Operation Toucan (KGB) Operation Toucan (KGB) Operation TOUCAN was a KGB/DGI public relations and disinformation campaign directed at the military government of Chile led by Augusto Pinochet. According to former KGB officer Vasili Mitrokhin, the plot was originally conceived by Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov. The plot's twofold task was to organize sympathetic human rights activists to pressure the United Nations and generate negative press for the Pinochet regime. In 1976, the start of TOUCAN, the New York Times published 66 articles on Chile’s human rights record and four on Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge and only 3 such articles on the human rights situation in Cuba.
Ivan Agayants he had acquired in the 1930s. On his return to Moscow Agayants was appointed to head the Western European Department of what would become the KGB. After working on forgeries of memoirs sponsored by the Soviet secret police to further the leadership's political goals, and, as part of Operation Seat 12, helping to produce a play The Deputy that maligned Pius XII, he was appointed the first head of Department D (disinformation) of the KGB First Chief Directorate. In 1967 Agayants was appointed deputy head of the First Chief Directorate, but died on 12 May 1968. He is buried in