CIA slipped bugs to Soviets

Memoir recounts Cold War technological sabotage

In January 1982, President Ronald Reagan approved a CIA plan to sabotage the economy of the Soviet Union through covert transfers of technology that contained hidden malfunctions, including software that later triggered a huge explosion in a Siberian natural gas pipeline, according to a new memoir by a Reagan White House official.

Thomas C. Reed, a former Air Force secretary who was serving in the National Security Council at the time, describes the episode in "At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold War," to be published next month by Ballantine Books. Reed writes that the pipeline explosion was just one example of "cold-eyed economic warfare" against the Soviet Union that the CIA carried out under Director William J. Casey during the final years of the Cold War.

At the time, the United States was attempting to block Western Europe from importing Soviet natural gas. There were also signs that the Soviets were trying to steal a wide variety of Western technology. Then, a KGB insider revealed the specific shopping list and the CIA slipped the flawed software to the Soviets in a way they would not detect it.

'Programmed to go haywire'

"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 pipeline joints and welds," Reed writes.

"The result was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space," he recalls, adding that U.S. satellites picked up the explosion. Reed said in an interview that the blast occurred in the summer of 1982.

"While there were no physical casualties from the pipeline explosion, there was significant damage to the Soviet economy," he writes. "Its ultimate bankruptcy, not a bloody battle or nuclear exchange, is what brought the Cold War to an end. In time the Soviets came to understand that they had been stealing bogus technology, but now what were they to do? By implication, every cell of the Soviet leviathan might be infected. They had no way of knowing which equipment was sound, which was bogus. All was suspect, which was the intended endgame for the entire operation."

Reed said he obtained CIA approval to publish details about the operation. The CIA learned of the full extent of the KGB's pursuit of Western technology in an intelligence operation known as the Farewell Dossier. Portions of the operation have been disclosed earlier, including in a 1996 paper in Studies in Intelligence, a CIA journal. The paper was written by Gus W. Weiss, an expert on technology and intelligence who was instrumental in devising the plan to send the flawed materials and served with Reed on the National Security Council. Weiss died Nov. 25 at 72.

According to the Weiss article and Reed's book, the Soviet authorities in 1970 set up a new KGB section, known as Directorate T, to plumb Western research and development for badly needed technology. Directorate T's operating arm to steal the technology was known as Line X. Its spies were often sprinkled throughout Soviet delegations to the United States; on one visit to a Boeing plant, "a Soviet guest applied adhesive to his shoes to obtain metal samples," Weiss recalled in his article.

Then, at a July 1981 economic summit in Ottawa, President Francois Mitterrand of France told Reagan that French intelligence had obtained the services of an agent they dubbed "Farewell," Col. Vladimir Vetrov, a 53-year-old engineer who was assigned to evaluate the intelligence collected by Directorate T.

Vetrov, who Weiss recalled had provided his services for ideological reasons, photographed and supplied 4,000 documents on the program. The documents revealed the names of more than 200 Line X officers around the world and showed how the Soviets were carrying out a broad-based effort to steal Western technology.

'Caused a storm'

"Reagan expressed great interest in Mitterrand's sensitive revelations and was grateful for his offer to make the material available to the U.S. administration," Reed writes. The Farewell Dossier arrived at the CIA in August 1981. "It immediately caused a storm," Reed says in the book. "The files were incredibly explicit. They set forth the extent of Soviet penetration into U.S. and other Western laboratories, factories and government agencies."

"Reading the material caused my worst nightmares to come true," Weiss recalled. The documents showed the Soviets had stolen valuable data on radar, computers, machine tools and semiconductors, he wrote. "Our science was supporting their national defense."

The Farewell Dossier included a shopping list of future Soviet priorities. In January 1982, Weiss said he proposed to Casey a program to slip the Soviets technology that would work for a while, then fail. Reed said the CIA "would add 'extra ingredients' to the software and hardware on the KGB's shopping list."

"Reagan received the plan enthusiastically," Reed writes. "Casey was given a go." According to Weiss, "American industry helped in the preparation of items to be 'marketed' to Line X." Some details about the flawed technology were reported in Aviation Week and Space Technology in 1986 and in a 1995 book by Peter Schweizer, "Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy that Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union."

