Ian Kaplan - Blond Ghost: Ted
Shackley and the CIA's Crusades by David Corn
412 pages, 1994, Simon and Schuster
David Corn
412 pages, 1994, Simon and Schuster
Shackley
did not think deeply on the issues he was confronted with. His rise in the
agency was aided by his ability to give slick presentations with charts and
graphs that reduced the complexities of the world to the simple abstractions
that his bosses felt comfortable with. Although those above him thought of
Shackley as someone who "got things done",……
In 1962,
almost a year after the Bay of Pigs debacle, Bill Harvey the head of the Berlin
station brought Shackley to Miami, first as deputy chief of station and later
as station chief. Shackley was thirty four at the time and was heading the
largest CIA operation in the world.
Although
the Bay of Pigs invasion was a failure, the Kennedy administration was
determined to overthrow Castro by any means short of invasion. Various schemes
were undertaken to assassinate Castro. The CIA plotted to poison his food in a
Havana restaurant and schemed to slip him poisoned cigars. There was even a
plan to give Castro LSD before one of his speeches, in an attempt to discredit
him (given the long and rambling nature of Castro's speeches, his listeners
might not have noticed that he was on acid).
As the
Miami station chief, Shackley was responsible for a large paramilitary
operation that was infiltrating agents and arms caches into Cuba. He was also
responsible for gathering intelligence and recruiting spies in the Cuba
communist party. Although they occasionally blew up a Cuban factory, the CIA's
paramilitary efforts had little success and probably succeeded in maintaining
popular support for the Castro regime they were attempting to undermine. Most
of the anti-Castro Cubans that the CIA managed to infiltrate into Cuba were
captured and either imprisoned or executed. Although the CIA had little success
against Castro, they trained and paid thousand anti-Castro Cubans in secret
bases throughout Florida. When the anti-Castro campaign finally shut down, some
of these out of work "freedom fighters" found employment as drug
smugglers in south Florida.
The
Miami station under Shackley had no more success gathering intelligence and
running spies, than it did in its paramilitary campaign. Despite later claims
to the contrary, the Miami station did not warn Washington about the missiles
that the Russians were basing in Cuba (this intelligence was gathered by U2 spy
planes) and they had few recruits who provided useful information about the
Cuban communist party. This might suggest that Shackley was an incompetent
station chief. In fact, this was not true. The demands made on him were
impossible to fulfill. The Kennedy administration wanted to overthrow Castro
without having any publicly traceable trail leading back to the United States.
They wanted high level spies, and they wanted them fast. But developing spies
is something that happens over many years and in many cases is a matter of
luck. No matter how "can do" a spy master is, the process cannot be
hurried.
Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA's Crusades by David Corn
412 pages, 1994, Simon and Schuster
Review score: *** out of *****
412 pages, 1994, Simon and Schuster
Review score: *** out of *****
Blond Ghost is a biography of Ted Shackley, who
in his twenty eight year career with the Central Intelligence Agency, rose to
be the Associate Deputy Director for Operations, one of the top positions at
the CIA. Shackley was involved in many of the central events of the cold war
and its aftermath. His intelligence career started in Berlin, at the beginning
of the cold war, before the Berlin wall went up. Shackley later served as CIA
station chief in Miami, Laos and Saigon. In the 1970s he was the head of the
CIA's Western Hemisphere Division during the CIA's campaign to over throw Allende
in Argentina. After Shackley left the CIA in 1979, he became associated with
the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s. Shackley's connection to so many
important events in the history of the CIA and the United States makes him an
interesting figure. His career also reflects, to a remarkable degree, the
fortunes and nature of the CIA itself.
I read Blond Ghost because Ted Shackley was the CIA
station chief in Laos during a critical period, when the secret war (secret
from the American people, that is) was escalated. After reading David Warner's
book Back
Fire,
I became curious about the accuracy of his reporting. Warner believes that the
CIA men were "honorable men", fighting the good fight, but somehow it
went horribly wrong. Given Warner's amazingly brief biography on the book
jacket, and his views on the virtues of the CIA's employees, I came to wonder
if Warner himself actually had CIA connections. David Corn, the author
of Blond Ghost, is the Washington editor of The Nation, which is
famous for its leftist views. I thought that Blond Ghost might
provide another perspective on the events in Laos. In Blond Ghost, David
Corn has written an extremely well researched and balanced account of Ted
Shackley's career and the history of the CIA (much more balanced than many
articles I have read in The Nation).
In the epilogue of Blonde Ghost, David Corn
quotes a CIA officer who was responsible for one of the provincial regions in
Vietnam and who was later operations chief of the CIA's Western Hemisphere
Division.
It's hard for people to understand who have not been
there. Its easy for people -- especially people of another generation -- to
view what we did with their own perspective. I fought the communists for
twenty-eight years. I did a lot of bad things for my country. But I loved my
country and did what I thought best.
