Spycraft. Part 10

"A regular philosophical battle was the 'time on target' discussion for an operation," explained a senior audio tech. "There's a school that said, when you go into a target site, stay as long as you have to and be as quiet as you can. You might be inside for three hours or four days, but take as long as needed to do the operation 'silently.' Another school said, you get in there, minimize the noise, but do it as fast as possible and get out in a few hours. I had one of these battles with a very tough chief of station. I lost, but he heard me out. He said go in, don't make noise, and stay as long as you need. It took five solid days to get through thirty inches of concrete drilling by hand. We smelled pretty ripe. But there wasn't any question about the chain of command. When the ops people made the operational call and Headquarters concurred, we saluted."23 Another tech disagreed with his case officer over his choice of cars for his cover status. "I had a 1957 Chevy, it was a wild-looking thing and the case officer was perturbed and thought it was too flamboyant," the tech remembered. "He wanted me to get something black and spooky. I said no, my cover is commercial and this red Chevy with fins is expected of a successful businessman. Plus, you can see that the fins aren't as big as those on some other models." The tech's argument prevailed.

An operation to bug a Czech intelligence officer in Europe almost never got to proposal stage. Headquarters rejected the station plan to send a tech on an after-dark walk around the target property to survey windows and doors, a.s.sess security, and observe activity in a neighborhood not frequented by Americans. The tech did not, Headquarters pointed out, have sufficient cover and plausible reason to be in that part of the city at night. The tech and case officer agonized for a couple of days then sent a brief cable, "If caught the tech will admit to being a thief. Then we will go to the local service and get him out of jail." Headquarters reversed itself and approved the operation.

Techs, with their predilection for improvisation to get a job done found the glamorous locales often offered the least amount of operational freedom. "In Europe it seemed you had levels and levels of Agency management all wanting to review and second-guess every piece of a plan, and there was always concern about diplomatic niceties," remembered one tech. "In Africa, we shot a little more from the hip-the case officers did, too, and I think we got a lot more done. We liked working down there and in South America. In Europe we sometimes felt smothered by a lot of tradition and scrutiny."

A tech stationed in Central America during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 undertook an ambitious operation to penetrate a Soviet emba.s.sy. After learning that the Soviets used a particular shop for typewriter repair, a case officer recruited the shop's owner. The next Soviet typewriter that came in was "lent" to the tech who disa.s.sembled the machine and installed a transmitter into the platen. Once back in the emba.s.sy, it was hoped the device would pick up sensitive conversations near the machine while audio a.n.a.lysis of the striking keys could potentially reveal individual letters or words.

Surveillance confirmed that the Soviet diplomat picked up the typewriter and took it back into the emba.s.sy. The plan was working, and after enough time elapsed for the typewriter's return to service, the tech sent a "turn on" signal to the device and heard . . . nothing.

The following morning, a CIA a.s.set observing the emba.s.sy's entrance watched a Soviet emerge carrying a typewriter high above his head. With a theatrically extravagant flourish, he heaved the offending machine into the trash. For some unknown reason the bug had been detected and the audio operation thwarted, but wariness of the Americans' capability was raised to a new level. After the incident, Soviet case officers were not allowed to type their reports; all had to be handwritten.

Another operation made possible by miniaturization of audio devices a.s.sisted a foreign government in catching a Soviet spy. John Kennedy was President when a Northern European security service called on TSD with an unresolved problem. A Soviet diplomat, a suspected KGB officer, had begun meeting regularly with a senior government minister. While the meetings had legitimacy based the official duties of the two men, the security service suspected the minister of also spying for the Soviets. Yet, their investigations had turned up no hard evidence of espionage.

The alleged KGB officer was cagey and professional. He met the minister openly at expensive, well-known restaurants, ostensibly to discuss legitimate diplomatic matters. Several times counterintelligence officers had notice of a planned meeting and plotted with the restaurant's manager to install monitoring equipment at the table where the Soviet would be seated, though the ploy never seemed to work. In some instances, the Soviet canceled reservations at the last moment in favor of an alternative location. In other cases, the KGB officer and the minister objected to the table offered and insisted on another.

Tom Grant had been in the country several times providing technical support to joint operations. On one of his trips, Grant's contacts confided, "We're certain the minister is dirty, but we can't get the goods on the guy. We've failed every single time to record the meal conversation and haven't been able to identify the covert communications being used." Grant said he would think about the problem.

Grant was living in another part of Europe with his family. One day his wife discovered a local shop that featured Scandinavian goods, including some attractive pepper mills. "Buy every one they have in the store," he instructed his wife. "Tell the owner we have lots of friends back home who'll be getting these as Christmas gifts."

