Printing Secrets At The CIA

With U.S. forces still deployed in Iraq, the CIA's intelligence data is more crucial to national security than ever. The agency relies on its in-plant to publish this top-secret information.

by Bob Neubauer

Long before the first U.S. troops began their march toward Baghdad, President Bush turned to the CIA for the latest intelligence information on Iraq. The Central Intelligence Agency, in turn, relied on its office of Imaging & Publishing Support (IPS) to print this classified information quickly and accurately.

In the same vein, when the country was preparing to enter Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, IPS was there, printing the intelligence briefings that told the President and his senior policy makers about the Taliban's activities.

Operating six days a week, with on-call support 24 hours a day, every day, the 100-employee Langley, Va.-based operation is adept at turning out such critical information on demand.

"We feel great about what we're doing, as far as supporting our government's pursuit to defend...and prosecute the war against terrorists," declares Doug Krauss, deputy chief of IPS. "Almost every individual in the CIA is, one way or another, touched by that mission, to counter the terrorist threat."

Few in-plants play such a vital role in our nation's security—and few are as equipped to handle the variety of work IPS tackles daily. Photography, design (both Web and print), prepress, offset, digital printing, bindery, even CDs and multimedia presentations—they're all part of the in-plant's array of publishing services.

Fifty-six Years Of Printing

The CIA has had printing capabilities right from its inception in 1947. The initial Printing Services Division evolved into today's IPS, which serves not only the CIA, but all 14 members of the Intelligence Community, as well as an expanding base of federal government departments.

"We really are the Intelligence Community publisher," notes Stephanie Danes Smith, chief of IPS.

The need for intelligence information has certainly grown in these turbulent times. Though Krauss is cautious in what he reveals about war-related printing, he says this:

"Iraq has been one of our...accounts where we've had a lot of attention in the agency, and we've supported our analytical arm with printing."

He says the September 11 attacks did not change the already strict "security posture" at IPS, but they did increase the workload, particularly that involving the President's Daily Brief (PDB), a compilation of intelligence information produced daily for the President and his senior policy makers (see sidebar).

"Our work in support of the PDB has risen dramatically since 9/11," acknowledges Krauss.

Total Cost Recovery

Functioning as a working capital fund since October 1999, Imaging & Publishing Support charges back for its services and must recover all costs, including salaries. With sales last year of $17.5 million, it has been fairly successful, but future business is never a sure thing. After all, CIA customers are allowed to send unclassified printing and photography jobs to any commercial vendor they choose. So IPS has to keep its prices competitive, its service level high and must continually market itself.

"When you compete with the private sector, you have to be as lean and mean as they are," notes Krauss.

Bringing in new business through insourcing has become an important focus of IPS. Last year the in-plant generated $1.2 million in sales from outside work. Its chief marketing officer, Jenny Gregory, is working hard to increase that figure by bringing in additional customers. IPS has already made contact with the new Department of Homeland Security, for example, and done a few small jobs for the Cabinet-level agency.

To help bring in new business, and ensure the satisfaction of existing customers, IPS employs 10 customer service representatives (CSRs). They also handle tasks like estimating, production planning and quality checks.

"They're our front line when it comes to sales and marketing," remarks Krauss, who is also chief of the Customer Service Center.

Focus On Security

The in-plant's strongest selling point, Krauss stresses, it its expertise in dealing with sensitive printing.

"Our greatest niche...is our ability to create, in a secure environment, with speed and quality and knowledge of the intelligence process, any product they need," notes Krauss.

Because IPS employees handle so much secure information, the CIA takes great precautions. Routine background checks and polygraph tests are conducted on all of them. On certain jobs, no one but the operators are allowed to see the sheets—not even Krauss or IPS Chief Danes Smith. Operators are debriefed afterwards and sworn to silence.

Once, Krauss says, he had FBI agents in his office trying to trace an information leak to the media.

