STUDIES IN INTELLIGENCE

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• Document Creation Date: December 28, 2022
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• Case Number: F-2017-01291
• Publication Date: January 1, 1960

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CONFIDENTIAL
STUDIES
INTELLIGENCE
JOB NO. .9$��322/6
BOX NO. 3
MEER O. _31
TOTAL 1,T''S HEREIN _L
DOC / REV DATE - �
OR1G COMP / OP1 TYPE 3c5
ORM CLASS _5_ PALS izy REV CLASS
JUST 22. RT REV 2.0/ CS ACTH: HR 104
VOL. 4 NO. 1 WINTER 1960
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
OFFICE OF TRAINING
06101117NOFORN
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All opinions expressed in the Studies are those of the
authors. They do not necessarily represent the official
views of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Office of
Training, or any other organizational component of the
intelligence community.
WARNING
This material contains information affecting the National
Defense of the United States within the meaning of the
espionage laws, Title 18, USC, Secs. 793 and 794, the trans-
mission or revelation of which to an unauthorized person is
prohibited by law.
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STUDIES IN INTELLIGENCE
EDITORIAL POLICY
Articles for the Studies in Intelligence
may be written on any theoretical, doc-
trinal, operational, or historical aspect
of intelligence.
The final responsibility for accepting or
rejecting an article rests with the Edito-
rial Board.
The criterion for publication is whether
or not, in the opinion of the Board, the
article makes a contribution to the litera-
ture of intelligence.
EDITOR
PHILIP K. EDWARDS
EDITORIAL BOARD
SHERMAN KENT, Chairman
LYMAN B. KIRKPATRICK EDWARD L. ALLEN
LAWRENCE R. HOUSTON KNIGHT W. McMAHAN
Additional members of the Board
represent other CIA components.
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CONTRIBUTIONS AND DISTRIBUTION
Contributions to the Studies or communications to the editors
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uuNt-ityow
TIAL
CCCTtCT
CONTENTS
CLASSIFIED ARTICLES
Page
The Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich . R. C. Jaggers 1
Inside story of how the Hangman met his death at
the hands of Czech intelligence. SECRET
The Interpreter as an Agent Francis Agnor 21
Advantages and drawbacks of a timeworn mas-
querade. SECRET
The Identi-Kit Herman E. Kimsey 29
A conjuror's pack for remote-controlled identifica-
tion. SECRET
Credentials�Bona Fide or False?. . David V. Brigane 37
The unmasking of amateur and professional de-
ceivers through scrutiny of their documentation.
SECRET
Hypnosis in Interrogation Edward F. Deshere 51
Nature of the trance and applicability in, and against
interrogation. OFFICIAL USE ONLY
Classified Listing of Articles in Volume III 65
CONFIDENTIAL
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UNCLASSIFIED ARTICLES
Page
From the CIA Cornerstone Ceremonies 69
The Symptoms of Scientific Breakthrough
R. R. Scidmore 73
Characteristic patterns as guidelines for the fore-
caster of scientific advance.
Publicizing Soviet Scientific Research
Lawrence M. Bucans 87
The intelligence community's hand in a Commerce
Department service to the scientific public.
Portuguese Timor: An Estimative Failure
Thomas F. Conlon 91
An assumption about enemy intent and its sad
sequel.
Intelligence in Recent Public Literature
Military intelligence in World War II 97
In the American Revolution 101
The Soviet intelligence services 109
Espionage and paramilitary tales 117
Evasions and escapes 120
Miscellany 122
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CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE
R. C. Jaggers does research into available records of World
War II intelligence services.
Francis Agnor is a linguist with experience as interpreter to
East-West exchange delegations.
Herman E. Kimsey directed the development of the identity
kit described in his article.
David V. Brigane is a CIA document analyst.
Edward F. Deshere is an experimental hypnotist and CIA psy-
chiatric consultant.
R. R. Scidmore is an analyst in CIA's Office of Scientific Intel-
ligence.
Lawrence M. Bucans has been for thirteen years in charge
of CIA's processing of foreign scientific and technical
documents.
Thomas F. Conlon is a Far East specialist in the Department
of State.
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SECRET
A tyrant's death at patriots'
hands revealed as Operation
Salmon of Czech Intelligence
in exile.
THE ASSASSINATION OF REINHARD HEYDRICH
R. C. Jaggers
On the twenty-ninth of May, 1942, Radio Prague announced
that Reinhard Heydrich, Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Mo-
ravia, was dying; assassins had wounded him fatally. On the
sixth of June he died.
Though not yet forty at his death, the blond Heydrich had
had a notable career. As a Free Corpsman in his teens he
was schooled in street fighting and terrorism. Adulthood
brought him a commission in the German navy, but he was
cashiered for getting his fianc�pregnant and then refusing
to marry her because a woman who gave herself lightly was
beneath him. He then worked so devotedly for the Nazi Party
that when Hitler came to power he put Heydrich in charge
of the Dachau concentration camp. In 1934 he headed the
Berlin Gestapo. On June 30 of that year, at the execution of
Gregor Strasser, the bullet missed the vital nerve and Strasser
lay bleeding from the neck. Heydrich's voice was heard from
the corridor: "Not dead yet? Let the swine bleed to death."
In 1936 Heydrich became chief of the SIPO, which included
the criminal police, the security service, and the Gestapo. In
1938 he concocted the idea of the Einsatzgruppen, whose busi-
ness it was to murder Jews. The results were brilliant. In
two years these 3,000 men slaughtered at least a million per-
sons. In November of that year he was involved in an event
that in some inverted fashion presaged his own death. The
son of a Jew whom he had deported from Germany assassinated
Ernst von Rath in Paris. In reprisal Heydrich ordered a po-
grom, and on the night of November ninth 20,000 Jews were
arrested in Germany.
In 1939 the merger of the SIPO with the SS Main Security
Office made Heydrich the leader of the Reichssicherheits-
hauptamt. In this capacity he ordered and supervised the
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"Polish attack" on Gleiwitz, an important detail in the stage
setting for the invasion of Poland on September first. It was
he who saw to it that twelve or thirteen "criminals" dressed
in Polish uniforms would be given fatal injections and found
dead on the "battlefield." It was probably he who chose the
code name for these men�Canned Goods.
At this time Bohemia and Moravia had already been raised
from independent status to that of Reichsprotektorat, with
Baron von Neurath, Germany's now senile former foreign min-
ister, designated the Protector�of the Czechs from them-
selves, presumably. But a greater honor was in store for them.
On 3 September 1941 von Neurath was replaced by SS Ober-
gruppenfuehrer Heydrich. The hero moved into the Hrad-
cany Palace in Prague and the executions started, 300 in the
first five weeks. His lament for Gregor Strasser became his
elegy for all patriotic Czechs: "Aren't they dead yet? Let
them bleed to death."
He had come a long way in thirty-eight years. The son of
a music teacher whose wife was named Sarah, Reinhard had
gone on trial three times because of Party doubts about the
purity of his Aryan origin. Now, as chief of the RSHA, which
he continued to run from Czechoslovakia, he was Hangman
to all occupied Europe. His power was such that he could force
Admiral Canaris to come to Prague and at the end of May,
1942, sign away the independence of the Abwehr and accept
subordination to the Sicherheitsdienst. It was his moment
of sweetest triumph. A few weeks later he was dead, and
Himmler pronounced the funeral oration calling him "that
good and radiant man."
So much for the story we all know, and on to questions left
unanswered by it. Who were Heydrich's assassins? Who
could successfully plan his death? Was the motive simply
revenge for suffering? How was it accomplished? And the
hardest question of all, was it a good thing? Here, for the
first time, are the answers to all these but the last, and on
that question stuff for pondering.
Need Mothers an Invention
When Heydrich took charge of Bohemia and Moravia, the
Czechs learned what it means to live under a master of sup-
pression. The war fronts were far away: it was the period of
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smashing German successes in the Balkans, Scandinavia,
France, and the USSR. The Czechs heard little that Heydrich
did not want them to hear. Their underground movement
was systematically penetrated and all but destroyed. On Oc-
tober third of 1941, for example, the capture of a single Czech
radio operator by Heydrich's men led to the arrest of 73 agents
working for Moscow. Underground radio contact with London
was monitored. The Czechs were losing heart.
In London the strength of the resistance in all occupied
countries was periodically reviewed, and the countries were
listed in the order of the assistance each gave the Allied cause.
In 1941 Czechoslovakia was always ranked at the very end.
Eduard Benes, its president-in-exile, was deeply embarrassed.
He was also gravely concerned that the Allies, if his people
failed to fight, might give short shrift to any Czech claims
after the war. He told his intelligence chief, General Fran-
tisek Moravec, to order an intensification of resistance activity.
But it was difficult enough to get even a parachuted courier
or coded radio message past the wary Heydrich. Nothing hap-
pened in response.
Then President Benes hit upon the idea of contriving to
assassinate a prominent Nazi or Quisling inside the tight dun-
geon of the Protectorate; such a bold stroke would refurbish
the Czech people's prestige and advance the status of their
government in London. The German retaliation would be
brutal, of course, but its brutality might serve to inflame
Czech patriotism.
Who should be the target? General Moravec first nomi-
nated the most prominent of the Czech collaborators, an ex-
colonel whose fawning subservience to his Teutonic masters
left the London Czechs nauseated and ashamed. The general
also had a personal reason for his choice: the name of the
Czech Quisling was Emanuel Moravec, a coincidence that had
plagued the general for years. But Emanuel, called the
Greasy, was not the right man for the purpose. He was not
well known abroad, and Czech prestige would not be raised
significantly by crushing a worm. The Germans, too, were
likely to regard his death as no great loss; he was only a min-
ister of education, easy to replace, and even the Nazis despised
traitors.
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Heydrich was totally different. His unique combination of
brilliance and brutality had no peer even in the Third Reich.
He had been personally responsible for the execution of hun-
dreds of Czechs and the imprisonment of thousands. The shot
that killed him would be heard in every capital of the world.
There could be no other choice. General Moravec so recom-
mended, President Benes agreed, and the planning of Opera-
tion Salmon began in tense secrecy.
Wanted: Men for Martyrdom
The first problem was finding one or two men who could
and would do the job. It must have seemed to General Mora-
vec, at least at the outset, an almost impossible task. The
many Czech politicians in London were preoccupied in the un-
ending scramble for posts in the provisional government.
There were quite a few Czech businessmen in England, but
most of them were too busy making a fast koruna to be in-
terested. There were brave and patriotic Czechs serving in
fighter and bomber wings attached to the Royal Air Force,
but the Air Ministry would never let them go. And so the
choice narrowed to the single infantry brigade of about 2,500
men encamped near Cholmondly.
This pool of prospects had its own disadvantages. An en-
campment of 2,500 is like a town of that size: everyone knows
everyone else and is full of curiosity about everything that
anyone does. Here this inquisitiveness was also undissipated
by outside contacts, the Czech soldiers speaking little or no
English and having few interests beyond the limits of the
camp. Each transfer, trip, or trifle thus became news, some-
thing to discuss and analyze.
For screening purposes the personnel files of the brigade
contained only what each man had told about himself or, in
rare instances, about others wham he had known earlier, at
home. There was no way to check police files, run background
or neighborhood checks, or otherwise obtain independent veri-
fication of loyalties. Under such circumstances it is a tribute
to General Ingr, Minister of Defense in the exiled government,
to General Moravec, and to their subordinates that of 153 para-
chutists flown from England and dropped into Czechoslovakia,
only three proved turncoats.
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How many people would have to know? President Benes,
General Ingr, General Moravec and his deputy, Lt. Col. Strag-
mueller, and Major Frye, chief of operations. Of these, Presi-
dent Belles and General Ingr needed to know only the purpose
of the operation and the names of the men chosen to carry it
out. Others, required for instruction, would necessarily know
that certain men were entering Czechoslovakia to carry out
a clandestine action, but not their precise intent. Four in-
structors would be needed, experts respectively in parachute
work, in the terrain of the area, in cover, documentation,
clothing, and equipment, and in commando techniques.
Several British officers, representatives of MI-6, would par-
ticipate in this training. The crew of the plane carrying the
men into Czechoslovakia would know where and when they
were going, though not their identities or mission. And
finally, a large number of men in the brigade personally ac-
quainted with the candidates could be expected to make guesses
of varying degrees of accuracy as the preparations for assassi-
nation progressed.
Because the number of persons who would be partly or fully
informed was so unavoidably much too large, it was essential
that the men finally chosen should be as discreet as they were
brave. Of the 2,500 Czech soldiers in the brigade some 700,
most of them volunteers, were already engaged in parachute
training under British instruction. Two officers were assigned
to the brigade, one to the parachutists and the other to the
ground troops, ostensibly as aides but actually as spotters.
These two officers knew only that they were to choose the best
candidates for a dangerous assignment.
Men recommended by the spotters were interviewed singly
by Lt. Col. Stragmueller. Some were asked whether they
would volunteer for special training. Almost all those asked
agreed, and they were sent in groups of ten for vigorous physi-
cal conditioning and thorough schooling in commando tac-
tics�the use of a wide assortment of small arms, the manu-
facture of home-made bombs, ju-jitsu, cover and concealment,
and the rest. During this intensive drilling the ten-man teams
were kept under close observation. It was essential to dis-
cover not only the bravest and most capable but also�it hav-
ing been decided that the assassination waS a two-man job�
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those who worked best in pairs. Other considerations also
came into play; men from Prague, for example, were auto-
matically eliminated because of the danger of recognition after
arrival.
By now the choice had narrowed to eight men in half as
many groups. General Moravec visited these four groups,
along with all the others, on a regular schedule. On his orders
the instructors drew the eight candidates aside one at a time
and passed each a piece of juicy, concocted information with
the warning not to mention it to anyone. Each tidbit was
different. Soon two new rumors were circulating, and two
men were eliminated. One of the remaining six was disquali-
fied by marriage; another was suddenly incapacitated by
illness.
General Moravec interviewed the remaining four. Two of
them, non-corns, met all tests and were also good friends.
Their names were Jan Kubis and Josef Gabcik. Kubis was born
in Southern Moravia in 1916. After some ten years of school-
ing he had gone to work as an electrician. He had been in the
Czech Army since 1936 and had fought in France in 1940. His
excellent physical condition made his 160 pounds, at 5'9", look
lean. Slow of movement, taciturn, and persevering, he was
also intelligent and inventive.
Gabcik was a year younger than Kubis. An orphan from
the age of ten, he too had left school at sixteen. After work-
ing as a mechanic for four years, he had entered the Czech
Army in 1937. He had been given the Croix de Guerre in
France in 1940. He was strong and stocky, an excellent soccer
player, and like Kubis lean for all his 150 pounds on a 5'8"
frame. His blue eyes were expressive, and his whole face
unusually mobile. Talented and clever, good-natured, cheerful
even under strenuous or exasperating circumstances, frank
and cordial, he was an excellent counterpoise for the quieter,
more introverted Kubis.
Both men had gone through the arduous training without
illness or complaint. Both spoke fluent German. Both were
excellent shots. General Moravec spoke separately to each of
them. He explained that the mission had the one purpose of
assassinating Heydrich. He stressed to each of the young
men the great likelihood that he would be caught and executed.
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Escape from encircled Czechoslovakia after Heydrich had
been killed would be practically impossible. And the survival
of either, hiding inside the country until the war ended, was
extremely unlikely. The probability was that both would be
killed at the scene of action.
Although neither man had relatives or friends in Prague,
both had relatives in the countryside; and the general re-
minded them of what had happened to the family of a Czech
sent from London on a successful clandestine mission to Italy.
Somehow the Gestapo had learned his identity and executed
all of his relatives in Czechoslovakia, even first and second
cousins. "Please understand," General Moravec told each of
them, "that I am not testing you now. You have proved that
you are brave and patriotic. I am telling you that acceptance
of this mission is almost certainly acceptance of death�per-
haps a very painful and degrading death�because I do not
believe that the man who tries to kill Heydrich can succeed
if the awful realization that he too will die comes too late,
and unnerves him. I have another reason, too: if you make
your choice with open eyes, I shall sleep a little better."
First Gabcik and then Kubis agreed, thoughtfully but with-
out hesitation or bravado. Both were quietly proud to have
been chosen. The general then brought them together and
explained that from that moment on they would be separated
from all the rest, the final preparations would be made in
strictest seclusion. If at any moment either man felt that
he could not go through with the assassination, he was bound
in duty and honor to say so immediately, without false shame.
They glanced at each other. "No," said Gabcik. "We want
to do it." Kubis just nodded.
Dress Rehearsal and Curtain Up
Some training was still needed. Kubis had to learn to ride
a bicycle. Both had to know Prague as though they had spent
years walking its streets and alleys. Both needed instruction
in withstanding hostile interrogation. Both had to memorize
all the details of separate cover stories which could be "con-
fessed," after initial resistance, to the Gestapo. On the last
day of training they were each given a lethal dose of cyanide
and told how to conceal it on their persons. It was the last
defense against torture.
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"One more point," General Moravec told them. "Under no
circumstances�and I mean none at all�is either of you to
get in touch with the underground, directly or indirectly.
You are absolutely on your own. The underground is infested
with informants; Heydrich has done his usual masterful job.
For this reason we have not sent out one word about you, even
to the most trusted leaders there. If anyone approaches you
and says that he comes from the underground, he is a provoca-
teur. Treat him as such."
The men nodded.
"Don't forget," the general insisted. "And now, a review.
Kubis, where does Heydrich have his office?"
"Prague Palace."
"Show me on the map."
Kubis did so without hesitation.
"Gabcik, where do you land?"
"Here, sir," said Gabcik, pointing to another spot some 50
kilometers southeast of Prague, an area chosen because it was
wooded, rolling, and offered good approaches to the city.
"Kubis, what do you do first, after touching ground and re-
moving parachutes?"
"We destroy all traces of the descent, sir."
"Do you proceed to the palace, Gabcik?"
"No. It is too heavily guarded. All visitors are thoroughly
checked."
"His private residence?"
"The same, sir."
"Kubis, where do you go?"
"Here, sir." Kubis' finger pointed to a spot half way be-
tween Prague and the village of Brezary.
"Gabcik, when does Heydrich pass this spot?"
"Daily, sir, going into the city, and at night on his return.
We shall observe the time."
"Why have we chosen this particular spot on the road?"
"Sir, there is a sharp curve. His car and the motorcycles
must slow down to twenty kilometers."
"How many motorcycles, Kubis?"
"Probably two, sir. We'll find out."
"Good. Now remember�don't rush it. Don't use pistols in
any case. If there is any chance that you can't bring it off
with the bomb or the machine gun on first try, wait and pick
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a better spot for the next day. But don't delay too long.
Now, a last dry run."
The two men left. General Moravec waited for ten min-
utes, summoned his car, and asked to be driven down a cer-
tain country road at normal speed. He sat in the back, with
binoculars, closely scanning all the foliage and other cover
wherever the car slowed for a curve. Then he drove back and
waited. Soon Gabcik and Kubis reappeared.
"Well?" the general demanded. "Did you kill me?"
"Yes, sir."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good."
The escape was planned with equal care. The men would
make their way, mostly on foot, to Slovakia, where the Ger-
man pressure was far less severe. Gabcik, who knew the
mountains of Slovakia well, had chosen a safe area where none
of his friends or relatives lived. For food they were on their
own.
Early April was all fog, wind, and rain. Normally Czech,
Polish, and Canadian crews took turns flying paratroopers
over Czechoslovakia, but General Ingr had made sure that a
Czech team, Captain Anderle and his crew, would be rested
and ready for a good day. The fifteenth, at last, dawned clear
and still. General Moravec walked to the plane with his two
chosen men. They stood at the bottom of the ramp. He
looked at them, and they at him, in silence. No speeches, no
cheek-kissing, no wet eyes. Gabcik and Kubis seemed as impas-
sive as two farmers starting the day's work. They shook
hands briefly.
The general went into the plane and briefed its captain and
crew. When he came out, he found Gabcik suddenly flustered.
"Sir, may I speak to you for a moment in private?"
So, the general thought sadly. Well, better for it to hap-
pen now. We shall have to send him to the Isle of Man until
the war ends. "Of course, Gabcik," he said, and moved some
yards away.
Gabcik followed, uncomfortable. He said, "Look, sir, I don't
know how to tell you this, I'm ashamed. But I have to tell
you. I've run up a bill at a restaurant, the Black Boar. I'm
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afraid it's ten pounds, sir. Could you have it taken care of?
I hate to ask, but I haven't got the money, and I don't want
to leave this way."
"All right," Moravec managed. "Anything else?"
Gabcik was relieved. "No, sir," he said, "except don't worry.
We'll pull it off, Kubis and I."
They climbed in, then, and the plane started down the run-
way. The general thought of all the courageous men he'd
known. "No," he said out loud. "None of them were braver."
He felt full of pride and pain.
Death Rides in Spring
Captain Anderle came back on schedule. He reported that
the two men had teased his crew about having to go back to
the strangeness of England instead of coming home. At the
command they had jumped unhesitatingly.
So the waiting started. Gabcik and Kubis had not taken a
transmitter or any means to report back: if they were suc-
cessful everybody would know it. None of the anxious witting
talked about the operation. On the tenth day Captain An-
derle was shot down and killed in an air battle at Malta.
"I am not a superstitious man," General Moravec told himself.
Two weeks, three weeks, four. It must have gone wrong.
"If they failed," said General Ingr, "let us hope they failed
completely, without getting anywhere near Heydrich."
Six weeks, and May 29, Friday afternoon. Prague radio, in-
dignant, reported that Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich had
been severely wounded by murderers in a criminal, dastardly
attempt upon his life that very morning. They had thrown
a bomb into the Protector's car. Two men had been seen leav-
ing the spot on bicycles. The search for them was under way.
They would be found.
The news exploded in the international press. At home and
abroad, Czechs stood a little straighter. Several "authentic
inside stories" were printed. The favorite was that the Czech
underground had struck. Scarcely less popular was the tale
that the Abwehr had killed Heydrich because of the humiliat-
ing agreement he had just forced Canaris to sign.
At Cholmondly the brigade buzzed. The absent Gabcik and
Kubis were talked about, of course; but they had been gone
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for a long time. And so had many more paratroopers dis-
patched on one mission or another. There was no reason to
pick out these two over others who had never returned. Lieu-
tenant Opalka, for example. He had been gone for five months
now. And three men had left the camp just a week before
Heydrich was killed.
The battalion talked of little else. One sergeant, a little
older than the others, was convinced that the man who took
care of Heydrich was a non-corn named Anton Kral.
"Kral?" repeated one of the others. "Why Kral? He's been
gone as long as Opalka."
"I don't know," the sergeant answered. "It's just a feeling.
Remember how tall and dark he was, and silent?"
"And brave," said another. "He fought well in France."
"Well," shrugged a third, "it could be anybody."
Perhaps the sergeant knew more than the others about
Anton Kral. Kral had been picked by General Moravec to be
parachuted with Lieutenant Opalka into an area northeast
of Prague. Their mission was to get in touch with the under-
ground there to deliver instructions. Nothing had been heard
from either of them since their departure, and they were pre-
sumed lost.
In Prague, Heydrich was dying. The three physicians sum-
moned from Berlin�Gebhardt, Morel', and Brandt�tried
hard, but could not save him. Himmler was there too, full of
public sorrow, privately perhaps rejoicing. He had his funeral
oration down pat before the sixth of June, when Heydrich
died. And he seized the chance to direct personally the search
for the assassins and the massive reprisals.
First, martial law was proclaimed over all Bohemia and Mo-
ravia. A rigid daily curfew at sundown was imposed.
Throughout the land public announcements proclaimed that
anyone who harbored the assassins or otherwise aided them
in any way would be executed summarily and without trial.
The illegal possession of arms and even approval of assassina-
tion in principle were declared capital crimes. Himmler's chief
executive in the subsequent action was the notorious Sudeten
German, Deputy Reichsprotektor Karl Hermann Frank.
The mass arrests and mass executions began. Czechs were
killed without investigation, without trial, even without in-
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terrogation, usually on the basis of some vague or distorted
denunciation. For twenty days the slaughter continued. But
neither terror nor the special Gestapo details dispatched to
Prague could bring the assassins to light.
Then Himmler and Frank had a new idea. Quite arbitrarily
they chose a small settlement near Kladno, fifteen miles
from Prague. On 9 June Colonel Rostock marched a military
detail into this village of the now memorable name, Lidice.
Every male not unquestionably a child was slaughtered. Even
the few who chanced to be absent were run down and killed�
two hundred men and boys in all. The women were driven into
concentration camps. The children were shipped off to Ger-
many. Everything above ground, all structures, were razed,
and the ground was ploughed. Lidice became a blank, a field
of regular brown furrows.
And still there was no trace of the killers of Heydrich. So
they did the same thing to another hamlet, Lezaky, in south-
western Bohemia.
The killers were not found.
