Behind Closed Doors - the Central Intelligence Agency

you've heard about it you've read about it but you've never seen it until now behind closed doors at the CIA total darkness on the grounds of what may be the most secure place in the world the CIA we all have our image of what goes on here and for most of us is probably James Bond's secret agents spies using the latest tricks of the trade like the video technology you're seeing right now whereby my image can only be seen through a special starlight scope but not to the naked eye or where a match can make this environment out here look like daylight we have been cleared tonight to explore the facts the mists and the people behind the closed doors of the Central Intelligence Agency they call it the compound of 258 a core classified city with no street address but its own zip code for the first time visitor it's intimidating security is tight five eight seven six you you do get the feeling that everybody here knows everything about you that's not true but security does monitor all of your movements once inside there are no tours here even immediate family members can't come in except for one day once a year just getting the agency to agree to this story took two years of persistence and negotiation and we agreed on certain ground rules we would be escorted by CIA representatives at all times even trips to the restroom all CIA employees were notified of our presence and given the option to appear because there were undercover operatives in the building the agency had the right to review our videotapes and erase any footage that directly compromised their security clearance our interview questions were not bring in advance and we retain complete editorial control were you a spy the agency itself is a contradiction in terms for almost 50 years a secret organization in a free society their official mission to collect analyze and disseminate raw information intelligence about foreign countries for our nation's top officials the vast preponderance of what we collect frankly we steal all right I mean that's what intelligence is it's stealing secrets we steal by flying reconnaissance satellites we steal by listening out communications we steal by recruiting assets in agents in places where people don't know that they're present certainly is gonna be a lot that you can't talk about publicly because in talking to you and to Americans I'm also talking to Saddam Hussein and Kim jong-il and Hezbollah and all of the people that frankly were spying on to protect those interests the agency was built so that what goes on here stays here on the outside the green tinted windows are electromagnetic shields so no internal communications can be intercepted inside engineers and architects design what is known as the wave hallways it deliberately twist and turn choking off all radio emissions while allowing people and air to move freely one of the first things that you notice is that the office doors have much more than a conventional lock and key because what's inside is for their eyes only to secure entry each door has a special combination lock in fact the officers are called bolts a typical vault looks like pretty much any other government office except that you're issued two phones the green one is secure the beige one is not and they must be three feet apart so as to avoid eavesdropping now the CIA has an internal cable TV system it has 25 channels five of them are classified now what to do with the trash well you can just toss it where you can shred it or it can be sorted into any one of three top-secret bags now where do these bags go that's classified to maintain secrecy the agency isolates itself from the outside world they have their own Police Department power plant phone company computer network television studio and full-service printing plant but still there's one unavoidable part of doing business that the agency can't completely control we have about 20,000 pieces of mail a day that comes into our mail room we have careers that deliver that mail around the metropolitan area to all of our customers obviously you have security concerns or the mailing in how do you handle that well we screen the mail in a variety of different ways we do have dogs that are trained to sip on certain items and we do some technical screening as well and you talk to us about the technical screening that goes on and we do some x-rays but we also do some other things as well so that's that all I'd like to say and yes they do have Labs labs straight out of James Bond what you're seeing has never been seen by the American public this is one of the ways the agency communicates with their spies abroad I literally buried the microdot under the O of your name so there's information inside this morning in the midfield a message up to an entire paragraph in length can be put on a film microdot the size of the tip of a needle and hidden in something as innocuous as a letter between friends so I would know if I'm an operative that I always with them at the O of my name what do I do I was shown the process by a man who teaches it to agents all over the world he spoke with us but for his own protection he altered his appearance hi all right now we're working right now on what would normally take place probably within the bathroom the hotel or something full of water into any little container take that little piece of the letter did you see the move yes and they're together oh my god that's you it is so small then the dot is carefully placed on a special plastic lens the size of a grain of rice can I just put up straight to the light oh my gosh our little wait I want to say this is Joan you are now behind closed doors at the CIA that's amazing that's your message that's amazing equally amazing is the image perspective transformation lamp believe it or not you are actually looking at a still photograph a Mogadishu Somalia taken from 400 miles in space here at Langley the CIA