CHAPTER 22

Concealments

The OTS concealment specialist combines the skills of a craftsman, the creativity of an artist and the illusion of a magician.

—An OTS concealment engineer

In 1586, secret correspondence to Mary Queen of Scots from the French ambassador was concealed inside barrels of beer and smuggled to her at the country estate of Chartley, England, where she was under house arrest.1 During the American Revolution, couriers who traveled by boat, carried intelligence reports inside weighted bottles that could be dropped overboard at the threat of capture.2 A hollowed-out lead bullet was used to conceal smaller written messages, but this was eventually replaced by a similar bullet made of silver that could be swallowed at the first sign of danger without incurring the ills of lead poisoning.3

OTS’s laboratory for concealments grew out of the OSS Research and Development—Camouflage Division in Fort Washington, Maryland, which had produced letter drops for use by World War II agents.4 The drops were originally made from tree limbs. The wood was split and a metal container inserted in such a fashion that the wood could be replaced and present an innocent appearance to any observer.5 An important principle learned after receiving comments back from the field was that the drops should never be constructed of anything burnable or edible, lest they be picked up and used by some passerby needing food or fuel. Afterward, better drops were produced in various forms that included stones and old tin cans. Such drops were designed to be be ignored by anyone not involved with the operation and could be left at public locations, such as at a prearranged distance from a mile-marker on a European road, for a two-way exchange of intelligence. 6

041

Sensitive notes and information could be protected by use of a Combustible Notebook. The ordinary-looking notebook contained Pryofilm, which when ignited by an incendiary pencil, would destroy the notebook and contents in thirty seconds, 1940s.

Another research and development unit, Division 19, Miscellaneous Weapons of the National Defense Research Committee, supported OSS’s wartime requirements and established its first lab in June 1943 at the Congressional Country Club outside Washington, D.C, operating as the Maryland Research Laboratory.7 Under the project code-named MOTH, three containers were created for transporting concealed secret intelligence documents with devices to destroy the contents “if opened by a person unfamiliar with its use.” One device could be camouflaged inside a fountain pen or shaving kit and held two or three folded sheets that would be destroyed thirty seconds after initiation. The second was a medium-sized notebook with bound sheets that was destroyed summarily, and the third was a briefcase capable of destroying a special insertable pocket for maps and papers.8

The U.S. Army operated a secret Escape and Evasion (E&E) laboratory and facility under the secret MIS-X program at Fort Hunt, Virginia, during World War II. This lab produced concealments and E&E aids including silk maps hidden in clothing and playing cards; compasses inside uniform buttons, safety razors, pencils, and fountain pens; and shortwave radios inside mess kits, baseballs, and cribbage boards.9

The true nature of the CIA’s original concealment program, a charter function of the Technical Services Staff, was obscured by its name, “Furnishings and Equipment Division.” During the Cold War, objects with un-apparent cavities such as furniture and automobiles were required when it became operationally desirable to hide a person, passageway, or object. Concealment created the illusion that the object being used for hiding had no relationship to a clandestine operation.10 Camouflage was a less-secure means of hiding than concealment; like a cover, if camouflage is removed, the contents could be seen. A large safe with a tarp thrown on top may be camouflaged and removing the tarp would expose the object as a safe. However, if a false bottom was created inside the safe and the cavity door could be opened only by manipulating a hidden latch, the safe was transformed into a concealment.

A concealment device, or CD, includes a hidden compartment to which access is obtained by mechanical decipherment of locks, hinges, and latches. The mechanical actions necessary to open a CD are normally a sequence of unnatural twists, turns, and pulls. Intelligence services used CDs to mask the entrance to tunnels or hiding places as well as for hiding spy gear. OTS categorized concealments as being active or passive.

