Executive Secrets

by William J. Daugherty

  Thus Kennan, in league with the CIA’s deputy director, Allen Dulles, and Undersecretary of State Robert Lovett, introduced NSC- 10 in early 1948 with a proposal for reorganizing the relevant offices with a role to play in covert action programs.25 His new superior, Secretary of State George C. Marshall, also agreed with the concept but was adamant that the State Department not be the home agency of any covert action executive or other espionagerelated entity. The State Department was the public voice of U.S. policy to the world and home of the nation’s diplomatic corps; placing a covert or clandestine component within the country’s official overt foreign policy establishment would erode the trust and confidence other nations might place in American diplomacy. More specifically, Marshall was fearful that an exposure of a covert action program in Europe would undermine the European economic recovery plan bearing his name, which promised the renewal of Western Europe and was critical to forestalling Communist subversion on the continent. Marshall’s concerns were real, for already covert action programs were being used effectively to support the Marshall Plan as well as other diplomatic efforts.26 Truman agreed with Marshall and shortly thereafter, in response to a study of CIA operations (NSC-50), authorized the establishment of an action office to develop and manage a variety of covert programs, in addition to psychological operations.

  NSC-10/2, signed by Truman on June 18, 1948, cited the “vicious covert activities of the USSR” and validated the assignment of covert operations to the CIA as the organization to counter Soviet perfidy.27 NSC-10/2 stated that it was “desirable” to place the responsibility for covert operations in the CIA and “correlate them with espionage and counterespionage operations under the overall supervision of the Director of Central Intelligence.” This designation was additionally intended to preclude any attempt by the Defense Department to create its own peacetime covert action office, a move feared by officials at the State Department.28

  NSC-10/2 directed the chief of OSP to report to the DCI (although the organization itself was to operate independently of the other components of the Agency); required that covert programs be consistent with established U.S. policy; and mandated that disagreements be resolved by the National Security Council—the first time any White House element was specifically charged with involvement in covert action programs. Covert action activities specified in 10/2 included paramilitary operations such as assistance to resistance and/or guerrilla groups and sabotage. NSC-10/2 also specifically required that the Agency conduct all covert programs in a manner that would allow the U.S. government to “plausibly disclaim any responsibility.” Important to the conduct of American foreign policy, NSC-10/2 made it explicitly clear that the CIA was to be the “instrument of policy, not the initiator.”29 In other words, the decision to undertake covert action operations was to remain with the president and the NSC. Ultimately, under this authorization, the CIA “channeled funds and information to non-Communist political parties, newspapers, labor unions, church groups, and writers throughout Western Europe.” The CIA also undertook to ensure that accurate news and political analysis reached not only Western Europe but Eastern Europe, where the populations sought greater freedom from Soviet domination.30

  With the implementation of NSC-10/2, Truman relied on a committee, naturally enough referred to as the 10/2 Panel, to evaluate and approve covert action programs. The 10/2 Panel membership initially included the DCI as chair and designated representatives of the secretaries of state and defense (George Kennan and Ivan Yeaton, respectively). Only when the 10/2 Panel was unable to reach consensus regarding the merits of a particular program was the issue passed up to the full NSC. Through his individual responsibilities as well as his membership on the 10/2 Panel, the DCI could initiate covert action programs, though he did not oversee or manage them, given that OSP was an independent agency. It must be noted, however, that the DCI did not have carte blanche to run any covert action operations he desired; he was guided by presidential policies established and laid forth in various NSC directives. As such, these covert action operations were responsive to presidential policies and may thus be justly considered to be presidential programs.31

