A History Of American Spies
Jonathan Pollard, an American convicted of spying on the US for Israel, was granted parole after 30 years in prison and will be released in November. He was given a life sentence for spying on behalf of one of the US' strongest allies, a sentence many felt was too strong.
Whether pursuing their craft for the Israelis, the Russians, or the British crown, spies have been trying to get the drop on American interests for centuries. Not only have spy rings been a fundamental part of the American story from the start, they in many ways made the American story possible in the first place.
1778
Revolutionary Spies
British-occupied New York City
An effective spy network in New York would be crucial to determining British troop movements, and George Washington realized he had an intelligence gap. After the king's troops took the city, Washington tasked Major Benjamin Tallmadge with forming a Long Island-based spy network.
The Culper spy ring, made up of Tallmadge's trusted childhood friends, relayed information from merchants seeded around New York. The network's intelligence prevented a planned British ambush on the French army in 1780, and was considered the most effective spy ring on either side of the Revolutionary War.
SEPTEMBER 3, 1941
Fooling The Nazis
New York City
Double agents are fun. The Nazis believed they had successfully recruited William Sebold, a naturalized American citizen, to spy for them in the US. Instead, Sebold joined forces with the FBI, which put him to work in a fake Manhattan office while they filmed his visitors through holes in the wall.
For a year, a network of 33 Nazis in the US led by Frederick Duquesne met with Sebold, believing they were handing off intelligence to be relayed back to Berlin in a larger effort to sabotage the US before it entered the war.
By the time the US did declare war on Germany, every member of the Duquesne ring had either pleaded guilty or was convicted at trial.
1949
Soviets Acquire The Bomb
Los Alamos, NM
Of the dozens in America who spied for the Soviets, Los Alamos nuclear physicist Klaus Fuchs was one of the few who had the knowledge to interpret the secrets he stole. When the Soviets detonated their first atomic bomb in 1949, American and British scientists were confounded. They'd been convinced the Russians were at least two years from a bomb.
How could they have been so wrong? Fuchs confessed: He'd been working with the Soviets since 1942. We don't know how many others in America provided military and defense secrets to the Soviets, but we do know how they got caught: the recently-declassified Venona project.
1943 – 1980
The Venona Project
Washington, DC
Most of the codebreakers on the Venona counterintelligence team were young women. The program provided some of the key breakthroughs of World War II and the Cold War. And it was so secret that Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman didn't even know the program existed.
Meredith Gardner and Genevieve Feinstein were two of those Venona codebreakers who, through decryption techniques, identified spies as high up in the chain of the command as the White House.
Venona agents foiled spy rings in Britain, revealed dozens of atomic spies — including Klaus Fuchs and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg — and discovered that the Soviets knew about the Manhattan Project. But despite its many victories, there was one spy Venona was unable to catch.
1968 – 1995
Walker Sells The Navy
Boston, MA
Some spy on their country out of idealism. Naval officer John Anthony Walker was just broke. The first time Walker offered a secret code card to the Soviets, he made a few thousand bucks. American intelligence officials suspect the USS Pueblo was captured a month later to provide the Soviets with US machines that could read the codes Walker passed on.
Walker continued his clandestine activities for almost 30 years, building out his spy ring by recruiting friends and family. He provided the Soviets with data that enabled them to know where US submarines were at all times. Walker was ultimately caught after his drunken, estranged wife repeatedly alerted the authorities that her ex-husband was a Soviet spy.
JUNE 27, 2010
The Bungling 'Illegals'
New York City
The breakup of the Soviet Union upended its legendary intelligence apparatus. The KGB was split into a domestic unit and a foreign unit known as SVR. In 2010, Russian spy Anna Chapman was arrested, along with nine others, and charged as a members of the SVR "illegals" program. The agents posed as ordinary Americans, hoping to gain intelligence from academics and policymakers.
They were terrible at spying. Their communications techniques included texted graphics and poorly encrypted flash drives. The FBI found the password for Moscow's secret method of contacting the agents written on a piece of paper. The era of the great Cold War KGB spy had given way to a Russian version of Inspector Clouseau.
JANUARY 26, 2015
The Russian Spies Of New York
New York City
The three SVR agents caught in January used old-school methods: meeting in public areas and passing off intelligence via book bags and magazines. They also communicated visually through objects like umbrellas and hats while talking about sporting events and concerts.
The FBI watched four dozen meetings between the agents over two years, and overheard them discussing their positions as undercover agents.
They chatted about how Russian spies are all given the same five-year contract and complained that their mundane spy work was "not even close" to the action of James Bond movies. But really, what is?
JULY 28, 2015
Israeli Spy Gets Parole
Butner, North Carolina
Jonathan Pollard was working with the US Navy's intelligence service when he met an Israeli officer and offered to give him data that America was withholding from their strategic allies. The Israeli thought the offer was too good to be true and suspected a sting operation before he accepted Pollard's offer in June 1984.
Pollard was caught a year later and sentenced to life in prison. Israel gave him citizenship in 1995, and many believe that he should be let out of jail or perhaps serve his sentence in Israel. But a federal board granted him parole in July 2015, so he'll be free in a few months to do whatever he wants – as long as it doesn't require a security clearance.
Want more?
Further reading
An NSA publication describing the Venona project.
The FBI's account of the Duquesne Spy Ring.
Read some of the Venona intercepts that revealed atomic spies.
This story originally appeared on Timeline.
