Dutch Harbor and the War Department's Decimal Mask
Kept secret for decades, the administrative indices of the War Department mask a shift from wartime defense to Arctic surveillance in Alaska.
By Miriam Adler ·
Counterintelligence
Ginny II Executions and the Caserta Command Gap
Fifteen men were executed under Hitler’s Commando Order in 1944, but the records of the station that sent them remain stripped of their strategic intent
By Harlan Pryce ·
X-2 and the Power to Kill OSS Missions Without Explanation
Hidden for decades in radio and cable logs, the records track a wartime intelligence apparatus that allowed a single counterintelligence branch to erase operations in the field.
By Vera Kessler ·
Jacob Monessowitz and the New York Cache targeting US Armed Services
Soviet directives for an espionage network in the United States were seized from a New York address in 1927, though the fate of the man who held them was erased from the record.
By Harlan Pryce ·
LAKAM's Ghost Agency and the 1979 CIA Blind Spot
Jonathan Pollard delivered US secrets to an intelligence unit that was completely missing from the CIA's 47-page map of Israeli intelligence, a gap that stayed secret for years.
By Harlan Pryce ·
U.S. Army's 1990 Map of Colombia's Most Notorious Brigades
For years, the U.S. military held a high-resolution map of the Colombian units that tortured and disappeared civilians, keeping the command structure secret while the blood flowed.
By Harlan Pryce ·
X-2 and the Saboteurs Trained for a War That Never Ended
Resistance fighters in Athens and Bari were groomed for sabotage by a secret branch of the OSS whose primary mission was the internal purge, kept under seal for decades.
By Desmond Okafor ·
Berlin's Ghost Network and the Intercepted Secrets of the Americas
German agents believed their traffic to Berlin was secure, but for years their secrets were read in English by the very intelligence services they sought to deceive.
By Harlan Pryce ·
Army Intelligence Drafted 1943 Plan to Watch Axis Suspects and American Firms
Domestic surveillance of "subversive" citizens and corporate entities was mapped out in a working model created during the height of World War II.
By Constance Bell ·
Foreign Office restricted MI5 action against Soviet spies to "barest minimum"
Diplomatic courtesy shielded Moscow's agents in Britain during the Second World War while security officers were forced to watch from the sidelines.
By Constance Bell ·
FBI Managers Hampered Early Hunt for CIA Mole Aldrich Ames
Names of managers lacking experience and the specific intelligence leads missed during the hunt for Aldrich Ames remain shielded in a more highly classified report.
By Vera Kessler ·