  Soon after NSC-10/2 was signed, OSP was transferred to the DCI’s control and formally became the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) on September 1, 1948.32 OPC eventually operated not only in Europe but also in the Middle East, South Asia, and the Far East, with Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa of lesser interest. NSC-10/5, Scope and Pace of Covert Operations, issued on October 23, 1951, provided for “the immediate expansion of the covert organization . . . and intensification of covert operations . . . to contribute to the retraction and reduction of Soviet power and influence.” NSC-10/5 added further to the CIA’s covert action authority by giving it the responsibility for paramilitary (i.e., guerilla) warfare. OPC (covert action) and OSO (positive intelligence collection) remained separate until merged into the Directorate of Plans in the CIA on August 2, 1952.33

  In an effort to impart more coherency to the world of covert action, Truman rescinded the NSC-4 and NSC-10 series of directives in March 1950 and replaced them with NSC-59, which divided responsibility for psychological warfare and propaganda between the Departments of State and Defense. Truman followed this measure with a program for national-level psychological warfare, which he authorized in NSC-74. Nearing the end of his tenure in office, in 1951 Truman created in NSC-10/5 a National Psychological Strategy Board (PSB), which was later merged into the group that approved covert action programs (the 10/2 Panel). Membership on the PSB, now called the 10/5 Panel, included representatives of the secretaries of state and defense, the CIA, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The staff director was Gordon Gray.34 By the time he left Washington, Truman had put in place more than eighty covert action mechanisms and programs intended to thwart the expansion of Communism into the Free World.

  The final word on Soviet expansionism by the Truman administration was recorded in NSC-141, written by the CIA’s Richard Bissell. NSC-141 “advised that Western nations must resist expansion” by the Soviet Union and its proxies.35

  OTHER COVERT ACTION OPERATIONS

  UNDER TRUMAN

  From Truman’s time through the Nixon years, covert action programs served only two purposes: they were intended either to stop the spread of Communism to countries that were not under the Soviet thumb by strengthening or supporting whatever regimes were in power, or to weaken Communist or Communist-supported governments by “eroding their internal support.” The overthrow of Communist regimes or governments that were sympathetic to the Soviet Union was not part of the original thinking. Nor was the idea of actively promoting or spreading democracy given much thought, although occasionally CIA programs in democratic countries were “designed to maintain the democratic process.” In sum, the overall goal of covert action in these initial stages of the cold war was simply to “Stop Communism.”36

  One of the most interesting and, later, controversial of these covert action programs was the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which was established in 1949 in Paris by the OPC. The idea was simple: use American writers, poets, musicians, and artists to help “negate Communism’s appeal to artists and intellectuals, undermining at the same time the Communist pose of moral superiority.” To do so, Congress, using funds supplied through covert channels by the OPC and, later, the CIA, published political journals and literary magazines and sponsored cultural events, music festivals, art shows, and lectures on a variety of high-brow issues. The objective was to demonstrate that American freedom was far superior to anything the Soviets could create in these same arenas. The result was that “[s]omehow this organization of scholars and artists—egotistical, free-thinking, and even anti-American in their politics—managed to reach out from its Paris headquarters to demonstrate that Communism, despite its blandishments, was a deadly foe of art and thought.”37 Although it may seem as if this program is one that could have been openly supported by the U.S. government, perhaps through the Department of Sta
te’s United States Information Agency (USIA), two critical factors prevented this. First, with McCarthyism rampant in the United States, USIA was pulling “hundreds of American classics” from USIA libraries worldwide due to fears of subversive content—an act that would not have endeared the agency to the writers and authors taking part in the Congress. Second, many of the artists and writers involved were either apolitical or had political leanings that were even anti-American; they found the sunny picture of Communism painted by the Soviet propaganda machine intellectually appealing, despite what was known about Stalin’s brutally repressive regime with its purges and Gulags. Thus, any hint of U.S. government sponsorship or participation would have seen the mass exodus of many, if not most, of those who were affiliated with the Congress for Cultural Freedom or who partook of its events or publications.38 After their CIA sponsorship was exposed in Ramparts magazine in 1967, the Congress folded along with the National Student Association, an organization that had been funded by the CIA since 1952, which intended to counter the Soviets’ attempts to indoctrinate world youth with Communist ideas and policies.39

