Original subtitles

[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]