A Look Over My Shoulder

by Richard Helms

  This did not please the White House. In early July, as directed by the President, CIA came up with a new proposal on Cuba. Once again, the President was not impressed. First ZAPATA—strike one! And now this? The CIA plan to increase intelligence collection and propaganda was entirely too passive—strike two! Later that July, Admiral Arleigh Burke handed the President a memorandum echoing the Agency’s earlier judgment that any real change in Cuba would require the use of U.S. military forces and that the longer we waited, the more difficult the operation would be. A few days later, on the occasion of his retirement, Admiral Burke went to the White House to receive a Distinguished Service Medal. The admiral got the well-earned medal, but his memorandum was strike three and out!

  It was three months before President Kennedy came up with his own plan.

  I remember the spring and summer of 1961 as a busy interregnum marked with flashes of abrupt change, dampened by the anxiety most of us shared about the shape and the future of the Agency. The press repeatedly jumped the gun in naming any number of persons who were surely to replace Allen Dulles. (I recall no such public speculation on Dick Bissell’s likely replacement.) It was not until late September that President Kennedy named John Alex McCone as Allen Dulles’s replacement as director of Central Intelligence.

  As much as I was to value my subsequent promotion to replace Dick Bissell, it was with deep sadness that I watched the untangling of events that led to the resignation of Allen Dulles. He had served the Republic well, was a fine leader and an innovative master of his craft. I will remember him for his lifelong achievements and remarkable personality rather than the blunder which was as much the result of the era in which we worked as it was of that final, sad chapter of operational lapses.

  *Reflections of a Cold Warrior (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 191.

  Chapter 18

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  A NEW MAN

  Unlike the often contradictory range of comments that journalists, historians, and former colleagues offer on high-level presidential appointees, there was an unmistakable consistency in the descriptions and evaluations of the new director of Central Intelligence. None of us realized it at the time, but John McCone turned out to have been exactly the right man to replace Allen Dulles.

  The new DCI was little known in the intelligence community, but Mc-Cone was not a Washington newcomer. His government service began in 1947 with a brief hitch as a special deputy to the secretary of defense, James V. Forrestal. His next post was as under secretary of the Air Force from 1950 to 1951. From 1958 to 1961 he served as chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. McCone, a conservative Republican and Catholic convert, was fifty-nine years old when he replaced Dulles. Unlike his predecessors, McCone had no formal intelligence experience. He was a successful businessman, an executive who made his fortune in private industry, much of it as a wartime shipbuilder in California.

  In November 1961, a few weeks before his retirement became effective, Dulles, with McCone in tow, undertook what became a whirlwind farewell tour of the European capitals. In addition to meetings with senior Agency personnel, Dulles introduced McCone to many of his personal contacts. McCone, who also had a wide variety of well-placed friends and business associates in Europe, was impressed by the depth and scope of Dulles’s connections. The trip also gave McCone a view of Allen in action, and an occasional glimpse of some of the contradictions in his approach to what Kipling called “the great game.”

  No one in the Washington headquarters knew McCone personally, and we were all eager to get a firsthand impression of the new boss. As luck had it, one of the senior officers in a station the pair had visited was called to Washington on routine business. It happened that he was the only DDP officer to have spent a few hours alone with McCone. Dulles stayed with the local station chief, and had arranged for McCone to stay as a houseguest of this other officer for three nights.

  After a day of introductions, briefings, elaborate liaison lunches, and dinners, a somewhat the worse-for-wear McCone liked to relax over a noggin of bourbon and the opportunity for an informal chat with his host. At one point, McCone rather plaintively asked why Dulles insisted that McCone impose himself as a houseguest rather than stop at the local four-star hotel.

  McCone was not impressed when his host loyally mumbled, “I suppose it was for security reasons.”

  “I’ve been in and out of that hotel for ten years,” McCone said. “I’ve spent the last five days racing around the Continent, being entertained and examined by the chiefs of a half dozen intelligence and security services. I’ve met two prime ministers, half the foreign ministers in Western Europe, and a score of politicians, émigrés, and otherwise. As far as I can see, there can’t be many people on the Continent who don’t know I’m here. Who is Mr. Dulles hiding me from by insisting that I impose myself on you and your wife?”

  McCone’s host had known Dulles from OSS days. “It may be a security reflex, dating back a few years,” he suggested loyally. “Mr. Dulles sometimes has two ways of looking at things. He has his own habits of operating, and rather likes showing the flag. Obviously, this works very well for him. The difference is, that with one or two exceptions, Mr. Dulles expects the rest of us to keep cover. Along with that, he damn well insists that we know our way around town and have a line on exactly who’s who in our part of the world. Mr. Dulles never seems to have had any trouble riding both horses, but it can be a stretch for the rest of us.”

  McCone took another sip of bourbon.

