The Farewell Dossier

[William Knowles <wk () c4i org>]

Forwarded from: Anonymous @ c4i.org

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/02/opinion/02SAFI.html

By WILLIAM SAFIRE
February 2, 2004

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 C.I.A. 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 - détente
notwithstanding - to place restrictions on the export of computers and
software to the U.S.S.R.

Seven years later, we learned how the K.G.B. 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 François 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 K.G.B. officer in
Moscow Center.

Col. Vladimir Vetrov provided what French intelligence called the
Farewell dossier. It contained documents from the K.G.B. 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 70's. In effect, the U.S. 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 U.S. 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 next month - 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 K.G.B.  
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
twenty 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 K.G.B. 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 K.G.B. 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.

E-mail: safire () nytimes com



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