THE PYRAMID SCHEME, PART 2: HOW TO STEAL A MiG

True Spies, Episode 139, The Pyramid Scheme, Part 2: The Men in Plaid

NARRATOR: Welcome to True Spies, the podcast that takes you deep inside the greatest secret missions of all time. Week by week, you’ll hear the true stories behind the operations that have shaped the world we live in. You’ll meet the people who live life undercover. What do they know? What are their skills? And what would you do in their position? I’m Sophia Di Martino, and this is True Spies, from SPYSCAPE Studios. The Pyramid Scheme, Part Two: The Men in Plaid.

PAULA: [Reading from a journal] "I delivered, clandestinely, the Pentagon's most desperately sought Soviet weapon, the first MiG-23 that the US ever possessed. My first three years in Cairo, they told me it was impossible, but I never gave up." 

NARRATOR: In the last episode of True Spies, we followed CIA officer Jim Fees on his mission to procure a coveted Russian MiG-23 fighter jet from the Egyptian Army. 

STEVE DAVIES: The United States had its own 'swing wing' fighters, they have the F-11, had the F-14. It should have understood why the Russians had developed that airplane with variable geometry, should have had some basic understanding as to the size of the engine, and the fact that it was built for high-speed flight versus turning flight, but they didn't. So it was embarrassing and it was also revelationary. 

NARRATOR: If you haven’t already, be sure to listen to Part 1. In that episode, we learned how Egypt was on the brink of succumbing to a charm offensive by Jim Fees. They were this close to handing over one of its Russian-made MiG-23s to Jim Fees. He’d seen the manual and they’d flown in the plane, but Egypt was still withholding when it came to sealing the deal and handing over the hardware. And we also heard how Jim, a high-profile American target living in Cairo, had found himself at the center of a Libyan assassination plot - an unwelcome distraction while you’re trying to convince Egypt to cheat on its former Russian Allies, to say the least. After some initial hesitance, President Anwar Sadat acquiesced. He’s agreed to give Jim a fighter jet to take back to the US. Now, there’s just the small task of extracting the airplane out of Egypt without the ever-watching Russians knowing. Discovery would mean an international incident and a humiliation for the Americans at the height of the Cold War. Jim begins organizing the extraction. He already knows who will be his right-hand man for this part of the mission. In fact, there was only ever one candidate.

PAULA: Yes, ‘Swede’ Svendsen. He was what they called an air attache in Cairo, and he and my dad were very close. They became lifelong friends, actually. And my dad really trusted him and Swede trusted my dad. And for some reason, I suppose because he was a renowned aviator himself, my dad invited him to come on the night that they took the MiG. 

NARRATOR: Leroy William Svendsen, or ‘Swede’ to his colleagues, was exactly the sort of person you wanted on your side. When he was 13, he ran away from his home in Chicago to join the Army. The recruiters, sensing he was far too young, called his parents who demanded he be sent right back. But Swede was so eager to fight for his country, a year later, he tried again, this time with his parents’ blessing. Jim has negotiated a suitable location for the pick-up - a secret air base that’s just close enough to Cairo for reasons that will soon become clear. Jim’s daughter, Paula, knows this story firsthand. Not only through her personal memories of her father during this time, but also through the journals he left behind. Entries such as the one she’s about to read include some rare first-hand accounts of the mission.

PAULA: “I made one inspection trip out to the secret Egyptian air base where they had disassembled the wings from the aircraft and wrapped all the parts in black plastic so it was impossible to tell what kind of aircraft it was. Then I had to manage follow-up exchanges back and forth with headquarters and the Egyptian Air Force to set up the clandestine flight for a large USAF C-5 to pick up the MiG in the dark of night at an air base on radio silence.” 

NARRATOR: The ‘C-5’ Jim wrote about is the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy. It was the US military’s largest aircraft and was chosen for extracting the MiG-23. Steve Davies is an aviation expert and former journalist who we met in episode one.

STEVE DAVIES: So C-5 is a very large, four [TF39] turbofan-equipped transporter used by the United States military. 

