International Tracing Service - Covert Role in Cold War

Covert Role in Cold War

Associated Press (AP) reporters who were given access to ITS files found a carton of documents related to an escapee program run by the Truman Administration. The AP reporters used these files and declassified US documents to describe how the United States asked the ITS to run background checks on escapees from Eastern Europe. The Central Intelligence Agency reviewed their histories and then recruited some of them to return to their countries of origin, to spy for the United States. The program did not return very much useful intelligence, because these recruits, motivated to impress their handlers, supplied information that was not reliable, and because by 1952, the Soviets had largely exposed these efforts. Many recruits disappeared, presumed dead.

Read more about this topic:  International Tracing Service

Famous quotes containing the words covert, role, cold and/or war:

    There was the murdered corpse, in covert laid,
    And violent death in thousand shapes displayed;
    The city to the soldier’s rage resigned;
    Successless wars, and poverty behind;
    Ships burnt in fight, or forced on rocky shores,
    And the rash hunter strangled by the boars;
    The newborn babe by nurses overlaid;
    And the cook caught within the raging fire he made.
    Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)

    The real test of a man is not how well he plays the role he has invented for himself, but how well he plays the role that destiny assigned to him.
    Jan Patocka (1907–1977)

    Let us not be deceived—we are today in the midst of a cold war.
    Bernard Baruch (1870–1965)

    Fiddle-dee-dee! War, war, war. This war talk’s spoiling all the fun at every party this spring. I get so bored I could scream. Besides, there isn’t going to be any war.
    Sidney Howard (1891–1939)