INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR OF "THE INVISIBLE GOVERNMENT"
Document Type:
Collection:
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST):
CIA-RDP80M01009A000100050077-0
Release Decision:
RIFPUB
Original Classification:
K
Document Page Count:
12
Document Creation Date:
December 27, 2016
Document Release Date:
July 5, 2013
Sequence Number:
77
Case Number:
Publication Date:
January 29, 1965
Content Type:
REPORT
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RADIO TV REPORTS, INC.
FOR
PROGRAM
DATE
15 WEST 47m STREET. NEW YORK 36. N.Y.
3333 CONNECTICUT AVENUE. N. W.. WASHINGTON El, D. C.
CIA- MAIL ROOM LIBRARY
"Book Beat"
CITY
January 29, 1965 10:30 P.M.
Washington, D. C.
INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR OF 'LHE INVISIBLE GOVERNMENT"
HOST: Robert Cromie, Wsitor of "Books Today,"
Chicago Tribune
GUEST: Thomas Ross, Was Bureau, Chicago
Sunday Times
CROMIE:, "Tom, you incidentally, were a Nieman Fellow,
werenzt you - and just, got back 17rom your year at Harvard,
think, in what - June?"
ROSS: "Just got back - well, Igot back in May, and got
into the thick of the political campaign almost immediately. Had
a very good year - it we very ploaonnt to Get out of the swim of
things for a bit and do a little mOve reflecttve thinking and a
little bit more reflective writing."
'CRaMIE: "I would think - lohat?wore you studying?"
ROSS: "I was doing, principally, work in the area of
Chinese and Russian studies - not the language, but the political
science, the history of the area although I did dabble in a few
other things constituidonal law, a little, government and science.
We aren6t required to tike a set curriculum under the Nieman. Fellow
-
Ship, and ? you can prettj much determine what you wish to take, and
/ spread myself rather 1..hin."
CROMIE: "Arent you a 'Tale man?"
RSSi.."Indeed I am."
OFFICES IN: NEW YORK ? DETROIT ? LOS ANGELES ? WASHINGTON. D. ? SAN FRANCISCO ? NEW ENGLAND ? CHICAGO
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CROMIE: Were you welcomed with open arms at Harvard?"
ROSS: "Wen, / would say, very pleoaantly welcomed* and
had a magnificent year. Its a marvelous school."
CROMIE: "I think its a great program, too - so pleasant
and so useful for a newspaper man to be able to do this
ROSS: "Yes, I think itgs the only way that a newspaper man
really could afford to take a year off which, / think, is very,
very important after yougvo been in the swim of things for so long.
I think you need a year to gain a little perspective."
CROMIE: "dell, almost like a sabbatical except, of course
you cant do it every seven years. It would be nice if you could.
Well, tell me about your book. HoaLdid you happen to decide to
write a book - you and Mr. Weiss - about the CIA?"
ROSS: "Well,- Dave Weiss an I write a previous book call d
"The U-2 Affair," and that dealt with Francis Gary Powers and the ,
U-2 that was shot down over Russia and broke up the Summit in 1960.
And, doing the work on this book we become fascinated with the
entire area of intelligence. We sow a very small part of the ice-
berg doing this, and it seemed to us that there was enormous areas
of this iceberg that were not seen by the American- people and,
although not all of it should be seen, we. felt that large parts of
it could and should be seen by the American people because, after
all, its their government. They must ultimately determine bow
they wish the government to run."
CROMIE: "della thatgs an interesting comparison - the ice-
ber bit. Icebergs are dangerous and do you think the CIA is
dangerous?"
ROSS: "Well, I think the CIA, in certain of its aspects, is
dangerous. I think - we came to the conclusion after our investia
gstion and after writing the book - that the CIA Tequires greater
control by Congress, greater control by the executive branch of the
government. Right now. Congress is completely ignorant - Con ress,
at large, is 'comaie e y Ignorant 0 t e ac, v t. es or e CIA. They
-
do not know how auch money the CIA spends. They do not know how
many people work for the CIA."
now?"
