STUDIES IN INTELLIGENCE [Vol. 17 No. 3, Fall 1973]

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP78T03194A000400010004-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 35
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 10, 2004
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: January 1, 1973
• Content Type: IS

Approved For Release 2004/125E DP78T03194A000400010004-7
25X1
"'TUDIES
IN 1NT',EL.L,1GENCE
VOL. 17 NO. 3 FALL 1973
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
ARCHIVAL RECORD
PLEASE RETURN TO
25X1 AGENCY ARCHIVES, BLDG.
Approved For Releas4
SECRET
N! 1507
3194A000400010004-7
25X1
 Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78TO3194A000400010004-7
SECRET
25X1
SECURITY PRECAUTIONS
Materials in the Studies are in general to be reserved to US per-
sonnel holding appropriate clearances. The existence of this journal is
to be treated as information privy to the US official community. All
copies of each issue beginning Summer 1964 are numbered serially and
subject to recall.
25X1
All opinions expressed in the Studies are those of the
authors. They do not necessarily represent the official
views of the Central Intelligence Agency or any other
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, Sees. 793 and 794, the transmission or revelation of which
to an unauthorized person is prohibited by law.
WARNING NOTICE
SENSITIVE INTELLIGENCE SOURCES
AND METHODS INVOLVED
Approved For Releasd 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78TO3194A000400010004-7
 25X1 Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78TO3194A000400010004-7
Next 3 Page(s) In Document Exempt
Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78TO3194A000400010004-7
 Approved For Release 2004/12/16: CIA-RDP78T03194A00 D004-7
How to obtain North Vietnamese
soldiers for intelligence in Laos
CASH ON DELIVERY
Robert A. Petchell
Through the early years of the fighting in Laos, technology was the
primary source of intelligence about the enemy, and it left something to be
desired. The jungle canopy frustrated photography, sensors which counted trucks
or marching units could not determine what they were carrying, and the enemy
order of battle derived from communications intelligence was less than complete.
Human sources were needed to fill the gaps. Friendly sources were avail-
able, and did yeoman service on such missions as road watch teams and recon-
naissance. A more useful human source, however, would be the North Viet-
namese Army (NVA) soldier. Pathet Lao sources were of minimal value-they
had little access to NVA activities or plans, and were not sufficiently interested
in NVA unit designations to provide adequate order of battle intelligence.
Five years into the war in Laos, NVA defectors or prisoners of war were
few and far between.
What was needed was an aggressive program to provoke defection or to
snatch NVA soldiers bodily from their environment. And for success in any
snatch program, it would first be necessary to overcome the conviction of the
average government soldier that all North Vietnamese were ogres 10 feet tall.
For assets, there were the Paramilitary Team Operations, a little-known
companion program to the highly publicized Meo irregular battalions of
General Vang Pao. The majority of these irregular guerrilla intelligence collection
teams came from the area of Saravane Province and the Bolovens Plateau
region, where NVA troops were more vulnerable than they were along the
main routes of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. At a considerable distance from their
supply bases, their hold on the territory not consolidated, they bivouacked their
troops in or near villages, and they sought supplies from the villagers. NVA
support and service soldiers began to move through the area in small groups
or alone, as couriers or foragers, or on reconnaissance. Later on, during 1971
and 1972, deserters began leaving NVA units in combat, trying to make their
way home to North Vietnam or find asylum in the villages.
These villages, however-in contrast to the Ho Chi Minh Trail area where
most of the villagers had left-turned out to be the friendly "sea" in which
the "fish" of the irregular guerrilla intelligence teams could swim.
Each of these teams normally had a team leader, a deputy, and a Morse
operator, along with enough team members for an average total strength of
eight men. At times, there were as many as twelve, or as few as two. Sometimes
they wore uniform, sometimes native dress, and they carried a variety of
weapons, from AK-47 or M-2 carbines to Colt .45s and hand grenades. They
used VHF portable voice radios and Delco CW radios (PRC-64s).
The teams were encouraged to remain in the field for at least 30 days per
mission, and often extended to 60 or 90 days with light resupply drops. Mem-
25X1
1
Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78TO3194A000400010004-7
MORI/HRP PAGES 1-7
 Appr%~t jeipr Release 2004/12/16: CIA-RDP78TO3194A000400010004-7
Cash On Delivery
hers received a regular base salary-ranging in 1970 from $16 a month for a
team member to $26 for a team leader-and additional mission pay of $1 for
each day spent on assignment in the field.
The real incentive under this system was the mission pay; salary could in
effect be doubled simply by doing-or, unfortunately, by faking-a modicum
of assigned work in the field. But where was there enough incentive to persuade
the irregulars to lay one of those 10-foot NVA ogres by the heels?
The mission pay was intended to be payment for results, but it had the
weakness, first, that it allowed for no differentiation to recognize either quality
or quantity of results, and second, most of the missions were of such a nature
that it was difficult for the headquarters to verify the results claimed.
The Bounty System
Out of these difficulties, the case officer handling Paramilitary Team
Operations in Military Region IV of southern Laos came up in 1970 with a
simple solution to bring rational cupidity to bear on primitive fear. He told
selected guerrilla teams that they would receive no daily mission pay, but
instead could share $1,000 for each live NVA officer delivered to the base, $400
for each NCO, and $200 for each NVA private-Cash On Delivery.
Tt worked. The first reliable guerrilla teams who were offered this scheme
declined, preferring to remain on regular assignment and daily mission pay,
but pressure was maintained to cajole them into trying an abduction in return
for the premium. The first successful effort, in fact, was by such a team on
another mission which found the premium overpowering their fears when they
spotted an opportunity to bring in an NVA sergeant. After several such successes
by reliable teams, the case officer began calling in the more marginal teams
and putting them on abduction missions without any option-and without mission
pay. If they failed, they would be terminated; if they succeeded, they would earn
the bounty and he allowed to return to regular missions at mission pay.
In November 1970, Lao guerrilla intelligence teams were able to induce
the defection of a NVA sergeant, the first time in the Lao war that RLG
soldiers were able to bring a NVA soldier under their control by means other
than his voluntary walk into an RLG position or his capture in a dazed or
wounded condition on the battlefield. It was the first successful aggressive
operation specifically designed to pluck a NVA soldier out of the NVA environ-
ment. It began like this:
Team I loperated in an area five kilometers south of the southern
provincial capital of Saravane during September and October of 1970. Their
principal informant, I had advised the team leader during their last
meeting prior to the team's withdrawal that it was possible to capture a NVA
officer. Team =led by reliable and authenticated team leader,
was briefed and sent into the same area to collect intelligence and tried to
work with on his capture plan. I decided to brief every
informant that Team was interested in capturing NVA soldiers. This
simple step paid an immediate dividend.
A former RLG soldier, living about three kilometers south of Saravane
and serving as an informant of Team II knew of an NVA soldier who was
living with a local Lao girl whose father was ethnic Vietnamese. The informant,
went to see the father and enlisted his aid in convincing the NVA
25X1
25X1
2
Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78TO3194A000400010004-7
 A rogejd For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78T03194A000 OR1 p04-7
Cash Mn a rvery
soldier to defect to the RLG so he could marry his girlfriend and live in Laos.
lead and the father successfully did just that, and was able
to NVA Sergeant Ito the Team command post,
whence he was taken by helicopter tote RLG military headquarters at Pakse.
Unknown toE:::A~was the fact that Sgt. as not only vulnerable in his
relationship to the Lao girl, but had deserte his unit during a RLG Air Force
bombing attack just a few days before Oproposed defection.
Team thus concluded the first successful operation, and was replaced
by Team led by I I who decided to recontact
Oand go after a NVA soldier. He was confident that if Team I I could
do it, he could, too. It mi ht be added that was impressed
by the $400 that Team ht
received to divide among six men for 20 days'
work. For team members, this was more than three times the dollar-a-day
mission incentive pay.
The First Abduction
put their heads together and, after review-
ing possible ambush sites, decided on a small trail knew was often
used by NVA soldiers travelin alone. After three days of waiting in ambush
alongside this trail Team got lucky on 2 January 1971. A single NVA
soldier riding a bicycle approac e the team which was hidden in high grass
on each side of the trail. One team member and 0 stationed in plain
view, tried to hail the soldier. When it did not seem that he was going to stop,
the team member charged the bicycle and bowled over the NVA soldier. He
was immediately joined by the rest of the team, who hauled the struggling
soldier into the grass, trussed him up, and while one team member removed
the bicycle from the scene, moved off to the Team Ocommand post
for successful delivery by helicopter. The captured soldier was Corporal
s a result of the defection of Sgt. and the capture of Cpl. Ibntel-
ligence analysts in Laos received the first reliable human source order o attle
information on the 968th NVA Group, a command unit for military operations
in Southern Laos. In addition, Sgt. =reported that a major effort would be
made to capture all of the Bolovens Plateau including the key city of Paksong.
The NVA did mount such an effort throughout 1971.
Meanwhile, Team decided to remain in the field and try again.
They had successfully pulled the first abduction of a NVA soldier in enemy-
held territory, and their case officer was anxious to keep them working. The
team was expanded from the eight men who had snatched Cpl.= to a
20-men team, divided into a five-man command post and three five-man snatch
units. Each snatch unit was augmented by from three to five informants, who
were to spot vulnerable NVA soldiers and then participate in the abduction.
The snatch units fanned out in three directions and by 15 January 1971 had
accomplished their second abduction.
Pfc. I was assigned to work in a supply depot with 25 other
NVA in Khanchom village, three kilometers northwest of Saravane. Two of
Team informants lived in Khanthalat village, one kilometer south
of Khanchom, and were acquainted with Pfc..= Lao villagers were not
allowed in Khanchom, but the informants knew that Pfc. =often traveled
25X1
25X1
25X1
25X1
25X1
25X1
25X1
25X1
25X1
25X1
25X1
25X1
25X1
25X1
25X1
3
Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78T03194A000400010004-7
 App g~$J1For Release 2004/12/16: CIA-RDP78TO3194A000400010004-7
Cash On Delivery
alone from Khanchom and always returned through :Khanthalat where he
stopped to visit his Lao friends. While six team members waited a few hundred
meters away in the forest, the two informants went to await Pfc. =along
the trail from Khanthalat to Khanchom.
