by Kevin Wright
The Sources of Soviet Conduct (George Kennan, 1947)
The Sources of Intelligence
Throughout the Cold War the size, composition and technological quality of Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces was constantly improving. To keep abreast of these developments, the Western intelligence community voraciously gathered information from all available sources. The generation of reliable, wide-ranging, verifiable intelligence was vital in providing political and military decision-makers with the most accurate assessed intelligence available.
All intelligence disciplines were employed against the Soviets. Operationally each was narrowly defined and had its individual strengths and weaknesses, but effective collation and fusion helped to reduce the individual disciplines’ deficiencies. An outline of the main disciplines used by Western intelligence agencies in Cold War Germany is useful in understanding intelligence collection methods.
Signals and Communications Intelligence (SIGINT–COMINT/ELINT)
SIGINT is the overarching term applied to the collection of communications intelligence (COMINT) and electronic intelligence (ELINT). SIGINT’s capabilities cover both tactical and strategic communications and electronic emissions. These included radio transmissions between military forces, armies, aircraft, ships and headquarters, as well as radar and data links. SIGINT can provide invaluable intelligence on current and strategic activities, organisations, military formations and manufacturing. However, it only ‘hears’ what is going on and requires confirmation by other means.
Photographic and Imagery Intelligence (PHOTINT/IMINT)
Photographic and Imagery Intelligence provides a permanent, tangible record by exploiting ground, airborne and space-based imagery. PHOTINT refers to optical photography, whereas IMINT encompasses multi-spectral sensors such as infrared and radar. Extracting intelligence from imagery, just like SIGINT, requires skilled, well-trained and experienced personnel. Imagery is far from infallible as it can be deceived by careful camouflage, sophisticated deception plans, and hiding equipment or physical activity from view whilst the collection platform is overhead and these measures are still used against satellites with their predictable orbits. Imagery’s value is its ability to produce details of new items of equipment, monitoring fixed operating locations and watching the movement of equipment and personnel. It can also help to confirm, or refute, information gathered from other sources.
Human Intelligence (HUMINT)
As its name suggests, Human Intelligence covers the acquisition of information and intelligence from human sources and is perhaps the most familiar form of intelligence collection. It can come from virtually any human interaction. More commonly this can mean casual and social meetings with local populations, formal and informal contact between diplomatic and military personnel, defectors and ‘agents in place’ (spies). HUMINT often manages to capture the information and perspectives that are not easily seen by external observers or technical means, including the state of military and civilian morale, levels and effectiveness of training, the overall competence of troops, equipment reliability, readiness and routine military practices. A key advantage, and complication, of HUMINT is its flexibility because humans not only collect information, but they also interpret and explain it. Explaining the reasons behind why something is done can sometimes be more valuable than just noting that it is being done. HUMINT has significant limitations: the age of the information is one, as much is likely to be very time sensitive. Another key consideration is the source’s own agenda and motivation.
One particularly valuable form of HUMINT sources were military and defence attachés who were trained to make informed and expert observations, and interpret them. They often took photographs to support their observations. Most were generally permitted to tour in their host country overtly. But in less friendly regimes their movements were often constrained by embassy policies, local regulations and local security force activities. Attachés have to work within the constraints of acceptable diplomatic practice. In extremis, they can be declared persona non grata and expelled from the country, resulting in political embarrassment and the loss of their unique capability until they can be replaced, which may take some time.
The sharing of intelligence gathered by separate agencies and states can multiply the amount of information available and contribute to the assembly of a more comprehensive intelligence picture.
The UK–US Intelligence Relationship and Co-operation
Richard Aldrich has observed that extensive US–UK security co-operation is rooted in the areas of atomic and intelligence exchange.1 This co-operation is often characterised as the ‘Special Relationship’ which developed between Britain and the US during the Second World War. Intelligence sharing has certainly always been a major element of that relationship. It included the US presence at Bletchley Park where wartime enemy communications were broken and at the Allied Central Interpretation Unit (ACIU) at RAF Medmenham where air photography was exploited. Both sides sought the continuance of this mutually beneficial relationship after the end of the war. In March 1946, before the well-known ‘UK–USA Agreement’ formalised the SIGINT relationship, an agreement on the ‘exchange of photographic cover of every description on a world-wide basis’ had been concluded between Air Vice-Marshal (AVM) Elmhirst of the RAF and General George McDonald, USAAF (Head of USAAF intelligence).2 In its haste to demobilise, the USA neglected airborne reconnaissance capabilities significantly so it was not surprising that the embryonic USAF intelligence branch looked instinctively to the RAF for support.3 Although US Army officialdom had officially banned such contact, there were very practical reasons why early US air intelligence efforts retained a significant focus on the UK.
