STUDIES IN INTELLIGENCE [Vol. 19 No.1, Spring 1975]

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP78T03194A000400010013-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 58
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 9, 2004
• Sequence Number: 13
• Publication Date: January 1, 1975
• Content Type: IS

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'cTUDIES
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INT".E.LLIGENCE
VOL. 19 No. 1 SPRING 1975
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SECRET
NO FOREIGN DISSEM
Jack H. Taylor is Strategic Forces Officer in the Product Review Division, ICS.
He has served in the intelligence community for some 20 years, principally
in DIA and in the Office of National Estimates. For many years he was
the principal drafter of the annual National Intelligence Estimate on Soviet
strategic forces.
Dino A. Brugioni and Robert F. McCort are veteran NPIC officers.
Robert L. Managhan, with a doctorate in criminology, has been one of the in-
telligence community's authorities on questioned documents for the past
eight years.
Gail Solin is a China analyst for the Office of Current Intelligence.
Dr. Jerrold M. Post, M.D., with CIA since 1965, is Technical Director, Behavioral
Sciences, Life Science Division, Office of Scientific Intelligence.
Robert M. Clark sandwiched a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering between eight
years in Air Force Intelligence and five years with CIA. He is Chief of the
Electronics Branch, Physical Science and Technology Division,, Office of
Scientific Intelligence.
Stanley Bergman retired after nearly 30 years of service to CIA and its predecessor
organizations, including duty on Taiwan and in mainland China during and
after World War H.
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CONTENTS
Page
Wohlstetter, Soviet Strategic Forces, and NIEs .......... Jack H. Taylor I
Soviet weaponry: overestimated or underestimated. SECRET
British Honors for Lundahl .......... Dino Brugioni and Robert McCort 9
30 years of leadership in photographic interpretation.
Trends in African Forgeries .................. Dr. Robert L. Managhan 13
Danger: Con men at workl CONFIDENTIAL
The Art of China-Watching ............................... Gail Solin 23
Problems of the China analyst. SECRET NOFORN
The Anatomy of Treason ........................ Jerrold M. Post, M.D. 35
Psychological contributions to selective targeting. SECRET NOFORN
Scientific and Technical Intelligence Analysis ......... Robert M. Clark 39
The birth and development of scientific intelligence. SECRET
Intelligence in Recent Public Literature .............................. 49
SECRET
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SECRET
Soviet weaponry-
overestimated or underestimated?
WOHLSTETTER, SOVIET STRATEGIC FORCES, AND
NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATES
Jack H. Taylor
The summer 1974 issue of Foreign Policy carried an article by Professor Albert
Wohlstetter titled "Is There a Strategic Arms Race?" In the article Wohlstetter
took up the question of myths and realities in the "arms race." He sought to
demonstrate that much of the public debate over the arms race has been driven
by myths, among others the myth of overestimation-that is, the widespread
belief that the Pentagon systematically overestimates the strength of Soviet
strategic forces. Using the Defense posture statements as his basis, Wohlstetter
showed that in fact during the mid-1960s the tendency was to underestimate
in such things as ICBMs, SLBMs, and bombers (although earlier, in the
"missile gap" era, the tendency had of course been quite the contrary).
Since the article was published, I have examined National Intelligence
Estimates going back to 1960 to see whether or not the same charge could be
directed at the official judgments of the corporate body whose task it is to
communicate the views of the U.S. intelligence community, the U.S. Intelligence
Board, as set forth in the NIEs. I also checked estimative history as regards
anticipated qualitative improvements in weapon systems and their predicted
operational dates.
I am satisfied on the basis of my research that Dr. Wohlstetter is essentially
correct in the case of ICBMs during the 1960s. There are some minor differences
between what the intelligence community said and the data Wohlstetter used,
but not enough to make a case against Wohlstetter's findings.
Take some examples of how the USIB tended to underestimate:
NIE 11-8-63 forecast a spread of 370 to 670 launchers for mid-1969.
The actual count in mid '69 was 858.
NIE 11-8-64 was even more extreme. It forecast 410 to 700 launchers
for mid-'70. The actual count was 1,292.
The worst of the lot was the NIE issued in 1966. It forecast a spread
of 800 to 1,120 for mid-'72. The actual count was 1,527. With the exception
of the initial year, the actual count exceeded the projected annual spreads
over the entire period covered by the estimate. (See Chart 1.)
In reading the past NIEs, I hoped to find some clear rationale for the
repeated underestimation. In many years the community expressed views essen-
tially along the lines that the Soviets would not deploy as many ICBMs as the
U.S. for fear of touching off a new round of deployment in the U.S., or that
they would be content with a retaliatory force somewhat smaller than the U.S.
force. In 1967, the rationale given for estimates such as 11-8-66 was that the MORI/H RP
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SECRET NIE Performance
ICBM Launchers: NIE 11-8-66 v. Fact
t600 ,-
1400 4---
1100 H
1000 H
300 ! --
3 oo I-
700 h-
i
71
Spread in Estimate
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NIE Performance SECRET
Soviets saw political and psychological advantages in having an ICBM force
roughly the same size as that of the U.S., and that was said to be the goal
of their deployment program. In other years, however, no clear rationale was
presented for the projected numbers.
In 1968, the text of the NIE established a lower side of the range for the
future at 1,360 launchers (the number operational and under construction at
that time). Because of several factors that could influence the size of the force,
however, it did not estimate the maximum size it might reach.*
I thought, when embarking on this venture, that it would be found that
we had credited the Soviets with the ability to make rapid strides in weapons
technology (leading to MIRVs, high accuracies, etc.,) and that consequent
improvements in quality would permit Moscow to limit the quantity of weapons
deployed. But this was not the case. Our judgments on when the Soviets were
likely to introduce certain qualitative improvements into their systems fitted
pretty well with what has actually happened.
The "Missile Gap"
I suspect, but obviously cannot document the fact, that part of the reason
for the repeated underestimation of the growth of Soviet ICBM forces was a
subconscious (or maybe even conscious) overreaction by the intelligence com-
munity to the gross overestimation of Soviet ICBM growth during the days of
the "missile gap." The intelligence community took quite a public flailing for
that error of judgment.
The "missile gap" era began in August 1957 when the Soviets carried out
the first test firing of an ICBM. That firing and subsequent ones served to
convince a large segment of the U.S. intelligence community, as well as sizable
elements of Congress and the Department of Defense, that the Soviets were
preparing to embark on an ICBM deployment program involving large numbers
of missiles. From the late 1950s until September 1961, the tocsin was repeatedly
sounded that the Soviets were outpacing the United States in ICBM production
and deployment. Several statements made by Khrushchev during those years,
both public and private, seemed to be encouraging such thoughts. The "missile
gap" was much discussed during the Presidential campaign of 1960, and the
NIE for that year serves in part to tell why. (See Chart 2.)
NIE 11-8-60, dated 1 August 1960, contained three numerical estimates of
Soviet ICBM strength for mid-1963. The Air Force estimated 700, the CIA 400,
and the Army and Navy 200. State and the J-2 of the Joint Staff stated that they
thought the number would be somewhere between the CIA number and the Air
Force number. By mid-1963 the actual number deployed was less than 100.
In NIE 11-8-61, dated 7 June 1961, opinion was again well divided. CIA
estimated that by 1964 there would be 200 to 400 ICBMs deployed; State INR's
spread was 300 to 500; Army and Navy liked 150 to 300; and the Air Force
projected 850. By mid-1964 the number actually deployed was 191. The Air
*State, DIA, and the military services all took footnote to this omission. They considered
1,800 launchers to be the upper limit.
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SECRET NIE Performance
ICBM Launchers: NIE 11-8-60 v. Fact
800 700
State & J-2:
Somewhere
between
A and B
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NIE Performance SECRET
Force, bolder than the rest of the community, also projected ahead to 1966,
estimating that by that time the Soviets would have 1,450 in the field. By 1966
the actual number deployed was 250. (See Chart 3).
Data collected during the late summer of 1961 showed the community how
wrong its estimates had been, and a Memorandum to Holders of NIE 11-8-61
was issued in September of that year. All agreed that there were probably 10
to 15 ICBMs deployed at that time (there were actually only 4) and that by
mid-1963 the spread would be some 75 to 125; the number actually deployed
by mid-1963 was 91, close to the center of the spread.
The Cuban Impact
I also feel that part of the reason for repeated underestimating was a lack of
appreciation on the part of the intelligence community of how bitter Khru-
shchev, and probably others in the Soviet hierarchy at the time, felt about the
"facing down" they experienced as a result of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.
At that time the Soviets had less than 50 ICBM launchers operational, and we
knew it. The Soviets knew they were dealing from a position of weakness and
probably at least suspected that we were aware of their lack of ICBM strength.
The chronology of the growth of their ICBM force fits very neatly with a deci-
sion that might have been taken shortly after the pullout from Cuba to expand
their ICBM force at a rapid rate and probably to a size never originally intended.
Deployment of the SS-9 and SS-11 really started to take off four years after the
crisis.
Heavy Bombers
Wohlstetter is again correct in the case of heavy bombers. From 1960 through
1971, the NIEs always phased out the Bison and Bear bombers at a faster rate
than actually occurred. There has, in fact, been no reduction in the heavy
bomber force for the past six years. I still think that the estimative judgments
were logical, albeit erroneous. Why the Soviets would go to the expense of
retaining such a small fleet of obsolete heavy bombers defies well-reasoned
explanation.
Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missiles
In the case of Soviet submarine-launched ballistic missiles, Wohlstetter is
somewhat wrong in his assertion that the tendency was to underestimate. The NIE
history on those systems is mixed. From 1961 through 1963, the NIEs over-
estimated. The spread of 160 to 250 projected for 1970 in the 1964 NIE was
exceeded, but only in that one year. (See Chart 4.) (It is only fair to point out
that the only NIE Wohlstetter used for these allegations about numbers of
SLBMs was the 1964 projection, and that isn't cricket.)
The subsequent 1965 estimate erred slightly on the high side in its projection
for mid-1966, showing a spread of SLBMs for that year of 122 to 137. The actual
count was 108. The projection for mid-1967 held at 122 to 137 and was pretty
good but for the wrong reason; the unpredicted advent of the first Y-class in
1967 boosted the actual count to 124, within the NIE spread. In projecting beyond
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SECRET NIE Performance
ICBM Launchers: NIE 11-8-61 v. Fact
1500 r
1400 F
1300
1200 I--
1100 F-
700 I-
600
63
State (INR)
Air Force I
r
Chart 3
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SLBM Tubes: NIE 11-8-64 v. Fact
Oct
1964
1967, the NIE considered only the ballistic missile submarines, and did not
specify the numbers of tubes per boat. In doing so, however, the estimate
was not too bad. It projected some 50 such submarines, including perhaps 7 of a
new class, for mid-1970. The actual number was 47, including 13 of the new
Y-class.
Our projection in 1966 for mid-1971 fell well below the actual count for
that year, principally because we had not yet established a production rate for
the Y-class, and the Soviets had 21 of that class operational by 1971, as opposed
to an estimate of 10. The NIE in 1967 also fell short in its projection for mid-69
and for mid-72 for the same reason. The 1968 estimate was quite accurate in
its prediction, as was the one in 1969. The 1970 NIE's record for the years
'71, '72, '73, and '74 was under, under, over, over-but the margin of error in each
instance was 20% or less.
The main reason for the overestimates in SLBM strength in the early 1960s
was the fact that the size of the ballistic missile submarine force remained static
from 1962 through 1966. The natural tendency in estimating when a new weapon
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SECRET NIE Performance
system is seen coming in is to project a continuing growth in that system and
to anticipate the development of new, improved models. In retrospect, it is now
clear that the Soviets opted to hold their SLBM force at a modest level of three-
tubed G- and H-class submarines, equipped with short range missiles, until
something more nearly approaching the U.S. Polaris system could become avail-
able. And it did-the Y-class, fitted with 16 tubes.
In sum, the USIB repeatedly erred after the mid-1960s in two out of three
categories. No one can claim this as a triumph, and let us hope that the short-
comings prove instructive in the future. As Wohistetter has observed, however:
"Predicting the size and exact mixture of a potential adversary's weapon deploy-
ments several years hence is a hard line of work. It is intrinsically uncertain,
reversible by the adversary himself between the time of prediction and the actual
deployment."
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20 years of leadership
in photo interpretation
BRITISH HONORS FOR LUNDAHL
Dino A. Brugioni and Robert F. McCort
Arthur C. Lundahl, Director of the National Photographic Interpretation
Center from its inception to 1973, was awarded the Order of the British Empire,
with rank of Honorary Knight Commander, in ceremonies at the British Embassy
on 17 December 1974.
In his presentation remarks, Ambassador Sir Peter Ramsbotham commented:
"We are assembled today to do honor to a man whose devotion to his own
country has been matched by remarkable services to our common good.
