There is no shortage of thrilling stories on the intelligence front, and there is no shortage of various versions of 007, but what exactly does the real intelligence warfare look like? Will it be as exciting as in the movie, or as boring as the legend?
According to the accounts of some retired spies, we learned that the real intelligence front and spies may be even more boring and boring than you think. But when you look back at these stories, you will find that the story is bizarre, the plot twists and turns, far beyond the brain hole of the movie screenwriter, which is addictive! This may be an important reason why espionage is attractive.
Friends who are interested in espionage warfare should be familiar with the so-called four major intelligence agencies of the world, namely the CIA, the former Soviet KGB, MI6 of the United Kingdom, and the Mossad of Israel.
It is said that there is also a heavyweight intelligence agency that does not appear on the list, not because it is not strong enough, but because it is so mysterious that its peers do not even know its real name. Like its predecessors, many agents didn't know the name of their work organization until decades later, which was the world-famous Central Special Branch.
Today's story is not a central special branch, but a twist and turn between the other three intelligence agencies, ups and downs and hilarious stories.
The story begins with World War II, when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed a Soviet-German peace agreement at the beginning of World War II, allowing Hitler to concentrate his forces on the European Allies led by Britain and France.
The Soviet Union itself was the socialist camp, and there were sharp contradictions with the representatives of the old capitalist camps such as Britain and France, and the armistice with Germany at this time was tantamount to helping Germany attack Britain and France. Therefore, the Allied camp hated the Soviets to the teeth, but there was no way to try to resist Germany with the Soviet Union.
Later, the Germans suddenly launched an offensive against the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union had to join the Allied camp to fight the Nazis. After a strenuous war of resistance, in 1943 the Soviet Union began to turn to a strategic counteroffensive and gradually drove german troops out of Soviet territory.
By this time the United States had entered the war and had become the substantive leader of the Allied forces, and the United States and Britain were worried that the Soviets would not cease war with Germany again, so that the pressure would all fall on Britain and the United States.
Despite Stalin's repeated promises to persevere to the end and eliminate fascism once and for all, Roosevelt and Churchill were worried because they could not understand what the Soviets were thinking, much less what the Soviets were doing in private.
Therefore, Britain and the United States believe that it is necessary to grasp the specific movements and information of the Soviets in a timely manner, and if the Soviets can really fulfill their commitments, then continue to work closely together. If the Soviets were clever behind their backs, they could prepare in advance.
At that time, Britain and the United States knew that the Soviet KGB was very powerful, but they were very confident in their own intelligence agencies and high-tech means, so they formulated a very strict radio surveillance operation, the purpose of which was to intercept the Telegram and telephone communications of the Soviets and fully grasp their movements.
It is not unusual for the Americans to engage in surveillance, whether in peacetime or during wartime, such operations have never stopped, but this is the first time that all-round surveillance of allies like the Soviet Union has been conducted. The Americans felt that they were still a little powerless on their own, especially since their bases were too far from the Soviet Union and needed to establish intelligence forward bases in Europe.
At that time, the US intelligence agency was not called the CIA, but its predecessor, called the "US Strategic Intelligence Agency". The project they worked with the British was called the Vinona Project.
After the Allied counterattack on the European continent on the Western Front, British and American intelligence agencies quickly established radio detection stations here, and a large number of advanced detection equipment began to collect radio signals over the Eastern Front. Since then, the detection station has continued to advance with the eastward advance of the front, and more and more intelligence has been intercepted.
Since Germany was about to be defeated, Britain and the United States shifted the backbone of intelligence deciphering to decipher Soviet intelligence, and soon the Soviet code was constantly deciphered, and a large amount of intelligence was learned by Britain and the United States.
The Vinona program was quite large, with a large number of advanced monitoring equipment deployed not only in the front, but also in the rear with a large number of recording, deciphering and analysis personnel. Every day, they need to decipher, analyze, and organize a huge amount of communication information, which is time-consuming and labor-intensive, but if they can get valuable information, it is incomparable to money and manpower.
On May 8, 1945, Nazi Germany announced its surrender, ending the fighting on the battlefields of Europe. Supposedly, the anglo-American fears had not become a reality, and the Vinona plan should have stopped. But Britain and the United States not only did not stop this plan, but instead increased their investment in it.
