American Spies in Soviet Union (war, Roman, bomb, general)

[thelogannator123]

I have a question, in the cold war did American spies ever really penetrate the soviet world? I know that the soviets had spies in the manhatten project and other important projects, but did we really put spies in their government facilities? Any information about spying in the Cold War would be welcome.

[eatfastnoodle]

Originally Posted by thelogannator123

I have a question, in the cold war did American spies ever really penetrate the soviet world? I know that the soviets had spies in the manhatten project and other important projects, but did we really put spies in their government facilities? Any information about spying in the Cold War would be welcome.

It's very hard, if not impossible to just send an agent to another nation to really "penetrate" another country's government. The language, cultural barriers are just too hard to truly crack. As far as I know, most truly valuable intelligence asset owned by both the US and Soviet Union (or China) were "recruited" rather than "sent out to penetrate". In another word, it's far more likely to recruit individuals already employed by the other side's military/intelligence/governmental agencies either because the individual had ideological reason to join you (A British woman working for the Soviet Union during the cold war was arrested in late 90s, even though cold war was long over, even though she was an grandmother then, and even though she hadn't been working actively as a spy for a long time, she was still very much unapologetic, that's the power of ideology), or far more likely, he/she was recruited by money/sex (The FBI guy sold secrets to Soviets/Russians purely for money) or coerced because he/she had some dirty secrets he/she didn't want you to leak out (during the 80s, an American female English teacher was expelled from China because allegedly she recruited some researchers working at Chinese military research institutes by using the most effective weapon women possess: sex). A Polish Colonel working at Polish General Staff secretly contacted and subsequently met up with CIA officials during a trip to the Netherlands, he was one of the most valuable CIA asset ever recruited during the cold war because he was one of very few CIA assets that had direct access to the heart of military intelligence of the eastern block. During the confrontation between Solidarity and Polish government, he leaked the plan to declare martial law to the US, as a result, his cover was blown and CIA secretly moved him and his family out of Poland and into Germany. Overall, I don't think both sides were very successful during the cold war when it came to stealing really high-level secret from the other side as evidenced by the wildly off-base analysis done by CIA about the status of Soviet military and economic strength and Soviet Union's apparent lack of understanding about the seriousness/feasibility of the Star War program. Because of the even wider difference in race, culture and language, it's even harder for the US to penetrate her Asian opponents like North Korea or China, therefore, I'd assume most of the intelligence asset CIA has before or right now in China or North Korea is the result of recruiting rather than penetration. (During the 80s, the US successfully facilitated the defection of a very very high-ranking Chinese intelligence official with deep political connection, that guy should be a gold-mine for the US. Not much detail of how much loss his defection costed China is known. But his defection directly led to the uncovering of the deepest covered Chinese spy known so far in US government , a CIA employee who had been selling intelligence to China from early 50s to early 80s). During the 90s, Taiwanese intelligence recruited a major general in the PLA headquarter, I'm sure intelligence from him was shared with the US by Taiwanese intelligence. (I think the most effective way for the US to acquire intelligence on Asian countries such as China and North Korea through Tainwan and South Korea as these countries have far deeper understanding/connections to the countries of target)

[Irishtom29]

Kim Philby might have been (I emphasize MIGHT) a triple agent controlled by James Jesus Angleton rather than a double controlled by the KGB. Russian suspician of just such a thing may be why Philby was treated well but sidelined after his defection.

Maybe.

[Quixzotek]

Spies of note from 1930's onward, most during the Cold War. To say that there weren't successful spies during the Cold War caught me totally by surprise. There certainly were and it was pervasive.

Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers, Elizabeth Bentley were American spies working for the Soviets.

Now, here are the American Jewish spies that betrayed America and sold secrets to the Soviet Union and to Israel.

