by Tim Weiner
“any direction other than their own”: “International Connections of U.S. Peace Groups” and Helms cover letter to the president, November 15, 1967, declassified April 2001, CIA/CREST.
next to no intelligence on the enemy’s intent: On February 16, 1968, Helms met with the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. He said American intelligence on the Tet offensive had failed first and foremost “because of the lack of penetration of the Vietcong.” FRUS, Vol. VI.
“Westmoreland doesn’t know who the enemy is”: “Notes of the President’s Luncheon Meeting with Foreign Policy Advisors,” February 20, 1968, FRUS, Vol. VI. Though some historians and memoirists have given the CIA analyst George Carver great credit for changing LBJ’s mind about the war in the weeks and days before his decision to stand down, the CIA’s leading Vietnam historian, Harold Ford, wrote that the influence of Carver and the CIA “was clearly less than that of many other forces above and beyond the inputs of CIA’s intelligence: the shock of the Tet offensive itself; the sharply rising tide of antiwar sentiment among the Congress and the public; the candid, very grim post-Tet assessments given by JCS Chairman Earle Wheeler, Paul Nitze, and Paul Warnke; and the sudden defections of Clark Clifford and most of the other ‘Wise Men’ who had previously backed Johnson’s war effort. Nonetheless, to these causes of the President’s change of heart must be added the late-March assessments given him by State and CIA officers.”
PART FOUR
Chapter Twenty-eight
he would have created a new organization outside the CIA: Richard M. Nixon, Six Crises (New York: Doubleday, 1962), p. 454. Nixon wrote that he stated his intention to JFK in 1960.
Nixon and Helms met for their first long talk: Recorded in “Notes of Meeting, Johnson City, Texas,” August 10, 1968, 12:25 p.m. FRUS, Vol. VI. Helms met Nixon for the first time in November 1956, when he and Allen Dulles briefed the vice president on the crushed Hungarian revolution. In his posthumous memoir, Helms omits the LBJ Ranch session described here, which was evidently their second face-to-face encounter.
“What do you think about Helms?”: Telephone conversation between President Johnson and President-elect Nixon, November 8, 1968, 9:23 p.m., LBJ Tapes, FRUS, Vol. VII.
“Richard Nixon never trusted anybody”: Helms interview with Stanley I. Kutler, July 14, 1988, Wisconsin Historical Archives, box 15, folder 16, cited with the kind permission of Professor Kutler.
“I haven’t the slightest doubt…that Nixon’s carping affected Kissinger”: Helms quoted in John L. Helgerson, “CIA Briefings of Presidential Candidates,” May 1996, CIA/CSI.
“Both were incurably covert”: Thomas L. Hughes, “Why Kissinger Must Choose Between Nixon and the Country,” The New York Times, December 30, 1973.
“make it very clear to the Director”: Report of the Covert Operations Study Group, December 1, 1968, CIA/CREST. The study dovetailed in part with the final report of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board to LBJ in December 1968. The board called the results of American espionage “inadequate.” It urged “an intensification of efforts to obtain significant intelligence on priority targets through clandestine agent collection operations.” It strongly recommended that the 303 Committee review “all approved covert programs in order to evaluate progress being made, and in appropriate instances, cancel unproductive projects.” FRUS, Vol. X, document 222.
“Dr. Kissinger—Information Request”: The one-paragraph memo turned up in the files of Red White, who in 1969 held the post of deputy director of central intelligence for support—the agency’s chief administrator. Declassified May 15, 2003, CIA/CREST.
“I don’t mean to say that they are lying”: Memo from [deleted] to Helms, June 18, 1969, FRUS, 1969–1972, Vol. II, document 191, declassified December 21, 2006.
“Useless”…“A superficial mindless recitation”: Kissinger to Nixon, “Subject: NIE 11–8–69, ‘Soviet Strategic Attack Forces,’” with covering memo from Helms annotated by Nixon on December 8, 1969, FRUS, 1969–1972, Vol. II, document 198.
“Whose side is the Agency on?”: Helms, A Look over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency (New York: Random House, 2003), pp. 382–388.
