Ike's Spies: Eisenhower and the Espionage Establishment

by Stephen E. Ambrose

  The CIA based its strategy on fear. Agents trained in Opa-Locka jammed Guatemalan radio communications so that the inhabitants of Guatemala City had little or no idea as to what was happening at the “front.” Wild rumors circulated, reporting major defeats of government forces and the imminent arrival of well-equipped divisions of rebel troops. In fact, the Guatemalan Army remained safely in barracks throughout the rebellion.

  Arbenz aggravated the situation when, in an effort to silence the Voice of Liberation, he ordered a total blackout of the capital and other large cities. This only increased the tension, making the threat seem more real. The incessant sound of police sirens and curfew bells frayed the people’s nerves to the breaking point. The scene was one of mass confusion.

  In this situation Castillo Armas’ “air force,” with pilots hired by the CIA, became the crucial factor. It consisted of a few small Cessnas along with some P-47 Thunderbolts. These planes buzzed Guatemala City, occasionally dropping a small bomb or two, or blocks of dynamite attached to hand grenades. They were called sufatos, the Guatemalan word for laxatives, due to the psychological effect they had on Arbenz and the residents of the city. One lucky hit on the citadel where the Alfhem’s cargo of munitions was stored made an impressive explosion.

  The CIA used black propaganda effectively to ground Arbenz’ air force, which was weak and unreliable to begin with. The Voice of Liberation broadcast accounts of Soviet aviators who had defected to the West with their planes. When a Guatemalan pilot did the same, CIA agents tried to persuade him to appeal publicly to others in the air force to follow his example. He refused, but the agents got him drunk, then persuaded him to make an “imaginary” appeal. This was secretly recorded, cut and spliced, and then broadcast triumphantly by the Voice of Liberation. From that moment, Arbenz grounded the remainder of his air force, fearful that other pilots would defect with their planes.43

  Nevertheless, Arbenz’ antiaircraft gunners were able to put up some resistance, and, on June 22, Allen Dulles reported to Ike that Castillo Armas had lost two of the three old bombers with which he was launching the “invasion.” The Times, meanwhile, after keeping the Guatemalan revolt in the headlines for a week, was rapidly losing interest. No Guatemalan peasants were rallying to Castillo Armas’ cause, the Guatemalan Army continued to sit in its barracks, the rebel “army” to sit in its church. Without some boost, the rebellion might soon die of boredom.

  Late on the afternoon of June 22, Ike held a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House. Foster Dulles was there, and Allen, along with Henry Holland. Allen Dulles said that Somoza of Nicaragua had offered to supply Castillo Armas with two P-51 fighter-bombers if the United States would agree to replace them. Holland, perfectly innocent of any knowledge of PBSUCCESS, insisted that the United States should keep hands off because the Latin American republics would, “if our action became known, interpret our shipment of planes as intervention in Guatemala’s internal affairs.” The Dulles brothers argued that replacing the bombers “was the only hope for Castillo Armas, who was obviously the only hope of restoring freedom to Guatemala.”

  Ike turned to Allen Dulles. “What do you think Castillo’s chances would be without the aircraft?”

  “About zero.”

  “Suppose we supply the aircraft. What would the chances be then?”

  Dulles did not hesitate. “About twenty percent.”

  Recalling the event years later, Ike said he thought of the “letter and spirit of the Caracas resolution.” His duty was clear. He instructed Dulles to send the planes.

  As Dulles began to walk out of the Oval Office, Ike went to the door with him. Smiling to break the tension, the President said, “Allen, that figure of twenty percent was persuasive. It showed me that you had thought this matter through realistically. If you had told me that the chances would be ninety percent, I would have had a much more difficult decision.”

  “Mr. President,” Dulles replied with a grin of his own, “when I saw Henry walking into your office with three large lawbooks under his arm, I knew he had lost his case already.”44

  The planes were delivered, the rebels resumed their bombing, and five days later Arbenz resigned. He was replaced by a short-lived military junta that gave way to Castillo Armas a week later.

