555 lines
23 KiB
Markdown
555 lines
23 KiB
Markdown
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created_at: '2017-05-14T12:19:12.000Z'
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title: How to Spot a Spook (1974)
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url: http://cryptome.org/dirty-work/spot-spook.htm
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author: mercer
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points: 130
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story_text:
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comment_text:
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num_comments: 63
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story_id:
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story_title:
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story_url:
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parent_id:
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created_at_i: 1494764352
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_tags:
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- story
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- author_mercer
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- story_14335310
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objectID: '14335310'
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---
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29 May 2010
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Related:
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"Where Myths Lead to Murder," Philip Agee:
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<http://cryptome.org/dirty-work/cia-myths.htm>
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CIA Who's Where in Europe:
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<http://cryptome.org/dirty-work/cia-who-where.htm>
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### How to Spot a Spook
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**by John Marks**
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From: *Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe*, by Philip Agee and Louis
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Wolf, 1978, pp. 29-39.
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> Footnote: \[This article first appeared in the November 1974 issue of
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> *Washington Monthly*, Washington, D.C.\]
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Both the Soviet and American intelligence establishments seem to share
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the obsession that the other side is always trying to bug them. Since
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the other side is, in fact, usually trying, our technicians and their
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technicians are constantly sweeping military installations and embassies
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to make sure no enemy, real or imagined, has succeeded. One night about
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ten years ago, a State Department security officer, prowling through the
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American embassy in Santiago, Chile, in search of Communist microphones,
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found a listening device carefully hidden in the office of a senior
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"political officer." The security man, along with everyone else in the
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embassy, knew that this particular "political officer" was actually the
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Central Intelligence Agency's "Station Chief," or principal operative in
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Chile. Bugging his office would have indeed been a major coup for the
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opposition. Triumphantly. the security man ripped the microphone out of
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the wall - only to discover later that it had been installed hy the CIA
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station chief himself.
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The reason the CIA office was located in the embassy - as it is in most
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of the other countries in the world - is that by presidential order the
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State Department is responsible for hiding and housing the CIA. Like the
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intelligence services of most other countries, the CI A has been
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unwilling to set up foreign offices under its own name. So American
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embassies - and, less frequently. military bases - provide the needed
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cover. State confers respectability on the Agency's operatives, dressing
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them up with the same titles and calling cards that give legitimate
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diplomats entree into foreign government circles. Protected by
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diplomatic immunity, the operatives recruit local officials as CIA
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agents to supply secret intelligence and, especially in the Third World,
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to help in the Agency's manipulation of a country's internal affairs.
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The CIA moves its men off the diplomatic lists only in Germany, Japan,
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and other countries where large numbers of American soldiers are
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stationed. In those countries, the CIA's command post is still in the
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U.S. Embassy, but most of the CIA personnel are under military cover.
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With nearly 500,000 U.S. troops scattered around the world, the CIA
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"units" buried among them do not attract undue attention.
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In contrast, it is difficult for the CIA to dwell inconspicuously within
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the American diplomatic corps, since more than a quarter of the 5,435
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employees who purportedly work for State overseas are actually with the
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CIA. In places such as Argentina, Bolivia, Burma, and Guyana, where the
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Agency has special interests and projects, there are about as many CIA
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operatives under cover of substantive embassy jobs as there are
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legitimate State employees. The CIA also places smaller contingents in
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the ranks of other U.S. government agencies which operate overseas,
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particularly AID's police training program in Latin America. \[EDITORS'
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NOTE: After much public outcry about U.S. exportation of repression via
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massive supplying of police equipment and training foreign police in
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methods of interrogation and torture since 1961, AID's Office of Public
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Safety was closed down by Congress in July 1975.\]
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What is surprising is that the CIA even bothers to camouflage its
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agents. since they are still easily identifiable. Let us see why the
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embassy cover is so transparent:
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- The CIA usually has a separate set of offices in the Embassy, often
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with an exotic-looking cipher lock on the outside door. In Madrid,
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for example, a State Department source reports that the Agency
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occupied the whole sixth floor of the Embassy. About 30 people
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worked there; half were disguised as "Air Force personnel" and half
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as State "political officers." The source says that all the local
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Spanish employees knew who worked on what floor of the Embassy and
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that visitors could figure out the same thing.
