All language subtitles for Spycraft.S01E05.1080p.WEB.H264-STRONTiUM_track8_[eng]

[ominous music playing]

[narrator] When intelligence agencies
deploy spies for espionage,

they rely on covert communication,
or cov-com,

to collect
and exchange secret information.

[man] It's possible today

to take and modify a strand of DNA

and have it contain a message.

We tried to make our communications
as undetectable as possible.

In micro photography…
take instructions and bring it down

to the size… a period
at the end of a sentence.

[narrator] Every agent requires
their own cov-com

to fit their unique circumstance.

He would just push a button
and it would transmit it,

and the base station would respond to it.

[man] One of the main focuses
of intelligence services

is to provide technology

that helps spies capture the information

and then find ways to pass it
without bringing danger to the spy.

It is the heart of covert communications

that really makes
a successful espionage operation.

[theme music playing]

[atmospheric music plays]

[narrator] The ability for spies
to operate successfully

depends largely
on the use of covert systems

to communicate with their handlers

that are secure from interception
by the enemy:

dead drops,

digital steganography,

concealment devices

and the seemingly endless capabilities
of the World Wide Web.

Covert communications, or cov-com,

is the essential ingredient in espionage.

You have spies who steal secrets,
you have handlers who manage them

and need to get the secrets
so they can pass them back to be analyzed.

But the link between them
is how they do it covertly

and secretly and without getting caught.

[narrator]
One of the most reliable methods

for transferring secret information
are face-to-face meetings

between an agent
and an intelligence officer.

The exchange of materials is guaranteed

and conversations
can address urgent issues.

[man]
…reticent to let you have it

because it's all classified

and…

But I will let you see it,

and you can take all the notes you want.

Uh, which I think you can do today,

but I…

If it ever fell into the wrong hands,
and I know it's not going to, but…

[narrator] FBI cameras
concealed in the car

recorded Pentagon analyst Gregg Bergersen
and Tai Shen Kuo, a spy for China,

discussing the handover
of secret documents

that list future weapons sales to Taiwan.

In this case, the face-to-face meeting
didn't go so well.

The recording of their meeting
served as evidence.

The men were sentenced
to 15 years in jail for espionage.

If you can't ensure that you are free
from surveillance going into a meeting,

you could potentially jeopardize
that asset that you're meeting.

And the gap is, at best, a few seconds.

So you turn a corner,
or you drive down a blind alley somewhere.

Uh, you only have that short--
very short, you know, just a few seconds

before the person who's following you
at some distance makes that turn as well.

[narrator]
Face-to-face meetings with an asset

is one challenge
for intelligence operatives.

Another is exchanging secret information
with an agent

without having to meet directly.

One technique used today that dates back
to World War II is the dead drop.

[tense music playing]

In a dead drop scenario,

an agent and a case officer

both have knowledge
of a particular location.

And the parties know
that if they receive a signal,

then there will be a package.

There will be material left
at a certain location.

And so, once that signal is received,

the agent goes to the location
and retrieves the document.

[narrator] Dead drop concealments
come in all shapes and sizes.

It can be as simple
as a hollow brick that can hold money

or a fake rock to conceal information.

In one low-tech scenario, dead rats,

with hidden messages inside them,
have even been used at dead drops.

He has a dead drop device
that you can put on the ground

that nobody else in that city is going
to want to pick up, except your agent.

And so at one point in time,

we were making dead animal
dead drop devices for use in denied areas.

[narrator] The dead drop was the preferred
method of covert communication

for Robert Hanssen, the former FBI agent
turned Russian spy.

Hanssen was so clever because he blended

the knowledge
of a counterintelligence officer

with traditional tradecraft.

He knew how to use dead drops
very effectively.

He knew how to select them
and then he added digital components.

[narrator] In 1988, Hanssen mailed a disk
to the KGB that appeared to be blank

but contained a hidden message.

By using a procedure
called 40-track mode,

he had reformatted the disk to have
slightly less capacity than usual

so that secret messages
could be concealed in its lost space.

Hanssen later used
a Palm III handheld computer

to communicate with
the KGB's successor, the SVR.