None of the pepper mills ever made the trip to America. Grant went directly to the audio shop where he had several cylindrical transmitters that would fit snugly inside the pepper mills. With the help of concealment techs, he disa.s.sembled the pepper mills and created a cavity sufficient for the transmitter, microphone, and batteries. By modifying the grinding and dispensing mechanisms, a small pepper reservoir was retained and the mill still functioned, providing the bugs with an active concealment.

When shown the pepper mill bug, the local security service agreed that it might work and sought the a.s.sistance of managers at three restaurants where the KGB officer and his minister frequently met. Rather than trying to place transmitters on a specific table, the service asked the managers to remove all pepper mills from the tables on the day of the next meeting and bring one to the table after patrons were seated.

"It worked like a charm. The Soviet made his reservation, then switched restaurants but used a restaurant we had planned for," said Grant. "When he arrived he asked for a table different than the one offered. Then the minister joined him. At that point, the headwaiter put our pepper mill right between the two of them. The guys in the surveillance van outside could hear everything."

The suspected KGB officer and the minister ordered a meal and engaged in small talk for over an hour. At the end of the meal, they ordered coffee. The conversation had centered on official government-to-government topics, boring the counterintelligence "ears" in the van. However, as the business lunch finally wound down, the Russian paid the bill, then, as he took a final sip of coffee, leaned across the table, right over the pepper mill, and gave the minister precise directions for a dead drop.

"Well, that woke up the 'ears,'" said Grant. "The guy with the headphones in the truck went bananas. Their service was elated. Even our case officer thanked me. I said 'I'm happy to help but you understand I have to get back my pepper mills for the Agency and besides, one of them has to go to my wife as a souvenir-she dragged me into that shop.'"

Later the government minister was arrested as a spy and the KGB officer expelled from the country.

In every part of the world, similar imagination and creativity were required from techs and case officers for the Agency to attack the wary and protected Soviet Bloc targets. An Eastern European diplomat posted to South America in the mid-1970s seemed virtually untouchable. Surveillance determined that his emba.s.sy office was well secured and his home always occupied by family, caretakers, and service staff. However, surveillance did identify an interesting pattern in his wife's regular Tuesday shopping excursions. As the case officer and the tech discussed the situation, the tech mentioned that concealment specialists had begun embedding a new generation of audio transmitters in desk and table lamps. The lamps functioned normally, the tech explained, and the transmitters operated without batteries by drawing power from the lamp's electric current. Not long after, a plan emerged.

A CIA officer residing in the country began a side business selling lamps, loading his merchandise into a van every day to establish a credible pattern of activity that made him a recognized figure in the area. On the appointed Tuesday, the officer drove to the shopping district and waited for the diplomat's wife. Arriving on schedule, she parked and went into the store. A few minutes later, the officer pulled his van into the adjacent parking place, accidentally dinging the fender of her vehicle, then waited until she returned.

Just as the target's wife saw the damage to her car, the lamp salesman quickly approached her offering profuse apologies. He explained that he waited for fear that somebody might have seen the accident and taken down his license number. Then, building a tale of woe, he confessed that if he reported another accident to his insurance company they would surely cancel his policy. Pressing far more money than required to fix the damage into the wife's hand, he implored her to accept the settlement and not report the incident.

The woman, sensing a good deal, accepted the money and, in a final gesture of grat.i.tude, the lamp salesman urged her to select any lamp from the stock in his van. The diplomat's wife chose what appeared to be the most expensive lamp and the officer carefully loaded the gift in her car, making sure to activate the audio "on" switch.

Later that night, the tech and the case officer met at the listening post and with amus.e.m.e.nt heard the diplomat's wife relate the story of how she had "screwed over this poor American." The audio stayed on the air for about two months until the couple decided they liked the lamp so much that it should grace their second residence in the mountains, far out of the transmitter's range.

In another operation, two techs disguised themselves as local painters to gain entry to a diplomatic facility being readied for new occupants. Their job was to find places to install bugs. As the techs studied areas where audio might be best installed, their attention fell on two large ornately carved wooden doors piled among other materials. The doors, the techs learned, would eventually hang between two of the mission's conference rooms. The techs reasoned that by placing mics on either side of the doors a single transmitter could pick up and relay conversations from both rooms. As an added operational bonus, the huge doors could accommodate dozens of batteries, extending the life of the operation far into the future.

The techs had only a few days to work and the presence of construction crews limited their access to the facility. The techs needed to get the doors to their shop to plant the devices. Noticing the entire construction site was a mess, with sc.r.a.ps of wood, fixtures, cement blocks, flooring, and other debris laying around, one of the techs said, "Let's clean this place up. They'll be happy that we got rid of the trash."

The techs went to work, piling whatever construction trash they could find on the doors and carried them out like stretchers. Several stretcher loads went out and other materials were carried in. Eventually the doors went into the techs' waiting truck and returned a couple of days later loaded with mics, batteries, and transmitters. "Everything just went fine," remembered one of the trash haulers. "We got the audio in and no one ever suspected a thing."

