Legacy of Ashes (The History of the C.I.A.)

by Tim Weiner

  “He is a professional liar”: “Background on J.I.S. and Japanese Military Personalities,” September 10, 1953, National Archives, Record Group 263, CIA Name File, box 7, folder: Kodama, Yoshio.

  “Strange, isn’t it?”: Dan Kurzman, Kishi and Japan: The Search for the Sun (New York: Obolensky, 1960), p. 256.

  “It was clear that he wanted at least the tacit backing of the United States government”: Hutchinson oral history, FAOH.

  “if Japan went Communist”: MacArthur interview with author.

  Kaya became a recruited agent: The records of Kaya’s relationship with the CIA are in the National Archives, Record Group 263, CIA Name File, box 6, folder: Kaya, Okinori.

  “we ran it in a different way”: Feldman interview with author.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “He would heft them and decide”: Lehman oral history interview, “Mr. Current Intelligence,” Studies in Intelligence, Summer 2000, CIA/CSI.

  NSC 5412/2: “Directive on Covert Operations,” December 28, 1955, DDEL.

  The division was dysfunctional: “Inspector General’s Survey of the Soviet Russia Division, June 1956,” declassified March 23, 2004, CIA/CREST.

  “‘indict the whole Soviet system’”: Ray Cline oral history, March 21, 1983, LBJL.

  His interference created a split signal at Radio Free Europe: The radios’ director, OSS veteran Bob Lang, complained about “the intrusion in each and every element of our affairs” by Wisner and his lieutenants. The CIA’s Cord Meyer, the division chief in charge of Radio Free Europe, said he felt “pressure to distort the purpose of the radios.”

  Vice President Nixon argued: NSC minutes, July 12, 1956, DDEL; NSC 5608/1, “U.S. Policy Toward the Soviet Satellites in East Europe,” July 18, 1956, DDEL. Under the auspices of the Free Europe program, the CIA already had floated 300,000 balloons containing 300 million leaflets, posters, and pamphlets from West Germany into Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. The balloons carried an implicit message: the Americans could cross the iron curtain with more than tin medals and radio waves.

  “CIA represented great power”: Ray Cline, Secrets, Spies, and Scholars, Blueprint of the Essential CIA (Washington, DC: Acropolis, 1976), pp. 164–170.

  “dead wrong”: NSC minutes, October 4, 1956, DDEL.

  Dulles assured Eisenhower: Memorandum of conference among Eisenhower, Allen Dulles, and acting secretary of state Herbert Hoover, Jr., July 27, 1956, DDEL; Eisenhower diary, October 26, 1956, Presidential Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, document 1921; Dillon oral history, FAOH; deputies’ meeting notes from October, November, and December 1956, CIA/CREST.

  “wishful blindness”: The state of Wisner’s operations in Hungary is described in two clandestine service histories: The Hungarian Revolution and Planning for the Future: 23 October–4 November 1956, Vol. 1, January 1958, CIA; and Hungary, Volume I [deleted] and Volume II: External Operations, 1946–1965, May 1972, CIA History Staff, all declassified with deletions in 2005.

  “Freedom or Death!”: Transcripts of Radio Free Europe programs, October 28, 1956, in Csasa Bekes, Malcolm Byrne, and Janos M. Rainer (eds.), The 1956 Hungarian Revolution: A History in Documents (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2002), pp. 286–289.

  “terrible mistakes and crimes of these past ten years”: “Radio Message from Imre Nagy, October 28, 1956,” in Bekes, Byrne, and Rainer, The 1956 Hungarian Revolution, pp. 284–285.