[tense music playing]

[Melton] And he proposed to the KGB,
or the SVR at the time, he said,

"Just think, in the future
I could do everything

and communicate to you wirelessly
without ever having to use the dead drop."

And so an agent who combines
digital techniques

with the classic old techniques

is a nightmare
for a counterintelligence service.

[narrator]
On the day Robert Hanssen was arrested,

he was filling a dead drop
reportedly used more than 20 times,

located under a bridge at Foxstone Park
in Vienna, Virginia.

It was a package
with seven secret FBI documents

and an encrypted letter to the SVR
on a computer disk,

all wrapped in a black plastic trash bag
covered in his fingerprints.

After leaving the package
under the bridge,

he headed back to his car
to find the FBI waiting for him.

Operating as a mole inside the FBI,

Hanssen spied for the Soviet
and Russian intelligence services

for 22 years.

He received a life sentence
for his espionage activities

against the United States.

Although spies use dead drops like
Hanssen's for covert communication,

today many are digital and wireless,

just as Hanssen had predicted
back in the 1990s.

You could have a digital dead drop

concealed inside a hollow rock,
and that rock could be in a park,

and as you go by
you have your cell phone

and you hit "transmit"
and it, using Bluetooth,

wirelessly transmits the information
from your phone 20 feet away to the rock.

The rock in turn receives the information

and then uploads
and sends you a confirmation,

or it may send you instructions back.

The next day, someone from the embassy
simply takes a walk with their dog

and they go on another path
20 yards away.

They have their hand in their pocket
and they use their cell phone

and they download the data
that's concealed

and they send you new tasking.

One of the main focuses
of intelligence services

is to provide technology that helps spies
capture the information more efficiently

and then find ways to pass it
without bringing danger to the spy.

[narrator] The CIA's
Office of Technical Service

is one agency charged
with creating spy technology.

This is an office known as OTS.

It, in fact, is one of the oldest
and most respected of the CIA offices.

It was originally formed in 1951.

OTS does all of the cool spy gadgets,

the disguises, the special weapons,

the covert communications gear,

all of those kinds of things

that people who are familiar
with the James Bond movies

would attribute to Q.

[atmospheric music playing]

The people who worked for me were Q.

The engineers and the scientists,
the technicians, the craftsmen.

All of those people did remarkable things
during the history of OTS

and continue to do them today.

We used a lot of what we called SRAC,
short-range agent communications,

which was a device that was built,

usually disguised to look
like something else,

that provided an agent a way
to send a burst message.

Usually, you take your message
or write it out,

you put it into a certain kind
of format, etcetera.

And then you, at a certain time and place,
you press a button

and it sends out what's called
a burst transmission,

which is just a "clip,"
very, very quick, uh…

uh, well, almost what we would call today
a zipped-up message.

And then it's received, ideally,

by somebody
who's authorized to receive it,

uh, usually fairly close.

Because what you're trying to prevent
is from somebody capturing the signal

and then triangulating it.

[narrator] SRAC was a favorite method
of covert communication

for many high-profile spies,

including double agent and GRU officer
Dmitri Polyakov, code named TOPHAT.

Polyakov was a Soviet major general

and one of the Cold War's greatest spies.

He revealed Soviet secrets to the FBI
and the Central Intelligence Agency.

So a case like the Polyakov case,

an important case of that magnitude
that lasts for many years,

is going to involve a number
of case officers.

You don't want to use the same
case officer who appears time and again.

He had probably half a dozen handlers.

[narrator] Skotzko, along with CIA officer
and Polyakov handler Sandy Grimes,

watched as Polyakov rose in the ranks
of the Soviet GRU.

The day that cable came in from Delhi…

uh, saying that he had just
become a general,

it was Christmas.

It was Christmas for him
and it was Christmas for us.

His access improved tremendously,

not only because he was a general,
he had the rank of general,

but that afforded him access

to all the rest of the generals,

that small group in the GRU.

Uh…

And therefore, based on his rank,
based on his position,

uh, it really became a goldmine for us.

