Cold War NSA espionage: defectors, KGB moles, and unanswered investigations

172 undoubtedly have preferred Martin and Mitchell to remain in place as moles, since their information was dated as of the moment they left NSA.” The next NSA defector was Victor Norris Hamilton. He was a translator and analyst at the NSA. He arrived in Moscow in 1962 and, like Mitchell and Martin, he claimed the status of a whistle-blower. This time KGB provided a newspaper platform. Writing in the Russian newspaper /zvestia, Hamilton revealed the extent of US spying on its allies in the Middle East. None of these three 1960s defectors revealed what, if any, NSA secret documents that they had compromised. Nor did any of them ever return to the United States. Martin changed his name to Vladimir Sokolodsky, married a Russian woman, and died in Mexico City on January 17, 1987. Mitchell vanished from sight and was reported to have died in St. Petersburg on November 12, 2001. Hamilton, after telling Russian authorities stories about hearing voices in his head because of a NSA device implanted in his brain, was consigned to Special Psychiatric Hospital No. 5 outside of Moscow. There were also KGB spies in the NSA who were caught or died before they could defect. One of them was Sgt. Jack Dunlap. He was found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning in his garage on July 23, 1963. Although there was no note, his death was ruled an apparent suicide. NSA classified documents later was discovered in his house. After that, NSA investigators unraveled his decade-long career as a KGB mole. Dunlap had been recruited by the KGB in Turkey in 1952. The standard KGB tool kit for recruitment was called MICE. It stood for Money, Ideology, Compromise and Exploitation. The KGB used the first element, money, to compromise Dunlap. After he was compromised, it exploited him by getting him to steal NSA secrets. He had access to such secrets because he became the personal driver first to Major General Garrison Coverdale, the chief of staff of the NSA. After Coverdale retired, he next became the driver for his successor, General Thomas Wattlington. These positions afforded him a secrecy clearance and, even more important, a "no inspection" status for the commanding General’s cars that he drove. This perk allowed him to leave the base with secret documents, have them photocopied by his KGB case officer, and then return them to the files at the NSA base before anyone else knew they were missing. He also used, likely at the suggestion of the KGB case officers, his “no inspection” perk to offer other NSA employees a way of earning money. He would smuggle off the base any items of government property off the base that they took. Once he had compromised them through thefts, he was in a position ask them for intelligence favors. This NSA ring could not be fully investigated because of his untimely death. Other than the packets of undelivered NSA documents found in his home, the investigation was never able to assess the total extent of the KGB penetration of NSA secrets. (Angleton suspected Dunlap was murdered the KGB, in what he termed a surreptitiously assisted death, to prevent Dunlap from talking to investigators.) The Russian intelligence services continued recruiting mercenary spies in the NSA for the duration of the Cold War. The KGB successes included Robert Lipka, a clerk at the NSA in the HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020324