“How does that work?”
“You put the encrypted tape on one machine, and a blank tape on a second machine. The first machine is running, say, 480 times as fast as the second machine. If, for example, you had 960 seconds of data, eight minutes’ worth, it gets copied onto two seconds’ worth of tape on the second machine. And most messages are a lot shorter than eight minutes, more like two, before condensation. When you condense a two-minute tape at 480—and we can go as high as 960 and even 1920, but sometimes the tape won’t take it that short—when you condense a two-minute tape at 480, you get a half-second uplink tape. You bury that in garbage—”
“What?”
“You send a long uplink tape . . . sometimes, depending on how long the satellite will be over you, an hour, and hour and a half. They call it garbage because the five-character blocks, which look like crypto, aren’t; they’re meaningless, randomly selected. I brought about twenty hours’ worth with me. So what you do is re-record say forty-five minutes of that, and you slip the half-second—sometimes shorter—crypto message in between a couple of characters in the garbage blocks. Still with me?”
“I don’t know,” Jack confessed.
“So we’ll send that up to the satellite,” Peters said. “The satellite records it, and then, when the satellite gets over Washington—actually, we have antennae farms at Vint Hill Farms Station in Virginia, and at Fort Meade, over in Maryland—the satellite downlinks it. Okay?”
“I’m beginning to be sorry I asked,” Jack confessed.
“Then they run the tape fast through one of their machines, until they hit the trigger—”
“What trigger?”
“The crypto message has an impulse—like a 300-cycle tone, you know? The exact frequency is in a Signal Operations Instruction, so maybe one day it’s 299 cps, and the next 1,202, and so on. Anyway, when the fast machine hits a trigger, it stops, backs up to the trigger, and then starts running at slow speed. That’s fed to a crypto machine, and that’s it. Out of the crypto machine comes the decrypted message.”
Jack thought it over for a long moment.
“So what the bad guys have to do is play the whole tape—the garbage tape—looking for the trigger. . . .”
“Right.”
“Which is hidden somewhere in a half-second encrypted message in tape maybe forty-five minutes long. . . .”
“Right.”
“And if they get lucky, then all they have to do is break the encryption code?”
“Right. It’s supposed to be foolproof, which probably means they’re reading it in the Kremlin, or in Peking, before the courier can get it into Washington from Vint Hill Farms or Fort Meade.”
“How often can you send, or receive, something?”
“We get a satellite about every four hours for half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes—it depends on the trajectory.”
“Around the clock?”
“Sure.
“I find it hard to believe that the bad guys have somebody here listening for us to send a message to a satellite.”
“Anything is possible,” Peters said.
“But if there is, aren’t we telling him here’s a message the minute we start transmitting?”
“We transmit garbage twenty-four hours a day. Every five minutes, there’s a two-second pause, long enough to shut off the garbage tape and turn on the crypto tape,” Peters explained. “And then, when the crypto’s finished, we wait for a two-second pause, and shut it down, and turn on the garbage again,”
“I am awed,” Jack said. “And I will be very surprised if it works.”
Two hours later, when Geoff Craig handed him a printout from the cryptographic machine, there was proof that it worked:
SECRET
EARN0005 WASH DC 1405 ZULU 19 MARCH 1965
VIA WHITE HOUSE SIGNAL AGENCY
FROM: EARNEST SIX
TO: HELPER SIX
1-IMMEDIATELY ON RECEIPT ADVISE LOCATION, CONDITION, VISA STATUS AND ETA USA MRS. MARJORIE PORTET.
2-ETA LÉOPOLDVILLE LIEUTENANT JAMES C. MOORE AND CWO3 FRANCIS CLAURE FROM RUCKER VIA BRUSSELS ABOARD UTA 5621 1635 ZULU 22 MARCH.
FINTON FOR EARNEST SIX
SECRET
And three hours after that, at 3:15 P.M. local time, Colonel Sanford T. Felter (Earnest Six) also had proof that the burst transmission network to Costermansville was functioning well when he received the following from Major George Washington Lunsford (Helper Six).
