Conducted primarily in the early 1990s, the interviews were part of a formal study by the Office of Net Assessment, drawing on the testimony of Soviet officers such as Marshal Sergei Akhromeev, General Andriian Danilevich, and Western figures including former U.S. Secretary of Defense Harold Brown.
The collection offers new insight into how both sides viewed nuclear deterrence,
the potential for war, and the logic behind massive arms buildups.

Soviet Doubts About Nuclear Warfighting

The document reveals that, by the 1970s, leading Soviet military thinkers had concluded that nuclear weapons were not true warfighting tools, but rather political instruments of deterrence. “At no time did the USSR ever intend to make first use of nuclear weapons,” Marshal Akhromeev told U.S. researchers, explaining that although a preemptive attack would offer an advantage in theory, neither side would actually win if nuclear war began. He described nuclear arms as “political tools,” and noted that both superpowers’ command and control systems for nuclear forces reached full reliability only in the
mid-1970s, greatly reducing the risk of unauthorized or accidental use.

General Danilevich described how the results of secret Soviet computer models, shown to Brezhnev
and other Politburo members in the early 1970s, predicted catastrophic devastation after a nuclear exchange. According to the unpublished findings, the Soviet armed forces would be “reduced to 1/1000 of their previous strength,” with 80 million Soviet citizens killed and 85% of industrial capacity destroyed. Danilevich recalled that Brezhnev was “visibly terrified” by the exercise and had to be reassured that it was not a real launch. The summary of this study was never published, as its message was judged “too psychologically detrimental to morale and resolve.” Instead, later models artificially reduced predicted destruction to make nuclear war appear less suicidal, a practice that continued into the 1980s.

Strategic Misperceptions and Internal Rivalries

The interviews point to a persistent pattern of misreading the other side’s intentions. Akhromeev, who was initially distrustful of the U.S., said that face-to-face meetings with American generals in the late 1980s changed his views, revealing that both sides had long misunderstood each other’s actual policies and motivations. “Each side made a tremendous misreading of the other side’s intentions, which led to a greater possibility of accidental strikes,” he said, but added that there was never an imminent danger of war in the 1970–87 period.

The document also details internal disputes within the Soviet leadership, especially between the General Staff, political authorities, and the powerful industrial sector. General Batenin recalled deep tensions between military planners and party leaders over decisions such as force structure and the production of new weapons, with disagreement over whether quantity or quality should be prioritized. The interviews highlight that subjective factors, political alliances, and personal relationships often overrode technical analysis in weapons procurement and strategy.

Economic Pressure and Arms Buildup

A recurring theme in the interviews is the immense economic burden of the Soviet arms race. Sergei Blagovolin, who worked on assessing the U.S. industrial mobilization potential, recalled that Soviet planners estimated the U.S. could produce “50 nuclear submarines and 50,000 tanks per year” in a mobilization scenario. These threat assessments were used for decades to justify vast increases in Soviet military spending and production, which ultimately contributed to the economic strains that weakened the USSR in the 1980s.

Chemical and New Weapons

On chemical weapons, both Soviet and U.S. interviewees agreed that the USSR maintained large stockpiles as a “secondary means” of warfare, to be used only if nuclear escalation could be avoided or in retaliation. Soviet planners consistently matched U.S. capabilities, but chemical weapons were viewed as fundamentally less decisive than nuclear arms.

There is also acknowledgment that both superpowers tracked and attempted to match technological innovations—such as cruise missiles, precision-guided munitions, and laser-based weapons—but economic and political realities limited their actual impact on the nuclear balance.

Political Leadership and Decision-Making

The interviews note the sometimes limited military experience of Soviet political leaders, with Brezhnev described as “very weak in the area of military decision making,” often leaving key decisions to the Minister of Defense and the General Staff. Final choices on weapons development and arms control frequently reflected a compromise between military advice, party priorities, and the interests of the defense industry.