  On the eve of the visitors’ departure, McCone’s host had arranged for an in-house cocktail party for his two guests and a mix of senior and junior Agency staff. McCone was particularly interested in meeting as many of the overseas officers and families as possible. The reception came a few days after Heinz Felfe, a senior officer on General Gehlen’s West German intelligence staff, had been exposed as a longtime KGB agent. Under close interrogation in a German prison, Felfe had begun to talk freely, if not entirely candidly. Because of the Agency’s close relationship with Gehlen’s service, we had a considerable stake in the damage Felfe had caused. In view of Dulles’s intense interest in the case, I had prepared a long message covering some of Felfe’s confession and addressed it to Dulles. My cable arrived in the local signal center at precisely the time the guests were assembling for the reception. At Allen’s request the report—more than a dozen uncut pages, on a scroll of perforated paper just as it was torn from the Teletype machine—was brought directly to him.

  As his host told us, Dulles pushed his glasses up onto his forehead, took a chair beside a fireplace, and began to study the incoming message. After a few moments he summoned two of the senior officers most concerned with the implications of Felfe’s treason to read over his shoulder. A question arose, and one of the junior staff was beckoned to provide an explanation. After a page or two more had been read, there was another question and a second young officer was summoned into the circle.

  McCone, who at the time could have had only the slightest knowledge of what was involved, remained at a distance, chatting with the other guests but clearly fascinated by the goings-on.

  It was a sentimental vignette. Dulles, surrounded by two generations of operatives, savoring a final glimpse of field operations a few days before his retirement.

  —

  By the time Dulles and McCone returned from Europe, Lyman Kirkpatrick, the Agency inspector general, had finished the in-house study of the ZAPATA operation that Dulles had requested. Kirkpatrick—“Kirk” as we knew him—had been recruited for OSS by General Donovan. After a hitch in London as an order-of-battle specialist, he ended the war as General Omar Bradley’s intelligence briefing officer. Kirk joined CIA in 1947, and played an important role in the merging of the covert action and espionage elements of the Agency early in General Bedell Smith’s term as DCI. He was a bright, aggressive, and well-organized staff intelligence officer. He preceded me quite briefly as Frank Wisner’s deputy and chief of operations.


  When Kirk contracted polio on a tour of our overseas posts in 1952 and suffered a long hospitalization, I was moved from chief of the Foreign Intelligence Staff to replace him on a temporary basis. Despite Kirk’s partial recovery, it became apparent to Allen Dulles that even though Kirk had bravely undertaken another long trip at the end of his convalescence, his confinement to a wheelchair meant that he would never be sufficiently mobile to cope with the activities and stress associated with the chief of operations job. When Dulles confirmed me as Wisner’s deputy, he appointed Kirk as the Agency’s inspector general. This was an important position, but a bitter disappointment for Kirkpatrick, an ambitious man whose goal had been to become DCI after serving as deputy director for plans. As IG, Kirk felt that he had been removed from the command line.

  Kirkpatrick’s critique of the ZAPATA project covered much the same ground as General Taylor’s report, but was harshly outspoken and severely critical. The report and thirteen attachments were printed in time for Kirk to hand a copy to John McCone on November 21, 1961. This came a week before McCone was to be officially sworn into office. With the document in hand, McCone boarded an airplane headed for the West Coast. Upon landing, he telephoned Kirkpatrick and instructed him to hand all copies of the report to Dulles. He then said in effect that he regarded Kirk’s handling of the report that Dulles had commissioned as a self-serving breach of command channels and a lapse of courtesy. Furthermore, he added, he did not agree with all of the analysis nor the manner in which Kirkpatrick had expressed it.

  Twenty copies of the report were printed. Three were circulated to the senior staff. One copy was sealed and placed in the DCI’s personal safe. The remaining copies were destroyed. Some writers’ assertions notwithstanding, the report was never “circulated” within the Agency. Aside from Dick Bissell, Tracy Barnes, and three of their senior operations officers, who collectively prepared a rebuttal to the report, only a handful of the most senior executives in CIA read it in 1961.

  Under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act, the report was declassified in 1997, and presumably required reading in the study halls of the world’s intelligence services. The report does not add anything significant to what was widely known at the time. Kirk’s sweeping criticisms of the individuals involved in the operation—many of whom had worked themselves to the point of exhaustion—ranged from the White House staff to the lowest-ranking Agency and military personnel. Having known Kirkpatrick for a number of years, I can only assume that when he realized his career was stymied, he unconsciously allowed some of his personal disappointment to impinge on his judgment. Nevertheless, Kirk was to stand by his conclusions in subsequent correspondence with McCone.

  In 1962, McCone recognized Kirk’s experience and competence by naming him executive director of the Agency. Still in a wheelchair, Kirk retired three years later to accept an academic appointment at Brown University.

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  In aspect, McCone was another example of a man who might have stepped straight from central casting in Hollywood. His white hair, ruddy cheeks, brisk gait, impeccable dark suits, rimless glasses, aloof manner, and unmistakable self-confidence were the profile of a modern executive. He had an extraordinary memory and the ability to pick the essence from any document no matter how long or complex, and to reduce it to a few sentences. He grudgingly accepted the notion that any existing routines were useful—at least until they had been thoroughly tested. For McCone, deadlines were deadlines, and no matter if sometimes unrealistic, were to be met to the minute. He also knew that all manner of devils dwelt in the details.

