STUDIES IN INTELLIGENCE [Vol. 5 No.2, Spring 1961]
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CIA-RDP78-03921A000300260001-6
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Publication Date:
January 1, 1961
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STUDY
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CONFIDENTIAL
STUDIES
in
INTELLIGENCE
JOB NO. 2a:0.12Lo
BOX " 0, ---3 ------
FOLOER FNO,
TOTAL COCS HEREIN
VOL. 5 NO. 2 SPRING 1961
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
OFFICE OF TRAINING
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All opinions expressed in the Studies are those of the
authors. They do not necessarily represent the official
views of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Office of
Training, or any other organizational component of the
intelligence community.
This material contains information affecting the National
Defense of the United States within the meaning of the
espionage laws, Title 18, USC, Secs. 793 and 794, the trans-
mission or revelation of which to an unauthorized person is
prohibited by law.
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CONTENTS
CLASSIFIED ARTICLES
Page
Priority National Intelligence Objectives
Ludwell L. Montague 1
View from the upper edge of the guidance gap,
SECRET
Intelligence Photography . . . . Kenneth E, Bofrone 9
Essential elements of good ground photos. CoNFI
DENTIAL
Snapshots at Random . . . . . . . . . Jane Schnell 17
Intelligence product of the camera fan's fun. OF-
FICIAL USE
Human Scent and Its Detection . . . Spencer Tebrich 25
Toward scientific exploitation of a neglected sense.
OFFICIAL USE
Cover: Property Restitution . . Frederick D. Barathy 39
A postwar U.S. program without benefit of in-
telligence and counterintelligence participation.
CONFIDENTIAL
Communication to the Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Amateur psychodiagnosis of Dr. John. CONFIDEN-
TIAL
Intelligence in Recent Public Literature . . . . . . . . 51
The German service's first effort at pressagentry.
CONFIDENTIAL
Shape of tomorrow seen from yesterday. OFFICIAL
USE.
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UNCLASSIFIED ARTICLES
Page
"Truth" Drugs in Interrogation . . . Al
Narcosis in therapy and police practice, with pos-
sible applications in intelligence.
Impunity of Agents in International Law
I A21
Precedent and authority in Powers' circumstances.
Operation Columba . . . . . . . . . . . T. J. Betts A35
British pigeon fanciers give their all.
English Mission . . . . . . . . . . . A43
Glimpses of the sixteenth-century popish under-
ground.
Public Texts in Intelligence
Walter Pforzheimer and the Editors A51
Bibliography of basic English-language readings.
Intelligence in Recent Public Literature
Intelligence in U.S. national strategy . . . . . . . A61
Military intelligence in action . . . . . . . . . . A64
Clandestine operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . A68
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Evolution and role of "the most
broadly controlling document
in the field of requirements."
PRIORITY NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE OBJECTIVES
Ludwell L. Montague
Clyde Heffter, in the "Fresh Look at Collection Require-
ments" which he takes in a recent issue of the Studies, notes
the "conspicuous hiatus" between such high-level guidance
documents as Director of Central Intelligence Directive 1/3,
Priority National Intelligence Objectives, and the collection
requirements actually produced at the working level, particu-
larly with respect to the question of determining relative
priorities among such requirements. He invites discussion of
the problem of "how to formulate needs and priorities in
such a way as to facilitate the satisfaction of needs in a de-
gree roughly proportionate to their priorities, through the
most effective use of the collection means available."
In the nature of the case, collectors are likely to be more
keenly aware of this problem than people working in other
phases of the intelligence process, but its existence and gravity
should be of concern to researchers and estimators as well,
for it is their work that ultimately suffers from any diffusion
and misdirection of the collection effort. The hiatus be-
tween general guidelines and practical requirements that Mr.
Heffter points out is real, and its consequences are serious.
He has considered it from the collectors' viewpoint. The pur-
pose of this article is to complement his analysis with an ex-
amination from the other side of the gap-specifically, to de-
scribe the development of the PNIO concept and to review
what the PNIO's are and are not intended to be. Conclusions
as to what is wanting for the determination of practical pri-
orities are substantially the same from either point of view.
Evolution of the PNIO's
From the outset it was understood that the responsibility
of the Director of Central Intelligence for the coordination of
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PNIO's
U.S. foreign intelligence activities included a responsibility to
provide authoritative guidance for intelligence collection and
production from a national (as distinguished from depart-
mental) point of view. To this end, National Security Coun-
cil Intelligence Directive 4, adopted by the NSC in December
1947, prescribed two specific duties:
(1) To prepare "a comprehensive outline of national intelli-
gence objectives [generally] applicable to foreign countries
and areas."
(2) To select, on a current basis, the sections and items of
this outline having priority interest.
By "comprehensive outline" the drafters of NSCID 4 meant
an integration of such then existing departmental docu-
ments as the Army's Index Guide and the Navy's Monograph
Index. What they had in mind has actually been accom-
plished by the preparation of the National Intelligence Survey
outline (NIS Standard Instructions, June 1951). However,
the publication of DCID 1/2 (15 September 1958) was consid-
ered necessary to meet the formal requirement for a "com-
prehensive outline" of national intelligence objectives.
The 1947 directive had the fault of prescribing a method
rather than a mission. Manifestly, national intelligence ob-
jectives have never been determined by the selection of "sec-
tions and items" from a "comprehensive outline." They
are no longer required to be in NSCID 1, of 15 September 1958,
whose subparagraph 3b (1) is the present-day survivor of the
original NSCID 4.
The fact is that no priority national intelligence objectives
were formulated until 1950, and that their provenance then
was unrelated to NSCID 4. In May 1950 the Joint Intelli-
gence Committee produced JIC 452/7, "Critical Intelligence
Objectives of the Department of Defense with Respect to the
USSR." This document identified as critical intelligence ob-
jectives five generalized aspects of Soviet military capabilities.
In September its text, with the addition of two highly gen-
eralized references to political warfare, was adopted as DCID
4/2, "Priority National Intelligence Objectives." In June 1952
this DCID was amended to cover explicitly not only the USSR
but also "its Satellites (including Communist China)."
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The preoccupation of DCID 4/2 with Soviet military capa-
bilities was a natural consequence of its origin and of the cir-
cumstances of the time, the shooting war then in progress
in Korea. In August 1953, however, an armistice having
been signed, the adequacy of the DCID as priority guidance
for a national intelligence effort was questioned. The Board of
National Estimates was directed to study the problem and to
propose a suitable revision. Its study, in consultation with
research and collection personnel throughout the Agency, ex-
tended over a period of ten months, followed by six months
of inter-agency coordination.
It was represented to the Board that the almost exclusively
military character of DCID 4/2 resulted in claims of priority
for the collection of any desired item of military information
over any other information, no matter how significant the
latter might be in relation to the national security. Such
claims were plainly out of consonance with the current esti-
mate (NIE 99, October 1953) that, for the near term at least,
the Kremlin would probably avoid military action with identi-
fiable Bloc forces, that the active threat to U.S. security was
likely to be a vigorous Communist political warfare campaign
designed to undermine the Western power position, and that
there was danger of a weakening of the unity of the Free
World. They were also plainly out of consonance with NSC
162/2, Basic National Security Policy (October 1953), which
emphasized a need for intelligence on the capabilities and in-
tentions of friendly and neutral states as well as of the Soviet
Bloc.
The Board concluded that the list of priority national in-
telligence objectives must be expanded to cover at least the
most significant of these non-military concerns, and that
there must also be some discrimination between military ob-
jectives of greater and of lesser consequence. This expansion
of the list and need for discrimination within it led to the de-
velopment of three general categories of priority within the
listing. A single list in absolute order of priority was con-
sidered infeasible and also undesirable, as likely to introduce
self-defeating rigidity into the system.
The revised DCID proposed by the Board of National Esti-
mates and adopted by the Director of Central Intelligence
with the concurrence of the Intelligence Advisory Committee
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PNIO's
(DCID 4/4, December 1954) was the prototype of the present
DCID 1/3 (4 January 1961). The differences between the two
represent only those adjustments normally to be expected as
responsive to developments in the situation.
Criteria for PNIO Selection
The DCID has an annex that sets forth certain criteria to
govern the selection of priority national intelligence objec-
tives. A gloss on these criteria is in order at this point.
It is stipulated, first, that the PNIO's should be directly re-
lated to the intelligence required in the formulation and exe-
cution of national security policy. Through its role in the
preparation of national intelligence estimates, the Board of
National Estimates is cognizant of the intelligence require-
ments of the NSC and its subordinate policy boards. It is
also cognizant of the most critical problems inherent in the
estimates required to meet their needs. Its identification of
these substantive problems as priority national intelligence
objectives can provide a basis for identifying priority research
and collection requirements, but of course does not in itself
define such requirements.
Second, since the bulk of the intelligence required in the
formulation and execution of national security policy will
be the product of routine intelligence collection and research,
the PNIO's should be limited to the critical problems which
require special attention and effort. This principle should be
axiomatic. There is, however, constant pressure to make the
listing more inclusive, with a consequent danger of its becom-
ing so nearly all-inclusive as to deprive the word "priority" of
meaning. This pressure, which apparently springs from a de-
sire to get everyone's favorite topic listed as a priority objec-
tive in order to insure that it will not be neglected, has to be
resisted.
Third, in order to afford a stable basis for intelligence
planning, the DCID should be designed to remain valid over
an extended period. This consideration requires the exclusion
of topics of momentarily urgent, but transitory, interest,
which will require and receive ad hoc treatment in any case.
The present practice is to review and revise the DCID annu-
ally, the process sometimes extending the period between re-
visions to as much as eighteen months.
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Fourth, since broad generalities are of little practical use,
the PNIO's should be specific enough to provide discernible
guidance for the allocation of research and collection re-
sources, but not so specific as to constitute in themselves re-
search and collection requirements. The application of this
criterion presents the greatest difficulty in the formulation of
PNIO's and is the source of complaints from those collection
personnel who refuse to accept them, with Mr. Heffter, as "a
constitution which requires both laws and courts to interpret
it." The criterion has served on the one hand to rule out
the kind of generality found in the 1950-52 DCID 4/2, and on
the other to keep the PNIO in rather broad terms, especially
in comparison with specific collection requirements-that is,
to maintain its character as the statement of a critical sub-
stantive intelligence problem rather than an itemizing of the
essential elements of information needed for its solution.
Role of the PNIO's in Guiding Research and Collection
The function of the PNIO's as stated in the DCID, is to
serve as a guide for the coordination of intelligence collection
and production. They are intended to be only the first step
in a process beginning with a need for information felt at the
national policy planning level and extending to the servicing
of specific collection requirements in the field.
In this first step, the Board of National Estimates, with the
advice of other Agency offices and in coordination with
USIB representatives, identifies the critical substantive prob-
lems inherent in the general body of intelligence required for
purposes of national security policy. This is as far as esti-
mators can properly go in relation to the total problem. The
identification and formulation of collection requirements re-
lated to these priority national intelligence objectives requires
analysis by research personnel to determine the elements of
information essential to a solution of the problem, the ele-
ments already available or readily obtainable through re-
search, the additional information obtainable through routine
collection and the residual information of such critical im-
portance as to warrant a priority collection effort.
Obviously, not every bit of information somehow related to
a priority national intelligence objective will be required with
equal urgency. Many are procurable by routine means. It is
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PNIO's
therefore necessary that research personnel exercise discrimi-
nation and restraint in formulating collection requirements,
claiming priority for only those aspects of a priority objec-
tive that actually do require a priority collection effort. As
Mr. Heffter has pointed out, the criterion here is not a pos-
sible incidental relationship of the collection requirement to
a PNIO, but the importance (the essentiality) of the desired
information for a solution of the critical problem designated
in the PNIO and its unavailability from other sources. If re-
search analysts present unjustified claims for priority collec-
tion, citing some not cogent relationship to a PNIO, collectors
must exercise their own judgment and authority in rejecting
them.
If a particular system of intelligence collection is unable
to satisfy all of the legitimate requirements levied upon it,
determinations have to be made as to which requirements
will be accorded priority. In this operational context, how-
ever, priority can never be determined solely by reference to
the PNIO's. One requirement related to a PNIO and certi-
fied by a responsible research agency to be a really essential
element of information, being well suited to the particular
mode of collection, may consequently be accorded the desired
priority. Another such requirement may be totally unsuited
to that mode of collection and therefore unworthy of any con-
sideration whatever, no matter what the PNIO to which it
is related. All sorts of gradations are possible between these
two extremes. In these circumstances collection officers
must assume the responsibility for deciding between the im-
portunate claimants for their services. Their decisions may
be informed and guided by the PNIO's and other instruments
that Mr. Heffter cites, but they must be made primarily in
terms of the collector's expert professional knowledge.
Problems such as these are inherent in the administration
of intelligence research and collection. No reformulation of
the PNIO's could obviate them-unless, indeed, the PNIO's
were to be transformed into a community-wide listing of coor-
dinated collection requirements in an absolute order of pri-
ority. Even if this were done, something like the present
PNIO's would then have to be reinvented to guide the coordi-
nators of collection requirements. The problem lies, not in
the PNIO's, however imperfect they may be, but in the gap
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between them and the scramble to obtain priority for indi-
vidual collection requirements.
What Can Be Done About It?
In 1954 the Board of National Estimates was keenly aware
that the formulation of PNIO's was only a small part of the
total problem. It recommended that the then Special Assist-
ant to the Director for Planning and Coordination be directed
to review existing procedures for the development and coordi-
nation of collection requirements in relation to the PNIO's,
and to propose improvements. The Special Assistant made
such a study and concluded that no action was advisable.
Like Mr. Heffter, he considered that a single community-wide
mechanism for coordinating collection requirements, assign-
ing priorities to them, and allocating particular collection re-
sources to their service would be a Rube Goldberg contrap-
tion, more a hindrance. than a help. The Board of National
Estimates would heartily agree. It had not meant to propose
the invention of such a machine, but it had hoped that seri-
ous study of the subject might bear such fruit as a more gen-
eral understanding of mutual responsibilities and more sys-
tematic procedures for cooperation in the common cause.
For six years, however, the gap has remained, and collec-
tors as well as estimators evidently find it to be not a Good
Thing. And now Mr. Heffter comes forward with some con-
structive suggestions and a welcome invitation to profes-
sional discussion of the problem. Rejecting as impractical the
idea of a community-wide coordination of collection require-
ments in priority order, he suggests that the situation could
be alleviated if more systematic use were made of the find-
ings of the several USIB subcommittees under their assigned
authority, in their respective fields, "to recommend ... intel-
ligence objectives within the over-all national intelligence ob-
jectives, establish relative priorities on substantive needs, re-
view the scope and effectiveness of collection and production
efforts to meet these objectives, and make the necessary sub-
stantive recommendations to the departments and agencies
concerned." This would be precisely the kind of implemen-
tation of the PNIO's which the Board of National Estimates
has advocated for many years.
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PNIO's
More important than any procedural proposals, however, is
Mr. Heffter's recognition of the fundamental need for a truly
professional doctrine and discipline in relation to this subject.
The professional discussion which he seeks to stimulate is a
necessary step toward the satisfaction of that need.
It is now time for someone to join the discussion from the
viewpoint of the research components of the community.
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Elastic requirements for useful
photos, but stringent specifica-
tions for the best.
INTELLIGENCE PHOTOGRAPHY
Kenneth E. Bofrone
In the days and months after the Nazi blitzkrieg suddenly
overran France, British topographic intelligence, ill prepared
to support the evacuation at Dunkirk and subsequent raids
on the French coast, resorted to photo intelligence from post
cards, travel folders and brochures, and tourist snapshots col-
lected by public appeal.' That they were driven to this kind
of improvisation illustrates the wisdom of building up in ad-
vance an intelligence photo collection even on objects and
areas where no intelligence need is foreseen. It also shows
that casual photos taken without any regard to the require-
ments of a photo interpreter can be useful. Nevertheless their
usefulness is increased and the interpreter's work eased in
proportion as his requirements-most of them stemming from
his need to take measurements-are fulfilled.
There are times when a single photograph is the documen-
tary evidence upon which a critical decision must be based.
The specially skilled personnel of a photographic intelligence
center may spend days and sometimes weeks exploring with
their computers and precision measuring devices a single
35 mm. negative, extracting information that could not be
imagined to reside in it. It may yield only one required fact,
but sometimes that tiny piece of acetate and silver becomes
the key to a cabinet full of hitherto inaccessible secrets. In
the story of the Yo-Yo missile guidance system told in a recent
issue of the Studies,' photographs of a grass-covered bunker
ending in two large triangular discs provided the critical
information that led to a break-through.
' See James Leasor's The Clock with Four Hands, reviewed in Studies
IV 1, p. 99.
2V 1, p. 11 if.
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The history of these Yo-Yo prints also illustrates the tribu-
lations imposed on the photogrammetrist trying to get his
measurements when the necessary technical data does not
accompany the film. The make of camera that took them
was not reported, nor the focal length of the lens, nor any
estimate of camera-to-target distance. Even the size of the
negatives was uncertain, there being no black border to show
that they had not been cropped. Nevertheless a crude indi-
cator for scale was found-a number of cows shown beyond
the bunker in one of the pictures. These were identified as of
the Angus breed, the average hip-to-ground height of Angus
cattle was obtained from the Department of Agriculture, and
the task of triangulation could begin. The resulting meas-
urements of the visible parts of what turned out to be a new
kind of radar system were later verified by repeated photo-
graphic coverage as being within 10% of the actual dimen-
sions.
Measurements
When the focal length of the lens and the camera-to-target
distance are known, the scale of the image on the negative
is immediately available as their quotient. Measurements of
the target's image, usually made in hundredths or thousandths
of a foot, can be converted by this scale into the target's true
dimensions :
image dimensionX distance =true dimension
focal length
The scale will be accurate, of course, only for objects in a
plane at exactly this distance from the plane of the camera
lens; the computation of the size of objects shown nearer to
the camera or farther away is more complex.
If the focal length is not reported, but an object of known
size-preferably something better standardized than cows-
is shown, the scale will be the quotient of a measured dimen-
sion of that object's image by its true dimension; and the
size of other objects in the same range plane can then be found
with the formula:
unknown image dimensionX known true dimension
known image dimension
=unknown true dimension
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For the most accurate measurement of fine detail, however,
the photogrammetrist uses angular measurements and
trigonometric computations, based on the angular field of
view of the lens and the size of negative used in the camera.
The standard 50 mm. lens for a 35 mm. camera, for example,
takes in a horizontal angle of 38.2 ? and a vertical angle of
26?, while a 400 mm. telephoto lens takes in only 51/2 ? by 31/2 ?.
At a given range the lateral distance from the center point
of the field of view to one of its extremes will be the product
of the range distance by the tangent of half the maximum
angle in question.
Fortunately, measurements are not always needed, even of
military equipment in denied areas. Specialists on the type of
equipment in question can often identify a known model by
its distant, poorly defined silhouette, and the knowledge that
such a piece of equipment was seen in that location is what
is important. New models or modifications of old ones are a
different matter; their capabilities have to be determined by
the measurement of critical parts. And here especially the
refinements that make the difference between a tourist snap-
shot and the most informative photograph, while small, are
important. They are of two kinds, qualities inherent in the
negative itself and a sufficiency of accompanying data about it.
Photographic Requirements
The first requirement is the highest resolution-sharpness
of image-of which camera and film are capable. It can be
achieved by focusing the lens properly, by holding the camera
steady, and by using a relatively high shutter speed (1/100th
second or faster) to minimize camera and subject movement.
The film, when there is a choice, should also be selected with
a view to resolution; and here, unless light is good and motion
minimal, it is necessary to compromise between fast film and
the slower fine grain. Panatomic-X (ASA 25) or its equiva-
lent is an excellent choice when light conditions are good and
the finest detail is necessary. For poor light or when a very
fast shutter is required, films such as Tri-X Pan (ASA 200)
should be used. As a compromise, Plus-X Pan (ASA 80) is the
best all-purpose film. Color film is desirable only when color
is an important feature of the subject; that now on the mar-
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ket gives rather poor resolution as the color fringes blur into
one another. With improvements, film of the type of East-
man's Kodacolor may in the future be the answer to this
problem.
The second requirement is that photographs not be cropped.
If a print is submitted it should be made from the full nega-
tive. The analyst's ability to take fine measurements from a
photograph is keyed, as pointed out above, to knowledge of
the angular field of view of the camera lens and the size of
the negative used. If a print has been cropped or masked,
the angular relationship is left without its frame of refer-
ence. But if prints are made with a little of the negative's
clear margin showing on all four sides, the resulting black
border assures the interpreter that he is working with the
full frame.
Third, if a print is submitted, the contrast should be neither
light nor heavy, but medium. The details important to photo-
analysis are frequently in shadow areas, which would be black-
ened by heavy contrast. But whenever possible, the original
negatives, not prints, should be submitted. The best of prints
will contain only about 35 of the 200 to 300 different tonal
shades of gray that the negative may have, and each tone
may represent additional information. The photogrammetrist,
to be sure, will not use the original negative for fear of dam-
aging it, but he will make a positive transparency that has
all the qualities of the negative by contact printing on a piece
of film designed for this purpose.
Accompanying Data
The analyst can sometimes improvise, as we have seen, but
he will be able to get the most out of each photograph if it
is accompanied by the following information:
Where the picture was taken-geographic location, prov-
ince, city, town, and as nearly as possible the exact posi-
tion. On a train the notation might be, "Ten rail clicks
south of milepost 147 on x-y rail line," or on the high-
way, "300 yards SSE of intersection of highways N30 and
N12." Further, the compass direction in which the
camera was pointed; the more accurate the azimuth read-
ing the more valuable the photo will be.
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Date and time. Precision as to the time of day within five
minutes will give the analyst a secondary method of mak-
ing height determination by reference to astronomic
data on sun position computed for the area in question.
Make and model of camera; different models may have dif-
ferent frame sizes, the Robot "Star," for example, pro-
ducing a 1" by 1" negative and the Robot "36" a 1" by
1%". Paramount is the importance of recording the
focal length of the lens, which is always engraved on the
front of the lens rim.
Camera-to-subject distance, with method of measuring it-
paced, map reference, eye estimate, etc.
Any unusual conditions at the scene-sounds, smells, colors,
smoke, anything that might help to identify an unknown
activity.
For all these purposes some system of numbering the ex-
posures to key them to the data is necessary. Film for 35 mm.
cameras is convenient in this respect because each frame is
numbered during manufacture.
Special Techniques
Every lens has a distortion pattern of its own, displacing
the photographic image from its true position. When the
camera and lens to be used on a photographic mission are
available to the photo analyst, he has them calibrated on an
optical bench, recording the distortion pattern of the lens and
the precise alignment between lens and plane of film. This
calibration in advance is not often possible, but the photog-
rapher can easily provide calibration data himself. He stands,
with his camera, between two parallel lines, such as the curbs
of a street, or even better a straight stretch of railroad
tracks, and makes one exposure looking down these lines with
camera held level in normal position. Then he turns the
camera 900 about its lens axis so that the horizontal dimen-
sion of the frame is vertical and makes a second exposure of
the same view from the same position. If these two nega-
tives are submitted along with the photos taken by the cam-
era, the optical technician can plot the pattern of distortion
and compute its effect on measurements in the latter.
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Photography CONFIDENTIAL
A real photographic study of a subject requires views from
various positions, even if they can be taken from only one
direction-distant views to show the entire area and the: posi-
tion of the subject in its environs; medium ones for defini-
tion of the relationships of components of the subject to each
other; close-ups for details of structure, size, and function'-
ing of individual components. These three kinds of view can
be taken either by moving progressively closer to the target
or by successive use of wide-angle, normal, and telephoto
lenses. There is no such thing as too many photographs
of a subject, particularly of telephoto views, in which atmos-
pheric interference and the foreshortening of the field pre-
sent additional problems to the photo interpreter.
When a subject is too broad or tall to get into a single
frame, it can be covered by a series of exposures-a procedure
called panorama or partial cyclorama. The photographer
takes a position at an identified point and starts with a pic-
ture of one of the extremes. Then from the same position
he takes a second shot with a 30% to 40% overlap of the
first, and so continues until he has covered the area. If pos-
sible, this procedure should be duplicated from a second or
even third position, recording the relationship of each
camera position to the others.
Of all the techniques used in ground photos, stereophotog-
raphy probably has the greatest versatility and value. The
simulated third dimension can be of great help in distinguish-
ing between components of a subject or several similar objects
in proximity to one another. Although 35 mm. stereo cam-
eras are available on the market, they are of little use at
distances beyond 50 or 60 feet. Stereophotographs at greater
distances are best made with an ordinary camera, taking
pictures of the same object from two or more slightly sep-
arated stations with the optical axis of the lens parallel in
all shots. As a rule of thumb, the distance between camera
stations should be one foot for each 100 feet of range. This
distance, called the stereo base, should be reported. Stereo-
photographs can be made from a moving vehicle by holding
the camera in fixed position and making successive exposures
as rapidly as possible. The interval between exposures and
the speed of the vehicle, if they can be estimated, will provide
a stereo base.
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CONFIDENTIAL Photography
These refinements of technique, together with accurate
and complete data accompanying submitted films, enhance
the intelligence value of reports based upon photography.
But the elaboration of sophisticated requirements should not
be allowed to obscure the most important requirement:
Take pictures.
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Intelligence market for the
product of the camera fan's fun.
SNAPSHOTS AT RANDOM
Jane Schnell
Everyone who has taken photographs in a foreign country
has collected potential ground photographic intelligence. The
traveller turns his camera upon anything that excites his in-
terest-the civil engineer on peculiarities in the construc-
tion of dams, roads, bridges, and city buildings; a woman per-
haps on clothing, jewelry, and hair styles; a doctor on things
related to disease and therapy; a farmer on crops and tools
and methods of farming. The more widely travelled the man
behind the camera and the broader his interests, the more
discriminating he is likely to be in photographing subject
matter peculiar to a particular place. But the potential in-
telligence thus collected is often lost; there are two minimum
requirements for transforming it into actual photo intelli-
gence. One is that the pictures must be identified, at least
by the name of the place or subject, the direction the camera
was facing, and the date. The other is that they must get
to the market.
