When French President Mitterrand tells President Reagan in July
1981 that the KGB has been stealing Western technology,
it confirms Reagan's distrust of the Soviet Union.
Reagan fears that stolen technology will help the Soviet
Union complete a giant engineering project,
the Trans-Siberian pipeline.
The Siberian pipeline was the largest
construction effort that the Soviet Union ever undertook.
NARRATOR: By 1981, the pipeline has become a chess piece
in the new Cold War between the United
States and the Soviet Union.
And at the time, it was the largest single
natural gas field discovered.
NARRATOR: It's a potential fortune for the Soviets.
The Communists are prepared to do whatever it takes
to bring the gas to market.
Well, if I pull out from the pipeline,
I see that it is really not going across the Soviet Union.
It's headed straight for Europe.
Why would they do that?
MARK STOUT: Well, Europe's where the money is, right?
You have to remember that the Soviet Union basically, aside
from weapons, doesn't make anything
that anybody wants to buy.
But what they do have is lots of natural resources.
And gas and oil are really high on that list.
So the Soviet Union is trying to make itself a necessary part
of European economy?
MARK STOUT: Yes, exactly.
And that's one of things that the Reagan administration is
particularly worried about-- some sort of military crisis,
or diplomatic showdown, or something
that Moscow could say to the West, you guys back down
or we're going to turn off the gas in Frankfurt and Paris.
And everybody freezes to death in the middle of the winter.
That's the big Reagan administration concern.
NARRATOR: Reagan's concern increases
when he learns from the French how much Western technology
the KGB have been stealing.
The French have given their KGB mole, Vladimir Vetrov
a codename, "Farewell."
Reagan turns the information about Vetrov
over to his own CIA.
THOMAS REED: Reagan gets the file delivered directly
to Bill Casey at the CIA.
Casey looks at this, and what's in the file
is the fact that the Soviets have penetrated
American industry, and are stealing technology
all across the board.
NARRATOR: Detente has been a smoke screen.
A decade of deceit is laid out in black and white,
along with a wish list of future theft.
MARK STOUT: Exactly which kinds of technologies, which pieces
of equipment, which weapons they're trying to steal,
and exactly the names and identities
of the KGB officers in specific countries
who are charged with doing that.
NARRATOR: Now the challenge for the CIA--
how to respond.
CIA boss William Casey knows he's been
handed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Casey shares trust documents with a brilliant economist
on the National Security Council, Gus Weiss.
REBECCA RANICH: Gus Weiss had been working with the CIA
on technology transfer since the 1970s.
NARRATOR: Casey and Weiss suggest
allowing the flow of stolen technology to continue.
But they start including a few adjusted products.
THOMAS REED: I like the word "adjust,"
because it was not a massive assault
on what they were doing.
If you did major changes, they'd notice it.
So you've got to have the chips be standard, government
issue, Texas Instruments chips.
Except in one little corner, you put a Trojan horse.
Lull the Soviets into thinking they
are continuing to be successful, while we in fact
feed them junk.
NARRATOR: Weiss and Casey take the plan to President
Reagan, who loves it.
THOMAS REED: It was sheer genius to pollute the technology they
were stealing, that it would then
pollute their own whole system.