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As early as the 1920s, the
Soviet Union 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 nationa ...
, through its
GRU The Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, rus, Гла́вное управле́ние Генера́льного шта́ба Вооружённых сил Росси́йской Федера́ци ...
,
OGPU The Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU; russian: Объединённое государственное политическое управление) was the intelligence and state security service and secret police of the Soviet Union f ...
,
NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. ...
, and KGB intelligence agencies, used Russian and foreign-born nationals ( resident spies), as well as
Communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, ...
s of American origin, to perform
espionage Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information ( intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tang ...
activities in the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
, forming various spy rings. Haynes, John Earl, and Klehr, Harvey, ''Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America,''
Yale University Press Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous. , Yale Univers ...
(2000)
''Retrieved Papers Shed Light On Communist Activities In U.S.'',
Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. new ...
, 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 Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
, such as information on the development of the atomic bomb (see
atomic spies Atomic spies or atom spies were people in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada who are known to have illicitly given information about nuclear weapons production or design to the Soviet Union during World War II and the early ...
). Soviet spies also participated in propaganda and
disinformation Disinformation is false information deliberately spread to deceive people. It is sometimes confused with misinformation, which is false information but is not deliberate. The English word ''disinformation'' comes from the application of the ...
operations, known as
active measures Active measures (russian: активные мероприятия, translit=aktivnye meropriyatiya) is political warfare conducted by the Soviet or Russian government since the 1920s. It includes offensive programs such as espionage, propagand ...
, and attempted to sabotage diplomatic relationships between the U.S. and its allies.


First efforts

During the 1920s
Soviet intelligence This is a list of historical secret police organizations. In most cases they are no longer current because the regime that ran them was overthrown or changed, or they changed their names. Few still exist under the same name as legitimate police fo ...
focused on military and industrial espionage in Britain, France, Germany, and the United States, specifically in the aircraft and munitions industries, in order to industrialize and compete with Western powers, as well as strengthening the
Soviet armed forces The Soviet Armed Forces, the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union and as the Red Army (, Вооружённые Силы Советского Союза), were the armed forces of the Russian SFSR (1917–1922), the Soviet Union (1922–1991), and t ...
. The United States opened diplomatic ties to the Soviet Union in 1933, normalizing relations, but also opening the door to a number of spies which initially focused on technological espionage. One early Soviet spy was
Jones Orin York Jones Orin York (August 5, 1893 – July 1970) was recruited in California by Soviet spy Stanislav Shumovskij approximately in 1935. In 1950 York told the FBI that he had passed secrets to the KGB since the mid-1930s, including plans for a new ai ...
who was recruited by the KGB's predecessors in 1935. The Soviets'
Amtorg Trading Corporation Amtorg Trading Corporation, also known as Amtorg (short for ''Amerikanskaya Torgovlya'', russian: Амторг), was the first trade representation of the Soviet Union in the United States, established in New York in 1924 by merging Armand Hamme ...
established in 1924 would become a nexus of espionage. Historian
Harvey Klehr Harvey Elliott Klehr (born December 25, 1945) is a professor of politics and history at Emory University. Klehr is known for his books on the subject of the American Communist movement, and on Soviet espionage in America (many written jointly wit ...
describes that the American businessman
Armand Hammer Armand Hammer (May 21, 1898 – December 10, 1990) was an American business manager and owner, most closely associated with Occidental Petroleum, a company he ran from 1957 until his death. Called "Lenin's chosen capitalist" by the press, ...
"met Lenin in 1921 and, in return for a concession to manufacture pencils, agreed to launder Soviet money to benefit communist parties in Europe and America." Historian
Edward Jay Epstein Edward Jay Epstein (born 1935) is an American investigative journalist and a former political science professor at Harvard University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Early life and educa ...
noted that "Hammer received extraordinary treatment from Moscow in many ways. He was permitted by the Soviet Government to take millions of dollars worth of czarist art out of the country when he returned to the United States in 1932." According to journalist Alan Farnham, "Over the decades Hammer continued traveling to Russia, hobnobbing with its leaders to the point that both the CIA and the FBI suspected him of being a full-fledged agent."


