Dateline Cold War. We found out the Russians didnt believe our media - they assumed anything printed in the newspapers or on TV was propaganda (it wasnt true then. It is now.). They also did not believe things that we leaked to them from highly placed government sources. They just assumed we were lying. The Russians only believed things they spied for. Once, there was an experiment done to try to get information into the Soviets hands that we wanted them to know. An Air Force officer was exposed to this information we wanted the Russians to believe to be true. The man in question had a psych profile showing he was weak willed. Psychologists figured that on questioning and under torture, he would break quickly and reveal the information to the communists. Years later, it was found that the man never broke. Despite his weakness, his patriotism was overwhelming, and he died in the interrogation room having never revealed the so-called secrets we wanted the Russians to have. New ways had to be constructed to get information into the hands of the Soviets. Bear in mind, there are two kinds of information we wanted them to have. True information and disinformation. An example of truth we wanted the Russians to have - Contingency 12 (not its real name), a little known corner of the war plan in which a submerged ballistic missile submarine would launch an all-out nuclear strike at the Soviet Union on the orders of the sub captain without input from Washington or the National Military Command Center. How is it that a sub captain, a 40 year old commander, could do such a thing? Contingency 12 was the situation in which the submarine lost all contact with the outside world. No radio comms from the ELF system, no VLF radio inputs, no HF, VHF, UHF. No television signals (back then, television signals came from UHF or VHF radio frequencies), no FM or AM radio signals - only static - could mean only one thing - the USA had been subjected to a sneak attack and lay burning in radioactive ruins. Contingency 12 was the USAs doomsday machine. Long after the Soviets won World War III, vengeance would come from the seas from the U.S. Submarine Force. But just as in Dr. Strangelove, what good is a doomsday device if the other side doesnt know about it? An unknown deterrent does not deter. Therefore, the USA had to get this information about Contingency 12 into Russian hands to scare them from executing a first nuclear strike on America. But how to get the Russians this information without leaking it, or publishing it, or putting it into the mind of someone to be allowed to be captured, interrogated and tortured? In the year of our Lord 1946, America turned to the U.S. Navys submarine force to commence spying on the Russians. As it turned out, near to the Soviet coastline, the Russians didnt use encryption, and broadcast in the clear on short range VHF systems. A well-placed submerged submarine with a radio antenna in the air could capture all sorts of good data. In 1954, the first American nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus - designed and built by Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, a true American patriot - was commissioned. Its first mission - go under the polar icecap. Its real mission - spy on the Soviets. It was not just radio intercepts. The Soviets employed telephone lines to communicate top secret things without encryption. Some of them went underwater in submerged cables in Russian bays. Americas nuclear submarines dived those bays and placed recording pods on the cables, picking up all the Russian communications. When retrieved, thousands of Soviet secrets were revealed. I suppose youre thinking, Mikey, youre talking about spying, not counter-intelligence, not the art of planting information or disinformation into the hands of the enemy. Hold on, were getting there. I just wanted you to know that from 1946 on, we used diesel submarines to spy on Russia. From 1954 on, we used nuclear submarines, perfect since they could stay on station virtually indefinitely, limited only by food loadout and crew psychology. So why was it that in the year of our Lord 1968, we used a SURFACE SHIP to spy on the North Koreans, a surface ship loaded out with all our special radios and our encryption device, the KL-7. As Wikipedia will tell you: The KL-7 was largely replaced by electronic systems such as the KW-26 ROMULUS and the KW-37 JASON in the 1970s, but KL-7s were kept in service as backups and for special uses. In 1967, when John Anthony Walker (a sailor in the U.S. Navy) walked into the embassy of the Soviet Union in Washington, DC seeking employment as a spy, he carried with him a copy of a key list for the KL-47. KL-7s were compromised at other times as well. A unit captured by North Vietnam is on display at NSAs National Cryptologic Museum. The KL-7 was withdrawn from service