To recruit nuclear scientists from countries like Iran and North Korea and persuade them to flee to the United States, US intelligence services regularly send agents to scientific events - or even organize their own dummy conferences.
The CIA agent knocked softly on the hotel room door. The speeches, discussions and dinner had already ended, and the conference participants went to spend the night. Wiretapping and visual observation showed that the people from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who oversaw the atomic scientist, went to bed, but he himself was still awake. And he was alone in the room when he opened the door.
According to a well-informed source, the scouts had been preparing this meeting, which took place about ten years ago, for several months. Through a front company, they financed and organized a conference at an unrelated international scientific center, invited participants and infiltrated their people into the ranks of the service personnel - all in order to lure the nuclear scientist from Iran, separate him from the guards for a few minutes and talk to him one on one. At the last moment, the plan almost fell through: the scientist changed the hotel, because the hotel proposed by the conference cost $ 75 more than the Iranians were willing to spend.
To demonstrate sincerity and benevolence, the agent put his hand to his heart. “Salam, khabibi,” he said. "I'm from the CIA and I want you to fly with me to the United States." The Iranian's face showed a mixture of surprise, fear and curiosity. The agent already had experience working with defectors, so he understood well what questions were swarming in the scientist's head: What will happen to my family? How will you protect me? Where will I live and for what? How do I get my visa? Will I have time to pack my things? What if I say no?
The scientist had already opened his mouth to ask something, but the interlocutor interrupted him: "First, take an ice bucket."
"What for?"
"If your guards wake up, tell them you went to get some ice."
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In what is arguably the most daring and complex plan to invade the academic world in its history, the CIA secretly spent millions of dollars organizing scientific conferences around the world. His goal was to lure Iranian nuclear scientists out of Iran into a more favorable environment, where intelligence officials could work with them individually and persuade them to change sides. In other words, the department tried to delay the development of the Iranian nuclear program by exploiting the international character of the academic environment. To do this, it was forced to resort to large-scale deception and mislead both the structures that held these conferences and the scientists who spoke at them. The participants in scientific events did not even suspect that they were involved in a performance that only simulated reality. You can argue aboutas far as national security objectives justify such manipulations by the professors, there is no doubt that most scientists would strongly disagree with the fact that the CIA has the right to use them as "idiots."
Conferences are the most spy-friendly side of scientific life. Thanks to globalization, this social and intellectual ritual has become ubiquitous. Like golf and tennis tournaments, they are held wherever the climate is favorable enough - and in the same way they attract a successful audience. Although scientists constantly communicate with each other remotely, virtual communication does not replace face-to-face meetings, which allow them to make connections that are useful for work, look at new devices and read a report that will later be published in the collection. “This is what makes conferences so attractive,” wrote the English novelist David Lodge in 1984 in his satire on scientific life titled “The Small World”. someone else's pocket. I wrote an article - I saw the world (cit.on the lane. O. E. Makarova).
The importance of the conference now can be measured not only by the number of Nobel laureates or Oxford teachers who participate in it, but also by the number of spies. American and foreign intelligence agents are drawn to conferences for the same reasons that army recruiters are drawn to poor areas: there is the most loot. If a certain university may have only a couple of professors who are of interest to the special services, then at the right conference - say, on drones or ISIS (an organization banned in Russia - approx. Transl.) - there may be dozens of them.
“Every intelligence agency in the world works with conferences, sponsors conferences, and looks for ways to send people to conferences,” one former CIA officer told me.
“Recruitment is a long-term process of seduction,” says Mark Galeotti, a senior fellow at the Institute for International Studies in Prague, a former special adviser to the British Foreign Office. - First you need to be on the same section with the object. Even if you just exchange a couple of meaningless remarks, next time you will be able to say: “I think we saw you in Istanbul?”
The FBI warned American scientists in 2011 to be careful at conferences, outlining the following scenario: “A researcher unexpectedly receives an invitation to submit abstracts to an international conference. She sends them and receives an invitation. At the conference, a representative of the host party asks her for a presentation, attaches a flash drive to her laptop, and quietly downloads all files and data from it."
