...a mild-mannered economist named Gus Weiss... worked down the hall from me in the Nixon administration... Weiss said: "Why not help the Soviets with their shopping? Now that we know what they want, we can help them get it." ...The technology topping the Soviets' wish list was for computer control systems to automate the operation of the new trans-Siberian gas pipeline. When we turned down their overt purchase order, the KGB 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." Our Norad monitors feared a nuclear detonation, but satellites that would have picked up its electromagnetic pulse were silent. That mystified many in the White House, but "Gus Weiss came down the hall to tell his fellow NSC staffers not to worry. It took him another 20 years to tell me why." Farewell stayed secret because the blast in June 1982, estimated at three kilotons, took place in the Siberian wilderness, with no casualties known. Nor was the red-faced KGB about to complain publicly about being tricked by bogus technology... Vetrov was caught and executed in 1983. A year later, Bill Casey ordered the KGB collection network rolled up, closing the Farewell dossier. Gus Weiss died from a fall a few months ago. Now is a time to remember that sometimes our spooks get it right in a big way.
I was in Woomera, Australia when that happened. We were battening down the hatches--thought the balloon was going up then and there. Took awhile but we calmed and started wondering, WTF????
Most of the events in the TV series The Americans were real.
I hope the one involving a submarine propeller shaft was one of them. They let the Soviets steal engineering designs for a very quiet drive shaft that actually shook itself to pieces and wrecked the sub they put it on.
Understandable how Putin gets spooked by the CIA... Bill Casey was the stuff legends are made of...