YOUR ARTICLE IN THE SPRING 1984 ISSUE OF STUDIES IN INTELLIGENCE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP86M00886R000800090001-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 54
• Document Creation Date: December 21, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 30, 2008
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: June 14, 1984
• Content Type: MEMO

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~~ )%64 14 June 1984
MEMORANDUM FOR: NIO/General Purpose Forces
FROM: Deputy Director of Central Intelligence
SUBJECT: Your Article in the Spring 1984 Issue of 3~ffacjc~(
"Studies in Intelligence"
1. I refer to your quote from page 12 of the "Studies," "In a sense
we are advocating a NATO "takeover" of US intelligence..." Further, on
page 13 you say, "...we need relief from obsolete doctrine. It is not
a task for any single level of responsibility. In the US Government
there should be a National Security Council senior interdepartmental
group (SIG) to formulate policy on NATO intelligence matters and to
coordinate the efforts of the various agencies and departments on the
subject."
2. Fortunately the drafters of the National Security Act of 1947 and
various Presidents in their Executive Orders have given the responsibility
as well as authority over intelligence matters to the DCI. What perplexes
me is why are you, as a serving officer of the DCI, advocating that that
be changed?
STAT
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Secret 0 25X1
Vol. 28 No. 1
Studies
in Intelligence
Spring 1984
0001
Secret
TE-SINT 84-001
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Next 46 Page(s) In Document Denied
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THE CIA CANOE POOL
STAT
The question recurs with remarkable consistency. Not even the wording
changes. When I meet casual acquaintances at the office most of them
eventually ask, "Are you still canoeing to work?" The question is a cut above
the usual elevator chatter, but I do bridle at that word "still," since it implies
there is a reason I might stop. For the fourteen years I have been a member of
the CIA canoe pool, getting there has been at least half the fun; there is no
question of stopping.
Of course, you need special circumstances before canoeing to work
becomes feasible, and I am grateful for the way these circumstances have
worked out for me. What has made the canoe pool possible is a pair of
unwitting conspiracies-one between nature and the National Park Service,
the other between Allen Dulles and a nineteenth-century Marylander named
Matthew Ruppert.
The Setting
The broad, tidal Potomac as it lazes past downtown Washington is
familiar to nearly everyone, and fair numbers have seen it as it comes off the
piedmont plateau at Great Falls, a dozen miles upstream. The setting for the
canoe pool is the much less familiar stretch between the tidal river and Great
Falls. For much of this stretch the salient feature is inaccessibility. The terrain
itself is difficult, since most of the way from Great Falls to Georgetown the
river runs through a steep-sided gorge, more precipitous on the Virginia than
on the Maryland side. But the Park Service (which owns most of the land) has
thrown up further barriers in the form of scenic parkways. In Maryland the
parkway has turnouts providing access to the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal,
which runs parallel to the river. In Virginia, however, the road is a four-lane,
almost exit-free speedway that gives motorists no chance to stop and
discourages anyone else from crossing it.
To be sure, people walk, bike, and jog by the thousand along the C&O
Canal towpath, but almost nobody uses the Virginia shore. Few people,
moreover, have any way of using the river itself, and most of those who do are
whitewater enthusiasts who stay in the first few miles below Great Falls,
where the exciting rapids are. Farther down, the river and the woods on the
Virginia side constitute what I have come to think of almost as a private
preserve: a narrow strip of near-wilderness, protected by a series of natural
and man-made obstacles and used by almost no one.
It was at a point in Virginia on the edge of this stretch that Allen Dulles
decided to build the new CIA headquarters, back when nobody worried about
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the cost of gas and it \\ as the "in thing to I1IU (? (flit of town. \1\ uHic( nn(\((l
io its ncvV (iu,ulcrs in the fall of 1961, IcaViIV behind lentpurar\ buildings
from A\ urld \\x- 11 that Were ahuul to make vva~ fur the hennedV (:ruler.
:)III n+tting bunt \larNland and the District of (ulunthia vvas painfIll at first:
the l,It vvay around \t'ashingtun had nut lion finished and ev erv one had to
inch across crowded bridges in the District But three resourceful collcagncs of
mine diticovered the (\caniorc Island (:anon (auh. set up h5 Alatthevv Nupperl
and sonic friends iii I,SS;) and occupy ing two islands near the \larN land shore
almost cyI t I N olrltusite the :A 'ti( hrrildinV. Thus was horn the (: I:1 cano(?
pool- and its ntenthers actn~tll~ saved contntuting tune until the heltwwa\ \\ as
ilI fished
I did nut iuin the canoe pool until 197 , at first because vve IiRed too far
aay in the Iistrict and then out of inertia after- We ill( Ved to \larVlaunl.
tV'hrn vve lined in the District nt\ car Ixurl did hrr)' the canoeists a child's
c(litinn of I/iunvulha and leave it nadir their canoe.) Since then all thin(
urir:ila I utcntlwis have retired and I have become one of the canoe boot's
n(aiIIsta\s.
S\ (atn)r( Island is an acre or two in area: it lies off the Mars land shore
;(hunt lilt% yards fr?nn the canal towI)ath. On it stand a clubhouse (Which has
(In,uters Ior a cao-elakcr and an ancient shed full of cations nthat often are al-
most o(Iuails ancient To reach it you descend a short flight of steps from the
tompalh and yank un a rope that rings a coartic?uIal ()h,lacle to contnnttin+z altar (lark
Hh> thin"
\ le)Ol tIt' ((ttllinc like this ntisse, must of the intt>orl;e it tliinO,. of (Oilr~e
"1'hc chance to olserve a little corner of ~~ilderness (lav in. (hiv ()Ill i, a rare
t)rkilei4e fur a (Icvkl)u(nt>I ,uhurhat(itc. One cls. fool cvanil>It'. a i~litnt>.e of the
luno and v enied rhythms (d the natural wall(, be(-t) 'car, in a lrectrinik.
V iitoe(I b?. the chain huI(linti my c"nnoe vvlieti trcc and e.(uue v(CI e tiulrncrs~cth
ill tlh(? It) -? llood. arc almost hcale(I: where tvvu bees on the hillside Ii;rnc loll
cti, huuey,nckle has used the evlra l4 flit to mm e in on the iaek-in-the pulpit.
st(tl>l>y twcs ((n the ((nlcroot>s in ntidstreant net stubbier v(itli cvcry l1((()(I and
ice ,turtn: fill dirt. durntl>ed vv h(?n the t)arkvv ay ill \ iroinia \\,I, heino built.
hcen ()Illy I t I tly cmcrcd with humus in o er twenty year,
)r the seasonal Illy thnts; the iluehclls that come tut) ;(lutes; the riper no
matter hom much silt has been put duvv n in high \\ awl: the' unv arv ino
sc(lucuce of v61d1l((vvers with ~~ont1 it0' narttes tootievvurt, then s(titirrel
corn. then tr()ttllily: the ioet>Ne v ted Iesto((tie(I \\ ith,vva11( taiI In itt oil] ii
in late ,tnnnter I am "moos in n>v kn(nw ledi,~c that dutchmen', breeches vw ill
a tjn ar ()ti a certain I att?h ()f ,(rotund in :Atn-il that a transit of let
tanaoer" taut be evl>ected the first v,eck in \lay_ that the ra,j>berrie~ will
ripen in luly and the t>avv pa in tiet>tetnder_ \\()4)(I dick, and tn:(Ilard,
t>roduee!n cc ( ~e~ery veal uri (le invariahlc tie't iii the',>e;tntore~ :(n(1 one
the Lath \\~ , \, ,It
i+~; the i .(~ I: 1III>ILI' Irani .itnirner, nilve drab ti, l, vclni('rli~~n
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There is a long roster of more or less permanent inhabitants: ospreys,
herons, pileated woodpeckers, occasional deer, raccoons (rarely seen, but their
tracks are everywhere), and the geese-barnyard and Canada-that are fed
by the caretaker on the island. And beaver: it astonishes my elevator friends
that beaver live right in metropolitan Washington, but they are numerous
enough to cause a good deal of damage to trees along the bank. They are noc-
turnal, and it is not too unusual to see one swimming home in the morning.
On occasion we have drifted downstream behind a beaver for a hundred
yards, and one evening when I was hurrying through the woods after working
late, I nearly tripped over a beaver that was browsing absentmindedly by my
canoe.
We have become connoisseurs of sunrises. Spring and fall produce misty
scenes out of an oriental painting, and the trees on the Virginia shore explode
with color when the autumn sun hits them. On a frigid winter morning we
may be spectators to a bleak interplay involving northwest wind, bright sun,
dark clouds, and blue sky. Only sodden summer mornings are predictable, and
it is during summer that mobilizing for the canoe pool is hardest.
It surprises many people, even those familiar with the pressure-cooker
effect of a Washington August, that canoeing comes hardest in summer. I
sometimes mitigate the discomfort by making the transit in swimming trunks
and taking a quick dip. In the morning I still am relatively cool by the time I
reach the top of the hill, where I change into business gear just before
emerging from the woods. A dip does not help much with the uphill bike ride
home, of course, and I must rely for motivation on the prospect of a cold
beer.
Winter canoeing is a joy by contrast. Another elevator question is, "Do
you mean you canoe all winter?" The answer is emphatically yes-if the river
is not too high, if there is not too much wind, and if the ice is either absent or
negotiable. Yes, the canoe pool kept going even in the chilly winter of 1983-84.
We obviously must pay closer attention to the many variables involved since
the margin for error is drastically reduced, but the variables themselves may
combine in ways that offer unexpected opportunities. To take one example, a
strong current or a good wind can keep the river ice-free at temperatures well
below freezing. To take another, the floating slush that sometimes dots the
river slows the canoe but keeps waves down on a windy day. (Slush on a morn-
ing of dropping temperatures is a warning, on the other hand. The original ca-
noe pool once took more than an hour rather than the usual ten minutes to
cover the third of a mile back to the island.)
At Washington's latitude, prolonged cold spells are rare and extensive ice
is not often a problem. We have had the sustained cold necessary for a solid
freeze only three times in the fourteen years I have been paddling. Those
three times-the winters of 1977, 1981, and 1982, when the river froze all the
way across-we crossed on foot, assuaging the inevitable worries with a wide
and creative variety of safety devices: a 14-foot bamboo pole; an ice axe; an
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automobile towline, so neatly and tightly coiled that it could not conceivably
have been used in an emergency; a 15-foot length of rope with the owner at
one end and his briefcase bouncing along at the other; and most improbable
and useful of all, a canoe. A canoe turns out to be a first class life support sys-
tem in and on the ice, and with it the pool kept going in conditions that once
stopped it.
Walking across when you know the ice is ten inches thick becomes almost
comfortable; but what about a thaw? What about the times the ice builds out
from shore, getting thinner and thinner as it approaches open water? I found
that a canoe was in its element in these conditions if I brought along an ice axe
and a sturdy paddle. Putting part of my weight on the canoe while walking be-
side it reduced the chance of breaking through, and the canoe was a refuge,
easy to scramble into, if I misjudged. The ice axe was sometimes useful for
chopping a path, but more often for propelling the canoe across the ice in the
same way the paddle pushed it through the water. The paddle got the canoe
through ice too thin for the ice axe to grip.
As a result I missed very few days, not just during the depth of the cold
spell in 1981 but during the thaw that followed. In 1982, by contrast, I hardly
crossed the ice at all. The difference lay in the almost infinite number of vari-
ables that affect the quality of river ice. In 1981 the river was exceptionally
low, the current was minimal, and the ice formed solidly. In 1982 the ice was
more treacherous even though the temperatures were lower. A somewhat
higher river level and a heavy fall of snow (which weighed down the ice and
let water onto the surface, turning the snow into slush) spelled the difference.
In many ways wind is the most daunting and frustrating of the winter
variables. When we are paddling it tries to capsize us, slew us around, and
send us sideways all at the same time; and when crossing the ice I have been
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propelled briskly to the southeast in an almost friction-free environment. A
good winter breeze also brings the wind-chill factor down to zero or below,
and because in winter it usually blows straight downstream it reinforces
whatever current there is. It was on such a day, when we all were chilled to
the bone and there was no way we could stop paddling for even a few seconds,
that a colleague remarked he had to keep looking to see if his arms were still
For moat of the winter, of course, questions of this sort do not arise.
Occasionally we get a quiet and beautiful snowfall, which usually occurs when
the temperature is around freezing and the river is ice-free. Much more often
there simply is nothing to report: there is no ice, the wind is not particularly
strong, and the weather is just the normal dreary Washington fare. Dreary or
not, I find it more salutary to be out in the weather than to grumble about it
from inside; somehow the winter thereby becomes easier to get through. I now
do not get really impatient for spring until mid-March.
