Here's a neat photo and description of a piece of equipment used by
the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, which among other things
was the CIA's SWL'ing division. The UK's MI6 equivalent was called
the BBC Monitoring Service.
-Ed Cummings
https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/cia-museum/experience-the-collection/index.html#!/artifact/123
FBIS Central Eurasia Program Mongolian Typewriter
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<https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/cia-museum/experience-the-collection/index.html#>Enlarge
image
Details
Since 1941, an organization dedicated to the collection and
exploitation of open sources has helped policymakers understand our
adversaries and the world around us. The Foreign Broadcast
Information Service (FBIS) originally monitored foreign shortwave
radio as part of the Federal Communications Commission and
contributed valuable information gleaned from the airwaves to
customers in the Office of Strategic Services and the US Departments
of State, War, and Navy during World War II.
At the conclusion of the war, FBIS became a founding element of the
new Central Intelligence Group. That same year, the National Security
Council tasked the Director of Central Intelligence to operate FBIS
as a service of common concern, specifically "to conduct all Federal
monitoring of foreign propaganda and press broadcasts required for
the collection of intelligence information to meet the needs of all
Departments and Agencies in connection with National Security."
In 2005, FBIS was the seed from which the Director of National
Intelligence established today's Open Source Center to be the premier
provider of open-source intelligence for the US Government.
Shown here is a Mongolian typewriter used on the Central Eurasia
Program of FBIS during the 1950s.
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