Deadly Deceits (7 page)

But there were other Agency operations in this region in the 1950s as well, including an unsuccessful Agency attempt in 1953 to overthrow the elected government of President Jose Figueres in Costa Rica.
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In 1956 the Agency also helped in the establishment of Buró de Represión Actividades Comunistas (BRAC), the police force of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. BRAC became famous for its brutal methods of
torture.
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* The Middle East. In the 1950s the Agency was conducting a variety of operations to stabilize or destabilize the governments of this region. I had heard through the grapevine that the Agency was instrumental in overthrowing the government of Iranian Premier Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 and reinstalling Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. This was confirmed later by, among others, former CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, in his book
Countercoup: The Struggle for Control of Iran.
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In Syria the CIA planned a coup in 1956 to overthrow the government. By chance, the coup attempt occurred on the same day that Israeli troops invaded Egypt. As a result, it was seen as linked to the Israeli operation and was quickly aborted. In that same period the CIA planned to overthrow two other Middle Eastern governments.
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* Africa. In 1957 the Agency began working with Israeli intelligence to penetrate the independent states of Black Africa.
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Since that time it has spent at least $80 million on such operations.

In the Third World in general in the 1950s the Agency's propaganda operations were multiplying. “Foreign editors and columnists were recruited, newspapers and magazines subsidized, press services supported,” wrote former CIA employee Harry Rositzke. “Propagandists ranged from paid ‘agents' to friendly collaborators, from liberal and socialist anti-Communists to simple right-wingers. Facts, themes, editorial outlines, model essays were sent out to third world stations to be reworked for local consumption.”
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While all these various covert operations to overthrow or bolster foreign governments were being carried out, the Agency was also supposed to be gathering intelligence. But intelligence-gathering operations did not match in size or scope the efforts to overthrow governments, and most intelligence gathering from 1952 to 1963 was carried out through liaison arrangements with foreign governments. According to the Church Committee report, CIA director Allen Dulles cultivated relations with foreign intelligence officials, and because of the United States' predominant postwar position, governments in Western Europe, in particular, were very willing to cooperate in information sharing. Liaison provided the Agency
with sources and contacts that otherwise would have been denied them. Information on individuals, on political parties, and on labor movements all derived from liaison. The Church Committee concluded that liaison created its share of problems: “The existence of close liaison relationships inhibited developing independent assets. First, it was simply easier to rely on information that had already been gleaned from agents.… It was far easier to talk to colleagues who had numerous assets in place than to expend the time required merely to make contact with an individual whose potential would not be realized for years. Second, maintenance of liaison became an end in itself, against which independent collection operations were judged. Rather than serving as a supplement to Agency operations it assumed primary importance in Western Europe. Often, a proposal for an independent operation was rejected because a Station Chief believed that if the operation were exposed, the host government's intelligence service would be offended.”
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The Agency's primary, if not sole claim to fame in intelligence gathering came in the mid-1950s with the development of the U-2 airplane and overhead photography. Since that time its record in intelligence has at best been dismal. The Church Committee that investigated the Agency in the mid 1970s concluded: “CIA intelligence was not serving the purpose for which the organization had been created—informing and influencing policymaking.”
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We now know that in the 1950s the CIA was also conducting many covert operations within the United States, in violation of the law. It was creating hundreds of dummy corporations, called proprietaries, that it used to provide cover for its operational agents.
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It was also continuing programs with academic institutions started during the days of the OSS. It expanded its operations with universities until some 5,000 American academics were doing its bidding by identifying and recruiting American students and identifying 200 to 300 future CIA agents from among the thousands of foreign students who come to the United States each year.
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The Agency had hundreds of teachers and graduate students on more than 100 campuses who worked for it secretly in recruiting, writing propaganda, and running covert operations.
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Thomas W. Braden, former head of the Agency's division
of international organizations, which had extensive facilities in the United States, stated that by 1953 the CIA was operating or influencing international organizations in every field where Communist fronts had seized the initiative and in some where they had not yet begun to operate. He also said that in 1951 or 1952 he gave Walter Reuther of the United Auto Workers $50,000 in CIA funds to support anti-Communist labor unions.
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From 1952 until 1967 the CIA funded the National Student Association, giving about $3.3 million to support the organization's operations.
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CIA director William Colby confessed that beginning in 1953 the CIA “conducted several programs to survey and open selected mail between the United States and two Communist countries.”
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According to a secret Senate memorandum, the CIA survey focused on mail sent to and received from the Soviet Union and China and was centered in New York and San Francisco.
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The Agency was also establishing close links with both book publishing houses and media organizations in the U.S. at this time. It felt that in the world of covert operations, book publishing had a special place. The head of its covert action staff said, “Books differ from all other propaganda media, primarily because one single book can significantly change the reader's attitude and action to an extent unmatched by the impact of any other single medium … this is, of course, not true of all books at all times and with all readers—but it is true significantly often enough to make books the most important weapon of strategic (long-range) propaganda.”
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Altogether from 1947 until the end of 1967, the CIA produced, subsidized, or sponsored well over 1,000 books. Approximately 20 percent of them were written in English. Many of them were published by cultural organizations backed by the CIA.
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The Agency was also conducting extensive operations with newspaper, magazine, and television organizations. It maintained liaison relationships with about 50 American journalists or U.S. media organizations. An uncensored portion of the final report of the Church Committee said: “They [the 50] are part of a network of several hundred foreign
individuals around the world who provide intelligence for the CIA and at times attempt to influence foreign opinion through the use of covert propaganda. These individuals provide the CIA with direct access to a large number of foreign newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies, radio and television stations, commercial book publishers, and other foreign media outlets.”
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Domestic “fallout”—a story that filters into U.S. media from abroad—was a deliberate result of these operations in newspapers, magazines, TV, and book publishing. At least two proprietary news services that the CIA maintained in Europe had U.S. subscribers. The larger of the two was subscribed to by more than 30 U.S. newspapers.
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In a long article entitled “The CIA and the Media,” Carl Bernstein wrote that more than 400 American journalists had secretly carried out assignments for the Agency, from gathering intelligence to serving as go-betweens with spies.
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This was the kind of work that the CIA was up to throughout the 1950s and that I unquestioningly supported. I would like to believe that if I had been aware of more of these operations at the time, I would have had some doubts about the Agency. But I'm not at all sure that I would have and I'll never really know because I simply wasn't aware of most of what was going on.

