http://www.smh.com.au/news/0101/15/world/world11.html
Transcript shows scale of KGB penetration
Moscow: A new day dawned over Cold War Italy. It was January 21, 1966, and
Edward Heath, leader of Britain's opposition Conservative Party, was calling
on President Giuseppe Saragat in the Quirinal, once summer palace to the
popes, now the residence of the head of state of a NATO power.
The two men were old acquaintances. Among topics discussed were Charles de
Gaulle, the future of Germany and the Vietnam War.
The meeting was part of the routine business of European diplomacy at the
time. But a verbatim transcript of the two men's conversation was in Moscow
within days.
Its unearthing in the Communist Party archives 35 years later provides
compelling evidence of the extent of Soviet penetration during the Cold War
of the West, and of Italy in particular.
A senior former KGB officer and an expert on Russia's archives suggested on
Friday that the likely source was a bug in the presidential palace, a well
placed agent or an Italian Communist.
Armed with the conversation, translated into Russian, intelligence chiefs and
policy-makers in Moscow would have gained a precious insight into the
thinking of two senior European figures. Sir Edward has no recollection of
that day in Rome but expressed amazement at the document's discovery in a
Russian archive.
"We never thought at the time there was a risk of this sort of thing
happening," the former prime minister said.
The document is not without touches of farce. In a handwritten note at the
top of the first page, the then Mr Heath is misidentified twice, first as the
Japanese foreign minister.
The word "Japan" has then been crossed out and replaced by "Britain". Mr
Saragat calls de Gaulle's obsession with the threat of Germany starting a new
world war "an intellectual kink", while Mr Heath blames the French leader for
helping to stir up talk of unification in the divided state. Even more
sensitively, the Italian president criticises the Vatican for its peace
initiatives aimed at stopping the Vietnam War and voices alarm at growing
anti-American sentiment in Europe.
It is no secret that the strength of the local Communist Party gave Moscow
freedom of manoeuvre in Italy rivalled only by that in France and West
Germany.
The Telegraph, London
