Site Map

THE CIA AND THE CULT OF INTELLIGENCE

PART 3

EIGHT: The Clandestine Mentality

The greatest dangers to liberty
lurk in insidious encroachment
by men of zeal, well-meaning
but without understanding.
-- JUSTICE BRANDEIS, 1928

The nation must to a degree take
it on faith that we too are
honorable men devoted to her
service.
-- CIA DIRECTOR HELMS, 1971

THE man who masterminded and oversaw the CIA's clandestine
operations in Indochina during much of the 1960s was William
Colby. He is a trim, well-groomed Princeton and Columbia Law
School graduate who, if he were taller, might be mistaken for a
third Bundy brother. He started in the intelligence business during
World War II with the Office of Strategic Services. His field assignments
included parachuting into German-occupied France and
Norway to work with the anti-Nazi underground movements, during
which he showed a remarkable talent for clandestine work.
After the war he joined the newly formed CIA and rose rapidly
through its ranks, becoming an expert on the Far East. From 1959
until 1962 he served as the CIA's chief of station in Saigon. In
1962 he was named head of the Far East Division of the Clandestine
Services.
In this position Colby presided over the CIA's rapidly expanding
programs in Southeast Asia. Under his leadership (but always with
White House approval) the agency's "secret" war in Laos was
launched, and more than 30,000 Meo and other tribal warriors
were organized into the CIA's own Armee Clandestine. Colby's
officers and agents directed-and on occasion participated in-the
battles against the Pathet Lao, in bombing operations by the
CIA's proprietary company Air America, and in commando-type
raids into China and North Vietnam, well before Congress had
passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
Colby seemed to keep the secret operation always under tight
control. His colleagues in the CIA marveled at his ability to run
all the agency's activities in Laos with no more than forty or fifty
career CIA officers in the field. There were, to be sure, several
thousand other Americans supporting the CIA effort, but these
were soldiers of fortune or pilots under contract to the agency, not
The Clandestine Mentality 245
career men. From the CIA's point of view, the war in Laos was
cheap (costing the agency only $20 to $30 million a year) and well
managed. * The number of Americans involved was small enough
that a relatively high degree of secrecy could be maintained. In
contrast to the tens of thousands of Laotians who died in the war,
few Americans were killed, and those who were casualties were
not CIA career officers but rather mercenaries, contract officers,
and personnel of the agency's air proprietaries. The agency considered
Laos to be a very successful operation. And Colby received
much of the credit for keeping things under control.
The agency's clandestine activities in Vietnam were not so well
organized, concealed, or successful as its Laotian operation. In the
mid-1960s the CIA was swept along with the rest of the U.S.
government into launching huge programs designed to support the
war effort. The agency would have preferred to run relatively
small, highly secret operations (or to have had complete control
of covert action), but the stiffer and stiffer demands of the Johnson
administration made this impossible. Thus, if the President wanted
a larger contribution from the CIA, the CIA would contribute.
In 1965 Colby, still stationed in Washington, oversaw the founding
in Vietnam of the agency's Counter Terror (CT) program.
In 1966 the agency became wary of adverse publicity surrounding
the use of the word "terror" and changed the name of
the CT teams to the Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs).
Wayne Cooper, a former Foreign Service officer who spent almost
eighteen months as an advisor to South Vietnamese internalsecurity
programs, described the operation: "It was a unilateral
American program, never recognized by the South Vietnamese
government. CIA representatives recruited, organized, supplied,
and directly paid CT teams, whose function was to use Viet Cong
techniques of terror-assassination, abuses, kidnappings and intimidation-
against the Viet Cong leadership." Colby also supervised
the establishment of a network of Provincial Interrogation
Centers. One of these centers was constructed, with agency funds,
* The full cost of the war was actually closer to a half-billion dollars a
year, but most of this was funded by other agencies-the Defense Department
and AID.
246 THE C I A AND THE C U L T 0 FIN TEL L I G ENe E
in each of South Vietnam's forty-four provinces. An agency operator
or contract employee directed each center's operations, much
of which consisted of torture tactics against suspected Vietcong,
such torture usually carried out by Vietnamese nationals.
In 1967 Colby's office devised another program, eventually
called Phoenix, to coordinate an attack against the Vietcong infrastructure
among all Vietnamese and American police, intelligence,
and military units. Again CIA money was the catalyst. According
to Colby's own testimony in 1971 before a congressional
committee, 20,587 suspected Vietcong were killed under Phoenix
in its first two and a half years. * Figures provided by the South
Vietnamese government credit Phoenix with 40,994 VC kills.
Also in 1967, President Johnson sent Robert Komer, a former
agency employee who had joined the White House staff, to Vietnam
to head up all the civilian and military pacification programs. In
November of that year, while Komer was in Washington for consultation,
the President asked him if there was anything he needed
to carry out his assignment. Komer responded that he certainly
could use the services of Bill Colby as his deputy. The President
replied that Komer could draft anybody he chose. A year later
Colby succeeded Komer as head of the pacification program, with
the rank of ambassador. The longtime clandestine officer had ostensibly
resigned from the CIA to become a State Department employee.
One of Colby's principal functions was to strengthen the Vietnamese
economy in order to improve the lot of the average Vietnamese
peasant, and thereby make him less susceptible to Vietcong
appeals and more loyal to the Thieu government. To win over the
peasants, Colby insisted that corruption within the Saigon govern-
* Even Colby has admitted that serious abuses were committed under
Phoenix. Former intelligence officers have come before congressional committees
and elsewhere to describe repeated examples of torture and other
particularly repugnant practices used by Phoenix operatives. However,
according to David Wise, writing in the New York Times Magazine on
July I, 1973, "Not one of Colby's friends or neighbors, or even his critics
on the Hill, would, in their wildest imagination, conceive of Bill Colby
attaching electric wires to a man's genitals and personally turning the crank.
'Not Bill Colby ... He's a Princeton man.'''
The Clandestine Mentality 247
ment had to be greatly reduced. At one point he even proposed a
systematic campaign called the "Honor the Nation" program, which
was to be an attack on illegal practices at all levels of Vietnamese
society. At that time Colby was well aware that black-market trafficking
in money was one of the biggest corruption problems in Vietnam.
All U.S. personnel in Vietnam were under strict orders not to
buy Vietnamese piasters on the black market, and a number of
Americans had either been court-martialed by the military or fired by
their civilian agencies for violating these orders. But Colby also
knew that for many years the CIA had been obtaining tens of
millions of dollars in piasters on the black market, either in Hong
Kong or in Saigon. In this way the agency could get two to three
times as much buying power for its American dollars. Additionally,
the Clandestine Services claimed, black-market piasters were untraceable
and thus ideal for secret operations. * Although from a
strict budgetary point of view the agency's currency purchases were
sound fiscal policy, they directly violated both Vietnamese law
and U.S. official policy. Moreover, the purchases helped to keep
alive the black market which the U.S. government was professedly
working to stamp out.
During the mid-1960s while Colby was still in Washington, the
Bureau of the Budget learned that the CIA budget for Vietnam
provided for dollar expenditures figured at the legal exchange rate.
Since in truth the agency was buying its piasters on the black
market, it actually had two to three times more piasters to spend in
Vietnam than its budget showed. The Bureau of the Budget then
insisted that all figures be listed at the actual black-market rate, so
at least examiners of the agency's budget in Washington would
have a true idea of how much money the CIA was spending. The
bureau then also tried to cut U.S. government costs by having the
CIA buy piasters for other agencies on the black market. The
agency was unenthusiastic about this idea and managed to avoid
doing it, not because massive black-market purchases would have
* Given more than 500,000 Americans in Vietnam, all using Vietnamese
piasters, and a chaotic Vietnamese banking system, the CIA could of course
have obtained untraceable or "sterile" money without resorting to the black
market.
248 THE C I A AND THE C U L T 0 FIN TEL L I G ENe E
negated the government's avowed efforts to support the piaster,
but because the agency did not want the secrecy of its money-exchange
operations disturbed.
Compared to other aspects of the Vietnam war, the CIA's use of
the black market is not a major issue. It simply points up the fact
that the CIA is not bound by the same rules that apply to the rest
of the government. The Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949
makes this clear: "The sums made available to the Agency may be
expended without regard to the provisions of law and regulations
relating to the expenditures of Government."*
Thus, a William Colby can, with no legal or ethical conflict,
propose programs to end corruption in Vietnam while at the same
time condoning the CIA's dubious money practices. And extending
the concept of the agency's immunity to law and morals, a Colby
can devise and direct terror tactics, secret wars, and the like, all
in the name of democracy. This is the clandestine mentality: a
separation of personal morality and conduct from actions, no matter
how debased, which are taken in the name of the United States
government and, more specifically, the Central Intelligence Agency.
When Colby left his post as deputy ambassador to Vietnam in
1971, the CIA immediately "rehired" him, and Director Helms
appointed him Executive Director-Comptroller, the number-three
position in the agency. When James Schlesinger took over the
agency in early 1973, he made Colby chief of the Clandestine
Services. In May 1973, at the height of the personnel shake-ups
caused by the Watergate affair, President Nixon moved Schlesinger
to the Defense Department and named Colby to head the CIA.
Thus, after about four months under the directorship of the outsider
Schlesinger, control of the agency was again in the hands of
a clandestine operator.
Senator Harold Hughes, for one, expressed grave reservations
about Colby's appointment as CIA Director in a Senate speech on
* The CIA in Vietnam even escaped the Johnson administration's worldwide
edict that all cars purchased by the American government would be of
American manufacture. While State Department and AID personnel were
forced to navigate Saigon's narrow streets in giant Chevrolets and Plymouths,
the agency motorpool was full of much smaller and more practical Japanese
Toyotas.
The Clandestine Mentality • 249
August 1, 1973: "I am fearful of a man whose experience has
been so largely devoted to clandestine operations involving the
use of force and manipulation of factions in foreign governments.
Such a man may become so enamored with these techniques that
he loses sight of the higher purposes and moral constraints which
should guide our country's activities abroad."
