NEW BODY FORMED TO GUIDE SECURITY
Document Type:
Collection:
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST):
CIA-RDP86B00269R000500050101-9
Release Decision:
RIFPUB
Original Classification:
K
Document Page Count:
28
Document Creation Date:
December 14, 2016
Document Release Date:
April 28, 2003
Sequence Number:
101
Case Number:
Publication Date:
May 11, 1949
Content Type:
NSPR
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Attachment | Size |
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CIA-RDP86B00269R000500050101-9.pdf | 8.55 MB |
Body:
Approved For Release 2003/05/27 : CIA-RDP86B00269R000500050101-9
NEW BODY FORMED
TO GUIDE SECURITY
Interdepartmental Committee
Will Chart Policy Against
Subversive Activity
SneeI- i to Tar, New Yonx rinses
WASHINGTON, May 10-The
National Security Council, it was
learned today, has created the
Interdepartmental Committee on
Internal Security (ICIS) to de-
velop a policy against subversive
activity within the United States.
The new agency, which will
function at the highest level above
Federal investigating and intelli-
gence agencies, was formed on
March 23 with the approval of
President Truman, who is chair-
man of the National Security
Council. The directive putting it
into effect was recently taken off
the secret list.
The ICIS received co=equal
status with the Interdepartmental
Intelligence Conference (IIC),
which consists of the heads of
Federal investigating departments.
Thus, while the new committee
,vill have no authority over the old
.IC, its policies and decisions on
nethods of coping with particular
>ecurity problems will govern the
nvestigating agencies. Any dis-
igrecnent between the two would
>e settled by the National Security
'ouncil, parent of both groups.
my fundamental; division that
ould not be settled by the council
vould be submitted to the Presi-
lent for decision.
Officials said this was the pre-
erred solution of the problem of
oordinating anti-subversive activ-
dies and developing a policy re-
nting to it. It was recalled that
ames Forrestal, former Secretary
f Defense, had proposed that
ome eminent civilian be chosen
o survey the adequacy of internal
ecurity and to take on the task
f correlating the efforts of all the
gencies involved in maintain-
Ig it.
The wisdom of placing such a
Yale Professor Chosen
s Drew Seminary Dea
Yale U
as dea
serve
tamen
cc
tment, Dr. Craig will succe-kd
Newton Davies, who is
retiring next Monday afte
ulty_
role in the hands of one person
was questioned, however. The
council thereupon settled on the
ICIS. Mr. Forrestal, a member of
the council, readily joined in ac-
THE NEW YORK TIMES, WEDNESDAY,' MAY 11, 1949.
cepting it as the preferred machin-
ery, it was reported.
As now conceived, the two agen-
cies, having great responsibilities
relating to inquisitional powers
and safety of the nation, would
act as a check and balance on
each other.
The members of the ICIS are:
Raymond P. Whearty, special as-
sistant to the Attorney General;
Samuel D. Boykin, director of the
Office of Controls, State Depart-
Admiral Thomas B. Inglis, Chief
of Naval Intelligence, and Brig.
Gen. Joseph F. Carroll, director
of the Officq of Special Investiga-
tion, Air Force.
Between them the two agencies,
apart from maintaining estab-
lished security safeguards, would
consider new problems as, they
arose.
These might include such cases
as that of Mme. Irene Joliot-Curie,
daughter of the discoverer of radi-
ment; ? James J. Maloney, former
head of the Secret Service, and
now chief coordinator of the
(Treasury Department's enforce-
ment agencies, and Major Gen.
Charles L. Bolte, director of the
Special Planning Group of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff.
J. Patrick Coyne, former Direc-
tor of Internal Security in the
Federal Bureau of investigation,
has been retained as coordinator
of the Activities of the IIC and
the ICIS. He is a member of the
staff of Sidney W. Souers, execu-
tive secretary of the National Se-
,curity Council.
The members of the IIC are J.
Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI;
Major Gen. S. LeRoy Irwin, Di-
rector of Intq ligence, Army De-
partment General Staff; Rear
um and wife of Frederic Joliot-
Curie, Communist head of the
French Atomic Energy Commis-
sion. She received a visa to visit
this country in March
1948
But
,
.
when she arrived in New York the
i
'
mmigration authorities
detained
her.
She was finally released and
went ahead with a lecture tour on
behalf of Co the Joint Anti-Fascist
Refugee mmittee. It was said
that under the new system her
case would be Ccnsidered before a
visa was grartted.
Also mentioned was the problem
raised by the admission of com-
munists and fellow travelers to the
so-called Cultural and Scientific
Conference for World Peace in
New York in March.
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They Fight the Cold War
Under (:over
i)OI'L i .L ; ~' BIl\.SO.1
I ter(' ' the turv uI NN hat our neii eaL -iI I il-)Iit g(er outfit.
t114 (,t'ntril III14 genre _-enev, i- doing to Iceel- unr
-i f rots-au(I learn the -ecret- of other uatiut):. It tint'-
fruni thine who serve in the IitIle-LnoAAit ur,!anizatiun.
Ai'l' 1 ,1st spring, Lt (of. J. 1). Tassoyev, Soviet
Guards Officer, was the central figure tit a
melodrama of internal ional intrigue that
rocketed onto the front page of almost every news-
l';ifier from Moscow to Sun Francisco. At the i ime,
there were two versions to the incident.
'l'ass, tIre official U. S. S. R. news agency, charged
t hat Tassoyev was kidnaped from Bremen to Lon-
don. imprisoned and tortured by the British Secret
Si'rvice in an effort to make him abandon his couu-
v's service.
I lily because "a scandal was brewing," 'l'ass
attn. did t he British Government ultimately release
I tip' o.'olonel to Soviet authorities.
The gent torah was here in England of his own
tree will," countered the British Foreign Office... He
left because he was asked to leave."
The American intelligence officers could fill in I he
missing chunks of both stories. They could tell :i tale
,,t spy arrd counterspy that would sound lil.e a movie
thriller. It. would he a valuable account, too, for it
would prove that, despite blundering of high levels
Lard abrasive frictions between agencies of our own
( lovernruent, the. United States at last has the rnak-
ings of in ell`ective intelligence system.
Here is the story the United States intelligence of-
ficers could tell. It comes from otlicial United Stales
Government sources.
('olonel'Tassoyev approaclied American agents ill
Bremen last April wit h an otter to desert the Soviet
Arniy. According io the report sent Washington, the
colonel spoke at lengt It about his hatred of cornmu-
nisnr, his yearning for democracy. He hinted t hat lie
had a large stock of secrets to divulge.
Such tut otter was nothing new to the United
States intelligence men. Scores of lied Army mien,
including at least one Russian lieutenant general,
have recently run out on Stalin. Many have given
valuable infortnat.ion. But the American agents told
Washington 1 hat t hey were not impressed with Tas-
sovev. "There was something phony about hits. Ill
their radioed report to Washington, the Americans
said point -blank that Tassoyev was a plant. Wash-
ington directed that they have nothing to do with
hint.
The American agents didn't, but the British
Secret Service dill! 'I'assoyev went to the British
after tit(- Americans strut the door in his face. The
British took him at his word and flew hint to Eng-
fand in Field Marshal Montgomery's own plane.
11heu our siipersleutits flopped. Iilood, N rioting in the streets of' BogoIJI, Colombia.
opening of flit- Pan-American Confirt-114c there last %pril. Our operatiNes' inecpcriencv
marked the
as blamed.
Director ,,t' Iii nem. oritl'it. Hear Admiral It. If.
IIiIIt- iihOCtIcr itioi41, hiring _+nniIiiii? arIisty. - .
In I ou,;on, he British lodged I he colonel iii a
coud'ortahie six-room apart uieni turd set to work ex-
amining hint. They even had one of I heir young
woman opera, ves, a blonde maned Betty Wiggin,
on hand IW26W0Q QQW01-9
THEY FIGHT THE COLD
WAR UNDER COVER
(Continued from Page 30)
picture of what is going on above and
underground throughout the world.
On the basis of a probing investiga-
tion into CIA's record, the results of
which were checked with a wide num-
ber of important Government officials,
this writer can say:
Months in advance, CIA ascertained
that the Russians were projecting a
drive to oust the Western democracies
from Berlin. As far back as last Decem-
ber, it provided Washington with de-
tails of the Russian plans for blockad-
ing the German capital by disrupting
its rail, river and air transportation.
CIA obtained full facts on the activ-
ities of the 100,000 slave laborers min-
ing uranium for the Russians in Ger-
many, Czechoslovakia and Poland.
More than three months' notice was
given the United States Government of
the Russian communist plot to take
over Czechoslovakia. The massing of
Red troops on the Czech border was
completely reported to Washington.
After the debacle, CIA engineered the
escape to the United States Zone of
Germany of dozens of outstanding
Czech democrats.
CIA agents turned up the proof that
Russia was supplying arms and ammu-
nition to its adherents in Italy and
France.
Continuous inside information has
been furnished Washington on future
Arab moves in the Palestine situation.
On the other hand, the record also
discloses that CIA has stumbled badly
at times. It shows that:
CIA made a mess of its work in con-
nection with the outbreak of violence
that swept Bogota, Colombia, during
the Pan-American Conference there
last April.
Efforts by CIA to learn and properly
evaluate what other nations are doing
in the field of atomic energy have been
a fizzle.
CIA permitted subversives to pene-
trate its own staff. This occurred when
it was given responsibility for the mon-
itoring of foreign broadcasts, a job
formerly held by.the Federal Communi-
cations Commission. A number of fel-
low travelers, or worse, who had been
working for the FCC were taken on the
CIA pay roll too. It took months be-
fore CIA awakened to their presence
and cleaned them out.
"Quitting, Matthew?"
Experts like Secretary of Defense
James Forrestal and Fleet Admiral
William D. Leahy, the President's
Chief of Staff, ascribe these bungles
largely to CIA's youth and inexperi-
ence. They say that the organization
has shown real improvement in recent
months.
The Central Intelligence Agency is
not the only Government agency in the
foreign-intelligence field. The State De-
partment's Foreign Service, the Office
of Naval Intelligence, Army Intelli-
gence and Air Force Intelligence also
have their fingers in the pie. Each is au-
thorized to collect any information "of
interest to itself " that is available
through "open channels," such as the
press, radio and official government re-
ports. However, under a formula laid
down by the National Security Coun-
cil, CIA is the pivotal group. It handles
all undercover operations and, in addi-
tion, is charged with correlating all ma-
terial gathered by the others.
Unfortunately, there is evidence of
bitter jurisdictional rivalry and feuding
among these various organizations.
Overlapping functions and unnecessary
duplication of work are widespread.
And in the opinion of many Washington
experts, these factors are seriously im-
peding the nation's intelligence pro-
gram.
On the bright side of the ledger,
though, is this: CIA has built up a staff
of some thousands of people and is now
striving diligently to give America eyes
and ears in every country on earth. Its
agents abroad are under strict orders to
keep Washington posted on everything
from a mayoralty election to the name
of a prime minister's mistress and the
extent of her influence over him.
Government officials familiar with
CIA operations say that its men are
closely scanning every facet of the eco-
nomic life in the countries they're in.
Key factories, railroad lines, oil refin-
eries--all these are being ferreted out
and reported back to Washington.
Not long ago, a high Air Force gen-
eral wanted to see just how much prog-
ress CIA had made in this sphere. He
arranged a confidential meeting with
CIA chiefs. At this session, he asked the
CIA people to assume that war with
Country X was going to break out the
following day. How much help, he in-
quired, could CIA give in the determi-
nation of bombing targets.
Inside of five minutes, complete de-
tails were handed him on the location,
description and importance of every
significant industrial target in Country
X, several thousand in all. In many
cases, photographs were shown him.
The general was deeply impressed. He
told me so.
By orders of the National Security
Council, CIA men are sent into action
whenever the Army, Navy or Air Force
is unable to get data through open
channels on the new weapons produced
abroad. Right now, CIA agents are said
to be working overtime to get specifica-
tions on certain foreign bombers, sub-
marines and germ-warfare develop-
ments.
Though little is being said about it,
CIA is known to be making wide use of
the same spectacular techniques which
OSS employed to rally resistance move-
ments against Hitler. Both in front of
and behind the Iron Curtain, CIA men
are assisting d'emocratic forces to resist
Red excesses. Anticommunist political
leaders, editors, labor-union chiefs,
clergymen and others are getting CIA
support in their struggles to retain or
regain democracy. CIA men call this
"building first columns."
In view of today's international ten-
sions, the biggest assignment CIA has,
of course, is the evaluation of other na-
tions' intentions toward the United
States. It is CIA's duty to tell the Na-
tional Security Council if and when an-
other country plans to start a war
against America. The biggest test CIA
has had to face in this line came during
the "war crisis," last spring. It was a
tough one.
A top-secret cable from Gen. Lucius
D. Clay, United States Military Gov-
ernor in Germany, set off the furor. It
arrived at the Pentagon on a Friday
morning shortly after the communists
had seized control in Prague. Cabinet
officials who read the cable quote Clay
as saying, in effect, that he was ready to
modify his long-standing belief that the
'Russians did not intend to. start a
shooting war soon. The man sitting on
the hottest spot in the world, in other
words, had shifted his position from
"they won't" to "they might." Clay
explained very carefully, however, that
he had no new evidence to support his
belief; he merely had a hunch and
wanted Washington to know about it.
When a man as responsible as Gen-
eral Clay makes such a statement,
Washington sits up and takes notice.
The CIA was asked to check up-im-
mediately.
For three days and three nights the
CIA staff got no sleep as it got in touch
with its agents in all parts of the world
and assembled all the information on
Russia at its disposal. It had its opera-
tives check to see if any Red Army
units had been shifted, if new supply
dumps had been established, if Euro-
pean fifth columns had been alerted.
On the following Monday morning,
CIA sent a note to President Truman,
stating: "The Russians are definitely
not going to start a war for the next
sixty days, and in all probability not for
a year."
The President's Cabinet accepted
this estimate and tension eased in the
capital
The men and women overseas for
CIA today are operating under a score
and more of different covers. As a
rule, they do no spying themselves. No
one wants the men to crack safes or the
women to vamp generals. The risks
would be too great. The main job of
these agents is to make contact with
elements in each country who are will-
ing to support the fight for democracy.
This is not to say that CIA representa-
tives don't also buy a good deal of in-
formation. They do. Most of the CIA
agents are veterans of wartime intelli-
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gene. Each is required to speak and
read the language of the country in
which he is stationed. In fact, CIA in-
sists that an agent must have traveled
extensively in that area before it sends
him there.
A top Government official who knows
the organization inside out says that
CIA has deliberately steered clear of
gumshoe artists in selecting its agents.
He says it much prefers " keen analysts,
with imagination and a flair for win-
nowing the important matter out of a
mass of confused detail."
Training men like that is a tricky
business and a very secretive one, he
declares. As he puts it, "A new CIA
agent has to be taught the techniques
peculiar to covert operations. He has to
be briefed in the area he is going to
from a clandestine intelligence point of
view. He has to be tutored on personali-
ties to know, use or avoid. A secure sys-
tem of communications, with alter-
nates, has to be devised for him and he
.has to learn how to use it." And, he
.states, this all has to be done in com-
plete secrecy. At no time during his
training can the new agent have any
direct contact, or be in any way identi-
fied, with CIA.
CIA personnel are paid up to $9900 a
year. The total amount of funds avail-
able to CIA, incidentally, is a carefully
concealed secret. All that is known is
that it runs into the tens of millions.
In spite of the missteps CIA has
made, reports have it that even the
British Secret Service has been favor-
ably impressed by its early record. Ac-
cording to an unimpeachable authority,
the British recently urged a virtual
merger of both services. The British
suggested that the two agencies split
the world between them, with some
areas assigned to CIA for coverage and
others to the British. In particular, the
British proposed that CIA handle all
intelligence work for both nations in Rio
de Janeiro, while it would handle every-
thing in Cairo.
CIA refused. Under such an arrange-
ment, it fears the United States might
be left half-blind should war come and
Great Britain be knocked out. In an
uncertain world, the CIA men hold
that America must have its own eyes ev-
erywhere, depending upon no one but its
own organization to keep it informed.
The closest liaison is maintained, how-
ever, between the top echelons of CIA
and the British Secret Service.
