The Craft of Intelligence (7 page)

In addition to getting the information, there is also the question of how it should be processed and analyzed. I feel that there are important reasons for placing the responsibility for the preparation and coordination of our intelligence analyses with a centralized agency of government which has no responsibility for policy or for choosing among the weapons systems which will be developed for our defense. Quite naturally policymakers tend to become wedded to the policy for which they are responsible, and State and Defense employees are no exception to this very human tendency. They are likely to view with a jaundiced eye intelligence reports that might tend to challenge existing policy decisions or require a change in cherished estimates of the strength of the Soviets in any particular military field. The most serious occupational hazard we have in the intelligence field, the one that causes more mistakes than any foreign deception or intrigue, is prejudice. I grant that we are all creatures of prejudice, including CIA officials, but by entrusting intelligence coordination to our central intelligence service, which is excluded from policymaking and is married to no particular military hardware, we can avoid, to the greatest possible extent, the bending of facts obtained through intelligence to suit a particular occupational viewpoint.

At the time of Pearl Harbor high officials here, despite warnings from our outstanding Ambassador to Japan, my old friend Joseph C. Grew, were convinced that the Japanese, if they struck, would strike southward against the soft underbelly of the British, French and Dutch colonial area. The likelihood that they would make the initial move against their most dangerous antagonist, the United States, was discounted. The attacks on Hawaii and the Philippines, and the mishandling of the intelligence we then had, greatly influenced our government’s later decision on how our intelligence work should be organized. While the warnings received before the attack from deciphered Japanese cables may not have been clear enough to permit our leaders to pinpoint Hawaii and the Philippines, they should at least, if adequately analyzed, have alerted us to imminent danger in the Pacific.

If anyone has any doubt about the importance of objective intelligence, I would suggest a study of other mistakes which leaders have made because they were badly advised or misjudged the actions or reactions of other countries. When Kaiser Wilhelm II struck at France in 1914, he was persuaded by his military leaders that the violation of Belgian neutrality was essential to military success. He relied too heavily on their judgment and disregarded the advice he received from the political side as to the consequences of British intervention.

In the days prior to World War II, the British Government, despite Churchill’s warnings, failed to grasp the dimensions of the Nazi threat, especially in aircraft.

Hitler likewise, as he launched into World War II, made a series of miscalculations. He discounted the strength and determination of Britain; later he opened a second front against Russia in June, 1941, with reckless disregard of the consequences. When in 1942 he was reportedly advised of the plan for an American-British landing in North Africa, he refused to pay attention to the intelligence available to him. I was told that he casually remarked, “They don’t have the ships to do it.”

As for Japan, successful as was the Pearl Harbor attack, later events proved that its government made the greatest miscalculation of all when it underestimated United States military potential.

Today a new threat, practically unknown in the days before the Communist revolution, has put an added strain on our intelligence capabilities. It is the Communist attempt—which we began to comprehend after World War II—to undermine the security of free countries. As this is carried on in secret, it requires secret intelligence techniques to ferret it out and to build up our defenses against it.

In the Soviet Union we are faced with an antagonist that has raised the art of espionage to an unprecedented height, while developing the collateral techniques of subversion and deception into a formidable political instrument of attack. No other country has ever before attempted this on such a scale. These operations, in support of the U.S.S.R.’s over-all policies, go on in times of so-called thaw and under the guise of coexistence with the same vigor as in times of acute crisis. Our intelligence has a major share of the task of neutralizing such hostile activities, which present a common danger to us and to our allies.

The fact that so many Soviet cases of both espionage and subversion have been uncovered in recent times and in several NATO countries is not due to mere accident. It is well that the world should know what the Soviets know already—namely, that the free countries of the world have been developing highly sophisticated counterintelligence organizations and have been increasingly effective over the years in uncovering Soviet espionage. Naturally, with our NATO and other alliances, we have a direct interest in the internal security arrangements of other countries with which secrets may be shared. If a NATO document is filched by the Communists from one of our allies, it is just as harmful to us as if it were stolen from our own files. This creates an important requirement for international cooperation in intelligence work.

Our allies, and many friendly countries which are not formal allies, generally share our view of the Communist threat. Many of them can make and are making real contributions to the total strength of the Free World, including one in the intelligence field, to help keep us forewarned. However, some of our friends do not have the resources to do all they might wish, and they look to the United States for leadership in the intelligence field, as in many others. As we uncover hostile Communist plans, they expect us to help them in recognizing the threats to their own security. It is in our interest to do so. One of the most gratifying features of recent work in intelligence, and one that is quite unique in its long history, has been the growing cooperation established between the American intelligence services and their counterparts throughout the Free World which make common cause with us as we face a common peril.

