It is a treat to read something, anything, that Marc Trachtenberg writes. The reasons go beyond the originality and authority of his substantive contributions to international history and international relations. Trachtenberg focused on European foreign relations before shifting to the United States, and, as is well known, trained in history and a titan in the subfield, after a quarter-century teaching History at the University of Pennsylvania he joined the Political Science Department at UCLA.[1] What perhaps distinguishes Trachtenberg’s scholarship more than anything is his insatiable curiosity, the enthusiasm with which he challenges orthodoxy (however defined), and his relentless, and, I would postulate, joyful pursuit of both archival evidence and theoretical insights to address the questions that he explores.[2] In addition, Trachtenberg’s expository style is unusual. He frequently invites the reader to follow along with his thought processes and explains how he arrived at the judgments and arguments that he did. In this way he provokes richer and more rigorous conversations, especially but not exclusively with scholars with the most expertise in his subject.
H-Diplo | Robert Jervis International Security Studies Forum
Commentary III-2
Forum on Marc Trachtenberg, “Operation Farewell and the Siberian Pipeline Explosion: A Research Note”
20 November 2024 | PDF: https://issforum.org/to/CIII-2 | Website: rjissf.org | Twitter: @HDiplo
Editor: Diane Labrosse
Commissioning Editor: Diane Labrosse
Production Editor: Christopher Ball
Pre-Production Copy Editor: Bethany Keenan
Contents
Introduction by Richard Immerman, Temple University, Emeritus. 2
Review by Vincent Frigon, Independent Scholar 21
Review by Jon R. Lindsay, Georgia Institute of Technology. 28
Review by David S. Painter, Georgetown University, Emeritus 35
Review by Svetlana Savranskaya, National Security Archive. 45
Review by Rebecca Slayton, Cornell University. 51
Response by Marc Trachtenberg, UCLA. 55
Introduction by Richard Immerman, Temple University, Emeritus
It is a treat to read something, anything, that Marc Trachtenberg writes. The reasons go beyond the originality and authority of his substantive contributions to international history and international relations. Trachtenberg focused on European foreign relations before shifting to the United States, and, as is well known, trained in history and a titan in the subfield, after a quarter-century teaching History at the University of Pennsylvania he joined the Political Science Department at UCLA.[1] What perhaps distinguishes Trachtenberg’s scholarship more than anything is his insatiable curiosity, the enthusiasm with which he challenges orthodoxy (however defined), and his relentless, and, I would postulate, joyful pursuit of both archival evidence and theoretical insights to address the questions that he explores.[2] In addition, Trachtenberg’s expository style is unusual. He frequently invites the reader to follow along with his thought processes and explains how he arrived at the judgments and arguments that he did. In this way he provokes richer and more rigorous conversations, especially but not exclusively with scholars with the most expertise in his subject.
These personal attributes and scholarly characteristics are all on display in this commentary, as attested to by Trachtenberg’s essay, “Operation Farewell and the Siberian Pipeline Explosion: A Research Note,” the positive reactions to it by the five commentators, and very significantly, Trachtenberg’s reply to their comments. The subject itself is emblematic of Trachtenberg’s scholarship. He has chosen to examine an event, or perhaps an episode, which is a more appropriate noun because the details are so ambiguous, in the waning years of the Cold War that most of us would classify as minor—if we had even heard or read about it. It may in fact have literally been a non-event because it may not have happened. Trachtenberg has problematized an explosion that disrupted the Soviet construction of a gas pipeline in Siberia in 1982. Or perhaps it was 1983. Or perhaps no explosion took place at all. Or if it did, perhaps it was “simply” an accident. The CIA’s in-house historian called it a “myth,” and if there’s one thing that is uncontestable about the CIA, it is that it is enveloped in myth.
That the alleged explosion on the Soviet gas pipeline occurred at the same time that Ronald Reagan was calling out the Evil Empire and reigniting the Cold War would by itself seem to beg investigation, although few have investigated it.[3] Yet the “if and when” question is only part of the puzzle, the origins of which Trachtenberg traces to an obscure memoir written by an obscure Reagan staffer, Thomas Reed. In his 2004 “Insider’s History of the Cold War,” Reed claimed not only that in 1982 an explosion had taken place on the in-progress Soviet pipeline, but also that a covert action undertaken by the United States was responsible for it.[4] According to Reed, “Farewell,” the code-name for Colonel Vladimir Vetrov, an officer in the Soviet’s KGB, had passed on to France a treasure trove of documents disclosing a Soviet industrial espionage operation. France then passed on most of these documents, the so-called “Farewell Dossier,” to the United States, among the most notable component of which was evidence that the Soviets were seeking illegally to purchase computer software from a Canadian firm which it intended to apply to the Siberian pipeline.
Rather than bust up the KGB ring, the United States, or more precisely the Bill Casey-led CIA, exploited it. Casey’s operatives orchestrated the infiltration of a “Trojan Horse” into the software, and then the agency and Reagan’s White House stood by as the Soviets bought it. In Reed’s telling, the CIA sabotage operation was a resounding success. The Soviets installed the defective software, and after it worked long enough for Moscow to gain sufficient confidence in its effectiveness, the software caused, and Trachtenberg quotes Reed, the “most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space” (1).
There are multiple pieces to this puzzle, and Trachtenberg, as we know he would, takes us methodically through all of them. In doing so, he unpacks and carefully weighs whatever evidence exists. As is so often the case, or some would argue is always the case with a CIA project, that evidence is woefully incomplete. The paper trail is thin even by the standards of plausible deniability, current declassification guidelines provide little reason to be optimistic that it will thicken in the future, and even Reed’s account is second-hand. Escalating the degree of difficulty in this particular case, Trachtenberg reports that a “general program for exploiting the Farewell information by planting defective technology on the Soviets did, in fact, exist” (4). The question is its responsibility for the sabotage of the Siberian pipeline.
Thus, the scholar to an uncomfortable degree must rely on problematic if not unreliable memoirists, reporters, and interlocutors to draw inferences in order to fill in the gaps and assess the likelihood of alternative scenarios. In his effort to sift and assess, Trachtenberg’s methodology in fundamental respects mirrors the tradecraft of the intelligence analysts who struggle more to collect “dots” than to connect them. Unlike the intelligence analysts, however, Trachtenberg is not compelled to make a call. And he does not.
Although I personally would have preferred that Trachtenberg estimate the probabilities of the alternative scenarios, and explain their hierarchical order, his admission that he cannot reach a verdict with any degree of confidence as to if, when, and how this operation took place projects the kind of humility that is commendable in a historian. Trachtenberg applauds the historian David Painter in his quoting of political scientist Robert Jervis on the difficulty getting “to the bottom of the story.” Moreover, he appreciates the politics that contaminate Reed’s “insider’s” history. The tale Reed tells is congruent with what Painter labels “Reagan’s Victory School”: the triumphalist narrative that Reagan’s aggressive crusade against the Soviet’s inflicted grievous harm to its economy and sped the empire on its way to the ash heap of history.
Trachtenberg’s methodology, humility, and sensitivity consequently sets an extremely hospitable table for the five commentators. And what fine commentators they are! Diane Labrosse and her colleagues at H-Diplo|RJISSF warrant our gratitude for assembling such a diverse and exceptionally qualified cohort. Both John Lindsay and Rebecca Slayton are political scientists with expertise in information technology and cyber security. For over two decades Svetlana Savranskaya has directed the Russian program at the National Security Archive. David Painter is a historian of US foreign relations whose scholarship on the influence of energy, especially oil, is unsurpassed. For me, at least, the inclusion of Vincent Frigon came as a most welcome surprise. Frigon co-produced an investigative documentary on the alleged incident that aired in 2013 and brought to light previously unknown “facts” and dimensions.[5] Before reading Trachtenberg’s Research Note, I was unfamiliar with this documentary.
Lest I play the part of the spoiler, I will not summarize their many interventions into the dialogue and debate. Suffice it to say, none are convinced that Reed’s account is accurate, although in their judgment not all of it is inaccurate. They raise issues that range from the CIA project’s timeline, to the KGB’s standard M.O. and the purported intent to steal the software, to the technical feasibility of both Operation Farewell’s engineering the explosion and subsequent efforts to tie an explosion to the operation, to the death toll that the explosion may or may not have caused. What is more, their responses are without exception well-reasoned, well-informed, and well-argued. So is Trachtenberg’s reply, but what is most impressive about his response is a string of comments that reflects his approach to scholarship and also captures the goal of these online exchanges: “I certainly learned a good deal from each of the comments,” he writes. “As a result, I have changed my mind on a number of points….So although we may not have gotten to the bottom of the issue, we have certainly learned some new things.”
Contributors:
Marc Trachtenberg, an historian by training, is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at UCLA. He is the author of a number of books and many articles dealing mostly with twentieth century international politics. His book The Craft of International History: A Guide to Method was published by Princeton University Press in 2006.
Richard Immerman is Emeritus Professor of History, Edward J. Buthusiem Distinguished Faculty Fellow, and Marvin Wachman Director of the Center for Force and Diplomacy at Temple University. A former President of the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations, the recipient of its Graebner Lifetime Achievement Award, and its Executive Director designate, Immerman’s most recent publication is Thinking Otherwise: How Walter LaFeber Explained the History of US Foreign Relations (Cornell, 2024), which he co-edited with Susan A. Brewer and Douglas Little. With Diane Labrosse and Stacey Goddard, he is currently co-editing The Jervis Effect (Columbia, forthcoming).
Vincent Frigon is a former journalist and documentary producer. He is the co-producer, with Yves Bernard, of the documentary film Bon Baiser du Canada (2011).
Jon R. Lindsay is an Associate Professor at the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy and the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is the author of Information Technology and Military Power (Cornell, 2020) and Age of Deception: Cybersecurity and Secret Statecraft (Cornell, 2025).
David S. Painter taught International History at Georgetown University for 31 years. His publications include Oil and the American Century: The Political Economy of U.S. Foreign Oil Policy, 1941–1954 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986); The Cold War: An International History (Routledge, 1999); Origins of the Cold War: An International History, co-edited with Melvyn P. Leffler (Routledge, 1994, 2005); The Struggle for Iran: Oil, Autocracy, and the Cold War, 1951–1954, co-authored with Gregory Brew (University of North Carolina Press, 2023); and, most recently, “The Oil Crises of the 1970s and the Global Cold War,” in The Oil Crises of the 1970s and the Transformation of the International Order, ed. Shigeru Akita (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024), 17-55. He is currently working on a study of oil and world power in the twentieth century.
Svetlana Savranskaya, PhD, is director of Russia programs (since 2001) at the National Security Archive, George Washington University. She is the author, with Thomas Blanton, of the book The Last Superpower Summits: Gorbachev, Reagan and Bush, (Central European University Press, 2016), and editor of the book by the late Sergo Mikoyan, The Soviet Cuban Missile Crisis: Castro, Mikoyan, Kennedy, Khrushchev and the Missiles of November (Stanford University Press/Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2012). Dr. Savranskaya won the Link-Kuehl Prize in 2011 from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, recognizing the best documentary publication over the previous two years, for her book (with Thomas Blanton and Vladislav Zubok) “Masterpieces of History”: The Peaceful End of the Cold War in Europe 1989 (Central European University Press, 2010). She serves as an adjunct professor teaching US-Russian relations at the American University School of International Service in Washington D.C. (since 2001). She is currently working on the new project documenting the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Programs in the 1990s.
Rebecca Slayton is an Associate Professor jointly appointed in the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies and the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies at Cornell University. Her research and teaching examine the relationships between and among risk, governance, and expertise, with a focus on international security and cooperation since World War II. Slayton’s current book project, Shadowing Cybersecurity, examines how expert knowledge and practice in cybersecurity has been historically institutionalized.
“Operation Farewell and the Siberian Pipeline Explosion: A Research Note”
by Marc Trachtenberg, UCLA
Thomas Reed, a high-ranking US official during the early Reagan period, told a story in 2004 about an extraordinary American operation which, he claimed, had led directly to a major explosion on the gas pipeline the Soviet Union was building in Siberia.
The US government, Reed noted, had acquired some extremely valuable information about the massive Soviet industrial espionage operation in the West that was conducted by a branch of the KGB called “Line X.” A KGB officer, Colonel Vladimir Vetrov (codenamed “Farewell”), had provided the French counter-intelligence agency with thousands of pages of documents relating to that program; much of that information was shared with US leaders in 1981. But how would that information be used? The Americans, as Reed told the story, decided that instead of immediately rooting out the Soviet spy network, they would try to turn the tables on their adversaries. Soviet operatives would be allowed to procure many of the items on their shopping list—but those items would have been doctored before they were turned over. Once installed, they would work well for a certain period of time, but would then fail to function properly, with possibly serious consequences. The goal, in other words, was to poison the well from which the Soviets were illicitly drinking.
US officials, Reed said, began working on that program in early 1982, after President Ronald Reagan had personally approved the plan. Many things were done, but one operation was of particular importance. The Soviets were trying to buy software for the computers that would help manage the gas pipeline they were building in Siberia—software they could not buy legally in the West. Armed with the Farewell information, US operatives allowed the Soviet operatives to buy that software from a Canadian firm, but only after a “Trojan Horse” had been engineered into it. The goal was to make sure that the system would run beautifully at first, but at a certain point would go haywire. The Soviets were taken in by the plan. They installed the defective software, and the result, Reed said, was the “most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space.”[6]
That story was quite extraordinary, and, if true, would have a certain bearing on how US foreign policy during the early Reagan period is to be interpreted. But a number of scholars were not convinced that the incident had actually occurred. The political scientist Thomas Rid was one of the skeptics. The evidence supporting Reed’s account, he wrote, was “so thin and questionable” that this episode could not “be counted as a proven case of a successful” cyber-attack of the sort Reed had described. Indeed, he seemed certain that the attack had not occurred at all.[7] The historian David Painter also doubted that the incident had taken place. “While the CIA may have had a program to corrupt software stolen by the Soviets,” he wrote, “and while there was an explosion at a Soviet natural gas pipeline in Siberia in 1982, there is no independent evidence connecting the two.”[8] Nicholas Dujmovic, formerly with the History staff at the CIA, had, in fact, as Painter noted, characterized the pipeline sabotage story as a “persistent myth,”[9] and various other writers have reached similar conclusions.[10]
What, then, are we to make of the story? There are four points that need to be noted. Vetrov, first of all, clearly did provide the French with a massive amount of information about the Soviet industrial espionage effort, and much of that material was indeed shared with the Americans.[11] A second point relates to the timing of the explosion. Reed said that it had taken place in 1982.[12] That allowed his critics to argue that his story did not hold up, because (as one of them wrote) there were “no media reports from 1982 that would confirm Reed’s alleged explosion.”[13] But Reed might have simply gotten the date wrong. It turns out that there wasa large explosion and fire at a compressor station in Siberia in December 1983; that event was widely reported in the Western press at the time.[14] And Gennady Schmal, the USSR’s deputy minister for oil and gas at the time, confirmed many years later that there had been major explosion. It had taken place, he said, at Pumping Station No. 7, in Nadym, in the Urengoy field in the Tyumen region of Siberia, and had resulted in dozens of deaths.[15] And to make matters even more confusing, it turns out that there might well have been another blast, having nothing to do with the pipeline, that had taken place in 1982; this might have been the explosion Reed remembered from his time in government.[16] We still do not have enough information to know exactly what happened, and when, but the argument that there had been no pipeline explosion in 1982 does not really discredit Reed’s story.
There is a third, but more general, point that should also be taken into account. Many people think that Reed’s story sounds like it could have come out of a John LeCarré novel; they find it hard to believe that this kind of thing could have happened in the real world.[17] So it is important to remember that governments have often understood that enemy perceptions can be manipulated by feeding the relevant intelligence agencies false, or even true, information. One occasionally comes across examples of this sort of operation in the course of doing ordinary historical work. In April 1953, for example, in a discussion of tactics for ending the Korean War, President Eisenhower suggested that the US government feed the enemy information which would impress it “with our determination, without, on the other hand, unduly alarming our allies or our own people.” The Americans could take certain steps, involving preparations for the use of nuclear weapons, which the enemy’s intelligence would notice; the enemy would piece together those various bits of information and would “come to the conclusion that he had pierced the screen of the intentions of the United States.”[18] Other examples from the Berlin Crisis period, also related to influencing the adversary’s estimates of America’s willingness to use nuclear weapons, can also be cited.[19] And such cases should not be dismissed as isolated examples. Operations of this sort, especially in wartime, are, in fact, fairly common.[20] British activities in this area during the Second World War, in particular, have received a great deal of attention—and, indeed, helped inspire the Farewell operation.[21]
And there is a fourth, and very important, point that needs to be noted: namely, that a general program for exploiting the Farewell information by planting defective technology on the Soviets did, in fact, exist. It is described in an article on the Farewell affair which Gus Weiss, at the time a National Security Council (NSC) official, who is generally viewed as the mastermind behind the project, published in the CIA’s in-house journal Studies in Intelligence, and in a longer unpublished account that he had written. “I met with Director of Central Intelligence William Casey,” Weiss wrote:
on an afternoon in January 1982. I proposed using the Farewell material to feed or play back the products sought by Line X, but these would come from our own sources and would have been “improved,” that is, designed so that on arrival in the Soviet Union they would appear genuine but would later fail. US intelligence would match Line X requirements supplied through Vetrov with our version of those items, ones that would hardly meet the expectations of that vast Soviet apparatus deployed to collect them.
Casey, he said, liked the proposal; Reagan “was enthusiastic”; and:
CIA and the Defense Department, in partnership with the FBI, set up a program to do just what we had discussed: modified products were devised and “made available” to Line X collection channels. The CIA project leader and his associates studied the Farewell material, examined export license applications and other intelligence, and contrived to introduce altered products into KGB collection. American industry helped in the preparation of items to be “marketed” to Line X. Contrived computer chips found their way into Soviet military equipment, flawed turbines were installed on a gas pipeline, and defective plans disrupted the output of chemical plants and a tractor factory. The Pentagon introduced misleading information pertinent to stealth aircraft, space defense, and tactical aircraft.[22]
It is important to note that Weiss is not the only source here. Richard V. Allen, Reagan’s national security advisor in 1981, confirmed on a number of occasions that such a program existed.[23] Norman Bailey, Weiss’s chief at the NSC, also described the program in a short book he published in 1998.[24] Other high officials corroborated that point in interviews with journalists like Tim Weiner and Alex French.[25] (One of French’s sources was “a high-ranking former CIA science and technology officer” who used the codename “Galahad.”[26]) Gene Poteat, a leading electronic warfare expert in the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology—and a man who evidently played a key role in this affair—also implicitly confirmed the accuracy of the account Weiss had given in his Studies in Intelligence article.[27] Indeed, even scholars like Rid and Painter do not dispute the claim that a general program of this sort actually existed. And it is also quite likely that within the framework of that general program there was an operation to provide the Soviets with defective software for use on the pipeline; that point was confirmed by Morris Covington, the head of the Canadian company that was said to have provided the defective software, in an interview years later.[28]
But Weiss’s account is of fundamental importance, in large part because he provides a certain amount of additional information about the program. Casey, he tells us, chose “an energetic and experienced officer from the Clandestine Service” to run the project soon after Reagan had approved the idea in early 1982. Farewell quickly grew into “a joint venture with FBI and Defense, spawning special committees for individual projects.”[29] Various people from the private sector were brought in as needed. Bailey, who paid a good deal of attention to what was going on—according to the British writer Anthony Cave Brown, he reported to Reagan “on these operations privately each Friday morning”—called the program “a colossal operation that was the largest of the Cold War.”[30]
Cave Brown, in fact, learned a good deal about the operation from interviews he had conducted in conjunction with a book he was writing about Weiss. His book manuscript, which is available in his papers at the Georgetown University library,[31] was based largely on what Weiss had told him, but it also included information derived from interviews with a number of former officials who had been directly involved in the Farewell operation—most notably Jan Herring and Gene Poteat from CIA and Don Goldstein from the Defense Department. Weiss, Alex French tells us, had provided him with introductions.[32] Cave Brown, to be sure, was not a very good scholar, and not everything he says in the manuscript is to be trusted. Indeed, the manuscript itself is a total mess—it is essentially a collection of research notes and various fragments he intended to use when he wrote the book. But it contains a good deal of the raw information that Cave Brown was given, and, despite all its flaws, it is hard to believe that it was fabricated from whole cloth.
