"ESPIONAGE is big business in Berlin and has it's painstaking, pecuniary bureaucracy. It is practiced by small fry (who is willing to procure for you anything from the latest deployment plan of the Red Army to a lock of Hitler's hair) and by big-time operators who deal nonchalantly and lucratively in international secrets."
"The CIA is a young and relatively untested child in the strange world of intelligence. The enemy dourly accuses it of 'Black Warfare.' But there is definite proof of its success. Radio Moscow never misses a chance to scream shrilly of 'the extended spy network of the Wall Street mercenaries.'"
"The CIA formula avoids the fog of rumor that fills any world capital, and goes straight to the hard facts of the enemy's economy, production, transportation, raw materials and manpower. A modern war must be organized, much of it in the open, long in advance. Guns must be manufactured; munitions, food, and raw materials stockpiled; railways and roads expanded and soldiers trained. The allocation of scarce Soviet-controlled steel is far more important than the minutes of the Politburo."
In 1958, Fidel Castro wrote an article for an American magazine in which he thoroughly lied about his intentions; click here to read it.
These seven paragraphs from THE PATHFINDER magazine served to introduce their readers to Herbert Philbrick (1915 - 1993) and his efforts to expose the subversive elements within the Communist Party U.S.A..
For nine years Philbrick labored as an F.B.I. mole deep within the Cambridge Youth Council, the Young Communist League and the CPUSA until he made good his resignation by serving as a surprise government witness at a conspiracy trial in which numerous high profile American Reds were indicted (among them William Z. Foster, Eugene Dennis, Robert George Thompson, Gus Hall, Henry Winston, and ex-New York councilmember Benjamin Davis).
The attached article will give you some indication as to the high level of anti-Soviet intensity that existed in the U.S. in 1951. This short piece, and others like it, fanned the fires that lead to the downfall of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh (1882 – 1967) in the well-known 1953 coup that was launched by both the CIA and MI5. The results of of this joint effort ("Operation Ajax") were fruitful in the short run, but set in motion a series of events that have created the Iran we enjoy today.
Illustrated with a military-style map, abounding with footnotes and an ominous-looking red Soviet arrow, rudely pointing at the Abadan oil fields, the uncredited journalist hinted that Mosaddegh's rise and subsequent nationalization of all foreign-owned oil wells would only create a new Iran that was firmly in the Soviet camp. This was not to be the case, for Mosadegh really never trusted the Reds.
Well-illustrated, pithy and informative, this article will get you up to speed on some of the espionage triumphs of the Soviet GRU (the military intelligence arm of the former "worker's paradise"). The article refers to where their agents trained before their American and Canadian deployments, what they were taught, and how big the GRU was. Of even greater interest were the parts of the article that referred to their "Atomic spies" and the variety of traitors and turncoats they were able to attract.
Fingered as the premier Soviet agent working in the United States by a former communist and editor of
The Daily Worker and
People's World, Gerhart Eisler (1897 – 1968) - was arrested in the Fall of 1947 and charged with espionage.
Standing before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Eisler refused to take the oath, preferring instead to read a prepared statement. The committee refused to play along and the Justice Department soon leveled Eisler with additional charges. By 1949 things were looking dark for Eisler; jumping bail he made good his escape and secured passage across the Atlantic. Welcomed in East Germany as a hero, Eisler was soon named director of East German radio and became a prominent voice for the Communist government.
In 1949 there still existed such hope and optimism for the future of the United Nations as a force for good in the world - and a profound disappointment can clearly be sensed in this writer's voice as you read this column that reported as to how the Soviets were manipulating the organization to benefit their espionage efforts.
CLICK HERE to read about the beautiful "Blonde Battalions" who spied for the Nazis...
Click here to read about the blackmail and extortion tactics that American Communists used in Hollywood during the Great Depression...
On September 5, 1945, N.K.V.D. cipher clerk Igor Gouzenko (1919 – 1982) severed ties with his masters at the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa and high-tailed it over to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police with tales of extensive Soviet espionage throughout all of North America. The news of this defection and the intelligence he delivered sent shock waves throughout Washington, London, Moscow, and Ottawa - historians insist that this was the event that sparked the Cold War and altered the course of the Twentieth Century.
On May 19, 1951 two officials of the British Foreign Office were reported as missing; their disappearance raised many eyebrows within the intelligence community.
