Interview with Robert Lou Benson, NSA

Interviewer: Tell me in your own words about the sabotage school in Barcelona, during the Civil War. What was that really?

Lou Benson: Well the sabotage school was apparently supervised by the KGB which was then called the NKVD.

Interviewer: And what was the point of it?

Lou Benson: Well, this was in the course of the Spanish Civil War; the Russians were supporting the loyalists. The patriotic or rather the legally elected Government of Spain in 1936 there was a rising against the Republic by General Franco's Forces. And the Civil War resulted. There was an intervention by the left and the right, so to speak. The Soviets came in on the side of the Republic, and the Nazis and the Italians on the side of what became called the Nationalists, Franco's Government.

Interviewer: If the KGB were basically running the sabotage school in Barcelona?

Lou Benson: Yes.

Interviewer: What was their gain? What was the point?

Lou Benson: Well, it was, I mean, to fight Franco's Forces, and that was one technique, of course sabotage, operating behind Franco's lines. But that was the military purpose of it. It undoubtedly gave them an opportunity to process people from the International Brigades who might be invited in. But its purpose was fight against Franco's forces and on behalf of the Republicans.

Interviewer: But also there's a good, a good opportunity -- to, to recruit.

Lou Benson: To recruit. I would think so, yes.

Interviewer: Now moving back to the United States. Um, the Soviet's, um, had -- what part did the American Communist Party play in selecting, screening, recruiting Americans who might be useful to the Soviets? To the KGB?

Lou Benson: If we look at the spy scene in Venona, and the agents, let's call them, Soviet Agency scene in Venona, they were essentially all Communists, or very closely allied with Communist Party members, called "the travellers," and that sort of thing. The party did in fact provide candidates who would recommend the specially trusted Communists to the Soviet Intelligence Services. For instance, Earl Browder, who was the leader of the American Communist Party, in Venona we see him from time to time discussing candidates and the KGB coming to him to discuss candidates. The party used a man named Bernie Schuster, again seen in Venona, as a liaison between the party and the KGB. Then Schuster would conduct what would be called background investigations. If a particular party member seemed like a good candidate to work for the KGB because of his access to classified information, or for some other reason the KGB wanted a person in a certain place, Schuster would check them out. We can only guess from the messages, Venona messages, but he apparently would check party records, and he would interview other party members and then make a recommendation as to whether this person would be suitable for the KGB.

Interviewer: And the KGB used these Americans to do it's work for it?

Lou Benson: The KGB used American Communists. Yes.

Interviewer: Now they were front organisations, legitimate organisations but with a covert purpose, TASS and Amtorg. In your own words could you tell me what those were and what they did?

Lou Benson: TASS was the Soviet Press Organisation in the United States, and in other countries where they were accredited. It served as a legitimate press relations and news service purpose and provided a cover for the KGB and GRU. So on the staff of any TASS unit in any country was KGB and GRU officers. The same could be said for Amtorg, which was the Soviet Government's trading organisation in the Western Hemisphere. There were similar trading organisations in other areas that had different names. Amtorg existed to further Soviet economic interests and legitimate trade purposes. Once again it provided a front, a cover, under which the KGB and GRU officers could operate.

Interviewer: Before the war they were interested in commercial intelligence or industrial intelligence. What kind of things did they collect?

Lou Benson: In the inter-war years there's no question, at least in the United States, the KGB and GRU had a great interest in what might be called industrial espionage, collecting trade secrets and so forth. I feel some of the targets were very mundane, but it was important to the Soviet Union and the Soviet economy. Things like synthetic rubber, sugar refining, processors, patrolling and refining processes, automobiles, automobile engines and, in a more, much more secret area of course, the development of American military aircraft. The espionage against these kinds of targets could be carried out in any number of ways. It could be the using the KGB and GRU officers under the cover of TASS and Amtorg but they could also be under the cover of the Embassy or the Soviet legations.

Interviewer: What do the term's legal and illegals mean?

Lou Benson: In Soviet intelligence usage, a legal would be a KGB or GRU Officer, intelligence officer, operating under a legal cover, let's say in the United States, perhaps on the staff of the Ambassador, -- perhaps on the staff of TASS or Amtorg, or the Consulate, as a First Secretary of the Consulate. That person, the legal, is concealing his true purpose, but he has a legal connection to the Soviet mission in the United States or in another country. An illegal traditionally was also a sworn KGB or GRU officer who would enter the target country, illegally, using false documentation, and then would assume a certain identity and perhaps might work as a salesman, which is what Colonel Akhmarhov, the illegal Chief in the United States did. He worked, I think, selling furs.

Interviewer: Tell me how Colonel Akhmarhov operated?

Lou Benson: Lieutenant Colonel Isak Akhmarhov was the Chief of the KGB illegals in the United States during the World War II. He was in this country on a second tour as an illegal, from 1942 to 1945. He'd also been here during the 1930s. He entered the United States illegally, using false documentation, and he was called the illegal resident. Resident is the Soviet term for station chief the United States, and in Britain you would use the term station chief perhaps for CIA or British Secret Service. They call that person a resident; he was the illegal resident. There were legal residents under diplomatic cover in New York, Washington, and San Francisco. So in theory he had parallel networks. You had a network run by the illegal resident, and you had multiple networks run by the legal residents. Of course it was all illegal. It was all against the law, but these were the terms of the time. And the terms are still in use.

Interviewer: How many kinds of code names did Akhmarhov have?

Lou Benson: Akhmarhov is his true name. In the United States he used four or five aliases at different times, such as, I believe, Michael Green, and perhaps Michael Adamack. He had a communications cover name, which is what we see in the Venona messages. That was Albert. When he met his agents he used what one might call a street name. Just a first name, Bill, John. His agents didn't know his alias. They didn't know his real name. They just knew him as Bill, and they knew his wife as Catherine.

Interviewer: Was Colonel Abel another illegal?

Lou Benson: Colonel Abel was an illegal. He was also a KGB officer, a sworn officer, of that service. I don't know how he entered the United States; I don't know if we do now. He certainly was using an alias in the United States, and he had a front, a cover business as a photographer

Interviewer: Now tell me about Venona. What exactly was Venona?

