Quote:
Originally Posted by Polydamas
. . . The kind of people who spend a lot of time speculating about security and secret government programs on the Internet (ie. mostly not the people you want to listen to) seem to figure that the US relies on throwing a lot of money at problems ("lets build a giant complex to transcribe and store all telephone calls within the United States, and another giant complex to analyse the contents automtically!"), while other countries may do the same with more cunning and HUMINT.
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There was an old story to that effect I heard in DC in the 1980s.
Legend was that in the early 1970s the Russians were building a new tank gun. The Western powers wanted to know how big it was.
The US intelligence community spent 25 million dollars on a camera so sensitive it could tell the diameter of a gun from low earth orbit. (Remember, $25 million dollars then was
real money. Also, this required at least a partial side shot -- or waiting for the Soviet tank in question to elevate its gun barrel sufficiently.)
The British intelligence community spent 300,000 pounds on bribing a Soviet official to get the documents with the needed information.
The French intelligence community had one of its people take a Soviet officer to lunch and ask him how big the gun was. The Sov told him. Total cost about $35 dollars (again,
real money for lunch in the early 1970s.)
Who knows? Maybe it's true.