Wired had this great piece where they sat with former Chief of Disguise for the CIA, Jonna Mendez, who explains how disguises are used in the Agency, and what aspects to the deception make for an effective disguise. It really reminded me of the basic old-school tradecraft used in The Americans, which, incidentally was created by Joe Weisberg, who was a former CIA officer (never say, “agent”), recruited while at Yale.
Tracing its roots to October 1941, CIA’s Cartography Center has a long, proud history of service to the Intelligence Community (IC) and continues to respond to a variety of finished intelligence map requirements. The mission of the Cartography Center is to provide a full range of maps, geographic analysis, and research in support of the Agency, the White House, senior policymakers, and the IC at large. Its chief objectives are to analyze geospatial information, extract intelligence-related geodata, and present the information visually in creative and effective ways for maximum understanding by intelligence consumers.
Since 1941, the Cartography Center maps have told the stories of post-WWII reconstruction, the Suez crisis, the Cuban Missile crisis, the Falklands War, and many other important events in history.
Now, celebrating over 75 years of operation, the CIA has uploaded several dozen historical maps online.
For more, check out the CIA’s Flickr albums, they have several just on maps
Helio-Courier C/STOL aircraft on the ground in Laos. The aircraft was better suited to mountain flying than helicopters, but it was demanding to fly. CIA file photo
The CIA just released an unclassified interactive PDF that contains 41 articles & links to more CIA & IC resources. Titled, CIA & the Wars in Southeast Asia, 1947-75, the volume discusses CIA activities in SE Asia as part of the Department of Defense’s 50-year commemoration of Vietnam War. Among the 53,000+ Americans who gave their lives during the conflict, 18 were known CIA officers– their sacrifices are marked by stars carved into the agency’s Memorial Wall
Links and more info here (and yes, they even talk openly about the Phoenix Program).
A really interesting read over at the Smithsonian
“The six CIA officers were sweating. It was almost noon on a June day in the Middle Eastern capital, already in the 90s outside and even hotter inside the black sedan where the five men and one woman sat jammed in together. Sat and waited.
They had flown in two days earlier for this mission: to break into the embassy of a South Asian country, steal that country’s secret codes and get out without leaving a trace. During months of planning, they had been assured by the local CIA station that the building would be empty at this hour except for one person—a member of the embassy’s diplomatic staff working secretly for the agency.
But suddenly the driver’s hand-held radio crackled with a voice-encrypted warning:
“Maintain position. Do not approach target.” It was the local CIA station, relaying a warning from the agency’s spy inside: a cleaning lady had arrived.
From the back seat Douglas Groat swore under his breath. A tall, muscular man of 43, he was the leader of the break-in team, at this point—1990—a seven-year veteran of this risky work. “We were white faces in a car in daytime,” Groat recalls, too noticeable for comfort. Still they waited, for an hour, he says, before the radio crackled again: “OK to proceed to target.” The cleaning lady had left.
Groat and the others were out of the car within seconds. The embassy staffer let them in the back door. Groat picked the lock on the code room—a small, windowless space secured for secret communications, a standard feature of most embassies—and the team swept inside. Groat opened the safe within 15 minutes, having practiced on a similar model back in the States. The woman and two other officers were trained in photography and what the CIA calls “flaps and seals”; they carefully opened and photographed the code books and one-time pads, or booklets of random numbers used to create almost unbreakable codes, and then resealed each document and replaced it in the safe exactly as it had been before.
Two hours after entering the embassy, they were gone.”
Read more here:
This film presents an account of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) activities that had previously been covert, including actions in Iran, Vietnam, Laos, the Congo, Cuba, and Guatemala. The film includes interviews with CIA director Allen Dulles and Allen Dulles. – ARC 614513 / LI 263-33 National Archives – Science of Spying – National Security Council. Central Intelligence Agency. (09/18/1947 – 12/04/1981). –