1 Whittaker Chambers. Witness.Random House, republished by Regnery Gateway, 1987.

2 Robert Louis Benson and Michael Warner (eds.). Venona. Central Intelligence Agency—Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1996. These are the transcripts of Soviet messages from the U.S. embassy and consulates back to Moscow during and immediately after World War II. The Soviet codes were broken in the late 1940s, leading to the arrest of their nuclear spies in the U.S., among others.

3 Literally, the “list of names,” i.e., the establishment of the CPSU and thus the USSR, the insiders who ran the country and benefited from the perks.

4 During the summer of 1941, as the Soviets reeled in retreat in the face of German advances on Moscow, Beria met with intermediaries of the Nazi government to explore terms for a truce or separate peace.

5 The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was an alliance of the U.S., Canada, and ten West European nations when started in 1949. Its purpose was to present a unified front to the threat of Soviet postwar expansion.

6 Electronic Intelligence: sensors looking for radar or navigation signals, missile telemetry, or voice channels.

7 The F-86E had a rated service ceiling of 42,000 feet, but when flown clean, i.e., with no external tanks, it could reach 50,000 feet and higher.

8 Vance Heavilin could not make the reunion; he had died in 1998.

9 In June 1956, Nikita Khrushchev paid a call on the UK, making his visit aboard a Soviet cruiser. A legendary British frogman, Lionel Crabb, disappeared while conducting an underwater surveillance of that ship. His body washed ashore fourteen months later, minus head and hands.

10 And, it turns out, their radar screens as well. Eisenhower had been assured that while Soviet radars could track azimuth and range, they could not track high altitude vehicles. Thus the U-2s were supposed to be invisible. Not so. The Soviets tracked those first two flights and were outraged, but did not know how to complain without exposing the shortcoming of their own air defenses.

11 Given the more accurate name Tyuratam, after the nearest rail spur to a pre–World War II rock quarry, by CIA analyst Dino Brugoni.

12 Born Vilyam Genrikhovich Fisher, to Russian revolutionary refugee parents in the UK in 1903, Abel returned to the USSR in 1921, served in army communications, and was sent to the U.S. in 1947 with a bogus passport. Once in the U.S., Fisher became “Emil Robert Goldfus,” an illegal who operated spy networks, most notably the “Volunteer” net of Los Alamos scientists. In 1957 one of Fisher’s agents defected. Though warned by Moscow, Fisher did not move fast enough. He was arrested in New York City on June 21, 1957. Confessing to espionage, he gave as his “real” name Rudolf Ivanovich Abel, a deceased KGB colleague. Fisher/Abel was sentenced to thirty years, and started serving that time at the Atlanta Penitentiary until traded for Powers in 1962.

Abel/Fisher returned to a hero’s welcome in Moscow, then oblivion. He lived out his days as a KGB pensioner, hanging around the office with a chair but no desk. His remains lie in Moscow’s Donskoy Monastery alongside those of other departed KGB luminaries.

13 “Talent” was the original codeword for aircraft-collected imagery, i.e., the U-2. When satellites were added, so was the phrase “Keyhole.” Imaging satellites were given Keyhole numbers, i.e., KH-1, KH-2, etc.

14 An immense flying boat whose structure was made entirely of wood to avoid the use of wartime-scare aluminum. It had eight engines and was intended to carry 750 passengers across oceans. With the end of World War II the government ceased funding its development, but in 1947 Howard Hughes flew the aircraft himself, for a distance of one mile across Long Beach harbor, to prove that it would fly.

15 Today it is known as Energia, or more formally, the Joint Stock Company Academician S. P. Korolyev Rocket-Space Corporation Energia.

16 These warhead yields are detailed in Jacob Neufeld’s Ballistic Missiles , an Air Force history office publication.

17 The Soviets use the term “rocket” to describe what we call a “ballistic missile.” Hereafter I will use “rocket” or “missile” when referring to Soviet or U.S. weapons systems, respectively.