There is a fundamental question about our intelligence work which, I realize, worries a good many people. Is it necessary, they ask, for the United States, with its high ideals and its traditions to involve itself in espionage, to send U-2s over other people’s territory, to break other people’s coded messages?

Many people who understand that such activities may be necessary in wartime still doubt that they are justified in time of peace. Do we spy on friend and foe alike, and do we have to do it merely because another less scrupulous and less moral type of country does it to us? I do not consider such questions improper, frivolous or pacifist. Indeed, it does us credit that these questions are raised.

Personally, I see little excuse for peacetime spying on our friends or allies. Apart from the moral issues, we have other and far more important ways of using our limited intelligence resources. Also, there are other ways of getting the information we need through normal diplomatic channels. Of course, we have to take into account the historical fact that we have had friends who became enemies—Germany on two recent occasions, and Italy and Japan. Hence, it is always useful to have “in the bank” a store of basic intelligence—most of it not very secret—about all countries. I recall that in the early days of World War II a call went out to the public for personal photographs of various areas of the world, particularly the islands of the Pacific. We did not then have adequate knowledge of the beaches and the flora and fauna of many places where our forces might shortly be landing.

But the answer to the question of the need for intelligence, particularly on the Communist bloc, is that we are not really “at peace” with them, and we have not been since Communism declared its own war on our system of government and life. We are faced with a closed, conspiratorial, police-dominated society. We cannot hope to maintain our position securely if this opponent is confident that he can surprise us by attacking the Free World at the time and place of his own choosing and without any forewarning.

The collection of foreign intelligence is accomplished in a variety of ways, not all of them either mysterious or secret. This is particularly true of overt intelligence, which is information derived from newspapers, books, learned and technical publications, official reports of government proceedings, radio and television. Even a novel or a play may contain useful information about the state of a nation.

Two sources of overt intelligence in the Soviet Union are, of course, the newspapers
Izvestia
and
Pravda
, which translate into
News
and
Truth
. The former is an organ of the government and the latter of the party. There are also “little”
Izvestias
and
Pravdas
throughout Russia. A wit once suggested that in
Izvestia
there is no news and in
Pravda
there is no truth. This is a fairly accurate statement, but it is, nevertheless, of real interest to know what the Soviets publish and what they ignore, and what turn they give to embarrassing developments that they are obliged to publish.

It is, for example, illuminating to compare the published text of Khrushchev’s extemporaneous remarks in Soviet media with what he actually said. His now-famous retort to Western diplomats at a Polish Embassy reception in Moscow on November 18, 1956, “We will bury you,” was not quoted thus in the Soviet press reports, even though it was overheard by many. The state press apparently has the right to censor Premier Khrushchev, presumably with his approval. Later, however, what Khrushchev then said caught up with him and he gave a lengthy and somewhat mollifying interpretation of it. Consequently, how and why a story is twisted is at least as interesting as the actual content. Often there is one version for domestic consumption, another for the other Communist bloc countries and still other versions for different foreign countries. There are times when the “fairy stories” that Communist regimes tell their own people are indicative of new vulnerabilities and new fears.

The collection of overt foreign information by the United States is largely the business of the State Department, with other government departments cooperating in accordance with their own needs. The CIA has an interest in the “product” and shares in collection, selection and translation. Obviously, to collect and sort out such intelligence on a world-wide basis is a colossal task, but the work is well organized and the burden equitably shared. The monitoring of foreign radio broadcasts that might be of interest to us is one of the biggest parts of the job. In the Iron Curtain countries alone, millions of words are spewed out over the air every day; most of the broadcasts of real interest originate in Moscow and Peking, some directed to domestic audiences and others beamed abroad.

All overt information is grist for the intelligence mill. It is there for the getting, but large numbers of trained personnel are required to cull it in order to find the grain of wheat in the mountains of chaff. For example, in the fall of 1961 we were forewarned by a few hours of the Soviet intention to resume atomic testing by means of a vague news item transmitted by Radio Moscow for publication in a provincial Soviet journal. A young lady at a remote listening post spotted this item, analyzed it correctly and relayed it to Washington immediately. Her vigilance and perceptiveness succeeded in singling out one significant piece of intelligence from the torrents of deadly verbiage that have to be listened to daily.