However, sound plans did not always go smoothly and some were just victims of bad luck, falling into the category of "technical success, operational failure." In one memorable instance, the Soviet Amba.s.sador in a European capital ordered a custom table for his home. The CIA got wind of the order and recruited the furniture maker, who agreed that the techs could put an audio device in the piece.

The operation had every earmark of success as the techs, observing from a safe house, watched the table as it was carefully carried up the steps to the Amba.s.sador's residence. The tech and the case officer exchanged smiles and shook hands, but before they could pour the victory toast, the deliverymen appeared again. This time they carried the table out of the residence, back down the steps and into the truck. Later that evening, as the two looked over the returned table with the furniture maker, they learned the rest of the story. The deliverymen reported that when the Soviet Amba.s.sador saw the table he was surprised to see the top was made of Formica. He uttered two words, "not cultured," refused delivery, and ordered the table out of his house.

At about the same time, the Agency learned of another Soviet official, a newcomer to the city, who lived in an apartment-hotel complex. The local station tracked the Soviet's pattern of movements for a few weeks, then the chief decided to bug the official's residence using a recently developed audio transmitter concealed in a standard three-way electrical plug. When the modified plug was inserted into a wall outlet, it drew power from the household circuit.

A week pa.s.sed and Headquarters had not responded to the operational proposal. The station chief became anxious. He had an OTS technical team in the city ready to act. A detailed ops plan had been laid out. Ch.o.r.eographed in concert with the target's comings and goings, the installation opportunity window fell on a specific date and time, but approvals were not in hand. "If we don't hear by eight o'clock tonight, we're going to go ahead and do this," the chief told the senior tech.

The plan left little margin for error. A team of two techs would enter the apartment-hotel complex. One would take temporary control of the elevator, holding it at the floor of the Soviet's apartment and act as outside countersurveillance. The other tech would make entry with a duplicate key and insert the modified three-way plug in an outlet under the bed. He would then exit, lock the apartment, join his colleague in the elevator, and depart the building. The entire operation would require no more than five minutes.

At eight o'clock, without a Headquarters response, the operation commenced. The techs were well into the job when, at 8:15, the communications officer brought a cable marked IMMEDIATE to the chief. The message, although apologetic about the delayed response, left no ambiguity: PROPOSED OPERATION IS NOT APPROVED.

As the techs departed the Soviet's apartment complex, they received a signal to contact the chief immediately. He related the Headquarters disapproval direction.

"Well, it's too late," replied the senior tech. "In fact, we're already listening to him. He came back home just behind us. He brushed his teeth and went to bed."

The next morning the device captured the personal routine of the Soviet as he prepared for the day, then went off the air at noon.

The station chief was in a quandary. He had acknowledged receipt of the Headquarters order, but had not told his superiors what had already occurred. He was applying the operational maxim "What happens in the field, stays in the field."

The chief ordered the techs to go back to the apartment and retrieve the plug. A second entry, this one without Headquarters' knowledge or approval, was planned and executed. The tech crawled under the bed but there was no plug in the outlet. He quickly surveyed other electrical outlets in the apartment but saw no plugs.

For the chief, as well as for the techs, the situation was about as bad as it could get. Not only had they conducted two unauthorized entry operations, but a piece of the CIA's newest clandestine audio equipment and its concealment were lost, very likely compromised to the Soviets.

The next day, the techs met at the listening post with the Russian-language transcriber sent to TDY from Headquarters to translate and process the audio take. He had set up the post in a small room in the same building as the target apartment. The post would now have to be quietly closed down and the transcriber sent home. As the tech related the saga of the lost transmitter and the pickle the chief found himself in, he noticed that one of the post's tape recorders was connected to building power by a familiar-looking three-way plug. "Where did you get that plug?" the tech asked.

"I asked the maid for one and she got it," the transcriber responded, a little puzzled. The maid who serviced the listening post apartment also cleaned the Soviet's room. A couple of days earlier she had pulled the bed away from the wall to vacuum and saw the three-way plug. Concluding it was not being used, she put it in her pocket. Later, when the post's keeper asked for a plug for his tape recorders, receiver, and other equipment, she just happened to have one handy.

The tech's next call went to the chief who suggested that everyone meet for a three-hour, three-martini lunch. As the first round of drink arrived, the chief offered a toast: "Remember, 'Ask and ye shall receive. Seek and you shall find.' Look it up. Matthew 7:7."

A legendary audio semi-success occurred when a South American dictator discovered a transmitter in a wood block attached to a piece of furniture in his office. Those in the listening post recorded the dictator's outrage. Then, in dramatic fashion, he drew his pistol and fired several rounds into the device while denouncing the CIA and America to his staff. Satisfied his marksmanship had killed the device, he tossed the bullet-riddled trophy carelessly on top of a file cabinet.