18 John von Neumann of Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study served as chairman. The members were: Clark Millikan, Charles Lauritsen, and Louis Dunn of Cal Tech; Henrik Bode, Bell Labs; Allen Puckett, Hughes Aircraft; George Kistiakowski, Harvard; Jerome Wiesner, MIT; Lawrence Hyland, Bendix; and Simon Ramo and Dean Wooldridge, previously of Hughes Aircraft but now on their own.

19 The correct technical term is “circular error probable” (CEP), defined as the radius of a circle within which half the shots or weapons would hit. “Average miss distance” is easier to understand, however.

20 Where radiation energy from the primary, not kinetic energy or neutrons, is used to implode a thermonuclear secondary stage.

21 In U.S. terminology, the SS-3, a single-stage, liquid-fueled rocket designed by the Soviets. As described in Russia’s Arms Catalog, Volume IV as well as by now-retired officers of the SRF, the R-5, when deployed, was capable of delivering a single 300 KT warhead to a range of about 750 miles, i.e., the distance from East Germany to Paris or London, with an average miss distance of about two miles. Its first launch, apparently unobserved by the U.S., took place on April 2, 1953.

22 SS-6 in U.S. terminology, a 280-ton monster, comparable in size to Atlas as originally conceived. To lift off, it required five engines with four rocket chambers each for a total of twenty propulsion units, all operating at full thrust.

23 Including Bud Wheelon of Ramo-Wooldridge, Carl Duckett of Redstone Arsenal, Eb Rechtin of Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Bill Perry of Sylvania’s Electronic Defense Lab. All were barely thirty years old at the time, and all went on to illustrious careers in the service of U.S. national security. From 1977 to 1981, Bill Perry served as director of Defense Research and Engineering. In that capacity, he oversaw the introduction of smart weapons and stealth into the U.S. military inventory. From 1993 to 1997, Perry served as U.S. Secretary of Defense.

24 Pentagon news conference, February 16, 1961, as quoted in McNamara’s In Retrospect (Random House, 1995): “I [have] concluded that if there was a missile gap it was in our favor.”

25 Much of this material was first published by the author, along with Arnold Kramish, in Physics Today,November 1996.

26 MAUD was not the name of some sinister international organization. It was just a handy code, being the name of Nils Bohr’s family nanny.

27 Ibelieve he is a U.S. national, very much alive, and now living in California.

28 Areport on the U.S. wartime nuclear weapons work, prepared immediately after World War II by Professor Henry Smyth of Princeton University. Many experts felt then, and feel now, that the release of this report was unwise, as it was a road map that proved to be very useful to the early proliferators.

29 From witnesses, speaking at the 1996 Dubna conference, as well as from the memoirs of Andrei Sakharov.

30 The Boyle’s Law some of us learned in high school, relating the pressure and volume of a confined gas, is a simple equation of state.

31 By some accounts, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles advocated the release of two nuclear weapons to the French for their use in defense of the fort. Others attribute an advocacy of direct use to members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. There is no evidence that such proposals received a serious hearing at the White House.

32 Three miles offshore, rather than the more commonly accepted twelve miles.

33 The orange ball that turns red or green if the approaching pilot is too low or high.

34 Although “downtown” Hanoi was off limits, as were the levees and much of the civilian infrastructure.

35 Actually, Soviet intelligence ships, outfitted with the best in communications electronics as well as fishing nets. They invariably showed up at the scene of every coastal and seaborne activity of interest to the Soviets, be it carrier takeoffs, missile launches, B-52 operations, or underwater searches.

36 They did. The U.S. reestablished trade relations with Vietnam in February 1994.

37 Permissive Action Links, devised by Johnny Foster at Livermore (see Chapter 8). These devices would render any nuclear device inoperable unless an outside set of digits, originating with the President, was punched into the weapon’s arming controls.

38 Apair of notebooks, one held by the sender, the other by the receiver. The encryption recipe changes for every word or letter. Once used, an encoding page is discarded, i.e., used but once. In the digital age, the parties use preplanned digital key streams instead of notepads.

