On Desinformatzia...."sometimes more than 90% of the content of disinformation is true. The thing that is important is to find the part that is false"

Top Scholar of `Dezinformatsia' Still Expert at Telling It Like It Is

by John Berlau
Published: Monday, May 26, 1997 (Internet pages...)

During the twenties and thirties, Natalie Grant worked alongside top foreign-policy experts such as George Kennan at the American Legation in Riga, Latvia, then the State Department's window to the Soviet Union. At age 96, Grant herself is a window to the world affairs of the 20th century. She still writes monographs and articles on foreign policy and meets with members of the intelligence community in her brick home atop a Virginia mountain.


Born the daughter of a judge under the Russian Czar Nicholas II, Grant fled the country as a young woman after the Bolsheviks took control in 1917. Married to an American, Grant went to work as a translator for the American Embassy in Latvia. Fluent in Russian, French, German and English, she studied and became expert at identifying a new kind of sophisticated Soviet propaganda to which the comrades referred as "dezinformatsia" or disinformation.

Grant reported on the means by which the Reds suppressed dissident movements while feeding the West false information through operatives and front groups that claimed to be independent or even anticommunist. "Everyone who has worked in the field of countering Soviet disinformation either learned it from her or learned it from someone who learned it from her," says veteran Soviet intelligence expert Herbert Romerstein.

A fervent anticommunist, Grant left the State Department during the fifties because of disagreement with liberal colleagues and officials about international policy and strategy.

INSIGHT: Let's go back and look at your long life. You were born in 1901.

Natalie Grant: Don't remind me. I was born with this century, and I will die with this century.

INSIGHT: Tell us about your childhood. Where were you born?

NG: Estonia, of all places, but I only stayed there for six weeks. My father was a judge, and he was transferred from one place to another. I have lived in the south of Russia, the west of Russia, the center of Russia. Every time my father was transferred, we would move. His last post was as head of the court of appeals.

INSIGHT: How would you describe your childhood in that long-ago time?

NG: Wonderful. We were a happy family.

INSIGHT: You were a teenager during the Russian Revolution. When did you first realize what the Bolsheviks were about and what their intentions were?

NG: I spent one year under Bolshevism - enough to know what it's like. It was not pleasant.

INSIGHT: How did you begin to study disinformation?

NG: I started out working with the American Embassy in Latvia. They found me because I spoke very good English. Then I got into the Russian section of the embassy, which was very important at that time. We took care of all the reporting on Russia. We were the window on Russia. If, for example, our embassy in Turkey picked up some information on Russia, they would send it to us immediately. We were the center for analysis. There I learned everything I know about the USSR, and there I learned how to express my views and how to work.

After that, gradually, I began noticing that there were conflicts between what I knew and what the Soviets told us, and I began investigating these conflicts. How did it happen that my knowledge was not the same as what they told me? And that is where I discovered disinformation.

INSIGHT: What's the difference between disinformation and propaganda?

NG: One is obvious, and the other is not. Propaganda is obvious to anybody with any brains, but disinformation is not.i Sometimes more than 90 percent of the content of disinformation is true. The thing that is important is to find the part that is false.

INSIGHT: You've studied the ancient Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu's book, The Art of War, in which he advised leaders to feign weakness to keep enemies from attacking even as the state grows stronger. We know Sun Tzu is important in China. What importance has he in Soviet affairs?

NG: Tremendous importance. If you followed Soviet affairs you quickly realized the Soviets are terribly taken by Sun Tzu, even today. The KGB published 10 books about him. They used his principles, his doctrine in politics rather than war. He wrote everything for a battle, to avoid fighting, to avoid killing his soldiers. But they have transferred Sun Tzu's methods and principles to politics, and they have used his politics as part of their efforts to destroy their enemies, opposition leaders, opposition among the public, their foes outside the Soviet Union. And they used his methods to undermine the countries that they consider dangerous to Russia.

INSIGHT: How have they used his methods?

NG: Well, for example, a long time ago when the Soviets first seized power there was a group of allies who decided, in 1920, that they would not trade with the Soviet government. The Soviet government then took a cooperative that had existed under the czars and was well-known and turned it into a communist organization. They appointed a member of the Communist International as head of the cooperative, and they sent that member of the Communist International abroad under the guise of chairman of the co-op, and he sold the idea of trading with the co-op instead of trading with the Soviet government. It's complicated.

INSIGHT: Didn't they also set up front groups, posing as opposition groups, that were in fact Soviet operations?

NG: There were dozens of them.i The opposition was infiltrated by a Communist agent who found out everything he could about the opposition group and then betrayed it. A group called the "Trust" has become famous because it was uncovered by the Soviets themselves. Far more important was this group, "Sindikat."

INSIGHT: What was the Sindikat?

NG: It pretended to be a left-wing movement against communism. There was a man named Boris Savinkov [an migr living in Poland] who had a big following in Russia and who tried to use that following to overthrow the Soviets. At first he was more or less successful. Then he was betrayed by using Sun Tzu methods. He was fooled into believing that there was still an organization [of his followers] in Russia awaiting his personal leadership, and he crossed the border [in 1925], and that was the end.i He was seized and killed.

INSIGHT: Do you think the Soviets and the Communist movement were bent on world domination from the beginning.

NG: Not world domination exactly, though maybe it was at one time. It's simply complete influence so that what they want they can get. Complete influence, by every and any means.i

I'm going to make you think I'm insane, but the effort still exists, having changed only its mode of action. Before, they had the idea that they would cause a revolution from below, and all the governments would topple. Today, they're working from another angle. Instead of pressure from below, they're applying pressure from above.

INSIGHT: How?

NG: One of the principles of communism that they're trying to achieve is to bring noncommunists under communist influence. By creating a movement, let us say, on the environment, they will bring in a lot of people who are sincere environmentalists. But they will have communists in key positions of the movement who will influence the innocent to a certain extent and work to change their ideas.

INSIGHT: Do you see China as a threat in the next century?

NG: It's a big threat. They are very energetic, and they want to rule as much of the world as they can.

INSIGHT: Are you familiar with the Chemical Weapons Convention that the Senate recently ratified?

NG: I don't like it.i I believe Russia has not ratified it.

INSIGHT: Any reflections on the 20th century, since you've lived through most of it? What will people see when they look back on this century.

NG: Confusion. Look at what has happened. The world has been turned completely over. Nations have been chopped into bits. Countries have expanded. It has been complete confusion.

INSIGHT: What are your secrets to living so long and being so healthy?

NG: I don't know. I've always been interested in things. I think that has a lot to do with it. When people stop being interested, they fade. As long as you're interested, you live.

*****PERSONAL BIO*****

BORN: March 8, 1901, in Tallinn, Estonia (then Russia).

CAREER: Until 1939, translator and analyst, American Legation, Riga, Latvia. Served American consuls during World War II, first in Brussels and then in Bern, Switzerland. After the war was assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Paris. Analyzed international communism at State Department headquarters in Washington in the late fifties and accompanied Soviet delegations that visited the United States. A research associate at the Hoover Institution at Stanford during the sixties.

WHAT SHE READS: "The best is the Washington Times, and it is the journal I rely on for information on foreign affairs. The [Washington] Post has zero. The New York Times - I don't like their tendencies. I don't read that." Grant also reads Pravda and literature from the Gorbachev Foundation.

OTHER INTERESTS: "I like food ... Not every kind, just good food. I like vegetables of every kind. I eat as many fruits and vegetables as I can cook ... I like chocolate. I like nuts. I eat everything."





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