The following is a list I obtained from Nigel West. The books are listed in alphabetical order of author.
Bearden, Milton and Risen, Jim (2004). The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA’s Final Showdown with the KGB.. New York: Random House. A fascinating version of the end of the Cold War and the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan, written by a senior CIA officer.
Benson, Robert Louis and Warner, Michael (1996). VENONA: Soviet Espionage and the American Response, 1939-1957. Washington, DC: NSA/CIA. The official history of the VENONA cryptographic project declassified in 1996.
Bentley, Elizabeth, ed. by Peake, Hayden (1988). Out of Bondage. New York: Ballantine. The story of the NKVD defector in New York in 1945 who implicated numerous Communist Party agents.
Burrows, William E. (1996). Deep Black. New York: Random House. Most accurate history of the development of reconnaissance satellites, and an overview of aerial intelligence collection platforms.
Dallin, David (1955). Soviet Espionage. New Haven, CN: Yale University Press. Earliest, most reliable history of early NKVD activities, the first of a genre.
Hinsley, F. H. (1979). British Intelligence in the Second World War. London: HMSO. Comprehensive study of ULTRA and other intelligence sources and their impact on the war, in five volumes, released as an official history series.
Masterman, J. C. (1972). The Double Cross System of the War of 1930 to 1945. New Haven, CN: Yale University Press. Magisterial analysis of the development and exploitation of double agents and the genesis of strategic deception.
Schecter, Jerrold (2002). The Spy Who Saved the World. New York: Charles Scribner’s. Best account of Oleg Penkovsky’s espionage in Moscow during the Cuban missile crisis, based on CIA transcripts.
Sontag, Sherry and Drew, Christopher, with Drew, Annette Lawrence (1998). Blind Man’s Bluff. New York: Public Affairs. Detailed account of the U. S. Navy’s deployment of clandestine submarine operations during the Cold War.
Wise, David (1995). Nightmover. New York: Harper Collins. An accurate account of the investigation in Aldrich Ames’ espionage inside the CIA, with the counterintelligence background.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Monday, August 9, 2010
27. Worst Books Written on Intelligence
The Worst Books Written on Intelligence
The following is a list I obtained from Nigel West. The books are listed with some comments, and are certainly not recommended for reading.
Thomas, Gordon (2009). Secret Wars: One Hundred Years of British Intelligence inside MI5 and MI6. New York: St. Martin’s Press. ISBN-13:978-0-312-37998-8; ISBN-10: 0-312-37998-6. Supposedly a centenary history of dMI5 and MI6, this book is filled with errors, invented quotations, and incidents that simply never happened, such as Allen Dulles and Stewart Menzies meeting at the 1945 Yalta conference. Neither attended it. He names Kim Philby’s father as Sir Harry Philby. St. John Philby never held a knighthood, and never could owing to the British class structure.
Stevenson, William (1976). A Man Called Intrepid. Macmillan. The fabricated biography of Sir William Stevenson by a Canadian journalist. Even the photographs, supposedly recovered from a secret wartime archive, are faked, and are stills from a movie made after the war. And Stephenson was never codenamed INTREPID.
Holzman, Michael (2008). James Jesus Angleton. University of Massachusetts Press. Yet another biography of the legendary CIA counterintelligence chief, but poorly researched and full of supposition masquerading as fact. The content mainly drawn from three other books, none of them any good.
Twigge, Michael (2008). British Intelligence. National Archives. Presented as a guide to declassified documents from the British Intelligence services, this is riddled with very basic mistakes and ahs no value whatever.
Allen, Martin (2005). Himmler’s Secret War. Robson Books. One of three books written by an author with a talent for forgery. Most of his “authentic archival documents” are rather poor modern forgeries.
Bennett, Richard (2002). Espionage: An Encyclopedia of Spies and their Secrets. Virtually every date in this encyclopedia is inaccurate. Most of the entries are a mixture of error and falsification.
Boyd, Colonel Arthur (2007). Operation Broken Reed. DeCapo Books. A delusional account of a clandestine operation in Korea that never happened.
The following is a list I obtained from Nigel West. The books are listed with some comments, and are certainly not recommended for reading.
Thomas, Gordon (2009). Secret Wars: One Hundred Years of British Intelligence inside MI5 and MI6. New York: St. Martin’s Press. ISBN-13:978-0-312-37998-8; ISBN-10: 0-312-37998-6. Supposedly a centenary history of dMI5 and MI6, this book is filled with errors, invented quotations, and incidents that simply never happened, such as Allen Dulles and Stewart Menzies meeting at the 1945 Yalta conference. Neither attended it. He names Kim Philby’s father as Sir Harry Philby. St. John Philby never held a knighthood, and never could owing to the British class structure.
Stevenson, William (1976). A Man Called Intrepid. Macmillan. The fabricated biography of Sir William Stevenson by a Canadian journalist. Even the photographs, supposedly recovered from a secret wartime archive, are faked, and are stills from a movie made after the war. And Stephenson was never codenamed INTREPID.
Holzman, Michael (2008). James Jesus Angleton. University of Massachusetts Press. Yet another biography of the legendary CIA counterintelligence chief, but poorly researched and full of supposition masquerading as fact. The content mainly drawn from three other books, none of them any good.
Twigge, Michael (2008). British Intelligence. National Archives. Presented as a guide to declassified documents from the British Intelligence services, this is riddled with very basic mistakes and ahs no value whatever.
Allen, Martin (2005). Himmler’s Secret War. Robson Books. One of three books written by an author with a talent for forgery. Most of his “authentic archival documents” are rather poor modern forgeries.
Bennett, Richard (2002). Espionage: An Encyclopedia of Spies and their Secrets. Virtually every date in this encyclopedia is inaccurate. Most of the entries are a mixture of error and falsification.
Boyd, Colonel Arthur (2007). Operation Broken Reed. DeCapo Books. A delusional account of a clandestine operation in Korea that never happened.
26. Jack Hewit and the Cambridge Four
Not discussed in many references to the Cambridge spies, Jack "Jacky" Hewit was born May 17, 1917 in England. He tried a career as an English dancer and chorus boy. His relationships were complicated and nearly destructive to him. Over the course of his life Hewit was lovers with Anthony Blunt, Guy Burgess and Christopher Isherwood. It is probably true that he was influenced by the work of the openly gay novelist, and friend of Isherwood, E. M. Forster.
In this context the comment of one of Guy Burgess' lovers, Jack Hewit, about the milieu in which they moved, is telling. 'There was a sort of gay intellectual freemasonry which you know nothing about. It was like the five concentric circles in the Olympic emblem. One person in one circle knew one in another and that's how people met.
Certainly all of the above were gay and openly so at a time that severe social prejudice against homosexuality was prevalent. Isherwood was also Burgess’ sometimes lover.
Hewit served as a civil servant and intelligence agent for Britain during WWII. He lived with Guy Burgess most often, at different periods in his life. According to Isherwood's diaries, Guy introduced Jack to Christopher toward the end of 1938. They went to Brussels with W. H. Auden for Christmas and Hewit is one of the subjects of Auden's poem "Ode to the New Year" (1939).
