The Wizards of Langley

by Jeffrey T Richelson

  Beginning in 1984, in an attempt to get part of the job accomplished at no cost to the intelligence community, Aldridge pushed for development of a laser crosslink, rather than a radio crosslink, for the Defense Support Program infrared launch detection satellites operated by the Air Force. As part of a modernization program, the Air Force planned to deploy satellites with crosslinks, eliminating the need for ground stations. Former OD&E chief Bernard Lubarsky, who worked for TRW after leaving the CIA in 1982, later recalled that the DSP contractor recommended the use of radio crosslinks to the Air Force for DSP. According to several individuals who worked on the DSP program for another contractor, radio crosslinks would have accomplished the mission for DSP. But Aldridge pushed for the laser crosslinks, figuring that once developed they could then be used on a system such as KODIAK.64 But although the Air Force contracted with McDonnell-Douglas to develop such a crosslink, the program had one problem after another until it was finally canceled in the early 1990s.65 However, as with OD&E’s proposed SIGINT satellite system, KODIAK’s death would be only temporary.

  A TRAITOR IN FBIS

  On November 22, 1985, the FBI ended the espionage career of Larry Wu- Tai Chin. Chin began his employment with the U.S. government in 1943 with the U.S. Army Liaison Mission in China. In 1948, he worked as an interpreter in the U.S. consulate in Shanghai and two years later took a job as a secretary-interpreter at the U.S. embassy in Hong Kong. During the Korean War, Chin interviewed Chinese prisoners captured by U.S. and Korean troops.66

  He began monitoring Chinese radio broadcasts in 1952 for the Foreign Broadcast Information Service’s Okinawa unit. In 1961, he moved to Santa Rosa, California, where he continued to work for FBIS. From 1970 until his retirement in 1981, Chin worked as an analyst in the FBIS office in northern Virginia and also served as the FBIS document control officer.67

  Chin’s career as a spy may have begun in the early 1940s, when he apparently received espionage training while still a student in college. In 1952, Chinese intelligence agents paid him $2,000 for having located Chinese POWs in Korea. He also provided Chinese agents with information on the intelligence being sought from Chinese prisoners by U.S. and Korean intelligence officers. Regular meetings in Hong Kong between Chin and his PRC controllers began in 1967. Between 1976 and 1982, Chin met four times with a courier for Chinese intelligence, “Mr. Lee,” at a shopping mall near Toronto International Airport. Speaking in Cantonese, Chin handed over undeveloped film of classified documents from FBIS.68

  The information Chin provided led the PRC to pay him several hundred thousand dollars over a thirty-year career. Although the FBIS is best known for its translation of the public broadcasts of foreign nations (and less known for its translations of the broadcasts of clandestine and black radios), the service’s analysts also used classified intelligence reports to help assess the significance of foreign broadcasts. Further, Chin’s skill as an interpreter and his long tenure gave him access to a great deal of highly classified data. Thus, Chin “was more than a guy . . . listening to People’s Republic of China broadcasts and translating People’s Daily.” According to testimony given at his indictment, Chin “reviewed, translated and analyzed classified documents from covert and overt human and technical collection sources which went into the West’s assessment of Chinese strategic, military, economic, scientific and technical capabilities and intentions,” and in 1979 he passed on that assessment to “Mr. Lee.”69

  Chin continued his intelligence activities on behalf of China into the 1980s. In 1981, he met with the vice-minister of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security in Hong Kong and Macao. In February 1982, he traveled to Beijing, where high government officials honored him with a banquet, told him he had been promoted to Deputy Bureau Chief in the MPS, and awarded him $50,000. As late as February 1985 he met Chinese officials in Hong Kong.70

  Chin’s life as a double agent, indeed his life, was undone by Yu Shensan, the son of two prominent Chinese revolutionaries. Before his defection in 1986, Yu headed the Foreign Affairs Bureau of the Ministry of State Security, which had been established in 1983 to improve coordination of China’s foreign intelligence operations and reduce leaks of internal government discussions. The new ministry took over the intelligence, counterintelligence, and security functions of the Ministry of Public Security, as well as the intelligence functions of the Investigation Department.71

  Yu was able to provide the United States with extensive information about Chinese intelligence operations abroad, including the names of Chinese agents. He may have provided information concerning Chin’s activities, possibly as early as 1982, the year the FBI first placed a wiretap on Chin’s phone.72

  Chin’s jury returned a guilty verdict on February 6, 1986. Sometime during the early morning of February 21, he tied a garbage bag over his head. Discovered by a guard at 8:45, he was pronounced dead forty-five minutes later.73

  Chin’s treason did far more harm to the CIA’s sensitive collection operations than to those of FBIS, which continued to monitor and analyze the foreign media. A change in policy leading to the February 1989 Soviet military withdrawal from Afghanistan was identified in FBIS media analysis. During May 1989, FBIS monitoring of Chinese radio broadcasts provided important information on the support for the student protesters in Beijing. The reports indicated that 40,000 students, teachers, and writers in Chengdu marched in support of democracy in mid-May. Altogether, radio reports indicated that there had been demonstrations of more than 10,000 people in at least nine other provinces.74