An active CD possessed an obvious function that remained operable in addition to the internal cavity and the spy gear it housed. An example of an active CD was a fountain pen that wrote normally but contained a subminiature camera that could be operated without affecting the writing function. The writing instrument masked the presence of the concealment. Another example would be a video camera concealed inside a lamp with both devices performing their designed functions separately or simultaneously. A calculator modified with a concealment cavity for a beacon was considered active if it continued to add, subtract, multiply, and divide.

042

The 1960s Burma Shave-can active concealment produced shaving foam and masked an internal cavity. Years later such items were copied by criminals for use in smuggling.

A passive CD provides a cavity for concealing materials but does not perform another function to mask its clandestine use. For example, a wooden statue with a cavity in the base would have no function other than for display. An attaché case with a false bottom at its base or a book with a hollowed-out cover were other examples of passive CDs that became a standard part of every case officer’s and agent’s operational equipment.

Concealments served five operational purposes: storing (bookcase at home), transporting (travel purse), exchanging (a loaded dirty mitten at a dead drop site), infiltrating (an audio transmitter inside a gift to a target), and masking (a wine rack placed in front of the entrance to a secret passageway).

Spies with compromising equipment must secretly store and protect the clandestine gear in their possession. One-time pads for enciphering messages or subminiature cameras must be stored indefinitely for use at the appropriate time. Sensitive intelligence information or documents must be hidden until passed to the handler. CDs need to provide quick access to the equipment and information while protecting against accidental discovery by a family member or exposure during a more threatening security search. The size of the items to be stored in the concealment and the available method for getting the CD to the agent dictated what could be used.

Virtually any object that offers sufficient volume can be converted into a concealment device, but the object has to fit into the user’s lifestyle. The local economy in the agent’s country often restricts the variety of CDs issued. In areas where consumer goods are in short supply, it may be difficult to find items that could be given to the agent for storage purposes without causing neighbors to be envious and suspicious. Constructing a CD inside a false-bottomed five-liter petrol can be an effective storage device for an agent with a car or garage, but if the country was experiencing severe petrol shortages such a luxury might be seen as out of place or be a target for theft.

In the decades before data could be stored on discs and thumb drives, wooden desks and bookcases that could conceal a four-inch briefcase, a large document, disguise items, radios, and cameras were among the most popular concealment “hosts.”11 Concealment furniture was constructed to blend in with the home decor of the user. Bookcases, in particular, were universally accepted as common furniture. They were durable and could be built with cavities throughout—at the top behind the molding, inside the shelves, in a false back, in the thickness of the sides, or with the largest cavity beneath the bottom shelf behind the skirt.

Material being exchanged by dead drop was hidden inside specially constructed CDs designed to blend in with the site’s surroundings and remain unrecognized until retrieved. If the drop site was in a park, a small piece of tree limb hollowed out to hold film cassettes or a false passport would have been a typical concealment.12 Waterproof containers, weighted with lead shot to compensate for the buoyancy, were constructed to fit inside drainpipes, toilet reservoirs, or submerged in the shallow water of a decorative pond or stream.13 Other “natural environment” concealments resembled bricks or chunks of masonry.14 These items were collectively known within CIA as “sticks and bricks” because, when deployed, they were indistinguishable from the original pieces in their natural environment.

Dead drop concealments normally must have no value to the society where used. Otherwise, the concealment may be collected for its assumed worth. In theory, the more repulsive a dead drop CD appeared, the more attractive its operational use. A crushed can still dripping oil, a piece of electrical cable coming out a wall with exposed wires that appeared “live,” discarded bandages and medical waste, or animal excrement were unlikely to be picked up by a casual passerby.

