Deadly Deceits (2 page)

As one final irony, he comments on his award citation that “as with nearly everything else touched by the Agency, its intelligence was flawed. It said that the Agency gave me the medal, in part, for my excellent work in Malaysia—a country which I had never even visited.”

There ends his personal story, save for an appendix in which he details the bureaucratic and legalistic maze he had to navigate in order to get the manuscript for
Deadly Deceits
through the CIA's publication-review process. This, too, is instructive, showing how high-ranking ex-officials who praise the agency and its practices have their memoirs passed through almost without question. On the other hand, critical former officers like McGehee are subjected to an inquisition in which their every reference to agency operations and practices or personnel are declared to be classified national-security information that cannot be revealed.

In this, McGehee again demonstrates what an extraordinarily thorough researcher he is. To every agency objection, he was able to present evidence showing that what he had written was already in the public domain, often placed there by the agency itself. It did not hurt his presentation that he had already established and was providing to subscribers on a computer site called CIABASE references to everything published about US intelligence agencies and their practices.

He also adds one final chapter—“Conclusion.” Here he declares that the CIA is not an intelligence agency and never has been. In truth, he goes on, it is essentially “the covert action arm of the President and his foreign policy advisors. … It shapes its intelligence … to support presidential policy.” He goes on: “Disinformation is a large part of its covert action responsibility, and the American people are the primary target of its lies.” Over the next few pages he gives example after example from Vietnam, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Indonesia, and elsewhere. He is appalled by the steps taken by the Reagan administration, particularly the issuance of the notorious Executive Order 12333, which gives the CIA, banned from conducting operations in the United States—a ban frequently ignored (DCM)— authorization to do so. He is similarly troubled by Executive Order 12356, further limiting public access to government documents.

But what to do? First, he calls for the abolition of the CIA, which, he says, “cannot be salvaged.” Next, since he accepts that they are sometimes necessary, he suggests that covert operations responsibility be given to a separate body not involved in intelligence gathering or analysis.

His last suggestion is intriguing. He calls for identifying people of “ability, integrity, and flexibility and giving [them] lifetime or long-term non-renewable appointments to a board controlling intelligence requirements and production.” The board would be assisted by high-rated university political science graduates who would serve one-year clerkships.

Interestingly, a move toward something like this was made in the last year of the Carter administration. A group of people from outside the agency were hired to work in the National Intelligence Council (NIC) as the primary drafters of national intelligence estimates independent of the various analytic offices within the CIA.

A highly respected senior CIA officer, who had been the head of the agency's first congressional-liaison office, was in charge. (Here the writer of this foreword must tell the readers that he was among the first of the outsiders hired.) Intentions were good, but the opening of this new NIC office coincided with the Reagan administration's appointment of William Casey as agency director. Good-bye to meaningful change, let alone an end to covert operations and misinformation. We were off and running on Iran-Contra.

(Again, for reasons of full disclosure, I have to inform readers that my refusal, on the basis of lack of credible evidence of Nicaraguan or Cuban government supply of arms to the insurgents in El Salvador, to write estimates justifying the support of the Nicaraguan contras led to my dismissal from Langley in late 1983.

After on-the-ground work in Nicaragua confirmed my conclusions I returned to the United States, where the
New York Times
and other major papers gave my charges against the CIA and the Reagan administration front-page coverage. Eventually, I became one of the principal witnesses against the United States in the 1985 UN World Court trial, in which the United States was convicted of violating international law in its covert contra war against Nicaragua.)

At about this time I became part of a just-organized group of former US intelligence officers, the Association of National Security Alumni, running its Washington office and editing its publication
Unclassified
. Ralph, then living in nearby Herndon, Virginia, while never an official member, was of great assistance to the association, and we became close acquaintances. Through this acquaintanceship I learned of the constant petty harassment, apparently conducted or instigated by the CIA, to which he and his family were subjected during his residence in Herndon.

This new edition of
Deadly Deceits
comes at a time when the faults and failures of the CIA and the rest of the US national security system that McGehee exposed thirty years ago have been shown by a new generation of insider whistle-blowers (as the McGehees of today are now called) to have survived all efforts at reform. Indeed, the never-ending War on Terror, employing weaponry, means of electronic espionage, and levels of government funding, unknown in the decades in which he worked, appear, if anything, to have magnified the problem.

Deadly Deceits
is more timely than ever. It deserves reading and Ralph McGehee once again deserves the thanks of all Americans.

David MacMichael

Author's Note

My thanks to Open Road Media for including
Deadly Deceits
in its Forbidden Bookshelf ebook series.

My purpose in writing
Deadly Deceits
a generation ago was to inform the public about how the CIA distorted intelligence reports, including mine, on the Vietnam War to support White House political goals. I had to obtain a court order against the agency to get the book published in its original form. I felt it was vital, however, to alert the public that many intelligence reports from the CIA could not be trusted.

It remains as important today as it was in the Vietnam era for the public to hold the CIA accountable when its reporting reflects political purposes instead of accurate intelligence.

My hope is that this ebook publication of
Deadly Deceits
will serve as a reminder that watching the watchers—the CIA and other intelligence agencies—may be the best way to keep them from straying from their legitimate intelligence-gathering mission.

INTRODUCTION

IT was late one night in December 1968 in Gia Dinh province near Saigon. Angered and miserable, I was sitting alone in the living room of a villa sparsely furnished with standard government-issue rattan tables and kapok-cushioned sofa and chairs. A bare coffee table and empty bookshelves signaled the recent transition from one CIA occupant to another. A framed picture of artificial-looking flowers broke up only slightly the monotony of the harsh yellow walls. The lone tape left by my predecessor played on the stereo and Nancy Sinatra sang for the hundredth time “Such a Pretty World Today,” soon to be followed by “End of the World.” Outside, helicopter gunships circled and off in the distance B-52s dropped another string of bombs on South Vietnamese men, women, and children.

