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- Herausgeber: Biteback Publishing
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
The CIA has been anxious about people wanting to tell its stories. Indeed, its effectiveness as an intelligence service hinges to a large degree on its ability to protect sensitive information. As an oft-quoted CIA proverb neatly sums up: 'The secret of our success is the secret of our success.'The disclosure of sources and methods, information that has the potential to endanger lives and put the success of its operations at risk has always been regarded, understandably, as something to be avoided at all costs.How, then, is the CIA to acclimatise when this cherished rule is increasingly bypassed, with the memoirs of ex-CIA officers regularly reaching bestseller lists and being adapted for Hollywood? Using interviews, private correspondence and declassified files, award-winning author Christopher Moran examines how the CIA treads (and, some might say, oversteps) the fine line between justifiable censorship on the grounds of security, and petty, overbearing redaction for the sake of reputation.From stealing draft manuscripts to authorising its own programme of 'memoirs', Company Confessions details how the CIA grapples with the notion of secrecy when faced with the demands of an open and democratic America.
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Praise for Christopher Moran
‘Classified … follows the maxim that history should not only educate but amuse. This deeply researched and wonderfully informative book is surprisingly entertaining as it takes the reader through the history of official secrecy in Britain from Victorian times to the present.’
NEW STATESMAN
‘A well-researched and fascinating book.’
Bernard Porter, THE GUARDIAN
‘Authoritative but hugely readable book … An academic by trade, Moran tells these stories, and plenty more, with a historian’s care, but also with a real flair for narrative.’
READER’S DIGEST
‘What Moran brings to the party is a mass of frequently fresh detail culled from extensive archival work, energetic exploitation of recently released classified material, and some valuable oral history. The detail is organised into a lively and strongly argued narrative that will become an essential point of reference for all future studies in the field.’
Professor David Vincent, TWENTIETH CENTURY BRITISH HISTORY
‘[A] carefully constructed and interesting book. Classified covers some very good ground that will be of interest to British political and diplomatic historians, rather than just the narrow field of intelligence history. Moran’s book has a very strong bedrock of research within it. The distillation of this evidence is alone worth the price of the book. This is a well-researched and well-written book that is a worthy contribution to our understanding of government secrecy. All those interested in this question [secrecy vs openness] should seek out Moran’s book and its lessons from history.’
Professor Rob Dover, INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
‘A superbly documented study and a fine contribution to the literature.’
STUDIES IN INTELLIGENCE
‘A fascinating study of how a long-established democracy deals with the persistent conundrum of government secrecy in an open society. Essential reading for students of intelligence accountability, and especially timely given the current international discussion of leaks and information security.’
David Robarge, Chief Historian, Central Intelligence Agency
‘Traditionally, people have preferred to feel, rather than to know, about the rights and wrongs of state secrecy in Britain. In his highly readable book, Classified, Dr Moran does the truth great service by exploring with fair objectivity the difficult middle ground in a revealing series of milestone case studies. Wherever one chooses to stand on this thorny, arcane, contentious and fascinating issue, Moran’s book will certainly leave its readers far better informed.’
Andrew Vallance, Secretary, ‘D-Notice’ Committee
‘A fascinating and timely account of how successive British governments have viewed official secrets and the sometimes extraordinary measures they have taken to protect them … A valuable contribution to the study of government secrecy, Dr Moran’s work will enhance the reader’s grasp of the fundamental issues raised.’
Peter Earnest, Executive Director, International Spy Museum, Washington, DC
‘Christopher Moran is one of the leading new scholars of intelligence during the Cold War. He is a veritable cottage industry with books and articles appearing at an tastonishing rate; more importantly, they are all solid histories.’
Professor Jonathan Nashel, H-Diplo
Contents
Foreword
by Tony Mendez and Jonna Mendez
British scholar Christopher Moran’s absorbing new book is a fascinating look at a subject very much on the mind of many former and current employees of the Central Intelligence Agency. The infamous Publications Review Board (PRB) is an unpredictable speed bump on a CIA author’s road to the publication of any written work, whether a fully-fledged book or a letter to the editor. Anything else in between these two points, for that matter, written for public consumption by an agency professional, is required to run the gauntlet of the PRB. And that can be quite a difficult and capricious experience for an author. In fact, this is one of the basic premises of Moran’s detailed study of the intelligence memoirist.
Dr Moran’s approach is freshened by the fact that he comes to the subject as an outsider; not as a CIA officer or even a member of the intelligence community, but as a serious student of national security and the very process of collecting intelligence. As such, he is well-equipped to lift the exquisite veil of secrecy surrounding the CIA’s review board and examine the machinery lying behind it. And what a machine he describes – reminiscent of the giant Wurlitzer at the heart of The Wizard of Oz; one that proceeds by fits and starts, then runs smoothly for a time, years perhaps, before it begins to cough and splutter again as a new CIA director takes the controls. The resulting chaos that repeatedly ensues is an amazing read. Company Confessions is a serious enquiry into the process of how successfully and appropriately the CIA has, through the machinations of the PRB, balanced national security with the American public’s right to know.
Those CIA directors, and the chairmen of the PRB, have a very direct impact on the ability of a CIA officer to write a book, while the Agency maintains control of its information. Another key element of Company Confessions takes a penetrating look at the politics behind the PRB policies. While many in the intelligence community will recognise general trends emanating from the White House and filtering down into their agencies, Moran is able to form a much more direct cause-and-effect relationship regarding censorship and takes considerable pains to demonstrate this point with detailed descriptions of the way different authors and books have been dealt with. The results themselves frame the Agency’s mixed feelings about its image, its story and even secrecy itself.