The most omnivorous and insatiable broker for the photo
intelligence market is the CIA Graphics Register. If you have
a batch of photos taken anywhere abroad, properly identified
and preferably with negatives, the Register would like to look
them over. If they were taken in London or Paris or Vienna,
say, the pickings may be slim, but the Register would like to
decide for itself. And if it knows in advance that you are
going to have a tour in some less well frequented place, it
may be interested enough in promoting your hobby to supply
you with camera and film. With a minimum of effort, adding
to the pictures you normally would take anyway a notation
of the place, time, and direction and as much descriptive data
as you can, you are likely to produce some useful photos.
Targets of Opportunity
The results will be much better, however, if you add to this
minimum effort a little more and become as familiar as you
17
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can with photo collection manuals and lists of requirements
on the area. Graphics Register can refer you to general pub-
lications on these subjects; 1 and attache offices in all the
U.S. diplomatic missions have such manuals and require-
ments lists in detail for their particular areas. You can pick
out of the listings a few things that are of interest to you
and accessible for photographing in the course of your normal
day-to-day activities. One standing requirement, for example,
is photographs of prominent persons in almost any field, espe-
cially the military, political, economic, and scientific. If an
election is coming up and campaigning is in progress, why
not take a few pictures of the speakers? If they are within
50 feet of a 35 mm. camera, the heads can be enlarged to
an identifiable likeness. The closer the better, naturally,
but the main thing is to get them on film and in focus.
The fact that an object may have been photographed pre-
viously by no means disqualifies it: changes, or the absence
of changes, in it over a period of years or of weeks may be
important. And changes aside, it is amazing how many pic-
tures of the same object can be taken without telling the
whole story. Although I must have seen hundreds of photo-
graphs of the Eiffel Tower before I went to France, it wasn't
until I walked under it that I realized the first balcony
has a big hole in it. So looking up, I photographed the tower
through the hole; and then, just for fun, I kept trying to
find another photograph that showed there was such a hole
in the middle of the balcony. It was three and a half years
before I saw one. A good photographic practice is to take
the normal view of an object and then try to think up a dif-
ferent viewpoint and take that also. Few people look up, and
it is often by looking up that you find an extraordinary
picture.
If a new gas storage tank is being built in the city where
you are stationed and you drive past it going to work every
day, why not photograph it once a week or once a month?
The photos will tell how long it takes to build it, what types
of materials and methods of construction are used, and how
much gas storage capacity is being added. Maybe you don't
know what a gas storage tank looks like, and all you see is a
'See appended bibliography for a sample list.
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big tank being built. Take a picture of it anyway; obviously
it is built to store something. What you don't know about
it the analyst will. That is what he is an analyst for, but
he can't analyze it if you don't get him the pictures.
Captions
A bit of extra effort put into captioning your shots will
pay off, too. One kind of information you may not be in the
habit of noting for your own purposes, technical data, may
be of importance to the Register. This includes the kind of
camera and lens, the type of film, and the speed of exposure,
as well as a serial number for each roll and frame. You
should especially make note if you have used a telephoto or
wide-angle lens. Information on the type of film and exposure
speed will not only assist in its development but also make
it possible for you to get advice on how to correct any mis-
takes you make and improve your technique.
Roll 20, frame No. 3. 2 May 1959. 1100 local time.
Malaya, Kelantan state. Town, road, waterway.
Main road between Kota Bharu and Kuala Trengganu
looking south at ferry toward village of Jerteh. Note cut at
right for bridge under construction (see frames 1 and 2 for
other shots of bridge).
%FI IAL USE NLY 19
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Most important, however, is good identifying data about
each picture. The essential elements are the date (and the
time of day may be useful) ; the precise place; the subject or
subjects, with special note of particular features of intelli-
gence interest; and the direction the camera was facing, by
compass or with reference to landmarks. It might be noted,
for example, that frame no. 7 of roll 2 was exposed at 1330 on
17 November, one mile east of Otaru, Hokkaido, on the road to
Sapporu, looking north and showing a Soviet trawler in the
bay. Or from a second-floor street window of the Hotel Eu-
rope in Bangkok, looking down on a passer-by identified as
so-and-so on his way to the corner to hail a samlor.
These essentials can frequently be supplemented to advan-
tage with additional comments or with printed matter bear-
ing on a particular picture. Perhaps the idea of the target
came from facts you read in the newspaper; clip the article
out and send it along. You find your way around unfamiliar
cities with the help of guidebooks, free tourist maps, and maps
bought at local survey offices or book stores. The analyst can
use the same material to find his way around your photo-
graphs; if you can't send copies, at least make reference to
the tools of travel you used. In the absence of printed ma-
terial it is extremely useful to draw a sketch showing the
relationship of pictured objects. A sketch is particularly good
when there are several shots of the same subject from differ-
ent vantage points, or of different subjects near each other,
or of subjects that are not mapped. The analyst never com-
plains that he is given too many facts about a picture.
Spies and People
You may want to shoot beyond your targets of casual op-
portunity and make trips or excursions expressly for the pur-
pose of getting useful pictures. Fine; but since you are pre-
sumably abroad on some other government business, it is
paramount that you remember you are taking pictures for
fun. You should never take photos at the risk of your proper
work, your purpose in being there. This need for discretion is
of course a greater limitation in some places than in others.
Once you have decided upon a target, the thing to do is become
as familiar with it as possible, learn for sure just what the
limitations of law and discretion are, and forget completely
20
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why you want the pictures. Try to take them for some other
reason than intelligence collection.
I once wanted to photograph a new electric power plant
in Malaya. So far as I knew, nobody would question my tak-
ing the pictures; but it is a little odd for a girl to go around
photographing power plants. First, I had to find it, some-
where around a certain town. I drove out the main road from
that town, which finally passed under some high power
wires. After taking pictures of the road in both directions,
and the wires and towers in both directions, I drove on,
planning to take the next road turning off either right or
left parallel with the wires. But at the next turn a sign
pointed to the power plant.
I photographed the side road and then drove down it until
I came to a one-way bridge with a policeman at each end and
the power plant on the other side. The first policeman waved
me to a stop. I got out of the car, camera in hand, and went
up and asked him why. He said I had to wait a few minutes,
the Sultan was coming. I asked what was the big building
on the other side of the river. "That's our new power
plant," he said proudly. "That's nice," I said, "Does it work
now?" "Oh, yes." "Golly," I said, "Can I take a picture of
it?" "Sure, why don't you go to the other end of the bridge,
you get a better shot." So I shot a lot of pictures, some in-
cluding the bridge and a nearby railway bridge, with a lot of
kibitzing, until the Sultan came past in his Mercedes. Then
I thanked the policeman and left, congratulating myself that
nothing could have been easier. If I'd been as smart as I
thought I was I'd have got a good picture of the Sultan and
one of the policeman. No matter how much you see, if it isn't
in your camera it's worthless.
The biggest hazard to the camera fan who has ulterior mo-
tives is people-himself, ordinary people, and people who
might suspect him. If you act suspicious even the ordinary
people will become suspicious. If you act quite ordinary even
the suspicious people will think you quite ordinary. That is
why it is important for you to forget the reason you are
taking your pictures. Just take them; but know what you will
say if you are questioned. Sometimes if people are watching
me take pictures it makes me nervous, so I retaliate by turn-
ing my camera on them to make them nervous. In the places
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Roll 27, frame 11. February 1960.
Burma, Kachin state, Shwegu village. Sociological.
Man cutting bamboo.
I've been they are either so pleased they stop being inquisitive
or suspicious or else they are embarrassed and go away. I
have been told that in the Middle East they often throw
things, and that in the Soviet bloc it can be quite dangerous;
but in Asia usually they giggle. Some friends of mine in
Borneo used a polaroid camera to divert the people with pic-
tures of themselves while they took candid shots. One Dyak
requested a photo of the tattoo on his back; he had never
seen it!
The necessary equipment for ground intelligence photog-
raphy consists of one camera and plenty of film. A camera,
like a pair of shoes, is an individual and personal matter. I
prefer a 35 mm. negative because its 20 or 36 frames per stand-
ard roll last longer without changing film, and larger cameras
are too heavy and bulky. I would not use a smaller one, of
the subminiature class, except for. some special reason; the
negative is so small that enlargement potential is seriously
limited. And ordinary people, if they bother to think about
it, think spies use tiny cameras that can be hidden.
If you
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go around more or less like a tourist with a popular-sized one
you avoid being conspicuous.
There are many publications on cameras and photographic
techniques, on special lenses, on the respective advantages of
black-and-white and color, of fine-grain and fast film. I
haven't tried to touch on these subjects. All I have tried to
do is point out that an opportunity exists for travellers in-
terested in photography to make a considerable contribution
to basic intelligence through collecting ground photos. I col-
lected them because I thought it important, because it helped
me learn about the place where I was living, and because it
was fun.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Guide for Graphics Coordinators. INR/State, October 1960. An
excellent new handbook.
A Manual for the Collection of Ground Photography and Related Data.
Bureau of Aeronautics, NAVAER 10-35-650, March 1953. This is
the best previous guide, illustrating many techniques and giving
many examples.
Techniques for Producing Good Ground Photography for Intelligence
Purposes. Secret. Photographic Intelligence Memorandum,
CIA/ORR, GP/I-198, 18 July 1956.
Volume 4-Political Affairs, of Foreign Service Manual. TL:PA-28,
7-25-60.
A Guide to the Collection of Ground Intelligence Photography on Ports
and Harbors. Confidential. Photographic Intelligence Memoran-
dum, CIA/ORR, PIM-2, September 1957.
Amateur Photography from Commercial Aircraft. Secret. Photo-
graphic Intelligence Memorandum, CIA/ORR, GP/I-205, 14 August
1956.
Intelligence Collection Guidance Manual-Intelligence Photography.
Confidential. Air Force Manual 200-9, 1 February 1955.
Intelligence Collection Guidance Manual-Industrial Recognition. Air
Force Manual 200-7, 15 December 1955.
Intelligence Collection Guide-Telecommunications. Confidential.
Army Pamphlet 30-100, July 1955.
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Nature, source, and behavior of
a human characteristic vulner-
able to intelligence exploitation.
HUMAN SCENT AND ITS DETECTION
Spencer Tebrich
The olfactory sensibilities of dogs have made them a use-
ful adjunct of intelligence and security services for as long
as such services have existed. In World War II the German
and currently several East European counterintelligence or-
ganizations have made notably regular use of them for track-
ing and identifying suspects, fugitives, and subjects of sur-
veillance. It is curious that this anachronistic animate op-
erational aid has simply been accepted into the age of science
and technology without much effort to discover whether it
could be replaced or improved upon, to define its precise capa-
bilities with a view to countermeasures, or even to deter-
mine how it really works. The very familiarity of the fact
that a dog can detect a man's odor from a considerable dis-
tance and can also distinguish one person from another by
odor alone may explain why there has been little serious con-
sideration of the parameters of the dog's capabilities or what
it is about a human being that he smells.
Just what is the odor that a dog identifies as human scent?
This is the first question that must be answered in a sys-
tematic inquiry into the phenomenon. Knowledge of the na-
ture of this odor would open the way to a definition of the
abilities of the dog. It would make possible experimental
studies to determine the effects of weather, terrain, and other
factors on the persistence and spread of the scent. It would
provide a base point in the search for techniques to neutral-
ize human odor or otherwise counteract the effectiveness of
dogs. Since every person appears to have a different odor, it
could also lead to a technique for identifying individuals. A
more visionary but still potential outcome of the study of
human odor could be the development of a "mechanical dog,"
a device that would automatically detect the presence of an
individual by his scent.
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These eventual applications of value to intelligence cannot
be approached, however, until the basic questions are an-
swered. This paper summarizes the results of current re-
search in this field.
Characteristics of the Scent
In 1924 L. Lohner, of the Physiological Institute of the
University of Graz, published a paper comparing human and
canine perception of human odor.' In an experiment devised
to determine if humans could differentiate between individ-
uals by odor, he had used a group of males between 20 and 40
years old, racially similar agrarian people from the Ba-
varian Alps. All were given the same diet during the testing
period and they bathed before each test. Then they took sun
baths with test cloths on various parts of their bodies-arm-
pits, pubic region, the hair on the head, and, for a hairless
region, the upper back or the palm of the hand. With prac-
tice, the men could distinguish among cloths which had been
on different parts of the body, but they could not distinguish
one individual from another. Lohner apparently didn't get
dogs to sniff these cloths, but he pointed out that trailing
dogs can take a scent from clothing off any part of the body,
and he concluded that whereas humans differentiate among
odors from different regions of the body, dogs recognize some
common component which identifies the individual.
In another paper, published in 1926, Lohner reported some
experiments with a female Doberman pinscher and blocks
of wood which had been held by various individuals.2 He said
the dog could identify a block which had been touched by
only one finger for a period of one or two seconds. Further-
more, the human odor was not masked when odorous sub-
stances such as bergamot, oil of cloves, or wild marjaram oil
were applied to the test blocks. Trying to determine how long
a block retained the hand scent, he found that it was lost
faster in warm weather than in cold, and most slowly if the
block was kept in a closed jar. It was not removed by soak-
ing for two minutes in warm water, but could be eradicated
' Lohner, L., Pfliiger's Archie fur die Gesamte Physiologie des Men-
schen and die Tiere, 202, 25-45, (1924).
9 Lohner, L., Pfliiger's Archie fur die Gesamte Physiologle des
Menschen and die Tiere, 212, 84-94, (1926).
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by placing the block in a hot air dryer at about 150? C. for
five to ten minutes or in boiling water for ten minutes.
It is possible to draw several conclusions about the nature
of human scent from these experiments and from other evi-
dence.
First, the odorous substance must be somewhat volatile,
since it could be removed by hot air. There are other consid-
erations that support this conclusion. For instance, it is dif-
ficult to imagine how a dog could detect a person from a dis-
tance if the odorous material were not volatile. In one series
of our own experiments, portions of trails were laid by row-
ing a boat along the shore of a lake, and it was found that a
dog, trailing on shore, could determine which way his human
quarry had gone without its having set foot on the ground.
The shore line must therefore have been marked for him
by vaporized scented matter.
Second, its volatility can nevertheless not be very high
under ordinary conditions. Since it remains on sticks and
clothing for a considerable length of time, it must have a
fairly low vapor pressure.
Third, it must be rather persistent (in the chemical war-
fare sense), hence chemically stable and relatively dense with
respect to air. Dogs can follow a trail hours after it was laid,
and their actions indicate that pockets of scent collect and
persist in particular places under the proper conditions.
Fourth, since warm water did not remove the scent from
Lohner's test blocks, it is not readily soluble in water. There
is evidence that a dog can identify an individual by scent,
although apparently with more than usual difficulty, even
after a number of successive baths. Either it is very diffi-
cult to wash the scent off even with soap, or else it is replaced
rapidly after a bath.
Some of our own experiments lead to further conclusions.
In these a male Laborador retriever named Skimmer, after
sniffing the hand of one individual, would select a stick he had
handled from among three or four handled by other persons.
The experimental variations of this basic test procedure were
each repeated at least three times, a different set of sticks
being placed in different order on a different section of a
wooden floor at each repetition. In practice the tests were
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not necessarily consecutive: it was found the dog would lose
interest after a few hours of work on any single day.
In one set of tests, although Skimmer was still given the
individual's scent by holding a hand over his nose, he selected
the right stick just as well if, instead of having been held in
the hand, it had been placed only under the arm or had only
been rubbed through the hair. A female miniature poodle
named Onyx, given the hand scent of an individual, also
readily selected a stick which had only had contact with his
hair. This essentially was a continuation of Lohner's experi-
ment, demonstrating that the hand, armpit, and hair all con-
tain some common element by which a dog identifies a person.
In another series of tests, however, the sticks were not han-
dled, but urine samples from the four test individuals applied
to them; and Skimmer could not identify these sticks.
Then an attempt was made to extract the odorous material
from samples of hair. Hair cuttings from the four test in-
dividuals were treated with a fat solvent, carbon tetrachloride
or perchloroethylene. When the solvent was removed by
evaporation at room temperature, there remained a small
amount of very pale yellow fatty material which had a slight
and not unpleasant odor. It was solid at room temperature,
liquid under body heat. These extract samples were tested
on Skimmer as follows.
Three individuals each handled a stick, but the fourth's
was marked only by a small amount of the material extracted
from his hair sample. Skimmer, given a hand scent by the
fourth individual, readily picked the correct stick. The test
was repeated, using a different person's extract each time,
always with success. It was also reversed, all four sticks being
handled but the dog given the scent from one of the bottles
of extract. Again he could equate the extract with the hand
scent on the stick. The experiment was repeated on Onyx,
the miniature poodle, with the same results. But when a
stick was rubbed with the hair which remained after the
extraction process, Skimmer could not identify it.
Thus it is possible to obtain from human hair an extract
which contains the odor identifying the individual. More-
over, since several weeks or even some months elapsed be-
tween the cutting of the hair and the tests with Skimmer,
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the experiments also indicate that an individual's character-
istic odor does not change over quite a period of time. It
could be that a person's scent is a permanent individual char-
acteristic.
The additional conclusions one can draw from these experi-
ments may be summarized as follows.
Fifth, dogs appear to find some common individual scent
produced by different parts of the human body, whereas to a
human the different parts of the body have different odors.
Urine, however, does not contain the individual's scent.
Sixth, the substance of human scent, although not very sol-
uble in water, is susceptible to fat solvents and can be ex-
tracted from hair by the use of these.
Seventh, the characteristic scent does not change from day
to day.
Source of the Scent
If we assume, as we have, that what a dog identifies as the
characteristic scent of an individual is the property of some
very specific material, and if we further assume, as seems
reasonable, that this specific and characteristic material
would have a unique source, the next step would be to look
about for the most probable source for it. Since it is trans-
ferred to an object by contact with the skin or hair, the scent
is apparently present on the skin; and a logical source for it
might therefore be one of the various secretions normal to
the human skin.3
The skin is normally covered with a part aqueous, part
oily film made up of the secretions of several different types
of glands. Some of these glands are found all over the body,
others only in certain parts. The most familiar of them is
that which produces the eccrine sweat whose evaporation
serves to control body temperature. It is about 99% water,
and the materials that make up the remaining 1% are very
similar to those of urine. The glands are all over the body,
the rate at which they operate depending on temperature,
exercise, and emotional factors. Eccrine sweat probably has
' The information on skin secretions in this section is derived from
Rothman, Stephan, Physiology and Biochemistry of the Skin (Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1954).
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some odor, one which becomes more noticeable with bacterial
decomposition.
Another type of gland produces a kind of sweat known as
apocrine, which contains fatty as well as water-soluble in-
gredients. There are apocrine sweat glands in all the hairier
parts of the body (armpits, perimammillary regions, mid-line
of the abdomen, pubic and anal regions) except on the head,
where they are found only in the external ear canal and the
nasal vestibule, not in the scalp or on the face. Apocrine
sweat contains odorous materials, and the odor becomes more
pronounced with bacterial decomposition; it is probably the
main source of so-called "body odor." These glands do not re-
spond to temperature changes, but they are readily activated
by mental stimuli. In animals, at least, they appear to be
related to sexual attraction. Beyond that, not much is
known as to why they exist.
A third set of glands secretes a fatty material that serves
to lubricate and protect the skin. These are called sebaceous
glands, and their secretion sebum. There are sebaceous
glands over the entire body except for some parts of the feet,
the palms of the hands, the palm sides of the fingers, and
between the fingers. But sebum is found on all parts of
the skin, including those where there are no glands, because
it flows over the skin very rapidly. It is said to be very difficult
to get even a small portion of the palm free from sebum,
and it is estimated that it flows over wet skin at the rate of
some 1.3 inches per second.
Sebum is liquid at body temperature, a solid at ordinary
room temperature. Chemically, it is a very complex mixture
of free and combined fatty acids, wax alcohols, sterols, ter-
penoids, and hydrocarbons, with compounds of relatively high
molecular weight predominating. Many of the compounds do
not occur anywhere else in.the body. If it is removed from
the skin, the glands operate very rapidly to replace it, but
when the sebum layer reaches a certain thickness they slow
down and stop until it needs renewal again.
In order to complete the catalog of organic materials found
on the skin, it should be mentioned that a small amount of
fatty material is released by skin cells that are in process of
being discarded. This process is quite slow.
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If we now examine each of these skin secretions in the light
of what we know about human scent, we should be able to
decide which of them is the most likely source of the scent,
or whether several are equally possible sources.
Of eccrine sweat, the 1% that isn't water is water-soluble.
But Lohner's experiments indicated that human scent is not
readily soluble in water, and we found that an individual's
scent can be extracted from a hair sample by using a fat
solvent. Moreover, eccrine sweat contains materials similar
to those found in urine, which we concluded does not carry
the characteristic odor of the individual. So eccrine sweat
does not appear to be a good candidate.
Apocrine sweat, since it is the main cause of the familiar
"body odor," might be supposed to be the source of the indi-
vidual's characteristic scent. But we saw that dogs can as
readily take a scent from a person's hand or the hair on his
head as from his armpit, the only one of these three areas
equipped with apocrine glands. So if we stick to our assump-
tion of a single unique source for human scent, apocrine sweat
is also a poor candidate.
The fatty material from the decomposition of skin cells is
produced so slowly that it could not be replaced promptly after
having been removed by a good bath. Yet a dog can detect
the human scent even after a series of baths. We can there-
fore probably ignore skin cells as a source.
This elimination leaves sebum the only remaining candi-
date. It seems reasonable that such a fatty substance con-
taining heavy alcohols and hydrocarbons and having a point
of fusion between room and body temperatures would have
the limited volatility, the persistence, and the solubility char-
acteristics we have attributed to human scent. The rapid re-
placement of sebum removed from.the skin would explain why
the most thorough bath or series of baths does not eliminate
the individual scent. Sebum, like the hair extracts by which
Skimmer identified our test individuals, is soluble in fat sol-
vents; in fact, these extracts were prepared in the same way
many investigators of sebum have obtained their samples.
There does not seem to be any reason why sebum could not
be the source. of individual. scent, and we may therefore make
the working hypothesis that it is, although it".cannot be: said
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we have proved that it is the unique source or that other
skin secretions do not also contain the scent.
From this hypothesis it would not follow that sebum is the
only thing about an individual the dog can smell. There are,
in fact, observations indicating that dogs do use other human
odors as cues. Those who work with police dogs have observed
that they sometimes seem to be drawn to a person for no
other reason than that he has done something which he fears
will be detected. The cue here could be a copious amount of
one of the emotionally controlled secretions, say apocrine
sweat. If sebum provides an ever-present identification of the
individual, the variable intensity of apocrine and perhaps ec-
crine sweat odor may give an indication of his emotional state.
Individuality of the Scent
In 1955 H. Kalmus, of University College, London, published
a paper on the ability of dogs to discriminate between identi-
cal twins.4 In a series of experiments with trailing dogs and
retrievers he found that they could distinguish between iden-
tical twins when confronted simultaneously with both scents,
but that if they were presented only one scent at a time they
would confuse one with the other. No other pairs of individ-
uals, even blood relatives, were so confused. Kalmus con-
cluded that there is more similarity between the scents of
identical twins than between those of other individuals and
inferred that individual scent is probably genetically con-
trolled.
If it is true that scent is genetically controlled, and if the
source is sebum, there should be a marked difference in the
composition of the sebum of different species. There is.
Rothman says,', "It seems that the chemical composition of se-
baceous gland and other skin products shows more striking
species differences among mammals than that of any other
organ or organ product." For instance, human sebum con-
tains a good deal of squalene (a compound structurally re-
lated to cholesterol), which is replaced in sheep sebum (wool
fat, lanolin) by a structurally similar terpenoid called lanos-
terol. Such differences in composition could produce major
4Kalmus, H., British Journal of Animal Behavior, 3, 25-31, (1955).
6 See footnote 3.
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species differences in scent, if one grants that the components
are odorous to the dog.
It is not so easy, however, to account for the fact that each
individual appears to have his own characteristic scent. It
would be absurd to suppose that each individual's sebum con-
tains some unique chemical compound to produce his individ-
ual scent. But the complexity of sebum and the possibility
of structural variations within its many compounds makes
another hypothesis possible. Of the fatty acid series, all the
normal straight-chain monobasic acids from seven to twenty-
two carbons (both odd and even) have been identified in hu-
man sebum. These include both saturated and unsaturated
chains with one, two, and three double bonds. The wax alco-
hols present an equally large array of related compounds, this
time with both straight and branched chains present. If one
postulates individual variations in the comparative quantity
of even a few of these components, there could be a large
number of possible combinations. Only five individual com-
pounds each present in any one of ten possible proportions
would give more than 600,000 combinations.
Thus it could be surmised that human scent, as a species,
is the property of a major component (or set of components)
characteristic of human sebum (say squalene), but that each
individual has a unique mixture of various minor ingredients
(say certain fatty acids or long-chain alcohols). Individual
scent would be a blend, the major scent modified by various
additives, like a series of different perfumes compounded on
the same basic theme. Such chemical individuality is not
without precedent, and it may even turn out to be the rule
that the chemistry of living organisms displays individual vari-
ations around some central theme. In blood groupings, which
have been studied rather extensively, it has been found that
each individual appears to have his own characteristic pattern
of blood types and sub-types, while genetically related indi-
viduals (racial groups) show characteristically similar pat-
terns. It is possible, by determining the presence or absence
of a comparatively few factors, not only to identify blood as
human, but also to obtain information about the donor's ge-
netic background and, potentially at least, to identify the in-
dividual.
