You may think ‘fake news’ is a modern invention, but you’d be wrong. One of Czechoslovakia’s most famous disinformation campaigns was Operation NEPTUNE.
This article explains why Czechoslovak spies carried out such a nefarious plot.
The Black Lake
In 1964, a documentary crew was filming around Cerne Jezero (the Black Lake)1. A group of divers stumbled on a series of buried chests in the lake1. When they opened them, they found stolen treasure and secret documents1. The producers called the Czechoslovak security service; Štátní bezpečnost also known as ŠtB1.
The ŠtB were responsible for the torture of Father Toufar.
They took the chests to Prague, where the interior minister declared that retreating Germans buried them at the end of World War II2. Amongst other things, they found a list of Gestapo collaborators1.
Dismay
The ŠtB had had Nazi documents and information on Nazi collaborators for a long time1. The Czechoslovak resistance had fought the Nazi occupation which meant they’d lots of information. Like any intelligence resource, they were waiting for the right time to use it. Why reveal your hand now, when you use it to your advantage later?
The Czechoslovaks knew that West Germany’s intelligence services were based on the wartime Nazi networks1. They knew a number of government officials had served the Nazis, and even Adolf Hitler directly1.
At the same time, the statute of limitations on war crimes was about to expire in 19651. Any war criminals found after 1965 would have escaped trials and prison for war crimes1. Czechoslovakia wasn’t happy with this. There was a lot of media coverage about this at the time, and many countries wanted West Germany to extend this statute of limitations1.
Apart from this, the Soviet bloc was keen to fuel anti-German feelings in Western Europe3.
This led to Operation NEPTUNE.
This was not the only deception Czechoslovakia carried out – Operation Border Stone was another one!
Disinformation
Ladislav Bittman was born in a working-class family and became a devout communist2. He joined the ŠtB in 1954 and served in its elite foreign intelligence service2.
In 1964 he was Deputy Chief of the new Department 8 – the department of disinformation2 3. This was an umbrella department covering military, political and economic disinformation2. It was the second-most successful disinformation department in the Soviet bloc, after Russia2. They operated worldwide and ran operations on almost every continent2. Bittman specialised in disinformation campaigns1.
This is how Operation NEPTUNE was born.
In 1964, he posed as a local and his team posed as divers to help the documentary makers with their filming1 2.
They had prepared the chests, and aged them, to look as if they’d been in the water for 20 years1. The metal parts were pre-rusted to look as authentic as possible1. The documents were ones they’d had in their possession for some time1. These “secret” chests gave the Czechoslovaks a cover story to reveal actual information.
The information ‘found’ in these chests incriminated many West German officials2. The discovery made world headlines at the time3.
West Germany delayed the statute of limitations for Nazi war crimes. It also waived any statute of limitations for concentration camp guards3. We can therefore say that Operation NEPTUNE changed the course of post-war European history.
Disillusioned
Bittman’s work in disinformation changed him. Disillusioned with the Soviet regime, the invasion of Prague in 1968 shocked him2.
This convinced him to defect to America1 3.
He crippled Soviet-bloc intelligence gathering2, given his encyclopaedic knowledge of their agents and methods.
In 1972, he wrote a book called the The Deception Game which explained Operation NEPTUNE1 3.
He later mused that Operation NEPTUNE was one of their most successful campaigns. He also said it was “not successful [enough] to convince the West European public that the present-day West German regime was the practical and ideological outgrowth of Nazi Germany3.”
He lived in Massachusetts2 and became a professor of disinformation at Boston University2.
In 2018, at the age of 87, Czechoslovakia’s most famous spy died2.
- Details of Czechoslovakia’s biggest disinformation operation published on web; Dita Asiedu; Radio Prague International; 2007-08-06[↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩]
- Famous Cold War spy Ladislav Bittman dies aged 87; Tom McEnchroe; Radio Prague International; 2018-09-24[↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩]
- DISINFORMATION. Truth is the best defense. CASE STUDY: WEST GERMANY. A Czech ploy that worked — but only briefly; Elizabett Pond; Christian Science Monitor; 1985-03-01[↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩]