NO PLACE TO HIDE FROM THE SKY SPIES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403210001-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 12, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: April 20, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
, Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000403210001-4
,RTICLE APPS .U
ON PAGE 7
WASHINGTON TIMES
20 April 1987
No place to hide from the sky spies
JENKIN LLOYD JONES
A n officer in the Chadian
army has said that the real
- ....tea v IJJQIL LL JU1/J III
northern Chad is that satellite photos
supplied by both the United States
and French governments give up-to-
the minute dispositions of the Lib-
yan forces.
So detailed is this information, the
officer claims, that a truck cannot
move through the remotest part of
the Sahara without being monitored
by an orbiting eye.
If a French estimate is correct
that the fleeing Libyans left behind
half a billion dollars' worth of Soviet-
made weaponry, much of it sophisti-
cated and never before obtainable by
Western experts, it explains the
high-level bombing by Libyan planes
of the captured base at Ouadi Doum
as an effort to destroy evidence be-
fore it can be hauled off.
.The Russians, too, have spy sat-
ellites, although our side still thinks
better of its own. This could turn out
to be the first desert war in which no
degree of secrecy will be left to mili-
tary movements on either side.
Satellite photos and instant radio
advice to commanders would have
changed history. Cromwell couldn't
have gotten away with concealing
much of his army behind Dust Hill
at Naseby. James II could know in
time that William had forded the
"unfordable" Boyne River.
Given an accurate photo of Gen.
Meade's positions at Gettysburg,
Robert E. Lee might have grasped
the significance of Little Round Tbp.
Constant photography of Japanese
construction on the little island of
Betio would have cured optimistic
assessments by the U.S. Navy and
Marines at Tarawa.
In the future, assuming the future
holds something less than a push-
button nuclear war, tactical sur-
prises will be rare and success or
failure will depend more on the
proper evaluation of what is
knowable.
But perhaps of even greater sig-
nificance are the galloping tech-
niques for spying behind guarded
gates and closed doors.
Charges that Marine guards in
our Moscow embassy permitted
Russian agents to plow through the
building in return for sexual favors
from Russian women point to a new
and scarier day.
In classic espionage of the past.
useful information was bought
(Benedict Arnold), or seduced out of
secret-holders (Mata Hari), or, best
o a t c e yDhotQgraphing an(T
returning documents, leaving no
hint that they had been compro-
misedi" ro-.' . ).
T he Moscow embassy case is
tougher than security prob-
lems of the past. We cannot
know how many sophisticated listen-
ing devices were planted by the un-
authorized visitors that could turn
the building into a sieve. The good
news is that Uncle Sam is scheduled
to abandon the present embassy and
r 'Ito a new one. The bad news
new one may be more
d than the old.
Russian constructors were per-
mitted to build prefabricated mod-
ules without American supervision.
It is feared that steel beams were
actually cast over implanted de-
vices.
Democratic Sen. Patrick J. Leahy
of Vermont, former vice chairman o
the Intelligence Committee, _says
"The only honest. approach is to tear
it down and start all over again." Bye-
bye about $190 million. And Demo-
cratic Rep. Daniel Mica of Florida,
head of the House committee that
oversees embassy security, mourns,
"What you have is a brand-new fa-
cility you cannot move into and a
present embassy you cannot whis-
per in."
The quantum leaps of electronic
science are making us wistful for the
good old days when bugs were con-
cealed in lamp sockets or hidden in
bedsprings. Those are now as
primitive and crude as the Gatling
gun.
Prince Otto von Bismarck, 100
years ago, was ahead of his time
when he cynically remarked,
"There is only one military secret,
and that is that there are no military
secrets."
But, at least as far as overtrusting
Western diplomacy is concerned,
that time may have at last arrived.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000403210001-4