The Rosenberg Trial - Nuclear Museum [61], In 1981, the KGB and the GRU started a joint operation, codenamed RYAN, to generate warning indicators of preparations for an American-led NATO nuclear attack in the USSR. Donations are voluntary and not required to download the e-book - your link to download is below. This content was originally written for an undergraduate or Master's program. Based on early suspicions that the murderer may have had skills in dissection because the body was so cleanly cut, agents were also asked to check out a group of students at the University of Southern California Medical School. Before you download your free e-book, please consider donating to [7] The following section will focus on the intelligence provided by one of the five Cambridge spies, whom his Soviet case officer, Yuri Modin, later referred to as the most important operative we had anywhere in the world[8]: Kim Philby. The FBI immediately opened an investigation. Following her guilty plea on July 28, 1944, Ms. Dickinson detailed how shed gathered intelligence at U.S. shipyards and how shed used the code provided by Japanese Naval Attach Ichiro Yokoyama to craft the letters. Around that time, it also started officially stationing agents as diplomatic liaisons in U.S. embassiesthe forerunner of todays Legal Attachsto coordinate international leads arising from the Bureaus work. Atomic spies - Wikipedia [56] Scott, Espionage and the cold war, p. 32. Germanywith most of its troops captured and Berlin surrounded by advancing American and Soviet forceswas the first to raise the white flag, in May 1945. Julian Assange, Wikileaks founder, was indicted under the law in 2019 for his role in releasing secret military and government information during the Obama presidency. On the contrary, ideologically motivated Russian agents who were recruited by the Americans and British were certainly equally damaging to the Soviet Union and vice versa. The climate of fear and repression linked to the Red Scare finally began to ease by the late 1950s. Trumans loyalty program was a startling development for a country that prized the concepts of personal liberty and freedom of political organization. As shown above, in a lot of cases, espionage alone has not been of value. Cold War espionage paid offuntil it backfired, East German - AAAS Public concerns about communism were heightened by international events. From 1979 to 1985, Adolf Tolkachev, an engineer at a military research center, cracked open the secret Soviet military research establishment. The History Learning Site, 9 Mar 2015. Donald Trump plays the victim card while rivals mostly defend him, The journey of Trumps classified documents, Read the FBI's search warrant for Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago property, Cornell Law School describes espionage as. The FBIs rolls swelled from just 2,400 agents and support employees in 1940 to a war-time peak of more than 13,000 in 1944. Who was the traveling companion of a South American police officialan official who boasted that he could spot any FBI undercover man on sight? Many thanks! Atomic Spies. On the basis of three case studies of Western and Soviet espionage, this essay will argue that espionage did affect the policies of the Cold War. The FBI was asked to help, and it quickly identified the bodyjust 56 minutes, in fact, after getting blurred fingerprints via Soundphoto (a primitive fax machine used by news services) from Los Angeles. [42] Andrew, For the presidents eyes only, p. 270. Cecil, R., The Cambridge Comintern, in The Missing Dimension: Governments and Intelligence Communities in the Twentieth Century, edited by Christopher Andrew and David Dilks (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1984), pp. In 2001, former FBI agent Robert Hanssen was accused of spying for Moscow, and FBI officials learned he had betrayed Polyakov to his Russian bosses. In order to answer this question, the following pages will analyse how intelligence, gathered through espionage, was integrated into the general intelligence analytical process and how valuable it was for the decision-makers. Though Polyakov was fiercely loyal to the USSR, he was increasingly disgusted by what he saw as the corruption and impending failure of Soviet leaders. All Rights Reserved | Site by Rootsy. How to put these clues together? Cold War espionage - Alpha History After several interrogations, he began full-time collaboration with SIS in 1974. Federal employees were analyzed to determine whether they were sufficiently loyal to the government, and the House Un-American Activities Committee, as well as U.S. When war finally did come to Americawith a bang at Pearl Harborthe Bureau was ready. The nation breathed a sigh of relief when the Axis powers finally collapsed. [27] Just before going to Washington, Philby was informed that a cryptanalyst in the US Army Security Agency, Meredith Gardner, had succeeded in decoding parts of NKGB messages sent from various residencies around the world to the Centre during the last year of the war, which were codenamed Venona by the Americans. The Bureau also had her mug shot in its files and provided it to the press. Trevor-Roper, H. R., The Philby Affair: espionage, treason and secret service; and Admiral Canaris! Apart from that, especially regarding the end of the Cold War, there is still a multitude of documents that have not been declassified yet. But that was hardly an accident. [56], However, there was another Oleg in the history of Western espionage who could in hindsight be considered as important to the British and Americans as Philby or Maclean to the Soviets. Polyakov was a consummate intelligence officer, Grimes recalled. [43] Thus, Penkovsky could assure the Americans that Krushchevs nuclear forces were far weaker than the Soviet leader was claiming and that all of his statements were a bluff. 