Office of Technical Service

Last updated

The Office of Technical Service (OTS; formerly known as the Technical Services Division (TSD) and Technical Services Staff (TSS)) is a component of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, [1] responsible for supporting CIA's clandestine operations with gadgets, disguises, forgeries, secret writings, and weapons. The OTS traces its history to October 1942, when OSS director William J. Donovan created the OSS Research and Development Branch, a technical group tasked with creating "dirty tricks and deadly weapons" to combat the US's World War II enemies. [2] Donovan named Cornell University-trained chemist and executive Stanley Platt Lovell as the branch's first head, a man whom the CIA remembers as the "founding father" of the OTS. [3] In the 1950s and early 1960s it also researched, investigated, and experimented with the use of drugs, chemicals, hypnosis, and isolation to extract information during interrogation, as well as to make it easier for American captives to resist interrogation. OTS is part of CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology.

Contents

Many film makers have been inspired by OTS, although the information around it is kept highly secret, with only dated projects being revealed and much of it left up to interpretation.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Office of Strategic Services</span> 1940s United States intelligence agency

The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was an intelligence agency of the United States during World War II. The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for all branches of the United States Armed Forces. Other OSS functions included the use of propaganda, subversion, and post-war planning.

CIA cryptonyms are code names or code words used by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to refer to projects, operations, persons, agencies, etc.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William J. Donovan</span> American soldier, lawyer, and intelligence officer (1883–1959)

William Joseph "Wild Bill" Donovan was an American soldier, lawyer, intelligence officer and diplomat. He is best known for serving as the head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), during World War II. He is regarded as the founding father of the CIA, and a statue of him stands in the lobby of the CIA headquarters building in Langley, Virginia.

Project Artichoke was a project developed and enacted by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for the purpose of researching methods of interrogation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MKNAOMI</span> American biological warfare research program

MKNAOMI is the code name for a joint Department of Defense/CIA research program from the 1950s through to the 1970s. Unclassified information about the MKNAOMI program and the related Special Operations Division is scarce. It is generally reported to be a successor to the MKULTRA project focusing on biological projects including biological warfare agents—specifically, to store materials that could either incapacitate or kill a test subject and to develop devices for the diffusion of such materials.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CIA Museum</span> American intelligence museum in Langley

The CIA Museum, administered by the Center for the Study of Intelligence, a department of the Central Intelligence Agency, is a national archive for the collection, preservation, documentation and exhibition of intelligence artifacts, culture, and history. The collection, which in 2005 numbered 3,500 items, consists of artifacts that have been declassified; however, since the museum is on the compound of the George Bush Center for Intelligence, it is not accessible to the public.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Project FUBELT</span> 1970–1973 CIA operations in Chile to suppress Salvador Allende

Project FUBELT is the codename for the secret Central Intelligence Agency operations that were to prevent Salvador Allende's rise to power before his confirmation and to promote a military coup in Chile. This project came after the circumstantial failure of Track I, which involved making president Eduardo Frei Montalva interfere with the 1970 national election in opposition to Allende.

Adolf Georgiyevich Tolkachev was a Soviet electronics engineer. He provided vital documents to the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) between 1979 and 1985. Working at the Soviet radar design bureau Phazotron as one of the chief designers, Adolf Tolkachev gave the CIA complete detailed information about projects such as the R-23, R-24, R-33, R-27, and R-60, S-300 missile systems; fighter-interceptor aircraft radars used on the MiG-29, MiG-31, and Su-27; and other avionics. KGB Police executed him in Moscow for being a spy in 1986.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Directorate of Operations (CIA)</span> US clandestine intelligence organization

The Directorate of Operations (DO), less formally called the Clandestine Service, is a component of the US Central Intelligence Agency. It was known as the Directorate of Plans from 1951 to 1973; as the Directorate of Operations from 1973 to 2005; and as the National Clandestine Service (NCS) from 2005 to 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David K. E. Bruce</span> American politician

David Kirkpatrick Este Bruce was an American diplomat, intelligence officer and politician. He served as ambassador to France, the Federal Republic of Germany, and the United Kingdom, the only American to be all three.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Central Intelligence Agency</span> National intelligence agency of the United States

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), known informally as the Agency, metonymously as Langley and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world, primarily through the use of human intelligence (HUMINT) and conducting covert action through its Directorate of Operations. The agency is headquartered in the George Bush Center for Intelligence in Langley, Virginia.

