HIGH-TECH ESPIONAGE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000707000002-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 2, 2011
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: March 1, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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~ Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/02 :CIA-RDP90-009658000707000002-9
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On the evening of June 24, 1947, Kenneth
Arnold was flying his private plane near
the Cascade Mountains in Washington
State when he saw a sight he was never
to forget.
As he recounted later. he spotted nine
very bright objects flying in what ap-
peared to be a chain formation. Each
about the size of a DC-3 transport plane,
the objects passed within several miles
of Arnold's plane at a very high speed.
Arnold had never seen anything like it,
and later, in trying to describe how the
objects flew. he used the simile "like sau-
cers skipping across water."
That interesting turn of phrase some-
how became "flying saucers" in news-
paperese (although Arnold himself never
used the term), and thus was born an
expression that later passed into the lan-
guage. More importantly, Arnold's sight-
ing,'the first such incident in a long list of
similar sightings that went on for years.
set oft the flying saucer craze-the be-
lief, still held by many, that alien space-
ships regularly visit this planet.
But only a handful of people knew ex-
actly what Arnold had seen. They knew
that he had inadvertently spotted Amer-
ica's most secret intelligence operation.
How all this came to be is a story of
some complexity. It is fundamentally a
story of human ingenuity, for the private
pilot's accidental peek into the murky
world of espionage afforded only a tiny
view of the most important part of that
world, technical intelligence. And it is
technical intelligence, still in its infancy
that day back in 1947, that has come to
dominate all modern espionage.
The effect has been revolutionary: The
United States has constructed an elab-
orate technical spying system-this
country's chief eyes and ears-un-
dreamed of in the long history of the
world's second-oldest profession.
Kenneth Arnold knew nothing of this
when he accidentally stumbled across
part of the secret 38 years ago. Nor did
he know that he had seen, at least in part,
the collective genius of a Japanese bal-
loonist, an irascible American aircraft de-
signer, and a college dropout who was
determined to prove the experts wrong.
PEiQTHOUSE
March 19$5
r:~
Together, they helped to develop an
unrivaled system that has not only come
to assume virtually all the functions of
American intelligence, but has caused the
traditional cloak-and-dagger human spy
to all but disappear. That quaint practi-
tioner of espionage has been supplanted
by a huge web of electronic and other
technical systems that promise fulfill-
ment of the ancient dream of all espio-
nage: specific, unequivocal, and de-
tailed intelligence, safely beyond the
reach of anyone trying to intercept it.
So much for the dream-the reality is
quite something else. For however won-
drous and all-encompassing modern in-
telligence technology might be, it has
proven unable to answer intelligence
questions with certitude. And ironically
enough, the more detailed, accurate, and
sweeping these technical systems, the
more arguments they seem to incite about
just what they are seeing (and whether
they have seen everything worth seeing).
What has happened ~s what no one
could have ant~c~pated rn 1947-mclud-
mg. as we shall see. the creation of the
hying saucer craze
Modern techn,cal intelf~gence was born
in the great BnUSh aerial reconnaissance
and photo-interpretation operaUOn of
World War II By comparison. U S tech-
nical ~nte!l~gence at the beginning of the
war was somewhere ~n the Dark Ages A
crash program put the United States ~n
the forefront of aerial reconnaissance al-
most overn,ght The key to that ach~eve-
menl lay m the American bases ranging
Germany and German-occupied lerri-
i tory From those bases: the Americans
could fly missions and return. That ad-
vantage disappeared with the advent of
the Cold? War. even the newest-model
planes had no hope o1 carrying out unes-
corted strategic reconnaissance m~s-
s1ons (journeys several thousand.m~les
long) over Eastern Europe and the Soviet
Union. The Red Air Force was large and
alert, backed by ground-based radar. it
was capable of checkmating any recon-
na~ssance overflight.
