THE UN-APPRECIATED ART OF CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-01208R000100070056-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 22, 2011
• Sequence Number: 56
• Publication Date: January 1, 1979
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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STAT Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/22 CIA-RDP90-01208R000100070056-5
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ON PAG
IF
Our
JANUARY 1979
They would sit around and tell stories.
Weird stories. Stories I had a difficult time
believing. But naturally I loved it. the
casu irihatter of death and international
intrigue, ideological war stories laden with
more blood, rape and sex than any real
remembered conflict. I kept coming hack
for more ("Did you know that they're
repaving the only road in Afghani tan? Do
you know why?"). It got into my system:
and before I knew it. I thought I had a
story when. really, a story had me. And
that was when I realized that these-
"sptxtks"wereprobably the most interesting
people in all government-lethal academi-
cians. philosopher superstars. referring to
a dead enemy as someone who had to he
"extracted.' as if killing someone simply
altered his point of view.
Oh. slick, slick, slick-your spook is so
slick. I watched him with endless fascina-
lion, and the more I watched, the slicker he
got ("Do you know how to kill someone
with a Shell No-Pest Strip? It's so simple it
scares me, and I'm fearless "). And I came
to d 'conclusion about CIA that I feel I
should share. After years of looking, I have
finally figured out what CIA is.
It's art. It's like Christo hanging'a 2416-
mile-long curtain..Or Oldenburg building
a ten-story baseball bat in Chicago. What
a goof. Back in 1976, when I was hot on the
spook trail. a friend of mine and I were
churning out a storm of prose on the
subject. We thought we were slick. Later,
we would nearly bust a gut over that. Haw!
We were beautiful. Hot on the trail! Slice-
it. Talk about being behind the times. We
were doing paleontology where spook
matters were concerned. Nevertheless, we
had the right instincts. We wrote this:
A CIA cover organixation is a strange and
very useful thing. It's like having a magic
box. You can put things in and you can take
things out. You can take things out that you
never put in and you can put things in that
will never comic out. or you can get into
the hers yotimcif and go away somewhere-
or perhaps go away forever. If the Max is might se hint idly.seritch himself beftirt
large enough. you can put an entire coun-
try inside it and no one will ever know
I From "The Puppet and the Puppet.
checking out. it was fired by a small aeon(
blank, similar to those used in pistols to
starting
swimming races. It was made to h,
DuRuis, I'Irnhrn. September 1976-FdG- used on -in airliner: and when he %,.-a:
asked to design it. lie was specifically tak
A former spook friend of mine with 13 that it should he able to pi:netratc the chat!
MOSs (Military Operational Specialties-- the Russians wear. It delinitelycould pene
most people have only one, two at most) (rate a Russian greatcoat. limnun. Re
told me ;about his time in Vietnam and member the Cold War?
Laos in the early Sixties, when we didn't Recently. I interviewedWilli;un Colby
exist in. the press as a Southeast Asian former director of Central lntclligenrt
entity. If anything had happened to him (DCI). at great length. and at the end o:
over there, his family would have been told - our sessions he remarked that there wept
he died in an-auto accident in California, "whole areas" ('hadn't even thought to ask
where he was officially stationed. If you about. "Whole systems." Imagine that
searched the records, you would find that What could it be? I pointed to some satcl-
he had never tell the States. Oflicially, (ite-photo information 1 had brought
Wild. eh? They put him in the "magic :along, concerning a supersecret install,.
box." where he iced the enemy for a while lion in Russia that the air force calls rNt!i
without officially leaving the base. in (Possible Nuclear Underground 1cst.
I once took a walk around ,'pond with a Ing. third in a series of suspected sites),
spook technical advisor. He wanted to he Spooks. however, say Russia is developim_
away from his house and lie had just "directed-energy weapons" there. Death
dumped a cache of "devices" into the ftys- Colby. the former chief spook in the
pond. The tore (Bureau of Alcohol. lo- world. looked at the material and hawked
hacco and Firearms) was after him. I to was up U wad of"no comment.- Our exciiang?
scared. He feared for his life. He wanted to ;'t'ent something like this:
tell me some stories-to use me. "What kinds of weapons are they test
He said,"A small quantity gfpfutoniunt ing? Sig weapons?" ? ., .
'hundreds of people. W' easily available: "I've been asked not to comment.",
all you'd need is it little hchavior. a lot less ,You want to know alx+ul the glamor o
,;aggressive than what it takes to hijack an being a reporter? I lerr it is the entire [him
airliner. Nerve gas? You can make it in in a nutshell. You show some truly hear
your kitchen. The essential ingredients liar government type a hit of informaiim -
it are over-the-counter items these days. you re not supposed to have. and he kint
The literature is all there, buried. All you of polishes his glasses real swiftly
looks
1
,
.
have to do is look for it. And the poisons a point just above our deli shoulder ant
you can concoct that are untraceable are says. "No comment." I love it. Nothing i
staggering. .The delivery systems art: Tabu- finer. Who knows what's goin`'on there
taus. That electric dart gun they showed in but you can bet it is ,t7,nrt' shit.
the Senate hearings was a joke. I worked CIA is a kind of realized Western Zcr
on projects like that. There are far more phenomenon. (Spook advice on avoiding
sophisticated methods now." phone lap: Tap your own phone. Whv:
I-te took out a-slim cigarette fighter and `What are the (Kids of having two taps or.
showed it to rot:. It fired a metal dart w- one phone'.'") Seymour M. Hem. It of the
small you could hardly see it. it was rifled ?\'(,u`. )iari Timex recently wrote a ,nut
with spiral grooves, which you could see James Angleton. !i-rmer director of c IA
only under a microscope, and then dipped Counterintelligence (C'.I. -a meta-spank
in poison. It would enter the body and not outfit. distilled es ence of sntx+_ rare.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/22 : CIA-RDP90-01208R000100070056-5 ~~QTI1U.~-
/Article by Laurence Gonzales .: I