Counterintelligence failures

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Countries with major counterintelligence failures are presented alphabetically. In each case, there is at least one systemic problem with seeking penetration agents when few or none may actually have existed, to the detriment of the functioning of the national service involved.

Contents

Many of the individuals named have separate articles in Wikipedia. The emphasis here is on both national-level counterespionage problems, and how the individuals eluded detection.

German counterespionage failures

Wilhelm Canaris

Red Orchestra

Otto John

Russian and Soviet counterespionage failures

The Czarist Russia had a secret police before the Soviet Union, and modern Russia still has intelligence services that may have been impacted by events during the Soviet period.

While there were penetration accusations after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the great mass of large-scale accusations and purges, after Stalin consolidated power but before WWII, tend to blur into the Great Terror. After Stalin's death, Lavrenti Beria, heading state security, attempted to gain control, but was shot and his subordinates purged.

Anatoliy Golitsyn

Yuri Nosenko

Oleg Penkovsky

Oleg Penkovsky was a UK-US defector in place, in an extremely key position in the Soviet system. His position was such that he not only was able to provide information about what the Soviets had learned about the West, but also about the real capabilities of the Soviets. A book, The Penkovsky Papers, was prepared, posthumously, with assistance from US intelligence. [1] A 1976 Senate commission stated that "the book was prepared and written by witting agency assets who drew on actual case materials." Much of the material provided by Penkovsky has been declassified.[ citation needed ]

Petr Popov

Adolf Tolkachev

Vladimir Vetrov

One example of counter-intelligence in action involves the case of Soviet defector Vladimir Vetrov, codenamed "Farewell," who gave several classified documents in 1981 to French Intelligence detailing industrial espionage committed by the Soviet Union in various western nations in a collection called the Farewell Dossier. The information was passed on to the Central Intelligence Agency, who exploited it by secretly preparing sabotaged "intelligence" for Soviet spies to collect. After the Soviet's incorporated the flawed industrial technology, it caused numerous technical failures in the USSR including a massive oil pipeline explosion which damaged the economy.

Igor Gouzenkov

UK counterespionage failures

A group of Soviet sympathizers, in respected positions in British society, formed the Cambridge Five, sometimes called the Cambridge Four, and it has never been established how many active agents were involved. Of these, the most devastating was Kim Philby. Other confirmed members included Donald Duart Maclean, Guy Burgess, and Anthony Blunt. See Cambridge Five for other suspects.

Kim Philby was an effective Soviet agent while in the British counterintelligence service, warning the Soviets of countersurveillance, while casting suspicion on loyal officers. Philby came under suspicion but was able to escape to the USSR. [2] Philby even was, at one time, considered as a possible head of MI5. He was able to protect numerous Soviet operations in Britain.

British intelligence also suffered from internal suspicion that may or may not have been directed at the right targets, [3] but caused suspicion to be thrown at the highest counter-intelligence officers, with severe effects on morale. Peter Wright, while later extremely controversial about revelations his 1987 book, Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer, also developed techniques that allowed the UK to track numerous Soviet clandestine agents, and agents under diplomatic cover. [4]

Kim Philby

US counterespionage failures

James Jesus Angleton, the legendary CIA director of counterespionage and a poet himself, used T. S. Eliot's term "an infinity of mirrors" to describe the intricacies of agent to double agent to triple agent so common in counterespionage, with works describing him as paranoid, [5] while others described him as brilliant. [6] Perhaps the truth may only emerge with the novelist's pen. [7] It is clear that searches for foreign penetration, whether present or not, came close to paralyzing US intelligence. [8]

Philip Agee

Aldrich Ames

On February 24, 1994, the agency was rocked by the arrest of 31-year veteran case officer Aldrich Ames on charges of spying for the Soviet Union since 1985. [9]

Robert Hanssen

Edward Lee Howard

William Hamilton Martin and Bernon Mitchell

These two cryptologists working for the National Security Agency disappeared in September 1960 and then re-appeared as defectors at a news conference in Moscow. Francis Gary Powers speculated that they were responsible for the downing of the Lockheed U-2 he was piloting over the Soviet Union causing the 1960 U-2 incident. [10] The analysis of the National Security Council, however, determined that the two were not recruited by the Soviets and that their defection was "impulsive." [11]

William Kampiles

David Henry Barnett

Denial and deception

Analysis of foreign denial and deception (D&D) activities is arguably among the most challenging of intelligence analytic disciplines. Throughout history, nations have sought advantage over rivals through the manipulation of valued information. Such manipulation spans a spectrum of activities from the simple act of keeping certain information exclusive or secret to sophisticated deceptions that seek to confuse or mislead an adversary's collection, analytic, and decisionmaking process. This spectrum includes denial, in which information is used in a "defensive" way by keeping it both secret and hidden (where the information gains further advantage through exclusivity and obscurity), and deception, in which information is used in an "offensive" way to mislead or confuse an adversary and which can include the use of both truthful and overt as well as false information in such a way as to influence a rival nation's perceptions. The discovery and uncovering of the first, and protection against the second, are "the two great purposes of intelligence