CIA director George H. W. Bush established the PRB in June 1977. Less than a year later new CIA director Stansfield Turner’s appointment by the Carter administration and his desire to usher in a new era of openness are discussed at length, not only Turner’s desire to ‘make the public one of the direct beneficiaries of our efforts’ but his establishment of a Speaker’s Bureau at the CIA. To the Agency’s old guard this was tantamount to a betrayal from the top; they feared that, by opening that vein, even a little, the control over secrecy, the life-blood of the Agency, would bleed away.
The case of former CIA officer Frank Snepp and his unauthorised publication of Decent Interval, an insider’s unflattering book about Snepp’s CIA experience in the Vietnam War, illustrates the other side of the coin. Under Turner’s military-centric control, the PRB would not, could not, tolerate this insubordination. The CIA’s cold fury rained down on Snepp, who published without PRB review and then suffered the retribution that this precedent-setting case deserved, bluntly drawing a line in the sand. Future publication without PRB approval would result in prosecution and, in this case, forfeiture of all profits from the book. Case made.
The final irony, of course, is the story of DCI Stansfield Turner himself and his attempts to publish his own memoir, Secrecy and Democracy: The CIA in Transition. Upon stepping down as head of the CIA, he was hoist on his own petard. Turner agonised through a hostile PRB review of his manuscript that lasted two years. Moran’s detailed documentation of Turner’s journey as CIA director is a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the politics and policies of the PRB as they evolved during his tenure.
There are a multitude of stories, some of almost urban legend fame in the intelligence community. Even though the stories may be familiar to insiders, Moran brings a level of detail and a story-telling ability to each that will keep readers turning the pages, or swiping their screens.
Moran’s approach to his subject reads as fair and even-handed. There are plenty of examples that will cause a new evaluation of what those in the intelligence community would consider an old story; the author clearly does not have a dog in this fight. He does, however, deliver his research with fresh eyes and with a bent for balance. Perhaps it is this ultimately unbiased approach that brings him to a philosophical discussion of the well-regarded head of the CIA’s Publications Review Board, John Hollister Hedley.
From 1996 to 1998, the PRB functioned under the chairmanship of Hedley. A thoughtful officer who described his role as that of an ‘honest broker’, he set out to find solutions, not create new problems. Attempting to set a new course, Hedley stressed that new realities required new thoughts. Redefining the role of the PRB, Hedley presented a new formula for the Board to consider in performing its duties: he emphasised not what had to be taken out, but what could be left in. The rules were relaxed, and the publication of Dewey Clarridge’s book A Spy for All Seasons and Richard Helms’s memoir A Look Over MyShoulder followed. It was Helms, in fact, who began to advocate against the once-common adage that revealing the history of intelligence was unwise.
Christopher Moran calls out the Hedley era as a false dawn in terms of PRB process, with many of the old habits subsequently returning after Hedley’s departure: too long to review the material, hostility toward unflattering material, inconsistent definitions of what is deemed classified. Additionally, discreet support has been lent to friendly treatment of classified material.
As the CIA’s Chief of Disguise, when working with a surveillance team in a zone around Washington, DC, we had code names for use in our radio transmissions. The CIA’s headquarters building in Langley, with a new addition cloaked in copper screening that appeared to be green glass, was christened ‘The Emerald City’. We always knew that there was a wizard inside, the Great and Powerful Oz, pulling the strings and levers, controlling the secrets. Christopher Moran provides a wealth of information documenting the CIA’s internal battles over disclosure versus the right to secrecy. It is a revelatory read.
Acknowledgements
One of the pleasures of completing a book is taking a moment to thank the various people who helped it come into being. Andrew Lownie is perhaps the most good-natured and tirelessly attentive agent into whose hands a young author could hope to fall, and I count myself exceptionally fortunate in having him to represent my literary interests. From Biteback, I should like to thank Michael Smith for seeing the book’s potential, and Victoria Godden, for copyediting the manuscript to the highest professional standards and much more besides. From St Martin’s, deepest thanks to Thomas Dunne and Will Anderson. I am especially grateful to Will, the soul of patience, for guiding me step by step through the publishing process. Help has also flowed in liberally from many other corners of the press, and I can only add my praise to the long list of authors appreciative of their efforts.
For historians, there is nothing more exhilarating than the paper chase, travelling from archive to archive, immersing oneself in documents, in the hope of discovering some hidden nugget or gem. However, without the help of archivists and librarians, the historian would be lost – ultimately high on enthusiasm, but low on end product. This one is no different. Without the assistance of staff at the following repositories, this book could never have come into existence: Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Harvard University; Bancroft Library, University of Berkeley; Churchill College, Cambridge University (UK); Davidson Library, University of California, Santa Barbara; Edward L. Doheny Jr Memorial Library, University of Southern California; Eisenhower Presidential Library, Abilene, KS; George C. Marshall Research Library, Lexington, VA; Georgetown University Special Collections Research Center, Georgetown University; Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin; Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University; Houghton Library, Harvard University; Library of Congress, Washington, DC; Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Los Angeles, CA; Milne Special Collections and Archives, University of New Hampshire; National Archives II, College Park, MD; National Archives of Japan, Tokyo; Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University; Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College; Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University; State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, WI; Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University; US Army Military History Institute, Carlisle, PA; Wendell H. Ford Public Policy Research Center, University of Kentucky; and Yale University Library, Yale University. I am also grateful to these institutions for giving me permission to quote from their collections.
The completion of this work was made possible by several grants and fellowships. Between 2008 and 2011, I had the good fortune to work as a research assistant on the AHRC-funded project, ‘Landscapes of Secrecy: The CIA and the Contested Record of US Foreign Policy, 1947–2001’. Coming so soon after finishing my PhD, the ‘Landscapes’ project was a godsend, and I am thankful beyond words to the two principal investigators, Matthew Jones and Richard J. Aldrich, for putting their faith in me. Richard and Matthew are both outstanding scholars, and their work has been instrumental in shaping my understanding of the CIA, intelligence and US foreign policy. As part of the project, I was lucky to work alongside a number of extremely talented early career researchers, all of whom have since gone on to secure permanent academic posts. Now at the University of East Anglia, Kaeten Mistry is the author of a pioneering book on the CIA, Italy and the early Cold War. Based at the University of Hull, Simon Willmetts is an expert on the relationship between the CIA and Hollywood, and has an extremely bright future ahead of him. At the University of Nottingham, Paul McGarr has established himself as one of the world’s leading authorities on relations between the United States, Great Britain and the developing world. Paul and Matthew also deserve credit for putting together our end of project conference, held at the East Midlands Conference Centre in April 2011.