When Christopher left for America with Auden in January 1939, Jack rode with him in the cab to see him off and gave Christopher a champagne cork from the New Year's party in Brussels at which Auden had read his poem. Christopher later buried the cork in the park yard of his home in Los Angeles.
Hewit’s connection with Anthony Blunt had a significant impact on British intelligence. Blunt reported on the Soviet operation “XXX.” This was a closely-held operation. It involved copying documents inside the British diplomatic pouches.
Pouches were escorted to the receiving country’s home office. Actually most were escorted on trains. Since trains had station stops, an escort might find a “blonde” to “liaison” with. The local constables would offer to put the pouch in a safe. Surely one could trust the British Bobby.
While the escort was “involved” technicians could retrieve the pouches, break the seal, photograph all contents, and return it to the safe, undetectable. Blunt convinced Jacky Hewit tyo be a lure for gay couriers. They nevere complained about delays.
Jacky died December 30, 1997. Whether or not he was also a Soviet agent is to me unknown, but he activities. Interviews with him revealed the Zeitgeist of the late 1930s when the Cambridge group found each other. It sheds some light on just how it could have happened.
The fact that Burgess was homosexual, to a predatory degree, that Blunt was gay, and the involvement of Hewit gave impetus to the discrimination against gays in intelligence. Many outstanding gay men worked in intelligence and at least one, Alan Turing, probably helpd shorten the war by two years through his service at Bletchley Park in breaking the German Enigma cipher. He was treated very badly after the war, to the point of torture, for being a homosexual. Because a handful of men, who happened to be gay, were turncoats to their country does not allow for painting all homosexuals as potential traitors. It was not until Prime Minister Gordon Brown that the British government finally apologized for the way Turing and other gays were treated after WWII.
(http://www.aolnews.com/story/gordon-brown-apologizes-for-treatment-of/666717)
In this context the comment of one of Guy Burgess' lovers, Jack Hewit, about the milieu in which they moved, is telling. 'There was a sort of gay intellectual freemasonry which you know nothing about. It was like the five concentric circles in the Olympic emblem. One person in one circle knew one in another and that's how people met.
Certainly all of the above were gay and openly so at a time that severe social prejudice against homosexuality was prevalent. Isherwood was also Burgess’ sometimes lover.
Hewit served as a civil servant and intelligence agent for Britain during WWII. He lived with Guy Burgess most often, at different periods in his life. According to Isherwood's diaries, Guy introduced Jack to Christopher toward the end of 1938. They went to Brussels with W. H. Auden for Christmas and Hewit is one of the subjects of Auden's poem "Ode to the New Year" (1939).
When Christopher left for America with Auden in January 1939, Jack rode with him in the cab to see him off and gave Christopher a champagne cork from the New Year's party in Brussels at which Auden had read his poem. Christopher later buried the cork in the park yard of his home in Los Angeles.
Hewit’s connection with Anthony Blunt had a significant impact on British intelligence. Blunt reported on the Soviet operation “XXX.” This was a closely-held operation. It involved copying documents inside the British diplomatic pouches.
Pouches were escorted to the receiving country’s home office. Actually most were escorted on trains. Since trains had station stops, an escort might find a “blonde” to “liaison” with. The local constables would offer to put the pouch in a safe. Surely one could trust the British Bobby.
While the escort was “involved” technicians could retrieve the pouches, break the seal, photograph all contents, and return it to the safe, undetectable. Blunt convinced Jacky Hewit tyo be a lure for gay couriers. They nevere complained about delays.
Jacky died December 30, 1997. Whether or not he was also a Soviet agent is to me unknown, but he activities. Interviews with him revealed the Zeitgeist of the late 1930s when the Cambridge group found each other. It sheds some light on just how it could have happened.
The fact that Burgess was homosexual, to a predatory degree, that Blunt was gay, and the involvement of Hewit gave impetus to the discrimination against gays in intelligence. Many outstanding gay men worked in intelligence and at least one, Alan Turing, probably helpd shorten the war by two years through his service at Bletchley Park in breaking the German Enigma cipher. He was treated very badly after the war, to the point of torture, for being a homosexual. Because a handful of men, who happened to be gay, were turncoats to their country does not allow for painting all homosexuals as potential traitors. It was not until Prime Minister Gordon Brown that the British government finally apologized for the way Turing and other gays were treated after WWII.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has apologized for the British government’s "horrifying" treatment a half-century ago of Alan Turing, the mathematical genius who played a key role in defeating Nazi Germany but was later convicted of "gross indecency" for having sex with another man.”
British gay activist Peter Tatchell said that Turing was one of an estimated 100,000 British gay men-- including playwright Oscar Wilde in 1895 -- convicted under Britain's "gross indecency" law, which was formally repealed in 2003.
While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can't put the clock back,'' Brown stated, "his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him.
Gordon Brown's message is clear," Graham-Cumming told AOL News. "Do not allow prejudice to color our thinking or actions.
(http://www.aolnews.com/story/gordon-brown-apologizes-for-treatment-of/666717)
25. The UK-US Special Relationship
US-UK Special Relationship
(This entry is a summary of a talk given on July 10, 2010by Nigel West on board Queen Mary 2, headed from New York to Southhampton, UK. Disclaimer: Any errors or omissions in the following are totally my own and should not be attributed to Nigel West.)
The term “special relationship” often heard mentioned by the President of the United States and The Prime Minister of Great Britain has a specific, narrow meaning related to intelligence and spills over into the nuclear program.
It really is an extraordinary relationship, particularly between NSA and GCHQ, the FBI and MI5. It began at the end of December 1940. There was considerable doubt, even in Britain, if the UK could survive WWII without the USA.
Two FBI agents, Hugh Clegg and Clarence Hince , went to the UK in December 1940 to determine if the UK had a secret means to survive and win the war with Germany.MI5 had booked only one room for the two of them (thinking they were boyfriend, girlfriend.)They had an extraordinary tour of secret facilities including Bletchley and the Radio Security Service (RSS). They were authorized to share everything in hopes of wooing USA help.
They learned of Group 5 traffic. This was a radio transmitter channel between Long Island and the Abwehr in Germany. The encryption was very crude and easily broken. It became clear the Nazis had a big operation in the US. Revealing this to the FBI would raise the problem of the FBI closing the operations and the Nazis would realize their hand ciphers were broken.
Some traffic was relayed to Enigma channels. This gave an advantage to breaking Enigma by comparing easily broken messages with those encrypted by Enigma.
Arthur Owen, a Welshman, was known to be suspect. He was taking in to custody and tried to make a deal. The Germans gave him a radio. He had been sending weather reports to Germany. RSS recruited amateur radio operators in the UK and were thrilled with Owens because he transmitted. Owens was codenamed SNOW. They were astonished he was transmitting to Hamburg. But triangulation showed the Germans were using a trawler radio ship. They began monitoring this ship and discovered the same message from the spy ship to Hamburg was Enigma encrypted. Thus if you know the message it is possible to work out the key setting for Enigma. This was crucial since knowing the settings was elemental in breaking the Enigma encryption for other messages.
