Mind games: cognitive bias,US intelligence and the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia

This article examines the impact of cognitive bias on the analytic output of the United States intelligence community during the Prague Spring. Utilising a range of primary sources, including declassified documents, oral history and contemporary accounts, this article argues that as a result of heuristic biases, analysts formed the mindset that the Soviet Union would not invade Czechoslovakia, and did not alter that assumption in the face of increasing evidence to the contrary. Consequently analysts possessed a distorted understanding of both Soviet intentions and the prevailing political environment and did not accurately convey the likelihood of military action to consumers.     

Soviet Bloc and Western Bugging of Opponents’ Diplomatic Premises During the Early Cold War

This article examines Soviet Bloc and Western bugging of their opponents’ diplomatic premises in the early Cold War, from 1945 to the late 1960s. It explains the process of audio surveillance, identifies significant cases of bugging and describes the countermeasures taken by Western states. The paper concludes that the Soviet Union was able to gather a considerable amount of intelligence from bugging Western embassies in Moscow during the early Cold War. In particular, bugging enabled the Soviets to break the diplomatic ciphers of the United States, Britain and West Germany.     

US Atomic Energy Intelligence Against the Soviet Target, 1945-1970

Throughout the Cold War, the United States and its allies mounted a massive atomic energy intelligence effort against the Soviet Union. Long-range, standoff technical systems provided the most data and allowed for successful tracking of many aspects of the Soviet nuclear program. Because of the closed nature of Soviet society and Soviet security and counter-intelligence measures, exploitation of open sources and traditional espionage operations, although important, were less productive. The relative lack of human intelligence made it difficult to understand important developments inside the Soviet nuclear complex and resulted in significant intelligence gaps.     

Comparing US and UK Intelligence Assessment in the Early Cold War: NSC-68, April 1950

US and British intelligence assessments regarding the Soviet Union during the early years of the Cold War contained substantial differences despite the remarkable level of cooperation and information sharing that existed between the respective services in the period. Using NSC-68 as a "pivot", this article examines these discrepancies as well as those similarities that did exist, considering their significance and evolution in an effort to understand what factors drove and shaped intelligence analysis on both sides of the Atlantic.     

“Freedom of Choice”: Israeli Efforts to Prevent Soviet Jewish Émigrés to Resettle in the United States

Beginning in 1967 the Soviet Union allowed some Jewish citizens to leave for family reunification in Israel (see Appendix ). Due to the break in diplomatic relations between Israel and the U.S.S.R., most émigrés traveled to Vienna where they were then flown to Israel. After 1976 the majority of émigrés who left on visas for Israel “dropped out” in Vienna and chose to resettle in the West. Several American Jewish organizations facilitated their obtaining visas and being resettled in the United States and other countries. This article examines efforts by Israel to deny Soviet Jewish émigrés the option of resettling in the United States. Israeli officials pressured American Jewish organizations to desist from aiding Russian Jews who wanted to resettle in the United States. Initially American Jews resisted Israeli efforts. Following Gorbachev's decision in the late 1980s to allow free emigration for Soviet Jews, the American Jewish community agreed to a quota on Soviet Jewish refugees in the United States, which resulted in most Soviet Jewish émigrés to Israel. The article uses the case study to explore efforts by American Jews and Israel to influence American refugee policy in the 1970s and 1980s. It provides insights into ethnic politics as well as “sponsored politics,” whereby Israel used the American Jewish community to further its interests in the making of United States foreign policy. It also deals with the issue of human rights and migration. While no migrant has the right to go to a country of his or her choice, Israel did deny some émigrés the right to exercise freedom of movement to other countries who welcomed them as refugees.     

From Malin Head to ‘Okean 75’: shadowing and intelligence collection operations by Royal Navy surface ships 1975–1985*

This article analyses a hitherto neglected aspect of the Cold War at Sea: the shadowing of Soviet warships by the Royal Navy surface vessels. Making use of previously untapped government sources, this article assesses the significance of these intelligence gathering operations, as well as their role in deterring the Soviet Navy through non-nuclear means. The article reviews three types of intelligence gathering operation by British warships: the regular and routine shadowing operations off Malin Head, the short-notice shadowing of Soviet warships transiting the sea areas near the United Kingdom, and finally the co-ordinated shadowing of the enormous ‘Okean 75’ Soviet naval exercise in 1975.     

