Operation Tamarisk: You Flush It, We Flaunt It
The 20th century saw the concept of warfare evolve to a horrifying new level. With the advent of globalization, automation and mechanization the art of war was refined to an almost obsessive extent, and perpetual warfare on a global scale became the new normal.
Alongside the two World Wars and the two decades the US fought in Vietnam, there were myriad conflicts scattered across the globe. And, from Afghanistan to Cuba, many of these wars were a consequence of the ultimate war which dominated the last century: the Cold War.
For 50 years the US and the USSR, the two superpowers dedicated to global domination and bringing their version of humanity to everyone, whether they wanted it or not, jockeyed for position. They could not fight each other: direct conflict was simply too destructive, we had become too good at it. But it was a war, nonetheless.
It is often said that conflict breeds innovation, and this was certainly the case for these two, and their allies. Espionage and spycraft in particular was advanced to a fine art. Knowing what your enemy is going to do, after all, is half the battle.
This was an era of wild invention, of inflatable planes and toxic shellfish bullets, of moles and traitors, microfilm and stolen secrets. This was a war where reliable information, from any source, was treasure.
Flaws were found in each side’s security, and exploited. If the information was reliable, that was all that mattered, and such information could come from the unlikeliest of sources.
This is the genesis of Operation Tamarisk, which saw the US and her allies sifting through used toilet paper.
A Dirty Operation
Operation Tamarisk was, in effect, brilliant. The west had identified a flaw in Soviet information security, specifically regarding the disposal of sensitive documents, and sought to exploit it.
Documents in Soviet countries were not handled with sufficient care. Steve Gibson, author of BRIXMISS: The Last Cold War Mission, sums up the situation as follows: “In large towns and cities the disposal of rubbish was crudely organized….The Soviets were no exception to this carefree disposal of waste, quite often simply dumping their rubbish outside the back door of their barracks.”
What rubbish, you might ask? Gibson here was referring to a wide variety of detritus and discarded waste from the Soviet authorities, but in essence what he was talking about was toilet paper, or rather the lack thereof.
This was a problem born of a logistical failure. Soviet soldiers were not provided with toilet paper and were forced to make do with whatever paper or other material was available. This included any documents lying around, and the soldiers were not concerned with what was contained within these documents.
Once used the paper was not flushed. Instead it was disposed of in large bins kept near the latrines or toilet facilities. The need to keep these bins secure was not considered important by the Soviets, but they had missed that there was more than fecal matter held inside.
The west did not miss this however, and the US, UK and France were aware that sensitive documentation was there for the taking. These countries routinely sent military liaison missions to East Germany, and these missions were given a clandestine, and filthy, role.
The western spies were tasked with ransacking these bins, sorting through the waste and trying to ascertain if a Soviet soldier had wiped his ass with official secrets. In truth any documentation from a Soviet source, secret or not, was valuable, and much could be learned in this way.
In the event it turned out the bins were even nastier than you might think. They were used for all kinds of foul waste, and the spies tasked with searching them would complain about what else they had to come into contact within their fetid depths. In the case of hospital bins this could be particularly grueling.
But the spymasters saw an opportunity here, too. There was more to be learned from these bins than the information written on the ersatz toilet paper. The spies may have complained about having to sift through amputated limbs and body parts, but these held their own secrets.
Spies were tasked with recovering the body parts and bringing them to their handlers alongside any documentation they found. These amputated limbs could then be studied for damage, particularly regarding weaponry. Of particular interest were shrapnel wounds, which told the west much about what type of shrapnel they were using.
Operation Tamarisk produced some real results, as well. In 1981 information derived from these sources discovered that Soviet troops in Afghanistan with the most extreme wounds, including horrifying injuries from chemical warfare, were being evacuated to East Germany for treatment. This allowed the west to estimate Soviet capacity for continuing to fight their proxy war against the US.
There were other advantages to this source of information, too. It seems the Soviets never ever considered the possibility of a large scale operation to retrieve documentation in this manner, and this oversight was beneficial for the spies in a number of ways.
The bins were unguarded, obviously, making retrieval a largely straightforward affair. But because the Soviets never saw this vulnerability, they were never likely to seek to exploit it to plant misinformation and therefore Operation Tamarisk material was often seem as highly reliable.
It may have been disgusting and abhorrent, but the information gathered in this way allowed the west to build up a wide ranging picture of Soviet activities and their operational structure. In fact the Soviets seemed so lax with their document disposal that sometimes entire notebooks would be found in the trash, filled with technical information and discarded without care.
Operation Tamarisk has been described as one of the most successful espionage operations of the Cold War. Soviet oversight and a strong stomach was all that was needed for the west to access a steady stream of useful information, building a picture of life behind the Iron Curtain.
Top Image: Used toilet paper was stored in bins outside military latrines, which was fine until you had no toilet paper and started using sensitive documents. Operation Tamarisk had the dirty job of retrieving these. Source: SuSanA Secretariat / CC BY 2.0.
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