Browder and Golos networks

Earl Browder Earl Russell Browder (May 20, 1891 – June 27, 1973) was an American politician, communist activist and leader of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). Browder was the General Secretary of the CPUSA during the 1930s and first half of the 1940s. Durin ...
,
General Secretary Secretary is a title often used in organizations to indicate a person having a certain amount of authority, power, or importance in the organization. Secretaries announce important events and communicate to the organization. The term is derived ...
of the
Communist Party of the United States The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revo ...
(CPUSA), served as an agent recruiter himself on behalf of Soviet intelligence.Sudoplatov, Pavel Anatoli, Schecter, Jerrold L., and Schecter, Leona P., ''Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness — A Soviet Spymaster'', Little Brown, Boston (1994) Browder later stated that "by the mid-thirties, the Party was not putting its principal emphasis on recruiting members." Left unstated was his intent to use party members for espionage work, where suitable. Browder advocated the use of a ''United Front'' involving other members of the left, both to strengthen advocacy of pro-Soviet policy and to enlarge the pool of potential recruits for espionage work. The illegal residency of
NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. ...
in the US was established in 1934 by the former
Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitu ...
resident
Boris Bazarov Boris Yakovlevich Bazarov (russian: Борис Яковлевич Базаров; 1893 - 1939) was a Soviet secret police officer who served as the chief illegal '' rezident'' in New York City from 1935 until 1937. Early life Bazarov was born Bo ...
. Christopher Andrew and
Vasili Mitrokhin Vasili Nikitich Mitrokhin (russian: link=no, Васи́лий Ники́тич Митро́хин; March 3, 1922 – January 23, 2004) was a major and senior archivist for the Soviet Union's foreign intelligence service, the First Chief Di ...
, ''The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West'', Gardners Books (2000),
In 1935,
NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. ...
agent
Iskhak Akhmerov Iskhak Abdulovich Akhmerov (russian: italic=yes, Исха́к Абду́лович Ахме́ров, tt-Cyrl, Исхак Габдулла улы Әхмәров, translit=İsxaq Ğabdulla ulı Əxmərov) (1901–1976) was a highly decorated OGPU/NK ...
entered the US with false identity papers to assist Bazarov in the collection of useful intelligence, and operated without interruption until 1939, when he left the US. Akhmerov's wife, an American who worked for Soviet intelligence, was
Helen Lowry Elza Akhmerova, also Elsa Akhmerova was an American citizen, born Helen Lowry. She is a niece of Earl Browder, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA). She died of leukemia. From 1936 to 1939, Lowry was an equal par ...
(Elza Akhmerova), the niece of CPUSA General Secretary Earl Browder. Recent information from Soviet archives has revealed that Browder's younger sister Marguerite worked until 1938 as an NKVD operative in Europe. She discontinued this work only when Browder himself requested her release from duty, fearful that her work would compromise his position as General Secretary. In the 1930s, the chief Soviet espionage organization operating in the U.S. became the
GRU The Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, rus, Гла́вное управле́ние Генера́льного шта́ба Вооружённых сил Росси́йской Федера́ци ...
.
J. Peters J. Peters (born Sándor Goldberger; 11 August 1894 – 1990) was the most commonly known pseudonym of a man who last went by the name "Alexander Stevens" in 1949. Peters was a journalist, political activist, and accused Soviet spy who was a leadin ...
headed the secret apparatus that supplied internal government documents from the
Ware group The Ware Group was a covert organization of Communist Party USA operatives within the United States government in the 1930s, run first by Harold Ware (1889–1935) and then by Whittaker Chambers (1901–1961) after Ware's accidental death on Augu ...
to the GRU. Browder assisted Peters in building a network of operatives in the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. This group allegedly included
Alger Hiss Alger Hiss (November 11, 1904 – November 15, 1996) was an American government official accused in 1948 of having spied for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Statutes of limitations had expired for espionage, but he was convicted of perjury in co ...
,
John Abt John Jacob Abt (May 1, 1904 – August 10, 1991) was an American lawyer and politician, who spent most of his career as chief counsel to the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and was a member of the Communist Party and the Soviet spy network "Ware Gro ...
, and
Lee Pressman Lee Pressman (July 1, 1906 – November 20, 1969) was a labor attorney and earlier a US government functionary, publicly alleged in 1948 to have been a spy for Soviet intelligence during the mid-1930s (as a member of the Ware Group), following hi ...
(Pressman admitted participation in the group, but denied it was involved in espionage). Courier for the group at the time was
Whittaker Chambers Whittaker Chambers (born Jay Vivian Chambers; April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961) was an American writer-editor, who, after early years as a Workers Party of America, Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet Union, Soviet spy (1932–1938), defe ...
. Browder oversaw the efforts of
Jacob Golos Jacob Golos (born Yakov Naumovich Reizen, Russian: Яков Наумович Рейзен; April 24, 1889 - November 27, 1943) was a Ukrainian-born Bolshevik revolutionary who became an intelligence operative in the United States on behalf of the U ...
and his girlfriend,
Elizabeth Bentley Elizabeth Terrill Bentley (January 1, 1908 – December 3, 1963) was an American spy and member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). She served the Soviet Union from 1938 to 1945 until she defected from the Communist Party and Soviet intellige ...
, whose network of agents and sources included two key figures at the Department of Treasury,
Nathan Gregory Silvermaster Nathan Gregory Silvermaster (November 27, 1898 – October 7, 1964), an economist with the United States War Production Board (WPB) during World War II, was the head of a large ring of Communist spies in the U.S. government. It is from him that ...
and Harry Dexter White. One early Soviet spy ring was headed by
Jacob Golos Jacob Golos (born Yakov Naumovich Reizen, Russian: Яков Наумович Рейзен; April 24, 1889 - November 27, 1943) was a Ukrainian-born Bolshevik revolutionary who became an intelligence operative in the United States on behalf of the U ...
. Jake Golos (birth name Jacob Golosenko, Tasin, Rasin or Raisen) was a
Ukrainian Ukrainian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Ukraine * Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe * Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine * So ...
-born
Bolshevik The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...
revolutionary and Soviet
secret police Secret police (or political police) are intelligence, security or police agencies that engage in covert operations against a government's political, religious, or social opponents and dissidents. Secret police organizations are characteristic ...
(NKVD) operative in the USSR. He was also a longtime senior official of the CPUSA involved in covert work and cooperation with Soviet intelligence agencies. He took over an existing network of agents and intelligence sources from Earl Browder. Golos' controller was the head of the NKVD's American desk,
Gaik Ovakimian Haik Badalovich Ovakimian (Hayk Hovakimyan), Major General, USSR (11 August 1898, in Nakhchivan – 13 March 1967, in Moscow), better known as "the puppetmaster" in intelligence circles, was a leading Soviet NKVD spy in the United States. Of A ...
, also known as "The Puppetmaster", who would later serve a key role in the
assassination Assassination is the murder of a prominent or important person, such as a head of state, head of government, politician, world leader, member of a royal family or CEO. The murder of a celebrity, activist, or artist, though they may not have ...
of
Leon Trotsky Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian ...
. Golos was the "main pillar" of the NKVD intelligence network. He had worked with Soviet intelligence from the mid-1930s, and probably earlier. He was not merely a CPUSA official assisting the NKVD (an agent or "probationer" in Soviet intelligence parlance) but held official rank in the NKVD, and claimed to be an oldtime Chekist. Golos established a company called ''World Tourists'' with money from Earl Browder, the General Secretary. The firm, which posed as a travel agency, was used to facilitate international travel to and from the United States by Soviet agents and CPUSA members. World Tourists was also involved in manufacturing fake passports, as Browder used such a false passport on covert trips to the Soviet Union in 1936. At World Tourist, Golos frequently met
Bernard Schuster Bernard (''Bernhard'') is a French and West Germanic masculine given name. It is also a surname. The name is attested from at least the 9th century. West Germanic ''Bernhard'' is composed from the two elements ''bern'' "bear" and ''hard'' "brave ...
, an NKVD agent (code name ''ECHO'' and ''DICK'') and Communist Party functionary who carried out background investigations for Golos as part of the
vetting Vetting is the process of performing a background check on someone before offering them employment, conferring an award, or doing fact-checking prior to making any decision. In addition, in intelligence gathering, assets are vetted to determine t ...
process of agent candidates. In March 1940, Golos pleaded guilty to being an unregistered
foreign agent A foreign agent is any person or entity actively carrying out the interests of a foreign country while located in another host country, generally outside the protections offered to those working in their official capacity for a diplomatic missio ...
, paid a $500 fine (equivalent to $ today), and served probation in lieu of a four-month prison sentence. Soviet intelligence did not like Golos' refusal to allow Soviet contact with his sources (a measure implemented by Golos to protect himself and to ensure his continued retention by the NKVD). The NKVD suspected Golos of
Trotskyism Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a ...
and tried to lure him to Moscow, where he could be arrested, but the US government got to him first. But even then, he did not reveal his agent network. After Browder went to prison in 1940, Golos took over running Browder's agents. In 1941, Golos set up a commercial forwarding enterprise, called the US Shipping and Service Corporation, with
Elizabeth Bentley Elizabeth Terrill Bentley (January 1, 1908 – December 3, 1963) was an American spy and member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). She served the Soviet Union from 1938 to 1945 until she defected from the Communist Party and Soviet intellige ...
, his lover, as one of its officers. Sometime in November 1943, Golos met in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
with key figures of the
Perlo group Headed by Victor Perlo, the Perlo group is the name given to a group of Americans who provided information which was given to Soviet intelligence agencies; it was active during the World War II period, until the entire group was exposed to the FBI ...
, a group working in several government departments and agencies in Washington, D.C. The group was already in the service of Browder. Later that same month, after a series of heart attacks over the previous two years, Golos died in bed in Bentley's arms. Bentley then took over his operations (thus the reference in the decrypts to him as a "former" colleague).


