To welcome new arrivals and to say goodbye to departing people, the station held monthly hail and farewell parties. One March night in 1961 we held a special hail and farewell costume party. Our clique of seven or eight couples, who had been together for more than a year, decided to do it up right. We held several meetings to decide the theme and type of costumes. Someone came up with the brilliant idea of an Indian tribe. Someone else said that a local tailor would surely be able to make the costumes for about $20 each—about the monthly salary of some Taiwanese workers. After a few drinks at one of our planning sessions, we decided to be the Sit Tribe. The women picked names such as Chicken Sit, Bird Sit, Running Deer Sit, while the men chose more macho names, such as mine—Big Chief Bull Sit.
After fittings at the tailor, our costumes seemed ready, except for the chief’s headdress—another excuse for a party. This special meeting was to dye feathers and sew them on a headband. The headdress was a spectacular thing with vividly colored feathers. It was also heavy and awkward, but anything for the cause.
The hail and farewell party resembled a bacchanalian orgy with free food, free drinks, free entertainment, and some clandestine fooling around. Our tribe won an award for the best costume group, and all were called to the stage to receive the award from Ray Cline, who in his good-willed manner accepted the challenge to introduce each member of the Sit Tribe by his or her tribal name—an interesting task after a few drinks, and he almost made it without a slip, but not quite. Ray also gave an award for the best female costume to the statuesque, beautiful wife of one of the case officers; her costume was a revealing bathing suit. After Ray gave her the award, she put her arms around him, turned his back to the audience and bestowed a most obvious pinch, to the delight of the crowd.
Driving home from the party in a caravan of cars, dressed up in our costumes, sipping champagne out of fancy crystal glassware, we passed by the hovels of the Taiwanese people. I looked inside one tin shanty and saw several people in virtual rags huddling over a charcoal fire. My eyes met those of a young man. He stared uncomprehendingly out at me, while I looked through him. We seemed people from two different worlds—one of affluence, comfort, dedicated to having fun; the other of grimy poverty, where it was a struggle to stay alive. Over the years I have thought of that moment and wondered how we in the CIA could ever have expected to understand what was happening in a foreign country when we existed in such a rarefied world, cut off from those we ostensibly were there to help.
5. LIFE AT LANGLEY
IN August 1961 I returned to a Headquarters rife with despair and upheaval. The Agency’s poor performance at the Bay of Pigs, plans for a government-wide reduction in force (RIF), and the anticipated move from the Lincoln Memorial mall to the new building at Langley, Virginia, added to the turmoil.
Following the Bay of Pigs disaster in April 1961, Allen Dulles, the CIA director, sent out an all-station cable that tried to put the best face on the tragedy. The cable implied that had events taken their planned course, we would have been victorious in that invasion of Cuba. Be that as it may, there were many who questioned the operation. I had little knowledge of what happened other than what I read and saw on television, but it did seem that the Agency had relied too much on an anticipated uprising by the Cuban people.
The layoffs in the Agency were code-named the 701 program. It seemed that the RIF program was aimed more at the CIA than other agencies of government, possibly as a result of the Bay of Pigs misfire, and President John Kennedy’s anger at it. This was a tension-filled, dismal time. I was assigned back to China activities, where I shared one small office with five other case officers. None of us had much to do, but we all made a real effort to appear busy. We all dreaded being called into the office of our superiors. All around people were receiving their notices. The halls seemed filled with the strained, anxious looks of the soon-to-be unemployed.
The move to Langley began shortly before the New Year 1962. The thrill of acquiring new, more spacious offices—usually no more than two people to a room—was dampened by the continuing 701 program, About one of every five was fired. The tension became too much for some. On several occasions one of my former office mates came to the office howling drunk and worked his way onto the 701 list. When the Agency announced the end of the program, we lucky ones felt immense relief and also began to consider ourselves members of an elite. We had to be good because we hadn’t been fired.