  In August 1948, Truman’s signature on NSC-20 initiated behind-the-lines paramilitary operations, including assistance to resistance groups and sabotage missions inside the Iron Curtain and in the Baltics using émigrés recruited in the West. The overall objectives were to “reduce the power and influence of the USSR to limits which no longer constitute a threat to peace . . . [and] to bring about a basic change in the [Soviet] conduct of international relations.”40 To accomplish the overall goals of NSC-20, the U.S. national security establishment was directed to “place the maximum strain on the Soviet structure of power and control, particularly on the relationships between Moscow and the satellite countries.”

  The scope of NSC-20 was amended and expanded over the next several months, emerging with the president’s signature as NSC- 20/4, U.S. Objectives with Respect to the USSR to Counter Soviet Threats to U.S. Security, on November 24, 1948. This version, a seven-page document, concluded that the “gravest threat to the security of the United States within the foreseeable future stems from the hostile designs and formidable power of the USSR and from the nature of the Soviet system.” As such, it held that the U.S. government must take steps “short of war” to counter Soviet expansionism and domination over the Eastern European satellites. Besides the offensive guerrilla operations, Truman included an authorization for “stay-behind” organizations in Western European nations and directed that weapons, munitions, and other supplies for potential guerrilla operations be cached in the event of a Soviet invasion. The stay-behind program was perceived to be so vital that it endured until after the end of the cold war.41

  By dint of NSC-20 and 20/4 the United States, unilaterally and allied with the British Secret Intelligence Service (BSIS, colloquially known as MI-6), conducted paramilitary operations around the periphery of the Soviet Union, with the goal of supporting “largescale regional insurrections” or nationalist movements during the years 1949–1953.42 CIA and BSIS teams worked with local émigré movements in the Ukraine, Poland, Albania, and the Baltics to make life difficult for the occupying Soviet forces, although without success. Though the problems with these programs were multifold, their predominant shortcoming was their foundation on the unrealistic goal of “rolling back” Communist domination. Too, organizers mistakenly assumed that that émigré groups could be made secure from Soviet counterintelligence penetrations, which led to the discounting of obvious counterintelligence concerns. Further, Soviet military and intelligence units conducted formidable counterinsurgency operations in the target countries, relentlessly hunting down the émigré guerilla forces. Last, these operations were betrayed by KGB double agent Kim Philby, who, as head of the BSIS station in Washington, was privileged to these operations and, hence, able to alert his Soviet handlers prior to the commencement of any operation or support activity. These operations were all run too long in light of their clear deficiencies and mounting death tolls, and they all resulted in abject failure. The programs dwindled away by 1955 with no successes to their credit.43

  In the last months of the Truman administration, a major concern to the president and his national security team was the question of potential Communist governments in Iran and Guatemala. Truman gave consideration to overthrowing the Guatemalan leader, Jacobo Arbenz, with the support of Nicaraguan leader Anastasio Somoza, and in fact allowed the CIA to ship weapons to Nicaragua for the operation. Undersecretary of State David K.G. Bruce convinced his boss, Dean Acheson, to persuade Truman to cancel the program before anything further transpired.44 Further action would wait until the impending Eisenhower administration. As for Iran, Truman initiated a covert action program in that country, at first limited to operations designed to diminish Soviet influence there. Fed up with the economic policies and intransigence of Prime Minister Mossadegh, Truman began to mull over the possibility of reversing the regime as his administration flowed into its last months.45 Time ran out, however, and so the removal of Mossadegh would also await the Eisenhower administration.

