19601776 Club
Two NSA cryptologists surface in Moscow; they left Washington on 'vacation' ten weeks ago
Martin and Mitchell tell a Soviet press conference the U.S. has been intercepting allied communications and flying reconnaissance over foreign countries.
The Cold War produced its share of defectors, but few came from as deep inside American signals intelligence as William Martin and Bernon Mitchell. The two NSA cryptologists slipped out of Washington on June 25, 1960 — officially on vacation — flew to Mexico City, then to Havana, and boarded a Russian freighter bound for the Soviet Union. On September 6, they appeared at a Moscow press conference to announce their request for asylum, revealing U.S. airborne reconnaissance missions over foreign countries and the interception of allied communications. The NSA later called it the single greatest blow to the agency's security program in its history…