The reason is also very simple, the Western capitalist camps such as Britain and the United States have seen the Soviet Union as a new opponent and want to engage in a Cold War confrontation with him. In this way, the intelligence battlefield will be a place for a long-term contest between the two camps, and Britain and the United States will naturally not give up the first-mover advantage they have achieved.
The Soviet Union had been under surveillance for so long, would the powerful KGB know nothing about it? Of course not, although the Soviets have the surname "Su", they are by no means vegetarians, and the KGB is by no means idle.
The KGB knew about the Vinona Plan long before it was officially implemented. The British and American sides guarded the Soviet Union in advance, and the KGB had the same concerns, so it had already installed a group of spies into the British and American intelligence systems.
It so happened that two KGB agents were involved in the Vinona Plan, and they had already reported the details of the plan to the KGB.
In order not to scare the snake, the Soviet side studied the backup communication system while maintaining its composure and pretending not to know anything. Just secretly handling important information for special processing, or passing it on through other secret channels, in short, watching Britain and the United States themselves act there.
During the five years from 1943 to 1948, the KGB deliberately sent a large amount of intelligence to the Vinona Project via radio networks. Of course, most of them are useless, just deliberately revealing a little valuable information in order to continue to seduce Britain and the United States.
KGB agents sometimes had Soviet employees deliberately use important internal phone chats about short, trivial, and sometimes even deliberately peachy gossip and jokes about European and American leaders.
British and American eavesdroppers carefully made a complete recording of these call records, and then handed them to the British deciphering base for deciphering and analysis. The result, of course, was nothing, but they always thought it was a new code adopted by the Soviets, but they just didn't decipher it.
Because ordinary employees would never dare to use such an important telephone line to talk about personal affairs for a long time, British and American intelligence agents never found themselves being played.
In October 1948, Venona was routinely monitoring Soviet radio communications when there was a sudden silence inside the headphones. In addition to the signals of civilian radio stations, there was a terrible radio silence in the soviet side of the radio communications that had just been busy.
The commander of Operation Venona was stunned that day. What's going on? Did the USSR have a nationwide power outage? Why are all the radios silent, and they have a new generation of secret communication tools?
The British and Americans were puzzled until they learned the truth after a long period of investigation.
The KGB has also been studying the Venona program for a long time, but they really don't have the technology to completely avoid U.S. and British eavesdropping. Without advanced technology but backward technology, the KGB simply informed all communications departments to change from radio communications to wired communications.
It is such a simple method, but it makes the United States and Britain helpless.
Because the Cold War situation between Europe, the United States and the Soviet Union was very serious at that time, the two sides almost completely severed their ties, and only maintained limited diplomatic ties. There was no communication on the ground, so it was difficult for European and American spies to enter Soviet control. Even if you enter, there is nothing you can do.
Because the cable communication network was extremely extensive, and it was not all networked at that time, it was possible that the KGB itself could not listen to all the telephones of the entire Soviet Union at the same time. Listening required large equipment and stable high-voltage power supplies, which were not possible in britain and the United States at that time.
The Fact that the Soviets were able to switch modes of communication almost simultaneously showed that they had made adequate preparations in advance to ensure that the work could be seamlessly connected. It also proves that the Soviets already knew about the existence of the Vinona Plan, so the information previously eavesdropped on must be false and of little value. Those parents are short in the real parents, there is no encryption at all, it is deliberately said to you.
The surveillance operations, which britannea and the United States spent heavily, became a joke among the Soviet population and were easily defused.
Since then, the Americans have lost an important source of information about the Soviet Union, and the intelligence on the Soviet side is transmitted only by a very limited number of latent spies, which is extremely risky and rare.
In 1950, the Korean War broke out, after the U.S. military entered the war, the most worried thing was the Soviet Union's entry into the war, they urgently needed soviet intelligence, but the intelligence could not be obtained.
Soon after, the Americans discovered that what they feared most had not happened, and that the Soviet Union had not entered the war. But the last thing they believed happened right under their noses, Chinese sent troops and caught them off guard.
