From: "Jay D. Dyson" <jdyson@techreports.jpl.nasa.gov>
Courtesy of EUCrypto List
Originally From: Zombie Cow <waste@zor.hut.fi>
http://www.parascope.com/articles/0197/xerox.htm
Spooks in the machine:
the CIA's most successful
spy may have been a
Xerox repairman.
The CIA's Xerox Spy-cam
by Jon Elliston
Dossier Editor
pscpdocs@aol.com
Remember the chatty, irritating "copier guy" from Saturday Night Live
skits a few years back? The character (played by Rob Schneider) drove his
office-mates mad with cloying catch-phrases in the copy room. The exploits
of the CIA's "copier spy" would have exasperated Soviet diplomats in the
United States even more, had they known of the espionage equipment stashed
under the glass of their Xerox machine.
An article by Dawn Stover in the January 1996 issue of Popular Science
details for the first time the top-secret operation that provided U.S.
intelligence with duplicates of sensitive Soviet papers. The story of the
clandestine copying begins in the early 1960s, when Soviet diplomats
stationed at their country's embassy in Washington, D.C., enjoyed the best
office equipment capitalism had to offer. Among the handy American devices
at their disposal was the Xerox model 914 photocopier. The machine was a
modern marvel in its day, the first automatic, push-button unit available,
spitting out plain paper copies at a blazing 7.5 pages per minute. But the
Soviets were not aware of one of its "undocumented features": their trusty
914 doubled as a CIA spy machine.
In 1962, according to Stover, the CIA quietly contracted the Xerox company
to design a miniature camera, to be planted inside the photocopier at the
Soviet Union's embassy in Washington. A team of four Xerox engineers set
to work in an abandoned bowling alley and built a working model -- a
modified home movie camera equipped with a special photocell that
triggered the device whenever a copy was made. In 1963, the tiny Cold War
weapon was installed by a Xerox technician during a regular maintenance
visit to the Soviet embassy. On subsequent visits the Xerox man retrieved
and replaced the film.
Stover's account of the operation is based in large part on interviews
with Ray Zoppoth, a retired mechanical engineer who had a key role in
designing the spy camera (Zoppoth was even issued a secret patent for the
gadget). The CIA and Xerox remain tight-lipped about the operation, but
Stover was able to confirm Zoppoth's story with others who worked on the
project.
The operation was a smashing success, and Stover writes that the Xerox
surveillance of the Soviets may have been just the tip of the iceberg.
"Judging by the number of parts ordered from Xerox, Zoppoth believes that
spy cameras may have been installed in photocopiers all over the world, to
keep an eye on U.S. allies as well as enemies."
[snip...]
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Received on Sun Sep 5 19:45:13 1999