Operation Aerodynamic

A certificate on the activities of the OUN-UPA No. 113 dated July 30, 93 is stored in the SBU archives. It indicates that back in 1944, representatives of the British intelligence Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) made contact with the UPA command. Therefore, the leadership of the OUN "zeros bet on the third light of the world between England and the United States from one side and the Soviet Union - from the West, as I can imagine the vision of their plans. So, in the document “Yak rozumіti conception of supreme power with our nationally-voluntary struggle”, it is stated: “My roztsіnyu third third sіvіtu vіyna yak іmlіznіst іzusnuvannya іnpriyatnogo zdobudіvіvіvіvіvіvіvіyvіvіvіvі ... ... ^[1] .

Even before the surrender of Nazi Germany in February 1945, the intelligence services of the United States and Great Britain began to carry out measures to preserve certain officials from among the personnel of the SS , SD and other structures that possess valuable information for intelligence.

In addition to those who were able to identify in the camps of prisoners of war and displaced persons, there were those who offered their services themselves. So, in 1945, among them was Mykola Lebed , who offered his services to representatives of the US special services in Rome , where he moved from Vienna with his family. ^[2] In the American occupation zone of Germany, representatives of the special services were approached by an iron cross of the second class ^[3] chaplain of the Nachtigal battalion Ivan Grinyokh and head of the OUN (b) propaganda service Myroslav Prokop ^[4] . All of them were members of the OUN-controlled (b) Foreign Representative Office of the Ukrainian Head Forbidden Rada (UGVR) - Swan in this structure served as the secretary general of overseas affairs, Grinokh was vice president.

In March 1945, in Vienna , still under German control, senior representatives of the OUN (b), among whom were Prokop and Swan, met with the leader of the OUN (b) Stepan Bandera . At the meeting, the prospects of activity were discussed and, based on its results, the OUN (b) Overseas Center — the OUN Central Scientific Center was created ^[5] .

Representatives of the OUN (b) proposed a package of information that included a significant amount of information on the anti-Soviet movement controlled by it and its agent network. ^{[6] [4]}

Already at the beginning of September 1945, representatives of the US Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) began to survey members of the UPA who had come from the Soviet occupation zone . ^[7] . After Churchill’s March speech in 1946, which proclaimed the beginning of the Cold War , anti-Soviet groups in Eastern Europe began to be of particular operational interest to the special services of the United States and Great Britain.

At the end of 1946, when the Drogobych and Lutsk supra-district wires were liquidated, the OUN GUBB of the Ministry of Internal Affairs seized the September OUN directives, which set the task of starting to collect data on the course of demobilization of the Soviet Army, the quantitative composition of the armed forces, the saturation of the territory of Western Ukraine with military units, and the political and moral state troops, the work of military factories, the deployment of strategic raw materials warehouses, etc. ^{[8] [9]}

Around the same time, a 126-page pamphlet by Mykola Lebed “UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army)” was published in Munich , which described the heroic struggle of the Ukrainian national liberation movement fighting against the Nazis and Communists. The UPA , in accordance with this booklet, had hopes for the forces of Nazi Germany, but after 1941 became disillusioned with its policies. CIC noted the usefulness of this publication as "comprehensive information on the subject" ^{[10] [9]} .

By 1947, about 250 thousand Ukrainians ended up in camps for displaced people in the western occupation zones in Germany, Austria and Italy. Many of these people were members of the OUN or sympathized with her. After 1947, UPA fighters began to infiltrate the American occupation zone through Czechoslovakia. Most of them were Bandera, many of whom during the war took an active part in the struggle against the communist and Nazi regimes. Camps for displaced people became a place for the dissemination of ideas of Ukrainian nationalists, and Bandera set the task of establishing control over Ukrainian emigrant circles.

The Soviet counterintelligence became aware of the intensification of the actions of the OUN (b) in the US occupation zone in Germany and the presence of Stepan Bandera there. The Soviet side appealed to the US occupation authorities to extradite the OUN (b) personnel as criminals who collaborated with the Nazis and were involved in the nationalist movement in the USSR. The CIC representative recommended that the military administration not extradite Bandera, on the basis that " such actions will destroy the confidence of all the anti-Bolshevik forces that the US has." As a result, the American side "could not find the whereabouts of these individuals." ^[9]

However, as a result of Bandera’s personal appeal through I. Grignoch in November 1947, the CIC moved M. Lebed and his family from Rome to “safer” Munich. It was noted that the loss of Cygnus “would have caused indirect damage to the United States”, since it is an important source of information about resistance in Ukraine ^[11] .

