Inside the CIA (11 page)

Buoyed by these triumphs, the U.S. became more aggressive. America interpreted the most innocuous developments as further evidence that the Soviet Union was about to encircle the world. In June 1954, the CIA supported the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala after he nationalized 400,000 acres of idle banana-plantation land owned by United Fruit Co. Arbenz had offered $600,000, precisely what the company had declared as the land’s value for tax purposes. Moreover, he had come to power in popular elections. But Arbenz’s leftleaning politics and the fact that some of the people around him were communists were seen by Washington as reasons enough to overthrow him.

In most cases, the benefits of covert action were only temporary. Arbenz was replaced by even more objectionable and often ruthless leaders. Guatemala has been in turmoil ever since. In Iran, the shah lasted more than twenty-five years and was toppled and replaced by the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979.

While twenty-five years of stability is a great feat, the CIA action in installing the shah “identified Iran and the shah more closely with the U.S. than was good for either of them,” Gregory Treverton wrote in his book
Covert Action.
“It also set in motion a kind of psychological dependence by the shah on the United States that Americans no doubt liked initially but came to lament in 1977 and 1978. “
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Meanwhile, the Soviets used the CIA’s meddling in the affairs of other countries to great effect. The U.S. was seen as imperialistic and hypocritical. What more evidence was needed than the fact that it would overthrow a legally elected leader? David A. Phillips, a CIA officer who played a major
role in the ouster of Arbenz, would later say that on balance, the CIA should not overthrow an elected leader.
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“Defenders of covert action would say we are fighting to preserve liberty and democracy and the American way,” said Simmons, a former CIA officer who was later staff director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. “But when you get into the details, you wonder if they are talking about the same thing. He may be an SOB and a dictator, but he is our SOB, whereas Arbenz, who was democratically elected, was not an SOB, but he wasn’t ours.”

On April 17, 1961, the CIA began the invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. It would be a dismal failure. The Directorate of Operations was so fixated on secrecy that it did not consult the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence for an assessment of whether the Cuban people would rise up against Castro once an invasion began. If it had, the judgment would have been that the Cubans would not support the invasion.
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Just before the invasion, CIA analysts had concluded that Castro “was likely to grow stronger rather than weaker as time goes by.” One CIA memo warned that Castro “now has established a formidable structure of control over the daily lives of the Cuban people.”
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Thanks in part to last-minute restrictions by President Kennedy, the CIA did not have enough firepower to pull off the invasion. While the Directorate of Operations kept the operation from other CIA components, the word quickly leaked out to the rest of the world. Even the
New York Times
knew about it but agreed not to publish the story. Finally, the CIA had the unrealistic notion that an invasion could be mounted by Cuban expatriates without Cuba’s knowing that the U.S. government was backing them.

“My own personal view is that almost the worst mistake we made on that operation was clinging to the belief that this could be done in a way that was not attributable to the U.S. government,” Richard M. Bissell, Jr., a former Yale University and MIT professor of economics who headed the invasion
as the CIA’s deputy director for operations, said. “Clinging to the idea that if our tradecraft was good, nobody could connect it to the U.S. government. That was just an utterly unattainable, and a very silly, hope. Anything of that magnitude would be blamed on the U.S. government, even if the U.S. had not had a role in it. But we paid a high price for disclaimability in terms of operational capability,” Bissell said. “We weren’t allowed to use volunteer U.S. air crews. We therefore didn’t have enough air crews. We therefore didn’t assemble enough B-26 bombers. We couldn’t take off from any American-held territory such as Puerto Rico. There was a whole list of things. We weren’t allowed to have any volunteer Americans go ashore with the brigade. That would have been a major benefit. So I think that from top to bottom, we made that mistake.”
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Nonetheless, under pressure from President Kennedy, the CIA in December 1961 began a range of other covert actions aimed at toppling Castro, each more foolish than the last.

A CIA inspector general’s report of August 25, 1967, recounts dozens of bungled attempts to assassinate Castro or embarrass him with his people. Under one such plan, the CIA would spray the air of a radio station where Castro broadcast his speeches with a chemical that would produce hallucinatory reactions similar to LSD. Another scheme was designed to contaminate cigars smoked by Castro with a chemical that would create “temporary personality disorientation.” A third idea was to introduce thallium salts into Castro’s shoes so his beard would fall out. This, according to CIA plotters, would destroy his public image. Finally, the CIA proposed setting off fireworks off the coast of Cuba that would portray an image of Christ in the sky—this to show that Castro was in disfavor with God.

The stupidest scheme was to enlist the aid of the Mafia in killing Castro. Bissell, the deputy director for operations, asked Sheffield Edwards, director of security, to contact Mafia leaders for the purpose.
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Edwards enlisted Robert A. Maheu, a private investigator, who asked John Roselli, an associate of Mafia leaders, to offer up to $150,000 to remove Castro. Roselli agreed to contact Salvator (Sam) Giancana, a member
of the Mafia, and Giancana asked for a lethal pill that could be given to Castro in his food. The CIA produced pills containing botulinum toxin for Castro.

The CIA passed the pills to the Mafia, but the gangsters reported they could not carry off the plot because their source had lost his position in the prime minister’s office.

The CIA also developed plans that were never carried out to assassinate Patrice Lumumba, who headed what was then known as the Congo and is now called Zaire. Today, assassination plots are banned. The first presidential prohibition was contained in Executive Order 11905, signed by President Gerald Ford on February 18. 1976. It said no government employee could participate in attempts to kill foreign leaders. Executive Order 12333, signed by President Reagan on December 4, 1981, governs the CIA’s activities today. It states, “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the U.S. government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.”