12 Jul 2023. The Sedition Act was wasrepealed by Congress in 1920 on the grounds that it violated the First Amendment. [49] Barrass, The Great Cold War, p. 391. In judicial affairs, for example, support for free speech and other civil liberties eroded significantly. During the Cold War both superpowers (and many other major nations) maintained government agencies related to espionage (spying) and intelligence gathering. Finally, Schecter and Deriabin argue that thanks to the Soviet missile manual that Penkovsky transmitted in 1961, the CIA knew the necessary technical details of the SS-4 missile system to identify it in Cuba in 1962. for the purpose of gathering secret information or detecting wrongdoing, and to transfer such information to another organization orstate.". For example, in the United States these functions were carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Because of its National Academy training regimen for law enforcement executives, the Bureau had a ready pool of experienced graduates that it could tap into for new special agents. Only when combined with his SIGINT reports, did Gordievskys evidence about the Soviet war scare increase in value. 101-116. By the early 1950s, the FBI and its allies had largely purged the federal government of dangerous moles and moved to become more proactive in infiltrating and deceiving Soviet intelligence. Along the top there are four regionsUnited States, Europe and the USSR, Middle East and North Africa, and East Asia. It was vital to know what the adversary was up to, and the possibility of using the hi-tech surveillance that is used today was not around. In the summer of 1943, an anonymous typewritten letter in Russian suddenly appeared at FBI Headquarters. The Cold War: Technological Advances Space Technology As part of the arms race with the Soviet Union, the United States poured billions of dollars into their space program, partly for strategic purposes of satellite surveillance, but also for the symbolic power of beating the Russians to outer space. Gaddis, Intelligence, Espionage and Cold War Origins, Diplomatic History 13 (1989) cited in Kerr, S. Investigating soviet espionage and subversion: the case of Donald Maclean, Intelligence and National Security, 17 (2002), p.101. It was also a crime under this act to advocate, teachor defend the former behavior. There was a significant learning curveit took some time for the FBI to get undercover operatives in place and to master the languages. The Bureau had been put in charge of domestic intelligence and had already built an extensive network of sources, with law enforcement around the country serving as an important set of eyes and ears. Hitler wasted little time rearming the country. Canada aligned with the West. Scott, L. Intelligence and the Risk of Nuclear War: Able Archer-83 Revisited, Intelligence and National Security, 26 (2011), pp. The intelligence arms of the Army and Navy had noticed increased activity by German and Japanese spies in the late 1930s and began . Basically, a mystery. This collection focuses on the ideals that formed the basis of American policy toward the Soviet Union during the early years of the Cold War. Through the casecalled COMRAP, for Comintern Apparatusthe FBI learned that Soviet spying was a significant threat, which helped the Bureau prepare for the Cold War to come. WHY DO COUNTRIES CONDUCT ESPIONAGE CAMPAIGNS? For the purpose of answering this essays question, the following paragraphs will focus on the latter. Espionage in The Cold War - History Crunch Cold War Canada - CBC.ca [4] J.L. What to make of it? [36] What can be said is that both were valuable Soviet moles due to their key positions either in the British Embassy in Washington or the section of the British Secret Service entrusted with fighting communism. Under pressure from the negative publicity aimed at their studios, movie executives created Hollywood blacklists that barred suspected radicals from employment; similar lists were also established in other industries. Nevertheless, Cogan recognizes the fact that with the help of the manual that Penkovsky provided in 1961, the CIA could know how the SS-4 would be field deployed so that they could confirm its existence in Cuba as it was being photographed by the U-2 flights. A good example was William Fisher (aka Rudolf Abel), who posed as a retired photographer