Dr. Joseph Keogh came to IWP with a Ph.D. in chemistry and nearly two decades of experience in the CIA, where he taught at the CIA HUMINT Training Center, partnered with Tony Mendez of Argo movie fame to create a capability for realistic disguises, worked on the Special Projects Staff Panel that developed the architecture for a future CIA clandestine information operations capability, served as the first Chief of the CIA’s Engineering Development Group, and served with the CIA’s Clandestine Information Technology Office. Dr. Keogh used his relationships from IWP to attract top candidates to work in CIA information operations during a tumultuous time for the Intelligence Community.
Joe recently spoke with us about his 32-year CIA career, his time at IWP, and his recently released book on Creating Mission Impact: Essential Tradecraft for Innovators at CIA and Beyond.
Dr. Joe Keogh in ColoradoDeveloping the CIA’s disguise capability
Hired at the CIA as the result of his Ph.D. in chemistry, Dr. Joseph Keogh didn’t know what to expect.
He was assigned to the Office of Technical Services, which supported human operations. CIA officer Tony Mendez had returned to the U.S. after several years in Asia, and he needed some technical help. Joe was assigned to help him.
At the time, few people believed that disguise had any value in intelligence work. “Most of the officers were male and didn’t like wearing wigs and mustaches – they didn’t think it was what ‘real men’ do,” said Joe. Joe’s colleagues encouraged him to return to Colorado because they thought he was taking on a dead-end assignment.
A few months after being hired, Joe found himself in Hollywood. Tony Mendez had struck up a professional relationship with John Chambers, a master makeup artist and winner of a 1969 Academy Award. John was also a patriot who wanted to share his knowledge with the CIA.
Together, they worked on the 1977 production of The Island of Dr. Moreau, with Charlie’s Angels being filmed on their left, and M*A*S*H being filmed on the right. “Tony worked with the makeup artist, and I worked to gather in-depth knowledge of the materials and fabrication processes being used by John’s team,” said Joe.
Still, it was a challenge. “Hollywood has the benefit of the camera,” said Joe. The disguises for the CIA must not only be highly realistic in person, but they must be easy and quick to use. John Chambers gave Tony and Joe access to all his materials and knowledge, and, said Joe, “It was the beginning of building a serious capability for disguise at the CIA.”
By 1984, Joe and Tony’s team had developed the capability to have a very realistic disguise, thanks to the collaboration of expert material scientists, artists, and operations officers.
Moving into the late 70s and early 80s, the need for disguises became well-recognized. An operations officer was assassinated in Greece, the world was getting rougher, and the Soviet Union was getting more aggressive in Moscow.
“You couldn’t meet with assets in Russia – it was total pervasive surveillance,” said Joe. “We were starting to work against terrorists and people in criminal narcotics who didn’t play by gentlemanly rules of espionage. Disguise began to be heavily used. Disguise became armor for operations officers, as former Chief of Disguise, Jonna Mendez, has said.”
Disguise innovations in action
The disguise capabilities that Joe helped Tony Mendez build were used in some very important operations, particularly in Moscow, to meet with and communicate with Agents.
In an operation involving Iran, Tony used disguises to help rescue a very senior Iranian agent whose life was in jeopardy. While Tony was working with this agent, there was gunfire in nearby buildings from the revolutionary guards who were looking for him. Nevertheless, Tony got him to the airport and into the waiting area for his flight. “This agent was very nervous – if they found him, he would have been shot on the spot,” said Joe. The agent soon disappeared, and Tony discovered him in the restroom, terrified and shaking. Tony boosted his courage, and the agent ultimately got on the flight. This story and others are shared in Tony Mendez’s book The Master of Disguise.
Interestingly, the skills and research undergirding the disguise technology have been used by retired operations officers to help improve the lives of people throughout the world who have been disfigured by illness or injury.
A transition to clandestine technical operations
After achieving his goals with the disguises and setting up that office for future success, Dr. Keogh led a group focused on technical security countermeasures and counterterrorism.
One of his teams’ projects was to help secure the new U.S. embassy that was being built in Moscow. In conjunction with the State Department, members of his team led an advanced technical countermeasures project that uncovered a host of Russian attempts to penetrate the new Embassy building. These findings led to an awakening across the Intelligence Community of the real nature of the counterintelligence threat.
Joe also remembers during this time that efforts led by the NSA created the GUNMAN operation: “In the early 1980s, NSA/CIA learned that the Russians had put collection devices in the office equipment of a U.S. ally. Suspecting U.S. embassy equipment was also compromised, NSA removed the equipment and transported it outside Russia for inspection. They found several pieces of equipment were compromised with a cleaver collection system. The U.S. ambassador’s office typewriters may have been compromised so that every keystroke was captured and the data exfiltrated wirelessly. They did it in a way that was beyond what we thought they were capable of. This extraordinary finding, coupled with our teams’ work in the new embassy under construction, led to a major awakening across the intel community that we were way behind in securing our facilities. Subsequently, we had a lot of programs to help close that gap.”
Dr. Keogh and his group also worked on the counterterrorism portfolio. He remembered, “Terrorism was not a high-tech thing at the time, other than the creative use of explosives. One of our major focus areas was explosive detection.”
In his book, Dr. Keogh describes how a U.S. Government effort was being made to build “sniffers” at the airport so that everyone got sniffed as a part of the security process. “We looked at the vapor pressure of the explosives and created a model that showed explosives would not be easily detectable in the air around someone. Yet, explosives are very adhesive to skin and objects, so if you have been handling explosives and touched a suitcase, etc., you probably left some deposits,” said Joe.
Joe and his colleagues published a paper at an international conference in Germany in 1985 suggesting that swabbing of surfaces in conjunction with sophisticated chemical analysis equipment would be more effective than direct analysis of the vapor around an object or individual.
To this day, a simple swabbing technique in conjunction with sensitive chemical analysis equipment is used by airport security to detect explosives.
Dr. Keogh took a one-year break to participate in a government-industry White House-sponsored executive exchange program to gain a better understanding of industry, and specifically its strategy development.
Upon return from this assignment, he transitioned to a role as a strategy consultant for over 60 Agency organizations that were realigning their strategies for the post-Cold War era. He spent the next few years working on clandestine operations on a variety of programs as an executive leader.
Dr. Joe Keogh at an IWP Chancellor’s Council eventStudying intelligence in context at IWP
During the era of the Soviet threat, few Americans questioned the need for a strong intelligence capability. Once the Soviet Union fell, the American public began to ask why we were still spending so much money on our intelligence programs.
“In the mid-90s, there was a lot of reflection on the role of the CIA and what future threats we should be spending money on,” said Dr. Keogh.
Having served in the CIA for the last 15 years and having reached middle management there, this issue hit very close to home for Joe. He was interested in exploring these topics himself.
“There is an old saying about Intelligence Community employees, that they know how to do intelligence but don’t know much about it,” said Joe. “We are all very specialized in what we are doing, but the history of intelligence and the broader purpose of intelligence was not something we had the luxury of reflecting about, other than personal reading.”
Dr. Keogh had taken internal programs at the CIA, but they were very closely tied to the specific skills he needed to get his job done. “Until IWP came into our awareness, there wasn’t really any place for an intelligence professional to get the kind of background that IWP was offering,” he said. “IWP came into existence at a critical time. The IWP curriculum was very practical, addressed fundamental issues, and was very on point.”
Inspiring top performers to work at the CIA
At IWP, he met Gene Poteat, a former CIA Scientific Intelligence Officer who studied at IWP before ultimately teaching here.
At the time, Dr. Keogh was building up a group involved in offensive information operations, which are now referred to as cyber operations. He was competing for talent with industry – which could offer far more generous pay packages and perks than a government agency.
“Gene was instrumental in helping me build this group,” said Joe. “I had him come in and speak with our talented new employees, many of whom were coop students. He was very inspirational, telling them about the history of intelligence. He had a lot of great stories. These young officers were asking questions, sitting there enthralled by the history. We were basically selling this mission at the CIA. Gene was using his IWP education to help me recruit and retain these hotshot employees for the Agency.”
It was critical that Joe and Gene helped build this talented group in the late 90s because, despite those who disparaged the importance of such a group at the time, its importance was recognized after the attacks on 9/11/2001.
Although recruiting became much easier after 9/11, Dr. Keogh said, “If we didn’t have that core there already, we would have been way behind.” The effort focused on cyber at the CIA soon grew from a few hundred to a few thousand people in a few years. It became the tip of the spear to go after Al Qaeda.
Helping innovation take root
A few years after the 9/11 attacks, Dr. Keogh became the Technology Chair at the CIA’s espionage academy. He worked together with the other senior faculty members to create relevant programs for the post-9/11 era.
“We had many outstanding applicants come in after 9/11,” said Joe. “But they soon complained that their ideas were not being listened to. The head of the Directorate of Operations asked us to look into this issue. We began to interview them to see how we could use their ideas. We found that even though they were impressive in experience and educational background, they lacked basic skills in terms of presenting ideas and encouraging the ‘old timers’ to accept them.”
Joe and his team developed a workshop to address some of these significant weaknesses and taught it for several years.
He now has shared these lessons in his book, Creating Mission Impact: Essential Tradecraft for Innovators at CIA and Beyond, published in May 2024.
These lessons are extremely relevant today:
“We are in an innovation war across the board,” said Dr. Keogh. “The war in Ukraine is a good example of how rapidly things are changing on the military side. On the intelligence side, we have to redo our tradecraft and look at the role of open-source intelligence. We are also examining the nature of clandestinity in a very open world. Innovation is a critical issue and a leadership issue.”
A leader at the CIA and in private industry
After a few years of teaching, Joe became an office director, where he tackled some of the most significant collection problems, with a focus on peer competitor nations, which were being somewhat neglected at the time due to the increased focus on terrorism.
“We were quite successful,” said Joe. “The problems we worked with were difficult, and we were able to innovate and work across boundaries with several other agencies.”
Dr. Keogh retired from the CIA in 2010 and spent nine years as a Principal working in the national security realm at Booz Allen, where he ran a multimillion-dollar business.
Reflecting on his career, Dr. Keogh is glad that he was able to develop startups and stabilize organizations that were in trouble, especially in the area of clandestine technical operations. He said, “It was always a good challenge to build an organization.”
Aspen, Colorado. Photo by Joe Keogh.