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James Gannon (author)
James Gannon is a freelance writer and producer of documentaries for NBC News. He has published many articles on a variety of subjects. Life James Gannon is the author of ''Stealing Secrets, Telling Lies: How Spies and Codebreakers Helped Shape the Twentieth century'' (2001). The book discusses key episodes of 20th-century espionage and cryptology involving the Zimmermann telegram; Enigma decryption and "Ultra"; the Battle of the Atlantic; Erwin Rommel; the Colossus computer; Frank Rowlett and Japan's Purple cipher; Allied Operation Overlord deceptions; World War II spies and spy organizations; Rudolf Roessler and the Lucy Spy Ring; Takeo Yoshikawa and Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor; Joseph J. Rochefort and the Battle of Midway; Richard Sorge; Donald Maclean; Klaus Fuchs; Venona; Oleg Penkovsky; and Ryszard Kukliński. A thread running through Gannon's book is the ubiquity of distortions in accounts of espionage and cryptology Cryptography, or cryptology (from g ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brackets
A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. Typically deployed in symmetric pairs, an individual bracket may be identified as a 'left' or 'right' bracket or, alternatively, an "opening bracket" or "closing bracket", respectively, depending on the Writing system#Directionality, directionality of the context. Specific forms of the mark include parentheses (also called "rounded brackets"), square brackets, curly brackets (also called 'braces'), and angle brackets (also called 'chevrons'), as well as various less common pairs of symbols. As well as signifying the overall class of punctuation, the word "bracket" is commonly used to refer to a specific form of bracket, which varies from region to region. In most English-speaking countries, an unqualified word "bracket" refers to the parenthesis (round bracket); in the United States, the square bracket. Glossary of mathematical sym ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Purple
Purple is any of a variety of colors with hue between red and blue. In the RGB color model used in computer and television screens, purples are produced by mixing red and blue light. In the RYB color model historically used by painters, purples are created with a combination of red and blue pigments. In the CMYK color model used in printing, purples are made by combining magenta pigment with either cyan pigment, black pigment, or both. Purple has long been associated with royalty, originally because Tyrian purple dye, made from the mucus secretion of a species of snail, was extremely expensive in antiquity. Purple was the color worn by Roman magistrates; it became the imperial color worn by the rulers of the Byzantine Empire and the Holy Roman Empire, and later by Roman Catholic bishops. Similarly in Japan, the color is traditionally associated with the emperor and aristocracy. According to contemporary surveys in Europe and the United States, purple is the color most ofte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oleg Penkovsky
Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky (russian: link=no, Олег Владимирович Пеньковский; 23 April 1919 – 16 May 1963), codenamed HERO, was a Soviet military intelligence (GRU) colonel during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Penkovsky informed the United States and the United Kingdom about Soviet military secrets, most importantly, the appearance and footprint of Soviet intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) installations and the weakness of the Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program. This information was decisive in allowing the US to recognize that the Soviets were placing IRBMs in Cuba before most of the missiles were operational. It also gave US President John F. Kennedy, during the Cuban Missile Crisis that followed, valuable information about Soviet weakness that allowed him to face down Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and resolve the crisis without a nuclear war. Penkovsky was the highest-ranking Soviet official to provide intelli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Venona
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] |
Klaus Fuchs
Klaus Emil Julius Fuchs (29 December 1911 – 28 January 1988) was a German theoretical physicist and atomic spy who supplied information from the American, British and Canadian Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union during and shortly after World War II. While at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Fuchs was responsible for many significant theoretical calculations relating to the first nuclear weapons and, later, early models of the hydrogen bomb. After his conviction in 1950, he served nine years in prison in the United Kingdom, then migrated to East Germany where he resumed his career as a physicist and scientific leader. The son of a Lutheran pastor, Fuchs attended the University of Leipzig, where his father was a professor of theology, and became involved in student politics, joining the student branch of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), and the ''Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold'', the SPD's paramilitary organisation. He was expelled from the SPD in 1932, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Donald Maclean (spy)
Donald Duart Maclean (; 25 May 1913 – 6 March 1983) was a British diplomat who conveyed government secrets to the Soviet Union. As an undergraduate, Maclean openly proclaimed his left-wing views, and was recruited into the Soviet intelligence service, then known as the NKVD. He entered the Civil Service and in 1938, he was made Third Secretary at the Paris embassy. He then served in London and was sent to Washington, D.C. from 1944 to 1948, achieving promotion to First Secretary. He was posted to Egypt and then was appointed head of the American Department in the Foreign Office. The Soviets helped Maclean to defect to Moscow in 1951. In Moscow, Maclean worked as a specialist on British policy and relations between the Soviet Union and NATO. He died there on 6 March 1983. Childhood and school Born in Marylebone, London, Donald Duart Maclean was the son of Sir Donald Maclean and Gwendolen Margaret Devitt. His father was chosen as chairman of the rump of the 23 independent MPs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Sorge