Lou Benson: Venona's just a made-up code word. Made up by the United States and Great Britain. It was the third of a series of code names. Earlier it was called Drug and Bride. It stood for the fact that we were able to read a certain set of Soviet Intelligence Service communications that had been sent during the 1940s.

Interviewer: Now where were these sent from? And how were they collected?

Lou Benson: The messages were between the KGB and GRU establishments abroad and the Centre in Moscow. For the most part they were passed by commercial international radio, by legitimate commercial companies, but of course they were turned into the message company, the cable company in cipher. So Western Union then would radio to Moscow a cipher telegram which they were told was perhaps of the Embassy, or the Consulate to Moscow. In other words a legitimate diplomatic communications. There were in fact diplomatic communications. There were trade communications. But there were also the communications of the GRU, the KGB and Naval Intelligence, the intelligence services operating in the United States.

Interviewer: How were these cables collected, as copies from Western Union?

Lou Benson: In general, yes. During the war, generally speaking, these messages were acquired through censorship. On the day after Pearl Harbour certain emergency laws and regulations went into effect, and every cable going to or from the United States a copy had to go to the censor. The censor would turn over these messages to Arlington Hall. There were occasionally messages that were intercepted, on different circuits, for instance, between the KGB in Tokyo and the KGB in Moscow. Of course that had to be intercepted but it turns out none of those were read anyway.

Interviewer: What exactly was Arlington Hall? What were they trying to do there?

Lou Benson: Arlington Hall is just a convenient name for the Army Signal Intelligence Service. It had formally been in the War Department building in downtown Washington, but with the onset of war larger quarters were needed. A girl's school was acquired in Arlington, Virginia, and then a couple of large temporary buildings were put up behind the girls' school. Army Corp engineers worked day and night, and during 1942, army signal intelligence moved into Arlington Hall. We just tended to call that organisation Arlington Hall, though it was merely the name of the former school.

Interviewer: Is that where they were trying to crack Venona?

Lou Benson: All Army, I should say. Most Army code breaking work was done at Arlington Hall. It was the Headquarters for the Army's world-wide signal intelligence operations. So Venona, what became called Venona was being worked on at Arlington Hall. Yes. It was a small effort to begin with.

Interviewer: The first break in cracking the code or one of the first breaks was Cecil Philips. Can you describe what happened?

Lou Benson: Well, Cecil Philips came to Arlington Hall in 1943. I think it was when he was eighteen years old, after he had finished two years at college. He went onto the Russian program surprisingly or worked on Mayday, 1944, and in November, 1944, he made some observations in studying Russian diplomatic traffic that essentially was the basic break in Venona. He made the basic solution that led to this whole thing unravelling. The reason was the material he was studying turned out to be KGB. He did not know that at the time. He found a way to exploit this material, or to identify it to make what we would call matches. The fact that it happened to be KGB was -- is one of the most important parts of this whole story.

Interviewer: What was the nature of the break through?

Lou Benson: What he did is he took the first few groups of messages and the last few groups of a message. I think it took some hundreds of messages and studied them and wrote them down. He found in one set of messages that there appeared to be too many sixes. If these were truly random numbers, one-tenth of the numbers in these groups should have been sixes. In fact there it was more than that, much more than that. After further study and discussion, what Cecil realised was that these numbers were what's called free key, that they were not encrypted. That they had been taken directly from a one-time pad and not added to anything not added to the code groups. Had these numbers been added to code, this bias in favour of sixes would have disappeared. We cannot explain why there was this bias in favour of sixes, because these were essentially random numbers, but they weren't absolutely random. His noticing it led to the unravelling of the whole thing.

Interviewer: The person who made the break through, I think, in language is Meredith Gardner. What did he do?

Lou Benson: Meredith Gardner was a -- a linguist, a linguistic genius, who during World War II had worked on Japanese Army problems, particularly military attaché. He spoke or could read a dozen or so languages and he had taught himself Russian. After the second world war, he was assigned to the Russian section, and taking advantages of the cipher breaks that had been made by Cecil Philips, and a large modest sized group of people, he was able to start attacking the underlying code. Now here was a codebook that the United States had never seen and has never seen to this day. But using his understanding of the Russian language, he reconstructed that codebook. The code group had ten thousand groups, probably by mid 1948, through analysis, he recovered ninety per cent of those code groups.

Interviewer: And what did that enable them to, to do?

Lou Benson: Well that enabled him then, to put the code groups into the messages, and translate, and then you would have the text of a Russian espionage message. So first you have to deal with that cipher, which is from the one-time pad. You have to strip the cipher off. Then you get down to the code. Then you've had to figure out what the code means. That code or code book is a dictionary really with -- with numbers.

Interviewer: One of the first great discoveries Gardner made was he saw this list of names appear. What list of names was this?

Lou Benson: During 1946, Meredith Gardner was able to decrypt to some extent, oh, a handful of messages, maybe four or five. In one of these messages that he translated he broke out from the code and so forth, he found a list of names which he recognised as people who had been involved in the atomic bomb program of the United States. Also it did include some foreign names such as Eisenberg I believe.

Interviewer: Who was he?

Lou Benson: He was, as I recall, a German Physicist who the US believed was probably heading the Nazi atomic bomb effort. So this was a list of physicists, involved in the development of this new weapon.

Interviewer: What could that tell American Intelligence?

Lou Benson: It was suggested that there was a Soviet agent inside the Manhattan Project.

Interviewer: Doing what?

Lou Benson: This agent was supplying the Soviet Union with classified information concerning the Manhattan project and the development of the atomic bomb.

Interviewer: What conclusion was drawn from the existence of this list of names?

Lou Benson: When Meredith Gardner saw this list of names, he recognised a number of names of famous physicists who were involved in the Manhattan Project. Meredith realised that this message was dated in, I believe, 1944, perhaps early '45. Now in 1944, any association of people with the Manhattan Project was at that time top secret. So it suggested to him somebody had acquired top secret information and had passed it on to Soviet intelligence.

Interviewer: So the Manhattan project was no longer secure?

Lou Benson: Correct.

Interviewer: Now, what further discoveries did this cracking the code as it were, lead to? For example did was Fuchs tracked down?

