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THE CIA AND THE CULT OF INTELLIGENCE

PART 2

FOUR: Special Operations

You have to make up your mind
that you are going to have an
intelligence agency and protect
it as such, and shut your eyes
some and take what
is coming.
-- SENATOR JOHN STENNIS
Chairman, Joint Senate Committee
for CIA Oversight
November 23, 1971

COVERT action-intervention in the internal affairs of other
nations-is the most controversial of the CIA's clandestine functions.
It is the invariable means to the most variable ends. It is
basic to the clandestine mentality. And the crudest, most direct
form of covert action is called "special operations."
These activities, mostly of a paramilitary or warlike nature,
have little of the sophistication and subtlety of political action
(penetration and manipulation) or propaganda and disinformation.
Although planned by the CIA's professionals, these operations
are to a large extent carried out by agency contract employees
and mercenaries-both American and foreign. Within the
CIA's Clandestine Services, "special ops" have always been
viewed with mixed emotions. Most of the professionals, especially
in recent years, have looked down on such activities, even while
at times recommending their use. It is widely recognized within the
agency, however, that less direct forms of covert action have their
limitations, especially when timely, conclusive action is thought
necessary to put down a troublesome rebel movement or to overthrow
an unfriendly government. In these cases, the CIA usually
calls on its own "armed forces," the Special Operations Division
(SOD), to do the job.
By definition, special ops are violent and brutal; most clandestine
operators prefer more refined techniques. The CIA professional
is a flimflam artist, involved in the creative challenge of plotting
and orchestrating a clandestine campaign without resorting to
violence. In such non-paramilitary covert action, the operator
tends to keep his hands unbloodied, and his crimes are of the
white-collar variety-conspiracy, bribery, corruption. His failure
or exposure is normally punished only with expulsion from the
country where he is operating. He is, in the end, merely engaging
Special Operations • 109
in a "gentleman's" game. The paramilitary operator, on the contrary,
is a gangster who deals in force, in terror, in violence.
Failure can mean death-if not to the operator himself, then to
the agents he has recruited. The SOD man wages war, albeit on a
small and secret level, but none of the rules of warfare apply. His
is a breed apart; in the CIA, special ops types are sometimes referred
to as the "animals" of the agency.
In the CIA's early years, and especially during the Korean war,
many paramilitary (PM) specialists, mostly former military men,
were hired as career officers. But the CIA soon learned that their
military skills were not easily transferable to other types of
clandestine work and that most of the PM experts were next to
useless in the bureaucratic and diplomatic settings in which the
agency usually functions. At times, when special operations were
at a low ebb, the agency had difficulty in finding jobs that the PM
specialists could handle. Hence, during the late 1950s PM manpower
was gradually reduced to a cadre of a couple of hundred
operators capable of doing the planning and the training for
paramilitary operations. When more men were needed, the agency
would hire them on short-term contracts. These contract forces
tended to be a melange of ex-military men, adventurers, and outright
mercenaries; others came to the CIA on direct loan from
the armed services. The U.S. Army's Special Forces and the
counterguerrilla units of the Navy (SEALs) and Air Force (SOFs)
provided many of the recruits, since veterans of these branches
already possessed the most up-to-date paramilitary skills. Sometimes
these military men "resigned" from the service in order to
accommodate the CIA's cover requirements for their activities,
but they did so with the understanding that eventually they would
return to military service-their time with the CIA counting toward
promotion and retirement. (This process is known in the
intelligence trade as "sheep-dipping.") But the agency was always
careful to keep direct control over the planning, logistics, and
communications of its special or paramilitary operations. The
contractees merely did the dirty work.
The CIA set up training facilities in the United States and overseas
to prepare both its own career operators and the temporary
110 • THE CIA AND THE CULT OF INTELLIGENCE
personnel on contract for paramilitary work. Camp Peary-"The
Farm"-in southeastern Virginia provided the basic courses. More
advanced techniques, such as demolitions and heavy weapons, were
taught at a secret CIA base in North Carolina. Instruction in
parachuting and air operations was provided at both these facilities
and at the headquarters of Intermountain Aviation near Tucson,
Arizona. A secret installation in the Canal Zone was the site for
jungle-warfare and survival training. Here the agency's trainees
would play paramilitary war games, pitted against the elite of the
U.S. Army's Special Forces.
Large-scale paramilitary operations also necessitated special
training bases for the mercenaries. For the 1954 Guatemalan
invasion, the CIA built installations in Nicaragua and Honduras.
For the 1961 attack at the Bay of Pigs, sites were established again
in Nicaragua and this time also in Guatemala, which had become
available to the CIA as a result of its success there seven years
earlier ( DELETED )
constructed large support facilities in Northeast India and gave
( DELETED ) the guerrillas at a deserted army base in the
mountains. And for its many Southeast Asia adventures, the
Special Operations Division had "a home away from home"
under Navy cover on the Pacific island of Saipan.
Saipan, however, was not a U.S. possession, but rather a Trust
Territory of the United Nations under U.S. care, and consequently
there was some concern within the agency that the establishment
and operation of a secret military base there would raise sticky
problems in the U.N. But being masters of the art of cover and
deception, the CIA contingent on Saipan merely "sanitized" the
base whenever U.N. representatives visited the island on inspection
tours. According to a native of the island, trainees and instructors
alike disappeared; the barbed wire and "no admittance to
unauthorized personnel" signs were taken down. In a day or so,
the camp was made to appear just like any other jumble of
military quonset huts, which the inspectors ignored. As soon as
they were gone, however, all was returned to normal, and the
CIA's special ops training was begun anew.
