Espionage study guide and overview

Espionage

Burds, Chapter 19

Golden Age of Soviet "Illegals"

Cambridge Five: Burgess, Blunt, Maclean, Philby and Cairncross

These five were all discovered to be spying for the Soviets.

Cairncross was never caught. He supplied Stalin with secrets that helped the Soviets stay ahead of British Intelligence, especially at the Battle of Kursk

Cairncross also informed Stalin of ULTRA, when Churchill was hiding ULTRA from Stalin

Cairncross supplied a total of 5832 documents to the Soviets

Cairncros had been working with ciphers at Bleckley Park

Alexander Orlov wrote Handbook of Intellience and Guerilla Warfare in 1963, seminal treatise on the subject

Orlov was the architect of the Golden Age of Illegals of Soviet spy network in the 30s

Orlov was born in Belarussia in 1895, studied law, drafted into tsarist army, fought in October Revolution and Civil War.

Re-entered law school, joined Communist Party, entered intelligence in 1926 and rose quickly

He was a spy in Paris and Berlin, returning to Moscow in 1930.

In 1932, went on a trade delegation to the U.S., obtained a passport as William Golden.

With this alias, he went to Paris, then to London. He was William Golden of American Referator Company, became controller of Philby @ Cambridge.

Orlov continued to use U.S. alias in Switzerland, Estonia, Italy and Spain. Command covert operations behind Franco's lines.

Orlov was called back to Moscow to be executed, but fled using his U.S. alias and money he's skimmed from the Soviets. By 1938, he was back in Moscow as 3-star general with the NKVD

Orlov had fled to the U.S., and when he ran out of money he published his story in Life Magazine, to the embarrassment of Hoover and subsequent Congressional appearance.

Recruitment of sources: most hazardous task. Best tactics are:

Appeal to idealistic purposes

Appeal to personal gain (money, career)

Romantic entanglements

Love of adventure

To conceal a hidden crime

Homosexual deviation and other devices

Blackmail is not commonly used, but is an excuse used by those who are caught to mitigate their guilt

Informants were often people with valuable information who needed money -- civil servants and military

"Honey traps" were sometimes effective, but especially with homosexuals because of social implications

Money is a bigger factor today than it was then -- personal problems were a contributor and the handler offered a way out of the personal problems.

Nightcrawling -- combing DC-area bars and clubs looking for disaffected military, and their weaknesses

False Flag Method -- pose as someone who needs the information for another purpose (i.e. commercial) so that the person selling does not think he is betraying his country

Orlov used heroic trajectory -- to build the spy up as a hero when he was actually the opposite

Philby -- recruited by a scout (his economics prof), and a handler, who took him to Berlin to see the scourge of fascism, and meet his "honey pot" future wife.

Philby built a false identity as a supporter of fascism and was asked to list possible candidates for recruitment -- the other Cambridge Five were all on that list

Orlov wanted to recruit students from upper class families because they tended to take rapid upward career trajectories, putting them in a position to learn things very quickly

The men were plied with young female agents, those with leftist sentiments who engaged in romantic relationships and acted as key ideological influencers

All Five were sons of famous men who struggled to emerge from their fathers' shadows, and their work with NKVD gave them purpose in life.

Philby provided NKVD with insight into MI6

The Five played a key role in the decision of Stalin to sign the 1939 non-aggression pact.

Maclean had leaked info about Hitler-Chamberlain negotiations to Moscow. Stalin knew the West was wanted to work with Hitler against the U.S.S.R., so he dropped his opposition to fascism, at least until war broke out.

Chapter 20: Operation Barbarossa

Stalin had at least 84 sources informing of German intent and readiness to launch Barbarossa

Stalin dismissed all reports as misinformation, believing Churchill responsible

The Soviet intelligence system from all over the world confirmed the attacks well ahead of time, all rejected by Stalin

This institutional myopia led to the denial of this imminent attack in the fact of overwhelming intelligence

Philby was rejected by Stalin for not confirming that this was all misinformation

Philby would eventually be head of MI6's Section IX for anti-Soviet operations

The Cambridge Five were at times suspected of being double agents

Late in the war, key intel provided by Philby would change Soviet perceptions of him.

Philby then provided the NKVD with info on all British agents around the world

Back to Barbarossa -- political leadership must trust the spy network in order for the spy network to be effective

Stalin was guided by a sour history with British intelliegence and by German misinformation

Richard Sorge, an agent in Tokyo, noted that old, unfit Japanese soldiers were in Manchuria, while the good ones were in the south. This meant that Japan was not going to attack the U.S.S.R.

