Cia Privileged Access

By Tom Herring

FROM A BOY WORKING IN A COTTON MILL IN GEORGIA TO NARROWLY ESCAPING DEATH WORKING MISSIONS FOR THE CIA, THIS ENGAGING TALE WILL TAKE YOU ACROSS THE GLOBE. A NAVY MAN RECRUITED TO DO COMMUNICATIONS AND INTELLIGENCE WORK – SOMETIMES DANGEROUS – IN SUPPORT OF A COUNTRY FIGHTING A BITTER COLD WAR. NAVIGATING A LIFELONG CAREER IN A JOB VERY FEW PEOPLE CAN DO HAS ITS MOMENTS. WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BE AN AGENT IN ONE OF THE WORLD’S MOST FAMOUS INTELLIGENCE ORGANIZATIONS? IT’S YOU, AND OFTEN YOUR FAMILY, MOVING FROM CONTINENT TO CONTINENT WHERE TROUBLE IS BUBBLING. THIS NARRATIVE WILL GIVE THE READERS A LOOK AT THE TREMENDOUS TRAVELS AND COURAGEOUS CAREER OF A WELL-RESPECTED NAVAL SEAMAN AND AGENCY COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER WHOSE LIFE WAS ANYTHING BUT MUNDANE.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781532090431

Tom Herring

STARTING LIFE AS A BOY IN A SMALL COTTON MILL TOWN IN SOUTHERN GEORGIA, TOM HERRING STRIVED FOR SOMETHING DIFFERENT THAN WHAT WAS OFFERED THERE. HE JOINED THE NAVY AND WAS SENT TO RADIO SCHOOL WHICH WOULD CHANGE HIS LIFE. AFTER A FEW EVENTFUL YEARS AS A RADIO SHACK OPERATOR, CIA RECRUITERS OFFERED THE OPPORTUNITY TO SEE THE WORLD – IN A DIFFERENT WAY. TENACIOUS AND INVENTIVE, TOM FOUND WORK AT THE AGENCY A FULFILLMENT OF HIS PATRIOTISM AND TECHNICAL ABILITY. NOW SETTLED IN NORTH CAROLINA, TOM LIVES A QUIET LIFE, MAINLY BECAUSE HE IS HARD OF HEARING.

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CIA

PRIVILEGED ACCESS

TOM HERRING

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CIA PRIVILEGED ACCESS

Copyright © 2020 Tom Herring.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or any other US government agency. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying US government authentication of information or CIA endorsement of the author’s views. This material has been reviewed by the CIA to prevent the disclosure of classified information.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-9044-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-9043-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020915140

iUniverse rev. date: 09/09/2020

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1 Many Decisions Had to Be Made

Chapter 2 The Navy Years

Chapter 3 CIA Recruitment and Training

Chapter 4 First Overseas Tour

Chapter 5 Returning Home to Care for Mother

Chapter 6 The Big Boss

Chapter 7 Learning about the Iron Curtain

Chapter 8 The Next Overseas Assignment

Chapter 9 Hard Work Ahead in a Fun Country

Chapter 10 Getting Settled for another Tour in WDC

Chapter 11 New Stateside Tour with OTS

Chapter 12 Back to WDC

Chapter 13 Supporting Unconventional Operations

Chapter 14 Transfer to OTS/SE Desk

Chapter 15 Retirement or another Tour Overseas

Chapter 16 Last Overseas Tour

Chapter 17 Waiting to Retire

Chapter 18 A Passing of the Torch

Chapter 19 Operations in OTS

Chapter 20 Telephone Taps

Chapter 21 Entry Op to Target Possible Terrorist

Chapter 22 Putting a Radio Tower Back in Business

Chapter 23 An Entry and Copy Op

Chapter 24The Life of a Tech Goes Awry

Chapter 25 Training an Asset in the Middle East

Chapter 26 A Simple Antenna Job

Chapter 27 Finding Gloria’s

Chapter 28 Unjust Reporters

Chapter 29 A One-Sided Firefight

Chapter 30 Dangerous Practices in a Wild and Dangerous Country

Chapter 31 Repairing the Telephone Taps

Chapter 32 An Op in Central America

Chapter 33 Another Op Was Like a Vacation

Chapter 34 Capturing an Arms Cache

Chapter 35 A Robbery in Our Favorite City

Chapter 36 Time to Activate

Chapter 37 Another Telephone Tap

Chapter 38 Using a Chimney

Chapter 39 A Waterlogged Operation

Chapter 40 Was a Friendly Service Working against the United States?

Chapter 41 Installing a Woodblock

Glossary

To the brave people who worked in the dark.