  Few knew that Wisner had more than one frequency to fight with. In Frankfurt, the Solidarists, the neofascist Russians who had worked for the CIA since 1949, began broadcasts into Hungary saying an army of exile warriors was heading for the border. They sent their message in the name of Andras Zako, who had served as a general in the fascist wartime Hungarian government and ran an Iron Cross outfit called the League of Hungarian Veterans. “Zako was the very model of an intelligence entrepreneur,” Richard Helms noted. He had sold millions of dollars’ worth of fabricated intelligence to every major American military and intelligence service from 1946 to 1952. The general had earned the rare distinction of a “burn notice,” a worldwide CIA order barring him from doing business with the agency.

  Reflecting on the CIA’s decision to amplify and beam back the low-wattage broadcasts of Hungarian partisans—using its own frequencies to broadcast their pleas for violent struggle against the Soviets—John Richardson, Jr., the president of Radio Free Europe, said: “The freedom fighters would be telling the folks whatever they wanted to tell them and whatever they’d believe. Then RFE would pick that up and rebroadcast it. That was, I think, the single most serious mistake that was made.” Richardson oral history. FAOH.

  “What had occurred there was a miracle”: NSC minutes, November 1, 1956, DDEL.

  “the promise that help would come”: William Griffith, Radio Free Europe, “Policy Review of Voice for Free Hungary Programming” (December 5, 1956), in Bekes, Byrne, and Rainer, The 1956 Hungarian Revolution, pp. 464–484. This document constitutes an official acknowledgment of a fact long denied by the CIA: that RFE implied or stated to its Hungarian listeners that help was on the way. RFE’s Hungarian desk was purged after Griffith’s detailed but self-absolving report. Two years later, its voice had changed. It inaugurated a hugely popular and truly subversive program that captured the popular imagination: a rock ’n’ roll show called Teenager Party. See also Arch Puddington, Broadcasting Freedom: The Cold War Triumph of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000), pp. 95–104; and George R. Urban, Radio Free Liberty and the Pursuit of Democracy: My War Within the Cold War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), pp. 211–247.

  “headquarters was caught up in the fever of the times”: Peer de Silva, Sub Rosa: The CIA and the Uses of Intelligence (New York: Times Books, 1978), p. 128.

  a fresh but false report from Allen Dulles that the Soviets were ready to send 250,000 troops to Egypt: Eisenhower diary, November 7, 1956, DDEL.

  “near a nervous breakdown”: William Colby, Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), pp. 134–135.

  “revved up”: John H. Richardson, My Father the Spy: A Family History of the CIA, the Cold War and the Sixties (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), p. 126.

  “We are well-equipped”: Director’s meeting, December 14, 1956, CIA/CREST.

  Bruce’s personal journals: Bruce’s journals are at the University of Virginia. They show that as the American ambassador in Paris, Bruce had heard through the grapevine in June 1950—on a day he lunched with Allen Dulles—about “the horrible possibility” that he might be asked to become director of central intelligence. Walter Bedell Smith took the job instead.

  His top secret report: Though the report from the president’s board of intelligence consultants has become known as the “Bruce-Lovett report,” its style clearly shows that David Bruce wrote it. The investigation team was Bruce; former secretary of defense Robert Lovett; and a former deputy chief of naval operations, retired admiral Richard L. Conolly. Until recently, the only evidence of the existence of the report was a set of notes taken by the historian Arthur Schlesinger from a document now said to have disappeared from the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library. The declassified version of the document—long excerpts from a collection of Eisenhower-era intelligence reports compiled for the Kennedy White House after the Bay of Pigs—appears here for the first time in book form, with abbreviations spelled out for clarity, typographical errors corrected, and the CIA’s deletions noted.

  The conception, planning and, even on occasion the approval itself [deleted] of covert operations, enormously significant to our military and foreign policies, is becoming more and more exclusively the business of the CIA—underwritten heavily by unvouchered CIA funds. (This is only the inevitable result of the structure, system and personalities concerned with the initiation and conduct of such operations.) The CIA, busy, monied and privileged, likes its “King-making” responsibility (the intrigue is fascinating—considera
ble self-satisfaction, sometimes with applause, derives from successes—no charge is made for “failures”—and the whole business is very much simpler than collecting covert intelligence on the USSR through the usual CIA methods!).