Lasting Lessons

The released record offers a rare, unfiltered view of the late Cold War from the perspective of both Soviet and Western insiders. The testimony shows that, beneath the rhetoric and buildup, both sides recognized the catastrophic potential of nuclear war and relied on deterrence—not victory—as the true goal. The collection reveals how misperceptions, internal politics, and economic exhaustion shaped the course of the Cold War, and how close both superpowers came to the brink while ultimately avoiding direct conflict.

###

Document Archive

The Crowded Path to Unlimited Soviet Arsenals: What Soviet Party Leaders, General Staff, and Industrialists Thought They Were Doing in the Cold War [153 Pages, 6.5MB]

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The post Declassified DoD Interviews Reveal Soviet Cold War Fears and Nuclear Realities first appeared on The Black Vault.

The helicopter in question had made a forced landing during the Libya-Chad conflict in the mid-1980s. While the crew was picked up by Libyan forces, the helicopter itself was left behind. It was a variant of the Hind that the United States had not previously had access to, and the Pentagon was interested in retrieving it for intelligence purposes.

To conduct the operation, the U.S. made use of the CH-47 Chinook helicopter, known for its heavy-lifting capabilities. The operation required the Chinook to fly a round trip of approximately 500 miles in a desert environment, much of it at night. The Chinook was equipped with extra fuel tanks to enable this long-distance flight.

Once the Chinook arrived at the site of the abandoned Hind, the crew had to dismantle the wings of the Hind so that it could be airlifted. After securing the Hind, the Chinook flew back to a forward operating base in Chad, where the Hind was loaded onto a C-5 Galaxy for transport back to the United States.

The entire operation was conducted without the knowledge of the Libyan government, and no shots were fired during the mission. It was considered a significant success, both for the intelligence gathered from the Hind and for the demonstration of the capabilities of the U.S. military.

After the operation, the helicopter was shipped to the National Air and Space Intelligence Center in Ohio, where it was carefully analyzed by American experts to gain insights about Soviet military technology. The details of Operation Mount Hope III remained classified until 1992.

Document Archive

Department of the Army records on Operation Mount Hope III [40 Pages, 13.53mb] – Includes what appears to be a slide presentation on the Operation briefing, and a 2 page summary as well.

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The post Operation Mount Hope III first appeared on The Black Vault.

The following list of documents pertain to FBI files and the Cold War era. They were obtained from the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Communist Index – FBI File 100-HQ-358086 – FBI Release #1 – [1,204 Pages, 864.2MB] Communist Index – FBI File 100-HQ-358086 – FBI Release #2 – [1,627 Pages, 338MB] – This file is numbered 100-HQ-358086, and appears to be titled, “Communist Index” though some of the records vary. The records deal with suspected communists throughout various locales in the United States. Note: According to the final response for FOIA Case 1398432-002, there are 20,702 remaining pages to be released. The cost is $625 for the release of the records on CD-ROM.

Role of the Communist Party, USA in Soviet Intelligence, February 1953 – [62 Pages, 5.2MB]

Nosenko, Yuri – FBI Release #1 – [325 Pages, 15.2MB] Nosenko, Yuri – FBI Release #2 – [8 Pages, 0.8MB] FOIA Case File & Processing Notes [28 Pages, 13.5MB] – Lt. Col. Yuri Ivanovich Nosenko (Russian: Юрий Иванович Носенко; October 30, 1927 – August 23, 2008) was a KGB defector and a figure of significant controversy within the U.S. intelligence community, since his claims contradicted another defector, Anatoliy Golitsyn, who believed he was a KGB plant.  The harsh treatment he received as part of the early US interrogation was one of the “abuses” documented in the Central Intelligence Agency “Family Jewels” documents in 1973.  Nosenko claimed that he could provide important negative information about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, affirming that he had personally handled a review of the case of Lee Harvey Oswald, who had lived in the Soviet Union prior to the Kennedy assassination. Nosenko said that, while the KGB had conducted surveillance of Oswald, it had never tried to recruit him. This issue was critical because KGB involvement with Oswald might suggest Soviet involvement in the Kennedy assassination – a prospect that could have propelled the Cold War into a nuclear war. Nosenko insisted that after interviewing Oswald it was decided that he was not intelligent enough and also “too mentally unstable,” a “nut,” and therefore unsuitable for intelligence work. Nosenko also stated that the KGB had never questioned Oswald about information he might have gained as a U.S. Marine, including work as an aviation electronics operator at Naval Air Facility Atsugi in Japan. According to the FBI, additional records which may have existed on Nosenko, were destroyed.