Gen. Zhukov moved his forces (40% of total) to Moscow, arriving just in time to repel the Germans

Red Orchestra -- loosely affiliated group of Soviet espionage rings in Nazi-occupied Europe

There were four main groups: PTX (Belgium), Red Three (Lucerne), Trepper (occupied Europe), and Schulze-Boysen/Harnack (Germany).

Sources included govt officials with German High Command

Lucy Ring:

Rudolph Roessler, a German anti-fascist living in Switzerland, met with two German officers who wanted to sell secrets to weaken Hitler.

These generals were conduit for high-level information, using a radio and Enigma machine, the German military cipher machine

They has Roessler set up a German military station so they could communicate with him through open German military channels

Roessler passed the info to the Swiss intelligence and later directly to the Soviet Military Intelligence

These general sent info about Case Blue, about Stalingrad and the Caucasus

This allowed the Soviets to circle the German position, beginning the siege at Stalingrad

German failure there prevented it from capturing Caspian Oil.

When Rommel failed to get into Arabia, Germany lacked the oil needed to win the war

Hitler had a counter-offensive (Operation Citadel) but wanted to wait for new tanks

Intel arrived to the Soviets before then, allowing them to withstand the counter-offensive

Lucy Ring ended when the German generals were arrested following the attempt to assassinate Hitler

Soviets also used deception, feeding Germans erroneous information about their strength

Kahn: The Intelligence Failure at Pearl Harbor

Cryptanalysts had been critical to managing America's relationship with Japan, which had been tense since the 20s.

Secretary of State Henry Stimson did not believe much in spying, and had cut the department's funds in 1929.

One cryptanalyst wrote a book about it, since he had been thrown out of work, and his humiliated the Japanese -- and the Japanese upgraded their crypto-systems

Army and navy still had codebreakers

Codebreaking was a major source of intelligence during this time, and the competing systems allowed for better codebreaking

In 1939, the Japanese changed their system and their messages became unreadable, so the Americans worked on something called PURPLE to break the new code.

The codebreakers worked under duress in 1940 -- construction above them broke their concentration

They cracked PURPLE and by 1941 were doing 50-75 messages a day from the Japanese

There were vague indications that there would be problems between Japan and the West

Japan's best code, though, was JN25b, and the navy only knew 10% of it

The navy cryptanalysts were deciphering PURPLE messages and German U-boat messages

Traffic analysis of Japanese naval vessels also gave hint of coming aggression

The U.S. did not believe that Japan would attack

December 3rd, Japanese embassy in DC was ordered to destroy its codes and cipher machines

This was indication of impending conflict, but it was believed that maybe through Singapore, not Pearl Harbor

Ship movements had made U.S. think either this or the ships went back to Japan, but instead they went to Hawaii

Tokyo had ensured that there were no leaks. Their embassy in DC did not know about the pending attack

The intelligence failure of Pearl Harbor was not about interpretation but of collection

The U.S. had not put enough spies in Japan, so it had no real information.

It had been focused on intercepting and codebreaking diplomatic cables, instead of building an intelligence network

There were conspiracy theories about the intelligence failure, but these do not hold up under scrutiny

The post-mortem on the intel failure was that army/navy needed to work together, leading to the formation of the Defense Department

The American attitudes contributed to the failure to build adequate intelligence -- the U.S. saw itself as independent an unlikely to be hit. This changed with Pearl Harbor, leading to the creation of the modern defense infrastructure

Kotani: Japanese Intelligence in World War II

IJA HUMINT was Japan's WWII era intelligence org

Operations mainly in China and along the U.S.S.R. border

Thus, the IJA entered into war knowing little about U.S. military strength

IJA officers often had very little experience, especially with field work

There were structural changes that disrupted what little operations they did have

Intel deficit hurt Japan, ex. At Guadalcanal

Japan did not even seem to understand the island, and soldiers were dying from malaria and hunger

Only 8 intel officers were dedicated to the U.S. And UK

Japan gathered intel extensively in China

Disguised as fishing boats to intercept transmissions

Codebreaking Chinese transmissions was important, and there was focus on Hong Kong at the time

There was also poor coordination between Japanese intelligence agencies

Used Thailand as a conduit for information, esp. pro-Japan PM Phibun

Britain intercepted communications between Bangkok and Japan

IJA also fought an intelligence war with the NKVD

MI5 also compromised Japanese intelligence, letting known agents continue their activities to observe them

Britain could also arrest British people feeding intel to the Japanese, such as Sempill, an underwater communications expert

Rutland was ex-British officer who sent intel to Japan

The focus in the 1930s was to international affairs, rather than technology

Japanese approached Rutland, told him it was recruiting RN officers, and his work would be indispensable. Rutland would be adviser, not agent.

After 10+ years as an adviser, Rutland was sent to the U.S., which Japan saw as a potential future enemy

Rutland was to lay the groundwork for Japanese intel infrastructure in the U.S.

