Table of Contents

Table of Contents
About the Author
Reviews
Introduction
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Appendix 1 - Alphabetical list of individuals
Appendix 2 - Abbreviations
Appendix 3 - Charts showing the bureaucratic structure of the CIA
Acknowledgements
 Table of Contents
Inside Cover
About the Author
Reviews
Introduction
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Appendix 1 - Alphabetical list of individuals
Appendix 2 - Abbreviations
Appendix 3 - Charts showing the bureaucratic structure of the CIA
Acknowledgements
Philip Agee, who was a CIA operations officer for twelve years, now lives in
England. "More than an expose, a unique chronicle ... the most complete
description yet of what the CIA does abroad. In entry after numbing entry,
U.S. foreign policy is pictured as a web of deceit, hypocrisy and
corruption." – The Washington Post
 Reviews
"Unlike Victor Marchetti, who was so high in the CIA that many of his
notions of what goes on at the operations level are downright absurd, Philip
Agee was there. He has first-hand experience as a spy-handler ... as
complete an account of spy work as is likely to be published anywhere ...
presented with deadly accuracy."
– Miles Copeland, former CIA agent, in The London Observer
"The workings of the world's most powerful secret police force – the CIA –
comes across as a frightening picture of corruption, pressure, assassination
and conspiracy."
– Evening News (London)
 Introduction
This is a story of the twelve-year career of a CIA secret operations officer
that ended in early 1969. It is an attempt to open another small window to
the kinds of secret activities that the US government undertakes through the
CIA in Third World countries in the name of US national security. It
includes the actual people and organisations involved, placed within the
political, economic and social context in which the activities occurred. An
attempt is also made to include my personal interpretation of what I was
doing and to show the effect of this work on my family life. My reasons for
revealing these activities will be found in the text. No one, of course, can
remember in detail all the events of a twelve-year period of his life. In order
to write this book, I have spent most of the last four years in intensive
research to reinforce my own recollections.
The officers of a CIA station abroad work as a team, often in quite different
activities and with a considerable number of indigenous agents and
collaborators. I have tried to describe the overall team effort, not just my
own role, because all the station's efforts relate to the same goals.
The variety of operations that are undertaken simultaneously by a single
officer and by the station team made an ordinary narrative presentation
cumbersome. I have chosen a diary format (written, to be sure, in 1973 and
1974) in order to show the progressive development of different activities
and to convey a sense of actuality. This method also has defects, requiring
the reader to follow many different strands from one entry in the diary to
another, but I believe it is the most effective method for showing what we
did.
In order to ease the problem of remembering who all the characters are, I
have included a special appendix, Appendix 1, which has descriptions of
individuals and organisations involved or connected with the Agency or its
operations (see note to Appendix 1). The reader is directed to this appendix
by the use of a double dagger, in the text. It will be noted that many agents'
names have been forgotten and that only cryptonyms (code names) can be
given. Some of the original cryptonyms have also been forgotten, and in
these cases I have composed new ones in order to refer to a real person by
some name at least. Appendix 2 gives an alphabetical listing of all
abbreviations used and an asterisk indicates those entries which appear in
Appendix 1. Several of the operational activities that I describe could not be
placed at the exact date they really happened, for lack of research materials,
but they are placed as close as possible to the date they occurred with no
loss or distortion of meaning. Similarly, several events have been shifted a
day or two so that they could be included in diary entries just before or just
after they actually occurred. In these cases the changes make no difference.
When I joined the CIA I believed in the need for its existence. After twelve
years with the agency I finally understood how much suffering it was
causing, that millions of people all over the world had been killed or had
had their lives destroyed by the CIA and the institutions it supports. I
couldn't sit by and do nothing and so began work on this book.
Even after recent revelations about the CIA it is still difficult for people to
understand what a huge and sinister organisation the CIA is. It is the biggest
and most powerful secret service that has ever existed. I don't know how
big the KGB is inside the Soviet Union, but its international operation is
small compared with the CIA's. The CIA has 16,500 employees and an
annual budget of $750,000,000. That does not include its mercenary armies
or its commercial subsidiaries. Add them all together, the agency employs
or subsidizes hundreds of thousands of people and spends billions every
year. Its official budget is secret; it's concealed in those of other Federal
agencies. Nobody tells the Congress what the CIA spends. By Jaw, the CIA
is not accountable to Congress.
In the past 25 years, the CIA has been involved in plots to overthrow
governments in Iran, the Sudan, Syria, Guatemala, Ecuador, Guyana, Zaire
and Ghana. In Greece, the CIA participated in bringing in the repressive
regime of the colonels. In Chile, The Company spent millions to
"destabilize" the Allende government and set up the military junta, which
has since massacred tens of thousands of workers, students, liberals and
leftists. In Indonesia in 1965, The Company was behind an even bloodier
coup, the one that got rid of Sukarno and led to the slaughter of at least
500,000 and possibly 1,000,000 people. In the Dominican Republic the CIA
arranged the assassination of the dictator Rafael Trujillo and later
participated in the invasion that prevented the return to power of the liberal
ex-president Juan Bosch. In Cuba, The Company paid for and directed the
invasion that failed at the Bay of Pigs. Sometime later the CIA was
involved in attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro. It is difficult to believe, or
comprehend, that the CIA could be involved in all these subversive
activities all over the world. The life of a CIA operations officer can be
exciting, romantic. You belong to a special club: The Company. For most of
my career with the CIA I felt that I was doing something worthwhile. There
is not much time to think about the results of your actions and, if you try to
do it well, the job of operations officer calls for dedication to the point of
obsession. But it's a schizophrenic sort of situation. You have too many
secrets, you can't relax with outsiders. Sometimes an operative uses several
identities at once. If somebody asks you a simple question, "What did you
do over the weekend?" your mind goes Click! Who does he think I am?
What would the guy he thinks I am be doing over the weekend? You get so
used to lying that after a while it's hard to remember what the truth is.
When I joined the CIA I signed the secrecy agreement. With this book,
articles, exposure on radio and television, I may have violated that
agreement. I believe it is worse to stay silent, that the agreement itself was
immoral. My experience with the CIA has mostly been with its overseas
operations. I trust investigations now going on in Washington into CIA
activities will also expose CIA internal involvement which is, I suspect,
much greater than anybody outside the CIA knows or the National Security
Council realizes. I believe a lot of sinister things will come out and that
Americans may be in for some very severe shocks.
In the New York Review of Books of 30 December 1971, Richard Helms,
then CIA Director, was quoted from a rare address to the National Press
Club. In justifying the CIA's secret operations, he said: 'You've just got to
trust us. We are honourable men.' I ask that these words be remembered
while reading this book, together with the fact that CIA operations are
undertaken on instructions from the President himself and are approved in
very detailed form on various levels within the CIA, and often at the Under-
Secretary level or higher outside the Agency. Finally, I ask that it be kept in
mind that the kinds of operations I describe, which occurred for the most
part in Latin America, were typical of those undertaken in countries of the
Far East, Near East and Africa. I would also suggest that they are
continuing today.
Revelations during the past year of the CIA's "destabilisation" program
against the Allende government in Chile, its illegal domestic operations and
its complicity in political assassinations or assassination attempts have
finally precipitated a long-overdue debate. I hope this book will contribute
to it.
London, May 1975
INSIDE THE COMPANY:
CIA DIARY
Part One
South Bend, Indiana April 1956
Hundreds of companies come to the university to interview students for
possible employment. I hadn't signed up for any interviews but I've just had
my first, and probably only, job interview. To my surprise a man from the
CIA came out from Washington to see me about going into a secret junior
executive training programme. Virginia Pilgrim must have recommended
me. I'd forgotten she mentioned a programme like this when she stayed with
us in Tampa last year – said she would dearly love to see the son of her
oldest friends come into the CIA. Somehow I have the impression she is
one of the highest-ranking women in the CIA – worked on the Clark Task
Force that investigated the CIA under the Hoover Commission.
I told Gus, the recruiter, that I had already been accepted for law study. He
was surprised. Virginia didn't know my plans. He said the JOT (Junior
Officer Trainee) Program consists of six to nine months, in some cases even
a year, of increasingly specialised training on the graduate school level.
After the course you begin CIA work on analysis, research, special studies
and reports writing, administration or secret operations. He said he couldn't
say much about the course or the work because it is all classified.
Gus asked me about my military service situation and when I told him I
would have to do it sooner or later he mentioned a possible combination.
For JOTs who haven't done military service the CIA arranges to take a
special course in the Army or the Air Force, which is really controlled by
the CIA. It takes about a year to get an officer's commission and then you
have to serve a year on a military assignment. Then it's back to Washington
for the JOT training programme and finally assignment to a job at CIA
headquarters in Washington. According to his calculations it would take
five or six years to be assigned overseas if I wanted to go into secret
operations. Too long to wait before getting to the good part, I thought.
Gus knew a lot about me: student government, academic honours and the
rest. I said that what I liked best was being Chairman of the Washington's
Birthday Exercises in February when we gave the Patriotism Award to
General Curtis Lemay. I told Gus that the Exercises are the most important
expression of the 'country' part of the Notre Dame motto ('For God,
Country, and Notre Dame'). He said I should keep the CIA in mind if I
changed my plans. I would consider the CIA if the military combination
worked but Gus emphasised that they only want people prepared for a
career in the CIA. That leaves me out.
I suppose the CIA works closely with General Lemay and his Strategic Air
Command. This is the most important part of the speech he gave at the
Exercises: Our patriotism must be intelligent patriotism. It has to go deeper
than blind nationalism or shallow emotional patriotic fervour. We must
continually study and understand the shifting tides of our world
environment. Out of this understanding we must arrive at sound moral
conclusions. And we must see to it that these conclusions are reflected in
our public policies.... If we maintain our faith in God, our love of freedom,
and superior global air power, I think we can look to the future with
confidence.
Tampa, Florida June 1956
It's a strange feeling being back in Florida for the summer with no plans to
return to the cold north in the fall. The miserable weather and the long
distance from home and all the other negative aspects of studying at Notre
Dame seemed to fade away during Commencement Weekend.
No more bed check or lights out at midnight. No more compulsory mass
attendance and evening curfew. No more Religious Bulletin to make you
feel guilty if you didn't attend a novena, benediction or rosary service. And
no more fear of expulsion for driving a car in South Bend. The end has
come too, I hope, to the loneliness and frustration of living in an all-male
institution isolated from female company.
What will it be like to live without the religion and discipline of the
university? It may have been hard but they were teaching us how to live the
virtuous life of a good Catholic. Even so, I still have this constant fear that
after all I might die by accident with a mortal sin on my soul. Eternity in
hell is a worry I can't seem to shake off. But the main thing is to keep on
trying – not to give up. After having to take all those courses on religion the
only person to blame, if I really don't make it, will be me. It is the discipline
and religion that makes Notre-Dame men different, and after four years of
training I ought to be able to do better.
Admiral Arleigh Burke, Chief of Naval Operations, discussed this in his
speech at the graduation ceremony. He really impressed me: Notre-Dame
symbolizes many virtues. It blends the virtues of religion and patriotism –
service to God, service to country. Notre-Dame stands for faith – faith in
self and faith in country.... Self-discipline and determination and fighting
spirit are an integral part of the curriculum ... We are living in a great
country where there is equality of opportunity, where justice is a reality....
We are a generous nation.... We will never wage a war of aggression.... We
are a strong nation.... We have strong allies.... But greater than all this
strength is the strength of our moral principles.... Our nation is the symbol
of freedom, of justice and opportunity, regardless of flag or political
beliefs.... Communism has been, and still is, a prison for the millions who
are denied the opportunity to learn responsibility – who are compelled to let
the few do the thinking for the many who will do the labour.... Should we
relax our efforts, either spiritual or physical, we would find our ship without
a rudder; we would find our strength not sufficient to cope with the strong
adverse winds which at some time will confront us. It takes a man with
strength and a stout heart to steer in a gale.
Admiral Burke writes a great speech – couldn't have been more accurate or
more inspiring. At Notre Dame we learned how one's responsibilities
extend beyond oneself to family, community and nation, and that respect for
authority is the virtue of a respectable citizen.
I will be driving a truck this summer to earn money for law school in the
fall.
Tampa, Florida December 1956
Studying law at the University of Florida was a mistake. I didn't feel I
belonged – I wasn't comfortable – in the fraternity whirl and the 'hail fellow'
routine. But I'm not an ascetic either. I suppose it was the lack of a sense of
purpose or maybe I couldn't adjust to secular learning after four years of
Jesuits and four at Notre Dame. At least I did realise it, and only stayed
three months.
I checked with the draft board and they said I have about six months before
I'll be called up. It's a sad prospect, two years wasted as a private, washing
dishes and peeling potatoes. For a few months anyway I'll live with my
parents in Florida and try to save some money. A draftee only makes about
eighty dollars a month and that's hardly enough for booze and cigarettes.
The problem is what to do about the business. My father and grandfather
are just starting a big expansion and they're counting on me to take my
place with them. I know I'll make a lot of money but I can't get enthusiastic
about it. Why the reluctance to go into a family business? When I switched
to philosophy studies after a year of business administration at Notre Dame
I thought I was doing it for the sake of a higher form of education. Like so
many others I could learn to run a business once I got into it. Well now I'm
in it and I feel the same as when I rejected business administration for
philosophy. I wish I could speak to my father or grandfather about it but it
would look as if I think I'm too good for something they've dedicated their
lives to.
No hasty decisions. I've got six months to work with them and then two
years in the Army.
Tampa, Florida February 1957
There has got to be a way to avoid two lost years in the Army. I've written
to the CIA, reminding them of my meeting with Gus, and asking to be
reconsidered. I've received application forms, returned them, advised
Virginia Pilgrim by telephone, and now have to wait. Virginia said her
friends in the personnel department would process my application as fast as
possible because of the problem of the draft but it looks as if I may be too
late. She said the security clearance takes about six months so the draft will
probably win.
Gus said the JOT programme is strictly for people who want to make the
CIA a career and I've been wondering about this. No way to know until I
learn more about what CIA work is like, but I really am interested in
politics and international relations. And the more I live here the less
enthusiastic I get for a lifetime in the family business.
We'll see what kind of alternative the CIA can provide. It will mean three
years' military duty instead of two if they take me, but I'll be an officer –
more pay, better work (especially at the CIA), and time to decide.
Washington DC April 1957
I've been called to Washington for an interview with the JOT office which is
in Quarters Eye near the Potomac River. I waited in a reception room until a
secretary came for me, filled out a visitor's pass form giving name, address
and purpose of visit, and the receptionist added the hour and stamped in
large letters MUST BE ACCOMPANIED. Then she gave me a plastic clip-
on badge which I had to wear at all times. The secretary signed as
responsible for me and I followed her to the JOT office.
The man who interviewed me is named Jim Ferguson. We spent about a
half-hour discussing Notre Dame, the family business and my interest in a
career in foreign affairs. I remembered the conversation with Gus and
emphasised that while I am interested in a CIA career I know so little about
the Agency that my reasons are necessarily restricted to an interest in
foreign affairs. He said that they had arranged a series of tests and
interviews with officers in charge of the JOT programme, including Dr
Eccles, the Program Director. If the testing and interviews go well a
complete security background investigation will be made: which could take
about six months. But in my case, with the problem of the draft, they could
ask for priority action and hope for the best.
The secretary gave me a piece of plain white paper with the building names,
offices and times I was to report for the testing – it would take three days in
all. She explained that at each building I would have to report to the
receptionist, who would call the office where I had the appointment for
someone to come and sign me in. She also reminded me to wear the visitor's
badge at all times in the buildings and to return it with the pink visitor's
pass on leaving. I would use the shuttle, an exclusive Agency bus, to get
around the different buildings.
During that first visit to the JOT office, I immediately sensed the fraternal
identification among the CIA people. I suppose it was partly because they
used a special 'inside' language. No one spoke of 'CIA', 'Central Intelligence
Agency', or even 'The Agency'. Every reference to the Agency used the
word 'company'.
My first appointment was at the North Building with the Medical Staff and
after that I alternated between those people and the office called
'Assessment and Evaluation' in the Recreation and Services Building on
Ohio Drive. Although it seemed that the Medical Staff were looking for
physical and mental health, and that 'A and E' were looking for the special
qualities needed in an intelligence operative, there seemed to be little
distinction between them. It was exhausting: endless hours filling in answer
sheets to vocational, aptitude and personality tests. I've read of the elaborate
testing procedures developed by the Office of Strategic Services during
World War II and now I see it's still going on. Stanford, Minnesota, Strong,
Wechsler, Guilford, Kudor, Rorschach – some tests are administered and
others just written. The worst was the interview with the psychiatrist at the
Medical Staff – he really bugged me. I finally finished about noon on the
afternoon of the third day, and I had a couple of hours before I had to report
back to the JOT office so I decided to do some sightseeing. I grabbed a
sandwich at a blind stand and then took the shuttle to the Executive Office
Building. (Those blind stands – sandwich bars operated by blind people –
are in practically every building. I guess it's a good thing for the blind
people to have that work, and the company can let them in the buildings
because they can't read secret papers. Everybody wins.)
Then out to the Washington Monument. Looking out from the top of the
Monument at the buildings where our national life is guided, where our
integrity in the face of grave external threat is defended, and where the
plurality of conflicting domestic interests finds harmony, I admitted to
myself that participation in government is my long-range goal. It won't
matter if I live below my parents' material level or even without fixed roots
in a community. Working in the Central Intelligence Agency, preferably
overseas, with intimate knowledge of the functioning and decisions of
friendly and hostile governments will provide a forever stimulating and
exciting atmosphere as well as an intellectually challenging occupation. I'll
be a warrior against communist subversive erosion of freedom and personal
liberties around the world – a patriot dedicated to the preservation of my
country and our way of life.
I left the Monument through the circle of American flags and walked back
to Quarters Eye feeling more confident and self-possessed than at any time
since arriving. After the usual sign-in, pink slip, badge and escort
procedure, I was received again by Ferguson who told me the first reports
on the testing looked pretty good. While waiting to see Dr Eccles, Ferguson
said he would brief me on the military programme they had in mind. First,
however, he warned me that the programme was classified and not to be
discussed with anyone outside the Agency. At his request I signed a
statement acknowledging that what I learned was information relating to
national security and promising that I would not reveal it.
Ferguson outlined the military programme. When the security clearance is
completed I will be called back to Washington where I will enlist in the Air
Force. After three months' basic training I will be assigned to the first
available class at Officer Candidate School – all at Lackland Air Force Base
in San Antonio, Texas. Following OCS I will be assigned to an Air Force
base somewhere in the US, and, with luck, my duties will be in air
intelligence. Ferguson explained that the company doesn't control
assignments made by the Air Force after completion of OCS, but more and
more of the company military trainees are getting intelligence assignments
during the obligatory year of strictly military duties. After a year at the Air
Force base I will be transferred to an Air Force unit in Washington that is
actually a company cover unit, and my formal company training will begin.
The secretary appeared and said Dr Eccles would see me. I still had to get
past him and I had primed myself for this meeting. Virginia had told me that
Dr Eccles's approval was necessary for acceptance. He turned out to be a
bushy-browed, bespectacled man of about sixty with an unavoidable
authoritative glare. He asked me why I wanted to be an intelligence officer
and when I replied that foreign affairs is one of my main interests he tried to
make me uncomfortable. He said that foreign policy is for diplomats;
intelligence officers only collect information and pass it to others for
policymaking. He added that maybe I should try the State Department. I
said maybe I should but that I don't know enough about the Agency yet to
decide, adding that I'd like to come into the programme to see. He then gave
me a little lecture; they don't want men who will quit the CIA as soon as
they finish military service. They want only men who will be career
intelligence officers. After that he turned into a kind old grandfather and
said we'd see how the security clearance turned out. He shook my hand and
said they'd like to have me. Made it! I'm in – but it seems too easy.
Back in Ferguson's office where he continued to describe the programme.
At no time will I be connected openly with the company, and I am to tell no
one that I am being considered by it for employment. Assuming the security
investigation is favourable, they will arrange for me to be hired as a civilian
by the Department of the Air Force, actually by an Air Force cover unit of
the company, when I am called back to Washington. A few weeks later I
will enlist in the Air Force and be sent to Lackland for basic training. While
in the Air Force I will be treated just like any other enlistee and no one will
know of my company connection. Keeping the secret will be part of my
training – learning to live my cover. A violation of cover could lead to
dismissal from the programme. My assignments afterwards will also be
determined in part by how well I have concealed my company affiliation.
Back in Florida I must keep the plan secret, but notify Ferguson if I receive
any orders from the draft board.
I'm beginning to feel a kind of satisfaction in having a secret and of being
on the threshold of an exclusive club with a very select membership. I am
going to be my own kind of snob. Inside the Agency I'll be a real and honest
person. To everyone outside I'll have a secret lie about who and what I am.
My secret life has begun.
Washington DC July 1957
Salvation! The security clearance ended before the call-up came, and I
drove to Washington loaded with books, hi-fi, records and tennis gear.
Georgetown is the 'in' area where a CIA officer trainee feels most
comfortable, so I've moved in with some former Notre Dame classmates
who are doing graduate study at Georgetown University. We're living in a
restored Federalist house on Cherry Hill Lane, a narrow brick street
between M Street and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. I have that feeling
of being just the right person in just the right place. These friends don't
know I'm going into the CIA so this will be my first real test of living a
cover.
At the JOT office Ferguson told me whom I am working for. My 'employer'
is the Department of the Air Force, Headquarters Command, Research and
Analysis Group, Bolling Air Force Base, Washington. He gave me the
names of my commander, an Air Force colonel, and of my immediate
supervisor, a major, both of whom are fictitious. I have to memorise all this
so I can reel it off to people I meet. My Bolling Air Force Base telephone
number rings in the Agency Central Cover Division where they have some
male telephone operators who roll dice each morning to see who will play
the colonel and who will play the major.
I signed another secrecy agreement – the wording makes it permanent,
eternal and universal about everything I learn in the company – and
Ferguson sent me over to my first assignment at 1016 16th Street. I rushed
over but discovered nobody was expecting me. Finally I was called up to
the fourth floor and welcomed to the Personnel Pool. All we do is fold maps
and have crossword puzzle competitions.
The Personnel Pool is a holding area for all prospective employees who
lack the final nihil obstat for the security clearance – we're all waiting for
the same happy event: the polygraph or lie detector. We're about thirty
people. Some of them have been in the pool for over a month and they're
the rumour-mongers. It seems that the polygraph, or 'technical interview' as
it's officially called, has been a real trauma for some. We have been warned
that nobody talks about the 'poly' and that makes the rum ours all the more
mysterious. It seems that the main part of the apparatus crosses the breasts,
which makes some of the girls nervous, and the main questioning is on
homosexual experience, which makes some of the boys nervous. There are
stories of nervous breakdowns, ambulances and even suicide. There's no
doubt, however, what's going to happen when you get advised of an
appointment at Building 13.
Washington DC July 1957
After two weeks of folding maps my turn finally came. How stupid to think
I could beat the machine! Yesterday I was 'polyed' and now I'm back at the
Personnel Pool but on a different floor and with people who've already
taken the test. We're kept away from those who haven't taken it so they
won't know much about it. The interrogators don't tell you right away about
the results of the test – they make you wait. Nothing but gloom here.
The shuttle doesn't stop at Building 13 so I had to ask the driver to leave me
as near as possible. When he acknowledged Building 13 in a loud voice (on
purpose, I'm sure) the cold, knowing eyes of the other passengers focused
right on me and I felt like a leper. They knew I was about to make a secret,
intimate confession. Bad joke.
At 23rd Street and Constitution Avenue, the driver announced Building 13
and pointed me towards a complex of temporary buildings, barracks style,
beyond a parking lot towards the Watergate. The buildings are surrounded
by high chain-link fences topped by several strands of barbed-wire tilting
towards the outside. All the windows have the same type of chain-link mesh
and every third or fourth window has an air-conditioner. None of them are
open and the buildings look impenetrable.
I made my way along the fence and the first building I noticed after getting
to a gate was one with a discreet 13 near the entrance. After a short wait
with the receptionist I was greeted by a man about thirty-five – clean-cut,
clean-shaved and clear-eyed. He took me a short distance down a hallway,
opened a door, and we passed into a small room with acoustical tile
covering the walls and ceiling. There was a standard government leather
easy chair that backed up to a desk-like construction with a built-in
apparatus of dials, graph paper and odd, narrow, metal pens. In an effort to
keep me from more than a swift glance at the machine, he conducted me
immediately to a sitting position in the easy chair. From behind the desk he
brought a straight chair and sat down in front of me. The interrogator
announced that I had reached the final phase of the security clearance
procedure necessary for access to Top Secret material and, of course, for
employment with the company. He assured me that all employees of the
company, even Mr. Dulles, submit to the polygraph – not just once when
they're hired, but periodically throughout their careers. Then he asked me to
sign a prepared statement acknowledging that I was submitting to the test of
my own volition and that I would hold no claim against any person or the
company afterwards no matter what the outcome. I eagerly signed this quit
claim – in advance – and also another secrecy agreement, pledging myself
to speak to no one of the questions or other details of the interview.
We then reviewed the questions, all of which were to be answered simply
'yes' or 'no'. Is my name Philip Burnett Franklin Agee? Was I born on 19
January 1935? Have I ever used any other name or identity? Have I filled
out my job application form honestly? Have I ever been a member of any of
the subversive organisations on the Attorney General's list? Have I ever
been a communist or belonged to any communist organisation? Have I ever
been in a foreign country? In a communist country? Have I known any
officials of a foreign government? Of a communist government? Have I
ever known an intelligence officer of a foreign country? Have I ever worked
for a foreign government? For a foreign intelligence service? For a
communist intelligence service? Have I been asked by anyone to obtain
employment with the CIA? Have I told anyone outside the CIA of my
attempt to obtain employment? Have I ever engaged in homosexual
activities? Have I ever taken drugs? Have I taken tranquillizers today?
The pre-test interview lasted over an hour as the interrogator explored each
question in depth, noting all names, dates, places, and finally rephrasing the
question to include an 'other than' or 'except for' clause that would qualify
the question and still allow for a 'yes' or 'no' answer. During this discussion
the interrogator explained to me that the lie detector is used exclusively in
the company by the Office of Security which is responsible for protecting
the company against employment of security risks or against penetration by
hostile intelligence services. He also assured me that everything I said
during the interview is strictly confidential and will be restricted to my
Office of Security File which is available only to security officers of the
same office. I didn't have the courage to ask how many security officers that
meant, but as I wondered I felt a creeping discomfort that behind one of
those thousands of holes in the acoustical tiles there was a microphone
secretly recording our conversation. I also began to wonder if I was having
incipient symptoms of the paranoia that some people say is the personality
trait sine qua non of the effective intelligence officer.
Now we were ready for the test. The polygraph consists of three
apparatuses which are attached to the body of the person being interrogated
and which connect by tubes or cords to the desk ensemble. Each apparatus
measures physiological changes, marked on moving graph paper by three
pens. There are, accordingly, a blood pressure cuff that can be attached
either to the arm or leg, a corrugated rubber tube about two inches in
diameter that is placed snugly around the chest and fastened in the back,
and a hand-held device with electrodes that is secured against the palm by
springs that stretch across the back of the hand. The cuff measures changes
in pulse and blood pressure, the chest-tube measures changes in breathing
rhythm, and the hand instrument measures changes in perspiration. I was
hooked into the machine, told to look straight ahead at the wall, to be very
still, and to answer only 'yes' or 'no' to each question. The interrogator was
behind me at the desk ensemble facing the back of my head. He asked the
questions to my back and I answered to the wall in front.
During the pre-test interview I had given my interrogator several half-
truths, partly because I simply resisted his invasion of my life, and partly
because I was curious about the effectiveness of the machine. Foolish child!
As the cuff inflated I was conscious of increased pulse and my hands began
to sweat profusely. Anticipating the questions that I should react on, I
started to count the holes in the tiles in order to distract myself from the
test. The interrogator passed very slowly from one question to another,
pausing between each question. I answered 'yes' or 'no' and at the end he
slipped in an unannounced question: had I answered all the questions
truthfully? Dirty trick. I said 'yes' and after a few seconds the cuff deflated.
I heard a shuffling of paper and he reviewed the chart as I remained still. He
told me I could move a little but that if I was not particularly uncomfortable
he would like me to remain seated and hooked up. Fine. He stayed behind
the desk behind my chair behind my back and started asking me what I was
thinking about when I answered the question on whether anyone had asked
me to obtain employment with the CIA. Nothing in particular. He insisted
but I couldn't come up with an answer other than that I was thinking that
indeed no one had asked me. Discussion. Then he asked me what I was
thinking when I answered the question about telling anyone outside the CIA
of my attempt to obtain employment. Nothing in particular. Discussion.
Then the question on homosexual experience. Then drugs. As we passed
from question to question he insisted with increasing intensity that I try to
remember what I was thinking when I answered the question, emphasising
that my cooperation is essential for a successful testing. Successful? I
wondered if successful for him is the same as successful for me. Obviously
not. I would stick to my half-truths. They weren't lies anyway, and besides I
have heard that you can beat the machine if you stay consistent.
We started again. Up went the blood pressure cuff and out came the
questions. In went the 'yeses' and 'nos' and up and down went the faintly
scratching pens. I fiercely counted the holes in the tiles and was gaining in
confidence. Down went the cuff followed by more post-test discussion. This
time I was 'having difficulty' on two more questions. I repeated and insisted
that I was being truthful and that when answering each question I had been
thinking only of the question and of its only possible truthful answer –
which I gave.
The interrogator said we would go through the questions again and that I
hadn't done too well on the first two runs, adding that there is no way for me
to be hired without successfully passing the test. Was there anything I
wanted to say or clarify? No. I was being truthful and maybe something
was wrong with the machine. That hurt. His tone cooled, the cuff inflated
and we did another test. At the end he said I was obviously having trouble.
With an air of finality he unhooked me from the machine.
At that moment I got scared and feared I wouldn't be hired. As I was about
to confess he said he would leave me alone to think things over for five or
ten minutes. He closed a lid to the desk ensemble and left the room taking
the charts with him. I stood up and looked at my watch which I had been
asked to remove and place on the desk behind me. I had been at Building 13
for over two hours. The interrogator was gone for at least twenty minutes.
During that time I decided to tell the full truth. Why risk losing the job out
of silly pride or the illusion that I could beat the machine? But as the door
opened and my interrogator rejoined me I suddenly became frightened of
admitting deception. I decided not to change any answer. Besides, in the
Personnel Pool I had heard that some people who have difficulty are called
back for a second or third time for the polygraph. I would have another day
if I really failed this time.
We passed through the questions two more times. After both tests the
interrogator insisted that I was having trouble on the same questions and I
insisted that I was answering truthfully no matter what difficulty I was
having. At last he said that would be all. I asked if I had passed and he
answered sceptically that he didn't know, that I would be advised after the
Security Office had reviewed my case and the charts. He was very
pessimistic, and as I was leaving I feared that they might not even call me
back for another test. I was exhausted – went home, had a couple of drinks
and slept for twelve hours.
When I called Virginia in the morning and told her I thought I'd failed the
test, she said not to worry, that they always make people think they've
failed. She thinks it's to avoid disappointment and fewer problems with
those who really aren't going to be hired. Virginia's news is temporary
relief, but the wait is agonising. No more arrogant jokes about the
polygraph in the Pool now – and nobody's reckless enough to discuss his
interrogation with anyone else. Everybody's just sitting.
Washington DC July 1957
I couldn't stand it any longer. After three days' waiting, I called Ferguson to
admit I was lying and to volunteer to take the test again. Before I could say
anything he said he had some good news and to come over to his office.
The tone of his voice gave infinite relief – I knew I had passed.
At the JOT office Ferguson told me he has started my processing for
enlistment in the Air Force but it will take three or four weeks. Meanwhile
he wants me to take a training course on international communism and, if
there is time, a course on the bureaucratic organisation of the company.
These aren't the courses I'll be taking when I get back but they'll be useful,
he thinks, even if they're pretty elementary. He also had the secretary
arrange to get me a badge – I can come and go now without being signed in
– and he made an appointment for me with Colonel Baird, the Director of
Training.
I missed the meeting with Baird and after being chastised at the JOT office I
finally saw him in his office at T-3 (another of the Potomac Park
temporaries). I hadn't realised how important Colonel Baird is – he set up
the JOT programme in 1950 under direct supervision of General Walter
Bedell Smith who was then Agency Director. With Princeton, Oxford, and
the headmastership of a boys' school behind him, Baird is considerably
more formidable than his military rank. He oozes firm leadership, old hand
super-confidence and a Dunhill special blend for special pipes. He's tall,
greying, very tanned and very handsome – irresistible to the ladies, I'm sure.
He didn't say much – just to work hard at OCS. Ferguson and everyone
else, since the polygraph, have greeted me with 'welcome aboard', as if
these words are the official greeting for newcomers. Maybe there are a lot
of ex-Navy men in the CIA – or maybe these people like to think they're on
a ship because of the isolation imposed by cover and security.
Baltimore, Maryland August 1957
The two weeks studying communism and two weeks reading organisational
charts of the headquarters' bureaucracy leave me happy to leave
Washington.
Yesterday morning Ferguson gave me my final briefing on joining the Air
Force. Arrangements had been made, he said, at the main Air Force
recruiting office in Washington for me to be taken into the Air Force on a
normal five-year enlistment, which was the standard procedure for all Air
Force enlistees. However, after basic training I will receive a special
appointment by the Secretary of the Air Force to the first OCS class. I
would have to be prepared to cover this appointment because we JOTs are
the only exceptions to the Air Force regulation that five years' service is
needed before an enlisted man can even apply for OCS. Ferguson said I can
refer to a little known (so little known, in fact, that it doesn't exist) Air
Force programme for college graduates if I am pressed, but I can probably
avoid giving explanations. He warned me, however, not to tell anyone that I
am going to OCS until the assignment is actually announced to me at
Lackland Air Force Base.
I signed another secrecy agreement and Ferguson said I'll have to take the
polygraph again when I get back in two years' time. Then I took the bus to
the recruiting office carrying only an overnight bag with some toilet articles
and a change of underwear and socks.
I told the paunchy, weather-beaten recruiting sergeant my name as
pleasantly as I could. He answered 'yeah' and when I noticed it was a
question I wondered whether to say 'here I am' or 'I want to enlist'. I decided
to say both, trying to sound unrehearsed, and I added that I thought I was
expected. The recruiting sergeant understandably looked back as if he
thought I thought the Air Force was about to be saved.
He gave me some forms to fill in and asked if I wanted to go in thirty, sixty
or ninety days. I said cheerfully that I was ready to go right then, which
made his eyes narrow and his mouth screw up into that 'another case'
expression. He motioned me over to a table across the room where I filled
in the forms, wondering all the while whether the sergeant was really
attached to the JOT office and was testing my ability to maintain the cover
story. I returned the forms which he looked over and then he disappeared
into a back office.
After a few minutes he returned with another recruiting sergeant and both
expressed considerable scepticism. We spent the next half-hour discussing
why a philosophy graduate wanted to enlist for five years in the Air Force
in order to learn to be a radar mechanic. Finally I admitted that it was
indeed kind of strange and I accepted their invitation to think it over for a
few days. I carried my little bag of essentials out of the recruiting office
wishing I could find somewhere to hide.
From a telephone booth I called Ferguson to advise that apparently the Air
Force didn't want me – not that day anyway. He gulped and stammered for
me to call him back in two hours. I wondered what clown had missed his
cue while at the same time I dreaded facing the recruiting sergeant again.
When I called back, Ferguson told me to go back to the recruiting office,
that everything was all right now. When I pressed him for an explanation
his voice turned cold and he warned me not to discuss classified matters
over the telephone. Back in the recruiting office there was a new sergeant
who simply gave me a ticket for the bus to Baltimore for the medical
examination and swearing in.
At Fort Holabird they took me. Tonight I fly to San Antonio to begin two
years away from CIA headquarters – Ferguson said I must consider this
time as part of the JOT training, a time for 'maturing', I think he said.
San Antonio, Texas Christmas 1957
Tony and I had Christmas dinner at the dining-hall, the low point of a
miserable day. Next week, New Year's Eve to be exact, we report to OCS.
We're going to live it up meanwhile except neither of us has any money.
There are only three of us going into this class; Tony, who's from Princeton;
Bob, from Williams, and me. A couple of nights ago we met in a hotel
downtown with the six JOTs who started OCS in the last class. They are
going to be upper classmen now – the course is three months lower and
three months upper class – which means they will be harassing us. That's
normal and necessary for cover.
For the meeting we took security precautions as Ferguson instructed when
he came to see us in October. No one can take any chances by a show of
prior knowledge or special camaraderie between the triple Xer's. Those
three X's which are in brackets after our names on all our documents, are
the Air Force's way of keeping track of CIA trainees.
The guys from the upper class told us not to be surprised if they put the heat
on us – they have to because of the resentment on the part of the others in
the class who had to work years to get into OCS. It seems these non-corns
aren't happy about our miniscule bunch (there are about 300 cadets
altogether in OCS) being specially privileged by entering straight from
basic training. I suppose we'll run into the same.
San Antonio, Texas June 1958
In a few days I'll be a Second Lieutenant unless the OCS Commandant
decides my insult was too much to take. A couple of weeks ago he called
me in to tell me I was going to be eligible for a regular commission instead
of a reserve commission. Only the top six OCS graduates get regular
commissions and for an aspiring career officer it's the end of the rainbow –
you practically can't get discharged. The Commandant also said it looked as
if I might graduate first in the class. I made a panic call to Ferguson and he
told me to turn the regular commission down. I told the Commandant who
said it might not help our cover situation (he's the only officer on the OCS
staff who knows of our CIA sponsorship), if the top graduate refuses a
regular commission. I got the hint and am holding back an academic paper
which should drop me a notch or two. But the Commandant took my refusal
of the regular commission like a slap in the face. Guess this hasn't come up
before.
My orders after commissioning are for transfer to the Tactical Air
Command. It's too good to believe: assignment as intelligence officer to a
fighter squadron at a base just outside Los Angeles.
Victorville, California June 1959
My orders finally came for transfer back to Washington – to the company
bogus unit, I mean. It's been a marvellous year, driving up and down those
motorways to Mexico, San Francisco, Yosemite, Monterey. I finally got
busy training the pilots in targeting because we have the new F-104 and
nuclear targets in China. I've also done some training in evasion and escape
because some of the targets are one-way ditch missions. The only big
mistake was volunteering for the Survival School at Reno, Nevada because
they sent me to the January course and the week-long trek in the mountains
was on snowshoes – pure misery. I've been seeing Janet, my girlfriend from
college, almost every weekend since last summer. I've told her about my
work in the company and about my hopes to be assigned abroad. We've
talked a lot about marriage but we're not sure what to do. She would like to
stay in California, and I wonder if I should wait until after the JOT course is
over a year from now. I'll be leaving for Washington in a couple of weeks
and we'll see how we endure the separation.
Washington DC September 1959
It didn't take a long time for us to decide. Less than a month after I left
California we agreed we didn't want to wait any longer, so now we begin a
life together. We were married at Notre Dame as a kind of compromise
because Janet's family is Congregationalist and she felt a wedding in a
Catholic Church in her home town might raise difficulties. We took a small
apartment in the building complex where Vice President Nixon and his wife
first lived when they came to Washington after his election to the House.
We have furniture to buy, but family and friends have been exceedingly
generous and new gifts arrive every day. We can save some money by
shopping at the military commissaries because I'm still on active duty.
My military cover unit is an Air Intelligence Service Squadron at Bolling
Air Force Base in Washington. My cover telephone number has changed
but the same two telephone operators are rolling the same dice to see who
will be the colonel and who the major.
Ferguson said I probably won't be discharged until June or July of next
year, which will coincide with the end of the JOT training programme.
All the JOTs in the OCS class ahead of me, my class, and the one behind
me are united in the JOT programme. Even so, we make up only about
fifteen of the sixty-odd in the class – which includes only six women. The
JOT classes, which have just started, are held in the Recreation and
Services Building, the same one where I was tested by the Assessment and
Evaluation staff two years ago. The 'A and E' routines are even longer now
than before and I'm going through all of those monotonous tests again. The
only thing we lack is a mammoth Potomac Park football stadium for
Saturday afternoon frenzy – the rest is the old college routine once more.
The opening sessions in the training course were welcoming speeches by
Allen Dulles, Colonel Baird, and others who have been showering us with
affection and praise for following them into this life of deliberate self-
abnegation, unknown sacrifice and silent courage as secret warriors in the
battles of our time. Very romantic. Each one of us in the class represents the
one in a hundred, or one in a thousand, of the total number of applicants for
the JOT programme who were finally accepted. The company leaders tell us
we're entering the world's second oldest profession (maybe even the first,
but that can't be proved) and if there are any uneasy consciences in the
group they have been soothed by Biblical quotations showing that no less a
figure than God himself instituted spying. So much for the moral question.
But our country had forgotten the lesson of Jericho. In 1929 Secretary of
State H. L. Stimson closed the code-breaking operation known as the Black
Chamber with the scolding that 'gentlemen don't read other people's mail'.
Until Pearl Harbor foreign intelligence in the United States was all but
forgotten. Then there were the heroics of the OSS during the war followed
by the decision of President and Congress alike not to risk another surprise
attack by leaving early warning to peace-time military neglect once again.
So the civilian CIA was established in 1947 to provide a centralised agency
for processing all foreign intelligence and for producing a national
intelligence product blessed by enlightenment from all possible sources.
After two years away with the Air Force these first sessions have been
stimulating and even exciting – almost like a raging thirst being finally
quenched. The JOT office has arranged evening language courses for
anyone interested, and Janet and I have a class in Spanish three nights a
week. It's nice that the company includes the wives as much as possible.
Otherwise they would really be at a distance, because everything we study
and read, almost, is classified. We selected Spanish only because that was
my language at school, but there is a monetary awards programme for
maintenance and improvement of foreign languages and it might be a way
to earn a little extra. Things are working out just right.
Washington DC October 1959
We've just finished a month studying communism and Soviet foreign policy,
and soon we'll begin studying the government organisation for national
security, where the Agency fits in, and the bureaucratic organisation of
headquarters. Each of us has periodic sessions with one of the JOT
counsellors to discuss possible future assignments and where to continue
training after Christmas. Almost everyone seems to want to go into secret
operations, which will mean six months' special training away from
Washington at a place called 'the farm'. I told Ferguson I wanted to go to
'the farm', but he was non-committal.
The lectures and readings in communism have been especially interesting.
The Office of Training stays away from philosophy – dialectical
materialism wasn't even mentioned – while concentrating on the Soviets.
It's a practical approach, of sorts, because what the CIA is up against, one
way or another, is Russian expansion directed by the Communist Party of
the Soviet Union – CPSU. The Leninist concept of the party, particularly its
elitist and secretive nature, and the CPSU's difficulties in reconciling
pragmatism with ideology (Russian domination of the minority
nationalities, NEP, collectivisation and elimination of the kulaks, united
front doctrine, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact) are seen as related to one goal:
obtaining, retaining and expanding power.
Subservience of foreign communist parties to the CPSU is another theme
given considerable emphasis – it's hard to believe that the Soviets with a
straight face preach that the first obligation of every communist, no matter
what nationality, is to defend the Soviet Union. Institutions such as the
Comintern and Cominform served that purpose in their time, but the KGB
is the principal organ. Much importance, of course, is given to the Soviet
security organisations, from the Cheka down.
The writings of defectors from communism were the most interesting:
Louis Budenz, Howard Fast, The God that Failed, Kravchenko, Gouzenko,
Petrov. But the most devastating for the Soviets, because of his criticism of
Leninist party doctrine, is Milovan Djilas. The other day we split into small
groups and interviewed Peter Deriabin – he's the highest-ranked KGB
defector yet. It was done through closed-circuit television so that he could
not see us (to protect our security) and he was disguised and spoke through
an interpreter (to protect his security because he is living in the Washington
area).
The central theory is that communist attempts to set up dictatorships around
the world are really manifestations of Soviet expansion which in turn is
determined by the need to maintain CPSU power at home. Our country is
the real target, however, and the Soviets have said often enough that peace
is impossible until the US is defeated. Now we're going to study how the
government, and the CIA in particular, are set up to counter the Soviet
threat.
Washington DC November 1959
A theme that is continually repeated during these sessions is that the CIA
does not make policy. The Agency's job is to provide the intelligence or
information that is used by the President and other policymakers. It only
executes policy, and collects information to be used in policy decisions by
people outside the Agency. It doesn't make policy.
For several weeks we have been listening to lectures and reading documents
on the government machinery for national security. The basic document is
the National Security Act of 1947 which set up the National Security
Council (NSC) as the highest body concerned with national security.
Chaired by the President, the NSC is composed of the following statutory
members: the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defence, the Director of
the Office of Civil and Defence Mobilisation, and the Vice President.
Membership can be enlarged whenever the President desires by ad hoc
appointments such as the Attorney General or the Secretary of the Treasury.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and the Director of Central
Intelligence (DCI) are NSC observers.[1]
The NSC has its own staff and offices in the Executive Office Building next
to the White House and, in addition, has three important subordinate groups
reporting to it: the NSC Planning Board, the Operations Coordination Board
(OCB),[2] and the Intelligence Advisory Committee (IAC).[3] The NSC
Planning Board works mostly on preparing materials for NSC meetings and
on following up the implementation of NSC decisions. The OCB is of very
special interest to the Agency because its function is to review and approve
CIA action operations (as opposed to collection of information) such as
propaganda, paramilitary operations and political warfare. The OCB is
composed of the DCI, the Under Secretary of State, the Deputy Secretary of
Defence and ad hoc members at the Under Secretary level.
The IAC is like a board of directors of the intelligence community, chaired
by the DCI and having as members the Deputy Director of Central
Intelligence, the intelligence chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Joint
Chiefs of Staff, the Chief of Intelligence and Research (I N R) of the
Department of State and the Director of the National Security Agency.
Intelligence chiefs of the FBI and the Atomic Energy Commission sit on the
IAC when appropriate. The purpose of the I A C is to assign intelligence
tasks among the different services according, at least in theory, to which
service can best do the job. It is also designed to avoid both overlaps and
gaps in the national intelligence effort, and it has several subordinate
interdepartmental groups such as the Board of National Estimates, the
National Intelligence Survey Committee and the Watch Committee, each of
which is chaired by a CIA officer.
As part of the NSC mechanism the National Security Act of 1947
established the office of the DCI as the NSC's principal intelligence officer
and the Central Intelligence Agency as the organisation that would effect
the centralising of the national intelligence effort. The CIA has five
statutory functions:
1. To advise the NSC in matters concerning such intelligence activities of
the government departments and agencies as relate to national security.
2. To make recommendations to the NSC for the coordination of such
intelligence activities.
3. To correlate and evaluate intelligence relating to the national security,
and provide for the appropriate dissemination of such intelligence within
the government.
4. To perform, for the benefit of the existing intelligence agencies, such
additional services of common concern as the NSC determines can be more
efficiently accomplished centrally.
5. To perform such other functions and duties related to intelligence
affecting the national security as the NSC may from time to time direct.
It is this fifth function which occupies most of the CIA's time and money.
It's the dagger inside the cloak. Covert action, although it is not spelled out
for us this way, is a form of intervention somewhere between correct, polite
diplomacy and outright military invasion. Covert action is the real reason
for the CIA's existence, and it was born out of political and economic
necessity.
The DCI is described as a man with two hats. First, he is the principal
intelligence advisor "to the President and the NSC, and secondly, he is the
Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Formal commands are given by
the NSC to the DCI through Top Secret Documents called National Security
Council Intelligence Directives (NSCIDs – pronounced non-skids). The
NSCIDs are put into effect by documents issued by the DCI to the
concerned member of the intelligence community, including the CIA, these
documents being called Director of Central Intelligence Directives
(DCIDs). Within the CIA the DCIDs are particularised in the thick and
continually changing volumes of regulations and other instructions. We
have been studying, then, the very broadly worded NSCIDs, the more
particularised DCIDs, and the specific CIA regulations. These are the
documents that govern everything from foreign intelligence collection
operations through political, psychological and paramilitary operations to
communications and electronic intelligence efforts. Clearly, the
documentation and the bureaucratic structure demonstrate that what the
Agency does is ordered by the President and the NSC. The Agency neither
makes decisions on policy nor acts on its own account. It is an instrument of
the President ... to use in any way he pleases.
 ***
We have also examined the question of Congressional monitoring of
intelligence activities and of the Agency in particular. The problem resides
in the National Security Act of 1947 and also in its amendment, the Central
Intelligence Agency Act of 1949. These laws charged the DCI with
protecting the 'sources and methods' of the US intelligence effort and also
exempted the DCI and the Bureau of the Budget from reporting to Congress
on the organisation, function, personnel and expenditures of the CIA –
whose budget is hidden in the budgets of other executive agencies. The
DCI, in fact, can secretly spend whatever portion of the CIA budget he
determines necessary, with no other accounting than his own signature.
Such expenditures, free from review by Congress or the General
Accounting Office or, in theory, by anyone outside the executive branch, are
called 'unvouchered funds'. By passage of these laws Congress has sealed
itself off from CIA activities, although four small sub-committees are
informed periodically on important matters by the DCI. These are the
Senate and House sub-committees of the Armed Services and
Appropriations Committees, and the speeches of their principal spokesman,
Senator Richard Russell, are required reading for the JOTs.
There have been several times when CIA autonomy was threatened. The
Hoover Commission Task Force on Intelligence Activities headed by
General Mark Clark recommended in 1955 that a Congressional Watchdog
Committee be established to oversee the CIA much as the Joint
Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy watches over the AEC. The
Clark Committee, in fact, did not believe the sub-committees of the Armed
Services and Appropriations Committees were able to exercise effectively
the Congressional monitoring function. However, the problem was
corrected, according to the Agency position, when President Eisenhower,
early in 1956, established his own appointative committee to oversee the
Agency. This is the President's Board of Consultants on Foreign
Intelligence Activities,[4] whose chairman is James R. Killian, President of
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It can provide the kind of 'private
citizen' monitoring of the Agency that Congress didn't want. Moreover, our
speakers have pointed out, the more Congress gets into the act the greater
the danger of accidental revelation of secrets by indiscreet politicians.
Established relationships with intelligence services of other countries, like
Great Britain, might be complicated. The Congress was quite right at the
beginning in giving up control – so much for them, their job is to
appropriate the money.
Washington DC December 1959
Studying the Agency bureaucratic structure has been fascinating but at the
same time exhausting – there's been no end to organisational charts and
speeches by representatives from every one of the divisions, sub-divisions,
offices and sub-offices. Each of the speakers has a story of how his office
broke an important case by having just the right piece of information or
person for the job.
Woven into the training programme since the first days in September are
constant reminders of the need for tight security. Capabilities and intentions
of the enemy must be discovered, whether in the Kremlin, in a Soviet
nuclear weapons factory, at a missile development site, or in the meeting-
hall of an obscure communist party in Africa. But of utmost importance,
since knowledge of the enemy is necessarily limited, is the protection of our
intelligence. We don't want the enemy to know what we know about him,
for then he could take measures to annul our advantage. So we have to
protect our intelligence by building a curtain of secrecy called 'security'.
Receptionists, guards, badges, barred windows, combination safe-filing
cabinets, polygraphs, background investigations, punishments for security
violations, compartmentation and the 'need-to-know' principle.
Compartmentation is the separation of activities whereby a person or group
performing a particular task do not know what tasks other people are doing.
The gap between people doing different jobs is bridged by the need to
know. If a person working in intelligence has a definite need to know what
others are doing on a specific job, he will be given access. If not, he is
expected to subdue normal curiosity. The CIA is organised with built-in
compartmentation designed to give maximum protection to the secret
information collected for the policymakers.
The CIA bureaucracy is fairly complicated.[5] At the top of the pyramid are
the executive offices composed of the Offices of the Director, the Deputy
Director, the Inspector General, the General Counsel, the Comptroller and
the Cable Secretariat.
Below the executive offices are four deputy directorates, each responsible
for distinct activities and each named after the title of the deputy director
who heads it. They are the DDI, headed by the Deputy Director,
Intelligence; the DDP, headed by the Deputy Director, Plans; the DDS,
headed by the Deputy Director, Support; and the DDC, headed by the
Deputy Director, Coordination. The DDC, we were told, is a small office
dealing with management problems, and we have spent practically no time
discussing it. The other three deputy directorates are the bone and muscle of
the Agency. (See pp. 319-20 for organisational changes in the early 1960s.)
The DDI is the component that sets requirements, engages in some
collection, evaluates and collates intelligence, and produces the finished
product.[6] It consists of several different offices, each of which provides a
coordinating function for the entire intelligence community. They are the
Office of Current Intelligence (OCI), the Office of National Estimates
(ONE), the Office of Basic Intelligence (OBI), the Office of Scientific
Intelligence (OSI), the Office of Research and Reports (ORR), the Office of
Central Reference (OCR), the Office of Operations (OO), the Foreign
Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), the National Photographic
Interpretation Center (NPIC). We have been asked to write examples of the
different types of specialised report prepared by these offices, and we have
visited several of them. It is interesting to note that over 80 per cent of the
information that goes into finished intelligence reports is from overt sources
such as scientific and technical journals, political speeches and other public
documents. The rest is obtained from secret agents or techniques, and the
difference, of course, is in the quality and sensitivity of the covertly
collected intelligence. The clandestine collection part of the CIA is the DDP
which is also known as the Clandestine Services (CS). It consists of a
headquarters' organisation with field stations and bases in almost all foreign
countries. Although we reviewed the headquarters' organisation of the DDP
we were told that the details of how secret operations are run will be given
only during the later instruction. Only the JOTs who express a desire to
serve in the DDP and who agree in writing to take an assignment to any
country will be given the advanced operational training at 'the farm'. Those
who want to work in some area of the Agency other than the DDP will go
on to specialised training in headquarters.
The bulk of the CS is divided into operating divisions and senior staffs.[7]
The operating divisions are in charge of geographical areas and certain
specialised services. The senior staffs are in charge of coordination and
review of all operational activities within the functional category of each –
which are reflections of basic CIA operational theory. There are three senior
staffs: the Foreign Intelligence (FI) staff; the Psychological Warfare and
Paramilitary (PP) staff; and the Counter-Intelligence (CI) staff. The FI staff
is concerned with intelligence collection operations, the PP staff with action
operations and the CI staff with protection of FI and PP operations. The
difference between collection and action operations is that collection should
leave no sign, whereas action operations always have a visible effect. (See
pp. 319-20 for organisational changes in 1960s.)
A collection operation might be the running of an agent in the Soviet
Ministry of Defence who is reporting on military planning. An action
operation might be an anti-communist intellectual journal, supported by
CIA money, passed through a Russian emigre organisation with
headquarters in Paris. Collection operations respond to the needs of the
DDI, for producing finished intelligence – which in turn depends on the
needs of the NSC and other consumers such as the military services and the
Department of State. Action operations consist of the control, guidance and
support of individuals and organisations engaged in the battle against
communism throughout the world. They include labour unions, youth and
student organisations, public information media, professional societies such
as journalists and lawyers, businessmen's organisations, politicians and
political parties and governments. Action operations also include the
training and support of irregular military forces such as guerrillas in Tibet
or Montagnards in Vietnam or saboteurs in Communist China. Protection
operations consists generally of CIA efforts to protect the Agency against
hostile penetration and to penetrate intelligence services of other countries
in order to discover what operations those services are running against us.
The DDP area divisions are responsible for all activities of the CS within
designated areas. These divisions are for Western Europe (WE) (which
includes Canada), Eastern Europe (EE), Soviet Russia (SR), the Near East
(NE), Africa (AF), the Far East (FE) and the Western Hemisphere (WH).
Each area division is headed by a Division Chief and Deputy Chief whose
offices include staffs responsible for review of FI, PP and CI operations
within the geographical area.[8]
Within each division the geographical area is divided into branches which
may include one or more countries as well as functional specialities peculiar
to the division. The branches in turn are divided into country desks when
more than one country is included in the branch. Thus the Polish branch of
EE Division deals exclusively with matters on Poland while the Central
American branch of WH Division has separate desks for six different
countries.
A division and branch of the Clandestine Services in headquarters are
responsible for supporting field stations and bases in the foreign countries
within its area, as well as for keeping the senior staffs and the DDP advised
on all matters related to those countries, informational as well as
operational. A headquarters' division will provide personnel for the stations
and bases, arrange training support by specialists and, most important,
process the paperwork required for all field operations. Every operation;
every agent and every report sent from the field to headquarters requires
review and routing of documents. Area divisions are responsible for seeing
that this enormous flow of paper is properly channelled to the appropriate
offices of the CS for review, advice and approval or disapproval.
Intelligence reports, as opposed to operational reports which deal with the
mechanics of how information is obtained, also need processing for
spelling, grammatical usage and routing to interested components of the
CS, the DDI and the rest of the intelligence community. Processing of the
operational and intelligence reports from the field is the job of desk officers
in the area divisions.
The CS includes four divisions that serve the rest. The International
Organisations Division (IO) supervises CIA relations with labour, youth,
student, professional and news media organisations throughout the world.
Activities in these fields are coordinated by IO with the PP staff and with
the area divisions and branches concerned. Contact between the CIA and
officials of those organisations might be handled by an officer of IO or by a
station officer where a particular operational activity takes place.
The Technical Services Division (TSD) provides support to operations in all
area divisions through experts in listening devices, photography, lock-
picking, invisible writing, clandestine opening and closing of
correspondence, disguise, containers with hidden compartments,
handwriting analysis, identification of persons through saliva analysis from
objects such as cigarette butts, and many other technical services.
Specialists are available for training agents as well as to perform tasks
themselves. Several TSD support bases exist in foreign countries for
regional support. The TSD also has a continuing research programme for
improving its capabilities and for developing protective measures against
the devices of foreign services, especially the KGB.
Division D is the CS unit that supports the National Security Agency in
cracking the codes of foreign governments. When it is necessary to mount
operations in the field against the communications of other countries, NSA
turns to its sister intelligence services, such as the military services, all of
which have sizable monitoring operations going against communist
countries' military communications. Or NSA could turn to Division D
which coordinates CIA collection support for NSA. Thus Division D
provides expert knowledge for the planning of operations to recruit code
clerks or to install technical devices to enable the decrypting of coded
messages. Division D seems to be the most hush-hush of the CS operating
divisions, but, like 10 Division, its activities are always coordinated with
the geographical area divisions and with station chiefs abroad.
The Records Integration Division (RID) is to the Clandestine Services what
OCR is to the DDI. It is somewhat different, however, because of the
different needs of the DDP. Clearly the Agency has spared no expense with
the best system for storage and retrieval that IBM can build. Numbering
systems exist for topics and sub-topics for every country for storing
intelligence reports. They also exist for all agents and the different phases
of each operation. Millions of names are indexed for easy electronic
processing and retrieval and microfilm is automated so that copies of
documents can be obtained simply by pushing buttons according to coding
classifications – practically instant retrieval of one document from among
millions. As the central repository for all CS intelligence and operational
reports, RID serves the entire headquarters DDP organisation and the field
stations as well. The DDS[9] is the support structure of the Agency, much of
which serves the DDP. This is the deputy directorate that we belong to as
JOTs. The most important offices of the DDS are Personnel, Security,
Training, Finance, Communications and Logistics. Each of these offices has
an important function, but most of us have been pushing hard for the special
operations training and for assignment to the DDP.
A few days ago a list was read of those who have been accepted for 'the
farm'. I was on the list – practically everyone was – and we had a special
briefing on what lies ahead. 'The farm' is officially known by the cryptonym
ISOLATION (cryptonyms are always written in capitals), and is a covert
training site run by the Office of Training under military cover. It is a few
hours' drive from Washington, and we will spend most of the next six
months there. On Friday evenings those who wish will be allowed to check
out for the weekend. The briefing officer said that there is daily Agency air
service (military cover) between Washington National Airport and
ISOLATION, but the flights are used mostly by Agency personnel not
assigned for long periods to the base. At the briefer's suggestion we have
divided into groups of four or five for car pools so that as many wives as
possible will be able to get around Washington during the week. Apparently
we won't need transportation at ISOLATION anyway.
