Terrorism In The Cold War State Support In

Eastern Europe And The Soviet Sphere Of

Influence Adrian Hnni Thomas Riegler Przemyslaw
Gasztold download
https://ebookbell.com/product/terrorism-in-the-cold-war-state-
support-in-eastern-europe-and-the-soviet-sphere-of-influence-
adrian-hnni-thomas-riegler-przemyslaw-gasztold-50216296

Explore and download more ebooks at ebookbell.com

Here are some recommended products that we believe you will be
interested in. You can click the link to download.

Terrorism In The Cold War State Support In The West Middle East And
Latin America Adrian Hnni Thomas Riegler Przemyslaw Gasztold

https://ebookbell.com/product/terrorism-in-the-cold-war-state-support-
in-the-west-middle-east-and-latin-america-adrian-hnni-thomas-riegler-
przemyslaw-gasztold-50228988

Terrorism In The Twentyfirst Century Combs Cynthia C

https://ebookbell.com/product/terrorism-in-the-twentyfirst-century-
combs-cynthia-c-22132024

Terrorism In The Late Victorian Novel 1st Edition Barbara Arnett

Melchiori

https://ebookbell.com/product/terrorism-in-the-late-victorian-
novel-1st-edition-barbara-arnett-melchiori-36383760

Terrorism In The Classroom Security Surveillance And A Public Duty To

Act 1st Ed Imran Awan

https://ebookbell.com/product/terrorism-in-the-classroom-security-
surveillance-and-a-public-duty-to-act-1st-ed-imran-awan-7320622
Terrorism In The United States 1999 Booth

https://ebookbell.com/product/terrorism-in-the-united-
states-1999-booth-36710858

Terrorism In Africa The Evolving Front In The War On Terror John Davis
Adrian Taylor Abdul Karim Bangura John Davis Mohamed A Elkhawas Ben K
Fredmensah Alem Hailu Samuel Moki Cyril Obi Melissa Simpson

https://ebookbell.com/product/terrorism-in-africa-the-evolving-front-
in-the-war-on-terror-john-davis-adrian-taylor-abdul-karim-bangura-
john-davis-mohamed-a-elkhawas-ben-k-fredmensah-alem-hailu-samuel-moki-
cyril-obi-melissa-simpson-51227046

Terrorism In Europe In The Crosshairs Again First Edition Cockburn

https://ebookbell.com/product/terrorism-in-europe-in-the-crosshairs-
again-first-edition-cockburn-11840998

Combating Terrorism In The 21st Century American Laws Strategies And

Agencies Joseph R Rudolph Jr

https://ebookbell.com/product/combating-terrorism-in-the-21st-century-
american-laws-strategies-and-agencies-joseph-r-rudolph-jr-47242592

War In The Bible And Terrorism In The Twentyfirst Century Richard S

Hess Editor Elmer A Martens Editor

https://ebookbell.com/product/war-in-the-bible-and-terrorism-in-the-
twentyfirst-century-richard-s-hess-editor-elmer-a-martens-
editor-51830070
TERRORISM IN THE COLD WAR
ii 
 TERRORISM IN THE COLD WAR

State Support in Eastern Europe and the Soviet

Sphere of Influence

Edited by
Adrian Hänni, Thomas Riegler and Przemyslaw Gasztold
 BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK
1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA
29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland

BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo

are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published in Great Britain 2021

This edition published in 2022

Copyright © Adrian Hänni, Thomas Riegler, Przemyslaw Gasztold, 2021

Adrian Hänni, Thomas Riegler and Przemyslaw Gasztold have asserted their right under the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.

Cover design by Adriana Brioso

Cover images © UWE MEINHOLD/DDP/AFP/Getty Images; jsteck/iStock

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or
any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the
publishers.

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-
party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were
correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience
caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no
responsibility for any such changes.

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

A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: HB: 978-0-7556-0023-6

PB: 978-0-7556-3656-3
ePDF: 978-0-7556-0025-0
eBook: 978-0-7556-0024-3

Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for
our newsletters.
 CONTENTS
Volume I
State Support in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Sphere of Influence

Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION: STATE SUPPORT FOR TERRORIST ACTORS IN THE
COLD WAR – MYTHS AND REALITY (PART 1)
Adrian Hänni 1

Chapter 2
THE KGB’S ABDUCTION PROGRAMME AND THE PFLP: ON THE CUSP
BETWEEN INTELLIGENCE AND TERRORISM
Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez 21

Chapter 3
SOVIET APPROACHES TO MUSLIM EXTREMISM AND TERRORISM
Michael Fredholm 41

Chapter 4
PALESTINIAN TERRORISM AND THE STATE SECURITY OF THE GDR:
ABU NIDAL BETWEEN EAST BERLIN, MOSCOW AND WASHINGTON
1973–89
Tobias Wunschik 61

Chapter 5
POLISH MILITARY INTELLIGENCE AND ITS SECRET RELATIONSHIP
WITH THE ABU NIDAL ORGANIZATION
Przemysław Gasztold 85

Chapter 6
CARLOS THE JACKAL IN PRAGUE: COMMUNIST CZECHOSLOVAKIA
AND INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM – A CASE STUDY
Pavel Žáček 107
vi Contents

Chapter 7
HUNGARIAN STATE SECURITY AND INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM IN
THE 1980s
Balázs Orbán-Schwarzkopf 123

Chapter 8
BULGARIAN STATE SECURITY AND INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM
Jordan Baev 143

Chapter 9
YUGOSLAVIA, CARLOS ‘THE JACKAL’ AND INTERNATIONAL
TERRORISM DURING THE COLD WAR
Gordan Akrap 167

Chapter 10
NORTH KOREA’S ‘TERRORISM’ AND ‘COUNTERTERRORISM’ IN THE
LATE 1980s
Bernd Schaefer 185

About the Authors 195

Select Bibliography 198
Index 205
 CChapter 1

INTRODUCTION
STATE SUPPORT FOR TERRORIST ACTORS IN THE
COLD WAR – MYTHS AND REALITY (PART 1)

Adrian Hänni

Accounts of the relationships between states and terrorist organizations1 in the

Cold War era have long been shaped by speculation, a lack of primary sources and
even conspiracy theories. The scholarship on the issue goes back to the Cold War
era itself and, in fact, has been shaped by the Cold War beyond the collapse of the
Soviet Union and the end of the East–West conflict.
In the last few years, however, things have evolved rapidly. Several original
research projects for a wide range of states, areas and time periods, which are based
on archival documents, have shed new light on the relations between government
actors and terrorists. The new body of research demonstrates that these relationships
were not only much more ambiguous, complex and multilayered than much of the
older literature had suggested but also, in fact, crucial for the understanding of
global political history during the Cold War era.
By offering the reader new insights into state involvement with terrorist
organizations, this book aims to present the current state of research, provide a
preliminary assessment and blaze a path for further studies. The contributions
focus on the European states on both sides of the Iron Curtain – with some
excursions into the Middle East, the Americas, East Asia and South Asia – during
the 1970s and 1980s. This period seems to be ideal to study the relations between
state and terrorist actors, considering that in those two decades almost every
major terrorist organization had some ties to at least one supportive government.2
State involvement seems to be a relevant factor for assessing today’s terrorist
threats as well. Chris Quillen concludes that, compared to groups without relations
to state actors, ‘state-sponsored terrorists would appear both more able and more
willing to kill in large numbers’.3 Moreover, as Bruce Hoffman recognized in 2006 in
his classic book Inside Terrorism, ‘Today, state sponsorship of terrorism continues
unabated.’4 As Daniel Byman argued convincingly, state actors often attempt to use
jihadist militants engaged in terrorist violence ‘to bolster allied regimes, weaken
rivals, and placate opinion at home. Many more states simply tolerate their activity
to avoid alienating powerful domestic constituencies or because they pay no
2 Terrorism in the Cold War

political or diplomatic price for their support.’5 Without this active or passive state
support, Byman claims, groups like the Islamic State would have been far weaker.
Interviews with several dozen defectors from the Islamic State, conducted by
a team of researchers led by Anne Speckhard, seem to confirm this judgement as
they detail mutual support and deals between the Islamic State and Syrian state
actors.6 Moreover, Abu Mansour al-Maghrebi, who apparently acted as the group’s
informal ambassador to Turkey, describes a ‘diplomacy where both sides benefit’
with the NATO country. According to al-Maghrebi, negotiations between ‘ISIS
diplomats’ and Turkish intelligence led to political deals, in which the Islamic
State agreed to refrain from attacks within Turkey, and to conduct proxy attacks
against Kurdish forces, in return for water supplies and medical support, including
the treatment of wounded fighters in Turkish hospitals.7 While this evidence of a
secret deal between Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization and the Islamic
State still needs to be corroborated by additional source material, the apparent deal
strikingly resembles some of the agreements that Eastern and Western states made
with terrorist organizations during the Cold War.
The Yemeni government under President Ali Saleh, in turn, has apparently
struck a deal with violent jihadists in its country, allowing them to travel to Iraq
after 2003 to join the insurgency in return for their renunciation of attacks at
home. Regional expert Gregory Johnsen described this understanding as a ‘tacit
non-aggression pact’.8 There is convincing evidence that the Yemeni government
later allowed Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to renew itself in the
late 2000s, in order to exploit the group as a ‘scarecrow’ to obtain international
support, especially from the United States, and to use it against the regime’s
domestic opponents.9 Even the war in Afghanistan has been shaped and sustained
by the support provided to the Taliban and the Haqqani network by state actors,
especially Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI).10
These examples show that understanding cooperative state–terrorism relations
remains a highly relevant subject for scholars and policymakers. A historical
approach, as it is pursued in this book, allows for an examination based on archival
documents and a rigid analysis of the primary source material. Such standards
are necessary to investigate a topic that has too often been shrouded in rumours,
disinformation and even conspiracy theories, as the following introduction will
demonstrate.

Cold War myths

Between the late 1970s and the second half of the 1980s, numerous publications
appeared on the subject of state involvement in the violent acts of terrorist groups.
This first body of research focused mainly on ‘state sponsorship’ of terrorism as a
type of covert warfare and interpreted terrorist actors as ‘proxies’, ‘surrogates’ or
‘subcontractors’ of state actors. At the same time, governments on both sides of
the Iron Curtain frequently accused each other of sponsoring, if not directing, the
various international terrorist organizations.
 1. Introduction 3

In early 1981, the incoming Reagan administration used ‘terrorism’ essentially

as a synonym for communism and started employing the idea of Soviet-directed
international terrorism as an ideological construct to build a new domestic
consensus to relaunch the Cold War and return to a more interventionist foreign
policy challenging the Soviet Union.11 In a canonical article in the January issue
of Commentary, Jeane Kirkpatrick, the new ambassador to the United Nations,
proposed the idea of Soviet-directed terrorism in Latin America as an opportunity
to reinterpret the East–West conflict in ideological terms, reconstruct the Soviet
Union as the present danger, and bring back the lost fear of communism. That way,
Kirkpatrick argued, a political basis for a military build-up, foreign interventions –
and, more specifically, military and economic aid for dictatorships in Latin
America – could be created on the domestic front.12 At the same time, Harvard
professor Richard Pipes, who joined the NSC staff, outlined ‘international
terrorism’ as a discursive power strategy for the Reagan administration. Pipes
recommended that the new government exposed as widely as possible the Soviet
Union’s support for terrorism ‘because terrorism is a handy and relatively cheap
weapon in their arsenal to destroy Western societies’.13
When the new NSC principals came together with key figures of the intelligence
community for a first meeting in the White House on 24 January 1981 to discuss
the threat posed by terrorism, Secretary of State Alexander Haig claimed that the
roots of all ‘state-sponsored terrorism’ were without a doubt in the Soviet Union.14
Four days later Haig went public: at his first press conference as Secretary of State,
he announced that ‘terrorism’ would be the top priority of the administration’s
foreign policy and explained the paradigm shift by claiming that the Soviets
were supporting international terrorism.15 Other principals of the Reagan
administration, such as National Security Advisor Richard Allen and the president
himself, soon asserted publicly that ‘international terrorism’ was directed by the
Soviet Union as a Cold War weapon to undermine Western democracies.16 The
same image was evoked repeatedly in much-noticed Senate hearings and through
the Reagan administration’s public diplomacy efforts.17
The administration’s rhetoric was mirrored in terrorism research. In early 1981,
the American journalist Claire Sterling published The Terror Network. According
to the bestseller, which received vast attention from major US media, the Soviet-
controlled network consisted of about 140 terrorist groups from fifty different
countries. The global conspiracy included the Red Army Faction (RAF), the Red
Brigades, the Irish Republican Army (IRA), Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), ‘Carlos
the Jackal’ and the Libyan strongman Muammar al-Gaddafi. The KGB trained,
financed, and equipped the terrorists and employed the groups as ‘elite battalions
in a worldwide Army of Communist Combat’ to destabilize and, if possible,
dismantle the West’s democratic societies.18
In the following years, numerous books and studies argued along the lines of
Sterling that ‘international terrorism’ was controlled by the Soviet Union.19 The
Terror Network was one of the most cited works in terrorism research during
the 1980s,20 and the reverberations of the conspiracy theory have hardly fallen
silent in the years after the Cold War came to a close. As late as 2007, the German
4 Terrorism in the Cold War

scholar Michael Ploetz claimed that ‘the analysis of Soviet grand strategy proves
that the support for terrorism and right-wing extremism was an inherent part’ of
the offensive ‘with which Brezhnev’s politburo wanted to win the system rivalry’
and to destroy bourgeois society. According to this Soviet plan, Ploetz claimed,
left-wing terrorist organizations such as the RAF, the Red Brigades, and Action
Directe were supposed to act as a vanguard.21
On the other hand, a mirror-symmetric conspiratorial narrative about
‘international terrorism’ was put forward by pro-Soviet intelligence services, a
global network of communist propaganda fronts and sympathizers, as well as left-
wing activists and intellectuals in the West. According to this myth, the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other Western intelligence services were the
masterminds orchestrating international terrorism, especially right-wing political
violence.22 In this vein, left-wing milieus regularly saw right-wing terrorist attacks
as part of a conspiracy between right-wing militants, the security services of their
countries and often the CIA. Especially in Italy, the left claimed that right-wing
terrorism was part of a plot tolerated or even actively supported by Italian state
authorities to block the socialists and communists from gaining power and to
establish an authoritarian regime. The CIA was believed to be the real ‘puppet
master’ behind this alleged conspiracy against Italy.23 The post–Cold War legacy
of such narratives are some of the more conspiratorial accounts of ‘Gladio’, which
insinuated that the stay-behind structures established in most non-socialist states
in Europe after the Second World War had formed a terrorist network coordinated
by NATO and the CIA.24 This book provides a factual analysis of the Gladio case
by Thomas Riegler.
An exemplary, and highly symbolic, example of the parallel but diametrically
opposed propagandistic efforts is the literature on the attempted assassination of
Pope John Paul II. On 13 May 1981, the Turkish assassin and former Grey Wolves
militant Mehmet Ali Agca shot and severely wounded the pontiff on the Vatican’s
St Peter’s Square. In the following years, intelligence services, propagandists
and scholars on both sides of the Iron Curtain blamed their respective Cold
War enemy for the terrorist attack. The Western narrative of the Bulgarian
Connection, claiming that the Bulgarian intelligence service and the KGB had
directed Agca to kill the pope who had been seen as a threat to communist rule in
Poland,25 was soon challenged by an Eastern narrative, fuelled by disinformation
of East German and Bulgarian intelligence services, that alleged that the CIA
had orchestrated the assassination attempt in order to implicate Bulgaria and the
Soviet Union.26 There is, so far, no convincing evidence for state support for the
papal assassination plot. To the contrary, the available archival source material
very strongly suggests that neither the East Bloc intelligence services nor the CIA
directed the attack.27
Another remarkable characteristic of the narratives about KGB or CIA
control of international terrorism is that they were fuelled to a large degree by
disinformation and forgeries of Eastern and Western intelligence services,
manufactured during the second half of the 1970s and thereafter. The most
significant Soviet forgery of this campaign is probably the so-called ‘Field Manual
 1. Introduction 5

30-31B’ that attributes left-wing terrorism around the world to US intelligence

operations. The purported US military manual, which was widely published in
Europe from 1976 on, was particularly used to justify claims of US involvement
in far-left terrorism in Europe, and especially in Italy, as part of the ‘strategy of
tension’.28 On the other hand, intelligence services of NATO countries such as the
Italian Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare (SISMI), the French
Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage (SDECE) and the
CIA repeatedly planted disinformation about the Warsaw Pact countries’ support
for individual terrorist groups, or even Soviet control of ‘international terrorism’ as
such, in European media outlets and in publications of select research institutes.29
Some of these articles and reports were then recycled and put together by Sterling
in The Terror Network.30

Beyond the myths

As the available archival documents – many of which became publicly accessible

only during the last couple of years – clearly demonstrate, neither the intelligence
services of the Eastern bloc nor those of the NATO countries controlled a large
number of international terrorist organizations or even a global terror network.
Nor did they use terrorist groups as proxies as part of an offensive plan for victory
in the East–West conflict and for global domination. The reality is much more
complex. A new body of research, represented by the articles in this book, shows
that the relations between state and terrorist actors were much more ambiguous
and multilayered than much of the older literature suggested based on rumours,
myths or even conspiracy narratives.

The Soviet Union

During the Cold War ‘international terrorism’ was not a monolithic network or
even a communist conspiracy masterminded by the Soviet Union to destabilize
Western democracies. The Soviet Union indeed supported a number of terrorist
organizations. For the most part, however, Soviet intelligence services did not
directly support groups that mainly or exclusively operated with terrorist tactics.
The US intelligence community was aware as early as summer 1986 that the Soviets
‘appear to avoid all direct contact with transnational terrorist groups such as the
Carlos Apparat and the Abu Nidal Group’ and that ‘Moscow evidently disapproves
of the nihilistic new-left terrorists of Western Europe typified by the Red Army
Faction (RAF) of West Germany, Action Directe of France, and the Communist
Combatant Cells of Belgium and has no apparent contacts with them’.31
The most prominent example of Soviet support for a group that engaged in
international terrorist violence was probably the KGB’s involvement with the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and especially with its
External Operations (PFLP-EO, later PFLP-Special Operation Group [SOG]).
The leader of this Palestinian splinter group, which was responsible for some of
6 Terrorism in the Cold War

the most spectacular international terrorist attacks in the late 1960s and 1970s,
was Wadi Haddad, a co-founder of the PFLP. Apparently, the KGB started
collaborating with Haddad as early as 1968, and the Soviet intelligence service
eventually recruited him formally as agent Natsionalist in May 1970. Thereafter,
the KGB provided Haddad’s group with significant amounts of weapons, money
and training for several years.32
In return for this support, the KGB tasked the PFLP-EO in 1970 to abduct a
high-ranking CIA operative in Beirut in order to extract intelligence – as Isabella
Ginor and Gideon Remez describe in great detail in this book based on newly
accessible documents. But Haddad’s organization eventually refused to commit
such ‘non-terrorist’ abductions for the KGB, demonstrating its freedom of action.
According to the Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman, however, the PFLP-EO
eliminated Soviet defectors for the KGB, which was eager to avoid being publicly
associated with such ‘wet jobs’ in the West.33 Overall, the Soviet support for the
PFLP was hardly part of an offensive terrorist strategy against the West. Already
in 1971, Fedor Mortin, the head of the KGB’s First Chief Directorate, responsible
for the collaboration with Haddad, made it plain that ‘it seems more expedient to
more actively exploit “Natsionalist” and his militants for bold operations aimed
only directly at Israel’.34
After Haddad died in early 1978, the PFLP-SOG split and the KGB subsequently
proved unable to recruit a suitable replacement within the more radical Palestinian
factions.35 In the 1980s, the Soviet Union continued to give some support, especially
weapons and training, to various armed Palestinian groups, some of which were
engaged in terrorist violence. Tellingly, however, the militants who received most
military and other forms of training during that decade were members of the
Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), the most doctrinaire
Marxist of the Palestinian groups – and among the least active in international
terrorism.36
The Israeli professor Galia Golan wrote in her history of the relationship
between the Soviet Union and the PLO in 1980: ‘Palestinian terrorism was
generally – though not always – perceived by the Soviets as counterproductive.’37
Certainly, the Soviets have time and again tried to use their contacts and
leverage their perceived or real influence to restrain extremist factions within
the Palestinian movement, to dissuade them from launching terrorist attacks
outside the Middle East and to urge them to work towards a political solution
of the conflict.38 An example is the significant pressure the Soviet leadership at
times put on the PLO to accept United Nations Security Council Resolution 242,
which among other things would have recognized Israel’s right to exist in peace.39
A US intelligence document from 1986 unambiguously states that the Soviets had
urged Palestinian groups under Moscow’s influence to stop when they conducted
transnational terrorist campaigns. According to the recently declassified National
Intelligence Estimate, the Soviet Union’s disapproval of Palestinian hijackings and
other terrorist tactics outside of Israel and the occupied territories had the effect
that the Soviets even suspended their support of the PFLP at one point during
the 1970s because of the group’s involvement in international terrorism. The CIA
 1. Introduction 7

concluded that since then ‘the concern that the Soviets would cut off aid again
may have been a factor in dissuading the PFLP from resuming its international
terrorist activities’.40
Furthermore, the support for Palestinian terrorist groups did not lead to Soviet
control. The relationship between the KGB and Wadi Haddad illustrates this fact,
considering that the PFLP-EO repeatedly refused to execute operations demanded
by Soviet intelligence as payback for its support.41 Jeffrey Bale accordingly concludes
that ‘it would be absurd to characterize the PLO as a whole, or even entire radical
factions within it, as little more than the terrorist agents, surrogates, or proxies of
the KGB’.42 This judgement is consonant with Thomas Riegler’s assessment of the
relationship between the KGB and terrorist actors more broadly. The historian
Riegler argues that the Soviet role did not amount to actual control of terrorism:
‘The groups maintained their autonomy and were no extensions of Soviet foreign
policy.’43
The available source material suggests that since the beginning of the
1980s, direct Soviet support to terrorist groups or even the use of terrorism for
political purposes abroad seems to have been limited to a few minor cases. The
activities reports of the KGB, submitted annually to the General Secretary of
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) by the chairman of the KGB,
mention no cooperation with terrorist groups. To the contrary, in the early 1980s
the various terrorist organizations are listed, besides the United States, China and
domestic dissidents, as the main enemies of the Soviet Union.44 These documents
clearly indicate that, at least in the final decade of the Cold War, the KGB regarded
these terrorist actors more as a threat than as the spearhead of communist world
revolution.

