CovertAction Quarterly (formerly CovertAction Information Bulletin) was an American journal in publication from 1978 to 2005, focused primarily on watching and reporting global covert operations. CovertAction relaunched in May 2018 as CovertAction Magazine. [1]
It is generally critical of US Foreign Policy, the Central Intelligence Agency, KGB and capitalism. CovertAction relaunched in May 2018 as CovertAction Magazine. [1]
The first issue of the Covert Action Information Bulletin was launched at a press conference in Havana, Cuba, coinciding with the 11th World Festival of Youth and Students. [2] [3]
The magazine was founded by former CIA officer turned agency critic Philip Agee, William Schaap, James and Elsie Wilcott, Ellen Ray, William Kunstler, Michael Ratner, and Lou Wolf in 1978. [4] [5] [lower-alpha 1] [8] It was created in order to carry on the work of the preceding publication CounterSpy magazine, which the editors claimed had been shut down as a result of CIA harassment. [9] Contributors included critics of US foreign policy such as Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Michael Parenti [5] and Christopher Hitchens. [10]
Agee said the Bulletin's goal was "a worldwide campaign to destabilize the CIA through exposure of its operations and personnel." [3] [11] The Mitrokhin Archive, by ex-KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin and British intelligence historian Christopher Andrew, alleged that Covert Action Information Bulletin received assistance from the Soviet KGB and Cuban DGI. Mitrokhin claimed that the Soviet group RUPOR was responsible for the Bulletin, although cautioned that of the publication's members, only Agee would have been aware of the foreign government connection. KGB files recovered by Mitrokhin boasted of their ability to pass information and disinformation to Agee. [2] [12] [13]
The magazine was based in Washington, D.C. [5] [14]
In 1992, with the issue #43, the magazine was renamed as CovertAction Quarterly. [5] [3] In 1998, the magazine won an award from Project Censored for a story by Lawrence Soley in the Spring 1997 issue titled "Phi Beta Capitalism", about corporate influence on universities. [15] [16]
Publication of CovertAction Quarterly ceased in 2005 with issue #78, only to be resurrected as CovertAction Magazine in 2018. [17]
Several articles from CovertAction Quarterly were collected in two anthologies, CovertAction: The Roots of Terrorism and Bioterror: Manufacturing Wars The American Way, both published by Ocean Press in 2003.
Anthologies
Magazines
Vasili Nikitich Mitrokhin was a major and senior archivist for the Soviet Union's foreign intelligence service, the First Chief Directorate of the KGB, who defected to the United Kingdom in 1992 after providing the British embassy in Riga with a vast collection of his notes purporting to be written copies of KGB files. These became known as the Mitrokhin Archives. The intelligence files given by Mitrokhin to the MI6 exposed an unknown number of Soviet agents, including Melita Norwood.
Intelligence assessment, or simply intel, is the development of behavior forecasts or recommended courses of action to the leadership of an organisation, based on wide ranges of available overt and covert information (intelligence). Assessments develop in response to leadership declaration requirements to inform decision-making. Assessment may be executed on behalf of a state, military or commercial organisation with ranges of information sources available to each.
Active measures is a term used to describe political warfare conducted by the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. The term, which dates back to the 1920s, includes operations such as espionage, propaganda, sabotage and assassination, based on foreign policy objectives of the Soviet and Russian governments. Active measures have continued to be used by the administration of Vladimir Putin.
The First Main Directorateof the Committee for State Security under the USSR council of ministers was the organization responsible for foreign operations and intelligence activities by providing for the training and management of covert agents, intelligence collection administration, and the acquisition of foreign and domestic political, scientific and technical intelligence for the Soviet Union.
Philip Burnett Franklin Agee was a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) case officer and writer of the 1975 book, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, detailing his experiences in the CIA. Agee joined the CIA in 1957, and over the following decade had postings in Washington, D.C., Ecuador, Uruguay and Mexico. After resigning from the Agency in 1968, he became a leading opponent of CIA practices. A co-founder of the CounterSpy and CovertAction series of periodicals, he died in Cuba in January 2008.