Not just the settings on one machine but for all machines were changed across Europe, making Enigma quite readable. By sending weather reports Owens gave MI5 a huge advantage. But now the question was, could the two US agents be trusted with this information?
When told, the two FBI agents didn’t react at all. This surprised RSS. The agents owned up that they knew all about the Long Island operations since they were sending it. They had blown the ring and took over transmission. They had been tipped off by William Sebold. Frederick Joubert Duquesne [see http://www.paperlessarchives.com/duquesne.html] was a key German agent in the US. The FBI filled every person meeting Duquesne. Thirty-two spies were identified by observation.
MI5 and RSS discovered a huge advantage with cooperating with the US. This began an astonishing exchange between the US and the UK. Among some of the areas of information were (1) degaussing; (2) centimetric radar, and (3) proximity fuse.
Degaussing is the process of decreasing or eliminating an unwanted magnetic field. The term was first used by (then) Cmdr Charles F. Goodeve, RCNVR, during World War II while trying to counter the German magnetic mines that were playing havoc with the British fleet.
Centimetric Radar was developed by the British to determine the altitude and speed of aircraft and was crucial in the Battle of Britain. [See http://www.vectorsite.net/ttwiz_03.html]
The Proximity Fuse concept originated with British researchers (particularly Sir Samuel Curran) and was developed under the direction of physicist Merle A. Tuve at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab (APL).
Sir Marcus Oliphant in the UK worked in nuclear physics. In a television interview he recalled the following [see http://www.australianbiography.gov.au/subjects/oliphant/script.html]
The Frisch-Pierels Report did suggest it might be possible to develop and air-transportable weapon. But this was hardly an option for the UK owing to the enormous resources required. Henry Tizard was impressed with the report and had the connections within the Ministry of Defence to take it to the War Cabinet, who found it should be further considered. [The Frisch-Pierels Report is published in Serber, Robert (1992). The Los Alamos Primer, Appendix I, “The Frisch-Peirels Memorandum,” Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. It isf also found in Clark, Ronald W.(1965) Tizard. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 215-17. Actually there are two memoranda, the first of which was lost until the British historian Ronald W. Clark discovered it among the papers of Henry Tizard, some twenty years after the end of World War II.]
John Cairncross became an aide to Lord Hankey, secretary to the British Cabinet. He typed the final report to the Prime Minister. Cairncross and Donald Maclean were active at that time but knew nothing of each other. Cairncross admitted to spying in 1951 after MI5 found incriminating papers in his possession. Some believe that the information he supplied about the Western atomic weapons programmes kick-started the Soviet nuclear programme.
It became clear that huge resources would be needed to build an atomic weapon. The government decided that it would develop a reactor at Chalk River in Canada. In the US the decision was finally made to go on with the weapon development. Vannevar Bush was the scientific head of the project and General Leslie Grove was the factotum. It was indeed an Anglo-American project. The UK depended on the US but maintained its own development.
The special relationship extended to cooperation with the OSS. The VENONA cooperation on cryptography became the BRUSA-UKUSA. In June, 2010 the NSA-GCHQ declassified and posted on the internet the early papers of this cooperation that extended through the 1950s.[See http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukusa/]
British pilots trained on U2 aircraft to get imaging of the Soviet Union. U2 aircraft flew so high they were immune to Soviet missiles. British planes adapted to deliver nuclear weapons, but standoff targeting was required. That is, delivery of a weapon at a considerable distance from the target so the delivery platform is not seen and never visually acquires the target. This necessity led to cruise missiles. The first British cruise missile was Skybolt (December 1962). However President John Kennedy cancelled the program without warning the UK. Kennedy met MacMillan to deal with this. MacMillan begged for assistance, so Kennedy shared the Polaris missile. Stung by being unwarned and in political difficulty, MacMillan vowed to have the Union Jack on the nose cone of every British Polaris.
The American needed ground stations for NSA and the UK had little islands all over the world, remnants of the empire. NSA shared its product (even raw data.) In 1970 the UK elected an anti-American prime minister (Edward Heath). As a young man he was dismayed by US isolationism before WWII. Further, the US did not help the UK, French, and Israeli attack in Suez. During the 1973 Yom Kippur War Heath refused permission for the US to use any UK bases for resupply.
The US reconnaissance aircraft, the SR71 “Blackbird”, was a great aircraft but burned a huge amount of fuel. British bases were needed for refueling. There was an enormous US antipathy to Heath. The US-UK finally got together after Heath. Nevertheless, the US-UK intelligence cooperation was unaffected.
The Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) in Britain is at the apex of British Intelligence. At its table sits the heads of the secret agencies plus Whitehall representatives and it reaches agreed views, by consensus, which are then circulated to an inner group of ministers and departmental consumers. It prepares and circulates the “Red Book, the classified weekly summary of current events which senior ministers take home and read each weekend.” The US CIA station chief also sits on the JIC.” [West, Nigel (1997). The Secret War for the Falklands. London: Little, Brown and Co., p. 26]
When a new prime minister is named in Britain, he (or she) makes a call on the Queen. The outgoing minister is quickly and quietly shown the back door of the palace. Upon return to Number 10, Downing Street the new PM is told to write three letters, for the UK nuclear submarine commanders. It is he who must determine what they are to do in the event of a nuclear attack on the UK (and decapitation of the UK command system). The cabinet secretary gives guidance but it is the PM who must write the letters. They have some options which the PM must prioritize
(This entry is a summary of a talk given on July 10, 2010by Nigel West on board Queen Mary 2, headed from New York to Southhampton, UK. Disclaimer: Any errors or omissions in the following are totally my own and should not be attributed to Nigel West.)
The term “special relationship” often heard mentioned by the President of the United States and The Prime Minister of Great Britain has a specific, narrow meaning related to intelligence and spills over into the nuclear program.
It really is an extraordinary relationship, particularly between NSA and GCHQ, the FBI and MI5. It began at the end of December 1940. There was considerable doubt, even in Britain, if the UK could survive WWII without the USA.
Two FBI agents, Hugh Clegg and Clarence Hince , went to the UK in December 1940 to determine if the UK had a secret means to survive and win the war with Germany.MI5 had booked only one room for the two of them (thinking they were boyfriend, girlfriend.)They had an extraordinary tour of secret facilities including Bletchley and the Radio Security Service (RSS). They were authorized to share everything in hopes of wooing USA help.
They learned of Group 5 traffic. This was a radio transmitter channel between Long Island and the Abwehr in Germany. The encryption was very crude and easily broken. It became clear the Nazis had a big operation in the US. Revealing this to the FBI would raise the problem of the FBI closing the operations and the Nazis would realize their hand ciphers were broken.
Some traffic was relayed to Enigma channels. This gave an advantage to breaking Enigma by comparing easily broken messages with those encrypted by Enigma.
