Sexual pleasure and smear campaigns: spreading fear and loathing during the Cold War

Sometimes the best propaganda is something you claim was produced by your enemies. At the height of tensions between communist and western powers, one covert unit created a host of bogus organisations targeting opponents worldwide. Rory Cormac explores some of the most cunning examples

A “TOP SECRET” folder sits between the U.S. flag and the Soviet flag, with two green missiles placed in front.

Published: August 2, 2026 at 3:30 PM

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How do you sway an audience who will never trust a word you say? And what if the message is underpinned by top-secret intelligence? How do you use it without blowing the source? One answer comes in the form of covert or black propaganda – material for which the source is faked, leaving readers ignorant of the real authors.

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During the Cold War, plenty of states waged political warfare across the world. Now, archival declassifications reveal the UK’s programme in remarkable detail.

Between 1948 and 1977, a small team in the Foreign Office’s little-known and banally named Information Research Department worked in the shadows to expose and discredit adversaries wherever they were to be found. They used three channels for the darker side of things: covertly controlled news agencies; forgeries of material purportedly obtained from genuine Soviet front organisations; and a constellation of fake groups disseminating equally bogus material.

These 14 of the named – but completely fictional – groups were among the most cunning, crazy and controversial.

1. International Committee for the Investigation of Communist Front Organisations

Created in 1959, this fabricated research institute published some 30 bulletins exposing Soviet front organisations. From non-existent offices across Europe and north Africa, it traded off its reputation as an authoritative (if dry) source, posting its exposés to peace organisations, student groups and the media worldwide. Bulletin no. 25, for example, outed the International Organisation of Journalists as a “Russian international camouflage organisation” and exposed its role in organising a supposedly independent “world meeting of journalists” in the Mediterranean, including by listing the names and tactics of those involved. The propagandists were delighted when media sources from Tunisia to Ankara repeated the bulletin’s claims. Even BBC referred to the fake Committee’s representation of the meeting as a “floating hive of subversion.”

With targets including everyone from the World Federation of Scientific Workers to the World Federation of Democratic Youth, this ‘Committee’ caused quite a stir. The Soviets complained to the Austrian police, while West German intelligence cheekily claimed credit for the Committee – a professional hazard when the real author can’t own up. Eventually, cover was blown and the fake Committee outlived its usefulness.

Three people sit at an ornate wooden table during a formal meeting. The person in the centre raises a finger while speaking.

President of the World Federation of Scientific Workers, Frederic Joliot-Curie (centre) speaks at the organisation’s general conference, 1951. The association was one of the main targets of the false Communist investigation committee | Credit: Alamy

2. Centre d’Études Micro-Analytiques

The replacement for that first ‘Committee’ was a supposedly French-speaking west European research organisation specialising in long-winded faux scholarship. Bulletin number 7, for example, comprised a dense 16-page assessment of recent organisational developments within the World Peace Council – the international anti-imperialist and anti-nuclear organisation discreetly sustained by the Soviets. It generated coverage in an Indian newspaper under the gratifying headline “World Peace Council Promotes War, not Peace”. British socialists were early readers, attacking it as “A mad-house anti-communist journal”. In doing so, they fell into a classic trap: repeating the Centre’s arguments to the very readers the propagandists most wanted to reach.

Other editions were too subtle. Foreign Office bosses in the know couldn’t tell the difference between the propaganda and a standard verbose research paper. Foreign Office colleagues not in the know took the Centre’s material at face value – and were unimpressed by the quality of the analysis.

3. Freedom for Africa Movement (Loyal African Brothers)

Created around 1960 and supposedly heralding from an unspecified part of Francophone Africa, this fictitious pan African nationalist network issued scruffy leaflets to expose and smear politicians deemed too close to the communists. Each of the 50 or so operations began with the same rallying cry: “Loyal African Brothers!”, earning the group its affectionate moniker.

Each combined ad hominem attacks with salacious rumourmongering, delivered in what the propagandists called “semi-educated prose” and “hideous jargon” to supposedly appeal to “the half-baked intelligentsia”.

The Movement claimed (without evidence) multiple successes in derailing local politicians and even had their words read out – unwittingly – on BBC radio. Most bizarrely, the Soviets forged a Brothers leaflet of their own, exposing CIA bribery of African politicians; the opportunistic British ran with it – knowing that it bolstered their own deniability.

4. Council of the Arab Unity Brethren

Various fictional Arab groups popped up and then disappeared again in the mid-1960s, each taking a shot at Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, a longtime target of the British. One such group, the Council of the Arab Unity Brethren, was christened by the head of the Information Research Department himself, who insisted that its name “apparently makes more sense in Arabic than in English” after the team raised quizzical eyebrows.

