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Abstract
The reconstruction of the history of the Bulgarian military intelligence services in the first fifteen years of post–Cold War democratic transition until the accession of the country to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has been rarely discussed in contemporary historiography so far. The proposed publication was based on various newly declassified archival sources, as well as on some personal recollections. The transformation of the Bulgarian military intelligence services in those years could be separated into three basic stages, in parallel with the transformation of the Armed Forces and the society as a whole.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Jordan Baev et al., Istoria na Balgarskoto voenno razuznavane (Vol. 1, 1878–1955); Jordan Baev, Istoria na Balgarskoto voenno razuznavane (Vol. 2, 1955–2018) (Sofia: Iztok-Zapad, 2017–2019).
2 Jordan Baev, “Bulgaria: A Century Unknown History,” in The Handbook of European Intelligence Cultures, edited by Bob de Graaff and James Nyce (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), pp. 53–67; Jordan Baev, “Bulgaria and Romania,” in The Handbook of European Defence Policies and Armed Forces, edited by Hugo Meijer and Marco Wyss (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 263–278; Jordan Baev, “The Fall of Zhivkov’s Regime in Bulgaria: A Palace Coup or Anti-Communist Resistance,” in 1989 Annus Mirabilis: Three Decades After: Desires, Achievements, Future, edited by Florian Abraham (Bucharest: Comunicare, 2020), pp. 191–210.
3 Jordan Baev, “Organizational Evolution of Bulgarian Special Forces: 80 Years Historical Development,” in Special Operations in Past and Present: Implications for Policy Makers, edited by Jan Hoffenaar (Breda: Royal Military Academy, 2023), pp. 130–145.
4 Archive COMDOS, Record Group “R,” Fond 9, Opis 4-A, A.E. 70, p. 4.
5 State Gazette, Sofia, No. 29, 10 April 1990.
6 State Gazette, No. 87, 30 October 1990.
7 The Political Departments within the Bulgarian Army were initially reorganized into Departments for Moral and Mental Training, which were disbanded at the end of 1991. Many former political officers finished further requalification Master of Arts courses in civilian universities (history, psychology, sociology, international relations, political science, etc.).
8 Gen. Vasil Zikulov was the longest ever chief of the Bulgarian military intelligence service (June 1967– August 1990). In 2005, the author recorded an oral video interview with him that was published in a digital documentary edition, prepared in cooperation with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. See Jordan Baev (ed.), Bulgarian Intelligence & Security Services in the Cold War Years (Sofia: 96+ Academic Publishing House, 2005).
9 Archive COMDOS, Record Group “VR,” Fond Register No. 1, Inventory No. 156.
10 Central State Archives (TsDA), Sofia, Fond 136, Opis 85А, A.E. 41; Opis 86, A.E. 1090. With the next decisions of 30 October, 14 November, and 6 December 1990 the government of Andrei Lukanov proposed the retirement of some more high-ranking officers, which increased to 76 generals.
11 TsDA, Fond 136, Opis 87 (files still classified).
12 Actually, the last Bulgarian foreign intelligence report on Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) activity in the Balkans came from Washington, D.C., in December 1991—Diplomatic Archive, Sofia, Confidential Records, Opis 62-P, A.E. 6.
13 Author interview with Col. (ret.) Ivan Penkov, former Bulgarian defense attaché in Belgrade (1992–1996), chief of the South East European operations department (1996–1999), and deputy director for operations of Bulgarian military intelligence service (2000–2002), Sofia, 13 July 2018.
14 See Jordan Baev, “The Organization of Multilateral Warsaw Pact Military Intelligence Coordination (1964–1990),” in Alliance Planning and Coalition Warfare: Historical and Contemporary Approaches, edited by Harold Raugh Jr. (Belgrade: Institute for Strategic Research, 2019), pp. 117–118.
15 Archive COMDOS, Record Group “VR,” Fond MF, Opis 01520, A.E. 1690, pp. 79, 88–89. The first Bulgarian–Hungarian secret agreement for bilateral radio-electronic cooperation was signed in 1963. The last such agreement, of 3 June 1983, enacted the exchange of radio-electronic teams of ten to fifteen persons each year. The Hungarian radio direction finder station near Varna had to monitor NATO activity in the Black Sea straits, while the Bulgarian station near Dunajvaros handled surveillance of NATO activity in Italy and the Eastern Mediterranean; Archive COMDOS, Record Group “VR,” Fond Register No. 1, Inventory No. 2681.
