Shadow Warrior

by Randall B. Woods

  That the director of the Central Intelligence Agency should be treated in such a manner in a public venue was stunning, almost as astounding as Colby’s decision to volunteer for such punishment. Sheehan, who was as close to an unbiased observer as there was in the conference room, painted a picture of the DCI under fire and speculated on his motives: “Sharp features with a slightly receding hairline, piercing grey eyes, pursed lips and folded hands.” Dressed in a light gray suit and a pink and red regimental tie, the DCI had remained the picture of composure, his hands trembling only slightly during one of the Phoenix queries. His facial expressions alternated between bemusement and sincerity. “He is really tough, extraordinarily tough,” Sheehan wrote, “to stand up to that group and keep his cool. . . . There was an incredible venting of rage in that room, particularly from the young people, who really wanted Colby’s blood.” Sheehan and his wife, Susan, also a writer, speculated that Colby felt guilt over what he had been involved in, particularly the Phoenix program, and as a good Catholic was seeking redemptive punishment. Marcus Raskin, who, along with Barnet, had founded the Institute for Policy Studies, disagreed. “He’s a cold-blooded killer,” he told Sheehan. “Just look at those eyes.”11

  In the end, Sheehan returned to his thought of Colby as the American Felix Dzerzhinsky, the notorious founder and first head of the Soviet intelligence apparatus. Anything was permissible as long as it was authorized by the “duly constituted authority.” Colby would not have disagreed with this last observation, but he would have pointed out that the duly constituted authorities he and Dzerzhinsky were serving were vastly different. And, in truth, Colby’s actions in the ensuing days were designed to affirm the rule of law and the intelligence community’s commitment to a liberal democratic system (in the United States, if not abroad), even above a White House determined to protect itself at all costs or a cold war against the Kremlin.

  Chile continued to dominate headlines, columns, and editorials. The Christian Science Monitor in September 1974 accused the Agency of a double standard, acting against governments it did not like—usually left-leaning regimes such as Allende’s—but abiding and even aiding governments it did like—generally rightwing regimes such as those in Greece and South Korea. The question is, columnist Tom Wicker declared in the New York Times, whether an administration had “the constitutional authority to order taxpayers’ money spent for clandestine warfare against the legitimate government of a sovereign country.” Daniel Schorr, a reporter who had covered Watergate for CBS, launched his own investigation, which led to a two-part television documentary on Chile, Allende, and the CIA. At a news conference on September 16, President Ford affirmed that CIA activities in Chile had been authorized by the White House; a few days later, he and Kissinger briefed top congressional leaders on Tracks I and II. Congress was not appeased. It subsequently enacted the Hughes-Ryan Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act, stipulating that no funds could be expended on a covert operation unless the president declared it vital to the national security and the activity was vetted in advance before no fewer than eight congressional committees.12

  The day after Ford’s press conference, the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee recommended that perjury charges be brought against Richard Helms for testimony given during his confirmation hearings. The principal piece of evidence in any trial would be Colby’s testimony before the Nedzi Committee, subsequently made public by Harrington, as to the existence of Track II. The ball was in Colby’s court. The issue, he recalled, “was about as welcome on my desk as a cobra, and as hard to handle. . . . Helms was a totally loyal servant of his President and his intelligence profession had manfully tried to keep the secret he had been directed to keep.” But secrecy would not be possible. According to Colby, a “middle-grade officer” in the Agency, reacting to the Schlesinger-Colby directive that all “questionable” matters be reported, observed in a memo to the director that Helms might in fact have committed perjury and recommended an investigation. What Colby did not say in his memoirs was that the press would inevitably compare Colby’s and Helms’s testimonies and demand to know which one of them was lying. Colby’s reputation and that of his Agency were on the line. Here was that question again: Was the CIA solely an instrument of the White House, or was it part of the executive branch and subject to constitutional checks and balances?13

