Walt, a blunt, aggressive, profane executive, was not big on formalities. Without being invited to sit, he pulled up a chair next to Gandy’s desk and lit up a cigarette without asking if he could smoke. Walt was coatless, with a canary-yellow short-sleeved shirt and light brown tie sporting multiple food stains and a small hole where a hot ash from a cigarette had burned through.
Gandy couldn’t be certain, because most of Walt’s ties looked similar, but he believed the cigarette burn on this particular tie was new.
“Well, hello there,” Gandy said.
Walt did not return the greeting. Instead, from his back pocket, he produced a folded-up, coffee-stained version of the same report Gandy had just been reading and waved it at Gandy. Taking a deep drag on his cigarette, then exhaling, Walt asked, “Did you read this fucking thing?”
“Just finished it.”
Walt had smoked his cigarette down to a small nub and looked around for an ashtray. Gandy, who kept one in his top right drawer for Deeley’s visits, pulled out a white ceramic ashtray proclaiming UN, a souvenir from a trip to New York, and pushed it across the desk.
Walt snuffed out his butt in the ashtray and lit up again, squinting through the smoke. “Goddamn Frogs were lucky to find this sucker. Normally they can’t find their asses with both hands.”
Gandy said nothing to that. Walt would not have cared for Gandy’s opinion of the French even if he had been foolish enough to offer it. Walt had strong opinions about nearly everything and was not known for listening to contrary views. “My way or the highway” was one of his most-used phrases around his offices. He was about as different from other NSA executives as it was possible to be.
Where most NSA leaders were college educated, often with Ph.D.s, Deeley had risen to the highest levels at the agency after joining it as an army sergeant with only a high school diploma. Walt was a brilliant linguist who spoke seven languages fluently, including Russian, Chinese, German, and Korean, but he was the opposite of polished. In an NSA culture that avoided face-to-face confrontations, Walt was a stab-you-in-the-chest-not-in-the-back sort of manager whose favorite threat to subordinates who displeased him, which happened often, was “I’ll cut your balls off.”
Walt had spent years at the pointy end of the SIGINT spear. His first stint overseas was in Korea during the war on the peninsula, where he commanded a small, mobile squad of army “cryppies” (cryptologists) who traveled back-mountain roads in radio-equipped jeeps, dodging enemy fire while performing low-level intercept of unencrypted Chinese military voice communications. Remaining in the army after the Korean armistice, Walt transferred to Berlin, where he went up against East Germans and Russians for six years.
Returning from Berlin, Walt joined NSA in 1960 as a linguist and steadily climbed the management ladder, ultimately becoming the deputy director of NSA in charge of communications security in 1983. The job came with heavy responsibilities, including protecting the president’s most sensitive communications and nuclear launch codes, as well as all military and defense communications.
Born dirt poor in Flint, Michigan, and moving to Boston, where he grew up in working-class Irish Catholic neighborhoods, Walt was a street fighter who used his mental toughness to bully subordinates and outmaneuver bureaucratic NSA rivals—almost always introverts—who shied away from open conflict.
Gandy’s private name for Walt Deeley was “Junkyard Dog.” The Junkyard Dog had a slight build, wore thick-rimmed, dorky glasses, and was inches shorter than Gandy, but he somehow managed to fill up any room he entered with unquestioned alpha maleness.
One of Walt’s traits, which had endeared him to a string of NSA directors, was that he didn’t seem to care what anyone thought of him. So NSA directors often picked him to lead unpopular projects that more image-conscious NSA managers avoided at all costs. One such “radioactive” project was the investigation of the USS Liberty incident.