On 24 June Frank officially announced that if the assassins
were not turned over in 48 hours, the population of Prague
would be decimated. He also used a carrot-1,000,000 marks
for anyone giving information leading to the death or capture
of the wanted men. This worked, apparently. On 25 June
Radio Prague reported that the culprits had been discovered
in the basement of the St. Bartholomeus Orthodox Church on
Reslova Street. Encirclement was under way and capture only
a matter of hours. In London the listeners knew that Gabcik
and Kubis were fighting back.
The following day the radio said the fight was over; the
assassins were dead. There were four of them, the announcer
said flatly, one Gabcik, one Kubis, a certain Opalka, and a man
known as Josef Valcik.,
In England Opalka was known, of course. So was Valcik,
a reliable member of the Prague underground. But what were
they doing in the same cellar with Gabcik and Kubis, sharing
their hopeless last stand? General Moravec, at least, felt cer-
There are conflicting records of this name; the New York Times
gives Walicikoff.
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tam n that his men would not have violated his orders and made
contact with the underground. And no word had gone to the
underground about Gabcik and Kubis.2 Perhaps the two
teams had met by chance at the church, driven to the same
sanctuary because the priests were known to be patriotic and
because all four were desperate.
Even now the Nazis went on murdering. The paralytic SS
General Kurt Daluege succeeded Heydrich. During the trial
that preceded his execution in Prague in 1946, he admitted
that 1,331 Czechs were executed, 201 of them women, in re-
prisal. From another source it has been established that dur-
ing this period 3,000 Jews were taken from the Terezin ghetto
and exterminated. No one knows how many died in concen-
tration camps. A sober estimate is that at least 5,000 Czechs
were killed to avenge the death of one murderous Nazi. Among
them were all the priests of St. Bartholomeus, not one of whom
would say a word about their guests.
Was It Worth This Price?
In London the jubilation of the Czech leaders gave way to
doubt as the murderings continued, and then to recrimina-
tion. At first President Benes would have none of it. He lis-
tened to Radio Prague as day after day, and several times a
day, the numbers and names of the executed were methodi-
cally announced. "Why don't they fight?" he asked his staff.
"Why don't they die as partisans and men, in the forests and
the mountains, taking as many Germans with them as they
can? Look at the Poles, the Yugoslays, the French. They
2111 an unpublished manuscript, War Secrets in the Ether, Wilhelm
F. Flicke asserts, "The attempt upon the life of Heydrich had been
planned and directed over [the Czech underground to London] net-
work. That was a big mistake on the part of the English and
Czechs because it afforded the German radio defense a complete
disclosure not only of the plot itself and those directly participating
but also of all the connections within the Czech resistance move-
ment." This statement is almost wholly wrong. It is true that
Heydrich and his spies had penetrated the Czech underground
thoroughly. But radio was not used for Operation Salmon, and
the network inside Czechoslovakia had no hand in planning or
directing Heydrich's assassination. The Germans had no advance
warning. And it was not merely an "attempt"; Gabcik and Kubis
did kill Heydrich.
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don't line up at the scaffold, waiting patiently like sheep."
He was unmoved by arguments about the terrain, the prox-
imity of France to England, the density of the population in
Bohemia and Moravia. "Why don't they fight?" he asked
again. "It's their duty." Whatever the answer, it was plain
by now that one of the hoped-for results, the stiffening of the
Czech will to resist, had not been achieved.
In Czech political circles the intensity of criticism mounted
in direct ratio to the mounting toll of German reprisals at
home. Although President Benes remained privately con-
vinced that the execution of Heydrich had been both justified
and necessary, he began to feel a need for modifying his views
publicly. He reacted to the pressure, finally, by announcing
that General Moravec had planned and supervised the assassi-
nation; and the accusations of irresponsibility from the politi-
cal group were turned on the intelligence chief. Those who
had lost relatives and friends at home were especially bitter.
As the war went on, General Moravec found that his mind
would not stop mulling over the profound questions of right
and wrong that attend all action but become sharpest, most
nagging, when the action has terrible consequences for others.
There was no doubt that the killing of Heydrich had served
its intended prestige purpose. In this sense it had been a
major success. For a time, at least, Czechoslovakia had
jumped from last place to first in the esteem of all the anti-
fascist world. Even the suffering of the people, even Lidice
and Lezaky, served this cause. But the aim of awakening re-
sistance had been a mirage. The people were not fighting,
were not earning the acclaim. They would be remembered as
martyrs, not heroes, even though there were heroes�Gabciks
and Kubises and Opalkas�among them.
Who had killed these 5,000 civilians? The Germans? Gen-
eral Moravec himself? The civilians at home, inviting
slaughter with their meekness? As the toll of war dead
mounted into the millions, the 5,000 shrank to perspective
and seemed almost insignificant; the war killed thousands
every day, women and children as well as soldiers. Yet right
and wrong are not a matter of quantity. The same questions
would have come whispering in his ear at night, like old ghosts,
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if only the brave assassins had died because of Reinhard Heyd-
rich's death.
Modern war, total war, kills everyone indiscriminately;
women and children drop as fast as soldiers. Millions were
dying to destroy the German instruments of war. And clearly
Heydrich had been one of the most effective of those instru-
ments. When Hitler escaped the twentieth-of-July bomb in
1944, the general wondered whether the German anti-fascists
would have been able to strike even this unsuccessful blow if
Heydrich had been alive to trap them before they could act.
Was it wrong to have assassinated Heydrich and right to try
to kill Hitler? No one who believed that fascism had to be
destroyed felt anything but admiration for the Yugoslav parti-
sans, the French Maquis, the brave Norwegians and Poles�for
all the people who fought and killed Germans. The Czechs
at home were not fighting, so the Czechs abroad had to do the
job for them.
It might have been wrong if the target had been the ,one
he first considered, Emanuel Moravec. This would have had
the taint of personal motives. But there was no such taint
in the assassination of Heydrich, and it had the official and un-
qualified approval of President Benes. Of course, the general
thought wryly, I cannot proclaim this fact today. It is the
duty of subordinates to step back when their plans succeed
and come forward into the limelight if their plans fail.
Finally, before the war ended, the self-questioning, the drill-
ing inside, apparently hit bed rock. General Moravec found
a firm position, he later explained, in the truth that no one
ever gets something for nothing. If Czechoslovakia had re-
jected the Chamberlain capitulation at Munich, a real under-
ground would have been born of its thus-affirmed integrity.
Men must die that countries live. If enough of them die at
once, the country may be lucky enough to coast for a few
generations. But coasting builds no muscles. The cost of
the free ride is strength, and the cost of sapped strength is
freedom. So in the last analysis you have to kill a Heydrich
not because he needs killing but because coasting along with
his kind will kill you and everybody else.
By the time the war was over, General Moravec felt sure
that the assassination of Heydrich was not a sombre page of
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history. It was a page that he could turn back to with satis-
faction, he and his countrymen and all the rest of us. Turn
back to, read again, and know that it was right.
Dregs of the Bitter Cup
At last the war ended, and General Moravec went home to
Prague. Everywhere in the city was a kind of gladness; it
was over now, and all were thinking of the future. Every-
where, it seemed, except at General Moravec's home, where
the callers apparently could not forget the past. They asked
why their fathers and mothers had been executed. They
wanted to know if the former general still thought he'd done
the right thing. His doubts returned. These people saw him
not as the executioner of Heydrich but as the killer of their
kin. This post-war period in Prague, he said later, was the
most miserable of his life. The men who, now that the war
was over, called themselves the leaders of the underground
also came to ask questions and pronounce judgment. They
said that the Heydrich operation was conceptually faulty.
They said they should have been consulted in advance, they
never would have permitted so blatant an error. The general
asked them to give a detailed account of their underground
activities and a signed estimate of their contribution to the
war against fascism, and they went away.
One day a different caller came. He said that the traitor
who delivered Gabcik and Kubis to the Gestapo had been dis-
covered and interrogated. He had confessed to a revolutionary
tribunal, but he stubbornly refused to give details. His name
was Alois Kral.
Kral! So the general's careful choice of men had produced
two heroes, and one villain to seal their fate. He put on
his coat; he would visit the man in prison and talk to him.
He recognized Kral as soon as he saw him; the four full years
had not changed him. Tall, swarthy, taciturn, he squinted
up at Moravec and said, "Greetings, brother."
"Brother?"
"I killed two Czechs. You killed five thousand. Which of
us hangs?"
So it went throughout the questioning. Kral kept most of
his secret to himself, not to save his neck but because he
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knew he couldn't. Besides, the revolutionary tribunal was
not predisposed to patient inquiry. It consisted of one profes-
sional lawyer and four lay judges on the bench, a prosecutor,
and a defense attorney appointed ex officio. All of them had
been chosen by the Citizens' Committee, which in turn was
dominated by the Communists. Each actor in the play had
memorized his part, knowing that the function of the court
was not to serve justice but to kill Kral. The hand-picked audi-
ence was fanatical, a lynch mob. Neither actors nor specta-
tors cared about the fate of Gabcik and Kubis; they were all
preoccupied with the million marks Alois Kral had collected
for his act of betrayal. While their closest relatives and
friends were dying and they themselves were suffering, Kral
had been living like a king. There was the unforgivable
crime�not murder or treachery, but his comfort in the midst
of their pain.
In France Kral had fought well. In England he could not
have been serving as a German stool-pigeon, because two op-
erations he knew enough about to wreck had been successful.
There was even evidence that he had not betrayed Lt. Opalka
to the Gestapo, or any of his underground contacts. Why had
he turned traitor at the end? General Moravec went to see
him several times. The best he could get was a fuller record
of events.
Kral said that Gabcik threw the bomb, Kubis covering with
the machine gun. Then the two rode their bicycles straight
to the church, where they were given sanctuary. The pres-
ence of Lt. Opalka and Valcik was accidental. The four hoped
that the storm would subside, and when the intense search-
ing was called off they could escape to Slovakia. Kral hinted
that he found out about the fugitives from a prostitute; he
was vague at this juncture.
"But why did you tell the Nazis?" asked the general.
"Maybe for the million marks," said Kral. "Or maybe I
thought it was better that two men die than two thousand.
What does it matter?"
At the church, the Gestapo had shouted to come out, to
surrender. The men answered with the machine gun, and
later with their pistols. The cellar of the two-hundred-year-
old church was a fortress not to be breached or taken by
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storm. Finally the Germans flooded it. It was then that all
four men, out of ammunition and near drowning, swallowed
their cyanide. The Gestapo officers reported the great victory.
Alois Kral was paid his million marks and lived in luxury for
three years.
The next morning General Moravec got up early. He
wanted to have a last talk with Kral and get the rest of the
story,'how Kral found out and why he informed. But before
he could leave the house a member of the Citizens' Commit-
tee, a leading Communist, came to see him.
"Let's have a little chat," the visitor said, removing his coat.
"I was just leaving."
"It's no use," said the Communist, sitting down and lighting
a cigarette. "We've given orders that you're not to be ad-
mitted at the jail any more."
"Why?"
"Why do you want to talk to Kral? You have no status
in this matter."
"I want to find out the truth."
"We know what you want. You want to keep your glamor-
ous story of the Heydrich case alive. Don't try to pretend
that you care about Gabcik and Kabis, or whatever their
names were, or Kral either. You just want people to believe
that your so-called government in London was a band of
heroes and patriots. You're not getting away with it. Keep
away from the jail, or we will let you in. There's still room."
The general did not say anything.
"And stop sniffing around trying to get records and names
of other people to talk to." The visitor got up. "In fact, for-
mer General Moravec, it would be a very fine idea for you to
get out of here. I think we understand each other?"
"I understand you," the general said. "Good day."
He knew it was no use to go to the jail, but he did anyway.
He was turned away so rudely that he was surprised to be
admitted to the trial. It lasted about five minutes. Gabcik
and Kubis were scarcely mentioned; Kral was tried and con-
demned for collaboration with the Gestapo. It was a mario-
nette show. But just at the end an impromptu line brought it
momentarily to incongruous life.
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"Why did you do it?" the chief justice recited. "For their
rotten German marks?"
"One million of them," Kral retorted. "How much are the
Russians paying you?"
They killed him, of course; General Moravec watched the
execution. He could not help thinking that Kral was dying
for the wrong reason�not for his crime, but for Communist
ends. Maybe that's really what keeps bothering me about
Heydrich's death, he reflected. Did we kill him and trigger
5,000 other deaths in a just cause, or out of political ambition?
Is any human motive ever untainted?
At least the two who did the killing, Gabcik and Kubis, came
close to purity of motive. They had been healthy young men,
not born martyrs in search of death. They had not killed
for pride, greed, envy, anger, or ambition. They had killed like
dedicated surgeons removing a cancerous mass. They must
have felt deeply that the play had to unfold and that their
business was not to choose the actors or criticize the choice
of theater but only to play their ordained parts as best they
could. Of all forms of courage, theirs was the highest because
it is the most humble.
As he walked away, General Moravec met the Communist
functionary who had forbidden him to visit Kral.
"Will you please tell me where Gabcik and Kubis are bur-
ied?" he asked politely.
"Nowhere," came the sardonic answer. "There are no
graves. You foot-kissers of the British are not going to have
that excuse to build a statue and hang wreaths. Czech heroes
are Communists."
General Moravec felt tired. There were more Heydrichs
than a man could destroy. Fascist Heydrichs died and Com-
munist Heydrichs took their places and there was no end to
it, as long as people coast.
Some day, perhaps, the wheel would turn and Czechs would
grow strong again, and be free to remember the strength of
Josef Gabcik and Jan Kubis.
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The assignment of an inter-
preter with slightly ulterior mo-
tives for selected international
visits yields a net gain.
THE INTERPRETER AS AN AGENT
Francis Agnor
The rather obvious time-honored practice of using inter-
preters assigned to international exchange delegations as in-
telligence agents (or, conversely, of getting intelligence per-
sonnel assigned as interpreters) has both advantages and dis-
advantages. If the interpreter makes the most of his intelli-
gence mission, however, and observes some common-sense
rules of behavior, there can be a net advantage both in the
direct yield of information from such an assignment and in
the improvement of an asset in the person of the interpreter.
The advantage in immediate information is likely to be limited;
the improvement of personal assets can be considerable.
In discussing these advantages we shall assume that the
interpreter can be given adequate intelligence training and
briefing (or that the intelligence officer is competent as an
interpreter, and not compromised). We shall ignore the tech-
nical aspects of the interpreter's art and the occupational dis-
eases, nervous indigestion and undernourishment, contracted
in his attempts to gulp food while translating banquet con-
versations. We shall examine his domestic and foreign as-
signments separately: the advantages and disadvantages of
assignment at home and abroad often coincide, but there are
also important differences.
Gains on Home Ground
Let us look first at the domestic assignment, where the in-
terpreter is on his own native soil, attached to a group of for-
eign visitors or delegates. As the communications link be-
tween the visitors and their strange surroundings, he pos-
sesses a strong psychological advantage in his available option
to confine himself strictly to the business portions of the trip,
leaving the visitors to fend for themselves in their spare time.
Even if they have their own interpreter along, there are a
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number of matters�shopping, local customs, the availability
of services�in which it would be convenient for them to have
his help.
Recognizing their dependence on his cooperation for the
smooth progress of their visit, they will usually do their best
to establish, if not a cordial friendship, at least a good working
relationship. A great deal depends on the interpreter him-
self, of course, but normal friendly overtures on his part will
usually be met at least half way by the visitors. Just by being
relaxed and perhaps willing to do a small extra favor here
and there, he can become accepted as an indispensable mem-
ber of their family group. An excellent way to break down
reserve and promote a free exchange of ideas is to invite the
group to his home. (It does not pay for him to be so obliging
that he becomes a valet, and it is advisable to establish this
principle early in the game.)
Continued friendly gestures are likely to result in time in
the establishment of a genuine rapport, with its attendant
benefits. If the interpreter is knowledgeable in the field of
the official discussions which he is interpreting, he can clarify
in private discussions with the visitors some of the ambiguous
or contradictory statements made during the official talks.
Without appearing too curious or asking too many questions
of intelligence purport (he should be particularly circumspect
at the outset of a trip, when his bona fides is subject to great-
est suspicion) , he will sometimes be able to get definitive state-
ments in private which are lacking in the confusion and in-
terruptions of official discussions. It is here that he may
bring to bear his training or natural bent for elicitation,
whether for official purposes or for his own education.
At the same time the interpreter himself is the target of
numerous questions which reveal both intelligence and per-
sonal interests on the part of his charges. Their intelligence
questions may indicate gaps in their own service's informa-
tion, and their personal ones are more broadly useful in show-
ing the preconceived picture of this country that the visitors
have brought with them. Although they often realize that
their questions betray a lack of sophistication, they are will-
ing to sacrifice dignity to satisfy their burning curiosity. Hon-
est, natural answers, despite the apparent rudeness of some
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of the questions ("How much do you make? How much are
you in debt?"), strengthen the interpreter's position and may
lead to even more revealing questions. If the visitors are from
a controlled society the very opportunity to put certain kinds
of questions is a luxury they cannot afford at home. And
when one of them is alone with the interpreter he often shows
eagerness to ask questions of a kind not brought up in group
discussions.
In all these discussions the interpreter is gaining knowledge
which no academic training can give him. First, he is given a
glimpse of his own country through the warped glass of for-
eign misconceptions and propaganda. The image will not be
fully that which hostile propagandists have sought to fix, but
it will show where they have succeeded and where they have
failed. Second, he learns how to get ideas across to these
representatives of another culture, learns where he must ex-
plain at length and where he can make a telling point in just
a few words. Finally, as a sort of synthesis of his experience,
he can arrive at some conclusions concerning the visitors'
inner thought processes, often quite alien to his own.
In addition to gaining these insights, the interpreter makes
what may prove to be useful contacts in future assignments.
How potentially useful depends on the spirit in which he parts
company with the visitors, but anything short of outright
hostility is likely to make them of some value.
Drawbacks and Limitations
The chief disadvantages of domestic assignment for the
agent-interpreter lie in the shallowness of his cover. Visitors
from Communist countries, in particular, start with a strong
presumption that any interpreter is at least working hand in
glove with local intelligence or security groups if he is not
actually a member of one. The barrier thus imposed in the
initial stages of a trip may break down as rapport is estab-
lished, but there always remains a lurking suspicion that the
interpreter is not what he seems, and the visitors are always
on guard against the slightest hint of prying or propaganda.
Furthermore, they collect a large file of biographic information
on him in the course of their association, material which is
certainly delivered to their own security forces. Matching
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this up with some earlier trace they may have of him may
blow his organizational connections.
Another limiting factor is that foreign delegations, particu-
larly from Bloc countries, are drawn from the elite and so
not typical of the peoples they represent. The impressions
the interpreter receives concerning their beliefs and feelings
may not be applicable to their countrymen at home. Though
the delegation members may not be as orthodox abroad as on
their home ground, where conformity is obligatory, they have
a more compelling stake in the regime than the average citizen.
The last disadvantage to be noted depends in large part on
the capabilities and limitations of the interpreter himself. It
lies in the difficulty of retaining facts and figures in one's
head while performing the complicated task of translation.
It is possible to store in one's mind only a limited number of
figures before the whole delicate structure of memory dis-
integrates into a jumble of confused statistics which are of no
use to anyone. While it is permissible to take notes during
long speeches where it is obviously impossible to remember
everything said between pauses, this device is not appropriate
for short conversations. If the interpreter is caught franti-
cally scribbling notes immediately after a visitor has casually
let drop the annual production of some electronic gadget, his
usefulness to intelligence has largely evaporated. Further-
more, he has pinpointed an area of intelligence interest. A
dash to the toilet after some particularly significant slip on
the part of a visitor can sometimes provide privacy for note
taking, but too frequent use of this dodge excites embarrassing
commiseration or, more often, suspicion.
On the Opponent's Horne Field
The foreign assignment differs in many respects from the
domestic. On the profit side, in addition to getting the same
positive intelligence take as the domestic interpreter, the in-
terpreter abroad can be an observer, reporting on things which
have nothing to do with his linguistic job. If he has had proper
training, such observations can be quite valuable. Further-
more, he can acquire a feeling for the country and a sense
of what intelligence activities can be undertaken and what
cannot. He may, for example, attempt photography in areas
on the borderline of legitimacy just to test reaction, or take
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a stroll before going to bed in order to check surveillance
patterns. If he is an area specialist, the trip provides an edu-
cation which no amount of book learning could give. He con-
firms certain of his preconceptions while discarding others,
and he returns with a far more solid grasp on his specialty
than he had previously. The confidence thus gained from first-
hand experience is a very valuable asset if he is to be involved
in operations against the country in the future.
On the negative side we find all the disadvantages noted in
the domestic assignment: the interpreter accompanying a dele-
gation abroad is, if anything, under sharper scrutiny as a prob-
able agent, and should be prepared for a more or less clan-
destine search of his baggage; his memory is still strained to
hold on to useful data; his official foreign contacts are the
most loyal stalwarts of the regime; his digestion deteriorates.
In addition, he finds himself a prisoner of his cover profession.
Whereas the foreign delegation's dependence on him during
his domestic assignment led to enlightening discussions, his
own party's need for his help, not only on official matters but
on everything that requires communication during every wak-
ing hour, now obliges him to spend all of his time with his
own countrymen. He becomes a communications machine,
unable to introduce any of his own ideas or queries into the
conversations. Contacts are pretty well limited to those which
the hosts have thoughtfully provided for about eighteen out
of every twenty-four hours, and a delegation of six-foot Amer-
icans accompanied by watchful hosts is not the sort of group
which a dissident member of a closed society is likely to ap-
proach in order to unload his true feelings about the regime.
Finally, even the diffident admissions of ignorance implicit
in questions put to the interpreter on his own home ground
are lacking when he goes abroad. Particularly in Communist
countries the officials he contacts need to show that they have
not been contaminated by his ideology; each tries to out-party-
line the rest, less as an effort (usually counter-productive) to
influence the visiting delegation than as a demonstration of
his own orthodoxy for the benefit of his comrades. This com-
pulsion precludes any serious discussion about either the hosts'
or the visitors' country. During such exhibitions of chest-
beating the interpreter is put on his mettle to hold his temper
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and restrain himself from active participation in the conversa-
tion.
Criteria and Other Considerations
From the foregoing we may conclude that the principal in-
telligence value of the domestic assignment lies in the psy-
chological field�exploration of mental attitudes, blind spots,
thought processes, strength and weakness of beliefs�whereas
the value of the foreign assignment derives from first-hand
experience in the country and from the collection of observ-
able operational and positive intelligence. It is perhaps un-
necessary to warn that the interpreter can not fulfill the
classic agent roles of recruiting spy nets, agitating for revolu-
tion, or personally stealing the master war plans. He will
pay his way by less dramatic acts.
Here are some of the factors that should be taken into con-
sideration in recruiting an interpreter for an intelligence
mission or utilizing an existing intelligence asset in inter-
preter capacity. First, it must be borne in mind that almost
any interpreter will be the target of intense scrutiny by the
opposition, particularly in Bloc countries. The prevailing po-
litical climate today, however, is such that the interpreter's
official position as part of a delegation protects him from
arbitrary arrest, except perhaps in Communist China. The
rest of the Bloc is so committed to East-West exchanges that
it would not jeopardize the program for one rather insignificant
intelligence fish.
Second, the interpreter should not be the only briefed mem-
ber of the delegation going abroad. As we have shown, the
interpreter has his hands full with his official duties and has
little opportunity for taking notes. The official delegate, how-
ever, has good opportunities and excellent cover for taking
notes. In addition, being presumably an expert in the field
of the discussions, he can recognize significant material better
than the interpreter.
Third, the size of the delegation is an extremely important
factor affecting the usefulness of both domestic and foreign
interpreter assignments. A delegation of more than six or
seven people imposes such a burden on the interpreter that
he has no time for an intelligence mission. He is kept con-
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tinually busy rounding up strays, making travel reservations,
getting people settled in hotels, and generally playing nurse-
maid. The best possible delegation would consist of one very
lazy man who neither demanded nor rejected the presence of
the interpreter.
Finally, the itinerary itself must be considered. On do-
mestic assignments the most important thing is a relaxed
schedule which will give the visitors enough spare time to ob-
serve their surroundings and ask questions about non-official
matters. On the foreign assignment perhaps the most im-
portant consideration is the previous accessibility of the areas
to be visited. If the area is completely off the beaten track
or had previously been closed to foreigners, there is excellent
reason to employ a trained observer as interpreter. Even
the standard tourist trips, however, may provide useful in-
formation if the interpreter is alert.
This paper has been oriented primarily towards the inter-
preter-agent question as it obtains in visits to or from the
Soviet Bloc, but many of the same factors are valid for neu-
tralist or uncommitted areas. With the steady increase in
cultural and professional exchanges among most countries of
the world, opportunities for placing interpreters have also ex-
panded. The expansion is not only making more experience
and training available but is affording better cover for in-
terpreters with intelligence objectives. Perhaps more of them
should be given such objectives, despite the drawbacks we
have noted.
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Anatomy of a scientific bag of
tricks to conjure up the likeness
of an unknown face.