16 TsDA, Fond 136, Opis 87, A.E. 436.
17 Archive COMDOS, Record Group “VR,” Fond MF, Opis 01764, A.E. I-1191.
18 Archive COMDOS, Record Group “VR,” Fond MF, Opis 01696, A.E. I-29, pp. 7–8.
19 Archive COMDOS, Record Group “VR,” Fond MF, Opis 01775, A.E. I-115; Opis 01776, A.E. I-96; Opis 01777, A.E. I-126. For more on the subject, see Jordan Baev, “Yugoslavia v analizite na balgarskoto voenno razuznavane (1945–1990)” [Yugoslavia in the Bulgarian Military Intelligence Analyses], in Centralna Evropa I Balkanite XIX-XX vek, edited by Ivan Parvev and Naum Kaichev (Sofia University Press, 2019), pp. 333–343.
20 Archive COMDOS, Record Group “VR,” Fond MF, Opis 01758, A.E. I-54.
21 Archive COMDOS, Record Group “VR,” Fond MF, Opis 01767, A.E. I-120.
22 Col. Ivan Dzhambov had a long career in military intelligence and also served as a military attaché in Ankara, Damascus, and London. After returning from East Berlin, he was appointed head of the 11th (Arabic) Department at the military intelligence service.
23 Archive COMDOS, Record Group “VR,” Register No. 1, Inventory No. 28, pp. 80–85. It is curious that similar hypotheses were discussed as well at the meetings of the Warsaw Pact Special Multilateral Group for Current Foreign Policy Information. See Diplomatic Archive, Sofia, Opis 47-10, A.E. 29.
24 Archive COMDOS, Record Group “VR,” Fond MF, Opis 01517, A.E. 1687, pp. 46–48.
25 Archive COMDOS, Record Group “VR,” Fond MF, Opis 01696, A.E. I-29, pp. 89–90. RADM Eduard Sheafer, Jr., was a leading U.S. military intelligence officer during the Operation DESERT STORM.
26 Diplomatic Archive, Sofia, Opis 48-10, A.E. 24, pp. 130–133.
27 Archive COMDOS, Record Group “VR,” Fond MF, Opis 562, A.E. 1584, p. 29.
28 Archive COMDOS, Record Group “VR,” Fond MF, Opis 506, A.E. 24, p. 124.
29 State Military History Archive (DVIA), Veliko Tarnovo, Fond 23, Opis 11, A.E. 3.
30 TsDA, Fond 136, Opis 87, A.E. 643.
31 State Gazette, No. 112, 27 December 1995. In the period 1996 to 2008, more than 30 changes in the law were made before accepting a new Law on Defense and Armed Forces in 2009.
32 DVIA, Fond 23, Opis 15, A.E. 16, p. 2; A.E. 18, p. 41.
33 DVIA, Fond 2723, Opis 17, A.E. 25, 28.
34 Military History Library, “Rakovski” National Defense College, Sofia, Manuscript Section, Unpublished reference by Col./Ret./Sirmo Sirmov, “SPETSNAZ Units in the Bulgarian Army” (2012).
35 TsDA, Fond 136, Opis 90, A.E. 252, 264, 283.
36 DVIA, Fond 23, Opis 11, A.E. 3, pp. 38–40.
37 The functions of the deputy chiefs were discussed at some length in Baev, Istoria na Balgarskoto voenno razuznavane, Vol. 2, Chapter Four.
38 Jeffrey Simon, “Bulgaria and NATO: 7 Lost Years,” Strategic Forum, National Defense University, Institute for National Strategic Studies, Washington, D.C., No. 142, May 1998.
39 TsDA, Fond 136, Opis 92, A.E. 1732.
40 DVIA, Fond 23, Opis 11, A.E. 10. During this time, agreements for protection of shared secret military information were signed with the governments of the United States and Germany—TsDA, Fond 136, Opis 90, A.E. 1100.
