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The "Farewell Dossier" -- the spooks get one right
by William Safire, New York TimesEFL. Hat tip: Brothers Judd. With all the "intelligence failures" in the news these days, itâs comforting to know that there are also Tom Clancy-style "intelligence successes." Maybe in 20 years, weâll finally hear about some of them... Col. Vladimir Vetrov provided what French intelligence called the Farewell dossier. It contained documents from the K.G.B. Technology Directorate showing how the Soviets were systematically stealing â or secretly buying through third parties â the radar, machine tools and semiconductors to keep the Russians nearly competitive with U.S. military-industrial strength through the 70âs. In effect, the U.S. was in an arms race with itself. Reagan passed this on to William J. Casey, his director of central intelligence, now remembered only for the Iran-contra fiasco. Casey called in Weiss, then working with Thomas C. Reed on the staff of the National Security Council. After studying the list of hundreds of Soviet agents and purchasers (including one cosmonaut) assigned to this penetration in the U.S. and Japan, Weiss counseled against deportation. Instead, according to Reed â a former Air Force secretary whose fascinating cold war book, "At the Abyss," will be published by Random House next month â Weiss said: "Why not help the Soviets with their shopping? Now that we know what they want, we can help them get it." The catch: computer chips would be designed to pass Soviet quality tests and then to fail in operation. Diabolically clever! In our complex disinformation scheme, deliberately flawed designs for stealth technology and space defense sent Russian scientists down paths that wasted time and money. The technology topping the Sovietsâ wish list was for computer control systems to automate the operation of the new trans-Siberian gas pipeline. I remember the pipeline being a big deal because it was said to have been built, on the Soviet side, with slave labor. When we turned down their overt purchase order, the K.G.B. sent a covert agent into a Canadian company to steal the software; tipped off by Farewell, we added what geeks call a "Trojan Horse" to the pirated product. "The pipeline software that was to run the pumps, turbines and valves was programmed to go haywire," writes Reed, "to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far beyond those acceptable to the pipeline joints and welds. The result was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space." . . . Ka-BOOM! Farewell stayed secret because the blast in June 1982, estimated at three kilotons, Ye Gods! took place in the Siberian wilderness, with no casualties known. Nor was the red-faced K.G.B. about to complain publicly about being tricked by bogus technology. But all the software it had stolen for years was suddenly suspect, which stopped or delayed the work of thousands of worried Russian technicians and scientists. Vetrov was caught and executed in 1983. A year later, Bill Casey ordered the K.G.B. collection network rolled up, closing the Farewell dossier. . . . Fred, Old Spook, was this one of your projects, back in the day? Posted by: Mike 2004-02-02 |
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