The world of this cold warrior is indeed gone. The
cold war was born out of the rubble of the Second World War, when the United
States was the only industrial economy that had not been ravaged by war. As
soon as the war in Europe ended, the cold war against the Soviet Union began.
Having defeated the fascists in Europe and Asia, the US was confident in its
self appointed role as the leader of the free world.
When Ted Shackley joined the Army, in October 1945,
the Allies had triumphed in Europe, but the cold war was starting to get under
way. The Army sent him to occupied Germany, to work with the counter
Intelligence Corps. At the time, Army Intelligence needed people who could
speak Slavic languages and Shackley was fluent in Polish. (Ted Shackley's mother
was a Polish immigrant, who left her husband, Theodore Shackley, when Ted was
two and a half. Ted went to live with a Polish woman, who may have been his
grandmother, until he was in his early teens. From her he learned Polish.) The
Intelligence bureaucracy seemed to agree with Shackley and after his Army
enlistment, rather than pursuing a law degree, as he had planned, he joined the
CIA.
The CIA assigned Shackley first to Nuremberg and
later to Berlin in the 1950s. This was a time of growth for the CIA and
Shackley's career prospered with that growth. Shackley was the perfect
organizational man. He had a "can do" attitude and was adept at self
promotion. Shackley was also a part of a "new breed" of manager at
the CIA, that was replacing the OSS "old guard" as the CIA grew. He
did not have an Ivy League degree and was not part of the east coast
intellectual elite, personified by intelligence mandarins like Allen Dulles (an
early director of the CIA). Shackley did not think deeply on the issues he was
confronted with. His rise in the agency was aided by his ability to give slick
presentations with charts and graphs that reduced the complexities of the world
to the simple abstractions that his bosses felt comfortable with. Although
those above him thought of Shackley as someone who "got things done",
to some of his colleagues he became known as a self promoter, whose
accomplishments were more on paper than in reality (of course this could be
said for the CIA as a whole).
In 1962, almost a year after the Bay of Pigs
debacle, Bill Harvey the head of the Berlin station brought Shackley to Miami,
first as deputy chief of station and later as station chief. Shackley was
thirty four at the time and was heading the largest CIA operation in the world.
Although the Bay of Pigs invasion was a failure, the
Kennedy administration was determined to overthrow Castro by any means short of
invasion. Various schemes were undertaken to assassinate Castro. The CIA
plotted to poison his food in a Havana restaurant and schemed to slip him
poisoned cigars. There was even a plan to give Castro LSD before one of his
speeches, in an attempt to discredit him (given the long and rambling nature of
Castro's speeches, his listeners might not have noticed that he was on acid).
As the Miami station chief, Shackley was responsible
for a large paramilitary operation that was infiltrating agents and arms caches
into Cuba. He was also responsible for gathering intelligence and recruiting
spies in the Cuba communist party. Although they occasionally blew up a Cuban
factory, the CIA's paramilitary efforts had little success and probably
succeeded in maintaining popular support for the Castro regime they were
attempting to undermine. Most of the anti-Castro Cubans that the CIA managed to
infiltrate into Cuba were captured and either imprisoned or executed. Although
the CIA had little success against Castro, they trained and paid thousand
anti-Castro Cubans in secret bases throughout Florida. When the anti-Castro
campaign finally shut down, some of these out of work "freedom
fighters" found employment as drug smugglers in south Florida.
The Miami station under Shackley had no more success
gathering intelligence and running spies, than it did in its paramilitary
campaign. Despite later claims to the contrary, the Miami station did not warn
Washington about the missiles that the Russians were basing in Cuba (this
intelligence was gathered by U2 spy planes) and they had few recruits who
provided useful information about the Cuban communist party. This might suggest
that Shackley was an incompetent station chief. In fact, this was not true. The
demands made on him were impossible to fulfill. The Kennedy administration
wanted to overthrow Castro without having any publicly traceable trail leading
back to the United States. They wanted high level spies, and they wanted them
fast. But developing spies is something that happens over many years and in
many cases is a matter of luck.
No matter how "can do" a spy master
is, the process cannot be hurried. Given the impatience of US politicians and
the inability of the CIA to undertake long term intelligence campaigns (except,
perhaps, against the Soviet Union), it is not surprising that US intelligence
has come to rely heavily on intelligence gathering by "technical" means
(satellites and communications interception). The CIA is also hobbled by the
fact that it is a bureaucratic organization, viewing the world through its own
political biases. The CIA rarely reports information that reflects badly on
itself, its mission or on the views of the politician it serves. For example,
CIA did not predict the collapse of the Soviet Union and as an organization
would be unlikely to do so, since this would conflict with its mission of
opposing the Soviets. The CIA has been equally poor at reporting other
political developments, like the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and the invasion
of Kuwait.
