--- alias: - AID - Audio Intelligence Devices, Inc. - National Intelligence Academy category: Private Organization created: 2026-09-21 location: Fort Lauderdale, Florida summary: Fort Lauderdale maker of eavesdropping equipment run by the Anguilla adventurer Jack Holcomb, where Michael Townley spent the morning of the Letelier bombing, and which his co-defendants called a CIA front. tags: - Organization - AudioIntelligenceDevices - Surveillance - FortLauderdale - JackHolcomb - OrlandoLetelier - MichaelTownley - PrivateIntelligence updated: 2026-09-21 --- Audio Intelligence Devices, Inc., of Fort Lauderdale, manufactured "twenty-first century electronic eavesdropping and countermeasures equipment." Its proprietor was Jack Holcomb, "a manic and balding spook with a somewhat dicey past," an ex-policeman "who brags that he's had 'wide experience in the field of law.'" Tried on two counts of wiretapping, Holcomb was acquitted; a charge of possessing barbiturates was dropped. He "has hinted at 'Mission Impossible assignments' he's performed, supposedly for the FBI."[^1] ### Anguilla During Anguilla's secession from the British Commonwealth in 1967 Holcomb, without legal training, became the island's magistrate and the "legal advisor" of the rebel leader Ronald Webster, and drafted a constitution that "reserved for private investors various rights ordinarily belonging to sovereign governments," with monopolies and tax exemptions for himself "until the year 2000." When British paratroopers ended the secession he "was reportedly ejected as 'a gangster-type element.'" He appeared in [Haiti](/places/haiti/) two weeks before an attempted coup and was deported "as a suspected secret agent." He "won't talk about any connections he may have to the CIA, but creates the impression that the ties are there, and binding." The same account places him in "that [Miami](/places/miami/) milieu which gave the world Frank Sturgis, Jack Holcomb, Loran Hall, and others."[^1][^2] ### The National Intelligence Academy On his return from Haiti Holcomb founded the National Intelligence Academy, a tax-exempt school for police in electronic surveillance, which "has always shared a modernistic, two-story office building" with the company. A sign at the door read: "U.S. Government regulations prohibit discussion of this organization or facility." Students practiced on "Surveillance City," a scale model of an American town. The academy's motel was donated, and more than three million dollars provided, by Leo Goodwin, Jr., heir to the GEICO fortune. "AID executives have doubled as NIA officers," students toured the factory, and the techniques taught used the company's products, among them "Unitels," attack kits in an attaché case, and a telephone transmitter stamped "Western Electric Noise Filter." Most of the original instructors, retired from the [CIA](/organizations/central-intelligence-agency/), the [DEA](/organizations/dea/), and the [Justice Department](/organizations/department-of-justice/), left "charging that NIA existed solely to create a market for the surveillance devices made by Holcomb."[^3] ### Townley [Michael Townley](/people/michael-townley/) of [DINA](/organizations/dina/) had equipment on order at the company. On the morning of September 21, 1976, having flown from New York to Miami the afternoon before, he went to the firm's premises and "spent several hours there, signing in and out as was required." While he was there [Orlando Letelier](/people/orlando-letelier/) and [Ronni Moffitt](/people/ronni-moffitt/) were killed by his bomb at Sheridan Circle in [Washington](/places/washington-dc/). At the 1979 trial the lawyers for [Guillermo Novo](/people/guillermo-novo/) and [Alvin Ross](/people/alvin-ross/) asked for CIA files on the company and Holcomb, on the theory that it was "a CIA 'front' organization in [Florida](/places/florida/)" that "had apparently attempted to create an alibi for Townley on the day of the Letelier assassination." The government answered that "no such files existed," that the company "has never been a 'front,' proprietary, or any other type of sub-organization owing allegiance to the CIA," and that the defense had built the request on a newspaper article, quoting against it the passage above on freelance operators who trade on "incidental or wholly imaginary ties to the CIA."[^4] A memorandum of the American prosecutors sent to Chile in June 1978 recorded that a customer calling himself Kenneth Enyart had "presented Holcomb with a document purportedly signed by Enrique Montero authorizing the purchase of goods for [Chile](/places/chile/)," that the purchase order "contained the name of General Washington Carrasco, since 'Enyart' had given Holcomb that name as a reference to verify 'Enyart's' credentials," and that "Holcomb was shown photographs and positively identified Michael Vernon Townley's photograph as the person he knew as Kenneth Enyart." Townley had told the Chilean prosecutor that his trip to the United States as Enyart in December 1974 was "to explore the possibility of acquiring electronic countermeasure equipment."[^5] [^1]: Hougan, Jim. *Spooks: The Haunting of America: The Private Use of Secret Agents*. William Morrow, 1978, pp. 12, 66-69 (index pagination; read through the archive.org search index). [^2]: Hougan, *Spooks,* p. 319. [^3]: Hougan, *Spooks,* pp. 66-69, citing Ellison, James M. "A Report from the Wiretap Subculture," *The Washington Monthly,* December 1975, and the Institute of Current World Affairs newsletters of Frank McDonald, FJM-4, 5, 9, and 10. [^4]: Brief for Appellee, *United States v. Sampol,* Nos. 79-1541 and 79-1542 (D.C. Cir. 1979), citing trial transcript pp. 1692-1694, and discovery section with footnote 72, https://www.latinamericanstudies.org/MNC/Letelier-brief-appellee.pdf; Brief for Appellants, same case, statement of facts p. 16 and discovery point, https://www.latinamericanstudies.org/MNC/Letelier-appeal.pdf [^5]: Fiscalía Militar Ad-Hoc, Santiago, causa 192-78, as reproduced in *Proceso contra Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda y Pedro Espinoza Bravo,* tomo 2, scan at https://www.latinamericanstudies.org/MNC/Causa-Contreras-Espinoza-1991-2.pdf. Quotations translated from the Spanish, memorandum of Eugene M. Propper and E. Lawrence Barcella, June 5, 1978; Fiscalía Militar Ad-Hoc, Santiago, causa 192-78 (fiscal Héctor Orozco), as reproduced in *Proceso contra Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda y Pedro Espinoza Bravo,* ministro instructor Adolfo Bañados, tomo 1, scan at https://www.latinamericanstudies.org/MNC/Causa-Contreras-Espinoza-1991.pdf. Quotations translated from the Spanish, declaración of Michael Vernon Townley Welch, March 29, 1978.