Animal carcasses, especially decaying ones, are universally offensive and thus effective for dead drop containers.15 OTS specialists periodically produced CDs from pigeons, rats, and an occasional roadkill. The lab animals were humanely killed, then gutted and treated to create an artificial cavity inside the stomach and chest. Some were freeze-dried and vacuum-packed in tin cans. Material intended for the agent was wrapped in aluminum foil and inserted inside the created cavity and the animal stitched back together. Before the carcass was deployed, it might be doused in Tabasco sauce as a deterrent to hungry cats roaming the streets. Pigeon carcasses were typically dropped at sites around parks and the special rats were often just left by the side of the road. To make the dead rats even more repugnant, OTS constructed rubberized “gut parts” to spill out of the carcass as it lay on the road. When deployed, the roadkill CD was intended to be retrieved quickly.

Agents needed a secure means to transport their spy gear. If recruited outside a denied area, the agent would be required to reestablish contact after they returned home and were ready to begin work. The techs found a solution by hiding one-time pads and commo schedules inside inexpensive tourist souvenirs such as statues of saints, reproductions of sculpture, and castings of famous buildings. These items could be collected in cities where the agent traveled, carried by hand, and readily explained as a tourist purchase if questioned. Low-cost items were less likely to be examined when packed in personal luggage. For greater security, these were one-time-use CDs that could not be opened without being broken to access their contents. Because there was no hidden latch or manipulation that might betray the method of opening the CD, the cavity was not likely to be detected even during a close examination.

People, as well as information often needed to be “transported.”16 During the Cold War CIA and OTS worked successfully on more than 140 “illegal movement” operations without ever losing a person.17 OTS constructed life-supporting human concealments for defectors or escapees in the form of specially designed exfiltration crates or modified automobiles. Refrigerator boxes could house an eight-hour life support system for a person weighing up to 250 pounds and measuring up to six foot six inches tall. The less than luxurious container included items needed to support basic life and body functionality such as “piddle packs” for urination, absorbent sponges, food, water, ice packs, gel packs, a warming source, and circulating battery fans. Constraints on the internal oxygen supply usually limited the time a system could be employed.

During one exfiltration of an agent from a Soviet Bloc country, the border crossing took much longer than planned when the vehicle was held up at several checkpoints. The agent was wedged inside a concealment built in the car’s trunk with virtually no room to move. Officers driving the car, although concerned about the agent’s well-being, could do nothing. Finally, after several hours longer than expected, the automobile arrived at a safe location, the concealment opened and the individual pulled out. To the amazement of the officers present, the agent was smiling and seemed unperturbed by his claustrophobic adventure. When asked how he had tolerated the experience so well, the safe and grateful agent replied that he had been a tank driver in the Soviet army. As a result, he was accustomed to being a contortionist.

In a less successful operation, OTS received a requirement for a Mercedes sedan configured to conceal a man who would be driven out of Eastern Europe. The lead OTS specialist designed a concealment using space created by reducing the car’s fuel tank. He worked on the project for six months to remove the original tank, replace it with a smaller one, and make other external and interior configurations to accommodate the agent. When finished, the passenger area, trunk, and underside looked factory new. The tech received unanimous acclaim for doing a first-class concealment job.

The automobile purchase had been disassociated from the Agency and the title and paperwork showed no official connection between the car and the U.S. government. The station arranged for a driver who was not aware of the intended use of the car to deliver the vehicle to Berlin. Apparently, the driver failed to heed the fuel indicator and ran out of gas while in route. He contacted the nearest Mercedes dealer because something “wasn’t working” right—the tank had been full when he started the trip, yet the fuel gauge had fallen quickly and he had run out of fuel well under the normal range for the vehicle. The technician examined the car for some time and then called the driver. “Sir, you have a problem,” asserted the technician as he pointed out the small tank and the cavity. The discovery immediately ended the operation but the U.S. government now owned a new limited-range Mercedes. Eventually the car became the VIP touring sedan at one of OTS’s covert facilities.

