Spycraft - Melton [223]
Some time later, a senior DO official called the operation “one of the best of the decade.” Its success hinged on the work of the OTS’s document fabrication and authentication officers.
From the cover perspective, CIA employees fall broadly into two classifications: overt and undercover. The majority of CIA employees are overt, acknowledge their CIA affiliation, and each January receive W-2 forms issued by the Central Intelligence Agency. Typical of overt employees are individuals in senior management positions, those with assignments in public affairs, the Center for Study of Intelligence, congressional liaison, personnel recruitment, analytical components of the Directorate of Intelligence, and research units in the Directorate of Science and Technology. These individuals perform work that does not require a covert identity.
Within the Directorate of Operations, most employees have cover, as does any other Agency officer who participates in covert operations. Cover documents provide corroborating personal and public material to establish and support the legitimacy of a cover and a fabricated identity.
The CIA categorizes cover in two types, official and commercial. Official covers are provided by other government agencies and departments while commercial covers are acquired from private-sector companies or private individuals. The cover of any individual officer can be adapted to the operational need and ranges from “light” to “deep.”
Officers may have a cover that allows them to work using their true name or they may assume an alias as part of operational cover. Two types of aliases are frequently used. The most common is a created identity. Officers are assigned randomly selected names, consistent with their ethnic appearance and supported by standard identification documents such as driver’s license, credit cards, social security card, and passport. Throughout their career, officers would be issued multiple aliases and supporting documents. Since 1990, however, the created identity has become increasingly vulnerable to detection as an alias due to interconnected databases containing official and personal information about individuals. The adage “If you don’t exist in cyberspace, you are probably a fraud” has become a truism that limits the long-term operational use of created identities.
Borrowed identities offer an alternative to fictitious identities but require the cooperation and temporary “disappearance” of the voluntary and cooperating donor. Borrowed identities have the advantage of possessing a verifiable personal history and require no manufactured backstopping of the individual’s college attendance, work history, social connections, or forged documents. The borrowed identity also exists as a “cyber persona” since, at minimum, credit history shows up on numerous databases. Reproduction of personal ID papers is simplified by a willing donor making the material available to document specialists. OTS technicians can provide effective disguise in the form of the donor’s clothing and, within reason, body appearance. Borrowed identity, normally reserved for particularly sensitive operations, was successfully employed to effect the single personal meeting that occurred between an agency officer and TRIGON in Moscow in 1976.
Disguise can either complement an alias or obscure the true identity of the user. The history of OTS’s disguise work, like documents, began in OSS. At the formation of TSS, disguise became part of the Furnishings and Equipment Division and subsequently supported covert operations by altering the appearance of officers and agents to protect their true identity or ensure