  On June 30, Foster Dulles went on nationwide television and radio to report to the American people. In his conclusion he declared, “Now the future of Guatemala lies at the disposal of the Guatemalan people themselves.”45

  TO IKE’S CRITICS this was a sordid event, nothing more nor less than the overthrow of a democratically elected, popular government whose only interest was in improving the wretched lives of the Guatemalan people. To Ike’s defenders this was a heroic event, nothing more nor less than the prevention of the rise of an early Castro in Central America. To United Fruit it was a godsend. The company got its land back, the labor reform laws were repealed, wages cut. To Castillo Armas it was only a temporary victory. He was assassinated three years later, to be replaced by Ydígoras Fuentes, whose cooperation with the CIA in permitting the agency to use Guatemala as a staging ground for the Bay of Pigs caused such widespread criticism that he was compelled to declare martial law.

  For Peurifoy the result may well have been Castillo Armas’ fate. Peurifoy went to Thailand as ambassador; a year later he died in an automobile accident. Hunt said that “a lot of people think that he was killed in Southeast Asia” because of his involvement in PBSUCCESS. “I have many friends who still think that.”46 For Hunt and Bissell, the result was greatly enhanced reputations and a big step forward in their CIA careers. For the CIA, the result was a huge success. At the cost of a few dozen lives and a few million dollars, it had overthrown another government.

  In 1977, thinking over the event, Howard Hunt mused, “Of course I’ve often wondered in retrospect if we shouldn’t have let the Guatemalans [i.e., Castillo Armas’ Guatemalans] shoot that group we had out at the airport there, including Che Guevara. I’m glad they didn’t have to shoot Arbenz though, I think that would have been bad. What happened was that there was an agent there and he said, ‘Don’t do it, we don’t want a bloodbath.’ ”47

  As a socially conscious, rebellious medical student in his early twenties, Guevara had entered Guatemala in February 1954. He was more a concerned observer than a dedicated revolutionary, at least at first, but then he became a supporter of Arbenz. When Arbenz fled, Che went with him, seeking asylum in Mexico. There he met Raúl Castro, who later introduced him to his brother Fidel.

  The lesson Che learned in Guatemala was that no Latin American reform, no matter how justified, would be accepted by the United States, not if it impinged on American economic interests. He was also convinced that Arbenz’ failure to arm the peasants had caused his downfall. In his first political article, “I Saw the Fall of Jacobo Arbenz,” Guevara outlined his tactics for revolutionary organization. Latin revolutionaries, he argued, must build an army whose loyalty is to the government, not independent of it, and they must spurn moderation, because moderation in the face of American hostility is futile.

  “The struggle begins now,” Che wrote in his concluding sentence. When, seven years later, the CIA went to Cuba to do to Castro what it had done to Arbenz, Guevara and the Castro brothers would be ready.48

  * * *

  * Later in the same interview Hunt characterized Arbenz as “not a nervy guy, a weakling … [who drank too much] totally dominated by his actually very competent wife.… ”

  * The program was separately administered—i.e., the regular CIA station chiefs were not involved. PBSUCCESS had its own budget and chain of command. According to Hunt and Bissell, the project cost between $5 and $7 million.31

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Hungary, Vietnam, and Indonesia

  NOVEMBER 1, 1956. “Help! Help! Help!—SOS!—SOS!—SOS!” the radio from Budapest repeats over and over. “Any news about help? Quickly, quickly, quickly!” Explosions and gunshots can be heard in the backgrou
nd. “SOS! They just brought us a rumor that the American troops will be here within one or two hours.” Another handmade Molotov cocktail goes off with a roar. “We are well and fighting. SOS! Where are the American troops?”1

  THERE NEVER WOULD BE ANY AMERICAN TROOPS. The Hungarian Freedom Fighters of 1956 would have to fight it out on their own, with Molotov cocktails against tanks, slingshots and stones against machine guns and bullets. American promises to help liberate Hungary were hollow, meaningless, empty verbiage.

  In a terrible blunder, the CIA had promised what it could not deliver, raised hopes that could not be realized, helped start a rebellion that could only be crushed. But it was by no means the exclusive fault of the CIA, which was merely repeating what the Secretary of State was saying and what the President had approved.

