Oh, that big 1982 Siberian explosion?

Fort Worth Star-Telegram / The New York Times ^ | 2/3/04 | William Safire

[Valin]

WASHINGTON - Intelligence shortcomings, as we see, have a thousand fathers; secret intelligence triumphs are orphans. Here is the unremarked story of "the Farewell dossier": how a CIA campaign of computer sabotage resulting in a huge explosion in Siberia -- all engineered by a mild-mannered economist named Gus Weiss -- helped us win the Cold War.

Weiss worked down the hall from me in the Nixon administration. In early 1974, he wrote a report on Soviet advances in technology through purchasing and copying that led the beleaguered president -- detente notwithstanding -- to place restrictions on the export of computers and software to the Soviet Union.

Seven years later, we learned how the KGB responded. I was writing a series of hard-line columns denouncing the financial backing being given Moscow by Germany and Britain for a major natural gas pipeline from Siberia to Europe. That project would give control of European energy supplies to the Communists, as well as generate $8 billion a year to support Soviet computer and satellite research.

President Francois Mitterrand of France also opposed the gas pipeline. He took President Reagan aside at a conference in Ottawa on July 19, 1981, to reveal that France had recruited a key KGB officer in Moscow Center.

Col. Vladimir Vetrov provided what French intelligence called the Farewell dossier. It contained documents from the KGB Technology Directorate showing how the Soviets were systematically stealing -- or secretly buying through third parties -- the radar, machine tools and semiconductors to keep the Russians nearly competitive with U.S. military-industrial strength through the '70s. In effect, the United States 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 United States and Japan, Weiss counseled against deportation.

Instead, according to Reed -- a former Air Force secretary whose fascinating Cold War book, At the Abyss, will be published by Random House in March -- 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.

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 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. 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 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.

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William Safire writes for The New York Times.safire@nytimes.com

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I have high speed cable but this box mostly just idles.

[Dog Gone]

Outstanding! Thanks for the ping.

[Valin]

Completely shameless bump

[Constitution Day]

Amazing story!

Thanks for posting.

[Valin]

It makes you wonder just what else they did. I guess it would fall under "I'd tell you but then I'd have to kill you."

[Just mythoughts]

Good post. Thus being the case, hard to "tout" one's success, is know by the liberals who have decided to politicize our intel gathering.

Appears that many have been frozen out on that oh so cherished intel and are "running" in the dark. The politicals are acting very scared, as though they have something to HIDE.

[LTCJ]

The Eighties were a great time to be involved in the dreaded Military/Industrial Complex.

Too bad most of these stories will never be declassified. Many were better than any Hollywood thriller ever made ...

[Constitution Day]

We will probably never know even a small fraction of all the things they've done.

It's amazing, really.

[js1138]

I believe I read a Tom Clancy interview some years back in which he said a fictional account of sabotaged computer chips was based on true events. He didn't give any details.

[Walkingfeather]

well they new in 81 that the soviets were doomed.

[Valin]

I can't say about others, but I always assumed they were.

[CJ Wolf]

true dat!

[Pagey]

"In our complex disinformation scheme, deliberately flawed designs for stealth technology and space defense sent Russian scientists down paths that wasted time and money".

I'm really glad that Bill Safire outlived Gus Weiss, if only to be able to let the world know that it's one more positive thing/momentous event that happened during the Reagan Administration.

[Simon666]

People only believe this because they see the name Reagan and doing something against the evil, evil Soviet Union. If you actually start thinking about it: the plan allegedly dates from January 1982, the explosion from the summer of 1982. Is there anybody here who believes you successfully build a pipeline under 6 months? Or if they are not building it and it is already there, that they replace existing software with American software without knowing what it does or testing it for several months on a test platform to get accustomed to it and see how it works when applying it to Russian equipment?

[Valin]

The catch: Computer chips would be designed to pass Soviet quality tests and then to fail in operation.

[Simon666]

Look, the pipeline was probably already there in January as you can't built a pipeline in Siberia in the winter for the simple reason it is freezing the soil rock hard. You don't build that thing under 6 months. That means also there was already hardware and software on it. So I really doubt the Soviets would change existing software/hardware with something unproven you bought from dubious sources unless the existing stuff was really bad.

And the time window is just too small if you consider the plan is from January 1982 and the "effect" is in the summer of 1982 already. That would require the plan to be executed in record time by both the American and Soviet bureaucracy. Now the American bureaucracy is feasible, but passing the Soviet bureaucracy at such speed as well? If it would have been the 1989 explosion of a pipeline that killed 600 people on passenger trains, I might have believed it.

[steve-b]

Anybody else reminded of Fred Pohl's The Cool War?

[Valin]

Gee you don't suppose the hradware and software were upgraded do you? Nah, no one ever does that, particularly the soviets as they always produced state of the art hardware and software.

[Old Professer]

The pipeline was above ground.

[Freebird Forever]

Simon666
Since Mar 4, 2004

Welcome to FR, newbie