Secret apparatus

By the end of 1936 at least four mid-level
State Department The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs of other na ...
officials were delivering information to Soviet intelligence:
Alger Hiss Alger Hiss (November 11, 1904 – November 15, 1996) was an American government official accused in 1948 of having spied for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Statutes of limitations had expired for espionage, but he was convicted of perjury in co ...
, assistant to Assistant Secretary of State Francis Sayre; Julian Wadleigh, economist in the Trade Agreements Section;
Laurence Duggan Laurence Duggan (May 28, 1905 – December 20, 1948), also known as Larry Duggan, was a 20th-century American economist who headed the South American desk at the United States Department of State during World War II, best known for falling to his ...
, Latin American division; and Noel Field, West European division.
Whittaker Chambers Whittaker Chambers (born Jay Vivian Chambers; April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961) was an American writer-editor, who, after early years as a Workers Party of America, Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet Union, Soviet spy (1932–1938), defe ...
later testified that the plans for a tank design with a revolutionary new
suspension Suspension or suspended may refer to: Science and engineering * Suspension (topology), in mathematics * Suspension (dynamical systems), in mathematics * Suspension of a ring, in mathematics * Suspension (chemistry), small solid particles suspende ...
invented by
J. Walter Christie John Walter Christie (May 6, 1865 – January 11, 1944) was an American engineer and inventor. He is best known for developing the Christie suspension system used in a number of World War II-era tank designs, most notably the Soviet BT and T-34 ...
(then being tested in the U.S.A.) were procured and put into production in the Soviet Union as the Mark BT, later developed into the famous Soviet
T-34 The T-34 is a Soviet medium tank introduced in 1940. When introduced its 76.2 mm (3 in) tank gun was less powerful than its contemporaries while its 60-degree sloped armour provided good protection against anti-tank weapons. The C ...
tank. In 1993, experts from the Library of Congress traveled to Moscow to copy previously secret archives of Communist Party USA (
CPUSA The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revo ...
) records, sent to the Soviet Union for safekeeping by party organizers. The records provide an irrefutable record of Soviet intelligence and cooperation provided by those in the radical left in the United States from the 1920s through the 1940s. Some documents revealed that the CPUSA was actively involved in secretly recruiting party members from African-American groups and rural farm workers. The records contained further evidence that Soviet sympathizers had indeed infiltrated the State Department, beginning in the 1930s. Included were letters from two U.S. ambassadors in Europe to
President President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) * President (education), a leader of a college or university * President (government title) President may also refer to: Automobiles * Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ...
Franklin D. Roosevelt and a senior State Department official. Thanks to an official in the State department sympathetic to the Party, the confidential correspondence, concerning political and economic matters in Europe, ended up in the hands of Soviet intelligence. In the late 1930s and 1940, Soviet intelligence had multiple staging areas for plots to murder exiled Russian revolutionary
Leon Trotsky Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian ...
, then living in
Mexico City Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley o ...
. Josef Grigulevich, an NKVD agent who had direct orders from Stalin to kill Trotsky, had a safe house in Zook's Drugstore in
Santa Fe, New Mexico Santa Fe ( ; , Spanish for 'Holy Faith'; tew, Oghá P'o'oge, Tewa for 'white shell water place'; tiw, Hulp'ó'ona, label= Northern Tiwa; nv, Yootó, Navajo for 'bead + water place') is the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. The name “S ...
. The Soviets had two plans to assassinate Trotsky, one involving the Mexican Stalinist
David Siqueiros David Alfaro Siqueiros (born José de Jesús Alfaro Siqueiros; December 29, 1896 – January 6, 1974) was a Mexican social realist painter, best known for his large public murals using the latest in equipment, materials and technique. Along with ...
, and the other the Spanish
Ramón Mercader Jaime Ramón Mercader del Río (7 February 1913 – 18 October 1978),Photograph oMercader's Gravestone/ref> more commonly known as Ramón Mercader, was a Spanish communist and NKVD agent, who assassinated Russian Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Tr ...
. One account of the first, failed raid on Trotsky's home states that Grigulevich tricked
Robert Sheldon Harte Robert Sheldon Harte (1915 – May 24, 1940) was an American Communist who worked as one of Leon Trotsky’s assistants and bodyguards in Coyoacán, Mexico. During the Stalinist attack against Trotsky’s household on May 24, 1940, Harte was abdu ...
, an American Communist who was Trotsky's bodyguard, into opening the gate. The Soviets failed to kill Trotsky during this attempt, but betrayed Harte, and they killed him for being a witness. Siqueiros then escaped to Chile with the help of
Pablo Neruda Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (12 July 1904 – 23 September 1973), better known by his pen name and, later, legal name Pablo Neruda (; ), was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature. Nerud ...
. Grigulevich likely then crossed the border north and took refuge at Zook's Pharmacy. The second later attempt by Mercader was successful and Trotsky was murdered in Mexico.


