.⁴ Karel Pacner’s four-volume work, on the other hand, focuses in more detail on specific cases of Czechoslovak intelligence employment abroad, covering the entire Cold War period, but it contains a number of inaccuracies, lacks an analytical perspective, and, considering the date of its publication, does not work with the most recently declassified materials.⁵ Although the editions of documents that have been produced on the subject are an appropriate complement to the aforementioned works, they do not cover the entire period of the intelligence service’s existence and only summarize some part of its activities.⁶ Neither the Handbook of the Communist Security Apparatus in East Central Europe nor the monograph Security Empire: The Secret Police in Communist Eastern Europe, which turns its attention to the internal security apparatus of the individual Eastern bloc countries, devote too much space to Czechoslovak intelligence.⁷ Nor do Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin’s award-winning two-volume works The Sword and the Shield and The World Was Going Our Way or even Jonathan Haslam’s Near and Distant Neighbour shed any light on the role of the intelligence services of the various “satellite” states in Eastern bloc intelligence operations, focusing exclusively on the activities of the State Committee for Security (KGB).⁸

Based on documents from the former Czechoslovak Ministry of the Interior and a broad range of secondary sources, it is the aim of this study to assess the changing face and activities of Czechoslovak foreign intelligence during the various phases of the Cold War, outlining in greater detail the types of intelligence in which it specialized, where it operated, and the results of its work. Furthermore, the study also addresses the question of how extensive were Czechoslovak intelligence’s links with the Soviet KGB; that is, to what extent it stood in its shadow and accomplished its tasks. The study focuses exclusively on foreign intelligence, which fell under the Ministry of the Interior (codenamed as the First Directorate) and does not deal with military intelligence managed by the Ministry of Defence. The second part of the study focuses on the reasons and processes leading to the declassification of the documents of the former Czechoslovak intelligence apparatus and explains how to critically interpret and evaluate them in the context of the history of the Cold War and the secret services.

STRUCTURE AND ORIENTATION OF CZECHOSLOVAK FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE

The Czechoslovak intelligence apparatus consisted primarily of the State Security Service (Státní bezpečnost; StB), which was a privileged section of the National Security Corps (Sbor národní bezpečnosti; SNB), which included the main police and security forces in Czechoslovakia. The only intelligence service standing outside the Ministry of the Interior apparatus was the Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Czechoslovak People’s Army (Zpravodajská správa Generálního štábu).⁹

State security was primarily concerned with controlling Czechoslovak society, where it was meant to seek out and suppress expressions of resistance to the communist regime, oversee the economy, and have specialized units for monitoring people, correspondence, and telephone/radio communications. It also included an intelligence service that was to operate abroad. Although it was only one part of the vast State Security apparatus, its mission of fighting the “arch-enemy,” which in the context of Cold War rivalry was the United States, gave it a special status. The foreign intelligence service of communist Czechoslovakia operated under several names during these decades, but it always retained the status of the First Directorate (I. správa) within the Czechoslovak StB. Its position within the state administration was never clearly defined by law, and thus it was not subject to the control of the constitutional authorities.

It was a globally active intelligence service that monitored a broad range of targets abroad, including political parties, state agencies, other intelligence services, émigré groups, what were known as “ideodiverse” centers (i.e., foreign institutions focusing on the dissemination of opposition and uncensored information destined for socialist countries), economic entities, scientific and research institutions, and military structures. Additionally, it participated in arranging security protection for Czechoslovak institutions abroad and provided courier and cryptographic radio communications, both for its own purposes and for Czechoslovak diplomatic missions abroad. Its area of operation included not only “capitalist” states but also third-world countries and, at various times, hostile socialist states. The main adversaries and primary targets of intelligence operations were the United States (code name OHEŇ/FIRE), North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member countries (BLESK/LIGHTNING), Japan (VZDUCH/AIR), and the People’s Republic of China (VODA/WATER).¹⁰ While the first two main adversaries had the highest priority throughout the First Directorate’s existence, the latter were added in the 1970s.¹¹

The objectives and orientation of Czechoslovak Intelligence were defined by key documents (statutes) published by the Ministry of the Interior.¹² Their content reflected the needs and interests of the Czechoslovak Communist Party and state apparatus, as well as those of the Soviet secret services. Based on these documents, the intelligence activities of the First Directorate were divided into Political, Scientific-Technical, and Illegal Intelligence. Political Intelligence was meant to gather information at a global level on U.S. political, military, and economic interests, an activity that was prioritized over local assignments in many countries. In the case of NATO, intelligence focused attention on the activities of its political bodies and later on the disarmament process. The surveillance of Japan and its foreign policy, as well as intelligence work against China, exclusively served the interests of the Soviet Union. In Europe, the primary target was the Federal Republic of Germany, particularly its relationship to NATO and the European Economic Community.¹³ Scientific-Technical Intelligence specialized in obtaining technical documentation, technical processes, and patents from abroad. It came to be one of the primary means by which Czechoslovakia overcame its technological backwardness and got around embargoes imposed by Western countries.¹⁴ The third section, Illegal Intelligence, was originally created for deployment in the event of a war, when a network of intelligence officers living abroad under foreign identities was to take charge of the secret collaborators. Hence, members of the Illegal Intelligence Service were not initially used for intelligence activities, but only received reports while remaining strictly undercover. This changed soon after its establishment in the late 1950s, when Illegal Intelligence officers, who had worked their way into targets of intelligence interest also started to be used to gather information.¹⁵

An important part of the First Directorate’s work also involved the performance of what were known as influencing and active measures,¹⁶ which primarily aimed to discredit the intelligence services of Britain, France, the United States, West Germany, and émigré and opposition groups, stirring up animosity between Western countries and monitoring ideodiverse centers, especially Radio Free Europe (RFE), Voice of America, and Radio Vatican.¹⁷ In the latter half of the 1980s, there was a growing emphasis on positive, proactive measures to promote the disarmament process, the easing of international tensions, and the issue of peaceful coexistence between East and West.¹⁸

In Czechoslovakia, the foreign intelligence service consisted of the headquarters, with its regional branches, which were directly connected. The headquarters consisted of operational departments organized on a territorial basis (e.g., the U.S. and Latin America Department) or based on specialized issues (e.g., the Active Measures Department). To these was added the Analytical and Information Department, which collated and evaluated the information obtained, on the basis of which the relevant analyses were drawn up. The regional StB branches, which dealt with operational actions of minor importance, sought out foreigners and Czechoslovak citizens suitable for use as secret collaborators as well as candidates for work in intelligence. Members who were assigned to cover jobs in Czechoslovakia after completing special training were designated as the “first reserve.” They worked in state institutions, most often in the ministries of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade.¹⁹ What was known as the “second reserve” of the First Directorate was represented by intelligence stations abroad, referred to as “residencies.” Czechoslovak representative offices (embassies) served as their cover. The term “legal residencies” was used to distinguish them from the Illegal Intelligence structures, which in contrast concealed any connection with the Czechoslovak state. It was the task of the residencies to manage intelligence agency networks consisting of foreign secret collaborators, who were registered in line with the extent of their cooperation under the classification of “agent” and “confidential contact.”²⁰

The Czechoslovak foreign intelligence service was an organization that grew significantly in its early years. From a few dozen individuals in the late 1940s, the number of its members had grown to 327 by 1955, of whom 48 operational and 20 technical staff worked abroad.²¹ In the following decade, the intelligence personnel increased even more significantly, in line with the expansion of its scope to the global level. In 1962, 854 personnel were serving in the First Directorate, and three years later 1,200. They were active in intelligence in 23 countries, in nine of which large residencies were established to cover all the types of activity performed by foreign intelligence.²² Years of constant growth were only halted by the intervention of the Warsaw Pact troops and the subsequent purges of staff who did not endorse the occupation of Czechoslovakia. Of the 1,236 intelligence officers who were serving in the First Directorate as of January 1968, some 260 were dismissed for their political views in the following years. This move was damaging because they were largely well-trained, experienced operatives.²³ By 1974, the First Directorate had 1,353 members but by the early 1980s this figure was down to 1,220. Almost 95% of them were members of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (Komunistická strana Československa; KSČ).²⁴ In the final years of its existence, the First Directorate served 35 residencies, of which sixteen were in Europe, nine in the Americas, seven in Asia, and three in Africa.²⁵

The exploitation of human intelligence was the main working method employed by Czechoslovak foreign intelligence.²⁶ Whereas it had acquired 73 agents between 1951 and 1953, by the end of 1955 it was managing 216.²⁷ In the early 1980s, the First Directorate reported cooperation with 278 individuals classified as “agents” or “confidential contacts” and carried out 115 active measures, 100 of them abroad.²⁸ In the technical sphere, its activities were limited, as it took advantage of the services of specialized StB units, primarily signals intelligence, where it cooperated with the Thirteenth Directorate.²⁹ Moreover, the technological lag behind the West was made apparent when operational equipment was deployed. One of the few significant technical operations performed by the First Directorate was Operation PŘÍSTROJ/INSTRUMENT, in which the radio communications of the local counterintelligence services were intercepted at selected diplomatic missions in order to protect ongoing intelligence operations.³⁰

