The Ghost

by Jefferson Morley

  “It was highly unusual to see Dr. Shapiro in the manufacturing section of the Apollo nuclear facility,” the employee went on. “It was unusual to see Dr. Shapiro there at night; and very unusual to see Dr. Shapiro so nervous.”

  The next day, NUMEC’s personnel manager visited the technician and threatened to fire him “if he did not keep his mouth shut” concerning what he had seen on the loading dock. It would be fifteen years before the employee told the story to the FBI.178

  * * *

  WHAT DID ANGLETON KNOW about NUMEC?

  He knew that the AEC and FBI were investigating the loss of uranium at the Apollo plant as early as 1965. As Israel desk officer, Angleton had to talk about the NUMEC case with Sam Papich, who was following it for the FBI.179 He also talked about it with John Hadden, who returned from Tel Aviv to serve Angleton in Washington.

  On the crime-scene particulars, Hadden defended his former boss.

  “Any suggestion that Angleton had helped the Israelis with the NUMEC operation was totally without foundation,” he told journalists Andrew and Leslie Cockburn.180 But Hadden didn’t deny that Angleton helped the Israeli nuclear program.

  “Why would someone whose whole life was dedicated to fighting communism have any interest in preventing a very anti-Communist nation getting the means to defend itself?” he asked.

  “The fact they stole it from us didn’t worry him in the least,” he said. “I suspect that in his inmost heart he would’ve given it to them if they asked for it.”181

  Hadden knew better than to investigate further.

  “I never sent anything to Angleton on this [the nuclear program] because I knew he wasn’t interested,” he told his son. “And I knew he’d try to stop it if I did.”182

  With the Israelis facing Arab enemies allied with the Soviet Union, Angleton had other priorities.

  WAR

  IN MAY 1967, ANGLETON met with Dick Helms in the director’s office suite on the seventh floor of CIA headquarters. Less than a year before, Helms had assumed the job as director of Central Intelligence. He wanted Angleton to read a memo that he was about to deliver to President Johnson concerning the growing military confrontation between Egypt and Israel.

  Helms and Angleton had known each other for twenty-two years. They collaborated, one way or another, in hundreds of secret operations. Some CIA hands would wonder why Helms was so tolerant of Angleton’s eccentricities. One reason was Angleton’s performance during the Six-Day War.

  * * *

  “BY LATE 1966 EVERYBODY was anticipating there would be an Israeli-Egyptian war one of these days. And we had reports about who was going to strike first,” said Tom Hughes, then the director of the State Department’s Intelligence and Research Bureau.183

  Egypt’s Gamal Nasser was probing for advantage. Ever since surviving the British-French-Israeli attack at Suez in 1956, Nasser had positioned himself as the champion of the Arab world, the person who would reverse the humiliation of Israel’s existence. In response to Nasser’s aggressive rhetoric, the Israelis engaged in a wide-ranging effort to upgrade their tanks and fighter jets.184 A CIA estimate in April 1967 concluded that “both sides appear to appreciate that large-scale military action involves considerable risk and no assurance of leading to a solution.”185

  That equilibrium began to change in May, when Nasser requested the withdrawal of UN peacekeeping forces, which had provided a buffer between Egyptian and Israeli forces since the Suez War. To the dismay of U.S. officials, UN secretary-general U Thant agreed. On May 22, Nasser announced the closure of the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli ships.

  Not only did Israel regard access to the Gulf as a vital interest but also the United States asserted that the Gulf was an international waterway. President Johnson called on all parties to exercise restraint.186

  Helms wanted Angleton’s take on the Agency’s latest assessment. The memo, written by the Intelligence Directorate, asserted the Israelis were likely to strike first. They would prevail quickly over Egypt and other Arab armies because of their superior weapons, training, and discipline. Helms, the ever-cautious bureaucrat, hesitated due to the memo’s categorical tone.

  “We’re really throwing everything on this one,” he said.

  Angleton counseled certainty.