The FBI and CIA, too, do not disregard conferences. According to the former FBI agent, at events in the United States, "foreign intelligence agents hunt Americans, and we hunt them." The CIA handles conferences in several different ways: it dispatches its agents to them, it organizes them through Washington front companies so that the intelligence community can tap into scientific knowledge, and it holds fake conferences to contact potential defectors from hostile countries.
The CIA monitors upcoming conferences around the world and identifies those that may interest him. Suppose Pakistan hosts an international centrifuge conference. The CIA will either send its undercover agent there, or turn to a scientist who was going there anyway to write a report. If it finds out that one of the Iranian nuclear scientists was there, it will mark him as a potential recruiting target at the next event.
Intelligence gathered at academic conferences can influence politics. For example, they helped convince the George W. Bush administration that Saddam Hussein continued to develop weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (which, as it turned out, was not true). “Our staff and informants, of course, noticed that Iraqi scientists in chemistry, biology, and to a lesser extent nuclear physics continued to appear at international symposia,” wrote former CIA officer John Kiriakou in his 2009 memoir, on the fight against terrorism. "They made reports, listened to other people's speeches, actively took notes and returned to Jordan, from where they went by land to Iraq."
Perhaps the intelligence officers sometimes drew the wrong conclusions, due to the fact that there were few professional chemists, biologists and nuclear physicists among them. Without specialized education, you can misunderstand what is at stake. In addition, a stranger is more likely to get caught. There are probably more spies than scientists at conferences in Vienna by the International Atomic Energy Agency on topics such as isotope hydrology and thermonuclear fusion, says Gene Coyle, who worked for the CIA from 1976 to 2006: “There is only one small problem. When you send an agent to a conference like this, he has to keep up conversations. And it is very difficult for a person with a diploma in history to pretend to be a specialist in plasma physics. In addition, it is a very small world. If an agent, for example, says that he works at the Fermi Institute of Chicago,he will immediately be asked how Bob, Fred and Susie are doing."
So, according to Coyle, the agency draws in people from the scientific world through the National Resources Sector, its secret internal service that "collaborates" with many scientists. "When they find out, say, about a suitable conference in Vienna, they ask Professor Smith if he will be there."
“Smith can say, 'Yes, I'm going there and then I'll tell you who I spoke to. If I run into any Iranian, I will not run away from him. " If he says he would love to go, but the university does not have the funds, the CIA or the FBI can answer: "Okay, maybe we can provide you with a ticket - in economy class ".
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Recruiting a scientist often begins with a seemingly random encounter - as First Contact experts say - at a conference. One former CIA officer - let's call him R. - explained to me how it works.
“I recruited a lot of people at conferences,” he says. "I was good at it - but, by the way, it's not difficult."
In between assignments, he studied the list of upcoming conferences, chose one of them and found out which of the scientists he was interested in had participated in it at least twice in previous years, which means he will probably attend it again. He then instructed CIA and NSA trainees to prepare a profile of the facility - where he studied, with whom, and so on. Then he telegraphed his superiors asking for funding. The request had to be compelling enough for the agency to allocate the money, but also unconvincing enough that other agents who read it and who were closer to the conference would not start hunting for the same object.
Then R. developed a cover. He usually portrayed a businessman. He came up with the name of the company, built a standard website, printed business cards, created documents, phone numbers and credit card details for a non-existent company. He also chose which of his several aliases he would use this time.
R. was not a scientist and could not easily strike up a conversation about the Riemann hypothesis. Therefore, realizing that most scientists are introverts and have difficulties with communication, he turned to the object before the buffet table: "You also do not like crowded events?" After that R. stepped aside. “The first contact should be fleeting,” he believes. “It is important that your face is simply remembered.” However, no one should notice such contact. A typical newbie mistake is to strike up a conversation in the presence of people who may be observers assigned to the scientist by the authorities of his country. If they report on this conversation, the security of the facility will be in jeopardy, and he himself will not be able - and will not want - to make further contacts.
The rest of the time R. "rushed about like a madman," trying to contact the scientist at every opportunity. With each interaction (in CIA jargon, they are called "time at the object" and are taken into account when measuring performance), he tried to win the sympathy of the object. This was helped by the habit of preparing well for recruitment. Let's say he tells the subject that he has read a delightful article on such and such a topic, but cannot remember the author. He was embarrassed and admitted that this was his article.