Arthur Lundahl's work for the United States has been marked, amongst other
honors, by the award of the National Security Medal, of which he was only
the 15th recipient. The distinction which Her Majesty the Queen has now
been pleased to confer upon him is only rarely awarded to a United States
citizen. It is, indeed, one of the most senior ranks of the Most Excellent Order
of the British Empire.... Mr. Lundahl will be joining the honored company
of those whom the British Sovereign has rewarded over the centuries for
services which go far beyond the call of normal duty. The distinction is richly
deserved by one whose collaboration with the United Kingdom in the field
of photogrammetry, photography, and photographic interpretation dates
from the wartime period."
Lundahl in his response called U.S. sharing of technical knowledge with
the United Kingdom "a return on your investment in us," recalling that when
World War II started, the United States:
"had nothing in this highly technical field-no photogrammetrists, no photo
interpreters, no manuals, no training aids-in short, no technology. The
British shared their knowledge with us, including their precious instructors,
at a time when they were fighting for their very lives. Those of us who
were the recipients of that knowledge will never forget this gesture."
If the United States had no such technology at the outset of World War II,
Arthur Lundahl began amassing and developing the science and. winning
commendations for it-almost as soon as he graduated from the University of
Chicago with his geologist's degree in 1942.
As a U.S. Navy officer from 1942 to 1946, Lundahl earned the Navy Com-
mendation Medal, awarded by Admiral Nimitz, for his photo interpretation
work in antisubmarine warfare.
From 1946 to 1953, he was a civilian with the Naval Photographic Inter-
pretation Center, first as Chief of the Photogrammetry Division and then as
Assistant Chief Engineer. In 1953 CIA picked him to direct the program which
later became the National Photographic Interpretation Center. He built it into
an organization of 1,000 people surrounded by complicated machinery that
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wasn't even dreamed of until Lundahl decided there was need for such inventions.
Under his guidance and direction, a totally new family of photo exploitation
equipment was designed and developed to cope with the product of new collec-
tion technology.
In these advances, Lundahl fused the talents of seven disciplines-photo
interpretation, automatic data processing, photogrammetry, graphic arts, com-
munications, collateral research, and technical analysis-into organized NPIC
teams.
Along the way, he was elected President of the American Society of Photo-
grammetry in 1954, played a major role in intelligence coverage of the Suez Crisis
of 1956, and "surfaced" with the discovery of Soviet offensive ballistic missiles
in Cuba in 1962, for which Lundahl received a personal commendation from
President Kennedy and NPIC received a Presidential Unit Citation.
In January 1963, the National Civil Service League gave him its Career
Service Award as the "top photographic intelligence officer in the United
States Government."
On the occasion of his retirement in June 1973, Lundahl received the Na-
tional Security Medal mentioned. by the Ambassador, the CIA's Distinguished
Intelligence Medal, and the DIA Director's Award for Exceptional Civilian
Service. The rare National Security Medal, authorized by the President for
"distinguished achievement or outstanding contribution in the field of intelli-
gence relating to the national security," was presented by Acting DCI Lt. Gen.
Vernon A. Walters in a July 1973 ceremony. The citation said in part:
"He has been a dynamic force for the improvement of intelligence vital to
the security of the United States and world peace. His outstanding con-
tributions have added new dimensions to the interpretation of the evidence
acquired by the most sophisticated collection mechanisms.
Mr. Lundahl's 20 years of exceptionally meritorious service with the Central
Intelligence Agency has been marked by outstanding ability, imagination,
drive, and dedication. His professional competence and personality have
made him an inspiring leader in the Intelligence Community and a key
adviser to many high Government officials."
DCI William E. Colby, presenting the CIA's Distinguished Intelligence
Medal, said it was awarded
"in recognition of his career with the Agency which has been marked by his
outstanding achievement of a distinctly exceptional nature in positions of
high responsibility. A superb technician in the field of photographic inter-
pretation and photogrammetry with few if any peers, Mr. Lundahl has been
the leader in the development of these vital tools in the interest of our
national security."
At the same June ceremony, Admiral Vincent R. DePoix, Director of the
Defense Intelligence Agency, in making DIA's award, commented that Lundahl's
contributions to the Department of Defense had been no less significant. Noting
that half of the photo interpreters at NPIC were DIA personnel, Admiral DePoix
said Lundahl was almost unparalleled in winning the complete respect, admira-
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OR OFFICIAL USE ONLY Lundahl
tion, and devotion of those with whom he had come in contact, and that the
NPIC Director had always been mindful of special intelligence needs and interests
of the Department of Defense.
The future? On leaving NPIC in June, 1973, Lundahl expressed the hope
that the technology developed for application to national security can now be
applied to peaceful purposes in solving such problems as world hunger. He now
is actively devoting his "retirement" to these goals.
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Danger: Con men at work!
TRENDS IN AFRICAN FORGERIES
Dr. Robert L. Managhan
If the years after 1950 resounded with the noises of cold warriors thrashing
about in the African bush, the last few years have been resonant with other
sounds. The dedicated disinformation specialist from Moscow or Prague working
the African scene has been displaced by a new and more ominous type of
operator-the amateur. The less than delicate hands of the Soviets, East Germans,
Czechs, and even the French if one wishes to accept the verdict of Newsweek,*
have been noted in Africa over the years.**
The goals of the disinformation efforts, often involving forged documents,
were usually to denigrate the image of the United States and/or its representa-
tives, to cause a break in relations between a host country and the United
States, or to cause the expulsion of effective economic or diplomatic personnel.
Considering the relative level of political sophistication found in the emerging
countries, it was not a task requiring great skill and exactitude.
While the Questioned Document Laboratory of the Office of Technical
Services was normally able to demonstrate the forged nature of the documents,
proving the identity of the perpetrator was sometimes another story. In many
cases, the physical evidence was less than conclusive in proving the true origin
of spurious documents. When a disinformation specialist paid attention to what
he was doing, the adducible evidence was not very weighty in proving origin.
Africa has always had its share of swindlers, hustlers, and good old-fashioned
con artists. Historically, they were involved in the more esoteric forms of folk
medicine and in relieving tourists of excess cash. Then some of the bunco spe-
cialists realized that the new and inexperienced governments could be victimized
as easily-and at least as lucratively-as individuals. It is just a short step
from alleging a non-existent plot to fabricating documents to "prove" the
allegations.
Looking back with the advantage of hindsight, some of the fabrications
surfaced in Africa have been hilarious. At the time, however, the situations
engendered were far from humorous to those involved. The great majority
of African leaders were not elected democratically. Most of them came to power
by a coup, and hence they feared plots, coups, and threatened invasions by
others seeking power. In an atmosphere permeated by intrigue and emigre
plotting, it is no wonder that there is an overreaction to claims of plots, etc. A
brief summary of the activities of some, but by no means all, of the individuals
* `The War Over Secret Warfare," Newsweek, 30 September 1974, p. 39.
"Hearings Before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal
Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. Senate:
"Communist Forgeries," Testimony of Richard Helms, 2 June 1961 (GPO, 1961) and "Testi-
mony of Lawrence Britt (Ladislav Bittman ), " 5 May 1971 (GPO, 1971).
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CONFIDENTIAL Forgeries
in our pantheon of forgers and fabricators may be of value to the reader in
trying to understand the problem.
Lemuel J. Walker, a twenty-eight-year-old Liberian, always wanted to be
an "American Secret Service Agent." In the pursuit of this ideal, he managed
to put a few dents in the armor of the American diplomatic stance in Africa.
Starting at the age of 17, in 1963, Walker was arrested periodically for forgery
and bunco operations by the Liberian police. Walker invented imaginary groups
such as the "Student Imphital Program" and the "Joint Student Cooperative
Superior Sciences Division" to bilk Liberian businessmen.
Some time near the end of 1971, Walker began to formulate plans to achieve
his heart's desire. With the assistance of a Liberian printer, Walker was ready
to face Africa as "Clifton W. C. Kent," secret agent and "Assistant Director" of
"Communications in Superior Sciences Activities, N.S.C., Fairbanks, The White
House, The State Dept., The Defense Dept., Washington 25, D.C." (see Figure 1)
and as "Walter H. Cliford," "Assistant Director" of the "Central Security Com-
mission-Special Interlligence (sic) Agency, National Security Counsel (sic),
The White House-The State and Defense Dept." (see Figure 2). Armed with
printed letterheads and fancy identification cards also identifying him as
"Cheyenne K. Lark" and several other names, Walker started to put together
information culled out of magazines in USIS libraries and to type up documents
alleging coups, plots, and invasions by the United States against African gov-
ernments. Although any American would find a phone number such as "Ext.
20-8338-91-658886" (see Figure 1) somewhat ridiculous, the average African
does not, because he is not acquainted with our telephone system.
Walker put together a series of documents on his C.I.S.S.A. (Communica-
tions in Superior Science Activities) letterheads alleging that the United States
was going to spend a million dollars to assassinate President for Life General
Jean Bedel Bokassa of the Central African Republic, and then invade the C.A.R.
While the documents may appear outrageous to us, they did not seem so to
Bokassa, who had come to power by a coup and assumed that others would use
force in attempts to unseat him. Bokassa reacted swiftly to the documents by
threatening to break relations with the United States. Technical analysis of
the document eventually convinced Bokassa that the documents were indeed
fabrications.
Not long afterwards, President Achmed Sekou Toure of Guinea announced
in his precise, oratorical French that the throats of all Americans in Guinea
would be cut if there was another invasion of Guinea. Sekou Toure also had a
sheaf of C.I.S.S.A. documents which were aggravating an already serious persecu-
tion complex. At this time, Sekou Toure gave out one of his more remarkable
pronunciamentos, "Documents can be forged, but the information is true." * A
series of investigatory leads led back to Monrovia. With the cooperation of the
U.S. Embassy and the Liberian government, it was determined that a "Clifton
W. C. Kent" who tried to borrow money from the Embassy was identical with
Lemuel J. Walker, the convicted bunco artist. Examination of Walker's prior
written police confession established that he was the writer of the handwritten
portions of the C.I.S.S.A. documents. Walker was finally arrested in Abidjan
*Meeting 30 September 1972, Toure and U.S. Ambassador Terrence Todman.
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Available
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Figure 1. Samples of Walker's letterheads and rubber stamps.
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CONFIDENTIAL Forgeries
1`txe hearer of this card i az 4s 1M
't c rtxy, Agency cif the United, Star
Sts t* ', tl t s , ax y 1J . IM plo s. at
7cink ial of the 1~T:.
yot indfing tlaz! c rd mar to e
eutlect One }tus drecl !)cellars re and
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Forgeries CONFIDENTIAL
in December 1972, while trying to peddle fabrications to three different govern-
ments, and was extradited to Monrovia. Subsequent interrogation revealed that
Walker was not in the employ of any other power. When arrested, Walker had
a series of documents on him which he had prepared for passage to foreign
governments. (See Figure 3.) A neurotic role-player with a desire for prestige
and money almost managed to ruin U.S. relations with numerous African
countries-and he wasn't really personally anti-American.
While Walker was busily promoting his misspelled documents, Herman
Essoka, a Cameroonian, was trying to peddle alleged secret cables from Soviet
Foreign Minister Andre Gromyko and/or U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers.
In a remarkable display of even-handedness, Essoka made the United States and
the U.S.S.R. in turn the villain in his fabrications. Posing as either a translator
in the code room of the U.S. Embassy in cities such as Cotonou, Lome, Libreville,
etc., or as a translator in the code room of the Soviet Embassy in cities such as
Lagos, Yaounde, Cotonou, etc., Essoka would claim to find evidence of a Soviet
or U.S. coup plot in the form of a "secret coded telegram." Essoka had the
United States plotting against the governments of Zambia, Sierra Leone, etc.,
and the Soviets trying to unseat the governments of Liberia and Chad. His
"Andre Gromyko" appeared to have difficulties deciding whether to communicate
in French or English; Essoka has the ability to write equally ungrammatically
in French or English. A tense atmosphere over a period of several weeks in
Sierra Leone was ultimately relieved when a friendly liaison service was able
to show the president of Sierra Leone, Siaka Stevens, that Essoka had claimed
to be working in the U.S. code room and the Soviet code room in letters written
one week apart.
Luis Manuel Gonzalez Mata-Lledo, a forty-six-year-old Spaniard, has
managed to lead an exciting life. Expelled from a Spanish seminary at nineteen,
Gonzalez served five years in the Spanish Foreign Legion and then made his
way to the Dominican Republic. After joining the Dominican intelligence service,
he worked his way up to the position of assistant director by 1962. His career
in the Dominican Republic came to an abrupt halt when he embezzled $28,000.
Since 1962, Gonzalez has been in trouble with the authorities for insufficient
funds in his checking account, for possessing the wrong passport, and for bilking
young ladies out of their dowries. His career as a forger and fabricator started
in 1963 when he tried to sell forged evidence implicating Rafael Trujillo in a
plot to assassinate Dominican President Juan Bosch. After a second try at selling
forgeries to the Dominican Embassy in Paris, this time under the name "Dr.
