| June 1982: largest non-nuclear explosion in history, orchestrated by magicians. |
MEMO TO PRES. TRUMP:
We've been though this before with the Russians. You don't have to be their patsy.
You pride yourself on being a great liar - you are a pathetic amateur compared to, for example, a true American hero, Gus Weiss.
Here's his story, from the annals of Dr. Barton Whaley, American magician and intelligence officer extraordinaire.
| Barton Whaley, author, The Man Who Was Erdnase, Turnabout & Deception, Stratagem, etc. |
From 1981 until his arrest in 1982 (and execution in 1983) Vetrov had been feeding French Intelligence some 4,000 secret documents that identified the 200+ KGB TECHINT espionage officers operating abroad under diplomatic cover plus leads to 100+ of their locally recruited agents. These efforts are well-documented and widely known.
Less known was a cunning American countermeasure that played the KGB’s own game back upon them. This counter-deception was devised by Gus Weiss, a senior advisor to the NSC under US President Reagan. Dr. Weiss (he held a 1966 NYU PhD in Business Administration) had been a senior advisor to US Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter. In Jan 1982, he presented his scheme to CIA Director Casey.
I proposed using the Farewell material to feed or play back the products sought by Line X, but these would come from our own sources and would have been "improved,” that is, designed so that on arrival in the Soviet Union they would appear genuine but would later fail. US intelligence would match Line X requirements supplied through Vetrov with our version of those items, ones that would hardly meet the expectations of that vast Soviet apparatus deployed to collect them. If some double agent told the KGB the Americans were alert to Line X and were interfering with their collection by subverting, if not sabotaging, the effort, I believed the United States still could not lose. The Soviets, being a suspicious lot, would be likely to question and reject everything Line X collected. If so, this would be a rarity in the world of espionage, an operation that would succeed even if compromised.
Casey liked the proposal and President Reagan was enthusiastic. So Director Casey deployed a coordinated CIA/FBI/DOD operation that systematically planted false technological data and even sabotaged gadgets on the KGB & GRU spies.
Both Gus Weiss and NSC member Thomas Reed have credited this sabotage program with one spectacular result. This involved computer software rigged with a “Trojan Horse” that the Russians installed as a component in control stations along their new natural gas pipeline from Siberia to Europe. This pipeline was a major part of Soviet Premier Gorbachev’s design for strategic economic influence in Eastern and Central Europe. When the Trojan Horse activated in June 1982, it caused an enormous (3-kiloton) explosion in the pipeline.
As Reed explained: In order to disrupt the Soviet gas supply, its hard currency earnings from the West, and the internal Russian economy, the pipeline software that was to run the pumps, turbines, and valves was programmed to go haywire, after a decent interval, to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far beyond those acceptable to the pipeline joints and welds. The result was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space. [The explosion was, in fact, so large that] “at the White House, we received warning from our infrared satellites of some bizarre event out in the middle of Soviet nowhere. NORAD feared a missile liftoff from a place where no rockets were known to be based. Or perhaps it was the detonation of a small nuclear device. … Before these conflicting indicators could turn into an international crisis, Gus Weiss came down the hall to tell his fellow NSC staffers not to worry. Fortunately, no one had died."
In 1984 Director Casey ordered the Soviet’s Line X network rolled up. By then he was satisfied that this project had run its course, having no doubt become known to Soviet intelligence through Vetrov or other sources. Accordingly, America’s NATO allies were notified and over 200 members of this Soviet network, including 47 in France alone, were expelled from their diplomatic posts.
-- from Whaley, Barton. Turnabout and Deception: Crafting the Double-Cross and the Theory of Outs. Naval Institute Press.