Helms always had believed that gadgets were no replacement for spies: Even the best electronic-eavesdropping intercepts were not intelligence. In 1968, the CIA and the NSA had a program code-named Guppy, which intercepted the mobile phone lines of the Russian leadership in Moscow. In September 1968, on the eve of the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the head of the Warsaw Pact telephoned the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev from the Moscow airport. The CIA heard the call. “The problem was they were no fools and spoke in a word code—you know, ‘the moon is red,’ or some silly phrase—and we didn’t have the faintest idea whether that meant the invasion was on or off,” said a State Department intelligence officer, David Fischer. Fischer oral history, FAOH.
the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty talks then under way in Helsinki: The KGB resident in Helsinki and the CIA station chief had agreed that neither side would try to penetrate the other’s delegation. “The consequences of getting caught would certainly outweigh any intelligence that could be collected,” said the State Department’s David Fischer. “As far as I know, both sides honored that agreement. Lord knows there were enough opportunities to entrap some poor American delegate with a buxom Finnish blonde.” Fischer oral history, FAOH.
Soviet strategic nuclear forces: In 1979, the CIA’s Howard Stoertz, Jr., then the national intelligence officer for strategic programs, reported “a series of gross overestimates in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s and a series of gross underestimates in the middle and late 1960’s” in the CIA’s analysis of Soviet strategic forces. Stoertz, Memorandum for Director, National Foreign Assessment Center, declassified July 2006. In March 2001, the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, said, “Every National Intelligence Estimate written on the subject from 1974 to 1986…overestimated the rate at which Moscow would modernize its strategic forces.” Tenet remarks, Conference on CIA’s Analysis of the Soviet Union, Princeton University.
“The President called Henry Kissinger and me into the Oval Office”: Helms, memorandum for the record, “Talk with President Nixon,” March 25, 1970, FRUS, January 1969–October 1970, Vol. XII, document 147, declassified December 19, 2006. In a May 13, 1970, follow-up on proposed covert action against Moscow, Helms laid out a five-point plan:
• Sino-Soviet tensions. The Sino-Soviet border conflict and the worldwide struggle for control of Communist parties make the Soviets highly susceptible [one line of source text not declassified].
• Soviet involvement in the Middle East. Because the Soviet presence in the Middle East entails many volatile factors, there will be opportunities for inducing strain between the Arabs and the Soviets.
• Soviet relations with East Europe. The steady growth of nationalism in East Europe in the face of Soviet military intervention and economic exploitation makes this area a fertile ground for [less than one line of source text not declassified] operations to heighten tensions between the USSR and its vassal states.
• Soviet/Cuban relations. Castro’s well-founded suspicion regarding Soviet maneuvers to dominate political and economic life in Cuba, possibly affecting Castro’s own future leadership, creates a situation that invites [less than one line of source text not declassified] manipulation.
• Soviet domestic dissidence and economic stagnation. By fostering unrest among the Soviet intelligentsia it may be possible to create pressures inducing the Kremlin to curtail its foreign involvements in order to concentrate on critical domestic situations.
“facing the threat of a Communist Party or popular front election victory”: Helms, “Tensions in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe: Challenge and Opportunity,” undated but early April 1970, FRUS, January 1969–1970, Vol. XII, document 149.
Guy Mollet of France: Wells Stabler, who served as chief of the political section at the American e
mbassy in Paris from 1960 to 1965, said, “Guy Mollet [and other French leaders of the Fourth Republic] had what you might call a fiduciary relationship with the United States and they indeed received some financial support from the US government. I would go to visit Guy Mollet and we would have a nice chat. The telephone would then ring and he would look up and smile at me and say, ‘Well, one of your colleagues is here to see me.’ We would have this revolving door act between myself and someone of the CIA station in Paris…. I found it quite frankly a rather embarrassing situation.” Stabler oral history, FAOH
at least $65 million: The program begun in 1948, as detailed in Chapter 3, had cost at least $65 million, according to a 1976 report by the newly formed House Intelligence Committee. The minutes for the 303 Committee meeting of June 25, 1965, state: “The Italian proposal was generally viewed as a ‘necessary evil’ and approved with the following proviso: Mr.[McGeorge] Bundy, deploring the chronic failure of the Italian democratic political parties to utilize their own bootstraps, used the term ‘annual shame.’”