Soble spy ring

Jacob Albam and the Sobles (
Jack Jack may refer to: Places * Jack, Alabama, US, an unincorporated community * Jack, Missouri, US, an unincorporated community * Jack County, Texas, a county in Texas, USA People and fictional characters * Jack (given name), a male given name, ...
and
Myra Myra ( grc, Μύρα, ''Mýra'') was a Lycian, then ancient Greek, then Greco-Roman, then Byzantine Greek, then Ottoman town in Lycia, which became the small Turkish town of Kale, renamed Demre in 2005, in the present-day Antalya Province of ...
) were indicted on espionage charges by the FBI in 1957; all three were later convicted and served prison terms. Alleged members of their spy ring, the Zlatovskis, remained in
Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...
,
France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
, where the laws did not allow their extradition to the United States for espionage. Robert Soblen was sentenced to life in prison for his espionage work at
Sandia National Laboratories Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), also known as Sandia, is one of three research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). Headquartered in Kirtland Air Force Bas ...
, but jumped bail and escaped to
Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
. After being expelled from that country, he later committed
suicide Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Mental disorders (including depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, anxiety disorders), physical disorders (such as chronic fatigue syndrome), and ...
in
Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It ...
while awaiting extradition back to the United States.''Cooperation''
''
Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...
'', August 19, 1957
Boris Morros Boris Morros (; January 1, 1891 - January 8, 1963) was an American Communist Party member, Soviet agent, and FBI double agent. He also worked at Paramount Pictures, where he produced films as well as supervising their music department. Life and ...
, formerly a Soviet spy, became an FBI counterspy and reported on the Soble spy ring.


Wartime espionage

During
the Second World War 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 ...
, Soviet espionage agents obtained classified reports on electronic advances in radio-beacon artillery
fuses Fuse or FUSE may refer to: Devices * Fuse (electrical), a device used in electrical systems to protect against excessive current ** Fuse (automotive), a class of fuses for vehicles * Fuse (hydraulic), a device used in hydraulic systems to protec ...
by
Emerson Radio Emerson Radio Corporation is one of the United States' largest volume consumer electronics distributors and has a recognized trademark in continuous use since 1912. The company designs, markets, and licenses many product lines worldwide, i ...
, including a complete proximity fuse (reportedly the same fuse design that was later installed on Soviet anti-aircraft missiles to shoot down
Francis Gary Powers Francis Gary Powers (August 17, 1929 – August 1, 1977) was an American pilot whose Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Lockheed U-2 spy plane was shot down while flying a reconnaissance mission in Soviet Union airspace, causing the 1960 U-2 in ...
's U-2 in 1960). Thousands of documents from the
National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was a United States federal agency founded on March 3, 1915, to undertake, promote, and institutionalize aeronautical research. On October 1, 1958, the agency was dissolved and its assets ...
(NACA) were photocopied or stolen, including a complete set of design and production drawings for
Lockheed Aircraft Lockheed (originally spelled Loughead) may refer to: Brands and enterprises * Lockheed Corporation, a former American aircraft manufacturer * Lockheed Martin, formed in 1995 by the merger of Lockheed Corporation and Martin Marietta ** Lockheed M ...
's new
P-80 Shooting Star The Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star was the first jet fighter used operationally by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) during World War II. Designed and built by Lockheed in 1943 and delivered just 143 days from the start of design, prod ...
fighter jet.Feklisov, Aleksandr, and Kostin, Sergei, The Man Behind the Rosenbergs, Enigma Books (2001) According to Soviet agent
Pavel Sudoplatov Pavel Anatolyevich Sudoplatov (russian: Пáвел Aнатóльевич Cудоплáтов; ua, Павло Анатолійович Судоплатов, translit=Pavlo Anatoliiovych Sudoplatov; July 7, 1907 – September 24, 1996) was a member ...
, five spy rings for the Soviet Union were targeting the United States during World War II: one was based in
Amtorg Amtorg Trading Corporation, also known as Amtorg (short for ''Amerikanskaya Torgovlya'', russian: Амторг), was the first trade representation of the Soviet Union in the United States, established in New York in 1924 by merging Armand Hammer ...
in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, another spy ring was based in the Soviet Embassy in the United States at Washington, D.C., another was based in the Soviet
Consulate General A consul is an official representative of the government of one state in the territory of another, normally acting to assist and protect the citizens of the consul's own country, as well as to facilitate trade and friendship between the people ...
in
San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...
, another was based out of
Mexico City Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley o ...
and ran by Vasilevsky, and the fifth was the Akhmerov led ring which targeted United States Communist Party members for the Kremlin's needs.


Atomic bomb secrets

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet Union, Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as Ge ...
directed Soviet intelligence officers to collect information in four main areas.
Pavel Fitin Pavel ( Bulgarian, Russian, Serbian and Macedonian: Павел, Czech, Slovene, Romanian: Pavel, Polish: Paweł, Ukrainian: Павло, Pavlo) is a male given name. It is a Slavic cognate of the name Paul (derived from the Greek Pavlos). Pa ...
, the 34-year-old chief of the KGB First Directorate, was directed to seek American intelligence concerning Hitler's plans for the war in Russia; secret war aims of London and Washington, particularly with regard to planning for
Operation Overlord Operation Overlord was the codename for the Battle of Normandy, the Allied operation that launched the successful invasion of German-occupied Western Europe during World War II. The operation was launched on 6 June 1944 (D-Day) with the Norm ...
, the second front in Europe; any indications the Western Allies might be willing to make a separate peace with Hitler; and American scientific and technological progress, particularly in the development of an
atomic weapon A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions ( thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bom ...
.
Pavel Sudoplatov Pavel Anatolyevich Sudoplatov (russian: Пáвел Aнатóльевич Cудоплáтов; ua, Павло Анатолійович Судоплатов, translit=Pavlo Anatoliiovych Sudoplatov; July 7, 1907 – September 24, 1996) was a member ...
claimed to have led the efforts to obtain information about the
Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project w ...
in an alleged "Department S" but this has been questioned because Sudoplatov placed false accusations on Oppenheimer and others. A well-known Soviet case was of
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg Julius Rosenberg (May 12, 1918 – June 19, 1953) and Ethel Rosenberg (; September 28, 1915 – June 19, 1953) were American citizens who were convicted of spying on behalf of the Soviet Union. The couple were convicted of providing top-secret i ...
, the first US citizens convicted and executed for espionage during peacetime. The married couple lived in New York City and were accused of spying for the Soviet Union and sending information regarding radar, sonar, jet propulsion engines, and sending nuclear weapon designs. Following the Moynihan Commission, the declassification of the
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 Oc ...
in 1995 revealed more information about the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg case, and confirmed that a widespread Soviet spy network did exist during the Cold War. However, many agents were never prosecuted or publicly implicated, for instance
Theodore Hall Theodore Alvin Hall (October 20, 1925 – November 1, 1999) was an American physicist and an atomic spy for the Soviet Union, who, during his work on United States efforts to develop the first and second atomic bombs during World War II ...
, because much Venona evidence was withheld until 1995. During this time,
George Koval George Abramovich Koval ( rus, Жорж (Георгий) Абрамович Коваль, p=ˈʐorʐ (ɡʲɪˈorɡʲɪj) ɐˈbraməvʲɪtɕ kɐˈvalʲ, a=Ru-George Abramovich Koval.flac, Zhorzh Abramovich Koval; December 25, 1913 – January 31 ...
who infiltrated the Manhattan Project as a member of the
GRU The Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, rus, Гла́вное управле́ние Генера́льного шта́ба Вооружённых сил Росси́йской Федера́ци ...
, also passed stolen atomic secrets to the Soviet Union.
Harry Gold Harry Gold (born Henrich Golodnitsky, December 11, 1910 – August 28, 1972) was a Swiss-born American laboratory chemist who was convicted as a courier for the Soviet Union passing atomic secrets from Klaus Fuchs, an agent of the Soviet Union, ...
and
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 af ...
were also Soviet spies. Harry Gold was a courier for other Soviet spies such as Klaus Fuchs.