The High Standard HDM is an American semi-automatic pistol equipped with an integral silencer. Based on the High Standard H-D pistol, it was adopted by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II. Because of legal concerns during wartime, full-metal-jacketed .22 LR rounds were developed for this pistol.

Operation WASHTUB was a covert operation organized by the United States Central Intelligence Agency to plant a phony Soviet arms cache in Nicaragua. It was a part of the CIA's effort to portray the administration of Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz as having ties to the Soviet Union, prior to the CIA sponsored 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état which overthrew Árbenz later the same year. On 19 February 1954, the CIA, working through the Guardia Nacional de Nicaragua, planted a cache of Soviet-made arms on the Nicaraguan coast near the fishing village of Masachapa to be "discovered" weeks later by Rafael Lola, a lieutenant in the Nicaraguan army, and fishermen in the pay of Nicaraguan president Anastasio Somoza García. The CIA also wished to dispose of the weapons, which were to have been used by Carlos Castillo Armas, and were therefore incriminating to the CIA. On May 7, 1954, President Somoza told reporters at a press conference that a Soviet submarine had been photographed, but that no prints or negatives were available. The story presented to the press was embroidered with the involvement of Guatemalan assassination squads. Somoza was supposed to convince the public that the arms had been intended for Guatemala. The press and the public were skeptical and the story did not get much press. However, the story became part of the Nicaragua local legends until the 1979 revolution.

National governments deal in both intelligence and military special operations functions that either should be completely secret, or simply cannot be linked to the sponsor. It is a continuing and unsolved question for governments whether clandestine intelligence collection and covert action should be under the same agency. The arguments for doing so include having centralized functions for monitoring covert action and clandestine HUMINT and making sure they do not conflict, as well as avoiding duplication in common services such as cover identity support, counterespionage, and secret communications. The arguments against doing so suggest that the management of the two activities takes a quite different mindset and skills, in part because clandestine collection almost always is on a slower timeline than covert action.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Central Intelligence Agency Directorate of Science & Technology</span>

The Directorate of Science & Technology (DS&T) is the branch of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) tasked with collecting and analyzing information through technological means and developing technical systems to advance the CIA's intelligence gathering.

This is a list of activities carried out by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in Indonesia.

The Pond was a small, secret organization formed by the government of the United States which operated between 1942 and 1955. It engaged in espionage. It was formally acknowledged by the US government in 2001.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), a United States intelligence agency that "provides objective intelligence on foreign countries", also informally referred to as the Agency. The CIA is part of the United States Intelligence Community, is organized into numerus divisions. The divisions include directors, deputy directors, and offices. The CIA board is made up of five distinct entitles called Directorates. The CIA is overseen by the Director of Central Intelligence. Under the Director of Central Intelligence is the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence. Under this the CIA is divided into four directorates. These directorates are as follows:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helias Doundoulakis</span>

Helias Doundoulakis was a Greek American civil engineer who patented the suspension system for the at-the-time largest radio telescope in the world. During WWII he served in the United States Army and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) as a spy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Melville Brooker</span>

Richard Melville "Bill" Brooker was a British soldier, spy, instructor, and commando during World War II, and integral to the Allied effort in defeating the Axis. He was a member of Churchill's Special Operations Executive (SOE), and Commandant of Camp X, where he trained the men and women who would become the leaders of the Office of the Coordinator of Information (COI), which became the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He is considered one of the fathers of modern American central intelligence, and gained the admiration of William J. Donovan and Allen Dulles, and even is mentioned as being a great instructor of spies in the memoirs of Kim Philby.

References

  1. Central Intelligence Agency press release, CIA's Office of Technical Service Celebrates 60 Years of Innovation, September 16, 2011
  2. Fischer, Benjamin. Fifty Years of Supporting Operations: A History of CIA's Office of Technical Service (1951-2001) (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2023-05-06. Retrieved 2023-05-08.
  3. Fischer, Benjamin. Fifty Years of Supporting Operations: A History of CIA's Office of Technical Service (1951-2001) (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2023-05-06. Retrieved 2023-05-08.

Further reading

38°57′06″N77°08′48″W / 38.95167°N 77.14667°W / 38.95167; -77.14667