Deadly Deceits (12 page)

According to William Colby, the CIA's office of security “inserted 10 agents into dissident organizations operating in the Washington, D.C., area” in 1967 in order to collect “information relating to plans for demonstrations, pickets, protests, or break-ins that might endanger CIA personnel, facilities, and information.”
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The propensity to operate illegally within the United States continued into the 1970s. In 1970 CIA director Richard Helms joined with others in recommending to President Nixon
“an integrated approach to the coverage of domestic unrest,” which came to be known as the Huston Plan.
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After the Huston Plan was rescinded, the CIA “recruited or inserted about a dozen individuals into American dissident circles” in order to secure “access to foreign circles.” It was believed that in this manner these individuals would “establish their credentials for operations abroad.” In the course of their work some of these individuals “submitted reports on the activities of the American dissidents with whom they were in contact.” This information was kept in CIA files and reported to the FBI.
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In 1971 and 1972 the CIA employed physical surveillance against “five Americans who were not CIA employees,”
The Washington Post
reported. This was done because the CIA had “clear indications” that the five were receiving classified information “without authorization.” It was hoped that the surveillance would “identify the sources of the leaks.” A secret Senate memorandum indicated that three of the five subjects were columnist Jack Anderson,
Washington Post
reporter Michael Getler, and author Victor Marchetti.
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In 1971 and 1972 the Agency secretly provided training to about 12 county and city police forces in the United States on the detection of wire taps, the organization of intelligence files, and the handling of explosives. The training program, involving less than 50 policemen, was reported to have included representatives from the police forces of New York City, Washington, D.C., Boston, Chicago, Fairfax County, Virginia, and Montgomery County, Maryland.
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Nine months after returning to Headquarters I was asked if I wanted to go back overseas—this time to Thailand. I had heard many good things about that country and its people and immediately answered that I wanted to be considered. The next day I was called for an interview with the deputy chief of station in Thailand, whom I shall call Dave Abbott, who was then at Headquarters on a recruiting trip. I was escorted into his office and sat down on a small, hard chair. Abbott was poring over a personnel file, mine I supposed; he did not look up or acknowledge my presence. So I sat there and studied him. He was a man of medium build with straight sandy hair,
thick horn-rimmed glasses, and a peaches-and-cream complexion that belied his 40 years. He continued to read for some time, then suddenly looked up, stared straight at me, and with no amenities said, “I hear you want to go to Thailand.”

Somewhat taken aback by his approach, I responded, “Yes, but I would like to know something about the job before deciding.”

Abbott, with his unwavering stare and without a trace of emotion, outlined the job possibilities. He said the station was reviewing its liaison operations with a nation-wide security service, and he was looking for people to fill specific positions. He noted my excellent record in Taipei, where I had earned a reputation for working in liaison with the Chinese Nationalist intelligence services. “In view of your background,” he said, “you might qualify for an assignment to the North.”

The reason so many new officers were being recruited for Thailand had to do with events in neighboring Laos. During the reconstituted Geneva Conference on Laos in 1961-1962, which followed a cease-fire there, the United States was upset that a neutralist government might be established in Laos. At the urging of the CIA, the Agency-backed rightist General Phoumi Nosavan broke the cease-fire by sending his troops to Nam Tha, just 15 miles from the China border in an area traditionally under the authority of the Communist Pathet Lao forces. But the Pathet Lao forced Phoumi's troops to withdraw and evacuate across the Mekong River into Thailand. The United States accused the Pathet Lao of violating the ceasefire, and the National Security Council used this pretext to create a crisis that existed only in Washington.
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To counter the Pathet Lao's so-called threat to Thailand, the U.S. sent 5,000 troops to Thailand. As part of the buildup, the CIA began to bolster its staff, whose job it was to advise Thai security and counterinsurgency forces. My assignment to Thailand was part of that buildup. In May 1962 Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara announced the creation of the U.S. Military Assistance Command Thailand to assist the government, and U.S. troops were in Thailand to stay.

That night after the meeting with Dave Abbott, I talked over the prospects of a tour with Norma and the children. I pulled out a copy of the Thailand post report, a document prepared by the government outlining living conditions for
those anticipating overseas tours. I also offered several travel books containing pictures of Buddhist temples and the colorful
klongs
(canals) heavy with boat traffic. Despite my enthusiasm and the books, there was considerable unhappiness and grumbling.

Several days later I was told that I was accepted. Norma and I agreed that I should go ahead first to Thailand to arrange housing before she and the children followed. Our neighbors seemed to believe my rather outlandish cover story of quitting what appeared to be a good, secure government job for one of indefinite duration in an exotic location overseas.

6. NORTH THAILAND:

SAVING THE HILL TRIBES

“DAD, what do you do?” my 13-year-old daughter Peggy asked about six months after we had settled into our home in North Thailand. She had been observing my strange comings and goings, my home office with its safe, map, and cameras, and my frequent hushed conversations with a variety of visitors. She wanted to know what it was all about.

I braced myself. I knew that simple question was inevitable, one that every child asks sooner or later, but I had dreaded it. In earlier years the children were either too young to notice or my activities were less overt, so I had gotten away with a joking, “Oh, I'm just a paper pusher.” As Peggy persisted this time, though, I knew this answer would no longer do.

Norma had felt all along that we should be truthful with the children, that our family trust came before my oath of secrecy to the Agency. This very clear set of priorities had been reinforced in her mind a hundredfold by her personal experience when she arrived in Thailand. I had flown ahead to North Thailand to make the necessary arrangements for the family to join me. Once I found a house, I wrote to Norma to fly to Bangkok, where I would meet her. But the housing deal fell through, and the next day I had written to Norma not to come yet. She never received the second letter. She had gone ahead, sending me her flight number and arrival date, but that letter had been held at the Thailand station, and I never received it.