The Silvermaster spy ring

The
United States Treasury The Department of the Treasury (USDT) is the national treasury and finance department of the federal government of the United States, where it serves as an executive department. The department oversees the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and ...
Department was successfully penetrated by nearly a dozen Soviet agents or information sources, including Harold Glasser and his superior, Harry Dexter White, assistant secretary of the treasury and the second most influential official in the department. In late May 1941, Vitali Pavlov, a 25-year-old NKVD officer, approached White and attempted to secure his assistance to influence U.S. policy towards
Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...
. Pavlov's memoirs after decades of being in the KGB, alleged that White agreed to assist Soviet intelligence in any way he could. According to
Whittaker Chambers Whittaker Chambers (born Jay Vivian Chambers; April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961) was an American writer-editor, who, after early years as a Workers Party of America, Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet Union, Soviet spy (1932–1938), defe ...
, the principal function of White was to aid in the infiltration and placement of Soviet operatives within the government, and protecting sources. When security concerns arose around
Nathan Gregory Silvermaster Nathan Gregory Silvermaster (November 27, 1898 – October 7, 1964), an economist with the United States War Production Board (WPB) during World War II, was the head of a large ring of Communist spies in the U.S. government. It is from him that ...
, White protected him in his sensitive position at the
Board of Economic Warfare The Office of Administrator of Export Control (also referred to as the Export Control Administration) was established in the United States by Presidential Proclamation 2413, July 2, 1940, to administer export licensing provisions of the act of July ...
. White likewise was a purveyor of information and resources to assist Soviet aims, and agreed to press for the release of German occupation currency plates to the Soviet Union. The Soviets later used the plates to print unrestricted sums of money to exchange for U.S. and Allied hard goods.Schecter, Jerrold and Leona, ''Sacred Secrets: How Soviet Intelligence Operations Changed American History'', Potomac Books (2002) In August 1945,
Elizabeth Bentley Elizabeth Terrill Bentley (January 1, 1908 – December 3, 1963) was an American spy and member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). She served the Soviet Union from 1938 to 1945 until she defected from the Communist Party and Soviet intellige ...
, fearful of assassination by the Soviet MGB, turned herself in to the government. She implicated many agents and sources in the Golos and Silvermaster spy networks, and was the first to accuse Harry Dexter White of acting on behalf of Soviet interests in releasing occupation plates to Moscow, later confirmed by Soviet archives and former KGB officers. U.S. counterintelligence archives in the
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 Oc ...
contain "damning evidence" against White—showing evidence for his inappropriate contacts with Soviet agents. In a twist of history, Harry Dexter White would participate in the
Bretton Woods Conference The Bretton Woods Conference, formally known as the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, was the gathering of 730 delegates from all 44 Allied nations at the Mount Washington Hotel, situated in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, Unite ...
, which created the American-led, post-war financial and economic order. Although White was sympathetic to the Soviet Union, he was still capitalist in his economic thinking, and there was only so much he could do to benefit the Soviet Union at a conference for liberal internationalism, an idea the Soviets opposed. Ultimately, the main result was that President Truman would nominate a European to Managing Director of the
IMF The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution, headquartered in Washington, D.C., consisting of 190 countries. Its stated mission is "working to foster glob ...
instead of Harry Dexter White. Dr. James C. Van Hook, joint historian of the
U.S. Department of State The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs of other n ...
and the
Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
., says "It is difficult to understand how White's detractors could characterize Bretton Woods, a fundamental institution of liberal capitalism, as inherently pro-Soviet."


Aftermath

President Harry S. Truman's
Executive Order 9835 President Harry S. Truman signed United States Executive Order 9835, sometimes known as the "Loyalty Order", on March 21, 1947. The order established the first general loyalty program in the United States, designed to root out communist influence ...
of 22 March 1947 tightened protections against subversive infiltration of the US Government, defining disloyalty as membership on a list of subversive organizations maintained by the
Attorney General In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general or attorney-general (sometimes abbreviated AG or Atty.-Gen) is the main legal advisor to the government. The plural is attorneys general. In some jurisdictions, attorneys general also have exec ...
. Truman, however, was opposed to the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950, calling it a "Mockery of the Bill of Rights" and a "long step towards totalitarianism".


Cold War espionage

Soviet espionage operations continued during the Cold War. The
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 Oc ...
, declassified in 1995 by the Moynihan Commission, contained extensive evidence of the activities of Soviet spy networks in America. The Mitrokhin Archive showed that the Soviets did not just perform espionage in terms of gathering intelligence, but also used its intelligence agencies for "
active measures Active measures (russian: активные мероприятия, translit=aktivnye meropriyatiya) is political warfare conducted by the Soviet or Russian government since the 1920s. It includes offensive programs such as espionage, propagand ...
" a form of political warfare involving forgeries and
disinformation Disinformation is false information deliberately spread to deceive people. It is sometimes confused with misinformation, which is false information but is not deliberate. The English word ''disinformation'' comes from the application of the ...
.


