Spycraft - Melton [301]
46 “Time-sensitive” information reported events or circumstances of immediate significance. If not received by the intelligence service quickly, the reporting rapidly lost its value.
47 Weiser, A Secret Life, 215, 229.
48 Ibid., 229-230.
49 “Bent-pipe” refers to the satellite’s limited role in receiving and relaying the signal without any processing. In essence, the signal from the agent bounced off the satellite to the ground receiving station.
50 The Russian Federal Service (FSB) museum in Moscow displays an attaché case, labeled as the BIRDBOOK system, which is filled with electronics and has a transmitting antenna built into the lid.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
1 Bearden and Risen, The Main Enemy, 522-523.
2 Ibid.
3 R. James Woolsey, in testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, February 2, 1993, just before his installation as DCI. The colorful metaphor provided a “sound-bite” justification for his view that substantial intelligence resources were still needed in the post-Cold War era.
4 A term applied to the period where movement of information became faster than physical movement, more narrowly applying to the 1980s onward. The Information Age also heralded the era when information was a scarce resource and its capture and distribution generated competitive advantage. Microsoft became one of the largest companies in the world based on its influence in creating the underlying mechanics to facilitate information distribution.
5 James Gosler, “The Digital Dimension,” from Transforming U.S. Intelligence, Jennifer Sims and Burton Gerber (editors) (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2005), 96.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Weiser, A Secret Life, 158.
9 Gosler, “The Digital Dimension,” 100.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., 101.
12 Ibid.
13 Construction of the Internet began in 1969 with the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) by academic researchers under the sponsorship of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). Two decades later, the Internet became publicly accessible with a worldwide system of interconnected computer networks. The “Net” connected thousands of smaller commercial, academic, domestic, and government networks, creating an interlinked “World Wide Web” that provided varied information and services including online chat, electronic mail, and instant messaging.
14 Walker was arrested on May 20, 1985, shortly after leaving secret documents for the KGB at a dead drop location in rural Montgomery County, Maryland. The warrant authorizing the search of the Ames residence was made possible by the discovery in their household trash of a yellow Post-it note referencing a covert meeting with the Russian Intelligence Service to be held in Bogotá, Columbia.
15 Decision Support Systems, Inc., Secure Communications Operational Tradecraft; “How Not To Be Seen,” January 11, 2002, website: www.metatempo.com/SecureCommo.PDF.
16 For even greater protection, the agent may choose to superencipher the message using an OTP first, and then enciphering it again using a “strong and proven” encryption program such as PGP (Pretty Good Privacy). See: web.mit.edu/network/pgp.html. Such protection, properly employed, would be slow and cumbersome to use, but would result in an “unbreakable message.”
17 “Malware” (malicious software) includes programs for data encryption, digital steganography, password “cracking,” and “hacking.” Possession of such software, while not illegal, may become a basis for suspicion if detected during an examination of the agent’s computer and hard drive.
18 The first electromechanical encryption machine was developed and patented by Edward Hebern in 1918.
19 A free version of PGP can be downloaded from www.pgpi.org/. Advanced commercial versions of PGP are available from www.pgp.com/.
20 FBI Affidavit for the Arrest of Ana Belen Montes; September 2001, pg. 8. The complete affidavit can be downloaded at www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressre101/092101.pdf.
21 Robert Hanssen