Supposedly based in Libya, the Brethren attacked Egyptian expansionism, designs on Libyan oil, and Nasser personally on religious grounds. In a list reminiscent of a Monty Python sketch, other groups created by the British to do much the same included the Brothers of the Renaissance, the Socialist Brotherhood of Iraq, the True Islamic Socialists, and so on.

A man in a suit sits at a desk with several microphones in front of him, speaking in a formal setting.

President Nasser announces free elections to elect a new parliament, 31 March 1968. Nasser was personally targeted by the Council of Arab Unity Brethren | Credit: Getty Images

5. Committee for the Defence of Non-Totalitarian Socialism

Another of the fake anti-Nasser groups, this supposed Committee exposed and criticised Egyptian covert operations in Sudan and Yemen from a left-wing perspective. It warned of the dangers posed by communists inside the Syrian government. The British were delighted when Egypt wrongly assumed that disaffected Syrians were behind it and insisted that the operation had hurt Nasser – without providing any evidence of that.

6. People’s Front of East Africa

By implication a pro-Chinese movement, the People’s Front amplified Kenyan political tensions and discredited the vice president, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, by association. After criticising the Kenyan government as a cesspool of dishonesty and authoritarianism, the Front lavished praise on Odinga and his vision of closer ties with China. Its material insulted African socialism but then called to make Odinga president.

The mysterious People’s Front generated coverage in British and Kenyan newspapers, with one Swahili commentary blaming the CIA for what it called a crude forgery. The British propagandists were delighted, and hoped to use the Front again when the Rhodesian government unilaterally declared independence from London in 1965. The plan was for the People’s Front to encourage Africans to rise up and resolve the Rhodesian problem through violence. Diplomats vetoed it as being far too risky.

Four people stand on a stone platform during a formal event. Three raise a hand in greeting while one stands with hands lowered.

Jaramogi Oginga Odinga (far left) at the May Day celebration in Moscow, 1964. The Kenyan politician was used as a pawn by the People’s Front of East Africa | Credit: Getty Images

7. International Movement for Revolutionary Action

Those British propagandists did repeat the People’s Front trick elsewhere in Africa, using yet another fake group. The Movement, another supposedly pro-Chinese group, valorised another target of British ire: John Malecela, a diplomat spearheading much of the United Nations’ decolonisation work.

In an attempt to unsettle African leaders, the Movement praised Malecela as a “revolutionary hero” who had scored “many brilliant victories” at the United Nations “in the war against those who are taking the bourgeois-nationalist road and opening up the only correct road for the victory of the Chinese revolution”. In doing so, the hope was to discredit Malecela by associating him with revolutionary Chinese militants. The Movement’s rallying cry to wage guerrilla warfare across the continent would have unnerved African leaders further.

8. Front for the Liberation of the Spanish Maghreb

When Spanish dictator Francisco Franco criticised the UK’s position in Gibraltar, the British shot back to remind the world of Spain’s own colonialism in north Africa. This fake Front sought to embarrass Spain at the United Nations, and to stir regional tensions.

It sounded legitimate enough – not too dissimilar from genuine organisations such as the National Movement for the Liberation of Equatorial Guinea, or the even more verbose Movement for the Self-Determination and Independence of the Canary Archipelago.

British operatives posted a forged petition to the UN calling for the restitution to Morocco of various Spanish colonial territories. It left the Moroccan press confused and authorities keen to identify the perpetrators.

A street scene with mid‑20th‑century cars near a building marked “CAFE ESPAÑOL,” with the Rock of Gibraltar rising in the background.

Spanish workers gather outside the closed gates at customs on the border with Gibraltar, 1969. After Franco criticised the UK’s position in the region, a fake Front was set up to cause trouble for Spain | Credit: Getty Images

9. Organisation for the Expulsion of the Spanish Colonialists

In January 1967, the British followed up with another pseudo anti-Spanish group. This one incited violence against Madrid, noting that, whereas the French, Belgians and British had all withdrawn from Africa, Spain had not.

“We will fight with all our strength and with every weapon we can lay our hands on… Victory [will be won] by God’s will.” There were so many of these little groups flying around that British propagandists struggled to keep track of which were real and which were creations of their own. It was all a bit confusing.

10. The Matopos Club

Named after the distinctive granite hills in Rhodesia (now the Matobo Hills in Zimbabwe), the burial place of Cecil Rhodes, the Matopos Club was a fake white Rhodesian group created after Ian Smith’s government unilaterally declared independence from the UK in 1965. To maintain credibility, the Club railed against “those arrogant dictators in Whitehall” before attacking Smith for lying, creating chaos, crippling the economy and, ironically, spreading propaganda.