A couple of days later, R. invited the scientist to have lunch or dinner and cast the bait - he said that his company was extremely interested in the subject on which the facility was working and would like to support his work. “All the scientists I know are constantly looking for grants to fund their research. They're just talking about that,”he says. They discussed the scientific project and the amount, which varied from country to country: "For Pakistanis, it is usually between $ 1,000 and $ 5,000, for Koreans, more." After a professor receives money from the CIA, even if the source of funding is unknown to him, he becomes addicted, because in his homeland, exposure could threaten his career - and sometimes his life.
Scientific conferences are so attractive for intelligence agents that CIA agents have become almost the first to fear the interference of colleagues in the management, tracking down the same academic prey. “We're inundated with events like this,” notes retired clerk Ishmael Jones in his 2008 book, The Human Factor: Inside the CIA's Ineffective Intelligence Culture. Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture ).
Jones writes that in 2005, having attended a conference in Paris that seemed to him "a suitable feeding trough for weapons developers working for rogue countries," he sharply lost heart when he noticed two other CIA agents (and part-time scientists). This, however, did not stop him, trying not to catch their eye, scouring the room, looking at the badges of the participants and looking for “potential sources of information,” ideally from North Korea, Iran, Libya, Russia or China.
“I am amazed at how large the open presence of the intelligence services is at such events,” notes Karsten Geier. "At every step you run into people from abbreviation offices." We spoke with Geyer, who is responsible for cybersecurity policy in the German Foreign Office, at the Sixth Annual International Conference on Cyber Interaction, which was held on April 26, 2016 at Georgetown University in Washington. At it, the leaders of the NSA and the FBI delivered keynote speeches on confronting one of the main challenges of the 21st century - cyber attacks. Religious art, stained glass windows and classic quotes that adorn the Gaston Hall, in which all this took place, looked like an elaborate cover against this backdrop.
Speakers included a former chief cryptanalyst at the NSA, former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, deputy director of the Italian security service, and director of a center that conducts classified research for Swedish intelligence. Judging by the badges of the participants (there were 700 people in total), the vast majority of them worked for the American government, foreign embassies, contractors cooperating with intelligence services, and companies producing products related to cybersecurity, or taught at universities.
Probably not all of the intelligence presence was open. Officially, 40 countries were represented at the conference - from Brazil to Mauritius, from Serbia to Sri Lanka - but not Russia. However, at the same time in the audience, in the gallery itself, a certain thin young man with a briefcase was spinning, listening to the reports. He had no badge. I went up to him, introduced myself and asked his name. “Alexander,” he replied. Then he hesitated and added: "Belousov."
"How do you like the conference?"
“I don’t know,” he replied, clearly trying to evade further inquiries. "I'm from the Russian embassy, I'm not a specialist, I'm just trying to understand."
I handed him a business card, but he refused to give me his: "I've only been here a month, my cards have not been printed yet."
I did not lag behind and began to ask him about his position in the embassy (later it turned out that in the diplomatic reference book he was listed as "second secretary"). In response, he only looked at his watch: "Sorry, I have to go."
***
When the CIA wants to know the opinion of Professor John Booth (John Booth), they call him and ask if he can participate in the conference. At the same time, the name of the department is absent on the official invitation and in the program of the event, the formal sponsor of which is one of the Washington contractor companies.
By hiding its involvement, the CIA makes life easier for scientists. This allows them to list their conference attendance on their resume without disclosing that they were actually advising the CIA. Such information could not only incite some of their scientific colleagues against them, but also damage their reputation in the countries in which they conduct research.
Booth, professor emeritus of political science at the University of North Texas, specializes in Latin American studies. In the region, historical experience has taught officials to be wary of the CIA. “If you intend to travel to Latin America, it is very important that you do not have certain things in your biography,” Booth explained to me in March 2016. - When you go to such a conference, even if it is held by the special services or the military, this is not reflected in your resume. Participants need such a fig leaf also because there are still some biases in academia. For example, at the events of Latin Americanists, I will not tell you that I recently participated in a conference organized by the CIA."