After a grueling, sleepless flight of 16 hours with four cranky children, she had arrived to find no one there to meet her. Since we were traveling on unofficial passports and no one had notified the Thai authorities, she had trouble getting
past customs and had to talk her way into a two-week visa. Speaking not a word of Thai, she took a taxi to a good hotel, but in one day the expense exhausted the cash she had in her purse.

The next day she went to the American Embassy and asked if they could put her in touch with me. After a lot of hassling in which everyone claimed never to have heard of me, she made contact with an official who explained that I was in the North. He didn't understand how I had not known of my family's arrival, but he promised that I would be contacted immediately. In the meantime Norma explained that she was out of money and had five mouths to feed. She asked if an advance could be made. He made a call, but the finance officer said that she could not be authorized funds because my assignment was in the North.

There is no anger or determination like my wife's when something threatens her brood. The official offered her money from his own pocket to tide her over until I could be contacted, but she refused. She said she was so mad that she would sit on the street corner right in front of the American Embassy and beg with her four children if she had to. Fortunately, I had by chance come to Bangkok on Agency business that day and everything straightened out before it came to that. But to make matters worse, the next day I had to send her and the children to the North on the train while I remained behind a few days on business. When I finally joined her, Norma's greeting was not the warmest I have ever received. “If you plan to ship us off somewhere else,” she raged, as close to divorce as we'd ever been, “it had better be right back to the States.” She went on to describe three miserable days in a hotel with no shower and nothing for the children to do, with mosquitos swarming all over, lizards crawling the walls and ceilings, and huge rats scurrying on the floors.

This experience—both the Agency's utter disregard for the well-being of her and the children and my own cockeyed priorities of putting Agency business above my family—had left Norma enraged and totally disillusioned with the Agency. While she knew that I still had complete faith in the Agency and could not be persuaded to leave it, she was now at least insisting that I not lie to the children any longer. The Agency had done enough to her and the children, she told me
repeatedly; she would not allow its ridiculous secrecy rules to sow distrust in our family.

Now Peggy's innocent question had brought the matter to a head. Because of all the indoctrination I had received and my gung-ho attitude, something inside me still resisted. I felt I should keep my activities secret—even from my own daughter.

“Daddy, it's embarrassing,” Peggy was saying, staring up at me. “All my friends know what their fathers do. I'm the only one who doesn't.”

I could feel Norma's eyes on me. What was I going to do? If I told Peggy, I would be breaking my oath. But of course people broke that oath all the time. Everyone knew that secret information was bandied about at Agency cocktail parties as if it were a weather report. Sometimes it seemed I was the only one who played it strictly by the rules. I wondered: would it make any difference to the Agency's mission if my children knew that I worked for it? Would it hurt the United States? I looked up at Norma, and we silently acknowledged that the time had come.

I breathed deeply and sat both of my daughters down (the boys were still too young to understand). With the same sense of compelling seriousness that I had used in regard to crossing streets, not going with strangers, and not taking anything that belongs to others, I said, “I work for the Central Intelligence Agency, which protects our country from anyone who might want to do it harm. I could not tell you before, because you were too young and would not be able to keep it a secret from your friends. But you must do just that. You must promise you will not talk to anyone but your mother and me about where I work.”

Neither daughter seemed particularly excited about the news. They looked at me and said, “Oh.” This was not at all the response I had expected, but I thought that they probably, like myself 10 years earlier, had not the least notion of what the CIA was and did. Years later when preparing to write this book, I asked each of them what they had thought when I told them about my work. Jean said she had been quite impressed and had thought the job must be difficult and exciting because of all my flying around. Her friends who had observed this activity had pumped her, and she felt frustrated that she
could not confide in them.

Peg said she had felt the same frustration at not being able to tell her friends. She also was curious about what specifically I did for the CIA on the various flying trips around North Thailand. I said that I would tell her after I retired—a promise, until now, that I never kept, for by the time I retired I was disillusioned and angry and did not want to lay this negative burden on my children.

I told our elder son, Scott, several years afterwards. Later he admitted that he had been humiliated in a classroom exercise where each child was asked to talk about his father's job. Scott had to say he did not know. After I told him, he said he had more respect for my lifestyle. But that did not alter the fact that he still could not admit he knew what his father did, or confide in his friends.

Norma told our younger son, Dan, in Bangkok when he was 11 years old. He said later that he had not been too surprised since we so carefully avoided the subject of my work. His reaction at the time, though, was to ask, “Oh, does he carry a gun?”

The Border Patrol Police [BPP] … were responsible for security along Thailand's international frontiers.… They were well-armed, mobile, counter-insurgency fighters specializing in intelligence-gathering along Thailand's borders and in conducting cross-border combat and reconnaissance operations.… The United States, through its … CIA advisors, continued to exercise almost complete control, both in training and operations – the PARU [Police Aerial Reconnaissance Unit] and BPP were “their” units.…
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– Thomas Lobe

Beginning in the early sixties, the BPP developed special programs among the hill tribes in the north and quickly became the only [Thai government] service to enjoy any kind of rapport with the tribal communities. It established and manned two hundred schools as well as dispensaries and development centers with garden plots and the like. This Remote Area Security Program, as it was called,…[was supplemented by] the recruitment of tribal volunteers into a police auxiliary service called Border Security Volunteer Teams. There is evidence in the
Pentagon Papers
… that U.S. support for the BPP was conducted by CIA.
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