Communist Party USA

During the Second World War, the
Communist Party USA The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Rev ...
was a center of Soviet espionage in the United States. After the war, this continued. Espionage historian John Earl Haynes states that the CPUSA was essentially a Soviet "
fifth column A fifth column is any group of people who undermine a larger group or nation from within, usually in favor of an enemy group or another nation. According to Harris Mylonas and Scott Radnitz, "fifth columns" are “domestic actors who work to un ...
", though "dried up as a base for Soviet espionage once the administration got serious about internal security". The Communist Party USA received a substantial subsidy from the USSR from 1959 until 1989. Because the CPUSA consistently maintained a pro-Moscow line, many members left over time dissatisfied with events of Soviet repression, such as in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968. The Soviet funding ended in 1989 when
Gus Hall Gus Hall (born Arvo Kustaa Halberg; October 8, 1910 – October 13, 2000) was the General Secretary of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and a perennial candidate for president of the United States. He was the Communist Party nominee in the ...
condemned the initiatives taken by
Mikhail Gorbachev Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet politician who served as the 8th and final leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to the country's dissolution in 1991. He served as General Secretary of the Com ...
. In 1952, Jack and
Morris Childs Morris H. Childs (born Moishe Chilovsky; June 10, 1902– June 5, 1991) was a Ukrainian-American political activist and American Communist Party functionary who became a Soviet espionage agent (1929) and then a double agent for the Federal Bureau ...
—both American-born ex-Soviet spies—became FBI double agents, and informed on the CPUSA for the rest of the Cold War, monitoring the Soviet funding and communications with Moscow.


Spy motivations and Soviet recruitment techniques

According to longtime CIA officer Frederick Wettering, many turncoats to the Soviets were not ideologically communist, such as
Aldrich Ames Aldrich Hazen "Rick" Ames (; born May 26, 1941) is a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer turned KGB double agent, who was convicted of espionage in 1994. He is serving a life sentence, without the possibility of parole, in the Fede ...
and John Walker who "did it strictly for the money." Wettering summarized the motivations as "MIRE -- money, ideology, revenge and ego." According to Russian investigative writer,
Andrei Soldatov Andrei Alekseyevich Soldatov (russian: Андрей Алексеевич Солдатов, born 4 October 1975 in Moscow, Russia) is a Russian investigative journalist and Russian security services expert. Together with fellow journalist Irina ...
:
In Soviet times, intelligence and counterintelligence branches of the KGB were closely interconnected. In addition to its espionage abroad, the KGB was always busy collecting “intelligence from the territory,” a euphemism for recruiting foreign nationals in the Soviet Union, with an eye to subsequently running them as agents in their home countries. Regional departments of the KGB were tasked with recruiting foreigners traveling throughout the country.
Former KGB defector Jack Barsky stated, "Many a right-wing radical had given information to the Soviets under a 'false flag', thinking they were working with a Western ally, such as Israel, when in fact their contact was a KGB operative."


Cambridge Five

Notable cases of Cold War Soviet espionage included
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 s ...
, a Soviet double agent and British intelligence liaison to American intelligence, who was revealed to be a member of the "
Cambridge Five The Cambridge Spy Ring was a ring of spies in the United Kingdom that passed information to the Soviet Union during World War II and was active from the 1930s until at least into the early 1950s. None of the known members were ever prosecuted ...
" spy ring in 1963. The other four members of the "Cambridge Five" spy ring included Donald Maclean,
Guy Burgess Guy Francis de Moncy Burgess (16 April 1911 – 30 August 1963) was a British diplomat and Soviet agent, and a member of the Cambridge Five spy ring that operated from the mid-1930s to the early years of the Cold War era. His defection in 1951 ...
,
Anthony Blunt Anthony Frederick Blunt (26 September 1907 – 26 March 1983), styled Sir Anthony Blunt KCVO from 1956 to November 1979, was a leading British art historian and Soviet spy. Blunt was professor of art history at the University of London, dire ...
, and
John Cairncross John Cairncross (25 July 1913 – 8 October 1995) was a British civil servant who became an intelligence officer and spy during the Second World War. As a Soviet double agent, he passed to the Soviet Union the raw Tunny decryptions that influ ...
, although Michael Straight was also involved with the Soviet spy ring and there were possibly other alleged members. The Cambridge Spy Ring focused on serving the Soviet Union in the Cold War by infiltrating British intelligence and providing secret information to the Soviet top leaders, and causing mistrust in British intelligence in the United States. Kim Philby, along with
Bill Weisband William Weisband, Sr. (August 28, 1908 – May 14, 1967) was a Ukrainian-American cryptanalyst and NKVD agent (code name 'LINK'), best known for his role in revealing U.S. decryptions of Soviet diplomatic and intelligence codes to Soviet intell ...
, would end up betraying the existence of the Venona project to the Soviets, between 1945 and 1948.