Paisley, John Arthur – [291 Pages, 19.1MB] – John Arthur Paisley (August 25, 1923 – September 24, 1978) was a former official of the Central Intelligence Agency. Paisley served in the CIA from 1963 to 1974.  During his career, he was heavily involved in Soviet operations. Paisley retired as deputy director in the Office of Strategic Research, the branch that monitored Soviet military movements and nuclear capabilities.  Please note: Additional records may exist, which have been requested. Check back on this page for further additions.

Soviet Diplomatic Activities – [437 Pages, 217.0MB] – This is the partially declassified FBI File: 65-HQ-30092, Soviet Diplomatic Activities. The entire file consists of tens of thousands of pages, and will take thousands of dollars to get declassified. I had amended my request to receive just the documents that had been reviewed and declassified thus far, and as of January of 2017 – this was 100% of the file that had been declassified thus far.

The post FBI Files – Cold War Era first appeared on The Black Vault.

The year 2019 was undoubtedly exciting for UFO enthusiasts. It brought news that the U.S. government and military takes UFOs, or what they now call Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP), seriously. As they are potentially a threat to military personnel, the U.S. Navy announced in May it had implemented guidelines for reporting and investigating UAP activity. They also divulged in September that three videos circulating throughout the mainstream media, are, in fact, unidentified objects. And in December, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) declassified a document to The Black Vault which unveiled details about a UFO encounter that has remained a mystery for more than forty years. The record represents yet another piece of evidence for an ongoing concern that not only are UAPs a potential threat; but that threat is global and has existed for decades.

The “Intelligence Information Report” was first released by the CIA in 1978, however most of it was redacted. The only legible portion was a paragraph detailing an encounter with a UFO.

“On one evening in late Summer 1973, Source observed an unidentified phenomenon at Site 7,” the intelligence report revealed. “While watching a sport competition between Canada and the USSR on television, he stepped outside for some air and observed an unidentified sharp (bright) green circular object or mass the sky. The object was situated West of the site at an angle of sighting of approximately 70 degrees.”

Although the witness could not determine the altitude of the object, they believed it was above cloud level. They also recounted that, “within 10 to 15 seconds of observation, the green circle widened and within a brief period of time several green concentric circles formed around the mass. Within minutes the coloring disappeared. There was no sound, such as an explosion, associated with the phenomenon.”

For forty-two years, all of the other pages and paragraphs in the intelligence report have remained secret, until now. Thanks to the result of a Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR) request filed by The Black Vault, additional details have been declassified that shed light on the incident.

It occurred at the Soviet operated Sary Shagan Weapons testing Range, located in what is now present-day Republic of Kazakhstan. It was here that during the 1970s, the Soviet Union was secretly launching experimental missiles, along with testing laser weapon systems utilizing powerful antennas.

The CIA intelligence document was crafted utilizing information from an unknown source. It outlined the types of weapons tested at the facility; locations of exactly where experimental weapons were stored and launched from; diagrams of buildings and housing units; and the report of “unidentified aerial phenomenon”.

According to experts, this mysterious encounter at a sensitive Russian weapons facility with a UAP is just one of many cases in the area.

“There has been ‘UFO’ activity around the area for decades,” says Paul Stonehill, author, lecturer, TV consultant and researcher of Russian and Eurasian paranormal phenomena. “USSR had taken UFO presence seriously since 1940s and established a special top-secret UFO/USO research program (academic/military) in 1978. But they are paying attention to the most sensitive UFO/USO presence areas (Arctic Russia; Russian Kuril Islands; Kamchatka, etc.). There is a new generation of highly educated, professional military scientists engaged in such research.”

The UFO encounter outlined in this CIA report also reinforces an ongoing issue that still plagues the U.S. military today. “There have been a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air space in recent years,” the U.S. Navy told The Black Vault in 2019. “For safety and security concerns, the Navy and the USAF take these reports very seriously and investigate each and every report.”