Back at the post, the recorders continued to roll while the device kept transmitting. The bullets had shattered the block and struck a battery, but only wounded, not killed the device. Within the heart of the woodblock enough power still flowed to the undamaged transmitter that every word uttered in the office was heard for several more weeks until the remaining batteries eventually died.

Retrieving bugs could be as hazardous as installing them and just as critical to an operation's success. Spy gear abandoned in place poses the risk of later detection by the local service or, depending on future occupants, by another foreign government. Any piece of equipment discovered, even years after the operation, could reveal technology and tradecraft to the opposition. It is one of espionage's ironies that the very equipment used to acquire intelligence, once discovered by an adversary, becomes a valuable source of intelligence. Surveillance gear in the hands of a hostile security service could yield vital information for creating countermeasures, point to an agent, or expose concealment methods.

Lady Luck did not smile on a retrieval operation in Western Europe in the late 1970s. A long-running successful audio operation concluded when the targets moved out of their residence and the techs received orders to return to the now empty apartment and retrieve the four bugs installed in the attic. It was a typical nighttime operation that demanded stealth and sure-footedness for the techs to make their away across the building's narrow rafters. The summer night was hot and the attic increasingly uncomfortable for the techs who, after finding the first three devices, were having difficulty locating the fourth. "My partner was swearing like crazy and I'm tiptoeing across these little rafters looking for the fourth when one the rafters breaks," said one of the techs, remembering the incident. "The next thing I know, I'm hanging by one arm, looking down at a very expensive terrazzo floor."

With the crash echoing in the middle of the night and the dust settling, the tech's radio came to life. The lookout had heard the noise and anxiously asked what was happening in the house. "I said, 'As you can probably surmise, we've got a little problem in here. That was me, going through the ceiling.'" Then the fourth audio bug fell to the floor.

Rather than retrace their steps over the now suspect rafters, the two techs dropped down through the hole. Fortunately, since the apartment had been vacated, they had time to clean up the mess and repair the ceiling. "Afterward, we just told everybody we had set the Guinness record for the world's biggest pinhole," the tech joked years later. "A six foot by six foot pinhole will give you the best audio you ever heard. G.o.d, that made a lot of noise, I can't believe we didn't get caught."

A dramatic breakthrough in audio hardware occurred in the 1970s. The SRT family of transmitters, which was steadily improving, made an impressive leap forward with the "Century Series" that carried three number designators. Nothing like it had previously existed in the OTS a.r.s.enal of covert audio equipment. Known particularly for the tiny size as well as performance, the Century Series devices were microphones and transmitters made with integrated circuits jammed into packages of less than a cubic inch of s.p.a.ce. OTS called it fractional cubic inch technology fractional cubic inch technology.

"To achieve the fractional cubic inch volumetric size, the whole package contained integrated circuits, very special integrated circuits," said Kurt Beck, who worked on the project. "Our contractors used custom technology and processes. There wasn't anything like it on the commercial market. It was a team effort. It was the contractor and the ops guys both asking, How do you get this stuff to be this small? How do you engineer the device into the size of this package?"

The volume of the new audio packages was comparable to that of six U.S. quarters stacked one on top of another. The housing around the bug's hermetically sealed components had slots on the side that allowed techs to plug in an external power source, antenna, and microphone as needed. In less than twenty years, OTS had gone from an unreliable vacuum tube SRT-1 to a stable but power hungry SRT-3 to a family of transmitters whose reliability, size, and functionality could be adapted to virtually any covert audio requirement.

"This was not your incremental, tiny improvement-this was a quantum step," said Linn, who built power cells for the Century Series transmitters. In terms of reliability and sophistication, it was the difference between a 1970s citizens band radio and a twenty-first-century cell phone. The James Bond gadgetry imagined in Q's fictional laboratory had arrived in Langley. Fractional cubic inch technology brought not only the ability to build audio into smaller concealments, but also a major reduction in power required to transmit. It allowed for simultaneous transmission from two or more microphones positioned within three feet of each other. Essentially working like human ears, the listening post could "steer" audio, filtering out background noise in the room to focus in on conversations that were of particular interest.24 "It wasn't just the electronics, but the power consumption. The power consumption was always the problem that would knock you in the head," explained Kurt. "So if we could achieve an order-of-magnitude reduction in the power consumption, we could make a corresponding reduction in the size of the battery. That to me is the breakthrough. The low-power technology. Every 10 percent savings in power drain translated into a big lifetime improvement for the size of the battery. It didn't make much difference if you halved the size of the transmitter, from a half a cubic inch to a fractional cubic inch, if the battery pack had to stay at ten cubic inches."

When OTS first envisioned the fractional cubic inch package, integrated circuits were in their infancy. A little more than a decade earlier, in 1958, Jack Kilby, working at Texas Instruments, and Robert Noyce, at Fairchild Semiconductor, independently came up with the idea of the integrated circuit. Kilby beat Noyce to the patent by less than a year and later won the n.o.bel Prize, but Noyce, who later cofounded Intel, came up with several technical solutions, such as how to connect the tiny components on the chip, which made production practical.