Rutland would only collect info when a war began -- a sleeper agent

Settled in the U.S. In 1934, nearby the Douglas Aircraft Factory, which supplied aircraft to the military

He filmed battleships and dropped off the film at a film shop. This was his conduit to Japan

IJA paid Rutland and others for their work.

Another spy was Herbert Greene (brother of Graham Greene), who would find information from the wealthy circles in which he traveled

Rutland established businesses in order to link intelligence gathering: Peking, Vancouver, New York etc.

Japan ended up financing these companies because Rutland didn't know how to run a business

Rutland traveled frequently, eventually to Honolulu and even went to Japan often.

By June 1941, Rutland saw one of his J-contacts arrested in LA. He was repatriated to Britain.

Rutland had worked for Japan for the money and the adventure

His intel work does not seem to have yielded much of anything useful

Kotani: pp. 86-90

Japan had its codes compromised when one of its subs was sunk off the coast of Australia, but it had not taken precautionary measures

This gave the Allies advantage in Coral Sea and Midway battles

The Japanese Navy had trouble accepting that the codes were critical to the loss at Midway

They believed that technical issues, such as supply lines, were more critical

The loss of codes also allowed the U.S. To shoot down Admiral Yamamoto in 1943

IJN officers were then very concerned about codes being broken

The Japanese launched investigations but determined that the shooting down of Yamamoto was not attributable to a leak but rather dumb luck on the Americans' part

Japanese hubris about the codes issue was a big problem for them

Also, Japan was taking a soft attitude towards counterintelligence. Top ciphers like Samejima should have known but could not admit that the codes were being broken

Vice Admiral Fukudome has plans in a briefcase in plain language -- uncoded -- another critical error. His ship went down and he was captured by militia on Cebu (PH).

The Japanese simply had trouble believing that their codes were being broken, and therefore did not worry, even about the lost briefcase

Chapter 22: From Espionage to Covert Action

Soldier-spy: highly-trained special forces commandos specialized in diversionary actions behind enemy lines

Operation Jedburgh, cooperation between British Special Operations Executive (SPOE) and Office of Strategic Services (OSS, USA)

Portable wireless 2-way radio was an important development allowing for everything from paratroopers to the ability to coordinate with remote friendly forces

Paratroopers were positioned behind enemy lines to gather intel and relay it back to the homefront

Resistance groups in Europe were seen as a value resource that was still largely untapped

Using French guerillas would help create favorable conditions in Europe

French resistance called maquis

Their efforts were usually ad hoc and of little impact

Colin Gubbins was a WWI vet who spawned a strategy to use the maquis to disrupt Germany in Europe

Some politicking in America was aimed at getting the 8 different intelligence agencies to work together, and this led to Jedburgh

Jedburgh teams parachuted into France to meet with resistance groups

These groups would delay the arrival of German reinforcements, for example, by sabotaging the French highway system

75% slowdown of Germany military was achieved

Team Quinine knocked down trees repeatedly on a major road to delay Panzers heading to Normandy beaches, as an example. They then used sniper fire to further delay them

This delayed the tanks by 10 days overall

More teams were dropped into Southern France to help coordinate the invasion of North Africa

A blowback was bloody German reprisals on citizens

Maquis groups also cut rail lines, further inhibiting German movements and there was no organized resistance from the Germans to these well-coordianted hit and run groups. Leveraging the resistance groups was therefore critical to success in France

The chapter also talks a bit about espionage networks aimed at the U.S.S.R., set up in Turkey and Estonia

Brandenburgers were German special combat unit that was successfully deployed in the war

They gathered massive amounts of intelligence that allowed them to preserve bridges from being blown up

Their work also laid the groundwork for Barbarossa, for example blowing up the powerstation in Brest (now in Belarus). They knew where everything was.

They even attempted to assassinate Stalin

A captured Russian Lt was turned, but ended up being a double agent

Espionage was about intel gathering, but morphed into covert action as these groups were often the only ones in position to do damage. But they also were able to assist conventional military operations by charting key positions and disrupting enemy movements

Chapter 23 Deception in WWII

"Magic was a decoding machine. It replicated the coding machines that the Japanese were using

Magic's results told of Japanese positions, helping win Coral Sea and Midway

Magic directed U.S. subs to Japanese merchant marine convoys, so they could be sunk, a key element to the strategy of isolating the archipelago

Japan was talking regularly with Hitler, so Magic also told of German plans

At Midway, the U.S. lured Japan into a trap and destroyed much of its fleet

Magic also allowed the U.S. To intercept the itinerary of Yamamoto and it shot him down

The British relied heavily on intelligence records, and kept their records sealed for decades after the war

The British code breaking bureau was relocated from London to Bletchley Park, in the countryside, because of bombing in London

The focal point was the German code Enigma

Enigma worked like this: It contained a series of rotating disks that scrambled the cipher alphabet. When a letter was input into the typewriter key an electrical current would run through the rotors, becoming scrambled. Then the keys would advance a position or two, so that two of the same letters input one after the other would not be encoded in the same way.

