My fist week in the CIA I had to sit through orientation with about one hundred other new employees. We were given a big blue nylon envelope to store all our handouts pertaining to benefits of the job. Weren’t allowed to take any of these documents out of the building and our envelopes had to be locked in our home office’s safe.
The unique thing about CIA orientation is that you get to sit through information sessions from every component in the agency. One of my favorite sessions was from the Directorate of Science and Technology. This division is filled with the best and brightest technological minds our nation has to offer. If you’re not a graduate of MIT or equivalent school, you were not getting in. The cool gadgets you see in James Bond movies, well they come from this department.
One memory that stays with me today is when the tech side presented. A dragonfly flew around the room during the entire presentation. No one gave it much mind because of all the other fascination gadgets being shown off. At the conclusion of the presentation, the speaker introduced their latest bugging and filming device – the dragonfly. Audio and video was played back from segments of the same presentation I just witnessed from the speaker. I was stoked and couldn’t believe that I was actually sitting in CIA headquarters in Langley, VA being shown this cutting edge spy gear.
Watch this video of an earlier version of the dragonfly detailed above. Technology is always evolving and I’m eager to learn of the next thing we invent. Stay tuned for more articles on CIA gadgets.
Article originally published on SOFREP by Drew Dwyer