On August 4, 1965, Bundy sent the following memo to President Johnson: “Over the years the U.S. has assisted the democratic Italian political parties and trade unions at a very high rate. Over the period 1955–1965, the total amount of assistance is just under [deleted]. In recent years we have been cutting this assistance back, primarily because the professionals closely related to the operation have concluded that we have not been getting our full money’s worth and what the Italian political parties need is not so much U.S. money as energetic administrative leadership. President Kennedy had a personal feeling that political subsidies at this level were excessive…. Meanwhile, by separate and somewhat unusual channels,[deleted] have let us know that they would like a lot more money…. It remains true that the anti-Communist battle in Italy is one of politics and resources; but simple handouts and intelligently applied resources are two entirely different things.” The 303 Committee minutes and the Bundy memo are in FRUS, Vol. XII, declassified April 2001.
“financial resources, political resources, friends, the ability to blackmail”: Fina oral history, FAOH.
“that cold-eyed fellow”: Robert Barbour oral history, FAOH. Barbour’s predecessor, Samuel Gammon, said, “Graham would pull the wings off flies with relish if it were necessary as a power operation.” These were men who admired Martin.
shadowy and strange: Michael E. C. Ely oral history, FAOH. 299 “slippery as a cold basket of eels”: Ambassador James Cowles Hart Bon bright oral history, FAOH.
Martin had converted Marshall Plan funds: Benson E. L. Timmons, III, oral history, HSTL. Timmons was a deputy chief of the Marshall Plan mission in Paris.
“I have great personal confidence in Graham Martin”: Nixon to Kissinger, February 14, 1969, FRUS, Vol. II, document 298.
Talenti went to see: According to Richard Gardner, the American ambassador to Italy from 1977 to 1981; Gardner remarks, Carnegie Council, January 19, 2006. See also Gardner’s memoir, Mission Italy: On the Front Lines of the Cold War (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005). In 1981, Talenti joined the Reagan White House staff as an unpaid political adviser. He became part of a now-forgotten influence-peddling case known as the Wedtech scandal, which eventually led to the resignation of the attorney general of the United States, Ed Meese.
“he was just the man”: Wells Stabler oral history, FAOH, and interview with author.
Nixon and Kissinger focused the CIA: Selected 303 Committee minutes covering the first eighteen months of the Nixon administration were declassified in April 2006. The CIA’s covert support for Thieu’s National Alliance for Social Revolution began in September 1968, when the 303 Committee authorized the first allotment of $725,000 in cash. Half of that sum was handed to Thieu in increments from September 1968 to March 1969. Records cited: Memorandum for the 303 Committee, August 29, 1968, FRUS, January–August 1968, Vol. VI; Kissinger to Nixon, “Covert Support for the Lien Minh (National Alliance for Social Revolution),” March 27, 1969; Kissinger to Nixon; “Operations Against Barracks and Storage Facilities in Dien Bien Phu in North Vietnam,” July 18, 1969; Kissinger to Nixon, “Operations to Undermine Enemy Morale in Vietnam,” December 9, 1969; memorandum for the 303 Committee, December 11, 1969; and “Minutes of the Meeting of the 303 Committee, 23 December 1969,” in FRUS, January 1969–July 1970, Vol. VI, documents 47, 98, 156, 157, and 165.
“the President wondered”: Memorandum for the record, “Subject: Discussion with the President on Tibet,” February 4, 1960, CIA/CREST.
the agency requested $2.5 million more to support Tibet’s insurgents: FRUS, Vol. XVII, 1969–1976, documents 273–280, citing 303 Committee meeting of September 30, 1969, and 40 Committee meeting of March 31, 1971. (The 303 Committee was renamed the 40 Committee in February 1970.)
“The CIA had no hand in it?”: Kissinger-Chou memorandum of conversation, FRUS, Vol. XVII, 1969–1976, document 162, declassified September 2006
The CIA was out of business in China for years to come: Not entirely. A year after Nixon went to China, the CIA’s Jim Lilley—born in China, twenty years an American spy in Asia—proposed that he join the soon-to-open United States Liaison Office in Beijing. It was to be the first American diplomatic mission since Mao took power close to a quarter century before.
Lilley got the go-ahead, and he served two years as the first station chief in Beijing, latterly under George H. W. Bush. This was prior to Bush’s becoming director of central intelligence in 1976. Lilley’s status as a CIA officer was openly declared to the Chinese communist government, and it was accepted on one condition: no spying. Lilley could recruit no espionage agents and run no covert operations—or else.