Nobody could figure Enigma out -- British, French, Polish all tried

The Poles had actually succeeded in 1932, when a mathematician Marian Rejewski.

Rejewski had some information from a German informant, but he took an unorthodox approach

He didn't try to crack the code, but to understand the mechanics of the machine

Brit Alan Turing expanded on Rejewski's work to match the Germany adaptations to Enigma

The challenge was not to give away the fact that the Allies had cracked Enigma.

There was substantial compartmentalization at Bletchley, so that few people knew Enigma was cracked

To manage Enigma info the XX Committee was formed

The U.S. And UK were involved, Stalin was not They worked with counterintelligence to throw the Germans

Britain was able to liquidate or turn every German secret agent in the UK

Operation Bodyguard was to surround the truth with a bodyguard of lies

The UK, for example, sent messages to convince the Germans they would try to land at Pas-de-Calais, across from Dover.

This was backed by dummy equipment and false communication congregating at Dover to fool German aerial recon

The deception took three-year and culminated in Operation Overlord -- D Day.

2/3 of Hitler's forces were at Pas-de-Calais

This deception allowed for the landing at Normandy

All the while, Hitler believed the landing was going to be at Pas-de-Calais and that Normandy was just a distraction

An important agent was Brutus, a Polish prisoner who told Germany he would spy on UK for them, only to turn double agent when he arrived in the UK.

Another agent was Juan Garcia ("Garbo"), a Spanish colonel and double agent

Both men were always intending to be double agents, due to dislike of Germany

These men planted four false operations to fool the Germans in North Africa, allowing for the Allies to get through the Straits of Gibraltar to North Africa untouched.

The XX Committee had been able to coordinate a highly sophisticated counterintelligence scheme, using agents from all over the Allied world, in order to guide Germany in all the wrong directions

Reliance on Ultra, however, was problematic at the end of the war, when Hitler ordered total radio silence, making intel gathering very difficult for Allies now dependent on Ultra.

Olmsted: Blond queens, red spiders, and neurotic old maids: Gender and espionage in the early cold war

Elizabeth Bentley was a Vassar grad who had run spy rings in NYC and DC during the war.

In 1948 she defected to the FBI and became famous as the story captivated American audiences

Her defection started the post WWII Red Scare, highlighting the threat that Communists were posing to the West

Reporters at the time had focused on her looks and sexuality rather than her importance as a spy, something that diminished the public knowledge of her contributions to Soviet spying on the U.S. during the war

Readers were informed about female spies from spy novels, pulp fiction and she did not fit the paradigm

Female spies were, however, auxiliaries in the novels, a "skirt" at best a sidekick to the hero male spy

Mata Hari had also informed the public perception of female spies, as an exotic dancer who slept with powerful men in order to get information from them

The femme fatale image was popular after WWII in the U.S.

This was a time when there was a balance of power shifting between men and women, following women's contributiosn to the war effort working in factories, for example.

Popular culture reflected a fear of these strong women

There were also stereotypes of female Communists, again from movies and other fiction

Communist women were humorless and hostile, and the women hated men.

There was also propaganda that portrayed Communist wives in a particularly unfavorable light, and this came with the idea that American Communists came from "mother-dominated families"

So there was this association between Communism and domineering women

Elizabeth Bentley was a strange and unsual example of a powerful woman, not the Communist Mata Hari the media and public were expecting

People did not trust her, thought maybe she was not telling the truth

Press coverage of Bentley set the paradigm for press coverage of females spies to follow

Right wing press branded her as a form of Mata Hari, even though she was nothing like that

The image of the honey pot was perpetrated, inaccurately, by media who had an interest in salacious stories about Communist spies

Yet, by the time she died her obituaries listed her as a neurotic spinster, again disparaging but in a less wrong way.

Another key female spy was Judith Coplon

She was caught trying to meet Valentin Gubitchev, a Russian engineer with the United Nations, and she had stuffed briefcase.

She was convicted after being also implicated as a harlot, but her convictions were eventually overturned

The press described the female spies as having a burning hatred for America, or having cold eyes, and other such descriptions that played to the established stereotypes

Similar strange press coverage occurred with other spies who were portrayed with the domineering stereotype, again by male reporters

The men who were with these women were easily found to have been corrupted, regardless of what the evidence actually said

The Rosenburgs, who were sentenced to death for treason, were similarly painted with the cold, domineering paintbrush. An example of this was singling out the woman for not caring about her children, which made her cold, a charge her husband never really faced

Later analysis gave the idea that part of what Bentley so effective was that her looks were aveage -- this made people think that she wasn't a spy.

