The Hungarian people had won their revolution but lost their war against the Red Army.
The free world and many Communist Party members were appalled by the post-Stalin violence. Moscow soon realized that the USSR had lost more sympathy and support than at any time in its history. A full-strength counter-propaganda attack was quickly mounted. The first blast came from—one might say, of all places—Bucharest. This was followed by remarks of the Soviet delegate during a Security Council debate in New York. In short, the USSR alleged that it was the subversive RFE broadcasts, directed from the United States, that played the key role in preparing and provoking the armed conflict. Today, it is difficult to believe that anyone with access to a free press might be led to believe that a series of broadcasts could possibly cause a nation, presumably delighted to live under the thumb of the USSR, to make an all but barehanded attempt to expel an occupation force backed by the then strongest military establishment in the world.
Yet the Bucharest allegation and its many offspring in the Western press got wide and repeated circulation. Three separate investigations—by the State Department, the West German Foreign Office, and the Agency—showed the RFE Polish desk to have remained completely within the tightly written policy guidelines. The hours spent going over the mass of data on the RFE Hungarian desk response to the revolution revealed one violation, an apparently innocent rebroadcast of an editorial opinion expressed in a British newspaper. Considering the emotional impact of the doomed Hungarian effort to shake free of the Soviet Union, this is a commendable record.
*Cord included “Waves of Darkness” in his book, Facing Reality: From World Federalism to the CIA (New York: Harper & Row, 1980).
Chapter 35
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GOING PUBLIC
For some time before the Ramparts disclosures hit the fan in February 1967, Frank Wisner, Cord Meyer, and I had been aware that the slim security shield protecting the fact that federal funds were financing Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty had seriously eroded. No amount of security tinkering can be counted on to contain the circle of compromise in any long-lasting secret activity involving numbers of people and extensive funding. Employees come and go, gossip is exchanged, slight security infractions pile up, and if the initial funding arrangements were rushed, basic security will become increasingly fragile. The number of knowledgeable members of Congress and congressional staffs increases with each change of administration.
After some two decades of expensive activity, any interested observer could only have deduced that no plausible measure of private funding would have met more than a fraction of the RFE and Radio Liberty overhead.
Ironically, it was the success of RFE and Radio Liberty that made it difficult to reinforce security. The risk of tampering with complex and highly successful operations going at full blast is akin to that of fixing something that is not yet broken. As we saw it, the only possible solution would be to arrange a means of acknowledging overt U.S. government support without destroying the impact on the audience. Aside from Senator Fulbright and a handful of others who were prepared to knuckle under, no one in the Johnson administration, and certainly none of the New York founding fathers, was interested in muzzling the radios. And no one was prepared to take on the problems and risks that would certainly be involved in trying to sell some semi-federal version of RFE and Radio Liberty to a less than enthusiastic Congress. Reluctantly, Cord and I agreed that rather than risk an upheaval, it would be best to let the security dog doze. Or so we thought.
Twenty-four hours after the initial Ramparts disclosure, a second New York Times front-page story noted that when President Johnson announced that he had stopped all secret aid to student groups, he also ordered the Agency to review all CIA financial aid to private anti-communist organizations. James Reston, head of the Times Washington office, observed that LBJ’s action placed other Agency operations—aid to anti-communist publications, radio, and labor unions—“in jeopardy.” With this, even more cats were tumbled out of the bag.
President Johnson had been well briefed on the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the Free Europe Committee, RFE, and Radio Liberty. Given the problems already on his desk, LBJ showed no particular interest in the details of successful projects, two of which had rocked along for some twenty years. He agreed with our estimate (shared by State) of the considerable impact these operations were having in Eastern Europe and Russia, but his enthusiasm was never more than tepid. When the Ramparts data surfaced, I had the impression the President was more concerned with the fundamental legality of passing official funds through various private channels than the effect the Ramparts fallout would have on the future of the Agency projects.
As the torrents of op-ed abuse continued to flow, Mike Wallace, a CBS-TV news correspondent, joined the attack and charged CIA with having used every citizen who contributed to the funds solicited by the RFE as “cover.” This had a curious side effect. As corporate president of CBS, Frank Stanton, a stouthearted patriot, was Wallace’s employer. Stanton was also chairman of the executive committee of the Free Europe Fund.
In a successful effort to head off an all-out Senate investigation of CIA clandestine funding, President Johnson appointed a special three-man committee to review relationships “between CIA and American educational and private organizations operating abroad.” The committee was also to recommend ways which government assistance could be provided to allow these organizations “to continue their proper and vital role abroad.” Under Secretary of State Nicholas deB. Katzenbach, my old friend Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare John Gardner, and I were the only members. Katzenbach later remarked that when appointing us, LBJ assumed that I would want all the CIA projects to continue, that John Gardner would insist that everything stop forthwith, and that Nick would serve as referee.