THE IDENTI-KIT
Herman E. Kimsey
One of the most difficult problems in human communica-
tion is that of exactly duplicating in another mind the visual
image one has in one's own. Language is not adequate to the
job: the range of variant concepts corresponding to each de-
scriptive word, not to mention their inevitable emotional and
imaginative colorings, create inaccuracies, distortions, and
downright false impressions. Man has therefore had to re-
sort to comparing such an image or its elements with ac-
cepted common physical standards, which reach their ultimate
precision in the standard units of measurement. This proce-
dure leaves no room for the vagaries of individual interpreta-
tion.
This communications problem has always been particularly
acute between the describers of absent persons and those
whose job it is to identify the subjects described�notably
the police�and the identification world has therefore been
using for more than a hundred years some system of com-
paring individual characteristics with physical standards. The
rather startling Identi-Kit herein presented, which provides a
set of such standards, must then be considered the product
of a development and evolution whose basic principles have
been thoroughly proven. The Kit itself is no untested or con-
troversial invention: it has withstood continuous testing and
retesting for the past five years in both experimental and
practical on-the-job applications.
The Identification Process
The basic premise of all identification systems is the fact
that nature never creates two identical individuals. The
problem is- to record the identifying characteristics and then
to catalog them objectively in some system by which they
can be communicated from person to person and from place
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to place. In identification by fingerprints and other similar
means the recording is done by taking a physical impression
of the characteristic features. Systems have been developed
to catalog and communicate these with accuracy. But cir-
cumstances do not always allow for the taking of these
physical impressions.
Identification by facial appearance gives us a wider range,
requiring as it does mere visual contact with the subject, if
only we have some method to crystallize out of the fluid mem-
ory of the observer an objective image of the subject's ap-
pearance and some way to code or tabulate its identifying
characteristics. The Identi-Kit provides such a method of re-
cording and cataloging. It has limits, however, short of posi-
tive identification, limits inherent in human ability to observe
and remember.
If every natural mark and line in a human face could be
visually compared with its antecedent image, complete and
positive identification would be possible. Such positive identi-
fication is not practical because the human eye and brain,
even with minute observation of all the natural marks and
lines on a person's face, could not retain the memory of their
exact location well enough to recreate a perfect image of it.
But given the impossibility of an infallible system of visual
identification, we can nevertheless make a practical and utili-
tarian approach to the identification problem through a proc-
ess of elimination. In this process visual comparison can elim-
inate great numbers of possible persons who fail to qualify
for likeness to the subject sought, and so reduce the possi-
bilities to a few individuals, and frequently to a single one.
The elimination process can begin with the gross physical
features of age, sex, race, height, weight, build, etc., and pro-
ceed from there to the finer distinctions of facial appearance.
The Kit
It is in pinpointing these finer distinctions that we run into
trouble when questioning a witness in order to build up an
image of the absent person. And this is where the Identi-Kit
coines in. The kit breaks a full-face image up into component
parts�hair, brows, eyes, nose, lips, chin-line with ears, and
age lines, plus beard, hat, and glasses, if any. It contains
several dozen transparent slides picturing each of these corn-
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ponents with different types of contours, 500 slides in all,
with five notches on the side for different placements of each
feature. Each slide is coded with a letter for the facial com-
ponent illustrated and a figure for the particular configura-
tion. The witness is given a catalog showing all these slides
and asked to pick out the brows, nose, chin-line, etc., which
most nearly suit the person he saw.
The witness, not accustomed to recognizing a pair of eyes
with the brows removed or a mouth with no face around it,
will find the going difficult at first. No matter: he will soon
be able to study the whole reconstructed face and make ad-
justments. As he makes his tentative selection of components
the slides are assembled on a make-up pad and the composite
image displayed. Is the nose too fat? Pick a bonier one. Are
the brows too prominent? Rearrange the pile of slides, putting
the brows at the back and the eyes farther forward. Is the
forehead too high? Slip the hair slide down by one or two
from the normal third notch. Is the hair parted on the wrong
side? Reverse the slide.
The witness is at last satisfied; he recognizes this man. It
is not a finished portrait, but a good line-drawing of the right
type of person. Figure 1 shows what a close resemblance to
a well-known face can be assembled with the kit. In the first
129 operational cases in which the kit was used (by four dif-
ferent operators), the witness was able to produce a recogniz-
able likeness of all but nine subjects. It took him anywhere
from five minutes to several hours, averaging perhaps between
thirty minutes and an hour.
There is one further refinement illustrated in Figure 1: if
there are moles or scars on the remembered face, a grid of
numbered lines is placed over the composite image and the
positions of the marks are noted in this frame of reference.
The scar grid is shown in Figure 2.
One of the advantages of the kit is the ease with which its
coding permits a face to be recorded or transmitted to a dis-
tant location through almost instantaneous assembly from
another kit there. A face is contained, for example, in the
code message
A17 N21X1 C30 E79 L16 D55 H92X4R SV40 SH20
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50
50
50
6 50
C DE
0
II 03
00
+
35
CDE
CE tp
� 50 06 17 H
O 35
35
C 6D E 95�
t4 13
H N
N Cr o
� /4 eo oe ao
35
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SECRET
which means "Age lines slide 17, nose slide 21 two notches
below normal, chin and ear slide 30, eye slide 79, lip slide 16,
brow slide 55, hair slide 92 reversed and one notch above
normal, mole under right eye at vertical 40 horizontal 20, no
beard, glasses, or hat."
The number of such facial combinations that can be formed
from the Identi-Kit is too astronomical to be conveniently
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71,
V
The Identi-Kit
�
Vie
I'
50
55
65
70
� �.�At� haykuNk..,
-v,���
,r
OINEN
FIGURE 2
written. These assemblages are rather like passport or other
identity photographs in reproducing physical contours with-
out reflecting "personality." Although they thus fall short of
portrait-type likenesses, they are sufficient when compared
feature by feature with known persons to weed out quickly
all but one or a few that each could represent.
We have been treating the kit as a police device, but its
application in intelligence is obvious. One might almost say,
in fact, that virtually every technique used in intelligence is
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some variation of a police technique, a relationship reflected
in the identity in many small countries of the police with
the intelligence service. The kit was actually a product of
intelligence effort later released for police use, and it is being
applied in an ever growing number of operational intelligence
cases to the problem of identifying the "third man."
The effectiveness of the kit, thoroughly tested by both in-
telligence and the police, has produced startling results in
areas where it has been properly applied. In fewer than one
percent of police cases is it identification by fingerprints that
leads to an arrest. In the several hundred Identi-Kit cases
on record the kit has led to a whopping 35 percent of the
arrests. Most of these identifications were accomplished by
cross reference of the witness's reconstruction with "mug"
files of known criminals which were classified in the Identi-Kit
system. This process was possible in 100 of the first 129 cases,
with an average file search time of 40 seconds.
One must remember, however, that the Identi-Kit system
is not intended to supplant any of the identification systems
in present use. It is simply an additional tool in the inter-
rogation kit, a special wrench that enables you to get at a
formerly inaccessible spot and work there effectively. You
still need your other tools, and you have to be a good me-
chanic in the first place: the kit needs the control of a skilled
interrogator, who can master this additional instrument
with the help of a special one-week course of instruction. A
child can make mechanical faces from the kit; but only ex-
perience and training can develop the right images from the
mind of a person who had no particular reason to remember
them until the questioning began, or perhaps does not want
to remember them at all.
The potential uses and performance of the Identi-Kit sys-
tem have barely been touched upon in this article. Exten-
sive files must be developed and many operators trained be-
fore the full benefit of the system will be apparent. But the
intelligence officer will feel the power of a conjuror when he
can take the codes from a face his agent has built up to the
nearest telephone or communications center, notify a dis-
tant file of his problem, and get back the required identifica-
tion, complete with details, in a matter of minutes more than
the communications lag.
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Glimpses into the meticulous
work of those who examine
identity papers for forgery or
falsehoods.
CREDENTIALS�BONA FIDE OR FALSE?
David V. Brigane
The use of false documents, traditional in espionage, has re-
sponded like all else in the profession to the modern trend
of expansion, organization, and technological advance. As
intelligence activities have multiplied, the demand for docu-
ments has grown, and increasing effort has gone into their
procurement and manufacture. On the defensive side, the de-
tection of false documents has undergone a parallel growth in
importance.
Those not familiar with false documentation would be
amazed to see the elaborate techniques that go into the
making of a high-grade reproduction and startled by the per-
fection of the results achieved. German World War II re-
productions of British pound notes were so accurate that a
Swiss bank, asked by German agents to check them as pos-
sible forgeries, had no reservations about declaring them au-
thentic. The bank had not been remiss: it had made a care-
ful examination and cabled London to verify the serial num-
bers and dates. After an extended period of use it was no
physical flaw but merely the unavoidable duplication of exist-
ing serial numbers that ultimately gave them away. More
recently a Western security service accepted a reproduction
of its country's passport as genuine even after the question
of forgery was raised.
But false documentation is an uneven business. Require-
ments on it are unpredictable, its raw materials often un-
available, and the time interval between demand and delivery
can be appallingly short. The perfection of high-grade re-
productions is no less astonishing than the crudity of make-
shifts sometimes used even by the intelligence services of ma-
jor world powers. Documents prepared by the German secret
services during World War II have been described as being in
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many instances "beneath contempt" and "veritable death war-
rants to their unhappy holders." 1 Japanese documentation
specialists, examining German reproductions of the Russian
basic identity document, noted that the cloth cover was too
light, the printing ink too glossy, the multi-colored back-
ground tint made by the Zammel printing press noticeably
brighter than it should be, and the place-of-issue indicator
identical in all copies.
Soviet Agent Documentation
The Russians themselves have not been above using some of
the crudest devices known to the forger's trade. In reproduc-
ing rubber stamps for the German military travel permit,
they economized by making a separate stamp for the center
emblem and combining it with various reproductions of the
outer portion, which showed the place of issue. The composite
cachets, of course, did not reflect the individual variations
characteristic of the originals, did not have the emblem in
proper alignment with its encircling legend, and even showed
inking differences from the separate imprintings. But al-
though the Soviet services have thus improvised under the
pressure of operational needs, especially in wartime, gambling
that their makeshifts will escape close scrutiny, they are
nevertheless journeymen at the documentation trade, having
long since passed their apprenticeship.
The Soviet emphasis on clandestine and deep-cover activi-
ties has historically made documentation of its agents a mat-
ter of prime importance. As Don Levine's new book recalls,2
a false Canadian passport was successful in establishing an
identity for Trotsky's killer, even though the NKV.D has mis-
spelled the name as "Jacson." Richard Sorge used forged
passports to conceal his travel to Moscow, and his radio op-
erator, Max Klausen, traveled on three passports, Italian, Ca-
nadian, and German.3 Documents were a major concern to
Alexander Foote and other members of his net. Rudolf Abel
used an altered American passport for entry into the United
States and two birth certificates to create different identities
Alexander Foote, Handbook for Spies, p. 102.
2 The Mind of an Assassin, reviewed in this issue.
' See Willoughby's The Shanghai Conspiracy (New York: 1952) .
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after his arrival; his assistant, Hayhanen, built an elaborate
identity structure on an original American birth certificate
apparently confiscated from a U.S. citizen who had emigrated
to Estonia.4 Khokhlov,5 Wolwebber, and "Witczak" relied on
documents to support false identities. But if documents were
of critical importance in these famous cases which now hap-
pen to be in the public eye, imagine the documentation re-
quirements created by the countless throng of subordinate
agents and couriers, the proletariat of Communist espionage
hierarchies.
To meet this continual demand, the Communists have al-
ways devoted a major effort to document collection and forgery.
Even in the early thirties they operated a documentation
unit in Moscow, one in Berlin, and a third in the United
States.� Of these three the German Pass-Apparat was the
most elaborate, with six workshops and agencies all over
Europe. In Germany alone there were agents for document
collection in each of 24 districts. Their sources were varied.
Communist sympathizers sometimes offered their own per-
sonal documents. A cleaning woman at Berlin police head-
quarters stole blank passports for the Party from time to
time. Two engravers at the Stempel-Kaiser plant provided
duplicates of rubber stamps manufactured for the German
government. Two Saarland police officers formed a partner-
ship in passports, one supplying the blanks, the other the
stamps. Once during these years a Communist raid on a
Czech police office yielded 1500 Czech passports as a by-
product, but the richest document hauls in the thirties came
from the International Brigade in Spain. Later, during World
War II, Max Habijanic, a Swiss police officer in Basel, was a
reliable source of backstopped Swiss passports. Currently
the Soviet intelligence services use documents of their own
Bloc extensively to authenticate defector and refugee cover.
They also maintain a systematic watch within the Bloc for
foreign identity documents held by returned �gr�
See W. W. Rocafort, "Colonel Abel's Assistant," Studies, 111 4, p. 1.
4 See his book, In the Name of Conscience, to be reviewed in the spring
issue of the Studies.
� David J. Dallin, Soviet Espionage, p. 92.
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Credentials
As a corollary to these Communist activities, Western in-
telligence services have given increasing attention to the coun-
terintelligence aspects of documentation. Techniques of docu-
ment analysis developed in scientific criminology have been
combined with world-wide intelligence resources to serve
the investigative needs of intelligence organizations. Docu-
ment analysis has been found increasingly effective as an aid
in the investigation and detection of enemy agents, in the
surveillance and control of one's own agents and verification
of their intelligence reports, in the screening of refugees and
defectors, and in developing biographic information and es-
tablishing the bona fides of individuals of intelligence interest.
Enemy Agents
Among the odds and ends of intelligence debris deposited
during World War II by the tide of battle in Burma was a
Japanese document bearing the title "CERTIFICATE OF RE-
LIABILITY." It contained a detailed description of the
bearer, followed by this text: "Please extend every assistance
to Mr. Aung since he is employed by us as a spy." Although
a spy's normal documentation does not resemble the forth-
right Mr. Aung's in advertising his profession, it often holds
hidden evidence against him. Document analysis can play a
key role in uncovering enemy operations.
The nature of this role can be illustrated in the case his-
tory of a Soviet escapee, whose documents and statement, in
accordance with standard practice, were subjected to analysis
and evaluation. During examination of the documents for
format, an abnormally small spacing between the abbrevia-
tion "No." and the serial number of his basic identity docu-
ment, the pasport, attracted attention. No pasport from the
same place of issue being available for comparison, an analysis
of the imprint was undertaken. It was determined that the
serial number had been added after the document was printed
and bound, contrary to all normal procedures for manufactur-
ing the pasport. Then the signatures came under suspicion,
two signatures by each of two officials, because both pairs
showed undue similarity. Subjected to handwriting analysis,
all four proved to be traced forgeries.
Now the pasport was checked against the escapee's military
reserve document, and an irregularity in the photographs be-
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came apparent. Normally the photos in the two documents
would have been taken on different occasions and would show
different poses, clothing, and lighting. It does sometimes hap-
pen that prints for both documents are made from the same
negative, but then the print used in the pas port is differenti-
ated by a white corner. In this case it was found that the
photo in the military reserve document had been copied from
that in the pas port but enlarged and cropped to eliminate
the white corner. Such rephotographing from another docu-
ment, generally inconsistent with legitimate issuance, may be
necessary when a forged document should show the person at
an earlier age or when because of time, distance, or security
considerations the subject is not available to the forger for
photographing in person.
In addition to these evidences of forgery, discrepancies were
found between the information given in the documents and
biographic data supplied by the escapee himself. In the use
made of these discoveries this case was a typical one. While
the results of document analysis did not prove conclusively
that the man was a Soviet agent, they showed that his docu-
ments had not been issued legitimately, disproved his general
story, and opened up specific lines of interrogation and in-
vestigation.
As a tool in the investigation of enemy agents, document
analysis can be used to great advantage not only in mak-
ing an initial detection but in the handling of known agents,
inducing them to talk and confirming or refuting their state-
ments. The material evidence from documents has a strong
psychological impact in corroborating or disproving an agent's
story, and can be effective in destroying his self-confidence
and eliciting confession.
Agent Control and Other Applications
Document analysis is not reserved for enemy agents; it can
be equally valuable in determining the reliability of one's own
agents and in assessing their reports and missions. A Far
Eastern case will serve as illustration, one wherein an agent's
report and the authenticity of a Chinese Communist docu-
ment on which it was based were tested by analysis.
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As evidence of mission accomplished, the agent had also pre-
sented, along with the questioned document, the forged travel
permit supplied him for use in the target area, now bearing
a Chinese Communist cachet stamped on, by his account, at a
checkpoint in the area itself. There were no known authentic
exemplars with which to compare either the questioned docu-
ment or this precise checkpoint cachet, but the cachet was
compared with others from the same general area. It ap-
peared to follow the normal pattern; several of the examples
on hand were similar in format. One of them, however, was
especially similar, to the point of suspiciously close likeness.
Photographic comparison proved that both cachets had been
stamped with the same instrument, and the place names sep-
arately imprinted.
Legitimate use of the same stamp in two different localities
was out of the question. Fraudulent use of an authentic
stamp in Chinese Communist hands was also out; this agent
had no such capability. The answer was obvious: both cachets
were forgeries. Since the exemplar cachet had been obtained
from another agent travel permit, all papers connected with
the mission this one had been used for came under scrutiny.
Among them was a document, allegedly procured in another
target area, which bore a small cachet of receipt in a Chinese
Communist office. Here again economy of effort betrayed the
forger's hand. This cachet proved to be identical with a re-
ceipt cachet on the questioned document in the current case,
although the receiving offices could not have been the same.
It was clear that neither of the reported missions had been
carried out and that the documents allegedly acquired in the
target areas were fabrications.
In a similar but simpler case, an agent presented a letter
which bore a postal cancellation as proof that he had been
in a certain city. This time, however, many authentic ex-
amples of postal cancellations from the city in question were
available for comparison. Examination of the lettering, dat-
ing, inks, and indicators conclusively proved that the cancel-
lation was a forgery.
Document analysis is useful in many other kinds of personal
investigation�for establishing the bona fides of refugees, for
surveying the activities of target personalities, for clearing
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prospective recruits, etc. Sometimes it is not a question of
establishing authenticity, but only of developing informational
content. An itinerary analysis from a passport, for example,
provides detailed information on a person's movements which
may not be procurable from any other source. Culling in-
formation of this type might appear to be a simple matter of
reading the record, not involving analysis; yet it requires
thorough familiarity with travel regulations and the custom-
ary passport entries to get the maximum amount of in-
formation. In one recent case where little proved biographic
information was available on a person, his detailed record dat-
ing back to 1931 was built up through documents.
Spotting Forgeries
False documents are brought to attention through observa-
tion of some defect in them, through improper use, or through
suspicion about the situation or activities of the bearer.
Analysis can come only after the initial spotting, and rela-
tively poor documentation can frequently escape detection
if used in an ordinary way under circumstances which do not
attract attention. Anyone who has experienced the harried
formalities of an international port of entry must be aware
that a passport flaw could well be passed. For where the vast
majority of the documents are genuine and the circumstances
of use normal, only an obvious flaw will give the document
away.
The obviousness of a flaw, however, is relative to the acuity
of the checker. The human mind and senses make astonish-
ingly fine distinctions, often unconsciously, in dealing with
familiar things. And the results of analysis can be used to
increase the checker's sensitivity and so play a part in the
initial spotting.
Checklists of irregularities indicative of forgery have long
been a counterintelligence tool. During World War II Soviet
intelligence prepared a list of indicators for reproductions
made by the German Abwehr. One of the salient signs was
the use of rustproof staples in the Abwehr reproduction of
the Ukrainian basic identity document, a gleaming evidence
of forgery. More recently such checklists have been useful
in screening Hungarian refugees. In another part of the
world, analysis of South Korean documents reproduced for
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North Korean agents has revealed characteristic flaws and
even made it possible to differentiate among those forged by
different North Korean intelligence units.
Aside from characteristic individual flaws, patterns in the
documentation of enemy agents can be detected by analysis
and set up as spotting devices to be used in screening large
groups of people. Some underlying pattern is likely to reflect
the basic constants in operational needs and aims and the
limitations of human imagination and material resources for
support of operations. For one thing, there is a tendency to
simplify false documents, since greater variety and complexity
mean greater chance of error in detail. The resultant simpli-
fication may lead to the establishment of more specific de-
tectable patterns. Take for example the question of showing
a military career. A fictitious military background is complex
and would require elaborate training to maintain under in-
terrogation. The simpler solution of giving no military back-
ground has been noted in the documentation of numerous
Soviet agents. Lack of military background may therefore
be one element of pattern.
The effort to conceal information of value to the opposi-
tion may account for other elements of pattern. When the
Communists use defector or refugee cover, the agents' docu-
ments themselves are of considerable value to Western in-
telligence. The Communists, operating under the assumption
that these Bloc documents will be exploited by Western intel-
ligence services, have introduced slight defects in them, pre-
sumably in the hope that these will be reproduced in docu-
ments for Western intelligence operations and thus serve to
identify Western agents.
One of these defects is the separate imprinting of the pas-
port serial number noted in the case of the Soviet "escapee"
we examined earlier. Other deception devices have been an
added letter, asterisk, or period, differences in printing impres-
sion, fabricated registration and deregistration cachets, and
an additional dry seal not used in legitimate documents. One
Communist service has shown a pattern of suppressing seri-
alization information by not recording the number of a previ-
ous document as "basis for issuance."
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But the Communist services risk being trapped in their own
dialectic. This technique has been noted and turned anti-
thetically to counterintelligence profit by the West: inten-
tional irregularities are carefully watched for and when found
incriminate the document holder. And their detection is fa-
cilitated by their tendency to follow a general pattern.
If, on the other hand, the Communists use the documenta-
tion of a neutral or enemy country, the limitations on their
resources for such documents may set a noticeable pattern.
After the Communist raid on the Czech police office back in
the thirties, the windfall of Czech passports was used freely
until French police became aware of the pattern of Czech pass-
port holders unacquainted with their native language.
For all these potential aids to document checkers, it must
be admitted that the counterintelligence function of provid-
ing them data for the identification of forgeries has in gen-
eral not been well developed. This is evidenced by the fact
that the average official whose duties include checking per-
sonal documents is surprisingly uninformed even about the
characteristic features of domestic documentation. The sys-
tematic Japanese do go so far as to provide police with pocket-
sized booklets listing the blocks of numbers assigned to prov-
inces for Japanese Alien Registration Certificates and describ-
ing some elementary characteristics of forgeries; but these
rudimentary aids did not prevent the Tokyo Metropolitan Po-
lice from being taken in by a Tokyo-issued Alien Registration
Certificate carried by a self-acknowledged North Korean agent.
Only the agent's insistence that he brought the document
from Korea led the police to request an analysis by Printing
Bureau experts, which proved the document a forgery.
Another Far Eastern country, less methodical, is also per-
haps more typical in its lack of attention to the counterin-
telligence aspects of documentation. It gives its police of-
ficers little or no assistance in detecting forgeries of the basic
identity document of its capital city, although an excellent
device is at hand. Genuine documents in use in the city have
come from thirty or more different printing plates made up
from time to time when additional stocks have been needed
and the old plates were no longer available. No attempt ap-
pears to have been made to turn this diversity to benefit by
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Maintaining accurate records of the districts and dates of is-
sue of the different printings. At the same time, Communist
reproductions of the document have seemingly undergone
only the most elementary analysis by the security forces, and
documentation, as might therefore be expected, has played a
very minor role in the spotting of infiltrators.
In the long-continued struggle against Communist infiltra-
tion and subversion, this counterintelligence function de-
serves much greater attention.
Analytic Procedures
Analysis of documents is essentially a matter of comparison.
But it is not simply comparing an item with an authentic ex-
ample in order to detect discrepancies. Take two examples of
a given signature: they will not be identical unless one or
both have been forged. So the process of analysis is one of
double comparison. First the two signatures are compared
and points of similarity and difference noted. Then these dif-
ferences are compared at least mentally with standards of ac-
ceptable variation which the handwriting expert has es-
tablished through previous examination of large numbers of
handwriting specimens and through study of principles based
on similar experience by others. The most laborious part of
the job, the establishment of norms, has therefore been ac-
complished before the two signatures have ever been seen.
And norms could not have been established without large
numbers of handwriting specimens available.
Essentially the same process is applied in all stages of docu-
ment analysis, and invariably one of the greatest difficulties
is to build up a volume of material extensive enough to de-
termine norms. Standards of judgment are needed on all the
innumerable details relating to format, alterations, aging, and
applicability and use of the document under varying condi-
tions.
