The CIA maintains a stable of “agents of influence” around the world: individuals, from valets and chauffeurs to personal secretaries and key ministerial aides, who presumably have sufficient access to high-ranking political figures to influence their decisions. The purpose, as with propaganda, is to convince important foreign officials to lean toward the United States and its allied democracies and away from the Soviet Union or, these days, Iraqi insurgents, extremists among the Taliban, Al Qaeda, ISIS, the government of Iran, and other anti-democracy adversaries in the Middle East, Southwest Asia, and anywhere else. As is the case with humint operations generally, the Agency seeks to expand its crop of agents of influence around the world – a goal made more difficult to achieve with the short tours of its operations officers and their limited foreign-language capabilities.
Economic covert action
The CIA has also attempted to slow or even destroy the economies of adversaries. In one instance during the Kennedy Administration (although apparently without the President's knowledge), Agency operatives planned to spoil Cuban–Soviet relations by lacing sugar bound from Havana to Moscow with an unpalatable, though harmless, chemical substance. At the eleventh hour, a White House aide discovered the scheme and had the 14,125 bags of sugar confiscated before they were shipped to the Soviet Union. The aide had concluded that the United States should not tamper with another nation's food supplies.21 Other methods of secret economic disruption have reportedly included efforts to incite labor unrest; smuggling counterfeit currencies into the target nation to cause inflationary pressures; depressing the world price of agricultural products grown by adversaries (such as Cuban sugar cane); sneaking defective components into the construction materials for a foreign nuclear reactor; contaminating foreign oil supplies or computer parts; and – upping the ante – dynamiting electrical power lines and oil-storage tanks, as well as mining an enemy's harbors with explosive charges to harm ships and undermine the target nation's international trade relations.
The U.S. military tried to enter the covert action domain, too, against Castro during the early years of the Johnson Administration. In response to a presidential request for new ideas on how to deal with the Cuban leader, the Pentagon proposed “Operation SQUARE DANCE”: the destruction of the Cuban economy by dropping from the cargo hatches of aircraft under the darkness of night a parasite known as Bunga that would attack the island's sugar cane plants. “The economic and political disturbances caused by this attack could be exacerbated and exploited,” claimed a DoD memo, “by such measures as spreading hoof-and-mouth disease among draft animals, controlling rainfall by cloud seeding, mining cane fields, burning cane, and directing other acts of conventional sabotage against the cane milling and transportation system.” The hoped-for end result, concluded the memo, would be “the collapse of the Castro regime.” The military planners conceded that adoption of SQUARE DANCE “would introduce a new dimension into Cold War methods and would require a major change in national policy.”22 But they were ready to carry out these measures anyway, if the White House so desired. The National Security Adviser at the time, McGeorge Bundy (a former Harvard University professor and dean), was troubled, however, by such extreme options – even against the likes of dictator Fidel Castro. Bundy rejected the proposal. The DoD memo provides startling insight into America's capacity and, evidently at some levels of government, its willingness to engage in radical covert economic operations to achieve U.S. foreign policy goals.
As part and parcel of the attempts to undermine Allende before and after his run for the presidency, the CIA adopted various covert measures to undermine the Chilean economy. By heightening the level of economic dislocation and social unrest in Chile, the Nixon Administration hoped that local military forces would decide to strip Allende of his powers, since the Administration's initial covert actions had failed to prevent Allende's victory in the presidential election. The DCI at the time, Richard Helms, took handwritten notes at a White House meeting on September 15, 1970, about what could be done if Allende won the presidential campaign. Huddled in the Oval Office with President Nixon, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and Attorney General John Mitchell, Helms jotted in his notebook: “Make the economy scream.” One method opted for this purpose by the Agency was to sow chaos in the nation's trucking industry, a ploy that dramatically impeded the flow of commerce from town to town. A decade later, attempts by the Reagan Administration to topple the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua would again turn to economic CAs, including the mining of the nation's harbors and the blowing up of power lines across the countryside.
