Know the Facts: Active Measures, SIG and The Ten Fundamental Principles Of "Dezinformatsiya"

The Ten Fundamental Principles Of "Dezinformatsiya" was part of the "Active Measures" program which began in the 1920s, as instituted by Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (29 March 1899 – 23 December 1953) who was a Georgian Bolshevik and Soviet politician, Marshal of the Soviet Union and state security administrator, chief of the Soviet security, and chief of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD). Beria was the longest-lived and most influential of Stalin's secret police chiefs, wielding his most substantial influence during and after World War II.

As early as 1923, Joseph Stalin ordered the creation of a "Special Disinformation Office", however, it should be noted that it was the general practice of Beria to work from the shadows and attribute his work to his superiors, as can be seen in his climb in party status from his other earlier works of deception.

It is therefore theorised by many historians, that Joseph Stalin himself coined the term “disinformation” in 1923 by giving it a French sounding name in order to deceive other nations into believing it was a practice invented in France, since the noun “disinformation” does not originate from Russian, it is a translation of the French word désinformation.

The objective of the "Active measures" program included offensive programs such as disinformation, propaganda, deception, sabotage, destabilization and espionage. These programs were based on foreign policy priorities of the Soviet Union. The purpose of "Active measures" was to influence the course of world events, abroad and domestically, in addition to collecting intelligence and producing revised assessments of it. "Active measures" ranged "from media manipulations the strategy of  "Dezinformatsiya" to special actions involving various degrees of violence".

As part of the Active Measures campaign in 1954 the KGB began organizing “peace” movements in the West by using well-meaning “useful idiots.” to weaken democracies through what was an international organization created in 1949 by the Cominform named the World Peace Council. The organization had the stated goals of advocating for universal disarmament, sovereignty, independence, peaceful co-existence, and campaigns against imperialism, weapons of mass destruction and all forms of discrimination.

The WPC currently states its goals as: Actions against imperialist wars and occupation of sovereign countries and nations; prohibition of all weapons of mass destruction; abolition of foreign military bases; universal disarmament under effective international control; elimination of all forms of colonialism, neo-colonialism, racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination; respect for the right of peoples to sovereignty and independence, essential for the establishment of peace; non-interference in the internal affairs of nations; peaceful co-existence between states with different political systems; negotiations instead of use of force in the settlement of differences between nations.

“In today’s world when nuclear arms have made mili-tary force obsolete, terrorism should become our main weapon” KGB General Aleksandr Sakharovsky (Pacepa, 2006.)

A former KGB agent Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov who defected to Canada in 1970 defined "... Active Measures or ideological subversion as:

“changing the perception of reality to such an extent that despite of the abundance of information no one is able to come to sensible conclusions.”

“A person who was demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell nothing to him. Even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents, with pictures; he will refuse to believe it.”

"They are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern [alluding to Pavlov]. You can not change their mind even if you expose them to authentic information. Even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still can not change the basic perception and the logic of behavior."

Retired KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin, former head of Foreign Counterintelligence for the KGB (1973–1979), described the "active measures" program as "the heart and soul of Soviet intelligence":

"Not intelligence collection, but subversion: active measures to weaken the West, to drive wedges in the Western community alliances of all sorts, particularly NATO, to sow discord among allies, to weaken the United States in the eyes of the people of Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and thus to prepare ground in case the war really occurs."

According to the Mitrokhin Archives, active measures was taught in the Andropov Institute of the KGB situated at Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) headquarters in Yasenevo District of Moscow. Vasili Nikitich Mitrokhin, was a major and senior archivist for the Soviet Union's foreign intelligence service, the First Chief Directorate of the KGB, copied documents certifying that the head of Soviet foreign intelligence. 

In light of the massive defeat of Arab armies, with their billions in Soviet Weaponry the Soviet Union in the 1956 Sinai and Six Day Wars, together with the withdrawal and lessing of sympathy for communism by Israelis, wanted to "repair the prestige" of "our Arab friends" at the hands of the Israelis.  Therefore, General Alexander Sakharovsky, who was head of the First Chief Directorate (foreign intelligence) of the KGB from 1955 until 1970 set out to destroy Israel through operation "SIG". 

