Inside the CIA (19 page)

But for most jobs, the Office of Technical Service provides invaluable aids—the most advanced spy equipment in the world. Many of the items have cost millions of dollars to
develop. Sometimes the devices are developed within OTS and sometimes by outside contractors cleared for security.

“There’s merit in both approaches,” a former OTS officer said. “The practical way would be to do both. If it’s way beyond the state of the art, for security reasons it might be done in-house. The problem is you don’t have the production capability in-house. If you want a hundred and thirty-five of them, you don’t want to tie down people soldering. If you want one, you can put two guys in a room for two years. But if you want a big order, you might do them outside.”

One of the most commonly used items supplied by OTS is disguises. Before going overseas, some operations officers are fitted with several. In rare cases when CIA officers have to break into a house or embassy, why take a chance that a witness might identify them? Or if a case officer is about to try to recruit an agent, he might wear a “light disguise”—a wig and glasses—so that if a potential recruit turns down the offer, he cannot readily identify the case officer who made it. A disguise is more likely to be used in a denied area such as the Soviet Union or if the potential recruit is a terrorist or drug dealer.

The material used for masks is of high-tech design that permits the skin to breathe.

“The agency has a disguise capability that no one can touch,” a former OTS officer said.

Because of electronic listening devices designed by the OTS, a number of Soviet-bloc embassies in foreign countries have been penetrated. The OTS supplies the installers—called audio-operations officers—who are often assisted by officers from the local stations. One installer was an extremely supple Japanese American who stood four feet nine inches tall and weighed just eighty pounds. He wormed his way into air ducts in order to plant bugging devices.

“The installers are guys willing to climb a fence in the middle of the night. If they’re caught, they’re in deep shit. They might spend fifteen hours on a job,” a former OTS officer said. “It is not a simple thing to do. They may need to drill a hole in a wall and put in something that will transmit for years. If the target sees a hole, he tends to get suspicious.
They may have to replaster the wall and match foreign paint that is six years old.

“It’s risky business,” the former officer said. “It’s hard to explain why you’re in the building in the middle of the night with a bag. ‘I’m a plumber.’ ‘You’re in the wrong room. The toilet is over there.’”

To make listening devices difficult to detect, OTS will sometimes transmit on the same wavelength as a local radio or television station.

“You mask the signal,” a former officer said. “There are ways to snuggle up to a standard radio signal: 101.4 plays oldies. You might snuggle up to that. So my signal is hidden by that. That would be a typical way. You hide it or burst it so it’s on the air a short period.”

“Today you have low probability of intercept [LPI],” the former officer said. “The name of the game today is spread spectrum, which operates on a variety of frequencies, so the signal is difficult to find.”

OTS operates its own secret printing plant at CIA headquarters with type for most foreign languages. It can produce old or foreign paper and foreign driver’s licenses and birth certificates.

“If you have a printing press, you can make anything you want,” a former OTS officer said, “but there are rules on what can be done.”

CIA regulations prohibit the agency from producing false U.S. documents such as passports, birth certificates, driver’s licenses, or college degrees. However, the agency can print less important, nonofficial documents such as library cards or membership cards. It also can request a blank driver’s license or college certificate from the issuing authority and if approved, imprint its own data on it.

“You go to a high authority and say, ‘I’m from the CIA,’” a former officer said. “You show credentials, and you tell him what you want. Perhaps you deal with the director of motor vehicles, appealing to his patriotic spirit to provide an authentic blank license to help establish the identity of an agent or officer in an operation. Or you go to a university [for a college degree]. ‘Any chance of a blank? If you want, I’ll tell
you generally how we’ll use it and who it is issued to. It may not be his real name, but you can be assured it’s for a good cause in the service of your country.’

“One college administrator will say, ‘Take a hike.’ Another will give three, with tight controls. Another will say, ‘Three dozen, it’s my country, good luck to you.’”

The military freely provides identification cards to the CIA, but the State Department rarely does. Obtaining a U.S. passport in an alias requires high-level approvals and is only infrequently done.

If the documents are needed to establish “a light legend,” meaning a superficial cover story, no steps are taken to make sure that if someone calls the college or motor vehicle department, the name on the document will be registered. But if a more sensitive operation is involved, the CIA will try to elicit the cooperation of the issuing authority in “backstopping” the document. In those cases, if someone calls the motor vehicle department, he will be told that a license has been issued to the individual whose name the CIA has imprinted on the blank driver’s license. Similarly, a college president may agree to make sure someone is listed as having graduated from the college, usually for only a month or two while the operation is going on.

“If your agent is going to be subjected to any kind of scrutiny, you want a real address. In the old days we would say 32 Prince Avenue. There wasn’t any. Today, you better make sure it’s real. Pick a large apartment building, but don’t put down the apartment number,” a former OTS officer said.

CIA assets or agents are often used to backstop an identity. An inquirer calls the asset to verify alleged employment. The asset says, “He’s been here twelve years, and he’s one of our best employees.” In fact, the asset wouldn’t know him if he walked in the door.

Because of the change in attitudes since the Church Committee hearings and the generally tighter approach to corporate responsibilities, companies are less willing than before to help the CIA establish cover for agents.

“What you want to do most is to handle your documents and your agreements carefully,” a former OTS officer said.

In obtaining cooperation from companies, the CIA today tries to warn of every conceivable consequence, including possible loss of business if the word gets out that the company has helped the agency, becoming known as an agency “front.”

CIA director William Casey tried to enlist the support of more U.S. companies in helping the CIA to establish at least temporary cover. He was largely successful. But even before the Church Committee hearings, few companies wanted to commit themselves to the kind of complex relationships required to establish long-term cover for CIA officers.

