WARNING: Billion-Dollar Intel Compromised. How did a single NSA clerk with $200 in his savings account end America's biggest undersea spy objective? Discover the surprise history of Operation Ivy Bells, the secret Cold War mission to tap Soviet undersea cable televisions, and the $35,000 betrayal that blinded the U.S. Navy.
TL; DR: In the 1970s, the NSA and Navy introduced an "difficult" objective to plant a 6-ton recording pod on a Soviet military cable 400 feet deep in the Sea of Okhotsk. It worked completely for a decade-- till Ronald Pelton, an insolvent expert with a photographic memory, walked into the Soviet embassy and sold the coordinates for cash.
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 - The $35,000 Betrayal: A Single Point of Failure 03:15 - Pillar 1: The Ghost in the Cable (Inductive Coupling). 08:45 - Pillar 2: The Break-in at Depth (USS Halibut and Saturation Divers). 15:30 - Pillar 3: Routine Becomes Method (Scaling the Operation). 22:10 - Pillar 4: Ronald Pelton: Debt, Ego, and the Decision to Offer. 30:05 - Pillar 5: The Quiet Spring (The KGB's Patient Countermove). 38:50 - Pillar 6: The Day the Cable Television Went Dark (The Unfavorable Healing). 45:15 - Pillar 7: The Second Betrayal (Vocabulary of Tricks). 52:30 - Pillar 8: The Net Tightens (Vitaly Yurchenko and The FBI Hunt). 1:01:10 - Pillar 9: Counting the Undetectable Losses. 1:08:45 - Pillar 10: Lessons Burned In (Tradecraft After Ivy Bells). 1:15:20 - Pillar 11: The Long Echo (Modern Undersea Espionage). 1:22:40 - Pillar 12: Human vs. Machine (The Weakest Link). 1:30:15 - Pillar 13: The Counterfactual: What if Pelton Never Talked? 1:38:00 - Resolution: The Tradition of Trust and Physics.
ABOUT THIS DOCUMENTARY:.
This is the conclusive account of Operation Ivy Bells, among the most audacious intelligence operations of the Cold War. Utilizing saturation divers, the USS Halibut, and advanced inductive coupling technology, the United States heard the "unbreakable" interactions of the Soviet Pacific Fleet. But wait-- here's the twist: the mission didn't stop working due to the fact that of a technical problem. It stopped working because of a single point of failure-- a human one.
We dive deep into the psychology of Ronald Pelton, the NSA clerk who used his photographic memory to trade billion-dollar tricks for just $35,000. You'll see how the KGB found the tap, why they waited till 1981 to pull the pod, and how the FBI finally caught the mole in 1985.
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