Deeply embedded within the clandestine mentality is the belief
that human ethics and social laws have no bearing on covert operations
or their practitioners. The intelligence profession, because
of its lofty "natural security" goals, is free from all moral restrictions.
There is no need to wrestle with technical legalisms or judgments
as to whether something is right or wrong. The determining
factors in secret operations are purely pragmatic: Does the job
need to be done? Can it be done? And can secrecy (or plausible
denial) be maintained?
One of the lessons learned from the Watergate experience is the
scope of this amorality and its influence on the clandestine mentality.
E. Howard Hunt claimed that his participation in the Watergate
break-in and the other operations of the plumbers group was
in "what I believed to be the ... the best interest of my country."
In this instance, at least, we can accept Hunt as speaking sincerely.
He was merely reflecting an attitude that is shared by most CIA
operators when carrying out the orders of their superiors.
Hunt expanded on this point when interrogated before a federal
grand jury in April 1973 by Assistant U.S. Attorney Earl Silbert.
SILBERT: Now while you worked at the White House, were
you ever a participant or did you ever have knowledge of any
other so-called "bag job" or entry operations?
HUNT: No, sir.
SILBERT: Were you aware of or did you participate in any
other what might commonly be referred to as illegal activities?
HUNT: Illegal?
SILBERT: Yes, sir.
HUNT: I have no recollection of any, no, sir.
SILBERT: What about clandestine activities?
250 THE CIA AND THE CULT OF INTELLIGENCE
HUNT: Yes, sir.
SILBERT: All right. What about that?
HUNT: I'm not quibbling, but there's quite a difference
between something that's illegal and something that's clandestine.
SILBERT: Well, in your terminology, would the entry into
Mr. Fielding's [Daniel ElIsberg's psychiatrist] office have been
clandestine, illegal, neither or both?
HUNT: I would simply call it an entry operation conducted
under the auspices of competent authority.
Within the CIA, similar activities are undertaken with the consent
of "competent authority." The Watergate conspirators, assured
that "national security" was at stake, did not question the legality
or the morality of their methods; nor do most CIA operators.
Hundreds if not thousands of CIA men have participated in similar
operations, usually-but not always-in foreign countries; all such
operations are executed in the name of "national security." The
clandestine mentality not only allows it; it veritably wills it.
In early October, 1969, the CIA learned through a secret agent
that a group of radicals was about to hijack a plane in Brazil and
escape to Cuba. This intelligence was forwarded to CIA headquarters
in Langley, Virginia and from tbere sent on an "eyes only" basis
to Henry Kissinger at tbe Wbite House and top officials of tbe State
Department, tbe Defense Department, and the National Security
Agency. Within a few days, on October 8, tbe same radicals identified
in the CIA report commandeered at gunpoint a Brazilian commercial
airliner with 49 people aboard, and after a refueling stop in
Guyana, forced the pilot to fly to Havana. Neither the CIA nor the
other agencies of tbe U.S. government whicb had advance warning
of tbe radicals' plans moved to stop the crime from being committed,
although at that time the official policy of the United States
-as enunciated by the President-was to take all possible measures
to stamp out aerial piracy.
Afterwards, wben officials of the State Department questioned
their colleagues in the CIA on why preventive measures had not
been taken to abort the hijacking, tbe agency's clandestine operaThe
Clandestine Mentality • 251
tors delayed more than a month before responding. During the
interim, security forces in Brazil succeeded in breaking up that
country's principal revolutionary group and killing its leader, Carlos
Marighella. Shortly after the revolutionary leader's death on
November 4, the CIA informally passed word back to the State
Department noting that if any action had been taken to stop the
October skyjacking, the agency's penetration of the radical movement
might have been exposed and Marighella's organization could
not have been destroyed. While it was never quite clear whether the
agent who alerted the clandestine operators to the hijacking had
also fingered Marighella, that was the impression the CIA tried to
convey to the State Department. The agency implied it had not
prevented the hijacking because to have done so would have lessened
the chances of scoring the more important goal of ''neutralizing"
Marighella and his followers. To the CIA's clandestine
operators, the end-wiping out the Brazilian radical movementapparently
had justified the means, thus permitting the hijacking
to take place and needlessly endangering forty-nine innocent lives
in the process.
During the last twenty-five years American foreign policy has
been dominated by the concept of containing communism; almost
always the means employed in pursuit of "national security" have
been justified by the end. Since the "free world" was deemed to be
under attack by a determined enemy, sincere men in the highest
government posts believed-and still do believe-that their country
could not survive without resorting to the same distasteful
methods employed by the other side. In recent years the intensity
of the struggle has been reduced as monolithic communism has
split among several centers of power; as a result, there have been
tactical changes in America's conduct of foreign affairs. Yet the
feeling remains strong among the nation's top officials, in the CIA
and elsewhere, that America is responsible for what happens in
other countries and that it has an inherent right-a sort of modern
Manifest Destiny-to intervene in other countries' internal affairs.
Changes may have occurred at the negotiating table, but not in the
planning arena; intervention-either military or covert-is still the
rule.
252 THE CIA AND THE CULT OF INTELLIGENCE
To the clandestine operations of the CIA, nothing could be more
normal than the use of "dirty tricks" to promote the U.S. national
interest, as they and their agency determine it. In the words of
former Clandestine Services chief Richard Bissell, CIA men "feel
a higher loyalty and ... they are acting in obedience to that higher
loyalty." They must be able to violate accepted standards of integrity
and decency when the CIA's objectives so demand. Bissell
admitted in a 1965 television interview that agency operators at
times carried out actions which "were contrary to their moral precepts"
but they believed "the morality of ... cold war is so infinitely
easier than the morality of almost any kind of hot war that I
never encountered this as a serious problem."
Perhaps as a consequence of the confused morality that guides
him, a clandestine operator is dedicated to the utmost secrecy.
Convicted Watergate burglar Bernard Barker, who long worked
with and for the agency, described these operators in a September
1972 New York Times interview: "They're anonymous men. They
hate publicity; they get nervous with it. They don't want to be
spoken of. They don't even want to be known or anything like
that." And nearly always accompanying this passion for· secrecy
comes an obsession with deception and manipulation. These traits,
developed in the CIA's training programs, are essential elements for
success in the operator's career. He learns that he must become
expert at "living his cover," at pretending he is something he is not.
Agency instructors grade the young operators on how well they
can fool their colleagues. A standard exercise given to the student
spies is for one to be assigned the task of finding out some piece of
information about another. Since each trainee is expected to maintain
a false identity and cover during the training period, a favorite
way to coax out the desired information is to befriend the targeted
trainee, to win his confidence and make him let down his guard.
The trainee who gains the information receives a high mark; his
exploited colleague fails the test. The "achievers" are those best
suited, in the view of the agency, for convincing a foreign official
he should become a traitor to his country; for manipulating that
The Clandestine Mentality 253
official, often against his will; and for "terminating" the agent when
he has outlived his usefulness to the CIA.
Operating with secrecy and deception gradually becomes second
nature to the clandestine operator as his early training progresses
and he moves into an actual field assignment. The same habits
may at times carryover into his dealings with his colleagues and
even his family. Most operators see no inconsistency between an
upstanding private life and immoral or amoral work, and they
would probably say that anyone who couldn't abide the dichotomy
is "soft." The double moral standard has been so completely
absorbed at the CIA that Allen Dulles once stated, "In my ten
years with the Agency I only recall one case of many hundreds
where a man who had joined the Agency felt some scruples about
the activities he was asked to carry on." Even today Dulles' estimate
would not be far off.
As much as the operator believes in the rightness of his actions,
he is forced to work in an atmosphere that is potentially demoralizing.
He is quite often on the brink of the underworld, or even immersed
in it, and he frequently turns to the least savory types to
achieve his goals. Criminals are useful to him, and are often called
upon by him, when he does not want to perform personally some
particularly distasteful task or when he does not want to risk any
direct agency involvement in his dirty work. And if the clandestine
operator wants to use attractive young women to seduce foreign
officials, he does not call on female CIA employees. Instead he
hires local prostitutes, or induces foreign girls to assume the
seductress's role, hoping to use his women to ferret information out
of targeted opponents and to blackmail them into cooperating with
the CIA.
Other CIA men regularly deal with black-marketeers to purchase
"laundered" currency. The agency cannot very well subsidize
a political party in South Vietnam or buy labor peace on the Marseilles
docks with money that can be traced back to the CIA. Thus,
CIA "finance officers" permanently assigned to Hong Kong, Beirut,
and other international monetary centers frequently turn to the
world's illegal money changers to support agency clandestine operations.
"Sterile" weapons for CIA paramilitary activities are
254 THE C I A AND THE C U L T 0 FIN TEL L I G ENe E
obtained in the same fashion from the munitions merchants who
will provide arms to anyone able to pay the price. And when untraceable
troops are needed to assist a CIA-sponsored revolution
or counter-revolution, the agency will put out the word in such
mercenary centers as Brussels, Kinshasa, and Saigon that it is hiring
soldiers of fortune willing to support any cause for a price.
Yet there are certain standards the CIA's clandestine operator
must maintain in order to hold on to his job and the respect of his
colleagues. By the agency's code, he is not supposed to profit
personally from his activities. If he were involved in narcotics traffic
for his own gain, he would probably be fired for having been "corrupted
by the trade." But if the same CIA man were involved in
narcotics traffic because he was using his narcotics connections to
blackmail a Soviet official, he would be considered by his colleagues
to be doing his work well.
