May 2008

Truth unwritten on socialite spy - Moura Budberg

TV Review: My Secret Agent Auntie, BBC4

…Moura Budberg was a glamorous socialite, a Russian baroness who, after two husbands, became a lover of Maxim Gorky… she was under surveillance by MI5 who thought she wasn't quite the thing, chaps, especially when her friend Guy Burgess turned out to be a spy. Nothing stuck, but after her death stories came out that suggested everything from knowing, well in advance, that Anthony Blunt was also a spy to having been involved in a plot to overthrow the Bolshevik government in 1917. Perhaps with accordions……(Scotsman, 8 May 08)

Marcus Klingberg

Marcus Abraham Klingberg was born in 1918, in Poland, to an ultra-Orthodox family. In 1935 he began medical school and when World War II broke out, he fled to the Soviet Union. His family stayed in Poland and perished in the Holocaust.  Klingberg joined the Red Army during the war and spent most of his service in various medical units, where he gained substantial expertise in contagious diseases. He returned to Poland after the war and was soon married. Shortly after, the Klingbergs immigrated to Sweden. It is believed that his contacts with Soviet intelligence began around that time.  In 1949, the Klingbergs immigrated to Israel. Klingberg enlisted in the Medical Corps, where he climbed the ranks to lieutenant-colonel and was named head of the preventive medicine bureau. Around that time, he renewed his contacts with Soviet intelligence and began providing his handlers with sensitive information……(YNet, 5 May 08)

April 2008

Panel Addresses Academic Ties with Nazis

A panel organized by the Organization of American Historians recently convened in Manhattan to discuss ties between Nazi Germany and leading US universities. Several renowned academics and researchers participated in a most revealing and highly informative event on Sunday, March 30th, entitled, "Columbia and the Nazis: New Research, New Concerns." The event, designated as a special session of the Organization of American Historians annual conference, was held at The Center for Jewish History in Manhattan and was sponsored by the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies……(Intellectual Conservative, 30 Apr 08)

Eisenhower Advisers Discussed Using Nuclear Weapons in China

Senior Air Force officers proposed using 10-to-15-kiloton nuclear bombs against targets in Communist China in 1958, in the event that Beijing blockaded the Taiwan Strait, but President Dwight D. Eisenhower ruled out that option, according to a newly declassified Pentagon document…A similar discussion is underway today as the Pentagon, under direction from Congress, examines U.S. nuclear strategy as part of the debate over whether to develop a new generation of weapons in the Reliable Replacement Warhead program……(Washington Post, 30 Apr 08)

Aldrich Ames Sentenced for Role as Soviet Spy in the CIA

On April 28, 1994, CIA counterintelligence analyst Aldrich Ames was sentenced to life in prison for providing the KGB with confidential information. During his trial, Ames admitted to the court that he sold confidential information to the Soviet Union and later Russia from April 1985 until his arrest in February 1994.
Ames was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole….(Finding Dulcinea, 28 Apr 08)

Scholars run down more clues to a Holocaust mystery

Budapest, November 1944: Another German train has loaded its cargo of Jews bound for Auschwitz. A young Swedish diplomat pushes past the SS guard and scrambles onto the roof of a cattle car. Ignoring shots fired over his head, he reaches through the open door to outstretched hands, passing out dozens of bogus ''passports'' that extended Sweden's protection to the bearers. He orders everyone with a document off the train and into his caravan of vehicles. The guards look on, dumbfounded. Raoul Wallenberg was a minor official of a neutral country, with an unimposing appearance and gentle manner. Recruited and financed by the U.S., he was sent into Hungary to save Jews……(AP, 28 Apr 08)

Voices of Air America 33 years later, pilots can finally reflect on covert CIA operation in Southeast Asia

It was an airline covertly owned and operated by the Central Intelligence Agency. As such, its structure was deliberately confusing, according to Felix Smith, former Air America pilot and author of "China Pilot," (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995.) "It was made so by CIA lawyers, so when news-people would try and figure it out, they'd give up." The Freedom of Information Act has given former Air America employees more latitude in speaking about the lives they led from 1950 to 1975…..(Chicago Tribune, 22 Apr 08)

The Real Joe McCarthy

Fifty-four years ago today, Sen. Joseph McCarthy started his televised hearings on alleged Soviet spies and communists in the Army. The spectacle grabbed the country's attention for the next two months…Robert J. Lamphere, who participated in all the FBI's major spy cases during the McCarthy period, was one. Lamphere also was the FBI liaison to the U.S. Army's Signal Intelligence Service's Venona program, which was intercepting secret Soviet communications…Lamphere (who died in 2002), told me in an interview that agents who worked counterintelligence were appalled that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover initially supported McCarthy. True enough, the Venona intercepts revealed that hundreds more Soviet spies had operated in the government than was believed at the time. "The problem was that McCarthy lied about his information and figures," Lamphere said. "He made charges against people that weren't true…..(Wall Street Journal, 22 Apr 08)

A Soviet Spy Caper: 25 Years Later

Dr. Paul Kengor: Marc, this is a pleasure. When we typically do our “V&V Q&A,” we interview a well-known expert on some major historical event that everyone remembers. No disrespect intended, but most people who have read this far into this interview are wondering, who is Marc Zimmerman, and what in the world did he do 25 years ago?... Zimmerman: Mikheyev was a Russian who served as a tour guide to my college buddy, Bob McGee, from New York, who had gone on a “Can’t-We-All-Just-Get-Along” excursion to the Soviet Union. Later in the year, Alex Mikheyev came to visit the United States by way of the United Nations and Bob asked me to show Mikheyev around D.C. when he visited…..(FrontPage, 22 Apr 08)