As the finishing line came into sight, the British Academy gave a welcome injection of funds, under the auspices of a Postdoctoral Fellowship. At least a quarter of the book was written at the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford, a highly stimulating environment where students and scholars consider ‘all things American’. For making me feel at home during my time there, I am grateful to Huw David, Jay Sexton, Sebastian Cody, Ursula Hackett and, above all, the Director of the Institute, Nigel Bowles. I am extremely fortunate to have held a six-month postdoctoral fellowship at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, which gave me access to a vibrant community of scholars, plus key archival holdings. Since 2008, I have enjoyed working with Peter Earnest, Anna Slafer, Vince Houghton, and Alexis Albion as a part-time consultant at the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. This book would be a poor shadow of itself had it not been for frequent pilgrimages to the nation’s capital, at the invitation of the museum.
My reflections on CIA memoirs have developed in dialogue with many friends, colleagues and interviewees, though they bear no responsibility for any errors of fact or interpretation, which are mine alone. It would be impossible for me to thank them all, but I feel obligated to mention a handful of standout individuals: Adam Svendsen, Andres Vaart, Arthur Hulnick, the late Cameron LaClair, Christopher Andrew, Christopher Murphy, Cynthia Helms, David Gioe, David Kahn, Eric Pullin, Frank Snepp, Frederick Hitz, Hayden Peake, Hugh Wilford, Jonathan Nashel, John Hollister Hedley, John Prados, Joseph Wippl, Jonna Mendez, Mark Zaid, Michael Goodman, Mike VanBlaricum, Nicholas Reynolds, Nigel West, Oz Hassan, Patrick Major, Paul Maddrell, Philip Murphy, Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, Richard H. Immerman, Robert Johnson, Scott Lucas, Tony Mendez and Wesley Wark. My heartfelt thanks are due to those close friends who read the text in full: Andrew Hammond, Christopher Read, Mark Stout and William Rupp. My debt to these individuals is impossible to repay. Acknowledgement is also due to several writers on US intelligence who sadly I have never met, but whose pioneering works have paved the way for a generation of authors like myself: Evan Thomas, James Bamford, Ronald Kessler, Steve Coll, Thomas Powers and Tim Weiner.
I am grateful to Peter Martland and the organisers of the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, the finest of its kind anywhere in the world, for twice inviting me to test my arguments before such a discerning and insightful audience. I would also like to thank the CIA History Staff for their encouragement and wise counsel, in particular David Robarge and Nicholas Dujmovic. Keep up the good work.
Despite time spent ‘on the road’, this is fundamentally a University of Warwick book. The Department of Politics and International Studies at Warwick is my scholarly home, and I have benefited beyond measure from the advice and questions of staff and students, both past and present. For nearly ten years, Richard J. Aldrich has been my closest colleague, mentor, and dear friend. A constant source of encouragement and wisdom, Richard remains as devoted as ever to answering the distressed early-morning email, for which I am grateful. Invaluable support has also come from Trevor McCrisken and my four PhD students, Jules Gaspard, Melina Dobson, Nikita Shah and Dee Dutta. As this book progressed from inception to realisation, I had the good fortune to enjoy the company of many talented students. I owe a special debt to those who have taken my Tuesday afternoon class on the history of the CIA. My thinking has been greatly enriched by their lively and astute contributions. It has been a privilege to learn with them and from them.
Finally, it would be remiss of me if I did not thank my parents and especially my fiancée, Ioanna. Their unflagging support and encouragement has benefited me in ways too numerous to enumerate. Quite simply, this book would not have been possible without Ioanna’s love and companionship.
List Of Abbreviations
Used in the Text
Locations
Collections
Introduction
I. If Walls Could Talk
The secret of our success is the secret of our success.
CIA Proverb.1
In autumn 1973, the Central Intelligence Agency approached a man named Harold Vogel for a special assignment. Vogel was not a spy, but possessed a particular set of skills required by the Agency. Born in Detroit, Michigan, he had been raised in the Bavarian town of Ansbach during the period of the Great Depression, where his grandfather, a restoration sculptor, taught him everything he knew about a hammer and chisel. Inspired by his elder’s teachings, Vogel studied for a stone carving apprenticeship in Nuremberg, before eventually returning to the United States, settling in Northern Virginia, as a Master Carver, where he found his talents in high demand. His various projects included restoring the Senate Chamber in the US Capitol, working on the National Cathedral, and fashioning a new wooden frame for the Declaration of Independence at the National Archives. Alerted to his craftsmanship by the US Commission of Fine Arts, the CIA asked him to build a wall, a memorial wall to be more precise, only ever to be seen by CIA employees and approved visitors.
Earlier that year, several CIA officers had recommended that a plaque of remembrance be installed at CIA headquarters at Langley to honour comrades who had died in the jungles of Vietnam and Laos. It was subsequently suggested that the Board be a tribute to all CIA men and women who had fallen in the line of duty. Inspired by an aesthetic of elegant minimalism and simple geometric forms, Vogel’s concept was a memorial wall designed to evoke a sense of pride and loss in everyone walking by it. This was approved by Director William Colby in November 1973.