As Pfc. = emerged from the village he spied the two and hailed them.
They talked a bit and told = they wanted to walk with him to Khanchom
to ask for rice. Pfc. agreed and they all continued along the trail. Soon
a third team member joined them and said he too was going to seek rice at
Khanchom. At this =became suspicious, since it was very unusual for any
Lao villager to try to beg rice from a NVA depot, let alone three of them
at one time. The third team member, spotting =suspiciousness, gave the
high sign in their tribal dialect, and all three pounced on him. Pfc.IIkicked
and fought, biting one Lao on the thumb, but was subdued, tied by the wrists
and elbows with parachute suspension line and taken to headquarters by heli-
copter, together with a triumphant Team
There was little of intelligence interest from =interrogation, but his
abduction was of great service operationally: it buttressed the argument that
NVA soldiers were vulnerable to abduction or defection by a resourceful Laotian
guerrilla team.
From Informant to Team Leader
Team departure left 0 behind, hoping to continue
sharing bounties wit any team as willing to use his information as =and
had been. He was disappointed, however, because for the next three
months the teams were unable to make contact with him. He then spent the
ensuing three months on the run, seeking the safety of an RLG area. The North
Vietnamese had learned of his informant role.
He finally reached Pakse, where he walked into Guerrilla Team Opera-
tions headquarters to volunteer as a team member. Recognizing his value in
abduction operations, the case officer accepted II as a team leader,
and trained him and a radio operator in the modus o erandi of the guerrilla
teams. 'T'hen 0 now operating as "Team went back into the
field in August 1971, and by 18 September had succee ed in capturing Sgt.
of the NVA 9th Regiment.
Sgt. had been in combat at Paksong against RLG forces when he
decided to desert and return to North Vietnam. Heading north, he had covered
almost 50 kilometers when he stopped to rest for the night in the village of
Khian,g Phoukhong. The village chief, a Team informant, made his way
to the team hideout and told that an NVA soldier was going to spend
the night at his house. and his radio operator returned to the village
with the chief, bringing with them an ample supply of lao-lao, the local moon-
shine. They proceeded to get the tired and emotionally distraught NVA sergeant
thoroughly drunk by the time their supply ran out, and invited him to another
house to find more lao-lao.
As they left the chief's house and his radio operator draped their
arms around Sgt. I Ishoulders as if to support the staggering sergeant, but
halfway down the steps the friendly arms tightened into vise-like grips on his
head and shoulders. They subdued him and delivered him to a helicopter land-
ing zone. At headquarters, Sgt. provided important order of battle infor-
25X1
25X1
25X1
25X1
25X1
25X1
25X1
25X1
25X1
25X1
25X1
Apj roved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78TO3194A000400010004-7
 04-7
Approved For Release 2004/12/16: CIA-RDP78TO3194A000 M191
Cash On Delivery
mation about the 9th Regiment, then the principal NVA unit in heavy contact
with RLG forces near Paksong.
This was not the end of I Icontributions. In January 1972 he
successfully induced the defection of a mechanic-driver
in a transportation pool of the 968th NVA Group. I I was an ethnic Viet-
namese, but had been born in Vientiane and had talked to I I of owning
his own taxi some day-a capitalistic pipe dream from the Hanoi viewpoint.
. trged him to defect with the argument that his birth in Laos would
help him obtain Laotian acceptance, and that his dream was much more likely to
come true in a free Laos than in a Communist North Vietnam. bought
the pitch and defected.
The Capable Brigand
The most successful Lao guerrilla team leader ever to stalk the NVA on
abduction missions was probably he leader of Team
His past performance was inauspicious: returning overland in January 1971
from a roadwatch mission along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, he had refused to make
the necessary signals for evacuation, and was taking a month to make his way
back to base at an unproductive dollar-a-day per man. He was then advised
by radio that the ruse would not earn any extra mission pay, and that he would
probably be fired. resigned" instead, returning to his home village
after telling the team members to report him killed in action. He then sent his
wife to claim an indemnity for survivors of team members killed in action.
The case officer flatly informed the wife that he did not believe
ad been killed, and that the indemnity would not be paid. While
a glum I Iwas pondering his next move, he heard about the bounties
offered for NVA soldiers, and the successes of Teams=and He
reasoned that if he could catch an NVA soldier, he could rehabilitate himself.
With the aid of another former team member, he set out to redeem his job.
NVA 2nd Lt. I I of the F31 Reconnaissance Company and
1st Lt. I I of the 3rd Battalion, 968th Group returning from a
reconnaissance, had stopped to make camp for the night near
village. As and his assistant hid and watched, 1st Lt. began
to bathe in a stream, while 2nd Lt. followed nature's call into the jungle.
They followed 2nd Lt. and caught him literally with his pants down.
Under the circumstances, it was relatively easy to subdue, gag, and hogtie him.
They then turned their attention to 1st Lt. II who was still bathing, and
managed to subdue him. then secured the arms of both prisoners,
but left their legs free for the 50-kilometer overland hike to guerrilla team
headquarters.
On 28 April 1971,1 and his partner ap eared at the base,
leading the two bedraggled NVA officers by neck ropes. I I announced
that he would deliver them only to the guerrilla team case officer
had no such scruples, and outlined the complete order of battle
of the NVA military command for all of southern Laos. He also reported an
NVA plan to conduct a major offensive in May, 1971, which took place and
resulted in the loss of Paksong.
was a very truculent prisoner and refused to talk, but the
25X1
25X1
25X1
25X1
25X1
25X1
25X1
25X1
25X1
25X1
25X1
5
Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78TO3194A000400010004-7
 Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78TO3194A000400010004-7
SECRET Cash On Delivery
was an instant hero, albeit marked as a rogue and brigand
and a man who would have to be carefully handled. The case officer refused
to pay I mission pay for his failed roadwatch mission, which
he had the nerve to ask for, but did agree to pay the monthly salary he had
missed from February to April 1971. He was told, however, that the only way
he could continue to work as a guerrilla team leader was capturing NVA soldiers
on a C.O.D. basis. pleaded and wheedled but could do no
better and accepted. It was on his second mission that he achieved one of the
more imaginative abductions.
Team was operating near a village about eight kilometers south
of Saravane, employing a net of informants who were seeking vulnerable NVA
soldiers. On 4 July 1971 an informant reported to I that four
NVA soldiers had arrived in their village to buy buffaloes. Two soldiers had
gone out of the village on the buying mission, while two soldiers were staying
in the village chief's house. The informants reported that these two were lax
in their personal security and could be taken. The two NVA soldiers were Pfc.
of the Production and the Logistic
Companies of Binh Tram 38, a major logistical unit of the Ho Chi Minh Trail
complex.
A Bridal Party
(with five team members, six informants, and
the daughter of one of the informants, rounded up pigs, chickens, and lao-lao
and headed for the village to announce that I and
wanted to be married. It is a Lao custom that weddings be conducted at the
village chief's house and that there be a feast and drinking before and after
the wedding. I plan was to pack the village chief's house
with his men and then jump the two NVA soldiers. The ruse worked. After
beginning the pre-wedding festivities, invited the two soldiers
to join the party.
One soldier, spoke Lao and was happy to join in, while Pfc.
Owho spoke no Lao sat warily by, AK-47 rifle across his lap, not partici-
pating. They had a pre-arranged signal that if poured whiskey
for the soldiers three times, the third pouring would be the signal to grab the
soldiers. As the team leader poured the third drink for Pfc. II the deputy
team leader slammed Pfc. ifle to the ground and kicked it away while
seized Pfc. The team quickly tied up the two prisoners,
cautioned the bewildered vi age c ief to maintain silence over what happened,
and left the hut, the bride, and the village.
Unfortunately for I his propensity for thievery did him in.
He had kept for himself a large part of the $2,400 he received for the four
prisoners, and paid his informants piddling amounts for their help. They were
so dissatisfied that when he appeared near their village for his third try, the
informants turned him in to the NVA authorities. He was last seen being led
eastward toward an NVA prison camp.
25X1
25X1
25X1
25X1
25X1
25X1
25X1
App(bved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78TO3194A000400010004-7
 Approved For Release 2004/12/16: CIA-RDP78T03194A00gt511.0004-7
Cash On Delivery
The Cash on Delivery program, from the first successful defection in No-
vember 1970 through January 1972, provided nine NVA prisoners or defectors.
During this same 15-month period another case officer, encouraged by the suc-
cesses, organized his own similar program and contributed six more prisoners.
A successor case officer subsequently obtained eight more NVA soldiers through
guerrilla intelligence teams.
Teams ad indeed initiated a useful program for pro-
viding a continuing supply o NVA human intelligence resources.
7
Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78TO3194A000400010004-7
 Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78TO3194A000400010004-7
UNCLASSIFIED
Ghostwriters in the
woodpile
WHAT DID TRUMAN SAY ABOUT CIA?
Benjamin F. Onate
On 22 December 1963 the Washington Post and numerous other newspapers
published an article syndicated by the North American Newspaper Alliance
(NANA), and signed by the late former President Harry S Truman, which
concluded with the following paragraphs:
For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its
original assignment. It has become an operational arm and at times a policy-making
arm of the Government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our
difficulties in several explosive areas.
I never had any thought when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into
peacetime cloak and dagger operations. Some of the complications and embarrassments
that I think we have experienced are in part attributable to the fact that this quiet
intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role that it is
being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue-and a
subject for Cold War enemy propaganda.
With all the nonsense put out by Communist propaganda about "Yankee im-
perialism," "exploitive capitalism," "war-mongering," "monopolists" in their name-
calling assault on the West, the last thing we needed was for the CIA to be seized
upon as something akin to a subverting influence in the affairs of other people....