  Implicitly acknowledging that he was a party to the dispute, Colby had the Agency’s inspector general put together a three-person panel to examine the record and submit a finding as to whether Helms had lied before a congressional committee. In the end, the panel could not decide, but advised the DCI that he was legally bound to turn the matter over to the Justice Department. Colby resisted; he recalled a 1954 “agreement” between the CIA and Justice to the effect that the Agency, and the Agency alone, would decide if and when any of its personnel—past or present—would be made available to the attorney general for prosecution. Both agencies had agreed that the overriding interest was national security, the need to cover trails from which intelligence sources and methods might be gleaned. If Colby stonewalled on this, the inspector general’s panel advised, the matter would surely leak to the press, and the CIA would be accused of a cover-up. Reluctantly, Colby made an appointment to see Acting Attorney General Laurence Silberman.

  The DCI began the meeting by bringing up the 1954 arrangement. “Come on, Bill,” Silberman said. “You’re a lawyer. You know better than that. I don’t care what the past arrangements might have been. In this day and age, there’s no way in the world the CIA is going to be given the extralegal privilege of deciding unilaterally which of its employees should be prosecuted and who shouldn’t. . . . So come on now, let’s get down to cases. Who or what are you talking about?” The next day, Colby had the files on Track II and Helms’s testimony delivered to Justice. A year later, while he was ambassador to Iran, Helms pleaded “no contest” to a misdemeanor charge that he had misled Congress.14

  Colby’s decision to turn the Helms matter over to the attorney general split the CIA. Helms’s followers—and they were still legion—viewed Colby’s decision to go to Justice as nothing less than a betrayal of a mentor and colleague, and more important, a betrayal of the culture of secrecy. While the case against Helms was still under internal Agency review, one Directorate of Plans officer had written, “This mongoloid baby should have been strangled in its cradle,” rather than being allowed to grow into “an irresponsible, uncontrolled and uncontrollable monster that threatens the integrity of the clandestine services.” Another, referring to Colby’s Catholicism, urged that the case be filed and forgotten, because it “has turned into a moralistic crusade to expiate our sins and exorcise the Satan from within the CIA corpus by sacrificing an as yet unknown number of officers.” One thing was certain: from that point on, Richard Helms was Colby’s sworn enemy, an enemy with influential friends.15

  On the evening of February 1, 1975, journalist and former CIA officer Tom Braden hosted a dinner party. Among those present were Averell Harriman, Stuart Symington, Robert McNamara, Henry Kissinger, and celebrity journalist Barbara Walters. According to another guest, columnist William Greider, the group had assembled “to cheer up an old friend, a comrade wounded by recent events.” The person in question was Richard Helms, whom Henry Kissinger pronounced an “honorable man.” Kissinger added a few words of rebuke for Colby, who was not there. Greider compared the two DCIs in an article written shortly thereafter: “When old colleagues describe Helms, he emerges as a man of deeper intellect, more flexible, more cynical, quite skilled at crossing the sliding sands of Washington’s bureaucratic struggles. Colby is more obvious, more straightforward and even moralistic, according to friends and non-friends. Helms is the urbanity of the Chevy Chase Club; Colby is the Boy Scouts in Springfield, Va, where he lives.” (Greider was incorrect on that point at least.)16

  Colby later wrote that he had not only had no choice but was proud of what he had done. “I was persuaded [by the i
nspector general’s three-person panel] that I had no right to make a decision on this matter alone or to preempt a ruling by the proper authorities, whether the dangers to intelligence security would prevent prosecution or investigation in the case. And I am glad they did, requiring me to uphold my oath to the Constitution and really demonstrate that a new and American intelligence [community] had been born, not just talked about.” As Colby was to learn, the labor pains had just begun.17

  Meanwhile, the ongoing Colby-Angleton feud had come to a head. A few months after the Yom Kippur War, the DCI had paid a visit to the Middle East. At Kissinger’s request, he had stayed away from East Jerusalem for fear of alienating the Arabs who disputed Israeli claims to the area. Privately, Angleton, who continued to view the Agency’s Middle East Division as pro-Arab, rebuked Colby for giving in to Kissinger.