How did CIA come into being? Tra-
ditionally,.the United States has always
ignored the value of intelligence. It had
no real organization of any kind before
the war, depending upon its military
and naval attaches to pick up any
scraps of information they could. Pearl
Harbor disclosed the tragic results of
this attitude. Nor was our military in-
telligence much improved during the
war. While OSS sometimes performed
Herculean feats, Army G-2 was fre-
quently ineffective. The massing. of
German panzer divisions prior to the
Battle of the Bulge was fully noted by
J' OSS, but G-2 disregarded its reports.
Hence the paralyzing surprise the
Nazis were able to effect in the Ar-
dennes. It was a lack of accurate intel-
ligence on the Pacific war, Maj. Gen.
William J. Donovan, OSS head, says,
that led President Roosevelt, at Yalta,
to make such extensive concessions to
Stalin. F. D. R. was informed by G-2,
states Donovan, that the Japs had an
additional army of 750,000 men in
Manchuria. Anxious to offset this force,
Roosevelt went all out to get the Rus-
sians in the Pacific war on our side.
"That report was untrue. The Jap-
anese had no such army," General
Donovan informed this writer. "It is
tragic that poor intelligence so misled
the President."
With the end of World War II, Don-
ovan and others urged President Tru-
man to take immediate steps to estab-
lish a permanent peacetime intelligence
organization. Groundwork for such an
outfit was even laid by the OSS. Before
its various units around the world
closed up shop, they drafted plans and
made arrangements for such a group to
take over. The OSS plans were largely
discarded, however.
Luckily, a recommendation by the
Joint Chiefs of Staff for a temporary in-
telligence setup was accepted by the
President. On January 22, 1946, he es-
tablished a National Intelligence Au-
thority, consisting of the Secretaries of
State, War and Navy, and the Presi-
dent's Chief of Staff. It was not until
the passage of the National Security
Act of 1947, though, that a permanent
intelligence organization was set up by
law. This was the CIA. It came into
official being on September 26, 1947, as
a separate agency reporting only to the
National Security Council, a group com-
posed of the President, the Secretaries
of State, Defense, Army, Navy and Air,
and the chairman of the National Se-
curity Resources Board.
The law specifically decrees that CIA
"shall have no police, subpoena, law-
enforcement powers or internal-secu-
rity functions." Congress was taking no
chances on propagating a Gestapo.
On the recommendation of Admiral
Leahy, President Truman appointed
Rear Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter
as CIA's first director. The post pays
$14,000 a year. A snub-nosed man of
fifty-one, with closely cropped dark
hair, Admiral Hillenkoetter is a Mis-
souri-born Annapolis graduate who has
had a distinguished naval career. He
was wounded aboard the battleship
West Virginia while fighting off the Jap
attack on Pearl Harbor. Later, he com-
manded the U.S.S. Dixie during the
Solomon Islands campaign. He has
spent many of his twenty-nine Navy
years in intelligence, putting in three
different stretches as a full or assistant
naval attache in Paris. It was he who set
up Admiral Nimitz's intelligence net-
work in the Pacific.
Hillenkoetter is married to the daugh-
ter of a Navy doctor. They have one
ten-year-old little girl. His friends say
that he spends twelve to fourteen hours
TAIL SATURDAY EVENING POST
"Heh-hch-er-thai.'s the end of the joke . . ."
a day at his desk, taking an afternoon
hour off only once a month for a game
of golf. He generally shoots about
ninety-two. His chief recreation is the
reading of history, and he is said to be
an expert on the writings of Marx,
Lenin and Stalin, quoting at length
from them to prove a point.
Admiral Leahy says that no man in
the country has a better grasp of the
mechanics of foreign intelligence than
Hillenkoetter. He gives him personal
credit for virtually all of CIA's accom-
plishments. However, other Govern-
ment officials do criticize Hillenkoetter
for certain missteps. They say that he
badly erred in filling some forty of
CIA's most important posts with Army
and Navy personnel. They claim that
this was unwise, on the ground that the
services lend orly their less able officers
for duty with outside agencies. These
same officials heatedly censure Hillen-
koetter, for example, for placing one of
his key branches under Brig. Gen. Ed-
ward L. Sibert, who, as intelligence chief
for the 12th Army Group in Europe,
was blamed for the Ardennes surprise.
Hillenkoetter apparently saw some
validity in these charges, because he
recently had General Sibert trans-
ferred back to the Army.
Over in the Pentagon, Hillenkoetter
is particularly assailed for talking too
freely before Congress on the rioting
that punctuated the Bogota Confer-
ence, He did this when asked to ex-
plain CIA's failure to warn Secretary
of State George C. Marshall of the
likelihood of broad-scale trouble during
the Pan-American parley.
At an open hearing of a House com-
mittee, the admiral read a number of
the actual messages CIA had received
from its agents in Bogota. They pur-
ported to outline communist plans to
break up the conference.
"We did know of unrest in Colom-
bia," he testified. "We did know that
there was a possibility of violence and
outbreaks aimed primarily at embar-
rassing the American delegation and
its leaders, and this information was
transmitted to officials of the State
Department." He implied that General
Marshall had disregarded the CIA
warnings.
Nothing in Hillenkoetter'stestimony,
though, demonstrated any inkling on
CIA's part that such widespread dis-
orders were in the wind. Furthermore,
(Conr;in.u.ed on Page 194)
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the Pentagon believes that Hillen-
koetter did CIA a great. disservice in
giving this evidence. He compromised
his Colombian agents and their sources,
it feels.
Actually, Hillenkoetter begged the
congressmen not to make him testify
in public. He was told, though, that if
he refused to testify at an open hearing,
he would be punished for contempt of
Congress.
Even so, one prominent Defense De-
nrtment official sternly commented,
He should have gone to jail first."
The Bogota incident brought some-
thing else to light. It showed how squab-
bling between CIA and other Govern-
ment agencies has critically impaired
America's intelligence effort. Hillen-
koetter's evidence disclosed that one
vital CIA dispatch was withheld from
the State Department because Willard
L. Beaulac, United States Ambassador
to Colombia, and Orion J. Libert, the
department's advance representative
in Bogota, insisted upon it. The mes-
sage said that "Communist-inspired
along. It, is known that, Army Intelli-
gence took eleven months before it
carried out. orders to turn over all its
undercover operations to CIA.
Washington is still talking about the
catastrophic boner Army Intelligence
pulled in connection with a clandestine
project to take aerial photographs of
Poland. In June, 1947, the Army or-
dered S/Sgt. James Hoagland, an Air
Force photographer, to join the United
States Military Mission in Warsaw for
this purpose. Ile was to make use of
the mission plane for his surreptitious
photographing job. One set of Ser-
geant Hoagland's orders was sent by
diplomatic pouch to Col. Thomas
Betts, the head of the mission. An-
other set of these top-secret papers was
sent through the ordinary mail in an
envelope addressed simply to "The
agitators will attempt to humiliate the
Secretary of State and other members
of the U. S. delegation ... by manifes-
tations and possible personal molest.a-
tion."
What happened was this: Under cur-
rent regulations, CIA agents in foreign
countries must submit all their dis-
patches to t:he ambassador or ranking
diplomatic official present. They there-
fore read this message to Ambassador
Beaulac before radioing it to CIA head-
quarters. Beaulac demanded that, the
dispatch be shown to Libert, before it
went to Washington. This was done.
According to the CIA men, Libert
stated that, he did "not consider it ad-
visable to notify the State Department
of this situation." He was afraid it
might unduly alarm the delegates.
Libert's stand put. Admiral Hillen-
koetter in a quandary. He got the re-
port, all right. The ambassador could
not prevent its transmission to CIA.
But Hillenkoetter knew that if he for-
warded it to Secretary of State George
C. Marshall, Beaulac would learn of it
and might make the CIA men's posi-
tion in Colombia untenable. Reluc-
tantly, he decided not to pass this mes-
sage along.
Bogota is not the only place where
CIA has been tangling with State De-
partment people and regulations. It, is
common knowl-Age in Washington
that a similar situation prevails in
Italy. The chief British Secret Service
man in Rome is said to have more au-
thority even than the British ambassa-
dor. In the American Embassy, how-
ever, the head CIA agent reportedly
complains of being treated like an office
boy.
There have also been differences be-
tween CIA and the Atomic Energy
Commission. One cause for this has
been CIA's inability to learn what prog-
ress Russia has made with the atomic
bomb. The other big reason has been
CIA's refusal-on the ground of se-
curity -to tell the AEC the sources for
such atomic-energy information as it
has been able to secure. The AEC main-
tains that it must know these sources
if it is to evaluate the information with
scientific accuracy. Recently, the situ-
ation was somewhat eased when CIA
designated a reliable scientist as a liai-
son officer with the AEC. The AEC has
agreed to accept his judgment as to the
worth of CIA scientific reports. Rela-
tions between the two groups, however,
are still far from amicable.
Evidence is also on hand that CIA
and Army Intelligence do not get
Commanding Officer, Warsaw, Po-
land." Quite naturally, the Polish au-
thorities opened the envelope and
read its contents. They permanently
grounded the Military-Mission plane.
Another move that amazed Washing-
ton was a statement by Army Intelli-
gence people in Germany giving details
of the alleged manner in which they
had spirited former Vice Premier Stan-
islaw Mikolajczyk out of Poland. Cap-
ital officials cannot understand why
Army Intelligence bragged about such
an ultraconfidential topic, especially
since Army Intelligence, they say, had
nothing whatsoever to do with Miko-
lajczyk's escape.
It is true, as Lt. Gen. Albert, C.
Wedemeyer, of the Army General
Staff, pointed out, to the writer, that
"the caliber of American military
attaches abroad has been vastly im-
proved. We are no longer sending over
teacup pushers with rich wives. Now
we are using military experts who are
thoroughly conversant with the people,
the language and the conditions of the
nations t.o which they are a,4signed."
But the Army has not been so care-
ful in its choice of enlisted personnel
for the offices of these military attaches.
Last. May, Army Intelligence was
severely embarrassed when a Russian
spy named Mrs. Galina Dunaeva Bi-
conish was able to seduce twenty-one-
year-old Sgt. James M. McMillin, de-
coding clerk in the Moscow Embassy.
The sergeant fell wildly in love with
this beautiful brunette and publicly re-
nounced his American citizenship in
favor of Russia.
Unlike CIA, where opportunities are
being offered for a lifetime career in
intelligence, the Army has almost al-
ways refused to let its officers special-
ize in intelligence work. It assigns men
with little or no intelligence background
to the various G-2 sections. Lt. Gen.
Stephen J. Chamberlin, for example,
who, until his transfer recently, was
Director of Intelligence, Army General
Navy John L. Sullivan's statement
about the presence of "unidentified
submarines" off the California coast.
During congressional hearings on the
draft, Sullivan got headlines by inti-
mating that Russian submarines were
reconnoitering American waters. He
noted that similar reconnaissance by
Nazi and Jap submarines prefaced
Pearl Harbor.
A news report of the secretary's re-
marks was the first indication ONI had
of the presence of those submarines.
An immediate investigation was or-
dered. According to a Navy Depart-
ment spokesman, ONI found that there
was nothing to Mr. Sullivan's state-
ment. No Russian submarine was then
closer to the United States than 3000
miles.
The Air Force's intelligence service
is reputedly doing a good job, although
it is occasionally attacked for alleged
wild-eyed exaggerations in its esti-
mates of Russia's combat air strength.
In as much as General Vandenberg, the
Air Force commander, is an old intelli-
gence man himself, Air Force Intelli-
gence has been receiving consistent
support in terms of funds and per-
sonnel.
At, the State Department, it is said
that Secretary Marshall has made sev-
eral attempts to better its foreign-
intelligence reporting. The same pal -
tern is still followed, though, with all
dispatches channeling through the
various ambassadors and ministers.
This, it is stated, has frequently re-
sulted in only that information reach-
ing Washington which has shown the
particular envoy in a good light or
which has reflected his personal politi-
cal views.
Whether this be the reason or not,
members of the Senate Foreign Affairs
Committee are bitter about the de-
partment's forecasts of the results in
the last French municipal elections.
The department told the committee
that General DeGaulle's new party
did not have a chance, that the com-
munists would sweep the polls. In-
stead, the Reds were decisively trounced
and the Gaullists won an outstanding
victory.
The FBI has not been in the for-
eign-intelligence field since early in
1947, when it was directed to trans-
fer its wartime Latin-American net-
work to the Central Intelligence
Group. It is now responsible solely
for counterespionage activities within
the United States and its possessions.
There is antagonism between it and
CIA.
Official Washington is aware of this
feud and the other internecine strife in
the intelligence family. In behalf of the
National Security Council, Secretary
of Defense James Forrestal has ap-
pointed a three-man board to look into
it, as part of a broad survey it is to
make of all American intelligence op-
erations. On the board are Allen W.
Dulles, who headed the OSS mission
to Switzerland, William H. Jackson,
New York lawyer and wartime intelli-
gence ace, and Mathias F. Correa,
former United States attorney for the
Southern District of New York.
While the full findings of this board
will probably never be made public, it
is expected to demand that the inter-
agency squabbling stop and that all
groups co-operate in the drive to give
the United States the best possible
eyes and ears around the world. The
board is said to believe that a fair
start has been made in this direction,
but, that much remains to be done if
another Pearl Harbor is to be avoided.
rur,ENll
Staff, is an officer with G-3 (Plans and
Operations) experience. So is Maj. Gen.
A. R. Bolling, who was his deputy.
Gen. Omar N. Bradley, Army Chief
of Staff, recently recognized this pecul-
iar state of affairs and made a move
that to Army men is 100 per cent revo-
lutionary. He said to this writer, "I am
recommending to the General Staff that
the Army establish an intelligence corps
in which personnel can specialize in
intelligence just as artillery men con-
centrate on guns, and armored-corps
men on tanks."
The Office of Naval Intelligence is
already veering in this direction. It has
instituted a separate section just for
intelligence experts and other special-
ists. This will allow them to focus ex-
clusively on their specialties without
the old-time necessity for regular tours
of sea duty. The stress that ONI is now
placing on intelligence can be seen in
its training program. Where the Army
gives its military attaches and other
intelligence men four months' school-
ing, the Navy puts its men through a
fifteen months' course.
ONI men, by the way, are quick to
deny responsibility for Secretary of the
Approved For Release 2003/05/27 : CIA-RDP86B00269R000500050101-9
Approved For Release 2003/05/27 : CIA-RDP86B00269R000500050101-9
THE NEW YORK TIMES, TUESDAY, JULY 20, 1948.
Intelligence I
Approv
One of Weakest Links in Our Security,
Survey Shows-Omissions, Duplications
By HANSON
America's first line of defense in
the atomic age-a world-wide in-
telligence service-is today one of
the weakest links in our national
security.
This is the conclusion of this
correspondent after a careful sur-
vey, of our intelligence activities,
and it is a conclusion with which
most of our informed authorities
emphatically agree.
The evidences are legion. Fric-
tion has been pronounced between
various intelligence agencies of
Government-notably between the
new post-war Central Intelligence
Agency and the State Department;
between the CIA (Central Intelli-
gence Agency) and the Federal
Bureau of Investigation, and be-
tween the CIA and the Atomic En-
ergy Commission.
There is unnecessary duplication
and overlapping; at the same time,
there are serious omissions of in-
telligence, and there is consider-
able expensive "empire-building."
Worst of all, many of the person-
nel being utilized to evaluate intel-
ligence reports are definitely sec-
ond-rate, able to earn more money
in Washington in Federal employ-
ment than they could earn on col-
lege campuses or in other civiilan
occupations.
Know Little of Soviet Strength
The result today is a marked
depreciation in the quantity and
quality of our intelligence as
compared to the war years. Our
knowledge of Russian strength is
admittedly fragmentary, and many
of the estimates by different Gov-
ernment agencies are conflicting-
so widely divergent in some cases
that they are impossible to recon-
cile. Our information about Rus-
sian atomic energy activities is
notable for its scarcity.
These facts, a growing sense of
frustration and discouragement
among some intelligence personnel,
which has led to the resignations
from CIA and Army G-2 of some
of the best civilian personnel, and
several intelligence fiascos since
the war, climaxed by Bogota, have
brought about an investigative
survey of the whole intelligence
structure of Government, it was
learned.
Allen W. Dulles, who occupied a
prominent role in Switzerland with
the Office of Strategic Services
during the war; William H. Jack-
son, New York lawyer and wartime
intelligence officer, and Mathias
F', Correa, former OSS official,
have been surveying our intelli-
gence organization and its opera-
,*fc Rn4eassi003 15)2 t
House, Secretary of Defense For-
W. BALDWIN
restal and the National Security
Council.
