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Assistant Secretary of State for Congressional Relations, Department of State, Washington, D.C. DEAR MR. ABSHIRE: The Senate Internal Security Subcommittee has come into the possession of two documents bearing the imprint of the Information Office of the Government of Ghana, and captioned (1) NKRUMAH'S SUBVERSION IN AFRICA, and (2) NKRUMAH'S DECEPTION OF AFRICA. From a preliminary check, we see no reason to question the authenticity of the publications. Apparently, however, the documents received virtually no distribution in the United States. The several experts we checked with had not seen them, and the Library of Congress did not even have a copy of NKRUMAH'S SUBVERSION IN AFRICA. Because of this, and because of the light they throw on communist methods of operation, the Subcommittee is considering publishing the two documents, with an analytical commentary.

In this connection, the subcommittee would be grateful if the State Department could advise us as to the authenticity of the two documents. Presumably some of the Foreign Service officers who were stationed in our Ghana Embassy at the time would be familiar with the publications, and would be able to identify them as documents which were in fact published by the Ghana government after the overthrow of Nkrumah. I am enclosing the two documents which the Subcommittee has received to assist the Department in identifying them.

Further than this, it would be useful if the Foreign Service officers in question could advise us whether the situation described in these two documents coincides in a general way with the situation as it was observed at the time by American representatives in Ghana and other African countries. With my thanks in advance for your cooperation in this matter, I remain

Sincerely yours,

Hon. JAMES O. EASTLAND,

Chairman, Internal Security Subcommittee,
U.S. Senate.

JAMES O. EASTLAND, Chairman.

DEPARTMENT OF STATE, Washington, D.C., April 3, 1972.

DEAR SENATOR EASTLAND: I write in response to your letter of March 27, 1972, concerning the desire of your Subcommittee to publish two documents, (1) NKRUMAH'S SUBVERSION IN AFRICA, and (2) NKRUMAH'S DECEPTION OF AFRICA.

The Department can vouch that these publications were issued in the Government of Ghana through its Information Office. Furthermore, while we are unable to authenticate each document in these publications, it would be accurate to state that they do describe in a general way the situation which obtained in Ghana during the administration of President Kwame Nkrumah. You will recall that that government was overthrown by the Ghanaian army and police on February 24, 1966. Please do not hesitate to call on me when you feel I can be of assistance.

Sincerely,

DAVID M. ABSHIRE, Assistant Secretary for Congressional Relations.

(V)

INTRODUCTION

BY

SENATOR JAMES O. EASTLAND,

Chairman, Senate Internal Security Subcommittee

This is the first volume in a series of documentations which the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee plans to publish under the general caption "Communist Global Subversion and American Security." It is particularly important at the present juncture because of the light it throws on the general pattern of Communist behavior and on Communist response to new agreements.

Recognizing the improbability of a comprehensive political agreement with the Communists, both Democratic and Republican Administrations have nevertheless, sought to negotiate with them limited agreements designed to defuse crisis situations or to place mutual restrictions on the competitive arms buildup. This is as it ought to be, for, in a world where peace is preserved by a tenuous balance of terror, we cannot afford to overlook any opportunity to make peace more secure. This, essentially, has been the purpose behind President Nixon's visit to Red China and the Soviet Union.

But while we must always seek to broaden our areas of agreement, and while some of the agreements achieved have unquestionably improved the world situation, the record unfortunately, offers little hope that the Communists will respond to new agreements or new concessions-by calling off their campaign of global subversion.

For example, in July of 1963, on American initiative, a treaty was signed in Moscow banning all nuclear tests in the atmosphere, under water, and in space-the most important agreement to date in the general field of arms control. And one month later, when the news broke that the Soviet Union was facing one of the gravest food crises in its history, we agreed to sell them $200 million worth of grain, without condition of any kind and on the most generous terms.

There was widespread hope at the time that the Test Ban Treaty and the wheat deal would lead to a significant relaxation of tensions. But how did the Soviets, in fact, react?

In October of 1963, American and British traffic on the Berlin Autobahn was subjected to a series of harassments.

In the same month, the Soviets further inflamed the situation in North Africa by shipping large quantities of arms to the Ben Bella Government and by openly inciting the Algerians against the Moroccans.

In November the entire Soviet mission was expelled from the Congo, when the Congolese Government discovered proof that members of the mission had been involved in a left wing plot to overthrow the government.

In December of 1963, there were the Panama riots, which were led by identified Castro agitators and which had the total support of the Soviet propaganda apparatus.

Let us take another example of the Soviet response to new agreements. On June 27, 1968, we signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty with Moscow, on terms that made generous concessions to the Soviet viewpoint. This agreement, too, was hailed as a major step towards detente.

