However important the problems of recruiting agents, training them and organising agent networks may be, there is still one overriding objective: the acquisition of secrets belonging to an enemy or a probable enemy. The material acquired by the GRU breaks down into information, documents and specimens or samples. Information includes commentaries and reports. Documents are not the subjective opinions or observations of agents but official secret papers, books, drawings or copies of them. Specimens or samples are self-explanatory: actual weapons, examples of military technology, instruments and equipment which the GRU uses for study and copying.
The photographing of documents and eavesdropping on conversations are in real life exactly as they are portrayed in spy films. But how does the agent contrive to steal secret equipment and remain undetected? Many ways and means exist: we have already examined one of them when we discussed the recruitment of the owners of small private companies producing military equipment. The owner of a small firm has not much difficulty in producing one extra specimen of an instrument or a gadget and it is very advantageous for him to sell it to the GRU. But what about really big objects like a tank, an aeroplane or an atomic reactor? Not only does one have to obtain such an object without its loss being noticed, but it also has to be transported to the Soviet Union. There is, perhaps surprisingly, a number of solutions to these problems. Samples of objects which can only be used once -rockets, torpedoes, shells, cartridges - are usually stolen during instructional periods, military displays or tests. An entry may be made, for example, in the official accounting documents that there were a hundred launchings of a certain anti-tank rocket whereas in actual fact there were only ninety-nine. The hundredth rocket will have been quietly sold to the GRU without anybody noticing. Very often written-off equipment is able to be sold because there exist official documents certifying that it has been written off or destroyed. One agent suggested to the GRU that he should obtain for them a lateral scanning radar for aircraft which permitted the aircraft to carry out intelligence work on the territory of the enemy while it was actually over its own territory. The GRU, of course, agreed to the suggestion, although the agent said that he did not know exactly when he would be able to acquire the apparatus. It might be within a day or two, it might take years. The GRU agreed to wait. Several months later the agent obtained the apparatus, and a year later it was taken into service with the Soviet Army. The agent worked in an experimental training ground, and when an aircraft equipped with the required apparatus crashed, the agent, in spite of very strict control, was able to steal a broken radar. This was quite sufficient for the Soviet Army to catch up with the United States in that particular field. Frequently agents go as far as deliberately damaging secret arms and equipment so that they can be written off and then sold. Wide use is made of countries of the Third World which receive equipment from Western countries, as was made clear in the GRU's (unsuccessful) attempt to acquire a French Mirage III from the Lebanon. Any armed conflict or change of government is usually accompanied by intense GRU activity, because this is the most favourable time for stealing military technology and armaments.
The diplomatic mail is the most often-used method of transporting specimens to the Soviet Union. The main problem is to transport the specimen into the Soviet embassy. From that time onwards, of course, it crosses all frontiers in sealed packing cases and accompanied by armed diplomatic couriers. Sometimes the difficult problem arises of a specimen weighing several tons which cannot be accommodated in the diplomatic post. This happened when, in one of the countries which had bought Leopard tanks in the Federal Republic of Germany, GRU agents were able to steal a written-off tank engine an item of exceptional interest to Soviet industry. The theft went unnoticed but the engine weighed more than a ton and there was no way it could be accommodated in diplomatic containers. The Soviet consulate then bought an old cruising yacht. The yacht was straight away sent for a refit and, for a very substantial sum, the small repair workshop installed the heavy tank engine in the yacht. The yacht went to sea on a number of pleasure trips and during one such trip fortuitously met a Soviet trawler. A special team of fitters literally tore the tank engine out of the yacht in a few minutes. The yacht put to sea several times after this to maintain its cover, before being sold.
Another, more reliable method of transporting heavy equipment exists. After an item has been acquired, GRU officers in the guise of a trade delegation will poach from a firm some completely unnecessary item of quite innocent nature. The important thing is that the quantity of containers and their weight approximate to the packing of the secret equipment. Subsequently the markings on the packing cases are changed and they make their way innocently through customs control. So items of exceptional importance are transported to the Soviet Union in the form of equipment for, say, a canning factory. Sometimes, too, specimens are sent to a safe address in one of the Third World countries where they can be loaded onto Soviet ships without any trouble.
