Spycraft - Melton [49]
As head of TSD, Gottlieb began shaking things up inside the Division. He instituted a program of daily operational briefings in a conference area that became known as “the situation room.” “Every afternoon beginning at about four, the bosses had to go to the situation room,” recalled a chemist. “On one wall hung a huge map of the world with pins representing a tech, somewhere, doing something operational. Those responsible for secret writing would not normally hear about audio because the individual operations and targets were compartmented. But with this briefing, TSD chiefs were forced to think about the problems and requirements faced in other disciplines.”
Gottlieb had little tolerance for personality differences or rivalries within the Division. When long-simmering tensions between two TSD chiefs showed no signs of dissipating, he put them in the same office. “They shared a small office, their desks faced each other, head to head,” recalled a TSD staff member. “Sid was quoted as saying, ‘They may refuse to talk to each other, but by God, they’re going to sit there and look at each other all day.’” Gottlieb’s personal attention to the TSD “family” became legendary. He called staff and officers on their birthdays and remembered spouses and hobbies. “It sounds hokey, but he had a touch with that kind of thing,” said a TSD chemist. “It came across as, ‘The boss knows me.’”
As TSD and Soviet Russia Division were beginning to mesh internally, a bureaucratic and political turf war raged among the CIA’s senior officers. From its inception, TSD had been a part of the Agency’s operational directorate, but with the formation of the Directorate of Research in 1962, the organizational position of TSD became a matter of debate.1 DCI John McCone believed that all Agency technical capabilities should be centralized. Conversely, Richard Helms, Deputy Director for Plans at the time, opposed moving TSD to the new directorate and argued successfully that operations needed a technical component “as their right arm.” Helms then became DCI, and, for the next decade, TSD remained in the operational directorate.
President Nixon moved to replace Helms by nominating James Schlesinger in December 1972 as the successor. Schlesinger became DCI in February 1973 and almost immediately initiated a major reorganization of the Agency. TSD was realigned from the DO to the DS&T.2 The move also brought TSD a new name: Office of Technical Service (OTS) and a new chief from the DS&T, John McMahon. Gottlieb retired in May 1973.3
The internal turbulence was soon matched by controversy on Capitol Hill. When OSS veteran William Colby followed Schlesinger as DCI, political clamor about the CIA’s activities in the 1950s and 1960s erupted.4 In December of 1974, The New York Times’ investigative journalist Seymour Hersh revealed evocative CIA “crypts” (cryptonyms), like MHCHAOS and MKULTRA, and described past operations within the United States.5 One of the most damaging revelations was the Agency’s involvement, along with the FBI, in opening the mail of U.S. citizens.6 As a result, both Congress and the Ford administration conducted investigations. The Church Committee in the Senate, the Pike Commission in the House of Representatives, and the presidential-appointed Rockefeller Commission each examined past CIA activities deemed illegal, improper, or misguided.7
Intent on making a full disclosure, Colby released sensitive and previously closely held operational details referred to as the Agency’s “family jewels.”8 Ordered by Schlesinger, the “family jewels” documents had been hastily compiled in 1973 during the Watergate inquiries. Colby made the highly classified material available to a Senate committee headed by Frank Church. He then unintentionally provided an impromptu visual coup for the Church Committee on September 16, 1975,