"That's not typical," he hastens, adding that it happened only one time in his 23 years at the CIA. In fact, Krauss points out, though security measures are thorough, they are far from draconian.

"There's an honor system here," he says. "Nobody's frisking you at the door."

Though this leaves open the possibility of a CIA employee smuggling out classified data (as depicted in the recent Al Pacino film "The Recruit"), Krauss feels such trust makes for a better work force.

"It would probably detract from the kind of quality of people we have working here if the overwhelming feeling was that our work force couldn't be trusted," he points out.

He also notes that, though operators may be printing classified material, they aren't necessarily reading it.

"They look at the sheet...but they don't read the books back to front," he says. "They're really focusing on the quality of the job and not the content."

To make sure other, more curious people don't see what was printed, all proofs are destroyed, and plates are smelted under armed guard at a recycling facility. Negatives are returned to customers.

Both Classified And Public Printing

Though IPS prints many classified documents, like the President's Daily Brief, the Senior Executive Intelligence Brief and National Intelligence Estimates, not everything the in-plant prints is top secret. Other projects include recruitment brochures, maps, publications, historical material and the 500-page World Fact Book, which provides reference information on every country in the world.

IPS has eight major clients from government departments outside the CIA and is looking for more. Krauss stresses that doing business with IPS is not as difficult as it may seem. All that's required for a customer to visit the IPS facility is a background check. And customers don't really have to set foot on the 238-acre CIA campus until the job has started; files can be sent to the in-plant digitally, and IPS representatives will bring proofs to the customer.

Once customers do step inside IPS's nearly windowless facility, a short walk from the main CIA building, they are greeted by a clean, modern pressroom sporting two-, four- and six-color offset presses (see equipment list). Nearby, the IPS bindery features just about every type of finishing equipment made. In fact, throughout the in-plant, a visitor can find two of nearly every piece of machinery, in the fashion of other government operations. As Rob Barbaris, chief of the Printing Services Center, explains: You can't tell the President he's not getting his daily brief because a folder broke down.

The copy center has its own bindery, and features Xerox color and black-and-white printers.

"We've always had Xerox," remarks Barbaris. "They're just the work horses."

Employees are cross-trained and moved around as the workload dictates. Barbaris says the schedule is always being changed as higher-priority rush jobs supplant other work. Jobs can come at in 11 p.m., he says, that must be delivered by 5 a.m.

Because of security concerns, IPS can't use commercial Internet-based job submission software. Unclassified jobs can be sent as e-mail attachments, but most jobs either arrive on a disk or via the CIA's very secure network.

"We're supposed to be the nation's best at keeping secrets," he notes, "and so all our communications are well protected."

IPS's six designers are located in the CIA's main building. They use both Macs and PCs to design jobs for publications and for the Web.

From there, jobs go to the prepress department, which handles preflighting, checks for fonts, converts RGB to CMYK and sends work to the two Creo (Scitex) Dolev imagesetters. Barbaris says IPS is looking into computer-to-plate devices and is currently doing a cost-benefit analysis.

In the basement of the IPS building, the Center for Imaging & Photography handles wide-format ink-jet printing, blueprint scanning and official portraits (of both people and devices).

A few months ago, IPS introduced a new data storage and retrieval service, at the suggestion of a customer. Called the Paper Archive Conversion (PAC) System, it scans documents and uses optical character reader (OCR) software to convert data to ASCII text. These text-searchable and editable files are written to CD-ROM.

Interest has been strong. Not only are the digital files more useful for searching, they take up far less space than paper. And with the influx of new CIA staff since the September 11 terrorist attacks, space is at a premium.

IPS has never had a problem recruiting and retaining employees, says Krauss. Printing professionals in the region seek it out, and the turnover rate at IPS is very low.

Krauss, who started at the CIA in 1979 as a cartographer, says IPS employees enjoy the variety of interesting work that comes their way. They are also proud of the part they play in protecting U.S. security.

"We have a tangible product that we produce that we know is going into that equation," Krauss says. "We feel real good about that."