The KGB was directly involved in the operation of Czechoslovak foreign intelligence. Cooperation between the two services was ensured by a multilayered system of agreements, foremost of which were the cooperation agreements at the level of the Czechoslovak Ministry of the Interior and the KGB. More specific tasks were set out in agreements (called Prospective Plans), which elaborated on individual cooperation agreements in even greater detail in particular areas of intelligence work or on specific territories.³¹ Detailed rules were also drawn up for cooperation “in the field” between the residencies of the two countries. This meant that the secret services of smaller satellite states sometimes took over the entire scope of the KGB intelligence work in a specific country. In practice, only some of these activities were relevant to Czechoslovakia, especially émigré operations, scientific–technological intelligence, and active measures.³²

At regular meetings of the Eastern bloc intelligence services, the KGB issued instructions to all its “satellite” services. The surviving documents provide important insights into Soviet priorities in directing the work of the intelligence services of the other Eastern European countries. They also demonstrate a strong emphasis on the scientific and technical sphere, including military and industrial know-how, as well as on defending “the camp of socialist countries” against the intelligence activities of the Western secret services, the infiltration of free information, and the preparation of active measures to support the position of the Eastern bloc.³³ These are the documents from different levels of intelligence management, starting with basic tasking contracts and followed with detailed contracts containing targeting of operations and active measures in countries or regions of Soviet interest. A special group of documents contain the meeting minutes of different levels of negotiations between both services, which demonstrate insight at the operational level. Finally, another important group of documents consists of KGB “products,” which reflect the KGB’s knowledge of the targets pursued (i.e., analyses or reports on persons or institutions, including the KGB’s bulletin focusing on Western intelligence services).

In addition to assigning tasks, the KGB First Chief Directorate had long-term control over the specialist training of Czechoslovak intelligence officers, whose training in the USSR was one of the requirements for their career growth.³⁴ The Soviet service supervised its Prague “junior partner” through a permanent group of “advisors” who acted as liaison officers.³⁵ Important information obtained during operations passed through their hands, they had an overview of a large number of the intelligence sources and the individuals under control, and, if need arose, they could initiate their transfer to the direct control of the KGB. In addition to the permanent representation of the Soviet secret service, members of the First Directorate came together to work with its representatives at regular meetings.³⁶

Hence, the Czechoslovak foreign intelligence service was only to some extent an instrument of the interests of its own state, and for the most part it operated as a branch or “little sister” of the KGB.³⁷ It remains an open question, however, how many Czechoslovak agents Soviet intelligence utilized, how deeply it knew their agency network, and how much it instructed the First Directorate.³⁸ A full list of secret collaborators handed over to the KGB has not been found and, in any case, probably never existed. Not only agents already recruited, but also individuals still at the initial processing stage, were handed over to the KGB.³⁹ In cases that were advantageous, the KGB took over Czechoslovak agents or at least shared their control.⁴⁰ The cases in which the Czechoslovak party handed over Soviet agents were few, and primarily involved risky or unsuccessful ones.⁴¹ The KGB also searched Czechoslovak citizens born abroad to be used as false identities for Soviet illegals.⁴² A small group of Czechoslovak intelligence officers serving as illegals operated under direct Soviet command.⁴³

We should also distinguish between different periods of cooperation because previous research has already noted cases from the first half of the 1960s, when the First Directorate unilaterally refused to follow all KGB instructions and pursued its own interests.⁴⁴ After 1968, however, as a result of the purges within the Czechoslovak foreign intelligence service, it is possible to speak of an almost boundless loyalty to the KGB.

In some time periods, the level of Soviet use of the First Directorate can be exactly quantified. For example, in the years 1985 to1989, the cooperation was established by general agreement and seven special treaties, which stipulated common (actually Soviet) goals in the United States, Federal Republic of Germany, Great Britain, and the Middle East, in the fields of Political, Scientific-Technical, and Illegal intelligence.⁴⁵ The highest priorities were operations against the United States and NATO and monitoring of indications of unexpected attacks on the Soviet Union (Operation VRYaN). During this period, the First Directorate handed over to its KGB counterpart more than 18,000 items for the Political Intelligence Section. The Czechoslovak Scientific-Technical Section handed over 3,360 information items and production samples to the KGB, which identified as the most important those concerning treatment of AIDS, production of pharmaceuticals, and information technologies.⁴⁶ In the late 1980s, both services’ residencies cooperated in at least twenty countries worldwide with varying levels of intensity, in many cases using Czechoslovak agents to fulfill common tasks or directly for the benefit of the KGB. Within the same period, the KGB used secret collaborators from the First Directorate for its own operations against Western embassies and intelligence services in countries, where Czechoslovak residencies did not operate (e.g., in Zambia, Kenya, Tunisia, and Kuwait).⁴⁷

The cooperation between the Czechoslovak First Directorate and the other socialist countries’ foreign intelligence services took place on a much smaller scale and in a completely different spirit, maintaining the equal status of the cooperating services. The main partners were the intelligence services of East Germany and, until the mid-1980s, the Cuban secret service. Exchanges of information also took place to a lesser extent with the Polish and Hungarian services.⁴⁸ In this case, too, this topic has hitherto only received marginal attention.⁴⁹

CZECHOSLOVAK INTELLIGENCE AND ITS MAIN STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT

The Formative Years: 1948–1953

The Czechoslovak foreign intelligence service was established within the Interior Ministry in 1945 as a completely new organization. Czechoslovak foreign espionage had previously been the domain of military intelligence.⁵⁰ Initially, it was a small division within the Interior Ministry’s Political Intelligence Department. At the end of 1947, this was made into a separate unit, which might be described as the de facto establishment of Czechoslovak foreign intelligence. Even at that time, it was under the considerable influence of the KSČ, which controlled the “power” ministries even before February 1948, and even served as a means to illegally secure funds for the needs of the KSČ.⁵¹ After the communist takeover, foreign intelligence underwent rapid development. Its activities were first affected by the departure of a number of experienced personnel into exile and those who were considered politically unreliable. The rapid development of the security apparatus that came about with the Sovietization of the Czechoslovak state then caused a number of inexperienced people, often without the necessary training, to join the security forces.⁵² During this period, the countries of Western Europe (especially the occupation zones in Germany and Austria, as well as France, Britain, Italy, and Switzerland) and, more recently, the United States, became the “enemy” at which much of the intelligence work was to be targeted.⁵³ From the autumn of 1948 it was assigned to the State Security headquarters, where it gradually gained equal status with the other counterintelligence divisions. An agreement with the Foreign Ministry provided it with better conditions for intelligence work abroad under diplomatic cover. After reorganization in May 1950, when the Ministry of National Security was established in Czechoslovakia, foreign intelligence became a part of it.⁵⁴ That same year saw a crucial meeting between representatives of the Czechoslovak and Soviet foreign intelligence services in Moscow, which had a bearing on its development over the following decades. Under the influence of the KGB, the operational scope expanded beyond Europe (e.g., to include South America and the Middle East), and this new orientation also covered the acquisition of scientific and technical information.⁵⁵ Although the internal purges in the communist security apparatus had a negative effect on Czechoslovak intelligence and its efficiency, they did not halt the process of its growth. In the early 1950s, the foundations were laid for the orientation and method of work that it practiced until the fall of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia.

The most prominent collaborators of this period included Vlastislav Chalupa, who was recruited after his arrest in 1948 and purportedly fled Czechoslovakia a year later while working for foreign intelligence. He first worked in France and from 1951 lived in the United States. He created bogus anticommunist organizations and became a respected member of the Czechoslovak émigré community. Hundreds of people that he recruited for the alleged resistance movement were denounced to the Czechoslovak authorities, which subsequently arrested them, and some of them were even executed. He worked as an intelligence collaborator in the United States from 1956 to 1958.⁵⁶

Global Expansion: 1953–1968

In the autumn of 1953, the Czechoslovak Ministry of National Security was again merged with the Ministry of the Interior. This change, probably approved by the Soviets, was intended to ensure greater control by the KSČ over the State Security in response to the StB’s activities during the party purges from 1950 to 1953. The Ministry was headed by an ambitious member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (Ústřední výbor Komunistické strany Československa; ÚV KSČ), Rudolf Barák. He was able to make good use of his exceptional status at the head of this “power” ministry to strengthen his influence within the ruling nomenclature.⁵⁷ In the completely reorganized Czechoslovak security apparatus, foreign intelligence figured under the codename First Directorate of the Ministry of the Interior (I. správa Ministerstva vnitra), which it retained with minor variations until its abolition.⁵⁸ From the middle of the decade onward, it began to develop intensively, supported by Rudolf Barák with his recruitment of qualified and educated university graduates, which was totally unique within the State Security environment. Intelligence activities included the training of illegal intelligence officers, while the activities of scientific and technical intelligence were expanded, and the first active measures were undertaken.⁵⁹

Czechoslovak foreign intelligence also came to include methods aimed at the physical liquidation of individuals and abductions across the border into Czechoslovakia. For example, the former Czechoslovak Industry Minister Bohumil Laušman was abducted from Austria in December 1953, as well as the anticommunist resistance fighter Jozef Vicen in May 1957, and in September of that year, the former Slovak intelligence officer Imrich Sucký, who was to become embroiled in the power struggle within the communist leadership. Intelligence also carried out several bombings abroad. One of the victims was Matúš Černák, a Slovak émigré in Munich in July 1955.⁶⁰ In May 1957, the First Directorate tried to kill the Strasbourg prefect, Andre Tremeaud, but the bomb accidentally killed his wife instead. The aim of this operation was to inflame tensions between West Germany and France, as the assassination was being passed off as the work of a secret neo-Nazi group.⁶¹ A series of attacks, including an attempted poisoning, were carried out against the Czechoslovak reporting staff at RFE.⁶²

