Inside the Company: CIA Diary, by Philip Agee

"Science," the Greek word for knowledge, when appended to the word "political," creates what seems like an oxymoron. For who could claim to know politics? More complicated than any game, most people who play it become addicts and die without understanding what they were addicted to. The rest of us suffer under their malpractice as our "leaders." A truer case of the blind leading the blind could not be found. Plumb the depths of confusion here.

Inside the Company: CIA Diary, by Philip Agee

Postby admin » Tue Jun 09, 2015 4:01 am

Inside the Company: CIA Diary
by Philip Agee
© 1975 by Philip Agee
Published by the Stonehill Publishing Company, Third Printing

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


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Dedicated to Angela Camargo Seixas and her comrades in Latin America struggling for social justice, national dignity and peace

Table of Contents:

• Inside Cover
• Introduction
• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three
• Part Four
• Part Five
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2
• Appendix 3
• Acknowledgments
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Re: Inside the Company: CIA Diary, by Philip Agee

Postby admin » Tue Jun 09, 2015 4:02 am

Inside Cover:

Excerpted from a page-one pre-publication review in the Washington Post "Book World"

When Victor Marchetti's The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence was published it contained intriguing blanks where material deemed too sensitive by the CIA had been.

There are no blanks in Philip Agee's Inside the Company: CIA Diary. This densely detailed expose names every CIA officer, every agent, every operation that Agee encountered during 12 years with "The Company" in Ecuador, Uruguay, Mexico and Washington.

Among CIA agents or [contacts] Agee lists high ranking political leaders of several Latin American countries, U.S. and Latin American labor leaders, ranking Community Party members, and scores of other politicians, high military and police officials and journalists.

After a stint as an Air Force officer (for cover) and CIA training, Agee arrived in Quito, Ecuador in late 1960. During the glory years of the Alliance for Progress and the New Frontier, he fought the holy war against communism by bribing politicians and journalists, forging documents, tapping telephones, and reading other people's mail.

But it was a faraway event which seems to have disturbed him more. Lyndon Johnson's invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965 was an overreaction Agee couldn't accept. In 1968, he resigned with the conviction that he had become a "servant of the capitalism I rejected" as a university student -- "one of its secret policemen."

Agee decided to write this reconstructed diary to tell everything he knew. He spent four years writing the book in Europe, making research trips and dodging the CIA. At one point he lived on money advanced by a woman he believes was working for the CIA and trying to gain his confidence.

Until recently, former CIA Director Richard Helm's plea that "You've just got to trust us. We are honorable men" was enough. With the revelations of domestic spying, it no longer is.

In this book Agee has provided the most complete description yet of what the CIA does abroad. In entry after numbing entry, U.S. foreign policy in Latin America is pictured as a web of deceit, hypocrisy and corruption. Now that we can no longer plead ignorance of the webs our spiders spin, will be continue to tolerate CIA activities abroad? -- Patrick Breslin

© The Washington Post

Cover photograph by Dennis Rolfe shows a typewriter and bugged case planted on the author presumably by the CIA.

Stonehill Publishing Company
Distributed by George Braziller, Inc.

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Philip Agee, who was a CIA operations officer for twelve years, now lives in England.

"More than an expose, a unique chronicle ... the most complete description yet of what the CIA does abroad. In entry after numbing entry, U.S. foreign policy is pictured as a web of deceit, hypocrisy and corruption." -- The Washington Post

"Unlike Victor Marchetti, who was so high in the CIA that many of his notions of what goes on at the operations level are downright absurd, Philip Agee was there. He has first-hand experience as a spy-handler ... as complete an account of spy work as is likely to be published anywhere ... presented with deadly accuracy." -- Miles Copeland, former CIA agent, in The London Observer

"The workings of the world's most powerful secret police force -- the CIA -- comes across as a frightening picture of corruption, pressure, assassination and conspiracy." -- Evening News (London)
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Re: Inside the Company: CIA Diary, by Philip Agee

Postby admin » Tue Jun 09, 2015 4:02 am

Introduction

This is a story of the twelve-year career of a CI A secret operations officer that ended in early 1969. It is an attempt to open another small window to the kinds of secret activities that the US government undertakes through the CIA in Third World countries in the name of US national security. It includes the actual people and organizations involved, placed within the political, economic and social context in which the activities occurred. An attempt is also made to include my personal interpretation of what I was doing. and to show the effect of this work on my family life. My reasons for revealing these activities will be found in the text. No one, of course, can remember in detail all the events of a twelve-year period of his life. In order to write this book, I have spent most of the last four years in intensive research to reinforce my own recollections.

The officers of a CIA station abroad work as a team, often in quite different activities and with a considerable number of indigenous agents and collaborators. I have tried to describe the overall team effort, not just my own role, because all the station's efforts relate td the same goals.

The variety of operations that are undertaken simultaneously by a single officer and by the station team made an ordinary narrative presentation cumbersome. I have chosen a diary format (written, to be sure, in 1973 and 1974) in order to show the progressive development of different activities and to convey a sense of actuality. This method also has defects, requiring the reader to follow many different strands from one entry in the diary to another, but I believe it is the most effective method for showing what we did.

In order to ease the problem of remembering who all the characters are, I have included a special appendix, Appendix 1, which has descriptions of individuals and organizations involved or connected with the Agency or its operations (see note to Appendix 1). The reader is directed to this appendix by the use of a double dagger, ‡ in the text. It will be noted that many agents' names have been forgotten and that only cryptonyms (code names) can be given. Some of the original cryptonyms have also been forgotten, and in these cases I have composed new ones in order to refer to a real person by some name at least. Appendix 2 gives an alphabetical listing of all abbreviations used and an asterisk indicates those entries which appear in Appendix 1.

Several of the operational activities that I describe could not be placed at the exact date they really happened, for lack of research materials, but they are placed as close as possible to the date they occurred with no loss or distortion of meaning. Similarly, several events have been shifted a day or two so that they could be included in diary entries just before or just after they actually occurred. In these cases the changes make no difference.

When I joined the CIA I believed in the need for its existence. After twelve years with the agency I finally understood how much suffering it was causing, that millions of people all over the world had been killed or had had their lives destroyed by the CIA and the institutions it supports. I couldn't sit by and do nothing and so began work on this book.

Even after recent revelations about the CIA it is still difficult for people to understand what a huge and sinister organization the CIA is. It is the biggest and most powerful secret service that has ever existed. I don't know how big the KGB is inside the Soviet Union, but its international operation is small compared with the CIA's. The CIA has 16,500 employees and an annual budget of $750,000,000. That does not include its mercenary armies or its commercial subsidiaries. Add them all together, the agency employs or subsidizes hundreds of thousands of people and spends billions every year. Its official budget is secret; it's concealed in those of other Federal agencies. Nobody tells the Congress what the CIA spends. By Jaw, the CIA is not accountable to Congress.

In the past 25 years, the CIA has been involved in plots to overthrow governments in Iran, the Sudan, Syria, Guatemala, Ecuador, Guyana, Zaire and Ghana. In Greece, the CIA participated in bringing in the repressive regime of the colonels. In Chile, The Company spent millions to "destabilize" the Allende government and set up the military junta, which has since massacred tens of thousands of workers, students, liberals and leftists. In Indonesia in 1965, The Company was behind an even bloodier coup, the one that got rid of Sukarno and led to the slaughter of at least 500,000 and possibly 1,000,000 people. In the Dominican Republic the CIA arranged the assassination of the dictator Rafael Trujillo and later participated in the invasion that prevented the return to power of the liberal ex-president Juan Bosch. In Cuba, The Company paid for and directed the invasion that failed at the Bay of Pigs. Some time later the CIA was involved in attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro. It is difficult to believe, or comprehend, that the CIA could be involved in all these subversive activities all over the world.

The life of a CIA operations officer can be exciting, romantic. You belong to a special club: The Company. For most of my career with the CIA I felt that I was doing something worthwhile. There is not much time to think about the results of your actions and, if you try to do it well, the job of operations officer calls for dedication to the point of obsession. But it's a schizophrenic sort of situation. You have too many secrets, you can't relax with outsiders. Sometimes an operative uses several identities at once. If somebody asks you a simple question, "What did you do over the weekend?" your mind goes Click! Who does he think I am? What would the guy he thinks I am be doing over the weekend? You get so used to lying that after a while it's hard to remember what the truth is.

When I joined the CIA I signed the secrecy agreement. With this book, articles, exposure on radio and television, I may have violated that agreement. I believe it is worse to stay silent, that the agreement itself was immoral. My experience with the CIA has mostly been with its overseas operations. I trust investigations now going on in Washington into CIA activities will also expose CIA internal involvement which is, I suspect, much greater than anybody outside the CIA knows or the National Security Council realizes. I believe a lot of sinister things will come out and that Americans may be in for some very severe shocks.

In the New York Review of Books of 30 December 1971, Richard Helms, then CIA Director, was quoted from a rare address to the National Press Club. In justifying the CIA'S secret operations, he said: 'You've just got to trust us. We are honourable men.' I ask that these words be remembered while reading this book, together with the fact that CIA operations are undertaken on instructions from the President himself and are approved in very detailed form on various levels within the CIA, and often at the Under-Secretary level or higher. outside the Agency. Finally, I ask that it be kept in mind that the kinds of operations I describe, which occurred for the most part in Latin America, were typical of those undertaken in countries of the Far East, Near East and Africa. I would also suggest that they are continuing today.

Revelations during the past year of the CIA'S "destabilization" program against the Allende government in Chile, its illegal domestic operations and its complicity in political assassinations or assassination attempts have finally precipitated a long-overdue debate. I hope this book will contribute to it.

London May 1975
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Re: Inside the Company: CIA Diary, by Philip Agee

Postby admin » Tue Jun 09, 2015 4:07 am

PART 1 OF 4

Part One

South Bend, Indiana April 1956


Hundreds of companies come to the university to interview students for possible employment. I hadn't signed up for any interviews but I've just had my first, and probably only, job interview. To my surprise a man from the CIA came out from Washington to see me about going into a secret junior executive training programme. Virginia Pilgrim must have recommended me. I'd forgotten she mentioned a programme like this when she stayed with us in Tampa last year -- said she would dearly love to see the son of her oldest friends come into the CIA. Somehow I have the impression she is one of the highest-ranking women in the CIA -- worked on the Clark Task Force that investigated the CIA under the Hoover Commission.

I told Gus, ‡ the recruiter, that I had already been accepted for law study. He was surprised. Virginia didn't know my plans. He said the JOT (Junior Officer Trainee) Program consists of six to nine months, in some cases even a year, of increasingly specialized training on the graduate school level. After the course you begin CIA work on analysis, research, special studies and reports writing, administration or secret operations. He said he couldn't say much about the course or the work because it is all classified.

Gus asked me about my military service situation and when I told him I would have to do it sooner or later he mentioned a possible combination. For JOT'S who haven't done military service the CIA arranges for them to take a special course in the Army or the Air Force, which is really controlled by the CIA. It takes about a year to get an officer's commission and then you have to serve a year on a military assignment. Then it's back to Washington for the JOT training programme and finally assignment to a job at CIA headquarters in Washington. According to his calculations it would take five or six years to be assigned overseas if I wanted to go into secret operations. Too long to wait before getting to the good part, I thought.

Gus knew a lot about me: student government, academic honours and the rest. I said that what I liked best was being Chairman of the Washington's Birthday Exercises in February when we gave the Patriotism Award to General Curtis Lemay. I told Gus that the Exercises are the most important expression of the 'country' part of the Notre Dame motto ('For God, Country, and Notre Dame '). He said I should keep the CIA in mind if I changed my plans. I would consider the CI A if the military combination worked but Gus emphasized that they only want people prepared for a career in the CIA. That leaves me out.

I suppose the CIA works closely with General Lemay and his Strategic Air Command. This is the most important part of the speech he gave at the Exercises:

Our patriotism must be intelligent patriotism. It has to go deeper than blind nationalism or shallow emotional patriotic fervour. We must continually study and understand the shifting tides of our world environment. Out of this understanding we must arrive at sound moral conclusions. And we must see to it that these conclusions are reflected in our public policies .... If we maintain our faith in God, our love of freedom, and superior global air power, I think we can look to the future with confidence.


Tampa, Florida June 1956

It's a strange feeling being back in Florida for the summer with no plans to return to the cold north in the fall. The miserable weather and the long distance from home and all the other negative aspects of studying at Notre Dame seemed to fade away during Commencement Week-end.

No more bed check or lights out at midnight. No more compulsory mass attendance and evening curfew. No more Religious Bulletin to make you feel guilty if you didn't attend a novena, benediction or rosary service. And no more fear of expulsion for driving a car in South Bend. The end has come too, I hope, to the loneliness and frustration of living in an all-male institution isolated from female company.

What will it be like to live without the religion and discipline of the university? It may have been hard but they were teaching us how to live the virtuous life of a good Catholic. Even so, I still have this constant fear that after all I might die by accident with a mortal sin on my soul. Eternity in hell is a worry I can't seem to shake off. But the main thing is to keep on trying -- not to give up. After having to take all those courses on religion the only person to blame, if I really don't make it, will be me. It is the discipline and religion that makes Notre-Dame men different, and after four years of training I ought to be able to do better.

Admiral Arleigh Burke, Chief of Naval Operations, discussed this in his speech at the graduation ceremony. He really impressed me:

Notre-Dame symbolizes many virtues. It blends the virtues of religion and patriotism -- service to God, service to country. Notre-Dame stands for faith -- faith in self and faith in country .... Self discipline and determination and fighting spirit are an integral part of the curriculum ... We are living in a great country where there is equality of opportunity, where justice is a reality.... We are a generous nation.... We will never wage a war of aggression.... We are a strong nation.... We have strong allies.... But greater than all this strength is the strength of our moral principles.... Our nation is the symbol of freedom, of justice and opportunity, regardless of flag or political beliefs .... Communism has been, and still is, a prison for the millions who are denied the opportunity to learn responsibility -- who are compelled to let the few do the thinking for the many who will do the labor .... Should we relax our efforts, either spiritual or physical, we would find our ship without a rudder; we would find our strength not sufficient to cope with the strong adverse winds which at some time will confront us. It takes a man with strength and a stout heart to steer in a gale.


Admiral Burke writes a great speech -- couldn't have been more accurate or more inspiring. At Notre Dame we learned how one's responsibilities extend beyond oneself to family, community and nation, and that respect for authority is the virtue of a respectable citizen.

I will be driving a truck this summer to earn money for law school in the fall.

Tampa, Florida December 1956

Studying law at the University of Florida was a mistake. I didn't feel I belonged -- I wasn't comfortable -- in the fraternity whirl and the' hail fellow' routine. But I'm not an ascetic either. I suppose it was the lack of a sense of purpose or maybe I couldn't adjust to secular learning after four years of Jesuits and four at Notre Dame. At least I did realize it, and only stayed three months.

I checked with the draft board and they said I have about six months before I'll be called up. It's a sad prospect, two years wasted as a private, washing dishes and peeling potatoes. For a few months anyway I'll live with my parents in Florida and try to save some money. A draftee only makes about eighty dollars a month and that's hardly enough for booze and cigarettes.

The problem is what to do about the business. My father and grandfather are just starting a big expansion and they're counting on me to take my place with them. I know I'll make a lot of money but I can't get enthusiastic about it. Why the reluctance to go into a family business? When I switched to philosophy studies after a year of business administration at Notre Dame I thought I was doing it for the sake of a higher form of education. Like so many others I could learn to run a business once I got into it. Well now I'm in it and I feel the same as when I rejected business administration for philosophy. I wish I could speak to my father or grandfather about it but it would look as if I think I'm too good for something they've dedicated their lives to.

No hasty decisions. I've got six months to work with them and then two years in the Army.

Tampa, Florida February 1957

There has got to be a way to avoid two lost years in the Army. I've written to the CIA, reminding them of my meeting with Gus, and asking to be reconsidered. I've received application forms, returned them, advised Virginia Pilgrim by telephone, and now have to wait. Virginia said her friends in the personnel department would process my application as fast as possible because of the problem of the draft but it looks as if I may be too late. She said the security clearance takes about six months so the draft will probably win.

Gus said the JOT programme is strictly for people who want to make the CIA a career and I've been wondering about this. No way to know until I learn more about what CIA work is like, but I really am interested in politics and international relations. And the more I live here the less enthusiastic I get for a lifetime in the family business.

We'll see what kind of alternative the CIA can provide. It will mean three years' military duty instead of two if they take me, but I'll be an officer -- more pay, better work (especially at the CIA), and time to decide.

Washington DC April 1957

I've been called to Washington for an interview with the JOT office which is in Quarters Eye near the Potomac River. I waited in a reception room until a secretary came for me, filled out a visitor's pass form giving name, address and purpose of visit, and the receptionist added the hour and stamped in large letters MUST BE ACCOMPANIED. Then she gave me a plastic clip-on badge which I had to wear at all times. The secretary signed as responsible for me and I followed her to the JOT office.

The man who interviewed me is named Jim Ferguson. ‡ We spent about a half-hour discussing Notre Dame, the family business and my interest in a career in foreign affairs. I remembered the conversation with Gus and emphasized that while I am interested in a CIA career I know so little about the Agency that my reasons are necessarily restricted to an interest in foreign affairs. He said that they had arranged a series of tests and interviews with officers in charge of the JOT programme, including Dr Eccles, ‡ the Program Director. If the testing and interviews go well a complete security background investigation will be made: which could take about six months. But in my case, with the problem of the draft, they could ask for priority action and hope for the best.

The secretary gave me a piece of plain white paper with the building names, offices and times I was to report for the testing - it would take three days in all. She explained that at each building I would have to report to the receptionist, who would call the office where I had the appointment for someone to come and sign me in. She also reminded me to wear the visitor's badge at all times in the buildings and to return it with the pink visitor's pass on leaving. I would use the shuttle, an exclusive Agency bus, to get around the different buildings.

During that first visit to the JOT office, I immediately sensed the fraternal identification among the CI A people. I suppose it was partly because they used a special 'inside' language. No one spoke of 'CIA', 'Central Intelligence Agency', or even 'The Agency'. Every reference to the Agency used the word 'company'.

My first appointment was at the North Building with the Medical Staff and after that I alternated between those people and the office called ;Assessment and Evaluation' in the Recreation and Services Building on Ohio Drive. Although it seemed that the Medical Staff were looking for physical and mental health, and that 'A and E' were looking for the special qualities needed in an intelligence operative, there seemed to be little distinction between them. It was exhausting: endless hours filling in answer sheets to vocational, aptitude and personality tests. I've read of the elaborate testing procedures developed by the Office of Strategic Services during World War II and now I see it's still going on. Stanford, Minnesota, Strong, Wechsler, Guilford, Kudor, Rorschach -- some tests are administered and others just written. The worst was the interview with the psychiatrist at the Medical Staff -- he really bugged me.

I finally finished about noon on the afternoon of the third day, and I had a couple of hours before I had to report back to the JOT office so I decided to do some sightseeing. I grabbed a sandwich at a blind stand and then took the shuttle to the Executive Office Building. (Those blind stands -- sandwich bars operated by blind people -- are in practically every building. I guess it's a good thing for the blind people to have that work, and the company can let them in the buildings because they can't read secret papers. Everybody wins.)

Then out to the Washington Monument. Looking out from the top of the Monument at the buildings where our national life is guided, where our integrity in the face of grave external threat is defended, and where the plurality of conflicting domestic interests finds harmony, I admitted to myself that participation in government is my long-range goal. It won't matter if I live below my parents' material level or even without fixed roots in a community. Working in the Central Intelligence Agency, preferably overseas, with intimate knowledge of the functioning and decisions of friendly and hostile governments will provide a forever stimulating and exciting atmosphere as well as an intellectually challenging occupation. I'll be a warrior against communist subversive erosion of freedom and personal liberties around the world -- a patriot dedicated to the preservation of my country and our way of life.

I left the Monument through the circle of American flags and walked back to Quarters Eye feeling more confident and self-possessed than at any time since arriving. After the usual sign-in, pink slip, badge and escort procedure, I was received again by Ferguson ‡ who told me the first reports on the testing looked pretty good. While waiting to see Dr Eccles, Ferguson said he would brief me on the military programme they had in mind. First, however, he warned me that the programme was classified and not to be discussed with anyone outside the Agency. At his request I signed a statement acknowledging that what I learned was information relating to national security and promising that I would not reveal it.

Ferguson outlined the military programme. When the security clearance is completed I will be called back to Washington where I will enlist in the Air Force. After three months' basic training I will be assigned to the first available class at Officer Candidate School -- all at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. Following OCS I will be assigned to an Air Force base somewhere in the US, and, with luck, my duties will be in air intelligence. Ferguson explained that the company doesn't control assignments made by the Air Force after completion of OCS, but more and more of the company military trainees are getting intelligence assignments during the obligatory year of strictly military duties. After a year at the Air Force base I will be transferred to an Air Force unit in Washington that is actually a company cover unit, and my formal company training will begin.

The secretary appeared and said Dr Eccles would see me. I still had to get past him and I had primed myself for this meeting. Virginia had told me that Dr Eccles's approval was necessary for acceptance. He turned out to be a bushy-browed, bespectacled man of about sixty with an unavoidable authoritative glare. He asked me why I wanted to be an intelligence officer and when I replied that foreign affairs is one of my main interests he tried to make me uncomfortable. He said that foreign policy is for diplomats; intelligence officers only collect information and pass it to others for policymaking. He added that maybe I should try the State Department. I said maybe I should but that I don't know enough about the Agency yet to decide, adding that I'd like to come into the programme to see. He then gave me a little lecture; they don't want men who will quit the CIA as soon as they finish military service. They want only men who will be career intelligence officers. After that he turned into a kind old grandfather and said we'd see how the security clearance turned out. Heshook my hand and said they'd like to have me. Made it! I'm in -- but it seems too easy.

Back in Ferguson's office where he continued to describe the programme. At no time will I be connected openly with the company, and I am to tell no one that I am being considered by it for employment. Assuming the security investigation is favourable, they will arrange for me to be hired as a civilian by the Department of the Air Force, actually by an Air Force cover unit of the company, when I am called back to Washington. A few weeks later I will enlist in the Air Force and be sent to Lackland for basic training. While in the Air Force I will be treated just like any other enlistee and no one will know of my company connection. Keeping the secret will be part of my training -- learning to live my cover. A violation of cover could lead to dismissal from the programme. My assignments afterwards will also be determined in part by how well I have concealed my company affiliation. Back in Florida I must keep the plan secret, but notify Ferguson if I receive any orders from the draft board.

I'm beginning to feel a kind of satisfaction in having a secret and of being on the threshold of an exclusive club with a very select membership. I am going to be my own kind of snob. Inside the Agency I'll be a real and honest person. To everyone outside I'll have a secret lie about who and what I am. My secret life has begun.

Washington DC July 1957

Salvation! The security clearance ended before the call-up came, and I drove to Washington loaded with books, hi-fi, records and tennis gear. Georgetown is the 'in' area where a CIA officer trainee feels most comfortable, so I've moved in with some former Notre Dame classmates who are doing graduate study at Georgetown University. We're living in a restored Federalist house on Cherry Hill Lane, a narrow brick street between M Street and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. I have that feeling of being just the right person in just the right place. These friends don't know I'm going into the CIA so this will be my first real test of living a cover.

At the JOT office Ferguson told me whom I am working for. My 'employer' is the Department of the Air Force, Headquarters Command, Research and Analysis Group, Bolling Air Force Base, Washington. He gave me the names of my commander, an Air Force colonel, and of my immediate supervisor, a major, both of whom are fictitious. I have to memorize all this so I can reel it off to people I meet. My Bolling Air Force Base telephone number rings in the Agency Central Cover Division where they have some male telephone operators who roll dice each morning to see who will play the colonel and who will play the major.

I signed another secrecy agreement -- the wording makes it permanent, eternal and universal about everything I learn in the company - and Ferguson sent me over to my first assignment at 1016 16th Street. I rushed over but discovered nobody was expecting me. Finally I was called up to the fourth floor and welcomed to the Personnel Pool. All we do is fold maps and have crossword puzzle competitions.

The Personnel Pool is a holding area for all prospective employees who lack the final nihil obstat for the security clearance -- we're all waiting for the same happy event: the polygraph or lie detector. We're about thirty people. Some of them have been in the pool for over a month and they're the rumour-mongers. It seems that the polygraph, or 'technical interview' as it's officially called, has been a real trauma for some. We have been warned that nobody talks about the 'poly' and that makes the rum ours all the more mysterious. It seems that the main part of the apparatus crosses the breasts, which makes some of the girls nervous, and the main questioning is on homosexual experience, which makes some of the boys nervous. There are stories of nervous breakdowns, ambulances and even suicide. There's no doubt, however, what's going to happen when you get advised of an appointment at Building 13.

Washington DC July 1957

After two weeks of folding maps my turn finally came. How stupid to think I could beat the machine! Yesterday I was 'polyed' and now I'm back at the Personnel Pool but on a different floor and with people who've already taken the test. We're kept away from those who haven't taken it so they won't know much about it. The interrogators don't tell you right away about the results of the test -- they make you wait. Nothing but gloom here.

The shuttle doesn't stop at Building 13 so I had to ask the driver to leave me as near as possible. When he acknowledged Building 13 in a loud voice (on purpose, I'm sure) the cold, knowing eyes of the other passengers focused right on me and I felt like a leper. They knew I was about to make a secret, intimate confession. Bad joke.

At 23rd Street and Constitution Avenue, the driver announced Building 13 and pointed me towards a complex of temporary buildings, barracks style, beyond a parking lot towards the Watergate. The buildings are surrounded by high chain-link fences topped by several strands of barbed-wire tilting towards the outside. All the windows. have the same type of chain-link mesh and every third or fourth window has an air-conditioner. None of them are open and the buildings look impenetrable.

I made my way along the fence and the first building I noticed after getting to a gate was one with a discreet 13 near the entrance. After a short wait with the receptionist I was greeted by a man about thirty-five -- clean-cut, clean-shaved and clear-eyed. He took me a short distance down a hallway, opened a door, and we passed into a small room with acoustical tile covering the walls and ceiling. There was a standard government leather easy chair that backed up to a desk-like construction with a built-in apparatus of dials, graph paper and odd, narrow, metal pens. In an effort to keep me from more than a swift glance at the machine, he conducted me immediately to a sitting position in the easy chair. From behind the desk he brought a straight chair and sat down in front of me.

The interrogator announced that I had reached the final phase of the security clearance procedure necessary for access to Top Secret material and, of course, for employment with the company. He assured me that all employees of the company, even Mr. Dulles, submit to the polygraph -- not just once when they're hired, but periodically throughout their careers. Then he asked me to sign a prepared statement acknowledging that I was submitting to the test of my own volition and that I would hold no claim against any person or the company afterwards no matter what the outcome. I eagerly signed this quit claim -- in advance -- and also another secrecy agreement, pledging myself to speak to no one of the questions or other details of the interview.

We then reviewed the questions, all of which were to be answered simply 'yes' or 'no'. Is my name Philip Burnett Franklin Agee? Was I born on 19 January 1935? Have I ever used any other name or identity? Have I filled out my job application form honestly? Have I ever been a member of any of the subversive organizations on the Attorney-General's list? Have I ever been a communist or belonged to any communist organization? Have I ever been in a foreign country? In a communist country? Have I known any officials of a foreign government? Of a communist government? Have I ever known an intelligence officer of a foreign country? Have I ever worked for a foreign government? For a foreign intelligence service? For a communist intelligence service? Have I been asked by anyone to obtain employment with the CIA? Have I told anyone outside the CIA of my attempt to obtain employment? Have I ever engaged in homosexual activities? Have I ever taken drugs? Have I taken tranquillizers today?

The pre-test interview lasted over an hour as the interrogator explored each question in depth, noting all names, dates, places, and finally rephrasing the question to include an 'other than' or 'except for' clause that would qualify the question and still allow for a 'yes' or 'no' answer. During this discussion the interrogator explained to me that the lie detector is used exclusively in the company by the Office of Security which is responsible for protecting the company against employment of security risks or against penetration by hostile intelligence services. He also assured me that everything I said during the interview is strictly confidential and will be restricted to my Office of Security File which is available only to security officers of the same office. I didn't have the courage to ask how many security officers that meant, but as I wondered I felt a creeping discomfort that behind one of those thousands of holes in the acoustical tiles there was a microphone secretly recording our conversation. I also began to wonder if I was having incipient symptoms of the paranoia that some people say is the personality trait sine qua non of the effective intelligence officer.

Now we were ready for the test. The polygraph consists of three apparatuses which are attached to the body of the person being interrogated and which connect by tubes or cords to the desk ensemble. Each apparatus measures physiological changes, marked on moving graph paper by three pens. There are, accordingly, a blood pressure cuff that can be attached either to the arm or leg, a corrugated rubber tube about two inches in diameter that is placed snugly around the chest and fastened in the back, and a hand-held device with electrodes that is secured against the palm by springs that stretch across the back of the hand. The cuff measures changes in pulse and blood pressure, the chest-tube measures changes in breathing rhythm, and the hand instrument measures changes in perspiration. I was hooked into the machine, told to look straight ahead at the wall, to be very still, and to answer only 'yes' or 'no' to each question. The interrogator was behind me at the desk ensemble facing the back of my head. He asked the questions to my back and I answered to the wall in front.

During the pre-test interview I had given my interrogator several half-truths, partly because I simply resisted his invasion of my life, and partly because I was curious about the effectiveness of the machine. Foolish child! As the cuff inflated I was conscious of increased pulse and my hands began to sweat profusely. Anticipating the questions that I should react on, I started to count the holes in the tiles in order to distract myself from the test. The interrogator passed very slowly from one question to another, pausing between each question. I answered 'yes' or 'no' and at the end he slipped in an unannounced question: had I answered all the questions truthfully? Dirty trick. I said 'yes' and after a few seconds the cuff deflated.

I heard a shuffling of paper and he reviewed the chart as I remained still. He told me I could move a little but that if I was not particularly uncomfortable he would like me to remain seated and hooked up. Fine. He stayed behind the desk behind my chair behind my back and started asking me what I was thinking about when I answered the question on whether anyone had asked me to obtain employment with the CIA. Nothing in particular. He insisted but I couldn't come up with an answer other than that I was thinking that indeed no one had asked me. Discussion. Then he asked me what I was thinking when I answered the question about telling anyone outside the C (A of my attempt to obtain employment. Nothing in particular. Discussion. Then the question on homosexual experience. Then drugs. As we passed from question to question he insisted with increasing intensity that I try to remember what I was thinking when I answered the question, emphasizing that my cooperation is essential for a successful testing. Successful? I wondered if successful for him is the same as successful for me. Obviously not. I would stick to my half-truths. They weren't lies anyway, and besides I have heard that you can beat the machine if you stay consistent.

We started again. Up went the blood pressure cuff and out came the questions. In went the 'yes's' and 'no's' and up and down went the faintly scratching pens. I fiercely counted the holes in the tiles and was gaining in confidence. Down went the cuff followed by more post-test discussion. This time I was' having difficulty' on two more questions. I repeated and insisted that I was being truthful and that when answering each question I had been thinking only of the question and of its only possible truthful answer -- which I gave.

The interrogator said we would go through the questions again and that I hadn't done too well on the first two runs, adding that there is no way for me to be hired without successfully passing the test. Was there anything I wanted to say or clarify? No. I was being truthful and maybe something was wrong with the machine. That hurt. His tone cooled, the cuff inflated and we did another test. At the end he said I was obviously having trouble. With an air of finality he unhooked me from the machine.

At that moment I got scared and feared I wouldn't be hired. As I was about to confess he said he would leave me alone to think things over for five or ten minutes. He closed a lid to the desk ensemble and left the room taking the charts with him. I stood up and looked at my watch which I had been asked to remove and place on the desk behind me. I had been at Building 13 for over two hours. The interrogator was gone for at least twenty minutes. During that time I decided to tell the full truth. Why risk losing the job out of silly pride or the illusion that I could beat the machine? But as the door opened and my interrgator rejoined me I suddenly became frightened of admitting deception. I decided not to change any answer. Besides, in the Personnel Pool I had heard that some people who have difficulty are called back for a second or third time for the polygraph. I would have another day if I really failed this time.