One former officer of the CIA's Clandestine Services, who was
Special Operations • I I I
trained in special ops, wrote this account of his experiences for
Ramparts magazine:
The stated purpose of paramilitary school was to train and
equip us to become instructors for village peasants who
wanted to defend themselves against guerrillas. I could believe
in that.
Some of the training was conventional: But then we moved
up to the CIA's demolition training headquarters. It was here
that Cubans had been, and still were [in the mid-1960s] being
trained in conventional and underwater demolitions. And it
was here that we received training in tactics which hardly
conformed to the Geneva Convention.
The array of outlawed weaponry with which we were
familiarized included bullets that explode on impact, silencerequipped
machineguns, homemade explosives and self-made
napalm for stickier and hotter Molotov cocktails. We were
taught demolition techniques, practicing on late model cars,
railroad trucks, and gas storage tanks. And we were shown a
quick method of saturating a confined area with flour or
fertilizer, causing an explosion like in a dustbin or granary.
And there was a diabolical invention that might be called
a mini-cannon. It was constructed of a concave piece of steel
fitted into the top of a # 10 can filled with a plastic explosive.
When the device was detonated, the tremendous heat of
friction of the steel turning inside out made the steel piece a
white-hot projectile. There were a number of uses for the
mini-cannon, one of which was demonstrated to us using an
old army school bus. It was fastened to the gasoline tank in
such a fashion that the incendiary projectile would rupture
the tank and fling flaming gasoline the length of the bus
interior, incinerating anyone inside. It was my lot to show the
rest of the class how easily it could be done. It worked, my
God, how it worked. I stood there watching the flames consume
the bus. It was, I guess, the moment of truth. What did
a busload of burning people have to do with freedom? What
right did I have, in the name of democracy and the CIA, to
112 THE CIA AND THE CULT OF INTELLIGENCE
decide that random victims should die? The intellectual game
was over. I had to leave.
The heavy reliance on paramilitary methods in the CIA's special
operations is a direct outgrowth of the clandestine guerrilla programs
undertaken by the Office of Strategic Services during World
War II. The OSS, like its British counterpart, Special Operations
Executive, made extensive use of indigenous underground resistance
movements to sabotage the activities of German and
Japanese armed forces in the occupied countries and to foment
national unrest in these areas. In running such operations, the OSS
officers performed as advisors and acted as channels for communications
and support from the Allied powers. Basic to the
success of the OSS operations was the fact that the countries in
which it conducted its covert activities were under the military
control of foreign armies despised by native resistance forces.
Even so, the resistance movements in most occupied countries
enjoyed limited success until the regular Allied forces had won
sufficient victories to force the Axis powers into an essentially defensive
strategy of protecting their homelands.
During the early postwar years, as we have noted, the CIA's
initial reaction to the Cold War was to employ the wartime tactics
of the OSS in new efforts to organize and promote paramilitary
resistance movements in such areas as Albania, the Ukraine, and
other parts of Eastern Europe. Almost all of these operations
were complete failures. (Similar setbacks occurred in agency paramilitary
operations against China and North Korea.) The controlling
military forces in Eastern Europe, although supported by
the Soviet Union, were for the most part of native origin-often
directed by the same political elements that had cooperated with
the OSS and other Allied intelligence services in the prior struggle
against the Nazi occupiers. Despite a large amount of disenchantment
with the communist regimes on the part of the indigenous
populations, which the CIA grossly misinterpreted as revolutionary
fervor, the war-weary populations were not willing to join, in
significant numbers, resistance groups with little chance of success.
And under the prevailing political circumstances of the times,
Special Operations • 113
there was little likelihood of eventual overt military support from
the U.S. armed forces. Thus, the Eastern European governments,
with their rigid internal-security systems, were easily able to
thwart CIA paramilitary efforts against them.
In those areas of the world not under communist domination,
however, the CIA's clandestine paramilitary operations fared somewhat
better, at least during the early 1950s. But unlike the OSS,
which had supported partisan groups fighting against fascistdominated
governments, the CIA more often than not found itself
in the position of supporting the counterinsurgency efforts of established
regimes threatened from the left by local guerrilla movements.
Blinded by its fear and distrust of communism, the CIA
had gradually drifted into a posture whereby its paramilitary operations
were in support of the status quo. The agency, in pursuit of
"stability" and "orderly change," increasingly associated itself with
protecting vested interests. In the view of much of the world, it
had become a symbol of repression rather than freedom. While
the CIA's paramilitary activities were at times successful, many
of the victories won took on a Pyrrhic quality. They always
seemed to work against legitimate social and political changefor
which the U.S. government would in later years be held accountable
by the peoples of these countries.
During the first years of its existence and particularly after the
outbreak of the Korean war in 1950, the CIA recruited and
trained large numbers of officers for special operations. Many
were, of course, intended for service in Korea, but the American
commander there, General Douglas MacArthur, was not particularly
fond of clandestine paramilitary operations, and he did
his best to keep the CIA's special-ops experts out of his theater.
The agency did nevertheless manage to launch a large number
of secret operations, resulting in the loss of numerous Korean
agents and few, if any, meaningful gains.
With its newly expanded staff, the CIA's Special Operations
Division was able to turn its attention to other countries in Asia.
