Technical Services Division
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Technical Services Division
__NOTOC__ The Office of Technical Service (OTS; formerly known as the ''Technical Services Division'' and ''Technical Services Staff'') is a component of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency,Central Intelligence Agency press releaseCIA's Office of Technical Service Celebrates 60 Years of Innovation September 16, 2011 responsible for supporting CIA's clandestine operations with gadgets, disguises, forgeries, secret writings, and weapons. 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. 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 left it up to interpretation. See also * Canadian Caper ** Tony Mendez * CIA cryp ...
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Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world, primarily through the use of human intelligence (HUMINT) and performing covert actions. As a principal member of the United States Intelligence Community (IC), the CIA reports to the Director of National Intelligence and is primarily focused on providing intelligence for the President and Cabinet of the United States. President Harry S. Truman had created the Central Intelligence Group under the direction of a Director of Central Intelligence by presidential directive on January 22, 1946, and this group was transformed into the Central Intelligence Agency by implementation of the National Security Act of 1947. Unlike the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which is a ...
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Central Intelligence Agency Directorate Of Science & Technology
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 develop technical systems in order to advance the CIA’s intelligence gathering. History Formation On December 31, 1948, the CIA formed the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI), by merging the Scientific Branch in the Office of Reports and Estimates with the Nuclear Energy Group of the Office of Special Operations. In 1962, the CIA formed the Deputy Directorate of Research (DDR), headed by Herbert Scoville. Under it was the newly formed Office of Special Activities, along with the Office of ELINT and the Office of Research and Development, which were quickly integrated into the DDR. However, the OSI remained part of the Directorate of Operations. In 1963, Scoville resigned, frustrated by the unwillingness of other departments to transfer their responsibilities. Director of Central ...
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Allen Dulles
Allen Welsh Dulles (, ; April 7, 1893 – January 29, 1969) was the first civilian Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), and its longest-serving director to date. As head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the early Cold War, he oversaw the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état, the Lockheed U-2 aircraft program, the Project MKUltra mind control program and the Bay of Pigs Invasion. He was fired by John F. Kennedy over the latter fiasco. Dulles was one of the members of the Warren Commission investigating the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Between his stints of government service, Dulles was a corporate lawyer and partner at Sullivan & Cromwell. His older brother, John Foster Dulles, was the United States Secretary of State, Secretary of State during the Eisenhower Administration and is the namesake of Dulles International Airport. Early life and family Dulles was born on April 7, 1893, in Watertown, New York, one of five children of Pres ...
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Jonna Mendez
Jonna Mendez (née Hiestand; born 1945) is an American former technical operations officer, photo operations officer, and chief of disguise in the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) Office of Technical Service. Life and career Jonna Hiestand was born in 1945 in Campbellsville, Kentucky. In 1963, she graduated from high school in Wichita, Kansas and went on to attend college at Wichita State. After graduation, she worked for Chase Manhattan Bank in Frankfurt. In 1966, she was recruited by the CIA in Europe and started a career with them. In the CIA, Mendez lived under cover and served tours of duty in Europe, the Far East, the Subcontinent, and at CIA Headquarters. In the 1970's, she joined the Office of Technical Service and worked overseas with a speciality in clandestine photography. As a technical operations officer, Mendez also prepared the CIA's most highly placed foreign assets in the use of spy cameras and the processing of intelligence gathered by them. In this rol ...
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Frank Olson
Frank Rudolph Emmanuel Olson (July 17, 1910 – November 28, 1953) was an American bacteriologist, biological warfare scientist, and an employee of the United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories (USBWL) who worked at Camp Detrick (now Fort Detrick) in Maryland. At a meeting in rural Maryland, he was covertly dosed with LSD by his colleague Sidney Gottlieb (head of the CIA's MKUltra program) and, nine days later, plunged to his death from the window of the Hotel Statler in New York. The U.S. government first described his death as a suicide, and then as misadventure, while others allege murder. The Rockefeller Commission report on the CIA in 1975 acknowledged their having conducted covert drug studies on fellow agents. Olson's death is one of the most mysterious outcomes of the CIA mind control project MKUltra. Biography Youth and education Olson was born to Swedish immigrant parents in Hurley, Iron County, Wisconsin. Olson graduated from Hurley High School in 1927. ...
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United States Biological Weapons Program
The United States biological weapons program officially began in spring 1943 on orders from U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt. Research continued following World War II as the U.S. built up a large stockpile of biological agents and weapons. Over the course of its 27-year history, the program weaponized and stockpiled the following seven bio-agents (and pursued basic research on many more): *''Bacillus anthracis'' (anthrax) *''Francisella tularensis'' (tularemia) *''Brucella'' spp (brucellosis) *''Coxiella burnetii'' (Q-fever) *Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus *Botulinum toxin (botulism) *Staphylococcal enterotoxin B Throughout its history, the U.S. bioweapons program was secret. It was later revealed that laboratory and field testing (some of the latter using simulants on non-consenting individuals) had been common. The official policy of the United States was first to deter the use of bio-weapons against U.S. forces and secondarily to retaliate if deterrence failed. In 1969, ...