We lived in Japan for two years. Although my work was not what I had visualized, the lifestyle was thrilling. Like most young Agency employees, Norma and I were intoxicated with the romance of being overseas. We loved traveling around and exploring the exotic wonders of Japan, learning its customs and traditions. We loved eating new and strange foods. We loved living in comparative luxury, having servants. And we loved drinking on the beach, going to parties, and participating in the camaraderie that developed in the close-knit community of Agency families. We felt part of a big family and part of a grand cause.

On April 24, 1954, Scott was born at the Naval hospital in Yokosuka. On May 5, as was the Japanese custom, I erected a tall bamboo pole and flew from its top a cloth streamer
shaped and painted to resemble a carp—a symbol of strength. This was Boys' Day, a national holiday, and I was announcing to the world the arrival of a son in the family of McGehee.

After the birth of Scott, Norma went to work as a secretary in the China operations group's administration office. Prior to being hired she had to submit the horrendously long personal history statement and wait for the security clearance. It had taken several months but finally she was cleared. I advised, “I can talk to you now about my work.”

This infuriated her.

“A piece of paper from the CIA doesn't change who I am,” she fumed. “The marital bonds and trust should be stronger than that paper.”

I knew I was on the losing end of this argument and I silently agreed, but the constant indoctrination about the dangers of loose talk, the need-to-know principle, and the necessity for secrecy had embedded themselves in my consciousness and I could not have done otherwise.

Near the end of the two-year tour in Japan, I had to submit a field reassignment questionnaire. Everyone joked that Headquarters looked at your request and then assigned you a job diametrically opposed to what you wanted—a joke with some truth in it. The China operations group moved to Subic Bay in the Philippines. My boss asked me to extend for a year and move to its new location. This would give us the opportunity to experience another foreign country. Norma and I talked it over and we decided to extend.

Before moving the station, the Agency constructed more than 100 expensive modern homes, a large two-story office building and a big warehouse at Subic Bay. The move was completed about October 1955.

My work in the Philippines was pretty much the same as in Japan except for one incident. My boss went on leave and left me in charge. The chief of station, a tall, impressive Bold Easterner, Desmond FitzGerald, called down one day and demanded that I come to his office immediately. He was steaming mad. He had cabled Headquarters to pin down the whereabouts of an important top secret document. Headquarters replied that it had sent the document to the station more than two months earlier. FitzGerald's secretary had checked with the records office's top secret control officer and had found it
in his safe. The control officer, in addition, had a whole stack of other top secret documents stored there. For reasons known only to himself, he had dutifully logged every document in and had locked them in his safe, without distributing them to any of the designated recipients.

This unfortunate incident may have been a blessing in disguise, for it highlighted the irrelevance of this mini-headquarters. For several months most of the key documents had been mislaid, and no one had missed them.

Following this incident, less than a year after the expensive move to Subic Bay, China operations group was deemed superfluous and was shut down. The abandonment of all those expensive buildings seemed to me a shame and a waste of time and money, but it seemed an aberration to me then and it in no way shook my faith in the Agency.

3. WASHINGTON:

FUN IN THE FILES

IN mid-1956 I checked in with the Far East division administrative office at Headquarters. My next stint within the Agency was to be at home in Washington as the chief of records for the counterintelligence unit of China activities. This news did not exactly thrill me. I would be supervising virtually the same work I had been doing in Japan and the Philippines.

I reported to the records unit offices on the second floor of J building in the temporary I-J-K-L building complex along the reflecting pool mall. The place had depressing gray walls decorated with a few calendars and a single plant and seemed hopelessly overcrowded with people, files, and desks. I soon discovered that the unit consisted of 15 women and myself. Having an “outsider” named chief caused some bitterness among the long-time female employees. They felt, appropriately enough, that they were better qualified, had more experience, and could do a better job. They were right, but the Agency at the time did not normally place women in supervisory positions. After a few months of working together, most of the women became convinced that I knew what I was doing and we at least achieved a
modus vivendi
.

Our group was responsible for processing all of the hundreds of file trace requests that emanated from Agency stations, bases, and offices operating against China around the world. There were two kinds of requests: (1) a file trace, which was simply a check of any record that Headquarters might have on an individual. This might be done if the individual was suspected of working for another intelligence service, or of fabricating intelligence, or for any number of
other reasons. (2) A clearance, which was a more thorough review of all information available on an individual whom the Agency wanted to use as an agent. The purpose was to evaluate his personal record and to determine if he was in a position to provide the necessary services.