SPECIAL OPERATIONS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000100530003-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 13, 2007
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: January 15, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Jack Anderson Confidential
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SUB.IECT
January 15, 1983 7:30 P,M. CIlY
Special Operations
Washington, D.C.
JACK ANDERSON: A raging debate is going on behind the
guarded doors of the nation's secret intelligence apparatus.
It's a dispute over the country's ability to carry out covert
missions. They're known as special operations. Some call them.
dirty tricks.
MITCHELL WERBELL: The use of teams of personnel to dis-
establish certain governments, to heavy cases, to correct a
government policy by the removal of personnel, one way or
another.
ANDERSON: That was Mitchell Werbell. He knows what
he's talking about. He's been involved in special operations all
his life. Today Werbell runs a counter-terrorist training school
outside Atlanta. His experienced instructors train the security
forces of other countries. My associate John Lee Anderson
visited him at his estate. Werbell talked about his career as an
independent contract agent for the government.
WERBELL: I've been in seven revolutions. I've been
involved in about coup d'etats. I have operated in practically
every country, with the exception of .any of the Eastern bloc.
A special operation could be likened to one of the
things that I did not too long ago, where there was a great deal
of kidnapping going on in Argentina. And a major U.S. company,
who were under kidnapping threats. and who had had several of
their executive corporation people kidnapped, came to me to go
down and stop it.
Well, there's only one answer to handling kidnappers,
and that's to kill them. Once they've stepped over the line,
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ANDERSON: Werbell's candor is most unusual for men in
his business. He speaks up on subjects that most others discuss
only behind closed doors. But his commitment to covert
operations is shared by many of the nation's ranking intelligence
officers.
One of them is Lieutenant General Daniel Graham, the
former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He also
expressed his views candidly.
GENERAL DANIEL GRAHAM: Well, they call them dirty
tricks, but actually the main reason you've got to have that
capability i.s that if you've got -- your national interests are
threatened by some development within some country, you don't
want to be stuck with the choice of running down to the U.N. and
complaining or landing the Marines. You want to have something
in between. So what you do is you have covert operation
capabilities that can range all the way from just bagmen coming
in with money to try to buy your way out of the situation or
people that actually have to go in and take some military-type
action, or to help military factions within the country involved.
REPORTER: Where do you think we stand now in our
capability to react in a critical situation, General?
GENERAL GRAHAM: Well, we're in pretty bad shape, I
think. As a matter of fact, we're in critical shape.
ANDERSON: Why is our special operations capability in
such critical shape? Well, General Graham blames the exposures
of the Watergate era. Investigations into CIA abuses were
conducted by Idaho Senator Frank Church and New York Congressman
Otis Pike.
Here's how Graham feels about it.
GENERAL GRAHAM: Well, I think what happened was that
special operations are bound to be -- have a certain clandestine
aspect to them. In other words, you've got to have very good
intelligence and you have to do things with an eye to security.
And when the whole Church-Pike Committee intelligence circus went
on, why, they really put the damper on doing anything right in
special operations.
It's just simply a fact that clandestine operations,
operating things, and espionage really go hand-in-hand, and you
can't separate the two. And if you kill off our capabilities to
gather intelligence with human beings, you begin to kill off
covert operations. That's one part of it.
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The other part of it was that such a great hurrah was
made of such things as alleged attempts to assassinate Castro,
and so forth, that the whole -- I think the military just got
scared of its own special operations capabilities. Certainly CIA
did. And Tuner. came along; he fired 800 of them. So the guts
were stripped out of what is a very important function for any
country that wants to call itself a superpower.
ANDERSON: Certainly the United States didn't look much
like a superpower when it conducted the most famous special
operation in U.S. history, the failed attempt to rescue the
hostages in Iran. That unhappy mission was executed by our elite
Delta team. The Delta force is composed of the armed forces'
special or non-conventional warfare elements, the Army's Green
Berets and Rangers, the Air Force's Air Commandos, the Navy's
Seals, and sometimes the Marines' long-range reconnaissance team.
My associate John Lee Anderson visited the Marine base
at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, where the reconnaissance teams
receive their basic training.
Most experts agree that the failure of the Iran rescue
mission cannot be blamed upon the brave men who participated in
it. The fault was in the command structure. A board of inquiry
recommended a remedy. The board called for a joint special
operations command coordinated by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But
many experts believe this is not enough.
One of them is General Jack Singlaub. He's one of the
highest-ranking Army officers trained at special operations.
He's divided his career between the CIA and the Army.
GENERAL JACK SINGLAUB: I think there is a recognition
that we are under attack now, we're losing the war, and unless we
do something in an offensive way, not just in a defensive way,
we're going to continue to lose. You know, it's like a football
game. You can't win a football game by staying on your side of
the 50 yard line. You have to carry the ball in an offensive way
and cross the enemy's goal line, your opponents' goal line. And
this is true in this war that we are in. We are under attack by
a very large, well-trained, well-funded force, and we're
pretending that we're at peace. And that's our basic problem, is
the failure to recognize the totality of the conflict in which we
are currently engaged.
ANDERSON: Noel Koch is the Defense Department's
Assistant Secretary for Policy. He's a strong advocate of
special operations.
NOEL KOCH: We are in the process of evolving a policy
which we think is adequate to our contemporary needs, to the
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contemporary threat. Along with that, we're increasing funding
to increase force structure, to increase the assets that are
required to train, to deliver, to extract special operations
forces.
ANDERSON: Could we mount a special operation anywhere
in the world?
KOCH: As a practical matter? As a practical matter, I
think we could. I don't think it; I know it. As a political
matter, as a legal matter, that would be another question. But
we do have that capability.
ANDERSON: The Reagan Administration is slowly, quietly
rebuilding our covert capability. Some say it's not moving fast
enough.
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