He did so by helping them organize terrorist operations that would humiliate Israel through the use of the main KGB asset -- Yasser Arafat, who was the co-founder of Fatah. Yuri Andropov described Yasser Arafat to Pacepa as a; "devoted Marxist-Leninist since his days in the membership of the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) from 1952 to 1956." .  

Lt. General Ion Mihai Pacepa described the operation "SIG" ("Zionist Governments") which was devised in 1972, to turn the whole Islamic world against Israel and the United States in his meeting with KGB chairman Yuri Andropov who stated:

"a billion adversaries could inflict far greater damage on America than could a few millions. We needed to instill a Nazi-style hatred for the Jews throughout the Islamic world, and to turn this weapon of the emotions into a terrorist bloodbath against Israel and its main supporter, the United States."

SIG is the Russian acronym for Sionistskiye Gosudarstva, or "Jewish (or Zionist) Government" which was a part of the KGB "Active Measures or ideological subversion campaign that was devised in 1967 to turn the Arab world against Israel and the United States and to disrupt the "Western Democracies". 

The KGB SIG mode of operation was to incite hatred and create chaos by the utilization of journalists to disseminate false information, as well as direct military support (funding, arms, training) to terrorist groups against the Jewish (Western Orientated Democracy) as means to create upheaval in their support of their "Client nations" in the Middle East and to replace (Negate) Israel with an Arab Muslim (PLO and Hamas) state. In order to achieve the overall goal of the campaign highly anti-Semitic conspiracy tropes from Western culture as well as vile anti-Zionist propaganda was incorporated  to spread the idea that the state of Israel was an oppressive, imperialist state which was built on unjust terms. operation “SIG” (“Zionist Governments”). 

Operation SIG has been as extremely successful KGB Soviet/Russian campaign to disrupt democracy by creating a subversion of Western Society and formenting a recurrence of deep anti-Israel/Zionism antisemitism, particularly on campuses in rallies, and even in some houses of worship, Jews are called the new Nazis

As an integral part of the KGB "Active Measures or ideological subversion campaign to disrupt the "Western Democracies" in the mid to late 1960's young college student activists on American campuses were enthusiastically following the North Vietnamese "line" in re-framing the Vietnam war from a Communist assault on the south to a struggle for national liberation.

“Progressive” activists on American campuses, enthusiastically following the line of North Vietnamese operatives, had succeeded in re-framing the Vietnam War from a Communist conquest of the South into a struggle for national liberation.

The KGB agents who created and led the KGB’s anti-Israel campaign, Operation SIG were Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, Major Anatoliy Mikhaylovich Golitsyn, Major Vasily Mitrokhin, Colonel Alexan-der Mikhailovich Orlov, and Czech Intelligence Officer Ladislav Bittman.

The Ten Fundamental Principles Of "Dezinformatsiya" 

1) The "Big Lie" - Always chose the greater lie at first over the lesser one, so that the masses (the listening or reading audience) can more readily accept it as fact and to make it harder for the real truth to be told.

2) Focus - Use one or two readily "acceptable"or"actual" events as the basis of "truth." 

3) Repetition - Always repeat the same line in your retelling of the event to to lend further credibility to hide the "lie".

4) Accusation - "Blame" be consistent in your libel of the "scapegoat". Do not leave room for doubt and use the three "D's"; Debase, Defame and Dehumanize." 

5) Issues - Critical or Crucial - events or concerns have no "gray areas" leaving no room for doubt regarding what immediate action should be taken. 

6) Terminology (Loaded language ) - Rhetoric used to influence an audience by using words and phrases with strong connotations associated with them in order to elicit an emotional response and/or exploit stereotypes. Provocative words like: "Genocide" "Apartheid" "Occupation".

7) Emotional triggers - the use of specific phrases or slogans that will induce an intense emotional reaction based on; memories, experiences, or events.

8) Denigrate - vilify, defame, denounce, malign, stigmatize and skewer your "scapegoat" as undesirables

9) Disregard Facts - Ignore intellectuals and reasonable arguments; target the least-able minded with powerful emotional pitches.

10) Unethical - be disingenuous, unscrupulous, amoral with no limitation -"The end justifies the means."