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The Martin and Mitchell Defection occurred in September 1960 when two National Security Agency (NSA) cryptologists defected to the Soviet Union. A secret 1963 NSA study said that "Beyond any doubt, no other event has had, or is likely to have in the future, a greater impact on the Agency's security program."[1]
Martin and Mitchell met while serving in the U.S. Navy in Japan in the early 1950s and both joined the NSA on the same day in 1957. They defected together to the Soviet Union in 1960, and at a Moscow press conference they revealed and denounced various U.S. policies, especially provocative incursions into the air space of other nations and spying on America's own allies. Underscoring their apprehension of nuclear war, they said ""we would attempt to crawl to the moon if we thought it would lessen the threat of an atomic war."[2]
Within days, citing a trusted source, Congressman Francis E. Walter, chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), said Martin and Mitchell were "sex deviates," prompting sensational press coverage. U.S. officials at the National Security Council privately shared their assumption that the two were part of a traitorous homosexual network.[3] Classified NSA investigations, on the other hand, determined the pair had "greatly inflated opinions concerning their intellectual attainments and talents" and had defected to satisfy social aspirations.[4] The House Un-American Activities Committee publicly intimated its interpretation of the relationship between Martin and Mitchell as homosexual and that reading guided the Pentagon's discussion of the defection for decades.[1]
William Hamilton Martin (May 27, 1931 – January 17, 1987) was born in Columbus, Georgia. His family soon moved to Washington state where his father was president of the Ellensburg Chamber of Commerce. He graduated from Ellensburg High School after two years. After studies at Central Washington College of Education (now Central Washington University), he earned a degree in mathematics from the University of Washington in Seattle in 1947. He joined the United States Navy and served from 1951 to 1954, working as a cryptologist with the Naval Security Group in Japan. Martin played chess and collected Japanese sword handles.[5]
Bernon F. Mitchell (March 11, 1929 – November 12, 2001) was born and raised in Eureka, California and enlisted in the Navy after one year of college. Following his Navy service, he earned of his bachelor's degree at Stanford University. He gained experience as a cryptologist during a tour of duty in the Navy from 1951 to 1954, serving in Japan with the Naval Security Group. He stayed on in Japan for another year, working for the Army Security Agency.[6]
Martin and Mitchell became friends during their Navy service in Japan. They kept in touch as each returned to school after their Navy service and encountered one another again when each was recruited into the National Security Agency (NSA) in 1957.
Their years at the National Security were uneventful. Martin gained enough recognition that he was twice awarded scholarships for study towards a master's degree.[7] Then he and Martin became disturbed by what they learned of American incursions into foreign airspace and realized that Congress was unaware of those NSA-sponsored flights. Together, in violation of NSA rules, they tried to report what they knew to a Congressman who had expressed frustration with the information he was receiving from the NSA, Ohio Democrat Wayne Hays.[8][9]
On June 25, 1960, Mitchell and Martin left the U.S. for Mexico. They traveled from there to Havana and then sailed on a Russian freighter to the Soviet Union. In early August, the Pentagon announced that they had not returned from vacation and indicated some concern that the pair might have defected.[10] On September 6, 1960, they appeared at a joint news conference at the House of Journalists in Moscow and announced they had requested asylum and Soviet citizenship. The New York Times described them as "long-time bachelor friends" and reported they smiled at each other only when they described the social advantages they anticipated in the Soviet Union, where, their prepared statement said, "The talents of women are encouraged and utilized to a much greater extent in the Soviet Union than in the United States. We feel that this enriches Soviet society and makes Soviet women more desirable as mates."[11]
During the conference, the defectors made public for the first time the mission and activities of the NSA in a prepared statement written, they said, "without consulting the Government of the Soviet Union." It said that "the United States Government is as unscrupulous as it has accused the Soviet Government of being." They also said:
They particularly attacked the views of General Thomas Power who had recently told a Congressional committee that the U.S. needed to maintain a nuclear first-strike capability and Senator Barry Goldwater's opposition to banning nuclear tests and negotiating a disarmament treaty. By contrast, they said, "we would attempt to crawl to the moon if we thought it would lessen the threat of an atomic war." Where the U.S. had recently admitted sending reconnaissance flights over foreign countries in recently years, Martin and Mitchell said they knew from their Navy service that such flights had occurred as early as 1952-54. They detailed a U.S. C-130 flight over Soviet Armenia that the Soviets brought down. They contended that it was designed to gain an understanding of Soviet defenses, and that it therefore represented an American interest in attacking the Soviets rather than defending against them. They also complained of restrictions on freedom in the U.S., such as government confiscation of mail, particularly the freedom of those who are "not theists" or "whose political convictions are unpopular."[12][13]
