Number 7 • December 1979-January 1980 • ·s2.oo ( Special Issue : . . • -- l . · CIA and the MEDIA ' \.. ____ .:.,___ ____ _______, _ _ _ _ INFOBMJlTION .BLJIJ,ETIN UNDER ATTA_CK AGAIN • L UWI L IBRARIES Editorial Carlucci Passses Ball to Boland We owe our readers an apology. In our last editorial we suggested that the legislation being urged by Deputy CIA Director Frank Carlucci to criminalize our "Naming Names"column was so obviously unconstitutional that the Agency would have to get one of its hacks to introduce it. To our surprise, on October 17, the entire House Select Committee on Intelligence introduced H. R. 5615, the " In­ tell igence Identities Protection Act." The bill combines an anti-Agee bill with an anti-CovertAction bill. The first part makes it a crime for anyone who has access to confident ial information identifying undercover intelli­ gence officers, employees, agents, informants, or "sources of operational assistance," to disclose such information. The second part makes it a lso a crime for anyone else to disclose such information "with the intent to impair or impede the foreign intelligence activities of the United States." When introducing the bill, Rep. Boland, the Chairman of the Select Committee, admitted, " I fully real­ ize that this latter provision will be controversial. It could subject a private citizen to crimina l prosecution for disclos­ ing unclassified information obtained from unclassified sources." Precisely. This is the first t ime that a genuine Official Secrets Act has been on the floor of Congress in some time. This bill, by the CIA 's own admission. was drafted and spoon-fed to the Committee by them. Though it is not aimed solely at us, that is what the Agency would like people to believe. The primary victims of such legislation would be both whistleblowers inside the government and investigative journalists outside. That it is limited to infor­ mation which identifies officers or agents is of little signifi- CONTENTS Editorial Sources and Methods: Pigeon Power Media Destabilization: Jamaica, A Case Study Two Views of Robert Moss The Incredible CIA Media Budget cance, because it is virtually impossible to expose illegal or immoral activity within government without disclosing who is responsible for, or involved with, t he crimes. As we have said from the outset, you cannot separate the opera­ tions from the operators. We will have more to say on this bill as a campaign against it takes shape. We are concerned that people will take the apathetic view that the bill is so extreme that there is no chance of its becoming law. That sort of complacency, particularly in a n election year, could be disastrous. Jour­ nalists must be made a ware of the ramifications of this bill. It would totally outlaw much of the investigative journal­ ism which has led to the exposure of Watergate, of My Lai, of such munda ne matters as the massive CIA payments to the King of Jorda n. (Talk about identifying a "source of operational assistance"!) The other danger to be guarded against is a n overcon­ cern with the second part of t he bill- clea rly in violation of the First Amendment-to the detriment of the first part of the bill- which still denies freedom of speech to govern­ ment workers. Journalists may rally to their own defense, but they must fight as well for the whistleblowers within government, without whom they would never have many of the stories they publish. What chance for any intelli­ gence reform at all would there be if the books of Ma rchet­ ti , Ma rks, Agee, Stockwell , Snepp, Smith and Corson were illegal? Richard Welch and the Ayatollah Khomeini What do they have in common, you say? Well, just this. For years we have taken the posit ion that although we How the Agency Woos Journalists Jonas Savimbi Comes Begging Book Review: Kermit Roosevelt and the Shah Naming Names Publications of Interest Co vert Action Information Bulletin, Number 7, December 1979-January 1980, published by Covert Action Publications, Inc., a District of Columbia Nonprofit Corporation, P.O. Box 50272, Washington, DC 20004. Telephone: (202) 265-3904. All rights reserved; copyright Cl 1979, by Covert Action Publications. Inc. Typography by Art for People. Washington, DC. Washington Staff: Ellen Ray, William Schaap, Louis Wolf. Board of Advisors: Philip Agee, Ken Lawrence, Karl Van Meter, Elsie Wilcott, Jim Wilcott. The Covert Action Information Bulletin is available at many bookstores around the world. Write or call for the store nearest you. Inquiries from distributors and subscription services welcome. 2 CovertAction Number 7 (Dec. 1979-Jan. 1980) UWI L IBRARIES name names and expose CIA officers and operations- out' of our distaste for what the CIA has become- we have never felt that doing.so placed them in physical danger. This is because their value as undercover subverters and corrupters is lost when they are exposed. Still, whenever we point out that we are not in favor of assassination as a political method , the Richard Welch red-herring is resurrected. Thus it was with considerable trepidition that we fol­ lowed the news of the ca pture of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. We hoped that no harm would come to the hos­ tages. (As this is written the hostages a re still in custody, a nd still unharmed.) It was clear, though, that the U.S. government had no business staffing such a large Embassy in such a hostile environment. It was as if they had learned no lesson at all from the fall of the Shah. Be that as it may, it was clear to us tha t if we had any names of CIA personnel ass igned to the Tehra n Embassy, we would not print them under the existing circumsta nces. 1 magine our consterna tion when, within days of the ta keover of the Embassy, we were swamped with calls from reporte rs with the networks, the wire services, a nd ma ny major national newspapers and magazines. asking, almost pleading. for the na mes of CIA personnel in Te hran. "Off the record," they begged , " I promise I won't tell a nyone." It was an object lesson a ll right. Some of the same people who cluck their tongues when we publish our magazine were thirsting for blood, for a n international incident, for a page one by-line. About This Issue For some time we have been preparing a specia l issue concentrating on the CIA and the media. We hope that our readers find much of this issue valuable, not only the new info rmation. but a lso the reference materia l. This issue we present a number of outside contributors. Andy Weir and Jonathan Bloch, two correspondents for Peoples News Service in London, and experienced free­ lance writers as well , have contributed an in-depth analysis of Robert Moss, one of the intelligence complex's most literate, if not necessarily most accurate, sympathizers. Philip Agee has added his own personal Robert Moss story. A majo r focus of this issue is the Caribbean, particularly Jamaica- a consequence of the massive CIA-inspired me­ dia campaign being waged on that island . In addition to our overview of the situation, we are pleased to include additional analyses by Fred Landis, the foremost expert on the use by the CIA of £ / Mercurio in the overthrow of Allende, and by Cecilio Morales, Jr. , the Washington cor­ respondent for the respected Latin America Week ly Report. We a lso include an examination of the newly refurbished J onas Sa vim bi campa ign and a letter about him by former Angola Task Force Chief. J ohn Stockwell; an analysis of the CIA media budget by well-known economist and au­ thor Sean Gervasi. a nd a n astonishing review of Kermit Roosevelt's new book by an insider who knows as much a bout the subject as Roosevelt himself, a nd is a good deal more honest. Finally, we continue our regular features, Naming Names a nd Sources and Method s. Abo ut the latter. our readers should know that last issue's Ken Lawrence col­ umn, on the CIA 's use of cockroaches to t rail people. was covered by several wire services and led to half a dozen radio interviews and news articles. Never underestimate the power of bugs. This issue Lawrence gets into pigeons. Sources and Methods By Ken Lawrence Pigeon Intelligence? A few months ago several articles appeared in the papers a bout how the Coast Guard is spending $146,000 to train a rescue squad of pigeons to find people lost at sea. The reports indicated that the pigeon patrol was a stun­ ning success- scoring 90 percent as opposed to a poor 38 percent scored by a human air crew searching for the same lost souls. Strangely enough, at the sametime these stories were appearing, the Navy was ordered to search the waters off Southeast Asia for the so-called "boat people" adrift at sea after leaving Vietnam. But none of the news accounts Number 7 (Dec. 1979-Jan. 1980) mentioned using the pigeons to find the boat people, an obvious thing to do if the birds are really so adept at their duty. This is so obvious, in fact , that it makes one pause to wonder whether the press reports about the pigeons were part of an elaborate cover story for something a ltogether different. If so, it would not be the first time. A few years ago the Navy told several fascinating stories about psycho­ logical and communications research to hide the fact that dolphins were being trained and used as underwater assas- continued on page 9 CovertAction 3 UWI L IBRARIES THE CUBAN AMBASSADOR TO JAMAICA: A CASE STUDY IN MEDIA MANIPULATION AND DESTABILIZATION By Ellen Ray In J uly. 1979 Ulises Estrada Lescaille. the new Cuban A mbassador. was due to arrive in Kingston. J amaica. For the entire month preceding his arrival the conservative Daily Gleaner newspaper. in conjunction with the opposi­ tion Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) and its leader Edward Seaga. re lentlessly pursued a campa ign of disinformation the likes of which had not been seen on that Caribbean island since the notorious C IA destabilization effort of 1976. And since last summer an international barrage of a ttack - lies. distortions. outright threats- has beset the Cuban Ambassador a nd his host . Prime M inister Michael Manley. Fa nning the flames have bee n s uch well-known toadies of Western intelligence as Robert Moss [see the articles in this issue by A nd y Weir and Jonathan Bloch. and by Philip Agee]. reactionary a nd C IA-connected newspape rs and wire services. dubious awards cere monies bestowi ng fa lse ho no rs [see t he a rticle in this issue by Fred Landis]. even the U.S. State Department. Observers can only marvel at the sophistica tion of the campaign. its di­ mensions. and. of course. its probable cost. Who is paying for it remains a major question. Manley has become. in the past few yea rs, one of the most respected leaders of the entire Third World. a major force in the o n-Aligned Movement. The socialist tenor of his government. a nd particularly its close relatio ns with Cuba. have S tate Department and other hard-liners fran­ tic. The U.S. government's ·'shock" when Manley support­ ed the Puerto Rican independence movement was proba­ bly. in one sense. rea l. Far more dangerous to U.S. intere ts. however. is Manley's role. as described by the Washington Post. in outlining "a new economic accord under which oil-producing states would give special con­ sideration to their energy-scarce brothers within the movement." Ma nley. almost single-handed ~ drew from the OPEC members of the on-Aligned Movement a commitment to lower prices or credits or terms of payment for their customers within the group- a commitment which must, of course, in the end cost the West. 4 CovertAction Ambassador U lises Estrada Right Wing's "Target of Opportunity" As elections in Jamaica draw closer, the media -manufac­ tured crisis has e calated dramatica lly. with Ambassador Estrada a " target of o ppo rtunity" for the right wing. As Fred Landi s points out elsewhere in this issue. the analo­ g ies between the C IA 's destabilization of the Allende government in Chile and the current turmoil in J amaica a re ~onsiderable. The two most common methods. he notes, were a supposed defense of freedom of the press and a n emphasis on ties with Cuba. Both methods a re a t the fo re of the Estrada affair. The J L P Daily Gleaner attacks on the Ambassador a re really cover for their attack on the government which recognizes him. Once agai n a coalitio n of forces. mainly outside J amaica. have united in a n at­ tempt to unseat the Manley government by whatever means necessary. The orchestrated campaign against Estrada began with a bluster of rhetoric, but has recently turned violent , remi­ niscent again o f 1976. On June 30. before the Ambassador arrived , the Gleaner announced that Seaga and the JLP were checking into the Ambassador-designate's back­ ground. particularly his ties with various African liberation movements and with Palestinian orga nizations. If such linkages turned o ut to be "as repo rted" {by whom. o r to what effect. is unclear), the J LP would "launch demonstra­ tions and pursue him to every corner until he departs." Number 7 (Dec. 1979-Jan. 1980) UWI L IBRARIES Also in J une, Seaga was interviewed by t he Miami Herald, always a willing outlet for anti-Cuban fervor, given the nature of its readership. He railed against Manley for "covertly estal:ilishing a Cuban-style a pparatus that will supplant democratic forms ." He then went on to contradict himself by claiming that Manley's party, the Peoples National Party (PN P) is taking "the third route to commu­ nism," not the elected route, not the route of violent over­ throw, but the route of gaining power under false preten­ ses- "the Euro-communist model." In October, inci­ dentally, Seaga reversed himself again, stating that Manley was preparing for "the military solution." "Freedom of Press" Threat Claimed In the same Miami Herald article, Clifton Nieta. the managing ed itor of the Gleaner, expressed very partisan support for the JLP and contempt for Manley. Yet two days later the Herald reprinted a piece Nieta wrote for the Wall S1ree1 Journal in which he claimed that the Gleaner "grinds no axes except public ones a nd supports no politi­ cal party." This is quite a revelation, since Hector Wynter, the editor. is a former Chairman of the JLP, and has recently fired a number of the Gleaner's more experienced journalists because of their objections to the increasingly outrageous and unprincipled attacks on the Prime Minis­ ter. The real message of ieta 's piece was to introduce the charge that Manley was planning to shut down the Gleaner- the "freedom of the press" campaign which would be used with more and more frequency, against both the government and the Cuban Ambassador. The foolish­ ness of the charge was pointed out in Harper's Magazine, which wryly observed that "hardly a day goes by that the newspapers do not prove their own editorials wrong, by freely publishing lurid accounts of the death of freedom of the press." Another peculiar piece of the Gleaner puzzle was alluded to by Nieta, who re lated how, in 1978, the Gleaner was forced to go public with a st ill private st ock offering to pay off its debts, a nd how the poor people of Jamaica rushed out to buy up millions of dollars of shares in sums of$50 or $ 100, on the premise that "in order to save Jamaica you had to save the Gleaner." He does not explain how a paper in such straits can afford to publish a weekly North American edition, with the high cost of publishing in the U.S. , the deva lued Jamaican dollar, and the limited readership of such a paper. Nor does he really clarify who put just how much into the Gleaner, under admittedly "unattractive" terms. International Campaign Inaugurated Shortly thereafter, sti ll prior to Estrada's arrival in Jamaica, the world-wide, coordinated attack against him began. From papers as far away as Hong Kong and as near as Mexico and Venezuela came stories of the new Cuban Ambassador to Jamaica, alleging that he was an intelli­ gence officer. All of the articles can be traced to a single, unsigned piece by Robert Moss in "Foreign Report ," cal- Number 7 (D ec. 1979-Jan. 1980) ling Estrada part of"the Palestinian Mafia .... the former head of Cuban intelligence in Cairo, and the new tool for subversion in the Caribbean." Seaga repeated these allega­ tions at his Washington press conference. Estrada, it should be noted , denies that he has ever spent any time in Egypt. Seaga 's U.S. Trip Seaga was exceptionally active during this period. On July 4th he spoke at a fund-raising dinner at the University of Miami to the newly-formed Freedom