Information newsletter
Issue 02(26), February 2006

From the Court Room: Are the Bulgarian Intelligence Services Accountable Before the Citizens? What Is The Truth About the Involvement of Bulgaria in Petrolgate, the Murder of Georgi Markov, and the Assassination Attempt Against Pope John Paul II?

A democratic system of government means that the security services should be democratic too. On one hand, this is necessary as a guarantee that these authorities would not misuse the power they have been entrusted with and that society would be able to exercise control over their work. On the other hand, their activities should respect some of the foreign-policy responsibilities Bulgaria has accepted, like NATO membership, for example. The services are expected to dispose of important information in other cases as well, like the situation of detention centers of the CIA in Eastern Europe.

Out of the two security services in Bulgaria—the National Security Services (NSS) and the National Intelligence Services (NIS)--the latter has an obscure status. The functions of the NSS are stipulated by the Ministry of Interior Act as they are a part of the MoI system. On the contrary, nothing is clear about the Intelligence Services. Pursuant to the Defense and Armed Forces Act, they are a specialized services and their director is appointed with a decree by the President. In the decree for the appointment of the current Director of the NIS—Gen. Kircho Kirov—the President stated that he had the power to appoint the supreme staff of the armed forces. Pursuant to a Decision of the Council of Ministers form 1991, the NIS is a legal body, financed by the budget. We, however, do not know what their functions, tasks, and priorities are. It is a little disturbing that the NIS employees are subject to the provisions of the unpromulgated (maybe even secret!) Decision from 1975 under the effect of Decision No. 216 as of 1991 of the Council of Ministers.

So, we have no official information about what Bulgarian Intelligence is doing. We have, however, a clear idea of what it is not doing. There have been three important cases in which the cooperation of the NIS was necessary. Two of these are related to the involvement of the People's Republic of Bulgaria in international events—the murder of the Bulgarian dissident writer Georgi Markov in London, 1978, and the assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II in 1982. The answers to a number of questions related to these events are hidden in the documents of the First Bureau of the former Security Services, whose archive is held within the NIS. This archive has still never been opened. The third case which has required the cooperation of the NIS is related to the involvement of Bulgarian companies close to the Bulgarian Socialist party in the UN „Oil for Food“ program. The NIS and NSS carried out an investigation at the demand of the President, though their activities were again unclear since the results from the report they prepared were never announced.

The issue, however, has not remained at the status of „unannounced.“ During the last couple of years, Bulgarian journalists have started to submit requests for access to information to the NIS under the provisions of the 2000 Access to Public Information Act (APIA). They started FOI litigation with the assistance of Access to Information Programme (AIP). It is not surprising that they submitted requests to the three already mentioned cases. On February 26, 2004, journalist Zoya Dimitrova from Monitor daily newspaper requested that the President provide the collaborative report of the NIS and the NSS on the involvement of Bulgarian companies in oil trade with Iraq at the time of Saddam Hussein. In her request, the journalist emphasized that if the report contained any legally classified parts, she would like to receive partial access to the other, unclassified, parts of the report. Access to the whole document was denied, however, on the grounds that the information was classified. This refusal was challenged before the court and the first session was held a day after the CIA published a similar report on its web site. The results of the UN investigation were also announced last year, while the position of the Bulgarian President, including the NSS and the NIS, remained unchanged. In January 2006, the Supreme Administrative Court referred the case back to the Sofia City Court, instructing it to request and inspect the classified document in order to oversee the lawfulness of the classification process.

On September 9, 2004, a journalist from Dnevnik daily newspaper, Hristo Hristov, submitted a request under the APIA to the NIS, demanding access to the documents of the First Bureau of the former State Security Services (SSS). The heads of the services passed the request over with silence. The position of the NIS was expressed later before the Sofia City Court, after litigation was started against the silent refusal. According to the position of the most informed agency in Bulgaria, the NIS were in the process of reconsidering the old secret documents and could not find the requested ones. The process of reconsideration and declassification should have started with the adoption of the Protection of Classified Information Act in 2002. Shall we assume that the intelligence keeps its documents in piles? That would explain why they needed so much time for the declassification process—in comparison with the Ministry of Finance, where the declassification took about a month and a half, from September 9 to October 26. Hristov published his book Kill the Tramp in 2005, though the court proceedings continue.

In 2005, the case of the assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II and the so called „Bulgarian trace“ reappeared. There were a lot of speculations on the issue in Bulgaria as well, though not all relevant archives were open. A journalist from Darik Radio, Bogdana Lazarova, a person who believed that there was no „Bulgarian trace,“ decided to inform the audience on the basis of authentic documents and requested the NIS to provide access to the archive of the First Bureau of the SSS. It was a great surprise to her to receive a grounded refusal from the services. The documents related to the case are part of a collection of documents which had been classified as state secret. The most interesting thing is that these documents were classified under the purview of § 9 of the Additional and Conclusive Provisions to the Protection of Classified Information Act, i.e. after 2002—in our own time. Under the law, the institutions shall reconsider documents which had been classified at the time of the communist regime and shall classify them again at their discretion. In the particular case, the file of documents contained a record as of February 17, 1986, which had been classified as „Top Secret of Particular Importance.“ Currently, the highest level of classification is for the maximum period of 30 years, meaning that until 2016 we would know nothing about the case. A lot of questions rise here—is the secret kept in the archive so sinister or are we facing a bureaucratic formalism on a large scale? Is the national security policy of the People's Republic of Bulgaria the same as the one of democratic Bulgaria? Are we facing a false modesty that is meant to cover the real events and the real participants, so that no one could say that Bulgarians are bad? Practically, however, the shame for contemporary institutions and society comes not from what the services had done before 1989, but from the attitude of the present officials. The hiding of information is more of a threat to the ethical reputation of the contemporary institutions than the activities of their predecessors in the past.

It is surprising that the proceedings were ended at a court session by the Sofia City Court in January 2006. The termination was appealed. The issue now has been raised and the case will continue. And while the case is going on, parallel to the other cited case, the CIA published daily reports of the what is perhaps the most powerful intelligence agency in the world. Indeed, some parts of them are now and then blacked out. However, the intelligence of the USA feels responsible before the society and gives account of its activities. The Bulgarian intelligence does not feel it the same way yet, especially about events that happened in the past—the past that we now try to deny.

The article was published in Glasove Newspaper, February 24, 2006.