receives a series of still satellite photos from both commercial sources as well as their own spy satellites these high-resolution photos are then digitally enhanced and animated into a 3d image is this the airport right here with a new airfield at Moga d Shoop and it's right along the coastal area so and oftentimes the military had to bypass certain areas of the city to get around to the airfield and that's important to show them which areas in city to avoid was very dangerous for people to go in and be taking pictures taking actual photographs on the ground we can provide information in a form that will allow people to be able to visualize and walk through an area they couldn't walk to ordinarily fly into an area they couldn't fly into ordinarily land at a beach they couldn't land at ordinarily this gives them a way of being prepared in advance for whatever situation they might face January 17th 1991 day 1 a Desert Storm having utilized 3d imagery enhancement of rocky terrain our pilots had actually flown dozens of sorties well in advance of the invasion but computer technology was only a part of the Desert Storm intelligence package CIA spies informed our leaders of the perfect time and conditions to launch an undetected first strike down to the minute my vision equipment takes the life it's available from the moon and the stars and any other life sources and it amplifies it so it's brought it up to your eyes to see the night was chosen so that it was a fairly moonless night because we knew that the iraqi sites would not be able to operate in those conditions and ours would like you to be seen well i travel to foreign countries and poses someone I'm not I'm in the business of gathering information about foreign systems and it's best that they not know who I am night vision secret writing computer warfare the technology we associate with Tom Clancy novels but it will surprise you how the agency actually gathers most of its intelligence they get it free the agency has its own video Operations Center where they monitor commercial unclassified broadcast from all over the world there's a lot of worldwide reporting going on and it's a lot of valuable information for example if they're reporting on a nuclear plant we can look behind and the scenes of that nuclear plant and see rods and count the capacity of that particular plant power there's a terrorist event you can look at that event and see the crowds and look at the faces of the people in the crowd sometimes that yields real information for operations officers the CIA library is designed specifically for intelligence in fact if an agent needs a phone number they have instant access to thousands of local phone books from every imaginable city in the world but not all the information the CIA needs can be acquired so easily the agency does in fact pay foreign nationals to become spies and commit treason it tends to be a matter of paying money for information and not just governments but narcotics cartels terrorist groups a paramilitary groups that might take over a friendly government - all of those types of groups are people inside whom we recruit agents assets people to inform us when we return we'll reveal how all that intelligence covert and overt winds up in the hands of the President of the United States Hollywood has led many of us to view life as a CIA and glamorous and all was full of intrigue reality to work in the spy business requires a great deal of personal sacrifice most of what you do and no you can't talk about even with family members the hours are long and many employees frequently work on weekends and holidays in fact 80-hour workweeks are not uncommon before he left his job director Woolsey spoke with us about his job and what life was like behind closed doors as the director of the CIA he was very candid and disarmingly honest I was going to ask you what are you keeping your briefcase but I know if you have at least four briefcases over there and a gentleman around here guarding them most nights are to briefcase nights for me and most weekends or four or five briefcase weekends I get up around 4:30 in the morning to start to read the overnight cables and materials that have come in so I've usually worked for two and a half hours or so before I head for the office and when all those briefcases go home is there a vault or something I thought yes how do you secure there's a there's a there's a command post actually in our house were someone who takes care of all that for 4:30 a.m. it's rush hour at the agency and for those who work in the printing press this is the busiest and most important time of the day they are on a deadline to finish printing the hundreds of copies of classified daily briefings that have to be proofed bound and numbered we would have to have it completely printed collated and utter backdoor no later than 5:30 in the morning 5:30 a.m. Karen Moore comes to work she is one of seven senior analysts who briefed everybody from the President on down her job to condense the world economy into a secret report for the administration's top advisors all intelligence eventually comes through here the hub the Operations Center of the CIA and very early every morning the briefers come here to go over the early morning reports and all of the overnight traffic intelligence gathered during the night they must be completely up to date before the early morning briefings are the top government officials it is almost 6 o'clock let's go inside [Music] you are looking at the Grand Central Station of intelligence 24 hours a day every day using all of the agency's resources analysts collect and interpret the top-secret details on every major crisis in the world integrating maps graphics pictures and texts these briefing books become a classified reader's digest if you just call back and let us know if that's been cleared then we can go ahead and descend it the vice president's guess his briefing on the way to work I go