A Look Over My Shoulder

by Richard Helms

  In the Agency corridors the speculation that Mr. Dulles would be asked to resign was temporarily stilled when, within three days of the surrender at the Bay of Pigs, President Kennedy appointed General Maxwell Taylor, who had retired in 1959 as Army chief of staff, to head a presidential inquiry on what had gone wrong in the ZAPATA effort. Assisting General Taylor were Robert Kennedy, the attorney general; Admiral Arleigh Burke, chief of naval operations; and Allen Dulles, DCI. At this time, Dulles instructed Lyman B. Kirkpatrick, then CIA inspector general, to conduct an in-house CIA study of the failed operation.

  Before the invasion, Robert Kennedy was known to have expressed doubt that Operation ZAPATA could succeed. By the time Castro had rounded up the surviving Brigadistas, young Kennedy was making no effort to conceal his determination to find those whose bad judgment had so harmed his brother. At the Agency, the impression was that Robert Kennedy, whom none of us knew well enough to judge, would serve as his brother’s vengeful hatchet man. In that depressed atmosphere, it was easy to imagine the probable result—an upending of the Agency, with the espionage and intelligence production elements blistered in the heat generated by the failed covert action.

  When he joined the investigation, Robert Kennedy’s criticisms were loud and persistent. Whether it was the result of General Taylor’s perceptive and levelheaded approach, the influence of Admiral Burke and Allen Dulles, or his own findings, Kennedy was to develop a more balanced view of the Agency than he had in the days after the collapse of the ZAPATA operation. In the weeks that followed, we were relieved to learn that he was a quick study. The two months of back-to-back interviews and briefings with the committee left Kennedy with an abiding interest in covert action and a measure of respect for the Agency. He remembered AJAX, which restored the Shah to the Peacock Throne, and PBSUCCESS, which rid Guatemala of Jacobo Arbenz, and had time to reflect on the assistance provided to the Tibetan guerrillas. That operation had only a slight positive effect, but it had, he discovered, remained secret.

  As we got to know one another, I incidentally learned that Robert Kennedy preferred to be called “Bob” rather than “Bobby,” a name he reserved for family use.

  One odd aspect of the painful incident was the trouble General Taylor’s committee had in finding a name for itself. First it was General Taylor’s Board of Inquiry on Cuban Operations Conducted by CIA. Soon after, it designated itself The Green Study Group. In the end, it became known as the Paramilitary Study Group, a term that, as the investigation progressed, came to make good sense.

  General Taylor’s instructions were to “study our governmental practices and programs in the area of military and paramilitary, guerrilla and anti-guerrilla activity which fell short of outright war with a view to strengthening our work in this area … and to direct special attention to the lessons which can be learned from the recent events in Cuba.” The study that resulted was broader in scope and more balanced than Kirkpatrick’s inspector general report, which concerned only the Agency’s role in the operation.

  The Taylor investigation proceeded with something akin—at least in a bureaucracy—to the speed of light. The group’s first gathering occurred on the Saturday the President told General Taylor that he was to lead the inquiry, four hours later. The second assembly occupied all of the following Monday, with some twenty sessions following hard on the heels of these initial meetings. General Taylor’s conclusions made it clear that there was more than enough blame to go around—the Agency, the Department of Defense, the Department of State, and the White House staffs all came in for a share. In reading the report, I confirmed my conviction that ZAPATA was such a complex venture that by the time it had developed its own fatal momentum, the breakdown of almost any element in the plan might have doomed the entire effort. Despite General Bedell Smith’s salty recommendation that the covert action “bucket of slops” be provided its own cover and separated from the espionage and intelligence production elements of the Agency, no such action was seriously considered.

  Because I had nothing to do with the planning or execution of ZAPATA, there is little I can add to the data and existing analysis of the undertaking. I do, however, have some views on covert action operations. Allen Dulles and those who conceived Operation ZAPATA can be given credit for maintaining a semblance of secrecy while recruiting, training, arming, and convoying a paramilitary force of more than a thousand exiles to the Cuban coast. This was an achievement, but scarcely a blueprint for future activity. Today, there is little reason to assume that even these preliminary operational steps could be realized without risking a crippling media reaction.

  Covert action has been referred to as the “third choice”—an activity more aggressive than conventional diplomatic maneuvering and less drastic than military intervention. This is true, and the best possible reason for our government to retain a covert action capability. In seeking to maintain such a means, we must realize that today’s world is far too sophisticated to permit covert action to be wielded about like an allpurpose political chain saw. At its best, covert action should be used like a well-honed scalpel, infrequently, and with discretion lest the blade lose its edge.

