When Webster became director of Central Intelligence in 1987, the lawyers that he brought with him from the FBI found that, of all the CIA offices that deal routinely with legal issues—the Office of General Counsel, the Counterintelligence Center, and the Office of Security—the Office of Security was most likely to flout legal procedures. One example was the great postage-stamp case, which involved nine workers in the Office of Security’s mailroom who noticed that $1 U.S. postage stamps had been misprinted. They sold eighty-five of the stamps—now valued at $28,000 each—to a New Jersey stamp dealer for an undisclosed sum. When the Office of Security learned about it, they interrogated the suspects without warning them of their right to have counsel present.
Eventually, four of the employees were fired because they had made statements during the investigation that were technically true but misleading, or because they had not returned the stamps they had taken, or both.178 If the cases had been criminally prosecuted, they would most likely have been thrown out because the employees had not been warned of their rights.
To improve the operations of the Office of Security, Webster appointed new directors who came from outside the office—one from the Directorate of Intelligence, another from administration. While they were not burdened by the Office of Security’s mind-set, they did not have the experience in law enforcement needed to give them the confidence to make wholesale changes. For his part, Webster did not want to become heavily involved in the operations of the office, realizing that trying to micromanage its activities would only lead to more problems. In any case, much of what the office does would be done the same way regardless of who is in charge. Debugging is one example.
19
Getting the Bugs Out
WITHIN THE OFFICE OF SECURITY, NEARLY A HUNDRED technicians engage in a never-ending battle to find wiretaps and other eavesdropping devices in the CIA’s offices at Langley and around the globe. Besides helping to investigate espionage and other crimes, polygraphing people, taking care of the buildings and grounds and locks, and guarding defectors, the Office of Security looks for eavesdropping devices. Given the threat, this is one of the most important jobs in the CIA. Besides finding bugs, the Technical Security Division within the Office of Security installs white-sound systems to mask voices, as well as state-of-the-art alarm systems, safes, locks, and other security systems. But the main job of the office is finding bugs by conducting periodic sweeps of the agency’s buildings in Washington and stations overseas. While usually based in Washington, the technicians spend most of their time traveling to CIA stations in their quest for elusive bugs.
A standard office can present dozens of possibilities for bugging, and CIA technicians have to check them all. Any speaker in a radio or television set can be turned into a bugging device that radiates signals to a remote listening post. An electrical outlet can be replaced with one that contains a bugging device that transmits signals through the air or over the power line. A microphone in a thermostat can transmit signals to the furnace, where a transmitter can beam the signals outside. Rewiring of a telephone can turn it into an open microphone, transmitting sound in the room down the telephone line even when the receiver is on the hook.
Typewriters are not immune. The power supply used by an IBM Selectric typewriter can be used to pick up what the typewriter is typing. Each time the typing element moves, the motor inside the machine runs. The amount of time the motor operates depends on how far the typing element moves. In turn, the amount of movement is based on which letter is being typed. By measuring the amount of current drawn, a snooper can determine how far the typing element has traveled and thus which letter it typed.
A computer screen also radiates signals that denote which letter is being typed. A microphone in a room can also be used to pick up sounds from the keyboard. Each key, when struck, makes a different sound. That sound can be used to determine which key was depressed. Likewise, a daisy-wheel computer printer emits sounds that can be translated into the text that it is printing out. If a computer has a modem, so long as the computer is turned on, a snooper can obtain the entire contents of the computer’s hard drive over the telephone line.
In checking for electronic eavesdropping devices, CIA technicians try to pick up any signals that might be transmitting sound from a room. This is not as easy as it sounds. In debugging the American embassy in Moscow, State Department technicians did not find the bugs implanted in the embassy’s IBM Selectric typewriters in part because of the clever way the Soviets masked the signals. The bugs stored data and transmitted it only intermittently. The Soviets controlled when the bugs dumped information and could turn them off when a sweep might be in progress. Moreover, the coded signals used the same frequency as a Moscow television station. When the bugs transmitted, viewers heard momentary static. Since the signals were on the same wavelength as the television station, sweeps of the embassy detected nothing.
In debugging overseas stations, one of the biggest problems CIA technicians face is not bugs but insistent requests from ambassadors to sweep their offices.
“It’s a status symbol,” a former technician said. “If the chief of station gets his done, the ambassador wants his done, too.”
The State Department sweeps its own offices, including those of ambassadors, but when CIA technicians visit stations overseas, many ambassadors insist their offices need a check as well. When that happens, CIA officers assigned to the stations often apply pressure to go along with the request. But according to a former technician, “We’ve been told we’ll be canned if we do it. The State Department doesn’t want to send men and equipment there if we have just been there.”
