[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] (Concerning) The Farewell Dossier

[Bill Totten]

by Rosa Miriam Elizalde

digital at jrebelde.cip.cu (September 17 2007)


In few words, from the beginning of the 1980s the United States was able
to introduce spy codes into the software that the USSR bought, allowing
the Americans to manipulate them at a distance.  The economic damage was
terrible - to the point that experts considered this disaster as one of
the main causes of the Soviet economic crisis.

A reader wrote me a few kind words concerning my article from last week,
"The Red Fishhook". It reveals skepticism concerning the possibility of
a spy from the FBI, or even some a bureaucrat, being able to just press
a button in their office and calmly find out what two people are
discussing thousands of miles away, while he impassively savors the
peanut butter snack that his wife prepared him for lunch.

Hollywood has educated us of the in the idea of the adventurous spy,
both tough and elegant, a la Humphrey Bogart, slipping surreptitiously
into an impossible place and getting into a fight with a thug,
preferably some non-Caucasian ethnic - all without tilting his hat. I
hate to upset the reader. For some time - more than what we could
imagine - that prototype has been only on celluloid.

The American spy in vogue these days is a bland character, a family man
or maybe the loving owner of a yellow cat. They are people who have
never run a risk, because they hardly need to rotate the mouse of their
computer to examine our coasts and geography with a perspective more
exact than that of a invading fleet landing on our shores. If the CIA
decides to infiltrate somebody into an Al Qaeda cell, or into the
Colombian forests or in a political organization, it uses the services
of a company of mercenaries - known by the euphemism of "independent
contractors". This reduces all types of costs, including those for
politicians.

I finally read a book published in 2004 by the former secretary of the
US Air Force, Thomas C Reed, and almost fell out of my seat when I
thumbed through the chapter dedicated the "Farewell Dossier", an
operation executed by the administration Reagan against the Soviet
Union. In few words, from the beginning of the 1980s the United States
was able to introduce spy codes into the software that the USSR bought,
allowing the Americans to manipulate them at a distance.

At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold War, Reed's book prefaced
by George Bush (the father), relates with a luxury of details how the US
sold computers chips to the Soviet Union that were designed to pass the
Soviet security controls, but which caused machines to crash shortly
after being employed.

"We sold them pseudo-software that dislocated factories; it was a
convincing idea that undermined their defense aviation and aerospace
capacities", said Reed, who was member of the Council of National
Security and intricately involved in the operation.

The most brilliant plan, he added, consisted of introducing a malicious
program well-known as "Trojan" inside the software of the main Soviet
gas duct. This was able to lodge in the computer and permit access to
external users to obtain information or remotely control the host
machine. "Instead of attacking the supply of Soviet gas, that is to say
their monetary earnings from the West and from the Soviet domestic
economy, we created the gas duct's principal software that would take
the natural gas from the Urengoi fields in Siberia, through Kazakhstan,
and on to Western Europe. The system that operated the pumps, turbines
and valves was programmed to go crazy. After a suitable period of time,
it would reset the speed of the pumps and the configuration of the
valves to produce pressure greatly above that which the pipes could
support ..."

The result was a non-nuclear explosion and the biggest fire seen from
space. Parts of the thick walls of the gas duct were found more than
eighty kilometers from the site. Although there were no human victims,
the economic damage was terrible - to the point that experts considered
this disaster as one of the main causes of the Soviet economic crisis;
and not only for the explosion, which ultimately was not the worst
damage. When they realized that the reason for the systems collapsing
was corrupted software, the Soviets faced a terrible nightmare: it would
be impossible for their experts to know which of the great quantity of
components bought in the western market or copied from American models
were corrupted and which were not.

Reed, a little man with a kind face, who is shown smiling on the jacket
of his book, concludes the chapter dedicated to the Farewell Dossier
with some lines that the Devil would surely subscribe to. "We put their
entire technology under suspicion and Reagan then played the Star Wars
card. He knew that the Soviet electronics industry was infested with
virus, bugs and Trojan horses planted by our intelligence community. It
was a brilliant operation. We put everything under suspicion."

Text received by email from Juventud Rebelde on (October 12 2007)



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