Spycraft. Part 2

When the spike, still loaded with the one-time-pad and commo instructions, arrived back at Langley, the receiving CIA officer put it in his office safe. Several months pa.s.sed before he got around to returning it to TSD. As he walked into the lab, a Geiger counter sitting on a nearby shelf sounded. The spike registered as highly radioactive.

Ill.u.s.tration showing the emplacement of a hollow-spike concealment at a dead drop site in a park or wooded area.

The investigation that followed concluded that the KGB had entered the diplomat's safe, removed the spike, extracted the contents, and impregnated the one-time pad with cobalt 60. It was estimated that the OTP contained enough radioactive material that a standard Geiger counter could register its presence through a brick wall. "That kind of experience makes counterintelligence very real," said the officer in whose safe the spike had been stored. "When all of a sudden you realize you've been sitting eighteen inches away from a device emitting radiation for months, you understand what the Soviets are capable of. Anyway, the Agency's Office of Medical Services gave me a lot of close attention for the next ten years."12 For a decade after Penkovsky's death the combined intense pressure from the KGB and scrutiny by the Agency's own Counterintelligence (CI) staff caused a virtual cessation of agent operations in the Soviet Union. Headquarters placed severe limitations on recruiting and handling agents inside the USSR. Field officers could not instigate or engage in any operational activity without prior Headquarters review and approval. While officers could express opinions, by saying, for instance, "We don't like that drop site because . . . ," Headquarters made all final decisions.

Given such restrictions, recruiting agents in countries bordering the Soviet Union became the priority focus, but even those opportunities were so infrequent that any reasonable lead merited immediate attention. In 1968, a Russian-speaking case officer a.s.signed to Headquarters received orders to make an immediate, unexpected a trip to Helsinki. There was a possibility that a Soviet target would become available. The officer waited in vain for a month in Helsinki for the Soviet to arrive, then returned home empty-handed. There was no other choice. With so few prospects, any potential opportunity received urgent attention.

Consequently, defectors, emigres, and legal travelers to the USSR became important sources of intelligence. But these a.s.sets were, almost by definition, often far removed from the political and military centers of power or technical inst.i.tutes. Only a spy near the center of power-given the ability to communicate securely with his handlers-offered the potential for a reliable stream of quality intelligence.

A tightly held secret among the elite of the CIA's Soviet Russia Division and Counterintelligence staff was the reality that neither the United States nor its allies could confidently recruit and securely handle Soviet agents unless they were able to travel outside the USSR. Frustration over Moscow's severely constrained operational environment remained with officers long after they retired. "I was in Moscow for two years in the mid-sixties following the loss of Penkovsky, and to my knowledge, we unloaded only one dead drop during that entire period," said a veteran case officer. "In those twenty-four months I never had a 'sit-down' dinner or a private visit with a nonofficial Soviet. I spoke good Russian but was never invited to a Russian's home. I traveled all over the country, and the only contacts I had were with people who, the minute they found out I was with the American government, either literally ran or turned their back on me and walked away out of fear."

Those occupying senior positions at Langley shared the frustrations felt by CIA officers stationed in Moscow. "Our operations were criticized both by people who thought we were being duped and those who thought we were too timid," recalled a Moscow hand. "There were others who thought it [running agents] wasn't worth doing because the U-2 and satellites could gather intelligence just as well."

"Soviet intelligence is over-confident, over-complicated, and over-estimated," wrote Allen Dulles in his 1963 book, The Craft of Intelligence. The Craft of Intelligence. Published the year following Penkovsky's arrest, the a.s.sertion was more bravado than fact, as Dulles no doubt had full knowledge of the situation in Russia at the time. Published the year following Penkovsky's arrest, the a.s.sertion was more bravado than fact, as Dulles no doubt had full knowledge of the situation in Russia at the time.13 Dulles, however, was not blind to the potential of technology. Nearly a decade earlier, in the winter of 1954, a twenty-seven-year-old Technical Services Staff (TSS) officer received an odd proposition from the TSS chief, Willis "Gib" Gibbons. "He asked whether I was game for taking on an unusual job. I asked for a better description than that and, of course, didn't get one," the officer remembers.

The a.s.signment turned out to be that of a technical tutor for Dulles, who had been appointed CIA Director by President Eisenhower in February of 1953. Dulles was not an unknown to the young tech. The two had met the previous autumn when the tech worked on another unusual job for the DCI's security detail. As part of the construction of the new DCI suite, the tech installed several covert audio devices, including microphones in the ceiling hardwired to recorders in the security offices. He also installed a secret b.u.t.ton on the DCI's desk to summon a secretary should a visitor outlast his welcome.14 An intelligence officer of the "old school," in which clandestine activity was conducted "nose-to-nose" or using easily understood devices, such as dead drops and concealments, Dulles realized that he was now involved in a technically complex world. Increasingly surrounded by engineers, including his deputy, Air Force General Charles P. Cabell, Dulles was determined to keep his knowledge relevant. He seemed to sense, even at this early stage, the advances in technology would shape Cold War intelligence as well as the CIA itself.

"Apparently Cabell stepped to the fore whenever anything technical came up, and Dulles didn't like to be overshadowed," the staff officer recalled. "The DCI wanted a technical education and needed it quickly. Basically, he was uncertain and somewhat afraid of the jargon-that sort of thing."

