Martin and Mitchell defection

When the overflowing of Martin and Mitchell is called an event from the year 1960, when deposed two cryptologists of the U.S. Secret Service NSA abroad in the middle of the height of the Cold War. From Moscow clarified William H. Martin and Bernon F. Mitchell the public about the extensive and up to date, top secret operations and interceptions on the NSA.

Course

The NSA cryptographer Martin and Mitchell fled via Mexico and Cuba in the Soviet Union. There she gave on September 6, 1960 at a press conference at the House of Soviet Journalists' Association, the SIGINT reconnaissance activities of the NSA known and declared their renunciation of U.S. citizenship.

Before reporters from around the world marked the defectors as the NSA spying, founded in 1950, many countries, and that these include the own allies. They told him it was possible the NSA, the encryption key of the Turkish Embassy in Washington to crack ( a NATO member ), such as the USA for many years, among other things spy flights with U2 reconnaissance conducted on the territory of the Soviet Union and that America secretly ran the overthrow hostile governments assumed. At the time, Mitchell and Martin told the world what the NSA was doing:

" From our work in the NSA, we know that the United States read the secret communication of more than 40 countries, including its own allies ... NSA keeps in operation more than 2000 manual intercept jobs ... both encrypted communication in plain text are intercepted by almost every nation in the world, including the nations on the bottom are the listening stations. "

Other life history

Both acquired Soviet citizenship and married. Martin studied in Leningrad and was divorced in 1963. He began his emigration to repent and tried unsuccessfully in the 1970s to re- enter the United States. In the end, he emigrated to Mexico and died in 1987 in Tijuana. About Mitchell's later life, however, is little known, he died in 2001 in Saint Petersburg.

Follow

A secret study by the NSA declared 1963 the serious consequences of this event:

"Beyond any doubt, no other event has had, or is likely to have in the future, A Greater impact on the Agency 's security program. "

As both a homosexual relationship was assumed, put the FBI in a row on a list of suspected homosexuals in the United States. U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower let it create a black list, which amounted to a relapse in the monitoring fervor of the McCarthy era.