We met in Katzenbach’s office at the time he was also acting secretary of state. John sat at one end of a sofa and I at the other. Katzenbach, a large and impressive figure, loomed over us from behind a desk the size and heft of a pool table. He was slow moving, but his darting eyes and occasional smile—sometimes genial smirk—were ample proof that he never missed a detail. John Gardner, uncommonly bright, with both feet squarely on the ground, and by then an icon in the educational world, was formidable in debate. The atmosphere was occasionally frosty but never ill-spirited. On the positive side, we came up with a succinct and effective recommendation: “It should be the policy of the United States that no federal agency shall provide any covert financial assistance or support, direct or indirect, to any of the nation’s educational or private voluntary organizations.” Unfortunately, the committee’s statement that the covert assistance to private American groups was a necessary and appropriate reaction to the communist front organizations was ignored in most of the press coverage.
For me, the least welcome of the committee conclusions was that, in view of the publicity and editorial ranting, it would be necessary to terminate all such secret grants. This, it was assumed, might “avoid any implication that because governmental assistance was given covertly it was used to affect the policies of private voluntary organizations.” The drastic cutback was intended to make it plain that the “activities of private American groups abroad are, in fact, private.” My observations about babies and bathwater both going down the drain were to no avail.
On the positive side, we battled our way to the sound recommendation “that the Government should promptly develop and establish a public-private mechanism to provide public funds openly for overseas activities of organizations which are adjudged deserving, in the national interest, of public support.” We wisely did not attempt to frame any such public-private institution, and shrewdly proposed that the President form another committee to deal with the problem. We wound up our recommendations with the warning that the new outfit “would have to be … and be recognized as … an independent body, not controlled by the government.”
President Johnson accepted our recommendation
that another committee be appointed to fashion a more nearly acceptable public-private mechanism for funding worthwhile projects. He named Secretary of State Dean Rusk as chairman of an eighteen-man committee with membership drawn from Congress, the executive branch, and private life. I was not the least surprised when this committee wrestled itself to extinction in its failed attempts to find a means of filling the void left when the Agency was ruled off the field. The complex of tangled events that led to the hyper-moral editorial judgments and sanctimonious posturing of some public officials had resulted, as Cord Meyer put it, in “unilateral political disarmament in the face of a continuing Soviet pressure.”*
It was 1973 before the Board for International Broadcasting was finally established. This was in marked contrast to Wisner and his New York supporters, who created both RFE and Radio Liberty from scratch in a matter of weeks.
The details of the efforts to establish the broadcasting board are well and fairly given by Sig Mickelson in his book America’s Other Voice.† Before becoming president of RFE, Mickelson was president of the CBS News Division and its chief executive for news and public affairs. Senator Fulbright continued his attack on RFE and Radio Liberty until the end. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he described the radios as “an instrument to keep alive animosities of World War II.” History suggests that the only sure way of ending such animosities is for one nation to abandon its principles, jettison its arms, and surrender. Fulbright notwithstanding, President Johnson had no intention of surrendering anything to the Soviet Union. In March 1967, LBJ accepted our recommendations as policy.
The decision that there was to be no further covert funding of any U.S. educational or private voluntary organizations was to a degree modified by “surge funding”—before the President’s directive became effective, RFE, Radio Liberty, and the Congress for Cultural Freedom were provided with a sufficient budget to carry on until arrangements for future funding could be determined. President Johnson and appropriate members of Congress agreed with this carryover solution.
The extended fallout from the Ramparts scandal, and the exposure of the Agency role and mechanisms involved in funding these organizations, threatened to compromise other covert action operations around the world. If security leaks were to be stanched, an immediate evaluation of all covert action projects was an essential first step. President Johnson directed that this be accomplished “in short order.”
In 1965, when I was promoted to deputy director under Admiral Raborn, Desmond FitzGerald, then chief of the Western Hemisphere division, moved up to replace me as deputy director for plans (DDP), with responsibility for worldwide operations. Des was an aggressive officer who had previously served in the Far East and as headquarters chief of the FE division. He had a distinct flair for covert action and was not easily persuaded by conventional thinking or tripped up by outdated procedures. After a brief but pointed discussion, I directed Des to review each covert action operation and to dismantle every such activity that might be terminated without any significant loss. He was also to evaluate the security of each operation and to close any that lacked sufficient security footing. I asked to have the report in my hands within a week.
Minutes after Des left, another senior officer, fresh from an overseas inspection trip, came through the door. He briefed me at some length before confiding that he had discovered that the Agency office in one of the lesser-developed countries had used the funds left over from a marginal covert action project for a most graphic poster campaign. Unfortunately, he admitted, the campaign had not been cleared with me or anyone else in Washington. The explicit graphics, he explained, were necessary because the intended audience was illiterate. It had been a long day and I braced myself for more bad news.