And it is of interest, in large part, because Cave Brown expanded there on some of the points Weiss had made in his unpublished memoir. “A special operations section of the CIA” called “Technology Transfer Intelligence and Operations,” Cave Brown wrote, was formed soon after Reagan had approved the basic idea. Its chief was Jan Herring, the CIA’s National Intelligence Officer for Science and Technology. The program “enjoyed Casey’s complete support” and conducted a large number of operations, a number of which he discussed in the manuscript; the target list, developed by a high Pentagon official, Maynard C. Anderson, Director for Security Plans and Programs in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, was based on information contained in the Farewell dossier. The Defense Department had, in fact, built a laboratory to supply items that could be used in the project. The general program, Cave Brown wrote, was given the codename “Kudo.” It included a number of specific operations:
- “DECA for ‘Development of Counterintelligence Awareness.’ An FBI program, its purpose was to educate the more than six hundred government hightech companies in California alone about Soviet and Warsaw Pact.
- RAMPARTS, an operation to bug all computers such as the Cray so that the whereabouts of each could be checked by satellites orbiting not just the United States but the world, including the Soviet Union.
- EXODUS, to catch hightech thefts and smugglers in the United States.
- ARROW, to do likewise in the British Isle[s] and the British Commonwealth countries.
- PERSEUS, for the 1800 operations spawned by Kudo overseas by the CIA, at home, the FBI.
- BOULEVARD, for such operations in Europe and the NATO countries.”
Some specific operations are described in the manuscript; again, that information expands on the very brief description Weiss gave in his Studies in Intelligence article. A number of the installations that were targeted are listed there. A chemical plant in Omsk was one of the first plants to be hit. US agents had gotten the Soviets to install a “‘modified’ computer logic system” there, which turned out to be worthless. “The venture,” he said, “cost the facility an estimated $8 to $10 million before the problems were corrected.” “A tractor factory in the Ukraine” was another early target. The managers tried to make machinery using blueprints which, unbeknownst to them, had been provided by the CIA. “The factory ran at half capacity for sixteen months until the engineers finally abandoned the new automated systems. Their problem was a logic bomb in the computer-automated production line.” A third operation related to the pipeline:
Blueprints for gas turbine parts were passed to the Soviets in early 1984, and some such parts were mounted on the gas pipelines. When brought on line, the turbines failed. Result: further delay in the construction of Russia’s most expensive, daring industrial program and vital source of hard currency. Their problem was with “modified” logic bombs.
The Cave Brown manuscript listed a fourth such operation. “‘Modified’ computer chips,” he wrote, “planted on Belgian middlemen ended up in the equipment at several Soviet military factories, where it was many months before the problems were resolved. Automated assembly lines were shut down for many weeks.”
The direct effects of the operation were important, but there were also far-reaching indirect effects, as the Soviets lost confidence in the reliability of the designs and equipment they had managed to procure. Cave Brown quoted from a memorandum Weiss had written to Casey in 1984: “Unable to delineate between real and inaccurate data and information, the Soviet ability to absorb and apply Western technologies has declined dramatically.”[33]
Now, all of this might be quite interesting, but there is no proof here that an American “Trojan Horse” actually triggered a major explosion on the pipeline, let alone that this was done intentionally. And there is another problem with Reed’s story: it was very much a second-hand account. As he himself noted in his book, at the time he did not know what had happened; Weiss only told him about it twenty years later.[34] And in an interview with the journalist Alex French many years later, Reed, in fact, seemed to admit that there was some room for doubt:
When I talked to Thomas C. Reed about my problems confirming the account in his book [French wrote], he reached for the broader context. Weiss told Reed about a pipeline caper in Siberia; Reed recalled hearing about a nuclear-sized blast out there in the wilderness that people from the Air Force found curious. Reed put one and one together. “It’s not clear that the explosion that I remember and the pipeline explosion Gus described are connected. It is very clear that all the Farewell stuff happened. It’s very clear that we’ve put tech junk in their technology systems. It’s very clear that we did sell ’em software that was garbled. We did do stuff and it’s pretty clear to me from other sources that it really disrupted the pipeline.”[35]
He went even further in a telephone interview 2010. The journalist Kim Zetter asked him if he “believed Weiss’s account of the pipeline”:
“I don’t really know if it happened” [Reed told her]…“Clearly, the whole Dossier episode happened. The agency had a very major campaign to adjust the tech of stuff that was being sent off to the Russians.” He said he does recall that an explosion occurred at the time he was on the NSC. “I remembered that there was a great event that puzzled the intelligence community.” But whether that was in fact a pipeline explosion, “that was thirty years ago,” he said, acknowledging that both his and Weiss’s memories may have been altered in the ensuing years. “I have respect for Russian historians who say there was no explosion in connection with Dossier…. So it could be there was an explosion, but it was not a result of a Trojan horse….Whether it was true or not I do not know.”[36]
So if Reed’s book were the only basis for the story, one would have to side with the skeptics. It could scarcely be taken as established fact that a US “Trojan Horse” had triggered a great explosion on the Siberian pipeline. The key issue here thus has to do with the skeptics’ claim (as one of them put it) that “there is no independent evidence corroborating Reed’s account.[37]
So do other sources support Reed’s story? Weiss himself, of course, was Reed’s main source, and Weiss did claim on a number of occasions—although not in his Studies in Intelligence article or even in his unpublished “memoire”—that the Farewell project had led to a “huge explosion” in Siberia.[38] But as he himself later noted, he had not been involved with the project at the operational level. After the plan was approved, he said, “I attended a few meetings of the Planning Group, saw that the project was best left to professionals, and thereafter had little direct role in it.”[39] So if Weiss’s testimony were all we had, we would not have very much. It is quite possible, for example, that Weiss had also simply put two and two together: he knew that the CIA was doctoring the software for the pipeline and also knew about the explosion and jumped to the conclusion that it was the modified software that had led to the blast. This would have been no more than an educated guess on his part; he might not have known for a fact that the CIA operation had actually caused the explosion,but he might have given the impression, in telling the story, that he was sure that that was the case. So Weiss’s testimony also has to be taken with a grain of salt.
It turns out, however, that other people who apparently knew what had happened seemed certain that the doctored software had caused the blast. The Pultizer Prize-winning journalist Tim Weiner, author of an important history of the CIA, was convinced, for example, that the pipeline incident had taken place; he “had three high-level people saying, ‘Yes, that happened.’”[40] A documentary film on the pipeline affair, produced by French-Canadians Vincent Frigon and Yves Bernard, includes a recording of a telephone conversation with a former high-ranking but unidentified US official, confirming the basic story.[41] And three former French counter-intelligence officials, writing in 2022, seemed to have no doubt that the American “Trojan Horse” operation had actually caused the December 1983 disaster; one of them, Raymond Nart, had been deeply involved in the whole Farewell affair.[42] But perhaps the most compelling testimony came from Roger Robinson, who had worked on Soviet economic issues at the NSC at the time and had been close to Weiss. “I know it happened,” he told Alex French, “because I was there. Because one afternoon Gus came in my office upset. Innocent people had died in the explosion. Gus would never lie about that.”[43]
The problem, however, is that it is by no means clear that these were all independent sources. At least some of those accounts, in fact, were based on second-hand information. That information might have come, directly or indirectly, from Weiss himself. Or those people might simply have put two and two together the same way Weiss might have and concluded without really solid evidence that the Farewell operation had caused the blast. Their claims were not fleshed out with the kind of detail that would suggest that the defective software had indeed triggered the explosion—that the software, for example, had been designed to malfunction on a particular date, and, lo and behold, that was exactly when the explosion took place. The claims lack that kind of detail, and what all this suggests, for our purposes, is that there is plenty of room for doubt, on both sides, about what actually happened.
So is this all that can be said about the pipeline affair, or is it possible to reach a stronger conclusion? David Painter had referred “to former CIA staff historian Nicholas Dujmovic,” who, he said, had “researched the issue for the agency during the 1980s.”[44] Dujmovic, it was clear from a review he had published in Studies in Intelligence, did not believe that Reed’s story about the pipeline explosion was correct, and I wanted to see what the basis for his skepticism was. So I asked him about it, and it turned out that he had looked into the issue, not in the 1980s, but about twenty years later, and that he had done so not as part of an officially commissioned research project but on his own authority as an Agency historian. But he did have the necessary clearances and spent some time looking into the issue.
His conclusion that the pipeline explosion had not been caused by anything the CIA had done was based in large part on what John McMahon had said about this business. McMahon, a top CIA official throughout this period, was certain that no operation of that sort had ever been mounted. This strikes me as compelling evidence. Although McMahon had been replaced as head of the Operations Directorate in April 1981—that is, shortly before the Farewell material was turned over by the French—he was so widely respected and trusted within the Agency that he almost certainly, sooner or later, would have heard about an operation that was designed to cause a major explosion on the pipeline if such an operation had in fact existed.[45]
Dujmovic was also struck by the absence of a paper trail relating to the episode—an important point, but not as compelling as the point about McMahon. The problem here is that when it came to covert operations, Casey and some of the people he worked with in this area were not particularly scrupulous about keeping records. Peter Oleson, another former intelligence officer, made precisely that point in a recent article on the Farewell affair. According to Oleson, when the plan to feed the Soviets defective products was approved, CIA Director Casey decided that a whole series of high-ranking pro-détente officials “were not to be briefed on the operation. Any of them could block the effort either through their access to Reagan or by a well-timed leak. Casey’s solution was to keep them and other potential opponents in the dark. Even knowledge within CIA was to be very limited. The task force went around senior CIA officials who were skeptical of the plan.”[46]
To back up that point, Oleson cited Robert M. Clark’s “The Farewell Dossier: A Case Study” in the Intelligence Community Officers Course (2007). Clark, in turn, had cited an interview with Jan Herring that took place on 16 May 2006. This sounded like third-hand information, but when I asked Oleson about it, he assured me that these were reliable sources. He and Clark had taught that course together, and Clark “wrote the piece of the syllabus related to Farewell.” He knew “him to be a very careful analyst” in the CIA and later in industry; he had also spoken with Herring, who seemed to have direct knowledge of the Farewell operation. He had learned a bit from Herring about “the politics of the Reagan Administration and within CIA.”[47] Oleson, at any rate, himself knew from personal experience that the sort of thing Clark and Herring had alluded to was quite possible. He had, he wrote:
sometimes interacted with Casey and he was his own man. That he would by-pass the congressional requirement for a Finding does not surprise me at all. I also knew John McMahon and respected him greatly. After the Family Jewels fiasco I conclude[d] that John was being very protective of CIA, not wanting another scandal to break. Did Casey go around McMahon? I do not know, but recognize that it was possible. . . . I also know that certain programs (activities) were not shared widely. The early aspects of the Iran-Contra were also very closely held, excluding some at CIA. Having been read into some bigot lists[48] for extremely sensitive matters I was always surprised how few people were on a list.[49]
The basic point here is confirmed by various other sources. Casey’s modus operandi had, in fact, become clear to well-informed observers very early on. “A congressional source well versed in intelligence matters” told the journalist David Wise in 1982 that when dealing with covert operations, the Reagan people were deliberately “obscuring the paper trail.”[50] And it became even clearer later on, during the Iran/Contra affair, that Casey had been quite willing “to play loosey-goosey with the rules”—something other top CIA officials, like McMahon and Casey’s first deputy director, Admiral Bobby Inman, strongly disapproved of. It is thus scarcely surprising that Casey sought to keep knowledge of what he was doing, at least in certain areas, to a minimum. Even high officials within the Agency, according to Robert Gates (who had been another top CIA official during this period and certainly knew what he was talking about), were deliberately kept in the dark about certain matters.[51]
So what’s the bottom line here? It was very unlikely, first of all, that the CIA deliberately sought to cause a massive explosion that would kill dozens of people. According to Reed, US officials involved in the operation expected only “that the pipeline would spring leaks all the way from Siberia to Germany”; they had not expected a huge explosion.[52] And Weiss himself, according to Robinson, was upset that people had been killed in the blast.[53] But even if there had been no plan to cause that sort of disaster, this in itself does not mean that the Farewell operation was not connected with the blast in any way. The software might have been far more devastating than its designers had intended, and human error on the Soviet side might have compounded the problem. But it is also possible that there was no connection at all. After all, if the software engineers were sophisticated enough to plant an essentially undetectable “Trojan Horse” in what the Soviets were buying, wouldn’t they have been able to make sure that the damage the defective software would cause would be fairly limited? Still, this is pure speculation, and there is a good deal more to be learned about this episode.[54]
If, however, the goal is to understand the Reagan policy more generally, it scarcely matters which of those two latter possibilities turns out to be correct. For they both support the general view that the basic thrust of Reagan’s policy toward the USSR, at least in his first term, was fairly aggressive—but also that he took care from the start not to go too far in pursuing that sort of strategy.
Review by Vincent Frigon, Independent Scholar
“Farewell Never Said Goodbye”
On 2 February 2004, journalist William Safire wrote that “intelligence shortcomings have a thousand fathers and secret intelligence triumphs are orphans.”[55] The New York Times columnist was the first to report on At the Abyss: an Insider’s History of the Cold War by Thomas C. Reed, former Secretary of the Air Force.[56] The book, which was still unpublished at the time, detailed a story that probably sounded strange to many readers: it involved a software with a Trojan Horse that led to the explosion of a Soviet pipeline in the early 1980s. True story or legend?
For years, scholars and investigative reporters have tried to find the answer, but specific information is very difficult to get. Could this be a sign of an intelligence triumph? One thing is for sure: the truth appears well hidden behind a maze of circumstantial evidence and contradictory testimonies.
In this quagmire, Marc Trachtenberg’s Research Note, “Operation Farewell and the Siberian Pipeline Explosion,” is like a breath of fresh air. Not only does he document the many sources available, including articles and knowledgeable people, but he also investigates their reliability and assesses whether they are independent or come from the same root source. His work is both a very good roadmap for anyone interested in the Farewell Dossier and is an invitation to dig deeper.
To start, it is important to differentiate between the two phases of the Farewell story. The first is a product of French intelligence, where a KGB Colonel, Vladimir Vetrov, decided to leak thousands of documents to Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST), the former French counterespionage agency. Farewell was Vetrov’s codename, an English word chosen by French intelligence to further protect the source, giving the impression that it was an American or British intelligence operation. Vetrov was introduced to DST through a friend who worked at Thomson-CSF, now Thales.[57] This phase is known in France as “l’Affaire Farewell.”
The second phase, which is known as the Farewell Dossier, describes the American counterespionage operation initiated under President Ronald Reagan and is well documented by Trachtenberg. Reed’s story falls under that category. This was initiated by a secret meeting of President Reagan and French President François Mitterrand at the G7 Summit of Château Montebello in Quebec, Canada. The latter informed his American counterpart of an extensive and successful Soviet espionage network, called Line X, to infiltrate Western industries and steal highly sensitive technologies.[58] With this revelation, Mitterrand saw an opportunity to reinforce the US-French partnership, which had been hampered by a false impression of close rapprochement between France and the USSR. It was certainly true that the new French Socialist president had formed a government with four members of the French Communist Party. A furious and alarmed Reagan administration sent Vice President George H. W. Bush to France to deliver a clear message: the future of Western democracy hung in the balance.[59] American concerns were legitimate but missed Mitterrand’s real motivations to rally French voters, manage internal dissent, and apply a proven method: keeping friends close and enemies closer.[60]
Trachtenberg’s sources and evidence originate mainly, if not exclusively, in the policy and executive levels. This is not surprising, given that Reed and his colleagues are former bureaucrats and policymakers. Proving or disproving Reed’s story is, however, almost impossible without connecting policies and national directives to the operational level. As Trachtenberg argues, the Reagan administration and the US Intelligence Community likely produced few records describing specific counterespionage operations. Obtaining evidence from the field could bridge the gap, but of course gathering information at this level is very difficult, given that many individuals are not authorized to talk publicly about the story, and government or private organizations may have various reasons for not disclosing the details about it.
Telimagin, a Canadian documentary producer led by journalists Yves Bernard and the author of this article, was intrigued by Reed’s account of a pipeline sabotage operation involving a Canadian firm. In 2008, Radio-Canada commissioned Telimagin to investigate the matter, including at the operational level, and to produce an investigative documentary. The story, which aired in January 2013, brought some answers to the viewers, including new testimonies from American, Russian, Canadian and French witnesses. However, as is often common with espionage stories, many questions remain unanswered.[61]
At the operational level, it is important to consider that both Farewell phases are connected by a French firm: Thomson-CSF. In the first phase, employees of the firm made initial contacts with Vetrov; then during the second phase CIMSA, a Thomson-CSF affiliate, became involved with a strategic Soviet contract for assembling the electronic components of the Trans-Siberian gas pipeline.
A key component of CIMSA’s system was to be delivered by COV-CAN, a Canada-US joint venture owned by Morris Covington, on the American side, and Yanusz Stuchly, on the Canadian one. The two businessmen, who had previously worked on the Alaskan Pipeline, were seasoned experts on computerized systems for pipeline control. With this joint venture, Covington was able to counter Reagan’s US embargo on equipment destined for the Soviet pipeline. COV-CAN employees worked at CIMSA’s office, south of Paris, to prepare the software. According to Covington, CIMSA had been infiltrated by French and English-speaking computer engineers who were tasked to “provide some mechanism for a remote party, whether US or Canadian government [or] some other entity [to] take control of that pipeline.”[62] Covington’s assessment, however, was contradicted by Stuchly.[63]
COV-CAN involvement in this operation was first reported by Washington-based journalist Wayne Madsen.[64] It is also supported by a document from a private firm close to the US Government that indicates that the software company in Reed’s story had previously worked on the Alaskan Pipeline.
As Trachtenberg points out, there is strong evidence that an American deception program to counter Soviet industrial espionage and use of Western technologies was really put in place (4). There are also testimonies pointing to a Trojan Horse operation to get some control over the Soviet Trans-Siberian gas pipeline, and additional evidence pointing to a huge pipeline explosion that Soviet officials decided to keep secret, for one reason or another. What is still very unclear, however, is whether the explosion was caused by sabotage or human error.