As with many of his generation, Dulles was ill adept, if not ill at ease, with even simple technology, including his office telephone and intercom system. Born in 1893, he was part of the generation that bridged the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and witnessed the unfolding of technological miracles of a "modern world." His generation was the first to experience the emergence of technology in daily life, in which the underlying science is neither intuitively apparent nor easily understood without some technical ac.u.men.

The young engineer a.s.signed as Dulles's tutor was only three years out of college, and had a degree in physics and electro-mechanical systems. As he had done several times when making the DCI's audio installations, he walked the two miles from the Technical Service Staff's covert building on 14th Street near the Department of Agriculture to Dulles's office on the second floor of South Building at 2430 E Street. Perched on a modest rise of land called "Medicine Hill," the facility was a hand-me-down from the U.S. Navy. Several scattered buildings had sprung up over the years within the small fenced compound, which had also been the final Headquarters for the OSS.15 First home to the U.S. Naval Observatory, it then served as the Naval Museum of Hygiene, and the Naval Medical School with hospital facilities for sick officers. Now, in the mid-fifties, the complex was again pressed into service for a "spy agency," though, by current standards, security was surprisingly relaxed. First home to the U.S. Naval Observatory, it then served as the Naval Museum of Hygiene, and the Naval Medical School with hospital facilities for sick officers. Now, in the mid-fifties, the complex was again pressed into service for a "spy agency," though, by current standards, security was surprisingly relaxed.

"When I first went to see Dulles, I remember particularly the women who worked for him. They were an odd a.s.sortment. They struck me as being very grandmotherly old biddies but, in fact, were the sharpest creatures you would ever meet," the technical tutor recalled. "They gave this very matronly appearance. They seemed thirty-five or forty years older than me. I was twenty-seven at the time and had an idea that they were somehow frail, elderly ladies. But once a man came to the office whom they knew intended to do bodily harm. He was one of St. Elizabeth's [the nearby Washington Psychiatric Hospital] 'walk aways.' I watched them disarm the fellow, who had a pistol. They talked to him very calmly, very politely, and all of a sudden a big hulking security guy was behind him; then it was over quickly." Inside the inner office, the tech found Dulles sitting behind an imposing desk. Bespectacled, gray-haired, and dressed in rough Scottish tweeds, he looked very much like the headmaster of a very good boarding school or a Wall Street lawyer at a prestigious firm (a job he had, in fact, once held). "I went in and introduced myself," the TSS staffer recalled. "I asked him what he wanted to know, exactly, and he said, 'I don't have the slightest idea, just start broad.' So, we talked about physics, and we talked about chemistry."

Over the next nine months, the tech and the DCI engaged in nearly two dozen sessions. Dulles, ever the spymaster, was effectively debriefing the junior engineer. What started out with principles of pure science soon narrowed to specific questions or requested tutorials regarding particular technologies, such as Doppler radar or sonar. "In hindsight, I know this was at a time when he and the Air Force were arguing about the U-2. I don't doubt that his deputy, General Cabell, was pushing the Air Force view, rather than Edwin Land's view, which was more aggressive as to what could be done," said the engineer. "Perhaps Dulles was beginning to feel that he was being cut out."

Land, founder of Polaroid, was heading an intelligence subpanel of distinguished scientists on long-range missile development. He, along with Ma.s.sachusetts Inst.i.tute of Technology president James Killian, proposed a technologically ambitious overhead reconnaissance role for the CIA while the Air Force was advocating a more conservative approach. In the end, President Eisenhower approved plans for the more advanced plane championed by Land and Killian, eventually code-named U-2. The project was put under CIA control and the aircraft designed by the legendary Clarence "Kelly" Johnson at the Lockheed "Skunk Works" outside Los Angeles, California.

Dulles began his scientific push by forming the CIA Research Board in 1953. Comprised of prominent scientists and business leaders, members of the Research Board included Land and Rear Admiral C. M. Bolster (ret.) of General Tire and Rubber Company, with Navy Rear Admiral Luis de Florez serving as chairman. "They'd come in for a day or so, and Dulles would entertain them at the Alibi Club," said the Advisory Board's secretary at the time. "Many of the sessions were very informal. He-Dulles-liked the informality. Once we had oysters, and I mean they brought in bushels, put them on the table and everyone pitched in, with a trash can next to the table and plenty of beer."

It is not difficult to imagine Dulles's likely methodology. As the case officer, Dulles was debriefing and building networks-essentially conducting an intelligence collection operation on the giants of industry and the "technologists" driving the aeros.p.a.ce and electronics revolutions.

If Dulles's pursuit of technical briefings seemed prescient, he was not alone. Other prominent national security experts saw substantial opportunities to use technology for intelligence objectives. In 1955, Air Force general and World War II hero James H. Doolittle, working at the request of President Eisenhower, led a small team in preparing a confidential report on the state of America's intelligence capabilities.16 The sixty-nine-page report took just eight weeks to complete, and its conclusions sounded an alarm: .

The usable [intelligence] information we are obtaining is still far short of our needs . . . [Therefore] the U.S. should [utilize] every possible scientific and technical avenue of approach to the intelligence problem . . . We must develop effective espionage and counterespionage services and must learn to subvert, sabotage, and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated, and more effective methods than those used against us.

