If the agent turns out to be bad—a double or a fabricator—the officer may not want to believe it.
“It’s like a husband coming home at three A.M. and saying he was out selling encyclopedias,” Saunders said. “[His wife] wants to believe him so badly that she does. A prudent case officer, however, is constantly vetting, checking, always cynical, often asking questions to which he already knows the answer. He doesn’t trust easily, and if he doesn’t pay attention, he may pay a price.”
The result of the Cuban deception was that the CIA wasted a lot of time and money and was not able to get the information it really wanted. Much of the information given to the CIA by the double agents was true but not particularly damaging to Cuba.
“They [the Cubans] said, ‘Tell them anything they want to know.’ It wasn’t that it was bad information. It was true and did not cause great policy errors to be made,” according to a former operations officer familiar with the CIA’s analysis of what happened.
After Aspillaga’s defection was publicized, Cuban television aired a series that exposed many of the CIA’s operations on the island over the years. The program showed CIA operations officers picking up documents left for them by double agents in a variety of out-of-the-way places, dropping off sophisticated communications equipment for their agents, and meeting with agents in foreign countries to give them instructions.
While some of the American diplomats the program claimed were CIA officers were not in the agency, most of them were. Some of the wilder schemes being discussed by CIA officers—such as substituting flimsy tanks to store ammonia so that the chemical would leak out and destroy crops—were presented as current plans but had actually been discarded by 1964.
Richard F. Stolz was the CIA’s deputy director for operations when the double agents were exposed. A respected CIA veteran, Stolz had served in Rome, Moscow, Munich, Istanbul, Belgrade, and London and had been chief of the Soviet/East Europe Division. He told his officers that Cuba was able to fool the CIA with phony agents because of enormous pressure from the White House and from within the CIA to recruit. In addition, he blamed “ethnic egotism,” saying that the ability of Latinos had been underestimated. Finally, he blamed overreliance on the polygraph, pointing out that polygraphy is an art, not a science.
During Stolz’s tenure, the CIA began weeding out unproductive agents worldwide in an effort to improve quality and cut costs.
As the Cold War began to wind down, the CIA began concentrating even more than before on uncovering plans to develop nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons—one of the CIA’s traditional and most important roles. Once evidence of these weapons is uncovered, the U.S. government can use diplomatic pressure, trade sanctions, or other economic weapons to halt the weapons programs. For example, in 1988, Taiwan had been working on a secret installation that could have been used to obtain plutonium, a main ingredient in the production of nuclear weapons. The effort to build an installation capable of extracting plutonium violated Taiwan’s secret commitments to the United States that it would undertake no research for developing atomic weapons. Moreover, the Communist Chinese had warned that if Taiwan were to develop a nuclear weapon, they would invade the island.
As the work progressed, the CIA recruited Col. Chang Hsien-Yia, a scientist working on the project, and eventually he defected to the U.S. Based on his information, the State Department successfully applied pressure on the Taiwanese in 1988 to dismantle the operation.17
While there are five declared nuclear powers, a number of other countries have the atomic bomb and refuse to acknowledge it.
“Several countries either possess a nuclear device or can fabricate one on short notice,” William Webster has said. “Others are developing key nuclear technology that could later be used for a nuclear explosive, should the decision be made to do so. And there are still other countries which are in the early stages of nuclear technology research and development.”18
In addition, the CIA tracks development of ballistic missiles. According to Webster, at least fifteen developing nations could be producing their own ballistic missiles by the year 2000.
Even the possibility of life on other planets has been considered by the CIA to be within its purview. When he was CIA director, Walter Bedell Smith authorized a CIA study of unidentified flying objects, declaring that they have “possible implications for our national security.”
Other intelligence gathered by the CIA helps the U.S. to foresee coming events or to gain an advantage in trade or arms talks. The CIA is perennially interested in the health of foreign leaders. When they visit the U.S., the CIA has arranged to obtain samples of their feces, hair, and other bodily fluids so they can be analyzed back at Langley for health problems. Kim II Sung, the aging strongman in North Korea, has a growth on his neck that has never appeared in photographs. The CIA arranged to have an agent report firsthand on its appearance. It was benign.
The CIA has always tried to obtain the negotiating positions of other countries before arms talks or trade talks begin. Stations plant bugging devices in hotel rooms or tap telephones so that the State Department will know what it is facing before negotiations begin.
Like the problem of weapons proliferation, economic matters have been given higher priority by the CIA since the end of the Cold War. The CIA tries, for example, to find out overseas what kinds of computers the Japanese are developing. For years, the CIA had an official in the entourage of the prime minister of Japan on its payroll. Armed with inside information on what Japan’s negotiating position will be on, say, imports, the State Department can make more informed counterproposals. It is something like being able to eavesdrop on a seller and his broker when negotiating to buy a house.
“When the Japanese prime minister is here to see the president or secretary of state, they’d like to know what he is going to talk about,” a former operations officer said.
While the CIA cannot be in the position of handing over commercial secrets to selected American companies, it can pass the information along to the Commerce Department so that it can issue broad guidance to all companies. For example, the Commerce Department might issue an advisory on the direction of the Japanese computer industry.