While the CIA has never trafficked in dope as a matter of official
policy, its clandestine personnel have used this trade-as they have
used almost every other criminal activity known to man-in the
pursuit of their goals. In Laos the CIA hoped to defeat the Pathet
Lao and North Vietnamese (and, thus, "stop communism"); for
that purpose, it was willing to supply guns, money, and training to
the Meo tribe, the part of the Laotian population most eager to
fight for the agency. The CIA was willing to overlook the fact that
the Meos' primary cash crop was opium and that they continued to
sell the drug during most of the years that they participated in the
"secret" war as the "cutting edge" of the anti-communist force in
Laos. While the planes of the CIA proprietary airline, Air America,
were on occasion used to carry opium and while some of the
highest military officers supported by the agency were also the
kingpins of the drug trade, the agency could stilI claim that it did
not officially sanction these activities. But not until the heroin
traffic from Southeast Asia was perceived as a major American
problem a few years ago did the CIA make any serious effort to
curb the flow of the drug, for it mattered not what sort of people
the Meo were-what mattered was what they were willing and able
to do for the CIA. The agency would hire Satan himself as an
agent if he could help guarantee the "national security."
The Clandestine Mentality • 255
The key to a successful espionage operation is locating and using
the right agent. There are seven basic areas of agent relationsspotting,
evaluation, recruiting, testing, training, handling, and
termination. Each deserves extended examination.
Spotting: This is the process of identifying foreigners or other
persons who might be willing to spy for the CIA.
The agency operator mingles as much as possible with the native
population in the country to which he is assigned, hoping to spot
potential agents. He normally concentrates on officials in the local
government, members of the military services, and representatives
of the intelligence agencies of the host country. People in other
professions, even if recruitable, usually do not have access to the
kind of strategic or high-level information which the CIA is seeking.
Most operators work out of the local U.S. embassy; their
diplomatic cover allows a convenient approach to their target
groups through the myriad of officials and social contacts that
characterize the life of a diplomat, even a bogus one serving the
CIA. Some agency officers pose as military men or other U.S. government
representatives--officials of the AID, the USIA, and other
agencies. In addition to official cover, the CIA sometimes puts
officers under "deep cover" as businessmen, students, newsmen,
or missionaries.
The CIA operator is constantly looking for indications of vulnerability
on the part of potential foreign agents. The indicators
may come from a casual observation by the operator at a cocktail
party, gossip picked up by his wife, suggestions from already
recruited agents, or assistance furnished~wittingly or unwittingly
-by a genuine American diplomat or businessman. The CIA
operator receives. instruction, based on studies made by agency
specialists or American college professors under contract to the
CIA, on what kinds of people are most susceptible to the intrigues
and strategies of clandestine life. Obviously, the personality of the
potential spy varies from country to country and case to case, but
certain broad categories of preferable and susceptible agent types
have been identified. The most sought-after informants are foreign
officials who are dissatisfied with their country's policies and who
256 THE C I A AND THE C U L T 0 FIN TEL L I G ENe E
look to the United States for guidance. People of this sort are much
more likely to become loyal and dedicated agents than those whose
primary motivation is monetary. Money certainly can go a long
way in obtaining information, especially in the Third World, but
the man who can be bought by the CIA is also a relatively easy
mark for the opposition. On the other hand, the agent who genuinely
believes that what he is doing has a higher purpose will
probably not be vulnerable to approaches from the KGB or other
opposition services, and he is less likely to be plagued by the guilt
and the accompanying psychological deterioration which frequently
hamper the work of spies. The ideological "defector in place" is the
prize catch for CIA operators. Other likely candidates for spying
are officials who have expensive tastes which they cannot satisfy
from their normal incomes, or those with an obviously uncontrollable
weakness for women, other men, alcohol, or drugs.
The operator does not always search for potential agents among
those who are already working in positions of importance. He may
take someone who in a few years may move into an important
assignment (with or without a little help from the CIA). Students
are considered particularly valuable targets in this regard, especially
in Third World countries where university graduates often rise to
high-level governmental positions only a few years after graduation.
In Latin American and African countries the agency puts special
emphasis on seeking agents in the armed forces, since so many of
these nations are ruled or controlled by the military. Hence, the
"cleared" professors on the CIA's payroll at American universities
with substantial foreign enrollments, and military training officers
at such places as the field command school at Fort Leavenworth,
Kansas, are prime recruiters.
In the communist countries, as we have said, agency operators
tend to focus on members of the opposition intelligence services in
their search for secret agents.
Evaluation: Once a potential spy has been spotted, the agency
makes a thorough review of all information available on him to
decide whether he is, or someday will be, in a position to provide
useful intelligence. The first step in the evaluation process is to
run a "namecheck," or trace, on the person, using the CIA's extenThe
Clandestine Mentality 257
sive computerized files located at headquarters in Langley. This
data bank was developed by International Business Machines exclusively
for the CIA and contains information on hundreds of
thousands of persons. Any relevant biographical information on the
potential agent found in the files is cabled back to the field operator,
who meanwhile continues to observe the prospect and makes discreet
inquiries about his background, personality, and chances for
advancement. The prospect will probably be put under surveillance
to learn more of his habits and views. Eventually a determination
will be made as to the prospect's probable motivation (ideological,
monetary, or psychological) for becoming a spy. If he hasn't any
such motivation, the CIA searches for ways-blackmail and the
like-of pressuring him. At the same time, the case officer must
determine if the prospect is legitimate or if he is an enemy plant-a
provocation or a double agent. Some member of the CIA team, perhaps
the original spotter, will attempt to get to know the potential
agent on a personal basis and win his confidence.
Recruiting: At the conclusion of the evaluation period, which
can last weeks or months, CIA headquarters, in consultation with
the field component, decides whether or not the prospective agent
should be approached to spy for the agency. Normally, if the decision
is affirmative, a CIA outsider will approach the prospect.
Neither the spotter nor the evaluator nor, for that matter, any member
of the local agency team will generally be used to make the
recruitment "pitch"; if something goes wrong, the individual being
propositioned will therefore be unable to expose any of the CIA
operators. As a rule, the CIA officer giving the pitch is furnished
with a false identity and given an agency-produced fake American
passport. The "pitchman" can quickly slip out of the country in
case of trouble.
Once the recruiter is on the scene, agency operators will concoct
a meeting between him and the prospective agent. The pitchman
will be introduced to the target under carefully prearranged-and
controlled--circumstances, allowing the operator who made the
introduction to withdraw discreetly, leaving the recruiter alone with
the potential agent. Steps also will have been taken to provide the
recruiter with an escape route in the event that the pitch should
258 THE CIA AND THE CULT OF INTELLIGENCE
backfire. If he is clever in his approach, the recruiter makes his
pitch subtly, without any overt statements to reveal his true purpose
or affiliation with the agency.
If the potential agent has previously voiced opposition to his
government, the recruiter is likely to begin with an appeal to the
man's patriotic obligations and higher ideological inclinations.
Ways by which he could aid his country and its people through
secret cooperation with a benevolent foreign power will be suggested.
If, on the other hand, the prospect is deemed susceptible tv
money, the recruiter probably will play to this point, emphasizing
that he knows of ways for the right individual to earn big moneyquickly
and easily. If the subject is interested in power, or merely
has expensive habits to satisfy (sex, drugs, and so forth), if he
wants to defect from his country, or simply wishes to get away
from his family and social situation, the recruiter will attempt to
concentrate his efforts on these human needs, all the time offering
suggestions as to how they may be met through cooperation with
"certain parties." People volunteer or agree to spy on their governments
for many reasons. It is the task of the recruiter to determine
what reason-if one exists-is most likely to motivate the potential
agent.
If the agency has concluded that the prospect is vulnerable to
blackmail, thinly veiled threats of exposure will be employed during
the pitch. In some cases, however, the recruiter may directly confront
the potential agent with the evidence which could be used to
expose him, in an effort to shock him into accepting the recruitment
pitch. And in all cases the meeting between the recruiter and the
prospect will be monitored either by audio surveillance (i.e., a tape
recording) or some other method-photographs, fingerprints, or
anything which will produce evidence that can later be used to
incriminate the prospect. If not at first susceptible to blackmail, the
prospect who wittingly or unwittingly entertains a recruitment pitch
may afterward find himself entrapped by evidence which could be
employed to ruin his career or land him in jail.
After the prospect accepts the CIA's offer, or yields to blackmail,
the recruiter will go into the details of the arrangement. He may
offer an agent with high potential $500 to $1,000 a month, say,
The Clandestine Mentality 259
partly in cash but mostly by deposit in an escrow account at some
American or Swiss bank. He will try to keep the direct non-escrow
payments as low as possible: first, to prevent the man from going
on a spending spree which could attract the unwanted attention of
the local security service, and, second, to strengthen his hold over
the spy. The latter reason is particularly important if the agent
is not ideologically motivated. The recruiter may pledge that the
CIA will guarantee the safety of the agent or his family, in case of
difficulties with the local police, and he may promise a particularly
valuable agent a lifelong pension and even American citizenship.
The fulfillment of such pledges varies greatly, depending on the
operational situation and the personality of the CIA case officer
in charge. Some are cynical, brutal men whose word, in most instances,
is absolutely worthless. Others, though, will go to extraordinary
lengths to protect their agents. In the early 1960s in Syria,
one CIA man endangered his life and that of a trusted colleague to
exfiltrate an agent who had been "rolled up" (i.e., captured) by
the local security service, tortured, and forced to confess his complicity
in the CIA's operations there. Although the agent, rendered
a physical and mental wreck, was no longer of any use to the CIA,
the two operators put him in the trunk of a private automobile
and drove him to a nearby country-and safety.
The recruiter will try to get the new agent, upon agreeing to work
for the CIA, to sign a piece of paper that formally and evidentially
connects him with the agency, a paper which can later be used to
threaten a recalcitrant agent with exposure, should he balk at continuing
to work for the CIA.
The recruiter's last function is to set up a meeting between the
new agent and the CIA operator stationed in that country who will
serve as his case officer. This will often involve the use of prearranged
recognition signals. One technique, for examplt' is to give
the agent a set of unusual cufflinks and tell him that he ',;villsoon be
approached by a man wearing an identical pair. Another is to set
up an exchange of code words which the case officer can later use
to identify himself to the agent. When all this is accomplished, the
recruiter breaks off the meeting and as soon as possible thereafter
leaves the country.