Paramilitary covert action
Secret warlike activities, known as paramilitary covert actions or PM, are yet another arrow in the CIA's quiver – the most lethal of all. No covert actions have held higher risk or generated more criticism than large- and small-scale “covert” wars (as if wars can be kept secret for long). From 1950 to 1953, the Agency's covert action capabilities attracted high funding to support America's overt warfare on the Korean Peninsula – the first major use of this foreign policy tool by the United States. Henceforth, whenever the United States was involved in overt warfare somewhere in the world, the Agency would be there as well to support the military with covert actions. Then, in 1953, the CIA provided support to pro-American factions that brought down the Iranian Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadeq, and replaced him with some one more pliable, the Shah of Iran (Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi). The next year, the Agency succeeded with its plan to frighten the democratically elected Arbenz government out of office in Guatemala by a combination of mainly CA propaganda, but also political, economic, and small-scale PM operations. Over the next two decades, the Agency mobilized its paramilitary capabilities for several secret military attacks against foreign governments, offering support (with mixed degrees of success) for anti-communist insurgents in such places as the Ukraine, Poland, Albania, Hungary, Indonesia, Oman, Malaysia, Iraq, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Thailand, Haiti, Greece, Turkey, and Cuba.
While the Bay of Pigs venture in Cuba exploded in the face of DO operatives, several other schemes experienced some degree of success – at least over the short run. For example, from 1962 to 1968, the CIA backed the Hmung tribesmen (pronounced with a silent “h”), sometimes referred to as the Meo tribesmen. The Hmung fought a war in North Laos against North Vietnamese puppets known as the Communist Pathet Lao. This war kept the Pathet Lao occupied and away from killing U.S. troops fighting next door in South Vietnam. The Hmung and the Pathet Lao struggled to a draw in Laos, until the United States withdrew from the ring to concentrate its efforts in Vietnam. Following this withdrawal, the Hmung lacked U.S. arms and advisers; they were soon routed, with some fortunate assets exfiltrated by the CIA for resettlement in the United States. The CIA redoubled its covert action operations against the North Vietnamese and their Viet Cong allies in South Vietnam, until the U.S. military retreated from Indochina in 1973.
Under President Ronald Reagan, the Agency pursued major paramilitary operations in a number of nations around the world, but with special emphasis in Nicaragua and Afghanistan – combined, the second most extensive use of covert action in the nation's history (slightly surpassing its emphasis in the Korean War; see Figure 3.2). While the Nicaragua involvement ended in the Iran–contra scandal, the Agency's support of mujahideen fighters against Soviet invaders in Afghanistan is considered one of the glory moments in the CIA's history. The Agency provided Stinger missiles to the mujahideen, which helped turn the tide of the war and sent the Red Army into retreat. Most recently, covert action has reached another high point in terms of emphasis by the United States – in fact, the nation's most pronounced use of this approach to foreign policy, eclipsing by a narrow margin the adoption of “special activities” in both the Korean War and the Reagan Administration's covert wars in Nicaragua and Afghanistan. This time, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the purpose has been to support America's overt wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with opera
tions directed against Al Qaeda, ISIS, and other terrorist organizations.
Figure 3.2 The ebb and flow of covert actions by the United States, 1947–2010
Source: The author's estimates based on interviews with intelligence managers over the years, along with a study of the literature cited in the notes of this chapter.
The Assassination Option
Perhaps the most controversial form of PM covert action has been the use of assassination as a method to eliminate dangerous, or sometimes just annoying, foreign leaders. The Soviets referred to this option as “wet affairs,” a method they adopted in 1940 to eliminate a regime critic, fellow communist Leon Trotsky, whom a Soviet intelligence operative killed with an ice pick during Trotsky's exile in Mexico. The CIA's involvement in murder plots came to light in 1975. In files discovered by presidential and congressional investigators (the Rockefeller Commission and the Church Committee, respectively), the DO referred to its attempts at dispatching selected foreign leaders with such euphemisms as “termination with extreme prejudice” or “neutralization.” At one time the Agency established a special panel – the “Health Alteration Committee” – to screen assassination proposals. The CIA also developed a tiny dart the size of a sewing needle (a “nondiscernible microbioinoculator,” in fanciful DS&T terminology), which could be silently propelled toward an unsuspecting target by an oversized .45 pistol equipped with a telescopic sight. Agency scientists considered the dart gun, which was accurate up to 250 feet and would leave no trace in the victim's body, the perfect murder weapon.