Whether Doolittle sensed that technology could transform human spying, or concluded, as did a growing number of scientific thinkers, that technology applied to intelligence collection could replace traditional spying, is moot. The intelligence strategy of America would swing toward big technology programs. Technical collection-early satellite photography, spy planes, and signal monitoring-born in the 1950s and nurtured in the subsequent decades, soon became the focus for America's intelligence investment, beginning with the Corona satellite program. This was "Big Technology" done in a big way, and with big budgets.17 Corona, a photoreconnaissance satellite conceived in 1946 by the Rand Corporation, was launched in February 28, 1959. The first flight failed, as did the next eleven attempts. On the thirteenth test launch, the low-orbiting satellite was a success and its engineering payload recovered. Then, on August 18, 1960, the fourteenth Corona test launch took images of the USSR from s.p.a.ce and, the following day, successfully ejected the film canister over the Pacific Ocean for retrieval by plane in midair.18 Carried within the canister were more than 3,000 feet of exposed film that captured a million square miles of the Soviet Union, providing intelligence officials with their first look at vast outlying areas of Russia. There could be little doubt that U.S. intelligence had dramatically changed since August of 1949 when the Soviets detonated their first nuclear device. Then, intelligence a.n.a.lysts rummaged through Herbert Hoover's Presidential archives at Stanford University, a collection dating back to the former President's days as a mining engineer, looking for a map of the Ural Mountain region where the blast occurred.19 Now, with the satellite pictures, a.n.a.lysts had current images of precise areas of interest. Now, with the satellite pictures, a.n.a.lysts had current images of precise areas of interest.

As Big Technology, with its big budget satellites and aircraft began operating against the Soviet Union, cla.s.sic tradecraft struggled for relevance. The Big Technology programs attracted scientists, inspired technical creativity, and pushed engineering, literally and figuratively, to new heights. Satellites in the skies were viewed as less susceptible to the kinds of risks and unpredictability that plagued spies on the streets. In the minds of some, "technical collection" was untainted by the moral, ethical, and diplomatic entanglements a.s.sociated with human espionage.

Satellites would not be arrested in the hallways of Moscow apartment buildings nor were they likely to cause international incidents. Satellites had no motive for betrayal and did not require rea.s.surance and flattery. Moreover, if the satellites that delivered images cost billions of dollars, it was not because of some foreigner's personal greed. Yes, satellites might have mechanical failures, but they did not quit working out of fear or disillusionment. They did not violate the territorial integrity of the Soviet Union while photographing facilities whose guards would shoot a trespa.s.ser. As long as they had fresh film, fresh batteries, and a cloudless sky, they delivered the otherwise unattainable: nonpoliticized data.

There were, to be sure, limitations. A satellite could capture the image of missiles deployed to remote areas, but seemingly endless spools of film and powerful lenses could not divine the intentions of Soviet leadership. It could see submarines in their pens at the Severodvinsk naval base, but could not penetrate the roofs of government labs in Moscow and Leningrad to record images of the future weapon systems spread out across the drawing boards of engineers. Nor could it see into the minds of the Politburo or capture the complex internecine dynamics of Kremlin leadership. Only an agent inside the Kremlin could do that.

Pictures neither lie nor reveal the complete story. With the early successes of the photoreconnaissance satellites, American leadership also desperatelyneeded to know more about what Soviet leaders were thinking and planning. At no time was this more publicly apparent than during the 1960 U.S. presidential election.

Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kennedy charged that Republicans were insufficiently attentive to national defense. How could the Republican administration, asked the Democrats, have allowed the United States to fall so woefully behind in this critical area? Backed by imprecise Pentagon estimates and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's tough talk, the issue touched a nerve with American voters. Eisenhower, of course, was basing his moderate Soviet policy on secret U-2 photographs, which would support his position, if made public. The U-2 photographs appeared to provide convincing reb.u.t.tal to the argument that the Republicans were weak on national defense, but without credible corroboration, their interpretation was hotly debated. National Intelligence Estimates of Soviet missiles showed an alarming increase in capability and numbers, with the U.S. lagging behind. 20 20 The phrase "missile gap" entered the national vocabulary. The phrase "missile gap" entered the national vocabulary.

What the American public heard were Khrushchev's exaggerated claims and Kennedy's allegations against the Republicans. Two years later, intelligence provided by Penkovsky, combined with satellite photographs, prompted a downward revision of the official estimate of Soviet missiles during Kennedy's presidency.21 Knowing Soviet capabilities with certainty was impossible. A totalitarian state such as the USSR possessed a large advantage over an open society in its centralized control of media and citizens. Within the Soviet Union, even road maps and railroad schedules were routinely falsified. Conversely, in any edition, The New York Times, The New York Times, the the Washington Post, Washington Post, or the or the Wall Street Journal Wall Street Journal provided more reliable accounts for the Soviets on the thoughts and motives of the American leadership than U.S. intelligence could tell the American President about events within the Soviet Union. Farm reports, stock prices, economic statistics, and dozens of other sources of information, freely and widely available in the United States, revealed data that the USSR either held as a state secret or purposely distorted. provided more reliable accounts for the Soviets on the thoughts and motives of the American leadership than U.S. intelligence could tell the American President about events within the Soviet Union. Farm reports, stock prices, economic statistics, and dozens of other sources of information, freely and widely available in the United States, revealed data that the USSR either held as a state secret or purposely distorted.