[narrator] Polyakov was able
to get his hands

on some of the Soviet's top-secret
documents on nuclear capabilities

and their chemical
and biological objectives.

His handlers had the responsibility

of making sure Polyakov was armed
with the best communication devices.

We used a radio… record player

as a concealment device
with Polyakov once.

A fishing pole…

And the handle of it,
I think, it was cork,

and it had been--
there was a hollowed-out little thing

so he could put his SW in here.

[narrator] Polyakov's shortwave radio
could be hidden inside the fishing pole.

And the whole thing falls apart.

I mean, it just crumbled.
He was a very, very unhappy camper.

So we start all over again.

[narrator] The OTS managed
to correct the design and make it work.

The fishing pole was basically
an antenna wire

that could pick up covert signals.

[Melton]
And when he sticks it in the water,

he's simply picking up
another acoustic signal

from somebody
a quarter of a mile upstream

who's sending a signal,

and they're both talking or humming,

and they're having a communication

and talking over a signal underwater.

What's the chances of that being caught?
It's very, very slim.

But the best one without fail
was called "Unique."

And OTS called it "Buster."

And it was developed specifically
for Polyakov.

And what Polyakov could do
with this little unit,

it had a keyboard and Cyrillic on it
and he would type in his messages.

It went into the guts of this thing.

He would just push a little button

and it would transmit it,
burst transmission,

2.4 seconds or something.

And the base station
would respond to it, and…

uh, Polyakov was thrilled with it,
and he said,

"Finally the boys
at the center got this right.

You can tell them it was good work."

Yeah, and it was revolutionary.

[narrator] By the late 1980s
and over 25 years of service to the CIA,

Polyakov begins to suspect
he's under surveillance by the KGB.

[Skotzko]
In a final meeting with him…

it was held in his apartment
in the Soviet Embassy compound.

That was his idea, certainly not mine.

It was probably the most scared
I ever was in my 40-year career.

But we got in, and I was surprised to see
all of his possessions had been packaged

and stacked in a pyramid
in the middle of the living room floor.

And I said, "What's going on?"

And he says,
"Yeah, but who knows what might happen?"

At which point I began to worry

that maybe he was worried
that he was under suspicion.

And I said to him…

"If you have any doubts
about your security,

we more than owe you the opportunity

to get you out of here
and get you to our country."

And it was the one time
I saw him actually flare up

and lose his temper, just a little bit.

He said,
"I am not doing this for your country.

I'm doing this for the Russian people
because of what those bastards

in the Communist Party have done
to my country over the last 60 years."

And that was the first in-depth look
into what his motivation was.

It was a very revealing moment.

[narrator]
Polyakov's intuition is correct.

While he's been working for the CIA,

FBI mole Robert Hanssen
was working for the Russians

and gave the GRU intelligence

about a possible FBI source
named Polyakov.

Hanssen helped put the final nail
in his coffin.

Polyakov was immediately apprehended,
searched and interrogated by the GRU.

[Skotzko] And he then proceeded
to make a full confession,

and off he went into prison

and was visited once or twice
by his family

and then dropped out of sight.

He was executed in '88.

[narrator] Polyakov is said
to have been credited

with keeping the Cold War
from boiling over

by giving the United States secrets
that gave it an inside view

of Soviet priorities
and weapon capabilities.

Polyakov's success relied on various
spy gadgets for covert communication,

and like the fishing pole, they are often
concealed inside everyday items.

[tense music playing]

[Murray] So we tried to make
our communications

either look like something else

or at least put them
within some other kind of device

and make them as undetectable as possible.

And that's cov-com.

And it was constantly evolving,
constantly being worked on.

[Gerald B. Richards] But today,
short-range might be using Wi-Fi,

uh, might be using Bluetooth,

uh, computers, on the Internet,

from one very short spot to another.

Maybe two computers
sitting next to each other

to transfer that information,
but basically that would be used today.

[narrator] In the real-life version of
the hit television series The Americans,

ten Russian sleeper agents,

who had been participating in deep-cover,
long-term assignments,

were arrested in Operation Ghost Stories
in the United States.

