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The Secret Cold War: The C.I.A. and American Foreign Policy in Europe 1946–1956. Part II*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Trevor Barnes
Trevor Barnes
Affiliation:
British Broadcasting Corporation
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Extract

The C.I.A. was taxed with five major intelligence failures by the influential New York Herald Tribune on 2 August 1950. This newpaper article was only part of a widespread campaign to reorganize the C.I.A. The concern of the C.I.A. director, Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, over the allegations was so acute that on the following day he prepared an apologia sent to President Truman. Three of the alleged failures of prediction concerned the defeat of the Chinese Nationalists, events in Palestine and the 1948 Bogota conference – the last now largely forgotten but the cause of great contemporary scandal when Secretary of State Marshall was attacked by a mob. The other two were in Europe. They were the inability to predict the fall of Czechoslovakia and the defection of Tito. Blaming the C.I.A. for not predicting the communist coup in Czechoslovakia was unfair, but there was more substance to the accusation concerning Yugoslavia.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , September 1982 , pp. 649 - 670
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

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References

1 ‘Rebuttal to New York Herald Tribune allegations of intelligence failures’, ER 1–1768, Hillenkoetter to president, 3 August 1950, Truman library, Truman papers, president’s secretary’s files (henceforth PSF).

2 See Barnes, Trevor, ‘The secret cold war: the C.I.A. and American foreign policy in Europe, 1946–1956. Part I’, Historical Journal, xxiv (1981), 399–415.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Quoted in C.I.A. 7–48, 14 July 1948, PSF.

4 C.I.A. 6–48, 17 June 1948. Memo, Hillenkoetter to Truman, 29 June 1948 and memo, ER 0108, 30 June 1948, PSF.

5 C.I.A. 7–48, 14 July 1948. C.I.A. 8–48, 19 August 1948, PSF.

6 O.R.E. 68–48, ‘Opposition to ECA in participating countries’, 10 February 1949. O.R.E. 51–49, ‘Soviet control mechanism in Germany’, 26 May 1949, PSF.

7 ‘Bauxite resources in Yugoslavia’, Intelligence memo no. 199, 22 July 1949. O.R.E. 44–49, ‘Yugoslav regime’s ability to resist Soviet pressure during 1949’, 20 June 1949. PSF.

8 Memo, ER 0–6208-A, Hillenkoetter to Truman, 30 August 1949. Intelligence memo no. 232, 5 October 1949. ‘Yugoslav Situation’, Memo, 17 October 1949, PSF.

9 Memo, Hillenkoetter to Truman, 18 January 1950, PSF.

10 C.I.A. 0 to 12–49, 19 January to 21 December 1949. O.R.E. 32/50, ‘The effect of the Soviet possession of atomic bombs on the security of the United States’, PSF.

11 N.S.C. status of projects, 4 October 1949 and 18 January 1950, PSF.

12 John Maury, chief of Soviet operations, interview. At the time of writing no other details of Project Jigsaw were available.

13 C.I.A. 1 to 4–50, 18 January 1950 to 19 April 1950, PSF.

14 C.I.A. 7–50, 19 July 1950, PSF.

15 Called World Situation Summaries, these are in PSF. Summaries from 20 July to 27 October 1950 have been declassified.

16 Summary, 27 July 1950.

17 Summary, 10 August 1950.

18 Summaries, 25 August and 1 September 1950.

19 Summary, 22 September 1950.

20 Summary, 22 September 1950.

21 Foreign relations of the United States, 1950 (Washington, 1977), III: Western Europe, 1667–8.Google Scholar

22 N.S.C. status of projects, 27 February, 13 March, 11 October and 16 October 1950, PSF.

23 ‘The Central Intelligence Agency and organization for intelligence: a report to the NSC’, by Allen Dulles, W. Jackson and J.Correa, 1 January 1949, box 7, N.N.M.M. Collection of N.S.C. Documents, National Archives, pp. 25–6, 63, 74, 81, 129–30, 138. N.S.C. meeting 22 March 1949; memo, Admiral Souers, for N.S.C. on the Dulles-Jackson-Correa report, 4 April 1949, PSF.

