[MUSIC PLAYING]
When action is required to preserve our national security,
we will act.
NARRATOR: Reagan has a vision of a world free from communism
and of American victory in the Cold War.
Reagan's suspicions of the Soviet Union and of detente
are dramatically confirmed in July 1981
at an international economic summit in Canada.
President Mitterrand of France is there.
He asks Reagan for a private meeting.
Richard Allen was at Reagan's side.
RICHARD V. ALLEN: Mitterrand made the most extraordinary
gesture, an offer to Reagan describing
a very successful operation that French intelligence
had underway.
NARRATOR: The details of the intelligence operation
are stunning.
The French have made secret contact with a KGB colonel
in Moscow.
His name is Vladimir Vetrov.
He says he's an analyst in a shadowy KGB office, known only
as Directorate T. Vetrov tells the French
that detente is a giant lie.
Directorate T is controlling hundreds of KGB agents
who are using detente to acquire the West's
technological secrets.
KRISTIE MACRAKIS: Acquiring is just
a polite word for stealing.
So they call them acquisition lines,
basically stealing science and technology from the West.
NARRATOR: The Soviet spies are burrowing
deep into Western factories and research laboratories.
DAVID MAJOR: We found out through this source, one
of the things they were doing is,
they were taking scientists and making them intelligence
officers to do collection.
NARRATOR: The Russians are using American research
and development to build their own war industry.
DEREK LEEBAERT: So Vetrov starts to hand off this material,
and suddenly it becomes clear to French intelligence,
and then also American intelligence,
just the tremendous extent of the KGB's
science and technology espionage efforts against the West.
It must have been a-- must have been
truly a dramatic realization.
NARRATOR: During the 1970s, detente
allowed Soviet scientists to visit Western factories,
to encourage economic cooperation,
and reduce Cold War tensions.
What they would do is, they would
send a delegation to America.
They would get visa approval to go to one company.
At the last minute, they would switch and go to a more
sensitive company, like Boeing.
DEREK LEEBAERT: So they'd go someplace that maybe wasn't
quite as sanitized and prepared from a security point of view
to receive a Soviet delegation.
KRISTIE MACRAKIS: Exactly, yeah.
So they would show up at Boeing--
well, this was a real case.
They actually went to Boeing and Seattle, Washington.
But they went to such lengths in their whole program
to acquire our science and technology
that they had some really bizarre methods they used,
as well.
They just didn't get blueprints.
They also collected samples, big samples.
But they also collected very small samples.
And so they were viewing the material in the factory,
and they'd put sticky tape on the bottom
of their shoes to pick up the metal filings from the floor.
Well, if you give me your shoe, I'll explain how it worked.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to put some sticky tape
on the bottom of your shoes.
And we want some samples of metal filings.
NARRATOR: Silently, the tape collects the dirt and dust
from the factory floor.
KRISTIE MACRAKIS: It's a pretty clever method.
So let's see your show in the metal filings.
Ooh, it's black now.
DEREK LEEBAERT: Nice and black from the filings.
KRISTIE MACRAKIS: Beautiful.
It's kind of remarkable the Soviets only
needed a tiny sample like this, but I
guess that's all that a chemist really needs to figure out
precisely what metals went into this alloy that's
perfect for building the body of an airplane.