The Wizards of Langley: Inside the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology (review)

The Wizards of Langley: Inside the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology. By Jeffrey T. Richelson. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2001. Pp. xiii+386. $26.

Jeffrey Richelson has established himself as one of the nation's leading scholars on intelligence. His findings in this book—the most definitive study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Science and Technology (DS&T)—are meticulously researched, reliable, dispassionate, and clearly written. These are a rare cluster of attributes in a field where scholarship is often marred by overheated speculation, ideological advocacy, and conspiratorial paranoia. Richelson plays it straight, although he is definitely impressed by many—if not all—of DS&T's technological innovations. Much of the book is about the CIA's success in adopting "scientific solutions to pierce the Iron Curtain" (p. 39).

Foremost among DS&T's achievements, Richelson tells us, was its early effort to develop reconnaissance airplanes and a series of increasingly sophisticated surveillance satellites, with cameras that could photograph Soviet bomber bases and missile sites with startling clarity from orbits deep in space. In 1960, the first effective satellite produced coverage of more than one million square miles, surpassing all previous U-2 photography combined. This "imagery" revealed that the U.S.S.R. had far fewer bombers and (later) ICBMs than American officials feared. The worst-case estimates of the U.S. Air Force proved wildly exaggerated, and the myths of the bomber and missile "gaps" were punctured by empirical data.

Less impressive to Richelson were DS&T's experiments in using animals for intelligence gathering. The goal was to employ remote control as a means for guiding cats and birds wired with listening devices into the vicinity of important officials. The kitty cat could curl up on the ottoman near the minister of defense and record his every word. Perhaps, the CIA envisioned, the animals could even be used in assassination plots. The experiments failed. Richelson discreetly skips over why, but have you ever tried to stick a microphone up a cat's posterior? I am told by DS&T scientists that felines are most unappreciative of the gesture. Richelson writes, too, of mechanical birds which the CIA hoped to use for eavesdropping purposes. They also failed. At the top of Richelson's list of dubious DS&T ventures, though, is the domain of psychic spying—"remote viewing," in the directorate's argot. The experiments in trying to imagine what was inside Moscow's secret files during the cold war led to no positive results—although the program was not abandoned until 1995!

Richelson judges the performance of each DS&T leader. His favorites are Albert D. "Bud" Wheeler (1963-66) and Carl E. Duckett (1966-76), who, respectively, built the directorate into a strong component of the CIA and then guided it through its golden age of technical innovation. In contrast, decisions by Ruth David (1995-98) contributed, he feels, to "a decline in the importance and status of the directorate" (p. 264) as it lost control over key responsibilities, including the analysis of satellite photography. Richelson acknowledges, though, that in some instances David had no choice, since the director of central intelligence (John Deutch) forced the changes on her. Richelson is critical, too, of the current director, George J. Tenet, citing a prominent former insider who states that under Tenet's tenure the directorate has become a "mere shadow of itself" (p. 283).

Richelson is deft at tracing the jockeying for power over control of spy technology. He appraises DS&T's ability to ward off challenges, especially from the air force, which eventually succeeded in wresting away the U-2 and satellite programs. The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) proved the most formidable competitor, however, and it now runs America's satellite surveillance programs.

Despite political setbacks, DS&T remains an important part of the CIA's worldwide...