By Louis V. Surgent
Senior Intelligence Officer/Manager (SIS-3) in the CIA Directorate of Operations (DO) with 47 years of experience in the development and execution of clandestine HUMINT and technical operations. He is well known across the IC for developing covert access to the hardest targets in hostile areas-and successfully deploying technical systems to these areas. Received the CIA Distinguished Intelligence Medal for outstanding service an intelligence production; National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medals, Exceptional Intelligence Collector award.
The Fourth Man book claims a matrix was made of all the agent and operational losses that couldn’t be explained by Howard, Ames and later Hanssen. In this review, Lou explains there is a very high chance that the many of the losses could be explained by technical failures, which the author and sources of the book fail to take into account.
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Baer’s book as many have stated, is poorly written and logically inconsistent. Bob’s focus is to identify a penetration of the CIA (Paul Redmond) by assembling almost 15 years of series of agent cases derived from his memory, earlier conversations with CIA and FBI officers, and former assets.
Baer does mention in passing throughout his book, alternative explanations such as the security of our staff Communications Systems, and possible bugs, KGB surveillance and monitoring. He knew about technical implants such as GUNMAN in electric typewriters used in Moscow. He discusses in several parts of his book (page 207 and others) the “anomalies” inherent in running agent operations. Baer was very well aware of all of these issues and his failure to seriously consider them for the losses of our agents undermines the credibility of the conclusion reached in this book. Baer left the agency in 1997.
As a senior case officer with multiple overseas assignments he knew of the inherent ambiguity that exists in almost every agent case and should have qualified these in his discussion of these cases (page 207). He knew that few people have complete access to the full details of a specific case even at the top of the counterintelligence chain in CIA. He mentions a couple of pages that those who have the most knowledge may provide deliberately misleading information frequently used to protect the source. He was correct when he states that between the initial agent losses in 1985 and the mid-1990s when Hansen and Ames were arrested there was a systematic search for possible penetrations in CIA that went on for some time thereafter.
He mentions the case “GTDECANTEUR” or Sergi recruited in 1989 and found dead after a meeting with Rick Ames the night before his death in February 1991 (page 146 and on other pages in that chapter). Note that Ames did not sufficiently document these meetings. Baer does not mention that Sergi was extensively debriefed by an experienced SE division case officer initials DS who did document these meetings.
Further, just before his death, Sergi provided details on the compromise of operation in 1985, details that suggested that the KGB had prior knowledge of that operation at least two years before its compromise. There was speculation at the time that Ames may have reported these conversations to his KGB handler. I believe that both Baer and Ames were aware of these details.
Baer was involved with multiple agent cases for NE, EA, and Central Eurasia Division (CE) while overseas and upon his return. In 1995 to 1997 he was Chief of CIA operations in Central Asia and the Caucuses. These operations were run out of expeditionary stations in multiple countries. He knew about the security issues inherent in operating out of stations and bases without Marine Guards and the possibility that these could be entered by the local security service and our communications systems compromised. These stations and bases frequently had alarm activations that were not fully understood and may have indicated penetration by these local services.
Baer mentions the GRID computer used in Moscow to improve security of our operations (resulting from a 1985 technical and security evaluation of the station and sources that cited the compromise of our communications). Baer mentions possible bugging of our stations on page 171. Some of the cases he discusses utilized the GRID for secure communications between South Group field stations and Headquarters. He coordinated on cables discussing these security issues in particular the use of the GRID computer system to provide an additional layer of security, and the steps being taken to protect our communications systems. He was present in several of these stations including Moscow and had to be oblivious if he did not understand how these communications were done and why. His failure to seriously discuss these security issues and possible compromise of our communications is another of the important failures in the logic used in his book.
Other factors contributing to the loss of our agents and other sensitive operations:
It is apparent that the IC grossly underestimated the massive effort the Soviet Union put into the collection, exploitation, analysis, and processing of communications systems in use by the US Military, NSA and CIA, and NATO in other countries. By combining the SIGINT sites and technical skills of the various republics and their physical locations they produced an extremely efficient signal collection apparatus. All of these services had in addition, SIGINT collection sites in many of their embassies around the world to support signals collection.
We also failed to understand the extensive effort undertaken by the Russians in their Soviet bloc intelligence services to develop the tradecraft and tools necessary to gain access to and exploit CIA’s secure communications. These included a variety of technical tools dedicated to collecting our communications systems before and after encryption, sophisticated covert entry techniques and methods to defeat alarms, and recruitment of individuals who could assist in their activities.
Baer, in his position in CIA/DDO and later as Chief of South Group was present in the 1990’s when CIA had meetings with several of these services both here and overseas. Several of these services described their SIGINT collection capability and successes in working against NATO airborne and satellite systems and toured their facilities. He did not include information about these SIGINT capabilities in his book.