Unveiled without ceremony in July 1974, Vogel’s design is one of the first things visitors to Langley will see, located on the north wall in the grand foyer of the Original Headquarters Building. Made out of smooth, white, Vermont marble, and flanked by ‘Old Glory’ on the left and a flag with the CIA’s seal on the right, it currently bears 111 stars, each signifying a fallen hero, a solemn constellation that has increased from thirty-one since the wall was erected. Measuring precisely 2.25 inches tall by 2.25 inches wide and half an inch deep, each star is painstakingly produced, first drawn by hand, following a stencil, before a pneumatic air hammer and chisel are used to carve out the traced pattern. The star is then cleaned and sprayed black, which, with age, fades to grey.
Above the stars is an inscription that reads: ‘In honor of those members of the Central Intelligence Agency who gave their lives in the service of their country’. Below them on a marble shelf is a Book of Honor, made from Moroccan Levant leather, locked in a stainless-steel and inch-thick bulletproof glass case. Inside, some of the names of the fallen are neatly inscribed, penned by a professional calligrapher, using a dip pen and black sumi ink for a lustrous finish. Next to these names is the year they died and a hand-etched, 23-carat gold-leaf star, no bigger than the size of an asterisk. In recent years, the job of making new stars for the wall has passed to Tim Johnston, a little-known tradesman out of Manassas, Virginia, who makes bespoke bathrooms and kitchen surfaces. Like Vogel, his mentor, he derives no pleasure in carving new stars, but recognises that it must be done and is thankful that he is the one entrusted with the responsibility.2
The CIA prides itself on quiet patriotism. A CIA officer, it is said, puts his country first, the Agency second, and then himself. The Memorial Wall is a silent and lasting reminder of the men and women who paid the highest price for this pledge. It is a poignant symbol of the dangers associated with intelligence work – dangers that most people, thankfully, will never experience. Every year, since 1987, the CIA holds a commemoration ceremony in which the names of the fallen are read aloud by representatives of each of the four directorates. Family members of the deceased are invited to attend and, since 2009, are given a keepsake replica of their loved one’s star. The National Anthem is observed, prayers are read, and an all-white floral wreath is placed before the wall. Finally, a trumpeter concludes the occasion with a playing of ‘Taps’, the bugle call sounded at US flag ceremonies and funerals.
What are the stories that lie behind the Memorial Wall? Ironically, more is known about the building of this edifice, thanks to a glossy 23-page brochure produced by the CIA’s Office of Public Affairs, than many of the people it venerates. As much as it is a shrine to the CIA’s heroes, it is also a testament to what is arguably the Agency’s operative virtue – secrecy. The Book of Honor is essentially censored. One hundred and eleven stars are inscribed on its pages, but only eighty have names next to them. For security reasons, the identities of thirty-one employees honoured on the wall are not contained in the book. Nor are the omitted thirty-one known to the men who carved their stars. Anonymity – even in death. The book contains no information about what position any of the officers held, what missions they were on, or how or where their lives were tragically cut short. The year of death is recorded, but not the day or month. Because of compartmentalisation within the organisation, the stories behind the wall are just as much of a mystery to most CIA officers as they are to the public. Retired CIA field operative Melissa Boyle Mahle has written that, ‘The identity of most were clouded in secrecy even to me, and I did not dare inquire because I did not have the need to know.’3 Remarkably, Richard Helms, whose career in US intelligence spanned more than three decades, including over seven years as CIA Director, has said that: ‘Most of the names didn’t have any resonance with me … I didn’t know who they were.’4
The annual commemoration ceremony sheds no extra light on the careers of any of the 111 heroes. Indeed, it too is a monument to the culture of secrecy. Guests, who are instructed to leave cameras, video recorders and mobile phones at home, arrive at the visitor’s centre from Route 123, where they are greeted by guards carrying pistols or, in times of high alert, assault rifles. After presenting their ID and Social Security Number, they are issued with a badge and directed to the compound proper, where there is a VIP parking lot. Many of the grieving parents, widows and widowers arriving that day have no clue about the circumstances in which their spouses or children died; some may have even been fed falsehoods. Entering into the cavernous lobby through a set of turnstiles, visitors might take a moment to step on the granite inlaid CIA seal, sixteen feet across, made famous by countless Hollywood movies, or observe, even genuflect, at the statue of William Donovan, Director of the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Undercover CIA officers are told long in advance to stay away. Eventually, everyone takes his or her assigned seat, arranged in a horseshoe pattern, looking directly at the Memorial Wall. There is no press. The incumbent CIA Director says a few words about sacrifice, but that is it. This contrasts starkly with Medal of Honor ceremonies, where a citation is given outlining an individual’s achievements. If they are lucky, guests might receive a vetted transcript of the proceedings, containing only the sparse remarks made about their loved ones.5
Ever since it was created in 1947, the CIA has worried about people wanting to tell its stories – not just the stories that lie behind each of the 111 stars, but many more besides. An oft-quoted CIA proverb is: ‘The secret of our success is the secret of our success.’ In common with all intelligence services – worldwide – the CIA is keen to protect stories that, if disclosed, would endanger the lives of sources, jeopardise operations or expose to the nation’s enemies the methods by which vital information is collected and analysed. President Gerald Ford once said that he would gladly share all the CIA’s secrets to every American, at the time estimated to be 214 million people, if he could guarantee that Moscow wasn’t listening. The CIA’s anxiety about the revelation of sources and methods is long ingrained in American history, dating to the foundation of the Republic. George Washington was adamant that such information was sacrosanct. On 26 July 1777, at the height of the American Revolutionary War, he wrote to Colonel Elias Dayton, who ran a spy ring in Staten Island, urging secrecy: ‘The necessity of procuring good Intelligence, is apparent and need not be further urged. All that remains for me to add is, that you keep the whole matter as secret as possible. For upon secrecy, success depends in most Enterprises of this kind.’ So apposite were these words that, some 200 years later, the CIA hung a framed reproduction of Washington’s letter on a wall at Langley for employees to see. At least one CIA Director has taken it with him when testifying on the Hill.6
The CIA has a justifiable argument that it needs to prevent the disclosure of stories that would undermine its ability to carry out its mission. Even in a free democratic society, there is a need for intelligence secrets, just as there is a need to protect the secrets exchanged between doctor and patient, or attorney and client.