In June 1967, during the six-day Arab-Israeli conflict, Israeli jets attacked the NSA-controlled SIGINT collection ship USS Liberty cruising off the Mediterranean coast, possibly to prevent the ship from relaying back to Washington ultrasensitive communications between Israeli military commanders that Israel believed the Liberty had collected. Israeli leaders considered the content of the communications (rumored to involve severe mistreatment of Arab prisoners) so damning that it could undermine Western support of the country. Therefore, Israel decided that intercepts of the communications could not, under any circumstances, leak out. Or so early reports from the Liberty’s survivors suggested.6
Digging into the politically charged incident, which both the Johnson administration and the Israeli government attributed to a tragic case of mistaken identity, was a career killer. If Walt found that a key U.S. ally had intentionally killed twenty-seven of its sailors, higher-ups in D.C. who wanted Americans to continue supporting Israel would crush him; if he went along with a cover-up, colleagues at NSA who knew what really happened would come for him with a vengeance.
Yet Deeley managed to skillfully navigate the political land mines in the Liberty review and issued the highly regarded “Deeley report” on the incident, most of which remains classified to this day. (So rumors about the true Israeli motive for the attack remain rumors.) As a result of his virtuoso performance on the delicate Liberty investigation, a series of NSA directors subsequently overlooked Walt’s abrasive, combative personality and continued to make him the go-to guy for many thorny problems.
And the French discovery of a teleprinter implant in Moscow, was, by any definition, a thorny problem. If NSA ignored it, the KGB might continue to intercept classified U.S. diplomatic traffic using a stealthy, previously undetected variant of the French embassy implant. But if NSA actively investigated the possibility of a similar device in the U.S. embassy, it invited the wrath of both George Shultz and William Casey.
Deeley smoked in silence, periodically flicking ashes from his pants as he appeared to work through the dilemma. Emerging from his reverie and locking eyes with Gandy, Walt said, “Here’s the problem as I see it with the teleprinter thing: although the Frogs are a third-rate power, the other side has chosen to target them with some truly high-tech shit.”
“Why is that a problem?” Gandy asked.
Walt stood and began to pace. “Because we are the Soviet’s grade-A, number-one main enemy, yet we haven’t found anything even close to this sophistication in our place in the Moscow embassy. Why? For sure, Sixteen [KGB’s Sixteenth Chief Directorate, roughly equivalent to NSA] is going to throw their best shit at us before screwing has-beens like the French with it.”
“Maybe our State Department security is better than the French’s and we’ve kept Russians best at bay,” Gandy said in a somber voice.
Walt stared at Gandy in astonishment for a few seconds, then realized Gandy was being sarcastic. “Right. Hand me that ashtray, would you?”
Gandy emptied the ashes in a trash can beside his desk and handed Walt the empty tray. Walt snuffed out his smoke, extracted another cigarette with his lips, flicked on his BIC lighter, and lit up again. Walt continued, “You had me going there for a second, but you know as well as I do, those security pukes over at State suck. So odds are, the bad guys have slipped something in on us over there that we haven’t found.”
Gandy let Walt’s observation pass without comment.
Walt scowled at Gandy. “You and your guys have been over there, what, three or four times. Did you see any evidence of something like the teleprinter thing in your TSCM work? Anything show up optically, in the RF spectrum, or on power lines?”
“Optically, no. But I guarantee the other side is getting text from one or more of our machines through RF. A teleprinter, code machine, maybe a typewriter or two.” Gandy went on to describe the other smoking-gun evidence he had collected and had reported.
“Oh yeah. Now I remember. Jesus H. Christ. And State and Langley sat on their hands?”
“Pretty much.”
Walt stoppe
d pacing and sat down again. “Okay. This French thing tears it. If I believe you, and I do, we’re fucked. Royally. We’ve got to get over there and stop this shit.”
Gandy’s eyes were beginning to sting from Walt’s smoke, but windows at NSA didn’t open for security reasons, so he pushed back from his desk to avoid the worst of the smoke. “But we have a cease-and-desist order from CIA telling us to stay out of countermeasures. It’s officially not our job to find and fix leaks in embassies. Moscow COSs have had us over in the past, but we can’t just invite ourselves over there.”
“Bullshit. It’s national security communications, isn’t it?”
“Of course, but it’s not DOD or military.”
“Who the fuck cares? What’s our name here? The National Security Agency. If compartmented comms out of Moscow aren’t national security, then nothing is.”
