Farewell

by Eric Raynaud

  Kissinger was sincere in his pursuit of détente. That strategy led to the relaxation of trade terms with the Soviet Union. It was assumed that good trade relations could only contribute to international stability and reduce the risks of military escalation. During this period, corresponding to the years of Vetrov’s posting in Paris, the KGB intensified its technological spying.

  A few former members of the Nixon administration, including Richard Allen, President Reagan’s first national security adviser, had been in a position to evaluate the limits of peaceful coexistence, and the double-dealing of the Soviets under the cover of détente. “In my opinion,” admits Allen, “the Nixon administration was a catastrophic disappointment, not just because of the ridiculous petty crimes turned into high crimes, but because of the turn to détente as a sort of theology, a theory of the inevitability of better relations with the USSR through inducements to alter its behavior. I believed that this theory was bankrupt.”1

  Ronald Reagan personally championed this new resolute attitude of firmness toward the Soviet Union, imposing a more aggressive style. With the new president, there was no more “inevitability of better relations.” The game was about to change. The chess game of détente, a specifically Russian game, would be replaced by the more American poker to be the final game of the Cold War.

  As confirmed by many witnesses, in contrast with Nixon’s more “cerebral” style, Reagan operated a lot on instinct and personal conviction. His views were that a system based on individual freedom and a market economy was better than the communist system and, therefore, had to prevail. “Reagan was often underestimated, he was aware of it, and did not mind turning that to an advantage. More importantly, he was able to shape and give substance to ideas that could be viewed as ‘primitive,’” Allen recalls.2

  Vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, Reagan’s “primitive ideas” were clear. Long before his famous “Evil Empire Speech,” delivered in March 1983, he made his views known to the world, during his first press conference held at the White House in January 1981. Richard Allen was there, and he remembers the episode vividly:

  “Answering a particularly insidious question from a journalist3 who had asked him how he viewed the long-range intentions of the Soviet Union, the president declared frankly that the Russians would continue to lie, cheat, and to commit any crime to achieve their goals. His words cast a chill over the audience, and the whole pack of journalists turned to Alexander Haig, the secretary of state, sitting next to me. Haig’s jaw dropped instantly, meaning an even more reproachful ‘Oh my God.’ Soon after the conference, as we were walking briskly through the arcade of the East Alley of the White House to go back to the West wing, Reagan suddenly turned toward me.

  “‘Tell me, Dick, aren’t the Russians lying, cheating, and stealing from us everything they can?’

  “‘Absolutely, Mr. President.’

  “‘That’s what I thought,’ concluded Reagan.”4

  Here again, one can only notice a disconcerting coincidence. Almost to the date, in Moscow, Vladimir Vetrov was about to plunge into his solo adventure, revealing to the West the scope of the theft of technology and of anything that could keep the Soviet economy afloat.

  Within Reagan’s administration, and more specifically at the NSC (National Security Council), Allen put together a team that shared totally the president’s views. From that moment on, coexistence between the two blocs was not a given anymore; the Soviet Empire could very well be defeated and dismantled. In 1980, this was still a crazy idea. A new global strategy, referred to by a few NSC members as the “take-down strategy,” was about to be put in place, with the goal of winning the Cold War by strangling the Soviet economy. This strategy was articulated in a secret document, NSDD 75 (National Security Decision Directive). It had many facets, but rested mainly on three pillars.5

  First, the White House was to reassert its determination in the military and geostrategic area. This led to the deployment of Pershing missiles in Europe, and to a stronger support of contra-revolutionary movements in Central America, in Angola, and in Afghanistan where the U.S. delivered ground-to-air Stinger missiles to the mujahideens.

  Then, the Americans decided, in close coordination with friendly oil-producing countries in the Persian Gulf, to significantly increase the oil production in order to drive the price of the barrel down, thereby reducing the source of hard currencies the Soviet Union derived from oil. This oil policy would soon be reinforced by a very restrictive monetary policy adopted by the Federal Reserve Bank, leading to a drop in the price of gold, another significant resource of the USSR.

  Finally, Reagan became directly involved in restarting the arms race with the implementation of new, but classic, military programs, including the famous stealth bomber. Above all was the elaboration of the SDI project (the Strategic Defense Initiative; better known under the name of Star Wars). SDI was a formidable technological challenge for the Soviets, since their economy was resting mostly on the military-industrial complex, dependent on stealing Western technology through the KGB Line X. Since Vetrov’s revelations, the Line X network had no secrets anymore for the Reagan Administration.

  Actually, even before the Farewell dossier, the American government knew about technological spying by the Soviets. With the easing of restrictions on East-West trade under Nixon and Ford, however, the boundary between theft and legal commerce became fuzzy, especially as the KGB could quite legally buy certain technologies that were sold freely during international trade shows. Against this backdrop, the CIA and the FBI preferred to work on purely political or military intelligence cases.

