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Venona
The Venona project was a United States counterintelligence program initiated during World War II by the United States Army's Signal Intelligence Service and later absorbed by the National Security Agency (NSA), that ran from February 1, 1943, until October 1, 1980. It was intended to decrypt messages transmitted by the intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union (e.g. the NKVD, the KGB, and the GRU). Initiated when the Soviet Union was an ally of the US, the program continued during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union was considered an enemy. During the 37-year duration of the Venona project, the Signal Intelligence Service decrypted and translated approximately 3,000 messages. The signals intelligence yield included discovery of the Cambridge Five espionage ring in the United Kingdom, and also of Soviet espionage of the Manhattan Project in the US, known as Project Enormous. Some of the espionage was undertaken to support the Soviet atomic bomb project. The Venona project remaine ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Julius And Ethel Rosenberg
Julius Rosenberg (May 12, 1918 – June 19, 1953) and Ethel Rosenberg (born Greenglass; September 28, 1915 – June 19, 1953) were an American married couple who were convicted of First Chief Directorate, spying for the Soviet Union, including providing top-secret information about American radar, sonar, jet propulsion engines, and nuclear weapon designs. Convicted of espionage in 1951, they were Capital punishment by the United States federal government, executed by the federal government of the United States in 1953 using New York's state execution chamber in Sing Sing in Ossining (village), New York, Ossining, New York, becoming the first American civilians to be executed for such charges and the first to be executed during peacetime. Other convicted co-conspirators were sentenced to prison, including Ethel's brother, David Greenglass (who had made a Plea bargain, plea agreement), Harry Gold, and Morton Sobell. Klaus Fuchs, a German scientist working at the Project Y, Los Alam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bill Weisband
William Weisband, Sr. (August 28, 1908 – May 14, 1967) was a Ukrainian-American Codebreaking, cryptanalyst and NKVD agent (code name 'LINK'), best known for his role in revealing U.S. decryptions of Soviet Union, Soviet diplomatic and intelligence codes to Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, Soviet intelligence. Background Weisband was born in Odessa, Russian Empire (now Ukraine), in 1908. He emigrated to the United States in the 1920s and became a United States citizenship#Naturalized citizens, naturalized United States citizen in 1938. He was drafted into the United States Army in 1942, and was assigned to signals intelligence duties. Espionage career From 1941 to 1942, Weisband was the NKVD Agent handling, agent handler for Jones Orin York, who worked at the Northrop Corporation. After joining the United States Army, U.S. Army's Signals Intelligence Service (SIS) in 1942, he performed signals intelligence and communications security duties in North Africa and Ita ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gene Grabeel
Gene Grabeel (June 5, 1920 – January 30, 2015) was an American mathematician and Cryptanalysis, cryptanalyst who founded the Venona project. Early life Grabeel was born on June 5, 1920, in Rose Hill, Lee County, Virginia, where she grew up; her mother raised chickens and her father farmed tobacco. She graduated from Mars Hill College and Farmville State Teachers College and initially worked as a high school home economics teacher in Madison Heights, Virginia, Madison Heights to teenage girls. Career On the recommendation of a friend of hers, Frank Rowlett, Grabeel joined the Signal Intelligence Service on December 28, 1942, where she was assigned to attack intercepted Soviet ciphertext. Her father gave her his permission to do so and "push some papers around" during the next few months. Thus Grabeel began her 36-year career with the Signal Intelligence Service. On February 1, 1943, she founded the Venona project, a counterintelligence program aimed at decrypting Soviet com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cold War
The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The term ''Cold war (term), cold war'' is used because there was no direct fighting between the two superpowers, though each supported opposing sides in regional conflicts known as proxy wars. In addition to the struggle for ideological and economic influence and an arms race in both conventional and Nuclear arms race, nuclear weapons, the Cold War was expressed through technological rivalries such as the Space Race, espionage, propaganda campaigns, Economic sanctions, embargoes, and sports diplomacy. After the end of World War II in 1945, during which the US and USSR had been allies, the USSR installed satellite state, satellite governments in its occupied territories in Eastern Europe and N ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Signal Intelligence Service
The Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) was the United States Army codebreaking division through World War II. It was founded in 1930 to compile codes for the Army. It was renamed the Signal Security Agency in 1943, and in September 1945, became the Army Security Agency. For most of the war it was headquartered at Arlington Hall (former campus of Arlington Hall Junior College for Women), on Arlington Boulevard in Arlington, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington (D.C.). During World War II, it became known as the Army Security Agency, and its resources were reassigned to the newly established National Security Agency (NSA). History The Signal Intelligence Service was a part of the U.S. Army Signal Corps for most of World War II. At that time the Signal Corps was a bureau in the Headquarters, Department of the Army, in addition to being a branch of the Army to which personnel were commissioned or appointed. The Signal Corps supplied the Army with communicatio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Donald Duart Maclean
