KGB EAVESDROPPING PERVASIVE, PERSISTENT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302380001-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 1, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: April 13, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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ST Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/02 :CIA-RDP90-009658000302380001-8
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LOS ANGELES TIMES
13 April 1987
Sophisticated NewDevices
KGB Eavesdropping
Pervasive, Persistent
? f By ROBERT GILLETTE, Times Staf f Writer
WASHINGTON-It was one of
the more dramatic moments. in the
modern history of electronic coun-
terespionage. U.S. Ambassador to
Moscow George F. Kennan sat in
the study of his ornate residence in
1952 and read aloud what he hoped
the KGB, listening through a de-
vipe suspected of being hidden
somewhere in the room, would
believe was an authentic message
to Washington.
As Kennan read, two technicians
scurried about with their detection
instruments, homing in on a radio
bug like excited hounds on the
scent. Suddenly one snatched a
wooden replica of the Great Seal of
the United States fmm the wall and
smashed it open.
"Quivering with excitement,"
Keenan recalled in hie memoirs,
"the technician extracted fmm the
shattered depths of the seal a small
device, not much larger than a
pencil." With the discovery of this
"fantastically advanced bit of ap-
plied electronics; ' he wrote, "the
whole art of intergovernmental
eavesdropping was raised to a new
technological level."
In the intervening 35 years,
nothing has changed and every-
thinahas chanced.
As the current furor over espio-
nage and bugging in the U.S.
Embassy in Moscow makes clear,
the KGB's determination to pene-
trate its primary target in the
Soviet capital remains as high as
ever.
What ie new, in the view of some
U.S. officials investigating security
breaches at the existing embassy
and the unfinished 1190-million
American compound immediately
behind it, is the multiplicity of
techniques that recent advances in
microelectmnica have made possi-
ble.
The amazing device uncovered
- -~-- -
in Kennan's office 35 yeass ago
seems hopelessly primitive today.
Bugs themselves have shrunk to
inconspicuous motes the size of rice
grains, and microwave beams, la-
sers, fiber-optic technology anti
computers have joined the arma-
mentarium of high-technology
snooping. Among the discoveries of
the last decade:
-A sophisticated antenna capa-
ble of being raised an+i lowered
through a disused chim;iey in the
U.S. Embassy in Moscow
Devices in Typewriters
-Tiny devices implanted in the
embassy's electric typewriters that
could read messages before they
were encoded and transmitted.
-The suspected connection of
the structural steel of the new U.S.
Embassy, which is still in con-
struction, into a huge radio antenna
that can broadcast information de-
tected by bugging devices hidden
inside the building.
The Soviets have no monopoly
on spying. In Moscow last week,
the Kremlin displayed a wealth of
electronic listening devices it said it
had found in Soviet offices and
homes in Washington, New York
and San Francisco.
But one U.S. official familiaz,with
the current investigation of U.S.
security lapses in Moscow said the
"Soviets are very, very compe-
tent-in some ways, years ahead of
us" in the technology of eaves-
dropping.
A Standing Assnmption
Since the end of World Waz II,
"hundreds, if not thousands, of
microphones have been concealed
inside American installations,"
Harry Rositzke, a retired Soviet
'~?a?Cigii3i'W!'CP'i'$he CIA, noted in a
1981 book on the KGB.
According to diplomats who
have served recently in the Mos-
cow embassy, it is a standing
assumption that the Soviets can
monitor conversations in ordinazy
offices of the building, which the
Soviets originally constructed as an
elite apartment complex and
turned over to the United States as
an embassy in 1952.
One low-tech countermeasure,
diplomats said, is to scribble the
sensitive parts of conversations,
such as the names of Soviet con-
tacts, on a yellow legal pad. At
home, many foreigners use a child's
"magic slate" for the same purpose.
Important conversations and
conferences are conducted in spe-
cially designed "secure rooms."
They are described in published
reports as rooms within rooms,
shielded to prevent the penetration
or escape of all sound and electro-
magnetic energy such as radio
signals or microwaves.
