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Ignacy Witczak
Ignacy Witczak was a GRU (Soviet Union), GRU ''illegal'' officer in the United States during World War II. Witczak's code name with the GRU and as deciphered by the Venona project and other counterintelligence investigations was "R". He operated under a cover of a student and then instructor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles in the 1940s. Shortly after the defection on 5 September 1945 of Igor Gouzenko, a GRU code clerk at the Soviet embassy in Ottawa, Samuel Witczak, an instructor at the University of Southern California, disappeared from a beach in Southern California, never to be seen again. Later his wife disappeared as well. In a 1952 Senate report, he was identified as a Soviet spy; his name had surfaced in the Venona decrypts. The FBI search for Witczak is described in the memoirs of FBI special agent Robert Lamphere. The FBI had learned Witczak had entered the United States from Canada on a false passport and suspected Witczak was not his true name. La ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
GRU (Soviet Union)
Main Intelligence Directorate ( rus, Главное разведывательное управление, Glavnoye razvedyvatel'noye upravleniye, ˈglavnəjə rɐzˈvʲɛdɨvətʲɪlʲnəjə ʊprɐˈvlʲenʲɪjə), abbreviated GRU ( rus, ГРУ, p=geeˈru), was the foreign military intelligence agency of the Soviet Army General Staff of the Soviet Union until 1991. For a few months it was also the foreign military intelligence agency of the newly established Russian Federation until 7 May 1992 when it was dissolved and the Russian GRU took over its activities. History The GRU's first predecessor in Russia formed on October 21, 1918 by secret order under the sponsorship of Leon Trotsky (then the civilian leader of the Red Army), signed by Jukums Vācietis, the first commander-in-chief of the Red Army (RKKA), and by Ephraim Sklyansky, deputy to Trotsky; it was originally known as the Registration Directorate (''Registrupravlenie'', or RU). Semyon Aralov was its first head. I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Venona Project
The Venona project was a United States counterintelligence program initiated during World War II by the United States Army's Signal Intelligence Service (later absorbed by the National Security Agency), which ran from February 1, 1943, until October 1, 1980. It was intended to decrypt messages transmitted by the intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union (e.g. the NKVD, the KGB, and the GRU). Initiated when the Soviet Union was an ally of the US, the program continued during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union was considered an enemy. During the 37-year duration of the Venona project, the Signal Intelligence Service decrypted and translated approximately 3,000 messages. The signals intelligence yield included discovery of the Cambridge Five espionage ring in the United Kingdom and Soviet espionage of the Manhattan Project in the U.S. (known as Project Enormous). Some of the espionage was undertaken to support the Soviet atomic bomb project. The Venona project remained secret for m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Of Southern California
The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in California. The university is composed of one Liberal arts education, liberal arts school, the University of Southern California academics, Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, and 22 Undergraduate education, undergraduate, Graduate school, graduate, and professional schools, enrolling roughly 21,000 undergraduate and 28,500 Postgraduate education, post-graduate students from all 50 U.S. states and more than 115 countries. It is also a member of the Association of American Universities, which it joined in 1969. USC is ranked as one of the top universities in the United States and admission to its programs is considered College admissions in the United States, highly selective. USC has graduated more alumni who have gone on to w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world's most populous megacities. Los Angeles is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Southern California. With a population of roughly 3.9 million residents within the city limits , Los Angeles is known for its Mediterranean climate, ethnic and cultural diversity, being the home of the Hollywood film industry, and its sprawling metropolitan area. The city of Los Angeles lies in a basin in Southern California adjacent to the Pacific Ocean in the west and extending through the Santa Monica Mountains and north into the San Fernando Valley, with the city bordering the San Gabriel Valley to it's east. It covers about , and is the county seat of Los Angeles County, which is the most populous county in the United States with an estim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Igor Gouzenko
Igor Sergeyevich Gouzenko (russian: Игорь Сергеевич Гузенко ; January 26, 1919 – June 25, 1982) was a cipher clerk for the Soviet embassy to Canada in Ottawa, Ontario, and a lieutenant of the GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate). He defected on September 5, 1945, three days after the end of World War II, with 109 documents on the USSR's espionage activities in the West. This forced Canada's Prime Minister Mackenzie King to call a Royal Commission to investigate espionage in Canada. Gouzenko exposed Soviet intelligence's efforts to steal nuclear secrets as well as the technique of planting sleeper agents. The "Gouzenko Affair" is often credited as a triggering event of the Cold War, with historian Jack Granatstein stating it was "the beginning of the Cold War for public opinion" and journalist Robert Fulford writing he was "absolutely certain the Cold War began in Ottawa". Granville Hicks described Gouzenko's actions as having "awakened the people of N ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Venona Decrypts