SECRET
HELP0003 1605 ZULU 19 MARCH 1965
VIA WHITE HOUSE SIGNAL AGENCY
FROM: HELPER SIX
TO: EARNEST SIX
1-REF PARA 1 YOUR 0005: MRS. MARJORIE PORTET, LAST SEEN IN SPLENDID CONDITION IN SWIMMING POOL THIS LOCATION 1555 ZULU 19 MARCH 1965 DECLINES TO DISCUSS HER TRAVEL PLANS TO USA BEYOND STATING QUOTE NOT ANY TIME SOON ENDQUOTE. SHE STATES SHE HAS NON-EXPIRING, MULTI ENTRY/EXIT VISA AND SENDS HER LOVE.
2-REF PARA 2 YOUR 0005: TRAVELERS WILL BE MET AT LÉOPOLDVILLE BY AUNT JEMIMA WHO HAS APPROPRIATE MACHINERY READY FOR THEM TO OPERATE.
HELPER SIX
SECRET
[ EIGHT ]
The Hotel du Lac
Costermansville, Kivu Province
Republic of the Congo
0950 23 March 1965
The reception room of the King Leopold Suite had been converted into the Detachment’s conference room by moving the elegant furniture with which it had been furnished and replacing it with folding banquet tables and folding chairs from the hotel’s basement storerooms.
Map boards had been locally fabricated from two-by-fours and sheets of plywood, and there was even a glossy mahogany speaker’s lectern with a built-in public address system. It carried a beautifully carved insignia reading, “Rotary International, Costermansville, Belgian Congo.”
With the exception of a few members of the Detachment—aircraft mechanics, a tower operator, and two Green Berets charged with their security—who were in Stanleyville, the entire Detachment had been assembled in the conference room. They were sitting around the banquet tables, which had been arranged in a U.
They were all now wearing the uniforms of Congolese paratroops, with the collar rank insignia of senior noncommissioned officers or junior officers. Lunsford had decided, Solomon-like, that E-7s would be captains, E-6s lieutenants, and everybody else who spoke Swahili senior sergeants. The seven E-5s who didn’t speak Swahili were wearing sergeant’s insignia.
Everyone was wearing U.S. Army parachutist’s jump boots, rather than Congolese boots, as the result of another Solomon-like decision of Major Lunsford. The “old” Green Berets had put on Congolese boots when they had drawn their Congolese uniforms; many of the “new” Green Berets had not.
“What the hell, Geoff,” Lunsford had announced when informed of the problem. “If it makes them feel good, why not?”
With the exception of their pistols—everyone had a Colt Model 1911A1 .45 ACP caliber semiautomatic pistol—their weapons were a mixture of Belgian and American. There were Fabrique National 7-mm automatic rifles from Colonel Supo’s ordnance stocks, and U.S. Army M-16 .223 rifles, including the short carbine version of that weapon, the Car-16.
Major Lunsford, Lieutenant Craig, and Sergeant Thomas were armed with cut-down Remington Model 1100 12-gauge shotguns. They had carried such weapons in Vietnam, having found they were both very effective close-range people killers, and easy to carry in aircraft. All three weapons and a case of 00-buckshot ammunition for them had been carried to Africa in a locked case, as Lunsford strongly suspected that if their weapons preference became known, everyone would want a shotgun, and he wanted most everybody to be armed with a rifle of one kind or another.
The weapons littered the banquet tables in the conference room, as everybody watched the door to see what the hell was up.
The door opened, and Lieutenant Craig walked in, stood to one side, and called, “Ah-ten-hut!”
Everyone in the room popped to attention.
Colonel Jean-Baptiste Supo, Military Commandant of Oriental, Equatorial, and Kivu Provinces, walked into the room, followed by two Congolese officers and finally Major Lunsford, who was wearing the uniform of a Congolese lieutenant colonel of paratroops.
Major Smythe walked up to Lunsford, saluted crisply, and announced, “Sir, the Detachment is formed.”
Lunsford returned the salute, performed a crisp about-face movement, saluted Colonel Supo, and said, in Swahili, “Chief, the detachment is formed.”
Supo returned the salute, then walked to the lectern.