"We talked to these designers and the engineers and we found out there were a lot of trade-offs you could make in all this stuff," Kurt explained. "When we started to push on them to get the power down, ideas began to crop up. The problem was getting these a.n.a.log circuits to be efficient with the power supplied. Instead of having two percent efficiency, could we get twenty-five percent efficiency?25 It makes a difference with the amount of power you need to run them. We pushed smaller and smaller. Our approach was to find the right designers. Give them some leeway. Don't stand over their shoulder. We gave them money and said, 'Go try it. If you have failure, do it again. Just don't give up.'" It makes a difference with the amount of power you need to run them. We pushed smaller and smaller. Our approach was to find the right designers. Give them some leeway. Don't stand over their shoulder. We gave them money and said, 'Go try it. If you have failure, do it again. Just don't give up.'"

In the end, the circuits designed for the new Century Series were both small and energy efficient. Techs called them "flea powered." The units drew only microamps from the batteries and signals were transmitted at the lowest possible power setting for reception by specialized antennas at the listening posts. There was almost no end to where the new devices could be hidden. Combined with new battery configurations, the Century Series could be hidden in books, wooden coat hangers, and even within the circuitry of other electronic devices, such as televisions or portable radios. Wood blocks, a longtime favorite among techs, could be made smaller as well.

Armed with new technology, techs along with the staff at Langley became more emboldened. Operations that would have been at best risky or impossible in the 1960s were now launched regularly. "Show me a target and I can get to it," one tech was noted for saying. Within the tech culture, this was more statement of fact than bravado.

Perhaps no operation better ill.u.s.trated the techs' derring-do than one that took place in the 1970s against an implacable U.S. adversary. After years of futile negotiations to resolve an international dispute with the other nation, the President ordered his closest advisor to initiate secret talks at the highest levels of the foreign government with the objective of ending the conflict. Special a.s.sistance from the audio techs was requested for a risky and dangerous operation to acquire information on the intentions and strategy of the foreign negotiators. The techs were chosen for their unusual skills and proven courage in combat. One was an experienced mountain climber. The other, a combat-hardened former Marine, trained for the mission by climbing over slate roofs in his hometown.

Working in the early-morning hours of a moonless night, a tech, dressed in black, carrying mountain-climbing gear, crawled through a window of a safe house onto the steep slate roof of an adjoining building. A few floors below, the other tech waited anxiously with the newly designed audio equipment.When they could move un.o.bserved, the techs skirted several roofs of adjacent houses leading to the residence of the chief of the foreign delegation and crawled silently over its slate tiles. Their targets were three chimneys positioned along the length of the roof's ridge. As they moved from chimney to chimney, into each they dropped a small device, called a "pinger," to measure the length of the fireplace flues that would eventually conceal an audio device. Resembling an oversized pistol, when the pinger reached the upper edge of the fireplace flue, the tech pulled the trigger. A small burst of radio wave energy-like radar-shot down the chimney and bounced back, instantly calculating the distance between the top of the chimney to the desired fireplace location for the bug. With data in hand, the techs retraced their climb and began planning the equally dangerous and risky installation.

"We returned a few weeks later, with mics and transmitters the lab had developed," recalled one of the techs. "They were encased in an asphalt bulb, maybe two inches in diameter, so when there was fire in the fireplaces, they wouldn't burn up." Wires, with precise distances based on "pinger" data, let them lower the devices to the proper length in each chimney before securing them to the top.

The audio collection produced transcripts of private strategy discussions held by the target negotiators that were immediately translated and hand-carried to the President's representative to prepare him for the next formal meeting. The techs never saw the transcripts and never expected to. That is the profession. Build the gear, put it in, make sure it works, and get out of the way. Let others use and benefit from the take. Besides, there was no reason to hang around; other stations had audio ops to be done-now.

The newly availabile fractional cubic inch transmitters encouraged planning for aggressive audio operations inside the USSR. Once the CIA had demonstrated that its officers could free themselves from surveillance in Moscow, technical audio operations followed. "In the late 1970s we were doing things in Moscow that were intentionally below the Soviet radar," remembers a tech. "We were trying to find the balance between high-, medium-, and low-technical operational acts on the street-the capability of the agent, capability for the case officer to meet the agent, capability to dead drop certain-sized things. All of that technology we provided the agent. Now we asked, can we bring audio into the mix?"