League of Greater Miami, described by one journalist as a small reactionary group primarily made up of Cuban exiles with some right­ wing Jamaicans and Barbadians. "A burst of documented evidence," Seaga claimed, has proved that the Cuban and Soviet governments have infiltrated Jamaica. He didn't say where the burst of documents came from, or what the,y were, but a few months later Washington journa lists and State Department officials were treated to endless copies of the "Seaga Papers." [see the article in this issue by Cecilio Morales. Jr.] IOWAll9111MA Seaga also made the startling- but subsequently easily disproved- statement tha t there were over 5000 Cubans in Jamaica. "Manley and Castro are in the same bed ," he exhorted his mainly Cuban audience. He also pointed out that one of Manley's ministers was seen at the home of a Cuban diplomat whom Seaga said was the head of intelli­ gence. Some time later, it was discovered that the diplomat was the counsel to the new Ambassador, and the meeting was a perfectly ordinary one. In Miami, Seaga also insisted that he was under constant government surveillance, fol­ lowed and wiretapped, with a police surveillance unit next to his home. He never made such allegations in Jamaica, though, where no one would believe them. CovertAction 5 UWI L IBRARIES At a meeting of the Twentieth Congress of the Peoples Progressive Party of Guyana, a C uban diplomat re­ sponded to some of the Gleaner's charges, referring to a "hysterical campaign of sla nder and lies. " He described the Gleaner as " reactionary," and referred to documented CIA connections. The Gleaner, hardly known for temperate language, professed outrage a nd demanded that the J a maican Foreign Ministry lodge a forma l protest. The comments in Guyana, they said, were "a dangerous act of interference wi th the free press of Jamaica." They de­ ma nded tha t Ambassador Estrada, who had just arrived in Jamaica, apologize for his country. The Foreign Minist ry refused to take o rders from the Gleaner, the Ambassador did no t apologize for his colleague, a nd the rival Jamaica Daily News noted that the descript ion of the Gleaner as "reactiona ry" was nothing if not accurate. Ambassador Answers Smear Campaign After unceasing dema nds that he respond, the Ambas­ sador finally called a press confe rence, and reiterated the point made in Guyana , that there was a ca mpaign of lies being circulated against him by the Gleaner and the JLP. The campaign against Cu ba, he said. "has been personal­ ized to become even a campaign against the new Ambassa­ dor who publicly was threatened with demonstrations against hi m." His government had the right to protest against these lies: the more t he lies were repeated , the more likely tha t people might believe them. As Ambassador. he said, it was not proper for him to respond personally to irresponsible attacks; but "we have means to answer all over the world a nd to begin to say our truths." He con­ cluded "t hat, "if wa r is declared by anyone, the C uban Revolution has always been characterized by accepting the challenge, and as Comrade Fidel has said, 'when the Cubans say we fight, we fight seriously.'" Much to the Ambassador's amazement, the Gleaner, with incredible self-righteousness, chose to interpret these remarks as threatening physical violence to a nyo ne who disagreed with him. In a page one editoria l the next day they called upon the government "to denounce Mr. Estra­ da's irresponsible behavior and to declare him persona no n grata so that he may be recalled." The Gleanerclaimed that Estrada was threatening freedom of the press, threatening Jamaicans a nd interfering in interna l politics. Although the Ambassador issued a statement clarifying the rema rks. insisting that he was clearly referring to verba l struggle. to "communicat io n,'' every conservative o rga nizat io n in Jamaica protested his "threats"- the Ja maica Chamber of Commerce, the Priva te Sector Organization. the Jamaica Manufacturers Association. The Gleaner printed all of t hese attacks. The same day, the Inter American Press Association jumped into the picture [see the Fred La ndis art icle for the ties between the C IA and IA PA]. Declaring Estrada's remarks "abusive a ttacks on the Gleaner," they said, "this intolerable and threatening statement by a representative of total ita ria n government, which does not allow freedom of expression, will surely come before the !APA 's annual meeting next month in Toronto." Not remarkably, the next month the 6 CovertAction Prime Minister Michael Manley C IA-riddled IAPA duly condemned the attempts of "for­ eign diplomats" to "intimidate the free and independent press of J a maica." P.M. Calls Press Conference As the memory of Estrada's exact words d im med, the Gleaner became more and more st rident, insisting that the Ambassador was threatening "reprisals" against Jamai­ ca ns, and "wa r" against the country. Prime Minister Ma nley was fo rced to ca ll his own press conference, at which he pointed out that the Ambassador had stressed the long-sta nding friendship between the people of Jamaica a nd Cuba- indeed , Jama ica, under a JLP government in the I 960s, had refused to comply wi th the U.S. blockade of Cuba. He noted that the Ambassador had continually referred to a "war of words." Yet. the Prime Minister said, the Gleaner had chosen, "in a malicious and deliberate act . .. with malice aforethought, to pretend that those words mean that Cuba was threatening Jamaica." The Prime Minister noted that the Gleaner was now assiduously lying on a daily basis. Number 7 (Dec. 1979-Jan. 1980) UWI L IBRARIES As the Prime Minister rallied his responding forces , the battle was not all one sided. The Federation of Progressive Forces was launched and named a working committee to request the Press Association of Jamaica to conduct a "public inquiry into the Gleaner's abuses of press freedom, to organize a public meeting to expose the Gleaner's abuses, report to the International Organization of Jour­ nalists , and UNESCO the Gleaner's unethical practices." The PAJ did set up the public inquiry, a respected panel of civic leaders was selected, and the invest igation of the Gleaner is expected to last many months. The international campaign alleging Cuban and Soviet dominance of Jamaica picked up in the meantime. In Sep­ tember. an issue of Business Week noted that "Seaga has charged repeatedly- with considera ble documentation­ that Cuban intelligence agents as well as Soviet secret police have infiltrated the Manley administration." The "documentation," as noted elsewhere in this issue, is totally fabricated. Ominously, Business Week sa id, referring to the upcoming elections, "The question posed by many observers is whether those elections will ever take place." The only "observer" making that observation, however, was Seaga himself. Other magazines, such as Barrons, echoed the same line, but most outrageous of all was the series of articles by Robert Moss in the Daily Telegraph which culminated , on October 8, with a piece in which he claimed that "it has been a long standing ambition of President Castro and his Soviet mentors to convert Jamaica into 'an Anglophone Cuba,"' according to a "defector from Cuban intelligence." Number 7 (Dec. 1979-Jan. 1980) On September 25 the JLP carried out the threat it had made even before Estrada arrived, by calling for a demon­ stration to protest his presence and the presence of Cuban volunteers in Jamaica- doctors, construction workers, etc.-and the government's acquiescence in this. Chanting slogans against Cuba and carrying placards reading "Communist Pigs Go Back to Cuba," the JLP marched against the Cuban Embassy and Government House. The crowd accosted several government officials who were shot at. A counterdemonstration appeared and the two groups clashed. Government supporters then marched to the Gleaner offices with pro-Cuban placards. Outside the building, speakers, including the Prime Minister, pro­ claimed their message: "Freedom of the press, yes. But no more lies." The demonstra tion then moved to the Cuban Embassy to express solidarity with the Ambassador. Foreign Media Descends J LP began to call for all-island demonstrations leading to a general strike. They invited foreign journalists to Jamaica, "to cover any political developments which may arise." Nineteen came, including Time, Newsweek, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, the Miami Herald, and the London Daily Telegraph, from September 28 till October 6. Casting modesty to the winds, Seaga announced at a rally that the C ubans and the PNP had joined together "to attack me, the JLP, the Gleaner Company, and the United States of America." He said that Estrada was "Manley's boss," and that "war" was beginning. Deputy JLP Leader Pearnell Charles, who had been jailed during the 1976 emergency for planning the overthrow of the govern­ ment with outside forces [see CounterSpy magazine, December 1976), made frequent allegations of PNP plots to shoot up their own meetings and blame it on the JLP. The PN P protested these statements, saying that they were laying the groundwork for a new onslaught of politi­ cal violence such as that of 1976. Sure enough, a week later the JLP instigated a disturbance where Jamaican and Cuban construction workers were shot at , and a few days later, shots rang out a nd interrupted the final ceremony of National Heroes Day. It was just a few days later that Seaga made his most recent U.S. tour, including the pro­ vocative speech in Washington, where he accused the government of planning a "military solution." It seems obvious that the situation in Jamaica is critical. The parallels to the last yea rs of the Allende government in C hile are too obvious a nd too frequent to ignore. The Gleaner is fulfilling, with relish, the role of El Mercurio; but there is no reason to believe that the role of t he U.S. intelligence complex has changed hands at a ll. Seaga 's meetings with State Department officials and National Security Council personnel are known. The entire interna­ tional campaign against the Cuban presence in Jamaica, and against the Ambassador in particular, are part of a sophisticated counter-intell igence plan related to U.S. in­ tervention in the Caribbean in general, and in Jamaica in particular: - CovertAction 7 UWI L IBRARIES SEAGA'S SLEIGHT OF HAND TRIPS UP JACK ANDERSON One of Ed ward Seaga 's worst kept secrets is a sheaf of "documents" which purportedly link J amaican Prime Min­ ister Michael Manley to Soviet and Cuban intelligence officers. Seaga, leader of the opposition Jamaica Labour Party, is known to have passed the papers on to Carter Administration officials, among them t he National Securi­ ty Council's Robert Pastor, d uring a two-day visit to Washington in October. Shortly after the visit , the Seaga Papers, a llegedly a sampling of files from Manley's Peoples National Party, began to be selectively leaked to the press by U.S. govern­ ment officials. Initially State Department officials them­ selves had circulated the merchandise at high echelons, setting off a chain of second generation Seaga Papers, with the State Department imprimatur, a nd , in the case of at least one set, with the signature of the soon to be replaced Assistant Secretary of State, Viron P. Vaky. At his press conference at the Natio nal Press Club, Seaga admitted that he had met with Vaky, but refused to disclose what they had discussed . Subsequently Jack Anderson's staff obtained the Vaky memo, but not the "documents," and ran a story which credited Vaky, a former Inter-American Bureau Chief (in- correctly billed as Undersecretary) with the "knowledge" that Manley was close to the KG B. Had they bothered to contact either Seaga or his White H ouse friends, they might have stum bled on to a set of papers, which, as d ocumenta ry evidence, are softer than the raw clams in the Caribbean. The papers comprise a crude chart, two spurious memos and a strange list of names. The highly inflammatory chart- it is unclear whether this is supposed to be a PNP document or merely Seaga's Guide f or the Perplexed­ outlines a n a lleged politica l liaison network, with, at the top, "58 Jamaica ns" at Jamaica House, the Prime Minis­ ter's offices, linked to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Manley and Claude Robinson, his former Press Secretary, are linked via Arnold Bertram, the Minister of Mobilization, Information and Culture, to KGB agents, DGI agents, other ministers also connected to KGB and DOI, and to the Workers Pa rty of Jamaica. Indeed, the mesh of lines, which resemble in t heir complexity a map of t he British Railway, a ll cross through t he WP J Secretary General , Trevor Munroe, incorrectly identified as the " leader of the Communist Party of Jamaica." There is a Sp. Branch Downtown ill be ing bypas 9ed , J A, HOUSI Some o fficer■ work out of J a, llouse, Griffi t hs has chickened out DGI ~Valdimir KU•ntov XGD 1977 DGI,._ Michael Xou•tovaki " (First Secty) KGB . . O~can ~ -~ •. ~-'-•·~!\--..~ ,!~' clandestine organisat~ona t " ··l \ \, ) forming •Security base a" • ' ' 1' '·· Wareika e tc , Yuri Logl nov I 51 Jamaican• Overt Operationo Commun . Councils· Sports etc. based on community system Juan Cabonel DGI Field OrganlHr JtGB Hini1tsri al/Councillor Dudley Thomp•on ( t-1\ ,...,,-s~-( c i; '(\.,~ ,~.,.~fl ~Ctv ~-t-.... ,) Kept at arma length aa . he is not trust ed totally by Russians who say he la crooked Loves money too much 8 CovertAction R,V, Alao, A,8,P.lrord at Ja. HOWIJI h Hanl,y'•Chi ef of Security at Ja, lfouse who theoretically •hould take orders fro~ Sp. Branch but who takes orders from Michael hi~self. Likely head of t otal Security Structure eventually. Seaga's "Chart" Number 7 (Dec. 1979-Jan. 1980) UWI L IBRARIES small Jamaican Communist Party, distinct from the WP J ; moreover, at his press conference, Seaga referred to Mun­ roe as a secret member of the PNP. Also linked by arrows to Bertram, and to Hugh Small, Minister of Youth and Sports, is "Juan Cabonel, DGI Field Organiser." This perpetuates one of Seaga 's major faux pas. In June of this year, he exposed the "newly arrived" head of DGI in Jamaica, Juan Cabonel, who, he announced, had arrived clandestinely in Jamaica the preceding night, to take over the reins of DGI in Jamaica. The story was touted l)n the front page of the Daily Gleaner, picked up by the Miami Herald and other papers, a nd reprinted in the Congressional Record by Seaga's acquaintance, arch right wing Congress man Larry McDonald of Georgia. What Seaga did not know was that Juan Carbone! (he had the name wrong) had been a well­ known consular official at the Cuban Embassy in Jamaica for three years, and was returning, the previous day, from his annual vacation. The diplomatic community in King­ ston, a ll of whom knew Carbone!, were bemused by Sea­ ga 's mistake. Seaga 's chart also shows Minister of Security, Dudley Thompson, linked to a KGB officer, but with the annota­ tion "not trusted totally by the Russians." The memos accompanying the chart seem obvious for­ geries. One discussed Small 's role in supervising the " in­ doctrination" of a construction brigade sent to Cuba; but that brigade was no secret, funded openly and publicly by continued from page 3 sins. Probably the most famou s such lie was the CI A's tale that the Glomar Explorer spy ship was supposedly a deep­ sea mining vessel owned by Howard Hughes. If the pigeons aren't out searching for lost boat peo~le, what are they doing?,One possibility is they may be spying on Soviet subma rines. This, too, would not be unprece­ dented ; during World War II the British used sea gulls to patrol the coast for German U-boats. Robert Lubow des­ cribed the technique in The War Animals (D oubleday & Co., 1977, $7.95): "A truly novel approach, and one that is exquisite­ ly simple, was said to have been employed by the British. As anyone who lives near the seashore knows, flocks of sea gulls will congregate around refuse dumps, fishing boats unloading their catch, or any other easy source of food. It i~ _a comn_10n s!g_ht, for instance, to see several gulls trailing a ship waiting for the garbage to be dumped overboard, or for some passenger to amuse himself by throwing crusts of bread into the air which the agile gulls will then catch in their beaks. Number 7 (Dec. 1979-Jan. 1980) the Housing Ministry, not Small's portfolio. The docu­ ments refer to Robinson's role as "documenting," with a link to the KBG; yet "documenting" is an ominous