Spycraft - Melton [131]
In the end, the circuits designed for the new Century Series were both small and energy efficient. Techs called them “flea powered.” The units drew only microamps from the batteries and signals were transmitted at the lowest possible power setting for reception by specialized antennas at the listening posts. There was almost no end to where the new devices could be hidden. Combined with new battery configurations, the Century Series could be hidden in books, wooden coat hangers, and even within the circuitry of other electronic devices, such as televisions or portable radios. Wood blocks, a longtime favorite among techs, could be made smaller as well.
Armed with new technology, techs along with the staff at Langley became more emboldened. Operations that would have been at best risky or impossible in the 1960s were now launched regularly. “Show me a target and I can get to it,” one tech was noted for saying. Within the tech culture, this was more statement of fact than bravado.
Perhaps no operation better illustrated the techs’ derring-do than one that took place in the 1970s against an implacable U.S. adversary. After years of futile negotiations to resolve an international dispute with the other nation, the President ordered his closest advisor to initiate secret talks at the highest levels of the foreign government with the objective of ending the conflict. Special assistance from the audio techs was requested for a risky and dangerous operation to acquire information on the intentions and strategy of the foreign negotiators. The techs were chosen for their unusual skills and proven courage in combat. One was an experienced mountain climber. The other, a combat-hardened former Marine, trained for the mission by climbing over slate roofs in his hometown.
Working in the early-morning hours of a moonless night, a tech, dressed in black, carrying mountain-climbing gear, crawled through a window of a safe house onto the steep slate roof of an adjoining building. A few floors below, the other tech waited anxiously with the newly designed audio equipment.When they could move unobserved, the techs skirted several roofs of adjacent houses leading to the residence of the chief of the foreign delegation and crawled silently over its slate tiles. Their targets were three chimneys positioned along the length of the roof’s ridge. As they moved from chimney to chimney, into each they dropped a small device, called a “pinger,” to measure the length of the fireplace flues that would eventually conceal an audio device. Resembling an oversized pistol, when the pinger reached the upper edge of the fireplace flue, the tech pulled the trigger. A small burst of radio wave energy—like radar—shot down the chimney and bounced back, instantly calculating the distance between the top of the chimney to the desired fireplace location for the bug. With data in hand, the techs retraced their climb and began planning the equally dangerous and risky installation.
“We returned a few weeks later, with mics and transmitters the lab had developed,” recalled one of the techs. “They were encased in an asphalt bulb, maybe two inches in diameter, so when there was fire in the fireplaces, they wouldn’t burn up.” Wires, with precise distances based on “pinger” data, let them lower the devices to the proper length in each chimney before securing them to the top.
The audio collection produced transcripts of private strategy discussions held by the target negotiators that were immediately translated and hand-carried to the President’s representative to prepare him for the next formal meeting. The techs never saw the transcripts and never expected to. That is the profession. Build the gear, put it in, make sure it works, and get out of the way.