The survey, a continuing one
which will end with a report by
next January, is studying not only
the Central Intelligence Agency,
but also the inter-relationship of
this agency with the intelligence
activities of the State, Army, Air
Force, and Navy Departments and
the FBI. As a result of the study
some changes already have been
made, and others-perhaps of a
sweeping nature-are predicted.
Considerable shifts of personnel,
particularly in the Central Intelli-
gence Agency, have occurred, or
are occurring, although some of
them pre-dated the Dulles commis-
sion's appointment.
Changes Going On in CIA
Apparently as a direct result of
the Dulles inquiry some strange
"finaglings" have been going on in
the Central Intelligence Agency.
Last year, coincident with the
transfer of its director, the office
of collection and dissemination,
one of six principal offices in the
agency, was abolished. Today it
has been restored under another
head and is bigger than ever.
After the Dulles survey started
a considerable section of the office
of administration and manage-
ment, a lopsidedly large and over-
staffed office which was supposed
to shuffle paper work for the bene-
fit of the operating forces but had
become in some ways the tail that
wagged the dog, was seemingly
"eliminated." But the elimination,
it has now developed, merely in-
volved the paper shift of a large
number of personnel to the newly
reconstituted office of collection
and dissemination, with no net re-
duction in employes.
At the same time some of those
in the intelligence picture-partic-
ularly a few "empire builders" in
the CIA, who were being studied
with particular interest by the
Dulles commission-have appar-
ently started an attempted "back-
fire" against the Dulles group in
an attempt to discredit it.
Mr. Dulles' survey, in other
words, already has struck sparks,
but if it is to achieve its purpose
it must inevitably lead-in the
opinion of those who have studied
our intelligence agencies closely-
to major personnel changes in our
intelligence agencies, to some re-
organizational and perhaps func-
tional modifications, and to insist-
ence upon better cooperation be-
tween all intelligence agoncies.
IATRDP88B 68 0 50101-9
articles.]
Approved For Release 2003/05/27 : CIA-RDP86B00269R000500050101-9
Older Agencies Resent a Successor
And Try to Restrict Scope of Action
In telligence-II
_Jul v 2,-1c4FA -
Approved
tained in some of them was accu-
rate and of considerable impor-
tance. The full scope of the up-
rising, and particularly the exten-
sive participation of the Bogota
police in it, were not anticipated,
however. The incident clearly re-
vealed some weaknesses in collec-
tion of intelligence, greater weak-1
nesses in evaluation and the
creaky nature of the mechanism
for exchange and transmission of
information between the State De-
partment and the CIA overseas
and in this country.
Improvements in the latter
weakness have been made, due in
large measure to the Dulles in-
quiry, but the State Department
is still hostile, not to the concept;
of the CIA, but to the present or-,
ganization staffed as it is, and
feels that many of its reports and
evaluations merely duplicate its
own.
3. Friction between the CIA and
the Federal Bureau of Investiga-
tion really began fourteen months
ago when, under a Presidential di-
rective, the CIA took over the in-
telligence functions that the FBI
their powers and prerogatives and
to restrict and confine and reduce
CIA's scope of action.
Catalogue of Friction
Friction between Government
Intelligence agencies is in a major
:degree responsible for the current
study, headed by Allen W. Dulles,
of the Government's intelligence
organizations.
Friction is not new to Washing-
ton, but the newly-established Cen-
tral Intelligence Agency, succes-
sor to the Central Intelligence
IGroup and to the wartime Office
of Strategic Services, has had
more than its share. A new agency
always has trouble in establishing
itself in politically-jealous and
power-conscious Washington, and
this has been especially true in the
case of CIA, which "inherited"
some of the Office of Strategic
i Services' wartime feuds, and which
found itself a "nouveau riche" in
the field of intelligence amongst
old established agencies.
Some gross mistakes of its own
and a much too rapid expansion by
CIA which led to "empire-build-
ing" and retention of some incom-
petent personnel fed the flames of
controversy, but major friction has
resulted because of the attempts of
the older agencies to -retain all
had expressed in Latin' America
during the war. The turnover of
responsibility in various offices
that had been established in Latin
America followed no common pat-
tern but generally was a good ex-
ample of lack of teamwork.
In some Latin-American offices
FBI agents offered full coopera-
tion to their 'CIA successors and
delayed their departure to permit
a period of overlap and a gradual
and orderly turnover. But in a
number of instances the CIA
agents arrived in the morning to
find the FBI files burned and the
FBI agents booked for departure
that afternoon. The excuse given
was that some of the CIA agents
assigned to Latin America were
not sufficiently "security-consci-
ous."
Shift on Loyalty Checks
More recently, the FBI, which
conducts loyalty and security
checks for personnel of all Gov-
ernment departments, stopped per-
forming that function, in so far as
the CIA was concerned. The CIA
was forced, because of this FBI
action, to set up its own security
check department---now a part of
the office of inspection and secu-
rity---to check records of prospec-
tive employes. The FBI recently
rescinded its action and is again
undertaking CIA checks, but the
expense to the, CIA and to the
Government in personnel and
money was large.
4. Considerable difficulties be-
tween the Atomic Energy Com-
mission and the CIA were evident
until recently. The CIA, criticized
by older intelligence agencies be-
cause of its alleged lack of secu-
rity, refused to divulge to the AEC
on the grounds of security the
sources of its atomic energy in-
formation. The AEC insisted that
it required these sources for prop-
er evaluation of scientific informa-
tion. This difficulty seems to have
been at least temporarily straight-
ened out by the appointment of a
liaision officer within the CIA-a
young scientist, whose word as to
the reliability of scientific reports
is satisfactory to the Atomic En-
ergy Commission. Neither the lat-
ter commission, nor for that mat-
ter the CIA itself, are satisfied,
oR?~R8@B60 9RO1DO5O
ligence, and we now very itt e
The full intelligence story of the
Bogat& conference never'has been
told, and probably never can be.
Rear Admiral Roscoe H. Hillen-
koetter, director of the Central In-
elligence Agency, produced-at the
quickly dropped Congressional in-
vestigation-messages which were
A brief catalogue of this friction
reveals its seriousness:
1. CIA and G-2 were locked in
a bitter feud until some months
ago; today relations are more cor-
rect but not cordial. The issue, in
part, was whether or not CIA
should take over collection of se-
cret intelligence as well as its
evaluation. CIA won out and the-
oretically, at least, controls all
espionage agents operating for
this country overseas, but there is
still reason to believe that G-2
continues to operate its own
agents, although it denies this.
2. Prime antagonists today are
the State Department and CIA, or
at least personalities in both agen-
cies. CIA representatives overseas
have been in virtually all cases at-
tached to American Embassies
land have usually used State De-
partment communications facili-
ties. Differences of opinion as to
the exact power of the Ambassa-
dor over the CIA representative
and other issues finally crystal-
lized into open "name-calling" aft-
er the unexpected rebellion flared
at the Bogota conference in April.
hailed in some quarters as proof of
our foreknowledge of the revolt.
A careful reading of these mes-
sages, however, indicated that they
were virtually unevaluated and un-
digested intelligence; most of them
read like clippings from The Daily
Worker and were so generalized
that they could scarcely be inter-
preted as accurate forecasts of the
revolt.
It was learned, however, that
the messages produced for Con-
gress and published were not, by
any means, the only indications
gleaned of the Colombian situa-
tion. Other messages-at least
one of them forecasting the par-
ticipation of some of the Bogota
mobile sound trucks to Incite re-
volt t--were received, and the fac-
tual advance information con-
about Russian atomic energy
progress.
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In tellig en ce-III
--sLlt1y_ .-._l948.
Errors, in Collecting Data Held
Exceeded by Evaluation Weakness
By HANSON W. BALDWIN
Several intelligence fiascos sinceservice loyalties and service inter-
the war, major service differences
in our estimates of Russian
strength and intelligence evalu-
ations too much influenced by
prejudice have hampered and are
still hampering a sound intelligence
analysis of the world situation.
The fiascos-they might be called
intelligence "catastrophies -have
occurred in Rumania, Hungary,
Finland and elsewhere.
The Rumanian case of last fall
offered an almost opera bouffe ex-
ample of how intelligence should
not be gathered; the episode might
well have been "graustarkian" had
it not resulted in tragedy and in
considerable embarrassment to the
United States Government.
Two young and exuberant army
officers attached to the Central In-
telligence Agency as carry-overs
from the old Office of Strategic
Services organization made con-
tacts almost openly with anti-Com-
munist and opposition leaders in
Rumania, urged the formation of
an anti-Communist group in that
country and recorded their efforts,
the names of the conspirators and
even the minutes of the "secret"
meetings held-apparently in order
to impress their superiors with
their industry.
"Duck Soup" for Soviet MVD
Naturally such naive attempts
were "duck soup" for the Russian
MVD; the officers left Rumania
hastily, but their native associates
;soon landed in jail. The Russians
utilized the information, including
!the seized documents, with consid-
erable embarrassment to this Gov-
ernment at the trial of Dr. Juliu
Maniu and his associates which
subsequently resulted in Dr.
Maniu's imprisonment for life.
The details of the Hungarian and
(Finnish fiascos have understand-
ably been guarded with consider-
able secrecy, but apparently
"rings" of agents established in the
old OSS days and inherited willy-
nilly by the Central Intelligence
Agency were responsible for much
loose work which resulted in easy
detection and ultimate elimination
of the "rings."
Perhaps more dangerous today
than the heritage of the mistakes
of the past, and even more glar-
ingly weak than our system of
collection of intelligence, is our
evaluation of it. That evaluation
is too often subjective and preju-
diced, and is too often made by
men without adequate background
for the task.
Each service-Army G-2, Air
Force A-2, Navy-ONI-is making
subjective estimates of Russian
strength, each of which varies in
important particulars from the
other estimates. The Navy empha-
sizes Russian submarine strength;
'the Air Force, Russian air ipower;
the Army, numbers of Russian di-
visions.
Approve Fbr eleas'e 2O03Mk27 b[
course, affected, if only subcon-
sciously, by the inter-service strug-
gle for funds and by their own
ests. The men who are making
these estimates are thinking first
as naval officers, air officers or
Army officers, not as intelligence
officers. 6
The result is a distorted picture
of Russian strength. The Navy
probably exaggerates the numbers
of modern Russian submarines;
the Air Force's estimates of Rus-
sian combat planes are not'wholly
accepted by G-2, and at least one
well informed British air officer
believes the A-2 estimate of Rus-
sian long-range bombers is far too
high.
CIA Tries to Reconcile Data
The CIA is attempting to recon-
cile these divergent estimates with
the aid of service information and
its own sources, and the resultant
compromise estimate is, in this
writer's opinion, more accurate- -
or at least, less in error-than that
of any one of the services. Yet
the CIA estimate cannot yet com-
mand the respect it must have, if
it is to mean much, partly because'
of past CIA mistakes, partly be-
cause of some inferior CIA per-
sonnel, partly because of the new-
ness of the CIA and its history
of frictions and duplications.
Another mistake now currently
being made-exemplified in the
February and March crisis when
the CIA was right but General
Clay and the Army were wrong-
was a mistake constantly made
during wartime, the confusion of
enemy "capabilities" with enemy
"intentions." The Russians, for
instance, may have the physical
"capability" of overrunning west-
ern Europe in forty-five days-
though though this seems a dubious esti-
mate--and the military services
may be perfectly correct in so es-
timating, for this involves a mili-
tary judgment. But a Russian "in-
tention" to overrun western Eu-
rope must imply political as well
as military judgment, and the
services are not particularly com-
petent to make such judgments.
This is the function of the CIA,
to couple the political judgments
of the State Department with the
military judgments of the services
and to supplement them with data
gathered by itself and other Gov-
ernment agencies and to evaluate
all this and present a definitive
whole view. Too often it has not
done this, ,.at least not comprehen- I
sively; too often it has simply re-
peated the political views of state
and the military views of the serv-
ices.
Occasionally it has produced a
careful synthesis, and it has cer-
tainly produced many detailed re-
ports of great value. Its judg-
ment in the so-called "spring
crisis," for instance, was far
closer to being correct than the
Army's was.
But the CIA does not yet have'
sufficient stature to command the
full confidence f the o -
IAaRDb8&BO&269RQOe v050101-9
gence services--subjective in their
approach-fulfill alone the func-
tions which CIA is supposed to fill.
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Intelligence-IV
J111 Y 24, l 94Fs __
Competent Personnel Held Key
To Success-Reforms Suggested
By HANSON W. BALDWIN
The current survey of the na- I must provide a greater continuit','
lion's intelligenc
i
e agenc
es, which
have been beset by factionalism
anad friction can had only to one
major conclusion: that adequate
personnel is the key to adequate
intelligence.
The study now being conducted
under the chairmanship of Allen
W. Dulles must undoubtedly rec-
ognize this fact, even though it
may make suggestions for im-
provements in organization and
perhaps a redefinition of func-
tional activities by the various
,agencies.
Personnel weaknesses undoubt-
edly are the clue to the history of
frustration and disappointment, of
friction and fiasco which have
been, too largely, the story of our
intelligence services since the war.
Present personnel, including
many of those in the office of
research and estimates of the Cen-
tral Intelligence Agency, suffer
from inexperience and inadequacy
of background, Some of them do
not possess the "global," objective
mind needed to evaluate intelli-
. ence, coldly, logically and defini-
tively. Others, in offices of opera-
tions or special operations in the
CIA are chair warmers. Some---in
CIA. and service agencies---are
"empire builders," anxious for
prestige and rank.
Civilian Executive Urged
The first requirement is to in-
duce into government service ci-
vilians of high capacity and will-
ing anonymity. The CIA should
be headed by a civilian, not by a
military or naval man as its first
three directors have been. Its
senior executives and office chiefs
should be largely civilian.
The concept that CIA could be
staffed in large measure by service
personnel and that the services
would then owe greater loyalty
and support to this agency be-
n cause of their personnel stake in it
has failed. The officers sent to
CIA are not always the best and
most of them have a psychological
aversion to the duty; they con-
sider themselves, in a professional
sense, "lost."
Civilians, therefore, must be in-
duced into CIA and into other
government intelligence agencies,
but they probably cannot be per-
suaded unless son le
of the re-
strictions of Civil Service are re-
laxed and more security and sense
of accomplishment is provided. A
corps of junior civilian intelligence
experts might be established
gradually by enlisting picked men
from the colleges or graduate
schools to serve four or five years
in government intelligence work.
The best 10 per cent might, if
they wished, make intelligence a
career; the rest would return to
civilian life--available, if neces-
sary, for a later tour of duty or
for ser I"-In r~ o
Appr,tr, k7rn'~F~ilstravey9nprr5
size intelligence even more greatly
han they have yet done and they
tion to officers who make intelli-
gence their specialty.
,Some Reforms Suggested
A solution of the personnel
problem is of prime impottance,
but these additional reforms
ought to be considered carefully:
1-A thorough house-cleaning of
the Central Intelligence Agency
and other intelligence agencies to
rid the services of drones, incom-
petents and "empire-builders.-
2-Re organization of the CIA
on a more efficient basis. The
otfice of collection and dissemina-
tion probably ought to be eliminat-
ed or greatly reduced and the of-
fice of administration and man-
agement ought to be cut down;
these two offices have become Loo
much the tail that wags the dog.
Friction between the vital offices
of operations and special opera-
tions must be eliminated; these
two offices probably ought to be
combined under one head and re-'
duced in size. Neither one needs
an evaluation section as at pies-,
ent; these sections somewhat I
duplicate the work of the office of
research and estimates. The lat-
ter office is a key to sound in-
telligence; it must be strengthened.
One means of doing so and of l
eliminating duplication with the
State Department is to transfer
the State Department's intelli-
gence analysts to CIA. The residue
of the Office of Strategic Services
was split up after the war be-
tween the Central Intelligence
Agency (then the Central Intelli-
gence Group) and the State De-
partment. This, it is now clear,
was a major mistake; the two
ought to be rejoined.
Functions Need Redefining
3 --The functional purposes of
each of the governuncnt's intelli-
gence agencies ought to be rede-
fined clearly and unmistakably,
but the CIA must be clearly estab-
lished as the top-echelon agencyi
with powers to coordinate the a(!_!
tivities of all the others. Organi
zationally, the present structure
seems sound; certainly it is better
than any prior system. The CIA
probably should continue to col-
lect information by both overt and
covert means as well as to analyze
it. If, however, official approval
should be given to the collection
of secret information by spy rings
operated by other agencies the
"master mind" control of all such
rings must be in the hands of the
CIA.
