Operation Aerodynamics: how the CIA looked for Ukrainians with anti-Soviet sentiments - ForumDaily
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Operation Aerodynamics: how the CIA looked for Ukrainians with anti-Soviet sentiments

Since the late 1950s, the CIA conducted Operation Aerodynamics to stir up anti-Soviet sentiment in Ukraine, says Air force with reference to The Guardian.

Photo: Shutterstock

As part of the operation, the agency was looking at the Olympics for Ukrainian athletes who wanted to flee the Soviet Union.

In this they were helped by the American Dave Syme, one of the best athletes of his time.

Something has long been known about his connections with the CIA. He told this to writer David Maranis, as mentioned in his obituary in the New York Times when he died in 2016.

More information surfaced when the CIA began to gradually declassify its files.

Then the researcher Austin Duckworth revealed one of the strangest sports stories of the twentieth century, the newspaper writes.

Ukrainian nationalists and the CIA

Syme was one of those who implemented a CIA plan during the 1960 Olympics in Rome called Operation Aerodynamics.

“Aerodynamics” was a broad program designed to promote anti-Soviet sentiment in Ukraine, the publication notes.

The program had two goals: to encourage new and existing "anti-Soviet, anti-communist, Ukrainian nationalist sentiments" and to collect intelligence on "Soviet Ukraine and the USSR as a whole to meet US needs."

This was led by a group of Ukrainian emigrants, code-named AECASSOWARY.

The number AECASSOWARY/2 was “Ukrainian nationalist” Nikolai Lebed, the publication writes.

After the war, the CIA helped him emigrate to the United States, where he was appointed chairman of the non-governmental research center Prolog, which produced, printed and distributed anti-Soviet literature in Ukraine.

On the subject: 'Intelligence success of the century': the CIA overheard half the world using a device created by the Russians

Olympics as part of the plan

Operation Aerodynamics agents were present at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, where they distributed their literature to athletes and fans from the Soviet Union.

In Rome in 1960, they had a more ambitious plan, writes The Guardian. The CIA wanted to convince Ukrainian athletes from the Soviet team to flee west.

Planning began in 1959. The swan asked his friend Bishop Ivan the Buchko in the Vatican to organize everything locally.

Butchko promised to organize a congress of “oppressed nations.” According to his instructions, “two Ukrainian Catholic priests dressed in civilian clothes” were to be present among the public in order to establish contacts with the inhabitants of the Soviet Union.

The CIA has already selected several potential runaways during international athletics competitions in Philadelphia in July 1959. The USSR sent 59 athletes there, and Lebed’s people contacted them, reporting on a meeting with Ukrainians from the Soviet team.

Among those they met were Tamara Press, a shot put athlete, Igor Petrenko, a pole vaulter, and Igor Ter-Ovanesyan, a long jumper.

Of these, Ter-Hovhannisyan seemed the most promising for the plans of the CIA.

Saima was assigned to establish contact with him. But when another agent, acting too bluntly, intervened, Ter-Hovhannisyan was frightened that the KGB was watching him and interrupted his communication.

On the subject: The CIA has declassified the document of the Cold War: there was a recipe for borscht

Hide and Seek with the KGB

The efforts of the Swan team to find an approach to the Soviet team were also hindered by the KGB.

Complex games in the style of “hide and seek” developed in Rome, the publication writes.

The CIA feared that the KGB was sending “baits” to Lebed’s agents, who were being followed by camera operators.

However, in two and a half weeks of the Olympics, the Swan team managed to conduct 155 conversations with Soviet athletes, journalists and tourists.

Some of them were very short. When gymnast Larisa Latynina was asked why the Ukrainians do not have their own Olympic team, she replied: “That’s not for me.”

I had a little more luck with journalists, for example with the sports editor of the newspaper “Soviet Ukraine”.

As the editor's wife told the agent, it was a boring propaganda publication that "gave the impression that Ukrainians were mainly interested in pigs and cows."

The editor was persuaded to take a brochure entitled “Friendship, Peace, Freedom.” He promised to pass it on to others, but when he next saw the agent, he complained that its contents were “completely counter-revolutionary” and asked: “Do you know what will happen to me if someone takes it from me and reads it?”

It appears that all the CIA was able to gather during this operation were a few home addresses in Ukraine. Soon articles and books were sent there from the United States, in particular “Animal Farm” by George Orwell.

Igor Ter-Hovhannisyan never fled to the west. He became a trainer, and Dave Syme became a successful ophthalmologist.

The Aerodynamics program was discontinued in the 1980s, The Guardian concludes.

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