This poem was read at the fiftieth OTS/TSD/TSS anniversary on September 8, 2001. It describes the life of many of us who worked behind the scenes. Our days of glory were only known behind closed doors and among those of us who had privileged access to be part of or know of an operation that happened. Many operations were never discussed with others—even with those who sat next to us in the office.

There are no lights that shine on those behind the scenes.

Their stage is set in darkness; rewards remain unseen.

There are no days of glory, for their tales remain untold.

Those who live in darkness, their names are never told.

Their goals remain elusive; success may never be.

Still they struggle forward in proud integrity.

If there is an answer to be sought outside the light,

Those of unknown glory are moving in the night.

– Author unknown

INTRODUCTION

In the beginning, I wanted to get other techs involved in this project to let people know who does a lot of the behind-the-scenes work for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). When that did not happen, I decided to go ahead with what I had in my memory and the operations I was involved in or was aware of. There were many I did not know about, which was normal.

This is a story of a young person who started out in a cotton mill village after graduation from high school. Never in a million years did I think about writing a book. It was scary at times, but it was very satisfying when I did things that made a difference in my life. I did not write this book for money; I wrote this book to demonstrate how the intelligence community gathered some of its information.

Over the years, I gained knowledge and enjoyed working with some of the best people in the world. My abilities grew from working with people who invented new equipment and developed methods for assisting the people on the ground.

The window was open for others to join in this effort, but due to the possible liability if something went wrong, many decided not to join in this effort. Working with the people at headquarters (HQS) who assisted in writing this book was extremely satisfactory. This book will show readers how we gained intelligence and protected our country and our friends.

A lot has changed in the CIA since I retired. The CIA is probably a different world now. Unfortunately, a lot of this story is about my life with the agency. So far, no one wants to participate because we are super secret, and the guidelines on what is acceptable are very restrictive.

Many of us who were in communications have viewed most of the secrets of the CIA and many other government agencies at one time or another. Many times, reading between the lines was very scary. Most jobs we did in the Office of Technical Services (OTS) will always remain classified, and depending on how much is leaked to the news media—possibly by inside sources—it will continue to be classified.

The guys in the trenches often wondered if the leaks were intentional to scare the opposition. Some of the guys in our group were heroes, but most of us were everyday workers doing our jobs. To the best of my knowledge, there never was an incident where a communications officer revealed a classified item to an outsider. However, some high-level individuals have allowed people to broadcast classified items. I do not claim to be a hero; I was a grunt who did behind-the-scenes work. We were not military types; we were civilians, but most of us were ex-military. In OTS, we did get some training with weapons, depending on what our assignment was and if there were dangers in a given operation. However, we preferred someone with very good firearms training to be our watchdog while we concentrated on the task at hand. Most of the time, we did not have watchdogs when we were doing our jobs.

I am not a professional writer—or a gifted writer—but I want to share this story about what we did for a living in the CIA. Many items in this book were included in a book by an author who worked for a famous newspaper. If things go well, they will be in this story. If they are redacted, I will do my best to work around it and use words that do not give away any locations.

When we were in unusual circumstances, we were sent to weapon ranges to qualify on various weapons. My best score was 288 out of 300 with several weapons. Sometimes we were covered by case officers (COs) with weapons. On assignments in war zones, we carried sawed-off twelve-gauge shotguns with six shells loaded in them. The road guards did not have to worry about a car with bulletproof windows because we always put our weapons on the dash so they could see them. They knew we were not bad guys.

Later, OTS had guards traveling with our groups. Their job was to cover our butts in dicey situations. We normally were not armed; if we were captured, we were probably better off without weapons. If we had weapons, we could be considered combatants. We would have been subject to different rules of war if the people who captured us concluded that we were warriors. Also, weapons today are years ahead of what we dealt with back then. It was best not to carry guns at all.

Many people in OTS performed these same operations repeatedly, and their detailed work will remain silent for many reasons. My writing does not cover the exact details about where and when an operation was performed. Most of the time, we didn’t talk about it with the people we worked with. After I retired, I had a second career as an employee of two contractors. One was in California, and the other was in Washington.

I cannot reveal the actual messages we dealt with as communication specialists. I expect parts of this book will be redacted if they are considered too sensitive for publication. We will cross that bridge when the CIA’s Publications Review Board makes its decision. However, I know that most of what I am writing is probably open information after twenty-four years. Several books in the public domain show some of the equipment we used, and many stories illustrate what the agency has done over the years. For example, in Spycraft, Robert Wallace and H. Keith Melton discuss subjects that are—or were—classified. Another book was about an officer who rescued some people in a war zone, and some of those officers also did brave jobs against our enemies. Our adversaries know about many of the operations we conducted and the equipment we used. Some equipment has been discovered, and some equipment is probably in their museums. I am sure the opposition has reverse engineered systems to build their own versions of those items.