The new building had been planned by Allen Dulles, but as a result of the Bay of Pigs he was replaced and never got to enjoy it. The 219-acre site, located above the Potomac River about nine miles from Washington, resembled a college campus. As Dulles had intended, the employees soon took to lunch-time strolling around its tree-lined walks, jogging out onto nearby roads, or just relaxing in the sun on the numerous park benches. The building itself was seven stories high and was made of concrete and Georgian marble. On the huge main entrance on one side, a biblical verse was etched: “and ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. John VIII-XXXII.” On the opposite wall were a bas-relief bust of Allen Dulles and memorial stars, each honoring a Central Intelligence Agency employee whose life was lost in the service of his country.
To get inside the building, you had to pass a security system consisting primarily of badges with identifying photographs. Once past the guards, you entered onto the wide first-floor corridors. This first floor housed many of the Agency’s service functions—the travel office, the medical staff, the credit union, the library, the insurance claims office, the various cafeterias and records management facilities. One corridor wall was reserved for portraits of former directors of the Agency and another for displays by various Agency clubs—the photo club, the art club, and others. Four banks of elevators hurried the employees to the upstairs office corridors, which were painted off-white with dark green-grayish vinyl floors. Later, to relieve the monotony, the office doors were painted in solid bright colors.
China activities occupied a major portion of C corridor on the third floor. My office was Room 57, or in governmentese, 3 C 57.
Those of us remaining after the ravages of the 701 program responded to the increased work space, the campus-like grounds, and the relaxed atmosphere. Our spirits soon revived.
It was only years later that I was to learn of the many covert operations that the CIA was conducting around the globe at that time. As in the previous ten years, covert operations dominated the Agency in the decade of the 1960s. It was employing all of the techniques of covert action, including disinformation, to accomplish policy goals. A dramatic surge in paramilitary activities in support of counterinsurgency programs was occurring in Laos and Vietnam.1
In the 1960s Cold War attitudes continued to shape foreign policy. In the early part of the decade, according to the Church Committee, an expansive foreign policy, exemplified by the invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, reflected American confidence and determination. The following confrontation with the Soviet Union over the installation of missiles and the rapidly escalating paramilitary activities in Southeast Asia drew the Agency into these major developments.2
The DDP functioned as a highly compartmentalized organization with a small cadre responsible for and knowledgeable of selected operations. This ethos helped foster the development of such operations as assassination plots against foreign leaders.3
The 1960s saw the emergence of revolutionary movements in Southeast Asia and Africa. United States policymakers called for the development of counterinsurgency programs to fight this challenge without precipitating a major Soviet-American military confrontation. To implement its responsibilities in this field, the Agency developed a network of worldwide paramilitary capabilities, and these assets consumed major portions of the Agency’s budget.4
The period between 1964 and 1967 was the most active era for covert operations: political action, propaganda, international organizations, and paramilitary.5
With the development of an extensive weave of far-flun
g paramilitary infrastructures, the Agency implemented covert operations in Laos and Cuba and expanded the ongoing effort in Vietnam. The failure at the Bay of Pigs was followed by a series of other operations directed at Cuba. Those operations became so aggressive and extensive, it led one Agency official to state: “We were at war with Cuba.”6
As in the decade of the 1950s this 10-year period saw the implementation of hundreds of covert operations each year with primary attention given to operations in Asia, Latin America, a growing endeavor in Africa, a continuing program in the Middle East, a somewhat reduced effort in Europe, and a burgeoning illegal internal U.S. operational program.
* Southeast Asia. The Agency’s large-scale involvement in Southeast Asia continued in Laos and Vietnam. “In Laos,” wrote the Church Committee, “the Agency implemented air supply and paramilitary training programs, which gradually developed into full-scale management of a ground war.”7 The CIA recruited and trained a private army of at least 30,000 Hmong and other Laotian tribesmen. This group was known as L’Armee Clandestine. Pilots hired by the CIA flew supply and bombing missions in CIA-owned planes in support of the secret army. Expenditures by the U.S. to assist this army amounted to at least $300 million a year. Forty or 50 CIA officers ran this operation, aided by 17,000 Thai mercenaries.8
In Vietnam, the Agency conducted the gamut of operations—political, paramilitary, psychological. (For more on those programs, see Chapter 10.)