Trachtenberg mentions inconsistencies in Reed’s book, with regards to the pipeline explosion. As documented by journalist Alex French,[65] and summarized by Trachtenberg (8), Reed offers little verifiable evidence for researchers interested in sorting out facts and myth. The former secretary of the Air Force and director of the National Reconnaissance Office himself admits that his book is an insider’s account of the Cold War, where he tells the story from his own perspective, from the information that he was able to collect over his long and successful government career. The chapter on the Soviet pipeline is merely an addendum offered by Reed to demonstrate what the early Reagan administration was eager to do to weaken the Soviet regime.[66]
Telimagin’s interview with Reed,[67] which took place in New York City in October 2010, also highlighted inaccuracies in the book’s narrative. First, on the explosion itself. Reed assesses that the Soviet pipeline explosion was the biggest non-nuclear explosion ever recorded, but contrary to what the book claims, it was never “seen” from space by US intelligence. As Reed indicated during the interview, the analysis of the explosion was not based on some space-based optical observation but instead was the result of an electronic detection, also known as electronic intelligence or ELINT. This is perhaps a small detail, but it is significant for researchers who are interested in analysing the nature of this incident.
Second, there is no evidence supporting the fact that Soviet operatives stole Canadian software for pipeline control, as suggested in the book. According to Morris Covington,[68] CIMSA leadership was aware of a plan to introduce malicious program lines in the software, but there is no indication that Line X operatives were trying to steal it. Telimagin interviews with former CIMSA employees suggest, to the contrary, that their Soviet client had paid a huge sum of money to acquire the technology through their contract with the French firm.
Third, the explosion of the pipeline did not happen in June 1982. During the interview, Reed confided that the date he once indicated as the date of the explosion may not be accurate. Telimagin made an extensive search in the declassified CIA Records that are available at NARA’s College Park to find any hint supporting the claim. CIA Records are not always a very good source of information for researchers because the documents are often incomplete and, even when they are available, they are usually heavily redacted and their perspective is lacking. However, CIA Records can sometimes be a good source of counter-factual information, especially when one is trying to demonstrate that a particular event did not happen.
For example, the CIA’s Office of Soviet Analysis published a series of reports on the Soviet gas pipeline project. One of them, dated 9 February 1982, indicates on page 2 that financing and equipment negotiations are nearly complete and that “construction should begin later this year.” However, the document specifies that delivery of most equipment “is probably scheduled for late 1983 or early 1984.” On page 19, the then-secret and still heavily redacted document also says that “no part of the export pipeline has been built so far…”[69]
Considering this information, and assuming that the assessment of the Office of Soviet Analysis was accurate, an explosion in June of 1982 is very unlikely, if not impossible: one cannot blow up a pipeline that doesn’t exist. Information on a construction starting only in late 1982 is also consistent with Telimagin interview of former Soviet Deputy Minister of Oil and Gas Gennady Schmal, which took place in Moscow in October 2010. Schmal confirmed that an explosion did happen on the Soviet pipeline but that it did not take place until the end of 1983 and that it was not at the main pipeline of Urengoï, but at “Nadym Station No. 7,” a secondary pumping station of the Soviet pipeline.
According to the former deputy minister, the incident left “dozens” of victims, information which was corroborated by Vladimir Toumaev, a former manager in charge of the worksite. Toumaev, who was also interviewed in Moscow in November 2010, witnessed the aftermath of the Nadym explosion and testified that he himself had ordered the coffins for the victims.[70]
Contextualizing Reed’s Story
Trachtenberg’s detailed analysis supports the idea that despite a lack of certainty surrounding the cause and the exact date of the pipeline explosion, a deception program to feed faulty technologies to the USSR was indeed put in place. Available CIA records also tend to confirm that.
Concerns about US technology being acquired legally or illegally by Soviet authorities predate the Vetrov files, but from 1982, declassified CIA documents reveal that the organization was determined to do something about the situation. For example, on 8 November 1982, Deputy Director John McMahon sent a memorandum to Bohdan Denysyk, deputy assistant secretary for Export Administration at the Department of Commerce, to discuss a case study dealing with “diversions of Western Technology to the USSR and Eastern Europe.” McMahon added that the “CIA is examining the feasibility of doing a study concerning the transfer of numerically controlled machine tools and related equipment to the Soviet Union.”[71] The same month, a Staff Weekly Report informed the intelligence community that “following the all-source assessment seminar on technology transfer held on 15 November, work has commenced on a National HUMINT Collection Plan on Technology Transfer.” The report specifies that the focus of this human intelligence collection effort was on technology transfer to the Soviet Bloc.[72]
That decision came roughly one year after the Vetrov files were shared with the US Intelligence community, as supported by the declassified transcript of the National Security Council (NSC) Meeting of 16 October 1981. CIA Director Bill Casey informed President Ronald Reagan that “this new information shows the value of what they [the Soviets] are getting is greater than what we had ever conceived.” NSC Advisor Richard V. Allen concurred: “Bill is also talking about the acquisition of technology by means other than purchases, such as theft.” President Reagan replied that he was already aware of that information, including how the USSR was using reverse engineering to procure new technologies.[73]
Information in the abovementioned records, and subsequent operations to prevent Soviet acquisitions, are consistent with Telimagin interviews with US officials who had a need to know. First, Steven Bryen, former deputy under secretary of Defense, told the reporters that “the key of the whole thing was to prevent the Soviet Union from being able to get hold of Western computers, Western microelectronics and use it in a military program.” He declined to comment on specific classified programs, but as a former official who was responsible for export control of high technologies, he was aware of the activities performed to delay or impede the construction of the Soviet pipeline. He added: “We did many things because it was a battle, and when you fight a battle you fight it all levels: the operative level, the public level, the secret level [and the] covert level if you want, you do all that.”[74] Second, former NSC Advisor Richard Allen confirmed that the deception program was indeed approved by President Reagan and that a secret Trojan Horse operation, leading to the explosion of the Soviet pipeline, did occur. “I knew that we would do our very best to sell the Soviets, or let them steal, rotten technologies,” Allen added.[75]
Still, there is no US record indicative of a plan to sabotage a Soviet pipeline, and the papers of Gus Weiss, “Duping the Soviets: the Farewell Dossier,”[76] may be the only written testimony available. Since Reed took most of his information from Weiss, it is no surprise that many experts doubt that there is any truth hidden behind the pipe. As Trachtenberg argues, several scholars (David Painter, Thomas Rid) are not impressed by the lack of paper trail.
Telimagin’s attempt to get more first-hand information was only a partial success. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to US agencies and Access of Information Act requests to Canadian agencies were met with the usual Glomar response: “cannot confirm nor deny.” Many US officials with a need to know were not at liberty to discuss the case, as demonstrated by Telimagin’s brief informal discussion with Jan Herring, former CIA deputy director for science and technology at the 2010 Annual Conference of the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies in Ottawa. However, Herring indicated that Gus Weiss was, in his own view, “a romantic,” suggesting that he might have altered the story a little.[77]
Another discussion, with Gene Poteat, who was also former CIA deputy director for science and technology, took place at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C. on 17 December 2008. Poteat told Telimagin that he had not yet read Reed’s book and “can’t say much about the actual gas pipeline explosion.” Although, he added that the Soviets “wanted a lot of American computers, [but] the one stolen had been doctored and manipulated so that [it] would not perform as […] expected. One of these computers may have been used to control SCADA systems and pipelines.”[78] That program, he concurred, “was quite good and accurate and extensive.”[79] For Telimagin, this conversation was an indication of a CIA clandestine operation to introduce a Trojan Horse in the Soviet pipeline software. It is still unclear, however, whether the malware was the cause of the explosion.
Some lines of investigation were dropped for lack of time, resources, or simply because potential sources could have faced legal prosecution. For example, on November 2010 a Thales spokesperson informed Telimagin that former CIMSA employees would be in breach of their legal agreement and could be prosecuted if they talked publicly about the case.[80]
Questions remain about the testimonies of some former staff employees of the Canadian-US joint venture COV-CAN. One senior employee told Telimagin that the firm could not have been involved in this operation because it was not in charge of developing the SCADA system. This testimony was, however, contradicted by a Globe and Mail article, with quotes from COV-CAN’s Canadian owner, that the software under development for the Soviet Pipeline was indeed a SCADA system.[81] Was the contract modified after the publication of the article? This is quite unclear.
As with many intelligence operations during the Cold War, the facts are hard to uncover. Investigations by scholars and reporters can lead down rabbit holes, as journalist Alex French testified himself.[82] This story is worth the effort as it leads to better understanding the early US policies of the Reagan administration towards USSR, and how Western intelligence agencies contributed to ending the Cold War. Even without definite proof of the cause of the Soviet pipeline explosion, there is a strong case demonstrating that the early Reagan administration was willing to go very far to destabilize the USSR, politically and economically, and prevent the Soviet Bloc from earning hard currencies. Therefore, for those interested in this story and the many intrigues of the Farewell Dossier, Trachtenberg’s Research Note is a must read.
Review by Jon R. Lindsay, Georgia Institute of Technology
“Sabotage in Siberia: Operational Feasibility and Implications for Cyber Warfare”
Thomas Reed’s “most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space” has become part of the lore of cyberwar. The (alleged) Siberian pipeline explosion is the first entry on the Repository of Industrial Security Incidents, an industry database of 242 reported intrusions or suspicious malfunctions up through 2014.[83] The most famous incident in the database is the Stuxnet intrusion discovered in 2010, which disrupted Iranian nuclear centrifuges.[84] Most of the rest of the entries in the database are just minor glitches or temporary outages with little material impact, but collectively they demonstrate the feasibility of hacking manufacturing, transportation, power, water, waste, petroleum, and other critical infrastructure.
More significant cyber-physical attacks have occurred subsequently, which include Russian attacks on the Ukrainian electrical grid in 2015 and 2016 and (most likely) Israeli attacks on Iranian rail infrastructure and manufacturing plants in 2021 and 2022.[85] FBI Director Christopher Wray recently warned that Chinese threat actors known by the cryptonym “Volt Typhoon” have been probing US critical infrastructure “in preparation to wreak havoc and cause real-world harm to American citizens and communities.”[86] Such incidents represent a very small but important subset of malicious activity in cyberspace.
The vast majority of cyber intrusions target information technology (IT) in order to steal data or spread disinformation. Cyber intrusions that target operational technology (OT), by contrast, have the potential to sabotage physical equipment and inflict material damage or even fatalities. The intuitive distinction is that IT affects data while OT affects physical processes. OT includes computerized industrial control systems (ICS), supervisory control and data acquisition systems (SCADA), programmable logic controllers (PLC), and weapons control systems. OT is the interface between cyberspace and industrial infrastructure. While it is also possible to sabotage IT directly in order to inflict harm, as was demonstrated spectacularly in the Israeli weaponization of Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies in September 2024,[87] most concerns about critical infrastructure vulnerability focus on OT sabotage.
The Siberian pipeline incident is important in this context because it is the earliest candidate case of OT sabotage causing serious damage in real-world circumstances. If it happened, it means that the history of US cyber warfare begins not with Stuxnet but decades earlier. It also means that actors like Volt Typhoon might inflict comparable damage decades later.
Yet Marc Trachtenberg raises the possibility that the Siberian pipeline explosion never happened at all, or perhaps that it happened differently than Reed suggests. These possibilities are also interesting for debates about cyber warfare. Perhaps OT sabotage is harder than believed. Perhaps OT sabotage is less useful than expected. Perhaps OT sabotage is more useful as a rhetorical flourish than as covert action. Insofar as the myth of Siberian pipeline hacking underwrites the myth of cyberwar, myth-busting in one has implication for the other.
With characteristic clarity, Trachtenberg pulls apart the questions surrounding the incident and evaluates the available evidence. As ever, the historian must be skeptical of circumstantial evidence and motivated biases. The history of secret intelligence is especially challenging because its subjects hide their tracks. In this case, as Trachtenberg points out, CIA Director William Casey “sought to keep knowledge of what he was doing, at least in certain areas, to a minimum.” Nonetheless, the evaluation and triangulation of imperfect and problematic sources may begin to paint a persuasive picture, the historiographic equivalent of what intelligence professionals call ‘multisource fusion.’ I do not think we have a fully persuasive account of this case yet, and I am not optimistic that we ever will, but thanks to Trachtenberg we have a better appreciation of where the uncertainties lie.
Was there really an explosion in Siberia? There may have been one, or several, but maybe not in 1982. It is possible that Reed refers to an explosion that happened at a different time, or was unrelated to the pipeline, or was caused by a pipeline accident that had nothing to do with sabotage. Did the CIA run a counterintelligence program against the USSR that was inspired by the Farewell Dossier? Almost certainly yes. Did the program target the pipeline? Trachtenberg’s sources suggest that this is very likely. Did sabotaged parts make it into the pipeline? It is hard to say. If so, did those sabotaged parts cause physical damage or injuries, let alone a massive explosion? Trachtenberg finds conflicting accounts. If so, was the level of damage achieved intended by the saboteurs, or were they surprised as well? Trachtenberg concludes that is “very unlikely, first of all, that the CIA deliberately sought to cause a massive explosion that would kill dozens of people.” I largely agree with all this.
But there are a few interesting questions that Trachtenberg does not explore. Namely, was it even technically possible for OT sabotage, given the state of the art of Soviet technology, to cause such a massive explosion? And if so, was it operationally feasible to deliver sabotaged OT into the Soviet pipeline in real world circumstances? These are important ‘hoop tests’ that the myth of pipeline sabotage must pass.[88] The answers to these questions are not satisfying, like so much else about this case, but they do provide additional reasons for skepticism—both of the Siberian pipeline incident and the cyberwar narrative that it has encouraged.
One inconsistency in Reed’s account is that the Soviets only began construction on the Siberian pipeline in mid-1982. Workers completed laying pipe in July 1983, at which time “[a]ccording to Tass, more than 2,500 miles of the pipeline has been tested. One 935-mile section between Urengoi and the Sverdlovsk region is already pumping gas to Siberian users.”[89] It is unlikely that much pipeline existed to sabotage in June 1982, much less pipeline that filled with gas and controlled by working OT that could be sabotaged. Still, as Trachtenberg points out, “Reed might have simply gotten the date wrong.”
The picture gets murkier because without further research it is not clear exactly what sort of OT the Soviets were using. In preparing this response I consulted with a security engineer who used to work on petroleum OT in the United States.[90] He opined that OT sabotage was technically feasible. Indeed, safety controls on a flammable gas pipeline are part of the justification for having OT in the first place. But controlling such a malfunction is another matter entirely. Control is a desirable feature for targeting effects and limiting collateral damage, although a lack of control could perhaps be more likely to appear to be an accident, depending on the risk acceptance of the saboteur. Even so, the tampered code in a SCADA system would also have had to overcome or shut down any other safeguard or failsafe devices on the pipeline. The things that engineers do to ensure against normal accidents may provide a degree of resilience against some OT attacks.
An interesting take on technical feasibility appears in a 2004 Russkii Zhurnal article by one Fateh Vergasov, “who during the years described worked as the chief dispatcher of the gas pipeline construction headquarters in Western Siberia,”[91] written in response to a New York Times op-ed on Reed’s forthcoming book:[92]
The pressure in a gas pipeline cannot be increased sharply. To do this, firstly, you need the gas itself, and secondly, you need to accelerate the compressor, which has a mechanical speed limiter. All compressor stations have protective shut-off valves, which are mechanically activated by differential pressure and do not require electricity or any commands. In the fields, all wells are equipped with packers, i.e. shut-off valves. Even if an atomic explosion were to occur, it would only demolish the “tree,” i.e. surface piping of the well. There will be a fire, but in a couple of hours everything will go out. There will be no Kuwait. Yes, imported equipment often had servo actuators, but they were never used in a unified telemechanics system due to our usual carelessness and backwardness. In a word, there simply was no truly automated process control system in those years. I am sure that this is not a problem even now. And most importantly: at that time no software was used on gas pipelines. There was no need and nothing to use it on.[93]
This could just be propaganda, as I cannot verify the existence or reliability of Mr. Vergasov, and the Russkii Zhurnal may not be entirely credible. But his perspective is plausible and worth taking with several grains of salt. The inadvertent advantages of backwardness resonate with me as a potential source of resilience against software sabotage. When an organization itself suffers from friction or relies on improvisation, this makes it harder for the attacker in turn to understand and anticipate local conditions. If a target must cope with a lot of friction during normal conditions, there are limits to the additional marginal friction that an attacker can impose from afar.
Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that it was technically feasible to cause a pipeline explosion by sabotaging 1980s-era Soviet OT. This is a heroic assumption, but let’s run with it. Now the question is whether it was operationally feasible to get that sabotaged software into a working Soviet pipeline. Reed asserts that “a KGB operative was sent to penetrate a Canadian software supplier in an attempt to steal the needed codes. US intelligence, tipped by Farewell, responded and—in cooperation with some outraged Canadians—‘improved’ the software before sending it on.”[94] Note that Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau refused to support American sanctions against the Soviet Pipeline in 1982,[95] and he launched a peace initiative to reconcile East and West in 1983.[96] Canadian involvement in the CIA plot would thus have had to have been very covert indeed. Either Trudeau was not fully read in to the program, or he was willing to tolerate something that was inconsistent with his public policy.
Assuming that the Canadians were on board with a plan that Casey was reticent to share with people in his own government, it would have taken careful planning for the CIA to ensure that the KGB agent stole the tampered software. That software would have to have been engineered and tested in advance based on reliable intelligence about and detailed technical knowledge of Soviet pipeline operations. The KGB agent then, believing his theft successful, must have unwittingly carried the poison pill to Soviet case officers, presumably via a floppy disk or some hardware component. Then the Soviet intelligence system, which was inefficient in the best of conditions, must have managed to disseminate the tainted code to a pipeline technician in Siberia who was qualified and empowered to install it. Since the pipeline was then under construction, and the Soviets were only just beginning to experiment with software controls, the technician must have evaluated and certified the new software without noticing anything fishy. Then the software worked normally for “a decent interval” before causing things to go “haywire” and explode.[97]
In short, several consecutive miracles must have occurred in order for the CIA operation to have intentionally caused catastrophic pipeline damage. While this is possible, the odds are against it. In counterintelligence, as in life, stuff happens. It is more likely that any catastrophic damage associated with the tainted code was as surprising to the CIA as it was to the Soviets. This is more consistent with Trachtenberg’s quotation from Roger Robinson that “one afternoon [CIA Officer] Gus [Weiss] came in my office upset. Innocent people had died in the explosion. Gus would never lie about that.”
To sum up what we can now reasonably surmise about this case, there was definitely a CIA sabotage program, and it probably targeted the Siberian pipeline, and this may have caused a malfunction. The malfunction, if it happened, would have been uncontrolled. It probably did not cause a massive explosion, which was never intended in the first place.