Arthur Owen, a Welshman, was known to be suspect. He was taking in to custody and tried to make a deal. The Germans gave him a radio. He had been sending weather reports to Germany. RSS recruited amateur radio operators in the UK and were thrilled with Owens because he transmitted. Owens was codenamed SNOW. They were astonished he was transmitting to Hamburg. But triangulation showed the Germans were using a trawler radio ship. They began monitoring this ship and discovered the same message from the spy ship to Hamburg was Enigma encrypted. Thus if you know the message it is possible to work out the key setting for Enigma. This was crucial since knowing the settings was elemental in breaking the Enigma encryption for other messages.
Not just the settings on one machine but for all machines were changed across Europe, making Enigma quite readable. By sending weather reports Owens gave MI5 a huge advantage. But now the question was, could the two US agents be trusted with this information?
When told, the two FBI agents didn’t react at all. This surprised RSS. The agents owned up that they knew all about the Long Island operations since they were sending it. They had blown the ring and took over transmission. They had been tipped off by William Sebold. Frederick Joubert Duquesne [see http://www.paperlessarchives.com/duquesne.html] was a key German agent in the US. The FBI filled every person meeting Duquesne. Thirty-two spies were identified by observation.
MI5 and RSS discovered a huge advantage with cooperating with the US. This began an astonishing exchange between the US and the UK. Among some of the areas of information were (1) degaussing; (2) centimetric radar, and (3) proximity fuse.
Degaussing is the process of decreasing or eliminating an unwanted magnetic field. The term was first used by (then) Cmdr Charles F. Goodeve, RCNVR, during World War II while trying to counter the German magnetic mines that were playing havoc with the British fleet.
Centimetric Radar was developed by the British to determine the altitude and speed of aircraft and was crucial in the Battle of Britain. [See http://www.vectorsite.net/ttwiz_03.html]
The Proximity Fuse concept originated with British researchers (particularly Sir Samuel Curran) and was developed under the direction of physicist Merle A. Tuve at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab (APL).
Sir Marcus Oliphant in the UK worked in nuclear physics. In a television interview he recalled the following [see http://www.australianbiography.gov.au/subjects/oliphant/script.html]
Now the interesting thing is that working with me in the laboratory at that time were two German refugees, from Hitler's Germany. One was named Piles [sic. His name was Rudolf Peirels] the other one's name Frish [sic. The name is Otto Frisch. He was the nephew of Lise Meitner, and the two of them have priority in the discovery of nuclear fission. Fred Wilson]. These two people together, of course they were enemy aliens, they weren't allowed to know anything about this secret weapon or radar you see. So they had to be kept out of that.
So not being allowed to do that, they set to work to do some calculations about nuclear energy, about the possibility of getting nuclear energy, and, they lo and behold -- they came through with a paper, which they said that if one could separate the uranium then one could make a bomb of enormous power and they calculated the amount of uranium 235 that was required and also the explosive force that might be produced.
And this was absolutely hair-raising. Here were these two chaps not allowed to have anything to do with the secrets of radar, producing this paper on this possibility of making a nuclear weapon. So this paper was sent to the United States to inform them. So I had to dash across to America in connection with the Magnetron, but while I was there, I was asked to see what had happened to our report, the Piles Frish [sic. Frisch-Peirels] report, so I went to the, to Washington, to the Chairman of the American committee, who was the head of their department that was responsible for standards, their standards laboratory. And he was a real stick in the mud and he'd taken this report, thought it was a bit interesting, but had stuck it in his safe and hadn't circulated it to the other members of the committee.
So I went straight away to see[Vannevar] Bush and [James] Connant, who were the President's scientific and technical advisers and both of them took the point of view, well this is very interesting but this if for the next war, not for this war.
So still dissatisfied, I got on an aeroplane and went to see [Ernest O.] Lawrence whom I'd worked with you see and knew to be a live wire and a member of the committee. So I told him about this, and he was so upset that he got on the plane with me and we went back to Washington. Within a few days the man had the project well on its way. And we moved to America, whole of the British team moved to America.
The Frisch-Pierels Report did suggest it might be possible to develop and air-transportable weapon. But this was hardly an option for the UK owing to the enormous resources required. Henry Tizard was impressed with the report and had the connections within the Ministry of Defence to take it to the War Cabinet, who found it should be further considered. [The Frisch-Pierels Report is published in Serber, Robert (1992). The Los Alamos Primer, Appendix I, “The Frisch-Peirels Memorandum,” Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. It isf also found in Clark, Ronald W.(1965) Tizard. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 215-17. Actually there are two memoranda, the first of which was lost until the British historian Ronald W. Clark discovered it among the papers of Henry Tizard, some twenty years after the end of World War II.]
John Cairncross became an aide to Lord Hankey, secretary to the British Cabinet. He typed the final report to the Prime Minister. Cairncross and Donald Maclean were active at that time but knew nothing of each other. Cairncross admitted to spying in 1951 after MI5 found incriminating papers in his possession. Some believe that the information he supplied about the Western atomic weapons programmes kick-started the Soviet nuclear programme.
It became clear that huge resources would be needed to build an atomic weapon. The government decided that it would develop a reactor at Chalk River in Canada. In the US the decision was finally made to go on with the weapon development. Vannevar Bush was the scientific head of the project and General Leslie Grove was the factotum. It was indeed an Anglo-American project. The UK depended on the US but maintained its own development.
The special relationship extended to cooperation with the OSS. The VENONA cooperation on cryptography became the BRUSA-UKUSA. In June, 2010 the NSA-GCHQ declassified and posted on the internet the early papers of this cooperation that extended through the 1950s.[See http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukusa/]
British pilots trained on U2 aircraft to get imaging of the Soviet Union. U2 aircraft flew so high they were immune to Soviet missiles. British planes adapted to deliver nuclear weapons, but standoff targeting was required. That is, delivery of a weapon at a considerable distance from the target so the delivery platform is not seen and never visually acquires the target. This necessity led to cruise missiles. The first British cruise missile was Skybolt (December 1962). However President John Kennedy cancelled the program without warning the UK. Kennedy met MacMillan to deal with this. MacMillan begged for assistance, so Kennedy shared the Polaris missile. Stung by being unwarned and in political difficulty, MacMillan vowed to have the Union Jack on the nose cone of every British Polaris.
The American needed ground stations for NSA and the UK had little islands all over the world, remnants of the empire. NSA shared its product (even raw data.) In 1970 the UK elected an anti-American prime minister (Edward Heath). As a young man he was dismayed by US isolationism before WWII. Further, the US did not help the UK, French, and Israeli attack in Suez. During the 1973 Yom Kippur War Heath refused permission for the US to use any UK bases for resupply.
The US reconnaissance aircraft, the SR71 “Blackbird”, was a great aircraft but burned a huge amount of fuel. British bases were needed for refueling. There was an enormous US antipathy to Heath. The US-UK finally got together after Heath. Nevertheless, the US-UK intelligence cooperation was unaffected.
The Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) in Britain is at the apex of British Intelligence. At its table sits the heads of the secret agencies plus Whitehall representatives and it reaches agreed views, by consensus, which are then circulated to an inner group of ministers and departmental consumers. It prepares and circulates the “Red Book, the classified weekly summary of current events which senior ministers take home and read each weekend.” The US CIA station chief also sits on the JIC.” [West, Nigel (1997). The Secret War for the Falklands. London: Little, Brown and Co., p. 26]
When a new prime minister is named in Britain, he (or she) makes a call on the Queen. The outgoing minister is quickly and quietly shown the back door of the palace. Upon return to Number 10, Downing Street the new PM is told to write three letters, for the UK nuclear submarine commanders. It is he who must determine what they are to do in the event of a nuclear attack on the UK (and decapitation of the UK command system). The cabinet secretary gives guidance but it is the PM who must write the letters. They have some options which the PM must prioritize
- Use your own initiative.
- Go to Australia (become part of the retaliation).
- Place yourself under command of the U.S. President.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
24. Did The CIA Get it Wrong about Iran
A recent article in The Wall Street Journal (Edward Jay Epstein, “How the CIA Got It Wrong on Iran’s Nukes,” The Wall Street Journal, (July 20, 2010), p. A13) posits the following:
The NIE to which Epstein refers is not quite so naïve or simplistic. At the outset it clarifies what questions it will address:
(See National Intelligence Estimate (November 2007), “Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities” (http://www.dni.gov/press_releases/20071203_release.pdf, p. 4).
This is the source from which Epstein drew since the full report remains classified.
Further, the assumptions Epstein makes:
is not supported by the NIE, which states:
Another crucially misleading statement Epstein makes is that the CIA got it wrong. Surely he must know the CIA does not write the NIE. The NIE is prepared under the auspices of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence:
The Director of National Intelligence coordinates the reporting of analyzed intelligence, with input from all intelligence sources in the Intelligence Community. To state that the CIA produces the NIE is to show lack of understanding of how national intelligence is produced and reported.
And finally, the NIE does not report what Epstein says it does. The 2007 version was updated in 2009 and the findings are much more complex that he suggests.
Epstein’s suggestions that we know something quite different about Iran today (and perhaps even when the NIE was written) and that the “CIA got it wrong,” is not supported by the facts. Epstein states,
The Obama Administration has made public statements quite different from what Epstein suggests, and those statements are in accord with the 2007 NIE. (See http://www.campaigniran.org/casmii/index.php?q=node/9097)
Epstein has been riding a hobbyhorse on Iran for years. In fact the Wall Street Journal article has appeared in several publications, virtually identical to the one referred to here, most of them in June and July of 2007. He is convinced that, “Taken together [his evidence]…these efforts added up an inescapable conclusion: Iran was going nuclear.”
We do have evidence of Iran’s nuclear energy program proceeding. Tehran has made claims, some of them outrageous (such that it will have fusion energy within a few years) but what is the likelihood of a nuclear weapons program being viable.
There has never been any scientific “secret” to the atomic bomb, except the crucial secret, revealed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that such a weapon would work.
The above quote is from Richard Rhodes, “Introduction” (1992).to Robert Serber(1943.) The Los Alamos Primer,Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press, p. xii.
Fareed Zakaria, on his program GPS (“Sanctions”. Fareed Zakaria (August 8, 2010) CNN GPS) argues that
[http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2010/08/08/gps.what.in.the.world.8.08.cnn]
Producing intelligence is not the same as investigative reporting. Many sources are tapped to gather data (not information. They are different.) Professionals with years of pertinent experience, assemble the data and perform analyses for policymakers. Finally the compiled intelligence is disseminated to consumers (the policymakers) who will, undoubtedly cherry-pick conclusions that agree with agendas and current perceptions. I know this is true. It has happened to me.
The costs in resources, facilities, and brainpower to develop nuclear weapons is enormous. Even with a set of plans handed over personally from Pakistan, Iran would find it very difficult to construct a working nuclear weapon. But other resources, also expensive and quite detectable, are required, such as a means of delivery of a weapon. These efforts can be detected far earlier than the detection of a nuclear arsenal.
It is in Israel’s interest that the U.S. policy assumes that Iran is hell-bent on developing a credible nuclear threat. It would follow that the U.S. would be the “deep pockets” of resources to eradicate such a threat. But Israeli policymakers are no less intelligent that American ones. Why would Israel be so concerned about such a program.
No country can afford to ignore a threat of even low credibility. No country can afford to ignore the threat of a threat. At the very least by announcing a nuclear program Iran gets a better chance at a place at the table. Its threats are not totally empty. Should Iran acquire even a very-low efficiency weapon then no city could afford to ignore an Iranian threat. It’s leverage. And in the world of geopolitics leverage may be even more important that possession of a working bomb.
Epstein has published this article in at least 5 different publications . He is an investigative reporter, still riding his hobbyhorse on the Warren commission Report. The article contains a number of misstatements and idiosyncratic presumptions and conclusions.
In a stunning departure from a decade of assessments, the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran declared: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program," including "nuclear weapon design and weaponization work" and covert uranium enrichment.
The NIE to which Epstein refers is not quite so naïve or simplistic. At the outset it clarifies what questions it will address:
This Estimate focuses on the following key questions:
- What are Iran’s intentions toward developing nuclear weapons?
- What domestic factors affect Iran’s decisionmaking on whether to develop nuclear weapons?
- What external factors affect Iran’s decisionmaking on whether to develop nuclear weapons?
- What is the range of potential Iranian actions concerning the development of nuclear weapons, and the decisive factors that would lead Iran to choose one course of action over another?
- What is Iran’s current and projected capability to develop nuclear weapons? What are our
key assumptions, and Iran’s key chokepoints/vulnerabilities?
(See National Intelligence Estimate (November 2007), “Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities” (http://www.dni.gov/press_releases/20071203_release.pdf, p. 4).
This is the source from which Epstein drew since the full report remains classified.
Further, the assumptions Epstein makes:
There were high-level people in the newly reorganized U.S. intelligence community who wanted to believe Iran was ending its quest for the bomb, and messages to the CIA from agents inside the country that diplomatic pressure was accomplishing this task fell on receptive ears.
is not supported by the NIE, which states:
This NIE does not assume that Iran intends to acquire nuclear weapons. Rather, it examines the intelligence to assess Iran’s capability and intent (or lack thereof) to acquire nuclear weapons, taking full account of Iran’s dual-use uranium fuel cycle and those nuclear activities that are at least partly civil in nature.
Another crucially misleading statement Epstein makes is that the CIA got it wrong. Surely he must know the CIA does not write the NIE. The NIE is prepared under the auspices of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence:
The Director of National Intelligence serves as the head of the Intelligence Community (IC), overseeing and directing the implementation of the National Intelligence Program and acting as the principal advisor to the President, the National Security Council, and the Homeland Security Council for intelligence matters.
The Director of National Intelligence coordinates the reporting of analyzed intelligence, with input from all intelligence sources in the Intelligence Community. To state that the CIA produces the NIE is to show lack of understanding of how national intelligence is produced and reported.
