The CIA Honor Guard waits to march onto the field and present the colors during the Redskins pre-game show.

Raindrops poured down as the CIA’s Honor Guard proudly marched onto the home field of the Washington Redskins on Saturday evening, August 22. Minutes before kickoff, Security Protective Service Officers Jason L., Suzanne K., Vernon A., and Virgil B., led by Sergeant Amie P., presented the colors as the Redskins band played the Star Spangled Banner and NFL players and tens of thousands of fans looked on. It was a dream realized for the Honor Guard.

It all began when Amie attended a Redskins game last December. She noticed that the honor guard presenting colors during the pre-game show was from a federal agency. After receiving Agency approval, she contacted Redskins management to inquire about the possibility of the CIA Honor Guard performing before one of the games. The CIA Honor Guard was placed in a pool with other agencies hoping to participate, awaiting final review by the Redskins upper management. In July, Amie received word that the CIA had been chosen to perform at the Redskins vs. Steelers preseason game the next month. The Honor Guard was thrilled.

The group arrived at FedExField in Landover, Maryland, several hours early, hoping to practice before the game. At that point, it had been raining for several hours and the field was covered by a tarp. The Honor Guard waited out the weather in a suite next to the Redskins locker room, but when it was apparent that the rain wasn’t going to stop, they decided to go out to practice anyway. The group worked with the Redskins staff to determine the best place to march out on the field, eventually deciding on the 50-yard line. “Getting an inside look and getting the opportunity to be on the field before and during the game was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I was extremely proud to represent the Agency and be offered the chance to experience something that most only see on TV,” said Amie.

Although they had practiced on the field before the gates opened, marching into a packed stadium was much different. The Honor Guard knew their routine well, but performing in front of tens of thousands of fans and two NFL teams on live television can be a bit nerve-wracking. “When we walked onto the field at the start of the game my heart was pounding as I tried to take in all that was going on around us. These are some of the NFL's biggest players, and during our performance their focus was on us, rather than us watching them,” said Amie.

Sgt. Amie P. (front) leads (from left to right) Virgil B., Jason L., Suzanne K., and Vernon A. in presenting the colors.

Instead of worrying about the crowd, the Honor Guard focused on their steps and proudly displayed the colors in the center of the field. “Large audiences can be a challenge to overcoming nervousness, but it does force everyone to make sure they are on the top of their game. When you know that everyone is looking at you, you make sure that you do things cleanly and crisply, as perfect as possible,” said Jason who marched onto the field with the American flag.

Many of the officers described the experience as surreal, like Suzanne, who carried the CIA flag onto the field. ”Even with the rain and intense nerves, it was one of the best events I have participated in with Honor Guard. To represent the Agency in that capacity was momentous,” she said. The Honor Guard stuck around after their performance to watch the game, which ended as a 17 - 13 win for the Redskins over the Pittsburgh Steelers.

In the end, the rain and nerves barely factored into the experience. After the flags were put away and the rain finally stopped, what the Honor Guard members cared most about was representing their Agency well. As Jason put it, “I can only hope that we left a positive mark on those who saw us perform before the game.”

Do you have a curiosity about all things CIA? Perhaps you want to know more about its history. Or maybe you’re interested in learning more about how the CIA is organized and what it does.

You can satisfy your curiosity and learn what the CIA is and what it does to protect our country in our newest publication, The Work of a Nation. The Office of Public Affairs (OPA) produces publications like The Work of a Nation to inform the public about the Agency and its mission.

The Work of a Nation gives readers an inside look at the nation's premiere intelligence agency. It is divided into chapters, covering everything from the Agency's history, organizational structure, frequently asked questions, and photographs of interesting items in and on the headquarters compound. Readers will discover how different parts of the Agency — analysis, clandestine collection, support, and science & technology — work in unison as our nation’s first line of defense.

A printable version of The Work of a Nation is also available on the Web site so you can share it with friends.