The socialist states in Eastern Europe

The Soviet Union’s satellite states in Eastern Europe and their relations with
terrorist actors were a somewhat different matter. Any discussion needs to start
with three basic distinctions regarding state, terrorist actor and time:

(1) There was no joint ‘Warsaw Pact’ approach towards terrorist organizations.
The policies and actions of individual states, which maintained their own
agreements, dealings and cooperation with terrorist actors, varied widely.
On the one hand, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), likely the most
extensive supporter of terrorist actors in Eastern Europe, provided military
training and weapons to various armed Palestinian groups such as the
PFLP, the DFLP and the PFLP-General Command (GC).45 Its Ministry for
State Security (MfS, commonly known as Stasi) further provided sanctuary
to some of the most notorious and deadliest terrorist groups in the West:
the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO) and the Carlos group. Some ANO
members also received ideological education, and a few of its cadres were
even provided with limited military training.46 Moreover, in the early 1980s
the GDR granted asylum to ten RAF dropouts, on the condition that they
8 Terrorism in the Cold War

permanently renounced terrorism. Several active RAF members received

weapons and explosives training in the GDR, and the MfS periodically
exchanged intelligence with the West German left-wing terrorists.47
On the other hand, Bulgaria’s involvement with terrorist actors seems to
have been limited to a passive (and in some instances temporary) toleration
of a number of terrorist organizations such as ANO and the Carlos group
and, potentially, using some of these groups as intermediaries for weapons
deals between Bulgarian state-owned arms manufacturers and Middle
Eastern buyers.48 Additionally, scholars should keep in mind that while
different Eastern European states pursued different, often autonomous,
policies towards terrorist organizations, different actors within the socialist
state structures – for example, foreign, domestic and military intelligence
services; foreign ministries; police services; government and party leaders –
sometimes also pursued different approaches and interests towards a given
terrorist actor.
(2) Not surprisingly, the relations of a particular socialist state with the various
terrorist organizations, even those who were seemingly aligned ideologically
or strategically with the state actor, varied widely. Romania, for example,
actually used the Carlos group for violent operations. Its intelligence
service, the Securitate, tasked ‘the Jackal’ with attacks on Romanian exiles,
including the bombing of Radio Free Europe (RFE) in Munich in February
1981. In return, the Securitate provided active support by equipping the
Carlos group with foreign passports, a safe house, a bank account, access
to training centres and even large amounts of weapons and explosives.49
On the other hand, Romanian authorities never closed an agreement with
ANO, despite Abu Nidal’s efforts towards this end. Instead of providing
sanctuary or even support to ANO members, they did not spare them from
being arrested. As a result, among other violent and non-violent reactions,
ANO carried out a rocket attack on the Romanian Embassy in Beirut in
November 1986.50
(3) The relations between states and terrorist actors have for the most part been
problematic, fraught with distrust and friction. Accordingly, these individual
relationships have a history. They evolved and transformed, often radically,
over time. To give only one illustrating example: as far as can be judged
based on the available source material (which is quite vast on this subject
and has been analysed extensively), the active support that the MfS provided
to the RAF, already described earlier, was effectively restricted to the three
years from 1980 until 1982, out of the approximately two decades that the
GDR and the RAF coexisted.
Before 1980, the MfS’ support seems to have been limited to allowing
RAF members to transit to the GDR, either to evade manhunts by the West
German police or to visit Palestinian camps in the Middle East, in exchange
for information. In the 1970s, the MfS had declined requests for more far-
reaching support by both the first and the second generation of the RAF: the
first time in 1970, when Ulrike Meinhof wanted to close a deal allowing her
 1. Introduction 9

group to use the territory of the GDR to plan operations in West Berlin; the
second time in 1979, when leading members of the second generation were
probing for support in East Berlin. The eventual short-lived cooperation of
the early 1980s broke down again as early as 1983/84.51 While a simple listing
of the various forms of support the MfS provided to the RAF – military
training, intelligence, sanctuary – might, indeed, indicate a major role of
the East German secret service in the RAF’s terrorist violence, a historical
‘timeline analysis’ of the relationship suggests that the ‘unholy cooperation’
may have had little impact or significance, as Tobias Wunschik concluded.52

Besides these important distinctions, there are a few general findings regarding
the Eastern European states and their relations with terrorist actors. State support
from Warsaw Pact intelligence agencies was in most cases not essential for the
survival of the sponsored terrorist groups. The terrorist actors pursued their
own interests and political goals. Occasionally, they even manipulated their
international ‘state sponsors’ to these ends.53 The direction of influence in these
state–terrorism relations has, therefore, not always been unambiguous. Some
left-wing terrorist groups such as the Red Brigades also seem to have consistently
refused cooperation with any Soviet bloc state.54 Further, in the majority of cases
support for terrorist actors likely occurred without Soviet guidance and was
therefore the result of more or less independently reached decisions within the
smaller socialist countries.
Another intriguing and myth-busting finding that applies to several Eastern
European states is how overwhelmed or even incompetent some of their supposedly
all-powerful security services turned out to be when they were challenged by the
presence of terrorist actors. Exemplarily, the Czech security services were taken by
surprise by Carlos’ initial visits and, despite considerable efforts, were unable to
prevent him from entering the country thereafter. Although the hotel selection for
foreign visitors to Prague was quite limited at the time, it used to take the Czech
intelligence services several days to find out that ‘the Jackal’ had been staying at
the Hotel Intercontinental.55 The Yugoslav domestic intelligence service, in turn,
did not realize for years that the Carlos group had been establishing a base in
Yugoslavia, which it used for weapons transfers and to prepare for operations in
Western Europe, until Carlos’ lieutenant Johannes Weinrich knocked on their
door one summer’s day in 1983.56
The good access to historical archives in Eastern Europe and the research
undertaken based on their records allow us today to identify a small number of
core motives for state support. These motives were certainly not the driving force
of every single instance of state sponsorship. Ideology, for example, sometimes
certainly played a role as well. Yet they are quintessential to understanding why
state actors in the Soviet bloc supported transnational terrorist actors in most of
the significant cases.

(1) Domestic security: The destabilization of Western democracies, or even

the expansion of the communist sphere of influence into the First World,
10 Terrorism in the Cold War

was hardly ever a decisive motive. Far from constituting an aggressive

furtherance of world revolution (as Sterling and many others have claimed),
the relations with terrorist actors were of a rather defensive character. The
East European security services regarded many of the organizations as a
potential threat to their own countries and genuinely feared a spill over of
the terrorist violence behind the Iron Curtain. The cooperation with these
groups thus constituted an, implicit or explicit, trade of limited support
for non-aggression. Paradigmatically, the CIA recognized in a major
analysis of Yugoslavia’s terrorism ties in March 1986 that ‘Belgrade also
seems motivated by concerns for its own internal security. It has long been
worried about terrorist attacks both in the country and against its interests
abroad […]. Belgrade probably calculates that it can prevent attacks on
Yugoslav territory by some groups […] by cooperating with them.’57 In
some cases, this motive was reflected in specific secret agreements between
East European intelligence services and terrorist groups. Examples are the
deals between Polish military intelligence58 and ANO in 1979 and between
the MfS and ANO in 1982.59 Even in those very rare cases in which an East
European intelligence service used a terrorist actor as a proxy for violent
attacks, the target seems to have been domestic opposition to the socialist
regime, not a foreign state or public.60 The most prominent case is the
Securitate’s cooperation with Carlos to attack Romanian exiles in the early
1980s.61 Accordingly, the status quo-oriented state support by the socialist
regimes in East Europe was qualitatively a very different phenomenon than
some of the state support provided by Middle Eastern regimes.
(2) Intelligence: The interest to gain intelligence has been a crucial factor driving
decisions to support terrorist organizations for basically all socialist states.
Its significance can therefore hardly be overestimated. This may not come
so much as a surprise if one considers that the dealing with terrorist actors
was the task of intelligence agencies, whose most fundamental objective
is to collect intelligence. On one hand, providing sanctuary or active
support put intelligence services in a better position for surveilling terrorist
organizations as well as recruiting informants. The MfS, for example, ran
six agents alone within the ranks or the entourage of ANO.62 Probably even
more important, support for terrorist groups allowed the security services
to demand intelligence as a quid pro quo. Certain terrorist groups were in a
position to deliver extremely valuable information, for example, on terrorist
groups that were considered a threat to the state sponsor, on political
developments in the Middle East, on rival groups or on military installations
of NATO countries. According to Christopher Andrew’s analysis of the
Mitrokhin archive, even the KGB’s attempt to make contact with the
Provisional IRA in 1977 was motivated by the hope of gaining useful
information on British intelligence operations.63 The KGB’s relation with
Wadi Haddad and his PFLP-EO likewise had a major intelligence gathering
element, as Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez impressively demonstrate in
this book.
 1. Introduction 11

(3) Commercial interests: In several instances, another important factor

was the usefulness of terrorist groups as intermediaries in weapons
deals between state-owned arms manufacturers in the socialist states
and mainly Middle Eastern buyers (both states and non-state armed
groups). Major examples of such ‘terrorist brokers’ were ANO and the
Turkish Grey Wolves.64 The Middle Eastern clientele paid for the large
amount of weapons in dollars – contrary to the socialist sister states in the
Comecon,65 which paid their bills in roubles – thereby bringing some badly
needed strong currency into the East European countries. Analysing the
case of Poland, Przemyslaw Gasztold accordingly concluded that money,
not ideology, was the decisive factor for Polish relations with international
terrorism.66 Besides the arms trade, another motive to cooperate with
terrorist organizations was that these actors could provide access to
embargoed goods, especially Western electronics and weapons.67 Polish
military intelligence required such deliveries even from ANO in their
1979 secret agreement and was able to acquire Argentinian-made Edda
submachine guns and special ammunition for use in airplanes through the
terrorist group. ANO also acquired sophisticated electronics from Swiss
companies for their Polish hosts.68 In 1986, at the peak of its international
terrorist violence, the same organization helped the GDR to obtain 100
state-of-the-art Enfield anti-riot weapons from the UK – arms that could
be used against domestic opponents of the regime.69 More generally, East
European states supported Middle Eastern (especially Palestinian) terrorist
actors in order to advance or maintain good economic standings among
Arab states.70
(4) Diplomatic influence/recognition: Although less significant than the motives
described earlier, a further recurring driver is the ‘constructive’ potential
of state support in the foreign policy arena, as opposed to the ‘destructive’
aims (e.g. frustrating particular policies, destabilizing or weakening a
foreign state and so on) pursued through terrorist violence. ‘Constructive’
objectives included attempts to advance diplomatic or economic relations
with states that had been sympathetic to the cause of the supported terrorist
groups, or generally to strengthen the state supporter’s political influence
in a specific community of states. Illuminating examples are the GDR and
the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). For the GDR, its strong
interest in diplomatic recognition in (as well as the further development
of economic relations with) the Arab world was a moving cause to support
armed Palestinian groups at the turn of the 1960s.71 The desire of Tito’s
Yugoslavia to strengthen its influence among member states of the Non-
Aligned Movement (NAM) was a decisive factor even in its decision to
support armed organizations that engaged in terrorist violence.72 Following
the same rationale, in 1983, the Yugoslav domestic intelligence service
decided not to extradite Carlos’s lieutenant Johannes Weinrich, because
such an act would possibly have compromised the Yugoslav policy in the
NAM.73
12 Terrorism in the Cold War

Another long-held myth was that the Soviet bloc remained free of the international
terrorist violence from the 1960s through the 1980s.74 While the number of
incidents was, indeed, much larger in Western Europe, the articles in this volume
clearly show that several terrorist groups, not seldom acting as proxies for state
actors, committed attacks in Eastern Europe and worldwide against representations
of socialist states, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, targeting the socialist
regimes. Croatian émigré nationalist groups, which fought for the destruction of
socialist Yugoslavia and the foundation of an independent Croatian nation state,
were not only among the first to globalize their operations but also among the
most active terrorist organizations in the 1960s and the 1970s. Over one ten-year
period, Croatian terrorists averaged one attack every five weeks, including more
than fifty assassinations or assassination attempts, forty bombings and two aircraft
hijackings.75
The terrorist campaigns by the Shia groups Amal, Hezbollah and Dawa against
Hungarian targets are another illustrating example. In the same vein that Iran and
Syria used Hezbollah as a terrorist proxy to influence the regional policies of the
United States, France and Israel, the Iranian regime also exploited Shia terrorist
groups to target Hungary. The most dramatic incidents of a series of attacks against
diplomatic and business properties were an assault on the Hungarian Embassy in
Aden in January 1987 and the bombing of the central office of Hungarian Airlines
in Kuwait in May 1987. The apparent objective of the Iranian state sponsors was to
intimidate socialist countries that had been giving significant aid to Iraq. And just
like the direction of Hezbollah against the United States, France and Israel proved
highly successful, Iran seems to have obtained some results with its terrorist proxy
strategy against the socialist states: at the turn of 1987, Hungary started delivering
war material to Iran.76
In any case, fears of terrorist violence were by no means restricted to the
West. East European countries like Hungary massively expanded their own
counterterrorism apparatus in the last decade of the Cold War, as Balázs Orbán-
Schwarzkopf analyses in his contribution to this book.77 Bernd Schäfer, in turn,
shows in his article that by the late 1980s even the regime of North Korea was
so paranoidly afraid of terrorist attacks that the hermit country engaged in an
unprecedented international ‘counterterrorism’ intelligence cooperation with
Warsaw Pact states, particularly with the East German MfS.
The articles in the first volume illuminate the complex, multilayered and
ambiguous set of relations that the socialist states in Eastern Europe maintained
with terrorist actors, providing sanctuary and various forms of support to a number
of groups, rejecting cooperation with others and finding themselves among the
targets of terrorist organizations.

Notes

1 In this article, ‘terrorism’ signifies the use or threat of political violence by non-state
actors aimed to influence, usually by instilling fear, a target audience beyond the
 1. Introduction 13

direct victims of the violence. An individual, group, organization, etc. is classified as

a ‘terrorist’ actor, when it makes considerable use of terrorist violence. The author is
aware that the use of the labels ‘terrorist’, ‘terrorist organization’, ‘terrorist attack’ etc. is
problematic as there is no definition shared by a majority of scholars. For a discussion
see, for example, Alex P. Schmid (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Terrorism Research
(London: Routledge, 2011), 39–157. Additionally, critical terrorism scholars have
made a good argument that ‘terrorism’ is largely a social construct and that the
use of the ‘terrorist’ label serves strategic functions. For an overview see Richard
Jackson, Marie Breen Smith and Jeroen Gunning (eds.), Critical Terrorism Studies: A
New Research Agenda (London: Routledge, 2009); David Miller, Jessie Blackbourn,
Helen Dexter and Rani Dhanda (eds.), Critical Terrorism Studies since 11 September
2001: What Has Been Learned? (New York: Routledge, 2014); Richard Jackson (ed.),
Routledge Handbook of Critical Terrorism Studies (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016).
2 Daniel Byman, Deadly Connections: States That Sponsor Terrorism (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005), 1.
3 Chris Quillen, A Historical Analysis of Mass Casualty Bombers, Studies in Conflict &
Terrorism 25/5 (2002), 285.
4 Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 263.
5 Daniel Byman, How States Exploit Jihadist Foreign Fighters, Studies in Conflict &
Terrorism 41/12 (2018), 931–45.
6 Anne Speckhard and Ahmet S. Yayla, ISIS Defectors: Inside Stories of the Terrorist
Caliphate (McLean, VA: Advances Press, 2016); Anne Speckhard and Ahmet S. Yayla,
ISIS Revenues Include Sales of Oil to the al-Assad Regime, ICSVE Brief Reports, 27
April 2016, https​://ww​w.ics​ve.or​g/isi​ss-re​venue​s-inc​lude-​sales​-of-o​il-to​-the-​al-as​sad-r​
egime​(accessed 1 January 2020). Links and cooperation between the Islamic State and
Syrian intelligence services are also documented in Islamic State files discovered in
Syria. See Christoph Reuter, The Terror Strategist: Secret Files Reveal the Structure of
Islamic State, Der Spiegel, 18 April 2015, https​://ww​w.spi​egel.​de/in​terna​tiona​l/wor​ld/is​
lamic​-stat​e-fil​es-sh​ow-st​ructu​re-of​-isla​mist-​terro​r-gro​up-a-​10292​74.ht​ml (accessed 1
January 2020).
7 Anne Speckhard and Ardian Shajkovci, The ISIS Ambassador to Turkey, Homeland
Security Today, 19 March 2019, https​://ww​w.hst​oday.​us/su​bject​-matt​er-ar​eas/t​error​
ism-s​tudy/​the-i​sis-a​mbass​ador-​to-tu​rkey (accessed 1 January 2020).
8 Glenn Greenwald and Gregory Johnsen, Salon Radio Transcript: Gregory Johnsen,
Salon, 24 December 2009, http:​//www​.salo​n.com​/2009​/12/2​4/gjo​hnsen​_tran​scrip​t
(accessed 1 January 2020).
9 Victoria Clark, Yemen: Dancing on the Heads of Snakes (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2010); Jeremy Scahill, Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield
(London: Serpent’s Tail, 2013); Larry Attree, Blown Back: Lessons from Counter-terror,
Stabilisation and Statebuilding in Yemen, Saferworld, January 2016, especially 11,
37–8.
10 Adrian Hänni and Lukas Hegi, Pakistanischer Pate: Der Geheimdienst Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI) und die afghanischen Taliban, 2002–2010, Journal for Intelligence,
Propaganda and Security Studies 5/1 (2011), 46–60; Steve Coll, Directorate S: The
C.I.A. and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan (New York: Penguin
Books, 2018).
11 Adrian Hänni, Terrorismus als Konstrukt: Schwarze Propaganda, politische
Bedrohungsängste und der Krieg gegen den Terrorismus in Reagans Amerika (Essen:
Klartext-Verlag, 2018), 167–245.
14 Terrorism in the Cold War

12 Jeane Kirkpatrick, U.S. Security & Latin America, Commentary 71/1 (1981), 29–40.
13 Cited in Philip Geyelin, The Reigning White House Soviet Scholar, Washington Post,
12 February 1981, A19.
14 On the meeting see Timothy Naftali, Blind Spot: The Secret History of American
Counterterrorism (New York: Basic Books 2005), 118–20; Joseph E. Persico, Casey:
From the OSS to the CIA (New York: Viking, 1990), 220; David C. Martin and John
Walcott, Best Laid Plans: The Inside Story of America’s War against Terrorism (New
York: Harper & Row, 1988), 45–7; Bob Woodward, Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA,
1981–1987 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), 92–3. For a list of the participants
see ‘Richard V, Allen, Meeting with Interagency Working Committee on Terrorism’,
24 January 1981, in George Bush Library, College Station, TX, Bush Vice Presidential
Records, National Security Affairs, ‘Terrorism [1 of 9]’.
15 Excerpts from Haig’s Remarks at First News Conference as Secretary of State, New
York Times, 29 January 1981, A10.
16 Hänni, Terrorismus als Konstrukt, 175–85, 231–7.
17 Ibid., 212–31.
18 Claire Sterling, The Terror Network: The Secret War of International Terrorism (New
York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1981).
19 See, especially, Samuel T. Francis, The Soviet Strategy of Terror (Washington, DC:
Heritage Foundation, 1981); Herbert Romerstein, Soviet Support for International
Terrorism (Washington, DC: Foundation for Democratic Education, 1981); Neil C.
Livingstone, The War against Terrorism (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1982); Ray
S. Cline and Yonah Alexander, Terrorism: The Soviet Connection (New York: Crane
Russak, 1984); Roberta Goren, The Soviet Union and Terrorism (Boston: Allen &
Unwin, 1984), edited by Jillian Becker, the director of the British Institute for the Study
of Terrorism (IST); Jillian Becker, The Soviet Connection: State Sponsorship of Terrorism
(London: Institute for European Defence and Strategic Studies, 1985); and Desmond
McForan, The World Held Hostage: The War Waged by International Terrorism
(London: Oak-Tree Books, 1986). See also Jan Sejna, We Will Bury You: The Soviet
Plan for the Subversion of the West by the Highest-Ranking Communist Ever to Defect
(London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1982); Brian Crozier, Drew Middleton and Jeremy
Murray-Brown, This War Called Peace (London: Sherwood Press, 1984); and Michael
A. Ledeen, Grave New World: The Superpower Crisis of the 1980s (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1985).
20 Edna F. Reid, Terrorism Research and the Diffusion of Ideas, Knowledge, Technology &
Policy 6/1 (1993), 17–37.
21 Michael Ploetz, Mit RAF, Roten Brigaden und Action Directe: Terrorismus
und Rechtsextremismus in der Strategie von SED und KpdSU, Zeitschrift des
Forschungsverbundes SED-Staat 22 (2007), 144.
22 See, especially, Boris Svetov et al., International Terrorism and the CIA: Documents,
Eyewitness Reports, Facts (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1983); Yu Pankov (ed.),
Political Terrorism: An Indictment of Imperialism (Moscow: Progress Publishers,
1983); and Vitaly Chernyavsky, The CIA in the Dock: Soviet Journalists on International
Terrorism (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1983). Viktor V. Vitiuk, Leftist Terrorism
(Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1985), even claimed that the CIA secretly directed
left-wing terrorism. The Soviet regime apparently produced a White Paper implicating
the CIA in international terrorism as early as spring 1981. See ‘Staff Meeting Minutes’,
Memorandum for the Record, CIA, 1 April 1981, 2, in CREST, CIA General Records,
84B00130R, Box 6, Folder 1, Document No. 398–9.
 1. Introduction 15