For sale: House of spies

The house at 6312 Riviera Dr. in Coral Gables is grand by almost any measure. It has a 33-foot long living room with dragons carved into its marble fireplace, vases that once belonged to Umberto I, King of Italy, a dance patio, mini-Olympic pool, an elevator, a tidewater pond, more than a dozen bathrooms, two roomy boathouses and a pedigreed architect… Given its extreme curb appeal, it seems incredible that the CIA used the house for secret operations at the height of its covert war against Fidel Castro in the 1960s. Then again, this is Miami -- no stranger to the high jinks of history. CIA operatives would stride across the lush lawn in broad daylight, past the pink cupola and into the boathouse where they would board a souped-up boat, part of an armada that then amounted to the Caribbean's third largest naval fleet. Once armed, and sometimes hooded, they would motor down the Coral Gables Waterway to launch one of hundreds of missions carried out against Cuba's Communist government…..(Miami Herald, 20 Apr 08)

Beirut, 25 Year Ago – Little Did We Know

Twenty-five years ago on this day, April 18, I was driving back from the U.S. Marine compound near Beirut International Airport where a press conference was held for the big news item of the day: a Marine guarding the perimeter was shot at. The Marine was unhurt, but the bullet went through his baggy trousers. That was the top news item of the day … until … until 1:03 p.m. That was the exact time when a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden van into the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. The blast was heard and felt several miles away…..(Middle East Times, 18 Apr 08)

Ian Fleming's war spying helped inspire James Bond

He may not have cheated death, seduced women at will and killed countless baddies, but James Bond creator Ian Fleming's experience of the shadowy world of wartime espionage helped inspire his bestselling novels. "For Your Eyes Only" is the first major exhibition devoted to the British author and coincides with the centenary of his birth. It opens at London's Imperial War Museum on Thursday and runs until March 1, 2009…..(Reuters, 16 Apr 08)

Former British spy's WWII exploits revealed

…Britain's National Archives opened its records on Pearl Cornioley, who parachuted into France posing as a cosmetics saleswoman to deliver coded messages to Resistance members. The release follows her death on Feb. 24. The records shed light on a woman who quickly adapted to life as an agent but never forgot about her family back home, requesting in handwritten notes that officials in London send her mother and sisters birthday and Christmas presents…..(AP, 10 Apr 08)

Britsh WW2 spy who posed as saleswoman

The secrets of a female spy who posed as a cosmetics saleswoman during World War II and helped lead the resistance inside Nazi-occupied France have been unsealed. Pearl Cornioley outfoxed the Nazis by, among other tricks, concealing secret messages in the hem of her skirt and helping airmen escape to safety, according to records unsealed at Britain’s National Archives last week. The release follows Cornioley’s death on February 24.

The records shed light on a woman who quickly adapted to life as an agent, but never forgot about her family in Britain, requesting in handwritten notes that officials in London send her mother and sisters timely birthday and Christmas presents…..(Dispatch, 9 Apr 08)

Spy buster, aged 100, keeps her secrets

Russia’s oldest counter-intelligence officer is 100 years young. And although she's long retired, Maria Lyovina is still barred from revealing sensitive details about her work in the past. She may not look like your archetypal secret agent but Maria Lyovina was catching spies long before the world had ever heard of James Bond… She joined SMERSH, a counter intelligence group dedicated to catching traitors and undercover Germans. Its name literally meant ‘death to spies’……(Russia Today, 7 Apr 08)

Video: Spy buster, aged 100, keeps her secrets

Bulgaria confirms Cold War border shootings of Germans

…Border police officers were rewarded for catching or shooting at people trying to flee the country, according to another committee member Valeri Katsunov. "Patrols were granted a 20-day leave for every person caught on the border and an engraved wristwatch for a so-called 'display of heroism' or firing at a trespasser," he said, citing former border police officers. It's the first official information about suspected communist-era shootings to come from Bulgaria…It Darzhavna Sigurnost secret service agency was implicated in some of the Communist era's landmark spy plots, like the 1978 poisoned-umbrella murder of dissident Georgi Markov and the 1981 attempt on the late Pope John Paul II…..(The Local, 4 Apr 08)

Today in History - April 3, 1998

Douglas Fred Groat, a disgruntled spy fired by the CIA, was charged with espionage and extortion. (Groat later pleaded guilty to trying to extort $1 million from the agency, and was sentenced to five years in prison.)

Sharpshooter, paratrooper, hero: the woman who set France ablaze

Sitting in the Air Ministry in London in 1943, Pearl Witherington longed to do something more for her beloved and broken France than simply pushing paper. Strong-willed, cool-headed and ferociously practical, the 29-year-old volunteered for the Special Operations Executive. After seven weeks of training she was parachuted into France to spend a year of danger and deprivation, becoming one of the second world war's most successful Special Operations Executive organizers of the armed resistance, with a million franc reward on her head… Pearl Cornioley, as she became, died in February and her obituaries told extraordinary tales of wartime courage: she commanded troops who killed 1,000 German soldiers, saw to the surrender of 18,000 more and organized and armed the resistance……(Guardian, 1 Apr 08)

Wartime files reveal slur on top woman agent

An outstanding female wartime agent who ended up in charge of 3,000 Resistance fighters in France was assessed as "not the personality to act as a leader" before being parachuted into the country, it was revealed yesterday. Pearl Cornioley, later commended for her "colossal bravery" and "outstanding powers of leadership", was described in one British training report before she left for France as not leadership material and best employed as a "subordinate". But another training assessment of the wartime agent described her as "probably the best shot – male or female – we have yet had" and it was noted that "this student, though a woman, has definitely got leader's qualities. Cool and resourceful and extremely determined."……(Scotsman, 1 Apr 08)

Revealed: the story of the spy who led the French Resistance

Pearl Cornioley's training officer in Britain's wartime Special Operations Executive (SOE) had plenty of doubts about her potential as a secret agent. In 1943, he wrote: "She is so cautious that she seems to lack initiative and drive. She is loyal but has not the personality to act as a leader, nor is she temperamentally suited to work alone." The officer could not have been more wrong about a woman who would later become known as Agent Wrestler. Within 18 months, Ms Cornioley, then aged 29, was in sole command of 1,500 resistance fighters in western France. In that role she masterminded a campaign of sabotage and guerrilla warfare so effective that the German military put a price on her head of Fr1m……(Independent, 1 Apr 08)

The wartime exploits of British agent with million franc bounty on her head

…Pearl Cornioley, who was then known as Cécile Pearl Witherington, became one of the most illustrious members of the Special Operations Executive - set up to foster resistance to the Germans across Europe during the Second World War - after being parachuted into occupied France……(Telegraph, 1 Apr 08)

March 2008

Today in History - March 29

In 1951, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage. (They were executed in June 1953.)

