How the CIA bugged a Soviet Xerox machine right under the KGB’s nose

The CIA has never confirmed or denied the following story.

But in 1963, with paranoia running high on both sides of the Iron Curtain, the agency worked alongside Xerox's top research team to undertake a daring covert operation right in front of the KGB.

The op begins with an anonymous repairman deep inside the Soviet embassy in Washington DC. No-one pays him any attention. Why would they? He's a familiar face, only there to service the boxy Xerox machine sitting in the corner of a busy administrative office.

But hidden inside his toolkit is one of the best-kept secrets of the Cold War, revealed years later by the mastermind behind the plot in Popular Science.

Launched just three years prior, the Xerox 914 was the company’s first successful photocopier - with a troubling tendency to catch on fire. But that’s not why the repairman is here today.

The repairman drops his bag to the floor. The diplomats and KGB agents ignore him, the clerical staff barely see him, the hawkish security guards notice nothing out of the ordinary. The repairman begins his routine maintenance work.

When he’s finished the job, he slips away as quietly as he came. He leaves behind a single trace of his presence. No-one in the building realizes yet, but the repairman has just become one of the CIA’s best assets.

The bowling alley plot

But the real story begins the year before in New York, at a disused bowling alley so anonymous you wouldn’t give it a single glance, let alone two. It’s far away from prying eyes.

Inside, Xerox’s head of government programs Donald Cary meets with four engineers. They’re not there to bowl. The Xerox men selected for the mission are Douglas Webb, Kent Hemphill, James Young, and thirty-six-year-old Ray Zoppoth, who knows the Xerox 914 inside out. He should do. He helped create the photocopier in the first place.

It’s exactly the expertise the CIA needs if the agency’s plan is to work.

They're going to heist as many files as they can from the Soviet Union's embassy, located within the Mrs. George Pullman House in downtown DC, without the KGB ever finding out.

With security so tight, it's clear not even an inconspicuous repairman could walk out unfrisked with stolen documents stuffed down his pants.

So, the secret service has to get creative.

For days, the engineers discuss potential ways to capture images of the files being photocopied on the Xerox 914. Finally, Zoppoth hits upon an answer. Like all great ideas, it’s as maddeningly simple as it is cunning.

According to Stover’s piece, Zoppoth suggests they “Mount a battery-powered home-movie camera with a zoom lens inside the copier. Aim the lens at the mirror used to reflect images onto the drum. Add a photocell that would prompt the camera to snap still frames whenever the photocopier lit up. And start taking pictures.”

Every time someone lays a document on the bed and presses 'Copy', the camera is triggered.

Easier said than done, but the Xerox engineers are excited by the breakthrough. They set to work installing a Bell & Howell 8mm movie camera inside a copier located in Xerox’s New York campus.

The noisy, bulky 914 is, it turns out, perfectly tailored to the role of spying device. It’s so impossibly large, it conceals the camera even when the maintenance panels are removed, and the operational sound as staff make copies masks the whir of the camera. No-one has any idea they’re being covertly watched.

The test run proves a success. Ray Zoppoth and the rest of the research team can see everything passing through the photocopier. “When we developed the pictures, we found recipes and copies of music and cartoons and jokes and all kinds of things,” he later tells Popular Science.

Code-name: Disneyland East

Weeks later, Ray Zoppoth finds himself deep inside a building used by the CIA. He's led into a basement room allegedly code-named ‘Disneyland East’. Zoppoth shows the spooks the Xerox invention. He teaches them how to fit the camera inside the 914. They, in turn, train the embassy’s regular repairman to install the camera and extract the film each time he returns.

Then, one day, in 1963, a familiar face arrives at the Soviet Embassy to carry out routine maintenance work. He holds a bag containing tools and, in its depths, an innocent 8mm home-movie camera. He’s waved through the gates without a thought.

The rest is history.

With lips tightly sealed and files classified, we’ll never know what was learned. The Cold War dragged on for another 27 long years.

But shortly after the project ended, Zoppoth confessed that the secret service again tapped up Xerox. This time, they want cameras hidden inside the more streamlined Xerox 813 desktop photocopier, used by ministries, agencies, and diplomatic offices around the world.

If the story is true - and only Zoppoth admitted it, with his colleague confirming but refusing to go on record - it suggests the joint operation was a success.

It remains a reminder that even the unsexiest machine in the office can be a security risk. We think of digital surveillance as a relatively modern fear. We worry that our phones are spying on us. That CCTV watches our every move. Even laptops have physical privacy covers to mitigate security risks. But it turns out, this goes back at least 60 years - right to the heart of the Soviet embassy in Washington DC.