Spycraft - Melton [96]
Through these electronic miracles, everyday consumer electronics could now be made smaller, less power hungry, and more reliable. For clandestine operations, the transistor’s impact would prove equally profound. The same transistor—“solid state”—technology that allowed teenagers to listen to Elvis at the beach would provide the foundation for new capabilities in audio surveillance operations. Yet the transistor solved only half the problem for the CIA. TSS still lacked the necessary in-house laboratory facilities and engineering expertise to conduct basic development work, and the funding to pay for it. In response, TSS revived the OSS model of forming classified partnerships with industry and academia to develop technology, then contracting with companies to design and produce the systems.
In the booming postwar economy, competition was keen and companies were adding R&D engineers as fast as they could in an effort to feed industrial and consumer markets hungry for innovation. The decision to use classified contracts with private industry seemed a practical way to get the maximum “bang for their buck,” or in this case, the smallest, most efficient audio devices for the dollar. TSS eagerly adapted new technologies from commercial research as well as spin-offs from the larger government programs to meet its operational requirements.
Because of the premium placed on reliability for clandestine devices, TSS bet that conventional and proven equipment, like transistors, microphones, and recorders, which worked well in the consumer and commercial markets, could be repackaged, reduced in size, and adapted to covert use. The same assembly processes used for making consumer products could also be redirected toward the production of spy gear.26
Companies that lent staff to the OSS during World War II were now asked by TSS for access to their proprietary research and their best engineering minds. At times it was a tough sell, just as it had been for Stanley Lovell. TSS was not as lucrative as the “big ticket” items like satellites, radar systems, missiles, submarines, and airplanes. The needs of TSS were relatively small—decimal dust—compared to billion-dollar military and satellite procurement programs. The CIA did not need production runs of 10,000 or 50,000 units. Fifty or a hundred small, reliable devices were enough and the companies could not publicly acknowledge or promote what had been produced. For large companies, in particular, these contracts and their limited production runs were marginally profitable in the short term and offered little potential commercial payoff over the long term.
Budgetary troubles severely limited TSS’s audio program in the early years. One tech remembers the entire budget for worldwide audio equipment in 1956 was under $200,000, enough to buy a few tape recorders, microphones, and some other commercial equipment, but not nearly enough to mount either an effective engineering effort or aggressive operations. Many of the new prototype devices developed by private contractors and research projects never left the labs because TSS simply did not have the funds to order even a small production run.
Then in 1957, a CIA Inspector General (IG) report addressed the issue of whether audio surveillance would be a core CIA mission and a primary future method of collecting intelligence. The report urged the DDP and TSS to make audio operations a “top priority” and forever changed TSS’s financial picture.27
A post-World War II engineer working in the audio equipment branch at the time, Tom Grant recalled that soon after the IG’s report was issued, he received an unannounced visit from a senior CIA official. Asked about the state of audio