Proof Against the Absurd
Aside from the obvious benefits-the chance to see wildflowers and
pileated woodpeckers, the exercise, the insights into the workings of nature-
what do I get out of all this? Part of the answer is that regular contact with the
earth is as important for me as it was for Antaeus.' Another part (and it may
be saying the same thing in a less metaphorical way) is that for a moment I get
to evade modern man's almost complete dependence on secondhand informa-
tion. People now are very largely containerized, physically and even mentally,
and without really noticing it we have come to rely on what others tell us
about the world beyond our narrow boxes. I suppose this has always been true,
but the ratio between the great mass of secondhand data and the small amount
we pick up on our own can never have been greater than it is now. It is all too
easy to ignore the distinction-to forget that nearly everything has been
through a process of selection, organization, and interpretation before we get
it. This is a particularly serious danger for professional information-processors
like me, but I think the proposition holds for most people. At any rate, the ca-
noe commute does give me a firsthand glimpse of what is going on beyond the
various manmade containers I inhabit; I benefit from regular access to
information that clearly is unmediated.
Beyond that, I find it simultaneously humbling and encouraging to be
reminded that it is an endless process out there, always and yet never
changing. At a less cosmic level it is satisfying to understand from my own ex-
perience (to take just one example) why the Eskimos have a vital need for
many terms to distinguish among different kinds of ice. And not least, when
things seem to be settling into a pattern of sustained wackiness either at home
or in the office, a fixed point of reference like the canoe crossing is useful even
if it is brief.
'In Greek mythology, Antaeus was a giant of Libya, son of Poseidon and Gaea (earth), long
invincible in wrestling because his strength was renewed every time he touched the earth, his
mother. Heracles held him off the ground and throttled him.
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There was only one time when the reference point itself seemed to be
working loose. One summer morning, when the mist was still heavy on both
the Potomac and my brain, I suddenly noticed that the river was full of dozens
of squirming beings ten or twelve inches long, each of them with a huge
mouth that stuck above the surface. For a long moment I felt as if I had wan-
dered into a Brueghel painting; then I realized that the surface was covered
with insect corpses, the result of some sort of mass death upstream, and the
squirming beings were catfish that had come up from the bottom to scoop
them in. Relieved that the river was still proof against the absurd, I resumed
paddling toward a world I knew was not.
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To eliminate a dilemma
DISCLOSURE PROBLEMS IN ESPIONAGE PROSECUTIONS
STAT
Enforcement of the principal provisions of the United States espionage
laws often poses a serious problem for our defense and intelligence agencies.
The statutes at issue, 18 U.S.C. ??793 and 794, are among the most often used
in espionage prosecutions. Since these statutes actually or potentially necessi-
tate damaging disclosures of national security information ' to defense counsel
and, through public trial, to foreign adversaries during the course of prosecu-
tion, the statutes should be reformulated to eliminate this dilemma unless such
disclosures are required as a matter of law or for some other compelling
reason.
Title 18 U.S.C. ??793 and 794 (Appendix A), respectively, proscribe the
gathering or obtaining of documents or information "relating to the national
defense" 2 and the communication or delivery, or attempted communication
or delivery of such documents or information to a foreign government or
faction or an agent thereof. To be proscribed, such acts must be done with "in-
tent or reason to believe" that the documents or information are "to be used to
the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation." These
requirements are a problem because they impose upon the government the
obligation to prove to a jury in open court that the documents or information
at issue are related to the national defense and that the defendant acted with
the requisite intent or knowledge.
Elements of Proof
To obtain a conviction under 18 U.S.C. ??793 and 794, the government
must prove that the documents or information at issue in the case meet the
statutory standard. In United States v. Gorin, 312 U.S. 19 (1941), the Supreme
Court adopted a broad definition of what information relates to the national
defense.
National defense, the Government maintains, is a "generic concept
of broad connotations, referring to the military and naval establish-
' "National security information" is intended to mean information which would be subject
to the various espionage statutes. As will be seen, as a practical matter this means classified
information.
18 U.S.C. ?793(a) uses the phrase "respecting the national defense" to describe the
covered information and documents while 18 U.S.C. ??793(d)-(f) and 794(a) use "relating to the
national defense" and ?794(b) uses "relating to the public defense" (emphasis added). No
distinctions were intended by the use of these differing formulations.
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ments and the related activities of national preparedness." We agree
that the words "national defense" in the espionage act carry that
meaning.'
Under such a broad definition, however, it would be difficult for a person
to know what specific acts are proscribed, since many foreign communica-
tions, dealings, and relationships in the private and commercial sectors pertain
to military-related matters. The Court disposed of such overbreadth objections
in Gorin:
... we find no uncertainty in this statute which deprives a
person of the ability to predetermine whether a contemplated action
is criminal under the provisions of this law. The obvious delimiting
words in the statute are those requiring "intent or reason to believe
that the information to be obtained is to be used to the injury of the
United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation." This
requires those prosecuted to have acted in bad faith. The sanctions
apply only when scienter is established.4
Since the obtaining and transfer of national defense information is
thus proscribed only when done with the requisite "bad faith," in the
absence of self-incriminating statements or a confession by the defendant,
about the only way to convince a jury on this element is to prove that the
information is so important that the defendant had to have an intent or
reason to believe that his acts would injure the United States or benefit a
foreign state.
The cases subsequent to Gorin developed further what information was
excluded from coverage and how the government could go about proving that
information relates to the national defense. Thus, information released by the
defense establishment or which is otherwise publicly available is not covered
by the statutes, regardless of the defendant's intent.5 On the other hand, the
fact that the information at issue is classified is admissible as evidence of
defense-relatedness ,6 although a jury would still have to determine as a
separate matter that the defendant had an intent or reason to believe that the
information would injure the United States or give advantage to a foreign
nation.
A CIA General Counsel once stated that "nobody doubts the proposition
that some prosecutions, and due to the elements of the relevant offenses,
virtually all espionage prosecutions, cannot be maintained except at the price
of disclosing information that otherwise would and should remain secret for
? Gorin v. United States, 312 U.S. at 28.
4 Id. at 27.
5 United States v. Heine, 151 F.2d 813 (2d Cir. 1945), cert. denied, 328 U.S. 333 (1946).
" United States v. Soblen, 301 F.2d 236 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 370 U.S. 944 (1962).
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reasons of national security." 7 While this statement was made broadly with
respect to all prosecutions that in some manner may require the disclosure of
classified information to enable the case to go forward, it clearly represents a
judgment that espionage cases in particular exact a high price. While the
Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) 8 has established a statutory
framework to obtain pretrial and trial rulings concerning the relevancy of
classified information claimed to be necessary in federal criminal prosecutions,
it is primarily of benefit in non-espionage cases where the defendant seeks
broad discovery of sensitive classified matters (often unrelated to any real issue
concerning the government's case of any defense) in order to force the
government to drop the case rather than disclose the requested information.
Obviously, when a central element of the offense involves classified informa-
tion, as with 18 U.S.C. 793 and 794, or is claimed to be necessary to enable the
defendant to cross-examine the principal government witness called to
establish how documents or information will injure the United States or give
advantage to a foreign adversary, CIPA is of limited or no utility.
In some relatively recent espionage cases, the government has avoided
high disclosure costs that might have resulted had it not been for the tactics of
defense counsel. For example, in United States v. Moore,9 a former CIA
employee was prosecuted under 18 U.S.C. 794(a) for attempting to pass to the
Soviet Union various documents relating to the national defense. Two of the
charges upon which he was convicted concerned portions of classified CIA
phone directories containing the names of numerous employees under cover.
The defense counsel failed to cross-examine the government's principal
witness who testified concerning the importance of the phone directories and
the damage that passage to the Soviets would have caused. While it is doubtful
that defense counsel could have persuaded the jury that the documents did not
relate to the national defense, he could have increased the cost to the
government by exploring in open court whether it had been disclosed publicly
that persons listed in the directory worked for CIA or if any had been
compromised to the Soviets in other ways.
Similarly, in United States v. Kampiles,'? another former CIA employee
was prosecuted under 18 U.S.C. 794(a) for selling to an agent of the Soviet
Union a top secret technical manual for the KH-11 satellite system. The
government's principal witness concerning the importance of the compro-
mised information was the CIA's Deputy Director for Science and Technol-
ogy. The witness gave general testimony concerning the importance of the
KH-11 system and how the technical manual would help the Soviets take
countermeasures. Defense counsel did not seriously cross-examine on these
points or press for a detailed explanation of how the manual would provide
Espionage Laws and Leaks: Hearings before the Subcommittee on Legislation of the
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, House of Representatives, 96th Cong., 1st Sess.
18, (1979) (letter of Anthony A. Lapham to Philip B. Heymann, Assistant Attorney General,
Criminal Division, Department of Justice) (hereinafter cited as Hearings).
18 U.S.C. App. III.
Unreported. D. Md. 1978.
? 609 F.2d 1233 (7th Cir. 1979) rehearing and rehearing en bane denied (1980).
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additional help to the Soviets if they already knew the United States had
reconnaissance satellites, or whether the United States had noted any decrease
in the KH-11 effectiveness since the manual was compromised. Such questions
would have clearly been permissible and would almost certainly have led to
the additional disclosure of classified information. While the defense tactics in
both Moore and Kampiles may have resulted from conscious decisions not to
contest the defense-relatedness of the information involved in order not to
unnecessarily prejudice the jury against the defendant, these cases should
make it clear that the current espionage statutes offer the government no
assurances that it alone will be able to control the amount of sensitive
information that will be disclosed at trial.
It should be possible to proscribe the conduct that is covered by 18 U.S.C.
793 and 794, at least insofar as those statutes are aimed at classical espionage,
without requiring the United States to confirm specific damage to the national
security or further exacerbate that damage. In their authoritative treatise on
the espionage statutes, Professors Harold Edgar and Benno C. Schmidt, Jr. had
the following to say about the broad manner in which classical espionage can
be proscribed under our legal system:
The essence of classical espionage is the individual's readiness to put
his access to information of defense significance at the disposal of
agents of foreign political organizations. Granted that the harm that
results from his conduct is a function of the importance of the
information transferred, there should be no hesitation, regardless of
the banal quality of defense information involved, to punish the
citizen whose priorities are so ordered or foreigners whose job it is to
risk apprehension. We believe, therefore, that the information
protected against clandestine transfer to foreign agents should be
defined broadly, probably more broadly than in current law. In this
context, we see no dispositive objection to making knowing and
unauthorized transfer of classified information to foreign agents an
offense, without regard to whether information is properly classified.
That a spy might earn complete immunity by stealing secrets so
serious that their significance cannot be disclosed in court-a clear
possibility under current law, and also under S.1 and S.1400-is an
outcome that should be avoided, if possible."
In some contexts, the knowing passage of classified information to foreign
agents is an offense under current law without regard to the propriety of the
classification. Thus, tinder 18 U.S.C. 798, the passage to a foreign government
of classified information concerning devices used for cryptographic or com-
munications intelligence purposes is an offense without regard to whether the
" The Espionage Statutes and the Publication of Defense Information 73 Colum. L.R. 929,
1084 (1973). Professors Edgar and Schmidt would support a revision of the current law to
streamline the proscription of classical espionage. See Statement of Harold Edgar and Benno
Schmidt, Jr. in Hearings, supra, note 7, at 112-13.
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information is properly classified.12 This is also the case under 50 U.S.C. 783(b)
with respect to passage of classified information by employees of the United
States to certain foreign representatives.1D Since it is difficult to see any First
Amendment issues in such cases,14 the only concerns in drafting an appropriate
statute to broadly cover communication of classified information to a foreign
power and associated preparatory conduct should be the mental state or
scienter needed to establish the offense and the sentencing process and severity
of punishment to be imposed. Presumably, since the government would not
have to prove the underlying significance of the information to the jury, it
should be required to show that the defendant knew that the United States ac-
corded a specific degree of protection to the information and that the
defendant's action was intended to benefit some foreign organization. Finally,
in order not to impose a severe penalty out of proportion to the offense,
provisions for in camera proceedings prior to sentencing should be considered
to allow the court to determine the importance of the classified information
involved. A draft statute which contains these requirements is at Appendix B.
" I Inited States v. Boyce, 594 F.2d 1246 (9th Cir.), rehearing denied (1979).
"Searbeck v. United States, 317 F.2d 546 (D.C. Cir.), cert. denied, 374 U.S. 856 (1963).