The Venona project was a United States counterintelligence program initiated during World War II by the United States Army's Signal Intelligence Service (later absorbed by the National Security Agency), which ran from February 1, 1943, until October 1, 1980. It was intended to decrypt messages transmitted by the intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union (e.g. the NKVD, the KGB, and the GRU). Initiated when the Soviet Union was an ally of the US, the program continued during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union was considered an enemy. During the 37-year duration of the Venona project, the Signal Intelligence Service decrypted and translated approximately 3,000 messages. The signals intelligence yield included discovery of the Cambridge Five espionage ring in the United Kingdom and Soviet espionage of the Manhattan Project in the U.S. (known as Project Enormous). Some of the espionage was undertaken to support the Soviet atomic bomb project. The Venona project remained secret for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kim Philby
Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby (1 January 191211 May 1988) was a British intelligence officer and a double agent for the Soviet Union. In 1963 he was revealed to be a member of the Cambridge Five, a spy ring which had divulged British secrets to the Soviets during World War II and in the early stages of the Cold War. Of the five, Philby is believed to have been most successful in providing secret information to the Soviets. Born in British India, Philby was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was recruited by Soviet intelligence in 1934. After leaving Cambridge, Philby worked as a journalist, covering the Spanish Civil War and the Battle of France. In 1940 he began working for the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service (SIS or MI6). By the end of the Second World War he had become a high-ranking member. In 1949 Philby was appointed first secretary to the British Embassy in Washington and served as chief British liaison with American in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Venona Names
The following list of Americans in the Venona papers is a list of names deciphered from codenames contained in the Venona project, an American government effort from 1943–1980 to decrypt coded messages by intelligence forces of the Soviet Union. To what extent some of the individuals named in the Venona papers were actually involved with Soviet intelligence is a topic of dispute. The following list of individuals is extracted in large part from the work of historians John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr and reflects their previous points of view.John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr (1999)''Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America'' Yale University Press, However, Haynes' positions on the meaning and correct identification of names on the list continues to evolve. Non-Americans may also be mentioned in passing. Notes and disclaimers on the list Names marked with a double asterisk (**) do not appear in the Venona documents. Inclusion has been inferred to correlate with codenames ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soviet Espionage In The United States
As early as the 1920s, the Soviet Union, through its GRU, OGPU, NKVD, and KGB intelligence agencies, used Russian and foreign-born nationals ( resident spies), as well as Communists of American origin, to perform espionage activities in the United States, forming various spy rings. Haynes, John Earl, and Klehr, Harvey, ''Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America,'' Yale University Press (2000) ''Retrieved Papers Shed Light On Communist Activities In U.S.'', Associated Press, January 31, 2001 Particularly during the 1940s, some of these espionage networks had contact with various U.S. government agencies. These Soviet espionage networks illegally transmitted confidential information to Moscow, such as information on the development of the atomic bomb (see atomic spies). Soviet spies also participated in propaganda and disinformation operations, known as active measures, and attempted to sabotage diplomatic relationships between the U.S. and its allies. First efforts During the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tom Shachtman
Tom Shachtman (born 1942) is an American author, journalist, filmmaker, and educator. He has published more than thirty books across a variety of topics, including histories, biographies, and books for children. He lives in Connecticut. Awards Shachtman and British filmmaker David Dugan won the 2009 American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award for their two-part Nova documentary "Absolute Zero." Retrieved 2014-10-24. Books Nonfiction * ''The Day America Crashed: A Narrative Account of the Great Stock Market Crash of October 24 ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soviet Spies Against The United States
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national republics; in practice, both its government and its economy were highly centralized until its final years. It was a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with the city of Moscow serving as its capital as well as that of its largest and most populous republic: the Russian SFSR. Other major cities included Leningrad (Russian SFSR), Kiev (Ukrainian SSR), Minsk (Byelorussian SSR), Tashkent (Uzbek SSR), Alma-Ata (Kazakh SSR), and Novosibirsk (Russian SFSR). It was the largest country in the world, covering over and spanning eleven time zones. The country's roots lay in the October Revolution of 1917, when the Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Russian Provisional Government that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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