Left Behind: Boris E. Skvirsky and the Chita Delegation at the Washington Conference, 1921–22

Although the story of the role of the Special Trade Delegation of the Russian short-lived Far Eastern Republic during the Washington Conference on Naval Disarmament of 1921–22, seems to be well-known from its many Western accounts published since 1922, a recent search in the records of the Russian Communist Party has uncovered many hitherto unknown or obscure details that shed the light on the fascinating intelligence origins of the secret documentation, which the delegation made public during the conference. Particularly, the Russian records indicate the central role of one of the delegates, Boris Skvirsky, who would be left behind in the United States to become the Soviet unofficial representative and back channel during the years of non-recognition of the Soviet Union by the United States.     

British Intelligence and the ‘Fifth’ Occupying Power: The Secret Struggle to Prevent Jewish Illegal Immigration to Palestine

At the end of the Second World War, British intelligence struggled to enforce strict limits imposed on Jewish immigration to Palestine. Holocaust survivors and Jews wishing to escape communism in Eastern Europe flooded the western Zones of occupation in Germany and Austria, while the Zionist movement worked to bring them to Palestine. Illegal immigration to Palestine was the key policy dispute between Britain and the Zionist movement, and a focus for British intelligence. Britain sought both overt and covert means to prevent the boarding of ships at European ports which were destined for Palestine, and even to prevent the entry of Jewish refugees into the American zones. This article highlights Britain's secret intelligence-gathering efforts as well as its covert action aimed to prevent this movement. It highlights a peculiar episode in the ‘special relationship’ between Britain and the United States, during which cooperation and partnership was lacking. British intelligence promoted a rumour that Soviet agents were using Jewish escape lines to penetrate Western Europe and the Middle East in order to persuade American authorities to prevent the movement of Jewish refugees. Instead, this article argues, American intelligence secretly cooperated with the Zionist organizers of the escape routes so to expose Soviet agents. Britain's attempt at deception backfired, and provided effective cover for the movement of hundreds of thousands of Jews during a critical period. Meanwhile its intelligence had dramatically improved, but policymakers failed to reassess Britain's ability to sustain immigration restrictions and the indefinite detention of tens of thousands of illegal migrants.     

The impact of ‘Tempest’ on Anglo-American communications security and intelligence, 1943–1970

ABSTRACT

This article examines the impact of the discovery by Britain and the United States in the late 1940s/early 1950s that cipher machines produced compromising emissions, a phenomenon which became known as Tempest. The British and Americans were forced to develop security measures to protect their encrypted communications but the Soviet Union was still able to exploit Tempest emissions from cipher machines in Western embassies in Moscow and read their diplomatic traffic. At the same time, Tempest became an important new way for the NSA and GCHQ to gather communications intelligence, particularly from developing world states and NATO allies.     

Space Situational Awareness in Europe: The Fractures and the Federative Aspects of European Space Efforts

ABSTRACT

One part of the massive US intelligence effort to learn about Soviet missile and space programs during the Cold War was acquiring and analyzing Soviet space debris that had returned to Earth. Equally important was retrieving US fragments that had landed in foreign nations to prevent the Soviets from recovering and exploiting them. At times bitter jurisdictional battles among the interested government agencies plagued the undertaking. Additionally the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 limited the ability to obtain foreign debris in some circumstances. Despite these problems, however, the available record shows that in many cases the United States acquired and tested important Soviet fragments and also was able to retrieve its own.     

Diplomatic Sigint and the British Official Mind during the Second World War: Soviet claims on Turkey, 1940–45

Historians of Soviet foreign policy have recently revisited the issue of Soviet claims against Turkey: a Stalinist objective during the period of the Nazi–Soviet Pact and in the immediate post-war era. Recently opened archives show that the British response to Soviet claims in 1945 was driven by comprehensive access to Turkish diplomatic correspondence. However, the British failed to recognize wartime decrypts that indicated continuity in Soviet ambitions in Turkey since 1940. This failure reflected the responsibility of the operational departments of the Foreign Office for the assessment of diplomatic Sigint, and the absence of a genuine political intelligence department with eyes for anything other than current lines of policy.     

Combatting terror in Europe: Euro-Israeli counterterrorism intelligence cooperation in the Club de Berne (1971–1972)

How do intelligence agencies cooperate to counter terrorism and to what extent can it be (ab)used for political purposes? This article focuses on the Club de Berne, an intelligence liaison forum that was founded in 1969 by nine Western European countries and which was also linked to the United States and Israel. This article explores the mechanisms of counterterrorism intelligence-sharing in the early 1970s and examines the motives for cooperation within this framework. On the basis of large-scale recently declassified intelligence records, the article uncovers new aspects in the history of European security cooperation with Israel and the United States, and hopes to lay the groundwork for broader theoretical reflections about counterterrorism intelligence cooperation.     

