Special Projects Staff
| CONTROLLED UNCLASSIFIED//DETR ARCHIVE//REL TO CLASS-D | |
|---|---|
| Special Projects Staff | |
| ABBREVIATION: | SPS |
| PARENT BODY: | CIA Directorate of Plans |
| FORMED: | 1965 |
| DISSOLVED: | 1983 |
| NATION: | United States |
| CONTROLLED UNCLASSIFIED//DETR ARCHIVE//REL TO CLASS-D | |
The Special Projects Staff was the predecessor body to DETR. A staff office of the Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Plans, raised in 1965 out of the residue of Project FURNACE and attached administratively to the Special Operations Division for personnel and force.
The Directorate of Plans was redesignated the Directorate of Operations in the March 1973 reorganisation. The Staff itself was not renamed.
Character of the office
Small, deniable, funded through Agency discretionary lines, with no standing containment capability of its own. It borrowed muscle from the Special Operations Division and from NATO, and it borrowed officers from the Army, which is how a serving U.S. Army officer came to hold operational command of it.
On the name
Agency cover designations are required to describe nothing. No classified office would carry the words esoteric or thaumaturgical on a letterhead a budget clerk might read.
The name became accurate in 1983, at the moment the secrecy became total. An agency funded entirely through black budget lines and cloaked behind shell corporations has no requirement for a cover designation, because nobody outside it will ever see the letterhead.
Transfer
Spun off from the Directorate of Operations in 1983, in the weeks following Operation LAST LIGHT, and reconstituted as the independent DETR with the covert backing of SAC/SOG and the Joint Special Operations Command.