The Iron Curtain was a geopolitical one-way mirror. Soviet leadership could see out if they wanted, but American leadership, desperate for the smallest glimpse, could not see in. During the darkest days of the Cold War, the intentions of the Kremlin leaders remained obscure at best. The placement of Soviet officials on the reviewing stand atop Lenin's mausoleum in Red Square during May Day festivities, combined with whatever grainy photos military attaches could get of the Soviet Army's parade of military equipment, became objects of intense a.n.a.lysis for Western intelligence organizations. Anxious for any information, a.n.a.lysts considered nothing too trivial for scrutiny. The pract.i.tioners who studied such minutia had a professional name, Kremlinologists. Kremlinologists.

However, a small but growing cadre of officers emerged within the CIA who argued that new tradecraft based on advanced technology could be applied to operations on the streets of Moscow just as had been done in the skies above the USSR. These officers, subjected to Soviet counterintelligence tactics behind the Iron Curtain for more than a decade, had acquired a substantial body of operational knowledge that could be used to counter the seemingly invulnerable KGB.22 They argued that if new tradecraft methods, combined with yet-to-be-invented spy gear, were developed and applied selectively, then the KGB's surveillance stranglehold in Moscow could be broken. This post-OSS generation of case officers found eager allies in Seymour Russell, Chief of the Technical Services Division (TSD), and his operationally oriented scientists and engineers. They argued that if new tradecraft methods, combined with yet-to-be-invented spy gear, were developed and applied selectively, then the KGB's surveillance stranglehold in Moscow could be broken. This post-OSS generation of case officers found eager allies in Seymour Russell, Chief of the Technical Services Division (TSD), and his operationally oriented scientists and engineers.23

CHAPTER 5.

Bring in the Engineers

Warfare is no longer a matter of chivalry but of subversion, and subversion has its own, special a.r.s.enal of tools and weapons. Only Research and Development is capable of creating such an a.r.s.enal . . .-Stanley Lovell writing to Allen Dulles in 1951 When Seymour Russell took the helm of TSD in the summer of 1962, no one doubted his disappointment with the a.s.signment. For Russell, a highly regarded and ambitious Clandestine Service operations officer, an a.s.signment outside one of the geographic divisions was almost certainly a detour in a fast-tracked career. After a series of impressive successes in the field as a case officer and station chief, Russell had every reason to expect an a.s.signment as Division Chief overseeing operations in Western Europe or Asia, or even heading up all CIA operations as Deputy Director for Plans.

"Seymour Russell lived operations," said a TSD officer who became one of his top lieutenants. "He made no secret that he didn't want the TSD job. He wanted a senior job in the DDP." While Technical Services was a "division" in the DDP, it did not have the status of the six area divisions with their geographic responsibilities, such as the Far East, Africa, or Soviet Russia.

Joining Russell on the new TSD management team were his deputy, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, and Richard Krueger as Chief of Research and Development. A chemist by training, Gottlieb was known internally for directing some of the Agency's most sensitive research under the MKULTRA program. Gottlieb arrived at Langley through a circuitous career path. He entered government service in 1944 by way of the Department of Agriculture, followed by a stint at the Food and Drug Administration, and then a spot at the University of Maryland before joining the Agency in 1951. After running a small, dozen-person chemistry division inside the Technical Services Staff for six years in the mid-1950s, he took a two-year a.s.signment in Germany before returning to Washington in 1959 to head the TSS Research and Development program.

Krueger, who had been the young tech who installed the secret microphones and recorders in Dulles's office and served as the DCI's technical tutor, then moved on to the CIA's U-2 and radar programs. Now, steeped in the science of big technology, he was returning to the basics of espionage tradecraft.

Barely a decade old, TSD had expanded from fewer than fifty technicians in 1951 to an office of several hundred engineers, craftsmen, scientists, psychologists, artists, printers, and technical specialists. After 1962, with the formation of a separate CIA Directorate of Research, TSD existed solely to support operations, with 20 percent of its staff a.s.signed to a network of forward-deployed bases overseas. With the exception of "denied areas" such as the USSR and China, these dispersed technical specialists could be summoned to any part of the world to provide immediate support to an operations officer. If an operation called for concealing a camera, secreting a microphone in the office of a target, or installing a phone tap, the tech could provide it, install it, or fashion a custom version from "off-the-shelf " parts. If something didn't work, the tech could repair it. Moreover, if it still did not function, the tech could figure out a "work around" from whatever materials were at hand.

Among newer case officers, the techs were becoming prized for their ingenuity as well as their engineering skills in the field. But there were serious limitations. Many other officers, while not exactly technophobes, did not fully embrace technology. Operations were generally conducted using World War II tradecraft refined by personal experience. When TSD techs were brought in for their expertise or gadgets, their a.s.sistance was often not viewed as critical for either the successful day-to-day agent operations or an ops officer's career. "It was nice to have the techs there when we needed them, but if we didn't have their gadgets, we still ran the operation," said one case officer active during the early 1960s. The necessary technologies for miniaturization, low power, and reliable electronics were in their infancy. Both the scientific advances of the 1960s and the leadership of Russelland Dr. Gottlieb would be required before technology and operations would become interdependent.