We have been given a Washington telephone number and told that it is a
direct line to ISOLATION for families but only to be used for emergencies.
The briefing officer finally told us the name and location of the base, the
best route for driving and our instructions for reporting. He placed extreme
emphasis on protecting the cover for the base and the sensitivity of its
identification. He said that agents from all over the world are trained there
and they are not supposed to know where they are. We probably won't even
see them. The name of the base is so sensitive, in fact, that we were told not
to tell any of the JOT classmates who weren't taking the operations training,
nor any other Agency employees, nor even our wives. Nobody talks about
ISOLATION, and in conversations and even formal briefing sessions it's
just 'the farm'.
We report to 'the farm' the first Monday after New Year's Day. I feel relaxed
now – the customary over-eagerness has disappeared. I've been accepted
into the work I want and only an utter catastrophe can wash me out. Six
more months of training, study, learning a profession. Then an assignment
to a DDP headquarters desk and in another year or two I'll be a secret
overseas operative.
Camp Peary, Virginia January 1960
The entrance to Camp Peary is an ordinary looking gatehouse manned by
military police about fifteen minutes out of Williamsburg on the road
towards Richmond. We showed our company badges to a guard and he
instructed our car pool driver which turns to take to get to the JOT area. Our
first session was in an amphitheatre called the 'pit' where we were
welcomed by the ISOLATION Base Chief – formerly a Chief of Station in
Mexico City. Then we were briefed by the Base Security Officer on the do's
and don'ts of ISOLATION. At any one time there are a number of different
training sessions being conducted here, some with foreigners who are not
even supposed to know that they are in the US. These are called 'black'
trainees and are restricted to areas away from the JOT site and other
'normal' activities. From time to time we will hear weapons firing and
explosions as well as aircraft movement.
We are to stay in the general area of the JOT site except when coming or
going from the base entrance, although we will have training sessions at
sites all over the base where we will be taken by bus. Wherever we go on
the base we are to take extreme caution with cigarette packages, beer cans
or other objects that might reveal the location of the base to 'black' trainees.
We are to wear Army fatigues at all times on the base.
We are discouraged, although not forbidden, from leaving the base at night,
but the Base Chief told us we will have night study and training sessions
that will leave little time for visits to Williamsburg. Since all of us pertain to
bogus Defence Department cover units in Washington, our cover story for
ISOLATION is that we are Defence Department employees temporarily
assigned to Camp Peary. The security officer gave us the name of an Army
colonel and his Pentagon telephone extension in the unlikely event of
verification of our status at Camp Peary becoming necessary. This Pentagon
extension rings in the Camp Peary administration building where a CIA
officer plays the part of the colonel.
The base is thickly wooded and surrounded by high, chain-link fences
topped by barbed-wire with conveniently placed signs warning: 'US
Government Reservation. No Trespassing.' The northern boundary of the
base is the York River and the base itself is divided internally into different
tightly controlled areas including administration, which is towards the
entrance, the JOT training site, the staff housing area, the landing field, and
distinct sites for training in border crossing, sabotage, weapons, air and
maritime operations, ambush, evasion and escape, and clandestine
meetings. Deer are plentiful as the base was once a wildlife refuge, and
there are several ranges for hunting as well as a couple of stocked lakes.
After the fatigues were issued we checked into the old wooden-frame
barracks that have double rooms rather than open bays. All the buildings, in
fact, are World War II-style frame buildings except the new brick
gymnasium. There are classroom buildings; the training office where
instructors have their offices, mess hall, officers' club, movie theatre,
football fields and a softball diamond. For leisure time we have the club and
sports facilities and even a language lab where we can work with tapes.
ISOLATION won't be bad at all, and on Friday nights we can drive back to
Washington for the weekends.
Each of us has been assigned an advisor from the teaching staff with whom
we will meet from time to time to discuss our strengths and weaknesses.
Mine is John Allen, an 'old NE hand' who served in Cairo. The training
course will be divided along the usual lines of Foreign Intelligence
(collection), Counter-Intelligence (protection) and Paramilitary and
Psychological (action). We will also spend considerable time, they said,
studying the tools of the clandestine operator, otherwise known as
'tradecraft'. Finally there will be many practical exercises in and around
ISOLATION as part of the war-games technique used to create the training
scenario.
As all clandestine operations take place within a political context, the first
consideration is the set of objective factors that create the 'operational
environment or climate'. These factors include the friendliness or hostility
of the host government, the level of sophistication of the host internal
security services and other intelligence services operating in the same area,
the known and presumed aims of these services, the effectiveness and
sophistication of the local communist and other revolutionary organisations,
local language, dress and other customs, and the general political
atmosphere of repression or liberalism. These are the objective conditions
within which clandestine operations are undertaken, and they determine the
manner in which these are executed. Running an agent penetration of the
Ministry of Defence in Baghdad obviously differs from running the same
type of penetration in Paris or Prague or Bogota. As the degree of
clandestinity can vary according to the tools and techniques employed –
operational security practices can be more extreme or less – the 'operational
environment' determines whether goals are realistic and how they are to be
achieved. It includes a continuing evaluation of enemy capabilities. Taking
into account, then, the operational environment, each CIA station has a
charter or general operational guide called the Related Missions Directive
(RMD). This is the document that establishes priorities and objectives and
is, in effect, the DCI's instructions to the Chief of Station. In any country
where there is an official Soviet presence, such as an embassy or trade
mission, the first priority for the RMD is almost always the penetration of
the Soviet mission through the recruitment of its personnel or by a technical
device. Penetration operations against Chinese and other communist
governments follow in priority as do intelligence collection efforts against
indigenous revolutionary movements and local governments, whether
friendly or hostile. CI and PP operations are also included in the RMD, and
when a station requests headquarters' approval of new operations or
continuation of existing operations, reference is made to the appropriate
paragraphs of the RMD.
I suppose my problem will eventually disappear, but I find it all rather
complicated because in the CIA cryptonyms and pseudonyms are used in
place of true names. There are many standard ones and, when reading, one
has constantly to refer from the text with cryptonyms to the cryptonym lists
which give a number, and then look up the same number on a separate true
name list. The cryptonym and true name lists are never kept in the same
safe. Cryptonyms consist of two letters that determine a general category or
place, followed by letters that form a word with the first two, or by another
word.
Thus the United States government is ODYOKE. The Department of State
is ODACID, the Department of Defence is ODEARL, the Navy is
ODOATH, the FBI is ODENVY. All government agencies have a
cryptonym beginning with OD. The CIA's cryptonym is KUBARK and all
Agency components have cryptonyms beginning with KU. The Clandestine
Services is KUDOVE, the FI staff (and FI operations generically) is
KUTUBE, the CI staff (and CI operations) is KUDESK, the PP staff (and
PP operations) is KUCAGE. Every foreign country and every agent and
operation in that country has a cryptonym that begins with the same two
letters – AE for the Soviet Union, BE for Poland, DI for Czechoslovakia,
DM for Yugoslavia, SM for the United Kingdom, DN for South Korea, etc.
AELADLE, AEJAMMER and AEBROOM are cryptonyms for operations
against the Soviets.
Cryptonyms are used to substitute for true names in order to protect the true
identities of persons and places mentioned in correspondence. They are
only used in documents of the Clandestine Services. The Records
Integration Division assigns new cryptonyms whenever a new operation or
agent is proposed, using the first two letters that correspond to the particular
country. In certain cases agents and operations are given cryptonyms of
which the first two letters refer to operations that occur in several countries
– particularly the international organisations involving labour and students.
In operational correspondence when no cryptonym has yet been assigned
for a particular person, the word IDENTITY is substituted in the text and
the true name is sent in separate correspondence for reconciliation with the
original document by the addressee.
All KUDOVE officers who engage in operations .are assigned a pseudonym
consisting of a first name, middle initial and last name which is used in the
same fashion as cryptonyms – in order to preserve the officer's true identity
should correspondence be lost or stolen. Pseudonyms are always written
with the last name in capital letters, e.g. Rodney J. PRINGLE.
All this seems confusing at first – it's really like learning a new language.
But it adds a certain spice to the work, like a special taste that helps develop
institutional identity – more and more of the inside group syndrome.
Camp Peary, Virginia February 1960
We still have plenty of snow on the ground and on Sunday nights when we
return from Washington the deer are so thick along the base roads that we
almost run into them. We've all gotten to know each other more since
coming to ISOLATION. Almost any type of person you want can be found
in the class. We have a physical training programme three or four times a
week at the gym – calisthenics, basketball, squash, volleyball, weights. We
also have training at the gym in defence, disarming, maiming, and even
killing with bare hands – just how and where to strike, as in karate and judo.
Our instructor in these skills (at first nobody believed his real name was
Burt Courage) was formerly on Saipan in the South Pacific, which is
another secret base of the Office of Training.
It's hard work. There is a physical-conditioning program, plenty of practice
in the martial arts. How to disarm or cripple, if necessary kill an opponent.
We have classes in propaganda, infiltration-exfiltration, youth and student
operations, labour operations, targeting and penetration of enemy
organisations. How to run liaison projects with friendly intelligence services
so as to give as little and get as much information as possible. Anti-Soviet
operations – that subject gets special attention. We have classes in framing
Russian officials, trying to get them to defect. The major subject, though, is
how to run agents – single agents, networks of agents.
In the classes we have been studying the different kinds of Foreign
Intelligence – FI, or KUTUBE – operations conducted by the Clandestine
Services. Although these operations are designed to discover the
capabilities and intentions of foreign powers, particularly enemy or
unfriendly governments, vis-a-vis the US, they are supposed to focus on
secrets rather than on overt or public information. In addition to discovering
ordinary state secrets, the CS is responsible for obtaining the most complete
and accurate information possible on the global manifestations of Soviet
imperialism, that is, on local communist parties and related political groups.
The exceptions to the world-wide operating charter of the CS is the
agreement among the US, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New
Zealand whereby each has formally promised to abstain from secret
operations of any kind within the territory of the others except with prior
approval of the host government. The governments of all other nations,
their internal political groups and their scientific, military and economic
secrets are fair game.
FI operations originate with the informational needs of US policymakers,
specified in the voluminous requirements lists prepared by the various
sections of the DDI that produce finished intelligence. These requirements
are also reflected in the station RMD. The station, incidentally, is the CIA
office in the capital city of a foreign country. Other major cities of the
country may have CIA offices subordinate to the station and called bases. In
most countries the stations and bases are in the political sections of the
embassies or consulates, with some officers assigned for cover purposes to
other sections such as economic or consular. In certain countries, however,
such as Panama and Germany the CIA stations are on US military
installations with only the chief and a minimum of other officers having
diplomatic status. Most of the others are under cover as civilian employees
of the Department of Defence with assignment to the military bases.
The station's task is to determine the different ways desired information can
be obtained and to propose to headquarters the method thought most
appropriate. This task is called 'targeting', and for every operation targeting
receives its written expression in a Field Project Outline which is prepared
at the station and includes all the operational details such as the purpose or
desired outcome, specific target, the agents to be involved, any technical
devices needed, support needed from headquarters or other stations,
security and cover considerations with an assessment of the 'flap potential'
meaning the possible scandal if the operation is discovered, and costs. Most
overseas CIA operations are described in Field Project Outlines, which are
forwarded to headquarters for suggestions and approval or disapproval by
all interested headquarters' sections of the CS.
Depending on the cost or sensitivity of an operation, the Project Outline is
approved on a lower or higher level in headquarters, from Division Chief to
Assistant DDP, to DDP, to DCI. Some operations require approval outside
the CIA, but these are usually PP (action) projects that are submitted to the
Operations Coordination Board of the National Security Council (the Under
Secretary level).
Projects for intelligence collection operations are generally approved for
periods of one year and can be renewed. The request for Project Renewal is
a document almost identical to the Field Project Outline and it includes
details of the operation's progress over the past year such as productivity,
costs, security problems, new agents and justification for continuation.
Operations that have failed to meet expectations or that are compromised by
a security flap or that have simply dried up are cancelled through a 'Request
for Project Termination' forwarded from the station to headquarters. This
document includes the details on reasons for termination, disposal of agents
and property, alternative sources, security and cover considerations and
support requirements from other stations or from headquarters.
Correspondence among CIA stations, bases and headquarters is the lifeline
of Agency operations. There are two basic types: operational reporting and
intelligence reporting. In operational correspondence matters discussed
include security problems, cover, finances, agent access to targets, levels of
production (but not the facts themselves), proposals for new recruitments or
termination, equipment requirements, agent motivation, and any other
occurrences that affect the operation. On every operation an Operational
Progress Report is required by headquarters every three months, but much
more frequent correspondence is usually necessary.
Intelligence reporting from overseas operations comes in the form of a Field
Information Report (FIR) which contains fads related usually to one subject
but possibly from several sources. The FIR relates the facts as obtained
from the sources although source or field comments may be added. FIRs are
prepared in the stations on special mats for printing which are forwarded to
headquarters for reproduction and distribution. FIRs contain a heading that
includes the name of the country or countries concerned, the subject matter
of the report, a description of the source (prepared to protect his identity),
an evaluation of the source's reliability and an evaluation of the accuracy of
the contents of the report. The body of the report follows with the clarifying
comments or opinions of source, station or headquarters at the end. In
headquarters the FIRs are given CS numbers for retrieval purposes, and
copies are sent, for instance, to DDI sections, the Departments of State and
Defence, the FBI or the White House.
Both operational reports and intelligence reports may be sent to
headquarters or other stations and bases either via the diplomatic pouch or
by cable or wireless. Practically all stations and bases have radio
transmitting and receiving equipment although commercial telegraph
service is frequently used.
How do we get the information that goes into the intelligence reports of FI
operations? Mostly through paid agents. On the highest level there is the
politician, scientist, economist or military leader who is actually creating
the events that the Agency would like to forecast. This kind of person,
however, because of his position of leadership, is the least likely to tell the
CIA or the US government his own country's official secrets. There are
some, however, who can be convinced that the interests of the US and their
own country are so close, even identical, that nothing is lost by providing
the information wanted by the CIA. In other cases what the high level
official says or plans may be placed on paper to which access may be
obtained by a whole variety of secondary level officials, functionaries or
colleagues. People of this level may betray their leader's confidence for a
great variety of motives. Then there is the third level of prospective agents
who simply have physical access to a target area but not to documents
themselves. These people may be trained to place listening devices where
sensitive conversations are held or to open secure document storage
containers or to photograph documents. Finally there is a great variety of
people who can assist in operations but who have no direct access to the
sources themselves. These are the support agents who rent houses and
apartments, buy vehicles, serve as couriers, and perform countless
additional necessary tasks.
There are, then, in addition to operations involving high-level, primary
sources, a category of extremely important secondary operations called
'support operations'. Often targeting to primary sources is effected through
support operations. These operations involve the use of surveillance teams
to follow people in the streets, observations posts to watch the comings and
goings from buildings, multiple forms of photography, interception of
correspondence from the mails, access to important statistics and
identification files of police and other security services, airline, rail and ship
passenger and freight lists, devices for listening, telephone tapping and
telegraph records. These operations may very well yield sensitive, high
quality intelligence but more often they are used to identify the people we
really need to get at, who may be recruited as intelligence collection agents.
Support operations are also indispensable for knowledge of target
personalities in order to discover motives that might make them accept or
decline a recruitment approach: strengths, weaknesses, problems,
ambitions, failures, enmities, vulnerabilities.
Another type of FI operation that is very common throughout the free world
results from the working relationships between the CIA and the intelligence
and security services of foreign countries. Contacts with foreign services
are known as liaison operations and their purpose is to exchange
information, mount joint operations and penetrate foreign services. The
general rule on exchange of information is to give nothing unless necessary.
But since foreign services usually press for an exchange, and often in poor
countries they collect very little useful information on their own, the second
rule is to preserve a net gain, or favourable balance towards the CIA in the
exchange. Regulations determine the types of information that can be
exchanged and the record-keeping required.
The 'third agency rule' is an important operating principle in liaison
operations. Information passed from one agency to a second agency cannot
be passed by the second agency to a third agency without prior approval of
the first. The purpose of the rule, obviously, is to preserve the security of
operations and. the secrecy of information as well as the secrecy of the
existence of the liaison relationship between the first two services. If, for
example, the British equivalent of the CIA, MI-6, passed to the CIA station
in London a certain piece of information, the CIA in turn could not pass that
information to the Dutch Intelligence Service even though the information
might be of great interest to the Dutch. In such a case the London station
would either suggest that MI-6 pass the information directly to the Dutch
(which may already have happened) or permission might be requested for
the CIA itself to pass on the MI-6 information. In the event of a first agency
agreeing that a second agency may pass information to a third, the first
agency may not wish to be revealed to the third agency as the source, so
that adequate concealment of the true source will be arranged. Sometimes it
can get complicated. The most important liaison operation of the CIA is
with MI-6, whose cryptonym is SMOTH. It has been almost ten years since
Burgess and Maclean disappeared, and SMOTH has apparently tightened its
loose, 'old boy', clubby security practices. The inner club also includes the
services of Canada, Australia and New Zealand although the CIA receives
relatively little from these. Liaison with the Dutch is considered excellent
because they facilitate support operations against targets of mutual interest,
as do the Italians who tap telephones and intercept correspondence for the
CIA station in Rome. The West German services are considered to be
thoroughly penetrated by the Soviets while liaison with the French has
become difficult and sensitive since the return of de Gaulle.
In theory no operations should be undertaken by CIA stations with liaison
services if the same operations can be mounted without the knowledge of
the local service (excluding the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand).
Those operations undertaken without the knowledge or cooperation of a
liaison service, are called 'unilateral', whereas bilateral operations are those
mounted for the CIA with the knowledge and support of local services. As
we examine various liaison relationships it becomes clear that the major FI
results in Western Europe come from local services, particularly with
support operations such as travel control, telephone tapping, physical
surveillance, postal intercepts and communist party penetration operations.
However, in underdeveloped, less sophisticated countries, local services
usually lack the knowledge and technical capability to mount effective
intelligence operations. Thus the station in many cases can choose whether
to mount joint or bilateral operations, or to undertake the operations without
the knowledge of the local service. The decision is often based on the local
services' internal security but also on the CIA personnel available in a given
country; when this is limited, it can balance the scales in favour of bilateral
operations.
Finally, there is the matter of penetration of local services by the CIA. For
many reasons, not the least of which is protection of the CIA itself,
operational doctrine demands the continued effort to recruit controlled
agents within liaison services. These agents, or prospective agents, are
usually spotted by CIA officers assigned to work with the local service to
exchange information, to train the local service and to work on the
operations mounted by the local service to support the CIA. Thus a CIA
station may have an information exchange programme going with a local
service, a joint telephone-tapping operation with the local service and an
officer or two of the local service on the payroll as a penetration of the same
service. Penetration of liaison services, however, is more properly a
counter-intelligence function.
FI operations, then, are those undertaken to obtain information on the
capabilities and intentions of foreign governments, especially enemy and
unfriendly governments. Ultimately the FI collection effort is aimed at
recruiting or placing an agent in the Kremlin with access to the decision-
making process of the Soviet Presidium. From that dream situation,
collection operations spread out and down to practically all other
governments and their political, scientific and economic secrets, and from
there to the most obscure communist or other revolutionary grouping of the
extreme left.
As we study the different types of FI operations we engage in practical
exercises, both here at ISOLATION and in cities nearby such as Hampton,
Norfolk, Newport News and Richmond. My main FI case has been a series
of meetings with a leader of an opposition, nationalistic political party. I
play the role of the station case officer under diplomatic cover while one of
my instructors plays the foreign political leader. This is a developmental
case and I have to work carefully to convince him that the best interests of
his country and of the United States are so closely aligned that by helping
me he will be helping his own country and political party. One more
meeting and I'm going to offer him money.
Camp Peary, Virginia March 1960
Counter-Intelligence (CI or KUDESK) operations differ from foreign
intelligence collection because by definition they are defensive in nature,
designed to protect CIA operations from detection by the opposition. The
opposition in this sense is every intelligence and security service in the
world, from the KGB to the municipal police in Nairobi. Since many
countries separate their foreign intelligence service from their internal
security service, much as the FBI is separated from the CIA, CI operations
are targeted against both the foreign and the internal services.
The CIA counter-intelligence function begins with the Office of Security of
the DDS and its responsibility for physical and personnel security. By
protecting buildings from entry by unauthorised persons and documents
from perusal, the Office of Security serves to protect the overall CIA effort.
Similarly, the lengthy and costly background investigations, together with
the polygraph (cryptonym: LCFLUTTER) help to prevent the hiring of
penetration agents. Continuing review of the security files of CIA personnel
as well as periodic LCFLUTTER examinations are designed to reduce the
risk of continued employment in the CIA of employees who might have
been recruited by opposition services.
The use of cover and compartmentation also serves to protect secret
operations by concealing the true employer of Agency members so as to
prevent discovery, The same is true of organisations, buildings, apartments,
vehicles, aircraft, ships and financing methods. Cover protects operations
by making them appear to be something legitimate that in reality they are
not. Compartmentation reduces the chance that exposure of a single
operation, for whatever reason, can lead to the exposure of additional
operations. A CIA officer or agent could gain knowledge of what other
officers or agents were doing only if it were necessary for him to do so for
his own work.
Whether to use or not to use a particular prospective agent is determined,
from the C I viewpoint, by the 'operational approval' process. It is an
integral part of every relationship between the CIA and foreign agents no
matter what a given agent's tasks might be. The operational approval
process begins with the initial spotting and assessment of a prospective
agent and continues through field and headquarters' file checks and
background investigation to the operational approval system established in
the CI staff of the DDP.
No person may be used in an operational capacity by a field station without
prior approval by the Operational Approval Branch of the Counter-
Intelligence Staff of the DDP in headquarters (CI/OA). Requests for
approval start from the field stations and are outlined in a document known
as the Personal Record Questionnaire (PRQ), which is divided into two
parts. The PRQ Part I contains some seven pages of basic biographical data
including full name, date and place of birth, names of parents, names of
family members, schools attended, employment history, marital history,
military service, present and past citizenship, membership in political
organisations, hobbies, any special qualifications, and use of drugs or other
vices. In itself the PRQ Part I reveals no operational interest or plans. The
PRQ Part II, which never carries the prospective agent's true name or other
identifying data, is a document of similar length with all the details of
operational plans for the agent. It is reconciled with the PRQ Part I by a
numbering system and usually bears the cryptonym assigned to the
prospective agent. In the PRQ Part II the proposed task for the agent is
described, the means through which the information in PRQ Part I was
obtained and verified is detailed, the cover used by the person who spotted
and assessed the agent is given, and all the operational risks and advantages
are discussed.
The officers in CI/OA run a series of name checks in headquarters and, after
studying the case, give final approval or disapproval for the proposed use of
the prospective agent. Assuming no serious problems exist, CI/OA issues a
Provisional Operational Approval (POA) on the agent, effective for six
months, at the end of which an Operational Approval (OA) is issued, based
on additional investigation by the station and the CI staff.
Files are maintained on all agents and they always begin with the number
201 – followed by a number of five to eight digits. The 201 file contains all
the documents that pertain to a given agent and usually start with the PRQ
and the request for POA. But the 201 file is divided into two parts which are
stored separately for maximum security. One part contains true name
documents while the other part contains cryptonym documents and
operational information. Compromise of one part will not reveal both the
true name and the operational use of the agent.
In addition to the continuing station assessment and evaluation of agents
from a C I point of view (which is to protect the Agency from hostile
penetration) and continuing file review in headquarters, almost all agents
are polygraphed from time to time. We call this 'fluttering', from the
polygraph cryptonym LCFLUTTER. Agents are 'fluttered' by the same
polygraph officers of the Office of Security in headquarters who interview
prospective Agency employees in Building 13. They travel, usually, in
teams of two on periodic visits to several countries in the same
geographical area, although special trips on the spur of the moment can be
arranged for serious cases.
The polygraph is usually sent to field stations through the State Department
diplomatic pouch, and is mounted snugly inside a suitcase, usually the two-
suite size, caramel colour made by the Samsonite company. These suitcases
look innocuous and facilitate carrying the polygraph in and out of
embassies and the places where agents are tested. Arrangements are made
for agents to be 'fluttered' in safe sites with interpreters as needed. The
questions usually concentrate on whom the agent has told about his
relationship with the CIA and any contacts he may have had with other
intelligence services. The purpose of using the 'flutter' on agents is to root
out double agents, although other matters inevitably arise such as honesty in
reporting and in the use of money.
Communist Party (CP) Penetration Operations
Communist party penetration operations are all those efforts made to
penetrate the communist and extreme leftist revolutionary movements
around the world. Their purpose is to collect information on the capabilities,
plans, officers, members, weaknesses, strengths and international
connections of every revolutionary organisation outside the communist
bloc. They are considered primarily of a counter-intelligence nature because
of the conspiratorial nature of communism and the similarity between
communist parties and hostile intelligence services. The focal point of
headquarters for specialised skill and advice on CP operations is the
International Communism Division of the Counter-Intelligence Staff
(CI/ICD). Although intelligence operations involving officials of
communist-bloc countries may be included in the general definition of CP
operations, because most government officials of interest in communist
countries are also party members, these are more properly considered
Soviet or satellite operations rather than CP operations.
A CIA station's approach to penetration of a communist party or of any
revolutionary organisation is determined by the operational environment
and particularly on the measure of repression exerted against the
revolutionary left. Another factor of major importance is the general
economic and cultural level of a given country which will reflect markedly
on the sophistication and vulnerability of the revolutionary groups. As a
general rule, penetration of a communist party is more difficult in the
degree that local security forces compel it to operate clandestinely. If a
given party is completely forced underground, for example, there is no
obvious way of penetrating it. Similarly, recruitment is easier to the degree
that members of the party are forced to live in penury, and this generally
corresponds to the overall level of a country's economic development. A
communist in La Paz will be more likely to spy for money than a
communist in Paris.
A proper interpretation of the operational climate is therefore an essential
first step in any station's CP programme. Next comes the matter of studying
all the overt material available on the party. This can be very considerable
in the case of a large and open party such as those of Italy, and France, or
very limited in the case of a proscribed party that operates clandestinely, as
in Paraguay. Such a study is based on the party press, speeches by its
leaders, its propaganda notices, activities of front organisations and its
degree of adherence to the party line that emanates from Moscow.
Penetration of communist parties and other local revolutionary
organisations by agents are standard bread-and-butter operations of
practically every CIA station. These agents are members of the
revolutionary organisations on which they report through clandestine
communications arrangements with the station. They are recruited in
several ways. The first type is known as the 'walk-in'. The walk-in is a
member of the party who, from need of money, ideological disillusionment
or other motive decides to offer his services to the US government. He
makes his initial contact either by walking into the US Embassy or
Consulate or by a more discreet path designed to protect him from
discovery and party wrath.
It is the duty of every Chief of Station to make sure that the Embassy
Security Officer (State Department) briefs the receptionists (usually local
employees) and the Marine Guards about the possibility that nervous people
who do not want to give their names may show up from time to time asking
to speak to someone in the embassy about 'politics' or the like. In such
cases, a legitimate State Department officer, usually in the political section,
will be notified and will hold a private, non-committal interview letting the
walk-in do most of the talking. In this way the station officers are protected.
The interviewing officer will advise an officer in the station and a decision
will be made about the walk-in's bona fides and the advisability of direct
contact by a station CP officer. A file check and background investigation is
always made before risking an initial contact with the walk-in, since every
precaution must be taken to avoid provocation.
If the walk-in looks favourable and contact is established a series of long
sessions follow in which the walk-in details his political activities and his
reasons for having contacted the US government. His capabilities and
willingness for future work as a spy against the party will be determined
and sooner or later he will be 'fluttered'. The clearance process for POA will
be initiated and if all goes well secret communications are established and a
new CP penetration operation will be under way.
Another way of penetrating the CP is through the non-communist who is
recruited to join the party and work his way up from the bottom. This is a
long-haul approach and usually undertaken only as a last resort. Perhaps the
most difficult is the recruitment of members of a revolutionary organisation
who are in good standing. This type of operation depends on reports from
other CP penetration operations because extensive knowledge of the
prospective recruit is needed to determine vulnerabilities and possibilities
for success. CIA stations are continually engaged in trying to recruit in this
manner and files grow thicker until a decision is made to recruit or not to
recruit.
The recruitment approach may be 'hot' or 'cold'. In the first case a station
agent, usually not a CP penetration agent, who knows or can get to know
the target, will make the proposition, sometimes after long periods of
nurturing the relationship and sometimes rather quickly. The cold approach
may be made by a CIA officer or agent, perhaps wearing a disguise or
called in from a neighbouring country or from headquarters. He may accost
the target in the street or at the target's home without prior personal
acquaintance with him. This type of approach known as the 'cold pitch' can
backfire when knowledge of the target's vulnerabilities is defective, and a
ready escape plan for the recruiting officer is advisable.
In both the hot and the cold approaches, prior arrangements are made for
immediate debriefing at a safe site, or for secure communications
afterwards should the target decline at first but reconsider later. The cold
approach may also be undertaken, on a small or large scale, by sending
letters or notices to possible recruits advising them of interest in their
political work and suggesting that they share it with others. A serviceable
but non-compromising address such as a post-box in the US may be
furnished as well as a separate identifying number for use by each
prospective recruit. If the target answers by number he will be contacted by
an officer under secure conditions.
Finally, there is the bugging of the homes or meeting-places of party
officers. Such operations can be mounted successfully only if considerable
information is available on people, places and the importance of meetings.
These are not always available, given the secrecy required of conspiratorial
revolutionary activity. But bugging yields excellent intelligence because it
lacks the human factor that may colour, exaggerate or otherwise distort the
reports from agents.
A station's support operations may be used to assist in the CP programme.
Surveillance teams may discover secret meeting-places that may be bugged.
Postal interception may provide interesting party correspondence, both from
the national and the international mails. Observation posts may reveal
participants in clandestine meetings or serve as listening posts for audio
devices. Telephone tapping can reveal voluminous information on party
functionaries and the routines of party leaders. Surreptitious entry may
produce party records and membership lists.
Aside from the penetration programme directed against revolutionary
organisations, CIA stations also direct the offensive weapons of
psychological and paramilitary operations against them. These include the
placing of anti-communist propaganda in the public media, the frame-up of
party officials for police arrest, the publishing of false propaganda attributed
to the revolutionary group in such a way that it will be difficult to deny and
damaging as well, the organising of goon squads to beat up and intimidate
party officials, using stink bombs and other harassment devices to break up
meetings, and the calling on liaison services to take desired repressive
action. But we shall study these types of operation later. Next we are
concerned with the CI aspects of liaison operations.
Liaison Operations
From the standpoint of pure doctrine all liaison operations are considered
compromised, since even the existence of a liaison relationship implies the
giving of something by the CIA: at the very least the identity of a CIA
officer. It is always hoped that the virtues of liaison operations with other
intelligence services outweigh their defects, but the judgement is sometimes
hard to make. The two most basic principles of liaison operations from the
counter-intelligence point of view are: first, there is no such thing as a
friendly intelligence service, and, second, all liaison services are penetrated
by the Soviets or by local revolutionary groups. Thus any operations
undertaken jointly by the CIA with a liaison service are by definition
compromised from the start. It is for this reason that some CIA intelligence
reports (FIRs) include the NOFORN or NO FOREIGN DISSEM indicators
which restrict reports to US officials only. The indicators are used so that
foreign liaison services will not receive information from sensitive sources
in the course of normal exchange programmes.
Why get involved with other services? Basically, liaison operations are
conducted because they are useful. They extend a station's limited
manpower however shaky the extension may be. They give the CIA a foot
in the door for penetration of the liaison service. And they may also result
in a local service taking action, such as an arrest or raid, at station request.
In non-communist countries it is the policy of the Agency to assist local
security services to improve their capabilities if, of course, these services
want the help and their government is not openly hostile to the US. By
giving money, training and equipment to local services like the police, the
CIA is able to receive information that might otherwise not be available
because, for example, of the shortage of station officers. Travel control, for
instance, involves obtaining airline and ship passenger lists from the
companies or from local immigration services. Often it is easier to obtain
them from a liaison service than from five or ten different companies.
Telephone tapping is often possible only through a local service, especially
when many lines are to be monitored. Mails can be opened much more
easily by a local service than by the lengthy process of unilateral agent
recruitment in post offices. Above all, if flaps (scandals) occur, the local
service, not the CIA, will take the rap.
Usually a Chief of Station will handle the contact with the chief of a local
service. Some stations may have whole sections of liaison officers at the
working level both in operational planning and in information exchange.
The general rule, of course, is to expose the absolute minimum of station
officers to a local service and, if possible, only those officers engaged in
liaison operations. Officers engaged in unilateral operations, that is,
operations undertaken without the knowledge of the local government,
should be protected against compromise with the local service.
Some local services are so pitifully backward that they need overt US
government assistance. Thus the International Cooperation Administration
(ICA)[10] technical assistance missions in many countries include Public
Safety Missions made up of US technicians who work with police
departments. They seek to improve the local service's capability in
communications, investigations, administration and record keeping, public
relations and crime prevention. The Public Safety Missions are valuable to
the CIA because they provide cover for CIA officers who are sent to work
full time with the intelligence services of the police and other civilian
services. Station officers under other cover may work with military
intelligence and, at times, officers undercover as businessmen, tourists or
retired people may be assigned to work with local services.
CIA assistance to local services through Public Safety Missions or other
forms of cover are not only designed to help improve the professional
capability of the local service. Operational targeting of the local service is
guided by CIA liaison officers so that the local service performs tasks that
are lacking in the overall station operational programme. In other words
local services are to be used for the benefit of the CIA, and this includes
keeping the local service away from station unilateral operations.
The personal relations between CIA liaison officers and their colleagues in
local services are very important, because the CIA liaison officers are
expected to spot and assess officers in the local service for recruitment as
penetration agents. Liaison officers make money available to officers of the
local service and it is expected that the local colleague will pocket some of
the money even though it is supposed to be strictly for operations. The
technique is to get the local police or intelligence officer used to a little
extra cash so that not only will he be dependent on the station for
equipment and professional guidance but also for personal financing.
Security officers such as police are often among the poorest paid public
servants and they are rarely known to refuse a gift. Little by little an officer
of a local service is called upon to perform tasks not known to anyone else
in his service, particularly his superiors. Gradually he begins to report on
his own service and on politics within his own government. Eventually his
first loyalty is to the CIA. After all, that is where the money comes from.
Penetration operations against local services are often of very considerable
importance because of the place of security services in local political
stability. Reporting from these agents is sometimes invaluable during
situations of possible coup d'etat.
Finally, CIA stations may undertake unilateral operations through officers
of liaison services who have been recruited as penetration agents. That is
the final goal. Recruited liaison officers may also report on efforts by their
services to uncover unilateral station operations. This, too, is a happy
situation.
Soviet/Satellite Operations
Operations against the Soviets and the satellite governments are designed to
produce, in the long run, positive information as opposed to counter-
intelligence. But both types of information, FI and CI, are so intertwined
that they are practically inseparable in specific operations. The reason is
that operations are extremely difficult to mount inside the target countries
because of the effectiveness of the communist internal security services.
Those that do originate within the Soviet Union or the satellites are usually
surprise offers of services that have little to do with targeting, spotting,
assessment and recruitment. Rather they are the result of inner processes
hidden somewhere in the psyches of communist officials which surface at
an unpredictable moment of strain. In effect, these people usually recruit
themselves.
On the other hand, access to Soviet and East European officials outside the
communist bloc is relatively easy and an elaborate operational method for
attacking them has developed in the CIA over the years. The operations that
result from this are generally more of a CI than an FI type, that is, they
reflect more of the protective function than the collection of intelligence
information, although they are in no way lacking in aggressive character.
The first rule is that all the bordering property around a Soviet embassy
should be considered for purchase by station support agents. The most
appropriate and the most promising of these properties will be purchased
and kept available for use whenever needed. As Soviet embassies are often
sizeable plots of land with large mansions and surrounded by high walls,
there may be as many as seven or eight houses contiguous with the Soviet
property. These houses may be used as visual observation posts and for the
setting up of technical collection equipment. For example, when the Soviets
are known or suspected to be using electronic encrypting machines,
radiations emanating from them may be captured, enabling the message to
be decrypted. Such an operation is undertaken in support of the National
Security Agency. But observation posts are more routinely used for
identifying, by associations, the KGB and GRU (military intelligence)
residences within the Soviet mission as well as the general pecking order in
the Soviet colony.
Wherever possible all the entrances to the Soviet compound as well as the
gardens within are placed under visual observation. Such coverage may
necessitate as many as three or four observation posts. Each OP is manned
by agents, often elderly couples, who maintain a log of the comings and
goings of every Soviet employee as well as those taking part in, and
characteristics of, the frequent garden conversations. Photography is
frequently used to get up-to-date photos of Soviet personnel as well as for
less successful purposes as close-up movies shot of garden conversations
and passed to Russian lip-readers. The logs from the observation posts are
studied with the transcripts of telephone tapping, which is standard
operational practice against all Soviet and satellite missions outside the bloc
together with the transcriptions of bugging operations against their
installations, if bugging has been possible. From these studies the functional
duties within the Soviet colony are revealed and the daily routines of
everyone become fundamental operating knowledge of the CIA Soviet and
satellite operations officers.
Coverage of Soviet and satellite officers begins, however, long before they
arrive in a foreign country. Almost always the first notice of a new arrival
results from the visa request made by the Soviet Foreign Ministry to the
embassy of the country concerned in Moscow. The visa may be granted by
the embassy, which will advise its own Foreign Ministry, or the request will
be transmitted to the Foreign Ministry for approval. These communications
are often made in coded diplomatic messages. The CIA station in the capital
city where the Soviet is to be posted receives the decrypted messages from
the National Security Agency via headquarters where file checks
immediately start on the Soviet official in question. Thus, if the Soviet
Foreign Ministry requests from the Indian Embassy in Moscow, a
diplomatic visa for Ivan Ivanovich, the CIA station in New Delhi may
receive its first indication of the assignment through the monitoring of
Indian government communications.
Before the Soviet arrives the station will have all the available information
on him and his family together with photographs if possible. The
information would have been collected and filed from coverage of the
Soviet (or satellite) officer on previous tours of duty abroad, from defector
debriefings, from communications intelligence and from other
miscellaneous sources. When no traces exist a new file is opened and the
target's history with the CIA begins.
The final purpose of the operations is to recruit Soviet and satellite officials
as agents for spying and this can be done only by getting to know them. In
this work the 'access agent' is the station's most sensitive and effective
means of obtaining data on target officials. Access agents are people who,
for a great variety of reasons, can establish a personal relationship with a
Soviet or satellite officer and through whom the CIA can observe the officer
as closely as possible. The access agent can also guide conversations very
carefully to selected topics so as to discover weakening beliefs, character
defects, personal problems and basic likes and dislikes. Sometimes an
access agent's role may change to that of double agent if the Soviet attempts
to recruit him, but double-agent operations are discouraged except in
special circumstances because there are too many problems in the continual
need to be certain that the agent has not been doubled back against the CIA.
An access agent may be anyone so long as the target official can be kept
interested: a host country Foreign Ministry official, a third country
diplomat, someone who shares the same hobby, a man with an attractive
wife.
In most countries the foreign diplomats have a club with monthly
luncheons, dinners and excursions. State Department and CIA officers
under State cover are members of these clubs and can thereby develop
personal relationships with Soviet officials. The Ambassador's permission is
necessary for a station to guide a State Department officer in a personal
relationship with a communist diplomat, who is almost always an
intelligence officer, and at times CIA officers themselves develop personal
relationships with communist officials. But such relationships are usually
not as productive as the personal relations developed by access agents, with
whom the target official may relax and let down his guard.
Soviet and satellite embassies usually employ a small number of local
people as gardeners, cleaners and occasionally as chauffeurs. These people
are always screened by the embassy for loyalty to communism, but
sometimes they too can be recruited by the CIA. They have very little
physical access to embassy offices so they usually cannot plant listening
devices, but they can report interesting information on superior-inferior
relationships, gossip and back-biting, wives and children and visitors to the
embassies.
The bugging of Soviet and satellite official installations abroad is a very
high priority but possible only in rare circumstances such as when a
defector can plant a device after contact with the CIA but before
disappearing. However, as the Soviets, satellites and Chinese expand their
diplomatic and commercial relations around the world, they always need
buildings. From the moment a preliminary mission by a communist country
is planned, the CIA station brings everything to bear in order to discover the
buildings selected and, during the period before occupancy, every effort is
made to install listening devices. Soviet and satellite officials usually live in
embassies, consulates or other official buildings with their families or alone,
but a few live in apartment buildings. Their apartments are also bugged
whenever there is reason to believe intelligence of value can be obtained.
Almost all CIA stations have surveillance teams equipped with cameras,
vehicles and radio communications. Their primary targets are known Soviet
and satellite intelligence officers and efforts are made to discover through
the surveillance teams the operational habits, and, with luck, the clandestine
contacts of the communist officer. Soviet operations are closely controlled
by the Soviet Russia (SR) Division of the DDP in headquarters. They are
the specialists and much operational correspondence on Soviet operations
bears the cryptonym REDWOOD, indicating SR Division action and
control. In certain cases, however, the indicator may be REDCOAT which
means action and control by the area division concerned. SR Division also
coordinates a number of other operations that have world-wide significance.
The REDSOX programme of illegal infiltration of agents into the Soviet
Union and satellite countries had started during the early 1950s but failed
miserably. It is still conducted, however, when the need is great and when a
Russian emigre with suicidal tendencies can be found. The REDSKIN
programme of legal travellers, on the other hand, has been highly successful
even though several agents have been lost. This programme includes
tourists, businessmen, scientists, journalists and practically anyone who can
obtain legal entry into the Soviet Union or the satellites and who is willing
to perform operational tasks.
Then there is the REDCAP programme which is a machine-listing system
of all Soviet nationals who travel abroad: scientists, technicians, military
advisors and commercial officers as well as diplomats. Intelligence officers,
of course, use all of these types of cover. The ZOMBIE listings are also
machine runs, listing all non-Soviet/satellite nationals who travel to the
bloc, and the ZODIAC machine programme lists travel of citizens of
satellite countries to the West. SR Division activities are particularly intense
at international scientific and technical congresses, and prior notices are
sent to stations around the world describing the meetings and requesting
station nominees to attend the meetings and establish contact with Soviet or
satellite colleagues.
Our instructors here, and the visiting lecturers from SR and EE Divisions,
freely admit that the communist intelligence services have discovered
numerous examples of all categories of operation against them. Thus they
are aware of our methods. Nevertheless; the leaders of the Soviet Russia
Division keep driving home the theme that the Soviets are the only nation
on earth with the capability and the avowed intention of destroying the
United States of America. This alone requires every possible effort to carry
the attack to the enemy.
Practical exercises continue. We've been spending about one afternoon per
week in near-by towns practising surveillance and having 'agent meetings'
with instructors. My liaison case was to convince the officer of the sister
service to accept money for personal expenses and to begin performing
tasks for me without the knowledge of his superiors. The communist party
penetration exercise was focused on building up the 'agent's morale' and
encouraging him to take a more active role in the party work he despises.
The Soviet operation was a series of developmental meetings with a 'third
country' diplomat (in my case an Indian) leading to his recruitment as an
access agent to a KGB officer. I also had a legal travel case in which I
recruited a reluctant American scientist who was to attend a scientific
conference. Then we had a series of briefing and debriefing sessions before
and after his trip. His main task was to befriend a Soviet colleague who we
know has access to sensitive military information. Hopefully they will meet
at future conferences and eventually my agent will recruit the Soviet
scientist.
Camp Peary, Virginia April 1960
Psychological and paramilitary, known as PP or KUCAGE, operations
differ from those of FI or CI because they are action rather than collection
activities. Collection operations should be invisible so that the target will be
unaware of them. Action operations, on the other hand, always produce a
visible effect. This, however, should never be attributable to the CIA or to
the US government, but rather to some other person or organisation. These
operations, which received their Congressional charter in the National
Security Act of 1947 under 'additional services of common concern', are in
some ways more sensitive than collection operations. They are usually
approved by the PP staff of the DDP, but when very large amounts of
money are required or especially sensitive methods are used approval may
be required of the OCB (Under Secretary level), the NSC or the President
himself.
PP operations are, of course, risky because they nearly always mean
intervention in the affairs of another country with whom the US enjoys
normal diplomatic relations. If their true sponsorship were found out the
diplomatic consequences could be serious. This is in contrast to collection
operations, for if these are discovered foreign politicians are often prepared
to turn a blind eye – they are a traditional part of every nation's intelligence
activity.
Thus the cardinal rule in planning all PP operations is 'plausible denial',
only possible if care has been taken in the first place to ensure that someone
other than the US government can be made to take the blame. PP
programmes are to be found in almost every CIA station and emphasis on
the kinds of PP operations will depend very much on local conditions.
Psychological warfare includes propaganda (also known simply as 'media'),
work in youth and student organisations, work in labour organisations
(trade unions, etc.), work in professional and cultural groups and in political
parties. Paramilitary operations include infiltration into denied areas,
sabotage, economic warfare, personal harassment, air and maritime support,
weaponry, training and support for small armies.
Media Operations
The CIA's role in the US propaganda programme is determined by the
official division of propaganda into three general categories: white, grey
and black. White propaganda is that which is openly acknowledged as
coming from the US government, e.g. from the US Information Agency
(USIA); grey propaganda is ostensibly attributed to people or organisations
who do not acknowledge the US government as the source of their material
and who produce the material as if it were their own; black propaganda is
unattributed material, or it is attributed to a non-existent source, or it is false
material attributed to a real source. The CIA is the only US government
agency authorised to engage in black propaganda operations, but it shares
the responsibility for grey propaganda with other agencies such as USIA.
However, according to the 'Grey Law' of the National Security Council
contained in one of the NSCIDs, other agencies must obtain prior CIA
approval before engaging in grey propaganda.
The vehicles for grey and black propaganda may be unaware of their CIA
or US government sponsorship. This is partly so that it can be more
effective and partly to keep down the number of people who know what is
going on and thus to reduce the danger of exposing true sponsorship. Thus
editorialists, politicians, businessmen and others may produce propaganda,
even for money, without necessarily knowing who their masters in the case
are. Some among them obviously will and so, in agency terminology, there
is a distinction between 'witting' and 'unwitting' agents.
In propaganda operations, as in all other PP activities, standard agency
security procedure forbids payment for services rendered to be made by a
CIA officer working under official cover (one posing as an official of the
Department of State, for instance). This is in order to maintain 'plausible
denial' and to minimise the danger of embarrassment to the local embassy if
anything is discovered by the local government. However, payment is made
by CIA officers under non-official cover, e.g. posing as businessmen,
students or as retired people; such officers are said to be working under
non-official cover.
Officers working under non-official cover may also handle most of the
contacts with the recruited agents in order to keep the officer under official
cover as protected as possible. Equally, meetings between the two kinds of
officer will be as secret as may be. The object of all this is to protect the
embassy and sometimes to make the propaganda agents believe that they
are being paid by private businesses.
Headquarters' propaganda experts have visited us in ISOLATION and have
displayed the mass of paper they issue as material for the guidance of
propaganda throughout the world. Some of it is concerned only with local
issues, the rest often has world-wide application. The result of the talks was
to persuade most of us that propaganda is not for us – there is simply too
much paperwork. But despite that, the most interesting part of propaganda
was obviously the business of orchestrating the treatment of events of
importance among several countries. Thus problems of communist
influence in one country can be made to appear of international concern in
others under the rubric of 'a threat to one is a threat to all'. For example, the
CIA station in Caracas can cable information on a secret communist plot in
Venezuela to the Bogota station which can 'surface' through a local
propaganda agent with attribution to an unidentified Venezuelan
government official. The information can then be picked up from the
Colombian press and relayed to CIA stations in Quito, Lima, La Paz,
Santiago and, perhaps, Brazil. A few days later editorials begin to appear in
the newspapers of these places and pressure mounts on the Venezuelan
government to take repressive action against its communists.
There are obviously hosts of other uses to which propaganda, both black
and grey, can be put, using books, magazines, radio, television, wall-
painting, handbills, decals, religious sermons and political speeches as well
as the daily press. In countries where handbills or wall-painting are
important media, stations are expected to maintain clandestine printing and
distribution facilities as well as teams of agents who paint slogans on walls.
Radio Free Europe (RFE) and Radio Liberty are the best known grey-
propaganda operations conducted by the CIA against the Soviet bloc.
Youth and Student Operations
At the close of World War II, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
began a major propaganda and agitation programme through the formation
of the International Union of Students (IUS) and the World Federation of
Democratic Youth (WFDY), both of which brought together national
affiliates within their respective fields in as many countries as possible.
These organisations promoted CPSU objectives and policy under the guise
of unified campaigns (anti-colonialism, anti-nuclear weapons, pro-peace
groups, etc.), in which they enlisted the support of their local affiliates in
capitalist countries as well as within the communist bloc. During the late
1940s the US government, using the Agency for its purpose, began to brand
these fronts as stooges of the CPSU with the object of discouraging non-
communist participation. In addition to this the Agency engaged in
operations in many places designed to stop local groups affiliating with the
international bodies. By recruiting leaders of the local groups and by
infiltrating agents, the Agency tried to gain control of as many of them as
possible, so that even if such a group had already affiliated itself to either
the IUS or the WFDY, it could be persuaded or compelled to withdraw.
The Agency also began to form alternative youth and student organisations
at local and international level. The two international bodies constructed to
rival those sponsored by the Soviet Union were the Coordinating Secretariat
of National Unions of Students (COSEC)[11] with headquarters in Leyden,
and the World Assembly of Youth (WAY) situated in Brussels.
Headquarters' planning, guidance and operational functions in the CIA
youth and student operations are centralised in the International
Organisations Division of the DDP.
Both COSEC and WAY, like the IUS and WFDY, promote travel, cultural
activities and welfare, but both also work as propaganda agencies for the
CIA – particularly in underdeveloped countries. They also have
consultative status as non-governmental institutions with United Nations
agencies such as UNESCO and they participate in the UN special agencies'
programmes.
One very important function of the CIA youth and student operations is the
spotting, assessing and recruiting of student and youth leaders as long-term
agents, both in the FI and PP fields. The organisations sponsored or affected
by the Agency are obvious recruiting grounds for these and, indeed, for
other CIA operations. It is particularly the case in the underdeveloped world
that both COSEC and WAY programmes lead to the recruitment of young
agents who can be relied on to continue CIA policies and remain under CIA
control long after they have moved up their political or professional ladders.
Apart from working through COSEC and WAY the Agency is also able to
mount specific operations through Catholic national and international
student and youth bodies (Pax Romana and the International Catholic Youth
Federation) and through the Christian democratic and non-communist
socialist organisations as well. In some countries, particularly those in
which there are groups with strong communist or radical leaderships, the
Catholic or Christian Democratic student and youth organisations are the
main forces guided by the Agency.
Agents controlled through youth and student operations by a station in any
given country, including those in the US National Students Association
(NSA) international programme run by headquarters, can also be used to
influence decisions at the international level, while agents at the
international level can be used for promoting other agents or policies within
a national affiliate. Control, then, is like an alternating current between the
national and international levels.
Largely as a result of Agency operations, the WFDY headquarters was
expelled from France in 1951, moving to Budapest. The IUS headquarters,
on the other hand, was never allowed to move to the free world after its
founding at Prague in 1946. Moreover, the WFDY and IUS have been
clearly identified with the communist bloc, and their efforts to conduct
conferences and seminars outside the bloc have been attacked and
weakened by WAY and COSEC. The WFDY, for example, has been able to
hold only one World Youth Festival outside the bloc, in Vienna in 1959, and
then it was effectively disrupted by CIA-controlled youth and student
organisations. The IUS has never held a congress in the free world. More
important still, both WAY and COSEC have developed overwhelming leads
in affiliate members outside the communist bloc.
Labour Operations
Agency labour operations came into being, like student and youth
operations, as a reaction against the continuation of pre-World War II CPSU
policy and expansion through the international united fronts. In 1945 with
the support and participation of the British Trade Unions Congress (TUC),
the American Congress of Industrial Organisations (CIO) and the Soviet
Trade Unions Council, the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) was
formed in Paris. Differences within the WFTU between communist trade-
union leaders, who were anxious to use the WFTU for anti-capitalist
propaganda, and free-world leaders who insisted on keeping the WFTU
focused on economic issues, finally came to a head in 1949 over whether
the WFTU should support the Marshall Plan. When the communists, who
included French, Italian and Latin American leaders as well as the Soviets,
refused to allow the WFTU to endorse the Marshall Plan, the TUC and CIO
withdrew, and later the same· year the International Confederation of Free
Trade Unions (ICFTU) was founded as a noncommunist alternative to the
WFTU, with participation by the TUC, CIO, American Federation of Labor
(AFL) and other national centres. Agency operations were responsible in
part for the expulsion of the WFTU headquarters from Paris in 1951 when it
moved to the Soviet sector of Vienna. Later, in 1956, it was forced to move
from Vienna to Prague.
The ICFTU established regional organisations for Europe, the Far East,
Africa and the Western Hemisphere, which brought together the non-
communist national trade-union centres. Support and guidance by the
Agency was, and still is, exercised on the three levels: ICFTU, regional and
national centres. At the highest level, labour operations congenial to the
Agency are supported through George Meany, President of the AFL, Jay
Lovestone, Foreign Affairs Chief of the AFL and Irving Brown, AFL
representative in Europe – all of whom were described to us as effective
spokesmen for positions in accordance with the Agency's needs. Direct
Agency control is also exercised on the regional level. Serafino Romualdi,
AFL Latin American representative for example, directs the Inter-American
Regional Labour Organisation (ORIT) located in Mexico City. On the
national level, particularly in underdeveloped countries, CIA field stations
engage in operations to support and guide national labour centres. In
headquarters, support, guidance and control of all labour operations is
centralised in the labour branch of the International Organisations Division.
General policy on labour operations is similar to youth and student
operations. First, the WFTU and its regional and national affiliates are
labelled as stooges of Moscow. Second, local station operations are
designed to weaken and defeat communist or extreme-leftist dominated
union structures and to establish and support a non-communist structure.
Third, the ICFTU and its regional organisations are promoted, both from
the top and from the bottom, by having Agency-influenced or controlled
unions and national centres affiliate.
A fourth CIA approach to labour operations is through the International
Trade Secretariats (ITS), which represent the interests of workers in a
particular industry as opposed to the national centres that unite workers of
different industries. Because the ITS system is more specialized, and often
more effective, it is at times more appropriate for Agency purposes than the
ICFTU with its regional and national structure. Control and guidance is
exercised through officers of a particular ITS who are called upon to assist
labour operations directed against the workers of a particular industry. Very
often the CIA agents in an ITS are the American labour leaders who
represent the US affiliate of the ITS, since the ITS would usually receive its
principal support from the pertinent US industrial union. Thus the American
Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees serves as a channel
for CIA operations in the Public Service International, which is the ITS for
government employees headquartered in London. And the Retail Clerks
International Association, which is the US union of white-collar employees,
gives access to the International Federation of Clerical and Technical
Employees, which is the white-collar ITS. Similarly, the Communications
Workers of America is used to control the Post, Telegraph and Telephone
Workers International (PTTI) which is the ITS for communications
workers. In the case of the petroleum industry the Agency actually set up
the ITS, the International Federation of Petroleum and Chemical Workers
(IFPCW) through the US union of petroleum workers, the Oil Workers
International Union. Particularly in underdeveloped countries, station
labour operations may be given cover as a local programme of an ITS.
Within the Catholic trade-union movement similar activity is possible,
usually channelled through the International Federation of Christian Trade
Unions (IFCTU).[12] And for specialised training within the social-
democratic movement, the Israeli Histadrut is used.
Labour operations are the source of considerable friction between the DDP
area divisions and the stations, on the one hand, and the International
Organisations Division (IOD) on the other. The problem is mainly
jurisdiction and coordination. The labour operations agents on the
international and regional level (ICFTU, ORlT, ITS, for example) are
directed by officers of IOD either in Washington or from a field station such
as Paris, Brussels or Mexico City. If their activities in a particular country,
Colombia, for example, are not closely coordinated with the Bogota station,
they may oppose or otherwise interfere with specific aims of the Bogota
station's labour operations or other programmes. Whenever IOD labour
assets visit a given country, the Chief of Station who is responsible for all
CIA activities in his country, must be advised. Otherwise the IOD agent,
lacking the guidance and control that would ensure that his activities
harmonise with the entire station operational programme, not just in the
labour field, may jeopardise other station goals. Continuing efforts are made
to ensure coordination between IOD activities in labour and the field
stations concerned, but this is also hampered at times by the narrow view
and headstrong attitudes of the agents themselves.
On the other hand, IOD agents can be enormously valuable in assisting a
local station's labour programme. Usually the agent has considerable
prestige as a result of his position on the international or regional level, and
his favour is often sought by indigenous labour leaders because of the travel
and training grants and invitations to conferences that the agent dispenses.
He accordingly has ready access to leaders in the local non-communist
labour movement and he can establish contact between the station and those
local labour leaders of interest. Such contact can be established through
third parties, gradually, so that the IOD agent is protected when a new
operational relationship is eventually established. Field stations may call on
IOD support in order to obtain the adoption of a particular policy or
programme in a given country through the influence that an IOD agent can
bring to bear on a local situation, again without the local labour leader, even
if he is a station agent, knowing that the international or regional official is
responding to CIA guidance.
Measuring the effectiveness of labour operations against their multi-
million-dollar cost is difficult and controversial, and includes the denial-to-
the-communists factor as well as the value of indoctrination in pro-Western
ideals through seminars, conferences and educational programmes. In any
case, free-world affiliation with the WFTU has been considerably reduced,
even though several leading national confederations in non-communist
countries still belong.
Operations against the World Peace Council
Agency operations against the World Peace Council (founded in Paris in
1949) are undertaken to neutralise the Council's propaganda campaigns
against the US and its allies, particularly with regard to military pacts.
Although no rival organisation has been established, media operations are
directed against WPC activities in order to expose its true sponsorship as a
propaganda front of the CPSU. Some success can be claimed in the
expulsion of WPC headquarters from Paris to Prague in 1951 although it
moved to Vienna in 1954. Efforts are also made to prevent the WPC from
holding congresses and other meetings outside the communist bloc through
operations involving media, students, youth, labour and especially political-
action agents for denial of permissions and other harassment.
Journalists
Founded in Copenhagen in 1946, the International Organisation of
Journalists (IOJ) brought together writers from both communist and non-
communist countries. Although the original headquarters of the IOJ was in
London, the Second Congress was held in Prague in 1947 where it was
decided to move the IOJ headquarters. Following the leadership of the
national journalists' organisations of the United States, Great Britain and
Belgium, most non-communist membership had been withdrawn by 1950,
and its activities were generally confined to Iron Curtain countries.
In addition to propaganda against the IOJ and operations to deny Western
capitals for IOJ meetings, the Agency promoted the founding of an
alternative international society of journalists for the free world. In 1952 the
World Congress of Journalists reestablished the International Federation of
Journalists (IFJ) which had been founded originally in 1926, but had been
disbanded in 1946 when the IOJ was formed.
Benefits to the Agency from the IFJ operation include the spotting and
operational development of potential propaganda agents. Moreover, local
station support to IFJ member organisations can be used to combat the local
communist and procommunist press and the efforts at penetration by the
IOJ, especially in underdeveloped countries.
Lawyers
In 1946 the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL) was
founded in Paris with the participation of lawyers from some twenty-five
countries. Dominated from the beginning by pro-communist forces,
especially the French participants, the IADL soon lost most of its non-
communist members and in 1950 was expelled from France, moving its
headquarters to Brussels where it has remained. The IADL's main function
has been to serve as a propaganda mechanism for the CPSU post-war
themes of peace and anti-colonialism.
