http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/A48521-2001Mar9.html
FBI Offered Officials Tours of Secret Tunnel Under Soviet Embassy
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 11, 2001; Page A03
FBI officials were so proud of a secret tunnel the bureau built beneath the
Soviet Embassy for electronic surveillance during the final years of the Cold
War that they offered tours to senior officials with top security clearances,
former government officials said last week.
While much about the tunnel remains a closely held secret, electronic
surveillance experts inside and outside the intelligence community said the
tunnel operation gave the FBI the proximity it needed to intercept Soviet
communications using a variety of bugs and taps.
"The closer the eavesdropper gets to the target, the more he can do," said
one former government expert, explaining how tiny bugs planted throughout the
embassy could have transmitted signals to the tunnel through fiber-optic and
copper lines that are extremely difficult to detect.
"Any time you can get physical proximity to a target, it opens up a world of
possibilities," said another expert who once worked for the National Security
Agency, which provided the tunnel's eavesdropping technology.
Beyond "hard-wired" bugs directly connected to receivers in the tunnel, the
experts said, the tunnel could have enabled the FBI to tap into
telecommunications lines and even power cables, whose electromagnetic
emanations can be reconstructed and deciphered.
One former law enforcement official said laser technology was deployed in the
tunnel, technology the experts said could have been used to capture sound
waves emanating from pipes and structural support beams. One former
government electronic surveillance guru said tiny microphones could even have
been inserted in toilets through water pipes to monitor conversations in
bathrooms.
But whatever technologies the NSA deployed to bug the embassy, the useful
information it obtained was likely negligible, according to current and
former government officials.
Prosecutors now believe that FBI agent Robert P. Hanssen tipped off the KGB
to the tunnel's existence early in his alleged 15-year career as a spy for
Moscow, nullifying the technological advantages the FBI could have gained
from such close range.
One intelligence source with direct knowledge of the technology Hanssen
allegedly compromised said the Soviets used the FBI bugs and wiretaps to feed
disinformation back to the U.S. government.
"They were obviously feeding a very large quantity of data to us of apparent
value but no real value," the source said. "It was a very delicate game that
was played out over several years."
One former government official who was offered a tour but declined the
invitation because he is claustrophobic said the tunnel was accessed from a
residence near the Soviet -- now Russian -- compound on Mount Alto, a hilltop
north of Georgetown between Wisconsin Avenue and Tunlaw Road NW that is one
of the highest sites in Washington. The former official said the government
purchased the home and started digging the tunnel out of its basement.
Another former official acknowledged that he had toured the passageway but
declined to describe it, saying everything about it remains highly classified.
A 109-page affidavit filed in court to support espionage charges against
Hanssen never specifically mentions the tunnel. But a senior U.S. official
said the affidavit refers indirectly to the eavesdropping operation when it
alleges that Hanssen "compromised an entire technical program of enormous
value, expense and importance to the United States."
U.S. officials, in any event, realized the tunnel operation had been
compromised years before Hanssen was unmasked last month as an alleged spy
for Moscow, former FBI and intelligence officials said.
Indeed, Stanislav Lunev, a former colonel in Soviet military intelligence,
said U.S. officials might have been alerted by a broadcast on Soviet
television in 1987. In the broadcast, Soviet officials revealed numerous
listening devices found throughout the embassy, including its basement.
"Somebody dug in the basement with a shovel and found electronic devices,
brand new," said Lunev, who arrived in Washington under cover as a
correspondent for the Soviet news agency Tass in 1988 and defected to the
United States in 1992.
Lunev said he was never told that a tunnel existed but hardly finds the
disclosure remarkable. "To believe there is no tunnel under the embassy would
be stupid," Lunev said. "It's real life, a clear practice of intelligence."
One former government electronic surveillance expert said that "hard-wired"
bugs accessible using a tunnel are vastly preferable to "radio frequency"
bugs that broadcast signals to nearby receivers, often in extremely short
bursts to avoid detection.
One such transmitting bug was planted by Russian military intelligence in a
seventh-floor conference room at the State Department and discovered in late
1999, the expert said. "A college student with a spectrum analyzer could have
found it," he added.
"Any time you see the word 'tunnel,' you assume that cables are being
introduced or hard-wired and the tunnel is a terminus for all the bugs in the
building," the expert said.
He contended that the Soviets probably would have discovered the listening
devices and tiny cables eventually, even without a tip-off. "And if they
found fiber-optic listening devices where they shouldn't have been, they
would have immediately realized the United States installed them," the expert
said.
Even harder than introducing the bugs, however, may have been digging the
tunnel itself. Several former intelligence officials said a unit within the
CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology possesses sophisticated tunneling
capabilities and might have been consulted on the project.
"This isn't the only tunnel ever dug," said one former intelligence official.
"There's been enough of these things done where there is considerable
in-house capability. The deeper you go, the more physical issues you have to
confront."
But not all of the challenges involve high technology. In digging any tunnel,
the former official noted, "you've got a massive amount of dirt to move."
