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ABSTRACT
Starting from 1948, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Office of Policy Coordination tried to harness and utilise the talents of recent émigrés from the Soviet Union, more specifically, to dispatch them in secret operations behind the Iron Curtain. The purpose of this article is to revise the commonly accepted narrative on two American-sponsored émigré operations, showing how they should be assessed as intelligence collection ventures rather than covert operations, and to demonstrate how these émigrés played a key role in providing intelligence on the Soviet target.
The study will also investigate how this kind of covert action tied into US policy-making, and how the perceived needs of the US administration – chiefly creating an ‘early warning’ system for a Soviet attack on Europe and the need of information on the Soviet target – shaped intelligence collection in the early Cold War.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 Founded in 1948, and ‘absorbed’ by the CIA in 1952, the OPC was created specifically to manage and conduct covert operations. Although it was housed inside the CIA for administrative purposes, the OPC functioned as an indipendent entity, whose policy requirements came from both the State and Defense Department, and as such enjoyed wide operational parameters and little oversight. Because in 1952 the OPC became officially part of the CIA, being renamed Directorare of Plans (DDP), thorughout the text I have only referred to the CIA for reasons of clarity and consistency.
2 In 1998, the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act created the Interagency Working Group (IWG), tasked with identifying and declassifying United States records related to Nazi and Japanese war crimes. It was a monumental effort that lasted for eight years, costed approximately 30 million dollars and required the screening of over one hundred million pages. According to Steven Garfunkel, Acting Chair of the IWG from 2002 to 2007, one of the legacies of that work is that the public has now access to hundreds of thousands of records from the Office of Strategic Services, the CIA, the FBI and the Army Counterintelligence Corps.
3 James Callanan, Covert Action in the Cold War: US policy, intelligence and CIA operations (London: IB Tauris, 2009), 103. The opinion that, under Dulles tenure as DCI, the Directorate for Plans (responsible for special operations and covert action) was favoured, in terms of financial resources and personnel, over the Directorate for Central Intelligence, is also mantained in the Church Report.
4 Brian J. Auten, “Political Diasporas and Exiles as Instruments of Statecraft,” Comparative Strategy, 25, no. 4 (2006):329–341.
5 Some examples can be found in the following documents: CIA Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room (henceforward: CIA FOIA ERR), ‘Summary and Evaluation of the Relationship of the NTS to CIA’, Aenoble Vol.1_0027; CIA FOIA ERR, Aenoble VOL. 2_0005; CIA FOIA ERR, ‘Questionnaire on Ukrainian emigration’, 30 June 1957, AERODYNAMIC Vol. 15 (Operations)_008; CIA FOIA ERR, ‘Ukrainian SSR – Operational Program’, 8 August 1952, AERODYNAMIC Vol. 10 (Operations)_0072; CIA FOIA ERR, ‘Contact and Briefing CASSOWARY 2 Prior to European Trip’, 21 August 1953, AERODYNAMIC Vol. 11 (Operations)_0016. The latter is the record of a meeting between Mikola Lebed, leader of an Ukrainian émigré group, and two senior CIA representatives, inculding Harry Rositzke.
6 Zakordonne Predstavnyztvo Ukrainoskoyi Holovnovi Vyzvolnoyi Rady (Foreign Representation of the Ukrainian Supreme Council of Liberation). Ukrainian émigré group founded by the representatives of the UHVR (Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council, a clandestine government established in 1944 as the highest political authority of the Ukrainian insurrection) sent to Western Europe in 1944.
7 Natsional’nyi Trudovoi Soiuz Novogo Pokoleniia (National Labour Union of the New Generation). Commonly known as NTS, it was a White Russian émigré group founded by young nationalists in 1926. It was the émigré group that the CIA used for project Aenoble
8 Sherman Kent, “Prospects for the National Intelligence Service,” Yale Review, 36 (Autumn 1946): 117.
9 Roy Godson, ed. Intelligence Requirements for the 1980’s: Elements of Intelligence. No. 1. National Strategy Information Center, 1986.
10 Michael Warner, “Wanted: A Definition of Intelligence,” Studies in Intelligence 46 (2002): 15–22.
11 Alan Breakspear, “A New Definition of Intelligence”, Intelligence and National Security 28, no. 5 (2013): 685.
12 First chief of the CIA Soviet Division and the man responsible for agent operations inside the USSR until 1954.
13 Sarah J. Corke, US Covert Operations and Cold War Strategy: Truman, Secret Warfare and the CIA, 1945–53 (London: Routledge, 2007).
