The Pond (intelligence Organization)
The Pond was a small, secret organization formed by the government of the United States which operated between 1942 and 1955. It engaged in espionage. It was formally acknowledged by the US government in 2001. History In the spring of 1942, Brigadier General Hayes Kroner, the head of the War Department's Military Intelligence Service, was given the go-ahead to set up an espionage organization separate from William "Wild Bill" Donovan's Office of Strategic Services. He selected to head it U.S. Army Captain (Jean) John V. Grombach, who was a rival and previous employee of Donovan. In 1955, The Pond was disbanded by the American government because of post-war centralization of intelligence gathering and questions about the organization's effectiveness. On April 27, 2008, the Associated Press reported that the Central Intelligence Agency planned to "release a stash of Pond-related papers accidentally discovered in a Virginia barn in 2001" and hand them over to the National Archive ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five major unincorporated territories, nine United States Minor Outlying Islands, Minor Outlying Islands, and 326 Indian reservations. The United States is also in Compact of Free Association, free association with three Oceania, Pacific Island Sovereign state, sovereign states: the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and the Palau, Republic of Palau. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, third-largest country by both land and total area. It shares land borders Canada–United States border, with Canada to its north and Mexico–United States border, with Mexico to its south and has maritime borders with the Bahamas, Cuba, Russia, and other nations. With a population of over 333 million, it is the List of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Office Of The Coordinator Of Information
The Office of the Coordinator of Information was an intelligence and propaganda agency of the United States Government, founded on July 11, 1941, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, prior to U.S. involvement in the Second World War. It was intended to overcome the lack of coordination between existing agencies which, in part, it did by duplicating some of their functions. Roosevelt was persuaded to create the office several months before the United States entered the war by prominent New York lawyer William J. Donovan, who had been dispatched to London by the president to assess the ability of the British to continue fighting after the French capitulation to German aggression, and by American playwright Robert Sherwood, who served as Roosevelt's primary speechwriter on foreign affairs. British officials, including John Godfrey of the British Naval Intelligence Division and William Stephenson, head of British Security Co-ordination in New York, also encouraged Roosevelt to create ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hungarian People's Republic
The Hungarian People's Republic ( hu, Magyar Népköztársaság) was a one-party socialist state from 20 August 1949 to 23 October 1989. It was governed by the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, which was under the influence of the Soviet Union.Rao, B. V. (2006), ''History of Modern Europe A.D. 1789–2002'', Sterling Publishers Pvt. Ltd. Pursuant to the 1944 Moscow Conference, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin had agreed that after the war Hungary was to be included in the Soviet sphere of influence. The HPR remained in existence until 1989, when opposition forces brought the end of communism in Hungary. The state considered itself the heir to the Republic of Councils in Hungary, which was formed in 1919 as the first communist state created after the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Russian SFSR). It was designated a " people's democratic republic" by the Soviet Union in the 1940s. Geographically, it bordered Romania and the Soviet Union (via the Ukrain ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Case Officer
In intelligence organizations, agent handling is the management of so-called agents (called secret agents or spies in common parlance), principal agents, and agent networks (called "assets") by intelligence officers typically known as case officers. Human intelligence A primary purpose of intelligence organizations is to penetrate a target with a human agent, or a network of human agents. Such agents can either infiltrate the target, or be recruited "in place". Case officers are professionally trained employees of intelligence organizations that manage human agents and human agent networks. Intelligence that derives from such human sources is known by the abbreviation HUMINT. Sometimes, agent handling is done indirectly, through "principal agents" that serve as proxies for case officers. It is not uncommon, for example, for a case officer to manage a number of principal agents, who in turn handle agent networks, which are preferably organized in a cellular fashion. In such ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Miklós Horthy
Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya ( hu, Vitéz nagybányai Horthy Miklós; ; English: Nicholas Horthy; german: Nikolaus Horthy Ritter von Nagybánya; 18 June 1868 – 9 February 1957), was a Hungarian admiral and dictator who served as the regent of the Kingdom of Hungary between the two World Wars and throughout most of World War II – from 1 March 1920 to 15 October 1944. Horthy started his career as a sub-lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian Navy in 1896 and attained the rank of rear admiral in 1918. He saw action in the Battle of the Strait of Otranto and became commander-in-chief of the Navy in the last year of World War I; he was promoted to vice admiral and commander of the Fleet when Emperor-King Charles dismissed the previous admiral from his post following mutinies. During the revolutions and interventions in Hungary from Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia, Horthy returned to Budapest with the National Army; the parliament subsequently invited him to becom ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Marcel Petiot
