Spycraft - Melton [38]
“I came in as part of Gottlieb’s program to hire these young people with fresh ideas just out of graduate school. I remember sitting in my first SW [secret writing] course. Several of us newly hired chemists started giggling at the 1930s technology the instructor was giving us,” said one chemist. “We’d sneak in a question, ‘Does this d-orbital . . . ?’ The instructor didn’t know the term ‘d-orbital’ [an advanced chemistry term related to the subatomic properties of certain substances, such as crystals and metals].7 I’m picking on one guy on one point, but that illustrates the level on which the chemical technology existed.”
The new hires had a profound impact on TSD’s technology. Young chemists improved formulas and processes for SW that had remained unchanged for decades. The SW chemists referred to themselves as “lemon squeezers” in acknowledgment of one of the oldest SW ingredients—lemon juice.
“In World War II secret messages were prepared with a wooden stick and a little bit of water-based ink,” explained an SW chemist. “The agent would dissolve the ink chemical, stir it around, take a small piece of cotton, wrap it around the end of the stick and dip it in. He had to first steam the paper, then write the message, re-steam the paper, and then press the paper flat. Finally, he had to write a cover message over the top of the secret writing.”
Although not particularly complex, the laborious multistep process required time to complete, and given the limited privacy in many apartments behind the Iron Curtain, was not very practical. “About the time I was hired, we understood the Russians and the British did it a little bit differently and much more securely. My guess is that’s when management finally realized we were far behind the curve in SW chemistry,” said the chemist. “Why are we using this liquid stuff? Why couldn’t we do it dry?”
If the operations officers were not immediately aware of the changes taking place, there were good reasons. TSD had not been moved into CIA’s new Headquarters Building at Langley in 1961 with the other DDP divisions. Rather, in 1965, TSD consolidated many, but not all, of its functions into three buildings, Central, East, and South, at the original CIA complex in Washington, D.C., on E Street on Medicine Hill next to the State Department. The TSD chief and deputy chief occupied offices formerly used by Dulles and other CIA directors. The consolidation improved communications among the techs but required a six-mile trip from South Building to Langley for the techs to meet with case officers.
By the late-1960s, Gottlieb’s focus on hiring engineers and scientists, combined with adequate funding from the DDP and revolutionary technology, had transformed TSD. In audio surveillance and secret writing, the technical advances produced new capabilities to meet technical support requirements in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and much of Asia. The exceptions were China, the Soviet Union, the Soviet Bloc, and Cuba—“denied area operations” countries where direct access to targets was nearly impossible and internal security strict. Yet, outside of the Vietnam War, these were the countries of highest priority for U.S. intelligence. A major initiative to make technology that would work in the toughest environments was demanded.
The Soviet Union presented a special set of operational problems. One involved the very technology that could help operations. The KGB, under its chief Yuri Andropov, fielded one of the most pervasive counterintelligence services imaginable. By virtue of its primary mission “to protect the Revolution,” the KGB regarded the Soviet citizenry, foreigners, and emerging consumer technologies