And finally, the NIE does not report what Epstein says it does. The 2007 version was updated in 2009 and the findings are much more complex that he suggests.
- The NIE judges, with high confidence, that Iran ended its nuclear weapons program in 2003, but kept its options open for restarting at a later date. In 2007 the program was judged not to have restarted…”but we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.” The NIE judges that in 2007 Iran did not have a nuclear weapon and that its desire to do so had decreased since 2005.
- ”We continue to assess with low confidence that Iran probably has imported at least some weapons-usable fissile material, but still judge with moderate-to-high confidence it
has not obtained enough for a nuclear weapon.” - ”We assess centrifuge enrichment is how Iran probably could first produce enough fissile material for a weapon, if it decides to do so.”
- Iranian entities are continuing to develop a range of technical capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons, if a decision is made to do so.”
- ”We do not have sufficient intelligence to judge confidently whether Tehran is willing to maintain the halt of its nuclear weapons program indefinitely while it weighs its options, or whether it will or already has set specific deadlines or criteria that will prompt it to restart the program.”
- ”We assess with moderate confidence that Iran probably would use covert facilities - rather than its declared nuclear sites - for the production of highly enriched uranium for a weapon.”
- We judge with high confidence that Iran will not be technically capable of producing and reprocessing enough plutonium for a weapon before about 2015.
- We assess with high confidence that Iran has the scientific, technical and industrial,capacity eventually to produce nuclear weapons if it decides to do so.”
Epstein’s suggestions that we know something quite different about Iran today (and perhaps even when the NIE was written) and that the “CIA got it wrong,” is not supported by the facts. Epstein states,
Unfortunately, as the Obama administration has now acknowledged, the NIE's conclusion was dead wrong, costing us precious time in dealing with a serious threat.
The Obama Administration has made public statements quite different from what Epstein suggests, and those statements are in accord with the 2007 NIE. (See http://www.campaigniran.org/casmii/index.php?q=node/9097)
Epstein has been riding a hobbyhorse on Iran for years. In fact the Wall Street Journal article has appeared in several publications, virtually identical to the one referred to here, most of them in June and July of 2007. He is convinced that, “Taken together [his evidence]…these efforts added up an inescapable conclusion: Iran was going nuclear.”
We do have evidence of Iran’s nuclear energy program proceeding. Tehran has made claims, some of them outrageous (such that it will have fusion energy within a few years) but what is the likelihood of a nuclear weapons program being viable.
There has never been any scientific “secret” to the atomic bomb, except the crucial secret, revealed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that such a weapon would work.
There were engineering and industrial secrets, of course – how to manufacture filters that would efficiently separate the [uranium isotopes], for example; how to separate plutonium chemically from irradiated uranium; how to compose and shape explosive lenses – and these secrets continue quite properly to be protected.
The above quote is from Richard Rhodes, “Introduction” (1992).to Robert Serber(1943.) The Los Alamos Primer,Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press, p. xii.
Fareed Zakaria, on his program GPS (“Sanctions”. Fareed Zakaria (August 8, 2010) CNN GPS) argues that
Two months ago, the UN security council imposed what President Obama called "the toughest sanctions ever faced by Iran. But are those sanctions working?
Not according to Iranian President Ahmadinejad.
But then why are countries, including some of Iran's trading partners, following America's lead and tightening the screws on Iran? And what effect will that have?
[http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2010/08/08/gps.what.in.the.world.8.08.cnn]
Producing intelligence is not the same as investigative reporting. Many sources are tapped to gather data (not information. They are different.) Professionals with years of pertinent experience, assemble the data and perform analyses for policymakers. Finally the compiled intelligence is disseminated to consumers (the policymakers) who will, undoubtedly cherry-pick conclusions that agree with agendas and current perceptions. I know this is true. It has happened to me.
The costs in resources, facilities, and brainpower to develop nuclear weapons is enormous. Even with a set of plans handed over personally from Pakistan, Iran would find it very difficult to construct a working nuclear weapon. But other resources, also expensive and quite detectable, are required, such as a means of delivery of a weapon. These efforts can be detected far earlier than the detection of a nuclear arsenal.
It is in Israel’s interest that the U.S. policy assumes that Iran is hell-bent on developing a credible nuclear threat. It would follow that the U.S. would be the “deep pockets” of resources to eradicate such a threat. But Israeli policymakers are no less intelligent that American ones. Why would Israel be so concerned about such a program.
No country can afford to ignore a threat of even low credibility. No country can afford to ignore the threat of a threat. At the very least by announcing a nuclear program Iran gets a better chance at a place at the table. Its threats are not totally empty. Should Iran acquire even a very-low efficiency weapon then no city could afford to ignore an Iranian threat. It’s leverage. And in the world of geopolitics leverage may be even more important that possession of a working bomb.
Epstein has published this article in at least 5 different publications . He is an investigative reporter, still riding his hobbyhorse on the Warren commission Report. The article contains a number of misstatements and idiosyncratic presumptions and conclusions.
23. The Deception Game, by Ladislav Bittman
From 1964-1966 Department D, the special arm of the Soviet-controlled Czechoslovakian intelligence service, engaged in dirty tricks against their number one enemy, the United States.
Bittman, the major player in this autobiography, said he defected to the West in 1968 because he concluded that Cold War propaganda was a disservice, especially to Czechoslovakia, his own country. The final irony, he said, was watching Soviet and Prague (Czechoslovakia) agents practice black propaganda operations against Czechoslovakia, herself, one of the most successful producers of disinformation and propaganda against the non-communist world. After defection he presented “special operations” the traced in the world press.
Bittman was suspected, and then accused of being a traitor, although he was never informed of the charges against him. Bittman was in Vienna in 1968 when the invasion by Russia began (August 21, 1968) He defected, perhaps to save his own skin more than feeling of guilt, although he claims to have come to an understanding that” the end does necessarily justify the means.”
He did experience the tragedy of his country being invaded by Russia, and the psychological crises of exile in a new political and cultural environment. He was tried in Czechoslovakia, in abstentia..
He did experience the tragedy of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovalialk and the psychological crices of seile in a new political and cultural
Bittman, Ladislav (1972). The Deception Game. London: Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. ISBN: 0-345-29808-X [New York: Ballantine Books]
Friday, August 6, 2010
22. Venona
(This entry is a summary of a talk given on July 9, 2010by Nigel West on board Queen Mary 2, headed from New York to Southhampton, UK. Disclaimer: Any errors or omissions in the following are totally my own and should not be attributed to Nigel West.)
This was an Anglo-American cryptographic project that succeeded in decoding more than 2,000 Soviet messages exchanged between Moscow and various diplomatic posts overseas between 1940 and 1949. It had several codenames but is better known as VENONA. [See West, Nigel (2002). Historical Dictionary of International Intelligence. Lantham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, p. 264].
