Christopher Andrew - The Sword and the Shield

Since most major American companies operated abroad, they were vulnerable to penetration outside as well as inside the United States. In the mid-1970s seventeen major US companies and research institutes were targeted by KGB residencies in western Europe: among them IBM by the London, Paris, Geneva, Vienna and Bonn residencies; Texas Instruments by Paris; Monsanto by London and Brussels; Westinghouse Electric by Brussels; Honeywell by Rome; ITT by Stockholm; and the National Institutes of Health by Copenhagen. 109European residencies were assisted by a number of walk-ins. In 1974, for example, a Canadian resident of Los Angeles (later given the codename SPRINTER) entered the Soviet embassy in Helsinki, announced that he worked for an electro-optical company which was developing laser anti-missile systems and infra-red sights for firearms, tanks, ships and aircraft, and offered to sell its secrets. 110Like SPRINTER, most of the KGB’s ST network in the United States appear to have been mercenary spies.

SIGINT added substantially to the ST provided by agents. The SIGINT stations within the Washington, New York and San Francisco residencies (whose operations are discussed in chapter 21) succeeded in intercepting the telephone and fax communications of the Brookhaven National Laboratory and a series of major companies. Mitrokhin’s notes, however, do not make it possible to assess the proportion of ST provided by SIGINT rather than HUMINT.

Since before the Second World War ST had been regarded as an essential means of preventing Soviet military technology and weapons systems from falling behind the West’s. According to one report noted by Mitrokhin, over half the projects of the Soviet defense industry in 1979 were based on ST from the West. 111Andropov claimed in 1981 that all the tasks in military ST set for the KGB had been successfully completed. 112According to an official US report, based largely on documents supplied during the early 1980s by Vladimir Vetrov (codenamed FAREWELL), a French agent in FCD Directorate T:

The Soviets estimate that by using documentation on the US F-18 fighter their aviation and radar industries saved some five years of development time and 35 million roubles (the 1980 dollar cost of equivalent research activity would be $55 million) in project manpower and other developmental costs. The manpower portion of these savings probably represents over a thousand man-years of scientific research effort and one of the most successful individual exploitations ever of Western technology.

The documentation of the F-18 fire-control radar served as the technical basis for new lookdown/shootdown engagement radars for the latest generation of Soviet fighters. US methods of component design, fast-Fourier-transform algorithms, terrain mapping functions, and real-time resolution-enhancement techniques were cited as key elements incorporated into the Soviet counterpart. 113

Other successful military projects made possible by ST were the construction of a Soviet clone of the AWACS airborne radar system and the construction of the Blackjack Bomber modeled on the American B1-B. 114

From the late 1970s onwards increasing emphasis was also put on the contribution of ST to the Soviet economy. Directorate T calculated that the main branches of civilian industry were ten years behind their Western counterparts. 115In January 1980 Andropov instructed Directorate T to draw up ST collection plans designed to resolve current problems in Soviet agriculture, metallurgy, power-generation, engineering and advanced technology. 116Of the 5,456 “samples” (machinery, components, microcircuits, etc.) acquired by Directorate T during 1980, 44 percent went to defense industries, 28 percent to civilian industry via the State Committee for Science and Technology (GKNT) and 28 percent to the KGB and other government agencies. In the same, possibly exceptional year, just over half the intelligence obtained by Directorate T came from allied intelligence services, chief among them the East German HVA and the Czechoslovak StB. 117

Among the HVA’s greatest ST successes was its penetration of IBM. According to the head of the HVA, Markus Wolf, the East German microelectronics company Robotron “became so heavily dependent on surreptitiously acquiring IBM’s technological advances that it was, in effect, a sort of illegal subsidiary of that company.” 118Though well behind the West, Robotron was rather better than its Soviet equivalents in exploiting IBM computer technology. The KGB’s name-trace system SOUD (“System for Operational and Institutional Data”) used East German computers. 119

ST collection continued to expand during the 1980s. At a meeting of senior FCD staff early in 1984 Kryuchkov reported that, “In the last two years the quantity of material and samples handed over to civilian branches of industry has increased by half as much again.” This, he claimed, had been used “to real economic effect,” particularly in energy and food production. Kryuchkov characteristically failed to mention that the sclerotic nature of Soviet economic management made it far harder to exploit ST in the civilian economy than in the imitation of Western armaments. His obsession with operation RYAN also left him dissatisfied with Directorate T’s intelligence on the weapons systems at the heart of Reagan’s non-existent plans for a nuclear first strike. “As previously,” Kryuchkov complained, “we are experiencing an acute shortage of secret information about new types of weapon and their means of delivery.” The FCD “work plan” for 1984 laid down as Directorate T’s main intelligence priorities:

military technology measures taken by the Main Adversary to build up first-strike weapons: the quantitative increase in nuclear munitions and means of delivery (MX missile complexes, Trident, Pershing-2, cruise missiles, strategic bombers); replacement of one generation of nuclear missiles by another (Minuteman, Trident-2), the development of qualitatively new types of weapons (space devices for multiple use for military purposes, laser and pencil beam weapons, non-acoustic anti-submarine defense weapons, electronic warfare weapons, etc.).

The second priority was “information and specimens of significant interest for civilian branches of the USSR’s economy.” 120

Like other Soviet leaders, Gorbachev doubtless took it for granted that Soviet military technology required ST from the West. He was probably more interested, however, in the use of ST to invigorate the civilian economy. In an address to embassy staff in London on December 15, 1984, three months before he became general secretary, he singled out for praise the achievements of Directorate T and its Line X officers in foreign residencies. 121It was already clear that Gorbachev regarded the covert acquisition of Western technology and scientific research as an important part of economic perestroika.

The dramatic improvement in East—West relations during the later 1980s offered new opportunities for Directorate T, which produced 25-40,000 ST “information reports” and 12-13,000 “samples” a year. In 1986 it estimated their value at 550 million roubles; in 1988 and 1989 it put the figure at one billion roubles a year. 122In the later 1980s about 150 Soviet weapons systems were believed by Western experts to be based on technology system stolen from the West. 123

AS WELL AS being impressed by the achievements of Directorate T, Gorbachev also seems to have revised his initially critical opinion of the political intelligence provided by the FCD. During the early 1980s Kryuchkov had repeatedly berated his subordinates for their lack of success in recruiting important American agents, and demanded “a radical improvement.” As late as February 1985 he denounced “the low standard” of operations against the Main Adversary and “the lack of appreciable results” by KGB residencies in recruiting US citizens. 124