Yef the need for such reconnaissance
was growing more acute The answer.
obviously. was some sort of airborne
platform that could overfly the vast d~s-
tances of the Soviet Union out of range
of fighter planes. take pictures. and re-
turn safely to base. The most advanced
U.S reconnaissance aircraft o1 the post-
war period. the RB-47 (essenf~ally a
souped-up reconnaissance version of the
B-47 let bomber). carved seven prec~-
s~on cameras. which. operating autp-
mahcally could photograph one million
square m~~es of territory during a ihree-
hour flight. recording a step 490 miles
wide by 2 700 miles long
But the Soviet Union s most important
strategic iac~lrt~es-their largest military
a~rf~elCs nuclear testing saes. major ~n-
dustnes etc -lay thousands of miles in-
IanC however ~mpresswe the RB-47 s
capab~l~t~es ~t could not possibly get p~c-
tures of those saes without overflying the
Soviet interior And that. given the for-
m~oable Soviet defenses. was not 1eas~-
ble How. then, could ~t be done?
Irk 1933. Re~k~ch~ Rada was named head
of the Japanese military s Sc~enhf~c Lab-
oratory. which (among other ass~gn-
ments) was trying to solve the problem
df how ro bomb enemy targets at rnter-
Continental ranges No foreseeable de-
velopmen? in airplane technology seemed
capable of producing such an aircraft. so
Rada hit upon an innovative idea Bal-
loons would be armed with bombs and
th2n sent to drift into enemy territory.
where the bombs would be automal~cally
released.
Alter Pearl Harbor, Rada was eager to
demonstrate that his idea would work.
With. prevailing winds unique to Japan.
he discovered that a balloon launched
from Japan s east coast could drift 6.200
miles to the United States' west coast.
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Next. Racy deve~oped an ~ngen~ous au-
tomaUC s~~stcm `or the balloon that
;copped ballast 'o keep the bal'~oon at a
Constant al;?udp Curing the `light. then
loosed an ~..^?cenc~a~y or other type o1
bomb as the banoon settled to earth
somewhere ~n the United States
The Rar,a designed balloons were
launched eastward m me fall of 1944.
Operation Fu-Gb as the Japanese called
~t was on
As the v,~orld s'irs' miercont~nen;al mil-
rtary attack Fu-Go was not a gl~ttenng
success- although ~t did cause some
panic ~n Amencan ~ntell~gence which
clamped down a ngnt Ind of secrecy m
order to prevent the Japanese from
learning whether ;heu balloon attacks
were successful The first balloons be-
gan iloat~nd over the UniteC States in
November 1944. and by Apnl of the fol-
lowmg year. when ;he Japanese gave up
Fu-Go a total of 285 balloons had been
spotted Most had been intercepted over
the ocean or malfunctioned, although one
woman and her five children were killed
~n Oregon when a Fu-Go bomb ex-
ploded. The Japanese had launched
nearly 4.000 of the balloons toward the
U S mainland, and, gwen the fact that
only a small percentage o` them ever
reached their ;arge; Fu-Go was a failure.
The failure. however, was only m mili-
tary terms. From an rntell~gence stand-
po~nt. Fu-Go was asuccess-at least to
in a diffused rainbow of colors. More sig-
nificantly, in the context of the curious role
Skyhook was to play later on, the balloon
also changed shape as it rode into less
dense air and its helium gas filled out.
The balloon would change from an ice-
cream-cone shape to anear-circle; then,
as it moved violently in the winds of the
upper atmosphere, it would become al-
most saucer-shaped.
The tendency of Skyhook to change
shape, especially into the form of what
appeared to be a saucer, caused a major
and unanticipated headache in the Moby
Dick program. One of the initial test flights
of Skyhook in 1941 was spotted by Ken-
neth Arnold, and the flying saucer scare
was on. As the people running Moby Dick
were aware, the sightings almost per-
fectly described what happened to the
Skyhook balloon as it encountered the
strong winds of the upper atmosphere:
The balloon flattened out in the shape of
a saucer and was yanked around vio-
lently, while reflecting sunlight in shades
of blue, red, and green. In other words,
a classic flying saucer (or, later, "UFO")
report.
