One size does not fit all: rollback orthodoxy and Anglo-American covert action in Albania and Ukraine in the early Cold War

ABSTRACT

Orthodox scholarship claims the CIA-MI6 covert actions in Albania and Ukraine in the early Cold War exemplified a singular effort to rollback Soviet power in Europe. Using recently declassified files, this article presents a case study of Operation BGFiend/Valuable and Aerodynamic to challenge the existence of an aggressive rollback programme. These were limited, diverse and strategically dynamic projects that did not seek regime change in either territory. The west subverted Hoxha’s Albanian regime, focusing on intelligence collection and propaganda. In Ukraine, emphasis was on gathering intelligence, particularly to provide early warning of an anticipated Soviet invasion of Western Europe.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their detailed and constructive feedback that helped us to refine the argumentation of this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. For book-length studies of rollback operations and policy, see James Callanan, Covert Action in the Cold War: US Policy, Intelligence, and CIA Operations (London; New York: I.B.Tauris, 2010); Sarah-Jane Corke, US Covert Operations and Cold War Strategy: Truman, Secret Warfare and the CIA, 1945–53 (London; New York: Routledge, 2007); Peter Grose, Operation Rollback: America’s Secret War Behind the Iron Curtain (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000); Stephen Long, The CIA and the Soviet Bloc: Political Warfare, the Origins of the CIA and Countering Communism in Europe (London; New York: I.B. Tauris, 2014); and Gregory Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin: America’s Strategy to Subvert the Soviet Bloc, 1947–1956 (London; Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000).

2. Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin, 45–6.

3. Callanan, Covert Action, 85.

4. Corke, US Covert Operations, 2.

5. Keith Jeffery, The Secret History of MI6, 1909–1949, 705–16.

6. Rory Cormac. “The Pinprick Approach: Whitehall’s Top-Secret Anti-Communist Committee and the Evolution of British Covert Action Strategy.” Journal of Cold War Studies, 16:3 (2014), 6.

7. Rory Cormac. Disrupt and Deny: Spies, Special Forces, and the Secret Pursuit of British Foreign Policy, 38, 56.

8. Cormac, Disrupt and Deny, 76.

9. Christopher Felix. A Short Course in the Secret War, 281.

10. Stephen Long, “CIA-MI6 Psychological Warfare and the Subversion of Communist Albania in the Early Cold War.” Intelligence and National Security 35 no. 6 (2020): 787–807.

11. For example, see Lindsey A. O’Rourke, Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War (Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press, 2018); Jordan Roberts, ‘State Preferences, Viable Alternatives, and American Covert Action, 1946–1989’, Intelligence and National Security 38 no. 4 (2023): 501–24.

12. For example, see: Anna Kasten Nelson (ed.), The State Department Policy Planning Staff Papers, Vol I – III, 1947–9 (New York, 1983).

13. NSC 20/4 ‘U.S. Objectives With Respect to the USSR To Counter Soviet Threats to U.S. Security’, 23 November 1948, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, General; The United Nations, Volume 1 Part 2 (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1976), Document 60: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v01p2/d60 (hereafter FRUS); NSC 58/2 ‘United States Policy Toward the Soviet Satellite States in Eastern Europe’, 8 December 1949, White House Office, National Security Council Staff – Papers, 1948–61, Disaster File, Box 51, Eastern Europe (1), Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Abilene, Kansas (DDEL); NSC 68/2 ‘United States Objectives and Programs for National Security’, 30 September 1950, FRUS 1950, National Security Affairs; Foreign Economic Policy, Vol 1 (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1977), Document 129: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1950v01/d129.

14. NSC 20/4, FRUS, 1948, Vol. 1 Part 2.

15. NSC 4-A, “Psychological Operations,” 17 December 1947, FRUS, 1945–1950, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1996), Document 257: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945-50Intel/d247; NSC10/2 ‘Office of Special Projects’, 18 June 1948, FRUS 1945–1950, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, Document 292: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945-50Intel/d292;

16. NSC10/2, FRUS 1945–1950, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment.

17. For Albania, see in particular: CIA Subject Files – Second Release, RG263, Entry ZZ-19 at the National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MA, United States (NARA); also see FO 1093/452, FO 1093/453, FO 1093/635 and FO 1093/636, The National Archives, Kew, United Kingdom (TNA). For Ukraine, see the CIA Records Search Tool (CREST).