The CIA is holding conferences on foreign policy issues so that its analysts familiar with classified information can learn from researchers who see the big picture and are familiar with open sources. Professors are usually paid $ 1,000 in royalty idea and offset the costs. The events themselves look like an ordinary scientific conference with reports and questions for speakers - minus the fact that many participants (as one might assume, CIA analysts) wear badges on which only the name is indicated.
Of the ten intelligence-sponsored conferences in which Bout participated - the last of which took place in 2015 and focused on the wave of Central American refugee children sweeping the United States - only two were conducted directly by the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence [ADPR]. The rest were handled by Centra Technology Inc, one of Washington's leading intermediary firms (“gaskets,” as they are called) that organize conferences for the CIA.
The CIA provides funding for Centra and tells who to invite. The events themselves take place at the Centra Convention Center in Arlington, Virginia. According to the company's website, it is "an ideal place for conferences, meetings, games and joint events held by our clients."
"Those in the know, when they see the Centra conference, understand that this is about the CIA or about the ADPR," said Robert Jervis, professor of international politics at Columbia University, who has long consulted with the CIA. "They understand that some scientists benefit from a formal cover."
Centra, created in 1997, has since received more than $ 200 million in government contracts, including $ 40 million from the CIA for organizational support - in particular for selecting and editing classified dispatches for the Senate Intelligence Committee, which studied torture for five years. the practice of the department. In 2015, the company's management consisted of many retired high-ranking intelligence officers. Its founder and head, Harold Rosenbaum, was a scientific and technical advisor to the CIA. Senior Vice President Rick Bogusky was the head of the Korean section of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Vice President of Research James Harris has been leading analytical projects for the CIA for 22 years. International Director Peggy Lyons,for a long time she was an agent of the CIA, several times was sent to East Asia, held administrative posts in the department. David Kanin, director of analytical work, spent 31 years as an analyst at the CIA.
Indiana University political scientist Sumit Ganguly has spoken at several Centra conferences. “Everyone who works with Centra knows that they are actually working for the American government,” he says. - If the events were carried out by the CIA itself, some would be unnerved. As for me, I am not ashamed of this in front of colleagues. If they don't like something, it's their problem. I am an American citizen and am always ready to give my government good advice."
Another political scientist who made four presentations at Centra events said he was told that the company represented some unnamed "clients." He realized that this was about the American special services only when he saw people in the audience with badges without surnames, with only names. Then he met some of them at another academic conference. They had no badges, and they did not appear in the program.
Centra is trying to mask its ties to the CIA. In 2015, she removed management bios from her website. Among the "top customers" on the site are the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the Army and 16 other federal government agencies - but not the CIA. When I called Rosenbaum and asked him if Centra was holding conferences for the CIA, he replied, “You're calling the wrong place. We have nothing to do with this,”and hung up.
Then I went to the Centra office in Burlington, Massachusetts, a northern suburb of Boston. It is located on the fifth floor. In the registration log, all visitors are asked to indicate their citizenship and the "type of visit" - secret or unclassified. The receptionist brought in HR Director Dianne Colpitts. She listened to me politely, contacted Rosenbaum, and said that Centra would not comment on anything. “To be honest,” she added, “our customers prefer not to talk to the press.”
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For Iranian scientists fleeing to the West, scientific conferences have become a modern analogue of the underground railway. The CIA is actively using this. Since President George W. Bush, the US government has allocated "unlimited funds" to covert operations to stall Iran's efforts to develop nuclear weapons, David Albright, head of the Institute for Science and International Security, told me. In particular, the CIA orchestrated Operation Brain Drain, which aimed to nudge leading Iranian nuclear scientists to flee to America.
As a former intelligence officer explained to me, in Iran itself, scientists were difficult to reach, and therefore the CIA lured them to conferences in friendly and neutral countries. The management, in consultation with the Israelis, selected the object for development. It then organized a conference at a renowned scientific institute. To do this, a "pad" was used - usually some entrepreneur, allegedly allocating an amount from $ 500,000 to $ 2 million for the event (at the expense of the CIA). It could be the owner of a technology company - or intelligence could have created a front company for him on purpose so that his sponsorship would not raise suspicion from an institution that should not have been aware of the CIA's involvement. “The less scientists know, the safer the situation for everyone,” says the former cereusnik. The "gaskets" knewthat they work for the CIA, but did not know the purpose of the work - and the department used them only once.