Lilley filed away a coded list of future targets of opportunity for the day that the CIA might open a real station in Beijing. But he was stymied until Bush arrived. The gregarious crypto-diplomat took Lilley under his wing, brought him to receptions to meet top Chinese officials, and introduced him to the rest of the diplomatic corps. Bush said: “I want you to be part of my job,” Lilley recalled. “I want to work with you and make you part of the team.” Lilley thus made friends with the future leaders of the United States and China. Bush and Lilley latched on to Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping, who would emerge as the head of the regime that took power after Mao’s death. (Deng used to say it doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice. He would have made a good station chief.) Deng, Bush, and Lilley started working together. The new friends agreed in principle to collect military, strategic, and technological intelligence against the Soviet Union when the time was ripe. Bush and Lilley returned to China as private citizens and convinced Deng to open up China to American oil companies. The intelligence deal was consummated in full in 1989, after President Bush made Jim Lilley the American ambassador to China.
The CIA’s bagman was Pote Sarasin: The Lotus records, declassified in December 2006, are in FRUS, Vol. XX, documents 2, 120, and 129. Document 2—memorandum of conversation, “Subject: Lotus,” Bangkok, January 16, 1969—sets the scene.
“democracy doesn’t work” and “There should be no change”: FRUS, Vol. XX, documents 142 and 143 (Ambassador Len Unger’s report on the coup and Kissinger’s analysis of the coup for Nixon, November 17, 1971).
“Get the CIA jerks”: Transcript of telephone conversation between President Nixon and Henry Kissinger, April 17, 1970, FRUS, Vol. VI, January 1969–July 1970.
“Get the money to Lon Nol”: Nixon to Kissinger, April 20, 1970, FRUS, Vol. VI, January 1969–July 1970.
“CIA had described the flow of materials through Sihanoukville”: “Record of President’s Meeting with the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board,” July 18, 1970, FRUS, January 1969–July 1970, Vol. VI, declassified April 2006.
“$6 billion per year on intelligence”: Ibid.
“people lying to him about intelligence”: “Record of President’s Meeting with the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board,” July 18, 1970, FRUS, 1969–1972, Vol. II
, declassified December 2006. Here we see an example of the futility of official secrecy. The record was declassified twice in two different ways. The first revealed the intelligence budget as of 1970—$6 billion. The second concealed it on the grounds of national security—but reveals more of Nixon’s critique than the first. The author applauds the inconsistency of government censors in this instance.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Few Latin American nations paid more than lip service to the ideals of democracy: One was Costa Rica, whose democracy was established in 1949 by José Figueres Ferrer, known as “Don Pepe.” He had just been re-elected president for the third time in 1970. He was married to an American, he spoke excellent English, and on occasion over the years he had accepted money from the CIA, a fact he freely acknowledged later in his life.
“I was conspiring against the Latin American dictatorships and wanted help from the United States,” he told The New York Times. “I was a good friend of Allen Dulles.” The agency thought it had bought Figueres. It had only rented him.
In early 1970, the American ambassador was a career diplomat named Clarence Boonstra and the newly arriving CIA station chief was a hard-drinking, sixty-year-old Cuba hand named Earl Williamson. “Earl had worked with me in Cuba years before,” Ambassador Boonstra said in an oral history. “When he was proposed as station chief, I had objected unless Williamson would work under my orders and would not do what he was noted for, disrupting things with unnecessary covert action—monkey business.” Then Nixon nominated a new ambassador, Walter Ploeser, a defeated Republican congressman and a major political fund-raiser. Suddenly the red threat loomed. “For some time Costa Rica had been planning to permit the Soviet Union to establish an embassy,” Ambassador Boonstra said. “That’s what Costa Rica stood for, democracy and openness to everyone.”
The new envoy and his station chief were under the misimpression that there was “a great communist scheme establishing Costa Rica as a central point for subversion in the hemisphere,” Ambassador Boonstra said. “And they began all types of actions, carrying on a crusade.” They worked to subvert the newly reinstalled president of Costa Rica, but they failed miserably. The station chief, deep into a drinking bout with his Costa Rican friends, proclaimed that Don Pepe’s days in power were dwindling. Word got back to the president quickly. He publicly denounced a plot to overthrow him, publicly identified the CIA station chief, publicly declared him persona non grata, and very publicly expelled him from the country.