Another exfiltration operation required a person be moved from a major hotel in a Middle Eastern country that was known to be under surveillance by the local service hostile to the United States. OTS techs covertly observed the comings and goings at the hotel for several days and determinedthat the surveillance focused exclusively on people entering and leaving but showed no interest in baggage or luggage. It was, a tech suggested, time to consult with some of OTS’s Hollywood contacts who specialized in performing magic tricks. If a magician could saw his beautiful assistant in half and then have her emerge intact from a coffin half a stage away, surely he could sneak someone past a surveillance team.

A magician and his trick builders designed a dolly for rolling luggage that was loaded with varying sizes of suitcases, a steamer trunk, and an ice chest. The façade of the baggage on the dolly appeared completely realistic; each piece was designed to fit around the legs, arms, torso, and head of a person so that the agent could sit inside and be wheeled out of the hotel by the porter into a waiting van. The operation proceeded without incident, completely confounding the surveillance.

CDs are critical to infiltrating secret equipment into a facility. The “Trojan horse” is often an item desired by the target or a gift given as a gesture of goodwill that conceals a bug, a beacon, or even an explosive device.18

A Trojan horse operation against a communist country’s ambassador in Europe exploited the diplomat’s interest in a piece of sculpture he openly admired at a dinner party. The local CIA station reasoned that the sculpture, an impressive large bronze of an old farmer, might be displayed by the ambassador in his embassy conference room. The size of the piece made it an ideal host for an audio device and the batteries necessary for a long service life. The station obtained the original sculpture, but the techs could not create a hollow cavity inside the bronze and restore the original without leaving signs of alteration.

The alternative was to sculpt an identical statue and position the eavesdropping package inside the farmer’s head before the final casting. By creating a forged sculpture, no visible scars would appear on the outside and the sealed bronze would limit access to the unit if examined by the embassy’s technical team. OTS found an accomplished sculptor from among its artists and the final casting was declared a masterpiece; even its weight replicated that of the original. When the audio components were tested, the device accurately reproduced the room sounds using a microphone “airway” the tech had hidden inside the recesses of the farmer’s mouth.

An access agent presented the statue to the ambassador during a ceremony on the annual celebration of the communist country’s national day. A listening post, a block away from the embassy, recorded the event as the access agent wheeled the bronze into the embassy and made the presentation. After several minutes of listening to diplomatic social chatter, the listening post’s keeper remotely switched the device off until the next morning. All waited anxiously to hear where the ambassador would display the sculpture.

When the audio was switched on again, the concealed statue continued performing splendidly. The ambassador had it sitting next to him as he conducted his daily briefing of his senior ministers. The placement could not have been better, right in the ambassador’s conference room.

Congratulations for the CIA officers were, however, premature. The ambassador then announced that a treasure like this statue deserved to stand in the embassy’s most prestigious location. All important visitors would pass this prominent spot at the top of the stairs leading to the ambassador’s suite and thus could pause to admire the sculpture.

The announcement was terrible news for the operation. The top of the stairs would not be an area used for secret briefings and meetings. The listening post monitored the device for several weeks but obtained nothing of intelligence value. The concealment tech and sculptor had done their jobs, perhaps too well. Assessment of the ambassador had not anticipated his need to display and show off the magnificent gift.19

OTS created masking or camouflage for equipment whose size, location, or function precluded concealment, but which could not be left visible. Roof antennas were masked by tool or storage sheds to prevent another security service from determining the antenna’s direction and configuration. A laser communication device pointing out of the window of an agent’s dining room might be camouflaged as a large decorative urn. The entrance to a secret tunnel in the basement of a safe house could be masked by a bar and wine racks that slid easily aside for the tunnel access. Each masking system is designed to draw attention to the mask itself without attempting to hide the fact of its existence. Because the mask is something that would be expected in the environment, no particular curiosity is aroused and no further examination of the mask is invited.