  “Plausible denial” has become an outmoded concept and is likely to remain so. From the outset in 1947, at the direction of the President, CIA had briefed selected members of congressional oversight committees on Agency activities. The arrangements were ad hoc as specified by each President. This never sat well with the Congress at large, and many members continued to insist that Congress be kept informed in a “timely fashion” of the start of any covert action operation. In 1974, Congress passed the Hughes-Ryan amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act, requiring CIA to inform eight (now two) separate congressional committees in advance of any CIA operation other than intelligence collection.

  The new rule states: “The President may not authorize the conduct of a covert action … unless the President determines such an action is necessary to support identifiable foreign policy objectives of the United States and is important to the national security of the United States, which determination shall be set forth in a finding.” Freely translated, this means that the President must sign and present to the intelligence oversight committees of Congress a document known as a presidential finding. In addition to describing each planned covert action operation in detail, each finding is to include a certification that the President has determined that the operation was necessary. At this point, “plausible denial” went straight out the window. Today, only the boldest chief executive would deny knowledge of a document which he has signed and presented to both houses of Congress.

  In the secret operations canon it is axiomatic that the probability of leaks escalates exponentially each time a classified document is exposed to another person—be it an Agency employee, a member of Congress, a senior official, a typist, or a file clerk. Effective compartmentation is fundamental to all secret activity. These days, the daily press and the electronic media have contacts in the executive branch and in Congress to a degree never imagined in 1961. The potential for leaks—deliberate or accidental—is vast.

  Compare these conditions with a quotation from a paper Allen Dulles wrote but never published. Dulles was a firm advocate of covert action and at one time actually believed covert action to be the prime function of CIA. The following is quoted from Dick Bissell’s memoirs:

  Allen Dulles wrote a paper on the Bay of Pigs, never published, that is very revealing. There is one particular sentence that he reworks over and over in draft form: “Great actions require great determination. In these difficult types of operations, so many of which I have been associated with over the years, one never succeeds unless there is a determination to succeed, a willingness to risk some unpleasant political repercussions, and a willingness to provide the basic military necessities. At the decisive moment of the Bay of Pigs operation, all three of these were lacking.”*

  —

  Sometime after Dulles retired, it was suggested that Lyman Ki
rkpatrick had given an erroneous impression as to the extent CIA was responsible for the failure of the ZAPATA operation. Kirkpatrick responded with a memorandum dated December 1, 1961, saying that he thought the failure of the operation should be charged in order of importance to the following factors:

  a) An overall lack of recognition on the part of the U.S. Government as to the magnitude of the operation required to overthrow the Fidel Castro regime.

  b) The failure on the part of the U.S. Government to plan for all contingencies at the time of the Cuban operation including the necessity for using regular U.S. military forces in the event that the exiled Cubans could not do the job themselves.

  c) The failure on the part of the U.S. Government to be willing to commit to the Cuban operation as planned and executed those necessary resources required for its success.

  Kirkpatrick’s references are to President Kennedy’s cancellation of air cover at the critical moment, the unwillingness to use U.S. Navy support for the landing, and other controversial possibilities of help from governmental entities other than CIA.

  I would add to these considerations a factor which has never received much attention. The plan for the Bay of Pigs operation originated in the Eisenhower administration, and had built into it President Eisenhower’s concept of its needs and possibilities and plans. By the time the Cuban exile troops were trained and ready to fight, a new administration had taken over. I recall running into Dick Bissell and McGeorge Bundy in the corridor adjoining our former offices alongside the Reflecting Pool at the Lincoln Memorial. I sensed an almost conspiratorial air in their head-to-head conversation. It was my guess at the time, which has subsequently proved to be correct, that Dick was “selling” the new special assistant to the President for national security affairs on the operation to unseat Castro and change the nature of the Cuban government.

  There were several discussions at the director’s morning staff meetings in which Dulles expressed his concern that the new Kennedy team be thoroughly briefed on all CIA components. But here lay a problem. In briefing Bundy, the President, and others on ZAPATA, Dulles’s and Bissell’s emphasis was obviously placed on the prospect for success, with little attention paid to what might be seen as the weaknesses of the plan. To be specific, did President Kennedy understand from the beginning that air cover would be essential at the time of the landings, and that a lack of this cover might likely doom the entire enterprise? I doubt that this was ever stressed. At the critical moment it was President Kennedy who, with the prodding of Dean Rusk, the new secretary of state, canceled the essential air cover.

  In the early weeks of any new administration extra care must be observed in any new foreign affairs undertakings, and even in modifications of existing programs. In their haste to rid Washington of the old and to substitute a shiny new penny, the transition teams tend to concentrate on personnel appointments and new organizational concepts. This is particularly true in the “black world” of clandestine operations and secret weapons developments. The new players have much to learn about how things in this strange new universe actually work. It is also important to remember that the new team is invariably less than a “team.” The key members have not had time to work together, to get to know one another, or to uncover the shortcuts that facilitate interoffice communication. This is a distinct liability, particularly in a crisis situation.