The conference was to be devoted to one of the aspects of nuclear physics that have peaceful applications, as well as to meet the research interests of the object. Iranian nuclear scientists usually work simultaneously at universities. Like any professorship, they love to travel at someone else's expense. The Iranian government sometimes allowed them to attend conferences - albeit under security - to keep them up to date with the latest research and to get to know suppliers of modern technology. In addition, it had a propaganda value.
“From an Iranian point of view, it certainly made sense to send scientists to conferences on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy,” Ronen Bergman told me. Bergman, a renowned Israeli journalist, has published The Secret War With Iran: The 30-Year Clandestine Struggle Against the World's Most Dangerous Terrorist Power and now works on the history of the Israeli political intelligence - the Mossad. "It was beneficial for them to say that they send their researchers to conferences in order to then use peaceful technologies for peaceful purposes."
The CIA agent conducting the operation could impersonate a student, technical consultant, or company representative with an exhibition stand. His first task was to rid the scientist of the guards. For example, there was a case where kitchen staff recruited by the CIA poisoned the food of the guards with a drug that made them vomit and diarrhea. They were counting on the fact that they would attribute the illness to the dinner eaten on the plane or unusual cuisine.
With some luck, the agent managed to catch the subject alone for a few minutes and talk to him. Usually before that, the intelligence officer carefully studied the Iranian - he read the dossier and talked with the "access agents" who had direct contact with him. As a result, if a scientist doubted whether he was really dealing with the CIA, the intelligence officer could say that he knows everything about him - and prove it. For example, one agent told a potential defector, "I know you had cancer and your left testicle was removed."
Even after the scientist agreed to change sides, he could change his mind and run away. “He had to be recruited constantly, over and over again,” explains the former intelligence agent. Even when he was already sitting in the car going to the airport, and the CIA, together with the allied intelligence services, organized a visa and tickets. The CIA also made every effort to take his wife and children to the United States - but not his mistress, as one of the defectors demanded. The department provided him and his family with housing and certain long-term benefits - in particular, paying for higher education for his children.
A competent former CIA source told me that enough scientists have fled to the United States - through conferences and beyond - to seriously slow down Iran's nuclear program. According to him, the engineer who built the centrifuges for the Iranians agreed to flee on one condition: that he would be allowed to defend his thesis at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Unfortunately, the CIA took him out of Iran without documents - including no diplomas. Therefore, first MIT, and then the CIA refused him. However, in the end, the agency insisted on its own, and the famous engineering university agreed to meet the scouts halfway and cancel the formalities. To examine the defector, a group of professors from different departments was assembled. He passed the oral exam brilliantly, was admitted to graduate school and defended himself.
The MIT administration claims they know nothing about this. “I haven’t even heard anything like it,” Gang Chen, head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, told me. However, two sources in academia have confirmed the credibility of this story at key points. Muhammad Sahimi, a professor of petroleum science at the University of Southern California, who studies Iranian nuclear policy, said a defector who worked in the Iranian nuclear program defended his dissertation in mechanical engineering at MIT. MIT mechanical engineering professor Timothy Gutowski, in turn, said: “There was one guy in our laboratory. Once I learned that in Iran he was dealing with centrifuges, and I wondered how he ended up with us."
Due to the fact that in 2015 Iran agreed to limit - in exchange for lifting international sanctions - the development of nuclear weapons, the issue of recruiting defectors from the Iranian nuclear program has lost some of its relevance for American intelligence. However, if President Trump abandons the deal, which he condemned in his September speech to the UN General Assembly, or decides to reconsider it, the CIA could once again covertly hunt prominent Iranian nuclear scientists through staged conferences.
This is an edited excerpt from Daniel Golden's Spy Schools: How the CIA, FBI, and Foreign Intelligence Secretly Exploit America's Universities, coming out November 1 in by Henry Holt.
Daniel Golden