  In late August 1974, a counterintelligence officer submitted a report to the CIA’s security office in which an Agency informant fingered Angleton himself as a Soviet spy. According to the informant’s story, Golitsin was a Soviet agent who had been dispatched to act as Angleton’s case officer and to question the bona fides of subsequent Soviet defectors. Colby put together a panel under former deputy director Bronson Tweedy to investigate. Tweedy and his colleagues gave the counterintelligence chief a clean bill of health, but to Colby, the episode was just one more proof of the bizarre atmosphere that prevailed in the counterintelligence branch.18

  On the morning of December 17, the DCI summoned Angleton to his office. He was relieving him of his duties both as Israeli liaison and chief of counterintelligence, he said. Colby offered Angleton “separate status” within the Agency, in which he could offer advice and act as a consultant, but without operational or policy control. Angleton protested—there was a “big fight,” he later told a friend. Colby told him to take a couple of days to think about it and dismissed him.19

  The day following his encounter with Angleton, Colby received a call from Seymour Hersh. “I’ve got a story bigger than My Lai,” he told the DCI, adding that he needed to see him. Colby acceded and in the meeting that ensued, the reporter said he had uncovered a “massive effort” by the Agency to spy on the anti–Vietnam War movement, including wiretaps, break-ins, mail intercepts, and surveillances of American citizens. Colby later recalled that he was shocked but not surprised. Indeed, the call on December 18 was just the culmination of a drama that had begun two weeks earlier.

  Hersh had telephoned Colby on December 9 to tell him he was working on a story on past illegal CIA operations within the United States. “I think if I crapped around long enough [on this] I could come up with a half-assed story,” he said. “I understand there is nothing [earth-shaking],” Hersh went on, that they were routine activities that were curtailed. Colby confided to Hersh that he had instructed his officers some months earlier to report any instances of such illegalities or questionable activities: “We sent out a memo to our people saying ‘If you hear anything tell us.’ We got a few blips.” Later that same day, Colby had informed House oversight committee chair Nedzi of the conversation, but Hersh, it seemed, had already called the congressman.20

  A week later, on December 16, former deputy director for operations Tom Karamessines told Colby that he, too, had heard from Hersh, who claimed that he could prove that both Helms and Angleton had engaged in domestic operations in violation of the Fourth Amendment, which guaranteed citizens protection against “unreasonable searches and seizures.” The next day, Deputy Director for Operations William Nelson phoned to tell his boss that Hersh had found out about the “family jewels” and was about to hang Angleton. On the afternoon of the 18th, following the first conversation of the day between Hersh and Colby, Hersh called again and left a phone message for the DCI: “I figure I have about one-tenth of one percent of the story which you and I talked about which is more than enough. . . . I want to write it this weekend. I am willing to trade with you. I will trade you Jim Angleton for fourteen files of my choice. I will be in my office at the Times in 30 minutes.”21 The story linking counterintelligence to Operation MH/Chaos would not only further embarrass the CIA but also lead to Angleton’s ouster. Colby, Hersh reasoned, must have understood that a disgruntled officer, forced out of the CIA in disgrace, would be more dangerous than one kept in-house under watch. This was particularly true of Angleton, who knew everything. From his point of view, Hersh must have seen an advantage in Angleton’s staying on; he could blackmail him over MH/Chaos for more Agency secrets. Apparently, the journalist was unaware that Colby hoped to get rid of Angleton.

  In a conversation with Lucien Nedzi on December 19, Colby learned that Angleton had confirmed the existence of the family jewels to Hersh. “I talked with him [Hersh] a short time ago,” Nedzi said. “Who is Jim Angleton?”

  “He is the head of our counterintelligence,” Colby replied. “He is kind of a legendary character. He has been around for 150 years or so. He is a very spooky guy. His reputation is one of total secrecy and no one knows what he is doing. . . . He is a little bit out of date in terms of seeing Soviets under every bush.”

  “What is he doing talking to Hersh?” Nedzi asked.

  “I didn’t think he was.”

  “Sy showed me notes of what he said and claims he [Angleton] was drunk.”