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Parameters of Detection
If one is willing to make a number of simplifying assump-
tions, it is possible to estimate the approximate amount of
human odor a dog would have available at a given distance
from a man. The calculation is rather crude, but at least it
gives a quantitative idea of the order of magnitude of the dog's
ability.
Take a man standing in a field with a wind blowing across
his body and a dog 100 yards down wind. Scent is transferred
from the man's body to the air and is carried down wind to
the dog. We will assume the man and dog have maintained
their positions long enough that a continuous cloud of scent
is present between them. As it goes down wind, the cross
section of the cloud will grow larger and the concentration of
the scent in the air smaller in rough proportion to the square
of the distance. The concentration at any particular point
will vary, however, not only with the rate of emanation of the
scent, wind speed, and distance, but also with corrective fac-
tors expressing the effects of weather and terrain on the width
and height of the cloud, the earth's drag on the part of the
cloud near the ground, and the tendency of the concentra-
tion to decrease with altitude.
Having noted the apparent similarities in limited volatility,
density, and persistence between human scent and chemical
warfare agents, we shall adopt the values for these corrective
factors that have been worked out for the travel of clouds of
chemical warfare agents. Prentiss 6 gives values for condi-
tions which he lists as "favorable," "average," and "unfa-
vorable" for a chemical gas attack. These conditions equally
well describe good, average and poor working conditions for a
dog.
For the rate of transfer of the scent from man to air we can
make an estimate on the following basis. Rothman 7 esti-
mates that an adult produces an average of at least 200 micro-
grams of sebum per minute. We have noted that the sebum
layer on the skin tends to maintain equilibrium, being replen-
? Prentiss, Augustin M., Chemicals in Warfare (McGraw-Hill, New
York, 1937).
7See footnote 3.
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Human Q~, 00-QNLf.
fished as fast as it is lost. So we can use. this average rate of
sebum production to represent the average rate at which it is
transferred to the air. But presumably not all the many in-
gredients of sebum are odorous to the dog, and we shall there-
fore arbitrarily take ten percent of this rate, or 20 micrograms
per minute (2X10-2 mg/min) as the rate of transfer of the
scent from man to air.
Taking this expression as the rate of scent transfer, a dis-
tance of 100 yards, a wind speed of 6 miles per hour, and the
values of corrective factors for "average" conditions, we get
a concentration of scent available to the dog of approximately
10-12 milligrams per milliliter of air. For "favorable" condi-
tions, using a wind speed of 2 mph, the concentration would
be about 10-11 mg/ml, and for "unfavorable" conditions, with
a wind speed of 12 mph, it would be about 10-13 mg/ml. It is
possible, to judge from practical experience, that under "un-
favorable" conditions 100 yards would be a little beyond the
dog's effective range.
The spread between the concentrations available to the dog
under favorable and under unfavorable conditions is about two
orders of magnitude (10-11 to 10-13mg/ml). Since scent con-
centration varies inversely with the square of the distance
when everything else is constant, a variation in the distance
by a factor of 10 would give this concentration change of two
orders of magnitude. It jibes well that a practical rule of
thumb for the effective range of a sentry dog's detection by
scent is 50 to 500 yards, depending on conditions, a minimum
and maximum distance separated by our factor of 10.
The concentration of scent available to the dog is exceed-
ingly small. The value obtained for "average" conditions
(10-12 mg/ml) represents only one millionth of a microgram of
odorous material in a liter of air, a microgram being a mil-
lionth of a gram. By weight, since a liter of air weighs some-
what over one gram, this means that the air 100 yards down
wind contains one ten thousandth of a millionth of one per=
cent of the odorous material.
Although these results seem at first sight incredible, man
in his own sense realm can also detect by smell exceedingly
small amounts of odorous. materials in air; and. there are sev-
eral substances which he can recognize in concentrations Simi-
OFFICIAL USE ONLY 35
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lar to those just calculated. Some minimum concentrations
detectable by humans are the following: S
vanillin ................................ 10-12mg/ml
synthetic musk ........................ 10-12mg/ml
mercaptan ............................ 10-1'mg/ml
skatol .................................. 10 -11mg /ml
In the light of these data, our fantastically small figures for
the concentrations a dog can detect are not particularly un-
reasonable. It is only necessary to make the obvious postu-
late that some things which have little or no odor to a human
must be quite odorous to a dog.
Toward Intelligence Applications
These tentative findings should provide a beachhead for
scientific study of the detection of human scent and its pres-
ent and potential applications in intelligence work. With re-
spect to the current use of dogs for security patrol and track-
ing and to the converse problem of evading them, the param-
eters of the dog's ability and the influence thereon of
weather, terrain, and other factors can be defined more pre-
cisely in laboratory and field experiments when controlled by
measured quantities of sebum in refinement of the uncertain
emanations of an individual. If the constant odorous com-
ponent of human sebum, which we have suggested above may
be associated with squalene, can be identified and isolated,
chemical experimentation should in time turn up a counter-
acting agent. Potentially, at least, physical or chemical anal-
ysis of the variant minor components appears also to offer an
alternate means of positive individual identification.
The more universally important senses, because they are
more important, have in the past century been supplemented
with inorganic aids which make them much more capable
than the animal originals. We have long been accustomed to
seeing and hearing much more by means of instruments
than with our natural powers, and to recording sights and
sounds by mechanical artifact. Once we have identified the
medium of human scent analogous to the light and air vibra-
tion which stimulate sight and sound, it seems reasonable to
B Moncrie8, The Chemical Senses (John Wiley and Sons, New York,
1946).
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uman cent
suppose that we shall also find mechanical means to improve
upon animal olfactory capabilities and not only to detect but
to record the otherwise unknown presence of an individual.
Our mechanical dog, when he is born, should be much more
unobtrusive than his natural ancestor, should be able to tell
us just whom he has smelled, and should maintain a reliable
permanent record of his visitors.
OFFICIAL USE ONLY 37
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CONFIDENTIAL
A striking instance of the post-
war hiatus in U.S. intelligence
and counterintelligence activ-
ity.
COVER: PROPERTY RESTITUTION
Frederick D. Barathy
Of the many opportunities presented Soviet intelligence in
the early postwar years to work unhampered in the Allied
occupation zones of Germany, probably none was more nearly
ideal than that offered by the large, unprecedented program
for the return of confiscated property from the U.S. zone,
under which the Military Government played helpful host to
restitution missions from the countries looted by the Nazis,
including those of the Soviet Bloc, from late in 1945 to June
of 1949. Although virtually no instances of intelligence ac-
tivity were detected, the presumption remains, reinforced by
certain indications, that the Soviets took full advantage of
the situation. The obverse opportunities, on the other hand,
for U.S. intelligence recruitment of Bloc mission members ap-
parently went unexploited.
Operation of the Program
Established for the just purpose of restoring to its rightful
owners property of all kinds, from art treasures to industrial
plants, that had been removed to Germany from the occupied
countries, the program was administered by a Restitution
Control Branch of the Military Government headquartered at
Frankfurt am Main and directing, under the policy guidance
of a small staff in Berlin, a field organization with units in
the individual Laender. These would locate claimed property,
the mission of the claimant country would come to identify
it, and the property would be placed under Military Govern-
ment control until it could be shipped out. Each claimant
mission was assigned an RCB officer to work with it, but un-
less it was a large and active mission-like the French, with a
staff of up to 30 members-it would share his time with sev-
eral other missions.
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Czechoslovakia and Poland, Yugoslavia, the USSR, and ulti-
mately the early Axis allies Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria
had felt the Nazi heel and seen many of their national assets
forcibly removed to Germany. They especially wished to re-
cover scientific equipment, important precision machinery, re-
fined minerals, and industrial materials thus commandeered.
In its anxiety to put to rights the injustices perpetrated by
the Germans, the U.S. Military Government welcomed the
missions from these countries into a setup for intelligence op-
erations about as perfect as can be imagined. The missions
not only had a good legitimate reason for being in West Ger-
many but enjoyed official recognition, a sympathetic attitude,
and logistic support. They could bring in a healthy comple-
ment of regular personnel-about 30 for the Bloc countries to-
gether-and additional specialists without restriction for
knotty restitution problems. There was almost no surveil-
lance and a liberal policy toward travel. No restriction was
placed on communication with home governments. It was
normal that chiefs of mission or their deputies would peri-
odically go home to report progress and receive instructions.
It is true that mission officers were required to get RCB
orders for their travel in the zone-a regulation to which the
Bloc missions in particular religiously adhered-and that as a
rule their RCB officer would accompany them on their prop-
erty inspection trips. This was not a counterintelligence
practice, however, but a safeguard against the possibility of il-
legitimate deals between the mission officer and the property
holder at the expense of the claimant. The few cases of such
illicit activity reported would bring the warning that a sec-
ond offense might result in expulsion of the officer as persona
non grata. Some offenders were removed by their own chiefs
of mission.
Grounds for Suspicion
In 1947 a member of the Yugoslav mission, reported for
trying to obtain technical information from a German metal
manufacturer while ostensibly on restitution business, was
given such a warning. By this time, with the cold war in full
bud, the suspicion was growing that the Bloc countries were
using their missions for non-restitution activities. Casual sur-
veillance of their members was attempted, partly with Mili-
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Property Restitution CONFIDENTIAL
tary Government personnel and partly with the Army CIC;
but no further evidence of improper behavior was detected.
The whole emphasis of policy, moreover, remained on Euro-
pean restoration rather than on counterintelligence or other
cold war measures. Surveillance, the monitoring of travel,
the double-checking of mission activities, and even obstruc-
tion of the shipment of war-essential materials were held to a
minimum: it was feared that such acts might be officially pro-
tested as unfriendly by the governments concerned.
The only major U.S. use of the restitution program to gain
leverage in a cold war issue had occurred earlier, in 1946, when
an American plane was downed over Yugoslavia. RCB received
instructions then to withhold shipment of a considerable
amount of agricultural equipment until the political ramifica-
tions of the incident could be settled. The shipment was de-
layed, in fact, for several months.
The Bloc missions were in general of high caliber, prompt,
assiduous, and capable in presenting claims and handling
cases. Only the Soviet mission was comparatively aloof and
not very punctual or thorough. It did effect restitution of
some machinery and some university libraries, but on the
whole manifested little interest in the program. Although its
staff accreditation time was tremendous, its office was fre-
quently closed and the whereabouts of its personnel unknown;
but when it was open there were always at least two officers
there.
A final sign of the likelihood of ulterior activities in the
Bloc missions was given in their reaction at the end of 1948 to
plans for phasing out the program for a few months and then
closing it down. By now the bulk of the restitutions had been
made, and for many of the missions the cost of continuing to
maintain a staff in Germany would be altogether out of pro-
portion to the value of the property they might still recover.
Nevertheless there was an avalanche of protests, not only from
the missions themselves, whose staffs might have had a per-
sonal reluctance to return to the comparative austerity of
life in their homelands, but from the governments they rep-
resented, especially in the Bloc. It was argued that three
years and a half was not enough for the intricate work of lo-
cating looted property and tracing and proving ownership,
and that the Americans had dragged their feet on some of the
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CONFIDENTIAL Property Restitution
most lucrative claims. But the Military Government was
adamant, and June 1949 saw the end of the unique and expen-
sive U.S. program.
Dissidence and Defection
Although U.S. intelligence apparently took no advantage of
the program to recruit members of the mission staffs, a num-
ber of the Bloc officers defected on their own initiative, espe-
cially toward the end. During the initial stages, two Hun-
garians temporarily attached to the Hungarian mission
pleaded with U.S. officials for assistance in removing the assets
of a textile factory-money, stock, and some personnel-out
of Hungary to the West, preferably to the United States. The
Military Government could not act, of course: it was policy
not to disturb political relations with any country engaged
in the restitution program. It had to take the same correct
attitude toward an intriguing plan of the Czech mission to
withhold shipment of a sizeable amount of recovered precious
stones and jewelry, sell them, and give the proceeds to the
Czech exile movement then beginning to form in the United
States.
Early in 1948 the Polish mission chief, a rough and outgo-
ing but shrewd man, told the RCB that his deputy had been
caught buying marks on the black market, a common prac-
tice, and would be sent home. Such charges were not a mat-
ter for RCB action except as the Military Government, on
German complaint, might decree an offender's expulsion.
Within a few days, however, the deputy decamped to New Zea-
land, and it was learned from his colleagues that the black
market charge had been trumped up in an effort to forestall
his politically motivated defection.
A Hungarian specialist brought in to work on the restitu-
tion of certain types of property with which he was familiar
also defected in 1948, shortly after his job was completed, to
England. Two other Hungarians fled to Sweden when the
program was closed down.
With one other dramatic exception, the bulk of the staffs of
the Bloc missions returned meekly home to their police states
in June 1949. It was known to the top officers of the RCB
that the chief of the Czech mission, an astute, well educated,
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Property Restitution CONFIDENTIAL
and very courteous gentleman, planned not to go back. But
he had the calm audacity, after closing his mission with all
the proper formalities, to return to Prague and ship out some
of his personal property before leaving for England under the
very noses of the Czech authorities.
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CONFIDENTIAL
COMMUNICATION TO THE EDITORS
Dear Sirs:
In "The Defections of Dr. John," 1 Delmege Trimble provided
us with an intriguing recital of facts but with only clues
about their causes. Probing of the wellsprings of John's de-
fection and redefection is necessary because of the wounds
already inflicted by turncoats on the Western body politic
and the menacing likelihood of deeper cuts to come unless
we learn to detect betrayal before it is unsheathed.
Early in his article Mr. Trimble points to the utility of psy-
chological probing: "Erich Ollenhauer may have come closer
when he remarked, after John redefected and began to show
increasing signs of a persecution and messiah complex; `This
is a case for the psychiatrists rather than the politicians.' "
It is.
One psychiatrist who has studied and written extensively
about people like Otto John is Dr. Edmund Bergler. Two of
his books 2 are particularly pertinent to an understanding of
both the case at hand and the dynamics of clandestinity, in-
cluding spy-handling and spy-catching.
In the varicolored spectrum of intelligence types, the figure
who often seems on first encounter the strangest and most
obscure is the psychic masochist. He appears to move in an
irrational world of his own. In fact, however, he is not living
in another world, as closer acquaintance shows; his values
are not random but rather reversed and also unconscious.
Unlike the perversion masochist, the psychic masochist de-
rives no conscious gratification from the forces that drive him.
Stabilized on the level of rejection, as Bergler would put it,
he devotes his life to death, bondage, and the pursuit of un-
happiness.
No layman's summary of Bergler's work in masochism can
be accurate, and lack of space increases the distortion. But
'Studies IV 4, p. 1 if.
2 The Basic Neurosis (Grune and Stratton Inc., New York, 1949) and
Principles of Self Damage (Philosophical Library, New York, 1959).
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CONFIDENTIAL Darkest John
it may not be too far off Bergler's mark to say that the mas-
ochist
(1) felt deprived, as a child, of his mother's comfort, food,
or affection;
(2) tried to retaliate, could not, repressed retaliatory
wishes, and instead found pleasure in being refused or denied
by his mother and, later, by a mother substitute;
(3) became an injustice-collector who, with unconscious
cunning, now contrives situations that can end only in his
own defeat and humiliation; and
(4) savors, like the connoisseur he is, each drop of self-
pity: "Wrongs like these are done only to me."
The masochist complains loudly but accepts and even pro-
vokes new injuries from the source of his grievances. He
suspects slights and hidden disparagements in situations that
seem perfectly straightforward to others. His career is likely
to be one of high promise and "inexplicable" failure. He is
prone to other neurotic, chiefly hypochondrial, symptoms.
In his love-life he tends to equate sex with the forbidden and
to be or seem promiscuous in order to be found out and pun-
ished.
How well does John fit Bergler's pattern? Unfortunately,
Mr. Trimble tells us nothing of Otto's parents or of his rela-
tionships with them. But he does say that "Otto felt no fra-
ternal jealousy" of his "younger, brighter, and sturdier"
brother. Here is repression with a vengeance.
We find that Otto studied assiduously for the German for-
eign service and then, in opposing Hitlerism because of con-
scious moral revulsion, subconsciously chose the one course
guaranteed to destroy his prospects. Moreover, he did not
join forces with an effective opposition party or group. And
when World War II erupted, he became "a chief promoter"
of the fantasies of Prince Ferdinand and his hopeless preten-
sions to the vanished Hohenzollern throne. Again his instinct
for the fated failure was unerring.
In 1941, acting as a go-between among some anti-Nazi
groups that had achieved an "ineffectual half-dozen different
attempts to remove Hitler," John seemed to deviate from the
masochist's pseudo-aggression by getting in touch with the
Allies and providing information. The next year, however,
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Darkest John CONFIDENTIAL
"he was turned in to the Gestapo by an aging and jealous
prewar mistress." Psychologically it is no accident that John
chose this harpy for his Nemesis. His service for the British
had been only the prelude to the disaster that he ensured
when he handed to the vindictive mother-substitute the
weapon that she promptly turned against him. Here, as else-
where in his life, John acted in a way that seems wholly illogi-
cal but is actually completely consistent with the goal of self-
destruction.
Released, he was able for a time to ensure the failure of his
mission to the British simply by refusing to name the con-
spirators whom he represented and thus provoking suspicion
about himself. When faced with the threat of restored con-
fidence in 1944, he was rescued because "the British ascer-
tained that he had transmitted information concerning allied
military intentions to Berlin." It would be helpful to know
how the British uncovered this fact. Was John their source,
directly or not? And why, incidentally, was he providing in-
telligence to a government that he was supposedly sworn to
destroy?
The documentary evidence bearing on John's whereabouts
on 24 July 1944-the lists of applicants for Spanish visas and
the travel manifests-leaves little doubt that he was in Spain
when the climactic day arrived. More interesting than his
absence from Germany is his later lying about it and, espe-
cially, the clumsiness of the lie. Almost anyone who was at
OKW headquarters that day and who survived could have ex-
posed its falsity. Moreover, Otto told not one story about his
role in the plot, but several. It is as though, subconsciously,
he wanted his falsehoods discovered, wanted to be charged as
a fraud whose claim to significant anti-Fascism-the hub of
his public life-was spurious.
We learn that in 1946, after seeing a film about the Belzen
concentration camp, John had "a species of nervous break-
down" and that "the lower part of his face began to discharge
a pus-like fluid." The conscious frustration that he adduced
as the cause of these phenomena is unconvincing. Nervous
breakdowns are the product of intolerable unconscious stress,
not of witting frustration. Bergler, who has written at
length about the oral basis of masochism, would probably find
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CONFIDENTIAL
Darkest John
it significant that the fluid was discharged from the region of
the mouth. But why 1946, when the danger and tension of
war had ended? Perhaps the answer lies not in what the Ger-
mans did to the inmates of Belzen but in what they did not do
to John. "He revisited with the wrath of a prosecutor the
country which he had fled as a political persecutee. He kept
aloof from other Germans . . . trying unsuccessfully to pose
as an Englishman . . . ." Here was behavior designed to
arouse the indignation, perhaps even the contempt and ha-
tred, of his fellows. Here was a chance to collect an accusa-
tion worse than liar, the epithet of traitor. But it did not
happen, because the Germans were then preoccupied with
their own problems.
Three years later he did manage, by extreme provocation, to
evoke a little hostility among his countrymen. Appearing as
"the chief German assistant to the British prosecution" and
"deliberately twisting facts and evidence to the advantage of
the prosecutors," he annoyed a number of his compatriots.
Consequently there were no conversion symptoms and no
breakdown in 1949. In fact, as Rudolf Diels 3 relates, John
now sought out, in Wiesbaden and elsewhere, the very Ger-
mans likeliest to despise him, and solicited their aid in obtain-
ing governmental employment!
In 1949 John also married-"the mother of the girl he had
been expected to wed." We remember that the mistress who
turned him in to the Gestapo was also "aging." The pattern
of the dominant, punishing mother is repeated in the mar-
riage. An American who knew both Otto and his wife recalls
how she ruled him and how he, the conversationalist, was
mutely attentive in her presence. It is also consistent that
John kept his mistress after his marriage and continued to
share in the sultry parties at Wowo's apartment. There was
always the tingling chance that his wife-mother would find
out-and spank.
The fact that John succeeded in becoming BfV chief may
seem incompatible with the theory of deep psychic masochism.
His success was not a result of chance, an idiot good fortune
that persisted in smiling blindly no matter how he tried to
'Der Fall Otto John, Hintergruende and Lehren (Goettinger Verlags-
anstalt, 1954).
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Darkest John CONFIDENTIAL
win her frowns. On the contrary, he moved realistically and
effectively to eliminate his chief rival, Friedrick Wilhelm
Heinz. But as Bergler has pointed out repeatedly, clever neu-
rotics play for high stakes. The attainment of eminence, the
immediate goal, ensures a deeper and more disastrous fall, the
ultimate goal.
From the moment of John's appointment, like the moment
of his marriage, he invented naughty irresponsibilities that
were likely to lead to punishment. He started by hiring a So-
viet spy or ex-spy as his secretary. He embarked upon projects
so ridiculous as to guarantee humiliation as failure's bonus.
Senior police officials and high-ranking members of the West
German government began to detest him. . Then-at last!-
the attacks began, and John could delectate while complaining
"about the bad things people were saying about him," could
be gleefully "convinced that the newspaper story of changes
planned by the Interior Minister was aimed at him."
The "enemies" whom he had created were all "Nazis," of
course. John's preoccupation with what he considered the
Nazi threat is revealing. Both before and after his defection
to the East, he complained shrilly about the "growing influ-
ence of the Nazis." No matter what Fascist tendencies the
analytic eye could discern in the Germany of 1954 (or can
spot today), avowed Nazis were hard to find. Aggression
against them was unreal, was pseudo-aggression. Bergler has
pointed out that masochists, like other neurotics, are incapa-
ble of real aggression and show only its counterfeit.
The BfV chief attended the 20th-of-July decennial and
"made an exhibition of himself, sobbing loudly and.denouncing
two other mourners as Gestapo agents." It is hard to im-
agine conduct better calculated to evoke a punch in the nose
than calling a 20th-of-July mourner a Gestapo stool-pigeon.
By this time John's deterioration had progressed, one sus-
pects, through deepening psychic masochism toward paranoia.
After this outbreak the chancellery might have obliged him
by kicking him out had he not owed his appointment to the
occupying powers. Bilked of the boot, he had to move out on
his own. And so Otto, in the ultimate act of pseudo-aggres-
sion, ran away from home.
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Darkest John
He knew, from his own experiences in Britain and the BfV,
that refugees and defectors encounter suspicion more often
than acceptance. He had every right to expect, at the very
least, a couple of sound psychic slaps, so that he could turn
the other quivering little cheek. But what happened? A full-
dress press conference attended by 400 Western and Commu-
nist reporters. Plans for a Ministry of German Unity, which
he would head. A prolonged visit in the USSR. And even
in the West, "a surprisingly good British press."
Hell hath no fury like a masochist unscorned. Now he had
to go back; there was no other way to snatch defeat from the
jaws of victory.
If the West had understood Otto John, if some superior had
been kind and sagacious enough to slip him just a crust of
insult now and then, he might have been one of the most
brilliant intelligence officers in Europe. Instead, he was re-
garded and treated like a normal person. Inevitably, he con-
sidered respect and kindness a form of weakness. Inevitably,
he became more disturbed the more he was cheated of pleasure-
in-displeasure. The West tried to use John not only without
understanding him but, as it happened, in contravention of
his nature. It was like trying to turn over a garden with a
tennis racquet.
Consequently his life followed the course of his own un-
conscious choosing and became the debacle toward which he
had aspired from his youth. Misunderstood, mistreated, and
maligned, he can now look forward to a serene old age, his
heart warmed by the dear familiar curses, his faith in man-
kind renewed by the jeers of the younger generation. At last
he has what he wanted.
At our cost.
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INTELLIGENCE IN RECENT PUBLIC LITERATURE
GEHEIM (Secret: A Documentary Report on the German Se-
cret Service). By Wolfgang Wehner. (Munich: Sud-
deutscher Verlag. 1960. Pp. 317. DM 14.80.)
For fourteen years Reinhard Gehlen observed a virtual
fetish of secrecy for himself and his emerging Bundesnach-
richtendienst. A series of articles in the German weekly
Muenchner Illustrierte, beginning in November 1959, which
now appears in book form as Geheim, abruptly-though prob-
ably only momentarily-reverses this policy. Since the au-
thor's efforts are BND-inspired, it is to be presumed that
someone in the BND is convinced this effort will impress
friends, inspire in the German public a supreme confidence in
the BND, and cause hostile services to quake in their boots.
Unfortunately, the book is not likely to have any of these ef-
fects. It is an odd and poorly organized mixture of case re-
views, history of the Gehlen organization and its General Staff
predecessor, Fremde Heere Ost, and ostensibly accurate ma-
terial on the American and German intelligence community
in postwar West Germany. The case reviews are unimpres-
sive substitutes for spy novels; they reveal a good bit less
than the opposition has exposed. The BND is represented as
dominating and inspiring the entire postwar development of
intelligence collection in Germany. The book creates an un-
warranted caricature of an omniscient General Gehlen. Its
incredible image would have been complete had it reproduced
the double-page photograph accompanying one of the Muench-
ner Illustrierte installments showing the almost never pho-
tographed General treading water in Lake Starnberg and had
captioned it "General Gehlen collecting naval intelligence."
It is to be hoped that the BND, an increasingly effective in-
telligence ally, will develop a sense of balance in its public re-
lations and come to cultivate neither unreasoned staff secrecy
nor a yen for eliciting hero worship.
QUINCY BEHNFIELD
~ or I9INTIA 51
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STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE AND THE SHAPE OF TOMOR-
ROW. By William M. McGovern. (Chicago: Regnery. 1961.
Pp. 191. $4.00.)
