The U.S. Military Liaison Mission, Its Tri-Mission Partners and the Quest for the ‘Holy Grail” James M. Warford

The U.S. Military Liaison Mission, Its Tri-Mission Partners and the Quest for the ‘Holy Grail’ by James M. Warford “His weapons are stealth and discretion. He knows that successful collection is a deliberate and persistent endeavor that reveals the correct picture about his opponent from an emerging mosaic of separate information. Upon his individual judgment, initiative and courage, the success of USMLM is built.” –COL Randall A. Greenwalt, chief of mission (1982), describing the qualifications of a U.S. Military Liaison Mission member ignated PRAs and TRAs were delineated by their surrounding road networks, which were actually considered to be inside the PRA/ TRA. The result was that these many PRAs and TRAs greatly restricted the authorized travel available to the various mission tours.

GSFG TRAs were normally imposed for a set time to support Soviet military exercises. TRA locations and in-effect dates changed with each exercise or event, so they were delineated on maps made available to the various missions.

PRAs, on the other hand, were just that – permanent. They were normally established around high-priority activities, installations and training areas. A mission tour inside a PRA required high-level permission from the U.S., British or French military chain-of-command and was considered very risky. Soviet and East German responses to these unauthorized incursions was unpredictable at best and could result in USMLM, BRIXMIS or FMLM tour members being detained or even shot by Soviet forces or the East German Stasi. At one point during the Cold War, 40 percent of East Germany was under PRA,3 according to BRIXMIS.

Results and risks Just one example of the depths to which the dedicated and courageous Tri-Mission team members would go to gather intelligence was their response to the Soviet army practice of “litter-bugging.” The Soviets were notorious for throwing away valuable documents and paperwork, leaving them in unsecure trash dumps when they moved from one location to another. Going through these trash dumps had been part of USMLM operations for some time, but in 1976 the Americans launched a more formal and intensified effort called Sand Dune. Sand Dune produced a variety of intelligence, including Soviet army unit-training schedules, tank-firing tables, vehicle-maintenance manuals, troop-rotation plans, new-equipment technical documentation and radio call signs and frequencies. BRIXMIS had a similar program called Operation Tamarisk. Published accounts describe BRIXMIS team members not only digging through trash dumps but also through retired latrines and sites used for medical-waste disposal. Perhaps the most significant find from Sand Dune and Tamarisk efforts over the years was made near a Soviet army barracks at Neustrelitz, in northern East Germany, in 1981. A Tamarisk operation produced a personal logbook written in Russian that included technical drawings. According to a British military-intelligence officer who knew what the logbook contained and who debriefed the BRIXMIS team who discovered it, “It was the most important thing we had from any source for 10 years.”4 The logbook contained top-secret information detailing the composition of the armor and the strengths and weaknesses of the new Soviet T-64A. The logbook also contained the same type of information regarding the even newer and more mysterious T-80B MBT. The detailed description of Soviet tank armor contained in the Neustrelitz logbook launched a crash program to develop new and more powerful ammunition for the British Chieftain MBT. The new British L23 120mm Armor-Piercing Fin-Stabilized Discarding Sabot ammunition (which included a newly designed, longer dart-like armor penetrator and was fielded in 1983/84) may have been designed for the sole purpose of defeating the Soviet tank armor described in the Neustrelitz logbook.

As mentioned, mission tours in and around GSFG PRAs and TRAs were risky. The risks were accepted, however, since it was USMLM’s task (as well as that of the other Tri-Mission teams) to gather intelligence on Soviet and East German military forces. Incidents between the Americans and Soviets occurred frequently and were considered part of the job; their seriousness ranged from relatively routine detentions of mission members to much more violent Soviet and East German responses. Here are a few examples:

• August 1978: Soviet troops fired on a USMLM tour while the Americans were collecting unit-designation markings from train-mounted T-64As. Four rounds of ammunition struck the USMLM vehicle.5

• March 1979: A tour vehicle was caught in a well-planned trap when a Soviet army truck near a radar site deliberately broadsided it. The attack forced the USMLM vehicle off the road, where it turned over twice. The tour officer was seriously injured and incapacitated for four weeks.6

• June 1980: A Soviet army truck deliberately rammed a USMLM vehicle as team members observed Soviet military equipment near a rail siding.7

