Good Hunting: An American Spymaster's Story by Jack Devine, Vernon Loeb

more enthusiastic about technology. He was continually sending messages to the tech staff at headquarters, pointing out some device he had seen in Popular Mechanics that could be deployed operationally or was less costly than a similar device in our inventory.
    For a time, if we wanted to talk to Fred in his office, we had to use one of his pet gadgets, a Hush-a-Phone. This was basically an upscale variation on the old Boy Scout soup-can-and-string device that kids used to use to talk to each other over a very short distance. The device had a miniature microphone attached to a headset, which in turn was attached to a similar set that Fred wore. Users had to sit ten feet apart and speak to each other in hushed voices, a guaranteed impediment to the free flow of discussion. This was Fred’s solution to the security implications of office conversations, which were indeed vulnerable to audio eavesdropping. The Soviets were always finding creative ways to plant bugs, and we did our share of bugging them as well.
    National security officials attempted to solve the bug problem by placing a soundproof plastic room, called a bubble, in virtually every U.S. facility around the world. These were generally located in an inconvenient spot. There simply wasn’t enough time in the day for officers to check into the bubble every time they needed to talk about an operations matter. Fred’s solution, though, turned out to be just as impractical. For weeks on end, we all vigorously avoided conversations with him in his office so we wouldn’t have to use the ludicrous-looking Hush-a-Phone. Eventually, Fred gave up and hung the Hush-a-Phone on his wall—a symbol, he said, of case officer obstinacy in the face of advances in technology.
    The truth is that, at least during my tenure, relatively few case officers liked new technology, even though it played an important role in Agency history and is part of the romance of the job—the hidden microphone, the spring-loaded secret compartment, the camera camouflaged in a commonplace object. The very popular spy museum in Washington, D.C., was founded on the public’s enduring fascination with such things. But they truly are just adjuncts to our trade.
    The most powerful tools I used in Chile remain the most powerful the CIA has: money and relationships. They were at the heart of my most important responsibility, which was the media account. El Mercurio was one of the oldest newspapers in Chile, serving, with the other publications in its chain, more than half the country’s reading public. As a profitable enterprise dedicated to free expression, it was a natural ally in our quest to keep the Allende government from establishing a Marxist regime. The owner legitimately feared that such a government might expropriate its papers and put the media under government control. Our chief of station, Ray Warren, brought me to meetings with his key contacts, and I gradually took over more of the account. It was a first-rate learning experience on how to manage top-level covert action assets.
    I hasten to clarify that the CIA had no role in what was printed in El Mercurio . The notion persists that the paper was an organ of the Agency. I can state categorically that this is not true. In fact, the editor did not take kindly to outside influence on the paper editorially. We did give them money that enabled them to continue publishing, but we met only with folks on the business side of the paper. Fred Latrash was always harping on the contention that El Mercurio needed to be more strident in its attacks on Allende, but Ray and I disagreed; I thought its stance was just right. The paper never used propaganda to deliberately mislead readers about the Allende government’s economic policies, but it did emphasize such issues as the seizure of private property, the illegal and violent actions of certain segments of the ruling coalition, and the specter of economic disaster. It managed to keep its credibility even