Operation Splinter Factor

by Stewart Steven

CIA intrigue tended to divide opinion in the world into pro-American or pro-Soviet camps. Despite the universalist claims of the ideologies of both blocs, both tended to view each other as dominant in their respective spheres of influence. The CIA's Allen Dulles even used his Eastern bloc contacts to purge Eastern European communist parties of their moderate, nationalistic minded leadership. Under "Operation Splinter Factor" Dulles' double agent in the Polish secret police, Josef Swiatlo, named prominent liberal Communists as CIA agents, based on their cooperation with U.S. intelligence during WWII in the struggle against Nazi Germany.

Genres: History

Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 1 out of 5]

So this may have been a useful text when it was released in the 70s but today it's an outdated apologia for Allen Dulles and the CIA.

The basic gist is that the CIA used the opportunity provided by a member of the Polish secret police wanting to defect in order to plant fake evidence of an anti Soviet conspiracy within the ranks of the governments of Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Czech Republic. They heightened this by planting evidence that an American with strong communist sympathies, Noel Field, was actually the ringleader CIA agent for the non-existant spy ring. They allowed him to be arrested, planted evidence of his guilt, and used their couple of defector agents to plant evidence tying high level communist officials they wanted to get rid of to Field. This led to hundreds of arrests and dozens of executions and the operation wasn't fully exposed until the US agent in Poland, Swiatlo, finally defected and fled to the US.

My ultimate takeaway remains what it was when I first heard of this operation, that while it, along with the excesses of the purges in the 30s, does point to a flaw in Soviet organization of giving too much power to the internal security services, its not because of some "inherent totalitarian paranoia" when there was an actual conspiracy of sabotage and assassination during the 30s and then the US planted all this evidence of another ring 20 years later. So there were definitely errors and crimes committed but the ultimate driver that motivated those errors was because of the constant attacks and subversion by external powers.

You can find decent summaries of Operation Splinter Factor in better books on the CIA like The Devil's Chessboard, Killing Hope, and others.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book recounts how Soviet counterintelligence manipulated the C.I.A. and anti-communist paranoia in the immediate postwar period in order to purge the Eastern European Left of its nationalist elements and install pro-Soviet regimes. A cautionary tale, it deserves retelling.