Russell, who lived for operations, was also one of a handful of senior case operations officers of his generation who understood the potential advantage technology could give to operations. "When you went to one of Russell's stations overseas, you saw good technical skills meshing with ops. He really sucked the techs dry in terms of wanting to know what they could provide and how it was going to happen," said one TSD veteran. "A lot of station chiefs literally didn't want to know that 'tech stuff,' but Russell wanted to know it all."

Over the next four years, the Russell-Gottlieb-Krueger team proved to be an inspired, if unlikely, trio. This combination of a case officer with no scientific experience, a scientist of limited operational experience, and an engineer steeped in Big Technology programs would transform TSD. Eventually, this new organization would play a major role in nearly every significant CIA operation for the remainder of the twentieth century.

Russell wasted no time in exerting his influence on TSD. He conveyed a sense of operational reality and urgency that made the case officer's concerns for recruiting and handling spies a concern for his engineers, while daily advances in technology began to influence his vision of operations.

However, Russell and TSD faced a problem unrelated to technology, that of the tightly compartmented world of the Agency itself. Although TSD was a "global division," its technical officers were rarely privy to the details or scope of the operations they supported. Compartmentation sealed off all but the basic facts of an operation to anyone who did not have an absolute need to know. This constraint was of little consequence if the requirement was to secretly photograph a doc.u.ment or prepare a dead drop container. However, with more sophisticated and flexible technology becoming available, the more the techs knew, the better they could match TSD expertise and technology to the operation.

"This was a place where compartmentation and need to know were at odds," said one case officer. "To perform the task perfectly the tech should know everything. But in our world the techs weren't allowed to know everything. Compartmentalization is a necessary fact of life."

Along with this situation, which separated the tech and the case officer, there also existed a subtle cultural divide. In the DDP, the case officer was the star player. The culture of the DDP had evolved from the OSS. The "Ivy League" image that once prompted derision in the press and the "Oh So Social" sobriquet carried over with the former OSS officers who were among the founding members of the CIA. DCI Allen Dulles had an Ivy League background (Princeton, cla.s.s of 1914) and an a.s.sociation with New York's powerful white-shoe law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell. Richard Helms, later a DCI himself, had attended boarding schools overseas, including the prestigious Swiss prep school Le Rosey, before attending Williams College. OSS head William Donovan, although not from a wealthy family, attended Columbia University (cla.s.s of 1905) and its law school (cla.s.s of 1907). DCI William Colby, the son of an army officer, graduated from Princeton and Columbia University Law School. DCI Bill Casey, who graduated from Fordham University, Catholic University School of Social Work, and Brooklyn Law School, represented the exception that proved the rule.

President Lyndon Johnson may have been thinking of the historical characterization of the so-called blue-blooded case officer when he said, "The CIA is made up of boys whose families sent them to Princeton but wouldn't let them into the family brokerage business."1 Conversely, TSS and later, TSD, included few famous family names or Ivy League bona fides, with the notable exception of Cornelius "Corney" V. S. Roosevelt (grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt), who served as director of TSS/TSD from 1959 to 1962. The reason for this was quite simple. For the most part, the OSS technical and engineering staff returned to their corporate or university laboratories after the war ended in 1945. By 1951, when Allen Dulles authorized the formation of TSS, the Agency turned to state universities, technical colleges, and inst.i.tutes, where engineering programs were emphasized, to hire its first wave of technical officers. 2 2 Typically, these technical recruits had shown a childhood penchant for tinkering that eventually turned into engineering and hard-science degrees. They were often the first or only member of their family to attend college and many came from rural communities in the Midwest and Southwest. They arrived at the CIA seeking technical opportunities and adventure.

It did not take long before these newly minted engineers began delighting in calling operations officers "liberal arts majors." For engineers, this less than flattering term summed up both a case officer's educational background and the imprecise, unscientific nature of agent recruiting and handling.

Case officers, for their part, had their own traditions. In theory, spies are acquired through a methodical process of spotting, a.s.sessing, developing, recruiting, and handling. All of it was usually done person to person. While living in Switzerland during World War II, Allen Dulles met with agents in his well-appointed study.3 Penkovsky was met and debriefed in hotel rooms. Face-to-face meetings between the agent and case officer were common practice. Agents were briefed, debriefed, and tasked in safe houses and out-of-the-way restaurants over leisurely dinners. Penkovsky was met and debriefed in hotel rooms. Face-to-face meetings between the agent and case officer were common practice. Agents were briefed, debriefed, and tasked in safe houses and out-of-the-way restaurants over leisurely dinners.

These meetings built rapport, mutual trust, and personal relationships that often approached friendship. Despite the inherent manipulation, deception, and potential for fatal consequences, the handler and spy worked as a team, with the best case officers also playing the role of a psychologist, cheerleader, banker, confidant, or best friend, depending on the needs of the agent.

Given the limited capabilities of most counterintelligence services after World War II, this process worked well until the 1960s. Highly valued spies such as Pyotr Popov and Penkovsky could use commercial cameras, pa.s.s film to their handlers via dead drops, receive messages in the form of strings of random numbers over a standard shortwave radio, and decrypt those numbers with OTPs like those used by the French or Polish underground in Occupied Europe.