In Indonesia in 1965 a group of young military officers attempted a coup against the U.S.-backed military establishment and murdered six of seven top military officers. The Agency seized this opportunity to overthrow Sukarno and to destroy the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI), which had three million members. As I wrote in The Nation, “Estimates of the number of deaths that occurred as a result of this CIA [one word deleted] operation run from one-half million to more than one million people.
“Initially, the Indonesian Army left the P.K.I. alone, since it had not been involved in the coup attempt, [eight sentences deleted] Subsequently, however, Indonesian military leaders [seven words deleted] began a bloody extermination campaign. In mid-November 1965, General Suharto formally authorized the ‘cleaning out’ of the Indonesian Communist Party and established special teams to supervise the mass killings. Media fabrications played a key role in stirring up popular resentment against the P.K.I. Photographs of the bodies of the dead generals—badly decomposed—were featured in all the newspapers and on television. Stories accompanying the pictures falsely claimed that the generals had been castrated and their eyes gouged out by Communist women. This cynically manufactured campaign was designed to foment public anger against the Communists and set the stage for a massacre.… To conceal its role in the massacre of those innocent people the C.I.A., in 1968, concocted a false account of what happened (later published by the Agency as a book, Indonesia—1965: The Coup that Backfired).… At the same time that the Agency wrote the book, it also composed a secret study of what really happened. [One sentence deleted.] The Agency was extremely proud of its successful [one word deleted] and recommended it as a model for future operations [one-half sentence deleted].”9
In Thailand in the 1960s the Agency continued its involvement with the Police Aerial Reconnaissance Unit and the Border Patrol Police. Those counterinsurgency forces then supplied much of the manpower for the secret war in Laos. The CIA also developed a series of internal security and counterinsurgency programs jointly with Thai security forces.10
In Cambodia the CIA played a role in the coup that toppled the government of Prince Norodom Sihanouk in 1970, which paved the way for the U.S. military invasion of that country in the spring of 1970.11
* Latin America. Many Agency operations in Latin America in the 1960s centered around Cuba and removing Fidel Castro’s government. Prior to the invasion of Cuba by CIA-trained Cuban exiles in April 1961, the CIA attempted to assassinate Castro. The Agency enlisted the help of Mafia figures to arrange his murder. The first attempt to kill Castro was made in early 1961. Five more assassination teams were sent against the Cuban leader in the next two years.12
A CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles made an unsuccessful invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in mid-April 1961. Four Americans flying CIA planes and nearly 300 Cuban exiles died during the invasion. More than 1,200 survivors were captured by Castro’s forces.13
The Guatemalan President, Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes, successor to Castillo-Armas, had permitted the CIA to use his country for its training camp for Cuban exiles. In November 1960 a rebellion broke out in Guatemala. The CIA secretly came to the aid of Fuentes and sent in B-26 bombers against the rebels. The insurgency was crushed and Fuentes remained in power.14
Beginning in 1961 the Agency conducted operations to bring down the regime of President Jose Velasco Ibarra of Ecuador after he refused to sever diplomatic relations with Cuba. Ibarra was overthrown in November 1961. His successor, Carlos Julio Arosemena, soon fell out of favor with the United States and once again the CIA used destabilizing tactics to overthrow his government in July 1963.15
In 1964 the CIA, with the cooperation of the Agency for International Development and the State Department, secretly funneled up to $20 million into Chile to aid Eduardo Frei in his successful bid to defeat Salvador Allende for the Presidency.16 Failing to block Allende’s election to the Presidency in 1970, the CIA directed a destabilization campaign of economic and political warfare which led to the 1973 military coup that toppled Allende.17
