Spycraft - Melton [34]
CHAPTER 5
Bring in the Engineers
Warfare is no longer a matter of chivalry but of subversion, and
subversion has its own, special arsenal of tools and weapons. Only
Research and Development is capable of creating such an arsenal . . .
—Stanley Lovell writing to Allen Dulles in 1951
When Seymour Russell took the helm of TSD in the summer of 1962, no one doubted his disappointment with the assignment. For Russell, a highly regarded and ambitious Clandestine Service operations officer, an assignment outside one of the geographic divisions was almost certainly a detour in a fast-tracked career. After a series of impressive successes in the field as a case officer and station chief, Russell had every reason to expect an assignment as Division Chief overseeing operations in Western Europe or Asia, or even heading up all CIA operations as Deputy Director for Plans.
“Seymour Russell lived operations,” said a TSD officer who became one of his top lieutenants. “He made no secret that he didn’t want the TSD job. He wanted a senior job in the DDP.” While Technical Services was a “division” in the DDP, it did not have the status of the six area divisions with their geographic responsibilities, such as the Far East, Africa, or Soviet Russia.
Joining Russell on the new TSD management team were his deputy, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, and Richard Krueger as Chief of Research and Development. A chemist by training, Gottlieb was known internally for directing some of the Agency’s most sensitive research under the MKULTRA program. Gottlieb arrived at Langley through a circuitous career path. He entered government service in 1944 by way of the Department of Agriculture, followed by a stint at the Food and Drug Administration, and then a spot at the University of Maryland before joining the Agency in 1951. After running a small, dozen-person chemistry division inside the Technical Services Staff for six years in the mid-1950s, he took a two-year assignment in Germany before returning to Washington in 1959 to head the TSS Research and Development program.
Krueger, who had been the young tech who installed the secret microphones and recorders in Dulles’s office and served as the DCI’s technical tutor, then moved on to the CIA’s U-2 and radar programs. Now, steeped in the science of big technology, he was returning to the basics of espionage tradecraft.
Barely a decade old, TSD had expanded from fewer than fifty technicians in 1951 to an office of several hundred engineers, craftsmen, scientists, psychologists, artists, printers, and technical specialists. After 1962, with the formation of a separate CIA Directorate of Research, TSD existed solely to support operations, with 20 percent of its staff assigned to a network of forward-deployed bases overseas. With the exception of “denied areas” such as the USSR and China, these dispersed technical specialists could be summoned to any part of the world to provide immediate support to an operations officer. If an operation called for concealing a camera, secreting a microphone in the office of a target, or installing a phone tap, the tech could provide it, install it, or fashion a custom version from “off-the-shelf ” parts. If something didn’t work, the tech could repair it. Moreover, if it still did not function, the tech could figure out a “work around” from whatever materials were at hand.
Among newer case officers, the techs were becoming prized for their ingenuity as well as their engineering skills in the field. But there were serious limitations. Many other officers, while not exactly technophobes, did not fully embrace technology. Operations were generally conducted using World War II tradecraft refined by personal experience. When TSD techs were brought in for their expertise or gadgets, their assistance was often not viewed as critical for either the successful day-to-day agent operations or an ops officer’s career. “It was nice to have the techs there when we needed them, but