But there are now some searching questions that need to be answered. I, therefore,
would like to see the CIA be restored to its original assignment as the intelligence
arm of the President, and whatever else it can properly perform in that special field-
and that its operational duties be terminated or properly used elsewhere.
We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our
ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the
CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historical position, and
I feel that we need to correct it.
The starter's flag had been dropped, and the contestants raced into the
field. Senator Eugene McCarthy (D., Minn.), appeared in the Saturday Eve-
ning Post with an article entitled: "The CIA is Getting Out of Hand." Richard
Starnes used the alleged Truman article, as the peg for a column in the Wash-
ington Star headlined "HARRY S FIRES TELLING BROADSIDE AT CIA."
Dozens of editorials along the same line sprouted in such papers as the New
York Post, the Tarrytown, N.Y., News, the Berkshire Eagle of Pittsfield, Mass.,
The Charlotte News in North Carolina, the Pittsburgh Press, the Cleveland Press
and News and the Columbus Citizen-Journal in Ohio, the Milwaukee Journal,
the Kansas City Times, and the Sacramento Bee and Santa Monica Evening
Outlook in California. It was open season on CIA over the 1963 year-end holi-
days, and for more than nine years since then the article in question has been
stock-in-trade for writers of books and articles attacking CIA, most recently
L. Fletcher Prouty in his The Secret Team: The CIA and its Allies in Control
of the United States and the World.
The CIA rocked back on its heels for a while, stunned that the source for
these attacks should be President Truman, the Enacting Father of the Agency,
and the man who had put CIA into the field of "such other functions and duties"
9
Approved For Release 2004/12/16: CIA-RDP78TO3194A0004000100'M3Rl/HRP PAGES 9-11
 Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78TO3194A000400010004-7
UNCLASSIFIED Truman and CIA
by covert action assignments in Italy, Greece, and Turkey. In June of 1948, in
fact, Truman himself had led the National Security Council to authorize the
creation of a new office within CIA to carry out cover operations directed against
secret Communist subversion (the Office of Policy Coordination).
Had Truman written the statement? It developed that he had not, but as
the Germans say, "Lies have long legs," and by the time a denial could have
been obtained, the impact of the original statement was so widespread that
a denial never would have caught up with it.
Nevertheless, as long as the statement continues to pop up in fantasies like
Prouty's, it appears to serve some purpose to get the facts into the record.
Allen Dulles, by this time in retirement, drafted a three-page letter to the
former President at Independence, Mo., noting more in sorrow than in anger the
views recited in the NANA article, and reminding him that while Truman had
indeed stressed the role of CIA as the President's intelligence arm, he had also
by his own action first put CIA into the covert operations field.
The draft, found in Dulles' papers, does not show whether or not it was
sent. On 17 April 1964, however, Dulles was in Kansas City for a speaking engage-
ment, and made an appointment to see Truman that afternoon.
In a memorandum of 21 April 1964 for the General Counsel of CIA, Dulles
subsequently reported:
I then reviewed with Mr. Truman the part he had had in supplementing the
overt Truman Doctrine affecting Greece and Turkey with the procedures largely
implemented by CIA to meet the creeping subversion of Communism, which could
not be met by open intervention, military aid, under the Truman plan. I reviewed
the various covert steps which had been taken under his authority in suppressing
the Huk rebellion in the Philippines, of the problems we had faced during the Italian
elections in 1948, and outlined in some detail ... the organization of the Free Europe
Committee and Radio Free Europe, keeping hope alive in the Satellite countries, etc.
Mr. Truman followed all this with keen interest, interjected reminiscences of his
own, recalled vividly the whole Italian election problem, as well as the Huk situation.
I then showed him the article in the Washington Post of December 22, 1963, which
I suggested seemed to me to be a misrepresentation of his position. I pointed out the
number of National Security Actions (Action #4 and Action 10-2) which he had
taken which dealt with covert operations by the CIA. He studied attentively the
Post story and seemed quite astounded at it. In fact, he said that this was all wrong.
He then said that he felt it had made a very unfortunate impression. [Emphasis
added). . . .
At no time did Mr. Truman express other than complete agreement with the
viewpoint I expressed, and several times he said he would see what he could do
about it, to leave it in his hands. He obviously was highly disturbed at the Washington
Post article. .. .
cannot predict what will come of all this. It is even possible, maybe probable,
that he will do nothing when he thinks it over. He may, of course, consult with those,
whoever they are, who induced him to make the original statement.
Even in retirement, Dulles was still proving himself a prescient estimator.
There is no record that Truman took any further action on the matter. But the
final piece in the puzzle fell into place six weeks later when Lt. Gen. Marshall S.
(Pat) Carter, then the DDCI, was at the Truman Library in Independence for
one of the regular briefings arranged for the former President by President
Johnson.
Api R ved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78TO3194A000400010004-7
 Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78T031 ~4tAePRgg 004-7
Truman and CIA
Prior to their meeting with Truman, General Carter and his Executive
Assistant, Enno H. Knoche (now head of FBIS), were chatting briefly with
David Noyes. Noyes had been a White House assistant while Truman was Presi-
dent, and continued to serve him in various capacities in retirement. Accord-
ing to a memorandum based on Knoche's notes on the meetings, "Noyes evidently
drafts Mr. Truman's statements and articles, and admitted quite freely the au-
thorship of the Truman article on CIA which was published on 22 December
1963.... It is highly doubtful whether President Truman ever saw the article
prior to its publication, as he was already beginning to age considerably at
that time."
During the actual briefing of Truman, Knoche recalls, "Carter did get into
this subject, at least slightly. He referred in general to recent criticism of the
Agency and its operations, and reminded Truman that it was he himself who
had authorized most of the early clandestine operations in response to such
challenges as Italy and Greece. Truman broke in on the General's statement
to say yes, he knew all that, it was important work, and he would order it to
be done again under the same circumstances. He went on to add, however, that
he had set up the CIA to pull together basic information required by the presi-
dency, but which had been denied to him by State and Pentagon handling
procedures. He said this was the main purpose." General Carter dropped the
subject at that point, and went on with the briefing.
11
Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78TO3194A000400010004-7
 Approved For Release 2004/12/16: CIA-RDP78TO319 RI 04-7
...'but one life to lose,'
yet hanged three times
THE STATUE OF NATHAN HALE
The original of the Nathan Hale statue entering on duty at CIA In Sep-
tember has had a lively career, according to a brief photo-essay in the August
American Heritage.
Since 1914, according to the article by George D. Vaill, assistant secretary
of Yale University, Hale stood guard over the New Haven campus in relative
serenity, until he suddenly disappeared from his pedestal in June 1969.
Irate letters poured in from alumni and townspeople who had leaped to
the conclusion that the statue had been buried to avoid provocation of activist
Yalies who might regard it as a symbol of militarism. The facts were that the
statue had been removed for a long-overdue cleaning, and to enable a cast to
be made for the production of replicas-including the one for CIA.
The original statue, slightly larger than life size, was created by American
sculptor Bela Lyon Pratt on the basis of contemporary descriptions of Hale. There
are no known contemporary portraits of him. It stands in front of Hale's dormi-
tory, Connecticut Hall, on the Old Campus at Yale, where Hale received his
B.A. in 1773. Caught behind British lines in New York three years later on a
mission for General Washington, he was hanged after his final statement, quoted
on the bronze base of the statue: "I only regret that I have but one life to lose
for my country." It has been claimed that he was betrayed by his Tory first
cousin, a Harvard graduate.
When Phillips Academy at Andover, Mass., wanted a copy of the statue
for a new dormitory to be called Nathan Hale House, the Renaissance Art
Foundry of South Norwalk, Conn., borrowed Pratt's original plaster model from
the Lyman Allyn Museum in New London, Conn. After the new statue was
made and sent to Andover, the plaster model was destroyed by a fire at the
foundry.
Meanwhile, the statue at Yale had been shabbily treated by the weather,
the birds, and a tinsmith working on the eaves above who had spilled a can
of muriatic acid. Some of it scored a direct hit on Hale's head and, according
to Vaill, "gave him the appearance of having had milk poured over him." The
years passed, and somehow there was never enough money in the budget to
refurbish Nathan properly.
Renaissance, however, wanted to borrow the statue in order to make a new
plaster model for the museum, and offered in exchange to clean and refinish
the bronze. When the workmen came for the statue in June 1969, they decided
the most practical and safest method would be to sling a noose around the neck
and hoist it up with a power winch.
This second hanging disclosed a vertical hole in the center of the pedestal
accommodating a bronze canister. The canister in turn contained the soggy
remains of papers placed there in 1914-illegible because seepage and freezing
had burst the canister. The contents could be identified only by a list found
in the Yale Library archives.
13
Approved For Release 2004/12/16: CIA-RDP78T03194A0004000109RMI/HRP PAGES
 Appr
NCLASSIFIED oved For Release 2004/12/16 :CIA-RDP78T03194A00040ffi1000 -ale
1.4
Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78TO3194A000400010004-7
 Approved For Release 2004/12/16: CIA-RDP78T0319dAQQ jB004-7
Nathan Hale
A new capsule was prepared, with a list of the 1914 contents and some
more contemporary documents and photographs, including one of Yale geologists
examining Apollo 11 moon rocks. Another depicted Miss Amy Solomon register-
ing as the University's first female undergraduate student.
By September, Nathan Hale was back at Yale for the fall semester. On 30
September-the 55th anniversary of the original dedication-Yale President
Kingman Brewster, Jr., deposited the new canister, and a bright and shining
Nathan Hale, the rope tight around his neck for the third time, was lowered
gently back into place.
In addition to the CIA copy of this statue and that at Andover, there are
copies outside FBI Headquarters on Constitution Avenue, at New London,
and at Bristol, Conn.
Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78T03194A000400010bD4-7
 Approved For Release 2004/12/16: CIA-RDP78T03194A000&AQ1d9004-7
INTELLIGENCE IN RECENT PUBLIC LITERATURE
CODEWORD BARBAROSSA, by Dr. Barton Whaley, the MIT Press, Cam-
bridge, Mass., and London, England, 1973.
