The Ghosts of Langley Read online

  When Dick Cheney, George W. Bush’s vice president, talked about walking on the dark side, he was referring to the Central Intelligence Agency, as well as the U.S. military’s Special Operations Command. Mr. Cheney hinted obliquely at what the Central Intelligence Agency had been put up to—reaching past long-understood norms of behavior. As The Ghosts of Langley documents the Bush era, it reveals how the arguments developed in the past have been employed in new contexts, sometimes even in reverse, to deflect charges of torture (criminal assault, assault with deadly weapons, assault with or without intent to kill), conspiracy, obstruction of justice, evasion of legal oversight, and more. Those charges threatened the CIA’s existence. The arguments and actions deployed to excuse failure, misadventure, and worse have been used to get past the monitors, disarm their objections, and avoid penalties. Each time the CIA skirted its overseers, the fabric of discipline, both within the agency and among the politicians who try to control it, has been weakened. The most recent and dramatic of the agency’s disasters is clearly the CIA’s torture program and the fallout from it. The torture program lay at the heart of U.S. actions in the war on terror, and with it this book begins.

  Originally I aimed at a more conventional account. However, the writing took place amid a fierce struggle between CIA figures and congressional monitors on the oversight committees over the progress of, and even the principle of, an investigation of the agency’s actions in its detention and interrogation projects. Egregious enough to trigger the investigation in the first place, the agency’s actions that emerged steadily became darker, while its success at evading scrutiny grew ever more stark.

  I have written a number of previous books on the Central Intelligence Agency, and one of my concerns has been to track the CIA’s relationship with its overseers. As events of the war on terror unfolded, I began to see how central the fight over investigation of this agency project was becoming to the entire oversight enterprise. That understanding reshaped this book. A central point in Presidents’ Secret Wars, my earliest work on this subject, was to argue that White House controls over the intelligence agencies offered an alternative to congressional oversight. More recently, in Safe for Democracy, the emphasis, at least so far as this element is concerned, showed an ebb and flow of White House versus congressional controls. In The Family Jewels, one goal was to demonstrate that the Central Intelligence Agency had erected a fortress of secrecy. Here I think the ghosts will tell us that the CIA has effectively broken free of congressional oversight, under conditions where White House control mechanisms have become increasingly ineffective and in which the agency, assuming a defensive posture, has used its fortress of secrecy in a way that will set up its next failure. If a new president with an itchy trigger finger embroils CIA in waters over its head, the impending disaster becomes ever more likely.

  This record is not made up or based on journalistic speculations. To the greatest extent possible, I use sources that are entirely from the agency—official documents and releases, CIA histories, memoirs of former spies, and congressional hearings and reports bearing on agency activities. Press stories document some individual points, appearing where they figure as leaks the spooks seek to plug or where they denote media revelations that became part of this chronicle. The declassified annals, you will see, are quite sufficient to make this a stunning story, and I have made the narrative as tight as I can.

  This book could not have been written by a CIA insider. If it had, either the text would be stuck in the limbo that nearly sank the Senate torture report, or you would see a sentence here and there surrounded by pages of blacked-out text. It is a sad commentary on how far our system has fallen that outsiders must say the things that intelligence persons cannot.

  I have been studying the CIA for four decades. Along this lengthy road, I have been helped by people in many places. I want to specially acknowledge the Truman Library Institute, which assisted with a research grant. I owe a debt, too, to the staffs of the CIA and other government agencies, who have, however grudgingly, declassified material at my, and others’, request. The records declassified by Freedom of Information Act and other requests, the CIA’s own historical review initiatives, expiration of secrecy authority, and legal proceedings are all indispensable to making this authoritative record. Former agency people who have spoken to me at various times have been very helpful too. Librarians and archivists at the presidential libraries and the National Archives, the air force and army war colleges, the Naval Operational Archives, the libraries of Columbia University, New York University, the City of New York, George Washington University, and Montgomery County have all been vital to the completion of this project. At the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library I’ve not until now had the opportunity to specially acknowledge the late Ted Gittinger, or the recently retired Regina Greenwell. Lara Hall continues to handle my declassification requests there very ably. At the Harry S. Truman Library I am recently indebted to David Clark, Sam Rushay, Randy Sowell, Tammy Williams, Jim Armistead, Jan Davis, and Lisa Sullivan. At the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library my thanks go to Mary Burtzloff, Nicole Beck, Deanna Kolling, and Michelle Kopfer. To all of these people, my great thanks. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Ellen Pinzur, my first reader, who has saved me from many pitfalls. At the New Press editor Carl Bromley, managing editor Maury Botton, and copyeditor Gary Stimeling saved the manuscript from many faults.These persons have all contributed things of value to this narrative. I alone am responsible for its errors.

  —John Prados

  Washington, D.C.

  January 2017

  A NOTE TO THE READER

  LANGUAGE IS CRUCIAL IN DEALING WITH THIS SUBJECT. THE CENTRAL Intelligence Agency is a security service that includes among its functions propaganda and psychological warfare.

