Word: kgb
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...same time, support for anti-Communist insurgencies has its limitations. As Nicaragua makes clear, the U.S. is still incapable of waging truly covert warfare of any magnitude. In this respect, the Soviets enjoy a permanent advantage. The First Chief Directorate of the KGB, the principal clandestine arm of Soviet foreign policy, can engage in dirty tricks while preserving its "plausible deniability." The CIA's Directorate for Operations, by contrast, is subject to oversight by a notoriously leaky and fastidious U.S. Congress...
...building is being constructed, Soviet personnel present a similar problem. Whereas the Russians bring to Washington an entire retinue of maintenance workers and cleaning people, the U.S. employs 211 Soviet citizens in similar capacities at its embassy. All are presumed to have at least informal ties to the KGB, and American personnel tag along as they do their chores. The State Department now has bowed to pressures from the intelligence community and agreed to remove most of the Soviets from their embassy jobs at some future date...
Another Andropov man who seems destined for higher office is Aliyev, who hails from the small, predominantly Muslim republic of Azerbaijan, on the Iranian border. A KGB official, he reportedly once declared that Soviet corruption could only be fought with means beyond "socialist legality." Aliyev made his name as first secretary of the Azerbaijan Communist Party; he helped transform the republic's economy from the Soviet Union's slowest to its fastest growing. Among his innovations: productivity bonuses for agricultural workers who exceeded their quotas. "He is an exciting character, a risk taker," says Simes. "I don't know...
There is one major difference between the elusive Andropov and Gorbachev. While KGB disinformers spread tantalizing tales about Andropov's taste for Scotch, Benny Goodman and Western pulp fiction, the former chief of the Soviet intelligence services remained the shadowy figure he had always been. Andropov, throughout his life, never traveled to the West and was seen only from afar at Kremlin ceremonies. Gorbachev, in contrast, is responsible for creating his own image abroad. He has what one Washington Kremlinologist calls "a real sense of public relations...
...Gorbachev cope with this dilemma? During his speech to the Central Committee last week, he referred to "speeding up the country's social and economic development," a strategy that he associated with the name of Yuri Andropov. The allusion was revealing. During Andropov's 15-month reign, the former KGB chief launched a campaign against worker absenteeism and nomenklatura corruption. At least one prominent black marketeer, with connections to the family of the late Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, was executed. Andropov fired several industrial ministers and began to appoint younger, more professional executives to senior posts. Andropov also...