In one of the first operations of its kind in Moscow, a plan was formed to bug one of the police shelters located throughout the city. The small shacks, also set up at strategic points in the foreign emba.s.sy district, provided shade and warmth for the police, militia, and KGB surveillance teams as well. The young officers who manned the shacks had duties other than traffic control and maintaining civil order. Their presence was a deterrent to Soviet citizens from contacting foreign officials, because any Russian wandering in the area could be stopped, asked for identification, and questioned about the reason for being there. Equally important for the KGB were the reports from officers in the shacks who relayed the comings and goings of foreign officials to the KGB from these excellent observation posts.

As the CIA increased its clandestine contacts inside the USSR through the 1970s, the chief decided to bug one of the shacks. The secret audio could potentially provide valuable intelligence from an officer "calling out" the movement of diplomats to the KGB surveillance teams and from capturing other security instructions he received.

The target shack, which was manned twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, was cla.s.sically basic. Constructed of wood and roughly twice the size of an old-fashioned phone booth, it contained a small table built into the wall, a telephone, and a heater that offered minimal comfort for two men against the cold of the Russian winter.

Over several months, CIA observers noted that the officer in the target shack was often away from his post, across the street talking with a friend. They were able to estimate the size of the small table in the booth and predict the times when the officer took a break for periodic gossip.

The operational requirements for the audio device were specific. It needed to be small enough to hide under the table in the shack, large enough to hold enough batteries for extended transmission life, and capable of being installed in less than a minute while the shack was vacant.

The techs created a woodblock audio concealment matching the faded color of the wooden table. They set spring-wound screws into one side of the wood block with enough torque from the spring to secure the block to the table's underside. When the wood block was placed firmly underneath the tabletop's bottom, the protruding screw heads were depressed, which released springs to turn the screws.

Because the bug required so many batteries for power, the wood block was too long to fit into the briefcase the chief normally carried. This required the techs to create a sling for cradling the device that could be worn under a topcoat. Every day, regardless of weather, the chief wore the topcoat and walked by the shelter, awaiting a time when he could enter unseen, open the coat, kneel down, pull the woodblock out of its sling, put it under the table, and activate the screws. It could all be done in less than thirty seconds.

Several weeks pa.s.sed with the chief carrying the device each time he walked by the shack. The opportunity finally arose one day as the chief was walking his dog. At a distance, the chief noticed the officer leaving the shelter and crossing the street to talk with a friend, exactly as the operational plan had envisioned. The chief stopped briefly, adjusted the dog's collar, ducked into the empty booth, planted the device, and continued walking. Later that evening, at the nearby listening post, the techs heard and recorded clear audio that was immediately forwarded to Langley for a.n.a.lysis of KGB surveillance codes and techniques.

Possibly more important to CIA operations than the intelligence collected from the little shack's tapes was the act itself. The CIA had successfully implanted an audio device that clandestinely collected KGB tactical conversations. The small breach of the KGB's internal security wall demonstrated that sound tradecraft combined with applied technology could compromise KGB communications. The little audio device became an early indicator of the possibility of future high payoff from technical collection operations inside the USSR.26 OTS officers who cataloged and a.n.a.lyzed foreign spy gear began to sense a peculiar pattern when it came to Soviet electronic gadgets in the late 1970s. Soviet technology seemed stalled. OTS testing repeatedly showed that the components and performance fell short of the kind of progress seen in Western spy gear.

The a.n.a.lysis proved correct. In a 1994 memoir, The First Directorate The First Directorate, the KGB's former counterintelligence chief, Oleg Kalugin, recounted a scene in which Nikolei Yemokhonov, the deputy for scientific and technical research, was "called on the carpet" by then KGB chief and future Premier, Yuri Andropov. Andropov reprimanded Yemokhonov for lagging behind American espionage technological developments and asked about an OTS transmitter obtained by the KGB.

"Well," replied Yemokhonov, "we don't have devices this size."

"What size have we got?" asked Andropov.

"Ours weighs about a kilogram," said Yemokhonov.

The American device weighed only a few ounces: everyone in the room knew that the bulky two-pound Soviet transmitters and receivers were barely suitable for clandestine work.27 Victor Cherkashin, a senior KGB officer, offered a similar take regarding OTS audio technology in his memoir published in 2005. Cherkashin recalled that information about U.S. eavesdropping operations inside the USSR "simply astounded the KGB" when provided by American traitor Aldrich Ames. Cherkashin recounted that at the time of Ames's initial betrayal in 1985, the CIA "was juggling several highly complex, technically advanced, ingenious operations inside the USSR without the KGB's knowledge including eavesdropping devices disguised as tree branches near research installations."28 On the defensive side, by the mid-1970s, the KGB had developed a significant countermeasures tool (code name MAGIC) to detect embedded audio eavesdropping devices. The KGB's first experiment with it inside their emba.s.sy in an Asian country found more than two dozen listening devices, some more than twenty years old with corroded batteries, hidden throughout the large complex. Called the Nonlinear Junction Detector Nonlinear Junction Detector (NLJD), the device could detect a transistor or integrated circuit inside a clandestine listening device even when it was not turned on. (NLJD), the device could detect a transistor or integrated circuit inside a clandestine listening device even when it was not turned on.