Attempts were made to develop resistance movements in China,
but these efforts accomplished virtually nothing more than the
------------------------,-- _..-=-----_ ..._--
114 THE C I A AND THE C U L T 0 FIN TEL L I G ENe E
oapture of agency officers John Downey and Richard Fecteauand
death for the Nationalist Chinese agents they were helping to
infiltrate. Mainland China, like Eastern Europe, was not fertile
territory for agency operations.
There were some successes elsewhere. The Huk insurgency in
the Philippines was put down with CIA help. Agency-supported
Nationalist Chinese troops in Burma (when not engaging in their
principal pastime of trafficking in opium) were induced to conduct
occasional raids into the hinterland of Communist China. In
South Vietnam the CIA played a large part in consolidating the
power of the Diem regime-and this was considered by the agency
to be a major accomplishment.
Such gains in Southeast Asia were offset by some rather notable
failures, most particularly the agency's inability to overthrow
President Sukarno of Indonesia in 1958. While this CIA-supported
revolt was going on, the U.S. government categorically denied providing
any support to the anti-Sukarno forces. In March 1958,
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles told a congressional committee
that "we are not intervening in the internal affairs of this
country." Six weeks later President Eisenhower stated that while
"soldiers of fortune" probably were involved in the affair, "our
policy is one of careful neutrality and proper deportment all the
way through so as not to be taking sides where it is not of our
business." These statements were of course false. The Indonesian
government put little credence in the denials and denounced the
United States for its intervention. The New York Times, however,
chose to believe the official American version and indignantly
scolded the Indonesians for circulating false reports saying that the
U.S. government was giving aid to the rebels. The Times commented
that the Secretary of State and "the President himself" had
denied American involvement, and that "the United States is not
ready ... to step in to help overthrow a constituted government."
The pattern of lying to cover up failure was established; it would
find further manifestation during the U-2 affair, and again at the
Bay of Pigs.
In 1959 the CIA found another opportunity to engage in
special ops when the Tibetans revolted against the Chinese comSpecial
Operations II 5
munists who eight years before had imposed their rule on the
mountain kingdom. Sparked by Peking's move to replace the
Dalai Lama, Tibet's traditional religious and temporal ruler, with
the Panchen Lama, an important religious leader controlled by the
Chinese, there was a short-lived uprising. After its failure, the
Dalai Lama with several thousand followers and troops escaped
to India, where he and his loyalists were granted sanctuary. Then, (
DELETED
) taken on a tour of friendly Asian and European
capitals as living, though somewhat incongruous proof-since
he was himself an autocrat-of Communist China's totalitarianism.
Later, he was brought to the United States for a visit, during which
he appeared at the United Nations to plead his case and to denounce
the Peking government. (
DELETED
) special ops officers began secretly training and
reequipping the Dalai Lama's troops-fearsome Khamba horsemen-
in preparation for eventual clandestine forays into Tibet.
Some of the Tibetans were quietly brought to the United States for
special paramilitary training at Camp Hale, Colorado.
Although the CIA officers led their Tibetan trainees to believe
that they were being readied for the reconquering of their homeland,
even within the agency few saw any real chance that this
could happen. Some of the covert operators who worked directly
with the Tibetans, however, eventually came to believe their own
persuasive propaganda. Years later, they would flush with anger
and frustration describing how they and their Tibetans had been
undone by the bureaucrats back in Washington.* Several of them
would turn for solace to the Tibetan prayers which they had
learned during their years with the Dalai Lama.
* This phenomenon of "emotional attachment" is not rare in the clandestine
business, but it is particularly prevalent in special operations. The officers
who engage in special ops often have a deep psychological need to belong
and believe. This, coupled with the dangers and hardships they willingly
endure, tends to drive them to support extreme causes and seek unattainable
goals.
II6 THE CIA AND THE CULT OF INTELLIGENCE
From the beginning of the Tibetan operation, it was clear that
its only value would be one of harassment. Spot raids against
Chinese facilities in the backward mountain country were an
annoyance to Peking and a reminder of its vulnerability. But the
dream of reoccupying the land and reestablishing the Dalai Lama
as its political ruler was an impossible one.
The guerrilla raids of the Dalai Lama's forces into Tibet,
planned by CIA operators and on occasion led by agency contract
mercenaries, were supported and covered by "private" planes
of the Civil Air Transport complex, a CIA proprietary which was
also instrumental in secretly supplying weapons ( DELETED
) part, the raids accomplished little beyond
giving the Tibetan troops some temporary satisfaction and
fanning their hopes that someday they would lead a true invasion
of their homeland. Communication lines were cut, some sabotage
was carried out, and from time to time an ambush of a small
Chinese Communist force was undertaken.
One such ambush resulted in an intelligence windfall. The
Tibetans had waylaid a small military convoy on a lonely mountain
road and were preparing to put the torch to the Chinese
vehicles when it was discovered that one of them contained several
mailbags. A quick examination disclosed that in addition to the
routine mix of general correspondence, the mail included official
governmental and military documents being delivered from China
proper. The mailbags were salvaged and returned to India by the
Tibetan guerrillas, where they were turned over to the CIA operatives
working on the operation. The contents of the mailbags were
later analyzed in detail by the agency's China experts in Langley,
Virginia. Data and insights as to the status of the Chinese occupation
of Tibet were found in abundance: While difficulties were
being encountered in imposing communist rule on the feudal system
of the mountain nation, it was clear that the Chinese were in
full control of the situation and were determined to have their
way. Even more interesting to the agency's China watchers, however,
was authentic background information revealing that Mao
Tse-tung's "Great Leap Forward" had failed in several crucial
respects to achieve its goal of raising China from the depths of
Special Operations • II 7
underdevelopment. As incredible as it may seem in retrospect,
some of the CIA's economic analysts (and many other officials in
Washington) were in the early 1960s still inclined to accept much
of Peking's propaganda as to the success of Mao's economic experiment.
