Amazon Quiz: In which US state (the 49th) is this historical building located?
Amazon Quiz: In which US state (the 49th) is this historical building located?
Colorado
Wyoming
Idaho
Alaska
Answer: Alaska
Alaska is in the northwest extremity of the US and is actually incredibly close to Russia. During Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war with Ukraine, there was a suggestion that troops could attack Alaska as well since it was at one time part of the Soviet empire. Considering the heightened animosity between the US and Russia, due to the former’s role in providing assistance to a war-torn Ukraine, an Alaskan lawmaker commented that the state and its people were equipped enough to deal with a Russian onslaught.
While this might seem like bravado, the CIA actually had a program during the Cold War to train Alaskan fishermen as spies. The invasion seemed like a real possibility in 1950, which is why the US government also enlisted help from bushpilots and other private citizens in the state.
This came to be known as operation “Washtub”, but Russia never invaded. Speaking of it later, an official with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, or OSI, said “While war with the Soviet Union did not come to Alaska, OSI trained 89 SBA (stay-behind agents), and the survival caches served peacetime purposes for many years to come”, as per New York Post.
Washtub was known as Corpuscle, Stigmatic and Catboat as well, among agency people and has been one of the agency’s longest-running operations there.
An FBI memo from that time noted, “The military believes that it would be an airborne invasion involving bombing and the dropping of paratroopers”.
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