None of us whose Washington battle-stations lay at the
bosom of the wartime intelligence community can forget the
lieutenant professor or associate commander William McGov-
ern. A less martial figure never wore uniform. In our one-
time university jobs we had had academic colleagues who oc-
casionally appeared before their classes tieless, uncombed, or
in mismatched shoes; but somehow, upon joining the colors,
even the most unconscious of them managed to spruce up to
dress requirements. Not so the splendid McGovern: one day
he had forgotten his shoulder boards; on another, the top
and bottom parts of the uniform were of different fabrics; on
another, a button of his tunic would be widowed of its but-
tonhole or his overseas cap stuck on backwards; almost always
down his front would run the track of cigar ashes.
It is reported by sources believed to be usually reliable that
Admiral King twice crossed Constitution Avenue specifically
to correct such derelictions. The story is credible, for Com-
mander McGovern, then late of the Northwestern University
faculty and a walking storehouse of knowledge, horse sense,
and good ideas, had become the Navy's chosen instrument on
the Staff of the Joint Intelligence Committee. One is led to
speculate that Admiral King-not generally known for the
quality of forbearance-realized that one price of McGovern's
contribution to high-level intelligence work was the incan-
descent eccentricity of his military bearing.
Some sixteen years after the fact, Professor McGovern has
addressed himself to Strategic Intelligence and the World of
Tomorrow. Both the title and the chapter headings-"Can
the Future be Foretold," "Secret Intelligence," "Economic In-
telligence," "Ethnological Intelligence," "Ideological Intelli-
gence," "Prospects for the Future," and "Grand Strategy and
National Policy"-hold out an alluring invitation to the devo-
tees of this journal.
Never was a deadfall more artfully baited. The guile of the
late Colonel Green of the Infantry Journal in thinking up
George Pettee's title, The Future of American Secret Intelli-
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gence, is innocence itself by comparison; after all, Pettee did
write a useful essay on his wartime experience with overt
economic intelligence and targetting. The McGovern book's
title is as good as any other, if you grant that it had to be
published; its faults lie in the very substance of practically
every paragraph of its hundred and ninety pages of text.
To begin with, internal evidence strongly suggests that the
book was dictated in very short order and not very carefully
proofed for repetitions, contradictions, confusions, and errors
of fact. The frame of reference and parts of the text are
clearly derived from Professor McGovern's wartime experi-
ence, other parts from his general knowledge and a desultory
study of open literature, and one part at least, it seems, from
his lecture notes on some prewar anthropology course. There
is little of it that will not appear simplist, irrelevant, out of
date, or incorrect to the relatively well-informed reader.
These are strong words, but let me illustrate-I hope not un-
fairly-what I have in mind.
1. Early on, the following appears: "By means of radar our
men were able to spot the approach of enemy vessels or enemy
aircraft long before they were visible to the naked eye.... Un-
fortunately radar does not function below the surface of water,
but the newly developed sonar was able to overcome this handi-
cap in large measure." There are many similar sentences
throughout the book, e.g.: "The armed forces of Iran are not
nearly as good as those of Turkey ..." (p. 164). "I am sure
that Italy will remain true to her treaty obligations, but I
seriously doubt she can render any spectacular military as-
sistance" (p. 161). "The situation in Black Africa, Africa
south of the Sahara, inhabited mostly by Negroes, is some-
what confused" (p. 158). "If [the armed forces of Indonesia]
were drawn into a military conflict with the Western powers,
they would present no serious menace" (p. 159). . This sort of
statement is what I have in mind when I say simplist.
2. In the economic chapter great stress is laid on the intel-
ligence of raw material distribution-a matter whose impor-
tance has been known to strategists for generations, and a
primary canon for both intelligence and strategic planning
since these arts have come of age. It is not that what he
says is wrong, it is that he says it in a context which suggests
that both the intelligence community and the stockpilers of
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OCDM have been woolgathering and need to be prodded into
action.
3. The ethnological chapter is the longest (40 pages), the
chattiest, the fullest of irrelevancies, and probably the most
dated. It contains a note on the principal races of the world,
it takes account of prejudices and animosities between them,
it gives a few pages to language and its role in the formation
of national character, and ditto for religion, with the com-
ment that he is in favor of religious toleration and that he
does not believe Arabs and Israelis will become reconciled to
each other "in the immediate future." It is unkind but true
to note that the tone and many of the ideas seem closer akin
to nineteenth than to twentieth century thinking.
4. In the chapter on ideology, which he feels to be a "very
important" and to this reader's surprise "a much neglected
source of strategic intelligence," we are sunk deep in the past.
His examples of right- and left-wing totalitarianism are not
those of today: Marx, Lenin, and Hitler get several pages and
Mao a brief mention; but to Stalin, Khrushchev, Franco,
Castro, and the others of the present era there is no refer-
ence at all. He introduces nationalism as a phase of ideology
and again draws upon history for lessons. We are presented
some vignettes of ancient Greece and Rome, the Middle Ages,
the Reformation, and then on into the French Revolution and
the nineteenth century. There is almost nothing about pres-
ent-day nationalisms. If his intent is to let the past point
out its own lessons I have two quarrels with him: a) his ref-
erences to the past contain too many errors to carry convic-
tion, and b) most of the lessons which he derives just do not
apply to today's situations. One's understanding of men like
Diem, Nkrumah, Sukarno, Nasser, etc. who today cause us
most concern is not improved by the implied analogy. In-
deed he considers not a one of them nor the particular kind
of nationalism each represents, and his historical elucidations,
ostensibly in aid of the intelligence estimator, are accord-
ingly of little or no concern even if they are correct.
But let me stop. This is a book which adds little if any-
thing to the sparse literature of our calling. Even sadder, it
does no favor at all to the reputation of a man who justifiably
cut quite a swath in World War II intelligence.
SHERMAN KENT
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Republication without
express permission pro-
hibited.
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Effects of narcosis and consider-
ations relevant to its possible
counterintelligence use.
"TRUTH" DRUGS IN INTERROGATION
The search for effective aids to interrogation is probably
as old as man's need to obtain information from an unco-
operative source and as persistent as his impatience to short-
cut any tortuous path. In the annals of police investigation,
physical coercion has at times been substituted for painstak-
ing and time-consuming inquiry in the belief that direct meth-
ods produce quick results. Sir James Stephens, writing in
1883, rationalizes a grisly example of "third degree" practices
by the police of India: "It is far pleasanter to sit comfort-
ably in the shade rubbing red pepper in a poor devil's eyes
than to go about in the sun hunting up evidence."
More recently, police officials in some countries have turned
to drugs for assistance in extracting confessions from accused
persons, drugs which are presumed to relax the individual's
defenses to the point that he unknowingly reveals truths he
has been trying to conceal. This investigative technique,
however humanitarian as an alternative to physical torture,
still raises serious questions of individual rights and liberties.
In this country, where drugs have gained only marginal ac-
ceptance in police work, their use has provoked cries of "psy-
chological third degree" and has precipitated medico-legal con-
troversies that after a quarter of a century still occasionally
flare into the open.
The use of so-called "truth" drugs in police work is simi-
lar to the accepted psychiatric practice of narco-analysis; the
difference in the two procedures lies in their different objec-
tives. The police investigator is concerned with empirical
truth that may be used against the suspect, and therefore
almost solely with probative truth: the usefulness of the sus-
pect's revelations depends ultimately on their acceptance in
evidence by a court of law. The psychiatrist, on the other
hand, using the same "truth" drugs in diagnosis and treat-
ment of the mentally ill, is primarily concerned with psy-
chological truth or psychological reality rather than empirical
Al
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"Truth" Drugs
fact. A patient's aberrations are reality for him at the time
they occur, and an accurate account of these fantasies and
delusions, rather than reliable recollection of past events, can
be the key to recovery.
The notion of drugs capable of illuminating hidden re-
cesses of the mind, helping to heal the mentally ill and pre-
venting or reversing the miscarriage of justice, has provided
an exceedingly durable theme for the press and popular lit-
erature. While acknowledging that "truth serum" is a mis-
nomer twice over-the drugs are not sera and they do not
necessarily bring forth probative truth-journalistic accounts
continue to exploit the appeal of the term. The formula is
to play up a few spectacular "truth" drug successes and to
imply that the drugs are more maligned than need be and
more widely employed in criminal investigation than can of-
ficially be admitted.
Any technique that promises an increment of success in ex-
tracting information from an uncompliant source is ipso facto
of interest in intelligence operations. If the ethical considera-
tions which in Western countries inhibit the use of narco-
interrogation in police work are felt also in intelligence, the
Western services must at least be prepared against its pos-
sible employment by the adversary. An understanding of
"truth" drugs, their characteristic actions, and their poten-
tialities, positive and negative, for eliciting useful informa-
tion is fundamental to an adequate defense against them.
This discussion, meant to help toward such an understand-
ing, draws primarily upon openly published materials. It has
the limitations of projecting from criminal investigative prac-
tices and from the permissive atmosphere of drug psycho-
therapy.
Scopolamine as "Truth Serum"
Early in this century physicians began to employ scopola-
mine, along with morphine and chloroform, to induce a state
of "twilight sleep" during childbirth. A constituent of hen-
bane, scopolamine was known to produce sedation and drowsi-
ness, confusion and disorientation, incoordination, and am-
nesia for events experienced during intoxication. Yet physi-
cians noted that women in twilight sleep answered questions
accurately and often volunteered exceedingly candid remarks.
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"Truth" Drugs
In 1922 it occurred to Robert House, a Dallas, Texas, ob-
stetrician, that a similar technique might be employed in the
interrogation of suspected criminals, and he arranged to in-
terview under scopolamine two prisoners in the Dallas county
jail whose guilt seemed clearly confirmed. Under the drug,
both men denied the charges on which they were held; and
both, upon trial, were found not guilty. Enthusiastic at this
success, House concluded that a patient under the influence of
scopolamine "cannot create a lie . . . and there is no power
to think or reason." 14 His experiment and this conclusion
attracted wide attention, and the idea of a "truth" drug was
thus launched upon the public consciousness.
The phrase "truth serum" is believed to have appeared first
in a news report of House's experiment in the Los Angeles
Record, sometime in 1922. House resisted the term for a while
but eventually came to employ it regularly himself. He pub-
lished some eleven articles on scopolamine in the years 1921-
1929, with a noticeable increase in polemical zeal as time went
on. What had begun as something of a scientific statement
turned finally into a dedicated crusade by the "father of
truth serum" on behalf of his offspring, wherein he was
"grossly indulgent of its wayward behavior and stubbornly
proud of its minor achievements." it
Only a handful of cases in which scopolamine was used for
police interrogation came to public notice, though there is
evidence suggesting that some police forces may have used it
extensively.2' 16 One police writer claims that the threat of
scopolamine interrogation has been effective in extracting
confessions from criminal suspects, who are told they will
first be rendered unconscious by chloral hydrate placed co-
vertly in their coffee or drinking water.16
Because of a number of undesirable side effects, scopolamine
was shortly disqualified as a "truth" drug. Among the most
disabling of the side effects are hallucinations., disturbed per-
ception, somnolence, and physiological phenomena such as
headache, rapid heart, and blurred vision; which distract the
subject from the central purpose of the interview. Further-
more, the physical action is long, far outlasting the psycho-
logical effects. Scopolomine continues, in some cases, to make
anesthesia and surgery safer by drying the mouth and throat
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"Truth" Drugs
and reducing secretions that might obstruct the air passages.
But the fantastically, almost painfully, dry "desert" mouth
brought on by the drug is hardly conducive to free talking,
even in a tractable subject.
The Barbiturates
The first suggestion that drugs might facilitate communi-
cation with emotionally disturbed patients came quite by ac-
cident in 1916. Arthur S. Lovenhart and his associates at
the University of Wisconsin, experimenting with respiratory
stimulants, were surprised when, after an injection of sodium
cyanide, a catatonic patient who had long been mute and rigid
suddenly relaxed, opened his eyes, and even answered a few
questions. By the early 1930's a number of psychiatrists
were experimenting with drugs as an adjunct to established
methods of therapy.
At about this time police officials, still attracted by the pos-
sibility that drugs might help in the interrogation of suspects
and witnesses, turned to a class of depressant drugs known
as the barbiturates. By 1935 Clarence W. Muehlberger, head
of the Michigan Crime Detection Laboratory at East Lansing,
was using barbiturates on reluctant suspects, though police
work continued to be hampered by the courts' rejection of
drug-induced confessions except in a few carefully circum-
scribed instances.
The barbiturates, first synthesized in 1903, are among the
oldest of modern drugs and the most versatile of all depres-
sants. In this half-century some 2,500 have been prepared,
and about two dozen of these have won an important place
in medicine. An estimated three to four billion doses of bar-
biturates are prescribed by physicians in the ,United States
each year, and they have come to be known by a variety of
commercial names and colorful slang expressions: "goofballs,"
Luminal, Nembutal, "red devils," "yellow jackets," "pink la-
dies," etc. Three of them which are used in narcoanalysis
and have seen service as "truth" drugs are sodium amytal
(amobarbital), pentothal sodium (thiopental), and to a lesser
extent seconal (secobarbital).
As with most drugs, little is known about the way bar-
biturates work or exactly how their action is related to their
chemistry. But a great deal is known about the action it-
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self. They can produce the entire range of depressant. effects
from mild sedation to deep anesthesia-and death. In small
doses they are sedatives acting to reduce anxiety and respon-
siveness to stressful situations; in these low doses, the drugs
have been used in the treatment of many diseases, including
peptic ulcer, high blood pressure, and various psychogenic dis-
orders. At three to five times the sedative dose the same
barbiturates are hypnotics and induce sleep or unconscious-
ness from which the subject can be aroused. In larger doses a
barbiturate acts as an anesthetic, depressing the central
nervous system as completely as a gaseous anesthetic does.
In even larger doses barbiturates cause death by stopping
respiration.
The barbiturates affect higher brain centers generally.
The cerebral cortex-that region of the cerebrum commonly
thought to be of the most recent evolutionary development
and the center of the most complex mental activities-seems
to yield first to the disturbance of nerve-tissue function
brought about by the drugs. Actually, there is reason to be-
lieve that the drugs depress cell function without discrimina-
tion and that their selective action on the higher brain cen-
ters is due to the intricate functional relationship of cells in
the central nervous system. Where there are chains of inter-
dependent cells, the drugs appear to have their most pro-
nounced effects on the most complex chains, those control-
ling the most "human" functions.
The lowest doses of barbiturates impair the functioning of
the cerebral cortex by disabling the ascending (sensory) cir-
cuits of the nervous system. This occurs early in the seda-
tion stage and has a calming effect not unlike a drink or two
after dinner. The subject is less responsive to stimuli.. At
higher dosages, the cortex no longer actively integrates in-
formation, and the cerebellum, the "lesser brain" sometimes
called the great modulator of nervous function, ceases to per-
form as a control box. It no longer compares cerebral out-
put with input, no longer informs the cerebrum command
centers of necessary corrections, and fails to generate correct-
ing command, signals itself. The subject may become hyper-
active, may thrash about. At this stage consciousness is lost
and coma follows. The subject no longer responds even to
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noxious stimuli, and cannot be roused. Finally, in the last
stage, respiration ceases .10, 211
As one pharmacologist explains it, a subject coming under
the influence of a barbiturate injected intravenously goes
through all the stages of progressive drunkenness, but the
time scale is on the order of minutes instead of hours. Out-
wardly the sedation effect is dramatic, especially if the sub-
ject is a psychiatric patient in tension. His features slacken,
his body relaxes. Some people are momentarily excited; a
few become silly and giggly. This usually passes, and most
subjects fall asleep, emerging later in disoriented semi-wake-
fulness.
The descent into narcosis and beyond with progressively
larger doses can be divided as follows :
I. Sedative stage.
II. Unconsciousness, with exaggerated reflexes (hyper-
active stage).
III. Unconsciousness, without reflex even to painful
stimuli.
IV. Death.
Whether all these stages can be distinguished in any given
subject depends largely on the dose and the rapidity with
which the drug is induced. In anesthesia, stages I and II
may last only two or three seconds.
The first or sedative stage can be further divided:
Plane 1. 'No evident effect, or slight sedative effect.
Plane 2. Cloudiness, calmness, amnesia. (Upon recovery,
the subject will not remember what happened at
this or "lower" planes or stages.)
Plane 3. Slurred speech, old thought patterns disrupted,
inability to integrate or learn new patterns.
Poor coordination. Subject becomes unaware of
painful stimuli.
Plane 3 is the psychiatric "work" stage. It may last only
a few minutes, but it can be extended by further slow in-
jection of the drug. The usual practice is to bring the sub-
ject quickly to Stage II and to conduct the interview as he
passes back into the sedative stage on the way to full con-
sciousness.
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Clinical and Experimental Studies
The general abhorrence in Western countries for the use
of chemical agents "to make people do things against their
will" has precluded serious systematic study (at least as pub-
lished openly) of the potentialities of drugs for interrogation.
Louis A. Gottschalk, surveying their use in information-seek-
ing interviews,13 cites 136 references; but only two touch upon
the extraction of intelligence information, and one of these
concludes merely that Russian techniques in interrogation
and indoctrination are derived from age-old police methods and
do not depend on the use of drugs. On the validity of con-
fessions obtained with drugs, Gottschalk found only three pub-
lished experimental studies that he deemed worth reporting.
One of these reported experiments by D. P. Morris in which
intravenous sodium amytal was helpful in detecting malin-
gerers.22 The subjects, soldiers, were at first sullen, nega-
tivistic, and non-productive under amytal, but as the inter-
view proceeded they revealed the fact of and causes for their
malingering. Usually the interviews turned up a neurotic or
psychotic basis for the deception.
The other two confession studies, being more relevant to
the highly specialized, untouched area of drugs in intelligence
interrogation, deserve more detailed review.
Gerson and Victoroff 12 conducted amytal interviews with
17 neuropsychiatric patients, soldiers who had charges against
them, at Tilton General Hospital, Fort Dix. First they were
interviewed without amytal by a psychiatrist, who, neither
ignoring nor stressing their situation as prisoners or suspects
under scrutiny, urged each of them to discuss his social and
family background, his army career, and his version of the
charges pending against him.
The patients were told only a few minutes in advance that
narcoanalysis would be performed. The doctor was consid-
erate, but positive and forthright. He indicated that they
had no choice but to submit to the procedure. Their attitudes
varied from unquestioning compliance to downright refusal.
Each patient was brought to complete narcosis and per-
mitted to sleep. As he became semiconscious and could be
stimulated to speak, he was held in this stage with additional
amytal while the questioning proceeded. He was questioned
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first about innocuous matters from his background that he
had discussed before receiving the drug. Whenever possible,
he was manipulated into bringing up himself the charges pend-
ing against him before being questioned about them. If he
did this in a too fully conscious state, it proved more ef-
fective to ask him to "talk about that later" and to inter-
pose a topic that would diminish suspicion, delaying the in-
terrogation on his criminal activity until he was back in the
proper stage of narcosis.
The procedure differed from therapeutic narcoanalysis in
several ways: the setting, the type of patients, and the kind
of "truth" sought. Also, the subjects were kept in twilight
consciousness longer than usual. This state proved richest
in yield of admissions prejudicial to the subject. In it his
speech was thick, mumbling, and disconnected, but his dis-
cretion was markedly reduced. This valuable interrogation
period, lasting only five to ten minutes at a time, could be
reinduced by injecting more amytal and putting the patient
back to sleep.
The interrogation technique varied from case to case ac-
cording to background information about the patient, the
seriousness of the charges, the patient's attitude under nar-
cosis, and his rapport with the doctor. Sometimes it was use-
ful to pretend, as the patient grew more fully conscious, that
he had already confessed during the amnestic period of the
interrogation, and to urge him, while his memory and sense
of self-protection were still limited, to continue to elaborate
the details of what he had "already described." When it was
obvious that a subject was withholding the truth, his denials
were quickly passed over and ignored, and the key questions
would be reworded in a new approach.
Several patients revealed fantasies, fears, and delusions ap-
proaching delirium, much of which could readily be distin-
guished from reality. But sometimes there was no way for
the examiner to distinguish truth from fantasy except by
reference to other sources. One subject claimed to have a
child that did not exist, another threatened to kill on sight
a stepfather who had been dead a year, and yet another con-
fessed to participating in a robbery when in fact he had only
purchased goods from the participants. Testimony concern-
,68
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ing dates and specific places was untrustworthy and often
contradictory because of the patient's loss of time-sense. His
veracity in citing names and events proved questionable. Be-
cause of his confusion about actual events and what he
thought or feared had happened, the patient at times man-
aged to conceal the truth unintentionally.
As the subject revived, he would become aware that he was
being questioned about his secrets and, depending upon his
personality, his fear of discovery, or the degree of his disil-
lusionment with the doctor, grow negativistic, hostile, or physi-
cally aggressive. Occasionally patients had to be forcibly re-
strained during this period to prevent injury to themselves
or others as the doctor continued to interrogate. Some pa-
tients, moved by fierce and diffuse anger, the assumption
that they had already been tricked into confessing, and a still
limited sense of discretion, defiantly acknowledged their
guilt and challenged the observer to "do something about it."
As the excitement passed, some fell back on their original
stories and others verified the confessed material. During
the follow-up interview nine of the 17 admitted the validity
of their confessions; eight repudiated their confessions and
reaffirmed their earlier accounts.
With respect to the reliability of the results of such in-
terrogation, Gerson and Victoroff conclude that persistent,
careful questioning can reduce ambiguities in drug interroga-
tion, but cannot eliminate them altogether.
At least one experiment has shown that subjects are capa-
ble of maintaining a lie while under the influence of a bar-
biturate. Redlich and his associates at Yale 25 administered
sodium amytal to nine volunteers, students and professionals,
who had previously, for purposes of the experiment, revealed
shameful and guilt-producing episodes of their past and then
invented false self-protective stories to cover them. In nearly
every case the cover story retained some elements of the guilt
inherent in the true story.
Under the influence of the drug, the subjects were cross-
examined on their cover stories by a second investigator. The
results, though not definitive, showed that normal individuals
who had good defenses and no overt pathological traits could
stick to their invented stories and refuse confession. Neu-
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rotic individuals with strong unconscious self-punitive tend-
encies, on the other hand, both confessed more easily and
were inclined to substitute fantasy for the truth, confessing
to offenses never actually committed.
In recent years drug therapy has made some use of stimu-
lants, most notably amphetamine (Benzedrine) and its rela-
tive methamphetamine (Methedrine). These drugs, used
either alone or following intravenous barbiturates, produce
an outpouring of ideas, emotions, and memories which has
been of help in diagnosing mental disorders. The potential
of stimulants in interrogation has received little attention,
unless in unpublished work. In one study of their psychiatric
use Brussel et al.7 maintain that methedrine gives the liar
no time to think or to organize his deceptions. Once the
drug takes hold, they say, an insurmountable urge to pour
out speech traps the malingerer. Gottschalk, on the other
hand, says that this claim is extravagant, asserting without
elaboration that the study lacked proper controls.13 It is evi-
dent that the combined use of barbiturates and stimulants,
perhaps along with ataraxics (tranquillizers), should be fur-
ther explored.
Observations from Practice
J. M. MacDonald, who as a psychiatrist for the District
Courts of Denver has had extensive experience with narco-
analysis, says that drug interrogation is of doubtful value
in obtaining confessions to crimes. Criminal suspects under
the influence of barbiturates may deliberately withhold in-
formation, persist in giving untruthful answers, or falsely
confess to crimes they did not commit. The psychopathic
personality, in particular, appears to resist successfully the
influence of drugs.
MacDonald tells of a criminal psychopath who, having agreed
to narco-interrogation, received 1.5 grams of sodium amytal
over a period of five hours. This man feigned amnesia and
gave a false account of a murder. "He displayed little or no
remorse as he (falsely) described the crime, including burial
of the body. Indeed he was very self-possessed. and he ap-
peared almost to enjoy the examination. From time to time
he would request that more amytal be injected." 21
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MacDonald concludes that a person who gives false infor-
mation prior to receiving drugs is likely to give false informa-
tion also under narcosis, that the drugs are of little value
for revealing deceptions, and that they are more effective in
releasing unconsciously repressed material than in evoking
consciously suppressed information.
Another psychiatrist known for his work with criminals,
L. Z. Freedman, gave sodium amytal to men accused of vari-
ous civil and military antisocial acts. The subjects were men-
tally unstable, their conditions ranging from character dis-
orders to neuroses and psychoses. The drug interviews proved
psychiatrically beneficial to the patients, but Freedman found
that his view of objective reality was seldom improved by
their revelations. He was unable to say on the basis of
the narco-interrogation whether a given act had or had not
occurred. Like MacDonald, he found that psychopathic in-
dividuals can deny to the point of unconsciousness crimes
that every objective sign indicates they have committed.10
F. G. Inbau, Professor of Law at Northwestern University,
who has had considerable experience observing and participat-
ing in "truth" drug tests, claims that they are occasionally
effective on persons who would have disclosed the truth any-
way had they been properly interrogated, but that a person
determined to lie will usually be able to continue the decep-
tion under drugs.
The two military psychiatrists who made the most exten-
sive use of narcoanalysis during the war years, Roy R.
Grinker and John C. Spiegel, concluded that in almost all
cases they could obtain from their patients essentially the
same material and give them the same emotional release by
therapy without the use of drugs, provided they had sufficient
time.
The essence of these comments from professionals of long
experience is that drugs provide rapid access to information
that is psychiatrically useful but of doubtful validity as em-
pirical truth. The same psychological information and a less
adulterated empirical truth can be obtained from fully con-
scious subjects through non-drug psychotherapy and skillful
police interrogation.
All
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Application to CI Interrogation
The almost total absence of controlled experimental studies
of "truth" drugs and the spotty and anecdotal nature of
psychiatric and police evidence require that extrapolations
to intelligence operations be made with care. Still, enough
is known about the drugs' action to suggest certain considera-
tions affecting the possibilities for their use in interrogations.
