HOW SOVIETS STEAL U.S. HIGH-TECH SECRETS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000404450001-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 21, 2010
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: August 12, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/21 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000404450001-5
ARTICLE A ED
ON PAGE-
U.S.NEWS 8 WORLD REPORT
12 August 1985
Now Soviets Steal U.S.
Nigh-Tech Secrets
The KGB uses blackmail,
bribery and deception to
plunder U.S. technology
worth billions to Moscow.
In Moscow's espionage offensive
against the United States, no prize is
more valued than secrets of America's
high technology.
Like his predecessors, Kremlin chief
Mikhail Gorbachev counts on pilfered
American industrial secrets to help res-
cue the Soviet Union from economic
stagnation and to keep pace in the su-
perpower arms race.
No fewer than 2,000 intelligence
agents, smugglers and interna-
tional middlemen are at work for
Moscow around the globe obtain-
ing everything from sophisticat-
ed computers to pinhead-size mi-
crochips in a no-holds-barred
offensive where stakes are high,
payoffs handsome and personal
risks relatively small. "Gaining
access to our advanced technolo-
gy continues to be their top prior-
it , says William Casey. director
of the Central Intelligence A en-
cy.. "It's a big effort.
Moscow saves billions of dollars
and years of military research by
making use of stolen computers,
semiconductor-manufacturing
gear and other high-tech equip-
ment that the West counts on to
offset huge Soviet numerical ad-
vantages in weapons.
By quickly adopting U.S. tech-
nology, as it has done in at least
150 weapons systems, the Soviet
As a result of past acquisitions, sophis-
ticated laser range finders on Soviet
tanks are carbon copies of U.S. devices,
precision transmission gears for heavy-
lift helicopters are forged on American-
made machine tools. MiG-25 Foxbat
jets are equipped with look-down,
shoot-down radar systems comparable
to those on America's sleek F-15s. And
Soviet cruise missiles incorporate the
same designs-in some cases, compo-
nents-as U.S. counterparts. The Atoll
air-to-air missile is so closely based on
blueprints of the American Sidewinder
that even a single left-hand-threading
screw is repeated.
The result: "Russia," warns Bryen,
W I
details of a quiet ra ar similar to that of
the supersecret Stealth bomber, a new
radar system for the Navy and a new
sonar device to Polish spy Marian Za-
charski. Bell, convicted of spying, is
now serving eight years in prison.
For $25,000, prosecutors charge,STAT
Thomas Patrick Cavanagh, a defense
engineer in Los Angeles, was ready to
sell Stealth blueprints, manuals and
drawings to the Soviets. He was arrest-
ed, authorities say, before the materials
were compromised.
Doctored documents. Smuggling
provides the Soviets with an even rich-
er reward. Their export agents falsify
the documents needed to circumvent
restrictions on the export of sensitive
technology. Some shipments, however,
do slip through amid the 100,000 indi-
vidual export licenses granted each
year for high-technology transfers.
Examples are many. Federal prose-
cutors in California allege that a pair of
high-tech traders, Vladimir Vesely and
Walter Podolece, unlawfully ex-
ported approximately 5,000 so-
phisticated electronic tubes,
among other items, without li-
censes. The equipment wound
up in Eastern Europe.
Often, smugglers simply crate
pieces of equipment for clandes-
tine shipment to the East. The
chief of a U.S. computer firm re-
cently was charged with' smug-
gling 36 unlicensed shipments of
restricted desk-top computers
valued at $350,000 to East-bloc
buyers in Europe.
Customs agents in Denver ar-
rested an American and a Briton
in 1983 as they tried to export to
Moscow the seismograph system
needed for measuring nuclear ex-
plosions, as well as a laser device
for testing fiber optics and etch-
ing computer microchips. Anoth-
er time, professional smugglers in
California flew an entire comput-
Union improves its position in the arms
race and boosts defense costs to Ameri-
can taxpayers as U.S. planners counter
a heightened Soviet threat.
"The implications over the long term
are drastic," says Deputy Assistant De-
fense Secretary Stephen Bryen, head of
the Pentagon's drive to block technolo-
gy losses to Moscow. "We're now faced
with a very high-risk kind of situation."
"Shopping" list. The Kremlin effort
is as determined, organized and brazen
as it is successful. The Soviet State
Committee for Science and Technolo-
gy each year updates a coordinated ac-
quisition plan as thick as a telephone
book and assigns responsibility for ob-
taining each item to the KGB or War-
saw Pact intelligence services.
"has begun to field weapons close to
equal to ours."
Moving among 11,000 companies
that hold U.S. defense contracts, as
well as hundreds of firms overseas that
are privy to U.S. technology, KGB and
other Soviet-bloc agents harvest a rich
collection of secrets and hardware.
Aside from the flood of illicit shipments
to the Soviet bloc, legal U.S. technolo-
gy exports to overseas markets last year
totaled more than 60 billion dollars.
Targeted for bribery, blackmail and
deception are any of the hundreds of
thousands of defense-industry em-
ployes with access to secrets. For
$103,000, say prosecutors, William H.
Bell, a radar engineer for the Hughes
Aircraft Company in Los Angeles, sold
er system to Mexico City aboard a char-
tered airplane to rendezvous with a
commercial airliner bound for Amster-
dam and points East. Customs agents
intercepted the shipment.
Where such efforts fail, the East bloc
turns to foreign third parties who devise
intricate schemes to divert legal exports
of U.S. high technology to intermediate
destinations and then on to the East.
Fully 75 percent of illicit shipments of
high technology are now thought to
reach the Soviet Union this way.
"The game is diversions," says Cus-
toms Commissioner William von Raab,
"much more so than ever before."
While the KGB's hand rarely shows
directly in such cases, U.S. investigators
insist that Soviet-bloc agents give mid-
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/21 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000404450001-5