Torrid trail of sex and politics: Profumo Affair

….In March 1963, John Profumo, 48, a Conservative Cabinet minister, was forced to resign as war minister not because of his affair with a call girl, as in the Spitzer affair, but because he lied about the affair in a speech to Parliament. He later recanted in another House of Commons speech, admitting he had lied about the affair. Even worse was the well-publicized fact that the call girl, Christine Keeler, 21, was sharing her favors with a Soviet intelligence officer, Yevgeny Ivanov, stationed at the Soviet Embassy….(Washington Times, 23 Mar 08)

1970s Radical Is Returned To Prison Days After Release

Days after her release on parole, a former 1970s radical who had hidden as a fugitive for years was arrested Saturday and returned to prison to serve at least one more year. Corrections officials said a miscalculation resulted in her early release. Criticism that followed Sara Jane Olson's release on Monday spurred a thorough review of her sentence and the timing of her parole, Chief Deputy Secretary Scott Kernan said at a news conference. Officials discovered a 2004 miscalculation that resulted in the former Symbionese Liberation Army member being released a year too early, he said. He said the review was ordered "after many concerns raised in the media." The union that represents Los Angeles police officers and the son of a woman killed in a botched 1975 bank robbery near Sacramento opposed Olson's release……(AP, 23 Mar 08)

Civil War: Women faced danger in roles as spies

When one thinks of a Civil War soldier, a male image usually comes to mind. And, the war was fought largely, but not exclusively, by men.  Long ago, someone arrived at a ballpark figure of about 300 women who actually fought in either blue or gray. That figure cannot be documented or even confirmed, but the truth of the matter is that no one really knows just how many women on either side bound their bosoms and fought along side their male counterparts. Some accompanied their husbands or sweethearts into battle. And, many of them were never even discovered. It certainly must have been a shock to an attending physician on the battlefield when one of these women was wounded and their true identity discovered. Sarah Edmonds, aka Frank Thompson, had a varied wartime experience and was a nurse and a spy, as well as a soldier…..(Murfreesboro Post, 24 Mar 08)

Dead Communist soldiers in South Korea still await repatriation

……….Decades after they fell in combat during the 1950-53 Korean War or their postwar espionage missions ended in gunfights with South Korean troops, the Communist warriors buried here still await a trip home. Their remains are unclaimed by their government, which denies sending armed infiltrators into the South…….One former North Korean commando, however, recalls that time. "If our mission had succeeded, South Koreans would be living under Communism now," said Kim Shin Jo. On Jan. 21, 1968, Kim and 30 other North Korean infiltrators penetrated the heavily guarded border, breaching a section manned by U.S. troops, and came within striking distance of President Park Chung Hee's residence in Seoul before they were repelled……..(International Herald Tribune, 20 Mar 08)

KGB archive documents on Ukraine

Significant formations of OUN [the Ukrainian Nationalist Organization] were created in the Donetsk Oblast: in Mariupol, OUN numbered up to 300 people…” “In the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, in the second quarter of 1944, 711 nationalist were arrested, in the third quarter – 744…” SBU keeps on declassifying KGB archives about the nationalist movements in Ukraine…..(Unian, 18 Mar 08)

The Kremlin's Worst Month: March 1983

It was 25 years ago this month, March 1983, that the Soviet Union went into hysterics, both realizing and arguably beginning the terminal phase in its deadly life cycle………A week after the Evil Empire speech came something on March 16, 1983 that sent the Soviets into fits. On that date, reporter Robert Toth of the Los Angeles Times broke the scoop of a lifetime, compliments of one of the serial leakers in the Reagan administration: Toth revealed that two months earlier, in mid-January, President Reagan had secretly signed NSDD-75, a highly classified document, and one of the boldest strokes of the entire Cold War. Written principally by Harvard professor Richard Pipes, with the economic elements developed by Roger Robinson—both operating within Bill Clark's National Security Council—NSDD-75 dedicated the Reagan administration to nothing short of reversing the Soviet communist empire and even the USSR itself, advocating the end of the Marxist directorship and the launching of political pluralism in the USSR. As Pipes put it, NSDD-75 was "a clear break from the past. [NSDD-75] said our goal was no longer to coexist with the Soviet Union but to change the Soviet system. At its root was the belief that we had it in our power to alter the Soviet system." This would be achieved by various external pressures, including covert economic warfare. Among the practitioners of this campaign, beyond Reagan's NSC, were Bill Casey and his team at the CIA—men like Casey's special assistant, Herb Meyer. Neither the Soviets nor the world in general were supposed to know about NSDD-75. They learned about it from the Toth article. This was discovered firsthand by Marc Zimmerman, an unknown legislative aide to then-Rep. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), who found himself being pumped for information by a KGB agent in March 1983…….(FrontPage, 18 Mar 08)

Wiretapping's true danger; History says we should worry less about privacy and more about political spying

As the battle over reforms to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act rages in Congress, civil libertarians warn that legislation sought by the White House could enable spying on "ordinary Americans." Others, like Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), counter that only those with an "irrational fear of government" believe that "our country's intelligence analysts are more concerned with random innocent Americans than foreign terrorists overseas."…..(Los Angeles Times, 16 Mar 08)

Today in History--13 March 1961: Five Britons accused of spying for Moscow

   Three men and two women have gone on trial at the Old Bailey charged with plotting to pass official secrets to the Russians…The accused are: Gordon Lonsdale, 37, a company director from north west London, Henry Houghton, 55 a civil servant from Weymouth in Dorset, Peter Kroger, 50 a bookseller and his wife Helen, 47, a housewife of the same address in Ruislip, Middlesex and Ethel Gee, 46, a civil servant of Portland in Dorset.....(BBC, 13 Mar 08)

