December 8, 2008
by intelNews
The National Security Archive has posted a brief analysis of declassified documents relating to the last official meeting between Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev and US President Ronald Reagan. The meeting, which took place at Governor’s Island, New York, in December 1988, was also attended by then US President-Elect George Bush, Sr. The released documents consist of three separate batches, namely previously secret high-level Soviet memoranda, CIA reports and estimates, as well as detailed transcripts of the meeting. According to the report’s editors, Soviet memoranda reveal that at the time of the meeting “Gorbachev was prepared for rapid arms control progress leading towards nuclear abolition”. The extent of the Soviet leader’s commitment stunned even the CIA, whose estimates had not anticipated such massive unilateral offer to disarm. The Archive’s press release blames the then President-Elect George Bush, Sr., for failing “to meet Gorbachev even half-way”, thus essentially preventing “dramatic reductions in nuclear weapons, fissile materials, and conventional armaments, to the detriment of international security today”. Read more of this post
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Bulgarian investigation reveals radio personalities worked for secret services
December 18, 2008 by intelNews Leave a comment
A Bulgarian commission examining files from the nation’s communist period has revealed the names of 66 employees of state-owned Bulgarian National Radio (BNR), who worked for the country’s secret services before 1989. The individuals, who previously worked as operatives or officers for Bulgaria’s Committee for State Security (CSS), include a former BNR deputy general secretary, as well as a former general secretary and numerous media celebrities. Prominent among numerous controversial allegations of CCS operations during the Cold War is the 1978 assassination in London of exiled Bulgarian writer Georgi Markov, with the aid of a poisoned pellet shot from a modified umbrella. CSS has also been accused of complicity in the 1981 assassination attempt against the late Pope John Paul II. [JF]
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Bulgaria, Bulgarian National Radio, Cold War, Committee for State Security (Bulgaria), Georgi Markov, News