One of the first things to be established is whether a docu-
ment's format is the normal one, as determined from originals,
photos, regulations covering issuance and use, and informa-
tion reports of many types. All characteristics of the docu-
ment must be considered�printing, dry seals, cachets, serial
numbers, signatures and handwriting, style of entries, termi-
nology, photos, inks, paper, binding, etc. Some of these ele-
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ments must be subjected also to technical analysis, a special-
ized field requiring separate treatment:,
Interestingly enough, format analysis can be applied very
successfully to Soviet agent documents issued by the Russians
themselves. It is sometimes assumed that when an� intelli-
gence service requires the documents of its own country for
its operations, it will make use of the genuine article, docu-
mentation invulnerable to counterintelligence analysis. This
is by no means true. Even if an agent document is issued by
the normal issuing office, it will frequently show pectliaritie8
arising from the operational needs of the case. Most notably
there is the problem of the date of issue: the agent cannot be
equipped with birth certificate, school diploma, military regis-
tration document, occupational papers, and basic identity
document all issued with a current date. But the blank docu-
ments appropriate to the required date may long since have
been replaced by new forms, and the normal issuing official,
not being a documentation specialist, will probably back-date
the document as required without departing from current is-
suance procedures. The resultant discrepancies can be re-
vealed by format analysis.
A Seaman's Passport carried several years ago by a Commu-
nist agent is a case in point. The document itself was genuine,
duly issued by the appropriate Harbor Master, but it had been
back-dated one year to meet operational requirements. Its
serial number therefore corresponded to those of issuances
a year later than the date shown, in other words to the actual
rather than ostensible date of issue. It also bore a cachet
which did not come into use until several months after its
purported date and omitted the fingerprint which had been
included up to and for approximately eight months after that
date.
In addition, the document lacked the two dry seals normally
placed over the photo. The logical explanation of this irregu-
larity appears to be that it was received from the Harbor Mas-
ter's office with serial number, issuance cachets, and signa-
tures, but otherwise blank. The seal could not have been in-
cluded with the issuance cachets since it had to be stamped
'See Wilson K. Harrison's Suspect Documents�Their Scientific Ex-
amination, reviewed in Studies, III 2.
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on the still absent photo. For reasons of security or con-
venience, the intelligence office did not see fit to have the com-
pleted document stamped later by the issuing authority.
These various flaws in format could be detected because of
the availability of document intelligence reports and a large
number of photocopied Seaman's Passports from which norms
could be established. These made it possible to determine the
approximate dates on which the new cachet was introduced
and the use of fingerprints discontinued, and through the se-
rial number sequence shown in the photocopies to pinpoint
the exact date on which the questioned document was actually
issued.
In addition to flaws in format, the Seaman's Passport con-
tained certain biographic inconsistencies. It recorded a
change of position from radio operator to apprentice, a retro-
gression violating the normal occupational pattern; and it
indicated that the seaman had made no voyage for a full year
after the document was issued. An even more damaging fact
turned up in the photocopies of Seaman's Passports on hand:
the bearer had held a second such Passport concurrently with
the questioned document, apparently for a different mission.
The difficulty of establishing norms and distinguishing fur-
tive violations of them is compounded, however, by human un-
predictability, which can easily disrupt the best established of-
ficial procedures. Irregularities do not per se prove fraud. A
document held by a Hungarian refugee is a good example. It
aroused immediate suspicion because the code number ap-
pearing in the dry seal impressed on the photo did not cor-
respond to the number in the cachet of the issuing office.
This irregularity, however, was the legitimate result of an
unusual chain of events. Involved in a bicycle accident in
Budapest, the bearer had had to present her basic identity
document for police check. The Budapest police had observed
that the dry seal was missing�something she herself had
never noticed�and checked with the issuing office in another
town. When the authenticity of the document was confirmed,
the woman was allowed as a matter of convenience to have
the dry seal entered in Budapest, where she was then staying,
although the Budapest office number on the dry seal would
not correspond, as in principle it should, with the number in
the issuance cachet.
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In another refugee case, analysis disclosed entries in civilian
documents inconsistent with the refugee's reported military
record. Further interrogation of the subject satisfactorily
explained these inconsistencies, drawing his exasperated com-
ment that if there had been anything wrong with his docu-
ments, he wouldn't have presented them. This comment of a
sensible man caught in the toils of a suspicious bureaucracy
seems logical, but its logic is not shared by those who have
something to conceal. The risk of having no proof seems
greater to them than the risk of defective proof. They are
generally not aware of the amount of information their docu-
ments will yield, and are prone to suppose that officials un-
familiar with them will fail to detect flaws.
One such hopeful deceiver was a Hungarian refugee whose
documents were used to check his political background, es-
pecially with regard to whether he had served in the State
Security Authority, the AVH. The man denied that he had,
maintaining that he had been employed in the civil police only;
but his documents told a different story. His Military Re-
serve Document recorded his police service in the space pro-
vided for military experience, and only service in the AVH, not
in the civil police, is counted as military service. Further-
more, the Military Reserve Document was not issued until the
termination of his police service, which therefore must have
been considered the equivalent of military duty. This is one
of the many cases in which documents that are themselves
genuine serve on analysis to betray the bearer's falsifications.
Document analysis is a valuable tool in counterintelligence,
but it is one tool only, to be used in combination with other
investigative techniques. And since documents do not exist
in a vacuum, intelligence data on many apparently unrelated
subjects may enter into document evaluation. On one occa-
sion, Navy reports on coastal Chinese weather corroborated
the travel route shown on a Chinese Communist document,
confirming other evidence of its authenticity. Furthermore,
the dependence for analytic effectiveness on intelligence re-
sources, document information and exemplars requiring con-
stant collection effort, make this activity an integral part of
intelligence processes, one that cannot be carried on in isola-
tion from the whole.
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A priori considerations preju-
dicing successful interrogation
by trance induction suggest a
possible variant technique.
HYPNOSIS IN INTERROGATION
Edward F. Deshere
The control over a person's behavior ostensibly achieved in
hypnosis obviously nominates it for use in the difficult proc-
ess of interrogation. It is therefore surprising that nobody,
as the induction of "Mesmeric trance" has moved from halls
of magic into clinics and laboratories, seems to have used it in
this way. A search of the professional literature shows at
least that no one has chosen to discuss such a use in print,
and a fairly extensive inquiry among hypnosis experts from a
variety of countries has not turned up anyone who admits to
familiarity with applications of the process to interrogation.
There is therefore no experimental evidence that can be cited,
but it should be possible to reach tentative conclusions about
its effectiveness in this field on the basis of theoretical con-
siderations.
The Nature of Hypnosis
Experimental analysis has gradually given us a better un-
derstanding of hypnosis since the days of Mesmer 6 and his fol-
lowers, who held that it results from the flow of a force called
animal magnetism from hypnotist to subject. Nevertheless,
although no present-day investigator shares the lingering lay
opinion that hypnosis is in some way an overpowering of a
weak mind by a superior intellect, there are still many di-
vergent theories propounded to account for the accumulating
clinical observations. Some of these have significantly dif-
ferent implications with respect to the susceptibility of a
hypnotized person to purposeful influence.
The view that hypnosis is a state of artifically induced sleep
has been widely held since Braid 7 invented the term in mid-
nineteenth-century. Currently Pavlov 20 takes a similar posi-
tion in maintaining that cortical inhibition, sleep, and hyp-
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nosis are essentially identical. This view is now held through-
out those parts of the world where Pavlovian theory is ac-
cepted as creed, but to the American investigator the experi-
mental evidence against it appears overwhelming. Bass,3 for
example, has shown that the patellar�kneecap�reflex, which
disappears in sleep, is not diminished in hypnosis. Wells 27
and others have demonstrated that all hypnotic phenomena can
be elicited in a state bearing no resemblance to sleep, a per-
formance which suggests the hypothesis that sleep-like as-
pects of hypnosis are not intrinsic to the hypnotic state but
result from the hypnotist's suggestion that his subject go to
sleep. Barker and Burgwin 2 have shown that the electroen-
cephalographic changes characteristic of sleep do not occur in
hypnosis except when true sleep is hypnotically induced. The
findings of two Russian papers 10 which dispute this conclu-
sion, affirming that the EEG rhythm characteristic of hyp-
nosis resembles that of drowsiness and light sleep, have not
been verified by replicating their experiments.
The concepts of suggestion and suggestibility as applied to
hypnosis, introduced about 1880 by the Nancy school of hyp-
nosis investigators, have been developed and refined in modern
times. In a major monograph Hull 10 concluded that hypnosis
is primarily a state of heightened suggestibility and has the
characteristics of habit in that it becomes increasingly easy
for a subject to enter the state of hypnosis after he has once
done it. Welch,26 in an ingenious application of the condition-
ing theory, pointed out that trance induction begins with sug-
gestions which are almost certain to take effect and proceeds
to more difficult ones. While the concept of suggestion does
provide a bridge between the hypnotic and the normal waking
state, it does not explain the peculiarity of the hypnotic proc-
ess or the causes of the state of trance.
Several more recent approaches, which might be called
motivational theories of hypnosis, hold that achievement of
trance is related to the subject's desire to enter such a state.
Experimentalists and clinicians who take the motivational
view�including the present writer, whose conclusions on the
subject of this paper are undoubtedly colored by it�believe
that it accounts best for the major portion of the clinical
data. Trance is commonly induced in situations where the
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subject is motivated a priori to cooperate with the hypnotist,
usually to obtain relief from suffering, to contribute to a sci-
entific study, or (as in a stage performance) to become a
center of attraction. Almost all information currently avail-
able about hypnosis has been derived from such situations,
and this fact must be kept in mind when one attempts to ap-
ply the data theoretically to situations different from these.
Hypnosis of Interrogees
The question of the utility of hypnosis in the interrogation
of persons unwilling to divulge the information sought in-
volves three issues: First, can hypnosis be induced under con-
ditions of interrogation? If so, can the subject be compelled
to reveal information? And finally, if information can be so
obtained, how reliable will it be? The initial problem is then
to induce trance either against the subject's wishes or without
his being aware of it.
The Subject Unaware. Hypnosis has reportedly been ef-
fected without the subject's awareness in three situa-
tions�in sleep, in patients undergoing psychiatric consulta-
tion, and spontaneously in persons observing another subject
being hypnotized.
The older literature is replete with references to somnam-
bulistic hypnosis induced by giving suggestions to sleeping
subjects in a low but insistent voice. No case records are cited
to support these statements, however; and they appear, like
many others in hypnosis literature, to have been carried over
from one textbook to another without critical evaluation. In
a recent study Theodore X. Barber 1 found considerable similar-
ity between subjects' compliance with suggestions given dur-
ing sleep and their reactions to ordinary hypnotic techniques.
Since Barber had asked them for permission to enter their
rooms at night and talk to them in their sleep, however, it is
reasonable to assume that most if not all of them perceived
that trance induction was his purpose. They cannot therefore
be regarded as truly naive sleeping subjects. Casual experi-
mentation by the present writer has failed to demonstrate the
feasibility of hypnotizing naive sleepers. The sample con-
sisted of only four subjects, three of whom awakened to ask
belligerently what was going on. The fourth just continued to
sleep.
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It is frequently possible for a therapist to perform hypnosis
with the patient unaware. Advising the patient to relax, sug-
gesting that he would be more comfortable with his eyes
closed, and so on, the practitioner may induce a deep level of
trance in a relatively brief time without ever using the term
hypnosis. Even though the subject has not explicitly con-
sented to be hypnotized, however, his relationship to the hyp-
notist, here a man of reputation and prestige, is one of trust
and confidence, of justifiably anticipated help.
Observers of hypnotic demonstrations may spontaneously
enter trance. One of my own psychotherapy patients has re-
ported that she went into a trance while watching me demon-
strate hypnotic phenomena on television. This spontaneous
hypnosis occurred despite the fact that the patient was in the
company of friends and it was therefore a source of embar-
rassment to her. But here again we are dealing with a sub-
ject in sympathy with the purposes of the hypnotist and one
who feels himself to be in a safe situation. It has been noted
clinically that persons with negative attitudes about hypnosis
are not susceptible to spontaneous trance.
The Subject Antagonistic. In experiments conducted by
Wells,29 Brenman,8 and Watkins,25 subjects making an effort
to resist trance induction were unable to fight it off. Space
does not permit a full review of these experiments here, but in
all three the subject had had previous trance experiences
with the hypnotist, which, we may assume, initiated a positive
relationship between subject and hypnotist. The subject was
instructed to resist hypnosis, but in the context of partici-
pating in an experiment to test this issue. It seems possible
that his response was one of compliance with a supposed im-
plicit desire on the part of the experimenter that he collabo-
rate in demonstrating that trance can be induced in the face
of resistance. The demand characteristics of the situa-
tion�those influencing the subject to partake of the experi-
menter's purposes�may have been such that his prescribed
attitude of overt resistance was unable to prevail over the more
fundamental attitude of cooperation in an experiment to show
that trance can be brought on against a subject's will.
Orne 18 has shown that the demand characteristics of an
experimental situation may greatly influence a subject's hyp-
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notic behavior. It is clear that at some level any cooperative
subject wishes an experiment to "work out," wishes to help
fulfill the experimenter's expectations. If he grasps the pur-
pose of the experiment or the bias of the experimenter, he is
disposed toward producing behavior which will confirm the ex-
perimenter's hypothesis. This is particularly true in a hyp-
notic relationship.
We are led to the conclusion that the many apparent cases
of hypnosis without the subject's awareness or consent all
seem to have depended upon a positive relationship between
subject and hypnotist. The most favorable situation is one in
which the subject expects to derive benefit from his associa-
tion with the hypnotist and trusts in the hypnotist and his
ability to help. This would not be the situation in an interro-
gation wherein the hypnotist is seeking to extract informa-
tion which the subject wants to withhold. The possibility of
using hypnosis would therefore seem to depend on success in
the slow process of nurturing a positive relationship with the
interrogee or in perpetrating some kind of trickery.
Obedience in Trance
Assuming that an interrogator has circumvented these
problems and hypnotized a subject who wants to withhold in-
formation, to what extent might the subject retain control
of his secrets even in deep trance? This is an area where
wide disagreements prevail among authorities and where ex-
perimental evidence is highly contradictory. Young," for ex-
ample, reports that subjects resist specific hypnotic sugges-
tions if they have decided in advance to do so, while Wells 28 re-
ports that none of his subjects were able to resist a prear-
ranged unacceptable command or indeed any other.
Most work on this problem has focused on the more specific
question of whether a person can be induced under hypnosis
to commit some antisocial or self-destructive act. Supporting
the negative view is the classic experiment by Janet," who
asked a deeply hypnotized female to commit several murders
before a distinguished group of judges and magistrates, stab-
bing some victims with rubber daggers and poisoning others
with sugar tablets. She did all this without hesitation. As
the company dispersed, however, she was left in the charge of
some young assistants, who took a notion to end the experi-
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ments on a lighter note. When they told her that she was
now alone and would undress she promptly awakened. The
murders were play-acted, the undressing would have been real;
and the subject had no difficulty discerning the difference.
Wells,29 on the other hand, caused a subject to commit the
post-hypnotic theft of a dollar bill from the hypnotist's coat.
The subject was unaware of his action and denied vehemently
that he had stolen the money. Wells argues that other fail-
ures to compel such acts do not disprove the possibility of do-
ing it, whereas even one success demonstrates that it can be
done. Schneck and Watkins, also, cite evidence that behavior
ordinarily constituting a crime can be produced by hypnosis.
Schneck 22 inadvertently caused a soldier to desert his duty in
order to carry out a suggestion for post-hypnotic action.
Watkins 24 induced a soldier to strike a superior officer by sug-
gesting that the officer was a Japanese soldier, and he ob-
tained from a hypnotized WAC some information classified
"secret" which she had previously told him she would not re-
veal.
Although these demonstrations appear convincing, there
are deficiencies in their experimental conditions. Since both
Schneck and Watkins were Army officers, the offenses com-
mitted could not possibly result in any serious damage. At
some level, the subjects must have been aware of this. This
same reasoning applies in experiments requiring a subject to
hurl acid at a research assistant or pick up a poisonous snake:
the participants are protected by invisible glass, a harmless
snake is substituted for the poisonous one, and so forth. The
situations are clearly experimental and the hypnotist who re-
quests the homicidal or self-destructive behavior is known to
the subject as a reputable man.
From real life there are a fair number of cases on record
dating before 1900, particularly among the German-speaking
peoples, claiming hypnotically induced criminal behavior,
mostly sex offenses. It is hard to evaluate these cases sci-
entifically at this late date; frequently it was relatives of the
subject, rather than the offender himself, that charged hyp-
notic influence. Within recent years, however, three docu-
mented cases in which hypnosis is said to have played a role
in criminal behavior have been reported�by Kroener,"
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Mayer," and Reiter.2' These three cases have a common ele-
ment: in each a dissatisfied person found gratification through
the individual who later became his seducing hypnotist. It
will be sufficient to examine one of them.
In the case reported by Kroener a young and sensitive un-
married male schoolteacher came under the hypnotic influ-
ence of a neighbor. Beginning with neighborly hospitality, the
neighbor built up the relationship to the point where he was
able by hypnotic suggestion to get the schoolteacher to give
or lend him small sums of money and goods. As a test of his
power he then implanted the post-hypnotic suggestion that
the schoolteacher would shoot himself in the left hand. The
schoolteacher actually did shoot himself in the left elbow, sub-
jectively perceiving the event as an accident. Finally the hyp-
notist caused his victim to confess to crimes that he himself
had committed. Throughout the entire affair, lasting five
years, the schoolteacher had no recollection of the hypnotic
sessions. He was convicted on the basis of his post-hypnotic
confession, but through a chance remark began to suspect
the nature of his relationship with his neighbor. After many
appeals, he was recommended for examination to Kroener,
who eventually uncovered the true course of events by re-
hypnotizing him and causing him to remember the hypnotic
experiences with his neighbor.
It is evident that a case like this offers little encouragement
to the interrogator hoping to extract secrets by hypnosis.
When the relationship between two individuals is marked by
intense feelings and a strong tendency in one to comply with
whatever requests are made of him by the other, it is in fact
hardly necessary to invoke hypnosis to explain the resultant
behavior. In the interrogation setting this emotional relation-
ship of subject to hypnotist is not likely to exist.
Accuracy and Veracity
Supposing, however, that an interrogee has been hypnotized
and induced to divulge information: how correct is this in-
formation likely to be?
Accuracy in Recall. A great deal has been written, espe-
cially in the press, about the perfect memory and unfailing ac-
curacy of recall people display in hypnosis. Statements have
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frequently been made about their ability to recall anything
that has happened to them even while infants, and according
to some even prior to birth.12 Hypnotic age-regression is a
mechanism frequently used for this purpose. The subject is
"taken back" to, say, the age of six. He begins to act, talk, and
to some extent think in the manner of a six-year-old. He hal-
lucinates the appropriate environment and gives details about
people sitting next to him in school, his teacher's name, the
color of the walls, and so on. His actions are exceedingly con-
vincing, and it has frequently been assumed that an actual
regression in many psychologic and physiologic age compo-
nents to the suggested year takes place.
There is little evidence for the genuineness of hypnotic age-
regression, even though there have been a number of studies,
mostly based on single cases. Young 11 demonstrated that per-
formance on intelligence tests was not appropriate to the sug-
gested age. Unhypnotized control subjects were more suc-
cessful than subjects under deep hypnosis in simulating their
age. Using the Rorschach test and drawings in a study of
hypnotic age-regression in ten subjects, Orne 17 demonstrated
that while some regressive changes appeared, non-regressive
elements were also present, and changes toward regression
showed no consistency from subject to subject. The drawings
did not resemble the work of six-year-olds, being characterized
by Karen Machover as "sophisticated oversimplification."
Drawings actually done at the age of six by one subject were
available for comparison, and there was not even a superficial
resemblance. Subjects often gave with great conviction the
name of the wrong teacher, one they had had at a later age.
Studies by True and Stephenson,23 and McCranie, Crasilneck,
and Teter 15 failed to find in electroencephalograms taken dur-
ing hypnotic age-regression any change in the direction of a
childhood EEG. Similarly they report no increased heart
rate, as characteristic of infants, or other changes in electro-
cardiograph tracings.
Hypnotic Veracity. Considerably less data is available
on the veracity of information furnished in trance. I have
been able to find in the professional literature only one
author�Beigel 4' 5�who deals with prevarication under hyp-
nosis. He writes in a personal communication that people
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may lie, refuse to answer, or wake up when asked direct ques-
tions on sensitive matters. Our own clinical work has amply
convinced us that hypnotized subjects are capable of lying
when they have reason to do so.
It is therefore possible that information obtained from an
interrogee by hypnosis would be either deliberate prevarica-
tion or an unintentional confusion of fantasy and reality.
The correctness of any information so obtained would thus
have to be established by independent criteria.
Prophylactic Hypnosis
Three suggestions have been made by Estabrooks 9 for what
might be called defensive uses of hypnosis. He proposed that
it might be used to make personnel hypnosis-proof on capture
by the enemy, to induce in them amnesia for sensitive ma-
terial in the event of capture, or to help them resist stress,
particularly pain, in captivity.
As we have seen, there is little or no evidence that trance
can be induced against a person's wishes. Proofing personnel
against hypnosis attempts which they could successfully re-
sist without this conditioning would seem a practice of doubt-
ful utility. The hypnosis undertaken in order to suggest that
they resist trance induction upon capture might in fact pos-
sibly precondition them to susceptibility. It might be better
simply to warn them of the techniques of trance induction
and inform them that they can prevent it.
Providing by hypnotic suggestion for amnesia upon capture
is an intriguing idea, but here again we encounter technical
problems. It is well known that the effectiveness and perma-
nence of hypnotic suggestion is directly related to the con-
crete definition of a specific task. General suggestions such
as blanket amnesia have unpredictable effects even on very
good subjects. Moreover, even if it would work to suggest that
a soldier remember only his name, rank, and serial number,
there is the serious question whether this might deprive him
of information vital to him during captivity. It would arti-
ficially induce a state of severe psychopathology, which if
adaptive to his situation in some respects might be extremely
disturbing in others. The impoverishment of his knowledge
and his loss of ego-control would give his interrogator a very
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effective means of controlling him, possibly leading to a quasi-
therapeutic relationship in which the captive would turn to
the interrogator for "treatment" to relieve his distress.
This method has other serious drawbacks: offensive action,
such as attempts to escape or schemes for cooperation among
prisoners to obstruct interrogation, would be severely handi-
capped. It could be far safer to rely on the soldier's own ego-
control to decide what information ought not to be re-
vealed to an enemy than to make this decision for him in ad-
vance by hypnotic means.
Conditioning individuals not to feel stress, particularly pain,
would seem to hold promise of protecting them as captives sub-
ject to interrogation. Laboratory experiments have demon-
strated that although subjects under hypnotic analgesia con-
tinue to respond physiologically much as they do in the wak-
ing state, they do not report experiencing pain. It appears
that hypnosis works best in situations of high anxiety and
probably has its major effect on the anxiety component of
pain.
Such a procedure might be undertaken in particular in-
stances, but probably is not feasible as general practice. Only
a relatively small number of individuals will enter a suffi-
ciently deep somnambulistic state to produce profound anal-
gesia. Furthermore, though major surgery has been per-
formed under hypnosis proper, I am unaware that major surgi-
cal procedure has ever been undertaken during post-hypnot-
ically induced analgesia. In some individuals, I am sure, this
would be possible, but clinicians working with hypnosis gen-
erally believe that the hypnotic state itself is more effective
than post-hypnotic inductions.
If this should be tried, what type of suggestion should the
subject be given? The post-hypnotic suppression of all pain
might be dangerous to the individual, since pain serves as a
physiological warning signal; and it is doubtful that such a
blanket suggestion would be effective anyway. It would be
bet ter to focus the suggestion on inability to feel pain at the
hands of captors. Even this suggestion, however, would rap-
idly break down if the captured subject felt any pain at all,
as is likely in all but a very few instances. The soldier who
had been taught to rely on hypnosis as an analgesic and
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found it ineffective in certain situations might be considerably
worse off than if he had not trusted this device in the first
place.
Pseudo-Hypnosis as Interrogation Aid
People do undergo physical and mental suffering to with-
hold information from an interrogator. Without attempting
to discuss the psychodynamics of capture and interroga-
tion�which obviously will vary widely from captive to cap-
tive�we would hazard the suggestion that at the core of their
resistance is the sense of extreme guilt which would be ac-
tivated by collaboration with the enemy while still in control
of one's faculties. The alleviation of this sense of guilt, there-
fore, might be extremely useful to the interrogator. Both the
hypnotic and the hypnoidal states induced by certain drugs
are popularly viewed as ones in which a person is no longer
master of his fate. This fact suggests the possibility that the
hypnotic situation, rather than hypnosis itself, could be used
to relieve a person of any sense of guilt for his behavior, giv-
ing him the notion that he is helpless to prevent his manipula-
tion by the interrogator.
A captive's anxiety could be heightened, for example, by
rumors that the interrogator possesses semi-magical tech-
niques of extracting information. A group of collaborating
captives could verify that interrogees lose all control over
their actions, and so on. After such preliminary condition-
ing, a "trance" could be induced with drugs in a setting de-
scribed by Orne 19 as the "magic room," where a number of
devices would be used to convince the subject that he' is re-
sponding to suggestions. For instance, a concealed diathermy
machine could warm up his hand just as he receives the sug-
gestion that his hand is growing warmer. Or it might� be
suggested to him that when he wakes up a cigarette will taste
bitter, it having been arranged that any cigarettes available
to him would indeed have a slight but noticeably bitter taste.