4 -Secret intelligence operations
must be conducted on a broader
and far more secure base than
heretofore. The State Depart-
ment's embassies and missions
have offered "cover" up until now
for nearly all overseas CIA activi-
ties largely because 11-J&
cover"I RDI 86B Z4kV0500050101-9 can and must be provided.
Ingenuity and secrecy are the keys
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In tells en ce-V
Ju- .
Broader Control Set-Up Is Held Need,
With a `Watch-Dog' Unit for Congress
The enlargement of present in-
telligence activities of the Govern-
ment and the establishment of a
Congressional "watch-dog" com-
mittee to study and inspect those
activities continuously are two of
major reforms required in the
reorganization and modernization
of our intelligence procedures.
first suggestion enlarge-
ment of our intelligence activities
already has received some atten-
Lion from Allen Dulles, chairman
a three-man group which has
surveying our intelligence
of John Foster Dulles, who is gen-
era.ily regarded as the next Secre-
of State if Governor Dewey
should be elected to the Presidency.
need for enlargement or some
of. our post-war concepts of
ligence was stressed by John Fos-
Dulles recently in a speech to
the Bond Club of New York.
Mr. Dulles, in his address, rec-
ommended "an organization dedi-
defense." Such an organization,
he held, should expose Communist
other subversive. plottings,
"tell adequately through radio and
press the story of what is happen-
cated to the task of nonmilitary terrorism," and help leaders-in-
protect "the free press" of
other countries by opportunity to
"get print paper"; provide "asylum
for those menaced by Communist
exile of foreign countries overrun
by communism "to go on working
for freedom."
Joint Organizations Mooted
out the details of his proposal, but
seemed to lump together the func-
.John Foster Dulles did not spell Department's "Voice of America," the FBI and the Central Intelli-
tions now conducted by the State
gence Agency. Such an organi
tion as he described would pre-
activities carried on by the Office
of. Strategic Services during the
psycholog'ical warfare, including
the utilization of "black radio" or
sumably conduct some of the same war, plus political warfare and sabotage, would be included in its No single organization of gov-
clandestine stations operating per-
lisps behind the "iron curtain." In
wartime other activities, including
cope.
ernment now has any such all-em-
bracing' charter as this, but the
CIA could conduct some of the
activities suggested, particularly
"black radio" and the encourage-
merit of anti-Communist minors-
emphasis of these "secret opera-
tions," but it seems likely that
most of these will be conducted by
the CIA. No such inclusive overall
organization as that app rentlyi
suggested by John Foster Dulles is
, at least in the immediate
probable,
futu
future.
Early
Wartime Merger Failed
A merger
and intelligence activities was
tried
in the early days of the war,
but did
not work out, and there
was a resultant
nt split into the Of-
e of War Information and the
fice
Office of Strategic Services. Th%,,
State
Department must also have'
a major voice in "political war-i
fare"
" and in dealings with leaders-
in
-exile. It does not seem possible,
refore, to centralize all such
therefore,
intel-
operations
agency, nor is it desirable. From
the Congressional
ressional and public point
of view such
an organization would
represent
a
greater emphasis
on "secret opera-
tiona I
" as well as on "secret intel-
" is now obvious, and someI
ligence"
agencies
of government must per-
form all the functions mentioned
by John Foster Dulles as well as
other functions to which he did not
. The CIA is the place for
allude.
many of them but not for all.
"Watch-Dog" Group Suggested
Because of the importance to
national security
of secret intelli-
gence and
secret operations, be-
cause of our past errors in intelli-
gence and
, particularly because the
grants
of power given to intelli-
gence agencies
,,secret , a Congressional committee
to
act as a discreet "watch-dog"
over
za-
of men of great discretion
reliability, close-i
and thorough
men able to keep secrets.
mouthed
It should be composed of repre-
sentatives of both parties; such a
committee must be nonpartisan,
for
above all, intelligence must be
out of politics. It should
kept
have the same relationship to the
and other intelligence agen-
CIA
the Senate'House Atomic
cies that
Energy Committee has to the
United States Atomic Energy Com-
Such a group, to act as a
mission.
advocate for our in-
sympathetic
telligence agencies and at the same
time as a gadfly to those agencies
and a check-rein upon undue
Approved FAhPuifl 1-9
enough viewpoint. Allen Dulles' Intelligence system -the first line
survey already has resulted in a re of defense,
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'1'114- shake that failed. In Manila to Bice up,
general hawahe got thrrrnbe(I on Iii. %cav
when he tried lo-clasp hands wi I h I he ant hor.
I Was an American Spy
I. I SII13IR. as tnh( to ,111 . >7 IVELL
)IIe of' %Iae rtlitir"s key airlr~~ [("is lilt' almost uuI-elie%al-le store t-I' his life as a
+?Iira1. and dagger" operati'e. Peril, intrigue, sl.ultlu erg' were his llaik distr.
Ills first chief told hire: "Re It Ienlbe I., i f yotr" re (If F ww e ney er heard of you.""
HAVE been in military-intelligence work, di-
rectly and indirectly, for twenty-nine years.
it hick up a book or drop into a movie for a
a'oupfe of hours. So I'm pretty familiar, too, with
he Cloud-Cuckooland version of intelligence.
Your American intelligence agent of fiction and
screen is a man of parts. He's part Dick Tracy, part.
liar Galahad, plus dashes of Lanny Budd and Casa-
aaova, double-distilled with the Boy Standing on the
Burning Deck and Vesuvius in eruption. All this is
rapped in a package resembling Alan Ladd.
Usually the agent is an amateur, a sort, of
Intelligence Minute Man. He has been called to
,nrvice from soda fountain, law practice or garage.
A few weeks of training turns hint into such a
master of disguise, dirty infighting, secret inks,
codes and lethal gadgets that he'll make monkeys
out of the hest career operatives the enemy can
muster.
`['he list tonal agent, for variety's sake, soni l imes
runs into such a riot of mayhem that he goes down,
bloody but unbowed. In that case, a faithful
Corn- Either
way, the agent or his hallowed memory gets the un-
dying gratitude of his government. On the screen
Ihis is 1uielly expressed by a distinguished, white-
haired official in a map-hung office whose windows
frame a view of the Capitol dome.
There is a modicum of truth to this popular no-
tion of intelligence work. For that matter, there
are recognizable objects in a Dali painting. But,
Colonel .A1ashhin, who today breaksal9-scar
silence on his wuiclue mulercon'er i~ork.
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taken by and large, it's flapdoodle-entertaining
enough, but still flapdoodle.
I know this because my career has covered every
phase of this complicated work. If a few of my ex-
periences will serve to bring the vital subject of
military intelligence into better focus and to alert
our people to its importance, I shall be satisfied. If
any toes are stepped on, I apologize in advance, but,
the public must know the facts in order to plan
intelligently for the future-something we have
never done before.
My first detail took me into Mexico before we
declared war on the Kaiser's Germany. Later I
helped run German spies to earth. Between wars, I
had assignments in Japan and Siberia for Army In-
telligence, and in Japan again for Naval Intelli-
gence. During World War II, I served first with the
Intelligence Branch of the Signal Corps, and later
in the G-2 Section of General MacArthur's quarters.
I have riot been a typical intelligence officer, for
t he very good reason that, there is no such animal.
The only constant in intelligence is infinite
variety. So this has to be an intensely personal nar-
rative.
And being personal, let me dispose of glamour
right now. Sadly enough, no movie-type female
spies endowed with slinky grace ever tried to suborn
me. I've an idea, too, that most movie-goers
wouldn't find the rough stuff sometimes involved
quite as attractive as the vicarious thrills of the
screen. For one thing, when a bullet rips into you,
you don't bleed tomato catsup, as I learned on my
first intelligence mission, which was as a spy.
In the summer of 1916, I was a captain in the
1st, Arizona Infantry. We were stationed on the
Mexican border, where Pancho Villa and his hen.-
didos were kicking up a lot of dust. after their raid on
Columbus. Although the headlines in Mexico read:
"Our brave General Villa has captured Columbus,
is marching on Washington, and President Wilson
and family have fled to Canada for safety," the
fact is that "Black Jack" Pershing and his cavalry
were running him ragged.
Suddenly our advance was halted on inexplicable
orders from Washington. Arizona's Sen. Marcus
Aurelius Smith told several of us in the old Pueblo
Club in Tucson that President Wilson had privately
advised the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
that % here are grave reasons wLy we cannot be-
come involved in a war with Mexico, and those rea-
sons have not hing to do with any country on this
coniinenC."
Apparently that was why Gen. Frederick Funst.on
sent, me below the border to investigate reports from
Papago Indian scouts that, groups of Japanese had
been landing in Sonora and infiltrating northwest
into Baja California. From the Indians' descrip-
tion, they were clearly military personnel, armed
and specially trained.
General Funston's parting words were, "Remem-
ber, Mashbir, if they or the Mexicans catch you,
we never heard of you."
A Ilot Time in It Jai)-lnlested Desert.
IN prospector's clothes with every identification
removed, and traveling light, I went across the
border. Northwestern Sonora is one of the most
desolate spots on earth. Even cactus doesn't, thrive,
and rattlesnakes and Gila monsters are few and
far between. The Indians themselves shunned this
suburb of hell. When the sky was like a sheet of dull
fire and the heat, devils shimmered over the dead
sand, I was thankful for the hardening I'd had in
Arizona. I had been reared there, had spent, years
in the desert surveying for railroads, and as a kid
had even worked in the copper mines.
No one had mapped the region I was entering. I
did discover that. one white man had preceded me,
at, least as far as the Pinto Range. I found his
bleached bones. He'd been a prospector. Inside an
iron utensil which stood beside what, time had left
of ]rim, the dying man had scratched with his knife:
"eny body wail cum this fur lookin fur gold is a darn
fool. John Gilson 18b I ."
There was no t irne to bury bones. I kept pushing
on to Tinajas Allas, a water hole where I had my
first glimpse of Japanese ideographs. They were
traced in charcoal against cliffs overhanging small
puddles of greenish-brown soup.
Later I spent years studying the complicated
Japanese writing. in 1916, 1 hadn't the faintest
notion what, it meant. I made laborious copies in
my notebook. As it developed, they were route mark-
ings. i collected scraps of paper printed in Japanese.
Whet her they were military messages or wrappings
of canned goods, I couldn't tell.
TO get information, vou associate with those who have it. So Colonel \lashhir Mows Jap big-wigs
c,-ill a speech at a Pan-Pacific inneheon in Tokyo in I937. The reran f ingering his chin is Baron Togo.
At any rite, I was three weeks on the trail, from
one scummy water hole to another. Subsequently,
we est imated that no fewer than 10,000 Japs had
taken the trek across those terrible shifting sand
dunes as =advance training for possible operations
in American desert areas.
The Jalr; were guided between water holes by
mounted Mexicans and half-breed Indians. Once
I came upon them just before sundown. I hid
among the rocks until dark. Then I crawled closer
to watch and listen. In the glow of the firelight, the
Jap leader was poring over a map. He gave orders in
broken Spanish to a swarthy guide whom he called
" Fosut.achari." Subsequently, when I learned Japa-
nese, this name resolved itself into "Charlie Foster."
The party turned in without posting sentries. As
soon as they were asleep, I crept forward, scared
silly, but. determined to get. the map and what other
papers I could lay hands on. I almost made it.. In
fact, I was just. reachirig for the leader's knapsack
when I knocked over a canteen, whose rattle roused
them all.
I got. the damnedest. beating I've ever had. A
thousand years later, I heard my voice croaking for
water. Direly Iwas aware of the renegade hall-breed,
Foster, looming over me. He spat in my face and
told me in foul Spanish that. that was water. He
thought I was too badly injured to move, much less
attempt to escape. 1 lay still for a while, gathering
my strength. Again I groaned for water, and again
Foster came over and leaned down to spit in my
face.
I caught, him on the point of his chin. I eased line
silently to the ground, without disturbing the sleep-
ing Japs. I had been too weak to do more than stun
hire. I couldn't al'l'ord to take chances, so I made use
of the knife he had af his belt. Still gripping the
knife, I stumbled to Foster's horse. I cut the rope
hobbles and, pulled myself astride.
Foster must have made some dying commotion.
The Jap camp sprang to life. There was scattered
rifle fire. Id just about got out of range when a
Mauser shag; caught me in the right hip. An even
unluckier shot. dropped the horse. I crawled oft
over a led of shale where tracks wouldn't, show.
Squeezing into a jumble of boulders, I flattened out
and waited.
The Japs combed the area. They found the dead
horse. Somehow they missed me, though one of
them came so close I could hear him muttering; to
himself. At daybreak they gave it, up, apparently de-
ciding I was so far gone from the beating that I he
desert, would get, ere. What finally happened to
them and to the other Japs who had gone before
them I don'a know. I sit pposeeventuaflyt[ley seeped
out of Mexico as they had come in.
At, any rite, I lay low for twenty-four hours. I
dug the Mauuser bullet out of my hip with my knife,
cauterizing t he wound by packing it with gunpowder
arid tom'hu'g a match to it.. After recovering my
haversack from its hiding= place, I hobbled ollfor the
border, mind 'r an umbrella of tow-circling buzzards
whose right iul menace drove inc on every time I
was about i n give in and unit. The sheer horror ul
Thai I'll never forget.
I did trot over the border with the first Javanese
papers ever captured by an American. I had lost
thiriv-five of my 160 nounds. T had gained an in-
eradicatale tinIred o! Ow .tapa.nese !uil,rat,y_ My,
papers and notes were sent to Washington.
Now a simple definition of intelligence is "ev al-
uated informat.ion." The most detailed inforniatioti
is worthless if the higher-ups misinterpret it. I was
bitterly disappointed when Washington reported:
"'t'hese papers and writings have no military value."
Somebody had completely missed the point, the
obvious military significance of any Japanese writ-
ing's be=ing discovered at. that, time and along that
route. The Japanese were then at war with Ger-
many, but on a jackal footing, to nick up what
spoils t hey could in the Far Fast,. They seized
Tsingt.ao, but refused to send troops to Europe uaa-
less permitted to colonize Australia. The Allies ill
France seemed to be crumbling before the massive
German drives. In later days, when I studied the
Japanese at, firsthand, I learned that. they seldom
gamble in the Western sense of the word. When they
do bet, it's en what they believe is a sure thing.
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L1. Gen. Kawabe,''akashiro, sninh for sill-render. ;gels the word from 1lashbir and (at left) General \ltu?lrtluu's G-:', Nlaj. If ;vu. C. 1. A%illoughbv.
r
So, in 1916 they were preparing to switch sides if
and when Germany forced the United States into
the war and there were diversionary attacks on us
by the Mexicans. Afterward, when I was an intelli-
gence officer at Governors Island, I learned that.
(;ermany had not, only offered Mexico the states
of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas but, had guaran-
teed the participation of Japanese troops.
For practical purposes of applied intelligence, my
mission into Mexico had been time wasted. I might,
,is well have spent those weeks playing ticktacktoe.
Later Pershing was withdrawn from Mexico.
Iloweve.r, I was rewarded by my immediate su-
periors. Within less than a year a lot of regulations
were waived, and I had been commissioned in the
Regular Army and put in charge of counterespio-
:.age and counterintelligence for the Eastern De-
partment of the United States Army.
I owed the assignment to Gen. F. D. (" Handsome
Dan") Webster, who had been with General Fun_
:~ton on the Mexican border. He told the Eastern
Department commander, Gen. Eli D. Hoyle, that
I was the man for the counterespionage job, on the
premise that it takes a thief to catch a thief. And
hadn't T been a spy for a few weeks? That, ought,
easily to qualify me to discover and upset. the com-
plicated spy system which the Imperial German
General Staffhad spent many years perfecting.
I confess I was in a hand-painted Peruvian tizzy.
I didn't know how to begin. Almost, I was tempted
to dig into F. Phillips Oppenheim for guidance.
Then I recalled the old Arizona story about: the cow-
puncher with a gift for finding strayed horses. When
asked how he did it, he said, "I just figger where I'd
want to go if I was a hoss, and I go there, and there
the boss is." In amateur fashion, I'd hit upon one
of the fundamentals not only of counterespionage
but. also of all intelligence. Knowing the enemy's
int.entin is, you must, deduce the courses of action
open to him, and then anticipate him. Conversely,
if' you do not. know his intent ions, you must, deduce
the iii from his strength, dispositions and possible
courses of action.
Very well, I thought, if I were doing it,, I'd plant,
spies and saboteurs in positions where they could do
the most damage while attracting the least notice.