It should be clear from the foregoing that at best a drug
can only serve as an aid to an interrogator who has a sure
understanding of the psychology and techniques of normal
interrogation. In some respects, indeed, the demands on his
skill will be increased by the baffling mixture of truth and
fantasy in drug-induced output. And the tendency against
which he must guard in the interrogatee to give the responses
that seem to be wanted without regard for facts will be
heightened by drugs: the literature abounds with warnings
that a subject in narcosis is extremely suggestible.
It seems possible that this suggestibility and the lowered
guard of the narcotic state might be put to advantage in
the case of a subject feigning ignorance of a language or some
other skill that had become automatic with him. Lipton 20
found sodium amytal helpful in determining whether a for-
eign subject was merely pretending not to understand Eng-
lish. By extension, one can guess that a drugged interro-
gatee might have difficulty maintaining the pretense that he
did not comprehend the idiom of a profession he was trying
to hide.
There is the further problem of hostility in the interro-
gator's relationship to a resistance source. The accumulated
knowledge about "truth" drug reaction has come largely from
patient-physician relationships of trust and confidence. The
subject in narcoanalysis is usually motivated a priori to co-
operate with the psychiatrist, either to obtain relief from
mental suffering or to contribute to a scientific study. Even
in police work, where an atmosphere of anxiety and threat
may be dominant, a relationship of trust frequently asserts
itself: the drug is administered by a medical man bound by a
strict code of ethics; the suspect agreeing to undergo narco-
analysis in a desperate bid for corroboration of his testimony
trusts both drug and psychiatrist, however apprehensively;
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and finally, as Freedman and MacDonald have indicated, the
police psychiatrist frequently deals with a "sick" criminal,
and some order of patient-physician relationship necessarily
evolves.
Rarely has a drug interrogation involved "normal" in-
dividuals in a hostile or genuinely threatening milieu. It was
from a non-threatening experimental setting that Eric Linde-
mann could say that his "normal" subjects "reported a gen-
eral sense of euphoria, ease and confidence, and they exhibited
a marked increase in talkativeness and communicability." 19
Gerson and Victoroff list poor doctor-patient rapport as one
factor interfering with the completeness and authenticity of
confessions by the Fort Dix soldiers, caught as they were in a
command performance and told they had no choice but to
submit to narco-interrogation.
From all indications, subject-interrogator rapport is usually
crucial to obtaining the psychological release which may
lead to unguarded disclosures. Role-playing on the part of
the interrogator might be a possible solution to the problem
of establishing rapport with a drugged subject. In therapy,
the British narcoanalyst William Sargant recommends that
the therapist deliberately distort the facts of the patient's
life-experience to achieve heightened emotional response and
abreaction.27 In the drunken state of narcoanalysis patients
are prone to accept the therapist's false constructions. There
is reason to expect that a drugged subject would communi-
cate freely with an interrogator playing the role of relative,
colleague, physician, immediate superior, or any other person
to whom his background indicated he would be responsive.
Even when rapport is poor, however, there remains one
facet of drug action eminently exploitable in interrogation-
the fact that subjects emerge from narcosis feeling they have
revealed a great deal, even when they have not. As Gerson
and Victoroff demonstrated at Fort Dix, this psychological
set provides a major opening for obtaining genuine confes-
sions.
Technical Considerations
It would presumably be sometimes desirable that a resist-
ant interrogatee be given the drug without his knowledge.
For narcoanalysis the only method of administration used is
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intravenous injection. The possibilities for covert or "silent"
administration by this means would be severely limited ex-
cept in a hospital setting, where any pretext for intravenous
injection, from glucose feeding to anesthetic procedure, could
be used to cover it. Sodium amytal can be given orally, and
the taste can be hidden in chocolate syrup, for example, but
there is no good information on what dosages can be masked.
Moreover, although the drug might be introduced thus with-
out detection, it would be difficult to achieve and maintain
the proper dose using the oral route.
Administering a sterile injection is a procedure shortly mas-
tered, and in fact the technical skills of intravenous injec-
tion are taught to nurses and hospital corpsmen as a mat-
ter of routine. But it should be apparent that there is more
to narcotizing than the injection of the correct amount of
sodium amytal or pentothal sodium. Administering drugs
and knowing when a subject is "under" require clinical judg-
ment. Knowing what to expect and how to react appropri-
ately to the unexpected takes both technical and clinical
skill. The process calls for qualified medical personnel, and
sober reflection on the depths of barbituric anesthesia will
confirm that it would not be enough merely to have access
to a local physician.
Possible Variations
In studies by Beecher and his associates 3-6 one-third to one-
half the individuals tested proved to be placebo reactors, sub-
jects who respond with symptomatic relief to the administra-
tion of any syringe, pill, or capsule, regardless of what it con-
tains. Although no studies are known to have been made
of the placebo phenomenon as applied to narco-interrogation,
it seems reasonable that when a subject's sense of guilt inter-
feres with productive interrogation, a placebo for pseudo-nar-
cosis could have the effect of absolving him of the responsibility
for his acts and thus clear the way for free communication.
It is notable that placebos are most likely to be effective in
situations of stress. The individuals most likely to react to
placebos are the more anxious, more self-centered, more de-
pendent on outside stimulation, those who express their needs
more freely socially, talkers who drain off anxiety by con-
versing with others. The non-reactors are those clinically
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more rigid and with better than average emotional control.
No sex or I.Q. differences between reactors and non-reactors
have been found.
Another possibility might be the combined use of drugs
with hypnotic trance and post-hypnotic suggestion: hypnosis
could presumably prevent any recollection of the drug experi-
ence. Whether a subject can be brought to trance against
his will or unaware, however, is a matter of some disagree-
ment. Orne, in a survey of the potential uses of hypnosis
in interrogation,23 asserts that it is doubtful, despite many
apparent indications to the contrary, that trance can be in-
duced in resistant subjects. It may be possible, he adds, to
hypnotize a subject unaware, but this would require a posi-
tive relationship with the hypnotist not likely to be found
in the interrogation setting.
In medical hypnosis, pentothal sodium is sometimes em-
ployed when only light trance has been induced and deeper
narcosis is desired. This procedure is a possibility for inter-
rogation, but if a satisfactory level of narcosis could be achieved
through hypnotic trance there would appear to be no need
for drugs.
Defensive Measures
There is no known way of building tolerance for a "truth"
drug without creating a disabling addiction, or of arresting
the action of a barbiturate once induced. The only full safe-
guard against narco-interrogation is to prevent the admin-
istration of the drug. Short of this, the best defense is to
make use of the same knowledge that suggests drugs for of-
fensive operations: if a subject knows that on emerging from
narcosis he will have an exaggerated notion of how much he
has revealed he can better resolve to deny he has said any-
thing.
The disadvantages and shortcomings of drugs in offensive
operations become positive features of the defense posture.
A subject in narco-interrogation is intoxicated, wavering be-
tween deep sleep and semi-wakefulness. His speech is garbled
and irrational, the amount of output drastically diminished.
Drugs disrupt established thought patterns, including the will
to resist, but they do so indiscriminately and thus also in-
terfere with the patterns of substantive information the in-
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terrogator seeks. Even under the conditions most favorable
for the interrogator, output will be contaminated by fantasy,
distortion, and untruth.
Possibly the most effective way to arm oneself against narco-
interrogation would be to undergo a "dry run." A trial drug
interrogation with output taped for playback would familiarize
an individual with his own reactions to "truth" drugs, and
this familiarity would help to reduce the effects of harass-
ment by the interrogator before and after the drug has been
administered. From the viewpoint of the intelligence serv-
ice, the trial exposure of a particular operative to drugs might
provide a rough benchmark for assessing the kind and amount
of information he would divulge in narcosis.
There may be concern over the possibility of drug addic-
tion intentionally or accidentally induced by an adversary
service. Most drugs will cause addiction with prolonged use,
and the barbiturates are no exception. In recent studies at
the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital for addicts in Lexing-
ton, Ky., subjects received large doses of barbiturates over a
period of months. Upon removal of the drug, they experi-
enced acute withdrawal symptoms and behaved in every re-
spect like chronic alcoholics.
Because their action is extremely short, however, and be-
cause there is little likelihood that they would be administered
regularly over a prolonged period, barbiturate "truth" drugs
present slight risk of operational addiction. If the adversary
service were intent on creating addiction in order to exploit
withdrawal, it would have other, more rapid means of pro-
ducing states as unpleasant as withdrawal symptoms.
The hallucinatory and psychotomimetic drugs such as
mescaline, marihuana, LSD-25, and microtine are sometimes
mistakenly associated with narcoanalytic interrogation.
These drugs distort the perception and interpretation of the
sensory input to the central nervous system and affect vision,
audition, smell, the sensation of the size of body parts and
their position in space, etc. Mescaline and LSD-25 have
been used to create experimental "psychotic states," and in
a minor way as aids in psychotherapy.
Since information obtained from a person in a psychotic
drug state would be unrealistic, bizarre, and extremely diffi-
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cult to assess, the self-administration of LSD-25, which is ef-
fective in minute dosages, might in special circumstances of-
fer an operative temporary protection against interrogation.
Conceivably, on the other hand, an adversary service could
use such drugs to produce anxiety or terror in medically un-
sophisticated subjects unable to distinguish drug-induced
psychosis from actual insanity. An enlightened operative
could not be thus frightened, however, knowing that the ef-
fect of these hallucinogenic. agents is transient in normal in-
dividuals.
Most broadly, there is evidence that drugs have least ef-
fect on well-adjusted individuals with good defenses and good
emotional control, and that anyone who can withstand the
stress of competent interrogation in the waking state can do
so in narcosis. The essential resources for resistance thus
appear to lie within the individual.
Conclusions
The salient points that emerge from this discussion are
the following; No such magic brew as the popular notion of
truth serum exists. The barbiturates, by disrupting defensive
patterns, may sometimes be helpful in interrogation, but even
under the best conditions they will elicit an output contami-
nated by deception, fantasy, garbled speech, etc.. A major
vulnerability they produce in the subject is a tendency to be-
lieve he has revealed more than he has. It is possible, how-
ever, for both normal individuals and psychopaths to resist
drug interrogation; it seems likely that any individual who
can withstand ordinary intensive interrogation can hold out
in narcosis. The best aid to a defense against narco-inter-
rogation is foreknowledge of the process and its limitations.
There is an acute need for controlled experimental studies of
drug reaction, not only to depressants but also to stimulants
and to combinations of depressants, stimulants, and ataraxics.
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17. Kidd, W. R. Police interrogation. 1940.
18. Legal dose of truth. Newsweek, Feb. 23, 1959, 28.
19. Lindemann, E. Psychological changes in normal and abnormal in-
dividuals under the influence of sodium amytal. Amer. J.
Psychiat., 1932, 11, 1083-1091.
20. Lipton, E. L. The amytal interview. A review. Amer. Practit.
Digest Treat., 1950, 1, 148-163.
21. MacDonald, J. M. Narcoanalysis and criminal law. Amer. J.
Psychiat., 1954, 111, 283-288.
22. Morris, D. P. Intravenous barbiturates: an aid in the diagnosis and
treatment of conversion hysteria and malingering. Mil. Surg.,
1945, 96, 509-513.
23. Orne, M. T. The potential uses of hypnosis in interrogation. An
evaluation. ARDC Study SR 177-D Contract AF 18(600) 1797,
Dec. 1958. Bureau of Social Science Research, Inc.
24. Pelikan, E. W., & Kensler, C. J. Sedatives: Their pharmacology and
uses. Reprint from The Medical Clinics of North America. W. B.
Saunders Company, Sept. 1958.
25. Redlich, F. C., Ravitz, L. J., & Dession, G. H. Narcoanalysis and
truth. Amer. J. Psychiat., 1951, 107, 586-593.
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"Truth" Drugs
26. Rolin, J. Police Drugs. Translated by L. J. Bendit. New York:
Philosophical Library, 1956.
27. Sargant, W., & Slater, E. Physical methods of treatment in psy-
chiatry. (3rd ed.) Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1954.
28. Snider, R. S. Cerebellum. Sci. Am., Aug. 1958, 84.
29. Uhr, L., & Miller, L. G. (eds.). Drugs and Behavior. New York-
London: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1960.
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Legal grounds for holding
another nation's agents not per-
sonally liable for their directed
violation of a nation's laws.
IMPUNITY OF AGENTS IN INTERNATIONAL LAW
International rules and institutions have existed since the
earliest days, but it was not until the 16th and 17th cen-
turies that there were developed the laws governing rela-
tions between European states which became the basis of
our present-day international law. The disintegration of the
Holy Roman Empire and the emergence of sovereign states
representing great concentrations of military, economic, and
political power led to the development or formulation of new
rules by which nations sought to govern their dealings with
one another. At the same time the concept of sovereignty as
a power constituting the sole source of laws was enunciated,
and with it an explanation of the concept of the nation.
The rules of international law and the concept of sover-
eignty in a sense limit each other; and particularly in the
treatment of crimes like espionage and subversion, interna-
tional law is confronted with what Philip C. Jessup once called
the "taboo of absolute sovereignty." The state is especially
jealous of its power to punish those who it believes have tried
to undermine its authority, and the principles of international
law can apply in matters affecting the security of a state
only at the discretion of that state. The Swiss diplomat
Emerich de Vattel, whose book Le Droit des Gens 1 had an
influence on American political philosophy, was one of the
early writers in international law who observed that men
"put up with certain things although in themselves unjust
and worthy of condemnation, because they cannot oppose them
by force without transgressing the liberty of individual Na-
tions and thus destroying the foundations of their natural
society." Vattel was particularly concerned with the rela-
tionships, duties, and responsibilities of nations during times
of stress.
Law of Nations. Fenwick, Trans. (Washington: Carnegie Institu-
tion of Washington, 1916.)
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floor
Principles of National Jurisdiction
The concept of sovereignty carries along with it the rule
that the laws of a country are supreme within its own ter-
ritorial limits. Consequently, generally speaking, whether a
particular act constitutes a crime is determined by the laws
of the country within whose borders it was committed. In
extension of this territorial principle for determining national
jurisdiction, however, there have been developed, in accord-
ance with the varying experience of individual nations, at
least four other pragmatic principles which a state may choose
to follow in determining whether it can try a person crim-
inally for acts committed in violation of its laws. A national-
ity principle would determine jurisdiction by reference to the
nationality or national character of the person committing
the offense, so that his own state would try him under its
law. Under a protection principle, jurisdiction would go to
the state whose national interest was injured by the offense,
wherever it was committed. A passive personality principle
would similarly determine jurisdiction by reference to the
nationality or national character of the person injured. And
a universality principle, finally, would give it to the state hav-
ing custody of the offender.2 In any case, however, a state
may claim jurisdiction only with respect to an act or omis-
sion which is made an offense by its own laws.
The principle of territorial competence is basic in Anglo-
American jurisprudence, and it has been incorporated in many
other modern state codes. Its basis is the sovereign, which
has the strongest interest, the best facilities, and the most
powerful instruments for repressing crimes in its territory,
by whomever committed. It is obvious that under the ter-
ritorial principle the sovereign must exercise exclusive con-
trol over the acts of persons within its territory; there is no
question of its right of jursidiction to punish acts that con-
stitute a threat to its authority.
The concept of sovereignty is so strong, however, that it
may also, in the protective principle of jurisdiction, push be-
yond state borders with power to try persons outside engag-
ing in acts against the security, territorial integrity, or po-
Y Research in International Law Supplement to the American Journal
of International Law, Vol. 29 (1935).
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Impunity of Agents
litical independence of the state. This principle was formu-
lated in statutes of the Italian city-states in the 15th and
16th centuries, and many modern states apply it to both
aliens and citizens. Conflicts arise, of course, where the pro-
hibited acts are carried on in another state in which such
acts are not illegal. Without agreement, it is difficult to see
how the protective theory can be effective in such cases with-
out an infringement of the sovereignty of the second state.
In the United States, the rule seems to be that the pro-
tective principle is not applied unless the legislation designat-
ing the crimes so specifies. In the Soviet Union, espionage
cases apparently do fall under the protective theory of ju-
risdiction. In the October 1960 International Affairs, G.
Zhukov wrote:
It should be noted that American plans of space espionage di-
rected against the security of the USSR and other Socialist coun-
tries are incompatible with the generally recognized principles and
rules of international law, designed to protect the security of states
against encroachments from outside, including outer space.
This position would give the USSR (and other Bloc countries)
jurisdiction over espionage offenses against them, no matter
where perpetrated.
Scope of Immunities
On the other hand, the USSR has, in effect, recognized
the immunity of American military attaches within its ter-
ritory by not prosecuting the charges of espionage leveled
against them. It thus honors the provisions of international
law and agreement whereby officers, diplomatic representa-
tives, consuls, armed forces, ships, aircraft, and other persons
and instrumentalities of a state may be immune from the
exercise of another state's jurisdiction even under the terri-
torial principle and consequently not subject to legal penal-
ties.3
While diplomatic immunity as applied to embassy officials
is universally accepted, the question of what persons outside
"Diplomatic Immunity from Local Jurisdiction: Its Historical De-
velopment Under International Law and Application in United States
Practice," by William Barnes. Department of State Bulletin, 1 August
1960.
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Impunity of Agents
this category can claim a similar immunity becomes more dif-
ficult. There is nevertheless some authority in international
law for the proposition that if a man is a duly commissioned
agent of his government, albeit without diplomatic immunity,
any illegal acts he performs within the scope of his duties
may still be considered not his personal violations but his
government's national acts, raising questions public and po-
litical between independent nations. Under this theory the
offended nation ought not try the individual before ordinary
tribunals under its own laws but should seek redress accord-
ing to the law of nations.4
This theory and variations of it have found acceptance
in a number of situations. For example, in the Claims Con-
vention between France and Mexico of 25 September 1924,
Mexico assumed liability for certain acts of its revolutionary
forces, accepting the even broader principle that the "re-
sponsibility of the State exists whether its organs acted in
conformance with or contrary to law or to the order of a su-
perior authority." 5 The applicability of the theory in any
particular case depends, of course, not only on its being ac-
cepted by the offended nation but also on an acknowledgment
by the offending nation that the offender is in fact its com-
missioned agent, that it authorized or now adopts his acts
as its public acts. For this reason texts on international law
have denied its application to the acts of secret political agents
and spies:
... An agent ... secretly sent abroad for political purposes with-
out a letter of recommendation, and therefore without being for-
mally admitted by the Government of the State in which he is
fulfilling his task ... has no recognized position whatever accord-
ing to International Law. He is not an agent of a State for its
relations with other States, and he is therefore in the same position
as any other foreign individual living within the boundaries of a
State. He may be expelled at any moment if he becomes trouble-
some, and he may be criminally punished if he commits a political
or ordinary crime... .
Spies are secret agents of a State sent abroad for the purpose of
obtaining clandestinely information in regard to military or politi-
cal secrets. Although all States constantly or occasionally send spies
Secretary of State Webster to Attorney General Crittenden, 15
March 1841. See 2 Moore International Law Digest 26 (1906).
? Hackwo~rth 557 (1943).
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Impunity of Agents
abroad, and although it is not considered wrong morally, politically,
or legally to do so, such agents have, of course, no recognized posi-
tion whatever according to International Law, since they are not
agents of States for their international relations. Every State
punishes them severely when they are caught committing an act
which is a crime by the law of the land, or expels them if they
cannot be punished. A spy cannot legally excuse himself by plead-
ing that he only executed the orders of his Government, and the
latter will never interfere, since it cannot officially confess to hav-
ing commissioned a spy .6
Nevertheless governments do sometimes officially confess
to having commissioned their clandestine agents and do in-
terfere in their prosecution under the law of the offended
land. Although the several historical cases on record have
not afforded a fully adequate test of this ground for claim-
ing personal impunity they do include some in which the of-
fended nation has accepted it. In three cases the United
States has been involved.
Paramilitary Raid
During the 1837 insurrection in Canada the rebels ob-
tained recruits and supplies from the United States. A small
steamer, the Caroline, was used for this purpose by a group
encamped on the American side of the Niagara River. On
29 December 1837, while moored at Schlosser, on the Ameri-
can side, with 33 American citizens on board, this steamer
was boarded by an armed body of men from the Canadian
side under the orders of a British officer. They attacked the
occupants, wounding several and killing at least one Ameri-
can, and then fired the steamer and set her adrift over Ni-
agara Falls. The United States protested. The British Gov-
ernment replied that the piratical character of the Caroline
was established, that American laws were not being enforced
along the border, and that destruction of the steamer was an
act of necessary self-defense.
In November 1840 British citizen Alexander McLeod was
arrested by New York State authorities on a charge of mur-
s H. Lauterpacht, Oppenheim's International Law (Longman's, 7th ed.,
1948), Vol. I, pp. 770, 772.
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Impunity of Agents
der in connection with the Caroline affair. On 13 December
1840 Mr. Fox, the British Minister at Washington, asked on
his own responsibility for McLeod's immediate release, on the
ground that the destruction of the Caroline was a "public
act of persons in Her Majesty's service, obeying the order of
their superior authorities," which could, therefore, "only be
made the subject of discussion between the two national Gov-
ernments" and could "not justly be made the ground of legal
proceedings in the United States against the persons con-
cerned." On 28 December 1840 the U.S. Secretary of State,
Mr. Forsythe, replied that no warrant for interposition in
the New York State case could be found in the powers with
which the Federal Executive was invested, and he also denied
that the British demand was well founded.
When on 12 March 1841, however, Mr. Fox presented the
British Government's official and formal demand for McLeod's
release on the same grounds, Daniel Webster, who had mean-
while become Secretary of State, wrote to the Attorney
General communicating the President's instructions and lay-
ing down the following principle:
That an individual forming part of a public force, and acting
under the authority of his Government, is not to be held answerable,
as a private trespasser or malefactor, is a principle of public law
sanctioned by the usages of all civilized nations, and which the
Government of the United States has no inclination to dispute.
Webster answered the British on 24 April, admitting the
grounds of the demand, but stating that the Federal Govern-
ment was unable to comply with it. He apparently believed,
however, that the British action would give New York State
cause to exempt McLeod from prosecution. McLeod brought
a habeas corpus proceeding, but his discharge was refused
by the New York court. He was brought to trial on the mur-
der charge and acquitted. In a final note to Lord Ashburton
disposing of the Caroline matter, Mr. Webster wrote:
This Government has admitted, that for an act committed by the
command of his sovereign, jure belli, an individual cannot be re-
sponsible in the ordinary Courts of another State. It would regard
it as a high indignity if a citizen of its own, acting under its
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Impunity o gents
authority and by its special command in such cases, were held to
answer in a municipal tribunal, and to undergo punishment, as if
the behest of his government were no defense or protection to him,
Confidential Fact finder, No Spy
On 18 June 1849 Secretary of State Clayton issued to Mr.
A. Dudley Mann, who was then in Europe, instructions for
a mission it was desired he undertake as a special and con-
fidential agent "to obtain minute and reliable information in
regard to Hungary," then in revolt against the Austrian Im-
perial Government. Mr. Mann proceeded to Vienna, where he
found the revolution practically quelled, and therefore did
not visit Hungary. The text of his instructions, however, was
made public in 1850 when President Taylor released it to the
U.S. Senate in response to a Senate resolution. The Austrian
charge d'affaires in Washington, Mr. Hulsemann, then entered
an official protest, declaring:
Those who did not hesitate to assume the responsibility of send-
ing Mr. Dudley Mann on such an errand, should, independent of
considerations of propriety, have borne in mind that they were ex-
posing their emissary to be treated as a spy. It is to be regretted
that the American Government was not better informed as to the
actual resources of Austria and her historical perseverance in
defending her just rights . . . the Imperial Government totally dis-
approves, and will always continue to disapprove, of those proceed-
ings, so offensive to the laws of propriety; and that it protests
against all interference in the internal affairs of its Government.
Mr. Webster, by now again Secretary, replied:
. the American Government sought for nothing but the truth;
it desired to learn the facts through a reliable channel. It so hap-
pened, in the chances and vicissitudes of human affairs, that the
result was adverse to the Hungarian revolution. The American
agent, as was stated in his instructions to be not unlikely, found the
7 The texts of the early diplomatic communications regarding the
Caroline affair and the McLeod case can be found in the report on
People v. McLeod, 25 Wend 482 (N.Y. 1841). Others can be found in
British and Foreign State Papers 1841-1842, volume 30. 2 Moore 24
(1906) contains a complete summary of the affair. So does "The Caro-
line and McLeod Cases" by P. Y. Jennings, appearing in 32 Am. Jr. Int.
Law 82 (1938). The latter also contains information on the aftermath
of the case in which McLeod sought reimbursement from a Claims
Commission. A learned critique by Judge Talmadge of the decision in
People v. McLeod is found in 26 Wend Appendix 663 (N.Y. 1842). Text-
books such as BISHOP p. 584 (1953) and 1 HYDE 239 (2d Edition 1931)
give summaries of the affair.
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condition of Hungarian affairs less prosperous than it had been, or
had been believed to be. He did not enter Hungary nor hold any
direct communication with her revolutionary leaders. He reported
against the recognition of her independence because he found she
had been unable to set up a firm and stable government. He care-
fully forebore, as his instructions require, to give publicity to his
mission, and the undersigned supposes that the Austrian Govern-
ment first learned its existence from the communications of the
President to the Senate.
Mr. Hulsemann will observe from this statement that Mr. Mann's
mission was wholly unobjectionable, and strictly within the rule of
the law of nations, and the duty of the United States as a neutral
power. He will accordingly feel how little foundation there is for
his remark that "those who did not hesitate to assume the respon-
sibility of sending Mr. Dudley Mann on such an errand, should,
independent of considerations of propriety, have borne in mind that
they were exposing their emissary to be treated as a spy." A spy is
a person sent by one belligerent to gain secret information of the
forces and defenses of the other, to be used for hostile purposes.