  President Carter was the first to become interested in scientific and technical espionage by the KGB. At his request, the CIA started writing reports such as the Presidential Review Memorandum 31, which treated the topic in fairly general terms. The first embargo measure on advanced U.S. technology was a retaliatory measure against the Soviet Army’s intervention in Afghanistan in 1979.

  In 1981, with the arrival of a new team in the White House, attention became even more focused. Reagan saw immediately the Soviet window of vulnerability in the area of strategic weapons, confirming that the communist economy was faltering. At the NSC, work started in earnest to monitor the situation closely. Thanks to the Farewell case, one man in particular became one of the most respected among Reagan’s advisers for his opinions. A few words about this character are in order before analyzing his personal contribution to ending the Cold War.

  As one of the National Security Council advisers, Gus Weiss was specializing in economic affairs, but his areas of expertise were many. Fascinated by aeronautics since childhood, after graduating from Harvard, he had chosen to focus on the strategic implications of technological innovation. A brilliant mind and an extremely competent specialist, NASA awarded him the Exceptional Public Service Medal for his work. He even received the French Legion of Honor for his collaboration in a joint venture with General Electric and SNECMA, leading to the development of the CFM56 aircraft engines that would equip the first Airbus airplanes.6

  In the mid-sixties, Gus Weiss joined the Hudson Institute, where he met Richard Allen. He worked in collaboration with Professor Hermann Kahn, the thermonuclear war theoretician, also known to have inspired the Dr. Strangelove character in Stanley Kubrick’s movie. At the NSC, this even earned him the nickname of “Dr. Strangeweiss,” which could not bother this man known for his strong sense of humor and for practicing self-derision occasionally.

  True, Gus Weiss could seem strange, mostly because of his physical appearance. As a youth, he was afflicted by a rare form of alopecia that left him totally hairless. Once he put on his wig and his thick glasses, he could pass for a crazy scientist. However, he owed this reputation of being a bit of an eccentric to his extraordinary intellectual abilities and to his quasi-obsessive research work on neglected topics in industrial espionage.

  Richard Allen, who had become his friend, brought him on board as a NSC staffer in the early seve
nties, during the Nixon presidency. “He was a pure genius,” Allen says, “he perfectly mastered all subject matters.” Weiss was already very interested in technology spying by the Soviets. He even wrote a first memo on the topic, which later was the inspiration for the 1974 NSC Memorandum 247. This was one of the very first texts responding to technology theft and prohibiting sales of powerful computers to Eastern Bloc countries.7

  For several years, alone in his Washington office, Gus Weiss continued to inventory industrial espionage cases from the East. Without being able to precisely quantify the phenomenon, he became convinced of its strategic significance and of the Soviet Union’s vulnerability in this area.

  In 1981, when Richard Allen came back to the NSC as first adviser, Gus Weiss was among the first to join his team of collaborators. He immediately resumed his work as economic adviser on technology espionage. This time, his activities were fully in line with the Reagan administration’s ideology.

  By the end of 1981, when the Farewell dossier landed on his desk, Weiss was both shocked and triumphant, since this information validated all of his previous analyses. With such a treasure in his hands, Dr. “Strangeweiss” started seriously thinking about strategic responses that could be integrated in the global plan of choking the Soviet Union economically.

  Respectful of Marcel Chalet’s explicit request, American secret services observed the utmost prudence when using the information from the Farewell file. At this stage of the operation, Vetrov was still active, and nobody wanted to kill the goose that was laying the golden eggs. In fact, mole arrests and expulsions would start much later.

  Gus Weiss had a better idea about using the Farewell dossier in a much more devastating way. The VPK, the organization centralizing technology requests from the military-industrial complex, compiled in what was informally called the Red Book a detailed “shopping list” for each Soviet ministry.

  In January 1982, Weiss proposed to William Casey, director of the CIA and personal friend of Ronald Reagan, to put in place a vast plan for sabotaging the Soviet economy by transferring false information to the KGB Line X spies.8 Reagan approved the plan immediately and enthusiastically.

  Weiss focused his attention more specifically on the oil and gas industry which, as mentioned earlier, was a sector of the Soviet economy Washington had decided to handle in a special way.

  A gas pipeline between Siberia and Western Europe had been in the design phase for many years.9 It was supposed to be commissioned soon. Implementing European technology, this gas pipeline was the source of tensions between the EEC countries and the United States. Europe’s need for energy independence through diversification was in direct conflict with the economic war the Americans had launched against the Soviet Union. Mitterrand and Reagan, just after their honeymoon over the Farewell case, had a serious confrontation on the topic.

  Weiss’s plan allowed everybody to agree. He arranged to have software delivered to Line X through a Canadian company. This software was meant to control gas pipeline valves and turbines, and it was delivered with viruses embedded in the code by one of the contractors. The viruses were designed to have a delayed effect; at first the software seemed to work as per the contract specifications.