This book has merit. Barton Whaley is a most industrious researcher. If he
marshals his facts too autocratically, his book is nevertheless clean of structure
and easy to read. It is also sprightly, if a bit self-consciously so. And it is full
of facts; no other book on the subject comes near it in terms of density of data.
Whaley's thesis is that Hitler fooled Stalin and that the Germans caught the
Russians off guard when they invaded the USSR on 22 June 1941, because
Hitler tricked Stalin into thinking that any German attack would be preceded
by an ultimatum. As Harrison E. Salisbury observed in a New York Times book
review of 6 May 1973, "Whaley offers no evidence that the ultimatum rumor
originated with the Germans." Code Barbarossa includes an Appendix A that
lists 67 German documents dealing with deception planning for Barbarossa.
None of these, however, discusses an ultimatum. Most of them deal with plant-
ing two other false ideas: that the Germans would not attack except preemptively,
and the German build-up was aimed at England (Sea Lion), This failure to
prove its central thesis is the book's most evident weakness. As Salisbury noted,
Whaley did not ask the right question. He is so intent upon explaining how
Hitler tricked Stalin that he has failed to note that Stalin deceived himself, and
that his dictatorial political system, devoid of checks and balances, was most
vulnerable to such self-deception.
Codeword Barbarossa has other flaws that may be grouped under four
headings: occasional stylistic awkwardness, conceptual oversimplification, in-
adequate knowledge of intelligence services and their work, and a lack of humility
which cannot fairly be termed arrogance but which stops not far short.
Whaley writes clearly and rather well but without a feel for good prose.
Sometimes he comes out with phrases like these:
"... the seemingly disinterested Soviet ambassador." (p. 116.) The
context makes it plain that the author meant uninterested, not impartial.
"... his remarkable series of scoops . . . were overlooked. . . :'
(p. 121.)
"Reasons of state continue to suppress this controversial truth."
(p. 142.) Whaley seems to be talking about a truth that would arouse
controversy if expressed.
"Typical of this type was the intelligence clearinghouse in Stockholm
operated by Japanese Military Attache Onodera and to which Soviet
intelligence was linked." (p. 167.)
"One clear proof of surprise of timing is if crisis catches the key
officials pursuing . . . routines."
Whaley's tendency toward simplistic concepts is illustrated in his discussion
(pp. 147-150) of whether German anti-Nazis who spied for Nazi Germany's
enemies were traitors or not. Speaking of the 20th of July group, he says,
"Because no money changed hands, their motives were clearly those of patriotic
treason." The subject is complex-as complex as the characters of such men of
July 20th as Hans Oster, Otto John, and Adam von Trott zu Solz. An adequate
discussion cannot be crammed into four pages. Moreover, the subject is not
germane to the book.
17
Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78TO3194A000400010004-7
MORI/HRP PAGES 17-19
 ApprggEgg .or Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78T03194A000400010004-7
Books
Perhaps three of Whaley's generalizations will serve adequately as illustra-
tions of a lack of scholarly humility. He says that Rudolf Roessler "had ac-
cess to superb intelligence on the operational plans and order of battle of the
Wehrmacht, although the exact nature of his sources has never been disclosed,
least of all to the Russians." (p. 100.) How does Dr. Whaley know what the
Russians do and do not know? Or for another Olympian pronouncement: "Further-
more, . . . their [the Japanese] intelligence services were generally over-
rated... ." (p. 111. No citation of source.) The third example on p. 1.91, is
the worst of the lot: "In general, the Soviet intelligence system has proven both
inefficient and highly fragmented." (Source cited-another book by Whaley.)
The fourth weakness appears frequently throughout this book. Whaley is
not an expert on intelligence services, although Codeword Barbarossa more
than suggests that he thinks he is. Again, a few illustrations will have to suffice:
The author says that on the first day of their invasion of the USSR the
Germans recovered a complete and current copy
.. of their own entire order of battle ... from the abandoned safe of
the commander in chief of the First Cossack Army at Lomza. It is quite
possible this last material was one of the fruits of Rudolf Roessler"s
magnificent GRU Intelligence line from Berlin to London [?] to Switzer-
land to Moscow." (p. 28.) Or again, on p. 100: "As intelligence began to
accumulate that indicated an impending German attack on Russia, the
Swiss intelligence decided ... to let Roessler act as a conduit of such
warnings to the Russians.
The first of the Rote Drei reports for which Rudolf Roessler was the
source was sent to Moscow more than a year after the German invasion of the
Soviet Union. (See Studies in Intelligence, XIII/3, p. 62.)
Whaley says of the Schulze-Boysen and Harnack ring in Germany, "'This
particular group of patriotic leftist and Communist conspirators had received
their espionage assignment . . . only a month or so before [early June J19411
and were still fumbling their way . . . toward the professionalism that they
would achieve by the time of their arrest in August-September 1942." (p. 98.)
In fact, this group consisted of amateur spies who never achieved profes-
sionalism. Members and leaders of the group were never given any training
in the USSR or any effective training anywhere. They were the weakest of the
Rote Kapelle teams. Their operational life was about one year.
A third example appears on p. 103. Whaley says that there is much to
commend Malcolm Muggeridge's hypothesis that British intelligence, not sources
in Germany, was the true source of the Lucy messages to Moscow. There is
practically nothing to commend this hypothesis. Muggeridge bases this fanciful
notion on the fact that during World War II the British read German military
radio traffic. But the Germans read a good deal of the radio traffic from the
Soviet sources in Switzerland including Lucy. The Germans could hardly have
remained unaware that they were decoding their own military messages.
It would be easy to pile up further proofs of this author's lack of expertise
in this area. This reviewer noted fifteen serious errors of fact. But space pre-
cludes.
A final word. A reader of Codeword Barbarossa is likely to become aware
that as he sees history here unfolding, he is looking very much through British
and American eyes. Of the 362 books and articles in the bibliography, 306 are
in English. The 56 remaining works are in German, Russian, French, Italian,
Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78T03194A000400010004-7
 BOOKS Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78T03194A000400010004-7
SECRET
Swedish, and Finnish. The bibliography sometimes indicates whether translations
exist and sometimes does not. Because the bibliography yielded no clue about
whether Dr. Whaley had read the originals of the six works chosen arbitrarily
for testing (one for each, language) or had read a full translation, a translation
of a few pages, a summary in English, or some other variant, each of the six
works was checked through the 38 pages of footnotes in order to determine
whether footnote references would answer the question. Although the author
footnotes many of his bibliographic items frequently-for example, he footnotes
himself 18 times-four of the six foreign language works are not footnoted at
all. The book in Russian is footnoted three times, but all three references are
to excerpts translated into English. Only the book in Swedish is cited by foot-
notes that do not refer to a translation. Even so, the footnotes offer no clue as
to whether Dr. Whaley has read this book in Swedish. A scholar's ability to
handle a complicated international subject like Barbarossa is determined to some
degree by his ability to consult sources first-hand, without being completely
at the mercy of those whims of fate that determine whether something will be
translated or not.
Codeword Barbarossa is the product of intelligence, impressive industrious-
ness, a real knack for organizing facts and discerning their interrelationships, a
respect for chronology, lucidity, and other virtues. If Dr. Whaley had recognized
the book's limitations at the outset, had stipulated them candidly, and had
neither made nor implied claims to having become a major authority on decep-
tion, his book would deserve high marks. Judged against the higher standards
that he himself has set, Codeword Barbarossa is unsatisfying.
Mark A. Tittenhofer
Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78T03194A00040001 ;804-7
 Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78T03194A000400010004-7
UNCLASSIFIED Books
CODE NUMBER 72/BEN FRANKLIN: PATRIOT OR SPY? By Cecil B. Currey.
(Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1972. 331 pp.)
"Impartiality," said the late Professor Gaetano Salvemini, "is a dream. Hon-
esty is a duty." This ought, as a matter of course, to be every historian's motto. It's
also something every serious reader of history should keep in mind. It's so deeply
in the nature of man to take sides that partiality becomes the life blood of his-
torical writing while complete impartiality, if achievable at all, would probably
result only in boredom. By the same token, however, the honesty becomes in-
creasingly important as the intensity of the partiality rises.
Cecil B. Currey, Professor of Early American History and Culture at the
University of South Florida, has written a book which illustrates half of Professor
Salvemini's dictum. Currey's partiality is beyond question but his honesty is
below par. True enough, he does point out in his introduction that his book
isn't intended to be a complete portrait of Franklin. No attempt is made, he
says, to assess the Doctor's undoubted scientific, philosophical, and literary
achievements. But, quoting Sam Adams to the same effect, Currey points out
that scientific genius doth not necessarily a diplomat make, and it is Franklin's
alleged inadequacies-or worse-in the Paris mission that Currey undertakes
to demonstrate. We are given, therefore, not exactly a portrait a la Cromwell,
"warts and all," but just the warts by themselves.
Actually, when you come right down to it, Professor Currey's book isn't so
much a Franklin study per se as another broadside in the apparently interminable
"Lee-Frankin" (or perhaps better: the "Lee/ Adams/ Izard., etc.-Jay/Franklin/
Morris, etc.") imbroglio. This bitter controversy, born largely (as Currey quite
rightly observes) out of conflict over the development of trans-Appalacian
land, has raged with scarcely diminished intensity since the French and Indian
War, and the end seems nowhere in sight. A consummation devoutly to be
wished of America's first 200 years would be a final, objective, definitive, and
honest i if not impartial) work which would lay this quarrel to rest for good
and all. Human emotions being what they are, however, the prospect of such
a bi-centennial birthday present is dim.
The deflation of the Parson Weems approach to American history has
been a popular pastime for quite a while now. A somewhat newer, but no less
popular game is the ex post facto psychoanalysis of prominent historical figures.
