A Look Over My Shoulder

by Richard Helms

  Along with the budget increases, personnel ceilings were raised to a level that threatened to engulf our training facilities. This suggested a corollary to the American inclination to find a dollar solution to difficult problems. In secret intelligence the addition of more staff does not necessarily guarantee increased production. In many instances, a lean outfit will outperform its plump neighbor. Any reasonably intelligent person can be taught the fundamentals of secret operations in a few months, and a student’s grasp of these principles is not difficult to test. The application of classroom knowledge to operations in the field is not as easily taught. The best, if not only, solution is at least two years’ field experience under a competent boss. In my division in the late forties, the twoscore operatives with this much practical experience were literally veterans, and our handful of experienced managers were in even greater demand. In those formative years we were creating our own postwar operational doctrine day by day.

  As we examined the entrepreneurs’ wares it became possible to sort them into two categories. First came individuals operating alone, often former intelligence operatives or agents, most of them survivors of the loosely supervised Nazi intelligence efforts in Eastern Europe and the USSR. These people tended to create their product from scratch—memory and the world press. No motive was more basic than patching together a livelihood in the desperate postwar economy.

  A more serious problem was the intelligence offices created in the various émigré groups, and usually staffed by former intelligence personnel and senior military officers. These people came with more intellectual heft, personal presence, and a better sense of the market than the less prepossessing lone operators.

  The minor scams ran to form. An alleged middleman represented a Russian or Eastern European official who wanted to sell information to cover his debts, support a mistress, or finance his eventual defection and life in the West. To protect himself, the alleged source would in no circumstance reveal his name or position in the Communist Party hierarchy. He—I recall no women being cited as mysterious sources in those macho days—trusted only his intermediary, in itself evidence of shaky judgment. The go-betweens had most often bubbled up from the bottom of the local black market. In practice, an operations officer would purchase an initial report or two. If the material showed any promise, an effort would be launched to identify the alleged source, and to determine the bona fides of the middleman. This might involve surveillance, telephone taps, extensive name tracing, and an unconscionable amount of time. There were as many variations on this theme as there were wine taverns in Vienna and beer halls in Berlin, but each had to be sifted for a possible treasure. The fact that on occasion a few nuggets of value were uncovered meant that we had to continue struggling against the impossible odds.

  Some junior officers learned their trade chasing these phantoms, but the time involved took our attention away from developing the techniques that in the future were to produce significant results.

  More serious than the individual fabricator was the industry that evolved into a string of what a perceptive analyst dubbed “paper mills.” The leadership of the various émigré organizations that had formed in the West usually comprised a handful of formerly prominent political figures. The fact that effective contact between the exiles and their real or imagined constituency in the homeland had effectively ceased did not, of course, reduce the need for funds to nourish the émigré groups and, incidentally, to maintain the lifestyle of the leadership. The exiles soon learned that the best way to serve both purposes was to enlist the support of the intelligence-hungry Western services. While émigré leaders chatted politics, intelligence matters were left to former professionals—sometimes self-styled “professionals.” In the absence of live sources, the temptation to fabricate plausible data was often overpowering.

  The efforts of the fabrication factories to milk Western intelligence and to influence U.S. policy approached its peak in 1952. As late as 1951, a third of the CIA operational effort in occupied Austria was devoted to tracking down fabrication. It was at this time that Walter Jessel, then chief of the Austria-Hungary branch at headquarters, undertook an intensive study of the problem. He had served as reports chief in Germany in 1946 when we were shifting from the wartime concentration on German targets to the USSR. Walter had effectively spiked the continuing flood of such reports as the number of rapes committed by Soviet troops in Silesia, dreams of a Wittelsbach restoration, and the occasional flash details of Hitler’s submarine voyage to Argentina, in favor of the more solid information on Soviet activity and intentions in East Germany.

  On his return to Washington, Jessel studied the “intelligence” we were beginning to identify as wishful thinking, refugee hearsay, and fabrication. He confirmed our suspicion that the fabricators were selling slightly altered versions of the same report to three or four of their customers. It was soon possible to trace the movement of cloned reports through various consumer channels. Given the proprietary interests of some of the American agencies involved, this was a sensitive bit of business. The impressive political backgrounds of some of the leading exile political figures gave them access to—and a measure of influence on—prominent businessmen, members of Congress, and others with ties to ethnic communities in the United States.

  Jessel began with a study of a prolific Hungarian paper mill run by General Andras Zako, who in 1944 was chief of VKF-2, the intelligence component of the General Staff of the Hungarian fascist premier Ferenc Szálasi. Keeping a prudent step ahead of the Red Army, Zako and some of his Iron Cross colleagues made their way to Austria, where the general became a founding member of the right-wing MHBK, the League of Hungarian Veterans. It was not long before Zako’s reports from the usual variety of “high-level” sources found their way to market. By 1952, Zako was the very model of an intelligence entrepreneur.