label applied to the pedestrian activities of a press secretary. The final document purports to be a list of police officers slated "to get Special Branch training and death squad work." If a government had a death squad, which in the case of J a maica appears ludicrous, it strains the imagina­ tion to believe that it would publish lists of the members a nd refer to them by such a name. Remarkably, this sloppy "documentation" does not seem to have affected Seaga's credibility with the National Security Council, even though the latest piece of "intelli­ gence" contains no authenticating evidence of any kind, no letterhead, no signatures, indeed nothing that could be traced back other than to an overactive imagination. Yet State Department officials continue to admit that ·Seaga is a major source of U.S. intell igence on Jamaica. Of cou rse, some skeptics believe tha t Jamaica, a nd the Seaga Papers, are merely chess pieces in Zbigniew Brzezinski's game of cold war in the Caribbean. The prize, it is said, would be Cyrus Vance's post, Secretary of State. - By Cecilio Morales. J r. Cecilio Morales, Jr .. is a correspondent for the London-based Latin America Week~1· Report. " It is reported that British subma rines submerged off the English coast released large amounts of bread . The bread , floating to the surface, would be spotted by local gulls, and soon an entire flock would be circling and diving in the area of the bread and the submarine. There is no information available as to how ma ny times this association of events, bread and submarine. had to be repeated befo re the sea gulls began to appear at the sight of the submarine alone. However, it is told that when the gulls spotted a long, da rk shadow moving beneath the surface of the wa­ ters , they would proceed to flock to that place. Wheeling and screeching, they were observed by hu­ man spotters on the shore. The location of the swarm­ ing gulls was reported, and if that location did not coincide with the known position of a friendly sub­ marine, the appropriate military countermeasures were init iated . It is not known how many German U-boats became victims of the scavenger gull 's insati­ able search for food." Unlike the wheeling, screeching gulls, the pigeons signal they've found their quarry by pecking a switch. Instead of a whole flock , it takes only a crew of three. Three pigeons and some J,i rd seed- that 's something to think about when the Senate's hawks scream that U.S. intelligence can't "verify" Soviet military presence. CovertAction 9 UWI L IBRARIES THE CIA AND THE MEDIA: IAP A AND THE JAMAICA DAILY GLEANER By Fred Landis Fred Landis is the author of Psychological Warfare and Med ia Operations in Chile, 1970- 1973, and a former re­ searcher f or the Senate Select Committee to S tudy Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence A ctivities (the Church Committee). He is at present a jour­ nalist in Santa Barbara, California. In its efforts to influence, and perhaps topple, the gcvernment of P rime Minister Michael Manley of J amaica, the CIA has used proprietary wire services, agents. assets, a major internationa l press organization. and stock propa­ ganda themes. These efforts have been on a hemisphere­ wide basis. but a re currently most evident in the local a nti-Manley newspaper, the Daily Gleaner. The close partnership between the Gleaner a~d the Inter American Press Association, desc ribed herein, is a case study of present day CIA covert propaganda. Indeed, the metho­ dology employed is strikingly simila r to the CIA 's use of El Mercurio against Chilean President Salvador Allende. The story is complicated, and intertwined , but revolves arou nd !APA and its General Manager, J ames B. Canel. In wha t follows, we try to unravel the many threads of this story. Prizes In October 1979 the Daily Gleaner received the Maria Moors Cabot citation in recognition of its services in de­ fense of "press freed om in Latin America." Serving on the Board which awards the Cabot citations is J ames B. Canel, General Manager of the Miami-based IAPA. Although the prize is administered by the Columbia University School of J ournalism in New York City, the Boa rd is tota lly inde­ pendent of the University, and is, reported ly, a creature of !A PA. Canel, in fact, is part of a select group which has been giving awards to each other for some time. In 1960, Canel himself received the Cabot award. In 1972, Canel gave the IAPA " Freedom of the Press" award to Arturo Fontaine of El Mercurio. Simultaneously the American Legion gave its "Freedom of the Press" award to El Mercurio owner, Agustin Edwards, a multi-millionaire who owned vast resources in Chile. At the ceremony ho­ noring Edwards were the past four IAP A presidents. , It was not until December 1975 that the Senate Select Committee report "Covert Action in Chile: I 964-1974" 10 CovertAction revealed t hat the day after a September 14, 1970 meeting between Edwards and CIA Director Richard Helms the now fam ous meeting between Richard Nixon, Henr/ Kis­ singer and Helms occurred in the Oval Office, at which time they sanctioned the destabilization of the Allende government, and in Februa ry 1979 with the use of classi­ fied documents, Inquiry magazine revealed that both Fontaine and Edwards were CIA agents. In fact, Edwards is known to have been a CIA agent since 1958, running other agents, la undering CIA money, and the like. Edwards, a long-time crony of Nixon, and whose cousin is married to David Rockefeller, is at present well placed as the vice-president of Pepsi-Cola's interna tional d ivision. Edwards was president of !APA in 1969, and both he and a nother CIA operat ive from El Mercurio, Rene Silva Espejo, are still on the IAPA board. ln 1968 Edwards had been cha irman of IAPA's Freedo m of the Press Commit­ tee, which during the past decade has given its awards to the wire services discussed below, who , of course, reciprocate. Wire Services T he major CIA-connected wire services reaching Latin America a nd the Caribbea n are Agencia O rbe Latino­ a me rica no , Co pley Ne ws Se rv ice , F o rum W o rld Fea tures, and LA TI N. (T wo other wire services reaching the Caribbean, Reuters-CANA and World Features Ser­ vices, are reputed to have ties to British intell igence- but tha t is not within the scope of this article.) The Daily Gleaner has subscribed to, and run stories from, both English-language services. In addition, since the exposures Number 7 (Dec. 1979-Jan. 1980) UWI L IBRARIES of ma ny o f the services, the Gleaner has taken to running wire service a rticles, often datelined Washingto n, with no source attribution at all. Agenda Orbe Latinoamericano was identified by Philip Agee in "Inside the Company: CIA Dia ry" as a feature news service serving most of Latin America, fina nced and co ntrolled by t he C IA through the Santiago, Chile station. Copley News Service was identi fied in the August 1977 Pe111house in a n article by invest igative reporters J oe Trento a nd Dave Roman as "the o nly [ media] o rganization that the C IA had ' fu ll coopera tio n with' fo r nearly three decades,"and was la ter co nfirmed by the New York Tim es as "the C IA's eyes and ea rs in Latin America." Forum World Features. incorporated in Delaware but based in Londo n, prod uced six a rt icles a week plus photo­ graphs for 150 newspapers in so me 50 count ries around the world , including the United Sta tes. It was ex posed asa C IA proprieta ry in the summer of 1975 by the Lo ndo n maga­ zi ne Time Out. and la ter in the London Guardian . the Irish Times. the Washing1on Post . a nd M ore magazine. In the May 1978 More. freela nce author Russell Warren Howe. who wo rked for a number of yea rs fo r the FW F- unaware of its Agency relatio nship- described it as "the principal C IA med ia effort in the world .'' LA TIN was iden ti fied in 1975 by the New York Times a.s a CIA wire service, eliciting a sharp rebuttal from former C IA Directo r Richard Helms. LATIN was not , technica l­ ly, a proprietary, but C IA agents a nd C IA fu nds pla yed a crucial role in its develo pment. Fraudulently proclaiming itself as the first Third World news service. L A T l N was sta rted and o wned by two forme r IA P A presidents to o ffset the inOuence of Cuba's Prensa La tina. Accord ing to a fo rmer LATIN execut ive. it developed o ut of the practice of Agust in Edwards call ing Julio de Mesq uita Neto, pub­ lisher of the Brazilian newspaper O Estado de Sao Pau lo, a nd yet another !A PA president , every T hursday after­ noon to excha nge info rmatio n. By July 197 1 LATI N had been co nso lidated into a hemisphere-wide wire service owned by El Mercurio and fou r Brazilian newspapers. In 1974 the governments of Mexico, Venezuela a nd Costa Rica attem pted , through indirect means, t o pu rchase LATIN . These effor ts were thwarted by Edwa rds who personally laid o ut a cool $400,000 to do so. Despite de­ nia ls by both Helms and Edwards. t he Ja nuary 16. 1976 Washington Post identified LAT! as a CIA wire service. The Hub T he Inter A merican P ress Associa t io n. with its own wire service reaching so me IOOO newspapers, is the hub of the entire Latin American med ia o perat ion. Its past presidents and boa rd members read a lmost like a roster o f key CIA agents in the Latin American med ia. T he la te J a mes S. Copley, founder of Copley News Se rvice, whose C IA ties da te back to befo re 1953, was president of !APA in 1970 . Two other C IA agents still a t Copley a re current !APA board members. Agustin Edwa rds was president of !APA in 1969, as noted , a nd Neto was president in 1972. One of Number 7 (Dec. 1979-Jan. 1980) Edwards' CIA operatives fro,m El M ercurio is also on the present IAPA board . IAPA, in sho rt is the intersectio n of the CIA's propaganda operations in La tin America. In the Sena te report discussed earlier it states that , as part of its war against Allende, "the CIA, through its covert actio n resources, o rchest rated a protest statement fro m an international press associa tio n a nd wo rld press coverage of the associa tio n 's protest. " In its classified vers ion the repo rt ident ified the associatio n as IA PA. T he individual wh om the C I A contacted in Septe mber 1970, a nd who issued the protest . was J a mes 8 . Canel. The History of IAPA The !APA began in 1926 as the fi rst Pan American Congress of J ournalists. a t the instigat ion oft he U.S. Sta te Depa rtment acting through the American Society of Newspa per Edito rs . During Wo rld Wa r II , it devoted itself to co unteracting pro-Axis propaganda in Lat in America. After the war, t hough. the Pa n America n Congress of J ournalists was not as wil ling to follow the lead of t he State Department as it had been. Instead o f viewing this a s a nat ural conseq uence of the la ck o f a co mmon enemy to ra lly against, the S ta te Depa rtment a ttributed the cha nge in mood to na tio na l chauvinism and communist sympa­ thies a mong the La tin American delegates. T hus. in 1950, the C IA orchest rated a coup. The annua l congress was to be held in the Un ited Sta tes tha t year, a nd the C IA had the Sta te Department refuse a visa for any member which the C IA considered sus pect. The a pproved delegates then met a nd voted to reorganize the associatio n in such a ma nner that o nly publishers, proprietors, and ed itors could vote. So me journa lists could remain. but o nly with associate. non-voting status. Th is CIA coup was fo l­ lowed in 1953 by the expulsio n from !A PA of members with "pro-communist" tendencies. O ne of the ch ief inquisi­ tors was J ames 8. Canel. IAP A's stock theme is to warn that "freedo m of the press" is threatened in whichever corner of the world U.S. inOuence is o n the decline. Co ncurrent ly, !A PA elevates to its board o f directors the publisher o f wha tever C IA media o ut lets ex ist in a ny " threatened" count ry. James B. Canel bega n his journa lis m career a s editor o f the Havana Post. In his v iew, there was plenty of freedo m of the p ress in Cuba under the Machado and Bat ista d ictato rships. But in 1959 Canel was al ready an !APA executive a nd spent the fo llowing year te lling the world that F idel Castro was a threat to freedo m of the p ress. Similarly, a s the crisis over Chile loomed. four El Mer­ curio executives were elevated to the !APA board­ Agustin Edwards, Hernan C ubillos, Rene S ilva Espejo, and Fernando Leniz. Edwa rds, as no ted a bove, had been a CI A agent since 1958. Cubillos was identified in the Octo b­ er 23, 1978 Los Angeles Times as "one of the C I A 's p rinci­ pa l agents." Cubillos, who was Edwards' a ttorney as well as assista nt , is now Fo reign Minister o f Chile; after the coup, many El Mercurio executives entered the j unta govern­ ment. T his informatio n had been leaked from the trial of former ITT official Ro bert Berrellez, who , with Harold CovertAction 11 UWI L IBRARIES Hendrix, another ITT official , was being prosecuted for perju ry before the Church Committee during its investiga­ tion of the role of ITT and the CIA in Chile. (The govern­ ment 's indictment admitted that Berrellez and Hendrix were in frequent contact with Cl A officer Jonathan Hanke in attempts to thwart the Senate hearings; and accord ing to an October 23 , 1978 Washington Post article, there were hints that numerous other CIA officers, career men like William Broe, Henry Hecksher, Ted Shackley, Tom Polgar and ] a.cob Esterline, may also have been involved in those attempts.) After the trial commenced. both Berrellez and Hendrix then appeared on the staff of the Miami Herald. The CIA apparently justifies its domestic media activities such as those at the Miami Herald and with the Copley papers in San Diego, California. because both cities a re used as bases for Agency operations in Latin America and the Caribbean. After the death of James Copley in 1973. CIA represen­ tation in.the Copley organization and in his IAPA slot was maintained by William B. Giandoni and Victor H. Krulak. Giandoni was identified as a CIA media asse t in the Trento and Roman expose mentio nless it serves their purposes." The Spectator's putdown co,1cl uded: "Moss does succeed in presenting Agee as a rather sinister figure, but only by suggesting that Mr. Agee is a mirror image of Mr. Moss ... . But should the Daily Telegraph accommodate (the security service and Moss)? At least the special supplements in the Times can be extracted and thrown away." - CovertAction 17 UWI L IBRARIES CIA COVERT PROPAGANDA CAPABILITY By Sean Gervasi Sean Gervasi is an economisr and aurhor and experr on African affairs This arric/e is one chaprer of a lengrhy work in progress. The series of art icles on CIA media activities published in The New York Times at the end of 1977 gave some indication of the Agency's global reach. It revealed that an extensive network of assets had been established for carry­ ing out covert propaganda around the world. Unfortun­ ately, however, the Times articles were impressionistic rather than systematic. They contained much va luable in­ formation. But the wealth of detail was e.ssentially uncon­ nected and incoherent. The articles did not provide any clear account of covert propaganda operations as a whole. The principal flaw of the series, which received relatively little attention, was that it left readers with almost no idea of the overall scale of CI A media activities. In this article. a rough estimate of CIA covert propaganda capability will be made. Such an estimate is essential if we are to begin to analyze the problems posed by covert propaganda within the present global information order. The Central Intelligence Agency does not publish figures which would help to shed light on its capabilities in the sphere of propaganda . Nonetheless, information which has become available in the course of Congressional inves­ tigations and private research can provide the basis for a tentative estimate of the amount of expenditure on covert propaganda and of the number of people engaged in that activity. The starting point for any such estimate must be the size of the current overall CIA budget. The official figure for total C IA expenditure, of course, remains a secret, even to the U.S. Congress. Nonetheless, there is enough fragmentary evidence available to permit a reasonable estimate. In their book The CIA and rhe Culr of Intelligence, Victor Marchetti and John Marks gave a figure of$750 million for the CIA budget. That figure may be taken to refer to the year 1973, the year before the publication