The Nazis’ Photographic Legacy
In May 1945 British and US units overran a number of Luftwaffe intelligence centres in the heart of the German Reich. They recovered a remarkable imagery collection covering the western part of the Soviet Union that had been assembled by the Luftwaffe. For the next two decades this photography was a vital part of British and American targeting intelligence. They gathered together this huge photographic collection, under Operations Dick Tracy and GX, from a number of dispersed locations. These ranged from a barn near Reichenhall, through partially burned photography found in barges, with some of the best said to be from Hitler’s retreat at Berchtesgaden and yet more from Vienna and Oslo. Totalling over 1 million prints it required nearly 200 officers to manage the collection. In October 1945 the duplication effort moved from Pinetree in Essex to RAF Medmenham in Oxfordshire. Work on piecing the material together continued beyond 1949.4 More photography was purchased from two unidentified ‘gentlemen of Europe’ in 1958 and Dino Brugioni mentions the discovery, of hitherto unknown material, moved from Berlin to a Dresden basement at the end of the war, which was found in 1993.5 The combined collection provided a detailed photographic record of Soviet Russia as far as the Ural Mountains and had begun to be amassed well before the Nazi invasion in 1941. Significant updating and replacement of this imagery was not possible until the advent of satellite imagery after 1960.6 This collection was the basis of the continuous Anglo-American photographic intelligence exchanges throughout the Cold War but was not restricted to just Soviet-focused material.
Cold War: Spy Planes and Politics
Cold War Intelligence Collection Flights (ICF) saw ever more sophisticated platforms being employed, ranging from balloons to aircraft and ultimately space-based satellites. The consolidation of Soviet control over Eastern Europe, the Berlin Airlift, the exploding of the USSR’s first atomic bomb, the Korean War and other events rapidly accelerated the USA’s desire for detailed targeting information. Besides the technological issues involved, extensive political bargains were struck between Britain and the USA to co-ordinate their deepening intelligence co-operation.
This combined British and US collection effort soon became extremely provocative as both countries engaged in deep-penetration overflights of the USSR, flouting its borders
and breaching its sovereignty. The precise start of these long-range overflights in Europe is difficult to identify but in 1950, after the start of the Korean War, was a watershed in the process. A series of six meetings between prime minister and president took place in Washington during December 1950. The talks suddenly kick started military nuclear co-operation between the two, based largely on a series of ‘informal understandings’. The deliberate ambiguity that seems to surround these meetings may well have included agreement on the collection of necessary intelligence for targeting purposes. US historian Cargill Hall refers to one meeting between Attlee and Truman, asserting (although admitting no archival material has emerged to support this) that the British agreed to join the USA in a co-ordinated overflight programme of the USSR. The details of this element of the ‘understandings’ were probably presaged by a conference at RAF Benson in October 1950 to discuss Cold War intelligence collection priorities. Hosted by RAF Bomber Command, attended by representatives from the War Office, Air Ministry, Admiralty, US and Canadian armed forces, it established early primary tasks for photographic collection.7 These included discovering evidence of the Soviet ability to mount long-range air attacks on Britain and to use submarines against Western surface ships. Reporting the movement of Soviet ground forces, undertaking air survey and updating targeting maps to support a future strike force were all seen as important priorities. Some of these tasks would have necessitated direct overflight of Soviet and satellite territory and both states were prepared to accept the inherent risks of such a policy as an intensified overflight programme got under way.8 By the spring of 1951 preparations were well advanced for the arrival of USAF B-45/RB-45 bomber and reconnaissance aircraft at RAF Sculthorpe in Norfolk.9
Operation Jiu-Jitsu
In 1951, well before the advent of the U-2, the British received a US request for the RAF to undertake a small number of radar reconnaissance missions over targets in the western USSR. The loss of a US Navy Neptune aircraft on a Far East peripheral flight in November 1951, together with an approaching election year and the high risk of losing a US overflight, have all been suggested as reasons for the USA seeking British support. The RAF duly obliged by forming the suitably anodyne ‘Special Duties Flight’ commanded by Squadron Leader John Crampton now deceased.
In late February 1952, after the selected crews had been trained on the RB-45 in the USA, Crampton was told that the flight’s mission was to simultaneously fly three different routes to acquire ‘radarscope photography’ of airbases, missile sites and other important targets using the US-owned RB-45s that now sported RAF markings. The final case justifying the mission was made in a summary paper of February 1952 and approved by Prime Minister Churchill.10 A gentle probe of the defences flying over the Soviet Zone of Germany for thirty minutes or so provoked no Russian reaction in March and the flight was ready for operations.11 On 17 April, the three aircraft, flying at 36,000ft over the Baltic, after an air refuelling, split up to fly their separate routes. One followed a northerly track covering targets in the Baltic republics, another a Central route that went well beyond Minsk and approached Moscow, while the Southern mission went beyond Kiev and close to Rostov-on-Don in the Ukraine. The flights’ results were viewed as a considerable success and the ‘Special Duties Flight’ then dispersed, only to be briefly reactivated in the autumn of 1952.12
This reactivation was short-lived because not all the Cabinet sub-committee ministers involved were comfortable with the flights. Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary, strongly objected to this second flight because he regarded it as of being of greater importance to the USA than to the UK: ‘The information to be obtained by “Jiu-Jitsu II” is required primarily for the general atomic offensive on the USSR and not for the special attacks on Soviet bomber bases, which are so important for the defence of the United Kingdom.’