Settling Dreyfus’s affairs at Boston University

It all started in October 1894, when an anonymous handwritten letter offering secret French military information was found in the wastebasket of a German military attaché. Viewed as an act of treason, the letter sparked a massive witch-hunt within the French army. Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish captain in the army’s general staff and a loyal patriot, was ultimately accused of authoring the bordereau… The incident became legendarily known as “the Dreyfus Affair.”  The Power of Prejudice: The Dreyfus Affair, on display through April 6, at Boston University’s 808 Gallery, details the political scandal — through documents, photos, published cartoons, and film — from its disturbing beginnings to its honorable though bittersweet ending. (Dreyfus, who was indeed innocent, was eventually released after almost five years of solitary confinement, and then exonerated and appointed Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1906.)…..Phoenix, 13 Mar 08)

Home Of Revolutionary Spy To Be Preserved?

…The historical value of the Phillips Roe House was discovered by Port Jefferson officials in the 1970s, at which time the village was in the midst of restoring an even older house, one built in 1682 by Phillips Roe's great-grandfather, John Roe. The John Roe House - which is now the village-owned Chamber of Commerce office - was the first house built in Drowned Meadow, which is now known as Port Jefferson… Phillips Roe was a spy for George Washington, part of the Culper Spy Ring, he explained, and the area where he lived - Drowned Meadow - was a British territory. As part of the Culper Spy Ring, Phillips Roe and the other spies sent secret messages, which started in New York City and went to Drowned Meadow, then across the Long Island Sound to Connecticut, and finally brought to George Washington in New Jersey. Washington also sent messages back to the spies to keep them informed. And Phillips Roe wasn't the only one in his family to serve in the Culper Spy Ring, which was a code name used by many within the ring, including Robert Townsend…..(Suffolk Life, 12 Mar 08)

Several events remember terrorism victims today

An official event and victims have remembered March 11th massacre in the European Day of Terrorism Victims. European Parliament has remembered Isaías Carrasco. The European Day of Terrorism Victims is celebrated today, on March 11th. This commemoration has its origins in 2004 March 11th attacks in Madrid and 2005 July 7th attacks in London…….(EITB 24, 11 Mar 08)

In the shadows of Camp Tracy

…Santucci has been researching Virginia’s Ft. Hunt, clandestinely known as “P.O. Box 1142” after its postal designation, for years. Ft. Hunt, the other top-secret center dedicated to wresting secrets from high-level officers, scientists and political prisoners captured during the war, was meant primarily for Germans and Italians; Camp Tracy was intended for Japanese……..Funded by a federal grant, Santucci’s team has interviewed about 20 of 45 known veterans who worked at Ft. Hunt and Camp Tracy. Sworn to secrecy until recently, these men have told no one of their experiences, not even family…..(Oakley Press, 7 Mar 08)

British Secret Service convinced of Hitler-astrology link

Secret wartime documents which have just been declassified in Britain reveal how a con man convinced the British Secret Service that Adolf Hitler relied on astrology. The Service hired the man who claimed to be Hungarian and put him up in one of London's best hotels while he churned out astrological charts supposedly duplicating the information Hitler was receiving from his fortune tellers……(Australian ABC News, 5 Mar 08)

Star turn: astrologer who became SOE's secret weapon against Hitler

The Special Operations Executive, set up by Churchill with instructions to "set Europe ablaze", is best known for blowing up bridges and helping the resistance in occupied countries. But in the darkest days of the second world war it looked to the heavens for help. The story of how it hired an astrologer as a secret weapon against Hitler is disclosed in MI5 documents released today at the National Archives…..(Guardian, 4 Mar 08)

How MI5 used astrologer to help beat Hitler

HE CLAIMED to be descended from Hungarian nobility, was fond of vivid silk dressing gowns and spoke to the spirits while flourishing a large cigar. But during the Second World War, the outlandish figure of Louis de Wohl was taken seriously by the British secret service, who believed he could cast light on what German astrologers were saying to Hitler. Now new evidence unearthed by MI5 historian Professor Christopher Andrew shows the British also used de Wohl as a weapon in the propaganda war to persuade the US to enter the war……(Scotsman, 4 Mar 08)

Mystery of Stalin’s death: rumours continue 55 years on

Fifty-five years have passed since the death of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Praised for making the Soviet Union one of the two world's superpowers and cursed for political purges which killed millions, Stalin remains one of the most controversial figures of the 20th century. Stalin was 74 when he died. For many, his death in 1953 came as a relief and some believe it wasn't not poor health that killed him……(Russia Today, 5 Mar 08)

Russia is spying. Richard Sorge

…In 1919 Sorge was formerly released from the army and he transferred his studies to the University of Kiel. He also joined the newly formed German Communist Party (KPD). After leaving university he worked as a journalist and in April 1925 he moved to the Soviet Union where he started work for the Comintern Intelligence Division. Sorge was recruited as a spy for the Soviet Union and using the cover of being a journalist he was sent to various European countries to assess the possibility of communist uprisings taking place…..(Russia IC, 4 Mar 08)

UK reveals its spies had astrologer in World War Two

British spies hired an astrologer during World War Two, although many thought he was a fraud, and even sent him to the United States on a propaganda mission…The files show that many British spy handlers had nothing but contempt for Louis de Wohl, a German-speaking novelist and astrologer who claimed to be descended from Hungarian nobility and called himself "The Modern Nostradamus."…..(Reuters, 3 Mar 08)

February 2008

Today in History: 26 February

1993: World Trade Center bomb terrorises New York

A suspected car bomb has exploded underneath the World Trade Center in New York killing at least five people and injuring scores more…..(BBC Archives)

BBC Video: 1993 WTC Bombing

Memories of a C.I.A. Officer Resonate in a New Era

Larry Devlin is 85 now, suffering from emphysema and tethered to an oxygen tank, his Central Intelligence Agency career long behind him. But he recalls with sunlit clarity the day in Congo nearly half a century ago when he was handed a packet of poisons, including toxic toothpaste, and ordered to carry out a political assassination…..(New York Times, 24 Feb 08)

