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  SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY

  ALSO BY JOHN PRADOS

  Hoodwinked: The Documents That Reveal How Bush Sold Us a War (ed.)

  Inside the Pentagon Papers (ed., with Margaret Pratt Porter)

  The White House Tapes: Eavesdropping on the President (ed.)

  Lost Crusader: The Secret Wars of CIA Director William Colby

  Operation Vulture

  America Confronts Terrorism (ed.)

  The Blood Road: The Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Vietnam War

  President’s Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon Covert Operations from

  World War II Through the Persian Gulf

  Combined Fleet Decoded: The Secret History of U.S. Intelligence and the

  Japanese Navy in World War II

  The Hidden History of the Vietnam War

  Valley of Decision: The Siege of Khe Sanh (with Ray W. Stubbe)

  Keepers of the Keys: A History of the National Security Council from

  Truman to Bush

  Pentagon Games

  The Soviet Estimate: U.S. Intelligence and Soviet Strategic Forces

  The Sky Would Fall: The Secret U.S. Bombing Mission to Vietnam, 1954

  SAFE FOR

  DEMOCRACY

  THE

  SECRET WARS

  OF THE CIA

  JOHN PRADOS

  SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY. Copyright © 2006 by John Prados. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form. For information, address: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, 1332 North Halsted Street, Chicago 60642, a member of the Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Group. Manufactured in the United States of America and printed on acid-free paper.

  www.ivanrdee.com

  The paperback edition of this book carries the ISBN 978-1-56663-823-4.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

  Prados, John.

  Safe for democracy : the secret wars of the CIA / John Prados.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-56663-823-4 (cloth : alk. paper)

  1. Intelligence service—United States. 2. United States. Central Intelligence Agency. 3. United States—Foreign relations. I. Title.

  JK468.I6P715 2006

  327.1273—dc22

  2006006269

  To a More Perfect Union

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Foreword

  Major Figures in the Book

  Acronyms Used in the Book

  1 The Gamut of Secret Operations

  2 The Cold War Crucible

  3 The Secret Warriors

  4 “The Kind of Experience We Need”

  5 The Covert Legions

  6 Bitter Fruits

  7 Adventures in Asia

  8 “Acceptable Norms of Human Conduct Do Not Apply”

  9 Archipelago

  10 The War for the Roof of the World

  11 “Another Black Hole of Calcutta”

  12 The Bay of Pigs: Failure at Playa Girón

  13 Cold War and Counterrevolution

  14 The Secret War Against Castro

  15 War in Southeast Asia

  16 Global Reach

  17 The Southern Cone

  18 From “Rogue Elephant” to Resurrection

  19 The Mountains of Allah

  20 The Reagan Revolution

  21 Bill Casey’s War

  22 Project Democracy

  23 Full Circle

  24 The Struggle for Control

  25 Safe for Democracy

  Notes

  A Note on Sources

  Index

  Acknowledgments

  MANY PEOPLE AND INSTITUTIONS contributed to the making of this book. My work on it began as a fellowship project of the International Center for Advanced Studies of New York University. I thank NYU and ICAS for their belief in and support of this initiative. I am especially indebted to my colleagues and friends at the National Security Archive, where I am a senior fellow. A portion of the research was underwritten by a grant from the Gerald R. Ford Library Foundation. I am grateful to them as well. A special thanks goes to all those editors on assorted other projects on which I have worked who patiently endured delays at various points so that this manuscript could move to completion. Speaking of editors, Ivan R. Dee’s vision, suggestions, and deft hand added immeasurably to this book, and I also thank Jason Proetorius and everyone who contributed to its production.

  This work would not have the depth and scope that it does without the insights of those who spoke to me or exchanged correspondence, so I wish to express my appreciation to all those interviewees who helped educate me on these matters. Certain reviewers of my earlier biography of William E. Colby chose to select out some of the individuals whom I acknowledged as an excuse to damn the entire work. For this reason, as well as because some interviewees wished to remain anonymous, I do not mention anyone by name. But all should know how thankful I am to them.

  For assistance with documentary research I extend great thanks to the staffs and archivists of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); and the Harry S Truman Library, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, John F. Kennedy Library, Lyndon B. Johnson Library, Richard Nixon Library Project, Gerald R. Ford Library, and Ronald Reagan Library, all of NARA. My special appreciation goes to John Taylor, Herbert Pankratz, Moira Porter, Michele DeMartino, David Humphrey, Regina Greenwell, Nancy Smith, Linda Seelke, Ted Gittinger, Shannon Jarrett, Irene Lonedo, Karen Holzhausen, and Donna Lehman. Some of these excellent archivists have moved up, on, or retired during the long years I have been following these subjects, but I am proud to have worked with each of them. In addition I am grateful to the staff and archivists of the Library of Congress and to the staffs of Columbia University, New York University, George Washington University, and Wheaton Regional libraries. For specific help with particular documents or tips on materials, I thank Anna Kasten Nelson, Malcolm Byrne, Mario del Pero, Peter Kornbluh, and William Burr.