In general terms the GRU leadership is quite confident that it is capable of obtaining any technological secret from the West provided it has been allocated a sufficient sum of money. Only one technological secret exists which the GRU is incapable of obtaining. Even if it did obtain it, the Soviet system would not be able to copy it since for that, the whole structure of communism would have to be changed. Yet this technological secret is of vital importance to the Soviet system. It is the Achilles' heel of socialism - strike at it and socialism will fall to pieces, all invasion, nationalisation and collectivisation will cease. This secret is nothing more than the means of producing bread. Socialism, for all its gigantic resources, is not capable of feeding itself. How easy it would be, one sometimes thinks, to place an embargo on the supply of bread to the Soviet Union, until Soviet forces no longer found themselves in occupied Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, until such time as the Cubans no longer held sway in Africa, until the Berlin Wall disappeared. It would only be necessary to withhold supplies of grain for a few months, and the whole edifice of socialism might fall to pieces.
Chapter Seven
Operational Intelligence
Operational intelligence marks a complete departure from the kind we have talked about until now. It embraces intelligence organisations subordinated to operational units - fronts, fleets, groups of forces, military districts, armies, flotillas - whose job is to aid in the implementation of the military activity. Organisationally, the Soviet Army consists of sixteen military districts and four groups of forces in Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. In war, or at the time of preparations for war, the groups of forces and military districts are transformed into fronts and army groups. Each military district, groups of forces and front has a staff, each with its own intelligence directorate (called RU or Second Directorate of the Military District Staff). The chief of the Second Directorate of the Military District Staff is the chief of all intelligence units of the military district. He is officially called the head of military district intelligence. All twenty heads of military district intelligence and groups of forces are under the command of the head of the GRU Fifth Directorate. The GRU Fifth Directorate supervises the activity of the intelligence directorates, carries out the posting of senior officers of operational intelligence, collates the work experience of all operational intelligence and issues corresponding recommendations and instructions. In addition, the head of intelligence is subordinated to the chief of the military district staff. The chief of staff directs the daily activity of the head of intelligence. The head of intelligence of a military district works exclusively in the interests of his military district, in conformity with the orders of the chief of staff and the commander of the military district. At the same time, all information obtained is forwarded to the GRU too. The role the GRU plays is to collect information from all heads of intelligence and forward to them information obtained by other intelligence organs. Sometimes, the intelligence directorate of the military district may work directly in the interests of the GRU but this must be done only with the agreement of the military district commander. The chief of the general staff is the supreme arbiter in disputes between the commander of the military district and the head of the GRU. However, in practice such disputes occur extremely rarely.
Each front, group of forces and military district consists of armies. Normally a front has an air force, a tank army and two to three all-arms armies. Each army consists of four to seven divisions. Sometimes a corps is included - two to three divisions. Each army and corps has a staff, among whose members is an intelligence section which is called RO [Razvedyvatelnyi otdel] or Army Staff Second Department. The head of the army intelligence section is the head of all intelligence units belonging to a given army. He also ranks below two other officers: the chief of staff of his army, and the chief of intelligence of the military district.
His relationship with his chiefs is based on similar lines. He works exclusively in the interests of his army, obeying the orders of the army commander and the army chief of staff. At the same time, all information acquired by him is also forwarded to the intelligence chief of the military district. A reciprocal arrangement exists whereby the intelligence chief of the military district forwards information to his heads of army intelligence which he has received from other armies, the intelligence directorates of the military districts and the GRU.
The Soviet navy consists of four fleets, the Northern, Pacific, Black Sea and Baltic fleets. Each of the fleets is the equal of a military district, group of forces, and front, and has a staff which includes an intelligence directorate or Naval Staff Second Directorate. Its head is the chief of Naval Intelligence. The naval directorates have the same organisation as those in military districts, fronts and groups of forces. The difference lies in the fact that while the army directorates are subordinated directly to the Fifth Directorate of the GRU, the four naval directorates fall under an organisation called naval intelligence. In its turn naval intelligence comes under the head of the GRU and is controlled by the Fifth Directorate. The reason for this extra organisational step is that ships of all four fleets frequently operate in all oceans as combined squadrons. For this reason the ships need information, not about a narrow sector like the troops of a military district, but on a much wider scale.