  Although these extremely sensitive, costly operations are justifiable only insofar as they are in support of U.S. military and foreign policies, the responsible long-range planning and sustained guidance for these, which should be forthcoming from both the Defense and State Departments, appear too often to be lacking. There are always, of course, on record the twin, well-worn purposes of “frustrating the Soviets” and keeping others “pro-western” oriented. Under these almost any psychological warfare and paramilitary action can be and is being justified [deleted].

  Initiative, and continuing impetus for psychological warfare and paramilitary operations, for the most part, reside in CIA. And, once having been conceived, the final approval given to any project (at informal meetings of the Operations Coordinating Board inner group) can, at best, be described as pro forma.

  Upon approval, projects in most instances pass to the management of the CIA and remain there to conclusion. Since these operations are so inextricably interwoven with (and, on occasion, dictate the course of) our other foreign policy operations, it would appear they should have not only the prior approval of the National Security Council (rather than OCB) itself, but also the continuous surveillance of that body.

  As a matter of fact, in most instances, approval of any new project would appear to comprise simply the endorsement of a Director of Central Intelligence proposal, usually without demurrer, from individuals preoccupied with other important matters of their own. Of course there is a preliminary (CIA proprietary) staffing of each project and an eventual (after the fact) reporting of its results to the NSC—but even after this report is rendered orally by the Director of Central Intelligence on an “off the record”—and on a naturally understandable, biased basis.

  Psychological warfare and paramilitary operations themselves, at any one time, whether through personal arrangement between the Secretary of State and the DCI (deciding between them on any one occasion to use what they regard as the best “assets” available) or undertaken at the personal discretion of the DCI, frequently and in direct and continuing dealings between CIA representatives and the heads of foreign states [deleted]. Oftentimes such dealings are in reality only the continuation of relationships established at a time when the foreign personalities involved may have been “the opposition.” (It is somewhat difficult to understand why anyone less than the Senior U.S. Representative [i.e., the Ambassador] in any country should deal directly with its Head in any matter which involves the official relationships of the two countries.) One obvious, inevitable result of this is to divide U.S. foreign policy resources and to incline the foreigner—often the former “opposition” now come into power (and who knows with whom he is dealing)—to play one U.S. agency against the other or to use whichever suits his current purpose [deleted].

  A corollary to this is the exclusion of responsible American officials from knowledge they should have to properly discharge their obligation. (It has been reported by people in its intelligence area that there is great concern throughout the State Department over the impacts of CIA psychological warfare and paramilitary activities on our foreign relations. The State Department people feel that perhaps the greatest contribution this board could make would be to bring to the attention of the President the significant, almost unilateral influences that CIA psychological warfare and paramilitary activities have on the actual formation of our foreign policies and our relationships with our “friends.”)

  CIA support and its maneuvering of local news media, labor groups, political figures and parties and other activities which can have, at any one time, the most significant impacts on the responsibilities of the local Ambassador are sometimes completely unknown to or only hazily recognized by him…. Too often differences of opinion regarding the U.S. attitude toward local figures or organizations develop, especially as between the CIA and the State Department…. (At times, the Secretary of State–DCI brother relationship may arbitrarily set “the U.S. position.”)

  …CIA is in propaganda programs [five lines deleted, probably dealing with the agency’s financing of dozens of magazines, journals, publishing houses, and the Congress of Cultural Freedom] which are difficult to identify as part of the responsibilities assigned to it by Congress and the National Security Council….

  The military expects that it will be responsible for the conduct of unconventional warfare (and there is difference of opinion here as to the extent of that responsibility); it is not quite sure who will be responsible for other psychological warfare and paramilitary operations in time of war—or how (or when) the responsibilities for them will be distributed.

