Ladislav Bittman

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Ladislav Bittman (born January 12, 1931 in Prague , † September 18, 2018 in Rockport , Massachusetts ) was a senior secret service officer of the ČSSR who moved to the West in 1968 .

Life

Bittman joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in 1946 at the age of 15. After obtaining his university entrance qualification, he studied international law at the Charles University in Prague and made a career in the analytical part of the 1st State Security Administration from 1954 . As a supporter of the Prague Spring , he fled to the US embassy in Bonn in 1968 after the Soviet invasion. Interviewed by American intelligence in Washington, DC for a year, Bittman changed his name to Lawrence Martin.

Bittman had lived in Rockport, Massachusetts , since the 1970s . In 1970 he was sentenced to seven years imprisonment in absentia in Prague. After testifying under the code name Lawrence Britt in the Senate subcommittee of Congress in May 1971 , he was sentenced to death in absentia in Prague in 1972. In the United States, he wrote a book on Soviet disinformation techniques, worked as a university professor at Boston University for almost three decades until the late 1990s, and received American citizenship in 1979.

In 1994 he was rehabilitated by the Czech Republic . Around 2000 he began to work as a visual artist. In 1998, Bittman defended Vienna's Mayor Helmut Zilk against allegations that he was an Ostagent. He did not want to comment on the renewed allegations against Helmut Zilk in spring 2009.

Works

  • The Deception Game. Czechoslovak Intelligence in Soviet political Warfare. Syracuse University Research Corporation, Syracuse NY 1972, ISBN 0-8156-8078-3 (In German: Secret weapon D. Verlag Schweizerisches Ost-Institut, Bern 1973, ISBN 3-85913-071-4 ).
  • The KGB and Soviet Disinformation. An insider's view. Pergamon-Brassey's International Defense Publishers, Washington DC et al. 1985, ISBN 0-08-031572-0 .
  • as editor: The New Image-Makers. Soviet Propaganda and Disinformation Today. Pergamon-Brassey's International Defense Publishers, Washington DC et al. 1988, ISBN 0-08-034939-0 .
  • as editor: Gorbachev's Glasnost. Challenges and Realities (= Propaganda, disinformation, persuasion. Vol. 2, No. 4, ISSN  1055-5889 ). Boston University, College of Communication, Program for the Study of Disinformation Papers, Boston MA 1989.
  • as editor with John Ost: Thievery, Deception, and Disinformation in International Affairs. Scientific, technological, and commercial (= Propaganda, disinformation, persuasion. Vol. 4). Boston University, College of Communication, Program for the Study of Disinformation Papers, Boston MA 1991.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lawrence Martin-Bittman, 87, Master of Disinformation, Dies
  2. ↑ Erika Lovley, Boston Globe, Nov. 20, 2005.
  3. ↑ ibid
personal data
SURNAME Bittman, Ladislav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech-American secret service officer of the ČSSR, university professor
DATE OF BIRTH January 12, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague
DATE OF DEATH 18th September 2018
Place of death Rockport , Massachusetts