How the Soviets stole a space shuttle

Online espionage
The key in terms of the shuttle program was “overt collection” and specifically the use of commercial databases. In effect, the massive effort directed at the U.S. space shuttle program was among the first cases of Internet espionage, if not the first case. With all the critical documents online, it was left to the VPK, under the auspices of the KGB, to gather it all up and then circulate it to those in the space program who needed it.

The 1985 CIA analysis on “Soviet Acquisition of Militarily Significant Western Technology” described the shuttle project as the best example of the KGB’s exploitation of U.S. government databases:

“From the mid-1970s through the early 1980s, NASA documents and NASA-funded contractor studies provided the Soviets with their most important source of unclassified material in the aerospace area. Soviet interests in NASA activities focused on virtually all aspects of the space shuttle. Documents acquired dealt with airframe designs (including the computer programs on design analysis), materials, flight computer systems, and propulsion systems. This information allowed Soviet military industries to save years of scientific research and testing time as well as millions of rubles as they developed their own very similar space shuttle vehicle.”

The CIA noted that “individual abstracts or references in government and commercial data bases are unclassified, but some of the information, taken in the aggregate, may reveal sensitive information.”

Moreover, said the CIA, the VPK had laid out “general guidance to collectors to acquire selected information on ... the U.S. space shuttle.” In terms of priority, in fact, the report noted that “documents on systems and heat shielding of the U.S. space shuttle” was the VPK’s top need in the “Space and Anti-satellite Weapons” arena. The CIA also detailed how much the KGB had budgeted for several of the shuttle-related projects and what academic institutions were targeted by the Soviets’ shuttle effort.

A half-million rubles — then worth roughly $140,000 — had been budgeted for “documents on the U.S. shuttle orbiter control system,” the CIA noted. And shuttle-related research projects at Caltech, MIT, Brooklyn Poly, Princeton, Stanford, Kansas, Penn State and Ohio State were also listed as targets of the KGB.

So thorough was the online acquisition, the National Security Agency learned, that the Soviets were using two East-West research centers in Vienna and Helsinki as covers to funnel the information to Moscow, where it kept printers going “almost constantly.” The Reagan administration had cut the Soviets off from making direct purchases of reports through the Department of Commerce’s National Technical Information Service and the Pentagon’s Defense Technical Information Service.

“Prior to that, they simply went from the Soviet embassy on 16th Street to the Government Printing Office on North Capitol and H Streets, provided the GPO with the name and number of the document they had gotten off the database, paid their money and took the documents back to the embassy,” said one intelligence official.

The computer center through which much of the intelligence then flowed, according to another CIA report, was located at the Soviet Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Moscow, which it identified as having strong “links” to the KGB. The report noted it was “reasonable to assume” that the chamber’s computer center tapped into western online information services.

Information bonanza
The shuttle program provided an online bonanza for the KGB. By the time of the launch of Columbia in 1981, there were 3,473 documents online related to the shuttle in general, 364 on shuttle wind-tunnel tests, 103 on the shuttle’s booster rockets, 124 on heat-resistant tiles, 605 on the shuttle’s computers and even 10 on its military applications.

Intelligence officials told NBC News that the Soviets had saved “billions” on their shuttle program by using online spying. “They didn’t have to put their orbiter through all the wind tunnel tests and computer simulations we did because our test data was available to them,” said Edward Aldridge, secretary of the Air Force during the Reagan administration.

Walter Deeley, who ran the NSA’s counter-intelligence operations, described the Soviet acquisition of documents via commercial databases as “shift work,” meaning it required round-the-clock monitoring.

How did the United States learn all about this effort — the targeting, the budgeting, the exploitation of databases? From a spy who has gone down as one of the most important in the history of espionage, and one who spurred one of the most ruthless counter-intelligence operations in U.S. history.

Continue to Part 2: 'Codename: Farewell'

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