14 Auten, ”Political diasporas”, 329.
15 In his recent study on CIA operations in the Soviet Bloc in the early Cold War, Stephen Long, coming to similar conclusions, points out that the lack of coordination between policy-making and covert action caused what he describes as disastrous results. Long blames not only operational incompetence, but also strategical infeasibility: Soviet control in Eastern Europe was too strong to be challenged by small covert operations. The only way of doing it would have been a full-scale war, a war that the United States were not willing to fight. Long’s conclusion is that America’s covert action strategy in Eastern Europe between 1945 and 1956 actually contributed to the downfall of the same resistance movement that it hoped to support. See: Stephen Long, The CIA and the Soviet Bloc: Political Warfare, the Origins of the CIA and Countering Communism in Europe (London, Tauris, 2014).
16 Benjamin Tromly, “The Making of a Myth: The National Labor Alliance, Russian Émigrés, and Cold War Intelligence Activities,” Journal of Cold War Studies 18, no. 1(2016): 80–111.
17 Ibid., 104.
18 Corke, US Covert Operations, 8.
19 Tromly, ‘The Making of a Myth’, 86.
20 For the NTS, see: Paul Robinson, The White Russian Army in Exile, 1920–1941 (Oxford University Press on Demand, 2002); Tromly, ‘The Making of a Myth’. For the ZP/UHVR: Jeffrey Burds, The Early Cold War in Soviet West Ukraine, 1944–1948 (Pittsburgh: Russian and East European Studies Program, University of Pittsburgh, 2001); For both groups’ relationship with the Cia, see: Francesco Cacciatore, ‘“Their Need Was Great”: Émigrés and Anglo-American Intelligence Operations in the Early Cold War’, PhD thesis, University of Westminster, 2018.
21 For a good overview on defectors and their role in American Cold War strategy, see: Benjamin Tromly, “Ambivalent heroes: Russian defectors and American power in the early Cold War,’’ Intelligence and National Security 33, no.5(2018): 642–658.
22 First called Central Reports Staff, the name was changed in July 1946 to the Office of Research and Evaluations, and again in October 1946 to the Office of Reports and Estimates (ORE), by which name it was known until it was abolished in November 1950. CIA veterans typically use ‘ORE’ as the shorthand name for the analytical office for the whole period 1946–50.
23 National Archives and Records Administration (henceforward, NARA), RG 263, Intelligence Publication Files, 1945–1950, ORE 22–48 (Addendum), ‘Possibility of Direct Soviet Military Action during 1948–49ʹ.
24 NARA, RG 263, Intelligence Publication Files, 1945–1950, ORE 22–48, ‘Possibility of Direct Soviet Military Action during 1948ʹ.
25 NARA, RG 263, Intelligence Publication Files, 1945–1950, ORE 22–48 (Addendum).
26 NARA, RG 263, Intelligence Publication Files, 1945–1950, ORE 22–48.
27 NARA, RG 263, Intelligence Publication Files, 1945–1950, ORE 22–48 (Addendum).
28 NARA, RG 263, Intelligence Publication Files, 1945–1950, ORE 22–48.
29 Harry Rositzke, The CIA’s Secret Operations (New York: Reader’s Digest Press, 1977): 20–21.
30 Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950–1955, The Intelligence Community, 1950–1955, eds. Douglas Keane, Michael Warner (Washington: Government Printing Office, 2007), document 252
31 For more details, see: Cacciatore, ‘‘Their Need Was Great”, chapter V.
32 CIA FOIA ERR, ‘AERODYNAMIC Ops. Vs. BANDERA-JAVELIN’, 25 September 1953, AERODYNAMIC Vol. 11 (Operations)_0024.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid.
35 For an overview on the role of émigrés in US-sponsored propaganda activities, see: Roman Kupchinsky, ‘Ukraine during the Cold War: the role of Prolog Research Corp’, The Ukrainian Weekly, 30 November 2008; Taras Kuzio, “U.S. support for Ukraine’s liberation during the Cold War: A study of Prolog Research and Publishing Corporation,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 45, no. 1–2 (2012): 51–64; A. Ross Johnson, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty: The CIA Years and Beyond (Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2010).
