SPECIAL PRINTING PLANT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80B01495R000600140019-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 15, 2005
• Sequence Number: 19
• Publication Date: November 20, 1975
• Content Type: MF

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MEMORANDUM FOR:
C
I understand OCI opie have been in touch
informally with and know what his proposal
entails.
Is the next step to take Blake up on his
briefing, with OCI represented.?
Date 20 November 1975
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D/OCI. LS r - 5
20 November 1975
3&lq -1 11
MEMORANDUM FOR: Deputy Director for Intelligence
SUBJECT Special Printing Plant
REFERENCE Memo from DDA to DDI, same subject, dated
7 November 1975 (DDI-2963-75)
Summary
We oppose the proposal to eliminate the Special Printing
Plant.
We base our position on these considerations:
-- The President's Daily Brief, the National Intellience_
Daily, the National Intelligence Bulletin, and the Intelli-
gence Checklist are the most important current intelligence
publications that the Agency produces. Their production in
the most efficient and timely manner is clearly one of the
Agency's most important priorities.
Each of the publications should be as current as possible.
We attempt to make the President's Dai Brief and National
Intelligence ligence Daily up-to-date as of two hours before delivery
to thePr sid-nt and other high government officials. The
present location of the Special Printing Plant in Room 7G28
contributes significantly to our ability to do this. Moving
printing and photography services to the General Printing Plant
in Room GJ56 would among other things force deadlines ahead by
at least an hour. We estimate that updating has been required
in our publications during this hour at least once or twice a
week.
-- The proximity of the editorial, composition, photo-
graphy, and printing components also contributes significantly
to the quality of the publications. The frequent consultations
that occur bc,ty-een printers and others are critical to quality
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control. Editors and processors make 20 to 25 trips to and
from the Special Printing Plant each night. To move the
printing and photography services away would decrease the con-
sultations and increase the probability of error.
-- A requirement to carry sensitive intelligence mate-
rials from the seventh floor to the ground floor for printing
and photography, and to carry the sensitive completed mate-
rials back to the seventh floor for packaging and dissemina-
tion, would create security problems not now involved in the
publications program.
The Argument
Almost two years of keeping major intelligence production
components close to each other have shown that the arrangement
is central to our ability to turn out overnight publications
successfully and efficiently. To move any of these components
away from the others would damage the overnight publications
operation.
The Office of Current Intelligence, the Office of Econ-
omic Research, the Office of Strategic Research, and the
Printing and Photography Division all have people and equip-
ment grouped in the seventh floor area at night for a joint
effort. The analysts, editors, publication typists, proof-
readers, and paste-up men are in Room 7G50 because they are
close to Room 7G28, where the Special Printing Plant provides
the printing and photography services required to get out the
publications. The Special Printing Plant is just across the
hall from Room 7G15, Registry, where the hot-off-the-press
publications are packaged and sent out to important consumers.
This arrangement works. The parts are finely tuned.
Publications deadlines occur one after another through the
night so that each publi_cati.on--the National Intell_i ence
Bulletin, the National Intelligence Daily the Irate gencc,
Checklist and the Presi_d--ent~ s Daily Brief--i5 as up-to-date
as possible and gets to its readers on tIf delays occur
in one publication, the next publication can be set back and
so on down the line.
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The Special Printing Plant is involved in many steps
of production. Editors and processors make 20 to 25 trips
a night to the Special Printing Plant. Here are some of
the things they do in connection with the National Intelli-
gence Daily:
They deliver photographs for the photo-
mechanical transfer process, pick up the com-
pleted transfers for paste-up, discuss the
proper degree of photo reduction or contrast,
deliver map plates, change map plates previ-
ously delivered, deliver the camera-ready
Page 2-3 paste-up, revise the Page 2-3 paste-
up to accommodate a late change or to correct
a late-appearing typographical error, deliver
the camera-ready, Page 1-4 paste-up of the
Daily, revise the Page 1-4 layout at the last
moment, and check the newspaper as it comes
off the press.
