WestminsterResearch http://www.westminster.ac.uk/westminsterresearch “Their Need Was Great”: Émigrés and Anglo-American Intelligence Operations in the Early Cold War Cacciatore, F. This is an electronic version of a PhD thesis awarded by the University of Westminster. © Mr Francesco Cacciatore, 2018. The WestminsterResearch online digital archive at the University of Westminster aims to make the research output of the University available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the authors and/or copyright owners. Whilst further distribution of specific materials from within this archive is forbidden, you may freely distribute the URL of WestminsterResearch: ((http://westminsterresearch.wmin.ac.uk/). In case of abuse or copyright appearing without permission e-mail [email protected] “Their Need Was Great”: Émigrés and Anglo-American Intelligence Operations in the Early Cold War Francesco Alexander Cacciatore March 2018 A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Westminster for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Abstract Covert action during the Cold War has been the subject of much historiography. This research, however, is based for the most part on primary sources, specifically on the records declassified in the United States in 2007 as a consequence of the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act. The majority of the historiography on this topic either predates or neglects these records. The study of covert operations inside the Iron Curtain during the early Cold War, sponsored by Western states using émigré agents, usually ends with the conclusion that these operations were a failure, both in operational terms and from the point of view of the intelligence gathered. I will challenge this conclusion, showing that not only the operations gathered a significant amount of intelligence, but also that the intelligence obtained was considered valuable by policymakers and had an impact in the planning and policymaking strategies of the early Cold War. The focus on primary sources also allowed a detailed description of the practical aspects of the operations, leading to a more coherent and solid analysis of their development and consequences. This study focuses on American operations, due to the abundance of records available. British operations have also been considered and assessed in the best way the author found possible. Two case studies have been selected, based on the nationality of the émigré agents used: White Russians and Ukrainians. The intelligence outcome from these operations has been carefully analysed, and their influence on policymaking assessed in the wider context of the Cold War. The conclusion is a complete re-evaluation of the importance and value of Western Human intelligence in the late 1940s and 1950s. 1 List of Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................... 5 Chapter I The Early Cold War: Policymaking and Covert Action ................................. 32 Chapter II Western Espionage and the Émigrés: Target Eastern Europe ....... 62 Chapter III The White Russians and Project Aenoble ....................................................... 96 Chapter IV Project Aerodynamic: the CIA Espionage Networks in the Ukraine ..................................................................... 142 Chapter V British Covert Operations in the Ukraine ..................................................... 184 Chapter VI Why the Émigrés ........................................................................................... 219 Chapter VII Émigré Intelligence Production .................................................................... 249 Conclusions .................................................................................................. 278 Glossary ........................................................................................................ 292 2 Bibliography ................................................................................................ 302 Acknowledgements To my Director of Studies, Peter Catterall, for making this easier than it should have been. To all the people closest to me, friends and family, for supporting me over the course of these three years. Finally, to room 406 and its denizens, for making the working days much more bearable. 3 Author’s declaration I declare that all the material contained in this thesis is my own work. 4 Introduction Context and argument When asked about my research by people from outside the field, the words “intelligence history” usually provoke surprise and admiration. The next step usually is explaining that studying the history of intelligence has not much to do with James Bond movies or with spy craft in general. At a first glance, it may seem that the work of historians and that of intelligence are the opposite ends of the spectrum: historians work with the past, while the main purpose of intelligence is to predict or give early warning of outcomes happening in the future. However, this is a shallow judgement that does not hold under a deeper analysis. The first historian in the modern sense of the word, the Greek Thucydides, wrote: "I shall be content if those shall pronounce my History useful who desire to give a view of events as they really happen, and as they are likely, in accordance with human nature, to repeat themselves at some future time, if not exactly the same yet very similar.”1 Almost two thousand years later, French philosopher Michel de Montaigne echoed that thought: “Tis one and the same Nature that rolls on her course, and whoever has sufficiently considered the present state of things might certainly conclude as to both the future and the past.”2 Finally, a sign in front of the former site of Dachau’s concentration camp stands as a grim reminder that, in the words of Spanish philosopher George Santayana, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The historian’s work, thus, even if rooted in the past, has much to do with the present and the future. The same goes for the work of intelligence, even if is quite hard to give an exhaustive definition of what that “work” exactly is. An article by Dr Michael Warner of the CIA History Staff well explains the difficulties in finding an answer to that question: “Without a clear idea of what intelligence is, how can we develop a theory to explain how it 1 Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War (New York, Oxford University Press, 2009), Book I, 2, 2. 2 Michel de Montaigne, The complete essays (London, Penguin UK, 2004), Book II, Chapter 12: An apology for Raymond Sebond. 5 works?”3 Among the official definitions presented in the study, the one provided by the Clark Task Force of the Hoover Commission in 1955 is very interesting: “Intelligence deals with all the things which should be known in advance of initiating a course of action.”4 The Central Intelligence Agency in 1999 provided its own definition of the ‘craft’: “Reduced to its simplest terms, intelligence is knowledge and foreknowledge of the world around us.”5 The two crafts, that of the historian and that of intelligence, share this peculiar connection between the past, the present and the future: the study and interpretation of the first two serves as a bridge to the third. Historians have something else in common with a fundamental figure of the intelligence field, the analyst, for their work consist in interpreting what is already known. For historians this can be quite a task, given the constant need for novelty and the amount of literature they have to usually relate to. Luckily, History will never run out of inspirations for research, and every historical era or event offers plenty of new angles worth exploring; the more we discover, the more questions are raised. This is particularly true for what we call the Cold War, a generalising and reductive term for a period that spans forty years of our recent history. Twenty-six years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, there is still much we can learn about the Cold War. The fact that the conflict between the two blocs was mostly a covert one means that the availability of information and primary sources is far from satisfying. The recent tensions between Russia and the Western countries could be used to prove the wisdom of maintaining a strict policy of control on the release of classified documents, no matter how old. This is obviously an obstacle for the researcher of the Cold War, but it also means that there are still a good number of grey areas, topics worth exploring and discoveries to be made. In the words of Richard Aldrich, “we do not yet know the full story of the Cold War, indeed we may never know.”6 His statement holds even truer for the field of intelligence history: “Secret service is fundamental to any understanding of the Cold War. At the highest level it was intelligence, especially very secret intelligence, that underpinned, even legitimated, so many policies launched in the conflict’s name.”7 3 Michael Warner, “Wanted: a definition of intelligence. Understanding our craft” (CSI Publications), Studies in Intelligence Vol. 46, No 3, 2002, pp. 15-22. 4 Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government [the Hoover Commission], Intelligence Activities (Washington, DC, June 1955), p. 26. 5 Central Intelligence Agency (Office of Public Affairs), A Consumer's Guide to Intelligence, (Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 1999), vii. 6 Richard J. Aldrich, The Hidden