Spycraft - Melton [3]
The authors of Spycraft have been my associates and friends for many years. Together they bring a career of operational experience and a lifetime of study of intelligence to this work. During my tenure as DCI, Robert Wallace headed the Office of Technical Service after serving more than twenty-five years as an Agency operations officer and manager. Throughout his thirty-two-year career, he received multiple awards for operational success and leadership. H. Keith Melton has been a friend of the CIA for more than two decades. He is a frequent lecturer throughout the intelligence community, a bestselling author, and an internationally recognized collector and interpreter of historical intelligence technical devices and artifacts.
My draft of September 7, 2001, remarks concluded with the the observation that “the twenty-first century will present major challenges to our Agency and OTS ingenuity will be put to the test in the years ahead.” The test began four days later. In the months that followed 9/11, the CIA again turned to OTS for technical innovation to build the gadgets that would detect and defeat a different and deadly enemy operating in an information environment revolutionized by the Internet and digital technology. Spycraft, whether detailing Cold War operations or those directed against terrorists, offers a somber warning to our adversaries and fresh encouragement to those who cherish freedom that we will prevail.
Preface
The CIA’s new Deputy Director for Operations, David Cohen, called me to his office in August 1995. “I want you to apply for the job of Deputy Director, Office of Technical Service in the DS&T [Directorate of Science and Technology],” Cohen directed. “We need a DO [Directorate of Operations] person there and I think you’re a good candidate.”
He might as well have suggested that I apply for NASA’s astronaut program. I had been an operations officer for almost twenty-five years, but for the past eighteen months I was assigned to the Comptroller’s office. At age fifty-one, I was out of operations, doing the type of staff and budget work that motivated me to plan for early retirement.
“I’ve never worked in the DS&T. I’m a history-political science major, an operations type. I’m an analog guy in a digital world. I don’t even change the oil in my car,” I objected.
“I know what your skills are and this is a good assignment for you.” Cohen left no doubt about the answer he wanted.
“Okay, I’ll apply, but I can’t imagine I’ll be competitive if there are other candidates.”
“There’ll be other candidates and you’ll do fine. We need a DO officer in OTS who knows senior ops people and is someone I have confidence in. You’ve been looking at the budgets in every DO division almost two years, so you know the key players and they know you. I have to make sure technical service and operations stay linked.”
The interview was over. I had worked for Cohen several years earlier and recalled his frequent admonition that once a decision was made he had no patience for further discussion. This was not the first time that he had directed me to a job I had not sought, and the others had worked out pretty well. In 1988, he sent me to a large station that had never been on my assignment wish list. That put me into position to join the ranks of the CIA’s Senior Intelligence