  For a brief moment in the 1990s and until 9/11 the Central Intelligence Agency made an effort to open its files to the American people. Its Historical Review Program declassified a number of documents central to the story. The CIA’s Center for the Study of Intelligence produced a number of documentary collections, some of which contained useful material. The Center sponsored more than a dozen conferences where the subjects of these collections were considered by (mostly former) intelligence officers and scholars together. I was asked to speak at several of these meetings. But since September 11 these initiatives have ground almost to a halt, as have most CIA document declassification efforts. This deplorable state of affairs bodes ill for the effort to build an American consensus on the need for intelligence and the future of the CIA.

  Having said that, let me hasten to add my appreciation for the efforts of the Kennedy Assassination Records Commission. Due to Americans’ intense interest in the events of the Kennedy assassination, for another brief moment in time the declassification shoe was on the other foot, and U.S. government agencies faced a board with the statutory responsibility to put information before the public. The results of its review have enabled us to move the discussion of U.S. covert operations against Cuba to a whole new level. I also wish to express my indebtedness to my own National Security Archive. The sustained efforts of the Archive to petition for the release of records through the Freedom of Information Act and other declassification avenues have opened up material relevant to almost every aspect of American foreign policy. The Archive’s physical collection of documents, and its collaboration with other institutions in hosting conferences that brought together historians and participants within a document-rich context, are a great source of knowled
ge. The Archive’s work in putting these materials before the public in the form of microfiche collections of primary source material, document readers, and electronic briefing books accessible on the internet, makes available a rich vein of research. Even this book can barely scratch the surface of that material.

  Many acute analysts of American policy, intelligence, and national security have exchanged ideas and suggestions or helped me sharpen my thinking. Some of them are mentioned above, but I also wish to thank Kai Bird, J. Kenneth McDonald, Stephen Coll, Mary Nolan, Gregory Treverton, Jeffrey Richelson, Gerald K. Haines, Marilyn Young, Andrew Bacevich, Phillip Deery, Michael Warner, Timothy Naftali, Lloyd Gardner, Svetlana Savranskaya, James Bamford, Richard L. Aldrich, Maria Eleonora Guasconi, Loch Johnson, Walter LaFeber, Max Holland, Richard K. Betts, and Thomas Blanton. For reading and editing the manuscript I am deeply indebted to Ellen Pinzur. For putting up with me during this lengthy process I thank my daughters Danielle and Natasha. All these persons added value to the book. For its errors and omissions I alone am responsible.

  J. P.

  Washington, D.C.

  July 2006

  Foreword

  PUBLIC OPINION POLLS in many countries today portray the United States as the greatest threat to world peace on the globe, worse than terrorism or any other nation. This is an unfamiliar role for a country that has consciously articulated—and advanced—over many decades the notion that democratic values are the solution for many of the world’s ills. How strange it is that Americans, fond of the vision of the nation’s exceptionalism as seen in the image of the City on a Hill, their democracy the admiration of the world, should find themselves an object of the world’s fears. The City is supposed to be a place of wonder and delight, even a state of grace. Its values are worth emulating, its freedom an example of achievement for all.

  The Founding Fathers articulated the vision well, and at some point American leaders translated that ideal into a mission to bring its values to the world. President Woodrow Wilson enshrined the mission into a policy to implant democracy and self-determination among peoples everywhere. His successors in the presidency, every one, have continued and enlarged that quest—which has led America into a variety of foreign adventures, with widely varying motives, accomplishments, and failures. Those who fear America worry that the adventures themselves have supplanted the quest for democracy as the real content of United States policy.

  Critics of this policy argue that American presidents have pursued their proximate goals, defined in terms of U.S. power, while cloaking them in the language and trappings of universalist desire. This is not a new argument—and, one may hope, not a correct one. But at the moment millions of people in many lands believe it, or something very like it. Their fears, and the extent of them, bode ill for American purpose in the world as well as for the feelings of Americans about their country and their government.

  One way to look at the world’s fears of America is to review U.S. actions on the world stage, where a major policy tool has been the secret operations of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), created after World War II. The agency quickly became the locus of open and covert efforts that have engaged many nations across the globe. Because of the secrecy of most CIA activities, it has been exceedingly difficult for historians and observers to evaluate them. Even today information about the CIA remains scattered, shrouded in misinformation, is poorly understood, or has remained inaccessible to researchers. The “need to know” has been used by government bureaucrats to restrict knowledge to a few, even in the case of events long past. Nevertheless an appraisal has become possible and is long overdue.

  In the sixty years since the formation of the Central Intelligence Agency, presidents have continually harnessed the agency in service of their foreign policy goals. Three decades ago the “problem” of the CIA appeared to be the agency’s status as a “rogue elephant”—unsupervised, tearing about the globe, acting at whim. By now it is evident that the agency and its cohorts were in fact responding to presidential orders. This seems to make it much more urgent to attempt to tell the story of exactly what the CIA has accomplished. What has the agency contributed toward the success of larger U.S. policy goals, and the global quest for democracy?

