Operation Ivy Bells was a joint

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

(CIA), and

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collecti ...

(NSA) mission whose objective was to place

wire tap Telephone tapping (also wire tapping or wiretapping in American English) is the monitoring of telephone and Internet-based conversations by a third party, often by covert means. The wire tap received its name because, historically, the monitorin ...

s on

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...

underwater communication lines during the

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

Background

During the Cold War, the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

wanted to learn more about Soviet

submarine A submarine (or sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability. The term is also sometimes used historically or colloquially to refer to remotely op ...

and missile technology, specifically

ICBM An intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is a ballistic missile with a range greater than , primarily designed for nuclear weapons delivery (delivering one or more thermonuclear warheads). Conventional, chemical, and biological weapons c ...

test and

nuclear first strike In nuclear strategy, a first strike or preemptive strike is a preemptive surprise attack employing overwhelming force. First strike capability is a country's ability to defeat another nuclear power by destroying its arsenal to the point where t ...

capability. In the early 1970s the U.S. government learned of the existence of an undersea communications cable in the

Sea of Okhotsk The Sea of Okhotsk ( rus, Охо́тское мо́ре, Ohótskoye móre ; ja, オホーツク海, Ohōtsuku-kai) is a marginal sea of the western Pacific Ocean. It is located between Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula on the east, the Kuril Islands ...

, which connected the major Soviet Pacific Fleet naval base at Petropavlovsk on the

Kamchatka Peninsula The Kamchatka Peninsula (russian: полуостров Камчатка, Poluostrov Kamchatka, ) is a peninsula in the Russian Far East, with an area of about . The Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Okhotsk make up the peninsula's eastern and we ...

to the Soviet Pacific Fleet's mainland headquarters at

Vladivostok Vladivostok ( rus, Владивосто́к, a=Владивосток.ogg, p=vɫədʲɪvɐˈstok) is the largest city and the administrative center of Primorsky Krai, Russia. The city is located around the Zolotoy Rog, Golden Horn Bay on the Sea ...

. At the time, the Sea of Okhotsk was claimed by the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

territorial waters The term territorial waters is sometimes used informally to refer to any area of water over which a sovereign state has jurisdiction, including internal waters, the territorial sea, the contiguous zone, the exclusive economic zone, and potenti ...

, and was strictly off limits to foreign vessels, and the Soviet Navy had installed a network of sound detection devices along the seabed to detect intruders. The area also saw numerous surface and subsurface naval exercises.

Installation

Despite these obstacles, the potential for an intelligence coup was considered too great to ignore, and in October 1971, the United States sent the purpose-modified submarine deep into the

. Funds for the project were diverted secretly from the

deep-submergence rescue vehicle A deep-submergence rescue vehicle (DSRV) is a type of deep-submergence vehicle used for rescue of downed submarines and clandestine missions. While DSRV is the term most often used by the United States Navy, other nations have different design ...

(DSRV) program, and the modified submarines were shown with fake DSRV simulators attached to them. These were early diver lockouts. US Navy Divers working from ''Halibut'' found the cable in of water and installed a long device, which wrapped around the cable without piercing its casing and recorded all communications made over it. The large recording device was designed to detach if the cable was raised for repair. The tapping of the Soviet naval cable was so secret that most sailors involved did not have the

security clearance A security clearance is a status granted to individuals allowing them access to classified information (state or organizational secrets) or to restricted areas, after completion of a thorough background check. The term "security clearance" is ...

needed to know about it. A cover story was thus created to disguise the actual mission: it was claimed that the spy submarines were sent to the Soviet naval range in the Sea of Okhotsk to recover the Soviet supersonic anti-ship missile (AShM) debris so that countermeasures could be developed. Although created as a cover story, this mission was actually carried out with great success: U.S. Navy divers recovered all of the SS-N-12 debris, with the largest debris no larger than , and a total of more than two million pieces. The debris was taken to the U.S. and reconstructed at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. Based on these pieces, at least one sample was

reverse engineered Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompli ...

. It was discovered that the SS-N-12 AShM was guided by radar only, and the infrared guidance previously suspected did not exist.