The acquisition of the Tibetan documents was a significant
contribution to the resolution of this particular debate
within the U.S. intelligence community.
Without any other noteworthy gains, the Tibetan operation
sputtered hopelessly on. A few years later, at the end of 1964, the
Chinese removed the Panchen Lama from power, setting off another
minor revolt. But the Dalai Lama's CIA-trained troops, now
more than five years in exile in India, were unable to come to the
rescue of their countrymen. With the CIA's Bay of Pigs defeat still
fresh in American minds, there was little interest in Washington
in supporting the dreams of the Khamba horsemen. Gradually the
Tibetan operation atrophied. By the late 1960s the CIA's clandestine
operatives were interested only in seeking a graceful way to
terminate their association with the Dalai Lama and his aging, now
useless troops.
The Tibetan operation was soon overshadowed and succeeded
by CIA involvement in the Congo. The chaotic strife which gripped
that country almost from the moment it became independent of
Belgian rule provided the CIA, along with intelligence services of
many other countries, fertile ground for special operations. The
U.S. government's intent was to promote a stable pro-Western
regime that would protect foreign investments, and the CIA was
given much of the responsibility for carrying out this policy.
At first the agency's covert activities were confined to political
manipulation and cash payments to selected politicians, but as
the Congolese political scene became more and more unraveled,
the agency sent its paramilitary experts and mercenaries to support
the new government. By 1964, CIA B-26 aircraft flown by
Cuban pilots under contract with the CIA were carrying out
regular bombing missions against rebel areas. Later, in 1966, the
New York Times would describe the CIA planes as "an instant
air force." While the agency was not completely happy with this
118 THE CIA AND THE CULT OF INTELLIGENCE
publicity, many operators were pleased with the newspaper's recognition
of the CIA's skill in putting the operation together on
comparatively short notice.
Relying in large part on the considerable assistance furnished by
the CIA and other U.S. government agencies, the central Congolese
government under President Mobutu was finally able to impose
some degree of stability throughout the country. (
DELETED
)
During the years when the Tibetan and Congolese programs
were in full operation, the CIA and its Special Operations Division
were already becoming increasingly preoccupied with Southeast
Asia. In Laos, agency operators were organizing a private
army (L'Armee Clandestine) of more than 30,000 men and
building an impressive string of bases throughout the country.
A few of these bases were used as jumping-off points to send
guerrilla raiding parties into North Vietnam and China.
The secret war in Laos was viewed within the CIA with much
more favor than the huge military struggle that eventually developed
in Vietnam. The fighting was not highly visible to the American
public or the world. In fact, the Laotian war was years along
before the U.S. Congress even became aware it was going on. In
Laos the CIA was in complete control, but at no time were more
than forty or fifty operations officers required to direct the paramilitary
effort. The dirty and dangerous work-the ground fighting
-was handled by hundreds of agency contract personnel and more
than 30,000 Lao tribesmen under the leadership of General Vang
Pao-whom the CIA from time to time secretly decorated with
"intelligence" medals. The CIA's Laotian forces were augmented
by thousands of Thai "volunteers" paid by the agency. Air support,
an extremely dangerous business in Laos, was supplied by Air
America-a CIA-owned airline-and on occasion by the Thai
Air Force. Thus, while the CIA's special-ops officers masterminded
the war and called all the shots, largely from the Laotian capital
of Vientiane or from secure bases upcountry, most were not required
to run the physical risks of war. The Laotian operation was,
Special Operations • II9
as special operations go, a near-perfect situation for the career
officer.
Meanwhile, in Vietnam the CIA supported and financed a force
of roughly 45,000 Civilian Irregular Defense Guards (CIDGs),
local guerrilla troops who fought under the operational direction of
the U.S. Army's Special Forces. SOD operators and agency contractees
ran the Counter Terror teams which employed similar
methods to oppose the Vietcong's terror tactics of kidnapping, torture,
and murder. The agency also organized guerrilla raids against
North Vietnam, with special emphasis on intrusions by sea-borne
commando groups coming "over the beach" on specially designed,
heavily armed high-speed PT-type boats. At least one such CIA
raiding party was operating in that part of the Tonkin Gulf in 1964
where two U.S. destroyers allegedly came under attack by North
Vietnamese ships. These CIA raids may well have specifically
provoked the North Vietnamese action against the destroyers,
which in turn led to the passage of the Tonkin Gulf resolution by
the U.S. Congress in 1964, thus setting the stage for large-scale
American military involvement in Indochina.
The CIA's special operations in Southeast Asia were massive in
scale and an important part of the overall U.S. war effort. Many of
these operations are described in detail in official U.S. government
documents published in The Pentagon Papers. Neverthele·ss, a few
operations not mentioned therein deserve particular note.
One involved the Nungs, a national minority of Chinese hill people
who fought on the French side in the first Vietnam war and then
ca'!le south in large numbers after 1954. The Nungs were known
to be extremely fierce fighters, and they became a favorite source
of manpower for CIA operations in South Vietnam. In fact, casual
observers could nearly always spot secret CIA installations in the
Vietnamese provinces by the Nung guards out front, dressed invariably
in jungle camouflage uniforms.