The sabotage of the gas pipeline has not been previously disclosed, and at the time was a closely guarded secret. When the pipeline exploded, Reed writes, the first reports caused concern in the U.S. military and at the White House. "NORAD feared a missile liftoff from a place where no rockets were known to be based," he said, referring to North American Air Defense Command. "Or perhaps it was the detonation of a small nuclear device." However, satellites did not pick up any telltale signs of a nuclear explosion.

"Before these conflicting indicators could turn into an international crisis," he added, "Gus Weiss came down the hall to tell his fellow NSC staffers not to worry."

The role that Reagan and the United States played in the collapse of the Soviet Union is still a matter of intense debate. Some argue that U.S. policy was the key factor -- Reagan's military buildup; the Strategic Defense Initiative, Reagan's proposed missile defense system; confronting the Soviets in regional conflicts; and rapid advances in U.S. high technology. But others say that internal Soviet factors were more important, including economic decline and President Mikhail Gorbachev's revolutionary policies of glasnost and perestroika.

Reed, who served in the National Security Council from January 1982 to June 1983, said the United States and its NATO allies later "rolled up the entire Line X collection network, both in the U.S. and overseas." Weiss said "the heart of Soviet technology collection crumbled and would not recover."

However, Vetrov's espionage was discovered by the KGB, and he was executed in 1983.

The Washington Post
By David E. Hoffman
updated 12:13 a.m. ET Feb. 27, 2004

Zbigniew Brzezinski: the Empire’s Adviser

The outrageous strategy to destroy Russia
by Arthur Lepic

Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s former adviser, embodies the continuity of U.S. foreign policy whether it is democratic or republican. A great admirer of Henry Kissinger, Brzezinski has always defended, praised and shown an absolute respect for the master’s two diplomacy concepts: the balance of the powers theorized by Metternich and George Kennan’s containment doctrine. Zbigniew Brzezinski recommends how Russia should be militarily weakened and intimidated. He is convinced that the best way to achieve it is by destabilizing its border regions, a political strategy that arouse the interest of former presidential candidate John Kerry’s team who recruited his son Mark Brzezinski as its foreign policy adviser.

Based on George W. Bush’s speech during year 2000 presidential campaign, a rigid, even aggressive attitude towards Vladimir Putin’s Russia would have been expected -according to his adviser “hawk” Wolfowitz’s doctrine. But, instead, we have seen an unprecedented approach in the political relations of these two great nations. And this has happened after September 11, 2001.

For many observers and analysts there was an agreement between Putin and Bush not to criticize Russian military operations in Chechnya whereas Putin would ignore American interventions and interferences in the Middle East.

This explanation does not really value September 11 facts. It actually considers them as an abstraction and the same with Kremlin’s position on this. We can say that Republican administrations have always attached too much importance to the Middle East whereas Democrat’s political tradition on foreign policy has been more focused in Eurasia.

To design its strategy towards the former USRR and then on the Easter states, recently emancipated from the Soviet influence, Democrats have trusted -since Jimmy Carter took power- a brilliant, unscrupulous and anti-Russian man: Zbigniew Brzezinski.

This well-known professor’s doctrine has many followers outside of the Democratic Party because it has defined the actual imperative of the empire’s survival and prosperity: the conquest of Eurasia.

This professor was born in Warsaw in 1928, the son of a Polish diplomat. At the age of ten, Brzezinski immigrated to Canada when his father was distinguished. He did his degree and his master at the University of Mc Gill, Montreal, and then his PhD at Harvard in 1953. After that, he became an American citizen and married the daughter of Czechoslovakia’s former president Eduardo Benes.

Between 1966 and 1968 he was a member of the Council of Policy Planning of the State Department where he developed the “peaceful involvement” strategy towards the Soviet Union in the framework of the Cold War. In October 1966, he convinced President Johnson to modify the strategic priorities in order to have the “thawing-out” before the German reunification.

During 1968 presidential campaign, Brzezinski was the head of the working party in charge of democratic candidate Hubert H. Humphrey’s foreign policy, who would lose to Richard Nixon.

The Inspiring Leader of the Trilateral Commission

At the beginning of the 1960s, Brzezinski distinguished himself as an analyst when prophetically announced the appearance of bigger actors in the world power. He was talking about Europe and Japan whose economies have had a rapid growth after WWII.

