Spycraft - Melton [266]
Invariably, the committees were amazed at the small size of the devices and that otherwise ordinary objects had been modified to perform extraordinary clandestine functions. It was not difficult to imagine how Stanley Lovell and other OTS directors similarly captivated Presidents, Senators, or Congressmen with examples of ingenious devices of their era. William Donovan, it was reported, was so proud of the silenced Hi-Standard pistol produced by Lovell that he demonstrated it for President Roosevelt by firing into a sandbag in the Oval Office while the President talked on the phone.1
As remarkable as the technological progress of spy gear since World War II and the days of Penkovsky may seem, the impact of digital and materials technology on clandestine operations during my seven years at OTS was revolutionary. Paralleling the technology change was a dramatic shift in the intelligence battlefield from the dominance of a Soviet strategic threat to a demand for tactical intelligence to defeat terrorist plots and disable their weapons. In responding to post-Cold War operational requirements, OTS had adopted digital technologies that radically changed the size and capability of our equipment. By 2001, the seemingly limitless ingenuity of OTS and its contractors made many of the toys I had taken to Committee briefings in 1996 technological antiques.
On my final trip to Congress as Director of OTS in the summer of 2002, I displayed our most advanced tracking and communications equipment. My purpose was to talk about OTS’s substantial role in operations against terrorism and al-Qaeda. As the committee members and staff looked over the devices, I pulled from my pocket another item that I believed spoke eloquently to the future of clandestine technical support.
“I fear that my successor OTS directors may no longer be able to show you so many neat gadgets and bugs,” I said, as I held up a compact disc purchased at Radio Shack that morning. “I expect this is the spy gear you will be seeing in the future because the most significant espionage equipment will be embedded in software. This disc is spy gear, but it does not have much of a gee-whiz factor. It appears so everyday and common that its importance can be easily overlooked. We will need to learn to communicate to you and the American public that twenty-first-century digital ‘spy gadgets’ are as necessary as Buster and the T-100 camera were for their time.”
Six years later, that compact disc is already obsolete.
Appendix A
U.S. Clandestine Services and OTS Organizational Genealogy, 1941-2008
Appendix B
Selected Chronology of OTS
1942
Office of Strategic Services is established with William J. Donovan as Director. OSS establishes Research & Development Branch under Stanley P. Lovell.
1947
National Security Act establishes CIA.
1951 (September 7)
CIA Technical Services Staff (TSS) created under James H. “Trapper” Drum.
1956
First U-2 reconnaissance flight over Soviet Union.
1959
Cornerstone laid for CIA Original Headquarters Building at Langley, Virginia.
1960
First satellite photos of Soviet Union recovered. TSS renamed Technical Services Division (TSD). Three TSD audio techs arrested in Havana.
1961
Invasion of Cuba by CIA-supported Cuban exiles.
1962
Seymour Russell appointed Chief, TSD. Oleg Penkovsky arrested. Cuban Missile Crisis.
1963
TSD audio techs released from Cuban jail.
1966
Dr. Sidney Gottlieb appointed Chief, TSD. TSD relocated to former CIA Headquarters at 2430 E Street, NW, Washington, D.C.
1973 (May 4)
TSD renamed Office of Technical Service and transferred from the Directorate of Operations to the Directorate of Science and Technology.
1975
President Gerald Ford creates “Commission on CIA Activities within the United States” (Rockefeller Commission).
The Senate establishes a Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (Church