The Unmentionable Uses of a CIA by Miles Copeland

Dear Bill: I did as I said I would. I went out to those intimidating headquarters buildings of the CIA in Langley, Virginia, and got the party line from the public relations and legal offices. Then I had “not for attribution” interviews with a cross-section of the Agency’s top officials, and ran down various old friends who are “intelligence community” insiders and who were willing to exchange confidences—sort of a “private opinion survey,” you might say. Finally, presuming on my alumnus status and the fact that I still pass for an expert on several subjects of particular interest to the Agency, I got myself invited to lunch and an afternoon of briefing at the highly secret offices of “Mother,” our old friend who now manages “miscellaneous projects,” one of which is octopus, the huge computer which builds profiles of you, me, Daniel Ellsberg, Senator Goldwater, Billy Graham, Allen Ginsberg, John Wayne, Jane Fonda, B. F. Skinner, Vice President Agnew, and millions of other persons who are “in the public eye,” as I believe Mr. Haldeman put it.

Mother’s office is also the command post for worldwide counterterrorist activity, and for amassing data on “the people’s war against imperialism and capitalism,” which is behind that part of the terrorism directly endangering the security of the United States. Since Mother has managed to get the cooperation of non-Communist security agencies everywhere, including many “anti-American” ones, his office is unquestionably the world’s central library for information on politically motivated terrorism. As you would expect, this makes it also the world’s principal supply base for the electronic gadgetry used by these security agencies for making secret tape recordings, surreptitiously taking motion pictures of terrorists and supporters of terrorists, and “ringing” the especially important ones (i.e., installing in their anatomies certain minute substances which emit traceable radio signals). It is truly a science-fiction establishment.

MC

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Miles Copeland

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Dear Bill: I did as I said I would. I went out to those intimidating headquarters buildings of the CIA in Langley, Virginia, and got the party line from the public relations and legal offices. Then I had “not for attribution” interviews with a cross-section of the Agency’s top officials, and ran down various old friends who are “intelligence community” insiders and who were willing to exchange confidences—sort of a “private opinion survey,” you might say. Finally, presuming on my alumnus status and the fact that I still pass for an expert on several subjects of particular interest to the Agency, I got myself invited to lunch and an afternoon of briefing at the highly secret offices of “Mother,” our old friend who now manages “miscellaneous projects,” one of which is octopus, the huge computer which builds profiles of you, me, Daniel Ellsberg, Senator Goldwater, Billy Graham, Allen Ginsberg, John Wayne, Jane Fonda, B. F. Skinner, Vice President Agnew, and millions of other persons who are “in the public eye,” as I believe Mr. Haldeman put it.

Mother’s office is also the command post for worldwide counterterrorist activity, and for amassing data on “the people’s war against imperialism and capitalism,” which is behind that part of the terrorism directly endangering the security of the United States. Since Mother has managed to get the cooperation of non-Communist security agencies everywhere, including many “anti-American” ones, his office is unquestionably the world’s central library for information on politically motivated terrorism. As you would expect, this makes it also the world’s principal supply base for the electronic gadgetry used by these security agencies for making secret tape recordings, surreptitiously taking motion pictures of terrorists and supporters of terrorists, and “ringing” the especially important ones (i.e., installing in their anatomies certain minute substances which emit traceable radio signals). It is truly a science-fiction establishment.