In 1952, an international legal conference was held in West Berlin from
which a permanent committee emerged to carry on the work of exposing
communist injustice in East Germany. In 1955 this committee became the
International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) with headquarters in The Hague,
moving to Geneva in 1959. The ICJ is composed of twenty-five prominent
lawyers from countries around the world, and its main work consists of
investigating and reporting on abuses of the 'rule of law', wherever they
occur.
The Agency saw the ICJ as an organisation which it hoped would produce
prestigious propaganda of the kind wanted on such issues as violations of
human rights in the communist bloc. Reports on other areas like South
Africa would, so far as the CIA was concerned, merely lend respectability
to this object.
Political-Action Operations
Communist expansion brought forth still another type of PP operation:
political action. Operations designed to promote the adoption by a foreign
government of a particular policy vis-a-vis communism are termed
political-action operations. While the context of these operations is the
assessment of the danger of communist or other leftist influence in a given
country, the operations undertaken to suppress the danger are pegged to
specific circumstances. These operations often involve promotion through
funding and guidance of the careers of foreign politicians through whom
desired government policy and action can be obtained. Conversely, these
operations often include actions designed to neutralise the politicians who
promote undesirable local government policy regarding communism.
Although political-action operations after World War II began with electoral
funding of anti-communist political parties in France and Italy in the late
1940s, they are now prevalent in the underdeveloped countries where
economic and social conditions create a favourable climate for communist
advance. The obvious human elements in political-action operations are
political parties, politicians and military leaders, although agents in other
PP operations including labour, student and youth, and media are often
brought to bear on specific political-action targets. In order to obtain
political intelligence as well as to develop relationships with potential
political-action agents, most stations have continuing programmes for
cultivating local politicians from opposition as well as from government
parties. Making acquaintances in local politics is not usually difficult
because CIA officers under diplomatic cover in embassies have natural
access to their targets through cocktail parties, receptions, clubs and other
mechanisms that bring them together with people of interest. Regular State
Department Foreign Service Officers and Ambassadors as well may also
facilitate the expansion of station political contacts through arranging
introductions. When a local political contact is assessed favourably for a
station's goals, security clearance and operational approval is obtained from
headquarters, and the station officer in contact with the target begins to
provide financial support for political campaigns or for the promotion of the
target's political group or party. Hopefully, almost surely, the target will use
some of the money for personal expenses thereby developing a dependency
on the station as a source of income. Eventually, if all goes well, the local
politician will report confidential information on his own party and on his
government, if he has a government post, and he will respond to reasonable
station direction regarding the communist question.
A station's liaison operations with local security services are also a valuable
source of political-action assets. Because of frequent political instability in
underdeveloped countries, the politicians in charge of the civilian and
military security forces are in key positions for action as well as for
information, and they are often drawn into an operational relationship with
the station when they enter office merely by allowing ongoing liaison
operations to continue. They are subjected to constant assessment by the
station for use in political action and when deemed appropriate they may be
called upon for specific tasks. Financial support is also available for
furthering their political careers and for a continuing relationship once they
leave the ministry.
As final arbiters of political conflicts in so many countries, military leaders
are major targets for recruitment. They are contacted by station officers in a
variety of ways, sometimes simply through straightforward introduction by
US military attaches or the personnel of US Military Assistance Missions.
Sometimes the liaison developed between the Agency and local intelligence
services can be used for making these contacts. Again CIA officers can
make contact with those military officers of other countries who come to
the US for training. As in the case of politicians, most Agency stations have
a continual programme for the development of local military leaders, both
for the collection of intelligence and for possible use in political action.
The political actions actually undertaken by the Agency are almost as
varied as politics itself. High on the list of priorities is the framing of Soviet
officials in diplomatic or commercial missions in order to provoke their
expulsion. Politicians working for the Agency are expected to take an active
part in working for expulsion of 'undesirables'. Similarly, where the Soviet
Union tries to extend its diplomatic or commercial activities, our politicians
are expected to use their influence to oppose such moves. They are also
expected to take a hard line against their own nationals engaged in left-wing
or communist activities. In the last of these instances success means the
proscription of the parties, the arrest or exile of their leaders, the closure of
their offices, publications and bookstores, the prohibition of their
demonstrations, etc. Such large-scale programmes call for action both by
anticommunist movements and by national governments – where possible
the Agency likes to use the same political-action agents for both purposes.
But it is not just a matter of financing and guiding local politicians. In
situations regarded as dangerous to the US, the Agency will conduct
national election operations through the medium of an entire political party.
It will finance candidates who are both 'witting' and 'unwitting'. Such multi-
million-dollar operations may begin a year or more before an election is due
and will include massive propaganda and public-relations campaigns, the
building of numerous front organisations and funding mechanisms (often
resident US businessmen), regular polls of voters, the formation of 'goon-
squads' to intimidate the opposition, and the staging of provocations and the
circulation of rumours designed to discredit undesirable candidates. Funds
are also available for buying votes and vote counters as well.
If a situation can be more effectively retrieved for US interests by
unconstitutional methods or by coup d'etat, that too may be attempted.
Although the Agency usually plays the anti-communist card in order to
foster a coup, gold bars and sacks of currency are often equally effective. In
some cases a timely bombing by a station agent, followed by mass
demonstrations and finally by intervention by military leaders in the name
of the restoration of order and national unity, is a useful course. Agency
political operations were largely responsible for coups after this pattern in
Iran in 1953 and in the Sudan in 1958.
Paramilitary Operations
At times the political situation in a given country cannot be retrieved fast or
effectively enough through other types of PP operations such as political
action. In these cases the Agency engages in operations on a higher level of
conflict which may include military operations – although these should not
be seen as US-sponsored. These unconventional warfare operations are
called paramilitary operations. The Agency has the charter from the
National Security Council for US government unconventional warfare
although the military services also sustain a paramilitary capability in case
of general war. These operations seem to hold a special fascination, calling
to mind ass heroism, resistance, guerrilla warfare, secret parachute jumps
behind the lines. Camp Peary is a major Agency training base for
paramilitary operations.
The need for getting agents into denied areas like certain parts of the Soviet
Union, China and other communist countries, is satisfied in part by illegal
infiltration by land, sea or air. The agents, usually natives of the denied area,
are given proper clothing, documentation and cover stories and, if
infiltrating by land, may be required to pass secretly through heavily
guarded borders. Training in border crossing is given in a restricted area of
Camp Peary where a mile or so of simulated communist borders is operated
with fences, watch-towers, dogs, alarms and patrols. Maritime infiltration
involves the use of a mother ship, usually a freighter operated by an Agency
cover shipping company which approaches to within a few miles of the
shore landing-site. An intermediate craft, often a souped-up outboard,
leaves the mother ship and approaches to perhaps a mile off the shore where
a rubber boat with a small silent outboard is inflated to carry the infiltration
team to the beach. The rubber boat and auxiliary equipment is buried near
the beach for use later in escape while the intermediate craft returns to the
mother ship. Infiltration by air requires black overflights for which the
Agency has unmarked long- and short-range aircraft including the versatile
Helio Courier that can be used in infil-exfil operations with landings as well
as parachute drops. Restricted areas of Camp Peary along the York River
are used for maritime training and other parts of the base serve as landing-
sites and drop zones.
Once safely infiltrated to a denied area, a lone agent or a team may be
required to perform a variety of jobs. Frequently an infiltration team's
mission is the caching of weapons, communications equipment or sabotage
materials for later retrieval by a different team which will use them. Or, an
infiltration team may perform sabotage through the placing of incendiary
devices or explosives at a target-site timed to go off days, weeks or even
months later. Sabotage weapons include oil and gasoline contaminates for
stopping vehicles, contaminates for jamming printing-presses, limpets for
sinking ships, explosive and incendiary compounds that can be moulded
and painted to look like bread, lamps, dolls or stones. The sabotage
instructors, or 'burn and blow boys', have staged impressive demonstrations
of their capabilities, some of which are ingeniously designed so as to leave
little trace of a cause. Aside from sabotage, an infiltration team may be
assigned targets to photograph or the loading or unloading of dead drops
(concealed places for hiding film, documents or small containers). Escape
may be by the same route as entry or by an entirely different method.
The Economic Warfare Section of the PP staff is a sub-section under
Paramilitary Operations because its mission includes the sabotage of key
economic activities in a target country and the denial of critical imports, e.g.
petroleum. Contamination of an export agricultural product or associated
material (such as sacks destined for the export of Cuban sugar), or fouling
the bearings of tractors, trucks or buses destined for a target country may be
undertaken if other efforts to impede undesired trade fail. As Economic
Warfare is undertaken in order to aggravate economic conditions in a target
country, these operations include in addition to sabotage, the use of
propaganda, labour, youth, student and other mass organisations under CIA
control to restrict trade by a friendly country of items needed in the target
economy. US companies can also be called upon to restrict supply of
selected products voluntarily, but local station political-action assets are
usually more effective for this purpose.
Also coordinated in the Paramilitary section of the PP staff is the effort to
maintain Agency supplies of weapons used in support of irregular military
forces. Although the Air and Maritime Support section of the staff
supervises standing Agency operations to supply insurgents (Air America
and Civil Air Transport in the Far East, for example) additional resources
such as aircraft can be obtained from the Defence Department. These
operations included the Guatemalan invasion in 1954 (aptly given the
cryptonym LCSUCCESS); Tibetan resistance against the Chinese in 1958-9
and the rebellion against the Sukarno government in Indonesia in 1957-8;
current training and support of irregular forces in South Vietnam and Laos;
and increasing sabotage and paramilitary operations against the Castro
government in Cuba. Leaflet drops as part of the propaganda aspect of
paramilitary operations are also arranged through the Air and Maritime
Support section.
Closely related to paramilitary operations are the disruptive activities
known as militant action. Through organisation and support of 'goon
squads' sometimes composed of off-duty policemen, for example, or the
militant sections of friendly political parties, stations attempt to intimidate
communists and other extreme leftists by breaking up their meetings and
demonstrations. The Technical Services staff of the DDP makes a variety of
weapons and devices for these purposes. Horrible smelling liquids in small
glass vials can be hurled into meeting halls. A fine clear powder can be
sprinkled in a meeting-place becoming invisible after settling but having the
effect of tear-gas when stirred up by the later movement of people. An
incendiary powder can be moulded around prepared tablets and when
ignited the combination produces ample quantities of smoke that attacks the
eyes and respiratory system much more strongly than ordinary tear-gas. A
tasteless substance can be introduced to food that causes exaggerated body
colour. And a few small drops of a clear liquid stimulates the target to
relaxed, uninhibited talk. Invisible itching powder can be placed on steering
wheels or toilet seats, and a slight smear of invisible ointment causes a
serious burn to skin on contact. Chemically processed tobacco can be added
to cigarettes and cigars to produce respiratory ailments.
Our training in PP operations includes constant emphasis on the desirability
of obtaining reportable intelligence information from agents engaged in
what are essentially action (as opposed to collection) operations. A well-run
action operation, in fact, can produce intelligence of extremely good quality
whether the agents are student, labour or political leaders. Justification for
continuing PP operations in Project Renewals includes references to the
operation's value in strictly collection activities as well as effectiveness in
achieving action goals. No action agent, therefore, can be allowed to
neglect the intelligence by-product of his operation, although the action
agent may have to be eased into the intelligence reporting function because
of the collaborative nature of his early relationship with the Agency.
Nevertheless with a little skill even leaders of some rank can be
manipulated into collecting information by letting them know indirectly that
financial support for them is based partly on satisfaction of intelligence
reporting requirements.
The funding of psychological and paramilitary projects is a complex
business. Project Outlines (see p. 50) are prepared either in the station or at
headquarters, depending on which of these is proposing or running the
operation. Included in this, apart from those elements already mentioned for
FI projects, will be a statement on the need for coordination with other US
government agencies such as the State Department or the Department of
Defence. Where appropriate further reports are attached giving greater
detail on finances, personnel, training, supply and cover mechanisms.
Operational progress reports are required each trimester in the case of
routine operations, but such reports may be more frequent in special cases.
Intelligence received as a result of PP operations is processed in the same
way as that which comes from FI operations.
Funding action operations, especially those involving labour, student, youth
or other organisations is a perpetual problem. Under certain circumstances
it can be done through foundations of one sort or another which have been
created as fronts for the Agency, but before this, or any other, method can
be employed there first has to be a decision about the level at which the
funds should be passed. If money is to be put into an international
organisation like WAY, for example, then it might be possible to do this
through an American organisation affiliated to it. The money can then be
disguised as a donation from that organisation. In other circumstances it
might be possible to supply the money through a 'cutout', that is, through a
person who can claim that the money is either a donation on his own
account or from his business. If this system is used the money is sometimes
paid by the 'cutout' to a US organisation affiliated to the international group
for whom the money is finally intended.
If it is paid direct then it is usual for the secretary-general or the finance
committee chairman of the organisation in question to be a 'witting' agent.
The decision about the method to be used is subject to several
considerations. First the matter of security and cover is considered; second
comes the question of which method would best ensure that the recipient or
recipients will then do what they have been paid for. Thus funds become a
very effective method of guiding an action agent. When cover foundations
or companies are used for funding they may be chartered in the US or in
countries such as Lichtenstein, the Bahamas and Panama, where
commercial secrecy is protected and governmental controls are minimal.
Camp Peary, Virginia May 1960
The practical exercises are more pleasant now that spring has arrived.
Except that we pick up hordes of ticks during the paramilitary training. We
have had training in evasion and escape and border crossing – also night
exercises in maritime infiltrations and air drops. At the ranges we have
firing sessions with a variety of pistols, rifles and sub-machine-guns. In
July, after the regular JOT training course ends, there will be a three-month
specialised course in paramilitary operations. Ten or fifteen of the class
have volunteered for the course and afterwards they'll be assigned to
operations already underway against Vietnam, Laos and Cuba.
The instructor who was my nationalistic political leader in the FI exercise
became a wild man in the political-action case. He went around without my
knowledge trying to recruit colleagues to overthrow the government and
telling them he was working for me in the US Embassy. The word got back
to the Ambassador (another instructor) and I had to convince him not to
send me home. Then I paid the agent a generous termination bonus and
picked up with one of his party subordinates.
Still, we have had a serious upheaval in the JOT class. None of us is quite
sure whether this is a training exercise or real or partly both. The training
staff has been ranting and raving, both in individual sessions with advisors
and in the classroom and pit sessions, that we aren't taking the work
seriously enough. They cancelled a couple of weekends off and we all had
to stay here and practice report writing. Morale among the JOTs is down
and resentment against the staff gets higher every day. Four of the
outstanding trainees have quit – two of them in order to take appointments
as Foreign Service Officers with the State Department.
The problem grew out of the way most of us handled the practical exercises
with the political-action agent – practically all of us were crucified in the
criticism sessions for not having developed proper control over the agent
before moving into sensitive assignments. The instructors accused us of
adopting whimsical attitudes – what they call derisively the 'cowboy
approach'. Besides agent-control failure, the staff is down on us for not
taking pains with tradecraft in the practical exercises. A couple of weeks
ago several teams got arrested while photographing a huge chemical plant
about twenty miles from here – they were caught by security patrols, turned
over to the police, and then had to be bailed out through the base
administration office. It was supposed to be a clandestine photography
assignment in a denied area and those guys climbed over the fence and
started snapping like they were at the beach in August.
The extra night sessions in tradecraft are supposed to emphasise the dangers
in taking shortcuts on how clandestine operations are performed – as
opposed to what is done (FI, CI and PP operations). Tradecraft is all the
techniques and tools of the trade used to keep a secret operation secret. The
tradecraft one selects depends on a correct analysis of the operational
environment – the set of conditions that determine the degree of
clandestinity needed, including the capabilities of local services, and the
strength of the local target organisations against which our operations are
directed. The more relaxed the operational environment, the more simple
and uncomplicated the tradecraft and the more mileage obtained from each
CIA officer.
Tradecraft is used to keep an operation secure and free from discovery
because, among many reasons, people's lives are often at stake. The
instructors keep driving home the importance of care to protect the agent,
and they toss out example after example of fatal and near-fatal
consequences of poor tradecraft. The techniques include how to select a
meeting-site, counter-surveillance before and after clandestine meetings, the
use of disguise, safety and danger signals before meetings, concealment
devices, precautions in the use of telephones, ways to counter possible
audio penetration of meeting-sites, the use of cutouts or go-betweens to
avoid frequent direct contact between agents and CIA officers, and
communication techniques.
Cover is closely related to operational security because it is the lie
established to make a secret operation appear to have a legitimate purpose.
A foundation may serve as a cover funding mechanism. A shipping
company may serve as cover for maritime operations. An airline may serve
as cover for air support to paramilitary operations. A legitimate business
activity may serve as ostensible employment for a CIA officer in a foreign
country. The State Department, Defence Department and the International
Cooperational Administration may also serve as cover employment for CIA
officers.
Communications with agents is perhaps the most crucial element of
tradecraft and operational security. Personal meetings between CIA officers
and their agents are often the most efficient type of communication but they
are also the most dangerous and require elaborate security precautions and
cover. Meetings can take place in hotels or apartments obtained for this
purpose (safe houses), vehicles, subways, parks, isolated woods, tourist
attractions. Normal communications may also be through cutouts and dead
drops (hiding-places like the hollows of trees where messages can be
placed). Brush contacts, such as the momentary contact for passage of a
report, can be used in public lavatories or pedestrian tunnels where motion
is uninterrupted and hostile surveillance difficult.
Communications with agents in denied areas (Iron Curtain countries) where
counter-intelligence forces are most effective, is often through encoded
radio transmissions to the agent, which can be heard on ordinary home
radios – while the agents' reports are made in invisible writing and sent to a
drop address in a noncommunist country through the international mails. In
such cases personal meetings would be restricted to emergencies or when
the agent is able to travel to a non-communist country. Elaborate signal
systems can be established to indicate safety, danger, discovery, loading or
unloading a dead drop, request for meeting, postponement of meeting.
In every clandestine operation some form of training is usually involved,
from simple reminders on security precautions to highly specialised
instructions in the use of complicated technical equipment. In FI operations,
continuous training is needed for refinement of the agent's reporting in such
areas as separation of fact from rumour and opinion, specification of
sources, correct dates, places and names, and spelling and format in written
reports. The Office of Training has a staff of multilingual training officers in
its Covert Training Branch who travel the world giving specialised
operational training to agents on station request. The Technical Services
Division personnel are also heavily engaged in agent training as is the
Office of Communications which is in charge of training agents in the use
of radio equipment and cryptographic materials.
Shortcuts in tradecraft on the practical exercises is not the main reason for
the training staff's toughening up. The real reason is attitudes – they want us
to get as serious about all this as they are, and they are focusing on agent-
control factors in order to drive this home. Maybe we'll all have to become
heavies in order to pass the course.
The importance of agent control is paramount because agent control means
the ways an agent is made to do what the CIA wants him to do. Each agent
is different and not everyone is always willing to do exactly what we want
him to do – sometimes he has to be coaxed, sometimes cajoled, sometimes
threatened.
'Agent' is a word that is used to signify the people who work at the end of
the line. Usually they are foreigners and the instruments through which CIA
operations are executed. The word 'agent' is never used to describe the CIA
career employee who functions in a station as an operations officer – more
commonly known as a case officer. We are all being trained to be case
officers, not agents.
There are different types of agents in CIA parlance. Many operations are
structured under the leadership of a single agent to whom other agents
respond either as a group working together or in separate, compartmented
activities. The single agent who runs an operation under station direction is
known as the principal agent and the others as secondary or sub-agents.
The chief of a five-man surveillance team is a principal agent while the
foot-men and drivers are sub-agents. An action agent is a person who
actually provides secret information, e.g. a spy in a communist party,
whereas a support agent performs tasks related to an operation but is not the
source of intelligence, e.g. the person who rents an apartment for meetings
between an action agent and the station case officer.
Case officers must constantly be searching for new agents to improve
ongoing operations and to mount new, better operations. Agent spotting,
therefore, is the activity whereby potential new agents are brought under
consideration. Agent development is the manner in which a potential agent
is cultivated and tested while agent assessment is the evaluation of whether
and how the potential agent can be used effectively. If, after weighing all
available data, a positive decision is reached for recruitment, the formal
clearance procedure is completed through the Headquarters Operational
Approval system. Agent recruitment can take many forms, often determined
by the type of operation for which the agent is needled and by the history of
agent development.
If your objective is to penetrate a leftist political party, the first thing to do
is to probe for a weak spot in the organisation. You might bug the phone of
a leading party member and find out he's playing around with the party's
funds. In that case, perhaps he can be blackmailed. Or perhaps one of your
agents plays on the same soccer team as a party member, or goes out with
his sister. The agent might learn something about the party member that
seems to make him a good prospect. Then you move in and make an offer.
On certain occasions recruitments are made in the name of the CIA,
especially when involving US citizens and high-level targets for PP
operations. But often recruitment can be effected without explicit
sponsorship with the target simply expected to assume that the CIA is the
sponsor. Thousands of policemen all over the world, for instance, are
shadowing people for the CIA without knowing it. They think they're
working for their own police departments, when, in fact, their chief may be
a CIA agent who's sending them out on CIA jobs and turning their
information over to his CIA control. On other occasions false flag
recruitments are more appropriate so that the target believes a service or
organisation other than the CIA is the sponsor, perhaps his own
government, or even Peking or Havana. You don't let the recruit know he'll
be working for the United States, because if he knew that, he might not
consent to do it. Coercive recruitment of a communist party member in an
underdeveloped country (under a threat made to appear to come from a
local security service) may be more effective to start with than revealing
CIA sponsorship. Later, when financial and other means of control have
been established, the recruited agent may be brought gradually to the
knowledge of true sponsorship.
In nearly all cases involving agents aware of their CIA sponsorship, a
direct, personal relationship is established between the agent and the case
officer. Since control of agents is so much more effective by persuasion
than by threat, the development of personal rapport by the case officer with
the agent receives constant emphasis from our instructors. On the other
hand, agent-handling officers are expected always to maintain the upper
hand and to avoid dangers that can give an agent a handle against him, or
any of the different varieties of 'falling in love with your agent'.
However, as almost all operations depend upon money, delicate treatment
of financial matters can be used as a constant control factor without
insulting the agent by treating him as a mercenary. In rich countries a man
might become an agent for ideological reasons, but in poor countries it's
usually because he's short of cash. A man with a hungry family to support
will do almost anything for money. The amounts paid to agents depends on
local conditions. In a poor country $100 a month could get you an ordinary
agent. In many countries $700 a month could get you a cabinet minister.
Payment is made in cash – you can't pay spies by check. At the end of every
month officers deliver pay envelopes to their agents around town; they meet
in cars or safe houses. Agents should be made to count the cash in front of
the officer so that any mistakes can be corrected immediately.
Firm guidance of agents, especially those involved in PP operations, where
a wide variety of alternatives is usually presented, depends largely on the
personalities of the agent and the case officer, and the twin requirements of
control and rapport present continuing problems. Capability for detached
manipulation of human beings is a cardinal virtue of the CIA case officer
and nobody makes any bones about it.
Agent termination and disposal is the way an agent is unloaded when he's
no longer needed or wanted. It can be touchy and complicated. Much
depends on whether the termination is friendly or hostile and the reasons for
it. Once the principle of terminating an operational relationship is
established with an agent, the procedure usually becomes one of negotiating
a financial settlement and quit-claim. The financial settlement may depend
ostensibly on past services rendered by the agent, but under the surface both
sides often negotiate on the basis of the damage a dissatisfied agent could
cause if termination were not to his liking. Again the control exercised by
case officers over the agent during the entire period of employment will
reflect on termination negotiations. Efforts by terminated agents to get back
on the payroll after having spent their termination bonus are not
uncommon. When asked just how drastic agent termination and disposal
might become in difficult circumstances, the instructor declined comment
without disallowing 'final solutions'.
Camp Peary, Virginia June 1960
This month the emphasis has been on technical operations and we have had
to incorporate these skills in the practical exercises, including the training
of our 'agents'. The heat from the training staff over tradecraft and agent
control is still on, but we're getting used to it now. It looks as if they're
trying to build up to a peak of tension for the final week of practical
exercises – five or six days of intense operations in the same war-games
scenario either in Baltimore or New York. But the past weeks have mostly
been dedicated to long hours in laboratories learning basic skills in the four
main technical functions: audio, photography, flaps and seals, and secret
writing.
Audio operations include telephone tapping and all the different techniques
of bugging. The most common and secure way to tap telephones is through
connections made in the telephone exchange – sometimes by a unilateral
agent but usually through a request to the local liaison service. But in
certain circumstances telephone intercepts 'off the line' (meaning
connections made somewhere between the target telephone and the
exchange) are more advisable. There are also small transmitters that can be
placed inside a telephone and TSD has developed a pencil-sized transmitter
that can be attached to telephone wires outdoors for reception in a listening
post (LP) not far away.
Telephones and telephone lines can also be valuable for full audio
penetration of the rooms where the telephones are located. This technique
calls for the activation of the telephone mouthpiece so that it will pick up all
conversations in the room, even when the telephone is cradled, and transmit
these conversations down the telephone lines. This technique is called the
'hot mike'.
The simplest and most dependable audio operation is the 'mike and wire'
job, consisting of a concealed microphone with a wire leading to a
listening-post where an amplifier and recorder are located. But this
technique is also insecure because the wire can be followed and unpleasant
surprises given to the LP keepers. So the mike and wire can be connected to
a hidden low-powered radio transmitter for reception in an L P protected by
being separated from the bugging equipment. Transmitters can be
connected to house current or operated with batteries.
Switches on transmitters are often desirable especially in audio operations
against the Soviets, Chinese and satellite governments because of their
regular counter-audio sweeps in which wide-range receivers are used to
detect radio transmissions. Visiting sweep teams pose as diplomatic
couriers sometimes, and transmitters have to be shut down when they are in
town. This necessitates constant reporting from station to station on the
movements of diplomatic couriers and suspected sweep officers.
The carrier-current technique is similar to the regular transmitter installation
except that the transmission is made through electric power lines instead of
through the air. This technique is convenient for easy switching and has an
unlimited power supply, but LP location is complicated because the
transmissions will not jump electric power transformers.
Installation of audio devices often requires drilling through walls, floors or
ceilings, for which TSD has demonstrated a large variety of drills, some
with diamond bits, but drilling isn't recommended for the inexperienced.
Even TSD technicians have been known to make the irreparable mistake of
drilling large holes all the way through the wall or ceiling of a target room.
Reducing the size of drilling equipment in order to reach the final pinhole
takes fine calculation and infinite patience. Audio installations often require
concealment afterwards, for which TSD has their Plaster Patching and Paint
Matching Kit. This consists of super-quick-drying plaster, some fifty colour
chips with mixing formulas for colour approximation, plus odourless super-
quick-drying paint.
Listening-post equipment for telephone taps usually consists of a Revere
(ape-recorder and an actuator/dial recorder that starts the recorder when a
telephone rings or when it is uncradled. Numbers called from the target
telephone are also recorded on a paper tape. LP equipment for other audio
operations may include FM radio receivers such as the military-supplied
SRR-4 with a 50-200 megacycle range, headphones and a variety of tape-
recorders. When switches are used the LP has a suitcase-package radio
transmitter that transmits one frequency to turn a switch on, and another
frequency to turn a switch off. But switches haven't been perfected yet and
they cause problems by jamming in the on or the off positions.
The research and development programmes of the TSD Audio Branch are
dedicated to improving equipment like the switch systems and to
development of sub-miniature microphones and transmitters for casting into
innocuous objects like light-switches and electrical outlets – also to the
development of new techniques. One new technique is the activation of
cradled telephones (the 'hot mike') by sending a current down the line to the
telephone without the need to make a complicated installation in the
telephone itself. Another fascinating technique under development is the
use of infra-red beams that can be bounced off windows and that carry back
to the receiving equipment the conversations being held in the room where
the target window is located. This technique captures the conversations
from the vibrations of voices against the window-panes.
Still another new technique involves the use of cavity microphones like the
one discovered in the eagle's beak of the Great Seal given by the Soviets to
the American Ambassador in Moscow and which he placed in his office.
The cavity microphone is a simple plastic spoon-shaped object that can be
activated by a radiowave of a certain frequency. The spoon reacts by
transmitting another radio signal that carries the voice vibrations from the
room to an appropriate receiver. That Soviet-made Great Seal was included
in a display of audio equipment with the admission that the Soviets are far
ahead in this particular field.
In photography we have learned to use a variety of cameras for general
purpose and documents. 35-mm cameras like the Exacta, Leica and Pentax
are the favourites of the instructors, although the tiny Minox is more secure
for agents. We've been practising also with clandestine photography using
cameras that can be concealed in a briefcase or innocuous package – even
underneath a shirt with the lens opening disguised as a tie clasp. Darkroom
training-sessions have concentrated on selection of films, paper and
developing chemicals. In the practical exercises each of us incorporated
both document and outdoor photography with developing and printing in
the dark-rooms.
The really boring technical skill is Flaps and Seals (F & S). This is the
surreptitious opening and closing of letters and other containers such as
diplomatic pouches. For a week we practised with hot plate, tea kettle and
the variously shaped ivory tools fashioned from piano keys and used for
gently prying open envelope flaps. But the most effective technique for
letters is the flat-bed steam table (about the size of a briefcase) that contains
a heating element encased in foam rubber. Steam is created by placing a
damp blotter on the top of the heated table, and most letters open in a matter
of seconds after being placed on the blotter. Careful resealing with cotton
swab and clear glue completes the process.
Secret writing (SW) is the communications system used for concealing or
making invisible a secret message on an otherwise innocent letter or other
cover document. SW systems are categorised as wet systems, carbons and
microdot. The wet systems use chemicals, usually disguised as pills, which
dissolve in water to form a clear 'ink'. The secret message is written on a
sheet of paper, preferably high-quality bond, using the end of a wooden
swab stick that has been tapered with a razor-blade and soaked in the 'ink' to
reach the proper tip flexibility. Before and after writing the message the
paper must be rubbed with a soft cloth on both sides in all four directions to
help conceal the writing within the texture of the paper. The paper with the
secret message is then steamed and pressed in a thick book and after drying,
if no trace of the message can be seen under ultra-violet and glancing light,
a cover letter or innocuous message is written.
Carbon systems consist of ordinary bond paper that has been impregnated
with chemicals. The carbon is placed on top of the message sheet and the
secret message is written on a sheet placed on top of the carbon. Applying
the proper pressure when writing the secret message with a pencil on the
top sheet transfers the invisible chemical from the carbon to the message
sheet on the bottom. The cover letter is then written on the opposite side of
the message sheet from the secret message. On receipt of an SW letter, an
agent applies a corresponding chemical developer, rolling the developer
with a cotton swab on to the page, and soon the secret message appears.
The microdot system involves a small camera kit with which a letter-sized
page can be photographed on an area of film no larger than the dot of an 'i'.
The microdot is glued over the dot of the 'i' or a period of a cover letter.
Although the equipment for microdots is incriminating, the microdots
themselves are very secure and practically impossible to discover. On the
other hand they require very tedious processing and can only be read with a
microscope.
Secret messages can be written either in clear text or encoded for greater
security. The SW branch of TSD has a continuous intelligence collection
programme on the postal censorship procedures in most foreign countries
for protective procedures in SW operations. The operational environment in
which the agent works determines the other details of SW correspondence:
whether the SW cover letter will be posted nationally or internationally, to a
post-box or a support agent serving as an accommodation address, with
false or true return addresses or none at all, the content of the cover letters,
signals to indicate safety or the absence of which could indicate that the
writing is being done under control of a hostile service.
The SW branch also has a technique for 'lifting' SW from suspect
correspondence. The process involves placing a suspect letter in a letter
press with steamed sheets on either side. By cranking down pressure
enough of the chemicals will come off on the steamed sheets to allow for
testing with other chemicals for development. The suspect correspondence
can be returned to the mails with no traces of tampering.
The TSD instructors have also demonstrated some of their techniques in
safe-cracking, surreptitious entry and lock-picking. But these are such
highly specialised activities that TSD technicians almost always travel to
countries when these talents are needed. As ordinary case officers we will
need only the basic skills and enough knowledge of the really special
techniques to know how to plan and when to ask for TSD technicians.
A few weeks ago I was discharged from the Air Force. Now I'm a civilian
employee of the Department of the Air Force, as I was when I came to
Washington three years ago. The cover unit is another bogus Pentagon
office with the major, the colonel and all that routine. But I'm keeping my
commission (I'm a First Lieutenant now) by joining an Agency Air Force
reserve unit. This is a cover unit too.
Last week Ferguson came down from headquarters and he opened his
session with me with a speech on the increasing demand in the Western
Hemisphere Division for new case officers – apparently Castro and the
Cuban Revolution are causing more and more problems all over Latin
America. My reaction is disappointment, what with all my old fantasies of
being a cloak-and-dagger operative in Vienna or Hong Kong. But Ferguson
said I could ask for a transfer if after six months I still don't like it. It looks
like ten or fifteen of us are destined for the Western Hemisphere Division so
maybe it won't be so bad. Besides, all those hours in the language lab may
at last be useful.
Notes:
[1] See Chart 1, p. 630.
[2] Later known as the 54-12 Group, the Special Group, the 303 Group, the
Forty Committee.
[3] Later renamed the United States Intelligence Board.
[4] Renamed in 1961 the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.
[5] See Chart 2.
[6] See Chart 3.
[7] See Chart 4.
[8] See pp. 319-20.
[9] See Chart 5.
[10] Predecessor of the Agency for International Development (AID).
[11] Later known as the International Student Conference (ISC).
[12] Later renamed the World Confederation of Labour.
Part Two
Washington DC July 1960
The training programme has ended at last. We spent the last week of June in
Baltimore running .in and out of department stores chasing our instructors
on surveillance exercises. It was just like earlier exercises in the cities in
Virginia except it went on day and night and included bugging hotel rooms,
loading and unloading 'dead drops', writing invisible messages, and several
difficult agent meetings. Most of us spent the few free hours at night at the
Oasis on East Baltimore Street – without par in really raunchy, fleshy,
sweaty stripping.
My feelings were mixed about leaving Camp Peary. It was an isolated sort
of life but the club was fun – the bar, ping-pong, chess. What I'll miss most
is the athletic programme and that nice gym.
After a short vacation I checked back with Ferguson and he sent me over to
the personnel officer in the Western Hemisphere (WH) Division. He didn't
seem to have expected me and after waiting a couple of hours he sent me to
the Venezuela desk, which, I discovered, consists of the desk officer, a
secretary, and now me. We are part of Branch 3 of WH Division which
covers the Bolivarian countries: Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and
Bolivia – and we also handle matters related to the Dutch islands, Aruba
and Curacao, British Guiana and Surinam. Branch 1 has Mexico and
Central America, Branch 2 has the Caribbean, Branch 4 has Brazil and
Branch 5 has the cono sur: Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina and Chile. Cuban
affairs are centred in a special branch and the paramilitary operation (it
looks like a repeat of the Guatemala operation but I can't get many details)
has taken over a wing of Quarters Eye. All the rest of the division is in
Barton Hall near Ohio Drive and the Potomac.
WH Division Is the only area division of the DDP that isn't over in the
buildings along the Reflecting Pool, and more and more I've been getting
the impression that this division is looked down upon by the rest of the
DDP. It seems that the physical separation of the division from the rest of
the DDP has created the concept of WH as a fiefdom of Colonel J. C. King
– he's been WH Division Chief now for some years. The other reason for
disdain towards WH (I hear these stories from JOTs who have been
assigned to other divisions) is that most of the division leadership – the
branch chiefs and the station chiefs in the field – are a fraternity of ex-FBI
officers who came into the CIA in 1947 when the CIA took over FBI
intelligence work in Latin America. It's embarrassing because they call us
the 'gumshoe division', even though the best communist party penetration
operations are in Latin America – WH in fact was responsible for getting
the secret Khrushchev speech to the 20th CPSU Congress, which the
Agency made public long before the Soviets wanted it to be. And
everybody knows about Guatemala. The problem is that the glory for super-
spooky achievements is enjoyed mostly by EE officers – old hands from
Berlin and Vienna. We'll see how they treat us after Castro gets thrown out!
I can't say I'm wild about the work I've been given. I inherited a desk full of
dispatches and cables that nobody had done anything about and trying to
make sense out of all this is frustrating – I have to keep bothering people to
find out what all the office symbols mean on the routing sheets, who takes
action on what, and which is more and which is less important. Most of my
work is processing name checks and reports.
The name checks are even duller than processing reports. The first one I did
was on some Jose Diaz and I didn't realise it was such a common name.
When I got the references back from Records Integration Division (RID)
there were over a thousand traces on people of that name. Trace requests for
RID have to be narrowed down by date and place of birth and other
identifying data. The bulk of the name checks are for the Standard Oil
subsidiary in Venezuela – the company security officer is a former FBI man
and he checks the names of prospective Venezuelan employees with the
CIA before hiring – trying to keep out the bad guys.
This work routine has to improve – I can't spend a couple of years on
reports and name checks.
Washington DC August 1960
I must be living right – and I'm almost too afraid to think about it – but I
may just get a field assignment sooner than I could ever imagine. Yesterday
morning my desk chief, C. Harlow Duffin, asked me if I was interested in
working overseas as he knows of an operations officer slot opening up next
month in Quito, Ecuador, and if I'm interested he'll see what he can do. But
he said nobody talks about field personnel assignments before they're
approved so I've got to keep it secret until he says I can talk. Next month!
But he said I wouldn't go right away. First, I'll have really to learn Spanish,
then process into the Department of State – lots of details to take care of
first. Yesterday morning I picked up a book and some briefing material from
the Ecuador desk, and I've been reading this instead of doing my work. I
can't seem to lay it aside. Talk about banana republics and
underdevelopment! Ecuador must be classic: torn apart as it is by internal
contradictions and ruled by privileged oligarchies while bigger neighbours
gobbled up enormous territories that Ecuador couldn't defend.
The overwhelming international reality for Ecuador is Peru and the 1942
Protocol of Rio de Janeiro whereby Peru made good its claim to over one
third of what until then Ecuadoreans had considered national territory. In
July and August 1941, after several months of negotiations had failed,
Peruvian troops overwhelmed Ecuadorean defences in the south – and in
the eastern Amazonian region. The Rio Protocol was signed after new
negotiations and Peru got the disputed territory, mostly Amazonian jungle.
There is a Peruvian side to the story, of course, but Ecuador will never
forgive having to sign the Rio Protocol under duress. The US was already at
war and we needed peace in South America for our own war effort.
Although the Peruvian victory in 1941 was only the latest in a series of
disputes that go all the way back to pre-Hispanic history, for Ecuador, easily
defeated and claiming dismemberment by force, the Rio Protocol is a
source of national humiliation less than one generation removed. The US
government is deeply involved because we promoted negotiation of the Rio
Protocol and are still responsible for enforcing it – along with the other
guarantor powers: Brazil, Chile and Argentina.
While Peru is the great international reality for Ecuador, the dominant
national reality is the division of the country between sierra and coast.
Although the Andes split the country down the middle, the eastern region is
mostly tropical jungle divided by Amazonian tributaries. Some years ago
exploration was made for petroleum but the cost of a pipeline over the
Andes wasn't justified by the discoveries. The Oriente, then, with its sparse
population (including head-shrinking Indians) counts very little in the
national life. The other two regions, the Andes highlands and the Pacific
coast, are almost equally divided in area and population, and their interests
are traditionally in conflict.
Liberal revolution came to Ecuador in 1895 and the main victim was the
Church, as the dominant coastal forces behind the revolution took control of
national policy out of the hands of the traditional sierra landowners. Church
and State were separated, lay education was established, civil marriage and
divorce were instituted, and large Church properties were confiscated.
Following the revolution in 1895 the Liberal Party dominated Ecuadorean
politics as liberals joined conservatives in the landowning aristocracy while
conditions changed very little for the overwhelming mass of the population
completely outside the power structure. Even so, Ecuadorean politics in the
twentieth century is not just another history of violent conservative-liberal
struggle for spoils of office – it is indeed that, but much more. Ecuador has
one of the most amazing Latin American politicians of the century: Jose
Maria Velasco Ibarra – elected President once again just two months ago.
This is the fourth time he's been elected President and none of his terms
have been consecutive. And of his three previous times in power, two ended
before the constitutional term was over because of military coups against
him.
Velasco is the stormy petrel of Ecuadorean politics, a spellbinding orator
whose powers of rhetoric are irresistible to the masses. He is also an
authoritarian who finds sharing power with the Congress very difficult. His
politics are as unpredictable as his fiery temperament and he has taken
conflicting positions on many political issues, thereby attracting support
from all established political parties, at one time or another. He won the
June elections by the largest margin ever attained by an Ecuadorean
presidential candidate and he did it in his typically clever fashion. Running
as an independent he allied himself with the impoverished masses in violent
tirades against the ruling oligarchies who, he claimed, were behind the
candidates of the Liberal and Conservative parties. He called for
fundamental economic and social change, an end to rule by oligarchies and
political bosses, and a fairer distribution of the national income. On this
populist appeal Velasco got almost 400,000 votes, a smashing victory, and
his denunciations of the Rio Protocol during the campaign made him the
champion of Ecuadorean nationalism.
Velasco is due to take office in September but the station in Quito isn't
taking any bets on how long he'll last. After three consecutive Ecuadorean
presidents have served out their terms, perhaps the instability of the past is
ending. Velasco's term is for four years, but taking into account the fact that
he is Ecuador's 70th President in 130 years of independence one can't be too
sure. I hope I'll be there to see.
Washington DC August 1960
I know I'm over-eager and impatient but I thought I'd go mad during the
week they were deciding. Duffin finally called me in and said the Branch
Chief, Edwin Terrell, had approved my nomination and that the reaction in
Colonel King's office was also favourable. The officer who is in the position
now is being transferred to Guayaquil as Base Chief in September and the
station is calling for a replacement right away. The WH personnel officer is
arranging for me to go into full-time Spanish training with a tutor so that I
can get to Quito as soon as possible. Cover for the job is Assistant Attache
in the US Embassy political section, which means I'll have diplomatic status
and 'integration' with the State Department as a Foreign Service Officer.
Then Duffin let me in on a secret. He said he is scheduled to go to Quito as
Chief of Station (COS) next summer which is why he picked me.
Meanwhile, he said, I'll be working with one of the best-liked COSs in WH
Division: Jim Noland. Even with the Spanish training and the time needed
for State Department integration, Duffin says I'll still be in Quito before
Christmas.
Duffin then set up a meeting for me with Rudy Gomez, the Deputy Division
Chief who gives the final approval on all lesser personnel assignments. He's
a gruff sort. Without looking up he said that if I didn't have a good reason
for not going to Quito, then I'd have to go. I said I wanted to go, played it
real straight and got his approval. Apparently I'm one of the first of our JOT
class to get a field assignment – the only one I've heard of so far who will
get out before me is Christopher Thoren who's being assigned this month
under State Department cover in the US mission at the United Nations.
Washington DC August 1960
Getting to know Ecuador is at once stimulating and sobering. The new
Congress, elected in June with Velasco, opened on 10 August although
Velasco doesn't take office until 1 September. If the tactics of Velasquistas
in the Congress are any indication, the new government may dedicate itself
more to persecuting the Poncistas of the outgoing regime than to governing
the country. The Velasquistas have a wide plurality in Congress but are just
short of a majority. At the opening, which consisted of the annual messages
of President Ponce and the President of the Supreme Court, Ponce was
overwhelmed by the insults and jeers from the screaming Velasquista-
packed galleries, unable to be heard during the entire three-and-a-half-hour
speech. The President of the Supreme Court, however, followed Ponce and
was heard with silence and respect. Congressional sessions since then have
been dedicated to efforts by the Velasquistas to discredit the Ponce
government, and Ponce's two most important ministers, Government
(internal security) and Foreign Relations, have resigned rather than face
humiliation in interpellations (political interrogations) by the Congress.
Attacks by Velasquistas against Ponce and his supporters reflect traditional
rivalries but are especially acute now because the Velasquistas are
beginning to take revenge for government repression against them during
the electoral campaign and even earlier. The most notorious incident was at
a Velasquista demonstration on 19 March when five Velasquistas were
killed and many wounded. The demonstration was to celebrate Velasco's
arrival in Quito to begin the political campaign after several years of self-
imposed exile in Argentina. The Velasquista campaign that followed was as
much a campaign against Ponce and traditional Ecuadorean oligarchies as it
was in favour of political policies proposed by Velasco. While reform
proposals for a fairer distribution of the national income and more efficient
government administration were central to the Velasco campaign, many are
sceptical of his personal stability as well as his ability to break the power of
the one hundred or so families that have controlled the country for
generations.
The people, nevertheless, liked what they heard from Velasco because this
country's extreme injustices and poverty are so acute. Not only is Ecuador
the next-to-the-poorest country of South America in terms of per capita
annual income (220 dollars – about one third of Argentina's and less than
one tenth of ours) but even this low average amount is extremely unevenly
divided. The top 1 per cent of the population receives an income
comparable to US standards while about two thirds of the population get
only on average a monthly family income of about 10 dollars. This lower
two thirds, consisting largely of Indians and people of mixed blood, are
simply outside the money economy, completely marginalised and without
social or economic integration or participation in the national life.
Except among those who would be adversely affected, there is wide
agreement that the root of Ecuador's extremes of poverty and wealth is in
land tenure. As in other countries the best lands belong to large landowners
who employ relatively few rural workers and thereby contribute to the
growing urban unemployed. The small plots usually cannot produce more
than a subsistence income due to land quality and size. Even .on the coast
where the cash crops of bananas, coffee, cacao and rice are raised on small-
and medium-sized properties, fluctuating prices, marketing difficulties,
scarce credit and low technification combine for low productivity and a
precarious existence for salaried workers.
Thus land reform and a stable market for export crops are fundamental for
the economic development necessary before Ecuador can begin to invest
adequately in facilities for education, health-care, housing and other
possible benefits. Indicators are typical of poor countries: poor diet; high
incidence of debilitating diseases caused by intestinal parasites from bad
drinking water; 370,000 children unable to attend school this year because
no schools exist for them; a housing deficit of 580,000 units in a country of
4.3 million.
Solutions to this misery are being sought both externally and internally. In
the external sector the Ecuadoreans are making efforts to stabilise the
falling prices that in recent years have forced them to produce ever greater
quantities in order to sustain imports. Also of great importance is foreign
aid obtained in part from the International Cooperation Administration
(ICA) which has a technical assistance mission in Ecuador. Internally, the
Ecuadorean government must embark on a programme of reforms: agrarian
reform to raise productivity and increase rural employment; fiscal reform to
increase government revenues and redistribute income; administrative
reform to improve the government administration and the myriad agencies
that currently enjoy autonomy – and to reduce corruption. Already a
movement is underway to abolish the huasipungo, a precarious form of
tenure, although government land policy is mainly orientated towards
colonisation and opening of new lands with limited success. Lowering the
population growth, now up to 3.1 per cent annually, is of obvious
importance, but is hindered by tradition and Catholic Church policy.
Somehow all of these programmes will contribute to raising the rate of
economic growth and to increasing the benefits available to the
marginalised two thirds of the population. Promises for these reforms and
increased benefits won Velasco his sensational victory, and he'll soon have
the chance to deliver.
Washington DC September 1960
For several weeks I've been studying Spanish full-time with a tutor in
Arlington, and on the tapes in the language lab. I'll probably be in this
routine until November when I get integrated to the State Department and
take the two-week orientation course at the Foreign Service Institute.
Meanwhile I stop in each morning to see Duffin and read more background
material at the Ecuadorean desk.
Velasco is now President. He has embarked on two early policies that affect
operations of the Quito station and other matters of concern to us. First, he
is trying to purge all the supporters of Ponce from government employment,
and secondly, he is stirring up the border problem with Peru by declaring
the Rio Protocol null and void.
Immediately after taking power Velasco relieved forty-eight military
officers from their assigned duties and placed them at the disposition of the
Ministry of Defence. Velasco also started a purge in the National Police,
starting with the two senior colonels who were the station's main liaison
agents. They were arrested and charged with participating in the 19 March
riot.
More serious was the forced departure of our Station Operations Officer
under Public Safety Cover with the United States Operations Mission
(USOM) of the ICA programme. Our Station Officer, Bob Weatherwax, had
been in the forefront directing the police during the 19 March riot, and he
was clearly identified because of his very blond hair and red face –
practically an albino colouring. As soon as Velasco was inaugurated
Weatherwax and Jim Noland, the COS, were notified by Jorge Acosta
Velasco, the President's nephew and family favourite (he has no children),
that Weatherwax should leave the country for a while to avoid being
dragged into the prosecutions for the 19 March affair. Acosta, who is a
close friend of both Weatherwax and Noland, made the suggestion only to
be helpful, not as an official act. Nevertheless, Noland agreed and
Weatherwax is now back in Washington killing time until he can return.
The government purge is being run mostly by Manuel Araujo Hidalgo who
was elected to the Chamber of Deputies from Pichincha Province (the Quito
region) and who is now Minister of Government. He was appointed after
Velasco fired his first Minister of Government only a week after taking
office. Araujo had to resign the Deputies seat but he is clearly the leader of
the Velasquista mobs. Araujo is an extreme leftist and ardent defender of
the Cuban Revolution – exactly the wrong man for the most important
internal security job. He is particularly hostile to the US, and the station is
fearful that he may jeopardise the Public Safety Programme because he is
also in charge of the National Police. The real danger is that all our efforts
to improve the government's security capabilities in preparation for the 11th
Inter-American Conference – now just six months away – may go down the
drain.
Araujo's purge is running not only into the military services and the police.
The civilian government employees are also being purged of Ponce
supporters – helped especially by the Congress's repeal of the Civil Service
Career Law passed during the Ponce administration. Velasco obviously
wants to pack the government with his own people.
Velasco's declaration in his inaugural speech that the Rio Protocol is void
has been followed by rising tension and fears that the dispute may
jeopardise the Inter-American Conference. Ecuadoreans are without doubt
behind Velasco on the matter, but Velasco is using the issue to denounce
any opposition to his policies as anti-patriotic and prejudicial to a
favourable solution of the boundary problem. So far the Conservative Party
and the Social Christians, while defending the Ponce administration, have
not declared open opposition to Velasco.
Washington DC October 1960
Headquarters files on the operations of the Quito station and its subordinate
base in Guayaquil reflect the very careful analysis of the operational
environment that is always the framework within which operations are
undertaken. Although the analysis includes assessments of such factors as
security and cover, the most important part deals with the enemy.
The Communist Party of Ecuador (PCE)
Although the PCE has been a legal party since World War II, it has never
been able to obtain the 5000 signatures necessary for inscribing candidates
in national elections. However, Pedro Saad, the PCE Secretary-General,
held the seat as Functional Senator for Labour from the coast from 1947
until last June when he was defeated through a Guayaquil base political-
action operation. (The Ecuadorean Senate has a number of 'functional
senators' from coast and sierra representing special interest groups, e.g.
labour, commerce, education, agriculture, the military services.)
Membership in the PCE is estimated by the station at around 1,000 with
perhaps another 1,000 members in the Communist Youth of Ecuador (JCE).
Almost all of the members of the PCE National Executive Committee
reside in Guayaquil. With respect to the emerging Sino-Soviet differences
the PCE national leadership supports the Soviets although some PCE
leaders in the sierra, particularly in Quito, are beginning to lean towards the
more militant Chinese position.
In the elections this year the PCE joined with the left wing of the Socialist
Party and the Concentration of Popular Forces (CFP) to back a leftist
candidate for President, the Rector of Guayaquil University, who received
only about 46,000 votes – just 6 per cent of the total. PCE strength,
however, is not measured in voter appeal but in the strength of labour,
student and youth organisations in which its influence is strong.
The Socialist Party of Ecuador (PSE)
Although much larger than the PCE, the Socialist Party has cooperated for
many years with the Communists in the leadership of the labour movement.
Recently the Socialists have split into a right wing which formed an alliance
with the Liberal Party in the unsuccessful presidential campaign of Galo
Plaza this year, and a left wing which voted with the PCE and the CFP.
Because of its support for the Cuban Revolution and of violent
revolutionary principles, the left-wing Socialists are dangerous and inimical
to US interests. Their successes, however, are concentrated in the labour
movement and intellectual circles. The President of the Ecuadorean
Workers' Confederation is a leftwing Socialist as is the Functional Senator
for Labour from the sierra.
The Ecuadorean Workers Confederation (CTE)
Founded by the Communists and the Socialists in 1944, the CTE is by far
the most dominant labour confederation in Ecuador and a member of the
World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU). Although the Secretary-
General of the PCE, Pedro Saad, headed the CTE at the beginning, a
Socialist took over in the late 1940s and this party is still in nominal
control. However, the Communists retained the number two position and
are now considered to exercise dominant if not complete control in the
CTE. CTE membership is estimated at 60,000 – less than 10 per cent of the
poorly organised labour force, but enough to cause serious trouble.
The Ecuadorean Federation of University Students (FEUE)
Consistent with the traditional leftist-activist student movement in Latin
America, the FEUE – the principal Ecuadorean national student union – has
been under frequent, if not continuous, control by PCE, JCE and left-wing
Socialists. Its loud campaigns are directed against the US presence in
Ecuador and Latin America, mainly US business, and strongly in support of
the Cuban Revolution. When appropriate issues are presented the FEUE is
capable of mobilising the students, secondary students included, for strikes
and street manifestations as well as propaganda campaigns. It is supported
by leftist professors and administrators in the five state universities in
Quito, Guayaquil, Portoviejo, Cuenca and Loja.
The Revolutionary Union of Ecuadorean Youth (URJE)
In 1959 the youth organisations of the Communists, the Socialists and the
Concentration of Popular Forces formed URJE which has become the most
important leftist-activist youth movement. It engages in street
demonstrations, wall-painting, circulation of flysheets, intimidation –
agitation of many kinds for revolutionary causes. Although URJE denies
that it is a communist front, the station considers it under PCE control and
the most immediate and dangerous threat for terrorism and armed
insurgency. It is stronger in Guayaquil than in Quito, and its membership in
both places totals about 1000. URJE gives unqualified support to the Cuban
Revolution and several URJE leaders have travelled to Cuba, probably for
revolutionary training.
Hostile Elements in the Ecuadorean Government
The Velasquista movement, as a heterogeneous populist movement contains
political colourings from extreme right to extreme left. The Minister of
Government, Manuel Araujo Hidalgo, is our most important enemy in the
government, but others, such as the Minister of Education and various
appointees to lesser posts, are also dangerous. The station has a continuing
programme for monitoring leftist penetration in the government, and the
results are regularly reported to headquarters and to the Ambassador and the
State Department. Aside from the National Government, the mayors of the
provincial capitals of Ambato and Esmeraldas are Revolutionary Socialists.
The Cuban Mission
The Cuban Embassy consists of the Ambassador and four officials. The
station lacks concrete information on support by the Cuban Embassy to
Ecuadorean revolutionary organisations, but their overt contacts with
extreme leftists leave little doubt. Araujo is their angel in the government
and of course they are supported by leftists throughout the country. While
the station is making efforts to penetrate the Embassy – and the Guayaquil
base is doing the same against the one-man Cuban Consulate – the main
CIA drive is to promote a break in diplomatic relations through propaganda
and political-action operations.
The Czech Mission
Ecuador broke diplomatic relations with Czechoslovakia in 1957 but during
his last week in the presidency, Ponce received the Czech Minister to Brazil
and relations were again established. The station expects that within a few
weeks or a little longer the Czechs will try to establish a diplomatic mission
in Quito which undoubtedly will include intelligence officers.
Operations of the Quito station and the Guayaquil base are directed against
these targets and are laid down in the Related Missions Directive (RMD)
for Ecuador, which is a general statement of priorities and objectives.
PRIORITY A
Collect and report intelligence on the strength and intentions of communist
and other political organisations hostile to the US, including their
international sources of support and guidance and their influence in the
Ecuadorean government.
Objective 1: Effect agent and/or technical penetrations at the highest
possible level of the Communist Party of Ecuador (PCE), the Socialist Party
of Ecuador (PSE-revolutionary), the Communist Youth of Ecuador (JCE),
the Revolutionary Union of Ecuadorean Youth (URJE) and related
organisations.
Objective 2: Effect agent and/or technical penetration of the Cuban
missions in Ecuador.
PRIORITY B
Collect and report intelligence on the stability of the Ecuadorean
government and on the strength and intentions of dissident political groups.
Objective 1: Maintain agents and other sources at the highest levels of the
government, the security services and the ruling political organisation.
Objective 2: Maintain agents and other sources in opposition political
parties, especially among military leaders favourable to opposition parties.
PRIORITY C
Through propaganda and psychological warfare operations: (1) disseminate
information and opinion designed to counteract anti-US or pro-communist
propaganda; (2) neutralise communist or extreme-leftist influence in
principal mass organisations or assist in establishing or maintaining
alternative organisations under non-communist leadership.
Objective 1: Place appropriate propaganda in the most effective local
media.
Objective 2: Support democratic leaders of political, labour, student and
youth organisations, particularly in areas where communist influence is
strongest (Ecuadorean Federation of University Students (FEUE);
Ecuadorean Workers Confederation (CTE)), and where democratic leaders
may be encouraged to combat communist subversion.
That is a sizeable order for such a small station and base – although the CIA
budget for Ecuador is a little over 500,000 dollars for this fiscal year. The
Quito station consists of the Chief, James B. Noland; Deputy Chief (this job
is vacant and will not be filled until early next year); one operations officer
which is the job I'm being sent to; a reports officer, John Bacon, who also
handles several of the most important operations; a communications officer;
an administrative assistant (she handles the money and property and
doubles as Noland's secretary); and a secretary-typist. The entire station is
under cover in the political section of the Embassy with the exception of
Bob Weatherwax, the operations officer under Public Safety cover in
USOM.
The Guayaquil base forms the entire small political section of the
Consulate, consisting of a base chief, Richard Wheeler, (my predecessor in
Quito); one operations officer; an administrative assistant who also handles
communications; and a secretary-typist.
The general directives of the RMD are put into practice through a number
of operations, making use of agents we have recruited, and which are
summarised now in some detail, first so far as the main station at Quito is
concerned, then for the Guayaquil base.
Quito Foreign Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence Operations (FI-CI)
ECSIGIL. This is our most important penetration operation against the
Communist Party of Ecuador and consists of two agents who are members
of the PCE and close associates of Rafael Echeverria Flores, principal PCE
leader in the sierra. The agents are Mario Cardenas, whose cryptonym is
ECSIGIL-1, and Luis Vargas, who is ECSIGIL-2. They have been reporting
for about four years since their recruitment as 'walk-ins' after their
disillusionment with the PCE. Although the agents are close friends and
originally came to the station together, they have since been discouraged
from associating too closely, so that if one is ever blown, the other will not
be contaminated. The separation is also designed to prevent their
collaborating over what they report.
Cardenas is directed through a cutout, Mario Cabeza de Vaca a Quito milk
producer who became a US citizen through military service in World War II
but returned to Ecuador afterwards. He is married to an American who runs
the food and liquor commissary of the US Embassy. Vargas is directed
through another cutout, Miguel Burbano de Lara, who is the Quito airport
manager of Pan American-Grace Airways. The cutouts are not supposed to
know each other's identity, although each knows that Vargas and Cardenas
are reporting, and they meet separately with the station Reports Officer,
John Bacon, who handles this operation.
Although neither of these agents holds important PCE elective positions,
they are extremely close to Echeverria and the decision-making process in
Quito. They receive information on practically all matters of importance,
and the ECSIGIL project accounts for an average of about five or six
disseminated intelligence reports in Washington each week.
ECFONE. This operation consists of an agent penetration of the PCE and
his cutout who also reports on the policy and plans of the Velasco
government. The recruitment of the PCE agent, Atahualpa Basantes Larrea,
ECFONE-3, is one of the more interesting recent station accomplishments.