'Chat finally boiled down to just one thing-non-
commissioned officers. They are the backbone of
any army. You'd as soon have suspected General
Pershing of traffic with the enemy as American
noncoms, who, t.radit.ionally, are rough diamonds
with hearts of gold.
Precision \\ ork F,xposes it Noncom
I DU(: into the records. 1 discovered that the
rolls bore thousands of Teutonic names. The pre-
ponderance were undoubtedly loyal. But the con-
centration of Germans in noncom ranks was particu-
larly heavy. I felt. I was near pay dirt:.
I tested my theory at. Governors Island, where
I was stationed. There was a good possibility handy
near by at. Fort Hamilton---Master Gunner Paul
Otto Kuno. Kuno had served ten years in the
Coast. Artillery. He was efficient, his conduct had
been exemplary. I felt hangdog about it, but I had
him sent. on a detail to Fort, Wadsworth for a day on
which I arranged with Frank Burke, operative in
charge of the Secret Service in New York, to lend
me his best lock expert.
This expert., who not only looked but, dressed like
President Wilson, was G. E. Adams, known as
"Camera Eye Adams." After we had got into
Kuno's quarters, Adarns removed his frock coat. to
reveal, fastened all around his belt, dozens of
bunches of keys of all sizes. None of Kuno's lug-
gage gave difficulty, and none revealed anything,
except for one small trunk. The odd thing about,
this trunk was t.haf it had two different, locks and
that everything had been packed in a peculiarly
syst.ernat.ic and complicated manner. Camera Rye
Adams photographed in his mind the exact angle
and order of each piece as he removed it._ Adams
felt, over the entptfeel trunk, inch by inch. Finally,
he grunted, "Here's something."
He had found a key under the bottom lining in :r
place exactly hollowed out to fit it. I'd have missed
it entirely, so cunningly was the job done. Adams
discovered the mi,roscopic seam, carefully cut.
and peeled it hack, removed the key, made a wax
impression and replaced it. After a delicate gluing
job, he repacked the trunk so that Kuno was never
able to detect any tampering.
Several days later Adams reported that he had
checked the key maple from the wax impression with
all the key companies. Kuno's was of a type fur-
nished for safe-deposit boxes to a bank not far
from Fort. Monroe, Virginia. The rest was routine.
We located the box, taken under an assumed
name. It contained Kuno's credentials as a reserve
officer of the Prussian Imperial Guard Artillery on
special foreign ;ervice. Among other incriminating
evidence was a notebook giving most. minute details
of our Eastern coast defenses.
From then on it was like unraveling a piece of
knitting when you've snatched the right tag of
yarn. We discovered that the Germans had at least,
one man in every ((nnrrnr 1-111
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"I\ i4.4? jig 14\i11'- .ai4I aIIia11I,-, . J4)-An11t? I4)r114Y1
On IIiIII. "Il III4)1I 4?CrIaiI I Ic i, 114 )1! I.1'~ a I44 r!'4?i?IIN
14119"V nig111! 1)111 I4)u 114.111. 111 aI Juauila -ing?"
DP86B00269R000500050101-9
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EVENING POST
I WAS AN
AMERICAN SPY
troop, battery and company in the pre-
war Regular Army. They didn't need
infernal machines and other favorite
devices of fictional secret agents.
Pliers to cut a control cable or a hand-
ful of sand thrown into the mechanism
of a big gun could immobilize it as effec-
tively as a direct hit by a shell. Often
as not, the Kaiser's boys turned out to
be company cooks. Imagine what a
cook, armed with nothing more deadly
than a bar of soap, could do to an out-
fit on the eve of battle. Even careless
failure to rinse all the soap from the
soup kettle can knock out an entire
company with dysentery.
I might mention in passing, as an-
other example of our naive unprepared-
ness for World War I, that inspection
revealed that, due to recalibration, not
one single big gun in the coast defenses
of New York harbor could have been
accurately fired at an enemy fleet for
the first nine weeks.
In one way or another, we got rid of
all the German agents we uncovered.
If, as in the case of Kuno, they were
not naturalized and we caught them
with incriminating documents, they
were dishonorably discharged and in-
terned for the duration at Ellis Island.
After the war they were deported. But
no German spy was hanged in the
United States during World War I.
Under the laws then in force, we would
have had to nab them actually smash-
ing a breechlock or handing secret pa-
pers to someone in German uniform.
A -number we knew to be enemy
agents were so clever that we either
couldn't even get enough admissible
evidence to intern them or get it be-
fore it was outlawed by the two-year
statute of limitations. The Articles of
War provide: "Except for desertion
committed in time of war, or for mutiny
or murder, no person subject to military
law shall be liable to be tried or. pun-
ished by a court-martial for any crime
or offense committed more than two,
years before the arraignment of such
person. . . ... Treason, after two
years, is exempt under military law.
We had to shunt them to routine
Army jobs where they couldn't pos-
sibly cause harm. I regret to say that
several have "honorably" completed
their active service. They are now
drawing retirement pay "equal to three
quarters of the pay of their highest
grade." All this because of the law-
makers who failed to provide us with
adequate safeguards against espionage
before and during World War I, or
with an adequate intelligence service
staffed by trained officers, instead of
leaving it in fumbling amateur hands
like mine.
Counterintelligence work kept me in
this country throughout the war, in
spite of every effort to get overseas. I
was finally detailed as. G-2: of the 12th
Division just before the war ended, but
wound up in Washington instead, and
was sent to Camp Dix as Camp Intel-
ligence Officer.
Then in June, 1920, I got confiden-
tial orders from the War Department
to proceed to Tokyo as assistant to the
military attache. Officially, I had a
four-year assignment to study the Japa-
nese language. Shirttailed to the
orders, however, was this significant
passage: . . and to perform such
other duties as may be assigned to
you.,,
I arrived in Tokyo in August with
my running mate and lifelong friend,
Maj. Edward: F. Witsell, now the Ad-
jutant General, reporting to Lt. Col.
Charles E. Burnett, our military attache.
Another officer who was on the same
transport with a similar detail to China
was Maj. Joseph W. Stilwell, afterward
the famous General "Vinegar Joe" of
China and Burma fame.
The morning after I moved into my
Japanese-style house, a stocky Jap,
enveloped in a suit of clothes straight
out of vaudeville and with a dinky
derby riding prim and high on his
shaved pate, bowed and hissed on my
doorstep.
"Captain Mash-i-ba San," he said,
"I are detective from Aoyama Poreece
Station. I are come to welcoming you
to new home. Japanese soldier are very
foolish. Japanese soldier think must
be loyal to Emperor. Japanese soldier
think must fight for Emperor. Japa-
nese soldier are very ignorant."
(Continued on Page 126)
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Ap
EVENING POST March 27,1948
(Continu.ed front Page 124) Speaking for myself, I know that I
If I had fallen into this so-subtle trap wound up my first period of service in
and had agreed with him or had made Japan penniless and in debt. But that's
any remark which the witnesses shut- running too far ahead.
tling with elaborate casualness back It was my habit to take daily walks
and forth before my door could have through Tokyo. One day I stopped at
twisted, the Imperial Government a bookseller's stall. My eye had been
would have demanded my withdrawal attracted by a red book cover which
on the. ground that I had insulted the showed an American flag being attacked
Emperor. by dragonflies. Its title was Nichi Bei
I shut the door and the incident in Moshi Tatakawaba-"If Japan and
his face. It was not to be my last ex- America Fight." The author was Lieu-
perience with Japanese police. Their tenant General Sato, of the Imperial
military intelligence wasn't always that General Staff. I took it home and
muttonheaded. For example, Colonel worked on it, turning the translation
Burnett told me that the day my or- over to Colonel Burnett to forward to
ders to report to him were mailed from the War Department. The virulence of
Washington, and before they had the book was beyond the wildest invec-
reached me, Maj. Hisao Watari, of tive of that part of the American press
Japanese Intelligence, walked into his which relied on the "Yellow Peril"
office and demanded, " Who is Captain for sensational stories. When I later
Sidney Forrester Mashbir? Who is reported the existence of this ultra-
Major Edward Fuller Witsell? Why nationalist group after the assassina-
they are coming to Japan?" Beyond a tion of Premier Hara on November 12,
doubt, whether by blackmail or cash, 1921, one indorsement on my official
they had, to our peril, made some of report read, "This young officer has
our own people their creatures. The been reading E. Phillips Oppenheim."
Germans used Germans; the Japs, per- Another comment: "This young offi-
force, used mercenaries. Here was the cer apparently fancies himself as an
tip-off on an even more acute peril than international spy ! "
the prewar German spy system. Alerted by Sato's book, I searched
My primary duty was to learn Japa- further and discovered several vol-
nese. More than once I've heard it umes written by other high Japanese
said that no sane man can learn Japa- officials, including Lt. Gen. Baron Ta-
nese and that no man can learn Japa- naka, Minister of War and reputed
nese and remain sane. Somehow I author of the notorious Tanaka Me-
passed my examinations in the spoken morial. I'll admit that I was shaken to
idiom as well as the three types of bedrock. Here were blueprints for
ideographic writing. The reader is wel- aggression drawn by the powers behind
come to draw his own conclusions. the Japanese throne and implemented
As I got the knack of conversational by the notorious Black Dragon Society.
Japanese, I kept my ears open. On the Prominent among their schemes were
streets, in trams, at the markets-. plans for air attack on the United
everywhere I heard hatred of the States, outlines of what was later to be
United States voiced. My superior, known as the Greater East Asia Co-
Colonel Burnett, took my reports seri- Prosperity Sphere and dozens of other
ously. Not so, the diplomatic gentle- harbingers of the Nipponese will to
men of the embassy. They stayed in conquest.
character. To hash a few metaphors, It was all succinctly epitomized in
they preferred to see everything rosy, the doctrine of Hakko I-Chiu-"The
as through a dark glass eye. We intel- eight corners of the world under one
ligence attaches-crude fellows-must roof." Expanded, this meant that all
have been subjects of superciliously Japanese, being gods, are superior to all
amused chitchat over cocktails and other mortals, that the emperor is the
teacups. greatest living god, and that all nations
These "tea-drinking crystal gazers" must be brought under his benevolent
by rights should have had the field to and enlightened rule. That was a clear-
themselves. Congress allowed such nig- cut statement of enemy intentions.
gardly appropriations for military and The day I gave my translation of
naval intelligence that an officer either Baron Tanaka's book to Colonel Bur-
had to have a private income or use up nett to be sent home in the diplomatic
his savings to supplement his trifling pouch, I put in an appearance at one
pay. The wonder is that there were of the regular Wednesday Afternoons at
always officers and their wives willing the embassy. Our ambassador, Mr.
to scrape down to the last cent in order Charles Beecher Warren, had no high
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THE SATURDAY
(Continued from Page 126)
opinion of intelligence activities, but
he was a stickler for those Wednesday
Afternoons.
On entering the embassy, I found
Mr. Warren standing before the great
fireplace in conversation with Sir
Charles Eliot and Monsieur Bassom-
pierre, the British and Belgian ambas-
sadors. Mr. Warren motioned to me
and said, "Mashbir, I was just telling
their excellencies here that no Japanese
in a position of authority has ever
made the statement that Japan desires
a foothold on the mainland of Asia.
Isn't that'so?"
"I'd better go pay my respects to
Mrs. Warren," I said.
"Answer my question. Is that not
so?"
"No, sir, it isn't," I said.
He flared up, " What do you mean by
that, Mashbir?"
"Mr. Warren," I said, "I have just
translated a book called Sotei Tokuhon
written by the Minister of War. It is
required reading for every male Japa-
nese inducted into the armed force.
The opening sentence of the opening
paragraph of the preface states, `In the
event that we do not gain a foothold
on the mainland of Asia and hold it at
all costs, we shall die like a miniature
garden deprived of moisture."'
The ambassador was speechless as I
excused myself to give my respects to
his very gracious wife.
In January, 1922, I had one of my
finest breaks in the way of an intelli-
gence mission. The Armament Limita-
tion Conference, then in session at Wash-
ington, was also taking up the question
of withdrawal of Japanese troops from
Siberia, where they had formed part of
the allied expedition against the Bol-
sheviks. American, French and British
contingents had pulled out almost two
years before. The Japanese gave as
their excuse for staying the massacre
of their garrison at Nikolaevsk. They
claimed that the deed had been done
by Chinese bandits who were in the pay
of the Reds.
Our military intelligence smelled a
large rat behind the wall of so-right-
eous indignation which the Japanese
had thrown up about the incident.
Furthermore, Merkuleff, president of
the pink Far Eastern Republic-a ram-
shackle moderate-socialist affair, bol-
stered by the Japanese, but by this
time secretly leaning toward the So-
viets-had got in a vodka-flavored
mood of confidence with Macgowan, our
consul in Vladivostok. He had hinted
that he had documents proving the
Nikolaevsk slaughter had actually been
something special in the way of a hand-
crocheted double cross. Then he had
shut up tight and refused to say more.
I was sent to Vladivostok to get to
the bottom of the thing and, if possible,
to obtain at least one of the documents.
As the first Army officer to get a visa
for Siberia since our forces had with-
drawn, I expected-and got-a full
share of secret-police surveillance. All
the way from Tokyo I had the com-
pany of a staring Japanese. He sat op-
posite me in the railway coach, from
which other passengers vanished as
soon as they saw him. On the deck of
the steamer he practically walked in
lockstep with me.
However, he couldn't have been shad-
owing me. Said so himself. Several
times he volunteered out of a clear
sky, "I are not secret poreece. I are
not following U. S. captain. I are
simple Japanese business person."
I had to paralyze his arm with a
loaded riding crop when I caught the
simple-business person trying to rifle
my luggage. Otherwise the trip to
Vladivostok was comparatively un-
eventful.
NEXT WEEK-Nimble footwork brings Colonel
Mashbir through a succession of Jap traps. He
undertakes a mission in Japan so secret that even
G-2 doesn't know about it-and it puts him under
surveillance as a suspected Japanese agent. Second
of three articles from a book titled What is Intel-
ligence, Anyway?, which Colonel Mashbir has writ.
ten on his unique career as an intelligence officer.
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I Was an American Spy
The ,Jays arraugc(I a sure-lire trap for tltc ' ants( scut to ferret
ollt their sc(rcls iii Sih('I'ia. 1n(I Ihell he (liscoycre(I Ihat
OIlt own (:-2 strongly sitsl-v('1('(I hint of beIifi, it Jal- agent!
NTELLIGENCE work can he an unrelent-
ing grind. But every once in a while you get,
a dividend of high amusement to top off the
accomplishment, of your mission. Not that
you have any forewarning. I know that I expected
:tuything but amusement when I left, Tokyo in Jan-
uary, 1922, for Siberia, where the Japanese expe-
dii,ionary force was sitting tight long after the other
Allied units sent. there to check the Bolsheviks had
withdrawn. I had been ordered to discover the truth
about the massacre of the Japanese garrison at. Niko-
laevsk, allegedly the deed of Red-inspired bandits.
We had sensed that this Jap claim was spurious. I
braced myself to face a very rough time from their
intelligence agents. A three-ring circus was the
farthest. Ching from my mind.
At. Vladivostok, I was met. by Capt.. Louis C.
Richardson, of the U.S.S. Albany, which was
anchored in the harbor. He introduced me to
Marine Capt. now Col.) James F. Moriarty, in-
ielligence officer of Lhe Albany. "Mo" and I not.
Only worked on t his mission together, we have re-
mained the closest friends ever since.
Meanwhile, the Japanese authorities in Vladivos-
tok had put, their heads together and had cooked up
a sure-tire recipe to get, rid of me, but, good. First,
r;tep was a flowery but, urgent invitation to pay :t call
on General Isamura, chief of staff of the Japanese
expedit ionary force.
This 1 dill immediately, but. not as they had ex-
pected alone. To their chagrin, Moriarty ac-
companied me. We were met by a Major Isobe, who
ushered us into an anteroom and promptly disap-
peared. The roe in was bare of furniture except for a
table in I he corner. The table was heaped to a height
of about two feet with rolled maps, all of which were
stamped in Japanese characters, GoJ;cu Ilirnitzu, or
what would correspond to our "Top Secret" classi-
fication. The red stamping was arranged so that I
could not fail to see it.
In an undertone, I said to Moriarty, "Straight to
the window."
The window was on the opposite side of t he room.
We stood there forty-five minutes, looking out, talk-
ing went her and other trivialities, until Isobe, ill
concealing his disappointment with politely hissed
phrases, came to fetch its to the general.