In countries that are free, where the press is free and the publication of political and scientific information is not hampered by the government, the collection of overt intelligence is of particular value and is of direct use in the preparation of our intelligence estimates. Since we are that kind of country ourselves, we are subject to that kind of collection. The Soviets pick up some of their most valuable information about us from our publications, particularly from our technical and scientific journals, published transcripts of Congressional hearings and the like. For the collection of this kind of literature, they often make use of the personnel of the satellite diplomatic missions in Washington. There is no problem in acquiring it. The Soviets simply want to spare themselves the tasks; also, they feel that a Polish or Czech collection agent is likely to be less conspicuous than a Russian.

Information is also collected in the ordinary course of conducting official relations with a foreign power. This is not overt in the sense that it is available to anyone who reads the papers or listens to the radio. Indeed, the success of diplomatic negotiations calls for a certain measure of secrecy. But information derived from diplomatic exchanges is made available to the intelligence service for the preparation of estimates. Such information may contain facts, slants and hints that are significant, especially when coupled with intelligence from other sources. If the Foreign Minister of X hesitates to accept a United States offer on Monday, it may be that he is seeing the Soviets on Tuesday and hoping for a better offer there. Later, from an entirely different quarter, we may get a glimpse into the Soviet offer. Together these two items will probably have much more meaning than either would have had alone.

The effort of overt collection is broad and massive. It tries to miss nothing that is readily available and might be of use. Yet there may be some subjects on which the government urgently needs information that are not covered by such material. Or this material may lack sufficient detail, may be inconclusive or may not be completely trustworthy. Naturally, this is more often the case in a closed society. We cannot depend on the Soviets making public, either intentionally or inadvertently, what our government most wants to know; only what they wish us to believe. When they do give out official information, it cannot always be trusted. Published statistics may credit a five-year plan with great success; economic intelligence from inside informants may show that the plan failed in certain respects and that the ruble statistics given were not a true index of values. Photographs may be doctored, or even faked, as was the famous Soviet publicity picture of the junk heap first designated as the downed U-2. The rocket in the Red Army Day parade, witnessed and photographed by Western newsmen and military attachés, may be a dud, an assemblage of odd rocket parts that do not really constitute a working missile. Easy as it is to collect overt intelligence, it is equally easy to plant deception within it. For all these reasons clandestine intelligence collection (espionage) must remain an essential and basic activity of intelligence.

Clandestine intelligence collection is chiefly a matter of circumventing obstacles in order to reach an objective. Our side chooses the objective. The opponent has set up the obstacles. Usually he knows which objectives are most important to us, and he surrounds these with appropriately difficult obstacles. For example, when the Soviets started testing their missiles, they chose launching sites in their most remote and unapproachable wastelands. The more closed and rigid the control a government has over its people, the more obstacles it throws up. In our time this means that U.S. intelligence must delve for the intentions and capabilities of a nation pledged to secrecy and organized for deception, whose key military installations may be buried a thousand miles off the beaten track.

Clandestine collection uses people: “agents,” “sources,” “informants.” It may also use machines, for there are machines today that can do things human beings cannot do and can “see” things they cannot see. Since the opponent would try to stop this effort if he could locate and reach it, it is carried out in secret; thus we speak of it as clandestine collection. The traditional word for it is “espionage.”

The essence of espionage is access. Someone, or some device, has to get close enough to a thing, a place or a person to observe or discover the desired facts without arousing the attention of those who protect them. The information must then be delivered to the people who want it. It must move quickly or it may get “stale.” And it must not get lost or be intercepted en route.

At its simplest, espionage is nothing more than a kind of well-concealed reconnaissance. This suffices when a brief look at the target is all that is needed. The agent makes his way to an objective, observes it, then comes back and reports what he saw. The target is usually fairly large and easily discernible—such things as troop dispositions, fortifications or airfields. Perhaps the agent can also make his way into a closed installation and have a look around, or even make off with documents. In any case, the length of his stay is limited. Continuous reportage is difficult to maintain when the agent’s presence in the area is secret and illegal.

