IP: 'Spy cameras may have been installed in photocopiers all over theworld'

[David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> Date: Sat, 4 Sep 1999 21:49:04 +0300 (EEST)
> From: Zombie Cow <waste () zor hut fi>
>
> By now, likely all US originated hardware is full of microphones
> and similar gadgetry...
>
> http://www.parascope.com/articles/0197/xerox.htm
>
> Spooks in the machine:
> the CIA's most successful
> spy may have been a
> Xerox repairman.
>
> The CIA's Xerox Spy-cam
>
> by Jon Elliston
> Dossier Editor
> pscpdocs () aol com
>
> Remember the chatty, irritating "copier guy"
> from Saturday Night Live skits a few years back? The character (played by
> Rob Schneider) drove his office-mates mad with cloying catch-phrases in
> the copy room. The exploits of the CIA's "copier spy" would have
> exasperated Soviet diplomats in the United States even more, had they
> known of the espionage equipment stashed under the glass of their Xerox
> machine.
>
> An article by Dawn Stover in the January 1996 issue of Popular Science
> details for the first time the top-secret operation that provided U.S.
> intelligence with duplicates of sensitive Soviet papers. The story of the
> clandestine copying begins in the early 1960s, when Soviet diplomats
> stationed at their country's embassy in Washington, D.C., enjoyed the best
> office equipment capitalism had to offer. Among the handy American
> devices at their disposal was the Xerox model 914 photocopier. The
> machine was a modern marvel in its day, the first automatic, push-button
> unit available, spitting out plain paper copies at a blazing 7.5 pages per
> minute. But the Soviets were not aware of one of its "undocumented
> features": their trusty 914 doubled as a CIA spy machine.
>
> In 1962, according to Stover, the CIA quietly contracted the Xerox
> company to design a miniature camera, to be planted inside the photocopier
> at the Soviet Union's embassy in Washington. A team of four Xerox
> engineers set to work in an abandoned bowling alley and built a working
> model -- a modified home movie camera equipped with a special photocell
> that triggered the device whenever a copy was made. In 1963, the tiny Cold
> War weapon was installed by a Xerox technician during a regular
> maintenance visit to the Soviet embassy. On subsequent visits the Xerox
> man retrieved and replaced the film.
>
> Stover's account of the operation is based in large part on interviews with
> Ray Zoppoth, a retired mechanical engineer who had a key role in designing
> the spy camera (Zoppoth was even issued a secret patent for the gadget).
> The CIA and Xerox remain tight-lipped about the operation, but Stover
> was able to confirm Zoppoth's story with others who worked on the
> project.
>
> The operation was a smashing success, and Stover writes that the Xerox
> surveillance of the Soviets may have been just the tip of the iceberg.
> "Judging by the number of parts ordered from Xerox, Zoppoth believes that
> spy cameras may have been installed in photocopiers all over the world, to
> keep an eye on U.S. allies as well as enemies."
>
> While the operation was certainly innovative, the Xerox-cam was created
> in the tradition of other CIA "technical penetrations." During the early
> 1970s, the Agency bugged the home of South Vietnamese President
> Nguyan Van Thieu using televisions and furniture implanted with hidden
> microphones. For several months in 1972, CIA counterintelligence
> monitored Philip Agee, a former agent who was writing a tell-all memoir of
> his time as a spy, using a bugged typewriter given to Agee by CIA
> operatives posing as supporters of Agee's work.
>
> Today the James Bond-ish mystique of intelligence gadgetry is promoted
> on the CIA's official website, where a historical collection of spy-gear
> features several special cameras used by U.S. operatives, including a
> matchbox-size Kodak and a "microdot" camera used for producing tiny
> images of documents.
>
> The high-tech spy wars continue. Despite the end of the Cold War, "the
> scale of U.S. surveillance and counterintelligence efforts [against Russia]
> may have actually increased," Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs
> recently wrote. Nowadays, of course, far more advanced monitoring
> devices are trained on the targets of the United States. Dobbs reports that
> "surveillance cameras are permanently trained on the Russian embassy,
> recording all who enter and leave the building." According to Ronald
> Kessler, an independent intelligence expert quoted by Dobbs, the FBI uses
> advanced "Nightstalker" airplanes fitted with infra-red vision equipment to
> peer down on suspected spies at night.
>
> As spy stories go, the Xerox operation is a rather tame one -- Tom Clancy
> probably won't be retelling the copier saga in his next 
> geo-political thriller.
> In the broad history of Cold War espionage, the operation will likely be
> considered an interesting but inconsequential footnote. Though more flashy
> operations will receive more attention, Dawn Stover points out that at least
> for time, "the United States' most effective spy may have been the most
> unexpected: a Xerox repairman."
>
> Sources:
>
>        Dawn Stover, "Spies in the Xerox Machine," Popular Science, January,
>        1997, pp. 68-70.
>
>        Michael Dobbs, "Spying Remains Hot Game in Post-Cold War
>        Washington," Washington Post, December 24, 1996, p. A4.
>
>        Jeffrey T. Richelson, The U.S. Intelligence Community, Third Ed.
>        (Westview, 1995).
>
>        Philip Agee, Inside the Company: CIA Diary (Bantam, 1975).