Abstract
The Wizards of Langley: Inside the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology
By Jeffrey T. Richelson
Westview Press, 2001
386 pages; $26.00
The Secret History of the CIA
By Joseph J. Trento
Prima, 2001
542 pages; $30.00
With intelligence more in demand than ever in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, we have a brace of books to help us understand the history and operations of the main U.S. espionage service, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The war in Afghanistan and the ongoing investigations into Al Qaeda terrorist plots have showcased both the negative and positive aspects of modern intelligence, and an intense media focus has given the public fresh opportunity to be impressed and dismayed, depending on which appendage of the dinosaur it happens to view.
One of the more impressive features of modern intelligence gathering is the ability of remote sensing devices to survey everything from geographical formations and clandestine human activities to signals communications and computer data banks. In The Wizards of Langley, Jeffrey T. Richelson tracks the evolution of these technological capabilities while providing a comprehensive history of the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology (DS&T), the service responsible for creating many of the exotic espionage gadgets used by the country's intelligence services. Richelson, a senior fellow at the National Security Archive, is a long-time observer of scientific intelligence. His previous works include America's Secret Eyes in Space, a history of U.S. reconnaissance satellite programs, and America's Space Sentinels, an examination of early-warning technology. (I should disclose that the author and I are both fellows at the archive.)
Wizards follows up on many of the subjects Richelson first reported on in Secret Eyes. The earlier work focused primarily on the activities of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which operates the nation's intelligence satellites and aids in their research and development. The book's central topic was the NRO's role in developing satellites in the Keyhole and Corona series. In Wizards, Richelson makes ample use of declassified CIA records (including a multi-volume history of the DS&T) to report on the CIA's involvement in the same satellite programs and extend his earlier analysis (which was published in 1990) into the last decade.
But Wizards is not just about satellites. The CIA's technological advancements have had an impact on the agency's field operations, its joint work with the National Security Agency (NSA), and its relationships with civilian scientists. In Wizards, we read about the technical aspects of secret government debates over the characteristics of Russian weapons systems, the role of U.S. intercept stations in Iran during that country's revolution, the horror felt by officials when intelligence first learned about the 1986 Chernobyl accident, various CIA-NSA joint operations, and much more.
Richelson also does an excellent job of describing the various personalities that helped make the DS&T a powerful bureaucratic empire within the U.S. intelligence community. According to the author, the directorate reached its apex in 1972. Since then, infighting with other agencies and military services have limited its influence.
While Wizards is about the technological aspects of intelligence gathering, Joseph J. Trento's The Secret History of the CIA focuses on the better-known side of espionage–human intelligence.
After September 11, many Americans were appalled that U.S. intelligence had failed to learn about and prevent the terrorist attacks. But the fact is, the Al Qaeda plot was so tightly held that a warning would have required having an agent within the top leadership of Osama bin Laden's organization. That degree of penetration is exceedingly difficult to accomplish, and it is something that the U.S. and Soviet secret services spent the entire Cold War trying to do to each other. In Secret History, Trento recounts the story of one particular slice of that intelligence battle–the compromising of the CIA's West Berlin office in the 1950s by Soviet agents and the purported impact this has had on the agency since then.
Building on his earlier work, Widows: Four American Spies, the Wives They Left Behind, and the KGB's Crippling of American Intelligence, which he co-wrote with his wife Susan and William Corson, Trento attempts to show the various ways Soviet spies were able to penetrate the agency early on in its existence. (Corson, a former marine who was detached to CIA duty during the Vietnam War, is also a major source for Secret History.) He describes how career agents and Russian master spies were able to establish their bona fides to CIA leadership and report from inside U.S. intelligence for decades.
To prove his contention that the Berlin base was compromised and to identify possible moles, Trento recounts in considerable detail the careers of several CIA officers who served in Berlin in the 1950s, highlighting inconsistencies in their work and describing the failed operations they were involved in.
One of the author's prime suspects is George Weisz, a naturalized U.S. citizen who emigrated from Hungary in 1932. Weisz joined the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) in 1949, continued on at the CIA when the OPC was folded into the agency, and worked in the clandestine service until his retirement. Trento documents Weisz's work with William H. Whalen, an army officer who in the mid-1960s was convicted on charges of having spied for the Soviet Union. Trento writes: “It may be that Whalen's proximity to Weisz was an unfortunate coincidence. There was no serious security investigation to determine if Weisz or anyone else deliberately assisted Whalen's betrayal.” The author also points to Weisz's unsuccessful efforts to infiltrate U.S. agents into North Korea during the Korean War. But the fact is, all such attempts failed, even those Weisz was not a part of.
“Now that we've learned to talk, deny everything.”
Trento employs circumstantial and marginally suggestive evidence throughout the book, which makes his conspiracy charges seem farfetched and unbelievable. And although the book contains a nice account of the Berlin station, it sheds little light on the CIA's efforts to glean intelligence about the Soviet Union. He devotes only a few pages at the end of his book to this topic, where he tries to connect the compromising of the Berlin station to later CIA operations in Nicaragua, Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf, Bosnia, and other events. He also briefly touches on the FBI's counterintelli-gence failure in the Robert Hanssen case. About the only thing missing from this eclectic mix is a charge that Aldrich Ames was also one of the boys from Berlin.