Spycraft - Melton [286]
3 See: Melton, CIA Special Weapons and Equipment, 67.
4 Helms, A Look Over My Shoulder, 128.
5 For details and photos of “bugs” in the SRT series see Pete McCollum’s clandestine communications website: www.militaryradio.com/spyradio/tsd.html
6 Critical characteristics for radio frequency audio transmitters intended for covert use include (1) reliability, primarily a function of the device’s design, components, and power supply; (2) concealability, primarily a function of device size and configuration; and (3) detectability, primarily a function of the intended or unintended signals generated and the materials from which the device is constructed. The same three characteristics are critical for every other component of an audio surveillance system such as the microphones, wires, connectors, batteries, and recording devices. Finally, reliability, concealability, and detectability are standards by which the operational utility of the fully integrated and operating system is judged.
7 Mallory since evolved into the well-known Duracell Company.
8 In addition to powering surveillance devices, batteries were vital to other OTS espionage equipment for covert communications, tracking beacons and signaling devices. Any gadget with electronics required a power source and, in most instances, that meant some type of battery.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
1 Philip Agee, CIA Diary: Inside the Company (New York: Stonehill, 1975), cover and end flap. The case held a tracking beacon, not an audio device.
2 The continuing miniaturization of circuits followed “Moore’s Law,” an observation made in 1965 by Gordon Moore, cofounder of Intel. The “law” observed that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year since the integrated circuit was invented, and Moore predicted that this trend would continue for the foreseeable future.
3 Richelson, The Wizards of Langley, presents an organizational history of ORD.
4 Richelson, The Wizards of Langley, 147.
5 See: www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/ciacats2.html for a redacted TSD memorandum about the Acoustic kitty project.
6 Both OTS and ORD experimented with other unconventional ideas using animals for intelligence collection. Ravens were tested as winged couriers to deposit audio devices on windowsills, though ambient noise made this idea impractical.
7 Melton, CIA Special Weapons and Equipment, 62.
8 For another description of the Backscatter Gauge in use see: F. W. Rustmann, Jr., CIA, INC.: Espionage and the Craft of Business Intelligence (Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 2002) 62.
9 Antonio J. Mendez in The Master of Disguise: My Secret Life in the CIA (New York: Morrow, 1999), provides an account of his career as an OTS operational disguise specialist.
10 George Gardner, Picks, Clicks, Flaps and Seals: A Monograph on Surreptitious Entry (unpublished monograph), 1944, 5. This rare manual was the primary “surreptitious entry” manual used by the OSS and later by TSD. “George Gardner” is most likely the nom de plume for Willis George, the senior OSS “entry expert” and postwar author of Surreptitious Entry: The Sensational Story of a Government Agent Who Picked Locks and Cracked Safes in the Service of His Country (New York: Appleton-Century, 1946).
11 Ibid., 5.
12 The lock-picking course included a “final” exam requiring the student to pick open sixty different locks in sixty minutes. “It was a tough course,” one tech noted, “I passed only because the generous instructor included several simple suitcase and luggage locks.”
13 Because a tech