  The sudden activation of the viruses in December 1983 led to a huge three-kiloton gas explosion in the Urengoi gas field, precisely in Siberia where, ironically, Vetrov had just started his jail time for a crime of passion. There was another extraordinary coincidence. The contract for the management software of the Urengoi-Uzhgorod pipeline pumping stations had been awarded to the French company Thomson-CSF, and the Thomson executive who had led the negotiations worked in collaboration with a certain Jacques Prévost.

  Observed from space by satellite, the explosion was allegedly so powerful that it alarmed NATO analysts, who later described it as the most powerful non-nuclear (man-made) explosion of all times. NORAD, responsible for the air defense of the U.S. territory, even thought that there had been a missile launch from an area where no base was known. Weiss had to reassure, one by one, his NSC colleagues, explaining that “all this was normal.”10

  The American administration thought the pipeline sabotage operation was a new blow for the Soviets. First, it disturbed natural gas exports and, consequently, earned revenue in hard currencies. Since the military-industrial complex was resting, for the most part, on technology stolen in the West, the American side was hoping that this “accident” would create a general climate of paranoia within the KGB regarding Soviet industrial equipment. It was also expected that the KGB would no longer trust its technology espionage, at a time when the Soviet Union needed it most.

  In March 1983, Reagan launched his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). The famous “Star Wars” plan was expected to go through Congress and pass with a budget above thirty billion dollars. To use a metaphor, the poker player had just raised the stakes, knowing his adversary’s poor hand.

  The Americans did not stop there. Under the coordination of William Casey and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, the plan of economic war against the Soviet Union became systematic in all federal organizations. Financially, the plan was to bar Soviet access to credit from Western banks. This effort was conducted by Roger Robinson, a New York banker familiar with the world of international finance. In the Defense Department, Fred Ikle and Richard Perle were in charge of coordinating with their allies to limit, and even prohibit, technology transfers to the Eastern Bloc. This was where the Farewell dossier had its greatest impact. When Richard Perle received the Farewell dossier from the hands of a CIA agent, he was absolutely astonished: “Of course everybody knew the Soviets were stealing whatever they could, but this was beyond everything we imagined. Each request for technology had the corresponding budget necessary to reach the stated objective. It was really like a catalogue de la Redoute [equivalent of the Sears catalog].”11 The Defense Department was also interested in using this catalog to determine exactly which advanced technologies should be off-limit to the Soviets.

  The Farewell dossier was progressively being exploited in Europe as well. The Americans had directly transmitted elements of the dossier to their NATO allies. These pieces of information would, therefore, eventually reach the French secret services, who were very “honored” to be trusted with such “confidential” information…which had actually originated from their services.

  At the DST, on Rue des Saussaies, the new boss, Yves Bonnet, was managing how the Farewell information was to be used. After a briefing in Langley by the CIA on how to use the Farewell dossier (the CIA agents knowing nothing of the French origin of the sources), Bonnet regained control of the situation and personally organized the process of informing his peers in the other fifteen countries concerned by Line X activities. The heads of British and German services came to Paris, in turn, to be briefed by the DST.

  The French also took part in a deception operation launched by the CIA. This was a particularly vicious campaign, giving a more precise idea of the manipulation techniques used in the world of espionage. The operation, as recounted by one of its masterminds, General Guyaux, had to do with the assumed properties of osmium-187 metal for use in weaponry implementing laser technology. With the launching of the SDI project by Ronald Reagan, this technology had become one of the priorities for Soviet intelligence. Here is what General Guyaux had to say about it: “By the end of the seventies, there was a lot of talk going on about the ‘graser,’ a kind of laser using high energy gamma rays from radioactive elements instead of using optical radiation ranging from infrared to ultraviolet. Even though, in France, Professor Jaéglé had obtained a weak laser effect with X-rays, it was out of the question to rush headlong into the domain of gamma rays. This technology was far from being developed, although it would have been a formidable weapon since gamma rays are highly penetrating.”12

  The Farewell dossier, as a matter of fact, included a document from a Soviet research lab wherein scientists were protesting the decision of Directorate T not
to launch any research program devoted to osmium. The letter went on to accuse scientists opposed to the project of betrayal. Convinced that the Soviets had a serious interest in that particular isotope, secret services of the Western alliance decided to encourage, in a subtle way, the Russians to err further.

  The American journal Physical Review and the British magazine Nature published a few articles signed by renowned physicists detailing the number and the diversity of osmium-187 energy levels. Then, technical papers on the subject stopped. When this happens in technical and scientific areas, it signals to all intelligence services that this is of strategic importance. Directorate T immediately ordered its operatives to follow that trail, and more specifically in France, where the KGB had attempted to recruit quite a few scientists. At scientific conventions, where intelligence officers spent a lot of time, renowned researchers from all over the world started discussing with credibility osmium properties, describing the metal as a good candidate for use in a possible “graser.” A few labs went as far as publishing posters claiming successful experiments conducted in highly protected research centers. And last, American labs conspicuously bought significant quantities of natural osmium from the Soviet Union, major provider of this metal on world markets.