The watchers at various thin slots in the walls had
expected us to grab up a few secret maps and conceal
them on our persons. Thus, on leaving, we would
have been arrested, dealt wit It as spies, and would
have contributed a i'aiise rrtli,bre to thicken the
Japanese smoke screen over Siberia.
list cad we strolled in to see the general with all
the anienit ies intact. The general was, to say the
least, somewhat upset by the Failure of his plan.
'clue from Lhe crowning operation of Nlashbir's career. 1 fresh-eaurht ,lap prisoner is being put
1111?ough Lhe Hringer on Ilollandia. Painstaking iulelligeme crork sairvI eouulless knlel'lean tiles.
The aulhor. ~shosi' duel of kits, Scotch, sake
and secrets lath the .lap had a surprise finale.
But, taken within his own frame, he was no fool. He
could be shifty on his mental feet. After an involved
lead-up, he announced that, as the Washington Con-
ference would make us allies, we would surely want
Lo know :uid report, to our Government the dis-
position of Japanese divisions in Siberia. Therefore,
he would sket ch us a little map, with details and
designations on it.
This he did, and handed the map to me, not
bothering to veil the gleam of triumph in his eyes.
He knew i htit Lhe stupid Americans were hemmed
in. They couldn't refuse the map without, giving
grave offense. " Mo" and I would have to take it,
thank him, ,and then walk out to search and certain
arrest.
We ;issii meet ;in air of awe-st ruck diffidence, and I
began saving, "Your excellency, we do not feel
worthy. But HOW that you hive seen fit to bestow
such confidence upon two lowly American officers,
we humbly ask another small favor from the boun-
teous store of your graciousness. We desire a me-
inenlo which our children and our children's children
can proudly display. In a word, Captain Moriarty
and 1 shrill be grateful evermore when your ex-
cellency and the renowned Major Isobe, who sits be-
side you, favor its with your autographs upon the
map, sett ing down in your own distinguished hands
the date of this not-to-be-forgotten occasion."
It. was in the purest, formal Japanese corn. As a
samurai, (teneral Isamura had to abide by the code
of his owra gaire. Possibly, he was secretly amused.
In any event, i rapped by his own ground rules, the
general shot his stale eyes at Isobe, picked up the
brush again, flicking his signature and the (late on
the map as did Major [sobe. " Mo" Moriarty and
I solemnly Ii) lowed suit- We shook hands with
Isamura and the gaping Isobe. and politely bowed
ourselves out. We returned to Lhe Albany unmo-
lested.
But, as I was soon to learn, the assiduous Major
Isohe had by no means tossed in the sponge. Presi-
dent Mer' iletl of the Fair l';astern Republic. re-
gretting his indiscreet hinting at, the machinations of
the Japanese accupalion forces in Siberia, made
himself about as easy to get, hold of in Vladivostok
as soap in a Iuhful of hot; water. Major Isobe took
the opposite tack.
Wherever I went, he thrust. himself upon me. A
droshky jaunt':' Major Isobe would draw up beside
me in another droshky, ducking his head and pop-
ping a mouthful of teeth at me. A cal'e? Isobe
would table-hon to mine, teeth gleaming. If I took a
stroll, guess who happened accidentally to be taking
a const it.uI Tonal along the same avenue'.'
The upshot of it was that. I accepted an invitation
to dine at his billet. I had become so interested in
the good aajor's devious ubiquity Ihat I agreed to
appear alone, at six ((far, ii,, 1'd an Page 1_25)
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,~ 11.
N N hat goes on o11'sta9e in our relations kith Russia is so paiit I'll IIN difl'eren I front is hit I happen,.
on stage. 1a1-shall and Molotov are Ioasline each other
a'*
? I I. -
London debacle. near the Nnl'I tutu Ica nariau hordt'1' is ^ I:ut--bin" utttllet'
!e
-Not S 1 16
C C/ _1'i t Rtj ks
F, cr
1Iv II 1 /\ O,'V 11XI1;1)IU'I- T
We should nut wag' a ltreventIN( \val? a ;must the SOv iels, nor enlbral e the
world state of the visionary if] lernatiunalists, the author stales. Father, he
believes, we should snl-l-ort a IU'.w kind of Ainerit'ari balanr?e-of-jtom('r role.
MERICANS are a materialistic people with a
A washing-machine culture. We are fond of
escape mechanisms, wishful 1 thinking and
ivory towers. Some of us are cynics, but we often
cloud our national aspirations with a wistful ro-
manticism, and we always have possessed what
Percy Bidwell has called "an underlying vein of
idealism." No other nation, a British editor has
written, is "more firmly on the side of the angels in
the long run."
This conflict. has produced n contradictorv and
unstable political mind. The gyrations of 111N5 Atnet--
ican mind are plainly influencing the present de-
bates in Congress on the Marshall Plan and are
scaring the daylights out of our friends in Europe
and Asia. The plain truth is these friends of ours
don't know whether they can depend upon America.
Let it, be said at once that we are more realistic
than we used to be-most Americans now under-
stand that we cannot change the horrid facts of
international politics by turning inward upon our-
selves. We are committed to the role of world power.
Some of us welcome this, some of us are resigned to
it., few of us understand it. A world role for the
United States-yes, but what world role?
Communism's appeal to the multitudes is as a
blood-red banner streaming from the battlements of
heaven. It promises the brotherhood of man. False
though its promises are, we cannot counter t.hern
beneath a simple standard of the status quo.
Politics is the "art of the possible." This is a
definition Hint ought to be emblazoned on every
American's political consciousness. For in our
thinking ahout international affairs we fend to leap
too easily over the chasm of the impossible into the
millennium. We fashion nice political theories which
have nothing to do with reality. What. in the modern
world does the "art of the possible" permit,?
There are four principal courses, any one of
which we might, in theory, follow. These are: (1) iso-
lationism; (2) a world order by agreement, with
international atomic and ether controls: (:3) a world
order by conquest that is, imperialism and the
waging of a deliberate preventive war against.
Russia before she manufactures atonic bombs--
and '4) the middle road: I he maintenance and ut.i-
lizat ion of our national power for international
rehabilitation and world stability. The objective:
A balance of power-
1. Isolationism. Isolationism cannot be titled
into the "art of the possible." Isolationism is im-
possible in the guided atomic-missile age. 'T'rans-
oceanic planes and supersonic, stratospheric missiles
with atomic warheads, biological agents, radioactive
dusts and lethal new gases have destroyed our
strategic insularity. Oceans, polar ice masses and
other barriers are no longer ramparts of defense.
Today the United States has "live" frontierst.he
frontiers of the air. Isolationism today is simply re-
tirement, into n fool's paradise and never-never land.
redo get along--sontel inae,. "1'Iti. li usso- 1nu riean parley
This n al ion, standing alone or with the rest of the
Western Hemisphere ;at, its side, has such tremen-
dous st.rengt h today that it could face with some
assurance for a few years a Europe-and even an
Asia :aligned beneath the standard of a single
power. Hut it. in time, anticommunist. forces were
scattered :nut broken; if, in lime, the potential of
Europe and Asia was harnessed and developed to
the Kremlin's ends, we should be threatened as
never before in our history.
Even if t his danger did not exist, it is certain t hat
we cannot. serve the cause of Western civilization by
shutting o,trselves tap in ear hemisphere. L` c :ire
not sell'-sufficient ttraniutn, Inanganese and many
of her essential raw materials come from foreign
sources. Our prosperity depends upon the world;
we need the world as the world needs us.
Isolationism is not the answer.
2. A world order by agreement. The type of world
order contempInted by many blueprint int.ernation-
alists is not corrapatihle with the "art, of the pos-
sible." Man's n-ind and man's emotions :tre riot yet
adjusted to the elimination of national boundaries,
to a cornnuan citizenship. Such a development
seems to me to he psychologically impossible today.
The deliberate reduction of national military strength
to a position inferior to the strength possessed by
some overruling world order has been shown to he
politically impossible by our posh it experiences.
This solution hogs the question of practical means
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I WAS
AN AMERICAN SPY
o'clock sharp, one evening. I'd come
to be rather fond of him in a back-
handed sort of way. He meant so ill
and worked so hard at it.
I arrived ten minutes early. Through-
out my career I've found that nothing
is so disconcerting as to keep an ap-
pointment before you are expected. So
I rang the bell, whereupon there were
sounds within as of rats scurrying in a
wall. Finally, the worthy major him-
self trotted to the door and ceremo-
niously ushered me in. Obviously flus-
tered he led me to the dining room. We
took chairs on opposite sides of a
mahogany table. It was covered with
linen and had candles throwing blobs
of snuff-colored shadow on a beautiful
Japanese screen where ancient heroes
stomped and grimaced, gods squatted,
and female deities were stylized wraiths.
No dishes had appeared or did appear.
However, on the table were bottles of
old Scotch whisky, Tan San water,
and sake.
Major Isobe's opening gambit was a
rhapsody on the friendship between
Japan and the United States, a friend-
ship welded as steel by the Washington
Conference, then closing. He proposed
toasts to the illustrious leaders of our
two peoples. It would be appropriate,
he declared, for each of us to imbibe his
own national drink. He would sip the
relatively mild sake, I whisky.
"No, major," I said. "I think, as
allies, it would be more appropriate for
us to alternate our national drinks-I
drinking sake and you whisky, then
swapping back and forth. That would
be a real hands-across-the-Pacific eve-
ning! "
I poured him a generous four fingers
of Scotch, and extended my glass, into
which he automatically slopped sake.
As he opened his mouth to make some
belated objection, I quickly arose, say-
ing, "His Imperial Majesty! Kampai!"
(Bottoms up.)
Of course, Isobe shot to his feet.
Strangling manfully, he managed to
view the ceiling through the bottom of
his glass. As duty-bound, he proposed
the health of President Harding. This
time I drank Scotch, he sake. Instantly
I proposed Her Imperial Majesty, we
refilled, and his Scotch and my sake
went bottoms up.
Now, sake itself is a mild rice wine.
But sake-and-Scotch sandwiches, rap-
idly taken, have all the subtlety of an
elephant on roller skates. Like the vast
majority of the Japanese, Isobe had
never learned to handle hard liquor.
However, he was a soldier on a mis-
sion. He remained on his feet through
four quick pairs, but he was obviously
slipping. He clutched at the table with
both hands while an expresson of cun-
ning idiocy puddled his now cherry-red
face. We seated ourselves.
He said, "Washington Conference
have make us allies. We will have very
entertain evening now." He gulped
and leaned forward confidentially,
blurting in what he conceived to be a
whisper, "You know secrets?"
"Oh, yes," I replied.
"I know secrets," he said. "You will
telling me American secret and I will
telling you Japanese secret."
"Fine," I said. "Go ahead and tell
me one."
"Oh, no, you telling me first."
I became quite reluctant, asking for
his word of honor as a samurai never to
repeat to a living soul the hushed in-
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125
formation I was about to divulge, be- the odd wellspring from which Rus- ration, I adopted one of the best tech-
cause it would most assuredly embar- sian logic flows like glue. niques-the "sneer technique." Seem-
rass a highly placed personage. Captain Richardson, of the Albany, ingly I lost my red-headed temper.
"I promise on honor of warrior an- was with me. Merkuleff produced a file "Very well," I said. "I don't want
cestors," said Major Isobe. of documents from which he read in to discuss these so-called documents
In a low tone, I said slowly, "I hear, excellent English at great length, with- further."
major-I hear that your commanding out letting us inspect them. In general, Merkuleff bridled, "Why not?"
general has been living with a Russian these purported to be translated state- "Because, your excellency, I'd have
woman for six months." ments by Chinese bandits that they to say something that would offend
Isobe gasped, then pitifully wailed, had been paid by the mikado's forces you. Let's drop the subject."
"Oh, but I do not mean that kind of to massacre the Japanese Nikolaevsk "I demand " he shouted.
secrets!" garrison. Merkuleff did not say how "No," I said acidly. "Your excel-
"Hell, major," I said, "that's the the papers had been obtained. Obvi- lency has undoubtedly been acting in
only kind of secrets I know." ously either bribery or torture-prob- good faith. Temporarily, I was also
He didn't answer. His head had ably both-had been resorted to by his deceived. But I soon realized that
dropped forward on the table. He was Cossack strong-arm men, you have been imposed upon and that
snoring in a moist, whimpering sort of In my inexperience, I revealed my in- the documents you hold in your hand
way, passed out cold. I looked at him terest and asked Merkuleff to let me are unquestionably forged. I would
for a moment. Then I got up and take the documents with me. He re- not consider offering such fakes to
walked around the corner of the hand- fused. I begged him to let Captain my Government. I believe you under-
some Japanese screen and politely said Richardson and me at least look over stand me!"
good night to the two astonished gentle- the file. He declined abruptly and He exploded. He raved and ranted
men behind it, whose chagrin was be- loudly. He said that his word as a Rus- all over the place in Russian, English,
yond description. Although I frequently sian ought to be sufficient guaranty of French, and-I think-longshoreman's
saw Major Isobe later in Tokyo, the the authenticity of the documents. Turkish. To cut a long story, he wound
word "Vladivostok" was never even Furiously he charged that I was im- up by offering first one, then several,
mentioned. Oriental "face saving." pugning his honor. I did not know at and, as Captain Richardson and I in-
At long last we got devious word that time that such is the Russian way differently declined them, the entire
that President Merkuleff would see us of getting concessions they want. The batch of documents. If he'd had any
secretly at a late hour one night. Why guy who yells the loudest wins. idea of remuneration for his evidence of
his sudden change of heart, I'll never How long the thing might have Japanese duplicity in Siberia, he forgot
know. I don't profess to understand lasted, I can't say. On a sudden inspi- it in his passion to prove that he was
0
MARRIAGE
lC
ENSES
E
"Something?"
neither a dupe nor a liar.
With a great show of reluctance,
Captain Richardson and I permitted
ourselves to be persuaded to examine
and select key documents, no more
than 1. could carry back to Tokyo con-
cealed on my person. We maintained a
bored attitude as we took our depar-
ture, but there was nothing languid
about our beeline to the Albany. We
didn't relax until we were safe on good
American deck plates. Then we must
have laughed a good ten minutes.
Some days later, after more fencing
with Japanese intelligence agents on
shipboard and along the rail route to
Tokyo, I reported to the embassy and
gave the documents and full details of
the mission to Ambassador Warren and
to his extremely able counselor of
embassy, Hugh R. Wilson, afterward
ambassador to Germany.
A long cablegram was drafted to go
to the State Department. Mr. Warren
added: "I am not prepared to state
that these facts are not correct."
I mention this gobbledygook, not
to reflect upon the memory of Mr.
Warren, but to point out that his re-
action was only typical of the non-
career diplomat's attitude at that time.
For that attitude tens of thousands of
young Americans have paid with their
life's blood, and in suffering, maimed
bodies and nightmare memories. I am
grieved to say that some persons in
lofty positions and even in the armed
services still do not seem to be con-
vinced that intelligence is a profes-
sion-is, in fact, an art, requiring a life-
time of study, application and devo-
tion over and above the call of cocktail
parties and intimate little luncheons.
It's beyond human understanding.
To return to the Siberian affair-
Hugh Wilson was upset over the am-
bassador's footnote to the cablegram.
He said to Colonel Burnett, "Charlie,
send a cable to your people on the
third floor"-the Intelligence Division
was then on the third floor of the old
State, War and Navy Building in
Washington-" and tell them to walk
around the corner and tell our people to
disregard that last sentence."
This was done, and it worked. After
my return to the United States, I was
told by Maj. Karl F. Baldwin-now a
retired colonel-who had been detailed
by the War Department as liaison offi-
c n the Ja anese d 1 t'
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126
Washington
ference:
pleased to have it turn out that way,
for the time being. After I'd got my
plan working, I could present a fait
accompli to the top-drawer boys in
Washington. The story would be dif-
ferent then, or so I believed.
However, one hurdle I balked at
taking. I could get a leave of absence
from the service, but knew it wouldn't
do; the Japanese would suspect my
real designs. Or I could resign out-
right from the Army. Week after week
I hesitated to do that. One day I was
discussing it with Colonel Burnett. He
pulled out of his desk drawer a copy of
the National Defense Act of 1920,
saying, "Here's your answer, Mash-
bir."
One section stated: "Former officers
of the Regular Army and retired offi-
cers may be reappointed to the active
list, if found competent for active
duty."
It was the most cataclysmic earthquake
of modern times. My firm was wiped
out. And what was worse, from the
standpoint of the M-Plan, the milita-
rists made use of the earthquake sham-
bles to tighten their grip on Japan.