Related Links:

• Sites to See
• CIA-At-A-Glance
• Headquarters Virtual Tour

October 7, 2009

The CIA celebrated Hispanic Heritage Month yesterday by hosting Representative Loretta Sanchez of California, the daughter of Mexican immigrants. She spoke to an audience of Agency officers about the growing leadership role Hispanic Americans play in our country, and the importance of mentoring, diversity, and professional development.

CIA Director Leon E. Panetta—the son of Italian immigrants—praised Sanchez’s work on these issues. “She is very much a symbol of the success that those who came to this country—and those who are the children of immigrants—can enjoy if they work hard,” said Panetta. “I can’t think of anyone better than Loretta Sanchez to be able to address the importance of diversity in our government and the rising influence of Hispanic leaders.”

Sanchez noted the patriotism of immigrant communities in the United States. “The immigrant family,” she said, “is really the family that works hard, that believes the American dream, that believes all of you who are here—who are at the CIA—believe in America. You wouldn’t be here otherwise. You believe in the great experiment called America.”

Sanchez praised Panetta’s efforts to increase diversity at the CIA. “Our kids need to understand they can be a Member of Congress, or a President, or a UN Secretary-General, or a Director of the CIA,” she said.

It’s hard to imagine by their titles, but Intellipedia Doyen Don Burke and Intellipedia and Enterprise 2.0 Evangelist Sean Dennehy are two relatively unassuming CIA officers. Even as they stood in tuxedos accepting a Service to America Medal for their unrelenting dedication to promoting and expanding information-sharing in the Intelligence Community (IC), they could not take sole credit for Intellipedia’s success.

“While there are two of us standing here accepting this honor, we are actually the embodiment of thousands of intelligence and national security professionals – all public servants who have built, enabled, and contributed to Intellipedia, often swimming upstream against the culture of the status quo,” said Burke to hundreds of senior leaders from across the federal government who packed the Andrew Mellon Auditorium in Washington, D.C., for the awards ceremony. “Contributing to Intellipedia did, and it often still does, take a bold act of courage, and we are indebted to every single person who had the courage to make edits. This award is for them.”

Intellipedia: Technology Making America Safe

At a gala on September 23, Burke and Dennehy received the Homeland Security Medal. Burke and Dennehy were the only team winners out of the nine medals presented, and the first officers to be nominated by the Intelligence Community for the eighth annual award.

Sponsored by the Partnership for Public Service, the annual Service to America Medals award program pays tribute to federal workers who have made significant contributions to the nation through dedication and innovation.

“Thanks to Intellipedia, our government now has a way to connect the dots fast and across agencies to make sure the chances are low that there is never another 9/11,” said Director for National Intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair who presented the award to Burke and Dennehy. “It’s a shining example of the government using technology to become more efficient and make the American people safer.”

The Evolution of Intellipedia

The idea to introduce a classified Wikipedia-based platform into the Intelligence Community began in 2004, when Calvin Andrus wrote his Galileo Award winning paper, “The Wiki and the Blog: Toward a Complex Adaptive Intelligence Community,” which explored the wide-ranging intelligence benefit of a collaborative tool with user-generated content. From there, a true grassroots effort took off.

In November 2005, the DNI’s Intelink office established Intellipedia and by the end of the pilot program, there were over 1,000 articles and over 300 users who heard about the tool solely by word-of-mouth. On April 17, 2006, Intellipedia officially went live, and on November 10 of that year, Burke became the first user to reach 10,000 edits. By the end of 2008, Intellipedia received its two millionth edit, and over 30 million pages were viewed by IC employees that year alone. On its third anniversary in April of this year, Intellipedia celebrated with a record-setting 15,000 edits in a single day.

Today, Intellipedia has 100,000 government users, nearly 1 million pages, and receives over 10,000 edits daily. DNI’s Intelink team has extended the service to the Secret and Unclassified domains so state and local law enforcement officials could benefit from relevant, up-to-date intelligence.

