Stealth secrets feared stolen

[William Knowles <wk () C4I ORG>]

http://www.msnbc.com/local/PISEA/5228.asp

PAUL SHUKOVSKY
SEATTLE P-I REPORTER

Oct. 30, 2000 - A Russian mathematician who was given access to an
American supercomputer loaded with stealth warplane design software is
under investigation for espionage.

FEDERAL AGENTS SUSPECT that Aleksey Yeremin, who logged on to the
supercomputer from Moscow, took advantage of Lockheed Martin and
military security lapses to steal stealth technology secrets.

The 3 1/2-year investigation stretches from the heart of the old
Soviet empire to Lockheeds secretive Skunk Works plant in Southern
California to a quiet suburb north of Seattle.

Yeremin, vice president of a software company based in Bothell that
did work for Lockheed, was e-mailed part of Lockheeds modeling program
for designing stealth planes. And, sources say, it would have been
easy for him to steal the rest of it.

The potential loss is staggering: the United States global monopoly on
radar invisibility.

In spring 1997, the FBI and the Air Force Office of Special
Investigations, or OSI, began the investigation, code-named Digital
Demon. A short time later, Lockheed pulled the plug on its project
with Yeremin: an ultra-high-speed, number-crunching computer program
that was supposed to greatly accelerate stealth aircraft design work.

Federal criminal-justice sources say Yeremin, 46, has connections to
the Russian military and now-defunct KGB.

It is unknown whether Yeremin got his hands on any classified
information. But sources told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that some
of the unclassified information he did obtain should have been
classified top-secret.

A retired Air Force three-star general said he is concerned that the
apparent leak could help the Russians build their own stealth
warplanes.

I dont think what is at risk here is making these (U.S.) aircraft any
more visible to radar, said George Muellner, who played a key role in
developing the nations stealth fleet.

But what is at risk is accelerating a countrys ability to develop and
build these sorts of aircraft to produce something that is a threat
downstream, he said. If they started building and selling these things
to the Iraqis, that would be a concern.

The joint FBI-Air Force probe has so far yielded no arrests, and no
one has been publicly charged with a crime. Agents have seized the
home computer of a Lockheed employee who worked closely with Yeremin.

That man told the P-I that he now realizes he was deftly manipulated
by Yeremin.

I am not 100 percent sure, but I am highly sure he is a spy, said the
38-year-old computer expert, who no longer works for Lockheed. He
asked that he not be identified for fear of jeopardizing his current
job.

He said he went beyond giving Yeremin portions of the MM3D simulation
software used to model highly complex interactions between stealth
aircraft and radar that the Russian needed to do his job. He said he
also provided information that Yeremin could have used to determine
American stealth capabilities.

I have to admit, I am very gullible, very naive, very trusting, he
said. He asked very probing questions, but I pushed my concerns away.

Now I can look back and see how he gathered information from me. He
used textbook ways to win over someone; to recruit them as an
operative or agent. He would earn my trust by saying he was not in any
way . . . loyal to the country he was from, but wanted to come here.

The computer expert is befuddled by how Lockheed and the Air Force
could allow a Russian with KGB ties access to such a sensitive
program.

Lockheed refused to answer questions about whether security was
compromised. The Air Force would not explain how it conducts security
oversight of the defense contractor.

Officials at Skunk Works, in Palmdale, Calif., where the U-2 spy
plane, the bat-winged F-117 and the F-22 were designed, first became
aware in 1997 that an employee . . . was not reporting contacts with
foreign nationals as required by governing security regulations,
Lockheed spokesman Sam Grizzle said in a prepared statement.

The officials reported the violations to appropriate U.S. government
agencies and followed their instructions in addressing the situation.
The employee in question no longer works for Lockheed Martin, Grizzle
said.

The FBI and the Air Force OSI declined to comment on the case, and
federal prosecutors did not return a call. What I can tell you is it
is an ongoing investigation, said Maj. Mike Richmond, an OSI spokesman
at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.

There are strong parallels to the Wen Ho Lee case, which also raised
questions about digital transmission of technology to foreign
nationals, and the way in which the federal government classifies its
secrets.

The government feared that Lee, a scientist at Los Alamos National
Laboratory in New Mexico, had stolen computer records containing the
crown jewels of U.S. nuclear secrets and turned them over to the
Chinese government. He recently pleaded guilty to a single count of
mishandling classified information and received a sentence of time
served nine months.

A federal judge delivered a stinging rebuke of the governments
handling of the case, apologizing to Lee for the harsh conditions of
his incarceration.

The Bothell connection

Working out of his Bothell home, high-tech entrepreneur Russ Sarbora
plucked Yeremin from a Russian military aircraft-design center a
decade ago and collaborated with him to start a company called Elegant
Mathematics.

Today, Sarbora is shocked that his business partner is under
investigation in an espionage case.

I believe he is not an agent for any foreign power, Sarbora said. It
would surprise me enormously if he turned out to be.

Yeremin readily acknowledged working for the Soviet military,
according to Sarbora, but prior to 1990, if you were a scientist of
any stature, you worked for the Soviet military structure. You didnt
get to work, or support in school without working for the military.

