- Joseph Stalin was not a man to leave anything to chance.
Years of eliminating his opponents and protecting himself from potential
challengers had instilled a keen sense of self-preservation in the Soviet
dictator and bred, as poker players put it, an unwillingness to ever "give
a sucker an even break". One of those suckers, it turns out, was Franklin
Delano Roosevelt, the United States president.
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- A new study has revealed in devastating detail how Stalin
bugged FDRís quarters during the 1945 conference at Yalta that determined
the map of post-war Europe.
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- In an article published in the latest edition of Studies
in Intelligence, the journal of the USís intelligence community,
Gary Kern writes that Stalin "had the American president pinned, examined,
and analysed like a specimen under a magnifying glass".
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- The Soviet leader knew every move, every gambit the Americans
and British would make at Yalta, and could plan his responses accordingly.
The US, argues Mr Kern, walked into a surveillance trap.
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- Whatís more, it did so twice. In 1943, the allies,
Stalin, FDR and Winston Churchill, had met in Tehran, where Stalin engineered
the conference so that FDR would stay in the Soviet delegationís
compound where his conversations could be monitored easily.
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- At Yalta, FDR was billeted at the Livadia Palace, a former
summer retreat of the tsars, where Stalinís security service, the
NKVD installed a sophisticated network of hidden microphones, ensuring
that no American conversations would be missed.
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- The US delegation ought to have known what to expect,
since a security sweep at the American embassy in Moscow the year before
had uncovered no fewer than 120 listening devices.
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- But it was not just the Americans who were under surveillance.
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- According to Mr Kern: "The British delegation settled
down in the Vorontsov Palace, 20 miles distant, where accommodations were
equally attentive. In a story with two versions - either Churchill said
that lemon juice would go nicely with his gin and tonic or his daughter,
Sarah, said that lemon juice would go nicely with the caviare - the British
woke up the next day to find a lemon tree growing on the ground."
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- "Itís bizarre. They say everything, in the
fullest detail," Stalin told Sergo Beria, the son of his chief of
police who was employed as an intelligence analyst at Tehran and Yalta,
summarising the nature and subject manner of the conversations of the US
delegation.
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- Mr Beria recalled in 1998 that even FDRís outdoor
conversations were secretly taped. "As we already had a system for
directing the microphones to a distance of 50 to 100 metres to listen,
[and] as there was no background noise, everything was quiet," he
said. "All these conversations recorded very well, and later on were
translated and processed."
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- Getting up at six each morning, Mr Beria prepared summaries
of the overheard conversations; then he met with Stalin at 8am.
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- "Stalin was interested not only in what was said,
but also in how it was said: He wanted to know the intonation, the length
of pauses, and the tone of voice of the American speakers," writes
Mr Kern, who served in the CIA directorate of operations for more than
35 years.
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- "According to Beria, Stalin prepared very carefully
for each dayís session, assembling all the reports from his intelligence
team."
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- FDRís benign and rational view of Stalin proved
to be one of his last, and arguably greatest, mistakes, even if it was
to some extent rooted in the practical realities of power politics. As
the historian Hugh Brogan puts it: "He knew that it was mere sentimentalism,
given the actual balance of forces, to talk as if the United States could
or would impose its policies on the USSR in matters of vital interest to
the latter.
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- "He said repeatedly that America would never fight
Russia just for the liberties of Eastern Europeans ... instead he favoured
friendly persuasion. He hoped, by constantly exhibiting frank, warm and
honest collaboration to the Russians, to induce them to modify the full
rigour of their policy and to persuade the Poles, Lithuanians and others
to accept the fact of Russian hegemony."
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- By trusting too much in the charm and persuasive powers
of his own personality at Yalta, FDR, argues Mr Kern, misjudged his adversary
and was guilty of allowing himself to be cheated by the dictator.
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- The communique issued at Yalta proclaimed "the establishment
of order in Europe and the rebuilding of national economic life ... which
will enable the liberated peoples to destroy the last vestiges of Nazism
and fascism and to create democratic institutions of their own choice."
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- But far from freeing the continent from dictatorship,
Yalta cleft Europe in two, paving the way for the Cold War. http://www.news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=731792003
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