The Craft of Intelligence

by Allen W. Dulles

  The Soviets cannot eliminate love and sex and greed from the scene. Since they use them as weapons to ensnare people, it is strange that they fail to recognize their power to disrupt carefully planned operations. A typical instance is described by Alexander Foote in telling of his Soviet military intelligence network during World War II.2 Maria Schultz, a Soviet agent of long experience, was married to one Alfred Schultz, another old-line Soviet agent who was under arrest in China for espionage. In Switzerland Maria fell in love with a radio operator who had been assigned to work with her, divorced her husband at long range and married the operator. This bit of disloyalty dismayed her old servant, Lisa Brockel, so severely that out of chagrin the latter one day called up the British consulate in Lausanne and told the officer who answered the phone enough to endanger the whole Soviet network. Fortunately for the Soviets, her English was terrible, she was hysterical and the consulate thought she was just another crank.

  2 Handbook for Spies (New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1949).

  Time and again the Soviets and satellites make serious psychological misjudgments in the people they solicit as agents. They underestimate the power of courage and honesty. Their cynical view of loyalties other than their own kind blinds them to the dominant motives of free people. A good illustration of this failing on their part was the case of the distinguished Rumanian businessman, V. C. Georgescu. In 1953, after his escape from Communist Rumania and after he had acquired American citizenship, he was approached by a Communist intelligence agent, acting under Soviet guidance, with a cruel attempt at blackmail. The agent, posing as a Secretary in the Rumanian legation, told Georgescu in so many words that if he would agree to perform certain intelligence tasks for Rumania, his two young sons, who were still being held in Rumania, would be released and returned to their parents. Otherwise he could never expect to see his sons again. Georgescu courageously refused any discussion of the subject. He threw the man out of his office and reported the full details to the United States authorities. The Communist diplomatic agent was expelled from the United States. The whole case received wide publicity so harmful to Rumania’s relations with this country that the Rumanians finally sought to repair their damaged prestige by acceding to President Eisenhower’s personal request for the release of the boys.

  Soviet intelligence is often overconfident, overcomplicated and overestimated. The real danger lies not in the mythical capabilities of the Soviet spy, though some are highly competent, but in the magnitude of the Soviet intelligence effort, the money it spends, the number of people it employs, the lengths to which it is willing to go to achieve its ends and the losses it is willing and able to sustain.

  WE AMERICANS ARE TOO NAÏVE AND TOO NEW AT THE JOB

  Americans are usually proud, and rightly so, of the fact that the “conspiratorial” tendencies which seem to be natural and inbred in many other peoples tend to be missing from their characters and from the surroundings in which they live. The other side of the coin is that the American public, aware of this, frequently feels that both in our diplomacy and in our intelligence undertakings we are no match for the “wily foreigner.” Foreigners likewise attribute to Americans a certain gullibility and naïveté. There are also other aspects of this same general notion. One is that the American official is a rather closed-minded do-gooder, a bit of a missionary, who butts into things he doesn’t understand and insists on doing things his way. This is the “American” we see in Graham Greene’s The Quiet American. The Ugly American gives us another angle of the same prejudice—lack of true understanding and appreciation of local conditions and of local peoples abroad. The number of best-sellers with this theme seems to show that it is a popular one and that we enjoy seeing our compatriots depicted as stupid people. It is little wonder then that such mischief-creating prejudices also find their way into the American and foreign criticisms of our operations abroad, including the intelligence service.

  I would like to say first of all that I much prefer taking the raw material which we find in America—naïve, home-grown, even homespun—and training such a man to be a good intelligence officer, however long the process lasts, to seeking out people who are naturally devious, conspiratorial or wily, and trying to fit them into the intelligence system. The reader will have noted that when I described our norms for the potential intelligence officer in an earlier chapter, I did not include such traits among them. The recruiter does not look for slippery characters. He is much more likely to shun or reject them. The American intelligence officer is trained to work in intelligence as a profession, not as a way of life. The distinction is between his occupation and his private character.

  Hand in hand with this preconception goes the attitude that American intelligence is young, hasn’t had time to grow up, and can’t possibly have produced a cadre of able officers in its brief existence who can match the work of older services, be they friendly or hostile ones. My answer to this is simple. We have seen nations such as Japan and Russia, who until the turn of this century were positively feudal, catch up with the technology of the twentieth century in one generation without going through the centuries-long evolution of Western societies. We have also seen that when a country has had its industry and technology devastated, as happened to Germany and to some extent France and Italy in World War II, it had a certain advantage when it began to reconstruct because it had lost the encumbrance of superannuated methods and equipment and there was no reason not to start with the latest and newest things.