41 DVIA, Fond 23, Opis 15, A.E. 10, p. 39; A.E. 16, pp. 1–2.
42 TsDA, Fond 136, Opis 91, A.E. 684.
43 State Gazette, No. 16, 21 February 1997; No. 24, 21 March 1997; No. 38, 13 May 1997. Of 240 members of the Bulgarian Parliament, only four voted against joining NATO.
44 State Gazette, No. 46, 22 April 1998.
45 Military Doctrine of Republic of Bulgaria (Sofia: Ministry of Defense Publishing House, 1999).
46 More on the mechanism and activities of PfP IPAP and NATO MAP for Bulgaria can be found in Baev, “Bulgaria and Romania,” pp. 268–270.
47 Lydia Yordanova, “Public Attitudes to NATO Membership,” in Bulgaria for NATO 2002, edited by Ognyan Minchev (Sofia: IRIS, 2002), pp. 356–372.
48 DVIA, Fond 23, Opis 11, A.E. 3, pp. 49–65.
50 See the official brochure on the history of Bulgarian military intelligence, prepared for the centenary anniversary of these services: V zashtita na otechestvoto: 100 godini balgarsko voenno razuznavane [In Defense of the Homeland: 100 Years of Bulgarian Military Intelligence] (Sofia: MoD Publishing House, 2008), p. 65.
51 Col. Marinchev served for a decade as head of the Financial Department at the Bulgarian Military Intelligence Directorate. After returning to Bulgaria in 2000, he was appointed deputy chief of the General Staff, and later was sent as a defense attaché to the United States.
52 Baev, Istoria na Balgarskoto voenno razuznavane, Vol. 2, p. 331.
53 DVIA, Fond 23, Opis 15, A.E. 18, pp. 91, 105.
54 DVIA, Fond 23, Opis 15, A.E. 18, pp. 217–218.
55 For more details about the POTKOVA Case and the “Bulgarian connection” in it, see Jordan Baev, “Balgaria, mitichniyat plan Podkova I operaciata Sayuzna sila sreshtu Yugoslavia” [Bulgaria, the Mythic Plan “Horseshoe,” and the Operation “Allied Force” against Yugoslavia], in Balgaria I Balkanite prez XX vek: Vanshna politika I publichna diplomacija, edited by Evgenia Kalinova (Sofia: Sofia University Press, 2021), pp. 410–429.
56 Heinz Loquai, Der Kosovo Konflikt: Wege in einen vermeidbaren Krieg: Die Zeit von Ende November 1997 bis März 1999 (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2000).
57 Joschka Fischer, Die rot-grünen Jahre: Deutsche Außenpolitik vom Kosovo bis zum 11: September (Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch Verlag, 2007).
58 In personal interviews with three former deputy chiefs for operations of the Bulgarian military intelligence services (Col. Nikolay Rusatev 1994–1999, Col. Ivan Penkov 2000–2002, Gen. Stefan Stefanov 2002–2008), the author compared their testimonies and views on the issue with the public versions of former foreign minister Nadezhda Mihailova and the head of the prime minister’s office, Nikolay Valchev, and finally with the memories of Prime Minister Ivan Kostov himself; See Ivan Kostov, Svidetelstva za prehoda 1989–1999 [Evidences of the Transition Years 1989–1999] (Sofia: CIELA, 2019), pp. 364–368.
59 For more on controversial versions of the “Horseshoe” plan, see Günter Joetze, Der letzte Krieg in Europa? Das Kosovo und die deutsche Politik (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2001); Raju Thomas (ed.), Yugoslavia Unraveled: Sovereignty, Self-Determination, Intervention (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003); Sabrina Ramet, Thinking about Yugoslavia: Scholarly Debates about the Yugoslav Breakup and the Wars in Bosnia and Kosovo (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Rafael Biermann, Lehrjahre im Kosovo: Das Scheitern der internationalen Krisenprävention vor Kriegsausbruch (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, 2006); Babac Bahador, The CNN Effect in Action: How the News Media Pushed the West towards War in Kosovo (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Stefan Gruber, Die Lehre vom gerechten Krieg: Eine Einführung am Beispiel der NATO-Intervention im Kosovo (Marburg: Tectum Verlag, 2008); David Gibbs, First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2009); Erich Rathfelder, Kosovo: Geschichte eines Konflikts (Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2010).