The Nonlinear Junction Detector Nonlinear Junction Detector worked by setting up a field of energy-radio waves-that read reflected energy. Any circuitry containing a diode present in the field was read as a disruption. Unlike metal detectors, which searched for metallic objects by means of electromagnetic induction, the NLJD was more selective in its search, noticing only the junctions of diodes found in transistors and integrated circuits. worked by setting up a field of energy-radio waves-that read reflected energy. Any circuitry containing a diode present in the field was read as a disruption. Unlike metal detectors, which searched for metallic objects by means of electromagnetic induction, the NLJD was more selective in its search, noticing only the junctions of diodes found in transistors and integrated circuits.

"It was the beginning of the end for cla.s.sical embedded audio devices," said Sasha, a former member of the KGB counterintelligence, who claimed the KGB removed "hundreds and hundreds of listening devices from each continent. Europe, Canada, Great Britain, United States." Sasha a.s.serted that the KGB "presented this nonlinear detector to Cuba, then Warsaw Pact countries, followed by Third World, so-called friends, such as Iraq, North Korea, and Vietnam."29 Once the NLJD technology was known, the United States countered with techniques to neutralize its effectiveness. The KGB found that bugs planted near naturally occurring junctions such as electrical sockets, rusty nails, or sections of walls containing pieces of dissimilar metals touching each other were "a nightmare for detection.30 Certain components were coveredwith a variety of hybrid coatings to mask the circuitry within. Improved shielding techniques for audio packages rendered the devices invisible to KGB countermeasures, including the NLJD. Certain components were coveredwith a variety of hybrid coatings to mask the circuitry within. Improved shielding techniques for audio packages rendered the devices invisible to KGB countermeasures, including the NLJD.

"We worried a little bit, and put additional filters in the circuits to keep the radio frequencies out," said Kurt. "We were always trying to shield them anyway, so the extra filtering became an incremental improvement. I don't think we lost many of our devices to nonlinear detection."31 Once the SRT audio systems were widely deployed, the CIA's capacity to process the "take" from the hundreds of installations worldwide became a continuing problem. Every audio op required listening post keepers and translators. Although much of the audio contained nothing of intelligence value, someone had to listen to the tape to make that determination. The promise of good intelligence from an audio installation often exceeded the results.

"I recall, over a ten-year period, fifty percent of the audio operations were terminated every year, and probably half of those shouldn't have gone forward in the first place," said one senior manager. "For a few years people were getting a feather in their cap because they were involved in an audio op. A case officer felt he really could not be promoted until he had run an audio op. That was part of the case officer checklist."

A study done by the same manager concluded that 5 percent of all audio ops produced 95 percent of all valuable information. But even that number was tricky. Some compared audio operations to diamond mining, the invaluable gems are found only after sifting tons of dirt.

For most of the last twenty-five years of the Cold War, audio dominated OTS operations. However, the emergence of computer-based information systems and cellular technologies in the 1980s and early 1990s created new target opportunities and eventually lessened the dependence on traditional audio for obtaining private conversations or communications. The target's technology, as well as the person, became an object of recruitment.

CHAPTER 15.

Genius Is Where You Find It

The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it.

-Dr. Vannevar Bush, "As We May Think," The Atlantic Monthly, July 1945 Espionage novels and movies devote few pages or minutes of screen time to the scientists and engineers who create spy gear. The notable exceptions are James Bond movies and the British gadget-master Q. Acting as the proper British foil to Bond's more colorful persona, Q invariably antic.i.p.ated Bond's technical needs for each mission even as he fussed and fretted over each piece of equipment that left his lab.

Contrary to Q's uncanny ability to provide Bond with just the right gadgetry no matter how vague the mission, specific operational requirements preceded the design and deployment of OTS devices. In fact, operational requirements drove much of the innovation in the same way compet.i.tion in consumer products pushes companies to the next level of technological sophistication with their products. Noteworthy is the fact that innovation in clandestine gear is motivated not by market share or quarterly profits, but by the need to ensure the survival of agents and officers. This remains as true today as it was for Lovell and the OSS during World War II.

Through the decades, the Agency had remarkable success in consistently acquiring the required technologies and expertise. By necessity and tradition, OTS sought its devices from a surprisingly wide range of suppliers. Over the years spy gadgetry has been produced by high-profile business leaders and academics as well as obscure inventors. CEOs, attracted by a technical challenge and eager to serve their country, set aside manpower and facilities to establish covert technical units. n.o.bel Prize-winning scientists and internationally recognized engineers have volunteered to work on OTS projects in their off hours.