Mounting both these horses at the same time, Professor Currey gallops off
on a wild ride to rescue the Lees and head off the Franklin and Deanes at the
pass. Briefly his thesis is this:
Franklin was obsessed by a desire to overcome the degradation of
his poverty-ridden childhood. This led, in turn, to an overdriven striving
for success. This striving plus a brilliant mind enabled him to make
it in the business world while still in his forties. But it also caused him
to be unsatisfied with this achievement and to yearn for the social
prestige deriving from vast land-holdings. The real aristocracy in the
British Empire was the landed gentry. This accounts for his obsession
with the multi-million-acre Ohio Valley land development scheme,
known as the Vandalia Project-an obsession which persisted to his
dying day. It motivated everything he did. It led him to "flee America
for France" lest he be caught in a collapsing rebellion. It led him to
AppfAed For Release 2004/12/16: CIA-RDP78T03194A000400UJ7RP PAGES 20-26
0''IIID
 Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78TO3194A000400010004-7
Books UNCLASSIFIED
deal with the enemy in the hope of securing himself and his land
development no matter which side won. And, finally-the major theme
of the book-it led him to cooperate actively with known agents of
the BIS, to supply the British Government with information on his
doings in Paris and to try to sell out the cause of independence.
Well.-Quite an indictment.
But there were heroes in those dark days. In this nefarious behavior, "Ben"
(Currey always calls him "Ben") was fought every inch of the way by Arthur
Lee, assisted by William Lee, his brother, and by Ralph Izard, all of whom
suffered intensely under the malevolent and vicious slandering of the old
Doctor and were the only ones who saw through his evil machinations.
To a point this is fairly convincing. It is true that Franklin's origins were
at the poverty level, that he made a fortune before he was 50, that he persisted in
pursuing the Vandalia project to the end of his life, that he remained in touch
with Thomas Walpole, the Wharton brothers, and the other British Vandalia
speculators throughout the war, and that he harbored and defended Dr. Edward
Bancroft. Professor Currey's problem comes when he tries to fit these facts
to his apparently pre-conceived notion of Franklin as a British agent.
Several things are lacking; evidence, for one. What happens is that Currey,
confused by the fact that the American mission in Paris was thoroughly pene-
trated by British agents, persuades himself that, since Franklin was a smart
man, he must have known of these penetrations, and if he knew it and allowed
it to go, he must have been in on it. When Currey then adds in the fact that
the British service used a pseudonym, "Moses," for Franklin, and that he was
given the code number "72" in one of their cyphers, it becomes "obvious" to
Professor Currey that Ben was a spy. (The fact that the same cypher had a
number for George Washington-206-is somehow overlooked.)
For Currey, the central villian in all this is Dr. Edward Bancroft, native
of Westfield, Mass., resident of London since about 1765, friend of Franklin
and fellow Vandalia investor, and well known (since 1889 anyway) as a double
agent. When the Committee of Secret Correspondence decided, in the spring
of 1776, to send Silas Deane to Paris to see what he could drum up in the way
of French assistance, Franklin suggested he call Bancroft over from London
to help him get started. The gospel according to Currey has it that Bancroft
was already working for British Intelligence, that he came to Paris, promptly
subverted Deane, recruited him, and went back to London to await his reports
and pass them to the British.
That's simply not the way it happened. Deane wrote Bancroft from
Bordeaux and Bancroft came immediately, meeting Deane in Paris in early
July. He stayed two or three weeks, helped Deane get started, then returned
to London promising to supply Deane with intelligence information via a clan-
destine contact in the French Embassy. Bancroft was a patriotic Loyalist who
wanted to see the Colonies reunited with-the Mother Country without a long
and bloody war. Realizing that French intervention would probably lead to
separation, he was troubled by Deane's secret mission. He talked it over with
another good Loyalist, Paul Wentworth, of the New Hampshire Wentworths,
whom he had known years before in Surinam. He didn't know that, since moving
to England, Wentworth had gone to work as a case-officer for Sir William Eden
who occupied a post in the BIS which would probably be called "Chief of
Approved For Release 2004/12/16: CIA-RDP78T03194A0004000%004-7
 Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78T03194A000400010004-7
UNCLASSIFIED Books
Operations" today. Wentworth promptly recruited Bancroft-doubled him, in
fact, since he already had a clandestine relationship with Deane. When Bancroft
returned to Paris in March, 1777, he was welcomed by his old friend Franklin
and by his new friend Deane. They made him secretary of the mission, and
he remained in this job throughout the war and the peace negotiations, reporting
faithfully the whole time to his case-officer, to Eden, and to Lord Stormont,
the British Ambassador.
Perhaps the most convincing evidence for this sequence of events is the
famous letter of 1784 to Lord Carmarthen in which Bancroft states in practically
so many words that he did just that. Since his purpose in writing Carmarthen
was to detail his services to the Crown in order to get his pension payments
resumed, Bancroft would most certainly have claimed credit for longer service
as well as for the recruitment of Deane if he had indeed done so.
Another piece of evidence, not mentioned by Professor Currey, is the
slightly ridiculous episode of "John the Painter." James Aitken (alias "John the
Painter"), a Briton of doubtful character and tainted reputation, approached
Deane in Paris and volunteered to sabotage the Portsmouth Navy Yard. Deane
foolishly gave him his blessing, a little money, and Bancroft's true name and
London address. John went to Portsmouth armed with a home-made incendiary
device and managed to set fire to the rope walk in the Navy Yard. He then
went to London, knocked on Bancroft's door, and told him what he had done.
Bancroft, keenly aware of the possibility of provocation, reacted as a good
double-agent should. He refused to do anything for John and got rid of him
as quickly as possible. (John the Painter was the only person known to commit
an act of sabotage in England on behalf of the Americans during the Revolution.)
Had Deane already been working for the British, it is doubtful he would
have gone along with John's harebrained scheme in the first place. If he Kad-
in order, perhaps, to preserve his bone fides as an American patriot-he would
surely have sent word to Bancroft as to what was afoot in order to forestall any
real damage. And Bancroft, had he not been a double-agent-i.e., if he had
already recruited Deane and both of them were working for the British-
would probably have turned John in to the authorities. As it was, John was
picked up a month or so later in connection with a burglary in Hampshire and
during his interrogation his part in the Navy Yard fire came out. The course
of the affair points strongly to the conclusion that Deane had not yet been
co-opted by the British. It also shows that Deane, in agreeing to participate in
such a silly operation and in blowing his only agent in London, was a very naive
and ungifted clandestine operator.
Richard Morris, a knowledgeable and meticulous scholar, states that Ban-
croft "undoubtedly subverted Deane." Possibly he did, but surely not until
after he had gone to Paris PCS to join the American mission.
It was, parenthetically, this affair of John the Painter which apparently
gave Eden and Wentworth the chance to get Bancroft credibly to Paris. During
John's trial, Bancroft's name and connection with Deane came out, and be was
arrested. His subsequent "escape" to Paris was probably engineered by the BIS,
and thenceforward he was considered by all-Loyalist and Patriot alike-to
be a throughgoing "rebel."
The third member of the mission, Arthur Lee, did not welcome his arrival.
He denounced Bancroft to Franklin as a British spy, a fact gleefully and end-
lessly reiterated by anti-Franklin, pro-Lee writers ever since the truth came
Appr'ed For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78T03194A000400010004-7
 Bock -proved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78TO319VQQ4 R,$10004-7
out with the publication, in 1889, of the Stevens facsimiles. Currey soundly be-
rates Franklin for his stubborn refusal to take Lee's accusation seriously. But
while repeatedly stating that the basis of Lee's charge was information that
Bancroft had, while in London, "been twice before the Privy Council," Currey
neglects to point out that Arthur had this information from his brother William,
who got it from a Dr. Ruston, who got it from an unnamed sea captain, who
claimed to have been told this by a servant of Bancroft. Nor does Currey consider
the unlikelihood of the BIS taking one of its best field agents in to be debriefed
by the Privy Council-rather like taking a CIA agent to a meeting of the
National Security Council.
Secure in the knowledge that, wherever else he had been, he had not been
before the Privy Council, Bancroft brazenly confronted Lee and demanded he
produce proof. Lee couldn't and, as far as Franklin was concerned, that was the
end of the matter. The trouble with Lee was that he suspected nearly everybody,
and after a while people got out of the habit of listening.
While Bancroft is Currey's arch-villain, he is by no means the only one.
Currey cheerfully calls the roll of the British agents and collaborators who
moved in and out of Passy or worked, from time to time, in the mission itself:
the Reverend John Vardill, New York clergyman whose services to the BIS
would, he hoped, be rewarded with the Regius Chair of Divinity at King's
College (Columbia University) ; Jacobus van Zandt (alias George Lupton),
scion of a prominent New York family and staunch Loyalist; Joseph Hynson,
Eastern Shore Maryland sea captain, recruited by the Reverend Vardill outside
a London brothel for the assignment of snitching the mission's pouch on it
way from Paris to Philadelphia (a job he pulled off with admirable finesse);
William Carmichael, also from Maryland, part-time secretary to Franklin and
Deane and notorious blabbermouth; the two British officers Lt. Col. Smith and
Maj. Thornton, the former a curious combination of case-officer, courier, and
semi-overt channel to the British Government, the latter secretary to Arthur Lee
(claimed by Currey to have been ployed into this position by Deane and
Franklin) from which position he reported regularly to Eden; and finally Silas
Deane himself whose eventual defection is clearly established but whose case
deserves a great deal more in the way of careful scholarship than Currey's
cavalier assertion that he was a British spy from the moment he set foot on
European soil.
What, in all the world, asks Currey, was Ben doing, hobnobbing with such
a pack of scoundrels?
What, indeed?
Well, in the first place it is possible that, lacking our 20-20 hindsight,
Franklin didn't know they were a pack of scoundrels. He did know there were
leaks-as did everyone else. He had, furthermore, a very relaxed attitude toward
security. All kinds of people came and went in the mission's offices. Papers were
left lying around where anyone could read them. Discussion of what ought to
have been confidential matters took place within earshot of unauthorized visitors.