The danger of not having a veil of secrecy for sources and methods should not be underestimated. The CIA’s effectiveness hinges to a large degree on whether it can protect this body of information. Foreign intelligence services, whose cooperation is often crucial, will not enter into liaison relationships if they cannot trust the CIA to protect basic secrets. When secrecy about unique and sometimes fragile techniques is compromised, enemies will develop countermeasures, potentially denying policymakers with intelligence essential to national security. CIA Director Admiral Stansfield Turner (1977–81) was committed to opening up the CIA, but remained acutely aware that transparency about methods was a line he could not cross. ‘If we tip the other side off to just how we are collecting our data’, he said sternly at a meeting of the Commonwealth Club of California in August 1977, ‘the flow of information will end and cost money, men and time to turn it on again in some way.’7
The CIA will struggle to recruit personnel and sources if it cannot guarantee that their identity will remain secret. In some cases, the life of an intelligence officer or source hinges on that guarantee being preserved. Indeed, at least one of the stars on the Memorial Wall – that of Richard Welch (more about him later) – is there because someone told a story the CIA failed to stop.
It is generally accepted – or at least it should be – that there is a public interest in the CIA protecting stories that impinge directly on sources and methods, even if the most compelling evidence to demonstrate the actual harm caused by disclosure is only available in the classified domain. The real controversy starts when the CIA is perceived as wanting to withhold stories where it is not obviously apparent that national security concerns are at stake. In the United States, where the political health of the nation stems from the ability of citizens to know and criticise policies carried out in their name, people have a right to be angry when it appears that the CIA is suppressing stories that might cause embarrassment, because they contain evidence of failure, ineptitude, wrongdoing or violations of law. That anger is intensified if the CIA is seen to be seizing upon the leverage of ‘national security’ – traditionally a sure-fire way to strike fear into people who do not know any better – to throw indiscriminately a blanket over a multitude of sins. It has long been claimed by critics that secrecy is a largely mindless reflex at the CIA, with the Agency keeping secrets for secrecy’s sake, irrespective of whether there is a legitimate national security reason for doing so. Steven Aftergood, a political activist who directs the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy, has argued that the bureaucratic instinct to avoid embarrassment is so powerful at Langley that the guiding mantra is not simply ‘If in doubt, classify,’ it is just ‘classify’.8
Every story requires a storyteller. This book examines how the CIA, with varying degrees of success, has attempted to control one particular type of storyteller. Investigating what tales this breed of storyteller wants to tell, and why, and exploring how much or how little the CIA has allowed them to say, provides a fascinating vantage point from which to assess the depth of secrecy at Langley (the secrets of secrecy, so to speak), and for thinking about whether the Agency has struck a fair and appropriate balance between its need to protect sources and methods and the core American value of openness.
Meet the intelligence-officer-turned-memoir-writer.9
II. What Would Walter Say?
Exposed intelligence agents are either dead, ‘turned’, or retired – and writing their memoirs.
Warren F. Kimball, historian and former Chair of the State Department Historical Advisory Committee.10
Walter Pforzheimer owned two apartments at the Watergate complex in Washington, DC. Purchased in 1966, six years before a ‘third-rate burglary’ made the site infamous, the two apartments served different purposes. One was Pforzheimer’s living quarters. The other, overlooking the Potomac River, and fortified by a locked steel gate, was home to the largest private collection of intelligence books in the world. The son of a rare book dealer, Pforzheimer was a bibliophile all his life, but his particular love for spy stories began in 1942 when he joined the OSS and wanted to read all about his new trade, the so-called ‘second-oldest profession’. That passion grew in 1956 when he was asked by CIA Director Allen Dulles to found and curate the Historical Intelligence Collection at the CIA, intended to help the Agency keep on top of what had been published and what was still secret. Acquiring the title of ‘Dean of Intelligence Literature’, Pforzheimer purchased two copies of every book – one for the CIA, and one for himself. As his obituaries noted, he was the custodian and keeper of the CIA’s institutional memory. Those lucky to have seen his private library with their own eyes will remember books in every room, even the lavatory, spilling off ceiling-high shelves, tables and chairs, and out of liquor boxes and fruit crates cannibalised for storage. As a personal touch, tacked onto one shelf was a bumper sticker with the words: ‘The world is at peace, ’cause the CIA is at war’.11
A lifelong bachelor, known by his friends as a loveable curmudgeon, outspoken to a fault, Pforzheimer was never happier than when he was at home, surrounded by his literary possessions, with a bottle of whisky and a fellow ‘old boy’ for company, musing about Yale, his beloved alma mater, his days at the CIA or the latest spy book. Were he alive today, he would need a third apartment to accommodate the staggering volume of books now being written about US intelligence, especially by CIA veterans. In recent years, it has become almost obligatory for senior retirees of the CIA to publish a memoir. In the words of one journalist, ‘The spies are coming in from the cold – and heading straight to Amazon.com.’12 In the words of another, ‘At retired spooks’ conventions, the card tables in the lobbies must be creaking under the weight of them all.’13 In 1998, the Chairman of the Publications Review Board (PRB), the body at the CIA responsible for vetting and clearing publications by CIA personnel, reported that the Board was being called into action more than 300 times a year.14 This was just the start of it. In 2004, the PRB reviewed no fewer than 30,000 pages.15 By 2007, some 100 prospective authors were contacting the Board every month.16 In 2010, it reviewed more than 1,800 manuscripts. In March 2011, the Board set a new one-month record by reviewing more than 300 manuscripts – the equivalent of what was reviewed in an entire year only a decade earlier.17
Memoir writing by ex-CIA officers is big business. Six-figure advances are relatively common, while intelligence officers of the first rank, such as former Directors, can command a lot more. Published in 2014, Worthy Fights, the memoir of CIA chief Leon Panetta, reportedly earned its author a lofty $3 million.18 Memoirs by particularly controversial or high-profile individuals will often become bestsellers, in some cases overnight, and draw the attention of a broad range of national and international presses. Published in 2007, the memoir of George Tenet, CIA Director at the time of 9/11, climbed as high as No. 2 on the Amazon bestseller list, beaten to the top spot only by the seventh and final Harry Potter novel.19
If large promotional tours, television appearances and the sound of ringing cash registers are not enough, some authors have even seen their memoirs become major motion pictures. Ben Affleck’s film adaptation of Argo, the true story of how CIA disguise and exfiltration expert Tony Mendez rescued six American diplomats from post-revolutionary Iran under the guise of being a Canadian film crew, pulled in a cool $136 million in domestic box office receipts and won Best Picture at the Oscars. The only down side, Mendez has joked, was not being played by George Clooney.20
The popularity of CIA memoirs should not come as a great surprise. They offer a special window into a realm of human activity that has long attracted public curiosity and concern, but which has also been obscured by secrecy and contorted by fantasy. While often eliciting hostility for what critics perceive as dubious literary quality, in many cases they provide the first draft of history, containing insights that one simply cannot get from other sources and which might otherwise remain hidden from the scrutiny of posterity. Indeed, since the CIA’s approach to declassification can at times leave a lot to be desired, memoirs might be the only place that certain information will ever be found.