This same problem currently facing the U.S. Navy, is the same that tormented the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War.  And despite the U.S. denying interest in the UFO phenomena after the close of Project Blue Book in 1970, there are many intelligence records like this one, which outline the concern on a global scale. Stonehill added that, “the Soviets knew they were watched, and those at the top were aware that the ‘watchers’ were not Americans [or the]Chinese.”

Mr. Luis Elizondo, a former DOD employee who claims to have run a secret UFO investigation program for the Pentagon from 2010 – 2012, also echoes the threat potential behind the phenomena today. In fact, according to Elizondo, he quit his post because the DOD was not taking the threat seriously.

“In many instances, there seems to be a direct correlation the phenomena exhibits with respect to our nuclear and military capabilities. The Department must take seriously the many accounts by the Navy and other services of unusual aerial systems interfering with military weapon platforms and displaying beyond next generation capabilities,” Elizondo said in his undated resignation letter. “Underestimating or ignoring these potential threats is not in the best interest of the Department no matter the level of political contention. There remains a vital need to ascertain capability and intent of these phenomena for the benefit of the armed forces and the nation. For this reason, effective 4 October 2017, I humbly submit my resignation in hopes it will encourage you to ask hard questions: ‘who else knows?’, [‘]what are their capabilities’, and ‘why aren’t we spending more time and effort on the issue?’.”

It remains unclear exactly how serious the Pentagon currently takes the UAP threat. Although the Navy has gone on the record about their guidelines and the facts that their results will remain classified; others like the Air Force and the FAA have not followed suit as they are seemingly not interested in UFOs at all.

The CIA’s recent declassification shedding light on one more UFO mystery may just offer some hopefuls a glimmer of optimism that possibly in a few decades, we will know just a little bit more about whatever this phenomena is that could potentially threaten our skies, along with everything in it.

Document Archive

CIA UFO Document Declassified Further Solidifies Threat Potential from Unknown Objects [14 Pages, 4.5MB]

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The post CIA UFO Document Declassified Further Solidifies Threat Potential from Unknown Objects first appeared on The Black Vault.

Background

“AZORIAN” (erroneously called JENNIFER after its Top Secret Security Compartment by the press) was the code name for a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) project to recover the sunken Soviet submarine K-129 from the Pacific Ocean floor in the summer of 1974, using the purpose-built ship Hughes Glomar Explorer. The 1968 sinking of the K-129 occurred approximately 1,560 nautical miles (2,890 km) northwest of Hawaii.

Project Azorian was one of the most complex, expensive and secretive intelligence operations of the Cold War at a cost of about $800 million ($3.6 billion in 2011 dollars).

In addition to designing the high tech recovery ship and its unique lifting cradle, the U.S. had to develop precision stability equipment to keep the ship nearly stationary above the target while lowering nearly three miles of pipe, and scientists also developed methods for preserving paper that had been underwater for years in hopes of being able to recover and read the submarine’s codebooks.

Since the Soviet Union had no idea where their submarine was located, the recovery operation took place covertly (in international waters) with a supposed commercial purpose: mining the sea floor for manganese nodules.

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Documents

All released CIA Documents Regarding the Incident [133 Pages, 4.29MB]

National Security Agency (NSA) Documents

NSA Documents Remain Classified, as of 21 February 2018 [5 Pages, 1.4MB]

The post Project Azorian / Project Jennifer first appeared on The Black Vault.

Excerpt from the document:

“Soviet statements indicate that the Soviets are planning a manned Mars mission from which they hope to derive world acclaim and prestige. Because all the technologies needed for such a flight have not yet been perfected, the Soviets have not committed themselves to a launch date. Our strongest, current indicators of Soviet plans for a manned mission to Mars are the long-duration stays in space by cosmonauts and the Soviet program to develop magnetoplasma dynamic thrusters for long duration space propulsion.”

In March of 2018, The Black Vault filed a Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR) request to have this previously released record re-reviewed for further declassification.

What is interesting is that although nothing new was revealed, there continues to be numerous redacted pages.