260 THE C I A AND THE C U L T 0 FIN TEL L I G ENe E
When the recruitment pitch doesn't work, (
DELETED
The Clandestine Mentality • 261
DELETED
) meeting with a potential agent/ defector in
a local "gasthaus" only to find that the occupants of the nearby
tables were not Viennese but rather members of a KGB goon
squad. In that instance, when fighting erupted, he managed to escape
by fleeing to the men's room and ignominiously crawling to
safety through the window above the toilet.
Testing: Once an agent has been recruited, his case officer immediately
tests his loyalty and reliability. He will be given certain
tasks to carry out which, if successfully performed, will establish
his sincerity and access to secret information. The agent may be
asked, for example, to collect information on a subject about
which, unknown to him, the agency has already acquired a great
deal of knowledge. If his reporting does not jibe with the previous
intelligence, he is likely to be either a double agent attempting to
mislead his case officer or a poor source of information clumsily
trying to please his new employer. When feasible, the agent's performance
will be carefully monitored during the testing period
through discreet surveillance.
In addition, the new agent will almost certainly be required to
take a lie-detector test. CIA operators place heavy reliance on the
findings of a polygraph machine-referred to as the "black box"-
in their agent operations. Polygraph specialists are available from
headquarters and several of the agency's regional support centers
to administer the tests on special assignment. According to one
262 THE C I A AND THE C U L T 0 FIN TEL L I G ENe E
such specialist, testing foreign agents calls for completely different
skills than questioning Americans under consideration for career
service with the CIA. He found Americans to be normally straightforward
and relatively predictable in their responses to the testing,
making it comparatively simple to isolate someone who is not up
to the agency's standards. But testing foreign agents, he says, is
much more difficult. Adjustments must be made to allow for
cultural differences, and for the fact that the subject is engaging
in clearly illegal and highly dangerous secret work. An ideologically
motivated agent, furthermore, may be quite emotional and
thus unusually difficult to "read," or evaluate, from the machine's
measurements. One spying solely for monetary gain or to satisfy
some private vice may be impossible to read because there is no
way of gauging his moral limits. Congenital liars, psychopaths,
and users of certain drugs can frequently "beat the black box."
According to the polygraph expert, a decision on the agent's
reliability and sincerity is, therefore, based as much on the intuition
of the tester as on the measurements of the machine. The
agent, however, is led to believe that the black box is infallible,
so if he is neither a well-trained double agent nor clinically abnormal,
he will more than likely tell the truth.
Training: When the agent has completed the testing process, he
is next given instruction in the special skills required for his new
work as a spy. The extent, location, and specific nature of the
training varies according to the circumstances of the operation. In
some instances the secret instruction is quite thorough; in other
cases the logistics of such training are nearly impossible to handle,
and consequently there is virtually none. In such circumstances
the agent must rely on his instinct and talents and the professionalism
of his case officer, learning the ways of clandestine life as the
operation develops.
When training can be provided to an agent, he will be taught
the use of any equipment he may need-a miniature camera for
photographing documents, for example. He will be instructed in
one of several methods of covert communications-secret writing,
coded or encrypted radio transmissions, or the like. He will also
learn the use of clandestine contacts. And he will be given training
The Clandestine Mentality 263
in security precautions, such as the detection and avoidance of
surveillance.
Depending upon the agent's availability, however, and his estimated
worth in the eyes of the Clandestine Services, he may receive
only a few short lessons from his case officer on how to
use an audio device or how to communicate with the agency
through a series of cut-outs. Or he may be asked to invent a cover
story to give to his family and his employer that will allow him to
spend several days or even a couple of weeks at an agency safe
house, learning the art of espionage. He may even seek an excuse
to leave the country so he can receive instruction at a CIA facility
in another nation, where he is much less likely to be observed by
his country's security service. Or he may even be brought to the
United States for training, constantly monitored while here by the
CIA Office of Security. Special training facilities for foreign recruits,
isolated from all other activities, exist at Camp Peary-
"The Farm"-in southern Virginia.
While the tradecraft taught to the agent is unquestionably useful,
the instruction period also serves as an opportunity for his
case officer and the other instructors to motivate him and increase
his commitment to the CIA's cause. The agent is introduced to
the clandestine proficiency and power of the agency. He sees its
tightly knit professional camaraderie. He learns that although he
is abandoning his former way of life, he now has a chance for
a better one. Good work on his part will be rewarded with political
asylum; the government he is rejecting may even be replaced by
a superior one. Thus his allegiance to his new employer is further
forged. It is the task of the case officer to maintain this attitude in
the mind of his agent.
Handling: Successful handling of an agent hinges on the strength
of the relationship that the case officer is able to establish with his
agent. According to one former CIA operator, a good case officer
must combine the qualities of a master spy, a psychiatrist, and a
father confessor.
There are two prevailing views within the CIA's Clandestine
Services on the best way to handle, or run, an agent. One is the
"buddy" technique, in which the case officer develops a close
264 • THE C I A AND THE C U L T 0 FIN TEL L I G ENe E
personal relationship with his agent and convinces him that they
are working together to attain an important political goal. This
approach can provide a powerful motivating force, encouraging
the agent to take great risks for his friend. Most senior operators
believe, however, that the "buddy" technique leads to the danger
of the case officer forming an emotional attachment to his agent,
sometimes causing the CIA man to lose his professional objectivity.
At the other end of the agent-handling spectrum is the
"cynical" style, in which the operator, while feigning personal concern
for the agent, actually deals with him in a completely callous
manner-one that may border on ruthlessness. From the beginning,
this case officer is interested only in results. He drives the
agent to extremes in an attempt to achieve maximum operational
performance. This method, too, has it drawbacks: once the agent
senses he is merely being exploited by his case officer, his loyalty
can quickly evaporate.
Agents are intricate and, often, delicately balanced individuals.
The factors which lead them into the clandestine game are many
and highly complex. The stresses and pressures under which they
must function tend to make such men volatile, often unpredictable.
The case officer, therefore, must continually be alert for any sign
that his agent is unusually disturbed, that he may not be carrying
out his mission. The operator must always employ the right mixture
of flattery and threats, ideology and money, emotional
attachment and ruthlessness to keep his agent actively working
for him.
With the Soviet Oleg Penkovsky, his British and CIA handlers
found that flattery was a particularly effective method of motivation.
Although he preferred British manners, Penkovsky greatly
admired American power. Accordingly, he was secretly granted
U.S. citizenship and presented with his "secret" CIA medal. As a
military man, he was quite conscious of rank; consequently, he
was made a colonel in the U.S. Army to show him that he suffered
no loss of status because of his shift in allegiance.
On two occasions while Penkovsky was an active spy, he
traveled outside the U.S.S.R. on official duty with high-level delegations
attending Soviet-sponsored trade shows. Both times, first
The Clandestine Mentality • 265
in London and then in Paris, he slipped away from his Soviet
colleagues for debriefing and training sessions with British and
American case officers. During one of the London meetings, he
asked to see his U.S. Army uniform. None of the CIA men, nor
any of the British operators, had anticipated such a request. One
quick-thinking officer, however, announced that the uniform was
at another safe house and that driving there and bringing it back
for Penkovsky to see would take a while. The spy was temporarily
placated, and a CIA case officer was immediately dispatched to
find a colonel's uniform to show to the agent. After scurrying
around London for a couple of hours in search of an American
Army colonel with a build similar to Penkovsky's, the operator
returned triumphantly to the debriefing session just as it was concluding-
uniform in hand. Penkovsky was pleased.
Months later, in Paris, the CIA operators were better prepared.
A brand-new uniform tailored to Penkovsky's measurements was
hung in a closet in a room adjacent to where he was being debriefed,
and he inspected it happily when the meeting was concluded.
In the 1950s the CIA recruited an Eastern European intelligence
officer in Vienna whose motivation, like Penkovsky's, was essentially
ideological. While he was promised a good salary (and a
comfortable pension upon the completion of the operation, at
which time he would formally defect to the United States), his
case officer avoided making any direct payments to him in Vienna
in order not to risk attracting the opposition's attention to him.
The agent well understood the need for such precautions, yet after
he had been spying for a while, he shocked his case officer one day
by demanding a fairly substantial amount of cash. He refused to
say why he wanted the money, but it was obvious to his case
officer that the agent's continued good work for the agency was
contingent on getting the money he had requested. After consultations
with the local CIA station chief and with headquarters, it
was finally decided that the risk must be taken and the agent was
given the money, with the hope that he would not do something
outlandish or risky with it. Agency operators then put him under
surveillance to learn what he was up to. To their consternation,
266 THE C I A AND THE C U L T 0 FIN TEL L I G ENe E
they discovered him the following weekend on the Danube River
cruising back and forth in a motorboat which he had just bought.
A few days afterward his case officer confronted him and demanded
that he get rid of the boat, for it was not something a man
of his ostensibly austere circumstances could possibly have purchased
on his own salary. The agent agreed, casually explaining
that ever since he was a small boy he had wanted to own a
motorboat. Now that yearning was out of his system and he was
quite willing to give up the boat.
Another Eastern European, who spied briefly for the CIA years
later, refused all offers of pensions and political asylum in the
West. He wanted only Benny Goodman records.
One of the biggest problems in handling an agent is caused by
the changeover of case officers. In keeping with the CIA's policy
of employing diplomatic and other forms of official cover for most
of its operators serving abroad, case officers masquerading as
U.S. diplomats, AID officials, Department of Defense representatives,
and the like, must be transferred every two to four years to
another foreign country or to Washington for a headquarters
assignment, as is customary with genuine American officials. A
departing case officer introduces his replacement to all his agents
before he leaves, but often the agents are initially reluctant to deal
with a new man. Having developed an acceptable working relationship
with one case officer, they usually are not eager to change
to another. Their reluctance is often heightened by the agency's
practice of assigning young case officers to handle already proven
agents. In this way, junior operators can gain experience with
agents who, as a rule, do not need as much professional guidance
or sympathetic "hand-holding" as newly recruited ones. Most
agents, however, feel that dealing with an inexperienced officer
only increases the risks of compromise. All in all, making the
changeover can be quite sticky, but it is almost always accomplished
without permanent damage to the operation. If persuasion
and promises are not adequate to retain the agent's loyalty, threats
of blackmail usually are: The agency precaution of amassing incriminating
evidence-secret contracts, signed payment receipts,
tape recordings, and photographs-generally will convince even
The Clandestine Mentality 267
the most reluctant agent to see things the CIA's way.