In addition, Nung mercenaries were often sent by the CIA on
forays along the Ho Chi Minh trail. Their function was to observe
North Vietnamese and Vietcong supply movements and on occasion
to make attacks against convoys, or to carry out sabotage on storage
depots. Since most of the Nungs were illiterate and had great
120 THE C I A AND THE C U L T 0 FIN TEL L I G ENe E
difficulty in sending back quick, accurate reports of what they saw,
the CIA technicians developed a special kind of radio transmitter
for their use. Each transmitter had a set of buttons corresponding
to pictures of a tank, a truck, an artillery piece, or some other
military-related object. When the Nung trail watcher saw a Vietcong
convoy, he would push the appropriate button as many times
as he counted such objects go by him. Each push sent a specially
coded impulse back to a base camp which could in this way keep
a running account of supply movements on the trail. In some instances
the signals would be recorded by observation planes that
would relay the information to attack aircraft for immediate bombing
raids on the trail.
The Nung units made special demands on their CIA case officers,
and consequently they cost the agency about 100 times
as much per soldier as the Meos fighting in CIA's L' Armee Clandestine
in Laos, who could be put into the field for less than ten cents
per man per day. The higher cost for the Nungs' services was
caused by their unwillingness to go into remote regions under
agency command unless they were regularly supplied with beer
and prostitutes-thus, the agency had no choice but to provide flying
bar and brothel services. Even though one of the CIA's own
airlines, Air America, handled this unusual cargo, the cost of the
air support was still high. The CIA's case officers would have
preferred to give the Nungs whiskey, which, while more expensive
to buy, was considerably lighter and hence cheaper to fly in, but
the Nungs would fight only for beer. The prostitutes also presented
a special problem because the agency did not want to compromise
the secrecy of the operations by supplying women from local areas
who might be able to talk to the Nungs. Thus, Air America brought
in only prostitutes from distant parts of Southeast Asia who had no
language in common with the Nungs.
With their characteristic enthusiasm for gimmicks and gadgetry,
the CIA came up with two technical discoveries in the mid-1960s
that were used in Vietnam with limited success but great delight.
(
DELETED
Special Operations • 121
DELETED
) In actual practice, however,
whatever damage was caused by the chemical was quickly
repaired by the Vietcong and North Vietnamese.
The agency's other discovery was a weapons-detection system.
It worked by spraying a special chemical on the hands of a suspected
Vietcong and then, after a few minutes, shining an ultraviolet
light on his hands. If the chemical glowed in a certain manner,
that meant that the suspect had held a metal object-in theory,
a weapon-during the preceding twenty-four hours. The system's
main drawback was that it was just as sensitive to steel farm implements
as to guns and it could implicate a person who had been
merely working with a hammer. The CIA considered the system
such a success, however, that it passed it on through a domestic
training program to the police forces of several American cities.
(
DELETED
)
Latin America in 1954 was the scene of one of the CIA's greatest
paramilitary triumphs-the successful invasion of Guatemala by
an agency-organized rebel force. And it was in Latin America that
the CIA seven years later suffered its most notable failure-the
122 THE CIA AND THE CULT OF INTELLIGENCE
abortive invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. But the agency was
slow to accept defeat in the Cuban operation. The only reason for
the failure, the CIA's operators believed, was that President Kennedy
had lost his nerve at the last minute, refusing more air support
for the invasion and withholding or reducing other possible assistance
by U.S. forces. Consequently, the agency continued its relationships
with its "penetrations" of Cuban exile groups-in a way
reminiscent of its lingering ties with Eastern European emigre
organizations from the early Cold War period. And the CIA kept
many of the Bay of Pigs veterans under contract, paying them
regular salaries for more than a decade afterward.
(
DELETED
)
Time after time, the Cuban government would parade CIA-sponsored
rebels before television cameras to display them and their
equipment to the Cuban public and the world. Often the captives
made full confessions of the agency's role in their activities.
Nevertheless, the CIA kept looking for new and better ways to
attack the Castro government. Under contract to the agency, the
Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics at Groton, Connecticut
developed a highly maneuverable high-speed boat designed for
use by guerrilla raiders. The boat was supposed to be faster than
any ship in the Cuban navy, and thereby able to move arms and
men into Cuba at will. There were numerous delays in putting the
boat into production, however, and no deliveries were made up to
1967. By that time, the U.S. was too deeply involved in Southeast
Asia to think seriously about a new invasion of Cuba. The
CIA, therefore, quietly dropped the boat project and turned the
developmental model over the U.S. Navy.
Also during the mid-1960s, (
DELETED
Special Operations • 123
DELETED
)
By 1968, almost everyone in the Clandestine Services had finally
accepted the fact that special operations against Cuba had outlived
their usefulness. To be sure, there were still some diehard veterans
around who would continue to propose new schemes, but even
"Frank Bender"-the heavy-accented, cigar-smoking German
refugee who had helped manage the Bay of Pigs fiasco--could no
longer bring himself to believe in them. The death knell for CIA
Cuban operations was sounded that year, seven years after the
Bay of Pigs, when the agency closed down its two largest bases
in Florida. One of these, located on an old naval air station at Opalocka,
had served as an all-purpose base for CIA-sponsored raids
on Cuba. (
DELETED
)
While the CIA was largely concerned with Cuba in its Latin
American operations during much of the 1960s, the rest of the
continent was by no means neglected. For the most part, the
agency's aim was not to overthrow particular Latin American
governments but rather to protect them from local insurgent movements.