  In these endeavors, the precise use of words is important, and the CIA had developed a certain expertise in it. It is expert at spin-doctoring, and it controls the declassification of secret documents as well as the content of writings by former agency employees who have held security clearances. In creating its action programs of recent years, the CIA developed a set of euphemisms to avoid using words conventionally employed to describe certain acts or things. By insisting on the use of these euphemisms in discussions of the behaviors and actions described here, the agency, its life in danger, subtly shaded the conversation in a direction more to its liking.

  There were no prisons. There were “black sites.” There were no prisoners; there were “detainees” and “high-value detainees.” There were no beatings; there were “attention grabs,” “wallings,” and the “facial slaps.” Near-drowning was “waterboarding.” These were “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Central Intelligence Agency officers—with exceptions, thankfully—strenuously protest characterization of any of these things as torture. Many approved of “legal” explanations from senior officials at the Department of Justice, which defined torture as something that begins only at the point of organ failure.

  The Ghosts of Langley will not hide horror behind euphemism. It will call things by their real names. That will aid in understanding the true stakes at issue, because the specifics of the latest debate on torture are but one element in the larger dilemma of democracy choosing whether or not to permit unfettered activity by its security agencies. There will be no effort here to play the CIA’s word game. If that is not acceptable, you can put this book down right now.

  ACRONYMS

  ACLU American Civil Liberties Union

  AGM air-launched guided munition (as the Hellfire missile)

  APA American Psychological Association

  AZ Abu Zubaydah (Al Qaeda helper, CIA prisoner)

  CAT Civil Air Transport (proprietary CIA airline, later Air America)

  CBS Columbia Broadcasting System (television network)

  CIA Central Intelligence Agency

  CIG Central Intelligence Group (CIA predecessor)

  COB chief of base (CIA)

  COS chief of station (CIA)

  COPS chief of operations (early CIA/DO job title)

  CTC Counterterrorist Center (until 2004, thereafter Counterterrorism Center, CIA)

  DCI director of central intelligence (director of CIA plus all of U.S. intelligence, until 2004)

  DCIA director of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA only, since 2004)

  DDCI deputy director of central intelligence (deputy to DCI)

  DDEL Dwight D. Eisenhower Library

  DDO deputy director for operations (of the CIA, previously DDP)

  DDP deputy director/directorate of/for plans, or “that directorate” (usage avoided herein)

  DI Directorate for Intelligence (CIA)

  DIA Defense Intelligence Agency

  DNI director of national intelligence (director of all U.S. intelligence since 2004)

  DO Directorate of Operations (previously Plans, subsequently NCS, then DO again)

  DOJ Department of Justice

  DP displaced person (post–World War II refugee)

  DPD Development Projects Division (CIA, previously Development Projects Staff)

  DS&T Directorate of Science and Technology (CIA)

  EITs enhanced interrogation techniques

  EO Executive Order (a form of presidential directive)

  FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation (the Bureau, Justice Department)

  FE Far East Division (CIA/DO)

  FOB forward operating base (military and intelligence term)

  FOIA Freedom of Information Act (declassification law)

  GID General Intelligence Directorate (Jordanian spy unit)

  GITMO Guantánamo Bay (U.S. military prison in Cuba)

  GS/G.S. Government Service (civil service rank)

  HPSCI House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

  IC-21 Intelligence Community for the 21st Century (HPSCI future study)

  IDF Israeli Defense Forces

  IG inspector general

  IOB Intelligence Oversight Board (White House watchdog unit)

  ISI Inter-Services Intelligence Department (Pakistan)

  ISIL Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant

  ITT International Telephone & Telegraph (multinational corporation)

  JAG judge advocate general

  JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff

  JFK President John F. Kennedy

  JFKL John F. Kennedy Library

  JOT junior officer in training

  KGB Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, Committee for State Security, Soviet intelligence service

  LBJ President Lyndon Baines Johnson

  LCI landing craft, infantry (medium-capacity amphibious ship)

  MI-6 Military Intelligence branch no. 6, British secret service

  NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization

  NCS National Clandestine Service (previously and subsequently DO)

  NESA Near East and South Asia Division (CIA units with this name exist in both the operations and intelligence directorates)

  NIA National Intelligence Authority (Turman umbrella intelligence board)

  NIC National Intelligence Council (board of analysts who assemble NIEs)

  NIE National Intelligence Estimate

  NIO national intelligence officer (top analysis manager on the NIC)

  NLF National Liberation Front (of South Vietnam)

  NSA National Security Agency

  NSA National Student Association (private voluntary association, CIA front group)

  NSC National Security Council

  NSPG National Security Planning Group (NSC subcommittee)

  NYPD New York Police Department

  NYU New York University

  OCB Operations Coordinating Board (Eisenhower-era NSC subcommittee)

  OCI Office of Current Intelligence (CIA)

  ODNI Office of the Director of National Intelligence

  OGC Office of General Counsel (CIA)

  OIG Office of the Inspector General (CIA)

  OLC Office of Legal Counsel (Justice Department)

  OMS Office of Medical Services (CIA)

  OPC Office of Policy Coordination (CIA)

  OS Office of Security (CIA)