We passed through the questions two more times. After both tests the interrogator insisted that I was having trouble on the same questions and I insisted that I was answering truthfully no matter what difficulty I was having. At last he said that would be all. I asked if I had passed and he answered sceptically that he didn't know, that I would be advised after the Security Office had reviewed my case and the charts. He was very pessimistic, and as I was leaving I feared that they might not even call me back for another test. I was exhausted -- went home, had a couple of drinks and slept for twelve hours.

When I called Virginia in the morning and told her I thought I'd failed the test, she said not to worry, that they always make people think they've failed. She thinks it's to avoid disappointment and fewer problems with those who really aren't going to be hired. Virginia's news is temporary relief, but the wait is agonizing. No more arrogant jokes about the polygraph in the Pool now -- and nobody's reckless enough to discuss his interrogation with anyone else. Everybody's just sitting.

Washington DC July 1957

I couldn't stand it any longer. After three days' waiting, I called Ferguson to admit I was lying and to volunteer to take the test again. Before I could say anything he said he had some good news and to come over to his office. The tone of his voice gave infinite relief -- I knew I had passed.

At the JOT office Ferguson told me he has started my processing for enlistment in the Air Force but it will take three or four weeks. Meanwhile he wants me to take a training course on international communism and, if there is time, a course on the bureaucratic organization of the company. These aren't the courses I'll be taking when I get back but they'll be useful, he thinks, even if they're pretty elementary. He also had the secretary arrange to get me a badge -- I can come and go now without being signed in - and he made an appointment for me with Colonel Baird, ‡ the Director of Training.

I missed the meeting with Baird and after being chastised at the JOT office I finally saw him in his office at T-3 (another of the Potomac Park temporaries). I hadn't realized how important Colonel Baird is -- he set up the JOT programme in 1950 under direct supervision of General Walter Bedell Smith who was then Agency Director. With Princeton, Oxford, and the headmastership of a boys' school behind him, Baird is considerably more formidable than his military rank. He oozes firm leadership, old hand super-confidence and a Dunhill special blend for special pipes. He's tall, greying, very tanned and very handsome -- irresistible to the ladies, I'm sure. He didn't say much -- just to work hard at OCS.

Ferguson and everyone else, since the polygraph, have greeted me with' welcome aboard', as if these words are the official greeting for newcomers. Maybe there are a lot of ex-Navy men in the CIA -- or maybe these people like to think they're on a ship because of the isolation imposed by cover and security.

Baltimore, Maryland August 1957

The two weeks studying communism and two weeks reading organizational charts of the headquarters' bureaucracy leave me happy to leave Washington.

Yesterday morning Ferguson gave me my final briefing on joining the Air Force. Arrangements had been made, he said, at the main Air Force recruiting office in Washington for me to be taken into the Air Force on a normal five-year enlistment, which was the standard procedure for all Air Force enlistees. However, after basic training I will receive a special appointment by the Secretary of the Air Force to the first OCS class. I would have to be prepared to cover this appointment because we JOT'S are the only exceptions to the Air Force regulation that five years' service is needed before an enlisted man can even apply for OCS. Ferguson said I can refer to a little known (so little known, in fact, that it doesn't exist) Air Force programme for college graduates if I am pressed, but I can probably avoid giving explanations. He warned me, however, not to tell anyone that I am going to OCS until the assignment is actually announced to me at Lackland Air Force Base.

I signed another secrecy agreement and Ferguson said I'll have to take the polygraph again when I get back in two years' time. Then I took the bus to the recruiting office carrying only an overnight bag with some toilet articles and a change of underwear and socks.

I told the paunchy, weather-beaten recruiting sergeant my name as pleasantly as I could. He answered 'yeah' and when I noticed it was a question I wondered whether to say' here I am' or 'I want to enlist'. I decided to say both, trying to sound unrehearsed, and I added that I thought I was expected. The recruiting sergeant understandably looked back as if he thought I thought the Air Force was about to be saved.

He gave me some forms to fill in and asked if I wanted to go in thirty, sixty or ninety days. I said cheerfully that I was ready to go right then, which made his eyes narrow and his mouth screw up into that' another case' expression. He motioned me over to a table across the room where I filled in the forms, wondering all the while whether the sergeant was really attached to the JOT office and was testing my ability to maintain the cover story. I returned the forms which he looked over and then he disappeared into a back office.

After a few minutes he returned with another recruiting sergeant and both expressed considerable scepticism. We spent the next half-hour discussing why a philosophy graduate wanted to enlist for five years in the Air Force in order to learn to be a radar mechanic. Finally I admitted that it was indeed kind of strange and I accepted their invitation to think it over for a few days. I carried my little bag of essentials out of the recruiting office wishing I could find somewhere to hide.

From a telephone booth I called Ferguson to advise that apparently the Air Force didn't want me -- not that day anyway. He gulped and stammered for me to call him back in two hours. I wondered what clown had missed his cue while at the same time I dreaded facing the recruiting sergeant again. When I called back, Ferguson told me to go back to the recruiting office, that everything was all right now. When I pressed him for an explanation his voice turned cold and he warned me not to discuss classified matters over the telephone. Back in the recruiting office there was a new sergeant who' simply gave me a ticket for the bus to Baltimore for the medical examination and swearing in.

At Fort Holabird they took me. Tonight I fly to San Antonio to begin two years away from CIA headquarters -- Ferguson said I must consider this time as part of the JOT training, a time for 'maturing', I think he said.

San Antonio, Texas Christmas 1957

Tony and I had Christmas dinner at the dining-hall, the low point of a miserable day. Next week, New Year's Eve to be exact, we report to OCS. We're going to live it up meanwhile except neither of us has any money.

There are only three of us going into this class; Tony, who's from Princeton; Bob, from Williams, and me. A couple of nights ago we met in a hotel downtown with the six JOT'S who started OCS in the last class. They are going to be upper classmen now -- the course is three months lower and three months upper class -- which means they will be harassing us. That's normal and necessary for cover.

For the meeting we took security precautions as Ferguson instructed when he came to see us in October. No one can take any chances by a show of prior knowledge or special camaraderie between the triple Xer's. Those three X's which are in brackets after our names on all our documents, are the Air Force's way of keeping track of CIA trainees.

The guys from the upper class told us not to be surprised if they put the heat on us -- they have to because of the resentment on the part of the others in the class who had to work years to get into OCS. It seems these non-corns aren't happy about our miniscule bunch (there are about 300 cadets altogether in OCS) being specially privileged by entering straight from basic training. I suppose we'll run into the same.

San Antonio, Texas June 1958

In a few days I'll be a Second Lieutenant unless the OCS Commandant decides my insult was too much to take. A couple of weeks ago he called me in to tell me I was going to be eligible for a regular commission instead of a reserve commission. Only the top six OCS graduates get regular commissions and for an aspiring career officer it's the end of the rainbow -- you practically can't get discharged. The Commandant also said it looked as if I might graduate first in the class. I made a panic call to Ferguson and he told me to turn the regular commission down. I told the Commandant who said it might not help our cover situation (he's the only officer on the OCS staff who knows of our CIA sponsorship), if the top graduate refuses a regular commission. I got the hint and am holding back an academic paper which should drop me a notch or two. But the Commandant took my refusal of the regular commission like a slap in the face. Guess this hasn't come up before.

My orders after commissioning are for transfer to the Tactical Air Command. It's too good to believe: assignment as intelligence officer to a fighter squadron at a base just outside Los Angeles.

Victorville, California June 1959

My orders finally came for transfer back to Washington -- to the company bogus unit, I mean. It's been a marvellous year, driving up and down those motorways to Mexico, San Francisco, Yosemite, Monterey. I finally got busy training the pilots in targeting because we have the new F-104 and nuclear targets in China. I've also done some training in evasion and escape because some of the targets are one-way ditch missions. The only big mistake was volunteering for the Survival School at Reno, Nevada because they sent me to the January course and the week-long trek in the mountains was on snowshoes -- pure misery.

I've been seeing Janet, my girlfriend from college, almost every week-end since last summer. I've told her about my work in the company and about my hopes to be assigned abroad. We've talked a lot about marriage but we're not sure what to do. She would like to stay in California, and I wonder if I should wait until after the JOT course is over a year from now. I'll be leaving for Washington in a couple of weeks and we'll see how we endure the separation.

Washington DC September 1959

It didn't take a long time for us to decide. Less than a month after I left California we agreed we didn't want to wait any longer, so now we begin a life together. We were married at Notre Dame as a kind of compromise because Janet's family is Congregationalist and she felt a wedding in a Catholic Church in her home town might raise difficulties. We took a small apartment in the building complex where Vice-President Nixon and his wife first lived when they came to Washington after his election to the House. We have furniture to buy, but family and friends have been exceedingly generous and new gifts arrive every day. We can save some money by shopping at the military commissaries because I'm still on active duty.

My military cover unit is an Air Intelligence Service Squadron at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington. My cover telephone number has changed but the same two telephone operators are rolling the same dice to see who will be the colonel and who the major.

Ferguson said I probably won't be discharged until June or July of next year, which will coincide with the end of the JOT training programme.

All the JOT'S in the OCS class ahead of me, my class, and the one behind me are united in the JOT programme. Even so, we make up only about fifteen of the sixty-odd in the class - which includes only six women. The JOT classes, which have just started, are held in the Recreation and Services Building, the same one where I was tested by the Assessment and Evaluation staff two years ago. The 'A and E' routines are even longer now than before and I'm going through all of those monotonous tests again. The only thing we lack is a mammoth Potomac Park football stadium for Saturday afternoon frenzy -- the rest is the old college routine once more.

The opening sessions in the training course were welcoming speeches by Allen Dulles, Colonel Baird, and others who have been showering us with affection and praise for following them into this life of deliberate self-abnegation, unknown sacrifice and silent courage as secret warriors in the battles of our time. Very romantic. Each one of us in the class represents the one in a hundred, or one in a thousand, of the total number of applicants for the JOT programme who were finally accepted. The company leaders tell us we're entering the world's second oldest profession (maybe even the first, but that can't be proved) and if there are any uneasy consciences in the group they have been soothed by Biblical quotations showing that no less a figure than God himself instituted spying. So much for the moral question.

But our country had forgotten the lesson of Jericho. In 1929 Secretary of State H. L. Stimson closed the code-breaking operation known as the Black Chamber with the scolding that 'gentlemen don't read other people's mail'. Until Pearl Harbor foreign intelligence in the United States was all but forgotten. Then there were the heroics of the OSS during the war followed by the decision of President and Congress alike not to risk another surprise attack by leaving early warning to peace-time military neglect once again. So the civilian CIA was established in 1947 to provide a centralized agency for processing all foreign intelligence and for producing a national intelligence product blessed by enlightenment from all possible sources.

After two years away with the Air Force these first sessions have been stimulating and even exciting -- almost like a raging thirst being finally quenched. The JOT office has arranged evening language courses for anyone interested, and Janet and I have a class in Spanish three nights a week. It's nice that the company includes the wives as much as possible. Otherwise they would really be at a distance, because everything we study and read, almost, is classified. We selected Spanish only because that was my language at school, but there is a monetary awards programme for maintenance and improvement of foreign languages and it might be a way to earn a little extra. Things are working out just right.

Washington DC October 1959

We've just finished a month studying communism and Soviet foreign policy, and soon we'll begin studying the government organization for national security, where the Agency fits in, and the bureaucratic organization of headquarters. Each of us has periodic sessions with one of the JOT counsellors to discuss possible future assignments and where to continue training after Christmas. Almost everyone seems to want to go into secret operations, which will mean six months' special training away from Washington at a place called 'the farm'. I told Ferguson I wanted to go to 'the farm', but he was non-committal.

The lectures and readings in communism have been especially interesting. The Office of Training stays away from philosophy -- dialectical materialism wasn't even mentioned -- while concentrating on the Soviets. It's a practical approach, of sorts, because what the CIA is up against, one way or another, is Russian expansion directed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union -- CPSU. The Leninist concept of the party, particularly its elitist and secretive nature, and the CPSU's difficulties in reconciling pragmatism with ideology (Russian domination of the minority nationalities, NEP, collectivization and elimination of the kulaks, united front doctrine, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact) are seen as related to one goal: obtaining, retaining and expanding power.

Subservience of foreign communist parties to the CPSU is another theme given considerable emphasis -- it's hard to believe that the Soviets with a straight face preach that the first obligation of every communist, no matter what nationality, is to defend the Soviet Union. Institutions such as the Comintern and Cominform served that purpose in their time, but the KGB is the principal organ. Much importance, of course, is given to the Soviet security organizations, from the Cheka down.

The writings of defectors from communism were the most interesting: Louis Budenz, Howard Fast, The God that Failed, Kravchenko, Gouzenko, Petrov. But the most devastating for the Soviets, because of his criticism of Leninist party doctrine, is Milovan Djilas. The other day we split into small groups and interviewed Peter Deriabin ‡ -- he's the highest-ranked KGB defector yet. It was done through closed-circuit television so that he could not see us (to protect our security) and he was disguised and spoke through an interpreter (to protect his security because he is living in the Washington area).

The central theory is that communist attempts to set up dictatorships around the world are really manifestations of Soviet expansion which in turn is determined by the need to maintain CPSU power at home. Our country is the real target, however, and the Soviets have said often enough that peace is impossible until the US is defeated. Now we're going to study how the government, and the CIA in particular, are set up to counter the Soviet threat.
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Re: Inside the Company: CIA Diary, by Philip Agee

Postby admin » Tue Jun 09, 2015 4:07 am

PART 2 OF 4

Washington DC November 1959

A theme that is continually repeated during these sessions is that the CIA does not make policy. The Agency's job is to provide the intelligence or information that is used by the President and other policymakers. It only executes policy, and collects information to be used in policy decisions by people outside the Agency. It doesn't make policy.

For several weeks we have been listening to lectures and reading documents on the government machinery for national security. The basic document is the National Security Act of 1947 which set up the National Security Council (NSC) as the highest body concerned with national security. Chaired by the President, the NSC is composed of the following statutory members: the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Director of the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization, and the Vice-President. Membership can be enlarged whenever the President desires by ad hoc appointments such as the Attorney-General or the Secretary of the Treasury. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) are NSC observers. [1]

The NSC has its own staff and offices in the Executive Office Building next to the White House and, in addition, has three important subordinate groups reporting to it: the NSC Planning Board, the Operations Coordination Board (OCB), [2] and the Intelligence Advisory Committee (IAC). [3] The NSC Planning Board works mostly on preparing materials for NSC meetings and on following up the implementation of NSC decisions. The OCB is of very special interest to the Agency because its function is to review and approve CIA action operations (as opposed to collection of information) such as propaganda, paramilitary operations and political warfare. The OCB is composed of the DCI, the Under-Secretary of State, the Deputy Secretary of Defence and ad hoc members at the Under-Secretary level.

The IAC is like a board of directors of the intelligence community, chaired by the DCI and having as members the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, the intelligence chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Chief of Intelligence and Research (I N R) of the Department of State and the Director of the National Security Agency. Intelligence chiefs of the FBI and the Atomic Energy Commission sit on the IAC when appropriate. The purpose of the I A C is to assign intelligence tasks among the different services according, at least in theory, to which service can best do the job. It is also designed to avoid both overlaps and gaps in the national intelligence effort, and it has several subordinate interdepartmental groups such as the Board of National Estimates, the National Intelligence Survey Committee and the Watch Committee, each of which is chaired by a CIA officer.

As part of the NSC mechanism the National Security Act of . 1947 established the office of the DCI as the NSC's principal intelligence officer and the Central Intelligence Agency as the organization that would effect the centralizing of the national intelligence effort. The CIA has five statutory functions:

1. To advise the NSC in matters concerning such intelligence activities of the government departments and agencies as relate to national security.

2. To make recommendations to the NSC for the coordination of such intelligence activities.

3. To correlate and evaluate intelligence relating to the national security, and provide for the appropriate dissemination of such intelligence within the government.

4. To perform, for the benefit of the existing intelligence agencies, such additional services of common concern as the NSC determines can be more efficiently accomplished centrally.

5. To perform such other functions and duties related to intelligence affecting the national security as the NSC may from time to time direct.

It is this fifth function which occupies most of the CIA's time and money. It's the dagger inside the cloak. Covert action, although it is not spelled out for us this way, is a form of intervention somewhere between correct, polite diplomacy and outright military invasion. Covert action is the real reason for the CIA's existence, and it was born out of political and economic necessity.

The DCI is described as a man with two hats. First, he is the principal intelligence advisor "to the President and the NSC, and secondly, he is the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Formal commands are given by the NSC to the DCI through Top Secret Documents called National Security Council Intelligence Directives (NSCID's -- pronounced non-skids). The NSCID's are put into effect by documents issued by the DCI to the concerned member of the intelligence community, including the CIA, these documents being called Director of Central Intelligence Directives (DCID's). Within the CIA the DCID's are particularized in the thick and continually changing volumes of regulations and other instructions. We have been studying, then, the very broadly worded NSCID's, the more particularized DCID's, and the specific CIA regulations. These are the documents that govern everything from foreign intelligence collection operations through political, psychological and paramilitary operations to communications and electronic intelligence efforts. Clearly, the documentation and the bureaucratic structure demonstrate that what the Agency does is ordered by the President and the NSC. The Agency neither makes decisions on policy nor acts on its own account. It is an instrument of the President ... to use in any way he pleases.

***

We have also examined the question of Congressional monitoring of intelligence activities and of the Agency in particular. The problem resides in the National Security Act of 1947 and also in its amendment, the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949. These laws charged the DCI with protecting the 'sources and methods' of the US intelligence effort and also exempted the DCI and the Bureau of the Budget from reporting to Congress on the organization, function, personnel and expenditures of the CIA -- whose budget is hidden in the budgets of other executive agencies. The DCI, in fact, can secretly spend whatever portion of the CIA budget he determines necessary, with no other accounting than his own signature. Such expenditures, free from review by Congress or the General Accounting Office or, in theory, by anyone outside the executive branch, are called 'unvouchered funds'. By passage of these laws Congress has sealed itself off from CIA activities, although four small sub-committees are informed periodically on important matters by the DCI. These are the Senate and House sub-committees of the Armed Services and Appropriations Committees, and the speeches of their principal spokesman, Senator Richard Russell, are required reading for the JOT's.

There have been several times when CI A autonomy was threatened. The Hoover Commission Task Force on Intelligence Activities headed by General Mark Clark recommended in 1955 that a Congressional Watchdog Committee be established to oversee the CIA much as the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy watches over the AEC. The Clark Committee, in fact, did not believe the sub-committees of the Armed Services and Appropriations Committees were able to exercise effectively the Congressional monitoring function. However, the problem was corrected, according to the Agency position, when President Eisenhower, early in 1956, established his own appointative committee to oversee the Agency. This is the President's Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities, [4] whose chairman is James R. Killian, President of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It can provide the kind of' private citizen' monitoring of the Agency that Congress didn't want. Moreover, our speakers have pointed out, the more Congress gets into the act the greater the danger of accidental revelation of secrets by indiscreet politicians. Established relationships with intelligence services of other countries, like Great Britain, might be complicated. The Congress was quite right at the beginning in giving up control -- so much for them, their job is to appropriate the money.

Washington DC December 1959

Studying the Agency bureaucratic structure has been fascinating but at the same time exhausting -- there's been no end to organizational charts and speeches by representatives from everyone of the divisions, sub-divisions, offices and sub-offices. Each of the speakers has a story of how his office broke an important case by having just the right piece of information or person for the job.

Woven into the training programme since the first days in September are constant reminders of the need for tight security. Capabilities and intentions 'of the enemy must be discovered, whether in the Kremlin, in a Soviet nuclear weapons factory, at a missile development site, or in the meeting-hall of an obscure communist party in Africa. But of utmost importance, since knowledge of the enemy is necessarily limited, is the protection of our intelligence. We don't want the enemy to know what we know about him, for then he could take measures to annul our advantage. So we have to protect our intelligence by building a curtain of secrecy called' security'. Receptionists, guards, badges, barred windows, combination safe-filing cabinets, polygraphs, background investigations, punishments for security violations, compartmentation and the 'need-to-know' principle.

Compartmentation is the separation of activities whereby a person or group performing a particular task do not know what tasks other people are doing. The gap between people doing different jobs is bridged by the need to know. If a person working in intelligence has a definite need to know what others are doing on a specific job, he will be given access. If not, he is expected to subdue normal curiosity. The CIA is organized with built-in compartmentation designed to give maximum protection to the secret information collected for the policymakers.

The CIA bureaucracy is fairly complicated. [5] At the top of the pyramid are the executive offices composed of the Offices of the Director, the Deputy Director, the Inspector-General, the General Counsel, the Comptroller and the Cable Secretariat.

Below the executive offices are four deputy directorates, each responsible for distinct activities and each named after the title of the deputy director who heads it. They are the DDI, headed by the Deputy Director, Intelligence; the DDP, headed by the Deputy Director, Plans; the DDS, headed by the Deputy Director, Support; and the DDC, headed by the Deputy Director, Coordination. The DDC, we were told, is a small office dealing with management problems, and we have spent practically no time discussing it. The other three deputy directorates are the bone and muscle of the Agency. (See pp. 319-20 for organizational changes in the early 1960s.)

The DDI is the component that sets requirements, engages in some collection, evaluates and collates intelligence, and produces the finished product. [6] It consists of several different offices, each of which provides a coordinating function for the entire intelligence community. They are the Office of Current Intelligence (OCI), the Office of National Estimates (ONE), the Office of Basic Intelligence (OBI), the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI), the Office of Research and Reports (ORR), the Office of Central Reference (OCR), the Office of Operations (OO), the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC). We have been asked to write examples of the different types of specialized report prepared by these offices, and we have visited several of them. It is interesting to note that over 80 per cent of the information that goes into finished intelligence reports is from overt sources such as scientific and technical journals, political speeches and other public documents. The rest is obtained from secret agents or techniques, and the difference, of course, is in the quality and sensitivity of the covertly collected intelligence.

The clandestine collection part of the CIA is the DDP which is also known as the Clandestine Services (CS). It consists of a headquarters' organization with field stations and bases in almost all foreign countries. Although we reviewed the headquarters' organization of the DDP we were told that the details of how secret operations are run will be given only during the later instruction. Only the JOT'S who express a desire to serve in the DDP and who agree in writing to take an assignment to any country will be given the advanced operational training at 'the farm'. Those who want to work in some area of the Agency other than the DDP will go on

to specialized training in headquarters.

The bulk of the CS is divided into operating divisions and senior staffs. [7] the operating divisions are in charge of geographical areas and certain specialized services. The senior staffs are in charge of coordination and review of all operational activities within the functional category of each -- which are reflections of basic CIA operational theory. There are three senior staffs: the Foreign Intelligence (FI) staff; the Psychological Warfare and Paramilitary (PP) staff; and the Counter-Intelligence (CI) staff. The FI staff is concerned with intelligence collection operations, the PP staff with action operations and the CI staff with protection of Fl and PP operations. The difference between collection and action operations is that collection should leave no sign, whereas action operations always have a visible effect. (See pp. 319-20 for organizational changes in 1960s.)

A collection operation might be the running of an agent in the Soviet Ministry of Defence who is reporting on military planning. An action operation might be an anti-communist intellectual journal, supported by CIA money, passed through a Russian emigre organization with headquarters in Paris. Collection operations respond to the needs of the DDI, for producing finished intelligence -- which in turn depends on the needs of the NSC and other consumers such as the military services and the Department of State. Action operations consist of the control, guidance and support of individuals and organizations engaged in the battle against communism throughout the world. They include labour unions, youth and student organizations, public information media, professional societies such as journalists and lawyers, businessmen's organizations, politicians and political parties and governments. Action operations also include the training and support of irregular military forces such as guerrillas in Tibet or montagnards in Vietnam or saboteurs in Communist China. Protection operations consists generally of CIA efforts to protect the Agency against hostile penetration and to penetrate intelligence services of other countries in order to discover what operations those services are running against us.

The DDP area divisions are responsible for all activities of the CS within designated areas. These divisions are for Western Europe (WE) (which includes Canada), Eastern Europe (EE), Soviet Russia (SR), the Near East (NE), Africa (AF), the Far East (FE) and the Western Hemisphere (WH). Each area division is headed by a Division Chief and Deputy Chief whose offices include staffs responsible for review of FI, PP and CI operations within the geographical area. [8]

Within each division the geographical area is divided into branches which may include one or more countries as well as functional specialities peculiar to the division. The branches in turn are divided into country desks when more than one country is included in the branch. Thus the Polish branch of EE Division deals exclusively with matters on Poland while the Central American branch of WH Division has separate desks for six different countries.

A division and branch of the Clandestine Services in headquarters are responsible for supporting field stations and bases in the foreign countries within its area, as well as for keeping the senior staffs and the DDP advised on all matters related to those countries, informational as well as operational. A headquarters' division will provide personnel for the stations and bases, arrange training support by specialists and, most important, process the paper-work required for all field operations. Every operation; every agent and every report sent from the field to headquarters requires review and routing of documents. Area divisions are responsible for seeing that this enormous flow of paper is properly channelled to the appropriate offices of the CS for review, advice and approval or disapproval. Intelligence reports, as opposed to operational reports which deal with the mechanics of how information is obtained, also need processing for spelling, grammatical usage and routing to interested components of the CS, the DDI and the rest of the intelligence community. Processing of the operational and intelligence reports from the field is the job of desk officers in the area divisions.

The CS includes four divisions that serve the rest. The International Organizations Division (IO) supervises CIA relations with labour, youth, student, professional and news media organizations throughout the world. Activities in these fields are coordinated by IO with the PP staff and with the area divisions and branches concerned. Contact between the CIA and officials of those organizations might be handled by an officer of IO or by a station officer where a particular operational activity takes place.

The Technical Services Division (TSD) provides support to operations in all area divisions through experts in listening devices, photography, lock-picking, invisible writing, clandestine opening and closing of correspondence, disguise, containers with hidden compartments, handwriting analysis, identification of persons through saliva analysis from objects such as cigarette butts, and many other technical services. Specialists are available for training agents as well as to perform tasks themselves. Several TSD support bases exist in foreign countries for regional support. The TSD also has a continuing research programme for improving its capabilities and for developing protective measures against the devices of foreign services, especially the KGB.

Division D is the CS unit that supports the National Security Agency in cracking the codes of foreign governments. When it is necessary to mount operations in the field against the communications of other countries, NSA turns to its sister intelligence services, such as the military services, all of which have sizable monitoring operations going against communist countries' military communications. Or NSA could turn to Division D which coordinates CIA collection support for NSA. Thus Division D provides expert knowledge for the planning of operations to recruit code clerks or to install technical devices to enable the decrypting of coded messages. Division D seems to be the most hush-hush of the CS operating divisions, but, like 10 Division, its activities are always coordinated with the geographical area divisions and with station chiefs abroad.

The Records Integration Division (RID) is to the Clandestine Services what OCR is to the DDI. It is somewhat different, however, because of the different needs of the DDP. Clearly the Agency has spared no expense with the best system for storage and retrieval that IBM can build. Numbering systems exist for topics and sub-topics for every country for storing intelligence reports. They also exist for all agents and the different phases of each operation. Millions of names are indexed for easy electronic processing and retrieval and microfilm is automated so that copies of documents can be obtained simply by pushing buttons according to coding classifications -- practically instant retrieval of one document from among millions. As the central repository for all CS intelligence and operational reports, RID serves the entire headquarters DDP organization and the field stations as well.

The DDS [9] is the support structure of the Agency, much of which serves the DDP. This is the deputy directorate that we belong to as JOT'S. The most important offices of the DDS are Personnel, Security, Training, Finance, Communications and Logistics. Each of these offices has an important function, but most of us have been pushing hard for the special operations training and for assignment to the DDP.

A few days ago a list was read of those who have been accepted for 'the farm'. I was on the list -- practically everyone was -- and we had a special briefing on what lies ahead. 'The farm' is officially known by the cryptonym ISOLATION (cryptonyms are always written in capitals), and is a covert training site run by the Office of Training under military cover. It is a few hours' drive from Washington, and we will spend most of the next six months there. On Friday evenings those who wish will be allowed to check out for the week-end. The briefing officer said that there is daily Agency air service (military cover) between Washington National' Airport and ISOLATION, but the flights are used mostly by Agency personnel not assigned for long periods to the base. At the briefer's suggestion we have divided into groups of four or five for car pools so that as many wives as possible will be able to get around Washington during the week. Apparently we won't need transportation at ISOLATION anyway.

We have been given a Washington telephone number and told that it is a direct line to ISOLATION for families but only to be used for emergencies. The briefing officer finally told us the name and location of the base, the best route for driving and our instructions for reporting. He placed extreme emphasis on protecting the cover for the base and the sensitivity of its identification. He said that agents from all over the world are trained there and they are not supposed to know where they are. We probably won't even see them. The name of the base is so sensitive, in fact, that we were told not to tell any of the JOT classmates who weren't taking the operations training, nor any other Agency employees, nor even our wives. Nobody talks about ISOLATION, and in conversations and even formal briefing sessions it's just 'the farm'.

We report to 'the farm' the first Monday after New Year's Day. I feel relaxed now - the customary over-eagerness has disappeared. I've been 'accepted into the work I want and only an utter catastrophe can wash me out. Six more months of training, study, learning a profession. Then an assignment to a DDP headquarters desk and in another year or two I'll be a secret overseas operative.

Camp Peary, Virginia January 1960

The entrance to Camp Peary is an ordinary looking gatehouse manned by military police about fifteen minutes out of Williamsburg on the road towards Richmond. We showed our company badges to a guard and he instructed our car pool driver which turns to take to get to the JOT area. Our first session was in an amphitheatre called the 'pit' where we were welcomed by the ISOLATION Base Chief -- formerly a Chief of Station in Mexico City. Then we were briefed by the Base Security Officer on the do's and don'ts of ISOLATION. At anyone time there are a number of different training sessions being conducted here, some with foreigners who are not even supposed to know that they are in the US. These are called' black' trainees and are. restricted to areas away from the JOT site and other' normal' activities. From time to time we will hear weapons firing and explosions as well as aircraft movement.

We are to stay in the general area of the JOT site except when coming or going from the base entrance, although we will have training sessions at sites all over the base where we will be taken by bus. Wherever we go on the base we are to take extreme caution with cigarette packages, beer cans or other objects that might reveal the location of the base to 'black' trainees. We are to wear Army fatigues at all times on the base.

We are discouraged, although not forbidden, from leaving the base at night, but the Base Chief told us we will have night study and training sessions that will leave little time for visits to Williamsburg. Since all of us pertain to bogus Defense Department cover units in Washington, our cover story for ISOLATION is that we are Defense Department employees temporarily assigned to Camp Peary. The security officer gave us the name of an Army colonel and his Pentagon telephone extension in the unlikely event of verification of our status at Camp Peary becoming necessary. This Pentagon extension rings in the Camp Peary administration building where a CIA. officer plays the part of the colonel.

The base is thickly wooded and surrounded by high, chain-link fences topped by barbed-wire with conveniently placed signs warning: 'US Government Reservation. No Trespassing.' The northern boundary of the base is the York River and the base itself is divided internally into different tightly-controlled areas including administration, which is towards the entrance, the JOT training site, the staff housing area, the landing field, and distinct sites for training in border crossing, sabotage, weapons, air and maritime operations, ambush, evasion and escape, and clandestine meetings. Deer are plentiful as the base was once a wildlife refuge, and there are several ranges for hunting as well as a couple of stocked lakes.

