Read Online Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency by James Bamford - Free Book Online

results.
    In all,
156 eavesdropping and photo missions were flown over Russian airspace during
the almost two months of Project Homerun without the loss of a single aircraft—and
without a nuclear war. Nevertheless, Moscow was well aware of the air invasion.
Eight days after the massed overflight, a protest note was delivered to the
American ambassador in Moscow. Publicly, however, the Kremlin said nothing; the
humiliation would have been too great.
    Throughout
the 1950s the ferrets, like mosquitoes hunting for an exposed patch of skin,
buzzed the long Soviet border. They were searching for holes in Russia's vast
fence of air-defense radar sites. At the time, the Soviet military had not yet
completed work on a nationwide network. Nor was much of the interior protected.
    As a CIA
report points out, human spies had effectively been put out of action.
"The stringent security measures imposed by the Communist Bloc
nations," said the study, "effectively blunted traditional methods
for gathering intelligence: secret agents using covert means to communicate
intelligence, travelers to and from target areas who could be asked to keep
their eyes open and report their observations later, wiretaps and other
eavesdropping methods, and postal interceptions. Indeed, the entire panoply of
intelligence tradecraft seemed ineffective against the Soviet Bloc, and no
other methods were available."
    But while
the Communist governments of Eastern Europe and Asia could draw impenetrable
iron curtains around their countries, hiding such things as the development of
nuclear weapons and missile technology, they could not build roofs over them.
Nor could their armed guards halt the continuous streams of invisible signals
escaping across their borders.
    While the
eavesdropping bombers occasionally flew deep into Soviet airspace, other ferret
missions engaged in the dangerous game of fox and hounds. Probing and teasing
the hostile air defense networks, they would dart back and forth across
sensitive borders, daring the Soviets to react. There was no other way to force
the missile batteries and border defense installations to turn on their secret
tracking equipment and thus enable the American signal snatchers to capture the
precious electrons. Once analyzed, the information enabled war planners to
determine where the holes were and how best to build equipment to counteract
the radar and fire control systems.
    It was a
time and a place where spy wars were fought with armor-piercing bullets and
heat-seeking missiles rather than with whispered words over cocktails or bulky
envelopes deposited under dead tree trunks. Unlike the U-2 spy planes, the
converted bombers flew low— well within the range of Russian missiles and
warplanes.
    In 1954,
two years before Project Homerun, three RB-47 reconnaissance planes took off
from England and headed toward Russia's northern Kola Peninsula, which borders
the Barents Sea. It was an area of extreme secrecy, and considered the most
likely spot from which the Soviets would launch a nuclear attack. At the time,
the United States was desperate to obtain intelligence on the number and
location of the new Soviet jet-turbine-powered long-range bombers, codenamed
Bison.
    At about
one hundred miles from the heavily defended port city of Murmansk, two of the
aircraft turned back as planned. The third, however, continued straight for the
coastline. With no wingman to supply cover, the air crystal-clear, and the sun
directly overhead, Captain Harold Austin, a tall, thin Texan, aimed the black
nose of his converted bomber directly for Murmansk and pushed hard on the
throttles. "The weather was gorgeous," he recalled. "We could
see forever." He sped high over the Russian coastline at just over 500
miles an hour. But within minutes of turning on the cameras and eavesdropping
equipment, MiGs were scrambling skyward.
    Above and
below, Austin could see the tracer bullets, and he yelled at his copilot to
return fire. Air Force captain