The flying saucer scare became seri-
ous. In 1948, an Air Force pilot was killed
while chasing a mysterious UFO (ac-
tually aSkyhook test flight), and there was
no end of reported UFO sightings. The
difficulty was that no one who knew any-
thing about Moby Dick could discuss the
program publicly, for by that time it had
A stable, safe platform was needed,
something that not only would be imper-
vious to the Soviet air-defense system,
but also would not risk the lives of valu-
able pilots. Soviet defenses were begin-
ning to exact a high price for intelligence-
gathering flights. By 1948, 40 American
planes had been shot down while flying
along or across the Iron Curtain, forcing
reconnaissance missions to become in-
creasingly cautious. The trend was ob-
vious: As Soviet radars and MIG fighters
improved, the American spy planes would
become increasingly endangered.
The possibility of a complete cutoff of
American reconnaissance of the Soviet
Union presented an especially stark
problem: Ii there were no reconnais-
sance, how would it be known that Rus-
sian intercontinental bombers or missiles
had been launched against the United
States?
It was the fear of a Soviet surprise at-
tack-and the realization that American
intelligence had no real capability for de-
tecting it-that led President Eisenhower
in 1954 to appoint a special panel of ex-
perts to come up with a solution.
The panel had a number of subcom-
mittees examining the problem of de-
tecting asurprise attack, the most im-
portant of which was the group studying
U.S. intelligence capabilities. The sub-
committee included a remarkable char-
acternamed Edwin H. Land, the inventor,
founder, and president of Polaroid. A no-
toriously reticent man (he has only given
two press conferences in 35 years), Land
was in the classic tradition of the great
American tinkerer/inventor. He had
dropped out of Harvard during 1937; then
he taught himself the intricacies of polar-
, ized light, mostly by holing up in a room
at the New York Public Library and read-
', ing his way through anything about the
subject he could get his hands on. Land
went into business for himself in an old
Massachusetts garage, ultimately devel-
oping 530 patents-including his most
famous, the self-developing camera. Po-
laroid, the name he coined to describe
the process, became an American
household word.
Land was very much in the "can do"
spirit of American inventiveness, and to
him, the problem of getting intelligence
on the Soviet Union was soluble-pro-
vided that the customary bureaucratic
inertia was overcome, along with the re-
luctance of experts, who decreed that
taking clear pictures from heights of about
70,000 feet was impossible. Land's insis-
tence was no small factor in the panel's
final conclusion that the solution to the
problem of American intelligence was
strategic reconnaissance, using a stable
platform that could overfly targets above
70,000 feet and take detailed photo-
graphs.
the Hmencaris. ~u~ ~r u~ w~~C~ r~ ~~~ ~ ~ ?~~" ~ lion. Operating from secret launching
the germ of an idea on how to get Intel- sites in Europe (where they precipitated
I~gence on the Soviet Union. ,: - another UFO scare), Skyhook balloons
- The idea was born in the series of in- ~ were launched into the prevailing winds
telligence reports prepared by the Army sweeping west to east over the Soviet
and Navy on the Fu-Go flights. One glar- Union. They were hooked up with Gam-
ing fact stood out in those reports: The eras and radio gear; when they reached
Japanese had managed to fly by remote Japan after a flight across the Soviet
control a very stable airborne platform at heartland, a radio signal sent from the
distances of over 6,000 miles. Instead of round would tell Skyhook to detach its
bombs, what if such balloons were armed 9 strument package. (Later, Air Force pi-
with cameras? Could similar types of bal- lots developed a special trapezelike hook,
loons be launched into prevailing winds attached to car o planes, which cau ht
sweeping over the Soviet Union? the balloon's shroud lines and recap-
By coincidence, the Air Force was run- lured the entire Skyhook, ready to tie
Wing an extensive meteorological re- flown another day.)
search program at the time called Moby Ultimately, Moby Dick was a failure.