  SPECIAL PROJECTS: THE SEQUEL

  During the mid-1960s, the DS&T had deployed a number of emplaced sensor systems—such as those targeted on the Chinese missile program or those that Leslie Dirks referred to in his testimony in the trial of Christopher Boyce. In VEIL, Bob Woodward described a system designated CERVICAL RUB—“a sophisticated electronic device disguised and constructed to look like a tree limb, complete with bark covering.” It was to be “planted” in a tree outside a Soviet air base in Eastern Europe to collect data on advanced Soviet MiG radars. There was also a round device camouflaged as a tree stump and discovered near a military facility that could transmit the data collected to a satellite.75

  There was also TAW. In 1979, the CIA had discovered that the Soviets were building a highly secret communications center near Troitsk, a town twenty-five miles southwest of Moscow. Underground tunnels connected the center to the headquarters of the KGB’s foreign directorate at Yasenovo as well as main headquarters in Moscow. Running through the tunnels were cables for telephone, fax machines, and teletype—all of which the KGB believed to be secure. However, the CIA had managed to bribe a member of the construction crew, who provided the agency with the blueprint for the tunnels. In 1980, a CIA technician, possibly from OTS or OSO, left the U.S. embassy in Moscow hidden in a van. After determining the van was not under surveillance, its driver took him to a remote area, where the technician jumped from the van and hid in the woods. After locating the tunnel, he climbed inside and installed a monitoring and recording device. The coup gave the CIA an ability to record the KGB’s most sensitive communications traffic in the Soviet Union.76

  ABSORB was the result of the directorate’s desire to determine the number of warheads carried by Soviet missiles. Those numbers could be estimated from missile telemetry but depended on some assumptions. The United States had never actually seen inside a Soviet missile nose cone to verify the number of warheads being carried. ABSORB did not let the CIA look inside but rather provided an indirect means of assessing warhead numbers. It was known that each warhead emitted a tiny amount of radiation. By measuring the amount of radiation being emitted from each missile, the system could help analysts determine just how many warheads sat on top of the missile. The problem was how to get an accurate radiation reading.77

  Someone realized that most Soviet nuclear warheads were manufactured in the western USSR and shipped over the Ural Mountains to the Far East, where they were installed
on missiles. The only way the Soviets could move those warheads was on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, which starts in Moscow and travels about 5,750 miles east until it arrives at Vladivostok. Branch lines connect Moscow with the rest of Europe. A train from Vladivostok to Moscow had a good chance, at some point in its journey, of passing an eastbound train carrying a nuclear cargo. Even though the trains might pass for only a few seconds, an advanced Geiger counter on the westbound train might be able to get a reading.78

  By 1983, the CIA had spent about $50 million on the project but had not yet perfected its Radiation Detection Device (RDD)—although it had made some interesting test runs. One test involved hiding a number of sophisticated cameras inside a false wall built in the side of a cargo container. A friendly Japanese company agreed to ship the container across the Soviet Union, from Vladivostok to Eastern Europe. The cameras would snap photographs whenever a train crossed the connecting track. Many of the tracks connected the railway to military manufacturing plants, so each time a train went by a weapons plant, the cameras snapped a photograph for the CIA. Thus, the CIA knew that ABSORB was possible. While the RDD was still being developed, the CIA sent another rigged container, with electronic sensors, to Japan. In February 1986, it learned that the KGB had stopped a cargo container filled with electronic sensors. ABSORB was over before it began. TAW and ABSORB had been betrayed to the KGB by Aldrich Ames in 1985, although that was not known at the time.79

  The CIA had also deployed seismic sensors in East Germany. In one operation, nuclear detection equipment was installed in a series of road posts on an East German road. The equipment transmitted back to an antenna on a pile of rubble in West Berlin. In another instance, seismic monitoring devices were placed underground, near a road. The data they transmitted (to a satellite) allowed intelligence analysts to differentiate among seven different weight classes, including those for jeeps, passenger cars, trucks, and tanks.80

  The design of such systems was handled by various offices in the directorate—usually either research and development, development and engineering, or SIGINT operations offices. Many of the projects, such as the seismic systems, fell in the category of MASINT (Measurement and Signature Intelligence). Intelligence was derived from the data collected by such systems through the analysis of acoustic or seismic signals (which did not fall within the electronic signals covered by the SIGINT designation), of debris from an explosion, or of the heat emitted by an object.

