Declassified documents of the Air Force and the United States FBI, it follows that the American authorities feared an invasion of Soviet troops in Alaska with its subsequent occupation. In this regard, in the early 1950s, they started to implement a top-secret project code-named “shell” (Washtub).
Heavily redacted documents about the project are made available to journalists from the AP site staff Governmentattic.org , which deals with the publication of government documents obtained by the “Freedom of Information Act,” reports the newspaperThe Daily Mail , translation of an article which leads InoPressa .
Project “Shell” has been engaged in the FBI and the American Air Force. Then director of the Bureau of Investigation J. Edgar Hoover has joined forces with the newly created Office of Special Investigations of the Air Force to develop a top-secret project.
The essence of the plan was to have a civilian agents in key locations in Alaska, ready to hide from invading the land invaders USA. These agents had to find a way to hiding place full of food, winter equipment, cryptographic equipment and radios out of hiding and report on the movements of the enemy.
This is not about civil defense, which became widespread in the later period of the Cold War, when the Americans oblashtovuvaly own bomb shelter. The secret plan was to a large-scale recruitment of civilians in intelligence agents in the United States.
In this case, the indigenous population of Alaska were not considered as potential participants in the project. Developers plan assumed that the good agents from the indigenous residents of the state will not work because of their interest in their own survival – their loyalty easily be transferred to any current government, noted in the project.
Participants in the plan “shell” become citizens of the United States, who came to Alaska to live in other places. Such people do recruiters and they have fueled patriotism and offered a reward of up to three thousand dollars a year, which is almost 30 thousand dollars as of 2014, for participation in the program.
The appearance of the plan “Sink” owing to concerns of US authorities. In 1950, the American military command believed that the invasion of Soviet troops begin to Alaska from the air using bombers and landing. The most likely targets were considered the city Nome, Fairbanks, Anchorage and Seward.
However, in September 1951, the FBI ceased to participate in the program. “In times of crisis we get a new” Pearl Harbor “and share the blame,” – wrote Hoover in the fields of the memorandum of September 6, 1951.
However, three years later, the FBI was forced to briefly re-do the project. In October 1954, a resident of Anchorage transferred staff departments typed encrypted message. Cipher has not been hacked, but eventually stopped the FBI investigation. It was found that mysterious message came not from enemy spy. It was “driving the message” sent by mistake by one of the agents of the “shell”.