In forging foreign documents, anything goes. OTS may produce fake passports of other countries, fake foreign birth certificates, and fake foreign driver’s licenses. Since CIA officers generally do not want to be identified as Americans, these are the documents most commonly used.

Early in CIA history, OTS made such items as Dog in Heat, the essence of a chemical that sexually attracts male dogs. As conceived, the chemical would be sprayed on the doorsteps of the homes of Communist Party members overseas so they would be besieged all night by yelping dogs. It was never used, but a stink bomb known as Who Me? meant to be thrown into Communist Party meetings was.

“Every five or six years at someone’s retirement party, someone brings it in a vial. ‘I just happened to find it. It’s the last one in existence.’ Great guffaws and laughter. That kind of crap hasn’t been used in thirty years,” a former OTS officer said. “I don’t think any serious officer feels, by and large, that that sort of thing is worth the effort.”

The OTS has tried everything, from extrasensory perception to psychics, to try to penetrate KGB tradecraft, such as where the KGB locates dead drops.

“What we wanted to know was, where do the Soviets leave their dead drops in Washington?” a former OTS officer said. “The answer was a very large oak tree at a busy intersection in northwest Washington,” meaning the answers were too general. “Anytime you got to specifics, that happened. We lost interest in it.”

Not the least of OTS’s duties is fashioning mementos or gags for CIA officers who are retiring. When William Baker
left the CIA as director of the Office of Public Affairs to become an FBI assistant director over the criminal division, OTS supplied a Sherlock Holmes outfit that William Webster gave him at his going-away party.

For all the James Bond devices and the billion-dollar satellites, the CIA would be helpless if it did not have a way of bringing all the information together and making sense of it. That is the job of the Directorate of Intelligence.

Special National Intelligence Estimate
Dec. 4, 1941

For the past two weeks, Japan has been warning its diplomats that war may be imminent.

Interception of Japanese diplomatic traffic indicates the message “East wind rain” has been repeated on a regular basis. Intelligence officials believe this code means Japan has made a decision to go to war in the near future.

In addition, there have been these other signs that Japan may be preparing to go to war:

• On Nov. 22, Foreign Minister Togo informed Ambassador Nomura that negotiations between Japan and the United States must be settled by November 29 because after that “things are going automatically to happen. . . .”

• For the past two weeks, the Japanese have been padding their radio messages with garbled or old messages to make decoding more difficult.

• Three days ago, the Japanese Imperial Navy changed its ship call signs. This is an unprecedented change, since they had just been changed. Normally they are switched every six months.

• Two days ago, the Japanese Foreign Ministry ordered its consulates in six cities—including Washington—to destroy all but the most important codes, ciphers, and classified material.

• Three days ago, the U.S. became unable to locate previously tracked Japanese submarines.

• Scattered, unconfirmed reports indicate naval air units in southern Japan have been practicing simulated torpedo attacks against ships there.

These warning signs justify immediate, extraordinary steps, including placing the Pacific commands on immediate alert.
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I
F THE
CIA
HAD BEEN AROUND AT THE TIME, THIS IS WHAT
the agency’s Directorate of Intelligence might have handed President Roosevelt three days before Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor. As Dr. Harold P. Ford, a former acting chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council, has pointed out in his book
Estimative Intelligence,
all of the facts listed above were known to the U.S. government—three days before the disastrous attack on Pearl Harbor. If such an intelligence estimate had been presented to the president, defensive action would almost certainly have been taken. But the government had no central agency for marshaling all the information, making sense of it, and presenting strategic assessments to the president.

The only existing intelligence agencies at the time were those operated by the military, and they were often considered dumping grounds for the least qualified military personnel. Each of the services was at the others’ throats, and fiefdoms within the services often suppressed whatever intelligence assessments were made. The government had no tradition of assessing the intentions—as distinguished from capabilities—of other countries. Those officials who did look at the question of Japanese intentions decided that Japan would never attack, because to do so would be irrational. Yet what might seem irrational to one country may seem perfectly logical to another country that has different goals, values, and traditions. Finally,
many in the government looked with disdain on Japanese capabilities. As one admiral said after the attack, “I never thought those little yellow sons of bitches could pull off such an attack, so far from home.”
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An alert was finally sent at the very last minute on the morning of December 7, but it did not reach its destination before the attack. The Army officer given the job of notifying the command at Pearl Harbor sent the message by Western Union, instead of through Navy channels, when he found the Army’s circuits to Hawaii were down. But this was just the last in a series of bungles. The result was the Japanese sank 5 of the Navy’s 8 battleships based at Pearl Harbor, damaged 200 of the 300 aircraft based there, and killed 2,330 servicemen and 100 civilians, bringing the U.S. into World War II.

“We just didn’t have an intelligence system,” Dr. Ray S. Cline, who was an analyst in the Navy and Office of Strategic Services before becoming deputy CIA director for intelligence, said. “Franklin Roosevelt had lots of information, but he didn’t have an intelligence system to present it to him. There was plenty of information about the attack on Pearl Harbor, but it was not handled bureaucratically in a way that would alert the armed services and the White House what was going on. There was no central system at that time.”
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These failures led indirectly to the creation of the CIA in 1947. The idea of a CIA was the brainchild of Col. William J. (“Wild Bill”) Donovan. A New York lawyer and politician, Donovan had served heroically in World War I, commanding a battalion and winning the Medal of Honor. During World War II, he headed the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Back in 1941, Donovan submitted a plan to President Roosevelt outlining the need for a government-wide organization that would pool and coordinate existing intelligence. Following Donovan’s advice, Roosevelt created a Coordinator of Information as part of the Executive Office of the President in July 1941.