Skip to main content

Steadies and One-Timers

The flow of oddball letters and phone calls increases perceptibly when CIA is in the news. Less than 48 hours after President Johnson announced he would nominate Admiral Raborn to be the DCI, a Detroit man had sent the Director-designate 8,000 words of complaint about the high cost of prescription medicines and a New Yorker had asked his help in controlling a whistling brain. The file of letters to him was mounting even before his appointment had been confirmed. On 17 April a Massachusetts man sent him some well-intentioned advice. "Dear Admiral," he wrote, "as you may be aware, L.B.J. ain't got much Brains or he wouldn't be President. I dealt with his type for 37 years. The best way to get along with him is humor him."

But a faithful nucleus of loyal intelligence fans always contributes about 25 percent of the total. Probably most of the cranks are as harmless as the childish codes they sometimes use. The trouble is, they're unpredictable. A few might have complaints worth hearing; others might pose a real threat to an unsuspecting officer who received them.

Nut-and-dolt visits to headquarters offices have practically disappeared since CIA moved out to Langley; an occasional walk-in still calls at its personnel office downtown. Its overt or semi-overt domestic offices, which are more approachable, have now compiled an impressive record of coping with off-beat visitors.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

MKULTRA Proposal - Subproject 133

Proposal entitled [redacted] Submitted on behalf of [redacted] June 1962 DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGY June 14, 1962 Purpose of Study: The purpose of this proposal is a request for financial support to continue an investigation of microbial action on marine manganese nodules and terrigenous mineral sulfides, which the principal investigator has been pursuing since 1958. Very intensive work on these materials is being carried on by him, with fruitful results, during the current year, 1961-62, under a grant from the [...] of Stanford University, California. Since relatively little is known about microbial mineral transformation, and in view of current academic and practical interest of microbiologists, geologists, mining engineers, soil scientists, oceanographers, etc., in the subject, this research should make a valuable contribution to science. Summary of Past Work: a. Bacteriology of mineral sulfides. Attempts were made to evaluate the microbial flora isolable from unsterilized, crushed sulfi...

The Darker Bioweapons Future

3 November 2003 A panel of life science experts convened for the Strategic Assessments Group by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that advances in biotechnology, coupled with the difficulty in detecting nefarious biological activity, have the potential to create a much more dangerous biological warfare (BW) threat. The panel noted: The effects of some of these engineered biological agents could be worse than any disease known to man. The genomic revolution is pushing biotechnology into an explosive growth phase. Panelists asserted that the resulting wave front of knowledge will evolve rapidly and be so broad, complex, and widely available to the public that traditional intelligence means for monitoring WMD development could prove inadequate to deal with the treat from these advanced biological weapons. Detection of related activities, particularly the development of novel bioengineered pathogens, will depend increasingly on more specific human intelligence and, argued panelist...

CIA Domestic Activities Timeline - July 1971

1 July 1971 "Carver noted that Secretary Laird had requested that our printing plant assist in reproducing the forty-seven-volume secret Pentagon study on Vietnam for distribution to the press and others this morning. This request was aborted by the President." (DDCI in the chair) 2 July 1971 "DD/S said that in the absence of [...] attended a meeting at the White House yesterday of the interagency group which is reviewing classification and declassification policy. The President spent an hour with the group and said that he wants: ... and (6) the revocation of all clearances and the return of all classified material held at Harvard, Brookings, Rand, and Cal Tech, as well as the withdrawal of Q clearances held by the Regents of the University of California. A brief discussion followed, and the Executive Director noted that DOD has asked us to provide information on all our contracts with Rand, as well as all clearances held by Rand personnel for our purposes. Acting Direc...