Early in 1960 when the leaders of Velasco's political movement began to
organise for Velasco's return from Buenos Aires and the presidential
campaign, Oswaldo Chiriboga, ECFONE, was a Velasquista leader
reporting to the station on Velasco's political campaign. Chiriboga advised
one day that he had recently seen his old friend, Basantes, who had been
active in Ecuadorean communism but had drifted away and was now in dire
financial straits. Noland, the COS, directed Chiriboga to suggest to Basantes
that he become more active in the PCE and at the same time become an
adviser to Chiriboga on PCE reaction to the Velasco campaign. Care was
taken from the beginning to establish a secure, discreet relationship between
Chiriboga and Basantes, and Noland provided Chiriboga with modest sums
for Basantes's 'expenses' as adviser – the classic technique for establishing a
developmental agent's dependence on a station salary. Basantes had no
trouble expanding his activities in the PCE and soon he was reporting
valuable information. Chiriboga, of course, moved carefully from
innocuous matters to more sensitive information while easing Basantes into
an agent's dependency. Although the original rational for Basantes's
reporting ended with the elections in June, Chiriboga has since been able to
convince Basantes of the continuing need for his 'advice'.
ECOLIVE. An agent penetration of the Revolutionary Union of
Ecuadorean Youth (URJE), ECOLIVE-l, is a recent walk-in who is
considered to have long-range potential for penetrating the PCE or other
revolutionary organisations into which he may later be guided. For the
moment he is reporting on the activities and plans of URJE for street
demonstrations in support of Velasco's attempt to nullify the Rio Protocol.
ECCENTRIC. This agent is a physician, Dr. Felipe Ovalle, with a history
of collaboration with the US government that goes back to FBI days during
World War II. Although he is a Colombian he has lived in Ecuador for
many years where he has a modest medical practice, most of which comes
from his inclusion on the US Embassy list of approved medical examiners
for Ecuadorean applicants for visas. Ovalle's 201 agent file reveals that
verification of his medical degree, supposedly obtained at a Colombian
university, has proved impossible. Through the years he has developed a
close relationship with President Velasco, whom he now serves as personal
physician. Ovalle reports the results of his weekly meetings with Velasco to
the station. Occasionally the information from this operation is interesting
enough to disseminate in Washington, but usually the information is inferior
to that of other agents.
ECAMOROUS. The main station activity in security preparations for the
Inter-American Conference is the training and equipping of the intelligence
department of the Ecuadorean National Police. The intelligence department
is called the Department of Special Services of the National Police
Headquarters, and its chief is Police Captain Jose Vargas, ECAMOROUS-2,
who has been given special training here and in headquarters. Weatherwax,
our case officer under Public Safety cover, works almost exclusively with
Vargas, who has been in trouble recently for being the leader of a secret
society of pro-Velasco young police officers. Secret societies in the police,
as in the military, are forbidden.
In spite of all our efforts, Vargas seems incapable of doing very much to
help us, but he has managed to develop three or four marginal reporting
agents on extreme leftist activities in his home town of Riobamba, a sierra
provincial capital, and in Esmeraldas, a coastal provincial capital. Reports
from these sources come directly to Vargas, and from him to the station,
because there is little interest in this type of information further up the line
in the Ecuadorean government. On the contrary, with Araujo as the minister
in charge of the National Police, intelligence collection by a police officer is
a risky activity.
Intelligence needs during the Inter-American Conference will have to be
satisfied largely by the station directly through unilateral operations but
before information of this kind is passed to Vargas it will have to be
disguised to protect the source. Although strictly speaking ECAMOROUS
is a liaison operation, the police intelligence unit is completely run by the
station. Vargas is paid a salary by Noland with additional money for his
sub-agents and expenses. Some technical equipment such as photo gear and
non-sensitive audio equipment has been given to Vargas by the station, and
we have trained his chief technician, Lieutenant Luis Sandoval.
Vargas is young and rather reckless but very friendly, well-disposed and
intelligent. Although he is considered to be excellent as a long-term
penetration of the National Police, he could be worked into other operations
in the future. His first loyalty is undoubtedly to the station, and when asked
he is glad to use his police position as cover for action requested by the
station.
ECOLE. This is the station's main penetration operation against the
Ecuadorean National Police other than the intelligence side, and it also
produces information about the Ecuadorean Workers Confederation (CTE).
The principal agent, Colonel Wilfredo Oswaldo Lugo, ECOLE, has been
working with the US government since hunting Nazis with the FBI during
World War II. Since 1947 he has been working with the Quito station, and
in the police shuffle and purge during Velasco's first weeks in office, Lugo
was appointed Chief of the Department of Personnel of the National Police
Headquarters.
In contrast with the fairly open contact between Noland and Weatherwax
and Captain Vargas, the intelligence chief, contact between Noland and
Lugo is very discreet. The agent is considered to be a penetration of the
security service and in times of crisis his reporting is invaluable, since he is
in a position to give situation reports on government plans and reactions to
events as reflected in orders to police and military units.
Over the years Colonel Lugo has developed several agents who report on
communist and related activities. Two of these agents are currently active
and are targeted against the CTE. Their reporting is far inferior to PCE
penetration agents such as Cardenas, Luis Vargas and Basantes, but they are
kept on the payroll as insurance in case anything ever happens to the better
agents. Noland also pays a regular monthly salary to Colonel Lugo.
ECJACK. About two years ago the Army established the Ecuadorean
Military Intelligence Service (SIME) under Lieutenant-Colonel Roger
Paredes, ECJACK, who then made contact with Noland. Paredes had been
trained by the US Army at Fort Leavenworth some years earlier. In 1959,
however, discouraged by the lack of support from his government for
SIME, Paredes suggested to Noland that he might be more effective if he
retired from the Army and worked full time with the station. At this point
SIME was only a paper organisation, and even today is still useless.
Paredes's suggestion to Noland came just at the time the station
investigations and surveillance team was discovered to be falsifying reports
and expenses. The old ECSERUM team was fired and Paredes retired from
the Army to form a new team. He now runs a five-man full-time team for
surveillance and general investigations in Quito and, in addition, he has two
reporting agents in the important southern sierra town of Loja. These two
agents are on the fringes of communist activities there.
Station direction of this operation is entirely through Lieutenant-Colonel
Paredes, who uses the SIME organisation as cover and as ostensible sponsor
for the other agents in the operation. Another sub-agent is the chief of the
identity card section of the Ministry of Government. As all citizens are
required to register and obtain an official government-issued identity card,
this agent provides on request the full name, date and place of birth, names
of parents, occupation, address and photograph of practically any
Ecuadorean. His main value is to provide this data for the station LYNX
List, which is a list of about 100 communists and other activists of the
extreme left whom the station considers the most dangerous. The LYNX
List is a requirement for all Western Hemisphere stations, to be maintained
in case a local government in time of crisis should ask (or be asked by the
US government) for assistance in the emergency preventive detention of
dangerous persons. The ECJACK team spends part of its time updating
addresses and place of employment of current LYNX List members and in
getting the required information on new additions.
The team is also used for following officers of the Cuban Embassy or for
following and identifying persons who visit the Embassy. Their surveillance
work is recognised by the station as clumsy and indiscreet, but plans call for
additional training, vehicles (they have no team transportation) and perhaps
radio equipment. Paredes, of course, maintains close contact with military
officers in SIME so that the station can monitor that service and confirm the
reporting from the US Army Major who is the Military Assistance Advisory
Group (MAAG) intelligence advisor.
ECSTACY. In the central Quito post office, ECSTACY-1 is the chief of the
incoming airmail pouch section. As pouches arrive from Cuba, the Soviet
bloc and Communist China, he sets them aside for his brother, ECSTACY-
2, who passes them to the station. John Bacon, the station reports officer,
processes the letters and returns them the same day for reinsertion in the
mails. Payment is made on a piecework basis. Processing requires
surreptitious opening, reading, photography of letters of interest, and
closing. Each week Bacon reports by dispatch the gist of the letters of main
interest, with copies to headquarters and other interested stations.
As most of the letters are from Ecuadoreans who are visiting the countries
from which the letters are mailed, this postal intercept operation enables the
station to monitor travellers to communist countries and their potential
danger when they return. The letters also reveal leads to possible
recruitment of Ecuadoreans who have been invited to visit communist
countries, as well as those selected for scholarships to schools such as
Moscow's People's Friendship University. Still other letters are from
residents of the country where the letter originates, who are writing to
Ecuadoreans who have visited that country. Attention is paid to possible
political disaffection of the writers, for recruitment as agents in the country
where the letter originates.
Since the letter intake amounts to about thirty to forty letters per day, the
ECSTACY operation is time-consuming for the station officer in charge.
Nevertheless it is a valuable support operation and of considerable interest
to the Cuban, Soviet, Eastern Europe and Communist Chinese branches in
the DDP in headquarters.
ECOTTER. Travel control is another standard support function enabling
the station to monitor the movements of communists, politicians and other
people of interest on the flights between Quito and other cities and on the
international flights. ECOTTER-1, an employee of the civil aviation office
at the Quito airport, passes copies of all passenger lists to ECOTTER-2,
who brings them to the station in the Embassy. The passenger lists, which
arrive in the station only one day after the flights, are circulated for perusal
by each station officer and returned when the new batch is delivered.
ECOTTER-1 has arranged with airport immigration inspectors to note on
the lists whenever a traveller's passport indicates travel to a communist
country or to Cuba, and this information is reported to headquarters and
indexed for station files. Any travel by people of importance, mainly local
communists or communist diplomats, is reported to headquarters and
appropriate stations and bases where the passenger list indicates they are
travelling.
ECTOSOME. The principal station agent for intelligence against the
Czechs is Otto Kladensky, the Oldsmobile dealer in Quito. His reporting
has diminished since the Czechs were expelled three years ago, but now
that relations have been reestablished he will undoubtedly be in close
contact with Czech officials when they open a Quito Embassy. For the time
being he reports on the occasional visits of Czech trade officials, and he
provides the link to a high-level penetration of the Velasquista movement,
ECOXBOW-1.
ECOXBOW. Before this year's political campaign, Noland began
cultivating a retired Army lieutenant-colonel, Reinaldo Varea Donoso,
ECOXBOW-1, whom he met through Kladensky. Recruitment of Varea, an
important leader of Velasquistas in military circles proceeded with the
assistance of Kladensky. Funds were provided by Noland via Kladensky for
Varea's successful campaign for the Senate, and in August he was elected
Vice President of the Senate. He reports on military support for Velasco and
he maintains regular contact with the leadership in the Ministry of Defence
and the principal military units.
Varea's station salary of 700 dollars per month is high by Ecuadorean
standards but his access to crucial intelligence on government policy and
stability is adequate justification. The project also provides funds for a room
rented full-time in Kladensky's name in the new, luxurious Hotel Quito
(built for the Inter-American Conference) where Kladensky and Varea take
their playmates. Noland occasionally meets Varea in the hotel, but he is
trying to keep the relation with Varea as discreet as possible by channelling
contact through Kladensky.
AMBLOOD. Early this year the Miami Operations base, cryptonym
JMWAVE, was established to support operations against the Castro regime
in Cuba. The Havana station is preparing to continue operations from
Miami when relations with Cuba are broken and the Embassy in Havana is
closed. As part of the Cuban operation stay-behind procedures, the Quito
station was asked to provide accommodation addresses for communicating
with agents in Cuba by secret writing. Lieutenant-Colonel Paredes, the
chief of the surveillance and investigative team, rented several post-boxes
which have been assigned to Cuban agents who -are part of a team located
in Santiago, Cuba. The chief of the team is Luis Toroella, AMBLOOD-1, a
former Cuban government employee who has been trained in the US and is
now being sent back to Cuba to head the AMBLOOD team.
The messages to Cuba are written in secret writing (SW) in Miami and
forwarded by pouch to the Quito station where a cover letter is written by
Francine Jacome, ECDOXY, who is an American married to an Ecuadorean
and who performs occasional support tasks for the station. The messages
from Cuba to Quito are also written in a liquid SW system and are retrieved
from the post-boxes by Paredes, passed to the station, and forwarded to the
JMWAVE base in Miami.
Quito Psychological and Paramilitary Operations (PP)
ECURGE. The major station agent for placing propaganda is Gustavo
Salgado, an ex-communist considered by many to be the outstanding liberal
political journalist in the country. His column appears several times per
week in El Comercio, the main Quito daily, and in several provincial
newspapers. Salgado also writes under pseudonyms for wider publication.
Proper treatment of Ecuadorean and international themes is worked out in
the station by John Bacon, who is in charge of this operation too, and
passed to the agent for final draft. Headquarters guidance on propaganda
subjects is also passed over in considerable volume and, on request from
other stations, Salgado can comment on events in other countries to be later
replayed there.
Salgado is also extremely useful for publishing intelligence received from
agent penetrations of the PCE and like-minded groups, and for exposing
communist backing for disruptive activities. The agent is paid on a
production basis.
ECELDER. Fly-sheets and handbills are a major propaganda medium in
Ecuador and the ECELDER operation is a secret means for printing these
kinds of throwaway notice. Five brothers, most of whom have other
employment, divide the work of operating a small family printing business.
The family name is Rivadeneira and the brothers are Marcelo, Jorge,
Patricio, Rodrigo, and Ramiro. The brothers are well known in local
basketball circles and have been the mainstays of the principal Catholic
preparatory-school team, La Salle, in its traditional rivalry with the
principal lay preparatory school, Mejia. Noland, who is also active in
basketball circles, handles the contact with whichever brother is running the
printing plant at a particular moment.
The text of the fly-sheets is usually written in the station by John Bacon and
passed to Gustavo Salgado for final draft. After printing they are given to a
secret distribution team. The ECELDER printing plant is a legitimate
operation with regular commercial orders. For the station handbills,
fictitious print-shop symbols are often used because Ecuadorean law
requires all printed material to carry the print-shop symbol. The shop also
has symbols for the print shop used by the communists and related groups,
for use when a station-written handbill is attributed to them.
ECJOB. A team of Catholic university students directed by ECJOB-1 is
used to distribute the station handbills printed at the ECELDER shop.
Because the handbills have false print-shop symbols and the team
distributes without official permits, techniques for fast, efficient distribution
are necessary. Usually several trucks are rented and as they move swiftly
along the crowded Quito streets the handbills are hurled into the air. Several
times team members have been arrested but ECJOB-1 has been able to buy
their freedom without difficulty. None of the team except the leader himself
knows about US Embassy sponsorship of the operation.
The team is also used for wall-painting, another major propaganda medium
in Ecuador. Usually the team works in the early hours of the morning,
painting slogans on instruction by the station or painting out and mutilating
the slogans painted by communist or pro-communist groups. Extreme
caution is taken by the team in order to avoid street clashes with the
opposition wall-painters who sometimes roam the streets searching for the
anti-communists who spoil their work. John Bacon is also in charge of this
operation.
ECACTOR. The most important station operation for anticommunist
political action consists of funding and guidance to selected leaders of the
Conservative Party and the Social Christian Movement. The operation
developed from the most important station penetration agent of the Ponce
government, Renato Perez Drouet, who was Secretary-General of the
Administration under Ponce and has since returned to manage his Quito
travel agency. Through Perez, the station now finances the anti-communist
propaganda and political action of the Social Christian Movement, of which
Perez is a leader.
Before the 1960 election campaign Perez proposed to Noland the support of
a young engineer, Aurelio Davila Cajas, ECACTOR-1, whom Noland
began to cultivate. Davila intensified his activities in the Conservative Party
and with station financing he was elected in June to the Chamber of
Deputies, representing the distant and sparsely populated Amazonian
province of Napo. Davila is now the fastest rising young leader in the
Conservative Party and very closely associated with the Catholic Church
hierarchy which the party represents in politics. He is an outspoken and
militant anti-communist and is considered by Noland, moreover, to have an
enlightened stance on social reform. The station is now helping him to build
up his personal political organisation, which is branching out into student
politics at the Catholic university. Normal communications between Noland
and Davila, and the passage of funds, is through Renato Perez. In
emergencies, however, messages and money are passed via Barbara Svegle,
the station secretary-typist, who rents an apartment in Davila's apartment-
building where the agent also lives.
Also through Renato Perez, Noland cultivated and eventually recruited
Rafael Arizaga, ECACTOR-2, who is the principal leader of the
Conservative Party in Cuenca, Ecuador's third largest city. Through this
agent Noland financed Conservative Party-candidates in Cuenca including
the agent's son, Carlos Arizaga Vega, ECACTOR-3, who was elected to the
provincial council of Azuay – the province of which Cuenca is capital.
Communications with this branch of the ECACTOR operation are difficult,
but usually Noland travels to Cuenca for meetings although the principal
agent may go to Quito. Funds channelled through this project are now being
spent on anti-communist propaganda, student politics at the University of
Cuenca, and local militant street-action by Conservative Party youth
groups.
Another agent has recently been added in order to fulfil the project's goals
in Ecuador's fourth largest city, Ambato, another sierra provincial capital.
The agent is Jorge Gortaire, ECACTOR-4, a retired Army colonel who has
recently returned from service on the Inter-American Defence Board in
Washington. Gortaire is on the list of pro-Ponce military officers now being
purged. In 1956 he was elected as functional Senator for the Armed Forces,
but he served only part of his term before being assigned by Ponce to the
Inter-American Defence Board. In Washington he was cultivated by a CIA
headquarters officer assigned to spot and assess potential agent material in
the delegations to the Defence Board, and reports on Gortaire were
forwarded to the Quito station. Noland has initiated contact with Gortaire
and the Ecuadorean desk is processing clearance for use of this agent in
anticommunist political action and propaganda in Ambato. Special
importance is attached to this new agent because the mayor of Ambato is a
Revolutionary Socialist and is using the municipal government machinery
to promote infiltration by the extreme left there. Gortaire has excellent
potential because he would be a likely candidate for Minister of Defence if
Ponce is re-elected in the next elections. Meanwhile he will also be
reporting on any rumours and reports of discontent in the military
commands.
ECOPTIC. The socialists, it will be remembered, have split into two rival
groups: the Democratic Socialist Party of Ecuador (PSE) and the
Revolutionary Socialist Party (PSR). Through his work in the University
Sport League which sponsors one of the best Ecuadorean professional
soccer teams, Noland met, cultivated and finally recruited Manuel Naranjo,
ECOPTIC-1, a principal leader of the PSE. With financial support from
Noland, Naranjo, an outstanding economist, was elected to the Chamber of
Deputies in June, representing Pichincha (Quito) Province. Financial
assistance is continuing so that this agent, like the others, can build up a
personal political organisation and influence his party to take desired action
on issues such as communism and Castro, while fighting the PSR.
ECBLOOM. Labour operations are perhaps the weakest part of the Quito
station operational programme, although considerable potential exists in
political-action agents such as Aurelio Davila and Manuel Naranjo.
However, because of Velasco's appeal to the working class and the poor,
Noland has continued to support a long-time agent in the Velasquista
movement, Jose Baquero de la Calle. Baquero has presidential ambitions
and is the leader of the rightist wing of the Velasquista movement, closely
identified with the Catholic Church hierarchy. He is now Velasco's Minister
of Labour and Social Welfare, and Noland hopes that non-communist
labour organisations can be strengthened through his aid. His close
identification with the Church, however, is restricting his potential for
labour operations to the Church-controlled Catholic Labour Center
(CEDOC) which is a small, artisan-oriented organisation. Noland pays
Baquero a salary and expense money for his own political organisation and
for intelligence on the government and Velasquista politics.
ECORT. Student operations are run for the most part from the Guayaquil
base. However, the Quito station finances and directs the most important
Ecuadorean anti-communist student newspaper, Voz Universitaria. The
agent in this operation is Wilson Almeida, ECORT-1, who is the editor of
the newspaper. Almeida gives the publication a liberal orientation because
the Catholic student movement is supported through Renato Perez, of the
Social Christian Movement and Aurelio Davila of the Conservative Party.
Propaganda against the Cuban Revolution and against communist
penetration in the HUE (University Students' Federation) is the main
function of the ECORT newspaper.
The following are the main operations of the Guayaquil base:
FI-CI Operations
ECHINOCARUS. There are already increasing signs of a policy split in
the Communist Party of Ecuador (PCE) over the problem of revolutionary
violence v. the peaceful road to socialism. The PCE leadership grouped
around Pedro Saad, the Secretary General, generally favour the long
struggle of preparing the masses, while the sierra leaders grouped around
Rafael Echeverria Flores, leader of the Pichincha Provincial Committee,
tend towards early initiation of guerrilla action and terrorism. Thus the
communists themselves are beginning to split along sierra-coast lines, and
the Guayaquil base is charged with monitoring the Saad group.
The best of several base penetration agents is ECHINOCARUS-1 whose
access is superior to cell-level, but far from the secrets of Saad's Executive
Committee. The Guayaquil base is hoping to snare a really first-class
penetration agent, or mount a productive technical penetration, on the basis
of a new targeting study now underway.
ECLAT. The counterpart to the ECJACK surveillance and investigative
team in Quito is the ECLAT operation in Guayaquil. This is a team of five
agents who have access to government identification and police files. The
team is directed by an ex-Army officer who also reports information picked
up among his former colleagues in the coastal military garrisons. As in
Quito, the investigative team in Guayaquil keeps the LYNX contingency list
current for quick action against the most important-activists of the extreme
left.
ECAXLE. The main political intelligence collected by the base is through
Al Reed, an American who has spent a large part of his life in Guayaquil.
He inherited a family business there, which has been doing rather badly, but
he manages to keep close relations going with a variety of business,
professional and political leaders.
Guayaquil PP Operations
ECCALICO. What the base lacks in intelligence collection is made up in
labour and student operations. ECCALICO is the labour operation through
which the base formed an organisation to defeat Pedro Saad in the coast
election of a Functional Senator for Labour earlier this year. The same
organisation forms the nucleus for a new coastal labour confederation that
will soon be launched.
The principal agent in the operation is Emilio Estrada Icaza, the general
manager of one of the country's largest banks. The main sub-agents are
Adalberto Miranda Giron, a leader of the Guayas Provincial Federation of
Employees (white-collar workers) and the base candidate who defeated
Saad; Victor Contreras Zuniga, anti-communist Guayaquil labour leader;
and Enrique Amador Marquez, also an anti-communist labour leader.
Through Estrada the base financed Miranda's electoral campaign, which
mainly consisted of the forming and registering of new, anti-communist
unions in the coastal provinces, mostly in Guayas (Guayaquil). The election
was based on a point system weighted according to the numbers of workers
in the unions recognised by the electoral court. Although the new unions
registered through the operation were really only company social clubs, for
the most part, and were generally encouraged by management as a result of
the prestigious but discreet support from Estrada, the protests from the CTE
and other communist-influenced labour groups were disallowed by the
electoral court. On the contrary, just before the election the electoral court
disqualified some fifteen pro-Saad unions following protests from the
ECCALICO agents. The balance swung in favour of Miranda, and he was
elected. Blair Moffet, the Guayaquil Base Chief, received a commendation
from headquarters on this operation, which eliminated the PCE Secretary-
General from a Senate seat he had held since the 1940s.
The base plan now is to follow through with the formation of a new coastal
labour confederation using the same unions, agents and cover as in the
election. The CIA labour programmes and the ORIT labour representative
will also be used, as they were in the electoral campaign, although they are
not in direct contact with the base. The long-range strategy in labour
operations, obviously, is to weaken the communist and revolutionary
socialist-dominated CTE while establishing and strengthening the station
and base-controlled democratic union structure.
ECLOSE. Student election operations for control of the Ecuadorean
Federation of University Students (FEUE) are run by the Guayaquil base
through Alberto Alarcon, ECLOSE, who is a businessman active in the
Liberal Party. At different times each year, the five Ecuadorean universities
elect new FEUE officers. An annual convention is also held when the
national seat of FEUE goes in rotation from one university to another.
Alarcon manages teams of agents at these electoral conventions, who are
armed with anti-communist propaganda and ample funds for purchasing
votes and other activities designed to swing the elections away from the
communist and pro-communist candidates. Through this operation national
control of the FEUE has been kept out of communist hands for several
years, although communist influence is still very strong nationally and at
several of the local FEUE chapters. Nevertheless, efforts to have the FEUE
pull out of the communist International Union of Students in Prague, and to
affiliate with the CIA-controlled COSEC in Leyden, have been
unsuccessful.
Washington DC November 1960
Tension and crisis prevail in the most important breakthrough in operations
against the Cubans in Quito. In October the Cuban Embassy chauffeur, a
communist, offered his services to the Embassy through an intermediary
and was immediately picked up by the station. His motivation is entirely
mercenary but his reporting so far has been accurate. His access is limited,
of course, but he will be an extremely valuable source for information about
the Cuban diplomats which we can use in trying to recruit some of them.
The problem is that the agent, ECALIBY-1, missed a meeting several weeks
ago and has also failed to appear for later alternative meetings. Blair
Moffet, the former Guayaquil Base Chief who has gone temporarily to
Quito until I arrive, is handling the case and has even checked at the agent's
home. Nobody there knew anything of his recent movements. Moffet is
afraid the chauffeur is in some kind of trouble because the ECJACK
surveillance team has reported that he hasn't been showing up at the
Embassy. For the time being Moffet will continue to work the alternative
meeting-sites with extreme caution against a possible Cuban provocation.
The station's campaign to promote a break in diplomatic relations between
Ecuador and Cuba is stalled because Manuel Araujo, the Minister of
Government and an admirer of the Cuban revolution, is the principal leader
of Velasco's programme to denigrate the Ponce administration and to purge
the government of Ponce's supporters. Araujo's campaign has been fairly
effective, at least enough to keep our Conservative and Social Christian
political-action agents, on whom we must rely for increasing pressure for
the diplomatic break, on the defensive. Araujo has also been effective in his
public campaign to equate support to the government with patriotism
because of increasing tension over the Rio Protocol and the Peruvian
boundary issue.
Last month, for example, Araujo accused the Conservative Youth
Organisation, through which Aurelio Davila carries out station political-
action programmes, of treason because it called on the Conservative Party
to declare formal opposition to Velasco. Araujo was then called to the
Chamber of Deputies by Conservatives to answer charges that he had
violated the Constitution with his remarks about treason. The session lasted
from 10 p.m. until 5 a.m. the next morning. Araujo, cheered on by the
screaming Velasquista galleries which shouted down the Social Christians
and Conservatives, turned the session into another denunciation of
corruption in the Ponce administration. He even accused the forty-eight
purged military officers of treason. Because of the deafening roar from the
galleries' wild cheering for Araujo, the Conservative, Social Christian,
Liberal and Socialist deputies who had planned to question him were forced
to leave the session. Araujo's new accusation of treason caused a big ripple
in the military services, and the Minister of Defence and Velasco himself
followed with denials that any of the officers were guilty of treason.
Since those events of early October the Velasquistas have continued to
equate patriotism on the Peruvian question with support for the government.
Thousands turned out on 18 October in Guayaquil for a street
demonstration to support Velasco and Araujo, and a similar mass
demonstration was held in Quito the following day. On 20 October, the
FEUE sponsored what was described as the most massive demonstration in
the history of Quito. Students, government workers and people from all
walks of life joined in the march and rally at a Quito soccer stadium where
Velasco and others denounced the Rio Protocol. Early in November, Araujo
was called again before the Congress to answer questions. He made the trip
from his Ministry to the Legislative Palace riding a decrepit old horse that
he claimed had been sold by Ponce's Minister of the Interior (a Social
Christian and close station collaborator) to the National Police for 30,000
sucres – about 2,500 dollars. He said the former Minister had made his
brother appear as the seller and that the useless nag ought to be embalmed
and placed in a museum as a monument to the Ponce Administration.
During the ride from the Ministry to the Congress Araujo picked up a large
crowd of followers – the spectacle of this physically deformed man less
than five feet tall with a Van Dyke beard ridiculing the Poncista elite was
just the sort of conduct that makes him so popular with the poor masses.
The Velasquistas again packed the galleries to cheer Araujo wildly during
his interpellation while shouting down any attempts by Conservatives or
Social Christian legislators to criticise him. Later the same day a group of
Velasquistas attacked a demonstration by a Conservative student group, and
the police – controlled by Araujo as Minister of Government – first attacked
the students and later persuaded the Velasquista mob to disperse.
The day after the 'horse parade' Araujo nearly uncovered our ECJOB
propaganda distribution team. Four of the team were distributing a fly-sheet
against communism and Castro when by chance they were seen by Araujo
himself. Araujo personally made the arrests, and our agents were charged
with distributing flysheets without a print-shop symbol – the ECELDER
print shop had erred in failing to use one of its fictitious symbols that take
longer to trace. The distribution team leader couldn't buy their release this
time so Noland had to get Aurelio Davila to use his Congressional leverage
to get them out. The station started a campaign to get Araujo thrown out,
but it is progressing slowly. Through Davila a fly-sheet was circulated
calling Araujo a communist because of his support for the Cuban
revolution, but Velasquista agents like Baquero, the Minister of Labour, and
Reinaldo Varea, Vice-President of the Senate, haven't been able to shake
President Velasco's confidence in Araujo. The campaign is difficult because
it's bound together with the political battle of Velasco against the
Conservatives and Social Christians – almost negating the effectiveness of
our Velasquista agents against Araujo. Care is being taken, in the campaign
through the rightist political agents like Davila, to focus on identifying
Araujo with communism and to avoid criticising Velasco himself.
Our forces came off second best just a few days ago, however, when the
Social Christians sponsored a wreath-laying ceremony in commemoration
of the death of a student killed during Velasco's previous administration
when police invaded a school to throw out strikers. During the days before
the ceremony, which was planned to include a silent march, Araujo's sub-
secretary denounced the ceremony as a provocation designed to cause a
clash between Catholic students and the government. When the march
arrived at the Independence Plaza in front of the Presidential Palace, groups
of Velasquistas attacked with clubs and rocks. The marchers were forced
out of the Plaza, and their floral offering left at the Independence
Monument was destroyed. The Velasquista mob, now in control of the
Plaza, cheered Velasco wildly when he returned to the Palace after a speech
in another part of town. Numerous clashes followed during the afternoon
and evening as the Velasquista mobs roamed the streets attacking the
remnants of the Social Christian march which was also repressed by police
cavalry. The government, however, clearly prefers to use its political
supporters rather than the police to suppress opposition demonstrations, and
the same tactics used in the Congress are now proving their worth in the
streets.
As if all this weren't bad enough, Araujo just expelled one of our labour
agents: John Snyder, the Inter-American Representative of the Post,
Telegraph and Telephone Workers International (PTTI) who for two years
has been organising Ecuadorean communications workers. Araujo accused
him of planning a strike to occur just before the Inter-American Conference,
but the real reason was a CTE request for Snyder's expulsion because he
was so effective. Jose Baquero de la Calle, our Minister of Labour, could do
nothing to help – he just doesn't carry the weight with Velasco that Araujo
carries. The campaign against Araujo has been hampered by the crisis
atmosphere over the boundary problem with Peru. In September Velasco
sent his Foreign Minister to the UN General Assembly where he repeated
the denunciation of the Rio Protocol because it was signed while Peruvian
troops still occupied parts of Ecuador. The Minister added that Ecuador
would raise the issue at the Inter-American Conference. Peru countered by
calling for a meeting of the Guarantor Powers and threatening not to attend
the Conference. The Guarantor Powers, including the US delegation, met in
Rio de Janeiro in October but no public statement was issued. However,
State Department documents at the Ecuador desk reveal that the Guarantors
voted to disallow Ecuador's unilateral abrogation of the Protocol, but they
followed with private appeals to both countries for a peaceful settlement. In
early December, nevertheless, a public statement is going to be issued
rejecting Velasco's position. The reaction in Ecuador will be strong – in
Guayaquil in September our Consulate and the Peruvian Consulate were
stoned because of the Rio Protocol.
The station has received isolated reports that Velasco might turn to the
Soviets or Cubans for support when he sees that the boundary issue is going
against him. Moreover, the Minister of Education is suspected of having
opened negotiations for an arms purchase during his recent trip to
Czechoslovakia, although the announced purpose of the trip was for the
purchase of technical equipment for Ecuadorean schools.
In Ecuador the Congressional sessions are set by the Constitution from 10
August until 7 October, but extension for up to thirty days is possible. This
year's Congress voted the extended session, but in the battling between
rightists and Velasquistas there was no significant legislation on any
reforms, particularly agrarian reform, which had been one of the central
promises of the Velasquista campaign. On the other hand repeal of the Civil
Service Career Law set administrative reform back a few years. Worse still,
the Congress in secret session just before going into recess, voted a 50 per
cent increase in its own salaries retroactive to the opening of the session in
August. The new amount is equivalent to 25 dollars per day – by
Ecuadorean standards rather generous considering that two thirds of the
population have a family income of only 10 dollars per month.
During the final two weeks before I was appointed to the Foreign Service I
had to take a special course in labour operations. Although the course was
supposed to be for mid-career labour operations specialists, the WH
Division training officer told me I was needed to fill a quota while he
assured me that I wouldn't have to run labour operations just because the
course is on my record.
Nominally the course was under the Office of Training, but the people who
really run it are from 10/4 (Branch 4, labour, of the International
Organisations Division). The course was dominated by bickering between
the 10 officers and the area division case officers over use of the labour
agents controlled by 10 Division under Cord Meyer. Officers from WH
Division were practically unanimous in condemning ORIT which is the
regional organisation for the Western Hemisphere of the International
Confederation of Free Trade Unions. They said ORIT is hopeless,
discredited and completely ineffective for attracting non-communist labour
organisations in Latin America. Agency leaders (at the apparent urging of
George Meany and Serafino Romualdi) are convinced, however, that ORIT
can be salvaged, and so WH Division must try to help.
Much emphasis was given to the advantages of using agents in the different
International Trade Secretariats in which, in Latin America at least, the
Agency has considerable control. Lloyd Haskins, Executive Secretary of the
International Federation of Petroleum and Chemical Workers, gave us a
lecture on how he can help in organising Latin American workers in the
critical petroleum industry. Also having interesting possibilities for Latin
America is the International Federation of Plantation, Agricultural and
Allied Workers (IFPAAW) which was founded last year to carry on the rural
organising begun several years ago through the ICFTU Special Plantation
Committee which had special success in Malaya. In Latin America we use
this union in a similar way to deny the peasant base of guerrilla movements
through the organisation and support of peasant unions within the larger
area of agrarian reform and development of cooperatives. Overall, the
course emphasised that Agency labour operations must seek to develop
trade unions in underdeveloped countries that will focus on economic issues
and stay away from politics and the ideology of class struggle. This is the
Gompers tradition of American trade-unionism which, when promoted in
poor countries, should raise labour costs and thereby diminish the effect that
imports from low-cost labour areas has on employment in the US.
After the labour course I took the two-week orientation course at the State
Department's Foreign Service Institute. Although the course was generally
boring, and I only took it because of cover requirements, it got me thinking
about the place Agency operations occupy within the larger context of US
foreign policy towards Latin America. There seem to be two main
programmes that the Latin American governments must promote: first,
economic growth through industrialisation; and second, economic, social
and administrative reforms so that gross injustice can be eliminated.
For economic growth they need capital, technology and political stability.
US government programmes are helping with these needs, particularly
since Vice President Nixon's trip two years ago: the Inter-American
Development Bank was founded last year, Export-Import Bank financing is
being increased, the technical assistance programmes of ICA are being
expanded, and now the Social Progress Trust Fund is to be established with
500 million dollars from the US for health, housing, education and similar
projects. From Kennedy's speeches on Latin America, some people
conclude that these programmes will be expanded still more when he
becomes President.
CIA operations are crucial to the economic growth and political stability
programmes, because of the inevitable capital flight and low private
investment whenever communism becomes a threat. The Cuban revolution
has stirred up and encouraged the forces of instability all over the
hemisphere and it's our job to put them down. CIA operations promote
stability through assisting local governments to build up their security
forces – particularly the police but also the military – and by putting down
the extreme left. That, in a nutshell, is what we're doing: building up the
security forces and suppressing, weakening, destroying, the extreme left.
Through these programmes we buy time for friendly governments to effect
the reforms that will eliminate the injustices on which communism thrives.
The Cuban Revolution has swung to the far left, the State Department, and
American businesses, are fearful that Cuba will try to export its revolution
to other countries in the hemisphere, which might result in nationalisation
of holdings. The top priority of the United States in Latin America is to seal
off Cuba from the continent. In Quito, our orders are to do everything
possible to force Ecuador to break diplomatic and economic relations with
Cuba, and also to weaken the Communist Party there, no matter what the
cost.
For weeks Janet and I have been getting shots, for every known disease, I
think, and she's been attending sessions on Foreign Service protocol and on
what's expected of an embassy wife. Bob Weatherwax has been telling us a
lot about housing and the life there. It sounds just too fantastic. He brought
a Christmas shopping list from the Noland family and we're sending all
their gifts down with our air freight. It won't be long now. Today I made my
last stop in the division on final check-out. It was in the Records Branch for
assignment of pseudonym – the secret name that I'll use for the next thirty
years on every piece of internal Agency correspondence: dispatches, cables,
reports, everything I write. It will be the name by which I'll be known in
promotions, fitness reports and other personnel actions. I signed the forms,
acknowledging with my true name that in secret employment with the CIA
I will use the assigned official pseudonym. Then I read the name – how can
I miss with JEREMY S. HODAPP?
Quito, Ecuador 6 December 1960
Finally here. Out plodding DC-7 took over ten hours to get to Quito,
including stops in Panama and Cali, but Janet and I were in the first-class
section thanks to government policy allowing the extra expense for long
flights. Former Ecuadorean President Galo Plaza, the Liberal Party leader
who lost to Velasco this year, was sitting behind us and it would have been
interesting to talk to him, but I was afraid it might seem presumptuous.
The weather was clear and sunny as we approached Quito, and through the
windows of the aircraft we could see snowcapped volcanos and green
valleys that extended up the sides of mountains to what seemed like almost
vertical cultivations. I wonder how they plough at such an angle. Everyone's
heard of the Andes Mountains but actually to see this breathtaking scenery
is almost overwhelming.
At the Quito air terminal, an ultra-modern building just completed for the
Inter-American Conference, we were welcomed by Blair Moffet who gave
us the Embassy orientation folder, mostly pointers on Ecuadorean health
hazards. Then he dropped us at a small hotel in a residential section less
than a block from the Embassy itself. A little while later Noland came to
greet us with a pleasant surprise; he had tickets for us to see the bullfight
this afternoon with his wife and some of their friends.
Today is Quito's most important annual festival: the celebration of the city's
liberation from Spanish rule. The festivities have been going on for some
days with bullfights, parades and livestock shows. I'm not sure I liked the
bullfight. It was exciting all right, and the music and oles were stirring, but
if Paco Camino is really one of the world's best I wonder what second-raters
are like. He practically butchered that bull trying to get him to fall.
Afterwards we went to a party with the Nolands at the home of the family
that controls the movie theatres. Everyone there seemed to be related by
blood or marriage, almost, and among the guests was Jorge Acosta,
Velasco's nephew and one of the station's best friends in the government.
He runs the National Planning Board, not a terribly powerful job, but as
President Velasco's family favourite he is not far from decision-making. Just
recently Acosta advised that Weatherwax, our officer under Public Safety
cover, can now return without danger.
Tension on the political scene has increased, if anything, in the past week.
On 1 December the Quito Municipal Government, which is under Liberal
Party control, began its new sessions. There was serious rioting between
Liberal and Velasquista mobs, and when Araujo's police intervened they
threw their first teargas grenade at the Liberal Mayor.
Tomorrow the Guarantor Powers will release their decision denying
Ecuador's claim that the Rio Protocol is void. Noland doesn't think the
announcement will be taken calmly.
Quito 8 December 1960
They say it takes a while to get used to this 9000-feet-plus altitude. The air
is thin and I seem to be unusually sleepy, but neither of us has had any sign
of the terrible headaches some people get. The nights are cool, and there is
quite a difference between being in the shade and the sunshine, but because
it is so dry here, people wear woollen clothing even on hot days. The nicest
thing about Quito, so far, are the flowers. It seems just like springtime, in
fact, and someone told me that here there are only two seasons, wet and dry,
but flowers all year. As soon as we can we're going to visit the monument
north of town where the equator passes. It's about a half-hour drive and you
can take photographs with one foot in the northern hemisphere and one in
the southern.
Noland says he wants me to take over the operations that Blair Moffet has
been running so that he can return to Washington. But Blair said he can't
return until he finds out what happened to the Cuban Embassy chauffeur.
The announcement on the Rio Protocol was a bitter blow in the face of all
the recent civic demonstrations and new hopes fomented by Velasco since
he took office. A really big demonstration is being organised for tomorrow
at the Independence Plaza.
Quito 9 December 1960
Emotions have overflowed. Today, my fourth day in Quito, I saw my first
mob attacks against a US Embassy. I was late leaving the hotel and the
manager warned me that rioters had already been stoning the Embassy.
When I arrived only a small group was still chanting in front, but I entered
at the rear and saw that many windows were broken during the earlier raids.
Throughout the day the station telephones were ringing as agents called to
report the movements of the URJE-led rioters who returned to attack the
Embassy a number of times. Araujo kept the police away, so the mobs
could operate almost at will. I watched from the station offices on the top
floor. Their favourite chant, as they hurled their stones, was: 'Cuba, Russia,
Ecuador'. The Ecuadorean-North American Cultural Institute which is run
by United States Information Service (USIS) and the Peruvian Embassy
were also attacked, as was our Consulate in Guayaquil.
While the Embassy was being attacked almost all the Quito buses
suspended service and gathered north of town where they began a caravan
into Independence Plaza picking up loads of people along the way. The
Plaza was jammed with thousands when the speeches began, which
included attacks on the Rio Protocol by Velasco and his Foreign Minister.
Araujo, for his part, called for diplomatic relations with the Soviets if that
were necessary for Ecuador to attain justice. The crowd chanted frequent
denunciations of the Guarantor Powers and the OAS. Later the Foreign
Minister announced that two Czech diplomats will be arriving shortly to
open the Czech Legation here.
Quito 14 December 1960
Attacks against the Embassy have continued but they now seem smaller and
more sporadic. Police protection has been improved and there were even
some Army units sent to the Embassy. Araujo was forced to send the police
protection back by cooler heads in the government like Acosta. The riots
spread to other cities, too, where bi-national cultural centres were attacked.
More public demonstrations have been held, the largest of which was
yesterday when a 'March of Justice' brought thousands again to the
Independence Plaza. URJE continues to be the most important force behind
the attacks although the marches and demonstrations are sponsored by a
variety of organisations and are inspired mostly from civic motives. Two
important labour organisations have just been formed but for the time being
only one is ours. In Guayaquil the ECCALICO agents who ran Miranda's
campaign to defeat the PCE General Secretary, Saad, as Functional Senator
for Labour, held a convention on 9-11 December and formed the Regional
Confederation of Ecuadorean Coastal Trade Unions (CROCLE) as a
permanent mechanism to fight the CTE on the coast, mainly in Guayas
Province. Both of the principal-action agents, Victor Contreras and Enrique
Amador are on the Executive Committee, Contreras as President. The ORIT
representative was very helpful, especially in providing unwitting cover for
our agents. The plan now is to affiliate CROCLE with the ORIT-ICFTU
structure in place of the current Ecuadorean affiliate, the small and
ineffective Guayas Workers Confederation (COG) which our Guayaquil
base had been supporting.
In Quito the USOM labour division, whose main work consists of giving
courses in free trade-unionism throughout the country, has taken the first
step towards the formation of a national, noncommunist trade-union
confederation. Under their direction during the first week this month the
Coordinating Committee of Free Trade Unionists of Ecuador was
established. This committee will soon begin establishing provincial
coordinating committees which will develop into provincial federations.
Eventually a national confederation will be established. The station plan is
to let USOM direct these early stages and later, after the new Deputy Chief
of Station arrives, we will probably move in on the formation of the
national confederation. For the moment, getting Miranda in the Senate and
forming CROCLE are as much as we can manage.
Bill Doherty, the Inter-American Representative of the PTTI, and another of
IO Division's international labour agents, arrived a few days ago to pick up
the pieces from John Snyder's expulsion. He's trying to arrange for
continued PTTI support to the communications workers' union, FENETEL,
in organisation, training and housing, but Araujo's hostility hasn't changed.
Noland is reluctant to show our connections with Doherty to Baquero de la
Calle, the Minister of Labour, by insisting on special treatment, but even if
he tried, Baquero probably couldn't outmanoeuvre Araujo.
Guayaquil student operations have also had a big success. The FEUE
National Congress was held in Portoviejo earlier this month, and the
ECLOSE forces under Alberto Alarcon finally attained a long-sought goal.
The Congress adopted a new system for electing officers of the various
FEUE chapters. From now on the elections will be direct, obligatory and
universal as opposed to the old indirect system that gave the communist and
other leftist minorities a distinct advantage. The national seat for the
coming year will be Quito where FEUE leadership is in moderate hands.
I've met Ambassador Bernbaum – he arrived only a few weeks before I did
and this is his first post as Ambassador. He is a career Foreign Service man
and not very colourful. Noland said he knows nothing about our operations,
not even the political-action operations, and doesn't want to. Today the
Ambassador visited Velasco with a message from Kennedy, and he took
advantage of the visit to announce that loans for certain public works and
development projects have been approved in principle by US lending
institutions. The announcement is supposed to assuage anti-US sentiment.
Press reports have alleged that several governments are seeking a
postponement or change of site for the Inter-American Conference, partly
because of the riots, and the Cuban press and radio are suggesting that
Ecuador may follow Cuba in repudiating the Inter-American System.
Quito 15 December 1960
Aurelio Davila, one of the main political-action agents of the ECACTOR
project, won an important and clever victory today. He was behind a mass
demonstration of support to Velasco's policy on the Rio Protocol which
backfired on Araujo. Students from all the Catholic schools and the
Catholic university marched to Independence Plaza where they chanted
slogans against communism. Velasco was on the platform and the Minister
of Defence had begun to speak when a small group of counter-
demonstrators began chanting 'Cuba, Russia, Ecuador', which prompted a
flurry of 'down with communism' from the mass of students.
Araujo, who was also on the speaker's platform, descended to join the
counter-demonstrators. Almost immediately a riot began and Velasco had to
grab the microphone and ask for calm. The speeches continued, including
one by Velasco, but the President was clearly annoyed at Araujo's having
disrupted this huge demonstration of support.
At the instigation of Davila and other Conservative Party leaders the
Cardinal issued a pastoral letter which was released today. The Cardinal,
whose influence is at least equal to that of any politician including Velasco,
warns that religion and the fatherland are in grave and imminent danger
from communism, adding that Ecuador should not move towards Cuba and
Russia in search of support on the boundary issue.
Tonight another demonstration of support for Velasco's Peruvian policy was
held – but it was by a leftist organisation called the Popular Revolutionary
Liberal Party (PLPR) which is an offshoot of the youth wing of the Liberal
Party but with many Velasquista supporters. The speakers included Araujo
and Gonzalo Villalba, a Vice-President of the CTE and one of the leaders of
the Communist Party in Quito. They called for diplomatic and commercial
relations with the Soviets while condemning the US and conservatives.
Quito 16 December 1960
Araujo's out! Late this afternoon it was announced at the Presidential Palace
that Araujo's resignation had been accepted, but we had been receiving
reports all day that Velasco was getting rid of him. We have poured out a
steady stream of propaganda against him for some weeks and his behaviour
at yesterday's demonstration clinched matters. The Foreign Minister, who is
a good friend of the US, has also been working to get Araujo fired, and of
course Araujo's own identification with the extreme left gave him little
room to manoeuvre.
Since Araujo's resignation was announced, street clashes have been
continuous between his supporters, mostly from the URJE, and anti-Araujo
Velasquistas. Right now the downtown area is full of tear-gas but we learn
from several agents that the rioters are finally dispersing.
Quito 22 December 1960
Civic demonstrations on the Peruvian question have continued but they
have lost their anti-US flavour. In fact they have almost been replaced by a
campaign by Catholic groups to show support for the Cardinal in response
to an attack against his pastoral letter on communism, made by the
Revolutionary Socialist Labour Senator. Aurelio Davila is leading the
campaign, funded from the ECACTOR project, which includes letters and
signatures published in the newspapers by Catholic organisations like
CEDOC, the labour confederation, and the National Catholic Action Board,
of which Davila is a Vice-President.
Today the campaign reached a peak with a demonstration by thousands who
marched through the Quito streets in the rain chanting slogans against
Cuba, communism and Russia. The Cardinal himself was the main speaker
and he repeated his warning in the pastoral letter of the imminent danger of
communism. He's almost ninety years old, but he's really effective.
I've taken over my first operations and met my first real-live agents – at last
I'm a genuine clandestine operations officer.
The first operation I took over was ECJACK, the surveillance and general
investigations team run by Lieutenant-Colonel Paredes. Blair took me out to
meet him a couple of days ago, and through him I'm continuing to keep a
watch near the Cuban Embassy for any signs of the missing chauffeur. With
this operation I also took over the secret-writing correspondence with the
agents in Cuba, and I've proposed to headquarters that we could save time if
a trainer were sent to teach me to write and develop the letters. That way we
could cable the messages and save the time required to pouch the SW
letters. In a few days Noland will introduce me to Francine Jacome, who
writes the cover letters.
Blair also turned over the ECFONE operation to me. The principal agent,
Oswaldo Chiriboga, was appointed Ecuadorean Charge d'Affaires to
Holland and The Hague station is going to use him against Soviet and
satellite diplomats. We had to get a new cutout to Basantes, the Communist
Party penetration agent, and Noland chose Velasco's physician, Dr Ovalle,
in order to sustain the cover story used from the beginning on this
operation. Dr Ovalle will advise by telephone when he gets reports from
Basantes, and I'll go to his office to get them. This operation took on even
greater significance in October when Basantes was elected to the Pichincha
Provincial Committee. With the schism growing between the PCE coastal
and sierra leadership this is equivalent to having an agent on the local
executive committee.
The station seems to have turned into a Santa Claus operation these last few
days. At Noland's house all the wives with their servants have been
wrapping bonbons, cartons of cigarettes, boxes of cigars, bottles of
whiskey, cognac, champagne and wine – and dozens of golf-balls. These are
operational Christmas gifts to agents and to 'contacts' – (friends who might
eventually be useful agents).
Most officers in CIA stations are expected to develop personal relationships
with as wide a variety of local leaders as possible, whether in business,
education, professions or politics. State Department cover in WH Division
facilitates the cultivation of these 'contacts' while station funds for
entertainment, club dues, gifts and supplements to the regular housing
allowances give us considerable advantages over our State Department
colleagues. Noland is clearly a great hit with the Ecuadoreans. He seems to
know everyone in town who counts. He's a former college football star and
coach with lots of personal charm and energy. His wife is the national
women's golf champion and an ex-Captain in the WACs. Together they are
the most effective couple in the Embassy and are lionised by the local
community. Mostly they've developed these 'contacts' through Noland's
political and sports work and the very active role both have at the Quito
Tennis and Golf Club.
Quito 30 December 1960
There seems now to be little doubt that the Inter-American Conference will
be postponed. Peru insists it won't attend because of Ecuador's intention of
raising the Protocol issue; Venezuela and the Dominican Republic are still
in a crisis over Trujillo's attempt to assassinate Betancourt; and US-Cuban
relations are getting still worse. We all know the invasion is coming but
certainly not I until Kennedy takes over.
Peru's break in relations with Cuba today hasn't helped prospects for the
Conference. The break is partly a show of appreciation to the US for the
October ruling by the Guarantors on the Protocol, but it's also the result of a
Lima station operation in November. The operation was a commando raid
by Cuban exiles against the Cuban Embassy in Lima which included the
capture of documents. The Lima station inserted among the authentic
documents several that had been forged by TSD including a supposed list of
persons in Peru who received payments from the Cuban Embassy totalling
about 15,000 dollars monthly.
Another of the forged documents referred to a non-existent campaign of the
Cuban Embassy in Lima to promote the Ecuadorean position on the Rio
Protocol. Because not many Peruvians believed the documents to be
genuine, the Lima station had great difficulty in getting them publicized.
However, a few days ago a Conservative deputy in the Peruvian Congress
presented them for the record and yesterday they finally surfaced in the
Lima press. Although the Cubans have protested that the documents are
apocryphal, a recent defector from the Cuban Embassy in Lima – present
during the raid and now working for the Agency – has 'confirmed' that the
TSD documents are genuine. The Conservative Peruvian government then
used the documents as the pretext for breaking relations with Cuba. We
could do something similar here but Velasco probably wouldn't take action.
He wants Cuban support against Peru on the Protocol issue, if he can get it.
The disappearance of the Cuban Embassy chauffeur is now solved. He tried
to impress the Embassy gardener by telling him about working for us. The
gardener told one of the Cubans and the chauffeur was fired. He panicked
and has been hiding out in a provincial village, convinced that the Cubans
will try to kill him.
He came into the Embassy yesterday and Blair met him. There's no saving
the operation but Blair gave him a modest sum to get him back to the
village and help him for a little while. Noland is really angry with Blair
because he thinks Blair didn't take enough pains teaching the agent good
security. Too bad – I was hoping I might get this operation too. Blair returns
to Washington now.
Quito 4 January 1961
The Inter-American Conference will definitely be postponed now that the
US has broken relations with Cuba. All cables and correspondence formerly
sent to the Havana station are now to be sent to the JMWAVE station in
Miami. I suppose the Conference won't be held until after the JMARC
invasion by the exiles. Holding it after the Cuban revolution is wiped out
will change the security situation here. For one thing we won't have the
Cuban Embassy's support to URJE to worry about, and all these would-be
protesters and agitators may not be so enthusiastic.
Two Czech diplomats have just arrived to open a Legation. Headquarters
had traces on only one of them who is a suspect intelligence officer. At
headquarters' request we will watch closely, through agents like the
Oldsmobile dealer, Kladensky, for indications on the permanent building
they intend to buy or rent. Before their expulsion in 1957 we had their code-
room bugged and headquarters wants to try again.
Weatherwax, our Public Safety officer, is back and through him we hope to
improve intelligence collection in rural areas, which is now almost nil.
Contraband operations complicate the problem. Some areas, particularly
those from just north of Quito to the Colombian border, live from the
contraband traffic, and rural security forces, if they're not in the pay of the
contraband rings, are often engaged in small wars against them. The
weakness of rural security forces is practically an invitation to guerrilla
operations, so we hope to strengthen them through the Public Safety
Mission and get some rural intelligence collection going at the same time.
Quito 29 January 1961
Today is the anniversary of the signing of the Rio Protocol and we thought
we might get some attacks on the Embassy. The only violence, however,
was among the Ecuadoreans. In Guayaquil the Minister of Foreign
Relations gave a speech on the boundary problem and in a procession
afterwards to Guayaquil University he was jeered and booed as a traitor.
Araujo and his friends in URJE are determined to get the minister fired
because he was one of the forces behind Araujo's expulsion and he's also a
good friend of the US. The campaign against him is based on his having
been a member of the Ecuadorean commission that signed the Protocol in
1942.
I've taken over the ECSTACY letter intercept from John Bacon. He has
been using old-fashioned techniques that took a lot of time so I asked for a
TSD photographic technician to come and overhaul the station darkroom
where I have to process the letters. The TSD photographic and SW
technicians have now both finished their work. The darkroom looks brand
new. Everything's in order and the technician will send some new
equipment in coming weeks. An SW technician has also come to train me
to write and develop the messages to and from the agents in Cuba, and she
left a supply of developer and ink pills. Now the Miami base will cable
messages for me to send and I'll cable the incoming messages after
development.
Quito 1 February 1961
Velasco's low tolerance of opposition is about to touch off another crisis.
Two days ago at the opening ceremony of the National Medical Association
Convention he, exchanged angry words with the Liberal Quito Mayor. Then
yesterday, at the inauguration of a new fertilizer plant where both were
present Velasquistas hissed and booed the Mayor and threw tomatoes at
him, forcing him to leave the ceremony. Last night supporters of both
Velasco and the Mayor held street demonstrations and the Minister of
Government is making threats against people who disturb public order – not
to be mistaken for the Velasquistas, of course. Today the Minister of
Government closed a Quito radio station under an administrative pretext
(failure to renew its licence on time) following an opinion programme in
which listeners were encouraged to call and participate in the programme
by expressing their support for the Mayor. The Minister himself called the
radio station during the programme and his threats against the station were
broadcast as part of the programme. Later he closed the station. More
Velasquista street demonstrations tonight.
Quito 8 February 1961
There has been a serious uprising at a large hacienda in Chimborazo
Province south of here. Some 2000 Indians turned against the hacienda
owner and the local authorities. Three policemen were injured, the Army
was called out, two Indians were killed and over sixty arrested. The leaders
of the Indians were organizers from the Campesino Commission of the
CTE, and the Revolutionary Socialist Labour Senator (also a CTE leader)
has started a campaign for the Indians' release.
The Indians' grievances were legitimate enough – they often are badly
treated on these enormous estates. In this case the owner hadn't paid them
since last year and wasn't keeping accounts of their daily work. The CTE is
also demanding an investigation into alleged torture of the Indians who
were arrested, and recognition of their demands: wages, housing and
schools.
Several people have told me that this is the type of incident that chills the
blood of the landowners here. If only one of these risings got out of hand
and began to spread there would be no telling where it would end. Probably
right in the Presidential Palace.
Quito 15 February 1961
Our new Deputy Chief of Station, Gil Saudade, arrived early this month.
He's taking over the labour and student operations but Bacon will keep the
ECURGE media operation. Saudade and I are working closely on preparing
agents to send to the Latin American Conference for National Sovereignty,
Economic Emancipation and Peace, scheduled for the first week of March
in Mexico City. Gil's agents are Juan Yepez del Pozo, Jr., ECLURE-2, and
Antonio Ulloa Coppiano, ECLURE-3. Until he arrived they were treated as
developmental prospects by Noland who was helping finance their takeover
of the Popular Revolutionary Liberal Party (PLPR). This party is attracting
a considerable following among young supporters of Velasco, and we hope
to use it to channel these radicals away from support to Cuba and from anti-
Americanism. Araujo's supporters are among those we most hope to attract,
and Gil will be certain that the party keeps its leftist character and firm
opposition to the traditional Ecuadorean political parties. The agent really in
control is Juan Yepez del Pozo, Sr., a writer who is also director of the
Ecuadorean Institute of Sociology. He has larger political ambitions and is
the party's chief advisor.
The Conference in Mexico City is sponsored by the leftist, former President
of Mexico, Lazaro Cardenas, as a propaganda exercise in support of the
Cuban revolution. Because communists and leftists from all over the
hemisphere will be there, headquarters asked stations months ago to
propose agents who could attend for intelligence gathering.
Besides Gil's agents, we're sending Atahualpa Basantes, one of our best
PCE penetration agents. Both headquarters and the Mexico City station
were pleased that he can attend, and I've sent requirements to him in writing
through Dr Ovalle. If possible he will try to get invited for a visit to Cuba
after the Conference is over.
Our propaganda operations have been promoting considerable comment
adverse to Cuba. The general theme is the danger of penetration by
international communism in the Western Hemisphere through Cuba, but
recently specific stories have highlighted statements by Cuban exile leaders
Manuel de Varona and Jose Miro Cardona. Alarmist accusations of Cuban
subversive activities included one report coming from Cubans in Miami
that Castro has sent arms to guerrillas in Colombia and arms to Ecuador to
use against Peru – these stories originally surfaced in El Tiempo in Bogota
and were repeated in El Comercio in Quito. Still another story which came
from Havana alleged that Castro's efforts to penetrate South America are
concentrated mainly through Ecuador and Brazil. This story also accused
Castro of contributing 200,000 dollars to the Mexico City Conference.