This book started out as a résumé after I retired to search for a job in 1994. However, the jobs that were open were not any of the jobs I wanted to participate in. I had worked in the Office of Communications (OC) and the OTS, and I was interested in a job that had openings in either of those two areas. Since I was not successful in obtaining a job that fit my knowledge base, I was told to expand my résumé into an autobiography for my children to let them know what I did in life as well as in the CIA. I only wanted to share this book with my children and a few people who were interested in reading about what we did in the CIA. I consulted with a person who had written several stories about the agency, and he suggested not writing an autobiography because it would sell very few copies and not pay for the book. He said I should write it as an adventure story about the things I did and the actions I was in throughout my career.

I was not a high-ranking manager in the CIA, but I was a telecommunications officer for sixteen years (radio, crypto, and teletype operator and some clandestine radio work). I made the grade of GS-15, and I never thought I would be more than a GS-7 or GS-8 since the only education I had was high school and the navy.

I switched career paths and became an officer of technical services. I did classified behind-the-scenes work for the agency. We worked directly for the COs who had jobs to discuss and with area agency officers who had ops that needed to be studied and worked on; 99 percent of the COs were very aware of what we did. I only met a few COs who I would consider not suited to be in the agency, but it was not my job to make judgments of others.

Most of the COs I worked with or knew were excellent. In OC, I trained assets in the art of clandestine communications and using several types of electronic equipment. I was switched over to OTS since our jobs were similar. The authorities recommended that Clandestine Communications be switched over to OTS, which was primarily due to needing the same type of permits or approvals before an operation. The deputy director of operations (DDO) made it clear that the type of work was almost the same as what the Electronic Operations Division (OTS/EOD) was doing.

I would like to make it clear that there were many other officers doing the same jobs in the CIA. We were not all heroes; we were mostly hardworking people who did a lot of research to accomplish the goals needed to help collect intelligence with and for the director. Many other officers were sent to many schools to expand our abilities to perform tasks other than clandestine communications. I served in the US Navy for four years, I worked for the OC for sixteen years, and I switched over to the OTS for seventeen years. All three of my jobs were very enjoyable and rewarding.

In some assignments as a radio operator or a telecommunications specialist, I saw a lot of things that I can never reveal. It is possible that some people could be tortured or killed if certain things they did for the United States became common knowledge. To prevent slips of the tongue, 99 percent of cable traffic used pseudonyms for staff and assets that provided the information we sought. We had to be extremely careful not to discuss certain things with anyone except pertinent DO (Director of Operations) and the COs who were part of an operation. This requirement in OTS was mandatory because it could cost the lives of some people if names or actual cities were made public. The other side monitors our press as well as we do theirs. Revealing names and locations of operations can be very dangerous.

Most people do not understand that some foreign governments have no problem killing people without trials if they are even thought to have been working for the CIA in any form.

The technical operations officers worked directly with the DO to prepare for, research, and support the collecting of intelligence for the agency. Some of this work was dangerous, and some of it required a lot of research and approvals before a clandestine operation could begin. While we were part of the DDS&T (deputy director of science and technology), we were always working for the DO or other American entities.

Think about being in someone’s house uninvited and being discovered. We normally figured out via other means if someone was in the residence, but our assistance in determining if the target was empty sometimes depended upon unreliable assistance and was not very good. If we were discovered after entering a target, they could shoot us, which would be perfectly legal.

Think about being arrested in a foreign country and going to jail for robbery. The cost of getting out of jail and returning to the United States could be very high unless you have a get-out-of-jail-free card. A high-level asset might intervene and escort us to the airport—and then out of the country. If the high-level person were to be asked about where we were, he might say the individual fell in a ditch and was not available anymore for questioning. He would use a pseudonym since we never revealed real names overseas except to qualified people. Even then, you could never go back to that country, and depending upon the media reports, you might never be able to travel overseas again.

We never had our true identification when we entered a target to prevent anyone from knowing who we were. Only a few countries would consider the dangers of gunplay if they caught us in their facilities. Most would put us in jail and wait for some type of agreement for our release. In one case, the wait lasted several years. There was one case where the OTS person had been told that the target apartment was empty, but when he used a key to access the room, someone was watching TV with their back to the door. Our entry person closed the door silently and exited via the nearest stairwell. Apparently, the TV was too loud, and the person inside the apartment never heard anything. Sometimes we would be equal to burglars in our work.