The American government responded with denunciations that called Mitchell and Martin's charges "completely false" and with plans for a Congressional investigation of hiring practices at the NSA. The Defense Department called them "turncoats" and "tools of Soviet propaganda," "one mentally sick and both obviously confused." It also characterized their positions at the NSA as "junior mathematicians." The issue of the pair's sexuality was raised and dismissed in this report: "Representative Francis E. Walter, Democrat of Pennsylvania [and chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee], denied that he had made an allegation, reported by a news agency, that one of the men had been described as a homosexual in a report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation."[14] The next day, Walter explicitly stated that a source he trusted had told him that the two defectors were "known to their acquaintances as 'sex deviates'."[8] That charge was promptly picked up by the press and resulted immediately in stories about homosexuals recruiting "other sexual deviates" for jobs in the federal government. The Hearst newspapers referred to Martin and Mitchell as "two defecting blackmailed homosexual specialists" and a "love team."[15] Time reported that a review of security checks turned up a Mitchell visit to a psychiatrist "presumably out of concern for homosexual tendencies."[16]
According to a later government report, Martin who was fluent in Russian, studied at Leningrad University (now Saint Petersburg State University), and used the name Vladimir Sokolodsky. He married a Soviet citizen whom he divorced in 1963. He later told a Russian newspaper that his defection had been "foolhardy." He also expressed disappointment that the Russians did not trust him with important work. He occasionally sought the help of American visitors in arranging for repatriation, including Donald Duffy, vice president of the Kaiser Foundation, and bandleader Benny Goodman. On another occasion he told an American that before defecting he had believed the vision of Russia presented by propaganda publications like USSR and Soviet Life. By 1975, a source told the U.S. government Martin was "totally on the skids." In 1979 he inquired at the American consulate about repatriation. As a result his case was examined and he was stripped of his American citizenship. He was next denied permission to immigrate to America and then denied a tourist visa. Martin eventually left the Soviet Union and died of cancer in Mexico on January 17, 1987 at Tijuana's Hospital Del Mar. He was buried in the U.S.[17][1]
Less is known of Mitchell. Having renounced his US citizenship, he remained in the Soviet Union for the rest of his life. He died in St. Petersburg on November 12, 2001.
The Martin-Mitchell defections had another life inside the U.S. intelligence community. At a meeting of the National Security Council in October 1960, officials considered a response to the Martin-Mitchell affair. Attorney General William P. Rogers believed that the Soviets had a list of homosexuals to use in their recruiting and blackmail efforts, that Martin and Mitchell were part of "an organized group." Several at the meeting thought polygraph tests would help prevent the hiring of homosexuals. President Eisenhower himself wanted a central authority to coordinate all government lists of homosexuals.[15]
In order to prevent another occurrence, the NSA needed to understand what motivated the defectors. Their initial investigation turned up little of interest. Notes of psychological counseling sessions from the 1940s described Martin as "brilliant but emotionally immature" and offered a diagnosis of "beginning character neurosis with schizoid tendencies" and mentioned he was likely "sadistic." Mitchell had told the NSA when questioned not long after starting work at the Agency that he had experimented sexually as a teenager with dogs and chickens. That evidence of abnormality was enough for the NSA to modify its hiring practices and purge 26 employees for "perversions."[18][1]
Yet a series of NSA investigations gave little credit to the role of sexuality in Mitchell and Martin's defection. In 1961, an NSA called them "close friends and somewhat anti-social," "egotistical, arrogant and insecure young men whose place in society was much lower than they believed they deserved," with "greatly inflated opinions concerning their intellectual attainments and talents." In 1963, another NSA report found "no clear motive," that they had not been recruited by foreigners, and termed the defection "impulsive." NSA files revealed after an investigation in 2007 by the Seattle Weekly attested to their heterosexuality citing definitive testimony on the part of women acquaintances. The only perversions recorded were Martin's "all-controlling sadomasochism." He had occasionally watched women having sex or had sex himself with multiple female partners.[1]
In 1962, however, Congressman Walters' House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) concluded its 13-month investigation and issued a report on the defections that "seemed to indicate the primary reason for the defection was homosexuality."[19]
Later government analyses followed the HUAC account, unaware of the NSA's unpublished analysis. In 1991, a study by the Pentagon's Defense Security Service called Martin and Mitchell "publicly known homosexuals."[1] A book published in 1997 says they were "homosexuals who had been permitted access to classified information."[20][1]
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