23 A discussion of the conspiracy theories on the involvement of the US government

in terrorism in Italy between the late 1960s and the 1980s is provided by Tobias Hof,
U.S. Involvement in Right-Wing Extremism and Terrorism in Italy, Paper presented
at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations
(SHAFR), Lexington, Kentucky, 19–21 June 2014.
24 See, among other books, Daniele Ganser, NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio
and Terrorism in Western Europe (London: Cass, 2005); Regine Igel, Terrorjahre: Die
dunkle Seite der CIA in Italien (München: Herbig, 2006).
25 See, especially, Claire Sterling, The Plot to Murder the Pope, Reader’s Digest,
September 1982, 71–84; Claire Sterling, The Time of the Assassins (New York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, 1983); Paul B. Henze, The Plot to Kill the Pope (New York:
Scribner, 1983). The narrative of the Bulgarian Connection has since been revived
from time to time, most recently in a book by Paul Kengor, A Pope and a President:
John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Extraordinary Untold Story of the 20th Century
(Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2017). For a critical discussion of the Bulgarian
Connection, see Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead, The Rise and Fall of the
Bulgarian Connection (New York: Sheridan Square Publications, 1986).
26 See, for example, Iona Andronov, On the Wolf ’s Track (Sofia: Sofia Press, 1983);
Iona Andronov, The Triple Plot (Sofia: Sofia Press, 1984); Ivan Palchev, The
Assassination Attempt against the Pope and the Roots of Terrorism (Sofia: Sofia
Press, 1985); as well as Eduard Kovalev and Igor Sedykh, ‘Bulgarian Connection’:
CIA & Co. on the Outcome of the Antonov Trial (Moscow: Novosti, 1986). On the
disinformation campaign by Bulgarian State Security and the MfS implicating
Western intelligence services in the plot to kill the pope, see Christopher Nehring,
Die Zusammenarbeit der DDR-Auslandsaufklärung mit der Aufklärung der
Volksrepublik Bulgarien: Regionalfilialen des KGB? PhD dissertation, Heidelberg
University, 2016, 220–32.
27 See, for example, the article by Jordan Baev in this book; Nehring, Zusammenarbeit
der DDR-Auslandsaufklärung mit der Aufklärung der Volksrepublik Bulgarien,
220–32; as well as Evtim Kostadinov (ed.), International Terrorism in the Bulgarian
State Security Files, Documentary Volume (Electronic Edition), The Committee
on Disclosing the Documents and Announcing Affiliation of Bulgarian Citizens
to the State Security and the Intelligence Services of the Bulgarian National Army
(CDDAABCSBNAF), 2011, https​://co​mdos.​bg/%D​0%9D%​D0%B0​%D1%8​8%D0%​
B8%D1​%82%D​0%B5%​20%D0​%B8%D​0%B7%​D0%B4​%D0%B​0%D0%​BD%D0​
%B8%D​1%8F/​mezhd​unaro​dniya​t-ter​oriza​m (accessed 1 January 2020). A recent
primary source-based study by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance reached
a different conclusion, claiming that Bulgarian special service agents played key
roles in the plot through their participation in the preparation for the assassination
attempt. See Michal Skwara and Andrzej Grajewski, Agca nie byt sam: Wokot udziatu
komunistycznych stuzb specjalnych w zamachu na Jana Pawta II (Katowice: Instytut
Gosc Media, 2015).
28 ‘Soviet Covert Action (The Forgery Offensive)’, Hearings before the Subcommittee
on Oversight of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, House of
Representatives, 96th Congress, 2nd Session, 6 and 19 February 1980 (Washington,
DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1980), 190–246; Soviet Disinformation during
Periods of Relaxed East-West Tensions, Appendix to Soviet Active Measures in the Era
of Glasnost: A Report to Congress by the United States Information Agency, March 1988,
available at http:​//ins​ideth​ecold​war.o​rg/si​tes/d​efaul​t/fil​es/do​cumen​ts/So​viet%​20Act​
16 Terrorism in the Cold War

ive%2​0Meas​ures%​20in%​20the​%20Er​a%20o​f%20G​lasno​t%20M​arch%​20198​8.pdf​
(accessed 1 January 2020).
29 These disinformation operations are documented in great detail by Hänni,
Terrorismus als Konstrukt, 117–65.
30 Ibid., 95–165.
31 The Soviet Bloc Role in International Terrorism and Revolutionary Violence, National
Intelligence Estimate 11/2-86, August 1986, 15, https​://ww​w.cia​.gov/​libra​ry/re​ading​
room/​docs/​CIA-R​DP90T​00155​R0002​00050​001-6​.pdf (accessed 1 January 2020).
32 See, especially, the article by Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez in this book. See
also Christopher Andrew and Vasiliy Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The
Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (New York: Basic Books, 1999),
380; and Letter from Yuri Andropov to Leonid Brezhnev, No. 1071-A/OB, 23 April
1974, published in Vladimir Boukovsky, Jugement a Moscou: Un dissident dans les
archives du Kremlin (Paris: R. Laffont, 1995), as well as online by Julia Zaks and
Leonid Chernikhov, http:​//buk​ovsky​-arch​ives.​net/p​dfs/t​err-w​d/plo​75a.p​df (accessed 1
January 2020).
33 Ronen Bergman, Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted
Assassinations (Random House: New York, 2018), 196. On the KGB’s targeting of
intelligence defectors in general, see Adrian Hänni and Miguel Grossmann, Death to
Traitors? The Pursuit of Intelligence Defectors from the Soviet Union to the Putin Era,
Intelligence and National Security 35/3 (2020), 403–23.
34 Doc. 164/1430, Report by Fedor Mortin, 24.6.1971, Typescript of Notes by Vasiliy
Mitrokhin, 80–1, in Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge, UK, The Papers of Vasiliy
Mitrokhin, MITN 2/24, Envelope K24: Near and Middle East. Emphasis added.
35 Christopher Andrew and Vasiliy Mitrokhin, The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB
and the Battle for the Third World (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 246–55. In 1974, the
KGB had recruited a second agent in the PFLP leadership, Ahmad Mahmud Samman
(codenamed ‘Vasit’). Like Haddad, he died in 1978.
36 The Soviet Bloc Role in International Terrorism and Revolutionary Violence, National
Intelligence Estimate 11/2-86, 21.
37 Galia Golan, The Soviet Union and the Palestine Liberation Organization: An Uneasy
Alliance (New York: Praeger, 1980), 211.
38 On the history of the Soviet–PLO relationship, see Roland Dannreuther, The Soviet
Union and the PLO (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998); Golan, The Soviet Union
and the Palestine Liberation Organization; Galia Golan, Moscow and the PLO: The
Ups and Downs of a Complex Relationship, in Moshe Ma’oz and Avraham Sela (eds.),
The PLO and Israel: From Armed Conflict to Political Solution, 1964–1994 (London: St.
Martin’s Press, 1997), 121–40.
39 ‘Current PLO Position on 242; Soviet and Arab Advice to PLO on 242, Secret
Intelligence Information Cable, Directorate of Operations, CIA, 20 August 1977, in
President Carter and the Role of Intelligence in the Camp David Accords Collection,
Document No. 527b88eb993294098d517722. See also Lutz Maeke, DDR und PLO: Die
Palästinapolitik des SED-Staates (Oldenbourg: De Gruyter, 2017), 159–61.
40 The Soviet Bloc Role in International Terrorism and Revolutionary Violence,
National Intelligence Estimate 11/2-86, 15, 19–21. As Tobias Wunschik shows in his
contribution to this book, the MfS of the GDR likewise made attempts to steer the
actions of some Palestinian terrorist groups towards the ‘political struggle’, and in May
1986 East Berlin intended to ask Arafat to use his authority so that no Palestinian
terrorist attacks would be executed.
 1. Introduction 17

41 See the description in Isabella Ginor’s and Gideon Remez’ article in this book, based
on documents in The Papers of Vasiliy Mitrokhin at Churchill Archives Centre.
42 Jeffrey M. Bale, Terrorists as State ‘Proxies’: Separating Fact from Fiction, in Michael
A. Innes (ed.), Making Sense of Proxy Wars: States, Surrogates & the Use of Force
(Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2012), 18.
43 Thomas Riegler, ‘Es muss ein gegenseitiges Geben und Nehmen sein‘: Warschauer-
Pakt-Staaten und Terrorismusbekämpfung am Beispiel der DDR, in Johannes Hürter
(ed.), Terrorismusbekämpfung in Westeuropa: Demokratie und Sicherheit in den 1970er
und 1980er Jahren (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2015), 291.
44 Report of the Work of the KGB in 1981, KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov to General
Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, 10 May 1982; and Report of the Work of the KGB in 1982,
KGB Chairman Victor Chebrikov to General Secretary Yuri Andropov, 15 March
1983, in Dmitrii Antonovich Volkogonov Papers, National Security Archive, George
Washington University, Washington, DC.
45 Matthias Bengtson-Krallert, Die DDR und der internationale Terrorismus (Marburg:
Tectum Verlag, 2017), 262–70; The Abu Nidal Terror Network, Report, U.S.
Department of State, July 1987, 8. For access to this document contact the author, who
keeps a copy in his private archive.
46 On the relationship between the GDR and ANO, see the article by Tobias
Wunschik in this book as well as Maeke, DDR und PLO, 329–496. On the relations
between the MfS and the Carlos group, see Riegler, Warschauer-Pakt-Staaten und
Terrorismusbekämpfung; John Follain, Jackal: The Complete Story of the Legendary
Terrorist, Carlos the Jackal (New York: Arcade, 1998), 117–94; Oliver Schröm, Im
Schatten des Schakals: Carlos und die Wegbereiter des internationalen Terrorismus
(Berlin: Links, 2002).
47 Tobias Wunschik, Baader-Meinhofs Kinder: Die zweite Generation der RAF (Opladen:
Westdeutscher Verlag, 1997), 389–403.
48 See the article by Jordan Baev in this book. See further, Patrick Seale, Abu Nidal: A
Gun for Hire (New York: Random House, 1992), 204, 279; The Soviet Bloc Role in
International Terrorism and Revolutionary Violence, National Intelligence Estimate
11/2-86.
49 On the relations between the Romanian Securitate and the Carlos group, see Liviu
Tofan, Sacalul Securitatii: Teroristul Carlos in solda spionajului romanesc (Bucharest:
Polirom, 2013).
50 See European Review, Supplement, EUR ER 85-015C, Directorate of Intelligence,
CIA, 3 July 1985, 3–5, in CREST, CIA General Records, 85T01184R, Box 3, Folder
122, Document No. 1–8; Romania: Ceausescu Adopts a Harder Public Line Against
International Terrorism, GIM87-20012, CIA, 23 March 1987, in CREST, CIA
General Records, 90T00114R, Box 4, Folder 420, Document No. 1–8; [Bericht der]
Abteilung XXII zur palästinensischen Organisation ‘Abu Nidal’, 25 April 1984, in Der
Bundesbeauftragte für die Stasi-Unterlagen, Berlin, Germany (henceforth BStU),
Hauptabteilung [henceforth HA] XXII 31, Vol. 2, 224–6; Seale, Abu Nidal, 279.
51 Wunschik, Baader-Meinhofs Kinder, 389–403; Tobias Wunschik, Baader-Meinhof
international? Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 40–1 (2007), 23–9; Bengtson-Krallert,
Die DDR und der internationale Terrorismus, 176–95; Christopher Daase, Die RAF
und der internationale Terrorismus: Zur transnationalen Kooperation klandestiner
Organisationen, in Wolfgang Kraushaar (ed.), Die RAF und der linke Terrorismus, Vol.
2 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2006), 905–31 (especially p. 925); Martin Jander,
Differenzen im antiimperialistischen Kampf: Zu den Verbindungen des Ministeriums
18 Terrorism in the Cold War

für Staatssicherheit mit der RAF und dem bundesdeutschen Linksterrorismus, in

Kraushaar (ed.), RAF und der linke Terrorismus, Vol. 1, 696–713; Michael Müller and
Andreas Kanonenberg, Die RAF-Stasi-Connection (Berlin: Rowohlt, 1992), especially
141–3.
52 Wunschik, Baader-Meinhofs Kinder, 402.
53 Mattia Toaldo, Origins of the US War on Terror: Lebanon, Libya and American
Intervention in the Middle East (London: Routledge, 2013), 130.
54 Andrea Chiampan, Overlapping Conflicts: Italian Terrorisms and the Cold War,
1969–1982, Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Historians
of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR), Lexington, Kentucky, 19–21 June 2014.
Likewise, the relations of the Red Brigades with other terrorist groups were not highly
developed. On the linkage between the (leftist) international terrorist organizations
during the 1970s/1980s, see, for example, various articles in Kraushaar (ed.), RAF und
der linke Terrorismus.
55 See the article by Pavel Zácek in this book. On the CSSR and Carlos see, further,
Daniela Richterova, The Anxious Host: Czechoslovakia and Carlos the Jackal
1978–1986, The International History Review 40/1 (2018), 108–32.
56 See the article by Gordan Akrap in this book.
57 Yugoslavia: PLO Ties and Terrorism, EURM86-200226, CIA, 3 March 1986, 5, in
CREST, CIA General Records, 86T01017R, Box 4, Folder 350, Document No. 1–8.
58 The Second Directorate of the General Staff of the Polish Army.
59 For those two specific agreements, see the articles by Przemyslaw Gasztold and Tobias
Wunschik in this book.
60 In Daniel Byman’s taxonomy of motivations, these instances of support/direction
would be classified as ‘military or operational aid’ within the category ‘domestic
politics’. As Byman explains: ‘Just as states can help a terrorist group become more
lethal, terrorists at times can make states stronger and more deadly. Terrorists,
particularly if they are affiliated with a broader insurgency, can become an adjunct
of a regime’s military power and reach, fighting as soldiers in a civil war or [as in the
Eastern European case described here] striking at dissidents wherever they may be
found.’ See Byman, Deadly Connections, 49.
61 See, in great detail, Tofan, Sacalul Securitatii.
62 Analyse der IM-Arbeit Abteilung XXII/8 in den Kategorien IMB/IMS, 22 February
1989, in BStU, HA XXII 521.
63 Andrew and Mitrokhin, The World Was Going Our Way, 255.
64 See the articles by Przemyslaw Gasztold, Tobias Wunschik, Balázs Orbán-
Schwarzkopf and Jordan Baev in this book.
65 The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance was an international economic
organization that existed from 1949 to 1991 under the leadership of the Soviet Union.
Its members were the countries of the Soviet bloc (as well as Cuba, Vietnam and
Mongolia).
66 Przemyslaw Gasztold, Zabojcze Uktady: Sluzby PRL i Miedzynarodowy Terroryzm
(Warsaw: PWN, 2017).
67 It is interesting to note that the CIA used some of the same ‘terrorist arms brokers’
as part of the Iran–Contra operations. For example, the US foreign intelligence
service paid the al-Kassar organization, at the same time that the latter was involved
in the hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro, for weapons deliveries to Iran
and the Nicaraguan Contras. See Final Report of the Independent Counsel for
Iran/Contra Matters, Vol. 1: Investigations and Prosecutions, Lawrence E. Walsh,
 1. Introduction 19

Independent Counsel, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia
Circuit, Washington, DC, 4 August 1993, Chapter 8, 159–72. Published online by
the Federation of American Scientists, http://fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/ (accessed 1
December 2017). The al-Kassar organization also acted as an intermediary for Polish
military intelligence to sell Polish arms to the Middle East.
68 See the article by Przemyslaw Gasztold in this book.
69 The Abu Nidal Terror Network, Report, U.S. Department of State, July 1987, 8. For
access to this document contact the author, who keeps a copy in his private archive.
70 Terrorism Review, May 1986, Directorate of Intelligence, CIA, 33, in CREST, CIA
General Records, 87T00685R, Box 2, Folder 35, Document No. 3–7; Bengtson-
Krallert, Die DDR und der internationale Terrorismus, 107–51. For socialist Eastern
Europe, Arab countries were particularly important as export markets, not only for
arms but also for, for example, machinery and chemicals as well as engineering and
construction projects.
71 For a discussion, see Bengtson-Krallert, Die DDR und der internationale Terrorismus,
107–51; Maeke, DDR und PLO, 30–116.
72 See the article by Gordan Akrap in this book, as well as Yugoslavia: PLO Ties and
Terrorism, 4.
73 See the article by Gordan Akrap in this book.
74 That ‘terrorism’ as such was directed against the West and democracy, and that the
dictatorships in East Europe were, accordingly, free of terrorist violence, was, in
fact, a consistent postulation within terrorism studies during the last decade of the
Cold War. During that time, terrorism was conceptualized in the West as a form of
‘low-intensity warfare against the West’ (Robert Kupperman during a hearing in the
House of Representatives in 1983). See Hänni, Terrorismus als Konstrukt, 301–5. The
assumption remained popular after the Cold War. As late as 2015, one could read in
a peer-reviewed journal that ‘the [terrorist] attacks touched solely Western countries’.
(Aviva Guttmann, Une coalition antiterroriste sous l’égide d’un pays neutre: La
réponse suisse au terrorism palestinien, 1969–1970, Relations internationales 3 [2015],
96).
75 Mate Nikola Tokić, Landscapes of Conflict: Unity and Disunity in post-Second World
War Croatian Émigré Separatism, European Review of History 16/5 (2009), 739–53.
76 See the articles by Balázs Orbán-Schwarzkopf and Ryszard M. Machnikowski in this
book.
77 For an overview of the counterterrorism apparatuses of the Eastern bloc countries in
the 1980s, see Pavel Zácek, Kontrarozvedny protiteroristicky aparát vychodního bloku
v osmdesátych letech dvacátého století, Sborník: Archive bezpecnostních slozek 15
(2017), 239–68.
20
 CChapter 2

THE KGB’S ABDUCTION PROGRAMME AND THE PFLP

ON THE CUSP BETWEEN INTELLIGENCE AND TERRORISM

Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez

Our interest in what is shaping up as the Soviet Union’s formally articulated

programme, or at least its standard practice, of abducting foreign nationals for
intelligence purposes arose in a context that would hardly qualify under the
usual concepts of terrorism. This occurred while we were studying the numerous
accounts of military veterans and other Soviet participants in the Soviet Union’s
massive, direct intervention in the Egyptian–Israeli conflict between 1967 and
1973.1 This literature flourished in an interlude of relatively free expression that
lasted about fifteen years, between the Soviet regime’s terminal tailspin and the
gradual return of authoritarianism under Vladimir Putin.
At the height of freewheeling disclosures, in 1998, a conference in Moscow
brought together Soviet and Egyptian veterans for ‘a handshake after a quarter
century’, marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. Most of
the presentations, however, dealt with the previous, joint preparation for Egypt’s
offensive across the Suez Canal in October 1973. In particular, they reminisced
about the 1969–70 War of Attrition, when the Soviet intervention peaked. It
then included some 20,000 servicemen at a time, most of them in an entire air
defence division. Along with Soviet MiG-21 fighter squadrons, the Soviet-manned
surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) vied successfully with the Israel Air Force (IAF)
for superiority over the canal in what was then the hottest front of the Cold War.
One of the speakers at the conference was Col. Valery Yaremenko, a Middle
East specialist at the Military History Institute of the Russian Federation’s Ministry
of Defense.2 He described the Soviet missile-men’s climactic engagement, on 18
July 1970, with Israel’s US-supplied F-4 Phantom jets and their state-of-the-art
American electronic warfare (EW) systems. Newly developed EW pods, which
had been installed by U.S. Air Force experts only a few days earlier, failed in their
first trial to prevent the shoot-down of the lead Israeli Phantom in an attack on a
SAM-3 battery west of the canal. As Yaremenko told the conference, ‘the plane,
which fell into deep sand, remained intact – which immediately drew the attention
of the Soviet experts. In short order, the plane and pilot were sent to Moscow’ –
where the pilot’s trace vanishes.3
22 Terrorism in the Cold War

