Shadow Warrior

by Randall B. Woods

  Colby then met with Agency lawyers and his science advisers to plan a course of action. To hell with Henry, they decided; the DCI should take Hersh’s deal. On February 1, 1974, Colby met with the journalist at the offices of the New York Times and briefed him on Azorian. “I went to see Seymour Hersh,” Colby subsequently told White House aide Fred Buzhardt. “Henry thought I was crazy, but I had to.” Hersh, who originally viewed the story as a study in CIA and Pentagon waste, was skeptical at first. He thought all the cloak-and-dagger stuff was just a cover. In the days that followed, Hersh and his superiors at the Times came around. But the journalist warned Colby that if he had gotten wind of Azorian, it would not be long before other enterprising reporters did, too.56

  It then came to light that early on the morning of June 5, while the Glomar Explorer was making final preparations to depart Long Beach for a second try at salvaging the Soviet sub, a team of burglars had broken into the Los Angeles offices of Summa Corporation. According to the night watchman, who was bound and gagged, the intruders seemed to know what they were looking for. In the end, they departed carrying four footlockers of documents and an estimated $68,000 in cash. Summa executives subsequently informed Colby that among the things taken was a memo outlining negotiations between the Agency and the Hughes Corporation over construction of the Glomar Explorer and describing the scheme to raise the K-129.57

  The Summa Corporation burglars might try to market the Glomar Explorer documents to one or more media outlets, but Colby comforted himself with the thought that it was going to be difficult to convince a reputable newspaper or magazine to publish a story based on them. But on Friday afternoon, February 7, 1975, the late edition of the Los Angeles Times carried banner headlines: “US Reported After Russian Submarine? Sunken Ship Deal by CIA, Hughes Told.” The story reported that Hughes had contracted with the CIA to raise a sunken Soviet submarine “from the North Atlantic.” It described the Glomar Explorer in a few sentences and then revealed that proof of the existence of “Project Jennifer” was included in the material stolen from Hughes’s Romaine Street offices. With this, Colby leaped into action. The DCI had one of his West Coast operatives contact the publisher of the Los Angeles Times, who immediately expressed regret, had the story relegated to page eighteen in the second edition, and ordered his reporters not to write anything further. Colby managed to have a follow-up story published in the New York Times on the 8th buried on page thirty.58

  But hadn’t the damage already been done, hadn’t the Kremlin been tipped off, and therefore hadn’t plans to raise the remainder of the Soviet vessel, scheduled for the summer of 1975, been rendered moot? Perhaps not. Colby recalled that during World War II, the Chicago Tribune had reported in banner headlines that US Naval Intelligence had broken the Japanese diplomatic and military code. President Roosevelt had been beside himself with anger and anxiety, but the Japanese kept using the same code, and the Americans kept intercepting and deciphering their top-secret messages. It could have been that Tokyo simply did not get wind of the story; more probably, the Japanese High Command believed the article a ruse, assuming that no country would ever permit a secret of such magnitude to be published by a member of its national media.59

  With the Glomar Explorer’s follow-up voyage just five months away, the director of the CIA waged an increasingly frantic war to keep the Soviet sub story out of print and off the airwaves. Finally, however, the dam broke. On the morning of March 18, 1975, Colby succeeded in persuading National Public Radio to hold its water. But that afternoon, he learned that syndicated columnist Jack Anderson was about to go public with news of Azorian. Colby called Anderson and, par for the course, appealed to his patriotism. Anderson was unmoved and proceeded to discuss the Glomar Explorer on his radio program that evening, focusing on the Hughes connection. The next day the New York Times went with Hersh’s full story. “C.I.A Salvage Ship Brought Up Part of Soviet Sub Lost in 1968, Failed to Raise Atom Missiles,” the headline read.60