Araujo has helped our propaganda operations by appearing on television in
Havana and promising the support of the Ecuadorean government and
people to the Cuban revolution. The reaction here was strong, and both
Velasco and the Foreign Minister issued statements rejecting Araujo's
generosity. Gustavo Salgado, the well-known columnist, is placing most of
this material for us, and he also arranged for a replay of follow-up
propaganda about the exile assault on the Cuban Embassy in Lima last
November. The commando leader has recently been interviewed by the
Agencia Orbe Latinoamericano news service which is a hemisphere-wide
propaganda operation of the station in Santiago, Chile. He said that other
documents captured during the raid (besides the list of Peruvians paid by
the Cuban Embassy in Lima) revealed that Cuba was using certain
Peruvians and Ecuadoreans in the hope of setting off an armed conflict
between the two countries, which in turn would prepare the atmosphere for
a communist rising in Peru. In his column today Salgado rehashed the
background and the interview and called for the publication of the names of
the Ecuadoreans working in this Cuban adventure. Araujo, of course, would
be first on the list. The 'other documents' are, of course, also Agency
produced.
The purpose of the campaign is to prepare public opinion so that reaction to
the Cuban invasion, when it comes, will be softened. Other stations in Latin
America are doing the same, but here we can also tie the propaganda to
Cuban interference in the boundary dispute.
Quito 18 February 1961
Velasco is reacting strongly to the leftist campaign to force the Foreign
Minister to resign, and some of our reports suggest this may be the
beginning of the end for his fourth term.
Yesterday morning the Foreign Minister had accompanied a distinguished
Colombian jurist (an expert in international law and proponent of the
Ecuadorean thesis on the nullity of the Rio Protocol) to the Central
University where he had been invited to speak. As they arrived several
hundred students began jeering the Foreign Minister and throwing tomatoes
at him. Several tomatoes hit him but he found shelter in the building and the
Colombian made his speech. Velasco was furious because the scandal has
upset his propaganda campaign for using the Colombian against Peru, even
though it was the Foreign Minister who was attacked.
Today the government arrested five URJE members for taking part in the
incident, which in turn has caused another spate of protests. The CTE
condemned the arrests and also demanded freedom for the PCE Indian
organizer Carlos Rodriguez, who is in jail in Riobamba over the recent
Chimborazo Indian rising. The Revolutionary Socialists are protesting
because three of those arrested are members of its youth group. The FEUE
is protesting because the five arrested are university students. The protests
include demands for the resignations of both the Foreign Minister and the
Minister of Government, the latter for illegal arrest of the students and the
closing of the radio station on 1 February.
Quito 20 February 1961
This has been a day of great violence. Yesterday the Minister of
Government ordered the release of the five students but they refused to
leave the jail. They demanded a habeas corpus hearing because that would
be held under the Quito Mayor and could be used to embarrass Velasco and
force the resignation of the Minister. During the early hours of this morning
the students were forced into police cars and driven separately to isolated
sectors of town where they were forced out of the cars.
The law and philosophy faculties led by members of URJE began an
indefinite strike this morning for the resignations of the Ministers of
Government and Foreign Relations.
The strike committee is supported by the Quito FEUE leadership which has
called a forty-eight-hour strike for the whole university, and the university
council headed by the rector has issued its own protest against the
government.
After the strike was announced this morning a Velasquista mob composed
mostly of government employees in the state monopolies and customs
service gathered at the downtown location of the philosophy faculty. After a
verbal confrontation with the striking students the mob began stoning them
to force them inside the faculty building. For much of the morning they
continued to control the streets around the faculty and to menace the
students with terrible violence.
The university administration and the students formed a special committee
to visit the Minister of Government to plead for police protection for the
striking students against the mob. The minister simply advised that the
government would not move against the strikers, leaving open the question
of police protection.
About five o'clock this afternoon the mob gathered again, this time in
Independence Plaza where they chanted praise to Velasco and
condemnation of the students. From there they marched to the Ministry of
Government where the minister spoke to them from a balcony, saying he
had acted legally in arresting the jive students for throwing tomatoes at the
Foreign Minister, but that no sooner were they released than they declared a
strike.
I've had the surveillance team under Colonel Paredes scattered about the
downtown area since the strike began this morning. Paredes has given us
their reports on the movements of the mob and the danger that the students
might be lynched. We've cabled reports to headquarters but Noland isn't
making predictions yet on whether Velasco will last – he thinks there will
have to be some bloodshed before the military gets restless.
Quito 21 February 1961
Guayaquil was the centre of today's action. A street demonstration by
FEUE and URJE this morning was attacked by Velasquista mobs controlled
by the Mayor (unlike Quito, in Guayaquil the Mayor is a powerful
supporter of Velasco). The marchers were forced several times to seek
refuge in the buildings of Guayaquil University when shots were fired from
the mob. Police eventually broke up the clash with tear-gas, and university
authorities have protested to the government and asked for protection for
the students.
Another demonstration by the students in Guayaquil was held tonight and
was again attacked by Velasquista mobs. Eventually the marchers returned
to the university and who should be the main speaker but Araujo! He had
just returned from Cuba today and was carried by the students on their
shoulders from his hotel to the university. In his speech he lavished praise
on the Cubans and described recent protest demonstrations in Havana
against the killing of Patrice Lumumba.
Manuel Naranjo, Noland's agent who is a Deputy of the moderate Socialist
Party, got the party to publish a statement today criticising the role of URJE
in the student strike and in the tomato attack against the Foreign Minister.
Wilson Almeida, the editor of our main student propaganda organ Voz
Universifaria, also published a statement against URJE participation and in
support of the Foreign Minister. The Velasquista association of
professionals published a statement supporting the Minister of Government.
The main propaganda item today, however, was from the Cuban Embassy
which released a sensational statement alleging that during the coming Holy
Week attacks will be made against religious processions by persons
shouting 'Viva Fidel, Cuba and Russia'. Blame for the attacks would be
placed on the Cuban Embassy. In the statement the Cubans also denied the
allegation circulated recently that sixty Cubans had come to Ecuador to
make trouble – adding that agents paid by the US are entering the country
from Peru. The statement also tried to clarify Araujo's television remarks in
Havana as an expression of solidarity between Ecuadoreans and Cubans
such as Velasco has repeatedly expressed. The statement went on to defend
the Cuban photographic exhibit now on display in Quito as expressive of
the works of the revolution, not communist propaganda as suggested in
recent rightist criticism of the exhibit, adding that the exhibit is sponsored
by the CTE, the National Cultural Institute and Central University as well
as the Embassy. The statement ended by alleging that all these recent
provocations are designed to disturb the good relations between Cuba and
Ecuador and to impede Cuban participation in the Inter-American
Conference. The real culprit, according to the statement, is the US
government with assistance from Peru because of Cuba's support to
Ecuador on the Rio Protocol issue. The statement ended with words of
praise for Velasco.
From what I gather this is an extraordinary statement for a diplomatic
mission to make. It shows among other things, that our propaganda is
hurting the Cubans, and Noland hopes to get the political-action agents like
Renato Perez and Aurelio Davila to charge the Cubans with meddling in
Ecuadorean politics.
Quito 22 February 1961
In response to the Cuban press release yesterday, our Ambassador issued a
statement today that had everyone in the station smiling. The Ambassador
said that the only agents in Ecuador who are paid and trained by the United
States are the technicians invited by the Ecuadorean government to
contribute to raising the living standards of the Ecuadorean people. He
added that the US has promoted a policy of order, stability and progress as
demonstrated in our technical and economic assistance programmes, and he
suggested that the Cuban Embassy present their accusations and appropriate
proof to the Ecuadorean government.
In Havana the Cuban Embassy statement has been prominently replayed for
distribution over the whole continent, with emphasis that collaboration
between the US and Peru is part of a plan to isolate Cuba from the rest of
Latin America and to impede Cuban participation in the Inter-American
Conference. They couldn't be more accurate on the matter of isolation –
that's the central theme of our propaganda guidance. Today Guayaquil had
the worst violence yet. The striking students in the university buildings
were attacked by a much larger group of Velasquista students and
government employees who forcibly ejected the strikers. Eight people were
hospitalised before the morning was over. In the afternoon two bombs
caused extensive damage at the Guayaquil Municipal Palace, although there
were no victims, and another bomb was reported by the Mayor's office to
have been hurled through a window into his office but without exploding.
Expressions of support to the Mayor have begun to pour in, and tonight he
announced that terrorists had tried to kill him. The Guayaquil base reported
that several of their agents believe the bombs were planted by the Mayor
himself.
Press reports confirmed by our National Police agents indicate opposition to
the government has spread to Cuenca. Yesterday a group of students held a
march to the provincial governor's office to plead for payment of certain
money that is due to the school. They had nothing to do with the strikers
here or in Guayaquil, but police didn't know this and the march was
attacked by the cavalry with sabres and several students were wounded.
Cuenca is a very conservative city and this was bound to cause a reaction
against Velasco. Today the university students held a demonstration of
support for the students in Quito and Guayaquil, and in protest against the
police stupidity yesterday. They also joined in the call for the resignation of
the two Ministers.
Quito 23 February 1961
Important efforts by the ECACTOR project agents, especially Aurelio
Davila, to focus attention on communism and Cuba are getting results.
Today the Cardinal issued another pastoral letter – this one signed by all the
archbishops, bishops and vicars in the hierarchy. Davila had been rallying
the leadership of the Conservative Party to call on the Cardinal for this new
letter for some weeks. The letter calls on all Catholics to take serious and
effective action against the communist menace in Ecuador, while accusing
the communists of trying to take advantage of the border problem for their
own subversive purposes. The letter also laments the weakening of the
Ecuadorean case on the border issue because of these communist tactics.
More important still was the call today by the Conservative Party for a
break in diplomatic relations with Cuba. This is the first formal call for a
break with Cuba by any of the political parties, and it is based partly on the
Cuban Embassy statement of two days ago.
The new pastoral letter and the call for a break in relations are designed to
use patriotism and the border issue rather like Velasco does, but more
subtly, in order to discredit the extreme left and the Cubans. We hope a
wave of mass opinion can be created, especially among Catholics, that will
equate URJE, Araujo, the CTE and the PCE – and the Cuban Embassy of
course – with divisive efforts to weaken Velasco's campaign against the Rio
Protocol. Hopefully this will strengthen the Foreign Minister's position and
suck Velasco himself into the current. But because of Velasco's attacks
against the political right, the animosity is so great that he may resist and
lash out again at our ECACTOR crowd. In that case we will simply
continue the campaign through all our propaganda machinery to deny the
enemy the banner of patriotism on the Protocol issue.
Through the same political-action agents we are promoting the formation of
an anti-communist civic front that will concentrate on getting a break in
relations with Cuba and on denouncing penetration of the Ecuadorean
government by the extreme left. Right now the signature campaign is
coming to a close and formation of the front will be announced in a few
days.
John Bacon is starting a new programme through Gustavo Salgado, his
main media agent, which will consist of a series of 'alert' notices to be
placed in the newspapers as paid advertisements against communism, the
Cubans and others. They will be short notices, and if Bacon can write them
fast enough they'll appear two or three times each week. The ostensible
sponsor will be the non-existent Ecuadorean Anti-Communist Front, not to
be confused with the political-action civic front which is going to be a real
organisation.
Quito 28 February 1961
Yesterday was National Civics Day and suddenly it seemed that the whole
country had forgotten its internal hatreds in the government-promoted
demonstrations against Peru. The demonstrations were sharply anti-
Peruvian because in recent days regular accusations have emanated from
Lima that Ecuador has accepted support on the boundary problem from
Castro and communism in general. The accusations are inspired by the
Lima station in order to preclude Cuban support to Ecuador and Ecuadorean
acceptance if support were ever offered. Today things were back to normal.
Our ECACTOR-financed anti-communist civic front was launched with a
two-page newspaper notice containing about 3000 signatures and
announcing the formation of the National Defence Front. In the statement at
the beginning, the signatories, mostly Conservatives and Social Christians,
denounce communist penetration of the government, the CTE and the
FEUE, together with the selection of Ecuador by the international
communist movement as the second target after Cuba for conquest in
America. The purpose of the Front is described as defence of the country
against communist subversion, and the first objective is the break in
relations with Cuba.
Although the political colouring of the rightist forces behind the Front is
well known, Noland hopes that the Front will have more manoeuvrability
than the political parties because it focuses on only one political issue:
communism and Cuba. As such the Front should be a more effective tool
for pressure on Velasco to break with Cuba and curb URJE, Araujo, the
CTE and the rest. This will take some doing – in a speech in a provincial
capital today Velasco said that communism in Ecuador is impossible. Today
El Salvador became the seventh Latin American country to break with
Cuba.
Quito 5 March 1961
The student strikes have subsided and Velasco seems to have survived
although opposition to him is growing steadily, particularly among the poor
classes who voted for him, because of inflation and corruption in the
government.
Our propaganda operations relating to communism and Cuba are
intensifying opposition to Velasco among the rightists, if that's possible.
With financing from the ECACTOR and ECURGE projects, we've been
turning out a stream of handbills, editorials, declarations, advertisements
and wall-painting, mostly through Salgado and the National Defence Front.
Bacon's 'alert' notices in El Comercio have also started.
Because of a new spate of rumours that the Inter-American Conference will
be postponed, the government has issued several statements on its
determination to maintain order at the Conference. Nevertheless, only on 1
March were the first arrests made in Guayaquil for the 22 February attack
against the university strikers. A higher court forced the lower court to take
action and those arrested were revealed to have been commanded by an
assistant to the Guayaquil Mayor. The FEUE and URJE leaders arrested
during the strike have also been released. This won't help the Conference.
The Mexico City Conference on National Sovereignty, Economic
Emancipation and Peace opened today. Three of the five Ecuadorean
delegates are our agents: if this were the case with all our stations the
possibilities would be endless. No word yet on whether Basantes, my PCE
penetration agent, will go on to Cuba.
Quito 7 March 1961
The Soviet Ambassador to Mexico arrived in Quito today for a goodwill
visit. He'll be here for about three days, discussing, among other things,
Ecuador's desire to sell bananas to the Soviets. We have a programme
planned for disruption and propaganda against him. It began today with a
statement by the National Defence Front calling for his expulsion. Another
announcement arranged by Davila is from the Catholic University Youth
Organisation, denouncing the millions of dollars spent each year by the
Kremlin to infiltrate Latin America, adding that the budget against Ecuador
for propaganda, agitators' salaries, secret go-betweens and instructors in
sabotage, explosives and weapons is 250,721.05 dollars.
John Bacon's 'alert' is directed against this visit. It runs:
On the alert, Ecuadoreans, against communist agitators! The official Soviet
newspaper is Pravda – which means Truth, one of the tremendous sarcasms
of contemporary history.
If we unmask the actors of this farce, we will find that it is not the plain
truth, but distorted, calumnied truth. That's Russia and that's communism.
And that is now Cuba and Fidelism. Disciples used by the great
international fakes, and at the same time masters in deceit and subversion,
try to introduce methods in Ecuador similar to those that their dictatorship
employs. First, in order to avoid being responsible, the authorised agents
wash their hands like Pilate even though the first terrorist bombs are heard
elsewhere. Alert, Ecuadoreans, there is friendship that could dishonour us.
Still he has run into a problem in this campaign of 'alert' notices attributed
to the Ecuadorean Anti-Communist Front. He was surprised to read this
morning that a real organisation with that name has been founded. They
published their first bulletin today with the theme: 'For Religion and the
Fatherland We Will Give Our Lives'. The symbol of the group is a condor
destroying with his powerful claws a hammer and sickle.
Quito 10 March 1961
Six anti-communist organisations including the National Defence Front
have been denied permits to hold street demonstrations against the Soviet
Ambassador. Nevertheless, Davila sent some of his boys around to the
Hotel Quito the other night and they made a small fuss. Police protection of
the Soviet delegation is considerable and so far there's been no violence.
The Soviet Ambassador has seen the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and
Education as well as President Velasco, and it was announced that an
Ecuadorean commercial mission will soon visit the Soviet Union. The
government wants to sell bananas, Panama hats and balsa wood in
exchange for agricultural and road building equipment. The overwhelming
police protection, which has included the cavalry, when the Ambassador
visits colonial churches and other tourist sites, is helping our propaganda
campaign.
Today's 'alert' notice was also against the Soviets:
Alert, Ecuadoreans! Communism enslaves. Communism imposes the
hardest slavery known through the centuries, and once it is able to enslave a
people it is very difficult for the victim to break the chains.
Hungary tried in 1956. The valiant Hungarians in an unsuccessful and
heroic struggle rose up demanding bread and freedom. But they were
destroyed by Soviet tanks that massacred more than 32,000 workers and
reduced the whole country to still worse slavery. In this terrible crime
against humanity the puppet traitor Janos Kadar went over to the side of the
muscovite hordes that assassinated his brothers and enslaved his fatherland.
Alert! There are puppets of the same kind who want to sell out Ecuador.
Tonight the Defence Front held an indoor rally at a theatre where Velasco
was attacked for his permissive policies towards communism, particularly
his continued favouritism towards Araujo. He was also attacked for
inflation and the increased benefits for representation and housing given to
members of his Cabinet. After the rally, participants were attacked in the
street by a mob of Velasquistas and URJE members shouting vivas to
Araujo. Our Embassy-sponsored bi-national cultural centre was stoned and
shots were fired at the home of a Social Christian leader. If the opposition to
Velasco over Cuba and communism is getting serious, it's even more
serious over economic policy. In the past three days the Monetary Board
(comparable to the US Federal Reserve Board) has reversed the fiscal and
economic policies begun when Velasco took office – largely because of the
growing opposition of the sierra Chambers of Agriculture, Commerce and
Industry.
The problem derives from the competing economies of the coast and sierra
and from Velasco's having placed monetary policy in the hands of
Guayaquil Velasquista leaders. Just after the election these people started a
campaign against the old leadership of the Monetary Board and the Central
Bank which under Ponce had followed policies of stability through tight
money and balanced foreign trade. The coastal Velasquista leaders,
however, claimed that such policies were strangling economic development
and they proposed expansion of the money supply. When Velasco took
power this group received the most important government financial
positions, including the Ministries of Economy and Development, and
eventually the chiefs of the Monetary Board and the Central Bank resigned
and were replaced by people from the same Guayaquil financial circle.
Quito 11 March 1961
The Peace Conference in Mexico City is over, and a cable arrived from the
Mexico City station advising that Basantes has been able to get an
invitation to visit Cuba. He will be there for two or three weeks at least, and
when he returns to Mexico City he'll be debriefed by an officer from the
Miami station. The Mexico City station was quite pleased with our agents'
work at the Conference. The Conference adopted the predictable
resolutions: support to the Cuban revolution; annulment of all treaties that
tend to revive the Monroe Doctrine; opposition to the military, technical
and economic missions of the US in Latin America; nationalisation of
heavy industry and foreign companies: establishment of cultural and
diplomatic relations with the Soviet bloc and Communist China; support to
Panama in its efforts to gain possession of the Panama Canal.
Since most visitors of importance to Quito stay at the Hotel Quito I
suggested to Noland that we could provide better coverage of their visits by
taking advantage of the US company that manages the hotel in order to bug
the rooms. I suggested that we get a couple of the standard hotel lamps and
send them to headquarters for installation of transmitters that we will be
able to monitor from other rooms in the hotel. Through the American
manager (whom we all know) we can get the lamps placed in the
appropriate rooms before the guests arrive.
Noland liked the idea and is going to get two lamps through Otto Kladensky
who rents the room used in the operation with Reinaldo Varea, Vice-
President of the Senate. After we get them back we'll decide whether to use
the manager or some other means for placing them. I'm going to suggest
battery-operated equipment so that it will work if the lamp is unplugged.
Quito 15 March 1961
President Kennedy's speech to the Latin American Ambassadors in
Washington on the Alliance for Progress has caused much excitement here
and almost unanimously favourable comment. We're using Castro's speech
the day after Kennedy's against him: he said the Cuban revolution is
supported by Ecuador, Uruguay and Brazil. Through the National Defence
Front we're generating continuous propaganda against Velasco's policy on
Cuba which may well be what caused the stoning of Ponce's house two
nights ago. The attackers got away but they were probably Velasquistas.
Other propaganda is generated through coverage of the Cuban exiles. We
are getting fairly good presentation of the bulletins of the main exile group,
the Revolutionary Democratic Front, and statements made by exiles when
they arrive, usually in Guayaquil, but so far Noland hasn't wanted to get
into direct contact with Cuban exiles in Ecuador.
Noland is financing the formation of the Anti-Communist Christian Front in
Cuenca, Ecuador's third largest city. The principal agent is Rafael Arizaga,
ECACTOR-2, a leader of the Conservative Party there whose son, Carlos
Arizaga, ECACTOR-3, is a Provincial Councillor and will be active in the
Front. Formation of the Front has just been announced.
Bacon has solved his problem by changing the name of his nonexistent
organisation to 'Ecuadorean Anti-Communist Action' instead of 'Front'.
Quito 19 March 1961
The lines are drawing tighter, which is just what we want. The leftists have
conducted a signature campaign of their own to support Velasco over
maintaining relations with Cuba. Two days ago they published a declaration
accusing the Defence Front of aiding Peru by calling for a break in relations
with Cuba. The announcement was followed by three pages of signatures
including Araujo and other leftist political, educational and cultural figures.
Velasco himself, in a speech yesterday commemorating the deaths of his
supporters which occurred a year ago, when he arrived in Quito to begin
campaigning, insisted that Ecuador will never break with Cuba while he is
President. He also emphasised that Ecuador is not communist, but he
alluded to a subversive plot against him – a reference no doubt to recent
rumours of rightist plotting in the military. Araujo was a speaker at the
same rally. If this keeps up we will isolate Velasco on the Cuban issue so
that his main support will be from the extreme left.
On our side Gil Saudade, the Deputy Chief of Station, has had Juan Yepez
del Pozo, Jr, National Coordinator of the Popular Revolutionary Liberal
Party, issue a manifesto on his return from the Mexico City Peace
Conference. The manifesto, which is just being put out today, condemns the
Conservative and Social Christians for their current campaign against
communism and Cuba while also criticising strongly the Liberal Party and
the communists. In his appeal to the Velasquista masses of poor people,
Yepez calls for an integral revolution favouring the poor, but insists that it
be effected within the law. The manifesto also denounces de facto regimes
and totalitarianisms from both left and right. If this party can really get
moving we will bring under control much of Velasco's leftist support,
gradually bending it against the Cuban solution. Gil is now going to have
Yepez establish an organisation in Guayaquil.
Quito 27 March 1961
Velasco is showing signs of erratic behaviour, partly at least as a result of
our propaganda. On 23 March he had the former Army commander under
Ponce arrested for subversion, but two days later he was released by the
Quito Mayor at the habeas corpus hearing. The government looked so
ridiculous that Velasco had to fire his Minister of Government, who today
resigned 'for reasons of health'. In announcing the appointment of his new
minister, Velasco criticised what he called the tendentious notices appearing
almost daily in the press. With his habitual reference to his 400,000 votes
he accused the propagandists of trying to provoke disorder. Velasco's
physician, Dr. Ovalle, is examining Velasco almost every week and he told
me Velasco is feeling considerable strain over loss of popular support,
which he attributes to the rightist campaign against Cuba and communism.
Atahualpa Basantes, my PCE penetration agent who went to Cuba after the
Mexico City Peace Conference, is back. He returned via Mexico City where
he was debriefed by an officer from the Miami station. In his first report,
which I just got from Dr. Ovalle, Basantes strongly insinuates he knows he's
working for the Agency, undoubtedly because of his meetings with officers
in Mexico City. Noland wants to continue the Velasquista pretext for the
time being, however, so I won't be meeting him personally yet. The agent
can't stop praising the Cuban revolution – I'm not sure what to do about
this.
Quito 2 April 1961
Pleasant surprises for the station this week. Yesterday the University Sports
League professional soccer team elected new officers and Noland was
named as a Director. Manuel Naranjo, the Socialist Party Deputy whom
Noland met and recruited thanks to the Sports League, was elected
President of the club. This is a matter of some prestige for Noland, an
American Embassy official, to become an officer of Quito's top soccer club.
Partly, it reflects his ability to move in the right circles and partly, no doubt,
it is because he brought in uniforms and equipment for the team via the
diplomatic pouch and contributed generously from his representation
allowance. More important, the Socialist Party has been holding its annual
convention, the first since the party split last year into the moderate wing
and the extreme-left Revolutionary Socialist Party. Naranjo was elected
Secretary-General today which means we will have still more influence in
keeping the party moderately oriented. Naranjo and his colleagues call
themselves Marxists but they reject the concepts of class struggle and
dictatorship of the proletariat. It's important that we have some influence in
a group that will attract people of social-democratic persuasion.
Propaganda remains intense. The Catholic University Youth Organisation
has just held a convention which we helped to finance through Davila. The
convention received considerable publicity, including a visit by a
convention delegation to the Cardinal, and a closing declaration against
communism and Cuba was issued.
Quito 4 April 1961
Velasco continues to struggle against the rightist campaign against
communism and Cuba. He again lashed out against the National Defence
Front, accusing the rightist political parties of using the Front to turn people
against his government for economic as well as political reasons. He was
answered later by the Deputy Director of the Conservative Party, who is
also on the Executive Committee of the Defence Front, with accusations
that Velasco is letting himself be carried away emotionally in his attacks on
the Front. He also belittled Velasco's accusations that the Front is being
manipulated like an opposition political party.
Velasco's nervousness is evident in a new purge in the Army leadership, and
in the resignation today of his Minister of Defence. The new minister is
from a clique of Guayaquil Velasquistas, and his appointment will intensify
charges that the President is being manipulated by the coastal Velasquista
oligarchy.
Quito 15 April 1961
The invasion against Cuba has started with the bombing of Cuban airfields
by 'defectors'. A leftist rally was held against the bombing in Independence
Plaza with Araujo as main speaker, but no attack has yet been made on the
Embassy. Noland has arranged with Colonel Lugo and also with Captain
Vargas to be sure we get good protection during the next few days. The
invasion will give URJE and the others all the excuse they need for another
round of window-breaking.
Quito 18 April 1961
The invasion really got going today but reports are conflicting and
headquarters hasn't said anything yet. There have been anti-US riots all day
in Quito and Guayaquil and the Army was called out to protect the
Embassy, USOM and the bi-national cultural centre. Araujo is leading the
mobs here in Quito.
Davila tried to get a demonstration going in support of the invasion but they
were outnumbered this time and had to be protected by police. Sentiment in
general is running against the invasion even though many of those against it
understand perfectly what would happen here if there was a communist
revolution. They just hate US intervention more than they hate communism.
The main Jesuit church in downtown Quito, a relic of colonial architecture,
was stoned tonight during the URJE riot, and later tonight a bomb exploded
in our Embassy garden. Things could be much worse however.
Quito 19 April 1961
Things are indeed much worse. This morning we received a propaganda
guidance cable – it was sent to all WH stations – with instructions on how
to treat the Bay of Pigs invasion. The cable said we should describe the
invasion as a mission to re-supply insurgents in the Escambray Mountains,
not to take and hold any territory. As such the mission has been a success.
Noland says this means the whole thing has failed and that heads are going
to roll in headquarters. I've never seen him so glum.
The Defence Front got together a sizeable demonstration of support for the
invasion, which included speeches against Castro and communism. There
was also a march through downtown Quito with the burning of a Russian
flag and chants against Fidel, URJE and the stoning of the Jesuit church.
I don't know what to think about the invasion. It's like losing a game you
never even considered losing. I'm also worried about the AMBLOOD
agents in Cuba. Press reports indicate that thousands have been arrested,
many simply on suspicion of not supporting Castro. We have exchanged
only five or six letters with secret writing, and they weren't very revealing.
Toroella has large sums of money, weapons and a yacht but apparently he
communicates with Miami by radio as well as by the SW via Quito. I
wonder if he is all right.
Quito 24 April 1961
Mostly through the efforts of Davila the anti-communist reaction to the Bay
of Pigs failure has driven the leftists off the streets. There was another pro-
Castro demonstration three days ago but then the government banned all
outdoor demonstrations for a week in order to let tempers cool. On the 21st
the formation of the Ecuadorean Brigade for the struggle against Castro was
announced with a call for inscriptions and the claim that among those
already signed up are military officers, students, workers, nurses, priests
and white-collar workers. The same day an indoor rally supporting the
invasion was held at the Catholic University.
By coincidence the traditional Novena to the Sorrowful Mother going on
right now is serving as a pretext to evade the ban on outdoor
demonstrations. The sermons have focused on the imminent danger of
communism, which is penetrating the country by passing itself off as
Velasquismo. This can't please the President because this is one of the most
heavily attended religious occasions, and is held at the Jesuit church that
was attacked during the URJE demonstration against the invasion.
Yesterday the novena service ended with a street procession that included
thousands of people who turned it into a political rally against communism
and URJE. Today a one-and-a-half-page notice was published in the
newspaper condemning the attack against the Jesuit church. Araujo and
URJE have denied the attack and the chances are high that the Conservative
Party Youth or a Social Christian squad actually did it.
Through all the commotion Gil Saudade has been working on an
international organisation. Last month the Secretary-General and the
Administrative Secretary of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ)
arrived in Quito in order to lay the groundwork for an Ecuadorean affiliate
of the ICJ. Saudade managed to arrange for them to meet Juan Yepez del
Pozo, Sr., the sociologist and leader of the Bolivarian Society who is chief
advisor to the Popular Revolutionary Liberal Party. The visit by the ICJ
officials was part of a tour of Latin America to form affiliates where they
don't already exist and to generate publicity for the ICJ's work.
***
Today the Ecuadorean affiliate of the ICJ was formally established, and
Velasco was named Honorary President. The Rector of Central University, a
Liberal-leaning independent, is President of the provisional Executive
Board, which also includes the President of the Ecuadorean Supreme Court.
Other distinguished lawyers and legal associations are also taking part,
including Carlos Vallejo Baez, who with Yepez runs the learned magazine
Ensayos to which Saudade gives financial assistance. Vallejo is also active
in the PLPR, and Yepez was named Secretary-General of the ICJ affiliate.
Gil is also working with the Inter-American Federation of Working
Newspapermen (IFWN), which was founded in Lima last year with the
American Newspaper Guild as cover. This organisation is more like a trade
union, as opposed to the Inter-American Press Society which is mostly
composed of publishers. The IFWN serves to promote freedom of the press
and as a mechanism for anti-communist propaganda. Its annual conference
has just taken place in Quito, with statements against Cuba and the rightist
dictatorships in the hemisphere. They also called for economic, social and
political reforms. US journalists in attendance were used to spot and assess
possible new media agents for different stations, while Saudade worked
through the host organisation, the Ecuadorean National Union of
Journalists.
Quito 30 April 1961
USOM has made its contribution towards countering the Bay of Pigs
humiliation. They delivered a check for half a million dollars to our
Minister of Labour and Social Welfare, Baquero de la Calle, for
colonisation and integration of the campesino. Present at the well-
publicised ceremony was Jorge Acosta, who is head of the National
Colonisation Institute. Acosta has a strange relationship with the station.
Most of us know him fairly well and he's closer than being just a 'contact'.
Since we don't pay him he's not really a controlled agent, but he tells us as
much as he can. The problem he has is that Velasco seems bent on losing all
his support except the extreme left rather than break with Cuba. Not even
Acosta can overcome that stubbornness.
The Inter-American Conference is definitely off. Velasco publicly accepted
a proposal made jointly by the Presidents of Colombia, Venezuela and
Panama that it be postponed indefinitely. We weren't surprised because now
security would really be a problem. The rum ours have never ended that one
country or another was proposing postponement because of security
hazards, and recent discoveries here of contraband arms shipments from the
US haven't helped to allay the fears.
The day before Velasco announced the postponement he called for national
unity and the easing of partisan political passions. But the same day the
Quito Chamber of Commerce denounced the failure of the government to
publish the weekly statistical bulletin of the Central Bank. It hasn't come
out for five consecutive weeks and the Chamber insists the government is
making a deliberate effort to hide the worsening economic situation. The
government is indeed considering a number of possible emergency
economic decrees but has announced ahead of time that none of them
involve new taxes.
Quito 5 May 1961
Pressure on Velasco from the National Defence Front and from the Cardinal
has been helped by Velasco himself. On 30 April the Cardinal was expelled
from the prestigious National Defence Board which is composed of eminent
citizens and is responsible for advising on how secret defence funds are to
be spent. Since the announcement of Velasco's action many Catholic groups
have made well-publicised visits of solidarity to the Cardinal, including one
today from the Defence Front. The visits have usually included speeches on
the inhumanities of communism and the imminent danger of a communist
takeover in Ecuador. Velasco's action in expelling the Cardinal is clearly
retaliation for the Cardinal's criticism of the government on the communist
issue, and sympathy for the Cardinal especially among the poor and
illiterate can only further erode Velasco's power base.
Quito 7 May 1961
We have just had a remarkable breakthrough. One of our most valuable
PCE penetration agents, Luis Vargas, recently reported on what he thought
was the beginning of serious guerrilla operations here. Vargas was not in the
group currently being trained but his close and frequent association with the
leaders of the group gave significant intelligence. Rafael Echeverria Flores,
the number one PCE leader in the sierra, and Jorge Ribadeneira Altamirano,
also a PCE leader in Quito and a principal leader of URJE, were the leaders,
and the training was being conducted by a foreign specialist whose
nationality was unknown to the agent.
Vargas the agent got the word in time to the station and Noland advised
Captain Jose Vargas, the Chief of the Police Intelligence. This morning
Lieutenant Sandoval laid a trap and during the course of the morning
twenty members of URJE were arrested on the mountain that rises above
Quito. Ribadeneira and Echeverria are among those arrested. The foreigner
conducting the training is a Bolivian and we're getting traces on him from
the La Paz station for police intelligence. Too bad he isn't Cuban, but the
propaganda dividend is going to be considerable anyway.
Quito 9 May 1961
The guerrilla arrests are headlines this morning! Yesterday the Sub-
Secretary of Government gave a press conference in which he distributed
the police report written by the intelligence unit. At Noland's suggestion the
police report described those arrested as only one small group among many
other groups that have been receiving guerrilla training for some time at
secret sites around the country. The press stories very effectively
sensationalise the police report, which described the training as including
explosives, guerrilla warfare, street fighting and terrorism.
The foreigner is Juan Alberto Enriquez Roncal, a thirty-two-year-old
Bolivian who came to Ecuador last month and had been training URJE
members in Guayaquil before coming to Quito. He has admitted everything
to the police including giving training sessions in Ribadeneira's law office.
Velasco issued a statement today that he will severely repress any terrorists,
but he has released all those arrested except Ribadeneira, Echeverria and
Enriquez. In Guayaquil the leader of the previous trainees was arrested, but
the release of the others is sure to provoke a negative public reaction, since
last night a power plant in Guayaquil was bombed.
Quito 13 May 1961
Basantes, another PCE penetration agent and a retired Army major, reported
that the PCE leadership in Guayaquil (Pedro Saad and company) is furious
with Ribadeneira and Echeverria. They think Enriquez may be a CIA agent
provocateur and that Echeverria and Ribadeneira fell into the trap.
However, the guerrilla trainer admitted today that he is really an Argentine,
aged thirty-six, named Claudio Adiego Francia. He told police intelligence
that he had no money and was giving the guerrilla training so that he could
continue travelling. Cuba is his destination but he said he has no invitation.
He described his long background in Argentine revolutionary activities, and
then changed his story, now claiming he wasn't really giving training but
only recounting to the URJE and PCE people his experiences in Argentina.
This new twist is keeping the story in the newspapers and the case has been
a help to our signature campaign for mercy for the Bay of Pigs prisoners.
The campaign has been promoted by stations all over Latin America. In
Quito the ECACTOR political-action agents have circulated the petition:
today the telegram to Castro pleading mercy was published, followed by
two pages of the more than 7000 signatures obtained.
Student operations of the Guayaquil base have had a series of successes in
recent months culminating two days ago with the disaffiliation of the FEUE
from the Prague-based International Union of Students.
This final victory began with the change in FEUE election procedures at
Portoviejo last December, followed by election victories at the University of
Cuenca in March and the Central University in Quito last month. In both
instances the forces led by Alberto Alarcon defeated the candidates for
FEUE offices put up by the Velasquistas and the extreme left. Our only
defeat was at the University of Loja where the leftist candidate won. The
picture is confused in Guayaquil because the FEUE has split between a
Velasquista group that supports the Mayor and an extreme-leftist group led
by members of URJE.
The vote today by the National FEUE Council in Quito will have to be
ratified by the FEUE Congress later this year, but in the meantime relations
between the FEUE and the Agency-controlled COSEC in Leyden can be
cemented.
Quito 15 May 1961
Ambato is the site of the most recent action. Yesterday in Ambato a Cuban
photographic exhibit was inaugurated under sponsorship of the Ambato
chapter of the Cuban Friendship Society. The ceremony was held in the
Municipal Palace approval for which had been granted by the Ambato
Mayor, a Revolutionary Socialist. The Mayor in his speech went so far as to
call the Quito Cardinal a traitor, and the Cuban Ambassador gave a fiery
speech against the US.
Following the speeches an unexplained electrical failure prevented the
showing of a film on Cuba and later a group of about twenty men invaded
the Palace and destroyed most of the photographs and mountings. The
police arrived after the damage was done and the group left quickly, firing
their revolvers into the air as they went. No arrests were made.
Jorge Gortaire, a retired Army colonel and leader of the Social Christian
Movement in Ambato, was the organizer of the raid. Noland has been
financing him from the ECACTOR project since last year to help build up a
militant action organisation and to promote a political campaign against the
Mayor. Careful planning of the attack, especially through coordination with
the police, was the reason it was so successful. Even so, the Mayor is
getting more photographs down from Quito so that the exhibit can stay
open.
Quito 22 May 1961
In Guayaquil the police recently arrested, at base request, three Chinese
communists who arrived some days ago. They had been given courtesy
visas by the Ecuadorean Ambassador in Havana and supposedly were here
representing the Chinese Youth Federation. The base tried to arrange for
them to be held for a long period, so that recruitment possibilities could be
studied, but the order for their expulsion had already been issued.
The police are carrying out the base request to sensationalise the case. The
official report charges them with propaganda and subversion, claiming they
had a powerful radio transmitter in their hotel room, with which they were
in communication with Cuba and other communist countries in the
evenings after ten o'clock. Preposterous charges, but there's so much fear
and tension in the atmosphere right now that most people will believe it.
The same day the Chinese communists were deported, a sensational plot to
assassinate Velasco surfaced. The attempted assassination was reported by a
Guayaquil radio station (falsely, for which the radio station was ordered to
be closed) but on checking sources the trail led straight to the Cuban
Consul. The Consul refused to testify in the investigation and has been
expelled by the Ecuadorean government. His departure has given us another
propaganda peg for demonstrating Cuban intervention in Ecuador, even
though he was simply a victim of provocation because he had reported the
plot to security authorities in Guayaquil. It appears to us that the
provocation was rigged by Velasco or his lieutenants in order to appease the
Defence Front and other anti-communists.
Here in Quito the National Defence Front has been more strident than ever
in its propaganda created through public meetings, press conferences and
published statements. The Front is criticising Velasco for his policy towards
Cuba, demanding the firing of the Ecuadorean Ambassador to Cuba over
the presentation of a portrait of Castro 'in the name of the Ecuadorean
people', demanding that Velasco suppress communism, and demanding the
expulsion of the Cuban Ambassador for his anti-US speech in Ambato. The
Front continues to insist that Velasco define himself on communism even
though he recently insisted in a speech that while he is President Ecuador
will not become communist. The Conservative Party has also joined the
campaign for expulsion of the Cuban Ambassador.
In Cuenca, Carlos Arizaga Vega, a leader of the ECACTOR operation there,
circulated a petition and sent it to Velasco demanding the firing of the
Ambassador to Cuba over the portrait presentation. Velasco, for his part,
has dismissed the military commander of the Cuenca zone who is a well-
known anti-communist – provoking renewed criticism there.
In Ambato, the Mayor was severely denounced by Municipal Councillors
for his remarks about the Cardinal and for having granted use of the
Municipal Palace for the Cuban photographic exhibit. But at the closing of
the exhibit yesterday the Mayor, Araujo, CTE and PCE speakers all
repeated the anti-clerical themes. They began a march in the street
afterwards, but were met by a Catholic counter-manifestation organised by
Gortaire and armed with rocks, clubs and firearms. A pitched battle
followed and, although shots were fired, no one seems to have been
wounded. The much larger counter-demonstration easily overwhelmed the
leftists and at one point Araujo was in danger of being lynched. If the police
hadn't intervened something serious might have happened.
Somehow amidst all these crises labour operations continue to move,
although not without some serious problems. CROCLE, our coastal
organisation, has served consistently for anti-Cuban and anti-communist
propaganda, but our agents in it are not as effective in trade-union activities
as we would like. They are constantly feuding among themselves and
failing to get out and organize. However, they won't be terminated until Gil
Saudade is able to move some of his agents from the PLPR into the
leadership of the national free labour confederation now in its embryonic
stage. Miranda, our Coastal Labour Senator, is also ineffective and he is
feuding with the CROCLE agents. Finally, Jose Baquero, our Minister of
Labour, is determined to promote the small and ineffective Catholic labour
group, CEDOC, instead of our budding secular organisations. His
effectiveness is also limited because as Minister he is responsible for the
public-health service, the social-security system, protection of minors, the
fire departments and cooperatives as well as labour matters.
On two recent occasions the International Organisations Division in
headquarters has sent in agents to help us. In March William Sinclair, the
Inter-American Representative of the Public Service International (PSI),
and William H. McCabe, also a PSI representative, came to assist in
planning for a congress of municipal employees that a few weeks later
launched a new National Federation of Municipal Employees. Also, an
exploratory visit was made by an international representative of the
International Federation of Plantation, Agricultural and Allied Workers
(IFPAAW) for possible assistance in organising Ecuadorean rural coastal
workers.
Quito 28 May 1961
The Cubans have made a timely manoeuvre. Yesterday Carlos Olivares, the
Cuban Sub-Secretary of Foreign Relations and their most important
troubleshooter, arrived in Guayaquil. He is on a 'goodwill' tour trying to
bolster Cuban relations with South American countries, capitalising, of
course, on the Bay of Pigs invasion. Today he saw Velasco, but we haven't
been able to get a report on their private meeting.
Olivares's visit coincides with new reports on the considerable publicity
given in Cuba to recent speeches by the Ecuadorean Ambassador at Cuban
universities. According to Cuban press releases the Ambassador has
attacked the US, alleging that Ecuador, like Cuba, has been the victim of the
'arbitrary, unjust and rapacious American imperialism'. The reports have
provoked new outrage against Velasco on his Cuban policy.
Today Velasco gave another speech and made no attempt to hide the
damage our campaign is doing. He condemned persons unnamed for trying
to divide the country between communists and anti-communists, and he
repeated that while he is President, Ecuador will never become communist.
Our campaign through Salgado, Davila, Perez, Arizaga, Gortaire and other
agents goes on. John Bacon is also continuing to publish the 'alert' notices
every two or three days, and other propaganda themes include concern over
the Bay of Pigs prisoners and the recent guerrilla arrests in Quito.
In Ambato, Gortaire has managed to launch an Anti-Communist Front that
includes Liberals as well as the Conservatives, the fascist ARNE and others.
This is the first instance of significant Liberal Party participation in anti-
communist fronts and clearly reflects the prestige and organising ability of
Gortaire.
Quito 29 May 1961
If our propaganda and political-action campaign doesn't force Velasco to
take the right action, the worsening economic situation will. Today the
President of the Monetary Board, appointed by Velasco himself, resigned in
protest against the damage to the economy that uncertainty over Cuba and
communism is causing.
Since the return in early March to policies of monetary stability, inflation
has failed to slow down while Velasco has created a considerable number of
new indirect taxes that are very unpopular. While Velasco and his
lieutenants continue their theme of 'forty years of Velasquismo' most of the
people have been struggling against their declining purchasing power. One
indication of how bad the situation is getting is the decline in free-market
value of the sucre: from about eighteen per dollar six months ago to over
twenty-two right now.
The President of the Monetary Board, in resigning, attributed the worsening
economic situation to lack of confidence based on Velasco's tolerance
towards communism internally and his ambiguity towards Cuba. He
insisted that Velasco must take action instead of making philosophical
statements, and he pinpointed the following specific problems: the activities
of the Ecuadorean Ambassador to Cuba; the agitation emanating from the
Cuban Embassy in Quito and the Cuban Consulate in Guayaquil; the Cuban
Ambassador's speech in Ambato; and the lack of clear definition by Velasco
on communism.
Velasco is really embarrassed by this resignation which Noland says is
bound to have some effect. The resignation statement couldn't have been
better if we had written it ourselves. Exactly what we want.
Quito 30 May 1961
Finally Velasco is taking action. Several of the Velasquista penetration
agents have reported that Velasco asked Olivares to withdraw the Cuban
Ambassador. There is not going to be a persona non grata note – simply a
quiet exit. This is a significant start and it shows Velasco is facing reality:
he just can't continue ignoring the pressure of the Social Christians,
Conservatives, Catholic Church and all the other anti-communists – and us.
As soon as we learn of the Cuban Ambassador's travel plans we'll pass
word for a hostile farewell committee.
On the negative side a judge today released Echeverria and Ribadeneira for
lack of evidence. He's the best friend of the extreme left in the court system
and was the last hope for those two. Earlier the habeas corpus proceeding
had failed them and the CTE campaign for their release hasn't been very
effective. The judge ordered documents from the police on the original
sources of the police information, including names of their informants. As
the station is the only source, this effectively killed the legal case.
Quito 3 June 1961
Velasco made a very important speech tonight. At a political rally he tried
to make the political definition that the Defence Front and the rightist
political parties have been demanding. He announced a doctrine of
liberalism which for him means cooperation rather than conflict between
classes. He denounced communism, praised representative democracy, and
described his own course as between the extremes of left and right. He also
said that communism should be attacked not by police repression but
through the elimination of misery, hunger, sickness and ignorance. He
showed the effect of our campaign, charging the anticommunists with
trying to take away the bases of his support by dividing the 400,000
Ecuadoreans who voted for him on the pretext of anti-communism.
This speech, coming on the heels of the Cuban Ambassador's expulsion,
will tend to soften the campaign. Our goal is a complete break in relations
with Cuba, not just an expulsion. Economics will probably help us. The
sucre is now down to twenty-three per dollar from eighteen six months ago,
and a controversy is raging over inflation, especially the prices of medicines
which are among the highest in Latin America.
Quito 7 June 1961
Velasco's 'anti-communist' speech has been very well received and even the
Conservative Party has issued a statement of guarded approval. What most
people are watching, however, are his actions and we have some distance to
cover before relaxing. The day after Velasco's speech, the Minister of
Defence made it clear that Velasco now considers his position defined as
anti-communist – a clear attempt to stop erosion of support from the
station-backed anti-communist campaign.
The Liberal Party has rather suddenly taken a strong stance against the
President, partly no doubt because of a recent attack by a Velasquista mob
on their paper El Comercio. At the annual celebration of the Party's
founding it was said that the past thirty years of Velasquismo have pulled
down the county in a cataleptic state and, of course, that only the Liberal
Party can save it. The Liberal's complaints are mostly founded on the
worsening economic situation: the sucre has now fallen to twenty-five.
Some relief has become available, however, largely because of Velasco's
anti-communist actions of the past two or three weeks. Today in
Washington the International Monetary Fund announced a ten-million-
dollar stand-by loan for a stabilisation programme in Ecuador. In the
announcement the IMF also said that the Central Bank, which requested the
loan, is going to adopt a policy of credit restriction and other measures to
end the flight of capital, recognising also that measures have already been
taken to slow the fall in foreign-exchange reserves.
The IMF announcement was embarrassing to the government here, which
didn't want publicity. The Minister of Economy even declined to comment
on the announcement, saying that questions should be directed to the IMF
in Washington.
Quito 12 June 1961
This past week, since Velasco made his 'anti-communist' speech, has been
the first fairly calm period since I arrived. In the hectic pace as we've passed
from crisis to crisis I almost haven't noticed how far my Spanish has come
along. Noland is especially pleased with my progress on the language and
also with the way I have been developing friends among the Ecuadoreans,
impossible, of course, without the language. Mostly I've been spending time
meeting people at the golf-club while learning to play.
Janet has a mental block on the language and it's growing as a source of
friction between us. Among other things this limits her friends to those who
speak English and it also hinders her running servants and shopping.
Politics, unfortunately, are not interesting to her either. But these are small
complaints and common, I'm told, at overseas posts. And they certainly pale
before the big news: in October our first child is due, something we didn't
exactly plan but we were both happily surprised.
The work routine at the station is arduous – nights, weekends, whenever
things are happening. After reading the newspapers each morning we begin
writing and distributing papers: pouched dispatches on operations,
intelligence reports, cables for urgent matters. Noland insists that each day
we all read the cable chronological file so that we're up to date on all the
incoming and outgoing traffic. The pouched material, both out and in, is
circulated so that each officer will know exactly what the others are doing,
their successes and their problems. Each of us also looks over the flight
passenger lists each day, and Noland insists that we also read the State
Department cables and pouched material handled by the Embassy staff.
With all this reading, I'm pressed to get out for agent meetings, although I
am only meeting directly about five. The worst is writing intelligence
reports because the special usage and format must be followed.
The propaganda and political-action campaign against Araujo, Cuba and
communism in general has clearly been the major station programme since
I arrived six months ago. The ECACTOR project has accounted for much
of this activity. It costs about 50,000 dollars a year and in a place like Quito
a thousand dollars a week buys a lot. The feelings I have is that we aren't
running the country but we are certainly helping to shape events in the
direction and form we want. The other main station activity, the PCE
penetration programme, has consistently provided good information.
There's no question that Echeverria and his group here in the sierra are
doing all they can to prepare for armed guerrilla operations. We have to
keep the pressure on Velasco to break with Cuba and clamp down on the
extreme left.
Quito 15 June 1961
Velasco apparently thinks his 'anti-communist' definition had ended the
campaign. In a speech the other day he repeated his old theme that Ecuador
will never become communist under him, but he insisted that he will not
break relations with Cuba without a diplomatic cause.
On the other hand Jorge Ribadeneira, the URJE leader arrested on the
guerrilla training exercise, has been sent to an isolated Amazon jungle
outpost to do his military service. His absence will be a severe blow to the
URJE leadership in Quito and also to the PCE.
Through Gustavo Salgado we are trying to relate the guerrilla arrests last
month to exile reports on guerrilla training in Cuba. The JMWAVE station
in Miami recently released an article on guerrilla training in Havana of
groups of ten to fifteen who have been arriving from various Latin
American countries. The article was passed to Salgado who added the
URJE training episode of last month and arranged for publication on two
consecutive days. Somehow we have to retain the sense of urgency in the
propaganda campaign on communism and Cuba.
Today the Foreign Ministry announced that the Ecuadorean Ambassador to
Cuba is retiring from the post 'at the convenience of the Foreign Service'.
Velasco is certainly making an attempt to placate the rightists, but the fact is
that he has no other choice now.
Quito 16 June 1961
It was recently announced that Vice-President Arosemena will leave on 18
June for a trip to the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Poland. We've
known about this trip for some time. The invitation is from the Supreme
Soviet and the group will include several legislators as well as Arosemena.
Formally this is a 'private' trip with no diplomatic or commercial purposes,
but Arosemena is well known for his leftist ideas – he is also an alcoholic –
and some mischief will come from the trip for sure.
Velasco is against the trip because Adlai Stevenson arrives the day
Arosemena leaves, and Velasco is desperate for economic assistance.
Stevenson is touring Latin America promoting the Alliance for Progress
and trying to pick up the pieces from the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and Velasco is
going to give him a list of requirements. He doesn't want Arosemena's trip
to jeopardise his requests for aid to Stevenson, especially after expelling the
Cuban Ambassador and firing his own anti-US Ambassador to Cuba to
prepare a favourable atmosphere. So Arosemena's trip has sparked a sharp
public exchange between him and Velasco. The Foreign Minister
announced today that the Cabinet unanimously resolved that Arosemena's
trip at this time is 'inconvenient' with emphasis that the trip is on
Arosemena's own account with no official standing. Arosemena for his part
defended the trip by denouncing unnamed Velasquista government leaders
as money-crazed. Dr. Ovalle reports that Velasco is furious.
Quito 20 June 1961
Arosemena left as planned and today Ambassador Stevenson also leaves.
Velasco presented Ecuador's development needs in a seventeen-page
memorandum that lists initial requirements totalling about 200 million
dollars. Stevenson also met with moderate leaders of the Quito FEUE
chapter and with leaders of the free trade-union movement. I had a short
chat with him in the Embassy yesterday. In a few days an Ecuadorean
delegation headed by the Minister of Development will leave for
Washington to press for new loans. Arosemena's trip doesn't seem to have
damaged Velasco's requests to Stevenson, but the split between the two
won't be mended easily.
Today Velasco changed his Minister of Government again. He named a
former Defence Minister under Ponce in what is an obvious move to make
adequate security arrangements before the Congress reconvenes in August.
Quito 29 June 1961
Noland has decided to move ahead on coverage of the Cubans here by
putting a telephone tap on the Embassy. He asked me to take charge of this
new operation, and a few days ago he introduced me to Rafael Bucheli, the
engineer in charge of all the Quito telephone exchanges. Bucheli is an old
friend of Noland because his brother (cryptonym ECSAW) was our
principal political-action agent in the Ponce government until he was killed
in an automobile accident. Bucheli is going to make connections in the
exchange where his office is located and which serves both his home and
the Cuban Embassy. Noland also introduced me to Alfonso Rodriguez, the
engineer in charge of all the telephone lines system outside the exchanges.
Noland met Rodriguez through his work on the University Sports League
soccer team where Rodriguez is also active. He recruited Rodriguez who
suggested that Bucheli might also help, not knowing yet that Bucheli had
also agreed. The two engineers, Noland and I began planning the operation
but Noland is going to let me handle it alone. The first thing I must do is get
headquarters approval for the operation and some equipment from the
Panama station where the TSD has just set up a regional support base. The
Panama station is located at Fort Amador in the Canal Zone where they
have various support staffs who are able to save several days travel time to
most of the WH stations. Then Rodriguez will run a special line to Bucheli's
house where we'll set up the LP. I'll ask Francine Jacome, who was writing
the cover letters for the AMBLOOD SW messages, to do the transcribing.
Quito 7 July 1961
Good news from Velasco for a change. Today he appointed Jorge Acosta
Velasco as Minister of the Treasury. Until now Acosta has been Director of
the Colonisation Institute and the Vice President of the National Planning
Board, somewhat removed from his uncle, the President. He has been
keeping Noland informed on Velasco's obstinacy over breaking with Cuba,
but now he'll be able to work on the problem from within the Cabinet.
Ambassador Bernbaum is also trying to soften up Velasco on the Cuban
problem. Thanks to his insistence a five million dollar development loan for
housing has just been approved, and he also arranged an invitation for
Velasco to visit Kennedy, which will be announced in a few days, probably
to take place in October.
Davila and the Conservatives continue to squeeze. Today the Party forbade
any of its members to accept jobs in the Velasco administration.
Quito 11 July 1961
The Cardinal issued an anti-Cuban pastoral yesterday which may have
overshot the mark. It's inflammatory, alarmist, almost hysterical in its
warning against Cuba and communism. He urges all Ecuadorean Catholics
to take action against communism but he doesn't say what action. The
statement is so emotional it may be counter-productive, but Noland has
faith that the Davila crowd, who at our instigation urged the Cardinal to
produce it, know what they are about. Today we distributed an unattributed
fly-sheet through the ECJOB team. This severely attacked the Cardinal for
these statements. The Catholic organisations are at once, as expected,
beginning their protests.
Quito 15 July 1961
The political situation has taken a new turn that promises to obscure the
Cuban and communist issues. Opposition to the government has suddenly
united behind Vice-President Arosemena, thanks largely to Velasco himself.
Three days ago Velasco appointed a new Minister of the Economy who is a
paving contractor with large government contracts. He is also associated
with the Guayaquil financial interests surrounding Velasco and his
appointment immediately rekindled the criticisms that Velasco is dominated
by the Guayaquil clique. Yesterday the government announced the
unification of the exchange rate which will mean that importers of
machinery, raw materials, medicines and other basic materials will have to
pay about 20 per cent more in sucres for each dollar of foreign exchange
purchased through the Central Bank for their imports. The unification
measure is practically the same as an official devaluation of the sucre and
will cause prices to rise immediately, because no compensatory measures
such as tax adjustments or tariff exemptions were included. The economic
sector most affected will be sierra agriculture but prices generally will rise
throughout the country.
The unification decree has come just as a series of new indirect taxes has
been announced on carbonated beverages, beer, official paper, unearned
income, highway travel and other articles. These taxes will also cause prices
to rise or buying power to drop and they violate Velasco's own recent
statements that taxes are already too high.
In Washington the International Monetary Fund has issued a statement
supporting the measure on unification, which is not surprising because
everyone knows unification was a condition for the ten-million-dollar
standby announced last month. In Ecuador, however, almost every
significant political organisation, and other groups such as the FEUE and
the CTE have announced opposition to both unification and the new indirect
taxes.
Announcement of the new economic decrees couldn't have been made at a
worse time for Velasco, because the other event yesterday was Arosemena's
return from his trip to Moscow. His supporters, including leaders of the
extreme left, had been promoting a big reception for him for over a week.
At the Quito airport several thousand turned out with Araujo as one of the
leaders. Posters were prominent with slogans such as 'Cuba si, Yankees no',
'Down with Imperialism' and 'We Want Relations with Russia'.
Velasco is going to have to struggle hard to keep his balance. Just possibly
he will break with Cuba in order to gain rightist support, but we aren't
taking bets.
Quito 23 July 1961
Arosemena has become undisputed leader of the opposition to Velasco.
Although the Conservatives and Social Christians continue their opposition
on the Cuban and communist issue, the new economic decrees have given
the FEUE, CTE, URJE, the PCE and the Revolutionary Socialists the
perfect pretext to line up behind Arosemena. Even the reactionary Radical
Liberal Party and the moderate Socialist Party under our agent Manuel
Naranjo have joined the extreme left in supporting Arosemena as the
opposition leader.
Velasco is rattled by Arosemena's sudden popularity. During the reception
for him at Guayaquil the local tank units were placed on alert to create fear
and (unsuccessfully) to cut down attendance. While trying to defend the
economic measures on the grounds that the government needs more income
for public works, Velasco has bitterly attacked Arosemena for dividing the
Velasquista Movement. As Arosemena and some of his supporters are still
calling themselves Velasquistas even though they have turned against
Velasco, the President has told them to leave the Movement and form
another group with a different name.
Guayaquil student operations have just had a setback. Elections were held a
week ago for FEUE officers at the University of Guayaquil – possibly the
most important FEUE chapter because of the high level of militancy of the
students there. Our forces, financed from the ECLOSE project and led by
Alberto Alarcon, lost to the extreme left. A leader of URJE was elected
FEUE President. The election came at a bad time just as the extreme left
was making noisy support for Arosemena against Velasco on the economic
issues.
Quito 27 July 1961
Gil Saudade, our Deputy Chief of Station, decided to risk the future of his
ECLURE party, the Popular Revolutionary Liberal Party (PLPR), on
Velasco's longevity in the Presidency. His hope is still to attract the
Velasquista left away from Araujo even if this means open and direct
support for Velasco. When the party's first national convention opened in
Quito a couple of days ago, Velasco was named Honorary President.
Preparations for the convention have been underway for several months and
have included public statements on major issues. In late June, for example,
the PLPR published a statement supporting Velasco on his Cuba policy (a
conscious manoeuvre by Saudade) but strongly denouncing 'the twenty
families that have been exploiting Ecuador since before Independence and
that seek to conserve their privileges by keeping the country under the
landlords and bosses'. The statement also affirmed that the real enemies of
the Ecuadorean people are the Conservative Party, the Social Christian
Movement, the Radical Liberal Party and the Socialist Party – all of whom
represent the rich oligarchies who oppress the poor masses of the country.
