CIA's huge supercomputers and its Operation code named Snow White

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2000-01-13-0001130129-story.html

A Chicago Tribune article from the year 2000

SPY VS. SPY

Michael KilianCHICAGO TRIBUNE

 

In this still very dangerous and uncertain world of ours, does it make you feel more comfortable to know that the seven huge, super-secret, global intelligence computer databases deep inside Central Intelligence Agency headquarters here are named Doc, Dopey, Grumpy, Sleepy, Happy, Bashful and Sneezy?

Yes, the CIA has indeed named its huge computers after the Seven Dwarfs -- and for all I know has a slinky blond in its cloak-and-dagger Directorate of Operations code-named Snow White.

(Interestingly, the producer of the non-Oscar-winning film "Snow White and the Three Stooges" ultimately became a high-ranking State Departmentofficial in the Reagan administration, with a top-secret clearance. His name was Charles Z. Wick, and his wife's best friend was Nancy Reagan. But I doubt he was connected to the CIA; he used to call the end-of-the-year Muslim religious holiday "Ramada.")

All sorts of neat stuff about the CIA (though nothing about Wick) is being revealed in a "first ever" cable TV documentary called "On the Inside: The CIA," Sunday (7 p.m. on the Discovery Channel).

Taken onto the actual grounds of the CIA's sprawling compound, we learn that the walls of CIA buildings are copper-lined and that the windows are double-paned to thwart electronic eavesdropping. We see prospective CIA agents undergo training in James Bond derring-do at the agency's super-secret Virginia encampment known as "the Farm," and get to see some of them sworn in (from behind).

We learn that their ID badges don't identify them by name but only by photograph (the kids at the agency day-care center are identified by first names and numbers). And we get to see a dramatization (in which nothing goes wrong) of an actual CIA extraction, or rescue, of an American citizen unlawfully held in a Panamanian prison during the reign of strongman Manuel Noriega (who is now being lawfully held in an American prison in Missouri).

It's all very fascinating. Certainly more fascinating than, say, "On the Inside: The Bureau of Weights and Measures." But I feel compelled to ask, is this really necessary?

Time was when the CIA's idea of public relations was to say "sorry" when ripping film out of the cameras of tourists who tried to take pictures of its entrance driveway. Now I wonder if they aren't overdoing it.

Admittedly, the agency went through a nervous time a few years ago. The Aldrich Ames spy scandal and the end of the Cold War prompted some skewed minds in Congress and elsewhere to suggest that we shut the place down and rely on maybe CNN to keep us informed of global threats.

The CIA responded by trying to become cuddly -- a notion to send chills down the spine of John Le Carre's George Smiley. During his recent tenure, former Central Intelligence Director John Deutch began having us newsies over to his super-secret padlocked briefing room, where he'd serve us tea and cookies!

Current director George Tenet has gone even further, allowing a Hollywood film crew on the grounds to shoot a spy movie and then holding a gala, red-carpet-and-limousine movie premiere for the film when it came out. Last month, he hosted the first ever CIA Christmas party for outsiders. Next, I fear there'll be a CIA kids show along the lines of "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?"

You don't find other spook shops holding Easter egg rolls. I can't think of a single soiree thrown by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office or the National Imagery and Mapping Agency. Some of these outfits, I think, would self-destruct first.

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What would be far more useful, for the CIA as well as the taxpayers, would be an "inside" documentary showing the big weak link in American intelligence gathering, which is the link that connects the intelligence community to the West Wing of the White House (the daft new TV series of the same name illustrates my point). It is a link that all too frequently disconnects as well.

In 1963, the CIA warned President John F. Kennedy that chaos would follow the assassination of Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, and was ignored. It told President Lyndon B. Johnson that, contrary to the U.S. Army high command, body counts would not win the Vietnam War, and was ignored.

As we learned at two high-level symposiums last year, the intelligence community had amply foreseen the fall of communism, but, in William Casey and Robert Gates, Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush had installed directors of central intelligence given to pumping up the Red Menace and telling the White House what it wanted to hear. (The Casey apparat informed us that, gosh, Russian subs were as long as the Washington Monument!)

And the CIA certainly informed the Clinton White House of the nefarious designs of Chinese spies in this country and the murderous ways of the "reform" regime Clinton installed in Haiti. Again ignored.

It is far better to have computers named Dopey and Sleepy than White House aides and advisers.