Active measures

Active measures Active measures (russian: активные мероприятия, translit=aktivnye meropriyatiya) is political warfare conducted by the Soviet or Russian government since the 1920s. It includes offensive programs such as espionage, propagand ...
(russian: активные мероприятия, translit=aktivnye meropriyatiya) are a form of political warfare that was conducted by the Soviet Union. These ranged from simple propaganda and forgery of documents, to assassination, terrorist acts and planned sabotage operations. In the US the KGB's main active measures were
disinformation Disinformation is false information deliberately spread to deceive people. It is sometimes confused with misinformation, which is false information but is not deliberate. The English word ''disinformation'' comes from the application of the ...
and the spread of conspiracy theories. Retired KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin, former Head of Foreign Counter Intelligence for the KGB (1973–1979), described active measures as "the heart and soul of
Soviet intelligence This is a list of historical secret police organizations. In most cases they are no longer current because the regime that ran them was overthrown or changed, or they changed their names. Few still exist under the same name as legitimate police fo ...
": : "Not intelligence collection, but subversion: active measures to weaken the West, to drive wedges in the Western community alliances of all sorts, particularly
NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two N ...
, to sow discord among allies, to weaken the United States in the eyes of the people of Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and thus to prepare ground in case the war really occurs. To make America more vulnerable to the anger and distrust of other peoples."Interview of Oleg Kalugin on CNN
The doctrine of active measures was taught in the Andropov Institute of the KGB situated at Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) headquarters in
Yasenevo District Yasenevo District (russian: райо́н Я́сенево) is an administrative district (raion) of South-Western Administrative Okrug, and one of the 125 raions of Moscow, Russia. The area of the district is . Population: 172,300 (2017 est.). Ge ...
of Moscow. The head of the "active measures department" was Yuri Modin, former controller of the
Cambridge Five The Cambridge Spy Ring was a ring of spies in the United Kingdom that passed information to the Soviet Union during World War II and was active from the 1930s until at least into the early 1950s. None of the known members were ever prosecuted ...
spy ring. ( en.wikipedia)
google books
One example of active measures by the KGB was Operation "Denver" (also nicknamed Operation INFEKTION), a propaganda campaign which fabricated and spread the idea HIV/AIDS was invented by the US as a biological weapon from
Fort Detrick Fort Detrick () is a United States Army Futures Command installation located in Frederick, Maryland. Historically, Fort Detrick was the center of the U.S. biological weapons program from 1943 to 1969. Since the discontinuation of that program, i ...
, Maryland. As part of the disinformation campaign the KGB, through affiliated Soviet press and Soviet bloc intelligence agencies, disseminated publications that claimed to be independent investigative work, such as the "Segal report" by
Jakob Segal Jakob Segal (17 April 1911 – 30 September 1995) was a Russian-born German biology professor at Humboldt University of Berlin in the former East Germany. He was one of the advocates of the conspiracy theory that HIV was created by the United St ...
. Part of the goal was to shift attention away from the Soviets' own biological weapons program. In 1992, SVR head
Yevgeny Primakov Yevgeny Maksimovich Primakov (29 October 1929 – 26 June 2015) was a Russian politician and diplomat who served as Prime Minister of Russia from 1998 to 1999. During his long career, he also served as Foreign Minister, Speaker of the Supreme ...
admitted that the KGB had instigated and perpetuated the myth of a manmade AIDS. The conspiracy theories fed into
AIDS denialism HIV/AIDS denialism is the belief, despite conclusive evidence to the contrary, that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) does not cause acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Some of its proponents reject the existence of HIV, while oth ...
and may have led to preventable deaths across the United States, and South Africa. According to the
U.S. State Department The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs of other n ...
, the
Soviet Union 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 nationa ...
used the campaign to undermine the United States' credibility, foster
anti-Americanism Anti-Americanism (also called anti-American sentiment) is prejudice, fear, or hatred of the United States, its government, its foreign policy, or Americans in general. Political scientist Brendon O'Connor at the United States Studies Centr ...
, isolate America abroad, and create tensions between host countries and the U.S. over the presence of American military bases. A cycle of misinformation and disinformation revolved between Kremlin-based and U.S.-based conspiracy theorists (such as
Lyndon LaRouche Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche Jr. (September 8, 1922 – February 12, 2019) was an American political activist who founded the LaRouche movement and its main organization the National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC). He was a prominent conspira ...
). A series of Soviet active measures focused on exacerbating racial divisions in the United States. According to intelligence historian Christopher Andrew, "
Martin Luther King Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...
was probably the only prominent American to be the target of active measures by both the FBI and the KGB." The FBI surveilled King and also tried to publicize adultery accusations against him, while posing as a former supporter. Meanwhile, the KGB tried but failed to influence MLK, Jr. through the CPUSA. Finding King not radical enough, the KGB sought to discredit him by portraying him as a supposed "Uncle Tom". After King's assassination, the KGB spread conspiracy theories about the government being involved in his murder. Following this, Yuri Andropov approved the forgery of anti-black pamphlets claiming to be from the
Jewish Defense League The Jewish Defense League (JDL) is a Jewish far-right religious-political organization in the United States and Canada, whose stated goal is to "protect Jews from antisemitism by whatever means necessary". It has been classified as "a right wi ...
. A more extensive sabotage plot was planned as "
Operation PANDORA Operation PANDORA (Russian: операция Пандора) is the name used by Russian defector Vasili Mitrokhin for an alleged active measure by the KGB against the United States during the Cold War. The intention was supposedly to start a r ...
" but never implemented. The KGB later penned racist letters to appear as a
Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Cat ...
campaign against Olympic athletes from African and Asian countries to scare them from participating, ahead of the Soviets'
1984 Summer Olympics boycott The boycott of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles followed four years after the American-led boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. The boycott involved 14 Eastern Bloc countries and allies, led by the Soviet Union, which initi ...
. According to
Yuri Bezmenov Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov (russian: Ю́рий Алекса́ндрович Безме́нов; December 11, 1939 – January 5, 1993; alias: Tomas David Schuman) was a Soviet journalist for Novosti Press Agency (APN) and a former PGU ...
, a defector from the Soviet KGB,
psychological warfare Psychological warfare (PSYWAR), or the basic aspects of modern psychological operations (PsyOp), have been known by many other names or terms, including Military Information Support Operations (MISO), Psy Ops, political warfare, "Hearts and M ...
activities accounted for 85% of all KGB efforts (the other 15% being direct espionage and intelligence gathering). Bezmenov put the process into the four stages "destabilize, demoralize, crisis, normalization" where an enemy country would be undermined over several decades, and pointed out that once the Soviet Union took control of a country, such as Czechoslovakia, they disposed of actual revolution and radicalism.


Spy ring discoveries

Major spy discoveries occurred in the 1980s despite the looming end of the Cold War. The press dubbed 1985 the "Year of the Spy" due to the discovery of multiple spies and spy rings, many of them passing information to the Soviet Union, such as
John Anthony Walker John Anthony Walker Jr. (July 28, 1937 – August 28, 2014) was a United States Navy chief warrant officer and communications specialist convicted of spying for the Soviet Union from 1967 to 1985 and sentenced to life in prison. In lat ...
and Ronald Pelton. ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' reported in 1987 that the Walker spy ring was "described as the most damaging Soviet spy ring in history." During his time as a Soviet spy (1967-1985), Walker stole and sold codes that assisted the Soviets in deciphering encrypted Navy messages, which allowed them to monitor American naval assets. The Walker spy ring also compromised information about weapons, sensor data, and related naval tactics. Other 1980s spies included
Aldrich Ames Aldrich Hazen "Rick" Ames (; born May 26, 1941) is a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer turned KGB double agent, who was convicted of espionage in 1994. He is serving a life sentence, without the possibility of parole, in the Fede ...
a KGB mole, investigation of Ames activities led to the 1995 CIA disinformation controversy revealing that false reports were fed to the United States through Soviet double agents.


