" I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma ..."
Winston Churchill
Beginning with this posting, I will be looking at CIA’s use of Human Intelligence (HUMINT) by infiltrating agents into the USSR in its quest for strategic information in the early Cold War.
REDSOX was CIA’s cryptonym for Operations involving the illegal return of defectors and emigres to the USSR as agents to infiltrate the USSR. Most REDSOX agent candidates were recruited from the estimated two million World War II displaced persons (DPs) of Slavic origin located in Europe. CIA‘s Soviet Russia (SR) Division infiltrated at least fifty REDSOX agents into the Soviet Union -- another estimate is that 85 agents were infiltrated via parachutes, land, or sea.
CIA’s Combined Soviet Operations Branch (CSOB) in Munich, Germany was responsible for the dispatching of agents into the USSR. The majority of these operations were directed against Western Ukraine, Byelorussia, and the Baltic countries and were "essentially one-way operations with few adequate provisions for exfiltration", i.e., they did not come back. According to one CIA report, “One chronic drawback during this period was that the Soviet authorities shrewdly revealed the capture and compromise of many of our agents in the newspapers.”
In 1952, the CIA created the Domestic Operations Branch (DOB), cryptonym AEACRE, to support operations of the Office of Special Operations (OSO) and Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). The purpose of the Basic Plan of AEACRE was,
To provide for the establishment of a Domestic Operations Base in or near Washington for the interrogation, assessment, training, briefing, and preparation for dispatch of agents for infiltration into the USSR. An increasing number of problems relative to operational security is hampering REDSOX training activities in Germany, Japan, and Turkey. Since the pool of possible agent recruits is diminishing in Europe, as a result of immigration, a large part of the recruiting will now have to be done in the Western Hemisphere.
In 1953, responsibility for the recruiting and training agents was transferred to the Domestic Operations Branch (DOB) in the United States. One reason being that processing of Soviet defectors showed that seven out of ten defectors were discovered to be Soviet agents sent to the West.
From 1953 to 1955, only a few REDSOX operations were launched, and only three agents were dispatched in 1953 and none in 1954. In 1955, the planning and execution of REDSOX operations were renewed as exclusive DOB projects. The following are summaries of some of the projects:
1. Project AESCOUTER: This operation was a joint Norwegian Intelligence Service (NIS)/CIA maritime penetration of the Northwestern USSR to gather photographic intelligence on a high-priority Soviet airfield. The training of two Norwegian citizens recruited by the NIS and one NIS case officer was completed successfully. In/exfiltration will be by maritime means with an alternate overland exfiltration possibility. The operation will be mounted in the late summer of 1956, as soon as darkness conditions permit.
2. Project AECANARY: This was a double-agent operation for the buildup and the acquisition of Counter-Espionage information and incidental Foreign Intelligence information. DOB assessed, trained, and dispatched the agent as a typical REDSOX border crossing agent. This agent's preparation presented many unique handling, training, and security problems. He was dispatched across the Turkish/USSR border in the summer of 1955
3. Project AENICKLE: It was an attempt to use a recent young Soviet Army defector to recruit a Soviet citizen in place. The Soviet to be recruited as an engineer in a Moscow jet-aircraft engine plant and a friend of the agent's father. The agent, AENICKLE, was declared a bona fide defector by Defector Refugee Center in Frankfurt on 8 September. He was favorably reassessed and re-polygraphed by field case officers before his move to the U.S. As was standard DOB practice, he was reinterrogated and assessed on his arrival at DOB. The interrogation revealed hitherto undiscovered discrepancies in this agent's story. The Office of Security, the Counter Intelligence Staff, and the FBI were advised.
4. Project AEDRLFTER: This is an approved project developed by DOB to provide balloon equipment and facilities in Iran to infiltrate agents into the Soviet Union. The project was implemented in Iran by one SR staff officer with the knowledge and consent of the Shah of Iran.
5. Project AEPISTOL: This joint Iranian Intelligence Service/CIA low-level border crossing project was developed with AEACRE funds and supported from Headquarters by DOB case officers. It aimed to gather operational intelligence and establish a covert apparatus in the Soviet Turkmen area East of the Caspian Sea. Two agents have already been recruited, trained, and dispatched. They were successfully exfiltrated debriefed in the field.
6. Project Turkish REDSOX: At the request of the Turkish Intelligence Service and the (redacted), DOB supported five REDSOX operations mounted or run by the Turkish Intelligence Service. Support consisted mainly of documentation, legends, operational and area briefing, clothing, and limited finances. DOB case officers worked on this project both at Headquarters and on TDY in the field. The operations were instrumental in producing vitally necessary recent documents from the Georgian SSR and some operational and positive intelligence. One two-man team was successfully exfiltrated.
7. Project AERODYNAMIC: AERODYNAMIC was an active SR project for the past seven years and has supported the dispatch of all REDSOX agents into Soviet Ukraine. It provided financial support for the mechanism by which pouched material was brought out by underground couriers and provided the intelligence community with information of Ukrainian underground activities; the structure, aims, and personalities of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA); and the underground government, the Supreme Liberation Council (UHVR). DOB took the initiative to renew the REDSOX portions of this project.
8. Project AEPRIMER: This project is an outgrowth of the combined AEQUOR Foreign Intelligence (FI) and Political and Psychological (PP) program directed at the Byelorussian SSR. The earlier version of AEPRIMER, AEQUOR/FI, was responsible for the dispatch of five action agents into Byelorussia and established a working relationship with the leading Byelorussian emigre organization for the continuation of covert activities.
9. Project ALOPECIA: This cryptonym has been given to a single contact in Brazil operating among the Ukrainian emigres. It was anticipated that his activities would be expanded to include all of South America, making him the focal point for the spotting and preliminary assessment of any action-type candidates used in Ukrainian REDSOX operations.
10. Project AECUPBOARD: This is a pilot project for which approval was recently requested. It was an attempt to set up an overt package mail channel with persons in the Soviet Union. By tapping correspondence with persons who were active in the old Ukrainian underground movement, it is hoped that material, funds, and instructions could eventually be sent to persons in Ukrainian SSR.
Details of some of these projects will follow in subsequent posts.
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