In certain higWy sensitive operations the problem of case-officer
changeover is avoided in deference to the wishes of a particularly
highly placed agent. The potential damage to the operator's cover
by his prolonged service in a given country is considered of less
importance than the maintenance of the delicate relationship he
has developed with the agent. Similarly, in those situations where
a (
DELETED
) the agency officer may serve as many as six
or eight years on the operation before being replaced. And when
he is eventually transferred to another post, great care is taken to
select a replacement who will be acceptable to the friendly chief
of state.
Termination: All clandestine operations ultimately come to an
end. Those dependent upon agent activities have a short life expectancy
and often conclude suddenly. The agent may die of
natural causes or by accident-or he may be arrested and imprisoned,
even executed. In any such event, the sole consideration
of the CIA operators on the scene is to protect the agency's
interests, usually by covering up the fact that the individual was
a secret agent of the U.S. government. Sometimes, however, the
agency itself must terminate the operation and dispose of the
agent. The decision to terminate is made by the CIA chief of
station in the country where the operation is in progress, with the
approval of agency headquarters. The reason for breaking with an
agent may be simply his loss of access to the secrets that the CIA
is interested in acquiring; more complicated is emotional instability,
lack of personal trustworthiness endangering the operation,
or threat of imminent exposure and arrest. Worst of all, there may
be a question of political unreliability-it may be suspected that
the man is, or has become, a double agent, provocation, or deception
controlled by an opposition intelligence service.
The useless or unstable agent can usually be bought off or, if
necessary, successfully threatened. A reliable or useful agent in
danger of compromise or exposure to the opposition, or an agent
who has fulfilled his agreement as a spy and has performed well,
268 THE C I A AND THE C U L T 0 FIN TEL L I G ENe E
can be resettled in another c~untry, provided with the necessary
funds, even assisted in finding employment or, at least, retraining
for a new profession. In those cases where the agent has contributed
an outstanding service to the CIA at great personal risk,
particularly if he burned himself out in so doing, he will be
brought to the United States for safe resettlement. The Director
of Central Intelligence, under the CIA Act of 1949, can authorize
the "entry of a particular alien into the United States for permanent
residence . . . in the interest of national security or
the furtherance of the national intelligence mission." The agent
and his family can be granted "permanent residence without regard
to their inadmissibility under the immigration or any other
laws and regulations."
Resettlement, however, does not always go smoothly. And sometimes
this is the fault of the CIA. In the late 1950s, when
espionage was still a big business in Germany, former agents and
defectors were routinely resettled in Canada and Latin America.
The constant flow of anti-communist refugees to those areas was
too much for the agency's Clandestine Services to resist. From
time to time, an active agent would be inserted into the resettlement
process. But the entire operation almost collapsed when, within a
matter of months, both Canadian and Brazilian governments discovered
that the CIA was using it as a means to plant operating
agents in their societies.
Not all former agents are willing to be resettled in the United
States, especially not on the CIA's terms. In the 1960s a highranking
Latin American official who had been an agent for years
was forced for internal political reasons to flee his native country.
He managed to reach Mexico City, where agency operators again
made contact with him. In consideration of his past services, the
agency was willing to arrange for his immigration to the U.S.
under the 1949 CIA law if he would sign an agreement to remain
quiet about his secret connection with the U.S. government and
not become involved in exile political activities in this country.
The Latin American, who had ambitions to return triumphantly
to his native country one day, refused to forgo his right to plot
against his enemies back home, and wanted residence in the
The Clandestine Mentality • 269
United States without citizenship, thus presenting the CIA with a
difficult dilemma. As long as the former agent remained unhappy
and frustrated in Mexico City, he represented a threat that his relationship
with the agency and those of the many other CIA
penetrations of his government which he knew about might be
exposed. As a result, CIA headquarters in Langley sent word to
the station in Mexico City that the ex-agent could enter the
country without the usual preconditions. The agency's top officials
hoped that he could be kept under reasonable control and prevented
from getting too deeply involved in political activities which
would be particularly embarrassing to the U.S. government.
It is only logical to believe that there are instances when termination
requires drastic action on the part of the operators. Such
cases are, of course, highly sensitive and quite uncommon in the
CIA. But when it does become necessary to consider the permanent
elimination of a particularly threatful agent, the final
decision must be made at the highest level of authority, by the
Director of Central Intelligence. With the exception of special or
paramilitary operations, physical violence and homicide are not
viewed as acceptable clandestine methods-unless they are acceptable
to the Director himself.
Two aspects of clandestine tradecraft which have particular applicability
to classical espionage, and to agent operations in general,
are secret communications and contacts. The case officer
must set up safe means of communicating with his agent; otherwise,
there will be no way of receiving the information that the
agent is stealing, or of providing him with instructions and guidance.
In addition to a primary communication system, there will
usually be an alternate method for use if the primary system fails.
From time to time, different systems will be employed to reduce
the chances of compromising the operation. As with most activities
in the intelligence game, there are no hard and fast rules governing
communication with secret agents. As long as the methods
used are secure and workable, the case officer is free to devise any
means of contact with his agent that is suitable to the operational
situation.
270 THE C I A AND THE C U L T 0 FIN TEL L I G ENe E
Many agents want to pass on their information verbally to the
case officer. From their point of view, it is both safer and easier
than dealing with official papers or using spy equipment, either of
which could clearly incriminate them if discovered by the local
authorities. The CIA, however, prefers documents. Documents can
be verified, thus establishing the agent's reliability. They can be
studied and analyzed in greater detail and with more accuracy by
the intelligence experts at headquarters. In the Penkovsky case,
for example, the secret Soviet documents he provided were far
more valuable than his personal interpretations of events then
occurring in Moscow's military circles.
On the other hand, some agents want to have as little personal
contact as possible with their case officers. Each clandestine
meeting is viewed as an invitation to exposure and imprisonment,
or worse. Such agents would prefer to communicate almost exclusively
through indirect methods or even by mechanical means
(encoded or encrypted radio messages, invisible ink, micro-dots,
and so on). But the CIA insists on its case officers having personal
contact with their agents, except in exceptionally risky cases.
Periodically, the spy's sincerity and level of motivation must be
evaluated in face-to-face meetings with the operator.
Each time the case officer has a personal contact with his agent,
there is the danger that the two will be observed by the local
security forces, or by a hostile service such as the KGB. To
minimize the risk of compromise, indirect methods of contact are
employed most of the time, especially for the passing of information
from the agent to the operator. One standard technique is
the use of a cut-out, an intermediary who serves as a go-between.
The cut-out may be witting or unwitting; he may be another
agent; he may even reside in another country. Regardless, his role
is to receive material from either the agent or the case officer and
then relay it to the other, without being aware of its substance.
Another technique is the dead-drop, or dead-letter drop. This
is a kind of secret post-office box such as a hollow tree, the underside
of a park bench, a crevice in an old stone wall-any natural
and unlikely repository that can be utilized for transferring
materials. (One of the dead-drops used in the Penkovsky operaThe
Clandestine Mentality • 271
tion was the space behind the steam-heat radiator in the entry of
an apartment building in Moscow.) The agent simply deposits his
material in the dead-drop at a prearranged time; later it is
"serviced" by the case officer or a cut-out engaged for this purpose.
Still another frequently used technique is that of the brush contact,
in which the agent and his case officer or a cut-out meet in
passing at some prearranged public place. The agent may encounter
his contact, for example, on a crowded subway platform,
in a theater lobby, or perhaps on a busy downtown street. Acting
as if they are strangers, the two will manage to get close together
for a moment, long enough for one to slip something into the
other's hand or pocket. Or they may quickly exchange newspapers
or briefcases. Such a contact is extremely brief as well as surreptitious,
and usually it is quite secure if well executed.
Although the case officer makes frequent use of indirect contacts,
he still must arrange personal meetings with his agent from
time to time. Whenever there is a clandestine meeting-on a bus,
in a park, at a restaurant-other CIA operators keep watch as a
precaution against opposition monitoring or interference. This is
known in the covert business as countersurveillance. The case
officer works out safe and danger signals in advance of each rendezvous
with both the agent and the countersurveillance team. In
this way, the operator, the agent, or any member of the team can
signal to the others to proceed with the meeting or to avoid or
break off contact if something seems out of the ordinary. Safe
houses (CIA-maintained residences) are also used for meetings
with agents, especially if there is a lot to be discussed. A safe
house has the advantage of providing an atmosphere where the
agent and the case officer can relax and talk freely without fear of
surveillance, but the more frequently one location is used, the
more likely it is to be discovered by the opposition. The need for
secrecy can keep the clandestine operator busy; but it is a need
on which the clandestine operator thrives.
272 • THE C I A AND THE C U L T 0 FIN TEL L I G ENe E
Agency Culture
A few years ago Newsweek magazine described the CIA as the
most secretive and tightly knit organization (with the possible exception
of the Mafia) in American society. The characterization
is something of an overstatement, but it contains more than a
kernel of truth. In its golden era, during the height of the Cold
War, the agency did possess a rare elan; it had a staff of imaginative
and daring officers at all levels and in all directorates. But
over the years the CIA has grown old, fat, and bureaucratic. The
esprit de corps and devotion to duty its staff once had, setting the
agency apart from other government departments, has faded, and
to a great degree it has been replaced by an outmoded, doctrinaire
approach to its missions and functions. The true purpose of
secrecy-to keep the opposition in the dark about agency policies
and operations-has been lost sight of. Today the CIA often
practices secrecy for secrecy's sake-and to prevent the American
public from learning of its activities. And the true purpose of intelligence
collection-to monitor efficiently the threatening moves
of international adversaries-has been distorted by the need to
nourish a collective clandestine ego.
