The Spy in Moscow Station

by Eric Haseltine

  The Russians used Doppler principle and other radio frequency principles such as nonlinear mixing (“parasitic and parametric” phenomena, according to Russian-language texts) to detect minute motions—including those triggered by acoustic energy from voices—of small metallic objects inside buildings upon which they wished to spy.

  Robert M. Clark, writing in the 2011 unclassified book The Technical Collection of Intelligence, states:

  Since at least the 1960’s, radio frequency [microwave] flooding of installation has been used for intelligence data collection. The flooding signals are used to collect data remotely, much as a radar senses its target. The flooding was directed at devices [with moving metallic parts] such as typewriters. Signals directed at the typewriters were modulated by the keystrokes [e.g., by Doppler shift as keys moved toward and away from the radar] and the modulated signals received by other antennas, thereby compromising the information typed.6

  Thus, after raising the possibility of Thing-like implants for voice recovery, Gandy probably informed Ambassador Hathaway and Jon that the KGB could be using microwaves to read messages as they were typed on typewriters or other text input devices, without any implant or bugs whatsoever!

  Yes, information about assets’ true identities was never supposed to be typed or openly discussed outside of the SCIF or the box, which were shielded against microwave radiation. But was the door of the microwave-impervious SCIF always closed? Was it ever left open by accident or by negligence or simple convenience? If so, microwave signals beamed into the building could easily travel through open doors and compromise typewriters and other equipment, as described later.

  Having worked at many embassies worldwide, Gandy knew that embassy SCIFs were often left open, despite claims by local intelligence officers that such lapses never happened.

  A recent translation of an account of a former KGB officer who claimed to have surveilled the U.S. embassy in Moscow described other things that the Soviets picked up using what they call RF imposition or high-frequency pumping (what Clark earlier referred to as radio frequency flooding).

  I saw with my own eyes and heard with my ears the information [conversations] not only from the phone disconnected from the automatic telephone exchange, but also the doorbells, electromagnetic starters, electric meters … in short everything that has inside at least a hint of an oscillatory circuit. [Back-and-forth movements of typewriter arms are mechanical oscillators.] This was achieved with the help of high frequency pumping. The secret pumping device at the time was called “area 69.” 7

  A modern Russian textbook used in introductory information security courses at the college level describes in more detail how RF imposition with microwaves can recover voice information from any device containing a nonlinear element such as a transistor: in other words, any modern piece of electronics, including telephones, televisions, stereo systems, scanners, printers, and computers.

  Extraction of information by high frequency imposition is achieved as a result of remote action [microwaves beamed at a target facility] by a high frequency [microwave] electromagnetic field or electrical signals on elements capable of modulating their information parameters [voice or data] by primary electrical or acoustic signals with voice information.… More often, a non-linear element is used as a modulation element [source of voice or digital data] including in the telephone system. In this case high frequency imposition is provided by bringing a high frequency harmonic signal to the telephone apparatus.… The principle of operation here is similar to the operation of a radio mixer.8

  In simpler terms, the phenomena described in the Russian textbooks means that when a microwave signal hits a nonlinear device such as any transistor or diode, it will cause that device to radiate multiple frequencies different from the microwave signal itself in a process called mixing. These new radio frequencies, in turn, increase and decrease in volume as a transistor or diode changes electrical conductivity with voice signals, or change current with data signals, so that a sensitive microwave receiver located nearby can pick up unintended radiation of voice or data signals.

  Yes, weird and magical as it seems—according to Russian textbooks—whenever you talk around any piece of electronics, your voice slightly vibrates that device, allowing a sensitive microwave to pick up and decode your voice. A similar principle allows microwave sensors to read data being processed in digital electronics.

  In sum, Gandy, based upon his research, likely would have suggested to Hathaway and LeChevet that the KGB learned the identities of CIA assets and CIA case officers by planting undetectable descendants of the Thing in classified regions of the embassy or extracting the information via microwave flooding.

  And the ingenious, nearly impossible-to-understand physics underlying such virtuoso technical feats made such Russian attacks all the more dangerous: Who could believe that such bizarre things were possible, especially from the backward third-world Soviets?

  * * *

  After the meeting, Gandy walked over to the north annex of the embassy, where he knocked on the door of the quarters of an absent embassy staffer who had, conveniently, left for a month. The door opened a crack, showing a sliver of the face of one of the two coworkers Gandy had brought with him from Fort Meade. The man opened the door, admitting Gandy, then swiftly closed it. Navigating around a black drape hung over stacked cardboard boxes that blocked any view inside the room from the door and covered all their electronics, Gandy followed his man inside and surveyed the room.

  Stacks of sophisticated electronics, some with antennas attached, had been set up on tables and boxes, cables running everywhere. NSA had shipped this equipment ahead of Gandy via diplomatic pouch, which was theoretically safe from KGB prying. His man had worked through the night. Now it was Gandy’s shift. A third man was sleeping nearby, who would take over for Gandy in ten hours or so, so that NSA could keep their mission going 24-7.

  With lives at stake, time was short.