According to practice, he may use deception, under the penalty of
being lawfully hanged if detected. To give this odious name and
character to a confidential agent of a neutral power, bearing the
commission of his country, and sent for a purpose fully warranted
by the law of nations, is not only to abuse language, but also to
confound all just ideas, and to announce the wildest and most
extravagant notions, such as certainly were not to have been ex-
pected in a grave diplomatic paper; and the President directs the
undersigned to say to Mr. Hulsemann that the American Govern-
ment would regard such an imputation upon it by the cabinet of
Austria, as that it employs spies, and that in a quarrel none of its
own, as distinctly offensive, if it did not presume, as it is willing to
presume, that the word used in the original German was not of
equivalent meaning with "spy" in the English language, or that
in some other way the employment of such an opprobrious term
may be explained. Had the Imperial Government of Austria sub-
jected Mr. Mann to the treatment of a spy, it would have placed
itself without the pale of civilization, and the cabinet of Vienna
may be assured that if it had carried, or attempted to carry, any
such lawless purpose into effect in the case of an authorized agent
of this Government the spirit of the people of this country would
have demanded immediate hostilities to be waged by the utmost
exertion of the power of the Republic-military and naval.'
German Saboteur
Werner Horn, a German, was indicted in the Federal Dis-
trict of Massachusetts for unlawfully transporting explosives
early in World War I from New York to Vanceboro, Maine.
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Horn claimed immunity from trial upon the indictment in a
petition for habeas corpus. His contention, which the Circuit
Court of Appeals for the First Circuit called "without prece-
dent," was as follows:
That your petitioner is an officer in the army of the empire of
Germany, to wit, a first lieutenant in the division of the aforesaid
army known as the Landwehr; that a state of war exists between
the empires of Great Britain and Germany, which state of war has
been recognized by the President of the United States in an official
proclamation; that your petitioner is accused of destroying part
of the international bridge in the township of McAdam, province
of New Brunswick and Dominion of Canada; that he is now held
in custody by the respondent on the charge of carrying explosives
illegally, which allegation, if true, is inseparably connected with the
destruction of said bridge; that he is a subject and citizen of the
empire of Germany and domiciled therein, and is being held in
custody for the aforesaid act, which was done under his right, title,
authority, privilege, protection, and exemption claimed under his
commission as said officer as described aforesaid.
Claiming thus that the felony for which he was indicted
was incidental to an act of war cognizable only by the law of
nations, Horn quoted Webster's statement in the Caroline af-
fair: "That an individual forming part of a public force, and
acting under the authority of his government, is not to be
held answerable as a private trespasser or malefactor, is a
principle of public law sanctioned by the usages of all civilized
nations, and which the Government of the United States has
no inclination to dispute." The Circuit Court did not dispute
the principle, but, noting that "this exemption of the individ-
ual is on the ground that his act was a national act of his
sovereign," held that the petition failed "entirely to show
either express or implied national authority for doing the acts
charged in the indictment; therefore no question of interna-
tional law is involved, and the District Court has full jurisdic-
tion to proceed to trial of the indictment found by its grand
jury.?9
European Cases
In 1887 the German Government arrested and put on trial
one Schnaebele, a French customs inspector who had operated
s Horn v. Mitchell, 232 F. 819 (1st Cir., 1916). Affirmed on other
grounds 243 US 247 (1917).
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a network of secret agents in Germany. The arrest was made
during an official visit he paid to Germany to hold a customs
conference. In the course of his interrogation he admitted
that he had been inciting German nationals to treason. The
French Government intervened on the grounds that Schnae-
bele enjoyed extraterritorial protection during his visit to Ger-
many. These grounds, which obviated any need for French
acknowledgment of his commission as a subversive agent, were
apparently considered sufficient : Bismarck ordered Schnae-
bele released.10
In the 1920's the Italian secret service, using Italian agents
in Switzerland, lured one Cesare Rossi from his Swiss hotel
room to the Italian enclave at Campione, where he was ar-
rested and taken to Italy. The Swiss Government protested
these "acts attributable to the authorities of another state"
which "not only violate national dignity but which also cause a
state of unrest and suspicion . . ." It is not known whether
the Italian authorities acknowledged such an attribution of
their agents' acts in the diplomatic talks which followed, but
the affair was settled in de facto accordance with the principle
of agent impunity: on 21 November 1928 the Swiss Govern-
ment announced that it considered the matter closed, since
the Italian official involved in illegal intelligence activities had
left Switzerland and two Italian nationals who had illegally
relayed information had been deported.,"
In Sweden there is apparently a trend toward the rule that
if an apprehended agent is acknowledged by his government
to have been acting under orders he cannot be brought to
trial in the apprehending country; his illegal acts become a
matter for diplomatic discussion between the two govern-
ments. A case since World War II on which details are not
available was disposed of in this way by a Swedish court.12
War and "Imperfect" War
None of these cases offers a precise precedent for one in
which a peacetime espionage agent is apprehended by the
target country and then released to his government upon its
'D Johannes Erasmus, The Intelligence Service (Institute of Interna-
tional Law, Goettingen University, 1952), p. 55.
"Ibid., p. 54.
"Believed to be documented in Rytt Juidiskt Arkiv No. 15, 1946.
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acknowledgment of his commission. In those that are other-
wise quite close, war is an element in the circumstances, with
the offended nation often a third party. Webster's final note
on the Caroline affair specifically cited ius belli. The blame-
lessness of the mere instruments of a government waging
however unjust a war is well recognized. Vattel wrote:
But as to the reparation of any damage-are the military, the
general officers and soldiers, obliged, in consequence, to repair the
injuries they have done, not of their own will, but as instruments
in the hands of their sovereign? It is the duty of subjects to sup-
pose the orders of their sovereign just and wise . . . When, there-
fore, they have lent their assistance in a war which is afterwards
found to be unjust, the sovereign alone is guilty. He alone is bound
to repair the injuries. The subjects, and in particular the military,
are innocent; they have acted only from a necessary obedience."
Yet there appears to be a similarity between the wartime
situation in which a uniformed member of a force gathering
information behind enemy lines, when captured, is treated as
a prisoner of war rather than executed for spying and the
peacetime situation of an intelligence agent whose acts are
acknowledged and adopted by the sending state. In both the
agent is a mere instrument of the state. The basis for the
traditional practice of holding the agent personally respon-
sible seems to be the clandestine nature of his acts. When
these are adopted by the sending state they are no longer
clandestine, and the ultimate responsibility is fixed.
As for ius belli, texts on international law recognize that
no clean-cut distinction can be made between war and peace
in this respect. A contemporary authority cites some of the
older texts for the proposition that:
If a country feels that it is being threatened by the unlawful
conduct of another country-such as perhaps by preparations for
aggression-that country should be free to protect itself against
such a threat with the help of defensive measures. This includes
the employment of agents for the purpose of determining enemy
intentions."
13 3 Vattel, Section 187.
-Erasmus, op. cit., p. 115, footnote 120, citing Heffter-Geffeken (p.
495), Venselow (p. 227), Vattel (pp. 598 and 607), and Rogge, Nationale
Friedens-Politik (p. 596).
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The older texts point out various types of hostile acts short
of formal war that a sovereign might commission his subjects
to perform.15 Judge Rutherford says:
If one nation seizes the goods of another nation by force, upon
account of some damage, etc., such contentions by force are re-
prisals. There may be likewise other acts of hostility between two
nations which do not properly come under the name of reprisals,
such as the beseiging of each other's towns, or the sinking of each
other's fleets, whilst the nations in other respects are at peace with
each other. These are public wars, because nations are the con-
tending parties. But as they are confined to some particular ob-
ject, they are of the imperfect sort .. I
A war lawful and in form, is carefully to be distinguished from an
unlawful war entered on without any form, or rather from those
incursions which are committed either without lawful authority or
apparent cause, as likewise without formalities, and only for havoc
and pillage."
He indicated that all hostile acts were lawful wars, if made
with lawful authority and apparent cause, and "not for pillage
and havoc." This rule had its application in admiralty cases.
Justice Story stated:
Every hostile attack of a piratical nature in times of peace, is not
necessarily piratical. It may be by mistake, or in necessary self-
defense, or to repel a supposed meditated attack by pirates-it may
be justifiable, and then no blame attaches to the act; or, it may
be without just excuse, and then it carries responsibility in dam-
ages. If it proceed further; if it be an attack from revenge and
malignity, from gross abuse of power and settled purpose of mis-
chief, it then assumes the character of a private unauthorized war,
and may be punished by all the penalties which the law of nations
can properly administer"
"Judge Talmadge discusses this point in his learned critique of the
decision in People v. McLeod, cited in footnote 7 above.
112 Rutherford, Section 10, as cited in 26 Wend Appendix 663 (NY
1842).
113 Vattel, Section 67.
"The Marianna Flora. The Vice-Consul of Portugal, Claimant. 24
US (11 Wheat. 1, 41) 1 (1826) ; 6 L. Ed. 405, 414.
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Impunity of Agents
These texts, therefore, in enunciating the principle of per-
sonal impunity, are not speaking of war only in terms of for-
mal declared war, but including also hostile acts when other-
wise peaceful conditions exist. As Rutherford points out:
In the less solemn kinds of war, what the members do who act
under the particular direction and authority of their nation, is by
the law of nations no personal crime in them; they cannot, there-
fore, be punished consistently with the law, for any act in which it
considers them only as the instruments, and the nation as the
agent''
A principle of international law which emerges from a study
of the older texts might then be stated as follows. Where an
individual, under orders from his sovereign, commits a hostile
act upon a foreign nation, this cannot be said to be a contro-
versy between individuals, to be decided by a court under do-
mestic law where there is a common judge and arbiter. This
is a controversy between nations, who admit no judge except
themselves. While this rule arose during periods of historical
development when concepts of hostilities and relations be-
tween nations were much more rudimentary than at present,
the basic problems of the rights and responsibilities of nations
were similar to what they are now. This principle has been
recognized by the United States since the early days of the Re-
public. The third Attorney General of the United States,
writing to the Secretary of State on 29 December 1797, declared:
It is well settled in the United States as in Great Britain, that a
person acting under a commission from the sovereign of a foreign
nation is not amenable for what he does in pursuance of his com-
mission to any judiciary tribunal of the United States 2?
Broader Considerations
We have not attempted in this discussion to take into ac-
count the broader implications of general international ac-
ceptance of a rule of law that the state is responsible for all
the acts of a subject carried out pursuant to orders of the
sovereign. It can easily be seen that a nation might demand
" 2 Rutherford, Section 18, as cited in 26 Wend Appendix 663 (NY
1842).
" Quoted in 26 Wend Appendix 663 (NY 1842).
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Impunity of Agents
limitations placed on the rule, and in many cases a nation
might totally reject the rule for its purposes. Questions
such as the following would have to be pondered by all na-
tions. Could a murder committed pursuant to orders by an
agent of a foreign nation be permitted to go unpunished if the
foreign nation demanded his return? What would be the im-
plications for a small nation if a strong nation flooded the
country with illegal espionage agents acting under orders, and
upon capture made a request for their return? Would war
or the threat of war as an alternative to punishment act as a
deterrent on the use of authorized confidential agents collect-
ing information from foreign countries?
Some of these questions have been raised in the past and
have moved many writers not to recognize the right of a sov-
ereign to expect the return of an agent who pursuant to or-
ders has committed an offense against another sovereign.
We have not attempted to present here the opposing viewpoint
of these writers or to discuss the limitations on the rule of
personal impunity as it appears in international law. The
purpose of this paper has been simply to explore the precedents
and authorities in international law to determine if there is
any basis for the proposition that a government has the right
to the return of one of its officers who has been apprehended
abroad for criminal acts committed pursuant to its orders.
There is such a basis.
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A wistful wartime offering from
pigeon fanciers, accepted with
indulgence by Allied intelli-
gence, is vindicated by the
enemy.
OPERATION COLUMBA
T. J. Betts
In early March 1944, when SHAEF staff in London was be-
ginning to go all out with preparations for the June invasion
of Normandy, we in G-2 were approached by a group of British
pigeon fanciers determined to volunteer to intelligence the
services of their pigeons. Their argument was simple: they
bred carrier pigeons which were guaranteed to return to their
owners' lofts; could we not use these birds in some way to
bring information back from Europe?
Actually, carrier pigeons were already being used quite suc-
cessfully as a link between the French Resistance and various
intelligence headquarters in London. They had proved effec-
tive and valuable in supplementing the overtaxed and pre-
carious radio links that were so hard to establish and so easy
to blow. Thus the pigeon fanciers' idea was not novel. But
we did not see how birds that would return to lofts scattered
all over England would fit into systematic communication with
resistance or espionage operations: checking up on our mes-
sages would keep us paging pigeons from one end of the UK
to the other.
The best idea we could conjure up was a scatter-shot project.
It was known that northwest France, Belgium, and Holland
formed a region that was saturated with pigeon breeders.
There might be some prospect of results if we dropped the of-
fered pigeons by parachute at random in that region. They
would be packaged in neatly crated pairs with an attached let-
ter saying in effect: These birds if released will return to Eng-
land. If you are a pigeon breeder, hold them until you or
your friends have something to tell us. If you.don't. keep
pigeons, give them to someone who does and let him take it
from there. From the counterintelligence viewpoint the pro-
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Operation Columba
posal seemed very safe, since carrier pigeons do not possess
national characteristics, are resistant to interrogation, and
once in a loft would be indistinguishable from local birds. The
real question was whether any substantial number of recipi-
ents would have anything of significance to tell us.
Light Risk, Low Stakes, Little Return
As we weighed the potential of such an operation, we came
more and more seriously to doubt that, while safe, relatively
simple, and very cheap to mount in terms of energy expended,
it would pay off at all appreciably in terms of information re-
ceived. In other words, it came to a balance but the weights
on each side of the scale were so slight that the whole thing
looked insignificant. The project might therefore have been
turned down but for the deciding weight cast in by the atti-
tude of the pigeon fanciers. They were earnest, decent peo-
ple, and their pigeons obviously represented their greatest
treasure in a grim, war-torn world. They all tended to be
thin; we suspected that they were sharing their scanty ra-
tions with their birds. Above all, we were conscious that
they were seeking to give up their most dearly loved posses-
sions. in the Allied cause. You just can't say no to a high
sacrifice offered in the hope that it will help. And it might
pay off, after all: surprise jackpots had been hit in the past.
So we adopted the scheme, dubbed, naturally, in a staff thickly
laced with University dons, "Operation Columba."
The work-up of the plan was uncomplicated. The pigeon
men provided neat standard travelling cases, each adapted to
and containing two feathered tenants. The parachute design-
ers, accustomed now to delivering anything by air from a jeep
to the Daily Mail, quickly whipped up the necessary gear.
The American and British Air Forces agreed without demur to
drop our birds in the course of their regular night opera-
tions. G-2 contributed the letter, printed in French, Flemish,
and Dutch, that was to find the pigeons friends and homes on
the other side of the Channel.
Only two snags appeared. One was of apprehension. While
the Air Force commanders and their staffs had been very co-
operative, we were morally sure that opposition would spring
up eventually at the pilot level. It was quite true that the
operation involved no additional danger; the planes would drop
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Operation, .Columba
the birds from normal flight altitudes and without having to
pinpoint their targets. Nevertheless we could understand. the
natural feelings of the pilot who, keyed up to his best ,to de=
liver a massive load of destruction at great personal risk,
would find himself sidetracked en route by Operation Columba.
It was too much like stopping off at the supermarket on the
way to your wedding. We knew, before the first pair of pi-
geons was dropped, that we could soon expect ungracious ref-
erences to what might euphemistically . be rendered "those
fluttering birds." We realized thoroughly that a long. life for
Columba depended on getting early results.
The second hazard was brought out by the pigeon fanciers
themselves. They told us something that most of us had never
known and that had not greatly impressed those who,at one
time or another had had cognizance of it. It seemed that total
war had included pigeon warfare earlier. When Britain had
braced to meet invasion in 1940, fears had arisen that enemy
agents in England might be using carrier pigeons as a means
of secret communication with the Continent. As part of the
counterespionage campaign it had therefore been decided to
ban destruction of the predatory hawks, falcons, and kestrels
nesting in the chalk cliffs along England's east coast. Now
our men pointed out that the predators would not discrimi-
nate between patriotic British pigeons and treacherous Axis
birds; please then would we have these enemies of the pigeon
restored to their true status as vermin. Grumbles arose in
G-2: was this a pro-intelligence or an anti-hawk project? Nev-
ertheless we went ahead and had the predators declared free
game. This wrapped up the operation, and in about a week
after it had come to our attention the first pigeons were
dropped behind enemy lines.
A week went by without a reaction. Then a second. Then
a third. Comments on "those fluttering birds" began to bub-
ble up to us through the chain of command. We also began
to harden ourselves for the task of telling the pigeon men that
their patriotism, devotion, and sacrifice had come to nothing.
Then in the fourth week a delegation of the pigeon fanciers
came up to see us. A bird, one bird, had returned! , It had
brought back a message. The message, to the effect:that there
were "lots of Germans around Lier," was however hardly, news.
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Operation Columba
While not substantively helpful, the return provided some
encouragement; at least it would stave off the day of reckon-
ing with our pigeoneers. We reported the good news to the
Air Forces, possibly with a little exaggeration of the informa-
tion's importance, and asked for Columba's continuation. The
airmen loyally obliged.
This general sequence was repeated as the pattern of the
whole operation until it came to its natural end with the Nor-
mandy invasion. Every two weeks or so, just as our hope for
the pigeons was at the vanishing point, in would come another
vague, unenlightening message. In all, after the dispatch of
hundreds of birds, five or six responses were recorded. None
of them had material intelligence value.
Modest Jackpot by Accident
But that was not the whole story. As the pigeon dropping
went on, we began to get indications of uneasiness among the
German military government people in the Low Countries.
They had picked up, of course, a few parachuted crates and
so become aware of Operation Columba almost from its first
implementation. They could not have been very anxious
about it as an Allied source of information, but apparently
they became outraged at their inability to control this physi-
cal penetration of their defenses. From underground sources
we received reports of enemy fumings and proclamations, the
latter ranging from paternal and advisory to minatory and
vindictive.
Pigeon fanciers were warned against harboring strange
birds. They were threatened with liquidation of their cotes
in the event of detection. Later they were told that harbor-
ing of alien pigeons was espionage and carried with it the
penalty of death by shooting. No one, apparently, was ever
shot for this offense, nor so far as we could find out were any
lofts destroyed (although healthy apprehensions may well
have hastened some of the birds, stringy as they were, into
the pot rather than into the cote). Our original calculation
that there is nothing self-betraying about a pigeon in a loft
seems to have held up: the Germans' intentions were probably
lethal enough, but they just never caught anybody.
All this sound and fury, however, did have a fine subversive
effect on the pigeon fanciers and their friends. These people,
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Operation Columba
as we had already noted among their British colleagues, felt
that a man's inalienable right to the pigeons of his choice was
subject to no question. The stronger the German reaction,
the more the pigeon men lined up with the Resistance. And
as they perceived that the enemy was unable to identify vio-
lators and reluctant to resort to mass reprisals over such
ridiculous things as pigeons, the curve of local effrontery and
rebelliousness shot up. The whole affair became cumulative,
and what had started out as a dubious intelligence operation
developed into a serious contribution to the build-up of resist-
ance.
Nor was even this all, we discovered after reentry into the
Continent. As a matter of routine we had cleared Operation
Columba in advance with the deception specialists. They had
given us an almost perfunctory response to the effect that
from their point of view they saw no harmful implications in
the undertaking. But the Germans found implications. After
they had picked up a few baskets of parachuted birds, their in-
telligence began a systematic plotting of the points of im-
pact. It was not long before they could conclude that the
drops were all falling north of the Somme River and the his-
toric Amiens-Abbeville line. Now why was this? they asked
themselves, and gave themselves a pregnant answer.
They might have reconstructed our thought that the pi-
geon-rich lowlands formed the safest and most logical area for
the random dropping of carrier birds. But no; to them it was
abundantly clear that this was only one more symptom of Al-
lied interest in the Strait of Dover at its narrowest. Clearly
we would try to cross the water hazard near Calais, just as
any systematic professionals would, including themselves.
They could not have regarded the pigeon-drop locations as pri-
mary evidence, but they came to accord them distinct value in
confirmation of a theory that was already pretty well estab-
lished. Thus Operation Columba made a small but significant
unplanned contribution to the deception scheme that masked
the Allies' intent to land in Normandy, well to the south and
across the Seine from the Pas de Calais.
To sum up, then, this operation, undertaken as an inconse-
quential gamble with little expectation of returns was
an intelligence failure; but
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Operation Columba
a definite plus in contributing to the saturation of local
enemy counterintelligence faculties and in building up
opposition and resistance to the Germans; and
a significant though minor element in the Allies' deception
scheme.
Reflections
This story of an intelligence failure, attended in its plan-
ning and execution by doubts and annoyances, has in retro-
spect.the virtue of being gently amusing. But if the debris is
looked over dispassionately, certain typical and permanent
values can also be found in it.
Columba was launched primarily in order to take some ad-
vantage of unused resources. Many, if not most, intelligence
operations are similarly undertaken in terms of the means
available rather than of the ends sought. The happy picture
of the unerring intelligence officer laying out his essential ele-
ments of enemy information and then devising foolproof
means to check them out is a much idealized depiction of the
state of the art.
Operation Columba was very much like trying to catch min-
nows with a salmon net: the shiners all got away. Unfortu-
nately most intelligence operations have this shortcoming in
greater or less degree, because the devising and creation of
intelligence means is usually a slow and rigid process. Either
you have to tailor a particular activity to one precise end, a
process which is expensive and time-consuming, or you have to
resort to a standardized procedure that never quite fits the
precise needs of the moment.
No intelligence operation is an island. In the case of Co-
lumba we owed our plusses in subversion and deception to this
fact. It is equally easy to damage or blow another operation
by the execution of a project that in itself is sound, safe, and
reasonable. The danger zone, of course, extends beyond the
area of intelligence: the adversary can often derive material
profits from intelligence operations which we have effectively
executed but which nevertheless give him leverages-military,
economic, or political. The work of the intelligence planner is
not done until he answers satisfactorily both questions : what
happens if I fail? and what happens when I succeed?
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pera ion o u a
All this seems to point toward one major conclusion. If in-
telligence is a science, as we all hope it is, then it clearly be-
longs among the social sciences. This is not because its field
and findings are often vague, as epitomized in Operation Co-
lumba. It is rather because its ultimate application is to man.
We may search for statistics, for technical and technological
characteristics, for the existence and capacities of such things
as roads and bridges, but in the last analysis we are always
trying to find out what some men are going to do with these
data and these means. We may be forced to analyze all capa-
bilities, but each such analysis is also a tacit confession that
we are unable to work out exactly what the other fellow is
doing or plans to do.
This is not to be construed as an assertion that precision
is alien to intelligence. Fuzzy problems are usually those that
demand the most rigorous approach. Thus the sociologists,
like ourselves, have continual recourse to the electronic com-
puter. Thus the economists, like ourselves, resort to the
theory of games and other advanced studies in probabilities.
Intelligence is indeed a product of disciplined and precise
thought; but its techniques, mechanisms, and occasional in-
cantations should not blind us to the fact that its ultimate
objective is the searching penetration of the mind of man.
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Clandestine methods of the
Jesuits in Elizabethan England
as illustrated in an operative's
own classic account.
ENGLISH MISSION
It is generally realized that the Jesuits of the renaissance
were adept in the conduct of affairs requiring secrecy. But
knowledge of the clandestine methods they used is not gen-
eral, even among intelligence officers whose experience would
give them a special appreciation of the subject. Considerable
insight into these methods is offered in a priest's own narra-
tive of his experiences operating underground in Elizabethan
England. Written in Latin after his mission was completed,
the book was made accessible to modern English readers ten
years ago.' Its highlights can be quickly summarized.
In early November 1588, John Gerard, S. J., aged 24, acting
under the direction of the Rome headquarters of the Society
of Jesus, made with three other priests of the Society a clan-
destine entry into his native country. It was only a few
months after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and the
Queen's security agents were alert for strangers even in re-
mote provinces. Landed near Norfolk in the dark of night,
they found that every path they tried led to a farm house
where dogs set up an alarm. They had to hide in a clump of
trees and wait in the rain for daylight. At dawn each went
his own way, according to immemorial usage in such circum-
stances.
Gerard's story describes, step by step, how he found Catho-
lics to shelter him and enable him to reach London, where
he reported to Fr. Garnet, the Superior on the English Mis-
sion, to begin his 18 years of undercover duty in England.
Captured in 1594 and imprisoned for four years, he made a
famous escape from the Tower of London and successfully
resumed his clandestine activity. It was not until the expo-
sure of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, which brought down upon
' John Gerard, The Autobiography of an Elizabethan, translated from
the Latin by Philip Caraman. (Longmans, Green and Co., 1951.)
c~
,4
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English Mission
the Jesuits the full crushing force of an aroused State and
made the extermination of priests seem inevitable, that he
was exfiltrated under diplomatic cover in the entourage of the
Spanish Ambassador.
Gerard apparently put his story into writing for the guid-
ance and benefit of trainees at a training and staging area
in Belgium. Later he became Confessor to the English Col-
lege in Rome, where he died at the age of 73. A study of his
experiences, even at this remove in time, shows the primal
and inevitable nature of certain methods required for success-
ful clandestine action. Above all, it shows the ruling power
of motivation. To see these fundamentals demonstrated in
an unfamiliar cultural context renews one's sense of their
force.
Tradecraft
Organization and line of authority in the Society were not
complicated. The commanding officer was the General of
the Society of Jesus, at Rome. Staff-wise, English affairs
were taken care of on behalf of the General by Father Per-
sons, an English Jesuit at headquarters. In the English Col-
lege at Rome English recruits were trained for duty in their
native country. The Superior on the English Mission resided
under cover in England and reported directly to the General.