" One of the main purposes of the freedom of speech and press clause of the First
Amendment was to ensure the unfettered discussion of matters of importance and interest to the
public. The public interest and the First Amendment, likewise, permit legislative efforts to
prevent acts, be they characterized as speech or otherwise, which are harmful to the public. The
Supreme Court recognized very early in its development of First Amendment law that there are
"evils that Congress has a right to prevent." Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 247 (1919). In
view of the unquestioned appropriateness of proscribing espionage, the only real issue becomes
one of ensuring that no legitimate speech or press activities are swept within the proscription.
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Espionage Laws
18 U.S.C. 793
793. Gathering, transmitting, or losing defense information
(a) Whoever, for the purpose of obtaining information respecting the
national defense with intent or reason to believe that the information
is to be used to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of
any foreign nation, goes upon, enters, flies over, or otherwise obtains
information concerning any vessel, aircraft, work of defense, navy
yard, naval station, submarine base, fueling station, fort, battery,
torpedo station, dockyard, canal, railroad, arsenal, camp, factory,
mine, telegraph, telephone, wireless, or signal station, building,
office, research laboratory or station or other place connected with
the national defense owned or constructed, or in progress of construc-
tion by the United States or under the control of the United States, or
of any of its officers, departments, or agencies, or within the
exclusive jurisdiction of the United States, or any place in which any
vessel, aircraft, arms, munitions, or other materials or instruments for
use in time of war are being made, prepared, repaired, stored, or are
the subject of research or development, under any contract or
agreement with the United States, or any department or agency
thereof, or with any person on behalf of the United States, or
otherwise on behalf of the United States, or any prohibited place so
designated by the President by proclamation in time of war or in
case of national emergency in which anything for the use of the
Army, Navy, or Air Force is being prepared or constructed or stored,
information as to which prohibited place the President has deter-
mined would be prejudicial to the national defense; or
(b) Whoever, for the purpose aforesaid, and with like intent or reason
to believe, copies, takes, makes, or obtains, or attempts to copy,
take, make or obtain, any sketch, photograph, photographic nega-
tive, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, docu-
ment, writing, or note of anything connected with the national
defense; or
(c) Whoever, for the purpose aforesaid, receives or obtains or agrees or
attempts to receive or obtain from any person, or from any source
whatever, any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch,
photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model,
instrument, appliance, or note, of anything connected with the
national defense, knowing or having reason to believe, at the time
he receives or obtains, or agrees or attempts to receive or obtain it,
that it has been or will be obtained, taken, made, or disposed of by
any person contrary to the provisions of this chapter; or
(d) Whoever, lawfully having possession of, access to, control over, or
being entrusted with any document, writing, code book, signal
book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan,
map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national
defense, or information relating to the national defense which
information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the
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injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign
nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits, or causes to be
communicated, delivered, or transmitted or attempts to communi-
cate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or
transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or
willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it on demand to the
officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it; or
(e) Whoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control
over any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch,
photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model,
instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or
information relating to the national defense which information the
possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the
United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully
communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated,
delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate, deliver,
transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted the
same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the
same and fails to deliver it on demand to the officer or employee of
the United States entitled to receive it; or
(f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control
of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph,
photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument,
appliance, note, or information relating to the national defense, (1)
through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its
proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his
trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having
knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper
place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or lost,
or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of
such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer-
Shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more
than ten years, or both.
(g) If two or more persons conspire to violate any of the foregoing
provisions of this section, and one or more of such persons do any
act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each of the parties to such
conspiracy shall be subject to the punishment provided for the
offense which is the object of such conspiracy.
June 25, 1948, c. G16, 02 Stnt. 730; Sept. 23, 1950, c. 1024, Title I, ? 18,
GI Stat. 1003.
18 U.S.C. 794
? 794. Gathering or delivering defense information to aid foreign
government
(a) Whoever, with intent or reason to believe that it is to be used to the
injury of the United States, or to the advantage of a foreign nation,
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communicates, delivers, or transmits, or attempts to communicate,
deliver, or transmit, to any foreign government, or to any faction or
party or military or naval force within a foreign country, whether
recognized or unrecognized by the United States, or to any
representative, officer, agent, employee, subject, or citizen thereof,
either directly or indirectly, any document, writing, code book,
signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint,
plan, map, model, note, instrument, appliance, or information
relating to the national defense, shall be punished by death or by
imprisonment for any term of years or for life.
(b) Whoever, in time of war, with intent that the same shall be
communicated to the enemy, collects, records, publishes, or com-
municates, or attempts to elicit any information with respect to the
movement, numbers, description, condition, or disposition of any of
the Armed Forces, ships, aircraft, or war materials of the United
States, or with respect to the plans or conduct, or supposed plans or
conduct of any naval or military operations, or with respect to any
works or measures undertaken for or connected with, or intended
for the fortification or defense of any place, or any other informa-
tion relating to the public defense, which might be useful to the en-
emy, shall be punished by death or by imprisonment for any term
of years or for life.
(c) If two or more persons conspire to violate this section, and one or
more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the
conspiracy, each of the parties to such conspiracy shall be subject to
the punishment provided for the offense which is the object of such
conspiracy.
June 25, 1948, c. 645, 62 Stat. 737; Sept. 8, 1954, c. 1261, Title II, ? 201,
GS Stat. 1219.
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Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
States of America in Congress assembled, that this Act may be cited as the
"Espionage Prevention Act of 1984."
SEC. 2. Chapter 37 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by
adding at the end thereof the following sections:
? 800. Espionage
(a) Whoever, without authorization, knowingly collects or attempts to
collect classified information with the intent that such information
be communicated to a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power
shall be punished by imprisonment for any term of years or for life.
(b) Whoever, without authorization, knowingly communicates, or at-
tempts to communicate, classified information to a foreign power
or an agent of a foreign power shall be punished by imprisonment
for any terms of years or for life.
(c) Prosecution under this section shall be barred unless, prior to the
return of an indictment or the filing of an information, the Attorney
General and the head of an appropriate department or agency
responsible for the classified information jointly certify in writing to
a court with jurisdiction that, at the time of the commission of the
offense, the classified information involved was properly designated
as classified information.
? 801. Defense to Espionage
Whoever, in the course of official duties on behalf of the United States,
engages in conduct described in Section 800 of this Chapter with a
reasonable belief as to the authority to do so shall not be guilty of an of-
fense under section 800.
? 802. Sentencing
(a) For purposes of sentencing an individual convicted of an offense
defined in section 800, the court shall consider the nature of the
classified information involved in the offense. Cases which involve
classified information deserving a high degree of protection shall,
absent especially mitigating factors, receive a greater sentence than
cases which involve information requiring lesser degrees of
protection.
(b) Life imprisonment shall not be imposed except in time of war
declared by Congress or when the court determines that the
classified information involved poses an exceptionally grave danger
to the national security or to the life of any person.
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(c) For purposes of determining an appropriate sentence the court is
authorized to conduct such in camera proceedings as it determines
are necessary for a full understanding of the nature of the classified
information involved in the offense. Upon request of the United
States for good cause, such proceedings or portions thereof may be
held in camera ex parte.
? 803. Definitions. For purposes of section 800 of this Title-
(a) The term "authorization" means having authority, right or permis-
sion pursuant to the provisions of a statute, executive order,
directive of the head of any department or agency who is
empowered to classify information, order of any United States
court, or provisions of any rule of the House of Representatives or
resolution of the Senate which governs release of classified informa-
tion by the respective House of Congress.
(b) The term "classified information" means information or material
designated and clearly marked or clearly represented, pursuant to
the provisions of a statute or executive order (or a regulation or
order issued pursuant to a statute or executive order), as requiring a
specific degree of protection against unauthorized disclosure for
reasons of national security.
(c) The term "communicate" means to disclose, impart, transfer,
convey or otherwise make available to another, but does not include
publication by the media.
(d) The term "foreign power" means-
(1) a foreign government or any component thereof, whether or not
recognized by the United States;
(2) a faction of a foreign nation or nations;
(3) an entity that is directed or controlled by a foreign government
or governments;
(4) a group engaged in international terrorism or activities in
(5)
preparation therefor; or
a foreign-based political organization.
(e) The term "agent of a foreign power" means any person who acts on
behalf of a foreign power for the purpose of obtaining classified
information.
(f) The term "Attorney General" means the Attorney General of the
United States (or Acting Attorney General) or the "Deputy Attorney
General."
SEC. 3. The table of sections for chapter 37 of title 18, United States
Code, is amended by adding at the end thereof the following:
? 800.
Espionage
? 801.
Defense to Espionage
? 802.
Sentencing
? 803.
Definitions.
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Iq
STAT
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New world for a diplomat
THE INTELLIGENCE BACKGROUND
OF OPERATION TORCH*
John C. Beam
Robert Murphy was a career diplomat who served the State Department
for 42 years, beginning in 1917 in Switzerland. In 1940, in the early days of
World War II, he was charge d'affaires at the embassy in Vichy, France,
following France's defeat that spring. Together with the naval attache,
Commander Roscoe Hillenkoetter," he reported to Washington on the
conditions in Vichy and in French North Africa. He and Hillenkoetter
reported that the Nazis had left French Africa to its own devices and that it
contained 125,000 combat-trained men on active service. They reported also
that if France was going to fight again anywhere in the war, North Africa
would be the place.
The reports elicited no comments from Washington. Murphy did not
even know whether they were of interest to anyone until he was abruptly sum-
moned to Washington and told by Under Secretary Sumner Welles that his re-
ports had been passed to President Roosevelt, that he had read them carefully,
and that the President wished to talk to Murphy. Murphy described that
meeting in November 1940:
There is no official record, so far as I know, of that hour-long
conversation which opened very informally. . . . This situation
intrigued Roosevelt, who believed that North Africa was the most
likely place where French troops might be brought back into the war
against Nazi Germany. Spread out on his desk was a large map
showing all of French North and West Africa, and the President told
me that he had given much thought about how to help French
officers who were operating in the relatively independent conditions
prevailing in Africa. The President then said that he wanted me to
return to Vichy and work unostentatiously to get permission to make
a thorough inspection tour of French Africa and to report my
findings to him. The French African policy of the United States
Government thus became the President's personal policy. He initiat-
ed it, kept it going, and he resisted pressures against it, until in the
autumn of 1942 French North Africa became the first major
battleground where Americans fought Germans. . . . As Roosevelt
concluded his suggestions for my African assignment, he said
casually, "If you learn anything in Africa of special interest, send it
'Reprinted by permission of Parameters, Journal of the US Arm' War College.
"Hillenkoetter rose to flag rank and served as Director of Central Intelligence from N1a'
1947 to October 1950.
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to me. Don't bother going through State Department channels." .. .
Thus I became one of President Roosevelt's "personal representa-
tives," assigned to carry out secret missions under his orders during
World War II.'
This was the opening of a new world for Murphy, the diplomat. It would
include secret meetings, the use of a false name, and the clandestine reception
of a submarine on the coast of North Africa. President Roosevelt did not
hesitate to use his bureaucracy in imaginative ways.
Approach to Weygand
Murphy made his inspection tour and sent his report to Roosevelt, who
used it as the basis of his African policy. At the President's direction, Murphy
also made contact with General Maxime Weygand, the senior ranking official
of Vichy in Africa. Roosevelt had encouraged Murphy to cultivate Weygand-
even, as a fellow Roman Catholic, to go to church with him. Weygand, despite
having participated in the surrender to the Germans, was respected by both
French and Allied officials. Roosevelt considered this tough, 74-year-old
soldier a potential ally against pro-German elements in Vichy and against the
Germans themselves.
Murphy had recommended in his report that he negotiate an agreement
with Weygand under which the United States would provide food and other
essential material to the population of North Africa. The President approved,
and the resulting Murphy-Weygand Accord was signed in early 1941.
Roosevelt's political and strategic motive behind the agreement was to
counter German influence and retain the goodwill of the French and native
populations. The agreement was also intended to encourage anti-Vichy, anti-
Fascist sentiments among the French military in North Africa. Roosevelt
could not do more than this in 1941. In the 1940 election he had assured
American mothers that their boys would not be sent into any foreign wars.
Yet he wanted to block any move that Hitler might make into the region, a
possibility that could close off the entire Mediterranean and endanger
American interests in the South Atlantic and the Southern Hemisphere.