of the book. The Marchetti and Marks figure is a useful benchmark. It is thought by many observers to underestimate CIA expenditures at the time. Nonetheless, it comes from a knowledgeable source and may be taken as a reliable indica- 18 CovertAction tion of the order of magnitude ·of total CIA expenditure five years ago. Recent well-informed estimates place the current figure at approximately $1 billion. The National Journal, for instance, a respected Washington weekly on politics and government, indicated at the end of 1977 that the CIA budget was "only slightly less than $1 billion. " This figure is within the range of the Marchetti and Marks estimate. Average annual increases of 5 percent added to their 1973 figure would give a 1978 budget ·total of some $940 million. It must be kept in mind, however, that these are all public es timates a nd that informed sources are, for a variety of reasons, likely to understate estimates given for publica­ tion or attribution. Sources within a nd near the intelligence community in­ dicate that the actual current figures are substantially higher. One Washington source with extensive knowledge of the CIA 's operations recently indicated that$ I .5 billion should be considered a " reasonable" esti mate for total expenditure. A second source close to the intelligence community stated that such a figure is too low and that $2 billion is more appropriate. Thus the range of estimates for current total expenditure by the CIA is from $1 billion to $2 billion. This is the same range given by Philip Agee in his most recent book. After an examination of the fragmentary evidence on expendi­ ture from Congressional investigations, Agee concluded that "the CIA would be spending between$ I billion and $2 billion depending on whether one takes the combined na­ tional, tactical and indirect support costs as the total ($22.4 billion), or simply the national program ($11.2 billion) as the total." T hus, when the avai la ble evidence is taken into account, it would appearthat $1.5 billion is a reasonable estimate for C IA total expenditure in 1978. The next step in estimating covert propaganda capabili­ ty is to break down the budget total into various kinds of expenditure. The Centra l Intelligence Agency is organized around four directorates: Operations, Administration, Na­ tional Intelligence, and Science and Technology. Table A shows how expenditures are divided a mong the four differ­ ent directorates and , within each directorate, how they are divided by function. The breakdown is based upon a sim­ ilar one given by Marchetti and Marks for 1973. Number 7 (Dec. 1979-Jan. 1980) ' .. UWI L IBRARIES Table A ESTIMATED CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY BUDGET: 1978 Office of the Director Directorate for Operations Espionage/ Counterespionage Covert Action Directorate for Administration 1 Communications Other Support Directorate for National Intelligence Analysis Information Processing Directorate for Science and Technology Technical Collection Research and Development TOTAL $20 million $880 million ($360 million) ($520 million) $220 million ($80 million) ($140 million) $140 million ($ JOO million) ($40 million) $240 million ($ 100 million) ($140 million) $1.5 billion I. Previously known as the Directorate of Management and Services. Table A is really an expansion of the Marchetti and Marks table. The overall budget figure is doubled, and the separate figures for each directorate and function are doubled. Thus the main assumption is that the structure of activities within the CI A remains what it was five years ago. Each activity is assumed to account for the same propor­ tion of tota l expenditure today that it acco unted for in 1973. This seems a valid assumption. Reductions in opera­ tions due to the withdrawal from Ind ochina have in all probability been compensated for by increases in activity and expenditure in other areas such as Central America and the Caribbean , the Persian Gulf and southern Africa. For the purposes of the present inquiry the important figure in Table A is the $520 million spent in the Director­ ate for Operations on covert action. For covert propaganda is one of the principal covert activities carried out by the CIA. The other two principal covert activities are political action and paramilitary. Thus the detailed breakdown of the overall budget estimate helps us to begin to isolate covert propaganda activities and to make a rough estimate of their dollar cost. At this stage one might estimate expenditure on covert propaganda anywhere from 15 to 40 percent of the total for covert action, that is, at between $75 million and $200 million. Such a n estimate would appear to be consistent with the notion that covert propaganda is one of three important activities in a covert action program costing more than $500 million. This would be a very crude esti­ mate, but certainly better than nothing. It is possible, however, to be rather more precise, for there are fragments of evidence which give fairly clear indication of the relative importance of propaganda in the Agency's covert action programs. The Report of the House Select Committee on Intelligence in 1976 stated: Number 7 (Dec. 1979-Jan. 1980) "Some 29 percent of 40 Committee-approved covert actions were for media and propaganda projects .. . This number is probably not representative. Staff has determined the existence of a large number of CIA internally-approved operations of this type, appar­ ently deemed not politically sensitive. It is believed that if the correct number of all media and propagan­ da projects could be determined it woutd exceed Elec­ tion Support as the largest single category of covert action projects undertaken by the CIA" The Committee stated further that the expenditure on political action, or Election Support, was, for the period examined, 32 percent of the total expended for covert action. Thus it would seem reasonable to assume that, when all covert action authorizations are taken into account, it is likely that covert propaganda accounts for one-third of the total for covert action. This means that , with a budget of some $520 million for covert action, the CIA was probably spending some $170 to $175 million for covert propaganda within the Directorate for Operations in 1978. These costs would be only the direct expenses, however. They would not include the support or indirect costs of covert propaganda activities. The indirect costs could be estimated by adding an appropriate proportion of the total costs incurred by the two supporting directorates of the CIA, those for Administration and for Science and Tech­ nology. These directorates provide support for all Agency operations, support without which operations would be impossible. Adding indirect costs means no more than adding the costs of additional activities which are necessary for support of covert propaganda. A.P U.PI. The estimated total expenditure by the Directorates for Administration and for Science and Technology in 1978 was $460 million. Some $270 million, or 60 percent of that sum, is allocable to covert action support. One-third of that $270 million, or $90 million , could be considered the indi­ rect cost of covert propaganda. The reasoning behind the allocation of such a sum to support of covert propaganda is based upon a fundamental distinction between operations and those activities which support them. The purposes of the Central Intelligence CovertAction 19 UWI L IBRARIES Agency, in essence, are to gather intelligence and to carry out operations. Other activities support those efforts. Basi­ cally, the Directorate for National Intelligence supports intelligence-gathering activities in the Directorate for Op­ erations. The two other Directorates support all Agency activities. Thus 60 percent of the expenditure by Adminis­ tration and by Science and Technology may be allocated to support of covert action, which spends 60 percent of all Operations funds. This is the reasoning behind the alloca­ tion of $270 as the indirect costs of covert action. The last logical step is to allocate one-third of that amount to the support of covert propaganda. Thus the total cost of covert propaganda in 1978 was probably in the range of$265 million, that is, $175 million in direct expenditure plus a further $90 million in support costs. Estimates of the number of personnel employed in co­ vert propaganda activities are more difficult to make. In 1974 Marchetti and Marks estimated that the total of CIA salaried employees was 16,500. Of that numbu they esti­ mated that 6,000 were employed in the Directorate for Operations. The total number of CIA employees, however, is believed by informed sources to be substantially larger. The lowest estimate cited currently is 20,000. If it is as­ sumed that personnel are allocated to different functions in the same proportions as expenditure, then this figure sug­ gests that 12,000 people are currently employed in the Directorate for Operations. Of that number 7,200 would be employed in covert action programs, and 2,400 would be employed in covert propaganda. For a variety of reasons, this estimate has been reduced to 2,000 salaried employees in covert propaganda. In addi­ tion, of course, one would have to add some 1,000 contract employees, most of whom are employed overseas, who constitute the "media assets" of the covert propaganda program. Thus some 3,000 salaried and contract em­ ployees of the Central Intelligence Agency are likely to be currently engaged in various clandestine media activities designed to influence world opinion. These figures must be seen in perspective. Table B gives data on the budgets and size of the largest of the world's news agencies. It can be seen that the Central Intelligence Agency uses far more resources in its propaganda opera­ tions than any single news agency uses in gathering and disseminating news around the world. In fact, the CIA propaganda budget is as large as the combined budgets of Reuters, United Press International and the Associated Press. The Agency, furthermore , appears to employ as many, if not more, personnel than any single news agency. TABLE B MAJOR INTERNATIONAL NEWS AGENCIES AND C.I.A. PROPAGANDA OPERATIONS BY SIZE MID-1970s Corre- Turnover/ Personnel spondents Agency Expenditure Total Overseas Reuters1 $80 m. 2,000 350 U.P.1.2 $75 m. 1,823 578 A.P.3 $100+ m. n.a. 559 T.A.S.S.4 n.a. 560· 61 A.F.P.5 n.a. 1,990b 171 C.I.A. propaganda6 $265 m. 2,000 1,0007 I. All data are from the chapter on the Reuters Agency in Interna tional Commission for the S tudy of Communications Problems, 15, Mono­ graphs (Ill) , pp. 113-123. U. ' .E.S.C.O., Pa ris. 1978. 2. All data are from the chapter on United Press Inte rnational. op. cir .. pp. 147-163. 3. All data are from the chapter on the Associated Press. I.C.S.C.P .. 13. M onographs(!), pp. 19-28. 4. All data are from the chapter on T.A.S.S. in I.C.S.C. P., 15, Mono­ graphs (Iii), pp. 138- 146. 5. All data are from the chapter on Agence France Press. I.C.S.C.P., 13. Monographs (!), pp. 2-10. 6. Estimates by the author explained in the text. 7. It is estimated that there are more than 1.000 individuals and news o rganizations in the "media assets inventory". a. Domestic and foreign correspondents only. b. Professional staff only. It must be realized, of course, that these comparisons are very rough ones. For the estimates of the CIA 's propagan­ da activities are approximate. Nonetheless, it is clear that the CIA 's propaganda capability is formidable. The Agen­ cy, in fact, may be considered the largest "news" organiza­ tion in the world. • - NOTICE TO SUBSCRIBERS Please Note: If your mailing address label contains the code number 'T' this is the la~t issue of your presen_t subscription. You must send in your renewal before the next issue is distributed to insure that you do not miss 11. You should receive a reminder card, but you may use the subscription order form in this issue. 20 CovertAction Number 7 (Dec. 1979-Jan. 1980) UWI L IBRARIES , ....... CIA Relations with Media­ Official and Otherwise It is clear that one of the most sensitive areas in govern­ ment is the use by the CIA of media and of reporters as spies "in the national interest." As the CIA is supplyi ng certain information to reporters in the U.S., even at their own request, it should not be forgotten that it is specifically forbidden from engaging in d omestic propaganda activity by the 1947 National Security Act. Nonetheless, the CIA has with impunity violated this part of its charter. It was exposed again a nd again during the Church Committee hearings which traced the pattern back many years; by Carl Bernstein in the October 1977 Rolling Stone, who asserted that about 400 American me­ dia people secretly collaborated with the Agency; and by the New York Times o n December 27 and 28, 1977 which revealed operational ass istance to the CIA rendered over the years by various editors a nd journa lists whom it named. The CIA has used major U.S. news organizations as cover for its officers. It has paid editors, reporters, colum­ nists, commentators, and free-lancers for their intelligence favors. It has owned or funded over fifty news organiza­ tions. And it has sponsored, subsidized or produced more than 1,000 books (about one-fourth of them in English). Getting Briefed by the CIA One of the ways in which the CIA exploits media per­ sonnel is characterized in an internal Agency regulation dated ovember 30, 1977 which sanctions the maintenance of "regular lia ison wi th representatives of the news media." HOW does this process work? Take the case of journalists whose beat is foreign or milita ry affairs. and who periodi­ cally travel to Headquarters in Langley. There they sit down wit h Herbert E. Hetu, the chief CIA spokesperson, or his representative, a nd receive a "substantive" briefing on some topic. Normally, the briefings are "on background ," meaning the information t hey receive can only be described as deriving from "a government official" or some such label, but can not be attributed to the CIA. These sessions are, by the admission of the journa lists, entered into on their own initia tive- a fact which is the CIA 's a utomatic justification of the program. Ma ny ob­ servers question the propriety of these liaison activit ies, both from the sta ndpoint of the CIA and of the journalists who choose the Agency as a news source, particularly when the source is not CIA-attributed, which it rarely is. The "voluntary" nature of the journalist's relationship with the CIA under such circumstances does not preclude the possibility that it is the CIA which receives the briefing and the journalists who gives it. Some are proud to say they have briefed the Agency. Number 7 (Dec. 1979-Jan. 1980) CA I B has learned that a few chosen Journalists in the U.S. receive briefings from the CIA, in printed form, delivered to them by courier, a nd known to contain a mixture of classified a nd non-classified materia l. Our source informed us that in some instances, recipients of these printed briefings have simply put their own by-line on t he stories, which are printed a lmost verbatim by their newspaper. The best known case of this kind is that of C. L. Sulz­ berger, New York Times foreign affa irs correspondent. According to an intelligence agency source quoted by Carl Bernstein, Sulzberger was provided with a " background paper"and then "gave it to the printers a nd put his name on it." Even though he acknowledged knowing every CIA director personally since Allen Dulles, Sulzberger denied the incident. Sowing Seeds on Foreign Soil Another sensitive area is the CI A's admitted liaison with foreign journa lists. It is quite apparent this is a field where the Agency remains tenaciously unyielding to any pro­ posed change or reform. In his 1978 reply to one journalist who challenged the practice, Admiral Stansfield Turner commented that because of"the knowledgeability of media peopl~ through their many contacts, foreign media people can be of great value to our intelligence act ivities." Another letter from Turner boldly claimed that to expand restric­ tions on the use of journa lists "beyond U.S. media organi­ za ti o ns is neithe r legally required nor o th erwise appropriate." Many journalists, U.S. and foreign, have expressed strong opposition to this practice. Gilbert Cranberg, edi­ torial page editor of the Des Moines Register-Tribune, testified before t he House Intelligence Committee in Janu­ ary 1978 that the CIA "should be required to quit