He questioned why the UK should undertake these highly risky flights when the USA was not prepared to do so itself. Ministerial colleagues accepted Eden’s objections and the US authorities were informed of their decision and the proposals quietly dropped.13
The ‘Special Duties Flight’ came together for a final mission on 28–29 April 1954. The Northern and Central routes were much the same as before but the Southern route over the Ukraine went even further eastwards. Crampton’s aircraft, on the latter route, encountered significant and prolonged anti-aircraft fire as it approached Kiev and night fighters were also launched to engage it.
Operation Jiu-Jitsu established an important precedent, clearly demonstrating how closely the two nations could integrate their efforts when there were perceived mutual interests.
Stepping Up the Surveillance
In the mid 1950s the USA faced great difficulties in collecting strategic intelligence on the Soviet Union. The huge landmass and the closed nature of the Soviet state and society meant very little useful information was overtly available to verify Soviet claims of military technical advances and a rapidly growing nuclear arsenal. The main means to gather this information was through photographic and signals intelligence. Peripheral SIGINT and shallow penetration photographic ICFs in Europe and Soviet Asia yielded valuable information but at a significant loss of life.14 Even so, the flights were not providing the material really sought by US military planners and politicians.
Eisenhower’s presidency oversaw a huge growth in technical intelligence gathering. Large budgets, rapid technological advances, careful management and some hugely talented individuals all played their part. The president demonstrated considerable political skill and practical statesmanship in managing the many divergent demands facing him. Many, including Eisenhower, were seriously concerned about the possibility of a surprise attack by the USSR. Congress was pressing for details of Soviet technology and military dispositions to justify the continual demands for huge increases in US defence spending to counter the growing ‘Communist threat’. This pressure was compounded by the C-in-C, Strategic Air Command (SAC) – General Curtis LeMay – Congress, and the military generally, who pursued aggressive intelligence collection programmes for targeting purposes. Eisenhower had to manage these demands and balance them with efforts to improve relationships with the USSR’s post-Stalinist leadership.
At a practical level, a lot of signals intelligence could be collected by distant monitoring posts and peripheral ICFs that did not violate sovereign airspace or borders. Photographic intelligence, of the quality required for targeting, needed either close proximity peripheral missions or direct overflights to discover Soviet bomber bases, missile sites, industrial complexes, command and nuclear secrets.
Eisenhower, who had been the Allied Supreme Commander in Europe in the Second World War, was acutely aware of what high-quality photographic intelligence could offer. Whilst not shy of developing the collection means, he was well aware that overflights of Soviet territory were highly provocative and tantamount to a declaration of war. There were also worries about domestic reactions, particularly from US public opinion, if its own government was seen to be so flagrantly violating international law.
The USA developed mechanisms for the political control of sensitive peripheral and overflight programmes intended to mitigate their inherent risks. It also established the political and military controls necessary for their management which lasted beyond the Cold War’s end. To avoid duplication and ‘overspill’ most peripheral missions and the Corridor programmes were co-ordinated through agreed monthly schedules. However, deep-penetration flights remained firmly subject to presidential scrutiny and authorisation. Most US deep-penetration overflights took place during the Eisenhower presidency. The original ‘broad approval’ process quickly became subject to more rigorous controls. In the early days, Staff Secretary General Andrew Goodpastor recalls authorisation discussions being just between the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs – General Nathan Twining or Admiral Arthur Radford. Later Secretary Dulles, or the CIA’s Richard Bissell, would provide Eisenhower with a memo detailing the justification for the
flight and a proposed routing. The president would examine the individual mission proposals in detail.15 The possible intelligence gain was weighed against the likely political embarrassment if something went seriously wrong. Eisenhower also came to insist on the tighter specification of flight dates and the length of time for which the flight authorisation remained valid.16 Knowledge of operations was initially kept to a very small group, with Staff Secretary Goodpastor acting as political ‘cut out’ to enable presidential deniability in the event of a disaster.
In the USA the continuing fears about the ‘bomber and missile gaps’ fed by senior military officers and many in Congress were further exacerbated by Khrushchev’s regular pronouncements on the rapid advances of Soviet military technology. Without hard evidence the USA was unable to sort fact from exaggeration and outright fiction.
Preparing for the U-2
There were a number of projects reaching fruition that pushed photographic and SIGINT capabilities forward by large orders of magnitude. The secret development of the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft was followed by an even more ambitious programme that produced the SR-71 Blackbird. Many advances were facilitated through Eisenhower’s 1954 establishment of the ‘Technological Capabilities Panel’. The Panel pushed forward huge leaps in camera, lens and film technologies that were harnessed for the overflight programmes. Even more sensitive were the resources being invested to create viable space-based reconnaissance satellites to ultimately replace the need for manned overflights. However, until their arrival, politicians had little option other than to authorise ever more risky manned overflights to get the information they so desperately sought. By 1955, the U-2 had reached an advanced stage of development and was almost ready for operations.