Lou Benson: Klaus Fuchs is found in Venona under a couple of cover names such as Charles or Rest. A particular message that Meredith Gardner solved was sent by the KGB in New York in 1944 to Moscow Centre, and it referenced a particular document, a particular study, that had been produced at Los Alamos in the Manhattan Project. It was learned that the author of that particular study was Klaus Fuchs, so that at least entered Klaus Fuchs' name into the tracking of Soviet agents. It began the investigation into atomic bomb espionage. As other messages were studied, it became apparent that the cover name Charles was a Soviet agent, and the cover name Charles was Klaus Fuchs. Fuchs was subsequently interrogated by security service and by FBI. He made confessions to both. His confessions then led in to other people and further confessions and the break up of a particularly important espionage network. Now the people who were rolled up here are also all in Venona so the investigation proceeds in a couple of directions. Studying these people later learned about Harry Gold, the Greenglasses and the Rosenbergs. Studying them in Venona, but then also taking Klaus Fuchs' confession and going after the next person, getting a confession from Harry Gold, then getting the identification of the Greenglasses, and then getting their confession and the identification of the Rosenbergs.

Interviewer: Did the Russians have any agents who had access to Venona? Who could feed back to them what was going on?

Lou Benson: A man named William Wiesband, who had been in Army signal intelligence during the second world war, and was assigned to Arlington Hall from the Mediterranean Theatre Operations later 1944. He was a Russian speaker. He spoke quite a number of languages. In 1945, probably the very beginning of 1945, he was assigned to the Russian Program which we speak of it as Venona. In those days, it simply would have been called the Russian Program if it were spoken of at all. He had the opportunity to observe certainly the early developments in this program. Meredith Gardner upon breaking out the atomic scientist's message called Wiesband over and said take a look at this message. He was subsequently determined from the investigation of a man named Jones York, found in Venona, that Wiesband apparently was a veteran KGB agent who had handled Mr. York and perhaps others.

Interviewer: So it was penetrated almost from day one?

Lou Benson: If in fact Wiesband was still working for the Soviets in the beginning of 1945, he could have reported on the progress of the attack on Russian diplomatic communications which of course included the KGB's communications.

Interviewer: Now of course Kim Philby also had access to Venona?

Lou Benson: Kim Philby was assigned to MI6 in Washington. In 1949, and he continued in that post until 1951. Part of his legitimate duties were to receive and study Venona translations. We know that from 1949 to '51, perhaps monthly, perhaps every couple of weeks, he did receive Venona translations. Kim Philby also visited Arlington Hall a couple of times. There was nothing particularly notable about the visits. Allegedly, he didn't pay much attention to what was being said. The important thing is he was receiving the translations. He was also undoubtedly was learning from the FBI about the progress of the investigations. Of course he liased with his counterpart in the Security Service. So he would have had full knowledge of the privacy investigations as well as the progress of the code breaking, and the discovery of new cover names from circumstances.

Interviewer: And how could he use that knowledge?

Lou Benson: Presumably Philby would have passed this information back to the Soviets by whatever channel he was using. It's a certainty that information Philby got from Venona led to the tip-off of Burgess and Donald Maclean and their flight to the Soviet Union. Maclean's cover name was Homer in Venona. He was identified, but before the next move could be made, he and Burgess fled. This is probably the most important counter intelligence development of the Venona story. Regardless of the fact that they supposedly got away with it, in fact, it broke up the most important espionage group any country could ever have had. Maclean's access to UK and US secrets was without parallel. It went far beyond just diplomatic matters, military and so forth. So when they fled, of course, we know the story that people began looking at Philby. Effectively that was the end of that group.

Interviewer: So it's seen as a kind of a victory that they fled, but in reality it was felt the end of the whole enterprise. It was a defeat for them?

Lou Benson: As a matter of fact, yes. It's hard to imagine how anything could have been more disappointing to the Soviets. They had extraordinary agents in the highest places, and they lost them.

Interviewer: Did the knowledge of what was going on in Venona help the Soviets tip off people, like possibly the Cohens, that they should flee?

Lou Benson: It's very hard to say until the Soviets tell their side of the story. How they made use of the information they got from Philby in tipping off and extracting their agents, we know, in the case of Burgess and Maclean what happened. They certainly had ample opportunity to tip off other people, such as the Rosenbergs, Cohens and so forth. They did tip off the Rosenbergs late in the game, and Julius Rosenberg tried to get his network out of the United States. Some got out. Some didn't. Lona Cohen's cover name was probably Lesley. She appears just in a single message of, I believe, early 1945, where KGB New York says they have not been in touch with Lesley for several months and are thinking of reactivating her to do some support work. I don't recall if it was as a courier, or it could be the keeper of a safe house. Morris Cohen is definitely not identified in Venona. He was, after all, in the army at that time. KGB would have had trouble contacting him. Some people think that the unidentified cover name, Volunteer, is Morris Cohen, but we don't know.

Interviewer: Now, we know that Lona Cohen was acting as a courier going down to Los Alamos, or out to Albuquerque where she met a scientist. Who was she meeting? Does Venona tell us the name of the person?

Lou Benson: There is nothing in Venona to really say anything about what the Cohens were doing. Because the single message concerning Lona Cohen as cover name Lesley simply refers to the fact the KGB has not been in touch with her in recent months, but they were going to reactivate her for some type of courier duties or to be the keeper of a safe house. So from Venona we would really not learn much about what Lona Cohen is doing. If Morris Cohen is the unidentified cover name Volunteer, there's a little bit more, but even there the references to Volunteer don't tie to atomic bomb espionage. So Venona is a very modest source of information on the Cohens.

Interviewer: What does Venona tell us about the man that Lona Cohen was meeting in Albuquerque?