This revelation, a shocking one in Israeli terms, drew our immediate attention
when, in 2000, we obtained a copy of the conference proceedings (which were
published with a print run of only 200). The airman in question, Maj. Shmu’el
Hetz (promoted ‘posthumously’ to Lieutenant-Colonel), was no ordinary pilot. An
outstanding ace, he led the first group of Israelis who were trained in the United
States to fly the F-4 and took command of the IAF’s first Phantom squadron. He
was therefore privy to every detail of the vaunted plane’s specifications, systems
and operational doctrine, as well as other top-secret data, presumably including
nuclear weapons that Israel was by then widely suspected to possess. Our inquiry
into the supposed recovery of Hetz’s remains and his official burial in 1974
established that they were highly doubtful, though well intentioned at the time,
to provide his family with closure. In brief, Israel had no definitive evidence that
could refute Yaremenko’s claim.4
In a series of interviews that we conducted with the Russian military historian,
he stood by his findings, which he said were based on ‘our sources’ as well as two
eyewitness testimonies. Voicing sentiments that were widespread in the early post-
Soviet years, Yaremenko said he was troubled by the case – preoccupied as he was
with the thought that Hetz might still be alive in Russia ‘and his children might be
going to school with mine’. He had made the case public at the veterans’ conference
in order to see if anyone would deny it. For three years no one did, and by the time
we spoke with him, a corrected and expanded account had been included in an
official publication of the Military History Institute. This book’s editorial board
included Gen. Aleksey Smirnov, the commander of the Soviet SAM division in
Egypt in 1970–1, as well as such long-time Middle Eastern hands as President
Boris Yeltsin’s foreign intelligence chief, foreign minister and prime minister
(successively), Evgeny Primakov – who had been a KGB operative in the region
under the guise of a journalist.5
Our Hetz dossier is still open; while the evidence we gathered in addition to
Yaremenko’s is highly suggestive, we cannot yet conclusively certify the veracity of
his version’s specifics. But for the purposes of the present chapter, what matters is
that in the 1990s, all the authorities we just listed treated this account as entirely
plausible – not exceptional enough to demand explanation. That is, they took for
granted that the Soviet Union was, in 1970, prepared to commit an egregious war
crime in order to obtain a human asset for its intelligence needs.6
The Israeli military was reluctant – to say the least – to reopen the Hetz case:
his name appears on a gravestone in a cemetery near Tel Aviv, and he is officially
listed as killed in action. But the US military took a strong interest in our inquiry.
The head of the Russian Military History Institute who had signed off on both
books that mentioned Hetz, Maj.-Gen. Vladimir Zolotarev, was also the Russian
co-chairman of the Joint Commission on Prisoners of War (POWs) and Missing in
Action from the Cold War period (USRJC), which had been set up with the United
States in 1992. In a decade of meetings, the Russians had not confirmed so much as
one of the multiple testimonies compiled by the Americans about sightings of US
servicemen, especially airmen captured in Korea and Vietnam, in Soviet prison
 2. The KGB’s Abduction Programme and the PFLP 23

camps and other facilities.7 Now, here was an unprecedented, unsolicited official
Russian statement that a POW from a regional arena of the Cold War had been
transferred secretly to the Soviet Union.
In both the Military History Institute and the USRJC, Zolotarev had succeeded
the eminent historian Col.-Gen. Dmitry Volkogonov. Up to the latter’s death
in 1995, he had reported finding no trace of American Cold War POWs in the
Soviet Union. However, in a letter to Yeltsin summing up his work in the Joint
Commission, Volkogonov asserted that ‘we are not sure whether there were any
individual cases in which aviation specialists were deported’. In his posthumously
published memoirs, he added: ‘I am not sure we have found out everything. I
know that not a few documents were destroyed.’ Most significantly, he revealed a
KGB directive that was issued not long before Hetz’s disappearance:

One sensational document was preserved, and a copy is in my possession. Its

essence: in the late 1960s, the KGB – the First Directorate for foreign intelligence –
was tasked ‘to bring informed Americans to the USSR for intelligence purposes’.
When I discovered this sensational paper in the ‘special file’, I immediately went
to E.M. Primakov (head of foreign intelligence). He called in his men. They
brought a copy of this plan, which features the signature of, I believe, [then-KGB
chief Vladimir] Semichastny […] For a long time the search went on for traces
of this directive’s implementation. As I expected, none were found. I was told:
the directive was not implemented. What actually happened? The regime then
was such that the wildest versions can be assumed. The answer to this question
remained a secret, which I never managed to penetrate.8

Volkogonov’s claim, too, was denied by Russian officialdom. At a meeting of the

USRJC in 2001, the Americans confronted Zolotarev with his own publication on
the Hetz case; he denied it, attributed the publication to an error on Israel’s part –
and was then dismissed.
However, this KGB policy in respect of ‘informed Americans’ is confirmed by
newly released details of another Middle Eastern case. A few weeks before the
Hetz affair, KGB chairman Yury Andropov sought and obtained General Secretary
Leonid Brezhnev’s approval for a special operation. The Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) would be deputized to abduct the CIA’s deputy
station chief in Beirut, Lebanon, and hand him over for transfer to the Soviet
Union.9

Are targeted intelligence abductions terrorism?

Abductions in general, and those done for intelligence purposes in particular,

illustrate the problematics involved in defining terrorism and terrorist acts. They
straddle the fuzzy borderline between even the broadest definition of terrorism
and other genres of violence, criminal or political.
24 Terrorism in the Cold War

Difficulties of definition are intensified by blurring the distinction between

‘terror’ (intimidation by a regime as an instrument of repression, by means of
mass violence as in Robespierre’s ‘Reign of Terror’ or Stalin’s ‘Great Terror’), and
‘terrorism’ (use of violence by resistance or revolutionary groups to further the
overthrow of a regime), a strategy perfected if not invented by revolutionaries
in imperial Russia.10 The two terms are used interchangeably in present-day
scholarship almost as much as in political parlance and the media. But they are
substantively different both ideologically and practically, and their conflation in
such phrases as ‘the global war on terror’ hardly helps to elucidate the issue.
Neither does the frequent juxtaposition of ‘terrorists’ as against ‘freedom
fighters’ as mutually exclusive; since one term refers to the means and the other to
the ends, an individual or group can be both freedom fighter and terrorist, either
of the two or none. Indeed, in British-mandatory Palestine, the ‘Fighters for the
Freedom of Israel’ (‘Lehi’ or ‘Stern Gang’) not only practised terrorism – including
abductions and assassinations – to combat ‘foreign occupation’ but also proudly
declared so. They only resented still being called so when they believed the scope
of their operations had outgrown this definition.11 Today, while Israel denounces
and combats terrorism, the country’s cities have streets named after Lehi and
several of the group’s heroes; one of its leaders, Yitzhak Shamir, ultimately served
as Israel’s prime minister.
In the 1940s, Lehi was infiltrated by Soviet agents and openly aligned itself with
the Soviet Union. However, once the Bolshevik revolution had established itself as
a state, it necessarily had to avoid any overt approval of terrorism: it now could be,
and in fact was, resisted by domestic groups using the same tactics. Particularly in
the period discussed here, as the Soviet Union progressed towards détente with the
United States, which brought Moscow considerable benefits, this dictated limiting
Soviet activity abroad to ‘clandestine methods of assisting terrorist activities’.12
Abductions in the sense discussed here cannot display the indiscriminate
violence perpetrated on individual victims that is usually associated with terrorism,
even if the targeted locale is deliberately selected. In this respect, these abductions
differ from hostage-taking, which can be classified as terrorism when it is directed
at achieving such goals as prisoner release or political concession rather than mere
ransom (though that, too, as well as robbery or extortion, can qualify if earmarked
for financing terrorist activity).
Another exceptional characteristic of intelligence-motivated abductions
among terrorist activities is their inherently furtive nature; neither side is likely
to publicize the incident. The effect on public opinion, morale and ideological
recruitment, which is a central rationale for terrorism in general, is thus absent.
Furthermore, the necessary secrecy usually dictates that the abductee cannot be
released or repatriated, but must be eliminated, ‘flipped’ or held indefinitely.
The categorization of an abduction as a terrorist act thus boils down to the
identity of the perpetrators and the overall classification of their group or
movement, rather than the nature of the specific act. More easily than bombings
or hijackings, abductions performed by state agencies can be accorded legality
by regulating or even legislating provisions and terms such as rendition, covert
 2. The KGB’s Abduction Programme and the PFLP 25

operations or anti-terrorist warfare – as distinct from legitimacy, which can be

conferred by a positive description of the cause to be served. Even more starkly
than other types of violence, then, abductions are termed terrorist acts if and when
the other side commits them.
While the unreported deportation of POWs as described in the Hetz case
was a war crime par excellence, few would call it terrorism – if only because it
was committed by a state agency. What now takes the discussion into the realm
of ‘states and terrorism’ is that an abduction was outsourced to an organization
universally considered, and indeed self-declared, as terrorist.

The gradual unveiling of the KGB–PFLP relationship

The documents that provided the base for much of the subsequent writing about
the KGB–PFLP symbiosis first surfaced shortly after the abortive ‘putsch’ attempt
against Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991, his eclipse by Yeltsin
and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Previously, in Western scholarship
both contemporary and retrospective, it was widely held that despite occasional
confluence of interests, the Soviet Union sought to restrain Palestinian groups
from launching terrorist attacks outside Israel or against civilians. Representatively,
one author claimed: ‘Palestinian terrorism was generally – though not always –
perceived by the Soviets as counterproductive.’13 Public, mutual criticism between
the Soviets and even avowedly Marxist Palestinian groups such as the PFLP was
taken to represent genuine mutual mistrust and suspicion.14
The anti-Soviet backlash that followed the 1991 watershed in Russia was
typified by Yaremenko’s specific disclosure in respect of the military, just as it was
by Volkogonov’s in respect of the KGB. As part of Yeltsin’s campaign to outlaw the
Communist Party, a commission was formed to officially investigate the KGB’s
involvement in the attempted coup. The result was to delegitimize the agency
and ultimately to dissolve it, among other means by publicizing its previous
involvement in international terrorism and other pernicious activities.
A commission member, the prominent journalist Evgenia Albats recorded
in a 1993 book how she was given access to some KGB files and personnel – a
glimpse that would never be repeated. She reported being allowed only to take
notes but not to remove or photocopy files, and consequently her book quotes
the documents rather than reproduce them.15 But photocopies of the same papers
circulated widely in Moscow during the spring and summer of 1992. At least one
was published in facsimile by Moskovsky Novosti, and brought to the attention of
the English-speaking world by the CIA’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service
(FBIS).16 This document and several others were among the sheaf of papers –
obviously photocopied many times over – that former dissidents, who had become
Yeltsin staffers or supporters, presented to us while we were on assignment in
Moscow on the first anniversary of the putsch, and were published in Israel by
Isabella Ginor.17 By January 1999 several such documents were posted online in
the Bukovsky archive.18
26 Terrorism in the Cold War

Although these documents were dated 1974 and later – that is, after the period
discussed here – they did include a reference by Andropov to collaboration with
the PFLP’s co-founder and foreign operations chief, Wadie Haddad, going back
to 1968.19 Specifically, Haddad was entrusted with ‘operations against US and
Israeli personnel […] in order to obtain reliable information’, as Andropov wrote
to Brezhnev in 1974.20 This was at least two years earlier than previously estimated
in Western studies, which continued to hold that the KGB ‘kept its eye’ on the
avowedly Marxist PFLP only after the organization, and Haddad in particular,
proved their mettle in a series of attacks during 1968–70. Pierre Marion, former
head of the French Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE), even
called Haddad the real inventor of modern terrorism; rather than any Soviet or
other mentor, it was ‘he who refined tactics and techniques’.21
So it was the early date of Haddad’s recruitment, as also the Soviets’ direct
initiation and supervision of at least part of his operations, which were the main
innovation when, a decade after the 1992 defection to Britain of KGB archivist
Vasiliy Mitrokhin, his trove of documents was summarized by Christopher Andrew
in two books.22 Mitrokhin's ‘archive’ actually consisted of handwritten notes that
he had made over decades (especially from 1972 until his retirement in 1985)
from documents that passed through his hands. He stashed these notes in empty
milk cans buried at his dacha in anticipation of an opportunity to defect, which
occurred only in 1992. The notes vary in detail from brief summaries to verbatim
transcripts of full documents. They are thus neither systematic nor exhaustive,
but the reliability and authenticity of what they do contain were recognized by
the foremost authorities even at the time of Andrew's publication.23 The release
in 2014 of Mitrokhin's full notes, as discussed later, enabled further scrutiny –
as in our study for this chapter – which further buttressed their veracity. One
example is the aforementioned documents about the KGB–PFLP link, which we
obtained in Moscow and published after Mitrokhin's defection but before his
archive was published: they are among the papers that he copied in full, and his
version matches the photocopied originals. They definitively identified Haddad
(codenamed ‘Nationalist’) as a full-fledged, ‘reliable’ KGB agent. But the previous
concept of an arm’s-length relationship was difficult to abandon. A specialized
handbook written in 2003 (twenty-five years after Haddad’s death, who, as the
handbook omits to mention, was under medical care in East Germany during
the last days of his life24) describes him only as the organization’s ‘operational
planner’ No reference was made to his KGB affiliation – though this had by then
been common knowledge for a decade. The PFLP’s Marxist–Leninist ideology is
highlighted, but the Soviet Union is mentioned in the organization’s history only
to say that ‘the decline of the Soviet Union […] caused the PFLP to alter some of
its ideological points’ – with nothing said of previous Soviet material support or
operational complicity, let alone direct sponsorship.25
As late as 2012, attempts were made to harmonize old assumptions with
emerging evidence by suggesting that ‘the Soviets seem to have pursued a two-
track strategy’. Even while criticizing the earlier approach, it was still held that
‘it would be absurd to characterize […] even entire radical factions within the
 2. The KGB’s Abduction Programme and the PFLP 27

PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] as little more than the terrorist agents,
surrogates or proxies of the KGB’.26 The numerous examples provided, among
others, by Mitrokhin demonstrate, however, that Soviet strategy was two-faced
rather than two-tracked, as Richard Pipes pointed out as early as 1979: ‘The Soviet
Union, while using terror abroad, nevertheless prefers not to identify itself with
terror openly.’27
Andrews’s abridged (and occasionally misleading) version could be fleshed out
only in mid-2014, when the Churchill Archive Centre at Cambridge University
opened Mitrokhin’s complete notes for study by researchers.28 One of the instances
more fully exposed exemplified the Soviets’ abduction programme as described by
Volkogonov – as well as the role of Haddad and the PFLP precisely as KGB proxies.
This case was the plot in 1970–1 to capture the CIA’s deputy station chief in Beirut
and deliver him to the Soviets. The newly expanded detail – as well as other
evidence that has emerged in the fifteen years since the appearance of Andrew’s
books – casts new light on several significant points, reveals several errors and
calls for some reassessment of the conceptual context.

Retaliation – or excuse for KGB-initiated action against the CIA?

For example, Andropov’s letter of 21 May 1970 to Brezhnev proposing the abduction
presents it as retaliation for similar acts by the CIA against Soviet personnel. By
implication, the operation would help to restore deterrence from repeating such
‘brazen’ provocations, which had been enabled by ‘lack of appropriate measures
on our part’. Andrew attributed this rationale to ‘conspiracy theorists in the Centre
[who] remained convinced that the CIA was out to abduct KGB officers, as well as
to induce them “to commit treason” (in other words, to defect)’. Whether or not
‘Andropov’s mistaken conviction […] derived not from any real CIA program but
from his own addiction to conspiracy theory’, as Andrew confidently asserted, is
beside the point. At least in respect of some defections, it would have been entirely
reasonable to suspect CIA instigation.29
The three examples of ‘CIA provocation’ that Andropov listed for Brezhnev
ranged back over four years and included only one actual ‘disappearance without
trace’, as well as two alleged attempts to abduct Soviet operatives. If that was all his
evidence, it was hardly enough to prove a pattern. It was, more likely, by way of
perfunctory compliance with a standard Soviet procedure: even in internal, secret
documents, proposals to initiate actions that would violate treaty commitments or
international law had to be justified as necessary response to similar provocations,
real or fictitious, by the adversary.30 Regardless of the supposed provocation, the
actual purpose of the proposed abduction was stated explicitly (but was omitted
by Andrew) as ‘possibly obtaining reliable information on US plans and concrete
measures in the Middle East’.
This shifts the emphasis of the abduction affair away from Soviet support for
terrorist groups that were ideologically aligned with the Soviet Union or promoting
causes generally congruent with Soviet interests (as it was categorized by Albats,
28 Terrorism in the Cold War

Andrew and others). Instead, it bespeaks subcontracting of specific missions

directly beneficial to Soviet intelligence. The two are not unconnected – in the case
of Haddad and the PFLP, both elements played a part – but they are nonetheless
distinct, not least in respect of their very classification as terrorist.
This distinction is underlined by several details that the full Mitrokhin archive
has now added, after Andrew had omitted them. He did list some of the particulars
that the KGB had collected about its target, either in advance or in ten days of
intensive surveillance (18–28 March 1970), down to the make and colour of his
car. But Andrew withheld the target’s name and other identity details, as well as the
KGB’s description of his activities.
Mitrokhin’s full notes name the putative abductee as ‘Sevier, L.V.’, born 1918 in
Denver, Colorado. This identifies him positively as the Lewis V. Sevier who is listed
in successive editions of the US Foreign Service’s Biographic Register.31 While it
gives his precise birth date, 14 March 1918, and his native state, the register does
not mention his native city – which indicates that the KGB did not merely copy
this unclassified handbook.
Elsewhere, Mitrokhin’s file describes an ‘operation Rubin (ruby)’, which
involved bugging the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, or Military Intelligence
Section 6, MI6) station in the British Embassy at Beirut. The operation began in
1966; in June of that year, according to the register, Sevier was posted as a ‘political
officer’ at the US Embassy there. By 1967, the information garnered by ‘Rubin’
included the identities of six CIA officers. Among them was the ‘acting’ station
chief – presumably the chief ’s top deputy, who stood in for him in his absence
– and the data about him ‘was utilized for a recruitment effort’ aimed at this
deputy.32 So, assuming this was Sevier, the Soviets may have resorted to abduction
after failing to recruit him.

