Spycraft - Melton [62]
Although the earpiece was small, it was not small enough to be worn on the street without the possibility of attracting attention. “The earpiece had an obvious a problem,” said one OTS staffer who was involved with the design. “You couldn’t be seen wearing a piece of plastic in your ear without drawing attention.” So OTS disguise specialists produced a “Hollywood solution.” After taking a casting of a case officer’s ear, they fashioned a false, silicone ear that fit over the Phonak receiver. Realistic down to the last detail, the covering was sculpted and tinted to duplicate the shadow of the ear canal. Each case officer received four earpieces, two for the right ear and two for the left ear. Officers could insert the receiver into the ear canal and place the ear mold in front to cover the device.
In addition to masking the earpiece, the sham ear exterior offered another benefit. The sculpting was done with such precision that it not only held the listening device firmly in place without adhesive, but also blocked out ambient street noise, rendering the Russian transmissions more intelligible.
Over time, OTS experimented with other methods for transmission surveillance. In one design, the smaller induction coil was placed in a smoking pipe, called “the Tooth Fairy.” The case officer could hold the pipe in his teeth and “hear” through bone-conducted vibrations transmitted along his jaw to his ear canal. Another engineering concept using bone conduction called for incorporating the Phonak circuitry into the bridge of an officer’s set of false teeth.
Within two years, the technology had progressed from correlating KGB radio communications with surveillance to being able to identify locations and activities of surveillance teams. A case officer could now walk out on the street, monitor the transmissions, and know with certainty whether or not he had surveillance. “When I heard that transmission and knew I’d been called out, I knew I was, for whatever reason, of some interest to them on that day,” said a tech about his Moscow experience. “I didn’t know whether or not they were calling me out to a surveillance team that was waiting around the corner or because they needed instructions about whether I was a target that day. I just knew that if the transmissions continued, they were looking at me. If the transmissions ceased, I knew there was a good chance I was free. And if the transmissions resumed later, I knew the KBG had me back on their active list.”
The CIA’s accumulated operational experience combined with OTS technological countermeasures revealed that the KGB surveillance apparatus, while daunting, was by no means perfect. A key to operational success became patience, as case officers learned that weeks, even months, of routine activity in pattern and profile, was often necessary to set the stage for a single clandestine act.
In time, case officers discovered that even under surveillance they could sometimes go black—vanish from sight—for relatively brief periods without setting off alarm bells. Soviet-style clothing, for instance, might be enough to blend into the population for relatively brief periods of time—just long enough to perform an operational act—and pop up again in view of the watchers, who no doubt breathed a sigh of relief. Personnel in Moscow called this “operating through the gap.” Such risky acts depended on a well-established pattern of travel,