planting false and misleading stories abroad, not just to protect America ns from propa'ganda fallout, but to protect all readers from misinformation." CIA case officers posted a broad under diplomatic cover at U.S. embassies often contact American a nd foreign journalists at cocktail parties, d iplomatic receptions, or over a private lunch together, to discuss matters of com­ mon interest. In cases where the particular individual has been tested by the CIA for reliability over a period of time, he or she may be compensated in the form of an occasional tip which can then be converted into ·a news "scoop." One of the primary methods the CIA employs is fabrica­ tion and orchestration of propaganda as a central part in any covert operation. The Church Committee Final Re­ port (Book I, page 200) cites a portion of a CIA cable dated CovertAction 21 UWI L IBRARIES September 25, 1970, which was used as part of the Agency's dedicated efforts to discredit Salvador Allende's election: "Sao Paulo, Tegucigalpa, Buenos Aires, Lima, Mon­ tevideo, Bogota, Mexico City report continued replay of Chile theme materials. Items also carried in New York Times and Washington Post. Propaganda activi­ ties continue to generate good coverage of Chile devel­ opments 11long our theme guidance." Intelligence Community Pow-wows As with the media, or in major corporations, much of the battle on the Washington intelligence front is fought in the ways the public relations machinery handles the public on a day-to-day basis. How does the Director of Central Intelli­ gence superintend the " public relations" of the intelligence community? The DCI convenes periodic "working lunches" for the PR officers from throughout the "community. " The agenda is of course set by the CIA, and it varies from lunch to lunch. Essentially, the aim of these CIA-controlled gath­ erings is to make sure the various PR people are in line and that all pull together. At one of the recent sessions, there were representatives from the following agencies in attendance: White House- one person; Vice President's Office-one person; Departments of Justice, Defense, and State, and the Federal Bureau of Invesigation- two persons each; Drug Enforcement Agency and Department of Energy­ one person each; Central Intelligence Agency-ten persons. All participating agencies (plus the National Security Agency and the intelligence arms of the three military services-whose absence is somewhat surprising) handle large amounts of classified intelligence every day, and each is accessible to a greater or lesser degree to the various media. The DCl's "line" on the relations between the intel­ ligence "community" and the media/ public is handed down at the meetings. 22 Co'vertAction The Nitty-Gritty The House Select Intelligence Committee held hearings on the CIA and the media between December 1977 and April 1978. Its final report conta ined three pages of cate­ gories (pp.335-7) developed by subcommittee staff members which described , according to Committee chief counsel M ichae!J. O'Neill, "what the relationships could be" between the Agency and the media. He asserted that the outline, which was displayed on charts during the hea rings, should not be construed as portraying the actual relationships. Nevertheless, the wealth of information which has emerged about CIA media operations in all t he Congres­ sional hearings and from persons who have worked in exposing the intelligence network, somehow add up to a picture very close indeed to the one set forth on the charts which we reprint below: PEOPLE American Media • full and part-time accredited journalists • stringers • non-journalist staff employees • editors, media polic;;y makers • free lancers Foreign Media ACTIVITIES Information • story confirmation • information swapping • pre-briefing • debriefing • access to files/ outtakes • prior tasking of intelligence collection Support • host parties • provide safehouses • act as courier Agent work • spotting • assessing • recruiting • handling Propaganda BONDS OF ASSOC/A TION Voluntary association ("contact" ), based on: • patriotism • friendship ties • career advancement (getting a scoop) Salaried association ("assets") based on: • gifts • reimbursement for expenses • regular financial payment - Number 7 (Dec. 1979-Jan. 1980) UWI L IBRARIES THE CIA AND THE MEDIA: SOME PERSONAL EXPERIENCES By Jim Wilcott Jim Wilcott, a mem ber of the Board of Advisors of CAIB, spent nine years as a finance officer with the CIA . His w(fe, Elsie, also worked for the Agency during that period. During nine years of employment as an accountant with the CIA (from 1957 to 1966) I became familiar with the widespread use of the media by the CIA. Newspapers, magazines, books, radio and TV were a ll targets of CIA projects. This activity was by no means limited to the collecting of information by overt means: i.e., through subscriptions or assigning analysts to monitor various broadcasts, although la rge efforts were expended in this activity. T-he full range of covert action techniques for which the CIA has become so infamous were regularly used in the many media projects. At CIA Headquarters in Washington D.C. (I was stati­ oned there before the new Langley, Virginia complex was opened), huge rooms were filled with intelligence analysts fluent in many languages poring over domestic and foreign publications or broadcasts. otations, name lists, copies of articles or translations of articles or broadcasts were made in areas of interest. A very complex and sophisticated system of referencing and cross-referencing using micro­ film and computer faci lities was employed. My assignment in the Finance Department required vis its to the computer room from time to time. The RCA 50 I computer that we ran our finance records through was shared by the Deputy Director of Plans division and the methods of computer­ / microfilm coding were explained and shown to me. At various times displays and talks of the operational and intell igence-gathering aspects of the Agency were held. The CIA called these "county fairs." Their purpose was to acquaint CIA employees with certain aspects of the CIA that their work might not bring them in touch with. It was at one of these fairs that the microfilm-computer coding system a lso was displayed and explained. In the earlier yea rs at CIA this a ll seemed to me a legitimate function well within the confines of the CIA charter. In later years I was to discover the bizarre and illegal purposes this information was put to. The CIA was not only analyzing and studying the media but was also influencing and subverting the media. They were actively involved in planting articles or influencing the political content to espouse their viewpoint. In fact, these positions were sometimes at variance with official U.S. Government positions. Number 7 (Dec. 1979-Jan. 1980) For instance, in Japan, the CIA took positions contrary to the then U.S. Ambassador, Edwin 0 . Reischauer. These positions were covertly placed in the Japanese mass media by the sta tion. On one occasion I was shown an article written by Chester Ito, a case officer in the Tokyo CIA station, which he said was to be placed in the Japan Times. The next day I read the article intact in the editorial section of the English language edition of the Japan Times. The a rticle dealt with the d ocking of nuclear submarines a t J a panese ports, an issue opposed by most Japanese people. I.1 addition articles were placed in the J apanese media on the Kennedy visit in the early sixt ies. A campaign conduct­ ed by some religious leaders in the U.S. called "Moral Rearmament" that was covertly supported and used by the CIA toured Japan . Articles in support of this campaign were also inserted in the med ia. My wife worked for a while in Internal Operations Branch during our four years at Tokyo Station. She recalls observing analysts using CIA's " Blue Book" to compose articles on Laos and civil rights, among other issues, for insertion in Japanese media. The Blue Book was issued regularly by Headquarters expressly for the purpose of providing the official CIA position for articles to be plant­ ed in the Japanese press. She a lso remembers CIA em­ ployees covertly associated with PEN, an internationa l writers group, and the Asia Foundation. These are but a very few examples of Tokyo Station's involvement with the J apanese media. This activity, of course, went on all over the world as well as in the U.S. I also heard of CIA agents infil trated into national net­ work news bureaus assigned to foreign countries, such as the UPI and AP Moscow news bureaus. Well known to most people now is the CIA 's extensive use of the Voice of America. At headqua rters, during training for overseas assign­ ments, we were told how CIA had covertly commissioned books to be written ostensibly by legitimate authors. CIA had also influenced , or funded , the production of movies, TV and radio programs or even theatrical productions. Many leaflets and pamphlets were a lso produced as the need arose in various circumstances. These as well as the media insertions could be any of three categories CIA had established- white, gray or black. White material was basically factual and conformed to good journa listic standards, although always espousing the CIA position. Gray material was on the border line be- CovertAction 23 UWI L IBRARIES tween white and black and would contain innuendos or insinuations or partial, subtle fabrications. Black material was outright fabrications designed to malign or discredit individuals, organizations or countries felt to be inimical to CIA interests. A term we heard often in CIA was contami­ nation. It meant that an individual or group would be discredited by guilt through association or tricked into some immoral or illegal act and then exposed in some media form. All of this required the cooperation of various individuals, a newspaper reporter or editor, etc. If volun­ tary cooperation for a fixed fee could not be obtained, blackmail or other nefarious methods of coercion were employed. The media also served as excellent cover for agents to get close to various targets. An agent under cover as a maga­ zine or newspaper reporter could interview persons deemed enemies of the CIA or potential recruits and obtain useful information in designing a project to neutralize or recruit the target. During our assignment at Headquarters a reporter on the New York Times was recruited and sent under Times cover to report on the activities of Fidel Castro in Oriente Province in 1958. With the completion of my two tours at Tokyo Station I was assigned to Headquarters Finance. For several months I had the duty of policing domestic special payments ac­ counts and checking the cover organization checks against our finance account balances before they were mailed in payment for services performed to various undercover agents or organizations. Ma ny of these checks were sent to well-known newspapers or reporters, as well as unions, colleges and· universities, scientific, cultural or social or­ ganizations. I specifically remember preparing checks sent to the National Student Association, for example. It was subsequently revealed in the press that NSA had been infiltrated at the highest levels by CIA. In March of 1965 I was assigned to the Finance Division at Miami Station. A day or two prior to my arrival in Miami my boss, the Chief of Finance Robert H. Graham, was assigned by the Chief of Station the task of appearing on a Miami TV station to deny the rumor (in fact quite true) that Zenith Technical Enterprises was a cover organi­ zation for the CIA's Miami Station. He was selected since he worked mostly inside the station and would be less continued from page 33 USSR A senior case officer now in Moscow, USSR, is Bruce Edward Kressler, born February 3, 1936 in Pennsylvania. Kressler is listed in State Department records as having served in the Army overseas from 1958 to 1961 , and there is no entry for 1962. This period may have involved deep cover . From 1963 to 1967 he is listed with the well-known cover of "analyst" for the Department of the Army, and then, in March 1968 first appears under diplomatic cover at the Foreign Service Institute language school in Taichung, Taiwan. In July 1969 he was posted to the Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Embassy with the cover rank of economic­ commercial officer. In 1972 he was back at Headquarters, and in May 1974 hew.as posted to the U.S. Mission to the 24 CovertAction subject to questioning about this fabricated denial than operational people who were more exposed to the public. All of us on the staff at Miami Station knew of the enormous subversion and manipulation of all forms of the media that was conducted by the station. At that time the station was busy screening the Cuban refugees. Many were recruited by the CIA and trained to give completely false testimonials designed to embarrass and malign the Cuban government, its leaders and particularly Fidel Castro. CIA arranged radio, TV, newspaper and magazine interviews for these agents. Articles were commonly placed in the Miami Herald. Often these articles were in support of the counterrevolutionary organizations set up or supported by the CIA. Pamphlets, newspapers and leaflets published for the counterrevolutionary organizations were printed at the station or with CIA funds. Swan Island was the station's radio broadcasting facility used to broadcast messages to agents in Cuba and as a major propaganda medium. Many broadcasts were also directed at Latin America. White, gray and black broad­ casts were made, often designed to inflame Cuban refugees and others to join the counterrevolutionary organizations engaging in military attacks against Cuba. The material presented here is a tiny fraction, the tip of the iceberg, of all that went on during my years with the CIA. By CIA 's own admission this act ivity has covered a span of more than thirty years and continues to the present time. The recent newspaper articles about such things as the alleged Ha noi spies among the Vietnamese refugees and the alleged Soviet combat brigades in Cuba have strikingly familiar qualities, very reminiscent of the phony fabrica­ tions I was exposed to during my employment with the Agency. Like the tiger who having once tasted human flesh never loses his hunger for it , so the CIA will never lose its appetite for subversion, infiltration and manipulation of the media. This is one more reason why I advocate the complete dismantling of the CIA and the enactment of strong legisla­ tion to protect the U.S. and foreign media from abuses by the government. - United Nations in New York, first as a "political-security affairs advisor" and then as a "political officer." In No­ vember 1974, however, records show him back at Head­ quarters, and. except for two advances in cover ratings in 1976 and 1978, no other postings are known until January 1979. when he shows up in Moscow. THE NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY We have learned from Pentagon sources that James Elias Freeze, born August 21, I 931 in Iowa, was trans­ ferred this fall to the National Security Agency. He joined the Army in 1949 and shortly went into Military Intelli­ gence, where he has remained ever since. In August 1975 he was promoted to Brigadier General, his present rank. - Number 7 (Dec. 1979-Jan. 1980) UWI L IBRARIES UNIT A'S SA VIMBI SEEKS U.S. UNDERSTANDING-AGAIN By Louis Wolf The United States has a long history of waging unde­ clared wars. One relatively modest Brookings Institution estimate in 1975 produced a list of 215 official U.S. military deployments between January I 946 and May 1975. While many of the CIA 's own paramilitary efforts around the globe, large and small , are not included i? the list, the _CIA 's huge caper in Angola from 1974-76 will go down 10 the history of American interventions as one of the most des­ tructive, and least productive (from the U.S. Government's standpoint). The failure of the joint C IA-South African military op­ eration that attempted to thwart the Angolan people's struggle for liberation from Portuguese colonial rule was amply documented by former CIA Angola Task Force chief, John Stockwell, in his remarkable book " In Search of Enemies: A C IA Story." The CIA and South Africa pinned their hopes on two so-called "liberation move­ ments," UNIT A (led by Jonas Savimbi) a nd FNLA (led by Holden Roberto), to destroy the people's genuine libera­ tion organization that had fought the