Reached recently at his home in Moscow, Yeremin refused to discuss the
espionage allegations.

If somebody say something about that, it is better that you ask this
individual, he said in heavily accented English.

Yeremin and his associates in Russia were working on computers loaded
with software known as MM3D, or Method of Moments in Three Dimensions.
It would have been easy for people with their expertise to steal the
portions of MM3D they hadnt already been given, the former Lockheed
computer expert said.

And it wasnt just MM3D that was at risk of being stolen. Also loaded
on the experts home computer were test fixtures secret computer
representations of stealth aircraft structures.

The expert said he had been assured by Lockheed engineers that the
test fixtures were not classified. But after the investigation began,
federal agents claimed some were top-secret. One of the computers
Yeremin was given access to also contained data on the performance
characteristics of radar-absorbing materials that coat stealth planes,
the expert said.

Those data, however, did not specifically identify the name or
chemical composition of the materials, he said.

Gen. Muellner, now vice president-general manager of The Boeing Co.s
Phantom Works research and development division, cautions that there
may be no way of telling if the apparent leak is devastating or merely
distressing.

In the old days of espionage, blueprints, decoder machines and the
like would suddenly disappear setting off alarms. Today, secrets can
be downloaded without a trace.

Its like the thing in Los Alamos, Muellner said. You dont know what is
lost.

Like Lee and former CIA Director John Deutch, who is under
investigation for having classified information on his home computer,
the Lockheed computer expert was working on an unsecure computer.

His home computer was loaded with MM3D. The program, he said, contains
a feature called an optimizer by which designers can simulate changes
in aircraft configuration or materials and quickly see how that
affects the planes radar invisibility.

Unlike in the Deutch case, the computer expert said he had written
permission from Lockheeds security and legal departments to work on
the program at home. Only after the investigation began was he told
that the optimizer should have been classified top-secret, he said.

The computer expert said the reason he was allowed to work at home is
that at night, he could access government and private supercomputers
for free, saving Lockheed the expense of maintaining an in-house
supercomputer on which he could work. I really campaigned hard to get
an in-house supercomputer so I wouldnt have to go out on the Net, he
said.

He said he repeatedly sought guidance from Lockheed security officials
over how far he could go with Yeremin but was either ignored or
rebuffed. I had continually apprised security of everything, he said.
Somebody out there knew what Alexs background was. But somehow the
communication to the (security) guy that was supposed to be covering
my back didnt happen.

A former Lockheed security official agreed.

It was bungled by Lockheed and the Air Force. From what I saw,
everybody kind of snoozed through, kind of kissed it off. It was just
keep an eye on it and give a report once in a while, said the former
official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The computer expert said he left Lockheed after the company pulled his
access to work on the stealth program. He remained a Lockheed
consultant for a time, then left for another job.

He maintains that any information he gave Yeremin pales in comparison
to open articles written by scientists and engineers, and technical
information available over the Internet.

The bigger issue is that these guys (Russian mathematicians) had
access to a lot of computers and computer networks, the former
employee said. Their software was being run on many American networks
and supercomputers.

Yeremins algorithm

The 48-year-old Sarbora is a longtime software programmer and former
computer industry executive.

He moved to Seattle in 1988 to become vice president of quality
assurance and technical support at Microrim Inc., a database software
company.

During the Goodwill Games of 1990, Sarbora volunteered to work on a
project showcasing the best of Soviet technology and met several
Russian scientists.

The following year, Sarbora went to Russia on a business trip, looking
to bring back software he could sell to U.S. companies. He said he met
Yeremin at the Central Aerohydrodynamics Institute, about 30 miles
southeast of Moscow, where Russian warplanes are designed.

It was shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union. Work for scientists
and mathematicians in Russia was rapidly disappearing. The U.S.
government feared they would peddle their expertise in rogue states
like Libya or Iraq.

When Sarbora learned that Yeremin had created an algorithm, or
calculation method, that could achieve on relatively primitive
computers what U.S. scientists did on supercomputers, he immediately
grasped the scientific and commercial potential.

Yeremin joined forces with Sarbora to launch Elegant Mathematics. They
incorporated in Washington state with Sarbora as president and Yeremin
as vice president. The main offices, however, were thousands of miles
away in Moscow, at the Russian Academy of Sciences.

At its peak, the company employed about 20 mathematicians, physicists
and software experts from the Russian academy, Steklov Mathematical
Institute and Moscow State University.

We insisted on maintaining the team in Russia, Sarbora said. The idea
is that after the transition from communism to capitalism, there would
be a few teams that could maintain mathematics in Russia.

We developed technology that would reduce computational costs of
solving problems in stealth technology by reducing the number of
calculations by an order of 10, Sarbora said.

Sarbora said his company scored its first major contract with Cray, a
supercomputer maker, and continued working on its software-development
project at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and at IBM.

In 1994, Elegant Mathematics was hired by Lockheed to improve the
efficiency and speed of computer simulations related to the
interaction between the aircraft and radar. That effectively meant
infusing MM3D with Yeremins solver program.

