U.S. Peace Council

The U.S. Peace Council was a Soviet controlled direct action committee formed in response to Soviet CPSU General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev's call to resist implantation of U.S. President Ronald Reagan's defense modernization program and NATO's decision to deploy a new generation of strategic nuclear warheads in Europe. Brezhnev issued a call for an immediate "nuclear freeze" before the Twenty-Sixth Community Party Congress on February 23 1981. The KGB's International Department instantly triggered active measure throughout the world to implement the strategy.

Three days of organizational meetings were held at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. attended by approximately 275 to 300 people from thirty-three states, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union. Two KGB Officers were in attendance, Oleg Bogdonav an Internal Department specialist in Active Measures, and Yuri S, Kapralov, a KGB Officer assigned to the United States since 1978 and dedicated to penetrating "peace movements." Kapralov was a member of the discussion panel.

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence held hearings in 1982 in which Edward J. O'Malley, assistant FBI director in charge of the bureau's intelligence division testified that KGB officers were instructed "to devote serious attention to the antiwar movement in the United States," and that a Communist-front group, the U.S. Peace Council, was among the organizers of a June 1982 huge peace protest in New York City.