Reed’s story is the cyberwar equivalent of John Huston’s tale of The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean: “Maybe this isn’t the way it was…it’s the way it should have been.”[98] It was a good yarn that has taken on a life of its own. The myth of the Siberian pipeline attack is now used to argue that Hollywood hacking in movies like Live Free or Die Hard or television shows like Mr. Robot has some grounding in Cold War fact. But the actual facts of the case are more consistent with a skeptical perspective on cyber warfare.[99]
Hacking OT requires specialized knowledge of not only software systems but also of the physical hardware and processes that they control. The ability to install malware or ransomware does not simply translate into the ability to damage critical infrastructure. This helps to explain why OT hacking is rarer than IT hacking. Nevertheless, as the history of known OT security incidents demonstrates, at least some actors do have the ability and motivation to hack OT. This possibility is at the root of the cyberwar narrative that cyberspace makes it possible to inflict serious damage at relatively low cost and risk. The question thus turns from how to hack OT to why. Here, the Siberian pipeline episode suggests that capable actors may nevertheless have motives for restraint.
Popular accounts imagine OT sabotage as a catastrophic escalation of violence.[100] But as Joshua Rovner points out, the goal of sabotage is usually to create friction for a target organization, not to cause serious harm or invite reprisals.[101] Trachtenberg likewise highlights the CIA program’s “far-reaching indirect effects, as the Soviets lost confidence in the reliability of the designs and equipment they had managed to procure.” Any possible direct effects were temporary, as the Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhgorod pipeline opened for business in 1984, slightly ahead of the CIA’s own estimates.[102]
Trachtenberg’s emphasis on indirect effects anticipates the concept behind Stuxnet, which was designed to degrade the efficiency of Iranian centrifuges, not to cause catastrophic breakage. As David Sanger reports, “one participant said the goal was simply to ‘throw a little sand in the gears’ and buy some time…. ‘The intent was that the failures should make them feel they were stupid, which is what happened,’ the participant in the attacks said.”[103] Stuxnet, moreover, was just one episode in a longer effort by the CIA to inject faulty parts into the Iranian nuclear program, e.g., through the Tinner spy ring and Operation Merlin, which both used human agents to provide Iranian engineers with flawed equipment[104]
To wrap up, Trachtenberg’s revised interpretation of this case lends support to an important revision to the standard cyberwar narrative. Most of these CIA sabotage programs, from the Farewell counterintelligence program to Stuxnet, are best understood as a form of covert competition that enables actors to avoid dangerous escalation.[105] This means that the Siberian pipeline incident, if it even happened, actually turns the cyberwar narrative on its head. Reed’s story is not a harbinger for catastrophic digital disruption. On the contrary, the evidence is more consistent with an alternative interpretation of cyber competition as a high-tech intelligence contest.[106] Sabotage is a way of inflicting friction, and saboteurs themselves must struggle with friction, too.
Review by David S. Painter, Georgetown University, Emeritus
Marc Trachtenberg’s provocative Research Note, “Operation Farewell and the Siberian Pipeline Explosion,” demonstrates the difficulties involved in writing about clandestine intelligence operations. In particular, Trachtenberg’s report highlights the extremely thin evidence base of existing accounts, which, at least in the two cases he examines, is characterized by an almost total absence of independently verifiable information and is instead dominated by undocumented memoirs and interviews which were conducted years after the events in question, often with people with no direct knowledge of the events in question and/or with people with strong motivation to believe and promote a certain version of the history.[107]
The key sources for Operation Farewell, a 1980s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operation to pass corrupted software and false information to the Soviets, are a 1996 article by Gus W. Weiss in the CIA’s in house journal, Studies in Intelligence; unpublished drafts of his brief “memoire” in the Special Collections at Georgetown University and elsewhere; and an unpublished manuscript by Anthony Cave-Brown, which is also held at Georgetown, which is based largely on information from Weiss and interviews with former CIA and Department of Defense officials.[108] Richard V. Allen, Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser in 1981, discusses the operation in a 2002 oral history interview at the Miller Center for Public Affairs and in a 2011 Canadian documentary film with the cheeky title, Bon Baiser du Canada (From Canada with Love).[109]Norman A. Bailey, who was special assistant to the president for security affairs, and senior director of international economic affairs during Reagan’s first term, briefly mentions the operation in two publications on Reagan’s “grand strategy,” and calls Operation Farewell “a massive deception program that was unparalleled in the history of the Cold War.”[110] Bailey also refers to the program in an interview in Bon Baiser du Canada.[111]
As Trachtenberg astutely points out, almost nothing in the Weiss article and manuscripts and the Cave Brown manuscript can be independently verified. Trachtenberg notes that Cave Brown “was not a very good scholar” and that not everything he says in the manuscript is to be trusted (6). Journalist Alex French notes that critics frequently note Cave Brown’s “propensity for crafting dramatic tales without regard for the facts.”[112] Weiss and Cave Brown are dead, and the people who ran the operation seem to have maintained their commitment to the CIA not to speak or write about it without the agency’s consent. Documentation on the operation is either still classified or no longer long exists, assuming that much existed in the first place.
Citing sources that claim that CIA Head William J. Casey exercised strict control over information about the program and made sure that “pro-détente members” of the Reagan administration did not know about it, Trachtenberg argues that the absence of a paper trail for operations such as Farewell is not unusual (10).[113] Whether this means that documents about the program never existed or that none existed outside the CIA is not clear, but Casey’s actions seem to shed new light on Reagan’s quip that “Sometimes in our administration, the right hand doesn’t know what the far-right hand is doing.”[114]
Reliable independent sources linking Operation Farewell to the explosion on a massive natural gas pipeline the Soviets were constructing that would send natural gas from fields in Western Siberian to European markets in the early 1980s are likewise lacking. The main source on the Siberian pipeline explosion is a few pages in a 2004 memoir by Thomas C. Reed, who served on the National Security Council (NSC) from January 1982 until March 1983. Reed claimed that the pipeline explosion was caused by software for the computers which controlled the flow of gas through the pipeline that had been altered secretly by the CIA so that they would fail after a certain amount of time.[115] Reed offered this story as an example of how the Reagan administration sought to punish the Soviet Union for stealing Western technology and to disrupt Soviet natural gas development and exports.[116] Reed’s story became gospel in conservative circles and found its way into more mainstream accounts, which often repeat it without any critical analysis even though Reed clearly did not know where the explosion occurred, when it occurred, or how it occurred, and exaggerates its impact.[117]
There are numerous problems with Reed’s story. In a review published in Studies in Intelligence, former CIA deputy chief historian Nicholas Dujmovic called the story a “persistent myth” and argued that “policy discussions about such covert action went on for years, into 1986, but no decisions were made or findings signed in large part because of the ethical implications.”[118] Trachtenberg points out that Dujmovic investigated the story “on his own authority as an Agency historian” and concluded that “the pipeline explosion had not been caused by anything the CIA had done.” Trachtenberg notes that Dujmovic “was struck by the absence of a paper trail relating to the episode,” but argues that Dujmovic’s conclusion was “based in large part” on the view of John McMahon, who was Deputy Director for Operations from January 1978 to April 1981, and Deputy Director of the agency from April 1982 to March 1986, that “no operation of that sort had ever been mounted.” According to Trachtenberg, McMahon “almost certainly” would have heard about the operation if it had in fact existed (10).[119] Similarly, former National Security Council official Norman A. Bailey stated in an interview in Bon Baiser du Canada that the story that US-supplied software caused the Siberian pipeline explosion was a “myth.” Bailey, who Cave Brown says briefed President Reagan privately every Friday about Operation Farewell, explained that he knew nothing about an explosion and that he was “quite sure” that he would have if it had occurred. According to Bailey, “It did not happen. The explosion did not happen.”[120]
There are other problems with Reed’s story. As Trachtenberg notes, “it was very much a second-hand account” (7). Reed apparently got almost all his information about Operation Farewell from Weiss. In an interview with the journalist Alex French many years later, Reed explained that he had put the story together from what Weiss had told him about a “pipeline caper” in Siberia and his memory of a “nuclear-sized blast” in Siberia that the Air Force had found “curious.” Although Reed insisted that “all the Farewell stuff happened,” and that the United States had sold the Soviets software that was “garbled,” he admitted that “it’s not clear that the explosion I remember and the pipeline explosion Gus described are connected.”[121] Reed’s admission confirmed what he had implied in a telephone interview with journalist Kim Zetter in 2010. Reed told Zetter that the CIA had a “very major campaign to adjust the tech of stuff that was being sent off to the Russians” and that there was a gas pipeline explosion in Siberia while he was at the NSC, but he did not know if the explosion was the result of a “Trojan Horse” planted by the CIA (7-8).[122]
Reed claimed that the explosion took place on a pipeline that ran from the “Urengoi gas fields in Siberia across Kazakhstan, Russia, and Eastern Europe, into the hard currency markets of the West.” There is an older and smaller pipeline that follows this route, but the pipeline that the United States wanted to disrupt was a massive pipeline under construction that ran from the Urengoi gas fields through Pomary and Uzhgorod to markets in Western Europe. It does not pass through Kazakhstan, as anyone who bothered to look at a map would know.[123]
Reed did not give a date for the explosion in his book, but in a 2004 interview placed it at some time in 1982, and, as noted earlier, in his 2010 interview with Zetter, he insisted that it occurred while he was at the NSC.[124] Although there was an explosion on a Soviet natural gas pipeline in Siberia in 1982, it occurred on a different pipeline and was the result of shoddy construction and poor maintenance.[125] There was, however, a fire and possibly an explosion in December 1983, around nine months after Reed left the NSC, at a pipeline compressor station in Nadym near the Urengoi gas fields, though it involved a feeder line from the Nadym field to a compressor station and not the main pipeline. Western news organizations reported the incident at the time. Citing Soviet sources, Time’s story about the incident noted that “a blaze had broken out on Dec. 15 in a pile of boxes lying on the floor of the station. The flames destroyed important electronic monitoring devices and control panels, but no one was injured.” Other reports also mentioned an explosion in addition to the fire, but Soviet authorities denied that an explosion had occurred. [126]
Two former Soviet officials, Gennady Shmal and Vladimir Toumaev, confirm the 1983 incident in Bon Baiser du Canada. According to Smal “dozens of people died,” and Toumaev, who was director of operations of the pipeline, says he lost workers. Toumaev claims that the incident was the result of “sabotage,” though he does not elaborate on the nature of the alleged sabotage, and a skeptic might wonder if the person in charge of the pipeline construction would admit shoddy and hasty construction as the cause. [127]
Reed claimed the explosion was the result of hidden code inserted by the CIA into computer software illegally obtained by agents from a Canadian firm. According to Reed:
…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 the pipeline joints and welds. The result was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space.[128]
Bon Baiser du Canada includes an interview with the head of Cov-Can, the Canadian Company that allegedly worked with the CIA to alter the software. The official confirms working on secret software, but it is not clear from the interview when this work occurred; if the corrupted software targeted computer controls for gas pipelines; if any corrupted software found its way into Soviet compressor stations; and if so, where and when.[129] Gilbert de Montricher, an engineer who worked at Cov-Can at the time, told journalist Alex French that although Cov-Can was initially in charge of developing the software, it failed to do so and the contract was given to another company, which did not deliver the software until 1986.[130] In an interview in Bon Baiser du Canada Montricher also explained that while it was possible to cause a pipeline to rupture if the pressure was significantly increased, it would take a very powerful turbine and that pipeline operators generally avoided overly powerful turbines to prevent such an occurrence.[131]
Thomas Rid, who has written extensively on cyberwarfare, points out that the software available for such applications in the early 1980s was simple. Testing such software for flaws would have been “rather easy” so it would have been difficult to hide malicious code.[132] Similarly, cyber-security expert Robert M. Lee points out in “CIA Cyberattack” that while it is easy to talk about building and installing a “Trojan Horse,” it would be very difficult to implement due to specialized nature of controls which would have been customized for each compressor station.[133]
According to two former KGB officers who were interviewed in Bon Baiser du Canada, Soviet officials were aware of the possibility of deception and had their computer scientists examine the software they obtained from the West. One official commented, however, that while anything related to the military was carefully checked, software destined for civilian projects was not always checked as thoroughly so it was possible that corrupted software made its way into some civilian projects.[134]
Finally, it is not clear that the Urengoi-Pomary-Uzhgorod pipeline used computer controls in the early 1980s. According to an article by a scientist who worked on pipeline safety issues in Siberia in the early 1980s, most Soviet gas pipelines were controlled manually until the 1990s. Bon Baiser du Canada includes images of a Soviet pipeline control station that shows what appears to be a large analog pressure gauge.[135]
Although Weiss apparently told Reed and others that the Siberian pipeline explosion was due to CIA-doctored software, in his Studies in Intelligence article he only claimed that “flawed turbines were installed on a gas pipeline” without giving a date. Cave Brown and Peter Schweizer claim that “blue prints for turbine parts were passed to the Soviets in early 1984, and some such parts were installed on the gas pipelines. When brought on line, the turbines failed.”[136]
There are scores of CIA research reports in the 1970s and 1980s about Soviet efforts to obtain Western equipment to build this and other pipelines. Although Trachtenberg argues that it was “quite likely” that the Soviets were looking to obtain software to run the pipeline, only a few of the reports I have seen mention control software as a possible target of Soviet efforts, and it is never as a high priority. After all, the Soviet government had been operating natural gas pipelines for years. What it needed was hardware, in particular high quality, large diameter steel pipe and valves, high-powered turbines to run the compressors that pushed the gas through the pipelines, and pipelayers.[137] Although the Reagan administration prohibited US companies from selling such equipment to the Soviets (though it did make an exception for pipelayers made by Caterpillar), the Soviets were able to buy the pipe and most of the turbines and other equipment they needed from European companies despite US efforts to prevent such sales.[138]
Reed claimed that the explosion showed up on US “infrared satellites” and was “the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space,” rated by the Air Force chief of intelligence at three kilotons. Reed also claimed that fears that it might have been a missile launch or detonation of a nuclear device were assuaged when “Weiss came down the hall to tell his fellow NSC staffers not to worry. It took him another twenty years to tell them why.”[139] In contrast, natural gas pipeline expert Rebecca Ranich told interviewers in “CIA Cyberattack” that there were no satellite photos of the alleged explosion, and French says that NORAD told him it had no records of a massive explosion in Siberia for the two years surrounding when the explosion was said to have occurred.[140] In addition, according to the former Soviet scientist mention earlier, it is physically impossible for a natural gas explosion to be so large.[141] Reed may have gotten his description of the explosion and fire from stories about a deadly accident along another gas pipeline in Siberia that occurred in 1989, which involved an unrepaired gas leak that was allowed to accumulate and was ignited by sparks from two passing trains.[142]
Reed wrote that “there were no physical causalities from the pipeline explosion, but, as noted earlier, other sources state that the explosion caused a number of deaths.[143] Roger Robinson, who worked on economic issues at the NSC from March 1982 to September 1985 and was close to Weiss, claimed in an interview that Weiss told him about the explosion and was upset because “innocent people had died.” The interview does not provide a date for this encounter. Trachtenberg writes that Robinson’s belief that “Gus would never lie about that” is “perhaps the most compelling testimony” that an “American Trojan Horse” caused the December 1983 fire and explosion. [144] Since Weiss states in his memoire that he was not involved in the project “at the operational level” and had little direct role in it after it was approved, “it is quite possible” that, aware that the CIA was doctoring software for the pipeline, he jumped to the conclusion that CIA-modified software had led to the blast (8-9).[145] Thus, Weiss’s apparently genuine concern about the death of “innocent people” does not necessarily confirm that the incident was the result of US sabotage only that he might have believed it did.
Trachtenberg’s other “independent” source for the veracity of Reed’s claims is a statement by Tim Weiner, author of a critical history of the CIA, in a 2020 interview that he was convinced that the incident occurred because “three high-level people” told him it had happened.[146] This might be convincing if the three high-level people had first-hand knowledge, but he provides no evidence they did. The late Robert Jervis, who knew quite a bit about intelligence matters, stated in an email to me in 2017: “For what it is worth, I have had some knowledgeable people swear to me that this is true and others, equally well-informed, claim that it is a legend.”[147]
Reed claimed that the pipeline explosion caused “significant damage to the Soviet economy,” which contributed to “its ultimate bankruptcy.”[148] Others echo his claim. Former CIA operative Peter C. Oleson, for example, claims that “losses in hard currency were in the billions of dollars.”[149] Neither Reed nor Oleson provide sources for their claims about the economic cost, so it is impossible to verify their claims, but both appear to be greatly exaggerated. The explosion at Nadym in December 1983 destroyed one compressor station out of a planned forty-two compressor stations, only two of which were completed in December 1983, and might have delayed completion of the pipeline for a few months. As a British expert pointed out at the time, a gas pipeline was not like a nuclear power station. Damage to one of many control centers would not shut down the entire operation. [150] The Soviets began sending Siberian gas to Western Europe through their existing pipeline system in January 1984. The Urengoi-Pomary-Uzhgorod pipeline began shipping gas to Western Europe in late 1984, and Soviet hard currency earnings from gas exports rose from $3,193,500,000 in 1983 to $3,813,200,000 in 1985.[151]
Although Trachtenberg believes that a program such as Operation Farewell probably existed, he concludes that it still not possible based on available and reliable evidence to prove that the December 1983 Siberian pipeline explosion was the result of altered software passed to the Soviets under such a program. Although the absence of evidence does not prove that such an incident did not occur, there is a great deal of evidence that demonstrates that the accounts by Weiss, Reed, and others are misleading and inaccurate in most respects.
While “there is a good deal more to be learned about this episode,” a key question is where to look for evidence. (12). It is unlikely that the CIA will make its records about the incident, if they still exist, open to scholars. It is also unlikely that relevant records in Russia, especially KGB records, will be made available to scholars, though it might be possible to find useful information in regional archives in the Tyumen region of Siberia and possibly in records of the former Ministry of Petroleum and Gas Construction.[152] Among other things, scholars should seek to find out if the compressor station at Nadym, where the incident occurred, used automated controls; whether the turbines there were powerful enough to cause a rupture; how extensive the damage was; and how long it took to repair. It might be possible to learn more from the Canadian companies that were allegedly involved in altering the software, especially when it was developed and passed to the Soviets. Scholars should also consult software experts about the feasibility of constructing a “Trojan Horse” for a pipeline compressor station without first penetrating the system to learn its complexities. It would also be very helpful if the media companies that produced Bon Baiser du Canada and “CIA Cyberattack” made available recordings, and if possible, transcripts, of the full interviews they conducted, not just the portions they used in their films. Similarly, it would be very useful if Alex French, Kim Zetter, Tim Weiner, and other journalists who have covered this story made their interview notes available to scholars (with appropriate safeguards for those who wish to remain unidentified).
