Counterintelligence Black Swan: KGB Deception, Countersurveillance, and Active Measures Operation

Abstract

In January 1990, a U.S counterintelligence surveillance team supporting a priority counterespionage investigation in Munich, West Germany, became engaged in a hostile encounter that was unlike anything ever experienced. The event was recorded as an “aggressive, hostile countersurveillance effort,” but with the U.S. victory in the Cold War, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the dismantlement of the State Committee for Security, the investigative record was inconclusively filed away before the applicable lessons could be captured. After 30+ years, the declassified details of the investigation and the sequence of events leading to this fateful Munich night is examined under an inductive causal analysis to deconstruct the events using a case study methodology. After a comprehensive analysis, it becomes evident that the engagement was mischaracterized, and the hostile operation had much broader implications. While the hostile engagement was a black swan event, the sequence of events in the investigation leading to this final act was a microcosm of the larger Soviet strategic disinformation, misdirection, and manipulation apparatus. Three decades after fading into obscurity under a veil of classification restrictions, counterintelligence professionals, intelligence analysts, and intelligence historians can now benefit from the still-relevant lessons and other insights from this case study.