The CIA generally avoided getting involved in any large
way, instead using relatively small amounts of covert money, arms,
and advisors to fight leftist groups. While this switch in tactics
reflected the counterinsurgency theories popular in the Kennedy
and Johnson administrations, it also came as a result of the diversion
of a substantial part of the nation's military resources--covert
and otherwise-to Southeast Asia.
The CIA assumed the role of coordinator of all U.S. government
counterinsurgency activities in Latin America, and other agencies
-particularly AID, with its police-training programs, and the
124 THE C I A AND THE C U L T 0 FIN TEL L I G ENe E
Defense Department, with its military-assistance and civic-action
programs-provided the CIA with cover and additional resources.
Much of the agency's manpower for Latin American special operations
was furnished by the U.S. Army's Special Forces; small detachments
of Green Berets were regularly placed under CIA control.
These soldiers usually came from the Third Battalion of the
Seventh Special Forces, located at Fort Gulick in the Canal Zone.
The agency had its own paramilitary base in the Canal Zone, and
even when the Special Forces carried on missions outside the CIA's
direct command, agency operators kept in close touch with what
was going on. Since 1962 more than 600 Special Forces "mobile
training teams" have been dispatched to the rest of Latin America
from Fort Gulick, either under direct CIA control or under Pentagon
auspices. Green Berets participated, for example, in what was the
CIA's single large-scale Latin American intervention of the post-
Bay of Pigs era. This occurred in the mid-1960s, when the agency
secretly came to the aid of the Peruvian government, then plagued
by guerrilla troubles in its remote eastern regions. Unable to cope
adequately with the insurgent movement, Lima had turned to the
U.S. government for aid, which was immediately and covertly
forthcoming.
The agency financed the construction of what one experienced
observer described as "a miniature Fort Bragg" in the troubled
Peruvian jungle region, complete with mess halls, classrooms, barracks,
administrative buildings, parachute jump towers, amphibious
landing facilities, and all the other accoutrements of paramilitary
operations. Helicopters were furnished under cover of official military
aid programs, and the CIA flew in arms and other combat
equipment. Training was provided by the agency's Special Operations
Division personnel and by Green Beret instructors on loan
from the Army.
As the training progressed and the proficiency of the counterguerrilla
troops increased, the Peruvian government grew uneasy.
Earlier, the national military commanders had been reluctant to
provide personnel for the counterinsurgency force, and thus the
CIA had been required to recruit its fighting manpower from
among the available local populace. By paying higher wages than
Special Operations • 125
the army (and offering fringe benefits, better training, and "esprit
de corps") the agency soon developed a relatively efficient fighting
force. In short order, the local guerrillas were largely wiped out.
A few months later, when Peru was celebrating its chief national
holiday, the authorities refused to allow the CIA-trained troops
into the capital for the annual military parade. Instead, they had
to settle for marching through streets of a dusty provincial town,
in a satellite observance of the great day. Realizing that many a
Latin American regime had been toppled by a crack regiment,
Peru's leaders were unwilling to let the CIA force even come to
Lima, and the government soon moved to dismantle the unit.
As large and successful as the CIA's Peruvian operation might
have been, it was outweighed in importance among agency leaders
by a smaller intervention in Bolivia that occurred in 1967; for the
CIA was out for bigger game in Bolivia than just local insurgents.
The target was Che Guevara.
The Tracking of Che
When he vanished from the Cuban scene in the spring of 1965,
there were reports that Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the Argentinian
physician and comrade-in-arms of Fidel Castro, had challenged
the Cuban leader's authority and, as a result, had been executed or
imprisoned. There were other reports that Guevara had gone
mad, beyond all hope of recovery, and was under confinement in
a villa somewhere in the Cuban provinces. And there were still other
reports that Che had formed a small cadre of dedicated disciples
and had gone off to make a new revolution. At first no one in the
CIA knew what to believe. But eventually a few clues to Guevara's
whereabouts began to dribble in from the agency's field stations
and bases. They were fragmentary, frustratingly flimsy, and, surprisingly,
they pointed to Africa-to the Democratic Republic of
the Congo, now called Zaire. Yet another insurrection was going on
in the former Belgian colony, and information from the CIA's
operatives in the field indicated that foreign revolutionaries were
participating in it. Some of their tactics suggested the unique style
of Che Guevara.
126 THE C I A AND THE C U L T 0 FIN TEL L I G ENe E
Before the intelligence could be verified, however, the rebellion
in the eastern inland territories suddenly evaporated. By the fall
of 1965, Lake Tanganyika was again calm. But the CIA mercenaries
(some of them veterans of the Bay of Pigs operation), who
had been assisting the Congo government in repressing the revolt,
were convinced, as were their agency superiors in Africa, that Che
had indeed been in the area.
Later it was learned by the CIA that Guevara and a group of
more than 100 Cuban revolutionaries had infiltrated into the Congo
from neighboring Tanzania in the spring of 1965. They intended
to set Africa aflame with rebellion, but their revolutionary zeal was
not matched by that of the native guerrillas or the local populace.
In disgust, six months later Che secretly returned to Cuba to lay
plans for his next adventure. At the time, however, the CIA
knew only that he had once again disappeared. Again conflicting
reports as to his whereabouts and status, health and otherwise, began
to drift into the agency. By early 1967, almost a year and a
half later, the information available to the agency pointed to the
heart of South America, to Bolivia.
