Intelligence

Diving Into The Pond

From Studies In Intelligence:

When the Pond was created in early 1942, the United States had very little experience with intelligence, and the notion of a spy agency which would be not only officially unacknowledged, but actually unknown, appealed to some people in Washington. These people were repelled by the larger-than-life publicity hound William Donovan and his “Oh So Social” intelligence agency. For a precedent they looked instead to foreign intelligence services such as the British MI-6, which they thought was more discreet and whose chief was never named in the press.

In accordance with this philosophy, the Pond spent most of its existence not as a government agency, but as a private sector organization, operating within real companies with names such as the Universal Service Corporation.3 This practice contributed substantially to obscurity and security. However, three successive government agencies found that having such an independent intelligence operation—and, worse yet, one run by a pugnacious, conspiratorial ideologue—was more trouble than it was worth, and the notion of having a truly secret intelligence organization never did catch on in the United States.

We wouldn’t know much about it except that records of a long-time Pond employee were found in a Virginia barn in late 2001. Too weird.