But what happens when finding out what the other side is doing is not enough, when the U.S. government wants to take a more active role? That is when covert action is used, a term that covers any clandestine means to influence or overthrow a foreign power, leader, or political party.
5
Castro’s Beard
AS A RULE, COVERT ACTION IS CARRIED OUT BY THE SAME officers in each station who normally collect intelligence. It is coordinated by the Covert Action Staff within the Directorate of Operations. In addition, the directorate has a Special Activities Operations staff that conducts paramilitary activities, such as those in Afghanistan.
One officer estimates that overall, 75 percent of the time of operations officers in the field is devoted to gathering intelligence and the rest to covert action.
Today, covert action accounts for only 3 percent of the national foreign intelligence budget—roughly $500 million—or 15 percent of the CIA’s budget. But covert action accounts for most of the black eyes the agency has received.
In the beginning, there were many successes—or what seemed to be successes. In 1948, the CIA funded the Christian Democrats in Italy, helping to prevent communists from taking over the Italian government. In 1950, Col. Edward G. Lansdale, who was on loan to the CIA from the Air Force, helped the Philippine leader Ramon Magsaysay overcome the communist-backed Huk guerrillas. On August 21, 1953, the CIA, led by Kermit Roosevelt, overthrew the left-wing government of Prime Minister Mohamed Mossadeq in Iran after he nationalized the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. Three days later the shah, who had fled the previous week, returned to the palace.
Buoyed by these triumphs, the U.S. became more aggressive. America interpreted the most innocuous developments as further evidence that the Soviet Union was about to enc
ircle the world. In June 1954, the CIA supported the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala after he nationalized 400,000 acres of idle banana-plantation land owned by United Fruit Co. Arbenz had offered $600,000, precisely what the company had declared as the land’s value for tax purposes. Moreover, he had come to power in popular elections. But Arbenz’s leftleaning politics and the fact that some of the people around him were communists were seen by Washington as reasons enough to overthrow him.
In most cases, the benefits of covert action were only temporary. Arbenz was replaced by even more objectionable and often ruthless leaders. Guatemala has been in turmoil ever since. In Iran, the shah lasted more than twenty-five years and was toppled and replaced by the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979.
While twenty-five years of stability is a great feat, the CIA action in installing the shah “identified Iran and the shah more closely with the U.S. than was good for either of them,” Gregory Treverton wrote in his book Covert Action. “It also set in motion a kind of psychological dependence by the shah on the United States that Americans no doubt liked initially but came to lament in 1977 and 1978. “19
Meanwhile, the Soviets used the CIA’s meddling in the affairs of other countries to great effect. The U.S. was seen as imperialistic and hypocritical. What more evidence was needed than the fact that it would overthrow a legally elected leader? David A. Phillips, a CIA officer who played a major role in the ouster of Arbenz, would later say that on balance, the CIA should not overthrow an elected leader.20
“Defenders of covert action would say we are fighting to preserve liberty and democracy and the American way,” said Simmons, a former CIA officer who was later staff director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. “But when you get into the details, you wonder if they are talking about the same thing. He may be an SOB and a dictator, but he is our SOB, whereas Arbenz, who was democratically elected, was not an SOB, but he wasn’t ours.”
On April 17, 1961, the CIA began the invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. It would be a dismal failure. The Directorate of Operations was so fixated on secrecy that it did not consult the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence for an assessment of whether the Cuban people would rise up against Castro once an invasion began. If it had, the judgment would have been that the Cubans would not support the invasion.*
Just before the invasion, CIA analysts had concluded that Castro “was likely to grow stronger rather than weaker as time goes by.” One CIA memo warned that Castro “now has established a formidable structure of control over the daily lives of the Cuban people.”21
Thanks in part to last-minute restrictions by President Kennedy, the CIA did not have enough firepower to pull off the invasion. While the Directorate of Operations kept the operation from other CIA components, the word quickly leaked out to the rest of the world. Even the New York Times knew about it but agreed not to publish the story. Finally, the CIA had the unrealistic notion that an invasion could be mounted by Cuban expatriates without Cuba’s knowing that the U.S. government was backing them.
“My own personal view is that almost the worst mistake we made on that operation was clinging to the belief that this could be done in a way that was not attributable to the U.S. government,” Richard M. Bissell, Jr., a former Yale University and MIT professor of economics who headed the invasion as the CIA’s deputy director for operations, said. “Clinging to the idea that if our tradecraft was good, nobody could connect it to the U.S. government. That was just an utterly unattainable, and a very silly, hope. Anything of that magnitude would be blamed on the U.S. government, even if the U.S. had not had a role in it. But we paid a high price for disclaimability in terms of operational capability,” Bissell said. “We weren’t allowed to use volunteer U.S. air crews. We therefore didn’t have enough air crews. We therefore didn’t assemble enough B-26 bombers. We couldn’t take off from any American-held territory such as Puerto Rico. There was a whole list of things. We weren’t allowed to have any volunteer Americans go ashore with the brigade. That would have been a major benefit. So I think that from top to bottom, we made that mistake.”22
Nonetheless, under pressure from President Kennedy, the CIA in December 1961 began a range of other covert actions aimed at toppling Castro, each more foolish than the last.