  A flotilla of Soviet vessels rushed to the salvage site and parked itself there more or less permanently. Phase II of Project Azorian was canceled. The Ford administration debated how to react. Somewhat surprisingly, Colby argued for an absolute “no comment.” He reminded Ford and Kissinger that during the U-2 crisis in 1960, it was Eisenhower’s public admission that Gary Powers had been on a spy mission over the Soviet Union that had so angered Khrushchev and caused him to call off the Paris summit. “I think we should not put the Soviet Union under such pressure to respond,” the DCI advised. And so, silence it was. Colby proved correct. Moscow was not forced to express outrage and wave the flag; détente continued uninterrupted.61

  It was indicative of the widespread mistrust of the CIA that many journalists and public intellectuals were convinced that ulterior motives lay behind Colby’s attempted cover-up. Hersh and Anderson continued to think that Jennifer/Azorian was not so much a case of espionage but a matter of government pork. Victor Marchetti told the Village Voice that the DCI had deliberately leaked the Glomar story in an effort to take some of the tarnish off of the Agency’s image. “Project Jennifer was a put up job,” he said. “I think the CIA leaked that story. They’ve been getting so much bad publicity. . . . Colby’s a very clever man.”62

  A footnote to Project Azorian: The next year, Howard Hughes died. One of his chief mourners was Jim Angleton. “Howard Hughes!” he exclaimed to Time magazine. “Where his country’s interests were concerned, no man knew his target better. We were fortunate to have him.”63

  17

  REVELATIONS

  Being DCI changed Bill Colby; he had run large, complex operations before—the Saigon station, the Far East Division, CORDS, and Plans/Operations—but now he was a public figure who was expected to be on top of world events and a person of gravitas within and without the administration. He was a player on the Washington stage whether he liked it or not. Increasingly he did.

  When Colby was not out of the country on an inspection tour or meeting with the head of a friendly foreign intelligence service, his day resembled that of a major cabinet officer. At 6:30 A.M. the alarm went off and he climbed out of bed. After retrieving and reading the Washington Post, it was calisthenics and a light breakfast. At 8:00 his driver and security officer picked him up in a dark blue, armor-plated Chevrolet. On the drive to the office he read the New York Times and the Daily Intelligencer. Colby wanted to know by the time he got to Langley what was going on in the world that would be of particular interest to the Agency and how American intelligence was being treated in that day’s columns. At 8:25 A.M., his auto dropped him off; the director walked through the marble entrance hall and took his private elevator to the seventh floor. Huddling briefly with his secretary, Barbara Pindar, and his assistant, Jenonne Walker, he then walked into the conference room at 9:00 sharp to meet with his principal deputies. At 10:00, it was the turn of the US Intelligence Board, which he chaired. Frequently, before going to lunch in the general dining room, he would award a medal to some deserving operator just out of the bush in Southeast Asia or Africa. From 1:30 to 3:00, Colby might prepare for a National Security Council meeting in the White House basement; there, he would brief Kissinger and the other members of the national security team on the ongoing North Vietnamese buildup in South Vietnam or some other topic. Then it was back through rush-hour traffic to Langley, where he spent a couple of hours on crisis management. At 7:00 it was home to a quiet dinner and more document perusal, or to get dressed for one of Washington’s ubiquitous dinners or receptions.1

  By the fall of 1974, Colby’s chief preoccupation had become defense of his beloved CIA from its growing number of critics. With President Richard Nixon’s resignation in August over charges that he had obstructed justice in the Watergate affair, many Americans concluded that the government itself was not to be trusted. But what had gone wrong? There was a constitution, one of the most respected in the world; the United States, for better or worse, was a democracy. There must be an evil force w
orking outside the grid, unseen and unaccountable to anyone. Perhaps what was wrong with American politics and foreign policy was that it was controlled by that “invisible government” that David Wise had talked about. The onslaught that had begun with the 1967 Ramparts article exposing CIA front organizations, then the Phoenix probe and Watergate, would continue with a massive congressional and media examination of America’s role in the rise and fall of Salvador Allende.

