July 19, 1981 (Sunday)
- At the summit of Western leaders in Ottawa, French President François Mitterrand revealed to U.S. President Ronald Reagan the existence of the Farewell Dossier, 4,000 pages of Soviet documents that had been supplied to France by former KGB Colonel Vladimir Vetrov, codenamed "Farewell". The material showed that the Soviets had, after years of infiltration, been stealing American technological research and development. While other advisers to the National Security Council were looking for ways to stop the leaks, Gus Weiss proposed the idea of creating defective technology and allowing it to be stolen. The first trial was for computer programs which, months after being applied to operate the Siberian gas pipeline, began to fail. The existence of the Farewell Dossier remained a secret until 1997.
Read more about this topic: July 1981
Famous quotes containing the word july:
“This, it will be remembered, was the scene of Mrs. Rowlandson’s capture, and of other events in the Indian wars, but from this July afternoon, and under that mild exterior, those times seemed as remote as the irruption of the Goths. They were the dark age of New England.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)