  The obvious solution to the fabrication problems was coordination between the various intelligence services. This was less easily achieved than reason would suggest. No intelligence service will lightly disclose the identity of any agent or contact; competition between the several services was fierce, and some services and a few well-entrenched senior officers had built reputations on intelligence that Jessel’s analysis showed to have been fabricated. General Zako’s enthusiastic customers were not easily convinced that they had been hoodwinked, and some highranking officers were suspicious of CIA’s motives for even suggesting it.

  General Bedell Smith was director of Central Intelligence when Walter Jessel and I brought the Zako study to his attention. Smith directed us to brief the United States Intelligence Board—made up of the chiefs of all the U.S. military and civilian intelligence services—on our findings. As the briefing unfolded, and the charts and supporting data to substantiate Jessel’s claims of fabrication were presented, General Charles Pearre Cabell, then chief of Air Force intelligence and later deputy director of CIA, asked, “Who in the Air Force could be buying this crap?” Jessel quietly pointed out that not only the Air Force, but every member of the board were major clients of the Zako paper mill. Jessel’s hard work broke the back of the fabrication industry. The cleanup—which included similar but less extensive fabrication activity in the Far East—took time and feelings were bruised, but coordination was achieved. Basic files were winnowed, doubtful information was replaced with solid data, and the basis for the sound analysis of incoming intelligence was established. The fabrication factories were slowly boarded up.

  As part of the cleansing process the names, operational characteristics, and photographs of identified fabricators were circulated among the Western services in documents we called “Burn” lists. In time, I suppose a bit of secret paper will surface in which someone will be found to have recommended that secret agent “Willy Piefke” be “burned.” However tempting that punishment might have been, let it forever be understood that in our jargon, “to burn” meant nothing more than adding a villain’s name and particulars to the circulating lists of culpri
ts known to fabricate intelligence reporting.

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  In fall 1948, President Truman named Allen Dulles chairman of a committee to investigate how CIA was functioning and to recommend appropriate changes. Dulles appointed William H. Jackson, who had served as General Omar Bradley’s intelligence officer before joining OSS, and Mathias Corea, a former New York attorney general, as committee members. All three were New York lawyers. Jackson and Corea had both been active in the informal intelligence support group Dulles had organized shortly after his return to practice law in 1946.

  The committee report was presented to the National Security Council in January 1949. It recommended that the Agency be organized in five divisions: Estimates, Research, and reports; Operations, Administration, and Coordination. The last division was to coordinate U.S. intelligence activity and synthesize intelligence information. After noting the somewhat scattered aspect of CIA operations during its first year, the report recommended that the Agency’s directives be specified by the National Security Council. Because the President chaired the NSC, this arrangement would ensure CIA’s direct link to him.

  General Walter Bedell Smith replaced Admiral Hillenkoetter as director of Central Intelligence in October 1950. In January 1951, Allen Dulles was appointed deputy director for the Office of Special Operations and the Office of Policy Coordination—effectively chief of intelligence, counterintelligence, and covert action operations. William Jackson was named General Smith’s deputy.

  From my position below the salt, it was almost immediately apparent that as much as Dulles enjoyed being back in operations, there was no reason to believe that he would linger long this far from the summit. As I recall, my best guess was twelve months—close, but wrong by two months. AWD replaced William Jackson as Bedell Smith’s deputy in August 1951. In February 1953, when President Eisenhower named Bedell Smith under secretary of state, Dulles was named director of Central Intelligence.

  Chapter 10

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  MR. DULLES TAKES OVER

  From the moment General Bedell Smith brought Allen Dulles into CIA, it was obvious to us all that the general and Allen were as different as two men their age in the same work might ever be. Smith was the Army prototype of what used to be called a mustang, an officer who had made his way through the enlisted ranks without the benefit of a service academy or even a college degree with its by-product, a reserve commission. General Smith had earned his stars by furiously hard work, an iron self-discipline, and relentless attention to business. He expected no less from his subordinates and was not reluctant to point out any shortfall in terms that even the least gifted private soldier would understand and take to heart.

  In contrast, Allen Dulles had lived a life of comparative ease. Although he had no private fortune, Dulles had always moved comfortably in the company of those who had. He worked hard for two degrees at Princeton, earned a law degree at George Washington University, and was welcomed into a prominent law firm. Dulles’s manner—that of a self-confident Ivy League gentleman, at ease in his work and secure in his position in life—masked his own strong ambition and devotion to duty. It is safe to say that Dulles understood Bedell Smith a bit better than the general ever fathomed the wellborn intellectual that his deputy seemed to be.

  Dulles was sometimes offended by Smith’s occasional drill-sergeant manner of dealing with all his subordinates, but there was only one serious discomfort in his relationship with the general. Bedell Smith was director of Central Intelligence and Allen Dulles was not.

  More than that, Dulles was not shaped to be anyone’s deputy, particularly in the one job that he was determined to have as his own. Fortunately for all concerned it was reasonably clear that Smith did not regard his post as DCI as the apex of his career; it was at the most a milestone. In the meanwhile, Dulles put up with the general’s abrasive behavior, and concerned himself with the aspects of secret intelligence that mattered most to him. He respected Smith’s talent for recognizing the decisions that needed to be made and his ability to push lesser matters to the side. When the time for decision came, the general was able to ignore the nuances that often plagued and compromised the solutions proposed by less confident executives. Invariably, Smith’s decisions dealt with the heart of the matter. Once the decision was made, the details—no matter how complex—were left to be dealt with at lower levels.