Castro foes mark anniversary of shootdown near Cuba

…Jose Basulto, 68, who founded Brothers to the Rescue, which flew planes over the Florida Straits looking for rafters and boat people fleeing Cuba…Three Cuban Americans and a Cuban exile, all companions of Basulto, were killed when Cuban government MiGs shot down two Brothers to the Rescue planes near Cuba on February 24, 1996…..(Reuters, 24 Feb 08)

World War II veteran to receive Bronze Star

The commanding general of the U.S. Army Intelligence Center and Fort Huachuca will present the Bronze Star Medal to World War II veteran Hans Spear on Wednesday… Every member of Spear’s unit, with the exception of him and another German-born Jewish soldier, received the Bronze Star for supervising interrogation under fire. He was denied the medal due to anti-Semitism and discrimination because Spear was categorized an enemy alien…..(Sierra Vista Herald, 22 Feb 08)

Italy Follows Trail of Secret South American Abductions

In an unusually sweeping investigation, Italian authorities are seeking to prosecute former top officials in seven South American countries for their roles in a secret operation in the 1970s and 1980s by the region’s security forces to crush left-wing political dissent…The investigation and recently declassified documents, which were reviewed by The New York Times, suggest a complicit role of the United States in ‘Operation’ Condor’s often-deadly operations, some of which American officials knew about before but did little to stop……(New York Times, 22 Feb 08)

Today in history - Feb. 20

2003: Former Air Force Master Sgt. Brian Patrick Regan was convicted in Alexandria, Va., of offering to sell U.S. intelligence to Iraq and China but acquitted of attempted spying for Libya. (Regan was later sentenced to life without parole.)

Ultra

Ultra (sometimes capitalized ULTRA) was the name used by the British for intelligence resulting from decryption of German communications in World War II. The term eventually became the standard designation in both Britain and the United States for all intelligence from high-level cryptanalytic sources. The name arose because the code-breaking success was considered more important than the highest security classification available at the time (Most Secret) and so was regarded as being Ultra secret…..(Guncel-Haber, 20 Feb 08)

Episodes in Power

The Revolution Begins: On July 26, 1953, Fidel Castro led a rebel attack on the Moncada Barracks in the southeastern town of Santiago de Cuba. Although the attack failed and resulted in Castro's imprisonment, it established him as a revolutionary figure in Cuba……(Washington Post, 20 Feb 08)

Today in History - Feb. 10

2003: A Chinese court convicted U.S.-based dissident Wang Bingzhang on spying and terrorism charges and sentenced him to life in prison.

Top secrets now on display

…Gotlieb Assistant Director for Manuscripts Ryan Hendrickson led more than 50 Boston University students and faculty members through the archive's extensive collection of espionage artifacts and other spy information last night. Hendrickson said important work in Cold War spy satellite development was done at BU. "It was called the Corona Project, and it was probably one of the most top secret programs in the U.S. government in the 1950s…..(Daily Free Press, 6 Feb 08)

CIA releases classified files of former director

Nearly 8,000 pages of documents covering the tenure of Allen Dulles, Class of 1914, the CIA’s longest-serving director, are now available online through the University website…The documents, declassified 11 months ago, will shed more light on Dulles’ long government career, and their digitization will also bring a part of the University’s vast research resources into the 21st century, Daniel Linke, curator of public policy papers at the Mudd Manuscript Library, said. “This is Mudd Library’s first truly digital collection…After Dulles’ death in 1969, the CIA collected documents spanning Dulles’ entire career with the agency. The CIA did not release any of the documents to the University until 1974.”…..(Daily Princetonian, 5 Feb 08)

Adolf Hitler's 'lost fleet' found in Black Sea

…The vessels, including one once commanded by Germany's most successful U-boat ace, formed part of the 30th Flotilla of six submarines, taken by road and river across Nazi-occupied Europe, from Germany's Baltic port at Kiel to Constanta, the Romanian Black Sea port. In two years, the fleet sank dozens of ships and lost three of their number to enemy action. But in August 1944, Romania switched sides and declared war on Germany, leaving the three remaining vessels stranded……(Telegraph, 4 Feb 08)

Plotting to steal Russion plane an experience

Question: How do you steal a Russian MIG29?
Answer: Ask Col. Kenny Cobb of Boaz, a retired U.S. Air Force pilot, who told Scottsboro Rotary Club members Wednesday at the Western Sizzlin’ about his activities as a civilian on the cutting edge of espionage…Cobb talked with the man in a car that had been debugged. The man told him of their plans and how he could earn a million dollars. In simple terms, his task would be to fly an advanced Russian MIG 29 in the late 1980s out of Damascus, Syria, where he would be accompanied by Israeli fighters to an air base in Israel. The plan included Cobb, his friend and three others who were to have roles in the theft…..(Daily Sentinel, 1 Feb 08)

January 2008

The East Berlin Tunnel: Whose Ruse?

On a rainy day 52 years ago, the cover was blown on one of the biggest espionage plots of the Cold War. Soviet and East German forces announced that they had found a quarter-mile-long tunnel that the CIA had burrowed into East Berlin as part of a massive wiretapping operation…In terms of telephonic engineering and sheer skulduggery, the CIA's tunnel was a marvelous accomplishment. Begun in August 1954 under a makeshift warehouse in the Rudow sector of West Berlin, near a field of hovels built amid wartime rubble by German refugees, the mole hole was secretly dug over a period of 18 months. It extended 300 yards into the Soviet sector…..(Washington Post, 28 Jan 08)

Documents: Declassified Documents on Berlin Tunnel

Terrorism in America: Recalling the forgotten

…a new exhibit opening Saturday at the Minnesota History Center museum in St. Paul. "The Enemy Within: Terror in America - 1776 to Today" is a traveling exhibit developed by the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., that traces the history of terrorism in the U.S., showing that attacks on American society from extremists aren't just a 21st-century phenomenon. Real and perceived threats from spies and saboteurs, left-wing radicals and right-wing hate groups, anarchists, extremists and traitors have been a common and recurring theme in U.S. history….(Pioneer Press, 25 Jan 08)

Today in History - Jan. 23

1968: North Korea seized the Navy intelligence ship USS Pueblo, charging its crew with being on a spying mission. (The crew was released 11 months later.)