After the fatigues were issued we checked into the old wooden-frame barracks that have double rooms rather than open bays. All the buildings, in fact, are World War II-style frame buildings except the new brick gymnasium. There are classroom buildings; the training office where instructors have their offices, mess hall, officers' club, movie theatre, football fields and a softball diamond. For leisure time we have the club and sports facilities and even a language lab where we can work with tapes. ISOLATION won't be bad at all, and on Friday nights we can drive back to Washington for the week-ends.

Each of us has been assigned an advisor from the teaching staff with whom we will meet from time to time to discuss our strengths and weaknesses. Mine is John Allen, ‡ an 'old NE hand' who served in Cairo. The training course will be divided along the usual lines of Foreign Intelligence (collection), Counter-Intelligence (protection) and Paramilitary and Psychological (action). We will also spend considerable time, they said, studying the tools of the clandestine operator, otherwise known as 'tradecraft'. Finally there will be many practical exercises in and around ISOLATION as part of the war-games technique used to create the training scenario.

As all clandestine operations take place within a political context, the first consideration is the set of objective factors that create the 'operational environment or climate'. These factors include the friendliness or hostility of the host government, the level of sophistication of the host internal security services and other intelligence services operating in the same area, the known and presumed aims of these services, the effectiveness and sophistication of the local communist and other revolutionary organizations, local language, dress and other customs, and the general political atmosphere of repression or liberalism. These are the objective conditions within which clandestine operations are undertaken, and they determine the manner in which these are executed. Running an agent-penetration of the Ministry of Defense in Baghdad obviously differs from running the same type of penetration in Paris or Prague or Bogota. As the degree of clandestinity can vary according to the tools and techniques employed -- operational security practices can be more extreme or less -- the 'operational environment' determines whether goals are realistic and how they are to be achieved. It includes a continuing evaluation of enemy capabilities.

Taking into account, then, the operational environment, each CIA station has a charter or general operational guide called the Related Missions Directive (RMD). This is the document that establishes priorities and objectives and is, in effect, the DCI'S instructions to the Chief of Station. In any country where there is an official Soviet presence, such as an embassy or trade mission, the first priority for the RMD is almost always the penetration of the Soviet mission through the recruitment of its personnel or by a technical device. Penetration operations against Chinese and other communist governments follow in priority as do intelligence collection efforts against indigenous revolutionary movements and local governments, whether friendly or hostile. CI and PP operations are also included in the RMD, and when a station requests headquarters' approval of new operations or continuation of existing operations, reference is made to the appropriate paragraphs of the RMD.

I suppose my problem will eventually disappear, but I find it all rather complicated because in the CIA cryptonyms and pseudonyms are used in place of true names. There are many standard ones and, when reading, one has constantly to refer from the text with cryptonyms to the cryptonym lists which give a number, and then look up the same number on a separate true name list. The cryptonym and true name lists are never kept in the same safe. Cryptonyms consist of two letters that determine a general category or place, followed by letters that form a word with the first two, or by another word.

Thus the United States government is ODYOKE. The Department of State is ODACID, the Department of Defense is ODEARL, the Navy is ODOATH, the FBI is ODENVY. All government agencies have a cryptonym beginning with OD. The CIA'S cryptonym is KUBAR K and all Agency components have cryptonyms beginning with KU. The Clandestine Services is KUDOVE, the FI staff (and FI operations generically) is KUTUBE, the CI staff (and CI operations) is KUDESK, the PP staff (and PP operations) is KUCAGE. Every foreign country and every agent and operation in that country has a cryptonym that begins with the same two letters -- AE for the Soviet Union, BE for Poland, DI for Czechoslovakia, DM for Yugoslavia, SM for the United Kingdom, DN for South Korea, etc .. AELADLE, AEJAMMER and AEBROOM are cryptonyms for operations against the Soviets.

Cryptonyms are used to substitute for true names in order to protect the true identities of persons and places mentioned in correspondence. They are only used in documents of the Clandestine Services. The Records Integration Division assigns new cryptonyms whenever a new operation or agent is proposed, using the first two letters that correspond to the particular country. In certain cases agents and operations are given cryptonyms of which the first two letters refer to operations that occur in several countries -- particularly the international organizations involving labour and students. In operational correspondence when no cryptonym has yet been assigned for a particular person, the word IDENTITY is substituted in the text and the true name is sent in separate correspondence for reconciliation with the original document by the addressee.

All KUDOVE officers who engage in operations .are assigned a pseudonym consisting of a first name, middle initial and last name which is used in the same fashion as cryptonyms -- in order to preserve the officer's true identity should correspondence be lost or stolen. Pseudonyms are always written with the last name in capital letters, e.g. Rodney J. PRINGLE.

All this seems confusing at first -- it's really like learning a new language. But it adds a certain spice to the work, like a special taste that helps develop institutional identity -- more and more of the inside group syndrome.

Camp Peary, Virginia February 1960

We still have plenty of snow on the ground and on Sunday nights when we return from Washington the deer are so thick along the base roads that we almost run into them. We've all gotten to know each other more since coming to ISOLATlON. Almost any type of person you want can be found in the class. We have a physical training programme three or four times a week at the gym -- calesthenics, basketball, squash, volleyball, weights. We also have training at the gym in defence, disarming, maiming, and even killing with bare hands -- just how and where to strike, as in karate and judo. Our instructor in these skills (at first nobody believed his real name was Burt Courage) was formerly on Saipan in the South Pacific, which is another secret base of the Office of Training.

It's hard work. There is a physical-conditioning program, plenty of practice in the martial arts. How to disarm or cripple, if necessary kill an opponent. We have classes in propaganda, infiltration-exfiltration, youth and student operations, labor operations, targeting and penetration of enemy organizations. How to run liaison projects with friendly intelligence services so as to give as little and get as much information as possible. Anti-Soviet operations -- that subject gets special attention. We have classes in framing Russian officials, trying to get them to defect. The major subject, though, is how to run agents -- single agents, networks of agents.

In the classes we have been studying the different kinds of Foreign Intelligence -- FI, or KUTUBE -- operations conducted by the Clandestine Services. Although these operations are designed to discover the capabilities and intentions of foreign powers, particularly enemy or unfriendly governments, vis-a-vis the US, they are supposed to focus on secrets rather than on overt or public information. In addition to discovering ordinary state secrets, the CS is responsible for obtaining the most complete and accurate information possible on the global manifestations of Soviet imperialism, that is, on local communist parties and related political groups. The exceptions to the world-wide operating charter of the CS is the agreement among the US, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand whereby each has formally promised to abstain from secret operations of any kind within the territory of the others except with prior approval of the host government. The governments of all other nations, their internal political groups and their scientific, military and economic secrets are fair game.

FI operations originate with the informational needs of US policymakers, specified in the voluminous requirements lists prepared by the various sections of the DDI that produce finished intelligence. These requirements are also reflected in the station RMD. The station, incidentally, is the CI A office in the capital city of a foreign country. Other major cities of the country may have CIA offices subordinate to the station and called bases. In most countries the stations and bases are in the political sections of the embassies or consulates, with some officers assigned for cover purposes to other sections such as economic or consular. In certain countries, however, such as Panama and Germany the CIA stations are on US military installations with only the chief and a minimum of other officers having diplomatic status. Most of the others are under cover as civilian employees of the Department of Defense with assignment to the military bases.

The station's task is to determine the different ways desired information can be obtained and to propose to headquarters the method thought most appropriate. This task is called 'targeting', and for every operation targeting receives its written expression in a Field Project Outline which is prepared at the station and includes all the operational details such as the purpose or desired outcome, specific target, the agents to be involved, any technical devices needed, support needed from headquarters or other stations, security and cover considerations with an assessment of the 'flap potential' meaning the possible scandal if the operation is discovered, and costs. Most overseas CIA operations are described in Field Project Outlines, which are forwarded to headquarters for suggestions and approval or disapproval by all interested headquarters' sections of the CS.

Depending on the cost or sensitivity of an operation, the Project Outline is approved on a lower or higher level in headquarters, from Division Chief to Assistant DDP, to DDP, to DCI. Some operations require approval outside the CIA, but these are usually PP (action) projects that are submitted to the Operations Coordination Board of the National Security Council (the Under-Secretary level).

Projects for intelligence collection operations are generally approved for periods of one year and can be renewed. The request for Project Renewal is a document almost identical to the Field Project Outline and it includes details of the operation's progress over the past year such as productivity, costs, security problems, new agents and justification for continuation. Operations that have failed to meet expectations or that are compromised by a security flap or that have simply dried up are cancelled through a 'Request for Project Termination' forwarded from the station to headquarters. This document includes the details on reasons for termination, disposal of agents and property, alternative sources, security and cover considerations and support requirements from other stations or from headquarters.

Correspondence among CIA stations, bases and headquarters is the lifeline of Agency operations. There are two basic types: operational reporting and intelligence reporting. In operational correspondence. matters discussed include security problems, cover, finances, agent access to targets, levels of production (but not the facts themselves), proposals for new recruitments or termination, equipment requirements, agent motivation, and any other occurrences that affect the operation. On every operation an Operational Progress Report is required by headquarters every three months, but much more frequent correspondence is usually necessary.

Intelligence reporting from overseas operations comes in the form of a Field Information Report (FIR) which contains fads related usually to one subject but possibly from several sources. The FIR relates the facts as obtained from the sources although source or field comments may be added. FIR's are prepared in the stations on special mats for printing which are forwarded to headquarters for reproduction and distribution. FIR's contain a heading that includes the name of the country or countries concerned, the subject-matter of the report, a description of the source (prepared to protect his identity), an evaluation of the source's reliability and an evaluation of the accuracy of the contents of the report. The body of the report follows with the clarifying comments or opinions of source, station or headquarters at the end. In headquarters the FIR's are given CS numbers for retrieval purposes, and copies are sent, for instance, to DDI sections, the Departments of State and Defense, the FBI or the White House.

Both operational reports and intelligence reports may be sent to headquarters or other stations and bases either via the diplomatic pouch or by cable or wireless. Practically all stations and bases have radio transmitting and receiving equipment although commercial telegraph service is frequently used.

How do we get the information that goes into the intelligence reports of FI operations? Mostly through paid agents. On the highest level there is the politician, scientist, economist or military leader who is actually creating the events that the Agency would like to forecast. This kind of person, however, because of his position of leadership, is the least likely to tell the CIA or the US government his own country's official secrets. There are some, however, who can be convinced that the interests of the US and their own country are so close, even identical, that nothing is lost by providing the information wanted by the CIA. In other cases what the high level official says or plans may be placed on paper to which access may be obtained by a whole variety of secondary level officials, functionaries or colleagues. People of this level may betray their leader's confidence for a great variety of motives. Then there is the third level of prospective agents who simply have physical access to a target area but not to documents themselves. These people may be trained to place listening devices where sensitive conversations are held or to open secure document storage containers or to photograph documents. Finally there is a great variety of people who can assist in operations but who have no direct access to the sources themselves. These are the support agents who rent houses and apartments, buy vehicles, serve as couriers, and perform countless additional necessary tasks.

There are, then, in addition to operations involving high-level, primary sources, a category of extremely important secondary operations called 'support operations'. Often targeting to primary sources is effected through support operations. These operations involve the use of surveillance teams to follow people in the streets, observations posts to watch the comings and goings from buildings, multiple forms of photography, interception of correspondence from the mails, access to important statistics and identification files of police and other security services, airline, rail and ship passenger and freight lists, devices for listening, telephone tapping and telegraph records. These operations may very well yield sensitive, high quality intelligence but more often they are used to identify the people we really need to get at, who may be recruited as intelligence collection agents. Support operations are also indispensable for knowledge of target personalities in order to discover motives that might make them accept or decline a recruitment approach: strengths, weaknesses, problems, ambitions, failures, enmities, vulnerabilities.

Another type of FI operation that is very common throughout the free world results from the working relationships between the CIA and the intelligence and security services of foreign countries. Contacts with foreign services are known as liaison operations and their purpose is to exchange information, mount joint operations and penetrate foreign services. The general rule on exchange of information is to give nothing unless necessary. But since foreign services usually press for an exchange, and often in poor countries they collect very little useful information on their own, the second rule is to preserve a net gain, or favourable balance towards the CIA in the exchange. Regulations determine the types of information that can be exchanged and the record-keeping required.

The 'third agency rule' is an important operating principle in liaison operations. Information passed from one agency to a second agency cannot be passed by the second agency to a third agency without prior approval of the first. The purpose of the rule, obviously, is to preserve the security of operations and. the secrecy of information as well as the secrecy of the existence of the liaison relationship between the first two services. If, for example, the British equivalent of the CIA, MI-6, passed to the CIA station in London a certain piece of information, the CIA in turn could not pass that information to the Dutch Intelligence Service even though the information might be of great interest to the Dutch. In such a case the London station would either suggest that MI-6 pass the information directly to the Dutch (which may already have happened) or permission might be requested for the CIA itself to pass on the MI-6 information. In the event of a first agency agreeing that a second agency may pass information to a third, the first agency may not wish to be revealed to the third agency as the source, so that adequate concealment of the true source will be arranged. Sometimes it can get complicated.

The most important liaison operation of the CIA is with MI-6, whose cryptonym is SMOTH. It has been almost ten years since Burgess and Maclean disappeared, and SMOTH has apparently tightened its loose, 'old boy', clubby security practices. The inner club also includes the services of Canada, Australia and New Zealand although the CIA receives relatively little from these. Liaison with the Dutch is considered excellent because they facilitate support operations against targets of mutual interest, as do the Italians who tap telephones and intercept correspondence for the CIA station in Rome. The West German services are considered to be thoroughly penetrated by the Soviets while liaison with the French has become difficult and sensitive since the return of de Gaulle.

In theory no operations should be undertaken by CIA stations with liaison services if the same operations can be mounted without the knowledge of the local service (excluding the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand). Those operations undertaken without the knowledge or cooperation of a liaison service, are called 'unilateral', whereas bilateral operations are those mounted for the CIA with the knowledge and support of local services. As we examine various liaison relationships it becomes clear that the major FI results in Western Europe come from local services. particularly with support operations such as travel control, telephone tapping, physical surveillance, postal intercepts and communist party penetration operations. However, in underdeveloped, less sophisticated countries, local services usually lack the knowledge and technical capability to mount effective intelligence operations. Thus the station in many cases can choose whether to mount joint or bilateral operations, or to undertake the operations without the knowledge of the local service. The decision is often based on the local services' internal security but also on the CIA personnel available in a given country; when this is limited, it can balance the scales in favour of bilateral operations.

Finally, there is the matter of penetration of local services by the CI A. For many reasons, not the least of which is protection of the CIA itself, operational doctrine demands the continued effort to recruit controlled agents within liaison services. These agents, or prospective agents, are usually spotted by CIA officers assigned to work with the local service to exchange information, to train the local service and to work on the operations mounted by the local service to support the CIA. Thus a CIA station may have an information-exchange programme going with a local service, a joint telephone-tapping operation with the local service and an officer or two of the local service on the payroll as a penetration of the same service. Penetration of liaison services, however, is more properly a counter-intelligence function.

FI operations, then, are those undertaken to obtain information on the capabilities and intentions of foreign governments, especially enemy and unfriendly governments. Ultimately the FI collection effort is aimed at recruiting or placing an agent in the Kremlin with access to the decision-making process of the Soviet Praesidium. From that dream situation, collection operations spread out and down to practically all other governments and their political, scientific and economic secrets, and from there to the most obscure communist or other revolutionary grouping of the extreme left.

As we study the different types of FI operations we engage in practical exercises, both here at ISOLATION and in cities near by such as Hampton, Norfolk, Newport News and Richmond. My main FI case has been a series of meetings with a leader of an opposition, nationalistic political party. I play the role of the station case officer under diplomatic cover while one of my instructors plays the foreign political leader. This is a developmental case and I have to work carefully to convince him that the best interests of his country and of the United States are so closely aligned that by helping me he will be helping his own country and political party. One more meeting and I'm going to offer him money.

Camp Peary, Virginia March 1960

Counter-intelligence (CI or KUDESK) operations differ from foreign intelligence collection because by definition they are defensive in nature, designed to protect CIA operations from detection by the opposition. The opposition in this sense is every intelligence and security service in the world, from the KGB to the municipal police in Nairobi. Since many countries separate their foreign intelligence service from their internal security service, much as the FBI is separated from the CIA, CI operations are targeted against both the foreign and the internal services.

The CIA counter-intelligence function begins with the Office of Security of the DDS and its responsibility for physical and personnel security. By protecting buildings from entry by unauthorized persons and documents from perusal, the Office of Security serves to protect the overall CIA effort. Similarly, the lengthy and costly background investigations, together with the polygraph (cryptonym: LCFLUTTER) help to prevent the hiring of penetration agents. Continuing review of the security files of CIA personnel as well as periodic LCFLUTTER examinations are designed to reduce the risk of continued employment in the CIA of employees who might have been recruited by opposition services.

The use of cover and compartmentation also serves to protect secret operations by concealing the true employer of Agency members so as to prevent discovery, The same is true of organizations, buildings, apartments, vehicles, aircraft, ships and financing methods. Cover protects operations by making them appear to be something legitimate that in reality they are not. Compartmentation reduces the chance that exposure of a single operation, for whatever reason, can lead to the exposure of additional operations. A CIA officer or agent could gain knowledge of what other officers or agents were doing only if it were necessary for him to do so for his own work.

Whether to use or not to use a particular prospective agent is determined, from the C I viewpoint, by the 'operational approval' process. It is an integral part of every relationship between the CIA and foreign agents no matter what a given agent's tasks might be. The operational approval process begins with the initial spotting and assessment of a prospective agent and continues through field and headquarters' file checks and background investigation to the operational approval system established in the CI staff of the DDP.

No person may be used in an operational capacity by a field station without prior approval by the Operational Approval Branch of the Counter-Intelligence Staff of the DDP in headquarters (CI/OA). Requests for approval start from the field stations and are outlined in a document known as 'the Personal Record Questionnaire (PRQ) which is divided into two parts. The PRQ Part I contains some seven pages of basic biographical data including full name, date and place of birth, names of parents, names of family members, schools attended, employment history, marital history, military service, present and past citizenship, membership in political organizations, hobbies, any special qualifications, and use of drugs or other vices. In itself the PRQ Part I reveals no operational interest or plans. The PRQ Part II, which never carries the prospective agent's true name or other identifying. data, is a document of similar length with all the details of operational plans for the agent. It is reconciled with the PRQ Part I by a numbering system and usually bears the cryptonym assigned to the prospective agent. In the PRQ Part II the proposed task for the agent is described, the means through which the information in PRQ Part I was obtained and verified is detailed, the cover used by the person who spotted and assessed the agent is given, and all the operational risks and advantages are discussed.

The officers in CI/OA run a series of name checks in headquarters and, after studying the case, give final approval or disapproval for the proposed use of the prospective agent. Assuming no serious problems exist, CI/OA issues a Provisional Operational Approval (POA) on the agent, effective for six months, at the end of which an Operational Approval (OA) is issued, based on additional investigation by the station and the CI staff.

Files are maintained on all agents and they always begin with the number 201 -- followed by a number of five to eight digits. The 201 file contains all the documents that pertain to a given agent and usually start with the PRQ and the request for POA. But the 201 file is divided into two parts which are stored separately for maximum security. One part contains true name documents while the other part contains cryptonym documents and operational information. Compromise of one part will not reveal both the true name and the operational use of the agent.

In addition to the continuing station assessment and evaluation of agents from a C I point of view (which is to protect the Agency from hostile penetration) and continuing file review in headquarters, almost all agents are polygraphed from time to time. We call this' fluttering', from the polygraph cryptonym LCFLUTTER. Agents are' fluttered' by the same polygraph officers of the Office of Security in headquarters who interview prospective Agency employees in Building 13. They travel, usually, in teams of two on periodic visits to several countries in the same geographical area, although special trips on the spur of the moment can be arranged for serious cases.

The polygraph is usually sent to field stations through the State Department diplomatic pouch, and is mounted snugly inside a suitcase, usually the two-suite size, caramel colour made by the Samsonite company. These suitcases look innocuous and facilitate carrying the polygraph in and out of embassies and the places where agents are tested. Arrangements are made for agents to be 'fluttered' in safe sites with interpreters as needed. The questions usually concentrate on whom the agent has told about his relationship with the CIA and any contacts he may have had with other intelligence services. The purpose of using the 'flutter' on agents is to root out double agents, although other matters inevitably arise such as honesty in reporting and in the use of money.
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Re: Inside the Company: CIA Diary, by Philip Agee

Postby admin » Tue Jun 09, 2015 4:08 am

PART 3 OF 4

Communist Party (CP) Penetration Operations

Communist party penetration operations are all those efforts made to penetrate the communist and extreme leftist revolutionary movements around the world. Their purpose is to collect information on the capabilities, plans, officers, members, weaknesses, strengths and international connections of every revolutionary organization outside the communist bloc. They are considered primarily of a counter-intelligence nature because of the conspiratorial nature of communism and the similarity between communists parties and hostile intelligence services. The focal point of headquarters for specialized skill and advice on CP operations is the International Communism Division of the Counter-Intelligence Staff (CI/ICD). Although intelligence operations involving officials of communist-bloc countries may be included in the general definition of CP operations, because most government officials of interest in communist countries are also party members, these are more properly considered Soviet or satellite operations rather than CP operations.

A CIA station's approach to penetration of a communist party or of any revolutionary organization is determined by the operational environment and particularly on the measure of repression exerted against the revolutionary left. Another factor of major importance is the general economic and cultural level of a given country which will reflect markedly on the sophistication and vulnerability of the revolutionary groups. As a general rule, penetration of a communist party is more difficult in the degree that local security forces compel it to operate clandestinely. If a given party is completely forced underground, for example, there is no obvious way of penetrating it. Similarly, recruitment is easier to the degree that members of the party are forced to live in penury, and this generally corresponds to the overall level of a country's economic development. A communist in La Paz will be more likely to spy for money than a communist in Paris.

A proper interpretation of the operational climate is therefore an essential first step in any station's CP programme. Next comes the matter of studying all the overt material available on the party. This can be very considerable in the case of a large and open party such as those of Italy, and France, or very limited in the case of a proscribed party that operates clandestinely, as in Paraguay. Such a study is based on the party press, speeches by its leaders, its propaganda notices, activities of front organizations and its degree of adherence to the party line that emanates from Moscow.

Penetration of communist parties and other local revolutionary. organizations by agents are standard bread-and-butter operations of practically every CIA station. These agents are members of the revolutionary organizations on which they report through clandestine communications arrangements with the station. They are recruited in several ways. The first type is known as the 'walk-in'. The walk-in is a member of the party who, from need of money, ideological disillusionment or other motive decides to offer his services to the US government. He makes his initial contact either by walking into the US Embassy or Consulate or by a more discreet path designed to protect him from discovery and party wrath.

It is the duty of every Chief of Station to make sure that the Embassy Security Officer (State Department) briefs the receptionists (usually local employees) and the Marine Guards about the possibility that nervous people who do not want to give their names may show up from time to time asking to speak to someone in the embassy about 'politics' or the like. In such cases, a legitimate State Department officer, usually in the political section, will be notified and will hold a private, non-committal interview letting the walk-in do most of the talking. In this way the station officers are protected. The interviewing officer will advise an officer in the station and a decision will be made about the walk-in's bona fides and the advisability of direct contact by a station CP officer. A file check and background investigation is always made before risking an initial contact with the walk-in, since every precaution must be taken to avoid provocation.

If the walk-in looks favourable and contact is established a series of long sessions follow in which the walk-in details his political activities and his reasons for having contacted the US government. His capabilities and willingness for future work as a spy against the party will be determined and sooner or later he will be 'fluttered'. The clearance process for POA will ,be initiated and if all goes well secret communications are established and a new Cp penetration operation will be under way.

Another way of penetrating the CP is through the non-communist who is recruited to join the party and work his way up from the bottom. This is a long-haul approach and usually undertaken only as a last resort.

Perhaps the most difficult is the recruitment of members of a revolutionary organization who are in good standing. This type of operation depends on reports from other CP penetration operations because extensive knowledge of the prospective recruit is needed to determine vulnerabilities and possibilities for success. CIA stations are continually engaged in trying to recruit in this manner and files grow thicker until a decision is made to recruit or not to recruit.

The recruitment approach may be 'hot' or 'cold'. In the first case a station agent, usually not a CP penetration agent, who knows or can get to know the target, will make the proposition, sometimes after long periods of nurturing the relationship and sometimes rather quickly. The cold approach may be made by a CIA officer or agent, perhaps wearing a disguise or called in from a neighbouring country or from headquarters. He may accost the target in the street or at the target's home without prior personal acquaintance with him. This type of approach known as the' cold pitch' can backfire when knowledge of the target's vulnerabilities is defective, and a ready escape plan for the recruiting officer is advisable.

In both the hot and the cold approaches, prior arrangements are made for immediate debriefing at a safe site, or for secure communications afterwards should the target decline at first but reconsider later. The cold approach may also be undertaken, on a small or large scale, by sending letters or notices to possible recruits advising them of interest in their political work and suggesting that they share it with others. A serviceable but non-compromising address such as a post-box in the US may be furnished as well as a separate identifying number for use by each prospective recruit. If the target answers by number he will be contacted by an officer under secure conditions.

Finally, there is the bugging of the homes or meeting-places of party officers. Such operations can be mounted successfully only if considerable information is available on people, places and the importance of meetings. These are not always available, given the secrecy required of conspiratorial revolutionary activity. But bugging yields excellent intelligence because it lacks the human factor that may colour, exaggerate or otherwise distort the reports from agents.

A station's support operations may be used to assist in the CP programme. Surveillance teams may discover secret meeting-places that may be bugged. Postal interception may provide interesting party correspondence, both from the national and the international mails. Observation posts may reveal participants in clandestine meetings or serve as listening posts for audio devices. Telephone tapping can reveal voluminous information on party functionaries and the routines of party leaders. Surreptitious entry may produce party records and membership lists.

Aside from the penetration programme directed against revolutionary organizations, CIA stations also direct the offensive weapons of psychological and paramilitary operations against them. These include the placing of anti-communist propaganda in the public media, the frame-up of party officials for police arrest, the publishing of false propaganda attributed to the revolutionary group in such a way that it will be difficult to deny and damaging as well, the organizing of goon squads to beat up and intimidate party officials, using stink bombs and other harassment devices to break up meetings, and the calling on liaison services to take desired repressive action. But we shall study these types of operation later. Next we are concerned with the CI aspects of liaison operations.

Liaison Operations

From the standpoint of pure doctrine all liaison operations are considered compromised, since even the existence of a liaison relationship implies the giving of something by the CIA: at the very least the identity of a CIA officer. It is always hoped that the virtues of liaison operations with other intelligence services outweigh their defects, but the judgement is sometimes hard to make. The two most basic principles of liaison operations from the counter-intelligence point of view are: first, there is no such thing as a friendly intelligence service, and, second, all liaison services are penetrated by the Soviets or by local revolutionary groups. Thus any operations undertaken jointly by the CIA with a liaison service are by definition compromised from the start. It is for this reason that some CIA intelligence reports (FIR'S) include the NOFORN or NO FOREIGN DISSEM indicators which restrict reports to US officials only. The indicators are used so that foreign liaison services will not receive information from sensitive sources in the course of normal exchange programmes.

Why get involved with other services? Basically, liaison operations are conducted because they are useful. They extend a station's limited manpower however shaky the extension may be. They give the CIA a foot in the door for penetration of the liaison service. And they may also result in a local service taking action, such as an arrest or raid, at station request.

In non-communist countries it is the policy of the Agency to assist local security services to improve their capabilities if, of course, these services want the help and their government is not openly hostile to the US. By giving money, training and equipment to local services like the police, the CIA is able to receive information that might otherwise not be available because, for example, of the shortage of station officers. Travel control, for instance, involves obtaining airline and ship passenger lists from the companies or from local immigration services. Often it is easier to obtain them from a liaison service than from five or ten different companies. Telephone tapping is often possible only through a local service, especially when many lines are to be monitored. Mails can be opened much more easily by a local service than by the lengthy process of unilateral agent recruitment in post offices. Above all, if flaps (scandals) occur, the local service, not the CI A, will take the rap.

Usually a Chief of Station will handle the contact with the chief of a local service. Some stations may have whole sections of liaison officers at the working level both in operational planning and in information exchange. The general rule, of course, is to expose the absolute minimum of station officers to a local service and, if possible, only those officers engaged in liaison operations. Officers engaged in unilateral operations, that is, operations undertaken without the knowledge of the local government, should be protected against compromise with the local service.

Some local services are so pitifully backward that they need overt US government assistance. Thus the International Cooperation Administration (ICA) [10] technical assistance missions in many countries include Public Safety Missions made up of US technicians who work with police departments. They seek to improve the local service's capability in communications, investigations, administration and record keeping, public relations and crime prevention. The Public Safety Missions are valuable to the CIA because they provide cover for CIA officers who are sent to work full time with the intelligence services of the police and other civilian services. Station officers under other cover may work with military intelligence and, at times, officers undercover as businessmen, tourists or retired people may be assigned to work with local services.

CIA assistance to local services through Public Safety Missions or other forms of cover are not only designed to help improve the professional capability of the local service. Operational targeting of the local service is guided by CIA liaison officers so that the local service performs tasks that are lacking in the overall station operational programme. In other words local services are to be used for the benefit of the CIA, and this includes keeping the local service away from station unilateral operations.

The personal relations between CIA liaison officers and their colleagues in local services are very important, because the CIA liaison officers are expected to spot and assess officers in the local service for recruitment as penetration agents. Liaison officers make money available to officers of the local service and it is expected that the local colleague will pocket some of the money even though it is supposed to be strictly for operations. The technique is to get the local police or intelligence officer used to a little extra cash so that not only will he be dependent on the station for equipment and professional guidance but also for personal financing.

Security officers such as police are often among the poorest paid public servants and they are rarely known to refuse a gift. Little by little an officer of a local service is called upon to perform tasks not known to anyone else in his service, particularly his superiors. Gradually he begins to report on his own service and on politics within his own government. Eventually his first loyalty is to the CIA. After all, that is where the money comes from. Penetration operations against local services are often of very considerable importance because of the place of security services in local political stability. Reporting from these agents is sometimes invaluable during situations of possible coup d'etat.

Finally, CIA stations may undertake unilateral operations through officers of liaison services who have been recruited as penetration agents. That is the final goal. Recruited liaison officers may also report on efforts by their services to uncover unilateral station operations. This, too, is a happy situation.

Soviet/Satellite Operations

Operations against the Soviets and the satellite governments are designed to produce, in the long run, positive information as opposed to counter-intelligence. But both types of information, FI and CI, are so intertwined that they are practically inseparable in specific operations. The reason is that operations are extremely difficult to mount inside the target countries because of the effectiveness of the communist internal security services. Those that do originate within the Soviet Union or the satellites are usually surprise offers of services that have little to do with targeting, spotting, assessment and recruitment. Rather they are the result of inner processes hidden somewhere in the psyches of communist officials which surface at an unpredictable moment of strain. In effect, these people usually recruit themselves.

On the other hand, access to Soviet and East European officials outside the communist bloc is relatively easy and an elaborate operational method for attacking them has developed in the CIA over the years. The operations that result from this are generally more of a CI than an FI type, that is, they reflect more of the protective function than the collection of intelligence information, although they are in no way lacking in aggressive character.

The first rule is that all the bordering property around a Soviet embassy should be considered for purchase by station support agents. The most appropriate and the most promising of these properties will be purchased and kept available for use whenever needed. As Soviet embassies are often sizeable plots of land with large mansions and surrounded by high walls, there may be as many as seven or eight houses contiguous with the Soviet property. These houses may be used as visual observation posts and for the setting up of technical collection equipment. For example, when the Soviets are known or suspected to be using electronic encrypting machines, radiations emanating from them may be captured, enabling the message to be decrypted. Such an operation is undertaken in support of the National Security Agency. But observation posts are more routinely used for identifying, by associations, the KGB and GRU (military intelligence) residences within the Soviet mission as well as the general pecking order in the Soviet colony.