In Munich, I. Grignoch and N. Lebed continued their collaboration with CIC as informants. The CIC also used OUN (b) personnel to identify possible Soviet agents among the displaced persons in the camps. In October 1947, Yuri Lopatinsky made a trip to the Deggendorf camp for displaced persons. At the end of 1947, an emissary of the OUN (b) was sent to the Ukrainian SSR with instructions from American intelligence to reorganize the actions of the OUN / UPA. In addition to the instructions, he was supposed to transmit an informative letter to Shukhevych , which promised the fast-paced underground war of the OUN / UPA that the Western countries would soon war against the USSR ^{[12] [9]} .

With even greater cooling of relations between the USSR and its former allies in Europe, a military threat began to grow and already in the spring of 1948 the CIA was preparing to start a war with the USSR ^[13] . As part of the ICON operation, the CIA studied more than 30 different emigrant groups and recommended using the “Grignoch-Swan group ... as the most suitable for covert operations” against the USSR. In the operation , codenamed CARTEL, launched in 1948, OUN (b) was chosen as the main partner. The CIA provided financial, material support and training facilities, as well as training agents and their further airborne deployment to the USSR ^[14] . Soon the operation was codenamed AERODYNAMIC ^[9] .

British MI6 also joined the operation, working directly with Bandera, who had rather tense relations with the Swan group by that time due to the appropriation of their monetary assets by them ^[15] .

Due to the life threat to Nikolai Lebed (which at that time was not so much from the Soviet special services as from "former colleagues"), the CIA decided to transfer him to the United States, while I. Grinoch was left to coordinate activities in Munich. On October 4, 1949, Swan, along with his family (daughter and wife), with the CIA issued emigration documents, arrived in the United States to become the main contact person in the AERODYNAMIC operation. He settled in New York, he was granted a permanent residence permit, and then American citizenship. This provided him with security against assassination attempts and the opportunity to return to the United States after business trips to Europe, and also allowed him to negotiate with Ukrainian emigrant circles. The fact that among the Ukrainians in New York he was considered responsible for the "mass killings of Ukrainians, Poles and Jews" was not discussed ^{[16] [9]} .

The direct paid agents of the CIA were 6 senior members of the Overseas leadership of the OUN (b) / UGVR.

The first stage of the operation included the penetration of Ukrainian agents back into the CIA by Ukrainian agents. By January 1950, the Office of Special Operations (OSO ) and its cover operations department ( Office of Policy Coordination, OPC ) took part in the operation. In 1949, it was established that in Ukraine there was an organized and well-conspired underground movement, which was even larger and better developed than anticipated in earlier reports. Particular joy was caused by the high level of training in the UPA , its ability to take further actions and the extraordinary news that active resistance to the Soviet regime was steadily spreading to the east, beyond the borders of the former Polish territory ^[17] .

The CIA decided to expand its operations to support, develop and use the Ukrainian liberation movement for resistance and intelligence. “ In view of the spread and activity of the resistance movement in Ukraine ,” said Frank Wiesner, head of the cover operations department, “ we considered this project a high priority .” According to the department (which did not completely correspond to the real state of affairs), the UPA allegedly acted in many regions of Ukraine, was popular among Ukrainians and was able to put up to 100 thousand soldiers in the event of a Western war against the USSR ^{[18] [9]} .

In fact, by 1949, all large UPA units (smokers and hundreds) were defeated, and the remaining groups sat in caches, mainly caring for their own survival.

By the beginning of the active phase of the AERODYNAMIC operation, the OUN (b) underground in the southeastern regions of Poland , after the criminal operation Vistula, was already suppressed, but large units still operated in the western regions of the Ukrainian SSR.

With the receipt of operational information about the cooperation of the OUN (b) with the Western special services of the Ministry of State Security of the USSR organized a radio game with the Western centers of the OUN. One of the operations of the MGB of the Ukrainian SSR on OUN (b) received the code name "Link" . As a result, agents of the Western special services aimed at establishing ties with the revolutionary liberation forces in the USSR were guaranteed to meet with the "representatives" of these forces - and disappeared without a trace for those who sent them. By the end of 1950, the CIA reports indicated "the confirmed existence of a well-developed and reliable underground movement" in Ukraine ^[9] . Washington was particularly pleased with the "high degree of preparation" of the UPA structures (actually liquidated in 1949) and their readiness for conducting large-scale guerrilla actions against the "Soviet regime" and for " further stable spread of activity to the east - beyond the borders of the former Polish territories " ^[19] . According to Frank Wiesner, secretary of operations operations unit chief, from the end of World War II until 1951, the OUN / UPA " managed to eliminate about 35,000 Soviet military personnel and members of the Communist Party ."

However, in reality, by 1951, in the Ukrainian SSR, there were both the legendary "district and district leadership of the OUN" and separate "underground groups" of the MGB who met American intelligence envoys from that side of the Iron Curtain ^[20] . It was from them that Wiesner received “valuable information”. Thus, significant US budget funds were allocated for operations to support the UPA “structures” created by the MGB of the Ukrainian SSR ^{[21] [9]} .