To Currey this very sloppy procedure is totally inconsistent with Franklin's
supposed cleverness, sagacity, and sophisticated awareness of the subtleties of
diplomatic maneuvering. To him there can be but one conclusion: Ben wanted
to make everything that went on in the mission available to the British. He wanted
this because he wanted to torpedo the French alliance. He didn't want any
European alliances. He "knew" (because Currey "knows") that independence
Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78T03194A00040001004-7
 Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78T03194A000400010004-7oks
UNCLASSIFIED
would be impossible to achieve without European alliances. Ergo, he didn't want
independence. He "wept at the prospect of separation from England." And all
this, of course, solely because, with independence, the Vandalia Project would
go down the drain.
What is missing in Professor Currey's analysis is any acknowledgment of
the fact that the American Revolution was also a bitterly contested civil war.
Among the Loyalists were many very intelligent, well motivated, and dedicated
people. And many a patriot underwent a long and difficult struggle with his
conscience before finally opting for independence. While presenting himself as
a demolisher of the Parson Weems school, Currey nevertheless clings tightly
to the position that the "radicals" who insisted from the beginning on indepen-
dence as the only possible solution to the quarrel were the only good guys;, and
that those who had reservations or were in any way ambivalent on the subject
were all bad guys. Thus the Lees and Adamses are lily white, and the Franklin
and Morrises are jet black. Forgotten are such inconvenient matters as, for
example, the fact that John Adams, four months after Bunker Hill, could still
write William Lee that no one in the Colonies in his right mind wanted separa-
tion, or that during the siege of Boston the chaplain of Washington's army could
still pray in public for the king.
That Franklin just might have been nervous about European alliances
because he feared America would become a pawn in the interminable squabbles
of Europe, or that he was "soft" on independence because of a feeling that his
country might very well be better off connected to Britain by a sort of "Dominion
Status" rather than shivering weak and alone in a cold, cruel world, are pos-
sibilities which Currey ignores.
As a matter of fact, Professor Currey ignores several things. As the villains
of the piece are Franklin and Deane, so the hero is Arthur Lee-a dedicated
and conscientious public servant who was set upon by his malevolent colleagues
because they feared he would unmask their myriad malfeasances. Aside from a
couple of throw-away lines to the effect that Lee's personality made him
difficult to get along with, Currey doesn't bother with any of the contemporary
evidence that Lee was not so much difficult as impossible to get along with,
and that this might have had something to do with the implacable animosity
toward Lee which Currey imputes to Ben.
Furthermore, Currey devotes pages to Ben's and, more especially, Deane's
private war-profiteering while completely exonerating Lee from any such dis-
reputable activity. Curiously he touches on an incident which, had he developed
it a little, might have thrown a more balanced light on Lee's character. At the
beginning of his first chapter, Currey gives us a dramatic account of the battle
between Bonhomme Richard and Serapis, contrasting the heroism of John Paul
Jones' sailors with the later-to-be-presented back-stabbing in Passy. He could
have noted (but he did not) that not the least of Jones' problems in that engage-
ment was the peculiar behavior of the frigate Alliance, the only new, com-
missioined warship in the infant American Navy. Alliance was, at the insistence
of Lee and over Franklin's objections (Ben didn't always get his way), under
the command of a starkly paranoid Frenchman, Pierre Landais. During the
battle, Alliance hung around the fringes of the action, taking part only toward
the end when she sailed in, delivered two broadsides into Bonhomme Richard,
and drew off again leaving Jones in considerably worse shape than he was before.
Appr4ed For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78TO3194A000400010004-7
 Book-proved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78T03194 B04-7
On his return to France, having won his battle but lost his ship, a furious
Jones tried desperately to get command of Alliance, but his efforts were thwarted
by Lee. Somewhat later, when Lee was to return to America, he arranged to sail
on Alliance. Before leaving, however, he ordered her cargo of military supplies
unloaded and replaced by one of his own consisting of civilian goods on which
he hoped to make a personal killing-thus indulging in the same kind of profiteer-
ing for which he (and Currey) continually denounced Deane and Franklin.
Currey, in fact, comes down very hard on Franklin, Deane, Robert Morris, and
various others in the matter of profiteering. In his outrage, he ignores the fact
that there was almost no one among the Founding Fathers (with the possible
exception of John Adams) who failed to reap some personal gain from the war-
including even Washington who is said to have padded his expense accounts.
Incidentally, Lee's trip home on Alliance involved him in the U.S. Navy's
first "Caine Mutiny." During the voyage his paranoid buddy, Landais, became
so violently unstable that his officers finally took command of the vessel and
brought her into Boston with her captain, Queeg-wise, under arrest. Naval dis-
cipline being what it was in the 18th Century, these officers were lucky to
escape hanging. Only Landais' incredible behavior at the court-martial saved
them, and, as it was, they were all cashiered from the service.
Of all this, of course, no word from Currey. His only mention of Alliance
is to call her a "privateer frigate." Frigate she was; privateer she wasn't.
In concluding this review it might be well to return to Franklin's alleged
cooperation with a "cell of British Intelligence," as Currey puts it, in Passy, as
well as his sloppy security practices. There seems to be little room for doubt
that Franklin was-well-unreasonably relaxed in the face of substantial security
leaks. Had Professor Currey not been so eager to dash into the Lee-Franklin
fray, or if, perhaps, he had decided to be referee rather than participant, he
might have performed a valuable service to history by undertaking a careful
and thorough analysis of Franklin's behavior and the possible reasons for it.
That Franklin was too stupid to know good security practices from bad
is ridiculous. That he was too indolent and lethargic to bother to keep order in
the mission, is perhaps a little more probable-he was, after all, in his seventies-
but still unlikely. That he wanted, as Currey insists, the British to know every-
thing the mission was up to is, however, an intriguing thought. Not that one
needs to believe, with Currey, that Franklin sold out to the British in order to
become a land baron in Ohio. (After all, if land-owning represented such a?
potent drive to his psyche as all that, he could easily have acquired large
estates in Pennsylvania-heaven knows he had money enough.) Nor does
Franklin's bureaucratic sloppiness tie in well with Currey's idea of Ben as an
active and witting collaborator of the BIS. Such laxity is very poor tradecraft.
Like Lee, Currey may be right for the wrong reasons.
As stated above, Franklin was not totally sold on the value of European
alliances. He would have preferred to get along without them if possible. He
was "soft," or at least ambivalent, on the subject of independence. "Dominion
Status" or, perhaps, complete independence but with a treaty tying American
commercial and political interests closely with those of England may have
been what he had in mind. In any case, he was always open to peace feelers
from London-a fact which Professor Currey seems to find somehow very
shocking.
Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78T03194A00040001UV04-7
 Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78TO3194A000400010004-7
UNCLASSIFIED Books
If Franklin's thoughts were indeed running along these lines, it would
have been quite logical for him, as he himself put it, to "blow up the coals"
of war between Britain and France, Spain, and Holland. England would then
be forced to recall her fleet and armies from America and offer peace on terms
which the Colonies could accept. Furthermore, if this could be done without
signing the alliance with France, America would gain its independence, not
only from Britain, but also, as Franklin devoutly wished, from possibly detri-
mental entanglements in European affairs.
Already the sheltering of American privateers in French and Dutch ports
and the smuggling of arms from these ports to the Colonies were constantly
exacerbating the friction between England and her continental neighbors. What
if one were to go a step further and play more directly on England's fears of
French intervention? How about ensuring that a constant stream of information
on the progress of the Paris negotiations be channeled to Whitehall? Is it too
far-fetched to imagine that Franklin tolerated leaks and agents and that he
intentionally indulged in poor security practices as part of his calculated program
of "blowing up the coals"?
And then there's one further possible angle. Currey is particularly distressed
that, all through the war, Ben kept an extensive correspondence going with friends
in England. Among these was David Hartley, member from Hull of the House
of Commons and a strongly pro-American Whig. When, in the summer of 11779,
a combined French-Spanish naval task force arrived in the Channel, and England
was in a panic with fear of an invasion, it was David Hartley who rose in the
Commons and moved that all operations in America be suspended for ten
years, the fleet and army be brought home immediately, and peace overtures
made. Unfortunately the motion lost when the Government pointed out that,
in their treaty with France, the Americans had committed themselves not to
make a separate peace. Nevertheless, it's tempting to speculate that Franklin's
covert (and not so covert) political action operation of "blowing up the coals"
might also have included contact with Hartley and other radical Whigs for
exactly this purpose-the introduction of a peace motion in Parliament at a
moment when it seemed most propitious. It shouldn't surprise anyone that
Franklin would not have shared an operation like this with Arthur Lee and
John Adams. They wouldn't have understood it. Lee's mind had closed tightly
years before to the possibility of any solution to the quarrel with England other
than complete independence and alliance with France. The deviousness of F:rank-
lin's approach would probably have offended Adams' plain, simple, straight-
forward, New England honesty.
If this was, indeed, Franklin's ploy, it turned out to be unachievable. It
proved impossible to blow the coals into a blaze without first signing the treaty
with France. But it was a good try. Whether we would all be better off now,
or worse, if it had succeeded, is an interesting question--but moot.
App26ved For Release 2004/12/16: CIA-RDP78T03194A000400010004-7
 Boo&Pproved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78T03194OQQ400QFED 4-7
SPIES IN THE SKY. By John W. R. Taylor and David Mondey.. (Charles
Scribner Sons, New York, 1973.)
Spies in the Sky is an attempt by the authors to call the world's attention
to the role that reconnaissance has played in the victories of war as well as
the preservation of peace. It is obvious that the authors are British reconnaissance
buffs and are not at all ashamed to claim that reconnaissance ensured the allied
victory in World War II and today provides a high threshold against World
War III.
