MEMO FROM G. A, CARVER, JR.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80R01720R000700010007-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 26, 2004
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: August 19, 1971
• Content Type: MEMO

Approved Ferr Release 2004/12/02: CIADP80R01ZDR000700010007-3
19 Aug 71
AC/FE
GACarver, Jr.
The attached was sent to mjby
Mr. Goodwin's office. Do we know
anything about the Asia Letter, its
sponsors or its background?
George A. Carver, Jr.
Special Assistant for Vietnamese Affairs
Attachment
The Asia Letter, Number 372, dated
10 August 1971
Approved For Release 2004/12/02 : CIA-RDP80RO172OR000700010007-3
 ~~Apr 4r Rel 4112/0 PIEP 20R0007003372
All 4UTHOI.'1Tl rll1C 11,11;L)718 OF AS/A17 .Fl"/1R8
Published by THE ASIA. LETTER Co. Tokyo Hong Kong Washington Los Angeles
10 August 1971
THE C.I.A. IN ASIA (III): MODUS OPERANDI (Part 1)., Every Friday, at
precisely 8:30 A.M., a clean-cut young American assigned to the Combined
Studies Group in Saigon leaves the American Embassy and drives' to a
rendezvous house on Saigon's Tran Hung Dao Street.
There, he picks up a briefcase and a Vietnamese accomplice and begins
a drive to Tay Ninh, located northwest of Saigon near the Cambodian border.
Inside the briefcase are bundles of Vietnamese piasters, U.S. dollars
and Cambodian riels.
The man carrying the briefcase is a C.I.A. "bagman". The money is
the payoff for local agents and tipsters who keep tabs on Communist activities
and movements in the important area of eastern Cambodia, southern Laos and
the western border of Vietnam.
He is one of a dozen or more C.I.A. "bag men" who make regular trips
to various parts ofw South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos to pay for the services
of agents and informants.
The "bag man" never sees what a businessman would call the "end user"---
the men who get the money. He merely turns it over to the C.I.A.'s "control
man" in the area. Sometimes he picks up data to take back to the higher-up
agents where tic' works. But more often than not he returns empty-handed.
The "bag man" duty usually goes to junior C.I.A. men in the Indo-China
area. It is a colorless, unstimulati.ng assignment that usually leads to
frustration and sometimes to resignations. .Oneay last Februaar.y, a Chinese cargo junk from Canton sailed down
the Pearl River, through the river estuary and tied up alongside Hong Kong's
Western waterfront.
It was one of many that made the same trip the same clay to the western
waterfront of Hong Kong Island and to the waterfront along Macao's ancient
Rua das Lorches.
The river junks, which ply between [long Kong, Macao and Canton daily,
carry very ordinary cargo ranging from vegetables to joss sticks.
Rut the cargo of cabbages carried by that junk last February was no
ordinaryar.go. Stuffed inside one of the innocent-looking Chinese cabbages
was a report giiingup-to-date information on China's missile program.
~It came from a C.I.A. informant inside China and went through a half
dozen intermediaries in [-long Kong before it ended up in the hands of a high-
ranking agent, who forwarded it on to Langley, Virginia, for study and analysis.
The C.I.A. frequently receives reports and messages from its agents and
informants in China by this method. And it often sends in messages or
instructions through t:he~ seine channels.
The best example of just how effective these channels are came during
Chi'na's Cultural Revolution (1966-69), which threw the country into turmoil..
In addition to a flood of Red Guard documents giving a very accurate picture
of the turmoil, the C.I.A.. also received hundreds-?--perhaps thousands---of
very valuable 5 j - ldsF8i.I dtle !2DO41 2/O2t-AcCIAfRbR8dA611 R OO7OQO10QOki-0a ins t:
government and military offices, and sold.
(FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY ON A CON IDi.NTIAL FASTS. REPFODUCiION OR QUOTATION IN WIiOLI. OR PART rRoH;C';FO f'cnt!rn.'e.(I
WITHOUT AUI f IORIZATION.)
 Volume of information coming out of China is down from the peals
of the Cultural Revolution clays. But the agency still. gets enough to enable
it to come up With some amazingly accurate analyses -anc.1 predictions about
Chi_nti`s capabil.iti.es end i_ntenti.ons when used in conjunction with the millions
of photographs taken by U.S. spy-in-the-sky satellites and data fed in
through a myriad of other channels ranging from radio monitors to East
European diplomats in Peking who are on the C.I.A. payroll..
NEXT: THE C.I.A. IN ASIA (III): MODUS OPERANII (Part 2).
Approvor Release 2004/12/02 : CIA-RDP80FWF720R000700010007-3
Approved. For Release 2004/12/02 : CIA-RDP80RO172OR000700010007-3