Depending on the size of the station, two or three technicians take one to two weeks to perform their sweeps. Depending on their sensitivity and the degree of the threat, the stations are checked every six months to once a year. The director’s office has devices that constantly detect any stray emanations that might come from bugs. In addition, the office is swept along with the office of the deputy director of Central Intelligence every six months.
To keep in top form, the technicians look for bugs that are placed by the CIA’s buggers—the Office of Technical Service within the Directorate of Science and Technology. The bugs are placed in homes and apartments previously used as safe houses. There is rivalry between the two offices, and the positive buggers often do not want to share their latest techniques and devices with the debuggers.
The technicians find bugs at overseas stations only occasionally. In one case, while checking the airwaves at a station overseas, they heard the voice of the chief of the British intelligence station there. It turned out the British had given the local security service some outdated bugging devices. The first thing the local security service did was to install one of the devices in the office of the British officer who had supplied them.
The Office of Security performs sweeps of the office of the director of Central Intelligence, his car, and his home every three to six months. They also sweep the rest of headquarters. CIA technicians have never found a bug in Langley. Sometimes, they think they have found one in the director’s office when they find a strange new wire. But in every case, it leads to a buzzer installed to signal a request for coffee and tea, or to some other newly installed gadget.
“It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack,” a former technician said. “It could be anywhere in a building. You can bust your chops looking, never find anything, and never be sure if it was behind the next wall. You are never sure.”
To find technicians who can debug offices, as well as the dizzying array of other specialists needed by the CIA, the CIA has an agency-wide office of personnel that looks for practically every area of expertise listed in college and technical-school catalogues. But finding people who will become spies takes a special approach, which is the primary purpose of the CIA’s Career Training Program.
20
Charisma
“WE NEED PEOPLE WHO ARE DRIVEN, PEOPLE WHO
ARE AGGRESSIVE, manipulative—people who can manipulate people to get them to do what they want them to do.”
It is nine A.M. on a Friday. Bob, as distinguished looking as Walter Cronkite, is telling a group of eager and very respectful applicants what the CIA looks for in a spy. The applicants are being considered for the CIA’s Career Training Program, the training program for the agency’s elite. Most of the applicants will go into the CIA’s Directorate of Operations—the side of the agency that engages in human spying. Some will obtain management positions in the agency’s three other directorates.
This has to be the strangest show in Washington—a place where the CIA uses a classroom setting to recruit people to become professional impostors.
Competition to work at the agency is keen. Each year, the CIA receives 150,000 to 200,000 résumés for only 2,000 full-time, part-time, and contract job openings. In all, the agency has 22,000 full-time employees and 4,000 part-time and contract employees.
About 12,000 applicants complete all the requirements, including taking polygraph tests. Many drop out along the way when they learn they will have to reveal prior drug usage, when they find out more about the job, or when they simply get tired of waiting. The CIA does not tell applicants why they were rejected. One common reason for rejection is evidence of psychological problems revealed in psychological tests. Psychiatric treatment is also frowned on. Occasionally, in the course of trying desperately to pass the polygraph test, applicants reveal they have committed rapes or other crimes—information that is passed along to the FBI and of course, disqualifies them for the job. So long as it is disclosed, homosexuality is no longer grounds for rejection.
The CIA advertises in local media in all fifty states and has twelve recruitment centers throughout the country. Each year CIA recruiters visit 450 college campuses. There, they play a videotape put together by an advertising agency.
In the video, William Webster, wearing a button-down blue shirt and a blue-and-rust-striped tie, looks earnestly into the camera. “There’s hardly any more diverse, complex, and truly worldwide organization than the CIA,” he tells potential applicants. “As our name indicates, our primary concern is intelligence, that is, information, information that helps protect the security interests of the United States. The scope of this intelligence includes virtually every kind of information from all parts of the world—economic, political, military, scientific information about people, places, and events. Events that have happened and might happen. Wars, coups, terrorist acts, crop failures, elections, famine, drug trafficking, and natural disasters. All of these events and many more worldwide are the concern of the CIA.”
Based on the résumés, the CIA narrows the list of applicants to five thousand and invites them to a three-hour introduction to the Career Training Program. Nearly all of the agency’s spies in the Directorate of Operations come through this program, and more than half of those who join the program become spies. Only a few hundred a year are finally hired as operations officers. Specialists such as biologists, physicists, engineers, and demolitions experts, along with clerks and secretaries, are hired directly.
The introduction to the Career Training Program takes place several times a year in Washington and other cities. In Washington, the session is held in the Ames Building at 1820 North Fort Meyer Drive in Rosslyn, Virginia. There is no sign on the building, and visitors must have an appointment to get in. CIA guards check identification.
After receiving their visitor’s badges, candidates go to a gray-carpeted room on the first floor at the rear of the building. Beige curtains cover the floor-length windows. School desks, in rows of six across, fill the room. The applicants, thirty-nine in this case, sit expectantly at the desks, most appearing nervous as they clutch the yellow notebooks they have been given.
