Page 142 - Gobierno ivisible

Date: 4/5/2011 Page: 142 of 237

One of the really spooky instruments at Langley is the CIA's electronic "brain," which stores and retrieves the
mountains of information that flow into the building. The CIA's library is split into four parts: a regular library of
books and documents, special libraries known as "registers" which store biographic and industrial intelligence, a
document center -- and the electronic brain.

The brain is called WALNUT and it was developed just for the CIA by IBM. A desired document is flashed in
front of the CIA viewer by means of a photo tape robot called Intellofax.

WALNUT and Intellofax, unlike humans, are infallible. Aside from the vast amounts of classified data that come
into the CIA, the agency collects 200,000 newspapers, books and other "open" material each month. The
information is stored on 40,000,000 punch cards.

When a CIA man wants a particular item, be it a Castro speech or a top-secret report on Khrushchev's health, he
feeds into WALNUT a list of key words -- perhaps twenty-five -- about the subject. The brain finds the right
microfilmed document and photographs it with ultraviolet light. The tiny photo is then projected on the viewing
machine. The whole thing takes five seconds. The CIA has also been experimenting with another brain called
Minicard, developed by Eastman Kodak for the Air Force.

The CIA also has a special spy-fiction library, which it does not advertise. This library contains thousands
of past and current mystery and spy stories. It should please fans of Ian Fleming, Helen MacInnes and Eric
Ambler to know that the CIA makes a point of keeping up with the latest tricks of fictional spy heroes.
Before Langley, the spy fiction was housed in the old Christian Heurich Brewery near the State Department.

CIA men and women lead a cloistered life. By and large they stick to themselves. Intermarriage is not
unusual, the most notable recent example being the U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers. After his release by the
Russians, Powers continued to work for the CIA at Langley.* He divorced his wife Barbara, and on October 26,
1963, in a quiet ceremony at Catlett, Fauquier County, Virginia, he married Claudia Edwards Downey, a twenty-
eight-year-old divorcee and a CIA psychologist. Mrs. Downey, the mother of a seven-year-old girl, was said to
have resigned from the CIA to become Mrs. Powers.

In Washington, a highly social city given to much partying and mixing of many diverse circles, it is remarkable
how few CIA men are casually encountered on the cocktail circuit. The reason is that CIA couples give parties
mostly for each other.

In bygone years, CIA employees were barred from admitting where they worked. In social situations they usually
managed to hint at it anyhow. Nowadays, overt employees are permitted to say where they work -- although not to
a foreign national. Those in the Clandestine Services are not, however, normally allowed to say they work for the
CIA.

And cover names are used even inside the CIA. "I don't know the names of everyone I deal with at the
agency," one high official confided. "We often use pseudonyms in house, in case a wire is tapped or a piece
of paper gets into the wrong hands. And we never use real names in communications."

The CIA is constantly facing little problems that no other agency faces. For example, suppose an agent in the
Clandestine Services breaks his arm in the line of duty. Blue Cross? Ah, but then Group Hospitalization would
find out his name when he filled out the inevitable form. And for the first few years after the agency's creation,
that is exactly what happened, much to the CIA's irritation. When agents were hospitalized, Group Hospitalization
had to know who they were. So in 1956 the CIA canceled its contract with Blue Cross. It took its business to
Mutual of Omaha, which benevolently agreed to waive the paperwork on ailing spies.