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- CIA personnel usually stick together. When they go to lunch or to a
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cocktail party or meet a plane from Washington, they are much more
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likely to go with each other than with legitimate diplomats. Once
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you have identified one, you can quickly figure out the rest.
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- The CIA has a different health insurance plan from the State
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Department. The premium records, which are unclassified and usually
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available to local employees, are a dead giveaway.
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- The Agency operative is taught early in training that loud
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background sounds interfere with bugging. You can be pretty sure the
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CIA man in the Embassy is the one who leaves his radio on all the
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time.
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- Ironically, despite the State Department's total refusal to comment
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on anything concerning the CIA, the Department regularly publishes
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two documents, the *Foreign Service List* and the *Biographic
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Register*, which, when cross-checked, yield the names of most CIA
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operatives under embassy cover.
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Here is how it works:
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America's real diplomats have insisted on one thing in dealing with the
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CIA: that the corps of Foreign Service Officers (FSO) remain pure.
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Although there are rumors of exceptions. CIA personnel abroad are always
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given the cover rank of Foreign Service Reserve (FSR) or Staff (FSS)
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officers - not FSO. Of course, there are some legitimate officials from
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the State Department, AID, and USIA who hold FSR and FSS ratings, so
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care must he taken to avoid confusing these people with the spooks.
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To winnow out the spooks, you start by looking up in the *Foreign
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Service List* under the country in question - for example, China. The
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letters in the third column from the left signify the man or woman's
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personnel status and the number denotes his or her rank. On the China
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list, David Bruce is an "R-1," or Reserve Officer of class 1,. the
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highest rank. John Holdridge is a regular Foreign Service Officer (FSO)
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of the same grade, and secretary Barbara Brooks is a Staff Officer,
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class 4.
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**PEKING (U.S. LIAISON OFFICE) (LO)**
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>
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Bruce David KE ...............
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Holdridge John H.............
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Jenkins Alfred Les ............
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Brooks Barbara A .............
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McKinley Brunson............
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Zaelit Lucille ...................
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Anderson Donald M ..........
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Hunt Janice E ..................
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Lilley James R .................
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Pascoe B Lynn .................
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Horowitz Herbert Eugene..
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Morin Annabelle C ............
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Rope William Frederick.....
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Blackburn Robert R Jr .......
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Herrera Delia L ................
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Lambert William F............
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Lucas Robert T ................
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Morin Emile F..................
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Peterson Robert D ............
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Riley Albert D.................. chief USLO
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dep chief USLO
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dep chief USLO
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sec
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spec asst
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sec
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pol off
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sec
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pol off
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pol off
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econ/cml off
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sec
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econ/cml off
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adm off
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sec
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coms/rec off
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coms/rec off
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gen ser off
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coms/rec off
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coms/rec off R-1
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O-1
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R-1
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S-4
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O-6
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S-5
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O-4
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S-8
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R-3
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O-5
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O-3
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S-7
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O-4
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O-3
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S-6
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R-6
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S-2
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O-5
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R-6
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S-5 5-73
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5-73
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5-73
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5-73
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5-73
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6-73
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12-73
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7-73
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6-73
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7-73
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4-73
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4-73
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5-73
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2-74
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7-73
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3-72
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7-73
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5-73
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Now Holdridge almost certainly can be ruled out as an operative, simply
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because he is an FSO. Not much can be told one way or the other about
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FSS Brooks because, as is the case with most secretaries, the State
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Department does not publish much information about her. David Bruce
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might be suspect because of his" R" status, but a quick glance at the
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*Biographic Register*, which gives a brief curriculum vitae of all State
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Department personnel, shows him to be one of the high-level political
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appointees who have "R" status because they are not members of the
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regular Foreign Service. Similarly, the *Register* report on FSR Jenkins
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shows that he had a long career as an FSO before taking on the State
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Department's special assignment in Peking as an FSR:
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> **Bruce, David KE**--b Md 2/21/98, m (Evangeline Bell).