1998: A judge in Fairfax, Va., sentenced Aimal Khan Kasi to death for an assault rifle attack outside CIA headquarters in 1993 that killed two men and wounded three other people. (Kasi was executed in November 2002.)

40 years later, man recalls Pueblo seizing

…If you are younger than 50, you might not have heard of the Pueblo, the U.S. Navy spy ship Barrett and Kisler served on during one of the darkest moments of the Cold War. But 40 years ago today, North Korea captured the ship, killed one sailor and held 82 others hostage for 11 months. The Pueblo crew spent the first weeks of 1968 performing basic Cold War espionage in the Sea of Japan, intercepting radio and radar communications of the North Korean military, with plans to spy on the Soviet navy. But on Jan. 23, a North Korean sub chaser, followed by gunboats and two MiG fighter planes, pulled up to the converted cargo ship and ordered Cmdr. Lloyd M. "Pete'' Bucher to stand down. When the Pueblo steered away, the Koreans fired a cannon and machine guns.......(Kalamazoo Gazette, 23 Jan 08)

Infamy

…On Jan. 23, 1968, naval and air forces of North Korea attacked and took hostage the USS Pueblo and its crew. The Pueblo was a Navy intelligence ship operating in international waters. Despite that, the Stalinist regime in Pyongyang decided on a bold course of action and sent patrol boats and MiG fighters to harass the lightly armed U.S. vessel. This was during the height of the Vietnam War, and the North Koreans correctly figured that American military brass weren’t focused on the American spy ship’s mission. They were right……(Pueblo Chieftain, 23 Jan 08)

North Korea tells U.S. to remember the Pueblo

North Korea marked the anniversary on Wednesday of one of its rare Cold War victories over the United States by saying a U.S. spy ship it seized 40 years ago served as a lesson to show it can repel an invasion. It is the paranoid state's latest dig at its long-time foe and which it still labels as an arch enemy despite Washington's pledge to provide aid and better diplomatic standing to Pyongyang in a disarmament deal. "(The Pueblo) is historical evidence proving before the whole world the victory of the DPRK (North Korea) in the confrontation with the U.S. to protect the national sovereignty and dignity,".....(Reuters, 23 Jan 08)

N. Korea Recalls Seizure of US Spy Ship

…The USS Pueblo was seized off North Korea while it was on an intelligence-gathering mission on Jan. 23, 1968. The North says the ship was inside its coastal zone. U.S. Navy records say it was in international waters…Forty years ago, North Korean torpedo boats attacked the lightly armed USS Pueblo as it was monitoring ship movements and intercepting messages. One of the U.S. ship's 83 crew members was killed and 10 others were wounded. The crew, led by Cmdr. Lloyd Bucher, were released after 11 months of captivity and sometimes torture…..(AP, 22 Jan 08)

Today in History 21 January

In 1950, former State Department official Alger Hiss, accused of being part of a Communist spy ring, was found guilty in New York of lying to a grand jury. (Hiss, who always proclaimed his innocence, served less than four years in prison.)

40 years ago this week, America hit hard

When North Koreans boarded and seized the USS Pueblo 40 years ago Wednesday, it was the first U.S. Navy vessel captured in peacetime in 161 years. Peacetime is an ironic description of Jan. 23, 1968. The nation was in an undeclared war in Vietnam, fighting a cold war with communism and at home the war for the soul of the nation was well under way…..(Pueblo Chieftain, 21 Jan 08)

Is a secret a lie if it just isn’t true? Part 2

… Tsien was placed under virtual house arrest and then deported in 1955. He later became a senior military and political leader in China and is considered by the Chinese to be the father of their missile and space program, although he probably stopped contributing to it by the 1970s or even earlier. If Tsien was not a communist when he was in the United States, he certainly became one after being accused, arrested, and deported to China by the United States government…..(Space Review, 21 Jan 08)

A dragon in winter Part 1

…According to the magazine, Tsien (Tsien Hsue-shen) deserves the honor because in 2007 China finally joined the ranks of first-rate space powers with two acts, its January ASAT test and its October launch of the Chang’e-1 lunar spacecraft. By the magazine’s own admission, Tsien had nothing to do with either of these activities and has apparently been bedridden for many years. Aviation Week’s reasoning was that Tsien is the founding father of the Chinese missile and space program and therefore put these events in motion over four decades ago….(Space Review, 14 Jan 08)

Declassified study puts Vietnam events in new light

US signals intelligence – the much-vaunted ability of American military and spy units to eavesdrop on the radio calls and other electronic communications of an adversary – failed at crucial moments during the Vietnam War, according to a just-declassified National Security Agency history of the effort. The 10,000 cryptographers and other signals personnel in Southeast Asia at the time did not predict the start of the Tet offensive on Jan. 31, 1968…..(Christian Science Monitor, 9 Jan 08)

Report: Spartans in Darkness: American SIGINT and the Indochina War, 1945-1975

Triple jeopardy: the Nazi plan to kill WWII leaders in Tehran

The British Big Ape Media TV company and the Moscow TV Center are making a documentary series about Russian-British relations over four centuries. The Lion and the Bear, for release in 2008, will mix documentary history, travelogue and personal accounts and will be presented by author, and Winston Churchill's granddaughter, Celia Sandys…..(Rossiiskava Gazeta, 4 Jan 08)

Polish women imprisoned under Stalin remember horrors of torture, separation from children

…Wojnarowska was among more than 5,000 women who historians say were imprisoned between 1944 and 1958 under the communist regime imposed by the Soviet Union after dictator Josef Stalin's troops occupied Poland at the end of World War II. The women had survived a brutal six-year occupation by Nazi Germany, only to suffer under the new occupiers, dragged from their homes and families and subjected to brutal investigations on charges of spying for the West or with scheming to overthrow the new communist government……(PR-Inside, 4 Jan 07)

