Kesslynn and Adelle's Podcast

During the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union were engaged in espionage. The Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb, had some employees who were traitors, such as Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. They were executed in 1953 for spying. The Vinoda Project was a counterintelligence program that decrypted Soviet messages, exposing spies in various branches of the American government. Around 349 Americans had covert relationships with the Soviet Union. The project remained secret for over 15 years and helped expose most of the spies. Hello everyone and welcome to our podcast. On today's episode, we will be exploring what it was like to be a spy in the Cold War. The Cold War started in 1947 and lasted until 1991. It was between the United States and the Soviet Union. Most of our story happens between the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War. During this time, there was a lot of development on nuclear weapons, specifically the atomic bomb. In 1942, President Roosevelt authorized the Atomic Bomb Project. It was called the Manhattan Project, which employed over 130,000 people sworn to secrecy. The U.S. didn't want the Soviet Union to find out about their development and kept the Manhattan Project under tight wraps, except there were some traitors among the employees. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were a married American couple convicted of spying for the Soviet Union in 1951. It's said that they were providing information on American radar, sonar, jet propulsion engines, and nuclear weapon designs. On June 19, 1953, they were both executed in Sing Sing Prison in Onsing, New York. For a long time, many people believed they were innocent and just were victims of Cold War paranoia. But when the U.S. government declassified information about them after the Soviet Union fell, many were shocked. The information told people that the couple's exact role in espionage, Julius's role as a coroner and recruiter for Soviets, and Ethel's role as an accessory or assistant to her husband, doing many clerical tasks, she also brought her brother David Greenglass to help. In 2008, it was officially set by National Archives of the U.S. that the Rosenbergs were guilty of espionage. David, however, somehow escaped being convicted. He was an American mechanic and an atomic spy for the Soviet Union who worked on the Manhattan Project. He provided help for his sister and brother-in-law who were executed for espionage. Then Greenglass turned nine and a half years in prison but not executed. He died July 1, 2014 at age 92. The U.S. government created a project during the end of World War II called the Vinoda Project. It was started on February 1, 1943 and ran until October 1, 1980. It was a counterintelligence program that was used to decrypt messages from the Soviet Union. This project was most effective during 1942 and 1945. Jean Grebel was the first cryptanalyst on the Vinoda Project. Many cryptanalysts were young women, including Meredith Gardner, one of the trailblazers for cracking the Soviets' code. The OTP, also known as one-time pad, was used to decrypt an unbreakable code. The code changed letters to a mixture of numbers and letters, sometimes making the coded text longer than the actual text, which made it impossible to crack. That is, when the OTP was used correctly. On December 20, 1946, Meredith Gardner wrote the first piece of code, revealing the existence of espionage in the Manhattan Project. The Vinoda messages also exposed spies in other branches of American government, such as the State Department, Treasury, Office of Strategic Services, and even the White House. American cryptanalysts discovered that the Soviets were reusing and duplicating coded messages, allowing them to be cracked. Around 2,200 messages were decrypted and transmitted. One of the first decoded messages revealed the existence of Soviet espionage. Now the U.S. knew that no one could be trusted. Later research revealed that there were about 349 Americans who had a covert relationship with the Soviet Union. The exact numbers are still unknown, but there is speculation that there were American spies who worked after these 349 Americans. Some of the most well-known Soviet spies were Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and David Greenglass. The Vinoda tapes exposed Julius' espionage and Ethel's part in recruiting other spies against the United States. The Vinoda Project remained under wraps for more than 15 years after it was closed. With cryptanalysts working diligently, they were able to expose most of the spies. This led to the FBI and the British counterintelligence to an Islamic spy, Klaus Fuchs. This is Adele. And Jesslyn. We thank you for tuning in to hear about espionage during the Cold War. We'll see you next time. Signing off.