Miguel Abrantes," Gonzalez tried to approach the U.S. Embassy in Algiers as a
representative of the notional "Third [Spanish] Republic Movement." By early
1967, Gonzalez was posing as a former Cuban intelligence officer and claimed
to be working for another notional group called "Conferencia Vanguardia
Latino-Americano" which was going to run a guerilla infiltration of Brazil from
a Cuban base in Conakry, Guinea. Although rebuffed by the Brazilians, Gonzalez
returned to the fray as "Captain A. L. Maedo" approaching the U.S. Embassy
in Brussels with the same story but with the United States as the target. The
"Vanguardia" plot was successively offered to the Venezuelans, Columbians,
and Dominicans. Although slightly discommoded by an arrest on a false passport
charge, Gonzalez moved to Paris in late 1967 when he became "A. Despadrel"
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CONFIDENTIAL Forgeries
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
MILITARY IN T ERLLIGENCE
Col. William Moore
6peerai Secto-Section
(MARINE UNIT) PENTAGON
Washington, 25, DC
I am herewith sending you the letter that I just received
C-3A from Youssef El All in Tripoli stating that the Israelis
are insisting on carring out their operation at a time oppoture
to them, but without instructions from either Tel-Aviv or the
agency here. According to.his letter as you will see for your-
self, they are acting very much disorderly and perfunctory, as
a matter of fact, they have automatically refused to cooperate
with either Khalil or Abdullah.
We already received a reply from Cairo but it is very discour-
aging, the feller do not at all work for the Egyptian War Dep-
artment, he simply got his information from somewhere we still
can't trace up to now, but he was intrepitity enough to colle-
seven thousand dollars from the boys there and vanish; I mean
the man vanished in thin air.
Did you get that personally and confidentialli message I send
by Director Kent? If so, please advise what you suggest I sho-
uld do as I wouldn't like to get into any misunderstanding or
any argument with my superiors here. We send two boys to Warna
and Al Aziziya regions, they are the areas that is on Kadaffi
plan for constructions by the Egyptians; according to report I
received from the man at the economy and industry Ministry.
I wish you a very happy birthday and give my regards to every-
one in the famaly, I hope to see you soon.
(K) section
C~i+j?alk
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Forgeries CONFIDENTIAL
of the "Liberation Front for Latin America" and "Rudolfo Campos," a Colombian
national traveling on an Algerian passport with information to sell the Libyans
on an alleged Soviet intelligence organization. To bolster his story he manu-
factured his own KGB file cards which he filled out in his own curious mixture of
Cyrillic and Latin characters.
After a year or two trying to peddle his deck of KGB cards, Gonzalez had
a change of heart and sold the Cubans a stack of self-designed CIA file cards.
Gonzalez' anti-Cuban activities started again in late 1969 when he designed
"Operation Lubumba" (sic), a Cuban invasion of Zaire. This time, posing as
"Dr. Rogelio Garcia Castro," he also favored the Ivory Coast, Gabon, and the
Cameroons with Cuban invasions via Conakry. After surviving temporary housing
in a French jail, and prior to his German jail term for forgery in 1971, Gonzalez
designed the fabricated U.S. invasion of Mali. This plot had the CIA and the
FBI joining a joint Spanish-Portuguese group which would invade Mali by
marching through Mauretania.
From the end of 1971 and through 1972, Gonzalez concocted his "Operation
Amanacer" documents, which were offered and/or sold to numerous South
American countries including Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Brazil,
Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Venezuela. By just changing the name of the country
on his master copy, Gonzalez was able to proffer documents to all. In the
"Amanacer" plots, Gonzalez used the name of "OSPAAL," an actual Cuban
propaganda mill, as the sponsoring group for his Cuban invasions. In one of the
more remarkable footnotes to history, Gonzalez managed to get the entire Soviet
colony in Bolivia declared persona non grata. He passed documents to the
Bolivians which claimed that Cuban guerrillas in Conakry would be loaded
on Soviet ships and would sail across the Atlantic and then somehow attack
Bolivia. Nobody appeared to notice that Bolivia has no coast-line.
After several more attempts to peddle anti-Cuban documents in South
America and Africa, Gonzalez turned against the United States again and is
believed to have been the author of information alleging U.S. involvement in
the attempted coup of 1972 against King Hassan of Morocco. When last heard
from in 1973, Gonzalez was selling information to the Cameroonians in Paris,
posing as a German, and selling undeveloped films of "secret bases for anti-
governmment plotters" to the Moroccans. The "Moroccan" films turned out to
be pictures taken during carnival season in Germany.
In September 1971, an individual calling himself "Dr. G. H. D. Opal" first
came to our attention with an alleged plot by the "African High Command
Unit" to assassinate President Banda of Malawi. The assassination was to be
carried out by a "Patricia Morley," allegedly an American citizen employed
by Orbitair. The mysterious "Patricia Morley" was to carry out the plot by
poisoning him with "phentic acid." It should be mentioned that phentic acid
is another name for carbolic acid, the substance that gives library paste its
pungent odor. In 1972, Dr. Opal was selling information to the Liberians on the
plans of the "Clean Africa Committee," a notional group allegedly planning to
eliminate African leaders who were not sufficiently pro-African.
This time "Patricia Morley" was to assassinate President Tolbert of Liberia
by putting phentic acid in his swimming pool. (See Figure 4.) It has been
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Figure 4. The "Phentic Acid" Assassination Report.
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Forgeries CONFIDENTIAL
calculated that 200 pounds of carbolic acid mixed into the water of a pool of
average size would make a 5 percent solution which would be efficacious in
eliminating athlete's foot, but would be far from lethal unless ingested. Assuming
that one could clandestinely slip half a ton of carbolic acid into a pool and mix
it-perhaps with an outboard motor-it might be injurious to health if one swam
a few laps in it. No prose could describe the prospective odor of such a mixture
nor the unlikelihood that an unsuspecting victim would dive into the solution.
In August 1973, Dr. Opal managed to get documents into the hands of
Sekou Toure of Guinea. This time, President Toure was to be assassinated
with a .39 caliber Wembley (sic) under the direction of Patricia Morley. While
Orbitair is a legitimate firm, they have never had any employee by the name
of Patricia Morley. In addition to getting the mythical Patricia Morley confused
with a real USIA employee who had TDY'ed to Conakry, Sekou Toure managed
to combine the Patricia Morley fabrication with the gleanings from all the
emigre letters available to his intelligence service and come up with a monster
plot against Guinea by all her neighbors. Before the rhetoric died down, Guinea
had broken relations with Senegal and the Ivory Coast.
The Senegalese were contacted in December 1973 by Opal with documen-
tation from the "Free Africa Committee" about an alleged plot to kill President
Senghor, again with that ".39 caliber Wembley." A second plot by Patricia
Morley against Senghor included the use of "phentic" which by now was "like
a camera and is operated like a camera."
While Lemuel Walker is still in jail, it is expected that he will be released
one of these days. Hermann Essoka, Luis Manuel Gonzalez Mata-Lledo, and
Dr. G. H. D. Opal and several others are still free, somewhere, busily sharpening
their tools for the next sting. An educational program in some of the African
countries has impaired the effectiveness of these forgers/fabricators, but there
is still work to be done in countering Walker and his ilk. With amateur mer-
cenaries like these at work in Africa, it is no wonder that professional Bloc
disinformation specialists have been able to turn their attention to other areas.
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No Foreign Dissem
The following article does not answer any questions about what is going on inside
China today. It is not intended to. It deals simply and solely-and with an unusual
degree of self-deprecation--with the state of the art of the Sinologist or China-watcher.
This article is for those who wonder what problems the China analyst has, what tools,
techniques, and assets he can bring to bear, and how confident he may be in the end
product. Note at the outset that the title calls it an "art," not a "science."
The Editor
THE ART OF CHINA-WATCHING
Most knowledgeable observers agree that information on, and analysis of,
events within the People's Republic of China has advanced now to the level of
"Kremlinology" about 15 years ago. It is no semantic accident that observers
of the Chinese political scene are more often called "China-watchers" than
"Sinologists," while analysts of the Soviet Union are frequently referred to as
"Kremlinologists." The art of China-watching is imprecise at best, and hardly
deserves yet to be callled Sinology.
The explanation, or blame, for this often frustrating situation lies mainly
with the way the Chinese conduct their affairs. To say the Chinese have a
penchant for secrecy is almost an understatement. Some Chinese have said
privately that they deliberately try to hide important domestic events from
their northern enemy, the Soviet Union. While there is certainly an element
of truth in this, the Chinese are also anxious to conceal information from the
Chinese populace and from the outside world in general. The secrecy syndrome
applies more often to domestic than to foreign affairs. By its very nature, Chinese
foreign policy inevitably makes itself known. With a second country involved,
Peking has had less success in hiding its foreign policy.
On the domestic front, however, there have been for the past several years
serious policy differences and genuine personal animosity among the Chinese
leaders. It is these schisms that Peking seems most anxious to hide--from the
Chinese populace, in order to promote confidence in the leadership and relative
stability at the grassroots; from the Soviet Union, because Peking believes
Moscow has tried and will try again to exploit differences in the Chinese leader-
ship; and from the rest of the world, perhaps for similar reasons and also because
the Chinese seem to believe that their internal affairs are none of our business.
They complained bitterly about Western press coverage of Chinese domestic
politics last year. They did not like the interpretation presented in the articles,
but neither did they say anything to clarify the situation.
The Aging Leadership
By most standards, China is a peculiar country. It has perhaps the most
aged leadership in the world. Four of the five vice-chairmen of the party are
in their seventies. The chairman, Mao, is 81. In the government bureaucracy, MORI/H RP
which exists alongside the party structure, there is no head of state. In fact, from pg. 23-33
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as with most major decisions, it took the Chinese several years of debating the
issue to decide whether to abolish the job. Until January, when the post was
officially dropped, it was filled on a temporary basis by an 88-year-old party
veteran. Without a head of state, the highest ranking government official is the
chairman of China's legislature. He, too, is 88.
Since the Communists came to power in 1949, China has been run by es-
sentially the same small group of aging revolutionaries. As a rule, they do not
retire. They tend to remain in office until they die or are purged. Thus far,
very few have died. Because they are roughly the same age-that is to say, old
indeed-there is the danger that they will all die nearly at once, leaving a
relatively inexperienced group of younger officials to take over the world's most
populous country. Only in the past two years has this old leadership made a
concerted effort to bring younger people into the top ranks of the party and
government hierarchies. By Chinese standards, "younger" generally means men in
their sixties.
Being elevated so recently, these younger officials will probably not have
much time to show their administrative and political talents, especially the ability
to survive the political maneuvering, backbiting, and rivalries that are likely
to emerge when the old leadership finally passes from the scene. Because the
leadership has been relatively tardy in beginning to put together a succession
arrangement, China watchers have little information to go by in trying to predict
the outcome of a possible succession struggle and the directions Chinese policy
will take in the coming years. Why the leadership was so slow in recognizing the
obvious need to groom younger officials remains a mystery, but no firm steps
were taken until the party congress in August, 1973, 24 years after coming to
power.
Vacancies and Unannounced Appointments
There are, of course, many mysteries on the Chinese political scene. For
more than three years there was no officially designated defense minister, al-
though it was fairly obvious who was acting in that capacity. The man was finally
given the job publicly in January, but why he wasn't named earlier is yet
another unanswered, and perhaps unanswerable, question. The man is 76, which
means the Chinese will have to go through this same apparently arduous process
of choosing a defense minister again in a few years.
The previous defense minister was Lin Piao, Mao's designated heir who
allegedly died in a plane crash fleeing to the Soviet Union after an abortive
coup attempt. All the events surrounding Lin's political demise and death will
probably never become known, but the incident has had a profound effect on
the Chinese leadership. It has fed their fears of possible Soviet meddling in
China's domestic affairs and has transformed the once glorified army into an
institution now viewed with considerable distrust. In typical Chinese fashion,
Lin was privately vilified by name in documents circulated within China, but
for the public record he was just an unidentified "political swindler." Everyone
in China and outside knew that the "swindler" was Lin, and the Chinese probably
were aware that they were fooling no one with their attempts to conceal his
identity by not using his name publicly. Nevertheless, it was not until nearly
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two years after his death that the Chinese propaganda machine started to attack
Lin by name.
The defense portfolio was just one of many jobs that remained vacant for
years on end. For several years there was no army chief of staff, no finance
minister, no one in charge of health, no one in charge of public security, and,
despite the growing importance of China's oil industry, no minister of petroleum.
At no time since 1971 have all of China's provinces had an officially designated
top man. Each time a new job opens up in China, it evidently becomes a political
nightmare just to get a small group of people to agree on who should fill it. Most
Chinese, even those in officialdom, can at best take only wild guesses as to who
sits in what job until the appointments are announced by the Chinese press.
Because the Chinese people, and even many officials, are often kept in the
dark about domestic politics, the usual problems of obtaining clandestine informa-
tion about denied areas are magnified in the case of China. Officials abroad are
often as confused about domestic developments as western observers are. An
amusing exchange ensued last year when the Peking press began to attack the
Italian film maker Antonioni. One official abroad asked another what the attacks
were all about, and the reply was that there had been no explanation from
Peking. Meanwhile, China watchers in Washington and elsewhere were frantically
poring over the articles, certain that they were of enormous significance but
not at all united about why they were.