• January 1984: While a USMLM vehicle passed a Soviet army roadwork crew, a Soviet officer unexpectedly stepped toward the moving USMLM vehicle and swung a long-handled shovel through the vehicle’s windshield.8 Easily the worst of these incidents was the fatal shooting of MAJ Arthur D. “Nick” Nicholson March 24, 1985. The official USMLM account of the tragedy is as follows: “[MAJ] Nicholson was shot at 1545 [hours] outside tank sheds located on Ludwigslust Sub-caliber Range 475, where he had dismounted from the tour vehicle to check for the possible presence of [Soviet] armored vehicles. This facility served the Independent Tank Regiment of the 2nd Guards Tank Army. Known to be frequently guarded under normal conditions, it had a varied history of occasionally violent reactions. Thus, the tour had entered the area with considerable caution, stopping in the forest to watch and listen at intervals as they did so. The tour then approached the sheds and photographed signboards displayed nearby, and positioned the vehicle to permit the tour [non-commissioned officer] to pull security while the tour officer [Nicholson] checked for armor. Unknown to the tour and despite its best efforts at observation, a sentry remained undetected, concealed in the adjacent woods. SSG Schatz [the tour NCO] noticed him just before he opened fire. The sentry’s first shot whizzed narrowly over the heads of the tour; it was not a warning, but a miss. One of the two remaining rounds fired struck [Nicholson], by this time run-A USMLM tour monitors the introduction of the T-64A into the 10th Guards Tank Division in June 1978. Note the USMLM license plate. (USMLM unit-history photo) ning back to the tour vehicle, near his center of mass: his upper abdomen. The tour NCO sprang from the tour vehicle to administer first aid, but the sentry refused to let him do so. The sentry, who had held [Schatz] at gunpoint the entire time, shouldered his AK-47, took aim at [Schatz]’s head and motioned him back into the vehicle. Seeing the futility of further action and the hopelessness of the situation, [Schatz] complied. Over the next three hours, many Soviet officers and soldiers arrived to secure the area, collect data and investigate the situation. Yet no one, including the obvious medical personnel, rendered even rudimentary first aid. The protracted failure to provide or permit any medical attention at all ensured that the wound proved fatal.”9 There are unresolved issues to this day surrounding Nicholson’s shooting. Unconfirmed reports suggest that he may, in fact, have been murdered in retaliation for a U.S. intelligence coup. The coup took place the early morning of Jan. 1, 1984, when a USMLM tour gained access to a T-64B MBT shed for 24 hours, where they examined and took interior photographs of the new tank. According to available information, Nicholson was on the tour that conducted this event.

In the years following, Cold War spy James W. Hall, a former U.S. Army intelligence analyst convicted of espionage in 1989, confessed to providing his Soviet and East German “handlers” the details regarding Nicholson’s intelligence coup with the T-64B. Clearly the Soviets knew the names of the USMLM team members responsible; it’s likely that Hall’s information to the Soviets ensured that the sentries at Ludwigslust 475 were very aware of whom they were dealing with March 24, 1985. It’s important to keep in mind that USMLM team members were never armed and relied solely on the standard equipment issue of a powerful Nikon camera with multiple lenses, a video camera (in more recent years), a tape recorder and a note pad to conduct their dangerous missions.

Another unresolved issue related to Nicholson’s death concerns the target of his tour’s intelligence-gathering efforts on that fatal day. Most available sources report that before the shooting, he had or was in the process of photographing T-80B tanks at the site. While the Ludwigslust 475 facility was located in the 2nd Guards Tank Army area of operations, which was equipped with T-64A and T-64B tanks, the established Soviet tank-deployment pattern had started to change. In 1984 USMLM observed a T-80B; this development changed the status quo, and USMLM was concerned. The confirmed presence of a T-80B in the 2nd Guards Tank Army in 1988 not only confirmed that the Soviets were upgrading T-64-equipped units with new T-80Bs but also that the tanks Nicholson had been photographing at Ludwigslust 475 could have been T-80Bs, not the expected T-64As or T-64Bs. It’s likely the Soviets had decided not to allow a repeat of Nicholson’s T-64B incident the previous year with the even newer T-80B in 1985.

Friendly competition Of all the important and, in many cases, even amazing intelligence-gathering efforts conducted by USMLM and its mission partners, those targeting the T-64A and T-64B stand above the rest. Perhaps most important was the campaign to get up close with the T-64A as quickly as possible following its initial deployment to the GSFG in 1976 and acquire metallic samples of the tank’s armor.

A BRIXMIS overflight took the first photographs of the new tank at Bernau. Reportedly, the BRIXMIS member didn’t recognize the prize he had photographed and sent the film through routine processing. Later that same day, a USMLM flight over the same area photographed the new tanks, but its crew realized they had seen something special. The USMLM flight crew thus claimed the “scoop” of being the first to photograph the new tank. Interestingly enough, the new Soviet tanks were initially identified as T-72 MBTs because the U.S., British and French missions were only aware of a new Soviet tank called the T-72. It wasn’t until the Soviet military parade in Red Square Nov. 7, 1977, that the missions learned there were in fact two new Soviet tanks: the T-72 and the T-64. The new tanks identified in East Germany were actually T-64As.