Lou Benson: Reportedly, but not from Venona, Lona Cohen was meeting with Ted Hall who was a young physicist at Los Alamos. He's very prominent in Venona. In 1944 he got in touch with the Russians, and was recruited by the KGB by an officer, an agent officer, named Sergei Kurnakov. He is seen in a number of Venona messages. Now the first message where there's a description of Kurnakov's meeting with Hall, his true name is used. The Venona message speaks of Kurnakov having a meeting with Theodore Hall. It says he's nineteen-years-old and a physicist. That he's involved in the Manhattan Project, and how he got in touch with the Soviets through a couple of tries, he and a friend of his made contact with the Soviets. Thereafter we see messages that refer to that meeting, and they speak of a cover name Mollad, and the equation was immediately made that Mollad and Hall were the same person. United States and the UK, therefore, had the identification of Hall, and Hall equals Mollad by the end of 1949 and certainly not later than probably the first half of 1950.

Interviewer: Does that mean that Hall's effectiveness ceased?

Lou Benson: Yes, in the case of Mr. Hall. I would have to draw on some recent books, particularly Joe Allbright's Commercial Consuls Book, Bomb Shell, where by 1950 Hall was not working for the government. I mean he had left what became the Atomic Energy Commission, shortly after the war. According to information, apparently, Hall may have provided to Mr. Allbright, he may have had further contact with the Russians, but he's not working for the US Government at that time. He's perhaps a graduate student at the University of Chicago at the time he comes under investigation.

Interviewer: How many code names are there in Venona? And how many people are still unidentified?

Lou Benson: If we consider the Venona messages that are to and from the United States, it would probably appear that there are at least just say one hundred and twenty-five Americans who were Soviet Agents to the KGB or the GRU. In other words their names are known in or through Venona, either directly from the messages or by analysis and investigation. Some of these people have cover names. Some of these people appear by their true names. Then we have an additional, let's say, a hundred cover names that have not been identified, a hundred cover names that appear to be Americans. That's, approximate. One of the reasons cover names cannot be identified is if they only appear in a couple of messages. So there is no context. It might suggest the person wasn't all that important. And that's hard to say. There are a few unidentified cover names that would appear to be important.

Interviewer: Are these important in terms of the atomic bomb program?

Lou Benson: Among the unidentified Venona cover names is one Pers, who appears in about five Venona messages. Pers is apparently a physicist. He's definitely working on the atomic bomb, or he might be at Oak Ridge, he has never been identified. There are others, other figures that appear in some of the messages concerning the atomic bomb espionage, but it's hard to know quite what to make of them.

Interviewer: Is Pers, probably a significant plan?

Lou Benson: I think Pers probably was a significant espionage figure for the Soviets. But again we only have five messages. But he does provide technical data, or he has access to technical data. In just a modest number of messages the Russians themselves have said that Pers was an important agent, but, of course, they declined to give the name of that person.

Interviewer: So Pers could still be alive?

Lou Benson: It's possible. We really don't know who Pers is.

Interviewer: And he's still not caught?

Lou Benson: If he's alive, he or she is not caught.

Source: Red Files: Secret Victories of the KGB

The Cold War Atomic Intelligence Game, 1945-70 - From the Russian Perspective - part 3

Part 1

Part 2

Counterintelligence Operations

The USSR's Communist Party and the government called on the KGB to maintain an enhanced counterintelligence posture at nuclear facilities. A 1947 resolution of the USSR Council of Ministers regarding security at the warhead R&D facility in Sarov, for example, directed that, "[I]n order to prevent infiltrations of Object No. 550 (code-name of the R&D center] by spies, saboteurs, and other enemies . . . the USSR Ministry of State Security (comrade Abakumov) is obligated to step up its operational and chekist work at Object No. 550 and in the areas of Mordov republic and Gorky region adjacent to the special regime zone."

In response, the KGB established a Department K in its headquarters in Moscow and "K" units in the regions. The KGB worked with nuclear facilities to develop suitable cover stories to conceal their true missions, monitored information protection measures, and implemented countermeasures against technical collection systems (see below). It also conducted classic counterintelligence operations involving the penetration of foreign intelligence organizations, working against suspected and confirmed foreign intelligence officers in the Soviet Union, and monitoring nuclear facilities and their surroundings.

According to KGB analysis, its success in preventing the insertion of clandestine agents inside the Soviet Union from the late 1940s to early 1950s forced Western intelligence services to rely on intelligence officers operating under diplomatic cover and agents entering the country via such other legitimate channels as tourism, scientific meetings, and cultural exchanges. This allowed the KGB to focus its operational resources on a relatively small number of targets. In 1961, KGB surveillance against Canadian and British diplomats led to the exposure of Col. Pen-kovskiy, who had provided the West with information on a range of nuclear-related matters. Later on, according to the KGB's 1967 Annual Report:

[I]n the course of counterintelligence countermeasures with regard to enemy intelligence officers under diplomatic cover and other foreigners under suspicion of being affiliated with the enemy's special services, a number of Soviet citizens who established contact with the aim of passing secret information were discovered and unmasked. Among those persons brought to justice were . . . a technician [named Malyshev] from an installation of special significance of the Ministry of Medium Machine-Building.

Technical Countermeasures

The effectiveness of the KGB's counterintelligence operations, on one hand, and improvements in US signals intelligence, overhead imagery, and nuclear test monitoring capabilities, on the other hand, led the US atomic energy intelligence program to rely increasingly on technical collection systems. KGB historians observe that the 1950s marked the beginning of the massive use of novel espionage technologies. In the nuclear energy area, for example, "[T]o locate Soviet atomic facilities . . . American, British, and Canadian intelligence officers and their agents were armed with state-of-the-art radio-electronic equipment, . . . radio-navigational systems . . . . Massive application of modern means of science and technology was a characteristic feature of activities by imperialist intelligences during that period [1953-58]."

In response, the KGB "took measures . . . to bring to further perfection the protection of state secrets from the radio-technical and aerial-space means of reconnaissance of the enemy." At a test site, for example, operations on nuclear devices in the field were conducted under a tent to prevent visual observation. Furthermore, "[T]he organs of military counterintelligence of the KGB did significant work on camouflaging . . . depots of nuclear weapons and other objects from the enemy's space reconnaissance." Moreover, most communications between nuclear facilities and the complex's headquarters in Moscow were by teletype or telephone and involved the use of landlines and microwave systems. These were considerably more difficult to intercept than short-wave radio transmissions, the target of the National Security Agency's listening stations at that time. Particularly sensitive documents, such as production data for the nuclear warhead assembly complex, were hand-delivered by couriers.