Dick. Operated in conjunction with the Man of the balloons crashed in the So-
Navy's Office of Naval Research, Moby viet Union, and those few which made
Dick aimed to uncover some of the mys- the entire flight produced spotty results.
teries of the upper atmosphere, where fu- Im rovements in Soviet air-defense ra-
lure aircraft (and missiles) were to oper- darp-balloons, because of their large
ate. The program used the latest in high- surface area, make perfect radar tar-
altitude weather-research balloons, a ets-eventual) s elled the end of Mob
large gasbag called Skyhook. The first g. y p y
models were about 300 cubic feet in size Drck. The last balloon flight over the So-
and capable of rising to over 120,000 feet. viet Union took place in 1958.
The high altitude was made possible by Despite its ultimate failure, a number
use of an innovative, partially transparent of valuable lessons were learned from
plastic material, which reflected the sun Moby Dick. Most importantly, it proved
that overflights of the Soviet Union were
possible and that reconnaissance pic-
lures could be taken from high altitudes.
The central problem remained, however:
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Land had vowed the photographic
problem could be solved, but what about
the platform? That seemed to be a more
knotty problem, but the panel noted that
a number of high-performance test air-
craft might possibly be converted into
such platforms-assuming that consid-
erable technological problems were
solved.
At that point, the panel had the good
fortune to encounter Clarence "Kelly"
Johnson, of Lockheed-a man who was
already a legend in the airplane-design
business. He had made his mark with a
number of aeronautical miracles, among
them the first American jet fighter, the F-
80 "Shooting Star," which in 1945 took an
unheard-of total of 141 days from design
to production.
Johnson did not suffer fools gladly, and
his independent style, hands-on philos-
ophy, and disregard for bureaucratic
convention were nervously tolerated by
Lockheed executives, a number of whom
Johnson did not hesitate to upbraid when
he thought they were interfering in his
projects. (Once, when asked the secret
of his success, Johnson snapped, "I get
a few good men and drown the rest.")
Lockheed had the sense to leave its
brilliant, if somewhat foul-tempered, de-
signer alone. Johnson spent most of his
time in what was officially known as Air
velopment up to that point in the history
of espionage. Here at last was the per-
fect spy: It could fty at the then astonish-
ing altitude of 90,000 feet and snap de-
tailed reconnaissance pictures, safely out
of the reach of any known let fighter, mis-
sile, or other hazard.
But only a few people connected with
the U-2 knew that fcr all of its marvelous
qualities. the plane had an Achilles' heel:
a tendency to flame out at high altitudes.
Flameout-the stalling of jet engines in
thin air because of the lack of oxygen-
was of special concern to the U-2 pilots.
for it meant they had to glide down to a
lower altitude, then restart the engine. But
the U-2's fuel, a specially refined kero-
sene, was difficult to ignite. The pilots
often would have to drop even lower, to
approximately 30,000 feet, in order to get
sufficient oxygen for restarting the en-
gines. And 30,000 feet was where jet
fighters and surface-to-air missiles could
easily attack.
That is precisely what haDD to ~i-
lot Francis Ga~~f Powers on the aft rn on
'~, ~f AAav 5 1960. When he suddenly re-
-_ .. _. _..------. rin .,t_
Powers at that point was ov rflvina the
c or ~~~1 Icrrial city of Sverdlovsk. nno .a
~ _---J ... ..f n..e_ln_~II
titude to restart his enoine hP would come
Force Plant No. 42 (on the edge of the
desert at Lockheed's Palmdale, Califor-
nia, plant), working out designs that were
literally made by hand to his specifica-
lions. Plant No. 42 was more familiarly
known around Lockheed as the "Skunk
1Norks," after the mysterious still in the
"Li'I Abner" comic strip that produced the
famous Kickapoo Joy Juice.
