21 August 2000: Thanks to Patrick Fitzgerald, add descriptions of "The 61" from Brian Crozier's "Free Agent: The Unseen War 1941-1991."
20 August 2000: Add "The 61" excerpts from Brian Crozier's book "The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire". Cryptome has attempted to learn from Brian Crozier more about The 61, but e-mail to his address has bounced.
6 August 2000
Cryptome has received this inquiry from Anonymous. Information on "The 61" is welcomed for publication here -- leads, publications, URLs; send anonymous if preferred, and encrypted if also preferred: jya@pipeline.com. Public key below.
August 6, 2000
I read about the "The 61" in Brian Crozier's book "The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire". He mentions that they are/where a private sector operational agency. They passed secret intelligence from Poland that Jaruzelski would declaire a state of emergency. The Intelligence was passed to the White House, 10 Downing Street, Elysee Palace and the Vatican.
The mention of this group is in only two pages. I am just curious about finding out more information on this group and private sector operational agency/agencies. What are they, if they even exist.
John Young public key:
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[Excerpted from The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire, Brian Crozier, Prima Publishing, Rocklin, California, 1999. ISBN 0-7615-2057-0, pp. 361-63.]
. . .
In the final event, the Soviet Union refrained from a military intervention. In February 1981, the Polish defense minister, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, replaced the inadequate Jozef Pinkowski as prime minister. Jaruzelski had been, in the full Communist sense, a political general. He had risen to the key position of head of the Central Political Department of the armed forces. In other words, he was Moscow's man in Warsaw, for the Polish contingents of the Warsaw Pact were of course based in Warsaw itself, under the command of the Soviet Marshal Victor H. Kulikov.
In March, shortly after Jaruzelski's appointment, secret intelligence reached the London headquarters of the private sector operational agency known as "The 61" to the effect that during the night of March 28-29 a state of emergency would be proclaimed in Poland, and units of the East German Volksarmee would cross the border.2 This vital intelligence was immediately passed on to the White House, 10 Downing Street in London, the Elys6e Palace in Paris, and the Vatican (the latter because of the crucial role of the Polish-born Pope John Paul II).
____________________
2. Crozier, Agent, pp. 196-97.
Although there is no evidence of American plans to intervene militarily, should the Soviet Union or any of the Warsaw Pact forces actually invade Poland, President Reagan records in his memoirs that he warned Brezhnev several times that any Soviet military intervention "would be resisted by us through every diplomatic means at our disposal"; there would be no further nuclear arms agreements or better trade relations; and he was to expect "the harshest possible economic sanctions from the United States if they launched an invasion."3
From reports reaching The 61, the decisive moment of the Polish crisis came that month (March 1981), when both Prime Minister Jaruzelski and the Party's first secretary Kania, had been genuinely exploring with Lech Walesa the possibility of settling Poland's labor problems by common consent. There followed the beating of Solidarity members by the police at Bydgoszcz (Bromberg) on March 19: an event clearly designed to provoke the workers into reckless reactions to discredit both Kania and Jaruzelski. There are grounds for reports that neither Kania nor Jaruzelski was briefed in advance on the police violence at Bydgoszcz; this supports the probability that the action was an independent provocation organized by the KGB.
There was strong evidence that high officials of the secret services were involved, with the support of "foreign friends" who took advantage of the absence from a meeting of the Politburo of both Jaruzelski and Kania. Jaruzelski was on an inspection tour of the Warsaw Pact military maneuvers, while Kania was in Hungary for a meeting with his opposite number János Kádár. Moreover, at that time talks were in progress between Walesa and one of Jaruzelski's new vice premiers, Mieczyslaw Rakowski, editor of the weekly journal Polityka and a Party member. The talks soon broke down after angry exchanges between the two men. While Walesa was doing his best to damp down attempts to stir up the trade union delegates (clearly penetrated by hostile agents), the Politburo was taken aback by unexpected remonstrations from the Party's rank and file against the "infamous events" at Bydgoszcz. At this troubled time, the Roman Catholic primate of Poland, Cardinal Stefan Wyszinski, was allowed on March 20 to make a radio broadcast in which he warned the authorities not to tolerate "irresponsible actions by the security forces," but went on to stress the need for moderation on all sides. Later that day he had talks with Jaruzelski.*
____________________
*Cardinal Wyszinski died shortly afterward, of cancer, on May 28, 1981. He was seventy-nine.