  Republican promises to help free the Russian satellites induced thousands of Americans of East European parentage to vote for Eisenhower in 1952. The promises also raised unrealistic hopes among the peoples of Hungary, Poland, East Germany and elsewhere. These hopes were sustained and strengthened by broadcasts from Radio Free Europe, a CIA-controlled radio station in Munich that broadcast to all the East European countries. RFE encouragement to the captive peoples was backed up by the Eisenhower White House, which sent out a stream of captive-nations resolutions. Each Christmas the White House radioed a Christmas greeting to the East Europeans to “recognize the trials under which you are suffering and to share your faith that right in the end will bring you again among the free nations of the world.”2

  Such statements made good campaign material, but unfortunately some of the captive people did not know how to distinguish between American campaign bombast and actual policy. The truth was that liberation talk was intended for the domestic political situation, not for the East Europeans themselves. There was precious little thought given to the RFE broadcasts or the White House pronouncements. The idea that the East Europeans could set themselves free by copying the example of the French Resistance was absurd. The French Resistance had been successful because, first, the SHAEF armies tied up nearly all German resources and, second, nearly every Frenchman and -woman supported the Resistance, and third, the French underground had a closely knit organization. None of these conditions were, or could be, present in East Europe in 1956. Under the circumstances, it was highly irresponsible for the Republicans to talk of liberation, but they could not resist the temptation.

  The irony was that this awful failure in Hungary was a direct result of one of the CIA’S great intelligence coups, the acquisition in 1956 of Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s famous secret speech at the Twentieth Party Congress denouncing Stalin for his criminal cruelty and misgovernment. That speech dovetailed perfectly with the Republican Party platform pledges in the 1952 campaign to “liberate” the Communist satellites in East Europe. In one well-publicized incident during that campaign, John Foster Dulles had said the United States would “use every means” to achieve liberation. Ike had called him on the phone that evening and told him to be sure to insert the word “peaceful” between “every” and “means” from then on, but nevertheless the emphasis remained on liberation.3

  According to Ray Cline (Harvard graduate, OSS officer, author of the CIA’S National Intelligence Estimates, eventually Deputy Director of the CIA), Allen Dulles managed to get a copy of Khrushchev’s secret speech by putting out the word that the CIA wanted it badly and that price was no object. It was finally acquired “at a very handsome price,” according to one ex-CIA agent. But James Angleton, Jr., the former Chief of Counter Intelligence, declared in 1976 that “there was no payment.” Angleton said the speech was acquired from an East European Communist whose motive was ideological. A third source, Howard Hunt, said that the speech was given to the CIA by Israeli intelligence.4

  However acquired, the CIA had a copy of the speech. In it Khrushchev had been brutal in his denunciations of Stalin and seemed to promise that the future would be different, that a relaxation of Communist Party controls inside Russia would be matched by a moderation of policy toward the satellites. It even hinted that there might be a modicum of true independence for the satellites in the near future. It was, in short, an explosive document, and the Soviets had kept it a closely guarded secret. Only those who had heard Khrushchev deliver the speech at the Twentieth Party Congress knew of its existence.

  The first question for the CIA was, is our copy authentic? Ray Cline, representing the intelligence-gathering and analysis side of the CIA, was able to provide Frank Wisner, Richard Helms, and Angleton, all from the operations side, with “convincing and most welcome internal evidence that the text we had was authentic.… This made everyone happy.”5

  The next question was, what to do with it? Cline wanted to release it at once, on the grounds that “it was a rare opportunity to have all the critical things we had said for years about the Soviet dictatorship confirmed by the principal leader of the Soviet Politburo. The world would be treated to the spectacle of a totalitarian nation indicted by its own leadership.”

  To Cline’s amazement, Wisner and Angleton demurred. They were in charge of an operation, code name RED SOX/RED CAP, which involved training refugees from Hungary, Poland, Rumania, and Czechoslovakia for covert and paramilitary operations inside their homelands. Angleton and Wisner wanted to hold the secret speech until the RED SOX/RED CAP forces were “up to snuff,” then release it to promote national uprisings.6 But they could not convince Cline, and he could not convince them.

  Shortly thereafter, on a Saturday, June 2, 1956, Cline was alone with Allen Dulles, working on a speech. Suddenly, Dulles swung his chair around, peered at Cline, and said, “Wisner says you think we ought to release the secret Khrushchev speech.”