The first observations of the T-64A from the air by both BRIXMIS and USMLM on the same day launched a friendly competition between the missions. The challenge was to gather as much intelligence as possible on the T-64A, and if you were able to “scoop” your Tri-Mission partners in doing so, all the better. What was needed was someone to be first to lay hands on a T-64A and bring back metallic samples of the tank. Before discovery of the Neustrelitz logbook, this was truly the holy grail for the Tri-Mission teams. However, the effort focused on the T-64A proved to be one of the few cases where Tri-Mission reporting and “credit” claims regarding who was first to accomplish something important were actually contradictory. Up until that time, each Tri-Mission team would normally give credit where credit was due. USMLM reporting, for example, consistently gave BRIXMIS and the FMLM credit for many significant discoveries and observations, including descriptions like “painstaking effort” or “determined vigilance.” This apparently changed as the tour members began closing in on the T-64A in 1981/1982. The friendly disagreement over who was first to obtain metallic scrapings of the tank’s glacis and turret armor remains to this day, leaving assignment of credit for this significant Cold War achievement unresolved. Unfortunately, little unclassified information is available regarding the first grab of T-64A scrapings. By August 1985, things seemed to be back to normal, with USMLM officially giving credit to BRIXMIS for close-up photography of the T-80B highlighting the tank’s glacis. The FMLM was also officially given credit for the first sighting of the T-80B fitted with mounted reactive armor in September/October 1985. Benefitting NATO The real-world and hands-on intelligence information gathered and provided by USMLM and other Tri-Mission teams proved invaluable during the Cold War. Their unprecedented proximity and access to the Soviet army’s latest weapons provided a unique ground-level viewpoint. These were not the weapons shown annually during military parades in Red Square; they were, in fact, the weapons and capabilities the Soviet army would use to fight World War III.

The shared intelligence gathered by the Tri-Mission teams would prove to benefit all countries arrayed against the might of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies in Europe. The detailed information regarding the almost fully exploited T-64A, for example, was distributed in many classified documents over the years, including the now unclassified USAREUR intelligence study, Warsaw Pact Tanks in the Forward Area (December 1983). According to the British Ministry of Defense, the T-64 intelligence gathered by BRIXMIS was so important that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would not have been able to defend Europe without it.

Fortunately, disagreements like the one concerning who deserved the credit for being the first to achieve the Tri-Mission’s holy grail were few and far between. They were never allowed to interfere with what was truly most important, the rock-solid and united front represented by USMLM and the other Tri-Mission teams against Soviet military forces in East Germany. Retired MAJ James Warford is a senior training developer in the Kansas City, MO, area. During his career, he served in various command and staff positions, including tactics instructor, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, KS; S-3 for 2nd Brigade, 24th Infantry Division, Fort Stewart, GA, and for 2nd Squadron, 4th Cavalry, Fort Stewart; small-group instructor, Armor Officer Advanced Course, Fort Knox, KY; and commander, Company A and Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion, 66th Armor, 2nd Armored Division, Germany. His military education includes Armor Officer Basic Course, Armor Officer Advanced Course and U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. He received a bachelor’s of science degree in history from the University of Santa Clara, a master’s of military arts and science in operations, plans and training from U.S. Army Command and General Staff College and a master’s of arts in human-resources development from Webster University.

Notes 1Paragraph IIIA, 1964 unit history, http://www.history.hqusareur. army.mil/uslmannual.htm. Other Websites have the unit histories as well, such as http://www.western-allies-berlin.com/units/military-liaison-mission/usmlm/detail/usmlm-history-1964, but they may not have the correct classification markings. 2USMLM history, 1982.

3BRIXMIS – The Untold Exploits of Britain’s Most Daring Cold War Spy Mission, Tony Geraghty, New York: HarperCollins, 1996. 4Ibid.

5USMLM history, 1978 (unclassified). 6USMLM history, 1979 (unclassified). 7USMLM history, 1980 (unclassified). 8USMLM history, 1984 (unclassified). 9USMLM history, 1985 (unclassified). BRIXMIS – British commanders-in-chief mission FMLM – French military-liaison mission GSFG – Group of Soviet Forces, Germany MBT – main battle tank NCO – noncommissioned officer PRA – permanent restricted area SMLM – Soviet military-liaison mission TRA – temporary restricted area USAREUR – U.S. Army Europe USMLM – U.S. Military Liaison Mission Acronym Quick-Scan USMLM photography of T-64As, taken August 1978. (USMLM unit-history photo)