NARRATOR: It’s also both the best solution and the biggest problem for Jim. On the one hand, it’s a formidable machine that is capable of transporting large cargo over long distances - perfect for smuggling out the MiG - on the other, it’s not very subtle. It’s big enough that you can easily fit six Apache helicopters inside. And it’s famous for having a distinct sound. ‘Distinct’ might be something of an understatement. Most people would describe it as a screaming sound. Jim knew the risk that sound presented. Any Russian ears within audible range would know exactly what that was. And you can guarantee the Russians were listening. But it’s his best option - perhaps his only option. During Jim’s inspection trip, he confirmed that the MiG-23 had been dismantled and covered in plastic according to his instructions. Ahead of the extraction, he told the ground team to store the parts in a secluded hangar at the far end of the airfield. With everything in place, all he needed now was to set the date and execute.

PAULA: The MiG was airlifted out on the 21st of September. I would guess that, knowing my father, he liked special dates. He likely picked the 21st because it was his birthday. It wouldn't surprise me if, on the first of January, he woke up thinking, “This year I'm going to get the MiG.” Sort of a New Year's resolution. And so I would guess that it took six to eight months probably from beginning to end - nothing happens quickly in Egypt, anyway.

NARRATOR: Paula’s intuition is finely tuned. Jim later wrote in his journal that he did deliberately choose his birthday as the extraction date. His reason, he claimed, was so that he wouldn’t forget it, but one might wonder if this was his present to himself - the satisfaction of gifting the US with the jet fighter it so dearly wanted. And now, that fateful day had finally rolled around. If nothing else, it would be one of the more memorable ones. Birthday or not, Jim spent the first part of that day at the office. His official job was chief of station, don't forget, and he had to pretend like it was just a regular Wednesday.

PAULA: He came home after work, probably had dinner, showered, changed, and then said he was going out again and then probably picked Swede up. And they would have driven out there, just the two of them in the car.

NARRATOR: Jim and Swede were usually animated in each other’s company, trading stories of danger and adventure. But little was said during that drive to the secret air base. No jokes were cracked. No tales of bravery and misadventure this time. Just calm focus. Periodically, they would check their mirrors to make sure they weren’t being followed. The night sky was clear and the arid heat of the day had started to cool to a balmy 80 degrees as the clock passed midnight. Perfect conditions for a covert nighttime landing, even if that is a 190-ton transport aircraft with no lights or radio communication.

STEVE DAVIES: So Military Airlift Command - MAC - was the command that operated the flight, and it would have come from one of the hubs in the US. It might have been Dover. It flew under the auspices of a transport flight that was going into Cairo West International Airport, and it flew through the dead of night, arriving in Cairo, met all the usual communications that you would expect with air traffic control. But at some point, as it approached Cairo, turned off its navigation lights, stopped talking to air traffic control, and then flew at a low level down the Nile to a secret air base.

NARRATOR: For an operation like this, it’s standard procedure - not to mention common sense - that the C-5 crew fly ‘lights out’ and in radio silence. Despite its gargantuan size, the C-5 would have effectively been invisible. All Jim could do was watch intently from the hangar where the dismantled MiG-23 was stored.

PAULA: He had a tendency to go very quiet and still, I think so he probably would have been internally excited and a little bit anxious but he probably then would have just been very quiet. Kind of, waiting for the sound of the plane coming in.

NARRATOR: For the C-5 pilots, the bright lights of Cairo started to narrow to twin strips of the suburban sprawl and industrial districts that flank the Nile, heading south, until the aircraft achieved a visual on its final destination. The crew has been specifically trained for conditions like this but there’s still a lot that can go wrong.

STEVE DAVIES: There was massive risk. There were very substantial stakes that were involved in making sure they got it right. So the deception had to be well-executed. The radio comms had to sound convincing. And then, flying at low altitude would have required that they get the navigation spot on because if they had missed the airbase and landed at the wrong place, then that would have been particularly embarrassing. And that's happened before.