However, big ideas were often the products of the smallest companies with highly specialized expertise. A firm with only a handful of employees was just as likely to turn out an amazing piece of hardware as a multinational with nearly unlimited resources. "OTS had long-standing relationships with real garage-shop companies. Sometimes they were no more than ten people. That was the whole company, soup to nuts, including the accountants," said Gene Nehring, an OTS manager. "We always kidded about some of our suppliers. Some Agency managers would say, 'You guys deal with every garage shop around.' And yes, we do, and each one did one little thing better than anyone else, anywhere."

Perhaps nowhere was this truer than in the case of the T-100 subminiature camera, arguably the most productive piece of Cold War spy gear. Developed and manufactured by a tiny company housed in a nondescript industrial park on the Eastern seaboard, the film-based T-100 was the ultimate spy camera. Unlike the Minox, which was originally designed and marketed as a commercial product, the T-100's sophisticated optical and mechanical design was so highly specialized and technologically unique there were virtually no uses for the device outside of espionage. It operated like a point-and-shoot camera, but had no viewfinder and required a painstakingly precise process to hand-load the customized film on its miniature ca.s.sette. From design to operation, the T-100 had one function: enabling an agent to take a covert, clear picture of the writing, printing, or diagrams on a piece of paper directly in front of him.

"Think about it. That camera, as marvelous as it proved itself, was utterly useless as a commercial product," said Gene. "It could take a wonderful picture of a single sheet of paper at eleven inches. But it has a depth of field of about one inch, and no other applications."

The T-100's a.s.sembly was closer to watchmaking than any commercial manufacturing process. The owner of the company fabricated each camera himself under a large magnifying gla.s.s and halo light using a device he built specifically for the task. "He had all kinds of things that held the different components in place," explained Gene, who once witnessed the a.s.sembly process. "It was a real Rube Goldberg apparatus, but it allowed him to take these little tiny things and put them together. Imagine tying a trout fly and performing ten steps at the same time in three-dimensional s.p.a.ce."

Because the camera was such a singular device, it offered a high level of operational security. Counterintelligence organizations, after all, cannot guard against a device they do not know exists. However, that same singularity and craftsmanship eventually became a cause for concern. By the late l970s, with the T-100 proving itself such a valued piece of Cold War spy gear, operational managers grew concerned about future supplies of the camera. With the small company the sole source for the device and a single individual the only person able to a.s.semble the tiny components, supplies could be jeopardized by something as ordinary as the owner of the company developing a twitch or injuring his hand.

The owner, recognizing the vulnerability of a national a.s.set, provided the camera's specifications and engineering drawings to the Agency. The complex lens a.s.sembly, made up of more than half a dozen elements layered one on top of another, seemed a logical component for second sourcing. One of the premier optical houses in the country seemed the reasonable place to start.

"We said, 'Here's a design, what do you think? Can you make this?'" recalled Gene. "Well, they did their computer a.n.a.lysis of the lens and came back to us and said, 'Nope, it won't work. The light won't focus properly. You'll never get a picture out of this thing.' Naturally, we didn't tell them we already had fifty in stock and they were all working just fine, thank you very much."

The potential for another source arose after the Agency allowed a friendly intelligence service to borrow some of the prized cameras. Not long afterward, the service requested permission to build its own version. The CIA agreed to share the specs with the understanding that this overseas production run would become the needed second source. After a few months, the friendly intelligence service returned with news that they too had failed to duplicate the camera.

The inventors themselves could be as unique as the devices they created. One of the stranger meetings Gene remembered was in tracking down an inventor of a new type of long-lasting battery at his upstate New York home. "On a February day, I go flying up there," recalled Gene. "I'm picked up at the airport and as we're driving out to the house, my colleague says, 'This isn't your ordinary contractor. He's a little eccentric.'"

Not knowing what to expect, Gene arrived at the suburban home of the inventor to find him in the backyard digging a trench with a backhoe. After he completed his digging, the inventor jumped on a small Bobcat bulldozer and filled the trench in before beginning work on another. The trench, as it turned out, had no specific purpose. Digging holes and refilling them was his hobby.

After initial introductions and pleasantries, the inventor invited the two officers to his workshop for a tour. "We went into the cellar, and he had welders, drill presses, all of these tools, and everything said CRAFTSMAN on it. It was like walking into a Sears' tool department. He had one of everything," Gene said. "And that's where he'd a.s.semble these little batteries by hand, in his bas.e.m.e.nt with all of these Craftsman tools. But they were one-of-a-kind and met our needs."

Eccentricity was not limited to outside contractors. One of OTS's legendary engineers, Brian Holmes, is remembered as much for his personal style as his remarkable brilliance and creativity. Although Holmes's engineering work was unsurpa.s.sed, what drove managers and colleagues to distraction was Brian himself. Every week seemed to bring Holmes another security violation for leaving cla.s.sified papers in the open or misplacing materials. Invariably these lapses triggered a broader review of security practices that disrupted the entire division.