  The origins of a later CIA covert operation conducted in the Himalayan kingdom of Tibet may also be traced back to the Truman administration. Immediately following the North Korean invasion of South Korea on June 25, 1950, and the concomitant increase in the United States’s national security emphasis on Asia, the Agency was “instructed to initiate psychological warfare and paramilitary operations against Communist China; this order would affect Tibet in due course.”46 In the fall of 1950, the Chinese Communists invaded Tibet, but they announced their action to the world only some weeks later. As the year ended, it was clear to Truman’s advisors that nothing could reverse the occupation of that tiny country, but, in the spirit of containment and in line with administration policy of confronting Communist aggression, it also was recognized that Tibet could potentially serve as a pressure point against the spread of Communism. Programs to train Tibetans to conduct intelligence collection and guerrilla operations were put in place by the CIA by the end of Truman’s tenure.47

  Truman also authorized paramilitary operations aimed at defeating the Hukbalahap Rebellion in the Philippines, cited by one former CIA officer-turned-scholar as OPC’s “first major success.” The Communist guerilla force known as the Huks first emerged to fight the Japanese during World War II. Once the United States granted the Philippines independence in 1946, the Huks turned their violence against the new democratic government in Manila. The legendary counterinsurgency expert Edward Lansdale (later the model for the protagonist in the novel The Ugly American) was ordered to the islands to lead the CIA’s liaison team to the Philippine military, relying particularly on Defense Minister Ramón Magsaysay. The Lansdale-Magsaysay team led to a revitalized Philippine military and, ultimately, defeat of the Huks. History would show that defeating Communist movements and armies elsewhere would not be as (relatively) easy as it was in the Philippines.48

  So it was that Truman, who was later disgusted with what he saw as excesses in the Eisenhower years and was eventually led to repudiate covert action, established the mechanisms for covert action operations whose progeny exist to this day. And just as Jimmy Carter’s administration was to quietly lay the foundation for many of the programs that grew in size and import under Ronald Reagan, so did Truman set in motion many of the projects that would eventually become associated with Dwight Eisenhower.

  EIGHT

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  [The Iranian coup] did not prove that the CIA could topple governments and replace rulers in power. Rather, it was a unique case of supplying just the right bit of marginal assistance in the right way at the right time. Such is the nature of effective political action.1

  Dr. Ray S. Cline, DDCI

  As a core element of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s cold war strategy, covert action in the Eisenhower administration “attain[ed] an importance among the CIA’s missions that would not be equaled until the Reagan administratio
n in the eighties.”2 For many years, the myth persisted that Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had conceived and managed the administration’s foreign policy while Eisenhower played golf. But as declassified documents from that era began to receive scholarly attention, it became irrefutably clear that Eisenhower was very much in control of his administration’s foreign and national security policies. Moreover, it became evident that he never hesitated to turn to covert action as a tool for achieving U.S. policy goals in instances where diplomacy alone was insufficient, but the risks and costs of overt military intervention were too great. Eisenhower believed that the CIA could be “more effective” and better utilized in covert action operations than in intelligence collection, and so he fully intended to use the Agency more actively than had Truman.3 As supreme commander in the European theater during World War II, Eisenhower oversaw the employment of highly imaginative and daring special operations in support of traditional military forces to achieve victory over the Nazis. Relatively fresh from this experience, Eisenhower was not only familiar and at ease with special operations, he was able to envision their peacetime variants playing key roles in containing the spread of Communism. As such, Eisenhower was probably the first president since George Washington to understand completely the value of intelligence and covert action.

  The most “covert” part of covert action programs under the Eisenhower administration was Eisenhower’s role in them, for he was adept at, and personally comfortable with, allowing his subordinates to step forward into the spotlight and accept the credit—or the heat—for his behind-the-scenes direction. It is worth remembering, too, that like Eisenhower himself, many of Eisenhower’s top advisors were veterans of World War II and were, therefore, predisposed to using a variety of alternatives—including covert measures—to achieve dominance over the nation’s enemies. From the beginning of his administration to the final days, Eisenhower personally approved each and every covert action program, whether instigating a coup, resorting to paramilitary operations, or, in at least two instances, giving the green light to assassinations.4