Cold War espionage describes the intelligence gathering activities during the Cold War (1947–1991) between the Western allies (primarily the US and Western Europe) and the Eastern Bloc (primarily the Soviet Union and allied countries of the Warsaw Pact). Both relied on a wide variety of military and civilian agencies in this pursuit.
While several organizations such as the CIA and KGB became synonymous with Cold War espionage, many others played key roles in the collection and protection of the section concerning detection of spying, and analysis of a wide host of intelligence disciplines.
Background Soviet espionage in the United States during the Cold War was an outgrowth of World War II nuclear espionage, with both sides utilizing and evolving techniques and practices developed during World War II. Cold War espionage has been fictionally depicted in works such as the James Bond and Matt Helm books and movies.
The Cold War was a state of political and military tension after World War II led by the United States (and the Western Bloc) and the Soviet Union (and the Eastern Bloc). After World War II, the victory of the Soviet Union over Germany granted them considerable territorial spoils; the Soviet Union banded together these states economically and politically creating a superpower challenging the might of the United States. Prior even to the United States' use of nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet Union had been developing the technology to make similar devices. Although the two powers never engaged in a full-scale war, both countries were constantly preparing for an all-out nuclear war. Cold War espionage was focused on gaining an advantage in information about the enemies' capabilities, especially related to atomic weaponry.
During the Cold War, information was a key commodity. It was vital to know what the adversary was up to, and the possibility of using the hi-tech surveillance that is used today did not yet exist. Instead of trusting technology, states relied on spies: people who infiltrated enemy territory and tried to discover information while staying undetected.
Espionage activities continued from prior to the beginning of the cold war in the late thirties- early forties, and all the way through the late 1960s and even continuing through today. Due to the nature of espionage, the information that we can gather about these activities is limited, equally as limited is the prosecutorial reach with regards to people who commit espionage are subjected to (especially in the United States). These spies were decoding encrypted information, and using many skills to gain an advantage over enemy countries.
Major spy rings Cambridge Five The Cambridge Five consisted of five members that were recruited from the University of Cambridge in the 1930s. There is debate surrounding the exact timing of their recruitment, but it is generally believed that they were not recruited as agents until after they had graduated. The group included Kim Philby (cryptonym 'Stanley'), Donald Maclean (cryptonym 'Homer'), Guy Burgess (cryptonym 'Hicks'), Anthony Blunt (cryptonyms 'Tony', 'Johnson'), and John Cairncross (cryptonym 'Liszt'). There were many others that were accused of being a part of the Cambridge Spy Ring, but these five members were collectively known as the Cambridge Five. Portland spy ring The Portland spy ring operated in England, as a Soviet spy ring, from the 1950s until 1961 when the core of the network were arrested by British Security Services. This spy ring was unique because they did not use the cover of an embassy as the cover for their spies. Its members included Harry Houghton, Ethel Gee, Gordon Lonsdale, and most famously Morris and Lona Cohen (cryptonym Peter and Helen Kroger). Ware Group Sleeper spy ring in US headed by J. Peters, first organized under Harold Ware, inherited by Whittaker Chambers (under orders from Peters), and also included: John Abt, Marion Bachrach (Abt's sister), Lee Pressman, Alger Hiss, Donald Hiss, Charles Kramer, Nathan Witt, Henry Collins, George Silverman, John Herrmann, Nathaniel Weyl, and Victor Perlo. When Chambers defected in 1938, the Ware Group went dormant and then broke up. Harry Dexter White (below) contributed materials to Chambers but not as part of the Ware Group. Silvermaster spy ring The Silvermaster spy ring was led by Harry Dexter White, assistant secretary of the US Treasury and the second most influential member of the Treasury department. His job was to aid placement of Soviet spies within the United States Government. The United States Treasury Department was successfully infiltrated by many Soviet spies, the most successful of which belonged to the Silvermaster Spy Ring. Harold Glasser, Elizabeth Bentley, and Nathan Silvermaster were other major members of the Silvermaster Spy Ring. Atomic spies While the Atomic Spies were not exactly a network of spies, the collective information that was obtained by this group of Soviet spies was critical to the Soviet Union's ability to build an atomic bomb. Many of the members of the Atomic spies group worked for, or around, the Manhattan Project, or the United States building of the atomic bomb. This group included: Klaus Fuchs: a German-born British theoretical physicist. He worked with the British delegation on the Manhattan Project. Morris Cohen: an American who gained insight to the plans from the secret laboratory at Los Alamos and delivered it to the designers of the Soviet atomic bomb. Harry Gold: an American who was a courier for Klaus Fuchs and David Greenglass. David Greenglass: an American machinist at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project. He gave crude schematics of lab experiments to the Russians. Theodore Hall: an American, and the youngest physicist at Los Alamos, gave a detailed description of the Fat Man plutonium bomb and several processes for purifying plutonium to the Soviets. George Koval: an American-born son of a Russian family. He obtained information from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Dayton Project about the Urchin (detonator) used for the Fat Man plutonium bomb. Irving Lerner: an American film director who was caught photographing the cyclotron at the University of California in 1944. Alan Nunn May: a British physicist who worked for the British nuclear research and then in Canada on the Manhattan Project. His uncovering in 1946 was responsible for the United States restricting sharing atomic secrets with the British. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg: Americans who were involved in the coordinating and recruiting of an espionage network. Ethel's brother was David Greenglass. Saville Sax: an American who acted as a courier for Klaus Fuchs and Theodore Hall. Morton Sobell: an American engineer who admitted to spying for the Soviets and uncovered how extensive the Rosenberg's recruiting network was.