Richard Sorge (russian: Рихард Густавович Зорге, Rikhard Gustavovich Zorge; 4 October 1895 – 7 November 1944) was a German-Azerbaijani journalist and Soviet military intelligence officer who was active before and during World War II and worked undercover as a German journalist in both Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan. His codename was "Ramsay" (). A number of famous personalities considered him one of the most accomplished spies. Sorge is most famous for his service in Japan in 1940 and 1941, when he provided information about Adolf Hitler's plan to attack the Soviet Union. Then, in mid-September 1941, he informed the Soviets that Japan would not attack the Soviet Union in the near future. A month later, Sorge was arrested in Japan for espionage. He was tortured, forced to confess, tried and hanged in November 1944. Stalin declined to intervene on his behalf with the Japanese. He was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union in 1964. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Battle Of Midway
The Battle of Midway was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that took place on 4–7 June 1942, six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea. The U.S. Navy under Admirals Chester W. Nimitz, Frank J. Fletcher, and Raymond A. Spruance defeated an attacking fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy under Admirals Isoroku Yamamoto, Chūichi Nagumo, and Nobutake Kondō north of Midway Atoll, inflicting devastating damage on the Japanese fleet. Military historian John Keegan called it "the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare", while naval historian Craig Symonds called it "one of the most consequential naval engagements in world history, ranking alongside Salamis, Trafalgar, and Tsushima Strait, as both tactically decisive and strategically influential". Hoping to lure the American aircraft carriers into a trap and occupying Midway was part of an overall "barrier" strategy to extend ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph J
Joseph is a common male given name, derived from the Hebrew Yosef (יוֹסֵף). "Joseph" is used, along with "Josef", mostly in English, French and partially German languages. This spelling is also found as a variant in the languages of the modern-day Nordic countries. In Portuguese and Spanish, the name is "José". In Arabic, including in the Quran, the name is spelled '' Yūsuf''. In Persian, the name is "Yousef". The name has enjoyed significant popularity in its many forms in numerous countries, and ''Joseph'' was one of the two names, along with ''Robert'', to have remained in the top 10 boys' names list in the US from 1925 to 1972. It is especially common in contemporary Israel, as either "Yossi" or "Yossef", and in Italy, where the name "Giuseppe" was the most common male name in the 20th century. In the first century CE, Joseph was the second most popular male name for Palestine Jews. In the Book of Genesis Joseph is Jacob's eleventh son and Rachel's first son, and k ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It was often visited by the Naval fleet of the United States, before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the Reciprocity Treaty of 1875. Much of the harbor and surrounding lands are now a United States Navy deep-water naval base. It is also the headquarters of the United States Pacific Fleet. The U.S. government first obtained exclusive use of the inlet and the right to maintain a repair and coaling station for ships here in 1887. The surprise attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy on December 7, 1941, led the United States to declare war on the Empire of Japan, making the attack on Pearl Harbor the immediate cause of the United States' entry into World War II. History Pearl Harbor was originally an extensive shallow embayment called ''Wai Momi'' (meaning, “Waters of Pearl”) or ''Puuloa'' (meaning, “long hill”) by the Hawaiians. Puuloa was r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Takeo Yoshikawa
was a Japanese spy in Hawaii before the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Early career A 1933 graduate of the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy at Etajima (graduating at the top of his class), Yoshikawa served briefly at sea aboard the armored cruiser '' Asama'' as well as submarines. He had begun training as a naval pilot near the end of 1934 when a severe stomach ailment prevented his completing his training. He was subsequently discharged from the Imperial Japanese Navy in 1936. As a result, he briefly contemplated suicide. A year later he began a career in Naval intelligence, being assigned to Navy Headquarters in Tokyo. He became an expert regarding the U.S. Navy, perusing every source he could possibly get his hands on. While on intelligence duty he intercepted a shortwave radio message in plain English that 17 troop transports were en route to England, having cleared the port of Freetown, Sierra Leone. He passed this information to the Nazi Germany, German Embass ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lucy Spy Ring
In World War II espionage, the Lucy spy ring was an anti-Nazi operation that was headquartered in Switzerland. It was run by Rudolf Roessler, a German refugee and ostensibly the proprietor of a small publishing firm, Vita Nova. Very little is clear about the Lucy ring, about Roessler or about Lucy's sources or motives. History Roessler, a German expatriate from Bavaria who fled to Geneva when Hitler came to power, was working as a publisher at the outbreak of World War II in Switzerland, producing anti-Fascist literature. He was employed by Brigadier Masson, head of Swiss Military Intelligence, who employed him as an analyst with Bureau Ha, overtly a press cuttings agency but in fact a covert department of Swiss Intelligence. Roessler was approached by two German officers, Fritz Thiele and Rudolph von Gersdorff, who were part of a conspiracy to overthrow Hitler, and had been known to Roessler in the 1930s through the Herrenklub. Thiele and Gersdorf wished him to act as a cond ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
