Spycraft - Melton [2]
http://us.penguingroup.com
For the families of TSS, TSD, and OTS
who served their country with patience,
courage, and honor through quiet,
unheralded support of the Spytechs
Office of Technical Service crest, 2001
Foreword
by GEORGE J. TENET
Director, Central Intelligence
1997-2004
Minutes before I was to deliver the keynote speech at CIA Headquarters recognizing the fiftieth anniversary of the Office of Technical Service (OTS) on September 7, 2001, I was unavoidably called away to a meeting downtown. What I had prepared to say to the several hundred OTS officers gathered that morning would seem prescient ninety-six hours later when al-Qaeda struck the American homeland. Those words remain appropriate today as our nation confronts terrorism on every continent. For five decades, OTS officers and their wondrous devices had played a vital role in virtually every major CIA clandestine operation. In the words of Jim Pavitt, our Deputy Director for Operations during my tenure, OTS was the “technical problem solver for what appears impossible.”
CIA’s Office of Technical Service was established in 1951 at the beginning of the Cold War to meet a threat very different from the one America faces today. Throughout the next fifty years, OTS fashioned a history of adapting brilliantly to the challenge of applying new technology to the intelligence needs of each era. Whether CIA operations required an ultraminiature camera, a battery the size of a fingernail, or travel documents with unique inks and printing, OTS became the organization that did not just make magic, it made magic on demand.
In 1951, the future of the United States and Western democracy was confronted by an ideology of advancing communism sponsored by a nuclear-armed Soviet Union. In those uncertain times, leaders of the four-year-old CIA, DCI Walter Bedell Smith, his deputy Allen Dulles, and a promising operations officer, Richard Helms, envisioned technology as the means to secure a decisive intelligence advantage over the Soviet Union and its client states. Drawing on their collective World War II experiences in the Office of Strategic Services, they concluded that the best operations were a partnership between technical specialists and operations officers. The concept they enacted was simple and brilliant—CIA would apply the full force of America’s technological ingenuity, whether sponsored by government or industry, to solve the problems of clandestine operations. From that idea, the Technical Services Staff emerged and its successes became legendary.
Now some of the previously untold stories of the impact on our intelligence history by this remarkable collection of people and technology can be told. Every CIA director confronts the tension between secrecy and the American public’s right to know what its government is doing. Secrets are the necessary currency of the intelligence profession and protection of confidential sources and special methods is a solemn duty of every CIA officer. Regrettably, there have been instances when secrecy was invoked to deny knowledge of information that has long since lost sensitivity but is vital for public understanding and consideration. Such misuse of secrecy can result in flawed policy decisions, wild speculation about the CIA’s activities, and a misleading historical record. For the CIA to maintain the public trust, responsible and accurate presentation of information on intelligence subjects is both wise and necessary.
The thousands of books and news articles produced about the CIA’s operations have generally concentrated on large technical programs, such as the U-2 spy plane, satellites and communications intercepts, or spies who worked for the CIA or against American