Galahad told me that Weiss zeroed in on the Soviet industrial sector; he wanted to gut punch the Soviet economy. Galahad recalled that Weiss was friendly with the analysts in the CIA’s Office of Soviet Research. “Let’s say the Italians were building a tractor factory for the Russians in the Ukraine—the guys in OSR would have had access to those blueprints. Gus shared his ideas and recommendations based on that intelligence to his friends at the DoD.”

Meanwhile, the government worked with private sector software companies to create doctored industrial products. They were then made available to the patent clerks and engineers in American technology and arms companies who’d been recruited by the KGB.

Weiss’ NSC compatriots attempted to sway leaders of Western European countries away from cheap Soviet fuel to divert the flow of cash away from the enemy. NSC energy economist Bill Martin was part of the effort to find other energy sources for European countries. “I remember seeing Gus in the hallway, kind of a mysterious guy, right? He smiled, almost giggled to himself. Sometimes smart people, they’re in their own world and they laugh because they’re thinking of something funny that the rest of the world doesn’t get. That’s Gus. He said to me, ‘Oh, Bill. Don’t worry if you can’t negotiate this thing, we’ve got an alternative plan.’”

That alternative plan is at the core of the legend of Gus Weiss. The best-known version of the tale goes like this: High up on the Soviet tech shopping list was software to regulate the pressure gauges and valves for the critical Siberian gas pipeline. According to Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes, the Soviets sought the software on the open market. American export controls prohibited its sale from the US. However, a small industrial software company located in Calgary called Cov-Can produced what the Soviets wanted. As Weiner writes, “The Soviets sent a Line X officer to steal the software. The CIA and the Canadians conspired to let them have it.”

The faulty software “weaved” its way through Soviet quality control. The pipeline software ran swimmingly for months, but then pressure in the pipeline gradually mounted. And one day—the date remains unclear, though most put it in June 1982—the software went haywire, the pressure soaring out of control. The pipeline ruptured, igniting a blast in the wilds of Siberia so massive that, according to Thomas C. Reed’s At the Abyss, “at the White House, we received warning from our infrared satellites of some bizarre event out in the middle of Soviet nowhere. NORAD feared a missile liftoff from a place where no rockets were known to be based. Or perhaps it was the detonation of a nuclear device. The Air Force chief of intelligence rated it at three kilotons.”

The pipeline explosion is said to have cost Moscow tens millions of dollars it could ill-afford to waste.

Kudo seems to have continued undetected for more than a year. During a 2002 interview for the Ronald Reagan Oral History Project, Richard V. Allen, Reagan’s first national security adviser, recounted: “It was a brilliant plan. We started in motion feeding the Soviets bad technology, bad computer technology, bad oil drilling technology. We fed them a whole lot, let them steal stuff that they were happy to get.” The Pentagon let slip misleading information about the stealth aircraft, space lasers, and combat aircraft.

Kudo was just a small part of a much broader American reaction to the Farewell intelligence turned over by the French. Throughout the mid-’80s, roughly 200 Soviet intelligence officers and their sources were expelled from countries across Europe. In 1986 the FBI rounded up 55 Soviet operatives living in the United States as diplomats. Suddenly, the Soviets were not only forced to create their own technology, they were also blind to Reagan’s massive defense buildup. In Legacy of Ashes, Tim Weiner writes, “The operation used almost every weapon at the CIA’s command—psychological warfare, sabotage, economic warfare, strategic deception, counterintelligence, cyberwarfare—all in collaboration with the National Security Council, the Pentagon, and the FBI … It was a smashing success. Had the tables been turned, it could have been seen as an act of terror.”

VIII. Bodyguard of Lies

One Sunday in 1997, Gus Weiss met a British journalist named Anthony Cave Brown for lunch in the buffet restaurant in the basement of the Watergate. Over his long career, Cave Brown wrote about the murky intersection of spycraft, politics, and war. Having finished his ninth book, he needed a new story to tell. His years of reporting provided him with deep connections in the intelligence community, and one of those suggested he meet Weiss, who showed up for the appointment wearing a Ghost Squadron bomber jacket, Bermuda shorts, and tennis shoes.