January 10, 2008 by admin.

Philip Agee passed away today in Cuba, January 7, 2008. For the CIA, this closes a very long and painful journey of one of the most damaging traitors in its history. How can I say that?

Two reasons, first the CIA in 1970’s assigned one of their best, Ted Shackley, to discredit, block the publication, or stop the publication of the book Agee was writing, called “Inside the Company: CIA Diary“. Ted could not figure out a way to stop the publication, so instead he had TSD create a bugged typewriter and got it to Agee to write his drafts on. A manual typewriter no less. Ted aka the Blond Ghost was legendary in the CIA, having been involved with a major covert operation in Miami (JM/WAVE) against Castro in Cuba (Operation Mongoose), was Chief of Station (COS) in Laos during the Vietnam war, and was Chief of Station (COS) in Saigon. He also the architect of the counter terror program “Phoenix” in Vietnam. Ted was my Fathers boss in both the JM/WAVE operation and Laos. They worked together and partied together. At our house, it was Ted this and Hazel that. My Father truly admired and respected Ted.

The second reason I know that Agee’s book truly damaged the CIA was when Agee’s book finally got published in England, my Dad got a paperback copy of it and read it from cover to cover. He called me a few days later and was in shock. Agee named names and specific secret operations, with no censoring by the CIA. My Dad used a yellow high lighter and bolded every agents name or operation that he recognized. When I went over to my Dad’s apartment later in the week, he showed me the book, and page after page had yellow highlighted on it. I knew right then how devastating Agee’s traitorous ways were and that they would affect the CIA for years to come. Lives were at risk and Agee did it knowingly and purposefully.

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December 27, 2005 by admin.

Paint

Home Improvement Agency Style

In about 1972, the house in Plano Texas that we were living in needed some painting done on the interior. What made this more complicated was that some of the old paint in the house was going to stay, so he had to match the old paint exactly. But I hear you saying, so what? Use the color-matching computer at the paint department. Mind you this is 1972 and there is no such animal. So my Dad went to the hardware store and bought several cans of paint.

When he came home, he meticulously painted just selected parts of the interior of the house. If you know anything about paint, it is that the color you buy is not the color when dry. So back then, you had to eyeball the colors and guess. Except in my Dad’s case, he cheated. The new paint when dry matched the old paint exactly.

I asked him how the heck he did that with any hesitation. He said that when he planted bugs and transmitters in the walls of Embassies and Consulates, the Agency provided them with this very cool quick drying plaster and paint kit. He was trained in how to use this kit proficiently. He learned how to match paint colors with his eyeball so that when the patch on the wall or ceiling dried, it would not reveal that someone had burrowed a hole and hid something there. If there were the slightest hint that someone had altered something in the Embassy, his project would have been compromised. So the paint and plaster matching had to be exact.

Tim Allen, eat your heart out.

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December 27, 2005 by admin.

Resistors

Resistors anyone?

One day in Texas I was working on a computer project for a customer. They wanted me to get their accounting software to run on two different Apple II computers at the same time. The only snafu was that the software had a hardware chip that had to be plugged into the game port of the Apple II in order to activate the software. And the customer only had one hardware chip from the software vendor.

So the customer asked me to investigate how to “clone” or copy this chip for them. I did some research and found out that the hardware chip was very simple. It was merely a plastic socket with two resistors soldered onto specific pins in the socket. If I could find another socket and the two resistors, and then solder them in the right place, I could duplicate the hardware chip.

I went to Radio Shack with my short shopping list in hand. They had all the parts, but it took awhile for the salesman and me to find the right resistors. If you know nothing about resistors, they are little tiny plastic looking devices with wires coming out both ends, looking like a brown piece of rice. They have colored stripes on them; each combination of stripes means different things. Since the permutations of possible color code combinations are more than most people can memorize, ordinary people use an electronics book look up table to figure it out or some Internet Web sites have resistor calculation programs.

For example, Black, Brown, Brown, Silver is 10 ohms, +/-10%. There are ten colors, with the first three positions being any of the ten color combinations, and the last position is either silver or gold. Needless to say, the Radio Shack salesman used the electronics book to look up the color codes, verifying that I was purchasing the correct resistors.

I went to my Dad’s apartment with parts in hand. I had watched him for hours in the garage, soldering things. I remember the distinct pungent odor of melting solder, and his skillful hands making short work of an electronics project. Since I did not own a soldering gun, I knew that he would have several. When I arrived and showed him what I wanted to do, he got that gleam in his eye once again. He jumped right into helping me, without a complaint. He setup a work area with an old towel on his kitchen table, soldering gun warming up, and other tools on standby. He took one glance at my two resistors and said what ohms and +/- they were.

I was dumbfounded. I asked if he saw the receipt and read what they were from there. He said no, that he had learned how to read the color codes. I just sat there, marveling at this unseen talent that my Father possessed. I know that other electronic whizzes can do the same, but heck, this was my Dad, and the Agency trained him well.

