Operation Shocker was a 23-year

counterintelligence Counterintelligence is an activity aimed at protecting an agency's intelligence program from an opposition's intelligence service. It includes gathering information and conducting activities to prevent espionage, sabotage, assassinations or ot ...

operation run by the US

Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...

against 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 national ...

. The operation involved the

fake defection Fake defection, often referred to as a "provocation" or " dangle" in intelligence circles, is a defection by an intelligence agent made on false pretenses. Fake defectors (who may be referred to as "plant"s) may spread disinformation or aid in uncov ...

in place of a US Army sergeant based in

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

who, in return for hundreds of thousands of dollars over two decades, provided information to Soviet intelligence (

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 ...

) as agreed by the

Joint Chiefs of Staff The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) is the body of the most senior uniformed leaders within the United States Department of Defense, that advises the president of the United States, the secretary of defense, the Homeland Security Council and the ...

. This included over 4,000 documents on a new

nerve gas Nerve agents, sometimes also called nerve gases, are a class of organic chemicals that disrupt the mechanisms by which nerves transfer messages to organs. The disruption is caused by the blocking of acetylcholinesterase (AChE), an enzyme that ...

the US believed unweaponizable, with the US intending to waste Soviet resources.

Overview

The operation began in 1959 when U.S. Army First Sergeant Joseph Edward Cassidy (1920-2011), assigned to the Army's nuclear power office near

, was approached (with Army permission) by the FBI. Cassidy, despite having no previous training, was able to make contact with a Soviet naval attache believed to be a spy, and set up an arrangement where he would provide information to the Soviets in exchange for money. Soviet requests for information were passed to the US

, and various classified information provided as a result.Anthony Day, ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

'', 7 April 2000
"Cold-War Espionage Thriller Brims with the Shocking Truth"
/ref> The principal Russian interest was in information about the US

program, and Cassidy initially established his credentials by providing genuine data from the US program. By 1964 he was in a position to begin pointing Soviet research towards a G-series nerve agent, GJ, which the US thought could not be produced in stable, weaponizable form. Cassidy provided over 4,000 documents on a mixture of real and non-existent research into the new gas, with the US intending to waste Soviet resources attempting to duplicate the work.Milton Leitenberg, Raymond A Zilinskas, and Jens H Kuhn (2012),
The Soviet Biological Weapons Program: A History
',

Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the retirem ...

, p. 430

James Risen James Risen (born April 27, 1955) is an American journalist for ''The Intercept''. He previously worked for ''The New York Times'' and before that for ''Los Angeles Times''. He has written or co-written many articles concerning U.S. government ...

, ''

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 ...

'', 5 March 2000
"U.S. Dangled Poison Secrets Before Soviets", Book Reports
/ref> David Wise, in his book ''Cassidy's Run'', implies that the Soviet program to develop the

Novichok agent Novichok (russian: Новичо́к, lit=newcomer, novice, newbie) is a group of nerve agents, some of which are binary chemical weapons. The agents were developed at the GosNIIOKhT state chemical research institute by the Soviet Union and Ru ...

s may have been an unintended result of the misleading information. The operation was highly classified, and when two FBI agents died in a plane crash while surveilling a Soviet spy, press and public were misled about the circumstances, and even the agents' families were told nothing for years. * A similar, and arguably more significant, disinformation operation was run by the FBI via double-agent

Dmitri Polyakov Dmitri Fyodorovich Polyakov (russian: Дмитрий Фёдорович Поляков) (6 July 1921 – 15 March 1988) was a Soviet Major General, a ranking GRU officer, and a prominent Cold War spy who revealed Soviet secrets to the Federal Bu ...

, feeding the Soviet Union the false information that the US was covertly continuing with its biological weapons program despite public announcements to the contrary. The disinformation may have been one reason which led the Soviet Union to expand its biological weapons program, and a near-universal belief into the 1990s among its scientists that they were mirroring US efforts.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shocker, Operation Disinformation operations Federal Bureau of Investigation operations Soviet chemical weapons program Soviet Union–United States relations United States intelligence operations