Total Length: 9330 words ( 31 double-spaced pages)
Total Sources: 0
Page 1 of 31
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….....