Communications were maintained by means of couriers over
whom a high degree of control was exercised through religious
sanctions.
Although Gerard's book is not in any modern sense a trade-
craft manual, it is possible to derive from it a confident sense
of how he and his Superior made expert use of the standard
paraphernalia of covert action-cover, aliases, safe houses,
secret printing presses, invisible ink.
Gerard, having been brought up a member of the upper
class, was able to maintain successfully the cover of a gen-
tleman at leisure. He was the object of the candid envy of
other priests because he was familiar with the technical lan-
guage of falconry-a useful resource in idle conversation with
laymen. He was a tall, dark man, "very gallant in apparel,
and being attended with two men and footboy is exceedingly
well horsed." When visiting the sick, he. amended his cover
to that of a doctor.
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English Mission
The construction of hiding places, or what the security po-
lice called "priest holes," became a matter for experts. The
skill of these "hides" specialists is shown in the fact that after
a raid on a safe house or on a large manor house, followed by
a close search lasting over a week, priests sometimes emerged
faint and tottering from hideouts concealed between walls,
under gables, or beneath fireplaces. An especially skilled car-
penter called Little John died mute under torture rather than
reveal the whereabouts of the hides he admitted having con-
structed.
On occasion it became necessary to provide clandestine
burials for priests who had died on the English Mission. These
were effected at night near a deserted monastery or ruined
abbey.
Funds were obtained from the laity. Members of certain
great Catholic families poured money into Gerard's coffers;
he seems never to have lacked in this regard. He remarks on
the expense of the various houses it was necessary for him
and his Superior to maintain in London and in the country.
He was able to offer annuities to persons in a position to fa-
cilitate the accomplishment of his mission: he granted a liberal
one to a prison warder who had been of some service to him
in the Tower.
Specialists in audiosurveillance and interrogation may note
with particular interest the incident of a warder who, feign-
ing friendship for an imprisoned priest, offered to show him
how he might talk secretly "through a cleft in the wall" with
the priest in an adjoining cell. The place was "purposely so
contrived that the sound of their words must needs be car-
ried to another place, not far off, where this keeper would
stand and some other with him, to have a double witness in
their double hearing."
The Jesuits themselves appear to have made use of counter-
intelligence deception. After Gerard's escape from the
Tower, the Government received a false report that he was
about to go to Ireland. "Gerard hath been lately in London,
and hath disguised himself with an artificial beard and peri-
wig of a brown color, somewhat dark. His beard is very long,
cut after the spade fashion, very even and formal." (When
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English Mission
an Elizabethan spoke of a "very long" beard, he meant long,
upwards of two feet.)
Prison
Gerard's basic instructions forbade him to meddle in politi-
cal matters, and he professed loyalty to the Queen and to
England. The question of whether a Catholic priest could be
loyal to a Protestant government was the subject of much
English dialectic, entailing as it did an ambiguity which the
State found it increasingly difficult to live with. It was only
after the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, however, that the
ambiguity became intolerable;2 at the time of Gerard's arrest
in the spring of 1594 the temper was still in some respects
relaxed. Moreover, Gerard's connections with those in high
places were good.
Refusing to disclose any information that would help the
authorities in arresting others on the English Mission, he
spent three years confined with other priests and Catholic
laymen in the Clink, where the guards grew fat on regular
bribes. In return for these payments the inmates were al-
lowed facilities for saying mass, hearing confession, and re-
ceiving visitors. Needless to say, it was not money alone that
made this possible; there was considerable popular feeling
in favor of the old church. During this time in the Clink,
and later in the Tower itself, Gerard successfully maintained
clandestine correspondence with his Superior and others, in-
cluding the "saintly and martyred widow" who kept his safe
house, which was used even during his imprisonment to shel-
ter young recruits for the English College until passage to
the Continent could be arranged.
He continued operating thus under relatively slight handi-
caps until a certain priest who seemed "a little unsteady"
and perhaps jealous of "all the people he saw coming to me"
turned informer and told the authorities that Gerard received
letters in the Clink from Rome and Brussels. "Two of the
'atmosphere created by uncertainty as to what was treasonable
is indicated in a passage from John Donne, who had a Catholic back-
ground and delayed for years his commitment to the Church of Eng-
land. Donne is calling down a curse upon an enemy:
"May he dream of treason, and think to do it, and confess, and die,
And no record tell why."
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English MMission
Queen's pursuivants came without warning to my room with
the head warder. Providentially they found no one with me
except two boys -I was giving them instructions before send-
ing them abroad." They found nothing but a hair shirt under
Gerard's doublet, but he was taken to the Tower of London
for safer keeping. His new warder went to the Clink to fetch
a mattress from Gerard's friends and returned with money
and instructions to treat him well.
Three days later, however, before the Lords Commissioners,3
when Gerard refused to disclose details relative to his foreign
correspondence or the whereabouts of his Superior, a warrant
for putting him to torture was produced. The Lords Commis-
sioners begged him not to force them to such a loathsome
measure. These formalities over, he was hung from his
wrists, his feet dangling, for about 5 hours. This was to be
repeated daily until he either confessed or died. The Com-
missioners left the room after it became apparent he would
not speak.
He was eventually helped back to his cell.
On the way we met some prisoners who had the run of the
Tower, and I turned to speak to my warder, intending them to
overhear.
"What surprises me," I said, "is that the Commissioners want me
to say where Father Garnet's house is ... I will never do it, even if
I have to die!"
I said this to prevent them spreading a report that I had con-
fessed. I also wanted word to get around through these men that
it was chiefly concerning Father Garnet that I had been questioned,
so that he might get to hear and look to his own safety. The
warder was not pleased at my talking in their hearing.
The message got through to Father Garnet. In a report
to the General of the Society, written eight weeks later, Gar-
net says: "He [Gerard] hath been thrice hanged up by his
hands until he was almost dead, and that twice in one day.
The cause was for to tell where his Superior was ..."
The authorities did not carry through to the end. Al-
though Gerard was rendered physically helpless for a time,
he seems to have largely recovered in the following months.
8 Edward Coke and Francis Bacon were among them.
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English Mission
He resumed his usual cell life, performing the Society's dis-
cipline, known as the Spiritual Exercises, and conducting his
clandestine correspondence. He explains in some detail that
he used orange juice instead of lemon or citron for invisible
ink because once orange juice has been brought out with
heat it stays out, whereas the other two fade away. Conse-
quently the recipient of a letter written in orange juice will
know whether or not it has been read. "If it has been read
and contains something that compromises him, he can dis-
own it." As a matter of routine, he never used true names
in his letters.
Escape
Gerard's escape from the Tower exhibits good planning,
teamwork, and a variety of clandestine techniques. In a small
tower nearby there was a Catholic layman, John Arden, who
had been in prison for ten years under sentence of death. He
walked daily on the roof of his tower and eventually he and
Gerard began to communicate by signs. The warder was
coaxed and bribed to allow Gerard to visit Arden to say mass.
He even sent his wife to get the things necessary for the
sacrament from Gerard's assistant, John Lillie, in the city.
With mobility thus established, Gerard observed that Arden's
tower was quite close to the moat, "and I thought it might
be possible for a man to lower himself with a rope from the
roof on to the wall beyond the moat." Arden was eager and
willing but had no outside help; Gerard had Lillie. He sought
the permission of his Superior to make the try, and Father
Garnet agreed to it provided the risk of life was not too great.
Then I asked John Lillie and Richard Fulwood (he was attending
Father Garnet at the time) whether they were prepared to take the
risk, and, if they were, to come on a certain night to the far side
of the moat, opposite the squat tower. I had described ... They were
to bring a rope with them and tie it to a stake; we would be on the
roof of the tower and throw them an iron ball attached to a stout
thread, the kind used in stitching up bales. They must listen in the
darkness for the sound of the ball touching the ground, find the
cord and tie it to the free end of the rope. This done, we would
draw up the rope by pulling the other end of the cord which we held
in our hands. I told them to pin a piece of white paper or a hand-
kerchief on the front of their jackets, for we wanted to be sure of
their identity before throwing the cord. Also, they were to bring
a rowing boat so that we could make a quick get-away.
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Ctng Is Mission
The first attempt aborted because of unwitting intruders
on the riverside. On the second attempt, which proceeded
as planned, Gerard's physical condition was such that he al-
most collapsed while clinging to the rope; but it was success-
ful. By daybreak he was with Father Garnet at a safe house
in the country. He was careful to make arrangements to pro-
tect the illiterate warder of his cell from possible punishment.
Although this man had refused a large bribe to let his pris-
oner walk out, he had for some months been willing to carry
letters and to grant what he judged to be harmless favors.
In return, Gerard arranged his flight to the house of a friend
a hundred miles from London and gave him an annuity of 200
florins a year, which enabled him to live comfortably with
his family.
Gerard had eight more years of undercover work in Eng-
land. He was particularly successful with the old established
families in the conservative counties. His physical endowment
and social position, combined with his undoubted abilities and
the aura of special interest arising from the perils he had en-
dured and still faced, gave him an almost hypnotic influence
over certain men and women and insured for his Society a
ready source of shelter, hospitality, and money. In the course
of his mission he sent at least 30 recruits to the Continent.
He was the only one to survive of the four priests who
landed together in 1588. Two were executed in Fleet Street
three years later; the third was active for a number of years
before he gained, to use the language of the time, the crown
of martyrdom. The Superior was executed in the aftermath
of the Powder Plot, along with many others with whom he
had worked.
Motivation
The purposes of a clandestine mission are basic to the mo-
tivation of its agents. For the Jesuits martyrdom was a glory,
and their motivation was rooted in acceptance of this end.
Although the ultimate aim of the English Mission, to return
Canterbury to Rome, was not achieved, its operatives were
regarded as accomplishing the mission when they were able
to perform rites for those who otherwise would have been de-
prived of them, to make converts, to send recruits to the Col-
lege, and above all to suffer martyrdom.
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A lay intelligence service must make do with a motivation
less absolute than that afforded by religion. If the cogency
of its purposes declines or the achievement of its avowed end
becomes remote, it risks making the means the end. Then
operations tend to be admired as demonstrations of tech-
nique, professionalism may become a fetish, and the mere
apparatus of intelligence proliferates as results lose definition.
The maintenance of an inspired service depends on the main-
tenance of an inspired policy for it to serve. In this sense, we
get the motivation we deserve.
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A selection of the most broadly
informative books on intelli-
gence available in English.
PUBLIC TEXTS IN INTELLIGENCE
Unclassified writings on an activity so well protected from
public inquiry as intelligence must necessarily show great de-
ficiencies when assessed as material for professional reading.
Some number of the thousands of books published in this field
have professional value, to be sure, but many of these are
devoted to recording the story of particular individuals or iso-
lated episodes rather than to a study of the nature or the
history of intelligence. The following bibliography has been
selected from among books available in English that are the
most broadly illuminating or at least serve to fill important
gaps in the picture. Whether viewed as a symposium on in-
telligence methods or as a composite history of intelligence
they are at many points grossly inadequate, but they do offer
matter that should be part of the intelligence officer's basic
equipment.
The selections fall into the following categories:
The Intelligence Process-theory, procedure, organi-
zation
Operational History:
From the earliest times up to World War II
Activities of the Western Allies in World War II
Organized resistance under the Nazis
German intelligence in World War II
The Soviet Services
Evading Capture and Escape from Imprisonment
THE INTELLIGENCE PROCESS-
Theory, Procedure, Organization
Ladislas Farago, WAR OF WITS: The Anatomy of Espionage and In-
telligence. (New York: Funk & Wagnalls. 1954. Pp. 379.)
The only comprehensive unclassified essay covering both the organi-
zation and procedures of world intelligence agencies and their activities
in the espionage, counterespionage, sabotage, and propaganda fields.
Marred by theoretical crudities, factual inaccuracies, and uncritical
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journalism, it nevertheless is useful as a composite of the most impor-
tant information on intelligence doctrine publicly available in 1954.
With source citations and index.
[Available in translation as Det Tysta Kriget (Stockholm: Ljiis Forlag,
1956), and Les Secrets de l'Espionnage (Paris: Presses de la Cite, 1955) ]
Sherman Kent, STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE for American World Pol-
icy. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. 1949. Pp. 226.)
Foresighted early work on the theory and ideal operation of national
intelligence production, by the present Chairman of the Board of
National Estimates. Lays down many principles which have since be-
come established in practice.
[Available in translation as Inteligencia Estrategica para la Politica
Mundial Norteamericana (Buenos Aires: Circulo Militar, Biblioteca del
Oficial, 1951), and in pirated Japanese and Chinese editions]
Harry Howe Ransom, CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AND NATIONAL SE-
CURITY. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 1958.
Pp. 287.)
The best current account of the development, organization, and prob-
lems of the U.S. intelligence system, with particular attention to the
production of national estimates. Includes a valuable bibliography.
Roger Hilsman, STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE AND NATIONAL DECI-
SIONS. (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press. 1956. Pp. 187.)
An academic study of the theory of intelligence, with emphasis on its
relation to policy. Valuable for its provocative thesis that policy is
likely to go its own way in disregard of intelligence, while intelligence
tends to turn scholar, gathering and piecing together facts for their
own sake. The author has recently become director of State Depart-
ment's Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
Washington Platt, STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE PRODUCTION. (New
York: Frederick A. Praeger. 1957. Pp. 302.)
A study of intelligence production from the perspective of the work-
ing analyst, with an emphasis on useful tools and methods which makes
it tend to treat social science methodology as something peculiar to in-
telligence. The author had experience in combat intelligence during
World War II and in intelligence production thereafter.
Don Whitehead, THE FBI STORY: A Report to the People. (New York:
Random House. 1956. Pp. 368.)
A laudatory account of FBI operations, both anticriminal and in the
maintenance of internal security.
[Available in the following foreign editions: The FBI Story (London:
Frederick Muller Ltd., 1957) ; Le F.B.I. (Paris: Morgan, 1957) ; Le Storia
dello FBI (Milan: Sugar Editore, 1958) ; Historia del F.B.I. (Buenos
Aires: Editorial Sopena, 1958) ]
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U.S. Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Gov-
ernment, INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES: A Report to the Congress.
(Washington: Government Printing Office. 1955. Pp. 76.)
The unclassified report of the intelligence task force of the second
Hoover Commission, under the chairmanship of General Mark W. Clark.
Considers problems of intelligence at the national and departmental
levels, including those of personnel and security administration and
functional organization.
[Also published as House Document No. 201, 84th Congress, 1st Session,
19551
OPERATIONAL HISTORY
Through World War I
Richard Wilmer Rowan, THE STORY OF SECRET SERVICE. (Garden
City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran. 1937. Pp. 732.)
The best comprehensive history of espionage and its practitioners
from Bible days to the end of World War I. Often sketchy and some-
times overdramatized, the treatment is generally sound and at its best
illuminated by perceptive reflections on the ways of human kind.
[Also available in a British edition, The Story of Secret Service (Lon-
don: John Miles Ltd., 1938) 7
John Bakeless, TURNCOATS, TRAITORS AND HEROES. (Philadel-
phia: J. B. Lippincott. 1959. Pp. 406.)
The most nearly complete account of espionage in the American
Revolution, covering-in an impossible attempt at encyclopedic narra-
tive-both sides' activities on the American continent. The author has
had extensive military intelligence experience.
Philip Van Doren Stern, SECRET MISSIONS OF THE CIVIL WAR.
(New York: Rand McNally. 1959. Pp. 320.)
Integrated and annotated anthology of the best accounts of clandes-
tine operations undertaken by both North and South during the Ameri-
can Civil War.
Admiral Sir William James, THE CODE BREAKERS OF ROOM 40: The
Story of Admiral Sir William Hall, Genius of British Counter-Intelli-
gence. (New York: St. Martin's Press. 1956. Pp. 212.)
Biography of Britain's Director of Naval Intelligence during World
War I, by the officer in charge of communications Intelligence. Centers
on the decipherment of German messages, including the notorious Zim-
mermann telegram.
[Published in Great Britain under the title The Eyes of the Navy (Lon-
don: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1956). For other reading on this subject, see
Chapter IX, "Secret Intelligence-1917-1919," in The Sky Was Always
Blue, by Admiral Sir William James (London: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1951) ;
The Man of Room 40, by A. W. Ewing (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1940) ;
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40 O.B., by Hugh Cleland Hoy (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1932) ; and
The Zimmermann Telegram, by Barbara W. Tuckman (New York: Vik-
ing, 1958) ]
Herbert Osborn Yardley, THE AMERICAN BLACK CHAMBER. (In-
dianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. 1931. Pp. 375.)
Querulous history of the first modern U.S. organization for communi-
cations intelligence, by its founder and director during World War I
and through the twenties.
[Available in the following foreign editions: Secret Service in America
(London: Faber & Faber, Ltd., 1940) ; Le Cabinet Noir Americain (Paris:
Editions de la Nouvelle Revue Critique, 1935) ; Amerikas Svarta Kam-
mare (Stockholm: Tidens Forlag, 1938) ]
The Western Allies in World War II
Constance Babington-Smith, AIR SPY: The Story of Photo Intelligence
in World War II. (New York: Harper. 1957. Pp. 266.)
Description by aleading RAF photo interpreter of the development of
photo intelligence techniques first by British and then by Allied per-
sonnel and their use in the European theater. Shows the role of air
photography in planning the D-Day landings, in bombing and damage
assessment, in industrial analysis, and in learning the secrets of German
countermeasures, radar, and the new "V" weapons.
[Published in Great Britain under the title Evidence in Camera
(London: Chatto and Windus, 1958) ]
Ewen Edward Samuel Montagu, THE MAN WHO NEVER. WAS. (Phila-
delphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1954. Pp. 160.)
Account of a classic British hoax which misled the Germans about
the coming Allied invasion of Sicily. The body of a Marine officer was
floated onto a beach in southern Spain with secret documents indicating
that Greece would be the point of invasion. Illustrates exemplary in-
telligence planning with respect to documentation, both personal and
official, and estimate of German reactions. The author was in charge
of this operation.
[Available in the following foreign editions: The Man Who Never Was
(London, Evans Brothers, 1953) ; De Man Die Niet Bestond (Utrecht:
Uitgeverij Het Spectrum, 1954) ; L'Homme Qui N'Existait Pas (Paris:
Juilliard, 1954) ; Mies iota Ei Ollutkaan (Helsinki: Kustannusosa-
keyhtio Otava, 1954). For further study see: Ian Colvin, The Unknown
Courier (London: William Kimber, 1953) ; and Sir Alfred Duff Cooper,
Operation Heartbreak (New York: Viking Press, 1951), a fictionalized
version of the operation]
Richard Collier, TEN THOUSAND EYES. (New York: E. P. Dutton.
.1958. Pp. 320.)
Probably the best English-language account of the Resistance agent
networks in France which under the direction of Free French Head-
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quarters in London secured information on the beach and inland de-
fenses of Hitler's Atlantic Wall.
[Available in foreign editions: Ten Thousand Eyes (London: Collins,
1958) ; La Guerre Secrete du Mur de l'Atlantique (Paris: Presses de la
Cite, 1958) ; Tiendinzend Ogen (Hoorn: U.-M. "West Friesland," 1958) 7
Philip John Stead, SECOND BUREAU. (London: Evans Bros., 1959.
Pp. 212.)
Wartime history of the regular French military intelligence service,
comprising the Deuxieme Bureau and its supporting organizations for
clandestine collection and counterespionage. Based on French-lan-
guage accounts and on conversations with many officers of the service,
it shows the difficulty experienced in maintaining operations after 1940
in double clandestinity, secret from both the Germans and the Vichy
Government.
Joint Committee of the Congress, REPORT: Investigation of the Pearl
Harbor Attack. (Washington: Government Printing Office. 1946.
Pp. 580.)
Summarizes the exhaustive congressional hearings on the surprise
Japanese blow, details the prior intelligence available, and analyzes the
poor coordination displayed in its collection, evaluation, and dissemina
tion.
[For the full text of the congressional hearings see Hearings Before The
Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, Parts
1-39 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1945-46)1
Stewart Alsop and Thomas Braden, SUB ROSA: The O.S.S. and Ameri-
can Espionage. (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock. 1946. Pp. 237.)
Fragmentary but authentic examples of OSS clandestine intelligence
and paramilitary operations in Europe, Africa, and Asia. The authors
were OSS parachutists.
[Available in a Swedish edition: O. S. S. (Stockholm: LjUs, 1947) 1
Elizabeth P. MacDonald, UNDERCOVER GIRL. New York: MacMillan.
1947. Pp. 305.)
A rather too sprightly feminine travelogue which nevertheless con-
tains in autobiographical form the most detailed information publicly
available on OSS operations, especially in black psychological warfare,
in the Far East.
Colonel Allison Ind, ALLIED INTELLIGENCE BUREAU: Our Secret
Weapon in the War against Japan. (New York: David McKay.
1958. Pp. 305.)
Kaleidoscopic scenes from the operations of the clandestine AIB
amalgamated from American, British, Australian, and Dutch personnel
under General MacArthur's command in the Southwest Pacific. The
author, its Deputy Controller, emphasizes the activities of the Australian
Coast Watchers concealed on Japanese-held islands, but also devotes
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sections to guerrilla and agent activity in the Philippines and to sabo-
tage operations.
[For further reading see Eric A. Feldt, The Coastwatchers (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1946; New York: Ballantine Books, 1959) ]
Resistance under the Nazis
Maurice James Buckmaster, SPECIALLY EMPLOYED: The Story of
British Aid to French Patriots of the Resistance. (London: Batch-
worth Press. 1952. Pp. 200.)
The work of the French Section of the British Special Operations Ex-
ecutive as described by its chief. Covers the organization of resistance,
many aspects of tradecraft, and the operations of a number of individ-
ual agents in France.
[For further reading on this subject see Buckmaster's They Fought
Alone (New York: Norton, 1958; and British editions) ]
Remy (Gilbert Renault-Roulier), MEMOIRS OF A SECRET AGENT OF
FREE FRANCE. Vol. 1: The Silent Company, June 1940-June 1942.
(New York: McGraw-Hill. 1948. Pp. 406.)
The first of Remy's six volumes on his experiences. Describes his
escape from France and his joining the Free French Intelligence Service
in London, his trips back to set up an agent net, and his second escape
with his family.
[Volume II has also been translated, as Courage and Fear (London:
Arthur Barker Ltd., 1950). The other four are: Comment Meurt Un
Reseau (Monte Carlo: Raoul Solar, 1947) ; Une Aitaire de Trahison
(Monte Carlo: Raoul Solar, 1947) ; Les Mains Jointes (Monte Carlo:
Raoul Solar, 1948) ; ... Mais le Temple Est Bdti (Monte Carlo: Raoul
Solar, 1950) ]
David Lampe, THE SAVAGE CANARY: The Story of Resistance in Den-
mark. (London: Cassell. 1957. Pp. 236.)
High spots and personalities of the Danish resistance, with much ma-
terial on resistance tradecraft.
[Published also as The Danish Resistance (New York: Ballantine
Books, 1960) and in Danish as Den Utaemmede Kanariefugl (Copen-
hagen, Gyldendal, 1957) ]
David Armine Howarth, ACROSS TO NORWAY. (New York: William
Sloane. 1952. Pp. 286.)
The story of Norwegian escapees assembled at a British base in the
Shetland Islands (where the author was deputy commander) to sail
their small boats back and forth as transport for saboteurs, agents, and
refugees. Also describes contacts with the Norwegian resistance and
evasion from capture by the enemy.
[Originally published in England under the title The Shetland Bus
(London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1951) ]
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Christopher Montague Woodhouse, APPLE OF DISCORD: A Survey of
Recent Greek Politics in Their International Setting. (London:
Hutchinson. 1951. Pp. 320.)
An authoritative account of Greek resistance against the Germans
during World War II and the internal postwar struggle, with emphasis
on the political background. Col. Woodhouse commanded the Allied
Military Mission to the Greek guerrillas.
Germany in World War II
Ian Goodhope Colvin, MASTER SPY: The Incredible Story of Admiral
Wilhelm Canaris. (New York: McGraw-Hill. 1951. Pp. 286.)
Ambivalent attitude and pro-Allied activities of the head of the Ger-
man Abwehr, based on published documents and interviews with many
of his former associates. Climax is the Admiral's involvement in the
'plot to assassinate Hitler on 20 July 1944, for which he paid with his life.
[Available in the following foreign editions: Chief of Intelligence (Lon-
don: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1951) ; L'Amiral Canaris, Notre Allie Secret
(Paris: Editions de la Paix, 1955) ; Admiral Canaris, Chef des Geheim-
dienstes (Vienna: Wilhelm Frick Verlag, 1955) ; Canaris (Barcelona:
Editorial AHR, 1956) ; Mysteriet Canaris (Bergen: Jahn Griegs Forlag,
1952). For further reading see: Karl Heinz Abshagen, Canaris (Lon-
don: Hutchinson, 1956) ; Paul Leverkuehn, German Military Intelli-
gence (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1954) ]
Walter Schellenberg, THE LABYRINTH: Memoirs. (New York: Harper.
1956. Pp. 423.)
Political intrigues and intelligence accomplishments in the Third
Reich through the eyes of Himmler's chief of foreign intelligence.
[Available in the following foreign editions: The Schellenberg Memoirs
(London: Andre Deutsch, 1956) ; Le Chef de Contre-Espionnage Nazi
Parle (1933-1945) (Paris: Rend Juilliard, 1957) ; Los Secretos del Servicio
Secreto Alemdn (Barcelona: Mateu, 1958) ; Memoiren (Cologne: Verlag
fur Politik and Wirtschaft, 1959) ]
Herman J. Giskes, LONDON CALLING NORTH POLE. (New York:
British Book Centre. 1953. Pp. 208.)