I sat there in agony thinking about all that had led me to this private hell. My idealism, my patriotism, my ambition, my plans to be a good intelligence officer to help my country fight the Communist scourge—what in hell had happened? Why did we have to bomb the people we were trying to save? Why were we napalming young children? Why did the CIA, my employer for 16 years, report lies instead of the truth?

I hated my part in this charade of murder and horror. My efforts were contributing to the deaths, to the burning alive of children—especially the children. The photographs of young Vietnamese children burned by napalm destroyed me. I wanted out of this massacre. Angrily I thought back to the year before in Thailand when I had worked in the rural villages and learned some painful truths about the nature of an Asian revolution. I had faced the undeniable evidence
that the Communists had infiltrated much deeper into Asian society than we had ever imagined or reported, and I had devised what I thought was a humane way to beat them. Why had the Agency first accepted that information and then, in spite of countless proofs of its accuracy, denied it? When presented with a viable alternative, why was it following the same old methods that resulted only in more killing and more futility?

I wanted to end this maddening turmoil. I thought about the loaded AR-15 by my bed upstairs and the small loaded pistol in my nightstand. I could kill myself. It would be easy. But if I did, I rationalized, my death should accomplish some purpose, like those of the monks who burned themselves in downtown Saigon. Maybe if I made a huge banner saying “THE CIA LIES” or “FUCK THE CIA” and hung it from the roof of the Agency's Due Hotel and then jumped off.… I hated my inaction and myself, but to die in those circumstances would only bring shame to my family—and poverty, for the Agency was vengeful and would withhold the death benefits. Even if I could hang the banner and jump, the Agency would quickly cover up what happened and issue a statement saying that I was crazy. There seemed no way.

I wondered if I was merely making excuses. Did I lack the guts to do it? Why not just quit the Agency? But then how could I support two children in college and two more at home? In my mental state it would be impossible to find a new career. Anybody in their right mind would send me to an institution, not hire me. No, quitting was out: either I would kill myself, or stay and struggle and suffer. There were no other paths. I stared at the bare light bulb on the ceiling. Outside there was a pause in the bombing and for a brief moment all was peaceful, silent. My hand trembled, I gulped down my drink, and then broke down in tears. Here I was, a former Notre Dame football player, now a macho CIA case officer, weeping like a baby.

It was at this moment of utter despair back in that ugly room in Gia Dinh in 1968 that the seed of this book was first planted. For I realized then that if I stayed I had to do something to fight the terrible things I had seen the CIA do. I knew then that the United States and the CIA had gone very wrong. Killing myself was not the answer. I had to stay alive and tell
what I had found out. I owed that much to the American and Vietnamese people—and to myself.

This book is a journey through my 25 years in the CIA. I worked from 1952 to 1977 in many places, including Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Langley, Virginia. I had a range of jobs, both in cities and rural areas, working as a case officer on covert operations, as a paramilitary operator, as a liaison officer with foreign police and intelligence agencies, and as an intelligence analyst. I also studied the CIA for years after I retired. This range of experience and research has led me to realizations and conclusions, many of which are unpleasant and painful to me. I choose now to share these experiences and conclusions for two main reasons.

The first is political. I want to reveal to those who still believe in the myths of the CIA what it is and what it actually does. My explanation will not include the usual pap fed to us by Agency spokesmen. My view backed by 25 years of experience is, quite simply, that the CIA is the covert action arm of the Presidency. Most of its money, manpower, and energy go into covert operations that, as we have seen over the years, include backing dictators and overthrowing democratically elected governments. The CIA is not an intelligence agency. In fact, it acts largely as an anti-intelligence agency, producing only that information wanted by policymakers to support their plans and suppressing information that does not support those plans. As the covert action arm of the President, the CIA uses disinformation, much of it aimed at the U.S. public, to mold opinion. It employs the gamut of disinformation techniques from forging documents to planting and discovering “communist” weapons caches. But the major weapon in its arsenal of disinformation is the “intelligence” it feeds to policymakers. Instead of gathering genuine intelligence that could serve as the basis for reasonable policies, the CIA often ends up distorting reality, creating out of whole cloth “intelligence” to justify policies that have already been decided upon. Policymakers then leak this “intelligence” to the media to deceive us all and gain our support. Now that President Reagan, in his Executive Order of December 4, 1981, has authorized the Agency to operate within the United States, the situation can only worsen.

But beyond contributing to the political dialogue about the CIA, I want to understand my own life, to try to adjust to the world as it is, not to the fairy-tale world I was led to believe in. I write with the knowledge that my experiences reflect, at least to a degree, those of the more than two million Americans who served in Vietnam and millions of others at home who idealistically believed, as I did, in the American dream. If this book helps some of them to understand how they were misled and how that dream was shattered, and to adjust, then it will have achieved its goal.

1. GUNG HO!

BEFORE I went to work for the CIA I believe I was a typical American, if there is such a creature. My family goes back three generations in Louisiana and many of the Scotch-Irish McGehees lie buried in the East Fork Baptist Church cemetery near Kentwood. My father, as a teenager, moved north to make his fortune and after several years returned to marry his childhood sweetheart, a neighboring girl from Osyka, Mississippi. I was born in Moline, Illinois in 1928. Shortly thereafter my parents, my older sister, and I moved to the South Side of Chicago, where my father worked long, hard hours as a janitor to support us. Despite the Depression, my family prospered.