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Domestic Tests for Agency Research and Development Efforts

1. As a normal part of ORD's efforts in the research and development of equipment and techniques for Agency applications in foreign intelligence, we conduct experiments and tests in the United States. Clearly, the design and development of our intelligence equipments can be done more economically and more securely in this country. Although most of the tests of our R&D equipments are performed in closed laboratories or in secure areas simulating the foreign environment, some of the tests and experiments, of necessity, reveal domestic information.

2. A review of the surveillance equipment or techniques which have at some time or other been exposed to domestic testing is as follows:

a. Laser Probe - About 1967, the laser probe developed by ORD was tested by TSD in San Francisco under very closely controlled conditions. The ORD Project Officer witnessed portions of the test. Recordings that were made of laser probe output were carefully controlled as classified material and it is believed that the tapes have long since been destroyed.

b. [...] System - About 1968, this system was tested [...] This system is designed to permit intercept of [...] Recordings of these [...] intercepts were carefully controlled and were destroyed several years ago.

c. Telephone Intrusion Study - [...] Many of these are patterned after the U.S. system and, for this reason, limited monitoring to test the operation of intercept equipment in the United States is planned. [...] Message content is of no interest and will not be recorded. Overseas testing is planned at a subsequent date. To date, some domestic testing of this concept has been carried out at the contractor's plant. No recordings have been made of such data. Extremely brief tests exercising U.S. and foreign telephone systems [...] have been carried out to verify initial concepts. The duration of testing was less than one-half hour.

d. Other Sensor Testing - Examples of engineering development tests of special sensors within the United States include [...] and [...] In all these cases, the data output of such testing has been used for engineering development and the content has been restricted to dissemination to those in Government involved with the engineering design.

e. Remote Physiological Measurements - An ORD-developed [...] is being tested at a contractor's site for use as a remote cardiograph [...] Some test subjects are witting, but most tests are on naive subjects (they do not know they are being tested). The [...] is completely harmless to the subject and the test results are closely held.

f. Personality Structure of Defectors Study - ORD undertook to determine the personality structure of defectors during the period 1966-69. The work primarily involved an analysis of the open literature on known defectors. An ancillary effort was concerned with a study of the phenomenon of defection itself, i.e., leaving one religion for another, or changing one set of political beliefs for another. The work was conducted at Stanford University.

g. [redacted]

h. Communications Link Loading Study - Under carefully controlled conditions, some U.S. microwave communications were recorded and passed through the intercept system under test to prove quality of performance. All intercept material connected with this was destroyed within a few weeks of the time of intercept and the material was never checked for substantive content.

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