24 Quoted in New York Times, 23 November 1949.

25 N.S.C. status of projects, 4 October 1949 and 18 January 1950, PSF. Foreign relations, 1950, III, 184.

26 New York Times, 2 April 1950.

27 New Tork Times, 7 May 1950.

28 Nomination of Lt. General Walter Bedell Smith to be Director of C.I.A., ref. 370 S 2971 and HR 4384, report of proceedings, Committee on Armed Services, U.S. Senate, papers of Walter Bedell Smith, Eisenhower library.

29 ‘Programs and cost estimates of NSC 68-NSC interim report’, George Elsey papers, Truman library. N.S.C. status of projects, 28 August and 20 November 1950, PSF.

30 According to John Maury.

31 Maury, interview.

32 N.I.E.-14, N.S.C. status of projects, 5 February 1951. N.I.E.-22, N.S.C. status of projects, 26 March 1951.

33 N.S.C. status of projects, 20 November 1950, 5 February, 26 March, 2 July and 3 September 1951. Report submitted as N.I.E. 14–26.

34 N.S.C. status of projects, 1 October and 19 November 1951.

35 N.S.C. status of projects, 13 August and 19 November 1951, 18 February 1952. Lalor to Bradley, 11 July 1952, and C. P. Cabell, director of the joint staff, to joint services mission, 17 September 1952, National Archives, U.S. joint chiefs of staff records (henceforth U.S. J.C.S.), file CSCS 091 England 1952.

36 Final report of the senate committee on intelligence activities (Church committee) (Washington, 1976), 1, 106–10.Google Scholar

37 Powers, Thomas, The man who kept the secrets: Richard Helms and the C.I.A. (London, 1980), pp. 49–50.Google Scholar

38 Church committee, Final report, 1, 106–12; iv, 42–5.

39 The best account of the Ukrainian and Polish débâcles is in Powers, Helms, pp. 40–8.

40 16 December 1949 policy paper enclosed with letter from Deputy Under-Secretary of State Dean Rusk to General J. H. Burns, 28 December 1949, file CCS 092 Albania (10–20–49), U.S. J.C.S.

41 ‘Strengths and weaknesses of the Hoxha regime in Albania’, intelligence memo no. 218, 12 September 1949. Memo, Hillenkoetter to Truman, 25 October 1949. O.R.E. 71/49, ‘Current situation in Albania’, 15 December 1949, PSF.

42 E.g. New York Times, 19 August 1950.

43 N.S.C. 58/2, ‘United States policy toward the Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe’, 8 December 1949, PSF, N.S.C.

44 Stevens to Wisner, 5 July 1951, sec 23, box 147, U.S. J.C.S. There was also intimate contact with the British on this issue. See JSPC 808/81, ‘Special operations in support of emergency war plans’, 18 December 1951 (sent out on 16 January 1952 to British), sec 30, box 148, U.S. J.C.S. The deputy head of S.I.S., General John Sinclair, visited Washington in December 1950 to present to the C.I.A. the British view about the control and organization of special covert operations in wartime. The British joint chiefs, in turn, approved three draft directives for their own commanders on the subject but the ones for Germany and Austria were withdrawn after the creation of SHAPE’s clandestine committee. Philby’s presence in the American capital obviously ensured the Russians were aware of these plans. JSPC 808/81 reveals some prickly hostility between the S.I.S. and the American joint chiefs over the Middle East. The American proposals for Middle East Command would have meant that the Supreme Allied Commander, Middle East would have been forced to receive directions from a steering committee ‘probably including French and Turkish members, in which event there are implications on which the British Secret Service is not prepared to commit itself. The British therefore, requested that the Joint Chiefs of Staff agree not to issue the proposed directives and further requested that the Joint Chiefs of Staff instruct the OPC to co-operate with the British Secret Service in support of the emergency war plans of the British commanders in chief, Middle East…’ By the beginning of 1952, the British were already planning ‘wartime covert operations’ on a military level with the Americans.

Another document in the National Archives reveals close co-operation between American and British cryptographers in the early fifties. An inquiry by the British Joint Services Mission in Washington on 4 February confirmed that the Americans were developing a new encoding machine, the AFSAM-7, to replace the Combined Cipher Machine (CCM), then in use by both the British and Americans. Tests were then in operation on the AFSAM-7 and if successful the CCM was to be replaced by 1 July 1955. The National Security Agency was prepared to lend the new machines to both NATO and Britain - in the case of the latter until the new U.K. machine incorporating the ADONIS principle had been manufactured. Memo, Bradley to General Price, 11 February 1953, box 4, file 091, England, U.S. J.C.S.