In Moscow, however, a decision had been made to extend the Warsaw Pact exercise known as Soyuz 81 and launch the final phase ("Counter blow/Destroy the enemy"). In the early hours of that same day -- March 20, 1981 -- KGB units at regimental strength were assigned to the maneuvers; and KGB General Bogdanov, with his staff, left Moscow for East Berlin and then to Prague and Warsaw.
Some days later the East German Politburo took formal cognizance of the "faulty assessment" of the East German intelligence service on the state of mind of the Polish armed forces and military police. A formal rebuke to the head of the MfS (Ministerium fur Staatssicherbeit, or Ministry for State Security), General Erich Mielke, was upheld by the Politburo.
Shortly afterward, on March 30, 1981, Ronald Reagan was shot and seriously wounded in a flawed attempt on his life. As soon as he was out of the hospital, on April 11, he sent chilly letters to Brezhnev, who, however, refused to abandon the "Brezhnev Doctrine," enshrining in his eyes the right of the Soviet Union to intervene militarily in any "Socialist" country that was under threat (although he did not actually use the term "Brezhnev doctrine").
Two days earlier the Soviet Politburo had held an important meeting, the main point of which was a depressingly detailed report on the Polish crisis by Yuri Andropov, head of the KGB. With the defense minister Dmitri Ustinov, he had held a secret meeting with the top Polish leaders, Jaruzelski and the Party's first secretary Stanislaw Kania. In the interests of secrecy the four men had met in a railway carriage near Brest. The meeting had begun at 9 P.M. and went on until 3 A.M. The two Poles had seemed "very tense," and "it was obvious that they were near the end of their tether." The two Soviet participants told them they should have proclaimed martial law long ago. Kania had painted a dismal picture of the situation, and it was clear to their visitors that he and Jaruzelski were at odds. Ustinov confirmed Andropov's impressions and added that they had tried hard to dispel Polish objections to martial law. (For the full text of the Andropov and Ustinov reports, see Appendix M: Document 2.)
At about the same time as the attempt on President Reagan's life, The 61 was receiving startling and important reports from the controversial anti-Soviet Russian nationalist organization, the NTS (Narodno-Trudovoy Soyuz Rossiyshikh Solidaristov, or Popular Labor Alliance of Russian Solidarists), based in Frankfurt.* In its issue of May 1981, the bulletin Transnational Security returned to the earlier theme in these words: "There is little disposition in Western establishments to consider contingency planning for the greatest contingency of all: the collapse of the Soviet system.
____________________
*The NTS was regarded as suspect by British Intelligence (SIS or MI-6), partly because of the role played by the Soviet General Andrei Vlasov, an NTS man, captured by the Nazis in 1942, who later commanded units of former Russian prisoners of war. Handed over to Stalin by the Americans, he was executed. However, Vlasov was anti-Soviet, not pro-Nazi. There was a further element when anti-Soviet operations involving the British traitor Harold Philby went wrong. The SIS blamed the NTS, and the NTS blamed Philby. In a speech on the fiftieth anniversary of the Soviet secret police on December 22, 1967, Yuri Andropov named the NTS as "enemy number one." -- BC
Re. Crozier/61.
The book you're looking for is "Free Agent: The Unseen War 1941-1991". Published by HarperCollins 1993. I've got a paperback edition published 94 (ISBN 0 00 638403 X). I think it may well be out of print now.
I imagine Crozier needs little introduction as a professional cold warrior and long-term CIA/SIS asset.