Perhaps because many of the tasks the CIA undertook
were impossible to achieve, how a CIA employee did his job became more
important than what was accomplished. And Ted Shackley did his job well. He
regularly went to Langley to report on the activities of the Miami station and
was adept at portraying these efforts in the best possible light. Under
Shackley, a CIA station produced reams of reports, even though much of the
information reported was of little value.
When John Kennedy was assassinated, the driving
force behind the build-up of the Miami station and its campaign against Castro
disappeared. After winding down the secret war in Miami, Shackley was appointed
station chief in Laos, in 1966. The CIA had been involved in Laos for over ten
years, since 1954, when the French withdrew. The USAID organization helped to
build schools and advised farmers on better agricultural techniques and soil
management. The CIA provided World War II vintage arms to the Hmong tribesmen,
who waged a guerrilla war against Vietnamese who encroached on their territory.
The CIA personnel of this era spoke the local languages and understood the
local culture. They served US interests, but they also believed that they were
helping the local people. The sleepy "country store" nature of the
CIA operations in Laos came to an end with the arrival of Ted Shackley. The war
in Vietnam was staring to heat up. Soon after Shackley became station chief,
vast amounts of money became available, and Shackley was not shy about using it
to build an empire and escalate the war in Laos.
Before Shackley arrived, the CIA operation in Laos
was run by Bill Lair and Pat Landry, who worked for Douglas Blaufarb, the CIA
station chief in Laos during the early 1960s. Unlike Lair and Landry, Shackley
knew nothing of the Laoatian language and culture. Shackley was in Laos to
support US interests, regardless of the local impact. At the time, US interests
in Laos involved stopping the North Vietnamese from using the section of the Ho
Chi Minh Trail that went through Laos. Shackley started a program that formed
Laotian tribesman into watch teams that kept an eye on the supply convoys that
moved down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. When a convoy was spotted, air strikes would
be called in. Shackley also provided modern arms, including artillery and a few
propeller driven bombers to Vang Pao, a Hmong warlord. Vang Pao's military
ambitions were encouraged and the CIA moved the Laotian tribesmen from an
irregular guerrilla force to a force that attempted to directly confront the
North Vietnamese. The tribal forces were decimated as a result and, in the end,
Hmong tribal culture was largely destroyed. At the present time, many of the
Hmong tribes people are refugees in Thailand and some, including Vang Pao, have
immigrated to the United States.
Once again Shackley's performance as station chief
in Laos impressed his superiors at the CIA's headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
Although the Hmong tribes people would eventually pay a terrible price for
allying themselves with the United States, they had tied up the North
Vietnamese military forces needed to protect the Ho Chi Minh trail and made
supply of the Viet Cong forces in South Vietnam more difficult. This saved
American lives, which was Washington's objective. In October of 1968, Shackley
left Laos to become the station chief in Saigon, South Vietnam. Although
Shackley had overseen a large scale escalation of the war in Laos, Vietnam was
where the real action was.
In theory, the primary mission of the Central
Intelligence Agency is the collection and analysis of information to aid
American policy and decision making. Like the OSS before it, the CIA has, to
various degrees, also become involved in covert actions that attempt to change
events, not just gather information about them. In Vietnam the CIA moved away
from intelligence gathering and toward covert action aimed at helping the
Saigon government and defeating the North Vietnamese. Although some
intelligence was gathered, any analysis that contradicted the view that the
United States would prevail was ignored. During the early 1960's William Colby,
who later became director of the CIA, was the Saigon station chief. Under Colby
the CIA became involved in "pacification" programs, that attempted to
track down the Viet Cong and their sympathizers in South Vietnam. In 1968, when
Shackley became station chief, Colby was on leave from the CIA to head
"operation phoenix", which became infamous as an assassination
program responsible for killing those suspected of aiding the Viet Cong. The
CIA also established Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRU) and Provincial
Interrogation Centers (PIC), all staffed by South Vietnamese, who became known
for their brutality.
Under Shackley, the Saigon station churned out
intelligence reports. These were all reviewed by Shackley, who rejected any
report without the proper positive "can do" tone. Although the United
States had been involved in Vietnam since the mid-1950s, few agents had been
developed and little real intelligence was reported. Much of the information
that was forwarded to Langley came from interrogations from the PRUs. Most of
this information was useless and the CIA failed to report the major build-up of
North Vietnamese forces in preparation for the Tet offensive in 1968. One
intelligence analyst, commenting on the intelligence from Operation Phoenix
stated:
I got disgusted when I tried to find out how they
authenticated their information. They captured people. And how did they
determine what kind of enemy they were? The provincial police would say
so-and-so is a secret Viet Cong and we have to neutralize. Well, how did they
know? We couldn't get authentication. It was a rampant problem throughout the
war. By mid-1969, a lot of innocent people were being captured by South
Vietnamese security and disposed of.