Chronology
+Chronology Date Topic Event1939 Whittaker Chambers meets with Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle; names 18 current and former government employees as spies or Communist sympathizers including Alger Hiss, Donald Hiss, Laurence Duggan, and Lauchlin Currie. Berle notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of Chambers's information in March 1940. 1941-08-10 The Soviet GRU reestablished contact with Klaus Fuchs, a German emigre scientist, who transferred from the British Tube Alloys nuclear research program to the US-led Manhattan Project in 1943. 1942 Nuclear espionage US communist Jacob Golos put Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (and their associated communist cell) in direct contact with Soviet intelligence operatives in New York. The Rosenberg cell provided information on newest developments in electrical and radio engineering to the XY Line of the NKGB foreign intelligence. 1944 Nuclear espionage Yuri Modin became the KGB controller of the "Cambridge Five" ring of atomic spies.1945 Starting in November 1945, Elizabeth Bentley, under the code name 'Gregory', started naming almost 150 Union Spies; among those, at least 35 were in fact federal government employees. 1946-12-20 The Venona counter-intelligence program is first able to decode Soviet intelligence messages thereby discovering the Soviet spying activities within the Manhattan Project. The project operated for 37 years and obtained around 3,000 messages, some lead to the discovery of the Cambridge Five and other messages led to the discovery of Soviet spies (including The Rosenbergs) operating within a US nuclear facility. 1949 Nuclear espionage A Mossad agent assumed, seeing CIA agent James Jesus Angleton dining with Cambridge Five mole Kim Philby, that the former had turned the latter into a triple agent.1950Klaus Fuchs voluntarily confesses to MI5 that he has been spying for the USSR. Fuchs identifies Harry Gold who identifies David Greenglass which in turn leads to the arrest and trial of the Rosenbergs.August 1952 Communications interceptionOperation Vagabond-Able launches floating transmitter USCGC Courier the most powerful radio broadcasting station on a ship. Additional to broadcasting VOA programming to countries behind the Iron Curtain, Courier docked at Rhodes Greece received information from American spies in the Soviet Union and relayed info to the US. Ship was manned by US Coast Guard, USIA, CIA, and funded by US State Department. Template:Cite online CIA memorandum USIA : Possible Intelligence Training Needs : https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp78-06365a000800010020-2August 1955Communications interceptionJoint US/UK (CIA/SIS) Operation Gold puts a tunnel under the frontier in occupied Berlin to tap into Soviet army communications. Already aware of the plan through George Blake, the Soviets let the operation run rather than compromise their agent.April 1956Communications interceptionThe Soviets discover the tunnel being used to tap their communications and to protect their mole George Blake, they stage a crew to accidentally discover the tunnel. However, in just the short time it was operational, the tap collected about 40,000 hours of Soviet telephone conversations. 1959-06 Corona (satellite) Under the covername Discoverer the camera-carrying Corona satellite missions start. 1959-10-15 Active measures Ukrainian politician Stepan Bandera was assassinated on KGB orders. 1960 1960 U-2 incident Pilot Francis Gary Powers' Lockheed U-2 spy plane was shot down by a Soviet surface-to-air missile. The US is forced to publicly admit that they were operating surveillance missions over the USSR.August 1960Discoverer 14 is the first Corona mission to successfully take reconnaissance pictures from orbit and return them to earth. 1961The Berlin Wall is erected, marking the Soviet desire to stop the flow of goods and information into their territory clear. At this time, the importance of East Berlin as an intelligence base for the US located within Soviet territory was solidified. 1962 Oleg Penkovsky provides information to SIS and CIA about Soviet missile capabilities and deployment to Cuba. The Soviets are aware of his activities through their own agent within the NSA. 1962-10-26 Cuban Missile Crisis Under the pseudonym of Aleksandr Fomin, the KGB Station Chief in Washington proposed the crisis' diplomatic solution. 1964 Operation Neptune A ruse was used to indicate West Germany's spies remaining from World War II had been exposed.1974 Oleg Gordievsky, a KGB agent becomes a double agent of MI6. In 1982, Gordievsky is given position as KGB's Resident in London in charge of intelligence gathering in UK. 1985-03-23 On a mission to photograph a Soviet tank storage building, US intelligence officer Major Arthur D. Nicholson was killed by a Soviet soldier.
Known spies Working for the Western Bloc Aleksandr Dmitrievich Ogorodnik- A Soviet Diplomat who photographed confidential diplomatic cables and sent them to the US.