From the first half of the 1960s, the First Directorate under Soviet patronage was systematically prepared for targeted sabotage tasks against strategic targets abroad. A “Special Purpose Service” was created within its ranks, tasked with preparing operations to destroy communications, energy sources, and military facilities in West Germany. Moreover, it was to carry out operations leading to the abduction or physical liquidation of selected individuals, such as defectors or anticommunists. However, the Special Purpose Service was never deployed in practice because its activities were exclusively geared toward the outbreak of war. Its definitive demise was brought about by the changes made to Czechoslovak foreign intelligence in the late 1960s.⁶³

The usual methods for recruiting secret collaborators included the exploitation of their ties to Czechoslovakia. Hence, successful operations from this period included Operation LIGHT, whose chief protagonist was Karel Zbytek, a former member of the Czechoslovak foreign army from World War II (WWII), who returned to Britain after the communist takeover. He anonymously offered to collaborate with the Czechoslovak secret services in London in May 1956 for personal profit. He offered information about the Czechoslovak émigré intelligence organization, the Czechoslovak Intelligence Office (CIO), which worked under the auspices of the British Secret Intelligence Service. This turned out to be a large, successful organization that had contacts inside the Czechoslovak state authorities, of which the Czechoslovak authorities had previously had no notion. Zbytek’s betrayal led to arrests and extensive personnel purges in Czechoslovakia, and the main local collaborators of the émigré secret service were executed in 1957. The CIO was disbanded by the British authorities, and Karel Zbytek died in Britain in 1962.⁶⁴

Two other agents were born in Czechoslovakia and had varying postwar fortunes. The first was Alfred Frenzel, a Sudeten German who, as an active opponent of Nazism, fled to Britain in 1938 and served with the Czechoslovak No. 311 Royal Air Force Squadron during the war. On his return to his homeland, he was instrumental to a large extent in the emigration of the Social Democrats to Germany, where he became a member of the Bavarian Landtag and later the Bundestag after the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany. Due to his membership of the Defence Committee, he had access to information on the structure of the West German army, which he passed on to the First Directorate, which recruited him in 1956, thanks to his interest in maintaining contacts with his stepdaughter in Czechoslovakia. After being arrested in 1960, he spent six years in prison, then was extradited to Czechoslovakia, where he spent the last two years of his life. In the summer of 1968, the Czechoslovak Ministry of the Interior wanted to use his case for propaganda purposes, but Frenzel’s sudden death and the precipitous events surrounding the Prague Spring put an end to this plan.⁶⁵ As regards early scientific and technical espionage, Kurt Sitte, a Liberec-born physicist working at the Technion Institute in Haifa, Israel, was recruited as an agent in 1955 thanks to his interest in Czechoslovak citizenship. By this means, the First Directorate attempted to gain access to the Israeli nuclear research environment until Sitte’s arrest in the spring of 1960.⁶⁶ A high-ranking Austrian police official, Alfred Petrovič, was also involved with Czechoslovakia to some extent, having been recruited through extortion and blackmail by a relative collaborating with Czechoslovak secret services. In his position with the Austrian Staatspolizei, he passed on documents about the network to the First Directorate, participated in the cover-up of its activities in Vienna, and also passed on information about Western intelligence services operating in Austria. There was even speculation that he was involved in the poisoning of a defector from Hungarian military intelligence in 1962. Alfred Petrovič was one of the most important Czechoslovak spies during the Cold War, although his name is not all that well known to the public.⁶⁷

The early 1960s saw an increase in the number of intelligence personnel and the enhancement of their qualifications. This was the period when its intelligence activities were at their most frequent and successful, carried out as they were in dozens of countries, often in conjunction with Soviet residencies, such as in the United States, Austria, West Germany, France, and Italy. During the latter half of the 1950s, a vast illegal intelligence network had been built up. It was a challenging project requiring elaborate preparation of cover identities and long-term training. The Czechoslovak illegal network was therefore not nearly as extensive as the pool of clandestine collaborators, yet it numbered several dozen people. The “illegal intelligence officers” from Czechoslovakia moved through various “transit countries,” for example in South America, to their destinations in Western Europe or the United States. However, the template-like “production” of cover identities turned out to be a weakness, after a series of operations was exposed by counterintelligence services in West Germany, Switzerland, and France in the early 1960s. Many of them had to be terminated prematurely and the modus operandi had to be modified.⁶⁸

The success of Czechoslovak foreign intelligence service in European countries during this period is indicated by the cases that the First Directorate managed in Britain and Austria. Revelations of collaboration by British members of Parliament Will Owen, Ray Mawby, and especially John Stonehouse attract attention to this day.⁶⁹ The revelation of former Vienna mayor Helmut Zilk’s intelligence contacts also caused a stir.⁷⁰ However, these cases are still only known for the most part from the press, and we are still waiting for their specialist treatment, although the relevant volumes are fully accessible to the public. The Paris residency also had notable successes, having managed to enlist the collaboration of several left-leaning journalists, including Jean Clémentin, who worked for the satirical weekly Le Canard enchaîné.⁷¹ With his help, the First Directorate carried out several active measures aimed at exacerbating the rift between France and West Germany and discrediting the French government in connection with the abduction of Moroccan politician Mehdi Ben Barka.⁷² The First Directorate also worked together with an employee at the Secretariat of the Paris Prefecture, Gerard Leconte (codename SÁMO), who for ideological and financial reasons supplied Czechoslovakia with information obtained by the French police and intelligence services. It took five years of operational development before Leconte finally committed himself to residency tasks, in 1965. He passed secretly photographed documentation through his wife, and the First Directorate thus acquired important insights into the French security forces, as well as into the activities of the Czechoslovak émigrés.⁷³

In cooperation with the KGB, the First Directorate reacted to dynamic changes in the international situation in the 1960s, such as the Sino–Soviet split, the intensification of the decolonization process, and the Cuban revolution, which accelerated the expansion of Czechoslovak foreign intelligence into Latin America. The First Directorate played an important role in the establishment of Fidel Castro’s regime in Cuba, providing information support, helping to build up the security apparatus, and providing cover for the transport of “revolutionaries” to other Latin American countries as part of Operation MANUEL.⁷⁴ Residencies in Brazil and Uruguay were also a success, as riding the wave of anti-American sentiment there, it was possible to create a fairly extensive network of collaborators and to implement a number of active measures through them. Czechoslovak foreign intelligence was also involved in the decolonization of British Guiana, which was to become an important base for further Eastern bloc intelligence activities in Latin America.⁷⁵

The First Directorate was even more active during the decolonization of Africa, where it maintained contact with national liberation movements, which it supported with arms supplies, as well as with training provided by intelligence experts in individual African states (the Congo, Guinea, and Mali) and in courses organized in Czechoslovakia at that time.⁷⁶ It succeeded in enlisting the collaboration of some prominent African politicians, notably Amilcar Cabral (SEKRETÁŘ/SECRETARY) and Mehdi Ben Barka (ŠEJK/SHEIK), who sought the support of the Eastern bloc countries in their efforts to limit the influence of the colonial powers. Ben Barka, who held prominent positions within the global anticolonial movement, received payments for his assignments from the intelligence services until his mysterious disappearance in Paris in 1965. It cannot be ruled out that his collaboration with the First Directorate, and his efforts to overthrow the monarchist regime in Morocco with its help, were the cause of his abduction and death.⁷⁷

The activities of Czechoslovak foreign intelligence in the Middle East, which became one of the most prominent areas of the world in the latter half of the twentieth century, are still awaiting detailed examination. However, there is extensive documentation available on Czechoslovak intelligence activities covering Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria. Only the residency in Cyprus, which attempted to escalate the conflict between two NATO members, Greece and Turkey, by influencing the “Cyprus question,” has received some close attention.⁷⁸

From 1963, the First Directorate, in cooperation with the KGB, switched to systematic preparation of active measures, which until then had been carried out as separate and not very coordinated actions. These were disinformation campaigns, which were undertaken by a specialized department on the basis of a long-term plan. The primary objective came to be the discreditation of the United States on a global scale and corrosion of West Germany’s credibility by referring to its Nazi past. From the mid-1960s onward, the First Directorate carried out several dozen active measures operations each year, some with considerable foreign involvement. The U.S. military intervention in the Dominican Republic in 1965 resulted in a wave of protests in Latin America, while on the other side of the world, in Indonesia, active measure KARNO was a success, sparking anti-American demonstrations and tensions in relations.⁷⁹ In the summer of 1964, probably the most famous Czechoslovak active measure of all time took place. As part of the NEPTUN operation, the First Directorate supposedly “discovered” hidden boxes of documents dating back to WWII. This action, justified by a desire to prevent the statute of limitations from being applied to Nazi war criminals in Germany, was to be the beginning of a large-scale discreditation campaign against West German political leaders.⁸⁰ Among others, Glenn Roy Rohrer, a defector from U.S. military counterintelligence, who fled to Czechoslovakia in 1965, was prepared for active measures. He was first interrogated in detail on issues surrounding his polygraph (lie detector) work, and then he was involved in an active operation to discredit U.S. intelligence services.⁸¹