Wherever possible all the entrances to the Soviet compound as well as the gardens within are placed under visual observation. Such coverage may necessitate as many as three or four observation posts. Each OP is manned by agents, often elderly couples, who maintain a log of the comings and goings of every Soviet employee as well as those taking part in, and characteristics of, the frequent garden conversations. Photography is frequently used to get up-to-date photos of Soviet personnel as well as for less successful purposes as close-up movies shot of garden conversations and passed to Russian lip-readers. The logs from the observation posts are studied with the transcripts of telephone tapping, which is standard operational practice against all Soviet and satellite missions outside the bloc together with the transcriptions of bugging operations against their installations, if bugging has been possible. From these studies the functional duties within the Soviet colony are revealed and the daily routines of everyone become fundamental operating knowledge of the CIA Soviet and satellite operations officers.

Coverage of Soviet and satellite officers begins, however, long before they arrive in a foreign country. Almost always the first notice of a new arrival results from the visa request made by the Soviet Foreign Ministry to the embassy of the country concerned in Moscow. The visa may be granted by the embassy, which will advise its own Foreign Ministry, or the request will be transmitted to the Foreign Ministry for approval. These communications are often made in coded diplomatic messages. The CIA station in the capital city where the Soviet is to be posted receives the decrypted messages from the National Security Agency via headquarters where file checks immediately start on the Soviet official in question. Thus if the Soviet Foreign Ministry requests from the Indian Embassy in Moscow, a diplomatic visa for Ivan Ivanovitch the CIA station in New Delhi may receive its first indication of the assignment through the monitoring of Indian government communications.

Before the Soviet arrives the station will have all the available information on him and his family together with photographs if possible. The information would have been collected and filed from coverage of the Soviet (or satellite) officer on previous tours of duty abroad, from defector debriefings, from communications intelligence and from other miscellaneous sources. When no traces exist a new file is opened and the target's history with the CIA begins.

The final purpose of the operations is to recruit Soviet and satellite officials as agents for spying and this can be done only by getting to know them. In this work the 'access agent' is the station's most sensitive and effective means of obtaining data on target officials. Access agents are people who, for a great variety of reasons, can establish a personal relationship with a Soviet or satellite officer and through whom the CIA can observe the officer as closely as possible. The access agent can also guide conversations very carefully to selected topics so as to discover weakening beliefs, character defects, personal problems and basic likes and dislikes. Sometimes an access agent's role may change to that of double agent if the Soviet attempts to recruit him, but double-agent operations are discouraged except in special circumstances because there are too many problems in the continual need to be certain that the agent has not been doubled back against the CI A. An access agent may be anyone so long as the target official can be kept interested: a host country Foreign Ministry official, a third country diplomat, someone who shares the same hobby, a man with an attractive wife.

In most countries the foreign diplomats have a club with monthly luncheons, dinners and excursions. State Department and CIA officers under State cover are members of these clubs and can thereby develop personal relationships with Soviet officials. The Ambassador's permission is necessary for a station to guide a State Department officer in a personal relationship with a communist diplomat, who is almost always an intelligence officer, and at times CIA officers themselves develop personal relationships with communist officials. But such relationships are usually not as productive as the personal relations developed by access agents, with whom the target official may relax and let down his guard.

Soviet and satellite embassies usually employ a small number of local people as gardeners, cleaners and occasionally as chauffeurs. These people are always screened by the embassy for loyalty to communism, but sometimes they too can be recruited by the CIA. They have very little physical access to embassy offices so they usually cannot plant listening devices, but they can report interesting information on superior-inferior relationships, gossip and back-biting, wives and children and visitors to the embassies.

The bugging of Soviet and satellite official installations abroad is a very high priority but possible only in rare circumstances such as when a defector can plant a device after contact with the CIA but before disappearing. However, as the Soviets, satellites and Chinese expand their diplomatic and commercial relations around the world, they always need buildings. From the moment a preliminary mission by a communist country is planned, the CIA station brings everything to bear in order to discover the buildings selected and, during the period before occupancy, every effort is made to install listening devices. Soviet and satellite officials usually live in embassies, consulates or other official buildings with their families or alone, but a few live in apartment buildings. Their apartments are also bugged whenever there is reason to believe intelligence of value can be obtained.

Almost all CIA stations have surveillance teams equipped with cameras, vehicles and radio communications. Their primary targets are known Soviet and satellite intelligence officers and efforts are made to discover through the surveillance teams the operational habits, and, with luck, the clandestine contacts of the communist officer.

Soviet operations are closely controlled by the Soviet Russia (SR) Division of the DDP in headquarters. They are the specialists and much operational correspondence on Soviet operations bears the cryptonym REDWOOD, indicating SR Division action and control. In certain cases, however, the indicator may be REDCOAT which means action and control by the area division concerned. SR Division also coordinates a number of other operations that have world-wide significance.

The REDSOX programme of illegal infiltration of agents into the Soviet Union and satellite countries had started during the early 1950s but failed miserably. It is still conducted, however, when the need is great and when a Russian emigre with suicidal tendencies can be found. The REDSKIN programme of legal travellers, on the other hand, has been highly successful even though several agents have been lost. This programme includes tourists, businessmen, scientists, journalists and practically anyone who can obtain legal entry into the Soviet Union or the satellites and who is willing to perform operational tasks.

Then there is the REDCAP programme which is a machine-listing system of all Soviet nationals who travel abroad: scientists, technicians, military advisors and commercial officers as well as diplomats. Intelligence officers, of course, use all of these types of cover. The ZOMBIE listings are also machine runs, listing all non- Soviet/satellite nationals who travel to the bloc, and the ZODIAC machine programme lists travel of citizens of satellite countries to the West. SR Division activities are particularly intense at international scientific and technical congresses, and prior notices are sent to stations around the world describing the meetings and requesting station nominees to attend the meetings and establish contact with Soviet or satellite colleagues.

Our instructors here, and the visiting lecturers from SR and EE Divisions, freely admit that the communist intelligence services have discovered numerous examples of all categories of operation against them. Thus they are aware of our methods. Nevertheless; the leaders of the Soviet Russia Division keep driving home the theme that the Soviets are the only nation on earth with the capability and the avowed intention of destroying the United States of America. This alone requires every possible effort to carry the attack to the enemy.

Practical exercises continue. We've been spending about one afternoon per week in near-by towns practising surveillance and having 'agent meetings' with instructors. My liaison case was to convince the officer of the sister service to accept money for personal expenses and to begin performing tasks for me without the knowledge of his superiors. The communist party penetration exercise was focused on building up the 'agent's morale' and encouraging him to take a more active role in the party work he despises. The Soviet operation was a series of developmental meetings with a 'third country' diplomat (in my case an Indian) leading to his recruitment as an access agent to a KGB officer. I also had a legal travel case in which I recruited a reluctant American scientist who was to attend a scientific conference. Then we had a series of briefing and debriefing sessions before and after his trip. His main task was to befriend a Soviet colleague who we know has access to sensitive military information. Hopefully they will meet at future conferences and eventually my agent will recruit the Soviet scientist.

Camp Peary, Virginia April 1960

Psychological and paramilitary, known as PP or KUCAGE, operations differ from those of FI or CI because they are action rather than collection activities. Collection operations should be invisible so that the target will be unaware of them. Action operations, on the other hand, always produce a visible effect. This, however, should never be attributable to the CIA or to the US government, but rather to some other person or organization. These operations, which received their Congressional charter in the National Security Act of 1947 under 'additional services of common concern', are in some ways more sensitive than collection operations. They are usually approved by the PP staff of the DDP, but when very large amounts of money are required or especially sensitive methods are used approval may be required of the OCB (Under- Secretary level), the NSC or the President himself.

PP operations are, of course, risky because they nearly always mean intervention in the affairs of another country with whom the US enjoys normal diplomatic relations. If their true sponsorship were found out the diplomatic consequences could be serious. This is in contrast to collection operations, for if these are discovered foreign politicians are often prepared to turn a blind eye -- they are a traditional part of every nation's intelligence activity.

Thus the cardinal rule in planning all PP operations is 'plausible denial', only possible if care has been taken in the first place to ensure that someone other than the US government can be made to take the blame.

PP programmes are to be found in almost every CIA station and emphasis on the kinds of PP operations will depend very much on local conditions. Psychological warfare includes propaganda (also known simply as 'media '), work in youth and student organizations, work in labour organizations (trade unions, etc.), work in professional and cultural groups and in political parties. Paramilitary operations include infiltration into denied areas, sabotage, economic warfare, personal harassment, air and maritime support, weaponry, training and support for small armies.

Media Operations

The CIA'S role in the US propaganda programme is determined by the official division of propaganda into three general categories: white, grey and black. White propaganda is that which is openly acknowledged as coming from the US government, e.g. from the US Information Agency (USIA); grey propaganda is ostensibly attributed to people or organizations who do not acknowledge the US government as the source of their material and who produce the material as if it were their own; black propaganda is unattributed material, or it is attributed to a non-existent source, or it is false material attributed to a real source. The CIA is the only US government agency authorized to engage in black propaganda operations, but it shares the responsibility for grey propaganda with other agencies such as USIA. However, according to the 'Grey Law' of the National Security Council contained in one of the NSCID'S, other agencies must obtain prior CIA approval before engaging in grey propaganda.

The vehicles for grey and black propaganda may be unaware of their CIA or US government sponsorship. This is partly so that it can be more effective and partly to keep down the number of people who know what is going on and thus to reduce the danger of exposing true sponsorship. Thus editorialists, politicians, businessmen and others may produce propaganda, even for money, without necessarily knowing who their masters in the case are. Some among them obviously will and so, in agency terminology, there is a distinction between 'witting' and 'unwitting' agents.

In propaganda operations, as in all other PP activities, standard agency security procedure forbids payment for services rendered to be made by a CIA officer working under official cover (one posing as an official of the Department of State, for instance). This is in order to maintain 'plausible denial' and to minimize the danger of embarrassment to the local embassy if anything is discovered by the local government. However, payment is made by CIA officers under non-official cover, e.g. posing as businessmen, students or as retired people; such officers are said to be working under non-official cover.

Officers working under non-official cover may also handle most of the contacts with the recruited agents in order to keep the officer under official cover as protected as possible. Equally, meetings between the two kinds of officer will be as secret as may be. The object of all this is to protect the embassy and sometimes to make the propaganda agents believe that they are being paid by private businesses.

Headquarters' propaganda experts have visited us in ISOLATION and have displayed the mass of paper they issue as material for the guidance of propaganda throughout the world. Some of it is concerned only with local issues, the rest often has world-wide application. The result of the talks was to persuade most of us that propaganda is not for us -- there is simply too much paperwork. But despite that, the most interesting part of propaganda was obviously the business of orchestrating the treatment of events of importance among several countries. Thus problems of communist influence in one country can be made to appear of international concern in others under the rubric of 'a threat to one is a threat to all'. For example, the CIA station in Caracas can cable information on a secret communist plot in Venezuela to the Bogota station which can 'surface' through a local propaganda agent with attribution to an unidentified Venezuelan government official. The information can then be picked up from the Colombian press and relayed to CIA stations in Quito, Lima, La Paz, Santiago and, perhaps, Brazil. A few days later editorials begin to appear in the newspapers of these places and pressure mounts on the Venezuelan government to take repressive action against its communists.

There are obviously hosts of other uses to which propaganda, both black and grey, can be put, using books, magazines, radio, television, wall-painting, handbills, decals, religious sermons and political speeches as well as the daily press. In countries where handbills or wall-painting are important media, stations are expected to maintain clandestine printing and distribution facilities as well as teams of agents who paint slogans on walls. Radio Free Europe ‡ (RFE) and Radio Liberty ‡ are the best known grey-propaganda operations conducted by the CIA against the Soviet bloc.

Youth and Student Operations

At the close of World War II, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union began a major propaganda and agitation programme through the formation of the International Union of Students (IUS) and the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY), both of which brought together national affiliates within their respective fields in as many countries as possible. These organizations promoted CPSU objectives and policy under the guise of unified campaigns (anti-colonialism, anti-nuclear weapons, pro-peace groups, etc.), in which they enlisted the support of their local affiliates in capitalist countries as well as within the communist bloc. During the late 1940s the US government, using the Agency for its purpose, began to brand these fronts as stooges of the CPSU with the object of discouraging non-communist participation. In addition to this the Agency engaged in operations in many places designed to stop local groups affiliating with the international bodies. By recruiting leaders of the local groups and by infiltrating agents, the Agency tried to gain control of as many of them as possible, so that even if such a group had already affiliated itself to either the IUS or the WFDY, it could be persuaded or compelled to withdraw.

The Agency also began to form alternative youth and student organizations at local and international level. The two international bodies constructed to rival those sponsored by the Soviet Union were the Coordinating Secretariat of National Unions of Students ‡ (COSEC) [11] with headquarters in Leyden, and the World Assembly of Youth ‡ (WAY) situated in Brussels. Headquarters' planning, guidance and operational functions in the CIA youth and student operations are centralized in the International Organizations Division of the DDP.

Both COSEC and WAY, like the IUS and WFDY, promote travel, cultural activities and welfare, but both also work as propaganda agencies for the CIA -- particularly in underdeveloped countries. They also have consultative status as non-governmental institutions with United Nations agencies such as UNESCO and they participate in the UN special agencies' programmes.

One very important function of the CIA youth and student operations is the spotting, assessing and recruiting of student and youth leaders as long-term agents, both in the FI and PP fields. The organizations sponsored or affected by the Agency are obvious recruiting grounds for these and, indeed, for other CIA operations. It is particularly the case in the underdeveloped world that both COSEC and WAY programmes lead to the recruitment of young agents who can be relied on to continue CIA policies and remain under CIA control long after they have moved up their political or professional ladders.

Apart from working through COSEC and WAY the Agency is also able to mount specific operations through Catholic national and international student and youth bodies (Pax Romana and the International Catholic Youth Federation) and through the Christian democratic and non-communist socialist organizations as well. In some countries, particularly those in which there are groups with strong communist or radical leaderships, the Catholic or Christian Democratic student and youth organizations are the main forces guided by the Agency.

Agents controlled through youth and student operations by a station in any given country, including those in the US National Students Association ‡ (NSA) international programme run by headquarters, can also be used to influence decisions at the international level, while agents at the international level can be used for promoting other agents or policies within a national affiliate. Control, then, is like an alternating current between the national and international levels.

Largely as a result of Agency operations, the WFDY headquarters was expelled from France in 1951, moving to Budapest. The IUS headquarters, on the other hand, was never allowed to move to the free world after its founding at Prague in 1946. Moreover, the WFDY and IUS have been clearly identified with the communist bloc, and their efforts to conduct conferences and seminars outside the bloc have been attacked and weakened by WAY and COSEC. The WFDY, for example, has been able to hold only one World Youth Festival outside the bloc, in Vienna in 1959, and then it was effectively disrupted by CIA-controlled youth and student organizations. The IUS has never held a congress in the free world. More important still, both WAY and COSEC have developed overwhelming leads in affiliate members outside the communist bloc.

Labour Operations

Agency labour operations came into being, like student and youth operations, as a reaction against the continuation of pre-World War II CPSU policy and expansion through the international united fronts. In 1945 with the support and participation of the British Trade Unions Congres (TUC), the American Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and the Soviet Trade Unions Council, the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) was formed in Paris. Differences within the WFTU between communist trade-union leaders, who were anxious to use the WFTU for anti-capitalist propaganda, and free-world leaders who insisted on keeping the WFTU focused on economic issues, finally came to a head in 1949 over whether the WFTU should support the Marshall Plan. When the communists, who included French, Italian and Latin American leaders as well as the Soviets, refused to allow the WFTU to endorse the Marshall Plan, the TUC and CIO withdrew, and later the same year the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU ‡) was founded as a noncommunist alternative to the WFTU, with participation by the TUC, CIO, American Federation of Labor (AFL) and other national centres. Agency operations were responsible in part for the expulsion of the WFTU headquarters from Paris in 1951 when it moved to the Soviet sector of Vienna. Later, in 1956, it was forced to move from Vienna to Prague.

The ICFTU established regional organizations for Europe, the Far East, Africa and the Western Hemisphere, which brought together the non-communist national trade-union centres. Support and guidance by the Agency was, and still is, exercised on the three levels: ICFTU, regional and national centres. At the highest level, labor operations congenial to the Agency are supported through George Meany, ‡ President of the AFL, Jay Lovestone, ‡ Foreign Affairs Chief of the AFL and Irving Brown, ‡ AFL representative in Europe -- all of whom were described to us as effective spokesmen for positions in accordance with the Agency's needs. Direct Agency control is also exercised on the regional level. Serafino Romualdi, ‡ AFL Latin American representative for example, directs the Inter-American Regional Labor Organization (ORIT) ‡ located in Mexico City. On the national level, particularly in underdeveloped countries, CIA field stations engage in operations to support and guide national labour centres. In headquarters, support, guidance and control of all labour operations is centralized in the labour branch of the International Organizations Division.

General policy on labour operations is similar to youth and student operations. First, the WFTU and its regional and national affiliates are labelled as stooges of Moscow. Second, local station operations are designed to weaken and defeat communist or extreme-leftist dominated union structures and to establish and support a non-communist structure. Third, the ICFTU and its regional organizations are promoted, both from the top and from the bottom, by having Agency-influenced or controlled unions and national centres affiliate.

A fourth CIA approach to labour operations is through the International Trade Secretariats ‡ (ITS), which represent the interests of workers in a particular industry as opposed to the national centres that unite workers of different industries. Because the ITS system is more specialized, and often more effective, it is at times more appropriate for Agency purposes than the ICFTU with its regional and national structure. Control and guidance is exercised through officers of a particular ITS who are called upon to assist labour operations directed against the workers of a particular industry. Very often the CIA agents in an ITS are the American labour leaders who represent the US affiliate of the ITS, since the ITS would usually receive its principal support from the pertinent US industrial union. Thus the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees ‡ serves as a channel for CIA operations in the Public Service International, ‡ which is the ITS for government employees headquartered in London. And the Retail Clerks International Association, ‡ which is the US union of white-collar employees, gives access to the International Federation of Clerical and Technical Employees, ‡ which is the white-collar ITS. Similarly, the Communications Workers of America ‡ is used to control the Post, Telegraph and Telephone Workers International ‡ (PTTI) which is the ITS for communications workers. In the case of the petroleum industry the Agency actually set up the ITS, the International Federation of Petroleum and Chemical Workers ‡ (IFPCW) through the US union of petroleum workers, the Oil Workers International Union. Particularly in underdeveloped countries, station labour operations may be given cover as a local programme of an ITS. Within the Catholic trade-union movement similar activity is possible, usually channelled through the International Federation of Christian Trade Unions ‡ (IFCTU). [12] And for specialized training within the social-democratic movement, the Israeli Histadrut ‡ is used.

Labour operations are the source of considerable friction between the DDP area divisions and the stations, on the one hand, and the International Organizations Division (IOD) on the other. The problem is mainly jurisdiction and coordination. The labour operations agents on the international and regional level (ICFTU, ORlT, ITS, for example) are directed by officers of IOD either in Washington or from a field station such as Paris, Brussels or Mexico City. If their activities in a particular country, Colombia, for example, are not closely coordinated with the Bogota station, they may oppose or otherwise interfere with specific aims of the Bogota station's labour operations or other programmes. Whenever IOD labour assets visit a given country, the Chief of Station who is responsible for all CIA activities in his country, must be advised. Otherwise the IOD agent, lacking the guidance and control that would ensure that his activities harmonize with the entire station operational programme, not just in the labour field, may jeopardize other station goals. Continuing efforts are made to ensure coordination between IOD activities in labour and the field stations concerned, but this is also hampered at times by the narrow view and headstrong attitudes of the agents themselves.

On the other hand, IOD agents can be enormously valuable in assisting a local station's labour programme. Usually the agent has considerable prestige as a result of his position on the international or regional level, and his favour is often sought by indigenous labour leaders because of the travel and training grants and invitations to conferences that the agent dispenses. He accordingly has ready access to leaders in the local non-communist labour movement and he can establish contact between the station and those local labour leaders of interest. Such contact can be established through third parties, gradually, so that the IOD agent is protected when a new operational relationship is eventually established. Field stations may call on IOD support in order to obtain the adoption of a particular policy or programme in a given country through the influence that an IOD agent can bring to bear on a local situation, again without the local labour leader, even if he is a station agent, knowing that the international or regional official is responding to CIA guidance.

Measuring the effectiveness of labour operations against their multi-million-dollar cost is difficult and controversial, and includes the denial-to-the-communists factor as well as the value of indoctrination in pro-Western ideals through seminars, conferences and educational programmes. In any case, free-world affiliation with the WFTU has been considerably reduced, even though several leading national confederations in non-communist countries still belong.

Operations against the World Peace Council

Agency operations against the World Peace Council (founded in Paris in 1949) are undertaken to neutralize the Council's propaganda campaigns against the US and its allies, particularly with regard to military pacts. Although no rival organization has been established, media operations are directed against WPC activities in order to expose its true sponsorship as a propaganda front of the CPSU. Some success can be claimed in the expulsion of WPC headquarters from Paris to Prague in 1951 although it moved to Vienna in 1954. Efforts are also made to prevent the WPC from holding congresses and other meetings outside the communist bloc through operations involving media, students, youth, labour and especially political-action agents for denial of permissions and other harassment.

Journalists

Founded in Copenhagen in 1946, the International Organization of Journalists (IOJ) brought together writers from both communist and non-communist countries. Although the original headquarters of the IOJ was in London, the Second Congress was held in Prague in 1947 where it was decided to move the IOJ headquarters. Following the leadership of the national journalists' organizations of the United States, Great Britain and Belgium, most non-communist membership had been withdrawn by 1950, and its activities were generally confined to Iron Curtain countries.

In addition to propaganda against the IOJ and operations to deny Western capitals for IOJ meetings, the Agency promoted the founding of an alternative international society of journalists for the free world. In 1952 the World Congress of Journalists reestablished the International Federation of Journalists ‡ (IFJ) which had been founded originally in 1926, but had been disbanded in 1946 when the IOJ was formed.

Benefits to the Agency from the IFJ operation include the spotting and operational development of potential propaganda agents. Moreover, local station support to IFJ member organizations can be used to combat the local communist and procommunist press and the efforts at penetration by the IOJ. especially in underdeveloped countries.
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Re: Inside the Company: CIA Diary, by Philip Agee

Postby admin » Tue Jun 09, 2015 4:08 am

PART 4 OF 4

Lawyers

In 1946 the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL) was founded in Paris with the participation of lawyers from some twenty-five countries. Dominated from the beginning by pro-communist forces, especially the French participants, the IADL soon lost most of its non-communist members and in 1950 was expelled from France, moving its headquarters to Brussels where it has remained. The IADL'S main function has been to serve as a propaganda mechanism for the CPSU post-war themes of peace and anti-colonialism.

In 1952, an international legal conference was held in West Berlin from which a permanent committee emerged to carryon the work of exposing communist injustice in East Germany. In 1955 this committee became the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) with headquarters in The Hague, moving to Geneva in 1959. The ICJ is composed of twenty-five prominent lawyers from countries around the world, and its main work consists of investigating and reporting on abuses of the 'rule of law', wherever they occur.

The Agency saw the ICJ as an organization which it hoped would produce prestigious propaganda of the kind wanted on such issues as violations of human rights in the communist bloc. Reports on other areas like South Africa would, so far as the CIA was concerned, merely lend respectability to this object.

Political-Action Operations

Communist expansion brought forth still another type of PP operation: political action. Operations designed to promote the adoption by a foreign government of a particular policy vis-a-vis communism are termed political-action operations. While the context of these operations is the assessment of the danger of communist or other leftist influence in a given country, the operations undertaken to suppress the danger are pegged to specific circumstances. These operations often involve promotion through funding and guidance of the careers of foreign politicians through whom desired government policy and action can be obtained. Conversely, these operations often include actions designed to neutralize the politicians who promote undesirable local government policy regarding communism.

Although political-action operations after World War II began with electoral funding of anti-communist political parties in France and Italy in the late 1940s, they are now prevalent in the underdeveloped countries where economic and social conditions create a favourable climate for communist advance. The obvious human elements in political-action operations are political parties, politicians and military leaders, although agents in other PP operations including labour, student and youth, and' media are often brought to bear on specific political-action targets.

In order to obtain political intelligence as well as to develop relationships with potential political-action agents, most stations have continuing programmes for cultivating local politicians from opposition as well as from government parties. Making acquaintances in local politics is not usually difficult because CIA officers under diplomatic cover in embassies have natural access to their targets through cocktail parties, receptions, clubs and other mechanisms that bring them together with people of interest. Regular State Department Foreign Service Officers and Ambassadors as well may also facilitate the expansion of station political contacts through arranging introductions. When a local political contact is assessed favourably for station' goals, security clearance and operational approval is obtained from headquarters, and the station officer in contact with the target begins to provide financial support for political campaigns or for the promotion of the target's political group or party. Hopefully, almost surely, the target will use some of the money for personal expenses thereby developing a dependency on the station as a source of income. Eventually, if all goes well, the local politician will report confidential information on his own party and on his government, if he has a government post, and he will respond to reasonable station direction regarding the communist question.

A station's liaison operations with local security services are also a valuable source of political-action assets. Because of frequent political instability in underdeveloped countries, the politicians in charge of the civilian and military security forces are in key positions for action as well as for information, and they are often drawn into an operational relationship with the station when they enter office merely by allowing ongoing liaison operations to continue. They are subjected to constant assessment by the station for use in political action and when deemed appropriate they may be called upon for specific tasks. Financial support is also available for furthering their political careers and for a continuing relationship once they leave the ministry.

As final arbiters of political conflicts in so many countries, military leaders are major targets for recruitment. They are contacted by station officers in a variety of ways, sometimes simply through straightforward introduction by US military attaches or the personnel of US Military Assistance Missions. Sometimes the liaison developed between the Agency and local intelligence services can be used for making these contacts. Again CIA officers can make contact with those military officers of other countries who come to the US for training. As in the case of politicians, most Agency stations have a continual programme for the development of local military leaders, both for the collection of intelligence and for possible use in political action.

The political actions actually undertaken by the Agency are almost as varied as politics itself. High on the list of priorities is the framing of Soviet officials in diplomatic or commercial missions in order to provoke their expulsion. Politicians working for the Agency are expected to take an active part in working for expulsion of 'undesirables'. Similarly, where the Soviet Union tries to extend its diplomatic or commercial activities, our politicians are expected to use their influence to oppose such moves. They are also expected to take a hard line against their own nationals engaged in left-wing or communist activities. In the last of these instances success means the proscription of the parties, the arrest or exile of their leaders, the closure of their offices, publications and bookstores, the prohibition of their demonstrations, etc. Such large-scale programmes call for action both by anticommunist movements and by national governments -- where possible the Agency likes to use the same political-action agents for both purposes.

But it is not just a matter of financing and guiding local politicians. In situations regarded as dangerous to the US, the Agency will conduct national election operations through the medium of an entire political party. It will finance candidates who are both 'witting' and 'unwitting'. Such multi-million-dollar operations may begin a year or more before an election is due and will include massive propaganda and public-relations campaigns, the building of numerous front organizations and funding mechanisms (often resident US businessmen), regular polls of voters, the formation of' goon-squads' to intimidate the opposition, and the staging of provocations and the circulation of rumours designed to discredit undesirable candidates. Funds are also available for buying votes and vote counters as well.

If a situation can be more effectively retrieved for US interests by unconstitutional methods or by coup d'etat, that too may be attempted. Although the Agency usually plays the anti-communist card in order to foster a coup, gold bars and sacks of currency are often equally effective. In some cases a timely bombing by a station agent, followed by mass demonstrations and finally by intervention by military leaders in the name of the restoration of order and national unity, is a useful course. Agency political operations were largely responsible for coups after this pattern in Iran in 1953 and in the Sudan in 1958.

Paramilitary Operations

At times the political situation in a given country cannot be retrieved fast or effectively enough through other types of PP operations such as political action. In these cases the Agency engages in operations on a higher level of conflict which may include military operations -- although these should not be seen as US-sponsored. These unconventional warfare operations are called paramilitary operations. The Agency has the charter from the National Security Council for US government unconventional warfare although the military services also sustain a paramilitary capability in case of general war. These operations seem to hold a special fascination, calling to mind ass heroism, resistance, guerrilla warfare, secret parachute jumps behind the lines. Camp Peary is a major Agency training base for paramilitary operations.

The need for getting agents into denied areas like certain parts of the Soviet Union, China and other communist countries, is satisfied in part by illegal infiltration by land, sea or air. The agents, usually natives of the denied area, are given proper clothing, documentation and cover stories and, if infiltrating by land, may be required to pass secretly through heavily guarded borders. Training in border crossing is given in a restricted area of Camp Peary where a mile or so of simulated communist borders is operated with fences, watch-towers, dogs, alarms and patrols. Maritime infiltration involves the use of a mother ship, usually a freighter operated by an Agency cover shipping company which approaches to within a few miles of the shore landing-site. An intermediate craft, often a souped-up outboard, leaves the mother ship and approaches to perhaps a mile off the shore where a rubber boat with a small silent outboard is inflated to carry the infiltration team to the beach. The rubber boat and auxiliary equipment is buried near the beach for use later in escape while the intermediate craft returns to the mother ship. Infiltration by air requires black overflights for which the Agency has unmarked long- and short-range aircraft including the versatile Helio Courier that can be used in infil-exfil operations with landings as well as parachute drops. Restricted areas of Camp Peary along the York River are used for maritime training and other parts of the base serve as landing-sites and drop zones.

Once safely infiltrated to a denied area, a lone agent or a team may be required to perform a variety of jobs. Frequently an infiltration team's mission is the caching of weapons, communications equipment or sabotage materials for later retrieval by a different team which will use them. Or, an infiltration team may perform sabotage through the placing of incendiary devices or explosives at a target-site timed to go off days, weeks or even months later. Sabotage weapons include oil and gasoline contaminates for stopping vehicles, contaminates for jamming printing- presses, limpets for sinking ships, explosive and incendiary compounds that can be moulded and painted to look like bread, lamps, dolls or stones. The sabotage instructors, or 'burn and blow boys', have staged impressive demonstrations of their capabilities, some of which are ingeniously designed so as to leave little trace of a cause. Aside from sabotage, an infiltration team may be assigned targets to photograph or the loading or unloading of dead drops (concealed places for hiding film, documents or small containers). Escape may be by the same route as entry or by an entirely different method.

The Economic Warfare Section of the PP staff is a sub-section under Paramilitary Operations because its mission includes the sabotage of key economic activities in a target country and the denial of critical imports, e.g. petroleum. Contamination of an export agricultural product or associated material (such as sacks destined for the export of Cuban sugar), or fouling the bearings of tractors, trucks or buses destined for a target country may be undertaken if other efforts to impede undesired trade fail. As Economic Warfare is undertaken in order to aggravate economic conditions in a target country, these operations include in addition to sabotage, the use of propaganda, labour, youth, student and other mass organizations under CIA control to restrict trade by a friendly country of items needed in the target economy. US companies can also be called upon to restrict supply of selected products voluntarily, but local station political-action assets are usually more effective for this purpose.

Also coordinated in the Paramilitary section of the PP staff is the effort to maintain Agency supplies of weapons used in support of irregular military forces. Although the Air and Maritime Support section of the staff supervises standing Agency operations to supply insurgents (Air America and Civil Air Transport in the Far East, for example) additional resources such as aircraft can be obtained from the Defense Department. These operations included the Guatemalan invasion in 1954 (aptly given the cryptonym LCSUCCESS); Tibetan resistance against the Chinese in 1958-9 and the rebellion against the Sukarno government in Indonesia in 1957-8; current training and support of irregular forces in South Vietnam and Laos; and increasing sabotage and paramilitary operations against the Castro government in Cuba. Leaflet drops as part of the propaganda aspect of paramilitary operations are also arranged through the Air and Maritime Support section.