In an article published in Foreign Affairs magazine in 1970, he talked about his vision of this “new world order”. «A new and more daring vision is needed - the creation of a community of developed countries capable of efficiently handling the problems of mankind. Apart from the U.S. and Western Europe, Japan should be included (...) A good start would be a council formed by representatives of the U.S, Western Europe and Japan, which will hold regular meetings among the heads of governments and less relevant personalities.»

In 1970, Brzezinski also proposed new ideas in his new book Between two Ages [1] where he explained that the moment to balance world power had arrived and it had to be in the hands of a new global political order based on a trilateral economic tie between Japan, Europe and the U.S. The revolution in production techniques and the transformation of the heavy industry into electronics had to cause a disruption of political systems and a new generation of power elites. David Rockefeller, excited about these concepts, hired him to create the Trilateral Commission and appointed him director. The commission was officially established in 1973 and gathered important personalities related to world trade, the international banking system, governors and the big European, Japanese and American media.

When the first oil crisis took place, the main concern of these world finance masters was to get rid of the foreign debt of developing countries by strengthening the role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It was also about strengthening and extending U.S.’s hegemony - by that time vulnerable due to its military defeat in Viet Nam- in every geographical boundary of the Eurasian continent where they were very influential after WWII

This mission, if analyzed from an outsider’s point of view, depicts Brzezinski as a peace advocate, a man in favor of multilateral relations and diminishing world tension (Cold War) and -to the eyes of the extreme right- as a man inspired by Marxism.
The best to be done in order to implement the plans of the Trilateral Commission was to make one of its members the President of the United States.

President Carter and the Double-Dealing

Since the creation of the Trilateral Commission, shepherd Jimmy Carter was among the members of Rockefeller-Brzezinski’s team. He has opened the first trade offices of the state of Georgia in Brussels and Tokyo and this turned him into the ideal model or the founding concept of the Commission. [2] For his nomination as an election candidate and to the presidential election in 1976, Rockefeller used his relations in Wall Street and put Brzezinski to work, whose academic influence assisting democratic candidate Jimmy Carter was very helpful for wining the election. And, of course, when Carter won the elections, Brzezinski was appointed national security adviser. [3]

As president, Carter stated the reduction of the military nuclear arsenal of the two blocks (U.S. -USRR) as a priority. However, the Soviet SS-20 missile crisis aimed at Europe forced Carter to deploy the Pershing missiles, an action that ruined his efforts, whether they were sincere or not, and caused the reciprocal distrust of the two countries.

It can be affirmed that by that time, the Soviet block had good reasons to believe that its adversary was involved in double-dealing: the U.S. military defeat in Viet Nam forced it to keep certain reserve in the strategic and military fields whereas Brzezinski was working on his war plan to set a trap for the Soviet Union and force it to come into a peripheral conflict.





















The destabilization of the Afghan communist regime and the financing and delivering of the first weapons to anticommunist Jihad followers in 1979 caused, as expected, the intervention of the Red Army in Afghanistan. Brzezinski had the support of Pakistan intelligence and espionage services, the fearful ISI.

When the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur interviewed Brzezinski in 1998, he admitted that the equipping of Bin Laden’s anti-Soviet troops was before the Russian invasion and was aimed at provoking its reaction:

Le Nouvel Observateur: Former CIA director, Robert Gates, says in his memoirs: the American secret services assisted Afghan mujahedeen six months before the Soviet invasion. By that time, you were President Carter’s adviser and you played a key role on this. Do you confirm it?

Zbigniew Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of the story, the CIA began to assist mujahedeen in the year 1980, that is, after the invasion of the Soviet army against Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. But the truth that remained secret until today is quite different: it was on July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed his first order on the secret assistance to Kabul’s pro-Soviet regime opponents. That day I wrote a memorandum to the President in which I told him that that assistance would cause the Soviet intervention (...) we did not force the Russian intervention, we just, conscientiously, increase the intervention possibilities.

NO: When the Soviets justified their intervention by affirming they were fighting against a secret American interference nobody believed them, though they were telling the truth. Don’t you regret it?

Z. Brz.: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. Its objective was to lead the Russian to the Afghan trap, and you want me to regret it? The very same day the Soviets crossed the Afghan border I wrote the following to President Carter: «This is our chance to give Russia its Viet Nam» (...).