It is a clear reminder for people
in the intelligence world

that Russian spies are still
actively working on US soil.

[Melton] "Ghost Stories" is the code name

for one of the longest-running
counterintelligence operations

in the United States
following World War II.

It began at least…

probably the year 2000,
probably much before.

And ultimately it tracked
ten Russian illegals

that were in the United States
under false identity.

They were SVR intelligence officers

and were living lives
as ordinary Americans.

And they were literally
the spies next door.

[narrator] Many of the Russian
SVR "illegals"

established themselves in the US
using stolen identities

and leading normal lives,

getting married, buying homes,

raising children
and assimilating into American society.

They were in it for the long haul

to develop sources of information
in US policymaking circles.

To report back to Russia, they used
various covert communication systems.

The Ghost Stories team used

virtually every means

of covert communication
available to them at the time,

including secret writing, secret ink.

They received coded
one-way voice messages coming over

just regular radio frequencies.

One of the most interesting were
the systems that were used

by one of the Russian 10
by the name of Anna Chapman in 2010.

And the SVR developed a system for her

that used her regular laptop.

And she would go to a Starbucks
or a coffee shop,

sit next to the window,

and she would activate
an ad hoc wireless network

that was built into the Windows
operating system of her computer.

And what this did, it was a system
that Microsoft envisioned years ago.

Say you had two members
in the same household

that wanted to play a game
from different rooms.

They didn't need to go on the Internet.

This was actually before the Internet.

But they could simply use
the wireless feature

and create their own intranet
between the two of them,

but it would never go over the Internet.

And so Anna activated that.

Her contact would be parked in a car
50 yards across the way,

have no personal contact with her.

She could simply open her computer,
activate the file.

It would wirelessly sync
with a car 50 yards away.

Any folder she drug
onto the folder with a link

would automatically be encrypted

and sent on this encrypted tunnel
to the car 50 yards away.

And virtually impossible to detect.

And even if it was detected,
it was encrypted.

One of the great ironies of it is that
Anna was a bit of a bumbling agent.

[narrator] In this FBI-sourced footage,
Chapman is seen inside a department store

using a hidden computer to send
encrypted messages to a Russian spy.

[Melton] It's strange to see pictures
of a Russian spy standing

and holding her laptop up,

making sure that she's making
communications with a car 50 yards away.

The weakness is often
not the technology but the agent.

[narrator] Chapman met a man named Roman,

who she believed was a Russian officer,
at a local Starbucks

and tells him about the technical issues
she was having with her computer.

[Melton] And Roman very alertly says,

"Oh, well, if you think there's a problem
with the computer,

why don't you let me have
some of my friends at the station

take a look at it?
They're very, very good at that."

And Anna says, "That would be wonderful,"

thinking she's just relieved herself
of this computer.

And so she gives
the FBI undercover officer

her computer to be checked.

He in turn says,
"Anna, I need you to do something…"

[narrator] He asks her to deliver
a passport to another agent

and to leave a sign
that the mission had been completed.

She not only handed over the computer
but agreed to deliver the passport.

But by committing
to conspiratorial behavior

and accepting the passport and doing this,

they now would be able
to charge her with an offense.

On the 26th of June,
in one massive operation

that probably involved more than
600 agents on the east coast,

all the arrests were affected
at the same time.

[narrator] It's reported that if Anna
hadn't been arrested,

she could have been one
of the most dangerous spies in America.

[Melton] And the reason was her access.

She could get past any door
and any secretary.

And men were always willing
to give her time and an interview.

And she had developed a pattern
and a pitch for her business.

It was basically a recruitment.

She was trying to make friends
and work her way up the social ladder.

[narrator] Communicating secretly
with an asset

and having the ability
to exchange intelligence

is vital to the success
of an espionage operation.

Secret writings is one method
of communicating covertly

and has been used
from ancient times to modern day.

[Parrack]
During the Revolutionary War,

George Washington a…
a spy network called the Culper Ring,

they would send messages to each other,
sometimes in secret writing,

sometimes in open letters.

They'd say,
"47 is going to meet 16 at 32."