Authors and publishers are keen to entice readers with the promise of a privileged and expert peek inside the secret world. Dust-jacket hyperbole will give the impression of an all-knowing spy, in the autumn of their life, making one final dead drop that will leave the reader infinitely better informed. In 1976, Ballantine Books raised reader expectations by claiming that Joseph Burkholder Smith’s Portrait of a Cold Warrior was ‘one of the most vivid, honest and revealing looks ever at the CIA by a man who was inside during the hottest decades of the Cold War.’21 In 1989, Berkeley Books boasted: ‘Former CIA Deputy Director Russell Jack Smith takes you on a thrilling behind-the-scenes tour of the intelligence community – for a rare glimpse of the everyday inner working of the real CIA.’22 Eye-catching titles like The Unknown CIA, Need to Know and Blowing My Cover are cleverly designed to invite the reader to pick at forbidden fruit.23 Moreover, publishers sometimes cannot resist giving a book a more titillating title than it deserves, or its content can actually sustain. For example, Praeger insisted that CIA veteran Arthur Hulnick call his book Fixing the Spy Machine, against his better judgement.24 As a result, Hulnick spent a large part of the book explaining that intelligence is not a machine, is not in fact broken, and, ergo, doesn’t need to be fixed.25
Given the abundance and popularity of CIA memoirs, it is surprising that scant effort has been made to study them or explore their historical development. Naturally, whenever a new title is released, journalists are quick to pen reviews. The CIA also provides engaging and informed critiques of recent memoirs in its in-house journal, Studies in Intelligence, written by the heir to Pforzheimer’s bibliographic throne, Hayden Peake. Yet, the frame of investigation for book reviews is understandably narrow, focused on whether the work in question constitutes ‘good history’. The absence of any serious or book-length enquiry into this body of literature can be traced to a broader reluctance among historians to study ‘official memoirs’ of any kind. The acid of envy has played its part. As George Egerton explained in a perceptive article in 1988, many historians are uncomfortable with the harsh reality that their painstakingly researched monographs seldom match the excitement and earnings generated by an official memoir promising secrets, scabrous details and high-class gossip.26 Jealousy, however, tells only half the story. Historians have long been sceptical about official memoirs, which they regard as self-serving and selective, irrespective of claims by the author to ‘tell it how it was’. Every memoirist, they believe, to justify and vindicate their actions, will resort to suggestio falsi and suppressio veri. Indeed, as Egerton remarks, ‘Are not [officials] uniquely disqualified, by years of habit-forming professional obfuscation, from telling the truth about what they have done and why they did it?’27 With good reason, concerns about factual contamination and mendacity are increased in the case of spy memoirs. Why, after all, should anyone believe a word of what a spy has to say? They are trained to lie, deceive and dissemble; that is their business. The historian’s frustration is compounded by the fact that it is often impossible to verify the author’s version of events because the documents necessary to do so are not available in the public domain.
Moreover, the older the memoirist, and the further the distance from the events described, the greater the likelihood of memory being eroded by the encrustations of time. At Langley, there is an old story about two elderly spies, a husband and wife. One evening, the wife announces that she would like a big fat sundae before going to bed, with vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce, whipped cream and a cherry on top. She asks her husband to write the order down, knowing he would forget, but he repeats the ingredients verbatim and leaves the house. Sometime later, he returns with a brown paper bag and a satisfied grin on his face. After opening the bag and pulling out a ham sandwich, his wife says to him: ‘See. I told you to write it down. You forgot the mustard.’28
The time has come, however, to think about CIA memoirs in a new light and not simply dismiss them because of their questionable objectivity. Whether historians like it or not, they play a significant role in shaping public perceptions of the CIA. By the time they have been serialised and reviewed in mass circulation newspapers, displayed in the windows of bookstores, attracted the attention of talk shows, been reborn in paperback and, in some cases, made the journey to the silver screen, they have left a powerful cumulative imprint on modern political culture and collective social memory. Egerton refers to this as the ‘latent function’ of the memoir.29 In the case of CIA memoirs, this latent function is even greater because they exist in a world where information about intelligence and intelligence agencies is extremely limited. Quite simply, our knowledge of many aspects of intelligence history would be greatly diminished without them.