While many of the officers in the CIA's Clandestine Services
firmly believed that Guevara was behind the insurgent movement
in the southern mountains of Bolivia, a few of the agency's top
officials hesitated to accept the fact. Despite the air of doubt,
some agency special operations personnel were sent to the landlocked
South American country to assist local forces in dealing
with the rebel movement. Ironically, at this point not even Bolivian
President Rene Barrientos thought that Guevara was involved in
the guerrilla movement.
A couple of months later, in April, two events occurred that
dramatically underscored the belief of the CIA's clandestine operators,
both in Bolivia and at headquarters, that Che was leading
the rebels. Early in the month a Bolivian army unit overran the
base camp of the guerrillas at Nancahuazu, capturing documents,
diaries, and photographs which the fleeing insurgents had left
behind. Included in the materials seized at the guerrilla base
camp were photographs of a partially bald, gray-haired man with
glasses who, upon close examination of certain features, bore a
Special Operations • 127
striking resemblance to Che Guevara. In addition, a couple of
smudged fingerprints on some of the documents seemed to match
Guevara's. The documents, furthermore, clearly established that
a number of the guerrillas operating in Bolivia were Cubans, probably
some of the same men who were thought to have been with
Guevara in the Congo.
Ten days later Regis Debray, the leftist French journalist, who
had disappeared months earlier upon arriving in Bolivia to do a
geopolitical study, was captured near Muyupampa, along with two
other foreigners suspected of having been in contact with the rebels.
According to his statements months later, the journalist Debray
was saved from summary execution by the CIA men accompanying
the Bolivian forces who captured him. Afterward he was confronted
with secret evidence by these same CIA operatives, disclosing
that the agency knew a great deal more about his activities
abroad and in Bolivia than he had thought possible. Denying, at
first, any knowledge of Guevara's connection with the rebel movement,
Debray soon wilted and began to talk in an attempt to save
himself from trial and execution.
Even with the rapidly mounting evidence, Director Richard
Helms still could not accept that the legendary Cuban revolutionary
had indeed reappeared to lead another rebellion. He scoffed at the
claims of his clandestine operatives that they had acquired proof of
Guevara's presence in Bolivia; Helms guessed Che was probably
dead. Thomas Karamessines, then chief of the CIA's Clandestine
Services, who had presented the case to the Director, would not,
however, back down from the contention that his operatives were
now hot on Guevara's trail, and Helms' attitude seemed to spur
the clandestine operators to greater efforts. More agency "advisors,"
including Cuban veterans of the Bay of Pigs adventure,
were soon dispatched to Bolivia to assist in the tracking down of
Guevara. A team of experts from the Army's Special Forces was
sent to La Paz from the Canal Zone to train Bolivian "rangers" in
the art of counterinsurgency operations.
The Clandestine Services were obsessed with Guevara, and even
somewhat fearful of him. He was in part a constant and irritating
reminder of their failure in the Cuban operation. Unable to vent
128 THE C I A AND THE C U L T 0 FIN TEL L I G ENe E
their frustrations and anger against those U.S. officials who had
undercut that desperate effort, and incapable of gaining direct retribution
by destroying Fidel himself or his Soviet and Chinese
allies, the CIA's Clandestine Services were left to brood over their
failure-until Guevara exposed himself. In so doing he presented
himself to the CIA as an inviting target; his capture or death would
provide some measure of revenge for past failures.
During the summer of 1967, while the agency's special ops
experts were assisting the Bolivian army in hunting down Guevara,
information as to his entry into Bolivia became available. It was
learned that in November 1966 he had come to La paz from
Havana, via Prague, Frankfurt, and Sao Paulo, traveling on a false
Uruguayan passport and disguised as a balding, gray-haired merchant
with horn-rimmed spectacles-a far cry from the familiar poster
picture. He had been preceded by fifteen Cubans who would
assist him in his Bolivian venture. There was no longer any doubt
in anyone's mind that Che Guevara was in the country and in
charge of the guerrilla movement in the southern mountains. Both
President Barrientos and Helms now accepted the fact. The
Bolivian government offered a reward ($4,200) for Guevaradead
or alive. It was only a matter of time until Che would be
run to ground.
In the months that followed, the guerrillas suffered defeat after
defeat at the hands of the American-trained, CIA-advised Bolivian
rangers. One battle, on the last day of August, resulted in the death
of the mysterious Tania, the lone female in Guevara's rebel band.
Although she had posed as a Cuban intelligence agent, a link between
the guerrillas and Havana, it was ultimately learned by the
CIA that the East German woman was actually a double agent. Her
primary employer was the Soviet KGB, which, like the CIA, wanted
to keep tabs on Guevara's Cuban-sponsored revolutionary activities
in Latin America. Less than six weeks later, on October 8, Guevara
himself was wounded and captured near the small mountain village
of La Higuera.
As they had done for Debray earlier, the CIA advisors with the
Bolivian army tried to bring Guevara back alive to La Paz for indepth
interrogations. The Bolivian commander, however, was under
Special Operations • 129
orders to execute Guevara. All that was to be brought back were
the head and hands-incontestable proof that Che had failed in
his mission and was dead.
While the CIA advisors stalled the Bolivian colonel, the agency's
station chief in La Paz tried to convince President Barrientos of
the long-range advantages of bringing Guevara out of the mountains
as a prisoner of the government. Barrientos was adamant. He
argued that the Debray affair had caused enough difficulties, and
that the arrival of Che Guevara, alive, in the capital might spark
disturbances among the students and leftists which his government
would not be able to control. In desperation, the station that night
appealed to Langley headquarters for assistance, but to no avail.
