Spycraft - Melton [250]
The largest of the CIA’s microdot viewers was the “little telescope” (about the size of an unfiltered cigarette) with an internal telescoping section for magnification up to 150 times. The viewer was more powerful and easier for agents to use than its predecessors, but it was much larger. If detected it was clearly recognizable as a piece of spy gear, but the little telescope was still small enough to be concealed in a pack of cigarettes or a modified fountain pen.
In 1983, the CIA recruited Soviet Colonel Vladimir Mikhailovich Vasilyev in Budapest and assigned the codename GTACCORD. To communicate with him after his return to Moscow, OTS perfected a new technique of sending messages using a Hewlett-Packard computerized laser-engraver. The technique allowed the CIA to etch a microscopic message into the black borders of features inside the February 1983 issue of National Geographic magazine.34 The hidden message in the ruled line was invisible to the unaided eye, though readable with a 30x magnifier.
The laser-engraver burned away microns of ink to leave a message that had characteristics of a microdot but did not require the additional stages of development and precise handling. By etching the message on an advertisement in a popular magazine to which GTACCORD had normal access, there was no link back to a specific agent should the presence of the message be detected. The secret message contained the internal commo plan for GTACCORD to contact CIA. It read: “Your package should always be in a waterproof wrapper placed inside a dirty, oily rag tied with string . . .”35
The commo plan worked. Colonel Vasilyev spied for the United States for three years until he was betrayed by CIA officers Edward Lee Howard and Aldrich Ames in 1984 and 1985. Vasilyev was arrested in 1986 and executed in 1987.36
One laser-engraving effort left an enduring olfactory memory with the OTS techs. In this operation, the covert message was placed on a border line of an advertisement for fancy chocolates in a gourmet magazine. The advertisement was printed with newly developed “chocolate-scented ink” and when the laser-engraver began burning the ink to embed the message, the entire OTS lab took on the smell of fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies.
Another reduced-image technique involved photography that used a sensitive, fragile emulsion layer of film. This plastic wrap-like substance could be separated from the thicker cellulose base of some types of film. Called “soft film” by the KGB, it was one of the most usable methods for clandestine communication even before World War II and saw use extensively throughout the Cold War.37
In the 1980s, OTS developed laser-engraving for clandestine communication. This was used by CIA agent Colonel Vladimir Vasilyev in Moscow. Left: Cover of National Geographic magazine. Right: Inside page of the magazine showing location of the line containing micro-engraving, mid-1980s.
Typically, a frame of soft film contained the image of a single page of text, which could be produced in a variety of sizes. Although a frame was much larger than a microdot and more vulnerable to detection, it was much easier for the agent to use. Larger examples could be disguised as photo protectors inside a man’s wallet or the shiny coating of a postcard such as was used by George Saxe’s agent in the late 1960s. Pieces of the pliable film could be rolled into tiny cylinders as small as the size of a matchstick, concealed in such varied household items as a hollow pencil or a ballpoint pen refill, or sewn into the lining of clothing, and then read using a standard magnifying glass.
Kalvar, a commercial product developed as an alternative to traditional microfilm, represented one of the OTS’s most successful special films for reduced-image photography. The company