American intelligence has followed the invasion of Czechoslovakia, 1968, and was interested in the military objects and weapons stationed on the territory of the country. The United States declassified archives of the CIA, containing information collected during the period from the 1940s to the 1990s, Among the 13 million pages of documents for many years were kept under a signature stamp “top secret”, a considerable part is devoted to “Eastern bloc” and its member — socialist Czechoslovakia.
Battle front “Czechoslovak Radio” and the Soviet tanks on the streets — a message to CIA documents the first hours of the invasion, when on 21 August 1968 to suppress the Prague spring in Czechoslovakia troops entered the Warsaw Pact countries.
“The document refers to the time when the invasion of the occupation forces in Czechoslovakia already happening. It was compiled for political and military leadership of the United States of America,” explains historian Jan Kalous of the Institute for the study of totalitarian regimes. The scientist believes the document shows that the US knew in advance about the plans of the Soviet Union to invade Czechoslovakia.
“The Soviets sent the us administration a message before the operation. The Americans had to prepare for how to react”, — commented almost half a century ago, Jan Kalous.
With this interpretation of declassified materials, however, do not agree historian Paul Gacek, former Director of the Institute for the study of totalitarian regimes.
“The documents do not reflect what the American intelligence service knew about the impending occupation, there is shown a political position, which at the time were the United States, and in the context of the Vietnam war, which was then”, — says Pavel Zacek.
In addition to the stay on the territory of Czechoslovakia by Soviet troops, the CIA constantly showed interest in the weapons located there — the tanks and rocket launchers. For example, they sought to gather information about a military base in brdo, near the town of Dobris, where at that time the anti-aircraft missile group of the Czechoslovak army under the code name “VEGA”. This object was in Czechoslovakia very secretive.
“The missiles could be aimed and, of course, was directed toward Germany, and their range exceeds the distance to the border of the country,” according to historian Paul Jacek.
The CIA was also interested in artillery unit in Gaberke. From archival documents that her quarters American intelligence believed first base missiles with nuclear warheads beyond the borders of the Soviet Union.
“True or not, remains to be seen. However, we now know that thought about this specific analytical division of the CIA in a specific period,” explains Paul Jacek.
On the basis of the declassified documents it can be concluded that the Central intelligence Agency of the US fairly closely followed the events in the socialist Czechoslovakia, which was considered a strategically important country in Central Europe — the boundary between Warsaw Pact and NATO.
It remains to add that 13 million pages of material, which in the United States took the “secret” was stored on the hard drives of four computers that are not connected to the Internet, in the National archives in Maryland.
Case declassified documents also contains materials about the intelligence activities of the CIA during the military conflicts in Vietnam and Korea in the years of the cold war and other information.