Going on the assumption that neither the station nor headquarters
would be successful in getting Barrientos to change his position,
the senior CIA operative at La Higuera, (DELETED) attempted
to question Che. The revolutionary, however, would not
cooperate. He was willing to discuss political philosophies and revolutionary
movements in general, but he refused to permit himself to
be interrogated about the details of his operation in Bolivia or any of
his previous guerrilla activities elsewhere. The CIA would have to
settle for the contents of his personal diary, which he had been
carrying at the time of his capture.
Final word came from the capital early the next morning. The
prisoner was to be executed on the spot and his body, strapped to
the landing gear of a helicopter, was to be flown to Vallegrande for
inspection at a local laundry house by a small group of reporters
and government officials. Afterward the corpse was to be buried
in an unmarked grave outside of town. On hearing the order,
(DELETED) the CIA operative, hurried back to the schoolhouse
where Guevara was being held, to make one last attempt at interrogating
Che. There was not much time left; the execution was to
be carried out in the next hour or two.
Guevara's last moments were recorded in a rare, touching message
to headquarters from the CIA operator. The Cuban veteran,
and agency contract officer, noted that Guevara was at first still
confident of somehow surviving his ordeal, but when he finally
realized that he was about to die, his pipe fell from his mouth. Che,
130 • THE C I A AND THE C U L T OF IN TEL L I G ENe E
however, quickly recovered his composure and asked for some
tobacco. His painfully wounded leg no longer seemed to bother
him. He accepted his fate with a sigh of resignation, requesting no
last favors. (DELETED) clearly felt admiration for the revolutionary
and compassion for the man he had helped to capture and
thereby condemn. Minutes later Che Guevara was dead.
The following summer Che's diary suddenly surfaced and soon
found its way into the hands of his comrades in Havana and certain
American admirers (Ramparts magazine), who immediately
verified its authenticity and published it, much to the chagrin of
the CIA and the Bolivian government, which had been releasing
only those portions which buttressed their case against Guevara
and his rebels. In the midst of the confusion, charges, and countercharges,
Antonio Arguedas, Bolivian Minister of the Interior, disappeared
in July among rumors that he had been the one who had
released the document. Arguedas, as Minister of the Interior, was
in charge of the Bolivian intelligence service, with which the agency
had many close connections. And Arguedas himself was an agent
of the CIA.
It was quickly learned that Arguedas had escaped to Chile,
where he intended to ask for political asylum. Instead, authorities
there turned him over to the CIA station, and the agency man who
had been his original case officer was dispatched from headquarters
in Washington to cool him off. But despite the CIA's
counsel, Arguedas spoke out publicly against the agency and its
activities in Bolivia. He denounced the Barrientos regime as a tool
of American imperialism, criticized the government's handling of
the Guevara affair, and then disappeared again, precipitating a
major political crisis in Bolivia.
At various times during the next several months of 1968, Arguedas
popped up in London, New York, and Peru. Alternately
cajoled and threatened at each stop by CIA operatives who wanted
him to shut up, the former minister nevertheless admitted he had
been the one who had released Che's diary because, he said, he
agreed with the revolutionary's motives of attempting to bring
about popular social, political, and economic change in Bolivia
Special Operations • 131
and elsewhere in Latin America. And ultimately, much to the
horror of the CIA and the Barrientos government, Arguedas announced
that he had been an agent of the CIA since 1965 and
claimed that certain other Bolivian officials were also in the pay
of the secret agency. He described the circumstances under which
he had been recruited, charging that the CIA had threatened to
reveal his radical student past and ruin his political career if he
did not agree to participate in its operations.
Eventually the CIA was able to strike a bargain with Arguedas,
and he voluntarily returned to Bolivia-apparently to stand trial.
He told a New York Times reporter on the flight from Lima to
La Paz that should anything untoward happen to him, a tape
recording detailing his accusations against the CIA and the Barrientos
government would be delivered to certain parties in the
United States and Cuba. The tape, he said, was being held for him
by Lieutenant Mario Teran. Teran, inexplicably, was previously
identified as Che Guevara's executioner.
Arguedas, during his interview, hinted at the magnitude of his
potential revelations by disclosing the names of several CIA officers
with whom he had worked in the past: Hugo Murray, chief of
station; John S. Hilton, former COS; Colonel Ed Fox; Larry
Sternfield; and Nick Lendiris. He also identified some of the
agency's contract officers who had assisted in the tracking down
of Guevara: Jolio Gabriel Garcia (Cuban), and Eddie and Mario
Gonzales (Bolivians). Arguedas credited the Gonzales brothers'
with having saved Debray's life. He now claimed, however, that
Barrientos and even the U.S. ambassador were unaware of the
full scope of the CIA's penetration of the Bolivian government,
undoubtedly a concession to the powers that arranged his safe
return to La Paz.
The final chapter in the episode was acted out the following
summer, almost two years after Che Guevara's deat!;. President
Rene Barrientos was killed in a helicopter crash while returning
from a visit to the provinces. Six weeks later Antonio Arguedas,
the self-admitted agent of the CIA who had yet to stand trial for
treason and releasing Che Guevara's diary, was shot to death on
132 THE CIA AND THE CULT OF INTELLIGENCE
a street in La Paz. A month later Herberto Rojas, the guide for
the Bolivian rangers and their CIA advisors during the final trackdown
of Guevara, and one of the few people who possibly knew
where the body of rebel leader was buried, was assassinated in
Santa Cruz.
The incriminating tapes Arguedas claimed to have given to
Mario Teran for safekeeping have never surfaced.

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