Propaganda Analysis
Over the years, China watchers have developed some analytical tools, much
the same as those used by Kremlinologists, to help break through the fog. The
Chinese, for their part, as their perceived need for secrecy has increased, have
devised a number of schemes to render these tools less useful than they might
once have been. One rule of thumb is that in their propaganda the Chinese do
not say things by accident and rarely say anything directly. They did not, for
example, attack Antonioni for nothing, and they probably were trying to convey
other messages beside their distaste for the film he made about China. One
theory was that the attacks were directed at someone in the Chinese leadership
who was known to be an Antonioni fan, another that they reflected a hardening
of Chinese views toward cultural exchanges with the West. While the various
theories arrived at through propaganda analysis usually lead to lively debates
among China watchers, rarely can any single theory be proved conclusively.
Complicating the process of analyzing propaganda is a relatively "free" press
in recent years, at least for those in the highest levels of the bureaucracy. The
party's offical newspaper has been known to carry two articles on the same
subject in the same issue, expressing diametrically opposed views. Because no
one "faction" in the leadership has exclusive access to the press and because
even signed articles are usually in pseudonym, China watchers can never be
absolutely certain whose views are being expressed in a given article.
Imprecise though it may be, propaganda analysis is often the only way to
keep track of an important political development as it evolves. Last year the
Chinese waged a major political campaign, almost exclusively through prop-
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SECRET China-Watching
aganda, that attacked two corpses-the fallen defense minister, Lin Piao, who
died in 1971, and the ancient sage Confucius, who died some 2500 years ago.
The propaganda articles discussed major figures and events from the Chinese
past, but the historical figures seemed to be surrogates for people in the current
leadership, and the events often resembled current problems.
Accepting the premise that the historical figures did in fact represent
current leaders, the problem of course was to determine which ones. With little
more than propaganda to go on, China watchers came up with widely differing
interpretations. Adding to the confusion, some historical figures who had been
consistently praised for implementing progressive policies suddenly were attacked
in other articles. The reverse took place. All this suggested that different people
in the leadership were promoting their own favorite historical figures, i.e., those
who stood for themselves, and denigrating the other stand-ins.
Confucius, of course, was consistently attacked, sometimes for very specific
and detailed misdeeds. For example, he was criticized for being finicky about food
and insisting that his meat be sliced just so. This accusation, though obscure to
China watchers, probably was very revealing to the small group of leaders at the
top who know one another's habits thoroughly. No information has ever turned
up as to who in the current leadership is noticeably picky about food, but un-
doubtedly the individual in question and his colleagues recognized the target
immediately.
When Chinese leaders attack one another through the use of information
known only to themselves, it not only leaves China watchers overseas baffled,
but makes it impossible for most Chinese officials to understand who is being
attacked. In fact, officials and the Chinese populace in general were all instructed
to study the same propaganda articles, without explanation, that the outside
world was puzzling over. They, too, had to be China watchers, and their specula-
tion as to who was under attack covered the entire political spectrum in the
Chinese leadership. A Chinese official even guessed that the target was the 88-
year-old acting head of state, who was extremely frail and died a year later. One
Chinese, expressing his frustration over the obscure criticism of Confucius, posted
a notice on a public building that read "why are we attacking someone who has
been dead more than two thousand years?" To their credit, China watchers were
generally quicker to recognize the importance of the anti-Confucius campaign
than were many Chinese officials.
One of the pitfalls of propaganda analysis is that certain catch phrases
used repeatedly over the years can mean different things at different times.
The term "three-in-one combination," for example-the organizational principle
for the formation of local administrative organs-meant at its inception a combi-
nation of experienced officials, military men, and "the masses," i.e., ordinary
workers or peasants. In recent years, however, as the military has fallen into
disfavor and many workers and peasants have shown themselves to be incompe-
tent administrators, the phrase has now come to mean a combination of old,
middle-aged, and young officials. Failure to recognize the change in meaning
would leave a China watcher several years behind the times, leading him to
believe that the Chinese were still interested in having soldiers, workers, and
peasants share the management of the local administrative units.
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Subtle changes in the propaganda line are often extremely significant, and
a China watcher can be left high and dry if he misses the changes. In its heyday,
the army was the model for, all of China. Everyone was exhorted to learn from
the army. When in recent years the Chinese added that the army must learn
from the people, this was the Chinese way of telling the outside world that the
army was falling out of favor with the leadership in Peking.
Propaganda analysis would be incomplete without a careful study of the
propaganda line coming from each of the provinces and comparisons between
them. Sometimes, differing lines from various provinces mean only that the local
leadership is confused about what to do. In some cases, however, the differences
are very meaningful. When ex-defense minister Lin Piao was still in power, many
provinces said the army was founded by Mao and commanded by Lin; others
said the army was founded and commanded by Mao. With the advantage of
hindsight, it is clear that even well before his fall, Lin's authority had begun
to erode. What is not clear is whether those provinces that failed to mention
Lin in this context were merely expressing their own dissatisfaction with him or
whether they were acting on instructions from leaders in Peking who were
working to oust him. In this case, as in many others, China watchers will probably
never know the answer. They can probably make an educated guess, however,
that those provinces which say the army should "obey" the party contain military
men more willing to submit to party authority than those provinces which say
the army should merely "respect" the party.
The Pecking Order
Another favorite tool of the analytical trade is the scrutiny of leadership
appearances. The order in which Chinese leaders are listed can be a reliable
gauge of their relative standing in the leadership. The Chinese have often cir-
cumvented this system by listing their leaders in the Chinese equivalent of
alphabetical order. On major holidays, the Chinese used to hold mass rallies
in Peking, with the entire leadership standing before the assembled crowds.
Who stood next to whom was another clue to the importance of individual
leaders, but in recent years the rallies have been abandoned. Instead, several
small groups of leaders appear in different parks in Peking, thus avoiding a public
display of the entire pecking order.
When several important officials fail to appear over an extended period
of time, it often means that a leadership meeting is in session. When at the same
time the top officials in many of China's 29 provinces do not appear at home,
the betting is that Peking has called in leaders from the provinces for a large
meeting. In August, 1973, as China watchers awaited a party congress, Peking
threw the intelligence community off the track: the national leadership attended
a table tennis match, and, on the same day, a provincial leader gave a speech
at home, several thousand miles from Peking. As it turned out, the party congress
was in session during the time. In what was an obvious effort to hide the fact,
the meeting was adjourned in midstream to allow national leaders to appear
in public; the provincial leader, who obviously did not attend the congress, was
elected in absentia to the party's ruling Politburo.
SECRET 27
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When all else fails, Peking resorts to outright deceit. In January, a secret
party meeting elected a new party vice chairman from the ranks of ordinary
Politburo members. After the meeting, in order not to tip the public, the new
vice chairman was listed not among the other vice chairmen but among ordinary
members of the Politburo. Thus the meeting and the new appointment remained
a secret until Peking chose to reveal it.
In the hands of the wrong people, the game of appearance watching can
result in widely speculative and highly sensational conclusions. When a national
leader does not appear in public over an extended period of time-say a month
or more-the Chinese people themselves, who watch appearances just as analysts
do, invariably begin rumors about their political demise or death. On one occa-
sion, after Madame Mao had not appeared in public for a couple of months, some
Chinese devised a wild story to explain her absence: they concluded that she
had had a fight, including fisticuffs, with her husband, and he had killed her.
She reappeared a few days later, however, with no black eyes.
In the case of Mao, who has often withdrawn from public view for long
periods, rumors of his death have plagued analysts for years. If accounts from
Chinese officials and ordinary people over the years were compiled, it would ap-
pear the man has died at least 20 times since the mid-1950s. Today, he remains
alive and relatively well, considering his advanced age. Reports of Mao's death
naturally send shock waves throughout Washington officialdom. Because there is
no way to verify or discredit these reports until he appears again in public, some
China watchers have more than once been forced to conclude tentatively, and
even sometimes in writing, that he was dying. With the Chinese tendency toward
secrecy, it is impossible to predict how soon after Mao's actual death the Chinese
will announce it. There are, of course, a few who still maintain Mao has been
dead for years, and the man seen greeting foreign visitors is actually a double.
Does Logic Help?
Logic, or common sense, is sometimes the China watcher's only tool for
assessing the veracity of a piece of new information. The problem is that the
Chinese, who are not without common sense themselves, can often disregard
it when they choose to. In July 1973, when the first report of preparations for
a party congress appeared in China watchers' in-boxes, many tended to reject
it. The party's anniversary had passed a few days earlier without so much as
a major article in the Peking press extolling the virtues of the party. If a party
congress was in fact in the offing, it was reasoned, surely the Chinese press would
have made more of the party's anniversary. Additionally, the leadership was
still sharply divided over a number of serious issues and showed no signs of
resolving differences; the party apparatus in several provinces was still a shambles.
Under these conditions, there seemed no point-indeed, it could be disastrous-
to convene a party congress.
The Chinese, who were obviously as aware of their problems as China
watchers were, held the congress away. To be sure, the congress was something
of a disappointment. Many important issues remained unresolved, and the
congress seemed to raise more questions than it answered. When, in December,
a secret party meeting took some major steps toward resolving some of the prob-
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lems, the question was raised again as to why the congress had been held in
August; it obviously would have made more sense to wait until December, when
the political climate was apparently more suitable for major decisions.
Logic does not fail in every case, however, and it sometimes allows the
China watcher to second-guess even top Chinese officials correctly. At the
August 1973 party congress, Premier Chou En-lai announced that the National
People's Congress, China's legislature, would convene "soon." At the time, the
anti-Confucius campaign had just begun and was likely to cause further divisive-
ness among the leadership and have major repercussions throughout the country.
With a major political campaign just getting under way, many China watchers
believed that chances of holding the National People's Congress under these cir-
cumstances were very slim. Nevertheless, no China analyst worth his salt is going
to contradict Chou En-lai and say in writing that the premier has either taken
leave of his senses or does not have a firm grip on the political scene in China.
Chou, as it turned out, had indeed miscalculated: the National People's Congress
was not held until a year and a half later.
This was not the first time Chou had "misspoken." Earlier, he told a western
reporter that China's harvest would show an increase over the previous year.
A month later, he had to retract that statement; the harvest had in fact shown
a four percent drop. China analysts seldom ignore statements coming directly from
Chou-with good reason. The occasional slips, however, can cause confusion.
Statements by high-level Chinese officials on the internal conditions in the
country are so rare that the China watching community must pay particular
attention to them, but there is cause for some caution on this score. A member
of the party's ruling Politburo, in response to a question about the anti-Confucius
campaign, calmly answered, "We know what we are doing." At the time, the
campaign had already caused major disturbances in several provinces and was
beginning to affect the economic sector. In fact, shortly after that statement
was made, the campaign was all but turned off. Its only visible result had been
a decline in production, clearly not the intent of the leadership, and China
watchers have a right to question whether the Chinese did in fact know what
they were doing or whether they merely knew what they wanted to do but were
not sure they would be successful. It is also possible that the Politburo member
was lying through his teeth or that, while others in the leadership did indeed
know what they were doing, this person, who most observers would conclude
was ultimately a loser in the political sweepstakes of 1974, did not.
Leadership Speeches
While statements by Chinese officials are frequent and relatively easy to
come by, China's leaders stopped making public speeches about domestic po-
litical affairs several years ago. One Politburo member tours the provinces giving
addresses on agriculture, but save for these and two general wrap-up speeches
by Premier Chou En-lai at major leadership meetings in the past two years, no
Chinese leader had gone on public record regarding internal affairs since the
mid-1960s.
This situation contrasts sharply with that of the Soviet Union. In recent
years Moscow had held party congresses on a fairly regular basis; the congresses
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hear a major address that usually drags on for hours, in which party leader
Brezhnev reports on party affairs, and another long speech by the Soviet Premier
on the economy. These speeches and many others delivered on less ceremonial
occasions are made public. At China's last party congress-only the third since
the Communists came to power-Mao was said to have made a few brief opening
remarks, which were not made public. In fact, Mao has not made a public
speech since 1949. While Soviet analysts chew on marathon speeches by Brezhnev,
China watchers must content themselves with the brief, usually enigmatic, quo-
tations that Mao issues periodically.
Chou En-lai's two speeches were a mixed bag of political, economic, and
foreign affairs. Even at the National People's Congress, China's vehicle for re-
porting on and ratifying government policies, there was no separate report on
the economy-at least no report that was made public.
Precedents and Past Performance
One analytical tool that has been all but rejected by China watchers is
the use of precedents. The Chinese have broken with past practice on several
occasions in the last two years, and China watchers have frequently been led
astray by trying to predict events on the basis of past patterns. The party congress
is a good example. Congresses have usually been preceded by a plenary session
of the party Central Committee. The plenum, held in secret but revealed after
it is over, usually issues a call to convene the congress. On its first day, Peking
announces the opening of the congress and issues periodic reports during the
session. The congress is usually held in Peking's grandly named building, the
Great Hall of the People. Lights burning late at night in the building, and large
numbers of cars, buses, and limousines parked outside are visible signs to Peking
residents that a major meeting is in session.