  “It only takes a ‘maybe,’” he told Helms, “and you don’t get the direct attention of the recipient. They begin to have a hundred thoughts rather than one thought.”

  Helms sent the memo to President Johnson without qualifications.187

  * * *

  “THE ATMOSPHERE IN ISRAEL was very grim,” recalls Efraim Halevy. “We called it the ‘three weeks of suspense.’ The atmosphere was very gloomy. Isser Harel said, ‘There’s going to be a war.’ He wanted to consecrate a number of places for mass graves, like the garden in the center of Tel Aviv. Meir Amit was very outspoken in the way he described the situation.”188

  When Amit asked John Hadden to come to his house, the CIA man counseled patience.

  “I said, “You’ve got to wait three weeks,” Hadden recalled. “You’ve got to give Johnson three weeks to try to broker peace … that you know and I know won’t work, but we got to let him try, so that he can stand before the world and say, ‘I tried.’ To save face. You go to war now he’ll be in position of not having kept you under control and not having tried to keep the peace. Let him go three weeks, and he’ll give you the green light and you can do whatever you want.”

  Amit lost his temper, Hadden recalled.

  “You’re condemning six thousand, twelve thousand, Israelis, by making me wait three weeks,” he shouted. “They’re all going to get killed.”189

  The Israelis wanted to go to war on their own terms but feared they might be abandoned by the United States as they had been at Suez. President Johnson sympathized but was consumed by the enormity of managing the war in Vietnam. In the Sinai, IDF field commanders virtually demanded orders to attack. When Prime Minister Levi Eshkol hesitated, seeking more time for diplomacy, his cabinet rebelled and forced him to appoint Moshe Dayan as defense minister.

  The Israeli war hawks wanted another answer from Washington. Could they count on U.S. support, or at least neutrality, if they attacked? The advocates of a preemptive strike sent Amit to Washington; John Hadden flew with him. When they landed, Amit went straight to Langley to see Angleton.

  In his memoir, Amit described Angleton as “a long-legged intellectual” and “a very talented person, but controversial” for his “far-reaching theories regarding the Soviet Union.… At the CIA, he was regarded with a certain mockery, but to us, this did not matter. His total identification with Israel was an extraordinary asset for us.”190 He was, in Amit’s words, “the biggest Zionist of the lot.”191

  Efraim Halevy says Angleton then escorted Amit to see Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.

  When Amit arrived, McNamara called the president by phone and spoke to him. “After the call Amit deduced that we had the green light, or at least a ‘flexible’ light,” Halevy said.192

  * * *

  EARLY ON THE MORNING of June 5, Dick Helms was roused from his bed by the news that fighting had begun in the Middle East.193 The Israelis had launched a sneak attack. They sent a squadron of low-flying jets to decimate the planes of the Egyptian air force as they sat on the runways of a desert air base. And when Jordan and Syria entered the war, Israel destroyed their air forces, too. Within hours, Israeli troops were beginning to sweep over the Sinai Peninsula and surging into the Old City of Jerusalem and across the west bank of the Jordan River.194

  For President Johnson, the CIA had delivered. The Agency’s memoranda not only predicted that Israel would attack its Arab neighbors but was accurate almost down to the day and time.195 The U.S. intelligence performance was not flawless. While reporting of events prior to the outbreak of the war was excellent, the coverage once the fighting began left much to be desired. At times, the U.S. government was blinded by technological issues.

  Making
matters much worse, the National Security Agency’s signal intelligence coverage of the war zone was violently degraded on the fourth day of fighting—by Washington’s putative ally Israel.

  * * *

  ON THE MORNING OF June 8, 1967, the USS Liberty was the eyes and ears of the U.S. government in the Middle East war zone. A lightly armed frigate, loaded with sophisticated radar, radio, and telemetry equipment, the Liberty loitered in placid international waters twenty-five miles north of the Egyptian coast. The NSA analysts working below deck were recording and analyzing the radio communications of the various armies fighting in the Sinai and in Syria.

