While many at the NSC were preoccupied with exploiting the pipeline, other members of the Reagan administration were busy finding economic alternatives that could also adversely impact the Soviets. One such alternative was an extraordinary effort that insiders dubbed the “Farewell Dossier,” a super-secretive initiative, known to only a handful of men, and entrusted to one person: a brilliant, enigmatic NSC staffer named Gus Weiss. Weiss was a behind-the-scenes foot soldier in the Reagan economic war, who had served in both Nixon’s and Ford’s NSCs, as well as on Carter’s U.S. Intelligence Board. He held a master’s degree from Harvard and a doctorate in economics from New York University. Apolitical and nonideological, Weiss, who tinkered with game theory as a hobby, was married to public service and dedicated his life to it. Over the course of his career, he won a number of merit medals for his exploits, including accolades from the CIA, NASA, and the National Security Agency. Even NASA awarded him the Exceptional Service Medal. Interviewed shortly before he died, Weiss spoke of the thinking inside the Reagan NSC:
We actually got word that he [Reagan] was going to try to “prevail” [over the USSR]…. So, we spent all of our time looking. Where can we find the Achilles’ heels? That’s what we looked for. We went on full economic warfare. One thing we did was the pipeline. But there was far more than that. There are things that no one knows about.48
The Farewell Dossier was one such “Achilles heel” that Weiss uncovered, and it proved to be a highly successful piece of the economic war’s espionage.49 Soviet intelligence worked around the clock to steal critical technical and scientific knowledge from the West. For years, the U.S. government suspected that the USSR had such a coherent, organized effort underway, but it was not until 1981 that the Soviet program was discovered. It was then that French intelligence obtained the services of a 53-year-old high-level Soviet defector named Colonel Vladimir I. Vetrov. Vetrov became known as “Farewell.”
During the course of his service, Farewell photographed 4,000 KGB documents, fully revealing the Soviet program. On July 19, 1981, French President Mitterand—in a generous but unreported example of French cooperation—told a grateful Reagan about Vetrov and offered to give the intelligence to the United States.50 Reagan eagerly accepted the gift.
Once the Farewell Dossier arrived in Washington, Reagan asked CIA director Bill Casey to consider how to best use the material. In the fall of 1981, Weiss was cleared to read the material and given the go ahead to brainstorm ideas. “It literally was dropped on my lap,” he said later. Weiss got to work, trying to make sense of the massive volume of material, soon learning that the KGB had created a new unit called Directorate T, which was tasked to plumb the R&D programs of Western nations. The operating arm of Directorate T was given the name Line X. Through this apparatus, said Weiss, “a master plan” was put in place to acquire American high-tech products and know-how.51
Upon reading the material, Weiss said his worst nightmares came true: Line X had been so successful “that the Soviet military and civil sectors were in large measure running their research on that of the West, particularly the United States. Our science was supporting their national defense.” Radar, computers, machine tools, semiconductors—everything was an open book for them.52 As Tom Reed, who was privy to the Farewell Dossier, put it, it was as if “the Pentagon had been in an arms race with itself.”53 In the dossier, Colonel Vetrov had spilled the beans on Directorate T, divulging the names of over 200 Line X officers stationed throughout the West and laid bare more than 100 leads on Line X activities.
In response to this wealth of information, Weiss planned an ingenious response, which he presented to Casey in December 1981: Because of Farewell, noted Weiss, Reagan’s NSC was suddenly in possession of a Line X shopping list of still-needed technology by the Soviets. Weiss offered a suggestion: U.S. counter-intelligence could intervene and supply some of these technologies, and even add enticing new technologies to the shelf, but with a fatal catch: these technologies would appear genuine but would later prove defective and destructive. Using the Soviet need for new technology as a weakness, the United States could sabotage the Soviet program.54
Excited by the potential, Weiss shared these conclusions with Casey, and in January 1982, an impressed Casey took Weiss’ plan to Reagan. From the onset, Reagan was enthusiastic, immediately giving the go- ahead.55 There were no written memoranda on this meeting or on the entire project. Reagan wanted the matter kept tightly under wraps to ensure that White House moderates did not find out about it and leak it to the press in order to kill the effort, which they often did when they disagreed with a policy.56
The plan required close cooperation among the CIA, FBI, DOD, and suppliers who would modify certain products and make them available to Line X. While it would take time for these efforts to come to fruition, an important covert measure was now underway, adding an intriguing new front to the economic campaign. With these weapons in hand, it was now time for the administration to turn attention to other fronts of the economic war, and to make undermining a stated part of official policy.
THE FORMAL DIRECTIVES TO UNDERMINE
Though undermining had been the goal from day one of the Reagan administration, it was not until early 1982 that the administration began the series of National Security Decision Directives (NSDDs) which would eventually help precipitate the fall of Communism. Springing from the NSDDs were at least a dozen actions— formal and informal—that the Reagan team pursued for the purpose of crippling and even trying to kill the Soviet Communist empire. Obviously, some of these actions could occur only as world events developed; the key was to recognize and grasp opportune moments as they presented themselves—whether in Poland or the pipeline in Siberia.
The NSDDs began with the arrival of Bill Clark in January. The directives would ultimately conceptualize the plan of attack in the economic war.57
With the sleeves up, Clark said that “at the president’s direction” the administration began “the study of the overall Soviet situation and what our existing relations were and what they should be.” These study directives developed into “decision directives.”58 This initial effort, said Clark, led to the development of NSDDs 2 through 120, which “created the national security policy” of the Reagan administration, a policy of which Clark spoke of Reagan’s close personal role:
In all the ‘DDs,’ he was totally involved. This wasn’t a workshop situation where elves sat around pounding out shoes for the king…. In my daily briefings, I would give him progress reports on the NSDD system and keep him abreast by thumbnailing where we were in all these important DDs. We would have Situation Room settings where all the national security principals would come together on these. He was very much a part of it. Not just signing, but also progression, briefing, discussion, and guidance.59
Richard Pipes also testifies to Reagan’s involvement: “As someone involved in the formulation of Soviet policy… I can attest that the direction of this policy was set by the president and not by his staff, and that it was vigorously implemented over the objections of several more dovish secretaries.”60 Among the dovish secretaries, Secretary of State George Shultz, hired in mid-1982, likewise confirms that Reagan “was very much involved. He set the policies. He set policy for how we should think about our approach to the Soviet Union.”61
The first major step in this policy was NSDD-24, which was signed February 9, and bore the lengthy title, “Mission to Certain European Countries Concerning Oil and Gas Equipment Exports to the Soviet Union and Restricting Credits to the Soviet Bloc Countries.” Despite this rather dull title, the document contained some rather striking initiatives designed to halt the Soviet pipeline construction. Specifically, NSDD-24 directed a delegation made up of high-level officials from State, Treasury, Defense, and Commerce to negotiate with the governments of Italy, France, West Germany, and the UK “with reference to the export to the Soviet Union of oil and gas equipment manufactured in their territories by subsidiaries and/or licensees of U.S. companies, as well as the
