Spycraft - Melton [25]
Well-designed and properly executed dead drop exchanges are among the most secure means for agent communication. Brush passes, though less secure, are still relatively safe. However, Penkovsky conducted an excessive number of personal exchanges between October 1961 and January 1962, all with Mrs. Chisholm. Even more alarming, eleven of these exchanges were in public view and some were poorly executed and transparent to surveillance teams.3 The KGB’s Seventh Directorate surveillance officers later commented that while surveilling Mrs. Chisholm and her children in a park off Tsvetnoy Boulevard in 1961, they observed an elderly man approach one of the children and proffer a small box of chocolates. The young girl took the present to her mother who, without opening the box, placed it inside the baby carriage.4 To the KGB the act was suspicious, and the elderly man was later identified as Penkovsky.
Whatever shortcomings might have existed were not entirely without reason. There simply were no suitable devices on Agency shelves for this type of operation. For instance, as late as 1962 the CIA had yet to develop a small, reliable document copy camera for agents. Rather, Penkovsky relied on the commercially available Minox Model IIIs camera.5 Small enough to conceal inside a man’s closed fist, the Minox boasted an excellent lens that easily captured images of letters, memos, and pages from a book but could not be used covertly. The sliding shutter release required two hands, making it impossible to use inside an office or archive with anyone else present. Good pictures required even lighting, proper photo technique, and privacy.
The only item Penkovsky used that could properly be called advanced tradecraft was his “agent-receive” communications through a one-way voice-link. These encoded messages, known as OWVL, were broadcast over shortwave frequencies at predetermined times from a CIA-operated transmitter in Western Europe. Penkovsky listened to these messages on a Panasonic radio—strings of numbers read in a dispassionate voice—and then decoded them using a one-time pad. Although foreign consumer technology, such as a Panasonic radio, was rare in the Soviet Union, Penkovsky could display his openly in the small study of his apartment since the radio raised no questions of disloyalty for a senior officer in his position. However, the system only received messages and left him without a means to send a reply.
Penkovsky secreted his spy gear—one-time pads, Minox cameras, film, and commo plan—inside a clever homemade concealment built into a wooden desk in his study. All of this was eventually displayed in open court as proof of his covert activities.
In sharp contrast to Penkovsky’s basic spy gear was the sophisticated KGB technical surveillance operation that enveloped him after coming under suspicion. The KGB established three key points of observation to monitor his activities inside his home. The first was in the apartment directly above his, from which a KGB audio surveillance post monitored all conversations. A pinhole opening was drilled through the ceiling of his study from a monitoring post overhead and photographed Penkovsky with a special 35mm camera (codenamed LINOCK) while he worked at his desk.
Minox subminiature concealment drawings. Covert photos with Minox cameras could be taken in a variety of circumstances but required user precision and experience to acquire high-quality pictures.
A second camera system, also from the apartment above, was mounted in the small balcony that overhung his window. Hidden in the concrete floor of this balcony was a camera and a small, remotely controlled trapdoor rigged to open and capture images as he photographed documents at the