The accord provided for an American Control Commission, which
Murphy headed in Algiers, to oversee the distribution of the American goods
and to ensure that they did not go to aid the German war effort. The
commission, a reflection of both Murphy's skill and Weygand's basic pro-
Allied sentiments, called for the presence of twelve "vice consuls." Under a se-
cret agreement initiated by Murphy and Weygand, these men would be
allowed to use codes and employ couriers carrying locked pouches, "a
privilege usually restricted to diplomatic missions and not extended to consular
offices in French North Africa." As Murphy described it,
This secret understanding ... became the basis of one of the most ef-
fective intelligence operations of the war, for it provided that
Americans not only could watch what transpired in French Africa,
but also could get out uncensored confidential reports to our
Government.2
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Information-gathering of this sort was unfamiliar to the bureaucracy of
Washington and created a great deal of discomfort both in the State
Department and in the War Department. A reflection of this was the fact that
the State Department could not provide the specialized personnel called for by
the project, "involving as it did a certain amount of irregular activity and dan-
ger." 9 The department turned to Army and Navy intelligence for specialists
who could appreciate objects and events of military significance. Murphy
further related that North Africa seemed almost another planet to military
intelligence in 1940 and, moreover, it had no personnel qualified in Arabic.
Additionally, the
services were reluctant to associate themselves with a State Depart-
ment enterprise, but after considerable discussion, the chiefs of
Intelligence at length agreed to assign to Africa several reserve
officers, commissioned as vice consuls, and to pay their salaries-
providing the State Department would pay their other expenses. The
men thus selected all had some experience in France and knowledge
of the French language. . . . Then somebody pointed out that
commissioned officers, if they performed civilian functions while on
active duty, could be shot as spies if war broke out. So some of the
officers who had been selected were discharged. So now they were
civilians-and who would pay them? The services were operating on
a financial shoestring. It was finally decided to pay them from the
President's emergency funds.,
By midsummer 1941, the twelve "vice consuls" were in Algiers, Tunis,
and Casablanca reporting on harbor facilities, road and rail networks, order of
battle information, and attitudes of French officers toward fighting Germans.
A sampling of the material sent to Washington shows that they also provided
detailed sketches and maps of the roads, airfields, and port facilities in North
Africa. In addition, the officers cultivated sources within the military estab-
lishment who provided them with copies of original documents from the
military files. Murphy sent these back by cover letter using the State
Department terminology of the day. An example:
Subject: Immediately Available Munitions Supplies Within Alge-
ria. I have the honor to enclose copies of documents which were
taken from the official archives of the 19th Army Corps Area
(Algiers) which have been secured by Vice Consuls Boyd and Knox
from a source we have found reliable. As in the case of the official
effectives' list (see my dispatch No. 1572 of July 28, 1942, Military
Effectives in Algiers), there is of course a certain amount of secret
supplies and depots which are not known to the Axis Armistice
Commissions.'
The volume and quality of the information provided by these officers was
later praised highly by Eisenhower, and their work was credited as a
contribution to the eventual success of Operation TORCH, the Allied invasion
of North Africa.
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"That Savage Conglomeration"
The Germans in North Africa, however (and fortunately), did not have so
high an opinion of the vice consuls. An intercepted German intelligence report
of 16 March 1942 stated,
Since all their thoughts are centered on their social, sexual, or
culinary interests, petty quarrels and jealousies are daily incidents
with them. Altogether they represent a perfect picture of the
mixture of races and characters in that savage conglomeration called
the United States of America, and anyone who observes them can
well judge the state of mind and instability that must be prevalent in
their country today.... Lack of pluck and democratic degeneracy
prevails among them, resulting from their too easy life, corrupt
morals, and consequent lack of energy.... They are totally lacking
in method, organization and discipline. . . . We can congratulate
ourselves on the selection of this group of enemy agents who will give
us no trouble.6
Despite these unkind observations by the Germans, the vice consuls were
active and working seriously at their duties. They were also in danger of being
misunderstood by their own masters, however, when they expressed a need for
discreet settings to meet their contacts who were providing them with
information. In the days before OSS and its successors provided budgets for
safehouses, the State Department had to be approached carefully for money
for unorthodox purposes. Murphy sent the following letter in support of such a
request.
In any propaganda effort from what I have seen in Europe through
the years, I should say that personal contact with a few powerful
individuals under favorable auspices is of the greatest importance.
Among the elements composing "favorable auspices" would be an
appropriate establishment where contacts could be received, friendly
meetings arranged and conversations carried on without surveillance.
Under present conditions, hotels are utterly unsuitable and many
contacts refuse point blank to meet our people in hotels or public
places. . . . In Marrakech our Vice Consul was able to obtain the
house of an American citizen which is suitable for this purpose. He
fortunately obtains it at a low rental.... Aside from acquainting you
with our small efforts along these lines, the purpose of the foregoing
is to inquire whether the Department would be disposed to add a
special allowance for, shall we say, "propaganda," a much abused
and naughty word, but it will serve in this case to describe activity in
behalf of the allied cause.... If so I feel that an allotment should be
made out of the President's Fund of $500 monthly for Fez and
Marrakech.
Murphy eventually received his funds, but was instructed to obtain from
the officers in question subvouchers to support his accounts.
Information-gathering was an important part of Murphy's task, but he
had also the greater mission of enlisting Weygand to take action to prevent a
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Torch
German invasion or, as events later developed, to assist the Allies in their
takeover. As Dr. Arthur Funk described in his Politics of TORCH,
Murphy knew that his primary responsibility required a continuous
relationship with Weygand-cautious, diplomatic, not so close as to
alarm the Axis but sufficient to reassure the French that the United
States would sooner or later help in defeating Hitler.'
Unfortunately, although Murphy did an admirable job of cultivating Wey-
gand, he very likely caused the failure of this important part of his mission by
his insistence on the use of the State Department cipher system.
From before World War I to the middle of World War II, the US
diplomatic codes were open to any cryptanalyst in the world who wanted to
make the effort to read them. State paid no attention to this arena, and in 1941
a unit of the German Foreign Ministry, Pers Z, was reading the US diplomatic
traffic. Murphy was sending to Roosevelt his most sensitive negotiations with
Weygand, including a request from Weygand for military assistance and
Roosevelt's assurance that it would be forthcoming. Murphy insisted on using
the State Department codes to preserve his autonomy, and even though
American officers in Eisenhower's command pointed out their insecurity, he
was certain that the Germans had not broken his codes. As early as 12 August
1941, however, the state secretary of the German Foreign Office could hand
to von Ribbentrop fully solved copies of Murphy's telegrams of 21 July and 2
August.' The result was that on 18 November 1941 Weygand informed
Murphy that the Germans had told Vichy that unless Weygand were removed,
they would occupy all of France and let the French population starve while
the German Army lived off the land. Weygand was recalled and retired to
southern France. He never again played a role in the war effort.
First Arena for Clandestine Activity
Murphy entered 1942 having to start again to find an individual like
Weygand or to construct an underground network that would accomplish the
same purpose. By then the United States had entered the war and OSS (then
known as the office of the Coordinator of Information, or COI) came to North
Africa. COI was formed in July 1941 based on a suggestion from Churchill to
Roosevelt that America needed an arm solely for intelligence and covert
operations. General William Donovan was named its chief, and one of the first
steps was to submit a plan to Roosevelt for operations in North Africa. Like
Roosevelt, Donovan had seen the Mediterranean as a potential battleground
and had all along urged Allied control of the African coast. Roosevelt
approved the plan, and Donovan appointed Marine Lieutenant Colonel
William Eddy as naval attache at the US Legation in the International Zone of
Tangier, Morocco, in December 1941.
Eddy had been born in Syria, spoke Arabic fluently, and had considerable
experience in the Middle East. He had served in World War I and had won
five banks of decorations with the Fighting Fifth Marines. (In a briefing
session which Eddy gave for General Strong, Chief of Army Intelligence, and
General George Patton in July 1942, Patton noted the ribbons-two more rows
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Torch
than he had-and grunted, "I don't know who he is, but the son of a bitch has
sure been shot at enough.") 10
The final decision to go ahead with the landings and serious preparation
for them did not take place until late July 1942. But Eddy's arrival in
December 1941 brought to Murphy and his team a heightened sense of
participation in a major enterprise. This came largely from the fact that
North Africa was the first arena for OSS clandestine activity in the field.
Donovan, wishing to establish his new agency in the Washington bureauc-
racy, generated a great deal of activity with the generous budget he was al-
lotted by Roosevelt.
At the same time, however, the arrival of Eddy and COI compounded the
confusion in the command structure in North Africa. At this point it was
chaotic. Murphy was working for the State Department but was detached
from it on verbal orders from the President. His salary came from State, and
his expenses came from the President's emergency fund. His vice consuls, who
were reporting to him, were being paid also from the President's emergency
fund. Eddy's upkeep came from COI's budget. Eddy was assigned to the
Legation in Tangier and was instructed to work with Murphy. Another
military officer, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Solborg, was working for Donovan
as assistant military attache in Lisbon. There he was responsible for organizing
clandestine activities in both the Iberian peninsula and North Africa. He also
was instructed to coordinate his activities with Murphy. Murphy was theoreti-
cally in charge.
This disorganization in the field was a reflection of the overall American
approach to intelligence activities during the period. Historically, it was a
subject the country's leaders did not want to deal with, but with the United
States having been thrust into world affairs, men like Roosevelt saw the need
for organized and discreet information-gathering. Murphy's assignment was a
beginning, and the formation of COI was the next step in the process. How
this unfamiliar new arm was going to fit into the government bureaucratic
structure was a problem then, and for many officials it remains a problem to
this day.
Eisenhower attempted to deal with the wartime command relationship
by urging General Marshall to advise the President to make the COI directly
responsible to the JCS. But the Army had a problem with its officers engaging
in spying or subversive actions. Eisenhower recommended that such work in
foreign countries "be conducted by individuals occupying a civilian rather
than a military status." Despite such status, however, Ike recommended that
they "be subject to the higher control of the Joint Chiefs of Staff." In June
1942 Roosevelt changed COI to OSS and did place it under the JCS in the
chain of command. Murphy's role was later clarified when, at his request, he
was formally detached from the State Department to the Office of the
President as Roosevelt's personal representative, until after the landings when
he was named adviser for civil affairs under Eisenhower. He was among the
first civilians to serve on the inner staff of an American military commander's
headquarters in wartime."
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Fortunately, Murphy and Eddy, the men in the field, had the personal-
ities and good sense to be able to get along and work together in all this early
confusion. Murphy became part of the overall plan for North Africa that
General Donovan had submitted to the President. It stated in part "that the
aid of the native chiefs be obtained, the loyalties of the inhabitants
cultivated, fifth columnists organized and placed, demolition materials
cached, and guerrilla bands of bold and daring men organized and
installed." 12
As one of their first moves to achieve these noble goals, Eddy and Murphy
set up a clandestine radio network across North Africa. The key station
Midway at Tangier was located in a winepress overlooking the airfield;
Lincoln was in Casablanca; Yankee was in Algiers; Pilgrim in Tunis; and
Franklin in Oran.13 But Murphy's intensified and untraditional activities
troubled some of his more orthodox colleagues. He wrote,
Those transmitters were immensely useful to us. One of them was in-
stalled in the attic of the Casablanca consulate general, and this
disturbed one of our senior consular officers who thought it might be
contrary to regulations. He said . . . rather dejectedly, "Murphy, I
hope you know what you are doing. But I should like to make clear
that I disapprove of espionage." 14
The State Department was not the only place where one could find
disapproval of unorthodox activities. Many military officers were also not
ready to accept them. Eddy had submitted a preliminary plan for subversive
activity in connection with the landings, and Donovan had set aside $2 million
for these secret plans. Most of the suggestions were accepted by the JCS with
the proviso that control of all secret activities in connection with TORCH
should be vested in the Supreme Commander, General Eisenhower. But there
was little enthusiasm on Eisenhower's staff for clandestine activities. In one
instance, OSS proposed that members of the Nazi military staff in North
Africa (many of them Gestapo officers) be assassinated when the landings
began. The assignment for this cold-blooded task had already been accepted
by the father of a French boy shot by the Germans in Paris. Eisenhower's aides
did not take the suggestion seriously, though, and it was "squashed at a higher
level." A plan that eventually was carried out involved smuggling out of
Morocco two experienced hydrographers (one the captain of a tugboat
company; the other, chief pilot of Port Lyautey) who were familiar with the
North African coastline. Eisenhower had not approved the plan, however, and
was furious when he heard of it. An investigation revealed that General Patton
had approved the project but had neglected to inform Eisenhower's staff.15
Another OSS project possibly inadvertently provided the inspiration for the
deception coup that the British later carried off in The Man Who Never Was.
In this an officer of General De Gaulle's Free French Forces was to be
assigned to the OSS team at Tangier. The Gaullist officer left London in a Brit-
ish plane, but it crashed or was shot down over Spain. The Frenchman was
killed, and his papers, which contained highly classified information, were
seized by the Spanish police (and undoubtedly made available to the
Germans). 13
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These were only a portion of the activities OSS carried out in North
Africa, but Murphy, still the man in charge, found himself playing more
unfamiliar roles after serious planning for TORCH got under way.