Anatoliy Mikhaylovich Golitsyn CBE was a Soviet KGB defector and author of two books about the long-term deception strategy of the KGB leadership. He was born in Pyriatyn, USSR. He provided "a wide range of intelligence to the CIA on the operations of most of the 'Lines' (departments) at the Helsinki and other residencies, as well as KGB methods of recruiting and running agents." He became an American citizen by 1984.
Operation Trust was a counterintelligence operation of the State Political Directorate (GPU) of the Soviet Union. The operation, which was set up by GPU's predecessor Cheka, ran from 1921 to 1926, set up a fake anti-Bolshevik resistance organization, "Monarchist Union of Central Russia", MUCR, in order to help the OGPU identify real monarchists and anti-Bolsheviks. The created front company was called the Moscow Municipal Credit Association.
John Daniel Barron was an American journalist and investigative writer. He wrote several books about Soviet espionage via the KGB and other agencies.
As early as the 1920s, the Soviet Union, through its GRU, OGPU, NKVD, and KGB intelligence agencies, used Russian and foreign-born nationals, as well as Communists of American origin, to perform espionage activities in the United States, forming various spy rings. Particularly during the 1940s, some of these espionage networks had contact with various U.S. government agencies. These Soviet espionage networks illegally transmitted confidential information to Moscow, such as information on the development of the atomic bomb. Soviet spies also participated in propaganda and disinformation operations, known as active measures, and attempted to sabotage diplomatic relationships between the U.S. and its allies.
Melita Stedman Norwood was a British civil servant, Communist Party of Great Britain member and KGB spy.
Christopher Maurice Andrew, is an Emeritus Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Cambridge with an interest in international relations and in particular the history of intelligence services.
Operation TOUCAN was a KGB/DGI public relations and disinformation campaign directed at the military government of Chile led by Augusto Pinochet, particularly the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA). The plot's twofold task was to organize sympathetic human rights activists to pressure the United Nations and generate negative press for the Pinochet regime. According to former KGB officer Vasili Mitrokhin, the plot was originally conceived by Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov. It was approved on August 10, 1976.
CounterSpy was an American magazine that published articles on covert operations, especially those undertaken by the American government. It was the official Bulletin of the Committee for Action/Research on the Intelligence Community (CARIC). CounterSpy published 32 issues between 1973 and 1984 from its headquarters in Washington DC.
The "Mitrokhin Archive" is a collection of handwritten notes, primary sources and official documents which were secretly made, smuggled, and hidden by the KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin during the thirty years in which he served as a KGB archivist in the foreign intelligence service and the First Chief Directorate. When he defected to the United Kingdom in 1992, he brought the archive with him, in six full trunks. His defection was not officially announced until 1999.
The Committee for State Security (CSS) was the main security agency for the Soviet Union from 13 March 1954 until 3 December 1991. As a direct successor of preceding agencies such as the Cheka, GPU, OGPU, NKGB, NKVD and MGB, it was attached to the Council of Ministers. It was the chief government agency of "union-republican jurisdiction", carrying out internal security, foreign intelligence, counter-intelligence and secret police functions. Similar agencies operated in each of the republics of the Soviet Union aside from the Russian SFSR, where the KGB was headquartered, with many associated ministries, state committees and state commissions.
Robert Stephen Lipka was a former army clerk at the National Security Agency (NSA) who, in 1997, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage and was sentenced to 18 years in prison. He was arrested more than 30 years after his betrayal, as there is no statute of limitations for espionage.
Soviet and Russian influence operations in Canada are clandestine operations conducted by Russian government and government-affiliated entities against Canada. These operations have continued through 2022
William Herman Schaap was an American lawyer, co-founder of the CovertAction Information Bulletin, and director of the Institute for Media Analysis.
Operation PANDORA is the name used by Russian defector Vasili Mitrokhin for an alleged active measure by the KGB against the United States during the Cold War. The intention was supposedly to start a race war that would consume and self-destruct the United States.