Fidel Castro attracted the full attention of the CIA's Covert Action Staff and its Special Operations Group during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. The Agency emptied its medicine cabinet of drugs and poisons in various attempts to kill, or at least debilitate, the Cuban leader. Before escalating to the level of murder plots, the CIA in one operation placed depilatory powder in Castro's shoes when he traveled abroad; the substance was meant to enter his bloodstream through his feet and cause his famous charismatic beard to fall off his chin. The Agency also impregnated Castro's cigars with the hallucinatory drug LSD, as well as with a deadly botulinum toxin; dusted his underwater diving suit with Madura foot fungus; sneaked an agent into his kitchen, who tried (but failed) to place a poison capsule in his soup; and attempted to find someone with access to Castro who could inject the highly poisonous substance Blackleaf-40 into his skin, using a needle-tipped ballpoint pen. In this last plot, the CIA made contact with a promising agent on November 22, 1963, ironically the very day that America's own president was assassinated.
All these efforts cratered, for Castro was elusive and well protected by an elite security guard trained by the KGB (today known in Russia as the SVR or Foreign Intelligence Service). So the Agency turned to the Mafia for assistance: a Chicago gangster, Sam Giancana; the former Cosa Nostra chief for Cuba, Santo Trafficante; and the mobster, John Roselli. These men still had contacts on the island from pre-Castro days when Havana was a world gambling mecca. No doubt assuming the U.S. government would back off Mafia prosecutions in return for some help against Castro, the crime figures volunteered to assemble assassination teams of Cuban exiles and other hitmen, then infiltrate them into Cuba. None succeeded.
Starting with the Eisenhower Administration and continuing into the Kennedy years, another foreign leader targeted for death was Patrice Lumumba, the dynamic Congolese political leader. From Washington's point of view, his error (like Castro's) had been to enter into ties with Moscow that seemed all too close. In the seemingly zero-sum context of the Cold War, both Castro and Lumumba had to go. Agency Headquarters sent to the COS in Congo an unusual assortment of items to achieve this objective: rubber gloves, gauze masks, a hypodermic syringe, and lethal biological material. The toxic substance would produce a disease that would either kill the victim outright or incapacitate him so severely that he would be out of commission. In 1961, a cable from DCI Allen Dulles sent to the Agency's COS in Congo underscored in capital letters that:
IN HIGH QUARTERS HERE IT IS THE CLEAR-CUT CONCLUSION THAT IF [LUMUMBA] CONTINUES TO HOLD HIGH OFFICE, THE INEVITABLE RESULT WILL AT BEST BE CHAOS AND AT WORST [IT WILL] PAVE THE WAY TO COMMUNIST TAKEOVER OF THE CONGO WITH DISASTROUS CONSEQUENCES FOR THE PRESTIGE OF THE UN AND FOR THE INTERESTS OF THE FREE WORLD GENERALLY. CONSEQUENTLY WE CONCLUDE THAT HIS REMOVAL MUST BE AN URGENT AND PRIME OBJECTIVE AND THAT UNDER EXISTING CONDITIONS THIS SHOULD BE A HIGH PRIORITY OF OUR COVERT ACTION.