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> Princeton U AB 19. Mem Md bar. US Army 17-19,
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> 42-45 col overseas. PRIV EXPER priv law practice
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> 21-26, mem State legis 24-26.39-42, with bank-priv bus
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> 28-40, chief rep Am Red Cross (England) 40-41,
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> GOVT EXPER with Off Strategic Sers 41-45, asst sec
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> of Com 47-48, ECA Paris R-1 chief of mission 5/48.
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> STATE AEP to France 5/49. Dept under sec of state 2/
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> 52\. consult to sec of state 1/53. Paris R-1 pol off-US
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> observer to Interim Comm of EDC. also US rep to
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> European Coal-Steel Community (Luxembourg) 2/53.
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> Dept consult to sec of state 1/55. Bonn AEP to Ger-
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> many 3/57-11/59. London AEP to Great Britain 2/61-3/
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> 69\. Dept R-1 pers rep of Pres with pers rank amb to hd
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> US del at Paris meetings on Viet-Nam 7/70-4/71. Pe-
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> king chief liaison off 3/73.
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>
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> **Jenkins, Alfred leSesne**--b Ga 9/14/16, m. Emory U
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> AB 38, Duke U MA 46. US Army 42-46 1st It. PRIV
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> EXPER prin-supt pub schs 40-42. STATE Dept FSO
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> unclass 6/46. Peiping Chin lang-area trainee 9/46, O-6
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> 11/46. Tientsin pol off 7/48,0-54/49. Hong Kong chief
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> pol sect 7/49. Taipei pol off 7/50, 0-4 6/51. Dept 3/52.
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> O-3 9/54. Jidda couns, dep chief mission 2/55. Dept det
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> Nat War Coll 8/57, 0-22/58, dep dir Off of SE Asian
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> Aff 6/58, reg plan ad Bu of Far E aff 8/59. Stockholm
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> couns, dep chief mission 10/61, cons gen 3/62, 0-1 3/
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> 63\. Dept FS insp 8/65, det Nat Security Counc 7/66,
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> FS insp 1/69, dir Off of Asian Communist Aff 7/70,
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> superior honor award 71, dir for People's Rep of
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> China, Mongolia, Hong Kong-Macao aff 2/73. Peking
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> dep chief liaison off 4/73. Lang Ger. (w--Martha
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> Lippiatt).
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Note that there are no gaping holes in their career records, nor did
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either of these men serve long tours with nameless Pentagon agencies,
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nor did they regularly change their status from "R" to "S" to "GS"
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(civil service).
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Now, for purposes of comparison, examine the record of the CIA's man in
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Peking, a "political officer" named James R. Lilley:
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> **Lilley, James R**-b China Am parents 1/15/28, m. Yale
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> U BA 51. US Army 46-47. GOVT EXPER anal Dept
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> of Army 51-58. STATE Manila R-6 7/58. Dept 10/60.
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> Phnom Penh 9/61, R-5 3/63. Bangkok 4/63. Dept 8/64.
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> Vientiane pol off 6/65. R-4 5/66. S-24/68. Hong Kong
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> 5/68, R-4 5/69. Dept 7/70, GS-15 fgn aff off 4/71, R-4
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> det lang trng FSI 7/72-4/73. Lang Fr. Rom. (w--Sally
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> Booth).
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The *Foreign Service List* provides another clue, in the form of
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diplomats' official assignments. Of all the jobs real State Department
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representatives perform, political reporting is generally considered to
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be the most important. Although genuine FSRs frequently hold
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administrative and consular slots, they are almost never given the
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important political jobs. So where an FSR does appear in the listing
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with a political job, it is most likely that the CIA is using the
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position for cover. There is an exception to this rule: A comparatively
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few minority-group members who have been brought into the Foreign
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Service as Reserve Officers under a special program. They are found
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exclusively in the junior ranks, and their biographic data is complete
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in the way the CIA people's is not.