After fumbling in Cuba, the CIA went on to try to control elections in Chile. In 1964, the agency spent $2.6 million to support the election of the Christian Democratic candidate, Eduardo Frei, to prevent Salvador Allende’s accession to the presidency. In 1970, the CIA tried to mount a military coup in Chile to prevent confirmation of Salvador Allende’s victory in the Chilean presidential election. It also spent $8 million to prevent his confirmation—all in vain.

The CIA also became involved in covert action and paramilitary actions in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Angola, Afghanistan, and Nicaragua. Only in Afghanistan was the CIA’s intervention considered entirely successful.

It would be easy, as some CIA officers do, to blame the presidents at the time for urging the agency to undertake covert action that was ill-advised. Nearly every one was approved by presidents and policymakers who were looking for a quick fix for the problem of the day.

“We cannot overemphasize the extent to which responsible agency officers felt themselves subject to the Kennedy administration’s severe pressures to do something about Castro and his regime,” the CIA inspector general’s report on the plots
said. “The fruitless and, in retrospect, often unrealistic plotting should be viewed in that light.”
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But that is not the whole story. The agency often encouraged the White House to think that covert action would work, then developed ill-advised schemes to carry it out. Too often, not enough thought was given to what was to be accomplished, whether it would work, and what would happen if the CIA’s involvement became public, as it invariably did. In CIA lingo, such bad publicity is known as blowback or flap.

CIA officers often pursued covert action for the sake of doing something, without giving much thought to the possible consequences.

As a result of the Church Committee hearings in 1975 and 1976, strong congressional oversight put a stop to many of the ill-conceived schemes, but under CIA director William Casey, some bizarre or highly risky covert actions were again approved or at least considered. The prime example was the Iran-contra plan to exchange arms for hostages. While the CIA itself did not arrange it, Casey and National Security Council aide Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, Jr., used a few individuals in the agency to carry out the scheme.

In 1985, the CIA provided training and communications equipment to Lebanese intelligence officers who claimed they were antiterrorists and would help free William Buckley, the former CIA station chief in Beirut who had been kidnapped on March 16, 1984. President Reagan approved the plan in a written intelligence finding, the formal authorization required before covert action can be carried out.
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But John McMahon, the deputy director of Central Intelligence, opposed it, saying the former intelligence officers were not to be trusted, and the CIA ran the risk of supporting people who might kill others.

According to McMahon, Casey then asked President Reagan to withdraw the finding, and the CIA never went ahead
with the project. But the officers who were to get the aid hatched their own plan to kill Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, who headed a Shiite terrorist movement called Hezbollah, or Party of God. It was this group that was believed to be holding Buckley. Eighty people were killed on March 8, 1985, when a car filled with explosives was left near Fadlallah’s apartment house in a Beirut suburb. Fadlallah escaped without any injury, and the CIA was unfairly blamed for having ordered the assassination attempt.
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“When that happened, I went to Bill [Casey] and said, ‘See, goddamn it, that’s exactly what I mean. That’s what happens with these guys ... we weren’t associated with it but we got blamed for it,” McMahon said.
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The same kind of problem occurred in Operation Phoenix, a program run by William Colby during the Vietnam War to identify Vietcong hidden within the South Vietnamese population. Both American and South Vietnamese intelligence agencies collected the intelligence, then turned the information over to the South Vietnamese. In most cases, the South Vietnamese incarcerated and questioned the Vietcong, but in some cases they killed them. As a result, the operation developed a reputation as an assassination squad, even though that was not its intent. Moreover, casualties that arose from military actions were often attributed to the program.

More recently, in Suriname, Casey decided the CIA should overthrow Désire D. Bouterse as the leader of the South American country because the government was killing opposition leaders and permitting the country to be used as a transshipment point for cocaine. This plan, too, never got off the ground after it hit opposition both in Congress and the administration.

“We were worried about what was going on there,” McMahon said. “The question was, should we do it militarily or do it ourselves? We tried to round up enough people to go carry it out. It did fall by the wayside, and I don’t think it was just because of the House or Senate. There were a lot in the administration who had some misgivings on it. But the agency gave it a college try and started drawing up plans on how to go about it.”

Today, only a dozen covert action programs are carried out each year. Some of them are broad strategies that may be undertaken in a number of countries. Most of them are low-level propaganda efforts or innocuous aid to countries fighting terrorism or narcotics. For example, at the request of these countries, the CIA may provide weapons, vehicles, training, and data bases for checking on travelers going through customs. The only reason the funding is covert is that the countries themselves do not want their own people to know the United States is helping to combat narcotics or terrorism.

The CIA’s propaganda efforts usually consist of printing books for distribution in the former Soviet Union or planting articles favorable to the United States or American ideals in countries where the media is anti-American.

During the Vietnam War, “we would present anything that made the Soviets or North Vietnamese look bad,” a former CIA officer said. “It may not necessarily be untrue, or it might be facts that otherwise might not get into print. The Soviets do that all the time. Truth is generally thought to be a better weapon [in propaganda efforts]. In a lot of places, you can’t get anything in the paper that is pro-American. Everything is pro-Soviet, so they only know that side.”

In contrast to the days before the Church Committee hearings, the CIA today tends to be reluctant to undertake covert action.

“It has to be done on a case-by-case basis,” a former National Security Council aide said. “There have been cases where it has been extremely effective. There are others where it didn’t make any difference at all. In some cases, it probably was counterproductive. That depends on what is being implemented, how it is implemented, and what your goals and policies are.”

Virtually every covert action eventually becomes public, often creating more harm than good because of the poor image it projects of the U.S.

“I would estimate that well over half of the covert action programs on the books have, at least in a general sense, been identified in the press in some fashion—not all the details and all the methods,” according to Russell J. Bruemmer, a former
CIA general counsel under William Webster. “Probably almost all of the controversial ones have been identified.”
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