MacArthur never believed that Chinese would send troops to North Korea, first, he was too conceited, and second, there was no intelligence to show that China was sending troops.
Therefore, the Americans had a great need for Soviet intelligence at this time, but they had no way to start, and could only do it in a hurry.
Since the Soviet side had made comprehensive radio precautions, the Americans could not intercept from this channel, but could only find a way from the Soviet telephone line.
So they thought of Berlin and Vienna in Europe, and after World War II, the Soviet union and the European and American armies divided their spheres of influence in Europe, and the two cities were also divided, with one side and half.
The Americans asked the British for help, and the British told them that they had secretly dug an underground tunnel under Vienna, and then connected to the Soviets' underground telephone line, which was eavesdropping on the intelligence on this line.
The British were very modest, and named the operation "Project Silver", and the Americans were also interested in hearing it, so they also ran to Berlin to dig a tunnel, and to dig a large one, because opposite was the Soviet line in Europe, and there was much more information than Vienna.
Americans were less modest and named their jobs the "Golden Plan."
U.S. intelligence agencies set up a radar monitoring station not far from the Soviet underground line aggregation area after precision measurement, which was actually a large warehouse.
There was nothing in the warehouse, just to cover people's eyes and ears to dig holes. The warehouse was very busy during the day and night, with vehicles constantly coming in and out, in effect digging out sand and stones for transportation.
This tunnel is actually not long, but the engineering difficulty is not small, because of the need for confidentiality, but also need to maintain a certain distance from the telephone line, this tunnel can not be dug too deep. It was therefore necessary to keep quiet and not to be spotted by the Soviets on the ground.
In this way, it is impossible to use machinery and equipment for excavation, and can only be dug by hand carrying shovels and pickaxes. This work is not easy to do, and the construction personnel have suffered a lot.
Because it is too close to the ground, so a lot of buried construction waste has been dug out, the soil in the tunnel is relatively loose, they dig a small section of it immediately after the support reinforcement, so the progress is very slow.
Although the work was not large, there were many accidents, sometimes they dug the foundations of the ground buildings, and sometimes they could hear the Soviets chatting on them.
It is said that once they inadvertently leaked a septic tank, a pool of large dung suddenly gushed out, and the workers below endured the stench in order not to expose it, and at the same time desperately blocked the septic tank. That scene, its excitement, is indescribable.
It is said that the Americans spent a lot of money to dig this tunnel, equivalent to tens of millions of dollars today.
Although it took a lot of effort, it was worth it to achieve the goal, so the Americans secretly installed a large eavesdropping recording device underground to secretly monitor all the telephone lines here.
Hundreds of thousands of telephone recordings were intercepted by the Americans in the past few years, and there were more than 50,000 tapes alone. A large number of decipherers at the British base collated and deciphered the information.
The truth of the Soviets was captured by the Americans, who could finally win this time. But is this really the case?
A few years later, two Soviet soldiers accidentally discovered the tunnel while patrolling, and the Soviets made it public, leaving the Americans to lose face in front of the world.
Since then, the tunnel has been abandoned, but the Americans have not given up on the recordings, and have been studying and sorting them out, believing that there is very important information in them, but they have not yet been deciphered.
In 1961, a Soviet official suddenly defected, and the Americans interrogated him, while he told the Americans a message that once again shocked them to the jaws.
Your so-called "Golden Plan", before the excavation, the Soviets knew, watching you dig holes, install machines, you eavesdropped information is all nonsense!
The official also told the Americans that there were a number of Soviet spies lurking in the British intelligence system, including a man named Black, who had revealed the information to the Soviets.
Blake was subsequently arrested, and according to his confession, he was informed of the gold and silver plan as early as 1953 and immediately reported to the Soviet Union. The Americans didn't start groundbreaking until 1954, so the Soviets had been there for a long time.
The Americans were completely dumbfounded this time, and they were played by the old maozi again, this time they played even bigger, it took so much effort, and they caught these nonsense and studied it over and over for six or seven years, and all of them were played in vain.
The agent, Blake, was not sentenced to death, but to more than forty years in prison. A few years later, he managed to escape back to the Soviet Union with the help of his fellow prisoners, only to die in 2020!
I am the Phantom of Shi Hai, and I am following me to praise history.