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On the Origins of American Counterintelligence: Building a Clandestine Network

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2011

Alan A. Block  and
John C. McWilliams
Alan A. Block
Affiliation:
Penn State University
John C. McWilliams
Affiliation:
Penn State University
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Extract

The subject of American counterintelligence has generated a considerable amount of scholarship in recent years, the bulk of that research focusing on the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and its predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Those agencies were and continue to be commonly recognized as having fulfilled the primary role as the nation's intelligence-gatherers. Within this vast intelligence community exists a microcosm in the form of counterespionage, or more euphemistically, counterintelligence.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 1 , Issue 4 , October 1989 , pp. 353 - 372
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 1989

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References

Notes

1. A sampling of the most recent research on the OSS and/or the CIA includes John Ranelagh's The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA (New York, 1986)Google Scholar; Stafford's, DavidCamp X: “Intrepid” and the Allies North American Training Camp for Secret Agents (New York, 1986)Google Scholar; Winks's, RobinCloak and Gown: Scholars in the Secret War, 1939–1961 (New York, 1987)Google Scholar; Trevorton, Gregory F., Covert Action: The Limits of Intervention in the Postwar World (New York, 1987)Google Scholar; and Blum, William, The CIA: A Forgotten History (London, 1986).Google Scholar

The most comprehensive study of the OSS is Brown's, Anthony CaveThe Last Hero: Wild Bill Donovan (New York, 1982)Google Scholar. Other valuable histories are Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones's American Espionage: From Secret Service to CIA (New York, 1977), 173–74Google Scholar; and Smith's, Richard HarrisOSS: The Secret History of America's First Central Intelligence Agency (Berkeley, 1972).Google Scholar

2. Roosevelt, Kennit, War Report of the OSS (New York, 1976), 188.Google Scholar

3. Marks, John D. and Marchetti, Victor, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (New York, 1974), 206.Google Scholar

4. Martin, David C., Wilderness of Mirrors (New York, 1980), 17Google Scholar; and Stafford, Camp X, xvi-xix.

5. Two recent articles touch on Anslinger's role during the 1940s and 1950s but do not address the issue of counterintelligence. See Kinder, Douglas Clark, “Bureaucratic Cold Warrior: Harry J. Ansltnger and Illicit Narcotics Traffic,” Pacific Historical Review 50 (May 1981), 169–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kinder, and Walker, William O. III, “Stable Force in a Storm: Harry J. Anslinger and United States Narcotic Foreign Policy, 1930–1962,” The Journal of American History 72 (March 1986), 908–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. The Anslinger collection is currently part of the Labor Archives in Pattee Library at The Pennsylvania State University. Several scholars have perused these papers for research, none of whom suggests that Commissioner Anslinger or any of his agents was involved in more than the enforcement of drug laws. See Bonnie, Richard J. and Whitebread, Charles H. II, The Marihuana Conviction: A History of Marihuana Prohibition in the United States (Charlottesville, VA, 1974)Google Scholar; Morgan, H. Wayne, Drugs in America: A Social History, 1800–1980 (Syracuse, NY, 1981)Google Scholar; Musto, David F., The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control (New Haven, 1973)Google Scholar; Sloman, Larry, Reefer Madness: Marihuana in America (New York, 1979)Google Scholar; and Walker, William O. III, Drug Control in the Americas (Albuquerque, 1981).Google Scholar

7. See Donner's, Frank J.The Age of Surveillance: The Aims and Methods of America's Political Intelligence System (New York, 1981)Google Scholar, especially for the FBI's “kulturkampf” activities, and Powers, Richard Gid, Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover (New York, 1987).Google Scholar

8. Roosevelt, War Report, 191; and Brown, The Last Hero, 181.

9. Corson, William R., Armies of Ignorance: The Rise of the American Intelligence Empire (New York, 1977), 46–52.Google Scholar

10. Powers, Thomas, The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA (New York, 1979), 10.Google Scholar

11. Corson, Armies of Ignorance, 73.

12. Corson, Armies of Ignorance, 73–75. John Foster Dulles was President Eisenhower's Secretary of State from 1953 to 1958; Allan Dulles was Director of the CIA from 1953 to 1961.