N.O.: Aren’t you sorry either for favoring Islamic fundamentalism and providing weapons and consultancies to future terrorists?

ZBrz.: What is the most important thing when you look at world history, the Taliban or the fall of the Soviet empire? Some excited Islamists or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War? [4]

When Brzezinski talked about «some excited Islamists» in this interview, he did not underestimate Al Qaeda’s power. He just described the reality of what the neo-conservatives has turned into a myth while justifying their world crusade. It is obvious that none of the members of the Council on Foreign Relations would be so categorical.

Objective Alliance with China and Unconditional Support to the Shah of Iran

Even when Nixon and Kissinger were cautious about besieging the Soviet Union and restored relations with China, a number of Carter’s closest advisers did not support this rapprochement Brzezinski had in mind.

When Carter became President, he stated he would establish a dialogue with the USRR and keep the People’s Republic of China at a distance. But, his Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, opposed Brzezinski anti-Russian obsession and Carter had no choice but to conciliate its administration’s antagonism.

Usually, the mediator between these two poles was Richard C. Holbrooke, U.S. future ambassador to the UN and John Kerry’s foreign policy adviser during his campaign, along with Mark Brzezinski, Zbigniew’s son. According to Cyrus Vance and some others in favor of establishing the dialogue, like democrat renegade Averell Arriman, the triangular logic of besieging would only lead, at its best, to a misunderstanding with the USRR, not to mention war.

They recommended dialogues on disarmament and cooperation with the Soviet Union to neutralize the Third World conflicts. The re-establishment of relations with China kept on; Brzezinski even completed a joint program of strategic cooperation and managed to have good personal relations with Deng Xiaoping, something that has really helped him nowadays.

Brzezinski’s distrust towards the USRR can be perceived again in his attitude towards Iran, which under the Shah’s regimen was considered as a bastion against the Soviet influence in the Middle East. Brzezinski promised Shah his support until the last moment and requested U.S. military intervention to keep him in power even when part of Carter’s administration, led by his Secretary of State, opposed it.

However, Washington’s concrete actions were implemented according to the state Department’s point of view and despite all negotiations with the generals that defeated Shah to guarantee a moderate regime in the country; it was Khomeini who took power after a popular seafloor spreading. Khomeini joined Carter at Camp David negotiations in 1977 and played a key role in the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt without even being present in the most important debates. However, when the USRR was the main topic, he was always there.

The Russian Threat and the American Supremacy

In 1989, Brzezinski quit his job at Columbia University where he taught since 1960 to work on Ukraine’s independent status plan. This marks the beginning of his compromise to prevent the resurgence of Russia as a superpower. He defended Russia’s integration to the Western system and the “geopolitical multiparty system” in the territory of the former Soviet Union.

He also developed a “plan for Europe” that included NATO’s expansion to the Baltic republics, a dream that came true when three of them joined NATO in 2002. During the 90s he was the special envoy of the American President to promote the most important oil infrastructure project of the world: the Baku-Tbilissi-Ceyhan pipeline which was his best opportunity to prevent the resurgence of Russia. He has also been, since 1999, the president of the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya, whose headquarters are located at the Freedom House facility. This position allows him to intervene in peace negotiations between the Russian government and independence fighters led by Mashkadov. However, the truth behind these good will “democratic” activities is to assist independence followers to maintain a war in the area, like the Afghan one, to weaken Russian and to keep it away from the gains of the Caspian Sea.

Brzezinski’s doctrine («The power ruling Eurasia will control two of the most economically advanced and productive areas of the world») is related to NATO’s expansion to the East, something the Clinton’s Administration actively worked on. But, how could they sell NATO to Europeans? «The European region located in the Western border of Eurasia and next to Africa is much more exposed to the risks of the increasing global disorder than a more politically united, military powerful and geographically isolated America (...).

The Europeans will be more exposed to risk if an imperialist chauvinism encourages Russia’s foreign policy», said Brzezinski to National Interest magazine in year 2000. [5] The whole thing is quite clear: the deployment of NATO’s forces around Russia was a preventive measure. If Russia’s reaction is to be defensive, it means that it is planning to restore its empire and totalitarianism.