Among the projects Johnson was
working on in 1954 was a test airplane
known innocuously as Utility-2, used to
test engines and other systems at high
altitudes, where the next generation of jet
fighters was expected to operate. One of
Johnson's more innovative designs, Util-
ity-2 was difficult to describe: something
of aglider-sailplane with turbojets, long,
` light wings, and a needlelike shape. AI-
. though it had a phenomenal 4,000-mile
range, it looked unlike any other plane
ever to take to the air.
But no matter how odd it looked, the
', panel realized that Utility-2-soon most
often referred to by its nickname, U-2-
was that perfect reconnaissance plat-
form they had been seeking. Johnson
promised he could make the U-2 into a
spy plane. And hooked up with a new
Land invention-special long-focus
cameras that could scan continuously
through seven apertures-Johnson's U-
2was the most astounding technical de-
into missile ranoe Powers dropped to tit
, n ....... ..~., ...L by ~
Russian surface-to-air missile.
The Powers incident did not com letely
t 1 oro ram tha nlane rs_still
used to this day for overflights of poorly
defended areas-but ~t did shatter t e
American confidence in the U-2 as the
final answer to the problem of obtainin
strategic intelligence on the Soviet Unon.
However an even more ama71nn substi-
tute was bein ro ead~ed.
Just before dawn on April 1, 1960, a
Thor-Able rocket lifted off from Cape
Canaveral, Florida, with a 290-pound
satellite in its nose. Called TIROS (tele-
vision and infrared observation satellite),
the satellite basically was designed to
photograph cloud formations from
above-fulfilling along-standing dream
of meteorologists, who had claimed for
years that high-altitude observation was
required in order to make accurate fore-
casts. Additionally, the scientists hoped
that observation of weather patterns on
earth would afford early warning of major
weather disasters, including hurricanes
and typhoons.
But TIROS was also a bold experiment
in espionage, designed to test whether a
high-orbiting satellite-far from radar,
missiles, and fighters-could carry out
photographic reconnaissance. There was
some question whether such reconnais-
sance, hundreds of miles up in spac?,
could duplicate the U-2's capabilities:
some experts argued that because so
much of the earth's surface was socked
in by weather systems at heights of 100
miles and above, it was very doubtful that
a satellite could ever see ground targets.
TIROS carried the latest marvels of
American technology-in particular, two
television cameras powered by nickel
cadmium batteries recharged by 9,000
solar cells. Each camera-actually a so-
phisticated television tube combined with
a focal-plane shutter-could store the
pictures it snapped on a tube screen. An
electron beam converted the stored im-
age into electronic signals, which were
then transmitted directly to ground re-
ceivers or recorded on magnetic tape.
When the satellite came within range of
aground station, it could be ordered by
radio signal to "play" its tape for the sta-
tion to pick up.
Two hours after its maiden flight be-
gan, TIROS's first pictures shocked the
meteorologists and the more expectant
CIA and Air Force experts who were
awaiting the results: everything could be
seen clearly. To the surprise of all the ex-
perts, TIROS showed that, in clear
weather, satellite cameras saw in detail
everything within the scope of their lens-
es. The pictures from the first pass over
the Soviet Union and China were so clear
that the smallest details of air-base run-
ways, planes, missile sites, and military
bases could be picked out easily, even
by the untrained eye.
The stunning success of TIROS revo-
lutionized intelligence collection almost
overnight. It proved that a satellite was
capable not only of obtaining sharp re-
connaissance pictures, but of eliminating
the need for a pilot. As an extra bonus,
the satellite was invulnerable to any proj-
ected possible threat, since it operated
high in space.
The United States took a quantum jump
in spy-satellite capability in 1971, when
the first of the Big Bird satellites were
launched. They were equipped with high-
resolution television cameras, which can
scan wide swaths of land on every pass,
supplemented by highly sophisticated
cameras which take detailed pictures.