“Be as you were,” he said, in painful English. “I regret, I have not the English. Major Totse will do for me.”
Major Alain George Totse stepped beside Supo.
“I am Major Totse,” he said in heavily French-accented English, “I have the honor to be Colonel Supo’s intelligence officer.”
He stepped back and motioned for Colonel Supo to go to the lectern’s microphone. Colonel Supo said something to him in Swahili, and Totse stepped forward to stand beside Supo.
Supo said something in Swahili.
“Colonel Supo welcomes you to the Republic of the Congo and thanks you for offering to serve against a common enemy,” Totse translated.
Colonel Supo said something else in Swahili.
“Colonel Supo,” Major Totse translated with a smile, “says I am to take it from here.”
Colonel Supo went to one of the empty chairs in the first row and motioned for Lunsford, Smythe, and Craig, who were still standing near the lectern, to join him.
Totse went to the map board, where there were two Belgian Army maps, one U.S. Army map, and one National Geographic Society map. He picked up a pointer, which had formerly been a billiards cue.
“My English is not so fine,” he announced. “Be so good to interrupt when understand me you don’t.”
There were some muted chuckles.
Totse pointed to the U.S. Army map.
“This is where we are, Costermansville, in Kivu Province,” he said, “at the southern end of Lake Kivu. We are pretty much in the center of Africa. This is the source of the Nile River . . .”
He moved the pointer.
“. . . just over the border in Rwanda.”
He shifted the pointer to the west.
“This is Stanleyville, in Oriental Province, where you arrived in this country. When this trouble began, a revolutionary named Nicholas Olenga, who originally referred to himself—without ever having been an officer—as ‘Major’ Olenga, then ‘Colonel’ Olenga, and who now calls himself ‘Lieutenant General’ Olenga, began operations in Albertville, which is here on the shore of Lake Tanganyika.”
He moved the pointer to show where he meant.
“The border between the Congo and Tanganyika runs down the middle of Lake Tanganyika.
“Now, in the beginning, Olenga’s rebellion was spontaneity—”
“Spontaneous, Alain,” Lunsford corrected him.
“Spontaneous, thank you, Father,” Totse said. “Olenga is a Kitawala, which is a cult mixing primitive Christian faith—they expect the return of Christ any day—with native gods. They believe they have Dawa, which protects them from being shot.
“Inasmuch as Olenga’s insurrection was unexpected, the Armée Nationale Congolese was not prepared for it. He took Albertville and marched on Stanleyville, and took that, and increased the size of his forces en route.
“Three things happened. It was necessary to request foreign assistance. A former British officer, Michael Hoare, who lives in South Africa, was recruited to form a mercenary force to resist Olenga and his Simbas. Hoare is a soldier, but he recruited his white mercenaries from the bars of the Belgian and French waterfronts. They are not soldiers. It is necessary for Hoare to shoot the insubordinate as a means of maintaining discipline.
“Olenga began to massacre Belgians and other whites in Stanleyville. The story that he cut their livers out and ate them is true. Major Lunsford was in Stanleyville and saw this.
“The Russians and the Chinese, who were apparently as surprised as we were at Olenga’s success, began to try to supply him with arms and people to train his men.
“Aware of what that would mean, and to save the lives of the Belgians in Stanleyville, the Belgians provided parachutists, and you Americans airplanes, to jump into Stanleyville. The Belgians also supplied troops under Colonel Van de Waele. Those troops, and Major Hoare’s mercenaries, succeeded in driving the Simbas from Albertville and Stanleyville. At the moment they are scattered, in small groups, all over this area, some in the bush around Albertville, some in the bush around Stanleyville, but with their greatest strength in the area of Luluabourg in Kasai Province.”
He moved the pool pointer far to the east on the map to Luluabourg.
“For one reason or another, the ANC has been unable to completely eliminate the Simba in Kasai Province, which may explain why, as of yesterday, General Mobutu has added Kasai Province to Colonel Supo’s responsibilities, and given him orders to eliminate the Simba and ‘Lieutenant General’ Olenga once and for all.