Portuguese uninter­ ruptedly since 1960, the MPLA. Both UNIT A and FNLA we~e proven to have been propped up by U.S. a nd South African support as well as, in UN IT A's case, by the Portu­ guese military. Newsweek Supplies a Chaperone It was in this context that Jonas Sa vim bi, the44 year-old UNIT A leader, arrived in New York on November 3 for a week-long visit to this country, his first since 1961. The decision to come here was, according to Newsweek, not even made by Savimbi, though it is not stated who did make the decision. In what had to be a carefully pre­ arranged itinerary, Savimbi allegedly walked for four days, then rode by t ruck until reaching a secret rendezvous at "Point Delta." He was expecting, so the story goes, to begin his annua l junket to drop in on the few African heads of state still friendly to U IT A. He was joined by Newsweek s star reporter Arnaud de Borchgrave (whose Western intel­ ligence connections a re self-admitted), and was informed - supposedly fo r the first time- that he was going to the United States instead. Together they flew across Africa "in a va riety of unmarked pla nes, from a lumbering old DC-4 to a swift little (Lear) executive jet" (the latter supplied by the London and Rhodesian Mining a nd Land Company - Lonrho). The trip was sponsored by Freedom House in New York, on whose board White House national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski sits (he is now listed "on leave"), and which trumpets itself as "a non-partisa n, national organi­ zation devoted to the strengthening of free societies." Number 7 (Dec. 1979-Jan. 1980) Savimbi spoke at Freedom House, to an a udience packed with Cuban exiles. The co-sponsor was Social Democrats, U.S.A. whose executive director in New York City, Carl Gershman (described by Human Events-the national conservative weekly- as "a prominent anti-Communist liberal") exalted Savimbi, calling him "one of the most impressive political figures I have ever met. " The Freedom House Logo ro/ · The Social Democrats Logo Although Sa vim bi said publicly he had not come to the U.S. seeking military or economic aid, but simply wanting "understanding," Newsweek's headline "Savimbi Asks For Hel p" wa s mo re ca nd id. as was hi s statement to De Borchgrave: " You should help your friends help them­ selv-:s. "Those who followed his movements could see that, like the ex-Sha h, he hadn't come halfway around the world just for his health. Savimbi travels with three different non-Angolan pass­ ports including, he said, one issued by "an independent country," yet this irregulari ty somehow was no problem when he a rrived a t the immigration counter at the airport in New York. Although he was not an official state visitor, the U.S. government t reated him like one. While in Washington, he and his party were, fo r the length of their three-day capital canvass, provided with two long, sleek black Cadillac limousines from the White House fleet. Kissinger as Keystone Despite not being registered with the Justice Depart­ ment as an agent working for a foreign entity, one person, a bove all others, has lobbied most for Savimbi's cause. Both at the time of the huge CIA-South African thrust into Angola in 1974-76 a nd recently, in particula r since the death of MPLA President Agostinho Neto in September, Savimbi has had the a rdent backing of none other than Henry Kissinger. Their meeting together in New York on N ovembe-r 5 was "very fruitful" and the former Secretary of CovertAction 25 UWI L IBRARIES Stockwell Scores Savimbi Savimbi has received considerable media support, from coverage in the Washington Post as a "guerrilla leader," to fawning praise from former Nixon speech-writer William Safire. His latest piece drew the following response from John Stockwell, which appeared in the November 22, 1979 New York Times: "To the Editor: "William Safire's Nov. 8 column, about Jonas Savimbi (Mr. Savimbi, a college dropout, no Ph.D. , no M.D.) was painfully inaccurate and misguided. "Savimbi has no ideology. He believes in nothing beyond his own selfish ambitions, and fighting has become his way of life. Jonas Savimbi "Over the years in central Angola ( 13 years, not eight) he has fought against the Portuguese, the MPLA, the FNLA, SW APO and the Cubans. A perennial loser, he has held his own only against the FNLA. He has accepted aid from North Korea, China, Rumania, Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa and the CIA. "From his CIA friends he learned to lie easily- they call it propaganda. In 1975-76, despite massive and intimate South African aid and CIA support, he lost the Angola civil war. Since then he has survived in the wastelands of central Ango­ la, but he is unable to show his face, except to raid, in any significant town or hamlet, and he has so completely lost popular support that he has resorted to urban terrorism even against his own Ovimbundu tribe- his movement, UNIT A, Number 7 (Dec. 1979-Jan. 1980) claims credit for bombing Ovimbundu marketplaces at prime time. "The Ovimbundu people are paying the greatest price for the economic disruption he is causing, along with two historic United States allies, Zaire and Zambia. By blowing up an occasional bridge on the Benguela Railroad he has prevented the railroad's reopening, and our friends are unable to get their copper to the sea. \ "Meanwhile, the legal Government of Angola has endea­ vored to cooperate with Zaire, Zambia and the United States in economic matters. They would reopen the railroad if Savimbi could be restrained. "Gulf Oil, Texaco, Boeing and Arthur D. Little have ma­ jor, ongoing projects in Angola. Cuban troops are helping to guard Gulfs installations from banditry and from FNLA and mercenary raids. And yet Mr. Safire chides President Carter and the State Department for cooperating with the Angolan Government at Savimbi's expense. "But most unforgivable of all is Mr. Safire's endorsement of Savimbi's preposterous "kidnapped school kids" propa­ ganda line. "One of the most cherished prizes a young person in central Angola can dream of is a scholarship to travel and study abroad. In April, 1979, accompanied by a respected television producer and a private citizen, I visited the Angolan schools complex on the lovely Isle of Youth in Cuba (Safire's "former penal colony'). We were impressd with the students' morale and enthusiasm. Many of them were Ovimbundu. The presi­ dent of the student body was Ovimbundu. "As I grew up in the Congo, my mother wept every year when I went awa·y to boarding school, and she wept when my sister followed me at age 8. But she sent us away because the alternative would have been sitting in her kitchen, trying to learn our three R's from her. Too many Congolese and Angolan mothers cannot teach their children the three R's because they are themselve illiterate, and the Cubans are proud of their international school system. I suggest Mr. Safire fly to Cuba and see for himself. If it offends us that Cubans are educating Africans, we might try to compete, to build comparable schools in the United States for young Angolans, Congolese and others. "The United States has far too many problems in the third world to go seeking new bloody involvements with the likes of Savimbi. Witness Iran, and note that if Mr. Safire's advice were followed and we rearmed Savimbi (we tried it once and lost) we would almost certainly lose access to Angolan oil as well. The State Department deserves credit for its avoidance of Sa vim bi. Let us instead proceed to the next logical step: full diplomatic recognition of the legal and responsible Govern­ ment of Angola. John Stockwell Austin, Tex., Nov. 16, 1979 "Th,e writer, af or mer CIA official. was head of the agency '.s covert operation in Angola." CovertAction 27 UWI L IBRARIES BOOK REVIEW "Countercoup" by Kermit Roosevelt McGraw-Hill, 210 pp., $12.95 Reviewed by Neville George Neville George is a pseudonym for a man whose service in the Middle East extended over many years. He was in Iran be.fore and after the CIA '.s Operation AJA X and he learned many of the details he describes f rom British and American intelligence agents. This review was written for C AIB in October 1979. On No vember 7. 1979 the news broke that McGrm1·-Hill was withdrawing the entire.first edition of this book after stren­ uous p rotests by the British Petroleum Company over the ident /fication of its predecessor. Anglo-Iranian Oil Com­ pany, as the originator of the plan to o verthro11· Mossa­ degh; in f act, Roosevelt had used A IOC as a pseudony m f or British intelligence. Our revie11·er saw through this ob­ vious .subterfuge. and we have le.ft his review as v,ri11en. The McGraw-Hill announcement, astonishing the pub­ lishing world, where it is unheard of .for a major p ublisher to withdraw an entire edition which has been released, came at the rime the Shah was in New York Hospital and the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was occupied by militant studen ts. As Mr. George said to CAIB, the book might "show what purposes the U.S. Embassy and its staff had in remaining in Tehran fo r nine m onths after any prudent go vernment would have closed do wn the 11·hole sho w and severed dip lomatic relations." The publication of this book , he suggests, may well have in volved a CIA subsidy "in anticipation that events would dictate a new A JAX to rescue Iran fo r the West. " Thus, although the events recounted in Roosevelt '.s book are twenty-f ive years old, the significance of this review is immediate. "The Struggle for Control of Iran" is the subtitle of this book which is being flogged as a "minute-by-minute" ac­ count of how a grandson of Theodore Roosevelt single­ handedly masterminded "one of the greatest triumphs in America 's covert operations in foreign countries"- the re­ turn of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to the Peacock throne of Persia. Such extravagant praise is obviously calculated to chivvy the interest of mystery fans . At the end of the book, 28 CovertAction however, the reader is left in a quandary: Why publish such a silly compendium of repetitious canards and intelligence miscalculations after the Pahlavi dynasty has been deposed and its corrupt and inhuma ne practices have been exposed? If t he author's objective was to make He~ Kissinger's memoirs read like an introvert 's recounting of history, Kermit Roosevelt deserves full marks for effort! Perslifage and megalomania abound in the story, yet this book has some redeeming features: beneath its retrospective revi­ sions of history; within its crude attempts to disguise identi­ ties; and, as a result of its efforts to denigrate Great Britain, the narrative bares more than it hides. It is, in fa ct, a story of how America's Centra l Intelligence Agency first became a determinant in U.S. foreign policy; its corollary is the instability one find s today in the Middle East (as well as in Latin America and South East Asia). Spurious Strategy Purporting to break his twenty-five year silence in re­ spect of the CIA 's Operation AJAX, Roosevelt alleges that th is clandestine caper represented "an allia nce of the Shah of Iran, Winston Churchill , Anthony Eden, and ' other British representatives' with President Eisenhower, J ohn Foster Dulles, and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.'' The object of AJAX was to replace Irania '? Premier D r. Mohammed Mossadegh who- according to intelligence Roosevelt neglected to sha re with the Foreign Office and the American State Department- is said to have formed an alliance of his own with the Soviet Union to expel the Sha h and give Russia control of Iran. Forging the bonds holding AJAX together was no small accomplishment, but the author casts modesty aside a nd expla ins (ad na useum!) how his unique background fitted him to do th is. Roosevelt 's story, when read in co nnection with the memoirs of its principal characters, reveals just how f orged the AJAX "alliance" really was. Foreign Secretary Eden opposed a coup in Iran; he was absent due to illness when stroke-invalided Winston Churchill gave Britain's blessing to what the CIA had presented as its plan to induce Iran to pay compensation for the nationalized properties of the Anglo-Ira nian Oil Company (A IOC). John Foster Dulles decided to spare President Eisenhower the honor of know­ ing that he was a member of the AJAX "alliance" until the operation's results were known. We can therefore scratch two of the statesmen/ plotters: Eden and Eisenhower. Another chink in the alliance's armor was the Shah of Iran: he was not to be told that he was a member of the "alliance" or j ust how his nation was to be "saved!" One of the burdens of bearing the Roosevelt name was involved in this regard : we are told that the British made the "very sensible proposal" that the author be the AJAX "field Number 7 (Dec. 1979-Jan. 1980) UWI L IBRARIES commander" but that Secretary Dulles recoiled at the prospect of it becoming known that such a "prominent family name" was involved in covert political action. Roosevelt was finally appointed "commander" with the stipulation, however, that he stay away from anyone who might know him, "especially the Shah." Undaunted, the author sagaciously kept his own counsel. The situation might change, he confides to the reader, and should the Shah need convincing, Roosevelt knew that he had been endowed at birth with "exactly the right credentials." And what about the "other British representatives" in the AJAX "alliance"? They, Roosevelt asks us to believe, consisted of the head of the AIOC (now British Petroleum Company) and that company's ~ ents" in the Middle East. One must wonder how even the CIA 's "security con­ sidera tions" can justify the author's decision to name a British oil compa ny as a conspirator in an American plot to overthrow an Iranian government. But coyly, obviously enjoying the tease, Roosevelt re­ veals by innuendo that he is really using "Al OC" as a synonym for Britain 's Secret Intelligence Service (S IS or MI6). We read of a" Mr. (later Sir J ohn) Cochran" appear­ ing in Washington to speak with John Foster (and All~n) Dulles in connection with AJAX. Square that. 1f you will, with the British custom of cloaking the enigmatic head of S IS with the anonymous initia l "C" and with Roosevelt's reference to a "Mr. C" (indicating Cochran) as the chief AIOC representative. At tha t time, of course, "C" was actua lly Major General (later Sir John) Sinclair. It is easy to imagine Roosevelt slapping his knee in glee as he launched this double-entendre; just as one can envision Baron Strathalmond of Pumpherstone, who headed AIOC at the time of AJAX , concurrently spinning round in his coffin in high dudgeon over the book's implicat ion that its author saved Iran single-handedly! As for the British (AIOC-cum-SJS) contribution to AJAX, the author concedes that two "AIOC agents" proved to be useful , but he describes the principal AIOC role as simply providing communications. The company's "clandestine" radios in Tehran and Cyprus bridged Roose­ vel t 's isolation from the "outside world." This, at a time when the American Embassy staff was being doubled to over 200 and another 1000-odd U.S. citizens lived in Iran, was rather comfortable "isolation." Fiddling the Facts The foregoing sets the tone of distortion and omission that prevails throughout the book. Roosevelt tells us he rejected as worthless a carefully prepared British plan for the replacement of Mossadegh, and the reader must wade through 155 pages of bu mph to learn how the author will " play it by ear." Two things emerge with certainty: Roose­ velt never had a proper operational scheme; and, always hoping to meet with the Shah, he even required British assistance in arranging a royal audience. SIS set up a meeting in Switzerland between U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Meade [Air Force Major Number 7 (Dec. 1979-Jan. 1980) Charles Mason in the book] and the Shah's twin sister Princess Ashraf, who, with the Queen Mother, influenced everything the 33-year-old Iranian monarch said and did. Meade was to inform the Princess of Roosevelt 's impend­ ing travel to Tehran to save her brother's kingdom; instead, fancying the beautiful Ashraf, the American colonel tried to bed rather than brief her with the result that she warned the Shah that the Americans could hardiy be taken seri­ ously. In the end the author found a retired U.S. general who was willing to say that a meeting between Roosevelt and the Shah would be essential, and agents