Radiological analysis of radioactive residues from Soviet atmospheric tests, collected by the US atomic Energy Detection System (USAEDS), was the primary tool for tracking the progress of the USSR's nuclear weapons R&D program and its atomic capabilities during the 1950s and 1960s. Indeed, benchmarked by US nuclear test data, the analysis of Soviet nuclear test residues allowed scientists from US national laboratories to determine the Soviet devices' "design space," yield, efficiency, materials, and other parameters. After 1963, when the United States and the Soviet Union signed the partial test ban treaty prohibiting nuclear explosions above the ground, each country made a transition to underground nuclear testing. The end of atmospheric testing was a major setback to the US intelligence effort. According to National Intelligence Estimate 11-2A-65, "[O]ur estimates of Soviet nuclear weapon technology . . . are based almost entirely upon analysis of the tests through 1962 . . . and upon extrapolation from that analysis." The radiological method remained useful to some extent because of radioactive venting from Soviet underground explosions. However, Soviet efforts to reduce venting eventually made the US radiological method ineffective against Soviet targets.

In 1973, the increasing threat from Western technical collection systems caused the Soviet government to establish a new organization, the State Technical Commission, with the main mission of developing and implementing a comprehensive system of countermeasures against technical espionage.

Gauging the Effectiveness of Soviet D&D

During the Cold War, US intelligence agencies invested considerable resources and effort to understand and predict Soviet nuclear technologies and policies. Despite the fact that the United States was off by several years in predicting the first Soviet atomic explosion in August 1949, it subsequently enjoyed numerous and remarkable achievements. For example, from the first Soviet explosion through the test series of 1961-62, US intelligence detected and correctly characterized many milestone designs of Soviet fission and thermonuclear weapons. Much of this success was based on the fact that atmospheric nuclear explosions by nature were so powerful that they were physically impossible to contain or conceal.

The Soviet Union also was unable to hide from overhead imagery systems its huge nuclear weapons production infrastructure. By 1965, the US intelligence program had correctly identified and characterized facilities with more obvious nuclear signatures, including all fissile material production centers, some uranium processing facilities, the Sarov warhead R&D center, the serial warhead assembly facilities in Lesnoy and Trekhgorny, and the component manufacturing plant in Zarechny. It appears that some facilities, especially those lacking distinct signatures, escaped detection. It is not clear, for example, that the CIA was aware in the 1960s of the non-nuclear warhead component manufacturing facilities and R&D institutes in Moscow, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, and Nizhni Novgorod.

Soviet D&D measures were very effective in preventing the United States from learning what was going on inside the buildings it could easily see from space. For example, US intelligence had a hard time assessing the Soviet program to produce enriched uranium for nuclear weapons and reactors. According to a 1954 National Intelligence Estimate:

Only meager evidence is available that is relevant to the isotope separation phase of the program . . . . The absence of sufficient evidence from which to estimate installed or planned isotope separation capacity continues to be one of the most serious gaps in intelligence information on the Soviet atomic energy program.

More than 10 years later, in 1965, US intelligence observed that while it had reasonably accurate estimates of power inputs into the Soviet gaseous diffusion plants—based on data obtained from overhead imagery and electric grid analysis—its assessments of plant efficiencies and, as a result, production capabilities, were very uncertain. Reliable estimates of plant efficiency would have required detailed knowledge of the Soviet gaseous diffusion technology and plant operations, which stand-off collection systems simply could not deliver.

Perhaps even more importantly, the USSR succeeded in preventing US intelligence from detecting its transition to the more advanced centrifuge uranium enrichment technology. A 1964 National Intelligence Estimate judged that "[T]he present size of the Soviet gaseous diffusion complex . . . tends to indicate that significant U-235 production by the ultracentrifuge and other methods is unlikely." In fact, a pilot centrifuge facility had begun operation in Novouralsk in 1957. By 1962, the initial phase of a much larger complex at that site had commenced operations, and by 1964 the entire industrial centrifuge enrichment facility had been completed and was fully operational.

The Soviet government worked hard to keep the centrifuge effort secret. The critical point was the repatriation of the German scientists who had participated in the project. According to Nickolai Sinev, the Soviet chief centrifuge designer during the 1950s:

Immediately upon his return from the USSR, Gernot Zippe [a talented engineer from Austria] . . . patents in the West the Soviet invention [the design of a subcritical centrifuge] . . . . Having learned about this plagiarism, the Soviet atomic management decided not to react to this information—to keep quiet in order not to give any indication that the USSR was working on a new, progressive method of uranium enrichment. Let them think that the USSR . . . continued using the inefficient gaseous diffusion method. Indeed, that was the price of the concealment for over 30 years of the industrial deployment of a new economic uranium enrichment technology in the USSR.

Another participant in the centrifuge program adds bitterly that "the damage to morale and economic damage done by the notorious regime of secrecy, which did not allow the USSR to patent abroad the Soviet centrifuge design, was [enormous]."

In Conclusion

Throughout the Cold War, the United States and its allies mounted a massive atomic energy intelligence effort against the Soviet Union. It was countered with a highly effective, defense-in-depth system of countermeasures. The precise score of this competition is unlikely ever to be established. It is clear, however, that long-range, stand-off technical systems proved to be the best collection sources for the United States, allowing for successful tracking of many aspects of the Soviet nuclear program. Overhead imagery enabled the detection and analysis of critical elements of the Soviet nuclear infrastructure. The USAEDS system, designed to monitor radioactive effluents from nuclear explosions and nuclear material processing, yielded important data on the development of Soviet nuclear weapons science and technology. Because of denial and deception countermeasures, however, the USSR's nuclear program was an exceptionally hard target. The lack of reliable on-the-ground intelligence made it difficult for the West to understand important developments inside the Soviet nuclear complex, which resulted in significant intelligence gaps.

Source

National Security Agency - domestic activity

The NSA's mission, as set forth in Executive Order 12333, is to collect information that constitutes "foreign intelligence or counterintelligence" while not "acquiring information concerning the domestic activities of United States persons". The NSA has declared that it relies on the FBI to collect information on foreign intelligence activities within the borders of the USA, while confining its own activities within the USA to the embassies and missions of foreign nations.

The NSA's domestic surveillance activities are limited by the requirements imposed by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; however, these protections do not apply to non-U.S. persons located outside of U.S. borders, so the NSA's foreign surveillance efforts are subject to far fewer limitations under U.S. law. The specific requirements for domestic surveillance operations are contained in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA), which does not extend protection to non-U.S. citizens located outside of U.S. territory.

The activities described below, especially the publicly acknowledged and so-called 'Domestic Phone' tapping and Domestic Call Database programs, have prompted questions about the extent of the NSA's activities and concerns about privacy and the rule of law.

A wiretapping program named ThinThread was tested in the late 1990s, according to information obtained by the Baltimore Sun in 2006. This program may have contributed to the underlying technology used in later systems, but its safeguards on privacy were abandoned after the 9/11 attacks.

On December 16, 2005, the New York Times reported that, under White House pressure and with an executive order from President George W. Bush, the National Security Agency, in an attempt to thwart terrorism, had been conducting phone-taps on individuals in the U.S. calling persons outside the country, without obtaining warrants from a secret court as required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

Proponents of the warrantless surveillance claim that the President has the authority to order such action, arguing that the President has powers under the Constitution that trump laws such as FISA. In addition, some argued that FISA was implicitly overridden by a subsequent statute, the Authorization for Use of Military Force, although most concede this argument is untenable after the Supreme Court's ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. The only judge to rule on the matter thus far, in the case ACLU v. NSA, concluded that such surveillance is illegal and unconstitutional; her decision is stayed pending appeal. Third party legal authorities agree that the surveillance is illegal or probably illegal, although there is more disagreement as to whether it is unconstitutional. See NSA warrantless surveillance controversy for details.

In the years after President Nixon resigned, there were several investigations of suspected misuse of CIA and NSA facilities. Senator Frank Church headed a Senate investigating committee called the Church Committee which uncovered previously unknown activity, such as a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro by the CIA, which had been ordered by President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. During the investigation, it was also found that the NSA was actively tapping the phones of targeted American citizens. After the Church Committee hearings, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 became law, limiting circumstances under which domestic surveillance was allowed.

National Security Agency - non-government cryptography

NSA has been involved in debates about public policy, both as a behind-the-scenes adviser to other departments, and directly during and after Vice Admiral Bobby Ray Inman's directorship.

The NSA was embroiled in controversy concerning its involvement in the creation of the Data Encryption Standard (DES), a standard and public block cipher used by the US government. During development by IBM in the 1970s, the NSA recommended changes to the algorithm. There was suspicion the agency had deliberately weakened the algorithm sufficiently to enable it to eavesdrop if required. The suspicions were that a critical component — the so-called S-boxes — had been altered to insert a "backdoor"; and that the key length had been reduced, making it easier for the NSA to discover the key using massive computing power.

However, the public reinvention of the technique known as differential cryptanalysis suggested that one of the changes (to the S-boxes) had actually been suggested to harden the algorithm against this — then publicly unknown — method of attack; differential cryptanalysis remained publicly unknown until it was independently reinvented and published some decades later. On the other hand the shortening of the cryptographic key from 128 bits, as recommended in IBM submission, to an effective key of only 56 bits in length, has been interpreted as an intentional weakening of the algorithm by the NSA, making possible an exhaustive search for the key by those with sufficient computer power and funding.

Because of concerns that widespread use of strong cryptography would hamper government use of wiretaps, the NSA proposed the concept of key escrow in 1993 and introduced the Clipper chip that would offer stronger protection than DES but would allow access to encrypted data by authorized law enforcement officials. The proposal was strongly opposed and went nowhere.

Possibly because of previous controversy, the involvement of NSA in the selection of a successor to DES, the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), was limited to hardware performance testing.

NSA was a major player in the debates of the 1990s regarding the export of cryptography. Cryptographic software and hardware had long been classed with fighter planes, tanks, cannons, and atomic bombs as controllable munitions. Restrictions on export were reduced but not eliminated in 1996.

The NSA/CSS has, at times, attempted to restrict the publication of academic research into cryptography; for example, the Khufu and Khafre block ciphers were voluntarily withheld in response to an NSA request to do so.

National Security Agency - role and history

Headquarters for the National Security Agency is at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, approximately ten miles (16 km) northeast of Washington, D.C. NSA has its own exit off the Baltimore-Washington Parkway labeled "NSA Employees Only". The scale of the operations at the NSA is hard to determine from unclassified data, but one clue is the electricity usage of NSA's headquarters. NSA's budget for electricity exceeds US$31 million per year, making it the second largest electricity consumer in the entire state of Maryland.

Photos have shown there to be 18,000 parking spaces at the site, although most guesses have put the NSA's worldwide workforce at around double that number. In 2006, the Baltimore Sun reported that the NSA was at risk of electrical overload because of insufficient internal electrical infrastructure at Fort Meade to support the amount of equipment being installed. This problem was apparently recognized in the 1990s but not made a priority, and "now the agency's ability to keep its operations going is threatened". Its secure government communications work has involved NSA in numerous technology areas, including the design of specialized communications hardware and software, production of dedicated semiconductors (at the Ft. Meade chip fabrication plant), and advanced cryptography research. The agency contracts with the private sector in the fields of research and equipment.

The NSA has facilities besides its Ft. Meade headquarters, such as the Texas Cryptology Center in San Antonio, Texas.

The NSA is increasing its reliance on American industry for the purposes of domestic spying, through a project code-named Project GROUNDBREAKER. It is linked to the DOD doctrines called "Fight the net" and "Information Operations Roadmap". Ex-director Michael Hayden has said, "As the director, I was the one responsible to ensure that this program was limited in its scope and disciplined in its application". Two examples of relying on American industry for the purposes of domestic spying are the use of CALEA on US telecommunication companies, and NarusInsight. Under CALEA, all US telecommunication companies are forced to install hardware capable of monitoring data and voice by May 14, 2007. The act also forces US telecommunication companies to build national technology standards to support CALEA. NarusInsight is one type of spying hardware, capable of monitoring an OC-192 network line in real-time, and gives AT&T the power to monitor all 7,432,000 DSL lines it owns. According to Narus, after data capture its software can replay "streaming media (for example, VoIP), rendering of Web pages, examination of e-mails and the ability to analyze the payload/attachments of e-mail or file transfer protocols".

History

The origins of the National Security Agency can be traced to the May 20, 1949 creation of the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA). This organization was originally established within the Department of Defense under the command of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The AFSA was to be responsible for directing the communications and electronic intelligence activities of the military intelligence units—the Army Security Agency, the Naval Security Group, and the Air Force Security Service. However, the agency had little power and lacked a centralized coordination mechanism. The creation of NSA resulted from a December 10, 1951, memo sent by CIA Director Walter Bedell Smith to James B. Lay, Executive Secretary of the National Security Council. The memo observed that "control over, and coordination of, the collection and processing of Communications Intelligence had proved ineffective" and recommended a survey of communications intelligence activities.

The proposal was approved on December 13, 1951, and the study authorized on December 28, 1951. The report was completed by June 13, 1952. Generally known as the "Brownell Committee Report," after committee chairman Herbert Brownell, it surveyed the history of U.S. communications intelligence activities and suggested the need for a much greater degree of coordination and direction at the national level. As the change in the security agency's name indicated, the role of the NSA was extended beyond the armed forces.

The creation of the NSA was authorized in a letter written by President Harry S. Truman in June of 1952. The agency was formally established through a revision of National Security Council Intelligence Directive (NSCID) 9 on October 24, 1952, and officially came into existence on November 4, 1952. President Truman's letter was itself classified and remained unknown to the public for more than a generation.

The heraldic insignia of NSA consists of a bald eagle facing its right, a symbol of peace, grasping a key in its talons, representing NSA's clutch on security as well as the mission to protect and gain access to secrets. The eagle is set on a background of blue and its breast features a blue shield supported by thirteen bands of red and white. The surrounding white circular border features "National Security Agency" around the top and "United States of America" underneath, with two five-pointed silver stars between the two phrases. The current NSA insignia has been in use since 1965, when then-DIRNSA, LTG Marshall S. Carter directed for the creation of a device to represent NSA.

National Security Agency - overview

The National Security Agency/Central Security Service (NSA/CSS) is the United States government's cryptologic organization that was officially established on November 4, 1952. Responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications, it coordinates, directs, and performs highly specialized activities to produce foreign signals intelligence information, which involves a significant amount of cryptanalysis. It is also responsible for protecting U.S. government communications and information systems from similar agencies elsewhere, which involves a significant amount of cryptography.

A component of the Department of Defense, the NSA has always been directed by a three-star flag officer. The NSA is a key component of the U.S. Intelligence Community, which is headed by the Director of National Intelligence.

Contrary to popular perception, the NSA does not engage in “wiretapping”; it collects signals intelligence, or “sigint.” In contrast to the image we have from movies and television of an FBI agent placing a listening device on a target’s phone line, the NSA intercepts entire streams of electronic communications containing millions of telephone calls and e-mails. It runs the intercepts through very powerful computers that screen them for particular names, telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and trigger words or phrases. Any communications containing flagged information are forwarded by the computer for further analysis.

The NSA's eavesdropping mission includes radio broadcasting, both from various organizations and individuals, the Internet, telephone calls, and other intercepted forms of communication. Its secure communications mission includes military, diplomatic, and all other sensitive, confidential or secret government communications. Despite having been described as the world's largest single employer of mathematicians, and the owner of the single largest group of supercomputers, it has tried to keep a low profile. For many years its existence was not even acknowledged by the U.S. government. It was often said, half-jokingly, that "NSA" stood for "No Such Agency", and also, as "Never Say Anything", primarily for its employees.

Because of its listening task, the NSA/CSS has been heavily involved in cryptanalytic research, continuing the work of its predecessor agencies which had been responsible for breaking many World War II codes and ciphers (see, for instance, Purple code, Venona, and JN-25).

Role and history

Controversy

Domestic activity

United States Army Intelligence and Security Command

The U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), a major Army command, conducts dominant intelligence, security and information operations for military commanders and national decision makers. INSCOM is both an organization within the US Army and the National Security Agency (NSA), the US' unified Signals Intelligence Organization. INSCOM and its counterparts in the Navy and Air Force are known as Central Security Service within NSA.

Charged with providing the warfighter the seamless intelligence needed to understand the battlefield and to focus and leverage combat power, INSCOM collects intelligence information in all intelligence disciplines. INSCOM also conducts a wide range of production activities, ranging from intelligence preparation of the battlefield to situation development, SIGINTanalysis, imagery exploitation, and science and technology intelligence production. INSCOM also has major responsibilities in the areas of counterintelligence and force protection, electronic warfare and information warfare, and support to force modernization and training.

INSCOM is a global command with four brigades that tailor their support to the specific needs of different theaters. Eight other groups or activities located worldwide focus primarily on a single intelligence discipline or function. They are available in a reinforcing role, enabling any combat commander to use INSCOM's full range of unique capabilities.

History

On Jan. 1, 1977, the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) was organized at Arlington Hall Station, Va. The formation of INSCOM provided the Army with a single instrument to conduct multi-discipline intelligence and security operations and electronic warfare at the level above corps and to produce finished intelligence tailored to the Army’s needs.

The new major command merged divergent intelligence disciplines and traditions in a way that was unique to the Army. Its creation marked the most radical realignment of Army intelligence assets in a generation. Several major building blocks were consolidated to form the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command. They were the former U.S. Army Security Agency, a signal intelligence and signal security organization with headquarters at Arlington Hall, Va.; the U.S. Army Intelligence Agency, a counterintelligence and human intelligence agency based at Fort George G. Meade, Md.; and several intelligence production units formerly controlled by the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence and U.S. Army Forces Command.

Brig. Gen. (later Maj. Gen.) William I. Rolya, former commanding general of the Army Security Agency and INSCOM’s first commander, had a wide array of diverse assets at his disposal. Initially, these included eight fixed field stations on four continents inherited from the Army Security Agency, various single-discipline units commanded by the U.S. Army Intelligence Agency, and the production centers in the Washington, D.C., area and at Fort Bragg, N. C.

On Oct. 1, 1977, the former U.S. Army Intelligence Agency headquarters was integrated into INSCOM, and the command established a unified intelligence production element, the Intelligence and Threat Analysis Center, on Jan. 1, 1978. Additionally, INSCOM assumed command of three military intelligence groups located overseas: the 66th Military Intelligence Group in Germany, the 470th Military Intelligence Group in Panama, and the 500th Military Intelligence Group in Japan. These groups were transformed into multidisciplinary units by incorporating former Army Security Agency assets into the previously existing elements. A fourth such group, the 501st Military Intelligence Group, was soon organized in Korea.

Parapsychologic Methods

Under the leadership of General Albert Stubblebine, INSCOM attempted to use parapsychologic methods in order to gather intelligence. This was done as late as 1981. Other intelligence services (such as some German services during World War II) attempted the same before, whithout any useful results.

Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency

The Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency (AF ISR) (F.K.A. the Air Intelligence Agency (AIA)) is an agency of the United States Air Force, with headquarters at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, and was activated 1 October 1993. The name change occurred 8 June 2007, and conincides with its new realignment from under the Air Combat Command to under the Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance. AF ISR had previously been realigned under Air Combat Command on 1 February 2001 as a primary subordinate unit and served as its primary information operations force provider normalizing and synchronizing IO capabilities into the warfighter's arsenal.

AF ISR is both an organization within the US Air Force and the National Security Agency (NSA), the US' unified Signals Intelligence Organization. AF ISR and its counterparts in the Navy and Army are known as Central Security Service within NSA.

Mission and organization

The agency's mission is to deliver multi-source intelligence products, applications, services, and resources. It also provides IO forces and expertise in the areas of information warfare, command and control warfare, security, acquisition, foreign weapons systems and technology, and treaty monitoring, to support Air Force major commands, Air Force components, and joint and national decision makers. With the realignment under Air Combat Command, the AF ISR commander serves as the Eighth Air Force deputy commander for information operations. The Eighth Air Force with its bomber and IO capabilities is the Air Force's first operational force designed to achieve and maintain information superiority.

The agency's 12,000 people serve at approximately 70 locations worldwide.

The National Air and Space Intelligence Center, Air Force Technical Applications Center, and 70th Intelligence Wing are aligned under Air Force ISR Agency. The agency is also responsible for mission management and support of signals intelligence operations for the 67th Network Warfare Wing, 55th Wing, 480th Intelligence Wing, and Air Force Information Operations Center, all four of which are subordinate to Air Combat Command and Eighth Air Force.

Air Force ISR Agency Units

National Air and Space Intelligence Center
The National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC), with headquarters at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, traces its roots back to 1917 during World War I. It is the primary Department of Defense producer of foreign aerospace intelligence. NASIC develops its products by analyzing all available data on foreign aerospace forces and weapons systems to determine performance characteristics, capabilities, vulnerabilities, and intentions. Center assessments are also an important factor in shaping national security and defense policies. As the DoD experts on foreign aerospace system capabilities, the center historically has also been involved in supporting American weapons treaty negotiations and verification.

70th Intelligence Wing
The 70th Intelligence Wing, with headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland, gains and exploits information as a major component of Eighth Air Force's global information operations mission. It provides national decision makers, tactical theater commanders, and warfighters of all services with tailored, timely and actionable information - anywhere, anytime. The wing plans and directs the integration of its components into theater and local exercises, ensuring wartime capabilities are tested and validated, and it assists component commanders with refining their requirements for products and services. Subordinate to the wing are three intelligence groups located in the continental U.S. and in the Pacific and European theaters. The wing was activated on 16 August 2000.

Air Force Technical Applications Center
The Air Force Technical Applications Center (AFTAC), with headquarters at Partrick AFB, Florida, mission is primarily Nuclear Detonation (NUDET) Detection, accomplished using seismic, hydroacoustic, and satellite detection systems.

Supported Units

67th Network Warfare Wing
The 67th Network Warfare Wing, with headquarters also at Lackland AFB manages the agency's global mission. The 67 NWW manages the planning of all-source intelligence. It assists Air Force components in the development of concepts, exercises and employment of AF ISR forces to support contingency, low-intensity conflict, counter-drug and special operations. Subordinate to the wing are five information operations groups located in the continental U.S., and in the Pacific and European theaters. Redesignated from units of the 67th Information Operations Wing, the new network warfare wing was activated on 5 July 2006 as part of a major restructuring of Air Force cyberspace assets.

55th Wing
The 55th Wing, with headquarters at Offutt AFB, Nebraska, conducts worldwide reconnaissance; command, control and communications; Presidential support and international treaty verification as directed by the President, Secretary of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, theater combatant commanders, commanders of major Air Force commands and national intelligence agencies.

480th Intelligence Wing
The 480th Intelligence Wing, with headquarters at Langley AFB, Virginia, produces and provides timely, tailored intelligence data and capabilities to meet Air Force needs. As a dynamic, worldwide force multiplier, it delivers valuable information to combatants. The wing conducts intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance tasking processing, exploitation and dissemination processing in support of national interests. It also performs imagery intelligence, cryptologic and measurement and signatures intelligence activities, as well as targeting and general intelligence production, intelligence data handling system network operations, and data/product dissemination. Subordinate to the wing are three intelligence groups located in the continental U.S. The wing was activated 1 December 2003.

Air Force Information Operations Center
The Air Force Information Operations Center (AFIOC), with headquarters at Lackland AFB, Texas, is engaged in a myriad of activities supporting its role as the Air Force's information warfare executive agent. It integrates information warfare tactics, training and technology for combatant commanders. The center is comprised of about 1,000 military and civilian members trained in the areas of operations, engineering, operations research, intelligence, radar technology and communications and computer applications. Formerly known as Air Force Information Warfare Center (AFIWC) activated 10 September 1993 by combining the Air Force Electronic Warfare Center with elements of the Air Force Cryptologic Support Center's securities directorate and portions of Air Force Intelligence Command. The merger of these organizations provided a solid baseline for the emerging IW mission.