My part as a technical operations officer was a lot of fun. I learned how to handle the surveys and the equipment nomenclature, but the job was much more than equipment and procedures. We would take trips to CIA stations overseas and discuss potential operations with the COs. If they made suggestions, we would discuss plans for the kinds of operations they envisioned. We needed to know what type of Intel they wanted to uncover and what other tasks we must be able to do.

It could take months before the window of opportunity arrived to do an operation. We might get an emergency call to do an urgent operation when the window of opportunity was very short. If we received a flash message (a very urgent teletype message), we had to cancel the entry operation. If the people who were supposed to be gone for a few weeks were not going, we needed to cancel the operation at the last minute.

One time, we were told not to leave the United States because the proposed operation had been canceled. We were already in the country, but we just turned around and flew home. We also had requests to conduct operations when the officers knew a new state-of-the-art system would be available. The battles got downright nasty when several entities in the DO claimed rights as the only group that could use the new type of system.

Sometimes OTS was responsible for many of these too early operations with new equipment. We frequently did show-and-tell demonstrations, and once we did, we could expect an avalanche of requests for this system—even though the details of what the DO wanted to use it for were not clear. It appears that they wanted to get brownie points for an operation using new equipment in their area of work. In fact, some divisions provided the money for building a system that they wanted to use for their operations. This created dissension in the DO for divisions that wanted the system. I hope that type of operation is a creature of the past and better judgment is used now.

I worked with and learned from the mainstay of this group. Some of our very smart engineers pushed the envelope of equipment to improve engineering and equipment. This effort constantly improved the techniques and equipment. We could not stop when the spotlight on us was constantly getting brighter and brighter. We constantly modified our techniques. If I could name those who kept pushing the frontier of progress, it would take up an entire page. Without these bright individuals, we would still be in the dark ages of collecting electronic intelligence that could not be collected in face-to-face meetings because it could be dangerous for our COs and their sources. Some of the intelligence-collection systems we installed for the DO were like getting the information from the horse’s mouth. They were very effective.

Many countries do not trust the American government’s officials in their countries. We are always searching for information that protects our way of life. Some countries cooperate with the CIA because they have targets, but they don’t have the equipment or technical know-how to conduct clandestine operations. The information from these operations is supposed to be shared by the host government, but we sometimes do not get the full extent of the information. When it comes up, there are serious discussions about why the information was not shared. Most of our COs can read and understand a foreign language.

Putting this book together relates to my life working for the government and with the finest people who are dedicated to protecting our country from any and all who wish to do us harm. This story began many years ago in my youth, and it advanced as I aged.

All books and speeches must pass through the CIA’s Publications Review Board. This group has elements of all parts of the agency. At times, they will ask people to verify that certain things are true before publication. Publishing a book without the review board’s approval is a breach of security that can cause legal action against the author. One book was written without the authority of the agency. The author made lots of money—but had to pay it back or go to jail for not obeying the rules.

We all signed an agreement when we joined the CIA that the board must approve any published material to protect the lives of those still working for the agency. I would love to print the actual locations and jobs we did, but I want to stay out of jail and keep my retirement money. While there were people who knew that I was in the CIA, I did not talk about what we did. Most of the OTS items were classified and were not subject to discussion.

Some of the information in this book is about me, and the first chapters are how I got to the point of working for the CIA. The rest is overall areas I worked on or visited, and the last few chapters are covert operations that I participated in or related stories about some of our cohort’s activities. This is the story of the behind-the-scenes people who did a lot of technical work for the agency, and a lot of the intelligence collection done by the agency came from technical sources.

For many technical terms and agency abbreviations, the Glossary at the back of the book may prove useful.

In OC and in OTS, we took care of each other in many ways. Whenever someone had problems, we would all jump in and help if needed. When arriving at a new assignment, someone was always at the airport to guide you through the arrival to a new place. They put the new people in a decent abode, put food in there for them, and came to get them when they were signing in. Working with those people in OC and OTS was a wonderful experience. We all must retire at the age of sixty since we are too old to put up with the stress we face. Only those with special abilities, usually leaders, are asked to stay on.

CHAPTER 1

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MANY DECISIONS HAD TO BE MADE

Little did I know at the age of fourteen that I would start a journey that only a few humans ever travel. This journey spanned thirty-seven years of my career with the US Navy and the CIA (four years with the navy and thirty-three with the CIA). However, one job led to the other job. My journey from living in a small cotton mill village to traveling the world working for Uncle Sam was truly a miracle. Very few of my schoolmates ever left town, and those who did usually lived within a short distance of their home area.

I attended grammar school for