Inside the CIA

by Kessler, Ronald

  Computers added another tool to the photo interpreters’ bag of tricks. As William E. Burrows described them in his book Deep Black, the computers inside Building 213 were “routinely being used to correct for distortions made by the satellites’ imaging sensors and by atmospheric effects, sharpen out-of-focus images, build multicolored single images out of several pictures taken in different spectral bands to make certain patterns more obvious, change the amount of contrast between the objects under scrutiny and their backgrounds, extract particular features while diminishing or eliminating their backgrounds altogether, enhance shadows, suppress glint from reflections of the sun, and a great deal more.”87

  The computers could even analyze the smoke coming from smokestacks and determine, through spectral analysis, what was being burned. With infrared, which senses heat, analysts could not only see inside buildings, they could tell that a plane, for example, had been on a runway hours after it had left.

  The most critical need when NPIC was started in 1961 was to determine what missiles the Soviets had. It was NPIC that counted Soviet missiles during the missile gap debate, demonstrating that there was no gap at all. NPIC went on to use the same techniques to uncover the Soviet missiles being sent to Cuba. By then, NPIC knew what the erectors and transporters for the missiles looked like and what kinds of crates they were shipped in. Even though the missiles were covered with canvas before being deployed, their length, shape, and width gave them away. NPIC analysts developed expertise in interpreting missile packaging.88

  “There was a science of crateology,” Lundahl said. “Also they had shelters for steamrollers and other heavy equipment, so we had shelterology. Cuban troops slept in one kind of tent, Soviet troops in another kind.”89

  “The Soviets used a standard deployment pattern. The cable lines ran in a certain way. There had to be a place for fuel storage. The minute we saw that we knew what it was,” R. Jack Smith, who was assigned to the Directorate of Intelligence at the time, said.90

  Based on its previous experience in analyzing missile deployment in the Soviet Union, NPIC was able to tell President Kennedy how long it would take for the missiles in Cuba to become operational. This was supplemented with information from the manuals to the missiles provided by Col. Oleg Penkovskiy, the Soviet intelligence officer who began spying for the British in early 1962. Finally, on October 16, 1962, Lundahl presented Kennedy with photographs that convinced him that the missiles really were there. On that basis, Kennedy confronted Khrushchev and by threatening retaliatory strikes, got him to remove them.

  “Politically, the Cuban missile crisis had demonstrated that overhead reconnaissance, and satellite reconnaissance in particular, was a stabilizing factor because it greatly reduced the element of surprise and, in the process, lessened the chance of a dangerous, all-out preemptive attack for fear that the enemy was getting ready to do the same thing,” Burrows wrote in Deep Black. “The satellites substituted imagery for imagination and provided a realistic look at what the opposition had and did not have.”91

  “We gave our leaders answers, gave real substance to our national estimate, gave enlightenment when there had been darkness,” Lundahl said. “I think we avoided nuclear war a couple of times, particularly in Cuba when people knew exactly what the facts were. We provided a basis for the strategic arms limitations treaty, which for years they referred to as confirmation by National Technical Means of Collection. Generally, the whole litany of our national intelligence was moved steadily into a technical arena, where the scope and speed and detail of information kept track of world events. People from the president on down became accustomed to this kind of service.”92

  NPIC helped to predict that the Soviets would launch an earth satellite before the U.S. and that the Chinese Communists would detonate an atomic bomb. With its help, the CIA also predicted the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, the India-Pakistan war, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. NPIC ensured that the Soviets were complying with arms limitation agreements. In 1990, it was NPIC that first pinpointed the movement of Iraqi troops toward Kuwait three weeks before the invasion. The center’s photo interpreters pointed out that Iraqi troops had months of supplies of fuel—far more than would be taken on a training exercise. Once the war started, NPIC pinpointed biological and nuclear facilities.

  NPIC routinely forecasts harvests, predicts natural disasters, pinpoints marijuana fields, and estimates the size of oil spills and forest fires. Some of the information is provided to other government agencies, such as the Commerce Department, to help them plan relief programs. By tracking the size of wheat and other critical harvests, the Agriculture Department can better estimate what prices will be like on the world market.