Serious, well-groomed, and well-dressed, the applicants could all pass for prep-school students. Most of them are in their early twenties, although a few are as old as thirty. The men wear blue suits with white shirts. For the most part, the women also wear conservative suits. A third of the class is women, and there is one black man. This is a homogeneous group, intent on projecting a wholesome image.
Some 22 percent of the agency’s new hires are minorities, according to Eugene J. Horan, the CIA’s director of employment. Overall, 15 percent of the CIA’s employees are minorities and 44 percent are women.179
Bob, wearing a gray suit, a white shirt, and paisley tie, introduces himself. He is from the Directorate of Administration, the side of the CIA that supports the rest of the agency by providing supplies, security, computers, and other necessities.
“The agency has four directorates,” Bob says. “The Directorate of Operations tries to recruit people. It’s a little like a marketing job.”180
The applicants are listening intently. Most of them have no idea what spying is all about, their conceptions shaped by movies and novels.
“The first thing a case officer has to do is answer a question,” he says. “Someone wants to know how much wheat the Soviets produced. It starts with a collection requirement.”
The example is not particularly apt. In the Soviet Union, CIA officers are usually after more sensitive classified material than harvesting techniques. It is left to State or Agriculture Department employees to obtain this sort of detail.
Bob says most case officers or operations officers—spies who are staff members of an intelligence organization—work under cover, pretending to work for another agency of the U.S. government. They may meet potential sources of information at diplomatic receptions, for example.
“You start tasking with information collection. ‘I need to know about your harvesting techniques.’ You use tradecraft, microfilm. You watch for surveillance,” he says. “It’s received in Washington. It goes to the policymakers. It’s a continuing cycle.
“It’s not a nine-to-five job,” Bob says. “Mostly they do agency work evenings and weekends. So it’s a very strenuous career, but a very rewarding one.”
Bob says the Directorate of Science and Technology determines military capabilities through satellites, radar, and other sensors. The Directorate of Intelligence analyzes information collected by the other directorates.
“The analysts have to be extremely careful they do not cross into policymaking,” he says. “You have to have a thick skin to be an analyst. The paper comes back with red marks on it.”
Then there is the Directorate of Administration.
“That’s my directorate,” he says. “It arranges cars, ships air freight for the DO [Directorate of Operations]. We make sure they get their pencils. We arrange S and T [Science and Technology] contracts.”
Bob introduces Cecil, a black man wearing gold-rimmed glasses and a blue suit. He ticks off the requirements to join the Career Training Program: applicants must be U.S. citizens, twenty-one to thirty-five years old, and have a college grade point average of 3.0 or better.
“However, other circumstances like supporting yourself are taken into consideration,” he says. “Exceptional oral and written communication skills are needed. A track record in extracurricular activities. A stable work record. Military experience is good.
“We look for brains, smarts. Charisma is always good. We want impeccable character and integrity. You are asking people to be spies—to commit espionage. At the same time, we expect you to obey U.S. laws.”
The Career Training Program takes a year, Cecil says, including internships of eight to ten weeks in two or three of the directorates.
“Here is a profile of a CT,” he says. “They come from all over the country, average age is twenty-seven. Forty percent are female, sixty percent male. One-half have advanced degrees, two-thirds have traveled overseas, twenty percent have good foreign-language skills, fifteen percent are from the military.
“As for salary, I’m sure most of you are interested in that. Or are you that patriotic that you don’t care?” Cecil asks rhetorically. A few applicants chuckle.
�
��You start as a GS-8, step 5. It starts at $26,000,” he says. Foreign languages, military experience, and/or living overseas for an extended period qualify a new employee for a higher salary.
“Any questions?”
An intense young man asks about the organizational chart in a CIA brochure distributed when they arrived. He observes that no detail is shown for the Directorate of Operations.
Cecil explains that the organization of the clandestine side of the agency is classified.
“Is training nine to five?” someone asks.
“You have a little night hiking,” Cecil says with a laugh, referring to paramilitary training.
It is now nine-fifty A.M., and Cecil introduces the next speaker, Shirley, from the Directorate of Operations. Shirley is pregnant and wears a gray maternity dress and polka-dot blouse. She has short, graying hair.
Whatever preconceptions the applicants have had about what spies look like, Shirley probably does not resemble any of them.
“I have been in the CIA eighteen years,” Shirley says. “We like to think we recruit responsible people. We are the clandestine service. We recruit human sources.”
If you are going to be a spy, she says, “you have to be certain how you feel on the moral issue.”
She does not spell this out, but the issue is of more than passing concern. To be a spy, a CIA officer must spend much of his or her life living a lie, pretending to be someone he or she is not, persuading others to turn against their own countries to commit espionage and become traitors. Not a job for everyone.
Inside the CIA Page 23