In August 1973, however, there was no Central Committee plenum, no sign
of activity at the Great Hall of the People, and presumably no congress. As
China analysts watched and waited for the usual signs, Peking surprised every-
one by announcing that the congress was over.
The National People's Congress of 1975, held in January, revealed another
break with precedent. This meeting has usually been a public affair: banners
in Peking greet the delegates as they arrive, foreign visitors have attended, and
the press builds up the event with frequent references to it. On several earlier
(and abortive) attempts to hold the conclave, the press did indeed refer to it,
and more than once the New Year's Day pronouncement from Peking indicated
it would be held within the year. This year, the New Year editorial ignored it,
but the meeting was secretly held two weeks later.
In an important departure from the standard way of doing business, wide-
spread personal attacks on high ranking party and military officials throughout
1974 have thus far had no visible effect on their political health. During the
Cultural Revolution, if an official was publicly criticized in wall posters, this
spelled the end of his political career-in most cases he was either about to
fall or had already been stripped of his power. Officials attacked in wall posters
last year, however, adopted a very casual attitude toward the process; some
even went out of their way to point out the posters to foreign visitors. None of
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China-Watching Ct KK
those attacked last year, including some who came under extremely heavy fire
in several different provinces, have been purged. Today, wall posters are ap-
parently not as damaging as they were a decade ago, but China watchers were
misled into thinking one of the party vice-chairmen was purged because he was
widely criticized in posters.
Peking Directives
Directives from Peking, in essence the laws of the land, are usually a good
way to gauge the intentions of the leadership. Ironically, as knowledge of the
contents of these directives has increased, thanks to clandestine collection efforts,
the number of directives issued each year has steadily declined. From some 90
in 1971, to perhaps 60 in 1972, to 44 in 1973, the number bit an alltime low of
approximately 27 last year. With such a large country to manage, presumably
there are a number of issues demanding the attention of the leadership and
requiring specific and authoritative instructions from Peking.
Disagreements in the leadership over a number of questions may have con-
tributed to the declining number of Peking directives. In some instances, these
differences manifest themselves in contradictory directives. The occasional re-
versals are usually short-lived and have not affected the general trend of events,
but they raise important-and puzzling-analytical questions. How can one
faction in the leadership be strong enough to push through a directive one day
but be unable to get it enforced the next? How can they block a personnel ap-
pointment for months but suddenly be powerless to stop it? And who, in fact,
are "they"?
Last year, most directives from Peking set strict limitations on the conduct
of the anti-Confucius campaign: officials could not be criticized by name; wall
posters, written by the general populace to expose the "crimes" of unnamed
officials, could not be posted outside public buildings where foreign visitors
could see them; and people were not to bring their complaints to Peking but
were to stay in their provinces and resolve their differences at home. Suddenly
a new directive was issued which said just the opposite: it was all right to attack
officials by name, posters could be put up anywhere, no effort was to be made
to prevent foreign visitors from reading them, and the people were invited to
come to Peking to express their grievances.
Taking Peking at its word and acting in accordance with the latest official
directive, a number of people descended on Peking, mounting posters throughout
the city attacking several important officials by name. The poster writers were
quickly suppressed: they were harassed, and sometimes jailed, by the security
forces, and their posters were often torn down as soon as they were put up.
The poster writers were then sent home to their provinces, and from then on
the campaign proceeded as though the latest directive had never been issued.
If the new directive came as a surprise to China watchers, it must have been
an even greater surprise to the unfortunate people who acted on it and got
themselves arrested for following Peking's latest instructions.
There are times in the China business when having solid information about
a particular event is more confusing than it is enlightening. If the event is re-
ported in the western press, it can even be a nuisance. For example, a large
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meeting was held in Peking in the summer of 1973, as China watchers were
looking for signs of a party congress. Because the meeting was public, reporters
got wind of it and accounts of the meeting appeared in the western press. China
watchers knew the meeting was not a party congress-it was too large-but
do not know even today what that meeting was all about and some wish they
had never known of its existence.
Despite the vicissitudes of China watching, analysts in some cases are better
informed about the situation in China's provinces than China's own national
leaders are. As early as 1970, for example, it became obvious to China watchers,
through intelligence reports and provincial radio broadcasts, that urban youth
sent to live and work in the countryside were being consciously discriminated
against with the acquiescence of local authorities. The situation seemed to come
as something of a shock to Mao, when he first learned of it in 1973. A school
teacher, with a son out in the country and apparently with contacts who could
see that messages got to the leadership, sent a letter to Mao describing the
living conditions of urban youth in the rural areas. Mao was outraged and
ordered that steps be taken immediately to end discrimination against these
young people. Not until 1974, however, after Peking had long since issued yet
another directive on the subject, did local authorities begin to move on this
question.
Cases of major disruptions or flagrant disobedience in the provinces, of
course, eventually come to Peking's attention. In such cases, national leaders
acting as trouble shooters often visit the province in question to help solve the
problems. In this context, discrimination against urban youth is a relatively minor
problem and one that is not likely to reach the ears of China's leaders on its
own. Local officials, after all, are not going to report to Peking that they are
deliberately giving urban young people a hard time, but this is exactly the kind
of information that refugees are best qualified, and most likely, to report to
China watchers. Paradoxically, the intelligence community can beat the Chinese
leaders on this issue, not one of especially high priority, while the Chinese can
consistently outfox us on the major issues that we watch so closely.
Disinformation
In addition to the usual analytical problems, Peking has two enemies-
Moscow and Taipei-who insist on inundating the world with disinformation.
China watchers can usually quickly discern and discard the more obvious fab-
rications, but the press is less discriminating. Lies often become accepted as facts
simply because they appear in a number of western newspapers. The heavy-
handed disinformation tactics have often led China watchers to disregard any
information coming from either Moscow or Taipei. This is unfortunate, because
on several occasions they have both come up with sound, accurate, and important
information. The Chinese Nationals somehow manage to get the full texts of
a number of Peking directives, and these are not hard to distinguish from those
that they fabricate. The Soviets, for their part, scooped everyone on the election
of a new member of the Chinese Politburo and also correctly predicted the pre-
cise dates during which the National People's Congress would be in session.
China watchers must be careful not to throw out the baby with the bath water.
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With all the ins and outs of China watching-the layers of secrecy, the
shifting political winds, the analysis of obscure propaganda articles, the scrutiny
of leadership appearances-those less close to the China scene are tempted to
view the China problem as insoluble and to write the Chinese off as "inscrutable."
China watchers, of course, do not have that luxury, and most of them would
disagree that the Chinese are impossible to understand. It may seem ridiculous
to others that China watchers learned to distinguish military officers from enlisted
men, when ranks were abolished and insignia removed, by the number of pockets
on their tunics, or that some China watchers have noticed a remarkable correla-
tion between those Chinese leaders who wear sunglasses in public and those
who eventually lose their jobs. That is, after all, the unique feature of the China
watching business: there are almost no clues that are not worth following up.
On those rare occasions when there is solid information about a major develop-
ment, the often divided China watching community can usually agree on its
implications and on Chinese motivations. It is not hard to understand the Chinese;
it is just hard to get information about them.
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Psychological contributions to
selective targeting
Jerrold M. Post, M.D.
Mission: to recruit a Soviet national in a third country.
In most of our overseas installations, we are heavily outmanned. Therefore
our first task must be selective targeting-to identify among the 80 or more
Soviets in a particular installation the small number who both have access to
important intelligence information, and are accessible to us. How do we further
narrow the field so as to concentrate our limited resources on the targets who
are most likely to work for us against their own country? Applied research
on the psychology of treason suggests that a process of psychological selective
targeting may help in this task.
Although it is often said that "every man has his price," we make the
assumption that not everyone can be recruited-that for all practical purposes,
a man who is at one with himself and his country is not recruitable. For an
individual to participate in espionage against his own country, there are two
basic requirements: there must be a psychologically fertile soil (i.e., the in-
dividual must have the capacity for the task), and there must be proper pre-
cipitating circumstances. He must be both able and willing. You cannot make
someone do something he can't do; you cannot make someone do something
he doesn't want to do. If it is true that the decision to work against one's
country is fundamentally an individual commitment, what is the role of the
case officer? It is to identify individuals with the psychological capacity for
working against their country, and to facilitate their decision to act.
What we are particularly interested in identifying is individuals who have
a pattern of split loyalties, who can sham loyalty on the surface while actually
being disloyal under the surface. Individuals who sustain loyal relationships
with families, friends and co-workers are intrinsically less interesting as targets
than individuals who have conflicts in their loyalties.
Thus, the nature of the marital relationship is one key indicator of how
an individual conducts his relationships. Although not everyone who betrays
his wife is about to betray his country, the Soviet who plays the role of loyal
husband while actively pursuing extra-curricular interests is more interesting
as a target than the Soviet who has a sound and sustaining marital relationship.
Similarly, the individual who does not get along with his boss, who
feels undervalued, who is blocked in his career, is much more attractive as a
target than the individual who is at the same level or ahead of his peers in terms
of his career advancement, who seems to get satisfaction from his job, and who
gets along well with his boss and. co-workers.
MORI/HRP
from pg. 35-37
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SECRET Psychological Targeting
Between the ages of 35 and 45, all persons go through a period of psycho-
logical reevaluation when they realize their youth is at an end, that all their
hopes and ambitions are not to be satisfied. Feelings of marital and job dis-
satisfaction are apt to peak at this time, and we can infer from marital and
work behavior which individuals are finding this period most stressful. Audio
can be extremely useful in making this discrimination. For some, the feelings
of self-doubt and dispair reach critical proportions at this time-the so-called
mid-life crisis. As a way of regaining their sense of competence and significance,
of proving themselves, at this time some men are impelled to act in significant
ways. Nearly all of the major agents in place and defectors were impelled to
act during this life period. Unable to fulfill themselves within their own system,
they sought new ways of proving themselves through their espionage.
One particular psychological quality which we find in spades in the major
agents in place and defectors is narcissism or self-absorption, egocentricity. In-
dividuals who are highly self-absorbed, who consider themselves entitled to
special consideration, who feel they are destined to play a special role, have
an insatiable appetite for recognition and success. Even when by external criteria
they are doing as well or better than their peers, they may feel very dissatisfied.
But when in external reality they are blocked in their careers, are embedded
in unrewarding marriages, such individuals are particularly apt to suffer, to
harbor grievances, to collect injustices, and at times to be motivated to strike
back at the individuals or the system not gratifying their needs. Thus we should
try to identify vain and arrogant individuals who consider themselves superior
to others and are impatient with ordinary frustrations, who feel entitled to
succeed. Some individuals have this quality to such a degree that they come to
feel they have a special role to play in history, what we have come to identify
as the Messiah complex. When we identify a highly narcissistic individual who
has a pattern of split loyalties, so that he feels he may have a special role to
play in saving his people from the system, we have identified a very ripe target
indeed.
Just as the marriage can provide useful clues to individuals with patterns
of split loyalties, so too the family background can provide useful leads. Indi-
viduals who are brought up in homes by united parents at one with the regime
are less interesting as targets. But there is a high percentage of family disrup-
tion through death, prolonged separation, or divorce and parental conflict in
the childhood of defectors and agents in place.
Two patterns of particular interest are loyalty to dissidence and dissidence
to loyalty. Some of our major assets have felt extremely close to relatives who
opposed the regime or had been bruised by the regime. Their act of treason was
an act of loyalty to dissident parents. On the other hand, rebellious youth whose
parents are highly identified with the regime are a particular interesting target
group. What better way to strike back at your father, the KGB colonel, than to
take a whack at the establishment? This has been a central motivation for some
of our major assets. Getting a fix on the target's childhood and adolescence and
the quality of the relationship with the parents can thus provide some extremely
useful clues.
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Psychological selective targeting is nothing more than loading the dice in
our favor. Although none of the items enumerated is critical in and of itself,
if in surveying our target population, we can identify individuals who have
several of these features, we may be identifying individuals who have the stuff
of which useful defectors-in-place are made. It is a fabric, a pattern we are
trying to discern. And when we can identify individuals who came from a
fractured family background, who were rebellious as adolescents or had parents
bruised by the regime, who show a pattern of split loyalties in their relations
with their wives and co-workers, who feel especially entitled to succeed and
be recognized, who are showing signs of stress in the critical mid-life period,
we have identified highly susceptible individuals.
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The birth and development
of scientific intelligence
SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL INTELLIGENCE ANALYSIS
in 1939, the British decided to assign a scientist to the Intelligence Branch
of the Air Staff. Inasmuch as no scientist had previously worked for an intelli-
gence service, this was a new and revolutionary idea. A tall, solemn physicist
named R. V. Jones, then working at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farn-
borough, was picked for the job. Jones's first job was to study "new German
weapons" which were believed to be under development. The first of these
was a blind bombing system which the Germans called Knickebein. Knickebein,
as Jones soon determined, used a pair of radio beams which were about one mile
wide at their point of intersection over the city of London. German bombers
flew along one beam, and when their radio receivers indicated that they were at
the intersection with the second beam, they released their bombs.