The 1960s, however, were not only a period of growth for the Czechoslovak foreign intelligence, but also a period of setbacks and scandals in the form of exposed agents and illegals. First, in April 1960, the scientist Kurt Sitte (Agent CHUDAK/POOR MAN) was arrested in Israel, while in Germany Alfred Frenzel, a member of the Bundestag (Agent ANNA) and his illegal case officers were exposed, in Switzerland the illegals “Mr and Mrs Schwarzenberger” and their case officers were exposed, and in France two more illegals were arrested.⁸² The First Directorate was forced to conclude on the basis of internal analyses that its development to date had been rather sporadic and in many respects poorly managed. After an internal reorganization, related, among other things, to the fall from power of Interior Minister Barák at the beginning of 1962, a number of key documents were approved, which were to guide its activities more systematically and professionally.⁸³

Stagnation and Collapse: 1969–1989

The 1968 “Prague Spring” marked an important turning point in the development of the First Directorate, as well as Czechoslovak society as a whole. During this period, a rift began to emerge within the First Directorate between younger and more educated members and their older colleagues, who often had careers in the counterintelligence sections of the Czechoslovak secret services. Cooperation with the reform-minded leadership of the Interior Ministry also led to a change in the First Directorate.⁸⁴ Some intelligence officers were even involved in drawing up proposals to change the classification of the First Directorate within the state apparatus and to separate it from the StB structures. The activities of KGB “advisors” were also partially curtailed, and the dispatch of the First Directorate officers to Soviet intelligence schools came to a (temporary) end. After the Warsaw Pact invasion, pro-reform officers made clear their opposition to the violent end of the Prague Spring, which inevitably led to purges in the security apparatus. They began with the installation of a new, “politically reliable” intelligence chief from the ranks of military intelligence and culminated in 1969–70, when more than 250 politically unreliable individuals were dismissed. The significant support for the Prague Spring reform process shown by intelligence officers sparked the personal interest of KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov in the reorganization of the First Directorate.⁸⁵ The service was then subject to increased Soviet control, including renewed training of the operational personnel in the USSR, up to 1989 and was always headed by people who were compliant with pro-Soviet policies.⁸⁶

After 1968, Czechoslovak foreign intelligence was forced to limit its work in a number of countries. A temporary shortage of personnel and a change in political priorities from 1970 led to a concentration of activities on Europe and the United States, monitoring Czechoslovak émigrés and psychological operations.⁸⁷ As a result of the Warsaw Pact intervention, events took place that had never previously concerned the First Directorate (unlike the KGB), namely the escape of several of its members to the West.⁸⁸ Some of them have since published their testimonies in books.⁸⁹ For the First Directorate, these departures invariably meant that its work was crippled by disclosures of agency networks and intelligence officers, to which it had to respond with internal investigations, the closure of compromised cases, and the withdrawal of compromised intelligence officers from abroad. The defections of Josef Frolík and Ladislav Bittman led to a disclosure of cases in Afghanistan, Austria, and Britain. Antonín Nenko’s escape caused the collapse of the scientific–technical intelligence network in the United States. The preparation process behind the active measures was also revealed, as well as the First Directorate’s headquarters location. Jan Fila’s and Vlastimil Ludvík’s escapes in 1986 and 1988 represented further defections of important service members. It was necessary to close the whole intelligence network in the United States because Fila was the deputy director of the “North American Department.” In the case of Vlastimil Ludvík, a special investigation committee evaluated it as a risk to continue operations in Western Europe, Cyprus, and Greece.⁹⁰

The most significant change in the First Directorate after 1968 could be seen in Africa, where it withdrew from all countries except Egypt and Algeria. It also gradually began to reduce its activities in Latin America, even in countries where successful intelligence operations had been conducted. The exceptions were Uruguay, where it ceased its activities in 1977, and Chile, where it remained operational until 1980, when it terminated Operation ANDROMEDA, in which it secretly supported the Socialist Party after the 1973 military coup in cooperation with the East German intelligence service.⁹¹ In Asia, the First Directorate left Afghanistan and Pakistan, but maintained its residencies in India and Indonesia and intensified its activity against the People’s Republic of China and Japan in compliance with Soviet demands. After the fall of the Shah’s regime, it resumed activities in Iran.⁹² In Europe, it carried on monitoring NATO and the institutions of the emerging European Communities and continued to take active measures against them. Important intelligence objectives also included the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, support for protest actions against the proliferation of nuclear weapons in Western Europe, and even monitoring internal political developments in Poland after 1980.⁹³

The First Directorate achieved its most important successes in its activities in the 1970s and 1980s, primarily against “soft targets”; that is, the Czechoslovak émigrés and the organizations that supported them. Unlike Western state agencies and intelligence services, they had only limited defense mechanisms, and so it was relatively easy to recruit secret collaborators among their members or to assign them to their ranks from Czechoslovak headquarters.⁹⁴ Several of the agents deployed in this way were withdrawn after the end of the intelligence operation to Czechoslovakia, where they were exploited for spectacular press conferences and propaganda campaigns. Among the most famous cases was that of Ervín Marák, who, under the codename HRAČKA/TOY, transmitted recordings of his telephone conversations to Czechoslovakia, which were used in radio programs to discredit public figures living in exile.⁹⁵ Pavel Minařík, who was deployed to West Germany in 1969, ostensibly as a political refugee, with the task of infiltrating the Czechoslovak newsroom at RFE, literally became a legend. After passing on information about its staff, and even suggesting a bomb attack in the studio, he was pulled back to Czechoslovakia in 1976. He became the main actor in a press conference during which he subjected RFE and his former colleagues to harsh criticism, accusing them of undermining the communist regime.⁹⁶

While many more similar cases against émigré organizations could be added, the First Directorate achieved far fewer successful results against the “enemy” during this period. One of them, however, was an operation in which Karel Köcher was sent to the United States in 1964 with his wife Hana, who was also a secret intelligence collaborator. After his university studies, Köcher first managed to join the Pentagon’s Open Source Evaluation Unit in 1973, and then moved to the CIA’s Technical Branch, which focused on translating records obtained through wiretaps and other technical measures. He relayed information about his associates and the results of the CIA’s work to intelligence headquarters in Prague. This collaboration continued until 1976, with much of the information being passed on to the KGB, which presumably assigned Köcher even more tasks. In that year, however, there was a dramatic split between Köcher and the First Directorate, which led to a break in contact. At the beginning of the 1980s, both sides tried to reestablish contact, but Karel Köcher did not attain any more intelligence-related positions. In November 1984, the couple were arrested in the United States and charged with espionage. Two years later, they were extradited as part of a group swap for Soviet dissident Anatoly (Natan) Sharansky at the Glienitz “Bridge of Spies” in Berlin.⁹⁷

In the military sphere, the First Directorate established contact with members of the U.S. Army in Germany, with whom Hungarian military intelligence had been working since the 1970s. The group, led by Zoltán Szabo, a U.S. citizen originally from Hungary, passed on classified documents containing NATO operational plans for Central Europe. After Szabo’s retirement in 1979, Sergeant First Class Clyde Lee Conrad took over the leadership and in 1982 approached the First Directorate to offer to sell classified documents for personal gain. The service accepted the offer and paid 207,000 USD and 5,000 DEM to Conrad’s group over the next four years. The documents obtained were passed on to the KGB. This collaboration came to an end in 1986 after Conrad broke off contact. Two years later, he was exposed and arrested.⁹⁸

The most famous revelations of Czechoslovak espionage activities include the case of “illegal intelligence officer” Václav Jelínek, which took place in 1988 in Britain. Jelínek worked as part of Operation GRAGERT under the identity of Dutch citizen Erwin van Haarlem. This was the identity of an actual person who had been placed as a child in an orphanage in occupied Czechoslovakia during WWII. This revelation was first and foremost a media sensation, as the security implications of Jelínek’s activities for the United Kingdom were close to zero. Although he was supposed to obtain information from British state institutions, he failed to do so, because he worked as an accountant in a private company. Because of his false identity, which was based on partial Jewish ancestry, he nevertheless managed to infiltrate British organizations supporting the emigration of Soviet citizens to Israel. While Jelínek’s importance to the First Directorate was minimal, information about the exodus from the USSR was of particular interest to the KGB and was passed directly to the Soviet intelligence representatives. After his arrest, Jelínek was brought before a British court, where he refused to state his identity. He served his sentence in the United Kingdom after his conviction and was not released until in 1993 after the breakup of Czechoslovakia.⁹⁹

During the 1980s, the First Directorate participated in two major Soviet security services projects. It became the entry point for the Standardized Information Records System, a database of hostile individuals collected by all the Eastern bloc secret services for use by the KGB in particular.¹⁰⁰ There was also an increased focus on military issues, and the primary task of Czechoslovak intelligence came to be a program they termed Index nenadálého napadení (Sudden Attack Index), which was the local version of the Soviet VRYaN operation. The aim of this project was to monitor NATO military and civilian facilities globally due to fears of an unexpected attack on the Soviet Union. The intelligence services of the USSR and its “satellites” were to search for signs of an impending attack based on a special methodology. Under the First Directorate this operation was launched in 1983, when the KGB trained Czechoslovak intelligence officers in obtaining the necessary information. Until 1989, the Soviets evaluated the results of the Czechoslovak activities within Operation VRYaN, using them for its own purposes.¹⁰¹