On one occasion, while visiting a police station,
Orrin DeForest, who was chief of interrogation for a Vietnamese province, saw
four Vietnamese Special Branch officers torturing a young girl. DeForest later
wrote that he did not think that the "brass" in Saigon had any idea
of what went on the field. Whether this ignorance of the brutal details of the
United States' allies was a result of studied ignorance or the bureaucratic
nature of the CIA, is unclear. However, it was quite clear to DeForest and his
colleagues that the "brass" did not appreciate reports that did not
square with the official view of events. Despite this, not all of the CIA's
intelligence was inaccurate. Officers like Frank Snepp, who later
wrote Decent Interval, were bitter that their reports were buried by their
superiors.
The fight against communism was used to justify
terrible atrocities and the United States government and the CIA lost its moral
compass in Vietnam. The CIA in Vietnam naturally selected for people who would
pursue the cold war fight without question. It is not surprising that the same
people went on to do terrible things in South America during the 1970s and
during the "Contra war" in the 1980s.
Shackley arrived in Vietnam after the Tet offensive,
when the pace of the war had slowed down. He increased the number of reports
generated by the station and damped down the chaos that reined at the Saigon
station during the war. When he left Vietnam in early 1972, it was a good time
to leave. In Washington they still believed that the United States would be
able to preserve South Vietnam and extricate itself "with honor".
When Shackley was recalled to Langley, in February
of 1972, he was put in charge of the CIA's Western Hemisphere Division. One of
Shackley's most important projects was to stop Philip Agee, an ex-CIA officer
who was writing a book on the CIA. Ironically, to get close to Agee, who was living
in Paris and was broke, a CIA agent gave Agee money. Although this allowed the
CIA to see parts of the manuscript before it was printed, Agee later said that
without the money he might not have been able to finish Inside the
Company, his expose on the CIA. In addition to the covert operation against
Agee, Shackley also inherited an operation that was funneling money to right
wing opponents of Salvador Allende, in Chile. Eventually Allende was
overthrown.
Salvador Allende died during the coup. When the
smoke cleared, General Augusto Pinochet, the head of a military junta, was in
dictatorial control. Political parties, including Langley's favored Christian
Democrats, were banned. [The Chilean] Congress was closed. Elections were
suspended. The press was censored. Allende supporters and opponents of the
junta were jailed. Torture centers were established. Executions replaced soccer
matches in Santiago's stadiums. Bodies floated down the Mapocho river. Due in
part to the hard work of Shackley and dozens of other Agency bureaucrats and
operatives, Chile was free of the socialists.
After serving as director of the Western Hemisphere
Division, Shackley was promoted to the position of Associate Deputy Director
for Operations, the number three position at the CIA. This was to be his last
promotion. Shackley was a friend of Edwin Wilson, an ex-CIA contractor, who
became an arms dealer. Wilson was jailed for shipping plastic explosive (C4)
and detonators to Libya. Admiral Stansfield Turner, who was head of the CIA during
the Carter administration, never forgave Shackley for his association with
Wilson. He transferred Shackley to the bureaucratic equivalent of Siberia and
Shackley left the Agency in 1979.
After leaving the CIA Shackley worked briefly for
Thomas Clines, who had worked for Shackley in Laos and Vietnam. Clines had left
the CIA before Shackley, in 1978. Using money loaded to him by Edwin Wilson,
Clines incorporated International Research and Trade, which became involved in
shipping arms purchased in the United States to Egypt. The cost of shipping the
arms was billed to the Defense Department, which later claimed that Clines and
his associates had illegally inflated their billings. Shackley later left
Clines' firm and formed his own company, Research Associates International,
which specialized in providing intelligence to business. The loose fraternity
of ex-CIA employees kept in touch with each other and with the United States
government. During the Reagan administration, both Shackley and Clines became involved
in the Iran-Contra affair, along with an associate from their days in Laos,
Richard Secord. Clines was later convicted of under reporting income from his
Iran-Contra dealings by at least $260,000 and served several months in a prison
as a result. Shackley's involvement in the Iran-Contra affair is more difficult
to discern.
In writing Blond Ghost, David Corn interviewed
many of those involved with the CIA, including Shackley. David Corn also did
extensive research (the book includes sixty nine pages of notes on sources).
The Vietnam war and the activities of the CIA in South America are starting to
fade from popular memory in the United States. Blond Ghost serves as
a reminder of these dark times and is an invaluable resource for anyone who
wants to study them in the future. Blond Ghost would have been
improved by an appendix listing the acronym's used in the book and a thumbnail
sketch of the various divisions of the CIA and their responsibilities.
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