  OSO Office of Special Operations (CIA)

  OSS Office of Strategic Services (World War II predecessor of CIA)

  OTS Office of Technical Services (CIA)

  PBCFIA President’s Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities (Eisenhower-era predecessor to PFIAB)

  PDB President’s Daily Brief

  PFIAB President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board

  PKI Partai Komunis Indonesia, Indonesian Communist Party

  PLO Palestine Liberation Organization

  PRB Publications Review Board (CIA)

  PRU Provincial Reconnaissance Unit (in South Vietnam)

  PSB Psychological Strategy Board (NSC subcommittee and staff)

  QT quiet (slang); on the QT: quietly

  RDG Rendition and Detention Group (CIA)

  RDINet Rendition Detention Interrogation Network (CIA computer monitoring unit)

  RFE Radio Free Europe

  RIAS Radio in the American Sector

  RL Radio Liberty

  SEC Securities and Exchange Commission (United States regulatory body)

  SERE Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape

  SIS Senior Intelligence Service (CIA supergrade ranks)

  SMO support for military operations (jargon term)

  SOCOM Special Operations Command (or USSOCOM, or JSOC, Joint Special Operations Command, U.S. military unified command)

  SRT Special Review Team

  SSCI Senate Select Committee on Intelligence

  SSU Strategic Service Unit (Pentagon spy entity after World War II)

  SUV sport utility vehicle

  UAV unmanned aerial vehicle (drone)

  U.K. United Kingdom

  UN United Nations

  UP United Press (wire service, later United Press International)

  USAID United States Agency for International Development

  WCR Weekly Case Reports

  WH Western Hemisphere Division (CIA/DO, predecessor of Latin America Division)

  WIN alleged Polish underground group

  WMD weapons of mass destruction

  PROLOGUE: GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE

  GRAYSON SWIGERT COMPLAINS OF BEING CAUGHT IN SOME KAFKA STORY. He’s not even allowed his own name. Courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Swigert, who has been discussed under his real name for years, must have a pseudonymous existence in official reports, allegedly because terrorists endanger his life. In the meantime, James Elmer Mitchell, to give the fellow back his identity, lives near Tampa, Florida, and goes kayaking to pass the time. Franz Kafka, the Czech author, wrote tales of horror and weirdness. Jim Mitchell, a former Air Force psychologist, perhaps engages in the classic maneuver called projection when invoking Kafka, for the CIA paid him millions, built a Get Out of Jail Free card into his contract, and labors to keep Mitchell from any forum where he might implicate others. The psychologist insists he is the victim, but what he did has been condemned by politicians, the public, and the American Psychological Association.

  Swigert asserts himself a patriot, solicited by people at the highest levels of the United States government. He only tried to help, Mitchell would say. Now Dr. Mitchell finds himself in enforced retirement, his license pulled, reporters—and lawyers—yapping at his heels. His retirement may be genteel, but jeopardy hangs in the air.

  THE ATTENTION GRAB

  On September 11, 2001, terrorists of the group Al Qaeda hijacked four airliners and crashed them into buildings in New York City and Washington, D.C. These mass-casualty attacks, now collectively known as 9/11, killed nearly three thousand persons. The attacks also led to work for Dr. Mitchell. The Counterterrorist Center (CTC) asked Mitchell, a former Air Force officer, to help its secret counterattack. Kirk Hubbard, chief of research and analysis in the Operational Assessment Division and chairman of a CIA psychological advisory committee, introduced him around the CTC. The 2009–2012 Senate intelligence committee investigation into torture establishes that Swigert worked with the agency’s Office of Technical Services (OTS) from late 2001, doing applied research, at times in a high-risk environment, to help “shape the future” of a project “in the area of counter-terrorism and special operations.” The psychologist was to earn $1,000 a day, $1,800 daily if sent abroad.

  In the Air Force, Swigert/Mitchell had taught pilots and aircrews to resist enemy interrogation. His lessons formed part of their survival-and-escape training, with scenarios subjecting airmen to conditions of captivity, including harsh treatment and repeated questioning. Mitchell then reprised the scenarios, educating airmen on how they might preserve their persona—and secrets. By Swigert’s own account, he had spent more than fourteen thousand hours observing military personnel in this training, watched hundreds of other instructors doing the same, and conducted more than 215 of the post-role-play debriefs for classes of ten to over one hundred persons. The captivity and interrogation training amounted to an extreme form of the game. CIA people needed training like this too. But here the CTC wanted the psychologist to reverse the logic and technique. Rather than train individuals to preserve their personalities and private knowledge, Mitchell would help the CIA break down detainees by exploiting the Stockholm syndrome—reducing prisoners to dependency upon their inquisitors. Along with Swigert/Mitchell came his sidekick Hammond Dunbar—real name John “Bruce” Jessen. Both participated directly, observing interrogation sessions and devising novel applications when their strong-arm tactics failed. More than that, Swigert and Dunbar collaborated with hard-ass CIA spear carriers to override the objections of the squeamish, namely the field operatives or officials who expressed concern that their methods violated international and U.S. law, morals, and agency regulations or were just plain wrong or ineffective.