Closely related to paramilitary operations are the disruptive activities known as militant action. Through organization and support of 'goon squads' sometimes composed of off-duty policemen, for example, or the militant sections of friendly political parties, stations attempt to intimidate communists and other extreme leftists by breaking up their meetings and demonstrations. The Technical Services staff of the DDP makes a variety of weapons and devices for these purposes. Horrible smelling liquids in small glass vials can be hurled into meeting halls. A fine clear powder can be sprinkled in a meeting-place becoming invisible after settling but having the effect of tear-gas when stirred up by the later movement of people. An incendiary powder can be moulded around prepared tablets and when ignited the combination produces ample quantities of smoke that attacks the eyes and respiratory system much more strongly than ordinary tear-gas. A tasteless substance can be introduced to food that causes exaggerated body colour. And a few small drops of a clear liquid stimulates the target to relaxed, uninhibited talk. Invisible itching powder can be placed on steering wheels or toilet seats, and a slight smear of invisible ointment causes a serious burn to skin on contact. Chemically processed tobacco can be added to cigarettes and cigars to produce respiratory ailments.

Our training in PP operations includes constant emphasis on the desirability of obtaining reportable intelligence information from agents engaged in what are essentially action (as opposed to collection) operations. A well-run action operation, in fact, can produce intelligence of extremely good quality whether the agents are student, labour or political leaders. Justification for continuing PP operations in Project Renewals includes references to the operation's value in strictly collection activities as well as effectiveness in achieving action goals. No action agent, therefore, can be allowed to neglect the intelligence by-product of his operation, although the action agent may have to be eased into the intelligence reporting function because of the collaborative nature of his early relationship with the Agency. Nevertheless with a little skill even leaders of some rank can be manipulated into collecting information by letting them know indirectly that financial support for them is based partly on satisfaction of intelligence reporting requirements.

The funding of psychological and paramilitary projects is a complex business. Project Outlines (see p. 50) are prepared either in the station or at headquarters, depending on which of these is proposing or running the operation. Included in this, apart from those elements already mentioned for FI projects, will be a statement on the need for coordination with other US government agencies such as the State Department or the Department of Defense. Where appropriate further reports are attached giving greater detail on finances, personnel, training, supply and cover mechanisms.

Operational progress reports are required each trimester in the case of routine operations, but such reports may be more frequent in special cases. Intelligence received as a result of p p operations is processed in the same way as that which comes from FI operations.

Funding action operations, especially those involving labour, student, youth or other organizations is a perpetual problem. Under certain circumstances it can be done through foundations of one sort or another which have been created as fronts for the Agency, but before this, or any other, method can be employed there first has to be a decision about the level at which the funds should be passed. If money is to be put into an international organization like WAY, for example, then it might be possible to do this through an American organization affiliated to it. The money can then be disguised as a donation from that organization. In other circumstances it might be possible to supply the money through a 'cutout', that is, through a person who can claim that the money is either a donation on his own account or from his business. If this system is used the money is sometimes paid by the 'cutout' to a US organization affiliated to the international group for whom the money is finally intended.

If it is paid direct then it is usual for the secretary-general or the finance committee chairman of the organization in question to be a 'witting' agent. The decision about the method to be used is subject to several considerations. First the matter of security and cover is considered; second comes the question of which method would best ensure that the recipient or recipients will then do what they have been paid for. Thus funds become a very effective method of guiding an action agent. When cover foundations or companies are used for funding they may be chartered in the US or in countries such as Lichtenstein, the Bahamas and Panama, where commercial secrecy is protected and governmental controls are minimal.

Camp Peary, Virginia May 1960

The practical exercises are more pleasant now that spring has arrived. Except that we pick up hordes of ticks during the paramilitary training. We have had training in evasion and escape and border crossing -- also night exercises in maritime infiltrations and air drops. At the ranges we have firing sessions with a variety of pistols, rifles and sub-machine-guns. In July, after the regular JOT training course ends, there will be a three-month specialized course in paramilitary operations. Ten or fifteen of the class have volunteered for the course and afterwards they'll be assigned to operations already underway against Vietnam, Laos and Cuba.

The instructor who was my nationalistic political leader in the FI exercise became a wild man in the political-action case. He went around without my knowledge trying to recruit colleagues to overthrow the government and telling them he was working for me in the US Embassy. The word got back to the Ambassador (another instructor) and I had to convince him not to send me home. Then I paid the agent a generous termination bonus and picked up with one of his party subordinates.

Still, we have had a serious upheaval in the JOT class. None of us is quite sure whether this is a training exercise or real or partly both. The training staff has been ranting and raving, both in individual sessions with advisors and in the classroom and pit sessions, that we aren't taking the work seriously enough. They cancelled a couple of week-ends off and we all had to stay here and practice report writing. Morale among the JOT'S is down and resentment against the staff gets higher every day. Four of the outstanding trainees have quit -- two of them in order to take appointments as Foreign Service Officers with the State Department.

The problem grew out of the way most of us handled the practical exercises with the political-action agent -- practically all of us were crucified in the criticism sessions for not having developed proper control over the agent before moving into sensitive assignments. The instructors accused us of adopting whimsical attitudes -- what they call derisively the 'cowboy approach'. Besides agent-control failure, the staff is down on us for not taking pains with tradecraft in the practical exercises. A couple of weeks ago several teams got arrested while photographing a huge chemical plant about twenty miles from here -- they were caught by security patrols, turned over to the police, and then had to be bailed out through the base administration office. It was supposed to be a clandestine photography assignment in a denied area and those guys climbed over the fence and started snapping like they were at the beach in August.

The extra night sessions in tradecraft are supposed to emphasize the dangers in taking shortcuts on how clandestine operations are performed -- as opposed to what is done (FI, CI and PP operations). Tradecraft is all the techniques and tools of the trade used to keep a secret operation secret. The tradecraft one selects depends on a correct analysis of the operational environment -- the set of conditions that determine the degree of clandestinity needed, including the capabilities of local services, and the strength of the local target organizations against which our operations are directed. The more relaxed the operational environment, the more simple and uncomplicated the tradecraft and the more mileage obtained from each CIA officer.

Tradecraft is used to keep an operation secure and free from discovery because, among many reasons, people's lives are often at stake. The instructors keep driving home the importance of care to protect the agent, and they toss out example after example of fatal and near-fatal consequences of poor tradecraft. The techniques include how to select a meeting-site, counter-surveillance before and after clandestine meetings, the use of disguise, safety and danger signals before meetings, concealment devices, precautions in the use of telephones, ways to counter possible audio penetration of meeting-sites, the use of cutouts or go-betweens to avoid frequent direct contact between agents and CIA officers, and communication techniques.

Cover is closely related to operational security because it is the lie established to make a secret operation appear to have a legitimate purpose. A foundation may serve as a cover funding mechanism. A shipping company may serve as cover for maritime operations. An airline may serve as cover for air support to paramilitary operations. A legitimate business activity may serve as ostensible employment for a CIA officer in a foreign country. The State Department, Defense Department and the International Cooperational Administration may also serve as cover employment for CIA officers.

Communications with agents is perhaps the most crucial element of tradecraft and operational security. Personal meetings between CIA officers and their agents are often the most efficient type of communication but they are also the most dangerous and require elaborate security precautions and cover. Meetings can take place i1nhotels or apartments obtained for this purpose (safe houses), vehicles, subways, parks, isolated woods, tourist attractions. Normal communications may also be through cutouts and dead drops (hiding-places like the hollows of trees where messages can be placed). Brush contacts, such as the momentary contact for passage of a report, can be used in public lavatories or pedestrian tunnels where motion is uninterrupted and hostile surveillance difficult.

Communications with agents in denied areas (Iron Curtain countries) where counter-intelligence forces are most effective, is often through encoded radio transmissions to the agent, which can be heard on ordinary home radios -- while the agents' reports are made in invisible writing and sent to a drop address in a noncommunist country through the international mails. In such cases personal meetings would be restricted to emergencies or when the agent is able to travel to a non-communist country. Elaborate signal systems can be established to indicate safety, danger, discovery, loading or unloading a dead drop, request for meeting, postponement of meeting.

In every clandestine operation some form of training is usually involved, from simple reminders on security precautions to highly specialized instructions in the use of complicated technical equipment. In FI operations, continuous training is needed for refinement of the agent's reporting in such areas as separation of fact from rumour and opinion, specification of sources, correct dates, places and names, and spelling and format in written reports. The Office of Training has a staff of multilingual training officers in its Covert Training Branch who travel the world giving specialized operational training to agents on station request. The Technical Services Division personnel are also heavily engaged in agent training as is the Office of Communications which is in charge of training agents in the use of radio equipment and cryptographic materials.

Shortcuts in tradecraft on the practical exercises is not the main reason for the training staff's toughening up. The real reason is attitudes -- they want us to get as serious about all this as they are, and they are focusing on agent-control factors in order to drive this home. Maybe we'll all have to become heavies in order to pass the course.

The importance of agent control is paramount because agent control means the ways an agent is made to do what the CIA wants him to do. Each agent is different and not everyone is always willing to do exactly what we want him to do -- sometimes he has to be coaxed, sometimes cajoled, sometimes threatened.

'Agent' is a word that is used to signify the people who work at the end of the line. Usually they are foreigners and the instruments through which CIA operations are executed. The word 'agent' is never used to describe the CIA career employee who functions in a station as an operations officer -- more commonly known as a case officer. We are all being trained to be case officers, not agents.

There are different types of agents in CIA parlance. Many operations are structured under the leadership of a single agent to whom other agents respond either as a group working together or in separate, compartmented activities. The single agent who runs an operation under station direction is known as the principal agent and the others as secondary or sub-agents. The chief of a five-man surveillance team is a principal agent while the foot-men and drivers are sub-agents. An action agent is a person who actually provides secret information, e.g. a spy in a communist party, whereas a support agent performs tasks related to an operation but is not the source of intelligence, e.g. the person who rents an apartment for meetings between an action agent and the station case officer.

Case officers must constantly be searching for new agents to improve ongoing operations and to mount new, better operations. Agent spotting, therefore, is the activity whereby potential new agents are brought under consideration. Agent development is the manner in which a potential agent is cultivated and tested while agent assessment is the evaluation of whether and how the potential agent can be used effectively. If, after weighing all available data, a positive decision is reached for recruitment, the formal clearance procedure is completed through the Headquarters Operational Approval system. Agent recruitment can take many forms, often determined by the type of operation for which the agent is needled and by the history of agent development.

If your objective is to penetrate a leftist political party, the first thing to do is to probe for a weak spot in the organization. You might bug the phone of a leading party member and find out he's playing around with the party's funds. In that case, perhaps he can be blackmailed. Or perhaps one of your agents plays on the same soccer team as a party member, or goes out with his sister. The agent might learn something about the party member that seems to make him a good prospect. Then you move in and make an offer.

On certain occasions recruitments are made in the name of the CIA, especially when involving US citizens and high-level targets for PP operations. But often recruitment can be effected without explicit sponsorship with the target simply expected to assume that the CIA is the sponsor. Thousands of policemen all over the world, for instance, are shadowing people for the CIA without knowing it. They think they're working for their own police departments, when, in fact, their chief may be a CIA agent who's sending them out on CIA jobs and turning their information over to his CIA control. On other occasions false flag recruitments are more appropriate so that the target believes a service or organization other than the CIA is the sponsor, perhaps his own government, or even Peking or Havana. You don't let the recruit know he'll be working for the United States, because if he knew that, he might not consent to do it. Coercive recruitment of a communist party member in an underdeveloped country (under a threat made to appear to come from a local security service) may be more effective to start with than revealing CIA sponsorship. Later, when financial and other means of control have been established, the recruited agent may be brought gradually to the knowledge of true sponsorship.

In nearly all cases involving agents aware of their CIA sponsorship, a direct, personal relationship is established between the agent and the case officer. Since control of agents is so much more effective by persuasion than by threat, the development of personal rapport by the case officer with the agent receives constant emphasis from our instructors. On the other hand, agent-handling officers are expected always to maintain the upper hand and to avoid dangers that can give an agent a handle against him, or any of the different varieties of' falling in love with your agent'.

However, as almost all operations depend upon money, delicate treatment of financial matters can be used as a constant control factor without insulting the agent by treating him as a mercenary. In rich countries a man might become an agent for ideological reasons, but in poor countries it's usually because he's short of cash. A man with a hungry family to support will do almost anything for money. The amounts paid to agents depends on local conditions. In a poor country $100 a month could get you an ordinary agent. In many countries $700 a month could get you a cabinet minister. Payment is made in cash -- you can't pay spies by check. At the end of every month officers deliver pay envelopes to their agents around town; they meet in cars or safe houses. Agents should be made to count the cash in front of the officer so that any mistakes can be corrected immediately.

Firm guidance of agents, especially those involved in PP operations, where a wide variety of alternatives is usually presented, depends largely on the personalities of the agent and the case officer, and the twin requirements of control and rapport present continuing problems. Capability for detached manipulation of human beings is a cardinal virtue of the CIA case officer and nobody makes any bones about it.

Agent termination and disposal is the way an agent is unloaded when he's no longer needed or wanted. It can be touchy and complicated. Much depends on whether the termination is friendly or hostile and the reasons for it. Once the principle of terminating an operational relationship is established with an agent, the procedure usually becomes one of negotiating a financial settlement and quit-claim. The financial settlement may depend ostensibly on past services rendered by the agent, but under the surface both sides often negotiate on the basis of the damage a dissatisfied agent could cause if termination were not to his liking. Again the control exercised by case officers over the agent during the entire period of employment will reflect on termination negotiations. Efforts by terminated agents to get back on the payroll after having spent their termination bonus are not uncommon. When asked just how drastic agent termination and disposal might become in difficult circumstances, the instructor declined comment without disallowing 'final solutions'.

Camp Peary, Virginia June 1960

This month the emphasis has been on technical operations and we have had to incorporate these skills in the practical exercises, including the training of our 'agents'. The heat from the training staff over tradecraft and agent control is still on, but we're getting used to it now. It looks as if they're trying to build up to a peak of tension for the final week of practical exercises -- five or six days of intense operations in the same war-games scenario either in Baltimore or New York. But the past weeks have mostly been dedicated to long hours in laboratories learning basic skills in the four main technical functions: audio, photography, flaps and seals, and secret writing.

Audio operations include telephone tapping and all the different techniques of bugging. The most common and secure way to tap telephones is through connections made in the telephone exchange -- sometimes by a unilateral agent but usually through a request to the local liaison service. But in certain circumstances telephone intercepts 'off the line' (meaning connections made somewhere between the target telephone and the exchange) are more advisable. There are also small transmitters that can be placed inside a telephone and TSD has developed a pencil-sized transmitter that can be attached to telephone wires outdoors for reception in a listening post (LP) not far away.

Telephones and telephone lines can also be valuable for full audio penetration of the rooms where the telephones are located. This technique calls for the activation of the telephone mouthpiece so that it will pick up all conversations in the room, even when the telephone is cradled, and transmit these conversations down the telephone lines. This technique is called the 'hot mike'.

The simplest and most dependable audio operation is the 'mike and wire' job, consisting of a concealed microphone with a wire leading to a listening-post where an amplifier and recorder are located. But this technique is also insecure because the wire can be followed and unpleasant surprises given to the LP keepers. So the mike and wire can be connected to a hidden low-powered radio transmitter for reception in an L P protected by being separated from the bugging equipment. Transmitters can be connected to house current or operated with batteries.

Switches on transmitters are often desirable especially in audio operations against the Soviets, Chinese and satellite governments because of their regular counter-audio sweeps in which wide-range receivers are used to detect radio transmissions. Visiting sweep teams pose as diplomatic couriers sometimes, and transmitters have to be shut down when they are in town. This necessitates constant reporting from station to station on the movements of diplomatic couriers and suspected sweep officers.

The carrier-current technique is similar to the regular transmitter installation except that the transmission is made through electric power lines instead of through the air. This technique is convenient for easy switching and has an unlimited power supply, but LP location is complicated because the transmissions will not jump electric power transformers.

Installation of audio devices often requires drilling through walls, floors or ceilings, for which TSD has demonstrated a large variety of drills, some with diamond bits, but drilling isn't recommended for the inexperienced. Even TSD technicians have been known to make the irreparable mistake of drilling large holes all the way through the wall or ceiling of a target room. Reducing the size of drilling equipment in order to reach the final pinhole takes fine calculation and infinite patience. Audio installations often require concealment afterwards, for which TSD has their Plaster Patching and Paint Matching Kit. This consists of super-quick-drying plaster, some fifty colour chips with mixing formulas for colour approximation, plus odourless super-quick-drying paint.

Listening-post equipment for telephone taps usually consists of a Revere (ape-recorder and an actuator/dial recorder that starts the recorder when a telephone rings or when it is uncradled. Numbers called from the target telephone are also recorded on a paper tape. LP equipment for other audio operations may include FM radio receivers such as the military-supplied SRR-4 with a 50-200 megacycle range, headphones and a variety of tape-recorders. When switches are used the LP has a suitcase-package radio transmitter that transmits one frequency to turn a switch on, and another frequency to turn a switch off. But switches haven't been perfected yet and they cause problems by jamming in the on or the off positions.

The research and development programmes of the TSD Audio Branch are dedicated to improving equipment like the switch systems and to development of sub-miniature microphones and transmitters for casting into innocuous objects like light-switches and electrical outlets -- also to the development of new techniques. One new technique is the activation of cradled telephones (the 'hot mike') by sending a current down the line to the telephone without the need to make a complicated installation in the telephone itself. Another fascinating technique under development is the use of infra-red beams that can be bounced off windows and that carry back to the receiving equipment the conversations being held in the room where the target window is located. This technique captures the conversations from the vibrations of voices against the window-panes.

Still another new technique involves the use of cavity microphones like the one discovered in the eagle's beak of the Great Seal given by the Soviets to the American Ambassador in Moscow and which he placed in his office. The cavity microphone is a simple plastic spoon-shaped object that can be activated by a radiowave of a certain frequency. The spoon reacts by transmitting another radio signal that carries the voice vibrations from the room to an appropriate receiver. That Soviet-made Great Seal was included in a display of audio equipment with the admission that the Soviets are far ahead in this particular field.

In photography we have learned to use a variety of cameras for general purpose and documents. 35-mm cameras like the Exacta, Leica and Pentax are the favourites of the instructors, although the tiny Minox is more secure for agents. We've been practising also with clandestine photography using cameras that can be concealed in a briefcase or innocuous package -- even underneath a shirt with the lens opening disguised as a tie clasp. Darkroom training-sessions have concentrated on selection of films, paper and developing chemicals. In the practical exercises each of us incorporated both document and outdoor photography with developing and printing in the dark-rooms.

The really boring technical skill is Flaps and Seals (F & S). This is the surreptitious opening and closing of letters and other containers such as diplomatic pouches. For a week we practised with hot plate, tea kettle and the variously shaped ivory tools fashioned· from piano keys and used for gently prying open envelope flaps. But the most effective technique for letters is the flat-bed steam table (about the size of a briefcase) that contains a heating element encased in foam rubber. Steam is created by placing a damp blotter on the top of the heated table, and most letters open in a matter of seconds after being placed on the blotter. Careful resealing with cotton swab and clear glue completes the process.

Secret writing (SW) is the communications system used for concealing or making invisible a secret message on an otherwise innocent letter or other cover document. SW systems are categorized as wet systems, carbons and microdot. The wet systems use chemicals, usually disguised as pills, which dissolve in water to form a clear 'ink'. The secret message is written on a sheet of paper, preferably high-quality bond, using the end of a wooden swab stick that has been tapered with a razor-blade and soaked in the 'ink' to reach the proper tip flexibility. Before and after writing the message the paper must be rubbed with a soft cloth on both sides in all four directions to help conceal the writing within the texture of the paper. The paper with the secret message is then steamed and pressed in a thick book and after drying, if no trace of the message can be seen under ultra-violet and glancing light, a cover letter or innocuous message is written.

Carbon systems consist of ordinary bond paper that has been impregnated with chemicals. The carbon is placed on top of the message sheet and the secret message is written on a sheet placed on top of the carbon. Applying the proper pressure when writing the secret message with a pencil on the top sheet transfers the invisible chemical from the carbon to the message sheet on the bottom. The cover letter is then written on the opposite side of the message sheet from the secret message.

On receipt of an SW letter, an agent applies a corresponding chemical developer, rolling the developer with a cotton swab on to the page, and soon the secret message appears.

The microdot system involves a small camera kit with which a letter-sized page can be photographed on an area of film no larger than the dot of an 'i'. The microdot is glued over the dot of the 'i' or a period of a cover letter. Although the equipment for microdots is incriminating, the microdots themselves are very secure and practically impossible to discover. On the other hand they require very tedious processing and can only be read with a microscope.

Secret messages can be written either in clear text or encoded for greater security. The SW branch of TSD has a continuous intelligence collection programme on the postal censorship procedures in most foreign countries for protective procedures in SW operations. The operational environment in which the agent works determines the other details of SW correspondence: whether the SW cover letter will be posted nationally or internationally, to a post-box or a support agent serving as an accommodation address, with false or true return addresses or none at all, the content of the cover letters, signals to indicate safety or the absence of which could indicate that the writing is being done under control of a hostile service.

The SW branch also has a technique for' lifting's w from suspect correspondence. The process involves placing a suspect letter in a letter press with steamed sheets on either side. By cranking down pressure enough of the chemicals will come off on the steamed sheets to allow for testing with other chemicals for development. The suspect correspondence can be returned to the mails with no traces of tampering.

The TSD instructors have also demonstrated some of their techniques in safe-cracking, surreptitious entry and lock-picking. But these are such highly specialized activities that TSD technicians almost always travel to countries when these talents are needed. As ordinary case officers we will need only the basic skills and enough knowledge of the really special techniques to know how to plan and when to ask for TSD technicians.

A few weeks ago I was discharged from the Air Force. Now I'm a civilian employee of the Department of the Air Force, as I was when I came to Washington three years ago. The cover unit is another bogus Pentagon office with the major, the colonel and all that routine. But I'm keeping my commission (I'm a First Lieutenant now) by joining an Agency Air Force reserve unit. This is a cover unit too.

Last week Ferguson came down from headquarters and he opened his session with me with a speech on the increasing demand in the Western Hemisphere Division for new case officers -- apparently Castro and the Cuban Revolution are causing more and more problems all over Latin America. My reaction is disappointment, what with all my old fantasies of being a cloak-and-dagger operative in Vienna or Hong Kong. But Ferguson said I could ask for a transfer if after six months I still don't like it. It looks like ten or fifteen of us are destined for the Western Hemisphere Division so maybe it won't be so bad. Besides, all those hours in the language lab may at last be useful.

_______________

Notes:

1. See Chart 1, p. 630.

2. Later known as the 54-12 Group, the Special Group, the 303 Group, the Forty Committee.

3. Later renamed the United States Intelligence Board.

4. Renamed in 1961 the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

5. See Chart 2.

6. See Chart 3.

7. See Chart 4.

8. See pp. 319-20.

9. See Chart 5.

10. Predecessor of the Agency for International Development (AID).

11. Later known as the International Student Conference (ISC).

12. Later renamed the World Confederation of Labor.
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Re: Inside the Company: CIA Diary, by Philip Agee

Postby admin » Tue Jun 09, 2015 4:10 am

PART 1 OF 10

Part Two

Washington DC July 1960


The training programme has ended at last. We spent the last week of June in Baltimore running .in and out of department stores chasing our instructors on surveillance exercises. It was just like earlier exercises in the cities in Virginia except it went on day and night and included bugging hotel rooms, loading and unloading 'dead drops', writing invisible messages, and several difficult agent meetings. Most of us spent the few free hours at night at the Oasis on East Baltimore Street -- without par in really raunchy, fleshy, sweaty stripping.

My feelings were mixed about leaving Camp Peary. It was an isolated sort of life but the club was fun -- the bar, ping-pong, chess. What I'll miss most is the athletic programme and that nice gym.

After a short vacation I checked back with Ferguson ‡ and he sent me over to the personnel officer in the Western Hemisphere (WH) Division. He didn't seem to have expected me and after waiting a couple of hours he sent me to the Venezuela desk, which, I discovered, consists of the desk officer, a secretary, and now me. We are part of Branch 3 of WH Division which covers the Bolivarian countries: Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia - and we also handle matters related to the Dutch islands, Aruba and Curacao, British Guiana and Surinam. Branch 1 has Mexico and Central America, Branch 2 has the Caribbean, Branch 4 has Brazil and Branch 5 has the cono sur: Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina and Chile. Cuban affairs are centred in a special branch and the paramilitary operation (it looks like a repeat of the Guatemala operation but I can't get many details) has taken over a wing of Quarters Eye. All the rest of the division is in Barton Hall near Ohio Drive and the Potomac.

WH Division Is the only area division of the DDP that isn't over in the buildings along the Reflecting Pool, and more and more I've been getting the impression that this division is looked down upon by the rest of the DDP. It seems that the physical separation of the division from the rest of the DDP has created the concept of WH as a fiefdom of Colonel J. C. King ‡ -- he's been WH Division Chief now for some years. The other reason for disdain towards WH (I hear these stories from JOT's who have been assigned to other divisions) is that most of the division leadership -- the branch chiefs and the station chiefs in the field -- are a fraternity of ex-FBI officers who came into the CIA in 1947 when the CIA took over FBI intelligence work in Latin America.

It's embarrassing because they call us the 'gumshoe division', even though the best communist party penetration operations are in Latin America -- WH in fact was responsible for getting the secret Krushchev speech to the 20th CPSU Congress, which the Agency made public long before the Soviets wanted it to be. And everybody knows about Guatemala. The problem is that the glory for super-spooky achievements is enjoyed mostly by EE officers -- old hands from Berlin and Vienna. We'll see how they treat us after Castro gets thrown out!

I can't say I'm wild about the work I've been given. I inherited a desk full of dispatches and cables that nobody had done anything about and trying to make sense out of all this is frustrating -- I have to keep bothering people to find out what all the office symbols mean on the routing sheets, who takes action on what, and which is more and which is less important. Most of my work is processing name checks and reports.

The name checks are even duller than processing reports. The first one I did was on some Jose Diaz and I didn't realize it was such a common name. When I got the references back from Records Integration Division (RID) there were over a thousand traces on people of that name. Trace requests for RID have to be narrowed down by date and place of birth and other identifying data. The bulk of the name checks are for the Standard Oil subsidiary in Venezuela -- the company security officer is a former FBI man and he checks the names of prospective Venezuelan employees with the CIA before hiring -- trying to keep out the bad guys.

This work routine has to improve -- I can't spend a couple of years on reports and name checks.

Washington DC August 1960

I must be living right -- and I'm almost too afraid to think about it -- but I may just get a field assignment sooner than I could ever imagine. Yesterday morning my desk chief, C. Harlow Duffin, ‡ asked me if I was interested in working overseas as he knows of an operations officer slot opening up next month in Quito, Ecuador, and if I'm interested he'll see what he can do. But he said nobody talks about field personnel assignments before they're approved so I've got to keep it secret until he says I can talk. Next month! But he said I wouldn't go right away. First, I'll have really to learn Spanish, then process into the Department of State -- lots of details to take care of first.

Yesterday morning I picked up a book and some briefing material from the Ecuador desk, and I've been reading this instead of doing my work. I can't seem to lay it aside. Talk about banana republics and underdevelopment! Ecuador must be classic: torn apart as it is by internal contradictions and ruled by privileged oligarchies while bigger neighbours gobbled up enormous territories that Ecuador couldn't defend.

The overwhelming international reality for Ecuador is Peru and the 1942 Protocol of Rio de Janeiro whereby Peru made good its claim to over one third of what until then Ecuadoreans had considered national territory. In July and August 1941, after several months of negotiations had failed, Peruvian troops overwhelmed Ecuadorean defences in the south -- and in the eastern Amazonian region. The Rio Protocol was signed after new negotiations and Peru got the disputed territory, mostly Amazonian jungle. There is a Peruvian side to the story, of course, but Ecuador will never forgive having to sign the Rio Protocol under duress. The US was already at war and we needed peace in South America for our own war effort. Although the Peruvian victory in 1941 was only the latest in a series of disputes that go all the way back to pre-hispanic history, for Ecuador, easily defeated and claiming dismemberment by force, the Rio Protocol is a source of national humiliation less than one generation removed. The US government is deeply involved because we promoted negotiation of the Rio Protocol and are still responsible for enforcing it -- along with the other guarantor powers: Brazil, Chile and Argentina.

While Peru is the great international reality for Ecuador, the dominant national reality is the division of the country between sierra and coast. Although the Andes split the country down the middle, the eastern region is mostly tropical jungle divided by Amazonian tributaries. Some years ago exploration was made for petroleum but the cost of a pipeline over the Andes wasn't justified by the discoveries. The oriente, then, with its sparse population (including head-shrinking Indians) counts very little in the national life. The other two regions, the Andes highlands and the Pacific coast, are almost equally divided in area and population, and their interests are traditionally in conflict.

Liberal revolution came to Ecuador in 1895 and the main victim was the Church, as the dominant coastal forces behind the revolution took control of national policy out of the hands of the traditional sierra landowners. Church and State were separated, lay education was established, civil marriage and divorce were instituted, and large Church properties were confiscated.

Following the revolution in 1895 the Liberal Party dominated Ecuadorean politics as liberals joined conservatives in the landowning aristocracy while conditions changed very little for the overwhelming mass of the population completely outside the power structure. Even so, Ecuadorean politics in the twentieth century is not just another history of violent conservative-liberal struggle for spoils of office -- it is indeed that, but much more. Ecuador has one of the most amazing Latin American politicians of the century: Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra -- elected President once again just two months ago. This is the fourth time he's been elected President and none of his terms have been consecutive. And of his three previous times in power, two ended before the constitutional term was over because of military coups against him.

Velasco is the stormy petrel of Ecuadorean politics, a spellbinding orator whose powers of rhetoric are irresistible to the masses. He is also an authoritarian who finds sharing power with the Congress very difficult. His politics are as unpredictable as his fiery temperament and he has taken conflicting positions on many political issues, thereby attracting support from all established political parties, at one time or another. He won the June elections by the largest margin ever attained by an Ecuadorean presidential candidate and he did it in his typically clever fashion. Running as an independent he allied himself with the impoverished masses in violent tirades against the ruling oligarchies who, he claimed, were behind the candidates of the Liberal and Conservative parties. He called for fundamental economic and social change, an end to rule by oligarchies and political bosses, and a fairer distribution of the national income. On this populist appeal Velasco got almost 400,000 votes, a smashing victory, and his denunciations of the Rio Protocol during the campaign made him the champion of Ecuadorean nationalism.

Velasco is due to take office in September but the station in Quito isn't taking any bets on how long he'll last. After three consecutive Ecuadorean presidents have served out their terms, perhaps the instability of the past is ending. Velasco's term is for four years, but taking into account the fact that he is Ecuador's 70th President in 130 years of independence one can't be too sure. I hope I'll be there to see.

Washington DC August 1960

I know I'm over-eager and impatient but I thought I'd go mad during the week they were deciding. Duffin finally called me in and said the Branch Chief, Edwin Terrell, ‡ had approved my nomination and that the reaction in Colonel King's office was also favourable. The officer who is in the position now is being transferred to Guayaquil as Base Chief in September and the station is calling for a replacement right away. The WH personnel officer is arranging for me to go into full-time Spanish training with a tutor so that I can get to Quito as soon as possible. Cover for the job is Assistant Attache in the US Embassy political section, which means I'll have diplomatic status and 'integration' with the State Department as a Foreign Service Officer.

Then Duffin let me in on a secret. He said he is scheduled to go to Quito as Chief of Station (COS) next summer which is why he picked me. Meanwhile, he said, I'll be working with one of the best-liked COS's in WH Division: Jim Noland. ‡ Even with the Spanish training and the time needed for State Department integration, Duffin says I'll still be in Quito before Christmas.