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December 17, 2005 by admin.

Security is an illusion

He forgot his keys. There we were, sitting in the car, looking at a locked house and garage door. Our driveway at the Plano Texas house was in the back and it led up to the two-car garage. But my conscientious Dad that secured the house every time we left had locked it. Except this time I was sure that he had done himself in.

He was his own worst enemy.

Once he discovered that he had no house keys on him, he walked up to the garage door, removed something from his shirt pocket, bent down just slightly, and inserted something into garage door lock. About 8 seconds later, the handle turned and the garage door slid up at his fingertips. I was dumbfounded. How did he open the garage without a key? He finally told me.
He habitually carried a open ended leather comb case with a metal comb in his shirt pocket. But next to the metal comb was two lock picks and a tension bar. The metal comb kept the picks from getting bent and held the picks in the case. Turns out that he could open most American locks with just two types of picks and a tension bar. I asked how he picked the lock so fast. He said that the U.S. Treasury had trained him as an ATF agent to pick locks and that the Agency gave him even further training. He had picked thousands of locks over the years and many different types.

It was as natural to him to pick a lock as it was for me to turn a doorknob and walk in a room. And I had seen many movies and TV shows by that time that showed spies and criminals picking locks by crouching down and looking into the keyway as they picked. I asked why he did not do that crouching method. He said that he was trained to walk up to a door and pick it in the same amount of time and appearance as if he had a key. He could feel the pins in the keyway with the pick and manipulate them at will. Most good locksmiths can pick locks but not in such an innocuous manner. When he was in the field, he did not want to give even the hint that he was picking a lock, because he would have drawn unnecessary attention to himself.

I asked the next logical question, were the lock picks illegal to own for a private citizen that was not a locksmith? His answer was yes, but then he said how often would a police officer search his comb case since he had a clean criminal history and would not give the officer any reason to search him. Besides, his law degree from the University of Minnesota came in handy when debating legal issues with law enforcement officers.

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December 17, 2005 by admin.

Concealment is a good friend

One day my Dad bought a lounge chair recliner and put it near the built in the wall bookcase in the living room of our Plano Texas home. He placed the chair so that it was facing the fireplace. The problem was that the lighting in the house did not reach that corner of the living room adequately, so he decided to add a track light or single bulb spotlight to showcase the fireplace.

He went to the hardware store and purchased a very nice single bulb spotlight. When my Brother and I were away from the house he installed the light and did not tell anyone. When we arrived home, he sat in his recliner and said, “Look at the fireplace”, which at that moment was the usual dark corner. We did not realize that he was doing a magicians misdirection trick on us. As we watched the darken corner, suddenly the fireplace bricks were awash with bright light. We looked up to the ceiling in amazement. Behind a ceiling timber near the fireplace was a concealed spot light, illuminating that dark corner. The next logical question was how did it turn on while we were standing there. My Dad just sat there with the biggest Cheshire cat grin that I have ever seen on his face. My Brother and I both ran around the room looking for the switch that turned on the light. But our search was in vain. Finally in a moment of desperation, I decided to trace the wire from the lamp to the source, but to no avail. He had concealed the wires between the ceiling and the ceiling timber. We were both totally stunned and baffled. And my Dad’s face was glowing with pride. Even knowing what we looking for, we still could not find the light switch.

In 1972, technology was very space age and we just knew that he had some kind of voice activated switch or laser beam contraption. You see my Dad always went overboard when it came to electronics. Move over Tim the tool man Taylor, ha. So anyhow, my Dad would have my Brother and I look at the fireplace and zap, the light would go on or off seeming at will. As soon as the light came on or off, we would instantly glance over at Dad and he always appeared to be relaxing in his chair and not reaching for anything. But since I was an amateur magician, I knew that the hand was faster than the eye. So we had Dad get out of the chair, we took turns sitting in the chair, desperately looking and feeling around for the switch.

Nada.

By then we were hoping mad and frustrated. Were was the switch? With great flair, he sat in his chair, had us looking at him, and then he reached just a few inches, to something on the underside of the a shelf in the bookcase next to him. Click, the light on the fireplace went on. We were stunned. It was a simple toggle switch, 59 cents worth, but hours of work to conceal it. He had strategically placed the switch at arm level to his chair, attaching the switch to the underside of the self, about four inches in. At that height and depth, someone standing next to the bookcase, you would never see the switch. Standing across the room, you could not even see the switch. He ran the wire from the switch to the light through the back of the bookcase, up the wall, into the small crack between the ceiling timber and the ceiling. Not a wire was visible to the naked eye. And since the bookcase was built into the wall, we never suspected that he could have rigged it. After that little demonstration of concealment, that was just for fun, I knew that the bad guys never stood a chance when TSD did their thing.

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