Many of the "advanced thinkers"
upon whose good will I was counting
were herded into bull pens and bay-
oneted. They were blandly reported
as quake victims. Fear made most of
the survivors docile. Those who dared
to show sparks of opposition were later
used as shock troops in the campaigns
against China. They were among the
first casualties. Others were assassi-
nated by army and Black Dragon So-
ciety thugs. During the war, many
were imprisoned and even tortured.
Along with my red hair, I'd inherited
Scotch stubbornness. I returned to the
United States early in 1924, hoping to
get American capital to finance my
you, and depend on the loyalty and
patriotism you have shown to see that
this does not become public until after
the war."
Well, it's after the war now!
If ever a man smacked into a dead
end, I was that man. A few pen strokes
had crossed out my excuse for being.
It was the all-time low of my life. But
despair and defeat aren't cherished
seriously or long under a red thatch.
Moreover, I had a family to support.
So, at the age of thirty-two, dead
broke, I had to make a new start in
life. Friends grubstaked me. The
minutiae of my subsequent business
ventures, ranging from selling cash
registers and some minor dabbling in
the stock market to the founding of
my present engineering-research firm,
are more a hiatus than a central part
of this narrative.
"When Secretary Hughes read the
cablegram nailing down the plot against
Siberia to the main. group of Nippon's
delegates, he, unfortunately, hadn't
enough fingers to cover up all the
names of the Japanese officers instru-
mental in arranging the Nikolaevsk
massacre. One name could easily , be
read. As you remember, that officer was
reported a suicide within forty-eight
hours."
Shortly thereafter, the Japanese
withdrew from Siberia. The military
caste lost a great deal of face. Their
advance into the continent of Asia was
set back by many years. I do not wish
to be understood as claiming that my
mission alone forced their withdrawal.
But it probably played a part, and if
so I'm pleased.
One morning in June, 1921, Capt.
Edward H. Watson, our naval attache
in Tokyo, came to me and said, "I've
been instructed by the Navy Depart-
ment to find some way to get informa-
tion out of Japan in time of war. Do
you think you could draw up a plan?"
I'd been waiting for such a request.
Before leaving Washington, I'd had
oral instructions in G-2. The officer ex-
plained the impossibility of using non-
Japanese as spies. Japanese natives
themselves were under such thorough
surveillance that they would be almost
as useless for our purposes. "We're
completely at a loss," he said. "During
your four years in Japan we want you
to give as much thought to this prob-
lem as possible."
It was never out of my conscious or
subconscious mind. By the time Cap-
tain Watson talked to me, I believed
I was close to a solution. Main details
of this M-Plan are still on the Secret
List, and likely to remain there for
some time. But I can say this much:
It depended on establishing in Japan
a number of commercial enterprises,
apparently unrelated to one another.
By a carefully thought-out psycho-
logical plan-too lengthy to go into
here-I had been able to get closer than
most foreigners to topflight Japanese.
I knew many of the "advanced think-
ers" who opposed the conquest schemes
of the military. I was also well ac-
quainted among the great financial
and industrial families who believed
that Japan's destiny lay in co-opera-
tion with the United States. Such
statesmen as Prince Tokugawa and
Viscount Inouye were my friends. I
became a director of the Pan Pacific
Association, the surviving members
of which will form the only safe nucleus
of a postwar Japanese democratic
government.
From a Japanese engineering firm I'd
had an excellent offer to go into busi-
ness. It flashed through my mind,
Why not take it? It ought to pay enough
money to permit me, personally, to get
the M-Plan started. By using personal
funds, I could eliminate the greatest dan-
ger of our Government's being implicated
if the Japs caught up to me.
I was not so naive as to believe that
Washington would go shouting mad
with enthusiasm when it examined the
M-Plan, but I didn't expect it would
roll over and play dead. As Capt.-
now Rear Admiral-Ellis M. Zacharias
of the Office of Naval Intelligence, and
author of the recent authoritative
Secret Missions, put it, "Any plan was
better than a total of no plans at all."
Weeks passed after I had submitted
the plan to Washington. It had evoked
an epic unenthusiasm and a thunderous
silence. Some dusty, remote file cabinet
had swallowed it up. I was just as
"Hell, son," Colonel Burnett said,
"when the war breaks, Congress will
promote you and cover you with
medals."
That settled it. I could resume my
intelligence career officially, once I had
the M-Plan going soundly. Yet the act
of writing my resignation caused me
the most terrific mental turmoil. I
didn't even take my wife into my con-
fidence as to what lay behind the resig-
nation. Only Colonel Burnett, in
Tokyo, and Commander Zacharias,
Naval Intelligence, in Washington,
knew.
In April, 1923, now a civilian, I
started work for the Japanese engi-
neering firm. I had charge of importing
American agricultural and indus-
trial machinery such as tractors, high-
pressure boilers, hydroelectrical equip-
ment, coal-loading apparatus, and so
on. By late summer the Japanese were
placing increasing confidence in me.
Unless the skies fall, I thought, I'll
have the M-Plan operating in good ear-
nest by the end of the year.
The skies remained in place, but on
the hot September first of 1923, the
earthheaved and spewed beneath Japan.
I'll pass over the years 1924-1937,
saying only that I kept plugging for
reinstatement in Regular Army Intelli-
gence. In 1928 I served eight months
on the General Staff as a Reserve In-
telligence Officer.
Then, in 1937, at the request of
Commander Zacharias, with whom I
had been constantly co-operating, and
of Capt. William D. Puleston, the direc-
tor of Naval Intelligence, I went on a
short mission to Japan. The Office of
Naval Intelligence had disinterred my
M-Plan. I was asked to make an
eleventh-hour reconnaissance to see if,
perhaps, it still could be put into opera-
tion. I insisted on going at my own
expense to prevent discovery of a Gov-
ernment tie-in.
I discovered that it was much too
late for the M-Plan. However, I did
return with such conclusive evidence
of Japan's aggressive intent against
China and against us that only the
deaf, dumb and blind could have ig-
nored it. Washington's high policy
makers ignored it with frantic enthu-
siasm.
I heard the first Pearl Harbor bulle-
tin over the radio in my Washington
home. I went from the dinner table to
the phone and called several intelli-
gence officers, offering to take anything
anywhere. I wired the Secretary of
War and offered my services in any
capacity without pay for the dura-
tion.
A puzzling silence of weeks followed.
Finally, on January 23, 1942, I was as-
signed as a lieutenant colonel in charge
of the Intelligence Branch of the Office
of the Chief Signal Officer. Early in
1942, Zacharias was made Assistant
Director of Naval Intelligence. He
knew that I was anxious to go to the -
Pacific, where my knowledge of the
Japanese and their language ought to
be useful. But orders to that theater
were strangely tardy. Then Zacharias
set certain wheels in motion.
One day I saw the dossier on me. The
file was half a foot high. Talk about
the left hand neither knowing what
the right is doing nor giving a damn-
G-2 had not known that my Japanese
visit in 1937 had been on a Naval In-
telligence mission. By avoiding con-
tact, as instructed, with our military
and naval people, so as not to arouse
Japanese suspicion, I had, weirdly
enough, incurred the suspicion of our
own side. Through the five years since
the mission, I had been under close
surveillance. I was strongly suspected
of being a Japanese agent.
M-Plan. To put it mildly, the attempt
was a flat failure. The particulars are
too involved, too dismal for inclusion
here.
I applied for reinstatement in the
Regular Army under the previously
mentioned terms of the National De-
fense Act. Colonel Burnett, Gen.
Frank McCoy, Ambassador Warren
and others had written to the Adjutant
General and to the Secretary of War,
recommending my immediate return
to intelligence duty in Tokyo.
My orders were already drawn up
when it was discovered that some six
months before my resignation the
Judge Advocate General had ruled out
reappointment of former officers who
had resigned. Incidentally, this was
not printed in the law until 1926. Any-
way, the decision went against me on
the grounds that unless the real reason
for my resignation were given, even
one exception would establish a prece-
dent.
" If we give the real reason," the
chairman of the Senate Committee on
Military Affairs said to me, "we'll have
international complications overnight.
This time your country must desert
NEXT WEEK: In the last ofthree.articles, Colonel
Mashbir reveals how Allied intelligence extracted
vital information from captured Japanese docu-
ments and soldiers. He tells about the sheet of car-
bon paper which led to the liquidation of a Jap force,
and the faux pas which endangered the surrender
conference.
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Approved For Release 2003-1
k1 llac l rlhur" hcadcluarter,. (,metal Kailabe,
Colonel llashbir (cenler) and General Vi illoughbF.
l Was an American Spy
4v ( OI., .'11k'S IJ) F"..11 i.'+11IIIR, a tind tap,/1 11 1,i5 'I:
1,11 H-1, of one of 1114' must N iial intclli~encr operations of World \\,11- 11, the
h,)\\ Ili;. IIliil 4r1)1IIH)'tl III,, 'kip", tol- 'eerets and cnahlc(I 11ac-
\rthur's forces to carrv out their islau(I-hopping a(Ivances-to "Tokyo's dismay.
N intelligence agent can never tell when his
work may have some jolting backlash. I
learned that afterPeart Harbor. Previously,
in 19:3, Nava] Intelligence had sent ire on
a confidential mission to Japan. At, he beginning
of World War 11, when I applied for service in the
Pacific, I found lint Army Intelligence just.:rbout
had ire taped as a Japanese spY-
I adrnif to unbridled rage. After all, in 19l(i I'd
been all but, killed by what, amounted to a Jap goon
squad in the Sonora desert. of Mexico. While I was
an nitelligenceofficer in Japan, I'd reported Lime and
Again the ultranationalists' plans for war on the
United States and for the seizure of Fast Asia. And
now, because I had done what an in telligerice opera-
I ive should do keep his mouth shut., except to those
who have assigned him - I was under a cloud.
Fortunately, Calif. Ellis Zacharias, of Naval
Intelligence, having discovered the G-2 blunder,
simply invited an inspection of his secret tiles. The
whole I hing was cleared up in no Lime. On Septem-
her 28, 1942, after spending some six weeks working
wit h Zacharias at. t he request of Admiral King, pre-
paring a plan fora central intelligence agency, I left
for Brisbane, Australia. I had been detailed to
General MacArthur's headquarters as chief of the
Allied Translator and Interpreter Section of GHQ,
under Gen. Charles A. Willoughby, his brilliant G-2.
It was a small -less than forty men lint , polyglot
unit., composed of Australian, Canadian and British
army, air and navy men; Chinese, White Russians,
East Indies Netherlanders and a handful of Amer-
icans. As the ,var progressed, ATIS was to become
preponderantly American. At the outset., however,
we were a potpourri, not an organization. The prize
was a Greek citizen in the Australian Army who
spoke Japanese with it Russian accent.
Soon after my arrival, we had our first captured
Japanese documents. Clotted with blood and body
fat, they had been taken in New Guinea and flown
to Brisbane. Australian Lt. John Shelton read them
aloud. ( )ur group made notes. They dealt, chiefly
with a Japanese mountain-artillery regiment in the
Owen Stanley Range.
Two American officers jumped into a car and
raced to General MacArthur's headquarters with
the informal horn, just in time to catch hell. One of
the other mien, an Australian, had telephoned it to
his headquarters, which had at once rung up GHQ
and passed on the data before the Americans could
get in with it.
I called together my unit heads. "Gentlemen," I
said, "right now, let's make the Japs our Number
One enemy, instead of their coming fourth-after
i he three allied intelligence services."
Then rid here we agreed to wipe out all inter-
allied and irrl.erservice distinctions and prejudices.
lnformat in gleaned from documents and prisoners
was thenceforth communicated to all headquarters
simultaneously. It was an interallied, interservice
command thtrt really worked.
A'I'IS was completely secret, until the Japanese
surrender. It eventually expanded from its little
nucleus to more than 3000 personnel, and partici-
pated in every single operation in the PacificThea-
ter. In the beginning, when the Japanese were push-
ing ahead in New Guinea, we had few captured doc-
uments, fewer prisoners. But as the .Japanese ad-
vance turned into retreat, more of both began to
trickle in. "Trickle" is the correct word.. Throughout
the war the number of prisoners was amazingly
small, and most of 1.hern were suffering either from
wounds or starvation. At Guadalcanal 40,000 Japs
were killed, Tait. only about 600 taken prisoner-
Forty-three thousand (lead were counted in the Buna
operation, yet we captured just 625 prisoners. This
ratio remained constant, until just before the close
of the Philippine campaign. I doubt it' in any war
so few prisoners have been captured in proportion
to the number of troops engaged and killed. The
United Stales, in contrast, lost 85 per cent. as many
prisoners as dead.
The reason for this state of affairs was Japanese
indoctrination. The soldier was taught that he ceased
to exist. as a Japanese and as a spiritual entity if he
gave himself up. Unwounded men sought death
rather than capture.
Captured Japanese invariably lied on first, interro-
gation. The PW often gave an assumed name---fre-
rluently that of his bitterest personal enemy. He
readily gave information on the chap's particular
outfit, although it might be his own unit. His chief
concern wash t military security, but to protect his
family from reprisals.
We soon came to know that, even though given
under an alias, most of the information was fairly
accurate Sinre the Jat aiiese fb4htint rnna1 was un-
der grim order to die by his own hand in preference
to capture, his superiors couldn't very well school
hint to avoid divulging information when captured.
A scattering of prisoners-mostly navy men, more
intelligent. than the run-of-the-mine army con-
scripts would say nothing at first. I remember
one obdurate Japanese who sported that rarity
among his people, a full beard, of which lie was very
proud. I had him brought into a room where a
camera was suet, up and a barber's chair prepared.
The barber waited with lather cup and razor.
"Do you see that barber'?" the bearded Jai.) was
asked. "Well, we are going to shave you and photo-
graph you and have your picture published in Allied
and neutral countries as one of the. first Japanese
prisoners."
After a moment of thought., he said, "Haki-tai !"
which means, " I must vomit !" Promptly he did,
then talked q~.nte freely. (Corrlirmed on P.r., l30)
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Approved
build, with broad shoulders and a swarthy face. His
eyes hold little encouragement for anyone wishing
to push Jerzy around.
It all started in September, 1939, when Hitler in-
vaded Poland, and Jerzy was hurriedly drafted for
the defense of Warsaw. He was just, seventeen. He
had left school two years before and was working as
n bellhop in the Hotel Polonia, where his father,
Samuel, had spent, the better part of his life as it
doorman. He was by no means a stationary char-
'refer, old Samuel Fordonsky; having fought, bravely
with the Czar's armies in the first World War, lie
landed in Shanghai, where he became a man of
some importance in the Chinese police. He returned
Lo Lodz, via the United States, with four Chinese
medals, which he kept on a silk cushion in his living
room, where Jerzy eyed them with envy, and de-
cided to earn his own medals someday. By 1939,
Samuel had already been pensioned off and was
living in a small apartment near the Lodz railroad
station with his second wife-Jerzy's mother having
died when Jerzy was five months old.
.Jerzy had been it soldier for exactly ten days when
Poland tell. He was taken prisoner. "Your father's
name is S. Fordonsky?" The German looked at his
pupers. "S. for Stanislav'?"
.Jerzy nodded.
"It. saved my life right then and there," he ex-
plains. "They released me, along with the other
Polish soldiers. If they'd known I was a Jew, they
would have sent me along to Auschwitz." And Jerzy
had other plans.
Hack in Lodz things were looking grim and getting
grimmer by the hour. More than half of the city's
/00,000 inhabitants were Jews, and the German
conquerors were beginning to herd them into it
ghetto. Jerzy, having holed in with non-Jewish ac-
quaintances here and there without reporting his
whereabouts to the police, took one look at: the large
walled-oil' Jewish section and decided it was not, for
;ninr. He preferred the freedom of the hunted. He
went. just once, to see that, his old father, his step-
inot,her and his brother, who had obeyed the Ger-
rnans and moved in, were all right. But even while
he was visiting, the Germans sealed the exits, and
.Jerzy had to climb back to freedom over the high
wall, He checked in with a Catholic family he knew
in one of the suburbs and took stock of the situation.
" I watched the German progress in France and
Scandinavia," he recalls, "and t figured it, would be
a long war. You can't stay on here indefinitely,
n _
llow is the fighting going in Palestine? Jerzy
devours all available newspapers to find nut.
'1'0 !Tire the lit Is a I h r i l l . Jerz.v fret It eI I II-, N% ears some of his medal bears of Ira_edv bill,' uol
,I:ona;*ed his spiriI. IIe Ollen eheens the young I)I',s NiIII a I i 1 4 - I % Led Iime solo on Iris harrn,urira.