CROMIE: "Does the CIA know how many people work for it lay.
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ROSS: Oh ?Oh yese I think their internal orders and controls
are very good and very tiaht. But there is really no way in which
the Congress which is, after all, the arm of the government which
represents the people most directly e there is no way in which
Congress can really determine what the CIA or, really, the other
branches of the invisible government - the other intelligence
agencies - are doing because the CIA is exempted from the normal
requirements of government agenciee to report on the 'people they
have hired, and also to report on how theygre using their funds.
The Director of Central Intelligence has a complete blank check
on using his money without regulations/ eudit by any oth r branch
of the government.'
CROMIE: "Didngt they have - I remember in your book - they
at one time tried to get a certain sum in the budget for a new
building, and they concealed it so well that it was thrown out of
the budget because nobody could figure out what it was."
ROSS: ?Yes, when the original budget went up it - all of
CIAgs funds and most of the funds for the various clandestine
intelligence operations of other agencies of the government, are
concealed under other appropriations, mainly in the Department of
Defense. We estimate that the various agencies of intelligence in
the government spend ,000 G00,000 a ear, and the- emslo. a proxl-
11 , 101. 0** .e 1, taese figures wj,1 never e found n
the federal budget becaune the7 are purposely concealed. They're
mainly concealed in the Defense Department budget under huge missile
contracts, airplane contracts. In Grans where the funds are so
big, one would not reelly know where they are. A few people do
know - the Comptroller at the Pentagon knows, the Director o2 the
International Division of the Budget Buveau knows, but beyond thet
maybe a handful of people outnide of the President really know.'
CROMIE: ?Jell, even the Presidents top advisors donut know
what the CIA is doing and I suspect, sometimes, the President him-
self. Is that,a1MnSt a fair ateteeent?"
ROSS: "Well, I think in detail - the details of what the
agency does - I think its a fair statement to say that the highest
/officials in the government rarely know, in minute detail, what
the agency is up to. In broad outlines I think itis quite clear
that most of the - certainly, all of the major operations which the
agency has conducted such, as the Bay of Pigs, or the overthrow of
Mossedegh in Iran, or the overthrow of Abends in Guatemala - these
were clearly authorized by the President* But, authorization in
:7
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in broad outline is a great deal different from control in detail.
And, I think where the agency has gone wrong or has exceeded its
authority in many areas is in its detail. It has actually taken
S mandate and used that mandate to carry out an operation."
CROMIE: "Was it Guatemala where they tried to enlist a
refugee politician - what they said, we are going to help over-
throw your government. We would like you to take over if - and
then they listed several things they were supposed to dirinclud.LOg
disbanding the railroad workers union - was that Guatemala?"
ROSS: "That was in Guatemala. We did not cite this on our
own authority in the book. We quote the man who was involved m and
am not prepared to state the authenticity of this. But he states
it as authentic and other people have stated it as authentic."
CROMIE: "Well, now thatvs a frightening thing if they are
actually doing things of this nature -I mean, not only over-
throwing a government but telling a new government what it may do."
ROSS: "Well, I think much of the operation of the Central
Intelligence Agency has been to bolster certain governments, to
gain influential position with certain governments? such as the
(nem?) government in Viet Nam in which the agency, under direc-
tive from Eisenhower and Kennedy, maintained a very intimate
relationship with this regime - such an intimate relationship that
when the regime struck at the Buddhists and invaded the Buddhist
temples just shortly before the regime fell, there was a very
popular misconception in Viet Nam that the _United States Govern-
ment was actively participating in these melds on a religious group.
And, very often, in many parts of the wor10 the agency has became
sd closely allied with certain elements within a government that, in
fact, at least among the sophisticated elements of those countries
the United States is assumed to be backing one faction against
another."
CROMIEl. "Well, this explains many of the riots -I would
think - that are otherwise unexplainable. I mean, suddenly m you
have an uprising of students against the United States and some-
times itv.s,probably because of something that CIA agents are doings
or that they think theyvre doing."