of Israel 's intelligence service were employed to ass ist the author in violating Washington's proscriptio n. Were it not for the fact that Roosevelt 's "secret" meet­ ings with the Shah were reported to Mossadegh immediate­ ly, the author's account of these charades could be amus­ ing. After the monarch congratulated Roosevelt on his selection of the next Iranian prime minister, the American superspy undertook [personally!] to draw up the necessary royal decrees and to arrange for their service. The Shah and his empress were sent off to bask on the shores of the Caspian while Roosevelt completed his paperwork and performed his routine miracles. To instill confidence in the departing royal ears, the author contrived a bogus message a nd att ributed it to President Eisenhower: "If the Pahlavis and the Roosevelts working together cannot solve this little problem, then there is no hope anywhere." There was precious little reason for hope, as it turned out. Anti-Shah riots erupted to protest the " blown" Ameri­ can plot; the Shah fled in panic to Baghdad and Rome even as his statues were being t oppled by mobs and calls for his head rang throughout Tehran. Having provoked the coup he had been sent to avoid, Roosevelt was ordered by the State Department to get out of Iran; instead, he ignored Washington's orders. The U.S. Air Force flew the vaca­ tioning American ambassador back to Tehran; he autho­ rized the U.S. military mission to release masses of new equipment to support a mutiny by junior army officers Roosevelt 's agents had managed to bribe. A subsidized mob was quickly formed and armed; it followed the rebel soldiers into the streets, but there were only faint calls for the return of the Shah. Assassins were sent off to do in Mossadegh and officials of his government and, when the prime minister went into hiding, retired General Fazlollah Za hedi (Roosevelt's can•didate for premier) emerged from his cellar to ride an American tank to the officer's club where he proclaimed a new government. Control of Radio Tehran meant control of Iran; this was seized to tip the balance tenuously in favor of Zahedi and the Shah. Over 300 Iranians were slain in the "pro-Shah" rioting, but Roosevelt neglects to record that grim statistic. Re­ ports of a successful "countercoup " were fed to a New York Times correspondent brought in from Cairo; when his paper predicted the Shah's return, the monarch decided to come home. And j ust to be certain that history would justify Roosevelt's antics, there was a "convenient" writer (called a "political attache") on the U.S. Embassy staff: Donald N. Wilber, who is described by Roosevelt as "the most re-liable historian on post World War II [Iran]." CovertAction 29 UWI L IBRARIES Why All the Bustle? First off, Britain was not, as Roosevelt says, merely interested in recovering its Intnian oil concession- there was then a world crude surplus and a new refinery (to replace AIOC's at Abadan) had been constructed at Aden to process oil from Iraq, Kuwait, and other British field s. Nor was Britain unaware of Soviet interests in Persia; Great Britain· had opposed Russia there before the Ameri­ can Republic was even formed! Three factors were involved in America's decision to float AJAX: the interests of American oil companies; the CIA 's determination to outshine British intelligence; and the obsession of the Dulles brothers with " International Communism." Foster Dulles was a confirmed Anglo­ phobe, and his brother Allen had resented British intelli­ gence since the days when he and the OSS had worked in the shadow of the British Security Coordinator's direct access to President Franklin Roosevelt. Kermit Roose­ velt- who tells us he sacrificed his doctorate so that his thesis might serve as a guide to the organization of the OSS!- harbored similar resentment; the fledgling CIA was determined that British SIS would dance to an Ameri­ can tune. Allen Dulles- no stranger to Iran as the author im­ plies- had headed the State Department's Middle East division after World War I; then he'd invoked American pressure to force Britain and France to share their Middle East oil concessions with the American companies. Later, after advising President Truman on the formation of the CIA, Allen Dulles visited Iran and stayed with the Ameri­ can All}bassador. Finding that the Shah feared Turkey far more than Russia and that there was considerable agitation to move the British out of Iran , Allen Dulles saw a chance to make the Shah an American puppet and, at the same time, to justify the award of oil concessions to American companies to forestall an Iranian deal with the Soviets. There had been ano1her Roosevelt active in Iran before Kermit was able to parlay two brief visits into status as America's Persian "expert": he was Archibald Roosevelt who first came as an assistant military attache, and then went on to head CIA activities in Beirut and Istanbul. Oh he's in cousin Kermit's book as well- Archibald knew far more about the Middle East than the author- but , one can't have 1wo of Teddy's grandsons sharing the glory of saving the Shah. Poor Arc:1ibald!: one has to dig him out of the "funny names" Kermit uses to preserve his paramount role. But between the Dulles brothers and the Roosevelt cousins, the OSS Establishment was revived and "Wild Bill" Donovan's cavaliers mounted and rode off to I ran to show Britain how to dominate a country. That is what AJAX was really all about; it couldn't have taken place (as the author admits) under President Tru­ man. He had disbanded the OSS and replaced it with the CIA in an attempt to make certain that intelligence was collected to advise foreign policy makers, instead of serving as a vehicle for the political action operatio_ns around which American foreign policy would have to be shaped. Once the myth of AJAX had been established, the sky 30 CovertAction became the limit: Guatemala, the Bay of Pigs, Syria, Leb­ anon, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Trucial Sheikh­ doms, Italy, Greece, Vietnam, Chile, and so forth! People, Places, and Na mes Roosevelt derisively refers to a distinguished British au­ thor's [Leonard Mosley's] use of pseudonyms for the char­ acters involved in AJAX as "a convincing bit of arro­ gance!" and then he employs arrogation throughout this book. One might think security was his reason (as in the case of AIOC), but sheer shoddy writing emerges too often. Frequently he reveals enough a bout the people or organi­ zations of which he writes to make them transparent to those who know the true story. But why would he write of landing at Rome's Fiumicino airport in 1953 when it wasn't opened until 1961 ? And what does moving the RAF air­ base at Habbaniya in Iraq from west to "south" of Baghdad do except betray the author's confusion? But to those of us who were in Tehran, moved to Beirut during the AJAX interregnum, and then returned to Iran, Roosevelt's use of"funny names" to cloak CIA personnel seems so foolish: they were all well-known; and , as the a uthor admits was one of Colonel Meade's frailties, most couldn't resist bragging about the "AJAX miracle." Even in Beirut, the fact that the CIA was hatching a plot in Persia was common gossip: it was impossible to gather Roosevelt, Roger Goiran [George Cuvier], Joseph Goodwin [Bill Herma n, and Goiran's replacement], and cousin Archibald (is he the man called Reynolds?] at the Hotel Saint Georges grill without tipping America's hand. Howard Stone and John Waller were well-known Tehra n figure~; Stone later tried, under Roosevelt's guidance, to engineer a coup in Syria and was nabbed in the act. Yet Roosevelt would ask us to believe that AJAX was his one and only venture into dirty work; he told Eisenhower, Churchill, and John Fos­ ter Dulles that the CIA wouldn't do such things unless it were "absolutely sure that people and the army want what we want." The Persian people and army let Mr. Roosevelt know how they felt in February, 19791 As have -most CIA seniors, Roosevelt claims to have known all about British spy Kim Philby for ten years before Phil by defected to Russia from Lebanon; we are not told why he failed to share his knowledge with the British government. By allusion the author refers to James An­ gleton (who also "knew" about Philby!), the long-time head of the CIA 's counterintelligence organization, who was fired by CIA director William Colby. Strangely, Roosevelt's only reference to his role, with Angleton, in building up the Iranian secret intelligence organization, SA V AK (the Persian acronym for the National Informa­ tion and Security Organization], that kept the Shah in power through terror and brutality, cites a speech Colby made about this in 1978. Nor does the author credit Angleton for supplying the agents of Israel's Mossad [the first word, in Hebrew, of the Institute for Intelligence and Special Assignments] who helped put over AJAX and later combined with the CIA to teach SA V AK new techniques. One must wonder how former CIA director Richard Helms, serving as America's ambassador in Tehran while Number 7 (Dec. 1979-Jan. 1980) UWI L IBRARIES the plot to overthrow the Shah was hatched, failed to use the assets of the CIA, SA YAK and Mossad to let Washing­ ton know that AJAX was about to be set in reverse. Mos­ sad's role in training SA YAK was surely a factor in the decision oflran's new Islamic Republic to break relations with Israel, cut off its oil, and embrace the PLO, however. \ What Price AJAX? At one point in his book, Roosevelt opines that there might never have been an AJAX if the author had gone to China for the OSS (presumably he would have then "saved" that country from Mao Tse-tung!). But AJAX has been good to Kermit Roosevelt: with help from the Shah and General Zahedi's son Ardeshir (the Shah's last ambas­ sador to Washington) Roosevelt has accumulated a hand­ some personal fortune. Registered in the United States as a "foreign agent" on behalf of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other countries in which he worked for the CIA, Roosevelt has reaped generous commissions and retainers from aircraft companies, engineering firms, and weapons merchants. As a reward for procuring Gulf Oil Company's membership in the Iranian Oil Consortium, organized after AJAX, the author was made a Gulf vice-president, or a t least given that title to cover his CIA activities. Archibald Roosevelt has done very well as a result of Cl A service. He returned from heading stations in the capitals of Europe to direct the Nixon-Kissinger collusion with the Shah to use Iraq 's Kurds to depose the Iraqi government; when that fell flat, Archibald elected to retire. He, along with Kissinger, received his reward from the Rockefeller (JI! and banking interests, and "run~" the Middle East from a desk in the Chase Manhattan Hank. - - · - --- -- --- ~-~-----~ ·- - Number 7 (Dec. 1979-Jan. 1980) And the Shah is far from indigent- he may have more money cached away than Iran has in its exchequer­ though it is unlikely that his country will ever become the industrialized, European-type society that Roosevelt and the Americans advised Mohammed Reza Pahlavi that he should aspire to build. To summarize this book, one might go to one of its characters to whom Kermit Roosevelt refers so frequently and foolishly: the Director General of Lebanon's Surete, Farid Chehab. This proud descendant of the Lebanese Emirs was well-known in the Middle East as a principal contact of the CIA; thus attributing the surname of Nasha­ shibi- a Jordanian CIA agent!- to Farid and his wife Yolande does little to disguise them. With irritating fre­ quency, Roosevelt quotes Chehab as sending the author off to "save" the shah from "Old Mossy" by citing "the tradi­ tional French hunter's" cry: "Merde a la chasse!" After reading Roosevelt 's book, methinks "la chasse est merde" provides a suitable description of the author's AJAX saga. Though denouncing the CIA for faili ng to heed his warn­ ing that the Bay of Pigs would turn into a disaster, Roose­ velt cleanses his hands in closing. Grandfather Teddy may have won the battle of San J uan Hill, but it was the same men Kermit and Archibald Roosevelt recruited and tu­ tored who lost Cuba for America in the end . As for the author's claim that his book represents his first admission of masterminding AJAX, one must hark back to his allega­ tion that the Shah credited a combination of God and Kermit Roosevelt with having saved Iran. Possibly a com­ bination of personal charm and Middle East knowledge enabled the author to accumulate his stable of commercial clients; however, it would not be idle to speculate tha t Mr. Roosevelt may at least have hinted modestly that he was praying very hard the day General Zahedi became Iran's prime minister. CovertAction 31 UWI L IBRARIES NAMING NAMES This is a regula r feature of the CovertA ction Informa­ tion Bulle1in . In view of the pending legislation which a ttempts to make a column such as this illegal, it is worth repeating what we said in our fi rst issue a year and a ha lf ago: "We do not believe that one can separate the dirty work of the CIA fro m the people who perform it. The exposure of past operations is valua ble, but it is only half the job. How many times have we all heard t he CIA, the F BI a nd others say, whenever a particula rly nasty covert operation has been exposed ,'Oh yes, but we don't do that a nymore.' We believe tha t they do, and that the same people a re often involved . As a service to our readers, a nd to progressive people around the world, we will continue to expose high­ ranking CIA officials whenever a nd wherever we find them." ARGENTINA A case officer in Buenos Aires, Argentina is Judith Ann Edgette, born November 15, 1936. State Department re­ cords first show Ms. Edgette as a political officer with the cover rating of R-6, posted to the Consulate General in Rio de J aneiro, Brazi l in April 1972. In early 1973 she moved to the Embassy in Brasilia, and in April 1976 was t ransferred to the Embassy in Lima, Peru, still as a political officer. As of at least October 1979, she a ppears at the Buenos Aires Embassy. Her cover posit ion is not known, but may well remain political officer. BRAZIL An ext re mely seni or, a nd notorio us CIA offi cer, Frederick Waldo Latrash, is now Chief of Station in Brasilia, Brazil. La trash, born November 29, 1925, in New York, has been with the Agency since the late 1940s, serv­ ing as "Vice-Consul" in Calcutta , India from 1949 to 1951 , a nd in New Delhi in 1951 , followed by four years under cover as a " political analyst" for the Department of the Navy, and additional deep cover from 1954 to 1956. In 1956 he reappeared in State Department reco rds, as Second Secretary in Amma n, J orda n, where he spent three years. In 1960 he was transferred to Cairo, United Arab Republic, this time under AID cover, as an operations officer. He was in Cairo until at least late I 961 , when records no longer show his whereabouts until 1963 , when he reappeared again in State Department records as a polit ical officer in Caracas, Venezuela. In 1965 he is found in Pa na ma City, Pana ma; from 1967 to 1970 in Accra, Gha na , where he was Chief of Station; and then, in May 197 1 he surfaced in his now well known role as Chief of 32 CovertAction Station in Santiago, C hile, where he served until June 1973, overseeing the U .S.