Use

Each month, divers retrieved the recordings and installed a new set of tapes. The recordings were then delivered to the NSA for processing and dissemination to other U.S. intelligence agencies. The first tapes recorded revealed that the Soviets were so sure of the cable's security that the majority of the conversations made over it were unencrypted. The eavesdropping on the traffic between senior Soviet officers provided invaluable information on naval operations at Petropavlovsk, the Pacific Fleet's primary nuclear submarine base, home to

Yankee The term ''Yankee'' and its contracted form ''Yank'' have several interrelated meanings, all referring to people from the United States. Its various senses depend on the context, and may refer to New Englanders, residents of the Northern United St ...

and

Delta Delta commonly refers to: * Delta (letter) (Δ or δ), a letter of the Greek alphabet * River delta, at a river mouth * D ( NATO phonetic alphabet: "Delta") * Delta Air Lines, US * Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19 Delta may also ...

class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines. Eventually, more taps were installed on Soviet lines in other parts of the world, with more advanced instruments built by

AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile tel ...

Bell Laboratories Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

that were

radioisotope thermoelectric generator A radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG, RITEG), sometimes referred to as a radioisotope power system (RPS), is a type of nuclear battery that uses an array of thermocouples to convert the heat released by the decay of a suitable radioacti ...

-powered and could store a year's worth of data. Other submarines were used for this role, including , , and . ''Seawolf'' was almost lost during one of these missions—she was stranded on the bottom after a storm and almost had to use her self-destruct charges to scuttle the ship with her crew.

Compromise

This operation was compromised by

Ronald Pelton Ronald William Pelton (November 18, 1941 – September 6, 2022) was a National Security Agency (NSA) intelligence analyst who was convicted in 1986 of spying for and selling secrets to the Soviet Union. One such top secret operation he compromis ...

, a 44-year-old veteran of the NSA, who was fluent in Russian. At the time, Pelton was $65,000 ($ today) in debt, and had filed for

personal bankruptcy Personal bankruptcy law allows, in certain jurisdictions, an individual to be declared bankrupt. Virtually every country with a modern legal system features some form of debt relief for individuals. Personal bankruptcy is distinguished from corporat ...

just three months before he resigned. With only a few hundred dollars in the bank, Pelton walked into the Soviet embassy in

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

in January 1980, and offered to sell what he knew to the

KGB The KGB (russian: links=no, lit=Committee for State Security, Комитет государственной безопасности (КГБ), a=ru-KGB.ogg, p=kəmʲɪˈtʲet ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əj bʲɪzɐˈpasnəsʲtʲɪ, Komitet gosud ...

for money. No documents were passed from Pelton to the Soviets, as he had an extremely good memory: he reportedly received $35,000 from the KGB for the intelligence he provided from 1980 to 1983, and for the intelligence on the Operation Ivy Bells, the KGB gave him $5,000. The Soviets did not immediately take any action on this information; however, in 1981, surveillance satellites showed Soviet warships, including a salvage vessel, anchored over the site of the tap in the Sea of Okhotsk. The USS ''Parche'' (SSN-683) was dispatched to recover the device, but the American divers were unable to find it and it was concluded that the Soviets had taken it. In July 1985,

Vitaly Yurchenko Vitaly Sergeyevich Yurchenko ( rus, Виталий Сергеевич Юрченко; born May 2, 1936) is a former high-ranking KGB disinformation officer in the Soviet Union. After 25 years of service in the KGB, he defected to the United States ...

, a KGB colonel who was Pelton's initial contact in Washington, D.C., defected to the United States and provided the information that eventually led to Pelton's arrest. , the recording device captured by the Soviets was on public display at the Great Patriotic War museum in

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

References

External links

"Spy Book Fact of the Day: Ivy Bells"
from the ''Spy Book: The Encyclopedia of Espionage'' promotional site at

Random House Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...

"Operation Ivy Bells Sea of Okhotsk, Russia, 1970s-1981"
at ''Special Operations.com''
Red November, Inside the Secret U.S. Soviet Submarine War
{{Cold War 1971 establishments in the United States 1971 in the Soviet Union 1981 disestablishments in the United States 1981 in the Soviet Union Ivy Bells Soviet Union–United States relations Ivy Bells Ivy Bells Sea of Okhotsk Signals intelligence Ivy Bells History of telecommunications 1981 in international relations 1970 in international relations 1971 in international relations Clandestine operations Espionage in the Soviet Union

Background

Installation

Use

Compromise

See also

References

Further reading

External links