18. For example, see Jeffrey Burds. The Early Cold War in Soviet West Ukraine, 1944–1948 (Pittsburgh: Russian and East European Studies Program, University of Pittsburgh, 2001); Grose, Operation Rollback; Benjamin Tromly, ‘The Making of a Myth: The National Labor Alliance, Russian Émigrés, and Cold War Intelligence Activities’, Journal of Cold War Studies, 18:1 (2016): 80–111.

19. For example, in journalistic accounts, Ben Macintyre describes the Albanian operation as a ‘calamity’ while Tim Weiner claims that ‘with each failed mission, the plans became more frantic, the training more slipshod, the Albanians more desperate, their capture more certain’. Ben Macintyre. A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 137; Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of CIA (New York: Anchor, 2007). 51–2.

20. ‘Outline Plan for Project No EE-10 Code Name BGFIEND’, 22 June 1949, Box 46 Vol 2 Folder 1 (hereafter B46 V2 F1), NARA; Chief, EE-1 ‘Project BGFIEND Report’, 29 November 1951, B46 V2 F1, NARA.

21. William Strang to Ernest Bevin, ‘Greece and Albania’, 14 April 1949, FO 1093/452, TNA; extensive British records on the dispute are available at FO 371/58492 and FO 800/436, TNA.

22. ‘Project BGFIEND Review for DCI’, 8 November 1951, B46 V2 F1, NARA.

23. In particular, CIA Subject Files – Second Release, RG263, Entry ZZ-19 at NARA; also see FO 1093/452, FO 1093/453, FO 1093/635 and FO 1093/636, TNA.

24. Untitled OPC memorandum, 6 December 1949, FO1093/453, TNA; ‘OPC Plans and Operations in Albania’.

17 May 1950, B49, V15, F1, NARA.

25. Untitled OPC memorandum, December 6, 1949, FO1093/453, TNA.

26. Untitled OPC memorandum, December 6, 1949, FO1093/453, TNA.

27. Chief, EE-1 ‘Project BGFIEND Report’, 29 Nov 1951, B46 V2 F1, NARA; Memorandum by Colonel Stilwell for State Department, ‘Data from Mr. Wisner’s briefing – Webb Meeting’, 27 September 1949, B48 V14 F1, NARA.

28. Untitled OPC memorandum, 15 November 1951, B50 V19, NARA.

29. OPC memorandum from Chief, Planning Support Staff to PB I, ‘British Counterpart of BGFIEND’, 26 July 1949, B48 V13 F2, NARA.

30. OPC memorandum to Chief, VLKiva, Washington D.C., “First Team Drop into HBPixie, 11–12 November 1950,” November 14, 1950, B46 V5, NARA.

31. OPC memorandum, ‘EE-I Daily Progress Report’, 11 September 1951, B49 V18 F1, NARA.

32. OPC memorandum from Senior Representative to Chief, SE, “BGFIEND: Detailed Report on Scrapping of Obsession Mission,” October 23, 1952, B51 V23 F1, NARA.

33. Cable to Special Operations, “ALB Ops,” September 7, 1951, B49 V18 F1, NARA.

34. FO memorandum, ‘Principal Events in Albania since the Departure of the British Military Mission’, undated, FO 371/72108, TNA; Owen Pearson, Albania as Dictatorship and Democracy: From Isolation to the Kosovo War, 1946–1998 (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006), 118.

35. Long, “CIA-MI6 Psychological Warfare”: 787–807.

36. Stephen Long, “’Inexpensive to us and yet very valuable to the impoverished Albanian people,: Covert Foreign Aid and the Anglo-American Subversion of Albania, 1951–55,” Cold War History [in press].