Two weeks later the PLPR published another statement sharply criticising
the most recent pastoral letters of the Cardinal, whom our agents accused of
being just one more oligarch using the communist scare for his own
purposes. Right now Gil has on the payroll the party's National Director,
Juan Yepez del Pozo, Jr; the National Coordinator, Antonio Ulloa
Coppiano; the Legal Counsel, Carlos Vallejo Baez; and the mastermind
behind the operation, Juan Yepez del Pozo, Sr. who holds no office.
Saudade is very pleased with the PLPR convention which ended last night
with Velasco as the principal speaker. The final session got ample publicity
and was overflowing with people. Although the party had to support
Velasco on his Cuban policy for tactical purposes, Saudade was careful to
have Juan Yepez, Jr, in his opening speech describe the PLPR as opposed to
the extremes of left or right, adding that the party could never approve of
the despotism of Soviet Marxism.
Gil has also picked up two new agents from the convention, both of whom
he plans to guide into the free labour movement to ensure station control
beyond the CROCLE operation of the Guayaquil base. One of the new
agents is Matias Ulloa Coppiano, brother of Antonio Ulloa who is PLPR
National Coordinator. Matias is a leader of a collective transportation
cooperative. The other new agent is Ricardo Vazquez Diaz, a leader of the
Guayaquil PLPR delegation, who was one of the secretaries of the
convention.
Quito 31 July 1961
Velasco and the Cubans seem to be on the verge of establishing a mutual-
aid society. Yesterday an interview with the new Ambassador was published
wherein the Ambassador claims that Cuba was the first country to back
Ecuador in its demand for revision of the Rio Protocol, comparing the
forceful imposition of the Protocol to the imposition by the US of the Platt
Amendment and our retention of the Guantanamo naval base. Today the
Foreign Ministry issued a statement emphasising Ecuador's opposition to
any form of collective or multilateral intervention in Cuba.
The Defence Front forces, however, haven't relaxed. At a pro-Cuba rally
three nights ago Araujo's speech was interrupted by an unexplained power
failure. Police troops and cavalry outside the theatre prevented another riot
with counter-demonstrators. Similarly, when the new Cuban Ambassador
presented his credentials at the Presidential Palace, an anti-Castro group
sent by the Defence Front clashed with an URJE group that had come to the
Palace to cheer the Ambassador. A riot followed and was finally broken up
by the police with tear-gas.
The TSD support office in Panama sent tape-recorders, dial-recorders and
actuators for setting up the telephone tap on the Cuban Embassy
(cryptonym ECWHEAT). Last week the audio technician, Larry Martin,
was here to train Rafael Bucheli to use the equipment, and Bucheli made
the connections in the exchange aided by an assistant. Bucheli and the
assistant are both active in the Quito model airplane club and I'm going to
get a catalogue from headquarters so that they can select items that I can
order through the pouch. Later we'll talk of salaries.
Quito 4 August 1961
Velasco's tactics of bullying the opposition have cost him another Minister
of Government. In a recent open polemic between the Minister and the
National Director of the Radical Liberal Party the Minister launched such
severe personal insults that he was challenged to a duel by the Liberal
leader. Yesterday the Minister resigned so that he could accept the
challenge, since duelling in Ecuador is illegal. The Liberal leader, who is
from Guayaquil, flew up to Quito yesterday for final preparations, but he
was met at the airport by several hundred rioting Velasquistas, most of
whom were plain-clothes policemen and employees of the government
monopolies and customs. The Liberal leader barely escaped lynching while
several international flights were disrupted because of the tear-gas used by
police and the general chaos. The duel was later called off, however,
because the seconds somehow arranged for satisfactory excuses by the ex-
Minister and honour was satisfied.
During the riot at the Quito airport a touring Soviet goodwill delegation
flew in unexpectedly. We've had reports from other WH stations on their
tour but the exact date they would proceed to Quito was undecided,
probably to avoid a hostile reception. Our National Defence Front agents
will publish statements and demonstrate against the visit. They are staying
at the Hotel Quito but we still have not received the bugged lamps back
from our technical support base in Panama.
Quito 31 August 1961
Our propaganda and political-action campaign to keep the opposition to
Velasco focused on Cuba and communism is being diverted because of the
greater importance of last month's economic decrees on unification of the
exchange rate and new taxes. Inflation has also become a major public
issue. The government, however, is determined to retain the economic
decrees in order to stimulate exports. Similarly, the new taxes are being
justified as needed for the police, armed forces, education and public works.
Nevertheless, the decrees have become the unifying issue for Velasco's
opposition, and tomorrow the Chambers of Commerce of the entire country
will call for repeal of the unification decree.
The Congress, which reconvened three weeks ago, is the centre of
opposition political debate, and already the Velasquista tactics of
intimidation by hostile mobs in the galleries have been renewed. During
one session, when the acting Minister of Government was called to answer
questions about police repression in Guayaquil, nothing could be heard over
the screaming of the galleries. Orange and banana peelings and showers of
spittle fell on the opposition Deputy who was trying to question the
Minister. Nevertheless, the Deputy spoke for several hours against
repression in Guayaquil, but he was vilified continuously by the galleries,
finally being forced to seek shelter. Meanwhile, fights broke out on the
Chamber floor between Deputies, ashtrays were hurled by opponents, and
the Chamber's security forces refused to eject the rioters in the galleries.
Arosemena, as President of the Congress, continues as the leader of the
opposition to Velasco. Although loyal Velasquistas have been elected to
offices in both houses, the exact party balance is unclear because of
uncertainty over defections of Velasquistas to Arosemena – as in the case of
Reinaldo Varea, who was reelected Vice President of the Senate and has
declared for Arosemena. Two weeks ago a delegation from the CTE was
invited by Arosemena to a joint session of Congress with Arosemena
presiding. Members of the delegation asked the Congress to nullify the July
decrees on unification and new taxes, adding that if the decrees are not
cancelled the CTE will call a general strike. This time Arosemena had the
Velasquista mob ejected when they started shouting.
Quito 2 September 1961
Saudade is certainly moving his Popular Revolutionary Liberal Party
(PLPR) along – this time with help from the Bogota station. Since arriving
in Quito Saudade has been corresponding with the Bogota station which
supports a leftist wing of the Liberal Party called the Revolutionary Liberal
Movement (MLR). Experience with the MLR in Colombia has been
important for Saudade here because he hopes to achieve success with the
PLPR comparable to the Bogota station's success with the MLR.
Some weeks ago Saudade had Juan Yepez del Pozo, Jr. of the PLPR invite
the leader of the MLR, Alfonso Lopez Michelson, to visit Quito to
exchange experiences and to promote PLPR organisational work. Saudade,
of course, didn't reveal the CIA interest in the MLR but the Bogota station
assured acceptance of the invitation. I wonder whether Lopez is witting and
contact with him is direct or whether the Bogota station's access to him is
through other MLR leaders.
Lopez arrived yesterday and will see Velasco and Arosemena and make a
number of speeches. He will also visit Guayaquil. Saudade is picking up the
tab, and good publicity is already coming out.
Quito 4 September 1961
Arosemena is cementing his political support from the CTE. Today the
Senate under his prodding gave 50,000 sucres to the CTE for its national
convention, scheduled for later this month in Ambato. The CTE responded
with thanks from the Revolutionary Socialist Sierra Labour Senator and
invited Arosemena to address the convention's closing session; he accepted.
The CTE's campaign against the decrees on unification and taxes continues,
along with promotion of a general strike, the date of which still hasn't been
set.
Our PCE penetration agents report joy in the party over Arosemena's
cooperation with the CTE and the extreme left generally but leftist leaders
are worried about his alcoholism and will be careful not to get burned by
getting too closely associated with him.
In a few days we are going to bug the Czech Legation. For months Noland
has had Otto Kladensky eliciting information from the Czechs on possible
permanent locations for the Legation, and they finally signed a contract on a
large house now nearing completion. On checking the building records,
Noland discovered that the engineer in charge of construction is a friend of
his from the University Sports League. Noland also knows the owner of the
house, but after discussions with the engineer he decided not to speak to the
owner for fear he would oppose risking his contract.
Equipment has arrived from headquarters for five or six installations, and
the audio technicians are already here studying the building plans to
determine how the rooms will be used. Their first priority is the code-room,
followed by the Minister's office, and then studies and bedrooms.
Since the house is in one of Quito's nicest new areas, we have plenty of
support bases available for use during the installation. The plan is for the
two audio technicians to enter the house at night with the engineer who
luckily speaks English. I will be in an observation post overlooking the
house which is a back bedroom of the home of an Embassy USIS officer.
Noland and Captain Vargas, Chief of Police Intelligence, and several of
Vargas's strong-arm boys, will be in a support base in the apartment of
Noland's administrative assistant who lives only two blocks from the target
house. We will have walkie-talkie communications between the target
house, my OP and the support base. If anything goes wrong, we will call on
Vargas and his boys to step in and take over 'officially' while our audio
technicians make a getaway. Vargas and his boys won't know why they're
on standby unless they're needed.
Quito 20 September 1961
The first try for the audio operation against the Czech Legation failed. It
was the technicians' fault and they were lucky not to have been caught.
Bunglers! Everything went perfectly until about five o'clock in the morning
when, as I was fighting to keep awake, I noticed the two technicians
hurrying out of the house with their suitcases of equipment and running
down the street to the getaway car. The engineer went running after them
and they all drove away. I advised Noland by walkie-talkie and we went to
the Embassy to rejoin the technicians.
Incredible story. They worked all night making three installations in the
walls and were about to plaster over the transmitters when they were
surprised by four Indian guards who had been asleep in another room all
night. The engineer is known to the Indians, who were told by the owner
not to let anyone enter the house, and he told them our frightened
technicians were simply some electricians he brought to work. At five
o'clock in the morning? While the engineer occupied the Indians, the
technicians ripped the installations out of the walls and packed up.
The Czechs are visiting the house every day and are bound to notice the big
holes left where the installations were ripped out. Noland gave the engineer
some money to buy silence from the Indians but the engineer will have
difficulty making explanations to the Czechs. He'll just have to play dumb
and hope the Indians keep quiet.
It may be too late to try again because the Czechs will soon be moving in,
so I suppose headquarters will ask for telephone tapping instead. We have
technical problems on this operation too – the tap on the Cuban Embassy
still isn't working right. Headquarters wanted us to try a new type of
equipment that actuates the tape-recorders from the sound on the telephone
wires instead of from changes of voltage. The trouble is that the wires pick
up a near-by radio station and all we're getting is reels and reels of music.
The only real casualty of this botched job will probably be my dog. Poor
Lanita. I tested the dog tranquillizer on him last week just in case the
Czechs suddenly put guard dogs at the house – several years ago the station
spent about five nights using this special powder mixed with hamburger
meat, but they couldn't get the Czechs' dogs to sleep so they could make an
entry. Now, however, only a few minutes after I gave Lanita the prescribed
dose he began to fade away. Hours passed and he just went into a coma.
The vet came the next day and took him away, saying his central nervous
system was paralysed. He's still at the kennels and if he dies I will send a
big bill to the TSD.
Quito 24 September, 1961
The CTE convention got underway in Ambato yesterday and it was almost
like the Congress. Arosemena was one of the guests, and when the
ceremonies began a group of Velasquistas who had infiltrated the theatre
began shouting vivas to Velasco and abajos to Arosemena and communism.
The CTE people started shouting vivas to Cuba and Arosemena and a vast
fist-fight ensued. Pistols were fired into the air, stink-bombs were set off,
and only when the police arrived and filled the theatre with tear-gas could
the brawl be stopped. It continued in the street outside, however, while the
inauguration ceremony began in the lingering stench of tear-gas combined
with stink-bombs.
Velasco simply cannot learn to compromise; this episode can only be
counter-productive.
Quito 25 September 1961
Now I know what happened to the agents in Cuba on the other end of the
secret-writing channel. El Comercio this morning carries a front-page
article on the arrest of Luis Toroella and the other AMBLOOD agents and a
story about their plan to assassinate Castro. The article is a wire-service
dispatch from Havana based on yesterday's Cuban government press release
and the El Comercio article is naturally headlined with reference to the
Quito-Havana secret-writing channel.
Apparently the agents told everything, but the story doesn't include the
number of the Quito post-office box, which is under Colonel Paredes's true
name. I sent a priority cable to the Miami station asking that they inform us
if the box number was revealed, because Colonel Paredes will need to cover
himself to protect the surveillance team. The agents undoubtedly were
arrested several months ago, perhaps at the time of the Bay of Pigs
invasion, but Miami should have told us so we could cancel the box and
perhaps destroy the records of the name of the holder. I hadn't known they
were planning to assassinate Castro but the press report reveals a detailed
plan using bazookas in an ambush near the Havana sports complex. The
radio channel must have been used for this operation. No indication on how
they were caught – I hope it wasn't from my bad SW technique. No
indication either of when they'll get the paredon[1] – maybe already.
Quito 3 October 1961
The CTE set tomorrow as the day for the twenty-four-hour general strike
against the July economic decrees. They claim 500 unions will participate
and have been joined by the FEUE and by the Socialist Party of Manuel
Naranjo. Velasco described the strike as a proclamation of revolution
against his government, adding that if the new taxes are repealed there will
be no money for 'teachers, police and military'.
For the past few days the government has been promoting a propaganda
campaign against the strike. Large numbers of 'unions' which are really
Velasquista political organisations have been publishing statements of
boycott. But the only real unions boycotting the strike are the Catholic
CEDOC and our own free trade-union movement including CROCLE, both
of which are for annulment of the taxes but against strengthening the CTE.
Tonight Baquero de la Calle, our Minister of Labour, made a nationwide
radio broadcast in which he called the strike a subversive political action
having nothing to do with labour matters, to counter CTE insistence that the
strike is purely for economic motives having nothing to do with politics.
Both are wrong because the strike is both political and economic, but we're
against it because of its extreme-left promotion.
No one doubts there will be violence when the strikers set up road-blocks to
stop transportation. We've set up special communications with our police
agents to get timely news on their reports from around the country. Tension
is high.
Quito 4 October 1961
Velasco is truly incomprehensible. This morning most of the commercial
activities in Quito and Guayaquil were normal and it was evident that the
strike would be only partially successful. However, by noon the police
cavalry and Army tanks had made such a show of force that everything
closed, and as the afternoon went on the strike became total in both cities. If
the government hadn't created such a climate of fear the strike would
probably have been a failure. But there was considerable violence in the
provinces, especially at Tulcan, on the Colombian border. Several have
been killed and wounded there.
Quito 6 October 1961
The strike continues in Tulcan. Yesterday a Congressional Commission that
included Manuel Naranjo went there along with the Minister of
Government and other high police and security officials. The meeting of the
Congressional Commission, the Minister's group, and the Tulcan strike
commission turned into a political rally against Velasco and the
government. The crowd, in fact, became so menacing that the Minister had
to seek refuge in a government building under military protection.
Today a popular strike committee in the coastal province of Esmeraldas
decided to follow the lead in Tulcan by extending the strike indefinitely.
Velasco continues the hard line. Four of the principal CTE leaders are being
held since the day before the strike, and an arrest list of nineteen others has
been published.
Quito 11 October 1961
Velasco ended the strikes in Tulcan and Esmeraldas by promising public
works, and tomorrow he goes to Tulcan to listen to complaints. A few days
ago in Guayaquil he again defended unification and the new taxes, but he
had the Mayor accuse Arosemena of subverting public order from the
Presidency of the Congress. The Congress is now in its thirty-day
extraordinary period, but there is little sign that anything of significance
will result – probably more riots and clashes with Velasco. No one expects
the lull of the past two days to continue.
Today the national golf tournament ended: I was awful but Noland and his
wife played well. I'm skipping the celebrations at the club tonight because
Janet is due to deliver any day. Her obstetrician is the Quito golf champion
and will be leading the party tonight. I hope his early prediction of delivery
on Columbus's Day will be slightly off because he won't be in condition
tomorrow.
Quito 12 October 1961
He was right! I had to get Alberto out of the golf-club at five o'clock this
morning. Miraculously everything was perfect – a boy.
Quito 16 October 1961
The political security office of the Ministry of Government has invented a
'plot' as a pretext for arresting opposition leaders. It's so unlikely that it will
probably make Velasco look worse than ever. For the past three days
political-security agents have been arresting opposition leaders, including a
leftist deputy who tried to question the Minister of Defence last August, and
some of the rightist leaders of the National Defence Front. Luckily none of
our agents is among the sixteen arrested although the security agents are
looking for communists and conservatives alike.
The 'plot' was announced today by the Director-General of Security who
runs the political security arm of the Ministry of Government – an office
we've purposely stayed far away from. Leaders of the 'plot', which was to
break out tomorrow night, are from the extreme right and the extreme left.
A sizeable quantity of arms was put on display, said to be of Iron Curtain
origin and found in the homes of communists during raids. No thinking
person could believe such a transparent fabrication, but Velasco obviously
hopes it will rekindle the support he needs from the poor and uneducated if
he decides to close the Congress by force.
In answer to the arrests and 'plot' the Liberals, Conservatives, Social
Christians, democratic Socialists and the fascist ARNE all joined today in a
coordinating bureau to fight assumption of dictatorial powers by Velasco.
Jorge Acosta, the Minister of the Treasury, returned from Washington today.
He tried to make the trip sound successful by telling reporters of several
loans that are 'pending' and 'ready to be signed', but he wasn't able to bring
immediate relief. Velasco must certainly be disappointed.
Almost unnoticed in this atmosphere of crisis was the resignation today of
Jose Baquero de la Calle, our Minister of Labour. Velasco wanted to get
him out, so he let him fire the Guayaquil Fire Chief for irregular use of
funds, then cancelled Baquero's action, leaving the agent no choice but to
resign. He has been an ineffective minister and not a particularly effective
agent either, so Saudade isn't too sorry to see him fired. Now he'll try to
ease him off the payroll.
Quito 17 October 1961
A shoot-out in the Congress last night has the whole country in an uproar,
and rumours are beginning to circulate that there may be a military move
against Velasco.
At a joint Congressional session last night the loyalist Velasquista mob
packed the galleries and began hurling orange and banana peelings as well
as the worst insults they could articulate. Loyalist Velasquista legislators
joined the rioters in the galleries, and when Arosemena, who was presiding,
ordered the galleries to be cleared the police refused to act. Stones began to
fly from the galleries and opposition legislators sought shelter under their
desks while others formed a protective shield around Arosemena.
By one o'clock this morning, after nearly four hours of rioting, shots also
began to be fired from the galleries, some directed right at Arosemena's
desk. He finally pulled out his own revolver, emptied it into the air, and left
the chamber, claiming that over forty policemen were in the galleries in
civilian dress with their service revolvers.
Today Velasco denied that he is seeking to install a dictatorship, while the
loyalist Velasquista legislators are justifying last night's riots as necessary
for the preservation of Ecuadorean democracy. Arosemena said today he
will charge Velasco before the Supreme Court with trying to assassinate
him. In Guayaquil today police with tear-gas, firing weapons into the air,
broke up a FEUE manifestation against the government. This can't go on
forever.
Quito 24 October 1961
Yesterday the Minister of Government resigned rather than face political
interrogation by Congress over repression since the general strike three
weeks ago. Velasco named Jorge Acosta as Acting Minister of Government,
which is a break for the station, but Noland thinks the situation may be too
desperate to hope for productive work with Acosta.
Today Velasco finally made his expected move for Conservative Party
support. Noland has been insisting with Davila that he do all he can to
sustain the Conservatives in making a break with Cuba their condition for
supporting Velasco. Thus Velasco's offer today of the Ministry of Labour
was rejected by the Conservatives, and Velasco's position continues to
weaken. Acosta told Noland that Velasco is as stubborn as ever on breaking
with Cuba, but he is going to do all he can to convince his uncle that the
only hope of survival for the government is to break with Cuba and gain
Conservative backing.
I haven't seen anything in writing on whether the Agency or State
Department want to see Velasco survive or fall – only that our policy is to
force a break with Cuba. The obvious danger is that Velasco will fall
because of his obstinacy and that a pliable Arosemena, strongly influenced
by the CTE, FEUE and other undesirables, will end up in power. This
makes Acosta's influence on Velasco for the break absolutely crucial.
Quito 27 October 1961
We weren't able to re-enter the Czech Legation before they moved in, so the
audio operation is definitely lost.
A couple of nights ago someone fired shots through the huge front windows
of the Legation, but a bomb placed in the garden at the same time failed to
explode. The windows are very expensive and have to be imported from the
US, so that will keep the Czechs off balance for a while – what's left of the
windows is all boarded up. We didn't instruct any agents to make this
terrorist attack, but Noland thinks it was Captain Vargas, our Chief of Police
Intelligence. Vargas's office is in charge of investigating the attack.
I've just taken over a new operation – the Tulcan portion of the ECACTOR
political-action project. Noland had been meeting irregularly with a leader
of the Conservative Youth organisation there, Enrique Molina, but guidance
and funding were difficult because the agent could come to Quito only
infrequently and Noland lacks the time to go there: two long days to drive
to the Colombian border and back. The drive between Quito and Tulcan is
so spectacular that it's beyond adequate expression. There are green fertile
valleys, snowcapped volcanoes, arid canyons eroded by snaking rivers,
lakes smooth as glass, panoramic views from heights almost as from an
airplane. All the way the cobble-stoned Pan-American highway winds
around and up and down the mountains, passing through colourful Indian
villages where every few kilometres the hats, ponchos, even the hair-styles
change to distinguish one community from another.
I took money to Molina and told him to use it for the anticommunist front in
Carchi province but he'll probably use it mainly for propaganda against
Velasco. I also set up a communications channel for him to report
intelligence on political unrest and we will try to alternate meetings; one
month he'll come to Quito and the next I'll go there.
Quito 1 November 1961
New violence broke out yesterday in Cuenca when a FEUE manifestation
against the government was severely repressed by police. The students had
been joined by a large number of people and when the demonstrators
attacked government buildings the Army was called in. Seven persons were
wounded in the shooting.
Velasco announced that in spite of the violence he will make an official visit
to Cuenca for its provincial independence celebrations the day after
tomorrow. There is much speculation that more violence will occur because
the people in the Cuenca area are so angry at Velasco's failure to alleviate
the effects of declining prices of the area's products – especially Panama
hats. Hunger migrations from the province, a rare occurrence even in
Ecuador, have been going on for some time, and representatives of the
Quito government are increasingly unpopular in this strongly Conservative
and Catholic region.
Reports from our police agents indicate that the rioting in Cuenca is
continuing today.
Quito 3 November 1961
Military rule was imposed yesterday in the province of Azuay (of which
Cuenca is the capital) as at least ten more people were wounded during a
popular uprising. Velasco fired the provincial governor and other leading
government officials and sent Jorge Acosta, Acting Minister of
Government, to Cuenca for a firsthand inspection. Acosta's trip only caused
further protest, which was followed by more arrests. Municipal authorities
in Cuenca cancelled the independence celebrations scheduled for today and
asked Velasco not to come.
But Velasco is in Cuenca right now, and many reports are coming from the
radio and the police that serious new rioting and shooting is going on.
Quito 4 November 1961
In Cuenca yesterday at least two were killed and eight more wounded. On
arrival Velasco headed a procession on foot from the airport into town – a
grave provocation against the local hostility reflected in funeral wreaths and
black banners decorating the houses in sign of mourning. Along the way
Velasco and his committee were jeered, taunted and finally attacked with
stones and clubs. Shooting followed as the riot was suppressed, but Velasco
insisted on presiding at the military parade. Afterwards, however, he was
forced to give his speech in an indoor hall where he blamed the violence on
opposition political leaders.
From Cuenca Velasco is motoring to several small towns for speeches and
then to Guayaquil. In the Congress today the debate over events in Cuenca
went on for eight hours. The CTE, FEUE and Revolutionary Socialists have
condemned Velasco, along with the Conservative Party and the Social
Christian Movement. A strange alliance for our political-action agents but
momentum against Velasco dominates the scene.
Jorge Acosta, Acting Minister of Government, got Velasco's approval to
expel another Cuban – this time it's the Charge d'Affaires because the
Ambassador is in Havana right now. After meeting today with the Cuban
Charge, the Minister of Foreign Affairs announced that the Charge will be
leaving. He gave vague reasons, suggesting an association between certain
Ecuadorean political figures and the Cuban government, but he emphasised
that the Charge's departure does not mean any change of policy towards
Cuba. The Charge on the other hand said he is leaving for Cuba voluntarily.
It's clear that the Foreign Minister was reluctant to follow Acosta's order to
expel the Cuban – and it's equally doubtful that this desperate move by
Velasco to obtain support from the Conservative Party and other rightists
will work. Acosta told Noland that Velasco still refuses to break completely
with the Cubans, but he is also going to move against the Prensa Latina
representative.
Velasco finally got some good news on economic aid. Two large loans have
just been signed in Washington: one a 4.7 million dollar loan for
development of African palm oil and sheep ranching and the other a 5-
million-dollar loan for middle-class housing. Good publicity but no early
effects expected.
Quito 5 November 1961
Today Jorge Acosta announced that the Cuban Charge is being expelled as
persona non grata. His clarification has been broadcast continually over the
government radio network. The Cuban Embassy, however, insisted (in order
to save face) that the Charge was never told that he is being expelled, while
at the Foreign Ministry confirmation was made of expulsion rather than
voluntary return to Cuba.
Quito 6 November 1961
If he goes, Velasco will not have gone quietly. More violence today, both in
Quito and in Guayaquil, where eleven have been killed and at least fourteen
wounded – all students and workers. We've been sending one report after
another to headquarters and the Guayaquil base is doing the same.
Congress went into session at noon and Arosemena accused Velasco of
having violated the Constitution. A FEUE delegation visited the Congress
to express support, and about three o'clock this afternoon the Congressional
Palace was sealed off by Army troops and telephone communications were
cut.
This morning the entire Cabinet resigned, and Velasco, who only arrived
from Guayaquil at noon, spent most of the afternoon visiting military units.
He also made a radio broadcast in which he accused Arosemena of
proclaiming himself a dictator, adding that he was firing Arosemena as
Vice-President.
I'll be spending the night here in the Embassy listening to the police and
military radios and taking calls from agents in the street. The latest is that
Arosemena and other legislators were allowed to leave the Congressional
Palace just after midnight, and as they walked towards Arosemena's house a
few blocks away they were arrested by Velasco's Director-General of
Security. Arosemena and the others have been taken to jail, but several
agents believe that it's a deliberately dangerous scheme on the part of
Arosemena to force Velasco to unconstitutional action – which could
provoke the military to move against him.
In spite of the Cabinet resignations, Acosta continues to function as
Minister of Government. This morning he expelled the Prensa Latina
correspondent, a Cuban who had been expelled last year under Ponce but
had slipped back into the country while Araujo was Minister of
Government. We're sending situation reports to headquarters practically
every hour.
Quito 7 November 1961
It's all over for Velasco but the succession isn't decided. About five o'clock
this morning the engineers' battalion in Quito rebelled on the grounds that
Velasco had violated the Constitution in arresting Arosemena, but was
attacked by loyalist Army units. A ceasefire occurred about 8 a.m. for
removal of dead and wounded and later in the morning the Military High
Command decided that both Velasco and Arosemena had violated the
Constitution. They later named the President of the Supreme Court to take
over as President of an interim government. Velasco has accepted this
decision and the Supreme Court President has taken over the offices in the
Presidential Palace.
Velasco visited several of the loyalist military units after leaving the
Presidential Palace this afternoon and according to military intelligence
reports he is at the home of friends but asking for asylum in a Latin
American embassy. Acosta received asylum earlier today in the Venezuelan
Embassy.
Arosemena is making a fight of his own to succeed to the Presidency. He
and the other legislators were released from prison tonight and went
immediately to the Legislative Palace where Arosemena convoked a joint
session and was himself named President. The constitutional limit on
Congress's extended session ends at midnight tonight, but the Congress is
remaining in the Palace with Arosemena.
Tonight I sleep in the Embassy again – just in case the Military Command
decides to move in favour of either of our two Presidents. Let's hope they
stick with the President of the Supreme Court, a rightist who would be
favourably disposed to a break with Cuba and suppression of the extreme
left in general.
Quito 3 November 1961
It's Arosemena! This morning the Legislative Palace was surrounded by
Army paratroopers and tanks but just after noon Air Force fighters flew low
over the Palace firing their guns into the air to intimidate the Army units.
When it became clear that the Air Force was backing Arosemena and the
Congress, the Supreme Court President resigned – he had lasted as
President only eighteen hours – and the Army units were withdrawn from
the Palace. The Military High Command recognised Arosemena later this
afternoon.
During the hours before the outcome was known today, URJE and FEU E
demonstrations in favour of Arosemena broke out in different parts of Quito
and later expressions of support to Arosemena have poured in from all over
the country, especially from the CTE organisations, FEUE and URJE.
While the Legislative Palace was still surrounded this morning Arosemena
named a centrist Cabinet consisting of two Liberals, two Democratic
Socialists, one Social Christian, one Conservative and three independents.
One of the Socialists is Manuel Naranjo who was named Minister of the
Treasury. This afternoon Arosemena has been meeting with supporters,
including Araujo whom Arosemena described as 'that great fighter'. But
when Araujo got up on a chair and tried to give a speech to the crowd
milling about, he only got out 'Noble people of Quito', when he was shouted
down with much ridicule. Arosemena's first act, even though he won't be
inaugurated until tomorrow, was to convoke a special session of Congress
for election of a new Vice-President and other business. Reinaldo Varea
Donoso was presiding officer at the first session today.
Velasco hasn't given up – quite. From the Mexican Embassy he issued a
statement that he hasn't resigned and he again reminded everyone of the
400,000 votes he got last year. Four times elected and three times deposed:
a winner on the stump but a loser in office. If he had only broken with Cuba
he could have won Conservative and other right support and weathered the
left campaign over economic issues.
Quito 9 November 1961
This morning before the inaugural ceremony the FEUE organised
'Operation Clean-up' which was a symbolic scrubbing down and sweeping
up at the Presidential Palace to cleanse the place before Arosemena took
over.
Arosemena and his new Cabinet then led a march of thousands from the
Legislative Palace to the Presidential Palace at Independence Plaza. In his
speech Arosemena described Velasco's regime as one that started with
400,000 in favour and ended with 4,000,000 against. In promising action
instead of flowery speeches, he pledged that his government will be one of
peace and harmony and that he will be President of all Ecuadoreans, not
just the privileged few. But from our point of view the most important of his
remarks was his pledge to continue diplomatic relations with Cuba.
In other ominous indications from the inaugural speeches the President of
the CTE attacked 'Yankee imperialism' while praising the Cuban revolution
and calling for the formation of a Popular Revolutionary Front. (Formation
of the Front has already been reported by our PCE penetration agents and
will include the CTE, Revolutionary Socialists, PCE, URJE, Ecuadorean
Federation of Indians, and a new student front called the Revolutionary
University Student Movement.) The FEUE President also spoke, recounting
the participation of the students in Velasco's overthrow. Although he's a
moderate and was elected with support from the Guayaquil base student
operation, opposition to Velasco has been growing too strongly in recent
months for economic and other motives to permit Alberto Alarcon and his
agents to keep the moderate FEUE leadership from supporting Arosemena.
Diplomatic relations with the Ecuadorean government are continuing as if
Velasco had died or resigned – which means there is no question of formal
recognition of the new government. Everything's been legal and
constitutional.
Quito 11 November 1961
The general political atmosphere is one of relief, optimism, satisfaction –
almost euphoria. After fourteen months of intimidation by Velasco,
supporters of the traditional parties are happy to see Arosemena in power, at
least for the moment.
Davila was elected President of the Chamber of Deputies for the
Extraordinary Congressional Session. Reinaldo Varea was elected Vice-
President of the Senate – offering, in his acceptance speech, to die before
violating the legal norms 'of this new and unmerited honour'. Congress then
recessed for two days and on Monday they will reconvene to elect a new
Vice-President. There's going to be plenty of tension over the weekend as
deals are made to see who becomes number two to Arosemena. The
importance of this election is very great because no one knows how long
Arosemena can last with his frequent drinking bouts. Noland thinks Varea,
one of the leading candidates, has a good chance. The Rector of Central
University, a Liberal-leaning independent, is the main contender and is
backed by the FEUE and extreme left.
Velasco was put on a Panagra flight to Panama this afternoon. Most of the
country is peaceful again and the vandalism and looting of stores has
disappeared. From the general strike on 4 October until now, at least thirty-
two have died in five cities and many more were wounded, forty-five in
Quito alone. It wasn't exactly a bloodless coup.
Quito 13 November 1961
Noland has pulled off a coup of his own. Over the weekend Varea called for
a meeting at the Hotel Quito safe house. He wanted to know if Noland
knew where he might get support for election as Vice-President, particularly
whether Noland thought the Conservatives might support him. Noland said
he thought so, but naturally had to be tactful in order not to reveal any
relation with Davila or other rightist agents.
Later Noland met with Davila who asked for advice on whom the
Conservatives should support for Vice-President. Noland was able to
promote Varea discreetly, reasoning that if the Central University Rector
were elected, the Vice-Rector, a Revolutionary Socialist, would take over
the University. Davila pledged to throw the Conservative vote to Varea.
Later Davila and Varea met for agreement, and Noland is convinced that
neither knew of the other's meeting with him.
This morning a notice in El Comercio placed through Gustavo Salgado
compromised the Rector pretty badly. It was an announcement of support
attributed to the Ecuadorean Communist Party and URJE. Denial will come
but too late because Congress reconve6ed at noon to elect the Vice-
President.
The galleries were packed by the CTE and FEUE militants screaming for
the Rector's election. Davila was the presiding officer and on the first ballot
Varea got sixty-four votes – the most of the four candidates but twelve short
of the two-thirds needed. When the results of this vote were announced the
galleries began to riot. Varea was elected on the next ballot and the FEUE
and CTE people really broke loose, showering Davila with stones, spit and
wads of paper. No police around as usual. Varea, in his inaugural speech
after Davila proclaimed him Vice-President, seemed a little too humble:
'You will see that I lack the capacity to be Vice President of the Republic. I
am full of defects, but against this is my life, which I have filled with
modesty and sacrifice. You and I with the help of God can solve little by
little the great problems that affect the Ecuadorean people.' Noland said he's
going to raise Varea from seven hundred to one thousand dollars a month,
and if he gets to be President we'll pay him even more.
Senator Humphrey arrived yesterday and we're reporting on possible
demonstrations against him. He'll visit Arosemena and address the
Congress, but yesterday he was right on target in remarks to newsmen: the
US is ready to finance the development of poor countries but their
governments have to effect agrarian, tax and administrative reforms.
Otherwise the US will just be financing eventual bolshevisation.
Quito 17 November 1961
Arosemena's government is not yet two weeks old but there are clear signs
that he will have significant leftist participation in his regime. Appointments
at the Minister and Sub-Secretary level like Manuel Naranjo, the new
Minister of the Treasury, are certainly acceptable. But jobs on the middle
level are increasingly falling into hands of Marxists and other leftists who
are unfriendly to the US even though they may not be formally affiliated
with the PCE or the Revolutionary Socialists. The objectionable
appointments are mostly in education and the welfare and social-security
systems, although the new governments of Guayaquil and Guayas Province
are also taking on an unfortunate colouring.
Both in the station and at the Guayaquil base we have been preparing
memoranda on the new faces in Arosemena's government for the
Ambassador, the Consul-General and the State Department in Washington.
The memoranda are based on our file information and also on queries to our
PCE penetration agents on Party reaction to the appointments. First
indications are that influence from the extreme left will be much greater
under Arosemena than under Velasco.
Reaction from the State Department and from headquarters is moderately
alarmist and headquarters has sent special requirements on continued close
monitoring of Arosemena appointments. The worry is that this is only the
beginning and that Ecuador will continue sliding to the left much as Brazil
is moving that way already. On the Cuban question the Foreign Ministry
announced today that the Cuban Charge expelled by Velasco can now
remain – in the confusion during Velasco's last days he had stayed on in
Quito.
To counter these developments we are going to start a new round of
propaganda and political-action operations through the ECACTOR agents
such as Davila, Perez, the National Defence Front and propaganda agents
such as Gustavo Salgado. Reinaldo Varea, the Vice-President, will also be
extremely important because he is well-known as an anti-communist. He's a
retired lieutenant-colonel in the Army and he studied at Fort Riley and Fort
Leavenworth in the US. He was also Ecuadorean military attache in
Washington and advisor to the Ecuadorean representative on the Inter-
American Defence Board, Sub-Secretary of Defence and later Minister of
Defence.
As an opening and somewhat indirect thrust, the Guayaquil base had the
CROCLE labour organisation publish a half-page statement in the
newspapers yesterday on the danger of communism and the subservience of
the CTE to the WFTU in Prague. It called for repression of communism,
warned against opening diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, and
forecast the establishment of the Ecuadorean Confederation of Free Trade
Union Organisations as a democratic alternative to the CTE.
Arosemena has started a shake-up in the internal security forces. Today an
investigation was started to verify the lists of agents on the role of the
National Security Directorate, the political security office responsible for
Arosemena's arrest on the night of 6-7 November. It is expected that many
of the agents listed simply do not exist and that their salaries were pocketed
by top officers of the NSD.
The top echelons of the National Police are also being shaken up. Captain
Jose Vargas, Chief of the Police Intelligence organisation, will undoubtedly
be purged because he is well known as the leader of a secret pro-Velasco
organisation within the police. We're hoping, however, that Lieutenant Luis
Sandoval, the chief technician under Vargas and fairly apolitical, will not be
moved.
Quito 20 November 1961
The station programme for penetrating the PCE is suddenly in better shape
than ever. The Pichincha PCE members have just elected a new Provincial
Committee and not only was Basantes re-elected but Cardenas and Luis
Vargas were elected too. This gives us three agents on the eight-member
committee which is comparable to a national Central Committee because of
the growing split between the coastal leadership under PCE Secretary-
General Pedro Saad and the sierra leadership under Rafael Echeverria,
chairman of the Pichincha Provincial Committee.
I've taken over another operation from Noland – this time it's Colonel
Oswaldo Lugo, our highest-level penetration of the National Police. The
other night Noland introduced me to Lugo who advised that he has been
appointed Chief of the National Police in the Southern Region with
headquarters in Cuenca. He won't be leaving for a few weeks, and
meanwhile he will introduce me to his stepson, Edgar Camacho, a
university student who will serve as cutout for reports from Lugo's sub-
agents in the CTE. Lugo expects to come to Quito at least once a month
when we'll meet, but he'll send urgent reports through Camacho. A very
friendly, intelligent and sharp officer.
Operations at the Guayaquil base got a jolt yesterday when their most
important labour and political intelligence agent died suddenly. He was
Emilio Estrada Icaza, director of one of Ecuador's largest banks, president
of a fertilizer company, former Mayor of Guayaquil and well-known
collector of pre-Hispanic artifacts. It was through Estrada that the base
organised the successful campaign to oust Saad from the Senate and then
formed the CROCLE labour organisation.
Quito 19 December 1961
There has been a flurry of activity prior to the Christmas lull, with little of
particularly happy significance to us. Three days ago Arosemena was the
principal speaker at the Congress of the CTE-controlled Ecuadorean Indian
Federation. He shared the platform with the CTE President, a Revolutionary
Socialist; Carlos Rodriguez, the PCE organizer in charge of the Indian
Federation; and Miguel Lechon, an Indian and PCE member who was
elected President of the Federation. In his speech to the thousands of
Indians trucked into Quito for the ceremony, Arosemena promised quick
action to abolish the huasipungo.
The Indian Congress was followed yesterday by the Congress of coastal
campesinos which is the CTE's organisation for rural workers on the coast.
Arosemena was also the principal speaker at this Congress which, like the
Indian Congress, was highly successful for the extreme left.
Student operations of the Guayaquil base under Alberto Alarcon have
suffered another defeat. The National FEUE Congress recently ended in
Guayaquil and the extreme left dominated. Guayaquil University, with the
FEUE chapter run by URJE militants, will be the national seat for the
coming year. Delegations from the universities of Cuenca and Portoviejo,
which are controlled by Alarcon, walked out of the Congress when
resolutions, supporting the Cuban revolution and condemning the Alliance
for Progress, were passed. Protests against the take-over by the extreme left
were also made through Davila and the Catholic University Youth
Organisation and through Wilson Almeida, editor of Voz Universitaria.
We also had a setback in student operations when a Revolutionary Socialist
was elected President of the Quito FEUE chapter. After the voting the new
officers issued a statement supporting Arosemena on the need for agrarian
reform and on 'non-intervention' with regard to Cuba.
Now both the Quito and the Guayaquil FEUE chapters, as well as Loja, are
in extremist hands. Meanwhile URJE continues to dominate the streets. A
few days ago a group of Cuban exiles (several hundred have arrived to
reside in Guayaquil) was attacked by URJE militants as they reported to a
government office to register.
Operations with the National Police are in transition. Jose Vargas was not
only relieved of command of the Police Intelligence unit – he is under arrest
along with other members of his secret Velasquista police organisation.
Luckily Luis Sandoval was left untouched and will continue in the unit. I've
been seeing him much more frequently since Vargas was removed and until
we can evaluate the new Police Intelligence Chief, Major Pacifico de los
Reyes, Sandoval will be our main Police Intelligence contact – in effect he's
a paid penetration agent. De los Reyes came to the station under a pretext
related to some equipment we gave Vargas, but the visit was obviously to
begin contact. Noland and I will alternate contact with him without telling
him that I am meeting regularly with Sandoval. Colonel Lugo has taken
command in the Cuenca Zone. Regular communications with him will be
through Edgar Camacho, his stepson, except on the trips he makes to Quito
every month or so. He wants me to hold his salary and the salaries of his
sub-agents for passing directly to him, so I imagine he'll come every month.
Progress continues on the formation of a national free labour confederation.
On 16-17 December the existing free labour organisations led by CROCLE
held a convention for naming the organising committee for the Constituent
Congress of the national confederation – to be called the Ecuadorean
Confederation of Free Trade Union Organisations (CEOSL). Enrique
Amador, one of the Guayaquil base labour agents, was President of the
convention and Adalberto Miranda Giron, the base agent elected last year
as Labour Senator from the coast, was a principal speaker. The Constituent
Congress was set for late April of next year.
Nevertheless, serious problems are growing behind the facade of progress
among the free trade-union groups. Mainly it's a question of job security
and bureaucratic vanity among the leaders of the different organisations.
Competition among them to get the best jobs in CEOSL, when it's
established, is creating jealousies and friction. In early November, IO
Division's most important Western Hemisphere labour agent, Serafino
Romualdi (AFL-CIO representative for Latin America), came to Guayaquil
and tried to establish a little harmony. The convention just over was a result
of his trip, but the various leaders are still fighting.
Now that Velasco is out, Gil Saudade's Popular Revolutionary Liberal Party
is bound to decline if not disappear completely. He is going to move some
of his agents from that party as fast as possible into the CEOSL
organisation, so that with salaried agents in place the organisation will have
some discipline and order. Otherwise it will be forever weak and no match
for the CTE.
Our National Defence Front has issued another call for a break in relations
with Cuba, but at the recent Conservative Party Convention it was decided
to give general support to Arosemena while still insisting on a break with
Cuba. (The photographs published on the Conservatives' meetings are
embarrassing – they keep a crucifix, about half life-size, on the front of the
speakers' table, and it looks like a Jesuit retreat.) Davila was elected Sub-
Director-General of the Party. All the other political parties of importance
have also held conventions, and all are continuing general support to
Arosemena. The State Department, too, is going to gamble on Arosemena
and, perhaps, on the anti-communist tradition in the military. A few days
ago a new loan was announced: 8 million dollars for budget support from
the US government – forty years at no interest. It had originally been
negotiated by Jorge Acosta as Minister of the Treasury under Velasco.
Congress recessed until next August with practically no legislation to show
for its 112-day session that cost over ten million sucres. Incredibly,
Congress took no action to repeal the decree on unification of the exchange
rate that had unified the opposition to Velasco. Arosemena and the CTE also
seem to have forgotten their big issue.
Quito 23 December 1961
The pace is slowing for the end-of-the-year celebrations and we've been
taking advantage to make the rounds with whisky, cigarettes, golf-balls and
other gifts. Noland is taking the new Administrative Assistant, Raymond
Ladd, around to meet the Quito travel-agent and tourism crowd so that he
can take over and expand the station travel-control operations. The new
principal agent will be Patricio Ponce, an old friend of Noland and
prominent bullfight figure, whom Ladd is going to set up in a cover office as
soon as possible. In January I'll also turn the ECSTACY letter intercept over
to Ladd.
We were fortunate to get Ladd for the administrative job, which is usually
filled by a woman, because he can handle some operations too. During his
previous assignment in San Jose, Costa Rica, he learned some operational
techniques, and although he was refused the operations training (for lack of
formal education) Noland wants to use him on non-sensitive matters. He
works in perfectly because he's a champion golfer, poker addict and general
hustler.
When I stop to think about the excitement and continual state of crisis over
the past year, I realise that we've tried to attain only two goals and have
failed at both. We haven't been able to bring about a break in diplomatic
relations with Cuba, and we haven't been able to get the government to take
action against the growing strength of local communist and related
movements. With Velasco, we made no direct effort to overthrow his
government. But by financing the Conservatives and Social Christians in
the quasi-religious campaign against Cuba and communism, we helped
them destroy Velasco's power base among the poor who had voted so
overwhelmingly for him. By the time Velasco introduced the new taxes and
unification of the exchange rate, our campaign, led by the rightists and
assisted by inflation, had already turned popular opinion against him. It was
an easy matter then for the CTE, URJE, FEUE and others with extreme-left
inclinations to usurp the anti-Velasco banner using Arosemena as their anti-
oligarchical symbol and as legitimate successor.
Our principal tasks in the coming months will be to renew the campaign
against relations with Cuba through the National Defence Front and other
operations while monitoring carefully the penetration by the extreme left of
Arosemena's government – and their preparations for armed action.
Although both the second and third in succession to Arosemena are on our
payroll, it would be difficult to argue that the present security situation is an
improvement on the Velasco regime.
The fundamental reasons why there is any security problem at all remain
the same: concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the very few
with marginalisation of the masses of the people. Such extreme injustice
can only encourage people to resort to extreme solutions, but there is still
no sign of the reforms that everyone talks about. I wonder about reforms.
Certainly the attitudes of my friends – whether blue-blood conservatives,
new-rich liberals or concerned independents – are not encouraging. Their
contemptuous term for the poor who supported Velasco – the chusma –
shows how much distance has still to be travelled.
My son is only ten weeks old but already he's beginning to show some
personality and awareness. Proud father, yes I am – he was baptised three
weeks ago in the old church in Cotocollao in a beautiful white dress given
by the families in the station.
I'm not sure what to do about Janet. We continue to grow apart for lack of
common interests. She knows practically nothing of my work, and her lack
of interest in politics and the language has turned her to bridge with other
American wives who tend to complain over trivia. I must help her, but the
strain of daily events leaves so little energy – except for golf where I'm
spending most of my free time. It's an unfair escape, I know, but it's also a
relaxation.
Quito 2 January 1962
The Cuban Sub-Secretary of Foreign Relations, Carlos Olivares, is back in
Ecuador – this time drumming up support in advance of the OAS Foreign
Ministers Conference scheduled for later this month in Punta del Este,
Uruguay. At the Conference, the US government hopes to get some
collective action going against Cuba – at least a resolution that all countries
still having diplomatic and commercial relations with Cuba move to break
them. Yesterday Olivares met with Arosemena at a beach resort and
Arosemena reaffirmed his policy of non-intervention towards Cuba. Today
he said, Ecuador will be against any sanctions against Cuba at the Punta del
Este Conference.
One reason why we're trying to isolate Cuba is that headquarters believe the
Cubans are training thousands of Latin Americans in guerrilla warfare,
sabotage and terrorism. Every station is required to report on travel to Cuba,
or to Moscow or Prague, which are longer but also widely used routes to
Cuba. Right now there are at least sixty-two Ecuadoreans in Havana invited
for the celebrations of the third anniversary of the revolution. Some no
doubt will be funnelled off to the training camps. Miguel Lechon, President
of the Ecuadorean Federation of Indians, is in the group.
Quito 16 January 1962
Our new campaign is off to a bang – literally. The national convention of
URJE was to have opened in Cuenca two days ago but during the night
before bombs exploded in the doorways of two Cuenca churches. There
were no injuries from the bombs – the anti-communist militants under
Carlos Arizaga Vega were careful – but large 'spontaneous' demonstrations
against the bombings occurred on the day the convention was to start.
Public authorities then banned the URJE convention in order to avoid
bloodshed.
The Conservative Party under Davila's direction has called on Arosemena
for a definitive political statement on Cuba and communism (the prelude to
new Conservative pressure). He answered that Ecuadoreans should
concentrate on national problems that are 'above' the problem of Cuba.
Davila is organising a demonstration for the day after tomorrow in Quito in
solidarity with the Cuenca one.
Yesterday the Popular Revolutionary Movement (formed by the PCE, URJE
and other extreme leftist organisations when Arosemena took over) sent a
delegation to visit the Minister of Government. They told him that the
bombings in Cuenca were not their work and that they reject terrorism as a
political instrument. Last night in Guayaquil Pedro Saad's home was
bombed – again no one injured.
The main theme of our propaganda in recent days has been the shooting last
month in Havana when a group of Cubans tried to obtain asylum in the
Ecuadorean Embassy by crash-driving an automobile on to the grounds.
Cuban security forces opened fire to impede them and several bodies were
carried away.
Gil Saudade keeps grinding away with his international organisations. This
time it's the Ecuadorean affiliate of the World Assembly of Youth (WAY) –
called the National Youth Council. It groups together students, workers,
sports organisations, rural and religious youth groups, Boy and Girl Scouts
and the Junior Red Cross. Gil runs this operation through Juan Moeller who
is President of the Ecuadorean Junior Red Cross and who just put in another
leader of the Junior Red Cross as Secretary-General of the Youth Council.
The main business in coming months will be to arrange for Ecuadorean
participation in the WAY Congress scheduled for August and to pass
headquarters' guidance to the Ecuadorean leader on which issues to support
and which to oppose.
Quito 19 January 1962
The campaign is back in full swing in Quito. Yesterday's rally against Cuba
and communism was enormous – and considerably helped by the
government. After days of promotional work by the ECACTOR-financed
organizers; yesterday morning the Minister of Government, a Liberal,
prohibited public political demonstrations throughout the country until
further notice including the rally planned for yesterday afternoon. His
decision was based on the recent wave of bombings and the tension caused
by our renewed campaign.
The organizers sent the word around that the rally would take place in spite
of the prohibition as a show of solidarity with the recent demonstrations in
Cuenca and Guayaquil. The crowd gathered at a theatre on the edge of the
downtown area, soon grew into thousands, and began to move towards the
Independence Plaza. Police tried to stop it with tear-gas and cavalry but lost
the pitched battle that followed in spite of wounding twelve people. The
demonstrators also attacked an URJE counterdemonstration which quickly
disappeared. Riobamba thanks to the efforts of a new agent of Noland's
named Davalos. Through Renato Perez and Aurelio Davila, Noland is also
getting money out for demonstrations in Loja and other provincial cities in
days to come. The Punta del Este Conference opens today but in spite of all
the pressure we're bringing on the government through the right it appears
that Ecuador will not support any joint move against Cuba.
Quito 31 January 1962
The Punta del Este Conference finally ended yesterday. All our efforts to
get sanctions against Cuba failed, thanks to opposition from countries like
Ecuador. Even on the resolution to expel Cuba from the OAS only fourteen
countries voted in favour with Ecuador among the abstentions.
Today the Social Christian Movement formally ended its participation in the
Arosemena government, and the Conservative Party is issuing a statement
against the government's position at Punta del Este. The Foreign Minister, a
prominent Social Christian, will either have to resign or quit the party.
Last night, the Czech Legation was bombed again and the huge new
windows just installed because of the October attack were completely
shattered. I drove by the Legation on my way to work this morning and the
carpenters were already at work boarding up again. The bombers escaped
through the heavy fog last night – must have been the Social Christian
squad.
Quito 28 February 1962
Most of the important political parties have held conventions this month to
begin preparations for the local, provincial and Congressional elections
scheduled in June. Where possible we have instructed agents to push for
resolutions on the Cuban and local communist issues.
Once in the Independence Plaza the crowd frequently shouted against the
government and Arosemena. Speakers attacked communism and Castro and
called for a break in relations with Cuba while urging Ecuadorean support
for a programme of sanctions against Cuba at the coming Punta del Este
Conference.
Yesterday, when the Minister of Government announced the prohibition of
demonstrations he denounced the right's 'battle plan' founded on the
government's lack of definition on communism and Cuba. Today the
Minister called for a pause in the fighting between Ecuadoreans over
'external problems', while the Cardinal issued another anti-communist
pastoral letter accusing the communists of the bombings in the Cuenca
churches. The campaign is getting under way in Tulcan as well. Yesterday
an anti-communist demonstration was held in spite of the prohibition and
afterwards the demonstrators clashed with leftists in a counter-
demonstration.
The Ambassador is also active making propaganda that nicely complements
ours. Yesterday with considerable publicity he presented a cheque to
Manuel Naranjo representing the second instalment of the 8-million-dollar
budget support loan announced just after Arosemena took over.
Photographs of the Ambassador handing over the cheque were prominent in
the newspapers this morning.
Quito 21 January 1962
In Guayaquil the base financed a demonstration yesterday. Thousands
turned out after a bomb exploded in the morning at the entrance to one of
the main churches – again with no injuries. These bombings are mostly
being done by a Social Christian squad in order to whip up emotions. One
would think the people would realise this, but Renato Perez, Noland's
principal Social Christian agent, says they can keep it up as long as is
needed. Participating organisations in the Guayaquil demonstration were
the Defence Front, our CROCLE labour organisation, the Liberals,
Conservatives, Social Christians and the fascist ARNE.
An anti-communist demonstration was also held yesterday in Manuel
Naranjo was only partially successful at the Socialist Party convention
where his party decided to join again with the Liberals in the National
Democratic Front as a joint electoral vehicle. The statement on re-
establishing the Front called for struggle against the totalitarian movements
now operating in Ecuador – but also affirmed the party's belief in Marxist
philosophy as 'adapted to the Ecuadorean political and economic reality'. In
a foreign policy statement issued two days after the convention closed, the
principle of non-intervention in Cuba was sustained along with opposition
to expulsion of Cuba from the OAS and to the economic blockade.
The Conservative Party has issued another statement insisting that
Arosemena dismiss communists and pro-communists from the
administration while alleging that a communist plot is underway for
uprisings to occur soon throughout the country. The Conservatives in Azuay
Province (Cuenca) have elected Carlos Arizaga Vega, one of our principal
ECACTOR agents there, as a party director.
Araujo is also active trying to build an organisation that will attract leftist
Velasquista voters. His new People's Action Movement held an assembly
today in preparation for the elections.
Our own campaign continues to consist of stimulating charges of
communist leanings of appointees in the government. Debate has also
continued over Ecuadorean failure to back resolutions against Cuba at
Punta del Este, and Arosemena is being forced on the defensive. Through
political action and propaganda operations we are trying to repeat what we
did with Velasco: cut away political support on the Cuban and communist
issues so that only the extreme left is left on his side. For his part
Arosemena has been protesting frequently in public that communists will
never become an influence in his government.
The Argentine break with Cuba a few weeks ago, which was the climax of
increasing military pressure on President Frondizi, has already generated a
spate of new rumours that the Ecuadorean military will bring similar
pressure on Arosemena. The rumours are mostly rightist-inspired as
suggestive propaganda targeted at the military, but they may well have an
effect – especially since less than three weeks after the break Argentina got
150 million dollars in new Alliance for Progress money. Now only Ecuador
and five other Latin American countries still have relations with Cuba.
Quito 1 March 1962
In another effort to create military ill-feeling towards the left, the Social
Christians infiltrated a FEUE march today in order to shout insults against
the military that appeared to come from the marchers. The march was
through the downtown area to the Independence Plaza where Arosemena
spoke and the leaders of the march presented a petition for increased
government support to the universities. The situation is indeed grave –
professors at Central University, for example, haven't been paid since last
December.
The Social Christian plan worked perfectly. The march was headed by the
President of the FEUE, the Rector and Vice-Rector of the University and
the Ministers of Education and Government. At the Independence Plaza just
before the speeches began, shouts were clearly heard of 'Death to the Army'
and 'More universities and less Army'. An almost electric current is passing
through the officer corps of the military services and new rumours, not ours
this time, are beginning on possible military reactions.
Quito 3 March 1962
Reactions to the Social Christian infiltration of the FEUE march have been
most satisfactory. Yesterday the Minister of Defence and the chiefs of all
the services issued a statement in which they admitted breaking a long
silence on the many activities going on that are designed to sow chaos in
the armed forces and separate them from the Ecuadorean people and the
government. These activities, according to the statement, are directed by
international communism through campaigns in periodicals, magazines,
radio, rumour, strikes, work stoppages, rural risings, militia training and,
most recently, the FEUE demonstration of 1 March. Instead of a
demonstration for greater economic resources, according to the statement,
the march was perverted to make propaganda against the armed forces. The
statement ended with an expression of the determination of the Minister and
the service chiefs to take whatever measures are necessary to defend
military institutions.
The military statement yesterday coincided nicely with a rally we financed
through Aurelio Davila with participation of the Conservatives, Social
Christians, ARNE, and Catholic youth, labour and women's organisations.
The purpose of the rally was another demand for a break in relations with
Cuba, and Davila was the principal speaker. He blamed the insults of 1
March against the military on communists and Castroites who seek to form
their own militias. He accused Arosemena, moreover, of giving protection
to the communist menace and, as President of the Chamber of Deputies, he
sent a message of support to the Minister of Defence and the chiefs of the
services.
Quito 16 March 1962
Fate's heavy hand has just fallen on our Vice-President, Reinaldo Varea.
Yesterday the government announced that a million dollars' worth of
military equipment purchased by a secret mission sent to the US last year
by Velasco has turned out to be useless junk. The announcement came just a
couple of days after one of Velasco's ex-ministers made a public call for
Velasquistas to begin organising for the June elections. Obviously the
announcement was made to begin a campaign to discredit the Velasquista
movement prior to the elections.
Varea is implicated because as Vice-President of the Senate he was chief of
the purchasing mission. There is no accusation that any money was stolen,
but to be swindled out of a million dollars by a US surplus parts company is
sheer incompetence on someone's part. Photographs of the tanks and
armoured personnel carriers are being published – some without motors,
others with no wheels, others simply rusted and falling apart.
Varea had told Noland that the case might come to the surface but he had
hoped to keep it under cover. There's no telling how badly this will affect
Varea's position as Arosemena's successor, but Noland is in a really black
humour.
The PCE has just held one of its infrequent national congresses. Basantes
and Cardenas attended as members of the Pichincha delegation. Divisions
within the party over whether to resort to armed action soon or to continue
working with the masses indefinitely are continuing to grow. Rafael
Echeverria, the Quito PCE leader, is emerging as the most important leader
of those favouring early armed action, although Pedro Saad was reelected
Secretary-General and remains in firm control. Unfortunately neither of our
agents was elected to the new Central Committee.
Quito 25 March 1962
For some days the anti-communist (Social Christian and Conservative)
forces in Cuenca have been preparing for another mass demonstration
against relations with Cuba and communist penetration of the government.
Noland financed it through Carlos Arizaga who will use it to show
solidarity with the important military command there. The affair was very
successful. In spite of police denial of permission thousands turned out with
posters and banners bearing the appropriate anti-communist, anti-Castro
and anti-URJE themes. Demands were also made for the resignation of
Arosemena and his leftist appointees, and expressions of solidarity with the
military services against their extremist attackers were also prevalent. A
petition with 2000 signatures was presented to the provincial governor,
Arosemena's chief representative.
Colonel Lugo, National Police commander in Cuenca, advised that although
he was unable to grant permission for the street march because of orders
from Quito, he was able to avoid taking repressive measures. The march in
fact had no police control and there was no disorder.