Declassified Document

 Soviet Plans for a Manned Flight to Mars, May 1985, 2010 Release [16 Pages, 3.5MB]

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Archived Versions

 Soviet Plans for a Manned Flight to Mars, May 1985, 2010 Release [12 Pages, 0.8MB]

The post Soviet Plans for a Manned Flight to Mars, May 1985 first appeared on The Black Vault.

Explanation and prediction of military R&D in the USSR requires consideration of the system as a whole. Only in context can one make sense of the array of specific strengths and weaknesses found in any undertaking as complex as the way a country acquires its weapons. Although it may approach being a cliche to note the existence of national assymetries and the problems they introduce into analysis, nevertheless they are only infrequently taken into account. In this paper the author is concerned explicitly with how Soviet institutions, constraints, incentives, and values influence the process of Soviet weapons design. The central theme is that these processes strongly affect outcomes over the medium term future.

The Document

 The Process of Soviet Weapons Design, March 1978 [45 Pages, 5.9MB]

https://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/dtic/2011-43.pdf

The post The Process of Soviet Weapons Design, March 1978 first appeared on The Black Vault.

Although this document has been released prior to my Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR) request, there has been quite a bit more released (ie: no longer redacted).

I requested this in October of 2016, and received this reviewed copy on 30 May 2017.

According to the document:

Before and during World War II, the Germans had developed a variety of missile systems. At the end of the war, they stood alone in the numbers and complexity of these systems. Some were used during the war with varying degrees of effectiveness; others were evolving when the war ended. Many of these missile systems, and the scientists who had developed them, were acquired by the Soviets after the war, permitting the USSR to quickly establish its own missile program.

At first the Soviets attempted to keep the missile-related facilities intact on German soil, using German scientists to the maximum extent possible while Soviet counterparts were gaining familiarity in a new field. Later, the Germans, and most of the missile-related facilities, were sent to the USSR, where work continued under Soviet control.

The V-2, a German rocket used operationally late in the war, was the system most extensively studied and emulated by the Soviets. It was the first such missile tested in the USSR, inaugurating the opening in 1947 of the Soviet Union’s first missile test range at Kapustin Yar. Reflections of its design were seen years later in the evolving Soviet missile program. Other missiles, and missile-related systems and subsystems, also fell into Soviet hands after the war; they too provided the Soviets with technology and hardware that would serve them well in later years.

By 1953, most of the Germans had departed the USSR, and subsequent developments were by and large the result of indigenous Soviet programs planned, engineered, developed, and produced by Soviet personnel. In 1957, the USSR successfully tested its first ICBM, and by the early 1960s it had available a variety of ballistic missiles, from short-range ones to those capable of· covering intercontinental distances. By this time, three additional major test ranges were operational or evolving, and the Soviets had launched earth satellites into orbit. They had also successfully conducted planetary probes, and they had launched the first man into space.

By the early 1970s, further significant developments had occurred in the Soviet. missile effort. By this time, the Soviet Union had a major land-based ballistic missile force in being, capable of achieving ranges up to 7,000 nautical miles or more. Refinements in guidance and control systems saw missile accuracy improve steadily. Yields of nuclear warheads of deployed missiles varied up to 25 megatons. Multiple reentry vehicles, penetration aids, and multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles had evolved or were evolving by this time. Hardened, dispersed silos had come into widespread use, and mobile missile systems, mainly for tactical use, had been deployed in large numbers.

In the early 1970s, tests began of newer-generation missiles, further enhancing the Soviet Union’s capabilities in this area. Incorporating refinements in a number of significant areas, these newer missiles, coupled with the older ones, provide the Soviet Union with an effective weapons mix. Thus, from the early German assistance, from technology gleaned from Western sources, and through its own efforts, it can be seen that the USSR progressed steadily throughout -the years in the missile field, culminating in its advanced systems of today. Just as the Soviets were embarking on a new and unfamiliar field in these early years, so did the Sigint establishment find itself faced with a new and unfamiliar . problem. Organizations had to be built from nothing; personnel had to be trained; facilities and systems had to be developed; and a fragmented effort had to be streamlined and centralized.