to his residence when we drive to the White House together as the moment so that tripping in the morning is a type of Escada that's right yes we bring up to date on everything that happens overnight and any questions you might have simultaneously President Clinton's day starts with a briefing in the Oval Office I'm one of the first people that I think that he meets with in the morning and what time I meet with him together with his national security advisors and after I complete my briefing then he continues his discussions with national security advisors the questions are difficult questions that these people ask they're a demanding administration like I would presume any administration is we're not to give our opinions they don't necessarily want our opinions they have enough opinions amongst themselves what they want from us is what is the facts what is the evidence and what does it all sort of add up to I've never had anybody ask what do you think my role is to represent the entire research and analysis of the analyst back here it's not my opinion I don't answer opinion questions now about this point when you're walking right up to the White House luckily that's right what are the three or four most important things I want to say what kinds of questions do I anticipate make sure that I don't leave anything out and how am I going to organize it because sometimes you might have a limited amount of time rights right you never know if you get in there what their schedule is it can change and now the process has begun the CIA analysts are briefing the top policymakers all around the nation's capital from the Pentagon the State Department - right here at the White House it went well as as usual but it's a never-ending process I mean that's part of what my job is just to come back here and say ok the next question is and that happens every day I mean the next question for tomorrow has to be turned around in 24 hours the CIA's goal has always been to remain very private but in February of 1994 they became very public when they experienced the worst scandal in agency history CIA spy Aldrich Ames and his wife Rosario were arrested for treason Ames was a sloppy double agent whose lavish lifestyle was seemingly ignored by internal agency security with anything over a nine-year period in exchange for an estimated two million dollars Ames exposed several hundred intelligence operations to the Russians the information he sold led to the execution of at least 12 top agents Aldrich Ames was not a friend of communism Aldrich Ames was a greedy despicable man who wanted a big house in a Mercedes and I'm sorry Jaguar and so many lives in order to gratify his his personal desire for money Aldrich Ames is now serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole although director Woolsey was not at the CIA during Ames tenure it became his responsibility to discipline agency employees who failed to detect Ames actions will they came under intense personal attack for not firing any of them it would have been politically a lot easier to have fired the four remaining people who were here but I gave those individuals letters of reprimand and I didn't do more for one simple reason I didn't think it was fair many claimed that because of that decision mr. Woolsey was forced to resign immediately following his resignation outside the compound the former directors sat with us again for this exclusive interview you were under so much scrutiny there are those who say that you've left before being asked to leave what would you say I had no indication from the President or from anyone who mattered that I was going to be asked to leave at all I mean I was one who decided to leave I think that the Ames case was a catalyst for some changes that needed to be made at the agency and I do not regret for a moment that I made the decisions about the individuals each one based on its merits based on what that person knew and when he knew it and took what I considered then and consider now to be the appropriate disciplinary steps at its best the CIA is about people normal people when they do their job correctly no and can know about it it's hard for people to understand what exactly you do when you can't talk about specifics of requests or what we gather or how we do our job so it has to be it's a pride within them in the building that's difficult to share on the outside it would be nice if you could if you could put your achievements up on the billboard that that would be the last day you'd be operating as an intelligence organization and I think that's the recognition that's pretty widespread in the business and we're more than willing to live with that it's one of those things that I feel that when I retire when I get close to that point when you say anyone could be free to write about my life I can sit on that front porch that rocking chair and say gee I'm glad what I did instead of sitting on that rocking chair and saying gee I wished I had done the agency of the 90s is a company in transition the aims case general government downsizing and the end of the Cold War have led Congress and the agency itself to re-examine the mission opening 50 years of closed doors what the CIA will look like in a year 2000 is a topic of great debate which will ultimately be decided by global events and the politicians that we elect but on the personal side we hope that we have helped to humanize this institution an institution which up until now has always been shrouded in secrecy we'll be right back Oh

Channel: Alan Grant

Views: 326,355

Rating: 4.7903357 out of 5

Keywords: CIA, Central Intelligence Agency, Joan Lunden, Behind Closed Doors, 1996, ABC, Government, Classified, Television

Id: KKHwGXMqTlc

Length: 20min 2sec (1202 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 02 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/TKInstinct]

I was half expecting Gary Newman to start playing at the beginning of the video.