60 Author interviews with Col. (ret.) Ivan Penkov, Sofia, 13 July 2018, 4 February 2019.
61 Quite scarce information about the two-day visit of CIA Director George Tenet to Sofia appeared in a few media publications; however, there is no available authentic documents so far on his talks with the Bulgarian authorities.
62 The first draft of the document was discussed in 2001; however, the final text was published in the beginning of 2002: Biala kniga za otbranata na Republika Balgaria (Sofia: Ministry of Defense, 2002), pp. 99–100.
63 Koncepcia za razuznavaneto v Balgarskata armia (Sofia: Voenno izdatelstvo, 2000).
64 V zashtita na otechestvoto: 100 godini balgarsko voenno razuznavane, p. 54.
65 DVIA, Fond 23, Opis 15, A.E. 9, p. 18.
66 The official data about the tragic terrorist assault in Karbala were included in a confidential Ministry of Defense report to the president of Bulgaria, Georgi Parvanov. See Ministry of Defense. Secret, No. ESL 4-15 of 9 February 2004, “Report of the Commission to Clarify the Incident with the Bulgarian Infantry Battalion of the Multinational Brigade in Iraq on 27.12.2003.” The document was declassified on 20 January 2014 by Minister of Defense Angel Naidenov. Many details and personal testimonies were published regularly in various media publications in the next decade.
67 Ministry of Defense. Secret, No. ESL 4-15 of 9 February 2004, “Report of the Commission to Clarify the Incident with the Bulgarian Infantry Battalion of the Multinational Brigade in Iraq on 27.12.2003.”
68 DVIA, Fond 23, Opis 15, A.E. 24, pp. 109–110.
69 24 Hours, Sofia, No. 41940, 13 August 2016.
70 DVIA, Fond 23, Opis 15, A.E. 24, p. 285.
71 DVIA, Fond 23, Opis 15, A.E. 24, p. 296, 306.
72 For more about Bulgarian participation in the international peace missions in Afghanistan and Iraq and the role of military intelligence personnel in those missions, see Baev, Istoria na Balgarskoto voenno razuznavane, Vol. 2, pp. 356–362.
73 DVIA, Fond 23, Opis 15, A.E. 24, p. 35, 36, 43, 63, 205.
74 During the next transformation of the Bulgarian IC, in November 2015, for the first time in Bulgaria the National Assembly approved a “Law on Military Intelligence,” while, in 2019, the “Military Information” Service was renamed the Military Intelligence Service.
75 A typical example was the transformation of Bulgarian counterintelligence services. In February 1990, after the dissolution of State Security, a new National Service for Protection of the Constitution was established on the “German model,” which was reorganized in June 1991 as a National Security Service, and in 2007 as a National Security State Agency on the “U.S. model.”
76 One of the indicative cases was of the former leader of the pro-Nazi Union of Bulgarian National Legions Ivan Dochev, who personally met Hitler in 1934, collaborated with Third Reich representatives in Sofia during the war, and was part of the so-called puppet government in exile in Vienna from September 1944 to April 1945. According to his personal file of 800 pages in CIA records, he was an agent of the U.S. intelligence services and also a Federal Bureau of Investigation informer from 1946 to 1966. His last personal letter to the CIA director, Richard Helms, was inMarch 1972. See National Archives and Record Administration, College Park, Maryland, RG 263, Entry ZZ 18, Box 25-26—DOCHEV, IVAN, Vol. 1–3.
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Jordan Baev
Dr. Jordan Baev is a Professor in International History at Rakovski National Defense College and a Visiting Professor in Intelligence History at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski.” Prof. Baev has written more than 300 publications on diplomatic, military, and intelligence history; international terrorism; peacekeeping; and civil–military relations. His last books were History of Bulgarian Military Intelligence (Vol. 2, 1955–2018), KGB in Bulgaria (1944–1991), U.S. Intelligence and Bulgaria 1941–1991, and China and Eastern Europe: Historical Horizons. The author can be contacted at [email protected].