In British Guiana, according to a report by the Center for National Security Studies, the “CIA funded strikes and riots that crippled Guiana in 1962 and 1963, and led to overthrow of [Cheddi] Jagan’s governing People’s Progressive Party. CIA funneled its secret payments that placed Forbes Burnham in power through the AFL-CIO and AFSCME.”18
In Brazil, the CIA funded unsuccessful candidates in opposition to President João Goulart, who had moved to expropriate International Telephone and Telegraph subsidiaries and maintain relations with Cuba. The CIA then orchestrated, continued the report, “anti-government operations by labor, military, and middle-class groups, including courses in ‘labor affairs’ in Washington, D.C.” The resultant coup in 1964 established a military dictatorship in power.19
During the mid-1960s the Agency secretly aided the government of Peru in its fight against rebel guerrilla forces. The Agency flew in arms and other equipment. Local Peruvian troops were trained by personnel of the special operations division of the CIA as well as by Green Beret instructors loaned by the U.S. Army.20
In Bolivia, the CIA gave assistance to government soldiers in 1967 in their successful effort to track down and capture Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the Cuban revolutionary leader. Guevara was captured on October 8, 1967 by CIA-advised Bolivian rangers. He was murdered shortly thereafter.21
In Uruguay, the CIA manipulated politics throughout the 1960s, pressuring the government to accept an AID police training mission which provided cover for CIA case officers. Their job: to secretly finance and train local police and intelligence services.22
* Africa. “In the early 1960s the decolonization of Africa sparked an increase in the scale of CIA clandestine activities on that continent,” wrote the Church Committee. “CIA actions paralleled growing interest on the part of the State Department and the Kennedy Administration in the ‘third world countries.’… Prior to 1960, Africa had been included in the European or Middle Eastern Division. In that year it became a separate division. Stations sprang up all over the continent. Between 1959 and 1963 the number of CIA stations in Africa increased by 55.5%.”23
In Angola in 1960 the CIA recruited Holden Roberto, the leader of one of the Angolan groups. In 1975 the CIA supported two factions in the civil war in Angola against the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), spending millions of dollars on ammunition, air support, and mercenaries.24
In the early 1960s the CIA became involved in the political struggle in the Congo. In 1960 the CIA plann
ed to assassinate Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese leader, and in fact worked with the African dissidents who murdered him in 1961.25 The Agency paid cash to selected Congolese politicians and gave arms to the supporters of Joseph Mobutu and Cyril Adoula. Eventually the CIA sent mercenaries and paramilitary experts to aid the new government. In 1964, CIA B-26 airplanes were being flown in the Congo on a regular basis by Cuban-exile pilots who were under CIA contract. Those pilots and planes carried out bombing missions against areas held by rebel forces.26
In South Africa the CIA worked closely with BOSS, the South African secret police. By 1975 the Agency was secretly collaborating with the South African government in the Angolan civil war.27
* United States. Illegal CIA operations in the United States in the 1960s continued to utilize the funding, corporate, and press mechanisms established during the preceding decade. But this era saw the beginning of the exposure of some of its internal U.S. operations. One of the earliest revelations was a 1967 Ramparts magazine article, which exposed CIA funding of private voluntary organizations that had begun in the 1950s. “The revelations resulted in President Johnson’s appointment of a three-person committee to examine the CIA’s covert funding of American educational and private voluntary organizations operating abroad,” wrote the Church Committee. “Chaired by the Under Secretary of State, Nicholas Katzenbach, the Committee included DCI Richard Helms and Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, John Gardner.… The Katzenbach Committee recommended that no federal agency provide covert financial assistance to American educational and voluntary institutions.… Although the CIA complied with the strict terms of the Katzenbach guidelines, funding and contact arrangements were realigned so that overseas activities could continue with little reduction.”28
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