Brzezinski has been working also as a consultant for BP-Amoco and Freedom House in Azerbaijan. His objective is to worship Heidar Alyiev’s image and in a New York Times interview he characterized the dictator as a «nice guy». [6] Brzezinski justifies Aliyev’s Anglo-Saxon support by explaining that after seven decades of communist government nobody can expect Azerbaijan and the former Soviet republics to become democratic nations in such a short period of time.

Even when Aliyev’s political repression increased during the last few years and the gains from the Caspian Sea diminished, Azerbaijan was still considered by Freedom House as a “partially free” country. In 1999, Secretary of State and Brzezinski’s disciple, Madeleine Albright, invited Heidar Aliyev to NATO’s anniversary ceremony. On their part, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Ukraine organized some joint military maneuvers, sponsored by NATO’s “Association for Peace” program, on April 16, 1996. [7]

Despite his activities as BP-Amoco and Freedom House’s consultant, Brzezinski assisted a system of funds and NGOs (non governmental organizations) in support of the former Soviet top-classes, intellectuals and elites.

As an initiative of the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya, whose chairman was Brzezinski, a meeting between the main leaders of the Chechnya movement was held from August 16 to August 18, 2002 in Lichtenstein, two months after the one held in Bassaiev and Maskhadov, where an agreement was signed on the mutual direction of the “Armed Forces of the Ichkeria Republic of Chechnya”. The participants concluded that Chechnya should not longer be a part of Russia, that a real autonomy was necessary and the time to negotiate with Maskhadov had arrived. But, was Beslán’s hostages event, as claimed by Bassaiev, part of Chechnya independence demand process or part of Russia’s destabilizing process? [8]

Several questions could be raised if we take into account that the main consequence of this action was a tightening of tensions between North Odessa and neighboring Inguchia, that is, a much more relevant balkanization of the region.

Nowadays, Brzezinski is very active in CSIS but he still the brain of the Democrats foreign policy program, something that is quite evident in candidate Kerry and his partner John Edwards’s obsession with Russia. Following Mark Brzezinski’s advises they chose as their main priority Russia’s nuclear disarmament in a moment in which it has recovered the same oil production it had before its demise and is benefiting widely of the current oil prices which has allowed it to double its defense budget. Therefore, Russia’s nuclear arsenal is not, as John Kerry says, a present-day threat.

Kerry’s real objective is related to Zbigniew Brzezinski’s strategy of Russia’s subordination but, from now on, it will be much more difficult to convince the world public opinion of Russia’s evil and totalitarianism. [9] Therefore, it is necessary to provoke its reaction as was done with the Afghan case in 1979, because Russia will have no problems with its energy supply in the next decades, a real concern the U.S. has. This is why in some recent Wall Street Journal and Novaya Gazetta interviews, Brzezinski characterized Vladimir Putin as «Russian Benito Mussolini».

Arthur Lepic, French Journalist, member of the French section of Voltaire Network and specialized in energy and military affairs.

Published originally in Voltairenet, 22 October 2004

[1] Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between two Ages: America’s Role in the Technotronic Era, Harper publishing house, 1971. French Edition, Révolution technetronique, Calman-Lévy publishing house, 1971.

[2] The Trilateral Commission will also lead French President Giscard d’Estaing to choose one of its members, Raymond Barre, professor of economics and political unexperienced, as Primer Minister.

[3] Brzezinski included in his team Madeleine K. Albright (whose father served in Czechoslovakia during Eduard Benes’s government, Brzezinksi’s father in law) and the two theorists of The Clash of Civilization, Bernard Lewis and Samuel P.Huntington.

[4] Le Nouvel Observateur, No. 1732, from January 15 to January 21, 1998, p.76.

[5] Quoted in George Szamuely : «Bribing Montenegro - It didn’t work», antiwar, June 15, 2000.

[6] «Freedom spells B-A-K-U», Counterpunch Magazine, 1999.

[7] See: «Freedom House, quand la liberté n’est qu’un slogan», Voltaire, September 7, 2004. Article written in French that will soon be published by Red Voltaire.

[8] Marivilia Carrasco : «Beslan: responsibility of slaughter points towards the Anglosaxons», Voltaire, September 19, 2004.

[9] Thierry Meyssan: «115 atlantists against Rusia», Voltaire, November 26, 2004.