From Ethel Rosenburg comes the idea of the 'red spider', a play on black widow, referencing Communism and the woman's role in building a web (spy network).

Yet the women were always evaluated against the Mata Hari paradigm

Chapter 24: Operation Rollback: From World War to Cold War

John Gaddis posited the notion that espionage may do good, but this is often counterbalanced.

"There is good reason to doubt whether the benefits Stalin gained from spying on his allies during and after the war counterbalanced the problems created for him once his indulgence in espionage became known"

Scholars have studied extensively whether or not the massive amounts of espionage had any effect on the Cold War.

We know that these efforts were effective during the war, but what about after?

The author asks to consider that both Stalin and Hitler were tremendous threats to America and that this should be taken into consideration when thinking about the value of espionage during the Cold War

Leffler argues that the U.S. And USSR need to take joint responsibility for launching the Cold War, since it was largely a war fought with the espionage between the two countries

Soviet behavior was concerned largely with defending its own turf, its own borders and solidifying its own idealogy, rather than on converting the world to Communism

Evidence uncovered of late highlights that the Soviets were mostly concerned about their own existence, and that they were not imagining the espionage efforts of the West, which were extensive

US policy towards the U.S.S.R. In the 40s was more aggressive than had been previously understood in the West

The U.S. believed that it should pursue any effort short of war to defeat the U.S.S.R. during this time

The CIA was created as new program within the State Department

Operation Rollback

Under auspices of National Secuirty Council

This was organized public support of resistance to tyranny in foreign countries

For the first time, the U.S. was specifically abandoning its isolationist status for a policy and instrument of active intervention around the world

This included support of anti-Soviet paramilitary groups in Eastern Europe

This political warfare would end up being dubbed the "greatest mistake" because it failed and it also created even greater distrust on the part of the Soviets

The Soviets entered a state of "heightened vigilance" against the West as the result of this strategy

The Soviet perspective:

In WWII, 1 in 8 Nazi soldiers had been a Soviet citizen prior to the war

These came from western and southern borderlands

The southern policy became much more important, especially re: the Caucasus

This is where the oil is, and was the objective of Hitler's march that was stopped at Stalingrad.

Recognizing the strategic importance of the Caspian, the U.S.S.R. refocused its efforts there

This lead to invasion of Iran in 1946 and a near-invasion of Turkey

These moves, however, convinced the Truman Administartion that the Near East was important to its interests

Turks were pushing for close U.S.-Turkish relations, a hedge against the U.S.S.R.

The Americans proposed to put land defenses in Turkey, a key factor in talks with Turkey at that point

Michael Kedia was a German working in Georgia who had been recruited as a double agent by OSS.

Kedia had contacts throughout the region, including Istanbul

The Caucasian peoples were viewed as struggling against the Soviets, as the Poles were

Kedia built up a large intelligence network in the Caucasus, Central Asia, Iran and India

Agents were recruited mainly for patriotic reasons, rather than for money

There was a U.S. policy shift around this time from containment of Communism to rollback, destabilizing Soviet power, and this was driven in particular by a desire to rid the Caucasus of Soviet influence, as that was a source of their power

Furthermore, millions of people in the U.S.S.R. were anti-Soviet. Nations like Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia had all once been independent and many central and Eastern European peoples hated being subjugated by the U.S.S.R.

A story is related about underground operations in West Ukraine, which is a hotbed of Uktrainian nationalism - especially in relation to the Russians

The CIA ran Eastern European operations through Munich and felt that the U.S.S.R. was going to plan war. So it needed people in place to know about it ahead of time

The CIA tapped into the networks of wartime guerillas, especially nationalists who were struggling against Soviet hegemony

Key was to "investigate the internal strains" of the U.S.S.R., and stop thinking about it as a monolithic union

The U.S. sought to forge reltaionships with these activist groups within the U.S.S.R. And coordinate their efforts, somewhat similar to what they had done in France during the war.

Sabotage and guerilla attack strategies were made, and the objective was to engage primarily in psychological warfare, highlighting to Stalin that his power was weak and under threat.