Vulnerabilities in our AGENT Communications Systems that could impact agent security:
Vulnerabilities in the systems used to communicate with our agents and the ability of a hostile service to exploit these vulnerabilities is a possible reason we some of our sensitive cases. CIA and other organizations have used a variety of means to enable agents to communicate information to another government or in the case of CIA, communications between and an agent and his CIA case officer. Each of the systems had vulnerabilities that could have allowed the Russians or other intelligence services such as the Chinese to exploit the communications to determine the location of the user or in some cases the content of the messages. Mr. Baer was aware of the systems as they were being used by agents in South Group and was aware in some of their shortcomings.
Secret writing: these tools have been used for centuries to communicate messages going back to pre-biblical times. In 1991 information became available that the Soviet intelligence services opened and censored virtually 100% of all mail from inside Russia to the west. Given that 100% of all of the mail was inspected and probably opened, we don’t know what percentage SW was detected in but given the tools at their disposal for censorship it appears that the only the most secure systems would go undetected. The most secure systems were usually reserved for the highest-level agents.
HF broadcasts to agents: Use of HF communications by the United States and other territories for government and commercial communications to and from the Soviet Union has gone on long before start of World War II. After World War II there were dedicated HF receivers and transmitters used by the US and other countries to provide two-way communications with their overseas official locations. One-way systems to transmit from U.S. bases in Asia and Europe into the Soviet Union were developed to communicate with agents located in the Soviet Union, China and other countries. US military aircraft used long range HF systems to communicate with their bases and with each other. Satellites replaced HF as a primary means of communications but HF is still available as a back up and for some redundant commo needs.
One-way agent broadcasts were received by commercial, often locally purchased receivers. These receivers leaked an RF signal, from the local oscillator that was proportional to the frequency being received. Thus, the KGB could watch possible targets, and if they tuned to a HF frequency we used to broadcast encoded messages, the receiver identified that receiver as being used by one of our agents. Any commercial receiver of that period had that specific technical vulnerability. The local oscillator signals could be detected many meters away from the receiver and this vulnerability was well known to the Soviets and was exploited.
Satellite communications systems: Each of these had specific technical vulnerabilities that were unknown to us in the DO at the time, that could be exploited by Russian intelligence services.
Most of the former Soviet intelligence services had extensive technical collection operations directed against HF military systems including Strategic systems, very low frequency Navy transmissions, to very high-frequency transmissions used by US and NATO satellite systems. Connected together across the Soviet Union by a coaxial cable network that enabled the services to cooperate in the geolocation of ground and air emitters as well as transmissions from our agents and sensor systems. Mr. Baer was well aware of these capabilities and the targets that they were collecting as he visited some of the sites and met with the services doing the collection.
Although early warning of hostilities was the principal mission of these services, a somewhat lower priority was the identification of hostile assets located in their country that were threat. This included internal hostile activities, agent communications, and possible military activities.
One service in 1995 reported that the Soviets had identified testing of our agent and sensor systems before they were deployed. Unfortunately, and unknown to us at the time, these satellite systems had significant vulnerabilities that enabled the GRU to process these transmissions and use time difference of arrival (TDA) to determine the location of the source. Billy Lofgren, chief of SE Division at the time who had a close working relationship with Baer was also aware of these reports.
INTERNET based agent communications systems:
Beginning in the early 1990s international networks were being set up to utilize the recently developed Internet protocol technology, referred to now as the Internet. DO tech groups developed unique solutions enabling agents and staff officers to communicate with each other via the internet.
Although aware of some agent compromises during that period, Baer had left CIA in 1997.
Security of our staff communication systems and networks.
Up until 1990s CIA used fixed key systems in a hub and spoke configuration to provide communications between our field stations and headquarters. Later network-based systems had other serious security vulnerabilities. The KGB took great pains to understand those communications, realizing they could not break our cryptography without access to the key material. These services reportedly utilized sophisticated covert entry tools to enter our embassy spaces, defeat the alarm systems, open safes and pouches so they can copy key material. Some of these tools such as the use of radioactive sources to determine safe combinations were developed by the KGB and provided to these services. They developed the means to covertly copy key sent inside our pouches as they were being transported or by doing covert entries into our stations.
Note: there is a recent publication of a book by a Polish UOP CI officer, in which he describes how his group penetrated American consulates repeatedly as often as once a month without being detected. He also describes and shows photographs of some of the tools they used and some of our alarm systems that they defeated. The objective of these entries was to obtain cryptographic key.
From 1984 to the mid-1990s, Russian intelligence services developed special bugs which could be implanted in typewriters to exploit plaintext information. More sophisticated bugs were later developed by the KGB for use in computers and printers. In 1984 the IBM Selectric typewriters used in Moscow by the ambassador’s office sophisticated were found to have bugs in them (GUNMAN) and were removed. The fact that these typewriters were installed in Moscow
during the time that some of these agent cases were being discussed and communicated, may be a very likely reason why some of the cases during this period were compromised. Mr. Baer was very well aware of the GUNMAN used by Soviet services up until 1984, and that GUNMAN could possibly explain the loss of the least of couple of Russian cases he uses to make his case against Redmond and is another failure in the analysis in Baer’s book.