  “A camera can take a picture of anything, and ipso facto you are involved in everything, whether it be economics or crops or biological warfare or missiles or submarines or missile testing,” Lundahl said. “Anything at all that man does on the face of the earth that is exposed to the sky, you get images that, if interpreted correctly, can tell you a tremendous amount of information.”

  Today, nearly all the CIA’s satellites provide data in real time, meaning that a battlefield commander can see enemy movements while they are happening. By combining images from magnetic, heat, radar, and visual-based images, NPIC can zero in on particular questions. This is particularly helpful when the Soviet Union or other countries try to camouflage their facilities.

  “It’s a game between hiders and seekers,” Lundahl said. “The art of camouflage, decoys, deception, is very well developed.”

  Yet for all the wonders of science, no technology can divine an adversary’s intentions.

  “Photo interpretation when well done can give you an excellent view of an enemy’s capability,” Lundahl said. “You can’t get his intentions. You can get some intentions. If you see a furnace is being moved or a railroad track is being torn up, you can tell it is being moved. Or cement is being poured.”

  These developments, in turn, may mean the enemy is planning to build a missile silo, for example. But the facility could initially be made to look like a factory. Nor can photos convey long-range plans and intentions.

  “Nothing will replace a good human spy,” Roland Inlow, a former chairman of COMIREX, said.

  In the area of human spying, too, the Directorate of Science and Technology plays a major role through its supersecret Office of Technical Service.

  11

  James Bond

  IN WINDOWLESS OFFICES WITHIN CIA HEADQUARTERS, THE Office of Technical Service (OTS) within the Directorate of Science and Technology devises state-of-the-art devices for bugging rooms, tapping phones, sending covert messages, and photographing documents. Several hundred CIA employees—including engineers, cabinetmakers, woodworkers, leatherworkers, and physicists—plant bugs or create secret compartments in everything from kitchen cutting boards to felt-tip pens. Over the years, to conceal its devices, the office has used car oil filters, videotape cassettes, false bottoms of toolboxes, toy trains, batteries, cigarette lighters, basket covers, teddy bears, chess sets, paintings, wallets, statues, hot plates, and toilet kits.

  For an agent of the CIA in such areas as Cuba or the Soviet Union, these tools of the spy trade are critical for maintaining security and carrying out his mission. An agent must photograph documents, deliver messages to his case officer, receive cash, and arrange meetings. Of greatest importance, he must have a way to signal in an emergency that he needs to leave—or “exfiltrate”—the country. The CIA usually provides agents with several alternative escape plans. One plan requires the use of a signaling device that sends a coded message to an embassy or other listening post.

  Sometimes the simplest methods are best. In Moscow or Havana, a window left open at night or a shade drawn halfway may signal a meeting or a drop at a prearranged site. In such cases, no high-tech methods are necessary. Instead of a custom-fitted wig, an operations officer may slick down his hair and wear glasses.

  “I might walk out
of the embassy at the end of the day with a suit and tie and long hair and my briefcase,” a former operations officer said. “I might go into the bathroom of a hotel and take off my coat and tie, put them in a briefcase, put on a sport shirt, wet my hair and slick it back, and walk out with maybe my raincoat draped over my briefcase. If I am arrested, I don’t have any spy gear. If you use spy gear, you are in trouble. If you are arrested and they peel your face off, you have a lot of explaining to do.”

  Bugging and wiretaps also have their limits.

  “You can get too much data,” a former officer assigned to the Office of Technical Service said. “The case officer thinks, ‘I’ll just put a bug in the room, and then I’ll know everything.’ It’s not that easy. Number one, you’ve got to be able to make sure one can do that. Number two, you’ve got to make an installation, and you’ve got to worry about the other side finding it. Then you have to have a listening post where it comes in. You have to have someone changing the tapes. Then you have to translate and transcribe the tapes. Once a month, something worthwhile comes out. But often you are inundated with a lot of marginal data that requires a lot of sifting. Is it worth it? The answer is frequently no. One guy in a key location can often tell you more in five minutes than all of the taping.”

  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.