Behind the Iron Curtain today, this method of spying is hardly adequate—not because the obstacles are so formidable that they cannot be breached, but because the kind of man who is equipped by his training to breach them is not likely to have the technical knowledge that will enable him to make a useful report on the complex targets that exist nowadays. If you don’t know anything about nuclear reactors, there is little you can discover about one, even when you are standing right next to it. And even for the rare person who might be technically competent, just getting close to such a target is hardly enough to fulfill today’s intelligence requirements. What is needed is a thorough examination of the actual workings of the reactor. For this reason it is unrealistic to think that U.S. or other Western tourists in the Soviet Union can be of much use in intelligence collection. But for propaganda reasons, the Soviets continue to arrest tourists now and then in order to give the world the impression that U.S. espionage is a vast effort exploiting even the innocent traveler.

Of far more long-term value than reconnaissance is “penetration” by an agent, meaning that he somehow is able to get inside the target and stay there. One of the ways of going about this is for the agent to insinuate himself into the offices or the elite circles of another power by means of subterfuge. He is then in a position to elicit the desired information from persons who come to trust him and who are entirely unaware of his true role. In popular parlance, this operation is called a “plant,” and it is one of the most ancient devices of espionage. The case of Ben Franklin’s secretary, Edward Bancroft, which I related in an earlier chapter, is a classical example of the planted agent.

A penetration of this kind is predicated upon a show of outer loyalties, which are often not put to the test. Nor are they easily tested, especially when opponents share a common language and background. But today, when the lines that separate one nation and one ideology from another are so sharply drawn, the dissembling of loyalties is more difficult to maintain over a long period of time and under close scrutiny. It can be managed, though. One of the most notorious Soviet espionage operations before and during World War II was the network in the Far East, directed by Richard Sorge, a German who was working in Tokyo as a correspondent of the
Frankfurter Zeitung
. Sorge made it his business to cultivate his fellow countrymen at the German embassy in Tokyo, and eventually succeeded in having himself assigned to the embassy’s Press Section. This not only gave him excellent cover for secret work with his Japanese agents, but also provided him directly with inside information about the Nazis’ conduct of the war and their relations with Japan.

To achieve this, Sorge had to play the part of the good Nazi, which he apparently did convincingly even though he detested the Nazis. The Gestapo chief in the embassy, as well as the ambassador, and the service attachés were all his “friends.” Had the Gestapo in Berlin ever investigated Sorge’s past, as it eventually did after Sorge was apprehended by the Japanese in 1941, it would have discovered that Sorge had been a Communist agent and agitator in Germany during the early 1920s and had spent years in Moscow.

Shortly thereafter, the West was subjected to similar treatment at the hands of Soviet espionage. Names such as Bruno Pontecorvo and Klaus Fuchs come to mind as agents who were unmasked after the war. In some such cases, records of previous Communist affiliations lay in the files of Western security and intelligence services even while the agents held responsible positions in the West, but they were not found until it was too late. Because physicists like Fuchs and Pontecorvo moved from job to job among the Allied countries—one year in Great Britain, another in Canada and another in the United States—and because the scientific laboratories of the Allies were working under great pressures, personnel with credentials from one Allied country were sometimes accepted for employment in another under the impression that they had already been sufficiently checked out. And when available records were consulted, the data found in them—particularly if of Nazi origin—seem often to have been discounted at a time when Russia was our ally and Hitler our enemy, and when the war effort required the technical services of gifted scientists of many nationalities.

The consequences of these omissions and oversights during the turbulent war years are regrettable, and the lesson will not easily be forgotten. We cannot afford any more Fuchses or Pontecorvos. Today investigation of persons seeking employment in sensitive areas of the U.S. Government and related technical installations is justifiably thorough and painstaking.

Consequently, an agent who performs as a plant in our time must have more in his favor than acting ability. With our modern methods of security checking, he is in danger of failure if there is any record of his ever having been something other than what he represents himself to be. The only way to disguise a man today so that he will be acceptable in hostile circles for any length of time is to make him over entirely. This involves years of training and a thorough concealing and burying of the past under layers of fictitious personal history which have to be “backstopped.”

If you were really born in Finland but are supposed to have been born in Munich, Germany, then you must have documents showing your connection to that city. You have to be able to act like someone who was born and lived there. Arrangements have to be made in Munich to confirm your origin in case an investigation is ever undertaken. Perhaps Munich or a similar city was chosen because it was bombed and certain records were destroyed. A man so made over is known as an “illegal,” and I shall have more to say about him later. Obviously, an intelligence service will go to all this trouble only when it is intent upon creating deep-set and long-range assets.