As a result, case officers were generally pa.s.sive toward technology's potential in operations. "We didn't comprehend what was there [technically], and either took a defensive position of operational arrogance or retreated into a sh.e.l.l of saying, 'Look, there's no way I will ever understand what you tech types are doing and if the success of this operation depends on me understanding, then we're just not going to make it,'" remembers one case officer.

For case officers, lacking a clear understanding of technology meant not grasping its potential, while techs ran the danger of either misapplying technology or failing to capitalize on some special advantage. This att.i.tude was especially frustrating for the eager engineers of TSS seeking insight into what was really needed in the field. Highlighting the separateness between operations and technology was the fact that TSD did not receive s.p.a.ce in the new Langley CIA Headquarters building where the DDP operational components resided. Six miles separated TSD's downtown Washington location from Langley, a distance that precluded the professional lubrication of drop-in meetings, cafeteria luncheon conversations, or office gossip.

Russell and Gottlieb, both with operational experience, understood this divide and undertook the task of bridging it. "Clearly there was a cultural division. No question about that. When Sid Gottlieb came back from Germany in 1959 to head TSD's research and development work, his approach was, 'Yes, there is this divide, but it needn't be there. And TSD has to bridge it, because the DDP won't,'" explained a TSD engineer. "Gottlieb was right on the mark." Ultimately, the DDP controlled the operations, the dollars and the manpower, so if TSD was to get the funds and requirements needed to be successful, it had to become part of operations.

One of Gottlieb's first moves was to bring research and development closer to the techs directly supporting operations.4 Less obvious at the time was the significance of the creation of the Directorate of Research in 1962. Less obvious at the time was the significance of the creation of the Directorate of Research in 1962.5 With this decision, R&D supporting the Big Technology of aeros.p.a.ce and satellite programs became independent from the DDP. TSD remained in the DDP with the single mission of operational support, specifically technical support to stations, case officers, and agents. With this decision, R&D supporting the Big Technology of aeros.p.a.ce and satellite programs became independent from the DDP. TSD remained in the DDP with the single mission of operational support, specifically technical support to stations, case officers, and agents.6 Gottlieb and Russell saw a future in which TSD technology would enable operations through new tradecraft devices and techniques. The Big Technology of satellites and photoreconnaissance had proven successful on a large scale in the relatively predictable environment of s.p.a.ce. Now TSD had the opportunity to demonstrate how sophisticated, scaled-down technology could expand the scope of what was possible in the unpredictable environment of street operations.

This ambitious strategy first had to address some immediate and not altogether pleasant realities. Much of the equipment in TSD's inventory was woefully outdated and the technical staff seemed imbalanced toward technicians at the expense of engineers. As late as 1960, most electronic gear available for field deployment was too big, too c.u.mbersome, too unreliable, too complex, and too power hungry. In the decidedly blunt terminology of one scientist of the day, the equipment was "junk."

What Russell and Gottlieb had was largely a "craft and special service boutique" for operations. TSD could provide excellent forged doc.u.ments, quality clandestine printing, and well-made concealments. But that was insufficient to meet the DDP's demands for conducting clandestine operations against the Soviet Union.

"TSD leadership had two mountains to climb. One was the technology, which was pretty bad," said a TSD staffer from the era. "For instance, with secret writing, we were issuing systems that Caesar could have used during the Gallic Wars. We used systems that were developed during the First World War. We weren't taking advantage of post-World War II chemistries; and the opposition, the Soviets, certainly had the capability to detect our existing systems. So, we had to get better technology. Second, we had to convince working level case officers that we had something to contribute. But it [the technology] wasn't on our shelves, so we'd have to develop the new capabilities and the new equipment across the board."

In chemistry, Gottlieb's field, the few academically degreed chemists directing research were trained prior to World War II. Other TSD "chemists" and techs supporting secret writing in the field were former military medics with no professional training. To remedy this problem, Gottlieb and Russell began recruiting university graduates-scientists and engineers, rather than technicians-specifically for R&D. Their strategy was to exploit the current science from university and research centers and package it quickly into viable covert systems.

Russell broke ties with the Agency's Office of Personnel, TSD's traditional source of "new hires," at the urging of his R&D chief, and began sending senior officers to universities to talk to engineers and recruit new graduates. A co-op program was started in which college soph.o.m.ores and juniors were hired for a summer or school term and put to work in a lab. An instant success, the co-op program offered a view into the newest research at the universities and allowed TSD to a.s.sess a potential employee before making a long-term commitment. In a bit of clever bureaucratic maneuvering, the division skirted personnel ceilings by hiring engineers as "contract employees" on two-year contracts. Not counted as permanent CIA staff, they fell outside the personnel ceiling limitation. The contracts could be renewed every two years as long as sufficient funds were available, and TSD always found the dollars.

"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 ill.u.s.trates the level on which the chemical technology existed." I'm picking on one guy on one point, but that ill.u.s.trates 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 with deep suspicion.