The orientation and working methods of the First Directorate did not change that much, which led to gradual stagnation in its effectiveness during the 1970s and 1980s. At the same time, defectors and exposed cases were an important source of information for Western counterintelligence services on the way the First Directorate worked. It was not until the eve of the Velvet Revolution that the leadership of the service openly acknowledged this unflattering situation.¹⁰² In contrast to 1968, in 1989 the First Directorate did not turn into a debating society. Although its members were aware of the slowly changing circumstances in the Eastern bloc, they maintained a considerable detachment from the events during this period. The KGB representatives left the First Directorate headquarters before Christmas 1989, and in mid-January of the following year, the last meetings of Czechoslovak and Soviet operatives took place at foreign residencies. In early 1990, the First Directorate leadership attempted to save the service’s position, proposing to the new Czechoslovak government a reorganization and a reduction in its numbers by 30%. At the same time, the KGB itself recommended the conclusion of entirely new cooperation agreements on terms of equal partnership. By the end of January 1990, however, the First Directorate was already heading inexorably toward dissolution.¹⁰³

THE ACCESS ROAD TO CZECHOSLOVAK INTELLIGENCE DOCUMENTATION

After the collapse of the communist regimes, most of the countries of East-Central Europe underwent fundamental changes that affected the secret police apparatus. In addition to the reorganization and realignment of activities, the question of how to deal with intelligence documentation became an important issue. The first, and for a long time only, state agency to take over and start making political police documents available to the public as well as to start their systematic specialist processing was established in Germany. This was made possible by the specific conditions of reunification, as the former East Germany’s state institutions disappeared along with the state.¹⁰⁴ In other former Eastern bloc states, the approach was different, and documentation remained in the hands of the transformed security forces. Although the newly transformed security services were not actually the originators of these records, in most cases they continued to use them as a source of information.

In the Czech Republic, an initiative was launched in 2005 to establish a specialized memory institution to research the communist dictatorship period. The institution was to integrally include an archive, which was to collect the documentation of all former intelligence services as well as military intelligence. Two years later, a law was passed establishing the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů) as the institution responsible for research on the Nazi occupation and communist rule in Czechoslovakia and the Security Services Archive (ABS),¹⁰⁵ to which approximately 97% of the First Directorate documentation was transferred in 2007–2008. This delimitation continued in the following years and has now reached more than 99% of the surviving archival material created by Czechoslovak foreign intelligence between 1945 and 1989.¹⁰⁶

HOW TO NAVIGATE THE CZECHOSLOVAK INTELLIGENCE FILES ARCHIVE SYSTEM

The primary means for storing the documents that emerged from the intelligence activities of the First Directorate were intelligence files. For historians, these are the most important source of information, presenting the course of intelligence operations on a general scale (the macro view) and in specific cases (the micro view). The operative files are based on a comprehensive system designed to store extensive documentation in a clear manner. For those interested in the history of the Czechoslovak foreign secret service, the basic principles involved need to be grasped to locate relevant information and understand its significance.

The final form of the system was created in 1966.¹⁰⁷ The directive on the registration of intelligence files has undergone several minor modifications, but the original categorization of files has not seen any alterations.¹⁰⁸ The files were registered under five-digit registration numbers and code names in a registration book (known as the file register), where the first digit of the file registration number represented a numerical code indicating the type of intelligence file (see Table 1).

Table 1. Types of Intelligence Files

Designation (File “Code”)	Designation of File Type	Description
1	Object-oriented file	A file in which information about an object under observation (i.e., an institution, organization, or informally organized group of individuals) was collected.
2	Archive file	In practice, however, this was used for files containing remnants of the oldest archived files from the late 1940s up to the mid-1950s. Material from the 1960s can also be found in them to some extent, most often in the form of evaluations.
3	“Cadre member” personal file	Were intended for storage of documentation on an intelligence officer who was working abroad in a First Directorate residency or an illegal intelligence officer.
4^a	Secret collaborator personal file	Contain information on the secret collaborator’s ongoing work for intelligence.
7	Clandestine and rented apartment file	Include basic information on the housing unit or property being used, a summary of meetings held, and a safety assessment of the use of the “safe house.”
8	Operational correspondence file	Intended to store written communications between the intelligence agency’s residencies and its headquarters or between the intelligence agency’s headquarters and subordinate territorial units, other parts of the Czechoslovak security apparatus, or with foreign partners.
9	Active measures file	Contain information on the preparation, planning, and implementation of active measures.

^aThe 1966 directives provided for the personal list of secret collaborators to be numbered 5 and 6, but in practice they were not used because No. 4 was not exhausted by the end of the existence of the First Directorate.

All types of files were internally subdivided. The first level was the division of the files into a main file and specialized subfiles, where only the main file was used to store basic information and the evaluation. In the case of the personal files of secret collaborators, the main file was usually also the only place containing the agent’s identification details. Specialized subfiles were intended to store records and intelligence according to objective characteristics (e.g., operational records, financial documents, liaison data; see Table 2).

Table 2. Specialized Subfiles

File or Subfile Designation	Designation of Function
011–019, D01–D99	Main volume section—used primarily for objective files and operational correspondence files. Functionally, these sections of the main file are equal; that is, they contain intelligence information and its evaluation stored on an ongoing basis throughout the period of intelligence work on the subject matter involved.
020–029, 050–099	Working subfile—part of the personal files of secret collaborators. These stored the supervising case officer’s reports on meetings with secret collaborators.
030–049, N01–N99	Financial subfile—these contain an overview of funds issued by the Intelligence Service during the period of cooperation with the agent or during residency work abroad.
100–299	Thematic subfile—an aid for storing information that elaborates on the main file issues in greater depth. These were components used mainly for objective files, and not so much for operational correspondence files.
300–999	Person of interest subfile/targets subfile—in particular these make up part of objective files and operational correspondence files. These subfiles were used to collect information on one or more individuals appearing in connection with a given object of intelligence interest. Those whose collaboration the Intelligence Service was interested in (known as agency targets or secret collaborator targets) while, on the other hand, those marked as hostile were also recorded here. If the person designated for collaboration was recruited, the subfile was closed and transferred to the secret collaborator’s personal file.

The First Directorate filing system had been completely different from that of counterintelligence ever since its establishment back in the 1950s and 1960s. Not only were the categories of the files themselves specific, but so was their internal division. From a historian’s standpoint, the intelligence files facilitated coverage of activities in many respects to a greater and better extent than the counterintelligence units. This is due to the existence of two specific categories of files: those containing operational correspondence present a basic overview of information on the activities of the First Directorate in individual countries, while similarly unique are the personal files of intelligence officers, which for each operative serving abroad contain information on the agents and actions they directed. In the case of illegal intelligence officers, they record training, preparation, and actual deployment on foreign operations.

Czechoslovak State Security documentation has not been preserved in its entirety, which is also the case for the First Directorate. This was due to the standard administrative procedures of shredding documents and operational files during the Cold War, which changed in concept and scope over the years, as well as the large-scale liquidation operation on the eve of the collapse of the communist regime. In early December 1989, file material and operational files were shredded on a massive scale. The extent of the damage within the First Directorate was relatively small, however, compared to that of counterintelligence, and the vast majority involved currently active cases. In addition to the complete destruction of several dozen files of important secret collaborators, files of active measures were removed en masse. This shredding primarily involved significant cases of activities against émigrés, the United States, and Western European institutions, as well as documentation depicting the surveillance of intelligence officers dismissed after 1968 and records of collaboration with the KGB.

CONCLUSION

Although for four decades the Czechoslovak foreign intelligence service, together with the KGB and other Eastern European secret services, was involved in gathering information, conducting intelligence operations, recruiting collaborators, and influencing political developments in various parts of the world for the benefit of the Eastern bloc, it remains a little-known protagonist in the global postwar conflict, despite the fact that the surviving Czechoslovak intelligence archive records represent a large and hitherto little-exploited resource for research into the history of the Cold War and the security services. Compared to the archive legacy of other Eastern European intelligence agencies, it is one of the most accessible archive collections. In addition to documents of a general nature (e.g., plans and analyses), unrestricted access can be gained to materials relating to the identity of intelligence officers and collaborators. Such documents are among the most closely guarded information of the intelligence services, yet the Czech Republic has taken one of the most liberal positions in the former Eastern bloc countries in disclosing information about its communist past. Access to the previously secret documentation is based on a moral imperative that condemns the security services as a repressive tool designed to maintain the communist regime in power. The findings of its activities, including the identities of its secret collaborators and members, raise important issues in the context of social moral cleansing and knowledge of the past in all its complexity. However, free access to this information does not mean that the amount of personal and sensitive data it contains should not be handled with care. Moreover, in the case of foreign intelligence, the situation is made even more complicated because of the potential impact of releasing documents to the media without proper analysis and interpretation.

One of the aspects that has emerged in several cases of foreign secret collaborators with the First Directorate are doubts over the origin or authenticity of the published documents. It should be noted that there has not been a single case of Czechoslovak foreign intelligence documentation being deliberately falsified. The First Directorate, like the entire State Security, had control mechanisms in place to prevent the creation of fictitious cases. This does not mean that all those with whom it was in contact were willing and able to collaborate as required. The ineffective cases of collaboration were sooner or later closed by the First Directorate and their resulting activities recorded. The surviving documents should therefore be treated as a normal official record and not rejected out of hand as unsubstantiated or falsified.