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Finally there is another almost certain tipoff. If an agent is listed in
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the *Biographic Register* as having been an "analyst" for the Department
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of the Army (or Navy or Air Force), you can bet that he or she is really
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working for the CIA. A search of hundreds of names found no legitimate
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State Department personnel listed as ever having held such a job.
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In an embassy like the one in Santo Domingo, the spooks in the political
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section outnumber the real FSOs by at least seven to three:
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**Political Section**
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>
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Beyer Joel H....................
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Brugger Frederick A..........
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Bumpus James N ..............
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Chafin Gary E ..................
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Clayton Thomas A............
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Dwiggins Joan H...............
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Fambrini Robert L ............
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Greig David N Jr...............
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Guell Janet E ...................
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Markoff Stephanie M .........
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Merriam Geraldine C.........
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Mooney Robert C .............
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Morris Margaret A............
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Pascoe Dorothy L .............
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Ryan Donald G.................
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Williams Albert N ............. pol off
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pol off
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pol off
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pol off
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pol off
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pol off
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pol off
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pol off
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sec
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sec
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clk-typist
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pol off
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clk-typist
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sec
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pol off
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pol off R-5
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R-7
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O-4
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O-6
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R-3
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R-7
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S-2
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R-5
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S-8
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S-8
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S-9
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R-6
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S-10
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S-7
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R-8
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O-3 7-72
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9-72
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7-72
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8-73
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5-71
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3-72
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6-73
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8-71
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12-73
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6-73
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2-73
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8-72
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12-73
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2-74
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8-73
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7-73
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While Donald Ryan is an "R" in the political section, there is not
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sufficient data published about him to verify his status. It was by
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studying these documents that I learned that the CIA has sent an
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operative to Peking. For confirmation, I called the State Department's
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ranking China expert, Acting Assistant Secretary of State Arthur Hummel.
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After I identified myself as a reporter working on a magazine article
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and explained where I had gotten my information, Hummel shouted, "I know
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what you're up to and I don't want to contribute. Thank you very much\!"
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and slammed down the phone.
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Another State official confirmed that the decision to send an operative
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to Peking was made in early 1973, but declared that making public the
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operative's existence could "jeopardize" Chinese-American relations.
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Neither this official nor any of his colleagues seemed willing to
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consider the notion that the U.S. government was under no obligation to
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assign a CIA man there - or anywhere else, for that matter. The first
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American mission to China since 1949 certainly could have been staffed
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exclusively with real diplomats if concern about damaging relations were
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so high. To have excluded the Agency from Peking, however, would have
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gone against a basic axiom of the post-World War II foreign policy
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establishment: the CIA follows the flag into American embassies.
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The Chinese government is presumably clever enough to identify the
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operative by sifting through the public documents available. In fact,
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his arrival may well have been cleared with the Chinese, who probably
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wanted reciprocal privileges for their secret service in Washington.
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Such are the arrangements the world's spooks are so fond of working out
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with each other - the Soviet KGB and the CIA even exchange names of
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intelligence analysts assigned to the other's capital.
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**Sacrificing "State"**
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Much to the alarm of a few high State Department officials, the
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proportion of CIA to State personnel abroad has been steadily rising in
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recent years. The precise figures are zealously guarded, but several
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State sources confirm the trend. They cite as the main reason for this
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tilt toward the CIA a series of government-wide cutbacks that have hit
|
||
|
State proportionately harder than the CIA. What troubles State is not,
|
||
|
as one career diplomat put it, "the principle" that State should provide
|
||
|
the CIA with cover. That is unquestioned, he says. Rather, most
|
||
|
legitimate diplomats do not like being a minority within their own
|
||
|
profession or having the rest of the world confuse them with the CIA's
|
||
|
dirty tricksters. They generally regard themselves as working at a
|
||
|
higher calling.