JFK,FBI, and CIA: playing hardball over an intelligence leak to the New York Times

On 26 July 1962, the New York Times published a front-page story by reporter Hanson Baldwin which, among many things, showed the vulnerability of Soviet land-based missiles, in the event of a first strike by the US. Drawing at least indirectly from a National Intelligence Estimate, it also showed how US intelligence had obtained that information. The story infuriated President John F. Kennedy, who believed it harmed the security of the United States. This article details an aggressive FBI investigation of who had leaked to Baldwin, as well as an initiative at the Central Intelligence Agency to conduct its own future leak investigations inside the US, both authorized by President Kennedy.     

Preparing for Armageddon: Jic 1 (Final) and the Soviet Attack on Canada

From 1945 to 1947 Canada shifted from a dependency on Great Britain for wartime operational intelligence to a junior partnership with the United States in the production of strategic threat assessments of the Soviet Union. Working through the Military Cooperation Committee the primary objective of Canadian and American officials was to update the wartime Defence Plan (ABC-22), with a Basic Security Plan for the post-war defence of North America. Each country was to produce a detailed 'Implementation' based on an intelligence 'Appreciation' of the threats facing North America in the 'air-atomic age'. Towards this end, the Canadian Joint Intelligence Committee prepared JIC 1 (Final), a report on when, where, and in what capacity the Soviet Union would strike Canada in the event of the next major war. The basic problem facing the Canadian Joint Intelligence Committee was to incorporate American sources in the assessment of Soviet capabilities without simply producing a carbon copy version of the assessment of their continental ally. Moreover, the Canadians were particularly concerned that they produce a 'made in Canada' assessment of Soviet intentions. The report was completed and approved by Canadian and American defence officials in 1947 and updated versions became the basis for continental defence planning until the signing of the 1957 Norad agreement.     

Rising Israeli–Iranian tensions

Tensions between Israel and Iran have increased since 10 February, when Israel shot down an Iranian-made drone launched from Syria and attacked military targets there, including Iranian installations. Policymakers in both Israel and the United States believe that Iran's strategy is to make Syria a platform for war against Israel, and broadly favour rolling back Iran in Syria. In this light, the prospect of a regional war looms larger.     

What do judges say on the protection of intelligence secrets?

This article discusses the role of the discourse of law in legitimizing the protection of intelligence secrets. It draws on examples from the United Kingdom and the United States to illustrate rhetorical regularities with respect to the need to protect intelligence officers, agents, sources and methods, the effectiveness of intelligence agencies, international intelligence relationships and the effects of a mosaic of disclosed information. It concludes that judges produce specialized knowledge on state secrecy that plays a part in shaping the understanding of state secrecy in society.     

Britain and the Missile Gap: British Estimates on the Soviet Ballistic Missile Threat, 1957–61

Between 1957 and 1961, American National Intelligence Estimates overestimated the Soviets’ capabilities to produce and deploy intercontinental ballistic missiles, creating the ‘missile gap’ controversy. This article examines the contemporaneous estimates of British intelligence on the Soviet ballistic missile program, which were based upon very similar, if not the same, raw intelligence. It demonstrates that British estimates of the Soviet ICBM program were more accurate. However, this success did not continue in the analysis of the medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missile (M/IRBM) threat, which was relatively poor for most of the period. It concludes that the reasons for this lie in the different assumptions held by intelligence analysts on both sides of the Atlantic, and a degree of conservatism in both intelligence establishments.     

Collision in Manchuria: rescue,intelligence, and the Cold War in Asia,August–September 1945

The Japanese decision to surrender on 15 August 1945 created an extraordinary and unique situation in the Chinese province of Manchuria. Within hours of the Japanese surrender, a number of special American intelligence teams parachuted into Manchuria to gain information on the POW’s and Soviet intentions for postwar Asia. This paper will examine on what occurred when Soviet and American military personnel met in Manchuria. Both sides had very different goals and aims for the end of war. For the small American force assigned to locate and identify Allied POW’s, their mission exemplified the already strained relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. For nearly every instance of cordial and joyous meetings between the two sides there were equally difficult confrontations and misunderstandings. These encounters offered a preview into the coming Cold War in Asia.     

De Witt Clinton Poole,the foreign nationalities branch and political intelligence

The Foreign Nationalities Branch of the Office of Strategic Services served as an important source of political intelligence for the Roosevelt administration during World War II. The philosophy of the Branch's most influential director, DeWitt Clinton Poole, and his organization's work among Yugoslav‐Americans, illustrates the concerns that ethnic politics generated in the United States, as well as appreciation of the role that ethnics could play in psychological warfare and postwar anti‐Soviet propaganda.