39 The frantic effort by the Soviets to stay abreast of this development led to the premature sea trials, in 1961, of an early nuclear-powered, missile-firing submarine, the K-19. The result was a horror story of fires, reactor malfunctions, and death at sea only recently disclosed and now set forth in the motion picture K-19, the Widowmaker.

40 Antennae are best sized when they are one-fourth of the transmitted signal’s wavelength. Wavelength is inversely proportional to frequency. Thus megahertz frequencies (cell phones) require small antennae. VLF (the Navy) requires antennae over a mile long.

41 Uranium, because it is 67 percent denser than lead. “Depleted” refers to the removal of the fissionable U-235 isotope, to be used for weapons or reactors. What is left is the inert but very dense U-238.

42 Airborne Warning and Control System, a 707 airframe mounted by a huge disk-enclosed rotating antenna and carrying a sizable battle staff. The AWACS became indispensable in searching the coastal approaches to the United States for terrorist attackers.

43 In later years, retired Soviet planners reported that when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, these inventories of war reserve supplies cushioned the fall. Their exhaustion accelerated the economic crash of the late 1990s.

44 In 1981 the NSC consisted of the President, Vice-President (Bush), Secretary of State (Haig, then in 1983, Schultz), Secretary of Defense (Weinberger), U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (Kirkpatrick), and the Director of Central Intelligence (Casey).

45 Made easier by the efforts of one of my military assistants, Colonel Allan Myer.

46 The Westminster speech was written by State Department staffer John Lenczowski, then White House speechwriter Tony Dolan, and eventually Reagan himself.

47 That call got Clark to thinking about those phone lines. If this particular telephone was hard-wired right to the Soviet Embassy, how did we know it was turned off just because we hung up? Clark asked that question of the National Security Agency, and a few weeks later the hot lines were removed.

48 President Reagan, Vice-President Bush, National Security Adviser Clark, Secretary of Defense Weinberger, Secretary of State Schultz, and Director of Central Intelligence Casey. Bud McFarlane and Henry Rowen also attended this November 1982 meeting.

49 A“withhold” is a concept within the SIOP wherein certain forces are withheld from an initial strike. They might be used in subsequent negotiations or follow-up attacks.

50 Eight to ten minute flight times from West Germany to Moscow. Average miss distance of less than a hundred feet.

51 Nancy Reagan with William Novak. My Turn: The Memoirs of Nancy Reagan. Random House, 1989.

52 President’s news conference, January 29, 1981.

53 The tale that follows is extracted, and in some cases quoted, from unpublished notes by Gus Weiss: “The Farewell Dossier: Strategic Deception and Economic Warfare in the Cold War,” 2003.

54 Kissinger on Detente. Harcourt-Brace, 1994.

55 Revealed by the Department of Defense in hearings before the House Committee on Banking and Currency, 1974.

56 Even today, a decade after the end of the Cold War, the U.S. does not allow intelligence operatives to participate in any similar trade, cultural, scientific, or other group visiting the former Soviet Union.

57 An expression describing a few lines of software, buried in the normal operating system, that will cause that system to go berserk at some future date (Halloween?) or upon the receipt of some outside message.

58 James A. Baker III and Thomas M. DeFrank. The Politics of Diplomacy. Putnam, 1995, page 562.

59 Even so, Nancy had the Tuttles deleted from the White House guest lists by the middle of the second term, replaced by détente activist Armand Hammer, a now-documented Soviet agent. (See Edward Jay Epstein. Dossier. Random House, 1996.)

60 Gates served throughout the Eisenhower administration as Secretary of the Navy and then as Deputy Secretary of Defense. He was sworn in as the seventh Secretary of Defense on December 2, 1959. Gates enjoyed the President’s confidence, and he brought a reasoned understanding of the Pentagon to its top job. He was the first of a new breed of Defense secretaries, men who were more than just captains of industry. Gates left behind a reputation as one of America’s best Secretaries of Defense.