The groups did not disable the U.S.S.R., but instead drove it further into the Cold War mindset

Chapter 25: Operation Enromoz: Atomic Spies

Western analysts had predicted a 5 to 10-year lag in Soviets adopting Western atomic technology

The actual gap was much lower, leading to the idea that the Soviets had stolen the knowledge

Whereas the U.S. had a physicist in charge of its program, Stalin appointed Beriia, head of his secret police

It is believed that one of the Cambridge Five, Cairncross, relayed to the U.S.S.R. The intentions that the U.S. And UK had to create the atomic bomb

The Maud Report was a feasibility study on the atomic bomb that was completed in 1941, and Cairncross relayed this information to Moscow as well, noting that the weapon was maybe 2 years away

Another member of the Cambridge Five, Maclean, confirmed this information

Moscow initially dismissed the reports, noting that the imminent German invasion was a more pressing priority for the British

However, some within the Soviet intelligent community recognized this issue, and undertook a shift towards the nuclear threat

This led to the foundation of the Soviet nuclear weapons project

Soviet spies were able to provide scientific and technical information to the Soviets at this time

Western nuclear research papers began drying up, confirming what had already been said about the nuclear project -- it was now classified which meant that they were getting close to a weapon

A spy in San Francisco, Gregory Kheifetz, was friends with Robert Oppenheimer, who would become head of the Manhattan Project, and this gave Moscow access to massive amounts of information.

The Soviets wanted to get some scientists on board, and felt that they would not be able to handle them as they would a normal agent

Kheifetz' job was to befriend the scientists, and build bonds based on anti-fascist ideology

By 1943, the U.S.S.R. had stolen 286 classified documents, and identified seven research centers and 26 scientists

A drugstore in Santa Fe was one of the stations by which information got back to the U.S.S.R.

An agent named Elizabeth Zarubina influenced Oppenheimer in his hirings, which would include several Soviet moles

Agent Lukas was Margarita Konenkova, who seduced Einstein.

He had no secrets to share at the time, refused to go to Moscow and ended up being useless to them

The USSR had descriptions of the atomic bomb by January 1945

Key player: Klaus Fuchs

Fuchs had fled Germany in 1933 and worked on heavy metals at the University of Bristol.

In 1943 he left to work on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, but in 1941 he had already been turned by the Soviets

He gave the Soviets the specs they needed to build their own bomb

He provided several critical points of information that allowed the Soviets to close the atomic gap quickly.

A British researcher, Allan May, was working at a nuclear research facility in Montreal and passed along two uranium samples and details on Little Boy

The next step was to get information from Niels Bohr about fixing a reactor and this enabled the Soviets to refine isotopes of uranium and plutonium.

One issue that actually hindered the Soviets was that Beriia, the secret police head in charge of the nuclear project, had trouble trusting scientists with the sensitive technical information that was being gathered.

The Soviets had actually the capability to develop the hydrogen bomb, which would have leapfrogged the U.S. And UK, but they chose to follow the U.S. instead of relying on their own ingenuity

Another element mentioned is that the Soviets for a while had trouble obtaining uranium, until they found some in Bulgaria

The chapter then profiles a number of nuclear spies

Melita Norwood: joined the Communist party in 1931, recruited in 1934 at age 24.

She had actually sold copies of the Daily Worker on street corners, but went relatively unnoticed

She had been investigated eventually but the investigation stalled, in part because of Kim Philby's flight to Moscow

There was an entire Russian emigre community that was a main recruiting ground in the 1930s that had essentially gone undetected

George Koval was American-born

His status as a spy was only found out in 2007, a year after he died, when Putin awarded him a Hero of Russia medal posthumously

It is thought that the number of Russian spies in the U.S. has quadrupled since the end of the Cold War

He'd gone to school in the U.S., but went back to Russia to the Jewish Autonomous Region in Siberia. He was recruited there and sent back to San Francisco, posing as a supplier to General Electric

He registered for the draft and ended up in the U.S. Army in 1943, theoretically to steal chemical weapons secrets

He ended up at the Manhattan Project, monitoring radiation levels and gaining access to the entire research facility in Tennessee

He sent message to Moscow via coded message, couriers and other means

After the war, he left for Moscow, where he lived the rest of his life

Ted Hall

TH was recruited to the Manhattan Project in 1944.

On vacation in NYC, he went to the Soviet consulate and offered information

He had strong feelings about the idea of the U.S. having a monopoly on nuclear weaponry

The FBI investigated him using Venona, but this was decided not to be enough evidence to convict

Ultimately, the U.S. tried to use death sentence as leverage against Julius and Ethel Rosenburg, who ended up not being nuclear spies and they were executed

Klaus Fuchs was only given fourteen years, in contrast

Julius had provided rocket guidance technology

Over 90% of espionage is about acquiring technology and that was certainly the case during the nuclear age

Chapter 26: VENONA and the McCarthy Era

The U.S. became a superpower with the end of the WWII, but it led to the greater period of insecurity as the result of the Cold War

Work with KGB archives provides insight into this period

The KGB was "far more contentious, chaotic, and confused than previous accounts by both Russian and Western writers would suggest"

By 1940 the NKVD had very little presence in America, many operatives having been called back to Moscow then executed

The operatives the U.S.S.R. had in the world actually received very little help from Moscow

The Communist underground is designed to carry forward phases of the Party's program which cannot be conducted openly and lawfully

Lenin had taught that the enemy needs to be weakened in advance

The U.S. was the main target for strategic spying

The Anti-Communist Manifesto spelled out American conceptions about the U.S.S.R., many of which were actually unfounded.