Its most controversial mooted operation – ultimately vetoed – targeted recipients inside the UK, linking support for Smith to support for Aryan supremacy. The Club did not make much of a mark; intelligence suggested that the wife of a wealthy young farmer in Rhodesia thought that the Club was playing a very important role. Apparently, her friends agreed and all thought it was the work of a mysterious resistance leader. This was a rather underwhelming outcome.

A black‑and‑white photo shows a man in a suit and tie seated at a reflective desk, speaking on a telephone. Papers, books, and a rotary phone sit in front of him. Behind him are window shutters, a coat of arms, and a framed landscape painting.

Ian Douglas Smith, prime minister of Rhodesia, pictured in November 1965. After his government declared independence, the fictional Matopos Club began a propaganda campaign against him | Credit: Getty Images

11. Committee for European Syndicalist Action

This fake student group sought to disrupt the 1968 World Festival of Youth and Students in Sofia by playing on the leftist, anti-war, counterculture student protests sweeping western Europe and the US. Senior diplomats worried that the Committee risked inciting violence, which might backfire against the west. The propagandists, though, insisted that the aim was merely to give the impression that there were people willing to make trouble, which would be enough to disrupt the festival.

It was a gamble, especially because the fake group did explicitly call for anarchist students to express their grievances at the festival. “We say that the time has come to answer violence with violence.” And violence did break out – although it is difficult to trace it back to the faux syndicalists.

12. The Black Power – Africa's Heritage Group

Struggling to stay relevant and justify budgets, the propagandists found a new target in the late 1960s: Black Power. A fake west African Group tried to exploit differences between US and sub-Saharan African manifestations of that movement.

It attacked Stokely Carmichael, the Trinidad-born Black Power leader who had travelled to Guinea in part to escape harassment by the FBI. The Group launched a personal attack, calling Carmichael: “That unbidden prophet from America… weaving a bloody trail of chaos in the name of Pan-Africanism”.

By coming to Africa, the material continued, Carmichael had “deserted the cause” in the US “which needs him more than we do”. And how dare he – who seemed to imagine Africans as ‘savages’ – preach Black Power to a continent “where it already truly belongs”? Strong words – but they did little damage.

A man in a double‑breasted suit speaks into a microphone, raising one hand with two fingers extended.

Trinidadian-American civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael, the main target of the The Black Power – Africa’s Heritage Group, appears at a college sit-in in New York, 1968. The group accused Carmichael of “deserting” the American cause with his Pan-Africanism | Credit: Getty Images

13. Comitato Milanese per la Pace

This fake Italian peace committee published an overzealous eulogy – the Adult’s ABC of Peace – to send to the World Peace Council, a long-standing target of British propaganda. The aim, as ever, was to expose the Council as a decidedly unpeaceful instrument of Soviet policy.

The booklet produced was rather a clumsy publication. C was for China, obstructing the world-wide struggle for peace; N, rather desperately, was for Negative Views, or any criticism of the Soviets; X, more desperately still, was for Unknown Quantity; Z for Zealous Struggle.

Based on genuine World Peace Council writings, the British booklet cleverly tried to box the communists into a corner, making it difficult for them to denounce the fake. Some 770 copies were sent from Milan to addresses worldwide, some of which reached senior World Peace Council leaders. The British claimed success in causing trouble – but, again, struggled to provide evidence.

A person in a military uniform speaks at a podium in a large hall, with several people seated at a long table behind them and multilingual text on the wall.

Fidel Castro speaks at the 1981 session of the World Peace Council. British intelligence groups wanted to expose the Council as an “unpeaceful instrument of Soviet policy” | Credit: Getty Images

14. World Muslim Brotherhood

A particularly controversial fake group was created simply by inserting ‘World’ in front of the (real) Muslim Brotherhood as a means of reaching Muslim audiences in the mid-1960s. In fiery language, the World Muslim Brotherhood attacked President Sukarno of Indonesia: “That creature is always running after more authority and sexual pleasures which had made him throw away every consideration for his and his people’s dignity for the sake of his lust.”

The fake Brotherhood protested the treatment of Muslims in China, drawing attention to the discrepancy between China's supposed religious tolerance and the persecution of Muslims under the Cultural Revolution. And it exposed Egypt’s use of chemical weapons in the Yemen Civil War: “detestable and internationally-banned weapon of warfare… which even the madman Hitler did not use against his enemies in the Second World War”. Worryingly, the propagandists laced this missive with antisemitism, in order (they would have insisted) to make it credible.

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Rory Cormac is a professor of international relations at the University of Nottingham. He is the author of Fakers: A Top-Secret Tale of Phantoms and Forgeries on the Disinformation Front Line (Oxford University Press), out now

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