“You’re preaching to the choir, Walt, but that cease-and-desist memo was targeted specifically at me. If I stick my fingers into the pie uninvited, I’ll get them chopped off.”
The two men regarded each other, thinking. Whereas the majority of NSA officers spent their careers working either defense (making codes to protect information) or offense (intercepting information and breaking codes to gather intelligence), both Walt and Gandy had spent many years working both missions, sometimes simultaneously. Both were intimately familiar with how offensive operators such as the KGB worked, because, well, that was the way they themselves sometimes worked. Thus, although neither man would have thought of his present role responding to the security threat implied by French bug finds in Moscow in exactly these terms, Gandy and Deeley were essentially two experienced burglars who now needed to burglar-proof the U.S. embassy in Moscow.
Walt’s deep understanding of what could be done offensively to a target had motivated him to revolutionize protection of military and intelligence communications, out of a belief that these communication channels were highly vulnerable. Deeley said that when he took over the COMSEC organization,
I was appalled. Within weeks I told Faurer [NSA director] that I would rank the United States in the top half of the Third World countries when it comes to protecting its communications.8
Deeley later testified to Congress that
the United States is in jeopardy because it does poorly protecting its vital communications.… As a nation so far, we have not made this commitment.9
Thus, shortly after Walt ascended to the role of top COMSEC official in the United States, he introduced a campaign he called “a new way of doing business,” in which communications systems, such as secure telephones, would have encryption and decryption embedded in them, rather than relying on vulnerable links to external encryption.
After thinking about the dilemma that Gandy had encountered—where NSA would be hurt if it did react to the French find and NSA and the nation would suffer if it didn’t react—Walt said, “I heard something about Shultz telling his guys he needed a smoking gun. We don’t want both him and Langley jumping down our throats.” Walt stroked his chin, thinking. “Okay, so what would it take to get us back in the game?”
“That’s easy,” Gandy answered, tongue in cheek. “Get the president to overrule State and CIA.” Gandy had offered the comment to illustrate the futility of pressing the issue of embassy security and so was surprised at Walt’s response.
Walt jumped to his feet. “Okay. I’ll take this to Reagan and have him lower the hammer on those motherfuckers.”
Gandy said, “You’re joking, right? That would short-circuit DIRNSA [NSA director], SECDEF [secretary of defense], and Poindexter [Reagan’s national security advisor].”
“So?” Walt came back. “What’s your point?”
Realizing that Walt actually did intend to go to the White House to reignite the stalled Moscow embassy investigation, Gandy said, “Well, my point is … good luck!”
* * *
Three days later, while Gandy was conducting a meeting with a small group of his direct reports, the light over one of his phone lines lit up with an incoming call. Almost immediately, his secretary stepped into the office. “Mr. Deeley for you. Sounds urgent.”
“Could you give me a minute?” Gandy asked his staff, who rose and filed out. The last one out the door closed it gently. Gandy picked up the call and heard a slow intake of breath as Walt inhaled smoke. “Gandy,” he said.
“Got it,” Walt said.
“Excuse me. Got what?”
“Letter from the boss green-lighting Moscow.”
Gandy felt a thrill of excitement. “By ‘boss,’ do you mean who I think you mean?”
“Fuckin’ A. POTUS [president of the United States] himself.”
“How did you pull that off?”
Deeley laughed. “I practically live at the White House. Who do you think does the football [the briefcase containing nuclear launch instructions and codes] and Secret Service comms? Who does the White House COMSEC and pen [penetration] testing? Wasn’t that hard for me to convince Poindexter to give me a few minutes with his boss when I suggested the Evil Empire might be eating our lunch. Lots at stake over there. SALT treaties, Pershing missiles in Europe, tons of heavy shit POTUS cares a whole lot about goes in and out of the Moscow embassy.”
Gandy asked, “What does the POTUS letter say?”
The sound of rustling paper came over the line. “Let’s see,” Walt said, reading. “‘NSA is hereby authorized to take whatever measures necessary to resolve the question of Moscow embassy security one way or another.’”
