August 21, 1985 – Disinformation Technology

Another chapter in the plots and conspiracies of KGB’s Colonel Fabrizio Leonidovich Vianello!
Brought to you by Thomas Gaul, retired KGB (or CIA?) agent and Grognard Emeritus.

Time: 2:24 am Moscow time, August 21, 1985
Place: Kremlin, private office of KGB Colonel Fabrizio Vianello, extra-top-secret sanctum cubicle of KGB Colonel Vianello

KGB Colonel Vianello suppressed a massive yawn and contemplated his new work with with the self satisfied inner bliss of one who has completed the “perfect” 5-year plan, or in this case the plan to solve the problems of the initial war-plan against the capitalist swine that was NATO. Of course, the initial plan prepared by him and his team had been nearly flawless, but as ever, wreckers and pseudo capitalist leeches, or even worse, personal enemies of the Colonel, had failed to anticipate events correctly, or even actively worked to smear his plan. But what he had now completed would correct those errors of lesser minds.

In preparing to implement the “more correct” correct plan, Colonel Vianello gave to himself the mental congratulations for his justified foresight and genius. Not all his opponents could or should be sent to the gulag and forgotten. All, of course, must be sent to the gulag (for an enemy of his was obviously an enemy to the State) but some should be sent to the gulag and still used for the Glorious Soviet State.

And such had been the fate of former KGB Major Marco Josevich Cimmino. An early “genius” in the field of computers, his future had been bright. Too bright. He had sought to replace the Colonel and his team, claiming his computers would do the job better and more certainly, without the corruption of humans. Him, Colonel Vianello, soon to be hero of the Soviet victory, corrupt!! As if a few richly deserved rubles, dachas and women, were anything other than proper rewards of a grateful Soviet State! The Major had been investigated, found lacking in proper Communist ideology, properly denounced, and the gulag it was.

But such was the Colonels’ genius that, while orchestrating the Major’s fall, he had convinced him he was actually on his side. And, by arranging a few pieces of meat for the Major’s daily diet of gruel and extra blankets for the Siberian winters, he had succeeded in convincing the Major that, with the his knowledge of computers put to proper use under the Colonel’s guidance, rehabilitation was possible. So the Major had labored 75 hours a week for months with his “computers” to produce what was needed by the Colonel.

The generals would receive what they had been clamouring for. Extra resources! Tanks! Planes! Artillery! Ammunition for all the baying hyenas with more stars on their collars than brains in their head!

Or so it would appear. Truly perception was reality with the masses. And, now, “IT” was ready. With a push of the special button on his computer, Operation Potemkin was launched. ….