The intended victim

Sevier was quite an old-timer for a field officer. He had just marked his fifty-second
birthday when the KGB began shadowing him. After military service ‘overseas’ in
the Second World War, apparently as a counterintelligence officer with the 82nd
Airborne Division from 1942 to 1945, he had a brief stint of ‘private experience’
as a salesman before entering government service.33 Between 1947 and 1959 he is
listed both as a ‘ргоgram analysis officer’ at the Department of the Army and as
chief of the economic treaties branch of the State Department’s Office of Economic
Defense and Trade Policy.
The Biographic Register also listed Sevier as married – a detail that the KGB
either did not discover or, bizarrely, considered to be irrelevant to the possibility of
offering him ‘asylum in a Socialist country’, which will be discussed later. Sevier had
served in the Muslim world continuously at least since 1959 (in Cairo as ‘assistant
program officer’ and ‘operations officer’, in Karachi as ‘program analyst’).34 If his
assignments were considered high-risk, or his wife Doris nee Wrigley pursued
her own career in Washington, she might have remained stateside even though
 2. The KGB’s Abduction Programme and the PFLP 29

this would be conspicuously unusual for his diplomatic cover roles.35 This might
explain the KGB’s failure to notice her – not to mention their three children, all by
then in their twenties – and to take her into account in the operational planning. It
did note a trip that Sevier made to the States in May–June 1970, without suggesting
that it was possibly a family visit.36
What, then, was the KGB’s reason for selecting a veteran but rank-and-
file CIA operative for an abduction that required authorization as high up as
Brezhnev himself? Mitrokhin’s notes mention, without elaboration, another
codename for Sevier, besides ‘Vir’, which was used for ‘Operation Vint (screw)’,
the abduction plan. This other codename was ‘Fakir’ (possibly a throwback to his
term in Pakistan), which indicates previous KGB interest. Another passage that
was omitted from Andrew’s version may reflect at least part of the rationale for
targeting Sevier. He is described as ‘virulently anti-Soviet, pathologically hostile
to the USSR and Communist ideology. [He] heads a department operating against
Soviet institutions and missions.’ These generalizations can be discounted as
pro forma excuses akin to the purported CIA provocations. However, they are
followed by a more specific accusation: that Sevier ‘operates against Soviet citizens,
especially of Armenian extraction’.
Lebanese Armenians figured among Soviet agents in Beirut (Andrew’s survey
of the Mitrokhin archive names several, both ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’), but none of them
are recorded as defecting. Still, Sevier may have been suspected of attempting to
instigate such defection. But Andropov’s descriptions of alleged CIA abduction plots
against Soviet operatives explicitly specified the targets’ intelligence function or
their cover jobs. The general term ‘Soviet citizens of Armenian extraction’ appears,
then, to apply to emigrants rather than agents already resident abroad. According
to a State Department cable, ‘prior to … 1975 [the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil
War], practically all Armenian refugees from the Soviet Union made their way to
Lebanon (Beirut), where they were registered by VOLAGS [volunteer agencies]
for USRP [US Resettlement Program] assistance and processed for conditional
entry to USA’. 37 ‘Processing’ for the USRP routinely included security clearance,
which in this case obviously involved weeding out planted Soviet agents. Sevier’s
counterintelligence background had prepared him well for such a task. It possibly
also extended to recruiting Armenians for US services.
Andrew’s version holds that ‘Operation Vint […] ended in failure. “Vir” varied
his daily regime and Haddad’s gunmen found it impossible to implement the
original plan for his abduction’. This is prima facie a reasonable inference from the
Mitrokhin file’s actual language, but the latter does not explicitly mention a failure
nor attribute it to Haddad’s men: ‘No consistent regularities were observed in Vir’s
behavior that could enable predetermination of the operation date.’
The surveillance effort did obtain sufficient data about Sevier’s routine to enable
a rather easy abduction, such as the daily walks with his dog – a black poodle, no
Rottweiler – presumably alone, since no escort was noted. Vir’s address is given in
the full document as 168-174 Avenue Ramlet el-Baida (white sands). This was, in
1970, a new, upscale residential development noted for its modernist architecture,
on Beirut’s only sand beach.38 It was situated in a predominantly Muslim area,
30 Terrorism in the Cold War

which would soon be the scene of a celebrated raid by Israeli commandos that
killed several Palestinian leaders.39 During the Lebanese civil war, from 1975, the
neighbourhood had become a stronghold of the PFLP and its allies, the locale for
the assassination of a US ambassador with his ‘economic counsellor’ in 1976.40
Conditions for Haddad’s assignment thus appear to have been favourable and,
given the competence that he had displayed in mounting other operations, this one
should not have been excessively challenging. Mitrokhin lists several other cases
in which the PFLP successfully abducted figures whom they suspected of hostile
activity (including work for the CIA) and moved them out of Lebanon. In one case
at least, they shared the resulting information with the KGB. But the abductees
were not handed over, and these operations are not described as initiated by the
Soviets.41
The stated reason for abandoning the ‘Vint’ plan thus seems dubious – perhaps
an excuse. Haddad’s ‘three most experienced and reliable militants’ who were to
be selected for the mission were to be told that its purpose was the ‘capture of an
American diplomat-spy, [who] works intensively against the Palestinians’. They
were to be fed a ‘legend’ whereby ‘the capture’s purpose is to transfer “Vir” to
Syria and then to exchange him for Fedayeen held in Israel’. Did the PFLP men
disbelieve it? Did they get wind of the equally fictitious scenario that was purveyed
to the Soviet ‘participants on the part of the Beirut and Damascus rezidenturas
[who] will be operative staffers of Caucasian and Tatar nationality’? These were to
be told ‘the “legend” that the operation is conducted in order to extract a Soviet
“illegal” who has turned traitor, for secret transport to the USSR’.
Such an objective would have much less to do with Palestinian goals than with
anti-US action, and it can only be speculated that Haddad or his men balked at
it – but preferred to plead unfeasibility rather than outright refusal, in view of the
support and armament that their group was receiving from Moscow. This support
was just reaching a new level. Mitrokhin’s file shows that Brezhnev approved, in
June 1970, another proposal by Andropov: to supply the PFLP with five RPG-7
grenade launchers, though other weapons that Haddad requested were denied.
Andrew is evidently mistaken in stating that the RPGs were ‘followed’ (by
implication, soon) by a much larger, advanced and meticulously camouflaged arms
transfer to Haddad in the Gulf of Aden. Close examination of the evidence points
to a much later date for the latter shipment.42 The CIA, then, was not so wildly
wrong (at least in respect of the PFLP) when it reported in December 1970 that
‘there was no indication as of the fall of 1970 that the Soviets were yet supplying
any direct material support to [any of] the Palestinians’.43
But the PFLP’s presence in South Yemen, and the RPGs it was already cleared to
receive, were exploited by the Soviets a year after ‘Vint’. It was then that ‘KGB experts
gave “Nationalist” an authoritative recommendation to organize and implement’
an attack on the Israeli-chartered, 80,000-tonne tanker Coral Sea as it carried
Iranian crude oil through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait into the Red Sea en route to
the Israeli port of Eilat. After the Soviets provided the necessary intelligence about
the tanker’s itinerary and pinpointed the location for the attack, operation ‘Nasos’
(pump) took place on 13 June 1971. PFLP gunmen on a speedboat fired between
 2. The KGB’s Abduction Programme and the PFLP 31

seven and nine rockets from three RPG-7 launchers provided by the KGB. Five of
the projectiles struck the ship, causing a fire.44
However, Fedor Mortin, head of the KGB’s First Directorate (foreign intelligence)
reported drily that the Coral Sea was not sunk.45 Mortin had been charged by
Andropov with implementing both ‘Vint’ and ‘Nasos’, and as in the case of Sevier
he did not explicitly report a failure – which in any case was apparently not entirely
the fault of Haddad’s men. A recently disclosed Israeli version, indeed, confirms
that it was only a fortuitous decision by the ship’s Greek captain, shortly before
the attack, to release the oil fumes accumulated in the hold that saved the tanker
from explosion (crude oil is flammable but not volatile in its liquid state).46 But
summing up the tanker incident ten days after the event, Mortin suggested that ‘it
seems more expedient to more actively exploit “Nationalist” and his militants for
bold operations aimed only directly at Israel’.47
This agrees with our hypothesis that operating the PFLP purely as a Soviet proxy,
as in the putative abduction of ‘Vir’, proved to be problematic. The organization
was not averse to abductions per se; it did carry out several of them in 1970, and
in one case documents of interest to the KGB were passed on to the Soviet agency.
But the abductees were not handed over, the PFLP had its own motives against
them, and neither Mitrokhin nor other sources attribute the initiation of these
operations to the Soviets.

The one who got away

At any rate, the KGB’s overall trust in and cooperation with the PFLP was not
affected. Andrew evidently gathered the failure of ‘Vint’ from the report in
Mitrokhin’s file that in the following year (1971) the KGB ‘developed and elaborated
another variant’ (actually, the file details three of them) for the capture of ‘Vir’.
These, too, involved Haddad’s group, as ‘alibis were elaborated for Nationalist and
his militants’. Though no exact date is given, this was apparently in parallel with
the Coral Sea episode and other Soviet-supported PFLP operations.
Mitrokhin’s particulars about these plans are more than in ‘Vint’ about what
was in store for Sevier. Plan A was ‘to transport him […] to a predetermined and
prepared […] “isolator”’ on Syrian soil, where ‘interrogations were to take place
for 1-2 weeks according to a KGB scenario and questionnaire, about top secret
information and manpower of the CIA agentura’. Even more revealing than this
indication that the KGB had its own, autonomous detention facilities in Syria is
the directive that ‘“Vir” was to be driven to the conclusion of not returning to his
country, but rather to start proceedings for political asylum in one of the socialist
countries. If he agrees, action should proceed according to the circumstances’ – an
outcome similar to what Yaremenko envisaged for Hetz.
What was to befall Sevier if he refused the asylum offer is not specified, but
‘under another scenario’, Vir would be held and interrogated at an ‘isolator’ in the
Saida (Sidon) region, 35 kilometres south of Beirut. Vir’s fate would be decided
independently by ‘Naslednik’ (‘successor’; the holder of this codename is not
32 Terrorism in the Cold War

identified).48 And under the final variant, ‘Vir was to be transferred to the KGB in
Syria or killed’. Releasing him was, then, not envisaged in any event.
The Mitrokhin file is silent on the outcome of these plans, but it can now be
determined that they too were not realized: Sevier turned up in January 1976 when
Libération, a far-left French daily, ‘outed’ him among forty-four ‘employees’ of the
CIA’s Paris station.49 His name actually led the second of two lists. The apparent
breach – ‘more of a security than a public relations problem’ – was serious enough
to be reported to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger himself.50
As pointed out by Le Nouvel Observateur, a rival and more moderate left-wing
organ, the list in Libération was inaccurate to the point of sloppiness: it included
US Embassy staffers who had nothing to do with the CIA, and some who were no
longer in Paris at all.51 The embassy noted that ‘even though names of all embassy
personnel are listed in [the] unclassified telephone book, we figured few people
actually possessed [said] book and held to no comment’.52 Therefore, as with the
KGB’s information about Sevier in Beirut, the French newspaper’s version might
ostensibly have been gleaned partly but not wholly from open sources.
But any uncertainty whether Sevier was erroneously named by Libération in
its list of CIA operatives was resolved by his second ‘outing’ in Paris. A Polish
exile group – which considered even the CIA as ‘dangerous’ – included him in a
‘blacklist’ that it published in August 1976. He was described as the first of two
assistants to Eugen F. Burgstaller, the head of a ‘CIA Polish section’ at the US
Embassy, who ‘conducts espionage against the Polish Ex-Combatants Association
in France, the publishing house “Kultura”, the editorial office of “Narodowiec”, and
other Polish organizations in which he maintains a network of informers’.53 How
accurate the specific association of Sevier – or the entire list – with activity towards
Polish expatriates was, is hard to establish. He had no known background in Polish
language or affairs, and this was his first assignment outside the Muslim world –
but it might have been similar in nature to his Armenian specialization in Beirut.
On the other hand, Sevier’s description as a close aide to Burgstaller seems
more significant. The latter was actually chief of the entire CIA station in Paris, and
had previously headed the Beirut station concurrently with Sevier’s service there,
including the period of the KGB’s abduction plans.54 They were transferred from
Beirut to Paris simultaneously – which appears to indicate that the station chief
took his associate along with him, rather than that the CIA got wind of a specific
risk to Sevier in Beirut and extricated him. But there are some indications of the
latter possibility, including a testimony from Burgstaller himself.
Sevier’s boss was two years younger than he was, but outranked him; Burgstaller
had the advantage of two Harvard degrees, while none are listed for Sevier. A year
after he retired in 1979, Burgstaller was deemed senior enough to testify before
the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The issue under discussion was
the advisability of congressional oversight of the CIA. Burgstaller asserted his
support for such oversight in principle, but indicated that certain activities, which
by implication could not be approved by Congress, were better withheld. As an
example, he related an incident that appears to mirror Mitrokhin’s account of the
plot to capture Sevier.
 2. The KGB’s Abduction Programme and the PFLP 33

I think it is evident that in foreign policy it is often desirable not to identify to

the potential enemy what you will and will not do in certain situations. I might
offer a thinly disguised, but what is substantially a very truthful account of how
this can work.
In the years that I served as COS [chief of station] in Beirut, Lebanon, we had
an operation involving contact between one of my officers and a young KGB
officer, a rather unusual KGB officer simply because he was undisciplined, and
this, of course, is what led us to him. He drank too much. He gambled. The
relationship between my subordinate and this officer seemed to be going along
quite well, when all of a sudden the KGB officer vanished from Beirut.

Andropov, then, was not entirely paranoid in charging that ‘US intelligence is
persuading Soviet citizens to commit treason’, and he had a case in point from the
very arena where he proposed to retaliate. Burgstaller went on:

Some months later a very senior KGB officer whom I had met earlier returned
from Moscow to Beirut, invited me to lunch, and began to tell me a very strange
sort of story in which he said […] that a zealous young CIA officer might well
wish to score some successes against his organization.

Sevier may have been zealous, as Andropov described him, but at fifty-two he was
hardly young. Still, the KGB officer may not have wished to identify his suspect
and prospective target too obviously – or the ‘undisciplined’ recruitment prospect
had tried to obscure his contact.

This [Burgstaller’s interlocutor said] was all part and parcel of the world of
espionage and counterespionage, but that there were two schools of thought
within the KGB as to how they should react. One, he said, was the ‘soft, flexible
school’, to which he said he was personally a subscriber; namely, that possibly
one could toss this young man ‘a few bones’ to assist him in his career with our
agency in return for his possibly tossing them something as a compensation.
Then he went on to say […] ‘There are others, Mr. Burgstaller, whom we might
call the hard-line school, who favor other types of action, and if we […] of the
soft-line school cannot convince our superiors that our way is the way to handle
it, the hard-liners may win out’.

The CIA’s Beirut station chief was experienced enough to see through the good
cop–bad cop exercise. He evidently discerned a recurring Soviet tactic: to threaten
a measure that had already been decided upon, by presenting it as a response to
the Americans’ failure to meet an ostensibly reasonable demand.

Well, at a certain point after listening to this I said, ‘May I ask, are you threatening
executive action against this young officer? Are you threatening to take physical
action against him?’ I said, ‘Because if you are, I would like to make clear to you
34 Terrorism in the Cold War

that we have never done this, neither your service nor ours. If you were ever
once to start that, it could become a two-way street.’

So denial notwithstanding, the CIA had a euphemistic code word for assassination
(‘executive action’ is not a Soviet term), and the former station chief preferred to
keep the matter obscure:

I simply mean here the fact that the Soviets cannot exclude in this particular
instance that we might not in retaliation assassinate one of theirs. It is simply
part of that flexibility which derives from not telling your enemies what it is
you’re going to do and what it is you’re not going to do.55

So was the CIA aware of the plot to abduct Sevier or to strike at him otherwise,
and particularly of its instigation by the KGB? In January 1971, a CIA report
stated that ‘there have been numerous reports during 1970 of planned PFLP
operations, some of which have been borne out. […] In late March 1970 [that
is, shortly before Andropov formally proposed “Vint”] a member of the PFLP
Politburo said that the PFLP had plans to kidnap diplomats, especially those
of Britain and the US, in the Latin American manner’, and listed several such
examples.56 All of these, however, were intended to achieve the Palestinian
organization’s own purposes – as indicated by Mitrokhin’s aforementioned
notes.
At any rate, neither the KGB nor the PFLP ever got Lewis V. Sevier. He lived to
age eighty-six and died in Bethesda, Maryland, in September 2004. His obituary
revealed nothing of his career, only that he was survived by his wife, three children
and nine grandchildren – and that his middle initial stood for Valentine.57 The fate
of Shmu’el Hetz and other possible targets of the Soviet abduction programme
remains unknown.

Notes

1 Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez, Veterans’ Memoirs as a Source for the USSR’s
Intervention in the Arab–Israeli Conflict: The Fluctuations in Their Appearance and
Character with Political Change in Post-Soviet Russia, Slavic Military Studies 29/2
(2016), 279–97.
2 The late Col. Yaremenko had personal experience in the Middle East as an Arabic-
speaking military interpreter who witnessed, among other events, the Israeli bombing
of Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981.
3 Valery Yaremenko, Sovetsko-Egipetskoe voyennoe sotrudnichestvo nakanune i v
khode oktyabr’skoy voyny 1973 goda, in Valery Vartanov et al. (eds.), Rukopozhatie
cherez chetvert’ veka, 1973–1998: Materialy nauchno-prakticheskoy konferentsii
(Moscow: Institute of Military History, Council of Veterans of War in Egypt and
Attaché Office of Egyptian Arab Republic, 1999), 52–3.
4 Isabella Ginor, Ta’alumat ha-tayyas Hetz, Yedi’ot Ahronot (Tel Aviv), 25 April 2001, 1,
5–7. An updated English version is included in Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez, The
 2. The KGB’s Abduction Programme and the PFLP 35

Soviet–Israeli War, 1967–1973: The USSR’s Military Intervention in the Egyptian–Israeli

Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).
5 Maj.-Gen. Vladimir A. Zolotarev et al. (eds.), Rossiya (SSSR) v lokalnikh voynakh i
voyennykh konfliktakh vtoroi poloviny XX veka (Moscow: Institute of Military History,
2000).
6 Article 12 of the Third Geneva Convention ‘relative to the Treatment of Prisoners
of War’ (1949) permits the transfer of POWs between ‘coalition’ powers, if both are
parties to the convention (as Egypt and the Soviet Union were). But the subsequent
treatment of Hetz according to the Russian version violated numerous other
provisions of the convention, such as immediate notification to the prisoner’s country
(art. 69) and his right to correspond with his family (art. 70–71).
7 Defense Department Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO), The Gulag
Study: 2005 [fifth] edition. In 2001, the study had just begun and ran only to about
one-tenth the length of the latest version. Upon the latter’s publication, DPMO’s
newsletter The Torch (spring 2005) noted that ‘so far, the records of the security and
intelligence agencies that operated the camps in which foreign (non-Soviet) citizens
were held have not been made available to us […] We continue to acquire information
from various sources about the presence of American servicemen in the Soviet camps
and will update the Gulag Study to reflect new leads and the results of our inquiry. In
this way, even if the political climate does not allow us to move forward with definitive
results, we will at least be able to maintain visibility and recognition.’ However,
The Torch and all versions of The Gulag Study have since been removed from the
DPMO’s website and its page on the Library of Congress website. The fifth edition is
still accessible on the website of the National Alliance of Families for the Return of
America’s Missing Servicemen, http:​//www​.nati​onala​llian​ce.or​g/gul​ag/5g​ulag.​html
(accessed 22 August 2016).
8 Dmitry Volkogonov, Etyudy o vremeni (Moscow: Novosty, 1998): entry dated 1993,
50–1; letter to Yeltsin, 5 September 1994, 361–2.
9 Andropov to Brezhnev, 21 May 1970, marked ‘approve’ with Brezhnev’s signature,
25 May. Andropov proceeded to instruct Fedor Mortin (then deputy chief, and soon
after appointed head of the KGB First Directorate) to implement the plan. This and
subsequent quotations from the Mitrokhin archive, the Churchill Archive Centre at
Cambridge University, UK (henceforth MA), unless otherwise indicated, are from
envelope K-24, ‘Near and Middle East’, 74–83, item #365.
10 For a fuller discussion, see Anna Geifman, Thou Shalt Kill: Revolutionary Terrorism in
Russia, 1894–1917 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 3–8, 59 (note 8).
11 For example, ‘The Social Revolutionaries in Russia were definitely terrorists. Orsini,
the Italian, was definitely a terrorist. But […] their acts are not considered morally
negative. Therefore, we are not insulted if we are called this name [terrorists],
especially if it is British mouths that utter this epithet. […] Undoubtedly, four or five
years ago our operations were merely terrorist acts. But extended operations aimed at
military installations, transport networks, government centers, and so on are usually
called otherwise in global parlance.’ Terror in the View of Provincials, Hama’as (Lehi
organ), issue 25, December 1947, in Lohamei Herut Yisra’el: Ktavim, Vol. 2 (writings;
Tel Aviv: Committee to Publish Lehi Writings, 1960), 299–300. See discussion in
Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez, A Cold War Casualty in Jerusalem, 1948: The
Assassination of Witold Hulanicki, Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs 4/3 (2010), 135–56.
12 Ray S. Cline and Yonah Alexander, Terrorism: The Soviet Connection (New York:
Crane Russak, 1984), 17.
36 Terrorism in the Cold War