See also

*
Amerasia ''Amerasia'' was a journal of Far Eastern affairs best known for the 1940s "Amerasia Affair" in which several of its staff and their contacts were suspected of espionage and charged with unauthorized possession of government documents. Publicati ...
*
Bella Dodd Bella Dodd (née Visono; 1904 – 29 April 1969 ) was a teacher, lawyer, and labor union activist, member of the Communist Party of America (CPUSA) and New York City Teachers Union (TU) in the 1930s and 1940s ("one of Communism's most strident ...
*
David Karr David Harold Karr, born David Katz (1918, Brooklyn, New York – 7 July 1979, Paris) was a controversial American journalist, businessman, Communist and NKVD agent. Early life Enthralled with the radical left, Karr began writing at a relativel ...
*
Farewell Dossier The Farewell Dossier was the collection of documents that Colonel Vladimir Vetrov, a KGB defector "en place" (code-named "Farewell"), gathered and gave to the Direction de la surveillance du territoire (DST) in 1981–82, during the Cold War. ...
*
George Trofimoff George Trofimoff (March 9, 1927 – September 19, 2014) was a United States military intelligence officer of Russian American, Russian descent. He was convicted in a U.S. federal court of having spied for the Soviet Union during the 1970s and ...
*
Gouzenko Affair The Gouzenko Affair was the name given to events in Canada surrounding the defection of Igor Gouzenko from the Soviet Union in 1945 and his subsequent allegations regarding the existence of a Soviet spy ring of Canadian Communists. Gouzenko's d ...
*
Hollow Nickel Case The Hollow Nickel Case (or the Hollow Coin) was the FBI investigation that grew out of the discovery of a container disguised as a U.S. coin and containing a coded message, eventually found to concern espionage activities of William August Fis ...
*
Lev Vasilevsky Lev Petrovich Vasilevsky (1904-1979), also known as Leonid A. Tarasov, was the KGB Mexico City Illegal Resident during much of the period of the Manhattan Project. In 1943, the Moscow Center of KGB intelligence activities in North America, decided ...
*
List of Americans in the Venona papers 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. ...
* Nuclear espionage *
Russian espionage in the United States Russian espionage in the United States has occurred since at least the Cold War (as the Soviet Union), and likely well before. According to the United States government, by 2007 it had reached Cold War levels.
*
Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections The Russian government interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election with the goals of harming the campaign of Hillary Clinton, boosting the candidacy of Donald Trump, and increasing political and social discord in the United States. Ac ...
*
Russia involvement in regime change Russian involvement in regime change describes activities by the Russian government to replace foreign regimes through overt or covert interventions since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. During the Soviet Union Previous to the 1 ...
*
Russian Soviet Government Bureau The Russian Soviet Government Bureau (1919-1921), sometimes known as the "Soviet Bureau," was an unofficial diplomatic organization established by the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in the United States during the Russian Civil War. T ...
* ''The Americans'' (2013 TV series) * The Thing (listening device)


References


Further reading

* * * John Earl Haynes,
Harvey Klehr Harvey Elliott Klehr (born December 25, 1945) is a professor of politics and history at Emory University. Klehr is known for his books on the subject of the American Communist movement, and on Soviet espionage in America (many written jointly wit ...
, and
Alexander Vassiliev Alexander Vassiliev (russian: Александр Васильев; born 1962) is a Russian- British journalist, writer and espionage historian living in London who is a subject matter expert in the Soviet KGB and Russian SVR. A former officer ...
, ''Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America'' (
New Haven New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,023 ...
:
Yale University Press Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous. , Yale Univers ...
, 2009) * John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, ''Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America,'' Yale University Press *
Allen Weinstein Allen Weinstein (September 1, 1937 – June 18, 2015) was an American historian, educator, and federal official who served in several different offices. He was, under the Reagan administration, cofounder of the National Endowment for Democracy in ...
and Alexander Vassiliev, ''The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America--the Stalin Era'' (New York: Random House, 1999)


External links


Soviet Technospies
from th
Dean Peter Krogh Foreign Affairs Digital Archives
* For new evidence on Soviet espionage in the United States, see former KGB officer Alexander Vassiliev's Notebooks From the Cold War International History Project (CWIHP)
V.I. Lenin, ''Terms of Admission into Communist International'', (July 1920)
First published 1921, ''The Second Congress of the Communist International, Verbatum Report'', Communist International, Petrograd * Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive. CI Reader: American Revolution into the New MillenniumA Counterintelligence Reader Volume 3, Chapter 1
''Cold War Counterintelligence''. PDF file.
office of the Director of Central Intelligence. Retrieved June 21, 2005. * Proyect, Louis

Published online May 25, 2002. Retrieved June 21, 2005. * Robert Louis Benson and Michael Warner, eds.

(Washington, D.C.: National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, 1996)*
The Hanford Site, Historic docs, Section 8 - Site Security


Eyewitness account of the era * Razvedka, Intelligence Information and the Process of Decision Making: Turning Points of the Early Period of the Cold War (1944–1953) (In Russian).



, Official site of
Foreign Intelligence Service (Russia) The Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation ( rus, Служба внешней разведки Российской Федерации, r=Sluzhba vneshney razvedki Rossiyskoy Federatsii , p=ˈsluʐbə ˈvnʲɛʂnʲɪj rɐˈzvʲɛ ...
* Film: ''The KGB Connections: An Investigation Into Soviet Operations in North America'', 1982, Public domain: .
Whittaker Chambers , Witness in the Alger Hiss Case, Anti-Communist, ex-Communist, Spy, Editor, Journalist, Intellectual, Writer, Translator, Poet
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Soviet And Russian Espionage In The United States Cold War history of the United States Espionage by period History of the government of the United States Russia intelligence operations Soviet Union–United States relations Soviet intelligence agencies Cold War history of the Soviet Union Espionage in the United States