Operation Farewell and Reed’s story about the Siberian gas pipeline explosion are important elements in the “Reagan Victory School” interpretation of the end of the Cold War. Victory School advocates claim that the US military build-up and political and economic offensive of the early 1980s forced the Soviet Union into a corner from which there was no escape save surrender. The Reagan administration’s economic warfare, especially its anti-Soviet energy strategy, is a key element in the Victory School argument. [153]
Efforts to sabotage the natural gas pipeline the Soviets were building from West Siberian gas fields to markets in Western Europe were an important part of this effort, which also included economic sanctions denying the Soviets access to Western technology and finance. Weiss reportedly told William F. Martin, who worked on energy issues at the NSC at the time, that he should not worry if Reagan administration efforts to prevent US allies from selling oil and gas equipment to the Soviets failed because “we’ve got an alternative plan.”[154] Although Weiss and others provide lists of supposed successes by the Farewell operation, most of them are mundane and, whatever their actual economic impact, not especially newsworthy.[155] Similarly, claims that US sanctions significantly delayed the pipeline and inflicted heavy economic damage are not very exciting and difficult to prove. In contrast, the story that the United States turned the tables on Soviet espionage and punished Soviet leaders by sabotaging their most important project was just the sort of spectacular and attention-getting success that Weiss and other supporters of Project Farewell craved and needed. Sabotaging the pipeline could be presented by the hardliners in the Reagan administration as a bold move that achieved what they had failed to achieve through negotiations with European allies and vindication of their strategy of all-out economic warfare.[156]
Review by Svetlana Savranskaya, National Security Archive
In his thorough and comprehensive research note, Marc Trachtenberg attempts to untangle myth from reality in the story about a mysterious explosion on the Soviet pipeline Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhgorod, which allegedly took place in June 1982. According to the version first publicly presented in 2004 in Thomas Reed’s book, At the Abyss: An Insider’s History of the Cold War,[157] the explosion that he approximately dates to June 1982 and describes as the “most monumental non-nuclear explosion” was the result of a US counterintelligence operation codenamed “Farewell” (1). Reed served as special national security assistant to President Ronald Reagan. The book’s publication inspired extensive discussions among historians as to whether the incident actually took place and, if so, whether it was engineered by the CIA.
Trachtenberg pulls together all the available sources that have appeared since the publication of At the Abyss and carefully weighs arguments of those authors who agree with Reed’s version and those who dismiss it. He does not come to a definitive conclusion, but suggests that the explosion could have taken place in December 1983, not 1982, and that given the persistent rumor that from time to time gets confirmed by intelligence insiders, Reed’s version is plausible. The main strength of Trachtenberg’s essay is its comprehensive review of various existing accounts and the fact that he brings new evidence to the debate (most importantly from an unpublished manuscript by the British writer Anthony Cave Brown, which relied on multiple interviews with intelligence officials). With this new evidence, Trachtenberg establishes clearly that the operation to supply the Soviets with intentionally defective technology using the information in the “Farewell” dossier was approved by Reagan in early 1982 and that the US did provide the Soviets with faulty technology through many channels for several years.
While the existence of such operation, which eventually involved the CIA, the FBI, and Defense Department is established (even if there are still no documents about it in the public domain), the link between the operation and an explosion on a Soviet pipeline is far from clear.
This author believes, based on a review of available Soviet contemporaneous documents and later memoir and journalistic accounts, that a program based on the “Farewell” materials was implemented and caused serious grief to the Soviet leadership, especially when the KGB Line X science and technology espionage program of the late-1970s-early 80s was revealed in 1983. However, most evidence leads to the conclusion that the explosion in question did not happen. The accidents that took place in April 1982 and December 1983 were not the result of Western-supplied faulty technology or software. Also, it seems that the alleged blast is being confused with a much later catastrophic explosion of gas that occurred when two passenger trains passed by the leaking pipeline near Ufa in June 1989 (on a very significant day in history, 4 June 1989, when Poland had its historic election and the Chinese government opened fire on the protesters in Tiananmen Square).
To begin with, the existence of “turncoat” KGB colonel Vladimir Vetrov and his damaging activity is acknowledged by such high source as the former KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov in his memoirs. Without revealing details of what kind of information Vetrov was giving to the French intelligence, Kryuchkov devotes entire three pages of his memoir to his case describing it as high treason, which in the end led to expulsion of dozens of Soviet officials from France. The operation was revealed in March 1983 and Vetrov was executed in the end of 1984.[158]
To what extent were the Soviets aware of this operation or, more generally, of the possibility that the West was attempting to supply them “altered,” intentionally defective technology? This question has a direct relevance to the main question of this review: did the explosion, whether it was in 1982 or in 1983, happen as a result of the CIA operation? If the industrial espionage operation was revealed in early 1983 and Vetrov was put on trial, it is very unlikely that later in 1983 the Soviet Union would have been still using the technology obtained through the compromised channels.
Given the reality of a very limited documentary base, one would benefit from a look at the available KGB documents. Two KGB reports, which are available at the National Security Archive (originally from the Volkogonov Collection),[159] describe the Soviet successes in obtaining technology from the West. One is the annual report for 1981 (the year when Vetrov was active and not under suspicion). It was presented to Yuri Andropov and the Politburo in April 1982.[160] The report describes the “scientific-technological” intelligence work that obtained information about US and other Western countries’ “achievements in military-technological sphere, development of principally new systems of weapons,” and breakthroughs in fundamental science. The report claims that the use of the obtained “information of scientific-technological character and of the [obtained] samples in the defense and people’s economy spheres and industries of the USSR allowed us to shorten the timetables of development of scientific research and design and testing work in the spere of military technology, to introduce more advanced technological processes in our industry and to save substantial financial resources in convertible currency and the Soviet rubles.”[161] Later in the report, it indicates that the Soviets were aware of at least some attempts of the Western countries to supply the USSR with “bad quality and incomplete sets of equipment and old or untested technology.”[162]
The next year’s report is even more explicit (the KGB put it on Andropov’s desk on 15 March 1983). It mentions the Soviet technological spying (“Farewell” is not revealed yet), but sounds more alarming about the US sabotage efforts. Work of the KGB “prevented numerous subversive actions in the sphere of scientific-technological and trade-and-economic ties. [It] prevented…damage to the people’s economy of the USSR by way of supplies of defective technologies. Facts of sabotage were revealed, of intentional damaging of equipment, means of transportation, by hostile elements.”[163] The report for 1982, although it does not mention any major technological disasters, gives one an idea that the Soviets were aware that some technology obtained via KGB channels was intentionally flawed. And yet, the stolen Western technology was used to improve Soviet weaponry, industrial equipment and technological processes. Given the specificity of the report and the statistics on cases that were revealed and “prevented” in other categories, one would expect that if a technological disaster on the main pipeline under construction happened during that year, the KGB would have investigated a possible Western connection. If the incident had the scale described in the Reed book, it most likely would have been mentioned in the report.
These two documents and the Kryuchkov memoir suggest that the Soviets were aware, even before the revelations of Farewell, that there was some attempt on the Western side to supply them with flawed technology that could lead to industrial “diversions.”
The next step is to examine the timeline and the existing reports of accidents. Thomas Reed dates the explosion to June 1982. It is interesting that as Trachtenberg points out, most of other reports about that case cite his book as their source, even when they corroborate it. In fact, the debate about the Siberian pipeline explosion starts only in 2004, after At the Abyss is published. William Safire in The New York Times attributes major significance to the blast and celebrates the success of the CIA operation in disrupting the Soviet efforts to assimilate the Western technology: “all the software [the USSR] had stolen for years was suddenly suspect, which stopped or delayed the work of thousands of worried Russian technicians and scientists.” According to Safire, quoting Reed, what was sold to the Soviets and caused the explosion was the “pipeline software that was to run the pumps, turbines and valves,” which “was programmed to go haywire.”[164]
In an essay of the similar title in Studies in Intelligence, former official of the Reagan National Security Council Gus Weiss, who was the main author of the operation to supply adulterated technology to the Soviets, mentions the following CIA successes: “contrived computer chips found their into way Soviet military equipment, flawed turbines were installed on a gas pipe line, and defective plans disrupted the of chemical plants and output a tractor factory.” He even credits Farewell with contributing to the end of the Cold War by delaying Soviet technological progress.[165] Note that Weiss mentioned “flawed turbines,” on the pipeline, not software.
Weiss approaches Casey in January 1982 with the idea to supply faulty technologies and software to the Soviets, and Reagan enthusiastically approves the program. Soon, the program expands to involve Defense Department and FBI. What is not clear here, is that if the explosion occurred in June 1982, is it plausible that so little time elapsed from the first mention of the program and its approval by the president through its implementation and to the actual incident? In that period of time, the program would have to be designed, software or technology had to be “fixed,” and the Soviets would have to buy and install the technology.
Several Russian and Ukrainian pipeline experts who worked in the area in 1981–1983, responded to the publication of At the Abyss with statements to the effect that there was no explosion on the pipeline in June 1982. And moreover, that although accidents happened not infrequently, they could not be related to faulty software or a Trojan Horse, because at that time, Soviet pipelines were operated mainly manually, and that when any Western technology was stolen, it was not inserted blindly into Soviet technological processes, but only after a prolonged testing under observation of Soviet experts and in most cases in order to improve and upgrade the existing Soviet technology. That certainly implies a much longer process than a couple of months after Reagan’s approval. Ukrainian explosive protection expert Vladimir Zakhmatov, who in 1980–1982 worked on “liquidation of all major accidents on gas and oil pipelines,” provided official reference in response to the Reed book, calling the story of the explosion “mythical.”[166]
In the long review of Russian-language evidence in the Russian publication Voennoe Obozrenie in 2013, experts share Zakhmatov’s conclusion that the explosion did not and could not take place as described (being the result of intentional insertion of flawed software or equipment).[167] Their review describes the “semi-manual” operation of the pipeline equipment at the time and tight control over technology. Another Russian veteran, who was a high-level official of the regional Tyumen KGB department and would have known about a major explosion on the gas pipeline, KGB Major General Vassily Pchelintsev, revealed in an interview to Trud newspaper in 2004 that there was an explosion on the Urengoy-Chelyabinsk pipeline in 1982, but that it was in April and was due to incompetency and negligence of local workforce and specific conditions of the terrain where the pipeline was laid. He described the conditions that led to the gas leak which sparked the fire that was, indeed, visible from the airplanes crossing the area.[168] But no casualties were reported in that incident.
Finally, Reed, Peter Schweizer, and Weiss all claim that the “massive” explosion resulted in deaths of “dozens” of people and significantly delayed the completion of the pipeline.[169] These statements cannot be supported by facts. In 1982–1983, even before the arrival of Gorbachev’s glasnost, the Soviet system was not so tightly secretive that news of a major explosion with human casualties would not have spread. The Voennoe Obozrenie authors note that they checked printed news media for the period as well as available archival documents and did not find a single mention of such an accident. Industrial accidents were usually reported in the press, even though with very little detail. With the coming of glasnost in the Soviet Union under Gorbachev, and with opening of the archives in the 1990s, information about an incident like this would most likely have been dug up by the new generation of journalists and historians.
Another issue to note is that the pipeline in question was the biggest Soviet gas pipeline under construction, the object of pride of the Soviet economists and political leaders: Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhgorod. That pipeline was supposed to bring Soviet gas to Europe notwithstanding the US economic sanctions on pipeline equipment. The construction of that pipeline was extensively covered in newspapers, on TV, and even in high schools. The pipeline construction was not delayed, just the opposite: the Soviet part of the pipeline was completed ahead of schedule in August 1983. The last French section was completed in late December 1983 and the first gas was delivered in January 1984.
Trachtenberg’s suggestion that the absence of an explosion in 1982 does not disprove the story is correct. He instead proposes that there had been an explosion in December 1993 reported in the French press and by Michael Dobbs in the Washington Post (from the French sources). However, it is unlikely that explosion of that magnitude right before the pipeline was supposed to be opened would not have delayed the opening. My search of Russian sources for any information on a pipeline accident in late 1983 did not produce any results. The above-mentioned Russian reviews of accidents on pipelines do not mention an explosion in 1983.
In preparing these comments, I looked through the collection of Russian documents at the National Security Archive, at the published memoirs of Soviet leadership, and at the Chernyaev Diary, which contains invaluable account of internal discussions of the Soviet Central Committee, including rumors about all kinds of “unprintable” developments—and I did not find any mention of a Siberian pipeline explosion that would be similar to the one described in the Reed book. Of course, the absence of evidence does not mean that an event did not happen.
At the same time, it is just possible that with the passage of time, the actors involved in the Farewell program came to see a different event that took place in June (the same month as Reed mentions) 1989, as the explosion they thought had happened in June 1982. The magnitude of the June 1989 explosion was similar in scale to the explosion Reed describes in his book. It happened when two passenger trains passed each other in a place near Ufa, Bashkiria, where a pipeline was leaking gas, and the gas was collecting in an indentation in the ground. Cloudy humid weather with practically no wind allowed gas to leak down and create a sort of lake of gas. It was ignited by a spark at the moment when the two trains passed each other and resulted in a tremendous catastrophic explosion that threw trains from the tracks and burned the trains and the surrounding forest. This explosion and fire could be seen from miles away and resulted in 575 dead and more than 800 injured. The magnitude of the explosion was estimated to be 7 to 8 kilotons, making it one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions.[170]
Both General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov visited the place of the explosion in the next several days. Initially, rumors spread about sabotage or terrorism, but these were quickly ruled out as investigation discovered the crack in the gas pipe. Information about the accident was provided to the Central Committee and covered in the Soviet press. The newly elected Supreme Soviet stopped its sessions for a day of mourning. The Soviet government, under policies of glasnost, provided information to the Western partners and accepted foreign assistance in treating the burn victims. US Army Institute of Surgical Research sent a surgical team that treated patients in the main Ufa hospital jointly with their Soviet colleagues.[171]
We will not know the answers searched for by Marc Trachtenberg in his excellent and comprehensive research note until the US documents are declassified, and given the level of secrecy in the intelligence community, we are not likely to know them for a long time. On the basis of this review of mostly Russian sources, this reviewer tends to agree with the conclusion by Nicholas Dujmovic in a footnote to his review of David Hoffman’s excellent book, A Billion Dollar Spy, that the allegations were not plausible but they remain “a persistent myth.”[172]
Yet it remains a persistent myth also because it fits the narrative of victory, the idea (classically expressed by Peter Schweizer in his book Victory: The Reagan Administration’s Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union) that the United States under the Reagan administration forced the Soviet Union to lose the Cold War and eventually break up.[173] It is also a persistent myth, which is masterfully debunked in the new biography of Ronald Reagan by Max Boot.[174]
Review by Rebecca Slayton, Cornell University
Did the United States use software to cause an explosion in the trans-Siberian gas pipeline in the early 1980s? There are multiple reasons for examining this question closely.
Marc Trachtenberg notes the historical significance of this question, which has “a certain bearing on how US foreign policy during the early Reagan period is to be interpreted.” The question also has a certain bearing on contemporary policy. Many nations are interested in conducting similar cyber-operations today, and could see the Siberian pipeline incident as creating a kind of precedent. Indeed, two scholars recently explored the possibility that the United States could sabotage China’s illicitly imported technology for artificial intelligence, and both cite the US-caused Siberian pipeline explosion as fact.[175] They would do well to read Trachtenberg’s analysis, which demonstrates strong evidence for the existence of a sabotage program, but casts considerable doubt on the idea that the US intentionally caused this explosion.
This brief comment focuses on another reason that Trachtenberg’s essay is important: it highlights important epistemological challenges to what security scholars and practitioners can know, and how we know it. The problem is not just that the materials on which historians rely—messy documents and fallible human memories—constitute ambiguous evidence. Nor is it that intelligence and counterintelligence operations create a deceptive house of mirrors with active misdirection both between and within governments.[176] These two problems, what we might provisionally call the problems of fallibility and deception, are both very real. But there is a third, and I would argue more fundamental, challenge to our knowledge of Operation Farewell: it may have been technologically impossible for anyone to know whether the US was responsible for the explosion.
Most of Trachtenberg’s analysis tackles the problems of human fallibility, evaluating sources by well-established criteria such as their proximity to Operation Farewell, the number of independent primary sources to discuss Operation Farewell, and their consistency with each other and other documentary evidence. Trachtenberg shows that many—he names at least nine—individuals who had reason to know about Operation Farewell confirmed a US program to infiltrate the Soviet Union’s high-tech supply chain.[177] The number could be even higher if certain unidentified sources are different than the known sources. However, only a couple of these sources claimed that the United States directly caused the explosion. And Trachtenberg notes that they may have been wrong; they may have known that the CIA was sabotaging the pipeline software, and jumped to an erroneous conclusion when they heard about the explosion. Or they may have taken their information from others who similarly “put two and two together.”
Trachtenberg also acknowledges that incentives for deception pose challenges for our knowledge of Farewell. Governments may have an interest in leaking false information to their adversaries. And individuals within governments may hold their cards very close to their chest, to the point of violating reporting requirements. Thus, even US intelligence officials who should have known about an attack on the Siberian pipeline might not in fact have known. While Trachtenberg acknowledges this problem, he puts great weight on John McMahon’s statement that the US did not cause the explosion. He states that McMahon, a top CIA official, “was so widely respected and trusted within the Agency that he almost certainly, sooner or later, would have heard about an operation that was designed to cause a major explosion on the pipeline if such an operation had in fact existed.”
Here the possibilities of deception could have been further explored. Even if McMahon had known that the US caused an explosion on the Siberian pipeline, he might have publicly denied US responsibility for an operation that killed dozens of Soviet citizens. Conversely, some intelligence operatives may have incentives to exaggerate the impacts of their operations, a problem Thomas Rid notes in his history of Russian intelligence operations.[178] While these are inconclusive, Trachtenberg gives less attention to these possibilities for deception (or even self-deception).
The third challenge to knowledge, that of complex technology, is only alluded to in Trachtenberg’s essay. He notes the possibility that the US effort to infiltrate the software that ran the pipeline unintentionally caused the explosion. However, Trachtenberg discounts this possibility: “if the software engineers were sophisticated enough to plant an essentially undetectable ‘Trojan Horse’ in what the Soviets were buying, wouldn’t they have been able to make sure that the damage the defective software would cause would be fairly limited?”
Evidence from the history of software engineering suggests otherwise. In the mid-1980s, not long after the pipeline explosions, many software engineers argued that it would be impossible to ensure that software worked properly without testing it in real operating conditions. These arguments emerged not in an analysis of Farewell, but also in an analysis of the viability of a “Star Wars” missile defense system. [179] President Ronald Reagan had promised that his Strategic Defense Initiative (popularly called Star Wars for its association with space and directed energy weapons) would render Soviet nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete. Computer scientists argued that this was not feasible, because complex software systems only become reliable through a period of testing under realistic operating conditions, and there would be no trial nuclear wars. While some computer scientists disputed these arguments, the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment eventually issued a report concluding that there was a “significant probability” of a catastrophic software failure the first time the system was needed.[180]
We have seen confirmation of these basic problems since the debates of the mid-1980s. In 1991, a Patriot missile defense system at Dharhan, Saudi Arabia, failed to intercept a missile which consequently killed 28 Americans. The problem was a timing error which had not been immediately evident in field tests, where the system was run for several hours, and then restarted. Engineers detected the problem when the system had operated for more than 8 hours, and they sent patches to Patriot deployments (which had been rushed into the field). Dhahran’s patch arrived one day too late.[181]
As this suggests that it is very plausible that software that was designed to spring leaks in the Siberian pipeline could have unintended consequences, including the consequence of causing an explosion. The designers of the software would have had little or no opportunity for realistic testing on the Siberian pipeline, and their knowledge of the operating procedures would have been limited. This in turn means that it is possible not only that nobody knew whether the US caused the explosion, but also that nobody could have known. Without detailed technical knowledge of the software and its operating environment, it would be impossible to reach a definitive conclusion about what happened.