[Wallace]
And the Culper Ring agents

would pick up those letters

and then deliver them
to Washington headquarters.

So, it was just a matter
of secret writing,

uh, information.

Information that was, quote,
it was "buried"

in what was otherwise
innocuous communication.

You get a similar technique

with what is called steganography
in digital information.

So people have devised ways

of adding data to images,
or to spreadsheets,

or to other documents, that are digital,

that is hidden and unknown.

[Melton] If you ask how many images
are sent over the Web each day,

no one has any idea in the world
because it's…

billions of images are transmitted.

So if a spy stealing information

can encipher it first,

put it in a digital form,
conceal it in an image,

conceal it in a music track,

conceal it in a Word document,
and transmit it,

if he can use a channel,
or post it to a website

that's not under analysis

or it's not under observation
by an intelligence service,

it's very, very likely that it would
never be scrutinized.

It would never be examined
and would thereby be effective.

[narrator] The ability to conceal
and hide secrets

is an art form
within the intelligence community.

The first actual micro photography
was done in the mid-1800s

and actually by 1900
it became a art form almost,

because one of the challenges
used to be is,

how you can put
on one inch of film the entire Bible.

So this was really,
really micro photography,

but during World War II,
the Germans decided

to use this as a communication device.

And basically what they would do
is take instructions

and bring it down to the size of a dot,
a period at the end of a sentence,

and send it to the asset.

[narrator] Modern technology
has taken microdots

and steganography even further,

with the development of a new technique
for conducting espionage

on a molecular level,
hiding covert messages in human DNA.

It's possible today to take
and modify a strand of DNA

and have it contain a message.

[narrator] Using this technique,
a sender would create

a unique strand of DNA that only
an intended recipient can isolate

and read from millions of similar strands.

[Melton] You could have it
contain a password.

You could produce it
and generate multiple copies of it.

The technology exists to do it.

[narrator] Today, the variety of channels
in which you can send a covert message

has exploded, especially with the growth
of social media applications.

[lively electronic beat plays]

[Melton] On your phone
you have multiple apps available

for point-to-point encryption.

You have WhatsApp, you have Telegram,
you have a variety of systems.

Every one of them is encrypted.

The government has enormous difficulty
and in some instances

cannot break this encryption.

But there's other ways that are
complex and baffling.

[narrator] Digital applications
make it easier to send messages

and also allow spies to communicate
secretly on otherwise benign platforms,

such as digital gaming.

[Melton] The Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six,

Halo, Fortnite, Minecraft,

where members are cooperating
and communicating as part of teams.

Well, the same channel can be used
for covert communication.

[narrator] Another workaround
for cov-com via the Internet

is something called Tor,
short for The Onion Router,

a gateway to the Dark Web.

Two thirds of the Internet
is on what they call a Dark Web.

It's used by drug dealers.
It's used by hackers.

That's where they buy the tools,
buy and trade the tools

that they use to get
into other people's computers.

It's used for all kinds
of nefarious purposes.

Uh, Tor is just the way you get into it.

[narrator] It's a tool that's also been
used by terror networks around the world.

-[shouting]
-[gunfire]

ISIS communicated via Tor
and social media

in the Paris attacks of 2016
by using telegram-like apps

which securely communicated their messages
to the other group members,

allowing them to coordinate
the attacks secretly.

Intelligence operatives are constantly
having to adapt their strategies

to meet the latest changes in technology.

[Melton] If you're
a counterintelligence service,

where do you know where to look at?
Where do you start?

In many ways,
the odds are with the agent.

And, as the Russians believe,

if you follow your tradecraft,

you'll never ever be caught,
and most often that's true.

[Richards] Well, the future
of clandestine is all digital.

Some of these encryptions
are virtually impossible to break

and therefore the… to catch the spies…

uh, is going to be much, much difficult,

but also for them to catch us spying is
going to be much, much more difficult,

but yes, it's a digital world today.

If you think about clandestine operations
as being a body,

it is the heart of covert communications
that really makes the difference

between whether or not
you have a successful spy,

whether or not you have
a successful espionage operation.

[atmospheric music playing]