Story of a remarkable radio deception set up by the Germans after
their capture of a Dutch officer parachuted into Holland by the British
SOE to work with the resistance: undetected for nearly two years, it
netted 54 agents and quantities of British weapons and explosives para-
chuted in to the Dutch. Contains also material on other operations of
the Abwehr's counterintelligence branch. The author was chief of the
counterespionage unit in Holland.
[Available in the following foreign editions: London Calling North Pole
(London: William Kimber, 1953) ; Abwehr III F (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij
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de Bezige Bij, 1949) ; Londres Appelle Pole Nord (Paris: Librarie Plon,
1958) ; La Burla Maestra De La Guerra (Buenos Aires: Editorial Ameri-
cana, 1954) ; Spione ttberspielen Spione (Hamburg: Hansa Verlag Josef
Toth, 1951). For further study see Pieter Dourlein, Inside North Pole
(London: William Kimber, 1953); Joseph Schreider, Das War das
Englandspiel (Munich: Walter Stutz Verlag, 1950) ]
Charles Wighton and Gunter Peis, HITLER'S SPIES AND SABOTEURS:
Based on the German Secret Service War Diary of General La-
housen. (New York: Henry Holt. 1958. Pp. 285.)
General Lahousen headed the Abwehr's sabotage section during part
of the war. This elaboration from his diary gives case histories of his
agents in Great Britain, Ireland, and South Africa and of the saboteurs
he landed by submarine on the U.S. coast who were rounded up by the
FBI.
[Published in Great Britain under the title They Spied on England
London: Odhams Press, 1958) ]
THE SOVIET SERVICES
Simon Wolin and Robert M. Slusser, THE SOVIET SECRET POLICE.
(New York: Frederick A. Praeger. 1957. Pp. 408.)
Historical development and philosophical bases of the Soviet state
security services from the establishment of the Cheka in 1917 until 1956,
presented largely through the accounts of defectors and victims. The
editors have contributed documentation and an excellent summary.
[Published in Great Britain under the same title (London: Methuen &
Co., 1957) ]
David J. Dallin, SOVIET ESPIONAGE. (New Haven: Yale University
Press. 1955. Pp. 558.)
A scholarly historical study of Soviet intelligence activities in Europe,
Canada, and the United States, based on published materials, some
unpublished documents, and interviews with former Soviet agents and
others.
[Available in the following foreign editions: Die Sowjetspionage (Co-
logne: Verlag fur Politik and Wirtschaft, 1956) ; Espionaje Sovietico
(Buenos Aires: Agora, 1957) ]
Peter Deriabin and Frank Gibney, THE SECRET WORLD. (Garden
City, N.Y.: Doubleday. 1959. Pp. 334.)
With its four appendices the most detailed and factual compilation,
for all its character as an expose, on the organization and activity of
Soviet State Security from 1946 to 1953.
[Published in Great Britain under the same title (London: Arthur
Barker, 1960) ]
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Alexander Foote, HANDBOOK FOR SPIES. (Garden City, N.Y.: Double-
day. 1949. Pp. 273.)
Classic case history of the operation of a Soviet wartime intelligence
net. The author was a senior member of a group of agents in Switzer-
land collecting information from Germany and reporting to Moscow
by radio.
[Available in the following foreign editions: Handbook for Spies (Lon-
don: Museum Press, 1949) ; Les Secrets d'un Espion Sovietique (Brussels:
Editions de la Paix, 1951) ; Handbuch fur Spione (Darmstadt: C. W.
Leske Verlag, 1954) ; Manual Para Espias (Barcelona: Editorial AHR,
1954) ]
REPORT OF THE ROYAL COMMISSION . . . to Investigate ... the
Communication . . . of Confidential Information to Agents of a
Foreign Power. (Ottawa: Edmond Cloutier, Printer to the King's
Most Excellent Majesty. 1946. Pp. 733.)
Details on Soviet espionage, subversion, and agent recruitment in
Canada officially uncovered after Igor Gouzenko's defection in 1945.
[Available in the following foreign-language editions: Russisk Spionage
i Canada (Copenhagen: Schultz Forlag, 1947) ; Le Rapport de la Com-
mission Royale (Ottawa: Edmond Cloutier, 1946) 1
REPORT OF THE ROYAL COMMISSION ON ESPIONAGE. (Sydney:
Government Printer for New South Wales. 1955. Pp. 483.)
An excellent account of Soviet espionage and subversion in Australia
brought to light by the defection in 1954 of MVD agent Vladimir Petrov
and his wife.
[See also: Official Transcript of Proceedings of the Royal Commission
On Espionage; Vladimir and Evdokia Petrov, Empire of Fear (New
York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1956; London: Andre Deutsch, 1956).
Empire of Fear is also available in foreign editions: L'Empire de la
Peur (Paris: Morgan, 1957) ; Imperio del Miedo (Mexico City: Ediciones
Zenit, 1957) ; Fryktens Land (Oslo: J. W. Cappelens Forlag, 1956) ; Sant
Vittnesbord (Stockholm: Sven-Erik Berghs Forlag, 1956) ]
Aidan Merivale Crawley, ESCAPE FROM GERMANY: A History of
R.A.F. Escapes during the War. (New York: Simon and Schuster.
1956. Pp. 291.)
The sanitized version of an official history prepared for the British
Air Ministry. Describes the escape intelligence organizations (one of
which the author headed) in the German POW camps and the pris-
oners' continual efforts, successful and unsuccessful, to get away.
[Available in the following foreign editions: Escape from Germany
(London: Collins, 1958) ; R. A. F. Te Woet (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij
Nieuwe Wieken N. V., n. d.) I
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Clay Blair, Jr., BEYOND COURAGE. (New York: David McKay. 1955.
Pp. 247.)
Stories of American airmen who, shot down behind enemy lines in
the Korean War, evaded capture and returned.
[Available in the following foreign editions: Beyond Courage (London:
Jarrolds Publishers, Ltd., 1956) ; Met de Moed der Wanhoop (Utrecht:
Uitgeverij Het Spectrum, 1955) ]
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INTELLIGENCE IN RECENT PUBLIC LITERATURE
INTELLIGENCE IN U.S. NATIONAL STRATEGY
STRATEGIC PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS AND AMERI-
CAN FOREIGN POLICY. By Robert T. Holt and Robert W.
van de Velde. (University of Chicago Press. 1960. Pp. 237.
$5.50.)
Half doctrinal discussion and organizational proposals, the
other half case studies of three propaganda campaigns, this
is a useful addition to the limited store of analytical-case-
took literature available on psychological operations, particu-
larly propaganda. Although the subject of propaganda is pre-
dominant, the authors did not intend to limit themselves
thereto: their thesis is that "the United States has failed to
develop total strategies [because] it has never truly under-
stood the nature of the psychological instrument" and its
relationship to the three traditional instruments of statecraft,
the military, the economic, and the diplomatic. (The charge
should rather be that it has lagged in implementing an acute
recognition of these things on the part of many of its offi-
cials.) They propose a cabinet-level organization for Stra-
tegic Psychological Operations not only to carry on the propa-
ganda functions hitherto inadequately handled by informa-
tion agencies but also to oversee the psychological aspects of
military, economic, and diplomatic programs.
This SPO proposal, complete with organization charts and
detailed functional breakdowns, may be over-elaborate and to
some, extent unrealistic. Solution of the problem of psycho-
logical effectiveness by the creation of a new agency is too
simple. It misses the fundamental point made over the past
ten years by psychological advisers and special committees,
most recently by the President's [Sprague] Committee on In-
formation Abroad, that the problem can be met only by
breaking down resistances, especially in the middle echelons of
certain agencies, through prolonged education and motiva-
tion, that mere changes in machinery will not suffice. The
authors nonetheless make an able presentation of the prob-
lem and suggest some of the changes necessary for its solu-
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tion. Further, their discussion gives the reader an introduc-
tory acquaintance with the multiplicity of coordinated func-
tions and activities involved in launching propaganda
programs.
The analytical section is good as an introduction to the
basic elements of propaganda, but too brief (some 56 pages),
having been subordinated to the elaboration of the SPO or-
ganization. It treats only white propaganda attributed to
official sources, omitting, except for a brief reference to black
radio, gray and black propaganda. The first half of the sec-
tion covers objectives, doctrine, techniques, and tactics. Only
the more obvious tactics such as deception, enlightenment,
terror, and reassurance are discussed. Indirect propaganda
is mentioned, but there is no acknowledgement of more so-
phisticated tactics such as the oblique approach, the kiss of
death, overcommitment of the opponent, quotation out of con-
text, and so forth.
The second half of the analytical section is devoted to in-
telligence requirements, an essential subject which is often
neglected in handbooks on propaganda techniques. The need
for comprehensive intelligence upon which to base propaganda
operations is clearly presented in a discussion of the selec-
tion of audiences, their availability, receptivity, and respon-
siveness, the credibility of the message, and the like. The
importance of accurate intelligence in depth is also well illus-
trated in the hundred-odd pages of case histories that form
Part II of the book, particularly in the detailed presentation
of Radio Free Europe's efforts to determine which messages
might provoke fruitful responses from the various segments
of its audience.
The three case studies of Part II not only describe compre-
hensive propaganda campaigns in detail but support the au-
thors' charge that the United States has failed to exploit the
psychological aspects of diplomatic, economic, and military
programs and to integrate them with propaganda operations
in an overall psychological strategy. The three are well se-
lected to illustrate different situations and different combi-
nations of the instruments of statecraft-military coordina-
tion of all activities in wartime Italy; an uncoordinated use
of diplomatic, economic, and psychological instruments in the
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all-out effort to swing the 1948 Italian elections; the activity
of a private propaganda organization, Radio Free Europe,
in support of U.S. foreign policy in East Europe during the
1950's.
The position of the authors with regard to SPO and propa-
ganda could have been more simply presented in their intro-
ductory chapter. Here their attempt to be succinct and de-
finitive bogs down in concepts and definitions that form a
frame of some distortion. It is an unfortunate beginning for
a book which otherwise is clear, direct, and especially in case
study, rich with material for thought.
AMERICANS AT WAR: The Development of the American
Military System. By T. Harry Williams. (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press. 1960. Pp. 139. $3.50.)
Originally delivered by the author as three J. P. Young
Lectures in American History at Memphis State University
in October 1956, this work traces the character of the Ameri-
can military system from the Revolution to 1860, its Civil
War bifurcation into the systems of the North and of the
South, and its subsequent development to the modern era
of global conflict. The book is notable here for the striking
fact that in all this span the subject of intelligence is not once
broached, an omission hardly conceivable in any comparable
history of European military development. It is pointed out
that Elihu Root's use of the German General Staff as a model
in his reorganization of the U.S. Army early in the present
century was one of the few influences from abroad on our
military organization. Perhaps our historical fear of an
overly strong military establishment was one of the reasons
why our war efforts through World War II have been largely
improvisations, why little thought had been given in advance
to who the enemy would be or where the war would be fought.
In any event, nothing could make it clearer than this broad
outline of the development of the American military system
that only in the most recent years has intelligence as a mili-
tary function entered the ken of the American commander.
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HITLER CONFRONTS ENGLAND. By Rear Admiral Walter
Ansel. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. 1960.
Pp. 348. $7.50.)
This is a study of amphibious operations, a thing as old as
warfare, yet unique in the twentieth century. In the days
when each man carried all the weapons he would use and
armies lived off the countryside, such operations were a mat-
ter of having enough boats to get the men across the water.
Now they have been transformed in their requirements for
planning, logistics, and intelligence by new dimensions such
as air power and the transportation of tanks and heavy equip-
ment to land on heavily defended hostile shores.
The first major German amphibious operation in World War
II was the invasion of Norway-successful, but incurring
heavy naval losses at the hands of the British. Then after
the devastating blitzkrieg that overran the Low Countries
and France and trapped the British Expeditionary Force at
Dunkirk, there occurred one of those mysteries of the war
that can be explained only by the personality of Adolf Hitler.
Although the German armor was ready and eager to smash
the British, Hitler held it back and allowed the B.E.F. to make
its amphibious escape relatively unscathed. Then followed
Operation Sea Lion, the plan for an amphibious move against
England.
Walter Ansel's well-researched analysis, based on official
documents and interviews with most of the available senior
German officers who were concerned, reaches some interest-
ing conclusions. Hitler didn't try to crush the British at
Dunkirk because he was confident he could make terms with
them. For the same reason, and also because the rapidity
of the blitzkrieg's total success was unexpected, there was no
planning what to do after the fall of France. The Germans
sat on the Pas de Calais looking across the Channel without
the vaguest idea of their next move. And when the planning
for Operation Sea Lion was ordered, it was of such short dura-
tion-a deadline of about two months from the start-so un-
realistic, and so uncoordinated that it is difficult to believe
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Hitler was ever serious about it. By comparison with Opera-
tion Overlord, the Allied planning for the Normandy landing,
the German effort was ridiculous. It impels the reader to
Admiral Ansel's apparent conclusion that Hitler thought he
could talk the British out of the war.
The book is plentifully interlarded with intelligence refer-
ences: the reasonably accurate air reconnaissance reports of
the Luftwaffe, the not-so-accurate overestimates of British
ground order of battle, and the assessments of the naval in-
telligence staff. But most striking to the intelligence profes-
sional is how the lack of any centralized coordinating and esti-
mating led the Germans into major errors. If they had tried
Sea Lion, the Nazi disaster would have dwarfed that of Xerxes
at Salamis.
MONS: The Retreat to Victory. By John Terraine. (New
York: Macmillan. 1960. Pp. 224. $4.50.)
This excellent book is an account of the first battles fought
by the British Expeditionary Force in Europe in World War I.
At one point its intelligence-minded author comments, "It is
hard to think of a day of war when action on such a huge
and momentous scale was conducted in such a fog of uncer-
tainty and misconception." Elsewhere he quotes the first
Von Moltke's remark at a staff conference, "Gentlemen, I
have observed that there are always three courses open to
the enemy, and that he usually takes the fourth." Both of
these observations characterize the appalling intelligence esti-
mates on both sides in the initial battles of the war.
On the Allied side the French staff failed to take into con-
sideration the altered conditions of twentieth century war-
fare, to recognize the German plan of operations, and to
conceive of the strength of the German Army. They were
convinced the Germans would not use reserve divisions.
Their estimate of the strength of the German right wing,
which drove through Belgium, was nearly 100% off-15 corps
as against an actual 28. They remained blind to the possi-
bility of a German advance through Belgium conducted in
enormous strength until it became a reality: it was 15 August
before they finally saw that the main German effort was in
the north.
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The British underestimated German enterprise; only
Kitchener believed that it could be a long war, "that the
Germans were about to attempt one of their much-advertised
enveloping maneuvers on a scale that nobody has so far con-
ceived." He felt more and more certain that the B.E.F. might
easily advance into a gigantic trap.
The Germans were also blind. "Engrossed with their own
sweeping maneuvers, [they] knew little about their enemies.
They had no idea, for example, of the whereabouts of the
B.E.F." They were left behind at the intelligence turning-
point: "At the Supreme Headquarters of both the French and
German Armies decisions of the first importance were taken
on August 25th. The pendulum of error took a definite swing
across the line of battle; as Joffre shed his delusions, Von
Moltke became more and more immersed in his, with results
that were to prove fatal to the German cause."
Mr. Terraine's book should be required reading for military
intelligence officers as well as military commanders.
STRINGFELLOW OF THE FOURTH: The Amazing Career of
the Most Successful Confederate Spy. By R. Shepard
Brown. (New York: Crown Publishers. 1960. Pp. 307.
$4.00.)
The late Douglas Southall Freeman, probably the foremost
historian of the Confederacy, noted that material on the ac-
tivities of one Frank Stringfellow was very scarce. Mr.
Brown's book on these activities does not now invalidate this
observation, but tends to confirm it: one gets the impression
that the author's reconstruction of many of the episodes in-
volving Stringfellow rests on rather meager evidence, and
there is more in his book about well-known battles than
there is about its hero.
Stringfellow was a scout and spy assigned to the Fourth
Virginia Cavalry, taking his orders directly from Jeb Stuart
and, after Stuart's death at Yellow Tavern, from Robert E.
Lee. He unquestionably scored amazing successes in cross-
ing Union lines and operating as an agent in 'both Washing-
ton and Alexandria. On his first mission he crossed into
Alexandria, assumed the cover of a dentist's assistant, and
set up a network of informants with such dispatch that he
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was back in time to do scout duty at the battle of First Ma-
nassas. He went to a Union Army regimental dance disguised
as a girl. He again went behind Union lines to visit his
mother, slightly wounded when the family home was shelled
during the Wilderness battle. He spent some time in Wash-
ington trying to set up a network and was spotted by Pinker-
ton's counterintelligence men. He was a scout on Stuart's
ride around McClellan's army in front of Richmond.
Although Stringfellow's exploits are documented in dis-
patches and in a series of lectures he gave after the war, these
sources obviously provided lean pickings for his biographer.
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THE CONSPIRATORS. By Geoffrey Bailey. (New York:
Harper. 1960. Pp. 306. $4.95.)
The complex of events known as the great Soviet purges
remains, even two decades after its close, obscure to Western
observers. No satisfactory account of what really occurred
can yet be reconstructed. None probably will be, until the
hoped-for day when Soviet archives are opened.
The author of this book, writing under the pseudonym Geof-
frey Bailey, makes an attempt to explain one of the major
facets of the purges-the destruction of Marshal Tukhachev-
skiy and the flower of the Soviet high command on the eve
of World War II. His valiant effort is not completely success-
ful, but he does contribute to an understanding of the case.
The Bailey thesis seems to be derived largely from Walter
Krivitskiy, who contended that the evidence used by Stalin
against his generals had been manufactured by the Gestapo
and fed to the Soviets through White Russian military organi-
zations abroad. According to Krivitskiy, Stalin had General
Evgeniy Miller, Chief of the Russian Armed Services Union,
a White organization with headquarters in Paris, kidnapped
during September 1937 in order to conceal the German origin
of the evidence he had used. The not altogether clear Krivit-
skiy account, however, also indicates that the Soviet authori-
ties, aside from the fabricated German evidence, had discov-
ered (or thought they had discovered) evidence of a real con-
spiracy in the Red Army.'
Bailey believes that an army conspiracy against Stalin did
in fact exist, and there is some support for this view in other
sources. For what it may be worth, Alexander Orlov, a de-
fector from State Security, says he was told that there was
an army conspiracy.2 Walter Schellenberg, a leading figure
in German intelligence, believed that there was a real Soviet
generals' plot against Stalin which Reinhard Heydrich be-
trayed to the Russians by means of evidence that was fabri-
Walter Krivitskiy, I Was Stalin's Agent (London, 1940), pp. 233-266.
2 Alexander Orlov, The Secret History of Stalin's Crimes (New York,
1953), pp. 236-237.
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cated in part.3 Wilhelm Hoettl, an Austrian who entered the
German intelligence service only in 1938, is not certain that
a generals' plot actually existed, but does state that Heyd-
rich forged materials to prove its existence.4 On the other
hand, there were indications for a time after the exposure of
Stalin's "errors" that Marshal Tukhachevskiy and other offi-
cers associated with him had been posthumously rehabilitated
by the Soviet regime. If there were firm evidence of actual
conspiracy by Tukhachevskiy, it is not likely that his good
name would be restored.
Bailey undertakes to weave into his book the story of a
series of intelligence operations that have no connection with
the Tukhachevskiy case and little relationship to each other.
The thread on which these beads are strung is the emigre
Russian Armed Services Union, its operations against the
USSR, and Soviet counterintelligence activity against it. The
latter was centered in the fascinating and incredible "Trust"
operation which developed from 1921 to 1927: utilizing con-
trolled anti-Soviet agents and organizations within the So-
viet Union and penetrations of the White Russian military
organizations abroad, the Soviet security service was able to
neutralize, manipulate, and destroy the counterrevolutionary
effort sponsored by ex-tsarist officers from points outside of
the country.
There is a direct methodological connection, bridging the
political change of the Bolshevik revolution, between the
OGPU's Trust and the Okhrana's Assev, who operated in the
first decade of the century. The line is also direct from OGPU
to its successors-the NKVD, the MVD, and the KGB of our
own day. No one who engages in current intelligence opera-
tions in or against the USSR can afford to ignore the security
lessons which the Trust case contains. This part of Bailey's
story, of considerable value to the intelligence expert, will
confuse the lay reader with its complexity and the flow of
unconnected incidents.
J Walter Schellenberg, The Schellenberg Memoirs (London, 1956), pp.
40-49. See also the similar story of Alfred Naujocks, who claims to have
supervised the fabrication and personally sold it to a Soviet agent, in
Gunter Peis' The Man Who Started the War (London, 1960), to be re-
viewed in a future issue.
2 Wilhelm Hoettl, The Secret Front (New York, 1954), pp. 77-87.
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"Bailey," who is clearly a white Russian refugee, makes
much use of undocumented information from refugee circles
and refugee publications. Most of this data, since it is not
sourced, cannot be evaluated. The footnotes in the book con-
vey an impression of scholarship not borne out by the ma-
terial used, and many of the references actually cited are sec-
ondary sources. The bibliography, nevertheless, although
not providing much support for the text, will be useful to stu-
dents of Soviet intelligence operations. The photographs of
personalities that illustrate the volume are also worth while,
many of them now rarely seen and difficult to locate.
Although Bailey certainly has not said the last word on the
Tukhachevskiy case and its antecedents, he has performed a
useful service in summing up the word-of-mouth and other
material on the subject that is presently available, scattered
and never properly explored. One could only wish that he
had also sourced and evaluated these verbal accounts that
have circulated among the emigres for years.
MINISTER OF DEATH: The Adolf Eichmann Story. By
Quentin Reynolds, Ephraim Katz, and Zwy Aldouby. (New
York: Viking. 1960. Pp. 246. $5.00.)
Adolf Karl Eichmann will ultimately rank close to the top
of the list of the Nazi perverts. He was probably individually
responsible for more mass murder of Jews than any other
German. Still fresh in the public mind is his abduction from
Argentina by the Israeli intelligence service last May, fifteen
years after his disappearance in Europe, and the resulting
crisis in relations between Israel and Argentina, whose sov-
ereignty was undoubtedly violated. It is notable that this
crisis could be laid to rest, after U.N. Security Council hear-
ings, principally because the Israeli Government steadfastly
refused to admit advance complicity in the operation.
While the Eichmann case has focused world attention once
again on the Nazi extermination program, it represents to
the intelligence officer one of the great professional opera-
tions of postwar days. Quentin Reynolds, with the assist-
ance of two Israeli journalists, has given the first comprehen-
sive report on the intelligence aspects of the case in this book,
the first quarter of which is devoted to the work of the
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Israelis in locating Eichmann. The last part traces his wan-
derings and desperate efforts to hide over a fifteen-year pe-
riod, and about a hundred pages in between describe his war-
time career and the atrocities he committed.
The excellent investigative job of the Israelis-and espe-
cially their persistence-can be pointed up by a brief recapitu-
lation of Eichmann's escape effort. At the war's end he tried
to organize a redoubt in the Austrian Alps and found that
nobody wanted to be caught with him. He was rejected by
his former associates in the S.S.; posed as a Luftwaffe cor-
poral and was interned in a PW camp; escaped; posed as a
Waffen S.S. lieutenant in another PW camp; escaped; worked
as a lumberjack. A Nazi underground reportedly got him to
Rome and then Damascus, where he worked for two years
with other Germans in the import business. In June 1950 he
went to Argentina and got a job with a construction company
in Tucuman, where he was reunited with his family for the
first time. Then followed a variety of jobs in several South
American countries, a year in the Middle East, and back to
Buenos Aires in 1959. During this period he used at least six
aliases.
After the war the Sheruth Yedioth, underground intelli-
gence service of the Haganah,5 commenced a systematic trac-
ing of Nazi war criminals who had gone into hiding. A spe-
cial squad of five was put on the Eichmann case. Their work,
interrupted in 1948 by the Arab-Israeli war, was later re-
sumed by the General Security Service which operates under
Israel's Central Institute for Intelligence and Security.
The search was extensive and painstaking, for Eichmann
had covered his tracks well. An agent was posted to watch
his father's electric appliance shop in Linz, and another as
a maid in his wife's household in Bad Aussee. One agent
spent months tracking down a photograph of the fugitive.
Another located a document in his handwriting. X-rays
showing a skull and collarbone fracture were found. Dozens
of false leads were traced. Finally Frau Eichmann was
picked up on a visit to Austria and followed back to Argen-
tina. The Israeli airline El Al announced its inaugural
See Dekel's SHAT, reviewed in Intelligence Articles IV 2, p. A49.
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flight to Buenos Aires. The return trip carried Eichmann
and his captors.
Two paperbacks also deal with the case. Eichmann: The
Man and his Crimes, by Comer Clarke (New York, Ballantine
Books, 1960. Pp. 153), chiefly a recitation of Eichmann's
atrocities, has little accurate information about the intelli-
gence episode. The Case Against Adolf Eichmann, edited by
Henry A. Zeiger with a foreword by Harry Golden (New York,
Signet, 1960. Pp. 191), is a compilation of captured docu-
ments, war-crime statements, affidavits, etc., dealing with the
Nazi effort to exterminate European Jewry, and is not even
concentrated exclusively on Eichmann.
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SET
Articles and book reviews on the following pages are un-
classified and may for convenience be detached from the classi-
fied body of the Studies if their origin therein is protected.
The authors of articles are identified in the table of contents
preceding page 1.
The editors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Mr.
Walter Pforzheimer, Curator of the CIA Historical Intelli-
gence Collection, in scanning current public literature for in-
telligence materials, and of the many intelligence officers who
prepared book reviews for this issue of the Studies. Most
noteworthy in this respect are the following:
Holt and Van de Velde's Strategic Psychological Operations
Books on military intelligence ........... Lyman Kirkpatrick
Bailey's The Conspirators ...................
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