After the U.S. invasion of Cambodia in 1970, a few hundred
CIA employees (mostly younger officers from the Intelligence and
Science and Technology directorates, not the Clandestine Services)
signed a petition objecting to American policies in Indochina.
Director Richard Helms was so concerned about the prospect of
widespread unrest in the agency's ranks and the chance that word
of it might leak out to the public that he summoned all the protesters
to the main auditorium and lectured them on the need to
separate their personal views from their professional duties. At
the same time, similar demonstrations on the Cambodian issue
were mounted at the State Department and other government
agencies. Nearly every newspaper in the country carried articles
.about the incipient rebellion brewing in the ranks of the federal
bureaucracy. The happenings at the CIA, which were potentially
The Clandestine Mentality 273
the most newsworthy of all, were, however, never discovered by
the press. In keeping with the agency's clandestine traditions, CIA
employees had conducted a secret protest.
To agency personnel who had had the need for secrecy drilled
into them from their moment of recruitment, there was nothing
strange about keeping their demonstration hidden from public
view. Secrecy is an absolute way of life at the agency, and while
outsiders might consider some of the resulting practices comical in
the extreme, the subject is treated with great seriousness in the
CIA. Training officers lecture new personnel for hours on end
about "security consciousness," and these sessions are augmented
during an employee's entire career by refresher courses, warning
posters, and even the semi-annual requirement for each employee
to review the agency's security rules and to sign a copy, as an
indication it has been read. As a matter of course, outsiders
should be told absolutely nothing about the CIA and fellow employees
should be given only that information for which they have
an actual "need to know."*
CIA personnel become so accustomed to the rigorous security
precautions (some of which are indeed justified) that they easily
accept them all, and seldom are caught in violations. Nothing
could be more natural than to work with a telephone book marked
SECRET, an intentionally incomplete telephone book which lists no
one working in the Clandestine Services and which in each semiannually
revised edition leaves out the names of many of the
people employed by the overt directorates, so if the book ever
falls into unauthorized hands, no enterprising foreign agent or reporter
will be able to figure out how many people work at CIA
headquarters, or even how many work in non-clandestine jobs.
Those temporarily omitted can look forward to having their names
appear in the next edition of the directory, at which time others
are selected for telephonic limbo. Added to this confusion is the
* The penchant for secrecy sometimes takes on an air of ludicrousness.
Secret medals are awarded for outstanding performance, but they cannot
be worn or shown outside the agency. Even athletic trophies--for intramural
bowling, softball, and so on--<:annot be displayed except within the guarded
sanctuary of the headquarters building.
274 THE CIA AND THE CULT OF INTELLIGENCE
fact that most agency phone numbers are regularly changed for
security reasons. Most employees manage to keep track of commonly
called numbers by listing them in their own personal desk
directories, although they have to be careful to lock these in their
safes at night-or else risk being charged with a security violation.
For a first violation the employee is given a reprimand and usually
assigned to several weeks of security inspection in his or her office.
Successive violations lead to forced vacation without pay for
periods up to several weeks, or to outright dismissal.
Along with the phone books, all other classified material (including
typewriter ribbons and scrap paper) is placed in these
safes whenever an office is unoccupied. Security guards patrol
every part of the agency at roughly half-hour intervals in the
evening and on weekends to see that no secret documents have
been left out, that no safes have been left unlocked, and that no
spies are lurking in the halls. If a guard finds any classified
material unsecured, both the person who failed to put it away and
the person within the office who was assigned to double-check the
premises have security violations entered in their personnel files.
These security precautions all take place inside a headquarters
building that is surrounded by a twelve-foot fence topped with
barbed wire, patrolled by armed guards and police dogs, and
sealed off by a security check system that guarantees that no one
can enter either the outer perimeter or the building itself without
showing proper identification. Each CIA employee is issued a
laminated plastic badge with his picture on it, and these must not
only be presented to the guards on entry, but be kept constantly in
view within the building. Around the edges of the badge are twenty
or so little boxes which mayor may not be filled with red letters.
Each letter signifies a special security clearance held by the owner.
Certain offices at the CIA are designated as restricted, and only
persons holding the proper clearance, as marked on their badges,
can gain entry. These areas are usually guarded by an agency
policeman sitting inside a glass cage, from which he controls a
turnstile that forbids passage to unauthorized personnel. Particularly
sensitive offices are protected, in addition to the guarded
The CLandestine Mentality • 275
turnstile, by a combination or cipher lock which must be opened
by the individual after the badge is inspected.
Even a charwoman at the CIA must gain security clearance in
order to qualify for the badge that she, too, must wear at all times;
then she must be accompanied by an armed guard while she cleans
offices (where all classified material has presumably already been
locked up). Some rooms at the agency are considered so secret
that the charwoman and her guard must also be watched by someone
who works in the office.
The pervasive secrecy extends everywhere. Cards placed on
agency bulletin boards offering items for sale conclude: "Call Bill,
extension 6464." Neither clandestine nor overt CIA employees
are permitted to have their last names exposed to the scrutiny of
their colleagues, and it was only in 1973 that employees were
allowed to answer their phones with any words other than those
signifying the four-digit extension number.
Also until recent years all CIA personnel were required to
identify themselves to non-agency people as employees of the
State or Defense Department or some other outside organization.
Now the analysts and technicians are permitted to say they work
for the agency, although they cannot reveal their particular office.
Clandestine Service employees are easily spotted around Washington
because they almost always claim to be employed by Defense
or State, but usually are extremely vague on the details and
unable to furnish an office address. They do sometimes give out a
phone number which corresponds to the correct exchange for
their cover organization, but these extensions, through some deft
wiring, ring in Langley.
The headquarters building, located on a partially wooded 125-
acre tract eight miles from downtown Washington, is a modernistic
fortress-like structure. Until the spring of 1973 one of the two
roads leading into the secluded compound was totally unmarked,
and the other featured a sign identifying the installation as the
Bureau of Public Roads, which maintains the Fairbanks Highway
Research Station adjacent to the agency.
276 THE C I A AND THE C U L T 0 FIN TEL L I G ENe E
Until 1961 the CIA had been located in a score of buildings
scattered allover Washington. One of the principal justifications
for the $46 million headquarters in the suburbs was that considerable
expense would be saved by moving all employees under
one roof. But in keeping with the best-laid bureaucratic plans, the
headquarters building, from the day it was completed, proved too
small for all the CIA's Washington activities. The agency never
vacated some of its old headquarters buildings hidden behind a
naval medical facility on 23rd Street Northwest in Washington,
and its National Photo Interpretation Center shares part of the
Navy's facilities in Southeast Washington. Other large CIA offices
located downtown include the Domestic Operations Division, on
Pennsylvania Avenue near the White House.
And in Washington's Virginia suburbs there are even more CIA
buildings outside the headquarters complex. An agency training
facility is located in the Broyhill Building in Arlington, and the
CIA occupies considerable other office space in that county's
Rosslyn section. Also at least half a dozen CIA components are
located in the Tyson's Corner area of northern Virginia, which has
become something of a mini-intelligence community for technical
work due to the presence there of numerous electronics and research
companies that do work for the agency and the Pentagon.
The rapid expansion of CIA office space in the last ten years
did not happen as a result of any appreciable increase in personnel.
Rather, the technological explosion, coupled with inevitable
bureaucratic lust for new frontiers, has been the cause. As Director,
Richard Helms paid little attention to the diffusion of his
agency until one day in 1968 when a CIA official mentioned to
him that still one more technical component was moving to Tyson's
Comer. For some reason this aroused Helms' ire, and he
ordered a study prepared to find out just how much of the agency
was located outside of headquarters. The completed report told
him what most Washington-area real-estate agents already knew,
that a substantial percentage of CIA employees had vacated the
building originally justified to Congress as necessary to put all
personnel under one roof. Helms decreed that all future moves
The Clandestine Mentality 277
would require his personal approval, but his action slowed the
exodus only temporarily.
When the CIA headquarters building was being constructed
during the late 1950s, the subcontractor responsible for putting in
the heating and air-conditioning system asked the agency how
many people the structure was intended to accommodate. For
security reasons, the agency refused to tell him, and he was forced
to make his own estimate based on the building's size. The resulting
heating system worked reasonably well, while the air-conditioning
was quite uneven. After initial complaints in 1961, the
contractor installed an individual thermostat in each office, but so
many agency employees were continually readjusting their thermostats
that the system got worse. The M&S Directorate then decreed
that the thermostats could no longer be used, and each one was
sealed up. However, the M&S experts had not considered that the
CIA was a clandestine agency, and that many of its personnel
had taken a "locks and picks" course while in training. Most of
the thermostats were soon unlocked and back in operation.
At this point the CIA took the subcontractor to court to force
him to make improvements. His defense was that he had installed
the best system he could without a clear indication of how many
people would occupy the building. The CIA could not counter
this reasoning and lost the decision.
Another unusual feature of the CIA headquarters is the cafeteria.
It is partitioned into a secret and an open section, the larger
part being only for agency employees, who must show their
badges to the armed guards before entering, and the smaller being
for visitors as well as people who work at the CIA. Although the
only outsiders ever to enter the small, dismal section are employees
of other U.S. government agencies, representatives of a
few friendly governments, and CIA families, the partition ensures
that no visitor will see the face of any clandestine operator eating
lunch.
The CIA's "supergrades" (civilian equivalents of generals) have
their own private dining room in the executive suite, however.
There they are provided higher-quality food at lower prices than
278 THE CIA AND THE CULT OF INTELLIGENCE
in the cafeteria, served on fine china with fresh linens by black
waiters in immaculate white coats. These waiters and the executive
cooks are regular CIA employees, in contrast to the cafeteria
personnel, who work for a contractor. On several occasions the
Office of Management and Budget has questioned the high cost of
this private dining room, but the agency has always been able to
fend off the attacks, as it fends off almost all attacks on its
activities, by citing "national security" reasons as the major
justification.
