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.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

[Simon666]

Am I supposed to believe they translated operation manuals and completed testing on test stand and in the field all in under 6 months, and got approval? And the Soviets usually tried to do things with as little resources as possible, they wouldn't change an existing product if it was doing its job. And if it was NOT doing its job, it would probably have exploded anyway and you only gave them the opportunity to reverse engineer it, reaching the exact opposite of bringing the Soviets to a similar technological level.

Considering the pipeline to be above ground: what is the relevance of that? You still don't go building it in the winter as then you risk in the summer the ground will become unstable if thawing sets it.

[shadowman99]

.

[snopercod]

The story that was broadcast on PBS was that the trojan horse triggered itself on a certain date.

[Straight Vermonter]

Bump

[Straight Vermonter]

Shortly before the first Gulf War IBM became aware that Iraq was buying computer printers through a third party in Brazil. IBM informed the US government and said they were going to put a stop to it.

The military told IBM to sell them specially modified printers. When our planes flew overhead we knew all of the places where the Iraqi government was operating these printers because they were emitting a radio signal.

Big boom.

[gitmo]

LOL!

Reminds me of something I did with a client I was sure wasn't going to pay me for a system I developed. Nothing physically exploded, but ...

[HungarianGypsy]

FBI works the same way. I remember during a murder investigation the FBI told the media one thing, while telling the family, "here's what's really going on." It was funny to see the media patting itself on the back all along.

[Valin]

I love it!

[SunkenCiv]

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[DavemeisterP]

I’m an archeologist working pipelines at times here in the US, and, from what I’ve seen the pipe gets laid several years in advance of everything else. The Valve stations and other controlling areas get laid last. At least, from what I’ve seen...

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Man there is good stuff in the archives.....

Thanks for putting this on today's thread:

Electricity Grid in U.S. Penetrated by Spies

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Something is amiss....

49 posted on Tue 15 Apr 2008 10:07:26 AM PDT by SunkenCiv

50 posted on Tue 15 Apr 2008 12:22:18 PM PDT by DavemeisterP

[neverdem]

thanks, bfl

[blam]

Yup. DavemeisterP's should be dated the 16th?

Here's a true story:

In the late 70's, the CIA discovered a Soviet sonobuoy that had washed ashore near the Puget Sound in Washington State. The Bangor Naval Submarine Base is located within the Sound and the sonobuoy was apparently used by the Soviets to track the movement of our submarines.

Anyway, I know about this story because the CIA came to TI inquiring about how one of our chips may have found its way into that sonobuoy. We reverse-engineered it and determined that it was a copy but, the CIA wasn't satisfied with that answer because "why would the Soviets include a TI logo on the chip."

We couldn't answer that either but after checking around we found that there had been prior incidents with the Soviets copying our chips and leaving off the logo. After that prior incident, our designers began to incorporate the TI logo as a functional part of the design. The Soviets soon caught onto this and from then on, copied everything exactly, including (the now necessary) logo.

BTW, FYI, there are empty spaces on some chips and the designers often times use this empty space to put graffiti, comments or random pictures. The Japanese designers would often put Samurai warriors while the Texans would put cowboys in the empty spaces.

Chip Art

[blam]

Hmmmm. Silicon Art was more widespread than I realized.

[SunkenCiv]

Amiss? I posted at 10 in the morning, Davemeister at 12:22 in the afternoon, same day?

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks blam, interesting account.

This is disappointing :’)

http://www.snopes.com/business/hidden/chipshot.asp

[rabidralph]

Thanks, for letting that cat out of the bag/sarc

[SunkenCiv]

Andy's 'blog -- the way I heard this story, read it actually, it was in (probably) Softalk magazine, and Woz actually did a prank that led to this kooky epiphany by Jobs.

[mad_as_he$$]

In the early 80's I worked for a company that made semiconductor test equipment. We received an order from a company in West Germany for a unit that we did not believe we would ever get permission to sell to them from DRPA and State.

We had already designed into the machine a password capability that locked out the process if the correct password was not typed in - three failures and it locked it out. Required a human service call to reset it.

In any case we received almost immediate permission to ship the unit. As the VP of Customer Support I scheduled a visit to install the machine and train the users. We could NEVER get a good date and at one point I sent an employee to "visit" he found an empty warehouse at the address for the company with one very old "janitor". He got out of the guy that the company had "moved" but not where too. As the years went by I wondered what happened to that machine. About two years after the wall went down I got a call from a Russian company in Moscow. They had the machine and could we come and fix it. It was password locked out and had been for a long time.

Thanks for this story I now believe I know what happened to the missing machine.