Spycraft - Melton [4]
Six weeks following the conversation with Cohen, after separate interviews with the Executive Director, Nora Slatkin, and the Deputy Director for Science and Technology, Dr. Ruth David, both recent appointees to their positions, I became Deputy Director, OTS.1 Evidently, they agreed with Cohen that the job required a breadth of operational and management experience more than a technical degree.
“OTS is America’s ‘Q’, sort of,” said “Roy,” in welcoming me to the office and offering no apology for the reference to the gadget master of James Bond movies. Roy had spent his first ten years at OTS in the forgery shop working as a “document authenticator,” making certain that CIA-produced travel and alias-identity documents were flawless in print type, color, design, and paper texture. Now, as a senior staff officer for Robert Manners, the Director of OTS, he had drawn the task of providing the new guy with a much-needed CliffsNotes version of the office. “I say ‘sort of,’” Roy continued, “because, unlike the movies, if one of our visas doesn’t pass muster at an immigration checkpoint, or one of our concealments accidentally opens and spills its contents, we can’t reshoot the scene. If people are arrested or get killed because of our mistakes, they stay in jail for a long time or they really die.”
Roy also made it clear that America’s “Q” consisted of not one scientific genius or a handful of eccentric inventors, but a large contingent of technical officers, engineers, scientists, technicians, craftsmen, artists, and social scientists deployed throughout the world and cross-trained in operational tradecraft. OTS had a hand in every aspect of the CIA’s spy gear from design and development through testing, deployment, and maintenance.
“Now, this is what’s really important,” Roy said, beginning the comprehensive briefing with a slow, deliberate delivery that conveyed no-nonsense seriousness. “We consider ourselves part of the Directorate of Operations as much as a part of the DS&T. Whatever the DO stations and case officers need for technical support, we do everything in our power to deliver. When we go to the field to do a job, there’s no question who we work for—the chief of station.”
Roy explained that the techs did much more than build and deliver spy gear. “Usually we are right there with the case officer or the agent, at the user’s side in the operation. We train agents, install equipment, test systems, and repair stuff that breaks. We take the same risks as case officers—share the same emotion of accomplishment or otherwise. Over the course of his career, the tech becomes involved in more operations and meets more agents than many case officers.”
Roy described OTS’s five primary organizational elements, or “groups,” as these were designated. The largest was a covert communications, or “covcom,” group with a name that described its function. This group developed systems for agents and case officers to communicate covertly and securely. Secret writing, short-range radio, subminiature cameras, special film, high-frequency broadcasts, satellite communications, and microdots were all included in covcom. A second OTS group designed and deployed audio bugs, telephone taps, and visual surveillance systems. These techs were often on the road up to fifty percent of the time, traveling from country to country, as their services were required. The third group, called on for special missions that may include support to paramilitary operations, included a mixture of technical and “soft science” capabilities. This group produced tracking devices and sensors, conducted weapons training and analysis, analyzed foreign espionage equipment, performed operational psychological assessments, and built special-use batteries.