  The fog of war enveloped the State Department.

  “The explanations for the Liberty’s presence in the area are so totally bizarre that you have to think Angleton was behind it,” said Tom Hughes, the State Department’s intelligence chief. “Here’s an NSA ship, a covert listening ship, that is taken off the African coast, prepositioned just before the Israelis attack, off the Egyptian coast, in international waters, and is sitting there. Who ordered it to go there and why? NSA didn’t seem to know. CIA didn’t seem to know. [The] State Department certainly never knew. The Pentagon couldn’t figure it out.”

  Hughes speculated that Angleton wanted to preposition the Liberty off Egypt as a hedge against Israeli battlefield reverses.196 For whatever reason, the Israelis treated the Liberty as a threat to be eliminated.

  * * *

  TWO UNIDENTIFIED AIRCRAFT CIRCLED the Liberty three times starting at ten thirty in the morning, causing little concern.197 The ship was flying a five-by-eight-foot American flag; her name was painted on the stern in English. The ship’s configuration, as shown in naval identification books, was, in the words of the subsequent navy inquiry, “clearly sufficient for the aircraft to identify her properly as a non-combatant ship.”198

  The Liberty’s commander, William L. McGonagle, testified that at two in the afternoon he saw “an aircraft of similar characteristics, if not identical” to the jets seen earlier, which began firing on the ship.193 Eight men were killed or died as a result of injuries suffered during the initial bombardment.

  Then three high-speed boats approached in flank formation, with the middle boat flying an Israeli flag.200 An explosion blasted a hole thirty-nine feet wide on the starboard side of the ship, killing another twenty-five NSA personnel. The Liberty came to a dead stop and started to list.201 When sailors began to lower lifeboats into the water, the Israelis fired on them, too.

  Eventually, the attacks ceased. A total of 34 men had been killed and 171 injured. The attack was deliberate, according to McGonagle. Secretary of State Dean Rusk passed a stern note to the Israeli ambassador, calling the incident “an act of military recklessness reflecting wanton disregard for human life.”202 Clark Clifford, a veteran presidential adviser and chairman of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, declared it was “inconceivable” that the shelling was an accident.

  The Israelis quickly apologized, asserting their forces had mistaken the Liberty for El Quesir, an Egyptian steamer reported in the vicinity. They called the attack a “tragic error.”203

  President Johnson ordered an investigation. The next day, the CIA produced its first analysis, which exonerated the Israelis. The paper concluded, erroneously, that there was “little doubt that the Israelis failed to identify the Liberty as a U.S. ship before or during the attack.”204 The Liberty “could easily have been mistaken” for El Quesir, the memo asserted, a claim that the U.S. Navy would soon repudiate.205 The report was “compiled from all available sources,” probably by Angleton, the Israel desk officer.

  “Israel knew perfectly well that the ship was American,” said Adm. Thomas Moorer, chief of naval operations at the time. Moorer, who later became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, concluded the attack was intended to maximize Israel’s territorial gains.

  “I am confident that Israel knew the Liberty could intercept radio messages from all parties and potential parties to the ongoing war, then in its fourth day, and that Israel was preparing to seize the Golan Heights from Syria despite President Johnson’s known opposition to such a move,” Moorer said. “I think they realized that if we learned in advance of their plan, there would be a tremendous amount of negotiating between Tel Aviv and Washington.”

  “What is so chilling and cold-blooded, of course,” he said, “is that they [the Israelis] could kill as many Americans as they did in confidence that Washington would cooperate in quelling any public outcry.”206

  Angleton cooperated.

  * * *

  WHEN A CEASE-FIRE TOOK effect on June 11, Israel had defeated all three of its Arab enemies, a resounding victory that expanded the land of Israel from the Sinai to the West Bank to the Golan Heights.