NARRATOR: Landing at the wrong airport wouldn’t just have been humiliating, it would have been a disaster for the Americans. What’s more, with radio communication off-limits for the landing, the only signal from the ground was a single green flare to confirm that the runway was clear for landing. But anyone who had been listening to air traffic control would have heard a different story.

STEVE DAVIES: So the radio communications, even though the C-5 was now south of Cairo, continued to play out with the air traffic control person at Cairo continuing to talk to it as though it was making a landing there. So the deception was complete. 

NARRATOR: Those final minutes before the landing were the most stressful for Jim. Despite his best-laid plans, everything was now out of his hands, all he could do was watch. Jim’s trusted companion, Swede, on the other hand…

PAULA: He was a great storyteller. Swede. So he probably just would have been telling him some crazy stories about flying planes upside down or something like that. To keep him entertained and yes, Swede probably would have been talking a lot. 

NARRATOR: That’s when they heard it: The distant, but unmistakable sound of the C-5’s whining engines. Gradually, the jet noise got louder until it was almost overhead. Everyone held their breath. And then, finally, the glorious sound of rubber on runway. With the C-5 safely on the ground, the clock was ticking louder than ever. The ground crew sprang into action. They were all too aware that the cargo needed to be loaded and back in the air before dawn broke over the Pyramids. Sunrise was five hours away, providing an immovable deadline. Missing it would mean an overnight stay for the C-5 and its crew without leaving the hangar. This would add hours of potential visual exposure, a risk that they simply couldn’t take. Jim watched intently as the cargo ship slowly taxied over to the hangar where the dismantled MiG-23 payload was stored on container loaders or K-loaders. Once safely inside the warehouse, the C-5’s huge nose, or visor, opened to reveal its cavernous, empty belly.

STEVE DAVIES: Really, the only thing that you can see as you get off this C-5 is this K-loader with a very pointy, odd-shaped thing with three undercarriage legs sticking out of it, and then on another K-loader, other shapes that resemble wings and tails.

NARRATOR: Jim had two teams to oversee during this precarious stage of the operation. First, the Americans.

STEVE DAVIES: Milling around, these two objects are a bunch of Western-looking guys wearing checked shirts and flannel suits, and that sort of thing, with clipboards who are moving around inspecting, making sure that everything is secure because they're going to want to put it on the airplane and then go quickly.

NARRATOR: And then, the local ground crew. Jim had to make sure everything was executed perfectly.

PAULA: He would have been saying, “Nope, don't do that, and not like that, and lift it this way.” And probably not with the US crew. But certainly, with any Egyptians on the ground, he would have been saying, “This is really important. And you have to do it right. And this is the way you do it.” He would have been directing operations for sure.

NARRATOR: Under Jim’s watchful eye, the dismantled MiG-23 was correctly loaded onto the C-5. With the precious cargo securely strapped in, all that remained was for the huge visor to descend and for the C-5 to taxi back to the runway for take-off. Of course, it still couldn’t make radio contact with control. Or expect luxuries such as turning on its lights. Stealth mode remained very much activated.

STEVE DAVIES: The MiG-23 is loaded and it's now going to get out of there as quickly as possible. Because if anybody sees a C-5 taking off from that secret airbase, the game is up. It's going to be very, very clear what that airplane is doing. It only does one job, which is to carry things long distances between one place and another. 

NARRATOR: Jim’s prior coordination with Cairo West’s radio control meant that anyone listening in would have heard the C-5 make a landing at the military airport near the capital but the Russians weren't naive. They knew that Egypt’s stock of Soviet military hardware was at risk of falling into US hands. The KGB almost certainly would have deployed its own spies to keep tabs on it. And, if so, there was a very real chance that they could have followed Jim or the Egyptian ground crew out to the secret airfield. It was vital to remain cautious.

STEVE DAVIES: It's going to be a ‘no communications’, or a ‘radio silent’ departure from the airfield, a transit back up north overhead, Cairo. And then probably some kind of fake radio communication from air traffic control initially to say that the C-5 is taking off from Cairo, and then once the C-5 is actually overhead, real communication, radio communications, to clear the C-5 out into international airspace to the northwest. 