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Sidney Gottlieb
Sidney Gottlieb (August 3, 1918 – March 7, 1999) was an American chemist and spymaster who headed the Central Intelligence Agency's 1950s and 1960s assassination attempts and mind-control program, known as Project MKUltra. Early years and education Gottlieb was born to Hungarian Jewish immigrant parents Fanny and Louis Gottlieb in the Bronx on August 3, 1918. His older brother was plant biologist David Gottlieb. A stutterer since childhood, he earned a master's degree in speech therapy from San Jose State University after retiring from the CIA. He was born with a club foot, which got him rejected from military service in World War II but did not prevent his pursuit of folk dancing, a lifelong passion. Gottlieb graduated from James Monroe High School in 1936, and enrolled in the free City College in NYC. He decided to transfer to a school that offered a legitimate agricultural biology course, and wished to attend the University of Wisconsin. In order to take the special ...
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Project MKULTRA
Project MKUltra (or MK-Ultra) was an illegal human experimentation program designed and undertaken by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), intended to develop procedures and identify drugs that could be used in interrogations to weaken individuals and force confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture. It began in 1953 and was halted in 1973. MKUltra used numerous methods to manipulate its subjects' mental states and brain functions, such as the covert administration of high doses of psychoactive drugs (especially LSD) and other chemicals, electroshocks,National Public Radio (NPR), 9 Sept. 2019"The CIA's Secret Quest For Mind Control: Torture, LSD And A 'Poisoner In Chief'"(On-air interview with journalist Stephen Kinzer) hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, and verbal and sexual abuse, in addition to other forms of torture. MKUltra was preceded by two drug-related experiments, Project Bluebird and Project Artichoke. It was organized through the ...
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CIA Cryptonym
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. Format of cryptonyms CIA cryptonyms sometimes contain a two character prefix called a digraph, which designates a geographical or functional area. Certain digraphs were changed over time; for example, the digraph for the Soviet Union changed at least twice. The rest is either an arbitrary dictionary word, or occasionally the digraph and the cryptonym combine to form a dictionary word (e.g., AEROPLANE) or can be read out as a simple phrase (e.g., WIBOTHER, read as "Why bother!"). Cryptonyms are sometimes written with a slash after the digraph, e.g., ZR/RIFLE, and sometimes in one sequence, e.g., ZRRIFLE. The latter format is the more common style in CIA documents. Examples from publications by former CIA personnel show that the terms "code name" and "cryptonym" can refer to the names of operations as well as to individual persons ...
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Tony Mendez
Antonio Joseph Mendez (November 15, 1940 – January 19, 2019) was an American technical operations officer for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), who specialized in support of clandestine and covert CIA operations. He wrote four memoirs about his CIA experiences. Mendez was decorated, and is now widely known, for his on-the-scene management of the "Canadian Caper" during the Iran hostage crisis. He exfiltrated six American diplomats from Iran in January 1980 by arranging to have them pose as a Canadian film crew. As part of their cover, the diplomats carried passports issued by the Canadian government to document them as Canadian citizens. After declassification of records, the full details of the operation were reported in a 2007 article by Joshuah Bearman in ''Wired'' magazine. This was loosely adapted for the screenplay and development of the 2012 Academy Award-winning film ''Argo'', directed by Ben Affleck, who also starred as Mendez. Mendez attended the 70th Golden Gl ...
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Canadian Caper
The "Canadian Caper" was the joint covert rescue by the Canadian government and the CIA of six American diplomats who had evaded capture during the seizure of the United States embassy in Tehran, Iran, on November 4, 1979, after the Iranian Revolution, when Islamist students took most of the American embassy personnel hostage, demanding the return of the US-backed Shah for trial. After the diplomats had been sheltered by the British mission and Canadian diplomatic personnel, the Canadian and United States governments worked on a strategy to gain their escape through subterfuge and use of Canadian passports. The "caper" involved a CIA officer (Tony Mendez and his colleague known as "Julio" for this event) joining the six diplomats in Tehran to form a fake film crew. It was purportedly made up of six Canadians, one Irishman and one Latin American, who were finishing scouting for an appropriate location to shoot a scene for the science-fiction film ''Argo'', production of whic ...
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Solitary Confinement
Solitary confinement is a form of imprisonment in which the inmate lives in a single cell with little or no meaningful contact with other people. A prison may enforce stricter measures to control contraband on a solitary prisoner and use additional security equipment in comparison to the general population. Solitary confinement is a punitive tool within the prison system to discipline or separate disruptive prison inmates who are security risks to other inmates, the prison staff, or the prison itself. However, solitary confinement is also used to protect inmates whose safety is threatened by other inmates by separating them from the general population. In a 2017 review, "a robust scientific literature has established the negative psychological effects of solitary confinement", leading to "an emerging consensus among correctional as well as professional, mental health, legal, and human rights organizations to drastically limit the use of solitary confinement." The United Nations ...
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