Ivy Bells: tapping an undersea cable

A tap on the seabed

In the official NSA history (Book IV of American Cryptology during the Cold War, declassified in 2024 after an appeal to the ISCAP panel) the operation appears as the Ivy Bells project: a tap on an undersea cable. The history gives no technical details and no location.^1,4

According to media and secondary accounts · not confirmed by official sourcesAccording to the naval analyst Norman Polmar, writing in the US Naval Institute’s Proceedings, US Navy submarines tapped into the seafloor cable, and the intercept pod was placed by USS Halibut. The cable linked the base at Petropavlovsk on Kamchatka with the Siberian coast.²

According to media and secondary accounts · not confirmed by official sourcesThe Associated Press, reviewing the book Blind Man’s Bluff (1998), reported that the idea of tapping cables leading to Soviet bases on the Sea of Okhotsk and the White Sea came from Capt. James E. Bradley, and that the missions were carried out by the submarines Halibut, Seawolf and Parche.⁵

According to media and secondary accounts · not confirmed by official sourcesIn 1981 US reconnaissance satellites spotted Soviet salvage ships moored directly over the pod. According to Polmar, this ended the operation.²

Ronald Pelton

Ronald Pelton worked at the NSA from 1965 to 1979 in communications intelligence and cryptology. In January 1980 he decided to sell NSA information to the Soviets; from 1980 to 1983 he met Soviet officers at their embassy in Washington and in Vienna.⁶

The NSA history says that Pelton filed for bankruptcy in April 1979 and left the agency that July. He first demanded $400,000 for his information but settled for $35,000 spread over five years. The author of the history calls him the most damaging cryptologic spy since William Weisband in the 1940s.¹

The FBI says Pelton was traced through information from a KGB defector. The NSA history writes that in October 1985 the FBI identified his voice on a tape – it had recordings of his telephone calls to the Soviet embassy in 1980. It also mentions Vitaly Yurchenko, who returned to the USSR on 4 November 1985, and judges his information to have been old.^1,3

On 24 November 1985 FBI agents questioned Pelton at a hotel in Annapolis. He admitted his contacts with the Soviets and marked the location of the cable tap on a map – according to the NSA history, well off the mark. The FBI says he was arrested on 25 November 1985.^1,3,6

Trial and sentence

A jury in Maryland found Pelton guilty of, among other things, conspiracy to commit espionage, espionage and unauthorised disclosure of communications intelligence (18 U.S.C. 794 and 798). The trial was scheduled to begin on 27 May 1986.^1,7

The court sentenced him to three life terms plus ten years. The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld the judgment on 18 December 1987.⁶

The appeal judgment and the Justice Department brief do not name the project – they speak of ‘Project A’ and of a classified project about which the Soviets later questioned Pelton.^6,7

The press and secrecy

According to the NSA history, a reporter heard the name ‘Ivy Bells’ in the courtroom when the defence lawyer used it. Bob Woodward of the Washington Post had been following the story for years; on 5 December 1985 the editor, Benjamin Bradlee, met government officials and agreed to hold publication.¹

In May 1986 the Director of Central Intelligence, William Casey, protested to Bradlee about a further article, and President Reagan asked the paper to delete passages. When NBC broadcast a general report on Ivy Bells, Casey said he was considering recommending prosecution; the Post published its article with the details removed.¹