Washington needed a first-hand appraisal of the situation in the unknown
territory of North Africa. Murphy was called to Washington in August to
describe his operational plan and to discuss his selection of French military of-
ficers who could provide a friendly reception for the landings. His under-
ground had selected General Henri Giraud, a respected officer who had
escaped from a Nazi prison, as the man who could take control of the French
forces. After explaining his plan to Roosevelt and the JCS, Murphy was
instructed to go to London and brief Eisenhower. In keeping with the overall
need for complete secrecy, Murphy was put in a lieutenant colonel's uniform,
given the name McGowan, and ferried across the Atlantic in a B-17 Flying
Fortress. General Marshall had told him he would be disguised in a lieutenant
colonel's uniform because "nobody ever pays any attention to a lieutenant
colonel." 17
In London he briefed Eisenhower and his advisers on North Africa and
entered his role as war planner based on his knowledge and special experience
in that area:
I was the only person at the London conference with prolonged
experience in Africa itself, and from questions asked I could see that
Eisenhower and some of his officers had mental pictures of primitive
country, collections of mud huts set deep in jungles.... Eisenhower
then prudently inquired whether winter underwear would be
necessary, and I told him it was, especially on the high plateau in
eastern Algeria. Thousands of American soldiers appreciated that the
following winter."
Murphy admitted to his "appalling ignorance of military matters" and
wrote that he was participating in the initial important offensive of World
War II not knowing the first principles of military science. It was here,
however, that he provided the contribution to military planning that his
successors would follow in later years. "My interests had always been political
and my professional training was in diplomacy," he wrote. "But I took
comfort in the knowledge that the expedition to French Africa would require
political as well as military strategy." 19
Eisenhower also gave credit to the political considerations of the military
operation. Regarding "discussions involving political possibilities," he wrote
Our concern over these affairs illustrates forcibly the old truism that
political considerations can never be wholly separated from military
ones and that war is mere continuation of political policy in the field
of force.20
That much of the London meeting was devoted to this political side of
military operations came about because the United States was invading neutral
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territory. The preparations included covert political action, which in this case
meant organizing an underground network of individuals sympathetic to the
Allied cause.
In London it was decided that General Mark Clark should make a trip to
Algeria to meet with Murphy and some of his French conspirators in order to
reassure the French and to obtain a first-hand assessment of the situation
there.
The clandestine reception of Clark in North Africa, later well publicized,
was arranged by Murphy, who once again played more the role of an
intelligence operative than a diplomat. Clark and his party flew from London
to Gibraltar and proceeded to Algeria by submarine. After arriving on the
Algerian coast, they saw prearranged light signals from a house Murphy had
borrowed for the occasion. The party rowed to the shore in kayaks and "from
the darkness they heard a voice: `Welcome to North Africa,' said Robert
Murphy, alias Lieutenant Colonel McGowan. `Damn glad we made it,' said
Clark." 21 Clark had a long and successful meeting with the representatives of
Murphy's underground, but afterward, while they were waiting for night to
fall before returning to the submarine, word came that the police were on the
way. In reality the police were looking for smugglers, but the party did not
know that. Clark's group divided and hid in the cellar and upstairs. Murphy
now played another perhaps unaccustomed role. He and his assistant received
the police while the owner of the house explained that Murphy was an
American diplomat at his house as a guest for a pleasant party. The party of
course included some ladies, who were upstairs. The scene of empty wine
bottles and the hint of ladies were enough to convince the French police that
they need not search further.
Clark made it back to the submarine with only minor additional mishaps,
including losing his trousers while trying to launch a boat in the surf, and Mur-
phy returned to Algiers to complete preparations for the landings.
The invasion took place on 8 November as scheduled, but it met
opposition by units of the French military, especially the navy. The result was
1,800 Allied casualties. What went wrong can be attributed to many factors,
but the principal one was that after Weygand's recall there was no officer in
overall charge who could suspend French operations. Murphy had a group of
officers up to divisional level who could sow confusion, but the senior officer
they brought in proved to be ineffective.
Eisenhower described the preparations and results from his perspective:
From Mr. Murphy we learned the names of those officers who had
pro-Allied sympathies and those who were ready to aid us actively.
We learned much about the temper of the Army itself and about
feeling among the civil population.... He gave us a number of de-
tails of French military strength in Africa, including information
concerning equipment and training in their ground, air, and sea
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forces. From his calculations it was plain that if we were bitterly
opposed by the French a bloody fight would ensue; if the French
should promptly decide to join us we would expect to get along
quickly with our main business of seizing Tunisia and attacking
Rommel from the rear. It was Mr. Murphy's belief that we would ac-
tually encounter a mean between these two extremes. Events proved
him to be correct. On another point, however, he was, through no
fault of his own, completely mistaken. He had been convinced by
the French Generals . . . that if General Henri Giraud could be
brought into North Africa ... the response would be immediate and
enthusiastic and all North Africa would flame into revolt, unified
under a leader who was represented as being intensely popular
throughout the region. Weeks later, during a crisis in our affairs, we
were to learn that this hope was a futile one.22
In the end, TORCH was a strategic success. In military terms it was a host
of firsts. Among these, it was the largest amphibious operation to that time,
and it was the first invasion to be planned by commanders and staffs of two
nations with different outlooks and military experience. The military organi-
zation was truly impressive, bringing together as it did an armada from widely
separated points of the earth to rendezvous at a number of points on the
African coast on target and on time. In intelligence terms, it launched OSS and
provided experience in organization and planning for its future operations.
The most valuable result was the degree of civilian-military cooperation
and understanding it exhibited. This is perhaps less extraordinary now, but it
still remains an important factor where men of different backgrounds have to
cooperate on a single venture. An American diplomat pursuing his normal
duties was suddenly and dramatically pulled from his accustomed world to
that of intelligence and planning for a large-scale military invasion. The
quality of the man is shown in the fact that he could adapt, relate to his mili-
tary counterparts, and earn the respect of all concerned. His lack of success in
an important aspect of the operation was unfortunate. But in all operations
there are many variable factors, and other key factors in this shortcoming may
remain obscured. The fact remains that without Murphy's efforts the Allied
casualty total would likely have been much higher.
The story of Murphy's work illustrates well the interrelationship between
military and civilian partners in operations, especially in those parts of the
world with complex political situations. Having the resources of a man such as
Murphy who is assigned to an area and who thus knows the terrain and,
especially, the political scene is vital. Equally essential is military and civilian
understanding of the contribution each makes to the operation.
What Murphy stated in his book about his own ignorance of military
matters is revealing. He said that Eisenhower and many of his brother officials
had the benefit of previous instruction in political problems,
such as the excellent course given at the Army War College and
other military schools, but I had had no equivalent training in
military matters. Nowadays [1964] we try to teach our diplomats a
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great deal about military affairs, and we try also to teach our
professional soldiers more about world politics and diplomacy. In
1942, American soldiers and diplomats alike had to contend with
large areas of ignorance.23
We may have come far since 1942 in mutual education on military and
political matters, but in honesty we must admit that gaps still exist in mutual
understanding between military and civilian officers, perhaps even more
problematic than the gaps in our awareness of the cultural and political factors
of the Third World. We should seek to fill the former no less than the latter
before American soldiers are once again sent into an unfamiliar war zone. The
cooperation of Murphy with Eisenhower and Eddy provides an example for us
to follow.
1. Robert Murphy, Diplomat Among Warriors (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964), pp. 67-
70.
2. Ibid., p. 90.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., pp. 90-91.
5. Dispatch No. 1573, 28 July 1942, from Murphy to the Department of State, National
Archives.
6. R. Harris Smith, OSS, The Secret History of America's First Central Intelligence Agency
(Los Angeles: Univ. of California Pres, 1972), p. 39.
7. Letter from Murphy to G. Howland Show, Assistant Secretary of State, 20 February 1942,
National Archives.
8. Arthur Layton Funk, The Politics of TORCH (Lawrence, Kans.: Univ. of Kansas Press,
1974), p. 18.
9. David Kahn, The Codebreakers (New York: Macmillan, 1967), pp. 497-98.
10. Corey Ford, Donovan of OSS (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), p. 157.
11. Murphy, P. 106.
12. Ford, p. 155,
13. ibid.
14. Murphy, p. 108.
15. Smith, p. 57.
16. Ibid., p. 56.
17. Murphy, p. 102.
18. Ibid., p. 103.
19. Ibid., pp. 103-04.
20. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1948), p. 88.
21. John S. D. Eisenhower, Allies (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1982), pp. 139-40.
22. Dwight D. Eisenhower, pp. 86-87.
23. Murphy, p. 104.
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PAR - FAITS (AND OTHER FAITS)
What follow are quotations from Performance Appraisal Reports that
compiled over the years and for which he composed introductory
comments. The quotations are rendered faithfully, with typographical and
other errors intact, for they contribute to the fun. The subjects, supervisors,
and reviewing officials mentioned and quoted in this compilation are to
remain forever, and mercifully, anonymous.
"I believe that the readers of this PAR, as well as the previous one written
by the Rating Officer, should know that the Rating Officer and I have had and
continue to have many strong personal and professional differences of opinion.
He believes, for example, that I have reached my level of competency, and I
believe that he has exceeded his."
Mastering the surprise ending:
"It should be recognized that by employing the proper technique, very
comfortable shoes can be made from a sow's ear but making a silk purse
requires an entirely different raw material."
Making no bones about it - in the vernacular:
"Subject is also responsible for all Headquarters support of a complex
covert action operation aimed at maintaining the political stability of a regime
headed up by a weirdo who goes around saying things like `dat get me
shame'."
When faint praise is called for:
"Operationally, Subject was not loafing."
"Subject is quick to spot thin stuff and do something about it
particularly when it comes to good operational tradecraft."
For one who can bench press human dynamics while reciting from
Rabindranath Tagore:
"His ability in oral expression and human dynamics was strongly
demonstrated ..."
25X1
25X1
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"As the period drew to a close, Subjects apparatus had begun taking
shape...."
Being hugely successful:
"He largely recruited a high level source."
What to do to protect colleagues from being hit by large and fast moving
desks:
"Mr. D. continued to be the Elmer's glue of the large and fast-moving
Laos Desk."
Almost flawless-so to speak:
"His English is flawless, if not close to it."
When in doubt clutter things up; its good for cover:
"He characteristically complicates simple things."
The smiling, freely offered thumb in the eye:
"One thing not noted previously is his calm and pleasant demeanor which
tends gratuitously to mask his toughness as a case officer."
The clairvoyant case officer:
" ... His operational reporting is often on time, often ahead of time."
Then there's this little QP drummer:
Although not a hot-head:
His eyes are clear but his prose is measured and smoke-watered:
"With the perspective of twenty months of overview of his long march,
rather than with the smoke-watered eyes of those who peer too closely into his
campfire, I conclude that his pace has been measured."
Big jokes from little mischiefs grow?
. . .' his personal eagerness tends sometimes to lead him into small
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Par - Faits CONFIDENTIAL
Although an off-quay visionary he can trumpet, and drum, and stomp his
foot all at the same time:
"He has been like a one-man band trying to cover the waterfront on a far-
frontier."
The Good Humor Man endures:
"He has endured rapid personnel changes with good humor."
The hyperactive dog of a case officer:
" ... He is a man of constant motion-some of it unnecessary ... he
bloodhounds even the longest odds and opportunities."
Although some may wonder:
"All said and done, Mr. S. is human."
When tippling leads to being Freud, and the naked truth must he
revealed:
"At the right psychological moment he unfrocked himself in a German
cafe."
The crawl-on-your -belly- and -hiss- approach:
style."
a target of opportunity whom he approached in his own inimical
Dignity in catastrophe:
"Subject handles flaps with aplomb."
Standing tall in the Lilliput of Liaison:
"Due to his height this man should probably be directed along liaison
lines or staff work."
The runaway case officer:
"He is not only a self-starter but a self-goer-at times tending to go too
fast."
Unless one speaks quietly and carries a big stick:
"The operational carrot is easily lost sight of and is difficult to catch."
The Case of the Abandoned Suitcase:
"He began to pursue ops leads as soon as his suitcase hit the ground."
The cape-and-dagger jock:
"He involves himself athletically in Base and local activities."
CONFIDENTIAL 87
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CONFIDENTIAL Par - Fait
The strong tryer:
"I would rate his effort to do the job as strong."
When finishing working hard on his syntax ...:
"He at least secured his own housing on which he has been working hard
to fix up."