[SIZE=3]Julius Rosenberg; electrical engineer; transferred U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviets, sentenced to death and executed in June 1953. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3][/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg; wife of Julius; transferred U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviets, sentenced to death and executed in 1953. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3][/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]David Greenglass: brother of Ethel Rosenberg; worked with the Rosenbergs; and was a Los Alamos machinist; passed drawings of atomic implosion lens to Harry Gold. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3][/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Morton Sobell; former employee of the Navy's Bureau of Ordnance; radar engineer and former classmate of Rosenberg. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3][/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]J. Robert Oppenheimer; top U.S. nuclear scientist; was in charge of the Manhattan Project; gave the Soviets atomic secrets. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3][/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Leo Szilard; worked with Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3][/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Bruno Pontecorvo; born in Italy; emigrated to Oklahoma in 1940. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3][/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Morris Cohen [aka Peter Kroger]; spy recruiter; assisted the Rosenbergs; entered U.S. Army in 1942. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3][/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Lona Cohen; [aka Kroger]; wife of Morris Cohen. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3][/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Robert Soblen; fled to Israel; committed suicide while being extradited back to America in 1962. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3][/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Jack Soble; head of a U.S. spy ring which included 'Agent Frost'; members of the ring [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]were indicted/arrested in 1957. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3][/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Victor Perlo; the CPUSA's [American Communist party] official economist; was on the War Production Board. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3][/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Lee Pressman; Congress of Industrial Organizations [CIO] lawyer; Communist party member. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3][/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Jacob Albam; an associate of Jack Soble. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3][/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Nathan Gregory Silvermaster was a leader of a Soviet espionage ring. This espionage investigation from 1945 to 1959 uncovered Soviet placed agents working within the U.S. Government. The case - titled Gregory, using the middle name of Silvermaster - exposed 27 individuals in the Silvermaster ring who gathered information from at least six Federal agencies to turn over to the Soviets. No indictments for espionage were returned against any subjects in the Gregory case by any Grand Jury; however, a Grand Jury did return an indictment against Alger Hiss for perjury." That Mr. Silvermaster oversaw 27 spies -- and that the FBI says so regardless of no indictments -- is significant. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3][/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]V. J. Jerome [aka Isaac Romaine]; the theoretician of the CPUSA. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3][/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Alexander Trachtenberg; member, CPUSA. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3][/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Israel Amter; a CPUSA leader. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3][/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]"Gus Hall" [Arvo K. Halberg]; U.S. Communist Party chairman; defendant in Foley Square trial of American Communists. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3][/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Philip Bart; general manager of the Daily Worker newspaper. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3][/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]"Carl Winter" [Philip Carl Weissberg]; defendant in Foley Square trial of American Communists. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3][/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Joel Barr; pal of Julius Rosenberg; electrical engineer; worked on military radar at the U.S. Army Signal Corps lab at Fort Monmouth; recruited by Rosenberg; fled to Czechoslovakia, he assumed fake identity. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3][/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Harry Dexter White [real name Weiss]; Deputy Secretary of the Treasury under Henry Morgenthau; helped create the World Bank. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3][/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Alfred Sarant; pal of Barr; electrical engineer; worked on military radar at the U.S. Army Signal Corps lab at Fort Monmouth; recruited by Rosenberg; fled to Czechoslovakia and assumed fake identity. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3] [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Klaus Fuchs: worked on Manhattan project and sold many key elements to creating a nuclear bomb to the Soviets. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3][/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Harry Gold [real name Goldodnitsky]; chemist; part of 1940s Fuchs-Gold spy ring. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3][/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Theodore Hall [real name Hallsberg, also claimed Holtzberg]; worked with Enrico Fermi and J. Robert Oppenheimer; "was the first to provide the Soviets with the crucial information that helped them build the bomb." [1] [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3][/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Yakov [Jacob] Golos; chief organizer of spying action through the American Communist party. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3][/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Armand Hammer; millionaire; Communist; head of Occidental Petroleum; one of the world's only millionaire/Communists. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3][/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Samuel Dickstein; U.S. Congressman from New York. Recently-released Soviet records revealed his spying. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3][/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Jonathan Pollard; U.S. Navy intelligence analyst; passed classified material to Israel -- where he is a national hero due to his spying actions. Has tried to be extradited to Israel many times, but been rejected each time. Israel tried to save face and said it was “not authorized by Mossad or Israeli intelligence, but left U.S. officials unimpressed. He is often held in Israel as some type of here, curious contradiction, don’t you think?[/SIZE]
[SIZE=3] [/SIZE]

[newhandle]

So only Jews spied? Nice cut and paste job; not even novel. You mean there were no non-Jewish spies? Interesting agenda you have there.

You forget Hanssen, Field, Straight, Dugan, McNutt, Dodd, and that is just from the top of my head. None were Jewish. There are scores more.

[newhandle]

The CIA certainly had it spies and agents. Then you had people like Penkovsky. There was a recent defection of a senior FSB offical to the US at the time the 10 Russian spies were revealed in the US.

[BlackShoe]

The basic problem was that it is far easier to penetrate, move about, recruit agents, and gather intel in a free and open society than it is to do the same in a closed society. Add to that, the Soviets and ChiComs were extremely paranoiac about leaks. Because of this, the communist bloc had more spying success against the West than we did against them. Besides the KGB, the East German Stasi was very effective in Western Europe. Today, the Red Chinese seem to have a large network in place. Almost surely the Russians still have assets in deep cover providing them with intel, left over spys from the Soviet era. While most of them have either died, retired, or are no longer useful, there still may be a few elderly spys that after the KGB ceased to exist in its old form, just went to work for the SVR.

[texdav]

I think one of the most amzing things is that we actually taped into ther naval communictions cables under the water near their fleet.

[toppan166]

The CIA sent agents into the Soviet Union beginning in 1949 under Operation RedSox. 191 agents were either air dropped into the SU or infiltrated over land. The operation stopped in 1959 because most of those agents were either arrested, killed or contact was lost. However, there were eleven agents that successfully made it into Soviet society. Of those 11, three were returned to American soil after the Soviet Union fell in 1991. Those 3 were honored by the CIA and given a secret life. One of the three made it to the Soviet Air Force rank of Colonel. He was probably one of the most secret agents we ever had inside the Soviet Union.

[Unsettomati]

Originally Posted by BlackShoe

The basic problem was that it is far easier to penetrate, move about, recruit agents, and gather intel in a free and open society than it is to do the same in a closed society. Add to that, the Soviets and ChiComs were extremely paranoiac about leaks. Because of this, the communist bloc had more spying success against the West than we did against them. Besides the KGB, the East German Stasi was very effective in Western Europe. Today, the Red Chinese seem to have a large network in place. Almost surely the Russians still have assets in deep cover providing them with intel, left over spys from the Soviet era. While most of them have either died, retired, or are no longer useful, there still may be a few elderly spys that after the KGB ceased to exist in its old form, just went to work for the SVR.

It's also much easier to infiltrate a nation of immigrants, where newcomers bringing their unusual behavior and dress and speech are the norm.

It would have been a lot easier for a Soviet citizen to blend in in New York than it would have been for an American citizen to blend in in Moscow.