13 Galia Golan, The Soviet Union and the PLO (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1976),
211.
14 Bard E. O’Neill, Armed Struggle in Palestine: A Political-Military Analysis (Boulder,
CO: Westview, 1978), 196–8.
15 Yevgenia Albats, KGB: State Within a State (London: I.B. Tauris, 1995).
16 FBIS Report: Central Eurasia (Washington DC: The Service, 1992), 7.
17 Isabella Ginor, Ha-KGB tikhnen pe’ulot Hasha’iyot neged Yisrael ve-siye’a la-hazit
ha-ammamit (The KGB Planned Operations against Israel and Aided the PFLP),
Ha’aretz (Tel Aviv), 28 August 1992, 1A, 8A and 2B.
18 #911, 913, 915, http:​//www​.buko​vsky-​archi​ves.n​et/pd​fs/te​rr-wd​/terr​-wd-r​us.ht​ml
(accessed 1 January 2020).
19 Albats, KGB, 228 (‘Vadia Haddad’). His first name is variously transliterated elsewhere
as Wadi, Wadia or Wadih.
20 Ginor, Ha-KGB tikhnen pe’ulot Hasha’iyot neged Yisrael ve-siye’a la-hazit
ha-ammamit.
21 Rémy Kauffer, Communism and Terrorism, in Stéphane Courtois and Mark Kramer
(eds.), The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1999), 354–5.
22 Christopher Andrew and Vasiliy Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin
Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (New York: Basic Books, 2000); and The
World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World (New York:
Basic Books, 2005).
23 For example, Christian Ostermann and Odd Arne Westad in their introduction to
Vasiliy Mitrokhin, The KGB in Afghanistan, Cold War International History Project
Working Paper #40, 2002, 7–11, https​://ww​w.wil​sonce​nter.​org/s​ites/​defau​lt/fi​les/W​
P40-e​nglis​h.pdf​(accessed 5 January 2017).
24 PFLP website, http:​//pfl​p.ps/​engli​sh/20​14/03​/29/r​ememb​ering​-comr​ade-d​r-wad​ie-ha​
ddad-​on-th​e-36t​h-ann​ivers​ary-o​f-his​-mart​yrdom​ (accessed 22 August 2016). The
article claims that his death was ‘the result of a targeted assassination via poisoning
by the Mossad’ – apparently based on such a claim in a book by a former Mossad
operative: Aaron J. Klein, Striking Back: The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and
Israel’s Deadly Response (New York: Random House, 2005), 205.
25 Yonah Alexander, Palestinian Secular Terrorism (Ardsley, NY: Transnational
Publishers, 2003), 33–5.
26 Jeffrey M. Bale, Terrorism or State ‘Proxies’: Separating Fact from Fiction, in Michael
A. Innes (ed.), Making Sense of Proxy Wars: States, Surrogates and the Use of Force
(Dulles, VA: Potomac, 2012), unpaginated.
27 Richard Pipes, The Roots of the Involvement, in Binyamin Netanyahu (ed.),
International Terrorism: The Soviet Connection (Jerusalem: The Jonathan Institute,
1979), 62.
28 In fact, these are Russian-language typescripts made from Mitrokhin’s notes, with
his handwritten corrections. They are very loosely grouped by theme or region,
sequenced in no discernible order, and are neither indexed nor searchable – so that
definitively covering any specific subject demands combing the entire collection. Still,
there is a lot of new information to be mined.
29 In the single case Andropov cited where the alleged abduction succeeded, ‘on 9 March
1970 in Delhi, a staffer of the APN [Novosty News Agency] bureau, Bezmenov Yu[ry]
A., disappeared without trace’. Andrew states that Bezmenov was ‘exfiltrated’ by the
CIA from India to Greece, which would actually confirm Andropov’s charge (Andrew
 2. The KGB’s Abduction Programme and the PFLP 37

and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, 379). But Bezmenov himself later claimed
that he escaped, unaided, from India disguised as a hippie American student and
walked into the US Embassy in Athens without any prior contact. ‘Useless Dissident’
blog, Interview with Yuri Bezmenov, 24 November 2008, http:​//use​lessd​issid​ent.b​
logsp​ot.co​.il/2​008/1​1/int​ervie​w-wit​h-yur​i-bez​menov​.html​ (accessed 1 January 2020).
Either way, Andropov was presumably unaware of Bezmenov’s fate when the KGB
chief ’s letter was written, less than two months later.
30 A senior Soviet diplomat related the explicit prescription of this technique by Foreign
Minister Andrey Gromyko in 1961. Oleg Grinevsky, 1001 den’ Nikity Sergeyevicha
(Moscow: Vagrius, 1998), 355–7; translated and discussed in Isabella Ginor and
Gideon Remez, Foxbats over Dimona: The Soviets’ Nuclear Gamble in the Six-Day War
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 3–4.
31 The Biographic Register, Division of Publishing Services, U.S. Department of State
(Washington: Government Printing Office, 1960), 687; 1968 edition, 456.
32 1967 Memo from KGB Maj.-Gen. Tsymbal, in MA, 58–59, #299. Some ‘CIA spotters’
list Sevier as the Beirut station chief in 1969, evidently reflecting one of the periods
when he stood in for the chief: http://cia-spotters.blogspot.co.il/, posting of 17 March
2015 (accessed 1 January 2020).
33 ‘2nd Lt. Lewis V. Sevier’, listed in John Mendelsohn, The History of the Counter
Intelligence Corps (New York: Garland, 1989), 109.
34 Department of State News Letter 59–68 (1966), 71.
35 She was listed as a research analyst in the State Department’s Near Eastern Branch in
1947, when she authored an article on the development of the Arab League for the
Department’s ‘Bulletin’, 1009; Biographic Register, 1947, 23.
36 A list of foreign service officers provided to the US Senate by President Richard Nixon
in 1972 gives Sevier’s domicile as Maryland. Journal of the Executive Proceedings of
the Senate of the United States, vol. 188, 1972, 574. The dates indicate that the report
was written after June. Mitrokhin mentions that ‘on 12 June 1970 an attempt was
made on Nationalist’s life in Beirut’, which may help to explain the disruption of ‘Vint’
along with the other hypothesis detailed later. Andrew and Vasiliy Mitrokhin (World,
247), rather than giving Mitrokhin’s version of the date for this incident, oddly dates
it to 11 July, based on a previous book: John Follain, The Jackal (London: Weidenfeld
and Nicholson, 1998), 24.
37 In 1974, the number of these refugees ‘peaked at about 4,000’ (of whom only 454 were
registered for relocation to America) and their total in Lebanon reached 12,000. The
flow was then ‘cut off ’ and channelled directly to the United States, due among other
reasons to the refugees being ‘subject to pressure by Armenian Communist Party
Organization within Lebanon’. Cables from US Mission, United Nations Geneva,
to Department of State, 4 June 1975, https​://se​arch.​wikil​eaks.​org/p​lusd/​cable​s/197​
5GENE​VA041​71_b.​html;​and from US Embassy, Moscow, to Department of State, 16
February 1977, https​://se​arch.​wikil​eaks.​org/p​lusd/​cable​s/197​7MOSC​OW022​32_c.​
html (both accessed 1 January 2020).
38 Brooke Anderson, Karol Schayer’s Mod, Mod World: Restoring a Beirut Apartment
Building to Its Midcentury Glory, The Wall Street Journal, 20 January 2014.
39 Zvi Lavi, Bevadai ha-Yisre’elim Matqifim (The Israelis Must Be Attacking), Ma’ariv
(Tel Aviv), 13 April 1973, 14.
40 Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2001), 83.
41 Andrew and Mitrokhin, World, 248; MA, 12, #59.
38 Terrorism in the Cold War

42 Although this transfer, ‘Operation Vostok (East)’ and the rewards given to the Soviet
participants are described in great detail, no date is given. Andrew implied that it
came shortly after the initial RPG transfer, that is, later in 1970, and this was widely
quoted as fact. But the massive quantity and types of foreign-made weapons and
signal equipment appear more suitable to later stages of the Soviet–PFLP relationship.
Indeed, the list, as well as the mode of transfer at sea, are almost identical with the
second of two shipments which Mitrokhin records elsewhere as reported to Brezhnev
by Andropov on 5 and 16 May 1975 (while resembling the types that Haddad was
denied in 1970). The timing in 1975, unlike 1970–71, also conforms to the titles given
for the senior Soviet officers involved in ‘Vostok’, such as Dmitry Ustinov and Viktor
Kulikov.
43 Fedayeen – ‘Men of Sacrifice’, Intelligence Report, ESAU XLVIII, Directorate of
Intelligence, CIA, December 1970, 37, http:​//www​.foia​.cia.​gov/s​ites/​defau​lt/fi​les/d​
ocume​nt_co​nvers​ions/​14/es​au-47​.pdf (accessed 1 January 2020).
44 It is unclear whether these were the same RPGs that were supplied a year before. If
not, as Mitrokhin’s language appears to indicate, a new batch may have been necessary
with rockets of a type specifically designed to cause the type of explosion described
later.
45 Associated Press report, quoted from the Utica (NY) Daily Press, 18 June 1981.
46 Former Mossad operative Gad Shimron, interviewed on Israel Radio, 28 March 2015,
and later elaborated personally to the authors of this article. The Israeli authorities
downplayed the incident, and it was only in 1977 that the captain, Markos Moschos,
received an Israeli decoration for his ‘courage and professionalism’ – the first and only
non-Israeli national to be so honoured. See Itur ha-mofet sar ha-tahburah (decoration
of valour from the Minister of Transportation), Davar (Tel Aviv), 12 April 1977, 3.
47 Our emphasis. Andrew and Mitrokhin (World, 250), omitted the crucial word
‘only’ and thus inverted the sense of Mortin’s recommendation. Mitrokhin quotes
immediately after this sentence: ‘Under KGB influence, Haddad also expressed
willingness to transfer the focus of his operations from third countries to Israeli
territory and occupied territories.’ However, one of the documents reproduced in
the Bukovsky archive clarifies that this concurrence by Haddad was reported not by
Mortin in 1971, but by Andropov following Haddad’s visit to Moscow in January
1975. See http:​//www​.buko​vsky-​archi​ves.n​et/pd​fs/te​rr-wd​/plo7​5c.pd​f (accessed 1
January 2020).
48 An agent with the same codename is described elsewhere in Mitrokhin’s file, but the
locale and character of his activity rule out his identification with this ‘Naslednik’.
49 La CIA à Paris: Deuxieme Liste, Libération, 14 January 1976.
50 Cable from US Embassy, Paris, to State Department, 14 January 1976, https​://wi​kilea​
ks.or​g/plu​sd/ca​bles/​1976P​ARIS0​1221_​b.htm​l (accessed 1 January 2020).
51 Rene Backmann, Franz-Olivier Giesbert and Oliver Todd, Ce que Cherchent les
Agents de la CIA en France, Le Nouvel Observateur, 18 January 1976, reproduced
in Philip Agee and Louis Wolf, Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe (New York:
Dorset Press, 1987), 174–5, https://pdf.yt/d/9MwmH_nnJ4eOmL66 (accessed 22
August 2016).
52 Cable from US Embassy, Paris, to State Department, 14 January 1976.
53 Free Poland Special Report #3, 1–2, http:​//www​.foia​.cia.​gov/s​ites/​defau​lt/fi​les/d​ocume​
nt_co​nvers​ions/​17051​43/HA​NFF%2​C%20K​ONSTA​NTY%2​0%20%​20VOL​.%202​
_0016​.pdf;​ CIA English translation, http:​//www​.foia​.cia.​gov/s​ites/​defau​lt/fi​les/d​ocume​
nt_co​nvers​ions/​17051​43/HA​NFF%2​C%20K​ONSTA​NTY%2​0%20%​20VOL​.%202​
 2. The KGB’s Abduction Programme and the PFLP 39

_0017​.pdf;​CIA reports discussing the disclosure, 9 September 1976, http:​//www​.foia​

.cia.​gov/s​ites/​defau​lt/fi​les/d​ocume​nt_co​nvers​ions/​17051​43/HA​NFF%2​C%20K​ONSTA​
NTY%2​0%20%​20VOL​.%201​_0045​.pdf;​ and 4 October 1976, http:​//www​.foia​.cia.​gov/s​
ites/​defau​lt/fi​les/d​ocume​nt_co​nvers​ions/​17051​43/HA​NFF%2​C%20K​ONSTA​NTY%2​
0%20%​20VOL​.%202​_0003​.pdf (all accessed 1 January 2020).
54 From June 1966, as ‘political officer’ at the US Embassy. The Biographic Register, 1971,
54.
55 National Intelligence Act of 1980: Hearings before the Select Committee on
Intelligence, U.S. Senate, 96th Congress, 2nd Session, on S. 2284 (Washington DC:
Government Printing Office, 1980), 524–6.
56 ESAU L: The Fedayeen (Annex to ESAU XLVIII: Fedayeen – ‘Men of Sacrifice’),
Intelligence Report, Directorate of Intelligence, CIA, January 1971, 37, http:​//www​
.foia​.cia.​gov/s​ites/​defau​lt/fi​les/d​ocume​nt_co​nvers​ions/​14/es​au-49​.pdf (accessed 1
January 2020).
57 Obituary in The Washington Post, 18 September 2004.
40
 CChapter 3

SOVIET APPROACHES TO MUSLIM

EXTREMISM AND TERRORISM

Michael Fredholm

There is no doubt that during the Cold War, the intelligence services of the
Soviet Union maintained contacts with terrorist groups. For instance, the KGB1
provided nationalist and leftist terrorist groups such as the Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO), the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC) and
the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) with funds, training
and arms.2 This was hardly surprising, since these terrorist groups were political
organizations that remained more or less aligned with the ideological goals of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Ever since 1919, when Vladimir
Lenin arranged for the creation of the Comintern,3 the CPSU had, when necessary,
relied on clandestine means to keep in touch with ideologically linked political
organizations elsewhere. By maintaining relations with them, Moscow ensured
Soviet access to their leaders, some of whom in time emerged as presidents of
established or newly independent states. For reasons of practicality and deniability,
the links were often maintained by Soviet intelligence. Besides, Soviet intelligence
could use the leftists with whom links were established as sources of information.
If nothing else, such informers would be able, and willing, to report on their rivals.
Some might also have been able to provide valuable intelligence on the countries
in which they were active.
None of the aforementioned Palestinian terrorist organizations was motivated
by Muslim extremism, even though they had all emerged in Muslim countries.
Their key defining ideology, beyond leftism, was nationalism. This begs the
question of whether Soviet intelligence also maintained links with extremist
organizations motivated by Islamic ideals, such as those groups that had begun
carrying out terrorist operations already in the Cold War and, in the twenty-first
century, grew into arguably the most serious terrorist threat to the Western world
and secular society. In most cases, the Soviets did not.
On Soviet territory, it will be shown, the security organs realized already during
the civil war that followed the Russian Revolution that at times, they could use
what they termed ‘revolutionary Islam’ as a means to fight the traditional Sufi
brotherhoods, which were perceived to be the greater threat to the Soviet state.
42 Terrorism in the Cold War

However, direct support essentially ceased during the Second World War, even
though their radical Islamic ideology was retained and incorporated into the
Soviet state structures in Muslim-majority union republics. From the early 1970s,
the Soviet security organs were aware of the existence of Muslim extremism, and
of its general hostility towards the Soviet, atheist ideology. However, it was treated
as purely a domestic security matter.
From a foreign intelligence perspective, the Soviet services had little to gain from
contacts with such groups. Besides, the focus of Soviet foreign intelligence was far
more traditional, with an emphasis on foreign governments, leftist organizations
and the subversive activities of the intelligence services of other countries. For
obvious reasons, the Soviets were also more attuned to finding support among
Marxists and others of ‘progressive’ political orientation than among religious
extremists.

The domestic security approach to Muslim extremism –

Sufi Islam versus revolutionary Islam

Both in the Soviet Union and in the Western world, the real threat from Islam
to Soviet power was identified in the Sufi brotherhoods that for centuries had
dominated Islam in the Caucasus and Central Asia.4 It was the Sufi Naqshbandiyyah
order, which in the nineteenth century had led the Muslim resistance against
Russian rule in the Caucasus, under leaders such as Imam Shamil (1797–1871).5 In
Central Asia, the situation had been similar. The resistance of the Tekke Turkmen
tribe at Gök-Tepe in 1861 was led by another Naqshbandi, Kurban Murat.6 When
revolts among Muslims occurred in the Tsarist Russian Empire, the politically
powerful Sufi brotherhoods almost invariably played a leading role. The Andijon
revolt of 1898 was led by a Naqshbandi, Muhammad Ali (Madali, also known as
Dukchi Ishan).7 The early Soviet leaders had confronted the same problem during
the 1918–20 Civil War, when certain Sufi leaders had also been involved in the
Basmachi revolts in Soviet Central Asia, from 1918 onwards (including Junaid
Khan, who probably was a Naqshbandi), and the first Daghestani and then Chechen
uprisings in the Caucasus from 1924 onwards.8 Pan-Turkism had played a role as
well. During the First World War, the Russian government had noted that Turkish
agents were active in the Muslim regions of the empire.9 Then the former war
minister of Ottoman Turkey, Enver Pasha (1881–1922), had assumed a prominent
role among the Basmachi insurgents until he was killed in battle. However, the
revolt ultimately failed, and many Basmachi migrated into Afghanistan, from
where their leaders continued to threaten the Soviet power in Central Asia.10
Based on the experiences of the revolts in Soviet Central Asia and in the
Caucasus, the Soviet leaders searched for an alternative vision of Islam for their
many Muslim subjects. Their goal was the enlistment of ‘revolutionary Islam’ on
the side of the Soviet power, against the conservative Muslims who might oppose
Soviet socialist rule. When the Daghestani communists wrote the history of the
Soviet conquest of the Caucasus, they drew the conclusion that ‘a war against
 3. Soviet Approaches to Muslim Extremism and Terrorism 43

conservative Muslim insurgents must be conducted by revolutionary Muslim

units or, at the very least, with the assistance of such units’.11
Revolutionary Muslims were found among those who, for one reason or
another, were opposed to the Sufi interpretation of Islam. Most such Muslims
were influenced by the Muslim reform movement of the late nineteenth century,
which in time came to develop into the Islamic modernism now generally
known as Salafism or Wahhabism. Several such groups and preachers joined the
Bolsheviks in the revolution and the civil war. One such group was the Vaisite
sect, founded at Kazan in 1862 by Bahauddin Vaisov. The group, the membership
of which mainly consisted of artisans, seemingly combined Sufi mysticism, Salafi
puritanism, extreme nationalism and, after 1907, Marxist socialism. In 1917, the
son and successor of the sect’s founder, Inan Vaisov, accepted weapons from, and
allied the sect with, the Kazan Bolsheviks. In 1918 he was killed, fighting for the
Bolsheviks.12
Another revolutionary Muslim was Shami Domullah al-Tarablusi (‘The
Syrian cleric from Tripoli’, born around 1867–1870), a native of Tripoli in present
Lebanon who was active in the period 1919–32 when he fought Sufism apparently
on behalf, or at least in support, of the Bolsheviks in Central Asia, motivated by
Salafi ideology.13
The belief in revolutionary Islam was also expressed in Soviet foreign policy.
When in January 1926 Ibn Saud declared himself king of Hijaz, the Soviet Union,
on 16 February 1926, was the first state to recognize him.14 Saudi rule depended
on the Wahhabi religious ideology. This was a radical interpretation of Sunni
Islam, often referred to as Salafism, which advocated a return to the practices of
the time of the Prophet Muhammad. The Saudi interpretation of Islam favoured
armed jihad as a means of spreading Saudi rule and the uncompromising Wahhabi
religious ideology. When the Soviet press reported the Soviet recognition of Saudi
Arabia, it also labelled the Wahhabi political system an ‘extraordinarily interesting
political-social programme’.15 Soviet–Saudi diplomatic relations were maintained
until 1938, when the Soviet mission in Jeddah was closed and diplomatic relations
severed.
The early Bolsheviks and Soviet leaders supported Salafi thought because the
proponents of Salafism backed the Soviet attempts to destroy traditional Caucasian
and Central Asian Sufi Islam and its holy places. The Bolsheviks regarded this as
a means to prevent Sufism from becoming a rallying point against Soviet rule. As
such, Sufism would have been dangerous due to its popular appeal, mass following
and potential for mobilization.16 After a few brief, failed attempts to eliminate
religion altogether, the Soviet rulers concluded that a key threat to state control
rested in popular Islam, which they believed almost exclusively consisted of Sufism
and depended on Sufi leaders, some of whom might set themselves up as rival
authorities to the state structures. As a result, the Soviet rulers tried to channel
the religious aspirations of the Muslims into directions acceptable to the state by
appointing and controlling a small number of state-controlled ulama (clergy).
Except for a few periods, the Soviet authorities generally sought to promote
atheism and discourage religion, not to eradicate religious faith as such. Faith was,
Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
“Yes, you must go. I can be of no service to you where the air will be filled
with spears and the canoes will be painted red with blood. I will return to
Hawaii. You will be defeated. Kukona is a brave and skilful warrior, and the
army of Kalaunui. will be rent in pieces and thrown into the sea. The
slaughter will be great, but circumstances will open a way and you will
escape.”

“And should I escape, where will I find you?” inquired Kualu.

“Among the owls in the old hut in Waipio,” replied the kaula.

“And the long knife?”

“The long knife is where I alone can find it,” answered Waahia. “Leave the
secret to me; it will be of service to us yet.”

Early next morning the army of Kalaunui set sail for Kauai, and with it, as
prisoners, the mois of Maui and Molokai and the alii-nui of Oahu. At the
same time Waahia embarked for Hawaii, taking with her the war-god of the
king. Traditions differ concerning the circumstances under which the god
was delivered to the prophetess. One asserts that she refused to hold her
peace or leave the expedition without it; another that the king, annoyed by
her ill-omened words and presence, purchased her departure with it; and a
third that it was given to her in deference to her declaration that, if taken to
Kauai, it would not return except at the head of a conquering army that
would make a tributary kingdom of Hawaii. Certain it is, however, that
Waahia returned to Hawaii from Oahu with the war-god of the king. It was
the sacred Akuapaao, or war-god of Paao, and was held in great reverence
by the priesthood. Borne over the waters by unseen forces, the canoe of
Waahia was stranded on the beach at Koholalele, on the island of Hawaii.
Not far off was the old heiau of Manini, and thither the god was conveyed,
and placed in the custody of the high-priest of the temple, with the
injunction that it was never to be removed from the inner court, or
sanctuary, unless the kingdom was in peril. Six generations after it was
taken from the heiau by the giant Maukaleoleo, and carried at the head of
the victorious army of Umi, as mentioned in the legend of “Umi, the
Peasant Prince of Hawaii.”

Five hundred canoes had been added to the fleet of Kalaunui, and the
imposing squadron seemed to stretch half across the wide channel
separating the two islands. A landing was made at Koloa, and the entire
army disembarked without opposition. The district seemed to be deserted,
and not a hostile spear was visible. And so continued the peaceful aspect
until daylight the next morning, when Kukona, supported by every
prominent chief of Kauai, suddenly precipitated upon the invaders from the
surrounding hills an army of ten thousand warriors. Nor this alone. Along
the westward coast was seen approaching a fleet of nearly a thousand war-
canoes, with the manifest design of capturing or destroying the canoes of
the Hawaiians and cutting off their retreat by sea. Hastily forming his lines
to meet the avalanche from the hills, Kalaunui despatched Kualu to the
beach with a force of three thousand warriors to protect the canoes.

The attacks by land and sea were almost simultaneous, and the battle was
one of the most stubborn and sanguinary ever fought in the group. As
predicted by Waahia, the air was filled with spears and the canoes were
painted red with blood. Standing in the water to their hips, Kualu and his
warriors met their enemies as they attempted to land, and a struggle of the
wildest description followed. Canoes were upset; men were hauled into
them and killed, and out of them and drowned, and for a distance of three or
four hundred yards in the surf along the beach raged a desperate conflict,
dreadful even to savage eyes. In their fury they fought in, above and under
the water, and hundreds fiercely grappled and without a wound sank to their
deaths together. Neither would yield, and in the end resistance ceased, and
Kualu saw the beach strewn with dead, a thousand tenantless canoes idly
playing with the surf, and less than as many hundreds of warriors left as he
had led thousands into the fight. He had saved the fleet, but the sacrifice of
life had been terrible.