The site’s real-time user-generated content has proved pivotal in the unfolding of several major events over the past couple of years. For example, when 10 Islamic militants overran two hotels in Mumbai on November 26, 2008, analysts from across the IC, stationed around the world, immediately convened on a newly created Intellipedia page on the attacks, which they updated continuously as new information came to light. Over the course of the three-day standoff, the page logged over 7,000 views and was integral to the understanding and analysis of the attack.

Nominated for Collaborative Value

Last year, recognizing the immeasurable intelligence benefit that this kind of collaborative tool provides, the DNI’s Chief Human Capital Officer Ron Sanders, a long-time Intellipedia advocate, nominated Burke and Dennehy for the Homeland Security Medal.

“We feel an amazing amount of pride at having the privilege to tell the Intellipedia story publicly both for the specific effort and as a symbol of all the great work that goes on in shadows that cannot be told publicly,” wrote Burke in his Intelink blog on May 7, when he and Dennehy found out they were selected as finalists for the award. “This award selection was made possible because of the countless contributions of individuals, whether you’ve posted a blog, edited Intellipedia, tagged a page, argued and persuaded others that they should be willing to give these tools a go, found connections because of these tools and told that story, or contributed in any number of ways. Intellipedia is seen across all of government as a shining light of possibility for a better way of working.”

Related Stories:

• Intellipedia Celebrates Third Anniversary with a Successful Challenge
• Intellipedia Marks Second Anniversary

Creation of the Historical Intelligence Collection

By the mid-1950s nonfiction books about intelligence were appearing at the rate of one per week. The CIA legislative counsel, Walter Pforzheimer, acquired and read copies for his private collection and from time to time mentioned interesting works — for example, World War II espionage memoirs — to Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles.

When Dulles asked about the state of the Agency library with regard to espionage books, Pforzheimer tactfully pointed out that their efforts had yet to be directed to the subject. Dulles responded by tasking Pforzheimer to come up with a plan for creating and operating a special collection of all important books on intelligence — in all languages. Its purpose was to serve as a reservoir of historical and contemporary open source experience. Thus the Historical Intelligence Collection (HIC) was created on January 31, 1956 and Pforzheimer was made Curator, responsible for selecting books and for knowing and evaluating their content.

Before his retirement in 1974, the collection had grown to about 20,000 volumes. It contains nearly 25,000 volumes today.

Rare Books Bring Early Espionage to Light

Aside from staying abreast of the contemporary books, the HIC has also sought to acquire rare volumes that give a picture of espionage, counterintelligence, and conspiracies from the earliest times. In this connection, Mathew Smith’s Memoirs of Secret Service (London, 1699), is a good example that some things change little. Smith had been an agent of the British crown, but thought his compensation less than warranted. When the Crown disagreed, Smith published his memoirs which the government promptly confiscated and burned. A few copies survived the purge, one is in the HIC.

The oldest item in the collection is a codebook bound in velum and published in Greek and Latin in 1605. More recently, the Revolutionary War holdings, in particular those on Nathan Hale and Major John Andre, are extensive and provide a view of basic intelligence operations when good instincts rather than training were the only prerequisites.

Utilizing the HIC for Present-Day Intelligence Problems

After 9/11 as the focus of interest shifted to Afghanistan, questions about the unchanging Afghan culture and military practices were answered in part by reading Alexander Burnes’ Travels to Bokhara (London: 1834) and the more recent The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk (London: 1990).

When Iranian ‘students’ took over the Embassy in Tehran in 1979 they captured many classified documents. After the hostages were released, the ‘students’ published copies of the documents in book form — English and Persian — in 75 volumes. The HIC also contains copies of these books.

Pieces of History

In certain circumstances the content of a book may not be about intelligence and yet still qualify it for the collection. A prominent example is The Boer War: A History (1902, 32pp.) written by Allen Dulles when he was 7 years old. Published privately by his family, the HIC has one of the few surviving copies.