As the KGB intelligence documentation is not widely available to researchers, and with limited access to documentation from other East-Central services (Poland is an exception in this respect), the Czechoslovak foreign intelligence legacy is a unique body of information on the issue of espionage of the Eastern bloc. It provides insight not only into the activities of the First Directorate itself, but also into the workings of the entire East-Central Europe IC, including the KGB foreign operations. From the large quantity of Soviet intelligence documents included in the collections of its “little sister,” a number of new insights can be gained into the KGB’s orientation and mode of work, its interests with regard to political and industrial espionage, the work of illegal intelligence, and the implementation of active measures. In addition, a thorough examination of the files of secret collaborators and individuals of interest can provide insight into dozens of people who worked for the KGB or were of interest to the Soviet secret services. Because one of the goals of the First Directorate was also to monitor the activities of Western intelligence services, the surviving documents are also a hitherto underused, valuable source of information on their operations.

Czechoslovak foreign intelligence underwent a dynamic transformation after the communist coup of 1948, and the number of its members, collaborators, and countries in which it operated began to increase significantly from the 1950s onward. Its activities peaked in the early 1960s, when it not only became involved in the decolonization of the African continent, but also achieved success in Western European countries. Its subsequent development and activities were clearly hampered by the intervention of Warsaw Pact troops in Czechoslovakia. The ideological purges within the First Directorate caused its gradual decline and the curtailment of its activities at the global level. However, in the fields of what is known as human intelligence and active measures in particular, the First Directorate achieved a number of successes throughout the Cold War, in which it did not lag behind the Western intelligence services. Unlike the Soviet KGB, it was not perceived as a potential danger in Third World countries, where politicians were in many cases more willing to cooperate with it and use it as a counterweight to Western influence. In this respect, it skillfully exploited its status as the “little sister” of the Soviet KGB. Although the First Directorate was tasked by the KGB, and much of its capacity was focused on targets selected by the Soviet secret services, it cannot be unequivocally stated that, especially in the latter half of the 1960s, it did not act in some cases with the aim of catering to Czechoslovak political and economic interests as well. The successful operations performed by the First Directorate, the wealth of information it gathered from dozens of countries around the world, and the hundreds of its foreign collaborators show that it has not yet received the attention it deserves in the study of the history of intelligence during the Cold War, and it has been unjustly overshadowed by the KGB.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Cooperatio Program, research area “History” (Faculty of Arts, Charles University).

Cooperatio Program, research area ‘History’ (Faculty of Arts, Charles University).

Notes on contributors

Petr Kaňák

Petr Kaňák is a Historian at the Office for Foreign Relations and Information in the Czech Republic. He is the coauthor of With Clear Goal and Full Force: The Deployment of the German Police Forces in the Break-Up of Czechoslovakia 1938–1939, Czechoslovak Foreign Intelligence and the Prague Spring, and Careers in the Service of Nazism: Supreme Commanders of the Nazi Repressive Apparatus in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The author can be contacted at [email protected].

Jan Koura

Jan Koura is an Assistant Professor at Charles University’s Institute of World History and the Head of the Cold War Research Group at the Center for Strategic Regions (Charles University). He has been a Fulbright-Masaryk Scholar at George Washington University and a Visiting Scholar at the University of St Andrews and University of Oxford. He is the author of two monographs, numerous articles, and a book chapter on Cold War history. His research focuses on Czechoslovak activities in the Global South during the Cold War. The author can be contacted at [email protected].

Notes

1 See, for example, Philip E. Muehlenbeck and Natalia Telepneva (eds.), Warsaw Pact Intervention in the Third World: Aid and Influence in the Cold War (London: I. B. Taurus, 2018); Daniela Richterova and Natalia Telepneva, “An Introduction: Secret Struggle for the Global South—Espionage, Military assistance and State Security in the Cold War,” The International History Review, Vol. 43, No. 1 (2021), pp. 1–11; Adrian Hänni, Thomas Riegler, and Przemyslaw Gasztold (eds.), Terrorism in the Cold War, Vol. 1 and 2 (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020); Hubertus Knabe, West-Arbeit des MfS. Das Zusammenspiel von “Aufklärung und “Abwehr,” 2nd ed. (Berlin: BStU, 1999).

2 See, for example, Jan Koura, “A Prominent Spy: Mehdi Ben Barka, Czechoslovak Intelligence, and Eastern Bloc Espionage in the Third World during the Cold War,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 36, No. 3 (2021), pp. 318–339; Natalia Telepneva, “Code Name SEKRETÁŘ, Amilcar Cabral, Czechoslovakia and the Role of Human Intelligence during the Cold War,” The International History Review, Vol. 42, No. 6 (2019), pp. 1257–1273; Aldo Marchesi and Michal Zourek, “The New Latin American Left in a Polarised Cold War: The Story of Vivian Trias,” Cold War History, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2022), pp. 19–40.

3 For example, “SPD-Mann wehrt sich gegen Agenten-Vorwurf,” https://www.spiegel.de/politik/spd-mann-wehrt-sich-gegen-agenten-vorwurf-a-f50c4433-0002-0001-0000-000070500959 (accessed 19 August 2022); “Affaire Ben Barka: Jan Koura s’enlise, Mohammed Achaari rectifie,” https://fr.hespress.com/250919-affaire-ben-barka-jan-koura-senlise-mohammed-achaari-rectifie.html (accessed 21 October 2022).

4 Jiřina Dvořáková, Historie a vývoj československého civilního zpravodajství se zaměřením na rozvědku (1919–1992), unpublished, UZSI Security Archive.

5 Karel Pacner, Československo ve zvláštních službách. Pohledy do historie československých výzvědných služeb 1914-1989 (Praha: Themis, 2001–2002).

6 Pavel Žáček, Menší sestra I. Vznik a vývoj První správy ministerstva vnitra 1953–1959 (Brno: Prius, 2004); Pavel Žáček, “Za mír a socialismus až do trpkého konce. Dokumenty o spolupráci československé a sovětské rozvědky 1985–1989,” Sborník Archivu bezpečnostních složek, No. 6 (2008), pp. 325–366; Pavel Žáček, “Socialistická solidarita bratrských rozvědek. Dokumenty z poslední porady náčelníků I. správ v Berlíně, 17.–21. 10. 1988,” Securitas Imperii, No. 2 (2012), pp. 182–226.

7 Krzysztof Persak amd Łukasz Kamiński (eds.), A Handbook of the Communist Security Apparatus in East Central Europe 1944/45–1989 (Warsaw: IPN, 2005); Molly Pucci, Security Empire: The Secret Police in Communist Eastern Europe (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2020).

8 Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield. The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (New York: Basic Books, 1999); Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World (New York: Basic Books, 2005); Jonathan Haslam, Near and Distant Neighbours: A New History of Soviet Intelligence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

9 Radek Fencl, “Struktura ZS/GŠ v roce 1989,” Sborník Archivu bezpečnostních složek, No. 9 (2011), pp. 181–194.

10 “Analysis of the Operation of the SNB First Directorate,” 1990, record group ZS FMV, box 3, UZSI Security Archive.

11 “První správa. Československá rozvědka v dokumentech 1945–1990,” unpublished, ÚZSI Security Archive 2000.

12 “První správa. Československá rozvědka v dokumentech 1945–1990,” unpublished, ÚZSI Security Archive 2000.

13 Žáček, “Za mír a socialismus až do trpkého konce,” pp. 325–366.

14 The issue of Scientific and Technical Intelligence (VTR) has not yet been professionally processed. The first attempt to gain insight into the issue is the memoirs of the former head of the VTR department. Věroslav Sobek, Pomohli jsme sestřelit Powerse. Tajemství vědeckotechnické rozvědky ČSSR (Praha: Futura, 2011).

15 “The Illegal Intelligence of the First Directorate of the Ministry of the Interior,” record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, Archiv bezpečnostních složek (ABS).

16 Petr Cajthaml, “Profesionální lháři. Aktivní opatření československé rozvědky do srpna 1968,” Sborník archivu ministerstva vnitra, No. 4 (2006), pp. 9–41; Martin Slávik, “Spolupráce rozvědky StB a KGB v oblasti aktivních opatření,” Aktivity NKVD/KGB a její spolupráce s tajnými službami střední a východní Evropy 1945–1989 II (Praha: Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů, 2009), pp. 175–184.

17 Prokop Tomek, Objekt ALFA. Československé bezpečnostní složky proti Rádiu Svobodná Evropa (Praha: Úřad dokumentace a vyšetřování zločinů komunismu, 2006); Jiří Bašta, “Agent REPO—Spisovatel ve službách komunistické propagandy,” Securitas Imperii, No. 8 (2001), pp. 6–69; Patrik Virkner, “Agent LEV—Tajný spolupracovník v exilové ČSSD,” Securitas Imperii, No. 8 (2001), pp. 203–258; Petr Cajthaml, “Hračka aneb osud oběti a pomocníka komunistických zpravodajských služeb,” Securitas Imperii, No. 14 (2006), pp. 10–89.

18 “1987 Active Measures Overview,” record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, box 475, ABS; “The First Half of 1988 Active Measures Overview,” ibid.

19 Petr Kaňák, Jiří Piškula, and Jiřina Dvořáková, “Transforming the Czech(oslovak) Foreign Intelligence Sevice 1990–1994,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Vol. 35, No. 2 (2022), p. 377.