A CIA inspector general’s report of August 25, 1967, recounts dozens of bungled attempts to assassinate Castro or embarrass him with his people. Under one such plan, the CIA would spray the air of a radio station where Castro broadcast his speeches with a chemical that would produce hallucinatory reactions similar to LSD. Another scheme was designed to contaminate cigars smoked by Castro with a chemical that would create “temporary personality disorientation.” A third idea was to introduce thallium salts into Castro’s shoes so his beard would fall out. This, according to CIA plotters, would destroy his public image. Finally, the CIA proposed setting off fireworks off the coast of Cuba that would portray an image of Christ in the sky—this to show that Castro was in disfavor with God.
The stupidest scheme was to enlist the aid of the Mafia in killing Castro. Bissell, the deputy director for operations, asked Sheffield Edwards, director of security, to contact Mafia leaders for the purpose.23 Edwards enlisted Robert A. Maheu, a private investigator, who asked John Roselli, an associate of Mafia leaders, to offer up to $150,000 to remove Castro. Roselli agreed to contact Salvator (Sam) Giancana, a member of the Mafia, and Giancana asked for a lethal pill that could be given to Castro in his food. The CIA produced pills containing botulinum toxin for Castro.
The CIA passed the pills to the Mafia, but the gangsters reported they could not carry off the plot because their source had lost his position in the prime minister’s office.
The CIA also developed plans that were never carried out to assassinate Patrice Lumumba, who headed what was then known as the Congo and is now called Zaire. Today, assassination plots are banned. The first presidential prohibition was contained in Executive Order 11905, signed by President Gerald Ford on February 18. 1976. It said no government employee could participate in attempts to kill foreign leaders. Executive Order 12333, signed by President Reagan on December 4, 1981, governs the CIA’s activities today. It states, “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the U.S. government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.”
After fumbling in Cuba, the CIA went on to try to control elections in Chile. In 1964, the agency spent $2.6 million to support the election of the Christian Democratic candidate, Eduardo Frei, to prevent Salvador Allende’s accession to the presidency. In 1970, the CIA tried to mount a military coup in Chile to prevent confirmation of Salvador Allende’s victory in the Chilean presidential election. It also spent $8 million to prevent his confirmation—all in vain.
The CIA also became involved in covert action and paramilitary actions in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Angola, Afghanistan, and Nicaragua. Only in Afghanistan was the CIA’s intervention considered entirely successful.
It would be easy, as some CIA officers do, to blame the presidents at the time for urging the agency to undertake covert action that was ill-advised. Nearly every one was approved by presidents and policymakers who were looking for a quick fix for the problem of the day.
“We cannot overemphasize the extent to which responsible agency officers felt themselves subject to the Kennedy administration’s severe pressures to do something about Castro and his regime,” the CIA inspector general’s report on the plots said. “The fruitless and, in retrospect, often unrealistic plotting should be viewed in that light.”24
But that is not the whole story. The agency often encouraged the White House to think that covert action would work, then developed ill-advised schemes to carry it out. Too often, not enough thought was given to what was to be accomplished, whether it would work, and what would happen if the CIA’s involvement became public, as it invariably did. In CIA lingo, such bad publicity is known as blowback or flap.
CIA officers often pursued covert action for the s
ake of doing something, without giving much thought to the possible consequences.
As a result of the Church Committee hearings in 1975 and 1976, strong congressional oversight put a stop to many of the ill-conceived schemes, but under CIA director William Casey, some bizarre or highly risky covert actions were again approved or at least considered. The prime example was the Iran-contra plan to exchange arms for hostages. While the CIA itself did not arrange it, Casey and National Security Council aide Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, Jr., used a few individuals in the agency to carry out the scheme.
In 1985, the CIA provided training and communications equipment to Lebanese intelligence officers who claimed they were antiterrorists and would help free William Buckley, the former CIA station chief in Beirut who had been kidnapped on March 16, 1984. President Reagan approved the plan in a written intelligence finding, the formal authorization required before covert action can be carried out.* But John McMahon, the deputy director of Central Intelligence, opposed it, saying the former intelligence officers were not to be trusted, and the CIA ran the risk of supporting people who might kill others.
According to McMahon, Casey then asked President Reagan to withdraw the finding, and the CIA never went ahead with the project. But the officers who were to get the aid hatched their own plan to kill Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, who headed a Shiite terrorist movement called Hezbollah, or Party of God. It was this group that was believed to be holding Buckley. Eighty people were killed on March 8, 1985, when a car filled with explosives was left near Fadlallah’s apartment house in a Beirut suburb. Fadlallah escaped without any injury, and the CIA was unfairly blamed for having ordered the assassination attempt.25
“When that happened, I went to Bill [Casey] and said, ‘See, goddamn it, that’s exactly what I mean. That’s what happens with these guys ... we weren’t associated with it but we got blamed for it,” McMahon said.26
Inside the CIA Page 8