Donald Duart Maclean (; 25 May 1913 – 6 March 1983) was a British diplomat and Soviet double agent who participated in the Cambridge Five spy ring. After being recruited by a Soviet agent as an undergraduate student, Maclean entered the civil service. In 1938, he was appointed as Third Secretary at the British embassy in Paris. He served in London and Washington, D.C., achieving promotion to First Secretary. He was subsequently posted to Egypt, and then was appointed head of the American Department in the Foreign Office. The Soviets helped Maclean to defect from London to Moscow in 1951. In Moscow, he worked as a specialist on British policy and on relations between the Soviet Union and NATO. He died there on 6 March 1983. Childhood and school Born in Marylebone, London, Donald Duart Maclean was the son of Sir Donald Maclean and Gwendolen Margaret Devitt. Following the 1918 general election, in which Liberal Party leader H. H. Asquith lost his seat, Maclean's father Sir D ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soviet Atomic Bomb Project
The Soviet atomic bomb project was authorized by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union to develop nuclear weapons during and after World War II. Russian physicist Georgy Flyorov suspected that the Allied powers were secretly developing a " superweapon" since 1939. Flyorov urged Stalin to start a nuclear program in 1942. Early efforts mostly consisted of research at Laboratory No. 2 in Moscow, and intelligence gathering of Soviet-sympathizing atomic spies in the US Manhattan Project. Subsequent efforts involved plutonium production at Mayak in Chelyabinsk and weapon research and assembly at KB-11 in Sarov. After Stalin learned of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the nuclear program was accelerated through intelligence gathering about the Manhattan Project and German nuclear weapon project. Espionage coups, especially via Klaus Fuchs and David Greenglass, included detailed descriptions of the implosion-type Fat Man bomb and plutonium production. In the final mo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guy Burgess
Guy Francis de Moncy Burgess (16 April 1911 – 30 August 1963) was a British diplomat and Soviet double agent, and a member of the Cambridge Five spy ring that operated from the mid-1930s to the early years of the Cold War era. His defection in 1951 to the Soviet Union, with his fellow spy Donald Maclean, led to a serious breach in Anglo-United States intelligence co-operation, and caused long-lasting disruption and demoralisation in Britain's foreign and diplomatic services. Born into an upper middle class family, Burgess was educated at Eton College, the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, and Trinity College, Cambridge. An assiduous networker, he embraced left-wing politics at Cambridge and joined the British Communist Party. Burgess was recruited by Soviet intelligence in 1935, on the recommendation of the future double agent Harold "Kim" Philby. After leaving Cambridge, Burgess worked for the BBC as a producer, briefly interrupted by a short period as a full-time MI6 in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SIGINT
Signals intelligence (SIGINT) is the act and field of intelligence-gathering by interception of ''signals'', whether communications between people (communications intelligence—abbreviated to COMINT) or from electronic signals not directly used in communication (electronic intelligence—abbreviated to ELINT). As classified and sensitive information is usually encrypted, signals intelligence may necessarily involve cryptanalysis (to decipher the messages). Traffic analysis—the study of who is signaling to whom and in what quantity—is also used to integrate information, and it may complement cryptanalysis. History Origins Electronic interceptions appeared as early as 1900, during the Boer War of 1899–1902. The British Royal Navy had installed wireless sets produced by Marconi on board their ships in the late 1890s, and the British Army used some limited wireless signalling. The Boers captured some wireless sets and used them to make vital transmissions. Since the Bri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cambridge Five
The Cambridge Five was a ring of spies in the United Kingdom that passed information to the Soviet Union during the Second World War and the Cold War and was active from the 1930s until at least 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 in 1951 after the sudden flight of Donald Maclean (1913–1983, codename Homer) and Guy Burgess (1911–1963, codename Hicks) to the Soviet Union. Suspicion immediately fell on Kim Philby (1912–1988, codenames Sonny, Stanley), who eventually fled to the Soviet Union in 1963. Following Philby's flight, British intelligence obtained confessions from Anthony Blunt (1907–1983, codename Johnson) and then John Cairncross (1913–1995, codename Liszt), 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 Blun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Signals Intelligence
Signals intelligence (SIGINT) is the act and field of intelligence-gathering by interception of ''signals'', whether communications between people (communications intelligence—abbreviated to COMINT) or from electronic signals not directly used in communication (electronic intelligence—abbreviated to ELINT). As classified and sensitive information is usually encrypted, signals intelligence may necessarily involve cryptanalysis (to decipher the messages). Traffic analysis—the study of who is signaling to whom and in what quantity—is also used to integrate information, and it may complement cryptanalysis. History Origins Electronic interceptions appeared as early as 1900, during the Boer War of 1899–1902. The British Royal Navy had installed wireless sets produced by Marconi on board their ships in the late 1890s, and the British Army used some limited wireless signalling. The Boers captured some wireless sets and used them to make vital transmissions. Since the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) secret police organization, and thus had a monopoly on intelligence and state security functions. The NKVD is known for carrying out political repression and the Great Purge under Joseph Stalin, as well as counterintelligence and other operations on the Eastern Front of World War II. The head of the NKVD was Genrikh Yagoda from 1934 to 1936, Nikolai Yezhov from 1936 to 1938, Lavrentiy Beria from 1938 to 1946, and Sergei Kruglov in 1946. First established in 1917 as the NKVD of the Russian SFSR, the ministry was tasked with regular police work and overseeing the country's prisons and labor camps. It was disbanded in 1930, and its functions dispersed among other agencies before being reinstated as a commissariat of the Soviet Union ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