The back of the book, beneath a picture of Crozier with Reagan, describes the "61" the Sixth International as "an international agency created and funded to bypass the official intelligence services".
"Free Agent" has copious references to "61". I¹ve scanned a few relevant pages which are in an attached file, plus a few notes from material on other pages. There is a lot of stuff in the book, though, and it¹s by no means a complete account of it.
Feel free to post this.
Best wishes,
Patrick Fitzgerald
London
Note:
Nicholas Elliott, who appears frequently in Crozier's account and was a major fund-raiser for "61", was a senior SIS officer during the 50s and 60s.
_____________________________
Free Agent
Pp 134-136
The stark fact was that the entire security apparatus of the United States was in a state of near-collapse. A true anecdote illustrates the problem. One of my best sources was Arnold Silver, who had been a very senior Agency man in charge of counter-subversion in Western Europe. He told me he was summoned to Langley by Admiral Stansfield Turner shortly after Turner took over as Director of Central Intelligence under President Jimmy Carter in 1977. Virtually in one breath, die Admiral had congratulated him on the 'superb' job he had done, and added: 'Therefore, I'm afraid you'll have to go.' Taken aback, Silver asked for an explanation, which Turner gave readily. 'You see, you are an anti-Soviet specialist. We don't need anti-Soviet specialists any more.'
Silver was one of some 400 CIA Soviet experts fired by Turner: about 50 per cent of 820 personnel forced into early retirement at that time. In his account of this major pruning, Admiral Turner makes a convincing case for the view that the CIA was seriously overstaffed. But he has nothing to say about the virtual elimination of the Agency's analytical and operational capacity to deal with the Soviet problem. (1) This catastrophic decision completed the self-emasculation of American intelligence.
To be fair to Admiral Turner, the mass redundancies were strictly in line with President Carter's policies and reflected the post-Watergate situation. The underlying argument was that the CIA's problems had been caused by HUMINT: Human Intelligence. The safest antidote was seen to be SIGINT: Signals Intelligence. The National Security Agency (NSA) offered SIGINT in abundance. Intercepted radio or telephonic signals did not talk to journalists or plot against the President. Then there was IMINT, or Image Intelligence: photographs from the stratosphere of ground installations weaponry. These were sometimes startling in their detail and clarity, but IMINT (under the Central Imagery Organisation) did have one drawback. As Nicholas Elliott put it (doubtless quoting somebody else): 'The signals in the sky tells you how many missiles the Soviets have, but not what intend to do with them.'
The question was whether something could be done in the private sector – not only in Britain, but in the United States and other countries of Western Alliance. A few of us had been exchanging views, and decided action was indeed possible. I took the initiative by convening a very small and very secret meeting in London. We met in the luxurious executive suite of a leading City of London bank on the morning of Sunday 13 February 1977. Our host, a leading figure in the bank, took the chair. Three of us were British, four were American, with one German. Ill health prevented a French associate from attending; Jean Violet was with us in spirit. Apart from the banker and myself, the other Briton was Nicholas Elliott. The German was a very active member of the Bundestag, whose career had started in diplomacy. He had a very wide understanding of Soviet strategy, on which he wrote several first-rate books. The Americans included two able and diligent Congressional staffers, and the Viennese-born representative of a big Belgian company. Also there was the remarkable General Vernon ('Dick') Walters, recently retired as Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, and later to re-emerge in public life as President Reagan's ambassador, first to the UN, and later to the German Federal Republic. Dick Walters, like myself educated in France and England, was a formidable linguist, able to switch without accent into eight or nine languages. As such, he interpreted for several US Presidents. Ronald Reagan would send him on confidential missions all over the world.
I proposed the creation of a Private Sector Operational Intelligence agency, beholden to no government, but at the disposal of allied or friendly governments for certain tasks which, for one reason or another, they were no longer able to tackle. I must make it clear that these tasks did not include any acts of armed force for physical coercion. (emphasis in original)
Our main concerns would be:
There were no dissenting voices, although there was much discussion about the areas for action: the 'requirements', in intelligence jargon.