In recent years, analysts have been able to conduct more detailed forensics on cyber operations.[182] Most notable is the analysis of the Stuxnet cyber attacks on Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities, which were discovered in 2010 and widely attributed to the United States, Israel, and their allies.[183] These analyses were possible because the Stuxnet code spread far and wide, and engineers were able to deduce how it would have operated in a nuclear enrichment facility. Data from the International Atomic Energy Agency also suggested the approximate effect of the software, as Iran took roughly 1000 centrifuges out of operation.[184] The software that was used to infiltrate the Siberian pipeline would have been less widely available, and even the designers of the software would lack precise data about what went wrong in a blast that killed dozens of people and burned up a lot of evidence in the process.
Trachtenberg notes that much more evidence may yet turn up. But even if the US operatives had intended to cause an explosion that killed dozens of people—and Trachtenberg firmly believes they did not—there are technological reasons to believe that they might have been unable to determine whether they were successful. Unless someone can closely examine the code used in the pipelines, identify conditions under which it would have triggered an explosion, and confirm that those conditions existed, the precise role of US-doctored software in the explosion is likely to remain a mystery.
Response by Marc Trachtenberg, UCLA
In 1980, Colonel Vladimir Vetrov, a high-ranking KGB officer, had become so disillusioned with the Soviet system that he decided to offer his services to French intelligence. Vetrov worked for the branch of the KGB that focused on procuring technologically advanced products in the West and served for about a year as a “defector in place” in Moscow. During that time, he turned over thousands of pages of documents to his French contacts. Those documents contained an enormous amount of information relating to Soviet industrial espionage in the West: what the Soviets were interested in procuring, how they went about getting what they wanted, what they had gotten, and who, exactly, was doing this work. Vetrov was arrested in 1983 as a result of an incident that had little to do with his espionage activities (he had stabbed his mistress and killed a militia man), but the Soviet authorities eventually learned what he had been up to and he was executed in 1985. Shortly before his death he poured out his feelings in a hand-written 60-page document he titled “confession of a traitor.” Vitaly Yurchenko, another KGB officer who defected (temporarily) to the West, had seen the document and told the CIA about it during his brief stay in the United States. Vetrov, Yurchenko said, “went to his death with only one regret,” and that was that “he could not have done more damage to the KGB in his service to France.”[185]
Vetrov was given the codename “Farewell” by his French handlers, and the material he provided was called the “Farewell Dossier.” In 1981, many of the documents it contained were handed over to US officials, who used the information they found there to mount a major anti-Soviet intelligence operation of their own. Knowing what Soviet operatives were looking for, the Americans would allow them to buy what they wanted—but before those products were turned over, they were modified so they would eventually malfunction, with possibly serious consequences. Or at least that is what a number of apparently well-informed writers have said. And the most important operation that US intelligence officials were supposed to have mounted involved computer controls for the natural gas pipeline the Soviets were building in Siberia. The software for that system was, allegedly, doctored before the Soviets procured it; the doctored software, the argument runs, was installed on the pipeline and caused a massive explosion in 1982 or 1983.
That claim, as David Painter points out in his comment here, loomed large in right-wing interpretations of the end of the Cold War. The hard-line Reagan policy (as Painter paraphrases those arguments) was said to have “forced the Soviet Union into a corner from which there was no escape save surrender”; economic warfare played a key role in that policy; and the pipeline sabotage story was an important example of how economic warfare worked in practice. And it is certainly true that the pipeline story played a key role in supporting interpretations of that sort. But that in itself does not mean that the story was baseless. Indeed, a number of writers who did not belong to what Painter calls the “Reagan Victory School” were also convinced that the incident had taken place—that is, that the American operation had, in fact, led to a giant explosion on the pipeline. The Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalists Tim Weiner and David Hoffman are good cases in point.[186] Three former French counter-intelligence officials, including one who had been very close to the Farewell affair, also apparently had no doubt that the American operation had led to a “gigantic explosion” on the pipeline in 1983. But they took a dim view of what the Americans had done; they certainly did not praise the operation as a key part of a policy that had led to the West’s victory in the Cold War.[187]
On the other hand, a number of serious analysts took the opposite view. The former CIA historian Nicholas Dujmovic, for example (as Painter notes), called the story a “persistent myth,” and he was by no means the only analyst who saw things that way.[188] As I noted in my paper, Thomas Rid, Tyler Esno, and Painter himself also doubted that the incident Reed described had actually taken place.
So the goal for me personally was to see who was right. I was interested, at a more fundamental level, in understanding why the Cold War ran its course the way it did in the 1980s. It was obvious to me that the Reagan policy, whatever one might think of it, played an important role in that story. And it was also clear that that policy had a major economic dimension. But it was not clear how far exactly the Reagan team was prepared to go in pursuing what key administration officials referred to (privately) as their “economic warfare” policy. A close study of the Farewell affair, I thought, might shed some real light on that issue.
But how exactly could I get to the bottom of the question—or at least form some sort of opinion about whether a US operation had actually led directly to a major explosion on the Siberian pipeline? The obvious place to start was with Thomas Reed’s book At the Abyss, which served as the basis for many other accounts. Reed seemed certain that an American operation had caused such an explosion. Since he had worked on the National Security Council (NSC) staff at the time, it seemed reasonable to assume (when I was starting out) that he knew what he was talking about. But when I started to look into the issue, it became clear that this was not a reliable account at all. For one thing, the timeline Reed gave was simply not plausible. He had Reagan approving the Farewell operation at the beginning of 1982, and he said the explosion had taken place in June of that year. But for that to happen all sorts of things would have had to be done in a very short period of time. After the plan was approved in principle, an operational structure had to be set up. The Soviets had to be lured into purchasing the necessary software with the right firm. The defective software had to be developed, turned over to the Soviets, shipped to the USSR, tested, and deployed to the field. The people operating the system had to be trained. And there would have to be a certain period of time before the “Trojan horse” would cause the system to malfunction. It seemed very hard to believe that all this could happen in the space of a few months. (Jon Lindsay makes a similar point about timing in his contribution here.) And Reed himself, to his credit, later admitted that the incident as he had described it in the book might never had happened. It seemed, in fact, that he had remembered hearing about an explosion in Siberia when he was working at the NSC in 1982, knew something about the Farewell operation, and jumped to the conclusion that the two were related.
So Reed’s account was at best an informed guess and obviously needs to be taken with a very large grain of salt. But that in itself did not mean that there was no connection at all between the Farewell operation and anything serious that happened with the pipeline during the early Reagan period. When reaching a judgment here, all sorts of other things need to be taken into account, and I tried to look at as many of them as I could.
But there was a limit to how far I personally was able to go in sorting things out. I simply do not have the background or language skills to get at certain important aspects of the Farewell affair. So I am grateful to all the contributors for throwing a good deal of new light on this whole complex of issues. I certainly learned a good deal from each of the comments here—especially when they deal with technical issues, an area where I know next to nothing.
As a result, I have changed my mind on a number of points. One of the reasons, for example, that I had thought it was quite possible that there was no connection between the December 1983 pipeline explosion and the Farewell operation was that it seemed unlikely to me that US actions could have inadvertently led to an explosion on that scale. “After all,” I wrote, “if the software engineers were sophisticated enough to plant an essentially undetectable ‘Trojan Horse’ in what the Soviets were buying, wouldn’t they have been able to make sure that the damage the defective software would cause would be fairly limited?” This was pure speculation on my part, so it was important to get Rebecca Slayton’s reaction to that point. She quotes that sentence, points out that “evidence from the history of software engineering suggests otherwise,” and goes on to explain why inadvertent effects were indeed possible. Given her expertise in this area, that reaction carries real weight with me. None of this, of course, proves that the US program had something to do with what happened on the pipeline at the end of 1983. But understanding these things a bit better does help me form an opinion on whether the two might have been linked in some way.
This is not the only example that could be cited, and I think that all of the contributors raise points and present evidence that have a real bearing on how the Farewell affair is to be interpreted. Lindsay’s contribution, like Slayton’s, sheds a good deal of light on the technical side of the issue. Svetlana Savranskaya’s paper presents some very interesting information from Russian and Ukrainian sources. Painter’s comment sums up a lot of what we know about this episode, and presents some information I had not included in my paper. I particularly like the passage where he quotes Robert Jervis’s remark that some knowledgeable intelligence officers swore to him that the pipeline sabotage story was true, while “others, equally well-informed, claim that it is a legend.” (I also once heard Jervis make that same point.) This in itself shows how hard it is to get to the bottom of the story.
I was especially impressed by Vincent Frigon’s contribution, which presents some new information he had unearthed when he was working on the documentary he co-produced about Farewell (but which he had not included in the film). One passage in his comment is particularly revealing. Judging from what Frigon says there, the Soviets, it seems, were not actually trying to steal the software that was being developed for pipeline operations by COV-CAN. The development work was being done by COV-CAN employees working outside of Paris with CIMSA, a subsidiary of the French firm, Thomson-CSF, which was involved with the construction of the pipeline. According to Morris Covington, the head of COV-CAN, “CIMSA leadership was aware of a plan to introduce malicious program lines in the software.” But the Soviets were apparently not trying to steal anything. Interviews with former CIMSA employees conducted when the documentary was being prepared, in fact, suggested “to the contrary, that their Soviet client had paid a huge sum of money to acquire the technology through their contract with the French firm.” All this strikes me as very important. Among other things, it runs against the notion that Soviet pipeline control systems were far too unsophisticated at the time for a software sabotage program of the kind that people like Weiss had described to be technically viable. It seems clear that something was going on in this area, but exactly what that was is very hard to say.
So although we may not have gotten to the bottom of the issue, we have certainly learned some new things. For me, the most important point has to do with the way US officials used the Farewell material. I think we can now take it as a fact that they developed a major program for planting defective equipment (including software) on Soviet purchasers. But it is still not very clear how much of an impact, both direct and indirect, that program had.
As for one of the key questions here—about whether there was any connection between the Farewell operation and the December 1983 explosion—I think a really solid answer remains beyond reach. But we can say more than zero. I think, for example, that it is very unlikely that US officials set out deliberately to cause a massive explosion that would results in the deaths of dozens of people. But US operations might have inadvertently—perhaps together with human error on the Soviet side—led to the explosion. In the paper, I recognize that this is a possibility. Today, given what both Frigon and Slayton say in their comments, I am a bit more inclined than I was when I wrote it to believe that something of the sort might well have happened.
Still, I come away from the exercise with the sense that so far we have seen only the top of the iceberg. But I am sure that all kinds of things that relate to this affair will be revealed sooner or later. The volumes that deal with foreign economic policy during the Reagan period in the State Department’s Foreign Relations of the United States series should be released in the not-too-distant future. It will be interesting to see whether the documents published there, and other sources that are being declassified in conjunction with the publication of those volumes, will throw any new light on the subject. And there are a number of archival sources, not just in the United States but in France and Russia as well, that will certainly be worth looking at when they become available. In the meantime we just have to do the best job we can with the sources we do have access to. And I think the comments here show how far we have been able to go in getting a handle on this issue, given the limited source material currently available. Some important parts of the story have already come into focus, and a lot of what we have learned is quite extraordinary. The whole Farewell affair really is one of the most remarkable episodes of the Cold War.
[1] Beginning with his Reparations in World Politics: France and European Economic Diplomacy, 1916-1923 (Columbia University Press, 1980), a small sampling of Trachtenberg’s influential and interdisciplinary scholarship must include but is certainly not limited to his History and Strategy (Princeton University Press, 1990); “The Influence of Nuclear Weapons in the Cuban Missile Crisis,” International Security 10:1 (1985): 137-163; “A ‘Wasting Asset’: American Strategy and the Shifting Nuclear Balance, 1949-54,” International Security 13:3 (1988–1989): 5-49; A Constructed Peace: The Making of a European Settlement, 1945-1955 (Princeton University Press, 1998); and The Cold War and After: History, Theory, and the Logic of International Politics (Princeton University Press, 2012).
[2] As illustrations, see his “Declassification Analysis: The Method and Some Examples,” http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/trachtenberg/documents/doclist.html; “Doing Cold War History: A Practical Guide,” http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/trachtenberg/guide/guidehome.html; and most famously, The Craft of International History: A Guide to Method (Princeton University Press, 2006).
[3] Among the subscribers to RJISSF/H-Diplo, the historian David Painter, a contributor to this commentary series, is the most notable outlier in this regard. See David Painter, “Energy and the End of the Evil Empire,” in The Reagan Moment: America and the World in the 1980s, eds. William Inboden, Simon Miles, and Jonathan Hunt, (Cornell University Press, 2021), 43-63; and “From Linkage to Economic Warfare: Energy, Soviet-American Relations, and the End of the Cold War,” Cold War Energy: A Transnational History of Soviet Oil and Gas, ed. Jeronim Perovic (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 283-318. See also the article by the political scientist Thomas Rid, “Cyber War Will Not Take Place,” Journal of Strategic Studies 35:1 (February 2012) 5-32.
[4] The full title of Reed’s memoir is At the Abyss: An Insider’s History of the Cold War (Ballantine, 2004).
[5]Bon baiser du Canada, dir. Vincent Frigon and Yves Bernard (Telimagin Productions, 2011) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8V57X50giM.
[6] Thomas Reed, At the Abyss: An Insider’s History of the Cold War (Ballantine, 2004), 266-69 (link). Reed served in 1982 as the president’s special assistant for national security affairs.
[7] Thomas Rid, “Cyber War Will Not Take Place,” Journal of Strategic Studies 35:1 (2012) (link), 10-11. See also Thomas Rid, Cyber War Will Not Take Place (Oxford University Press, 2013), 4-6 (link).
[8]David Painter, “Energy and the End of the Evil Empire,” in Jonathan Hunt and Simon Miles, eds., The Reagan Moment: America and the World in the 1980s (Cornell University Press, 2021) (link), 40 and 44 n.55. See also David Painter, “From Linkage to Economic Warfare: Energy, Soviet-American Relations, and the End of the Cold War,” in Jeronim Perovic, ed., Cold War Energy: A Transnational History of Soviet Oil and Gas (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) (link), 311 n.35.
[9]Painter, “Energy and the End of the Evil Empire” (link), 40 and 44 n.55; and Nicholas Dujmovic, review of David Hoffman’s The Billion Dollar Spy, in Studies in Intelligence 60:1 (2016) (link), final footnote.
[10] See, for example, Tyler Esno, “Reagan’s Economic War on the Soviet Union,” Diplomatic History 42:2 (2018) (link), 292-93.
[11] See, especially, Patrick Ferrant, ed., Farewell: Conséquences géopolitiques d’une grande opération d’espionnage (CNRS, 2015); Raymond Nart, Jacky Debain and Yvonnick Denoël, L’affaire Farewell vue de l’intérieur (Nouveau Monde, 2013); and Jean-François Clair, Michel Guérin and Raymond Nart, La DST sur le front de la guerre froide (Marueil, 2022). Nart, writing under a pseudonym, had described the Soviet operation in an article published in 1983: Henri Regnard (pseud.), “L’URSS et le renseignement scientifique, technique et technologique,” Revue de la Défense Nationale 438 (December 1983): 107-121.
[12] Reed mentioned the date not in the passage dealing with the episode in At the Abyss, but in an interview he gave when the book came out. See David Hoffman, “Reagan Approved Plan to Sabotage Soviets: Book Recounts Cold War Program that Made Technology Go Haywire,” Washington Post 27 February 2004 (link). Reed, incidentally, told Hoffman that he had “obtained CIA approval to publish details about the operation.” The text is somewhat ambiguous, but he was probably referring not to the alleged operation relating to the pipeline, but to the general program of planting defective technology on Soviet purchasers.
[13] Rid, “Cyber War,” 11. See also Rid’s remarks in the Smithsonian Channel’s America’s Hidden Stories episode “CIA Cyber Attack,” Season 1 Episode 5, aired 1 April 2019 (link), 34:13-35:27. A comment Alex French made is also worth citing in this context. “There are no newspaper accounts of the explosion,” he wrote, “or reports of interruptions to natural gas service in western Europe.” French, “Secret History” (alt link).
[14] For two important accounts see: Michael Dobbs, “Fire Damages Soviet Pipeline, French Report,” Washington Post, 11 January 1984, A1; and John F. Burns, “Soviet Confirms Fire at Gas Pipeline,” New York Times, 12 January 1984, D1. Word of the fire, Burns reported, had “reached Moscow through Western engineers supervising installation of the equipment.” Similar reports appeared in British and French newspapers at the time. Three former Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST) officers (at least one of whom, Raymond Nart, had been deeply involved in the Farewell operation), referred to it in a book published in 2022 as a “gigantic explosion.” Clair, Guérin and Nart, La DST sur le front de la guerre froide, 181 (in the Kindle version).
[15] Extract of interview with Schmal, in the documentary Bon baiser du Canada, dir. Vincent Frigon and Yves Bernard (Telimagin Productions, 2011) (link—password is “farewell”; alt link), 45:15 to 46:29.
[16] Dujmovic had, in fact, said in the passage Painter referred to that a major pipeline disaster did occur in 1982, although the CIA “apparently had nothing to do with it.” Dujmovic, review of Hoffman’s Billion Dollar Spy (link), final footnote.
[17]The connection with the spy novelists runs deeper than what one might have thought. Ian Fleming, who wrote the James Bond novels, was apparently the real author of an important memorandum that helped shape British deception operations during the Second World War. One of the ideas laid out in that document was the basis for a famous deception operation: Operation Mincemeat, dramatized in the film “The Man Who Never Was,” dir. Ronald Neame (20th Century Fox, 1956); that idea was actually dreamt up by another novelist, Basil Thompson, who had been a “spy-catcher during the First World War.” See Ben Macintyre, Operation Mincemeat (Broadway, 2011), 11-14 (link).
[18] Discussion at the 141st Meeting of the National Security Council, 28 April 1953, US Declassified Documents Online, record no. CK2349241247 (link), 12.
[19] See, for example, the letter Dean Rusk wrote to me that is quoted in Marc Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945–1963 ( Princeton University Press, 1999), 295 n.39, and Dulles’s remarks quoted there on 281-82 n.152.
[20] For some older works, see the historical studies listed in Stanley Zell, An Annotated Bibliography of the Open Literature on Deception (Rand Corporation, 1985) (link). For more recent works on the subject, see Neil Verrall, “Ruse de Guerre Redux,” RUSI Journal 166:3 (2021): 68-82 (link), and Rémy Hémez, Les opérations de deception: Ruses et stratagèmes de guerre (Perrin, 2022) (16-page bibliography) (link). Note, also, the cases discussed in Barton Whaley, Stratagem: Deception and Surprise in War (Artech House, 2007). It is, however, not quite correct to refer to activities of this sort as “deception operations,” since in many cases it might make sense to feed the enemy accurate information, since information obtained through clandestine channels is inherently more credible than what is learned in other ways, and states often have an interest in making sure that their adversaries perceive their own intentions correctly. For US policy in this area during the Reagan period, see Jeffrey T. Richelson, ed., “Special Plans and Double Meanings: Controversies over Deception, Intelligence, and Policy Counterterrorism,” National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 456 (20 February 2014) (link); and Jeffrey T. Richelson, “Planning to Deceive,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 59:2 (2003): 64-69 (link). David M. North, “US Using Disinformation Policy to Impede Technical Data Flow,” Aviation Week & Space Technology, 17 March 1986, 16-17, presented some important leaked information on these operations.
