Wipe Out

Protecting embassy secrets

When the Communists stormed the U.S. embassy in Saigon in 1975, they captured files and computers laden with secret material, including the names of informants in North Viet Nam. In 1979 the mobs of students who seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran found secret material presumably showing the ultimate links between Washington and the Shah--there had not been time to destroy it.

At last, the National Security Agency is developing safeguards to make sure such accidents never happen again. Working with a private firm, NSA is designing a system of special minicomputers for U.S. embassies around the world. Standard computers would still store normal messages, but sensitive data would be fed into the new machines. Unlike the material in regular computers, this information--millions of words--could be erased in a matter of moments.

To give the operators time to act, the State Department has installed heavy steel doors that can be slid into place to block the stairways to the upper floors of embassies, where the code rooms are located. Another new security ploy: nozzles in the corridors that at the push of a button spew tear or nausea gas on invaders.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.