  In the spring of 1973, while Colby was still deputy director for plans, Senator Frank Church (D-ID), a key figure in the congressional anti–Vietnam War movement, had launched an investigation of multinational corporations. Chairing a special subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Church and his team of investigators uncovered the fact that International Telephone and Telegraph had played a role in aiding opponents of Salvador Allende in Chile’s 1970 presidential elections. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, under J. William Fulbright, had long had its knife sharpened for what it considered illegal and immoral interference by the United States in the political affairs of other nations. Indeed, in 1970, as Richard Helms was leaving after testifying before the committee, Fulbright had pulled him aside and said, “Dick, if I catch you trying to upset the Chilean election, I will get up on the Senate floor and blow the operation.”2 DCI Schlesinger did not appear before the Church subcommittee, but he had testified to the CIA’s oversight committees on the relationship between the Agency and ITT during the 1970 Chilean elections. He omitted any discussion of Track II, which, among other things, referred explicitly to US support for a coup. The previous month, Helms, during his confirmation hearings to be ambassador to Iran, had been asked by members of the Fulbright committee about the CIA’s role in Chilean politics. Stuart Symington, who was a member of both the Senate Armed Services Committee, a CIA oversight body, and the Foreign Relations Committee, put the questions:

  “Did you try in the Central Intelligence Agency to overthrow the government of Chile?”

  “No, sir,” Helms replied.

  “Did you have any money passed to opponents of Allende?”

  “No, sir.”

  “So the stories you were in that war are wrong?”

  “Yes, sir.”3

  Later, Helms would recall that in authorizing Track II, Nixon had ordered him to keep it secret from anyone not directly involved, including the secretaries of state and defense. Perhaps so, but the CIA had clearly supplied funds to opposition parties under Track I, the plan to prevent Allende’s election. Depending on one’s interpretation of the law, Helms had perjured himself.

  There matters rested until Allende’s bloody overthrow on September 11, 1973. Allende’s ouster, as luck would have it, occurred during Kissinger’s confirmation hearings to be secretary of state. Fulbright and his colleagues asked him about Chile. “The C.I.A had nothing to do with the coup, to the best of my knowledge and belief,” he said, “and I only put in that qualification in case some madman appears down there who without instructions talked to somebody. I have absolutely no reason to suppose it.”4

  At this point, Representative Michael J. Harrington (D-MA), long a critic of US foreign policy in Central and South America, decided to make the CIA and Chile his personal crusade. Convinced that the Agency, in alliance with multinational corporations and the Chilean military, had intervened to overthrow a democratically elected government, he persuaded the Subcommittee on Inter-American Affairs to hold hearings on Chile. Colby testified but would not discuss CIA activities in Chile. Frustrated, Harrington persuaded Lucien Nedzi, chair of the Intelligence Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee (a CIA oversight body), to hold full hearings on US activity in Chile. Nedzi, who knew of Track I, was not enthusiastic, but he felt he had no choice. On April 22, 1974, Colby appeared before the Nedzi subcommittee in secret session. Harrington was not present. The DCI began with Track I, revealing that the United States, acting through the CIA, had funneled $8 million to Allende’s opponents and, following Allende’s election, had worked to make conditions in Chile so uncomfortable that its citizenry would rebel against the new president. Colby made it clear that the CIA was not acting on its own but at the behest of President Nixon and the 40 Committee chaired by Henry Kissinger.

  On his way to the hearing, Colby had debated what to do about Track II, which linked the United States to a coup attempt. Nixon had ordered Helms and the Agency to hold Track II in strictest confidence, but Colby had given assurances during his confirmation hearings that he would be absolutely frank with the oversight committees. “I considered it my responsibility to keep them informed,” he wrote in Honorable Men, “even about CIA matters that they would have no way of even suspecting, and therefore would be unable to question me on.”5 Thus, after the formal hearings were over, Colby took Nedzi and the committee counsel aside and told them about Track II. The chairman, taken aback, paused and then demanded assurances that Track II had ended after Allende’s election and that the Agency had had nothing to do with the coup that overthrew him in 1973. Colby gladly gave those assurances, and both men hoped that the matter had ended there.