Holy mackerel! Gandy thought, hoping Walt would not get fired for going over so many of his bosses’ heads.
“There’s more,” Walt said. “POTUS signed out a separate eyes-only memo to Shultz—I think Poindexter actually wrote it, but who gives a shit?—directing State to cooperate. I understand Shultz is penning a note to Ambassador Hartman as we speak, ordering him to give us what we need and to tell no one, absolutely no one, about our project.”
“Not even CIA?”
“Especially not CIA. I told Reagan, who incidentally I don’t like much and didn’t vote for, that CIA would obstruct us, and he seemed to understand. Bottom line: we’ve got a blank check … sort of.”
“Mind if I ask what ‘sort of’ means?”
“‘Sort of’ means ‘get on with it but don’t take forever.’ Reagan was sympathetic, for sure, but he didn’t want to seem to take sides. Has to keep peace in the family and all that. My sense, reading Reagan’s body language, is that we’ve got a month or two, three tops, after we get our hands on the gear. Then he’ll step in and put an end to the squabble unless we find something compelling.”
While Gandy was thinking that over, Walt added, “You know the lay of the land over there. Can you organize what needs to be done?”
“Sure, but it’ll take some work. This is like a chess game against two opponents at the same time. We can’t tip our hands to either the KGB or CIA.”
“Agreed. I remember the safe thing. And CIA will shove this up our butt in a heartbeat if we step on our dicks.”
Gandy knew that what Walt meant by “the safe thing” was a Russian implant that had been discovered in a code machine years earlier at a sensitive U.S. operation in Europe and stored in a safe overnight in a SCIF for NSA to pick up the following morning. But when an NSA man opened the safe as planned the next day, the device and its implant had vanished. The KGB apparently had learned of the discovery and managed to get into a tightly secured room to recover their device without being detected. Or maybe CIA, for their own opaque reasons, had removed the compromised code machine.
As leaky as the Moscow embassy was, the chances that the KGB—or CIA—were going to learn about the operation that Reagan had just approved were excellent. A scary thought. If, after raising such a big stink in the White House, NSA came up short in Moscow because the KGB got to their implants before NSA did, NSA’s prestige would plummet, CIA’s posture in the never-ending game of one-upmanship with NSA would go
through the roof, and both Walt and Gandy would be headed for early retirements.
“Okay,” Gandy said, “I’ll work up a plan. But I can tell you the first step already. We need to send someone over there ASAP to do a thorough inventory so we know what to replace when we swap out suspect gear over there for clean stuff we prepare over here.”
“Who did you have in mind?”
Gandy said, “You know that guy who works for you, always sits in the back of meetings and never says anything. Except when, once in a blue moon when he does speak up, it’s always right on target?”
“Yeah. I think I know who you mean.” Walt supplied a name. “I call him Wallflower. You hardly know he’s there.”
“That’s the guy. Keeping his mouth shut is Wallflower’s default mode. If anyone can keep State and CIA off the scent, he can.”
“You got him. I’ll send him over to you this afternoon.”
Gandy was about to thank Walt and hang up when Walt said, “One more thing. We got to have a name for this thing.”
“I suppose. We’ll need to create a compartment and bigot list [short list of NSA employees who would be read in to the project]. We can’t have a compartment without a name. What do you suggest?”
“Well,” Walt said slowly. “Shultz did say ‘bring me a smoking gun’ or stop our bitching about Moscow, right?”
“So I heard.”
“Then we’re going to give Herr Shultz the smoking gun he asked for. We’re calling this GUNMAN. Project GUNMAN.” Walt hung up without saying goodbye.
Gandy put down the receiver and let out a deep breath. Over five years had gone by since his first trip to Moscow, and he had encountered nothing but obstacles and foot dragging. “Who hates whom” had won out over “who helps whom.”
Now, the hand of God had magically swept all those obstacles away.
9. Project GUNMAN
The Spy in Moscow Station Page 17