  Psychological warfare and paramilitary operations (often growing out of the increased mingling in the internal affairs of other nations of bright, highly graded young men who must be doing something all the time to justify their reason for being) today are being conducted on a world-wide basis by a horde of CIA representatives [deleted] many of whom, by the very nature of the personnel situation [deleted] are politically immature. (Out of their “dealings” with shifty, changing characters their applications of “themes” suggested from headquarters or developed by them in the field—sometimes at the suggestion of local opportunists—strange things are apt to, and do, develop.)

  Fortunately in some instances, unfortunately in others, the results of many of these operations are comparatively short-lived [seven lines deleted]. If exposed these operations couldn’t possibly be “plausibly denied”—indeed it would seem to be utterly naïve for anyone to think that the American hand in these operations is not only well known to both local country and Communist Party officials, but to many others (including the press)—and in derogation of the specific caveat contained in NSC [orders that the American role in covert operations remain unseen].

  Should not someone, somewhere in an authoritative position in our government, on a continuing basis, be counting the immediate costs of disappointments (Jordan, Syria, Egypt, et al.), calculating the impacts on our international position, and keeping in mind the long-range wisdom of activities which have entailed the virtual abandonment of the international “golden rule,” and which, if successful to the degree claimed for them, are responsible, in a great measure, for stirring up the turmoil and raising the doubts about us that exist in many countries of the world today? What of the effects on our present alliances? Where will we be tomorrow?

  We are sure that the supporters of the 1948 decision to launch this government on a positive psychological warfare and paramilitary program could not possibly have foreseen the ramifications of the operations which have resulted from it. No one, other than those in the CIA immediately concerned with their day to day operation, have any detailed knowledge of what is going on. With the world situation in the state it is today now would appear to be the time to engage in a reappraisal and realistic adjustment of that program with perhaps some accompanying “unentanglement” of our involvement, and a more rational application of our activities than is now apparent.

  “a strange kind of genius”: Ann Whitman memo, October 19, 1954, DDEL.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “If you go and live with these Arabs”: NSC minutes, June 18, 1959, DDEL.

  “a target legally authorized by statute for CIA political action”: Archie Roosevelt, For Lust of Knowing: Memoirs of an Intelligence Officer (Boston: Little, Brown, 1988), pp. 444–448.

  few CIA officers spoke the language: “Inspector General’s Survey of the CIA Training Program,” June 1960, declassified May 1, 2002, CIA/CREST; Matthew Baird, CIA Director of Training, “Subject: Foreign Language Development Program,” November 8, 1956, declassified August 1, 2001, CIA/CREST.

  “the ‘holy war’ aspect” and “a secret task force”: Goodpaster memorandum of conference with the president, September 7, 19
57, DDEL. Eisenhower’s hopes for military action to protect Islam against militant atheism and his meetings with Rountree to orchestrate secret American military aid to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon were recorded by his staff secretary, General Andrew J. Goodpaster, in memos dated August 23 and August 28, 1957, DDEL.

  “These four mongrels”: Symmes oral history, FAOH.

  Frank Wisner’s proposal: Frank G. Wisner, memorandum for the record, “Subject: Resume of OCB Luncheon Meeting,” June 12, 1957, CIA/CREST. The memo says that “Wisner pushed need for across-the-board assistance to Jordan,” in addition to CIA support. “The Agency is strongly in favor of getting Saudi Arabia and Iraq to put up as much as they can.”

  “Let’s put it this way”: Symmes oral history, FAOH.

  “a likeable rogue”: Miles Copeland, The Game Player (London: Aurum, 1989), pp. 74–93.

  “ripe for a military coup d’etat”: Dulles in NSC minutes, March 3, 1955. The best account of the CIA’s work in the region is Douglas Little, “Mission Impossible: The CIA and the Cult of Covert Action in the Middle East,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 28, No. 5, November 2004. Little’s essay is a tour de force based on primary documents. Copeland’s memoirs are strong on atmosphere but untrustworthy on telling details unless independently confirmed by scholarship like Little’s.