  Harrington had planned well. Taking advantage of the long-standing House rule that entitled any member to review the transcript of any committee of the House, he demanded to see Colby’s secret testimony. Grudgingly, Nedzi agreed. On September 7, Harrington summarized Colby’s testimony in a letter to Representative Thomas E. Morgan (D-PA), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and offered it as proof that the CIA had indeed worked to “destabilize” the Allende regime. Harrington subsequently had his letter published in the Congressional Record.6

  Smelling new blood in the water, reporter Seymour Hersh launched himself. In September and October, claiming to have obtained the minutes of 40 Committee meetings, he wrote a series of articles in the New York Times on the CIA and Chile. This was the first the American public had ever heard of the 40 Committee’s existence. With Kissinger once again threatened by the undertow of negative media coverage, his team at the State Department pressured Colby to deny everything. Instead, the DCI gave an exclusive interview to Time magazine writer Strobe Talbott, admitting US interference in Chilean affairs but justifying it in the context of the Cold War.7

  The previous summer, Colby had agreed to participate in a conference entitled “The Central Intelligence Agency and Covert Actions,” sponsored by the Center for National Security Studies. The center was dedicated to uncovering the secrets of a presumably nefarious national security state; it was, among other things, an instrument of the New Left, and particularly the anti–Vietnam War movement. Colby was aware that he would be Daniel before the lions, but he had, “somewhat defiantly,” as he put it, decided to make an appearance at the coliseum. Senator James Abourezk (DSD) chaired the meeting, which was held in the cavernous congressional conference room on September 13. Other panelists included Daniel Ellsberg; Fred Branfman, a leading critic of the US air war in Indochina; David Wise; historian Richard Barnet; Congressman Harrington; and former CIA covert operative Paul Sakwa. Sakwa, whom journalist Neil Sheehan described as “nuts,” had long believed that Desmond FitzGerald, Colby, and others were fathers of a scheme to deepen the crisis in Vietnam in order to provoke a showdown with Communist China. The audience ran the gamut of the antiwar movement, from hippies, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and Quakers to Black Power advocates.8

  The DCI led off with a short speech justifying the CIA and covert action from World War II through the Chilean election. He observed that thus far, the US clandestine services had succeeded in preventing World War III, implying that if there had been a CIA following the Great War, World War II might have been avoided. He then took questions. In response to a query from Harrington, Colby declared that the CIA had had nothing to do with the coup in Santiago. “We did look forward to a change in government,” he said, an observation met with laughter and derisive hoots. “How many did you kill in Phoenix?” a young woman shouted from the audience. “I’d like to ans
wer that,” Colby said, “I didn’t kill any.” Another collective guffaw. He persisted: “The Phoenix program was designed and started in about 1968 in order to bring some degree of order and regularity to a very unpleasant, nasty war that had preceded it.” Colby was asked if the CIA was above the law: Should Agency operatives be held to US statutes for actions taken outside the country? “There are a lot of illegal things done overseas by our standards,” he retorted.9

  Ellsberg was next. He questioned his old counterinsurgency colleague about the break-in to his psychiatrist’s office. Why had the CIA destroyed taped conversations dealing with the incident? Standard procedure, the DCI replied. What about the “tiger cages” on Con Son Island? The Agency had moved expeditiously to get the South Vietnamese to end mistreatment at the facility, Colby replied. More laughter and catcalls. “What exactly was the morality of torture?” Branfman asked. “My morality is to try to help produce a better world,” the former Jedburgh declared, “and not to insist on a perfect one, Mr. Branfman.” At this point Branfman’s wife, whom Sheehan described as “a skinny Vietnamese bitch,” rose and began abusing Colby in “her strident, Vietnamese market-place voice.” Another panelist: “The techniques of covert action include blackmail, burglary, subversion, and assassination. . . . Are these techniques justified in the name of national security?” Colby was unequivocal: “I think the use of an atomic bomb is justified in the interests of national security.” Stunned silence. The gathering closed with another denunciation from an audience member: “You’re not only a liar, you’re not only a racist, you’re a Nazi war criminal.”10