in June 1983[1], and Canadas last KL-7-encrypted message was sent on June 30, 1983, after 27 years of service. (source, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KL-7, accessed August 31, 2014) The KL-7 could not be destroyed by the crew. Instead, it was captured by the Soviet bloc. And yet, IT REMAINED IN USE WELL INTO THE 1980s! People always ask me, Mikey, why would we allow a captured cypto system to stay in service? And I always reply, Im glad you asked that question. You see, we NEEDED a way to get information and disinformation into the hands of the Soviets, in a manner in which they would believe it. But then people ask, But Mikey, without the crypto cards to decode that days messages, isnt the KL-7 useless? And I always reply, Im glad you asked that question. Enter the Walker spy ring. The Walkers and their associates were enlisted Navy radiomen, and had access to what was called CMS or communications material security. CMS was THE MOST HIGHLY HELD U.S. secrets because it decoded everything going out on the radio. So the Walkers not only gave the Russians the CMS key cards for current operations, but for dates far in the past, so the Russians could decode captured radio messages intercepted and saved but not decrypted. How is it that one card of CMS is impossible to move out of a secured area, but the Walkers got not just years and years of cards but past data as well? Is it possible they succeeded because the U.S. government WANTED them to succeed? Yes, children, it is indeed possible. The thing is, once the communication conduit was established and open for business, the Russians would treat it with suspicion until they verified some things. So we allowed them to have some real secrets to let them know that the data they were getting was real. Example - we allowed the Russians to know some op-orders of ballistic missile submarines and attack submarines and allowed the Soviets to trail them. While that would be considered bad, it allowed the Soviets to know that the data they were getting was real. So the door was open to allowing us to whisper in the Soviets ears. So what did we tell the Russians? What did they tell them that ended the Cold War? For starters, we told them about the aforementioned Contingency 12. Then we told them that the Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as Star Wars, the famous missile shield over America, had passed its tests and was secretly operational. We bluffed the Soviets into thinking we could intercept all their missiles. Then we put out false info that we were preparing for a nuclear first strike during the Reagan administration. All kinds of fake messages were passed over the KL-7 talking about when, how and where wed attack. An operation order called Agile Player was discussed in which the east coast submarine force would scramble to sea. Dateline 1984, Cold War. The message for Agile Player tells the sub force to be ready to go at a moments notice. A Russian Cosmos spy satellite makes a routine pass over the U.S. east coast and photographs the 60-something U.S. attack submarines quietly at their piers. The go code then is transmitted for Agile Player. The entire submarine force is scrambled to sea. It was a Sunday afternoon. The call came in at noon on the dot. By 1 pm, the force was at sea, en route the Virginia Capes Operation Area. By 3 pm, the entire east coast sub force was gone and submerged. The next orbital pass of the Cosmos satellite? The east coast sub force was GONE. The Kremlin went absolutely ape. President Reagan called Primer Gorbachev to Reykjavik, Iceland to discuss terms of the Soviet surrender. Change the name of your country. Change your flag. Release the vassal states to independence. Establish a democracy. Or else. Or else what, Gorbachev asked. Or else we take your pants down and nuke your asses, Reagan said. A few years later, the hammer-and-sickle flag of the USSR was hauled down and a Russian Republic flag was raised in its stead. The vassal states in the Baltic and the stans - Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, etc. - were all released from servitude to the Soviet Union. That would never have happened if the Russians simply imploded from the economic forces besieging their country as the modern media insists. No, the terms of Russian surrender were severe, and Russia executed them to the letter. We won. They lost. Because of a poker game bluff. Because of disinformation. Because of counterintelligence. Not from economic forces. The next time someone wants to talk to you about how the Cold War ended, now you know, the rest of the story. Ill end this tale like all good sea stories end: with the exclamation that, THAT, gentlemen, is a no-shitter.
Posted on: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 14:11:38 +0000
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