Even more amazing were the KH (for
I "keyhole") satellites launched three years
later. KH has special sensitive cameras
that can measure images in terms of heat
(thus detecting even subtle changes),
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along with multispectral scanning de- frayed detectors (which can spot heat of the islands to begin floating into Soviet
vices that register wavelengths, picking sources at night especially missile and territory-while the Air Force detachment
up images that even the most sensitive aircraft exhausts), and multispectral on it wondered what would happen to
photographic films can't detect. scanners (which can take several pic- them and all their monitoring equipment
The key to the success of the American tures at the same time in different regions when they fell into Russian hands. The
spy satellites has been U.S. technology's of the visible light spectrum and infrared Air Force sent a plane to pick up the men
ability to dramatically improve ground bands). Additionally, new computers al- and their equipment, but it crashed on
resolution-the size of the smallest pos- low analysts to manipulate this data to landing and was unable to take oft.
sible object distinguishable in a satellite bring out subtle details. Meanwhile, Russian planes began
camera's picture. A good deal of that ca- Much less is known, however, about a .buzzing the island, and the leader of the
pability has been revealed by the U.S. second type of spy satellite-the ones detachment, fearing imminent Soviet at-
space program, which routinely pub- that collect ELINT and COMMINT (elec- tack, ordered his men to dig in-and dis-
lishes amazingly detailed pictures taken tropics and communications intelli- covered that it was impossible to dig into
by its nonmilitary spacecraft and satel- Bence). These remain the U.S. govern- the thick pack ice. To make matters worse,
lites. But even those pictures represent ment's deepest intelligence secrets, and the monitoring equipment detected what
child's play for spy satellite cameras, its chief concern. was thought to be a flight of Soviet bomb-
which can achieve ground resolution of The reason for the American concern ers headed for the North American con-
about four inches from 100 miles away. is technology: Radar, phone scramblers, tinent. An alarm was radioed, and the en-
Technology has also made a number radio communication networks, and fire American air-defense system went on
of dramatic improvements in how much electronic warning complexes have be- alert-only to find that they had been
data can be received from a spy satellite. come an important part of a nation's ar- alerted for a flight of migrating Siberian
In the beginning, the Air Force borrowed sepal-and therefore a prime target for fish ducks.
an old idea from the Moby Dick program intelligence. Getting at those electronic An emergency Air Force helicopter fi-
and began retrieving photo capsules webs in the Soviet Union has presented Wally lifted the men and their equipment
parachuted from satellites, using the tra- a problem, for most of them are deep in off the ice island before the Russians
peze-hook method that once snared the heartland, out of the range of eaves- could grab them, but the incident again
Skyhook balloons. The method is still dropping devices. The initial solution was demonstrated the dangers of operating
used for photos produced by "quick-look" to attack the web at its outer fringes. communications intelligence, even on the
spy satellites that sweep in relatively low Beginning in 1946, U.S. "ferrets," most fringes of the Soviet Union. (This episode
e
o pl
t
(about 100 miles up) over a particular tar- ?
, fl w m scions along
ear
onic listeng
get to take pictures. Most satellite im- g g
agery, however, is returned by electronic thanes,nmilitaral abd rNational Security
signal, produced by a system aboard the A enc electronics experts moved the
satellite that takes the pictures, instantly receiver dials slowly, hoping to pick up
develops them, then stores the images
on a television scanner that transmits the any interesting transmissions from the
data to earth, where they're fed into large other side of the border, ranging from
tactical orders to high-level communi-
computers for processing. .cations with Moscow.