|
||
|
|
||
|
While the State Department has been comparatively honest in accepting
|
||
|
the personnel cuts ordered by the Johnson and Nixon administrations, two
|
||
|
sources familiar with the CIA budget report that the Agency has done
|
||
|
everything possible to escape the reductions. Traditionally, when
|
||
|
outsiders - even Presidents - have tried to meddle with the Agency's
|
||
|
personnel allotment, the CIA has resisted on "national security"
|
||
|
grounds. And when that argument failed, the CIA resorted to bureaucratic
|
||
|
ruses: cutting out a job and then replacing the person eliminated with a
|
||
|
"contract" or "local" employee, who would not show up on the personnel
|
||
|
roster; or sending home a clandestine support officer - a specialist in
|
||
|
things like renting "safe houses," "laundering" money, and installing
|
||
|
phone taps - and then having the same work done by experts sent out from
|
||
|
Washington on "temporary duty. " Not only does the State Department
|
||
|
provide the CIA with cover, but the Senate - and especially its Foreign
|
||
|
Relations Committee - encourages the current practice of sending over
|
||
|
25% of our "diplomatic" corps abroad under false pretenses.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Every year the Foreign Relations Committee routinely approves and sends
|
||
|
to the full Senate for its advice and consent lists of "Foreign Service
|
||
|
Reserve Officers to be consular officers and secretaries in the
|
||
|
Diplomatic Service of the United States of America." In 1973, of the 121
|
||
|
names submitted by the State Department, more than 70 were CIA
|
||
|
operatives. According to a knowledgeable source, the committee is
|
||
|
informally told the number of CIA people on the lists, but "not who they
|
||
|
are." No Senator in memory has publicly objected to being an accomplice
|
||
|
to this cover-building for the CIA.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Just this spring \[1974\], the State Department took official, if
|
||
|
secret, notice of its declining presence overseas compared to the CIA
|
||
|
when Secretary Henry Kissinger authorized a high-level study of
|
||
|
State-CIA staffing. The Department's top administrator, L. Dean Brown,
|
||
|
who had urged the study be made in the first place, gave the job to
|
||
|
Malcolm Toon, a career diplomat serving as U.S. Ambassador to
|
||
|
Yugoslavia. Toon returned to Washington to compile the top-secret
|
||
|
report.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Asking not to be named and refusing to provide the specific figures, a
|
||
|
source close to Kissinger says that Toon's report calls for a
|
||
|
substantial reduction in the number of CIA operatives abroad under State
|
||
|
cover. The source adds that Kissinger has not made up his mind on the
|
||
|
issue.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Kissinger has always acted very carefully where the CIA is concerned.
|
||
|
One of his former aides notes that the Secretary has regularly treated
|
||
|
the Agency with great deference at government meetings, although he has
|
||
|
often been privately scornful of it afterward. In any case, Kissinger is
|
||
|
unquestionably a believer in the need for the CIA to intervene covertly
|
||
|
in other countries' internal affairs - he was the prime mover behind the
|
||
|
Agency's work against Salvador Allende in Chile. The question of how
|
||
|
much cover State should provide the CIA, however, is chiefly a
|
||
|
bureaucratic one, and is not basic to Kissinger's foreign policy.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The Secretary therefore will probably not take a definite position until
|
||
|
he sees how much opposition the CIA will be able to stir up in the White
|
||
|
House and in the congressional subcommittees that supposedly oversee the
|
||
|
Agency.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The CIA has lost no time in launching its counteroffensive. At a July 19
|
||
|
off-the-record session with key Democratic congressional aides, Carl
|
||
|
Duckett, the CIA's Deputy Director for Intelligence, complained about
|
||
|
the reductions recommended by the Toon report. According to a source who
|
||
|
was present, Duckett said that, even without further embassy cuts, the
|
||
|
CIA now doesn't have enough people overseas.