  The DS&T had achieved some successes by 1987, but Hineman believed they were not enough.81 There were also some notable failures. In the early 1980s, the counterintelligence services of several East European countries, including Bulgaria, discovered a number of emplaced sensor systems near air bases, ammunition depots, and other strategic sites. The systems were camouflaged as tree limbs, rocks, and other natural objects. In 1983, the CIA gave an individual it believed was an asset, but who was actually a double agent, three of the devices. He quickly turned them over to the East German Ministry of State Security, which then consulted the KGB. The East Germans’ Soviet colleagues informed them that similar gadgets had been found in the Soviet Union. Eventually it became clear that the devices recorded traffic around the strategic sites or registered the emissions from nuclear weapons.82

  Hineman later recalled that as the world evolved and more was discovered about intelligence, countries took countermeasures. The United States needed to develop new capabilities and new technologies, to get closer and closer access.83

  One problem that Hineman believed was plaguing the program was a lack of proper coordination among the different groups that set requirements, developed the system, deployed the system, and exfiltrated the data. Those in the operations directorate designated to deploy a device in a tree might discover only months or years into development that the device weighed a hundred pounds. To get everybody on the same page from the beginning, it made sense, in Hineman’s view, to put everybody in the same organization—so that they could understand problems and difficulties and influence the design.84

  Just as Bud Wheelon had removed the responsibility for satellites from OSA and created the Special Projects Staff in 1963, Hineman removed the responsibility for emplaced sensors from the other directorate offices and placed it in a new Special Projects Staff in summer 1987. At the beginning of the 1988 fiscal year, it became the Office of Special Projects. The office’s director was “responsible for the development and operational support of [emplaced sensor] systems to collect Measurement and Signature Intelligence, Nuclear and Signals Intelligence.” In order to carry out that mission, the office was to analyze potential targets, plan the operation, develop collective devices appropriate for the specific targets, and provide operational support during deployment. It was headed by a DS&T official, Gary Goodrich. Its chief of operations came from the operations directorate, its Systems Development Group came from the SIGINT and development and engineering units, and its Collection Group came from the Office of SIGINT Operations.85

  In Hineman’s view, the creation of the separate office improved the em-placed sensor program. As with all such changes, there were some who were less than enthusiastic. Robert Phillips, who worked on a clandestine program that wound up in OSP, acknowledged the importance and sensitivity of the programs. But he wondered if the growing size of OSO helped create a bureaucratic requirement to establish OSP as a way to authorize more Senior Intelligence Service positions, equivalent to Senior Executive Service positions.86

  According to Phillips, Hineman told him that he wanted more management attention devoted to the emplaced sensor programs. The political fallout from being caught in unacknowledged operations using invasive techniques even in friendly countries could be enormous. But after four years the program had less management than before. OSP was just another bureaucracy and “provided no added value,” and it “didn’t help solve problems.” The people from OSO who formed the core of OSP, Phillips believed, “should have stayed in OSO.”87 In a few years, both OSP and OSO would disappear and be reunited under a new name.

  The CIA has funded a number of SIGINT facilities operated by U.S. allies. The functions of this Norwegian facility, code-named METRO, which began operations in 1958, included the interception of Soviet missile telemetry. CREDIT: Norwegian Intelligence Service

  (top left) The Marjata II was among the Norwegian vessels that carried eavesdropping equipment to spy on Soviet naval activities, equipment provided by the CIA. CREDIT: Norwegian Intelligence Service

  (bottom left) A U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, developed by the Lockheed Corporation for the CIA. CIA U-2 flights began in 1956 and continued until 1974 when the Air Force assumed full control of U-2 operations. The first CIA U-2 flights helped end fears of a “bomber gap.” CREDIT: Lockheed

  (above) U-2 photograph of Almaza airbase, Cairo, after British-French airstrike, November 1, 1956. CREDIT: CIA.

  (above) The A-12/OXCART aircraft was developed by Lockheed for the CIA as a successor to the U-2. The plane could fly at over 2,100 miles per hour and at an altitude of over 90,000 feet. The A-12 had a brief operational life, beginning in May 1967 and ending in June 1968, when it was retired in favor of the Air Force’s A-12 derivative—the SR-71. CREDIT: Lockheed

  (top right) The U.S. Navy was the primary purchaser of the P-2V Neptune, which it used in maritime surveillance operations. However, in 1954, the CIA procured several of the aircraft to use in both covert action and intelligence collection operations—including operations over the Chinese mainland. CREDIT: Lockheed

  (bottom right) The CIA Directorate of Science and Technology has been heavily involved in the development of unmanned aerial vehicle programs. In 1982, the Office of Research and Development funded work by a small California firm to develop a solar-powered UAV for surveillance. Today the plane’s successor is used by NASA for environmental research. CREDIT: AeroVironment

  (above) The SS-9 missile was the source of a major dispute in the intelligence community in the late 1960s. Presid
ent Nixon justified the decision to build the Safeguard ABM on the conclusion, disputed by the DS&T’s Foreign Missile and Space Analysis Center, that the SS-9 was a MIRVed ICBM, and therefore gave the Soviets a capability for a preemptive strike on the U.S. ICBM force. The CIA was eventually proved correct. CREDIT: U.S. Air Force

  (top right) The Sary Ozek IRBM complex as it appeared in September 1971 CORONA/KH-4B imagery. The KH-4B images has a resolution of about six feet. The first launch of the successor system, the KH-9/HEXAGON, had taken place in June. KH-9 images had a resolution of about two feet. The final CORONA launch occurred in May 1972. CREDIT: National Reconnaissance Office

  (bottom right) Somewhat degraded 1998 advanced KH-11 images of the Baghdad Barracks Brigade and Depot, Abu Ghurayb, Iraq, before and after U.S. air strikes. CREDIT: Department of Defense