For decades, I learned, peasants living on the outskirts of the capital had once a week sold their produce on the city streets. At the close of business, it was the peasant custom to buy a bottle of the local firewater, and to drink as much as possible before curling up on the sidewalk. In time, the peasant would wake, lower his trousers, defecate, and totter along home. This sequence of events was portrayed on the posters, with an explicit picture of the possible consequences. Only when the headquarters man stepped from the capital’s best restaurant and narrowly missed putting a foot in the redolent proof that the campaign had failed did he agree that the $260 salvaged from the abandoned project had at the least been spent with the best of intentions. I managed a faint smile, suppressed the thought of briefing Congress on this transgression, and realized it was past time for me also to get along home.
In the week that followed, Des reviewed hundreds of covert action projects with the responsible division chiefs and headquarters desk officers. Canceled out of hand were the marginal activities hastily undertaken in the go-go days when “the Russians are coming” was the Washington watchword. Aging projects with most energy spent were put to rest. Operations which, despite the efforts of the case officers, showed only a chance of achieving success were less easily throttled. Each dismantling presented unique problems. Well-motivated indigenous activists had to be assured that the closing of their activity did not signal a change in U.S. policy. Mercenary agents, accustomed to a monthly tax-free income, had to be left with a smile and a delicately shaded caution against any threat of tattle-telling. Within the Agency the impact of the cutback was traumatic. Months of hard work were swept aside in reviews lasting but a few minutes. But the decks were cleared for new projects and security fences were effectively reinforced.
In November 1967, when the editorial attacks had subsided from flood stage, President Johnson asked me to remain behind after one of the Tuesday lunches. Without the slightest preface he said, “I won’t fund those radios of yours any longer.”
Taken totally by surprise, I blurted, “You can’t do that!”
My spontaneous response had gone so far beyond the customary White House protocol that we both lapsed into silence. Until that moment I had assumed that although LBJ had never expressed interest in either of the radio projects, he was not opposed to them. By the time I realized that my spontaneous reaction had come as much of a surprise to the President as his announcement had to me, I began to recover my wits. LBJ listened for the usual two or three minutes before interrupting.
“All right, Helms,” he said. “If on your own, and without any support from me, you can get the Senate to play ball, I’ll agree.” He loosened his tie in preparation for his after-lunch nap. “Just don’t forget that you’re not going to have any help from me.”
In the course of our work together I had learned that one of President Johnson’s quirks was his tendency to react immediately, and without any staff consultation, to the views that some trusted chum had expressed orally. It would have helped in framing our response to know who had soured LBJ. I was unable to uncover a clue.
It took a bit more than three weeks to select and brief the members of Congress having to do with appropriations who would support the radios, and whose views were most likely to impress the President. Senator Russell was an obvious choice, with Senator Milton Young of North Dakota as second witness. Congressmen George Mahon of Texas, Frank Bow of Ohio, and Glenard Lipscomb of California completed the cast. Each volunteered to support the Agency’s request to continue federal funding until other arrangements could be made. As usual, Senator Russell was outspoken in his support and admitted to wondering “what all the ruckus” was about. The consensus of this group was that this was not the time to reduce our efforts to influence our Eastern European and Soviet audiences.
In the opening paragraph of my letter forwarding the news to the President, I was more mindful of my manners than when he first dropped the bomb on me. “You will recall,” I wrote delicately, “that at lunch … we discussed the future of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty … you expressed a willingness for me to consult those leaders of Congress having to do with appropriations” and that in doing so I was to make sure that my approach “would n
ot constitute a request by you for this money or a charge against your congressional program.”
The funds were appropriated and LBJ never again mentioned either of the radios to me.
Now, some thirty years after the firestorm of criticism of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, it is easier to judge the impact of these operations than it was at the time the naysayers were holding the high ground. In a letter to Radio Liberty on its fortieth anniversary, Russian President Boris Yeltsin wrote: “It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of your contribution to the destruction of the totalitarian [Soviet] regime.” Mikhail Gorbachev wrote: “Radio Liberty always broadcast much which was essential to people in Russia and in Europe.” In a letter to President Bill Clinton, Václav Havel, president of the Czech Republic, said: “On several occasions I have, on behalf of Czech citizens, expressed gratitude for RFE’s help in our people’s resistance to the communist regime.” These post facto comments support the more difficult impact assessments we were able to make before Eastern Europe and Russia shook off the shackles.
Before Cord Meyer left for an overseas assignment, I had the pleasure of awarding him the Distinguished Intelligence Medal. Cord accepted the decoration on the part of the others who had contributed so much to these programs.
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A few weeks before his death, I visited Allen Dulles in his Georgetown house. Through the years of his retirement there were often bits and pieces of unfinished business. As DCI, I always welcomed the opportunity to handle some of them myself and to use the occasion for a chat. Allen’s gout had flared and, as always, he resorted to the well-worn carpet slippers. We had finished our shoptalk and were sitting in the solarium which he used as his retirement office. It was dark by the time we set aside the tea that his wife, Clover, had brought. I was about to leave when Allen, pipe in hand, motioned me to stay.
A Look Over My Shoulder Page 45