Dispatches from Prague’s Archives: Watching the Jackals
BOOK REVIEW: Watching The Jackals: Prague’s Covert Liaisons With Cold War Terrorists And Revolutionaries
By Daniela Richterova / Georgetown University Press (Georgetown Studies in Intelligence History)
Reviewed by: Jean-Thomas Nicole
The Reviewer — Jean-Thomas Nicole is a Policy Advisor with Public Safety Canada. The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policies or positions of Public Safety Canada or the Canadian government.
REVIEW — Dr. Daniela Richterova is Senior Lecturer in Intelligence Studies at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. Her research and teaching focus on Cold War intelligence history as well as contemporary issues related to intelligence liaison, covert action, counterterrorism intelligence, and intelligence analysis.
A leading expert among a new generation of intelligence and security scholars, Dr Richterova specializes notably in the history of Cold War espionage and state relations with terrorists and revolutionaries. She regularly publishes in prestigious academic and media outlets, including International Affairs and Foreign Policy.
Following this orientation, her first book, Watching the Jackals, part of the remarkable Georgetown Studies in Intelligence History collection, delves thus successfully, with great details and insight, into Czechoslovakia’s relationship with Cold War jackals associated with the Palestinian cause. It primarily interrogates Prague’s diplomatic, security, and intelligence liaisons with these high-profile terrorists and revolutionaries.
Similar indeed to wild jackals, the perpetrators of international terrorism of the late Cold War era were territorial about their beliefs and causes, chose their targets with much precision, and attacked in packs. Much like the fictional Jackal —the protagonist of Frederick Forsyth’s 1971 bestseller The Day of the Jackal—Cold War terrorists were enigmatic, prone to targeting high-ranking officials and symbolic targets, and feared by powerful governments.
As well, this book draws interestingly on thousands of Czechoslovak communist-era foreign policy, intelligence, and security records collected across five Czech and Slovak archives, most crucially the Security Services Archive in Prague (Archiv bezpečnostnich složek, or ABS), which holds millions of records of the Czechoslovak communist-era secret service, the StB. Despite the importance and accessibility of this archive, its material has not yet been widely utilized in academic works available in the English language. Furthermore, this is the first book based on the voluminous recently declassified collections on the Middle East and international terrorism.
As Christopher Andrew, the Official historian of MI5 and coauthor of The Mitrokhin Archive rightly underlines in the foreword, Daniela Richterova’s main source for this pathbreaking book is the most important Cold War archive to become available in recent years, that of the domestic and foreign intelligence service of communist Czechoslovakia. About 99 percent of communist-era foreign intelligence files have now been passed on, in higher proportion than in any other major intelligence archive, in either the East or the West. Also remarkably, unlike the declassified files of the CIA, MI5, and other major Western agencies, none of the StB’s once top-secret files have been redacted…
Thanks to these unredacted files, we get a glimpse inside the minds of ministers, heads of services, case officers, and agents as well as their Middle Eastern partners and targets. We are also able to observe internal debates among different foreign policy and security actors frequently tainted by doubts, hesitations, and conflicts in respect to their nonstate liaison partners.
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This fascinating dynamic suggests that these totalitarian systems were more pluralistic than we thought and not well-oiled bureaucracies following a singular party line. Furthermore, thanks to informants’ reports, signals intelligence intercepts, and documents confiscated from Cold War jackals, we get a front-row seat to the decision-making processes of these enigmatic groups.
This book also rests on two dozen interviews conducted with former Czechoslovak intelligence officers, diplomats, and Communist Party representatives who witnessed Prague’s attempts to navigate the disorderly world of terrorist and revolutionary diplomacy.
These are complimented by interviews with national security and intelligence practitioners from the United States and the United Kingdom and a French national security judge. Their firsthand experience with Cold War jackals helps us understand how key Western states grappled with international terrorism during the formative years of transatlantic counterterrorism.
Consequently, the book traces Prague’s complex dealings with them from the 1960s, when the country first started engaging with nonstate actors who employed terrorist methods, until the end of the Cold War. It explores how Czechoslovak communists, diplomats, and spies interacted with these groups on two fronts: in the Middle East—specifically Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Libya—and on Czechoslovak territory. To cover both sides of the story, it utilizes a unique cache of foreign intelligence as well as domestic security documents.