The technological revolution that cre- Some of the ferrets, however, played a
ated the spy satellites has also been much more dangerous game: They would
packing ever more sophisticated capa- make a headlong dash across the Iron
bilities into them. The reason is microcir- Curtain into the airspace of an Eastern
cuff chips, which can now be made five European country (or, in other areas,
or seven microns wide (each micron is across the Soviet border itself), deliber-
one-millionth of a meter), much thinner ately setting off air-defense alarms. Those
than a human hair. American intelligence, transmissions, invaluable for showing the
however, is in the forefront of an effort to strength, response time, and pulse levels
develop one-micron-wide VHSICs (very of radars, were recorded as the ferret
high-speed integrated chips) that can suddenly turned tail and headed back at
store prodigious amounts of data. How to seed for home. Some didn't make
much data? A map of the United States it: Almost half of the several dozen Amer-
. printed on a sheet of paper only 20 inches ican spy planes shot down by the Rus-
wide would show every single streenes signs while flying the "fringe route" from.,
the entire country, represented by 1946 to 1960 were electronics ferrets.
only ahalf-micron wide. The ferret missions were supple-,
Combined with other advances in var- mented with a wide range of sometimes
ious sensing devices, that would give spy in enious efforts to tap into Soviet com-
satellites atruly awesome capability. The munication nets. Among them was one
newest generation of satellites now oP- of the more bizarre operations designed
erating include such advances as im- to gather communications intelligence on
aging radar (which can see and maP the Soviet Uhion: monitoring stations set
ground targets even through heavy up on several small ice islands near the
clouds), infrared radiometer and thermal North Pole, where they were ideally sit-
infrared scanners (which can detect un- uated to pickup Soviet military transmis-
derground construction), mosaic in- sions from Russian territory on the other
side of the Pole (and provide warning of
Soviet strategic attack). But a freak early-
spring thaw in 1954 suddenly caused one
served as the basis for the popular book
and movie, Ice Station Zebra.)
With the advent of satellite technology,
a considerable amount of ELINT and
COMMINT was put aboard special ferret
satellites that were piggybacked onto
photo-reconnaissance satellites. The first
ferret satellite was launched in 1962, and
with advances in sensor technology, they
are now able to record a vast amount of
electronic transmissions while orbiting
about 300 miles high. At that altitude, the
satellites are invulnerable to attack-al-
though there are recurring attempts to
jam them electronically-but there has
been much more danger associated with
some of the supplements to the ferret sat-
ellites. One was an operation that con-
verted old World War II Liberty merchant
ships into floating electronics-intercep-
tion platforms; packed with radars and
radio receivers, the ships, including the
ill-fated Liberty and Pueblo, slowly sailed
in waters just off the borders of assorted
hot spots, recording every electronic
transmission they could reach. Even more
dangerous was the De Soto program,
composed of patrols of U.S. Navy de-
stroyers packed with electronics-inter-
ceptiongear that, during the early 1960s,
deliberately provoked coastal defense
radars in North Vietnam-a program that
finally led to the fateful attack in 1964 on
two De Soto destroyers in the Tonkin Gulf.
Why would these dangerous opera-
tions continue, even after ELINT and
COMMINT functions were put aboard
~nued
Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/02 :CIA-RDP90-009658000707000002-9
 Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/02 :CIA-RDP90-009658000707000002-9
satellites? Because unlike photo recon-
naissance, collecting electronic trans-
missions involves much more (and much
heavier) equipment. The EC-121 Ameri-
can ELINT plane shot down by North Ko-
rea in 1969, for example, had a crew of
31 and six tons of eavesdropping equip-
ment aboard; it will be quite some trme
before that amount of equipment can be
miniaturized for use aboard satellites.
American intelligence has now sur-
rounded its perceived enemies, notably
the Soviet Union, with a vast electronic
eavesdropping web whose size, com-
plexity, and thoroughness remain un-
matched in the history of espionage. Be-
sides the satellites, there are 2.000
listening posts all around the world to
eavesdrop on military communications,
a half-dozen huge radar complexes to
monitor missile tests, and a sprawling
communications-interception operation
in Cheltenham, England-run in con-
junctionwith Canada and Great Britain-
that picks up virtually all military com-
munications in Eastern Europe. Addition-
ally, the Americans are now deploying the
very latest in COMMINT-robot elec-
tronic snoops planted at various sites in-
side the Soviet Union. About the size of
a small handbag, the robots are unbe-
lievably sophisticated electronic eaves-
dropping devices, capable of automati-
cally gathering transmissions from
superhigh frequencies being broadcast
miles away. then encoding and transmit-
t~ng them up to 300 miles to a passrng
plane or satellite
(Although the robots are Still highly Se-
cret mthe UniteC States. the r~uss~ans
10und Out. about them when One O1 the
t~f~c~al tree stump. was sued ~n a forest
near Moscow The CIA agents who did
the lob made a serous mistake Thev out
the robot inside a fake pine-tree slump.