Questions of social class and snobbery have always been very
important in the CIA. With its roots in the wartime Office of
Strategic Services (the letters OSS were said, only half-jokingly,
to stand for "Oh So Social"), the agency has long been known for
its concentration of Eastern Establishment, Ivy League types.
Allen Dulles, a former American diplomat and Wall Street lawyer
with impeccable connections and credentials, set the tone for an
agency full of Roosevelts, Bundys, Cleveland Amory's brother
Robert, and other scions of America's leading families. There have
been exceptions, to be sure, but most of the CIA's top leaders have
been white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, and graduates of the right
Eastern schools. While changing times and ideas have diffused the
influence of the Eastern elite throughout the government as a
whole, the CIA remains perhaps the last bastion in official Washington
of WASP power, or at least the slowest to adopt the
principle of equal opportunity.
It was no accident that former Clandestine Services chief Richard
Bissell (Groton, Yale, A.B., Ph.D., London School of Economics,
A.B.) was talking to a Council on Foreign Relations
discussion group in 1968 when he made his "confidential" speech
on covert action. For the influential but private Council, composed
of several hundred of the country's top political, military, business,
and academic leaders, has long been the CIA's principal "constituency"
in the American public. When the agency has needed
prominent citizens to front for its proprietary companies or for
other special assistance, it has often turned to Council members.
Bissell knew that night in 1968 that he could talk freely and
The Clandestine Mentality 279
openly about extremely sensitive subjects because he was among
"friends." His words leaked out not because of the indiscretion of
any of the participants, but because of student upheavals at
Harvard in 1971.
It may well have been the sons of CFR members or CIA officials
who ransacked the office housing the minutes of Bissell's
speech, and therein lies the changing nature of the CIA (and the
Eastern Establishment, for that matter). Over the last decade the
attitudes of the young people, who in earlier times would have followed
their fathers or their fathers' college roommates into the CIA,
have changed drastically. With the Vietnam war as a catalyst, the
agency has become, to a large extent, discredited in the traditional
Eastern schools and colleges. And consequently the CIA has been
forced to alter its recruiting base. No longer do Harvard, Yale,
Princeton, and a few other Eastern schools provide the bulk of the
agency's professional recruits, or even a substantial number.
For the most part, Ivy Leaguers do not want to join the agency,
and the CIA now does its most fruitful recruiting at the universities
of middle America and in the armed forces. While the shift
unquestionably reflects increasing democratization in American
government, the CIA made the change not so much voluntarily as
because it had no other choice if it wished to fill its ranks. If the
"old boy" network cannot be replenished, some officials believe,
it will be much more difficult to enlist the aid of American corporations
and generally to make use of influential "friends" in the
private and public sectors.
Despite the comparatively recent broadening of the CIA's recruiting
base, the agency is not now and has never been an equalopportunity
employer. The agency has one of the smallest
percentages-if not the smallest--of blacks of any federal department.
The CIA's top management had this forcefully called to their
attention in 1967 when a local civil-rights activist wrote to the
agency to complain about minority hiring practices. A study was
ordered at that time, and the CIA's highest-ranking black was found
to be a GS-13 (the rough equivalent of an Army major). Altogether,
there were fewer than twenty blacks among the CIA's
approximately 12,000 non-clerical employees, and even the pro280
• THE C I A AND THE C U L T 0 FIN TEL L I G ENe E
portion of black secretaries, clerks, and other non-professionals
was considerably below that of most Washington-area government
agencies. One might attribute this latter fact to the agency's
suburban location, but blacks were notably well represented in the
guard and char forces.
Top officials seemed surprised by the results of the 1967 study
because they did not consider themselves prejudiced men. They
ordered increased efforts to hire more blacks, but these were not
particularly successful. Young black college graduates in recent
years have shied away from joining the agency, some on political
grounds and others because of the more promising opportunities
available in the private sector. Furthermore, the CIA recruiting
system could not easily be changed to bring in minorities. Most of
the "spotting" of potential employees is done by individual college
professors who are either friends or consultants of the agency, and
they are located on predominantly white campuses where each year
they hand-pick a few carefully selected students for the CIA.
The paucity of minority groups in the CIA goes well beyond
blacks, however. In 1964 the agency's Inspector General did a
routine study of the Office of National Estimates (ONE). The
Inspector found no black, Jewish, or women professionals, and only
a few Catholics. ONE immediately took steps to bring in minorities.
One woman professional was hired on a probationary basis, and
one black secretary was brought in. When the professional had
finished her probation, she was encouraged to find work elsewhere,
and the black secretary was given duties away from the main ONE
offices--out of sight in the reproduction center. ONE did bend
somewhat by hiring a few Jews and some additional Catholics.
There are extremely few women in high-ranking positions in
the CIA, but, of course, the agency does employ women as secretaries
and for other non-professional duties. As is true with all large
organizations, there is a high turnover in these jobs, and the agency
each year hires a thousand or more new applicants. In a search for
suitable candidates, CIA recruiters concentrate on recent highschool
graduates from the mostly white small towns and cities of
Virginia and the neighboring states, Maryland, West Virginia, and
Pennsylvania. Washington, with its overwhelming black majority,
The Clandestine Mentality 28r
supplies comparatively few of the CIA's secretaries. Over the years
the recruiters have established good contacts with high-school
guidance counselors and principals in the nearby states, and when
they make their annual tour in search of candidates, interested girls
are steered their way, with several from the same class often being
hired at the same time. When the new secretaries come to CIA
headquarters outside of Washington, they are encouraged to live
in agency-selected apartments in the Virginia suburbs, buildings in
which virtually all the tenants are CIA employees.
Security considerations playa large part in the agency's lack of
attention to urban areas in its secretarial recruiting. All agency
employees must receive full security clearances before they start
work. This is a very expensive process, and women from small
towns are easier and cheaper to investigate. Moreover, the CIA
seems actually to prefer secretaries with the All-American image
who are less likely to have been "corrupted" or "politicized" than
their urbanized sisters.
Agency secretaries, as well as all other personnel, must pass liedetector
tests as a condition of employment. Then they periodically
-usually at five-year intervals or when they return from overseas
assignments-must submit themselves again to the "black box."
The CIA, unlike most employers, finds out nearly everything imaginable
about the private lives of its personnel through these polygraph
tests. Questions about sex, drugs, and personal honesty are
routinely asked along with security-related matters such as possible
contacts with foreign agents. The younger secretaries invariably
register a negative reading on the machine when asked the standard:
"Have you ever stolen government property?" The polygraph
experts usually have to add the qualifying clause, "not including
pens, pencils, or minor clerical items."
Once CIA recruits have passed their security investigations and
lie-detector tests, they are given training by the agency. Most of the
secretaries receive instruction in the Washington area, such instruction
focusing on the need for secrecy in all aspects of the work.
Women going overseas to type and file for their CIA bosses are
given short courses in espionage tradecraft. A former secretary
reported that the most notable part of her field training in the late
282 THE C I A AND THE C U L T 0 FIN TEL L I G ENe E
1960s was to trail an instructor in and out of Washingon department
stores. *
The agency's professionals, most of them (until the 1967 NSA
disclosures) recruited through "friendly" college professors, receive
much more extensive instruction when they enter the CIA as
career trainees (CTs). For two years they are on a probationary
status, the first year in formal training programs and the second
with on-the-job instruction. The CTs take introductory courses
at a CIA facility, known as the Broyhill Building, in Arlington,
Virginia, in subjects such as security, the organization of the
agency and the rest of the intelligence community, and the nature
of international communism. Allen Dulles, in his days as Director,
liked to talk to these classes and tell them how, as an American
diplomat in Switzerland during World War I, he received a telephone
call from a Russian late on a Saturday morning. The Russian
wanted to talk to a U.S. government representative immediately,
but Dulles had a date with a young lady, so he declined
the offer. The Russian turned out to be Nikolai Lenin, and Dulles
used the incident to urge the young CTs always to be alert to the
possible importance of people they meet in their work.
Afterward, CTs go to "The Farm," the establishment near Williamsburg
that is disguised as a Pentagon research-and-testing
facility and indeed resembles a large military reservation. Barracks,
offices, classrooms, and an officers' club are grouped around a central
point. Scattered over its 480 mostly wooded acres are weapons
ranges, jump towers, and a simulated closed border of a mythical
communist country. Away from these facilities are heavily guarded
and off-limits sites, locations used for super-secret projects such as
debriefing a recent defector, planning a special operation, or training
an important foreign agent who will be returning to his native
country to spy for the CIA.
As part of their formal clandestine training at "The Farm," the
CTs are regularly shown Hollywood spy movies, and after the performance
they collectively criticize the techniques used in the
* This woman's training proved useful, however, when in her first post
abroad, ostensibly as an embassy secretary, she was given the mission of
surveilling an apartment building in disguise as an Arab woman.
The Clandestine Mentality 283
films. Other movies are also used, as explained by the former
clandestine operator who wrote about his experience in the April
1967 Ramparts:
We were shown Agency-produced films depicting the CIA in
action, films which displayed a kind of Hollywood flair for
the dramatic that is not uncommon inside the Agency. A
colleague who went through a 1963 training class told of a
film on the U-2 episode. In his comments prefatory to the film,
his instructor intimated that President Eisenhower "blew his
cool" when he did not continue to deny that the U-2 was a
CIA aircraft. But no matter, said the instructor, the U-2 was
in sum an Agency triumph, for the planes had been overflying
Soviet territory for at least five years. During this time the
Soviet leaders had fumed in frustration, unable to bring down
a U-2 on the one hand, and reluctant to let the world know of
their inability on the other. The photography contained in the
film confirmed that the "flying cameras" had accomplished a
remarkable job of reconnaissance. When the film ended and
the lights came on, the instructor gestured toward the back of
the room and announced: "Gentlemen, the hero of our film."
There stood Francis Gary Powers. The trainees rose and
applauded.