Although Spies traces the evolution of reconnaissance from the eighteenth
century to present day satellites, it is the sort of book that can be read in either
direction. From facts which are already enshrined in history, Taylor and Mondey
recapitulate reconnaissance missions with a bit of spice and anecdotes a. la
Reader's Digest. When it comes to classified programs, however, or where their
material is limited, their research is superficial. Their version of the history
of the U-2 is an example: They attribute the development of the U-2 to the
U.S. Air Force, but later acknowledge that the program came under the control
of CIA; they attribute the first camera in the U-2 to Dr. Edwin Land, a camera
remarkable enough to distinguish golf balls on a putting green from fifty-five
thousand feet. Not so. Land of course, as we know, was instrumental in en-
couraging the President to approve the U-2 program, and he gave liberally of
his time in "pushing" the development of the U-2 as well as other CIA recon-
naissance systems which were to come. However, he did not develop the camera
carried by the U-2; moreover, his company has yet to hold a U.S. Government
contract.
For the sake of clarity and contrary to the book's statements, U-2 pilots
were not taken from any civilian sources. Taylor or Mondey, or possibly both,
get slightly mixed up in their chronology and are somewhat self-contradictory
when they note that the U-2 entered service in 1956, yet two pages later assert
that the U-2s maintained a bird's eye view of the Soviet Aviation Day fly-by
over Moscow in July 1955. The Moscow overflight did occur in July 1956. Prob-
ably the most flagrant error, however, is the literal interpretation of the U-2
as a "powered glider." The authors state: "The all-important question of range
was resolved by building in effect a powered glider. By shutting down the
turbojet engine, and gliding for long periods of flight, the U-2, as it became
known, was able to transverse remarkable distances at heights beyond the reach
of contemporary fighters or defensive missiles." The U-2 indeed can glide but
should the engine flame out at altitude, a restart cannot be effected until the
aircraft has dropped to thicker atmosphere at approximately 35,000 feet, well
within the range of everyday fighters and guns. Normally everyone, most espe-
cially the pilots, prayed that the engine would remain "lit" throughout the
course of the mission. The authors also mix up the initial deployment of the
U-2 overseas. The first deployment was to Lakenheath, England, in April 1956,
shortly redeployed to Wiesbaden, then Giebelstadt, Germany, by June 1956. The
assignment of a second detachment to Incirlik Air Force Base at Adana, Turkey,
took place in August 1956.
In the main, the book adds little new to the U-2 story.
A thread of righteousness of reconnaissance remains heavy throughout the
book. Taylor and Mondey praise President Eisenhower's "Open Skies" policy
and set out to prove the wisdom of this philosophy as each new reconnaissance
Approved For Release 2004/12/16: CIA-RDP78TO3194A00040004004-7
MORI/HRP PAGES 27-29
 Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78T03194A000400010004-7
UNCLASSIFIED Books
system is added to the Free World's stable. The authors surn up the Open Skies
proposal as "a mutual photographic reconnaissance policy." The authors continue
to beat the drums for reconnaissance after the downing of the U-2 on 1 May
1960 by stating that "President Eisenhower summed it up neatly when he said:
`Aerial photography has been one of the many methods we have used to keep
ourselves and the Free World abreast of major Soviet military developments.
The usefulness of this work has been well established through four years of
effort. The Soviets were well aware of it. The plain truth is this: when a nation
needs intelligence activity, there is no time when vigilance can be relaxed.' "
The book then leads us through the tense moments of the Cuban missile
crisis and claims that "the Cuban missile crisis emphasized the peace-keeping
power of aerial surveillance. It gave the world an impressive demonstration of
the potential of the Open Skies policy that had been proposed by President
Eisenhower. No longer was it possible to argue that reconnaissance aircraft could
find useful employment only in times of war. The aviation pioneers would have
cheered to a man could they have known that the vehicle they gave to the
world as a new and exciting means of communication has been able to preserve
mankind from a horrifying end."
In flashback we observe that the first recorded use of an airplane in war
took place on 23 October 1911. It was a reconnaissance sortie. Taylor and
Mondey portray the development of aircraft as a retaliation against "the other
side's reconnaissance capabilities."
It is a truism as the authors state that "Reconnaissance, in its many forms,
has become interwoven so inextricably with the military duties of electronic
intelligence gathering, airborne early warning, electronic countermeasures, elec-
tronic counter-countermeasures, airborne warning and control system operations,
anti-submarine warfare and other tasks that the aeroplane itself is the least com-
plex and least costly component of the overall weapon system." They do not
even blush when they state "Never again will combat aeroplanes be the simple,
uncluttered shapes they used to be. Reconnaissance-the vital key to victory
on land and sea that gave birth to military aviation-has proliferated to such
a degree that it must now dominate military thinking, planning and spending.
`Know your enemy' is the oldest of old axioms for the war leader. Equally, the
enemy must be prevented from knowing you."
The trail through the world of reconnaissance with our authors finally leads
us to the satellite programs, and here it is apparent that prime sources are
found wanting. Taylor and Mondey fill in their knowledge gaps with more poetic
license than a book of this sort should, but again normal research was un-
doubtedly prejudiced by classification.
The authors employ the old trick of "telling them what you told them" by
summing up what they tried to do in writing the book in the first place. This
occurs when they profess:
In the pages of this book we have already learnt something of the
meaning of an effective deterrent. More importantly, we should have
gained some appreciation of the part that aerial and satellite recon-
naissance can play in providing the in-depth intelligence needed to
maintain the kind of delicate parity established by the SALT agree-
ment, in terms of both strategic offensive missiles and anti-ballistic
missile systems.
App4ved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78T03194A000400010004-7
 Boo Approved For Release 2004/12/16: CIA-RDP78T03194N&J%%?A2B04-7
There is no reason to suppose that leaders in the United States
are not fully aware of this grave responsibility; or that they are
ignorant of the part which reconnaissance has to play in maintaining
a peace that, however costly or uneasy, is infinitely preferable to a
war that can only bring worldwide devastation.
On the contrary, there is every indication that the Americans
appreciate fully the vital and continuing role of reconnaissance, and
this is confirmed by recent reports of new "spy" satellites which are
already operational or in the planning stage.
In summary, the authors have attempted to set forth a strong case for the
vital role which reconnaissance has played in achieving military victory and
the role it continues to play in insuring peace. While the authors certainly have
picked an exciting topic to talk about, and one we certainly subscribe to, their
treatise falls somewhat short. They have given a snapshot (no pun intended)
account of reconnaissance and, while meaning well, hardly begin to build the
case it richly deserves.
John N. McMahon
COMPANY MAN. By Joe Maggio. (G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1972.
222 pages.)
Emblazoned on the dust jacket of Company Man is the eyecatching phrase:
"A Novel About the CIA's Mercenaries." The flaps of the dust jacket add more
to whet one's appetite for an evening's reading. This is a book, they proclaim,
"so shocking that it promises to generate excitement, alarm, and controversy."
Actually, it laid an egg.
More blurb:
Startling in its authenticity, Company Man is the painfully vivid
story of a CIA mercenary-an insider's account.... In this brutal novel,
Joe Maggio exposes the shadow world of the CIA ("the Company") and
the mercenaries paid to die for their country. The story centers on
Nick Martin, contract employee of the CIA's Special Operating Di-
vision (SOD). . . . An arm of the Company that runs virtually un-
reined, the SOD employs outcasts, criminals, and ex-military men in
the "world defense against Communism."
The dust jacket describes Maggio as "a graduate of the Farm-the SOD's
`secret' training base in Langley, Virginia." "Never before," we are told, "have
CIA training and operations-both domestic and international-been presented
so convincingly in fact or in fiction." The back of the book jacket informs the
gullible readers that Joe Maggio "has previously worked as a mercenary soldier,
largely for the Central Intelligence Agency." His alleged bases of operation
were Southeast Asia, the Congo, and Cuba.
The novel is a hoax.
Perhaps the unwary reader may breathe a sigh of relief at the opening
words of the introduction: "Though it is a novel, Company Man is a novel of
facts. Casting the book as straight nonfiction was out of the question--chiefly
Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78T03194A00040001K04-7
MORI/HRP PAGES 29-31
 Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78TO3194A000400010004-7
UNCLASSIFIED Books
because of national security." The author tries to assure us once more that:
"Much here will be difficult for the reader to accept; but with regard to the
CIA, nothing is impossible." The publisher's blurb, sent to unsuspecting book-
sellers, is equally lurid.
On L9 iuly 1972, after receipt of an advance copy of Company Man, Mr.
William E. Colby, then Executive Director of CIA, wrote the president of
Putnam's, the publisher, noting the claims as to the authenticity of the book.
In his letter, Mr. Colby wrote that:
Taken together, the above statements indicate that you believe you
are publishing an accurate, though thinly veiled, account of actual
experiences. If you truly believe this, I am afraid you are the victim
of a hoax.
Mr. Colby then went on to advise the publisher as to his reasons for this state-
ment, adding that Company Man
is largely a fabrication interlarded with a few instances taken from
[Maggio's] training period which might have some validity.
Mr. Colby also took the opportunity, in his letter, to deny two of the charges
in Maggio's book: that CIA carries out assassinations and has participated in or
condones traffic in drugs.
On the 27th of July, the president of Putnam's replied to Mr. Colby that
"You are indeed correct about our beliefs as to his book Company Man. The
content of your letter would indeed seem to indicate a hoax." However, the fact
that they had so luridly described a book which they now knew to be a hoax
(lid not lead Putnam's to withdraw the book from sale or to indicate publicly
that they had been hoaxed. Despite its exaggerated claims, Company Man did
not sell very well.
Maggio's mischief did not begin or end with Company Man. Instead, he
has tried to push his theme in radio interviews (in one of which he claimed
to have been a CIA case officer in Laos), and succeeded in coking up the local
Virginia press with exposures of the covert CIA training base at "Camp Perry"
(sic), Virginia. To Maggio, security was meaningless, as we had learned in his
brief contract association with the Agency.