-orchestrated destabilization of the Allende government. From 1973 to 1975 he headed the station in La Paz, Bolivia ; from 1975 until mid-1977 he did the same in Montevideo, Uruguay. He was then transferred back to Headqua rters, and as of September 1979 has ta ken up the new post in Bras ilia, accompanied by his Vene­ zuelan wife Flor Teresa Padron. La trash has presided over CIA machinations in many key countries at critical times, as the foregoing demonstrates. HONG KONG A senior case officer in Hong Kong is Graham Edmund Fuller, born November 28, 1937. Fuller served as a political officer in Jidda , Saudi Arabia from 1968 to 1971 , and as a consula r officer in Sana 'a , Yemen Arab Republic in 197 1 before being t ransferred in 1973 back to Headqua rters. In 1975 he a ppeared at the Kabul, Afghanistan Embassy again as a polit ical officer, a nd, as of December 1978 he was located at the Consulate General in Hong Kong. INDIA At the Consulate General in Madras, India the new C hief of Base appears to be John D. O'Shaughnessy, born November 5, 1939 in New York. O'Shaughnessy is listed in State Depa rtment records as a program a nalyst for AID from 1965 to 1967, transferring to diplomatic cover in 1968, as a political officer a t the Accra, Ghana Embassy, where he served until 1971 when he returned to Headquar­ ters. From 1974 to 1979 he does not appear in State De­ partment records, but as of early November 1979 he resur­ faced a t the Madras Consulate General. ITALY A case officer recently tra nsferred to the Rome, Italy Embassy is Charles Ronald Emmling. Emmling served as a political assistant in Rangoon, Burma from 1971 to 1974; a nd as a politica l officer in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for the next several years. Our source in Rome found him at the Rome Embassy as of J uly 1979. Number 7 (Dec. 1979-Jan. 1980) UWI L IBRARIES JAPAN We have located two case officers at the Tokyo, Japan Embassy. One is Michael Allan Burns, born July 19, 1940. Department of State records show him at the Bangkok, Thailand Embassy, as political assistant, in 1969, transfer­ ring late that year to Singapore, for university training, before returning to Bangkok in 1970, as a political officer. He returned to Headquarters in 1973, and in 1974 was sent to the Taipei, Taiwan Embassy, as an economic­ commercial officer. As of October 1978. records show him in Tokyo, in the political section once more. The other officer in Tokyo is Tom Roudebush. Records indicate he was stationed in the Montevideo, Uruguay Embassy, in the political section, as of late 1976. The ne~t record discovered shows that as of July 1979 he was m Tokyo. MOROCCO A relatively senior case officer has been located at the Casablanca, Morroco Consulate General, where he may be chief of Base. He is David R. Wilson, born November 6, 1936 in Pennsylvania. Wilson served overseas as a Marine lieutenant from 1958 to 1961 , which may have been legiti­ mate or undercover. From 1962 to 1966 he was serving as a "trai~ing officer" for the Department of the Army in Pakistan, a relatively unusual cover position. ln late I 966 he became an assistant training officer with AID cover in Amman , Jordan, and from 1969 to 1971 was a program officer for Al D in Saigon, Vietnam, where he was un­ doubtedly part of the massive CIA operations there. In 1972 he was back at Headquarters for Arabic language training, and then spent the early 1970s in Beirut, Lebanon and Tripoli, Libya. As of September 1979 he appears in Casablanca. ROMANIA Thomas A. Witecki , whose biography appears in "Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe,"has been transferred to the Bucharest, Romania Embassy. Witecki, born August 30, 1940, served under cover as a "programs offi­ cer" for the Department of the Army from 1965 to I 967, and spent from 1971 to 1976 at the Vienna, Austria Embas­ sy under diplomatic cover, as economic-commercial officer and then as political officer. In 1976 he was transferred to Headquarters, and, as of October 1978, appeared in Bucharest. His cover position is not known. SAUDI ARABIA In 1979 a number of CIA transfers occurred from and to Saudi Arabia. Indeed , reports reaching us indicate that the entire station was "asked" to leave. This may be related to the interesting fact that in December 1977 the then CIA Chief of Station in Jidda, Raymond H. Close, "crossed the street," quitting the CIA and taking a job as advisor to the Saudi foreign intelligence chief. We have located two case officers now in Saudi Arabia. Number 7 (Dec. 1979-Jan. 1980) One is Arnold C. Long, born December 30, 1943. Re­ cords first show Long at Headquarters in mid-1969. Later that year he went to the Consulate General in Calcutta, India serving there first as a "consular officer," and then as a political assistant. In 1971 he moved to the Embassy in New Delhi, this time as an economic-commercial officer, until returning to Headquarters in 1974. As of September 1976 he appeared at the Kabul, Afghanistan Embassy, in the economic section, and, finally, information as of Sep­ tember 1979 places him in Jidda, although we are not at present aware of his cover position. Another case officer in Saudi Arabia is William Dennis Murray. Records indicate that Murray was at Headquar­ ters in late 1975, and he showed up at the Jidda Embassy, in the economic section as of June 1979. SINGAPORE A well-known CIA operative, with considerable deep cover experience including a stint as a "journalist" with Forum World Features-an Agency news service proprie­ tary till exposed in 1975- is the new Chief of Station in Singapore. The officer. Robert Gene Gately, born July 4, 1931 in Texas, was exposed in numerous newspapers and magazines , including the London Times. Time Out, Embassy and More magazines. in the spate of revelations on FWF which appeared between 1975 and 1978. State Department records list Gately as having served overseas in the Army from 1953 to 1955 and in "private experience" both as an " international trader" and as a "journalist" from I 955 to 1967. Most, if not all of this experience was in deep cover. From late 1965 to early 1967 Gately was the manag­ ing editor of FWF; in the late 1950s, he was a Newsweek executive in Tokyo. In 1967 he shows up in State Depart­ ment employee status at CIA Headquarters; from 1968 to 1972 he was under diplomatic cover at the Osaka-Kobe. Japan Consulate General as a political officer; and in 1972 he was back again at Headquarters. From 1973 until late 1976 he served in Bangkok, Thailand, before returning once again to Headquarters. A source in Asia indicates that as of September 1979 he was at the Singapore Embassy, clearly as Chief of Station. SPAIN We have located a senior case officer in the Madrid, Spain, Embassy. Vincent Michael Shields, born Sep­ tember 21, 1937 in New York.•Shields'records include the give-away service as a "research analyst" with the Depart­ ment of the Army from 1963 to 1966, followed by "private experience" as an "aircraft specialist" with an "aviation development service," obviously deep cover. From 1971 to 1973 he is listed as a "plans officer" with the Department of the Army, additional obvious cover, and it is only in April 1973 , after at least ten years under deep cover, that he emerges with diplomatic cover, this time as an economic­ commercial officer at the Jakarta, Indonesia Embassy. In 1977 he was back at Headquarters, and, as of August 1979 we find him at the Madrid Embassy, in the political section. continued on page 24 CovertAction 33 UWI L IBRARIES PUBLICATIONS OF INTEREST Studies on the CIA and the Media: La ndis, Fred, Psy chological Warfare and M edia Opera­ tions in Chile, 1970-197 3. (This Ph.D. disserta tion of over 300 pages is the definitive study of the use of the newspa per El Mercurio by the CIA in the campaign to desta bilize a nd overthrow the Allende government. With graphs, cha rts a nd ma ny illustrations.) Soft-bound phot ocopies may be obtained from CA IB for $30.00, plus 50e postage U.S., $1.00 overseas surface, $5.00 overseas airma il. The CIA and the Media , Hea rings before the Subcom­ mittee on Oversight of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, House of Representa tives, December 27, 28, 29. I 977, J a nuary 4, 5, and April 20, I 978. Printed by the U.S. Government Printing Office fo r the use of the Per­ ma nent Select Committee. (Conta ins the testimony, much but not all of which was reported in the news med ia at the time, of many present a nd fo rmerintelligence officia ls, and leading journa lists, editors a nd publishers.) Petrusenko, Vita ly, A Dangerous Game: CIA and the Mass Media, English version of the Russia n origina l, pub­ lished by I nterpress, Prague, Czechoslova kia; $5.50 plus 75e postage, from Imported Publications, Inc., 320 West Ohio Street, Chicago, IL 606 10. (A fully annotated review of a ll the exposes, both in Congress a nd in the press, with valua ble references.) Chomsky, Noam, and Ed wa rd Herman, The Political Econom y of Human Righ1s, two volumes, South End Press, Box 68, Astor Station. Boston, MA 02 123, each volume $5.50 paperback, $ I 5.00 ha rdcover. (Not limited to the CIA. th is work presents an extremely worthwhile, de­ ta iled a nalysis of the role of the media in covering up a nd d istorting the complicity of the U.S. government a nd the multinationals in repression a nd torture in Latin America, Africa a nd Asia, a nd, regarding postwar Indochina , " the media 's rehabilita tion of the bruised doctrina l system of the imperial powers.'') Other Publications of Interest: Agrell, Wilhelm, Mili1ary Intelligence and 1he lnform a- 1ion Explosion , Second Revised Edition, Discussion Pa per No. 129 of the Research Policy Instit ute, University of Lund, Magistratsvagen 55N, S-222 44 Lund , Sweden. (A brief, inte resting pamphlet which looks at the cha nging operational pa tterns of military intelligence in recent years, particularly the changes due to electronic development a nd ensuing "intelligence overkill.") Center for National Security Studies, From Official Files: Abs1racts of Documents on National Security and Civil Liber1ies A vailable f rom the Center f or Na1ional Securily S1udies library, $3.00 from CNSS, 122 Ma ryland Ave., NE, Washington, DC 20002. (Self-explanatory. Good descriptions of all the Center's significant documents in the field, and the costs of copies from them.) 34 CovertAction Chile Commiltees Newsletters. A number of groups around the country publish info rmative newsletters deal­ ing prima rily, but by no means exclusively, with Chilean resistance. Two valuable ones we have seen are: Pan y Agua, sent to contributors to the Chile Resistance Com­ mittee, P.O. Box 14248, Minnea polis, MN 55414. For a Free Chile, sent to contributors to the Chile Solida rity Committee, P .O . Box 477 1, Kansas City, MO 64109. Civil liberties- A New War Casually, by request from the Viet Nam T rial Support Committee, 1322 18th Street, N W. Washington, DC 20036. (A pamphlet describing the David Truong case, a nd the extent of government repres­ sion of dissent and a buse of espionage laws.) Gombay, $15 per yea r, a irma il (Ce ntra l America, Mexico and Caribbean), $20 elsewhere, from Gombay Magazine, P .O. Box 927, Belize City, Belize, Central America. (The excellent monthly magazine of the Belize Institute of Friendship a nd Culture. Fine coverage of Central America and the Caribbean.) Kohen, Arnold, and J ohn Taylor, A n A ct of Genocide: Indonesia 's In vasion of Eas1 Timar, 1.75 pounds sterling (plus 1.00 overseas airmail; .65 overseas seamail), from TAPOL (UK), 8a Treport Street, Londo n SWl8 2BP, United Kingd om. (A comprehensive look at the East Timor resis ta nce a nd independence movement, the mas­ sive scale of Indonesia n at rocities a nd killings, a nd the rela tionships of western policies to t he issue. Especially timely in light of recent reports of widespread starvation since the Indonesia n occupation.) Lifschultz, Lawrence, Bangladesh: The Unfin ished Re­ volution , $6.50, from Monthly Review Press, 62 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 , or 2.85 pounds sterling, from Zed Press, 57 Caled onian Road, London NI 9DN, United Kingdo m. (An extremely well-documented journalistic look at the Bangladesh counter-revolution a nd the murder of Mujib, exposing the role of the United States, a nd especia lly the Pa kistan/ Bangladesh / India politics of Henry Kissinger. Includes a unique interview with a CIA station chief. ) Noyes, Dan, Raising Hell: A Ci1izens Guide to the Fine Art of In vestigation , $2.25 from Raising Hell , 607 Market St reet, Sa n F ra ncisco, C A 94105. (A pamphlet published by M other Jones magazine, with many suggestions and resources for investigative journalism a nd reporting.) Periodical Service: Periodicals- By-Mail is a project designed to give wider accessibility to worthwhile periodicals not distributed through many newsstands. For a free list of over70 alterna­ tive periodicals which can be ordered by mail, send name, address a nd a l 5e stamp to: Periodicals-By-Mail, A Peri­ odical Retreat, 336½ S. State, Ann Arbor, Ml 48104. - Number 7 (Dec. 1979-Jan. 1980) UWI L IBRARIES I I I -- - SPECIAL OFFER DIRTY WORK The CIA In Western Europe Edited by Philip Agee and Louis Wolf This start ling and inva lua ble expose of the CIA lists for $24.95. If you order your copy through the Covert Action Information Bulletin a nd at the same time subscribe to the Bulletin. we will give you a $ 10.00 discount. Overseas book orders must include $2.00 for postage surface o r $8.00 fo r postage ai rmail. We are pleased to inform our readers that "Dirty Work 2: The CIA in Africa ," edited by Ellen Ray, William Schaap, Karl Van Meter and Louis Wolf, will be published by Lyle Stuart, Inc. within the next several weeks. Our next issue will provide details for ordering this book, the second in the " Dirty Work" .series, from the Covert Action Information Bulletin. -------------------- SUBSCRIPTION/ORDER FORM I Covert A ction Information Bulletin appears from five to seven times a year. Subscriptions are for six consecutive I issues. All payments must be by check or money order, in U.S. funds only, payable to Covert Action Publications, Inc. I Subscriptions: I ( ) U.S. , $10.00 ( ) Canada, Mex ico, $15.00 I ( ) Lat. Am. , Europe, Med. 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Box 50272, Washington, DC 20004. -- ----- - ... ~ --- ... - --- - - --- - ---- Number 7 (Dec. 1979-Jan. 1980) CovertAction 35 UWI L IBRARIES THE TREASONOUS GUERRILLA: EXCERPTS FROM THE SA VIMBI LETTERS During his recent expedition to New York and WasI,ington, Jonas Savimbi spoke again ar.d again a ~out his long t.istory of fighting against Portuguese colonialism, of having spent the last eight years (or was it ten?) in the bush, of struggling for the inde­ pendence of the Angolan people, etc., etc. For some inexplicable reason, he forgot to mention how, for at. least three years prior to the fall of the fascist Caetano' reg;me in Portugal, he had been in direct secret cor­ respondence with the Portuguese military, and was an active collaborator with the highest levels of the Portuguese government in its fight against the MPLA. The letters, which were found in Lisbon after the Portuguese revolution, were first published in 1974 -in the Paris magazine, A/rique-Asie, and appear verba­ tim translated from the origina l Portuguese in "Dirty Work 2: The CIA in Africa. " Here follow four brief excerpts from one of the letters: Letter from Jo nas Savimbi_J,o General Luz Cunha (Comma nd er-in- Chief o:f the armed fo rces in Angola), via General · Beth'e9~ourt Rodrigues, Sep- tember 26, 1972: • • -- • "Excellencies: " Before ge.tting to:·practical matters, I wish Your Excellencies to transrnit my heartfelt compliments on .. •,-· • ~ I • • • , CovertAction INFORMATION BULLETIN P .0 . Box 50272 -::· · · Washington , DC 20004~- • .i;• . 36 Covert Action .·, . the occasion of the fou rth anniversary of the coming to power of His Excellency P rofessor Marcdo Cae­ tano, President of the Council of Ministers. I would also like to use this occasion to send my congratula­ tions to His Excellency General Luz Cunha fo r his nomination to the very responsible post of Comman­ der-in-Chief of the armed forces in Angola." "Our position is irreversible. We are no longer interested in the OAU, nor in Zambia, and even less in alliances with the MPLA. If these a,pects of UNIT A's policies are not yet sufficiently clea r for the authorities in Angola and in Portugal, it is still a n irrefutable fact: we have actively participated in the weakening of the MP LA in regions of t he east. We have no illusions about alliances with the kind of people we have been fighting, and whorr we continue to fight without letup. Whatever the thoughts of the government, we will never entertain taking Uj) arms against the authorities. We use our a rm, so that 0;1e day we will force the M PLA to abandon the east." "As regards camouflage, we will a,k the timber merchants for a nother type of cloth, as you recom­ mended, but I a sk that, if possible, at tea~t two good uniforms, in genuine camouflage cloth, be sent, one for me and one for Puna." " I humbly ask Your Excellencies to accept my salutations and high esteem." Number 7 (Dec. 1979-Jan. 1980) UWI L IBRARIES covert0001 covert0002 covert0003 covert0004 covert0005 covert0006 covert0007 covert0008 covert0009 covert0010 covert0011 covert0012 covert0013 covert0014 covert0015 covert0016 covert0017 covert0018 covert0019 covert0020 covert0021 covert0022 covert0023 covert0024 covert0025 covert0026 covert0027 covert0028 covert0029 covert0030 covert0031 covert0032 covert0033 covert0034 covert0035