Part 1, Section 1 of "Counterintelligence Awareness Primer", circa 1987.
In 1975 Sedaq K. Dedayan, an employee of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, and his relative, Sarkis O. Paskalian, were arrested by the FBI. Dedayan, who was cleared for access to classified information, frequently violated security procedures by taking classified documents home with him at night. Apparently unknown to Dedayan, Paskalian was photographing the classified documents and transmitting the photographs to Soviet agents. Dedayan was charged with violating the Espionage Act by failing to report the illegal photographing of documents in his possession.
Paskalian was charged with conspiring with Soviet agents to gather and transmit national defense information. Dedayan was convicted and sentenced to three years. Paskalian pleaded guilty to espionage and was sentenced to 22 years.
In September 1985, a surprising report was presented to the Permanent Sub-committee on Investigations of the United States Senate. For the first time the Senate heard that the Soviet efforts to acquire western technology were "far greater than previously believed and so successful that western nations are systematically subsidizing the Soviet military buildup."
The facts suggest that the conclusion of "Soviet Acquisition of Militarily Significant Western technology: An Update" may be an understatement.
Soviet intelligence services and their East European surrogates collect an estimated 100,000 scientific and technological documents each year.
More than 10,000 of these are classified documents acquired through covert espionage operations.
From the early 80's until the present, western technical documents and hardware benefitted over 5,000 Soviet military and weapon system research projects per year.
The Soviets have acquired defense-critical technologies, documents, and/or hardware in almost every weapons program (See following chart.)
In the Soviet Union the business of espionage is administered by a huge, well-financed bureaucracy. Several industrial and scientific committees play a role in determining which technologies or hardware to acquire.
Items targeted for acquisition are called "requirements."
The principal organization in the establishment of collection requirements is the Military-Industrial Commission (VPK). It is comprised of the top executives of the key defense manufacturing industries. (See chart on page 18.) [below – ed]
The VPK is primarily charged with overseeing the research, development, and production of all Soviet weapon systems. To improve the technical quality of Soviet weapons, weapons designers and engineers request western documents and hardware from the VPK.
The VPK translates the requests from the defense and industrial ministries into lists of requirements. The targeted technologies and products are compiled into a book titled Coordinated Requests for Technological Information, informally known as the Red Book.
According to Jeffrey T. Richelson, author of Sword and Shield - Soviet Intelligence and Security Apparatus, the Red Book "constitutes a shopping list for Soviet Intelligence officers, detailing specific items to be acquired, such as microelectronic equipment, radar, Integrated circuitry. The items are divided into twenty-six chapters such as 'Theoretical Physics,' 'Lasers,' and 'Atomic Energy.' "
Each year more than 3,500 items are targeted for acquisition by the Red Book. According to a 1985 CIA study, each year more than 30% of the targeted items turn up in Russia. The list of targeted items grows by 15% a year.
The mandate of the VPK is espionage on a massive scale. To acquire the targeted hardware and technologies the VPK controls a national fund estimated to be $1.5 billion.
Requirements for documents alone frequently command considerable amounts of money. In 1980, $140,000 was budgeted for the acquisition of documents on the U.S. shuttle orbiter control system. The budget for documents on high energy laser developments, $140,000; and for the acquisition of research documents on US antimissile defense concepts, $560,000.
In the future, a wide range of technologies and hardware will be targeted by the VPK but clearly some areas are more important to the Soviets.
After the targets and the respective acquisition budgets are established, the VPK tasks the appropriate intelligence service for the collection of each requirement.
Moscow views U.S. and allied defense contractors as difficult targets. Of the top 100 U.S. defense contractors, nine of the ten most frequently cited by the Soviets as sources of needed technology are in the aerospace industry. (See table on facing page.) [below – ed]
Although the KGB, GRU, and their surrogates among the East European intelligence services are the collectors primarily tasked to operate against aerospace companies, there is growing concern that the intelli-gence services of the People's Republic of China (PRC) are increasingly tasked to acquire critical U.S. aerospace technology.
Ladislav Bittman, a former Czechoslovakian intelli-gence officer who defected to the U.S., said, "For years the United States largely ignored the enormous theft of its technology by Soviet Bloc countries. It even tolerated serious violations by Soviet Bloc scientists, technicians, and students under the theory that the visitors were in the country for only a short time and their expulsion would be meaningless."
According to Rear Admiral E. A. Burkhalter, USN, Director, Intelligence Community Staff, U.S. technology is critically important to the development of most advanced Soviet weapons systems. “Today's weapon systems depend upon modern technology: microelectronics, communications, computers, advanced pro-pulsion and materials," he said. "It takes a highly motivated and sophisticated industry to invent, develop, and produce weapons of modern warfare. Here (in the Bay Area) we stand in the heart of the greatest concentration of high technology industry in the western world. Surely, the Soviets must have a Silicon Valley of their own supporting their massive military buildup. Yes, the Soviets do have such an industry. Unfortunately, you are part of it.”
As early as 1980 William Webster, Former Director of the FBI, said that "Soviet Bloc operatives are making approximately 25,000 contacts every year in the United States. In terms of manpower, we are out-manned around the world by our competition.”
For the United States, Sino-Soviet Bloc espionage activities have become a national crisis.