61 “Strategic” in Pentagon lingo refers to the weapons carried on the strategic or intercontinental forces, i.e., the ICBMs, SLBMs, and long range bombers. Nuclear weapons fired by artillery, carried in tactical aircraft, or launched on short range missiles do not fit in this category. They are not part of the SIOP.

62 Truck-mounted SS-25s and rail-mobile SS-24s and SS-27s.

63 Take bombers off alert, remove tactical nuclear weapons from surface ships and SSNs, withdraw nuclear warheads from overseas, significantly reduce the number of strategic nuclear warheads, remove MIRVs from the inventories, terminate development of the new small ICBM, and cancel development of the new airborne attack missile, among others. had an opportunity to reduce the size and characteristics of nuclear weapon inventories around the world.

64 Within weeks British Intelligence had a transcript of this meeting. They rated it as important as Khrushchev’s 1956 denunciation of Stalin, but it was not a story the Nixon administration wanted to hear, committed as it was to détente. Only the Boston Globe ran the story, on February 11, 1973.

65 Acronym for Raketno-Yadernoye Napadenie, or “Missile Surprise Attack.”

66 “Openness” or “transparency,” and “restructuring” or “reconstruction,” respectively.

67 By the end of Nixon’s first term, EDS was processing 90 percent of the Medicare claims in the United States. Perot’s campaign to maintain that base is evident from his 1974 conversation with HEW Secretary Cap Weinberger. Perot: “I gave five million bucks to Nixon [in ’72], and I want that [Medicare] contract now.” Weinberger was neither amused nor impressed, but he remembers the conversation well.

68 According to testimony given by Col. Richard Childress, USA, on August 12, 1992, to the U.S. Senate Committee on POW/MIA Matters.

69 This description of Colonel Jaeger’s role in history comes from Roger Cohen’s wonderful account in the November 9, 1999, edition of the New York Times.

70 ACongressional edict that precluded most favored nation trade status for the Soviet Union so long as it interfered with emigration.

71 If only two-thirds of the Perot votes in those states had gone to Bush, the then-President would have carried them.

72 Guy Burgess, with the British Foreign Office, spied for the USSR for years before fleeing to Russia one step ahead of MI-5.

73 Russians use the word “institute” where we use “laboratory,” meaning a very large organization, employing thousands of people and devoted to pushing a specific envelope of technology. A “laboratory” is also a room filled with glass tubes and Bunsen burners. That’s what the Russians mean when they use the word. In this text “lab” and “laboratory” are taken to mean “institute.”

74 USAF General W. Y. Smith and Red Army General A. I. Gribkov first met at a Cold War history conference in Havana in January 1992. Two years later they published their joint findings on Soviet Project Anadyr. This was the secret shipment of Soviet missiles into Cuba, triggering the missile crisis of October 1962. In their book they reported that General Pliyev had control of twelve two-kiloton warheads for his Luna tactical rockets, eighty ten-kiloton warheads for his FKR cruise missiles, and six six-kiloton bombs for carriage by IL-28 bombers. The IRBM warheads, with yields of around a half a megaton each, were still aboard the Alexandrovsk in the port of La Isabella, not available to Pliyev. In subsequent private discussions, other retired Soviet generals have confirmed these numbers.

75 After the Gulf War, Russian officials or individuals exported a half dozen GPS jammers into Iraq. These systems were intended to disable the American Global Positioning Satellite system and thus degrade the performance of U.S. smart weapons. It was a nice try, but to no avail. During the 2003 war in Iraq, the Soviet GPS jammers all failed and were destroyed, one by a GPS-guided weapon.

76 Access to Arab-world oil is no longer a windfall to the major oil companies. Big money is still involved, but terms must now be negotiated with sharp oil ministers trained in the West. The major U.S. and European oil companies are invited into the OPEC countries because those nations want, and are willing to pay for, the technology and reservoir engineering skills of the majors. These companies often suffer enormous losses when the political winds change or corrupt officials prevail. We consumers ultimately reimburse those costs.