Two months later, on August 20 the Soviet Union invaded and occupied Czechoslovakia and deposed the Dubcek Government. The Soviet Government followed this action by promulgating the so-called Brezhnev doctrine, under which it claimed the right to intervene in any "socialist country" if the government of this country began to move in what the Soviets considered a "nonsocialist" direction.

The final example we are living through today: Over the past two years the United States has made important concessions to the Soviet Government in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks; and on March 16 it was announced that President Nixon would visit Moscow towards the end of May in a major effort to reduce tensions and improve relations.

On April 2 the North Vietnamese army, lavishly equipped with Soviet heavy artillery and tanks openly invaded South Vietnam. Even so critical an observer as James Reston of the New York Times, was constrained to comment:

*** it is scarcely credible, considering the recent visits of high-ranking Soviet military officers to Hanoi, that Moscow did not know all about or help plan the North Vietnamese invasion across the DMZ. (1)

The history is a melancholy one, but it would be wrong to conclude from this that it is pointless to seek after new agreements with the Communists. What it does signify, however, is that we cannot expect any significant improvement in Communist behavior in consequence of such agreements. As Professor Leonard Shapiro, widely respected British Sovietologist, told the Jackson Subcommittee two years ago:

Soviet policy*** is not directed towards achieving equilibrium, or balance of forces, or peace, or collective security ***: its ultimate aim is victory, which means Communist rule on a world scale.

THE GLOBAL CHALLENGE TO AMERICAN SECURITY

No meaningful study can be made of Communist activities in the USA in isolation from the world-wide pattern of Communist activism. Communist activity is internationally orchestrated, so that what the Communists do in this country is intended to dovetail with and support what they are doing in other countries-and vice versa.

The global nature of Communist activities and their infinite variations make it exceedingly difficult, even for those who have specialized in the problem, to form a clear perception of the state of the battle at any given moment. It is as though we were called upon to play a game in which we had to keep our eye on a hundred different balls at the same time. It is not enough to keep tab on the activities of the Communists and their allies in this country-although, clearly, this is something that we must do. For the fact is that the global struggle between the forces of Communists totalitarianism and the Free World may be decisively affected by events in little-known and far-away

countries.

For example, few Americans would be able to place Kuwait or Abu Dhabi on the map. But the oil sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf are reputed to contain 4 of the world's reserves of oil, and they currently supply 60 percent of Europe's requirements and almost 80 percent of Japan's. Both the Soviet Communists and the Chinese Communists have for a number of years now been backing a regional guerrilla organization which calls itself the "Popular Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arab Gulf." This "Popular Front" proposes to replace all of the independent Arab governments of the Gulf area with "Peoples Republics" on the Marxist model. The headquarters of the organization is in leftist-dominated Southern Yemen; and for geographical reasons, the prime objective of their thrust has been the adjoining State of Oman. According to U.S. News and World Report of April 10, 1972, it is from Southern Yemen that "come the camel trains carrying Sovietmade Kalashnikov submachine guns and Katyusha rockets. There the rebels get their training and advice from the Chinese instructors."

If leftist guerrillas under Communist influence were ever to seize control of Oman and the other independent sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf area, Western Europe and Japan would become completely dependent on the mercy of the Communists for their continued oil supplies. The mere ability to control the oil spigot would put the Communists in a formidable position to play the game of political blackmail. By the same token, the security of the United States is also directly involved in the guerrilla war that is now being waged in the Dhofar region of the State of Oman.

*

The two documentations published in this volume have to do with the attempted Communist subversion of Black Africa, working with and through the Government of Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana. It remains an enormously pertinent document despite the death of Nkrumah, in exile in Guinea, on April 27, 1972.

The documentations completely bear out the findings made by the subcommittee in December 1962, after taking the testimony of Dr. Kofi A. Busia, a Ghanaian exile who was later to become Prime Minister of his country. Summarizing these findings, the late Senator Thomas J. Dodd, then Vice Chairman of the subcommittee, said in his introduction:

*** the evidence *** strongly suggests that Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana has become the first Soviet satellite in Africa, just as Cuba is the first Soviet satellite in the Americas.

It is the focal point for the subversion of Africa, just as Cuba is the focal point for the subversion of the Americas.

It is the mortal enemy of true freedom and independence for the peoples of Africa and the mortal enemy of African peace.

Like Castro's Cuba, it carries on a propaganda campaign that would tax the resources of a major country. It trains natives of other countries in the arts of infiltration, sabotage, terror, and guerrilla warfare. It exports arms by clandestine means to the opposition terrorist groups in other countries which it has fostered and today supports.