37. COP/DDP to Chiefs of EE, SE & FE, ‘Albanian Country Plan’, 29 December 1953, B45 V1 F1, NARA.

38. Kastriot Dervishi, Sigurimi I Shtetit, 1944–1991: Historia e Policisë Politike të Regjimit Kommunist [History of the Political Police of the Communist Regime] (Tirana: Shtëpia Botuese 55, 2012).

39. Pilo Shanto, ‘Bora Filloi’ e Vërteta mbi Radiologën ‘Liqeni i Vajkalit’ [‘The Snow Started’ and the Truth about the ‘Lake Vajkal’ Radio Operation] (Tirana: Filara, 2008); [Author redacted]. “James J. Angleton, Anatoliy Golitsyn, and the ‘Monster Plot’: Their Impact on CIA Personnel and Operations.” Studies in Intelligence 55, no. 4 (2011): 41–2.

40. I am indebted to my student research assistant at XJTLU, Weiyi Zhang, for helping me quantify various details about the CIA/OPC and MI6 agent infiltration missions inside Albania.

41. CIA memorandum, ‘Project Status Report: OBLIVIOUS, July 1–31, 1955’, undated, B53 V29 F2, NARA.

42. CIA memorandum ‘CA Project Action Record: OBTEST’, July 11, 1960, B48 V10, NARA.

43. ORE 22–48 (Addendum), ‘Possibility of Direct Soviet Military Action during 1948–49’, 16 September 1948, Intelligence Publication Files, 1945–1950, RG 263, NARA.

44. Matthew Evangelista, “Commentary. The ‘Soviet Threat’: Intentions, Capabilities, and Context.” Diplomatic History 22 no. 3 (1998): 440. The intentional overestimation of Soviet ground forces in the late 1940s and 1950s was pointed out by Matthew Evangelista in the early 1980s and has since become commonly accepted. See Matthew Evangelista, “Stalin’s Postwar Army Reappraised.” International Security 7, no. 3 (1982): 110–138. Historians Phillip Karber and Jerald Combs later provided evidence that US intelligence analysts were by and large aware of the extent of Soviet postwar demobilization but justified US military plans premised on worst-case assumptions about Soviet armed forces. This spurred Evangelista to further dispute the threat poised to Western Europe by Soviet conventional forces (in ‘Commentary’).

45. For an excellent analysis of US policy towards Europe in the context of the Soviet threat see: Chris Tudda, ‘The Truth is Our Weapon’: the Rhetorical Diplomacy of Dwight D. Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006).

46. On the effectiveness of Soviet counter-insurgency strategies in Ukraine see: Ustina Markus, Soviet Counterinsurgency: A Case Study of the Guerrilla Wars in Lithuania and Western Ukraine, 1944–1953 (PhD thesis, University of London, 1992); Jeffrey Burds. “Agentura: Soviet Informants’ Networks & the Ukrainian Underground in Galicia, 1944–48.” East European Politics and Societies 11, no. 1 (1996): 89–130.

47. For an interesting but perceivably biased account of anti-Soviet resistance activities in Ukraine see: Volodymyr Viatrovych, The Ukrainian Insurgent Army: A History of Ukraine’s Unvanquished Freedom Fighters (Lviv: Center for Liberation Movement Research, 2008).

48. MGM-A-793, “Project ICON: Postwar Ukrainian Exile Organizations in Western Europe,” CIA CREST.

49. “Questionnaire on Ukrainian Emigration”.

50. “Ukrainian SSR – Operational program,” AERODYNAMIC Vol. 10 (Operations)_0072; CIA CREST.

51. A report on the first three months of the Landsberg project, sent to Rositzke by the CIA station manager at Karlsruhe, can be found in: ‘Report on the Landsberg Project’, AERODYNAMIC Vol. 10 (Operations)_0010, CIA CREST. News of the project’s termination can be found in several documents, including: ‘An Evaluation of the Aerodynamic Project’, AERODYNAMIC Vol. 2_0030, CIA CREST.

52. “Report on meetings with CASSOWARY 2 and 15,” AERODYNAMIC Vol. 43_0012, CIA CREST.

53. ‘An Evaluation of the AERODYNAMIC Project’, AERODYNAMIC Vol. 2_0030, CIA CREST.