20 A foreigner who was aware of cooperation with Czechoslovak intelligence and used conspiratorial methods of work was labeled an “agent.” The term “confidential contact” referred to a foreigner who was in contact with a Czechoslovak intelligence officer who was acting under diplomatic cover, while his affiliation with the intelligence agency was not revealed to the cooperating foreigner. “Intelligence Operations Guideline,” 1983, record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, box 1, ABS.

21 “Foreign Intelligence Activity Report,” record group Sekretariát MV A2/1, inventory number 944, ABS.

22 “Personal Department—Overview of Task Performance in First Quarter of 1962,” record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, box. 041, ABS; “Organisation and Tasking of the Czechoslovak Foreign Intelligence (1965),” record group Sekretariát MV A2/2, inventory number 1045, ABS.

23 Petr Kaňák, Jiřina Dvořáková, and Zdenka Jurová, Československá rozvědka a pražské jaro (Praha: ÚSTR, 2016), pp. 69, 77.

24 Dvořáková, Historie a vývoj československého civilního zpravodajství se zaměřením na rozvědku (1919–1992), pp. 215, 237.

25 Pavel Žáček, “Poslední reorganizace zahraniční rozvědky. Snižování početních stavů Hlavní správy rozvědky SNB v letech 1988–1990,” Securitas Imperii, No. 1 (2009), pp. 186–237.

26 “Intelligence Operations Guideline,” 1983, record group Hlavní správa rozvědky (I. správa SNB), box 1, ABS.

27 “Report on Czechoslovak Foreign Intelligence Activity,” record group Sekretariát MV A2/1, inventory number 944, ABS.

28 Dvořáková, Historie a vývoj československého civilního zpravodajství se zaměřením na rozvědku (1919–1992), p. 236.

29 File No. 12965, record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, ABS.

30 File No. 81114, record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, ABS.

31 See record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, box 016, ABS; Jerguš Sivoš and Pavel Žáček, “Spolupráca KGB ZSSR a ministerstva vnútra ČSSR na najvyššej úrovni. Edicia dohod o vzájomnej čs.-sovietskej štátobezpečnosnej súčinnosti 1958–1989, Pamäť a dejiny, No. 2 (2009), pp. 72–86.

32 “Analysis of the Operation of the SNB First Directorate,” 1990, record group ZS FMV, box 3, UZSI Security Archive, 10–12, 26–28.

33 “Final Document of the Moscow Summit of the Supreme Representatives of the Socialist Community Foreign Intelligence Services,” record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, box 476, ABS; Žáček, “Socialistická solidarita bratrských rozvědek,” pp. 182–226. See also “Final Record of the Soviet Bloc Intelligence Services Summit in Moscow (1982),” record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, box 016, ABS; “Multilateral Meeting of the Science and Technology Intelligence” (1983 and 1989), record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, box 364, ABS.

34 The exception were the years 1967 to 1969, when the sending of intelligence officers to the USSR was discontinued. Kaňák, Dvořáková, Jurová, Československá rozvědka a pražské jaro, p. 79.

35 Pavel Žáček, “První garnitura sovětských poradců v Praze. Ovládnutí a řízení československého bezpečnostního aparátu, 1949–1953,” Securitas Imperii, No. 31 (2018), pp. 40–69; Karel Kaplan, Sovětští poradci v Československu 1949–1956 (Praha: ÚSD AV ČR, 1993), pp. 17–42.

36 Overview of documents on foreign cooperation of Czechoslovak intelligence in the late 1980s in Record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, box 477, ABS.

37 The term “little sister” was used in the memoirs of the defector Vlastimil Ludvík, who named his book as such. Pavel Žáček paraphrased the title as the KGB’s “little sister” in his unfinished edition.

38 An example of the KGB‘s great knowledge of the Czechoslovak network is Indonesia in the second half of the 1980s; see file No. 81109/108, record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, ABS.

39 Information about the transfer of agents can only be found in individual files, which makes tracking them down very difficult. There is only a partial list, created in 1984, which was used to prepare the so-called Hall of Traditions of the First SNB Directorate. “The Examples of Cooperation with Friendly Intelligence Services” (1984), record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, box 010, ABS.

40 Examples are Algeria, Japan, Colombia, and Cyprus in the second half of the 1980s; see files No. 81363, 81242/015, 81242/016, 81242/130, 81135/204, and 81314/114, record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, ABS.

41 For example, files No. 48267, 81109/108 record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, ABS.

42 “The Origins of the Illegal Intelligence in General,” record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, box 0365, ABS.

43 File No. 80295, record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, ABS.

44 Koura, “A Prominent Spy,” pp. 329–330.

45 “Evaluation of the Cooperation of the KGB First Chief Directorate and the Czechoslovak First Directorate in the years 1985–1988,” Record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, box 475, ABS.

46 “Analysis of the Operation of the SNB First Directorate,” 1990, record group ZS FMV, box 3, UZSI Security Archive, pp. 38–39.

47 File No. 81332, Record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, ABS.

48 “Information Exchange with the Hungarian Intelligence Service,” record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, box 0123, ABS; “Main Informational Interests of Hungarian Intelligence in the Year of 1983,” ibid.; “Information Exchange with Polish Friends,” record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, ibid.; “Information Exchange Assessment Based on Focused Topics and on Targeting of Our Service,” ibid.

49 Pavel Žáček, “Sovětská pomoc při organizaci služby zvláštního určení,” Aktivity NKVD/KGB a její spolupráce s tajnými službami střední a východní Evropy 1945–1989 II (Praha: ÚSTR, 2009), pp. 133–140; Slávik, “Spolupráce rozvědky StB a KGB v oblasti aktivních opatření,” pp. 175–184; Klára Horalíková, “Počátky spolupráce bezpečnostních aparátů NDR a ČSR,” Securitas Imperii, No. 14 (2006), pp. 210–235.

50 Dvořáková, Historie a vývoj československého civilního zpravodajství se zaměřením na rozvědku (1919–1992), pp. 6–14; Pavel Kreisinger, Brigádní generál Josef Bartík. Zpravodajský důstojník a účastník prvního i druhého československého odboje (Praha: ÚSTR, 2011).

51 Josef Slanina, “Akce Toman,” Securitas Imperii, No. 1 (1994), pp. 120–127.

52 Ivana Koutská, “Únor 1948 a perzekuce zaměstnanců ministerstva zahraničních věcí,” Paměť a dějiny, No. 1 (2008), pp. 39–52; Matej Medvecký, “K počátkom československej rozviedky,” Pamäť národa, No. 1 (2012), pp. 18–32.

53 “Report for the Deputy Security Minister Šváb from May 5th 1950 on Targeting, Progress and the Results of Intelligence Operations of the BAb Department in the USA and Other Countries,” record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, File No. 20962, ABS.

54 Jan Frolík, “Nástin organizačního vývoje státobezpečnostních složek Sboru národní bezpečnosti v letech 1948–1989,” Sborník archivních prací, No. 2 (1991), pp. 447–509.

55 Dvořáková, Historie a vývoj československého civilního zpravodajství se zaměřením na rozvědku (1919–1992), pp. 84–88; “Report on the Outcome of Negotiations between Representatives of the Soviet Foreign Intelligence Service and Representatives of the Czechoslovak Service in Moscow, May 24th–27th 1950,” record group Communist Party of Czechoslovakia—Bureau of the First Secretary Antonin Novotny, box 2, Národní archiv Praha.

56 Jiří Málek, “JUDr. Vlastislav Chalupa, agent StB,” Securitas Imperii, No. 2 (1994), pp. 72–116.

57 Jan Frolík, “Ještě k nástinu organizačního vývoje státobezpečnostních složek Sboru národní bezpečnosti v letech 1948–1989,” Sborník archivních prací, No. 2 (2002), pp. 371–520; Prokop Tomek, Život a doba ministra Baráka (Praha: Vyšehrad, 2009). On Barák’s ambitions, see Jan Koura and Robert Anthony Waters, “‘Africanos’ versus ‘Africanitos’ the Soviet-Czechoslovak Competition to Protect the Cuban Revolution,” The International History Review, Vol. 43, No. 1 (2021), pp. 72–89.

58 František Koudelka, Státní bezpečnost 1954–1968 (Praha: AV ČR, 1993).

59 Cajthaml, “Profesionální lháři,” pp. 9–41.

60 Prokop Tomek, “Kdo zabil Matúše Černáka?,” Pamäť národa, No. 1 (2009), pp. 42–47.

61 Jakub Petlák, “Útok StB ve Štrasburku” (Master‘s thesis, Masarykova Univerzita Brno, 2014), pp. 37–39.

62 Pavel Žáček, “Vzestupy a pády Bohumila Molnára,” in Oči a uši strany, edited by Bořivoj Čelovský (Šenov u Ostravy: Tilia, 2005), pp. 105–106.

63 Pavel Žáček, “Služba zvláštního určení—nejtajnější úsek československého rozvědného aparátu 1963–1969,” Pamäť a dějiny, No. 3 (2006), pp. 20–25; Žáček, “Sovětská pomoc při organizaci služby zvláštního určení,” pp. 133–146.

64 Prokop Tomek, “Agent LIGHT—tajný spolupracovník v britské tajné službě,” Securitas Imperii, No. 8 (2011), pp. 149–182.

