THE SPECIAL FORCES IN 'COVERT ACTION'

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-01208R000100100075-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 2, 2011
• Sequence Number: 75
• Publication Date: July 7, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/03/02 : CIA-RDP90-01208R000100100075-0
LRTICL3 APPL1RZD
ON PAGr___ _ _
ARTICLES.
NATION
7-14 July 1984
A PENTAGON-C.I.A. PRODUCTION
The Special Forces
In `Covert Action'
PETER H. STONE. .
few months ago the Pentagon telephoned retired
Air Force Major General Edward Lansdale. His
voice cracks now, but Lansdale says he still likes
to advise the government. So when the Pentagon
invited him to address a two-day conference on new tactics
to use against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua anu
the leftist rebels in El Salvador, he readily assented. The
choice of Lansda!: was more than serendipitous. In military
circles he is legendary as a veteran of Third World struggles.
A World War II ace with the Office of Strategic Services, he
made his name in the Philippines in the 1950s, mastermind-
ing the Central Intelligence Agency's -covert tricks and
military "civic action" programs which were crucial in
defeating the Huk guerrillas. He went on to South Vietnam,
where he devised the clever system of green and red voting
cards that helped Ngo Dinh Diem garner 98 percent of the
vote in 1955. The cards bearing Diem's name were red,
which represents good luck in Asia, while those bearing his
opponent's name were green; which is associated with
cuckolds. With Lansdale's record, it is no wonder Graham
Greene used him as the model for Pyle- in The Quiet
American, the tale of an innocent Yankee whose efforts to
spread the American way bring only destruction and death
in their wake.
Although he won't reveal the details of his address to the
Pentagon conference, Lansdale says he proposed a broad
campaign of "psychological operations" for Central Amer-
ica. "I don't think conventional forces work," he told me.
"I'm concerned that the government hasn't caught on how
to handle these things." Some idea of what Lansdale might
have suggested can be inferred from an interview he gave
last year to The Journal of Defense and Diplomacy, in
which he lauded the Nicaraguan "freedom fighters" and
argued that a strategy of political action was needed to op-
pose leftist insurgencies in Central America: "Since there
are political minds and political forces that direct the sub-
versive actions in the target countries, they certainly offer
themselves as targets for political attack.... If we can
reach them, and they can be made to give up their aims, the
insurgency they direct and support will wither and die."
Lansdale says he doesn't know if the Pentagon took his
advice, but the fact that he was asked to contribute his ideas
is itself emblematic of the important shift in Pentagon
STAT
thinking that has occurred during the Reagan Administra-
tion-especially within the last year, as the influence of the
State Department has waned and that of the Pentagon and
the C.I.A. has risen. The Pentagon and the C.I.A. have col-
laborated closely in building a network of bases in Hon-
duras for overt and covert operations, and they have
developed backdoor mechanisms for supporting the Nic-
araguan contras despite Congressional reins on C.I.A.
spending. Not yet ready to commit combat troops to the
region because of the political risks at home, the Pentagon
has revived many elements of the counterinsurgency strategy
employed in the Vietnam War, including the expanded use
of Special Forces which often work closely with the C.I.A.
They comprise Army Green Berets and Rangers, Navy Seals
and what the Air Force generically. calls special operating
forces. Consider. the following signs:
? The Joint Special Operations Agency was formed early
this year to coordinate the various elements of the Special
Forces in all the services.
? The Army and the Navy have expanded their elite
forces substantially. By October 1, 1985, the Army should
have about 6,000 men in its units, up from 4,000 in 1983.
The four Navy Seal units in the United States, which accord-
ing to a Navy spokesman are "somewhat smaller" than the
Army's elite units, have been buying new equipment. The
Air Force now has about 3,200 Special Forces troops and
has ordered twenty-one MC-130 Combat Talon planes
which can be used for their rapid deployment.
? To insure better coordination, the Army set up the First
Special Operations Command in 1982, and the Air Force set
up a similar command, the Twenty-third Air Force, last year.
? The Pentagon has been sending Special Forces to Hon-
duras, El Salvador and Costa Rica. In Honduras 100 to 150
men, most located at Puerto Castilla, have been running the
regional military training center at which 4,191 elite troops
from El Salvador and 2,180 from Honduras have been trained.
About forty members of the Special Forces are assigned to
El Salvador and about six to Costa Rica. A battalion unit
with 250 of them is based nearby in Panama. And the Army's
250-member Intelligence Support Activity, formed in 1980
to combat terrorism, is also reportedly operating in Central
America under an expanded mandate.
The Special Forces were conceived in the early 1960s by a
group of Pentagon advisers working closely with President
Kennedy. Part of a "flexible response" strategy to deal with
guerrilla and other unconventional warfare in Third World
countries, they were designed as highly mobile, small units,
capable of crossing enemy lines and conducting a range of
operations that would include assassinations,. hit-and-run
missions, sabotage and psychological warfare. In 1962 Ken-
nedy created the Special Group for Counterincuroencw tc
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