"Properly constructed and prop-
erly inspected, these rooms are
100% secure," an experienced gov-
ernment security officer said in an
interview. "There are certain
physical laws that even the Soviets
can't violate."
Ronald I. Spires, undersecretary
of state for management, said it is
"generally true" that devices using
microwaves can overhear conver-
sations in almost any unprotected
room. "In those kinds of environ-
ments, nobody in his right mind
would conduct a conversation he
doesn't want overheard," Spires
said.
Two Marine guards have been
accused of letting Soviet agents
enter the most secure azeas of the
embassy in 1985 and 1986 and a
third has been detained on suspi-
cion of espionage during his posting
at the American Consulate in Len-
ingrad in 1981.
Arthur A. Hartman, who retired
as U.S. ambassador to Moscow in
Februazy, was conscious of Soviet
bugging and sought to turn it to
good advantage, said a senior diplo-
mat with long experience in Mos-
cow.
"He wanted the Soviets to hear
95% of what he had to say-when
he briefed a congressman, for ex-
ample," the diplomat said. "This
was one way he had of getting his
ideas across to the Soviets. For the
other 5%, you had the secure
rooms." '
However, he and others noted
that lower-ranking embassy staff
could not always be counted on to
distinguish as clearly between
what could and could not be said
outside secure areas.
Outside the embassy walls, the
bugging of foreign apaztments is
considered so pervasive and the
equipment so easily replaced that
U.S. officials do not even bother
"sweeping" the living quazters for
Soviet bugs.
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"It would only maze tnem maa, even with the receiver on the hook.
and they might steal something in According to a dissident electronics Computers could then recon-
retaliation,' noted one diplomat engineer in Moscow, one technique struct the cables exactly as they
who served in Moscow. Debugging is to transmit through the receiver were typed. In this way, officials
diplomatic apartments, he added, an ultrasonic tone-inaudible to familiar with the technology said,
would also encourage a false sense human ears-that is modulated by the Soviets were able to intercept
of security. voices in the room. The mouthpiece cables before they were coded,
then returns the modulated si Hal. circumventing an encryption sys-
Debugging Is Hopeless B
which is processed to extract the tem that is considered unbreakable.
Soviet agents, seemingly to in- voice component.
timidate foreigners and remind Wholesale Bugging
them that debugging is hopeless, Image of Omniscience Officials said the bugs were
occasionally leave telltale signs of While the KGB may circulate probably installed when the type-
their regular visits to foreigners' such tales to promote an image of writers were shipped from West-
apartments-a roll of film stolen omniscience, many Russians take it ern Europe to Moscow. One source
from a personal camera tucked seriously enough to disconnect said they were briefly in the hands
away in dresser drawer, a toilet ~ their telephones or bury them in of a Western European shipping
used and left unflushed, a piece of ' firm in which the Soviet Union had
trash left on the floor. ~ pillows when friends visit.
Several years a o, one West The KGB, probably like other a controlling interest.
B I intelligence agencies, appears to The greatest problem faced by
European military attache who I reserve its most sophisticated and the Americans is the wholesale
lived alone in Moscow discreetly ingenious bugging technology for bugging of the eight-story office
attached a counting device to his ; its potentially most productive tar- building that is part of their $190-
front door and found that the ~ million embass p
number of openings and closings ~ Bets. Foremost in Moscow is the construction immediateleX behind
U.S. Embassy. Y
was roughly twice what his own ~~ Although U.S. authorities are the present embassy. Under a 1972
comings and goings could explain. ~ reluctant to describe Soviet sys- construction agreement, the Sovi-
"Talking to the walls" has be- terns found at the embassy, it is ets were allowed both to design the
come a time-honored technique clear that countersurveillance ex- major structural elements of the
among foreigners for demanding ' perts have uncovered at least three complex and to fabricate them
repairs and other services from the major technological surprises in the away from the site, providing ex-
notoriously uncooperative govern- last 10 years. tensive opportunity to rig the
ment service agency. In 1978, security officers found a buildfng for eavesdropping.