At Jones's urging, Winston Churchill ordered up an RAF search aircraft
on the night of 21 June 1940, and the aircraft found the Knickebein radio signals
in the frequency range which Jones had predicted. With this knowledge,
the British were able to build jammers whose effect was to bend the Knickebein
beams so that German bombers for months to come scattered their bomb loads
over the British countryside. Thus began the famous "battle of the beams"
which lasted throughout much of World War II, with the Germans developing
new radio navigation systems and the British developing equally effective counter-
measures to them.
Jones went on to solve a number of tough Scientific and Technical Intel-
ligence problems during World War II and is generally known today as the
"father of S&T Intelligence." The basic principles of S&T Intelligence analysis
which Jones worked out during World War II and which have been previously
discussed in Studie's in Intelligence* are just as useful today as they were in
the beginning.
Purpose of S&T Intelligence
The primary purpose of S&T Intelligence since Jones's day has been to
identify new enemy weapons and to describe their characteristics.
Once you know the characteristics of an enemy weapon system, then his
tactics and strategy for using the weapon system follow naturally. If, as a
result of a heavy research, development, and testing effort, the Soviets manage
to squeeze the accuracy of a particular ICBM down below .25 nautical miles
CEP, then the primary target of all such ICBMs is almost surely going to be
U.S. Minuteman missile silos. If the ICBM has no better than one-half nautical
*Jones, Reginald V. "Scientific Intelligence," Studies VI/3; and "The Scientific Intelli-
gencer," ibid, VI/4.
MORI/HRP
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mile accuracy, then it probably will be used against cities, industrial complexes,
and other soft targets. As another example, the range of the Soviet BACKFIRE
bomber is a critical factor in determining whether BACKFIRE is intended for
use against ground targets in Western Europe and for naval use, or whether
it is intended for strike missions against the Continental United States.
Also, once you know the characteristics of an enemy weapon system, counter-
measures against that system become much easier. For instance, we knew a
great deal about the SA-2 surface-to-air missile system which was deployed
extensively to defend North Vietnam. When the decision was made to launch
mass raids against North Vietnam with B-52 aircraft, we were able to tailor
our countermeasures against the SA-2 so well that on some raids the North
Vietnamese SAM system was almost completely ineffective. On the other hand,
we knew very little about the SA-6 SAM system which was deployed in Egypt
prior to the Yom Kippur War. Largely as a result of this lack of knowledge,
countermeasures against the SA-6 were not effective and the Israelis lost large
numbers of their strike aircraft to Egyptian SAM systems.
Cases of S&T Intelligence
Jones found that all the S&T Intelligence problems which he encountered
fell into three general cases. Unfortunately, since Jones's time, S&T analysts have
had to contend with a fourth case.
S&T CASE #1:
WE DEVELOP WEAPON-
THEY DEVELOP WEAPON
This is the most common problem encountered by S&T intelligence officers.
We develop an ICBM-the Soviets develop an ICBM. We put MIRVs on our
ICBMs-they are putting MIRVs on their ICBMs. The Soviets developed an
ABM system-we developed an ABM system. Both sides are now developing
a laser kill weapon. And so forth. In this case the S&T Intelligence officer's job
is not so difficult, because he can turn to his own country's experts on that
particular weapon system. Use of your own experts has its own pitfalls, however,
as we note later on. A classic example of some of the pitfalls is "The Case of the
SS-6." * U.S. ICBM experts, insisting on applying U.S. design approaches to
Soviet missile designs, managed to hold up an accurate intelligence assessment
of the SS-6 for a number of years.
S&T CASE #2:
WE DEVELOP WEAPONS-
THEY DON'T DEVELOP WEAPONS
In this case the intelligence officer runs into a real problem: it is almost
impossible to disprove anything in S&T intelligence. The fact that no intelligence
information exists about a particular foreign development cannot be used to show
*Wonus, M. C., Studies in Intelligence, XIII/1.
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that the development itself doesn't exist. As an Air Force intelligence officer
in the early 1960s, I read year after year the USAF estimates that said, "the
USSR is probably developing a pulse doppler radar for its interceptor aircraft,"
and "the USSR is expected to deploy a computerized air defense system similar
to the U.S. SAGE system." Years later, the Soviets have still done neither-so far
as we can tell. But both estimates are just as difficult to disprove in 1974 as they
were in 1964. And the BACKFIRE we mentioned earlier . . . how can anyone
conclude that the Soviets do not intend to use it as a strategic bomber against
the U.S., no matter how unsuited it may be for such a mission?
S&T CASE #3:
WE DON'T DEVELOP WEAPONS-
THEY DEVELOP WEAPONS
This is the most dangerous case. Here the S&T Intelligence officer has
to overcome opposition from skeptics from his own country. Very often these
skeptics are scientists who themselves tried a similar approach, failed, and
then felt themselves obligated to discourage everyone else from trying the same
thing.
One of the most dramatic examples of Case #3 was the Soviet development
of the antiship cruise missile. Segments of the U.S. intelligence community
sounded a warning in the early 1960s that the Soviet antiship missiles represented
a real threat to the U.S. surface fleet. The threat was not taken seriously,
however, until the sinking of the Israeli destroyer Eilat by an early model Soviet
cruise missile in the Six Day War of 1967. Unfortunately, many Defense Depart-
ment officials then overreacted, and have since repeatedly labeled the U.S.
surface navy "a bunch of sitting ducks."
Analysts in the bacteriological warfare and chemical warfare business will
become more and more familiar with Case #3 now that the U.S. has stopped
all BW/CW weapons research.
S&T CASE #4:
WE DON'T DEVELOP WEAPONS-
THEY DON'T DEVELOP WEAPONS
R. V. Jones never had to contend with this case, since the British were
involved in a war and had no resources to waste on academic problems. Case
#4 is the most frustrating; it resembles Case #2, but since we haven't developed
the weapons system in question, physical restraints can be ignored and any
of the players can change any of the rules of the game at any time. Our first
real encounter with Case #4 was the SAM upgrade problem, described by
Sayre Stevens in "SAM Upgrade Blues."
SAM upgrade-the possibility that the USSR could develop a limited
ABM defense using the SA-2 (and later SA-5) SAM systems-made life exciting
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(and frustrating) for many CIA analysts and senior officials. Any time an analyst
working on SAM upgrade seemed to be making progress toward a solution, some-
one would find a new wrinkle in the problem which forced a fresh start. One
lesson of SAM upgrade is that we can no longer produce only conventional in-
telligence assessments. Intelligence analysts will continue to answer questions
which read, "What is the capability of weapon system `X'?"; but more and more
analysts will encounter questions which begin "What if ... ?" These are usually
the Case #4 questions.
Last summer, DDS&T intelligence analysts had to address the idea that
the Soviets might be developing a space-based laser ABM system. This concept
was proposed by a senior official of another government agency (interestingly,
most Case #4 problems are proposed by people who are outside the intelligence
community but have contact with it; seldom if ever are such cases proposed
by intelligence officers). The idea was that the Soviets might be working on
a program to put large high-powered ultraviolet lasers into synchronous altitude
(25,000-mile-high) orbits. By focusing the laser energy on U.S. ICBM reentry
vehicles during their midcourse phase of flight, the Soviets would then be able
to destroy any number of the reentry vehicles. The fact that such a program
would cost the Soviets more resources than the U.S. put into the Apollo Program
seemed to daunt no one-least of all the advocates who insisted that we look
for evidence of a Soviet program. After considerable expenditure of analyst
time and effort, we concluded that the Soviets were not developing a space-
based laser ABM system. Unfortunately, this was probably only the initial effort
on this particular problem. It seems characteristic of Case #4 problems that
they never go away; they simply go through cycles.
Sources of S&T Intelligence
Jones used the analogy of the human head to describe how S&T cases
were handled. In his analogy the eyes represented photo intelligence and the
ears represented signal intelligence. Both of these intelligence inputs were fed
to the brain, which handled the job of collating the intelligence, analyzing what
it meant, and making decisions. To complete the analogy, one might consider
the mouth to represent the dissemination process.
Despite Jones' comment about the eyes and ears, an S&T analyst normally
uses six sources of information in his work. They are:
Photo Intelligence
Signal Intelligence
Human Sources
Foreign Literature
Results of U.S. Work
Basic Physical Laws
Many intelligence analysts refer to the first two of these as "hard" intelli-
gence and the second two as "soft" intelligence. This unfortunate terminology
reflects a common bias that photo and signal intelligence information is more
reliable than the other kinds. Actually, human and foreign literature sources
have provided some of our most valuable insights into foreign scientific and
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technical developments. Their evaluation, however, requires more judgment
and analytical skill than do the photo and signal intelligence sources.
The last two sources-U.S. work and basic physical laws-are not generally
considered as sources of intelligence at all. But these sources tell you what has
been done and what can be done. And they take as much analytical time as any
of the other sources. In some cases, they may take more time; some analysts claim
that it is easier to get information on Soviet than on U.S. R&D work.
Intelligence analysis-the brain function in the Jones analogy-is the
process of pulling together all the sources of information and drawing conclusions.
It is a difficult process, probably no better understood than the functioning of
the brain itself. There are a few guidelines, however, the most important of
which Jones described as "the cardinal principle of scientific intelligence."
The Cardinal Principle of Scientific Intelligence
Back in the fourteenth century, a philosopher named William of Occam
did a great deal of thinking about the best way to draw conclusions from the
results of scientific experiments. His conclusion has been used as a guiding
principle for scientific researchers in all the centuries since. It also serves as
the single most important guiding principle for intelligence analysts. It goes
under the name of Occam's Razor: Use the least number of hypotheses to explain
your observations.
Occam's Razor works this way: Suppose that we discover that the Soviet
embassy in Washington has received a copy of a classified briefing which was
presented recently in the Headquarters Auditorium. I might then announce to
you: "The Soviets must have a bug in the igloo-go find it." After you have
finished tearing the igloo apart, you come back and report that no bug is to be
found there. My reply is: "Do you really expect the Soviets to put the bugs out
where you can find them so easily? Call in the sweepersl" So after a very
thorough electronic sweep of the wrecked igloo, you come back with a negative
report. But I'm ready. "Ah-ha," I say. "It's just as I suspected-the Soviets have
developed an unsweepable bug!" As you see, we could carry this game on for
quite some time-unless you use Occam's Razor and say, "Nol There must be
a simpler explanation for our observations."
Now this story may sound a bit farfetched, but it describes the sort of thing
that goes on in the intelligence community every day. We recently went through
an exercise of this sort with an acquaintance of mine on the Intelligence Com-
munity (IC) Staff which ended up with his conclusion that every Soviet satellite
had some sort of a clandestine mission. And the only reason we hadn't found
out about all these clandestine missions was that we hadn't looked hard enoughl
Some S&T Intelligence Maxims
In addition to the cardinal principle, there are a number of rules of thumb
which most intelligence analysts learn sooner or later through hard knocks or
experience. The first of these is: Suspect all crusaders.
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An intelligence officer should never have an ax to grind. The day an analyst
says to himself, "I'm going to prove . . .," he's left the path of reason. Of course
you have to present proof for any conclusions you draw from analysis. This is
quite a different thing than setting out to prove something before you know
the facts. The objective of any intelligence analysis effort is the truth-not the
proof of some preconceived notion. There probably exists no better illustration
of this point than the story of the "SS-8 controversy" which David Brandwein
described in the Summer 1969 issue of Studies in Intelligence (XIII13).
In 1961, the Soviets began testing a new missile system, the SS-8. Air Force
intelligence analysts concluded very quickly that since the Soviets had a large
ICBM (the SS-6) and a small ICBM (the SS-7), the SS-8 would be an even
larger ICBM than the SS-6. CIA analysts disagreed. By the beginning of 1962,
the intelligence community analysts were divided into two camps-a "large
SS-8" group and a "small SS-8" group-and the struggle had all the marks
of a full-blown crusade. Neither side would concede that its analysis was less
than flawless. Each side searched for evidence to "prove" its case. By the middle
of 1962, an objective analysis of the SS-8 was no longer possible within the
intelligence community. The impasse was not broken until an independent and
reasonably impartial committee was formed to assess the problem. The con-
troversy did not end completely until 1964, when the SS-8 was photographed
in the Moscow parade and turned out to be a small missile. Unfortunately, much
time and money had already been wasted because a few people were more
concerned with "proving" their case than in finding the truth.
The mark of a true crusader generally is an inability to admit that he might
be wrong. The intelligence community seems to have more of its share of
crusaders than most government or industrial groups; unfortunately, many of
the crusaders are in the S&T Intelligence field-the last place a professional
scientist would expect them to be. Professional scientists instinctively distrust
crusaders. Crusading is incompatible with the scientific method, which tries
only to establish the facts-never to prove something. One of the great scientists
of all time, Louis Pasteur, put it concisely:
"The greatest derangement of the mind is to believe in some-
thing because one wishes it to be so ..."
A second rule of thumb in S&T Intelligence is: Experts can be wrong.
Of necessity, the intelligence community has to use experts as consultants.