wh ch They olaced ~n a grove of aspen
=_-gees A pine tree ~n an aspen grove ~s
ver rare m the Sov~e! Union and the ro
bot ~ns~de was soon detected )
All of this Seems almost breaihtak~ng
a huge clockwork operation of such ~n-
gen~ousness. and one so airtight. that
nothing could ever escape And yet that
~s not what has happened. the supreme
irony of modern American ~nten~gence ~s
the discovery by many of its pract~t~oners
that the more soph~st~cated the collection
system. the more ambiguity ~n the re-
sull~ng ~ntell~gence judgments there
seems to be
Consider what happened ~n late 1970.
when U S photo reconnaissance satel-
I~tes detected the bu~ldrng of what ap-
peared to be 80 new Soviet ICBM silos
That triggered an ~ntel'~~gence alarm. but
three years passed while various com-
ponents of the Amer~Can ~nlell~gence
o0mmurnty argued over its s~gn~f~cance
Not until 1973 were the Russians asked
formally about the silos-they re-
sponded that they were command and
control silos not m~ss~ie emplace-
ments-and ~t look unl~l 1977 for the de-
bate linalry to be cleared up (The Rus-
sians were tellrnq the truth )
Another shortcoming discovered in
tecnn~cal couect~on systems ~s their vul
nerability to decepUOn The Soviets have
been developing the art o1 concealment
to a fine edge. and one enure factory ~n
Czechoslovakia produces nothing but
rubber MIGs phony submarines. and
other decoys. all designed to hoodwink
American satellites and spy planes The
very prec~s~on of spy satellites-- their
Tracks Can be predrCled Exactly. allowing
analysts to prnpo~nt wnat the sensors de
tect-.s also a major disadvantage The
Russians know when the satell~les are
overhead and when They re on the other
side of the world. allowing for a wide range
of concealment achv~hes when tho sat-
. en~tes aren t around
Even when the satellites are looking
there ~s some question whether they re
detecl~ng what they r0 supposed to de
sect On September 22 1979. for exam
ple an ArnenCan VELA satellite. scan
Wing 1hC SOU!hern AIIanI~C tOr any Sign Of
a nuclear explosion registered Iwo ~n
tense bursts of light the CharaClenshC
double pulse of an atomic detonation. The
VELA s~ght~ng caused a sensation in the
American rntell~gence community. but
however conclusive intelligence analysts
regarded the evidence to be-they were
convinced that either Israel or South Af-
rica had carved out a test o1 a nuclear-
warhead m~ss~fe-~t was msuffic~ent for
the White Hous?
As President Carter noted. with some
Iust~i~caUOn. the United States was not
about to make the Sensal,Onal Charge that
Israel. a close American ally. or South Af-
nca had set off an atomic weapon NoL
Ih31 is. without having more cOnCluswe
evidence Where was the fallout from the
blasts Was there any confirmation from
other ~ntell~gence sources? Could the ~n-
teu~gence agencies certify that no natu-
ral phenomenon-such as a meteor--
' was responsible for the (lash the VELA
detected They could not.
And ~n that adm~ss~on lay the crux of
the problem. a problem that continues to
bedevil American ~ntell~gence At root. its
great web. of electronic and photo-
; graprnc snoops amounts to a collection
01 dumb machines able to record. but
nOI t0 think
As we have learned the hard way
overreliance on such technology leads to
confusion--much more than we ever
I dreamed O+-~,
J
Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/02 :CIA-RDP90-009658000707000002-9