Quito 28 March 1962
The Cuenca military garrison under Colonel Aurelio Naranjo has suddenly
sent a message to Arosemena giving him seventy-two hours to break
relations with Cuba and fire the leftist Minister of Labour. The whole
country is shaken by the revolt although the outcome is uncertain because
so far no other military units have joined.
Arosemena spoke this afternoon with Vice-President Varea and with the
press. He's taking a hard line promising severe punishment for those
responsible for the rebellion. The traditional parties are ostensibly
supporting Arosemena and the Constitution, but the Conservatives have
issued a statement insisting on a break with Cuba and Czechoslovakia and a
purge of communists in the government. The FEUE, CTE, URJE and other
extreme leftists are of course backing Arosemena.
The key is the reaction of the Minister of Defence and the armed services
commanders here in Quito. We're checking various agents who have access
but haven't been able to get straight answers because apparently the military
leaders are taking an ambiguous position.
This Cuenca revolt is clearly a result of the renewed agitation we have been
promoting since January through the Conservatives and Social Christians.
There was no way to tell exactly when action of this sort would occur but
several sensational events of the past two days have probably had an
influence. Yesterday news reached Quito of an uprising at the huge Tenguel
Hacienda on the coast which is owned by a subsidiary of United Fruit and
where communist agitation has been going on for some time. Eight hundred
workers are striking over the company's contracting of land to tenant
farmers, and the strike has touched off rumours of other risings in rural
areas. At a Social Christian rally yesterday where Renato Perez was one of
the speakers the Tenguel rising was attributed to the communist leadership
of the workers. Also yesterday, in Cuenca, the provincial committee of the
Conservative Party called on the National Committee to declare formal
opposition to the Arosemena regime. Key figures in this move are Carlos
Arizaga Vega in Cuenca and Aurelio Davila Cajas on the National
Committee. The other sensation is the overthrow of President Frondizi by
the Argentine military. Although the Peronist victory in this month's
elections is the immediate reason for the military move there, we will
interpret the coup in our propaganda as related strongly to Frondizi's
reluctance to break with Cuba and his general policy of accommodation
with the extreme left.
Quito 29 March 1962
The crisis continues. Today the Cuenca garrison issued a public statement
on the need to break relations with Cuba and Czechoslovakia and to purge
the government of communists. The Minister of Defence, the Chief of Staff
and the commander of the Army are all indirectly supporting the Cuenca
commander by not sending troops to put down the rebellion. In response to
today's statement by the Cuenca garrison, the Army commander publicly
ordered the Cuenca commander to refrain from political statements, but he
also sent an open statement to the Minister of Defence that the armed forces
are in agreement on the need to break with Cuba.
Demonstrations have occurred today in most of the major cities: in Quito
one in favour and one against Arosemena; in Guayaquil in favour of
Arosemena; and in Cuenca against – marchers there carried posters reading
'Christ the King, Si, Communism, No'.
Arosemena is trying to strike back but in the absence of cooperation from
the military he's almost powerless. He had the entire Cabinet resign today,
accepting the resignations of the Ministers of Government (for allowing the
security situation to degenerate), Labour (as a gesture to the rightists who
have focused on him as an extreme leftist), and Economy (for being one of
the Conservative Party leaders of the campaign against communism and
relations with Cuba).
Quito 30 March 1962
The stand-off between Arosemena and the Cuenca garrison has continued
for a third day although Arosemena is grasping for an alternative to save
face. He announced today that within ten or fifteen days a plebiscite will be
held on relations with Cuba. The idea of a plebiscite has already been
proposed by several groups including the Pichincha Chamber of Industries
whose members are suffering the effects of all the tension and instability of
recent months. Arosemena may not have ten or fifteen days left for the
plebiscite. This afternoon in Quito a massive demonstration calling for a
break with Cuba was sponsored by the anti-communist forces including a
four-hour march through the streets. At the Ministry of Defence the Chief
of Staff, a well-known anti-communist, told the demonstrators that he and
other military leaders share their views on Cuba. The demonstration also
had pronounced anti-Arosemena overtones. Similar demonstrations have
occurred today in Cuenca and Riobamba. In the press we are stimulating
statements of solidarity with the movement to break with Cuba including
one from the Popular Revolutionary Liberal Party which Gil Saudade had to
wring out of Juan Yepez, Jr.
In spite of all the crisis other activities continue. Today Noland was
honoured at a ceremony presided by Manuel Naranjo for his year as a
Director of the University Sports League. He got a medal and a diploma of
appreciation – plenty of good publicity.
Quito 31 March 1962
A solution is emerging The Conservatives today formally ended their
participation in Arosemena's government, and conversations between
Arosemena and the National Democratic Front – composed of the Liberals,
Democratic Socialists and independents – have begun. One of the Front's
conditions for continuing to support Arosemena is a break with Cuba and
Czechoslovakia. Meanwhile the Electoral Court quashed the plebiscite idea
for constitutional reasons.
Conservative withdrawal from the government was highlighted by the
publication today of an open letter from the Conservative ex-Minister of the
Economy who resigned two days ago. In the letter the Cuenca rightist
charged communists whom Arosemena has allowed to penetrate the
government with thwarting the country's economic development.
The solution, interestingly, has resulted because Varea, the Vice-President,
is unacceptable to the military high command because of his implication in
the junk swindle. Otherwise Arosemena would probably have been deposed
in favour of Varea for his resistance on the Cuban break. The Liberals and
others in the Democratic Front expect to improve their electoral prospects
from a position of dominance in the government. And the Conservatives
and Social Christians will be able to campaign on the claim that they were
responsible for the break with Cuba (if it takes place). Everyone is going to
be satisfied except Arosemena and the extreme left – although Arosemena
will at least survive for now.
The Social Christian bomb squad finally slipped up last night. Just after
midnight they bombed the home of the Cardinal (who was sleeping
downtown at the Basilica) and a couple of hours later they bombed the
Anti-Communist Front. By a stroke of bad luck the two bombers were
caught and have admitted to police that they are members of the Anti-
Communist Front itself. So far they haven't been traced to the Social
Christian Movement which planned the bombings. These produced lots of
noise but little damage, to provide a new pretext for demonstrations of
solidarity with the Cardinal.
Quito 1 April 1962
The crisis is over and the Cubans are packing. Today the announcement was
made that the National Democratic Front will enter the government with
five Cabinet posts and that relations with Cuba will be broken. The new
Minister of Government, Alfredo Albornoz, is an anti-communist
independent known personally by Noland. (His son is a friend of Noland's
and of mine – he's President of the YMCA board on which I replaced
Noland in January. The new minister is an important banker and owner of
the Quito distributorship for Chevrolets and Buicks. Noland intends to
begin a liaison arrangement with him as soon as possible.)
Today new anti-communist demonstrations and marches were held in Quito
and down south in Loja celebrating the break with Cuba. The Conservatives
and Social Christians are promoting still another massive demonstration in
three days to show support for the Cardinal – in spite of the admission by
the bombers (which in the newspapers was relegated to a small, obscure
notice).
Quito 2 April 1962
Success at last. Today the new Cabinet, in its first meeting with Arosemena,
voted unanimously to break relations with Cuba, Czechoslovakia and
Poland (which just recently sent a diplomatic official to Quito to open a
Legation). After the meeting Arosemena lamented that the plebiscite was
impossible while Liberal Party leaders claimed credit for the break.
Tomorrow the Foreign Ministry will give formal advice to each mission.
Besides the Pole there are three Czechs and seven Cubans. The main
problem for the Foreign Ministry is to find a country with an embassy in
Havana that will take the asylees in the Ecuadorean Embassy – almost two
hundred of them. The extreme left has been trying to promote
demonstrations against the decision but they've only been able to get out
small crowds.
This afternoon we had a champagne victory celebration in the station, and
headquarters has sent congratulations.
Quito 4 April 1962
The Social Christian and Conservative street demonstration today was said
to be the largest in the history of Quito. Tens of thousands swarmed through
the downtown streets to the Independence Plaza where the Cardinal, who
was the last speaker, said that, following the teachings of Christ, he would
forgive the terrorists who had tried to kill him. Aurelio Davila was one of
the organizers of the demonstration, and he arranged for a Cuban flag to be
presented to the Cardinal by a delegation of the exiles. (The main exile
organisation, the Revolutionary Student Directorate, is run by the Miami
station and in some countries the local representatives are run directly by
station officers. In our case, however, Noland prefers to keep them at a
distance through Davila.)
Noland is already meeting with the new Minister of Government, Alfredo
Albornoz, to pass information on communist plans that we get from our
penetration agents. Today we got a sensational report from one of Jose
Vargas's sub-agents to the effect that Jorge Ribadeneira, one of the principal
leaders of URJE, has called his followers into immediate armed action in a
rural area towards the coast. Communications with the sub-agent are very
bad right now but Noland is trying to get more details. When Noland met
with the Minister he learned that the Minister also has information on the
guerrilla operation – it's concentrated near Santo Domingo de los
Colorados, a small town a couple of hours' drive towards the coast from
Quito. Tonight the Ministry of Defence is sending a battalion of
paratroopers to the area to engage the guerrillas. As a precaution the
Minister has banned all public demonstrations until further notice, but he
and the Minister of Defence hope to keep the guerrilla operation secret until
the size of the group is known. That may be impossible, however, because
other agents including Lt. Col. Paredes, the surveillance team chief, are
beginning to report on the paratroopers' mobilisation.
The thought of facing an effective guerrilla operation is one of our most
persistent nightmares because of the ease with which communications and
transport between coast and sierra could be cut. The difficult geography,
moreover, is ideal for guerrilla operations in many areas, and if the
imagination of the rural Indians and peasants could be captured –
admittedly not an easy task because of religion and other traditional
influences – the guerrillas would have a very large source of manpower for
support and for new recruits. This is why we have been continually trying
to induce government action against the various groups of the extreme left
in order to preclude this very situation.
Quito 5 April 1962
Communications are impossible with Jose Vargas's agent in the guerrilla
band and little news of substance is coming into the Ministry of Defence
from the operations zone. I sent Lieutenant-Colonel Paredes down to Santo
Domingo to see what he could pick up, but he hasn't been able to get close
to the operations. Our best information from the Ministry of Defence is
coming from Major Ed Breslin, the US Army Mission Intelligence Advisor.
He has been in Quito only a short time but has already worked his way in
with the Ecuadorean military intelligence people much more effectively
than his predecessor. Both Noland and I have been working more closely
with him on targeting for recruitments in the military intelligence services,
and our relationship with him is excellent – he trained the tank crews that
landed at the Bay of Pigs last year. Breslin reports the guerrillas are offering
no resistance and that several arrests have been made.
At the Guayaquil airport last night two events related to Cuba will give us
good material for propaganda. First, an Ecuadorean returning from a three-
month guerrilla training course in Cuba was arrested. He is Guillermo
Layedra, a leader of the CTE in Riobamba, whose return was reported to
the base by the Mexico City station which gets very detailed coverage of all
travellers to and from Cuba via Mexico through the Mexican immigration
service. Data on Layedra's travel was passed to Lieutenant-Colonel Pedro
Velez Moran, one of the liaison agents of the base. Of propaganda interest
are the books, pamphlets, phonograph records of revolutionary songs and,
especially, a photograph of him in the Cuban militia uniform. Through
Velez the base expects to get copies of his interrogation and will pass
questions at headquarters' request.
The other case, also the work of Lieutenant-Colonel Velez, occurred during
a refuelling stop of a Cuban airliner bound from Chile to Havana. It was
carrying some seventy passengers most of whom were Peruvian students
going to study on 'scholarships' in Cuba – most likely they were really
guerrilla trainees. The base asked Velez to get a copy of the passenger list,
an unusual demand for a service stop, which the base will forward to the
Lima station. During the stop, however, the pilot was seen to give an
envelope to the Third Secretary of the Cuban Embassy in Quito (the Cubans
haven't left yet) and a customs inspector demanded to see the envelope. The
Cuban diplomat took out a .45 pistol and, after waving it menacingly at the
customs inspector, he was arrested by the airport military detachment. Only
about 10 a.m. this morning was he allowed to go free, but he was allowed to
keep the envelope.
Quito 6 April 1962
The press carried its first stories of the Santo Domingo guerrilla operation
this morning – sensational accounts of 300 or more men under the
command of Araujo. The Ministry of Defence, however, announced later
that thirty guerrillas have been arrested along with a considerable quantity
of arms; ammunition and military equipment. First reports from
interrogations indicate that the guerrilla group numbers less than 100 and
that Araujo isn't participating, but military operations continue.
Although the early interrogation reports also indicate that the guerrilla
operation was precipitated by the Cuenca revolt and very poorly planned,
we will try to make it appear serious and dangerous in our propaganda
treatment. Most of those arrested are young URJE members – followers of
Jorge Ribadeneira who may well be expelled from the PCE if, as is likely,
the Executive Committee under Saad had nothing to do with the operation.
Reports from PCE agent penetrations coincide in the view that Ribadeneira
was acting outside party control.
Quito 10 April 1962
The Santo Domingo guerrilla affair is wiped up. Forty-six have been
captured with only a brief exchange of fire. Only one casualty occurred – a
guerrilla wounded in the foot. All have been brought to Quito and we're
getting copies of the interrogations through Major Breslin. In an effort to
help Pacifico de los Reyes make a good impression in his new job as chief
of the intelligence department of the National Police, I have been giving
him information on many of those arrested, which he is passing as his own
to the military interrogation team.
Propaganda treatment is only partly successful. The Minister of Defence
has announced that the weapons seized are not of the type used by the
Ecuadorean Army and must have been sent from outside the country –
although the truth is that the weapons are practically all conventional
shotguns, hunting rifles and M-1's stolen from the Army. Interrogation
reports released to the press allege (falsely) that the operation was very
carefully planned and approved at the PCE Congress held last month.
Press comment, however, is tending to romanticise the operation.
Participation of four or five girls, for example, is being ascribed to
sentimental reasons. Those arrested, moreover, once they have been turned
over to police and are allowed to see lawyers, are saying that they only went
to Santo Domingo for training in the hope of defending the Arosemena
government from overthrow by the Cuenca garrison. The FEUE has set up a
commission of lawyers for the guerrillas' defence, and unfortunately the
early public alarm is turning to amusement and even ridicule.
Of continuing importance will be two factors. First, the ease with which the
guerrillas were rolled up has given the Ecuadorean military new confidence
and may encourage future demands for government suppression of the
extreme left. Second, the operation is bound to exacerbate the growing split
on the extreme left, both inside and outside the PCE, between those
favouring early armed action and those favouring continued long-term work
with the masses. In both cases this pitiful adventure has been fortunate for
us.
Quito 23 April 1962
Back in the cool thin sierra air after a brief holiday. The Pole, Czechs and
Cubans have all left so we have no hostile diplomatic missions to worry
about any more. The telephone tap on the Cubans was only of marginal
value because they were careful, but I'm going to begin soon to monitor
Araujo's telephone and perhaps one other if I can arrange for transcription.
The technical problems with the sound-actuated equipment were never
solved so we reverted to the old voltage-operated machines.
Although we tried to keep the Santo Domingo guerrilla operation in proper
focus it hasn't been easy. The Rio station helped by preparing an article on
the communist background of one of the girls in the operation, a Brazilian
named Abigail Pereyra. The story was surfaced through the Rio
correspondent of the hemisphere-wide feature service controlled by the
Santiago, Chile, station – Agencia Orbe Latinoamericano. The story
revealed that her father is a Federal Deputy and the personal physician of
Luis Carlos Prestes, long-time leader of the Communist Party of Brazil,
while her mother is the Portuguese teacher at the Soviet Commercial
Mission in Rio de Janeiro. Both parents are leaders of the Chinese-Brazilian
Cultural Society, and her mother went to Cuba early this year to visit
Abigail – who was taking a guerrilla training course, according to the
article. This may help keep her in jail for a while, but public opinion is
favourable to early release.
Gil Saudade has established another of his front organisations for
propaganda. The newest was formed a few days ago and is called the
Committee for the Liberty of Peoples. Through this group Gil will publish
documents of the European Assembly of Captive Nations and other
Agency-controlled organisations dedicated to campaigns for human rights
and civil liberties in communist countries. The agent through whom he
established the Committee is Isabel Robalino Bollo whom he met through
Velasco's former Minister of Labour, Jose Baquero de la Calle. Robalino is
a leader of the Catholic Labour Center (CEDOC), and is Gil's principal
agent for operations through this organisation. She was named Secretary of
the Committee which includes many prominent liberal intellectuals and
politicians.
Quito 27 April 1962
The government has lifted the prohibition on public political
demonstrations in effect since the turmoil over the break with Cuba, and the
campaign for the June elections is picking up steam. Quite a number of our
agents will be candidates but so far our main electoral operation is in
Ambato where Jorge Gortaire, a retired Army colonel and Social Christian
leader, is working to defeat the Revolutionary Socialist Mayor running for
re-election.
Gortaire is also a leader of the Rotary Club and is President of the Ambato
Anti-Communist Front which we finance through him. Because of his
exceptional capability the Front is running a single list of candidates backed
by the Conservatives, Liberals, Social Christians, independents and, of
course, the fascist ARNE. Noland thinks Gortaire is one of the best agents
he has – after Renato Perez and Aurelio Davila.
Gil Saudade is about to see a giant step forward in his and the Guayaquil
base labour operations. Tomorrow the constituent convention of the free
trade-union confederation to be called CEOSL begins, and Gil is fairly
certain that between the base agents in CROCLE and his Popular
Revolutionary Liberal Party agents, we will come out in control. In recent
months the PLPR agents have become increasingly active and Gil is
counting on them to offset the divisive regionalism of the CROCLE agents.
Quito 1 May 1962
The CEOSL – Ecuadorean Confederation of Free Trade Union
Organisations – is formally established with several agents in control:
Victor Contreras Zuniga is President, Matias Ulloa Coppiano is Secretary
for External Relations, and Ricardo Vazquez Diaz is Secretary of
Education. Publicity build-up has been considerable, including messages of
solidarity from ORIT in Mexico City and ICFTU and International Trade
Secretariats in Brussels. Leaders of other Agency-controlled labour
confederations such as the Uruguayan Labour Confederation (CSU) were
invited.
The main business of the first sessions was to seek affiliation with the
ICFTU and ORIT which has just opened an important training-school in
Mexico. Soon CEOSL will begin sending trainees to the ORIT school,
which is run by the Mexico City station through Morris Paladino, the ORIT
Assistant Secretary General and the man through whom IO Division
controls ORIT. (The new Secretary-General of ORIT, Arturo Jauregui,
hasn't been directly recruited yet although he was here in March to promote
the school.)
Gil Saudade will now have to coordinate closely with the Guayaquil base so
that his agents, Ulloa and Vazquez, will work in harmony with the base's
agent, Contreras. None is supposed to know of the others' contact with us.
Unfortunately the controversy between the Guayaquil base agents from
CROCLE and the ECCALICO election operation of two years ago came to
a head. Adalberto Miranda Giron, the Labour Senator from the Coast, was
terminated by the base several months ago because certain of his
inappropriate dealings with companies became known. At the CEOSL
constituent convention he was denounced as a traitor to the working class,
the beginning of a campaign to get him completely out of the trade-union
movement.
Quito 3 May 1962
The 'junk swindle' has become Ecuador's scandal of the century and is being
used increasingly by the left to ridicule the military. Today the Chief of
Staff and the Commander of the Army issued a joint statement defending
themselves from attacks by CTE leaders in May Day speeches and other
recent attempts to connect them with the junk swindle. Final liquidation of
the armed forces, they warned, is the purpose of the leftist campaign.
Resentment is also growing in the military over recent leaflets and wall-
painting labelling them 'junk dealers'.
A new crisis has developed in rural areas violently demonstrating the
backwardness of this country. For the past two months the government has
been trying to conduct an agriculture and livestock census to aid in
economic planning. Numerous Indian uprisings have occurred because of
rumours that the census is a communist scheme to take away the Indians'
animals. On several occasions there were dead and wounded, as in Azuay
Province, for example, where a teacher and his brother, who were taking the
census, were chopped into pieces with machetes and only the arrival of
police impeded the burning of what remained of their bodies.
Because priests serving rural areas are often responsible for the rumours,
the government had to ask the Church hierarchy to instruct all priests and
other religious to assist in the census wherever possible. In Azuay,
nevertheless, the census has been suspended. One has to wonder about the
strength of religious feeling here. On Good Friday two weeks ago tens of
thousands of Indians and other utterly poor people walked in procession
behind images from noon till 6 p.m. – despite heavy rain. The same
occurred in Guayaquil and other cities.
Quito 12 May 1962
Some of our agents are running solid electoral campaigns but others have
pulled out for lack of support. Both Jose Baquero de la Calle, ex-Minister of
Labour under Velasco and running as an independent Velasquista, and Juan
Yepez del Pozo, Sr., General-Secretary of the Ecuadorean affiliate of the
International Commission of Jurists, and running for the Popular
Revolutionary Liberal Party, declared for Mayor of Quito. When Baquero's
candidacy was repudiated by the Conservative Party, he resigned, and when
Yepez failed to attract significant Velasquista backing, he resigned. Oswaldo
Chiriboga, long-time penetration of the Velasquista movement, also
declared for Mayor but is pulling out. For all of these candidates station
support was only nominal because their possibilities for success were
obviously rather limited.
On the other hand the candidacies of Renato Perez for the Municipal
Council, Aurelio Davila for the Chamber of Deputies and Carlos Arizaga
Vega for Deputies are going very well. Alfredo Perez Guerrero, President of
the ICJ affiliate and reform-minded Rector of Central University, is heading
the Deputies list of the National Democratic Front (Liberals, Socialists and
independents) and will win without our help. Other candidates of the Social
Christian Movement and the Conservative Party are being financed
indirectly through funds passed to Perez and Davila.
Quito 13 May 1962
Because Arosemena continues to resist firing extreme leftists in his
government – penetration in fact continues to grow – Noland
recommended, and headquarters approved, expansion of the political
operations financed through the ECACTOR project. Not only will
continued and increased pressure be exerted through the regular agents in
Quito, Cuenca, Riobamba, Ambato and Tulcan, but we have made two new
recruitments of important Social Christian leaders in Quito. I am in charge
of both these new cases. The first new operation is with Carlos Roggiero, a
retired Army captain and one of the principal Social Christian
representatives on the National Defence Front. Roggiero is chief of the
Social Christian militant-action squads, including the secret bomb-squad,
and I have started training him in the use of various incendiary, crowd
dispersement and harassment devices that I requested from TSD in
headquarters. Through him we will form perhaps ten squads, of five to ten
men each, for disrupting meetings and small demonstrations and for general
street control and intimidation of the Communist Youth, URJE and similar
groups.
The other new operation is with Jose Maria Egas, a young lawyer and also a
leading Social Christian representative on the National Defence Front. Egas
is a fast-rising political figure and a really spellbinding orator. Through him
I will form five squads composed of four to five men each for investigative
work connected with our Subversive Control Watch List – formerly known
as the LYNX list. The surveillance team under Lt. Col. Paredes simply
hasn't the time to do the whole job and is needed on other assignments.
With the group under Egas's control we will have constant checking on
residences and places of work so that if the situation continues to
deteriorate and a moment of truth arrives, we will have up-to-date
information for immediate arrests. If Egas's work warrants it, we may train
him in headquarters and even extend the operation to physical surveillance.
In another effort to improve intelligence collection on the extreme left I
have arranged to add another telephone tap through Rafael Bucheli and
Alfonso Rodriguez. The new tap will be on the home telephone of Antonio
Flores Benitez, a retired Army captain and somewhat mysterious associate
of Quito PCE leader Rafael Echeverria Flores. We have several indications
from PCE penetration agents Cardenas and Vargas that Flores is a key
figure in what seems to be an organisation being formed by Echeverria
outside the PCE structure properly speaking. The chances are that
Echeverria is developing a group that may be the nucleus for future
guerrilla action and urban terrorism, but he hasn't yet taken any of our
agents into it. I will tap Flores for a while to see if anything of interest
develops – Edgar Camacho will do the transcribing as Francine Jacome has
only time for transcribing the Araujo line. The LP remains in Bucheli's
home under the thin cover of an electronics workshop.
Raymond Ladd, our hustling administrative officer, has been very active in
the basketball federation, teaching a course in officiating and helping to
coach the local girls' teams. Through this work he met Modesto Ponce, the
Postmaster General of Ecuador, who soon insisted that Ladd review in the
Embassy all the mail we are already getting through the regular intercept. In
order to avoid suspicion that we are already getting mail from Cuba and the
Soviet Bloc, Ladd accepted Ponce's offer, and now we get the same
correspondence twice. We may attempt certain new coverage through Ponce
so Ladd has begun giving him money for the mail under the normal guise of
payment for expenses.
Quito 21 May 1962
Arosemena struck back for his humiliation at the hands of the military when
he was forced to break with Cuba. Last week he fired the Minister of
Defence, sent the Army Commander to Paris as military attache and sent
the Air Force Commander to Buenos Aires as military attache. Immediate
protests came from the Social Christians, Conservatives and others over the
removal of these staunchly anti-communist officers with new charges of
communist penetration of the government.
Then Alfredo Albornoz, the Minister of Government appointed only seven
week ago, resigned. Next, all the other National Democratic Front Ministers
resigned. The issue is Arosemena's refusal to honour his promise of last
month, when the Front came into the government, to dismiss two key leftist
appointees: the Secretary-General of the Administration and the Governor
of Guayas Province.
Noland is sorry to lose Albornoz because they were developing a
worthwhile relationship both from the point of view of intelligence
collection through Albornoz and from action by Albornoz on undesirables
within the government. Arosemena is searching for new support, but the
Front is holding out for the resignations.
But yesterday new ministers were named after Arosemena made another
promise in secret to fire the Governor of Guayas Province. Today the
resignation was announced. Although this is a step in the right direction, the
Secretary General of the Administration remains (he is like a chief of staff
with Cabinet rank) along with many others of the same colouring. Among
the new ministers is Juan Sevilla, a golfing companion of mine who was
named Minister of Labour and Social Welfare. Gil Saudade will decide
whether Sevilla could be of use in his labour operations.
Quito 4 June 1962
Traditional violence flared up in several cities during the final days before
the elections which were held yesterday. The right was split, as were the
centre and the Velasquistas – with a profusion of candidates all over the
country excepting the extreme left which didn't participate.
The Conservative Party won the most seats in the Chamber of Deputies
(although not quite a majority), and victories in most of the municipal and
provincial contests. Aurelio Davila, who managed the Conservative
campaign in Quito, was elected Deputy for Pichincha. ReRato Perez was
elected Quito Municipal Councillor from the Social Christian list. And
Carlos Arizaga Vega was elected Conservative Party Deputy for Azuay
Province.
The Velasquistas have had a disaster, winning only six deputies and two
mayors' races – one of which was in Ambato. Jorge Gortaire's candidate
there, backed by the Anti-Communist Front, was second but Gortaire is
being given overall credit for the defeat of the Revolutionary Socialist
incumbent.
The elections are a clear indication of the effectiveness of the
Conservatives' campaign against communist penetration in the government
and are a severe defeat both for Arosemena and for the National
Democratic Front. When Congress opens there can be little doubt that the
Conservatives will exert new and stronger pressure for elimination of
extreme-leftists in the government.
Reinaldo Varea has been taking a severe beating in the continuing
controversy over the junk swindle. The case is colouring the whole political
scene and unfortunately for us Varea isn't very effective in what is a very
difficult defence. In a few days he'll go to Washington for treatment of
stomach ulcers at Walter Reed Hospital – Davila will be acting Vice-
President.
Quito 15 June 1962
The International Monetary Fund has just announced another stabilisation
credit to Ecuador of five million dollars over the next twelve months for
balance of payments relief. The announcement was optimistic and
complimentary, noting that Ecuador since mid-1961 has stopped the decline
in its foreign exchange reserves and obtained equilibrium in its balance of
payments. The new standby, of course, is conditional on retention of last
year's exchange-rate unification, that contributed to Velasco's overthrow.
Two programmes are getting under way this month as part of a new US
country-team effort in staving off communist-inspired insurgency. One is
the Civic Action programme of the Ecuadorean military services and the
US military assistance mission – in fact under way for a couple of years but
now being expanded and institutionalized. The purpose of Civic Action is
to demonstrate through community development by uniformed military
units that the military is on the side of the people so that tendencies of poor
people to accept communist propaganda and recruitment can be reversed.
It's a programme to link the people, especially in rural areas, to the
government through the military who contribute visibly and concretely to
the people's welfare.
The Civic Action programme just announced as the first of its kind in Latin
America calls for contributions in money and equipment by the US
military-assistance mission worth 1.5 million dollars plus another 500,000
dollars from the AID mission. Projects will include road-construction,
irrigation-canals, drinking-water systems and public-health facilities, first in
Azuay Province to be followed by Guayaquil slums and by the Cayambe-
Olmedo region north of Quito. Widespread publicity will be undertaken to
propagandise these projects in other areas in order to generate interest and
project proposals in these other regions.
In the station, we will work with Major Breslin, the intelligence advisor of
the US military mission. He will use the mission personnel who visit and
work at the projects as a type of scout – keeping their eyes open and
reporting indications of hostility, level of communist agit-prop activities
and general programme effectiveness.
The other new programme is more closely related to regular station
operations and is Washington's answer to the limitations of current labour
programmes undertaken through AID as well as through ORIT and CIA
stations. The problem is related to the controversy over the ineffectiveness
of ORIT but is larger – it is essentially how to accelerate expansion of
labour-organising activities in Latin America in order to deny workers to
labour unions dominated by the extreme left and to reverse communist and
Castroite penetration. This new programme is the result of several years'
study and planning and is to be channelled through the American Institute
for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), founded last year in Washington for
training in trade-unionism.
The reason a new institution was founded was that AID labour programmes
are limited because of their direct dependence on the US government. They
serve poorly for the dirty struggles that characterise labour organising and
jurisdictional battles. ORIT programmes are also limited because its
affiliates are weak or nonexistent in some countries, although expansion is
also under way through the establishment of a new ORIT school in Mexico.
Control is difficult and past performance is poor. The CIA station
programmes are limited by personnel problems, but more so by the limits
on the amount of money that can be channelled covertly through the
stations and through international organisations like ORIT and the ICFTU.
Business leaders are front men on the Board of Directors so that large sums
of AID money can be channelled to AIFLD and so that the institute will
appear to have the collaboration of US businesses operating in Latin
America. Nevertheless, legally, AIFLD is a non-profit, private corporation
and financing will also be obtained from foundations, businesses and the
AFL-CIO.
The AIFLD is headed by Serafino Romualdi, IO Division's long-time agent
who moved in as Executive Director and resigned as the AFL-CIO's Inter-
American Representative. Among the Directors are people of the stature of
George Meany, J. Peter Grace and Joseph Beirne, President of the
Communications Workers of America (CWA) which is the largest Western
Hemisphere affiliate of the Post, Telegraph and Telephone Workers
International (PTTI). AIFLD, in fact, is modelled on the CWA training
school of Front Royal, Virginia where Latin American leaders of PTTI
affiliates are being trained. Day to day control of AIFLD by IO Division,
however, will be through Romualdi and William Doherty, former Inter-
American Representative of the PTTI and now AIFLD Social Projects
Director. Prominent Latin American liberals such as Jose Figueres, former
President of Costa Rica and also a longtime Agency collaborator, will serve
on the Board from time to time.
The main purpose of AIFLD will be to organise anti-communist labour
unions in Latin America. However, the ostensible purpose, since union
organising is rather sensitive for AID to finance, even indirectly, will be
'adult education' and social projects such as workers' housing, credit unions
and cooperatives. First priority is to establish in all Latin American
countries training institutes which will take over and expand the courses
already being given in many countries by AID. Although these training
institutes will nominally and administratively be controlled by AIFLD in
Washington, it is planned that as many as possible will be headed by
salaried CIA agents with operational control exercised by the stations. In
most cases, it is hoped, these AIFLD agents will be US citizens with some
background in trade-unionism although, as in the case of ORIT, foreign
nationals may have to be used. The training programmes of the local
institutes in Latin America will prepare union organizers who, after the
courses are over, will spend the next nine months doing nothing but
organising new unions with their salaries and all expenses paid by the local
institute. Publicity relating to AIFLD will concentrate on the social projects
and 'adult education' aspects, keeping the organising programme discreetly
in the background.
This month, in addition to training in Latin American countries, AIFLD is
beginning a programme of advanced training courses to be given in
Washington. Spotting and assessment of potential agents for labour
operations will be a continuing function of the Agency-controlled staff
members both in the training courses in Latin America and in the
Washington courses. Agents already working in labour operations can be
enrolled in the courses to promote their technical capabilities and their
prestige.
In Ecuador, the AIFLD representative from the US who is now setting up
the training institute – the first course begins in three weeks – is not an
agent but was sent anyway in order to avoid delays. However, Gil Saudade
arranged for Ricardo Vazquez Diaz, the Education Secretary of CEOSL, to
be the Ecuadorean in charge of the local AIFLD training programmes.
Carlos Vallejo Baez, who is connected with the Popular Revolutionary
Liberal Party, will also be on the teaching staff. Eventually Saudade will
either recruit this first AIFLD representative or headquarters will arrange
for a cleared agent to be sent.
These two new programmes, military Civic Action and the AIFLD, are
without doubt being expanded faster here than in most other Latin
American countries. Recently I read the report by a special inter-
departmental team of experts from Washington called the Strategic Analysis
Targeting Team (SATT), which in months past secretly visited all the Latin
American countries. Their purpose was to review all US government
programmes in each country and to determine the gravity of the threat of
urban terrorism and guerrilla warfare. We prepared a secret annex for the
SATT Report, and among their recommendations were expansion of the
Subversive Control Watch List programme and updating of contingency
planning in order to continue our operations from a third country – in case
we lose our Embassy offices. Ecuador, in fact, shared with Bolivia and
Guatemala the SATT Report's category as the most likely places for early
armed insurgency. Emphasis on immediate expansion of Civic Action and
labour programmes is probably a result of the SATT Report.
Quito 21 July 1962
A breakthrough in Guayaquil student operations. The anticommunist forces
led by Alberto Alarcon have just won the FEUE elections. They replace
extreme-leftist officers who are members of URJE. Less than two weeks
ago, Alarcon was here in Quito for a golf tournament sponsored by
Ambassador Bernbaum, and he and Noland made final preparations for the
FEUE elections.
Gil Saudade has launched another new operation – an organisation of
business and professional people to promote economic and social reform.
Civic organisations of this sort have been established by other stations and
have been effective for propaganda and as funding mechanisms for
elections and other political-action operations. Our group is called the
Center for Economic and Social Reform Studies (CERES) and is headed by
two agents, Mario Cabeza de Vaca and Jaime Ponce Yepez. Cabeza de Vaca
formerly was the cutout to PCE penetration agent Mario Cardenas but they
had a personality clash of sorts so John Bacon shifted Cardenas to Miguel
Burbano de Lara who was already handling another PCE penetration agent,
Luis Vargas. Bacon then turned Cabeza de Vaca over to Saudade to front in
the CERES organisation. Jaime Ponce is the Quito Shell Oil dealer and
already a friend of mine and Noland's. Noland recruited him to work in
CERES and then turned him over to Saudade. The Bogota station is helping
by sending a delegation from its reform group called Center of Studies and
Social Action (CEAS). They are here now.
Quito 2 August 1962
Arosemena's back from a state visit to Washington. During his main
business meeting with Kennedy he was feeling no pain and proved he could
name all the US Presidents in order from Washington on. He also claimed
he couldn't remember the Ecuadorean Presidents, there have been so many,
for the last half-century. Kennedy apparently was amused, but the State
Department reports on the trip are sombre.
Thanks to Arosemena the last of the Santo Domingo guerrillas have been
released. In recent months they've trickled out slowly with little publicity,
and unless Davila and others can create an issue during the Congressional
session opening in a week, the cases will just sink away into the
bureaucratic swampland. Several of the guerrillas have already gone to
Cuba for additional training.
The telephone tap on Antonio Flores Benitez is producing better
information right now than any of our PCE penetration agents. Flores has
ten or fifteen persons who call and say very little, only code-phrases for
arranging meetings, obviously using code-names. Using the ECJACK
surveillance team under Lt. Col. Paredes I've been trying to identify Flores's
contacts but the work is very slow, especially because Flores simply cannot
be followed – partly it's the size and low proficiency of the team, but,
mainly Flores is watching constantly and taking diversionary measures.
Even so, I have identified Rafael Echeverria, Principal PCE leader in Quito,
as one of the clandestine contacts, along with a non-commissioned officer
in the Ministry of Defence Communications Section, the chief of the
archives section of the Presidency and the deputy chief of Arosemena's
personal bodyguard. Analysis of the transcripts has been most helpful
because even though Flores is careful when he speaks by telephone, his
wife is very garrulous when he's out of the house. Several important
identifications have been made from her carelessness.
My impression at this point is that Flores, who is not a PCE member, is in
charge of the intelligence collection branch of an organisation Echeverria is
continuing to form outside the established PCE structure. If he is doing as
well in the guerrilla and terrorism branch we will have to act soon to
suppress the organisation before armed operations begin.
In order to speed up transcriptions we have brought in another transcriber.
He is Rodrigo Rivadeneira, one of the brothers who run the clandestine
printing press. Rodrigo is one of Ecuador's best basketball players and was
on a scholarship in the US obtained for him by Noland. He returned to
Ecuador in June and because of family financial problems he will probably
have to give up the scholarship. Francine Jacome will be unable to work for
a few months so Rodrigo will take over the Araujo line which, while
interesting, is not producing as much as the Flores line.
Two police agents have been transferred to new assignments. Pacifico de los
Reyes, Chief of Police Intelligence, left yesterday for the FBI course at
Quantico, Virginia. We got the scholarship for him through the AID Public
Safety office and he will be gone until the end of the year. Before he left he
asked me if I would like to keep up contact with the Police Intelligence unit
while he is away. He selected Luis Sandoval, chief technician of the Police
Intelligence unit, with whom I have been meeting since last year but
without de los Reyes's knowledge. He introduced Sandoval to me three
days ago and somehow we both kept a straight face. Before leaving, de los
Reyes was promoted from captain to major. With the Office of Training in
headquarters I am arranging special intelligence training for him to follow
the FBI course.
Colonel Oswaldo Lugo, our oldest and most important penetration agent of
the National Police, has been reassigned from the Cuenca district to the job
as Chief of the Fourth District with headquarters in Guayaquil. This new
job puts him in command of all the National Police units on the coast and
will be an important addition to the Guayaquil base operations. In a few
days I will make a quick trip to Guayaquil to introduce Lugo to the Base
Chief.
Guerrilla training in Cuba is on headquarters' highest priority list for Latin
America and instructions have been sent to all stations asking that efforts be
made to place agents in the groups sent for training. We haven't been able to
get an agent sent for training yet, but I've been meeting lately with the new
Director of Immigration, Pablo Maldonado, who has expressed interest in
helping impede travel to Cuba by administrative procedures where prior
knowledge of the travel is available. Maldonado, whom I met through
mutual friends, is also willing to arrange close searches of Ecuadoreans
who return from Cuba. I have begun passing on information which comes
from the Mexican and Spanish liaison services using the immigration
documents of travellers to and from Cuba through the two main travel
points: Mexico City and Madrid.
Quito 10 August 1962
Congress opened a new session today and acknowledged that agrarian
reform is one of the first items on its order of business. In the Senate the
National Democratic Front is in control while in the Chamber of Deputies
the Conservative Party has a slight edge when backed by the leftist
Concentration of Popular Forces' two or three deputies.
The Conservatives are out to get Varea's resignation and Noland has no way
either to stop it or to salvage Varea. Once Varea is thrown out over the junk
swindle the Conservatives will try to get Arosemena thrown out or force his
resignation for physical incapacity. Unfortunately Varea has to go first
because ousting Arosemena with Varea as Vice-President will be almost
impossible.
Varea continues as President of the Senate and Carlos Arizaga Vega, our
ECACTOR political-action agent from Cuenca, was elected Vice-President
of the Chamber of Deputies. He has quickly replaced Davila as leader of the
rightist bloc – Davila is concentrating on organisational work and wasn't a
candidate in the Chamber of Deputies.
Quito 29 August 1962
After four days of political crisis, including the resignations of all Cabinet
ministers, Arosemena finally had to dismiss his leftist Secretary-General.
Without doubt this is a significant victory for the Conservatives and Social
Christians, although certain Liberals and Socialists are also aligned in the
campaign since last year against the key administration leftist.
The only other Cabinet resignation accepted was that of Manuel Naranjo,
Minister of the Treasury and Noland's agent leading the democratic
Socialist Party. His resignation comes as a result of increasing opposition
from businessmen to his austerity policies although he is widely and
favourably recognised for his personal honesty and the beginnings of tax-
reform.
The situation worsens for another of Noland's agents. Two nights ago the
Chamber of Deputies voted to impeach Varea for his participation in the
junk swindle – still the supreme issue in current Ecuadorean politics. He's
not being charged with stealing any of the money, just with negligence and
ineptitude. The Minister of Defence at the time of the swindle is being
prosecuted by the Chamber along with the Vice-President. Carlos Arizaga
Vega is leading the attack.
Araujo has arrived back in Guayaquil after a trip to China that started late
last month. At the airport five rolls of training film on street-fighting
techniques were confiscated as well as propaganda. In China he was
received by the Vice Premier – we're going to try and discover if he got
other assistance too.
Quito 3 September 1962
Labour operations proceed with their usual mixed accomplishments. The
CROCLE leadership within the CEOSL has insisted in attacking Adalberto
Miranda, the Labour Senator from the coast, because of his dealings with
the Guayaquil Telephone Company. Now they are accusing him of being
involved with efforts by the United Fruit subsidiary to fire certain
employees who are members of the subsidiary's trade union which recently
affiliated with CROCLE and CEOSL. The same Guayaquil CROCLE
leaders tried to get Miranda disqualified from the Senate but that move
failed too. This campaign against Miranda is justified in some ways,
according to the base, but undesirable right now because of its divisive
nature. Soon the base plans to terminate the CROCLE agents who also
insist on retaining the regional identity of CROCLE in opposition to our
efforts to replace it with coastal provincial federations. When that happens,
Gil Saudade will move his Quito agents into full control of CEOSL; he is
now preparing for that development.
Meanwhile the AIFLD programme is continuing to progress with close
coordination with CEOSL through Ricardo Vazquez Diaz. Next month
Vazquez will conduct a seminar for labour leaders from which four will be
selected for the three-month AIFLD course starting in October in
Washington.
Two weeks ago a PTTI delegation was here to discuss organisation and a
low-cost housing programme with their Ecuadorean affiliate, FENETEL,
which is one of the most important unions in CEOSL. The PTTI is training
FENETEL leaders at their school in Front Royal, Virginia, and the visit was
also used to create publicity for the AIFLD seminar programme. Included
in the delegation was the new PTTI Inter-American Representative and a
Cuban who is leader of the Cuban telephone workers' union in exile. This
PTTI organisation is without doubt the most effective of the International
Trade Secretariats currently working in Ecuador under direction of IO
Division.
One has to wonder how the Ecuadorean working class can even stay alive
to organize. Two weeks ago the President of the National Planning Board,
in a general economic report to the Chamber of Deputies, revealed that the
worker in 1961 received an average monthly income of only 162 sucres –
about seven dollars.
Quito 10 September 1962
Noland has turned over another branch of the ECACTOR political-action
project to me. From now on I'll be handling the Ambato operation with
Jorge Gortaire. Two weeks ago I went with Noland down to Ambato to
meet Gortaire and to plan a bugging operation that we think may reveal
information on Chinese support to Araujo, if any. Previously, the manager
of the Villa Hilda Hotel in Ambato, a Czech emigre, reported to Gortaire
that Araujo had made reservations for one of the cottages. This will be
Araujo's first trip to visit his Ambato followers since returning from
Communist China and Gortaire suggested that we bug the cottage – which
he will monitor when Araujo goes there at the end of the month.
Last weekend I returned with the equipment and spent a couple of days with
Gortaire. He had taken the cottage which Araujo will use and we installed a
microphone, transmitter and power supply behind the woodwork of the
closet door. It works perfectly and Gortaire can monitor at ease from his
house, which is only two blocks from the Villa Hilda. The only problem
was that Gortaire forgot to lock the door and, when I was standing on a
table in the closet making the installation, a couple of maids burst in on us.
They were clearly puzzled by my strange activity, but Gortaire believes they
simply could not imagine what I was really doing. He will stop by to see the
manager from time to time to find out if the maids mentioned seeing me on
the table.
Quito 3 October 1962
Arosemena has survived another attempt at impeachment for incapacity,
largely because the Conservatives fell apart on the issue, and because Varea
is so discredited.
Through my work with Pablo Maldonado, Director of Immigration, on
attempting to stop or delay Ecuadoreans from travelling to Cuba and to
carefully review their baggage on return, I have met the Sub-Secretary of
Government, Manual Cordova Galarza, who is Maldonado's immediate
superior.
Cordova expressed willingness to cooperate in trying to cut off travel to
Cuba, and he said Jaime del Hierro, the Minister of Government, is also
anxious to see effective controls established. He added that any time I wish,
I can call on him or on the Minister to propose new ideas.
Noland isn't anxious to get involved with Cordova or del Hierro because,
according to him, Arosemena won't allow them to take really, effective
action. He said they are probably just trying to appear to be cooperative
since serving as Minister and Sub-Secretary of public security in this
government is beyond redemption. In his view they're like the other
Liberals serving Arosemena: disgraceful opportunists. For the time being
I'll continue with Maldonado and avoid contacts with Cordova and del
Hierro.
Today Cordova went to Cuenca to investigate a macabre incident that
occurred in an Indian village about twenty kilometres outside Cuenca. A
medical team of the Andean Mission, an organisation supported by UN
agencies and dedicated to teaching social progress and self-help to rural
Indians in several countries, was making the rounds of villages when they
encountered strange hostility just outside a community they had already
visited several times. They stopped the jeep and the doctor and social-
worker proceeded on foot leaving the nurse and chauffeur in the vehicle. In
the village the doctor and the social-worker found the Indians assembled in
the church for a religious service, but when they entered the church they
were greeted with extreme hostility by the Indians who began to jostle them
about. When they did not return for some time the nurse also left the jeep
and entered the village, but at the church she too was menaced as she joined
the others. By now the Indians were whipped into a rage by several of their
leaders who thought the Andean Mission people were communists. As
matters grew worse the Mission team fled to the sacristy for safety but were
followed by the Indians who surrounded them and would not let them leave.
The elderly priest, who had been in the parish thirty-eight years, appeared
and the team begged him to confirm to the Indians that they were not
communists, but were simply there to help them. The priest refused to
intervene even as the team knelt before him begging protection, and he
simply blessed them and disappeared. The team was then severely beaten –
the nurse left for unconscious while the doctor and the social-worker were
dragged to the street.
The nurse escaped, returned to the jeep and obtained a police patrol from
Cuenca. When they returned to the village the doctor and social-worker had
been killed with stones, clubs and machetes while a local schoolteacher
who tried to intervene had also been attacked. The Indians, in fact, were
about to burn him, thinking he was dead, when the nurse and police arrived.
Preliminary investigation revealed that the priest had earlier instructed the
Indians to resist the agriculture and livestock census because it was a
communist plot, and that the priest also spread the story that the Andean
Mission team were communists. My friends tell me that the priest will
probably be sent to a religious retirement house as punishment. Arosemena
rewarded Manuel Naranjo by naming him Ecuadorean permanent delegate
to the UN General Assembly. He has gone to New York and Noland has
arranged for contact to be established with him by officers from the
Agency's New York office. We expect that the CIA will try to use him for
special operations at the UN.
Quito 7 October 1962
Brazilian elections are being held today as the climax of one of WH
Division's largest-ever political-action operations. For most of the year the
Rio de Janeiro station and its many bases in consulates throughout the
country have been engaged in a multimillion dollar campaign to finance the
election of anti-communist candidates in the federal, state and municipal
offices being contested. Hopefully these candidates will become a counter-
force to the leftward trend of the Goulart government – increasingly
penetrated by the communists and the extreme left in general.
***
Noland's transfer back to Washington, expected by him for many months, is
now official. After five years here he is being replaced in December by
Warren L. Dean, currently Deputy Chief of Station in Mexico City. No one
here knows anything about the new chief except that he's a former FBI man
who wants Noland to arrange for immediate release of his dogs, that are
coming on the same flight from Mexico City.
Quito 15 October 1962
The Santo Domingo guerrilla adventure has reached a conclusion as far as
the PCE is concerned. At a Central Committee Plenum just ended Jorge
Ribadeneira was expelled from the party for his 'divisionist' work in URJE
and for leading PCE and JCE members into the guerrilla operation. The
expulsion was in agreement with a resolution of the Pichincha Provincial
Committee following their investigation in August. Ribadeneira was an
alternate member of the Central Committee and a full member of the
Pichincha Provincial Committee under Rafael Echeverria. Our PCE agents
report that the struggle will now turn to URJE where the Ribadeneira forces
are struggling with the forces controlled by the PCE and Pedro Saad. One
can only wonder what the Central Committee would think of Echeverria's
parallel activities outside the PCE as reports continue to reveal preparations
by his group for armed action and terrorism. This comes through the
ECWHEAT telephone tap on Antonio Flores.
I continue working with my two Quito Social Christian leaders, Carlos
Roggiero and Jose Maria Egas, in their respective fields of militant action
and subversive watch-control. Egas has been under rather intense
cultivation by the chief of the Embassy political section (ostensibly my
boss) who doesn't know he is my agent. Egas has just left on a State
Department leader grant to observe the US electoral campaign. He'll spend
most of his time in California but after the elections he'll return to
Washington where headquarters will give him a month of intense training in
clandestine operations, mainly surveillance and investigations.
Velasco is again beginning to haunt the political scene and the spectre of his
return for the 1964 elections looms not far over the horizon. Through the
Agenda Orbe Latinoamericano news service we arranged to have Velasco
interviewed recently in Buenos Aires, and he affirmed his plans to return in
January 1964 for the campaign. Publication of the interview here has
caused just the ripple we want so that the ECACTOR agents will begin
plotting to keep him from returning or from being a candidate.
Noland has a new Velasquista agent who began calling on him at the
Embassy some weeks ago to offer titbits on organisational work of
Velasquista leaders in Quito. The new agent is Medadro Toro and he has
Noland extremely nervous because of his reputation as a gunman. He was
one of the four people arrested for firing at Arosemena during the shoot-out
in the Congress in October last year, and he was jailed from then until
February when the Supreme Court threw out the case. He was back in jail in
April for insulting Arosemena and in May he was a Velasquista candidate
for Deputy in the June elections. He lost and is obviously looking for some
way to keep body and soul together. So far his information has helped
resolve persistent rumours of Velasco's imminent return and Noland,
although personally fearing this man, thinks he has long-range potential.
What bothers Noland are Toro's beady eyes looking through him, but he'll
either have to begin discreet meetings outside the Embassy very soon or
forget the whole thing. Politically Toro is dynamite. Gil Saudade is trying to
salvage his Popular Revolutionary Liberal Party (PLPR), although several
of the agents are now firmly entrenched in the CEOSL labour organisation.
After the fall of Velasco the struggle resumed in the PLPR between our
agents and a group of extreme-leftists who were close to Araujo, coming to
a head last week with the expulsion of Araujo's friends. Now Gil will try to
get his agents active again in the organisation, again to attract the
Velasquista left away from Araujo, so that the PLPR will have some
influence if Velasco returns for the 1964 election campaign.
Quito 6 November 1962
At long last Reinaldo Varea's impeachment proceedings, which have
dominated the political scene since August, have ended. Today he was
acquitted by the Senate although Velasco's Minister of Defence at the time
of the junk swindle lost his right to hold public office for two years. Varea
may have survived as Vice President but his political usefulness is
practically wiped out. The only hope is for him to work very hard to rebuild
his reputation so that when Arosemena's next drunken scandal occurs Varea
might not be such an obstruction to ousting Arosemena for physical
incapacity. Even so, there is little or no indication that Varea could ever
overcome the Conservative and Social Christian opposition to him – he is,
after all, a Velasquista.
Quito 8 November 1962
Congress's final session last night kept tradition intact. In addition to a
fistfight involving Davila, the national Budget was adopted. Discussion of
the Budget only began yesterday and was, of course, shallow and
precipitate. There is a general agreement that it will be very difficult to
finance in spite of new tax measures.
The 1962 Congressional session, as in 1961 and 1960, ended with no
agrarian, tax or administrative reform. The session was controlled by the
Conservatives and Social Christians who sought to use the Congress as a
political forum, with the junk scandal as the issue, to attack both the
Arosemena administration and the Velasquista movement. Significant
legislation was never seriously considered.
Quito 20 December 1962
Another crisis – the worst yet – broke today. President Allesandri of Chile
stopped in Guayaquil this afternoon for an official visit to Arosemena after
a trip to see Kennedy. At the airport Arosemena was so drunk he had to be
held up by aides on both sides and later at the banquet he had to call on a
guest to make the welcome toast.
News of this disgrace has spread around the country like a flash and already
Carlos Arizaga Vega is moving to gather signatures for convoking a special
session of Congress to throw Arosemena out. This time Arosemena may
well have to resign.
***
The new Chief of Station arrived with his wife and dogs and next week the
Nolands leave. Today Jim was given a medal by the Quito Municipal
Council in recognition of his work with youth and sports groups in Quito.
Renato Perez, Acting Council President, presided at the ceremony.
Tomorrow at the golf-club the Nolands will be honoured at a huge party,
and the following day Janet and I have invited about a hundred friends to a
farewell lawn party for the Nolands at our house.
Quito 28 December 1962
The Nolands left and the new Chief of Station, Warren Dean, hasn't wasted
any time letting us know how he works. The other day, even while Noland
was still here, Ray Ladd and I went off to spend the afternoon with a crowd
of friends, mostly from the tourism business, at a bar and lounge of
questionable respectability called the Mirador (it overlooks the whole city).
The next day Dean gave us a verbal dressing down in a staff meeting and
left no doubts he wanted to know where everyone is at all times. Afterwards
Noland gave me another of his friendly advice sessions, warning me that
my wilder habits may not sit well with Dean and that I'd better be a little
more discreet. Frankly I think this new chief is pulling the old military
shakedown technique – a mild intimidation to establish authority. Surely,
with the extra hours worked at night and on weekends, an afternoon taken
off now and then is justified.
This new chief is a big man, about six feet four inches and somewhat
overweight. He's obviously having difficulty with the altitude even though
he has come from Mexico City – each afternoon after lunch he sits behind
his desk fighting to keep his eyes open. So far the main changes he has
indicated are increased action against the extreme left in collection of
information through technical operations and new agent recruitments. He
also wants me to increase my work with Major Pacifico de los Reyes, the
former Chief of Police Intelligence who has just returned from training at
the FBI Academy in Virginia and at headquarters, where he was given
several weeks training in clandestine intelligence operations. He's just been
appointed Chief of Criminal Investigations for Pichincha but will continue
to oversee the intelligence department.
Jose Maria Egas, the young Social Christian leader, is also back from his
State Department trip and from our special training programme. Dean also
wants me to intensify the use of this agent because headquarters is getting
frantic that serious insurgency may be imminent. Programmes like the
Subversive Control Watch List are getting increased emphasis and Egas's
teams are crucial for this effort. From now on I'll pay him the equivalent of
200 dollars a month, which is very high by Ecuadorean standards but
consistent with Dean's instructions.
Quito 12 January 1963
In Guayaquil last week a national convention of URJE voted to expel Jorge
Ribadeneira and nine other URJE leaders, most of whom were involved in
the Santo Domingo guerrilla operation. The expulsions reflect PC E control
of the convention and the specific charge against those expelled was misuse
of 40,000 dollars that Ribadeneira and his group were given by the Cubans
for guerrilla operations around Quevedo rather than Santo Domingo.
The best report on the convention was from a new agent of the Guayaquil
base who is one of the URJE leaders expelled. Although the agent, Enrique
Medina, will no longer be reporting on URJE the base will try to ensure that
he participates in the organisation that these former URJE leaders will now
form.
From now on the URJE ceases to be the main danger for insurgency from
our point of view. The most important leaders have been thrown out and
now that the PCE is back in control the emphasis will be on organisation
and work with the masses rather than armed action, not to eliminate, of
course, selective agitation through bombings and street action. Our main
concern now will be to monitor any new organisation set up by Ribadeneira
and the others who were expelled, together with improving our penetrations
of the Araujo and the Echeverria groups in Quito. In a few days the base
will bring out an appropriate story in the Guayaquil press on the URJE
convention and we'll give it replay here in Quito. This will be a blow to
URJE and to those expelled, since normally they try to keep these internal
disputes quiet. Ribadeneira couldn't have been more effective for our
purposes if he had been our agent.
My year as a director of the YMCA is ending, but now I am going to
organise a YMCA basketball team. Dean has approved the use of station
funds for players' salaries so we will be able to attract some of the best in
Quito. We'll also buy uniforms and bring in shoes from the US by
diplomatic pouch. The station administrative assistant, Ray Ladd, will
coach the team. The advantage to the station is to continue widening our
range of contacts and potential agents through the YMCA, which was only
established here a couple of years ago.
Quito 16 January 1963
Reorganisation of CEOSL is moving ahead although termination of the old
CROCLE agents by the Guayaquil base required a visit in November by
Serafino Romualdi, Executive Director of AIFLD and the long-time AFL-
CIO representative for Latin America. The struggle between the old
CROCLE and COG agents, who favoured retention of their unions'
autonomy within CEOSL, and our new agents, who insisted (at our
instruction) that CROCLE and COG disappear in favour of a new Guayas
provincial federation, finally led to the expulsion a few days ago of the
CROCLE and COG leaders from CEOSL. Those expelled included Victor
Contreras who only last April became CEOSL's first President. Matias
Ulloa Coppiano is now Acting Secretary-General of CEOs L and Ricardo
Vazquez Diaz is Acting Secretary of Organisation. Both are agents of Gil
Saudade who originally recruited them through his Popular Revolutionary
Liberal Party.
Ricardo Vazquez Diaz has been very effective in expanding the AIFLD
education programme along with Carlos Vallejo Baez. In recent months,
courses have been held in Guayaquil and Cuenca as well as Quito. Other
courses are being planned for provincial towns in order to strengthen the
CEOSL organisations there.
Quito 18 January 1963
Student election operations through Alberto Alarcon have again been
successful in Quito. In December the elections for officers of the Quito
FEUE chapter were so close that both sides claimed fraud and the voting
was annulled. Today another vote was held and Alarcon's candidate, a
moderate, won. The national FEUE seat is now in Cuenca where anti-
communist forces are also in control.
The Guayaquil base has made several PCE documents public, by having
Colonel Lugo, Commander of the National Police in the coastal provinces,
add them to a three-ton haul of propaganda he captured last October. In a
few days these documents will come to light in the report emerging from a
Senate commission's investigation of the propaganda. Included is the PCE
Central Committee resolution expelling Ribadeneira. Dean is determined to
create as much fear propaganda as possible as part of a new campaign for
government action against the extreme left.
Quito 30 January 1963
Our new station officer under Public Safety cover has arrived and Dean put
me in charge of handling his contact with the station. His name is John
Burke and he's the most eager beaver I've ever met. Seems to think he'll be
crawling in the attic of the Presidential Palace next week to bug
Arosemena's bedroom. His problem is that he broke his leg training, and
while it mended for the past year and a half he took every training course
offered by the Technical Services Division, for lack of anything else to do.