The word VENNONA has no meaning, being a codeword only. The original codeword was BRIDE. Its disclosure brought a chill to many people because it was so closely held (only declassified in 1995. See http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/declass/venona/dated.shtml ] This project was responsible for the identification of scores of Soviet agents across the world and was the key to many famous espionage cases in the United States.
VENONA began in 1943, without mandate, at Arlington Hall Codebreakers had solved the problem of acquiring Japanese traffic and breaking the code. Time-on-hand gave the opportunity to look at other things. The codebreakers turn attention to the “Russian problem,” breaking Soviet codes.
Soviets used commercial cable companies to communicate with Moscow. Messages were encrypted and sent by wire. This was a huge advantage, since a clean (original) copy was retained at the sending office. Acquiring traffic required neither interception nor relying on copies of originals (which could be very difficult to read.)The large amount of traffic, and the clarity of the text, made cryptology much easier.
Soviets used one-time pads (OTP) for encryption. They believed the OTP was unbreakable. The first step was converting letters (Cyrillic) to numbers. Next a page was selected from the OTP. One by one, the numbers of the clear message were modularly added to successive numbers from the OTP. Decryption in Moscow would reverse the process, using modular subtraction to get the clear text.
As discussed in a previous blog, producing OTPs requires generation of random numbers. However machine production of random numbers requires some algorithm (at least in the past. In a previous blog entry a method for producing a truly random distribution was presented where no algorithm is needed.) When there is an underlying algorithm it is conceivable to recover the algorithm and deduce the random sequence.
The Soviets must have had some kind of problem generating random numbers. Added to this, more than one page of OTPs were produced. When the Nazi’s attacked the USSR, production and distribution of pads was difficult. Second, the bills of lading had to be widely used to alert what was on the ships. Thus, having observed multiple uses of OTP pages, and the huge traffic in bills of lading, deciphering the encryptions was given a significant boost.
How or why duplicate pages existed is not known. One may surmise that only a few people had responsibility for producing the pads, since they had to be closely held. Under pressure to produce more and more pads, and the difficulty of producing random numbers, it is likely that a preparer simply used carbon paper to produce multiple pages, then inserted pages in new pads in random order. We have no evidence that this is true but it is a most likely scenario. This was catastrophic for the NKVD, GRU, Naval GRU, since each used OTPs. Trying to match up clear text of manifest with encrypted traffic was a sure way into the messages. A very important clue and entryway were the dates of information on manifests. Gradually, over two years, the encrypted version matched up with clear text. That allowed for teasing out the OTP edition, and results began to appear.
The first cracked NKVD message contained a list of 24 names, people working at Los Alamos. This was extremely important since even the existence of the Manhattan Project was closely held. Soviets discussing the Manhattan project meant there was a Russian spy in Los Alamos.
Acquiring such valuable information showed the value of the VENONA project. Over 2000 messages were broken. From 1941-1948 the BRIDE project continue since so much information was in the traffic. A huge effort was set up to find out who was the spy and identify him. (Actually there were at least two spies, Ted Hall and Klaus Fuchs. They may have been more, as many continue to suspect.) The Soviet codeword for the Manhattan Project was found to be ENORMOUS.
In cryptography, a message is seldom entirely broken by itself. Messages are not only encrypted but they are encoded, where codewords are used to further cover something closely held. As more messages are decrypted some of these codewords are also broken, leading to identification of, say specific names. As a codeword was broken all messages containing it were updated. Sadly for historical purposes, we now have only the best versions of the traffic. We cannot see how the information evolved.
We learned to read quite a bit of Soviet traffic from New York, San Francisco, Washington, DC, and a few more sites. We were able to look at other REZIDENTURA. We shared information with the UK and were able to get much further help from the Brits and from Swedish crypts. The Swedes kept all the traffic the Soviets sent even though they could not read it.
Traffic from Moscow to Canberra was hugely important. [See West, Nigel (2002). Historical Dictionary of International Intelligence. Lantham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, p. 18].
The Australians (with the US) operated a secret installation at Pine Gap, outside Alice Springs. (See http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/sociopol_pinegap08.htm) The Canberra traffic was contemporaneous and allowed identification of real people. From that, contacts could be identified. Together, efforts led to developing a string or cluster of people involved in the act. The Australians at that time actually had no counterespionage units, until MI5 urged on. As the counterespionage effort there got underway it was identified as “The Case” to conceal the actual source (VENONA).
There was also considerable consternation that scientists passing secrets might be continuing in espionage or that they recruited others to replace them. An unidentified spy BARON (see http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1503011/posts) was at Bletchley Park. It never was discovered who it was passing secrets to the USSR. GSHQ (Government Communications Headquarters, the NSA of Great Britain; see Nigel West (2002), p. 117)
VENONA also revealed changes in codenames. It took 4.5 years to find REST from Los Alamos. Counterintelligence narrowed it to one person who fit all the data. It was Klaus Fuchs. By the time he was ferreted out (1949) he had returned to the UK to work at Harwell. How could he be dealt with? It was out of the question to use VENONA in court or its value would be lost. MI5 did get Fuchs to self-present. He acknowledged he had passed information. He was arre3asted, pled guilty, believing he was \doing the right thing. He knew that he was already known to MI5 from VENONA.
Donald Maclean was also identified from information from VENONA and known by the codenames GOMER, HOMER, G. He vanished before he could be arrested. Since Maclean was known to be close to Philby, suspicion immediately fell on Kim Philby.
Harry gold (GOOSE) was identified. That led to David Greenglass and his wife (BUMBLEBEE and WASP.) Their interrogations revealed Ethel Rosenberg, married to Julius (ANTENNA and then LIBERAL.) In retrospect the codenames are often semi-transparent to help the handlers remember who the sources are.
Alger Hiss and his wife were also identified. Hiss had attended the Yalta conference and advised President Franklin Roosevelt on spheres of influence. As it happened, and was later determined, there were about 300 spies in the US, many of them around FDR. It was also true in Britain. Two were known as NOBILITY and MONTAGUE. INTELLIGENCE may have been Holbein (also RESERVIST, and MINISTER, never specifically identified.) Many of these are discussed at the NSA website (http://ww.nsa.gov).
The recent identification of 10 Russian sleeper spies in the US shows it never ends. These have been taken out of the picture (as discussed early in this blog.) They may have disclosed some information. Forensics tracing may reveal more. Locking up a spy has no operational value. However, exchanging them gave the US a great advantage, since the Russians sent to us, for example Alexander Zaporozhsky, Gennady Vasilenko, Sergei Skripal, and Igor Sutagin. Some may cooperate to a degree, others have no interest in handing over anything. Zaporshsky helped identify the traitor, Hansen. Vasilenko (a name included by Ames) was totally innocent. He was charged in Moscow with terrorism since he had hunting rifles in his garage. Very unusual for the Russians to sent people as these out of the country. Sutagin is a nuclear scientist, and will be interesting to talk with.
This was an Anglo-American cryptographic project that succeeded in decoding more than 2,000 Soviet messages exchanged between Moscow and various diplomatic posts overseas between 1940 and 1949. It had several codenames but is better known as VENONA. [See West, Nigel (2002). Historical Dictionary of International Intelligence. Lantham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, p. 264].