while secretly recruiting and supervising Soviet spies. Spy tunnel in Cold War Berlin. [34] Maclean passed valuable intelligence on American strategies in the Korean War, on atomic weapons as well as NATO politics. Over time, he passed on a treasure trove of important documents, from Soviet intelligence related to the Vietnam War to monthly Soviet military strategy reports to a list of military technology the Soviets wanted to obtain from the West. Strategically, it made senseSouth and Central America were fast becoming staging grounds for the Nazis to send spies into the U.S. and hubs for relaying information back to Germany. [15] Likewise, Philby passed information on former Soviet prisoners of war and other displaced Soviet persons that were interrogated by SIS. For nearly 25 years, the Soviet military intelligence officer had served as the United States most trusted resource on the Soviet military, providing reams of intelligence and becoming a legend in the process. [3] However, this is contested by scholars like J.L. Classified documents refer tothe kind of material that government agencies have deemedso sensitive to national security that access must be controlled and restricted,Jeffrey Fields, associate professor of the practice of international relations at USC, wrote in an article for The Conversation. They were hounded by law enforcement, alienated from friends and family and fired from their jobs. Soviet agents were able to obtain and pass on technical information about this program, including blueprints, with remarkable ease. USA TODAY 0:00 0:55 An old piece of anti-spy legislation is piquing interest again after former President Donald Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury. [62] It was also Gordievsky who warned SIS about Soviet anxieties regarding the NATO command-post exercise Able Archer in November 1983. [53] In fact, it was a U-2 flight on August 28, 1962 which revealed the existence of the Soviet missiles. The inside story of its foreign operations from Lenin to Gorbachev (Great Britain, Hodder and Stoughton Ltd. 1990), p. 398. [51] When the NIE was discussed by the US Intelligence Board, Penkovskys information has not been mentioned or even reflected on. Meanwhile, Nazi espionage on U.S. soil had become a real threat. WATCH NOW Ethel Rosenberg was arrested on the courthouse steps. According to Pravda, the spy who had meant so much to the United States had been convicted of treason and executed in 1988. And when the U.S. joined the Allied cause in 1941, the President wanted to protect the nation from Hitlers spies and collect intelligence on Axis activities to help win the war. In contrast, it took the Western allies more time after the end of World War Two to start thinking about covert operations on Soviet territory. [38] However, this is not to say that the American or British intelligence community did not possess any human intelligence at all during the Cold War. [6] Andrew, C.; Gordievsky, O., KGB. Yet it was only one of many questionable activities that occurred during the period of anticommunist hysteria known as the Red Scare. In it's strict definition, espionage is the practice of spying usually to obtain confidential intelligence either ofa military or political nature. (London, Kimber, 1968). Figures such as McCarthy and Hoover fanned the flames of fear by wildly exaggerating that possibility. The Bureau had reformed itself on the fly; it was stronger and more capable than ever. The intelligence arms of the Army and Navy had noticed increased activity by German and Japanese spies in the late 1930s and began working with the Bureau to disrupt it. An official website of the United States government. It determined that all five were using doll code to describe vital information about U.S. naval matters. All had typing characteristics that showed they were typed by the same person on different typewriters. Now, this letter. [30] While scholars like Andrew and Gordievsky, Cecil, Modin, or Borovik claim that Philby played a crucial role in the failing of the Albanian operation, Newton argues that it did not fail because of Philbys betrayal. [55] Penkovskys material itself was certainly not as decisive in changing the US NIE as Philbys information was for the Centre. But in 1980, the double agent was summoned back to Moscow. He provided the Centre with a direct pipeline to high-level Western strategy sessions[33] including direct exchanges between the president and prime minister. A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States. The collection includes 57 documents totaling 681 pages covering the years 1945 through 1952. The Bureaus domestic counterintelligence work continued full force as well, with plenty of successes. She opened a doll shop on Madison Avenue that same year, catering to wealthy doll collectors and hobbyists, but she struggled to keep it afloat. In June 1942, for example, German subs dropped off four saboteurs each in Long Island and northeastern Florida. In the Far East, Japan was making military waves as well. In fact, Philbys position in SIS was at that time even more important to the Kremlin than the various intelligence that he transferred, especially when there was a legitimate hope that Philby would be appointed head of SIS in the following years. In 1934, he had first asked the FBI to determine if American Nazi groups were working with foreign agents. Moreover, Hoovers agents helped build the case against Julius Rosenberg (1918-53) and his wife, Ethel Rosenberg (1915-53), who were convicted of espionage in 1951. The CIAs Cold War activities ranged from general surveillance of suspected foreign agents, to the deployment of agents abroad, to illicit operations like assassinations and human experimentation. But the two superpowers continually antagonized each other through . 