VIENNA AS A SECRET SERVICE HUB
The Soviet Committee for State Security (KGB) leveled a great number of charges against Austria in 1968: twenty-two radio transmitters, arms, and money had been smuggled into Czechoslovakia from Austria, sometimes in ambulances; German and U.S. elite commandos (Green Berets) had stopped off at Salzburg’s Schwarzenberg Barracks before being smuggled into the ČSSR in the guise of tourists; 500 Austrian plainclothes policemen were active in Czechoslovakia; Austrian agents had infiltrated the ČSSR People’s Army; Western intelligence services had made Vienna their base for operations directed against the Eastern Bloc; since the Prague reformers opened the borders with the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and Austria, there was a daily influx of up to 40,000 so-called tourists; there had been more than 370,000 in spring 1968, many of whom, according to an angry Brezhnev, undertook liaison missions.45
The KGB took for granted the active role played by the Austrian secret service in countermeasures against the invasion of the ČSSR. From the end of World War II, Eastern and Western secret services had been using Austria as a hub for their operations; in 1968, there was a significant increase in their activities, notably on the part of the KGB, which was tracking and observing more and more Austrians. A case in point is Simon Wiesenthal, who had blown the cover of several ex-Nazis working in German Democratic Republic (GDR) government agencies. The Soviet news agency TASS claimed that the Austrian military secret service was active, primarily against the ČSSR. These claims were rebutted by Federal Chancellor Klaus and Foreign Minister Waldheim.46
How important Vienna was as a secret-service hub in 1968, particularly for Eastern secret services, is demonstrated by the high degree of infiltration of Austria’s secret services.47 Forty-seven members of the Staatspolizei were suspected of engaging in espionage on behalf of foreign secret services, and many arrests led to convictions. The first to be arrested were Josef A., Johann A., and Norbert K. Josef A., an editor of the Federal Press Agency, had been recruited in Vienna by a Prague secret service officer and correspondent of the ČSSR news agency ČTK. Private detective Johann A., a former civil servant, had passed on the records of the interrogations of Czechoslovak refugees to a Communist Party organization. All three were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. The same was true of the press spokesman for the minister of the Interior Franz Soronics, Alois E., who had spied both for the German Bundesnachrichtendienst and for the Czechoslovak secret service. A parliamentary commission of inquiry was set up to shed light on his connections, and he was sentenced to three and a half years of hard labor in 1969.
Much information came from a very dubious source: Major Ladislav Bittman, employed at the Czechoslovak embassy in Vienna since 1966 and formerly of the disinformation department of the ČSSR secret service.48 Many of Bittman’s pieces of information, which were taken at face value in 1968, turned out to be false. On 7 September 1968, for instance, more than a fortnight after the invasion, the head of the Military Secret Service, Peterlunger, informed Federal Chancellor Klaus on the basis of information passed on by Bittman on the intention of the Soviet Army to blockade the Austrian-Czechoslovak border in order to dislodge armed ČSSR troops and push them onto Austrian territory. An outbreak of hostilities was to serve as a pretext for the occupation of eastern Austria. The so-called Polarka plans, which were supposed to serve the Soviet army as it crossed eastern Austria en route to Yugoslavia, also belonged under the heading “Deza” (disinformation).
MOSCOW CHARGES AUSTRIA WITH BREACHING ITS NEUTRALITY
On 31 August 1968, the Soviet ambassador paid a call on Josef Klaus at his country refuge in Wolfpassing near Vienna in order to hand him a note from the Soviet government. The note repeated that the invasion of Czechoslovakia was “an act of fraternal help to the Czechoslovak people that would have suffered no delay” and that the intervention was not directed against any other state.49 The Soviet envoy informed Klaus on the conclusion of the “negotiations” a few days earlier between the government delegations of Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. After a lengthy explanation of the agreement achieved on the “normalization” of the situation in Czechoslovakia, the Soviet envoy launched into an open criticism of Austria. Previously, as we have already seen, it was reporting in the Austrian media that had provoked Soviet criticism; now Podtserob openly accused the Austrian government of having breached the country’s policy of neutrality. The fact that “Austrian TV, which was state controlled, as well as the Austrian press” had become vehicles of an anti-Soviet and antisocialist position was in “direct and open contrast to Austria’s status as a neutral country…. This could not but damage Austria’s foreign policy.”50 The Soviet ambassador, however, also stressed that the USSR had taken note of Austria’s repeated official statements affirming its neutrality and pointed out that it was in Austria’s interest “that the policy of European states be built on the unshakable acceptance of existing borders in Europe and the rejection of attempts to undermine the principles of European security.” Klaus affirmed again in his reply that Austria was irrevocably committed to its neutrality policy. “Having said that,” Klaus added, “it is equally clear that the Austrian government cannot remain indifferent to the fate of a neighboring country that Austrians feel close to on account of historical and kinship grounds. This is the reason why Austria, motivated by purely humanitarian considerations, has provided material help to those Czechoslovaks who are at present on Austrian soil due to the recent developments.”
The federal chancellor rebutted the Soviet ambassador’s charge that the press was under the control of the government, saying that “in view of the legal situation… the government… was unable to control the press,” despite the fact that he had recently been holding “almost daily meetings with the heads of radio and TV” in order to “instruct them to take the government’s neutral position as the basis from which to report on events in Czechoslovakia.” Klaus committed himself to continuing to exert this kind of influence on the media and shared with the Soviet ambassador the story of how he himself had become the butt of criticism in a recent Presse editorial, even though he had been on friendly terms with the writer of the article for twenty years. The federal chancellor also addressed the topic of Soviet press reports on Austria—without explicitly mentioning the Literaturnaya Gazeta article—and called them devoid of any factual basis.
Klaus explicitly mentioned the Soviet charges that Austria had supported “counterrevolutionary forces” in the ČSSR with radio transmitter stations and stated emphatically “that the government was not aware of any actions whatsoever that might have infringed Austria’s neutrality and the State Treaty.” The Soviet ambassador, who had been prepared for this reply as part of his briefing by the Politburo of the Central Committee (CC) of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Kommunisticheskaya Partiya Sovetskogo Soyuza or CPSU), was quick to use this cue and suggested that the Austrian government might possibly “not be aware of such developments even though they did exist.” There might, after all, be “dishonest individuals among Austrian customs officials.”51 Klaus took this as a facetious remark.52