"It is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination by whatever means and at whatever cost

. There are no rules in such a game. Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply. If the United States is to survive, long-standing American concepts of fair play must be reconsidered."

This doctrine drove the development of massive espionage and counter-espionage apparatus

There was a spy scare in 1945

Defection of Igor Gouzenko

Code clerk at the Soviet embassy in Ottawa.

Obtained protection from Canada and defected with 109 top secret documents

The Gouzenkos had a loud baby and had therefore been encouraged to find a place to live outside of their compound, which facilitated the defection

Gouzenko had decided not to return to Russia, and brought the documents to ensure safe passage to the West, because the documents contained information of interest

The Gouzenkos had tried to defect, wandering around Ottawa to find authorities to grant him asylum.

That night, their apartment was raided, and the next day they turned themselves into the RCMP

Gouzenko's evidence showed the depth of Soviet espionage, attempts to get into cipher rooms, Parliament, the Air Force, and atomic research laboratories

There was also evidence of espionage by Alger Hiss and Treasury Official Harry Dexter

Spies fingered in the reports were arrested

Three weeks later, Churchill declared the Iron Curtain with Truman, and the Cold War was more or less officially under way

There was significant alarm in the UK and U.S. about Gouzenko's information

Konstantin Volkov

Was a NKGB officer who tried to defect in Turkey

After Gouzenko, the Soviets were trying to tighten security

Volkov wrote the British consul in Istanbul, requesting an urgent meeting

He arrived in person and asked for asylum and £50,000 in exchange for files while working on the British Desk at Moscow Center

Philby intercepted the communique from Istanbul in the diplomatic bag, and alerted Moscow

Philby then gained authorization to fly to Istanbul and deal with the case personally

Volkov and his wife were taken back to Moscow, meaning that the potential disaster had been averted

Volkov admitted to the Soviets his plans, and was executed

Elizabeth Bentley

There was Silvermaster spy ring, and Harry Dexter's Soviet connection had also become known

Bentley offered the FBI over 100 names of people in the U.S. And Canada with Soviet ties

Many of these individuals were put under surveillance

The Bentley defection severely compromised Soviet efforts in NA, and they shut own their operations almost entirely as the result of the defection

This ended the golden age of Soviet espionage in America

The MGB turned its attention to damage control, trying to ensure that former agents were not cooperating with U.S. authorities

This was basically the beginning of the Red Scare, the idea that instead of a few hundred spies there were over 5000 Soviet spies in North America

However, Stalin had actually lost his intelligence network due to the Gouzenko and Bentley defections.

The Red Scare made the risks of collaborating with the Soviets higher than the rewards, something that was not the case during the war when the Soviets were still an ally (albeit an untrusted one).

VENONA

Secret program to capture encrypted messages sent by the Soviet diplomatic missions around the world

A base in the Australian outback was capturing Soviet transmissions

They were stored, but the code had not yet been cracked, so the information contained in them was not useful as of yet After Gouzenko's defection, counter-intelligence efforts were incrasesd as the result of the Red Scare

Five nations agreed to intercept materials and cipher secrets: the UK USA Security Agreement

Canada, U.S., UK, NZ, Australia

Codebreakers were able to crack Soviet codes

After Bentley's defection, it was the beginning of the end for the Cambridge Five

Meredith Gardner was a key codebreaker for the National Security Agency (NSA)

He spoke six or seven languages, including Sanskrit

He had taught himself Japanese in less than three months following the attacks on Pearl Harbor

He was key to the success of VENONA

A 1500-page NKVD code book was recovered in Finland. It was returned, but first it was copied in its entirety

There were 999 five digit code groups and messages were double-coded

However, many transmissions would repeat code sequences, something that was not supposed to happen.

Still, only 1% of messages had been successfully decoded. They needed a better way

VENONA would eventually reveal that there was a British informant to the Soviets who had been working in Washington at 1944-45. This resulted in a short list

Maclean was pinpointed via his patterns of travel

VENONA led to the discovery of Klaus Fuchs as well and other spies of that era

Spy hunting is tedious work, and these counterintelligence officers struggled with the double-coded Soviet messages.

When they found out that Maclean was a spy, they could not arrest him because then the Soviets would have known that VENONA was working -- they knew it existed from Philby

VENONA was, alas, already well-known and ultimately failed as a counterintelligence operation because of how any Soviet moles existed in the U.S. after the war.