NARRATOR: With the fake take-off completed and normal radio communications resumed, Jim and Swede had succeeded. In effect, for Jim, the active operations of this particular mission had come to an end. It was back in the hands of the US Air Force now. All that remained for him was to file his report and alert his colleagues in the US that the extraction had been successful. Finally, after a long, stressful night. Jim and Swede could head home but, with the adrenaline rush, it wouldn’t be straight to bed.

PAULA: I think he just would have dropped Swede back and then come home and poured himself a whiskey.

NARRATOR: Jim later added the following entry into his journal. We’ve asked Paula to read an extract.

PAULA: "I delivered, clandestinely, the Pentagon's most desperately sought Soviet weapon, the first MiG-23 that the US ever possessed. My first three years in Cairo, they told me it was impossible, but I never gave up. By 1977, knowing the Egyptians at the top very well and inside out, I decided to do it cautiously in three stages to eventually obtain an actual MiG-23 that I could deliver to my country for its defense against the Soviets and any other countries that use the MiG-23. I was at the secret Egyptian airfield for the transfer of the MiG-23 with our air attache, Brigadier Leroy Swede Svendson, whom I invited along as we were very close and trusted each other fully. I was present throughout as the C-5 landed, loaded the wrapped up MiG-23, and departed and total radio silence around midnight. This was the first step in our creating in Cairo station a major Sovmat program."

NARRATOR: 'Sovmat' is CIA-speak for 'Soviet material'. It’s the plan Steve referred to in Episode 1, and was an ongoing program during the Cold War. 

NARRATOR: Jim now had to wait another excruciating 10 hours before he would know for sure that the C-5 had made it back to US soil without incident. And where would it end up? The answer is, in possibly some of the most restricted airspaces you could find in the US at the time. Ironically, it’s also one of the most famous.

STEVE DAVIES: It ultimately landed at Area 51 which was, at that time, a secret airbase that was about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada, and was home to foreign military exploitation of MiGs and Sukhoi jet fighters.

NARRATOR: Foreign Military Exploitation - FME, for short. 

STEVE DAVIES: If you discount the UFO conspiracy theorists who say that UFOs and aliens operating there, all of the US military's most secret aerospace projects - where you need a long runway - you need to be able to operate in airspace that is not being watched visually or electronically by your adversaries. Then Area 51 is the place to go and do it. And so that was the natural choice for the United States to operate its FME activities from.

NARRATOR: This is where things got a little tricky. Area 51, also known as Groom Lake or, officially, Homey Airport, was a hive of secret activity. Most were so secret that the teams working on them had to be hidden from each other almost as much as from the enemy.

STEVE DAVIES: Groom was originally home to the U-2 program, sometimes people say. “Don't call it a spy plane because it's a reconnaissance aircraft.” But everybody knows the U-2 is the very long, winged glider-looking spy plane. It was also home to the SR-71, which is the Blackbird, which is the Mach 3.3, Mark 3.4 spy plane that is very well popularized these days. And it's home to all of America's most secret projects. 

NARRATOR: The United States isn’t unique in having a Foreign Military Exploitation program, but it might be the only one that is quite so developed at the time. During the '50s and '60s, it was a simpler operation. Any time a new asset - a jet fighter, for example - was secured, there would be pilots on hand that specialize in putting enemy craft through its paces. It soon became apparent that this wasn’t going to be enough. The US Air Force stood up two squadrons that would focus almost exclusively on conducting FME.

STEVE DAVIES: One of them is called the Red Eagles, which is a squadron whose job it is to go out and exploit. From an operational point of view, how do we beat this thing with our own airplanes? How do we teach our pilots to beat this thing if they come against that in combat? And the second squadron was called the Red Hats, which is a technical exploitation squadron. And their job is to just understand what can this airplane do? What's it made out of? How is it built? How is it used? Does it go fast? Does it go slow? How high can it go? How low can it go? And to understand what its performance capability is not to figure out how to employ tactically against it. 