  The fact that plausible denial is an outmoded concept does not necessarily mean that all forms of covert action have gone by the board. U.S. support for the Afghan guerrillas during the Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan was undoubtedly an important factor in the eventual withdrawal of the Soviet troops. The sentient world knew that the United States was providing essential weapons and other support. Nevertheless the means by which this was done were regarded as sufficiently cloaked to keep the Soviets from raising hob in the United Nations or seeking other revenge on Washington.

  There is an aspect of covert political action that touches on the newly modish “law of unintended consequences.” Some observers consider Operation AJAX to have been an Agency mistake. Had Mossadegh remained in office, they reason, he might have created an Iranian political system which would have headed off the revolution against the monarchy without bringing about the oppressive rule of the mullahs. PBSUCCESS is now thought by some to have fathered a Guatemalan regime which produced years of military brutality.

  However one may evaluate these speculations, it must be remembered that the Agency’s role in Operation AJAX, as directed by the President, was to depose Mossadegh. The order to oust the Arbenz government also came from the White House. After any such successful operation, the continuing responsibility for establishing and nurturing a sound new government is not, and should never be, the ongoing task of an intelligence agency. This sort of nation building is the proper province of the State Department and other governmental and aid agencies. In some situations, the Department of Defense must lend a hand. Insofar as there is any continuing role for the Agency, it would best be to support the various overt activities by helping to keep inimical local or hostile foreign political elements from penetrating or taking over the new government, and to lend a hand in any ancillary operations which would support the basic mission.

  General Taylor completed his 154-page report on the ZAPATA operation in June 1961, almost exactly two months after the surrender at the Bay of Pigs, and three months before Kirkpatrick had finished the inspector general’s report.

  —

  To the best of my knowledge, the term “Special Group” came into use with the advent of the Eisenhower administration. The origin of the term, and the reasons to affix the Special Group to the Office of the National Security Advisor as a subcommittee, can be left to historians. The important fact is that the root purpose of the Special Group as it was initially conceived was to provide authorization for every significant CIA covert action operation as specified by the National Security Directive 5412/2.

  An important secondary purpose of the Special Group was to establish a screen, protecting the President from having to assume personal responsibility for every risky covert action operation. In the event a secret undertaking were to go wrong, it would thus be possible for the President “plausibly to deny” any knowledge of the infamous activity that had been approved by his overzealous administration. (The likelihood that as soon as the Special Group approved a given operation, the national security advisor would have scuttled into the Executive Mansion to brief the boss would remain one of the administration’s secrets.) Unfortunately, even this minimal cover was to be whisked away when Congress won the right to insist that the President sign a finding stating once and forever that he had formally approved the international skulduggery his subordinates had undertaken. Today, the spoiled detritus of every failed covert action initiative is flushed directly onto the President’s lap.

  Under President Kennedy, members of the Special Group were the deputy secretary of defense; the under secretary of state for political affairs; General Maxwell Taylor, the President’s military advisor; the national security advisor, and the director of Central Intelligence. When this group became the center for all activity in respect to Cuba, Robert Kennedy, the attorney general, added himself to the roster. The group then became known as the Special Group (Augmented).

  One of the recommendations made by General Taylor’s Study Group was that President Kennedy establish a subcommittee on counterinsurgency. Thus was born the Special Group Counterinsurgency (CI). A relatively new term, “counterinsurgency” was defined as the “use of all available resources … in preventing and resisting subversive insurgency and related forms of indirect aggression in friendly countries.” The Special Group (CI) was responsible for coordinating U.S. efforts to assist foreign governments—at the time, Laos, South Vietnam, and Thailand—which were threatened by guerrilla insurrection. General Taylor chaired the group, which included General Lyman Lemnitzer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the directors of the United
States Information Agency and Aid for International Development; the deputy secretary of defense; the under secretary of state for political affairs, and Robert Kennedy. On an ad hoc basis, this high-level group was often joined by the deputies of various other U.S. agencies involved in the operations.

  These innovations were accomplished by the Kennedy administration in less time than it might take the civil service to sort out a change in the roster of officially designated parking places. Even veterans with a fluent knowledge of government structure and practice had trouble keeping pace with the new administration. For decades, the acronym “CI” had served as shorthand for “counterintelligence.” By the time some of the old hands had learned that the same letters as appended to the Special Group (CI) had a secondary meaning, counterinsurgency as an activity had all but slipped off the President’s blip screen.

  By summer 1961, our reports showed Castro rapidly consolidating power and his military forces steadily gaining strength. In an estimate—of the sort sadly lacking before the Bay of Pigs—the United States Intelligence Board (USIB) stated that the combined strengths of the Cuban army and militia were now such that there was no chance that any invasion by Cuban exile forces could overthrow Castro’s government. Nor could any guerrilla force be expected to succeed in gaining and maintaining a substantial foothold anywhere on the island. As USIB saw it, only a modern, fully equipped military force would have the strength to oust Castro and his Fidelistas.