  At the time, the DCI and his senior staff officers still occupied the buildings General Donovan and the OSS staff had used throughout World War II. These were a short distance from the new State Department building, but at least a fifteen-minute trip from the offices of the operational components, ranged along the Reflecting Pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

  A few months after Allen Dulles replaced Smith, I went to his office with an outgoing cable for his release. On the chance that the director might have a question, any cable important enough for his signature was hand-carried to him by the officer who had drafted it. I no longer remember the cable—in a busy week there might be several such messages—but it was in early 1954, sometime after I had received two promotions.

  Here a bit of background. The first promotion, in March 1951, lifted me from the Central European Division to chief of the Foreign Intelligence (FI) Staff with responsibility for intelligence collection operations worldwide. This was a welcome assignment because for the first time it gave me detailed insight into the FI activity of the stations beyond the European area and the opportunity to get to know the personnel involved in the many far-flung posts.

  In January 1953, I replaced Lyman Kirkpatrick in the job we called COPS—chief of operations. This gave me responsibility for both intelligence collection and covert action operations. The job also meant that I was deputy to my old friend Frank Wisner, who was deputy director for plans (DDP). Kirkpatrick had fallen ill with polio, and it had become apparent that his health would not permit him to carry the double duty as chief of operations and deputy to the DDP.

  The new job was demanding and required my quickly coming to grips with a wide variety of covert action operations, some areas of which were new to me. The reason we called this job chief of operations rather than deputy deputy director for plans is obscure, but I was satisfied not to be known as a deputy’s deputy. Title notwithstanding, when Wisner was out of town I acted in his place and I did so for seven years. It was a testing job, but it was a pleasure to work with Frank.

  The “plans” element of the DDP title was, of course, a fig leaf presumably chosen to shield fainthearted members of Congress and other such sensitive souls from a too revealing glimpse of Wisner’s job, which some years later would be more forthrightly titled deputy director for operations (DDO). Despite the change in name, the DDP and DDO were the same job.

  That morning, Dulles fiddled a bit with the cable I had brought in before signing it. As I edged out of my seat to leave, Allen motioned me to stay. It was mid-morning, and definitely not the time the DCI would pick for any business-as-usual or even an encouraging personal chat. In the few seconds before he began to speak, I ran through a list of topics he might have on his mind. Nothing registered, but then we had worked closely together in Germany and I was used to these surprise encounters.

  “A word about the future,” Dulles said. There was a weighted pause before he added, “The Agency’s future.”

  I may have nodded apprehensively because he gave me a reassuring smile before saying, “You remember the conniving and blood spilling that went on when we were trying to sort things out in 1946? What would Central Intelligence be responsible for? Would there even be a service?”

  I hadn’t played much role in the battle, but everyone in the outfit at the time remembered the bureaucratic furor.

  “It was perfectly clear then,” Dulles said, “and it’s all down in black and white that the fundamental purpose of Central Intelligence is to prevent anything resembling another Pearl Harbor.” Another brief pause. “And as of 1948 it’s been equally clear that we have full respo
nsibility—all of it specified in NSC 10/2, documented and legal—for most aspects of covert action operations.”

  I was, of course, aware of the covert action history from the moment in 1947 when President Truman’s National Security Council issued a directive (NSCD 4/A) charging the Agency with responsibility for covert psychological operations. Within a week, CIA had established the Special Procedures Group and began to plan propaganda operations in Eastern Europe. In 1948 the communist coup in Czechoslovakia and a cable from General Lucius Clay, the U.S. military commander in Germany, warning that war with the USSR “may come with dramatic suddenness” roused the National Security Council to issue NSC Directive 10/2. This “Nonskid”—as we referred orally to National Security directives—abolished NSCD 4/A, defined the broad range of covert action operations, and established the policy that all such activity be “planned and executed [so] that any U.S. Government responsibility for them is not evident … and that if uncovered the U.S. Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them.” Responsibility for covert action was lodged with CIA.

  Still not sure where Dulles was headed, I must have nodded my understanding.

  “Although the press and the public never seem to remember it, you know as well as I do that operations are at best only a fraction of our responsibility. Right now, the Directorate for Intelligence [DI] is doing its job, and is on top of all the intelligence coming into the government. Our estimates are sound and the analysis is getting a good response from the consumers.”

  He seemed to ruminate for a moment before coming bluntly to his message for me. “It’s the operations directorate that concerns me, and I want to be absolutely sure you understand how important covert action operations are right now.” Dulles must have caught my surprise for he quickly added, “Intelligence collection has its place—no question, no doubt about it. And by and large I’m satisfied with the progress we’re making. But I want you to be sure that everyone in operations has it firmly in mind that the White House and this administration have an intense interest in every aspect of covert action.” He paused again, silently to underline his emphasis.