Word: code
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...other reasons, the twelve intelligence experts who rushed to Moscow in the wake of Bracy's confession were also predisposed to believe the Soviets had got into the code room. In late 1983 French intelligence had told the NSA that a Soviet bug had been found in a coding machine at the French embassy in Moscow. The French warned that the Soviets might also have bugged communications at the U.S. embassy...
...secure areas of the embassy to replace these batteries. Remaining in Moscow to figure out how this might be done, this official wrote a report warning that a Soviet Spider-Man was scaling the embassy wall at night, squeezing through a tiny window and making his way to the code room. He also warned that the Soviets had enlarged the flues built into the embassy walls, and that KGB technicians were using them to climb up to the secure floors. The report declared -- categorically -- that the KGB was penetrating the PCC. Returning to Washington, the NSA superspook eventually briefed President...
...convinced officials that there was no evidence of a devastating communications breach in Moscow. In the wake of Bracy's statement, an interagency team led by the CIA began shipping suspect equipment back to Washington. Machinery was returned to the U.S., taken apart and painstakingly studied under a program code-named Operation Merit. Most of the equipment went to a CIA facility in Virginia; communications gear was sent first to NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, Md., then joined the rest of the freight at the CIA warehouse...
Next, investigators looked into whether the Soviets had been able to penetrate the PCC electronically without setting foot inside, either by drilling a hole or by placing a device on the outside wall of the code room. "If they could touch it, they could penetrate it," says former official. "At least, that's what our guys say we can do. Our best offensive and defensive guys spent a lot of time looking at this. They concluded it was not a problem...
...last possibility was that KGB agents had entered the code room and installed some kind of device. One of the Marines posted just down the hall could have let the Soviets into the embassy. He might also have been able to help the KGB learn the combination to the vaultlike front door of the PCC. But once inside, Soviet operatives would have been faced with several locked doors, one of which led to the CIA's area: that would have been the target. Inside that room was a subvault that housed the CIA's printers, communications and coding machines...