The book’s first substantive section presents an in-depth account of Prague’s long-standing alliance with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) led by Yasser Arafat, one of the most recognizable political figures of the twentieth century. It shows that while this clandestine relationship was incredibly complex—covering areas of intelligence exchange, training, arms deals, and joint operations—it was ultimately characterized by a mismatch in expectations, objectives, and modi operandi. Furthermore, it was plagued by mutual suspicion and manipulation, which led Prague to keep its liaison partner under close watch, penetrate its ranks, and ultimately expel some of its most extreme members and associates.
Its second substantive section explores Prague’s attitude toward some of the most notorious figures of the Cold War terrorist underworld, who broke away from the more mainstream Palestinian factions. These enfants terribles included high-profile terrorist outfits such as the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO), which turned against moderate Palestinian groups after they embraced diplomacy, and the group led by Carlos the Jackal, one of the most notorious terrorists of the late Cold War. It shows that from the onset Prague was reluctant to align with these radicals. In fact, it displayed substantial anxiety about their stay in Czechoslovakia and gradually developed ways of infiltrating and pushing them out in a way that would enable it to mitigate potential risk.
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This book primarily focuses on understanding how the communist state used the StB—the joint domestic and foreign intelligence organization—to manage these intricate relations. It argues that Czechoslovak decision-makers deployed the StB in multifarious ways. Prague used its spies, multi-tooled like a Swiss Army knife, to pursue a full spectrum of policies and approaches toward Cold War jackals. At times, it deployed them to forge clandestine alliances with more moderate, politically significant factions. In other instances, when it came to those whom Prague deemed radical, its officers were tasked to do quite the opposite—to monitor, block, infiltrate, manipulate, and, eventually, oust some of the most notorious figures from its territory.
Nevertheless, the StB’s tool kit was not always sharp enough to manage these complicated and fluid interactions. While employing its multitool approach, Prague often faced dilemmas and challenges. It found Cold War jackals to be unpredictable partners and foes. Moreover, it considered them difficult to control and, in some cases, even dangerous. In fact, the Czechoslovak intelligence and security apparatus—reputed for its tight grip on the local population living within the walls of the communist state—was not always adequately equipped, trained, or staffed to deal with these nebulous foreign targets effectively. Consequently, interactions between Czechoslovak spies and these violent nonstate actors were inherently uncomfortable, profoundly anxious, and at times suspenseful.
Gradually, Czechoslovakia sharpened the many tools in its arsenal, refining and enhancing the StB’s capability to deal with these mercurial actors. Prague’s spies learned how and when to apply the various tools available to them. While they learned how to best calibrate liaison with their allies, they also developed a set of approaches designed to quell those violent nonstate actors deemed dangerous, without provoking retribution or incurring reputational damage.
Czechoslovakia’s approach to these jackals could be best described as a risk-management, counterterrorism style.
Fundamentally, this book is about the various ways in which states use their spies to pursue covert policies at home and abroad, especially in relation to violent nonstate actors, and how governments employ intelligence as part of statecraft and as a form of power. It also explores the way totalitarian states engage with terrorists and revolutionaries who might share their political goals yet subscribe to different ideologies or employ controversial tactics. Based on primary source material, it analyzes the dilemmas and challenges that intelligence practitioners faced when navigating these complicated relations set against the background of Cold War competition. And, crucially, it exposes the red lines that they did not dare to cross as well as the moments when they turned a blind eye.
Overall, by focusing on Cold War revolutionary politics, this book shows when junior states followed hegemonic interests and when they trotted their own paths with regard to international terrorists and revolutionaries. While doing so, it assesses how small and medium states contributed to the globalization of political violence and terrorism and, moreover, how they used their military, security, and intelligence services to further their foreign policy objectives. Simultaneously, we get an insider’s look at the numerous challenges and dilemmas junior partners faced while engaging in overt and covert liaisons with unfamiliar allies from around the globe. And we can understand the lengths that small powers are willing to go to show solidarity, attempt political influence, and satisfy the foreign policy goals of their hegemons.
Watching the Jackals earns a prestigious 4 out of 4 trench coats
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