[21]See, for example, Charles Cruickshank, Deception in World War II (Oxford University Press, 1979) (link); Michael Handel, Strategic and Operational Deception in the Second World War (Routledge, 1987); F.H. Hinsley and C. A. G. Simkins, British Intelligence in the Second World War, Volume 4, Security and Counter-Intelligence (Cambridge University Press, 1990); Michael Howard, Strategic Deception in the Second World War (Norton, 1995); Thaddeus Holt, The Deceivers: Allied Military Deception in the Second World War (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004); and Terry Crowdy, Deceiving Hitler: Double-Cross and Deception in World War II (Osprey, 2008). One early work, Anthony Cave Brown’s Bodyguard of Lies (Harper & Row, 1975), made a big impression on Weiss. See Anthony Cave Brown, “The Strange Life & Weird Death of Ambassador Gus Waldo Weiss, Ph.D.: Star Wars and the Fall of the Soviet Union” (unpublished manuscript), esp. 26, 30, 266 and 426-29, Anthony Cave Brown Papers, Part 8, Box 1, Georgetown University Library Special Collections; and Gus W. Weiss, “The Farewell Dossier: Strategic Deception and Economic Warfare in the Cold War: A Memoire of the Secret World” (unpublished, 2003), Anthony Cave Brown Papers, Part 5, Box 20, Georgetown University Library Special Collections. “Churchill’s ‘Bodyguard of Lies’ philosophy of deception,” Weiss wrote there (21), was “where my idea came from, just substitute crafty devices for crafty words, a rather obvious thing to do, so obvious that nobody had thought of it.” I am very grateful to Ted Jackson, the manuscript archivist at Georgetown, for sending me copies of both items. Another version of the “memoire” is in the Herbert Romerstein papers, box 840, folder 8, Hoover Institution Library, Stanford CA, and yet other versions are in private hands. The unpublished “memoire” was an important basis for the account in Reed’s book. See Reed, At the Abyss, 266n. It is also discussed in Alex French, “Secret History of a Cold War Mastermind,” Wired, 11 March 2020 (link) (alt link).
[22] Gus W. Weiss, “Duping the Soviets: The Farewell Dossier,” Studies in Intelligence 39:5 (1996): 121-126; https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/The-Farewell-Dossier.pdf (link). See also Weiss, “Farewell Dossier” (Georgetown version), 21.
[23] See the extract from an interview with Allen in the Frigon and Bernard, Bon Baiser du Canada (link—password is “farewell”; alt link), 16:32-16:47. Note also Richard Allen oral history, 28 May 2002, Miller Center, University of Virginia (link to transcript), 72.
[24] Norman A. Bailey, The Strategic Plan that Won the Cold War: National Security Decision Directive 75 (Potomac Foundation, 1998) (link), 19.
[25] Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (Allen Lane, 2007) (link), 385-387, and French, “Secret History” (quoting Weiner) (link) (alt link).
[27] I am not sure that the “also” is appropriate here; “Galahad” might well have been Poteat’s codename. Poteat’s career and his role in the affair is discussed at length in Cave Brown, “Strange Life & Weird Death,” esp. 231-248.Poteat had been involved in electronic deception operations for some time and was one of Cave Brown’s most important sources. His short memoir, “Stealth, Countermeasures, and ELINT, 1960-1975,” was published in Studies in Intelligence 48:1 (1998): 51-59 (link). See also S. Eugene Poteat, “Scientific and Technical Intelligence: A Memoir by a S&T Intelligence Officer,” in Association of Former Intelligence Officers, The Intelligencer 20:3 (2014): 41-47 (link); another version was published in Peter Oleson, ed., AFIO’s Guide to the Study of Intelligence (AFIO, 2016) (link), 137-48. Poteat referred there to Weiss’s Studies in Intelligence article in a footnote: “The fascinating story of the covert action to respond to the extensive Soviet pilfering of US and western technologies,” he wrote, “is told by Gus W. Weiss, ‘The Farewell Dossier,’ Studies in Intelligence; Poteat goes on to give the URL. This was tantamount, I think, to a confirmation of the accuracy of Weiss’s account, since if Poteat (who was clearly well-informed in this area) had major disagreements with it, he would never have cited it that way.
[28] Frigon and Bernard, Bon Baiser du Canada, 48:26 to 50:36.
[29] Weiss, “Farewell Dossier” (Georgetown version), 21.
[30] Cave Brown, “Strange Life & Weird Death,” 2 and 84.
[31]See Cave Brown, “The Strange Life & Weird Death of Ambassador Gus Waldo Weiss, Ph.D.: Star Wars and the Fall of the Soviet Union” (unpublished manuscript), Cave Brown papers, part 8, box 1, Georgetown University Library, Special Collections division.
[33] Cave Brown, “Strange Life & Weird Death,” 32, 218-19, 270-72, 501-504, 611. On the Pentagon’s laboratory: Cave Brown, “Strange Life & Weird Death,” 74-75 and 494. According to Cave Brown, it was brought into being at the end of the Carter period by Ellen Frost, then Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Economy and Technology Affairs at the Pentagon. For more on the Omsk operation, see also 31 and 611. The same target list was published in Peter Schweizer, Victory: The Reagan Administration’s Secret Strategy that Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1994) (link), 188-189. My guess is that both Schweizer and Cave Brown were quoting from a document Weiss had shared with each of them.
[36] Quoted in Kim Zetter, Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World’s First Digital Weapon (Crown, 2014) (link), 199 n.21.
[37] See Painter, “From Linkage to Economic Warfare” (link), 311 n.35. Note also Esno, “Reagan’s Economic War” (link), 293: It is unclear, he writes, that “this incident actually took place, as any evidence to corroborate Reed’s claims remains classified.”
[38] Weiss interview with Alan Dobson, 28 April 2003, quoted in Alan Dobson, “Ronald Reagan’s Strategies and Policies: Of Ideology, Pragmatism, Loyalties, and Management Style,” Diplomacy & Statecraft 27:4 (2016) (link), 763-764 n.23; the date of the interview is given in n.16. Weiss died—supposedly by committing suicide—a few months after the interview. He also told much the same story to his friend Wayne Keup and probably to Cave Brown as well. French, “Secret History” (link) (alt link); and Cave Brown, “Strange Life & Weird Death,” 220, 271-72, 503.
[39] Weiss, “Farewell Dossier” (Georgetown Version), 21.
[40] French, “Secret History” (link) (alt link), and Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (New York: Anchor Books, 2008).
[41] Frigon and Bernard, Bon Baiser du Canada (2011), 26:22-28:16.
[42] Clair, Guérin, and Nart, La DST sur le front de la guerre froide, 180-181 in the Kindle version. Nart and his colleagues, incidentally, were not gloating here; they very much disapproved of what they believed the Americans had done.
[44]Painter, “Energy and the End of the Evil Empire” (link), 40. According to his bio on the website of the National Security Institute at George Mason University’s Scalia Law School (link), Dujmovic was “the director of the Intelligence Studies Program at The Catholic University of America. After service in the US Coast Guard, he joined CIA in 1990 as an analyst on the USSR and East Europe, and later was a speechwriter for the Director of Central Intelligence, editor of the President’s Daily Brief, and a manager of analysts. He received his Ph.D. in 1996 from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Dr. Dujmovic was CIA staff historian for 11 years before his retirement from federal service in 2016. He worked on classified studies of clandestine operations, including the hunt for Bin Ladin. His unclassified work on Agency operations and culture has appeared in several intelligence journals and anthologies.” He also published, under a pseudonym, a collection of quotations on intelligence and espionage: Charles E. Lathrop (pseud.), The Literary Spy: The Ultimate Source for Quotations on Espionage & Intelligence (Yale University Press, 2013).
[45] Dujmovic to Trachtenberg, 5 May and 11 May 2024.
[46] Peter C. Oleson, “Farewell Dossier,” The Intelligencer: Journal of US Intelligence Studies 29:1 (2024) (link), 79. Oleson “is a former associate professor of intelligence studies in the Graduate School of Management and Technology of the University of Maryland University College. He spent a 48-year career in the discipline, as a senior executive in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and Defense Intelligence Agency, managing director of an aerospace firm’s think tank, CEO of an intelligence and technology-oriented management consulting firm, and an educator. He has served on the faculties of the National Defense Intelligence College (now the National Intelligence University) and CIA University. He is a member of the AFIO board of directors, chairman of the academic outreach committee, and editor of AFIO’s Guide to the Study of Intelligence.” See Peter Oleson, ed., AFIO’s Guide to the Study of Intelligence (AFIO, 2016) (link). (AFIO is the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.) Oleson also taught at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
[47] Oleson to Trachtenberg, May 17, 2024. As noted above, it was clear from the Cave Brown manuscript that Herring had played a central role in this whole affair. See Cave Brown, “Strange Life & Weird Death,” 23-25, 30, 62, 218-19, 229, 270, 294-95, 300, 501-504. “It was Herring,” Cave Brown writes, “as chief of the Technology Transfer Intelligence Center who introduced ‘cooked’ or ‘poisoned’ microelectronics into Line X channels in order to sabotage selected and critical nodal points in the Soviet Military Industrial Complex system. In due course, the ‘poisoned products’ were produced by ‘the watchmakers,’ a super-secret group of technicians directed and employed by J Fred Bucy, CEO of Texas Instruments, and a leading producer of microelectronics.” Cave Brown, “Strange Life & Weird Death,” 229.
[48]A BIGOT list (or bigot list), according to the Wikipedia, “is a list of personnel possessing appropriate security clearance and who are cleared to know details of a particular operation, or other sensitive information.” “BIGOT List,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIGOT_list.
[49] Oleson to Trachtenberg, 17 May 2024.
[50] David Wise, “Blurring its Trail, the CIA Steps Up Covert Action,” Los Angeles Times, 21 March 1982, IV-3.
[51] Robert Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (Simon & Schuster, 1996), 211-213, 221, 293-294 (for “loosey-goosey”), 311, 315 and 392. A good deal of evidence on this general subject came out in connection with the Iran/Contra affair. There is a large literature dealing with that episode, but probably the best study is Malcolm Byrne, Iran-Contra: Reagan’s Scandal and the Unchecked Abuse of Presidential Power (University Press of Kansas, 2016) (link). And there is other evidence relating to the Reagan administration’s aversion to keeping written records on sensitive matters. According to Peter Schweizer, for example, it decided very early on to conduct a “series of military probes on the Soviet periphery.” “It was very sensitive,” former Undersecretary of Defense Fred Iklé told Schweizer. “Nothing was written down about it, so there would be no paper trail.” Schweizer, Victory (link), 8.
[54] See, especially, National Security Planning Group meeting, 29 June 1984, on Jason Saltoun-Ebin’s Reagan Files website (link). The whole section on the “Proposed Presidential Finding on Technology Modification” (5-7), which almost certainly contains important information relating to this whole business, has been “sanitized” out of that version (released in 2005). I filed a Mandatory Declassification Review request with the Reagan Library (M9914) for that document (in May 2024), so we’ll see what turns up. And that is not the only item to look out for. The Gus Weiss files at the Reagan Library are all still closed and many of the Roger Robinson files are also still closed; those collections might eventually yield some interesting information. In 2013, the National Security Archive published an article in Redacted about this affair (link). That article concluded with the following comment: “We have yet to find primary source data or US government documents concerning the pipeline explosion so this report relies largely on Reed’s recollections. But, the FOIA requests have now been submitted. We’ll let you know when the documents trickle in.” So far, however, they have not posted anything on their website dealing with this issue, but there is a certain chance that some new sources might eventually be made available as a result of those requests. I should also note that a Freedom of Information request, evidently relating to this issue, had been filed in 2006 (CIA case no. F-2006-00615). Nothing came up when I searched for that case number in the CIA’s FOIA search engine (link), but who knows what will eventually be posted there?
[55] William Safire, “Opinion: The Farewell Dossier,” The New York Times, 2 February 2004, https://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/02/opinion/the-farewell-dossier.html.
[56] Thomas C. Reed, At the Abyss: An Insider’s History of the Cold War (Presidio Press/Ballantine Books, 2004).
[57] See Sergueï Kostin and Eric Raynaud, Farewell: The Greatest Spy Story of the Twentieth Century (Amazon Crossing, 2011).
[58] “Soviet Acquisition of Militarily Significant Western Technology: An Update,” Central Intelligence Agency, 18 June 1982, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000500561.pdf.
[59] David A Andelman, “100 Days of Awe,” World Policy Journal 25:4 (2008): 177–183, at 177, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40210134.
[60] Patrick Ferrant, Farewell: conséquences géopolitiques d’une grande opération d’espionnage (CNRS, 2015), 118.
[61] Bon baiser du Canada, dir. Vincent Frigon and Yves Bernard (Telimagin Productions, 2011) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8V57X50giM.
[62] Phone interview of the author with Morris Covington for the making of Bon baiser du Canada, Montreal, June 2010.
[63] Phone interview of the author with Yanusz Stuchly for the making of Bon baiser du Canada, Montreal, March 2011.
[64] Wayne Madsen, Wayne Madsen Report. https://www.waynemadsenreport.com/
[65] Alex French, “Secret History of a Cold War Mastermind,” Wired, 11 March 2020: https://www.wired.com/story/the-secret-history-of-a-cold-war-mastermind/.
[66] Reed was after the bigger picture, not the technical aspects of the story. He told French that it’s “not clear that the explosion that I remember and the pipeline explosion Gus described are connected”. He also told Telimagin that the explosion may have occurred at a different date than the one mentioned in his book.
[67] Interview with Thomas C. Reed for Telimagin, 8 October, 2010, New York.
[68] Phone interview with Morris Covington for Telimagin, Montreal, June 2010.
[69] “Overview of the Siberia-to-Europe Natural Gas Pipeline,” Office of the Soviet Analysis, Central Intelligence Agency, 9 February 1982, Document Number 0000637831, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000637831.pdf.
[70] Telimagin interview with Gennady Schmal, former Soviet deputy minister of oil and gas, and Vladimir Toumaev, former manager in charge of the Nadym worksite, Moscow, November 2010.
[71] John N. McMahon, “Microelectronics Case Study on USSR,” Memorandum to Bohdan Denysyk, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Export Administration, Department of Commerce, Central Intelligence Agency, 3 November 1982, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP85M00364R001001520022-2.pdf.
[72] “Intelligence Community Staff Weekly Report,” Central Intelligence Agency, 15-19 November 1982, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP83M00914R002900050033-4.pdf.
[73] “East-West Trade Controls,” National Security Council Meeting, 16 October 1981, Executive Secretariat, NSC: NSC Meeting Files: Records, 1981–1988, Reagan Library. Available online at https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/public/2022-03/40-750-80627194-001-041-2021.pdf. This appears at page 66 of the document.
[74] Frigon and Bernard, “Bon baiser du Canada,” from 29:40.
[75] Frigon and Bernard, “Bon baiser du Canada,” from 15:50.
[76] Gus Weiss, “Duping the Soviets: The Farewell Dossier,” Studies in Intelligence 39:5, (1996): 121-126. https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/1996-2/the-farewell-dossier/.
[77] Discussion with Jan Herring for Telimagin, Ottawa, 15 October, 2015.
[78] A Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system is made of software and hardware components to control an industrial device.
[79] Frigon, pre-interview with Gene Poteat, former CIA Deputy Director of Science and Technology, Institute of World Politics, Washington, D.C., 17 December 2008. Poteat was not part of the documentary because he was not available at the time of the video shooting that took place in Washington almost two years later, on October 2010. Transcript available on request.
[80] Discussion with a Thales spokesperson at Thales main office, Paris, November 2010. See Frigon and Bernard, Bon baiser du Canada, at 36:30.
[81] J.P. Cowan, “Firm Has Part in Soviet Pipeline,” The Globe and Mail, 8 July 1983.
[82] See French, “Secret History of a Cold War Mastermind,” Wired, He writes: “I understand now that I could chase this story for decades, following a trail of clues from one rabbit hole to the next,” https://www.wired.com/story/the-secret-history-of-a-cold-war-mastermind/.
[83] “The Repository of Industrial Security Incidents,” RISI, https://www.risidata.com/.
[84] Nicolas Falliere, Liam O’Murchu, and Eric Chien, “W32.Stuxnet Dossier, Version 1.4,” Symantec, 4 February 2011.
[85]Kim Zetter, “Inside the Cunning, Unprecedented Hack of Ukraine’s Power Grid,” Wired, 3 March 2016; Joe Tidy, “Predatory Sparrow: Who Are the Hackers Who Say They Started a Fire in Iran?,” BBC News, 10 July 2022, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-62072480.
[86]Christopher A. Wray, “Director Wray’s Opening Statement to the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party,” Federal Bureau of Investigation, 31 January 2024, https://www.fbi.gov/news/speeches/director-wrays-opening-statement-to-the-house-select-committee-on-the-chinese-communist-party.
[87]Sheera Frenkel and Ronen Bergman, “Israel Planted Explosives in Pagers Sold to Hezbollah, Officials Say,” The New York Times, 17 September 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/17/world/middleeast/israel-hezbollah-pagers-explosives.html.
[88] A hoop test looks for evidence that a theory implies is necessary but not sufficient. If a theory flunks a hoop test, then we must reject the theory, but passing a hoop test does not ensure the theory is true. See James Mahoney, “Process Tracing and Historical Explanation,” Security Studies 24:2 (2015): 200–218, https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2015.1036610.
[89] “Workers Monday Completed Laying Pipe,” 25 July 1983, UPI Archives, https://www.upi.com/Archives/1983/07/25/Workers-Monday-completed-laying-pipe-for-the-worlds-longest/6562427953600/
[90] Phone conversation by the author with Joe Weiss on 26 July 2024
[91] “An Explosion of Disbelief. Is The Farewell Dossier Containing Lies?” Russkii Zhurnal, 7 March 2004, trans. Nikolai Edelman, https://rima.media/en/document/2004-03-07-russ-304771-vzryv-nedoveriia-dos-e-farewell-soderzhit-lozh?lang=en.
[92]William Safire, “The Farewell Dossier,” The New York Times, 2 February 2004, https://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/02/opinion/the-farewell-dossier.html.
[93] “An Explosion of Disbelief.”
[94]Thomas C Reed, At the Abyss: An Insider’s History of the Cold War (Random House, 2004), 268.
[95]“Different Drummers,” The New York Times, 3 January 1982, https://www.nytimes.com/1982/01/03/weekinreview/different-drummers-carrots-and-sticks-in-warsaw-and-the-west.html.
[96]Beth A. Fischer, “The Trudeau Peace Initiative and the End of the Cold War: Catalyst or Coincidence?,” International Journal 49:3 (1994): 613–634, https://doi.org/10.1177/002070209404900307.