One of the greatest bargains in espionage history was the Soviet purchase of the technical manual for the KH–11 reconnaissance satellite from former CIA employee (now convicted spy) William Kampiles for a paltry $3,000. As a result of this theft and other compromises, U.S. intelligence must assume as a matter of course that overhead imagery and other technical collection will be met by D&D efforts. [12]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kim Philby</span> British intelligence officer and KGB double agent for the Soviet Union (1912–1988)

Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby 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 secrets to the Soviets during World War II and in the early stages of the Cold War. Of the five, Philby is believed to have been most successful in providing secret information to the Soviets.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cambridge Five</span> British ring of spies for the Soviet Union

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 for spying. The number and membership of the ring emerged slowly, from the 1950s onwards. The general public first became aware of the conspiracy after the sudden flight of Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess to the Soviet Union in 1951. Suspicion immediately fell on Harold "Kim" Philby, who eventually fled the country in 1963. Following Philby's flight, British intelligence obtained confessions from Anthony Blunt and then John Cairncross, who have come to be seen as the last two of a group of five. Their involvement was kept secret for many years: until 1979 for Blunt, and 1990 for Cairncross. The moniker Cambridge Four evolved to become the Cambridge Five after Cairncross was added.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Counterintelligence</span> Offensive measures using enemy information

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 other intelligence activities conducted by, for, or on behalf of foreign powers, organizations or persons.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Jesus Angleton</span> Central Intelligence Agency officer (1917–1987)

James Jesus Angleton was chief of counterintelligence for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 1954 to 1974. His official position within the organization was Associate Deputy Director of Operations for Counterintelligence (ADDOCI). Angleton was significantly involved in the US response to the purported KGB defectors Anatoliy Golitsyn and Yuri Nosenko. Angleton later became convinced the CIA harbored a high-ranking mole, and engaged in an intensive search. Whether this was a highly destructive witch hunt or appropriate caution vindicated by later moles remains a subject of intense historical debate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oleg Penkovsky</span> British spy in the USSR (1919–1963)

Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky, codenamed HERO, was a Soviet military intelligence (GRU) colonel during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Penkovsky informed the United States and the United Kingdom about Soviet military secrets, most importantly, the appearance and footprint of Soviet intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) installations and the weakness of the Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program. This information was decisive in allowing the US to recognize that the Soviets were placing IRBMs in Cuba before most of the missiles were operational. It also gave US President John F. Kennedy, during the Cuban Missile Crisis that followed, valuable information about Soviet weakness that allowed him to face down Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and resolve the crisis without a nuclear war.

Peter Maurice Wright CBE was a principal scientific officer for MI5, the British counter-intelligence agency. His book Spycatcher, written with Paul Greengrass, became an international bestseller with sales of over two million copies. Spycatcher was part memoir, part exposé of what Wright claimed were serious institutional failures in MI5 and his subsequent investigations into those. He is said to have been influenced in his counterespionage activity by James Jesus Angleton, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) counterintelligence chief from 1954 to 1975.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dick White</span>

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Sir Roger Henry Hollis was a British journalist and intelligence officer who served with MI5 from 1938 to 1965. He was Director General of MI5 from 1956 to 1965.

Anatoliy Mikhaylovich Golitsyn CBE was a Soviet KGB defector and author of two books about the long-term deception strategy of the KGB leadership. He was born in Pyriatyn, USSR. He provided "a wide range of intelligence to the CIA on the operations of most of the 'Lines' (departments) at the Helsinki and other residencies, as well as KGB methods of recruiting and running agents." He became an American citizen by 1984.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chapman Pincher</span> English journalist, historian and novelist (1914–2014)

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George Kisevalter was an American operations officer of the CIA, who handled Major Pyotr Popov, the first Soviet GRU officer run by the CIA. He had some involvement with Soviet intelligence Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, active in the 1960s, who had more direct relations with British MI-6.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Goleniewski</span>

Michał Franciszek Goleniewski a.k.a. 'SNIPER', 'LAVINIA',, was a Polish officer in the People's Republic of Poland's Ministry of Public Security, the deputy head of military counterintelligence GZI WP, later head of the technical and scientific section of the Polish intelligence, and a spy for the Soviet government during the 1950s. In 1959, he became a triple-agent, giving Polish and Soviet secrets to the Central Intelligence Agency, which directly caused the exposure of George Blake and Harry Houghton. Goleniewski defected to the United States in 1961. He later made unsubstantiated claims to be Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich of Russia.

