US trained Alaskans as secret `stay-behind agents'
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Fearing a Russian invasion and occupation of Alaska, the U.S. government in the early Cold War years recruited and trained fishermen, bush pilots, trappers and other private citizens across Alaska for a covert network to feed wartime intelligence to the military, newly declassified Air Force and FBI documents show.
Invasion of Alaska? Yes. It seemed like a real possibility in 1950.
"The military believes that it would be an airborne invasion involving bombing and the dropping of paratroopers," one FBI memo said. The most likely targets were thought to be Nome, Fairbanks, Anchorage and Seward.
So FBI director J. Edgar Hoover teamed up on a highly classified project, code-named "Washtub," with the newly created Air Force Office of Special Investigations, headed by Hoover protege and former FBI official Joseph F. Carroll.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CITIZEN_SPIES_ALASKA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-08-31-13-05-35
Blue_In_AK
(46,436 posts)selling Alaska to the US in 1867.
NaturalHigh
(12,778 posts)referencing then-Secretary of State Seward because the land was thought by many to be worthless.
Hoppy
(3,595 posts)Sarah Palin.
Blue_In_AK
(46,436 posts)if Alaska was part of Russia, and I'd still be hanging out in the Bay Area trying to keep up with its cost of living.