  “Everything working okay?” Gandy asked.

  Charles’s partner, a tall, blond engineer of few words, only nodded. Because the room, inside a heated embassy, was draped in shielded black material and there was no air-conditioning, the temperature exceeded ninety degrees Fahrenheit. The blond man wore only his skivvies to keep cool, but Gandy, who had worked under exactly these conditions before with his team, hardly noticed. Downrange, sacrifices had to be made.

  Gandy took off his own shirt to stay cool and said, “Okay, let’s get started.” The two men set to work, sweating profusely as they concentrated.

  As with the second half of the meeting in the Plexiglas box earlier that morning, only fragmentary information is publicly available about what Gandy did the rest of the day in that room, and the following weeks must remain a subject of informed speculation based upon declassified documents and Russian textbooks on TSCM procedures.

  But if Gandy and his team did what state-of-the-art bug hunters did in 1978—which is very likely—here is a rough idea of what went on in their temporary quarters.

  * * *

  Given that LeChevet had conducted routine bugs hunts and found nothing in the secure areas of the embassy, Gandy, in a hurry to find possible compromises, is likely to have used methods and technologies that were beyond those available to State Department security at the time, in order to avoid wasting time repeating what LeChevet had done many times recently.

  One such advanced approach would have employed expensive, state-of-the-art low-noise radio scanners and spectrum analyzers capable of detecting and demodulating (turning encoded radio transmissions into format such as speech and text that humans could understand) RF signals, along with sophisticated antennas capable of plucking faint signals from the air.

  The State Department, who didn’t put the same priority on technical countermeasures that NSA did, lacked the latest and greatest equipment available to the intelligence agency.

  Gandy and his colleagues, if they had followed standard TSCM practice, would have me
ticulously scanned the RF spectrum around the clock (ergo the 24-7 shift arrangement), searching for any signals that did not belong to the normal background of transmissions from TV and radio stations, police and fire dispatches, microwave telecommunication data links, and, in 1978, car telephones.

  The goal of such needle-in-a-haystack searches is to find exfiltrated signals from bugs, microphones, or data-gathering implants, especially those transmitted in ultrashort, hard-to-find bursts favored for covert communications.

  The hunt for ephemeral bursts was especially important because, in the intelligence world, any attempt by an adversary to hide information—with encryption or use of burst transmissions—ipso facto merited close attention. In a never-ending cat-and-mouse game between spies and counterspies, the trick with exfiltrating stealthy transmission was to hide the fact that you were hiding, in order not to draw attention to the fact that you were hiding.

  TSCM textbooks provide another tantalizing clue about what Gandy and colleagues might have been doing to track down the lethal information leaks. Electronic circuits in rooms where conversations are occurring can vibrate slightly with acoustic energy generated by speech, exactly as the diaphragm of a microphone vibrates. Just as microphones convert such vibrations into a voltage that is then amplified and transmitted (e.g., via a telephone receiver, a public address system), minute vibrations of electronic circuit boards cause subtle changes in the electrical properties of transistors and other components. When such changes occur in a circuit that oscillates (such as a digital clock that oscillates between one and zero in most electronics), voice signals that vibrate an electronic circuit having an oscillator will slightly modulate (change the amplitude, or pitch) of that oscillation. Since, according to principles of physics, any oscillation in an electronic circuit will transmit some RF to the outside world, a sensitive receiver can pick up and decode unintended voice transmissions from many types of electronic equipment.9

  The KGB (as evidenced by many Russian-language TSCM textbooks) was well aware of the dangers of unintended RF transmissions of voice signals and therefore, like other intelligence organizations, routinely shielded electronics in sensitive areas capable of radiating such signals or placed them in electrically shielded rooms (SCIFs), or both.

  Here is a translated excerpt from a modern Russian TSCM primer:

  Acoustic energy arising during a conversation can cause acoustic (mechanical) oscillations of electronic equipment elements, which leads to the appearance of electromagnetic radiation [unintended RF transmissions] or to its change under certain circumstances. The most sensitive elements of radio electronic equipment for acoustic influences are the inductors and capacitors of variable capacity, piezo and optical converters.10

  Thus, if the KGB was recovering voice signals from the embassy and playing them on loudspeakers (or possibly even headsets) in their listening posts, Gandy might have been able to hear what the KGB was hearing, despite Russian efforts to electrically shield the rooms from which they were surveilling the embassy. Shields didn’t always work as intended. Gandy might also have been able to pick up voices of KGB operatives themselves, commenting on their “take” (the intelligence collected from the embassy) or problems they were having zeroing in on suitable signals.

  In the spy trade, listening to listeners is called robbing the highway robber.

  Again, no information has emerged that indicates that Gandy actually did “rob the robbers” in Moscow in this way. But if he were aware of these techniques in 1978 and motivated to learn what the KGB was learning about human assets and their controllers, he had the skills to do so.