Jerzy,' I said to myself. 'Too many people know
your face around this town, and the Germans will
pick you up in the end."' Having heard I hat. large
remnants of I he Polish ;rrrny had pushed across the
border into (Czechoslovakia and Hungary, fie de-
cided to join theta. One rainy morning in June,
19'0, having bade farewell to Iwo or three friends of
he family, Jerry quietly slipped out of town.
In the ancient city of Cracow, not far from the
border, he called oil an ofd pal who had once been a
policeman in Lodz. "The border is closed and
guarded by the SS," he t old Jerzy. " Why don't you
stay here? Cracow doesn't. even have a ghetto yet.
V n:r re sai't here . . . aas tong as no one' knows that
you're Jewish."
.Jerzy Ibought it over and decided to take his ad-
vice. "All I could think of', then, was how Lo survive.
The Germans had caught are once, and I didn't want.
them to catch inc again. I was afraid of them. I
wanted to live."
Jerzy went tot he Polish Hed Cress and told I Irern
the hard-luck story of it released prisoner who had
no family and was out of a job. The Red Cross,
without asking too many quest ions, directed him to
it small furnished room in an apartment which had
once belonged to it Jewish f:trnily until the Gestapo
emptied it, and Jerzy moved in.
Jerzy couldn't took for it lob because of the con-
stant danger of being found out.. The Gestapo was
combing all Poland for lows, and they were using
the line-tooth comb by now. He had no proper
papers. He had no alibi for being at. large. But he
had to eat., and there was only one answer to his
intrnedi:rte proilern the black market. On C'racow's
main square, chrisitned Adolf Ilitter I'lat.z by the
Germans, Polish hues would buy whatever (;r'rm:rn
soldiers could spare extra hisnkets, boots and
watches curd sell I hem, in turn. such luxuries is it
side of bacon, n Polish barn, a few eggs. "There was a
fair living in this sort of thing, if you were smart.
Jerzy felt relatively +:ife in it business where rteiltier
seller nor buyer cou d :rlford to he inquisilive'. He
became a si.early, t bough distinctly small lime
operator on the Platz; and he went on, to this pre-
carious fashion, for nearly two years, never revealing
himself, and wary of making enemies or friends.
l 4d r l,ruds .,ere r,;tl herirrc' rrvr-r his heart. AN
Jerzy had to drr ":is look out the window :ind he
could see which w:rv the wind was blownri;. The
streel where he live was sealed off with harhed wire
no%v; Lhe' Gestupo was using it is a collecting; point
for Polish Jews. /:very night a new cargo of weary,
ragged, slupelierl hninimity was pushed onto frocks
to he carted off'. And every night, as Jerzy looked on
in horror, i few would quietly collapse, having
mirnaged Lo swallow poison. When would they come
for hint?
Hy late summer of It.)1'?, with I lie Germans logged
down before Stalingrad, the dragnet. was applied
with greater care than ever. 5S men took up po-
sit ions it( I he st recI corners, spot -chocking people's
documents. A decree was published ordering every
Pole to apply fur it new ideality card, with his Foe-
ture on it. Deeming it unwise to present himself to
the nuthoril ies, Jerzy let the dead line go by, unde-
cided, brooding. 'I'll( ! ..,r a;,, r,..,I ,to
I'n_.? I :; )
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- I WAS
A pro F?1@1JMX7 : C111ATI`D600(~P68Idfi0065i(~1,?1-9
'?""" anguage proved a terrible problem to
t~"`'`~fr?"' ~'i, 28) us at first, but in the end a boon. The
Japanese had to write down everything
That is as close as ATIS ever came possible of misinterpretation. They de-
to applying pressure to a prisoner. Yet pended to a pitiful degree upon the
every one of the 14,000 we interrogated written word in all military operations.
eventually told us what we wanted to We found that they seldom used the
know. simple Kaisho for anything more im-
The attitude of many of them was portant than formal operations orders,
expressed by one Japanese sergeant, medical and intelligence reports, whereas
member of a "special intelligence unit" at least 80 per cent of the documents set
which operated in Filipino garb behind down in the obscure Sosho script had
our lines in the Philippines with orders immediate tactical value. Apparently
to assassinate MacArthur. "Defeat for the Japs had decided that Sosho con-
Japanese is death. Thus, if living in stituted an almost unbreakable code,
flesh after defeat, Japanese prisoner is as far as Anglo-Saxons were concerned.
reborn to new life. We prisoners, hav- Every scrap of Japanese paper we
ing been reborn as Americans, must regarded as a potential nugget. A sheet
serve America with utter loyalty. Amer- of carbon paper salvaged from an
icans do not understand this, and I do abandoned Jap position in New Guinea
not understand why I am to be hanged had been used three times. This be-
tomorrow for a crime committed in a came an intelligence classic. Subjected
previous existence." to ultraviolet-ray scanning and other
General MacArthur is one American techniques, the carbon betrayed: (1)
who does understand, incidentally. The a hitherto unknown war-craft route be-
wholesale success of his administration tween the Japanese bases of Kokopo
of Japan, where the armchair experts and Salamaua; (2) The exact strength
expected bedlam confounded, demon- of the Jap 66th Infantry Regiment; (3)
strates his profound knowledge of the The amounts of quinine dosages being
nuances of Japanese psychology, issued to troops in a certain jungle area.
Before Pearl Harbor, t here were prob- The intelligence value of the first
ably fewer than 100 Caucasians in all two items is obvious. However, it was
the Allied forces reasonably expert in the routine medical notation that
both spoken and written Japanese. proved to be of most dramatic and im-
Written Japanese entails use of some mediate tactical importance. We al-
6000 borrowed Chinese ideographs. As ready knew the approximate number
if that weren't enough, there are three of Japanese troops in the sector, and
varieties of Japanese writing. Kaisho we had learned that about 30 per cent of
is a relatively simple blocklike print- them were normally out of commission
ing. Gyosho corresponds roughly to with malaria. But the carbon revealed
handwritten script. Sosho can be de- such a heavy increase in issues of
scribed only as a species of short- quinine that it was deduced that
hand, refined to almost indecipherable malaria casualties had soared to at
rudiments. least 80 per cent.
days Jforathe ptalk is language,
morass every-
of men and supplies for an attack on this
homonyms-words identical in sound, area, planning to launch it in about
but with meanings poles apart. There three weeks. Now they decided to
is some of this in English, to be sure- strike at once. This they did the mid-
"pear," "pair" and "pare," for in- night following the discovery of the
stance-but nothing to compare with sheet of carbon. The malaria-ridden
Japanese. Take the sound "Ki," pro- Japs were cleaned out in short order,
nounced "key." Depending upon the and the Allied timetable in that part
ideograph used, Ki can mean tree, of the Pacific leaped three weeks ahead.
vessel, river, undiluted, yellow, a sea- Another discarded scrap of paper,
son, a warning, a warrior, strangeness, picked up at Gizarum, gave away the
and a baker's dozen other things. daytime hide-outs of Jap supply nd
On a street corner in Japan it is a troop barges along the Neuinea
common sight to see two conversa- coast. Allied aircraft promptly blasted
tionalists lost in the labyrinth of their them, sinking 300, with probable Jap-
own speech. One breaks off talk to anese casualties of 12,000 to 15,000
explain what he has been saying by men, and none on our side.
tracing with a forefinger in the palm (Continued on Page 132)
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((: ,i, /6uu(l frouI Pag(' 130)
Eventually, ATIS published 20,-
000,000 pages of information derived
from the interrogation of prisoners and
the examination of 2,000,000 enemy
documents. All of it was evaluated,
painstakingly correlated and then in-
dexed and cross-indexed. On very
short notice almost any fact or com-
bination of facts about Japanese forces
anywhere could be extracted from the
files.
For example, before the attack on
New Britain, ATIS was ordered by
General Willoughby to furnish data on
Japanese strength on the Gazelle Pen-
insula and at Rabaul. In twelve hours
we delivered to GHQ a study, complete
with maps, showing every gun posi-
tion, pillbox, pig track and equipment
part, every billet and the number and
identification of its occupants, and
even the telephone numbers. If needed,
it would have been possible to give
-
d
preju
ages, birth marks, hobbies, foo
dices and snoring habits of scores of the thing bore historic Japanese names. At
Rabaul garrison. Toward the end of Wewak, for instance, they used names
the war, GHQ literally knew more like Momo Yama-tomb of the Em-
about Japanese military and naval peror Meiji-Tsushima-scene of a
dispositions and strength in the Pacific great naval battle of the Russo-
than did the Japs themselves. Japanese War-and Chusenji-a fa-
Most of our tiny original ATIS group mous shrine. Capt.-later Maj.-George
were competent linguists. But as the Caiger, Australian Army, had an in-
work load became heavier, I had to spiration while laboring over these
requisition additional men from the maps. He said, "I don't think these
anese place names have been sp-
Ja
l
h
p
oo
s
military-intelligence language sc
in the United States. A very few were plied haphazardly. I'm convinced this
expert. Some, found proficient in is a far cry from the sense of humor
Japanese, were only so-so in English. that G. L's show when they call some
Others, rating excellent in English, steaming, muddy hole `Times Square'
had mediocre grasp of Japanese. It and a jungle trail `Broadway.
fi 11 oncluded that the elab-
c
W
e nay
occurred to me that individuals in
the groups might serve as mutual orate names were a tip-off that the
crutches. Experimentally, we paired Japs had been ordered to hold these
linguists. This technique proved emi- places to the death. If so, they might
nently successful. Out of every two just as well die there of starvation as
d of bullet wounds or shrapnel. This de-
partial Allied linguists we obtame one
team nearly the equal of an educated duction was submitted at once to GHQ-
Japanese. General Willoughby concurred. It was
A majority of our translators were one of the factors considered in the
American Nisei. Had it not been for leapfrog jumps which thereafter char-
the loyalty, bravery and ability of acterized General MacArthur's tactics.
these Japanese-Americans, many phases Wewak was among the first Jap
of intelligence work in the Pacific would strongpoints by-passed. Among their
have fallen flat. I know that their sacred place names the Wewak troops
faithful service to the United States sat and starved while our timetable
d f r months ahead. Their
saved many thousands of American jumpe ou
lives and shortened the war by months- plight became so bitter that cannibal-
It must be realized that this group of ism was rampant. At final surrender,
men had more to lose than any others nearly 40,000 Japanese scarecrows at
participating in the war. Had any of Wewak laid down their arms. I believe
them been captured, their torture that thousands of Americans are alive
would have been indescribable. To today only because-in spite of lifted
each Nisei outfit reporting for duty, I eyebrows-General MacArthur de-
said, "I won't lie to you. You're in as cided not to storm those symbolically
difficult a position as Jews in Germany. renamed Wewak strongholds.
The vast majority of you are volun- Understanding the unique quirks of
teers. You know what war hysteria has the Japanese make-up was just as vital
done to your families in the States. to success in another phase of intel-
They have been put in concentration ligence -psychological warfare. Some
camps, some with good reason, others Washington officials initially felt that
simply because of race. Undoubtedly, techniques which had worked bril-
liantl in the European Theater of
are
Y
some of you are bitter. But you
ood Americans. You have decided to
g
serve your country where you will be
most useful, nevertheless. I give you
my promise that, if I live, I will make
every effort within my power to see
that your achievements are recognized
by the American public."
Every word was taken to heart.
Throughout the war, we never had to
take any disciplinary measures where
our Nisei were concerned. When the
Nisei got into combat zones, they often
were fired on by both sides. The Japs
complicated this by infiltrating our lines
with men garbed in American and
Australian uniforms stripped off our
dead. Finally we issued orders that
every Nisei going to the front had to
be accompanied by an American or
Australian noncom or officer.
None of them ever showed the white
feather, although ATIS Nisei accom-
panied assault units on every landing
from Papua to the Philippines. More
than 150 were finally given direct com-
missions. The rest were promoted
several grades. An exceptionally high
percentage were decorated or cited for
valor.
Every now and then you get results
in intelligence work by playing a
hunch-not the race-track, spur-of-
the-moment kind, but the poker type
based on knowledge of your opponent's
psychology. During the New Guinea
campaign, ATIS was having trouble
identifying scrambled place names on
Japanese military maps. Sometimes
the Japs used native names. Again,
they would adopt designations from
British maps or from old sketches made
by Dutch missionaries. At other points
we found arbitrary labels such as Hill
A, Hill B, Hill C.
Operations ought to come off as well
against the Japs. Much effort against
Japanese troops in the field was ini-
tially directed toward arousing nos-
talgia. Leaflets were dropped describ-
ing the beauties of Japanese homelife
and giving surrender as the prescription
for a quick reunion with loved ones.
I doubt like hell if any Jap gave up
for this reason. By their code, the Jap
who did surrender considered his fam-
ily disgraced and himself dead as a
Japanese, and forevermore banished
from his homeland. However, con-
structive criticism by ATIS was well
received in Washington. By and large,
the quality of psychological warfare
improved remarkably. Under Gen.
Bonner F. Fellers it became a precision
weapon-but that is a story in itself.
App{ oved For Release 2003/05/27 : CIA-RDP86B00269R000500050101-9
Ridicule was one of our beet psy-
chological weapons against the Jap-
anese, I do not mean juvenile insults
:end narne-calling, such as the Japs'
classic shouts of. "To hell with Babe
Ruth!" But, skillful needling could,
uncl did, goad them out of bunkers and
caves into suicidal Banzai charges
where grenades and trench mortars
failed.
For the Philippines campaign, we
broadcast i.o the Japs along this line:
"'Can it, be that the Imperial Japanese
Navy, whose bravery has never been
questioned, is carrying its historic en-
anity against, the army t.o such an ex-
lent, that. it, is abandoning the soldiers to
die like curs on the shores of foreign
lands? "
(quickly the Japanese filled the ether
with counter-propaganda that the
Philippines were now an integral part
of the empire. 'T'herefore, Japanese
soldiers giving their lives there would
certainly not, be (lying on foreign
shores. But other Jap broadcasts con-
fusedly stated that the Japanese Meet,
was inactive in the Philippines because
it, was being utilized for protection of
-apanese home waters.
This gave its the perfect cue_ Our
next. broadcast said, in effect, "In view
of the fact that the Philippines are now
>a part of the Japanese Empire, how can
file Imperial Japanese Navy reconcile
its statement of guarding the Japanese
Empire with its abandonment of Nip-
ponese soldiers in the Philippines? As
part. of' the empire, the Philippines are
part of the home waters of Japan ! "
We couldn't. have wished for more
perfect Liming. Damned if it, didn't,
1 he Japanese fleet, chose to be damned
if it did. It. sallied forth to its destruc-
tion at the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
The climax of my intelligence career
came in two parts-one before and one
Approved For Rele;it 2` 03/0,4/127''CIS-RDP18'6B00269R000500050101-9
during I he surrender. Ever since I had
liver] among the ,Japanese 1 had puzzled
over their seemingly autornat.ic disci-
pline. They a re law-a biding, whether the
law is civil or military, on a scale that.
Occidental individualists simply can't.
grasp. I tried to att.ribut.e it. to Em-
peror worship, to Shinto indocl.rina-
1ion, to the thought police, inbreeding,
t.radit.ion, and so on. No single factor
or meshing of factors gave nme a satis-
factory answer. I was also at. a loss t.o
interpret, certain vague undertones in
Japanese conversations and news-
papers. During the war, the same mad-
dening hints kept bobbing up in cap-
tured documents.
Then in March, 1945, A'1'IS had a
windfall. Several apparently unrelated
Japanese documents reached us simul-
taneously. Taken together, they spelled
out for the first. Lime the missing clue
to Japanese psychology a spy-hostage
system called Ilol,:o, which had secretly
functioned in Japan for centuries.
tinder its modern name of Tonuri (;umi
or "Neighborhood Associations," it,
had been successfully extended Lo con-
quered parts of China and Manchuria,
and was now proposed for application
to the Filipinos.
The system originated in China
about, 1100 B.('., and was first intro-
duced into Japan about, 700 A.D. by
the Empress Gemrnyo. Very simply, it,
made every member of every family re-
sponsible for any offense commil.ted by
any other member. A special family
representative "acceptable to the po-
lice" was appointed to report. to the
authorities.
That was only the beginning. Every
Len families formed a Ili. They, in turn,
selected a responsible representative.
Ten If, became a Ko, with its own rep-
resentative. Every ten Ko formed a
Ho, with its representative. The local
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