ROSS: "Right, I think the CIA is accused of doing a lot
more things than it is deinz? y the NSMS token it does a lot of
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!things which no one has the slighto3t conception that it's doing.
After all, it of necessity must be a aecret organization. It is
impossible for an intelligence operation to operate openly. On
the other hand, I think the main thrust of our book is that - yes,
in this unfortunately complicated world youuve got a cold war, and
youure fishting a rather unscrupulous enemy - you do have to have
this type of organization. But if this organization is not to
warp the very meaning of a democracy, you must keep very tight
control on it. And we have the feeling, particularly in the Eisen-
hower years, that when Allen Dulles was the head of the CIA, and
his brother, John Poster Dulles, was Secretary of State, that this
agency had a carte blanche to do many, many things which were not
necessarily in the long range interest of the United States."
CROMIE: "Well, I knew that Americans had flown, for instance,
combat mission in various places, but I didnut realize that the
CIA had hired them which, apparently, they did in a couple of
places - or arranged for them to fly - I guess, Guatemala was one,
wasnut it?"
ROSS: "Guatemala 7I think, most significantly - the Bay
of Pigs - but also in Indonesia, a story which, until we narrated
.it in this book, was essentially unknown other than to a few high
government officials. . .Of Sukarno - the attempt in 1958 - the
CIA-backed attempt to overthrow Sukarno. And many people have
wondered - I think many average Americans must have paused many
times and asked themselves why Sukarno is so hostile to the United
States. Well, he might have his owh reasons for being hostile -
and he undoubtedly was hostile prior to the intervention of the .
CIA into this operation, but he must Inevitably have become
entrenched in his hostility by the fact that'he know very well that
the United States Government, acting through the CIA, actively.
attempted to overthrow his government." ?
CROMIE: "Didnut the late President Kennedy say this flatly -
that no wonder Sukarno is unhappy. He knows that we have been
trying to overthrow him?" .
ROSS: ."Thatus exactly what he said. He didnut say it in
public. He said it privately when Sukarno came to visit him just
the week .after the. Bay of Pigs, and Kennedy at that point was not
particularly happy with the CIA nor with the invisible government
at large?. and he cited this as an example that here was a man who
was coming to see hio. He was going to have to deal with him in a
normal diplomatic way knowing full well that Sukarno knew fall well
that the United States Government had come to overthrow him*"
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CROMIE: 2'Its an odd situation.'
ROSS: "Indeed it is.'
CROMIE: "Well, of course the Central Intelligence Agency
headquarters is in Washington."
ROSS: "Yes."
CRaMIE: "And they finally got their big new building,
didnvt they?"
ROSS: -"Yes,, they have a *46,000,000 building in Langley, ?
Virginia 'which is about a fifteen minute drive from downtown
, Washington."
CROMIE: "Woll? is this the building which ties in with
that funny story about the high rise apartment that you tell?
Would you repeat it - I love it."
ROSS: "Well, there was a developer who bought a parcel of
land, close by the projected site of the CIA -- in fact the CIA
building was already up, and he was determined that from one of the
windows in this projected building, a man with a pair of binoculars
would be able to look into various offices in the CIA, including
the office of John McCone? the Director of Central Intelligence.
And conceivably with a high enough telescopic lens, perhaps even
read documents, and the CIA succeeded in avoiding the building of
this property."
CROMIE: "Yougd think it would have been cheaper to buy
shades, wouldngt you?"
ROSS: "Well I would think so, but then again, they need
light too."
CROMIE: "I lapposo, although I admired the doctor. Wasngt
there a doctor In the neighborhood who beat them -- refused to sell
his house?"
ROSS: "Yes, he was able to keep his house, and they were able
to build some screening trees and shrubbery, so at least in the
summer he cangt see very much."
CRONE: "You also had a charming -- I was going to say
charming, but it wasngt charming -- you also had a well, an
amusing,;-sinister story about someone who had 'a message to deliver
to McCone, and came back, unable to deliver the message, but very
disheveled and unhappy. Do you remember that?"