It was agreed that no outsiders should be made aware of the existence of the organisation, except if, in the judgement of one of us, the person was deemed a suitable candidate for recruitment. In the interests of security, I proposed that the organisation should be nameless. Some months later, however, a distinguished Argentine associate of ours, a former justice Minister (and anti-Peronist) named Jacques Perriaux, suggested to me that we should call ourselves 'The 61'. Why '61'? I asked. 'Because the Fourth International split,' he replied.
The reasoning was abstruse. There had been four Internationals, of which the third was Lenin's Comintern. The Fourth International was the Trotskyist one, and when it split, this meant that, on paper, there were five Internationals. In this numbers game, we would constitute the Sixth International, or '61'.
On this tenuous basis, the organisation was known, among its members, as 'The 61', and members or conscious contacts were known as 'numerical'.
One of the security problems we faced, and discussed that morning, was fund-raising. Nicholas Elliott and I undertook to find the money. The task was daunting, for how does one raise money for a secret agency without running the risk that some of the people approached would talk about it? In the event, however, we had no leaks from the business world.
Our initial estimate of financial needs was too high: not for the requirements, but for the realistic limits of generosity on the part of the necessarily small number of sources we approached. We agreed on a target figure of $5 million a year, which may sound a lot, but was trifling in the face of the enemy's enormous resources.
NOTES
1 Stansfield Turner, Secrecy and Democracy (Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1985), pp. 196-8.
*****
pp.144-6
Crozier had previously established Shield, a domestic version of ‘61’, concentrating on countering ‘subversion’ (trades unions, leftist political organisations, anti-nuclear etc). Though Thatcher is initially sympathetic, once in power she gives Crozier the brush-off.
Operations continue, however; the London branch of ‘61’ takes over from Shield and infiltrates agents into the Militant Tendency (a Trotskyist grouping within the Labour party) and CND.
*******
p.161
In November 1978, the Shah sent the top civilian in the SAVAK hierarchy to London to see me. I arranged for him to be closeted with Robert Moss for a whole week. He had brought a pile of secret reports in Farsi, which he translated for us, and other documentary evidence of Soviet involvement with the Shah's enemies. This included copies of Navid, a well-produced publication believed to be printed on modem presses in the Soviet embassy. Navid carried forged 'Army declarations' against the Shah, and articles calling for a Muslim-Marxist revolutionary front.4
The outcome was a Conflict Study dated November 1978, 'The Campaign to Destabilise Iran', by Robert Moss. Shortly after the study had appeared, the Iranian chargd d'affaires informed me that the Shah had payment of £1 million to The 61 for a psychological action campaign on the lines we had suggested to him.
The welcome news came too late: the Shah was driven into exile before he could make the first payment.
*****
p.164
A CIA report, sent to me by a senior member of the 61 in the Pentagon, gave detailed evidence that the Sandinistas’ final offensive had been planned in detail by the Cuban General Staff…. I passed it on to Robert Moss who used it in his column in the Daily Telegraph (6 August 1980).
*****
pp. 179-81
Crozier secures introduction to Reagan through Aline, Condesa de Romanones,
"Aline had joined the wartime Office for Strategic Services towards the end of World War II and had thus become one of the founder members of the CIA when it took over from the OSS. She had been serving In Spain and married the Conde de Romanones. She later told her own story in her bestselling book The Spy Wore Red."
"….Reagan was of course generally well informed. He mentioned that he had served on President Ford's Committee on intelligence and thought it had done what was necessary, until Senator Church had spoilt it. (The Church Committee undoubtedly was mainly responsible for the emasculation of the CIA.) Despite this experience, there were, understandably, gaps in his knowledge of the security and intelligence situation, and in his appreciation of the enormous intensification of the Soviet threat at the time.