OTS techs enjoyed James Bond movies for the beautiful women, daring men, quips, and especially for the clever ingenuity exhibited by Major Quentin Boothroyd, known as Q. They never failed to be amazed at how well Q’s devices always worked in the field.20 The gadget master for Her Majesty’s Service met with Bond before each operation and issued him devices drawn from a seemingly endless array of well-designed and highly crafted gadgets. Q always anticipated needs and applied technology that pushed the boundaries of design, materials, and craftsmanship. In the character of Q, techs recognized a surprisingly realistic depiction of a scientist-craftsman-intelligence officer who shared many of their everyday problems. Q dealt with officers who were technophobic, worked with people who neither understood nor trusted technology, spent hours teaching the proper use of devices, and unsuccessfully admonished Bond to remember to return the gadget to stores when finished with it. At OTS, a real-life Q would have felt comfortable at a location known simply as “the lab.”

The OTS lab, an hour’s drive (or more, depending on traffic) from downtown Washington, would have been the dream of any craftsman. One tech, with a university degree in mechanical engineering, remembered thinking that the array of equipment he saw on his first day on the job was awe inspiring. In the mid-1970s the lab employed craftsmen and -women specialists for all of the hand skills needed for professional concealments—metal and automotive shop; wood, plastic, and ceramic shop; electronics; leather; fabric; glass; seamstress; bookbinding; welding; tool making; photography; drafting—and others. The lab seemed to have virtually every piece of equipment available to work on any material.

Compared to a university environment, the lab wanted for neither money nor skilled craftsmen. If the concealment tech needed a new tool or piece of equipment, he could get it or make it. Men and women with twenty or more years of experience seemed eager to pass their knowledge on to the new arrival. Not only did the lab have talented techs, it also had the necessary tools and materials, such as industrial-quality sewing machines for professional work with textiles, fabric, and leather. Thousands of dollars’ worth of the finest glove and belt-weight leathers, dyes of every color, along with cutting and buffing machines, were available to make items appear “factory new” or “old as dirt.” The shop could produce handbags with fine stitching and maintained a selection of needles, guards for hands, colors and weights of threads, and various types of fabrics. In the metal shop there were tools that few universities could afford, including special gauges and single-purpose cutters. The cabinetmaking shop turned out furniture, molding, or decorative boxes with the look, craftsmanship, and quality of the finest manufacturer. Exotic woods were available to match any operational need. The plastic and electronic shops were similarly equipped.

As clandestine ops in the Soviet Union accelerated, the lab devoted half of its concealment output to supporting these operations. Soviet operations were considered so sensitive that case officers demanded a different type of concealment item for every operation; and since no item was ever repeated, each required the full process from design to fabrication.21

Items with the largest cavities were usually wooden structures such as bookcases and desks. Techs in the 1970s designed and built all CD furniture from scratch, from unfinished raw wood to completed desk, bookcase, or bed stand.22 Later, in the 1980s, “solid” wood products began to be replaced on the commercial market with furniture constructed from particleboard, which was less expensive, but frequently heavier and less durable. Since the techs’ job was to produce CDs that blended in with other contemporary furniture, the lab shifted its construction to particleboard as well. For the OTS craftsmen this change was accompanied by a noticeable fall-off in the quality of furniture and increased operational difficulties. A case officer who issued a particleboard CD bookcase learned that after one or two moves, the tolerances and alignment of latches necessary for the CD to function properly did not hold up nearly as well as those in solid wood. The techs found adjustments almost impossible, so the only solution was to build a new piece.

Although wood was most frequently used, by no means was it the only host material employed for concealments. The lab could construct CDs in toolboxes, toasters, power supplies, large step-down transformers (2000-watt models that were available overseas), bases of small refrigerators, small air conditioners, and vehicles. The shop was equipped to work in plastics, a material that went through phases of popularity in the consumer marketplace. However, plastic generally was so light that if used as a CD for any weighty item, an explanation was required as to why this apparently lightweight plastic set of drawers seemed so heavy and solid.

The OTS concealment shop was the ultimate “form, fit, and function” business that encouraged imagination. “If you can think it, you can do it” became the unofficial motto. The techs called their lab “the greatest toy shop in the world.”