The monosyllabic hot dog:
"His performance has been-WOW"
The musty Middle East:
"This officer has been associated long enough with Arab affairs. He now
needs fresh air."
After making good strides in the wrong direction ...
"He has made good strides in the right direction."
The gritty performer:
"This officers performance has been outsanding."
The forward leaning, vine swinging Case officer:
"Mr. K. moved in sure-handed fashion."
The Compleat hard target Case officer:
"He is a hard-nosed supervisor and a hard-headed officer."
Besieged, bothered and bewildered:
"He has reached a standoff with the bureaucracy around him."
The operational arsonist:
"Subject has kept the target fires burning."
When aptitude isn't apt:
"His apptitude for spelling is poor."
When he's not plodding he lies down, humps his back and makes himself
small:
"He is steady and defendable."
Because his compass came in his air freight ...
"It took the officer less than one week after his arrival here to get his
hearings."
88 CONFIDENTIAL
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Par - Faits CONFIDENTIAL
Just give him a tune-up, but don't touch the cheerful plugs:
"He tries hard in a situation that has him more stymied than most of us,
and he plugs along cheerfully."
The lean and meaningness officer:
"He has brought new energy and meaningness to the program."
While shunning the unusual infinitude of every day chores ...:
"He handles the usual infinitude of occasional case officer tasks."
To be some kind of mixed up butterfly ...:
"... He needs to get the operational chrysallis out of the political coccoon
it is in."
He trembles at dullness, but-:
"He confidently attends all sorts of events of interest
The wary grunter:
"He gives a negative first impression, primarily because he is
inarticulate. "
When the anatomy of an Advance Work Plan is necessarily obscure:
"Mr. S. has had supervisory responsibility for parts of two I.A.'s ...
Not risking over confidence:
"He can look back at this job as `pretty well done'."
The little engine with the retarded spark:
"During the reviewing period this officer has made good use of the
limited intelligence resources available to him."
Somewhere down there is gold; it just doesn't pan out:
"Subject probably has much good in him. Somehow, though, it has not
come through."
"... he is a happy headhunter."
In addition to avoiding prickly confrontations ...
"Subject is not one to sit on his laurels."
CONFIDENTIAL 89
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Migratory fixation:
"I am looking forward to the next reviewing period when the birds will
come home to roost." (next FR) "They have, and they have settled on the high-
est branches."
Seen through a glass darkly:
"Insofar as I am able to comprehend it, I have no quarrel with the
substance of the rating officer's comments."
This article is classified CONFIDENTIAL.
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INTELLIGENCE IN RECENT PUBLIC LITERATURE
Vietnam: A History. By Stanley Karnow. Viking, New York; 1983; 750 pp.
From the beginning Americans found Vietnam an exasperating land. In
1820, John White, captain of a Massachusetts clipper ship, became the first
American to visit Vietnam, but his efforts to negotiate a commercial treaty
met rebuff from the Vietnamese, already fearful of foreign influence. A
generation later, the U.S.S. Constitution, "Old Ironsides," inadvertently got
caught up (nor, for Americans, would this be the last time) in a dispute
between the Vietnamese and the French, which culminated with the United
States Government disavowing the actions of its warship and extending an
official apology to the Vietnamese Emperor. Lyndon Johnson may have
sensed the torment this strange land would eventually bring him. Only weeks
after succeeding the murdered John Kennedy, long before Vietnam came to
obsess him, the new President confided to an aide that he had a "terrible feel-
ing that something has grabbed me around the ankles and won't let go." (p.
324) That something, of course, developed into America's longest, and only
losing, war.
Stanley Karnow is an American journalist who has devoted much of his
career to Asian affairs. First visiting Vietnam in 1959, well before the United
States transformed the country into an American outpost, he returned
periodically over the next two decades and in 1981 spent seven weeks there in-
terviewing many high-ranking communist officials, as well as dozens of the
North Vietnamese, Viet Cong, and South Vietnamese soldiers who fought so
long and paid so dearly for a peace that has yet to come. These interviews
forced Karnow to reevaluate some of his own preconceptions about the war;
they furnish the most original material in his book, Vietnam: A History, which
is the companion volume to last fall's Public Broadcasting System television
series on the war.
Karnow (like most authors) writes that he undertook his task with no
special cause to plead. Indeed, this study is remarkably free of the passions
that have so long surrounded consideration of the war. He resists the
oversimplifications and stereotypes that have characterized much of the
writing about Vietnam, recognizing that the issues usually were considerably
more complex than either hawks or doves acknowledged. Opposition to the
Saigon government, he rightly notes, did not necessarily connote support for
the communists. Many of the Buddhist militants, student activists, and others
who led the resistance to Prime Minister Diem were as anti-communist as
Diem himself, counting among their grievances against Diem his inability to
defeat the Viet Cong.
In another illustration of this balanced tone, Karnow observes that it may
be impossible to say with finality whether the American destroyer Maddox
was in Vietnamese territorial waters in August 1964 when North Vietnamese
patrol torpedo boats fired at it. The question is pertinent because it was this in-
cident that precipitated the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Washington took it for
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granted that Hanoi adhered to the three-mile limit set by the French, he
writes, but "it could have been equally assumed that they had switched to a
twelve-mile limit such as China observed." Thus, the American warship
was "conceivably" violating North Vietnam's sovereignty (p. 366), he
concludes, adopting a tone far more cautious than most pronouncements on
the subject.
This is not to suggest that Karnow's account is bland or lacking in
judgments. Writing of General Nguyen Khanh, he remarks that it seems
almost beyond belief that America's commitment in Vietnam rested by 1964
on "so sleazy a surrogate." (p. 335) Prime Minister Ky once showed up at a
high-level conference dressed "like a saxophone player in a second-rate
nightclub." (p. 425) Maxwell Taylor was "a conventional soldier with little
patience for Vietnam's political complexities." (p 378) William C. Westmore-
land was "gullible" and "naive," "a corporation executive in uniform, a
diligent, disciplined organization man who would obey orders." (pp. 345, 551,
557) In pursuing possible diplomatic solutions to the war, Johnson and his
advisers displayed "a rare combination of ineptitude and intransigence." (p.
495) Never sectarian in his assessments, he turns his fire on the other side as
well, labeling Hanoi's communist government in 1981 "an inept and repres-
sive regime incompetent to cope with the challenge of recovery." (p. 27)
Karnow offers measured judgments on controversies that have peppered
discussion of Vietnam for a generation. For instance, he unequivocally
addresses the question of whether the conflict could more correctly be called a
civil war or a North Vietnamese invasion of the South. Central to this matter is
the issue of when North Vietnamese main force units infiltrated south-prior
to the arrival of American combat forces, or only in response to these
deployments. The decision to send North Vietnamese troops south, he writes,
was made in the spring of 1964, long before the White House considered
introducing American forces in significant numbers into Vietnam. By April
the first North Vietnamese regulars were already on their way, followed at the
end of the year by complete units. "The Communists had added a new and
significant dimension to the struggle," Karnow observes. (p. 334) The widely
held notion that the Viet Cong represented an indigenous and autonomous
insurgent movement, he adds elsewhere, was by late 1964 nothing more than a
myth.
As for the destruction wrought by American firepower, Karnow is equally
forthright. While pointing to the unprecedented tonnage of US bombing, he
also notes that the dikes along the Red River, the destruction of which might
have killed "hundreds of thousands," were never targeted. Nor were Hanoi,
Haiphong, and the other northern cities subjected to the kind of "carpet
bombing" common during the Second World War. (p. 415) Even the
"Christmas bombing" of 1972 inflicted only a fraction of the damage its critics
initially claimed. The B-52s, Karnow avows, "were programmed to spare
civilians, and they pinpointed their targets with extraordinary precision." (p.
653) Karnow judges that the bombing backfired for the Americans, stiffening
the North's resolve and enabling Hanoi to ask for greater sacrifice from its
citizens.
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Turning to the matter of responsibility for Saigon's fall in 1975, Karnow
implies that culpability lay primarily with Nguyen Van Thieu and his corrupt
regime. Later claims that the American Congress had undermined the will of
an ally by refusing it needed supplies, Karnow writes, were little more than a
maneuver to avoid the onus for Saigon's "almost certain collapse." (p. 667)
Karnow cites a Pentagon study that revealed that of the $700 million in
American aid allocated to Saigon in that final year, less than half had actually
reached Vietnam by the time of Hanoi's final victory. The remainder
consisted of goods still in the pipeline, or had not yet been spent. Money, it
seems, was the least of Saigon's problems; and no amount of outside aid, short
of massive armed intervention, could permanently prop up a government that
neither earned nor received the support of its people.
Some, missing the commitment and moral certitude the war aroused in
proponents and opponents alike, will find Karnow too evenhanded. Quite
often his judgments are implied rather than stated, a technique which makes
them less sharply drawn than they otherwise would be. But on the major
issues, he is clear enough. Vietnam was a misguided endeavor, a "tragedy of
epic dimensions" which nobody won. (p. 11) The United States, "motivated by
the loftiest intentions, . . . rip[ped] South Vietnam's social fabric to shreds." (p.
439) The enemy, "imbued with an almost fanatical sense of dedication to a re-
unified Vietnam under [its] control," saw the war as a continuation of two
thousand years of resistance to foreign domination; ideology played a distinct-
ly secondary role in the struggle. (p. 17) The United States, failing to recognize
this fundamental situation, then compounded its error by viewing the conflict
as a military problem, susceptible to solutions more appropriate to a conven-
tional war for territory. "The real problem," Richard Nixon wrote in his diary,
"is that the enemy is willing to sacrifice in order to win, while the South Viet-
namese simply aren't willing to pay that much of a price in order to avoid los-
ing." (p. 642)
One of the themes tying this fat book together pertains to the frustrations
Saigon caused the United States. Karnow makes shambles of the contention
that South Vietnamese officials were little more than American puppets.
Indeed, it was almost the other way around, for by the late 1950s, Washington
had invested too much in building up the South as an anti-communist bastion
to allow it to succumb to the communist insurgents or their sponsors in Hanoi.
Thus, South Vietnam, not Washington, held most of the cards, as American of-
ficials repeatedly discovered when Saigon ignored their demands for political
reform or military assertiveness. Their very helplessness gave the South
Vietnamese leverage with respect to their American partners, for as a Saigon
official candidly admitted to Karnow, "Our big advantage over the Americans
is that they want to win the war more than we do." (p. 383) The South Viet-
namese were, Karnow repeatedly reminds us, clients who refused to play the
part.
Intelligence professionals will find the fragmented and rather cursory
treatment Karnow accords their field something of a disappointment. In the fi-
nal analysis, the entire US involvement in Vietnam, lasting a quarter century
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and costing close to 58,000 American lives and untold billions of dollars, rested
upon an erroneous assumption: that Ho's brand of communism represented
little more than an extension of Soviet or Chinese power. From time to time,
American officials entertained the "theoretical possibility," as Dean Acheson
phrased it, that Ho might be another Tito, but they never seriously tested this
notion. (p. 176)
Had they done so, they might have discovered that, like the relationship
tying Saigon to Washington, links between Hanoi and its sponsors in Moscow
and Beijing suffered through a tortuous series of twists and turns. The Chinese
provided the Viet Minh with advisers and weapons as early as 1950, and
during the next 25 years, supplies from abroad played a crucial role in the
communist resistance to first French, then American power. Foreign assist-
ance, for instance, more than compensated for the damage American bombing
caused, while toward the end of the war SAMs and other sophisticated air de-
fense systems provided by the Soviet Union enabled Hanoi to inflict heavy ca-
sualties on American fliers. On the other hand, neither Moscow nor Beijing
proved willing to subordinate its perceived national interests for the sake of
ideological solidarity. In 1954 Zhou Enlai, fearful that a continuation of the
war against the French would draw the United States more deeply into
Indochina, pushed Ho's representatives at Geneva into concessions they were
loath to make. Pham Van Dong, the longtime prime minister of North
Vietnam, angrily walked away from the last round of the negotiations
muttering that Zhou "has double-crossed us." (p. 204) In later years there
would be further disputes over both diplomatic and military strategy.
Remembering Mao's advice that Hanoi pursue a policy of protracted guerrilla
war, Pham Van Dong bitterly recalled to Karnow in 1981 how the Chinese
leader "was always ready to fight to the last Vietnamese." (p. 329) In the
1960s, Ho would find Khrushchev's policy of "peaceful coexistence" with the
West similarly distasteful, all the more so because the Kremlin urged him to
postpone his plans to "liberate" the South. But American decision makers,
caught up in their image of a monolithic communist threat, rarely paused to
consider the implications of these differences. Seldom has a failure in
understanding-a breakdown in the intelligence process, if you will-had
more devastating consequences for the United States, or for those unfortunate
enough to find themselves in the Americans' path.