Despatching a messenger to the king, and speedily reorganizing the remnant

of his force, Kualu was about to leave the beach for service where he might
most be needed, when he discovered, with horror, that the Hawaiian army
had been defeated, and in scattered fragments was seeking flight in all
directions. Harassed by pursuit, a thousand or more were fighting and
struggling to reach the beach. Satisfied that the battle was lost, to facilitate
the escape of the fugitives Kualu ordered a large number of canoes to be
hastily equipped and launched, and then started back to assist in covering
the retreat. But his men refused to follow him. Knowing the danger of
delay, all but a few of them leaped into canoes and paddled out to sea. As he
could do nothing more, he selected a canoe suitable to the four persons who
were to occupy it, and with his three remaining companions passed through
the surf and headed for Oahu.

Kualu did not escape a moment too soon. He had scarcely stemmed the surf
before the fugitives, abandoning all defence, made a precipitate dash for the
canoes, closely followed by their pursuers. In their haste they shoved out in
canoes some of which were overburdened and others but half-manned. A
number of the former foundered in the surf, and such of the latter as
succeeded in passing the breakers were overtaken by the canoes sent in
pursuit. Nor did but few escape of the two or three hundred who preceded
Kualu in his flight. Some of them embarked in double canoes which they
were unable to manage, and others were either without sails or short of
paddles. The result was that less than a hundred of the fugitives escaped
capture, and of that number probably not more than twenty or thirty
succeeded in reaching the other islands of the group, for the sea was rough
and but few of them were skilled in navigation. Among these were Kualu
and his companions.

Almost from the beginning the sudden attack of Kukona from the hills had
been a slaughter. The withdrawal of three thousand spears for the protection
of his canoes had weakened the lines of Kalaunui at an exposed point, and,
breaking through them, the Kauaians so vigorously followed up the
advantage that no effort could save the Hawaiians from defeat. They fought
bravely and with desperation; but the breaking of their lines had left them
without any definite plan of action, and defeat was inevitable. Kalaunui’s
courage was conspicuous, but after an hour’s hopeless struggle he saw his
brave battalions melting to the earth and giving way at all points.
Recognizing that the battle was lost, and that what was left of his army
would soon be in wild retreat, he attempted to cut his way through to the
beach, but was intercepted and taken prisoner. Learning his rank, he was
taken by his captors to Kukona, and a few minutes later the royal chiefs of
Maui, Molokai and Oahu, with their arms corded behind their backs,
appeared on the scene. Deserted by their guards, they had been found in a
hut not far from the beach and brought to the victorious moi.

It was a historic group, that meeting on the battle-field of Koloa of the five
principal sovereigns of the archipelago. Had Kukona been ambitious the
means were at his command to become the supreme head of the island
group; but he thought only of the future peace of Kauai, and promptly
dismissed from his mind all dreams of broader fields of empire, well
knowing that, were he able to seize the mastery of the group, he could not
hope to long maintain it.

Not a word of jeering or of triumph passed between Kalaunui and the

captive chiefs as they stood before Kukona, for the aha alii of the period—
the chiefs of accepted rank—commanded the respect, not only of the
untitled, but of each other, even in bondage and in death. Kukona had met
the alii-nui of Oahu in his own dominions some years before, and
recognized him at once, but the kings of Maui and Molokai were strangers
to him. Being informed of their rank and the circumstances of their
captivity, he ordered them to be liberated at once, and with his own hands
removed the cords from the arms of his royal friend from Oahu.

The rescued princes were at once returned with befitting escorts to their
own possessions, but Kalaunui was retained as a prisoner of war. But few of
the invading army escaped. The victory was celebrated with elaborate
sacrifices and general rejoicing throughout the island. The captured arms
and canoes were divided among the assisting chiefs, and peace reigned
again on Kauai.

Kukona had secured the lasting friendship of the chiefs of Oahu, Maui and
Molokai, and therefore did not fear the retaliation of Hawaii. But, as a
guarantee of peace, he kept Kalaunui a prisoner, rightly surmising that, if
the ruling powers of Hawaii really valued the life of the captive king, they
would not imperil it by attempting his release by force, and if they did not
greatly value it he would be left to his fate or the chances of peaceful
negotiation.

III.

Escaping from Koloa, Kualu and his companions made sail for Hawaii,
stopping for supplies at such intermediate points as they deemed safe on the
coasts of Oahu, Molokai and Maui, and on the evening of the sixth day
arrived at Waipio. They were the first to bring to Hawaii the news of the
defeat of Kalaunui on Kauai, and when the people learned that the army had
been destroyed the land was filled with wailing.

Appearing at once before Kaheka and her son, Kualu recited to them the
story of the dreadful battle, but was unable to tell them definitely of the fate
of Kalaunui. The grief of the queen was great, and found strange and
unreasonable expression in charging Kualu with cowardice and ordering
him from the palace. In vain he protested against the ungenerous treatment.
She had never liked him, especially since discovering that he had secured
something more than the good-will of Kapapa, and it seemed monstrous to
her that he should have survived Kalaunui and the scores of gallant chiefs
who fell with him. She cruelly intimated that it was more than probable
that, with the force sent to protect the fleet, he had embarked in the canoes
without striking a blow, thus treacherously depriving the defeated army of
its sole means of escape.

Had these monstrous charges been made by a man Kualu would have
answered them with blows; but, as they were the foolish and inconsiderate
ravings of a woman, without venturing further reply he took his leave, and
with a heart filled with stifled rage and anguish strode from the palace.

Proceeding up the valley, Kualu entered the hut of Waahia. He found the
kaula alone, as usual. She knew he was coming, but was none the less
rejoiced to meet him. With a word or two of greeting he sat down in silence.
The cruel words of Kaheka still stuck like thorns in his throat. Waahia
regarded him intently for a time, and then said:

“I know it all. Kalaunui’s army has been destroyed. You escaped in a canoe
with three others.”

“And Kalaunui?” questioned Kualu, not a little amazed at the correctness of

her information.

“Is a prisoner,” replied the kaula.

“Thank the gods for that!” exclaimed the chief vehemently. “He must be
liberated, for he can tell her that in escaping I acted neither with cowardice
nor treachery!”

“Tell whom?” inquired the kaula.

“Kaheka,” answered Kualu. “She charges me with cowardice and

desertion.”

“Then Kaheka accuses you of what I know to be false!” said Waahia.

“Yes,” returned the chief; “but the witnesses to my fidelity are few and
humble, and the words of the king can alone relieve me in the eyes of the
aha alii of the disgrace with which the charges of Kaheka will cover me.”

“True,” replied the kaula, encouragingly; “but the disgrace will not be
lasting, for the king will return to do you justice.”

“When will he return?” eagerly inquired the chief.

“I cannot tell,” answered Waahia; “but I know that his rule is not yet at an
end in Hawaii, and you must be patient.”

And Kualu promised to be patient, and for a few days bore the neglect and
frowns of his former friends, and the sneers and covert insults of his
enemies. But when the heartless accusations of Kaheka, passing from
tongue to tongue with the news of the dreadful slaughter, became generally
known, and almost as generally believed, notwithstanding the statements of
his three companions to the contrary, Kualu’s indignation could no longer
be restrained, and he challenged to combat and slew on the spot a chief
who, in the presence of a party of friends, repeated the charges to his face.
Great excitement followed, and in his desperation and wrath Kualu invited
the friends of his fallen defamer, one and all, to test his courage then or
thereafter.

As the life of Kualu was now in constant and undoubted peril, Waahia
advised him to leave Hawaii for a time, and together they set sail for
Molokai, and took up their residence at Kalaupapa. But before leaving
Waipio the kaula called upon the high-priest, by whom she was held in
great respect, and told him where she might be found on Molokai, should
her services be required.

“And they will be required,” said Waahia, significantly. “Kalaunui is not

dead, and when you shall have failed in all your efforts to liberate him, tell
Kaheka to think better of Kualu and send for me.”

“How know you that Kalaunui still lives?” inquired the priest.

“Should the high-priest of Pakaalani ask me that question?” replied Waahia.

“Where are his seers? Where are the kilos of the temple, who in the heavens
saw victory for Kalaunui where I beheld defeat? Have they not been
consulted?”

“All do not see with the eyes of Waahia,” returned the priest, evasively.

Flattered by this recognition of her superiority, the kaula said, as she turned
to depart: “You will know more to-morrow!” And an hour after,
accompanied by Kualu, she left Waipio for Molokai.

The priest was not deceived by Waahia, for the day after authentic
intelligence was received from Maui to the effect that Kalaunui’s campaign
had been a failure in Kauai, and the king was a prisoner in the hands of
Kukona. The leading chiefs were called together in council, and several
projects for the liberation of the king were advanced and discussed. Kaheka
was in favor of raising a powerful army at once, and bringing her royal
husband back by force; but when it was considered by cooler heads that
Kukona was undoubtedly well prepared for war, and had secured the
friendship, and in an emergency could command the support, of the chiefs
of Maui, Oahu and Molokai, the suggestion was dismissed as dangerous
and impracticable.

Under the circumstances it was finally resolved to attempt the liberation of

Kalaunui through negotiation; and to this end messengers were despatched
to Kauai with offers of a large number of canoes, spears and other war
materials in exchange for the royal prisoner. But the surrender of Kalaunui’s
fleet, and the capture of thousands of spears and other arms, had given
Kukona a great abundance of both, and he declined the offer.

Failing in this, after a lapse of some months messengers were again sent to
Kukona with a proffer of twenty full-sized mamos, or royal feather cloaks, a
canoe-load of ivory and whalebone, and a thousand stone lipis, or axes, of a
superior kind peculiar to Hawaii. The messengers were courteously
received and listened to, but the offer was not accepted.

War was again urged by Kaheka, but the chiefs refused to embark in an
undertaking so hazardous, and without their support she could do nothing.
And so for more than two years Kalaunui remained in captivity, when a
third attempt to ransom him was made. Kaheka despatched to Kauai two
ambassadors of high rank, offering her daughter Kapapa in marriage either
to Kukona or his son, Manokalanipo, and promising perpetual peace
between the islands. This offer was also declined, and Kukona refused to
name to the ambassadors the terms upon which he would treat for the
liberation of their king.

It now became a question either of war or the abandonment of Kalaunui to

his fate. In this dilemma the priests and kaulas were consulted, but their
predictions were vague and their counsels unsatisfactory. Remembering the
words of Waahia, the high-priest sought the presence of Kaheka, and
advised her to send for the old prophetess, who was living with her foster-
son at Kalaupapa. This, after some persuasion, she consented to do, and,
despatching a chief of high rank to Molokai, with the admission that she
had accused Kualu unjustly, the kaula was induced to return with the
messenger to Waipio. But Kualu did not accompany her. She was suspicious
of Kaheka, and advised him to remain at Kalaupapa.

Arriving at Waipio, the kaula, feeling that the game was now in her own
hands, informed the high-priest that she would communicate with the
leading chiefs of the kingdom convened in council. The chiefs were
accordingly assembled, and Waahia appeared before them. Kaheka was
present, as the kaula desired.

With a staff in her hand, capped with the head of an owl, and her long,
white hair falling to her waist, there was something weird and awe-inspiring
in the appearance of the venerable prophetess as she entered the council-
room and bowed low before Kaheka and the assembled chiefs. It was not
her privilege to break the silence without permission, and when it had been
formally accorded she raised her eyes, and, without especially addressing
any one, said:

“Why have I been sent for?”

No one could answer, not even Kaheka.

At length an old chief, after conferring with those around him, replied:

“You have been sent for on the word of the high-priest, and with the hope
that you might be able to point out a way for the return of Kalaunui to
Hawaii. Can you do so?”

“I can speak of no way,” answered the kaula.

“Then you can do nothing?” returned the chief.

“My words were that I could speak of no way, nor can I,” said the kaula;
“yet, keeping my own counsel, I might possibly be able to accomplish what
you all desire.”
“And will you undertake to do so?” inquired Kaheka.

“Yes, on one condition,” was the prompt reply.

“Well, what do you ask for attempting to save the life of your king?”
returned the queen, in a tone of rebuke.

Waahia did not like the spirit of the inquiry, and a scowl darkened her
wrinkled face as she replied:

“I might ask that, if the gods willed that I should fail, Kaheka would not
charge me with treachery!”

This reference to the treatment of Kualu created a feeling of uneasiness

among the chiefs; but, without inviting remark or explanation, the kaula
continued:

“What I require is a pledge from every chief here that, should I succeed in
liberating Kalaunui, the terms of the release, whatever they may be, will be
complied with.”

The chiefs hesitated, as it was not impossible that the sovereignty of the
island might be offered to Kukona by the prophetess, and they could not
pledge themselves to a sacrifice involving their own ruin. Waahia relieved
their apprehensions, however, by assuring them that the pledge would not
be considered binding if the terms affected either the sovereignty of the
island or the lives, possessions or prerogatives of its chiefs. With this
assurance the members of the council, after briefly discussing the
possibilities of the obligation, consented to accept it. Thereupon the pledge
was carefully repeated thrice by the chiefs, and each in turn solemnly
invoked upon himself, should he fail to keep and observe it in its fulness,
the wrath of Hikapoloa, the divine trinity, and the swift and especial
vengeance of Kuahana, the slayer of men.

“Are you satisfied now?” inquired Kaheka.

“I am satisfied,” replied the kaula.

“Do you require assistance?” This inquiry came from more than one.

“Only of the gods!” was the impressive answer of Waahia, as she left the
council and slowly wended her way up the valley.

All night long strange lights flashed at intervals through the weather-rent
openings in the kaula’s hut. Shadowy forms were seen to move noiselessly
around it; owls came and went as the lights vanished and reappeared; and,
just as the sun began to paint the east, Waahia proceeded to the beach, and
with a single sturdy assistant of supernatural aspect embarked in a canoe
which seemed to be equipped and provisioned for a long voyage. This was
the ghostly narration of two or three of the nearest neighbors of the
prophetess, and the truth of the story was not doubted, even when it reached
the palace. Doubtless the plain facts were that Waahia spent the most of the
night in preparing for the voyage, and set sail early in the morning with an
assistant known to be trustworthy and familiar with the sea.

Waahia proceeded very leisurely to Kauai. The annual feast of Lono was
approaching, and as she desired to arrive there during the festival, which
would not be for some days, she spent the intervening time in visiting many
sacred spots and noted temples on Maui, Oahu, Molokai and Lanai. Perhaps
to commune with the honored dead, she made a pilgrimage to the sacred
valley of Iao, on the island of Maui, where were buried many of the
distinguished kings and chiefs of the group. She stopped at Kalaupapa, on
Molokai, to confer with Kualu, and while there paid a visit to the home,
near Kaluakoi, of Laamaomao, the wind-god, who came from the south
with Moikeha more than a century before; and in the same valley visited the
dreaded spot where, in the reign of Kamauaua, the father of Kaupeepee, the
abductor of Hina, near the close of the eleventh century, sprang up in a
night the poisoned grove of Kalaipahoa, or, according to another tradition,
where that goddess, belonging to a family of southern deities, visited the
group with two of her sisters, and entered and poisoned a small grove of
trees of natural growth.

From one of these poisonous trees the famous idol of Kalaipahoa was
made. So poisonous was the wood that many died in cutting down the tree
and carving the image, for all perished whose flesh was touched by the
chips; but the workmen finally covered their bodies with kapa, including
masks for their faces and wraps for their hands, and thus succeeded in
completing the dangerous task without farther loss of life. But a single
image was made. It remained with the ruling family of Molokai until the
subjugation of the group by Kamehameha I., when it came into his
possession, and at his death, in 1819, was divided among a few of the
principal chiefs. Two fragments of the image, it is said, are still preserved,
but they are carefully guarded and never exhibited to eyes sceptical or
profane. Long before Waahia visited the spot the last vestige of the grove
had disappeared, but for many acres around where the terrible trees once
stood the earth was black and bare. Within the dreaded area no living thing
was seen, and birds fell dead in flying over it. But the kaula entered it and
returned unharmed, to the amazement of more than one witness.

Waahia next visited the heiau of Kaumolu, which was then a puhonua, or
place of refuge, and in another temple near the coast offered sacrifices to
the shark-god Mooalii. By reputation she was generally known to the
priesthood of the group, and was nowhere regarded as an intruder in places
sacred to worship.

Stopping at Ewa, on the island of Oahu, she saw for the first time the
hallowed enclosure of Kukaniloko, the creation of Nanakaoko, son of
Nanamaoa, the earliest arrival from the south of the migratory stream of the
eleventh century. Chiefs born there were endowed with especial
prerogatives and distinctions, and the beating of a sacred drum called
hawea gave notice without of the birth of a tabu chief.

IV.

The winter solstice, which marked the end of the Hawaiian year, was at
hand, to be followed by the usual five days’ feast of Lono, and Waahia so
timed her voyage as to arrive on Kauai the day before the festival began.
She quietly landed at Koloa, and as far as possible avoided observation by
taking up her residence in a small hut secured by her companion well back
in the neighboring hills.

These annual festivals of Lono were seasons of universal merriment and

rejoicing. The god was crowned and ornamented with leis of flowers and
feathers, and unstinted offerings of pigs, fowls and fruits were laid upon the
altars of the temples consecrated to his worship. Chiefs and people alike
gave themselves unreservedly over to feasting, dancing, singing and the
indulgence of almost every appetite and caprice, and the Saturnalias of the
old Romans gave to the masses scarcely more license than the festivals of
Lono. Every instrument of music known to the people—and they possessed
but four or five of the simplest kinds—was brought into requisition, and for
five days there was almost an uninterrupted tumult of revelry. Lakakane, the
hula god, was decorated and brought out, and every variety of the dance
was given—some of them to the time of vocal recitations and others to the
noisier accompaniment of pipes, drums and rattling calabashes. In the midst
of these enjoyments long-bearded bards appeared before the king and
distinguished chiefs, and while some of them recited wild historic tales of
the past, others chanted the mele-inoas and sang of the personal exploits of
their titled listeners. Awa and other intoxicating drinks were freely indulged
in by those who craved them, and the festivals were usually followed by a
week or more of general languor and worthlessness.

It was the third day of the festival at Koloa. The gates of the enclosure had
been thrown open, and thousands of people thronged around the royal
mansion in a grove near which large quantities of refreshments were spread
on the ground in huge wooden trays and calabashes. The feast was free to
all, and Kukona lounged on a pile of kapa in the deep shade of the trees in
front of the palace, happy in witnessing the enjoyment of his subjects.
Around him were standing a number of chiefs of high rank. A kahili of
bright feathers was occasionally and unobtrusively waved above his head
by the paakahili, and the iwikuamoo, aipuupuu and other of his personal
attendants, all of the lesser nobility, stood in readiness to respond to his
slightest wishes. A guard of inferior chiefs kept the crowd from pressing too
closely the distinguished group, but from time to time, as permission was
granted, select bands of dancers and musicians and chanters of ability were
allowed to approach and entertain the royal party with specimens of their
skill and erudition.

A company of dancers had just retired, when Waahia, with a staff in her
hand, and wearing a short mantle, indicating that she claimed privileges of
dress which were not accorded to women generally, asked permission to be
admitted to the presence of the king. Her strange appearance excited the
curiosity of Kukona, and she was allowed to approach. Kneeling and
touching her forehead to the ground, she rose and asked if it was the
pleasure of the king to hear her. As these ceremonies, due to supreme
authority, were usually waived on such occasions, it was surmised that the
woman must be a stranger in Kauai. She was told to speak. A moooelo, or
historic chant, was expected; but in a full, sharp voice she chanted these
words:

“O the long knife of the stranger,

Of the stranger from other lands,
Of the stranger with sparkling eyes,
Of the stranger with a white face!
O long knife of Lono, the gift of Lono;
It flashes like fire in the sun;
Its edge is sharper than stone,
Sharper than the hard stone of Hualalai;
The spear touches it and breaks,
The strong warrior sees it and dies!
Where is the long knife of the stranger?
Where is the sacred gift of Lono?
It came to Wailuku and is lost,
It was seen at Lahaina and cannot be found.
He is more than a chief who finds it,
He is a chief of chiefs who possesses it.
Maui cannot spoil his fields,
Hawaii cannot break his nets;
His canoes are safe from Kauai;
 The chiefs of Oahu will not oppose him,
The chiefs of Molokai will bend at his feet.
O long knife of the stranger,
O bright knife of Lono!
Who has seen it? Who has found it?
Has it been hidden away in the earth?
Has the great sea swallowed it?
Does the kilo see it among the stars?
Can the kaula find it in the bowels of the black hog?
Will a voice from the anu answer?
Will the priests of Lono speak?
The kilo is silent, the kaula is dumb.
O long knife of the stranger,
O bright knife of Lono,
It is lost, it is lost, it is lost!”

At the conclusion of the chant, which was listened to with attention, the
kaula bowed and disappeared in the crowd. Kukona had heard of the long
knife, and Waahia’s description of its powers interested him greatly. He
despatched a messenger to the high-priest, ordering that the diviners at once
be put to the task of discovering the hiding-place of the sacred weapon.

