CIA releases declassified Cold War archives

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Seventy-two-year-old declassified archival documents have been made public - brief summaries of reports from American intelligence that went to President Harry Truman's desk. A "cold wind of change" is blowing from the typed pages half-blind from time to time - yesterday's allies in the war, the USA and the USSR, having defeated a common enemy, are beginning to move away from each other. And the gap between them is widening.

Some Russians

The first entry in the very first bulletin for the president is dated February 15, 1946.

“The embassy in Paris reports that the alleged secret agreements between the US and the USSR, reached in Yalta and Tehran, were put up for sale in Paris by agents of“some Russians”from Switzerland. French and Swiss newspapers are considering publishing them."

The Central Intelligence Agency did not yet exist, it was created a year and a half later, in September 1947. But Harry Truman had already disbanded the main wartime intelligence agency, the Strategic Services Directorate, and six months later formed the Central Intelligence Group (CIG), bringing together a dozen military and civilian intelligence services that operated autonomously and often without coordination with each other.

The President ordered the CIG management to provide him with summaries of the most important reports on a daily basis

As the official website of the CIA explains, the head of the White House was "dissatisfied with the lack of a coordinated method of informing the president" and wanted to receive generalized information from a single source.

The first twenty-first reports, 86 pages long, are posted on the CIA website. The report about "some Russians" selling Yalta and Tehran secrets to Western European newspapers is explained: the talks were about agreements that could indeed arouse considerable public interest.

For example, the provision of a US $ 10 billion loan to the Soviet Union in exchange for support for American proposals to facilitate world trade, equitable distribution of raw materials, and regulation of the international currency.

And in Yalta, US President Harry Hopkins and USSR Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov signed an agreement that Washington accepts the Soviet demand for free access to the Mediterranean in exchange for the Soviet recognition of the absolute independence of Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia … In addition, the intelligence report mentions agreements on the use of the labor of German prisoners of war and German technologies by the Soviet Union, on relations with Syria, Libya, Iraq …

In the future, information about the alleged leak was neither confirmed nor denied. It remained unclear who sold the secret information to whom, and whether it was sold at all. It is also unclear what kind of "Russians" are we talking about - emigrants, defectors, provocateurs? Nothing is known about the publication of classified materials in Western media either. In a word, the "dead cat" has been thrown in. However, the message itself is very characteristic, it determined the entire further topics of intelligence reports. Now the president is reported about the "intrigues of the USSR" every day, except Sunday.

Soviet Penetration Continues

In February 1946, American intelligence began to closely monitor the actions of the Soviet Union in Central and Eastern Europe. The hyperinflation of the Hungarian national currency, the pengö, is immediately linked by the CIG to the intervention of Moscow.

“Inflation in Hungary is growing very quickly now. Over the past week, the US dollar has risen in price from 800 thousand to more than 1.8 million penge, prices have more than doubled, and the currency in circulation is now more than two trillion penge. Analysts predict an inevitable loss of the entire currency value of Hungarian assets. Meanwhile, the Soviet infiltration continues: the Hungarian Economic Council decided to transfer to the USSR all shares in the bauxite mining companies that the Soviets believed belonged to Germany. This is 35 percent of all bauxite resources in Hungary,”the president was told on 18 February.

The attempts of the Soviet Union to streamline money circulation in the country are also suspicious

On February 27, CIG informs Truman that the chairman of the Allied Control Commission in Hungary, Kliment Voroshilov, has banned the Hungarian government from printing additional millions of pengos to avoid aggravating inflation. The Hungarian government has warned that workers in factories will be left without wages and this will cause unrest.

"As long as I am here, there will be no revolution," Voroshilov replied with his usual arrogance.

Only six months will pass, and in August the pengö will change forint. Today it is one of the freely convertible European currencies. The introduction of the forint helped to overcome hyperinflation and stabilize the Hungarian financial market.

The monetary reform was then carried out by the Hungarian Communist Party, which, of course, was supported by the USSR.

Mistrust grows

A March 4 report states that a US commercial flight has been denied a stopover in Budapest, and that no aircraft can land at a Hungarian airfield without the permission of the Soviet command. Not only the situation in Hungary, but also the development of events in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania is causing increasing concern among American intelligence officers.