2023, A&E Television Networks, LLC. Schecter, J. L; Deriabin, P. S., The Spy Who Saved the World. During. Andrew, C., For the presidents eyes only: secret intelligence and the American presidency from Washington to Bush (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1995). The FBI also launched a key crime-fighting tool in March 1950the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives listwhich has since enlisted the help of a ubiquitous news media and a watchful public to capture more than 450 of the nations most dangerous criminals. Soon after, the FBI raided the Rosenberg home and arrested Julius. It also turned out that she had a long and close association with the Japanese diplomatic mission in the U.S.and she had $13,000 in her safe deposit box traceable to Japanese sources. To conclude, whereas the NKGB/MGB had run valuable Soviet moles in British services of external relations right after the end of the Second World War, Soviet defectors working for the West became more and more important for British and American assessments towards the end of the Cold War. How successful was the Special Intelligence Service? Both the fine and the prison sentence could be imposed in conjunction as well. The Cold War. The Espionage Act was passed to bolster the war effort. Does he lie in a traitor's grave, as Pravda suggests, or is he a secret hero, quietly retired at the end of a daring career? speculated intelligence expert Thomas Powers in the Los Angeles Times. [28] Thanks to Philbys new position as SIS liaison officer in Washington as well as his extremely good relationships with the American services and in particular with Meredith Gardner himself, the MGB/KI got warnings from Philby each time the Americans decrypted new Venona messages and got closer to the real names of their British or American moles. Using strong detective work and cutting-edge intelligence collection and analysis tools, the FBI and its partners in the intelligence communityalong with allies in Canada and Great Britainbegan dismantling Soviet spy networks. [66] Herman, M., The JIC 1972-75: Sime Personal Reflections, Centre for Intelligence and International Security Studies Gregynog Conference One Hundred Years of British Intelligence: From Empire to Cold War to Globalisation, 1 May 2009., cited in Scott, Intelligence and the Risk of Nuclear War, p. 772. The first Red Scare climaxed in 1919 and 1920, when United States Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer ordered the Palmer raids, a series of violent law-enforcement raids targeting leftist radicals and anarchists. [46] Schecter, J. L; Deriabin, P. S., The Spy Who Saved the World. The art of espionage is an evolving one, adapting to new technologies and geopolitical conditions, yet often driven by human motivations - including greed, ideology, and revenge - that have changed little over the course of 250 years. [14] Modin remembers that Every time, Philby gave us notice in a different way. Its a mystery. 2023, A&E Television Networks, LLC. The Bureau had a vital role to play in protecting the homeland and supporting the war effortfrom rounding up draft dodgers to investigating companies that deliberately supplied defective war materials just to turn a tidier profit. [10] Nevertheless, Felix Cowgill, head of Section V at that time and SIS anti-communist expert, had been quite surprised when, upon returning to London in October 1944, he found the announcement of Philbys appointment as head of Section IX on his desk. [9], After having worked for Section D for a short time, Philby was transferred in 1941 to Section V, a sub-section of SIS counter-espionage. But fear and prejudice prevailed, and in early 1942, some 120,000 Japanesemore than half U.S. citizenswere hastily detained and interred by the military under executive order. These experts concluded that the three Old English dolls left at a wonderful doll hospital for repairs might well mean three warships being repaired at a west coast naval shipyard; that fish nets meant submarine nets; and that balloons referred to defense installations. Boris Prikhodko/Sputnik. Philby couldnt do anything and felt quite helpless during the secret meetings deciding on Mays arrest., Andrew, Gordievsky, KGB, p. 378; Cecil, Cambridge Comintern, p. 182. Espionage played an important role in the Cold War and highlighted the ongoing tensions between the two superpowers. Spies could become double