DEATH OF MAJOR NICHOLSON

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100310031-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 6, 2012
• Sequence Number: 31
• Publication Date: March 27, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

ILLEGIB
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/06: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100310031-6
RADIO N REPORTS, INC.
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Morning Edition
STATION WAMU-FM
NPR Network
DATE March 27, 1985 6:45 A.M. CITY Washington, D.C.
Death of Major Nicholson
BOB EDWARDS: The official Soviet news agency Tass said
today that U.S. Army Major Arthur Nicholson was in a restricted
area, taking pictures of military equipment through a window,
when he was shot and killed by a Soviet sentry in East Germany on
Sunday. Nicholson was part of a 14-member U.S. military liaison
team based in East Germany since 1947.
James Bamford is an expert on American intelligence
gathering and author of the book the Puzz-1-e Palace, about the
National Security Agency. He says the liaison team's mission is
to observe Soviet military activities.
JAMES BAMFORD: I think they're able to get quite a bit
of information on troop strength and tactical type of equipment,
such as tanks and armored personnel carriers, that type of
information. I don't think they're very useful in terms of
getting high-level strategic information. I think their main job
is collecting the battlefield type of information that they can
get close-up.
EDWARDS: American sources quoted in the New York Times
say that Major Nicholson was observing Soviet tank sheds. Now,
what could one hope to learn from that?
BAMFORD: Well, I think he would hope to see a tank
inside the shed.
One of the problems that the United States has in terms
of spying on East Germany is the fact that our satellites are
only capable of observing a certain amount of the area for a very
small segment of the day. Usually only about a few minutes out
of the day is a spy satellite able to photograph the area. And
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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/06: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100310031-6
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/06: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100310031-6
then again, there's a problem of cloud cover.
So, a lot of times, if the Soviet Union or East Germany
knows-when a satellite is going to go over, they'll hide the
equipment under a cover or in a shed. And perhaps this is one
way to get around the problem of not observing the tanks close-up
by a satellite. And perhaps they were going to take some
close-up photos of the cannon on the tank or a particular
armament on the tank.
EDWARDS: Any idea how successful this intelligence
gathering has been over the years?
BAMFORD: I assume that it's been quite successful. The
United States gathers quite a bit of intelligence through the
human sources, and this is probably the most ambitious of all the
human intelligence operations performed by the Army, primarily
because the Russians do the same thing in West Germany.
EDWARDS: Do you know of any other place in the world
where two adversaries have such an arrangement?
BAMFORD: No. As I said, from all I know, this is the
only place in the world that has it this obvious, that it's this
overt.
Again, the attaches perform a somewhat similar function.
Military attaches in the Soviet Union, for example, are, in a
sense, legalized spies. That's their primary mission, is
collecting intelligence. And the same with Soviet attaches in
the United States. And every now and then, an attache is caught
spying and is declared persona non grata and thrown out of a
country. But it never comes to this violent a conclusion.
EDWARDS: National security expert James Bamford.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/06: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100310031-6