LANGLEY, Va. — Dr. Gary L. Smith has to be the most unlikely spy-tech wizard in the history of espionage. Just seven months ago, the bearded and friendly 63-year-old nuclear physicist was ready to retire from his directorship of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory — where he worked on projects intended to make submarines undetectable from sonar. Then the CIA came calling with an offer that was just too intriguing to pass up.
Would he be the new “Q”?
(The official phrase is the CIA’s deputy director for science and technology.)
In other words, Smith is the real-life chief of spy gadgetry — the man who gives the spooks in the world’s hot spots what he calls “their eyes, their ears, their ability to record and to transmit.”
Just like the character in the James Bond movies, played by Desmond Llewelyn, Smith operates a shadow world of master disguises, micro-burst communications, laser imaging and computer hacking — in which lives, government policy and even the outcomes of wars are the stakes.
There are a million questions to ask this man with perhaps the world’s most fascinating job as he sits in a bright airy office overlooking the bucolic Northern Virginia countryside.
On the surface, his surroundings look just like an ordinary office. There’s an autographed baseball and pictures of his 12 grandchildren on his mahogany desk.
But then you notice that folders labeled “Top Secret Eyes Only” are being filed discreetly away by the friendly and efficient Moneypennys in the outer offices. And there are special locks on the doors that require a swipe of a card and the punching of a special code. And to get into the CIA’s sprawling complex, you have to get past SWAT teams wearing black uniforms at the front gate.
And beside Smith, there’s a rather serious looking woman from the CIA’s public affairs department, ready to jump in if this rookie in the intelligence game even comes close to giving away even a bauble of the Company’s “family jewels” — its secrets.
First off, I ask if there is really a lab somewhere in the basement at the CIA’s mammoth headquarters — like there is in the James Bond movies — where gruff scientists are outfitting BMW Spider sports cars with the hardware needed to invade a small country.
Smith smiles and pauses, and acknowledges the stern look from the lady from public affairs before answering.
“We do have some pretty far-out stuff,” he admits. “There’s been a surprise a day for me here.”
He pauses again and then makes a comparison to the Bond flicks. “Well, it’s not quite as dramatic as those films. That’s more physical in nature. The business we are in is much more of a mind game — the exercise of one’s mental abilities,” Smith says.
There are no poison pens or watches that blow people’s heads off, because, as the lady from public affairs reminds us, the CIA doesn’t engage in assassinations or other “wet work.”
The intelligence game is also much different now, Smith says — and so are his priorities.
There’s no Soviet Union to compete with for world domination anymore — only a vast series of grubby conflicts and potential conflicts with warlords and tinpot dictators trying to get their hands on nuclear devices and chemical agents. He said developing areas of clandestine technology to keep track of low-level nuclear tests as well as transfers of fissionable material is a huge priority of his office.
“Also, the world is going away from microwaves and satellites as the principal communications means, and they’re going to fiber optics. Ten years ago, the information we needed was stored in file cabinets, vaults and microfilm. Today, much of that information is stored on hard drives and computer networks,” he says.
That, Smith says, is a “major change and a major challenge for us,” requiring the CIA to operate in a world that spins on Internet time — and to trade its cloak-and-dagger culture for a click-and-
dagger culture.
Last September, the CIA jumped into the go-go world of high-tech with both feet. It announced the creation of a company with the tongue-in-cheek name of In-Q-It, a public venture-capital firm set up to provide funds to Silicon Valley companies charged with developing technology to meet the CIA’s needs. The idea, Smith says, is to develop products that would allow people to communicate anonymously on the Internet, or to keep up with advances in the encryption and counter-encryption technology that is so vital to the intelligence agency’s business.
Smith admits that the CIA creating a public company is a “bold experiment,” and a departure from its secrecy-obessed method of operation. But for years, he says, much of this kind of work was done for the government in university labs. Today, however, it is the commercial world that is dictating the pace of change, and the government simply cannot compete with the huge salaries, stock options and golden parachutes being awarded to top scientists by companies like Microsoft.
There is also the fun stuff.
Smith won’t talk about it, but Capitol Hill is still buzzing about a private display put on by his department a few months ago demonstrating its ability to disguise agents. Agency representatives showed up at a private briefing for members of the Senate Intelligence Committee and told them someone in the room was wearing a disguise. At the end of the session a young aide who was holding charts stepped forward and took off a disguise that was so good, senators’ jaws dropped.
Although constantly amazed by the gee-whiz gadgetry being developed by his employees, Smith says there isn’t much difference between managing a team of dedicated scientists at the CIA and doing so at a university like Johns Hopkins.
“The integrity of the people here is as high as I have seen in any endeavor,” he adds. The only difference in his life now is having an extra hour’s drive to drive to work from his family home in the countryside near Baltimore, he says.
He also admits that being the CIA’s real life Q prompts a lot of questions from family and friends about his work — questions that he can’t answer. Smith was able to lift the cloak of secrecy briefly during a recent “family day,” at CIA headquarters, where his grandchildren were shown some of the gadgets being developed by his office.
He admits that it was an eye-opening experience for them.
“They had a ball. One of my granddaughters turned to me afterwards and said, “This is the best day of my life.'”
