Spycraft - Melton [63]
By the early 1980s, those skeptical that the CIA could operate in Moscow had been silenced with several remarkable clandestine successes. Viktor Sheymov, a brilliant engineer from the KGB’s Eighth Directorate (communications security and signals intelligence) had been smuggled out of the USSR with his wife and daughter in May 1980.6 A. G. Tolkachev was reporting regularly about advanced Soviet aviation developments during clandestine meetings in Moscow.7 Although TRIGON had been lost in 1977, he, along with another agent, code-named AEBEEP, a GRU general, had been handled successfully inside, and new technical collections systems were being deployed. Technology was melting some of the iron in the Iron Curtain.
CHAPTER 10
A Dissident at Heart
I have chosen a course which does not permit one to move backward, and
I have no intention of veering from this course.
—A. G. Tolkachev, as quoted in Studies in Intelligence
Clandestine operations inside the Soviet Union through the 1970s steadily increased along with reliance on new spy devices. These operations, although relatively small in number, were growing in frequency and yielding successes that would have been unimaginable in the Penkovsky era. Agent operations, once wholly dependent on the traditional tools of secret writing, signal sites, and dead drops were undergoing a technological revolution and defeating the KGB counterintelligence apparatus. The new generation of equipment focused on three areas critical for running agent operations: copying documents, communicating with agents, and countering surveillance.
Prior to 1970, techniques for agent communications were limited to a small number of proven techniques, primarily secret writing, microdots, radio broadcasts, and dead drops. Now materials, electronics, chemistry, and miniaturization were transforming agent operations. Technical capability was becoming integral to operational planning and execution.
Whether it was an electronic surveillance package such as the SRR-100 or the T-100 subminiature camera, denied-area operations received the first run of every new device that flowed out of OTS—or at least got first crack at it. A new piece of spy gear provided the element of surprise, since the longer an item was in use, the more likely it would be exposed by defecting agents and subsequently susceptible to technical countermeasures.
Moscow, where operations were largely dependent on the new gadgetry, was to become the proving ground in modern espionage. High-tech spy gear was new territory for agent operations and critical questions had to be answered. For example, would an agent accept “impersonal” handling? How will the equipment be delivered? How are agents trained? Can the agent be trusted with gear that cost millions of dollars to develop? Can the agent reliably operate the new technology? If a device malfunctions, how will it be repaired? Where can the agent hide obvious spy gear?
A second, more subtle change had also taken place among case officers. Almost all Agency personnel working in Moscow were baby boomers, just a few years out of college. Thirty years later, photographs of the era surprise even those who posed for them. The now-fading pictures show grinning youths, relaxed and dressed in the casual American fashions of the day. This change in appearance by the “ ’60s generation” confounded the KGB, making it more difficult for them to pinpoint the intelligence officers who now dressed in the casual fashions of the 1970s rather than official-looking suits and ties.
In part, youth was also an operational requirement, since the KGB monitored all Americans in Moscow. Once an American was identified as being CIA, he was flagged throughout all subsequent postings and into retirement. A hint of suspicion would earn the officer additional surveillance.
Officers began building their official covers months, sometimes years before