13. McWilliams, John C., The Protectors: Harry). Anslinger and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 1930–1962 (Newark, DE, 1989), 57.Google Scholar

14. “Order” from Secretary of State Robert Lansing to Harry J. Anslinger, Anslinger Papers, Box 3, File “Correspondence 1921.” Hereafter referred to as “AP.” Some of this information was later passed on to William J. Donovan in New York. See a letter from William J. Donovan to Harry J. Anslinger, 11 August 1920, AP, Box 3, File “Correspondence 1921.”

15. Smith, OSS, 15–16; and Lee, Martin A. and Shlain, Bruce, Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD and the Sixties Rebellion (New York, 1985), 246.Google Scholar

16. “Committee on One Hundred,” 1931, AP, Box 1, File “Iniations, Awards by Anslinger.”

17. “Annual Report of the Egyptian Government,” AP, Box 3, File 10.

18. Letter from Russell Pasha to Harry J. Anslinger, 15 July 1942, AP, Box 3, File 10.

19. H. R. Nicholson, “Survey of the Narcotics Situation in China and the Far East,” to Commissioner of Customs, AP, 12 July 1934, Box 10, File 3.

20. Nicholson, “Survey of the Narcotics Situation,” Annex II, p. 7.

21. Nicholson, “Survey of the Narcotics Situation,” Annex IV, 14–16.

22. Letter from H. J. Anslinger to Keith Weeks, 24 November 1941, AP, Box 2, File “Correspondence 1940–1941.”

23. Treasury Department Conference, 15 December 1941, Morgenthau Diary, Box 473, pp. 36–37, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library.

24. Smith, OSS, chapter 1, “Donovan's Dreamers,” 1–35; and Ranelagh, The Agency, 37–56.

25. Corson, Armies of Ignorance, 101.

26. Ibid.

27. Anslinger, Harry J. and Gregory, J. Dennis, The Protectors: Narcotics Agents, Citizens and Officials Against Organised Crime in America (New York, 1964), 13–15.Google Scholar

Preferring to work alone, Williams uncovered several major smuggling rings in the South and later in Mexico, where he was sent to win the cooperation of President Lazaro Cardenas in stopping the liquor traffic. Williams's effectiveness made a strong impression on Anslinger, who in 1929 was appointed the Assistant Commissioner of Prohibition. When he became the first commissioner of the newly established Federal Bureau of Narcotics in 1930, he remembered the Mississippian with a heavy southern drawl.

28. Telephone interview with Garland H. Williams, 6 February 1988.

29. “Assumes New Duties At U.S. Treasury Aide,” 2 October 1940, New York Times, 38.

30. “Brief History of the 525th Military Intelligence Group,” United States AINSCOM, Arlington Hall Station, Virginia.

31. Anslinger, The Protectors, 76.

32. “Brief History of the 525th”; and Corson, Armies of Ignorance, 180–81.

33. Smith, OSS, 170–71.

34. Smith, OSS, 408.

35. Smith, OSS, 422.

36. See three reports filed by Garland Williams from Teheran, Iran, 10 June 1948, 21 January 1949, and 1 February 1949, AP, Box 6, File 4.

37. “Brief History of the 525th.”

38. Ibid.

39. Ibid.

40. Letter from Garland Williams to Harry J. Anslinger, 12 October 1951, AP, Box 6, File 4.

41. “Named to Revenue Bureau Post,” 1 January 1953, New York Times, 9; and “Tax Aide Resigns; Own Returns Eyed,” 27 November 1953, 36. In a telephone interview on 1 February 1988, Williams said he “worked forty years in the government service,” and that he “retired from military status in 1957,” but worked for another ten years. He did not specify in what capacity he was employed between 1957 and 1967, only that “much of what I did was classified.” It is also interesting to note that none of the numerous FBN agents interviewed, who began their employment in the 1940s, had any knowledge of Williams's later activities.