  American intelligence has been in precisely this position. During World War II it learned from the old-line services the results of centuries of experience. When the time came to found a permanent service here after the war, it was possible—indeed, imperative—to construct this organization along lines that would enable it to cope with contemporary problems and not with areas and conditions that had existed fifty years before. It is not important that American intelligence is young in years. What is important is that it is modern and not hidebound or tied to any outdated theories. I would point here above all to its ability to adapt the most modern instruments of technology to its purposes. In this it has been a daring pioneer.

  SECRET INTELLIGENCE OPERATIONS ARE NOT IN THE AMERICAN TRADITION; IF ENGAGED IN, THEY SHOULD NEVER BE ACKNOWLEDGED

  This is only in part a myth, and one that is on the wane. However, it is still true today that there are some Americans who are suspicious of any “secret” agency of government. Certainly that agency must assume the burden of proof that its claim to secrecy is reasonable and in the national interest.

  Fortunately, there is a growing awareness of the dangers we face in the Cold War and that they cannot all be met by the usual tools of open diplomacy. And even those who regret the necessity for it are reconciling themselves to the fact that national security requires us to resort to secret intelligence operations. Interestingly enough, I have found little hesitation on the part of Congress to support and to finance our intelligence work with all its secrecy. In the very law setting up the CIA, Congress has enjoined the Agency to “protect intelligence sources and methods from unauthorized disclosure,” but has provided none of the tools to accomplish this, outside of the CIA itself.

  Naturally, when our intelligence operations go wrong and blow up in the press, there is bound to be criticism, and sometimes unjustified criticism. Intelligence operations are risky enterprises, and success can rarely be guaranteed. Since generally only the unsuccessful ones become advertised, the public gains the impression that the batting average of intelligence is much lower than is really the case.

  The ability of the CIA to recruit year after year a select and very able group of our young college graduates shows that the hesitation of Americans about intelligence in general has not gone very deep in the younger generation. I have found that our young recruits have a growing appreciation of intelligence work as a career where they can make a real contribution to our national s
ecurity. In my ten years with the Agency I recall only one case out of many hundreds where a man who had joined the Agency felt some scruples about the activities he was asked to carry on. In this case, he was given the option of either an honorable resignation or a transfer to some other branch of the work.

  There was one sensational secret operation, now in the public domain, which did worry some people in this country as being “unlawful,” namely the flights of the U-2 airplane. People know a good bit about espionage as it has been carried on from time immemorial. The illegal smuggling of agents with false papers, false identities and false pretenses across the frontiers of other countries is a tactic which the Soviets have employed against us so often that we are used to it. But to send an agent over another country, out of sight and sound, more than ten miles above its soil, with a camera seemed to shock because it was so novel. Yet such are the vagaries of international law that we can do nothing when Soviet ships approach within three miles of our shores and take all the pictures they like, and we could do the same to them if we liked.

  If a spy intrudes on your territory, you catch him if you can and punish him according to your laws. That applies without regard to the means of conveyance he has taken to reach his destination—railroad, automobile, balloon or aircraft or, as my forebears used to say, by shanks’ mare. Espionage is not tainted with any “legality.” If the territory, territorial waters or air space of another country is violated, it is an illegal act. But it is, of course, a bit difficult for a country to deny any complicity when the mode of conveyance is an aircraft of new and highly sophisticated design and performance.

  As I said at the outset, some of our fellow citizens don’t want anything to do with espionage of any kind. Some prefer the old-fashioned kind, popularized in the spy thrillers. Some would concede that, if you are going to do it at all, it is best to use the system that will produce the best results and is most likely to secure the information we need.

  The decision to proceed with the U-2 program was based on considerations deemed in 1955 to be vital to our national security. We required the information necessary to guide our various military programs and particularly our missile program. This we could not do if we had no knowledge of the Soviet missile program. Without a better basis than we then had for gauging the nature and extent of the threat to us from surprise nuclear missile attack, our very survival might be threatened. Self-preservation is an inherent right of sovereignty. Obviously, this is not a principle to be invoked frivolously.

  In retrospect, I believe that most thoughtful Americans would have expected this country to act as it did in the situation we faced in the fifties, when the missile race was on in earnest and the U-2 flights were helping to keep us informed of Soviet progress.

  And while I am discussing myths and misconceptions, I might tilt at another myth connected with the U-2, namely, that Khrushchev was shocked and surprised at it all. As a matter of fact, he had known for years about the flights, though his information in the early period was not accurate in all respects. Diplomatic notes were exchanged and published well before May 1, 1960, the date of the U-2 failure, when Khrushchev’s tracking techniques had become more accurate. Still, since he had been unable to do anything about the U-2, he did not wish to advertise the fact of his impotence to his own people, and he stopped sending protests.