|
||
|
|
||
|
CIA officials must be especially concerned about Toon's recommendations,
|
||
|
since in countries where there are no U.S. military bases, the only
|
||
|
alternative to embassy cover is "deep," or nonofficial, cover. American
|
||
|
corporations operating overseas have long cooperated in making jobs
|
||
|
available to the CIA and would probably continue to do so. Also, the
|
||
|
Agency would probably have to make more use of smaller firms where fewer
|
||
|
people would know of the clandestine connection. Two examples of this
|
||
|
type are:
|
||
|
|
||
|
- Robert Mullen and Company, the Washington-based public relations
|
||
|
concern for which E. Howard Hunt worked after he left the CIA and
|
||
|
before the break-in at Democratic National Headquarters. Mullen
|
||
|
provided CIA operatives with cover in Stockholm, Mexico City, and
|
||
|
Singapore, and in 1971 set up a subsidiary in cooperation with the
|
||
|
CIA called Interprogres, Ltd. According to a secret Agency document
|
||
|
released with the House Judiciary Committee's impeachment evidence,
|
||
|
"At least two \[CIA\] overseas assets have tangential tasks of
|
||
|
promoting the acceptance of this company as a Mullen subsidiary."
|
||
|
- Psychological Assessment Associates, Inc., a Washington
|
||
|
psychological consulting firm specializing in behavioral research
|
||
|
and analysis. By the admission of its president John Gittinger, most
|
||
|
of the company's business since it was founded in 1957 by three
|
||
|
ex-CIA psychologists has come from Agency contracts. The firm had
|
||
|
two "representatives" in Hong Kong, at least until June of this year
|
||
|
\[1974\].
|
||
|
|
||
|
Unless their cover is blown, companies of this sort and operatives who
|
||
|
work for them cannot be linked to the U.S. government. But the Agency
|
||
|
has learned over the years that it is much more difficult and expensive
|
||
|
to set up an operative as a businessman (or as a missionary or newsman)
|
||
|
than to put him in an embassy. As a "private" citizen, the operative is
|
||
|
not automatically exposed to the host country's key officials and to
|
||
|
foreign diplomats, nor does he have direct access to the CIA
|
||
|
communications and support facilities which are normally housed in
|
||
|
embassies. Moreover, as an ex-CIA official explains, "The deep cover guy
|
||
|
has no mobility. He doesn't have the right passport. He is subject to
|
||
|
local laws and has to pay local taxes. If you try to put him in an
|
||
|
influential business job, you've got to go through all the arrangements
|
||
|
with the Company. "
|
||
|
|
||
|
**Who Needs Gumshoes?**
|
||
|
|
||
|
Everything argues for having the intelligence agent in the embassy -
|
||
|
everything, that is, except the need to keep his existence secret. The
|
||
|
question then becomes whether it is really that important to keep his
|
||
|
existence secret - which, in turn, depends on how important his
|
||
|
clandestine activities are.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Could any rational person, after surveying the history of the last 20
|
||
|
years, from Guatemala to Cuba to Vietnam - and now Chile - contend that
|
||
|
the CIA's clandestine activities have yielded anything but a steady
|
||
|
stream of disaster? The time has come to abolish them. Most of the
|
||
|
military and economic intelligence we need we can get from our
|
||
|
satellites and sensors (which already provide nearly all our information
|
||
|
about Russia's nuclear weaponry) and from reading the newspapers and the
|
||
|
superabundant files of open reports. As for political intelligence -
|
||
|
which is actually an assessment of the intentions of foreign leaders -
|
||
|
we don't really need this kind of information from Third World countries
|
||
|
unless we intend to muck about in their internal affairs. With the
|
||
|
Soviet Union or China - countries powerful enough to really threaten our
|
||
|
national security - timely political intelligence could be a great help.
|
||
|
But for the past 25 years we have relied on open sources and
|
||
|
machine-collected intelligence because our agents have proven incapable
|
||
|
of penetrating these closed societies. There is not enough practical
|
||
|
benefit gained from the CIA's espionage activities to compensate for our
|
||
|
nation's moral and legal liability in maintaining thousands of highly
|
||
|
trained bribers, subverters, and burglars overseas as "representatives"
|
||
|
of our government. The problem of getting good, accurate, reliable
|
||
|
information from abroad is a complicated one, beyond the scope of this
|
||
|
article, but, to paraphrase Mae West, covert has nothing to do with it.
|
||
|
|
||
|
```
|
||
|
```
|