The ubiquity of CIA memoirs, coupled with their latent function in framing popular perceptions, represent compelling reasons to subject them to in-depth analysis. By sheer dint of numbers, they are important. From the perspective of this study, what makes them particularly worthy of detailed investigation is that they provide a window onto a bigger subject: secrecy. By looking at the development of CIA memoirs – why they have been written; what they have revealed; what the CIA has allowed to be revealed; and the battles the CIA has fought and the strategies it has adopted to try to prevent certain disclosures – we learn a great deal about how the Agency has approached the age-old puzzle of secrecy in an open society. In short, an examination of CIA memoirs is highly revealing of how successfully and appropriately the Agency has managed the high-wire act of balancing national security concerns with the founding principles of the American Republic.
III. Blood Sport
On the Agency’s scale of preferential occupations for ex-employees, a second career in writing is a cut above double agents and a shade below gunrunners.
CIA Officer David Atlee Phillips, 1975.30
This book makes three major claims.
One: for most of its history, the CIA has regarded memoirs with outright hostility. ‘There used to be a feeling of “Don’t even think about writing a book”, and I shared that feeling,’ recollected CIA officer Floyd L. Paseman, who retired in 2001 and published A Spy’s Journey in 2004.31 As we shall see, intelligence officers have had a range of motivations for wanting to write memoirs, some more noble than others. No author is exactly the same, but common factors include a desire to expose wrongdoing, settle scores, correct popular misconceptions, seek self-glorification and obtain money. Unsurprisingly, money looms large in many cases, and is perhaps the common denominator. Whatever the motive, the CIA’s default position was for a long time clear and simple: spies should not write books. If intelligence officers saw something they did not like, they should speak with their superiors, report to the CIA’s Inspector General or go to the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board – not write a book. If they feel their reputation or actions have been unfairly impugned, they should resolve the conflict in-house – not write a book. If they are fed up with the distorted and lurid fantasies spun by certain journalists and spy novelists, they should suck it up and get on with their job – not write a book. If they feel underpaid, they should start a new career on Wall Street – not write a book. And finally, if they find it maddening to have saved the world and have no one know about it, they should polish their medal or see a therapist – not write a book.
Memoir writing is fundamentally antithetical to the Agency’s most cherished code: never celebrate successes or explain failures. Spies are meant to be inveterate ‘hiders’ of things, expected neither to confirm nor deny. The principles of silence and discretion are ingrained in staff from the moment they walk through the door at Langley. Accordingly, when someone produced a book, the Agency’s natural instinct was, for many years, to regard this as improper at best, traitorous at worst. James E. Flannery, who joined the CIA in 1952 and was later deputy chief of the Latin American division, encapsulated this uncompromising attitude in a letter to fellow CIA man Scott Breckinridge:
Every CIA employee is required to sign a secrecy oath as a condition of employment; he is not released from that oath in leaving. He was not forced to work for the CIA, and it is clear to him at the time he enters its employ that he is obligating himself to observe unusual restrictions and rules of conduct.32
The CIA’s deep-seated dislike of intelligence officers writing books can be discerned from a myriad of declassified documents. In May 1947, a few months before the CIA came into being, Lawrence R. Houston, who became the first general counsel of the CIA and who built the statutory foundation on which it rests, agreed with his superiors that a British-style Official Secrets Act, which enjoined any intelligence officer from saying anything in public (even the colour of the office wallpaper), was highly desirable. However, he lamented that the timing to introduce it was wrong, with congressmen still adjusting to the idea of a permanent foreign intelligence service, and wondered anyway if it might contravene the First Amendment.33 Six years later, the desire at the CIA for a draconian Secrets Act was still very much alive, but again the legal obstacles were judged to be too great. Pforzheimer, the CIA’s man on the Hill at the time, concluded that Congress would never pass such an act because it ‘appeared to run counter to our prohibition against internal security functions’.34 In 1981, an internal CIA investigation was set up to ‘find ways to discourage former officers from writing books’.35 Proposals ranged from tougher exit briefings, warning departing officers of the damage caused by books to operations and other equities, to lectures by senior management giving employees the third degree about publishing.36 It should be emphasised that the CIA’s basic aversion to intelligence officers ‘treading the boards’ is not anomalous in US history. ‘I do not mean to protect or countenance them in any manner of trade, should they attempt to carry it on,’ wrote a decidedly unforgiving George Washington.37 Indeed, Washington punished offenders with the lash!
Two: the CIA’s core belief that it is unbecoming of an intelligence officer to write a book has ensured that, in many cases, memoir writing is a blood sport. To put this argument into some context, as a condition of employment, every CIA employee must sign a secrecy agreement vowing, subject to civil and criminal sanctions, not to disclose classified information. Contained in this agreement is a pre-publication review clause, mandating submission of all writings that bear relation to the officer’s career or the CIA – memoirs, speeches, articles, editorials, book reviews, dissertations, even movie scripts. This requirement extends beyond employment, into perpetuity. According to the PRB, the ‘sole purpose’ of pre-publication review is to safeguard classified information, which, if disclosed, would harm the Agency or the country.38 In April 2014, the PRB Chairman described the Board as ‘another set of eyes’, there in case an author fails to spot something, ‘either because of an oversight or because they were not even aware that the information is classified’.39 This second set of eyes, he continued, is not intended to ‘interfere with people wanting to tell their stories’.40 Permission to publish cannot be refused because the material is either embarrassing to the CIA, critical of it, or inaccurate. Authors, even CIA officers, have a constitutional right to free speech under the First Amendment – albeit that right is curtailed for the sake of national security. The late CIA stalwart William Hood, author of several books, once said: ‘We could write that everyone is dead drunk at eleven o’clock in the morning and they couldn’t say no.’41 If the drunkards were named, that would be a different matter.