36 CIA FOIA ERR, ‘Project Aerodynamic (Renewal)’, Aerodynamic Vol. 1_0079.
37 CIA FOIA ERR, ‘Project AERODYNAMIC (PP), Amendment #1ʹ, Aerodynamic Vol. 2_0040.
38 CIA FOIA ERR, ‘Project Aerodynamic (FI) Renewal FY 1955ʹ, Aerodynamic Vol. 2_0012.
39 Ibid.
40 Redsox was the codename for operations involving the infiltration of illegal agents inside the Soviet Union.
41 CIA FOIA ERR, ‘An Evaluation of the Aerodynamic Project’, Aerodynamic Vol. 2_0030.
42 Ibid.
43 CIA FOIA ERR, ‘Summary and Evaluation of the Relationship of the NTS to CIA’, Aenoble Vol.1_0027.
44 CIA FOIA ERR, Aenoble Vol.3_0035.
45 This codename was given to the Russian émigré agents trained and dispatched to infiltrate the Soviet Union.
46 CIA FOIA ERR, Aenoble Vol.3_0035.
47 Ibid. Kudratsev and Yakuta were two of the CIA-trained NTS agents, who were captured after infiltrating the Soviet Union. They were publicly exposed in a press conference, where they admitted having been trained and dispatched by the United States. The Soviets offered an amnesty to all other agents who would turn themselves in.
48 CIA FOIA ERR, ‘Renewal of Project AESAURUS/AENOBLE’, Aenoble Vol.3_0055.
49 Ibid.
50 Ibid.
51 CIA FOIA ERR, ‘Termination of Project AENOBLE’, Aenoble Vol. 3_0084.
52 Ibid.
53 Ibid.
54 NARA, RG 263, National Intelligence Estimates and Related Reports and Correspondence, 1950–1985, SNIE 11-8-54, 14 September 1954, ‘Probable Warning of Soviet Attack on the US through Mid-1957ʹ.
55 Ibid.
56 NARA, RG 263, National Intelligence Estimates and Related Reports and Correspondence, 1950–1985, SNIE 11-3-57, 18 June 1957, ‘Probable Intelligence Warning of Soviet Attack on the US’.
57 Ibid.
58 CIA FOIA ERR, Aenoble VOL. 3_0055/0072.
59 NARA, RG 263, National Intelligence Estimates and Related Reports and Correspondence, 1950–1985, NIE 11-4-57, 12 November 1957, ‘Main Trends in Soviet Capabilities and Policies 1957–1962ʹ.
60 See, as one of the most recent examples of this tendency: Yuri Totrov, “Western Intelligence Operations in Eastern Europe, 1945–1954,” Journal of Intelligence History, 5 no. 1, (2005): 71–80.
61 Tromly, “The Making of a Myth,” 88.
62 Rositzke, “The CIA’s Secret Operations,” 35
63 Callanan, “Covert action in the Cold War,” 60–61.
64 On the history of the OSS, this is a list of selcted works for reference: Richard H. Smith, OSS: the secret history of America’s first central intelligence agency (Guildford: Lyons Press, 1972); Thomas F. Troy, Wild Bill and intrepid: Donovan, Stephenson, and the origin of CIA (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). Finally, it is worth consulting the US government official publication: War Report of the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), prepared by the History Project, Strategic Services Unit, Office of the Assistant Secretary of War, War Department.
65 Jeffrey Richelson, American Espionage and the Soviet Target (New York, Quill, 1987): 48–52.
66 John Prados, The Soviet Estimate: US Intelligence Analysis and Russian Military Strenght (New York: Dial Press, 1982), 38–50; Steve Zaloga, Target America: The Soviet Union and the Strategic Arms Race, 1945–1964. (New York: Presidio Press, 1993); Raymond L. Garthoff, ‘Estimating Soviet Military Intentions and Capabilities.’ Watching the Bear: Essays on CIA’s Analysis of the Soviet Union, 2001, 135–186.
67 This episode is recounted by Peer de Silva, a CIA officer who held the post of chief of Soviet activities and head of station in Saigon, in his autobiography, Sub Rosa: The CIA and the Uses of Intelligence (New York: Times Books, 1978), 58.
68 Callanan, Covert Action in the Cold War, 69.
69 Anne Karalekas, member of the CIA history staff, in her history of the agency prepared for the Church Committee, sustained that this was the case in the 1950s: Anne Karalekas, History of the Central Intelligence Agency (Laguna Hills, California, 1977), 56–57.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Francesco Alexander Cacciatore
Francesco Cacciatore holds a PhD in History from the University of Westminster. His area of expertise is Cold War History, with a focus on US covert operations in Europe during the early Cold War.