One of the men, Donald MacLean (1913 - 1983) had been working in various trusted positions within the British diplomatic corps since 1934, but his handlers in Moscow called him "Homer". The other Englishman, Guy Burgess (1911 - 1963) began working for the Foreign Office in 1944; the KGB called him "Hicks". The two men were members of a spy ring that would soon be known as "the Cambridge Four" (the other two being Kim Philby and Anthony Blunt. In later years a fifth spy would surface: Roland Perry. All of them were recruited by the Soviets while attending Cambridge University in the 1930s).
The information that was fed to the journalist who wrote the attached article was clearly meant to disguise the fact that all the Western intelligence agencies were totally freaking out.
"For the first time in history, the U.S. government is training professional spies - and picking the brightest college youngsters to make espionage their career. By December, some 250 men and 50 women will be learning the spy business from the bottom up, at schools they mustn't even admit exist."
A 1951 article about the young CIA can be read by clicking here...
Stalin's deep fear of traitors and moles was not simply confined to the Soviet Union - it spread throughout every branch of his embassies as well. This article pertains to the Soviet spies who worked in Washington - the ones who spied on the Soviet diplomatic corps:
"When a new [diplomat arrives from Moscow] he soon learns that the Ambassador is not the real boss. One outside diplomat who has contacts with the Embassy declares: 'Always, there is someone in the Embassy whom the others fear. They live in terror of him, for he is the real leader... I have seen Soviet officials actually tremble when he comes into the room.'"
A 1951 article about the young CIA can be read by clicking here...
An interesting column that succinctly sums up how Stalin's spies were able to compromise the Manhattan Project, who organized the spy ring, the intelligence that was gleaned, how they were caught and what their fate within the legal system would be.
You can read about Alger Hiss HERE...
FBI agents arrested
Judith Coplon (1921 – 2011: Soviet code name "Kompid") on March 4, 1949 in Manhattan as she met with Valentin Gubitchev, a NKVD official employed at the United Nations, while carrying what she believed to have been secret U.S. government documents in her purse. Hoover's G-Men FBI were certain that Coplon, a secretary at the Federal Justice Department, was colluding with the Soviet agents in Washington but to prove their case conclusively would compromise an ongoing counter-espionage project called the "Venona Project". The failure to prosecute this case successfully began to shed doubt upon the FBI director and his credibility in matters involving Soviet spy-catching.
- read about that here...
Years later Coplon's guilt was made clear to all when the Venona cables were released. However our laws mandate that it is illegal to try a suspect twice for the same crime and she was released.
The arrests of David Greenglass (1922 - 2014: Soviet code name "Kalibr") and Alfred Slack (1905 - 1977: Soviet code name "El") were the result of the FBI having arrested and interrogated a vital Soviet courier a month earlier: Harry Gold (1911 – 1972: Soviet code name "Arno"). When Gold began to sing, the spies began to fall like leaves of autumn day. This quick read concentrates on Gold's fellow chemist, Slack, who had been passing along information to the Soviets since the mid-Thirties, however between the years 1944 and 1945 Slack had been assigned to work in Oak Ridge Tennessee with the Manhattan Project. Greenglass had also been on the Manhattan project, and he was a far bigger catch.
In January, 1950, a British scientist named Klaus Fuchs (1911 – 1988) was arrested for passing atomic secrets on to Soviet agents.
"In his confession Fuchs admitted that the transfer of information began in 1942, shortly after he joined the [British Ministry of Supply] as a German Refugee."
This is a report concerning how the Hiss/Chambers perjury trial was proceeding before the jury. The journalist pointed out that Hiss' attorney, Lloyd Paul Stryker, was repeatedly making slanderous remarks about the character of Whitaker Chambers - an indication that the facts were simply not on the side of the defendant.
A fascinating article written by a man who just seven years earlier had been a senior officer in Stalin's army. In order to escape the dictator's purges, General Alexander Barmine (1899 - 1987) defected to the West in 1937 and made his way to the U.S. where he began writing numerous articles about the NKVD operations in North America. This article concerns the Soviet infiltration of labor unions, the Democratic Party and the U.S. Government.
Looking back fifteen years at the greatest espionage trial of the Fifties, Medford Evans, a former administrative officer of the U.S. Atomic Energy Project, re-read the court testimony and concluded that Harry Gold and David Greenglass had lied on the stand.