For the majority of authors, however, even loyalists, the pre-publication review process is exhausting and infuriating. Bitter and lengthy disputes over what can be disclosed are commonplace, with authors, not the guardians of secrecy, invariably the ones to make the greatest sacrifices. The net result: books littered with lines and sections ‘blacked out’, sometimes for pages on end. Frustrations with the PRB have extended all the way to the CIA’s seventh-floor executive offices. For example, in 1991, former CIA Director Stansfield Turner was aghast when the PRB refused him permission to mention, in an article for the journal Foreign Affairs, the National Reconnaissance Office – an organisation acknowledged in a Senate committee report in October 1973 and extensively reported by the press. Required to refer to a completely fictitious organisation known as the Satellite Reconnaissance Agency, Turner wrote mockingly in a footnote: ‘For reasons that are difficult to comprehend, the true name of this agency is classified.’42
Captain Nathan Hale, a martyr soldier of the American Revolution, executed for spying by the British, famously described espionage as a ‘peculiar service’. Peculiar is probably the kindest word one can use to describe the decision-making of the PRB. Examples abound of the PRB exceeding its mandate, using redactions to silence critics and shelter the CIA from embarrassment. Yet, this is not its biggest fault. Time and again, the evidence suggests that it fails to pass what Warren Kimball, speaking in the context of CIA declassification, has called the ‘common sense test’.43 Plain old common sense dictates that as human sources die, as technologies become obsolete, and as governments and liaison arrangements change, there comes a time when secrecy is no longer needed. This might take thirty years to be the case; but eventually, as Kimball observed, the risk surely dies with the ageing. Alas, the PRB has seldom thought in these terms, making author disputes inevitable.
To illustrate this, take the experiences of CIA alumni Scott Breckinridge and Joseph Wippl, both dyed-in-the-wool patriots and Agency men, with no desire whatsoever to hurt the country. Breckinridge’s exchanges with the PRB were, in his own words, ‘painful’ – so painful, in fact, that he protested to the CIA’s Inspector General, Frederick Hitz.44 ‘This is a complaint … about the Publications Review Board,’ he wrote:
My complaint is not just that they have caused me problems, but they seem to have a narrow and unthinkable adherence to some set of rules that so often stem from either a lack of knowledge of what is in the public domain, or that reflect a bizarre sense of human judgment.45
Breckinridge’s main grievance was that he had been prevented from saying that he had served in Australia for three years, despite the fact that this was well known. To expose what he perceived to be the absurdity of the Board’s decision, he showed them a postcard he had received from CIA colleagues wishing him ‘Good Luck Down Under’. The postcard, which appealed to his love of bladed-weapon combat sports with a picture of a kangaroo, in full fencing garb, poised to launch a sabre attack, had been sent through normal postal channels.46 If his Australian assignment was so sensitive, he remonstrated, why had the Agency sent a postcard and had it delivered by an ordinary mailman? Moreover, it was now 1995 and his Australian tour had ended in 1959. Surely enough time had elapsed for such a disclosure not to damage national security?
As a former operations officer who spent thirty years in the National Clandestine Service (NCS), Wippl is as qualified as anyone to know what secrets need protection. Like Breckinridge, he has found the PRB to be overly conservative in its approach, wedded to the notion that the world will end unless it errs on the side of extreme caution. Nowhere more evident is this than the PRB’s long-standing refusal to allow authors to use the word ‘station’. ‘The whole world knows that there are [CIA] stations in embassies,’ Wippl said in a recent interview, ‘but I had one person in the PRB say that if we admitted there was a station in the Japanese embassy, they would break off relations with the United States. And I said, “Are you kidding me? Are you crazy?”’47
The justification the PRB commonly provides for redacting this sort of material is that, while it may be common knowledge, it is not something that has been officially acknowledged by the CIA or the US government. Accordingly, if a book containing this information were sanctioned, it would be tantamount to an official acknowledgement. Let me be clear: there is logic to this argument. For example, it would not have been in America’s interests to acknowledge openly, in real time, that the CIA was arming mujahedeen rebels in Afghanistan with man-portable Stinger missiles to destroy Soviet helicopter gunships. Similarly, during the Iran hostage crisis, it would have been highly ill-advised to acknowledge that six diplomats were secretly fleeing the country the moment their plane left Iranian airspace and Tony Mendez ordered a Bloody Mary to celebrate. But, as the Breckinridge and Wippl examples highlight, surely there comes a moment when it just becomes plain silly to keep up the fiction? According to Wippl, the Board’s inability to recognise that definitions of ‘national security’ and ‘harm’ are neither absolute nor constant stems from the fact that the real power in the Board has long resided with its members from the NCS and its predecessors, the Directorate of Plans and the Directorate of Operations (DO). In his words: ‘They understand operations, but they don’t really understand international affairs … Spending a lifetime in operational intelligence, for some people it screws them up, it warps their minds. They get really funny.’48 Historically, one adverse vote is all it takes to block publication of a manuscript. Ergo, the DO representatives hold enormous power, and can literally make or break an author’s fortunes.
Being pushed through the meat grinder of the PRB is nevertheless only one part of what has made memoir writing a blood sport. For some authors, especially those who have sought to embarrass the Agency, the endless haggling and arbitrary decision-making of the Board represent the least of their worries. If the CIA really dislikes a book, the author in question will face an almighty struggle to get into print, and may even have their name dragged through the mud. In these cases, the rule is not simply ‘If in doubt, classify’, or even just ‘classify’; it is, as Wippl puts it, ‘If in doubt, take ’em out!’49
The CIA has had numerous authors placed under physical surveillance, causing emotional distress. It has made staff take lie-detector tests to determine if they are writing a book, or whether they have contacted a publisher. It has used informants in the publishing world to acquire proposals by intelligence officers and has sent threatening letters to editors in the hope that they knuckle under the pressure and desist from publishing. On at least one occasion, it has used an agent provocateur