agents and the whole story has developed a rather romantic . [19] His information would include the names of three highly placed Soviet agents operating in England: two in the Foreign Office and a third as the head of a counter-espionage section. Decades of experience, along with a greater preparedness to employ devious tactics, gave the Soviet Union a distinct head start when it came to espionage. amount, in any currency, is appreciated. According to Borovik, Philbys position in Washington was even more important for Moscow than the previous ones. His official task was, in cooperation with Turkish counter-intelligence, to recruit agents who could be sent into Soviet territory. Heading into the late 1930s, fresh off a victory over the gun-slinging gangsters, the FBI hardly had time to catch its collective breath. Cold War espionage - Wikipedia The author even claimed (falsely) that Zubilin was spying for the Nazis. [64] However, Gordievsky said that he had seen documents that proved a genuine nervousness, mostly from senior Party circles that a nuclear strike by NATO could take place any time, possibly under cover of a routine military exercise. Enforced by President Woodrow Wilson's attorney general, the law made it illegal to share any information that could interfere with the war or stand to benefit foreign adversaries. Spies and spying became part of the Cold War game. The FBI also brought on board huge numbers of professionals for its fingerprinting, scientific, and records management operations; its Identification Division grew so large that it had to be moved to a federal armory larger than a football field. This next section will focus on two important Soviet double-agents who provided valuable information on Soviet politics and military strategies to the Americans and the British: Oleg Penkovsky and Oleg Gordievsky. While a small number of the accused may have been aspiring revolutionaries, most others were the victims of false allegations or had done nothing more than exercise their democratic right to join a political party. Trump claims Mar-a-Lago documents were 'declassified.' Counterintelligence in the Cold War and Beyond It was the woman in Colorado who provided the big break. It is published as part of our mission to showcase peer-leading papers written by students during their studies. Soldiers of the Soviet Union and the United States did not do battle directly during the Cold War. The ensuing investigation was led by the L.A. Police Department. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI, and its longtime director, J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972), aided many of the legislative investigations of communist activities. The Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia, also know as Russian military Intelligence Service or GRU, in Moscow, Russia. The U.S. and Britain, alarmed by the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, feared the expansion of Soviet power and communism in Western Europe and elsewhere. Despite the extensive mutilation and cuts on the body, there wasnt a drop of blood at the scene, indicating that the young woman had been killed elsewhere. [46] When the question emerged whether to send in the Air Force to take out the missile bases, thanks to Penkovskys information, the CIA could tell the President how many days it would take the Soviets to complete the installation of the missiles in Cuba and when they would be ready to be fired. Polyakov also exposed the espionage of Frank Bossard, a British military officer who was caught selling secrets to the Soviets. The Nazis had trained these men in explosives, chemistry, and secret writing. [8] Modin, Y., My Five Cambridge Friends (London, Headline, 1994), p. 46. It formally joined with Germany and Mussolinis Italy to form the Axis powers in September 1940. Your donations allow us to invest in new open access titles and pay our The Cold War | JFK Library At the time those found guilty could be fined up to $10,000 and serve up to 20 years in jail, according the The History Channel. With the dawning of the new anticommunist crusade in the late 1940s, Hoovers agency compiled extensive files on suspected subversives through the use of wiretaps, surveillance and the infiltration of leftist groups. [2] The FBI passed what it learned about Zubilins spying to the War Department, which had primary investigative jurisdiction on the project. Though the climate of fear and repression began to ease in the late 1950s, the Red Scare has continued to influence political debate in the decades since. Learning the counterintelligence ropes as it went along, the FBI was ultimately given the lead in these cases and uncovered some 50 spies operating in America before the nation entered the war, including a massive ring led by long-time German agent Fritz Duquesne. Hanssens admission about Polyakovs service as a double agent had taken place at least 5 years before Polyakov was charged with espionage, raising questions as to whether the general had been lured back to the Soviet side, perhaps misleading U.S. intelligence in the last years of his service.