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ROSS: "Yes, this was Senator Church, had discovered some-
thing which he thought ought to be brought to the attention of
the Director of Central Intelligence, and he gob a normal runner
from Capitol Hill, and gave him this message, in a congressional
envelope and sent him off to the agency to deliver it. And he
arrived at the agency and he could get nowhere. He couldn't get
inside the building to deliver it -- no one would take the envelope
from him. Finally he was supposed to go back to Senator Church's
office to report this to him, and they put it in the mail, and
presumably the letter finally got to him."
CROMIE: "You have many many interesting and unusual things.
For instance, the collection of the spy story library which you say
the CIA has. How did you find out about that? You say they hate
thousands of volumes apparently -- ;fames Bond and all the suspense
and spy story thrillers."
ROSS: "This came from a source which you, as a good newspaper
man wouldn't want me to reveal, and I think a great deal of the
information in our book has come obviously from people in a position
to know -- people high in government, within and without the intelli-
gence community, who feel that these things should legitimately be
put on the public record. Some -.-- a great deal of what is in our
book is at the same time a compilation of open sources. I think
many people within the government think that they have really kept
secret much more than they actually have. And I think this is a --
we feel we have done another service in this regard. Certain people
within the CIA complained when our book first came out --"
CR?111E: "Did they try to stop you, Tom?"
ROSS:
have the book
program later,
am, because
CROMIE:
we'll, ask him
"They tried to stop the book, yes, then they tried to
changed, and then, Mr. Cerf, who will be on your
I s probably more aware of the details of this than
"Yes I think' Bennett will be on next Wednesday --
about it."
ROSS: "It was mainly done through New York, through the
Random House, rather than through us. But their main objection was
that we named certain people in this book, which they insisted had
never been disclosed before. But the fact of the matter is that,
unknown to them, these people had boon disclosed. They were easily
documented from public records, from court hearings, things of this
sort, in positions where the Russian espionage apparatus -- any
other espionage apparatus -- must have inevitably have known these
facts, and yet for the Agency to work on the assumption that certain
of their people wore really unknown, seems to me to be a very dangerous
practice, because if they wore putting a man who is known to the
communist apparatus, into an operation -- where he was unknown --
he'd be the most easy person in the world to be surveyed by the
communists, and that was rather disconcerting to us. I think they
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should be aware, if of nothing else, they should be aware of what
of their operations have already been disclosed, and what of their
personnel have already been disclosed."
CROMIE: "Well in some of the operations, in Laos I think,
and possibly Guatemala, or one of the South -- maybe Nicaragua,
you mentioned that the CIA men were almost swaggering around town,
that everyone around town knew who they were."
ROSS: "Precisely. I think there's a -- the CIA has a great
deal of difficulty in this regard. Americans do not have a long
and honored tradition of spying. The British seem to have the
greatest sense of this sort of thing. An awful lot of our agents
overseas, particularly on a lower level, take -- chafe a bit under
the fact that they cannot get any publicity or credit for what they
do, and in one way or another they very often let it be known, what
type of work they are doing, in order to attempt to gain some sort
of normal human reward for what they are doing. And this very often
leads to disclosures of wholesale number of the people who should
be kept secret."
CROMIE: "Well, you have a chapter in here on the Peace
Corps and Sarge Shrivergs I think very wise efforts to be sure
that the Central Intelligence Agency,s operatives do not infiltrate
the Peace Corps and use it for a cover."
ROSS: "Yes, well, when Shrivel- took over the Peace Corps
shortly after the election of his brother-in-law, President Kennedy,
he had gotten word from various foreign governments, from various
diplomats with whom the Peace Corps were negotiating, that these
governments were suspicious the CIA was going to be used as a
front -- a natural suspicion really -- rather that the Peace Corps
was going to be used as a front for CIA -- and the communists were
peddling this line -- propaganda, I think, to this effect. And
Shriver felt that this would be the ruin of the Peace Corps, if any
taint whatsoever had fallen upon it, that the whole thrust, the
whole idealistic thrust of the CIA (SIC) would have been undermined.