CIA remains throughout this book a shadowy presence, its role never
defined, its impact seldom explored. Karnow writes from time to time of
"intelligence," but more often than not, he is referring to the military
intelligence officers in Westmoreland's headquarters in Saigon. He cites the
West Point textbook that termed Tet an "intelligence failure ranking with
Pearl Harbor," but renders no firm judgment on the accuracy of this
assessment. Instead, he writes that "like medieval scholars interpreting
theological scriptures, various intelligence specialists detected different mean-
ings" from the ample supply of indicators available in the weeks before the of-
fensive. (p. 543) CIA's role in this process of evaluation is not specifically
mentioned-a recurring characteristic of the book which Agency officers will
find irritating.
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Karnow's account of the coup against Diem exemplifies his treatment of
CIA. He makes Lucien Conein, identified as "one of the star performers in the
CIA's `department of dirty tricks,' " an energetic participant in the intrigues
against the Ngo family. (p. 283) The single reference to John McCone suggests
that the DCI opposed overthrowing Diem. Whether Conein was operating
contrary to orders from Langley (which seems unlikely), or McCone muted his
opposition to the coup is not clear. Complicating matters further, Karnow
portrays John Richardson, Saigon station chief, as an initial supporter of the
plotters who subsequently developed doubts and was removed from his post
by Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge in order to reassure the conspirators of
American backing. So while CIA in the person of Conein is painted as a co-
conspirator,. the Agency's role in Diem's ouster remains obscure.
In discussing the arcane political intrigues in South Vietnam, Karnow is
considerably more blunt. "The American intelligence establishment in Saigon
simply could not cope," he writes (p. 337), referring to the difficulties of
monitoring the multitude of plots endemic to the South Vietnamese capital in
the mid-1960s. He also recounts an (in retrospect) embarrassing CIA judgment
in October 1964 that the communists would probably avoid actions which
might bring "the great weight of US weaponry" down on them. (p. 402) As for
Hanoi's Easter offensive in 1972, he notes that its magnitude and duration
stunned American commanders, again despite warnings the communists were
planning such a move. As with his account of Tet, Karnow makes no
recommendations concerning the age-old problem of separating intelligence
wheat from the far larger amount of chaff.
Karnow does credit the Agency with recognizing that the conventional
military tactics and the commitment of ever larger American ground forces
favored by the Pentagon simply would not work, and he quotes Agency
analyst Willard Matthias' mid-1964 forecast of a "prolonged stalemate" in.
which a negotiated settlement and neutralization might offer the best possible
alternative. (p. 403) He writes that no solid evidence substantiates the
allegations that CIA was behind Lon Nol's 1970 coup against Prince Sihanouk.
And in describing the Agency-run Phoenix program, he admits that his 1981
interviews in Vietnam forced him to reevaluate his earlier negative assessment.
The program was far more effective in disrupting the Viet Cong infrastructure
than he had initially believed, he concludes-adding, however, that it was so
riddled with corruption and abuse that perhaps seventy percent of the suspects
detained under its auspices were able to buy back their freedom with judicious
bribes to the South Vietnamese.
Other issues of interest to intelligence officers engage Karnow's attention
only slightly. He briefly mentions the order of battle controversy that
eventually pitted Agency analyst Sam Adams against both the Pentagon and
Adams' own superiors, but does not substantiate Adams' contention that the
military deliberately underestimated enemy strength. Instead, Karnow implies
that the number juggling Westmoreland allegedly engaged in was more or less
routine; had Johnson sought a less optimistic estimate, he could easily have ob-
tained one among the welter of competing agencies circulating statistics in
Washington. One reads these pages without getting any sense of the domestic
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debate touched off by Senator Stuart Symington's ballyhooed charges that the
CIA was running a "secret war" in Laos. In fact, Laos receives short shrift
from Karnow throughout the book. The single reference to the infiltration of
enemy supplies through Sihanoukville gives no indication of the intensity this
controversy provoked, nor of the damage to CIA's reputation it wrought. The
1969 Green Beret case, in which Agency officers were accused of complicity
in the execution of a Viet Cong suspect, is passed over in silence. John McCone
and Richard Helms each rate one citation in the book's index, William Colby
two, and George Carver, Helms' longtime Special Assistant for Vietnamese
Affairs, none. Thomas Powers in his biography of Helms credits Carver with
turning the "wise men" against the war in the month after Tet. (The Man
Who Kept the Secrets, pp. 243-45) Karnow relates the same incident but
assigns the prominent role to the State Department's Philip Habib. (p. 562)
Could better intelligence have prevented the debacle Vietnam became?
In theory, yes-providing it enabled American officials to shed their precon-
ceptions about the supposed identity of purposes linking Ho Chi Minh and his
foreign backers. But Washington did not slide unawares into the quagmire
that was Vietnam. At each stage in the escalation, Johnson was fully aware of
the hazards ahead. By July of 1965, Karnow tells us, he had already sensed
that a commitment in Southeast Asia might require as many as 600,000
American soldiers. Johnson ultimately failed "because he misjudged the
enemy's capacity to withstand pain," because he expected Hanoi to balance
anticipated gains against costs as he believed Americans would have done.
"The trouble with our policy in Vietnam," a Pentagon official later conceded,
was that Washington policymakers "anticipated that the North Vietnamese
would respond like reasonable people." (p. 396) Only if the nation's intelli-
gence experts had persuaded the decision makers that Hanoi operated under a
wholly different calculus of reasonability would we have been spared
Vietnam.
Aside from its shortcomings in the field of intelligence, Karnow's
organization strikes the reader as uneven and at times imbalanced. Save for his
introductory chapter, he does not get beyond 1954, at which time the United
States began to supplant the French in Indochina, for more than two hundred
pages. Still, his emphasis on this earlier period serves as a useful reminder that
for many Vietnamese, the American war was merely the latest episode in a
struggle encompassing two thousand years of resistance to foreign domination.
With the exception of a single chapter, Karnow focuses on the decision
makers, not the Vietnamese peasantry, the soldiers, or the American civilians
back home. As a consequence, although he characterizes the war as a "test of
endurance in which the side able to last longer would prevail" (p. 464), it is not
entirely apparent why the other side was able to hold out longer than we were.
He provides many partial explanations, but never a sustained argument,
asking his reader instead to piece together the reasons from among the
hundreds of pages of text.
Karnow usefully reminds us just how easy it was to slip into a large-scale
commitment in Vietnam, how logical it all seemed at the time. The war was
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Book Reviews
"a struggle this country cannot shirk," the New York Times solemnly intoned
during the Kennedy years. (p. 255) At the same moment, Senator J. William
Fulbright, subsequently one of the leading opponents of "executive encroach-
ment" upon legislative prerogatives, was suggesting that the country's global
responsibilities required granting the President "a measure of power in the
conduct of our foreign affairs that we have hitherto jealously withheld." (p.
359) Perhaps one of the lessons of Vietnam should be for us to beware of that
which seems all too logical.
Could the United States have won the war? American GIs apparently
think so. Karnow cites a Veterans Administration study a few years ago that
showed that 82 percent of the veterans polled believed they had been sent to
fight a war Washington politicians would not let them win. But most
indicators would point otherwise. Saddled with an ally unwilling or unable to
save itself, and only marginally understanding the nature of the conflict, the
United States gradually escalated its role in the war. Ironically, the further
Washington intervened, the weaker the non-communist forces in South
Vietnam became, as they lost all possibility of turning aside allegations of
surrogating for America. As a consequence, the United States never had a
serious chance to do more than stave off defeat. And such an objective, when
measured against the costs entailed, increasingly proved insufficient to most
Americans.
STAT
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Book Reviews CONFIDENTIAL
MI-6: British Secret Intelligence Service Operations, 1909-45. By Nigel
West, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London; 1983; 253 pp.
Nigel West, the young British writer who earlier gave us the two-volume
history of MI-5, the British Security Service,' this time has tackled an even
more arcane and difficult subject, the story of the origins and operations up to
1946 of MI-6, the British Secret Intelligence Service. This latest book by the
prolific West (true name Rupert Alason) is MI-6: British Secret Intelligence
Service Operations, 1909-45.
The first question one has about a book on so secret an organization must
concern the author's sources. In an illuminating introduction, West describes
some of the problems he faced. He notes that SIS secrecy has rarely been pene-
trated. Even Professor Hinsley and associates, who have had access to the
official records, have managed to produce only the dryest of narratives.
Although Hinsley's two volumes are immensely valuable as detailed accounts
of British intelligence in wartime, especially on the cryptographic side, they
have been widely criticized for omitting virtually all mention of personalities.
The late Sir Maurice Oldfield, Chief of MI-6 from 1973-78, commented that
the two volumes were remarkable for not having any names in them, giving
the impression that the intelligence war was won by committees in Whitehall
rather than by people. But even more indicative of the secrecy which
surrounds British intelligence is the fact that volumes three and four of
Hinsley's great work, which were to have been published by now, have not ap-
peared and a shroud of mystery surrounds their fate. It has been widely
rumored that Mrs. Thatcher became alarmed that the first two volumes, even
emasculated as they are, represent an unwarranted breach of security.
How then did Nigel West pull together enough material to pack 253
pages with such fascinating detail? West agrees it was not easy, but admits he
took advantage of the large amount of material already published concerning
wartime intelligence operations, particularly about the codebreakers, SOE
operations, and OSS activities with the British and Allied organizations.
Certainly the first two volumes of Hinsley's work must have been helpful
when it came to untangling the story of the early efforts to establish a
workable intelligence system. But West's intention, he makes quite clear, is to
concentrate on MI-6 operations, i.e., the stations overseas, their agents and
staff, as well as the SIS"' organization at home. His aim is to give the reader
an understanding of how MI-6 as a whole played its wartime role, but to do so
without the frustrating coyness of previous commentators. In this he states he
was much assisted by information volunteered by former MI-6 officers and
their agents. He says he was fortunate in tracing former members of the staff
'MI-5: British Security Service Operations 1909-45, the Bodley Head, London, 1981; and
A Matter of Trust: MI-5 1945-72, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1982.
"British Intelligence in the Second World War, Volumes I and II, by F.H. Hinsley, E.E.
Thomas, C.F.G. Ransom, and R.C. Knight, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London, 1979 and
1981. For a review, see Studies in Intelligence, Winter 1983, Volume 27, Number 4.
"'SIS (Secret Intelligence Service) and MI-6 are used interchangeably in this review, MI-6
having been an early cover designation under the War Office.
CONFIDENTIAL
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CONFIDENTIAL Book Reviews
from each of the overseas stations. He justifies such help by noting that the
structure and methods of SIS as he describes them in his book have little
relevance to the organization's current operations, although many intelligence
professionals would take issue with this. He says that the few hundred SIS offi-
cers and agents he interviewed have, to a man, retired, and that some senior
former officers volunteered their assistance, although West nowhere cites
specifically an MI-6 source. Finally, West claims he gave the Ministry of
Defence the opportunity to ask for alterations and, where these seemed
justified to West, he agreed to them.
West unquestionably received valuable assistance from many retired
officers, but he also got some very important help from a completely
unexpected quarter. To West's surprise, he discovered that the Public Records
Office at Kew holds a large number of SIS documents which somehow escaped
the "weeders." The Public Records Act, 1957, established the principle of
releasing the British Government's secret documents after half a century. In
1967 the period was reduced to thirty years for all government records,
although the Lord Chancellor's permission may be sought to delay the release
of files deemed to be particularly sensitive. Some government departments,
such as the Security Service (MI-5), are exempt from the act altogether. Almost
all documents sent to Kew pass through the so-called "weeders," who have the
discretion to remove from the files what they deem to be trivia before
delivering material to the records office. West (from his experience with
researching this book) believes these weeders probably consign to the shredder
much important historical material.
West also discovered that the Foreign Office weeders in particular
allowed considerable material to pass into the permanent records, not realizing
they were overlooking most sensitive secret information. This was especially
true of MI-6 records, because the service had been obliged to shelter under the
cover of the Foreign Office, especially in operations abroad. West notes that
from the files titled "54 Broadway" it is apparent the weeders were unaware
that this was the headquarters of SIS. It was from this gold mine of records
that West unearthed so much material about MI-6 stations abroad prior to
World War II. From these documents he obtained names and facts which
directed him to personalities still alive who apparently were prepared to talk.