Marcel André Henri Félix Petiot (17 January 1897 – 25 May 1946) was a French medical doctor and serial killer. He was convicted of multiple murders after the discovery of the remains of 23 people in the basement of his home in Paris during World War II. He is suspected of the murder of about 60 victims during his lifetime, although the true number remains unknown. Early life Marcel Petiot was born on 17 January 1897 in Auxerre, Yonne, in north central France. At the age of 11, Petiot fired his father's gun in class and propositioned a female classmate for sex. During his teenage years, he robbed a postbox and was charged with damage of public property and theft. Petiot was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, resulting in charges being dismissed when it was judged that he had a mental illness. Later accounts make various claims of Petiot's delinquency and criminal acts during his youth, but it is unknown whether they were invented afterwards for public consumption. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Carl Marzani
Carl Aldo Marzani (4 March 1912 – 11 December 1994) was an Italian-born American political activist with a series of careers as a volunteer soldier in the Spanish Civil War, organizer for the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), United States intelligence official, documentary filmmaker with an Academy Award nomination, author, and publisher. During World War II he served in the federal intelligence agency, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and later the U.S. Department of State. He picked the targets for the Doolittle raid on Tokyo, which took place on April 18, 1942. Marzani served nearly three years in prison for having concealed his former CPUSA membership when joining the US war effort in 1942. Background Carl Aldo Marzani was born on March 4, 1912, in Rome, Italy. The family immigrated to the United States in 1924 and settled in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Carl entered the first grade at the age of twelve, not knowing English. He graduated from high school in 1931 with a sch ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss (November 11, 1904 – November 15, 1996) was an American government official accused in 1948 of having spied for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Statutes of limitations had expired for espionage, but he was convicted of perjury in connection with this charge in 1950. Before the trial Hiss was involved in the establishment of the United Nations, both as a U.S. State Department official and as a U.N. official. In later life he worked as a lecturer and author. On August 3, 1948, Whittaker Chambers, a former U.S. Communist Party member, testified under subpoena before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) that Hiss had secretly been a communist while in federal service. Hiss categorically denied the charge and subsequently sued Chambers for libel. During the pretrial discovery process of the libel case, Chambers produced new evidence allegedly indicating that he and Hiss had been involved in espionage. A federal grand jury indicted Hiss on two counts of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Alfred McCormack
Colonel Alfred McCormack, CBE (1901-1956), was a trained attorney of Cravath, Swaine & Moore who during and after World War II served in the US Military Intelligence Service, where he proved crucial in developing military analysis of cryptographic intercepts in Operation Magic. Background Alfred T. McCormack was born on January 13, 1901, in Brooklyn, New York. In 1921, he graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton University and in 1925 received a law degree from Columbia University in 1921. Career In 1926, McCormack clerked for Supreme Court Justice Harlan Fiske Stone. Later that year, he joined a Wall Street law firm of Cravath, de Gersdorff, Swaine and Wood (whose name became Cravath, Swaine & Moore in 1944), where he became a partner in 1935. In June 1942, McCormack received a commission as colonel in the US Military Intelligence Service, known as the Military Intelligence Corps as part of the US Department of War's general staff. He became deputy chief of a special intelli ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Alexander Gregory Barmine
Alexander Grigoryevich Barmin (russian: Александр Григорьевич Бармин, ''Aleksandr Grigoryevich Barmin''; August 16, 1899 – December 25, 1987), most commonly Alexander Barmine, was an officer in the Soviet Army and diplomat who fled the purges of the Joseph Stalin era for France and then United States, where he served the US government (including the OSS, VOA, and USIA) and also testified before congressional committees (including the SISS). Background Alexander Grigoryevich Barmin was born on August 16, 1899, in Mogilev, Mogilev Government, Russian Empire (now Belarus). His father, whose surname was originally Graff, was a teacher and came from an ethnic German colonist family, while Alexander's mother was Ukrainian. Alexander attended a state gymnasium in Kiev, followed by St. Vladmir University also in Kiev, Infantry Officer's School in Minsk, M. V. Frunze Military Academy in Moscow, and the Oriental Languages Institute in Moscow. Career USSR ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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War Department General Staff
The United States Department of War, also called the War Department (and occasionally War Office in the early years), was the United States Cabinet department originally responsible for the operation and maintenance of the United States Army, also bearing responsibility for naval affairs until the establishment of the Navy Department in 1798, and for most land-based air forces until the creation of the Department of the Air Force on September 18, 1947. The Secretary of War, a civilian with such responsibilities as finance and purchases and a minor role in directing military affairs, headed the War Department throughout its existence. The War Department existed from August 7, 1789 until September 18, 1947, when it split into the Department of the Army and the Department of the Air Force. The Department of the Army and Department of the Air Force later joined the Department of the Navy under the United States Department of Defense in 1949. History 18th century The Departme ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million Military personnel, personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Air warfare of World War II, Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the List of wars by death toll, deadliest conflict in hu ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |