Literally a year and a half after the end of World War II, a new so-called Cold War began, in which the former allies in the form of the Angloaxes and their satellites, on the one hand, and the USSR and its allies, on the other, were involved. The unfolding confrontation took place against the backdrop of an unprecedented tightening of the conservative regime in the United States, widespread repression of the left (communist and even socialist / social democratic) forces, constantly fueled by the manifestation of so-called McCarthyism (named after the influential ultra-conservative Senator Joseph McCarthy) from the state of Wisconsin. created verification commissions "for loyalty", etc.
The main instrument in the implementation of such a course in the domestic political arena in the United States was a conglomerate of special services led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the military counterintelligence cooperating with it. Loyalty checks, explicit and implicit, in the American armed forces led to their "cleansing" of any dissent and turned into a powerful enough and completely obedient to the authorities means of pursuing the imperialist course in the foreign policy arena.
TRANSLATIONS, INTERROGATIONS, REPRESSIONS
With experience in ensuring the security of international conferences, starting with the Paris one following the First World War, the military intelligence and counterintelligence officers of the United States took an active part in the similar provision of preparation and holding of the first and then subsequent sessions of the United Nations General Assembly and other events in within this organization in the United States, including as translators.
In the first post-war years, the leadership of the military counterintelligence took unprecedentedly active actions in all the states of Europe and the Pacific zone controlled by the US occupation regime. US military intelligence officers obtained intelligence information from captured documents, interviews with prisoners of war, internees, ex-guerrillas and insurgents. They were also entrusted with the tasks of ensuring the security of military installations and zones, searching and arresting "enemy" agents and opening spy networks, training special national units in the peculiarities of censorship, searching for the necessary documents and methods of countering the introduction of disinformation. At first, counterintelligence officers even performed the tasks of the so-called occupation commandant's offices, until they were replaced by appropriately trained units, including the military police, closely associated with counterintelligence.
In preparation for the International Nuremberg Tribunal over Nazi criminals, US military intelligence and counterintelligence officers were involved in the Charter, Alsos, Skrepka, Bluebird (Artichoke) operations supervised by the US Central Intelligence Agency (since 1947). "MK-Ultra" ("Monarch") and others, aimed at identifying German specialists and researchers in the fields of nuclear weapons, missile technology, cryptography, medicine (psychology), robotics, etc. with their subsequent transfer to the United States. Moreover, the facts of repeated "cover" by American counterintelligence officers of war criminals, who, under one pretext or another, were "taken away" from responsibility and helped to travel to states, for example, South America, where they "dissolved" among the local population and avoided criminal persecution. Operating in the countries occupied by the United States, American military counterintelligence officers took an active part in the outbreak of the Cold War.
FIRST POST-WAR
President John F. Kennedy (left), FBI Director John Edgar Hoover (center) and US Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Photo from the US National Archives and Records Administration
With the formation in 1947 of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the introduction of the post of Director of Central Intelligence (DCR), all intelligence and counterintelligence activities in the country were, in fact, concentrated in a single center - the CIA. After the successful ("not without the help of Soviet agents") detonation of the nuclear device by the Soviet Union in 1949, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCSC) of the US Armed Forces published its fundamental considerations, according to which during the war all counterintelligence activities in the country should be under control military, which the military tried to do in 1951 during the Korean War. However, the director of the central intelligence managed to convince the country's leadership that such a concentration of efforts of the special services during the war, as they say, in the same hands, that is, the military, is "irrational."
As a result, already in the 1950s, the leadership of the United States realized the fact of the "redundancy" of the national special services, which not only began to duplicate functions, but also often trivially hindered the work of their colleagues. In this regard, military intelligence and counterintelligence stood out. Despite repeated reminders from lawmakers about the inadmissibility for the military department and its subordinate structures to conduct any intelligence activities within the country, intelligence officers of the branches of the US Armed Forces continued to develop extensive networks of relations with local law enforcement agencies, the so-called patriotic organizations, and against this background they actually connected to the measures sanctioned by some ultra-right politicians and legislators to "curb anti-American activities." It is noteworthy that this activity of military intelligence officers and counterintelligence officers was really encouraged by the leadership of the Ministry of Defense under the pretext of "combating communist influence and instilling a sense of patriotism among the population." Formally, the legal impetus for this type of activity was the secret directive of the OKNSh of 1958, which obliged the US Armed Forces to focus on countering communist propaganda. From that time, for example, the intelligence department of the headquarters of each army corps was obliged to draw up weekly intelligence reports on the so-called internal subversive activities in units and formations of the national Armed Forces.