To further complicate the problem, · the main inter.est of the U.S. Comint establishment after World War II concerned ·communications signals, in particular those transmitted in the HF band and below. Equipment, systems, and facilities were not available to adequately handle telemetry signals – from fast-moving missiles propagated in higher frequency bands.

Declassified Document

 The Soviet Land-Based Ballistic Missile Program, 1945-1972: An Historical Overview, 1973 [136 Pages, 15.8MB]

https://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/nsa/sovietmissileprogram.pdf

The post The Soviet Land-Based Ballistic Missile Program, 1945-1972: An Historical Overview, 1973 first appeared on The Black Vault.

According to the document:

This project analyzed Soviet national television by investigating the following topics. All programming was taped from First Program (channel) received in real-time (Moscow time) from the Ghorizont geostationary communications satellite.

1. The broadcast day: two full days of First Program-October 22 and 24, 1987 (approximately twenty-eight hours of programming)–analyzed in detail.

2. The newspaper base-line: television and the newspaper system–consistency and disparity in stories and themes between television and individual newspapers. Compared were Central Television and Literaturnaya Gazeta, ,Moscow News, and Pravda.

3. Lag-time and news coverage: comparison of Soviet and American news for July 27-31, August 10-17, and August 11-17, 1988 in order to determine:

(a). The degree to which the same stories were covered
by the two television systems;
(b). The degree of simultaneity of news coverage;
(c). The.”spin” on the stories both systems covered.

4. Detailed analysis of non-news programs depicting the United States between September 1986 and October 1988.

5. Soviet television news flow: analysis of the authoritative evening news program, Vremya, for August 1988: 690 individual news stories, analyzed in terms of countries covered, subjects treated, format, people on the news, degree of explicit bias.

6. Guide to use of the weekly Soviet television programming listings and descriptions, Govorit i pokazyyaet Moskva.

Document Archive

 Soviet Television Programming: Context and Content, January 1989 [297 Pages, 29.5MB]

The post Soviet Television Programming: Context and Content, January 1989 first appeared on The Black Vault.

This document was discovered as a reference in another government records. I then filed a FOIA request for the report, and it took more than 5 years to track down the office that had it. It has now been reviewed and released to The Black Vault. You can download it below.

Excerpt

The objective of this analysis is to define and assess the vulnerabilities that might exist in prospective Soviet Charged Particle Beam Weapon (CPBW) systems.

This analysts will then establish the technological base required before countermeasure efforts can be pursued to negate such new weapon systems. Of primary concern in this effort is the vulnerabilities of an atmosphere Particle Beam Weapon systems; hence, only Charged Particle Beam Weapon systems will be addressed, not space-based Neutral Particle Beam Weapon systems.

A secondary objective of this effort is to provide US designers and builders of such weapon systems with an insight into vulnerabilities that might exist in our own systems – thereby to facilitate the incorporation of counter-countermeasure techniques in our systems to probably “hardened” them against attack from early generation Soviet CPBW countermeasures.

Declassified Document

 Vulnerability Assessment of Charged Particle Beam Weapons, September 1979 [45 Pages, 2.1MB]

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The post Vulnerability Assessment of Charged Particle Beam Weapons, September 1979 first appeared on The Black Vault.

The Martin and Mitchell Defection occurred in September 1960 when two U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) cryptologists, William Hamilton Martin and Bernon F. Mitchell, defected to the Soviet Union. A secret 1963 NSA study said that “Beyond any doubt, no other event has had, or is likely to have in the future, a greater impact on the Agency’s security program.”

Martin and Mitchell met while serving in the U.S. Navy in Japan in the early 1950s and both joined the NSA on the same day in 1957. They defected together to the Soviet Union in 1960, and at a Moscow press conference they revealed and denounced various U.S. policies, especially provocative incursions into the air space of other nations and spying on America’s own allies. Underscoring their apprehension of nuclear war, they said “we would attempt to crawl to the moon if we thought it would lessen the threat of an atomic war.”