NARRATOR: The first crew to get its hands on the MiG-23 was the Red Hats. The exploitation program for this specific aircraft had been given the codename 'HAVE PAD'. The Red Hats got straight to work. As Steve mentioned, the Red Hats’ job wasn’t to form a tactical opinion on the MiG-23. It was just to understand it technically.

STEVE DAVIES: So they go through this entire gamut of technical exploitations, whether they're understanding whether or not the MiG-23 is really what it was made out to be. And the big one is the speed. The airplane can accelerate absolutely brilliantly. And it can keep accelerating to the point where, actually, it becomes unstable to fly. 

NARRATOR: You’ll remember from Part 1, Steve talking about how the US Air Force’s early intelligence suggested the MiG-23 wasn’t fast but was highly maneuverable. You’ll also remember that when the Egyptians granted General Secord permission to test fly one, he was quick to report back that the early intel was wrong. The Red Hats conclusively confirmed that the MiG-23 was, in fact, incredibly fast. And it didn’t handle all that well at all. This meant that the US Air Force tactics manuals at that time - which still advised pilots to avoid trying to out-maneuver the MiG - were horribly misinformed.

STEVE DAVIES: Once the Red Hats are done with technical exploitation and they understand, therefore, the performance characteristics of the airplane, it's time to hand it over to what will become the Red Eagles, which is a group of pilots who are going to go out and perform the tactical exploitation, i.e., how do you use this airplane to fight against an F-4 or an F-15 or 16? How do we beat this airplane? And so the man that they choose to head that effort is Major Ron Iverson. And he is responsible for going out, building out a test program. 

NARRATOR: The Red Eagles spent the next few weeks putting the MiG-23 through its paces in more combat-like situations. This was the squadron's chance to see how it really handled. The lone test flight back to Egypt was useful, but the formation flying and simulated ‘dog fights’ were really what the US military had been after.

STEVE DAVIES: They find out that if the two airplanes are approaching one another and the F-15 turns into the MiG-23 in an attempt to shoot it down. By the time the MiG-23 has flown past and the MiG-23 has completed its turn, the MiG-23 is now too far for the F-15 to be able to actually shoot it and kill it.

NARRATOR: For active pilots, this would be vital information. Tactical manuals had been giving American pilots bad advice. Any future air battle without the Red Eagles’ reports could end up in a fatal decision on the battlefield. But the relationship between military intelligence and international relations or diplomacy is a complicated one.

STEVE DAVIES: There's definitely a dilemma when it comes to developing intelligence like that which came out of the HAVE PAD exploitation. And you can see this going back in time. If you take, for example, World War II, the Allies developed chaff, which is thin strips of aluminum that would travel behind the airplane and that would confuse the radar of your adversaries so that they didn't know where you were. And they didn't want to use that capability because they didn't want the Germans to know they had it. But little did they know that the Germans had also developed that capability. The Germans didn't want to use it because they didn't want the Allies to know. So there is this strange sort of paradox that goes around developing intelligence. 

NARRATOR: There’s a pattern here, if you can spot it. In the same way that General Secord had to pretend to his Egyptian counterpart that he’d never seen a MiG jet before, let alone flown one, the CIA sometimes has to make a call about what to do with its intelligence. The lesson here is, what your enemy thinks you know is sometimes more important than what you actually know.

STEVE DAVIES: It is the strangest thing, and I can only imagine that. These sources and the methods were deemed to be so secret that the decision was made that American fighter pilots would figure out pretty quickly if they went up against MiG-23 as they could out-turn them. And in exchange for holding that intelligence, we preserve the integrity of our relationship with Egypt, because if it had been very boldly stated that the United States was getting hold of these things, or if it had been leaked through somebody talking incautiously that Egypt had given the United States a MiG-23, then it's possible that from there on the other acquisitions that they were looking to make around surface-to-air missiles and other aircraft and systems and capabilities would have dried up. 