  Cline said that he did and gave his reasons. As Cline later recalled the scene, “The old man, with a twinkle in his eye, said, ‘By golly, I am going to make a policy decision!’ He buzzed Wisner on the intercom, told him he had given a lot of thought to the matter, and wanted to get the speech printed.”7

  Dulles then phoned his brother at the State Department. Foster Dulles concurred. Together, the Dulles brothers went to the Oval Office. Ike was enthusiastic and ordered it done. State sent a copy of the speech to the New York Times, which printed it on Monday, June 4, in its entirety.8

  Publication of the speech caused tremendous excitement throughout East Europe. Riots in Poland led to the disbanding of the old Stalinist Politburo in Warsaw. Wladyslaw Gomulka, an independent Communist, took power. Poland remained Communist and a member of the Warsaw Pact, but it won substantial independence and set an example for the other satellites.

  The excitement spread to Hungary. On October 23, 1956, Hungarian students took to the streets to demand that the Stalinist rulers be replaced with Imre Nagy, a Hungarian nationalist. The CIA sent RED SOX/RED CAP groups in Budapest into action to join the Freedom Fighters and to help organize them.

  Hungarian workers joined with students to demonstrate against the Russian occupation forces. Khrushchev agreed to give power to Nagy, but that was no longer enough to satisfy the Hungarians, who now demanded the removal of the Russians and an end to communism. Radio Free Europe, and the RED SOX/RED CAP groups, encouraged the rebels. So did John Foster Dulles, who promised economic assistance to those countries that broke with the Kremlin.

  On October 31, Nagy announced that Hungary was withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact. Khrushchev, furious, decided to invade. He sent 200,000 troops with 2,500 tanks and armored cars to crush the revolt. Bitter street fighting in Budapest left 7,000 Russians and 30,000 Hungarians dead.9

  Those radio pleas for help from Budapest made the tragedy even more painful, but Ike did not even consider giving overt military support to the Hungarians. When Milton asked him about it, Ike merely pointed to a map and said, “Look for yourself. Hungary is landlocked. We can’t possibly fight there.”10

  Liberation was a sham. It had always been a sham. All Hungary did was to expose it to the world, and to the
CIA, which was furious at Ike for backing off. William Colby, at the time a junior CIA officer, later remarked that “there can be no doubt that Wisner and other top officials of his Directorate of Plans, especially those on the covert-action side, were fully prepared with arms, communications stocks and air resupply, to come to the aid of the freedom fighters. This was exactly the end for which the Agency’s paramilitary capability was designed.”

  But Ike said no. “Whatever doubts may have existed in the Agency about Washington’s policy in matters like this vanished,” Colby wrote. “It was established, once and for all, that the U.S., while firmly committed to the containment of the Soviets … was not going to attempt to liberate any of the areas within their sphere.”11

  However deep Ike’s hatred of communism, his fear of World War III was deeper. Even had this not been so, the armed forces of the United States were not capable of driving 200,000 Red Army combat soldiers out of Hungary, except through a nuclear offensive that would have left most of Hungary and Europe devastated. In the face of Russian tanks, the RED SOX/RED CAP groups were pitifully inadequate. The Hungarians, and the other East European peoples, learned that there would be no liberation, that they would have to make the best deal they could with the Russians. The Soviet capture and execution of Nagy made the point brutally clear.

  Many ex-agents today believe that Frank Wisner’s tragic mental breakdown and subsequent suicide date from the failure of the RED SOX/RED CAP program.12

  After the event, President Eisenhower and General Lucian Truscott conducted a thorough review of the entire liberation policy. Truscott questioned the CIA’S RED SOX/RED CAP operators to find out what they had told the freedom fighters about American intentions and promises of support. In Truscott’s view the results of his investigation showed a basic failure on the part of the CIA to distinguish between insurrectional violence, mass uprisings, revolutionary action, and true guerrilla warfare in the twentieth century. To his horror, he discovered that the CIA was still pushing RED SOX/RED CAP. The agency wanted to try again, in Czechoslovakia. But as a result of his report to the President, Ike ordered RED SOX/RED CAP terminated.13