It is often argued that the experts are the best people to do the analysis, but
an expert can develop a closed mind in his own field of expertise more readily
than the non-expert. Experts are particularly dangerous in S&T Case #3. When
Jones concluded his successful analysis of the Knickebein signal, his proposal
to send a search aircraft up after the signal was strongly opposed by Britain's
leading expert in radio wave propagation-who contended that the Germans
couldn't be using such a signal because it would have to bend around the earth's
surface to be received over London. Fortunately, Churchill didn't learn of the
expert's opinion until after the search aircraft had obtained the Knickebein
signal.
A big problem with experts is that they impress people unnecessarily because
they are labeled "expert." The expert's opinion may be given more weight than
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it deserves. Perhaps the mentality of official Washington-which spurns pearls
offered by a research assistant for the dross from a research director-has some-
thing to do with the problem. Any intelligence analyst foolish enough to propose
a major analysis effort on "Possible Soviet Development of a Space-based ABM
Laser Weapons System" would have been laughed at. Unfortunately, the idea
was proposed by an expert who happened to be influential, and no one laughed
(out loud, at least). We did the project.
Experts tend to be most obstinate when they are in the wrong. A few years
ago, CIA analysts were trying to assess a particular Soviet ABM radar. Some
experts who were consulted came to the conclusion, based on incomplete informa-
tion, that it was actually two radars-that a large flat structure located next
to the main radar antenna was the antenna for the secondary radar. After we had
done some additional analysis and had taken a close look at Soviet antenna
technology, it became apparent to most intelligence community analysts that
the flat structure was an antenna feed structure, not a radar. The experts dis-
missed this interpretation, and CIA analysts were obliged to search for a signal
from the secondary radar. Finally, the Soviets built an operational version of
the ABM radar we had been observing. In the operational version of the
radar, the flat structure was replaced by a strange-looking flat apparition
which no one in his right mind could call a radar antenna. While conceding
that the new flat structure was clearly a feed system for the ABM radar antenna,
the experts never did admit that their original estimate of the secondary radar
had been wrong. They merely avoided all discussions on the subject. Even today,
I occasionally ask one of the analysts who were involved in the project if he
has found the secondary radar signal yet. Fortunately, our ABM analysts all
have a good sense of humor.
When the expert's opinion differs from all the other available sources of
intelligence, you have to question the expert's opinion just as you would question
any other intelligence source, for reasons which the expert seldom can appreciate.
Treat the expert just as you would any other intelligence source; don't worship
him. The same could be said for the contractors, who are just another form of
expert. Which brings us to our next maxim: Never trust a contractor.
This is a bit strong; perhaps I should say "Don't rely unreservedly on a con-
tractor." There are good contractors and bad ones. Note that I didn't say never
use a contractor-I said don't trust him. We do and should use contractors in
S&T Intelligence analysis to perform jobs which would take too much analyst
time, but we tend to depend too much on the contractors. I once asked a good
friend of mine, an ABM analyst, about the technical capabilities of a particular
ABM radar he was studying. His reply was "I'll have to check with my contractor
first." Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I assume that his remark was tongue-
in-cheek. But it points to a dangerous trend in CIA as well as much of the
rest of the intelligence community.
Remember, a contractor is in the business for the money, much as a pro-
fessional spy is in the business for the money. Any case officer can tell you
how to treat a professional spy. You use them when you have to, but you never
trust them. The same is true for contractors.
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We once awarded an electronics analysis contract to Company "Z" on the
West Coast. Shortly thereafter, the company "Z" project officer visited Head-
quarters to receive his instructions on how to proceed. After a few formalities
and a cup of coffee, we sat down to discuss the contract details. His first question
was unforgettable-and typical of many contractors. He said: "OK-What is it
that you want us to prove?" We should have cancelled the contract on the spot.
Because the contractor wants to earn the money you're paying him, he
feels obligated to come up with something-whether there's something there
or not. A contractor also knows what every good newspaper man knows: Bad
news sells. So the contractor is particularly vulnerable to the Anak syndrome
(a vulnerability which contractors share with new intelligence analysts who are
trying to make a name for themselves).
The Anak syndrome goes back to the time when the Israelites found it
necessary to spy out the land of Caanan. The spies came back with a completed
intelligence analysis which they reported in Numbers 13:32-33:
"... And they brought up an evil report of the land which they had
searched unto the children of Israel, saying, The land, through which
we have gone to search it, is a land which eateth up the inhabitants
thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are the men of a great
stature.
And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of
the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so were
we in their sight."
The results of this report were disastrous for the Israelites: 40 more years of
wandering in the wilderness.*
Based on previous experience with contractors, I will always be convinced
that the next day Moses received a letter something like this one:
Israelite Research Projects Agency
Kadesh 3
Wilderness of Paran
Commanding General
Palestine Liberation Army
Kadesh 7
Wilderness of Paran
Unto Moses, Shalom:
1. Recent intelligence reports indicate that Canaanite Army field
units have deployed GIANTs. This unprecedented advance in human
engineering on the part of a potential enemy puts our forces at a severe
tactical disadvantage. IRPA war gaming analyses indicates that PLA
units encountering GIANT-equipped Canaanite units one-on-one would
incur 76.8% casualties while inflicting only 16.4% casualties on opposing
forces.
*For another view of Moses as policy maker and intelligence officer, see "Decision Trees,"
Studies in Intelligence, XVIII/4.
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2. IRPA believes that the magnitude of this challenge to Israelite
survival requires a full-scale R&D effort to counter the Canaanite threat.
Accordingly, we are pleased to submit our proposal entitled, "The
Feasibility of Developing GIANTs from Israelite Racial Stock."
3. IRPA is well qualified to conduct this R&D effort. Our related
experience includes two prior assessments: "The Biological Impact of
Locust Swarms on Egyptian Wheat" (Secret/ Israelite Use Only) and
"A Tactical Mobility Problem: New Approaches to Crossing the Red
Sea" (TS/IUO).
4. We propose to undertake this effort on a cost-plus-fixed-fee basis
for a fee of 2,000,000 shekels. The contract effort is expected to be com-
pleted in 40 years.
Signed,
Ammiel the Son of Gemalli of the
Tribe of Dan
Director of Research
Attachments: Proposal
Our final maxim is an obvious one: Look at the whole picture.
Or, to put it another way, never ignore sources of intelligence. This rule
may be obvious, but it's one of the most difficult things for an S&T analyst to
do. The chief problem is one of available intelligence information. NSA, CIA,
and Naval Intelligence Command, to name three groups, have many information
compartments. An S&T Intelligence analyst on almost any topic will find that
the information he needs is scattered across several of these compartments.
And sooner or later, in trying to get the information which he needs out of these
compartments, he has to face up to the paradox of S&T Intelligence: The more
important the subject, the more difficult it is to obtain access to the available
intelligence.
This paradox results not from security regulations, but from human nature.
Very few intelligence collectors or analysts are willing to reveal (to other analysts,
at least) the most interesting and exciting bits of information which they
possess. This is due to a fear-often justified-that the analyst to whom you
reveal the information will take it, use it for his own purposes, and get the
credit for your work.
Almost all intelligence services over the years have paid a heavy price for
this over-compartmentation and professional jealousy. Soon after the British
began jamming the Knickebein system, Goering became aware that the British
knew in advance when his bomber raids were coming. He put together a team
of counterintelligence officers to locate the source of the leak. Goering gave
them access to all available information except the Knickebein project, which
he considered too sensitive to release to them. Of course, Knickebein was the
tipoff of the German air raids, so Goering's counterintelligence effort was
a failure before it started. As another example, Pearl Harbor resulted in part
from too much compartmentation; the people at the top didn't have the whole
picture.
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Even when the information is available to analysts, we don't always use it
intelligently. The bias on "soft" vs. "hard" intelligence mentioned previously
is one example. We seem to be training many telemetry analysts, ELINT
analysts, photo analysts ... people who rely primarily on one source of informa-
tion, and use the others as background. Such people are S&T Intelligence
specialists. They are not S&T Intelligence analysts.
An S&T Intelligence analyst has to have a sense of perspective. He must
have an instinctive feel for what the foreign R&D groups are like-their biases,
preferred approaches, weaknesses and strengths-and the resources that act as
constraints on their developments. You can't get perspective from a single
intelligence source. You can't get perspective in three months, or even six
months, of intensive work in one S&T subject. It takes years of work, with all
the available intelligence information, to gain the perspective and the insights
that a first-line S&T Intelligence analyst must possess.
Postscript
This article has addressed some aspects of S&T Intelligence analysis as it
has developed since Jones's day. Its stress has been on weapons intelligence,
or the application of science and technology for military purposes. In recent
years, as the focus of international competition has shifted somewhat from the
military to the economic instrument of national power, a new purpose or objective
for S&T Intelligence has begun to evolve: to assess the technical capability of
our economic competitors (France, Japan, etc.) in the high technology areas
of international trade. The S&T Intelligence community is still groping for a
role in this rapidly expanding area of civil technology assessment. It is a job
which is foreign to much of our past experience. It would be a very familiar
role, however, to the industrial espionage group at General Motors which must
keep tabs on the latest developments at Ford and Chrysler. Many of the rules
discussed above will apply; some will not. The development of ground rules will
be an interesting and exciting task in this new field of S&T Intelligence.
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INTELLIGENCE IN RECENT PUBLIC LITERATURE
A HISTORY OF THE CHINESE SECRET SERVICE. By Richard Deacon.
[Donald McCormick] (Frederick Muller, London, 1974. 523 pp. with index) *
A large part of A History of the Chinese Secret Service is concerned with
Chinese history not easily related to espionage; the remainder of the book reveals
the results of the author's efforts to investigate the "modern Chinese Secret
Service," that is, the intelligence services and operations of the People's Re-
public of China (PRC). To accomplish this and "to get at the facts," the author
states that he created his own "mini-intelligence organization" with the opera-
tional code name of "Jackdaw," composed of "no fewer than 23 . . . spies
and researchers;" he adds that "no one member of the team knew any of the
others, so there was no opportunity for collusion." The book jacket's blurb adds
that "Operation Jackdaw" was "composed both of operatives in the field and
ham radio operators who successfully intercepted and interpreted Chinese
Secret Service radio messages." All this conjures up an image of a vast espionage
network. Unfortunately, however, the author rarely cites sources of information,
and, when identified, they are invariably of a secondary sort and usually items
garnered from overt publications. He has been repeatedly interviewed by MI-5
about his so-called sources, apparently without success, and has been aptly
described as a "scissors and paste" writer. His penchant for hyperbole and
even fabrication tends to negate whatever pretensions for authenticity the book
may otherwise have had.
It is also to be noted that so-called "secret service" activities described
by the author range from Chinese historical incidents of purely political or
military nature to allegedly current and sophisticated clandestine operations
including intelligence collection and political action. Moreover, Chinese govern-
ment organs, activities, and personalities with basically no connection with
intelligence operations are frequently characterized by the author as "secret
service." For example, Pan Ch'ao, who takes his place in history as being re-
sponsible for bringing most areas of Central Asia under Chinese control during
the latter part of the first century through political ingenuity and military
daring, is considered by the author "the first man to establish an external
espionage system for the Chinese empire." The apparent basis for this state-
ment is that, according to the author, "altogether he [Pan Ch'ao] spent the
best part of 30 years in Central Asia, having won the allegiance of something
like 50 tiny tribal kingdoms."
Then there is the case of Lin Tse-hsu, Special Anti-Opium Commissioner
to Canton in 1839. His activities to put an end to the foreign opium traffic
with China are referred to by the author as "the first occasion in the nineteenth
century when China's Secret Service was forced into action against a foreign
power." Lin's attempts to familiarize himself with all facets of the opium trade
before acting on behalf of his emperor to put an end to it apparently makes
Lin, in the author's opinion, a "secret service" operator. Here, therefore, the
*Also published in the United States as "The Chinese Secret Service," by Taplinger
Publishing Company, New York, 1974.
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acquisition of information for the better understanding of a political or economic
situation is equated with "secret service" or clandestine activity. Even the organ-
ization of "The Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists," usually re-
ferred to as "The Boxers," is considered by the author a "Secret Service, which
would enable them [the Boxers) to drive out the foreign devils" from China.
Concerning present-day PRC "Secret Service" activities, the author has in-
cluded innumerable reports, in most cases completely unauthenticated, from
published material as well as allegedly from members of his "Jackdaw" intel-
ligence net. As any one involved in the collection of information on the PRC
Intelligence Service (PRCIS) will attest, the author truthfully states that "it
has been most difficult to gather any information" on the personnel of "the
Investigation Bureau, the most secret of all organizations in the modern Chinese
Secret Service." Here the author undoubtedly is referring to what CIA calls
the Investigation Department of the Chinese Communist Party (ID/CCP).