54. Memorandum for the chief of Soviet Russia division, “Evaluation of the AERODYNAMIC Project,” AERODYNAMIC Vol. 12 (Operations)_0010, CIA CREST.

55. Memorandum for the chief of the Soviet Russia division, “An Evaluation of the AERODYNAMIC Project,” AERODYNAMIC Vol. 2_0030, CIA CREST.

56. Memorandum to Chief, DYCLUCK, “Monthly Survey Report, BGFIEND: 15 April-15 June, 1952,” 19 June 1952, B51 V22 F1, NARA.

57. Untitled MI6 memorandum, 25 October 1950, B49 V15 F2; Nigel Bicknell to Sir Anthony Rumbold, 9 November 1949, FO 1093/452, TNA.

58. Memorandum from Senior Representative to Yatsevich, “BGFIEND/Operational: BGFIEND Field Operational Planning for Uprising in Albania,” 23 December 1952, B51 V23 F2, NARA.

59. For a brief but exhaustive account of the different approaches taken by the Americans and the British in regards to the Ukrainian emigration and Stepan Bandera in particular, see: “Our relations with the Ukrainian Nationalists and the Crisis over Bandera,” attachment to EGQA-37253, AERODYNAMIC Vol. 11_0045; CIA CREST.

60. For example, see Vasil Andoni’s recollections in Nicholas Bethell, Robert Elsie and Betjullah Destani (eds.), The Albanian Operation of the CIA and MI6, 1949–1953: Conversations with Participants in a Venture Betrayed (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2016), 24–25.

61. For British intercepts of Albanian government communications, see HW 75/61, TNA; for an example of western efforts to gather intelligence about internal Albanian conditions from the French, see ‘Notes on an Interview with Mademoiselle LEHA, acting French Consul at Tirana’, undated, FO 536/66, TNA.

62. Long, “CIA-MI6 Psychological Warfare,” 801–802.

63. For example, see Senior Representative to Chief, SE, ‘BGFIEND Monthly Survey Report, 15 October-14 November 1952’, 17 November 1952, B51 V23 F2, NARA; Shanto, ‘Bora Filloi’.

64. Memorandum to Chief, SE, ‘OBOPUS/PARAM: Recapitulation of OBOPUS Operations, 1 January to 31 December 1953’, undated, B52 V27 F1, NARA; Memorandum from Chief, SE, to Senior Representative, ‘SHAM/BGFIEND: Security Review of APPLE Team Operations’, 21 October 1953, B47 V6 F1.

65. See, for example, Rositzke’s account in his autobiography: Harry Rositzke, The CIA’s Secret Operations (New York: Reader’s Digest Press, 1977), 35. His statements are supported by the conclusions in the CIA internal study of the Ukrainian operation: ‘An Evaluation of the AERODYNAMIC Project’, Aerodynamic Vol. 2_0030, CIA CREST.

66. Nicholas Bethell, The Great Betrayal: The Untold Story of Kim Philby’s Biggest Coup (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1984), 98–103; Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends, 138; Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 52.

67. Felix, A Short Course in the Secret War, 286–91; Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, In Spies We Trust: The Story of Western Intelligence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 118–19.

68. Enver Hoxha, The Anglo-American Threat to Albania: Memoirs of the National Liberation War (Tirana: 8 Nëntori, 1982), 430.

69. For an early introduction of this concept see: Callanan, Covert Action, 60–1.

70. Corke, US Covert Operations, 108–9.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Eisenhower Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Stephen Long

Stephen Long is an Assistant Professor in International Relations at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) in Suzhou, China. His first book The CIA and the Soviet Bloc: Political Warfare, the Origins of the CIA and Countering Communism in Europe was published by I.B. Tauris in 2014. He is currently writing a monograph on CIA-MI6 covert action in Albania in the early Cold War.

Francesco Cacciatore

Francesco Cacciatore holds a PhD in History from the University of Westminster. He has extensively researched US covert operations in Europe in the Early Cold War, including the stay-behind network ‘Gladio’ in Italy and the émigré-based operation AERODYNAMIC in Ukraine and AENOBLE in Russia.