Talk they did, about operations and other events concerning which even
the most determined investigator might otherwise have had no clue. In fact,
like many of their American counterparts, it appears these British officers,
though supposedly bound by the Official Secrets Act, have been particularly
garrulous about their past occupation. It is not too hard to picture; the old cod-
ger is sought out at his lair in clubland, probably Boodles or the Travellers,
plied with drink and a good lunch during which he is questioned about some
old scandal which resulted in a suicide or some similar tender memory. The
veteran responds; he believes he must put the matter straight and suddenly
West has his story. The method, used with astonishing success by David Martin
and John Sawatsky earlier, seems never to fail. Certainly the Public Records
Office at Kew was of invaluable help, but despite those titillating leads most
would have gone nowhere had not many old-timers been prepared to talk with
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Book Reviews CONFIDENTIAL
a looseness that does not match the image we have of the close-mouthed
British secret intelligence officer.
As indicated earlier, one of the most notable features of this book is the
large number of names of ex-SIS people which appear in it, although one
should not be misled into thinking all those mentioned were sources (to begin
with, many are dead). But one may assume that many of those named were
sources. In this aspect, the book's contrast with Hinsley's cannot be more
astonishing. In some respects, it is what makes West's book so attractive,
especially to readers who worked with the British intelligence service during
or after World War II. All the characters are there, from General Menzies
(never mentioned in the Hinsley books) to registry and secretarial personnel.
The list is unending, but one cannot resist ticking off a few: Harry Carr (still
alive in his nineties and one of the most famous post World War I Baltic sta-
tion chiefs); Colonel Valentine Vivian; Eddie Boxshall (for nearly twenty years
station chief in Bucharest); the Gibson brothers (Harry and Archie); Leslie
Mitchel (he ran "the Shetland bus"); John Bruce Lockhart; "Biffy" Danderdale
(he brought out the Enigma machine from the Poles); and Sidney Reilly. And
West admits only a few of the stories from each could be crowded into this in-
credible book. What's more, many of these officers served for as many as two
decades after the war. So it is not as though they stepped off stage in 1945.
The book is divided into two parts. The first part deals with the period
from the origin of the modern service in 1909 up through World War I and on
to the year after the outbreak of the Second World War. This first section is
devoted largely to the beginning of the service under the redoubtable Captain
Mansfield Smith-Cumming, RNR, who when pinned under the vehicle after a
serious auto accident cut off his own leg with a pen knife in a vain attempt to
save his mortally injured son who had been driving. SIS was begun because the
British Government had been caught napping by the Boer War and knew next
to nothing about the enemy. A committee established to investigate the
intelligence situation found that although everyone believed the British had
the most superb organization in the world, they in fact hardly had a single
agent worth his salt anywhere in Europe. The establishment of MI-6 followed,
and the service prospered during World War I. Mansfield Smith-Cumming
died in harness at the age of 64 in 1923, and was succeeded by Admiral Hugh
Sinclair, thus maintaining the Royal Navy influence on the service. Between
the wars, SIS deteriorated. By 1940 the intelligence situation was a shambles.
There had been major miscalculations of German military strength and even
the early Enigma decrypts were being ignored by the military services because
they thought the code name represented merely another questionable SIS
agent in the field. Once Enigma became fully accepted and the MI-6/MI-5
counterintelligence operations began to pay off, the situation improved for SIS
in Whitehall.
By 1945 the role of MI-6 in the postwar world was being assessed. It was
clear that after the liberation of Western Europe there would be a prolonged
struggle over the areas occupied by Soviet forces. Even by the end of 1944 this
area had become depressingly extensive: Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia had
all but disappeared. Poland, Hungary, Romania, and others in the path of the
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Russian war machine would be next. To deal with the spreading menace of the
Soviets, Major General Sir Stewart Menzies, then Chief of MI-6, established a
new Section IX to concentrate on the USSR. There was a struggle within the
service as to who should head this new and vital department intended to
combat Russian espionage. The choice was an ambitious young officer who
had previously worked in the counterespionage department known as Section
V. Enter H.A.R. (Kim) Philby.
Putting the book down, one wonders what West will do for an encore. His
earlier books about MI-5 took that service first from its origin in 1909 to 1945.
The second volume ranged from 1945 through 1972, a period dense with
security disasters to the British Government. The obvious question that arises is
whether West will pursue his earlier pattern and follow this book with a
second covering the postwar period through 1972, or thereabouts. If that is his
plan, we may expect fireworks. The British Government reacted vigorously to
the second book on MI-5, although in the end it was able to do precious little
about it. It would be surprising if it were not even more vehemently negative
to a second volume on MI-6 covering a period of equal delicacy for the British
Government in its foreign as well as domestic affairs. Furthermore, although
there are many overt sources (some of dubious quality) for this period which
could be helpful (after all a good deal has been written about Philby, the
Crabbe episode, the Berlin Tunnel, George Blake) it is obvious such fruitful
sources as the Public Records at Kew would not be available for much of this
period. One suspects, also, the weeders may have been sent back after West's
revelations to have a second go at what is left. The old boys might talk, but
when it comes to events so close in time and of such political sensitivity one
wonders how West will fare. And the government may act even more
decisively than it did with the second MI-5 book. But this has its political risks,
too. It will be fascinating to see what develops if there is another volume. If it
is anything near as good as the book under review here it will be a winner,
even though this may embarrass the British, as well as some other friendly gov-
ernments, including our own.
This review is classified CONFIDENTIAL.
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Book Reviews
Inside the Soviet Army. By Viktor Suvorov. Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc,
New York; 1982; 296 pp.
The Threat: Inside the Soviet Military Machine. By Andrew Cockburn.
Random House, New York; 1983; 338 pp.
Both books cover more ground than the titles indicate. Both are important
in today's world because they shed light on what goes on inside the Soviet
Union. Both books help put the US - USSR confrontation in somewhat better
perspective. Both are important to intelligence professionals, but for different
reasons.
I found Inside the Soviet Army by Viktor Suvorov (an assumed name) to
be an enlightening glimpse inside that starkly closed society. Here is a Soviet
defector with 15 years active duty in the Army, obviously an intelligent and
perceptive individual, answering questions which have plagued Western
analysts for years. He helps the reader understand how the Russian soldier and
the Russian officer think. I agree with General Sir John Hackett, who wrote
the foreword, that every serving officer in the Western world should read this
book, as should every politician and member of the public who takes the
threat of World War III seriously. Although the author's title is Inside the So-
viet Army, one must remember that to the Soviets the word "Army" is all-en-
compassing. In fact, they use "Land Forces" to identify what we in the US re-
fer to as "Army." Thus, Suvorov is really examining the entire Soviet defense
structure.
Have you ever looked at the hopeless maze which is an organizational
chart of the Soviet hierarchy-and wondered who runs the country and who
makes the major decisions? Suvorov sweeps away the confusing cobwebs and
identifies the basic troika which makes all important decisions in the Soviet
Union: The Party, the Army, and the KGB. When one leg of this triangle gets
too long, the other two (who may despise each other) unite and chop that leg
off. Did you wonder why Khrushchev fell from power so suddenly? Suvorov
explains that the Party was suddenly too strong. The Army and the KGB
joined forces and ousted him. Similarly, the Army and Party joined forces to
eliminate Beria, Stalin's chief inquisitor and head policeman, who sought
supreme power after Stalin's death. A precarious but strangely durable
balance exists among the three elements of the troika. We in the West,
particularly our decision makers and intelligence analysts, need to understand
this balance of power and its implications.
Have you ever wondered why the Soviets continue to tolerate the insolent
and unruly government of Romania, yet reacted so violently to events in
Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968)? Suvorov explains that no Soviet
citizen would want to move to Romania; therefore, Romania is no threat and
can be tolerated. In Hungary and Czechoslovakia, on the other hand,
glimmerings of democracy were appearing and these represented serious
threats which could not be tolerated. As Suvorov explains, the fear of having
its citizens learn about the Free World and the fear of having those citizens de-
fect influence almost every major decision. For example, in the Soviet Union,
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maps which have any detail at all are classified SECRET and are not available
to the public, even to most military. The reason: it is hard to make one's way
out of Russia without a map.
Suvorov describes how the Soviet concept of detente grew out of lessons
learned from the costly 1940 invasion of Finland. Having lost upwards of one-
and-one-half million men in the invasion, and having never put a tank on the
streets of Helsinki, the Soviets found that by means other than force they
obtained total capitulation of the Finns. To this day, Suvorov reports, the
Soviets are not anxious to attack militarily any country with the strength and
ill to defend itself.
Suvorov analyzes the five major components of the Armed Forces and
gives us not only their strengths and weaknesses but also their "pecking order,"
which has nothing to do with seniority. He gives a splendid description of
higher field command in the Soviet military-that is, the Strategic Directions,
vv hick correspond most closely to our major joint commands in the overseas
theaters, and which contain, essentially, four Fronts, a Group of Tank Armies,
and a Naval Fleet. Ile exposes the Warsaw Treaty Organization for what it is,
a political sham. In the event of war in Europe, all Soviet and Soviet satellite
forces will immediately fall under direct Soviet command.
Suvorov's chapters on strategy and tactics, mobilization and equipment
are superb, as are his final two chapters: the "Soldier's Lot," and "The
Officer's Path." You will find literally hundreds of eye-opening facts and
observations in these and earlier chapters. For example, under tactics, Suvorov
repeats a question he generally asks Western officers at the conclusion of his
lectures. He states that he has never had the correct answer yet from a
Western audience. The question involves how a Soviet regimental commander
would commit his reserve when three of his motor-rifle companies are on the
move: the first is under murderous fire and its attack has crumbled; the second
company is advancing slowly with heavy losses; the third company has
suffered an enemy counterattack and, having lost all of its command
personnel, is retreating. According to Suvorov, there is only one possible
answer for the Soviet commander. What is it? Make your own decision before
you read further. Answer: the Soviet commander must use his reserve to
reinforce the second company which is advancing, however slowly; the others
do not qualify for help nor are those company commanders entitled to ask for
help. Suvorov is showing us what Kipling meant when he said, "East is East
and West is West ..."
As a related subject, the defector Suvorov supplied much of the back-
ground on which General Sir John Hackett's new best-seller, The Third World
War: The Untold Story, is based.
The Threat: Andrew Cockburn, a Western journalist who specializes in
nilitary subjects, states in his first chapter that "it is the true shape and scope
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of Soviet military capability that concerns us...." This statement and the title
represent, as best I can determine, the purpose of the book. Cockburn does a
yeoman's job of examining Soviet military forces and weapons systems while
concurrently examining those of the US. This technique results in a form of
net assessment which has always been, by whatever name, a logical way to
perform intelligence analysis. Regrettably, the technique has never been fully
exploited in the West, probably because decision makers have not demanded
it of their intelligence chiefs and the intelligence chiefs have not sought to tres-
pass on ground hallowed by chiefs of operations.
Cockburn's findings, at virtually each step of the way, are that the Soviets
are not nearly as formidable as the Pentagon would have us believe. For
example, starting with current military manpower figures: 5.8 million Soviets
vs 2.2 million US, Cockburn, by eliminating various categories of noncombat
Soviet troops which we do not have in our Armed Forces (border guards,
railway construction) and by subtracting the excessive numbers (compared to
ours) required to perform tasks (Soviet military airlift employs 100,000
military while our Military Airlift Command employs only 37,000), he arrives
at a net figure of approximately 2 million combat troops on each side.
Whether you agree with Cockburn's analysis is not as important as the fact
that he challenges the reader to look at the threat more closely, more
realistically, and with the view that many human factors must be considered
along with the sheer numbers of forces and weapons.
As he moves along in his book, Cockburn becomes less and less tolerant of
the military bureaucrats in both countries. In fact, he eventually gives the
picture of two humbling bureaucracies, spending huge amounts of money on
many of the wrong things, exaggerating each other's capabilities to keep the
wheels of the military-industrial complexes turning ... meanwhile leading the
world toward an inevitable confrontation.
Perhaps not taking into full account the fact that the US has suffered
more in the past from underestimation of its opponents than from the reverse,
his intolerance of inflation of the Soviet threat by US bureaucrats erupts in the
final chapter, "The Consequences of Threat Inflation." In this chapter he
warns of growing militarism in both countries and draws a parallel with the
situation in Europe in 1914 when the generals found themselves helpless to
control the monster they had created. Cockburn's warning is certainly valid.
Yet I wish that he had found some way to recognize this important factor:
Neither the US nor the Soviet Union can afford to underestimate the other.
The stakes are too high.
Cockburn has performed extensive research and produced a controversial
book. Every reader can find something to like and something to dislike in it.
Whether his assessments are always valid is not as important as the fact that he
shakes bushes and challenges "rutted'' thinking. This, in my view, is his major
contribution.
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Secret
Secret
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