An equally rare item is the leather bound prayer book that once belonged to Richard Sorge who served Soviet military intelligence in the Orient before World War II. It was given to the collection by a KGB defector who had once worked with Sorge.

Advising Agency Officers

One of the most important functions of today’s HIC is to offer advice on books covering the same topic, as for example, the value of intelligence in Vietnam, or the multiple books on the Robert Hanssen, Aldrich Ames, or John Walker cases. Intelligence officers don’t have time to read them all. The results are often reviewed in the Agency journal, Studies in Intelligence, which is available on the Internet.

About 150-200 intelligence books — in English alone — are published each year. The Historical Intelligence Collection is the place to find them.

The CIA Museum is home to many interesting artifacts associated with the Central Intelligence Agency’s predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services; foreign intelligence organizations; and the CIA itself. The following article is the second in a series that will explore the Agency’s amazing history through the artifacts in the CIA Museum. This article focuses on the pneumatic-tube carrier.

* * * * *

Long before e-mail existed, CIA officers sent written communication to their colleagues by using a pneumatic-tube system for delivering mail. They simply placed their message in a special carrier and dropped the carrier in the shoot, and it was sent hurtling through miles of steel tubing to its destination.

Building the System

The pneumatic-tube system was installed by Lamson Corporation of Syracuse, New York, during the construction of the Original Headquarters Building (OHB) in the late 1950s. The system had many astounding facts and figures associated with it, including:

• More than 30 miles of 4-inch steel tubing, which was enough to reach from CIA Headquarters in McLean, Virginia to Manassas, Virginia
• Approximately 150 receiving and dispatching stations throughout the building from the ground floor to the seventh floor
• Vacuum-driven carriers that moved at 30 feet per second through the network of tubes
• More than 7,500 trips a day and 1.3 million trips annually
• One of the largest systems of its kind in the world.

In order to operate and maintain the pneumatic-tube system, the Agency had to recruit a staff from the Washington Post Office and the Washington Navy Yard. These recruits had experience in electronics and general mechanics. The original staff consisted of 11 workers.

The Four Carrier Systems

Four separate carrier systems composed the pneumatic-tube system:

• A System with amber-colored carriers
• B System with green-colored carriers
• C System with red-colored carriers
• D System with metal carriers used for sending mail directly between two tube stations only.

The D System was similar to those used today at bank drive-up windows and operated 24 hours a day. The A System was by far the largest, with about 100 stations. Systems A, B, and C were fully automatic. Any tube station in a system could send to any other station in the same system.

Carriers

The carrier tubes measured 14 ½ inches long and could easily accommodate most mail items. Each receiving/dispatching station had at least four carriers; some had as many as 25. Overall, there were between 1,000 and 1,2000 carriers in the system.

Make Way for the Computer

The pneumatic-tube carrier system operated for nearly 30 years. It served the Agency workforce well by making rapid inter-office mail possible throughout the Headquarters building. The system was shut down in 1989. It required a lot of space, had become too expensive to maintain, and was no longer needed as more modern e-mail systems now operated throughout CIA Headquarters.

To this day, the steel tubing remains in the walls of the Headquarters building.

The CIA Museum currently has carriers on display, including one in the CIA Director’s Suite.

To view a picture of a carrier and see other artifacts, visit the CIA Museum Virtual Tour.

