Active reserve (KGB) officers with a military rank who worked undercover in the Soviet Union. "Trusted contacts" were high placed civilians who collaborated with the KGB without signing any official working agreements, such as directors of personnel departments at various institutions, academics, deans, or writers and actors. Informers were citizens secretly recruited by the KGB, sometimes using forceful recruitment methods, such as blackmail. The precise number of people from various categories remains unknown, but one of the estimates was 11 million "informers" in the Soviet Union, or one out of every eighteen adult citizens The active reserve was established by Yuri Andropov in
The KGB and Soviet Disinformation foreword by Roy Godson. A Spanish language edition was released in 1987 by Editorial Juventud. Seth Arenstein analyzed the book for "SAIS Review" and wrote that "Bittman's treatment of disinformation, particularly his meticulous research, makes "The KGB and Soviet Disinformation" fascinating reading". John C. Campbell reviewed the book for the journal "Foreign Affairs" and gave a mixed review, "Going well beyond the author's personal experience–he left Czechoslovakia in 1968–the book ranges over the entire field ... with many illustrative cases and items of interest, but also with a tendency to write the KGB's role as larger than life". "The KGB