With ingenuity a large variety of suggestions can be made to
come true by means unknown to the subject. Occasionally
these manipulations would probably elicit some form of� trance
phenomenon, but the crucial thing would be the situation, not
the incidental hypnotic state. The individual could le-
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gitixnately renounce responsibility for divulging information,
much as if he had done it in delirium.
The correctness of information so obtained, however, would
be no surer than that of information obtained from hypnosis
itself. Further, the interrogator would have to act in his
relationship with the captive as though he were confident that
it was all correct, except as he could detect falsehoods with
certainty. Any doubt he betrayed would increase the sub-
ject's feeling of control and so decrease the effectiveness of
the hypnotic situation. Cross-examination, upon which much
of his Success in deriving accurate information ordinarily de-
pends, would be denied him. Once the prisoner loses his feel-
ing of responsibility for his behavior, he also is relieved of re-
sponsibility for giving accurate and pertinent information.
An effective defense against this hypnotic situation, as
against hypnosis, could be provided by raising the level of
sophistication of those who might be exposed to it. Even one
or two lectures warning them of possible devices to trick them
into believing themselves hypnotized could show them that
people cannot be hypnotized against their will and cannot be
compelled even under hypnosis to tell the truth or to follow
suggestions really contrary to their beliefs.
Findings
In summary, it appears extremely doubtful that trance can
be induced in resistant subjects. It may be possible to hyp-
notize a person without his being aware of it, but this would
require a positive relationship between hypnotist and subject
not likely to be found in the interrogation setting. Disre-
garding these difficulties, it is doubtful that proscribed be-
havior can be induced against the subject's wishes, though we
must admit that crucial experiments to resolve this question
have not yet been performed. The evidence also indicates that
information obtained during hypnosis need not be accurate
and may in fact contain untruths, despite hypnotic sugges-
tions to the contrary.
Hypnosis as a prophylaxis against interrogation, whether
to prevent hypnosis by captors, to condition against stress
and pain, or to create amnesia for sensitive information, would
function as an artificial repressive mechanism with the seri-
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ous disadvantage of diminishing the captive's mastery of the
situation. Finally, the hypnotic situation, rather than hyp-
nosis itself, seems likely to be a more effective instrument in
interrogation.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Barber, T. X. Hypnosis as perceptual-cognitive restructuring: III.
From somnambulism to autohypnosis. J. Psychol., 1957, 44, 299-
304.
2. Barker, W., and Burgwin, S. Brain wave patterns accompanying
changes in sleep and wakefulness during hypnosis. Psychosom.
Med., 1948, 10, 317-326.
3. Bass, M. J. Differentiation of hypnotic trance from normal sleep.
Exper. Psychol., 1931, 14, 382-399.
4. Beigel, H. C. Prevarication under hypnosis. J. din. exp. Hypnosis,
1933, 1, 32-40.
5. Beigel, H. C. The problem of prevarication in marriage counseling.
Marriage and Family Living, 1953, 15, 332-337.
6. Boring, E. G. A history of experimental psychology. New York:
Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1950.
7. Braid, J. Neurohypnology. London: George Redway, 1899.
8. Brenman, M. Experiments in the hypnotic production of anti-
social and self-injurious behavior. Psychiatry, 1942, 5, 49-61.
9. Estabrooks, G. H. Hypnotism. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.,
Inc., 1943.
10. Hull, C. Hypnosis and suggestibility. New York: Appleton-Cen-
tury-Crofts, 1933.
11. Janet, P. Psychological healing; a historical and clinical study.
London: George Allen & Unwin, 1925.
12. Kline, M. V. A scientific report on "the search for Bridey Murphy."
New York: Julian Press, 1956.
13. Kroener, J. Hypnotism and crime. Trans. J. Cohen. Wiltshire,
Hollywood, 1957.
14. Mayer, L. Das verbrechen in hypnose. Munchen: J. F. Lehman,
1937.
15. McCranie, E. J., Crasilneck, H. B., and Teter, H. R. The EEG in
hypnotic age regression. Psychiat. Quart., 1955, 29, 85-88.
16. Nevsky, M. P. Bioelectrical activity of the brain in hypnotic sleep.
Neuropatologia: psikhiatriia, 1954, 54, 26-32.
17. Orne, M. T. The mechanisms of hypnotic age regression: an ex-
perimental study. J. abnorm. soc. Psychol., 1951, 46, 213-225.
18. Orne, M. T. The nature of hypnosis: artifact and essence. J.
abnorm. soc. Psychol., 1959, 58, 277-299.
19. Orne, M. T. Hypnotically induced hallucinations. A. A. A. S. sym-
posium on hallucinations, December, 1958, in press.
20. Pavlov, I. P. The identity of inhibition with sleep and hypnosis.
Science Monthly, 1923, 17, 603-608.
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21. Reiter, P. J. Antisocial or criminal acts and hypnosis: a case
study. Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1958.
22. Schneck, J. M. A military offense induced by hypnosis. J. Nery
ment. Dis., 1947, 106, 186-189.
23. True, R. M., and Stephenson, C. W. Controlled experiments corre-
lating electroencephalogram, pulse, and plantar reflexes with
hypnotic age regression and induced emotional states. Person-
ality, 1951, 1, 252-263.
24. Watkins, J. G. Antisocial compulsions induced under hypnotic
trance. J. abnorm. soc. Psychol., 1947, 42, 256-259.
25. Watkins, J. G. A case of hypnotic trance induced in a resistant
subject in spite of active opposition. Brit. J. Med. Hypnotism,
1941, 2, 26-31.
26. Welch, L. A behavioristic explanation of the mechanism of sug-
gestion and hypnosis. J. abnorm. soc. Psychol., 1947, 42, 359-364.
27. Wells, W. R. Experiments in "waking hypnosis" for instructional
purposes. J. abnorm. soc. Psychol., 1923, 18, 239-404.
28. Wells, W. R. Ability to resist artificially induced dissociation. J.
abnorm. Psychol., 1940, 35, 261-272.
29. Wells, W. R. Experiments in the hypnotic production of crime.
J. Psychol., 1941, 11, 63-102.
30. Young, P. C. Is rapport an essential characteristic of hypnosis?
J. abnorm. soc. Psychol., 1927, 22, 130-139.
31. Young, P. C. Hypnotic regression�fact or artifact? J. abnorm.
soc. Psychol., no, 35, 273-278.
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GGW-H3ENT-IA-P-Ne1eR1
CLASSIFIED LISTING OF ARTICLES
IN VOLUME III
History
World War I
The Early Development of Communications Intelli-
gence Wilhelm F. Flicke III 1, p. 99
World War II
Agent Radio Operation During World War II
Scudder Georgia III 1, p. 125
William J. Donovan and the National Security
Allen W. Dulles III 3, p. 71
The Lost Keys to El Alamein . Wilhelm F. Flicke III 4, p. 73
The Alamo Scouts Eustace E. Nabbie III 4, p. 87
Organization and Management
Administration, Support, Training
Soviet Intelligence Training . Sherman W. Flemer
Coordination, Guidance, Controls
The Guiding of Intelligence Collection
William P. Bundy
Spy at Your Service, Sir Lowell M. Dunleigh
Acquisition of Information
III 2, p. 1
III 2, p. 39
III 1, p. 93
III 1, p. 37
III 2, p. 13
III 2, p. 61
III 2, p. 81
General
Techniques of Domestic Intelligence Collection
Anthony F. Czajkowski III 1, p. 69
Political
Intelligence Gathering in an Unlettered Land
Francis Hollyman III 3, p. 15
Scientific and Technical
Policing a Nuclear Test Ban Herbert Scoville, Jr. III 1, p. 1
Processing and Documentation
On Processing Intelligence Information .. Paul A. Borel HI 1, p. 25
Developments in Air Targeting: Data Handling Tech-
niques Outten J. Clinnard III 2, p. 95
-G01414DENTIAL-74449FeRN� 65
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CONFIDENTIAL/NOFORN Articles In Vol. III
Research and Analysis
Economic
The Assessment of Communist Economic Penetra-
tion Edward L. Allen
Military
The Monitoring of War Indicators
Thomas J. Patton
K C. Duncan
Geographic Intelligence
III 1, P. 15
III 2, p. 31
III 1, p. 55
III 2, p. 17
II 2, p. 47
III 3, p. 53
III 4, p. 43
III 4, p. 81
III 1, p. 85
III 2, p. 73
III 4, p. 59
III 3, p. 23
III 3, p. 45
III 4, p. 49
III 2, p. 105
III 3, p. 1
III 4, p. 1
III 4, p. 31
III 3, p. 85
III 4, p. 114
III 4, p. 93
III 1, p. 135
III 4, p. 97
III 4, p. 95
III 4, p. 97
Developments in Air Targeting: Progress and Future
Prospects Kenneth T. Johnson
The Calculation of Soviet Helicopter Performance
Theodore A. George
Terrain Intelligence for the Pentomic Army
Clifton A. Blackburn, Jr.
Evaluation, Estimates, Application to Policy
History's Role in Intelligence Estimating
Cyrus H. Peake
The Assessment of Graphology
Graphological Assessment in Action
James Van Stappen
Covert Operations
The Shorthand of Experience Thomas F. Elzweig
The Life and Work of Stephan Haller
Patrick R. Beller
Colonel Abel's Assistant W W. Rocafort
Experience with Types of Agent Motivation
Paul Tollius
Intelligence as Foundation for Policy .. Robert Cutler
Tools and Techniques
Handwriting Analysis as an Assessment Aid
Keith Laycock
E. A. Rundquist
Books Reviewed
Theory and Doctrine
Cheng Chieh-min, A Study of Military Intelligence
Yudin, The Top-Secret Label
Military Intelligence: World War II
Hartmann, Spillet mu Norge
Ind, Allied Intelligence Bureau
Roskill, The Secret Capture
Stead, Second Bureau
Strutton and Pearson, The Secret Invaders
66 CONFIDENTIAL/NOFORN
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Articles In Vol. III CONFIDENTIAL/NOFORN
Military Intelligence: World War I
Tuchman, The Zimmermann Telegram III 1, p. 133
Wolff, In Flanders Fields III 2, P. 134
The American Civil War
Breihan, Quantrill and His Civil War Guerrillas III 4, p. 106
Bulloch, The Secret Service of the Confederate
States in Europe III 4, p. 109
Stern, Secret Missions of the Civil War III 4, p. 105
Processes and Techniques
George, Propaganda Analysis III 3, p. 93
Hall, The Silent Language III 3, p. 90
Harrison, Suspect Documents III 2, p. 133
Rogge, Why Men Confess III 3, p. 87
Espionage and Counterespionage
Burt, Commander Burt of Scotland Yard III 4, p. 113
Cookridge, Sisters of Delilah III 4, p. 102
Eppler, Rommel Ruft Kairo III 3, p. 91
Langelaan, Knights of the Floating Silk III 4, P. 101
Morros, My Ten Years as a Counter-Spy III 3, p. 63
Mosley, The Cat and the Mice III 2, p. 139
Wynne, Count Five and Die III 3, p. 67
Political and Paramilitary Operations
Dallin, Rodionov III 4, p. 113
Harrison, World Within III 4, p. 100
Henderson, Man Hunt in Kenya III 1, p. 137
Toye, The Springing Tiger III 4, p. 99
Young, The House of Secrets III 3, p. 66
Resistance
Aron, Histoire de la Liberation de la France III 4, p. 102
Seth, For My Name's Sake III 2, p. 140
Evasion and Escape
Chrisp, The Tunnelers of Sandborstal III 4, p. 111
Lodwick, Bid the Soldiers Shoot III 4, p. 112
Urquhart, Great True Escape Stories III 2, p. 140
Williams, Great Escape Stories III 2, p. 140
CONFIDENTIAL/NOFORN 67
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FROM THE CIA CORNERSTONE CEREMONIES
America's fundamental aspiration is the preservation of
peace. To this end we seek to develop policies and arrange-
ments to make the peace both permanent and just. This can
be done only on the basis of required information.
In war nothing is more important to a commander than
the facts concerning the strength, dispositions and intention
of his opponent, and the� proper interpretation of those facts.
In peacetime the necessary facts are of a different nature.
They deal with conditions, resources, requirements and atti-
tudes prevailing in the world. They are essential to the de-
velopment of policy to further our long term national security
and best interests. To provide information of this kind is the
task of the organization of which you are a part.
No task could be more important.
Upon the quality of your work depends in large measure
the success of our effort to further the nation's position in the
international scene.
By its very nature the work of this agency demands of its
members the highest order of dedication, ability, trustworthi-
ness and selflessness�to say nothing of the finest type of
courage, whenever needed. Success cannot be advertised;
failure cannot be2 explained. In the work of intelligence, he-
roes are undecorated and unsung, often even among their own
fraternity, Their inspiration is rooted in patriotism�their
reward can be little except the conviction that they are per-
forming a unique and indispensable service for their country,
and the knowledge that America needs and appreciates their
efforts. I assure you this is indeed true.
The reputation of your organization for quality, and excel-
lence, under the leadership of your Director, Mr. Allen Dulles,
is a proud one.
.13ecause I deeply believe these things, I deem it a great
privilege to participate in this ceremony of corner-stone lay-
ing for the national headquarters of the Central Intelligence
Agency. , On this spot will rise a beautiful and useful structure.
IVIay endure, to serve the cause of peace.
�DWIGHT a. EISENHOWER
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The laying of this cornerstone marks an important stage in
the growth of the Central Intelligence Agency. We will soon
have a home of our own, in these inspiring surroundings high
above the Potomac.
The Agency was established 12 years ago by the same Act of
Congress which created the National Security Council and
the Department of Defense. Thus the Central Intelligence
Agency was recognized as one of the important elements in
our national security structure.
World War II and its aftermath and the international com-
munist threat had already brought home to us that our vital
interests were at stake in places as distant as Korea and Laos,
in Africa and the Islands of the Pacific, as well as in this
Hemisphere and in Europe.
Since then, our country's ever expanding responsibilities
have increased the need for better information from the four
corners of the earth and for sound analysis of that informa-
tion.
The law creating the Agency was voted by a Congress in
which there was a Republican majority. It was sponsored and
signed by a Democratic President. For the past crucial years
it has had the unfailing support of a Republican President
and a Democratic Congress.
Facts have no politics.
Our charter, in the carefully drafted provisions of the Na-
tional Security Act, has undergone no change. It provides
that, under the direction of the President and of the National
Security Council, the Agency shall correlate and evaluate in-
telligence relating to the national security, and perform such
additional services of common concern in this field as the Na-
tional Security Council may direct.
Wisely this legislation provides that we should have no do-
mestic internal security functions. Yet the scope of the juris-
diction granted is ample. Our work is broad and cornprehen-
sive enough to enlist the interest and to inspire the devotion
of those who choose, and are chosen, to enter upon it.
Laws can create agencies of government; they cannot make
them function. Only the high purpose and dedication of all
serving them can weld them into effective instruments for
our national security.
70
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In this work of intelligence we must not forget that human
beings are largely the creatures of their beliefs. As individuals
we tend instinctively, and sometimes wistfully, to become at-
tached to causes, to theories, to solutions.
If they be sound and enduring, based on the deep moral
strivings of man and the highest conception of our national
interests, let us cling to them. But in the field of our rela-
tions with our fellowmen abroad, let us assure ourselves,
through accurate intelligence, that our attachments to poli-
cies are soundly based.
It is the particular duty of this Agency to help perform
this function in a world where change is the rule rather than
the exception. This task must be carried out fearlessly, with-
out warping to meet our prejudices or our predilections or
even the tenets of existing policy.
As we build a new edifice in which to house, to concentrate
and coordinate our work, we must rededicate ourselves to this
high purpose.
The guiding motto to be inscribed on the face of this build-
Mg will be the words taken from the Gospel according to Si.
John: "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make
you free."
The President of the United States has graciously consento
to lay the cornerstone.
�ALLEN W. DULLES
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The editors particularly invite readers to offer
suitable manuscripts based on their own work or
experiences. These need not be ambitious pieces, but
may for example simply describe some not well known
methodology, suggest or tell of procedural innova-
tions, discuss successes or frustrations in getting
efficient working relationships along some production
� line, show the complexity of an administrative process
peculiar to intelligence, or supply some bit of intelli-
gence history that should be recorded. The views of
intelligence officers about the problems they live with
are likely to be more useful than the constructions of
those who theorize about them.
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Manifest characteristics of cli-
max in scientific research which
may betray areas of future
breakthrough.
THE SYMPTOMS OF SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGH
Scientific intelligence has the responsibility for guarding
this country from scientific or technological surprise, and to
that end tries within practical limits to maintain constant
surveillance over all foreign research and development. The
evaluation of what is actually being done or published in a
scientific field is certainly the best basis for detecting the
imminence of a breakthrough there. But it is clearly impos-
sible to keep all the many facets of modern scientific research
under constant surveillance, and intelligence analysts must
in practice confine their work to the major fields of obvious
importance. A significant advance in some obscure field of
basic science may thus go unrecognized until its application
brings it to the forefront of world attention.
There may be a way, however, to mount a less exhaustive
watch which would have some chance of uncovering research
of potential breakthrough caliber even in obscure fields. If we
can identify a group of common factors�general attributes of
the research, of the scientists involved, of the environ-
ment�which characteristically tend to be associated with sci-
entific breakthrough, we could set these up as tentative
criteria for areas in which breakthrough may be impending.
Research seeking to identify such common factors was done
at Teachers College, Columbia University, in 1957-58 by six
Ph.D. candidates in the physical and natural sciences. This
article summarizes the results of their study.'
Methodology
The researchers selected for study certain breakthroughs
in four fields�biology, medicine, chemistry, and phys-
1 Entitled A Study of Patterns Which Have Characterized Certain
Major Scientific Breakthroughs of the Twentieth Century, by Lau-
rence J. Grassman, 0.S.B., Eugene V. Petrik, John H. Rosengren,
Mrs. Esther B. Sparberg, Herbert H. Stewart, and the author.
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The Symptoms Of Scientific Breakthrough
ics�which came to fruition during the twentieth century and
have had a marked effect upon western culture. From lists
of major scientific discoveries, some assembled from reference
works and some submitted by members of a panel of 15 ex-
pert consultants, they made their final selection with an eye
both to the apparent importance of the discoveries and to the
availability of detailed information on them. The four break-
throughs selected were the following: relativity and the
quantum theory; atomic energy; chemotherapy; and plant
auxins.
The first of these comprised three major theoretical ad-
vances, Max Planck's quantum theory in 1900 and Einstein's
special and general theories of relativity in 1905 and 1915.
The others were all characterized by successful experimenta-
tion. The atomic energy breakthrough was viewed as the re-
sult of the concentrated experimental work done by some 30
scientists between 1939, when Hahn and Strassman identified
barium among the products of neutron-bombarded uranium,
and 1942, when Enrico Fermi and others working under Ar-
thur Compton constructed the first chain-reacting pile.
Chemotherapy began with Ehrlich's discovery of salvarsan in
1910, and 14 scientists figure prominently in its development
up through Waksman's production of streptomycin in 1944.
The discovery of the first plant auxin�growth hormone�was
the work of one young botanist, Frits Went, in 1926. Alto-
gether, 50 contributions by 47 different scientists can be dis-
tinguished in these four breakthroughs.
The case histories of these contributions were reconstructed
by studying the scientific papers reporting them, by examin-
ing published accounts, at first or second hand, of the cir-
cumstances surrounding them, by assembling biographical
and autobiographical material, and in some cases by corre-
sponding with the responsible scientists or their associates.
A description of the approach, techniques, and equipment used
in the course of a breakthrough development was supple-
mented by analyzing the scientific climate at the time, the
stream of scientific ideas which converged at the breakthrough
point, the public environment outside the scientific world,
the nature and vigor of support for the scientist in his� re-
search, and the personal characteristics and circumstances
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of the scientist. The fifty cases were then compared and their
common features identified and assembled into a pattern
which might have predictive value for use in intelligence.
The results, not startling to anyone well acquainted with
scientific activity, do constitute a methodical confirmation
and logical presentation of the characteristics of scientific ad-
vance, which may serve to dispel some popular misapprehen-
sions about scientists and their work. Since the case histories
were all taken from the Western world, some of their features
will not be applicable to other societies, notably the Soviet.
But refinement in dry-run and live application, with adjust-
ments where necessary to Communist conditions, might make
them a first step toward a predictive methodology. They can
be grouped for summary in categories�the general state of
affairs in science, the state of the particular scientific art, the
sociological environment, the attributes of the scientist, and
the immediate circumstances of the breakthrough.
The State of Scientific Affairs
The contributions to breakthrough were not made in isola-
tion from other progress, past and contemporary, in re-
lated�sometimes not obviously related�fields. The quantum
and relativity theories of the first two decades of this cen-
tury, with their widespread effects in all scientific fields, were
in particular one of the preconditions for the nuclear physics
breakthrough. Planck and Einstein, in turn, traced their own
ideas which flowered in these theories back through many sci-
entists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to their
foundation on Newtonian mechanics and optics. Fleming
owed his penicillin and Waksman his streptomycin to Ehrlich,
Koch, Pasteur, and ultimately Galen. Went found his auxin
with the help of Darwin, Loeb, Fitting, and others. The in-
terrelations among sciences and the cumulative nature of sci-
entific advance thus illustrated create one necessary condi-
tion for breakthrough�the free communication of scientific
information. Secrecy failed to retard the military applica-
tion of atomic energy only because the basic discoveries had
already been made in open collaboration by scientists of many
nations. New facts turned up by a scientist in one corner of
the world were subjected to scrutiny and verification in an-
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other, led to new questions asked of the universe in a third,
and stimulated new answers in a fourth.
A related circumstance notable particularly in the many
contributions to the achievement of nuclear energy release
and to the development of chemotherapy was the part played
by a corps of inconspicuous scientists and technicians con-
scientiously gathering and patiently checking data in a series
of unspectacular advances toward the goal. The scientists
who became famous all acknowledged their indebtedness to
the many who toiled in obscurity to make possible the
eventual giant stride. Another condition favoring break-
through, therefore, especially in experimental fields, is the
presence of a great army of scientific workers doing lesser jobs.
We shall discuss later the attributes of the breakthrough
scientist, but one of them seems universal and important
enough to include as a third element in the general state of
scientific activity: the scientists studied were clearly all men
driven strongly toward some goal, usually characterized by the
urge to reduce complexity to a unitary understanding of the
environment. The third general condition favoring break-
through is then the presence of inspired men devoting their
lives to a compelling scientific purpose.
The State of the Art
The breakthroughs were all made when the stage, so to
speak, was set for them, and in fact it is something of a truism
to say that a necessary condition for breakthrough is that the
state of the art be such as to provide some important un-
answered questions and a theoretical foundation, mathe-
matical tools, equipment, and techniques to answer them.
Viewed thus, the breakthroughs seem but the next logical
step in a series of lesser advances�the relativity theory, in
answer to Michelson-Morley's fruitless attempt to detect an
ether drag on light, going one step beyond Lorenz and Pain-
care, whose steps in turn led back to Maxwell and Faraday,
the fathers of field theory; the nuclear breakthrough reached
in logical progression from the first exploration of the new
worlds of radioactivity and the cathode ray tube, backed by
the quantum theory and Einstein's mass-energy equation;
the antibiotics developed by systematic experimentation; the
auxins found by application of newly developed techniques to
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the old problem of phototropism, once teleological explana-
tions no longer satisfied the scientist.
This logical quality in scientific advance has led some
schools of thought to say that a ready state of the art is not
only a necessary but a sufficient condition for breakthrough,
that an advance is inevitable when the time is ripe for it; and
these people quote Einstein to the effect that the special
theory of relativity would have been born about the time
it was even if he himself had not. Einstein, however, thought
that the same statement would not be true about the 1915
general theory of relativity; and the study of these selected
cases does not support the logical inevitability hypothesis. It
would have been more logical to arrive at the quantum theory
through an extension of Helmholtz' work than through
Planck's thermodynamics. The mathematical tools which
converted the special to the general theory of relativity had
been there, unused, before. The potential of penicillin lay
unrecognized for a dozen years. There is no logical reason
why the plant auxin could not have been isolated by Loeb or
Fitting, ten or twenty years before Went found it. The state
of the art made the breakthroughs possible and likely, but
did not bring them about.
The Sociological Environment
Scientific activity thrives or sickens according to the kind
of society in which it lives, and a generally thriving science is
of course a condition favoring breakthrough. The influence
of society is felt in science through education, facility of com-
munication, financial support, and moral support or stimulus.
These factors are examined with reference to the cases under
study and, more broadly, to their influence on twentieth-cen-
tury science as a whole.