Joseph Alan Maggio was born in 1938. In January 1966, he was approved
for CIA contract employment in a covert project. In June 1.966, while in training
at a special Agency site in the United States, information began to be available
which raised questions as to Maggio's suitability for Agency employment. In
early August 1966, Maggio was terminated for cause, part of which was his
loquacity and continued indiscretion, particularly boasting to anyone who would
listen of his nonexistent experiences with CIA. The least of his boasts was that
he had been a Special Forces captain, although his highest rank had been
that of sergeant. There were several derelictions of a more serious nature.
The fact of the matter is that Maggio never undertook any assignments
for CIA at Headquarters, and he never served overseas while with CIA. He
was only a trainee. Therefore, his descriptions of his own activities in the guise
of his fictional hero, Nick Martin, are largely fake depictions as Maggio tried
to equate his hero with his own views of himself. He has described himself as
a Vietnam war hero who had participated in behind-the-lines CIA activities
App$?ved For Release 2004/12/16: CIA-RDP78TO3194A000400010004-7
 Bo*sproved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78TO3194A000400010004-7
UNCLASSIFIED
while there, and has written more of this tripe regarding his role in Vietnam
for a Miami newspaper, where he also wrote of his role as a soldier of fortune
in the Congo, also a fabrication. To the best of our knowledge, Maggio never
served in combat while on active military duty, and he certainly never "worked
as a mercenary soldier, largely for the Central Intelligence Agency," as claimed
on the dust jacket of his book.
The most that can be said for Company Man is that, in the course of almost
six months of CIA training, Maggio was able to pick up enough fact and gossip
to put some plausible details into his fiction. To point out the countless errors
of fact in his text, or to rebut the incredible statements he makes about CIA
activities and its personnel, would be to dignify the book by reviewing a text
which is not worth the reading. We have included this much only to indicate
to those interested in the literature of intelligence, particularly readers of Studies
in Intelligence in generations to come, that Company Man should not be a book
that they would want to read, either as fact or fiction.
THE POLITICS OF LYING: GOVERNMENT DECEPTION, SECRECY, AND
POWER. By David Wise. (Random House, New York, 1973) 415 pp.
One sometimes wishes that the Founding Fathers could be subpoenaed-
even under a grant of immunity if need be-to testify as to just exactly what
they did have in mind when they wrote the U.S. Constitution.
When they wrote in the First Amendment, for example, that "Congress shall
make no law respecting an establishment of religion," meaning that no one church
could be favored over another as the Anglicans are as the Established Church
in England, did they have the remotest intention that prayers should be outlawed
in the public schools?
The Fourth Amendment in the Bill of Rights states that "The right of the
people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against un-
reasonable searches and seizure shall not be violated." It is perhaps understand-
able that a Constitution written almost 200 years ago has nothing to say about
wiretaps, but the fact remains that the phrase "invasion of privacy" appears
nowhere in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, or the later Amendments. The
legal concept of a right of privacy first saw the light of day in justice Tom C.
Clark's decision in Mapp v. Ohio (381 US 485) in 1961, when Clark referred
to the Fourth Amendment as "creating a right to privacy." It was further expanded
in 1965 by justice William O. Douglas (in Griswold v. Connecticut (379 US
85 S.C.) who found that "specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras
formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and
substance." Within the shade of these copious "penumbras," the courts have now
found that the Fourth Amendment says a man cannot be successfully prosecuted
if the government will not reveal the circumstances of any third-party wiretap
in which the defendant was overheard or even mentioned!
And so we are being drawn these days into the penumbra of the First Amend-
ment, whose less ethereal substance provides merely that "Congress shall make
no law ... abridging the freedom of speech or of the press." There is nothing in
Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78T03194A00040001 1b04-7
MORI/HRP PAGES
31-34
 Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78T03194A000400010004-7
UNCLASSIFIED Books
the Constitution extending similar guarantees of a right to collect information
by any means, as distinct from the right to publish it, once obtained. Recently,
in fact, courts have upheld contempt sentences against reporters who argued
that their right to publish carried with it an immunity for their means of
collecting it. But the New Breed of committed reporters, the "engages" who
frown on objective news, are in full cry to establish that the First Amendment
actually guarantees what they call "The Right to Know." The government of a
democracy, they argue, has no right to withhold or protect any information
the press wants. If it is classified, it should be declassified on request. And even
if it remains classified, freedom of the press is infringed upon by any law
providing punishment for the keeper of such information who leaks it! *
David Wise has written the most thorough exposition yet of this argument
in The Politics of Lying, with his thesis that:
... through official secrecy, we now have a system of institutionalized
lying. Policy makers who consider it desirable to mask their decisions or
their objectives, or who wish to mislead the public, or withhold infor-
mation, can do so as easily as reaching for the nearest rubber stamp.
In short, lying and secrecy are two sides of the same coin. [emphasis
added.]
This is about the most careful statement of Wise's thesis. Elsewhere he leaves
little doubt of his view that secrecy is lying. The first 11 pages of the book are
devoted to the Son Tay raid and Defense Secretary Laird's testimony to Sen.
Fulbright's Foreign Relations Committee. Subsequent disclosure of further details
indicated that Laird was guilty of what Kipling's schoolmasters called suppressio
neri, if not suggested falsi. Laird in reply told a press conference: "I was never
asked the question ... If you'll read over the record, you'll find that the question
was not asked ... that is not my responsibility . . . I answer questions, but I
only answer the questions that are asked." A valid answer for a man charged
with maintaining security in a combat situation, and Wise does not dispute any
of it. He merely comments that Laird "had lied repeatedly in public statements
and in testimony to the Congress."
Among other Wise judgments are these:
The classification and secrecy system .. . has resulted, I have suggested,
in a system of institutionalized lying. . . . My own view is that the
present classification system should be junked. I doubt if there is any
need for a formal system of official secrecy in the United States. ....
It is a relic of the Cold War. It breeds concealment and mistrust; it
encourages the government to lie. (pp. 347-349)
If Congress attempts to legislate secrecy . . . it could open the door
to a law prohibiting the press from publishing what Congress has de-
fined as secret.... Once this line is crossed, or even if existing espionage
statutes are applied to the press, the First Amendment-and the Ameri-
can system-would be dangerously diminished. (p. 351)
*Cf. Wise, p. 151: "Punishment of officials also has, or may have, a chilling effect. Other-
officials may then be less inclined to talk to reporters. If so, the flow of information to the press
about what the government is doing is bound to be reduced, raising at least indirectly a First
Amendment consideration."
App8@ved For Release 2004/12/16: CIA-RDP78T03194A000400010004-7
 Approved For Release 2004/12/16: CIA-RDP78T0319Ogl'104-7
Books
There is a considerable amount of inconsistency in Wise's arguments. On
page 229, for example, he faults President Nixon for the pre-Inauguration state-
ment to his prospective cabinet officers: "Always remember, the men and
women of the news media approach this as an adversary relationship." This
statement, Wise said, introduced "the strongest, most highly coordinated, and
ultimately the most dangerous attack on the nation's constitutionally protected
free press since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798." Compare this with Wise
himself on pp. 160-161:"
. there is in this country an inbuilt tension between press and gov-
ernment that can not and should not be reconciled. And the differences
between them are intrinsic and fundamental. Government has the right
to classify and attempt to protect its secrets. The press has a right to
try to obtain and publish those secrets. These are two forces that will
continually be in some danger of conflict.
Again, commenting on Arthur Sylvester's celebrated statement, that "it's
inherent in government's right, if necessary, to lie to save itself when it's going
up into a nuclear war," Wise rules that "Government does have an alternative
to lying. It can tell the truth, or it can say nothing." (p. 39) But saying nothing
amounts to silence, and Wise says silence is secrecy, and secrecy is lying.
By and large, the book is a collection of anecdotes and detailed histories of
confrontations between the government and the media. There are lengthy sections
on leaks and other information techniques. A check of chapter headings shows
only two that bear more directly on the Intelligence field: "Secrecy, National
Security, and the Press," and "The Case of the Colorado Tibetans."
In these, CIA fares no better and no worse than is to be expected. Wise
gleefully and gratuitously blows a few code words and other intelligence secrets,
some accurately, some inaccurately. The "Colorado Tibetans," a training opera-
tion in the Rockies, "is disclosed here for the first time," a statement which
must come as a bit of a shock to authors of pieces in the San Francisco Chronicle
in September 1970, the Washington Post in January 1971, and the Denver Post
Empire Magazine in February 1972.
There are several snide remarks and misleading allegations about the
Agency which can flatly be called lies only by Wise's own standards. Possibly
because so much less space is devoted to the subject of intelligence, there are
fewer outright inaccuracies than in previous books he has co-authored on the
subject. The intelligence business, however, is struck several glancing blows:
Government lying has also resulted from the growth of a huge intelli-
gence establishment since 1947. This invisible government, with the CIA
at its center, has frequently engaged in security operations that have
led the United States to tell official lies.... The intelligence practitioners
are apparently unconcerned with the long-range effect on American
democracy of government lying; . . . they speak of confining intel-
ligence operations to those that are "plausibly deniable." Thus, the
standard is not truth, but fashioning lies that will be believed. (p. 31)
Wise makes no attempt to discuss whether cover stories are essential to
intelligence work-to him, they are just another form of lying.
Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78T03194A000400010%%4-7
 Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78TO3194A000400010004-7
UNCLASSIFIED Books
Similarly, with reference to President Kennedy's timely "cold" which was the
pretext for cutting short a political trip and returning to Washington during
the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, "the justification for misleading the American
press and public was the necessity to mislead the enemy. It is a justification
that permits almost limitless deception in the name of `national security'." (p. 38.)
And finally, on page 40, "In May of 1961, also without public announce-
ment, Kennedy ordered the CIA to undertake a program of covert action
against Hanoi, including the infiltration into North Vietnam for sabotage and
intelligence gathering." Wise, unfortunately, does not specify just what kind
of "public announcement" Kennedy should have made; possibly the infiltration
teams should have applied to Hanoi for visas?
Clinton B. Conger
App $ved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78TO3194A000400010004-7
 25X1 Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78TO3194A000400010004-7
Approved For Release 2004/12/16 : CIA-RDP78TO3194A000400010004-7