45 Memo, Admiral Stevens to J.C.S., 8 January 1952, file sec. 31, box 148, U.S. J.C.S. Cookridge, E. H., Gehlen (London, 1972: Corgi edn), pp. 292–6Google Scholar and Corson, William, Armies of ignorance (New York, 1977), pp. 366–71.Google Scholar

46 Bradley to Bedell Smith, 9 March 1951, sec. 16, box 147, U.S. J.C.S. Memo, Edward F. Witsell to C in Cs, ‘Logistics assistance to the Central Intelligence Agency’, 21 March 1951, file CCS, 334. sec. II, U.S. J.C.S.

47 ‘Training in the military services for selected CIA career individuals’, memo, chief of staff, U.S. army. Memo, Bradley to Admiral Divis,6 April 1951, memo, Bradley to Defense Secretary, 15 June 1951, file C.C.S., 334 C.I.A. sec. 13, U.S. J.C.S.

48 Bradley to J.C.S., 7 February 1952, file CCS. 334 C.I.A., sec. 12, U.S. J.C.S. Memo to J.C.S., ‘Liaison between the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Chiefs of Staff”, 7 March 1952, file CCS. 334, C.I.A. sec. 13, U.S. J.C.S.

49 Powers, Helms, pp. 45–7. Maury, interview.

50 Robert Amory Jnr, interview. Amory’s main task in Europe was to obtain a copy of Khrushchev’s ‘ Destalinization’ speech. In May the Yugoslavian Communist Party refused to seal an agreement with the C.I.A. to provide it, so – according to Amory – the speech was finally obtained from a member of the Polish Communist Party through William Barker who had served in the American embassy in Warsaw after the war. See Powers, Helms, pp. 74–5.

61 His name cannot be revealed here for legal reasons. Thomas Braden, Head of C.I.A.’s International Organizations Division, 1951–4, interview, 21 March 1979.

52 Amory, interview. The proposal was turned down after a meeting in a private guestroom of the Travellers’ Club in Paris in the spring of 1954.

53 Handy to Collins, 4 June 1950, files of General Omar Bradley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff (henceforth Bradley files), National Archives, file 091 France 1950, box 1. Interviews with Sir Robert Mackenzie, 21 February and 17 April 1980, and George Carey-Foster, 13 May 1980.

54 Memo, Brigadier-General V. E. Megee, deputy director of Intelligence to director, joint staff, II August 1950, Bradley files, file 091.

55 Carey-Foster, interview.

56 Memo, Bradley to Marshall, October 1950, Bradley files, file 091.

57 Memo, Colonel Gordon E. Dawson, Defense representative on Tripartite Security Group, to Bradley, 29 March 1951; memo and enclosure, Dawson to Bradley, 25 April 1951, Bradley files, file 091 France 1951, box 2. Mackenzie and Carey-Foster, interviews.

58 Memo, Bradley to Marshall, 17 July 1951, Bradley files, file 091.

59 Carey-Foster, interview. Information based on private diary.

60 ‘Policy statement and background data on unification of Italian non-communist trade unions’ by Irwin Tobin, 22 November 1949, Foreign relations of the United States, 1949 (Washington, 1976). iv, 707.Google Scholar

61 Braden, interview. New York Times, 8 February 1950. See also the general admission of American involvement in Italy: Foreign relations, 1949, iv, 144.

62 Memo to secs. of Army, Navy, Air Force and J.C.S. from K. R. Kreps, 14 December 1951, sec. 30, box 148, 385 (6–4–46), U.S. J.C.S.

63 Boothe-Luce to Jackson, 19 June and 7 September 1953. Jackson to Boothe-Luce, 2 October 1953. C. D.Jackson papers, Eisenhower library, folder: Luce, Clare Boothe 1953–4, box 57.

64 Boothe-Luce to Eisenhower, John Foster and Allen Dulles, 3 November 1953 and ‘Estimate of the Italian situation (as of 1 November 1953)’, Eisenhower papers as President (Ann Whitman file), Eisenhower library, folder: Luce, Clare Boothe, box 27.