Chapter 27: Espionage and the Cuban Missile Crisis

A man approached two American tourists in Moscow, gave the envelopes to take to the CIA

This was Oleg Penkovsky, who was offering to help

He was working for the Soviet Army Intelligence Directorate, so the offer was treated with skepticism

Penkovsky had photographed every document he'd come across for the past year, and added his own notes

There were also tips of cryptography, aiding the codebreakers

The Soviets were forced to recall 200 spies as the result of Penkovsky's revelations

Penkovsky also came at a critical point in time, when there was a missile gap and a warhead gap, and there were difficulties measuring Soviet military capability

It was believed that there was a 17-to-1 advantage that the U.S. had at the time in capability

There was debate, however, about the nature of U.S. superiority in the arms race, especially with respect to the Soviet rocket program

There were concerns, of course, because the U.S.S.R. had put the first man into space, Yuri Gagarin, and this suggested that the Soviets had intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities

This was of significant concern to the Americans, who were genuinely unsure if the Soviets had not superseded them in the arms race.

The idea of mutually assured destruction was born

Penkovsky had basically revealed, however, that fears about the size of the Soviet arsenal were mostly based on Soviet misinformation -- the missile gap was a myth and in fact Soviet rockets were few and inaccurate

There were concerns about Penkovsky's motivations for providing this information

Penkovsky was, in fact, the son of an anti-Soviet revolutionary, and he harbored similar sentiments

Penkovsky had also portrayed the U.S.S.R. As preparing for a first strike

He was plagued by delusions of grandeur, demaning audience with the Queen and with President Kennedy.

He also advocated for a U.S. first strike against the Soviets

He provided over 5000 photographs, 1200 pages of transcripts, 111 exposed rolls of film, and 10,000+ pages of intelligence reports

These included a Kremlin telephone directory and operating manuals for missiles

There was also a guidebook on missile silo sights

His information allowed the U.S. To identify nuclear missile construction in Cuba in 1962

Kennedy announced the crisis on television with intelligence that indicated the missiles were not yet ready to launch, based on the information that Penkovsky had provided

There was a ship, the Poltava, that was en route to Cuba, but had not yet arrived

There was a naval blockade imposed with the objective of keeping this ship out of Cuba

There were talks about a ground assault, using 180,000 commandoes and air support

The initial pictures of the missiles in Cuba were only identifiable because of information that Penkovsky provided

The U.S. knew that if these missiles became operational, they could hit as far as San Antonio or DC

This would reduce the lead time of an attack, versus an intercontinental ballistic missile

Soviet perspective of CMC

Khrushchev had three objectives: shore up strategic balance with the U.S., deter attack by the U.S. On Cuba, and help the U.S.S.R. gain political parity with the U.S.

For example, the U.S. had missiles in Turkey, on the Soviet border, capable of striking quickly the Caspian oil installations of the Crimean naval installations.

Col. Bolshakov was able to establish a friendship of sorts with Robert Kennedy that provided a direct channel of communication between JFK and Khrushchev.

There were problems with Soviet intel, however, as it thought the U.S. was planning a first strike on the U.S.S.R., which was not the case

There were bullish influences that were pushing Kennedy towards a first strike, but it was never genuinely on the table.

Aftermath

One of the most significant problems with intel of the CMC was that the nuclear warheads were already in Cuba, not on the Poltava.

So while the U.S. knew a lot, it did not know the most important thing, where the warheads were

Some of the warheads were specifically designed to be used against the prospect of a U.S. invasion, and this at a moment when Kennedy was considering precisely such an invasion.

Penkovsky had actually been blown in 1961

He'd been filmed passing along information

He had been allowed to continue for 16 months, which was not their usual modus operandi

There was a secret source that had exposed Penkovsky and the Soviets needed to protect that source, so they could not arrest him

The mole must have been more important than the information that Penkovsky was passing along

Penkovsky was deliberated deceived about the location of the warheads, which led to Kennedy not knowing that they were already in Cuba.

Khrushchev had decided to us tactical nuclear weapons if Cuba had been invaded, as this deception showed

Back in Russia, there were two outcomes. First, Beriia, the head of the secret police, was arrested and executed

He had contributed to the leaks and to Penkovsky

Penkovsky was executed by being fed into a furnace, alive, feet-first.

Richelson: The Great Molehunt

SNIPER's defection, along with the arrests of Blake and Felfe, indicated that the KGB was still capable of penetrating the intelligence services of major Western powers.

It was assumed that there were moles in the CIA and in MI5

A molehunt was underway, and brought in the French SDECE and CSIS in Canada as well

Key catalysts were Anatoli Golitsyn and James Angleton

Golitsyn rang the doorbell of the CIA chief in Finland and asked for asylum

Golitsyn was like Penkovsky, in that he had reached a dead end in his career