The wife of a former security sophisticated transmitting and re- Spires, the undersecretary of
officer at the American Embassy, ceiving antenna in a disused chim- state, said that in retrospect it was
for instance, recalls complaining Hey of a residential wing. The "beyond belief" that the Nixon
long and distinctly to her kitchen antenna, capable of being raised Administration gave the Soviets
walls several years ago about the and lowered, evidently to scan such latitude.
disappearance of her favorite various floors of the 10-story em- One official familiar with thb
butcher knife, seemingly purloined bassy, was connected to cables that current investigation explained,
'by the Soviet maid. She came home led through a previously undiacov- "The Soviets would never have
from work a few days later to find a ered tunnel beneath the building. agreed to any conditions that
lump under the living room rug. IC points outside the building. would prevent them from bugging
was the knife. In the spring of 1983, the United the place. They don't do things that
Although microphones buried in States used neutron radiography' are not in their interest."
the walls may still serve their According to other government
purpose, the KGB and its allied equipment that, in effect, X-rayed sources, the problem is not simply
security agencies in Eastern Eu- The tunnel led to a nearby apart- that sophisticated devices have
rope now have much more sophis- ment building. been planted in the building but
ticated and convenient devices, U.S. officials said at the time that that, in a sense, the building itself is
according to diplomatic sources. the antenna appeared to represent a bug. Soviet engineers, they said,
One, these sources said, resem- a unique variety of eavesdropping appear to have incorporated cavi-
bles an inconspicuous bit of copper technology. Some published re- ties in prefabricated structures to
wire that can be installed in mo- ports have said the antenna may conduct sounds or to carry fiber-
ments behind the wall plates of have been designed to pick up optic threads to convenient pickup
electrical outlets. The device reso- emissions from bugged typewrit- the walls and floors of the building.
Hates to the sound of voices and ers, while other reports suggest Accounts differ about what was
transmits its signals through the that it was intended to activate found. But according to one official,
building wiring. listening systems that lay dor- the radiography "essentially con-
U.S. diplomats are warned that mant-and thus harder to de- ?
conversations are no safer outdoors Lett-until needed. firmed that the building had been
than indoors. According to a former Even now, officials refuse to wired for sound.
senior diplomat at the American specify the purpose of the antenna. In addition, some analysts be-
lieve that steel rders and rein-
Embassy, the technology of direc- "It took us a while to figure out. forcing roda~emb dded in the con-
tional microphones has advanced what they were doing; 'one said. Crete walls have been deliberatel
so far that you cannot go outdoors A second major revelation was mt, ~ ~ rovide titiouys
and conduct a conversation safely the discovery in 1984 of ingenious an8 P ~'ep
anywhere in the Soviet Union. microelectronic devices implanted pathways for electronic signals. It
Among ordinary Russians, it is in a number , of the embassy's is feared that the steel structural
widely accepted that the KGB is electric typewriters. Each press of elements of the building may func-
capable of selectively monitoring a key transmitted a distinctive Lion as a huge radio antenna, to
,conversations in any apartment by signal down the typewriter's power broadcast information that bugging
listening through .the telephone, cable and into the building wiring. devices pick up.
The State Department has asked
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' 3 ,
former Defense Secretary and CIA
Director James R. Schlesinger to
recommend whether the building
should be torn down. Several offi-
cials familiar with Schlesinger's
study said there were persuasive
t?easons for not razing it.
"With a certain amount of time
and money, you can pretty well
neutralize what the Soviets have
done," a veteran security officer
insisted. "No building can be made
100% secure-that's why you have
secure rooms."
And a State Department official
pointed out: "Now, you're dealing
with 1977 [bugging] technology.
Rebuild it, and you're going to have
to deal with 1987 technology."
Staff writers Norman Kempster
and Robert C. Toth contributed to
this story.
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