Clandestine human intelligence is intelligence collected from human sources using clandestine espionage methods. These sources consist of people working in a variety of roles within the intelligence community. Examples include the quintessential spy, who collects intelligence; couriers and related personnel, who handle an intelligence organization's (ideally) secure communications; and support personnel, such as access agents, who may arrange the contact between the potential spy and the case officer who recruits them. The recruiter and supervising agent may not necessarily be the same individual. Large espionage networks may be composed of multiple levels of spies, support personnel, and supervisors. Espionage networks are typically organized as a cell system, in which each clandestine operator knows only the people in his own cell, perhaps the external case officer, and an emergency method to contact higher levels if the case officer or cell leader is captured, but has no knowledge of people in other cells. This cellular organization is a form of compartmentalisation, which is an important tactic for controlling access to information, used in order to diminish the risk of discovery of the network or the release of sensitive information.

Clandestine HUMINT asset recruiting refers to the recruitment of human agents, commonly known as spies, who work for a foreign government, or within a host country's government or other target of intelligence interest for the gathering of human intelligence. The work of detecting and "doubling" spies who betray their oaths to work on behalf of a foreign intelligence agency is an important part of counterintelligence.

There is a long history of close cooperation between the United States and the United Kingdom intelligence services; see Clandestine HUMINT and Covert Action for World War II and subsequent relationships. There are permanent liaison officers of each country in major intelligence agencies of the other, such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Secret Intelligence Service ("MI6"), FBI and the Security Service (MI5), and National Security Agency (NSA) and Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). From 1943 to 2017, the Open Source Enterprise, a division of the CIA, was run out of Caversham Park in Reading, Berkshire. American officials worked closely with their British counterparts to monitor foreign TV and radio broadcasts, as well as online information.

Sergeant Gilles G. Brunet was a career officer in Canada's Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He was born on September 20th 1934 in Rimouski. Commenced Saint Aloysisus School. He also attended A school at Côtes des Neiges and St-Nicolas School in Montreal. He attended D'Arcy McGee High School. He left school in June 1951. In Ottawa he continued school at Grade 13th at Nipean High school. In 1972 American suspicions had triggered one of Brunet's colleagues, Leslie James Bennett, to lose his security clearance, leading to his dismissal. A year after Brunet's death, a Soviet defector named Vitaly Sergeyevich Yurchenko would clear Bennett, and assert that Brunet was the mole.

Graham Russell Mitchell OBE, CB (1905–1984), was an officer of MI5, the British Security Service, between 1939 and 1963, serving as its deputy director general between 1956 and 1963. In 1963 Roger Hollis, the MI5 director general, authorised the secret investigation of Mitchell following suspicions within the Secret Intelligence Service MI6 that he was a Soviet agent. It is now thought unlikely that Mitchell ever was a "mole". Mitchell was an International Master of correspondence chess who represented Great Britain.

The Martel affair, sometimes known as the Sapphire affair, was a spy scandal that took place in France in early 1962. It involved information provided by former high-ranking member of the KGB, Anatoliy Golitsyn, who defected to the United States in December 1961. Golitsyn stated that the Soviets had agents placed throughout French military intelligence and even within French President Charles de Gaulle's cabinet. He claimed that these agents had access to any NATO document on demand.

David Henry Blee served in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from its founding in 1947 until his 1985 retirement. During World War II in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), he had worked in Southeast Asia. In the CIA, he served as Chief of Station (COS) in Asia and Africa, starting in the 1950s. He then led the CIA's Near East Division.

References

  1. ↑ Penkovsky, Oleg (1966). The Penkovsky Papers: The Russian Who Spied for the West. Doubleday.
  2. ↑ Philby, Kim (1968). My Silent War. Macgibbon & Kee Ltd.
  3. ↑ Wright, Peter; Greengrass, Paul (1987). Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer . Penguin Viking. ISBN   0-670-82055-5. Wright 1987.
  4. ↑ Wright & Greengrass 1987
  5. ↑ Martin, David C. (2003). Wilderness of Mirrors: Intrigue, Deception, and the Secrets that Destroyed Two of the Cold War's Most Important Agents. Lyons Press. ISBN   978-1-58574-824-2.
  6. ↑ Epstein, Edward Jay. "Through the Looking Glass" . Retrieved 2007-10-24.
  7. ↑ Buckley, William F. Jr. (2001). Spytime: The Undoing of James Jesus Angleton. Harvest Books. ISBN   0-15-601124-7.
  8. ↑ Wise, David (1992). Molehunt: The Secret Search for Traitors That Shattered the CIA. Random House. ISBN   0-394-58514-3.
  9. ↑ "FBI History: Famous Cases - Aldrich Hazen Ames". Federal Bureau of Investigation. Archived from the original on 2007-10-05. Retrieved 2007-10-06.
  10. ↑ Francis Gary Powers (1970). Operation Overflight: The U-2 spy pilot tells his story for the first time. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. ISBN   978-0-03-083045-7.
  11. ↑ Seattle Weekly: "The Worst Internal Scandal in NSA History Was Blamed on Cold War Defectors' Homosexuality," July 17, 2007, accessed January 6, 2010
  12. ↑ Van Cleave, Michelle K. (April 2007). "Counterintelligence and National Strategy" (PDF). School for National Security Executive Education, National Defense University (NDU). USNDU-Van Cleave-2007. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-11-28. Retrieved 2007-11-05.
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