For the KGB, even simple technology in the hands of the public was a potential threat to the government and "state security." Virtually every typewriter sold in the Soviet Union, for example, had its fonts sampled on a sheet of paper that was then filed away should the need ever arise to trace the origins of a suspicious doc.u.ment. Complex procedures granting access to copy machines in government offices included signed authorizations and meticulously kept logs of the copies produced.8 Even consumer items commonly available in the West, such as Kodak point-and-shoot cameras, electric appliances, and battery-powered transistor radios, could not be purchased in the USSR. A typical Soviet possessing such Western-made items would a.s.suredly draw KGB attention. Even consumer items commonly available in the West, such as Kodak point-and-shoot cameras, electric appliances, and battery-powered transistor radios, could not be purchased in the USSR. A typical Soviet possessing such Western-made items would a.s.suredly draw KGB attention.

For agents to operate in this security-obsessed environment, with its deep suspicion of technology, TSD would need to develop an array of special cameras, communications equipment, concealments, and countersurveillance devices.

CHAPTER 6.

Building Better Gadgets

The Game is so large that one sees but a little at a time.

-Rudyard Kipling, Kim Russell saw a new role for technology, particularly in its potential for enhancing agent communications. For a spy the greatest danger usually is not stealing a secret, but rather, pa.s.sing it to his handler. Covert communication (known as "covcom") dominated operational planning. Without the means to transfer information securely between agent and handler, espionage could not exist. The most secure covert communication system was an impersonal exchange that separated the agent and case officer by distance, time, place, or some combination of the three.

The tradecraft lexicon is filled with colorful phrases for impersonal exchanges of information. The best-known method, and most widely used, is called dead drop by the CIA, taynik taynik by the Soviets, and dead letter box by the British. by the Soviets, and dead letter box by the British.

Another personal exchange, the brush pa.s.s, requires the agent and handler to walk close enough to each other so that a note or package can be dropped or pa.s.sed quickly and discreetly. The drop might be made into an open shopping bag or handed off folded into the morning's newspaper. The car toss, a variation of the brush pa.s.s, involves throwing a package through the open window of a slowly moving vehicle.

What these pieces of tradecraft have in common is the goal of minimizing the time agent and handler spend in the same s.p.a.ce at the same time. With some techniques, such as with the brush pa.s.s, the time is reduced to a fraction of a second. Nevertheless, even the seemingly insignificant half second required to make a successful brush pa.s.s brings the agent and handler to the same place at the same time. In hostile areas, such as Moscow, mere proximity of two individuals could arouse suspicion. Was it possible that in Moscow, a city of millions, an American would, by chance, b.u.mp shoulders with a leading scientist on a streetcar? The KGB would not believe in such chance encounters. Their view might well have been derived from the legendary New York Yankees catcher, Yogi Berra, who is reputed to have said, "That's too coincidental to be coincidence."

Dead drops, a preferred means of covert communication in denied areas, separate the agent and handler by time, but carry the risk of leaving the package unattended in an environment that could change without warning. A concealment package left at the site could be found by an unwitting pa.s.serby or buried by an unexpected snowstorm. The act of loading or clearing the drop site if it appeared unnatural could draw suspicion.1 Russell, the case officer, now surrounded by engineers, proposed a solution for improved agent communications that was both ingenious and technologically elegant. A TSD audio surveillance engineer remembered receiving an unexpected call from the chief. "Russell called me up one day in early 1963 and said, 'I was just thinking last night: If you compromise your audio operation by telling the agent where a hidden microphone is, he can talk near it and you have a one-way communication system.'"

Soon afterward, techs began suggesting to case officers that audio devices or bugs, previously used exclusively for audio surveillance, could become a one-way communication system if an agent knew he could be heard through a concealed mic and transmitter.2 The result became known as an audio dead drop. In one western European city, TSD techs planted a microphone in a tree in a park. To communicate with his handler, the agent "talked to the tree." "I remember one time, we bugged the exterior of a building, so our guy could pause at the corner of the building, say whatever he had to say and keep on walking," a TSD staffer recalled. "We really got involved in that. Audio dead drops took off like gangbusters once we started, and it all began with Russell." The result became known as an audio dead drop. In one western European city, TSD techs planted a microphone in a tree in a park. To communicate with his handler, the agent "talked to the tree." "I remember one time, we bugged the exterior of a building, so our guy could pause at the corner of the building, say whatever he had to say and keep on walking," a TSD staffer recalled. "We really got involved in that. Audio dead drops took off like gangbusters once we started, and it all began with Russell."

Imagining a dignified diplomat pausing and muttering a few words into a tree trunk seems comical. Yet, the humor is overshadowed by considering how dramatically this new capability expanded the options for communication beyond the chalk marks for signals or loading and unloading dead drops, the level of tradecraft employed by Penkovsky. However, even with the clever audio dead drop, two-way impersonal covert communications inside the Soviet Union remained the prize, a necessary weapon to counter the ma.s.sive security apparatus of the KGB's Second and Seventh Directorates.

Taking on the KGB inside the USSR began modestly when TSD launched operations to identify the postal censorship techniques used by the Soviets to monitor and examine both internal and international mail. In one basic method of covert communication, an ordinary letter with standard text could also contain a hidden message in secret writing. Mixed in with millions of pieces of mail, cover letters with nonalerting descriptions of vacations and family news could be virtually undetectable. Since World War II agents working for U.S. intelligence had routinely written and received hundreds of secret writing messages from most areas of the world. But the Soviet Union was different from "most of the world."