All the CTs receive some light-weapons training, and those
destined for paramilitary duties receive a full course which includes
instruction in explosives and demolition, parachute jumps, air and
sea operations, and artillery training. This paramilitary training is
also taken by the contract soldiers (who greatly resent being called
"mercenaries") who have been separately recruited for special
operations. They join the CTs for some of the other courses, but
generally tend to avoid the younger and less experienced recent
college graduates who make up the bulk of the CT ranks. Many of
these mercenaries and a few of the CTs continue on for an advanced
course in explosives and heavy weapons given at a CIA
training facility in North Carolina. Postgraduate training in paramilitary
operations is conducted at Fort Bragg in North Carolina
and at Fort Gulick in the Panama Canal Zone.
284 • THE C I A AND THE C U L T 0 FIN TEL L I G ENe E
Fringe Benefits
Although agency personnel hold the same ratings and receive the
same salaries as other government employees, they do not fall
under Civil Service jurisdiction. The Director has the authority to
hire or fire an employee without any regard to normal governmental
regulations, and there is no legal appeal to his decisions. In general,
however, it is the CIA's practice to take extremely good care of the
people who remain loyal to the organization. There is a strong
feeling among agency management officials that they must concern
themselves with the welfare of all personnel, and this feeling goes
well beyond the normal employer-employee relationship in the
government or in private industry. To a certain extent, security
considerations dictate this attitude on the part of management,
since an unhappy or financially insecure employee can become a
potential target for a foreign espionage agent. But there is more to
it than that. Nearly everyone seems to believe: We're all in this
together and anyone who's on the team should be taken care of
decently. The employees probably feel a higher loyalty to the CIA
than members of almost any other agency feel for their organization.
Again, this is good for security, but that makes the sentiments
no less real.
Some of the benefits for agency personnel are unique in the
federal bureaucracy. For example, the CIA operates a summer
intern program for college students. Unlike other government
agencies which have tried to hire disadvantaged and minority
youngsters, the CIA's program is only for the sons and daughters of
agency empl0y'ees. Again the justification is security and the expense
of clearing outsiders, but it is a somewhat dubious claim
since the State Department manages to clear all its interns for "top
secret" without significant expense or danger to security.
If a CIA employee dies, an agency security officer immediately
goes to his or her house to see that everything is in order for the
survivors (and, not incidentally, to make sure no CIA documents
have been taken home from the office). If the individual has been
living under a cover identity, the security officer ensures that the
The Clandestine Mentality 285
cover does not fall apart with the death. Often the security man will
even help with the funeral and burial arrangements.
For banking activities, CIA employees are encouraged to use
the agency's own credit union, which is located in the headquarters
building. The union is expert in giving loans to clandestine operators
under cover, whose personal-background statements are by
definition false. In the rare instance when an employee forfeits on a
loan, the credit union seldom prosecutes to get back the money:
that could be a breach of security. There is also a special fund,
supported by annual contributions from agency officers, to help
fellow employees who accidentally get into financial trouble.
The credit union also makes various kinds of insurance available
to CIA employees. Since the agency does not wish to give outsiders
any biographical information on its personnel, the CIA provides the
insuror with none of that data that insurance companies normally
demand, except age and size of policy. The agency certifies that all
facts are true-even that a particular employee has died-without
offering any proof. Blue Cross, which originally had the agency's
health-insurance policy, demanded too much information for the
agency's liking, and in the late 1950s the CIA switched its account
to the more tolerant Mutual of Omaha. Agency employees are even
instructed not to use the airplane-crash insurance machines available
at airports, but to purchase such insurance from the credit
union.
Attempts are made even to regulate the extracurricular activities
of agency employees-to reinforce their attachment to the organization
and, of course, for security reasons. An employee-activity
association (incorporated for legal purposes) sponsors programs
in everything from sports and art to slimnastics and karate. The
association also runs a recreational travel service, a sports and
theater ticket service, and a discount sales store. The CIA runs
its own training programs for reserve military officers, too. And
it has arranged with local universities to have its own officers teach
college-level and graduate courses for credit to its employees in
the security of its headquarters building.
The CIA can be engagingly paternal in other ways, too. On
the whole, it is quite tolerant of sexual dalliance among its em286
THE C I A AND THE C U L T 0 FIN TEL L I G ENe E
ployees, as long as the relationships are heterosexual and not with
enemy spies. In fact, the CIA's medical office in Saigon was known
during the late 1960s for its no-questions-asked cures of venereal
disease, while State Department officers in that city avoided the embassy
clinic for the same malady because they feared the consequences
to their careers of having VD listed on their personnel
records.
In many other ways the CIA keeps close watch over its employees'
health. If a CIA officer gets sick, he can go to an agency
doctor or a "cleared" outside physician. If he undergoes surgery,
he frequently is accompanied into the operating room by a CIA
security man who makes sure that no secrets are revealed under
sodium-pentathol anesthesia. If he has a mental breakdown, he is
required to be treated by an agency psychiatrist (or a cleared contact
on the outside) or, in an extreme case, to be admitted to a
CIA-sanctioned sanitarium. Although no statistics are available,
mental breakdowns seem more common in the agency's tensionladen
atmosphere than in the population as a whole, and the CIA
tends to have a more tolerant attitude toward mental-health problems
and psychiatric therapy than the general public. In the
Clandestine Services, breakdowns are considered virtually normal
work hazards, and employees are encouraged to return to work
after they have completed treatment. Usually no stigma is attached
to illness of this type; in fact, a number of senior officers suffered
breakdowns while they were in the Clandestine Services and it
clearly did not hurt their careers. Ex-Clandestine Services chief
Frank Wisner had such an illness, and he later returned to work
as the CIA station chief in London.
Many agency officials are known for their heavy drinkingwhich
also seems to be looked upon as an occupational hazard.
Again, the CIA is more sympathetic to drinking problems than
outside organizations. Drug use, however, remains absolutely
taboo.
While the personnel policies and benefits extended by the CIA
to its employees can be justified on the grounds of national security
and the need to develop organizational loyalty, these tend to have
something of a personal debilitating effect on the career officers.
The Clandestine Mentality • 287
The agency is unconsciously viewed as an omniscient, omnipotent
institution---one that can even be considered infallible. Devotion to
duty grows to fanaticism; questioning the decisions of the authorities
is tantamount to religious blasphemy. Such circumstances encourage
bureaucratic insulation and introversion (especially under
strong pressures from the outside), and they even promote a perverse,
defensive attitude which restricts the individual from keeping
pace with significant social events occurring in one's own nationto
say nothing of those evolving abroad. Instead of continuing to
develop vision and sensitivity with regard to their professional
activities, the career officers become unthinking bureaucrats concerned
only with their own comfort and security, which they achieve
by catering to the demands of the existing political and institutional
leaderships-those groups which can provide the means for such
personal ends.
Secret Writings
A number of years ago the CIA established a secret historical
library, later a secret internal professional journal, and ultimately
began the preparation of the exhaustive secret history of the agency,
being written by retired senior officers.
The Historical Intelligence Collection, as the special library is
officially known in the CIA, is a fascinating library of spy literature,
containing thousands of volumes, fiction and non-fiction, in many
languages. The curator, a senior career officer by trade but by
avocation a bibliophile of some note, is annually allocated a handsome
budget to travel around the world in search of rare books and
documents on espionage. Through his efforts, the CIA today possesses
probably the most complete compilation of such publications
in the world. In recent years the collection has been expanded to
include intelligence memorabilia, featuring exhibits of invisible inks,
bugs, cameras, and other equipment actually used in certain operations
by spies or their handlers.
The CIA's own quarterly trade journal is called Studies in Intelligence.
Articles in recent years have dealt with subjects ranging
from the practical to the theoretical: there have been articles on
288 THE C I A AND THE C U L T 0 FIN TEL L I G ENe E
how to react when undergoing enemy interrogation; how the National
Estimate process works; how to covertly infiltrate and
exfiltrate heavily guarded enemy borders. After the Cuban missile
crisis the journal ran a debate on whether the CIA had failed to
detect the Soviet missiles early enough or had succeeded in time to
allow the government to take remedial action.
Some articles are of pure historical interest. In 1970 there was a
fascinating account of the successful efforts at the end of World War
II of the couturier Count Emilio Pucci, then in the Italian army, to
keep out of German hands the diary of Mussolini's Foreign Minister
(and son-in-law) Count Ciano, who had earlier been executed
by the Duce. Presumably stories of this kind would be of interest
to ordinary citizens but Studies in Intelligence, while bearing a
physical resemblance to many regularly published magazines, is
different in one important respect. It is stamped SECRET and is
therefore available only to CIA employees and a few selected
readers elsewhere in the intelligence community. Even its regular
reviews of current spy novels are withheld from the American
public.
The most important of the CIA's private literary projects is the
massive secret history of the agency that has been in preparation
since 1967. Recognizing the irresistible tendency of former intelligence
officers to write their memoirs and, thereby, often to embarrass
their organizations and their government with their revelations,
Director Helms prudently agreed to permit the preparation of
an official secret history of the CIA and its clandestine activities.
A professor of history from a Midwestern university was hired to
to act as coordinator and as a literary jresearch advisor to those
officers who would participate in the project. Retired senior officials
were rehired on contract at their former salaries to spend a couple
of additional years with the agency putting their recollections down
on paper for eventual incorporation in the encyclopedic summary
of the CIA's past.
Helms' decision was a master stroke. The history will never be
completed, nor will it ever be published. By definition it is a perpetual
project and one that can be read only by those who have a clear
"need to know"-and they are few indeed. But the writers, the
The Clandestine Mentality 289
battle-scarred old hands, have gotten their frustrations out of their
systems-with no harm done-and they have been paid, well paid,
for their efforts. (Probably better than they could have been had
they gone public.) As for the CIA, it, too, is content with the
arrangement; for it is its arrangement, a pact made among friends
and colleagues, one that conveniently shuts out the primary enemy
of those possessed of the clandestine mentality-the public.

Go to Next Page