Spycraft - Melton [265]
On September 7, 2001, McMahon addressed an audience of 500 retired and active CIA officers who gathered to celebrate OTS’s golden anniversary in the Agency’s auditorium. “Technical services [are] driven not just by advances in technology, but more importantly by the innovation of the technical officers to capture the potential of technology and bring it to application in operation,” McMahon observed. Turning to how the CIA’s operations officers used spy gear, McMahon said he detected a recurring fifty-year pattern: “Build it and they will try it—make it work and they will come back.”
McMahon’s remarks encompassed a half century of OTS contributions to clandestine operations. OTS forgers had fabricated documents for agents to infiltrate the Soviet Union in the early 1950s and created alias cyber-identities for case officers five decades later. OTS chemists made undetectable secret inks when writing was a primary means for clandestine communications, and its electrical engineers seized technology to develop radios whose millisecond transmissions were almost impossible to intercept. OTS psychologists evaluated the motivation and courage of a would-be agent. Mechanical engineers hid audio bugs in lamps to capture private conversations. These were the scientists, engineers, and craftsmen who built America’s gadgets and disguises. They bugged embassies, trained saboteurs, and tracked down terrorists. When an operation went awry, they sat in foreign jails. When others were held hostage, they came to help.
From its beginning, OTS understood that supporting operations was its mission. Whether the operational requirement needed research, development, engineering, production, training, or deployment, OTS acted, driven by a philosophy of unapologetic responsiveness to national security needs. No constraints were placed on the imagination of the Agency’s technical wizards. “If we can think it, we can do it. Our boundaries are the limits of what we can imagine, and, sometimes, the laws of physics,” said a tech who devoted thirty-five years to OTS. This philosophy of limitless possibility produced an organization of a few thousand technical specialists who gave U.S. intelligence its decisive Cold War technical advantage and continue to equip the CIA for its battle against terrorism.
If not attempted during rush hour, the eight-mile drive from CIA Headquarters in Langley to Capitol Hill takes no more than fifteen minutes. The route, south along the George Washington Parkway across Memorial Bridge and down Constitution Avenue, provides a tourist’s view of famed landmarks—the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial, the White House, the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Memorial, and, finally, the Capitol dome.
On such trips, I found myself moved by the familiar yet singular symbolism of these monuments to liberty. I passed those landmarks scores of times as Director of OTS to meet with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Responsible for congressional oversight of the CIA, these committees needed to know the requirements and problems of Agency components and I was determined that they hear about them firsthand from OTS. The conversations, held in secure rooms in the Hart Senate Building or the south wing of the Capitol, were frank, detailed, and not broadcast by C-SPAN or leaked to the newspapers.
Speaking with members of Congress and their staff, I defended and advocated funding for OTS programs. In some years, I sought survival money for critical capabilities and, under other circumstances, I made the case for resources to launch programs for new capabilities. I always carried OTS toys to show the latest innovations of the office. These devices were usually small enough to put in my coat pocket and briefcase, yet impressive in illustrating the ingenuity and skill of OTS engineers, craftsman, and contractors. The toys might include dead drops or concealments, tiny batteries, prototypes of advanced beacons, or covert communications systems.