65 Agee, and Wolf, , Dirty work: the C.I.A. in Western Europe (Secaucus, NJ, 1978), pp. 168–9Google Scholar. Colby, William, Honourable men (New York, 1977), pp. 107–25, 138 and interview.Google Scholar

66 Colby, Honourable men, p. 139. Robert Amory Jnr, interview.

67 Foreign relations, 1947, III 749–50, 889–92; iv, 194, 468.

68 This information comes from notes on meetings between the Foreign Office’s Information Research or Policy Department, the BBC and an American assistant secretary at the London embassy, Edward Barrett, which took place on 20 and 22 May 1950 in London, Foreign relations, 75150, 111, pp. 1641–8.

69 The figures given by Barrett are 78 million dollars in 1951 and 120 million dollars in 1952 (note 68).

70 Fascinating in view of the C.I.A.-S.I.S. plans to subvert the country.

71 The idea had issued from the New York coterie of Allen Dulles, which included Frank Wisner and Charles Sulzman, a Time-Life journalist, and the group set up a corporation in New York before putting forward the concept in Washington in 1949. Hillenkoetter was sceptical, but Dulles established the National Committee for a Free Europe as a front organization and the project went ahead. Lawrence Houston, general counsel of C.I.A., interview. Marchetti, Victor and Marks, John, The C.I.A. and the cult of intelligence (London, 1974: Coronet edn), pp. 195–9Google Scholar. Cline, Ray S., Secrets, spies and scholars (New York, 1977), pp. 128–30.Google Scholar

72 N.S.C. status of projects, 28 August and 16 October 1950, PSF. The problem of frequencies in Germany was the subject of a memo from Assistant Secretary of State Perkins to Acheson, 24 January 1950, Foreign relations, 1950, 11, 1612–14.

73 C.I.A. estimate dated 15November 1950 quoted in memo, General Omar Bradley, ‘Review of the World Situation and the Ability of the Forces being maintained to meet United States commitments’, 15 January 1951, declassified by Defense Department, National Archives.

74 New York Times, 2 May 1951.

75 Articles in New York Times by Anthony de Leviero, 12–14 December 1951.

76 Thomas Braden, interview.

77 Agee, Philip, C.I.A. diary (Harmondsworth, 1974: Penguin edn), pp. 72–9.Google Scholar

78 Philip Agee and Louis Wolf, Dirty work, pp. 92–5. Braden, interview.

79 Agee and Wolf, Dirty work, pp. 189–98. Braden, Amory, interviews. Marchetti and Marks, Cult, p. 193.

80 Gordon Gray, director of P.S.B., to Stevens, 12 July 1951. Stevens to Gray, 23 July 1951, sec. 23, box 147, U.S. J.C.S. Memo, Balmer to joint staff director, 2 October 1951, sec. 26, box 148, U.S. J.C.S.

81 Jackson to Eisenhower, 21 April 1953, papers of C. D.Jackson, Eisenhower library, box 41: folder - D.P. correspondence to 1956 (2). Blackstock, Paul W., Agents of deceit (Chicago, 1966), pp. 147–51. Memo, Edward W. Barrett, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, 11 April 1951 (declassified). Memo, General Walter Bedell Smith to George Morgan, undersecretary of defense, 10 March 1953, folder- P.S.B. plans for psychological exploitation of Stalin’s death, box 5, C. D.Jackson records, 1953–6. Jackson to Eisenhower, 17 December 1952: folder-Eisenhower, D.P. correspondence to 1956, box 41, papers of C. D.Jackson. Memo for the Board Assistants from George A. Morgan, acting executive officer, 27 July 1954, file CCS 334 O.C.B., U.S.J.C.S.Google Scholar

82 ‘N.S.C. directive on covert operations’ 15 March 1954, Modern Military Section, National Archives, box 7, N.N.M.M. collection of N.S.C. documents.

83 Eisenhower to Dulles, 26 July 1954, Eisenhower papers as President, Eisenhower library, folder: Dulles, Allen (4), 1953–61 (Ann Whitman File) Administration. Doolittle Special Study Group Report, N.N.M.M. collection of N.S.C. documents. The report of the President’s Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities (chairman, James R. Killian), 20 December 1956, was even more explicit about the link between covert action and foreign policy. ‘Politics and psychological operations of the black (and grey) order are now integral parts of the foreign operations of this government and, as such, affect importantly the implementation, and even the shaping of our foreign and military policies.’ Eisenhower papers as President.

84 The only academic, although pedestrian, study of covert action is Blackstock, Paul W., The strategy of subversion (Chicago, 1964).Google Scholar