The computer experts job at Lockheed involved using computers to
simulate how a radar wave reflects off the surface of a plane. The
whole idea of stealth technology is to prevent that reflection so the
wave echo doesnt return to the radar antenna and get read on a radar
screen.

Over the next three years, the computer expert said, he met with
Yeremin at Skunk Works at least 15 times. The sprawling facility in
the Mojave Desert is surrounded by chain-link fences topped with razor
wire. Armed guards are stationed at the gates. Access to secure
buildings requires personal security codes and badges that open
electronic locks.

The former Lockheed security official said the company lusted after
Elegant Mathematics promised cost-cutting technology. That was where
the greed came in. Yeremin was offering this tantalizing carrot in
front of everybody.

Hes an interesting character, the computer expert said of Yeremin. I
always liked him a lot because of his zeal for the task at hand. But
he leaves a trail of people very pissed off because hes so arrogant.
Hes brilliant, but not as brilliant as he thinks he is.

The expert, however, said he believed in Yeremins algorithm.

I have seen it solve big problems, he said. Seeing is believing. I
dont think they were peddling snake oil.

Others disagree. Even before the security concerns were raised,
Yeremins breakthrough was being officially snubbed.

Elegant Mathematics grant application to continue research into its
algorithm failed to pass review at the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency, a Defense Department agency that sponsors exotic
research.

The methods he (Yeremin) has developed are not considered competitive
in this country. He got attention for a while, until his balloon was
punctured, said University of Illinois professor Eric Michielssen, an
expert in the use of computer modeling of radar problems.

Fear of bugged software

The computer expert said he sent Yeremin sections of source code, the
underlying components of the MM3D program, by e-mail in early 1997.

He said the source code was not classified, and the portions he sent
were not related to the physics of stealth, but to technical
requirements of inputting and retrieving data that Yeremin needed for
his work.

The expert was testing Yeremins software on supercomputers at the NASA
Ames Research Center in California, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory
in Tennessee and at IBM in New York. The entire MM3D program was
loaded on the NASA Ames and IBM computers, as well as on his home
computer, he said.

Federal agents told the expert there were worries over whether
Yeremins software might have been implanted with the hacking
capability of e-mailing information from those computers back to
Russia. And Yeremin had direct, online access to the IBM
supercomputer, the expert said.

The expert said the agents were never 100 percent sure that I had not
sent the whole (MM3D) source code to Yeremin. I could have sent the
whole farm to him. Which, of course, I did not.

There was also the concern that Yeremin or one of his Russian
colleagues could have hacked into the computer experts home computer.
The expert said he followed the rules by reporting his e-mail
exchanges with Yeremin to Lockheed security. Security people later
turned over to Air Force OSI agents information on the e-mails,
triggering the investigation.

What the Air Force calls a Red Team a group of technology, military
and security experts was mobilized to assess the potential damage to
national security. One inside source said the team called it
catastrophic. Other investigators are not convinced that Yeremin was
involved in espionage, federal sources said.

Like Muellner, the retired general, the former Lockheed computer
expert worries that the Russians might have stolen technology that
gives them a big boost in the design and construction of stealth
aircraft.

We dont know if he got the source codes, the computer expert said.
That was the supposition due to the fact that we were working on the
same computer. A routine hacker with the kind of access Yeremin had
could have gotten the codes.

When federal agents came calling on the computer expert on June 23,
1997, he was aghast. They entered his home in Californias Tehachapi
Mountains and demanded that he turn over his computer. He said he
cooperated fully.

Traumatized beyond belief

They told him he may have seriously damaged national security. I was
traumatized beyond belief, he said. That was more than three years
ago.

The agents still have his hard drive. He hasnt been arrested since
then, he asserts, because he didnt deliver classified information to
Yeremin, had permission to work on his home computer and had no intent
to damage national security.

The FBI paid a similar call on Sarbora in 1997. Sarbora says it marked
the beginning of the end for Elegant Mathematics.

Lockheed soon cut its ties to the company. The specter of an espionage
investigation scared off almost everyone else.

The FBI, Sarbora said, interviewed our customers and prospective
customers; anyone we had a relationship with. That had a very chilling
effect on business. It pretty much put a box around it and shut it
down.

In 1997 and 1998, Sarbora was questioned several times by the FBI. So
was Yeremin, who has not been seen in the United States since 1999.
While Yeremin is still considered a person of interest in the spy
case, Sarbora said the agents ultimately told him he was no longer
under suspicion.

By then, it was too late. The dreams of Yeremin and Sarbora had been
dashed. So were the hopes of the crack team of Russian scientists.
They are all scratching for jobs, Sarbora said.

Elegant was on life-support comatose and remains so.

P-I reporter Paul Shukovsky can be reached at 206-448-8072 or
paulshukovsky () seattle-pi com


*==============================================================*
"Communications without intelligence is noise;  Intelligence
without communications is irrelevant." Gen Alfred. M. Gray, USMC
================================================================
C4I.org - Computer Security, & Intelligence - http://www.c4i.org
*==============================================================*

ISN is hosted by SecurityFocus.com
---
To unsubscribe email LISTSERV () SecurityFocus com with a message body of
"SIGNOFF ISN".