NARRATOR: Back in Egypt, Jim’s involvement with this particular MiG-23 may have been over but he was still actively negotiating with President Sadat for even more hardware.

STEVE DAVIES: They very quickly got hold of what the Americans called HAVE BOXER, which was an air-to-ground version. And I think I'd be very surprised if Jim wasn't central to all of those things. And then, over time, Egypt supplied - I don't remember off the top of my head how many, but - 10, 12, MiG-23 airframes in total. And I suspect he would have been instrumental in making that happen. 

PAULA: He would receive feedback from headquarters or the Pentagon as to what was happening and what they'd discovered about it in due course. I know he was told later on that it had saved the Pentagon billions of dollars in R&D because they had the plane. And so they were able to study it and see how to fly against it without having to research it and test it themselves.

NARRATOR: Billions of dollars? Not bad for one man with a three-step plan. Of course, much information on the Sovmat program and asset exploitation in general is still highly classified. According to some reports, as many as 12 MiGs may have been handed over to the Americans as a result of Jim’s efforts. In return, the US Air Force supplied a reported 36 F-4Es to the Egyptian military.

STEVE DAVIES: I think that Fees’ contribution to the confidence and the understanding of those warfighters is really what is the lasting legacy from this particular exploitation.

NARRATOR: Jim remained posted in Egypt for about another year after this successful operation with the MiG-23. You might remember from Part 1 that the CIA had a habit of rewarding good work in dangerous places with more danger. The Agency, impressed with Jim’s success with the MiG-23s, paid him the ultimate compliment - the chance to leave Egypt for possibly the most politically volatile posting at that time.

PAULA: They asked him to go from there to Tehran to be chief of station in Tehran. And he turned them down. He said, "I'm too tired. My family has been through enough these last four years. We need, I need, an easy posting where we don't have to worry about security and things, just for a couple of years." And they said, "How about Geneva, Switzerland?" And he said, "Sounds perfect," thinking nothing happens there. And so we went to move to Geneva. And, of course, a few months later, the US Embassy in Tehran was invaded and everybody was taken hostage.

NARRATOR: Well, he was the spy with perfect timing. Jim dodging another brush with death and disaster was probably a sign that it was time to settle into a slower pace, preferably in a place where people weren’t trying to kill him. Somewhere like Geneva, Switzerland.

PAULA: He turned the place around, as he likes to say, because when he arrived it was a sleepy station and all they talked about was when they were next going to go skiing. The station was right around the corner from the United Nations. And he was saying, headquarters of the United Nations? There's loads of intelligence to be had here. Why are you talking about skiing? And so, much to their distress, he announced that he didn't ski and wasn't interested in ever hearing the word skiing or schedule or ski weekends. And so, yes, he put them on a rough ride to producing intelligence but they did. And, then he resigned a few years later, a couple of years later, and we stayed on in Geneva after that.

NARRATOR: Jim might have been actively avoiding skiing in Geneva for the rest of his career, but the MiG-23 exploitation plan had a long tail and would carry on for over a decade.

STEVE DAVIES: The exploitation of the Egyptian supply of MiG-23s went on through to 1988. So the Red Hats kept on because you can exploit these things for a very, very long time. You do your initial exploitation to understand what your basic capabilities are. But over a period of years, you can continue to fly that airplane technically to evaluate it. 

NARRATOR: The US wouldn’t directly face an Air Force that used the MiG-23 until its conflicts with Libya during the ‘80s. But perhaps the real test was the 1991 Gulf War. Sadam Hussein had a fleet of 127 MiG-23s in active service at the time that the US military intervened in Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Thanks to Jim, by this time, the Americans would have known the fighter jet inside out. According to some reports, between January and March 1991, US Forces destroyed an estimated 47 Iraqi MiG-23s. I’m Sophia Di Martino. Join us next week for a special episode highlighting some of the best tradecraft from the True Spies archives. Or subscribe to *SPYSCAPE Plus* to listen right now. Sign up for early access and bonus content on Apple Podcasts.