(11th DCI William Colby. Photo Time-Life, Inc.)
Sorry- I have been distracted. It is a soft gray Sunday morning, and it will wind up at the office presently to catch up on some projects that were deferred in the swirl of activity near and far.
I was telling you about Jim Schlesinger and his report that excoriated the fractious and fiercely independent American intelligence community. Mac lived the history of the military end of it. The rivalry between Army and Navy was so intense that the Services used to rotate the intelligence duty that supported President Franklin Roosevelt in the days before Pearl Harbor- the discontinuity may have contributed to the strategic surprise.
That was long before the establishment of the CIA, created out of the downsized OSS of Wild Bill Donavon. Mac was working at Arlington hall after the war in what was then the Armed Forces Security Agency- the linear predecessor to the National Security Agency.
He was there as an experienced Spook at the inception of both agencies, and was a contemporary of the strange and opaque James Jesus Angleton, who may, or may not have had his fingers on activities that would dwarf the impact of the Crown Jewels.
Mac got to CIA- or to the part of it that would become the Community Management staff- on the first of January, 1972. He hung up his Admiral’s uniform on the 31st of December and reported to the Agency in the time of troubles. It was a period that has some interesting resonance in what is about to happen to the community again as the pendulum of history- and Presidents- swings.
It had been a wild decade. The invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs and the continuing war in SE Asia book-ended ten years of wild activity by the Agency. Dr. Kissinger and Dick Nixon were deeply suspicious of the quality of both analysis and operations at Langley.
The Bay of Pigs was a disaster. The legacy of the Studies and Observations Group (SOG) in the Republic of Vietnam and adjacent nations is more nuanced.
There was a deep paranoia in the Administration, and the conviction that the Agency had to be reined in. Mac was going to be part of the response to that, now that his Navy days were done.
I have been distracted in my attempt to get back to the thread of history that is playing itself out again.
The boys and girls at Langley always like to say that they have only one customer- the President of the United States. They respond to occupier of the Oval Office to the best of their ability. The inclination of the President to use the tools at his disposal provides the direction in which the Agency will go.
This week, news flared that an obscure professor at The University of Michigan had been targeted for collection and potential discrediting by the National Intelligence Council, a community organization that works out of the Original Headquarters building on the Langley campus.
It was an odd story, since the NIC is hardly an operational intelligence organization, but it appears that the Bush White House had leaned on whoever was convenient to get some dirt on a perceived enemy.
Agents of the IC are not supposed to do that to “US persons,” which is a construct created in the wake of three separate inquiries that date from the 1970s. I have inflicted an exploration of the Schlesinger Report on you already, and the recommendations that made such complete common sense that it took nearly thirty years and the 9/11 Commission to ram some of them through.
Then there were the Pike and Church Reports that issued from sensational Congressional hearings in the House and Senate. From the revelations of dirty tricks, assassination attempts and general mayhem, the Agency was pilloried.
Mac and the people he worked with on the IC Staff were tasked to implement the new and more restrictive rules.
Vietnam was over. A smaller, meeker and much more technical intelligence community was going to result.
I asked Mac about the Family Jewels at the Willow bar the other afternoon, and whether he knew about them at the time.
“No,” He said. “They were held centrally and not disseminated. Jim Schlesinger asked Agency employees to report activities they thought might be inconsistent with the Agency’s charter after Dick Helms was fired. Of course, he was only DCI for six months before President Nixon sent him down the GW Parkway to take over the Pentagon.”
“From what I have read, he started firing people left and right, too,” I said. “That was when Major General Thomas joined he Staff, and he was still there when I worked for Joan on what had morphed into the DDC-CM Staff.”
“Well, the last American combat troops were being pulled out of Vietnam, and there was great pressure to downsize the Agency, particularly the paramilitary component. The work force at the Agency hated him. What happened was the usual here in Washington. Leaks to the press during Watergate suggested that the Agency was involved in the break-in.”
“That was E. Howard Hunt and James McCord, right?”
“Yes- but it was not completely clear whether The Plumbers commissioned by G. Gordon Liddy were actually Agency employees in that role, or just free-lancers. But they were certainly both CIA veterans. Schlesinger’s direction to compile the Family Jewels was a 693-page loose-leaf book of memos that plopped into the in-basket of William Colby when he took over as the 11th DCI.”
“It was Seymour Hersh that blew the whistle in the New York Times, right?”
“Some things never change,” said Mac. “Same now as in 1974. Colby was holding the bag on what Schlesinger had created. He had to deliver the documents to Congress when the Committees found out they existed, and feigned shock at what had been going on all those years.”
I looked at my Happy Hour white wine and thought about my research. “Colby and Helms were interviewed much later, in the late 1980s on their perspective on the dilemma a DCI faced in in running a secret agency in a democracy. They called the period starting with the Nixon administration “The Time of Troubles.”
“No kidding. By the end of Watergate, the President was out of control, and the world faced thermonuclear holocaust in the 1973 Mid-east war. Then there was the Ford Administration, and the long national nightmare was over.” We both laughed at the old quotion.
(1975: Henry the K, Jerry Ford and Jim Schlesinger, who Ford cashiered for insubordination. Photo UPI.)
“I am afraid this is going to need another visit to Willow,” I said.
“Or a couple,” said Mac. “But you will have to hear about that to get to the 12th DCI, Stansfield Turner.”
“That sounds like the 12th Imam President Ahmadinejad is waiting for.”
“Not quite as mystical,” said Mac with a smile. “But definitely his appearance transformed the secret world.”
(Twelfth DCI, Adm. Stansfield Turner, USN (ret.) Image Time-Life.)
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com