Spycraft - Melton [99]
Grant’s entrance into spying was typical of that first class. In 1952, he graduated from an electronics school in Kansas City and found a good job as a video engineer at the New Orleans television station WDSU. Then, a few days after receiving his draft notice, whether coincidentally or with other knowledge, a CIA recruiter called with an offer. Although he had turned down the recruiter once before, Grant now responded enthusiastically, took the job, and went on to serve in TSS, TSD, and OTS for more than thirty years.
The intelligence contribtution of techs like Grant, who thrived on fixing and experimenting with electronics, was imperfectly understood by the Agency’s senior management. Dr. Herbert Scoville, the Deputy Director for Research in 1962 and 63, reportedly referred to TSD as “those tinkerers” at a staff meeting. The patronizing label received wide circulation within TSD and served to reinforce the techs’ identification with the Directorate of Plans rather than with the new Directorate of Research.32
There was virtually no legacy of experience and TSS engineers and technicians received little or no formal training in audio operations. Whatever clandestine expertise they acquired occurred on the job. Many of these techs were technically intuitive and given to modifying consumer electronics for their clandestine work.
On an assignment overseas in the early 1960s, at a time when public address systems were often built into classrooms, offices, and hotels, a newly deployed tech realized the job of bugging every room in a large hotel was beyond the scope of a single person. However, within hours he had jerry-rigged a small circuit that turned the rooms’ wall-mounted speakers into passable microphones that picked up conversations at the flip of a switch.33 The innovation had security advantages beyond efficiency since the room speakers (usually used for announcements and fire alarms) were part of the woodwork and ignored by patrons.
Wall-mounted speakers were not the only type of in-place speakers whose wiring could be reversed. Television sets and table radios could be wired so that their speakers, when not in use, were turned into microphones. The techs could use televisions and radios as concealments for small microphones hidden behind the cloth or grill in front of the speaker. With the transmitter’s circuitry masked by existing wiring, the audio device drew power whenever the set was plugged into an electrical outlet.
When a tech was directed to bug an apartment but could not enter it nor drill through the wall or ceiling to create an air passage, the solution came in the form of a contact microphone. Working on the principle that all hard surfaces in a room vibrate in the presence of voices and noise, placing a sensitive contact microphone on the reverse side of a wall or floor would pick up these vibrations and feed them to an amplifier and tape recorder. The design of the mic was similar to a traditional phonograph cartridge with the needle removed. The tech could hollow out a small furrow in the floor of the apartment above the target, place the microphone in the groove, and cover it with putty to eliminate ambient vibrations.
“Audio techs had to have a little larceny in their hearts to master skillsneeded in the field, including picking locks, duplicating keys, tapping phones, and surreptitious entry, to gain access to the target sites. Did we do anything illegal?” Grant recalled. “I guess, most of it.”
MAKING THE KEY IMPRESSION
Use of a Key Impressioning Kit was often the first step in copying original or master keys for surreptitious entry into buildings and rooms.
Arriving in South America in 1958, an audio tech prepared for an operation to bug the trade office of an Eastern Bloc country. These government-controlled trade offices, functioning primarily outside the diplomatic community, posed as Western-style commercial companies