In 1958, on the initiative of its director John Edgar Hoover personally, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, together with the military counterintelligence, planned an operation, later called "Shocker" (Espionage, Soviet-United States-History), the purpose of which was to infiltrate the "enemy" intelligence of its agents. The idea of the operation, according to the famous American researcher David Wise, was to identify individuals who could be of interest to Soviet intelligence, including among the American military. Essentially, the Americans intended to misinform their geopolitical adversary in all possible areas, including military development. Wise testifies that the efforts of the American counterintelligence during this 23-year (!) Operation were not in vain, and in a number of cases they managed to achieve the desired results, that is, to misinform the "enemy" and expose "Soviet agents".
Meanwhile, gradually the activity of military counterintelligence officers began to go beyond "permissible boundaries", when, in particular, the network of their informants covered many educational institutions of the country - from secondary schools to universities in almost all states. Thus, in the course of the parliamentary investigation of 1960, it was revealed that "the military counterintelligence assigned 1,500 agents only to monitor the usual, usually anti-war, demonstrations throughout the country." In addition, other, clearly illegal actions of counterintelligence became public, in particular, the fact that during the war agents of military counterintelligence installed eavesdropping devices in the premises of the then president's wife Eleanor Roosevelt.
Ultimately, lawmakers delivered their verdict: military intelligence clearly exceeds its powers and violates the law. As one of the measures to streamline the activities of the special services, including within the armed forces of the country, in 1961, all counterintelligence agencies of the branches of the Armed Forces were consolidated into a single structure within the United States Department of Defense Intelligence Directorate (DIA). This, to a certain extent, undermined the authority of the CIA and even the FBI as "the main coordinating bodies of the country's intelligence services," including counterintelligence. But at the same time, the rather broad counterintelligence powers of the Federal Bureau of Investigation still remained practically intact.
In the second half of the 60s, lawmakers again tried to "limit the permissiveness" of counterintelligence, passing through Congress in 1968 the law on the control of organized crime, according to which "wiretapping" without a court order was categorically prohibited, and some restrictions on work were again imposed including counterintelligence services in the United States. But in the mid-70s, by decrees of presidents Ford, and then Carter, some restrictions were eased, which allowed counterintelligence officers to tighten their actions against real and "imaginary" "enemies of the country."
In general, the 50s – 70s of the last century are considered by many researchers of the US intelligence services as the “heyday” of counterintelligence, including the military. It was during this period that the powerful foundations of a very specific work of counterintelligence officers were laid, aimed at identifying "enemy agents", including in the ranks of the American armed forces.
RISE AND LIMITATIONS
A number of experts associate the formation and consolidation of the tough methods of counterintelligence work of the American special services in the mid-1950s with the name of James Angleton, who was appointed in 1954 by the director of central intelligence (aka CIA director) Allen Dulles to the post of head of the counterintelligence operations department of the Central Intelligence Agency. The methods of work proposed by Angleton that were quite successful in implementation (in fact, total surveillance), on the one hand, aroused "jealousy" among the FBI staff and personally from the long-term director of this service, John Edgar Hoover, and on the other, they were massively introduced into the practical work of all special services. in one way or another related to counterintelligence activities, including primarily the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
James Angleton was famous for the fact that during the Second World War, being an employee of the forerunner of the CIA - the US Strategic Services Office, he was sent to Great Britain as his representative to enrich his experience, fulfill the duties of an employee in the London branch of the American counterintelligence (X-2) and direct, albeit with limited access, work with the British in the implementation of the highly covert Operation Ultra to break German military and diplomatic codes. According to the recollections of his colleagues, the future head of the CIA counterintelligence service was impressed by the "ideally organized" by the British to ensure the secrecy of the activities and, as it turned out later, the almost absolute exclusion of information leakage that would allow opponents (Germany and its satellites), as well as allies (USSR) take advantage of the benefits of British cryptographers. Already after the end of World War II and in the course of his tenure at a leading position in the CIA, James Angleton, with the support of almost all the leaders of American political intelligence, advocated strict observance of the stringent requirements he had learned from British practice for not only counterintelligence, but also intelligence personnel. In particular, he admired the selection of employees for work in the British special services, when only those persons who must be born in the UK and whose family must have lived in the United Kingdom for at least two generations were allowed access to classified information.
Senator McCarthy launched a real witch hunt in the United States. Photo from the Library of Congress
The success of the Soviet special services in penetrating the structures of Western intelligence and security agencies was not only a "sobering" factor for the leaders of American counterintelligence, but also forced to improve the methods of counterintelligence activities. On the recommendation of the unconditional authority among the Angleton intelligence services, the CIA leadership constantly insisted on close coordination of the counterintelligence activities of all services within the US Intelligence Community. Naturally, due to functional duties and according to the law, the coordinating role in this activity belonged and continues to belong to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, on the recommendation of which the US administration periodically updates the so-called lists of especially important threats, including the military sphere, and to counter which it obliges the relevant the country's special services to unite their efforts.
