Spycraft - Melton [308]
Sol Kurtzman lived in Washington nearly fifty years and never lost his New York accent or demeanor. Sol was among the early professional engineers in the Technical Services Staff and remained with the office until the end of the Cold War. Sol told of the TSS’s determined struggle to establish a reputation as “the place” in CIA where technical solutions to operational requirements would be found no matter how “impossible” the problem. Sol’s reputation for cajoling and prodding engineers to create smaller, more reliable, less power-hungry clandestine devices matched his personal uncompromising standard for technical excellence. I was unaware of the seriousness of Sol’s declining health when he asked in late 2006 if he could read a draft of Spycraft. After several days, Sol returned the manuscript pages with critical, positive, and invariably insightful annotations. His admonishment that OTS “engineers deserve as much ink as the ops guys” resulted in Chapter 15, which we dedicate to Sol’s memory.
Without the contributions of Mick, Paul, and Sol, three OTS giants and American patriots, Spycraft could not have been written.
Several friends assisted us in obtaining artifacts, providing photographs, or validating information regarding operations of other intelligence services. These included Michael Hasco; Dan Mulvenna, retired RCMP Security Service officer; Gerald “Jerry” Richards, retired FBI Special Agent and Soviet tradecraft specialist; and Peter Earnest, Executive Director, International Spy Museum. Additional valuable contributions were made by Pete Burns, Chase Brandon, Brian Kelley, Jim LeCroy, Bill Mosby, Jonna Mendez, Tony Mendez, Pat Merriweather, Harry Price, and the history preservationists Nick Benigsen, Lyle Hunger, and Mr. “X” and friends. The CIA curator Toni Hiley and her assistant Carolyn Reams facilitated our access to images from the CIA’s museum collection. Through the generosity of Richard Lovell, we acquired papers of his father, the late Stanley Lovell, who directed research and development for the Office of Strategic Services.
Hayden Peake, author, historian, and curator of the CIA’s Historical Intelligence Collection, is the dean of intelligence bibliophiles. His wise counsel, literary criticism, and encouragement proved invaluable. Former CIA Chief Historian Ben Fischer has been a friend and contributor to this project from its inception. Danny Biederman, Dr. David Crown, Jack Downing, and Bill Mulligan urged us to persevere when it seemed the project might not succeed. Critiques by Jim Gosler, Richard Lawrence, and Lou Mehrer on early drafts provided helpful commentary on the text from perspectives outside the OTS family. As demands to devote more time to Spycraft increased, Paul Johnson, former Director of the CIA’s Center for the Study of Intelligence, and Nick Dujmovic, head of the CIA’s oral history program, graciously offered schedule flexibility that allowed me to complete this manuscript while concurrently fulfilling my CSI assignments.
The CIA’s publication review staff, particularly Paul B. and Kate M., information review officer Suzanne Fleischauer, and Publication Review Board member Larry Boteler worked professionally with the authors to resolve potential issues of classification. Herb Briick assisted us in obtaining, under the Freedom of Information Act, several historical documents and images seen for the first time in Spycraft. Michael Morell, the CIA’s Associate Deputy Director, encouraged our efforts