Education. The nineteenth-century extension of education
to the middle classes, broadening the personnel base of scien-
tific activity, is reflected in the fact that almost all the 47 sci-
entists here studied came from the middle classes. The con-
tinued democratization which has now opened the universities
to all classes must be counted a principal factor in the geo-
metric progression of scientific advance in this century.
Communication. Easy communication among scientists we
established above as a condition favoring breakthrough. The
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proliferation of media for scientific communication in today's
society provides for this intercourse as never before. On the
other hand, national antagonisms and especially wars tend to
bind it with requirements for secrecy.
Support. The universities furnished not only the person-
nel base but also the facilities and financial support in most
of the cases studied, as in scientific activity generally during
this period. The funds came in large measure from govern-
ment, but the use of academic institutions as disbursing agents
left them free from specific controls. The current trend
toward industry-supported research was illustrated in some
measure in dye and drug firm help toward the development
of chemotherapeutic agents. Support from industry here,
like the support from government in the nuclear break-
through, was predicated on the development of applications
rather than aimed at basic research. An adequate level of
support for basic research appears to be independent of gen-
eral prosperity or depression; the poverty of the thirties seems
not to have retarded the mounting flood of scientific discov-
eries. Perhaps the surplus of resources available to science
in prosperity tends to be squandered in hectic technological
development.
Moral Stimulus. Basic science appears indifferent also to
popular acclaim or disapproval. Whether idolized as the hero
of technocracy in the twenties, hooted down as the creator
of depression in the thirties, or tolerated as an impractical
wizard in the forties, the scientist stuck to his laboratory,
stimulated by his own goals. An obstacle in public doubt and
suspicion was noted only in the early history of the work on
chemotherapy. The stimulus of national aims is generally
not strongly felt by the notoriously unnationalistic scientist,
but great causes may spur him on: the refugee scientists who
contributed to the nuclear breakthrough were moved not only
by their scientific purposes but by bitterness toward Naziism
and apprehension of a German breakthrough in atomic energy.
That social needs may provide a stimulus was evident in the
development of chemotherapy and in the work on plant
growth substances. And finally the great stimulator of so-
ciety, war, galvanizes science too, mostly toward technological
applications but with repercussions on basic research, as seen
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in the course of nuclear energy development. The cold war,
with its less urgent demand for immediate applications, is bet-
ter than hot war in this respect as in others.
In summary, we can say that sociological conditions favor-
ing breakthrough include the following: universal education;
absence of political inhibitions on scientific intercourse; ade-
quate funds administered by an agency, such as the universi-
ties, interested in knowledge for its own sake; compelling so-
cial needs, especially for medicine and biology; the stimulus
of international competition without a division of knowledge
into national compartments.
Attributes of the Scientists
The 47 scientists studied included three women, two in medi-
cine and one in atomic energy. Eighteen were born before
1900, the other 29 between 1900 and 1920. They were of many
nationalities. Statistical studies of available data on them
yield the following results.
Family Background. The chances are at least 2 to 1 and
probably as high as 4 to 1 that at least one of the break-
through scientist's parents was well educated. There is an
equal probability that the family was in moderate to com-
fortable financial circumstances or better. The chances may
be as high as 4 to 1 that the scientist was reared in a religious
atmosphere. Incomplete data make it 11 to 2 that he was
either the youngest or the oldest of the children but 18 to 1
against his being an only child. The boys born to the sci-
entists' parents outnumber the girls 3 to 2. The chances are
rather high against the family's having another scientist, but
perhaps 4 to 1 in favor of its having others engaged in some
profession.
Choice of Vocation. The great majority of the scientists
became interested in science early in life. Many engaged in
scientific hobbies and showed exceptional ability in childhood.
Although many received encouragement in the choice of this
vocation from their family, friends, relatives, associates, and
some from their teachers, the greatest single motivating fac-
tor was their own interest. In choosing their fields of re-
search, their own recognition of the need for development of
some field, the presentation of an opportunity, and the guid-
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ance of teachers seem to have been factors of equal impor-
tance.
Education. No significant pattern was found at the ele-
mentary school level, but the chances are 3 to 1 that the
scientist's undergraduate school was a large one, the same
that it was state-supported, and 2.5 to 1 that it was both.
More than half of them left their undergraduate school to
enter a large graduate institution. All 47 attended some grad-
uate institution; the chances are 9 to 1 that it was a large
one, better than 3 to 1 that it was state-supported, and al-
most 2 to 1 that it was both. Most of them had a Ph.D. or
the equivalent at the time of their major contribution. A
few were actively engaged in their doctorate research. At
least half had continued their research studies past the doc-
tor's degree.
Private Life. The scientists' marital status conformed to
the normal pattern for the population. Their economic sta-
tus followed the normal pattern for college graduates: most
of them were at least moderately well off. No significant pat-
tern was found either in their religious or in their political
affiliations. Most of them were reported to be in good health.
Some were active in athletic sports.
Age at Time of Contribution. This study confirmed other
evidence 2 that advances are made with the greatest frequency
by scientists between 30 and 39 years old. There is a sharp
decline from these to the next most prolific age group, 20 to
29 years old, which is then followed closely by those 40 to 49
years old. Eighty-six percent of the contributions were made
before the scientists reached their fiftieth birthday.
Professional Standing at Time of Contribution. The data
from these 50 cases yield a zero probability that a major sci-
entific advance should be made by anyone except a scientist
actively engaged in research. The probability is also almost
nil that a major advance should have been made by a scien-
tist whose talent was not recognized at least by his immedi-
ate colleagues or the person directing the research. The prob-
ability is extremely high that the scientist who made a major
See Harvey Christian Lehman, Age of Achievement (published for
the American Philosophical Society by the Princeton University
Press, 1953).
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discovery had already published the results of previous re-
search. The chances are better than 2 to 1 that he was in
fact an acknowledged authority in his field. The large ma-
jority of the breakthroughs were made while the scientists
were engaged in their regular research in their usual places
of employment. Almost all of them were connected with aca-
demic institutions; only about 10 percent were connected in
any way with industrial organizations, and only 2 percent
were working solely in industry.
Composite Type. The study thus gives a composite portrait
of the typical breakthrough scientist as a person who early in
life became interested in science and in adolescence had a
scientific hobby. He came from an educated, middle-income
family, where he led a normal childhood life, probably getting
more than average encouragement in his choice of science as
a career. He attended the usual elementary and secondary
schools but showed a decided preference for the larger gradu-
ate institutions, and more than likely he continued his studies
after receiving the doctorate. He became a professor or fel-
low actively engaged in research at an academic institution.
He published a number of scientific articles, and by the time
he made his major discovery he was well known, although still
probably only about 35 years old. He was fortunate in hav-
ing chosen a field ripe for major advances, and fortunate also
in his choice of associates. He seems to have led a normal
and reasonably happy life, having the intellectual rewards
of achievement in his chosen field and not much worry over
financial matters.
Circumstances of the Breakthrough
In an effort to arrive at a corresponding picture of the
typical breakthrough situation, the data from the 50 con-
tributions were analyzed and tabulated under two heads:
First, nature and origin of the contribution, whether theo-
retical or experimental, whether arising out of diffused ad-
vance along a broad front or from a concentrated push on a
narrow front, whether lying in the scientist's own field or not.
Second, organization and support of the research work,
whether done by an individual, working alone or with assist-
ants, or a team, by whom paid for, whether hindered by lack
of funds, whether controlled by the sponsor, whether helped
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or hindered by location, space, or equipment, and whether
helped or opposed by other scientists.
Nature and Origin. Six of the contributions were classi-
fied as pure theory, and the remainder divided about equally
between pure experiment and experiment plus theory. The
pure theories advanced science along a broad front, most of
the others on a narrow front. One, the penicillin spore on
Fleming's bacterial culture, could be classified as an accident
under propitious scientific circumstances. All the other ex-
periments which led to contributions were planned, many of
them to clarify the unexpected result of a previous experi-
ment. None of the contributions lay outside the scientist's
major field of interest or a closely related one.
Organization and Support. Team projects outranked in-
dividual research, with or without assistants, by a ratio of 3
to 1. About 76 percent of the scientists got all or part of their
financial support from academic institutions and private
foundations. About 14 percent got some government funds,
but only about 2 percent were entirely supported by the gov-
ernment. Industry helped finance about 8 percent, but en-
tirely supported only about 2 percent. Probably fewer than
10 percent of the scientists had what might be called gen-
erous budgets, but about 80 percent were receiving adequate
financial support. Another 8 to 10 percent produced their
contributions under very meager financial circumstances.
Little or no control was exercised over the funds made avail-
able.
Physical conditions for the research were in general ade-
quate. The favorable location of many of the laboratories
may have been an important factor. New techniques were a
factor in 50 percent of the contributions, new materials in
16 percent, and new or improved equipment, in conjunction
with new techniques or materials, in 10 percent. About 85
percent of the scientists, all those on whom this informa-
tion could be obtained, had the benefit of some kind of en-
couragement from other scientists. About 15 percent, before
World War I, were hindered by some form of professional op-
position. Scientific discoveries of the rank under discussion
are never ignored by other scientists.
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Patterns for Prediction
In assembling these common elements into patterns which
intelligence might use as criteria for indicating the break-
through potential of any particular piece of current research,
we should recognize that no one can predict a specific break-
through in the sense of anticipating its essential features.
Such a predictor would create the breakthrough itself. We
only hope to define the conditions that make some kind of
breakthrough likely in a given area, much as hurricane pre-
diction, although it cannot foresee a particular hurricane
arising at a precise point in space and time, can at least set
a twenty-four hour watch on any area where certain defined
conditions have been found. When the patterns which have
been associated with past scientific breakthroughs are found
to characterize any field of current scientific research, that
area should bear watching.
General State of Science. As we have seen, a major ad-
vance, irrespective of field, is most likely to be made when
there is free and untrammeled interchange of the accumu-
lated knowledge of all the sciences, and when the leaders of
science, each dedicated to his particular goals, are supported
by a large corps of ordinary scientific workers and technicians.
The State of the Art. If the experimental research in some
field appears to have reached a plateau whereon old data are
being refined and more precise measurements made but no
new evidence generated which cannot be explained satisfac-
torily by current theories, where the tools of the trade are
being fully used and are giving satisfactory results, and where
the scientists believe they know all the answers or at least
what to do to get the answers, no major advance is likely to
be in the offing. But when scientists in a field are developing
new experimental evidence that does not fit the old factual
patterns and cannot be explained satisfactorily by present
theories, and realize that they are dealing with new evidence,
not "experimental error," then the science will begin to ad-
vance to the extent that techniques, instruments, and the
materials required become available (sometimes from the de-
veloping state of another science), and a major advance is
likely as the next logical step in a series of lesser advances.
Characteristics of Current Research. No major advance will
be made in an area of science where little or no basic re-
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search is being done, and there is bound to be some correla-
tion between likelihood of breakthrough and quantity of cur-
rent research. Intelligence analysts can get some idea of the
amount of research being conducted in a given field by merely
counting the number of scientific papers produced. The fear
that many research papers may be unpublished seems not
to be well founded: the results of basic research seem always
to get published in some journal or other, since military se-
crecy, beginning to operate only after the breakthrough is al-
most accomplished, cannot even then dam all the flow. And
peripheral areas not readily recognized as pertinent often hold
the key to breakthrough.
Sheer quantity, of course, is no assurance of impending
breakthrough. The features common to the advances we have
studied show that research most conducive to scientific break-
through will be conducted by a group of scientists working
as a team in their major field of competency, with capable
technical support, to advance scientific knowledge along a nar-
row front. It will have adequate financial support free from
control, and moral support from other scientists. It is likely
to consist of experiments designed to clarify the unexpected
result of previous experiments, and to feature the use of new
techniques, new materials, improved equipment, or all three.
The Scientists. The most common and outstanding char-
acteristic of breakthrough scientists, we have seen, is youth
combined with experience in the field in question. The
scientist 30 to 39 years old will have had 10 to 20 years of
research experience. The one who makes a great discovery,
most common at this age, will almost invariably have worked
in it for some years during and after his study for the doc-
torate. He will have published articles concerning his past or
present research. He is likely to be attached to an academic
institution or non-profit foundation, a recognized authority
in his specialty. He almost invariably has attended large,
well-known academic institutions, at least for his doctorate
work.
As breakthrough scientists have not appeared suddenly
from total obscurity, so they have not come, either, from
the lower economic strata of society nor been freaks or even
infant prodigies. They have come from homes of moderate
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to comfortable financial circumstances, with one or perhaps
both parents well educated. They grew up without peculiari-
ties except an early interest in science. They lead the normal
family lives of well educated, upper-middle-class society.
Sociological Factors. Scientific advance is most likely when
society is in sympathy with scientists and their effort and does
not create artificial restraints or barriers to their inter-
communication or try to make them the mere providers of
comforts. The favorable economic situation is one in which
adequate funds can be made available for basic research�
not necessarily times of greatest prosperity, which may
be too busy developing previous discoveries to feel the need for
further basic work. Politically also, the need for basic re-
search must be recognized, whatever the circumstances
that bring it to attention. Some nations foster scientific re-
search in time of war (the United States) and some do not
(Nazi Germany). Some governments favor research in time of
depression and forget about it in time of prosperity. One
country (the USSR) incorporates it into its national phi-
losophy, and another (the United States) fosters it to keep
ahead of the other. Finally, scientific advance is most likely
when education is widespread and scientific education broad,
not a mere training of technicians for the development of
applications.
Check-List of Criteria
The five most critical of the conditions described above
might be listed in abbreviated form as a kind of prospector's
wand to be tested by intelligence analysts for its value in
locating a subsurface breakthrough in any current field:
1. New experimental evidence that cannot be satisfactorily
explained by present theories is being discovered at a
rapid rate.
2. New techniques, new materials, and new or improved
equipment are being brought to bear on an old problem.
3. A group of scientists is assembled to make concentrated
attack on the problem.
4. This group is composed of relatively young men well
qualified in this specific field.
5. The group has adequate technical and financial support
and professional encouragement.
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A unit of the Department of
Commerce now serves the scien-
tific public with an intelligence
community product.
PUBLICIZING SOVIET SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
Shortly after Sputnik I jarred the nation on 4 October
1957, people began looking for someone to blame; they rapidly
settled upon the Government and charged it with a total
neglect of Soviet scientific information, spreading the tall
tale that Soviet scientific periodicals were gathering dust
on the shelves of the Library of Congress. If the nation's
shock could indeed be laid to some fault of the Government,
that was the wrong charge, as previous articles in the Studies
have shown., Some half million pages of translations, con-
densations, and abstracts from Bloc�mostly Soviet�scientific
literature had been issued by the intelligence community
since the beginning of 1949.
The Government's fault, if there was one, with respect to
this literature, aside from its general disposition to encourage
public disrespect for propagandistic Soviet emanations, was
the lack of vigorous measures to acquaint the U.S. scientific
public with the published results of Soviet research. The in-
telligence community, however, for all that its responsibilities
lie in the opposite direction from publicity, had for its own
selfish reasons begun efforts to repair this omission even be-
fore the epochal earth satellite was launched. In 1958, thanks
to the cooperation of the Department of Commerce and the
Sputnik's lubrication of Congressional purse strings, these
efforts reached full fruition.
Intelligence Doffs the Veil
The history of the community's treatment of information
from Soviet scientific literature is one of progressive relaxa-
tion of restrictions, ending almost in an active peddling to the
public. Up through 1949 this material was stamped Restricted
1 George A. Pughe, "The Dust That Isn't There," II 2, P. 71; J. J. Bag-
nail, "The Exploitation of Russian Scientific Literature for Intelli-
gence Purposes," II 3, p. 45.
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when it was pure dead-pan translation, Secret when it was
tailored to meet intelligence requirements. It was not just
from force of habit that such stamps were applied: the So-
viet security laws of 1948 throttled the flow of Soviet scien-
tific periodicals to the United States until it reached an all-
time low of 69 titles in the winter of 1949-1950, fewer than
forty of them of intelligence value, while a full hundred un-
classified Soviet periodicals were unobtainable outside the
USSR.
In 1950, however, this trickle began the steady increase
which has brought it to its present flood tide, and the in-
telligence community now recognized the periodical litera-
ture as its major and indeed only encyclopedic source of in-
formation on Soviet scientific organization, activities, and per-
sonnel. The need for classification faded with the softening of
Soviet security practices, and it began to be more and more de-
sirable for community purposes to issue this information in
unclassified reports. The reasons an unrestricted availabil-
ity is desirable lie in the difficulties of scientific intelligence
production: the range of subjects that must be covered is all
out of proportion to the number of scientific hands available in
the community. A tremendous number of pin-point specialists
in numerous divergent disciplines are required to evaluate the
foreign data. Scientific intelligence, in fact, seems to be best
served when all U.S. scientists are well informed about re-
search conducted abroad, notably in the USSR, in parallel
with their own specializations.
The reports were therefore declassified in 1950, and in 1953
came the first diffident move to make them publicly available:
they were anonymously deposited in the Library of Congress,
the Department of Agriculture Library, the Crerar Library
in Chicago, and some others. This was a step in the right
direction, but the producers of scientific intelligence, whether
in Air Force, Army, Navy, AEC or CIA, still had difficulty
getting the translated data to all the many scientists and con-
tractors assisting them. Two or three years later the Na-
tional Science Foundation, acting for the U.S. scientific com-
munity, began to help: in cooperation with several learned
institutions it sponsored translations to be sold by subscrip-
tion at a modest fee. The National Institutes of Health began
a parallel program for medical translations, and together the
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two now offer more than 50 Soviet scientific periodicals trans-
lated from cover to cover. The intelligence community ad-
vised and assisted in setting up both these programs.
The OTS Solution
In the search for a more comprehensive solution a meeting
of the various processors and users of Soviet scientific data
was held under National Science Foundation auspices on 3
October 1957, one day before Sputnik I. The Department of
Commerce, which has the legal responsibility for disseminat-
ing technical information to the public but had no appropria-
tion to handle the massive quantities of Soviet scientific lit-
erature, was invited to send a representative. It was unan-
imously agreed at this meeting that the intelligence commu-
nity should make the material available, unclassified, to Com-
merce's Office of Technical Services, and that the Department
should request from the Congress the funds to publish and
disseminate it. In due course, with help from the Sputnik,
OTS got the money, and since 1958 U.S. scientists have at a
nominal cost had access through this channel to large volumes
of data translated from Bloc sources.
The OTS intake, in its second year now, is a huge and
growing one. The intelligence community's product has
grown seven-fold from its low in 1948 to nearly 150,000 pages
of abstracts and translations in 1959. To this flow contribute
eight principal intelligence components�Air Force's Air In-
formation Division in the Library of Congress and its Air Tech-
nical Intelligence Center, Army's ACSI, Corps of Engineers,
Signal Corps, and Ordnance Corps, the Atomic Energy Com-
mission, and CIA's Foreign Documents Division. Yet an-
other 50,000 pages are supplied from outside the community
by the translation programs of the NSF, the NIH, the Joint
Publications Research Service, the Consultant's Bureau, Per-
gamon Press, and others.
For controlling and researching this total of some 200,000
pages of translated Bloc studies arriving annually, OTS sells
a semi-monthly listing of "Technical Translations" done in
and out of government and the semi-monthly "Scientific In-
formation Report" produced by CIA, which presents the high-
lights of research published in nearly a thousand Sino-Soviet
Bloc periodicals. Complete tables of contents of Bloc periodicals
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Publicizing Soviet Scientific Research
are contained in the "Monthly Index of Russian Accessions"
and "Monthly Index of East European Accessions" available
at the Library of Congress and in the "Current List of Medi-
cal Literature," at the National Library of Medicine. Finally,
CIA still produces the venerable "Consolidated Translation
Survey," now in its eleventh year. Not generally available to
the public, to be sure, it is nevertheless unclassified and may
be sent to individual scientists when government needs are
thereby served.
The intelligence community, which has neither the func-
tion nor the funds to publish reports for the general public,
has thus in its own interest done the next best thing�
helped arrange and supported appropriations for others to
disseminate the information, making available all its unclassi-
fied production on a regular basis for public use.
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A historical object-lesson on
the consequences of letting ill-
considered intelligence assump-
tions determine a course of
action.
PORTUGUESE TIMOR: AN ESTIMATIVE FAILURE
The preparation of U.S. intelligence estimates has become
an organized and methodical process. In response to a change
in the international situation or in accordance with a more
or less regular schedule, an estimate is laid on by the USIB.
Terms of reference are circulated to members of the intelli-
gence community, agency contributions are made, and a com-
posite draft is produced by an estimates staff. After considera-
tion and revision by representatives of the agencies, a final
draft is presented to the USIB for concurrence in the National
Intelligence Estimate of a given situation, provided to guide
American military and political policy. Under special condi-
tions this process is shortened, but not essentially changed.
A similar process goes on in the governments of a number of
Western countries, and we can probably assume that equivalent
joint intelligence exercises are undertaken by the Soviet Party
and Government.
This unhurried and systematic mobilization of available in-
telligence resources to bear on a given problem is a relatively
recent phenomenon, one which can be said to have begun
during World War II. Before that time intelligence estimat-
ing in most countries was a pretty haphazard affair. Strategic
intelligence as a function distinct from policy-making was
usually regarded as superfluous to the extent that it was re-
garded at all. Accordingly, until well into World War II, in-
telligence estimates appear to have played only a very modest
role in the making of political and military decisions.
Of the many examples that could probably be drawn from
the earlier years of World War II to show the disastrous
consequences that followed from operational plans based on
inadequate intelligence consideration, one of the most poig-
nant, it seems to me, was the Dutch-led occupation of Portu-
guese Timor, the isolated overseas territory of neutral Portu-
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gal. This rather sparsely inhabited eastern half of Timor, the
easternmost large island in the Lesser Sundas, lies almost
2,000 miles southeast of Singapore but only about 500 miles
from the north coast of Australia. Its proximity to Australia
gave the otherwise remote and unimportant territory a dis-
proportionate strategic value which, in the fall of 1941 and
early 1942, brought it an unwelcome prominence not known
before, or since.
The "Estimate"
� The nature and extent of Japanese interest in Portuguese
Timor in 1941 are not fully known. At that time, however,
Japanese interest in the East Indies was primarily attracted
to Sumatra, Borneo, and Java, where major sources of strategic
raw materials were to be found; and the fact that Japanese
operational plans in Southeast Asia prepared in 1941 did not
originally envisage a landing in Australia removed what would
have been the principal attraction for them in the Portuguese
territory.
Dutch archives for this period are not open to the public,
and we are therefore thrown back on official histories to shed
some light on this recondite corner of the history of World
War II strategic planning. A Dutch official history of the
period, Nederlands-Indie Contra Japan,,' states that Japanese
interest in an air service with Portuguese Timor
aroused great concern among the Allies. Timor, indeed, formed
a very important link in the defense chain which linked Malaya,
the Netherlands Indies, and Australia. A Japanese air base in
Timor could form a very dangerous starting point for further
actions against Dutch and Australian territory.
The Dutch history goes on to note that Dili, the capital of
Portuguese Timor, "which lent itself so well to the establish-
ment of a base for amphibious aircraft, was only weakly held
by the Portuguese, largely with native troops." The Portuguese
"garrison," in fact, consisted of a company of indigenous
scouts�cazadores--and a platoon of "Frontier Police" appar-
ently assigned to immigration duties along the Dutch terri-
tory border.
1Historical Section, General Staff of the Royal Netherlands Army
(Bandung, 1950) Vol. II, pp. 230-232.
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The Dutch history continues:
These troops were not in a secure enough position to undertake
with their own small strength to oppose a Japanese attack. The
Netherlands Indies Government was thereby faced with a difficult
decision. On the one hand was the danger of a Japanese occupa-
tion of Portuguese Timor, on the other hand occupation of this
territory by us meant aggression against the territory of a friendly
power. Since it could be foreseen practically with certainty that
Japan would not hesitate to aim at Timor-Dili as a point of sup-
port, it was decided in November, 1941, to occupy the place with
Dutch and Australian troops and thereafter to offer the Portu-
guese Government protection for that territory.
This November decision was apparently contingent upon an
actual outbreak of war in the Pacific.
The Dutch history does not make clear whether any more
detailed intelligence estimate was formulated on this point.
Given the relatively primitive development of intelligence es-
timating at the time, it seems unlikely that the question was
considered at any great length. Faced with an imminent
Japanese assault in great force on the Netherlands Indies�
which seemed virtually inevitable following the failure of the
Dutch-Japanese trade talks in June 1941�the Dutch appear
to have assumed that the Japanese would opt simultaneously
for all the strategic alternatives open to them and attack
across the board, from Sumatra to Timor.