And he went to President Kennedy, and asked for assurances, and
President Kennedy delivered assurances to Shriver, and he also passed
word to Allen Dulles and subsequently to John McCone, that the
agency was not to infiltrate the Peace Corps. And to Shrivergs
satisfaction they have not, and to my satisfaction they have not.
"But nonetheless, because of their modes or operation in
other areas and in other parts of the world, suspicion still
lingers in the minds of many foreign governments."
CROMIE: "Well yva did say that 15 or 20 possibly ex-CIA
employees had tried to got into the Peace Corps, but this of course
could have been just a routine attempt to get a job -- it wouldngt
necessarily mean,that they were trying to get in for any ulterior
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purpose."
ROSS: "No, and all of these people had already severed their
relationship with the Agency."
CROMIE: "Most of them had minor jobs anyway, like secretaries."
ROSS: "Most of them had minor jobs. Nonetheless Shriver
issued a flat prohibition against the hiring of anyone who had
previously worked for the CIA, for fear that this would got out, and
would appear to be infiltration of some sort."
CROMIE: 'Well, I liked your sample question too, when you
were telling about the indoctrination or the lectures they gave
future Peace Corps members. One of the questions was 'What would
you do if a CIA man came up to you, and said "lotus go and get a
cup of coffee, and then said, "look, I donut want you to work for
us, but couldn,t we just meet once in a while and sort of talk over,
you know and of course if they give the wrong answer to that, to
the Peace Corps people, if they said yes they would talk it over
with him, then they didngt get in,"
ROSS: "Yes. In fact their admonition was not only were they
not to talk to these people, but that if anyone approached them, they
were to immediately report the fact that they had been approached, so
that this word gets passed to Washington, and in turn Shriver could
make sure that this word was passed to the Agency."
CRO: "Well some of the things that the CIA has done, I
suppose, has boon very valuable to us --"
ROSS: "Oh, magnificently valuable."
CRC/ME: "Which is the most valuable, would you say?"
ROSS: "Well, despite the fact that it ended in ignominious
failure, the 11-2 operation, which was run by Richard Bissell, a
brilliant former Deputy Director --ft
CROMIE: "Oh, the man who got. the invisible medal from the
invisible government?"
ROSS: "Yes indeed. Mr. Bissell was the architect of the
invasion of the Bay of Pigs and which We outlined in some con-
siderable detail in the book, and I think unjustly he has taken
most of the brunt of the failure, when, as President Kennedy said,
there are enough mistakes to go all around on that one. When(
Bissell left the Agency about a year later -- largely as a result
of this failure -- of the Bay of Pigs -- he was in such public
disrepute that people, and yet in such high regard within the
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government, that they felt he should be honored in some way.
And yet you can't make a public presentation to a man who is
supposed to be a Secret operative. So what in fact they did, is
they gave him a private citation, which he is not allowed to display,
show, wear, or in any way allude to. In fact as we say in the book,
the invisible government presented him with an invisible medal."
CRONIE: "When we're speaking of the Bay of Pigs, I suppose
It's only fair to the late President Kennedy to mention that, of
course, as most people know if they remember, it was begun -- the
planning for the Bay of Pigs under President Eisenhower."
ROSS: "Yes indeed. The operation had started many many
many months before President Kennedy took it over. Although, as
President Kennedy rightly said, he was the man who finally authorized
it, and he was the man who was finally responsible. He didn't attempt
to duck this one."
CRONIE: "Well there was a great foul-up on the air cover
at the Bay of Pigs."
ROSS: "Yes, we go into great detail in the book, as to
the circumstances surrounding the air cover controversy. You may
recall that after it failed -- after the Bay of Pigs failed --
there was a great rumble, largely politically oriented, but also
from many people who wore more detached, that it had failed because
Kennedy had withdrawn a promise to provide United States military
aircraft, manned by United States military personnel, to make sure
that the Cuban refugees who hit the beaches would be protected.