Here are some of the things editors and processors do
in connection with the President's Daily Brief, the National
Intelligence Bulletin, and the Intelligence Checklist:
They check the,printing impressions as
each color goes on the maps, correct errors
on the map plates or change the plates to
reflect new information, deliver camera-ready
text pages, revise pages at the last moment
to incorporate last changes, submit pages on
a piecemeal basis when part of the book is
ready and part is not, check the pages as they
come off the press, and check the collation of
each book.
Through the night, a printer with a question now finds
it convenient to take a few steps to the editorial offices
to get an answer. He might not take a seven-floor trip to
ask a simple but important question.
As each printing deadline approaches, the Registry
couriers can monitor progreFs in the Special Printing Plant.
If the deadline for the early downtown delivery is approach-
ing, the couriers can take what they have in hand and deliver
the remainder in a later run.
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The proximity of working areas keeps the lines of
communication open. Each component knows what the other
is doing. People have no tortuous channels to snake
through, no incomprehensible memoranda to interpret, no
telephone conversations, no great distances to traverse.
The work gets done, on time.
In the present arrangement, we can produce an item
for the President's Daily Brief and the. Daily as late as
5:00 a.m., and do so frequently. Often, the President's
Daily Brief and the Daily include items that do not appear
in The Washington Post simply because of our late deadline.
We estimate that if the work now done in the Special Print-
ing Plant were done in the General Printing Plant, the
President's Daily Brief and the National Intelligence Daily
would lose as much as an hour's currency at the crucial
time in the production process--between 4:30 and 5:30 a.m.--
because of the need to deal at long range with the print
shop. Deadlines would have to allow for the extra time
required to carry materials from the seventh floor to the
ground floor and back to the seventh floor. We would lose
efficiency throughout the night, and the cost would be high-
est just when time becomes most precious.
Our proximity to the Special Printing Plant makes it
easier to deal with errors that sometimes surface at the
last minute, such as missing graphics, errors in the graph-
ics or texts, problems with headlines in the Daily, classi-
fication problems and off-center printing. On occasion,
the President's or Vice President's copy of the President's
Daily Brief has been badly smudged. A ground floor' printing
plant could correct any of these errors, but again it is a
question of time against tight deadlines. We should avoid
as often as we can a situation where an editor has to decide
whether correcting an error is worth a publication being
late.
Security
The page layouts for the National Intelligence Daily
must be handled carefully from the beginning of the layout
process to the end. These paste-ups consist of separate
pieces of paper and film mounted on a layout sheet. Between
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the layout sheet and the paper or film is a coating of wax.
The wax has to be thick enough to make the piece of paper
or film stick to the layout sheet, but not so thick that it
will appear as a glob when the layout is photographed to
produce the press plate. Furthermore, the wax has to be
thin enough to allow the paste-up man to relocate the piece
of paper in the event of a make-up change.
Any of these pieces of paper or film can fall off the
layout sheet as the compositor carries it to the printers.
This has happened. With the paste-up room close to the
Special Printing Plant, it has always been possible to find
the missing piece. If the compositor had to carry the
camera-ready layout all the way to the elevator, down the
elevator, and along the ground floor hallway to the General
Printing Plant, the danger of losing material would increase.
We believe this would constitute a significantly increased
security hazard.
Conclusion
In 1973, a proposal to eliminate the Special Printing
Plant was introduced, thoroughly debated, and turned down.
One of the memoranda circulated in the debate made these
points:
"When we moved into Headquarters Building,
the seventh floor printing plant, the OCI Regis-
try, the OCI Production Staff, the grandfather
of the Operations Center, and the Office of the
DOCI were placed as close to one another as was
feasible can the seventh floor, because it was
recognized that these units formed an integrated
complex. The complex in turn was placed on the
seventh floor to facilitate support of the DCI
and the DDI. The production process is both
more complicated and more extensive than it was
in 1961, and the arguments for keeping these ele-
ments together are eveii stronger today than they
were then.
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In 1975, the arguments for keeping these elements
together are even stronger than they were in 1973, assum-
ing that the DCI wishes to have publications of the high-
est possible quality in terms of currency and appearance.
Almost any system or location can be made to work if the
DCI is willing to sacrifice these qualities. The real
issue is what quality he wants; we think he, and'the
President and our other high-level customers, should get
the best.
William K. Parmenter
Director of Current Intelligence
Attachment:
Reference
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