Spycraft - Melton [17]
The CIG’s two basic missions were strategic warning and the coordination of clandestine activities abroad. Absorbing the Strategic Services Unit along with its officers, agents, files, overseas stations, and unvouchered funds, the new agency’s overseas component was named the Office of Special Operations (OSO), with responsibilities for foreign intelligence, counterintelligence, covert action, and technical support. However, without independent funds, the CIG did not function well and, within the first year and a half, had three directors.9
With the Cold War intensifying and with the CIG underperforming, government leaders recognized that without independent statutory authority, the structure could not carry out the required mission. As a response, Congress passed the National Security Act of 1947 that created the Central Intelligence Agency. Like the CIG, the new Agency focused on providing early warning and preparation for any Soviet invasion of Western Europe. On the military front, weapons were cached, agents infiltrated into Eastern European countries, stay-behind resistance groups organized, and plans for counterattacking Soviet invaders drawn up.
The more traditional job of spying fell to the OSO, which had been absorbed into the CIA intact. With more than one-third of its officers drawn from the OSS, the OSO proved effective, but technical support could not keep up with operational demands. As a result, in September 1949, OSO created an Operational Aids Division staffed by officers with prior experience in OSS Cover and Documentation Division. The “operational aids” included agent authentication and documentation papers, secret writing, photography, and audio surveillance.10
A year earlier, in September 1948, a separate organization known as the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) was formed to conduct aggressive paramilitary and psychological warfare operations against the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Between 1948 and 1952, OPC grew from 302 employees, with no overseas stations, to a staff of more than 2,800 staff and 40 overseas stations.11 OPC had its own small R&D shop and staff, inherited from OSS, that conducted research in chemistry, applied physics, and mechanics.
The underside of flaps of an envelope, shown here unfolded and after developing, were often used for secret-writing messages during World War II and afterward.
The two offices operated independently and competed for the limited resources available to produce the clandestine devices needed by agents and officers. With little quality control and without a coordinated research and development program, early CIA technical equipment was often in short supply and of uneven quality.
In October of 1950, President Truman, dissatisfied with the CIA’s intelligence following North Korea’s invasion of South Korea, appointed General Walter Bedell Smith as Director of Central Intelligence. Smith, in turn, appointed Allen Dulles head of clandestine operations, giving him the title Deputy Director for Plans (DDP) in 1951. All of the Agency’s operational components came under the DDP in January 1952.12 Dulles appreciated the value of technical equipment for clandestine operations through firsthand knowledge. As an OSS case officer, he had used devices supplied by Lovell’s R&D branch. He also understood that the CIA faced a problem of applying emerging postwar technologies to improve clandestine gear and deploy the equipment to field operatives.
Dulles first turned to Lovell, who had returned to the private sector, for advice in early 1951. The Professor Moriarty of the OSS responded by proposing a centralized technical R&D component within the Agency similar to the OSS/R&D division. This technical organization, working under the DDP, would develop technology for operations as well as conduct research on new capabilities that might contribute to intelligence gathering. The engineers would understand both the potential of new technology and how to apply it to clandestine requirements.