The two damning documentations here reproduced fell into the hands of the new Ghana Government when Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown on February 24, 1966, by a popular revolt,

backed up by the army. The subcommittee has decided to publish these documentations for the information of Congress, first, because they are unique-indeed there is no comparable documentation dealing with Communist methods of operation in the so-called "Third World"; and, second, because the original distribution was largely limited to Africa, and only a handful of copies, it would appear, found their way to this country at the time. (Several knowledgeable experts who were consulted had not seen the documentations; they were not on file at the libraries of Georgetown University, American University, George Washington University, Catholic University, and the Library of Congress did not have "Nkrumah's Subversion in Africa," the more important of the two documentations.)

Summarizing the situation revealed by the two documentations, the Government of Ghana Information Service said in its introduction to "Nkrumah's Subversion in Africa":

After an attempt on his life in August, 1962, Nkrumah came to realise that he was so hated by so many citizens that he could not rely on more than a handful of base men to help carry out his plans. As a result, he appealed directly to the Communist States to provide him with personal protection, and to prepare detailed plans for spying on the citizens of Ghana and for espionage and subversive activities throughout the continent. To his appeal, the U.S.S.R., the People's Republic of China and the German Democratic Republic eagerly responded, while, somewhat later, numbers of Yugoslavs, Czechoslovaks, Poles, Bulgarians, North Koreans and Cubans flooded into the country. According to his orders, the immigration officials kept no record of these arrivals, although more than one thousand of them came and moved freely about the country. (See Appendix A).

The Communists were only too pleased to be invited by Nkrumah. Their interests were parallel to those of Nkrumah as regards the goal of overthrowing those African governments that were not inclined to Communism. While Nkrumah was making use of these Communist experts and advisers, they were enjoying a splendid opportunity to carry out plans that were only in their own interests. At this point, only a few examples will be cited as to the special interests of the Communists, and more details will be found in a latter section of this publication. The Russians and the East Germans recruited their own agents within the intelligence service of Ghana and instructed them in the secret ways of making reports to their new masters. The Russians and the Chinese who trained Freedom Fighters tried to make use of them in ways that were harmful to the cause of African freedom, while a large group of Cubans carrying diplomatic passports got in touch with the Freedom Fighters without asking permission of Ghana. In the same way, the Russian Embassy had its own arrangements with individuals coming from Congo/ Kinshasa. Then, too, the Russians, the Chinese, and the East Germans selected members of the intelligence service who were to be trained in those countries in guerilla warfare and the techniques of espionage, expecting them to return to Ghana as devoted Communists.

The liberation of Ghana was a bitter blow to all these Communists. Like animals running in front of a forest fire, they fled the country. Planes and ships took away 1,100 Russians, 430 Chinese and scores of people from the countries already named. Among these were 22 Russians and three Chinese intelligence officers, and 13 Chinese guerilla warfare instructors who were declared personna non-grata.

One of the most interesting features of the documentations is the light they throw on the Sino-Soviet rift, the Soviet-Yugoslav rift, and the other cleavages and differences that exist within the world Communist movement. These differences are real, and it would be a mistake to underestimate them. But this is only one side of the coin. At the same time that Russia and Red China were competing with each other and pursuing their own special objectives in Africa, they were, nevertheless, working in tandem through the centralizing instrumentality of the government of Nkrumah, for the subversion of Black Africa.

Here are a few pertinent paragraphs on the subject from the Ghana Government's documentation:

These files [the captured files of Nkrumah's Bureau of African Affairs] disclosed that Nkrumah had been training "freedom fighters" from independent African countries since 1961, that he had set up and used three successive camps for this purpose, that Soviet guerilla warfare instructors had originally staffed the camps but were replaced in 1964 by Chinese instructors, that more than a third of the "freedom fighters" trained in Ghana had come from countries with which Ghana maintained diplomatic relations, and that, in addition, hundreds of dissident Africans who could not be accommodated in Ghana's guerilla training camps were sent to the Soviet Union, East Germany, China and Cuba.

Nkrumah not only turned Ghana into a sanctuary and training ground for subversives from independent African nations but also acted as a conveyor belt for secretly transporting political malcontents to communist countries for guerilla training and revolutionary indoctrination. Thus hundreds of African subversives who, like flies to fly-paper, found their way to Nkrumah's Ghana, immediately came under communist revolutionary tutelage. They either remained in Ghana for guerilla training by the Soviets and later the Chinese or they were sent on for more intensive instruction elsewhere. In all cases they were indoctrinated by foreigners in a foreign ideology.'

Nkrumah and the Communists both sought to give the impression that their activities were directed primarily against those governments in Black Africa which were still dominated by European countries. But the fact is, as the previously quoted paragraphs suggest, that their principle subversive efforts were directed towards countries that are already free and under the leadership of nationalist governments resistant to communism and Nkrumaism.

1 See page 123.

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