觀點：愚弄希特勒的人 (2/2)

Recently CNN News on-line reported the following:

Opinion: The man who fooled Hitler (2/2)

CNN - Opinion by Tim Naftali

 9 minute read

Updated 11:30 AM EDT, Sun June 16, 2024

(Editor’s Note: Tim Naftali is a CNN presidential historian and senior research scholar at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. The views expressed here are his own. Read more opinion on CNN. The CNN Original Series “Secrets & Spies: A Nuclear Game” airs on Sundays at 10 p.m. ET/PT.)

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Decades ago, as I was researching what ultimately became my dissertation, I had the good fortune to meet some of the surviving British MI-5 officers who were in charge of these Double-Cross agents.  These were inventive, disciplined intelligence officers whose talent was not only managing the agents captured in England, but also brilliantly imitating the way they reported to their Nazi case officers and figuring out how to weave reality and falsehood into messages that would be plausible to the ultimate intelligence consumer in Berlin.

I also met the man who came up with the D-Day deception, Roger Fleetwood Hesketh, who was a trained architect. He told me that for the D-Day deception, codenamed Fortitude South, he had drawn on different talents. He had grown up with one sibling on a big estate (where he still lived when I visited him in the 1980s) near Liverpool. He and his sister compensated for not having many friends their own age nearby by creating a fantasy world of playmates. A sandbox conspiracy, if you will, that seemed very real to them but, of course, only existed in their own minds.

Besides being creative, one of the keys to the brilliant counterespionage campaigns in World War II was the codebreaking that allowed the Allies to assess whether their efforts were working, and double down once it became clear the Nazis were taking the bait. Not only could the US read what the Japanese were saying about how Hitler viewed the progress of the war in Europe, but US and British codebreakers could also read what German intelligence officers were saying amongst themselves about the trustworthiness of its agents in the UK — part of Ultra, the UK-led intelligence project against all high-level Nazi military communications. Codebreakers at the British facility Bletchley Park, chief among whom was the computing and LGBTQ pioneer Alan Turing, routinely broke the codes and ciphers that the Germans unsuccessfully used to disguise their most important messages. From Ultra, allied counterspies learned that German intelligence trusted double agents’ disinformation campaign about the invasion of France.

While much of the counterespionage during WWII remained a secret to the public for nearly 30 years after June 6, 1944, these tactics were well known among intelligence officers and widely used during the Cold War. The Soviets learned about the Double-Cross network from two well-placed spies of their own — moles Anthony Blunt in MI5 and Kim Philby in MI6’s counterespionage service, Section V or XB.

The D-Day achievement would set a very high-bar for those who learned the craft of counterespionage in fighting Hitler. What they couldn’t possibly have known in 1944 was that they were living through a golden age in counterespionage and strategic deception. As depicted dramatically in CNN’s new original series “Secrets & Spies: A Nuclear Game,” the Cold War would provide a more evenly matched, and, therefore, more difficult environment for the spy v. spy game.

Evaluating human intelligence is always messy and challenging. If you are a case officer — the manager of a particular agent — it can be incredibly difficult to know whether he or she is telling the truth. In other words, when dealing with double agents, being certain about their ultimate loyalty is a virtual impossibility.

With one major exception, neither the Western powers nor the Soviets had a reliable window into what their adversaries’ spies were up to for most of the decades-long conflict between the US and USSR.

Finding traitors during the Cold War got harder, and intelligence services became more susceptible to futile “mole” hunts and the paranoia that those naturally inspired. It also permitted the moles that did exist to secretly influence how the adversaries understood each other. Sometimes, as in the case of Oleg Gordievsky, a KGB officer working for the British, it worked to the benefit of world peace and stability as Gordievsky gave timely warning to London and Washington of the Kremlin’s nuclear paranoia.

Sometimes, however, the insufficiency of counterespionage made the world a more dangerous place. For 20 years, starting in 1979, the top US counterespionage officer working on the Soviet target in America, the FBI’s Robert Hanssen, was himself a Soviet agent. As was the CIA’s counterintelligence officer who managed security for its agents in the Soviet Union, Aldrich Ames.

The crisis in US counterespionage against the USSR in the 1980s — largely due to the simultaneous activities of Hanssen and Ames — hampered efforts in the West to monitor and understand fully the Soviet Union as it underwent a massive period of reform and, ultimately, collapse. Fortunately, Mikhail Gorbachev, who came to power in 1985, did much of his most significant work overtly — trying to signal that he was a different kind of leader to the West as much as to his own people.

Now, 80 years after D-Day and 35 years after the end of the Cold War, fake identities and disinformation are no longer relegated to the concerns of counterespionage agents. They are part of our daily online feeds. In a sense, each of us has become our own counter-deception officer, trying to distinguish misinformation from what’s real. A strategy once perfected to save lives and defeat arguably the worst dictator the world has ever known has become commonplace online — and eroded our trust in institutions and each other.

