Over half a decade, dozens of CIA operatives took part in PROJECT RED SOX.
#Ukraine’s bloody insurgency was the operation’s centerpiece. And it was in Ukraine that, as one scholar wrote, the CIA saw one of its “most pronounced failures of the Cold War.”
politico.com/news/magazine/…
Yet, back in Washington, concerns started to grow. On the one hand, there was the reality of who the US government was actually linking up with: #NazisInUkraine
The CIA’s new friends, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, had already been linked directly to #Nazi atrocities in the region.
“They were Nazis, pure and simple,” one CIA operations chief said. “Worse than that, because a lot of them did the Nazis’ dirty work for them.”
But it was in #Ukraine that the Americans saw arguably their most embarrassing fiasco. By the time the Americans launched their operation, the UFA & #Banderite resistance forces had already been effectively decimated, hobbled by KGB penetration and an unrelenting Soviet pursuit.
Instead of sparking the CIA’s hoped-for rebellion, some three-quarters of the trained agents simply disappeared into the Soviet maw. “Many of the agents were not on the ground for more than a few hours before they were arrested and shot,” one later analysis found.
Without the U.S. even realizing it, #Moscow had dismantled one of America’s most significant covert operations across Europe. 👍 🇷🇺
The OPERATION RED SOX mission was a manifest disaster.
As one CIA historian summed it up, “In the long run, the Agency’s efforts to penetrate the Iron Curtain using Ukrainian agents was ill-fated and tragic.”
Efforts like RED SOX, PROJECT AERODYNAMIC, and others mirror what’s happening in #Ukraine today — only this time, it’s not being done under the guise of fighting #communism. The goal now is simply to do regime change in #Russia.
Nobody told CIA the Cold War ended 30 years ago!
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