Related Stories:

• The CIA Museum: Looking Back to See the Future
• The CIA Museum: The People Behind the Magic
• The CIA Museum … Artifacts: The Caltrop

Unclassified extracts from Studies in Intelligence Volume 53, Number 3 (September 2009)

Improving Homeland Security at the State Level
Needed: State-level, Integrated Intelligence Enterprises
Dr. James E. Steiner [PDF 124.8KB*]

Thinking About the Business of Intelligence:
What the World Economic Crisis Should Teach Us
Carmen Medina and Rebecca Fisher [PDF 67.7KB*]

In Gratitude to the Crews of Air America:
A Speech to an Air America Symposium
Craig W. Duehring [PDF 86KB*]

Intelligence in Public Literature

The Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of US Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan [PDF 29KB*]
Reviewed by J.R. Seeger

Memorias de un Soldado Cubano:
Vida y Muerte de la Revolucion [PDF 29KB*]
Reviewed by Juan

Strategic Intelligence: A Handbook for Practitioners, Managers and Users[PDF 41KB*]
Reviewed by Peter C. Oleson

The Intelligence Officer’s Bookshelf [PDF 115 KB*]
Compiled and Reviewed by Hayden B. Peake

* Adobe® Reader® is needed to view Adobe PDF files. If you don't already have Adobe Reader installed, you may download the current version at www.adobe.com (opens in a new window). [external link disclaimer]

Contributors

Craig W. Duehring is Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Manpower and Reserve Affairs. During the war in Southeast Asia he served in the US Air Force as a pilot flying forward air control missions.

Rebecca Fisher is a researcher and analyst in the Center for the Study of Intelligence.

Juan is the pen name of a senior National Clandestine Service officer.

Carmen Medina is the Director of CIA’s Center for the Study of Intelligence and chairs the Studies in Intelligence Editorial Board. She served as an analyst in the Directorate of Intelligence and was an Associate Deputy Director for Intelligence.

Peter C. Oleson has held senior positions in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and in the DIA. He has taught at CIA University. He is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland University College.

Hayden Peake is the Curator of the Historical Intelligence Collection. He has served in the Directorate of Operations and the Directorate of Science and Technology.

J. R. Seeger is a retired National Clandestine Service officer with service in Central and South Asia.

James E. Steiner teaches at State University of New York at Albany. He retired from CIA after 36 years of service in national intelligence n 2005. He has since been an adviser to the Department of Homeland Security and New York State’s Office of Homeland Security.

All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed in this article are those of the author. Nothing in the article should be construed as asserting or implying US government endorsement of an article’s factual statements and interpretations.

November 3, 2009 marks the 50th anniversary of the ceremony in which President Dwight D. Eisenhower laid the cornerstone of CIA’s Original Headquarters Building, located just outside Washington, D.C. The 1959 milestone represented a major achievement after more than 12 years of aspiration, struggle, and persistence to acquire a suitable workplace for the Agency.

The Cornerstone Laying Ceremony

Considerable preparation went into planning for the ceremony where Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Allen W. Dulles would assist President Eisenhower in laying the cornerstone of the Headquarters Building. Dignitaries and other special guests received engraved RSVP invitations. Programs included pictures of President Eisenhower and DCI Dulles, an artist’s concept and a description of the new building, a list of the contents of the time capsule to be sealed within the cornerstone, and a photo of the cornerstone. Enough programs were printed for the ceremony attendees and for employees to keep as souvenirs. Dulles directed that women employees be prominently visible at the ceremony “to highlight the vital role which women play in the Agency.”

Dulles gave introductory remarks, highlighting this important stage in the CIA’s history and quoting the motto taken from the Gospel according to St. John — which was inscribed on the building’s face — “And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”

DCI Dulles watches as President Eisenhower begins to lay the cornerstone.

President Eisenhower told Dulles and the crowd of some 5,000 assembled near the partially completed structure that, “No task could be more important” than gathering intelligence. He publicly affirmed the need for intelligence, both in peacetime and in war.

On November 3, 1959, President Eisenhower, assisted by DCI Dulles, then ceremonially sealed within the cornerstone a time capsule containing carefully selected documents and materials of historic interest relating to the newly created CIA. CIA Museum holds engraved, silver-plated trowels used by Eisenhower and Dulles.

The cornerstone laying ceremony was largely symbolic, however, as the “cement” used to secure the cornerstone was actually a mixture of water, sand, and sugar. Immediately after the ceremony, the cornerstone and capsule were removed for safekeeping and permanently installed a year later.