Duffin then set up a meeting for me with Rudy Gomez, ‡ the Deputy Division Chief who gives the final approval on all lesser personnel assignments. He's a gruff sort. Without looking up he said that if I didn't have a good reason for not going to Quito, then I'd have to go. I said I wanted to go, played it real straight and got his approval. Apparently I'm one of the first of our JOT class to get a field assignment -- the only one I've heard of so far who will get out before me is Christopher Thoren ‡ who's being assigned this month under State Department. cover in the US mission at the United Nations.

Washington DC August 1960

Getting to know Ecuador is at once stimulating and sobering. The new Congress, elected in June with Velasco, opened on 10 August although Velasco doesn't take office until 1 September. If the tactics of Velasquistas in the Congress are any indication, the new government may dedicate itself more to persecuting the Poncistas of the outgoing regime than to governing the country. The Velasquistas have a wide plurality in Congress but are just short of a majority. At the opening, which consisted of the annual messages of President Ponce and the President of the Supreme Court, Ponce was overwhelmed by the insults and jeers from the screaming Velaquista-packed galleries, unable to be heard during the entire three-and-a-half-hour speech. The President of the Supreme Court, however, followed Ponce and was heard with silence and respect. Congressional sessions since then have been dedicated to efforts by the Velasquistas to discredit the Ponce government, and Ponce's two most important ministers, Government (internal security) and Foreign Relations, have resigned rather than face humiliation in interpellations (political interrogations) by the Congress.

Attacks by Velasquistas against Ponce and his supporters reflect traditional rivalries but are especially acute now because the Velasquistas are beginning to take revenge for government repression against them during the electoral campaign and even earlier. The most notorious incident was at a Velasquista demonstration on 19 March when five Velasquistas were killed and many wounded. The demonstration was to celebrate Velasco's arrival in Quito to begin the political campaign after several years of self-imposed exile in Argentina. The Velasquista campaign that followed was as much a campaign against Ponce and traditional Ecuadorean oligarchies as it was in favour of political policies proposed by Velasco. While reform proposals for a fairer distribution of the national income and more efficient government administration were central to the Velasco campaign, many are sceptical of his personal stability as well as his ability to break the power of the one hundred or so families that have controlled the country for generations.

The people, nevertheless, liked what they heard from Velasco because this country's extreme injustices and poverty are so acute. Not only is Ecuador the next-to-the-poorest country of South America in terms of per capita annual income (220 dollars -- about one third of Argentina's and less than one tenth of ours) but even this low average amount is extremely unevenly divided. The top 1 per cent of the population receives an income comparable to US standards while about two thirds of the population get only on average a monthly family income of about 10 dollars. This lower two thirds, consisting largely of Indians and people of mixed blood, are simply outside the money economy, completely marginalized and without social or economic integration or participation in the national life.

Except among those who would be adversely affected, there is wide agreement that the root of Ecuador's extremes of poverty and wealth is in land tenure. As in other countries the best lands belong to large landowners who employ relatively few rural workers and thereby contribute to the growing urban unemployed. The small plots usually cannot produce more than a subsistence income due to land quality and size. Even .on the coast where the cash crops of bananas, coffee, cacao and rice are raised on small- and medium-sized properties, fluctuating prices, marketing difficulties, scarce credit and low technification combine for low productivity and a precarious existence for salaried workers.

Thus land reform and a stable market for export crops are fundamental for the economic development necessary before Ecuador can begin to invest adequately in facilities for education, health-care, housing and other possible benefits. Indicators are typical of poor countries: poor diet; high incidence of debilitating diseases caused by intestinal parasites from bad drinking water; 370,000 children unable to attend school this year because no schools exist for them; a housing deficit of 580,000 units in a country of 4.3 million.

Solutions to this misery are being sought both externally and internally. In the external sector the Ecuadoreans are making efforts to stabilize the falling prices that in recent years have forced them to produce ever greater quantities in order to sustain imports. Also of great importance is foreign aid obtained in part from the International Cooperation Administration (ICA) which has a technical assistance mission in Ecuador. Internally, the Ecuadorean government must embark on a programme of reforms: agrarian reform to raise productivity and increase rural employment; fiscal reform to increase government revenues and redistribute income; administrative reform to improve the government administration and the myriad agencies that currently enjoy autonomy -- and to reduce corruption. Already a movement is underway to abolish the huasipungo, a precarious form of tenure, although government land policy is mainly orientated towards colonization and opening of new lands with limited success. Lowering the population growth, now up to 3.1 per cent annually, is of obvious importance, but is hindered by tradition and Catholic Church policy. Somehow all of these programmes will contribute to raising the rate of economic growth and to increasing the benefits available to the marginalized two thirds of the population. Promises for these reforms and increased benefits won Velasco his sensational victory, and he'll soon have the chance to deliver.

Washington DC September 1960

For several weeks I've been studying Spanish full-time with a tutor in Arlington, and on the tapes in the language lab. I'll probably be in this routine until November when I get integrated to the State Department and take the two-week orientation course at the Foreign Service Institute. Meanwhile I stop in each morning to see Duffin and read more background material at the Ecuadorean desk.

Velasco is now President. He has embarked on two early policies that affect operations of the Quito station and other matters of concern to us. First, he is trying to purge all the supporters of Ponce from government employment, and secondly, he is stirring up the border problem with Peru by declaring the Rio Protocol null and void.

Immediately after taking power Velasco relieved forty-eight military officers from their assigned duties and placed them at the disposition of the Ministry of Defence. Velasco also started a purge in the National Police, starting with the two senior colonels Who were the station's main liaison agents. They were arrested and charged with participating in the 19 March riot.

More serious was the forced departure of our Station Operations Officer under Public Safety Cover with the United States Operations Mission (USOM) of the ICA programme. Our Station Officer, Bob Weatherwax, ‡ had been in the forefront directing the police during the 19 March riot, and he was clearly identified because of his very blond hair and red face - practically an albino colouring. As soon as Velasco was inaugurated Weatherwax and Jim Noland, the COS, were notified by Jorge Acosta Velasco, ‡ the President's nephew and family favourite (he has no children), that Weatherwax should leave the country for a while to avoid being dragged into the prosecutions for the 19 March affair. Acosta, who is a close friend of both Weatherwax and Noland, made the suggestion only to be helpful, not as an official act. Nevertheless, Noland agreed and Weatherwax is now back in Washington killing time until he can return.

The government purge is being run mostly by Manuel Araujo Hidalgo who was elected to the Chamber of Deputies from Pichincha Province (the Quito region) and who is now Minister of Government. He was appointed after Velasco fired his first Minister of Government only a week after taking office. Araujo had to resign the Deputies seat but he is clearly the leader of the Velasquista mobs.

Araujo is an extreme leftist and ardent defender of the Cuban Revolution -- exactly the wrong man for the most important internal security job. He is particularly hostile to the US, and the station is fearful that he may jeopardize the Public Safety Programme because he is also in charge of the National Police. The real danger is that all our efforts to improve the government's security capabilities in preparation for the 11th Inter-American Conference -- now just six months away -- may go down the drain.

Araujo's purge is running not only into the military services and the police. The civilian government employees are also being purged of Ponce supporters -- helped especially by the Congress's repeal of the Civil Service Career Law passed during the Ponce administration. Velasco obviously wants to pack the government with his own people.

Velasco's declaration in his inaugural speech that the Rio Protocol is void has been followed by rising tension and fears that the dispute may jeopardize the Inter-American Conference. Ecuadoreans are without doubt behind Velasco on the matter, but Velasco is using the issue to denounce any opposition to his policies as anti-patriotic and prejudicial to a favourable solution of the boundary problem. So far the Conservative Party and the Social Christians, while defending the Ponce administration, have not declared open opposition to Velasco.

Washington DC October 1960

Headquarters files on the operations of the Quito station and its subordinate base in Guayaquil reflect the very careful analysis of the operational environment that is always the framework within which operations are undertaken. Although the analysis includes assessments of such factors as security and cover, the most important part deals with the enemy.

The Communist Party of Ecuador (PCE)

Although the PCE has been a legal party since World War II, it has never been able to obtain the 5000 signatures necessary for inscribing candidates in national elections. However, Pedro Saad, the PCE Secretary-General, held the seat as Functional Senator for Labour from the coast from 1947 until last June when he was defeated through a Guayaquil base political-action operation. (The Ecuadorean Senate has a number of 'functional senators' from coast and sierra representing special interest groups, e.g. labour, commerce, education, agriculture, the military services.) Membership in the PCE is estimated by the station at around 1000 with perhaps another 1000 members in the Communist Youth of Ecuador (JCE). Almost all of the members of the PCE National Executive Committee reside in Guayaquil. With respect to the emerging Sino-Soviet differences the PCE national leadership supports the Soviets although some PCE leaders in the sierra, particularly in Quito, are beginning to lean towards the more militant Chinese position.

In the elections this year the PCE joined with the left wing of the Socialist Party and the Concentration of Popular Forces (CFP) to back a leftist candidate for President, the Rector of Guayaquil University, who received only about 46,000 votes -- just 6 per cent of the total. PCE strength, however, is not measured in voter appeal but in the strength of labour, student and youth organizations in which its influence is strong.

The Socialist Party of Ecuador (PSE)

Although much larger than the PCE, the Socialist Party has cooperated for many years with the Communists in the leadership of the labour movement. Recently the Socialists have split into a right wing which formed an alliance with the Liberal Party in the unsuccessful presidential campaign of Galo Plaza this year, and a left wing which voted with the PCE and the CFP.

Because of its support for the Cuban Revolution and of violent revolutionary principles, the left-wing Socialists are dangerous and inimical to US interests. Their successes, however, are concentrated in the labour movement and intellectual circles. The President of the Ecuadorean Workers' Confederation is a leftwing Socialist as is the Functional Senator for Labour from the sierra.

The Ecuadorean Workers Confederation (CTE)

Founded by the Communists and the Socialists in 1944, the CTE is by far the most dominant labour confederation in Ecuador and a member of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU). Although the Secretary-General of the PCE, Pedro Saad, headed the CTE at the beginning, a Socialist took over in the late 1940s and this party is still in nominal control. However, the Communists retained the number two position and are now considered to exercise dominant if not complete control in the CTE. CTE membership is estimated at 60,000 -- less than 10 per cent of the poorly organized labour force, but enough to cause serious trouble.

The Ecuadorean Federation of University Students (FEUE)

Consistent with the traditional leftist-activist student movement in Latin America, the FEUE -- the principal Ecuadorean national student union -- has been under frequent, if not continuous, control by PCE, JCE and left-wing Socialists. Its loud campaigns are directed against the US presence in Ecuador and Latin America, mainly US business, and strongly in support of the Cuban Revolution. When appropriate issues are presented the FEUE is capable of mobilizing the students, secondary students included, for strikes and street manifestations as well as propaganda campaigns. It is supported by leftist professors and administrators in the five state universities in Quito, Guayaquil, Portoviejo, Cuenca and Loja.

The Revolutionary Union of Ecuadorean Youth (URJE)

In 1959 the youth organizations of the Communists, the Socialists and the Concentration of Popular Forces formed URJE which has become the most important leftist-activist youth movement. It engages in street demonstrations, wall-painting, circulation of f1ysheets, intimidation -- agitation of many kinds for revolutionary causes. Although URJE denies that it is a communist front, the station considers it under PCE control and the most immediate and dangerous threat for terrorism and armed insurgency. It is stronger in Guayaquil than in Quito, and its membership in both places totals about 1000. URJE gives unqualified support to the Cuban Revolution and several URJE leaders have travelled to Cuba, probably for revolutionary training.

Hostile Elements in the Ecuadorean Government

The Velasquista movement, as a heterogeneous populist movement contains political colourings from extreme right to extreme left. The Minister of Government, Manuel Araujo Hidalgo, is our most important enemy in the government, but others, such as the Minister of Education and various appointees to lesser posts, are also dangerous. The station has a continuing programme for monitoring leftist penetration in the government, and the results are regularly reported to headquarters and to the Ambassador and the State Department. Aside from the National Government, the mayors of the provincial capitals of Ambato and Esmeraldas are Revolutionary Socialists.
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Re: Inside the Company: CIA Diary, by Philip Agee

Postby admin » Tue Jun 09, 2015 4:12 am

PART 2 OF 10

The Cuban Mission

The Cuban Embassy consists of the Ambassador and four officials. The station lacks concrete information on support by the Cuban Embassy to Ecuadorean revolutionary organizations, but their overt contacts with extreme leftists leave little doubt. Araujo is their angel in the government and of course they are supported by leftists throughout the country. While the station is making efforts to penetrate the Embassy -- and the Guayaquil base is doing the same against the one-man Cuban Consulate -- the main CIA drive is to promote a break in diplomatic relations through propaganda and political-action operations.

The Czech Mission

Ecuador broke diplomatic relations with Czechoslovakia in 1957 but during his last week in the presidency, Ponce received the Czech Minister to Brazil and relations were again established. The station expects that within a few weeks or a little longer the Czechs will try to establish a diplomatic mission in Quito which undoubtedly will include intelligence officers.

Operations of the Quito station and the Guayaquil base are directed against these targets and are laid down in the Related Missions Directive (RMD) for Ecuador, which is a general statement of priorities and objectives.

PRIORITY A

Collect and report intelligence on the strength and intentions of communist and other political organizations hostile to the US, including their international sources of support and guidance and their influence in the Ecuadorean government.

Objective 1: Effect agent and/or technical penetrations at the highest possible level of the Communist Party of Ecuador (PCE), the Socialist Party of Ecuador (PSE-revolutionary), the Communist Youth of Ecuador (JCE), the Revolutionary Union of Ecuadorean Youth (URJE) and related organizations.

Objective 2: Effect agent and/or technical penetration of the Cuban missions in Ecuador.

PRIORITY B

Collect and report intelligence on the stability of the Ecuadorean government and on the strength and intentions of dissident political groups.

Objective 1: Maintain agents and other sources at the highest levels of the government, the security services and the ruling political organization.

Objective 2: Maintain agents and other sources in opposition political parties, especially among military leaders favourable to opposition parties.

PRIORITY C

Through propaganda and psychological warfare operations: (1) disseminate information and opinion designed to counteract anti-US or pro-communist propaganda; (2) neutralize communist or extreme-leftist influence in principal mass organizations or assist in establishing or maintaining alternative organizations under non-communist leadership.

Objective 1: Place appropriate propaganda in the most effective local media.

Objective 2: Support democratic leaders of political, labour, student and youth organizations, particularly in areas where communist influence is strongest (Ecuadorean Federation of University Students (FEUE); Ecuadorean Workers Confederation (CTE)), and where democratic leaders may be encouraged to combat communist subversion.

That is a sizeable order for such a small station and base -- although the CIA budget for Ecuador is a little over 500,000 dollars for this fiscal year. The Quito station consists of the Chief, James B. Noland; ‡ Deputy Chief (this job is vacant and will not be filled until early next year); one operations officer which is the job I'm being sent to; a reports officer, John Bacon, ‡ who also handles several of the most important operations; a communications officer; an administrative assistant (she handles the money and property and doubles as Noland's secretary); and a secretary-typist. The entire station is under cover in the political section of the Embassy with the exception of Bob Weatherwax, ‡ the operations officer under Public Safety cover in USOM.

The Guayaquil base forms the entire small political section of the Consulate, consisting of a base chief, Richard Wheeler, ‡ (my predecessor in Quito); one operations officer; an administrative assistant who also handles communications; and a secretary-typist.

The general directives of the RMD are put into practice through a number of operations, making use of agents we have recruited, and which are summarized now in some detail, first so far as the main station at Quito is concerned, then for the Guayaquil base.

Quito Foreign Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence Operations (FI-CI)

ECSIGIL. This is our most important penetration operation against the Communist Party of Ecuador and consists of two agents who are members of the PCE and close associates of Rafael Echeverria Flores, principal PCE leader in the sierra. The agents are Mario Cardenas, ‡ whose cryptonym is ECSIGIL-1, and Luis Vargas, ‡ who is ECSIGIL-2. They have been reporting for about four years since their recruitment as 'walk-ins' after their disillusionment with the PCE. Although the agents are close friends and originally came to the station together, they have since been discouraged from associating too closely, so that if one is ever blown, the other will not be contaminated. The separation is also designed to prevent their collaborating over what they report.

Cardenas is directed through a cutout, Mario Cabeza de Vaca ‡ a Quito milk producer who became a US citizen through military service in World War II but returned to Ecuador afterwards. He is married to an American who runs the food and liquor commissary of the US Embassy. Vargas is directed through another cutout, Miguel Burbano de Lara, ‡ who is the Quito airport manager of Pan American-Grace Airways. The cutouts are not supposed to know each other's identity, although each knows that Vargas and Cardenas are reporting, and they meet separately with the station Reports Officer, John Bacon, who handles this operation.

Although neither of these agents holds important PCE elective positions, they are extremely close to Echeverria and the decision-making process in Quito. They receive information on practically all matters of importance, and the ECSIGIL project accounts for an average of about five or six disseminated intelligence reports in Washington each week.

ECFONE. This operation consists of an agent penetration of the PCE and his cutout who also reports on the policy and plans of the Velasco government. The recruitment of the PCE agent, Atahualpa Basantes Larrea, ‡ ECFONE-3, is one of the more interesting recent station accomplishments. Early in 1960 when the leaders of Velasco's political movement began to organize for Velasco's return from Buenos Aires and the presidential campaign, Oswaldo Chiriboga, ‡ ECFONE, was a Velasquista leader reporting to the station on Velasco's political campaign. Chiriboga advised one day that he had recently seen his old friend, Basantes, who had been active in Ecuadorean communism but had drifted away and was now in dire financial straits. Noland, the COS, directed Chiriboga to suggest to Basantes that he become more active in the PCE and at the same time become an adviser to Chiriboga on PCE reaction to the Velasco campaign. Care was taken from the beginning to establish a secure, discreet relationship between Chiriboga and Basantes, and Noland provided Chiriboga with modest sums for Basantes's 'expenses' as adviser -- the classic technique for establishing a developmental agent's dependence on a station salary. Basantes had no trouble expanding his activities in the PCE and soon he was reporting valuable information. Chiriboga, of course, moved carefully from innocuous matters to more sensitive information while easing Basantes into an agent's dependency. Although the original rational for Basantes's reporting ended with the elections in J~ne, Chiriboga has since been able to convince Basantes of the continuing need for his' advice'.

ECOLIVE. An agent penetration of the Revolutionary Union of Ecuadorean Youth (URJE), ECOLIVE-l, ‡ is a recent walk-in who is considered to have long-range potential for penetrating the PCE or other revolutionary organizations into which he may later be guided. For the moment he is reporting on the activities and plans of URJE for street demonstrations in support of Velasco's attempt to nullify the Rio Protocol.

ECCENTRIC. This agent is a physician, Dr. Felipe Ovalle, ‡ with a history of collaboration with the US government that goes back to FBI days during World War II. Although he is a Colombian he has lived in Ecuador for many years where he has a modest medical practice, most of which comes from his inclusion on the US Embassy list of approved medical examiners for Ecuadorean applicants for visas. Ovalle's 201 agent file reveals that verification of his medical degree, supposedly obtained at a Colombian university, has proved impossible. Through the years he has developed a close relationship with President Velasco, whom he now serves as personal physician. Ovalle reports the results of his weekly meetings with Velasco to the station. Occasionally the information from this operation is interesting enough to disseminate in Washington, but usually the information is inferior to that of other agents.

ECAMOROUS. The main station activity in security preparations for the Inter-American Conference is the training and equipping of the intelligence department of the Ecuadorean National Police. The intelligence department is called the Department of Special Services of the National Police Headquarters, and its chief is Police Captain Jose Vargas, ‡ ECAMOROUS-2, who has been given special training here and in headquarters. Weatherwax, our case officer under Public Safety cover, works almost exclusively with Vargas, who has been in trouble recently for being the leader of a secret society of pro-Velasco young police officers. Secret societies in the police, as in the military, are forbidden.

In spite of all our efforts, Vargas seems incapable of doing very much to help us, but he has managed to develop three or four marginal reporting agents on extreme leftist activities in his home town of Riobamba, a sierra provincial capital, and in Esmeraldas, a coastal provincial capital. Reports from these sources come ' directly to Vargas, and from him to the station, because there is little interest in this type of information further up the line in the Ecuadorean government. On the contrary, with Araujo as the minister in charge of the National Police, intelligence collection by a police officer is a risky activity.

Intelligence needs during the Inter-American Conference will have to be satisfied largely by the station directly through unilateral operations but before information of this kind is passed to Vargas it will have to be disguised to protect the source. Although strictly speaking ECAMOROUS is a liaison operation, the police intelligence unit is completely run by the station. Vargas is paid a salary by Noland with additional money for his sub-agents and expenses. Some technical equipment such as photo gear and non-sensitive audio equipment has been given to Vargas by the station, and we have trained his chief technician, Lieutenant Luis Sandoval. ‡

Vargas is young and rather reckless but very friendly, well-disposed and intelligent. Although he is considered to be excellent as a long-term penetration of the National Police, he could be worked into other operations in the future. His first loyalty is undoubtedly to the station, and when asked he is glad to use his police position as cover for action requested by the station.

ECOLE. This is the station's main penetration operation against the Ecuadorean National Police other than the intelligence side, and it also produces information about the Ecuadorean Workers Confederation (CTE). The principal agent, Colonel Wilfredo Oswaldo Lugo, ‡ ECOLE, has been working with the US government since hunting Nazis with the FBI during World War II. Since 1947 he has been working with the Quito station, and in the police shuffle and purge during Velasco's first weeks in office, Lugo was appointed Chief of the Department of Personnel of the National Police Headquarters.

In contrast with the fairly open contact between Noland and Weatherwax and Captain Vargas, the intelligence chief, contact between Noland and Lugo is very discreet. The agent is considered to be a penetration of the security service and in times of crisis his reporting is invaluable, since he is in a position to give situation reports on government plans and reactions to events as reflected in orders to police and military units.

Over the years Colonel Lugo has developed several agents who report on communist and related activities. Two of these agents are currently active and are targeted against the CTE. Their reporting is far inferior to PCE penetration agents such as Cardenas, Luis Vargas and Basantes, but they are kept on the payroll as insurance in case anything ever happens to the better agents. Noland also pays a regular monthly salary to Colonel Lugo.

ECJACK. About two years ago the Army established the Ecuadorean Military Intelligence Service (SIME) under Lieutenant- Colonel Roger Paredes, ‡ ECJACK, who then made contact with Noland. Paredes had been trained by the US Army at Fort Leavenworth some years earlier. In 1959, however, discouraged by the lack of support from his government for SIME, Paredes suggested to Noland that he might be more effective if he retired from the Army and worked full time with the station. At this point SIME was only a paper organization, and even today is still useless.

Paredes's suggestion to Noland came just at the time the station investigations and surveillance team was discovered to be falsifying reports and expenses. The old ECSERUM team was fired and Paredes retired from the Army to form a new team. He now runs a five-man full-time team for surveillance and general investigations in Quito and, in addition, he has two reporting agents in the important southern sierra town of Loja. These two agents are on the fringes of communist activities there.

Station direction of this operation is entirely through Lieutenant- Colonel Paredes, who uses the SIME organization as cover and as ostensible sponsor for the other agents in the operation. Another sub-agent is the chief of the identity card section of the Ministry of Government. As all citizens are required to register and obtain an official government-issued identity card, this agent provides on request the full name, date and place of birth, names of parents, occupation, address and photograph of practically any Ecuadorean. His main value is to provide this data for the station LYNX List, which is a list of about 100 communists and other activists of the extreme left whom the station considers the most dangerous. The LYNX List is a requirement for all Western Hemisphere stations, to be maintained in case a local government in time of crisis should ask (or be asked by the US government) for assistance in the emergency preventive detention of dangerous persons. The ECJACK team spends part of its time updating addresses and place of employment of current LYNX List members and in getting the required information on new additions.

The team is also used for following officers of the Cuban Embassy or for following and identifying persons who visit the Embassy. Their surveillance work is recognized by the station as clumsy and indiscreet, but plans call for additional training, vehicles (they have no team transportation) and perhaps radio equipment. Paredes, of course, maintains close contact with military officers in SIME so that the station can monitor that service and confirm the reporting from the US Army Major who is the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) intelligence advisor.

ECSTACY. In the central Quito post office, ECSTACY-1 ‡ is the chief of the incoming airmail pouch section. As pouches arrive from Cuba, the Soviet bloc and Communist China, he sets them aside for his brother, ECSTACY-2, ‡ who passes them to the station. John Bacon, the station reports officer, processes the letters and returns them the same day for reinsertion in the mails. Payment is made on a piecework basis. Processing requires surreptitious opening, reading, photography of letters of interest, and closing. Each week Bacon reports by dispatch the gist of the letters of main interest, with copies to headquarters and other interested stations.

As most of the letters are from Ecuadoreans who are visiting the countries from which the letters are mailed, this postal intercept operation enables the station to monitor travellers to communist countries and their potential danger when they return. The letters also reveal leads to possible recruitment of Ecuadoreans who have been invited to visit communist countries, as well as those selected for scholarships to schools such as Moscow's People's Friendship University. Still other letters are from residents of the country where the letter originates, who are writing to Ecuadoreans who have visited that country. Attention is paid to possible political disaffection of the writers, for recruitment as agents in the country where the letter originates.

Since the letter intake amounts to about thirty to forty letters per day, the ECSTACY operation is time-consuming for the station officer in charge. Nevertheless it is a valuable support operation and of considerable interest to the Cuban, Soviet, Eastern Europe and Communist Chinese branches in the DDP in headquarters.

ECOTTER. Travel control is another standard support function enabling the station to monitor the movements of communists, politicians and other people of interest on the flights between Quito and other cities and on the international flights. ECOTTER- 1, ‡ an employee of the civil aviation office at the Quito airport, passes copies of all passenger lists to ECOTTER-2, ‡ who brings them to the station in the Embassy. The passenger lists, which arrive in the station only one day after the flights, are circulated for perusal by each station officer and returned when the new batch is delivered.

ECOTTER-1 has arranged with airport immigration inspectors to note on the lists whenever a traveller's passport indicates travel to a communist country or to Cuba, and this information is reported to headquarters and indexed for station files. Any travel by people of importance, mainly local communists or communist diplomats, is reported to headquarters and appropriate stations and bases where the passenger list indicates they are travelling.

ECTOSOME. The principal station agent for intelligence against the Czechs is Otto Kladensky, ‡ the Oldsmobile dealer in Quito. His reporting has diminished since the Czechs were expelled three years ago, but now that relations have been reestablished he will undoubtedly be in close contact with Czech officials when they open a Quito Embassy. For the time being he reports on the occasional visits of Czech trade officials, and he provides the link to a high-level penetration of the Velasquista movement, ECOXBOW-1.

ECOXBOW. Before this year's political campaign, Noland began cultivating a retired Army lieutenant-colonel, Reinaldo Varea Donoso, ‡ ECOXBOW-1, whom he met through Kladensky. Recruitment of Varea, an important leader of Velasquistas in military circles proceeded with the assistance of Kladensky. Funds were provided by Noland via Kladensky for Varea's successful campaign for the Senate, and in August he was elected Vice- President of the Senate. He reports on military support for Velasco and he maintains regular contact with the leadership in the Ministry of Defence and the principal military units.

Varea's station salary of 700 dollars per month is high by Ecuadorean standards but his access to crucial intelligence on government policy and stability is adequate justification. The project also provides funds for a room rented full-time in Kladensky's name in the new, luxurious Hotel Quito (built for the Inter- American Conference) where Kladensky and Varea take their playmates. Noland occasionally meets Varea in the hotel, but he is trying to keep the relation with Varea as discreet as possible by channelling contact through Kladensky.

AMBLOOD. Early this year the Miami Operations base, cryptonym JMWAVE, was established to support operations against the Castro regime in Cuba. The Havana station is preparing to continue operations from Miami when relations with Cuba are broken and the Embassy in Havana is closed. As part of the Cuban operation stay-behind procedures, the Quito station was asked to provide accommodation addresses for communicating with agents in Cuba by secret writing. Lieutenant-Colonel Paredes, the chief of the surveillance and investigative team, rented several post-boxes which have been assigned to Cuban agents who -are part of a team located in Santiago, Cuba. The chief of the team is Luis Toroella, ‡ AMBLOOD-1, a former Cuban government employee who has been trained in the US and is now being sent back to Cuba to head the AMBLOOD team.

The messages to Cuba are written in secret writing (SW) in Miami and forwarded by pouch to the Quito station where a cover letter is written by Francine Jacome, ‡ ECDOXY, who is an American married to an Ecuadorean and who performs occasional support tasks for the station. The messages from Cuba to Quito are also written in a liquid SW system and are retrieved from the post-boxes by Paredes, passed to the station, and forwarded to the JMWAVE base in Miami.

Quito Psychological and Paramilitary Operations (PP)

ECURGE. The major station agent for placing propaganda is Gustavo Salgado, ‡ an ex-communist considered by many to be the outstanding liberal political journalist in the country. His column appears several times per week in El Comercio, the main Quito daily, and in several provincial newspapers. Salgado also writes under pseudonyms for wider publication.

Proper treatment of Ecuadorean and international themes is worked out in the station by John Bacon, who is in charge of this operation too, and passed to the agent for final draft. Headquarters guidance on propaganda subjects is also passed over in considerable volume and, on request from other stations, Salgado can comment on events in other countries to be later replayed there.

Salgado is also extremely useful for publishing intelligence received from agent penetrations of the PCE and like-minded groups, and for exposing communist backing for disruptive activities. The agent is paid on a production basis.

ECELDER. Fly-sheets and handbills are a major propaganda medium in Ecuador and the ECELDER operation is a secret means for printing these kinds of throwaway notice. Five brothers, most of whom have other employment, divide the work of operating a small family printing business. The family name is Rivadeneira and the brothers are Marcelo, ‡ Jorge, ‡ Patricio, ‡ Rodrigo, ‡ and Ramiro. ‡ The brothers are well known in local basketball circles and have been the mainstays of the principal Catholic preparatory-school team, La Salle, in its traditional rivalry with the principal lay preparatory school, Mejia. Noland, who is also active in basketball circles, handles the contact with whichever brother is running the printing plant at a particular moment.

The text of the fly-sheets is usually written in the station by John Bacon and passed to Gustavo Salgado for final draft. After printing they are given to a secret distribution team. The ECELDER printing plant is a legitimate operation with regular commercial orders. For the station handbills, fictitious print-shop symbols are often used because Ecuadorean law requires all printed material to carry the print-shop symbol. The shop also has symbols for the print shop used by the communists and related groups, for use when a station-written handbill is attributed to them.

ECJOB. A team of Catholic university students directed by ECJOB-1 ‡ is used to distribute the station handbills printed at the ECELDER shop. Because the handbills have false print-shop symbols and the team distributes without official permits, techniques for fast, efficient distribution are necessary. Usually several trucks are rented and as they move swiftly along the crowded Quito streets the handbills are hurled into the air. Several times team members have been arrested but ECJOB-1 has been able to buy their freedom without difficulty. None of the team except the leader himself knows about US Embassy sponsorship of the operation.

The team is also used for wall-painting, another major propaganda medium in Ecuador. Usually the team works in the early hours of the morning, painting slogans on instruction by the station or painting out and mutilating the slogans painted by communist or pro-communist groups. Extreme caution is taken by the team in order to avoid street clashes with the opposition wall-painters who sometimes roam the streets searching for the anti-communists who spoil their work. John Bacon is also in charge of this operation.

ECACTOR. The most important station operation for anticommunist political action consists of funding and guidance to selected leaders of the Conservative Party and the Social Christian Movement. The operation developed from the most important station penetration agent of the Ponce government, Renato Perez Drouet, ‡ who was Secretary-General of the Administration under Ponce and has since returned to manage his Quito travel agency. Through Perez, the station now finances the anti-communist propaganda and political action of the Social Christian Movement, of which Perez is a leader.