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幾十年前，當我的研究最終成為我的論文時，我有幸見到了一些倖存的英國軍情五處官員，他們是負責這些「欺騙網路」的特工。 這些都是富有創造力、紀律嚴明的情報官員，他們的才能不僅在於管理在英國被抓獲的特工，還出色地模仿他們向納粹個案負責官員報告的方式，並弄清楚如何將現實與虛假編織成資訊, 令在柏林的資訊使用者相信。

我還遇到了諾曼第登陸騙局的發明者 Roger Fleetwood Hesketh，他是一位訓練有素的建築師。他告訴我，在代號為「堅韌南方」的諾曼地登陸欺騙行動中，他動用了不同的人才。他和一個姐妹在利物浦附近的一處大莊園長大（當我在 20 世紀 80 年代拜訪他時，他仍然住在那裡）。在那裡他和他的姊妹透過創造一個幻想的玩伴世界來彌補附近沒有太多同齡朋友的問題。以某一種方式表達來說，一個用沙堆砌出的陰謀對納粹官員來說似乎非常真實，但當然，這只存在於納粹官員自己的想像中。

除了創造性之外，第二次世界大戰中出色的反間諜活動的關鍵之一是密碼破譯，使盟軍能夠評估他們的努力是否有效，並在發現納粹上釣後加倍努力。美國不僅可以讀懂日本人對希特勒如何看待歐洲戰爭進展的言論，而且美國和英國的密碼破譯者也可以讀懂德國情報官員, 關於其駐英國特工可信度的言論 - 這是Ultra的一部分, 是英國領導的針對所有納粹高層軍事通訊的情報項目。英國 Bletchley Park 設施的密碼破譯者（其中主要人物是電腦和 LGBTQ 的先驅者 Alan Turing）經常破解德國人用來掩飾其最重要訊息但未能成功的代碼和密碼。盟軍反間諜從 Ultra 了解到，德國情報部門信任雙重間諜關於入侵法國的假訊息活動。

雖然二戰期間的大部分反間諜活動在 1944 年 6 月 6 日之後的接近 30 年內一直對公眾保密，但這些策略在情報官員中眾所周知，並在冷戰期間廣泛使用。蘇聯人從他們自己的兩名精心佈置的間諜那裡了得知到這雙重間諜網絡的存在 - 即軍情五處的蘇聯潛伏內奸 Anthony Blunt 和軍情六處反間諜部門第五, 或稱為 XB 部門的潛伏內奸 Kim Philby。

諾曼地登陸的成果, 將為那些在對抗希特勒的過程中學會反間諜技巧的人, 設定一個非常高的標準。 在1944 年他們不可能知道自己正處於反間諜和戰略欺騙的黃金時代。正如美國有線電視新聞網 (CNN) 的新原創劇集《秘密與間諜：一場核競賽》中戲劇性地描述的那樣，冷戰將為間諜對疊間諜的競賽提供一個更加勢均力敵、因此更加有挑戦的環境。

去評估人類智力總是混亂且具挑戰性的。如果您是一件個案的官員, 即某一個特工的經理人，要知道他或她是否說真話可能會非常困難的。換句話說，在與雙重間諜打交道時，去確定他們的最終忠誠實際上是不可能的。

除了一個重大例外，西方列強和蘇聯都沒有一個可靠的窗口來了解對方間諜在美蘇之間長達數十年的衝突的大部分時間裡所做的事情。

冷戰期間尋找叛徒變得更加困難，情報部門更容易面對面對徒勞的追捕「內奸」行動及那些自然地會引發出的偏執。它還令確實存在的內奸 去秘密地影響對手如何相互理解。有時，就像為英國工作的 KGB 官員 Oleg Gordievsky 的個案，Gordievsky 及時就克里姆林宮的核偏執向倫敦和華盛頓發出警告而有利於世界和平與穩定。

然而，有時，不足夠的反間諜活動使世界變得更加危險。從 1979 年開始的 20 年來，美國聯邦調查局 (FBI)負責監視蘇聯在美國目標的最高級反間諜官員 Robert Hanssen 一直是一名蘇聯間諜。負責管理美國駐蘇聯特工安全的中央情報局反間諜官員 Aldrich Ames 也是。

20 世紀 80 年代美國針對蘇聯的反間諜工作所面對的危機 - 主要是由於 Hanssen 和 Ames 的同時活動 - 阻礙了西方在蘇聯經歷大規模改革並最終崩潰時, 對其進行監測和全面了解的努力。幸運的是，1985 年上台的 Mikhail Gorbachev 公開地去完成了他最重要的工作 - 試圖向西方和他自己的人民表明，他是一位不同類型的領導人。

如今，諾曼地登陸已過去 80 年，冷戰結束已過去 35 年，虛假身分和假訊息不再是反間諜特工的焦點。它們是我們每日線上資訊的一部分。從某種意義上說，我們每個人都成為了自己的反欺騙官員，試圖去區分失實訊息和真實訊息。曾經為了拯救生命和擊敗可以說是世界上最壞的獨裁者而完善出來的策略, 現在在網上變得司空見慣，並侵蝕了我們對機構和彼此的信任。

So, according to the author, as we remember and celebrate the heroism of the Allied troops on D-Day 80 years ago, it is worth mentioning that even more Allied soldiers would likely have died had it not been for a group of spies working on behalf of the Allies to deceive Hitler. A key objective of the deception was to convince Hitler to keep the 15th Army and tank divisions in reserve, away from the Normandy beaches for as long as possible, so as to give Allied soldiers a fighting chance to secure a beachhead. This is an interesting espionage project that happened in WWII.