Soviet secrets in the ether - clandestine rad...

Soviet secrets in the ether - clandestine radio stations at the New York and San Francisco consulates in World War II
Cryptologia,  Apr 2003  byDavid, James
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ABSTRACT: This article details the operation of illegal clandestine radio stations at the Soviet consulates in San Francisco and New York in 1943, the reasons for their establishment, and the American response to them.
KEYWORDS: Soviet espionage, VENONA, clandestine radio interception, Federal Communications Commission, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Signal security Agency, Department of State.
One of the more puzzling mysteries regarding Soviet espionage in the United States during World War II has been the clandestine radio stations the KGB operated at the Soviet consulates in New York and San Francisco in 1943.1
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The two stations - in a brazen act by the Soviets - began transmitting within months of the State Department denying their request to establish a radio station in the New York consulate. New York and San Francisco soon established contact with each other and with stations in Moscow and Siberia. All four stations were extremely active, but the vast majority of transmissions consisted solely of actual or attempted contact with another station in the circuit and there were very few actual encrypted messages.
The Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) extensive monitoring facilities detected the stations as they came on the air, and both the FCC and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) instituted around-the-clock monitoring and intercepted a huge amount of transmissions. Although the stations were illegal under U. S. law and their existence was promptly reported to the highest officials of the government - including President Franklin D. Roosevelt - no official action was taken to stop their operation. They went off the air only in October 1943, when an article appeared in several American newspapers publicly disclosing their existence for the first time.
The literature contains only brief references to the stations.2 Using recently declassified records (including the VENONA translations),3 this article discusses in detail the operation of the stations, why they were set up, and the U. S. government's response to them. One critical question regarding the stations remains to this day, though - what did the actual messages say?
THE SOVIET REQUEST IN 1942 TO ESTABLISH A STATION IN ITS NEW YORK CONSULATE
In early July 1942, the Soviets requested permission from the State Department to operate a radio station at the New York consulate. Among other things, they stated that all transmissions would only be in code and only with stations in the Soviet Union. The reason given for the request was that the station would eliminate the problems with the service then provided by international cable companies between the two nations and permit the Soviets to send an unlimited amount of message traffic. If the request were granted, the Soviets made it clear that the United States could set up its own station in Moscow.4
Under the Communications Act of 1934, such foreign-owned or -operated stations were illegal. However, the issue was complicated by the fact that the Navy Department had only recently asked the State Department to request permission from the Soviets for the Navy to build and operate a monitoring station in Siberia from which Japanese radio traffic could be intercepted. Loy Henderson and another official in the Division of European Affairs met with Secretary of State Cordell Hull on 20 July concerning the Soviet request. (Surprisingly, the available records do not disclose that anybody outside the State Department most notably at the White House or FBI - was ever contacted regarding the Soviet request.) Shortly after this meeting, Henderson met with Andrei Gromyko, counselor of the Soviet Embassy, and informed him that consideration had been given the request by the appropriate authorities but that "it would be contrary to provisions of the laws of the United States for any non-American organization to maintain or operate a radio station in the territory of the United States." Henderson encouraged Gromyko to take up the issue of problems with the international cable companies "with a view toward obtaining improvements in the service."5 This denial, however, did not deter the Soviets for long.
THE DETECTION AND MONITORING OF THE MOSCOW-NEW YORK-SAN FRANCISCO-SIBERIA CLANDESTINE CIRCUIT
The FCC's National Defense Organization (which became the Radio Intelligence Division in 1942) began rapidly expanding its radio intercept and direction-finding capability in late 1940.6 By 1942 the Radio Intelligence Division (RID) was monitoring thousands of commercial radiotelegraph circuits worldwide, encrypted weather messages of several nations (including the Soviet Union), and selected Axis military and diplomatic traffic. It provided all or some of the intercepts to numerous government agencies depending on their specific requests. The RID also monitored a number of the known clandestine circuits worldwide, scanned the entire radio spectrum in an effort to discover new ones, and provided the intercepts to selected government agencies. The Army's Signal Security Agency7 and Coast Guard8 requested all clandestine station intercepts, while the State Department, FBI, and British Security Coordination (the liaison office of the British Secret Service located in New York City) requested intercepts of stations in specified countries only.9 Additionally, RID, FBI, Signal Security Agency, Coast Guard, and British Security Coordination representatives held weekly meetings in Washington, D. C., from August 1942 about August 1943 on clandestine circuits around the world. Discussion concerned the existence and identifying characteristics of the circuits and not any intelligence derived from them.10