The COS in Congo began to plan how he could carry out the specific directions from Agency Headquarters to inject the toxic material into something that could get into Lumumba's mouth – “whether it was food or a toothbrush,” read the instructions. The COS informed one of his colleagues that there was a “virus” in a safe within the CIA's quarters at Leopoldville, the capital of Congo. The recipient of this hushed disclosure later conceded to investigators in dark humor that he “knew it wasn't for somebody to get his polio shot up-to-date.” The plan, though, was never carried out. The CIA experienced problems getting near enough to Lumumba to inject the deadly toxin into an apple or toothpaste. Soon after, a rival Congo faction, fearful of Lumumba's popularity, snuffed out his life before a hastily arranged firing squad. A recent study of his death suggests that the CIA may have arranged to render Lumumba into the hands of his assassins and, therefore, may have finally and indirectly achieved its goal of his permanent demise.23
Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam, and General René Schneider of Chile were other national leaders murdered by assassins who at one time or another had connections with the CIA. The Church Committee concluded, however, that at the time each was murdered the Agency no longer had control over the assassins. The CIA also gave weapons to dissidents who dispatched President Sukarno of Indonesia and François “Papa Doc” Duvalier of Haiti; but, once again, these plots seem to have gone forward without the Agency's direct involvement – though it is unlikely that officials at Langley or the White House shed many tears over the outcomes.
The CIA has been implicated, as well, in the incapacitation or death of lower-level officials. The most well-known operation of this kind was the CIA's Phoenix Program, carried out in South Vietnam as part of the U.S. war effort to subdue the influence of communists in the countryside (known as the Viet Cong or VC). According to DCI William Colby, who led the program for a time, some 20,000 VC leaders and sympathizers were killed – though 85 percent of these victims were engaged in military or paramilitary combat against South Vietnamese or American soldiers.
In 1976, soon after Congress revealed the CIA's involvement in international murder plots, President Gerald R. Ford signed an executive order against this practice. The wording of the order, endorsed by his successors, reads: “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government, shall engage in, or conspire to engage in assassination.”24 While honored most of the time, situations have occurred where administrations have bent this language to suit their own needs. For example, President Reagan ordered the bombing of President Muammar Qaddafi's house in 1986 as part of an air raid against Libya, on grounds that he had been aiding and abetting terrorism; and President George H. W. Bush ordered the bombing of Baghdad – including the palaces of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein – during the first Persian Gulf War (1990–91). Indeed, this first Bush White House “lit a candle every night hoping Saddam Hussein would be killed in a bunker” during these bombings, recalls a DCI.25 In these instances, the United States was involved in overt warfare against Libya and Iraq; under such conditions (ideally, authorized by Congress, although the attacks against Libya were not), the executive order on assassination is suspended.
More recently, as authorized by Congress, the United States has been involved in overt warfare in Iraq, Afghanistan, and against ISIS, as well as Al Qaeda and its supporters (most visibly, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan). Again, the executive order against assassination has been lifted, or at least l
oosely applied, in these struggles. Saddam was regularly a target in the Second Persian Gulf War that began in 2003; but, as in the First Persian Gulf War, he proved to be elusive. Eventually, in December of that year, U.S. troops discovered him hiding in a hole in the ground near his hometown. He was arrested, tried by an Iraqi tribunal, and hanged – all with the strong encouragement of the United States under President George W. Bush. Saddam had ordered an assassination attempt against the President's father and mother soon after Iraq's defeat in the first Persian Gulf War, when the Bushes were visiting Kuwait to celebrate the victory – a fact not lost on Bush the son.
Added to the current list of people to be captured or assassinated by the United States military and CIA paramilitary forces are extremist Taliban and Al Qaeda members in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as ISIS members in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and wherever else they pop up. The Obama Administration added Afghan narcotics dealers to the drone target list.
Since the end of the Cold War, the CIA (in cooperation with the U.S. Air Force) has developed and fielded its most deadly paramilitary weapon: UAVs, such as the Predator and its more muscular brother, the Reaper. Both drones are armed with Hellfire missiles and can easily fly across national boundaries. These systems are controlled remotely from sites in Afghanistan and Pakistan (for the takeoffs and landings) and at Langley, in Nevada, and other locations in the United States (for the targeting and killing phases of flight). Cruising at relatively low altitudes, the UAVs are equipped with sophisticated cameras that help operators in the United States identify distant targets before the missiles are released. Mistakes are still made, unfortunately, as Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists hide in mosques and other locations where innocent civilians may be inadvertently hit by the missiles – although the CIA and the military go to great lengths to avoid this “collateral damage.”
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