  His rage at the Paris Conference was feigned for a purpose. At the time he saw no prospect of success at the conference on the subject of Berlin. He was then in deep trouble with the Chinese Communists. Following his visit to President Eisenhower in the fall of 1959, he had been unable to placate Mao during his stop at Peking en route back from the United States. Furthermore, he was apprehensive that the Soviet people would react too favorably to President Eisenhower’s planned trip to the U.S.S.R. in the summer of 1960. Influenced by all these considerations, he decided to use the U-2 as a good excuse for torpedoing both the trip and the conference.

  There is evidence of long debate in the Praesidium during the first two weeks of May, after the U-2 fell and before the date of the Paris Conference. The question was, I believe, whether to push the U-2 issue under the rug or use it to destroy the conference. There are also reports that Khrushchev was asked why he had not mentioned the overflight issue when he visited the President in 1959, more than six months before the U-2 came down. He is said to have remarked he didn’t wish to “disturb” the spirit of Camp David.

  Finally, to conclude the U-2 discussion, I should deal with one other myth, namely, that when Powers was downed on May 1, 1960, everybody should have kept their mouths shut and no admissions of any kind should have been made, the theory being that you don’t admit espionage.

  It is quite true that there is an old tradition, and one which was excellent in its day and age, that you never talk about any espionage operations and that if a spy is caught, he is supposed to say nothing.

  It does not always work out that way in the twentieth century. The U-2 is a case in point. It is, of course, obvious that a large number of people had to know about the building of the plane, its real purposes, its accomplishments over the five years of its useful life and also the high authority under which the project had been initiated and carried forward. In view of the unique nature of the project, its cost and complexity, this proliferation of information was inevitable. It could not be handled merely like the dispatch of a secret agent across a frontier. Of course, all these people would have known that any denial by the executive was false. Sooner or later, certainly, this would have leaked out.

  But even more serious than this is the question of the responsibility of government. For the executive to have taken the position that a subordinate had exercised authority on his own to mount and carry forward such an enterprise as the U-2 operation without higher sanction would have been tantamount to admission of irresponsibility in government and that the executive was not in control of actions by subordinates which could vitally affect our national policy. This would have been an intolerable position to take. Silence on the whole affair, which I do not believe could have been maintained, would have amounted to such an admission. The fact that both in the U-2 matter and in the Bay of Pigs affair the Chief Executive assumed responsibility for what was planned as a covert operation, but had been uncovered, was, I believe, both the right decision to take and the only decision that in the circumstances could have been justified. Of course, any subordinate of the executive, such as the Director of Central Intelligence, would have been ready to assume all or any responsibility in either of these affairs—even the responsibility of admitting irresponsibility if called upon to do so. In theory, this may have appealed to some. In actual practice, I believe it was quite unrealistic.

  Today in the field of intelligence, many admissions are made, either tacitly or by deeds and actions, as well as in words. When the Soviet Union agreed to exchange Francis Powers for their spy, Colonel Rudolf Abel, they were admitting what he was and who he was, just as clearly as if they had published the facts in the newspaper.

  Intelligence has come a long way since the good old days when everything could be shoved under the rug of silence.

  CIA, THE BAD BOY OF GOVERNMENT

  There are other kinds of myths, more of the spiteful or backbiting sort, that one sometimes hears in more restricted and “knowing” circles. I doubt if many readers outside Washington have ever even encountered them, and so I will deal with them only in passing. They have to do primarily with CIA’s relations with other parts of our government, especially those with whom it works most closely. First of all, it is in the nature of people and institutions that any “upstart” is going to be somewhat frowned upon and its intrusions resented at first by the more well-established and traditional organizations. CIA had to prove itself and gain the respect of its elders by showing what it could do and by submitting its employees and its work to the test of time. It has, in my opinion, withstood this test and earned
the respect of its fellows in government. It has, at the same time, not swallowed up the personnel, the property or the functions of any other agency, despite its reputed size and its reputed budget. The statement that there are American embassies where the CIA personnel outnumber the Foreign Service personnel is a rather typical troublemaking bit of malice, as is the one that the CIA personnel in embassies can do what they please. The Soviets, it is true, have many embassies where the intelligence personnel outnumber the diplomats, but we do not. The Soviet ambassador is himself sometimes an officer of the KGB. I have yet to hear of a case where the American ambassador was a CIA man.

  The American ambassador is the commanding officer of all American officials in the country to which he is assigned, including any CIA personnel. This is subject, however, to the overriding authority of the President and the Secretary of State, who are responsible for the conduct of our foreign relations and decide how our policy should be carried out. It is they, of course, who instruct the ambassadors and determine the roles and mission of the various segments of our overseas missions, which often include AID, USIA, military, intelligence and other official personnel. There have been times when, under instructions of the State Department, the CIA has carried on certain operations which were not disclosed to the ambassador in the country in which the operations may have originated. This is the exception rather than the rule and generally happens only in a situation where an intelligence operation may be in part based in country A but more directly affects the situation in country B.