“The United States Government is as unscrupulous as it has accused the Soviet Government of being. Our main dissatisfaction concerned some of the practices the United States uses in gathering intelligence information … deliberately violating the airspace of other nations … intercepting and deciphering the secret communications of its own allies … Perhaps United States hostility towards Communism arises out of a feeling of insecurity engendered by Communist achievements in science, culture and industry.”
William H. Martin and Bernon F. Mitchell — The first NSA whistleblowers
June 25 2020 — The National Security Agency faced a terrible crisis in the summer of 1960 when two cryptologists disappeared on vacation. On June 25 1960, Mitchell and Martin left the U.S. for Mexico. They traveled from there to Havana and then sailed on a Russian freighter to the Soviet Union. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY
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“The NSA has now complete control over Crypto AG. Spying can start on an industrial scale.”
NSA William Friedman (1955)
UPDATE (June 25 2021) — The infamous CRYPTO AG spy scandal began in 1955 when NSA William Friedman visited Boris Hagelin in Zug, Switzerland.
And yet, to the best of my knowledge, although William H. Martin and Bernon F. Mitchell revealed that the NSA was reading the secure communications of its own allies, they never said a word about CRYPTO AG. Does it mean they did not know?
Fast forward…
On January 3 1991, Alan Standorf — a civilian employee of NSA at its Vint Hill, Virginia intercept facility — was found beaten to death in the backseat of his car in the parking lot at Reagan National Airport.
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Alan Standorf was allegedly the person who provided Danny Casolaro copies of computer printouts from the PROMIS spying database system.
The murder was never solved and the investigators assumed it was a street robbery that went bad. Seriously?
END of UPDATE
“In order to do this kind of stuff [referring to government surveillance], we have to recruit from a certain demographic. And I don’t mean to judge them at all, but this group of millennials and related groups simply have different understandings of the words loyalty, secrecy, and transparency than certainly my generation did. Culturally, they have different instincts than people who made the decision to hire them.”
General Michael Hayden (March 2017)
Fifty-three years before Edward Snowden left his job as a consultant with the NSA and ultimately pursued refuge in Moscow, a pair of disillusioned NSA employees, William H. Martin and Bernon F. Mitchell, defected to the Soviet Union.
“It’s a story filled with uncanny parallels that could be plucked directly from today’s headlines: young men working with the National Security Agency (NSA) who grow disillusioned by what they find, abscond with classified information, and end up seeking asylum in Moscow.”
In a worst case scenario for the U.S. government, the pair appeared in Moscow on September 6, 1960 to announce their defection and denounce the United States.
For the first time the mission and activities of the NSA — including unauthorized incursions into foreign airspace — were made public.
Long before the “NSA four” and Ed Snowden, William H. Martin and Bernon F. Mitchell sent a clear message to US allies:
“As we know from our previous experience working at N.S.A., the United States successfully reads the secure communications of more than forty nations, including its own allies.”
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About William Hamilton Martin
William Hamilton Martin (May 27, 1931 – January 17, 1987) was born in Columbus, Georgia. His family soon moved to Washington state where his father was president of the Ellensburg Chamber of Commerce.
He graduated from Ellensburg High School after two years. After studies at Central Washington College of Education (now Central Washington University), he earned a degree in mathematics from the University of Washington in Seattle in 1947.
He enlisted in the United States Navy and served from 1951 to 1954, working as a cryptologist with the Naval Security Group in Japan. Martin played chess and collected Japanese sword handles (tsuka). [WIKIPEDIA]
About Bernon F. Mitchell
Bernon F. Mitchell (March 11, 1929 – November 12, 2001) was born and raised in Eureka, California, and enlisted in the US Navy after one year of college.
He gained experience as a cryptologist during a tour of duty in the Navy from 1951 to 1954, serving in Japan with the Naval Security Group at Kami Seya.
He stayed on in Japan for another year, working for the Army Security Agency. Following his Navy service, he earned his bachelor’s degree at Stanford University. [WIKIPEDIA]
Martin & Mitchell: The Defectors
The Untold Story from Truman to Kennedy, will uncover what led to their defection and the aftermath for both the NSA and the defectors.
REFERENCES
The First NSA Defection: 1960 — CWIS
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Remembering the First NSA Defection: William H. Martin and Bernon F. Mitchell (June 25 1960)
On This Day — The First NSA Defection : William H. Martin and Bernon F. Mitchell (June 25 1960)
On This Day — The First NSA Defection : William H. Martin and Bernon F. Mitchell (June 25 1960) [2019]
60 Years Ago — The First NSA Defection : William H. Martin and Bernon F. Mitchell (June 25 1960)
On This Day — The First NSA Defection : William H. Martin and Bernon F. Mitchell (June 25 1960) [2021]
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