How to Explain the KGB’s amazing success identifying CIA agents in the field?

 

A great example of using “comparison data” and simple deduction to pull back the veil. Counterintelligence 101.-SF

As the Cold War drew to a close with the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, those at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, finally hoped to resolve many long-standing puzzles.

The most important of which was how officers in the field under diplomatic and deep cover stationed across the globe were readily identified by the KGB. As a consequence, covert operations had to be aborted as local agents were pinpointed and CIA personnel compromised or, indeed, had their lives thrown into jeopardy.

The problem dated from the mid-’70s, the very time that James Angleton, the paranoid head of agency counterintelligence, was at last ushered out of office, to the relief of conscientious officers hitherto cast under a dark cloud of suspicion, their promotion delayed or, worse still, denied, and in some cases entire careers wrecked.

But could Angleton have been right? Some consistently maintained so, notably the late Bruce Bagley. Their argument was simple. How could these disasters have happened with such regularity if the agency had not been penetrated by Soviet moles?

Read the Remainder at Salon

Acoustic Kitty: More Weird Cold War Spy-Gear

By Luis A. Mercado

Ever wished you could talk to animals to find out what they know? Well, so did the CIA. During the Cold War, when espionage was the stage for many of the ways the U.S. and the Soviets tried to one-up each other, the latest project of choice was, “Acoustic Kitty”.

“Acoustic Kitty” is the name of a project launched by the Directorate of Science & Technology, which in 1960 intended to use cats to spy on theKremlin.

The CIA used five years and more than $10 million attempting to train a cat, which normally is easier, but given the surgically implanted listening equipment, battery and tail-based antenna, it became tougher.

They had, normal cat problems:

“They slit the cat open, put batteries in him, wired him up. The tail was used as an antenna. They made a monstrosity. They tested him and tested him. They found he would walk off the job when he got hungry, so they put another wire in to override that.”

That overriding didn’t work as expected, though. During it’s first mission (eavesdrop on two men in a park outside the Soviet compound on Wisconsin Ave. in Washington D.C., the cat darted under a taxicab and died during a field test.

After this, a second attempt was done but in the end they desisted and removed the equipment from the cat and had it live a happier life afterwards. Presumably, ignoring any human owners and free of surgically implanted spy equipment.

The project was considered a failure, a total loss and officially cancelled in 1967 and the closing memorandum stated that:

“the environmental and security factors in using this technique in a real foreign situation force us to conclude that for our (intelligence) purposes, it would not be practical.”

The project was disclosed to the public in 2001 when some CIA documents became declassified.

Original Source Article at Medium