  Perhaps the problem is more one of the “rogue” president than it is about an out-of-control Central Intelligence Agency. The control and oversight of United States intelligence needs to be examined in specific contexts where the overseers concern themselves with covert operations. In the past the question of oversight has been viewed as one of congressional supervision of the intelligence community, but we can now see this is an inadequate approach. The truth is that White House mechanisms for control and supervision of intelligence activity predate those instituted by Congress. Each branch of government has had its own objectives and degree of success, or lack of it, in overseeing the CIA. Existing studies of presidential or congressional oversight ignore key facets of the problem and do not take into account the most recent developments. And CIA attempts to pursue operations beyond the limits of the oversight system highlight the need for fresh examination. The oversight question must not only be examined in much greater detail but must be reframed as a competitive process between two branches of government. Safe for Democracy does that. While it is impossible to say where oversight is headed, we can show where it has been and why it has generally not worked.

  This book surveys Central Intelligence Agency covert actions on four continents. In the most recent version of their dictionary of terms, the Joint Chiefs of Staff define a “covert operation” as one planned or conducted so as to conceal the identity of the sponsor or permit a denial of involvement. To that category the U.S. military adds the “clandestine operation,” defined as one in which emphasis “is placed on concealment of the operation rather than on concealment of the identity of the sponsor.” Special operations are covert or clandestine, are carried out by military forces, and may combine elements of both varieties. All these form part of our terrain of inquiry.

  Aside from labels based on secrecy, covert actions may also be viewed along functional lines. The several types include political action, in which the objective is to influence opinion-makers or the politics of nations; psychological warfare and propaganda, which are tactical tools in many actions; support for military operations, an intermediate category between traditional covert action and military special operations—which consumes an increasing fraction of CIA effort; and paramilitary operations, which are covertly coercive. Safe for Democracy examines activities along this entire spectrum.

  This book contributes important new detail to our understanding of many CIA operations, including those in Italy, Korea, Poland, Iran, Guatemala, Hungary, China, Tibet, the Philippines, Indonesia, Syria, Iraq, Cuba, Bolivia, the Congo, Ghana, Vietnam and Laos, Kurdistan, Chile, Angola, Afghanistan, and Nicaragua; and it provides a first-cut view of actions in Somalia, Bosnia, Iraq, and other most recent activities. Whenever possible I have related all these events to specific presidential decisions expressed through White House control mechanisms and moderated by congressional oversight procedures. To prevent the work from growing completely unmanageable, the secret wars in Vietnam and Laos have been treated in less detail than is possible—they could easily consume an entire book by themselves—and the war against terrorism has been placed to one side except where it impinges directly upon our main subjects.

  The conclusions of this inquiry tend to bear out the critics. American undercover actions have resulted in upheavals and untold suffering in many nations while contributing little to Washington’s quest for democracy. Despite considerable ingenuity, technological wizardry, operational flexibility, and an impressively competent cadre of secret warriors, the results of covert operations have been consistently disappointing. Yet the very drive to maintain and use these capabilities has had consequences—often unforeseen—both for America’s image around the globe and for constitutional control of the United States governm
ent by its own people. Secret warriors are known to argue the unique reasons for failure in specific actions but—except in secret studies unknown to the public until now—to resist broad overall evaluation. This book, however, does not stop short. Its content is not speculation, idle rumination, mindless ideology, or uninformed criticism. The evidence gathered in these pages is broad and deep. Covert operations have been a negative factor in the American pursuit of democracy throughout the world.

  I have written on these matters earlier in Presidents’ Secret Wars, a book published in the mid-1980s, and in fact the present work began as a revision of that book. Time had passed, and an updating seemed appropriate. But preparations for the project quickly revealed that a mere revision would be inadequate—sources have multiplied, the understanding of what constitutes a covert action has widened, and the terrain has shifted in other ways as well. The 1980s public concern about the CIA as rogue elephant obscured a great deal about the impact of agency operations on American foreign policy goals. Much of what we knew then has been modified by fresh evidence. It seemed to me clear that the entire subject needed to be recast in terms of what matters today.

  A steady stream of newly declassified secret documents and a parade of memoirs of former CIA officials has enriched the record. Many things that once had to be inferred or addressed on the basis of interview material can now be described from hard evidence. Further interviews have extended the envelope. Throughout this book pseudonyms for CIA officers have been replaced with real names where possible; actual code names of operations are supplied; project costs, assigned personnel, and other details are revealed. The mountain of new detail on CIA operations ranges widely, from the recollections of participants to the dates and contents of headquarters decisions, White House deliberations, and the proceedings of key meetings. Thus while some measure of text remains unchanged, most of Safe for Democracy is brand-new. It is the closest we can come at this juncture to a definitive history of U.S. covert operations.