Carter denied CIA meddling

CLAIMS of CIA meddling in Australia prompted an assurance from US president Jimmy Carter in 1977 that no improper interference was taking place…Mr Fraser's claims support allegations made in 1977 by Christoper Boyce, an American subsequently convicted of selling secrets to the Soviet Union. Mr Boyce, employed at a Californian aerospace facility that monitored CIA communications, claims to have been outraged over the US withholding information from Australia collected through Pine Gap.....(Australian, 1 Jan 08)

December 2007

Deadly blast from the past implicates Stasi

…Herrhausen, the chairman of one of Europe's most powerful companies, Deutsche Bank, was killed in the explosion along that suburban Frankfurt road on November 30, 1989… Within days, the Red Army Faction - a leftist terrorist group that had traumatized West Germany since 1970 with a series of high-profile crimes and brazen killings of bankers and industrialists - claimed responsibility for the assassination…Now, almost two decades later, German police, prosecutors and other security officials have focused on a new suspect: the East German secret police, known as the Stasi…..(Wall Street Journal, 27 Dec 07)

Report: Hoover planned for mass arrests -- mostly of Americans

In 1950, 12 days after the start of the Korean War, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had a plan "to apprehend and detain persons who are potentially dangerous to the internal security of the country" -- thousands of them, almost all American citizens.

Hoover submitted the plan to President Harry Truman's special consultant for military and foreign affairs, Adm. Sidney Souers -- who had been the first director of the nascent Central Intelligence Agency in 1946 -- and to Souers' successor as Truman's top security aide, James Lay…..(CNN, 24 Dec 07)

Hoover Planned Mass Jailing in 1950

A newly declassified document shows that J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had a plan to suspend habeas corpus and imprison some 12,000 Americans he suspected of disloyalty. Hoover sent his plan to the White House on July 7, 1950, 12 days after the Korean War began. It envisioned putting suspect Americans in military prisons…The names were part of an index that Hoover had been compiling for years. “The index now contains approximately twelve thousand individuals, of which approximately ninety-seven per cent are citizens of the United States,”…..(New York Times, 23 Dec 07)

Text: Hoover’s Letter to Truman’s Special Consultant

Spies Caught, Spies Lost, Lessons Learned

It was our first major international spy case: on December 2, 1938—less than a year before World War II broke out in Europe—three Nazi spies were found guilty of espionage in the U.S. And the man who had exposed the ring, Guenther Rumrich, was sentenced to a reduced prison term for his cooperation…..(Student Operated Press, 5 Dec 07)

November 2007

Cryptographers flock to Bletchley Park

An amateur German cryptographer has managed to successfully compete against a World War Two code-breaking machine to decrypt data. Amateur cryptographer Joachim Schuth, who used software he had designed specially, raced against the rebuilt “Colossus” to complete his task…..(Malaysia Sun, 20 Nov 07)

Subject of professor’s work turns out to be Russian spy

…The professor learned of the connection just two weeks ago when he read a small article on President Vladimir Putin posthumously giving the highest Russian award — the Hero of Russia medal — to Koval, who died last year at 94. New York Times writer William Broad, who quotes Srebrnik in a recent article on Koval, wrote that the brilliant physicist’s success as a spy hinged on an unusual family history of migration from Russia to Iowa and back…..(Guardian, 20 Nov 07)

Former Stasi Leaders Discuss Past at Conference

Former East German communist spies held a meeting in Denmark, with their former boss saying their work contributed to world peace. Outraged Stasi victims said the conference brushes over the atrocities of the GDR regime. At the two-day conference, which started Saturday, Nov. 17, in Danish city of Odense, academics interested in East Germany's efforts to destabilize the West and advance Soviet interests during the Cold War were hearing the recollections of the former agents and their East Berlin-based commanders...trying to produce an objective assessment of the former East German security apparatus by inviting its heads to speak is absurd, according to Hubertus Knabe, director of the memorial to victims at the former Stasi prison and interrogation center in the Berlin district of Hohenschönhausen. "It would be like inviting Osama bin Laden and his followers to a conference on terrorism," Knabe said. The office that deals with the Stasi archives also withdrew its support for the conference and planned to send a single "observer" to the meeting, according to Andreas Schulze, the archive's spokesperson. "These old Stasi generals have no idea of what they have done," he told the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. "For them it is about acquitting themselves and fighting over who was at fault."……(Deutsche Welle, 17 Nov 07)

Russian claims he killed 'Buster' Crabb, the frogman who inspired James Bond

One of the most enduring mysteries of the Cold War – who killed Commander Lionel "Buster" Crabb? – may finally have been solved. A retired Russian frogman claimed that he cut the British diver's throat in Portsmouth harbour when he caught him placing a mine on the hull of a ship that had brought Nikita Khrushchev and other Soviet leaders to Britain in April 1956. But the claim was dismissed by one of Commander Crabb's relatives, who said that it was unthinkable that a Royal Navy diver would have deliberately endangered a visiting ship. According to a BBC News report, the diver, Eduard Koltsov, spoke to a Russian documentary team because he needed to tell the truth before his own death...Mr Koltsov, who was 23 at the time, said that he was ordered to investigate suspicious activity around the ship, the cruiser Ordzhonikidze, when he spotted Commander Crabb fixing a mine to the hull…..(Times Online, 16 Nov 07)

Sailor spills beans on Cold War mystery

Commander Lionel "Buster" Crabb disappeared while spying on a Soviet warship in 1956…Now the final moments of Cdr Crabb's life have been put together after a retired Russian sailor told a documentary he needed to clear his conscience before he died……(Telegraph, 16 Nov 07)

Today in History - Nov. 15

1979: The British government publicly identified Sir Anthony Blunt as the "Fourth Man" of a Soviet spy ring that included Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and Kim Philby.