Before the 1960 election campaign Perez proposed to Noland the support of a young engineer, Aurelio Davila Cajas, ‡ ECACTOR-1, whom Noland began to cultivate. Davila intensified his activities in the Conservative Party and with station financing he was elected in June to the Chamber of Deputies, representing the distant and sparsely populated Amazonian province of Napo. Davila is now the fastest rising young leader in the Conservative Party and very closely associated with the Catholic Church hierarchy which the party represents in politics. He is an outspoken and militant anti-communist and is considered by Noland, moreover, to have an enlightened stance on social reform. The station is now helping him to build up his personal political organization, which is branching out into student politics at the Catholic university. Normal communications between Noland and Davila, and the passage of funds, is through Renato Perez. In emergencies, however, messages and money are passed via Barbara Svegle, ‡ the station secretary-typist, who rents an apartment in Davila's apartment-building where the agent also lives.

Also through Renato Perez, Noland cultivated and eventually recruited Rafael Arizaga, ‡ ECACTOR-2, who is the principal leader of the Conservative Party in Cuenca, Ecuador's third largest city. Through this agent Noland financed Conservative Party-candidates in Cuenca including the agent's son, Carlos Arizaga Vega, ‡ ECACTOR-3, who was elected to the provincial council of Azuay -- the province of which Cuenca is capital. Communications with this branch of the ECACTOR operation are difficult, but usually Noland travels to Cuenca for meetings although the principal agent may go to Quito. Funds channelled through this project are now being spent on anti-communist propaganda, student politics at the University of Cuenca, and local militant street-action by Conservative Party youth groups.

Another agent has recently been added in order to fulfil the project's goals in Ecuador's fourth largest city, Ambato, another sierra provincial capital. The agent is Jorge Gortaire, ‡ ECACTOR- 4, a retired Army colonel who has recently returned from service on the Inter-American Defense Board in Washington. Gortaire is on the list of pro-Ponce military officers now being purged. In 1956 he was elected as functional Senator for the Armed Forces, but he served only part of his term before being assigned by Ponce to the Inter-American Defense Board. In Washington he was cultivated by a CIA headquarters officer assigned to spot and assess potential agent material in the delegations to the Defense Board, and reports on Gortaire were forwarded to the Quito station. Noland has initiated contact with Gortaire and the Ecuadorean desk is processing clearance for use of this agent in anticommunist political action and propaganda in Ambato. Special importance is attached to this new agent because the mayor of Ambato is a Revolutionary Socialist and is using the municipal government machinery to promote infiltration by the extreme left there. Gortaire has excellent potential because he would be a likely candidate for Minister of Defence if Ponce is re-elected in the next elections. Meanwhile he will also be reporting on any rumours and reports of discontent in the military commands.

ECOPTIC. The socialists, it will be remembered, have split into two rival groups: the Democratic Socialist Party of Ecuador (PSE) and the Revolutionary Socialist Party (PSR). Through his work in the University Sport League which sponsors one of the best Ecuadorean professional soccer teams, Noland met, cultivated and finally recruited Manuel Naranjo, ‡ ECOPTIC-1, a principal leader of the PSE. With financial support from Noland, Naranjo, an outstanding economist, was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in June, representing Pichincha (Quito) Province. Financial assistance is continuing so that this agent, like the others, can build up a personal political organization and influence his party to take desired action on issues such as communism and Castro, while fighting the PSR.

ECBLOOM. Labour operations are perhaps the weakest part of the Quito station operational programme, although considerable potential exists in political-action agents such as Aurelio Davila and Manuel Naranjo. However, because of Velasco's appeal to the working class and the poor, Noland has continued to support a long-time agent in the Velasquista movement, Jose Baquero de la Calle. ‡ Baquero has presidential ambitions and is the leader of the rightist wing of the Velasquista movement, closely identified with the Catholic Church hierarchy. He is now Velasco's Minister of Labour and Social Welfare, and Noland hopes that non-communist labour organizations can be strengthened through his aid. His close identification with the Church, however, is restricting his potential for labour operations to the Church-controlled Catholic Labor Center ‡ (CEDOC) which is a small, artisan-oriented organization. Noland pays Baquero a salary and expense money for his own political organization and for intelligence on the government and Velasquista politics.

ECORT. Student operations are run for the most part from the Guayaquil base. However, the Quito station finances and directs the most important Ecuadorean anti-communist student newspaper, Voz Universitaria. ‡ The agent in this operation is Wilson Almeida, ‡ ECORT-1, who is the editor of the newspaper. Almeida gives the publication a liberal orientation because the Catholic student movement is supported through Renato Perez, of the Social Christian Movement and Aurelio Davila of the Conservative Party. Propaganda against the Cuban Revolution and against communist penetration in the HUE (university students federation) is the main function of the ECORT newspaper.

The following are the main operations of the Guayaquil base:

Fl-CI Operations

ECHINOCARUS. There are already increasing signs of a policy split in the Communist Party of Ecuador (PCE) over the problem of revolutionary violence v. the peaceful road to socialism. The PCE leadership grouped around Pedro Saad, the Secretary- General, generally favour the long struggle of preparing the masses, while the sierra leaders grouped around Rafael Echeverria Flores, leader of the Pichincha Provincial Committee, tend towards early initiation of guerrilla action and terrorism. Thus the communists themselves are beginning to split along sierra-coast lines, and the Guayaquil base is charged with monitoring the Saad group.

The best of several base penetration agents is ECHINOCARUS- 1 ‡ whose access is superior to cell-level, but far from the secrets of Saad's Executive Committee. The Guayaquil base is hoping to snare a really first-class penetration agent, or mount a productive technical penetration, on the basis of a new targeting study now underway.

ECLAT. The counterpart to the ECJACK surveillance and investigative team in Quito is the ECLAT operation in Guayaquil. This is a team of five agents who have access to government identification and police files. The team is directed by an ex-Army officer who also reports information picked up among his former colleagues in the coastal military garrisons. As in Quito, the investigative team in Guayaquil keeps the LYNX contingency list current for quick action against the most important-activists of the extreme left.

ECAXLE. The main political intelligence collected by the base is through Al Reed, ‡ an American who has spent a large part of his life in Guayaquil. He inherited a family business there, which has been doing rather badly, but he manages to keep close relations going with a variety of business, professional and political leaders.

Guayaquil PP Operations

ECCALICO. What the base lacks in intelligence collection is made up in labour and student operations. ECCALICO is the labour operation through which the base formed an organization to defeat Pedro Saad in the coast election of a Functional Senator for Labour earlier this year. The same organization forms the nucleus for a new coastal labour confederation that will soon be launched.

The principal agent in the operation is Emilio Estrada Icaza, ‡ the general manager of one of the country's largest banks. The main sub-agents are Adalberto Miranda Giron, ‡ a leader of the Guayas Provincial Federation of Employees (white-collar workers) and the base candidate who defeated Saad; Victor Contreras Zuniga, ‡ anti-communist Guayaquil labour leader; and Enrique Amador Marquez, ‡ also an anti-communist labour leader. Through Estrada the base financed Miranda's electoral campaign, which mainly consisted of the forming and registering of new, anti-communist unions in the coastal provinces, mostly in Guayas (Guayaquil). The election was based on a point system weighted according to the numbers of workers in the unions recognized by the electoral court. Although the new unions registered through the operation were really only company social clubs, for the most part, and were generally encouraged by management as a result of the prestigious but discreet support from Estrada, the protests from the CTE and other communist-influenced labour groups were disallowed by the electoral court. On the contrary, just before the election the electoral court disqualified some fifteen pro-Saad unions following protests from the ECCALICO agents. The balance swung in favour of Miranda, and he was elected. Blair Moffet, ‡ the Guayaquil Base Chief, received a commendation from headquarters on this operation, which eliminated the PCE Secretary-General from a Senate seat he had held since the 1940s.

The base plan now is to follow through with the formation of a new coastal labour confederation using the same unions, agents and cover as in the election. The CIA labour programmes and the ORIT labour representative will also be used, as they were in the electoral campaign, although they are not in direct contact with the base. The long-range strategy in labour operations, obviously, is to weaken the communist and revolutionary socialist-dominated CTE while establishing and strengthening the station and base-controlled democratic union structure.

ECLOSE. Student election operations for control of the Ecuadorean Federation of University Students (FEUE) are run by the Guayaquil base through Alberto Alarcon, ‡ ECLOSE, who is a businessman active in the Liberal Party. At different times each year, the five Ecuadorean universities elect new FEUE officers. An annual convention is also held when the national seat of FEUE goes in rotation from one university to another. Alarcon manages teams of agents at these electoral conventions, who are armed with anti-communist propaganda and ample funds for purchasing votes and other activities designed to swing the elections away from the communist and pro-communist candidates. Through this operation national control of the FEUE has been kept out of communist hands for several years, although communist influence is still very strong nationally and at several of the local FEUE chapters. Nevertheless, efforts to have the FEUE pull out of the communist International Union of Students in Prague, and to affiliate with the CIA-controlled COSEC ‡ in Leyden, have been unsuccessful.

Washington DC November 1960

Tension and crisis prevail in the most important breakthrough in operations against the Cubans in Quito. In October the Cuban Embassy chauffeur, a communist, offered his services to the Embassy through an intermediary and was immediately picked up by the station. His motivation is entirely mercenary but his reporting so far has been accurate. His access is limited, of course, but he will be an extremely valuable source for information about the Cuban diplomats which we can use in trying to recruit some of them.

The problem is that the agent, ECALIBY-1, ‡ missed a meeting several weeks ago and has also failed to appear for later alternative meetings. Blair Moffet, the former Guayaquil Base Chief who has gone temporarily to Quito until I arrive, is handling the case and has even checked at the agent's home. Nobody there knew anything of his recent movements. Moffet is afraid the chauffeur is in some kind of trouble because the ECJACK surveillance team has reported that he hasn't been showing up at the Embassy. For the time being Moffet will continue to work the alternative meeting-sites with extreme caution against a possible Cuban provocation.

The station's campaign to promote a break in diplomatic relations between Ecuador and Cuba is stalled because Manuel Araujo, the Minister of Government and an admirer of the Cuban revolution, is the principal leader of Velasco's programme to denigrate the Ponce administration and to purge the government of Ponce's supporters. Araujo's campaign has been fairly effective, at least enough to keep our Conservative and Social Christian political-action agents, on whom we must rely for increasing pressure for the diplomatic break, on the defensive. Araujo has also been effective in his public campaign to equate support to the government with patriotism because of increasing tension over the Rio Protocol and the Peruvian boundary issue.

Last month, for example, Araujo accused the Conservative Youth Organization, through which Aurelio Davila carries out station political-action programmes, of treason because it called on the Conservative Party to declare formal opposition to Velasco. Araujo was then called to the Chamber of Deputies by Conservatives to answer charges that he had violated the Constitution with his remarks about treason. The session lasted from 10 p.m. until 5 a.m. the next morning. Araujo, cheered on by the screaming Velasquista galleries which shouted down the Social Christians and Conservatives, turned the session into another denunciation of corruption in the Ponce administration. He even accused the forty-eight purged military officers of treason. Because of the deafening roar from the galleries' wild cheering for Araujo, the Conservative, Social Christian, Liberal and Socialist deputies who had planned to question him were forced to leave the session.

Araujo's new accusation of treason caused a big ripple in the military services, and the Minister of Defense and Velasco himself followed with denials that any of the officers were guilty of treason.

Since those events of early October the Velasquistas have continued to equate patriotism on the Peruvian question with support for the government. Thousands turned out on 18 October in Guayaquil for a street demonstration to support Velasco and Araujo, and a similar mass demonstration was held in Quito the following day. On 20 October, the FEUE sponsored what was described as the most massive demonstration in the history of Quito. Students, government workers and people from all walks of life joined in the march and rally at a Quito soccer stadium where Velasco and others denounced the Rio Protocol.

Early in November, Araujo was called again before the Congress to answer questions. He made the trip from his Ministry to the Legislative Palace riding a decrepit old horse that he claimed had been sold by Ponce's Minister of the Interior (a Social Christian and close station collaborator) to the National Police for 30,000 sucres -- about 2500 dollars. He said the former Minister had made his brother appear as the seller and that the useless nag ought to be embalmed and placed in a museum as a monument to the Ponce Administration.

During the ride from the Ministry to the Congress Araujo picked up a large crowd of followers -- the spectacle of this physically deformed man less than five feet tall with a Van Dyke beard ridiculing the Poncista elite was just the sort of conduct that makes him so popular with the poor masses. The Velasquistas again packed the galleries to cheer Araujo wildly during his interpellation while shouting down any attempts by Conservatives or Social Christian legislators to criticize him. Later the same day a group of Velasquistas attacked a demonstration by a Conservative student group, and the police -- controlled by Araujo as Minister of Government -- first attacked the students and later persuaded the Velasquista mob to disperse.

The day after the 'horse parade' Araujo nearly uncovered our ECJOB propaganda distribution team. Four of the team were distributing a fly-sheet against communism and Castro when by chance they were seen by Araujo himself. Araujo personally made the arrests, and our agents were charged with distributing flysheets without a print-shop symbol -- the ECELDER print shop had erred in failing to use one of its fictitious symbols that take longer to trace. The distribution team leader couldn't buy their release this time so Noland had to get Aurelio Davila to use his Congressional leverage to get them out.

The station started a campaign to get Araujo thrown out, but it is progressing slowly. Through Davila a fly-sheet was circulated calling Araujo a communist because of his support for the Cuban revolution, but Velasquista agents like Baquero, the Minister of Labour, and Reinaldo Varea, ‡ Vice-President of the Senate, haven't been able to shake President Velasco's confidence in Araujo. The campaign is difficult because it's bound together with the political battle of Velasco against the Conservatives and Social Christians -- almost negating the effectiveness of our Velasquista agents against Araujo. Care is being taken, in the campaign through the rightist political agents like Davila, to focus on identifying Araujo with communism and to avoid criticizing Velasco himself.

Our forces came off second best just a few days ago, however, when the Social Christians sponsored a wreath-laying ceremony in commemoration of the death of a student killed during Velasco's previous administration when police invaded a school to throw out strikers. During the days before the ceremony, which was planned to include a silent march, Araujo's sub-secretary denounced the ceremony as a provocation designed to cause a clash between Catholic students and the government. When the march arrived at the Independence Plaza in front of the Presidential Palace, groups of Velasquistas attacked with clubs and rocks. The marchers were forced out of the Plaza, and their floral offering left at the Independence Monument was destroyed. The Velasquista mob, now in control of the Plaza, cheered Velasco wildly when he returned to the Palace after a speech in another part of town. Numerous clashes followed during the afternoon and evening as the Velasquista mobs roamed the streets attacking the remnants of the Social Christian march which was also repressed by police cavalry. The government, however, clearly prefers to use its political supporters rather than the police to suppress opposition demonstrations, and the same tactics used in the Congress are now proving their worth in the streets.

As if all this weren't bad enough, Araujo just expelled one of our labour agents: John Snyder, ‡ the Inter-American Representative of the Post, Telegraph and Telephone Workers International ‡ (PTTI) who for two years has been organizing Ecuadorean communications workers. Araujo accused him of planning a strike to occur just before the Inter-American Conference, but the real reason was a CTE request for Snyder's expulsion because he was so effective. Jose Baquero de la Calle, ‡ our Minister of Labor, could do nothing to help -- he just doesn't carry the weight with Velasco that Araujo carries.

The campaign against Araujo has been hampered by the crisis atmosphere over the boundary problem with Peru. In September Velasco sent his Foreign Minister to the UN General Assembly where he repeated the denunciation of the Rio Protocol because it was signed while Peruvian troops still occupied parts of Ecuador. The Minister added that Ecuador would raise the issue at the Inter-American Conference. Peru countered by calling for a meeting of the Guarantor Powers and threatening not to attend the Conference. The Guarantor Powers, including the US delegation, met in Rio de Janeiro in October but no public statement was issued. However, State Department documents at the Ecuador desk reveal that the Guarantors voted to disallow Ecuador's unilateral abrogation of the Protocol, but they followed with private appeals to both countries for a peaceful settlement. In early December, nevertheless, a public statement is going to be issued rejecting Velasco's position. The reaction in Ecuador will be strong -- in Guayaquil in September our Consulate and the Peruvian Consulate were stoned because of the Rio Protocol.

The station has received isolated reports that Velasco might turn to the Soviets or Cubans for support when he sees that the boundary issue is going against him. Moreover, the Minister of Education is suspected of having opened negotiations for an arms purchase during his recent trip to Czechoslovakia, although the announced purpose of the trip was for the purchase of technical equipment for Ecuadorean schools.

In Ecuador the Congressional sessions are set by the Constitution from 10 August until 7 October, but extension for up to thirty days is possible. This year's Congress voted the extended session, but in the battling between rightists and Velasquistas there was no significant legislation on any reforms, particularly agrarian reform, which had been one of the central promises of the Velasquista campaign. On the other hand repeal of the Civil Service Career Law set administrative reform back a few years. Worse still, the Congress in secret session just before going into recess, voted a 50 per cent increase in its own salaries retroactive to the opening of the session in August. The new amount is equivalent to 25 dollars per day -- by Ecuadorean standards rather generous considering that two thirds of the population have a family income of only 10 dollars per month.

During the final two weeks before I was appointed to the Foreign Service I had to take a special course in labour operations. Although the course was supposed to be for mid-career labour operations specialists, the WH Division training officer told me I was needed to fill a quota while he assured me that I wouldn't have to run labour operations just because the course is on my record.

Nominally the course was under the Office of Training, but the people who really run it are from 10/4 (Branch 4, labour, of the International Organizations Division). The course was dominated by bickering between the 10 officers and the area division case officers over use of the labour agents controlled by 10 Division under Cord Meyer. ‡ Officers from WH Division were practically unanimous in condemning ORIT ‡ which is the regional organization for the Western Hemisphere of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. ‡ They said ORIT is hopeless, discredited and completely ineffective for attracting non-communist labour organizations in Latin America. Agency leaders (at the apparent urging of George Meany ‡ and Serafino Romualdi ‡) are convinced, however, that ORIT can be salvaged, and so WH Division must try to help.

Much emphasis was given to the advantages of using agents in the different International Trade Secretariats in which, in Latin America at least, the Agency has considerable control. Lloyd Haskins, ‡ Executive Secretary of the International Federation of Petroleum and Chemical Workers, ‡ gave us a lecture on how he can help in organizing Latin American workers in the critical petroleum industry. Also having interesting possibilities for Latin America is the International Federation of Plantation, Agricultural and Allied Workers ‡ (IFPAAW) which was founded last year to carry on the rural organizing begun several years ago through the ICFTU Special Plantation Committee which had special success in Malaya. In Latin America we use this union in a similar way to deny the peasant base of guerrilla movements through the organization and support of peasant unions within the larger area of agrarian reform and development of cooperatives. Overall, the course emphasized that Agency labour operations must seek to develop trade unions in underdeveloped countries that will focus on economic issues and stay away from politics and the ideology of class struggle. This is the Gompers tradition of American trade-unionism which, when promoted in poor countries, should raise labour costs and thereby diminish the effect that imports from low-cost labour areas has on employment in the US.

After the labour course I took the two-week orientation course at the State Department's Foreign Service Institute. Although the course was generally boring, and I only took it because of cover requirements, it got me thinking about the place Agency operations occupy within the larger context of US foreign policy towards Latin America. There seem to be two main programmes that the Latin American governments must promote: first, economic growth through industrialization; and second, economic, social and administrative reforms so that gross injustice can be eliminated.

For economic growth they need capital, technology and political stability. US government programmes are helping with these needs, particularly since Vice-President Nixon's trip two years ago: the Inter-American Development Bank was founded last year, Export-Import Bank financing is being increased, the technical assistance programmes of ICA are being expanded, and now the Social Progress Trust Fund is to be established with 500 million dollars from the US for health, housing, education and similar projects. From Kennedy's speeches on Latin America, some people conclude that these programmes will be expanded still more when he becomes President.

CIA operations are crucial to the economic growth and political stability programmes, because of the inevitable capital flight and low private investment whenever communism becomes a threat. The Cuban revolution has stirred up and encouraged the forces of instability all over the hemisphere and it's our job to put them down. C I A operations promote stability through assisting local governments to build up their security forces -- particularly the police but also the military -- and by putting down the extreme left. That, in a nutshell, is what we're doing: building up the security forces and suppressing, weakening, destroying, the extreme left. Through these programmes we buy time for friendly governments to effect the reforms that will eliminate the injustices on which communism thrives.

The Cuban Revolution has swung to the far left, the State Department, and American businesses, are fearful that Cuba will try to export its revolution to other countries in the hemisphere, which might result in nationalization of holdings. The top priority of the United States in Latin America is to seal off Cuba from the continent. In Quito, our orders are to do everything possible to force Ecuador to break diplomatic and economic relations with Cuba, and also to weaken the Communist Party there, no matter what the cost.

For weeks Janet and I have been getting shots, for every known disease, I think, and she's been attending sessions on Foreign Service protocol and on what's expected of an embassy wife. Bob Weatherwax has been telling us a lot about housing and the life there. It sounds just too fantastic. He brought a Christmas shopping list from the Noland family and we're sending all their gifts down with our air freight. It won't be long now.

Today I made my last stop in the division on final check-out. It was in the Records Branch for assignment of pseudonym -- the secret name that I'll use for the next thirty years on every piece of internal Agency correspondence: dispatches, cables, reports, everything I write. It will be the name by which I'll be known in promotions, fitness reports and other personnel actions. I signed the forms, acknowledging with my true name that in secret employment with the CIA I will use the assigned official pseudonym. Then I read the name -- how can I miss with JEREMY S. HODAPP?
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Re: Inside the Company: CIA Diary, by Philip Agee

Postby admin » Tue Jun 09, 2015 4:13 am

PART 3 OF 10

Quito, Ecuador 6 December 1960

Finally here. Out plodding DC-7 took over ten hours to get to Quito, including stops in Panama and Cali, but Janet and I were in the first-class section thanks to government policy allowing the extra expense for long flights. Former Ecuadorean President Galo Plaza, the Liberal Party leader who lost to Velasco this year, was sitting behind us and it would have been interesting to talk to him, but I was afraid it might seem presumptuous.

The weather was clear and sunny as we approached Quito, and through the windows of the aircraft we could see snowcapped volcanos and green valleys that extended up the sides of mountains to what seemed like almost vertical cultivations. I wonder how they plough at such an angle. Everyone's heard of the Andes mountains but actually to see this breathtaking scenery is almost overwhelming.

At the Quito air terminal, an ultra-modern building just completed for the Inter-American Conference, we were welcomed by Blair Moffet who gave us the Embassy orientation folder, mostly pointers on Ecuadorean health hazards. Then he dropped us at a small hotel in a residential section less than a block from the Embassy itself. A little while later Noland came to greet us with a pleasant surprise; he had tickets for us to see the bullfight this afternoon with his wife and some of their friends.

Today is Quito's most important annual festival: the celebration of the city's liberation from Spanish rule. The festivities have been going on for some days with bullfights, parades and livestock shows. I'm not sure I liked the bullfight. It was exciting all right, and the music and oles were stirring, but if Paco Camino is really one of the world's best I wonder what second-raters are like. He practically butchered that bull trying to get him to fall.

Afterwards we went to a party with the Nolands at the home of the family that controls the movie theatres. Everyone there seemed to be related by blood or marriage, almost, and among the guests was Jorge Acosta, ‡ Velasco's nephew and one of the station's best friends in the government. He runs the National Planning Board, not a terribly powerful job, but as President Velasco's family favourite he is not far from decision-making. Just recently Acosta advised that Weatherwax, our officer under Public Safety cover, can now return without danger.

Tension on the political scene has increased,' if anything, in the past week. On 1 December the Quito Municipal Government, which is under Liberal Party control, began its new sessions. There was serious rioting between Liberal and Velasquista mobs, and when Araujo's police intervened they threw their first teargas grenade at the Liberal Mayor.

Tomorrow the Guarantor Powers will release their decision denying Ecuador's claim that the Rio Protocol is void. Noland doesn't think the announcement will be taken calmly.

Quito 8 December 1960

They say it takes a while to get used to this 9000-feet-plus altitude. The air is thin and I seem to be unusually sleepy, but neither of us has had any sign of the terrible headaches some people get. The nights are cool, and there is quite a difference between being in the shade and the sunshine, but because it is so dry here, people wear woollen clothing even on hot days. The nicest thing about Quito, so far, are the flowers. It seems just like springtime, in fact, and someone told me that here there are only two seasons, wet and dry, but flowers all year. As soon as we can we're going to visit the monument north of town where the equator passes. It's about a half-hour drive and you can take photographs with one foot in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern.

Noland says he wants me to take over the operations that Blair Moffet has been running so that he can return to Washington. But Blair said he can't return until he finds out what happened to the Cuban Embassy chauffeur.

The announcement on the Rio Protocol was a bitter blow in the face of all the recent civic demonstrations and new hopes fomented by Velasco since he took office. A really big demonstration is being organized for tomorrow at the Independence Plaza.

Quito 9 December 1960

Emotions have overflowed. Today, my fourth day in Quito, I saw my first mob attacks against a US Embassy. I was late leaving the hotel and the manager warned me that rioters had already been stoning the Embassy. When I arrived only a small group was still chanting in front, but I entered at the rear and saw that many windows were broken during the earlier raids.

Throughout the day the station telephones were ringing as agents called to report the movements of the URJE-led rioters who returned to attack the Embassy a number of times. Araujo kept the police away, so the mobs could operate almost at will. I watched from the station offices on the top floor. Their favourite chant, as they hurled their stones, was: 'Cuba, Russia, Ecuador'. The Ecuadorean-North American Cultural Institute which is run by USIS and the Peruvian Embassy were also attacked, as was our Consulate in Guayaquil.

While the Embassy was being attacked almost all the Quito buses suspended service and gathered north of town where they began a caravan into Independence Plaza picking up loads of people along the way. The Plaza was jammed with thousands when the speeches began, which included attacks on the Rio Protocol by Velasco and his Foreign Minister. Araujo, for his part, called for diplomatic relations with the Soviets if that were necessary for Ecuador to attain justice. The crowd chanted frequent denunciations of the Guarantor Powers and the OAS. Later the Foreign Minister announced that two Czech diplomats will be arriving shortly to open the Czech Legation here.

Quito 14 December 1960

Attacks against the Embassy have continued but they now seem smaller and more sporadic. Police protection has been improved and there were even some Army units sent to the Embassy. Araujo was forced to send the police protection back by cooler heads in the government like Acosta. The riots spread to other cities, too, where bi-national cultural centres were attacked. More public demonstrations have been held, the largest of which was yesterday when a 'March of Justice' brought thousands again to the Independence Plaza. URJE continues to be the most important force behind the attacks although the marches and demonstrations are sponsored by a variety of organizations and are inspired mostly from civic motives.

Two important labour organizations have just been formed but for the time being only one is ours. In Guayaquil the ECCALICO agents who ran Miranda's ‡ campaign to defeat the PCE General Secretary, Saad, as Functional Senator for Labour, held a convention on 9-11 December and formed the Regional Confederation of Ecuadorean Coastal Trade Unions ‡ (CROCLE) as a permanent mechanism to fight the CTE on the coast, mainly in Guayas Province. Both of the principal-action agents, Victor Contreras ‡ and Enrique Amador ‡ are on the Executive Committee, Contreras as President. The ORIT representative was very helpful, especially in providing unwitting cover for our agents. The plan now is to affiliate CROCLE with the ORIT-ICFTU structure in place of the current Ecuadorean affiliate, the small and ineffective Guayas Workers Confederation (COG) which our Guayaquil base had been supporting.

In Quito the USOM labour division, whose main work consists of giving courses in free trade-unionism throughout the country, has taken the first step towards the formation of a national, noncommunist trade-union confederation. Under their direction during the first week this month the Coordinating Committee of Free Trade Unionists of Ecuador was established. This committee will soon begin establishing provincial coordinating committees which will develop into provincial federations. Eventually a national confederation will be established. The station plan is to let USOM direct these early stages and later, after the new Deputy Chief of Station arrives, we will probably move in on the formation of the national confederation. For the moment, getting Miranda in the Senate and forming CROCLE are as much as we can manage.

Bill Doherty, ‡ the Inter-American Representative of the PTTI, ‡ and another of IO Division's international labour agents, arrived a few days ago to pick up the pieces from John Snyder's ‡ expulsion. He's trying to arrange for continued PTTI support to the communications workers' union, FENETEL, ‡ in organization, training and housing, but Araujo's hostility hasn't changed. Noland is reluctant to show our connections with Doherty to Baquero de la Calle, the Minister of Labor, by insisting on special treatment, but even if he tried, Baquero probably couldn't outmanoeuvre Araujo.

Guayaquil student operations have also had a big success. The FEUE National Congress was held in Portoviejo earlier this month, and the ECLOSE forces under Alberto Alarcon ‡ finally attained a long-sought goal. The Congress adopted a new system for electing officers of the various FEUE chapters. From now on the elections will be direct, obligatory and universal as opposed to the old indirect system that gave the communist and other leftist minorities a distinct advantage. The national seat for the coming year will be Quito where FEUE leadership is in moderate hands.

I've met Ambassador Bernbaum -- he arrived only a few weeks before I did and this is his first post as Ambassador. He is a career Foreign Service man and not very colourful. Noland said he knows nothing about our operations, not even the political-action operations, and doesn't want to. Today the Ambassador visited Velasco with a message from Kennedy, and he took advantage of the visit to announce that loans for certain public works and development projects have been approved in principle by US lending institutions. The announcement is supposed to assuage anti-US sentiment.

Press reports have alleged that several governments are seeking a postponement or change of site for the Inter-American Conference, partly because of the riots, and the Cuban press and radio are suggesting that Ecuador may follow Cuba in repudiating the Inter-American System.

Quito 15 December 1960

Aurelio Davila, ‡ one of the main political-action agents of the ECACTOR project, won an important and clever victory today. He was behind a mass demonstration of support to Velasco's policy on the Rio Protocol which backfired on Araujo. Students from all the Catholic schools and the Catholic university marched to Independence Plaza where they chanted slogans against communism. Velasco was on the platform and the Minister of Defense had begun to speak when a small group of counter-demonstrators began chanting 'Cuba, Russia, Ecuador', which prompted a flurry of' down with communism' from the mass of students.

Araujo, who was also on the speaker's platform, descended to join the counter-demonstrators. Almost immediately a riot began and Velasco had to grab the microphone and ask for calm. The speeches continued, including one by Velasco, but the President was clearly annoyed at Araujo's having disrupted this huge demonstration of support.

At the instigation of Davila and other Conservative Party leaders the Cardinal issued a pastoral letter which was released today. The Cardinal, whose influence is at least equal to that of any politician including Velasco, warns that religion and the fatherland are in grave and imminent danger from communism, adding that Ecuador should not move towards Cuba and Russia in search of support on the boundary issue.

Tonight another demonstration of support for Velasco's Peruvian policy was held -- but it was by a leftist organization called the Popular Revolutionary Liberal Party (PLPR) which is an offshoot of the youth wing of the Liberal Party but with many Velasquista supporters. The speakers included Araujo and Gonzalo Villalba, a Vice-President of the CTE and one of the leaders of the Communist Party in Quito. They called for diplomatic and commercial relations with the Soviets while condemning the US and conservatives.

Quito 16 December 1960

Araujo's out! Late this afternoon it was announced at the Presidential Palace that Araujo's resignation had been accepted, but we had been receiving reports all day that Velasco was getting rid of him. We have poured out a steady stream of propaganda against him for some weeks and his behaviour at yesterday's demonstration clinched matters. The Foreign Minister, who is a good friend of the US, has also been working to get Araujo fired, and of course Araujo's own identification with the extreme left gave him little room to manoeuvre.

Since Araujo's resignation was announced, street clashes have been continuous between his supporters, mostly from the URJE, and anti-Araujo Velasquistas. Right now the downtown area is full of tear-gas but we learn from several agents that the rioters are finally dispersing.