Yet in the economic and trade negotiations of 1940 and 1941
the Japanese had shown little interest in Timor, emphasizing
rather their desire to obtain additional supplies of the raw ma-
terials produced in Sumatra, Borneo, and Java. The few signs
of Japanese interest in Portuguese Timor cited by the Dutch
history hardly constitute convincing evidence of Japanese in-
tent to occupy the territory. Nor do other available sources
provide such evidence in recording Japanese economic inter-
ests there. A semi-official Portuguese source, Timor Portu-
gues,2 states that Japanese firms began to invest capital in
Portuguese Timor in 1934 and that in 1938 a Japanese Con-
sulate was opened in Dili. There is no indication that these
Japanese interests were more than purely commercial. Por-
tuguese Timor was and is a producer of modest consequence
2By Capt. Helo Felgas, Agencia Geral do Ultramar (Lisbon, 1956)
pp. 287-288.
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of high-quality Arabica coffee. After the opening of the Japa-
nese Consulate in Dili an Australian Consulate was also es-
tablished there.
Even the efforts made by the Japanese to obtain landing
rights in Dili need not have been considered particularly omi-
nous, for an air route from Japan to Australia via the Palaus
and Portuguese Timor is fairly direct, avoiding the long detour
to the west through Hong Kong, Singapore, and Batavia.
Moreover, an airline operating from Japan to Australia via
Singapore and Batavia would have faced heavy competition
from the British-owned Imperial Airways, particularly on the
Singapore-Australia segment. The Dutch estimate of Japanese
intentions towards Portuguese Timor, therefore, appears to
have been both hurried and poorly done. The extent of Aus-
tralian participation in this estimate and the consequent de-
cision to occupy the neutral territory is not known, but Aus-
tralian agreement to the action must have been obtained.
The Action
If the estimate was poorly done, the operational response
was even worse. After the outbreak of hostilities on Decem-
ber 8, the Royal Netherlands Indies Army prepared to occupy
Portuguese Timor. The action was carried out on December
17 by a combined force of about 600 Dutch-led Indonesian
troops and some 300 Australians. The combined force was
equipped with four 75-millimeter field guns, six sections of
machine gunners and three squads of light mortars, in addi-
tion to the usual small arms with which infantry companies
were then equipped. The force had no tanks, no anti-tank
guns, no provision for air or sea support.
This action was undertaken at a time when the forces avail-
able for the defense of the far more important islands of Java,
Sumatra, and Borneo were already much too slender to op-
pose the avalanche of Japanese troops pouring into Southeast
Asia. The size and weight of the forces already poised to
attack the Philippines, Malaya, and the Netherlands Indies
were reasonably well known to the Dutch and the other Allied
countries, and against this background the absurdity of the
unsupported and ill-equipped 1,000-man expedition to occupy
Portuguese Timor stands out clearly.
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The Portuguese response to the Dutch-Australian invasion
was non-violent, but the Portuguese Prime Minister, Dr. Sala-
zar, immediately protested to the British government. He ap-
parently sought British assurances that the Allied invasion
forces would be withdrawn upon arrival of Portuguese East
African troops to be dispatched from Lourenco Marques in
Mozambique to reinforce the Timor garrison.
The Aftermath
Whatever the arrangements between the Portuguese and
the Allied nations, the presence of an Allied force in Portu-
guese Timor inevitably drew the attentions of the Japanese.
As their invasion forces moved deep into the Netherlands In-
dies in late 1941 and early 1942, they undertook preparations
for the assault on Timor. On February 20, 1942, simultane-
ously with a landing near Kupang, capital of Dutch Timor,
Japanese troops of the 228th Infantry Regiment, supported by
destroyers, went ashore near Dili and met only light resist-
ance. The Dutch troops withdrew towards Dutch Timor,
where they were eventually forced to surrender, and the Aus-
tralians retreated to the center of the island. From there
they carried out guerrilla operations throughout 1942, but in
February 1943, after suffering heavy casualties, they were
withdrawn to Australia by submarine.
From a faulty intelligence estimate to an ill-considered op-
erational plan, the Allied occupation of Portuguese Timor pre-
sents a sorry spectacle. Much the worst of it is the fact that
this performance probably brought on the Japanese invasion
of the territory. It cannot be said with certainty that the
Japanese would otherwise not have taken action, but it should
be noted that they respected the neutrality of another Por-
tuguese territory in the Far East, Macau, which remained
wholly in Portuguese hands throughout the war. Although
a British consul was resident in that territory during the
war years, no Allied troops were ever stationed there. Given
its relatively few attractions, it seems reasonably plausible
that the Japanese would have left Portuguese Timor alone
also, if the Allied nations had not been the first to occupy it.
For the balance of the war a fairly large Japanese occupa-
tion force remained in Portuguese Timor. This force, in turn,
presented an attractive target to Allied bombers, based less
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than 500 miles away in Darwin, Australia: Dili was virtually
flattened by Allied bombardments. Late in 1942 the Governor
of the territory, Sr. Manuel Ferreira de Carvalho, ordered Por-
tuguese citizens (as distinguished from the indigenous "pro-
tected persons") in Timor to concentrate in an area west of
Dili, on the north coast. There, he felt, he could provide them
some measure of defense against the depredations of the oc-
cupation force and the indigenous bandit gangs encouraged
by the Japanese. While this move gave them some protec-
tion, their supplies of food, medicine, and clothing steadily
dwindled in quantity and quality throughout the rest of the
war, and eventually 50 of them, out of a total of some 300 in
the territory, died. Several thousand indigenous inhabitants
died from causes directly or indirectly connected with the
Japanese occupation.
Although the certificates of death issued for these people
(if, indeed, any certificates were made) may have given ma-
laria, ben-ben, or complications of dysentery as the imme-
diate cause of death, the real cause they might have cited
was "Bad intelligence estimate."
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INTELLIGENCE IN RECENT PUBLIC LITERATURE
MILITARY INTELLIGENCE IN WORLD WAR II
THE LONGEST DAY. By Cornelius Ryan. (New York: Si-
mon and Schuster. 1959. Pp. 350. $3.95.)
D Day. By David Howarth. (New York: McGraw-Hill. 1959.
Pp. 251. $4.95.)
INVASION: 1944. By John Froyn Turner. (New York: G. P.
Putnam's Sons. 1959. Pp. 248. $3.95.)
The fifteenth anniversary of the greatest triphibious as-
sault in history was marked by the publication of these three
books devoted exclusively to the events of that sixth day of
June, 1944. By far the best written, most concerned with in-
telligence aspects of the action, and most skillfully put to-
gether is Ryan's The Longest Day. Like Howarth, Ryan bases
his story largely on the personal accounts of participants, but
by concentrating on fewer individuals and developing some
new material he has produced a better narrative.
The Longest Day tells how the senior German commanders
were scheduled, ironically, to attend a Kreigsspiel at Rennes
on 6 June to war-game the theoretical invasion of Normandy.
It devotes a chapter to the two-part signal broadcast by the
BBC to notify the French underground that the invasion had
begun�how Admiral Canaris had learned of the code phrases
in advance and correctly interpreted their meaning, how Lt.
Col. Hellmuth Meyer, intelligence officer of the German Fif-
teenth Army, picked them up when broadcast, and how the
Fifteenth Army was thus put on the alert while the Seventh
Army, which held Normandy, was not. It shows how, after
the action had begun, the German High Command was split
on its evaluation, some believing it a feint to draw the defend-
ers away from the Pas de Calais, the real objective of the main
assault.
Howarth's D Day describes in greater detail the individual
battles fought at the sites of air drops and on the beaches,
supplying fewer personal anecdotes than Ryan's book. Al-
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though Howarth pays less attention to intelligence, he gives
several pages to a description of British beach reconnaissance:
in the preceding months men had been secretly landed on some
30 French beaches to determine the precise characteristics of
the landing areas.
Turner's Invasion: 1944, "The First Full Story of D-Day in
Normandy," is much more detailed than the other two, but
far less interesting. Turner concentrates on logistic aspects
of the operation, devotes the first half of his book to planning
and preparations, and has little to say about intelligence.
BATTLE: The Story of the Bulge. By John Toiand. (New
York: Random House. 1959. Pp. 400. $5.00.)
This is a superbly organized and excitingly written book
about the battle in the Ardennes, from 15 December 1944 to
23 January 1945, in which three German armies smashed
through a lightly held Corps sector of the United States First
Army and were ultimately thrown back by the First and Third
U.S. Armies plus a British Corps. Mr. Toland indicates that
he travelled a hundred thousand miles and talked to more
than a thousand participants in order to write this hour-by-
hour account of the engagement. He has done a magnificent
job in making a cohesive picture of the multitude of clashes
(between units ranging in size from patrols to armored divi-
sions) that collectively were the Battle of the Bulge�a strug-
gle in which there was seldom a defined front and where knowl-
edge of the enemy's location was certain only upon contact
with him.
The author gives short shrift to the controversial question
of whether the initial success of the Germans in the Ardennes
was the result of a major breakdown in the Allied intelligence
effort. At the beginning of his story he notes that on the
night of 15 December "no Allied commander seriously feared
a major German attack." A woman who came through the
lines of the 28th Division did report having seen a mass of
German tanks behind the Siegfried Line, and she was sent
to Corps and then to Army to tell her story. Col. Dickson at
First Army predicted there would be an all-out German of-
fensive, and in the Ardennes; but his associates said he was a
notorious pessimist, and overworked. The 12th U.S. Army
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Group said attrition was sapping the German strength. Mont-
gomery was of the opinion that the Germans "cannot stage
major offensive operations," and the SHAEF G-2 said the
Germans were all but finished.
After describing the 38-day battle that caused 75,000 cas-
ualties, Mr. Toland concludes:
Much has been written of the failure of American G-2 officers
to foresee the battle. The rather primitive, naive American intel-
ligence system, based largely on procedures used by the Pinkertons
in the Civil War, was not at fault; the sophisticated British system
was just as blind. The blame should not even fall on Hodges,
Bradley and Eisenhower, nor on the architects of strategy, Roose-
velt and Churchill. The entire Allied world must share the blame.
On the night of December 15, 1944, it breathed the air of com-
placency, optimism and self delusion.
Although Mr. Toland's graphic description of one of the
decisive battles of movement in modern warfare is fascinat-
ing reading, particularly for those who fought in the Bulge,
its intelligence interest is limited to this brief treatment of
the estimative failure and a presentation of some challeng-
ing situations for the combat intelligence officer.
THE CLOCK WITH FOUR HANDS. By James Leasor. (New
York: Reynal & Company. 1959. Pp. 314. $5.00.) Pub-
lished in England under the title, "War At The Top."
With some interpolations by Mr. Leasor, this book is in ef-
fect the diary of Sir Leslie Hollis, who was in an exceptionally
advantageous position to observe the making of high British
policy before and during World War II: as one of the secre-
tariat of the British Joint Chiefs of Staff he attended some
6,000 meetings of that body. Unfortunately, the book does
not live up to the potential of that experience, either in depth
or in balance. It is rather a collection of anecdotes, some
amusing but all highly opinionated, tied together by the
thread of history. If Sir Leslie's diary contained more of what
could be expected of it than appears here, or if he still had
access to the Joint Chiefs' minutes, he would have done bet-
ter to publish his own memoirs.
There are, however, some interesting tidbits here for the
professional intelligence officer, telling for example how the
British Government in the thirties refused to listen to intel-
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ligence reports on the growing strength of Germany, and how
its surprise at the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor equaled
that in the United States. British intelligence correctly pre-
dicted the German attack on Greece. On the other hand, it so
exaggerated German industrial production (which actually
was less than British) that it seriously inhibited the planning
for the second front.
A useful chapter devoted to topographical intelligence and
the organization of the Inter-Service Topographic Department
describes the way it had to scrounge for information. There
was scarcely enough to brief the R.A.F. for a raid on the Dort-
mund-Ems Canal. When the army had to be evacuated from
Dunkirk so little data was available about the beaches that
travel agencies were asked for brochures, and then destroyers
were sent for an on-the-spot look. The BBC broadcast an
appeal for photographs taken by tourists, expecting to get
eight or ten thousand, and were inundated by nine million.
"Know Thine Enemy." By Captain J. V. Heim,ark. (U.S. Na-
val Institute Proceedings, Vol. 85, No. 8, August 1959. Pp.
65-71.)
Shows how good intelligence�primarily reconnaissance�
on the part of the U.S. forces at Midway and ignorance of the
enemy's whereabouts at Pearl Harbor, in the Coral Sea, and
in the Philippine Sea had a decisive influence on the outcome
of these naval actions.
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IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
TURNCOATS, TRAITORS AND HEROES. By John Bakeless.
(Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott. 1959. Pp. 406. $6.50.)
In the past twenty years, since the publication of Morton
Pennypacker's General Washington's Spies on Long Island and
in New York 1 and Carl Van Doren's Secret History of the
American Revolutian,2 more and more facts and documents
concerning British and American intelligence in the Ameri-
can Revolution have come to light. Colonel Bakeless' mis-
leadingly titled book is the first attempt to synthesize this
new material with the old in a comprehensive intelligence his-
tory of the Revolutionary War.
The generally conceded fact that American intelligence on
a large and organized scale dates only from World War II
should not be allowed to obscure the wealth of espionage ac-
tivity which the Revolution developed from casual and amateur-
ish beginnings until it reached a point of considerable sophisti-
cation, with backed-up cover, secret writing, couriers, cut-
outs, double agents, and deception operations. It is evident
that George Washington himself was a masterful intelligence
officer. He gave close personal attention both to the opera-
tional details of espionage and to the reports of his agents,
whom he sometimes called "my intelligencers." He had a
preference for spies "who live with the other side; whose local
circumstances, without subjecting them to suspicions, give
them an opportunity of making observations"; he noted that
it was "necessary to be circumspect with double spies."
Washington had competent intelligence staff officers, but
he himself planned many operations and made his own evalu-
ation of the product. Colonel Elias Boudinot recalls how,
after reporting some newly arrived intelligence, he repeated
his own interpretation of it three times to the apparently
uncomprehending General Washington, who then gave it a
diametrically opposite evaluation. When the General proved
'Brooklyn: Long Island Historical Society, 1939.
2 Garden City: Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1941.
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to have been correct, "I then said," wrote Colonel Boudinot in
admiration, "that I never would again set up my judgment
against his."
Washington initiated many intelligence deception opera-
tions, planting false strength figures and other information
which he often compiled himself, advising his agents what
could be safely passed along. The hero of the cherry tree
legend could tell some whoppers. He made a practice of plant-
ing the same false story in several widely separated places,
thus providing the enemy with "independent confirmations."
One such plant was so successful that when a British intelli-
gence officer laid the facts before General Howe, the British
commander treated him "with contempt & Severity" for such
bad reporting.
General Washington's view of intelligence as a matter to
be kept "as secret as possible. For upon Secrecy, Success de-
pends in most Enterprises of the Kind . . ." is illustrated in
the realistic American use of cover. Agents sent into the Brit-
ish lines as Tories and deserters were officially listed as such,
rewards were sometimes offered for their capture alive, and
their families often suffered public opprobrium. In 1781, after
five years of being hoodwinked, the British ordered no further
protection for deserters; but then it was too late.
Turncoats, Traitors and Heroes attempts with indifferent
success to tell its history chronologically, beginning in the
fall of 1774 with Paul Revere and his friends in the Boston
area, "the first American intelligence net," real amateurs. A
little later, the Americans in Georgia are shown perpetrating
a deception: they intercepted a letter from the Royal Gov-
ernor there to the British commanders in Boston and substi-
tuted forged documents of contrary purport before sending
it on. At Lexington and Concord, American intelligence was
not bad; the British was probably better. And even the
French introduced a couple of agents into the Boston area to
see how the American cause was progressing.
By 1776, when the American Army had suffered many re-
verses, intelligence was improving; and an espionage-deception
operation now brought a victory. John Honeyman, sent by
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Washington into Trenton as a butcher and horse trader,3 dar-
ingly brought back critical intelligence on the defenses of
Trenton. Then, "escaping" from Washington's headquarters,
he returned to Trenton and assured the Hessians that no ac-
tion was to be expected from the Americans. It was with
this intelligence preparation that Washington crossed the Del-
aware on Christmas night to the victory at Trenton.
General Washington's most important intelligence net was
probably that of the "Culpers" in British-occupied New York
City and Long Island. From the City the merchant Robert
Townsend (Culper, Jr.) sent reports by courier (usually Aus-
tin Roe) to Samuel Woodhull (Culper, Sr.) on Long Island.
There they were transferred to Caleb Brewster, whose whale
boats took them across Long Island Sound to Fairfield, Con-
necticut, to one of Washington's finest intelligence officers,
Major Benjamin Tallmadge, a Yale classmate and friend of
Nathan Hale.
These reports, Colonel Bakeless indicates, were handled also
by Alexander Hamilton, on Washington's staff. The book
gives nothing further on Hamilton's intelligence activities, the
extent of which has yet to be revealed. They may in fact
have been negligible; but some historians say he served as an
intelligence staff officer, and this reviewer has seen one docu-
ment which reports the dispatching of spies, "Agreeable to
Colo: Hamilton's request." The identity of the Culpers was a
well-kept secret for a century and a half, until Pennypacker
established it. Culper, Jr., continued to masquerade in New
York as a Tory merchant until the war's end. The British
knew that intelligence was leaking from New York, that many
of the reports were written in secret ink, and that Caleb
Brewster's whale boats ferried them across the Sound, but
were unable to catch Brewster or discover the sources.
Colonel Bakeless adds comparatively little to what Penny-
packer wrote about the Culper net, and he contributes noth-
ing material to the history of Hercules Mulligan,4 the Arnold-
Andre affair, or the case of Nathan Hale. But he does help
'See "A Spy for Washington," in American Heritage, Vol. VIII, No. 5,
August 1957, pp. 58-64.
4 O'Brien, Hercules Mulligan: Conftdential Correspondent of General
Washington. New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons, 1937.
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unravel the threads of another American intelligence net,
that established from New Jersey by Joshua Mersereau to
operate behind the lines in Staten Island, showing among
other things that there was a third Mersereau in addition
to the two previously known. Joshua Mersereau is cited in
General Washington's account books as paid "for Exp. & re-
wards of himself & others (whom he was obliged to employ)
to open & carry on a Correspondence with persons within
the Enemy Lines by the way of Staten Island." But money
was sometimes short and agents complained. One wrote to
Mersereau from Staten Island:
. . . as soon as you fulfil that Request of mine, a regular Corre-
spondence shall take place & unless you indulge me in that, I could
not resume my Pen on a Subject of this Nature with any degree of
Propriety; for give me Leave to remark that altho my Breast throbs
with the purest & most fervent Love to my country, that can inspire
to Noble actions, & banishes from my Soul every lucrative Passion;
Yet a laudable Ambition requires that I Should Secure the Approba-
tion of my Country; e'er I enter on So dangerous an Undertaking
. . . Before I bid you farewel, I must beg it as a particulor favour
that you will be careful of my Letters, as you value the Safety of
your Friend . . .
Colonel Bakeless also relates in detail for the first time the
role of an intelligence agent at the Battle of Saratoga. It
will be recalled that the first battle for Saratoga was fought
with inconclusive results in mid-September 1777. Then on
October 7 the British attacked at Bemis Heights, were re-
pulsed, and withdrew to the plain at Saratoga, where they
surrendered ten days later. There has now come to light an
affidavit made in 1852 by one Daniel Bryan, recounting the
role played by his father, Alexander, in the battle of Saratoga.
Alexander Bryan is said to have been asked by the American
commander, General Gates, to go into General Burgoyne's
lines and get information "as to the heft of the artillery" and
the strength and contemplated movements of the enemy. In-
side the British lines, he "purchased a piece of cloth for a
trowsers when he went stumbling about to find a tailor and
that thus he soon learned the strength of the artillery and
the number of the Army . . ." as well as the plan to take
Bemis Heights the next day. With this intelligence, General
Gates was able to fortify himself on Bemis Heights and then
counterattack and defeat the British.
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There seems little reason to doubt this story, and if it is
reasonably correct Bryan's venture was a one-shot espionage
job which may have changed the course of history. Saratoga
is generally considered one of the decisive battles in world
history: had the British won, the colonies would have been
split in two at the Hudson River, and the American victory was
an important factor in the French decision to enter the war.
It is nevertheless difficult to go along with Colonel Bakeless'
nomination of Bryan as "the most successful spy in history"
and "the man who really won the American Revolution." The
author, in this reviewer's opinion, also errs in dating Bryan's
espionage in September before the first inconclusive battle of
Saratoga. The internal evidence seems to place it before the
second battle, fought on October 7. And Benson J. Lossing,
in his Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution,5 describes how a
sergeant arrived at the headquarters of the American com-
mander, General Gates, just before the British attack of Octo-
ber 7, "with intelligence of the movement of the British
army." This sergeant may have been Alexander Bryan.
Turncoats, Traitors and Heroes also treats the activities of
British intelligence in America during the Revolution. There
were many (including Benjamin Franklin's son William, Royal
Governor of New Jersey) whose loyalty to the British Crown
was not shaken by rebel activities, and many loyalists were
fruitful sources of intelligence. Even before the Revolution
broke out, the British had established a high-level penetration
of patriot activities in Boston. Their agent was Dr. Benjamin
Church, Jr., a member of the Massachusetts Provincial Con-
gress, privy to the patriots' innermost councils, and ultimately
General Washington's Director General of Hospitals, whose
long successful operations show up the early lack of American
counterintelligence. But finally an indiscreet ciphered letter
from him fell into patriotic hands; his courier-mistress, "an
infamous hussy" but "subtle, shrewd jade," was interrogated
by Washington himself and forced to reveal her principal's
name; and the cipher was broken by Washington's specialists.
Historians of the period have noted before that Dr. Church
must have begun to feel shaky, for he had found out that an
American spy deep in Cabinet levels in London, whose name
New York: Harper Brothers, 1851. Vol. I, p. 60.
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has never come to light, was learning the identities of British
agents in America. In November 1774, Paul Revere had been
advised that there was a leak somewhere high in the patriot
group. Still suspicion was not fixed on Church, even when
it was observed in 1775 that he was spending beyond his ap-
parent means and keeping a mistress. When he showed Re-
vere his blood-stained stocking the day after the battle of
Lexington, Revere was fully convinced of his loyalty; he didn't
stop to think that the Doctor had had twenty-four hours to
change to clean stockings. American security had not come
of age, and the full extent of Church's treason was not known
until General Gage's papers became available in the Clements
Library at the University of Michigan in 1930. Much of Colo-
nel Bakeless' account had already been told in Allen French's
General Gage's Informers .�
General Gage had numerous agents working out of Boston,
and his intelligence for Lexington and Concord was good.
"There is one evil that I dread," wrote General Washington of
the British, "and that is, their spies." And again of the Brit-
ish commander in New York: "General Howe has every Species
of Intelligence he can wish for . . ." One of Howe's best agents
was James Moody, who doubled as a guerrilla raider in New
Jersey and published a book about himself afterwards.7
Women were not overlooked as agents by either side in
the Revolution. One of the must successful was Ann Bates,
who worked for the British under peddler cover. (This was
also the cover occasionally used by the American spy Enoch
Crosby,8 the prototype of James Fenimore Cooper's Harvey
Birch in The Spy). Colonel Bakeless' superlatives for Ann�
"the most successful female spy in history"�are attributable
to the fact that she remained anonymous until his own re-
searches identified her as "the Woman" in British General
Sir Henry Clinton's intelligence files.
6 Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1932.
"Lieut. James Moody's Narrative of his Exertions and Sufferings in
the Cause of Government, Since the Year 1776. London: 1782.
Barnum, The Spy Unmasked; or, Memoirs of Enoch Crosby, alias
Harvey Birch. . . . New York: J. & J. Harper, 1828.
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Much of the intelligence work for General Clinton was di-
rected by Major John Andre, whose ability in this field seems
to have been high until he took to the road himself and was
hanged for his pains. Clinton's spies were quite effective, but
two of them turned out to be captains in the American Army,
working for the British on Washington's orders. Even at
this late date they were hard to detect; Colonel Bakeless
wrote to a friend who had seen an early draft of his book:
I have had to do a great deal of re-writing since I saw you�part
of it because one of Sir Henry Clinton's prize agents turned out
to have been working for Washington with the rank of Captain,
all the while. If my face is red (and it is!) think of Sir Henry's.
Colonel Bakeless is well qualified in the subject of his book.
He had military experience in both World Wars, much of it
in intelligence work; he is a good scholar and writer; he spent
four years of intensive research on this work, and his exami-
nation of primary sources appears to have been fairly exhaus-
tive. It is too bad that he did not have access to the exten-
sive files which the late General William J. Donovan had
amassed in the hope of writing on intelligence in the American
Revolution.
Yet the most evident weaknesses of Turncoats, Traitors and
Heroes stem not from scarcity of sources but from the wealth
of insufficiently integrated material. "It was . . . a surprise
to find," Colonel Bakeless writes in his preface, "how
embarrassingly abundant the supposedly lost documents really
were . . . it became necessary to reduce the scope of the work
five times." The author sensibly eliminated the story of
British and American espionage overseas, another volume in
itself. (The British intelligence penetration of Benjamin
Franklin's mission in Paris was very thorough; 9 and no one
has satisfactorily done the story, for example, of James Aitken
�John the Painter�the only American to commit an act of
sabotage in Great Britain during the Revolution, who was
tried and hanged in 1777 for setting fire to naval stores and
�See Bemis, "British Secret Service and the French-American Alli-
ance," in The American Historical Review, Vol. XXIX, No. 3, April
1924, pp. 474-495.
