Partner William Martin
Queer Places:
2607 S St, Eureka, CA 95501
Stanford
University, Old Union 232, Stanford, CA 94305
Smolenskoye Orthodox Cemetery
Saint Petersburg, Saint Petersburg Federal City, Russia
Bernon
Ferguson Mitchell (March 11, 1929 – November 12, 2001) was an U.S. National
Security Agency (NSA) cryptologist. In September 1960, William Hamilton Martin and Bernon F. Mitchell defected to the Soviet Union.
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, 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 of the press conference, 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.[1] 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]
Bernon Ferguson Mitchell (March 11, 1929 – November 12, 2001) was born in
San Francisco and raised in Eureka, California, and enlisted in the US Navy
after one year of college. 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 at Kami Seya. He stayed on in Japan for another year, working
for the Army Security Agency. Following his Navy service, in 1957 he earned a
bachelor's degree in Statistics at Stanford University.[5] Martin and Mitchell
became friends during their Navy service at the Naval communications intercept
facility at Kami Seya, 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
NSA were uneventful. Martin gained enough recognition that he was twice
awarded scholarships for study toward a master's degree.[6]
Bill Martin And Bernon Mitchell
Mitchell 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. In February 1959, 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.[7][8][9][a] In December 1959, the pair visited Cuba, without notifying their superiors as required by NSA procedures.[10]
OOn 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. On August 5, the Pentagon announced that they had not returned from vacation and said: "there is a likelihood that they have gone behind the Iron Curtain."[11] 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.
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". The U.S. had recently admitted sending reconnaissance flights over foreign countries in recent years, but Martin and Mitchell said they knew from their Navy service that such flights had occurred as early as 1952–1954. In response, the American government called Mitchell and Martin's charges "completely false". The Department of Defense 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 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."[15] The issue of the pair's sexuality was raised and dismissed by the
government: "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."[16] A Pentagon spokesman told reporters that there was nothing
in Mitchell and Martin's personnel records to suggest homosexuality or sexual
perversion.[17] The next day, Congressman Walter explicitly stated that a
source he trusted had told him that the two defectors were "known to their
acquaintances as 'sex deviates'".[7] 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".[3] Time reported that a review of security
checks turned up a Mitchell visit to a psychiatrist "presumably out of concern
for homosexual tendencies".[18]
AAccording 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 the U.S. 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.[1][19][b]
Less is known of Mitchell. Having renounced his U.S. citizenship, he remained in the Soviet Union. He married Galina Vladimirovna Yakovleva, a member of the piano department faculty at the Leningrad Conservatory.[21] He became an alcoholic and regretted his decision.[22] Mitchell died of heart attack in November 2001, and was buried in St. Petersburg.[1]
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