On the following afternoon Waahia appeared before the king and his chiefs,
and with the same ceremonies repeated her chant of the day before. The
high-priest was summoned, and informed the king that his diviners had as
yet discovered no trace of the long knife.

The third day Waahia appeared and repeated her chant before the king, and
silently withdrew, as before. Again the high-priest was summoned, but was
able to offer no assurance that the long knife would be found by the
kahunas. They had resorted to every means of inspiration and magic known
to them, but could discover no clue to the mystery.

“Who is this woman who for three successive days has told us of the lost
knife?” inquired Kukona, addressing the chiefs surrounding him.
No one seemed to be able to answer. Finally the master of ceremonies
stepped forward and replied:

“The woman, I think, is Waahia, the noted prophetess of Hawaii. I saw her
fifteen years ago in Waipio, and am quite sure that I remember her face.”

The name, if not the face, of the distinguished seeress was known to the
king and many others present, and the high-priest, anxious to explain the
failure of his magicians, bowed and said:

“The master of ceremonies has doubtless spoken truly. The woman must be
Waahia. Her powers are great, and a secret in her keeping is beyond the
reach of the kaulas.”

Accepting this explanation of the high-priest, Kukona ordered the

prophetess to be found and respectfully conducted to the royal mansion; but
after a fruitless search of two days it was reported that she had probably left
the valley, and therefore could not be found.

Irritated at what seemed to be the inefficiency or neglect of his kaulas and

chiefs, Kukona was about to attach a death-penalty to further failure when
Waahia suddenly entered the royal enclosure and approached the palace.
Her appearance was most welcome to the attending chiefs, and she was
ushered at once into the presence of the king. So delighted was Kukona at
the unexpected visit that he rose unconsciously to his feet and greeted the
prophetess. This breach of courtly form amazed the attendants of the king,
and suggested to them that the strange visitor must be of supreme rank; but
before any explanation could be gathered they were ordered to retire, even
to the paakahili, and Kukona was left alone with the kaula.

The king motioned his visitor to a lounge of kapa, for she seemed to be old
and feeble, and he had a favor to ask. Seating herself, as requested, the king
approached, and, in a voice that could not well be overheard, said:

“Are you Waahia, the prophetess of Hawaii?”

“I am Waahia,” answered the kaula.

“You have chanted of the long knife of the stranger, of the bright knife of
Lono, of the lost knife of Wailuku,” resumed Kukona. “Our diviners can
give me no information concerning it.”

Waahia smiled significantly, but made no reply, and the king continued:

“They say you have tabued the secret, and others, therefore, cannot share it.
Is it so?”

“Perhaps,” was the brief reply.

“Then you can find the sacred knife?” eagerly suggested Kukona.

“I can find it,” was the kaula’s emphatic answer.

“Then find and bring it to Kukona, and for the service claim what you will,”
was the prompt proposal of the king.

With the way thus broadly opened, Waahia announced that the price of the
knife must be the liberation of Kalaunui, and was astonished at the
promptness with which the terms were accepted. It was manifest to Waahia
that he either placed a very high value upon the talisman, or had kept his
royal prisoner about as long as he cared to detain him or the peace of his
kingdom required. In either event his unhesitating acceptance of the main
consideration warranted Waahia in at once naming one or two other
conditions, which were just as promptly agreed to by the king. One of these
conditions was that Kalaunui should agree, as the only consideration for his
release to be known to him, that his daughter Kapapa should be given in
marriage to the chief Kualu, not only as a fitting union, but as a measure of
atonement for the unjust and disgraceful charges made against that worthy
young chief by Kaheka, and that Kukona and Kalaunui should mutually
pledge themselves to the fulfilment of the compact. The other condition was
that, on the delivery of the knife to Kukona, he was to release the captive
king at once, and return him to Hawaii in company with three high chiefs of
Kauai, who were to remain in Waipio until after the consummation of the
marriage of Kapapa and Kualu.
Kalaunui was communicated with. For nearly three years he had been
confined and closely but respectfully guarded within a square of high stone
walls enclosing a single hut. Utterly unable to account for Kukona’s interest
in Kualu, he nevertheless accepted the terms submitted to him for his
release, and Waahia started at once for Kalaupapa, promising to be back
within six days. For the voyage she accepted a canoe larger and more
commodious than her own, and the services of five additional rowers.

Arriving at Kalaupapa on the morning of the third day from Koloa, Waahia
startled Kualu by informing him that Kalaunui was about to be released,
and that in twelve days he must return without further notice to Waipio,
where he would be relieved of all disgrace by the king, and become the
husband of Kapapa. Coming from Waahia, he believed the words as if they
had been flashed from the heavens, and asked for no confirmation as the
kaula abruptly left him and proceeded alone toward the hills.

A few hours later Waahia re-embarked for Kauai, taking with her, securely
wrapped in a number of kapa folds, the sword of Kaluiki. She reached
Koloa within the time promised, and, proceeding to the palace, delivered to
the king, in person and alone, the glittering blade which rumor had clothed
with extraordinary sanctity and power.

Kalaunui renewed his pledge to Kukona, and the next morning embarked
for Hawaii in a large double canoe, accompanied by three of the leading
chiefs of Kauai and their attendants. Stepping into the kaulua as it was
about to be shoved into the surf, Kalaunui caught sight of Waahia, for the
first time for years, as she stood leaning upon her staff near the water.
Kualu’s part in the agreement with Kukona was explained at once by
Waahia’s presence in Koloa; but what was Kualu to Kukona? and, if
nothing, what influences had the kaula been able to bring to effect his
release upon such conditions? No matter. Kalaunui was too happy in his
liberation to quarrel with the means through which it had been secured, and
he turned with a look of gratitude toward the prophetess as the canoe shot
out into the breakers.
The return of their captive king was joyously celebrated by the people of
Hawaii, and a few days after Kapapa became the willing wife of Kualu. The
union was distasteful to Kaheka, but she was powerless to prevent it. The
agreement was faithfully fulfilled by Kalaunui, and he spent the remainder
of his days in peace, leaving the kingdom to his only son, Kuaiwa, between
whom and Kualu a lasting friendship was established.

Kualu, with Kapapa, became the head of an influential family, one of his
direct descendants having been the wife of Makaoku, a son of Kiha and
brother of Liloa, one of the most noted of the kings of Hawaii.

The sword of Kaluiki, the ransom of a king, remained for some generations
with the descendants of Kukona; but what became of it in the end tradition
fails to tell.
 The Sacred Spear-Point.

CHARACTERS.

Kakae and
joint mois of Maui.
Kakaalaneo,
Kahekili, son of Kakae.
Kaululaau, son of Kakaalaneo.
Waolani, a high-priest of Maui.
Kalona-iki, king of Oahu.
Laiea-a-Ewa, sister of the queen of Oahu.
Kamakaua, a companion of Kaululaau.
Kauholanui-mahu, king of Hawaii.
Neula, queen of Hawaii.
Noakua, a chief of Kohala, Hawaii.
Pele, goddess of Kilauea.
Keuakepo, brother of Pele.
Mooaleo, a gnome-god of Molokai.
Pueoalii, a winged demon of Oahu.

THE SACRED SPEAR-POINT.

 THE ADVENTURES OF KAULULAAU, PRINCE OF
MAUI.

I.

Kaululaau was one of the sons of Kakaalaneo, brother of, and joint ruler
with, Kakae in the government of Maui. The latter was the legitimate heir to
the moiship, but, as he was weak-minded, Kakaalaneo ruled jointly with
him and was the real sovereign of the little kingdom. The court of the
brothers was at Lele (now Lahaina), and was one of the most distinguished
in the group.

The mother of Kaululaau was Kanikaniaula, of the family of Kamauaua,

king of Molokai, through his son Haili, who was the brother or half-brother
of Keoloewa and Kaupeepee. The latter, it will be remembered, was the
abductor of the celebrated Hina, of Hawaii, and the family was of the old
strain of Maweke.

Kaululaau was probably born somewhere between the years 1390 and 1400.
He had a half-sister, whose name was Wao, and a half-brother, Kaihiwalua,
who was the father of Luaia, who became the husband of a daughter of
Piliwale, moi of Oahu, and brother of Lo-Lale. He doubtless had other
brothers and sisters, since his father was blessed with two or more wives,
but the legends fail to refer to them.

Kahekili, son of Kakae, and who became his successor in the moiship, was
of near the age of his cousin, Kaululaau, and the two princes grew to
manhood together. They were instructed by the same teachers, schooled in
the same arts and chiefly accomplishments, and chanted the same
genealogical meles. Yet in disposition and personal appearance they were
widely different.
From his youth Kahekili was staid, sober and thoughtful. Bred to the
knowledge that he would succeed his father as moi of the island, he began
early in life to prepare himself for the proper exercise of supreme authority,
and at the age of twenty was noted for his intelligence, dignity and royal
bearing. He had been told by a prophet that one of his name would be the
last independent king of Maui, and the information rendered him solicitous
for his future and drove many a smile from his lips. Yet, with all his
austerity and circumspection, he was kind-hearted and affectionate, and his
pastimes were such as comported with his dignity. In height he was
somewhat below the chiefly medium, and his features were rugged and of a
Papuan cast; but all knew that he was royal in heart and thought, and the
respect due to him was not withheld.

Kaululaau was unlike his royal cousin in almost every respect. He was
noted alike for his intelligence, his manly beauty and his rollicking spirit of
mischief and merriment. He did not covet the sceptre. He thought more of a
wild debauch, with music, dancing and a calabash of awa, than the right to
command “downward” or “upward the face”; and since Kahekili was the
designated successor of his father, he claimed the right, as a favored and
tabu subject of the realm, to enjoy himself in such manner as best accorded
with his tastes. As he could not make laws, he found a pleasure in breaking
them. He was neither wantonly cruel nor malignant, but recklessly wild and
mischievous, and neither the reproofs of his father nor the mild persuasions
of his cousin were sufficient to restrain him. His bantering reply to the latter
was: “When you become king I will act with more propriety. Two mois can
afford one wild prince.”

He had a congenial following of companions and retainers, who assisted

him in his schemes of mischief. With feasting and hula dancing he would
keep the village in an uproar for a dozen consecutive nights. He would send
canoes adrift, open the gates of fish-ponds, remove the supports of houses,
and paint swine black to deceive the sacrificial priests. He devised an
instrument to imitate the death-warning notes of the alae, and frightened
people by sounding it near their doors; and to others he caused information
to be conveyed that they were being prayed to death.
Notwithstanding these misdemeanors, Kaululaau was popular with the
people, since the chiefs or members of the royal household were usually the
victims of his mischievous freaks. He was encouraged in his disposition to
qualify himself for the priesthood, under the instruction of the eminent
high-priest and prophet, Waolani, and had made substantial advances in the
calling, when he was banished to the island of Lanai by his royal father for
an offence which could neither be overlooked nor forgiven.

At that time Lanai was infested with a number of gnomes, monsters and
evil spirits, among them the gigantic moo, Mooaleo. They ravaged fields,
uprooted cocoanut-trees, destroyed the walls of fish-ponds, and otherwise
frightened and discomfited the inhabitants of the island. That his residence
there might be made endurable, Kaululaau was instructed by the kaulas and
sorcerers of the court in many charms, spells, prayers and incantations with
which to resist the powers of the supernatural monsters. When informed of
these exorcising agencies by Kaululaau, his friend, the venerable high-
priest, Waolani, told him that they would avail him nothing against the more
powerful and malignant of the demons of Lanai.

Disheartened at the declaration, Kaululaau was about to leave the heiau to

embark for Lanai, when Waolani, after some hesitation, stayed his
departure, and, entering the inner temple, soon returned with a small roll of
kapa in his hand. Slowly uncording and removing many folds of cloth, an
ivory spear-point a span in length was finally brought to view. Holding it
before the prince, he said:

“Take this. It will serve you in any way you may require. Its powers are
greater than those of any god inhabiting the earth. It has been dipped in the
waters of Po, and many generations ago was left by Lono upon one of his
altars for the protection of a temple menaced by a mighty fish-god who
found a retreat beneath it in a great cavern connected with the sea. Draw a
line with it and nothing can pass the mark. Affix it to a spear and throw it,
and it will reach the object, no matter how far distant. Much more will it do,
but let what I have said suffice.”
The prince eagerly reached to possess the treasure, but the priest withdrew
it and continued:

“I give it to you on condition that it pass from you to no other hands than
mine, and that if I am no longer living when you return to Maui—as you
some day will—you will secretly deposit it with my bones. Swear to this in
the name of Lono.”

Kaululaau solemnly pronounced the required oath. The priest then handed
him the talisman, wrapped in the kapa from which it had been taken, and he
left the temple, and immediately embarked with a number of his attendants
for Lanai.

Reaching Lanai, he established his household on the south side of the

island. Learning his name and rank, the people treated him with great
respect—for Lanai was then a dependency of Maui—assisted in the
construction of the houses necessary for his accommodation, and provided
him with fish, poi, fruits and potatoes in great abundance. In return for this
devotion he set about ridding the island of the supernatural pests with which
it had been for years afflicted.

In the legend of “Kelea, the Surf-rider of Maui,” will be found some

reference to the battles of Kaululaau with the evil spirits and monsters of
Lanai. His most stubborn conflict was with the gnome god Mooaleo. He
imprisoned the demon within the earth by drawing a line around him with
the sacred spear-point, and subsequently released and drove him into the
sea.

More than a year was spent by Kaululaau in quieting and expelling from the
island the malicious monsters that troubled it, but he succeeded in the end
in completely relieving the people from their vexatious visitations. This
added immeasurably to his popularity, and the choicest of the products of
land and sea were laid at his feet.

His triumph over the demons of Lanai was soon known on the other islands
of the group, and when it reached the ears of Kakaalaneo he despatched a
messenger to his son, offering his forgiveness and recalling him from exile.
The service he had rendered was important, and his royal father was
anxious to recognize it by restoring him to favor.

But Kaululaau showed no haste in availing himself of his father’s

magnanimity. Far from the restraints of the court, he had become attached
to the independent life he had found in exile, and could think of no comforts
or enjoyments unattainable on Lanai. The women there were as handsome
as elsewhere, the bananas were as sweet, the cocoanuts were as large, the
awa was as stimulating, and the fisheries were as varied and abundant in
product. He had congenial companionship, and bands of musicians and
dancers at his call. The best of the earth and the love of the people were his,
and the apapani sang in the grove that shaded his door. What more could he
ask, what more expect should he return to Maui? His exile had ceased to be
a punishment, and his father’s message of recall was scarcely deemed a
favor.

However, Kaululaau returned a respectful answer by his father’s messenger,

thanking Kakaalaneo for his clemency, and announcing that he would return
to Maui some time in the near future, after having visited some of the other
islands of the group; and three months later he began to prepare for a trip to
Hawaii. He procured a large double canoe, which he painted a royal yellow,
and had fabricated a number of cloaks and capes of the feathers of the oo
and mamo. At the prow of his canoe he mounted a carved image of Lono,
and at the top of one of the masts a place was reserved for the proud tabu
standard of an aha alii. This done, with a proper retinue he set sail for
Hawaii.

II.

On his visit to Hawaii, Kaululaau was accompanied by a number of

companions of his own disposition and temperament. Among them was
Kamakaua, a young Maui chief, who had followed him into exile and was
thoroughly devoted to his interests. He was brave, courtly and intelligent,
and in personal appearance somewhat resembled the prince. The crew and
most of the attendants of the prince had been selected by Kamakaua,
including the chief navigator and astrologer; and however competent they
may have been in their respective stations, it was discovered during the
voyage that they were no less efficient as musicians and dancers. Hence
there was no lack of amusement as the huge double canoe breasted the
waves of Alenuihaha Channel, and on the morning of the third day stood off
the village of Waipio, in the district of Hamakua, Hawaii.

At that time Kauholanui-mahu, father of the noted Kiha, was king of

Hawaii. His wife was Neula, a chiefess of Maui, who had inherited very
considerable possessions in the neighborhood of Honuaula, on that island.
As the climate of the locality was salubrious, and the neighboring waters
abounded abundantly in fish, the royal couple made frequent and sometimes
lengthy visits thither. These visits were usually made without the
knowledge of Kakaalaneo, and the unexplained attachment of the Hawaiian
king to the comparatively small inheritance of his wife on a neighboring
island began to be regarded with suspicion, and had become a theme for
speculation and inquiry at the court of Lahaina.

At the time of the visit of Kaululaau to Waipio, Kauholanui had been absent
for some months on Maui, leaving Neula in charge of the government of
Hawaii. Attributing the absence of the king to deliberate neglect, Neula had
become greatly dissatisfied, and whispers of coming trouble were rife
throughout the island. All this was doubtless known to Kaululaau, and, as
the royal residence was at Waipio, it was upon the beach below it that he
landed with his party and drew up his double canoe.

The presence and state of the strangers were soon heralded to the queen,
and she promptly despatched messengers, courteously inviting the prince
and his personal retainers to become her guests at the royal hale, at the
same time giving orders for the accommodation of the humbler of his
attendants and followers, as was the hospitable custom of the time.
Accepting the invitation, Kaululaau and four of his chiefly companions
were provided with quarters within the palace enclosure, and their food was
served from the royal table. In the afternoon Kaululaau was accorded an
audience with the queen, during which he presented his friends, including
Kamakaua.

The prince whiled away nearly a month at Waipio, and many formal
entertainments were given in his honor. Neula was unusually agreeable, and
was soon on terms of friendly intimacy both with the prince and Kamakaua.
This was exactly what Kaululaau desired, since it enabled him to devise and
assist in the execution of a scheme for bringing the king back from Maui
and keeping him thereafter within his own kingdom.

Under the instructions of Kaululaau, Kamakaua assumed to be greatly

smitten with the charms of the queen. As she was a comely woman, and
somewhat vain of her personal appearance, the conquest of the handsome
chief gratified her; but his attentions developed the fact that he had a rival
in Noakua, a chief of Kohala. This discovery simplified the plans of the
prince, and relieved Kamakaua of a dangerous duty in the end. In pressing
his suit he found a pretext for informing the queen that the continued
absence of the king was due to the fact that he had taken another wife, with
whom he was living at Honuaula, and that he had ceased to care either for
his kingdom or his family.

While Kamakaua was pouring this poison into the ears of Neula, Kaululaau,
who had made the acquaintance of Noakua, was planting in the mind of that
chief the seeds of sedition. He flattered him with the opinion that he was
made to rule, and by degrees developed to him a plan through which, with
the favor of the queen, he could seize the government, unite the principal
chiefs in his support, and prevent Kauholanui from returning to Hawaii.

The ambition of Noakua, and anger of the queen at the presumed neglect
and infidelity of her husband, soon harmonized them in a plot against the
absent king. Preparations for the revolt began to be observed, when
Kaululaau, not wishing to be openly identified with the dangerous
movement, quietly embarked with his party for Hilo, where he remained to
watch the progress of the struggle which he had been instrumental in
originating.

The prince had been in Hilo but a few days when a lunapai arrived from
Waipio, summoning the chief of the district to repair thither with eight
hundred warriors, and announcing the assumption of the sovereignty of the
island by Neula. Similar notifications were sent to the chiefs of the other
districts of the kingdom, and soon all was excitement from Kau to Kohala.

Hearing of the revolt, Kauholanui, who had been engaged in constructing a

fish-pond at Keoneoio, in the neighborhood of Honuaula, left Maui at once
with less than a hundred spears, and, landing in Kona, whose chief could be
relied upon, he started overland for Waipio. The revolution was unpopular,
and with great unanimity the chiefs and people rallied to the standard of the
king. The struggle was brief. A battle was fought near Waimea, resulting in
the defeat of the rebel army and the death of Noakua.

This ended the revolt. As a punishment to Neula the king took another wife.
But the object of Kaululaau was accomplished, for Kauholanui never again
visited Maui, although the queen spent much of her time thereafter at
Honuaula, where her favorite guest and friend was Kamakaua.

Leaving Hilo, Kaululaau and his party leisurely drifted along the coasts of
Puna until they reached the borders of Kau, when they landed at Keauhou
to spend a few days in fishing and surf-riding.

Weary of the sport, Kaululaau left the bathers in the surf, one afternoon, and
threw himself under the shade of a hala tree near the shore. Watching the
clouds and the sea-birds circling in the heavens above him, he fell asleep,
and when he awoke his eyes fell upon a beautiful woman sitting upon a
rock not more than a hundred paces distant, and silently watching the
swimmers as they came riding in on the crests of the rollers. Her skirts were
a pau spangled with crystals, and over her shoulders hung a short mantle of
the colors of a rainbow. Her long hair was held back by a lei of flowers, and
her wrists and ankles were adorned with circlets of tiny shells of pink and
white.
Welcome to our website – the perfect destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. We believe that every book holds a new world,
offering opportunities for learning, discovery, and personal growth.
That’s why we are dedicated to bringing you a diverse collection of
books, ranging from classic literature and specialized publications to
self-development guides and children's books.

More than just a book-buying platform, we strive to be a bridge

connecting you with timeless cultural and intellectual values. With an
elegant, user-friendly interface and a smart search system, you can
quickly find the books that best suit your interests. Additionally,
our special promotions and home delivery services help you save time
and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Join us on a journey of knowledge exploration, passion nurturing, and

personal growth every day!

ebookbell.com