“I have no doubt this could be accomplished, and without the assistance of Major Hoare’s mercenaries, were it not for the new threat of Guevara. If Guevara is coming to the Congo, we have to presume he is coming with Soviet support, which means with Soviet weapons and other supplies, and possibly with the assistance of the Chinese Communists as well.
“Now, so far Olenga’s forces are not well-equipped or well-trained. Most of their weapons are those they captured from the ANC in the opening days of the trouble. If Guevara comes—”
“With respect, Alain,” Lunsford interrupted. “When Guevara comes.”
“I stand corrected,” Totse said. “When Guevara comes, it will be necessary for him to get his men, and weapons, and supplies to the center of insurrectionist activity in Luluabourg. There is little doubt that both will arrive in the capital of Tanganyika, Dar es Salaam, which is here . . .”
He pointed to the far, eastern, coast of Tanganyika.
“. . . on the Indian Ocean, by both ship and air. That’s quite a distance. There’s no way they could get them across the border where our countries join, which means they would have to be shipped across Lake Tanganyika, and then somehow transport them to Luluabourg.
“That raises the possibility of both men and matériel being shipped through the former French Congo, now known as Congo Brazzaville.”
He moved the pointer again.
“You can see that Brazzaville is closer to Luluabourg than Luluabourg is to Lake Tanganyika.
“As Napoleon said, ‘an army travels on its stomach’, and that would seem to apply to a guerrilla force as well. The tactics devised by Colonel Supo to deal with this threat are as follows:
“First, now that Kasai Province is under his orders, he will use ANC Forces and Major Hoare’s mercenary force, and the few aircraft that will now be available to him—several B-26 bombers, a few more T-28s, and a C-47—to contain, and ultimately eliminate, the insurrectionists around Luluabourg.
“Colonel Supo believes that all that activity in Luluabourg area will discourage the Soviets—and the Cubans—from trying to increase their forces, or supply them, through Congo Brazzaville.
“That, of course, leaves them only the across-Lake-Tanganyika route. It is also possible that since they will soon learn the bulk of our strength is in the Luluabourg area, they may see it as an opportunity to strike in this area. It is communist doctrine, as we all know, to strike where the enemy is weakest, and when resistance is encountered, to bend like a weed in the wind.
“The terrain in this area is such that the insurrectionists can move a hundred meters off the road confident that we can’t see them. And, until now, aerial reconnaissance has been unavailable to us. If we can find them, without them knowing they have been found, we can do them a good deal of harm. Furthermore, patrolling Lake Tanganyika by air will permit us to interdict much of what they try to ship across the lake.�
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He paused and smiled.
“Are you now getting the idea of why we’re so glad to have you with us?”
“Major,” Lunsford said. “With due respect to our aviators, overwhelming immodesty compels me to tell you that Special Forces is also pretty good at interdicting people—and their supplies—on the ground. In both friendly territory and the other kind.”
“So you have been telling me, Father,” Totse said.
“We’re also pretty good at listening to other people’s radio messages, Major,” Spec7 Peters said.
“That of course would be very helpful,” Totse said, and then went on. “I will be here as long as necessary to answer any and all questions, but before we get into that: Would you like to add anything, my colonel?”
Supo got up and walked to the lectern, looked around the room, and then said something in Swahili.
Totse translated. “The colonel says that when he was a young corporal, he was taught to conserve the things necessary to fight—that most of the time when they are gone, they are gone forever.”
Supo spoke again, and again Totse translated:
“The colonel says that he thinks you are going to become very valuable tools to fight this war, and therefore he asks—”
Supo interrupted him in Swahili.
“The colonel begs you to conserve your airplanes, and yourselves, so that you will be valuable tools for a long time,” Totse translated. “He says he cannot afford the loss of one airplane, or any one of you.”
Lunsford stood up.
“With all respect, my colonel,” he said. “When we take care of this little job for you, and get on the plane to go home, I will bet you a case of beer that you will say, ‘My God, am I glad to see them go !’ ”
“A soldier,” Supo said in his painful English, “is never glad to say good-bye to another soldier.”
He turned and marched out of the room.
[ NINE ]
SECRET
Central Intelligence Agency Langley, Virginia
Special Ops Page 59