The KGB watched the mail going in and out of the USSR a.s.siduously. Soviet postal censors were well aware of SW techniques, and the KGB un-apologetically opened and inspected the mail of its citizens and foreigners alike. However, since even the KGB could not open, read, and test every single letter, the TSD staff theorized that the Soviets must have censorship protocols. If TSD could understand the systematic organizational sieve that captured and flagged suspicious letters, then they could defeat it.

"For us the question was always: What is the decision process that gets a particular letter routed to the KGB's chemist inside Moscow's Central Post Office? Once that happened, once the letter is suspect, and your guy, whether sender or receiver, is in trouble," said a TSD staffer. "Their chemist may not have confirmed it yet, but there was something, an anomaly, that the first-line postal censor, who is not a chemist, sensed or saw. Why did he pull that letter aside? Why was that one sent over there to the chemist?"

In an exercise called probing, TSD staffers directed the mailing of hundreds of test letters in and out of the Soviet Union with a seemingly endless number of permutations including: date and time of mailing, site of postal box, country of destination, type of letter or postcard, and whether it was written or typed. Probing continued for several years with the letters varying in language, size, and style. Letters were sent from the United States to East European and Russian addresses. Letters were sent from those denied areas to accommodation addresses, known as "AAs," in Europe and the United States.3 Many AAs were the homes of ordinary citizens recruited for the sole purpose of receiving mail from unknown parties. Once the mail was received, the recipient would call a number alerting the Agency of its arrival and requesting pickup. Many AAs were the homes of ordinary citizens recruited for the sole purpose of receiving mail from unknown parties. Once the mail was received, the recipient would call a number alerting the Agency of its arrival and requesting pickup.

The letters were delivered to TSD for examination and a.n.a.lysis. Envelopes were screened for markings, fingerprints, and opening techniques, as well as traces of chemicals that could have been used by the KGB to test for secret writing. Small details, such as the positioning of fingerprints along the perimeter of the paper, revealed valuable clues about the level of scrutiny given a particular letter.

"I traveled to Leningrad and then to Prague, just looking at transit times. One item, like a postcard, came through in about two days; sealed items came through in about two weeks," recalled one member of TSD's probe team. "We began to get a real good feel for what various countries were doing with censorship. The project gave us something solid to take to the Soviet Russia Division officers and recommend, 'Use this technique for mailing from these cities.' We had real postal data that the case officers wanted to hear and could use."

Transit times of letters, postcards, and other commonly mailed items may seem a prosaic detail of intelligence, yet in this way TSD began chipping away at the ma.s.sive KGB security apparatus.

It took years of efforts by the engineers to make even modest progress. George Saxe had an engineering degree when he was recruited into the Agency directly out of college in 1951. Like most new CIA officers of the time, his career path was not something he antic.i.p.ated, although the happenstance manner that launched his twenty-five-year service in espionage remains one of his favorite stories.

As an engineering student in the Southwest, Saxe had high hopes for a corporate career in a solid company like Westinghouse or General Electric. It was during his senior year, facing a tight job market, that George spotted a recruitment notice on a campus bulletin board. Turning to a friend, he asked, "What do you think the Central Intelligence Agency is?"

President Truman had established the Agency four years earlier, but the organization had little visibility outside of Washington. George, with no better employment prospects on the horizon, signed up for the interview. When he arrived at the interview, George had no hint that the man seated across the table from him had introduced himself with an alias or that it was not George's engineering skills that made him an attractive candidate.

"The guy had scars all over his face. And I've got papers with my grades and the courses I'd taken, and I'm ready to talk about engineering-what I've been studying for the last four years," remembered George. "The first question was, 'I understand you're on the pistol team?'" George, as it happened, was the captain of the team and regularly posted the highest scores.

"The next question was about whether I ever handled a small boat. Now, this is in a setting where I'm the young engineer looking for my future career," George said with a laugh. "Then he looked at me kind of intently and asked, 'What do you think about jumping out of airplanes?'"

Truthfully, George had not thought about it all that much, but answered that he imagined he could do it. After a few more questions, the interviewer invited George to the campus hotel for a follow-up conversation. "I got there and the first thing he does is haul out a bottle of bourbon, which was not allowed on campus. So, that was my introduction. This was not exactly interviewing for a position at Westinghouse."

Nor was Saxe interviewing for an engineering job. The CIA's interest in George came from its covert paramilitary work to counter a potential Soviet invasion of Western Europe. Soviet-U.S. tensions had not yet coalesced into their four-decade Cold War standoff and all forms of military action seemed possible, if not likely.

"In the early 1950s the Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Security folks-everybody who thought they knew anything about the strategic situation in the world-believed the Red army was going to cross the Rhine River," said George. "So my first tour in Germany had nothing to do with recruiting spies and everything to do with the Soviet Union. I was caching-burying-arms and demolitions for stay-behind teams to wage covert operations against the invading Soviets, like the French resistance during World War II. After a year, I had to fill out a rea.s.signment questionnaire: Where did I want to go next? A fishing buddy of mine said, 'Wouldn't it be neat to go to Alaska?' We got what we wanted. Alaska, not yet a state, was one of Soviet-Russia Division's field locations."