The book does contain some valid items of information, considered "Secret"
by CIA and including the identification of the ID/CCP as well as some of its
activities and responsibilities. Unfortunately, neither Chinese ideographs nor
romanizations for such organs as the ID/CCP are given, and discrepancies in
the romanized nomenclature often occur, with different titles used for the same
organ in different parts of the book, and with no apparent effort to reconcile
the differences nor even to indicate they exist. For example, on Page 314,
reference is correctly made to the "Investigation Department of the Party," but
on the same page, farther on, mention is made of the "Investigation Depart-
ment of the State Council" (the latter actually a government rather than a
Party organ) where obviously the ID/CCP is intended. Then, on Page 465,
"The Ministry of Investigation" is described as "the key organization of the
Chinese Secret Service" and the "highest of all the intelligence organizations,"
again with no indication from the author that this organ is obviously identical
with the previously mentioned "Investigation Bureau," "Investigation Depart-
ment of the Party," and "Investigation Department of the State Council."
Several other items of information in A History of the Chinese Secret Service
have, basically, the ring of what CIA considers to be the truth concerning the
PRCIS, although the author, in his own inimitable way, apparently cannot
refrain from overstatement. Included in this category of valid statements are
items such as: "The Chinese Intelligence Service deliberately maintains a low-
key activity in Europe;" "Chou (Tsou) Ta-p'eng, who was a key figure in the
Investigation Department, appears to have disappeared since the Cultural Rev-
olution;" and "The Ministry for Public Security . . . still controls internal
security, sends spies to Taiwan ... as well as having officials in every Embassy
abroad."
The inconsistencies in A History of the Chinese Secret Service, concerning
inter alia the nomenclature of PRC intelligence organs, could probably have
been avoided if the author had attempted to analyze, collate, and edit reports
obtained allegedly "from all parts of the world." Unfortunately, he seems to
lack the proclivity for careful examination of the information gobbled tip by
his "voracious bird" jackdaw. as characterized apparently by one member of
his "intelligence net." The author seems, moreover, to have a propensity for
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embellishment of information to the extent that in some cases it becomes "more
and more like a fictional fantasy"-the author's own description of an extrava-
gant tale of derring-do and espionage allegedly involving Hsu Tsu-tsai, a
Chinese scientist who died as a result of an unsuccessful attempt to defect from
the PRC while attending an international scientific conference in the Nether-
lands in July 1966.
The author's imaginative concoction of the events leading to Hsu's un-
successful defection effort and his death makes James Bond's often incredible
adventures seem like prosaic experiences and, indeed, is "fictional fantasy" and
not just "like a fictional fantasy." The book's version of the Hsu case makes
him the principal actor in a bizarre melodrama allegedly involving CIA efforts,
through a Chinese intermediary, to offer Hsu "a million dollars for deserting
and handing a `parcel' to the U.S. Embassy in The Hague," the "parcel" con-
taining a capsule of "poison gas." This melodrama reaches its climax when
Hsu, according to the author, "pleaded" with his CIA contact: "Take me to
your Embassy. I am going to ask for political asylum." Unfortunately, however,
just as Hsu allegedly was handing over the parcel as well as some micro-film
demanded by the CIA man, "The door of No. 17 opened up and four Chinese
ran into the street. . . . The Chinese shouted to the driver of a car that had
just come around the corner: `Look-someone is trying to escape. Stop him!'
The driver immediately drove straight at Hhu, knocking him down and pushing
his body on to the pavement." "The two Chinese who went with Hsu to the
hospital alleged that he had fallen out of a window of the house" where he
was staying. Later, "Hsu was kidnaped from the X-ray Department" of the
Red Cross Hospital.
This figment of the author's contrasts with what appears to be the simple
truth concerning the Hsu incident as related by Liao Ho-shu, who was second
secretary at the Chinese Embassy at The Hague at the time of the Hsu defec-
tion attempt and who, in 1969, when charge, defected to the U.S. According to
Liao, Hsu "tried to defect by tying sheets together to let himself down from
the window of the bedroom. The sheets parted at the point where they were
tied together, plunging him to his eventual death three stories below. He was
discovered by another Chinese Communist lying on the sidewalk and taken
to the hospital by the Chinese Communist who found him. . . . A group was
then sent to the hospital to remove Hsu to the mission where he died."
It is to be stressed that-the author's spine-tingling tale notwithstanding-
there had been no CIA involvement with Hsu prior to the International Welders
Conference in the Netherlands in July 1966. At that conference, American
scientists collaborating with CIA had only casual conversations with Hsu, and
reported no indications that he would soon be attempting to defect.
Perhaps an even more flagrant fabrication than the Hsu fiction is the
author's treatment of the Liao Ho-shu defection. He describes Liao as "one
of . . . the most important Chinese spy chiefs in Western Europe," a "Chinese
Philby ... engaged in selling secrets to the West and working on behalf of the
Americans while actually still operating inside Chinese intelligence," and "with-
out doubt the single major defector from the Chinese Intelligence Service to
the West in the past quarter of a century." All this must be considered utter
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nonsense by anyone familiar with the Liao case, for in actuality Liao was a
paranoiac, frustrated, and relatively unimportant member of the PRC diplo-
matic mission at The Hague, who became charge in July 1966 after his prede-
cessors had become political casualties of the Cultural Revolution. A thorough
investigation and debriefing of Liao by CIA after his defection in January 1969
revealed that he had little knowledge of PRC intelligence organizations and
activities. Liao returned to the PRC of his own. volition in 1972.
In like manner, the book's chapter entitled "The Opium War in Reverse"
is a greatly exaggerated, misleading, and inaccurate account of PRC participation
in narcotics smuggling operations allegedly controlled by the Chinese "Secret
Service." It is replete with unsupported statements such as: "Only in the hands
of the Chinese Communists has it been used almost solely as a subversive
weapon and for financing, by an opium war in reverse, a great many of their
espionage operations." Available information would tend to belie these extrava-
gant contentions.
The author's treatment of the New China News Agency (NC NA) and its
activities also reflects his disposition for hyperbole, which permeates the book.
The fact that NCNA has served as cover for intelligence operators in all parts
of the world gives him the opportunity to overstate its importance as a "secret
service" organ and to equate all NCNA activities with intelligence operations.
Succumbing once again to his penchant for generalization, the author stresses
the "reliability of NCNA correspondents as agents," pointing out that "not a
single one of them has been known to defect." Obviously, his "Jackdaw"
operators did not get the word to him that an NCNA employee in Cairo had
defected from the PRC in December 1959 and another in Katmandu in
November 1970.
In addition to apparently deliberate attempts at embellishment and fabrica-
tion, the book contains a plethora of what can charitably be described as unin-
tentional blunders. Included in this category are the description of Liao Cheng-
chih as a former Ambassador to Burma, and statements that France recognized
the PRC in 1967 (rather than in 1964) and that "up to the end of 1972 there
was only one representative of the NCNA in Paris." Along these lines, it is to
be noted that since the late 1950s there have been normally at least two NCNA
representatives in Paris at the same time, even before the recognition of the
PRC by France in 1964.
Then there is the author's dogmatic and unqualified assertion that "ever
since the rift with China, the USSR has drastically scaled down its intelligence
effort in the colony [Hong Kong], having switched its attention to other areas."
This, however, is followed immediately by references to a "top man of Soviet
intelligence in Hong Kong," who "was known to live aboard a ship for his own
protection" as well as to "KGB agents" who "only pay brief visits to Hong Kong
by ship from Nahodka . . . and then meet their contacts aboard ship, which
they rarely if ever leave." Thus, unwittingly, the author himself points up the
inaccuracy of the implication that the KGB has voluntarily curtailed its intelli-
gence activities against the PRC in Hong Kong. All indications are that the
[long Kong authorities have prevented the USSR from establishing either an
official or unofficial presence, which would facilitate KGB activity in Hong
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Kong, because of the obvious sensitivity of the PRC to such developments,
and that the USSR is anxious to exploit areas such as Hong Kong, on the
southern periphery of the PRC, for the acquisition of information on China.
There are few places in the book where the author appears to let his
imagination take freer rein than in his discussion of Sino-American relations
and the effects of alleged Soviet "disinformation" operations on this relation-
ship. "... so blinded were both the CIA and U.S. State Department to the true
facts of life vis-a-vis China in the early sixties," writes the author, "that the
KGB's disinformation activities helped enormously to shape the U.S.A. policies
towards China." The United States apparently should also be very grateful to the
Chinese who, according to the author, "gave the Americans a real break-through
in supplying details of the Soviet espionage setup in Hong Kong which
eventually led to the collapse of that network. From that moment the Chinese
were able to start secret talks with the United States and these paved the way
for the visit of President Nixon to Peking and the beginning of some measure
of agreement between the two countries." And "China's intelligence links" have
been strengthened "with the U.S.A., with whom there is now a modest exchange
of information on an unofficial level." Here the author undoubtedly magnifies
the Sino-American Liaison Offices' contacts into a budding Sino-American
intelligence relationship. And in rehashing the allegation* that Henry Kissinger
"as `Bor' had been an agent of O.D,R.A., a section of Soviet intelligence con-
trolled from Poland," the author adds a new, completely unsubstantiated
wrinkle: "with their usual painstaking efforts the Chinese checked and double-
checked and finally obtained ... the full details of the KGB smear on Kissinger.
All this was passed on to the Americans." There is no doubt that even Deacon
would agree, along with the Chinese, that this story is "more like a fictional
fantasy" than the truth.
Stressing the possible mutuality of interest between the PRC and Israel
vis-a-vis the USSR, the author states that "in Khartoum, the Chinese Intelligence
Service is credited with having established some unusual links with both the
French Intelligence in neighboring territories, both North and South, and with
Israel." Immediately, however, he adds that "attempts to unravel the truth
of these machinations have, it must be confessed, failed." These "machinations"
are, indeed, tantalizing, but of course, like other sensational revelations in the
book, are completely uncorroborated.
The author's handling of the apparent suicide of Paul Yu, scientist and
inventor, who had owned and operated an electronics laboratory in Passaic, N.J.,
until the company went into bankruptcy in 1968, is an excellent example of his
reporting technique. It is to be noted that all the pertinent information in what
the author calls "the strange case of Dr. Paul Yu," who apparently committed
suicide aboard a TWA flight from Taiwan to Honolulu, could have been and
probably was obtained by the author from a UPI dispatch, from Honolulu,
dated 4 April 1973, to which the author does refer and which was the basis for
other newspaper reports in Hong Kong, including those in the Chinese language
*An allegation published in March 1974 by Frank A. Capell, Editor of The Herald of
Freedom, an anti-Semitic, anti-Communist newsletter issued in Zarephath, N.J. Capell
attributed the charge to a defector from the Polish Intelligence Service.
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press. The author has, however, enlarged on the basic information and offers
several interpretations, all probably his own but referred to as "various reports
circulating." Presenting all possible conjectures or "theories" as to the reasons
for Yu's suicide, these "reports" include the U.S. Government's fear that "Yu,
who had reputedly developed a missile device, would pass his secrets to a foreign
power, which poses the question whether Yu committed suicide or whether
he was murdered by U.S. agents." The author concludes that "there was no ap-
parent reason for Yu's suicide; the report of his death remains strangely untrue."
Indeed it does, and mainly because of the author's melodramatic and hyperbolic
treatment of this "strange case."
The Richard Deacon case is itself a strange case. The book jacket of A
History of the Chinese Secret Service reveals that "Richard Deacon is well
known as a historical writer, not only for his histories of the British and Russian
secret services, but also for Madoc and the Discovery of America, John Dee, and
The Private Life of Mr. Gladstone," and that "under his real name [he] has
written a number of books, including a well-received reinvestigation of Jack the
Ripper, and has recently retired from his position as Sunday Times Foreign
Manager." The 1974 edition of The Dictionary of International Biography indi-
cates further that "George Donald King McCormick, British author and journalist
had published 21 books under the name of Donald McCormick, including
Murder by Perfection, 1970, One Man's Wars, 1972, and How to Buy an Island,
1973, as well as five books under the name of Richard Deacon, including A
History of the Russian Secret Service, 1973." It is to be noted that, in 1974,
The Master Book of Escapes and The Master Book of Spies were both published
with Donald McCormick as author. The Writers' Dictionary, 1974-76, published
1973 by St. Martin's Press, New York, notes: "McCormick, (George) Donald
(King). Also writes as Richard Deacon. Biographer, historian and writer on
topography, and true life crime."
An intriguing question concerns Mr. McCormick's criterion for determining
the use of his real name or the pseudonym of Richard Deacon. An examination
of the titles and subjects of his works would lead one to conclude that the
pseudonym is used for the historical publications and the real name for those
on non-historical matters. The two Masters books, published under the Mc-
Cormick name, however, would seem by the nature of the subject matter to fall
into the category of historical as well as "secret service" works and, therefore,
could be expected to have been attributed to the authorship of Richard Deacon.
Yet apparently in Mr. McCormick's estimation they qualify to bear his real
name because, although historical in nature, they are concerned with real as
well as fictitious spies and "escapists." If this analysis is correct, then it is baffling
that the "secret service" books have been published under the author's pseudonym
of Richard Deacon rather than his real name of Donald McCormick. Even a
cursory reading of the author's books on the Russian and British Secret Services
places them easily in the same category as A History of the Chinese Secret Service,
which this reviewer has attempted to indicate, in no uncertain terms, is an
inappropriate mixture of fact and fiction.
Stanley Bergman
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