However, the excessive zeal of counterintelligence agents, as was subsequently determined in the course of investigations based on the results of the work of the special services, often prevented the “elite segment” of the Intelligence Community - the intelligence officers from fulfilling their direct duties. For example, conflicts arose repeatedly between the CIA and the DIA due to the fact that Angleton and his employees constantly interfered in the specific recruiting work of military intelligence officers, suspected recruited agents and defectors of "working for the enemy" and thereby thwarted "promising operations." In parallel, the CIA counterintelligence officers and military counterintelligence officers continued to expand the networks of their agents in the United States, intensifying the "fight against the internal enemy", which once again was evidence of a direct violation of American law. As a result of several Senate investigations of the early and mid-1970s (the Murphy, Church commissions, etc.), legislators again passed laws and by-laws restricting the activities of special services, mainly in relation to American citizens in the United States. The heads of the counterintelligence agencies were also subjected to harsh repression. By the decision of the director of central intelligence, William Colby, in December 1974, James Angleton and his entire "team" were dismissed. Employees of other counterintelligence services, including the military counterintelligence, were also subjected to certain, but less harsh repressions.
However, the formulation of the counterintelligence strategy in the United States and, accordingly, the main role in this area still continued to belong to the FBI. Back in 1956, bureau director John Edgar Hoover, with the approval of the presidential administration, proposed a so-called counterintelligence program to the country's leadership, in the implementation of which, under the "patronage" of the FBI, the relevant structures of all members of the US intelligence community, including military counterintelligence, were involved.
The involvement of Washington in numerous military actions abroad, and above all in the war in Southeast Asia in the 60s and 70s of the last century, gave rise to an unprecedented wave of protests within the country, which counterintelligence efforts were directed to “neutralize”. The leadership of the special services believed that intelligence agencies of Washington's geopolitical opponents, primarily the Soviet Union, were involved in these actions, causing significant damage to the prestige of the United States. The situation was really not developing in the best way. Suffice it to give an example: by the end of the 1960s, more than 65,000 servicemen had deserted from the American Armed Forces, which was the equivalent of four infantry divisions.
It is noteworthy that the famous political scientist Samuel Huntington, in one of his historical studies, states the fact of an unprecedented decline in American loyalty to their government in the 70s of the last century. It was during this period, as noted by many researchers, that there were numerous cases of recruitment of American citizens by foreign intelligence services, including members of the US Armed Forces. The situation for counterintelligence was aggravated by constant violations of domestic American law by the American special services, which could not but attract the attention of various public organizations and legislators. Due to the fact that many counterintelligence operations directly violated the rights of large masses of American citizens, a Senate committee chaired by Senator Frank Church in 1975 categorically banned such activities as “contrary to the First Amendment of the Constitution of the country, which guarantees freedom of speech and press.
ANOTHER "REVIVAL"
With the coming to power in the United States in the early 80s of the Republican administration headed by the representative of the right wing Ronald Reagan, the situation in the country gradually began to change towards a tightening of the counterintelligence regime, the resumption of total surveillance of the so-called non-patriots and mass checks on the subject of "loyalty to the state. and National Values ”, affecting all segments of American society, including the military. From the point of view of counterintelligence, it was during this period that "impressive successes in its work" were achieved.
Researcher of the history of special services Michael Sulik, referring to documents of the Center for Research and Protection of Personnel of the US Department of Defense, cites data that during a relatively short period of the second half of the 1980s, more than 60 Americans were arrested for espionage. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of them were military personnel who agreed to work for the Soviet and allied intelligence services, mainly for alleged mercantile interests. Naturally, the responsibility for these "failures" was assigned to the military counterintelligence, which was unable to "neutralize the impending threat" in time. The military, however, in their defense stated that the recruitment took place at a time when counterintelligence was “in fact neutralized” and was in a “humiliated position”, that is, during the period of widespread exposure of its actions that went beyond the law. Nevertheless, Sulik continues, starting in the late 80s and over the next decade, a set of measures was carried out in the army structures "suffered from espionage", which ultimately allowed to significantly tighten the security system, to which the military was directly involved. United States counterintelligence.
Interestingly, with the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the workload of the American counterintelligence service did not diminish at all. In the late 1990s and 2000s, more than 140 foreign intelligence services “worked” against the United States, according to Joel Brenner, a respected counterintelligence expert. This allegedly required the country's leadership not only to preserve the counterintelligence potential accumulated over the long years of the Cold War, but also to constantly build it up.
From the editorial board
On March 25, Major General Sergei Leonidovich Pechurov turns 65. Honored Military Specialist of the Russian Federation, Doctor of Military Sciences, Professor Sergei Leonidovich Pechurov is a regular author of the "Independent Military Review". The editors congratulate Sergei Leonidovich on his birthday and wholeheartedly wish him good health, further fruitful work for the good of our Motherland, success in the field of military scientific research, as well as in literary and social activities.
