ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Espionage, Intelligence, and Security Volume ...

Cameras, Miniatureaccurately. A Baltic German living in the Latvian capital ofRiga, Zapp began producing his camera just before theSoviets annexed his country as an outgrowth of the 1939non-aggression pact with the Nazis. Because of his Germanheritage, Zapp opted to move to his homeland, but itappears that the Nazis did not make use of his design.Therefore seven years elapsed between the production ofthe Riga Minox in 1938 and the founding of the MinoxGmbH company in Germany. The latter produced morethan 1 million cameras in its first half-century, and a 90-year-old Zapp was on hand for the company’s 50th anniversaryin 1995.Uses for espionage. In the meantime, the Soviets, havingappropriated Minox technology after capturing Riga, beganproducing their own miniature cameras. Among theSoviet spies associated with the Minox was John A. Walker,Jr., who used one given to him by his KGB handlers forphotographing sensitive U.S. Navy and National SecurityAgency documents. After his arrest, Walker demonstratedfor authorities how he used a Minox, along with a measuringchain to ensure that the camera was held a proper anduniform distance from the documents.Western intelligence also recognized the value of theMinox, and its operatives continued to use them into the1990s. Popular among both civilians and intelligenceoperatives was Model B, produced from 1958 to 1972,which was the first Minox with its own built-in light meter.It required no batteries, and therefore could be kept inhiding for many months until it was needed. As timepassed, the resolution quality of Minox film improveddramatically, along with the enlargers used to make printsfrom the minuscule negatives produced by the camera.There were also improvements in the technology of developingfilm: thanks to a developing tank, it became possibleto produce pictures without a darkroom, even in broaddaylight.Other Notable Miniature CamerasToday miniature and subminiature cameras are availablefor sale to civilian consumers via the Internet, but oncethese were virtually the sole province of intelligence servicesworking on either side of the Iron Curtain. Today’sdesigns for consumers—a jealous spouse, or an employersuspicious of employee malfeasance—are typically basedon these old cold-war models.As for the photographic technology utilized by today’sespionage services, that information is unavailableto the general public. However, it is a safe guess that thetechnological gap between the equipment used by intelligenceservices and that used by amateur photographers isat least as great as it was in the middle of the twentiethcentury.Wristwatch cameras. An example of a civilian product with adesign related to that of a camera used in espionage is theEncyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence, and SecurityTessina, still produced and sold by Concava SA of Switzerland.Unlike most tiny cameras, the Tessina, which ismade to fit on a watchband, uses 35mm film, though thisis loaded into special cassettes to make frames that measurejust 14 x 21 mm. The Tessina was reportedly designedby Rudolph Steineck, whose Steineck ABC wristwatchcamera is a classic of compactness in the service ofespionage.First produced in 1948, the Steineck ABC resembled awristwatch, though it was not disguised behind a watchface. In fact, nothing about the Steineck looked like awatch except the size and the fact that it was attached to awatchband. Yet it bore such a close resemblance to awatch from a distance that it seldom attracted attention asa camera. The Steineck was capable of producing eightexposures, each about 6mm across, on a film disk thatmeasured 25mm (some sources say 24) across.Cameras disguised as smoking paraphernalia. One variety ofTessina used in the realm of espionage was a 35mmmodel, the smallest motor-driven camera of its kind in theworld, which was designed to fit inside a cigarette pack.The shutter could be pressed from outside the pack, withvery small holes on the exterior letting in just enough lightto take pictures. The Tessina could shoot up to 10 exposuresbefore it required manual winding.Ingenious as this Tessina model was, it simply fitinside a cigarette pack. By contrast, the Soviet Kiev 3016mm model was actually designed to resemble a metalcigarette case, complete with dummy cigarettes. By movingone of the cigarettes, the user advanced the film andsnapped pictures through a lens at the side of the pack.During World War II, Eastman Kodak designed for theOffice of Strategic Services a 16mm camera that was assmall as a matchbox, and could be disguised as onesimply by affixing a matchbox label. The lens opening wason the side, in a small hole on the striking surface, and theshutter release was at the end.An early example of postwar Japanese technologywas the Echo 8 cigarette lighter camera, which first appearedin 1951. It was even more authentic than the Sovietcigarette case or the American matchbox, because thelighter actually worked. In order to photograph the subject,the user simply flipped the top, revealing a viewingport and other equipment for a camera. It was a simpletask to light a cigarette while snapping a picture from theside of the lighter. The “8” in its name referred to the 8mmfilm, made by slicing 16mm film down the middle.Microdot cameras. Microdots were a specialized applicationfor which certain cameras were used during the Cold War.This was particularly the case during the 1950s and 1960s,though microdots—tiny photographic images that requiremagnifying to be viewed—have been a fixture of intelligencework since the mid-nineteenth century. Microdotswere ideal for passing messages between East and West159