  * * *

  For the next several weeks, Gandy lived a Groundhog Day existence, repeating the same activities for twelve to eighteen hours each day, including the weekends. Rising early, he would go down to breakfast, find a fresh batch of nongovernment visitors or guests to sit with, listen attentively to the same stories and complaints, nod and smile in all the right places—but say little—then bus his cafeteria tray and make his way up to the work quarters to relieve the night shift.

  But it wouldn’t have been right for him to return from an exotic city like Moscow without some souvenirs for his wife, Freda, and their children, Chuck and Beth, so Gandy requested an embassy driver and car and ventured out into the city for some shopping at a Beriozka store, where embassy staff had told him that foreigners could spend their hard currency. Given that the KGB knew who he was, there was some danger in leaving the protective, if overly acquisitive, walls of the embassy.

  Gandy and his team had indeed experienced a sophisticated form of harassment while working in the temporary quarters. One night, there was a deafening pop inside their room, accompanied by a blinding flash and smell of ozone, just before the power went out. The KGB, who controlled electrical power fed to the embassy, had created an overvoltage on the power circuits feeding the admiral’s quarters in order to blow out their electronics.

  The power surge destroyed a stereo and TV in the room but caused only minor damage to Gandy’s gear, because he had anticipated and protected his equipment from just such an attack.

  Later checks of the embassy revealed that the power surge had only hit the circuit feeding the admiral’s room, proving that the KGB had somehow figured out exactly where he was working.

  And Gandy had a fair idea of how the KGB knew about his work location.

  When showing up at the beginning of his shift each day, Gandy had to step around a neat, ten-by-ten matrix of cigarette butts left at the stairway landing on the floor where he worked. Although he never saw the smoker who left signs of a stakeout, Gandy believed the smoker was a KGB surveillance officer who managed to get into the embassy each day (not much of a challenge, given that much of the embassy’s outside security was provided by the KGB), then parked himself at the top of the stairs and watched who entered and left Gandy’s work space.

  A few times, Gandy had even caught fleeting glimpses of the KGB sentinels who sat at the top of the stairs, waiting for him to emerge.

  With listening devices everywhere and over a hundred pairs of eyes of Soviet employees working in the embassy, it could not have been hard for the KGB to learn where Gandy and his team were working and to plan a stakeout.

  The well-organized cigarette butts were another message, Charles supposed. “We own you, even inside your ‘secure’ embassy.”

  “Smoking kills,” Gandy mused. “I wonder if smokers also kill.”

  But if the KGB were going to harm him either inside the “safe” confines of the embassy or when he ventured outside, as he planned to do now, they probably would have done it two weeks earlier right after he entered the country, so Gandy felt reasonably safe leaving the embassy with a driver and security escort.

  Getting into the same sedan that had ferried him from the airport, Gandy noted that the early May air carried the scent of diesel exhaust mixed with the ubiquitous odor of cooked cabbage, onions, and cheap cigarettes. When his limo cleared the embassy compound, black-hatted drivers in KGB chase cars once again boxed his car in.

  The KGB drivers and their passengers fixed him with the by-now-familiar KGB death stare. Gandy smiled back at his grim escorts, mustering his maximum northern Louisiana charm. Bless their little hearts, he thought.

  The wide boulevards of downtown Moscow were well maintained, and the façades of many buildings ornate and sometimes colorful with pastel exteriors and white trim. Not third world at all, Gandy thought. Scarf-headed women in long skirts were everywhere, wielding long-handled brooms to sweep the streets. LeChevet had told Gandy that these veniki (“broom ladies”) were usually KGB paid informants who kept an eye on the streets for the authorities.

  Gandy was mesmerized by the rhythmic back-and-forth motion of the veniki’s brooms, which kept the main boulevards spotless.

  But Moscow’s side streets were dingy and piled high with trash.

  The nicely groomed boulevards reminded Gandy of a story he’d once read about Czarin
a Catherine the Great’s minister and sometime lover, Grigory Potemkin. Shortly after Russia’s 1789 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, when Catherine asked to see Russia’s new possession, the inventive Potemkin had created moveable picturesque villages to be placed along the czarina’s route from Saint Petersburg to the Crimea so that the ruler would only see new, well-maintained buildings and well-fed peasants along her journey and think her country had prospered under Potemkin’s administration.11

  The term Potemkin village had been born on that trip, and apparently, its lessons had not been lost on modern Russians.

  Arriving at the Beriozka store, Gandy selected an iron bust of Lenin (he thought it would sit well on his desk back at NSA), along with wood boxes delicately painted with single-hair brushes, and the Matryoshka dolls-within-dolls-within-dolls toys.

  While checking out at the cashier, a commotion erupted at the store’s entrance, catching Charles’s attention. Two six-foot-five-plus guards, probably KGB, had closed ranks at the store’s entrance, blocking a scarf-headed babushka in her seventies accompanied by a small girl from entering. “Nyet,” one behemoth simply said in a deep baritone, informing the woman that the store only permitted foreigners. Face growing pale, the woman clutched her little girl’s hand and scampered away.

  That’s odd, Gandy thought. The Russian woman must have known that Beriozka stores catered exclusively to foreigners. Why would she call the KGB’s attention to herself?