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the Rope House in Portsmouth Navy Yard)." He also has
limited his coverage of well-known figures like Nathan Hale and
of the Andre-Arnold affair, on which a good book already
exists. "
Even so, the book is often choppy and uneven; at times it
becomes almost a mere catalog, as the author crams in names
and incidents in indigestible profusion. It wavers uncertainly
between the chronology of the War and the sequence of action
in different espionage operations; perhaps it might have been
more easily organized around General Washington's headquar-
ters, as a focal paint from which most of the remaining ma-
terial would drop into place. Nevertheless it is an important
book, the first to deal comprehensively with the material now
available on its subject; and future treatments of this ma-
terial should be the better for it.
10 [AITKEN]. The Trial (At Large) of James Hill. . . London: G.
Kearsley and Martha Gurney, [1777].
Flexner, The Traitor and the Spy. New York: Harcourt, Brace and
Company, 1953.
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THE SOVIET INTELLIGENCE SERVICES
THE SECRET WORLD. By Peter Deriabin and Frank Gibney.
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. 1959. Pp. 334. $4.50.)
Here is another book about Soviet intelligence, about the
men who make it tick, and about those who�for one reason
or another�get tired of the ticking and defect to the West.
Its world is really not so secret any more, thanks to books
like this which publicize its objectives and techniques, remind-
ing any readers who need it that the KGB is still very much
with us, whatever we may think of Mr. K's real intentions.
Lay readers having no special knowledge of Soviet opera-
tions, if they have not been habitual devotees of cloak-and-
dagger stories, may derive a good bit of new information from
this book. Certainly they will be impressed, even if they real-
ize that no intelligence service falls in the Sunday school cate-
gory, with the repulsiveness of the Soviet system of internal
intelligence; and the achievement of this effect was appar-
ently the main aim of the authors.
The book describes Deriabin's early life in the Altai region
of southwest Siberia, traces his teen-age career in various So-
viet youth oganizations, crowned by appointment to a politi-
cal post with the Army, shows him in action in the Battle of
Stalingrad and, after the war, working for State Security in
Siberia. In a chapter entitled "The Shape of Terror" there
is factual material which the professional reader will recog-
nize as authentic on the internal structure of the KGB and
the scope of its activities.
Deriabin.'s transfer to Moscow occasions some good passages
describing life in the Soviet capital from the vantage point
of a security officer. A list of numerous security installations
in Moscow is also conveniently supplied, and something is told
about Soviet interrogation techniques. Soviet foreign intelli-
gence is portrayed as the "cleanest" part of the security or-
ganization, being staffed by "some of the most intelligent,
technically accomplished and sophisticated members of Soviet
society."
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A chapter on the "Hidden War in Germany" tells of the
Linse kidnapping and the Otto John case, and one entitled
"Cold Storage Agents and Satellites" devotes quite a bit of
space to Allen Dulles. Deriabin is said to have noted, in a
pamphlet on American intelligence he edited, that "in 1944,
Dulles already foresaw the breakdown of the anti-Hitler coali-
tion and . . . began to make plans for intelligence activity
against the Soviet State." Another old Soviet pamphlet is said
to treat the CIA, the CIC, Naval and Air Force Intelligence,
and even the FBI as components of a single organization.
There are a number of chapters on the misdeeds of the So-
viet upper crust�"Moscow Executive Suite," "The New Class,"
"Soviet Immorality," and the struggle of the Stalin succes-
sion. Khrushchev is pictured as no great improvement over
Stalin, it being suggested that Malenkov might have made a
more reliable co-existence partner. A chapter on "Vienna" has
much authentic quadripartite flavor, and one entitled "Agents
and Escape" tells about Austrian operations involving emigres
and would-be returnees. Deriabin himself escaped in 1954.
The book has four appendices, one illustrating the develop-
ment of a Soviet surveillance case, one on provocation tech-
niques, one a lengthy and tedious discussion of "some pitfalls
of Socialist 'legality,'" and a fourth giving the organizational
diagrams of the several elements of the State Security or-
ganization.
For the professional reader the shortcomings of The Secret
World are obvious�the sensationalism of its "terrifying re-
port," its deceptive cloak of authorship, its exaggerations and
misstatements of fact. It isn't a book by Deriabin and Gibney
or even one by Deriabin "as told to" Gibney. For all Mr. Gib-
ney's protestations to the contrary, it is a book by Frank
Gibney about Deriabin and several other things, including
what Mr. Gibney thinks of the Soviet Union�which evidently
isn't much.
Here are some examples of his purposeful extravagances.
On Soviet morality:
[On] the high level of the "New Class" Soviet society . . . debauch-
ery is organized and beyond criticism. . . . A clinical study of Soviet
social life might easily dwarf The Lost Weekend and make the
Kinsey Report look like a Parents Magazine anthology.
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Describing Stalin's exits from the Kremlin:
The only warning . . . would be the amber lights blinking . . .
and the sudden screaming cavalcade with Colonel Kirilin of the
Guard shrieking obscenities and frequently spitting in the faces
of passers-by.
On the right of the Soviet voter to cross out names of candi-
dates he doesn't like:
Compared to the Soviet voter, even a Negro voter in Mississippi
could be said to enjoy a thoroughly democratic franchise.
Of the Ukraine:
. . . this huge and sensitive Russian subsidiary.
On housewifely Mrs. K.:
It is doubtful if Mrs. Khrushchev has seen the working end of a
kitchen for a good many years.
The author's sense of mission also leads him into oversimpli-
fications and some substantial errors in fact:
At the beginning of the Revolution and for some years thereafter
. . . the reins of leadership were held by intellectuals of bourgeois
or even noble background, like Lenin and Trotsky.
Trotsky a Russian nobleman!
Admiral Canaris' Abwehr . . . was strongly anti-Hitler until it
was absorbed by the Gestapo after Canaris' arrest and execution.
One of [Deriabin's] teachers . . . had managed to keep a large
library from the old days. . . . So it was that The Last of the
Mohicans, Tom Sawyer, and Huckleberry Finn became a part of
one young Russian's education, although he scarcely included them
on his Komsomol reading lists.
The exceptional Russian student would be the one not
acquainted with these books.
The decision to "de-sanctify" Stalin was probably taken late in
1955 by Khrushchev, who was aware of the void left by the great
dictator. Just as people in the early Stalin period had grumbled
that "things wouldn't be like this if Lenin were alive," a tendency
had grown to look wistfully back to the Stalin era whenever the
regime showed shortcomings.
A nostalgic concept, the good old days of Stalin.
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Mr. Gibney's views on foreign policy and estimate of the
Soviet Union can be illustrated by two final quotations from
his work:
[During] the Time of Troubles, from 1953 to 1956 . . . had the
USSR been faced with an aggressive American diplomatic policy
on the international scene, the Party leaders might have been
in real trouble.
American tourists can come back from Moscow with stories of a
society straining at its old controls. Cultural exchanges can multi-
ply. The Soviet people can inch a few more steps forward toward
a better and freer life. But in the last analysis, all efforts to pro-
duce a real thaw in the USSR will fail as long as State Security
maintains its position as the ultimate executive arm of the regime.
History will have to tell us whether even Soviet-style intelli-
gence can so decisively govern a nation's course.
THE MIND OF AN ASSASSIN (The Man Who Killed Trotsky).
By Isaac Don Levine. (New York: Farrar, Straus and
Cudahy. 1959. Pp. 232. $4.50.)
THE GREAT PRINCE DIED. By Bernard Wolfe. (New York:
Scribner. 1959. Pp. 398. $4.50.)
Whether assassination is the same thing as murder de-
pends, as the saying goes, on where you are sitting and what
cards you hold. For those who hold Communist Party cards,
the assassinations which have been carried out all over the
civilized world by the "organs of State Security" have merely
executed the sentences of competent judicial organs without
benefit of the legal nicety of extradition. But even the Com-
munist who sees them in this light must admit that there
have been some spectacular remote-controlled executions in
the history of Soviet jurisprudence.
The execution of the death sentence passed by the Soviet
organs on Ignace Reiss, the Soviet senior spy in Western Eu-
rope who broke in revulsion over the Moscow show trials of
the late thirties, brought an exaggerated bit of Chicago to a
quiet Swiss country road. Reiss' body was literally cut to
pieces by heavy machine-gun fire. The case of General Walter
Krivitsky, Soviet espionage boss in Western Europe who fled to
safety in the United States after breaking at about the same
time as Reiss, is a classic illustration of the homely proverb
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of the State Security apparatehiks that anyone can commit
a murder, but it takes a real artist to arrange a good suicide.
Krivitsky was found dead in a Washington hotel room, a sui-
cide note by his side, shortly after he had told a friend never
to believe any evidence of suicide on his part, because he would
never kill himself. Lev Davidovich Trotskiy is probably the
only man in history to die by ice axe in execution of a death
sentence passed by a court.
The tradition of this form of retribution against traitors
to the movement is so strong that the widow of Richard Krebs
(better known, since the publication of his book Out of the
Night, as Jan Valtin) told a friend in 1958 that she was not
at all certain Krebs had died the natural death officially pro-
nounced by Maryland doctors at New Year's 1951. Clara
Krebs was born and raised on the Eastern Shore and never
had anything to do with Communism, but almost lost her
mind in the year her late husband's friends, including some
ex-Communists and some professional anti-Communists, spent
looking for clues and speculating about an assassination in
his case.
Those who would like to believe that assassinations of this
sort belong to the age of Stalinism should note that the de-
nunciation of Stalin crimes (or "errors") has been confined
to those committed against good comrades, not against trai-
tors. And they might usefully contemplate the mysterious
death of Stefan Bandera, the legendary anti-Soviet Ukrainian
partisan leader. Bandera was poisoned in Munich, Germany,
in October 1959, in this age of peaceful coexistence.
The murder of Lev Davidovich Trotskiy, popularly known as
Leon Trotsky, was not a case of "whodunit," but of "whobeit."
The mystery was not who committed the murder, but who
the murderer really is. The best published study of the Trot-
sky assassination has been that by Leandro A. Sanchez Sala-
zar, the Mexican police official who conducted the investiga-
tion.' Latterly the impending release of the killer, whose
twenty-year sentence will have been served on 20 August 1960,
is apparently at least partly responsible for the appearance of
these recent books by Isaac Don Levine and Bernard Wolfe.
1 Murder in Mexico (London: Seeker and Warburg. 1950).
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Don Levine is a vigorous anti-Communist and a man who
makes his living by producing and ghosting books that will sell
well, not necessarily ones characterized by objective and metic-
ulous scholarship. Richard Krebs, after trying in vain to
sell Out of the Night to a number of publishers in the United
States, finally gave the manuscript and all American rights
to Levine for a pittance. Later Krebs complained of a num-
ber of inaccuracies and errors in fact which stemmed from
Levine, and it was not until shortly before Krebs' death
that a personal reconciliation of the two men was effected.
On the other hand, Levine has been responsible for the pub-
lication of a number of highly interesting memoires by Com-
munist defectors (among them Walter Krivitsky's In Stalin's
Secret Service 2) and for bringing some of these defectors
together for the intellectual and moral stimulation of ex-
changing ideas. Krebs has spoken with enthusiasm of a
fascinating night he spent at Levine's home talking without
let-up through the night and into the morning with Walter
Krivitsky after Levine had helped them overcome their mutual
mistrust.
The Mind of an Assassin does not live up to whatever mis-
givings one may have about the author. It is a good story,
well researched and interestingly told. The factual errors
(insistence, for example, that Vittorio Vidali's real name is
Carlos Contreras) are neither so frequent nor so glaring as
to disturb the knowledgeable reader greatly. Levine makes
too much at this late date of the mystery of the killer's iden-
tity, which has not really been a mystery for the past five
years or so, but he does perform a useful job in pulling to-
gether some of the scattered material on the subject which
has appeared over the years, and he makes an interesting
new contribution in the final chapter, "The Mother Speaks."
This last chapter is a communication which Levine says he
received unsolicited from Enrique Castro Delgado after the
manuscript for the book had gone to the printer. Castro was
a hero of the Spanish Communist movement, lived in Moscow
after the Spanish Civil War, broke with Communism in 1944,
and after a number of very precarious months managed to
escape from the USSR. While in Moscow, Castro heard from
New York: Harpers. 1939.
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the lips of the assassin's mother, an old-time Spanish Commu-
nist and Soviet agent, part of the story of the assassination.
He says in his letter to Levine that he had never told it to
anyone before.
It is evident from the title of the book that it deals more
with the assassin than with Trotsky. Two of the chapters,
"Prisoner against Psychologist" and "Portrait of an Assassin,"
deal with the years-long analysis of the murderer by Mexican
doctors and psychologists. Here one is tempted to borrow a
pun from a famous music commentator and critic: Levine
played Freud, Freud lost. These chapters are boring and ap-
pear to a non-professional somewhat far-fetched (e.g., the
killer idolized his mother, hated his father, was able to kill
Trotsky as a father-symbol). Not so, however, the story of
the murderer, the role played by his mother and many others
(such as Louis Budenz and Sylvia Ageloff), the State Security
masterminding of the execution by Soviet General Leonid
Eitingon, and related stories like that of the death of Trotsky's
son Leon Sedov in Paris and of the Soviet penetration agents
in the Trotsky movement, Jack Soble and Mark Zborovsky.
From former close associates of Trotsky we know that dur-
ing the whole period of his exile in Turkey, France, Norway,
and Mexico the father of the Red Army was a hunted man.
After his son died mysteriously in Paris in February 1938,
Trotsky seemed to wait more resignedly for his own end. His
widow Natalia is quoted by Levine as having written, "Both
. . . knew that the verdict of the Moscow court was not platonic
and that it would be carried out in one way or another." The
way it was carried out is well told in Levine's book, although
the titular mind of the assassin has eluded him.
Bernard Wolfe, for reasons best known to himself, has
chosen to tell parts of the story of Trotsky's Mexican exile in
fictional form. This permits him, it is true, to deviate from
the facts when he does not know them (as in places he obvi-
ously doesn't) or when the truth is neither stranger than
fiction nor as interesting. Because its hero Victor Rostov
is a so thinly disguised Trotsky, The Great Prince Died is both
tantalizing and frustrating for a reader familiar with the story
of the Mexican exile.
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Wolfe, who as a young man did spend some time at Trot-
sky's exile headquarters in Mexico, has developed the hypoth-
esis that Trotsky's later years were plagued by a gnawing
sense of guilt regarding his role in suppressing the Kronstadt
uprising. Wolfe suggests that Trotsky was struggling with an
increasingly strong awareness of his own betrayal of a revo-
lution. It is interesting as a hypothesis, but others who were
closer to Trotsky in this period have seen no traces of this
struggle of conscience.
If The Great Prince Died could be read as straight fiction,
it would not be a bad book. The story is well told, the writing
tight and professional. There is plenty of suspense to hold
the reader's attention. For this reviewer, however, it has not
been possible to achieve the necessary detachment from his
knowledge of true events to read it as straight fiction, and
such a conflict within the reader spoils the whole book. The
only part which could be read under these circumstances with-
out any trace of annoyance is the section entitled "Author's
Notes," pp. 383-398. This is not enough to compensate for
the frustrations of the rest of the work.
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ESPIONAGE AND PARAMILITARY TALES
LES DESSOUS DE L'ESPIONNAGE: 1939-1959. By Robert
Boucard. (Paris: Editions Descamps. 1958. Pp. 249.
750 frs.)
M. Boucard, who has published several books on intelligence
subjects and services, dedicates this one to the memory of
Rene Dubois, formerly Attorney General of Switzerland, who
took his own life in 1957 after the clandestine contacts of
high Swiss officials with an attach�n the French Embassy
were publicly exposed. The promise in its title of the inside
story of espionage for the past twenty years, however, is
poorly to indifferently fulfilled. Although it presents vi-
gnettes from many interesting cases, both details and material
substantiating its purported revelations are sadly lacking.
In summarizing the story of the famous German agent
Cicero, for example, the author says that the Turkish secret
service arranged his employment by the British Embassy in
Ankara and helped him in his project with the ambassador's
secret papers. It would be good to know whether there is
some evidence other than presumptive indications in his op-
erations that Cicero worked for the Turkish service. Else-
where, as when he offers "the truth about the Gleiwitz affair,"
wherein the Nazis had prisoners in Polish uniforms attack a
German transmitting station to give pretext for the invasion
of Poland, Boucard's expos�are sometimes quite old hat.
One of the most tantalizing stories in Les Dessous is that of
a Japanese general, military attach�n Ankara, Sofia, Madrid,
and Stockholm, whom Boucard calls Yamato Ominata. The
American authorities, it is said, discovered in the Sicherheits-
dienst archives a message, No. 392�B�M from Stockholm to
Berlin, in which Ominata, under the cryptonym "Eierkopf,"
proposed to "Senior" (Himmler's nom de guerre) the sale of
Brazilian, Portuguese, Turkish, Vatican, and Yugoslav codes
for 28,000 Swedish crowns or 20,000 U.S. dollars. Boucard says
that Ominata was also in contact with Admiral Canaris, the
British service, and OSS. These bits of information strongly
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suggest that Yamato Ominata is none other than Major Gen-
eral Makoto Onodera, Japanese military attach�n Stockholm
with responsibility for espionage in the Scandinavian coun-
tries from February 1941 to the end of the war. A Swedish
newspaper article which appeared on 11 January 1953 when
Onodera was on a business trip to Sweden mentioned that he
had been known to the Germans as "Eierkopf" and had made
a large amount of money selling foreign codes to the Germans.
A PERSON FROM ENGLAND (and Other Travellers to Turke-
stan). By Fitzroy MacLean. (New York: Harper. 1959.
Pp. 314. $5.00.)
Bokhara, Samarkand, Khiva and Mery are here brought
back in a series of true episodes which make good bed-time
reading for romantics, lay historians, and connoisseurs of bold
and curious men. A rabbi's son who astounded the Emir of
Bokhara by arriving from England to demand single-handed
the release of two of his countrymen, a gifted Hungarian
linguist disguised as a dervish from Turkey, a New York re-
porter who caught up with the Russian forces in time to enter
Khiva with General Kauffmann, and a British correspondent
elected Khan of Mery as human symbol of the British Crown to
stay the Russians�these were four who lived to describe their
adventures in forbidden territory during the Great Game be-
tween England and Russia in Central Asia.
The story of the fifth, a British colonel for whom Bolshevist
Tashkent became too dangerous in the fall of 1918, is of par-
ticular interest to collectors of intelligence tales. After wear-
ing thin an astonishing variety of disguises he enrolled as an
Albanian lepidopterist in the Bolshevik intelligence service and
was sent to spy on briefly independent Bokhara, where fifteen
previous agents had vanished without a trace. He managed to
Obtain asylum there until he could escape with other refugees
in a hazardous desert trek to the Persian border, where the
Bolsheviks claimed to have killed him in a skirmish at the
river crossing. He reported to the British command at
Meshed in January 1920.
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THEY CAME IN THE NIGHT. By Brede Klefos. (Greenlawn,
New York: Harlan Publications. 1959. Pp. 207. $3.75.)
This is the personal account of a young Norwegian cadet's
contribution to his country's liberation from the Nazis. It
includes what he could observe in Norway of the growth of
resistance from spontaneous impudences to an organized and
security-minded movement, his confession to a naive venture
in military espionage in Stockholm, and details on his com-
mando training in Scotland. Intelligence officers may find
these items useful; more likely they will want to use them as
an excuse to read an honest and unglamorized story of exalted
human enterprise in the service of a cause, followed by inevi-
table disillusionment when the cause is won.
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EVASIONS AND ESCAPES
BE NOT FEARFUL. By John Furman. (London: Anthony
Blond, Ltd. 1959. Pp. 224. 18/�.)
This account of a British army officer's escapes and pro-
longed evasion in Italy during World War II, in some respects
a story much the same as many previously published, is unique
in its pertinence to organizational aspects of large-scale eva-
sion activities and for the light it throws on wartime intrigues
in and around the Vatican.
Mr. Furman was one of the many Allied prisoners of war
who escaped from camps in Italy during the brief period of
confusion in 1943 between the Italian surrender and the con-
solidation of German authority in northern Italy. Aided by
sympathetic Italians, thousands of these men remained at
large behind German lines, moving southward in the hope of
reaching Allied-controlled territory. Opportunities for cross-
ing the front were limited, however, and caution, inertia, and
official directives encouraged the escapees to remain where
they were until the front overran them: '"It will only be a
matter of days or at most a few weeks," they said. But as
the weeks rolled into months and food became scarce, evaders
found it increasingly difficult to keep alive and in hiding.
To meet the exigencies of this situation, a Roman Catholic
priest, Mgr. O'Flaherty, organized from the Vatican a supply
and billeting service in which the Italian-speaking Furman
became a key Rome coordinator. At the peak of its activity
this group provided aid to some 3,000 evading ex-POW's within
a forty-mile radius of Rome, among other things dispensing
subsistence money at a rate that reached some 4,000 lire per
man per month. The records of the organization remained
within the safety of the Vatican along with its director, an
arrangement that raised and still raises some thorny ques-
tions of law, ethics, and policy. Eventually captured by the
Gestapo, Furman escaped from a train conveying him to Ger-
many and made his way back to Rome, where he resumed work
for the O'Flaherty organization. He continued with this op-
eration until Allied forces entered the city.
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Recent Books: Escape
Successful clandestine activities require luck; and Furman
and his cohorts had a full, almost too full, share. Neverthe-
less, the author's two breaks from POW captivity, both of
them conceived, planned, and carried to completion in a mat-
ter of hours, are classics of quick thinking and good timing.
And it was not a matter of luck that he achieved fluency in
Italian in a relatively short time by taking advantage of his
residence in Italian households.
Be Not Fearful fills gaps in the open-source history of eva-
sion during World War II. Its not having been published until
fifteen or sixteen years after the events it describes is probably
due in part to the delicacy of its revelations about the war-
time use of the Vatican.
PIMPERNEL IN PRAGUE. By Donald Campbell-Shaw. (Lon-
don: Odhams Press. 1959, Pp. 192. 18/�.)
Leisurely account, generous with relevant and irrelevant
detail, of how the author arranged privately for the 1950 es-
cape of his wife's relatives from Czechoslovakia, hoodwinking
not only the Communists but also a number of would-be help-
ers, including officers of the American CIC. Of mild interest
in illustrating the border-crossing activity of that time.
Some of its solemn dissertations on peripheral matters�the
evolution and functions of the several Soviet and U.S. intelli-
gence services, for example�are amusing in their ingenuous-
ness.
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MISCELLANY
DIPLOMAT. By Charles W. Thayer. (New York: Harper and
Brothers. 1959. Pp. 229. $4.50.)
This casual compendium on the workings of diplomacy in-
cludes a quick look at intelligence as certain others see it.
Chapters XII, XIV, and XV combine elements of a short his-
tory of intelligence�the Black Chamber, OSS, CIA, taken from
standard sources�with the anecdotes and comments of a dip-
lomat extraordinary. The author has reservations about in-
telligence in the hands of socio-anthropologists, with their new
scientific methods. He sees the research and analysis experts
in their isolated tower in State Department "chiefly engaged
in gathering materials for high-level public speeches and re-
analyzing foreign newspapers long since scrutinized in foreign
capitals by our embassy staffs." He asks how the new "scien-
tific" expert can "take into consideration and evaluate a subtle
smile he never saw or a handshake he never felt." On the
new concept of national estimates he quotes Churchill's con-
tempt of "collective wisdom" and concludes that "any attempt
to synthesize the products of several minds must end by re-
flecting the product of none."
But he concedes that specialists in intelligence are useful
in support of the Diplomat, the only true intelligence officer.
As the general practitioner in intelligence, the Diplomat has
a requirement for specialists to bring the mass of information
under encyclopaedic control by substituting numbers for men-
tal capacity. Above all, he needs specialists in intelligence to
safeguard his communications.
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ellisiter/NOFORN
Articles and book reviews on the following pages are un-
classified and may for convenience be detached from the clas-
sified body of the Studies if their origin therein is protected.
The authors of articles are identified in the table of contents
preceding page 1.
The editors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Mr.
Walter Pforzheimer, Curator of the CIA Historical Intelli-
gence Collection, in scanning current public literature for in-
telligence materials, and of the many intelligence officers who
prepared book reviews for this issue of the Studies. Most
noteworthy in this respect are the following:
Military Intelligence in World War II Lyman Kirkpatrick
In the American Revolution Walter Pforzheimer
Deriabin's The Secret World J R Hogham
Books by Levine and Wolfe on Trotsky Hans Andersen
Boucard's Les Dessous de l'Espionnage Arthur Casberg
Furman's Be Not Fearful Louis Thomas
OtleRIBT/NOFORN
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