The operational capacity of the CIA had been paralysed, by the savage and sustained campaign launched against it, and in the end by the Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts. This was equally true not only of the FBI, but also of the State police forces, the Customs Department, and the Internal Revenue Service in its law-enforcement capacity. Before Watergate, the FBI had had some 2500 informants scattered through the US. Now, there were barely three dozen.'
As Reagan knew, all recent testimonials before Congressional committees agreed that the flow of intelligence on which effective action depends had virtually dried up - for the simple reason that there was now no guarantee of confidentiality for the names of informants. Moreover, the security organs of the State were now forbidden to keep flies either on individuals or on groups, so that the prevention of terrorism and other crimes had become virtually impossible.
Among other consequences of this situation, two points seemed particularly important. One was that the Federal Loyalty Security Program for entry into the American Civil Service had been abolished. This meant that there were now no vetting procedures for prospective entrants.
The other point was that the Subcommittee on Internal Security of the Senate Committee on the judiciary had been disbanded. What this meant, quite simply, was that threats to the internal security of the US were no longer publicly examined in the Congress. This was bad enough, but we wanted to draw Reagan's particular attention to certain specific aspects of the problem. One anomaly was that the FBI was no longer allowed to function either in the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan, or on Capitol Hill, although neither area was out of bounds to the KGB. Indeed, the KGB was extremely active in both.
At that time, the intelligence functions of the FBI, in terms of counterespionage and counter-action against terrorism, were increasingly being performed by specialised companies, groups and individuals In an attempt to fill - at least in part - the even more serious gap caused by the operational collapse of the CIA.
That, I explained, was where The 61 came in. We planned both to initiate secret operations in our various countries, and to coordinate the existing overt actions of the many private groups involved in the resistance to Soviet propaganda and Active Measures. At that time, we had no plans to operate as an espionage agency in the Soviet bloc countries. We felt that this was still a task that could be entrusted to our existing Intelligence services, including the CIA. Our main mission was in the field of countersubversion. Inevitably, we expected to pick up occasional items of secret intelligence. These we would pass on, at our discretion, to interested Allied agencies. We intended also to supplement the analyses made available to the American, British and other Allied governments by the official secret agencies. In many cases, these analyses would prove different. To this extent, they would provide an alternative assessment of current dangers for the special benefit of presidents and prime ministers.
Unlike existing agencies, we would not be hampered by prohibitions on functioning in our own or Allied countries. Security would be rigorously observed. In particular, the media, whatever they might guess or speculate upon, would never be told of our existence, or of the work we were doing. We would be concerned equally with home-grown subversion and the other kind. Soviet power and influence had been spreading, not only because of conscious efforts to that end by the KGB and its huge network of conscious ('witting') agents, but also spontaneously.
The prevailing ideology, among our intellectuals and media people, was heavily influenced, whether they knew it or not, by one variety or another of Marxism-Leninism. It was our job to counter this. Partly because of it, but also because the natural and commendable role of the press in a free society is to be critical of our governments, there was a tendency to give the other side (the Soviet bloc) the benefit of any doubt. There was no question, however, of interfering with freedom of the press or speech. The aim was to make alternative facts and opinions more widely available to our own leaders.
I had brought with me two or three issues of our monthly analysis, at that time still called Transnational Security which was read regularly by Margaret Thatcher. Henceforth, I said, it would be available to Ronald Reagan, and we hoped he would find it useful when he reached the White House.
He leafed through the bulletin, and expressed interest. We agreed that for the time being it would be sent to him at his Pacific Palisades address, and later, by means to be worked out, to the Oval Office.
Reagan had been listening intently. On the CIA, he assured me that one of the first things he would do on coming to power would be to revive it."
****
p.244 ff
‘61’ involved in establishing "peace counter-groups" throughout Europe. Some money comes ‘back-channel’ from Casey (£50k in ’81, £100k in 82).
****
p.287
In 1986, ‘61’ went through a funding crisis. In 1987, it closed down.
"I closed down five of my offices in the Linen hall [in London], and paid off all The 61’s agents, mainly in Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, Holland, Spain, Portugal, and the United States".