[97]Reed, At the Abyss, 268. A harshly critical Canadian perspective can be found in Christine Duhaime, “Cold War: The CIA Says it Blew up a Russian Gas Pipeline in 1982 with Canada’s Help—Fact or Fiction?” Duhaime’s Anti-Money Laundering Law in Canada (blog), 21 October 2023, https://www.antimoneylaunderinglaw.com/2023/10/cold-war-the-cia-says-it-blew-up-a-russian-gas-pipeline-in-1982-with-canadas-help-fact-or-fiction.html.
[98] Title card in The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, dir. John Huston (First Artists, 1972)
[99] Inter alia, Jon R. Lindsay, “Stuxnet and the Limits of Cyber Warfare,” Security Studies 22:3 (2013): 365-404; Rebecca Slayton, “What Is the Cyber Offense-Defense Balance? Conceptions, Causes, and Assessment,” International Security 41:3 (2017): 72-109; Lennart Maschmeyer, “The Subversive Trilemma: Why Cyber Operations Fall Short of Expectations,” International Security 46:2 (2021): 51-90; Jacquelyn Schneider, Benjamin Schechter, and Rachael Shaffer, “A Lot of Cyber Fizzle But Not A Lot of Bang: Evidence about the Use of Cyber Operations from Wargames,” Journal of Global Security Studies 7:2 (2022), https://doi.org/10.1093/jogss/ogac005.
[100]Richard A Clarke and Robert K Knake, Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do about It (Ecco, 2010); Sean T. Lawson, Cybersecurity Discourse in the United States: Cyber-Doom Rhetoric and Beyond (Routledge, 2020); Jason Healey and Robert Jervis, “The Escalation Inversion and Other Oddities of Situational Cyber Stability,” Texas National Security Review 3:4 (2020): 30-53, http://tnsr.org/2020/09/the-escalation-inversion-and-other-oddities-of-situational-cyber-stability/.
[101]Joshua Rovner, “Theory of Sabotage,” Études françaises de renseignement et de cyber 1:1 (2023): 139-153.
[102] CIA, “Outlook for the Siberia-to-Western Europe Natural Gas Pipeline,” Intelligence Assessment SOV-82-10120, August 1982, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP83T00853R000100100005-0.pdf
[103]David E. Sanger, “Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran,” The New York Times, 1 June 2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html.
[104]James Risen, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration (Free Press, 2006).
[105]Austin Carson, Secret Wars: Covert Conflict in International Politics (Princeton University Press, 2018); Erica D. Lonergan and Shawn W. Lonergan, Escalation Dynamics in Cyberspace (Oxford University Press, 2023).
[106]Robert Chesney and Max Smeets, eds., Deter, Disrupt, Or Deceive: Assessing Cyber Conflict as an Intelligence Contest (Georgetown University Press, 2023).
[107] Interviews conducted years after the event(s) can be subject to “memory contamination” whereby memories can be affected or even altered by what a person has subsequently read or heard about the event(s).
[108] Gus W. Weiss, “The Farewell Dossier,” Studies in Intelligence 39 (1996): 121-126; Weiss, “The Farewell Dossier: Strategic Deception and Economic Warfare in the Cold War: A Memoire of the Secret World” (unpublished, 2003), Anthony Cave Brown Papers, Part 5, Box 20, Georgetown University Library Special Collections; Anthony Cave Brown, “The Strange Life & Weird Death of Ambassador Gus Waldo Weiss, Ph.D.: Star Wars and the Fall of the Soviet Union” (unpublished manuscript), Anthony Cave Brown Papers, Part 8, Box 1, Georgetown University Library Special Collections . I want to thank Ted Jackson, Manuscript Archivist at Georgetown, for providing me copies of the Weiss and Cave Brown manuscripts.
[109] Miller Center for Public Affairs, University of Virginia, Interview with Richard V. Allen, 28 May 2002, 72; Bon baiser du Canada, dir. Vincent Frigon and Yves Bernard (Telimagin Productions, 2011), 11:05-11:35. I wish to thank John V. Bowlus for assistance with translating French into English and Diane Labrosse and Vincent Frigon for providing me with a synopsis of the program.
[110] Norman A Bailey, The Strategic Plan That Won the Cold War: National Security Decision Directive 75 (The Potomac Foundation, 1998), 19; Bailey, “Defining the Strategy: NSDD 75,” in The Grand Strategy that Won the Cold War: Architecture of Triumph, ed. Douglas E. Streusand (Lexington Books, 2016), 72-73.
[111] Bon Baiser du Canada, 23:10-24:40.
[112] Alex French, “The Secret History of a Cold War Mastermind,” Wired, 11 March 2020, https://www.wired.com/story/the-secret-history-of-a-cold-war-mastermind/.
[113] Peter C. Oleson, “Farewell Dossier,” The Intelligencer 29 (2024), 75-84; here 78-79; Peter Schweizer, Victory: The Reagan Administration’s Secret Strategy that Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1994), xvi-xix.
[114] Lou Cannon, “Reagan Isn’t Wimping Out, Washington Post, 29 September 1986.
[115] Thomas C. Reed, At the Abyss: An Insider’s History of the Cold War (Ballantine Books, 2004), 268-69.
[116] Reed played a key role in the writing of NSDD-32, “U.S. National Security Strategy,” 20 May 1982, NSDD Digitized Reference Copies, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library; Mark F. Cancian, Formulating National Security Strategy: Past Experiences and Future Choices (CSIS, 2017), 88-94. Among other objectives, NSDD-32 called for a policy of “forcing the USSR to bear the brunt of its economic shortcomings,” and “preventing the flow of militarily significant technologies and resources to the Soviet Union.”
[117] Robert Service, The End of the Cold War, 1985–1991 (Macmillan, 2015), 49; Hal Brands, Making the Unipolar Moment: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Rise of the Post-Cold War Order (Cornell University Press, 2016), 84.
[118] Nicholas Dujmovic, “Review of David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy,” Studies in Intelligence 60 (2016),final footnote.
[119] According to Schweizer, CIA Director Casey viewed McMahon as part of the “old guard” at the CIA; Schweizer, Victory, 10, 18.
[120] Bon Baiser du Canada, 24:40-25:00; Cave Brown, “Life of Gus Weiss,” 2, 84. Trachtenberg does not mention Bailey’s statement.
[121] French, “Secret History.”
[122] Kim Zetter, Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World’s First Digital Weapon (Crown Publishers 2014), 199 n.21. See also Reed’s comments in the Smithsonian Channel’s America’s Hidden Stories episode “CIA Cyber Attack,” Season 1 Episode 5, aired 1 April 2019, 45:05-45:35. Reed resigned from the NSC in March 1983.
[123] See the map in “Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhgorod pipeline,” Wikipedia, URL: https://w.wiki/BBTS.
[124] David Hoffman, “Reagan Approved Plan to Sabotage Soviets: Book Recounts Cold War Program that Made Technology Go Haywire,” Washington Post, 27 February 2004; Zetter, Countdown to Zero Day, 199 n21.
[125] Anatoly Medetsky, KGB Veteran Denies ’82 Blast,” Moscow Times March 18, 2024.
[126] “Incident at Urengoi,” Time, 23 January 1984, 22; Michael Dobbs “Fire Damages Soviet Pipeline, French Report,” Washington Post, 11 January 1984; John F. Burns, “Soviet Confirms Fire at Gas Pipeline,” New York Times, 12 January 1984; Anna Christensen, “Soviets Deny Pipeline Fire Will Affect Deliveries,” UPI Archives, 11 January 1984; Dominique Dhombres, “U.R.S.S. Un responsable soviétique reconnaît qu’un incendie a endommagé le gazoduc eurosibérien,” Le Monde, 13 January 1984.
[127] Bon Baiser du Canada, 45:15-46:29; 46:43-48:09. The film identifies Shmal as a former deputy in the Ministry of Oil and Gas, but the Ministry of Petroleum and the Ministry of Gas were separate ministries at this time. Shamal may have worked in the Ministry of Construction of Petroleum and Gas Industry Enterprises. A 1979 CIA study mentions Shmal in passing as a mid-level official in Siberia; CIA, Politics of the Soviet Energy Balance: Decisionmaking and Production Strategies: A Research Paper, RP 79-10004, 47, CIA Freedom of Information Act Reading Room (hereafter CIA Docs.)
[128] Reed, At the Abyss, 268-69.
[129] Bon Baiser du Canada, 48:30-50-35.
[130] French, “Secret History.” According to French, de Montricher sent him a four-page memorandum “addressing the viability of the legend.” Trachtenberg does not mention de Montricher’s communications with French or his interview in Bon Baiser du Canada.
[131] Bon Baiser du Canada, 37:20-39:10.
[132] Thomas Rid, Cyber War Will Not Take Place (Oxford University Press, 2013), 5.
[133] “CIA Cyberattack,” 34:55-36:00, 38:45-39:30.
[134] Bon Baiser du Canada, 42:20-43:37, 43:58-45:06.
[135] V.D. Zakhmatov, V.V. Glushkova, and O.A. Kryazhich, “Explosion, which…It was not!” 25 June 2011, http://ogas.kiev.ua/perspective/vzryv-kotorogo-ne-bylo-581 (http://ogas.kiev.ua/perspective/vzryv-kotorogo-ne-bylo- 581); Bon Baiser du Canada, 38:35-40.
[136] Weiss, “Farewell Dossier,”125; Cave Brown, “Gus Weiss,” 271; Schweizer, Victory, 188. On Soviet problems with turbines, see CIA, Failing Reliability of Pipeline Gas Turbines, SOV 88-10013, March 1988, CIA Docs.
[137] CIA, USSR: Turbines for Natural Gas Pipeline: A Research Paper, SOV 84-10108CX, July 1984, CIA Docs; and the CIA report, “Preliminary Judgments on the Impact of COCOM and US Embargo of Oil and Gas Equipment to the USSR,” attached to Robert V. Allen, Memorandum to the President, 28 November 1981, in Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Digital Library Collection, Executive Secretariat, NSC: Meeting File, NSC 00023 10/16/1981 [East West Trade Controls, USSR, Oil] folder 3. There is a slightly different version of this report in folder 1. A December 1981 memorandum by Richard Perle recommends banning export of “electronic equipment for oil and gas operations,” including “automatic remote controls for valves and compressor stations,” which might be interpreted as software; Perle to Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, 18 December 1981, Reagan Library Digital Library Collection, Executive Secretariat, NSC: Meeting File, NSC 00023 10/16/1981 [East West Trade Controls, USSR, Oil] folder 1.
[138] David S. Painter, “Energy and the End of the Evil Empire,” in The Reagan Moment: America and the World in the 1980s, ed. Jonathan R. Hunt and Simon Miles (Cornell University Press, 2021), 43-63; Painter, “From Linkage to Economic Warfare: Energy, Soviet-American Relations., and the End of the Cold War,” in Cold War Energy: A Transnational History of Soviet Oil and Gas, ed. Jeronim Perović (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 290-318.
[139] Reed, At the Abyss, 269; Reed also recounts this story in “CIA Cyberattack,” 2:40-3:09; and again at 33:00.
[140] Ranich in “CIA Cyberattack,” 42:15; French, “Secret History.”
[141] Zakhmatov, “Explosion.”
[142] Bill Keller, “Five Hundred Reported Killed by Soviet Gas Pipeline Explosion, New York Times, 5 June 1989; Michael Dobbs, “Soviets Say 600 Are Killed As Gas Blast Wrecks 2 Trains,” Washington Post, 5 June 1989; David Remnick, “Victims ‘Reduced to Ash:’ Toll Still Uncertain in Soviet Gas Blast, Washington Post, 8 June 1989; Masha Hamilton, “Hundreds Die as Soviet Gas Blast Hits 2 Trains, Los Angeles Times, 5 June 1989.
[143] Reed, At the Abyss, 269.
[144] Alex French, “Secret History.”
[145] Weiss, “Memoire,” 21.
[146] French, “Secret History.”
[147] Jervis email to author, 28 November 2017.
[148] Reed, At the Abyss, 269.
[149] Peter C. Olsson, “Farewell Dossier,” The Intelligencer 29 (2024), 83.
[150] Anna Christensen, “Soviets Deny Pipeline Will Affect Deliveries,” UPI, 11 January 1984. As pipeline specialist John V. Bowlus notes, “physical damage to pipelines rarely results in long-term stoppages of flows and is quickly fixed;” Bowlus, email to the author, 9 September 2024.
[151] Central Intelligence Agency, Soviet Energy Data Resource Handbook: A Reference Aid, SOV-9010021, May 1990, 7, CIA Docs.
[152] See the bibliography in Valentina Roxo, “Struggle for Oil: An Environmental History of West Siberia, 1961-1978” (PhD diss., Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, 2004).
[153] Schweizer, Victory; Douglas E. Streusand, ed., The Grand Strategy that Won the Cold War: Architecture of Triumph (Lexington Books, 2016), which contains chapters on economic issues by former NSC staff members Norman A. Bailey, “Devising the Strategy: NSDD 75,” 67- 76; and Roger W. Robinson, Jr., “Reagan’s Soviet Economic Take-Down Strategy: Financial and Energy Elements,” in 159-74.
[154] French, “Secret History.” There is no indication when this exchange took place.
[155] Weiss, “Farewell Dossier,” 125.
[156] “CIA Cyber Attack,” 25:50; Oleson, “Farewell Dossier,” 83; Alan Dobson, “Ronald Reagan’s Strategies and policies: Of Ideology, Pragmatism, Loyalties, and Management Style,” Diplomacy & Statecraft 27 (2016), 750-54; Painter, “Energy and the End of the Evil Empire;” Painter, “From Linkage to Economic Warfare.”
[157] Thomas C. Reed, At the Abyss: An Insider’s History of the Cold War (Ballantine, 2004).
[158] Vladimir Kryuchkov, Lichnoe delo (Personal File), (Eksmo, 2003), 118-121.
[159]https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/rus/text_files/Volkogonov/Volkogonov%20Collection%20Description.pdf; https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/media/26278/ocr.
[160]Otchet o rabote Komiteta Gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti SSSR za 1981 god 13.04.1982 (Report about Work of the Committee on State Security for 1981).
[161]Otchet o rabote Komiteta Gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti SSSR za 1981 god 13.04.1982, 3.
[162]Otchet o rabote Komiteta Gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti SSSR za 1981 god 13.04.1982, 5.
[163]Otchet o rabote Komiteta Gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti SSSR za 1982 god, 15.03.1983 (Report about Work of the Committee on State Security for 1981), 6.
[164] William Safire, “The Farewell Dossier,” The New York Times, 2 February 2004, https://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/02/opinion/the-farewell-dossier.html.
[165] Gus W. Weiss, “Duping the Soviets: The Farewell Dossier,” Studies in Intelligence 39:5 (1996): 121-126, https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/The-Farewell-Dossier.pdf
[169] Peter Schweizer, Victory: The Reagan Administration’s Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1994).
[170] Igor Nadezhdin, Ufa, Lenta.ru, June 4, 2024 https://lenta.ru/articles/2024/06/04/asha/.
[171]A V Kulyapin , V G Sakhautdinov, V M Temerbulatov, W K Becker, J P Waymack, “Bashkiria Train-Gas Pipeline Disaster: A History of the Joint USSR/USA Collaboration,” National Institutes of Health 16(5): (1990 October): 339-42, DOI 10.1016/0305-4179(90)90005-h; https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2275763/.
[172] Nicholas Dujmovic, review of David Hoffman’s The Billion Dollar Spy, in Studies in Intelligence 60:1 (March 2016), 3 n.c, https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/The-Billion-Dollar-Spy.pdf.
[173] Schweizer, Victory.
[174] Max Boot, Reagan: His Life and Legend (Liveright, 2024).
[175]“Attacking Big Data: Strategic Competition, the Race for AI, and Cyber Sabotage,” Articles of War, Lieber Institute, West Point, 2024, https://lieber.westpoint.edu/attacking-big-data-strategic-competition-race-ai-cyber-sabotage/. A longer version appears in an edited book: Gary Corn and Eric Jensen, “Attacking Big Data: Strategic Competition, the Race for AI, and Cyber Sabotage,” in Big Data and Armed Conflict, ed. Laura Dickensen and Ed Berg (Oxford University Press, 2024): 91-134.
[176] See, for example, Thomas Rid, Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020).
[177] These include Gus Weiss (National Security Council), Raymond Nart (French counter-intelligence official); Richard V. Allen (Reagan’s National Security Adviser), Norman Bailey (National Security Council), Gene Poteat (CIA); Morris Covington (at a software company directly involved in the operation); Jan Herring (CIA); Don Goldstein (DOD); Roger Robinson (NSC).
[178]Rid, Active Measures.
[179]Rebecca Slayton, “Speaking as Scientists: Computer Professionals in the Star Wars Debate,” History and Technology 19:4 (2003): 335-364. See also chapter 8 of Rebecca Slayton, Arguments that Count: Physics, Computing, and Missile Defense, 1949-2012 (MIT Press, 2013).
[180] The primary rebuttal came from computer scientists who served on a panel from which David Parnas, a prominent software engineer, resigned because he concluded the software could not be developed. The remaining panelists, who were working for the Strategic Defense Initiative, defended its viability. See Danny Cohen, Eastport Study Group: A Report to the Director; Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (1985), https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA169210.pdf. For the report warning of the potential for catastrophic failure, see U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment, SDI: Technology, Survivability, and Software, GPO (Washington, D.C., 1988).
[181]Michael Blair, Sally Obenski, and Paula Bridickas, Patriot Missile Defense: Software Problem Led to System Failure at Dhahran, United States-General Accounting Office-Information Management and Technology Division (Washington, DC, 1992); see https://cs.nyu.edu/~exact/resource/mirror/patriot.htm.
[182] Most of the International Relations literature to discuss forensics focuses on the problem of attribution, but cyber forensics is a more general field focused “on acquiring, preserving, retrieving, and presenting data that have been processed electronically or have been stored in electronic form” Council National Research, Toward a Safer and More Secure Cyberspace (National Academies Press, 2007), 173.
[183] For an accessible journalistic account, see Kim Zetter, “How Digital Detectives Deciphered Stuxnet, the Most Menacing Malware in History,” Wired (11 June 2011), http://www.wired.com/2011/07/how-digital-detectives-deciphered-stuxnet/. For scholarly analyses, see Jon Lindsay, “Stuxnet and the Limits of Cyber Warfare,” Security Studies 22:3 (2013): 365-404; Rebecca Slayton, “What Is the Cyber Offense-Defense Balance? Conceptions, Causes, and Assessment,” International Security 41:3 (2017): 72-109.
[184]Ralph Langner, To Kill a Centrifuge: A Technical Analysis of What Stuxnet’s Creators Tried to Achieve (The Langner Group, 2013), http://www.langner.com/en/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/To-kill-a-centrifuge.pdf.
[185] Quoted in Sergei Kostin and Eric Raynaud, Farewell: The Greatest Spy Story of the Twentieth Century (AmazonCrossing, 2011), 359-60.
[186] Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (Anchor, 2008), 46-48; David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal (Anchor, 2015), 230; and David E. Hoffman, The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy (New York: Anchor, 2009), 35 (link).
[187] Jean-François Clair, Michel Guérin, and Raymond Nart, La DST sur le front de la guerre froide (Marueil, 2022), 179-181 (Kindle edition).
[188] Nicholas Dujmovic, “Review of David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy,” Studies in Intelligence 60 (March 2016), final footnote.