February 2, 2004
RACING OURSELVES:
The Farewell Dossier (WILLIAM SAFIRE, 2/02/04, NY Times)
Col. Vladimir Vetrov provided what French intelligence called the Farewell dossier. It contained documents from the K.G.B. Technology Directorate showing how the Soviets were systematically stealing — or secretly buying through third parties — the radar, machine tools and semiconductors to keep the Russians nearly competitive with U.S. military-industrial strength through the 70's. In effect, the U.S. was in an arms race with itself.Reagan passed this on to William J. Casey, his director of central intelligence, now remembered only for the Iran-contra fiasco. Casey called in Weiss, then working with Thomas C. Reed on the staff of the National Security Council. After studying the list of hundreds of Soviet agents and purchasers (including one cosmonaut) assigned to this penetration in the U.S. and Japan, Weiss counseled against deportation.
Instead, according to Reed — a former Air Force secretary whose fascinating cold war book, "At the Abyss," will be published by Random House next month — Weiss said: "Why not help the Soviets with their shopping? Now that we know what they want, we can help them get it." The catch: computer chips would be designed to pass Soviet quality tests and then to fail in operation.
In our complex disinformation scheme, deliberately flawed designs for stealth technology and space defense sent Russian scientists down paths that wasted time and money.
That's as clever as the Star Wars hoax. Of course, the intelligence agencies specialize in dis- and misinformation. Posted by Orrin Judd at February 2, 2004 11:31 AM
You may remember the "Concordski," the Soviet SST airliner that looked suspiciously like the Concorde.
As it turns out, the KGB attempted to blackmail in engineer on the Concorde program. However, rather than flipping as intended, he rang the opsec bell. MI-5 told him to pass them the microfilm before they passed it back for him to pass to the Soviets.
MI-5 made small changes, the sort that go unnoticed if you have to cheat on the test because you didn't do your homework. But those changes added up.
Perhaps you remember the Paris Airshow (late-70s, I think), where the Concordski was in a left-hand base to final turn for landing when the back half of the airplane fell off.
Doh.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at February 2, 2004 11:51 AMJeff - Are you saying that "our tax dollars at work" go towards making civilian airliners fall out of the sky? That sounds awfully close to terrorism to me.
Posted by: Michael Gersh at February 2, 2004 1:12 PMWell, if by "our" you mean British tax dollars.
My guess is that MI-5 intended the airplane to come apart during trials, before commercial use.
Which, in fact, is what it did. That it hit an apartment building, killing several French citizens, might arouse some sympathy.
Or not. Depending on your view of the French, your mileage may vary.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at February 2, 2004 2:28 PMDidn't Pournelle write about this back in the '80's? I know I've seen this written up as a scenario a least a decade or more ago.
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at February 2, 2004 5:33 PM> Didn't Pournelle write about this back in the '80's?
I don't know if you're thinking of The Strategy of Technology, of which he had an annotated and revised copy up on his website (and may still have, for all I know.) I don't remember this specific incident being mentioned, but either way SOT is a valuable work and played a small but importand role in making this all happen.
Posted by: at February 2, 2004 11:10 PMThat's probably it. He didn't mention any specific incidents, but did discuss the general concept of letting the Soviets steal broken technology in order to sabotage them.
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at February 3, 2004 11:20 AMThe BBC did a series on it around 1990.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at February 3, 2004 1:28 PM