65 File No. 40972, record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, ABS.

66 File No. 40010, ABS.

67 File No. 40377, ABS; Mária Palasik, “From the Budapest Dance Palace to the Autopsy Table: The Lapusnyik Case, or the Defection and Death of a Secret Agent at the Beginning of the Kádár Era,” Securitas Imperii, No. 2 (2020), pp. 166–185.

68 “The Origins of the Illegal Intelligence” (1968), record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, ABS; “The Illegal Intelligence of the First Directorate,” record group, Hlavní správa rozvědky, ABS.

69 For these cases, see for example, “MI5 Suspects: John Stonehouse, Bernard Floud and Will Owen,” https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/oct/05/three-labour-mps-history-mi5 (accessed 17 August 2022); “Tory MP Raymond Mawby Sold Information to Czech Spies,” https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-18617168 (accessed 17 August 2022). Of particular interest is the question of Stonehouse’s cooperation, due to the fact that he achieved the highest status of all the exposed Czechoslovak secret collaborators. There are also declassified documents from Prime Minister Thatcher’s era, when new evidence against Stonehouse emerged following the defection of Czechoslovak intelligence officer Karel Pravec to the United States. “Armstrong Minute to MT (New Evidence that John Stonehouse Is an Agent of the Czechoslovak Intelligence Service),” https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/121001 (accessed 6 September 2022); “Security: Armstrong Minute to MT (New Evidence that John Stonehouse Is an Agent of the Czechoslovak Intelligence Service),” https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/121002 (accessed 6 September 2022); Security: No. 10 Record of Conversation (MT-Whitelaw-Stonehouse-Armstrong), https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/121003 (accessed 6 September 2022).

70 “Zilkova aféra” [Zilk Affair], http://www.janyr.eu/index.php/66-zilkova-afera (accessed 17 August 2022).

71 Koura, “A Prominent Spy,” pp. 330–332.

72 Ibid.

73 File No. 44204, record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, ABS.

74 Koura and Waters, ‘Africanos’ versus ‘Africanitos,’” pp. 72–89; Prokop Tomek, “Akce MANUEL,” Securitas Imperii, No. 9 (2002), pp. 326–333; Pavel Žáček, “Náš soudruh v Havaně. Vznik čs. rezidentury a spolupráce s kubánskou bezpečností,” Paměť a dějiny, No. 3 (2012), pp. 18–32.

75 Marchesi and Zourek, The New Latin American Left; Vladimír Petrilák and Mauro Kraenski, Rudá samba. Činnost StB v Brazílii v 50. a 60. letech 20. století [Red Samba. StB Activity in Brasil in 1950s and 1960s] (Praha: Academia 2020); Jan Koura and Robert A. Waters, “A ‘Mudbank’ or the Most ‘Dangerous Area in the World’? Decolonising British Guiana, Czechoslovakia and the Making of a Cold War Hot Spot in Latin America,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Vol. 50, No. 6 (2022), pp. 1145–1178.

76 “Essential Data About the Czechoslovak Intelligence” (1968), record group Secretarite of the Minister of the Interior A 2/3, inventory number 2140, ABS. See also Mikulas Pesta, “Reluctant Revolutionaries: Czechoslovak Support of Revolutionary Violance between Decolonisation and Détente,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 37, No. 7 (2022), pp. 1003–1019.

77 Telepneva, “Code Name SEKRETÁŘ, Amilcar Cabral, Czechoslovakia and the Role of Human Intelligence during the Cold War”; Koura, “A Prominent Spy.”

78 Jan Koura, “Czechoslovakia and the ‘Cyprus Issue’ in the Years 1960–1974: Secret Arms Deals, Espionage and the Cold War in the Middle East,” Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 57, No. 4 (2021), pp. 516–533.

79 Cajthaml, “Profesionální lháři,” pp. 15–119.

80 File No. 90039, record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, ABS.

81 Files No. 44634, 81089, 81092, and 81093, record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, ABS.

82 Dvořáková, Historie a vývoj československého civilního zpravodajství se zaměřením na rozvědku (1919–1992), p. 173.

83 “About Some Experience of the Communist Party Work within the Foreign Intelligence (1968),” box 6, record group ÚV KSČ—Antonín Novotný, Národní archiv Praha.

84 Milan Bárta, Jan Kalous, Daniel Povolný, Jerguš Sivoš, and Pavel Žáček (eds.), Biografický slovník náčelníků operativních správ Státní bezpečnosti v letech 1953–1989 (Praha: Academia 2017).

85 Kaňák, Dvořáková, and Jurová, Československá rozvědka a pražské jaro, pp. 45–62.

86 Biografický slovník náčelníků operativních správ Státní bezpečnosti v letech 1953–1989.

87 “Plan for the Gradual Reconstruction and Build-Up of the Czechoslovak Foreign Intelligence 1971–1975,” record group Ústřední zpracovatelská komise MV ČSSR, ABS.

88 Prokop Tomek, “Josef Frolík—Muž na nepravém místě,” Securitas Imperii, No. 8 (2001), pp. 183–202; Daniel Běloušek, “Akce PANT. Příběh Vlastimila Ludvíka, posledního defektora komunistické rozvědky,” Sborník Archivu bezpečnostních složek, No. 6 (2008), pp. 243–260; Daniel Běloušek, “Rak, který zmizel beze stopy,” Paměť a dějiny, No. 3 (2008), pp. 25–35. Eighteen Czechoslovak intelligence officers defected after 1968. “Defectors Card Files,” record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, ABS.

89 Ladislav Bittman, The Deception Game: Czechoslovak Intelligence in Soviet Political Warfare (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University, 1972); Josef Frolík, The Frolik Defection: The Memoirs of an Intelligence Agent (London: Corgi, 1975); František August and David Rees, Red Star over Prague (London: Sherwood Press, 1984).

90 Prokop Tomek, “Československo-britské zpravodajské soupeření,” Securitas Imperii, No. 14 (2006), pp. 154–162; Files No. 12950, 12975, 13099, and 81427, record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, ABS.

91 Michal Zourek, “Czechoslovak Policy Towards Chile in 1970s and 1980s,” Canadian Journal of Latin American and Carribean Studies, No. 2 (2014), pp. 211–228; File No. 12623, record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, ABS.

92 File No. 12784, record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, ABS.

93 See, for example, “Recent Situation and Perspective of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe,” record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, box 0132, ABS; “The Preparations of the West for the All-European Conference in Belgrade 1977,” ibid.; “Knowledge About Intentions of the West to Misuse the Conference on Security and Cooperation Process Against the Foundations of Czechoslovakia, Its Security and Defensiveness,” box 475, record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, ABS; “1987 Active Measures Overiew,” ibid.; “The First Half of 1988 Active Measures Overiew,” ibid.; “Information Exchange with Polish Friends,” record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, box 0132, ABS; “Information Exchange Assesment Based on Focused Topics and on Targeting of Our Service,” ibid.; Monitoring in Poland was the subject of an active measure code named VARIACE (file no. 90062), but the file was completely destroyed.

94 “Moral Status Assesment” (1989), box 0208, record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, ABS.

95 File No. 45126, record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, ABS.

96 File No. 44947, ABS.

97 File No. 44503 ABS; Vladimír Ševela, Český krtek v CIA. Cesta Karla Köchera z StB přes americké tajné služby do Prognostického ústavu (Praha: Prostor, 2015).

98 Peter Rendek, “‘Červený kovboji’—špionážna skupina Clyde Lee Conrada v dokumentoch čs. Rozviedky,” Pamäť národa, No. 3 (2006), pp. 26–35.

99 Jaroslav Kmenta, in his book Český špion Erwin van Haarlem (Praha, 2005), offers a fictionally conceived description of the case, which overestimates its newsworthiness and misinterprets some issues due to the one-sided source base. See also File No. 39589, record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, ABS; see also Andrew Christopher, Defend the Realm: The Authorised History of the MI5 (London: Allen Lane 2009).

100 In the Russian original, the system was called Sistema objediněnnovo učeta dannych o protivnike. Prokop Tomek, Systém sjednocené evidence poznatků o nepříteli v československých podmínkách (Praha: ÚSTR, 2008). The Czechoslovak part of the database has been preserved and transferred to the ABS.

101 In the Soviet version, called Vnězapnoje raketno-jaděrnoje napaděnije (VRJAN). Michal Miklovič, “Index nenadálého napadení. Československá verze KGB operace VRJAN,” Aktivity NKVD/KGB, pp. 255–262.

102 Žáček, Z operativních porad náčelníka I. správy, pp. 144–146.

103 Žáček, Poslední reorganizace zahraniční rozvědky, p. 208.

104 Dagmar Unverhau (ed.), Das Stasi-Unterlagen-Gesetz im Lichte von Datenschutz und Archivgesetzgebung (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2003).

105 Act No. 181/2007 on the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes and the Security Services Archive.

106 Petr Kaňák, “Zpráva z odborného semináře Delimitace svazkové agendy komunistické rozvědky po deseti letech,” Sborník Archivu bezpečnostních složek, No. 16 (2019), pp. 429–432.

107 “Operational Guidelines for File Management of the First Depertment of the Ministry of the Interior,” record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, box No. 04, ABS.

108 The last regulation was issued in 1988. “Guidelines for the Recording, Statistics and Administration of the File Agenda of the First Directorate,” record group Hlavní správa rozvědky, box No. 017, ABS.