A separate item in the February 27 report is devoted to the complete Soviet control over the military and civil aviation of Poland

“Sources in Warsaw say that the Polish Air Force is commanded by Soviet General Polynin. All key personnel of the Polish Air Force are from the USSR, and they fully control all training and operational units. A Polish pilot is not allowed to fly without a Soviet pilot on board. Likewise, the planes of the now nationalized Polish airline are operated by Polish crews, but always under the supervision of Soviet officers. Polish Marshal Zeleski attributed this to a lack of trained Polish personnel, but the US military attaché points out that many experienced former Air Force officers have now been expelled from the military due to their loyalty to the former government,”the report said.

In the same summary, the upcoming general elections in Poland are analyzed in detail. In general, while agreeing with the Soviet argument that “hungry people cannot vote rationally,” and therefore it is better to postpone the elections, the scouts warn that the Soviets will certainly try to use the delay for their own purposes. A February 28 message suggests that Moscow may deliberately try to aggravate the economic situation in Poland in order to increase its influence on the country.

Americans fear Soviet influence not only in the countries of the future Eastern Bloc, but also in Austria, Italy and even France

“The French Minister of Food, strictly confidentially, informed the US Consul in Lyon that the USSR had offered France 200,000 tons of wheat“with almost immediate delivery”from the strategic stocks created on the Soviet-Iranian border. The minister believes that the purpose of the proposal is political and that its adoption may lead to the fact that the communists will receive important advantages in the upcoming elections, - stated in the summary dated February 25.

In the USSR, devastation, post-war reconstruction is just beginning. The population is starving, food is given out on cards. In such difficult conditions, the Kremlin offers bread to France, on whose territory there are no Soviet troops. Washington sees this as another "intrigue of the Soviets." The degree of mistrust rises higher and higher.

There is a cold war

It was at the time when these generalized reports of American intelligence were on the table to Harry Truman every day, and the Cold War began. On February 22, the US Ambassador to Moscow, George Kennan, sent a message to Washington, known as the Long Telegram. It was indeed telegram 511, eight thousand words long. Kennan outlined the threats posed by the Soviet Union at length and suggested moving from Roosevelt's expectations of partnership to a policy of containing the Soviets.

In intelligence reports, this was mentioned in passing and only on the third day. There is not a word in the reports about the famous Fulton speech of the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, delivered on March 5, 1946 and considered a declaration of the Cold War.

However, both the content and the tone of the American intelligence reports leave no doubt: Moscow no longer sees an ally in the deadly war, but a new global enemy - insidious and dangerous

“Sources in Moscow report that Soviet research institutes are using the work of German scientists under the supervision of Soviet officials. A concrete example is given: 20 Soviet engineers, dressed in military uniforms, were sent to Berlin to supervise 200 German scientists and engineers working on communications projects,”the March 1 report says.

Moscow is "picking up" German oil assets in Austria and is trying to take control of the Danube along its entire course. There are many reports that Soviet troops are in no hurry to leave Iran. The scouts ascertain the formation of a communist regime in North Korea and inform about the claims of the Soviet side for a quarter of all Japan's remaining military and civilian navies. Fears are expressed that by extending the non-aggression pact with Afghanistan, the Soviets will impose additional conditions on Kabul.

Empire of Evil

In the general negative stream, there are other, more sober and friendly notes. In a report dated February 23, US Ambassador to London John Winant reports: “The British Foreign Office has a“general impression”that the USSR does not want a big war in the foreseeable future, wants to prepare himself and his people for the fact that they can impose a war on them."

But this is an isolated example. On the whole, the USSR appears as an "evil empire" where freedoms are suppressed, the press is under the yoke of censorship, and displaced persons from the Soviet Union are trying with all their might to stay in the West, so as not to return to their homeland.

“A source in the US Third Army reports that out of about 3,000 Soviet citizens in the American zone of Germany, about 1,800 people, according to the Yalta Agreement, are subject to forced repatriation.

The US military authorities fear numerous suicides and attempted suicides in this regard,”reads the February 25 review.

More and more accusations against the Soviet press

So, on March 1, intelligence reports that TASS "distorted the facts and called it a gross miscarriage of justice" the acquittal by a military court of the US Army of an American soldier accused of killing a Soviet officer on a train in Austria.

And on March 7, the report contains a message that the Soviet authorities are trying to control the work of American correspondents in Moscow. The clash of ideologies results in what today would be called media wars.