The word VENNONA has no meaning, being a codeword only. The original codeword was BRIDE. Its disclosure brought a chill to many people because it was so closely held (only declassified in 1995. See http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/declass/venona/dated.shtml ] This project was responsible for the identification of scores of Soviet agents across the world and was the key to many famous espionage cases in the United States.
VENONA began in 1943, without mandate, at Arlington Hall Codebreakers had solved the problem of acquiring Japanese traffic and breaking the code. Time-on-hand gave the opportunity to look at other things. The codebreakers turn attention to the “Russian problem,” breaking Soviet codes.
Soviets used commercial cable companies to communicate with Moscow. Messages were encrypted and sent by wire. This was a huge advantage, since a clean (original) copy was retained at the sending office. Acquiring traffic required neither interception nor relying on copies of originals (which could be very difficult to read.)The large amount of traffic, and the clarity of the text, made cryptology much easier.
Soviets used one-time pads (OTP) for encryption. They believed the OTP was unbreakable. The first step was converting letters (Cyrillic) to numbers. Next a page was selected from the OTP. One by one, the numbers of the clear message were modularly added to successive numbers from the OTP. Decryption in Moscow would reverse the process, using modular subtraction to get the clear text.
As discussed in a previous blog, producing OTPs requires generation of random numbers. However machine production of random numbers requires some algorithm (at least in the past. In a previous blog entry a method for producing a truly random distribution was presented where no algorithm is needed.) When there is an underlying algorithm it is conceivable to recover the algorithm and deduce the random sequence.
The Soviets must have had some kind of problem generating random numbers. Added to this, more than one page of OTPs were produced. When the Nazi’s attacked the USSR, production and distribution of pads was difficult. Second, the bills of lading had to be widely used to alert what was on the ships. Thus, having observed multiple uses of OTP pages, and the huge traffic in bills of lading, deciphering the encryptions was given a significant boost.
How or why duplicate pages existed is not known. One may surmise that only a few people had responsibility for producing the pads, since they had to be closely held. Under pressure to produce more and more pads, and the difficulty of producing random numbers, it is likely that a preparer simply used carbon paper to produce multiple pages, then inserted pages in new pads in random order. We have no evidence that this is true but it is a most likely scenario. This was catastrophic for the NKVD, GRU, Naval GRU, since each used OTPs. Trying to match up clear text of manifest with encrypted traffic was a sure way into the messages. A very important clue and entryway were the dates of information on manifests. Gradually, over two years, the encrypted version matched up with clear text. That allowed for teasing out the OTP edition, and results began to appear.
The first cracked NKVD message contained a list of 24 names, people working at Los Alamos. This was extremely important since even the existence of the Manhattan Project was closely held. Soviets discussing the Manhattan project meant there was a Russian spy in Los Alamos.
Acquiring such valuable information showed the value of the VENONA project. Over 2000 messages were broken. From 1941-1948 the BRIDE project continue since so much information was in the traffic. A huge effort was set up to find out who was the spy and identify him. (Actually there were at least two spies, Ted Hall and Klaus Fuchs. They may have been more, as many continue to suspect.) The Soviet codeword for the Manhattan Project was found to be ENORMOUS.
In cryptography, a message is seldom entirely broken by itself. Messages are not only encrypted but they are encoded, where codewords are used to further cover something closely held. As more messages are decrypted some of these codewords are also broken, leading to identification of, say specific names. As a codeword was broken all messages containing it were updated. Sadly for historical purposes, we now have only the best versions of the traffic. We cannot see how the information evolved.
We learned to read quite a bit of Soviet traffic from New York, San Francisco, Washington, DC, and a few more sites. We were able to look at other REZIDENTURA. We shared information with the UK and were able to get much further help from the Brits and from Swedish crypts. The Swedes kept all the traffic the Soviets sent even though they could not read it.
Traffic from Moscow to Canberra was hugely important. [See West, Nigel (2002). Historical Dictionary of International Intelligence. Lantham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, p. 18].
The Australians (with the US) operated a secret installation at Pine Gap, outside Alice Springs. (See http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/sociopol_pinegap08.htm) The Canberra traffic was contemporaneous and allowed identification of real people. From that, contacts could be identified. Together, efforts led to developing a string or cluster of people involved in the act. The Australians at that time actually had no counterespionage units, until MI5 urged on. As the counterespionage effort there got underway it was identified as “The Case” to conceal the actual source (VENONA).
There was also considerable consternation that scientists passing secrets might be continuing in espionage or that they recruited others to replace them. An unidentified spy BARON (see http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1503011/posts) was at Bletchley Park. It never was discovered who it was passing secrets to the USSR. GSHQ (Government Communications Headquarters, the NSA of Great Britain; see Nigel West (2002), p. 117)
VENONA also revealed changes in codenames. It took 4.5 years to find REST from Los Alamos. Counterintelligence narrowed it to one person who fit all the data. It was Klaus Fuchs. By the time he was ferreted out (1949) he had returned to the UK to work at Harwell. How could he be dealt with? It was out of the question to use VENONA in court or its value would be lost. MI5 did get Fuchs to self-present. He acknowledged he had passed information. He was arre3asted, pled guilty, believing he was \doing the right thing. He knew that he was already known to MI5 from VENONA.
Donald Maclean was also identified from information from VENONA and known by the codenames GOMER, HOMER, G. He vanished before he could be arrested. Since Maclean was known to be close to Philby, suspicion immediately fell on Kim Philby.
Harry gold (GOOSE) was identified. That led to David Greenglass and his wife (BUMBLEBEE and WASP.) Their interrogations revealed Ethel Rosenberg, married to Julius (ANTENNA and then LIBERAL.) In retrospect the codenames are often semi-transparent to help the handlers remember who the sources are.
Alger Hiss and his wife were also identified. Hiss had attended the Yalta conference and advised President Franklin Roosevelt on spheres of influence. As it happened, and was later determined, there were about 300 spies in the US, many of them around FDR. It was also true in Britain. Two were known as NOBILITY and MONTAGUE. INTELLIGENCE may have been Holbein (also RESERVIST, and MINISTER, never specifically identified.) Many of these are discussed at the NSA website (http://ww.nsa.gov).
The recent identification of 10 Russian sleeper spies in the US shows it never ends. These have been taken out of the picture (as discussed early in this blog.) They may have disclosed some information. Forensics tracing may reveal more. Locking up a spy has no operational value. However, exchanging them gave the US a great advantage, since the Russians sent to us, for example Alexander Zaporozhsky, Gennady Vasilenko, Sergei Skripal, and Igor Sutagin. Some may cooperate to a degree, others have no interest in handing over anything. Zaporshsky helped identify the traitor, Hansen. Vasilenko (a name included by Ames) was totally innocent. He was charged in Moscow with terrorism since he had hunting rifles in his garage. Very unusual for the Russians to sent people as these out of the country. Sutagin is a nuclear scientist, and will be interesting to talk with.
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