  McCone was a superb administrator. There were times when I suspected he may have felt that he had met his match in coping with some of the Agency’s administrative procedures. Until he learned why some of our homegrown practices seemed less than business-like—they had to be bent around the demands of operational security—he was prepared to make a clean sweep. Efficiency and security are diametrically opposed concepts. One of the marks of a competent chief of operations is his ability to fine-tune the balance between efficiency and security in respect to the local operational climate.

  One of my first meetings with the new DCI came in November 1961, sometime before the President’s new approach to the Cuba problem surfaced. I was still Dick Bissell’s deputy, but because it was widely known that he would soon be leaving, I acted in his place until my appointment as DDP in February 1962.

  McCone began by reminding me forcefully of President Kennedy’s intense concern with Cuba, and his determination “to be rid of Castro and the Castro regime.” Then, without so much as an oral comma, he said that as of that moment I was the DCI’s “man for Cuba.” I said, “Yes, sir.”

  McCone offered no further elucidation, and I asked for none. In the preceding weeks, I had seen enough of the new boss to realize that it would have been a mistake to ask for further guidance. The existing command channel for our Cuba activity was, at best, improvised, and throughout the months of intense activity, had been subjected to innumerable ad hoc tinkerings. McCone assumed that having shown me that he was aware of the situation, I would know how to correct it and would do so without requiring any further discussion or direction. A meeting with Dulles on a problem like this would have been much more comfortable. After discussing the problem at some length, I would have been asked to suggest alternative command structures, and to recommend two or three officers capable of taking charge. McCone expected each of us to handle our own responsibilities, and it only took one occasion for the survivors to realize this.

  That afternoon I removed the Cuba responsibility from the Cuba desk—a component of the Caribbean Islands branch of the Western Hemisphere Division, reporting through the chief of that division to Tracy Barnes of Dick Bissell’s staff, and thence to Bissell himself—and established a task force directly under my command.

  Bill Harvey, recently back from Berlin, had no experience in Latin America or the Caribbean when I named him chief of the Cuba task force. He was, however, an aggressive officer and a demanding and conscientious executive, and he had a good knowledge of the operations personnel he could count on. His first move was to christen his unit “Task Force W.” It was only later that I learned that the “W” stood for William Walker, an American adventurer who had been active in Nicaragua in the 1850s.

  —

  The code names for most Agency operations are picked in sequence from a sterile list, with care taken not to use any word that might give a clue to the activity it covers. On some large projects, code names are occasionally specially chosen—GOLD, SILVER, PBSUCCESS, CORONA. When Bob Kennedy requested a code name for the government-wide plan that Richard Goodwin was drafting, an exception was made. Goodwin was on the White House staff, and the plan concerned Cuba. Occasionally the special code names come close to the nerve, as did MONGOOSE.

  Chapter 19

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  AN AGILE MAMMAL

  From the moment John McCone told me I was to be his man on Cuba until the death of President Kennedy, not a day passed but that I spent some time—ranging from a dozen telephone calls and thirty-minute conferences in my office to half-day sessions in the executive offices at the White House—discussing Castro and his government. Dick Bissell was still DDP, but had stepped aside from most activity.

  Richard Goodwin’s plan for MONGOOSE established a “command operation” headed by Attorney General Robert Kennedy and General Taylor, with General Edward G. Lansdale as chief of operations. Given the intense White House pressure for action against Castro, the concept that the activity was to be government-wide was correct. On its own, the Agency could not possibly have handled the whole of MONGOOSE as conceived by the Kennedy administration. The proposed actions—a conventional list of almost every variety of intelligence and covert operation—were to be parceled out to the Pentagon, State Department, and various other agencies, some of which were not normally concerned with covert action or foreign policy.

  I first heard of Genera
l Lansdale, then an Air Force lieutenant colonel, in 1950 when he was seconded to CIA and posted to a senior OPC position in the Philippines. Using his cover as an advisor to the Philippine army, Lansdale helped the Philippine government put down the Huk guerrilla forces which had already brought significant areas of the country under their control. The Huk movement, a direct descendant of the Hukbalahap guerrillas who had fought the Japanese invaders, was under strong communist direction. Colonel Lansdale identified Ramon Magsaysay, a congressman, as a potential leader who with some guidance and support might be able to find a path between the established but corrupt right-wing politicians and the increasingly powerful left. With Lansdale’s help, Magsaysay became secretary of defense, and was able to launch a series of military moves and political initiatives, including an important land reform program, which by 1953 had tamed the Huk movement and contributed directly to Magsaysay’s eventual election as president.

  In Washington, President Eisenhower recognized Lansdale’s operation as a prime example of sophisticated political action. Not only had a guerrilla insurrection been put down, but Lansdale’s behind-the-scenes activity had maneuvered Philippine political, military, and establishment figures into doing the job themselves. A corrupt government had been turned into a working democracy. It was a tour de force. Just about everything worked right.

  Sometime after the Magsaysay election, Lansdale moved along to Vietnam. There things did not go as well. The linguistic, cultural, and political differences between the Philippines and Vietnam were, of course, profound. It was not surprising that Lansdale was never able to establish the intimacy with Ngo Dinh Diem that he had with Magsaysay.