Quito 22 December 1960

Civic demonstrations on the Peruvian question have continued but they have lost their anti-US flavour. In fact they have almost been replaced by a campaign by Catholic groups to show support for the Cardinal in response to an attack against his pastoral letter on communism, made by the Revolutionary Socialist Labor Senator. Aurelio Davila is leading the campaign, funded from the ECACTOR project, which includes letters and signatures published in the newspapers by Catholic organizations like CEDOC, the labour confederation, and the National Catholic Action Board, of which Davila is a Vice-President.

Today the campaign reached a peak with a demonstration by thousands who marched through the Quito streets in the rain chanting slogans against Cuba, communism and Russia. The Cardinal himself was the main speaker and he repeated his warning in the pastoral letter of the imminent danger of communism. He's almost ninety years old, but he's really effective.

I've taken over my first operations and met my first real-live agents -- at last I'm a genuine clandestine operations officer.

The first operation I took over was ECJACK, the surveillance and general investigations team run by Lieutenant-Colonel Paredes. Blair took me out to meet him a couple of days ago, and through him I'm continuing to keep a watch near the Cuban Embassy for any signs of the missing chauffeur. With this operation I also took over the secret-writing correspondence with the agents in Cuba, and I've proposed to headquarters that we could save time if a trainer were sent to teach me to write and develop the letters. That way we could cable the messages and save the time required to pouch the SW letters. In a few days Noland will introduce me to Francine Jacome, ‡ who writes the cover letters.

Blair also turned over the ECFONE operation to me. The principal agent, Oswaldo Chiriboga, ‡ was appointed Ecuadorean Charge d'Affaires to Holland and The Hague station is going to use him against Soviet and satellite diplomats. We had to get a new cutout to Basantes,; the Communist Party penetration agent, and Noland chose Velasco's physician, Dr Ovalle, ‡ in order to sustain the cover story used from the beginning on this operation. Dr Ovalle will advise by telephone when he gets reports from Basantes, and I'll go to his office to get them. This operation took on even greater significance in October when Basantes was elected to the Pichincha Provincial Committee. With the schism growing between the PCE coastal and sierra leadership this is equivalent to having an agent on the local executive committee.

The station seems to have turned into a Santa Claus operation these last few days. At Noland's house all the wives with their servants have been wrapping bonbons, cartons of cigarettes, boxes of cigars, bottles of whiskey, cognac, champagne and wine -- and dozens of golf-balls. These are operational Christmas gifts to agents and to 'contacts' -- (friends who might eventually be useful agents).

Most officers in CIA stations are expected to develop personal relationships with as wide a variety of local leaders as possible, whether in business, education, professions or politics. State Department cover in WH Division facilitates the cultivation of these 'contacts' while station funds for entertainment, club dues, gifts and supplements to the regular housing allowances give us considerable advantages over our State Department colleagues.

Noland is clearly a great hit with the Ecuadoreans. He seems to know everyone in town who counts. He's a former college football star and coach with lots of personal charm and energy. His wife is the national women's golf champion and an ex-Captain in the WAC'S. Together they are the most effective couple in the Embassy and are lionized by the local community. Mostly they've developed these' contacts' through Noland's political and sports work and the very active role both have at the Quito Tennis and Golf Club.

Quito 30 December 1960

There seems now to be little doubt that the Inter-American Conference will be postponed. Peru insists it won't attend because of Ecuador's intention of raising the Protocol issue; Venezuela and the Dominican Republic are still in a crisis over Trujillo's attempt to assassinate Betancourt; and US-Cuban relations are getting still worse. We all know the invasion is coming but certainly not I until Kennedy takes over.

Peru's break in relations with Cuba today hasn't helped prospects for the Conference. The break is partly a show of appreciation to the US for the October ruling by the Guarantors on the Protocol, but it's also the result of a Lima station operation in November. The operation was a commando raid by Cuban exiles against the Cuban Embassy in Lima which included the capture of documents. The Lima station inserted among the authentic documents several that had been forged by TSD including a supposed list of persons in Peru who received payments from the Cuban Embassy totalling about 15,000 dollars monthly.

Another of the forged documents referred to a non-existent campaign of the Cuban Embassy in Lima to promote the Ecuadorean position on the Rio Protocol. Because not many Peruvians believed the documents to be genuine, the Lima station had great difficulty in getting them publicized. However, a few days ago a Conservative deputy in the Peruvian Congress presented them for the record and yesterday they finally surfaced in the Lima press. Although the Cubans have protested that the documents are apocryphal, a recent defector from the Cuban Embassy in Lima -- present during the raid and now working for the Agency -- has 'confirmed' that the TSD documents are genuine. The Conservative Peruvian government then used the documents as the pretext for breaking relations with Cuba. We could do something similar here but Velasco probably wouldn't take action. He wants Cuban support against Peru on the Protocol issue, if he can get it.

The disappearance of the Cuban Embassy chauffeur is now solved. He tried to impress the Embassy gardener by telling him about working for us. The gardener told one of the Cubans and the chauffeur was fired. He panicked and has been hiding out in a provincial village, convinced that the Cubans will try to kill him.

He came into the Embassy yesterday and Blair met him. There's no saving the operation but Blair gave him a modest sum to get him back to the village and help him for a little while. Noland is really angry with Blair because he thinks Blair didn't take enough pains teaching the agent good security. Too bad -- I was hoping I might get this operation too. Blair returns to Washington now.

Quito 4 January 1961

The Inter-American Conference will definitely be postponed now that the US has broken relations with Cuba. All cables and correspondence formerly sent to the Havana station are now to be sent to the JMWAVE station in Miami. I suppose the Conference won't be held until after the JMARC invasion by the exiles. Holding it after the Cuban revolution is wiped out will change the security situation here. For one thing we won't have the Cuban Embassy's support to URJE to worry about, and all these would-be protesters and agitators may not be so enthusiastic.

Two Czech diplomats have just arrived to open a Legation. Headquarters had traces on only one of them who is a suspect intelligence officer. At headquarters' request we will watch closely, through agents like the Oldsmobile dealer, Kladensky, for indications on the permanent building they intend to buy or rent. Before their expulsion in 1957 we had their code-room bugged and headquarters wants to try again.

Weatherwax, our Public Safety officer, is back and through him we hope to improve intelligence collection in rural areas, which is now almost nil. Contraband operations complicate the problem. Some areas, particularly those from just north of Quito to the Colombian border, live from the contraband traffic, and rural security forces, if they're not in the pay of the contraband rings, are often engaged in small wars against them. The weakness of rural security forces is practically an invitation to guerrilla operations, so we hope to strengthen them through the Public Safety Mission and get some rural intelligence collection going at the same time.

Quito 29 January 1961

Today is the anniversary of the signing of the Rio Protocol and we thought we might get some attacks on the Embassy. The only violence, however, was among the Ecuadoreans. In Guayaquil the Minister of Foreign Relations gave a speech on the boundary problem and in a procession afterwards to Guayaquil University he was jeered and booed as a traitor. Araujo and his friends in URJE are determined to get the minister fired because he was one of the forces behind Araujo's expulsion and he's also a good friend of the US. The campaign against him is based on his having been a member of the Ecuadorean commission that signed the Protocol in 1942.

I've taken over the ECSTACY letter intercept from John Bacon. He has been using old-fashioned techniques that took a lot of time so I asked for a TSD photographic technician to come and overhaul the station darkroom where I have to process the letters. The TSD photographic and SW technicians have now both finished their work. The darkroom looks brand new. Everything's in order and the technician will send some new equipment in coming weeks. An SW technician has also come to train me to write and develop the messages to and from the agents in Cuba, and she left a supply of developer and ink pills. Now the Miami base will cable messages for me to send and I'll cable the incoming messages after development.

Quito 1 February 1961

Velasco's low tolerance of opposition is about to touch off another crisis. Two days ago at the opening ceremony of the National Medical Association Convention he, exchanged angry words with the Liberal Quito Mayor. Then yesterday, at the inauguration of a new fertilizer plant where both were present Velasquistas hissed and booed the Mayor and threw tomatoes at him, forcing him to leave the ceremony. Last night supporters of both Velasco and the Mayor held street demonstrations and the Minister of Government is making threats against people who disturb public order -- not to be mistaken for the Velasquistas, of course.

Today the Minister of Government closed a Quito radio station under an administrative pretext (failure to renew its licence on time) following an opinion programme in which listeners were encouraged to call and participate in the programme by expressing their support for the Mayor. The Minister himself called the radio station during the programme and his threats against the station were broadcast as part of the programme. Later he closed the station. More Velasquista street demonstrations tonight.

Quito 8 February 1961

There has been a serious uprising at a large hacienda in Chimborazo Province south of here. Some 2000 Indians turned against the hacienda owner and the local authorities. Three policemen were injured, the Army was called out, two Indians were killed and over sixty arrested. The leaders of the Indians were organizers from the Campesino Commission of the CTE, and the Revolutionary Socialist Labor Senator (also a CTE leader) has started a campaign for the Indians' release.

The Indians' grievances were legitimate enough -- they often are badly treated on these enormous estates. In this case the owner hadn't paid them since last year and wasn't keeping accounts of their daily work. The CTE is also demanding an investigation into alleged torture of the Indians who were arrested, and recognition of their demands: wages, housing and schools.

Several people have told me that this is the type of incident that chills the blood of the landowners here. If only one of these risings got out of hand and began to spread there would be no telling where it would end. Probably right in the Presidential Palace.

Quito 15 February 1961

Our new Deputy Chief of Station, Gil Saudade, ‡ arrived early this month. He's taking over the labour and student operations but Bacon will keep the ECURGE media operation. Saudade and I are working closely on preparing agents to send to the Latin American Conference for National Sovereignty, Economic Emancipation and Peace, scheduled for the first week of March in Mexico City.

Gil's agents are Juan Yepez del Pozo, Jr., ‡ ECLURE-2, and Antonio Ulloa Coppiano, ‡ ECLURE-3. Until he arrived they were treated as developmental prospects by Noland who was helping finance their takeover of the Popular Revolutionary Liberal Party ‡ (PLPR). This party is attracting a considerable following among young supporters of Velasco, and we hope to use it to channel these radicals away from support to Cuba and from anti-Americanism. Araujo's supporters are among those we most hope to attract, and Gil will be certain that the party keeps its leftist character and firm opposition to the traditional Ecuadorean political parties. The agent really in control is Juan Yepez del Pozo, Sr., ‡ a writer who is also director of the Ecuadorean Institute of Sociology. He has larger political ambitions and is the party's chief advisor.

The Conference in Mexico City is sponsored by the leftist, former President of Mexico, Lazaro Cardenas, as a propaganda exercise in support of the Cuban revolution. Because communists and leftists from all over the hemisphere will be there, headquarters asked stations months ago to propose agents who could attend for intelligence gathering.

Besides Gil's agents, we're sending Atahualpa Basantes, ‡ one of our best PCE penetration agents. Both headquarters and the Mexico City station were pleased that he can attend, and I've sent requirements to him in writing through Dr Ovalle. If possible he will try to get invited for a visit to Cuba after the Conference is over.

Our propaganda operations have been promoting considerable comment adverse to Cuba. The general theme is the danger of penetration by international communism in the Western Hemisphere through Cuba, but recently specific stories have highlighted statements by Cuban exile leaders Manuel de Varona ‡ and Jose Miro Cardona. ‡ Alarmist accusations of Cuban subversive activities included one report coming from Cubans in Miami that Castro has sent arms to guerrillas in Colombia and arms to Ecuador to use against Peru -- these stories originally surfaced in El Tiempo in Bogota and were repeated in El Comercio in Quito. Still another story which came from Havana alleged that Castro's efforts to penetrate South America are concentrated mainly through Ecuador and Brazil. This story also accused Castro of contributing 200,000 dollars to the Mexico City Conference. Araujo has helped our propaganda operations by appearing on television in Havana and promising the support of the Ecuadorean government and people to the Cuban revolution. The reaction here was strong, and both Velasco and the Foreign Minister issued statements rejecting Araujo's generosity.

Gustavo Salgado, ‡ the well-known columnist, is placing most of this material for us, and he also arranged for a replay of follow-up propaganda about the exile assault on the Cuban Embassy in Lima last November. The commando leader has recently been interviewed by the Agencia Orbe Latinoamericano ‡ news service which is a hemisphere-wide propaganda operation of the station in Santiago, Chile. He said that other documents captured during the raid (besides the list of Peruvians paid by the Cuban Embassy in Lima) revealed that Cuba was using certain Peruvians and Ecuadoreans in the hope of setting off an armed conflict between the two countries, which in turn would prepare the atmosphere for a communist rising in Peru. In his column today Salgado rehashed the background and the interview and called for the publication of the names of the Ecuadoreans working in this Cuban adventure. Araujo, of course, would be first on the list. The 'other documents' are, of course, also Agency produced.

The purpose of the campaign is to prepare public opinion so that reaction to the Cuban invasion, when it comes, will be softened. Other stations in Latin America are doing the same, but here we can also tie the propaganda to Cuban interference in the boundary dispute.

Quito 18 February 1961

Velasco is reacting strongly to the leftist campaign to force the Foreign Minister to resign, and some of our reports suggest this may be the beginning of the end for his fourth term.

Yesterday morning the Foreign Minister had accompanied a distinguished Colombian jurist (an expert in international law and proponent of the Ecuadorean thesis on the nullity of the Rio Protocol) to the Central University where he had been invited to speak. As they arrived several hundred students began jeering the Foreign Minister and throwing tomatoes at him. Several tomatoes hit him but he found shelter in the building and the Colombian made his speech. Velasco was furious because the scandal has upset his propaganda campaign for using the Colombian against Peru, even though it was the Foreign Minister who was attacked.

Today the government arrested five URJE members for taking part in the incident, which in turn has caused another spate of protests. The CTE condemned the arrests and also demanded freedom for the PCE Indian organizer Carlos Rodriguez, who is in jail in Riobamba over the recent Chimborazo Indian rising. The Revolutionary Socialists are protesting because three of those arrested are members of its youth group. The FEUE is protesting because the five arrested are university students. The protests include demands for the resignations of both the Foreign Minister and the Minister of Government, the latter for illegal arrest of the students and the closing of the radio station on 1 February.

Quito 20 February 1961

This has been a day of great violence. Yesterday the Minister of Government ordered the release of the five students but they refused to leave the jail. They demanded a habeas corpus hearing because that would be held under the Quito Mayor and could be used to embarrass Velasco and force the resignation of the Minister. During the early hours of this morning the students were forced into police cars and driven separately to isolated sectors of town where they were forced out of the cars.

The law and philosophy faculties led by members of URJE began an indefinite strike this morning for the resignations of the Ministers of Government and Foreign Relations.

The strike committee is supported by the Quito FEUE leadership which has called a forty-eight-hour strike for the whole university, and the university council headed by the rector has issued its own protest against the government.

After the strike was announced this morning a Velasquista mob composed mostly of government employees in the state monopolies and customs service gathered at the downtown location of the philosophy faculty. After a verbal confrontation with the striking students the mob began stoning them to force them inside the faculty building. For much of the morning they continued to control the streets around the faculty and to menace the students with terrible violence.

The university administration and the students formed a special committee to visit the Minister of Government to plead for police protection for the striking students against the mob. The minister simply advised that the government would not move against the strikers, leaving open the question of police protection.

About five o'clock this afternoon the mob gathered again, this time in Independence Plaza where they chanted praise to Velasco and condemnation of the students. From there they marched to the Ministry of Government where the minister spoke to them from a balcony, saying he had acted legally in arresting the jive students for throwing tomatoes at the Foreign Minister, but that no sooner were they released than they declared a strike.

I've had the surveillance team under Colonel Paredes scattered about the downtown area since the strike began this morning. Paredes has given us their reports on the movements of the mob and the danger that the students might be lynched. We've cabled reports to headquarters but Noland isn't making predictions yet on whether Velasco will last -- he thinks there will have to be some bloodshed before the military gets restless.

Quito 21 February 1961

Guayaquil was the centre of today's action. A street demonstration by FEUE and URJE this morning was attacked by Velasquista mobs controlled by the Mayor (unlike Quito, in Guayaquil the Mayor is a powerful supporter of Velasco). The marchers were forced several times to seek refuge in the buildings of Guayaquil University when shots were fired from the mob. Police eventually broke up the clash with tear-gas, and university authorities have protested to the government and asked for protection for the students.

Another demonstration by the students in Guayaquil was held tonight and was again attacked by Velasquista mobs. Eventually the marchers returned to the university and who should be the main speaker but Araujo! He had just returned from Cuba today and was carried by the students on their shoulders from his hotel to the university. In his speech he lavished praise on the Cubans and described recent protest demonstrations in Havana against the killing of Patrice Lumumba.

Manuel Naranjo, ‡ Noland's agent who is a Deputy of the moderate Socialist Party, got the party to publish a statement today criticizing the role of URJE in the student strike and in the tomato attack against the Foreign Minister. Wilson Almeida, ‡ the editor of our main student propaganda organ Voz Universifaria, also published a statement against URJE participation and in support of the Foreign Minister. The Velasquista association of professionals published a statement supporting the Minister of Government.

The main propaganda item today, however, was from the Cuban Embassy which released a sensational statement alleging that during the coming Holy Week attacks will be made against religious processions by persons shouting 'Viva Fidel, Cuba and Russia'. Blame for the attacks would be placed on the Cuban Embassy. In the statement the Cubans also denied the allegation circulated recently that sixty Cubans had come to Ecuador to make trouble -- adding that agents paid by the US are entering the country from Peru. The statement also tried to clarify Araujo's television remarks in Havana as an expression of solidarity between Ecuadoreans and Cubans such as Velasco has repeatedly expressed. The statement went on to defend the Cuban photographic exhibit now on display in Quito as expressive of the works of the revolution, not communist propaganda as suggested in recent rightist criticism of the exhibit, adding that the exhibit is sponsored by the CTE, the National Cultural Institute and Central University as well as the Embassy. The statement ended by alleging that all these recent provocations are designed to disturb the good relations between Cuba and Ecuador and to impede Cuban participation in the Inter-American Conference. The real culprit, according to the statement, is the US government with assistance from Peru because of Cuba's support to Ecuador on the Rio Protocol issue. The statement ended with words of praise for Velasco.

From what I gather this is an extraordinary statement for a diplomatic mission to make. It shows among other things, that our propaganda is hurting the Cubans, and Noland hopes to get the political-action agents like Renato Perez and Aurelio Davila to charge the Cubans with meddling in Ecuadorean politics.

Quito 22 February 1961

In response to the Cuban press release yesterday, our Ambassador issued a statement today that had everyone in the station smiling. The Ambassador said that the only agents in Ecuador who are paid and trained by the United States are the technicians invited by the Ecuadorean government to contribute to raising the living standards of the Ecuadorean people. He added that the US has promoted a policy of order, stability and progress as demonstrated in our technical and economic assistance programmes, and he suggested that the Cuban Embassy present their accusations and appropriate proof to the Ecuadorean government.

In Havana the Cuban Embassy statement has been prominently replayed for distribution over the whole continent, with emphasis that collaboration between the US and Peru is part of a plan to isolate Cuba from the rest of Latin America and to impede Cuban participation in the Inter-American Conference. They couldn't be more accurate on the matter of isolation -- that's the central theme of our propaganda guidance.

Today Guayaquil had the worst violence yet. The striking students in the university buildings were attacked by a much larger group of Velasquista students and government employees who forcibly ejected the strikers. Eight people were hospitalized before the morning was over. In the afternoon two bombs caused extensive damage at the Guayaquil Municipal Palace, although there were no victims, and another bomb was reported by the Mayor's office to have been hurled through a window into his office but without exploding. Expressions of support to the Mayor have begun to pour in, and tonight he announced that terrorists had tried to kill him. The Guayaquil base reported that several of their agents believe the bombs were planted by the Mayor himself.

Press reports confirmed by our National Police agents indicate opposition to the government has spread to Cuenca. Yesterday a group of students held a march to the provincial governor's office to plead for payment of certain money that is due to the school. They had nothing to do with the strikers here or in Guayaquil, but police didn't know this and the march was attacked by the cavalry with sabres and several students were wounded. Cuenca is a very conservative city and this was bound to cause a reaction against Velasco. Today the university students held a demonstration of support for the students in Quito and Guayaquil, and in protest against the police stupidity yesterday. They also joined in the call for the resignation of the two Ministers.

Quito 23 February 1961

Important efforts by the ECACTOR project agents, especially Aurelio Davila, to focus attention on communism and Cuba are getting results. Today the Cardinal issued another pastoral letter -- this one signed by all the archbishops, bishops and vicars in the hierarchy. Davila had been rallying the leadership of the Conservative Party to call on the Cardinal for this new letter for some weeks. The letter calls on all Catholics to take serious and effective action against the communist menace in Ecuador, while accusing the communists of trying to take advantage of the border problem for their own subversive purposes. The letter also laments the weakening of the Ecuadorean case on the border issue because of these communist tactics.

More important still was the call today by the Conservative Party for a break in diplomatic relations with Cuba. This is the first formal call for a break with Cuba by any of the political parties, and it is based partly on the Cuban Embassy statement of two days ago.

The new pastoral letter and the call for a break in relations are designed to use patriotism and the border issue rather like Velasco does, but more subtly, in order to discredit the extreme left and the Cubans. We hope a wave of mass opinion can be created, especially among Catholics, that will equate URJE, Araujo, the CTE and the PCE -- and the Cuban Embassy of course -- with divisive efforts to weaken Velasco's campaign against the Rio Protocol. Hopefully this will strengthen the Foreign Minister's position and suck Velasco himself into the current. But because of Velasco's attacks against the political right, the animosity is so great that he may resist and lash out again at our ECACTOR crowd. In that case we will simply continue the campaign through all our propaganda machinery to deny the enemy the banner of patriotism on the Protocol issue.

Through the same political-action agents we are promoting the formation of an anti-communist civic front that will concentrate on getting a break in relations with Cuba and on denouncing penetration of the Ecuadorean government by the extreme left. Right now the signature campaign is coming to a close and formation of the front will be announced in a few days.

John Bacon is starting a new programme through Gustavo Salgado, ‡ his main media agent, which will consist of a series of 'alert' notices to be placed in the newspapers as paid advertisements against communism, the Cubans and others. They will be short notices, and if Bacon can write them fast enough they'll appear two or three times each week. The ostensible sponsor will be the non-existent Ecuadorean Anti-Communist Front, not to be confused with the political-action civic front which is going to be a real organization.



Quito 28 February 1961

Yesterday was National Civics Day and suddenly it seemed that the whole country had forgotten its internal hatreds in the government- promoted demonstrations against Peru. The demonstrations were sharply anti-Peruvian because in recent days regular accusations have emanated from Lima that Ecuador has accepted support on the boundary problem from Castro and communism in general. The accusations are inspired by the Lima station in order to preclude Cuban support to Ecuador and Ecuadorean acceptance if support were ever offered.

Today things were back to normal. Our ECACTOR-financed anti-communist civic front was launched with a two-page newspaper notice containing about 3000 signatures and announcing the formation of the National Defense Front. ‡ In the statement at the beginning, the signatories, mostly Conservatives and Social Christians, denounce communist penetration of the government, the CTE and the FEUE, together with the selection of Ecuador by the international communist movement as the second target after Cuba for conquest in America. The purpose of the Front is described as defence of the country against communist subversion, and the first objective is the break in relations with Cuba.

Although the political colouring of the rightist forces behind the Front is well known, Noland hopes that the Front will have more manoeuvreability than the political parties because it focuses on only one political issue: communism and Cuba. As such the Front should be a more effective tool for pressure on Velasco to break with Cuba and curb URJE, Araujo, the CTE and the rest. This will take some doing -- in a speech in a provincial capital today Velasco said that communism in Ecuador is impossible. Today El Salvador became the seventh Latin American country to break with Cuba.

Quito 5 March 1961

The student strikes have subsided and Velasco seems to have survived although opposition to him is growing steadily, particularly among the poor classes who voted for him, because of inflation and corruption in the government.

Our propaganda operations relating to communism and Cuba are intensifying opposition to Velasco among the rightists, if that's possible. With financing from the ECACTOR and ECURGE projects, we've been turning out a stream of handbills, editorials, declarations, advertisements and wall-painting, mostly through Salgado and the National Defense Front. Bacon's' alert' notices in El Comercio have also started.

Because of a new spate of rumours that the Inter-American Conference will be postponed, the government has issued several statements on its determination to maintain order at the Conference. Nevertheless, only on 1 March were the first arrests made in Guayaquil for the 22 February attack against the university strikers. A higher court forced the lower court to take action and those arrested were revealed to have been commanded by an assistant to the Guayaquil Mayor. The FEUE and URJE leaders arrested during the strike have also been released. This won't help the Conference.

The Mexico City Conference on National Sovereignty, Economic Emancipation and Peace opened today. Three of the five Ecuadorean delegates are our agents: if this were the case with all our stations the possibilities would be endless. No word yet on whether Basantes, my PCE penetration agent, will go on to Cuba.

Quito 7 March 1961

The Soviet Ambassador to Mexico arrived in Quito today for a goodwill visit. He'll be here for about three days, discussing, among other things, Ecuador's desire to sell bananas to the Soviets. We have a programme planned for disruption and propaganda against him. It began today with a statement by the National Defense Front calling for his expulsion. Another announcement arranged by Davila is from the Catholic University Youth Organization, denouncing the millions of dollars spent each year by the Kremlin to infiltrate Latin America, adding that the budget against Ecuador for propaganda, agitators' salaries, secret go-betweens and instructors in sabotage, explosives and weapons is 250,721.05 dollars.

John Bacon's 'alert' is directed against this visit. It runs:

On the alert, Ecuadoreans, against communist agitators! The official Soviet newspaper is Pravda -- which means Truth, one of the tremendous sarcasms of contemporary history.

If we unmask the actors of this farce, we will find that it is not the plain truth, but distorted, calumnied truth. That's Russia and that's communism. And that is now Cuba and Fidelism. Disciples used by the great international fakes, and at the same time masters in deceit and subversion, try to introduce methods in Ecuador similar to those that their dictatorship employs. First, in order to avoid being responsible, the authorized agents wash their hands like Pilate even though the first terrorist bombs are heard elsewhere. Alert, Ecuadoreans, there is friendship that could dishonour us.

Still he has run into a problem in this campaign of 'alert' notices attributed to the Ecuadorean Anti-Communist Front. He was surprised to read this morning that a real organization with that name has been founded. They published their first bulletin today with the theme: 'For Religion and the Fatherland We Will Give Our Lives'. The symbol of the group is a condor destroying with his powerful claws a hammer and sickle.

Quito 10 March 1961

Six anti-communist organizations including the National Defense Front have been denied permits to hold street demonstrations against the Soviet Ambassador. Nevertheless, Davila sent some of his boys around to the Hotel Quito the other night and they made a small fuss. Police protection of the Soviet delegation is considerable and so far there's been no violence.

The Soviet Ambassador has seen the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Education as well as President Velasco, and it was announced that an Ecuadorean commercial mission will soon visit the Soviet Union. The government wants to sell bananas, Panama hats and balsa wood in exchange for agricultural and road building equipment. The overwhelming police protection, which has included the cavalry, when the Ambassador visits colonial churches and other tourist sites, is helping our propaganda campaign.

Today's 'alert' notice was also against the Soviets:

Alert, Ecuadoreans! Communism enslaves. Communism imposes the hardest slavery known through the centuries, and once it is able to enslave a people it is very difficult for the victim to break the chains.

Hungary tried in 1956. The valiant Hungarians in an unsuccessful and heroic struggle rose up demanding bread and freedom. But they were destroyed by Soviet tanks that massacred more than 32,000 workers and reduced the whole country to still worse slavery. In this terrible crime against humanity the puppet traitor Janos Kadar went over to the side of the muscovite hordes that assassinated his brothers and enslaved his fatherland. Alert! There are puppets of the same kind who want to sell out Ecuador.

Tonight the Defense Front held an indoor rally at a theatre where Velasco was attacked for his permissive policies towards communism, particularly his continued favouritism towards Araujo. He was also attacked for inflation and the increased benefits for representation and housing given to members of his Cabinet. After the rally, participants were attacked in the street by a mob of Velasquistas and URJE members shouting vivas to Araujo. Our Embassy-sponsored bi-national cultural centre was stoned and shots were fired at the home of a Social Christian leader.

If the opposition to Velasco over Cuba and communism is getting serious, it's even more serious over economic policy. In the past three days the Monetary Board (comparable to the US Federal Reserve Board) has reversed the fiscal and economic policies begun when Velasco took office -- largely because of the growing opposition of the sierra Chambers of Agriculture, Commerce and Industry.

The problem derives from the competing economies of the coast and sierra and from Velasco's having placed monetary policy in the hands of Guayaquil Velasquista leaders. Just after the election these people started a campaign against the old leadership of the Monetary Board and the Central Bank which under Ponce had followed policies of stability through tight money and balanced foreign trade. The coastal Velasquista leaders, however, claimed that such policies were strangling economic development and they proposed expansion of the money supply. When Velasco took power this group received the most important government financial positions, including the Ministries of Economy and Development, and eventually the chiefs of the Monetary Board and the Central Bank resigned and were replaced by people from the same Guayaquil financial circle.

Quito 11 March 1961

The Peace Conference in Mexico City is over, and a cable arrived from the Mexico City station advising that Basantes has been able to get an invitation to visit Cuba. He will be there for two or three weeks at least, and when he returns to Mexico City he'll be debriefed by an officer from the Miami station. The Mexico City station was quite pleased with our agents' work at the Conference. The Conference adopted the predictable resolutions: support to the Cuban revolution; annulment of all treaties that tend to revive the Monroe Doctrine; opposition to the military, technical and economic missions of the US in Latin America; nationalization of heavy industry and foreign companies: establishment of cultural and diplomatic relations with the Soviet bloc and Communist China; support to Panama in its efforts to gain possession of the Panama Canal.

Since most visitors of importance to Quito stay at the Hotel Quito I suggested to Noland that we could provide better coverage of their visits by taking advantage of the US company that manages the hotel in order to bug the rooms. I suggested that we get a couple of the standard hotel lamps and send them to headquarters for installation of transmitters that we will be able to monitor from other rooms in the hotel. Through the American manager (whom we all know) we can get the lamps placed in the appropriate rooms before the guests arrive.

Noland liked the idea and is going to get two lamps through Otto Kladensky ‡ who rents the room used in the operation with Reinaldo Varea, ‡ Vice-President of the Senate. After we get them back we'll decide whether to use the manager or some other means for placing them. I'm going to suggest battery-operated equipment so that it will work if the lamp is unplugged.

Quito 15 March 1961

President Kennedy's speech to the Latin American Ambassadors in Washington on the Alliance for Progress has caused much excitement here and almost unanimously favourable comment. We're using Castro's speech the day after Kennedy's against him: he said the Cuban revolution is supported by Ecuador, Uruguay and Brazil. Through the National Defense Front we're generating continuous propaganda against Velasco's policy on Cuba which may well be what caused the stoning of Ponce's house two nights ago. The attackers got away but they were probably Velasquistas.

Other propaganda is generated through coverage of the Cuban exiles. We are getting fairly good presentation of the bulletins of the main exile group, the Revolutionary Democratic Front, ‡ and statements made by exiles when they arrive, usually in Guayaquil, but so far Noland hasn't wanted to get into direct contact with Cuban exiles in Ecuador.

Noland is financing the formation of the Anti-Communist Christian Front in Cuenca, Ecuador's third largest city. The principal agent is Rafael Arizaga, ‡ ECACTOR-2, a leader of the Conservative Party there whose son, Carlos Arizaga, ‡ ECACTOR- 3, is a Provincial Councillor and will be active in the Front. Formation of the Front has just been announced.

Bacon has solved his problem by changing the name of his nonexistent organization to 'Ecuadorean Anti-Communist Action' instead of 'Front'.
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