Within days, citing a trusted source, Congressman Francis E. Walter, chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), said Martin and Mitchell were “sex deviates”, prompting sensational press coverage. U.S. officials at the National Security Council privately shared their assumption that the two were part of a traitorous homosexual network. Classified NSA investigations, on the other hand, determined the pair had “greatly inflated opinions concerning their intellectual attainments and talents” and had defected to satisfy social aspirations. The House Un-American Activities Committee publicly intimated its interpretation of the relationship between Martin and Mitchell as homosexual and that reading guided the Pentagon’s discussion of the defection for decades.

Below, you will find my research into this defection, and the declassified documents that have been released.

National Security Agency Documents

 NSA Declassified Documents, Released March 2015 [ 103 Pages, 49.5MB ] – The NSA is charging nearly $2,000 to complete their search for records relating to this incident. They used the 2 hours allotted to me for free, and sent me the first 100 pages that they found. This is that release. Any additional searching or releases, I will be required to pay the thousands of dollars.

The post Martin and Mitchell Defection to Soviet Union, September 1960 first appeared on The Black Vault.

 Click here for a directory listing of all 125 .pdf files on Operation SOLO [ 21,121 Total Pages ]

A Byte Out of History
Going SOLO: Communist Agent Tells All

In April 1958, a representative of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) named Morris Childs made important trips to the Soviet Union and China. His purpose: to re-establish formal contact between the CPUSA and these countries. 

First, Morris visited with key Communist Party and Soviet leaders in Moscow. He learned of their wider political goals, their concerns and fears, and their deep interest in restoring connections with the CPUSA. Then he went to Beijing, where he made similar inroads and met with Premier Mao Tse Tung.

After three months, Morris returned home and reported all he’d learned to CPUSA leaders. But as a new Freedom of Information Act release in the FBI Vault makes clear, he was also secretly talking to President Dwight Eisenhower, the vice president, the secretary of state, and a select group of other U.S. officials.

Morris, you see, was actually one of the FBI’s greatest Cold War agents.

Born Moishe Chilovsky in the Ukraine, Morris Childs and his family immigrated to the U.S. in 1912. He joined the emerging communist movement in Chicago as a teenager and devoted his life to the cause. In 1947, his work ended after an internal power struggle removed him as editor of the CPUSA’s flagship newspaper and his continuing struggle with heart disease left him sickly and incapacitated. Unable to pursue other work for the movement, Childs was soon forgotten.

Meanwhile, America’s growing realization of the penetration of the U.S. government by the Soviets and the subsequent political debate over the role of communism in society became the focus of the day. By the early 1950s, the FBI began taking a more proactive approach to dealing with Soviet intelligence. That included zeroing in on the CPUSA—in part, by approaching Communist officials who had left the party. One of the first on the list was Morris Childs’ brother Jack.

Jack willingly cooperated and strongly advocated that the Bureau contact his brother, paving the way for a 1952 meeting between Morris and Special Agent Carl Freyman. The two got along quite well, sharing a knowledge of communist philosophy and an interest in wider intellectual and cultural issues.

After several meetings, Childs agreed to return to the CPUSA as an informant for the FBI. With the assistance of Jack, the Bureau helped Morris rehabilitate both his health and his role in the Party. Morris began feeling better after a Bureau-arranged stay at the Mayo Clinic, and within a year he started reaching out to his old comrades. He and Jack were accepted back into the CPUSA and eventually were tasked with deepening contacts with the Canadian Communist Party and through it, the Soviet Union.

Over four decades, Morris made more than 50 visits overseas for the CPUSA, each time reporting with great detail and insight about the issues and concerns of the leadership of the Soviet Union and China. Considering that these two nations were such closed societies, Morris’s intelligence was invaluable—a fact recognized by President Ronald Reagan when he awarded Morris (and posthumously, Jack) with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The intelligence work of the brothers—and later their wives—was handled by the FBI under the code name SOLO. In the coming months, stay tuned as we reveal more details of this long-running operation as additional sections of the SOLO file are released in our Vault.

 Click here for a directory listing of all 125 .pdf files on Operation SOLO [ 21,121 Total Pages ]

The post Operation SOLO, Communist Party Infiltration first appeared on The Black Vault.