"But this is an erroneous conception. Kennedy, in fact, and
Eisenhower, in fact, had specifically placed a prohibition on the
use of any overt U. S. military forces. The mix-up on the aiar. cover
as I say, we go into in some detail in the book. The difficulty was
that Castro's Air Force was supposed to have been destroyed on the
ground by planes -- bombers that were being flown by Cuban refugees."
CROMIE: 'Ostensibly manned by people who had taken off from
Cuban bases and were bombing their own places before coming over
here?"
ROSS: "That's right. Ostensibly defectors, but in fact
they were based in Central America --"
CROH1E: "And directed by the CIA ?"
ROSS: "And directed by the CIA. But these people were
Cubans. They wore not Americans. And the difficulty, one of the
great perhaps a. conundrum- which will never be unravelled, is whether
if President Kennedy had not .ordered a second air strike by these
Cuban refugees, to be abandoned, whether in fact they could have
destroyed Castro's forces on the ground sufficiently so that the
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Invasion might have succeeded. There is a very split opinion on
that within the government."
CRONIE: "Well then didn't we have our own planes over, but
they got there at the wrong hour?"
ROSS: "Wellat the last minute, after things wore going very
badly, President Kennedy, as we disclose here, authorized U. S.
Navy jets off a carrier, to provide an hour's air shield, something
a little bit different than air cover. They were not to take action
unless they were fired upon. But they were to provide an air shield
for these Cuban exiles, bombers, to make one last attempt to protect
the people on the beach, and through a miaup in time, the CIA
operated -- sent its message based upon Central American time, where
the pilots were based. The Navy sent its message based upon
Greenwich mean time, which is what the Navy always operates under,
and the planes did not rendezvous over the beaches at the proper
moment -- they came an hour apart."
CROME: "That's a classic foul-up, isn't it?"
ROSS: "Classico But something which happens in military
operations, not only those directed by the CIA --"
CRONIE: "Well this is a great cloak and dagger book, if I
may pay you that compliment, and I think it is as fascinating as
fiction, and sounds like fiction, although I know it isn't. But,
you have so many things about secret bases and people being trained
there, and the widows in Birmingham, Alabama, of the Americans who
were killed in that Bay of Pigs attempt -- the flyers who hired
out to the CIA, under some kind of a trading company, CIA front
they got checks -- are they still getting checks?"
ROSS: "Yes, they're still getting checks."
CROMIE: "Will they get thea for the rest of their lives?"
ROSS: "Presumably. It is --once again it's an area which
is shrouded in such secrecy, one would never know ultimately whether
they --"
GROMIE: "The decent thing to do."
ROSS: "Yes, I would say so. Our feeling was that they had
been rather -- the government had rather shabbily treated these
pilots, these Americans who volunteered for this operation, by
implying they were soldiers, of fortune; and they were doing it lust
for the money. And in fact I think it was clear that their motivations
were mixed, as with most human motivations, and anyone who goes off
for'whatever motivation, and offers his life for his country deserves
better treatment than to be castigated."
CROMIE: "They were told of course that they were doing a
patriotic thing."
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ROSS: "Yes, indeed. So that, as you say, they had a dual
motive."
CROYAIE: "Woll, it,s a lovely book, and I do urge everyone
to read it, because I think its an extremely important book.
Now since it came out, has there been any adverse CIA comment, or
are they pretty much accepting it?"
ROSS: "Well I think they have pretty much accepted it. I
think there was an initial -- mind you, there was not a universal
opposition to the book within the CIA, -- but there --"
GROMIE: "Itgs a very valuable book, Tom. I hate to break
in, but we just ran out of time. My guest tonight wasjom Ross,
who with David Weiss, has written a book called The Invisible
Government,, published by Random House. Tom of course; is with the
Washington Bureau of the Sun-Times, and I hope you will watch us
again next week . . ? Bennett Cerf of Random House will be our
guest. . ."
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