A closer look
Tapping a phone line is easy, but tapping a highly classified Soviet underwater communication cable requires an insanely dangerous sub-zero scuba dive. In Operation Ivy Bells, the CIA retrofitted the USS Halibut with specialized thrusters and dispatched saturation divers to the freezing bottom of the Sea of Okhotsk. They clamped a massive, nuclear-powered recording pod directly onto the Soviet Navy's main data cable. It secretly recorded unencrypted military chatter for over a decade before a rogue NSA employee sold out the operation for fifty grand.