The Cornerstone Time Capsule

Sealed behind the cornerstone was a time capsule containing the following carefully selected documents and other materials of historical value:

• Memorandum for President Franklin D. Roosevelt from Major General William J. Donovan, Director of the Office of Strategic Services, dated November 18, 1944, regarding the establishment of a permanent centralized intelligence service; and memorandum from President Roosevelt to General Donovan, dated April 5, 1945, directing that General Donovan discuss his plan with the appropriate officials of the Government
• President Harry S. Truman's Executive Letter of January 22, 1946, establishing the National Intelligence Authority and the Central Intelligence Group
• Statement of General (then Lieutenant General) Hoyt S. Vandenberg, Director of Central Intelligence, before the Senate Committee on Armed Services, on April 29, 1947, in support of the sections of the proposed National Security Act of 1947 to establish the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
• Text and Explanation of Statutes and Executive Orders relating specifically to the Central Intelligence Agency, including Enabling and Appropriations Acts for the construction of the new CIA building
• Reproduction of the CIA seal and its official description
• "William J. Donovan and the National Security," a speech by Allen W. Dulles, Director of Central Intelligence, to the Erie County Bar Association, Buffalo, New York, May 4, 1959
• An aerial photograph of the CIA building site
• Drawings of the CIA building as it will appear when completed
• Mementos from the Cornerstone Laying Ceremony: invitation, program, tape recording, and photographs
• Microfilm copies of daily and weekly newspapers of November 3, 1959
• A National Security Medal, Distinguished Intelligence Cross, Distinguished Intelligence Medal, Intelligence Star, Intelligence Medal of Merit, Certificate of Merit with Distinction, and Certificate of Merit.

After the ceremony, when the press asked Dulles what was in the box, he smiled and said, “It’s a secret.” Despite his joke, everything in the box was unclassified.

To assure proper long-term preservation of the capsule’s contents, CIA had the National Bureau of Standards design and construct containers. They made an inner box of steel plate to shield the magnetic tape recording of the ceremony and an outer box of 8-inch-thick copper to hold the inner box and all other materials. Both the steel and copper boxes were welded shut. The Bureau conducted tests to verify each container’s air-tight design and to make sure that the welding processes would not harm the contents.

The Present CIA Headquarters Campus

The Original Headquarters Building now shares its larger 258-acre campus with the additional New Headquarters Building, which was completed in 1991. DCI Dulles' vision of a location where intelligence officers could work near the policymakers in a secure and secluded environment had become a reality that is thriving 50 years after President Eisenhower laid the cornerstone.

Related Links and Stories:

• The CIA Campus: The Story of Original Headquarters Building
• Our First Line of Defense: Presidential Reflections on US Intelligence; Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953-61
• Headquarters Virtual Tour

Statement to Employees by Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Leon E. Panetta on Honoring Our Veterans

November 10, 2009

Yesterday we commemorated the fall of the Berlin Wall, and tomorrow we mark the day on which the guns of World War I fell silent. Those two historic events — and the promise they held for people across the globe — were made possible in large measure by the sacrifices of the men and women of America’s military.

Each year, Veterans Day is an opportunity not only to honor and thank all who fought for freedom throughout our nation’s history, but to reaffirm our support for those who wear the uniform today. Our thoughts are especially with the victims of last week’s shooting at Fort Hood, as well as their colleagues, friends, and families.

The CIA helps defend the nation each day through its essential partnership with the military. Working shoulder to shoulder with troops in the war zones, we save lives and foster stability. Collaboration in many other areas ensures that we collect, analyze, and deliver to policymakers the information they must have to keep America safe.

On this Veterans Day, I extend my deepest thanks to those of you who serve — or have served — in the Armed Forces, as well as those who support and work with the military here at CIA. Your efforts and sacrifices make a real difference. Thanks to all of you, our country is stronger, and the world is a better place.

Leon E. Panetta