Wisconsin Woman Helped Lead Nazi Resistance

…"From the first day of the Nazi period, Mildred Harnack was against this dictatorial system," Tuchel said. The Harnacks used her third-floor apartment on Woyrschstrasse to put their resistance into action, seeking to end the war and preserve German independence. They recruited other like-minded Germans and began spiriting military and economic secrets to the United States and Soviets……(Channel 3000, 14 Nov 07)

Video: Wisconsin Woman Helped Lead Nazi Resistance

Munger: Spy story restokes Oak Ridge memories

The news this week that George Koval - a Soviet spy and possibly one of the most important atomic spies in history - may have worked in Oak Ridge during the Manhattan Project has generated a buzz of interest locally. It also revived stories from those wartime years and the intense security in place at Oak Ridge and other sites involved in the A-bomb project…..(Knox News, 14 Nov 07)

Putin praises Russian spy who came from Sioux City

…A Sioux City native infiltrated clandestine U.S. nuclear facilities and sent secrets about building the atomic bomb back to Moscow. On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin posthumously presented the Hero of Russia medal to George Koval, a Little Maroon noted in his high school yearbook for holding office in a group that cherished loyalty and democracy….(Sioux City Journal, 14 Nov 07)

Vladimir Putin honours traitor George Blake with tit-for-tat birthday medal

…Blake betrayed the identities of hundreds of British agents at the height of the Cold War until he was exposed as a Soviet mole in 1961. One of the Kremlin’s greatest coups came in 1953 when he tipped off his handlers about plans by Britain and the United States to tunnel into Soviet-occupied East Berlin……(Times Online, 14 Nov 07)

E. Germans drew blueprint for Cuban spying

A once-jailed Cuban exile's research reveals how East Germany exported its repressive Stasi security system to Cuba, where it lives on today……(Miami Herald, 4 Nov 07)

New revelations in attack on American spy ship (Part 1)

…Lockwood was aboard the USS Liberty, a super-secret spy ship on station in the eastern Mediterranean, when four Israeli fighter jets flew out of the afternoon sun to strafe and bomb the virtually defenseless vessel on June 8, 1967, the fourth day of what would become known as the Six-Day War.  For Lockwood and many other survivors, the anger is mixed with incredulity: that Israel would attack an important ally, then attribute the attack to a case of mistaken identity by Israeli pilots who had confused the U.S. Navy's most distinctive ship with an Egyptian horse-cavalry transport that was half its size and had a dissimilar profile. And they're also incredulous that, for years, their own government would reject their calls for a thorough investigation…….(Just-International, 1 Nov 07)

New revelations in attack of American spy ship (Part 2) 

October 2007

Why They Called It the Manhattan Project

By nature, code names and cover stories are meant to give no indication of the secrets concealed. “Magic” was the name for intelligence gleaned from Japanese ciphers in World War II, and “Overlord” stood for the Allied plan to invade Europe. Many people assume that the same holds true for the Manhattan Project, in which thousands of experts gathered in the mountains of New Mexico to make the world’s first atom bomb… It was supersecret,” Dr. Norris said in an interview. “At least 5,000 people were coming and going to work, knowing only enough to get the job done.” Manhattan was central, according to Dr. Norris, because it had everything: lots of military units, piers for the import of precious ores, top physicists who had fled Europe and ranks of workers eager to aid the war effort. It even had spies who managed to steal some of the project’s top secrets……(New York Times, 30 Oct 07) Video embedded

NYT Interactive: The Manhattan Project

FBI Watched McCarthy Anti-Hoover Effort

When Eugene McCarthy ran for president in 1968, he pledged to fire J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director who had outlasted presidents from Calvin Coolidge to John F. Kennedy. Before long, McCarthy's calls for new FBI leadership were cataloged and commented upon by FBI officials in a nearly 500-page file, obtained by The Associated Press through the Freedom of Information Act……(AP, 25 Oct 07)

Nazi spy photographs are unveiled

Remarkable German reconnaissance photographs of the east coast of the UK taken shortly before World War II have been put on display for the first time……(BBC, 25 Oct 07)

Former CIA agent auctions off lock of CheGuevara's hair

Several items claimed to relate to the death of revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara will be put up for auction this week in Texas, including an alleged lock of his hair, cut off by the man who helped capture Che more than 40 years ago…..(Digital Journal, 24 Oct 07)

CIA agent who helped kill Che Guevara to sell icon's hair

…… The items belong to Gustavo Villoldo, who was an American CIA liaison to a group of US Rangers authorized by the Bolivian government to apprehend Che Guevara 40 years ago this month……(AFP, 23 Oct 07)

24 Years After Barracks Attack, Marines Still 'Tip of the Spear'

The U.S. Marines were honored on the Senate floor Tuesday, the 24th anniversary of the terrorist attack on the Marine Barracks in Beirut, Lebanon…….(Human Events, 23 Oct 07)

Commemorating Alger Hiss Day

…..The appropriate thing to do would be to acknowledge the basic truth that communist spy and State Department official Alger Hiss laid the groundwork for the U.N. and became its first acting secretary-general, causing it to be dubbed “the house that Hiss built.” Hiss also advised President Franklin Roosevelt at the Yalta conference, which defined post-World War II Europe and betrayed Eastern European nations to Soviet control……(AIM, 23 Oct 07)

A Near Miss

Forty-five years ago this week, the world teetered on the brink of nuclear war. On October 14, 1962, a U.S. reconnaissance mission discovered medium-range ballistic missile sites in Cuba. The thirteen days of brinkmanship that followed have been called the most dangerous episode in recorded history…..(The Atlantic, 22 Oct 07)

Nazi Spies Top Secret Scots Photos Up For Sale

……The aerial snaps originate from a rare 140-page book printed in 1942 containing reconnaissance pictures of Scotland’s east coast, including clear photographs of RAF Kinloss, the sea approach to Edinburgh and several Aberdeen docks, which were taken clandestinely on civil flights. However, the top-secret document was smuggled out of Nazi-occupied France by an unnamed British commando……(Daily Express, 21 Oct 07)

What did LBJ know about the Cuban Missile Crisis and when did