Concealment techs understood that if there were an intuitive or obvious means of opening the host device, the CD would not meet the level of security required for its clandestine use. Therefore, they pursued a continuing search for a “hidden catch” or an inventive new way to keep something hidden from anyone other than the intended user. Catches and latches became the stock-in-trade of concealment specialists, since if the compartment could be opened by anyone, it was not an acceptable CD. Hinges, magnets, pins, slides, pneumatic tubes, and even old-fashioned pull bolts were used to create an array of concealed openings. Generally, to open a CD required twists, turns, or pulls in a precise combination that functioned as a form of mechanical code that had to be performed before gaining access.

The techs recognized that concealments in everyday items had to look normal, yet be easily opened by those who knew the “code.” An OTS concealment tech in the 1970s remembers designing and building a concealment that required normal manual dexterity to open the device. However, word later came back to the tech that the device, though perfect in every other aspect, was not usable because the agent had nonfunctional arthritic thumbs. The case officer had not previously provided this information about the agent’s limitations, and the tech never thought to ask for it. It was a lesson long remembered. Only by observing and asking probing questions during the design process could the techs devise a concealment that made the agent feel as if the device had always been part of him. The successful concealments matched the CD to the person and the CD became second nature when used and operated.

Every CD was designed to meet an anticipated level of threat. A low-threat CD for the home of a case officer might be adequate for hiding his office attaché case, which itself was a CD. At the other extreme were CDs used to transport sensitive materials across international borders where they were subjected to x-ray and magnetometer readings as well as physical examinations.

Sometimes a perfect-looking dead drop CD was not enough; it also had to pass the “smell test.” In the late 1970s, the KGB determined that some of the OTS dead drop concealments made from wood to resemble tree limbs had been assembled using a type of epoxy whose odor was detectable by specially trained KGB dogs. The unfortunate success of the KGB in discovering some containers led the lab to identify the flaw in their production process and replace the epoxy with a nonscented adhesive.

The techs were ever conscious that an agent’s life often depended on the skill and ingenuity they used to fabricate the CD. If spy gear inside a CD was discovered, it became prima facie evidence of espionage. Such a compromise would not only seal the fate of the agent, but could result in the detection of other agents using similar equipment and lead to the arrest of the handler.

The craftsmen of high-threat CDs worked under dual requirements that the host could always be subjected to physical search and an item’s design had to fit with the agent’s lifestyle and cover. When completed, the host would look and function exactly as expected in the agent’s environment and the concealment cavity be inaccessible to anyone unaware of the mechanical cipher.

Detailed drawings of the concealment host and thorough documentation of concealment issuances were maintained. These records became invaluable should a CD be lost or compromised. If other CDs like it had been issued in the same country, they might need to be recalled and replaced. Once hostile counterintelligence officers learned of a CD, and how it was manipulated and opened, they could be expected to be on the lookout for similar pieces.

OTS concealment makers were masters of craft and illusion. Whimsy, smoke, and mirrors were as much the materials of CDs as wood and metal and fabric. It was expected that the techs would be masters of the fabrication skills required of their craft, but they constantly challenged each other to reach the next level by making materials do things they were not intended or expected to do. The best CDs used materials in ways not done elsewhere and possibly never done before. Fabrication skills were one part of creating an illusion; the thought process for the initial idea was of equal importance and an indispensable step in designing a device. Concealments worked because people assumed what they observed was the only reality. A person looking at a lamp could not imagine that illumination was its secondary feature. The primary function of the lamp was storage—storing the hidden camera that was taking the observer’s picture. For clandestine operations, illusion and CDs worked together because people want to believe what they see. The OTS techs succeeded brilliantly in fabricating concealments from physical materials; in time, their next challenge would be to do the same with electronic software.

If you find an error or have any questions, please email us at admin@erenow.org. Thank you!