In total, during the operational measures of the Soviet counterintelligence from 1951 to 1959, as part of Operation Link, the MGB of the Ukrainian SSR managed to neutralize 33 CIA and British intelligence agents (18 of them were killed or committed suicide during detention). Some of them were able to revert and engage in radio games ^{[22] [9]} .

By 1954, during a radio game, the Ministry of State Security of the Ukrainian SSR managed to deepen the split between supporters of Bandera and the UGVR - the last of which the "Ukrainian underground" transferred all powers to represent itself in the international arena. As a result, MI6 ceased cooperation with Bandera, and the CIA - the aggressive phase of the AERODYNAMIC operation ^[18] .

Prologue

Since 1953, under the leadership of Lebed and the control of the CIA, the ideological struggle was intensified. By this time, Swan himself lived in New York , and his children attended a Catholic college in the affluent area of Upper Manhattan . A “scientific group” was created, the main task of which was to collect “Ukrainian history and literature”, finance and prepare for publishing newspapers, radio programs and books for distribution to the Ukrainian SSR. In 1954, Grignoch spoke on behalf of the nations enslaved by communism at the hearings of the US Congress on "Communist Aggression." In 1956, the “Swan Science Group” was legalized in New York State as the “nonprofit research and publishing association Prolog.” This allowed the CIA to channel funds from “private philanthropists” without tax formalities into its activities. Subsequently, it became the Prolog Research Corporation and changed its tax status to avoid excessive attention of tax inspectors to financial flows ^[18] .

In Munich, under the leadership of Grignoch, a branch of the Prologue was founded - German. Ukrainische Gesellschaft für Auslandsstudien, EV (Ukrainian Society for the Study Abroad). By 1955, radio broadcasts were broadcast from Athens to the target audience in the Ukrainian SSR, leaflets were scattered over the territory of the Ukrainian SSR. To distribute the desired information, mailing lists of publications published by the Prolog were widely used. In 1957 alone, Prologue released 1,200 radio programs (70 broadcast hours per month) and distributed 200,000 newspapers and 5,000 pamphlets promoting nationalism .

Representatives of the Ukrainian diaspora were involved in the work. After the removal of severe restrictions on entry into the USSR, representatives of the Ukrainian diaspora who visited the USSR, attracted by Prolog, also provided intelligence information. Representatives for conducting targeted activities were sent to international events outside the USSR with the participation of representatives of the Ukrainian SSR “Prologue”. The information obtained as a result of such activities was transmitted to the CIA. In 1960, Anatol Kaminsky, prepared by the CIA, was involved in the work of the Prologue (he left Lviv with German troops in 1944). By 1966, Kaminsky created a network of informants in Europe and the USA, working with Soviet Ukrainians both in the Ukrainian SSR and when they left for Western countries. Since 1966, he became the head of operations for Prolog. The information Prolog received in the 1960s ranged from data on poets and dissidents to missile and military aviation locations in Western Ukraine. By the beginning of the 70s of the XX century, according to one of the leading officers of the CIA, “Prologue” became “a means for carrying out CIA operations in the Ukrainian SSR and against 40 million of its population ” ^[23] .

In 1975, Lebed formally resigned, continuing to occupy the posts of adviser and consultant both in the Prologue and in the ZP OUN (b) / UGVR.

In 1977, President Carter ’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, helped expand the program because of what he called “impressive dividends” and “targeting specific audiences in a targeted area.” In the 1980s, Prolog expanded its operations to other nationalities of the Soviet Union, including Soviet dissident Jews.

In June 1985, the Office of Government Accountability mentioned the name Lebed in a report on the Nazis and their accomplices who settled in the United States with the help of American intelligence agencies. In the same year, the Special Investigation Agency of the Ministry of Justice investigated the Swan case. The CIA was worried that the exposure of Cygnus could compromise the QRPLUMB, and failure to defend Cygnus could cause outrage among Ukrainian emigrants.

In 1990 , when the collapse of the USSR was already close, the operation, which by that time was called QRPLUMB, was completed. A settlement was made with the employees, the amount of which amounted to 1.75 million US dollars. The " prologue " continued to exist, but was already financed independently ^[24] .

In January 2017, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency published a large number of materials previously considered classified. Among them were many documents relating to the CIA’s relations with Ukrainian nationalists. It turns out that American intelligence agents established contact with the leadership of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) immediately after the war, in the second half of the 40s; but even more surprisingly, this connection was interrupted only in the early 90s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union. One of the earliest documents is dated April 1947. An unknown agent (his name is erased) reports on terrorist acts committed on the territory of Ukraine. A power station has been blown up in Lviv, and a hydroelectric power station has been blown up in Korsun-Shevchenkovsky. A large number of civilian casualties are reported. The addressee of the report is also jammed. Given the lack of reports of terrorist attacks in the Soviet media, it can be assumed that the Soviet authorities decided to shut up the information so as not to cause panic among the population ^[25] .