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

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…