#spying

The Cyclops

Artist: Odilon Redon (French, 1840-1916)

Date: c. 1914

Medium: Oil on cardboard mounted on panel

Collection: Kroller Muller Museum, Ottherlo, The Netherlands

Description

The work of Redon portrays a dream world, inhabited by fairies, monsters, spirits and other fantasy figures. This makes him typically representative of symbolism, an art movement in the late 19th century with a strong leaning towards the subconscious, the extraordinary and the inexplicable.

This one is going to get a little gross.

What's the most valuable source of information when spying on a foreign power? It's not really stuff you get directly, like tapping into phone lines and stealing attaché cases. The western powers learned that lesson in Operation Gold in the 1950s.

The Soviet Army headquarters in Berlin during the Cold War was one of the most desirable targets, and worth investing resources into to extract secret information. To do this, the US, UK, and France cooperated to dig a tunnel beneath the East-West Berlin border, 1,480 feet long.

Their target was a bundle of cables which served as a telephone junction, just 6 feet below the surface. The operation, while costly and complex, was a massive success: The West spent 11 months with a tap directly into unguarded phone lines.

Or was it a success? The Soviets knew about the project before it even broke ground, thanks to a Soviet spy who was there for the earliest meetings. The KGB spent those eleven months feeding the tap a mix of true, false, and useless information without letting on that they knew about it.

Unwillingness to compromise their spy's existence led to much useful information still being intentionally fed through, but when he was reassigned, the USSR arranged for the tunnel to be "accidentally" discovered.

So where can you get your information and know that it's definitely the truth? Toilet paper!

Let's move forward to 1979. The Soviet-Afghan War has started. The West wants information on how it's going, the Soviet military strategy, and what equipment they use. The location to learn all this is, once again, East Germany.

Rifling through trash is a long-honored bit of spycraft, but this project, Operation Tamarisk, would take it a new level starting in the late 1970s. See, many Soviet troops injured in Afghanistan would be evacuated to East German hospitals. That may not sound very useful, but the next important thing to know is that Soviet troops often didn't have toilet paper.

And so they would use documents. Letters from home, receipts, old paperwork, top secret military plans. That last one is what drew interest. And so the unhappiest British spies found themselves digging through used toilet paper. One such document retrieved in this way: an analysis of the latest Soviet tank's strengths, weaknesses, and development.

(Why don't any of my sources say WHICH tank that is? I guess it'd be the T-80, introduced just a few years earlier?)

The worst was searching the refuse of hospitals for these hidden (but feces-covered) gems. When spies complained to their handlers that the trash was filled with things like amputated limbs, the handlers simply requested that those be recovered as well. The limbs would show evidence of chemical weapon use and shrapnel encountered in the war.

Because of its source, the toilet paper is the one thing the West could count on the Soviets not seeding with false information. In fact, Operation Tamarisk proved to be one of the most successful intelligence coups of the Cold War. And at least one spy found himself eager to go "tamarisking", as the highly valuable information would often lead to an increase in reputation and promotions.

Section 702 of FISA to expire tonight, but certification lasts until March 2027.