| --- |
| title: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12) (HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019751)" |
| source: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12)" |
| sourceUrl: "https://www.justice.gov/epstein" |
| date: "2026-01-01" |
| category: "House Oversight" |
| eftaNumber: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019751" |
| ocrPages: 1 |
| ocrChars: 2395 |
| ocrElapsed: 0.0 |
| parseTier: "external-legacy" |
| engine: "engine undisclosed (ep-nov-12.greg.technology mirror)" |
| externalSource: "greg-ep-nov-12" |
| externalLicense: "not granted" |
| externalCredit: "ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| externalUrl: "https://ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| --- |
| |
| Through the Looking Glass | 263 |
| Pelton debriefings. The debriefing sessions, which went on for fifteen |
| days, were from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. In them, Pelton managed to |
| recall Project A, a joint NSA-CIA-navy operation in which subma- |
| rines surreptitiously tapped into Soviet undersea cables in the Sea |
| of Okhotsk, which connected to the Soviet Pacific Fleet's mainland |
| headquarters at Vladivostok. Pelton received another $30,000 from |
| the KGB. |
| "Did the information in his head prove valuable?" I asked. |
| "As long as the NSA didn't know the tap was compromised by |
| Pelton, we could use the cable to send the NSA the information we |
| wanted it to intercept." He said that while actual NSA documents |
| would have proved more useful than someone's memories, "Our job |
| is to take advantage of whatever we can get." |
| Two years later, Pelton was again flown to Vienna for another |
| debriefing to see if he could recall any further details. According to |
| Cherkashin, the KGB's job was to leave no stone unturned when |
| it came to the NSA's sources. In 1985, the KGB's task ended when |
| Pelton was arrested by the FBI. Like Ames and Hanssen, Pelton was |
| sentenced to life imprisonment. |
| Looking at his watch, Cherkashin politely excused himself. |
| I subsequently spoke to Colonel Oleg Nechiporenko, who had |
| been a foreign intelligence officer in the KGB between 1958 and |
| 1985 and continued his intelligence work until recently as chief |
| counterterrorism expert of the Russian-led Collective Security |
| Treaty Organization. Over a leisurely coffee in the bar of the Hotel |
| National, he told me that many "walk-ins" who contacted Soviet |
| officials in his time were emotionally disturbed, but all of them had |
| to be assessed for possible intelligence value. "Our job was to find |
| espionage sources," he said with a twinkle in his eye. "The Internet |
| has changed the espionage business since secret documents can be |
| massively downloaded by an unhappy employee," he said, "but they |
| still need to be assessed by a professional." |
| Through the eyes of the KGB, a penetration of American intel- |
| ligence was clearly opportunistic. If these practices continued, they |
| put Snowden's situation in a new light for me. If Russian intelli- |
| gence considered it worthwhile to send a former civilian worker at |
| the NSA, such as Ronald Pelton, two thousand miles from Washing- |
| Epst_9780451494566_ 2p_all_r1.indd 263 |
| 9/30/16 8:13 AM |
| HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019751 |
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|