  “You catch me twelve hours ahead of an unpleasant chore of talking to him about a substantial change of his [Angleton’s] responsibilities.”

  “The problem that occurs to me right now is here is a guy who is trying to expose the Agency, and all of a sudden he gets sacked.”

  “Yes, I think what I’ll do is talk to Hersh[,] . . . but brace myself for whatever he does write and be prepared to answer whatever comes out. Meanwhile, I have to proceed on the Angleton thing anyway. I wanted to do it about six to eight months ago and was dissuaded out of human compassion.”22

  The DCI later wrote that he had feelings of both trust and obligation toward Hersh. The journalist had gotten wind of the Glomar Explorer adventure early on, but after Colby implored him, he had sat on the story. Indeed, he was still sitting on the story. Jack Anderson’s broadcast on the secret mission to raise the Soviet sub, and Hersh’s follow-up article in the Times, would not appear until March 18 and 19, 1975. Colby must have decided that continued secrecy for the as-yet-to-be-revealed Project Azorian trumped confirming Hersh’s impending story about the CIA and domestic spying. The best he could do was to try to get Hersh to put his story in context. “Look, Sy,” Colby said during their December 20 meeting, “what you’re onto here are two very separate and distinct matters that you’ve gotten mixed up and distorted.”There was the effort at the behest of the White House to uncover foreign influence in the antiwar movement, but after none was discovered, the operation was terminated. Mail intercepts and surveillance of American citizens had to do with counterespionage against the Soviet Union. Overzealous agents may have overstepped the bounds of the Agency’s charter, but there had been no further incidents since Schlesinger’s orders of 1973, orders that had been reiterated by Colby after he became DCI.23

  Later that same day, Colby called Angleton to his office and told him that Sy Hersh was going to go public with the Operation MH/Chaos story and that counterintelligence would be singled out. “This story is going to be tough to handle,” the DCI said. “We’ve talked about you leaving before. You will now leave, period.” Colby was not above a little turning of the knife: “I told him that no one in the world would believe his leaving his job was not the result of the article. But both Jim and I would know it was not, which was the important part to me.” Peter Wright, MI-6 liaison with the counterintelligence branch, was waiting for Angleton in the latter’s office. His face tinged with a gray-blue pallor when he returned, Angleton cried, “Peter, I’ve just been fired.”24

  When the story broke, the press rushed to Angleton’s house in North Arlington. Daniel Schorr was first to ring the doorbell. “A groggy-looking man in pajamas opens the door,” Schorr later wrote o
f the encounter. The journalist asked to come in, and Angleton admitted him. “It looks like the home of a somewhat disorderly professor,” Schorr recalled, “books in many languages, memorabilia of Italy and Israel, a worn rug, pictures of wife and two sons. But no preparations for Christmas.” For the next four hours, Angleton rambled on about the fiction of a divided communist camp. Holding up a picture of Yasser Arafat at Lenin’s tomb, the former counterintelligence guru cited it as proof that the Palestinian leader was a KGB colonel. He then related the details of his firing.

  Later that day, dressed in his black overcoat and fedora, Angleton emerged from his house to face the cameras and answer questions. He was so unsteady that he appeared drunk, Schorr wrote, but the journalist thought Angleton was shell-shocked rather than inebriated. Whatever the case, James Jesus Angleton would regain his balance. Bill Colby’s longtime adversary had become a bitter and dangerous enemy.25

  Meanwhile, Colby knew that Hersh was going to publish a major story on the family jewels, but he did not know how extensive it would be. The reporter’s ability to acquire information was uncanny. On December 21, Larry Silberman called the DCI: the acting attorney general recalled that Hersh had told him that Colby was coming to see him, Silberman, about Helms’s possible perjury even before the meeting took place. “I am absolutely staggered that he knew that I was going to see you,” Colby said. “The SOB has sources that are absolutely beyond comparison.” Jenonne Walker, Colby’s assistant, later recalled that Hersh seemed to know more about the Agency’s secrets than she and Colby did.26