  The CIA had won a victory, too. Thanks to Angleton’s Israeli contacts, the Agency had correctly predicted when the war would start, who would win it, and why the Soviet Union could not, or would not, intervene.207

  President Johnson was impressed. After the Six-Day War, Johnson started inviting Dick Helms to his weekly Tuesday lunches with Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Defense Secretary Bob McNamara. Angleton burnished the CIA’s reputation and delivered Helms into the good graces of the president. Helms had every reason to be eternally grateful to him.

  CHAOS

  LATER THAT SUMMER, ANGLETON was back in Dick Helms’s office for another meeting about a war—the war that had come to the streets of America. Tom Karamessines, whom Helms had promoted to deputy director of operations, was there, too. The weather outside was balmy, the mood inside grim.

  Angleton felt besieged by the growing criticism of the Agency. In 1965, he had learned from his sources at The New York Times that the paper was querying its reporters worldwide about CIA activities. The very questions, he told Times editor Harrison Salisbury, “betrayed the hand of Soviet operatives.”208

  Then, in February 1967, Ramparts magazine, a left-wing monthly, laid bare the international operations of Cord Meyer, Angleton’s friend and fishing companion. In a series of articles, the magazine exposed the CIA’s funding of the National Student Association and of the AFL-CIO’s Jay Lovestone, his longtime friend and a frequent houseguest. One corner of Angleton’s intelligence empire was exposed and subjected to scrutiny, questions, and denunciation for the first time.

  Opposition to the war in Vietnam was growing and spreading. The sort of patriotic unity seen during World War II and the Korean War was gone. In April 1967, antiwar rallies in New York City and San Francisco attracted hundreds of thousands of people, including Nobel Prize winner Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who had never before involved himself in foreign policy issues. Philosopher Bertrand Russell made headlines by convening a war-crimes tribunal in Sweden to judge U.S. actions in Vietnam. Antiwar groups from around the world gathered in Stockholm to plan their next actions.

  At the same time, racial disorder turned many of America’s urban neighborhoods into battle zones. The country suffered more than 160 civic disturbances in 1967 alone, eight of which were classified as major riots.209 In Newark, New Jersey, a protest march against police brutality was followed by stone throwing, looting, and gunfire. The National Guard was called in to restore order. In the course of a week, twenty-three people were killed.

  Ten days later, Detroit, the country’s fourth-largest city, erupted in violence when police shut down a string of private social clubs patronized by blacks. The National Guard could not control the streets, so President Johnson sent in U.S. Army paratroopers. In a week of rioting, thirty-four people were killed and hundreds injured.

  “Detroit was the new benchmark, its rubble a monument to the most devastating race riot in U.S. history—and a symbol of domestic crisis grown graver than any since the Civil War,” said the editors of Newsweek magazine.210

  President Johnson suspected a conspiracy behind the antiwar movement and the black nationalist insurgency. In his now-regular meetings with Helms, Johnson nagged the C
IA director for help.211

  On August 15, Helms called in Angleton and Karamessines. He ordered them to set up a new intelligence-collection program to keep tabs on antiwar leaders and black militants traveling abroad. The mission of spying on U.S. citizens, even if they were overseas, had “definite domestic counterintelligence aspects,” as Karamessines delicately put it.212 It was a job for Angleton.

  Helms wanted suggestions for a senior officer who could run such a program. Angleton offered Richard Ober. Like Angleton, Ober had a bookish pedigree. His father had run a literary agency and he had attended Harvard before joining the CIA.213 Ober was already investigating possible foreign intelligence connections to the Ramparts stories, so he was prepared to expand the scope of CIA interest, per the president’s wishes.214 Karamessines asked Angleton to assign a cryptonym to the project, “so that cable traffic can be suitably handled on a limited basis.”215

  Operation CHAOS was born. Before it was terminated six years later, CHAOS would spy on and infiltrate the entire antiwar movement, not just people or organizations that engaged in violence or contacted foreign governments. Angleton’s program indexed the names of 300,000 Americans in the Agency’s Hydra computer system. CHAOS opened files on 7,200 individuals and more than 100 organizations.216 More than 5,000 reports were sent to the FBI.217