42. Corson, Armies of Ignorance, 203.

43. Stafford, Camp X, 186.

44. Stafford, Camp X, 81.

45. Stafford, Camp X, 66.

46. Roosevelt, War Reports, 81.

47. George H. White's “Personal History Statement” in his Office of Personnel Management File, United States Office of Personnel Management, St. Louis. Hereafter referred to as White OPM file; and Anslinger, Harry J. and Oursler, Will, The Murderers: The Story of the Narcotic Gangs (New York, 1962), 129–32.Google Scholar

48. George White's Diaries, Perham Electronics Museum, Los Altos, California. See 1943.

49. Stafford, Camp X, 71, 81–82, and 205.

50. Cassidy, History of the Schools, 199–200.

51. Cassidy, History of the Schools, p. 200.

52. James Sterba, “The Politics of Pot,” Esquire, August 1968, 60; U.S., Congress, Senate, Committee on Human Resources, Human Drug Testing By the CIA, 1977, Hearings before the subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research of the Committee on Human Resources, on S. 1893, 95th Cong., 1st sess., 1977; and MK-ULTRA documents released to the authors in response to a Freedom of Information request.

53. Stafford, Camp X, 82; and Brown, The Last Hero, 745–47.

54. See White's Diaries, 1943.

55. According to a former FBN agent who worked for White in California, Albertine White had no knowledge as to the contents of her husband's diaries when she donated them to the Perham Electronics Museum.

56. See White's Diaries: Stafford, Camp X, 81; and Brown, The Last Hero, 385.

57. Martin, Wilderness of Mirrors, 65–65. See also Robin W. Winks, Cloak and Gown.

58. For discussions of Gottlieb's involvement in assassination plots, see Marks, John, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control (New York, 1980), 74–76Google Scholar; and Ranelagh, The Agency, 210–11.

59. “Espionage: Cloak, Dagger, $50,000,” Newsweek, 15 October 1951, 21–23; John Kobler, “He Runs a Private OSS,” Saturday Evening Post, 21 May 1955, 31, 141–42; “Ulius Amoss Dies; Ran Spy Network,” New York Times, 10 November 1961, 35; and letters from Pete Amoss to Harry J. Anslinger, 6 March 1950 and 10 April 1959, Box 2, AP.

60. Letter from Pete Amoss to Harry J. Anslinger, 25 August 1950, AP, Box 6, File 8.

61. Letter from Arthur Von Thaden to Harry J. Anslinger, 29 June 1951, AP, Box 6, File 8. From New Jersey, Von Thaden was an insurance executive and board chairman of a Wall Street firm, Excess Insurance Company of America. “Named By Underwriters,” 19 January 1942, 24; and “Dies in Thruway Crash,” 28 July 1961, New York Times, 14.

62. Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets, 161.

63. “Memo” from Pete Amoss to Harry J. Anslinger, 1958, AP, Box 6, File 8.

64. For a closer examination of Gottlieb's role, see Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets, 161–62; and Marks, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate (New York, 1980), 55–75.Google Scholar

65. Evidence that Manfredi was working for the CIA at the time of his death is contained in a letter from Andrew C. Tartaglino, Assistant Director for Enforcement, to the Bureau of Employees Compensation, 13 August 1970. Manfredi's Office of Personnel Management File, United States of Personnel Management, St. Louis.

66. Anslinger, The Protectors, 76.

67. In conversation with current drug enforcement personnel, the authors learned that the DEA was instrumental in the release of J. Paul Getty II, who was kidnapped in 1973. More recently, in The Tower Commission Report it was noted that Lt. Colonel Oliver North asked Robert C. McFarlane of the National Security Council “to secure the services of two officers of the Drug Enforcement Agency who would work with the NSC staff on this matter [ransoming two hostages for $2,000,000].” The Tower Commission Report (New York, 1987), 125.Google Scholar