In recent months he has sent to the station masses of audio, photo and other
technical equipment including about 200 pounds of car keys – one for every
Ford, General Motors and Chrysler model built since 1925. Dean finally
blew up over this equipment and fired off a cable telling headquarters not to
send one more piece of technical gear unless he specifically asks for it. Poor
Burke. He's not off to a very good start, and Dean has told me to make him
stick exclusively to the AID police work until further notice. His first AID
project, it seems, will be to take a canoe trip down in the Amazon jungles to
survey rural law enforcement capabilities there – not exactly clandestine
operations but it could get interesting if he runs into any Auca head-
shrinkers.
In fact Burke will have plenty to keep him busy in the straight police work.
Under the Public Safety programme this year AID is giving about one
million dollars' worth of weapons and equipment to the police: 2000 rifles
with a million rounds of ammunition, 500 .38 calibre revolvers with half a
million rounds, about 6000 tear-gas grenades, 150 anti-riot shot-guns with
15,000 shells, almost 2000 gas-masks, 44 mobile radio units and 19 base
radio stations, plus laboratory and investigations equipment. In addition to
training the national police here in Ecuador, the Public Safety office is also
sending about seventy of them to the Inter-American Police Academy at
Fort Davis in the Panama Canal Zone. This Academy was founded by our
Panama station last year and is intended to be a major counter-insurgency
facility similar in many ways to the training programmes for Latin
American military officers under the military aid programmes.
Quito 15 February 1963
Dean is getting more determined each day to avoid a surprise insurgency
situation. He wants to increase coverage of two groups in particular and he
wants me to do most of the work. The two groups, not surprisingly, are
those led by Araujo and Echeverria.
We've had a breakthrough in coverage of the Araujo group through the
recent recruitment of one of his close collaborators, a Velasquista political
hack named Jaime Jaramillo Romero. Jaramillo was arrested last month
with Araujo and two of the expelled PLPR leaders while recruiting in the
provinces. Soon after, he was a 'walk-in' to the Embassy political section,
and after being informed by the State Department officer who spoke with
him we decided to make a discreet contact with him using the non-official
cover operations officer of the Guayaquil base. I arranged for this officer,
Julian Zambianco, to come to Quito and with automobiles rented through a
support agent, Jose Molestina, Zambianco called on Jaramillo at his home.
A meeting followed in Zambianco's car, which I recorded in another car
from which I was providing a security watch for Zambianco. Earlier I had
rigged the Zambianco car with a radio transmitter to monitor their
conversation. Jaramillo's information looks good – including information
about an imminent trip by Araujo to Cuba for more money. As Dean is a
great believer in the polygraph I have requested that an interrogator come as
soon as possible to test Jaramillo. If he's clean I'll turn him over to a new
cutout so that we won't have to call Zambianco to Quito for each contact.
Telephone coverage continues on Araujo but it hasn't produced good
information.
On the other hand telephone coverage of Antonio Flores Benitez – one of
Echeverria's principal lieutenants – is still providing excellent information.
Flores is obviously getting very good intelligence from his agents in the
Ministry of Defence, the Presidential Palace and the police. Our problem is
inadequate coverage of Echeverria's plans and of his organisation for
terrorism and guerrilla warfare, although we are getting some information
from Mario Cardenas, one of our PCE penetration agents who is close to
Echeverria. On Dean's instruction I am studying three new operations for
increasing coverage of Echeverria.
First, we will try to install an audio penetration of the Libreria Nueva
Cultura, the PCE bookstore in Quito run by Jose Maria Roura, the number
two PCE leader in Quito and Echeverria's closest associate. The two of
them often meet at the bookstore, which is a rendezvous for PCE leaders in
general and consists of a street-front room on the ground floor of an old
colonial house in downtown Quito. On checking records for the owner of
the house I discovered that it belongs to a golfing companion of mine,
Ernesto Davalos. Davalos has agreed to give me access and security cover
during the audio-installation which we will make from the room above the
bookstore on a Sunday when it is closed. For a listening post (LP) I hope to
obtain an office in a modern, multi-storey building across the street from the
bookstore, where we could also photograph visitors and monitor the
telephone.
Second, we will try to bug Echeverria's apartment. He lives in a fairly new
building in downtown Quito but access for the installation will be difficult.
On the floor beneath his apartment is the Club de Lojanos (the regional club
of people from Loja), from which we might be able to drill upwards to
install the microphone and transmitter. This installation would be very slow
and difficult, especially if we have to do it while Echeverria or his wife are
at home, but Cardenas believes Echeverria has important meetings at home
and probably discusses all his activities with his wife, who is a Czech. I am
also checking on whether I can get an apartment across the street from
Echeverria's that would serve as listening and observation post for this
operation. The third new operation is another technical installation, this
time against Antonio Flores Benitez. He has recently moved into a modern
multi-storey apartment-building where we might be able to monitor both his
telephone and an audio-installation from the same LP. Although there seems
to be little chance for access to his apartment or to those around it for the
installation, an apartment above and just to the side of his is coming free in
a few weeks. I may take that apartment in order to begin monitoring the
telephone from there (rather than from the LP in Rafael Bucheli's house)
and see later whether the audio technicians can drill to the side and down or
whether we will have to make the bugging by surreptitious entry. Already
we know that Flores meets many of his contacts in his apartment, and he
discusses most of his activities with his wife – who gossips about them by
telephone when he's not at home.
On the government side Dean also wants me to intensify my work with
Pablo Maldonado, the Director of Immigration, and to work into a liaison
relationship with Manuel Cordova, the Sub-Secretary of Government and
with Jaime del Hierro, the Minister of Government. Although I have
avoided until now regular contact with Cordova and del Hierro (on Noland's
instruction last year) picking up with them now should not be difficult. The
reason, Dean said, is to discover and to monitor their willingness to take
action on information we give to them. Once we determine willingness on
the high level, we'll be able to determine more accurately what information
will bring action when passed through police agents such as Pacifico de los
Reyes and Oswaldo Lugo.
With all this technical coverage I'll need some new agents for transcribing,
photographic work and courier duties – but if they work we'll not be
surprised by either Araujo or Echeverria. The team for processing the
telephone taps will be Edgar Camacho and Francine Jacome with Francine
as courier. Rodrigo Rivadeneira can switch to transcribing the new audio
penetration and Francine, will serve as courier for receipt of his material as
well. I'll have Francine come by my house each morning at eight to leave
transcripts and pick up any instructions for the others.
One other effort coming up that could be important: I've given money to
Jorge Gortaire so that he can buy a used Land Rover to make a trip to
military garrisons in the southern sierra and on the coast. The purpose of
this trip is for Gortaire to sound out military leaders on all the rumours
going around about a move against Arosemena while at the same time
weighing the predisposition of the military leaders to such an action, even if
the rumours aren't true.
Quito 1 March 1963
This morning's newspapers give prominent coverage to Mr. McCone's
testimony to the Senate yesterday in Washington on training for guerrilla
warfare in Cuba. The Director mentioned Ecuador as one of the countries
from which the largest number of trainees has been recruited, and he
explained how the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City tries to conceal travel to
Cuba by issuing the visa on a slip of paper with no stamp in the passport.
His report follows another headquarters' report, issued last month by the
State Department, that between 1,000 and 1,500 Latin American youths
were given guerrilla training in Cuba during 1962.
In commenting on the press reports this morning Dean told me that one of
his operations in Mexico City was the airport travel-control team. There the
passports of travellers to Cuba are stamped by the Mexican immigration
inspectors with 'Arrived from Cuba' or 'Departed for Cuba' to make sure the
travel is reflected in the passports. The station there also photographs all the
travellers' passports and with large press-type cameras photographs are
taken as they embark or deplane. Results of the Mexico City travel-control
operation are combined with other data on travel, mostly from the other
important routes to Cuba via Madrid or Prague, for machine processing. In
order to intensify operations with Pablo Maldonado, Dean wants me to pass
him copies of the monthly machine runs on Ecuadoreans travelling to Cuba.
In addition, Mexico City is cabling the names and onward travel data to
stations throughout the hemisphere so that the travellers can be detained or
thoroughly searched when they arrive home. I'll also pass this type of
information to Maldonado and use it as an entree to Cordova and del
Hierro.
I tried to get Dean to reveal why he wants me to work with the Minister and
Sub-Secretary, because usually a Chief of Station handles the high-level
liaison contacts. He says he wants me to get the experience now because it
will help me later. He's bitter about Winston Scott, the Chief of Station in
Mexico City. Scott has very close relations with both the President, Adolfo
Lopez Mateos, and the Minister of Government, Gustavo Diaz Ordaz.
When Scott left the country from time to time or went on home leave he
made arrangements for communications to be kept open with the President
and the Minister but would never let Dean make personal contact even
though he was Acting COS when Scott was away.
Guayaquil 31 March 1963
The best part of being a CIA officer is that you never get bored for long. On
Friday, two days ago, I flew down from Quito to recruit someone I've
known for about a year and whom the Base Chief, Ralph Seehafer, wants to
use as a cutout to one of his PCE penetration agents. The recruitment went
fine and tomorrow I'll introduce the new agent, Alfredo Villacres, to
Seehafer.
I came down on a Friday so that I could spend the weekend out of the
altitude, but mostly because Alfredo and I usually spend Saturday nights
making the rounds of Guayaquil's sleazy dives. Last night was typical and
we left the last stop about eight o'clock this morning with Alfredo roaring
down the unpaved, pot-holed streets of a suburban shanty town, firing his
.45 into the air while his dilapidated, windowless old jeep station wagon
practically shook apart.
This afternoon he called me at the hotel to advise that we had barely
escaped involvement in a new Arosemena scandal. It seems that a few
minutes after we left the 'Cuatro y Media' last night (it had been an early
stop and we left about 1 a.m.) Arosemena and his party arrived. The story is
all over town now of how Arosemena and his friends began to taunt the
waiters – all are homosexuals there – finally ordering one of them to put a
lampshade on his head. Arosemena took out the pistol he always carries and
instead of shooting off the lampshade he shot the waiter in the head. No one
is certain whether the waiter died or is in the hospital, but the blame is
going to be taken by Arosemena's private secretary, Galo Ledesma (known
to all as 'Veneno' (poison) Ledesma). Ledesma apparently left today for
Panama where he's going to wait to see what happens here. Alfredo said
that if we had' been there when Arosemena and his group arrived we would
have had to stay since it's a small, one-room place and Arosemena always
invites everyone to join his group. I can see the Ambassador's face if that
had happened and my name was included in the story: good-bye Ecuador.
Guayaquil 2 April 1963
I was to have returned to Quito on the first flight this morning but a very
interesting situation suddenly developed yesterday: After introducing
Villacres to the Base Chief over lunch, Seehafer and I returned to the
Consulate and had a visit from the chief of the USIS office. He told us that a
young man had come into the Consulate this morning asking to speak to
someone about 'information' and was eventually directed to him. The
person said he was a Peruvian and that he had information on the
revolutionary movement in Peru and on Cuban involvement. The us Is chief
said the Peruvian was so nervous and distracted that he is probably a mental
case, but Seehafer asked me to see him if I had nothing better to do. We
arranged for the USIS chief to give him my hotel-room number (the
Peruvian was to return to the Consulate in the afternoon), where he would
call in the evening.
The Peruvian came around to the hotel and we talked for two or three hours.
I took copious notes because I know none of the names on the Peruvian
scene and sent off a cable this morning to Lima and headquarters. The
Peruvian is Enrique Amaya Quintana and is a middle-level militant of the
Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR). He has just finished a three
months' training course in Cuba along with several hundred other MIR
members. They are all reinfiltrating to Peru right now, overland from
Colombia and Ecuador.
The important aspect of this future agent, if he's telling the truth, is that he
was selected out of the MIR group to receive special training in
communications. He showed me a notebook full of accommodation
addresses throughout Latin America to which secret correspondence will be
sent. Moreover, he also showed me a dictionary that serves as the key to a
code system that he will use in secret writing and radio communications
with Havana.
This afternoon we got cables back from both headquarters and Lima
confirming Amaya's status in the MIR and warning us not to let this one slip
away. The MIR is the most important potential guerrilla organisation in
Peru with hundreds of people trained in Cuba and with advanced plans for
armed insurgency.
Lima sent a list of questions for Amaya which I'll go over with him tonight.
He really is a case of nerves and won't like working with a tape-recorder but
I'm going to insist we record everything so that we don't have to depend on
my notes. This way I can get more out of him too. It's not going to be easy
getting him to stay with us – what he wants is financial assistance to get his
wife and child out of Peru and to resettle in some other country. He says he
became disillusioned during the training in Cuba, but my guess is that he's
lost his nerve now that he's almost on the battlefield.
Quito 5 April 1963
This MIR case has people jumping all around headquarters it seems. Not
just the Peruvian and Ecuadorean desks – the Cuban branch and even the
Soviet Russia Division are also getting into the act. As a cutout and
handling officer I brought in Julian Zambianco, and yesterday Wade
Thomas arrived from headquarters to take close charge of the case – he's a
specialist in CP penetration operations. Meanwhile I had sessions each day
with Amaya on the tape-recorder, summarising the results in cables to Lima
and headquarters. The guy is definitely coming clean – everything seems to
check out – and yesterday I finally got him to agree to spending at least a
short period back in Peru with his former friends. From the sound of the
cables from Lima, Amaya is going to be their first important MIR
penetration. My participation ended today when I came back to Quito.
Quito 12 April 1963
A report is just in from Mario Cardenas, one of our best PCE penetration
agents and a close but not intimate associate of Echeverria. Cardenas
reported that Jose Maria Roura, Echeverria's principal lieutenant in Quito,
has left for Communist China where he expects to get payments started that
will enable the Echeverria group finally to begin armed action. Echeverria
has told Cardenas to stand by for travel to Colombia at a moment's notice,
so that he can receive money and documents that Roura, who is very well-
known, should not bring into the country himself.
We discussed in the station whether to advise Jaime del Hierro, the Minister
of Government, or Manuel Cordova, the Sub-Secretary, but for better
security we decided to post a special watch on Roura's return through Juan
Sevilla, the Minister of the Treasury. Sevilla, who has been a golfing
companion of mine for over a year, jumped at the chance, just as I thought
he would, and he assigned his personal secretary, Carlos Rendon Chiribaga,
to watch for Roura's return at the Quito airport. Now we can only hope that
Roura comes straight back to Quito with no stop in Colombia so that we're
not forced to protect Cardenas. If by chance we learn that Roura will arrive
in Guayaquil, Sevilla can send his secretary there to await Roura.
Meanwhile I'm moving along with the audio operation against Roura's
bookstore and in a couple of days Larry Martin, the audio technician from
the Panama station support unit, will arrive to make the installation.
Besides Roura's trip we are also monitoring for Araujo's return. He is in
Cuba right now and perhaps he too will bring back money, although the
chances are slim that either he or Roura will be so careless as to bring back
money on their persons. So that we can get timely information after his
return I've had Zambianco come up from Guayaquil again to turn over
Jaime Jaramillo to a new cutout, Jorge Andino, who is a hotel owner and
Ecuador's best polo player. Andino is another acquaintance from about the
time I arrived and he too was quite willing to help. He'll receive the reports
at the hotel but pass them to me at another business he owns a couple of
blocks away. One of the mysteries we're trying to solve right now is
whether there is any close relationship between Araujo's group and
Echeverria's group, because Echeverria has given several indications that he
is in contact with the Cubans.
Medardo Toro, the Velasquista gunman whom Noland picked up in a
developmental status last year, is now reporting on a regular basis. Dean
told me to get him into the groove so I brought Zambianco into the case in
an arrangement similar to the one we used with Jaime Jaramillo two months
ago. Until I get a good cutout for Toro we'll have to keep it going with
Zambianco, but this way it's very secure. Mainly we want to keep abreast of
Velasco's plans to return for next year's elections. Too bad Toro is so far
from Araujo's group.
Quito 14 April 1963
Each day, it seems, a new wave of rumours spreads around the country
signalling the imminent outbreak of guerrilla warfare and terrorism. Partly
the rumours reflect our continuing propaganda campaign to focus attention
on communism in order to provoke a serious crackdown by the
government. But partly the tension is based on real cases such as captures
of propaganda by Colonel Lugo's police in Guayaquil and the recent near-
death of a terrorist when a bomb exploded during a training session. Our
worry is that the Ecuadorean police and military wouldn't be able to cope
with a determined guerrilla movement.
A recent incident underlines our doubts. Two nights ago a Navy logistics
ship was returning from the Galapagos Islands with a group of university
students who had been in the islands on an excursion. A coastal Navy patrol
was lurking in the darkness just off-shore in wait for an expected incursion
by a contraband vessel. The coastal patrol mistook the logistics ship for the
contraband vessel and a two-hour gun battle between the two Navy ships
followed. The coastal patrol finally called by radio to Guayaquil for help
and the Navy communications centre called off the battle. What was worse
was that their firing was so bad that no serious hits were made during the
two-hour battle and only one sailor was wounded. After arriving in
Guayaquil the students spread the story, which was published in Guayaquil
today, but the Navy isn't talking.
When Dean heard this story this morning he told me to get moving faster on
the new technical operations – he said headquarters will get all over us if
we get surprised by Araujo, Echeverria or others, what with the guerrilla
movements already under way in Peru, Venezuela and Guatemala, and
Brazil steadily going down the drain under Goulart. Here the only
encouraging sign of late has been increasing willingness by the Minister of
Government and Sub-Secretary to increase general travel-control efforts
and to allow police action such as Colonel Lugo's recent operations.
However, del Hierro and Cordova are clearly being restrained by
Arosemena from really effective action.
Quito 19 April 1963
Another important trip to wonder about – this time it's Antonio Flores
Benitez, one of Echeverria's lieutenants, who left today for Cuba. What we
can't figure out is why Echeverria would send Flores to Cuba when Araujo
is there and Roura is in China. Roura's trip to China, according to Cardenas,
was made without the authorisation of the PCE Executive Committee in
Guayaquil and if Pedro Saad finds out there will be serious trouble for
Roura, a member of the PCE Central Committee, and possibly for
Echeverria. No doubt now that Echeverria is moving ahead fast with his
organisation outside the party.
Flores was very careful not to mention his trip by telephone, but his wife let
it slip out a couple of days ago. We're monitoring the telephone now from
the apartment above and to the side of Flores's. Rodrigo Rivadeneira moved
into the apartment with his brother Ramiro and his mother, and between
him and Ramiro the transcriptions are kept right up to date. The connection
was easy because the building is completely wired for telephones and
Rafael Bucheli and an assistant simply made the connections in the main
terminal box in the basement of the building. While Flores is away we'll try
to get going on the audio operation although the audio technician isn't
enthusiastic about drilling through reinforced concrete at such a difficult
angle.
I also decided to use Rodrigo Rivadeneira in the listening and observation
post for the technical operation against the PCE bookstore. On Sunday
Larry Martin and I made the installation from the room above with Ernesto
Davalos giving us security and cover. Davalos was very nervous because
his caretaker is a communist and spends most of the time in the bookstore.
Although I assured him that we would be very quiet, Martin decided to
make the installation behind the baseboards and underneath several of the
floorboards. The noise when we ripped them up was so screeching, what
with their centuries-old spikes, that Davalos almost had a coronary. The
same thing happened when we hammered the boards back into place but
luckily the caretaker showed no signs of suspicion – at least according to
Davalos. The audio quality is good (Echeverria is running the bookstore
while Roura is in China) although street noise at times drowns the
conversations.
Rivadeneira rented the office across the street as an LP and he sits in a false
closet I had built by Fred Parker, a US citizen support agent who has a
furniture factory in Quito. Parker built the closet so that it could be carried
in by pieces, and Rivadeneira sits in it looking through a masked side,
listening, recording, snapping pictures of visitors to the bookstore, and
keeping a log.
I had good luck also in getting just the right apartment across the street
from and slightly above Echeverria's apartment. This observation and
listening post (OP-LP) has just been rented through Luis Sandoval, the
chief technician of police intelligence, who accepted my offer to work with
us full-time for the foreseeable future. Sandoval is resigning from the police
and will open a cover commercial photography studio in the OP-LP. I've
given him enough equipment to start – more is coming later – and he will
do the developing and printing of the photographs taken by Rivadeneira at
the bookstore. As soon as we have a chance, we'll get Larry Martin back
and try for the audio installation against Echeverria's apartment – probably
by drilling up from the Loja Club that occupies the entire floor underneath
Echeverria's place.
Quito 24 April 1963
A sensational case that may be our first real breakthrough has just
developed, but it looks as though interference from Arosemena may hamper
follow-up. A few days ago, the Guayaquil base received information from
one of its penetration agents that a Cuban woman was training URJE
members there. The base passed the information to Colonel Lugo who
managed to arrest her. Her name is July da Cordova Reyes, at least that's
what her documentation says, and we may well have here the first case of
the Cubans sending out training missions to work in Latin American
countries where they don't have diplomatic missions – certainly it's the first
case of its kind in Ecuador.
Colonel Lugo, however, reported that after her arrest he was ordered not to
conduct an extensive interrogation. I took up the matter with Jaime del
Hierro, the Minister of Government, in order to emphasise the great
importance of this case for discovering the extent of Cuban involvement,
especially whether there are other Cubans here besides the woman and all
the details about when she arrived, whom she trained, where and whom she
has trained before, her intelligence service in Cuba, communications, and
much more. We are prepared, I told the Minister, to bring down an expert
from Washington who could assist in the interrogation but who would not
be recognizable as an American. All I got from the Minister was evasion,
and we've concluded that Arosemena gave the order not to exploit the case.
Two days ago the Governor of Guayas ordered her expulsion from the
country: we're trying to salvage the case but right now we're not hopeful.
The extreme left has been forced into the dubious position of supporting the
very government that broke with Cuba. Arosemena certainly isn't fooling
the extreme left, or anyone else for that matter, on how hard he must fight
for political support. Two days ago he cancelled a provision of last
November's Budget Law prohibiting any government salaries higher than
the President's. The purpose of the law was to limit the very high salaries
and benefits being received by the heads of certain autonomous government
agencies and by other officials who hold more than one government job.
Some, for example, were making the equivalent of 1,000 dollars per month
– twice as much as Arosemena. Obviously he cancelled the law in order to
glue on a little more firmly his Liberal Party supporters and others who had
been hurt by the salary limitation bill. Disgusting for a desperately poor
banana republic where over half the population receives less than 100
dollars per year.
Quito 1 May 1963
Some success on the da Cordova case. On 27 April she was deported to
Mexico but was refused entry and returned to Guayaquil. Colonel Lugo
can't proceed with interrogation until he gets the go-ahead from the
ministry, so I'll bring up the case again with del Hierro or Manuel Cordova.
Warren Dean is happy – he told me very confidentially that Gustavo Diaz
Ordaz, the Mexican Minister of Government, is really in the Chief of
Station's pocket and that's where I ought to try and get del Hierro. The way
to do it, according to Dean, is to provide money for a high government
official's mistress-keeping: the caso chico rent, food, clothing,
entertainment. In Mexico, he said, the Chief of Station got an automobile
for the Minister of Government's girlfriend. The Mexican President, with
whom the COS also works closely, found out about the car and demanded
one for his girlfriend too. That must be an interesting station.
***
Gil Saudade has made some progress in labour operations. Last month a
provincial trade-union federation for Guayas (FETLIG) was established as
the CEOSL affiliate there, replacing CROCLE. This was a long-sought after
development and perhaps will now end the dissension that has wracked
CEOSL for so long. The AIFLD courses, largely the work of our agents,
Ricardo Vazquez Diaz and Carlos Vallejo Baez, continue to expand.
Vazquez was recently confirmed as permanent CEOSL Organisation
Secretary and Matias Ulloa Coppiano was confirmed as permanent
Secretary-General. They had been acting in these jobs since the expulsions
in January of the old CROCLE agents.
Today only the CTE and the Catholic CEDOC were in the streets to
celebrate Labour Day. Instead of a parade, which would have turned out
very few people, the CEOSL group were invited by our Ambassador to a
reception at his residence which was highlighted with entertainment by
Matias Ulloa.
Quito 11 May 1963
Today a sensational new case has solved at least some of the recent
bombings and kept the city in a commotion all day. It started just after
midnight this morning when four terrorists (two from URJE) hailed a taxi,
overpowered and drugged the driver, tied him up and placed him in the
trunk. The terrorists then drove around town passing various embassies
where they intended to throw the bombs they were carrying – along with a
quantity of weapons and ammunition. Because of recently increased police
protection at the embassies, however, they decided against the bombings.
Just after dawn the driver regained consciousness and after slipping out of
his ropes managed to open the trunk of the taxi. The terrorists saw him
escaping but he got away and went for the police.
Major Pacifico de los Reyes took charge of the case. The terrorists panicked
and drove to the edge of town where they tried to escape on foot up the
volcano that rises on one side of Quito. The manhunt during the day caused
widespread alarm and exaggerated fears in Quito but eventually the
terrorists were captured. They have already confessed to various recent
bombings and armed robberies, through which they were raising funds to
finance guerrilla operations. Most sensational of all, however, is that their
leader is Jorge Ribadeneira of Santo Domingo guerrilla fame and another
member is Claudio Adiego Francia, the Argentine who was arrested in 1961
for training URJE members.
We didn't know about this new Rivadeneira group, and I've told de los
Reyes to try to determine if there is any connection between them and the
Echeverria group.
Quito 17 May 1963
Major de los Reyes has arrested Francia but Ribadeneira is still in hiding.
He has also arrested Echeverria and Carlos Rodriguez, Echeverria's chief
lieutenant for Indian affairs, but they protested their innocence and he had
to let them go. Propaganda play on the case is sensational, with photographs
of the weapons and ammunition spread all across the newspapers. Dean
wants to press ahead with propaganda exploitation of every possible case:
Layedra, da Cordova, this one – also the current trips of Araujo, Roura and
Flores. Somehow Arosemena has got to be forced into taking repressive
action.
It's too soon to be sure but perhaps a change of policy is already under way.
Today Pablo Maldonado's Immigration Service denied passports to ten
young Ecuadoreans who have scholarships to 'study' in Cuba. I've given
Maldonado this type of information before but this is the first time he has
taken strong action and it may work. The students asked for passports
saying they were only going to Mexico (where they would arrange visas
and onward travel). The protests have already started and we shall see how
long del Hierro, Maldonado's superior, takes to weaken.
Quito 19 May 1963
Roura's hooked! Juan Sevilla, Minister of the Treasury, called me this
morning to advise that Roura arrived at the airport and was discovered to be
carrying 25,000 dollars in cash. Carlos Rendon, Sevilla's personal secretary,
was at the airport and made the body search, and right now Roura is being
held incommunicado by the police with the money impounded. I suggested
to Sevilla that he add to the sensation of the case by starting a story that
Roura was also carrying false documents, compromising papers and other
similar material. This is going to be a big one.
***
Jorge Gortaire was back here in Quito a couple of days ago. He has finished
his trip to the military garrisons in the south and on the coast – making
several long delays through breakdowns. He's going to write up a complete
report back in Ambato, but he said there is very considerable disgust with
Arosemena in the military commands. If it weren't for Reinaldo Varea, in
fact, there would be nothing to keep the military leaders, once they got
organized, from forcing Arosemena's resignation. For now they see nothing
to do because they still favour constitutional succession. Varea is still the fly
in the ointment, because the junk swindle led to so much ridicule of the
military. All the officers with whom Gortaire spoke seriously are concerned
about communist infiltration in the government and preparations for armed
action, but something more serious will have to happen before they begin to
move against Arosemena. So we must keep up the pressure, exploiting
every case to the maximum through propaganda media and political-action
agents. On Varea, Dean is considering whether or not to ask him to resign,
with encouragement in the form of a generous termination bonus, but he
hasn't decided.
Quito 21 May 1963
The Roura case is headlines – supersensational! Everyone in the country is
talking about it. Jaime del Hierro has taken charge and is keeping up the
suggestions about 'compromising documents'. He told the press that Roura's
documents are more important than the money and relate to recent reports
from the US that Che Guevara is leading guerrilla-warfare planning for
several South American countries including Ecuador. The documents are
also said to include a 'secret plan' for guerrilla warfare and terrorism in
Ecuador.
Last night del Hierro asked me if I could get someone in Washington to
determine whether the bills are counterfeit because the Central Bank
experts here believe they're real. I suppose he and his friends want to keep
the money, so I cabled headquarters to see what can be done.
Del Hierro's action puzzles me somewhat because of his sudden
enthusiasm. Perhaps Sevilla is pushing him hard because he was
responsible for the arrest, yet del Hierro still refuses to give the go-ahead on
interrogation of the Cuban, July da Cordova Reyes.
Quito 23 May 1963
Del Hierro is getting worried because the press and others keep urging him
for the compromising Roura documents. There aren't any, of course, and
now Roura's lawyers are beginning to move. Nevertheless both del Hierro
and Sevilla are keeping the publicity going by calling the Roura case an
example of the importation of foreign ideology to enslave the country. Del
Hierro is also citing the case of the ten students who were refused passports
as another example of falsification of documents for travel to Cuba for
guerrilla-warfare training. Yesterday Sevilla's secretary, who made the
airport arrest, said in a press statement that the Roura documents include
instructions on how to organise a Marxist revolution, how to intensify
hatred between classes, and how to organise campesinos and salaried
agricultural workers.
Yesterday del Hierro ordered the arrest in Guayaquil of the local
correspondent of the New China News Agency, whose press carnet was in
Roura's pocket when he arrived. The correspondent only returned from
Europe a few days ago, and his trip must have been related to Roura's.
Roura's defence began yesterday with publication of a statement that shows
he is worried about repercussions from Saad and the PCE leadership in
Guayaquil. He defended having the money, saying that he had been invited
to London by Gouzi Shudian (International Bookstore of Peking) and that
his trip was sudden and without authorisation of the PCE. Because of recent
confiscations by the government of material purchased for sale in his
bookstore, Roura said, he had obtained 25,000 dollars for a printing shop to
reproduce the materials provided by Gouzi Shudian. From London he went
to Peking, he said, and he denounced the confiscation of his notes on visits
to communes and other sites.
No doubt Roura will end up in terrible trouble with the PCE – possibly even
expulsion like Ribadeneira. More important, his arrest will drive the wedge
deeper between the Saad and the Echeverria groups. What a ridiculous
cover story.
Quito 24 May 1963
Roura has had a bad day all around. He made his formal declaration to the
court alleging that he discussed the new printing facility in Peking with one
Chan Kung Wen. The money, however, was given to him, so he said, in
Berne on his return by someone named Polfo. We're checking these
unlikely names with headquarters – Roura's imagination knows no bounds.
Roura's lawyer also had a session before the Council of State (the highest
body for appeal against government violation of personal liberties) which
refused Roura's plea for liberty and took under advisement Roura's charges
against Sevilla and del Hierro for violating the Constitution. Now he'll have
to stand trial on the basis of the 'documents' and the money. We'll have
plenty of time to fabricate appropriate documents for del Hierro to use
against Roura but first we're working on something else.
John Bacon, the Station Reports Officer, and I suggested to Dean that we
prepare an incriminating document to be used against Antonio Flores
Benitez – to be planted on Flores when he arrives at the airport. There's a
chance, of course, that he'll come overland from Colombia or that he'll
arrive in Guayaquil, but Dean likes the plan and asked us to go ahead. The
document will appear to be Flores's and Echeverria's own report to the
Cubans on the status of their organisation and on their plans for armed
action. We are describing what we know about the organisation, filling in
with imagination where necessary, on the basis of the information from the
ECWHEAT telephone tap and reports from Cardenas and Vargas, our two
best penetrations of the Echeverria group. We are emphasising (for
propaganda afterwards) Flores's penetration agents in the Ministry of
Defence, Army communications, the presidential bodyguard and the
presidential archives. We are also planning to mention relations with
Araujo's group and Gonzalo Sono Mogro, who seems to be training a
separate organisation in explosives and weapons.
Quito 26 May 1963
It has been a busy weekend. Bacon and I finished the 'Flores Report'
yesterday and he took it out to Mike Burbano to put in final form, correct
Spanish and proper commie jargon. He knows this usage best because he's
the cutout for Cardenas and Vargas. No question but that we've got a really
sensational and damaging document.
Bacon included in the report a general analysis of the Ecuadorean political
scene with appropriate contempt for the Saad PCE leadership for its
'reformist' tendencies. He infers that the Echeverria group has already
received funds from Cuba and that this report is the justification for new
funds. The date for commencing an all-out terrorism campaign will be late
July (since we already have a report that the CTE plans to announce a
general strike for that date). Bombing targets and guerrilla attacks will be
set for the homes of police and military officers as well as key installations
such as the water-works and the telephone and electric companies.
Burbano passed it back and I typed it this morning – it filled five sheets of
flimsy blue copy paper. Then Dean came to the office and we agreed that
Juan Sevilla, the Minister of the Treasury, would be better for getting it
planted than Jaime del Hierro, the Minister of Government. I went to see
Sevilla; he agreed immediately and said he'll use Carlos Rendon, the same
secretary and customs inspector who nailed Roura. When I got back to the
Embassy Dean was acting like a little boy. He had gone over to the
'Favorita' to buy a tube of toothpaste and had spent three hours squeezing
out the paste and cleaning the tube. Then he crumpled the papers, ground
them a little with his shoe, folded them to fit into the tube and pronounced
the report genuine beyond doubt. I took the tube, now with the report neatly
stuffed inside, back over to Sevilla and tomorrow he will give it to Rendon
who will plant it if possible. Rendon won't move from the airport until
Flores arrives, and if he comes via Colombia or Guayaquil, we'll figure out
some other way to get the document out. One way or another this one
should really provoke a reaction.
Quito 29 May 1963
Yesterday still another sensation broke when Araujo arrived back from his
trip to Cuba. Too bad we didn't have a document prepared for him but he
did just what we wanted. Sevilla's customs people, whom I had advised
through Sevilla of Araujo's imminent return, tried a body search but Araujo
provoked such a scandal that he was taken to the central immigration
offices for the search. He only had forty-one dollars, however, and was later
released – but his screams at the airport that revolution will occur very soon
in Ecuador were prominently carried in this morning's newspapers.
Other propaganda is coming out nicely. The Council of State meeting on the
Roura case was in the headlines, featuring Sevilla's very effective
condemnation of communism and Cuba in defence of his action against
Roura. The case of Guillermo Layedra, who blew his hand off training
URJE members to make bombs, is in the courts, and Jorge Ribadeneira's
latest caper is still causing sensation. Still, we haven't been able to get an
interrogation of the Cuban woman.
Quito 31 May 1963
First try at the Echeverria bugging was a near disaster. The audio
technicians, Larry Martin and an assistant, came back from Panama during
the week and I worked out an elaborate plan for security and cover. Gil
Saudade brought up from Loja one of his agents who works in Catholic
student activities there, Cristobal Mogrovejo, who is the only agent we have
who could easily rent the Loja Club which occupies the floor underneath
Echeverria's apartment. I brought up Julian Zambianco from Guayaquil to
be team leader and to direct Mogrovejo as the shield for cover. Luis
Sandoval and I were in the OP-LP across the street observing and
communicating with Zambianco via walkie-talkie. I also arranged for two
getaway vehicles through Pepe Molestina.
Mogrovejo earlier this week arranged to rent the entire club for this
afternoon, a Friday, and to have an option to rent it for the rest of the
weekend if his 'business conversations' with the foreigners required
additional meetings. From observation we knew which room Echeverria
uses as a study and we selected the proper spot beneath from which to drill
up.
The team entered the club about ten o'clock this morning and Martin and his
assistant began quietly drilling, slowly and by hand in order not to arouse
Echeverria or his wife who were coming and going. About four o'clock this
afternoon the club manager burst in with about a dozen flower-hatted ladies
to whom, he said, he wanted to show the club. Mogrovejo protested that he
had been promised absolute privacy but because of the insistence of the
club manager and the ladies, Zambianco had to intervene to keep them from
proceeding to the room where the drilling was going on. The incident
produced enough suspicion in the club manager and enough panic in
Mogrovejo to warrant calling the operation off for now. I radioed to
Zambianco to have the technicians fill in their holes with plaster and to
paint over. This only took a few moments and shortly the team had
evacuated the building.
For the time being we'll let this one cool off while I try to discover another
way to get access to the Loja Club. Mogrovejo was a bad choice. We won't
forget it because Echeverria, according to Cardenas, has given several
indications that he has some kind of communications with Cuba – possibly,
one would suppose, with a secret writing and radio link. A photo technician
from Panama was recently here and he said that TSD has large lenses that
could be used to 'see through' the curtains Echeverria sometimes draws in
front of the table where he works so that readable photographs of
documents on the table might be obtainable. This would be one way to read
his communications.
Quito 2 June 1963
Flores is hooked and we've got another big case! Juan Sevilla and I were
playing golf together this morning when a caddy came running out to call
him to the telephone. We rushed into the clubhouse and sure enough it was
Carlos Rendon, his personal secretary, calling to say that Flores had arrived
and that the plant had worked perfectly. Sevilla rushed straight to the airport
and I went home to wait. Late in the afternoon he telephoned and when I
went to his house he explained that Rendon had seen Flores arrive and had
put the toothpaste tube up his sleeve. He let it fall out carefully while he
was reviewing Flores's luggage, 'found it' and began to examine it, finally
opening it and 'discovering' the concealed report.
Arriving with Flores was another well-known communist, Hugo Noboa,
who was discovered to be carrying 1,400 dollars in cash in a secret pocket.
This money, propaganda material, and phonograph records of revolutionary
songs were confiscated along with the Flores report, and both Flores and
Noboa were taken under arrest to the political security offices for
questioning.
Now to get the publicity going.
Quito 3 June 1963
We're going to have to fight for this one. Only a small notice appeared in
the press today on the Flores and Noboa arrests, and the only reference to
the 'Flores Report' was an allegation that microfilm had been found in his
suitcase. Flores, according to this notice, is protesting that if any microfilm
was found it was planted either in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where he was in
transit, or here in Quito.
I checked with Juan Sevilla and he told me that he thinks Arosemena is
going to try to quash the whole case including the false document. This is
why, according to Sevilla, Flores is still in custody of the political security
office instead of the police investigations department under Major Pacifico
de los Reyes. He added that the key figure is Jaime del Hierro, the Minister
of Government and added that if I know del Hierro, I should confirm the
importance of Flores and the document. (Neither Sevilla nor del Hierro
knows that I am in a working relationship with the other.)
For most of the afternoon I've tried to get either del Hierro or Manuel
Cordova, the Sub-Secretary of Government, by telephone. It's not like them
to avoid me like this, and Dean is about to blow up because the report hasn't
been surfaced.
Quito 4 June 1963
There's no doubt now that Arosemena has tried to cover up the case and
protect Flores, but we're prying it loose almost by the hour. Sevilla
threatened to resign if the case were suppressed and the rumours of a new
Cabinet crisis were so strong yesterday and today that the Secretary-
General of the Administration made a public denial of the crisis. Del Hierro
finally called me back today, and when we met at Cordova's house he gave
me the 'Flores Report' asking that I check it for authenticity because it is so
grave. I couldn't simply give it a moment's look and pronounce it genuine
so I took it back to the station. When I told Dean of this he went into a fury,
stamped up and down and said I'd better get that report surfaced or else.
He's really disgusted with del Hierro, whom he thinks is trying to delay
making it public in order to protect the Liberal Party from embarrassment;
the document, after all, is pretty damaging to the government, even though
it is primarily aimed at exposing the Echeverria group.
A positive sign is that Flores has been passed from the political security
office to the police, which places him directly under del Hierro. In his
declaration Flores only said that he had been in Europe on a forty-five-day
trip as a journalist (he writes for the leftist weekly La Manana) with no
mention of travel to Cuba.
Quito 5 June 1963
Dean's fit of temper shows no signs of diminishing. This morning he
demanded Jaime del Hierro's private telephone number at the ministry,
which I gave him. He called del Hierro and told him angrily that of course
the document is authentic and that every Ecuadorean should read it. Dean
was careful to record this call on his dictaphone just in case del Hierro
complains to the Ambassador.
Then I proposed to Dean that I give a copy of the document to Jorge
Rivadeneira Araujo, the brother of Rodrigo Rivadeneira – the transcriber of
the Flores telephone tap. Jorge has long participated in the clandestine
printing operation, along with his brothers, and is a writer for El Comercio,
Quito's leading daily. We don't usually place propaganda through Jorge, but
Dean agreed since it is the fastest way to put pressure on del Hierro to
release the original document. Later I took a copy to Rodrigo which he is
passing to Jorge who will show it to his editors at the newspaper. This may
destroy my relationship with del Hierro and Cordova but Dean doesn't care
– he doesn't think Arosemena and the Liberals can last much longer
anyway.
Quito 6 June 1963
Our ploy against del Hierro worked liked a charm. This morning about ten
o'clock Cordova called me from the Embassy receptionist's desk and when I
went down he took me out back to del Hierro who was waiting in his car.
He said he urgently needed back the Flores document because the press had
somehow got a copy and he would have to release the original later today. I
rushed up for the document, returned it to del Hierro and told Dean who
whooped for joy. Then I called Rodrigo Rivadeneira to alert his brother
Jorge that the Ministry of Government would release the document later
today. It may not be printed in today's evening newspapers but already the
whole town is buzzing about it.
Today the Council of State formally rejected Roura's case against del Hierro
and Sevilla, which wasn't unexpected. Roura will be on ice for a long time
and now Flores's chances of getting off are nil. Tomorrow, Sevilla's formal
statement to the Council of State will be published in the newspapers – a
full page which we're paying for and which includes PCE data like
membership figures and recruitment priorities that I passed to Sevilla for
documentation.
Both Mario Cardenas and Luis Vargas report that Echeverria has been
crushed psychologically by this blow. He fears that with the Roura arrest
and now Flores he'll surely be reprimanded by the Saad leadership, possibly
even expelled from the PCE. He has now gone into hiding and the agents
are trying to find out where.
Quito 7 June 1963
Finally it's in print and the sensation is immense. Everything's included:
description of Saad and the PCE Guayaquil leadership as 'old bureaucrats
full of bourgeois vices, faithful to the Moscow line and acting as a brake on
revolution'. Also: 'We (the Echeverria group) are faithful to the experiences
of the Cuban revolution and the necessity to prepare for armed insurrection'.
Araujo is described as having a good number of trained and armed teams
and the Ribadeneira group is cited as possibly useful for 'our' purposes. All
the different critical government offices where Flores has his contacts are
mentioned – including the Presidential Palace – and the date for
commencing operations (urban terrorism and rural guerrillas) is given as
late July to coincide with 'our' urging of the CTE to call a general strike for
that time.
As if this document weren't enough in itself, by sheer coincidence the CTE
yesterday announced a general strike for late July. Our agents had reported
that this announcement would come sometime and we had included it in the
Flores document. This announcement was carried in the press today,
alongside the Flores document, as proof that the latter is genuine. Moreover,
Sevilla's statement to the Council of State also came out this morning.
Quito 15 June 1963
Several pieces of good news. First, I've just received my second promotion
since coming to Quito, to GS-11 which is about equivalent to captain in the
military service. The other is that I'm being transferred to Montevideo,
Uruguay, at the end of the year – this I learned informally in a letter from
Noland the other day. I had asked to be transferred to Guayaquil as Base
Chief if the job became vacant, but the Montevideo assignment is good
news because we'll be near the seashore again. These mountains are getting
oppressive lately, and besides, Noland says Montevideo is a great place to
live with good operations going.
Meetings between Zambianco and Medardo Toro, the Velasquista gunman,
have been fruitful but Dean is getting nervous about collecting timely
intelligence on Velasco's plans to return for next year's elections. Through
Zambianco I have worked out a plan to send Toro to Buenos Aires under
cover of medical treatment for a back injury that has needed special
attention for some years. Toro will take the treatment in Montevideo but
will contact Velasco in Buenos Aires and stay as close to him as possible.
Our hope is that Velasco will take Toro into his confidence as a kind of
secretary and general handyman – this shouldn't be difficult as Toro was at
Velasco's side with two sub-machine-guns draped over his shoulders up to
the moment Velasco left the Presidential Palace. I've notified the Buenos
Aires station, set up a contact plan for an officer of that station, and
requested that Toro be placed on the list for the polygraph the next time the
interrogators come around. Hopefully Toro will have his affairs arranged so
that he can leave by the end of the month.
Over the weekend I'm going to Guayaquil and to the beach for a day – then
to Manta and Portoviejo, the two principal towns of Manabi province just
north of Guayas. In Portoviejo I'll introduce Julian Zambianco to Jorge
Gortaire's brother, Frederico Gortaire, an Army lieutenant-colonel and
commander of the Army units in the province. Because of the extreme
poverty in Manabi province, even by Ecuadorean standards, communist
activities there have prospered in recent years. Zambianco has been
working several operations in the province including support of a well-
known anti-communist priest, and he'll be able to handle contact with
Gortaire on his frequent trips there. Contact arrangements were made by
Jorge Gortaire when he was in the province last month, so getting this new
operation going will be easy. The purpose is to be able to pass information
on communist activities in Manabi to Lieutenant-Colonel Gortaire who,
according to his brother, will not hesitate to take strong and prompt action
unfettered by the political restraints often imposed on Colonel Lugo in
Guayaquil.
Warren Dean is leaving shortly for six or eight weeks' home leave. Too bad
about Gil Saudade. Normally when a Chief of Station leaves the Deputy
simply takes over as Acting COS. But with all the tension and instability
right now Dean asked for a temporary replacement from headquarters. It'll
be Dave McLean, a Special Assistant to Colonel King, the Division Chief
who, surprisingly, managed to survive the head-rolling exercise after the
Cuban invasion. While at headquarters Dean is going to push for one or two
more slots for case officers under Embassy cover.
Quito 22 June 1963
The struggle is growing within the government among the factions
favouring different lines of action in the face of the growing tension and
fear of imminent insurgency. Juan Sevilla, the Minister of the Treasury, is
the leader of the hard-liners while Jaime del Hierro, Minister of
Government, is somewhere in between, trying to manoeuvre so that the
Liberals can stay in the government and retain their emoluments.
Arosemena leads the doves, who refuse to see the danger, and the leftists,
who would like to see the power of the traditional parties broken. Thus the
cooperation we're getting from del Hierro in the security field is mixed.
Today, for example, the government finally announced a programme that
I've been pushing since last year to restrict travel to Cuba. From now on
travel to Cuba by Ecuadoreans is formally banned and all passports will be
stamped 'Not Valid for Travel to Cuba'. This programme is the work of
Pablo Maldonado who told me only recently that such a drastic measure
would still be very difficult to get approved. On the other hand del Hierro
still evades all my requests for access to the Cuban woman who was
training in Guayaquil – now she's been sent to Tulcan which is practically
isolated and a place from which she could 'escape' and disappear across the
border in Colombia.
In Guayaquil two days ago, an anti-communist television commentator
narrowly escaped when a bomb demolished his car. Yesterday Colonel
Lugo's police raided a bomb factory and storage facility at the isolated
house of Antonio Chang, a militant of an URJE faction, following a lead
provided by a base agent. Chang's wife, two sons, a Spanish bomb
technician and a helper were all arrested and have made sensational
declarations, including the fact that they were trained by a Cuban. (The
Cuban hasn't lived in Cuba since the 1940s but this item was hidden in
small print in the propaganda coverage.)
Meanwhile we're trying to keep media coverage going on all the cases, old
as well as new, and stations in countries nearby are helping. As each case
breaks we advise Caracas, Bogota, Lima, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago and
others, mailing immediately the clips of what's been published. These
stations generate editorial comment on the communist danger in Ecuador
and send clips back to us which we use to generate still more comment
based on the Ecuadorean image abroad.
Dean has made one last effort before going on home leave to salvage a little
mileage from Reinaldo Varea, our discredited Vice-President. He told Varea
to get going on speeches related to all the recent cases revealing communist
plans for action and the bombings. Yesterday Varea began with a speech at
the national convention of the Chamber of Industries, denouncing
communism as a cancer seeking to destroy the national life. Hopes for his
succeeding Arosemena are ever so slim but three days ago the Supreme
Court began hearing charges against three persons in the junk swindle and
Varea, happily, wasn't one of them.
Quito 25 June 1963
Yet another sensation broke today: this one without our help. The case
began this morning when one of the revolutionary paratrooper group led by
Lenin Torres, still under arrest since they were discovered last year trying to
help the guerrillas they had arrested to escape, themselves escaped and
joined with three others in order to hijack one of the Area Airlines DC-4's
that fly between here and Guayaquil. The plan was to fly over Quito
distributing fly-sheets from the aircraft telling people to mass at the
Presidential Palace and demand the release of Torres and the other
paratroopers still being held. Also while the aircraft was circling URJE
members would have carried out a series of intimidation bombings and
would have demanded the release of Flores, Noboa and Roura as well as the
paratroopers. They would have landed, taken aboard the released prisoners
and flown to Cuba. The paratrooper who escaped had been outside the
prison under guard on an urgent family matter, but the guard, who was
overpowered, tied and gagged, and left behind, got loose and reported the
planned hijacking which he had overheard. Pacifico de los Reyes, Chief of
Criminal Investigations in Quito, placed some of his men in maintenance
uniforms at the airport and when the four hijackers arrived they were
immediately taken into custody. Seized with them were arms, bombs, tear-
gas canisters, walkie-talkies, and TNT – as well as the fly-sheets. After their
arrest they implicated Araujo and Ribadeneira in the plan, although this
may well be a little provocation by de los Reyes. The whole episode, in
fact, may have been staged or at least well-penetrated.
The story is headlines in the afternoon papers and has sent another shock
wave across the country as it's the first political hijacking here.
Quito 27 June 1963
Today is a bigger day for propaganda than most but it illustrates how our
campaign to arouse concern over the communist problem has been going.
The front page of El Comercio carries four articles related to it. The
headlines report a press conference yesterday by Reinaldo Varea in which
he condemned communism for threatening the country with organised
subversion, including acts of terrorism and massacre. He also pointed to
Cuba, supported by Russia and China, as the focal point for communist
terror in America, adding that when the Congress convenes in August a
special law against terrorism should be passed, possibly to include the
outlawing of communism. A second article reports a press conference by
Jaime del Hierro, in which he promised to exterminate every centre of
communist terrorism in the country. A third article describes follow-up
raids of Colonel Lugo's police in Guayaquil and the discovery of another
bomb factory from which 150 bombs were seized – it also reports a strategy
meeting held two days ago between Colonel Lugo, Manuel Cordova, the
Commanding General of the National Police and the Governor of Guayas
province. A fourth article describes the latest revelations in the frustrated
airliner hijacking. Not to be forgotten, of course, is the junk swindle, and a
fifth front-page article relates the latest development in this case. Aside
from the front page, the lead editorial expresses alarm over the recent
terrorist cases and still another editorial wishes success to some Cuban
exiles who recently landed a raiding party in Cuba.
Quito 28 June 1963
Police in Guayaquil under Colonel Lugo seized some 300 more bombs in
raids yesterday, and arrests of terrorists there now number nineteen.
Also yesterday, Juan Sevilla, Minister of the Treasury, was honoured at a
banquet given by the Chambers of Industry and Commerce and the Textile
Association. In condemning communism, Sevilla said: 'The country is
suffering a grave moral crisis. It is discouraging to walk through
government offices and see how moral values have deteriorated. It is
indispensable that we re-establish moral values.' He was given a parchment
in appreciation of his 'clear democratic position in defence of free enterprise
and of our country's Western ideology'.
Media exploitation of the airliner hijacking continues as does the Roura
case. Today it was announced that the money taken from Roura will be
examined by experts to see if it is counterfeit. This is a delaying formality
because I've already told Jaime del Hierro that the Treasury Department in
Washington has refused to certify that the US currency is counterfeit.
Quito 5 July 1963
The chain of recent cases, particularly the Roura and Flores cases, has
produced one of the results we wanted. At a special meeting of the PCE
Central Committee the whole Pichincha Provincial Committee under
Echeverria was dismissed, with Roura expelled from the party and
Echeverria suspended. Already Jaime Galarza, one of Echeverria's
lieutenants, has published an article suggesting that Pedro Saad, PCE
Secretary-General, was behind the revelations in the Flores document and
Roura's arrest, because such information could only come from highly
placed party members.
The momentum of the last three months' campaign is having other effects.
Most of our political-action agents, particularly the rightists in the
ECACTOR project, are reporting improving disposition to a military rather
than a Congressional move against Arosemena, what with the alarm and
gravity of the current situation. At the Ambassador's reception yesterday,
moreover, the politicians talked considerably of their surprise that
communist preparations have progressed so far. Moreover, everyone
seemed to be apprehensive over the spectre of Velasco's return and the
probability that he'll win again next year. Some members of Congress are
anxious to begin proceedings against Arosemena, but many realise the odds
favour Arosemena and his patronage over a weak and divided Congress.
Quito 8 July 1963
Rafael Echeverria is still hiding and has seen our agents only rarely. In
order to get closer monitoring of his activities, and possibly to discover his
hiding-place, I've arranged to turn over the Land Rover bought for Jorge
Gortaire's trip to Luis Vargas, a PCE penetration agent. I gave the car to
Jose Molestina, a support agent and used-car dealer, to place on sale, and at
the same time John Bacon sent Vargas around to make an offer. Molestina
doesn't know Vargas, much less as a communist, and when he told me of
the offer I told him to take it. Now Vargas will probably be asked by
Echeverria (who has no private transportation) to drive him around for his
meetings.
Media exploitation continues on the recent cases as well as on efforts to
salvage Varea. The Guayaquil base placed an editorial in El Universo, the
main daily there, praising Varea for his recent anti-communist speeches. We
replayed the editorial here in El Comercio. We've also used the CEOSL to
condemn communist plans for terrorism.
Operations at the Georgetown station (British Guiana) have just brought a
big victory against the Marxist Prime Minister, Cheddi Jagan. Jagan has led
that colony down a leftist-nationalist path since coming to power in the
1950s on the strength of Indian (Asian) predominance over blacks there.
The Georgetown station operations for several years have concentrated on
building up the local anti-Jagan trade-union movement, mainly through the
Public Service International (PSI) which is the International Trade
Secretariat for public employees. Cover is through the American Federation
of State, County and Municipal Employees, the US affiliate of the PSI.
Last year through the PSI the Georgetown station financed an anti-Jagan
campaign over the Budget that included riots and a general strike and
precipitated British intervention to restore order. This past April, with
station financing and direction, another crippling strike began, this one led
by the Guiana civil servants union which is the local PSI affiliate, and it has
taken until just now to force Jagan again to capitulate. Visitors here who
have also been to the Georgetown station say eventually the Agency hopes
to move the leader of the black community into power even though blacks
are outnumbered by Jagan and the Indians.
Quito 11 July 1963
Arosemena's out and a four-man military junta is in.
It began last night at a banquet Arosemena gave for the President of the
Grace Lines – W. R. Grace and Co. has large investments in Ecuador – to
which high-ranking Ecuadorean military men were invited because the
Grace Lines President is a retired US Navy admiral. During the toasts
Arosemena made favourable commentary about US business operating in
Latin America but he insulted our Ambassador by derisive reference to US
diplomatic representatives. In his drunkenness Arosemena also
demonstrated incredible vulgarity and finally left the banquet and his
guests.
This morning the chiefs of the military services decided at a meeting at the
Ministry of Defence to replace Arosemena with a junta and about noon the
Presidential Palace was surrounded by tanks and troops. I went down to the
Hotel Majestic just in front of the Palace where Jorge Andino, a support
agent and owner of the hotel, arranged a room where I could watch the
action. I also monitored the military intelligence radio and reported by
telephone and walkie-talkie back to the station where frequent progress
reports on the coup were being fired off to headquarters and to Panama (for
the military commands there who receive all Agency intelligence reporting
in Latin America).
Several hours of tension passed as Arosemena, known to be armed, refused
to receive a delegation from the new junta. He remained in the presidential
living quarters while the junta members arrived and went to work in the
presidential offices. Eventually Arosemena was disarmed by an aide and
taken to the airport where he was placed on a military aircraft for Panama –
the same place that Velasco was sent to less than two years ago.
As the coup was taking place a leftist protest demonstration was repressed
by the military with three killed and seventeen wounded but these figures
will probably be much higher if an accurate count is ever made. Also during
the coup Reinaldo Varea tried in vain to convene the Congress in order to
secure his succession to the Presidency, but it's no use – he's finished.
The junta is composed of the officers who commanded the Army, Air Force
and Navy plus a colonel who was Secretary of the National Defence
Council. The Navy captain is the junta chief but Colonel Marcos Gandara
of the Defence Council is said unanimously to be the brains and main
influence. No question that these men are anti-communist and will finally
take the kind of action we want to disrupt the extreme left before they get
their serious armed operations underway.
Quito 13 July 1963
No problem for the junta in consolidating power. Loyal messages were
received from military units throughout the country, civil liberties have
been suspended, and communist and other extreme leftists are being
rounded up and put in jail, more than a hundred in Guayaquil alone.
Communism is outlawed (the junta's first act), censorship has been
imposed, there is a curfew from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., and next year's elections
are cancelled.
It will take some days for formal US recognition of the junta but we've
already started passing data from the Subversive Control Watch List to
Major de los Reyes here in Quito and to Colonel Lugo in Guayaquil which
they are using with military colleagues in the arrests campaign. For the time
being we'll keep working with these police agents, and after US recognition
of the junta and Dean's return, decisions will be made on new contacts in
the government. The most likely liaison contacts are the Minister of
Defence, Colonel Aurelio Naranjo, who was chief of the Cuenca garrison
and leader of the movement that forced Arosemena to break with Cuba; the
Minister of Government, Colonel Luis Mora Bowen; and the junta leader,
Colonel Marcos Gandara.
Besides outlawing communism the junta is looking favourably at the
reforms that the civilians were never able to establish. In their first
statement the junta said its purpose is to re-establish moral values because
the country had reached the brink of dissolution and anarchy. Their rule will
be limited to the time necessary to halt the wave of terrorism and
subversion and to resolve the country's most urgent problems. They have
also declared that their government will not be oligarchic and will have
policies designed to stimulate economic and social development in order to
raise the standard of living – not just through development, however, but
also through the redistribution of income. Among its highest priorities are
agrarian, tax and public administrative reforms.
In a press conference Colonel Gandara said that reforms will be imposed by
decree and that after repressing the extreme left the junta will call for a
constituent assembly, a new Constitution and elections. However, he added,
the junta might stay in power for two years to accomplish these plans –
which immediately caused a cry of outrage from politicians in all quarters.
Today, rather sheepishly, the junta issued a statement saying that they will
'not be in power for a long time'.
In justifying their takeover the junta said that Arosemena had spotted the
national honour with his frequent drunkenness and his sympathy for
communism. Arosemena, for his part, is saying in Panama, as Velasco did,
that he still hasn't resigned. Varea is also in Panama now, but he had a
happy departure. At the Quito airport where he was taken under arrest
yesterday he was given an envelope from the junta containing a month's
pay.
Quito 31 July 1963
The first three weeks of junta rule have been rather mild as military
dictatorships go, in fact after all the crisis and tension in recent months one
can even note a feeling of euphoria. Today the junta was recognised by the
US but all along we've kept busy getting information to Major de los Reyes
and Colonel Lugo. Goes to show how important station operations can be at
a time when conventional diplomatic contacts are suspended. Even so, the
most important communist leaders from our viewpoint, Echeverria, for
example, have eluded all efforts to catch them. Very possibly some have
even left the country.
At least for the time being the junta has considerable political support from
Conservatives, Social Christians and others – not formally as parties but as
individuals. How long this will last is unknown because the junta is
obviously determined to end the power struggle between Velasco and Ponce
and the instability such caudillismo brings. Moreover, by stressing that they
intend to wipe out special privilege and the rule of oligarchies while
pledging projects in community development, housing, public-health and
education, the junta is attracting considerable popular support.
From our standpoint the junta definitely seems to be a favourable, if
transitory, solution to the instability and danger of insurgency that were
blocking development. By imposing the reforms this country needs and by
taking firm action to repress the extreme left, the junta will restore
confidence, reverse the flight of capital and stimulate economic
development.
Quito 15 August 1963
Dean is back from home leave and is moving fast to get established with the
junta. Already he is regularly meeting Colonel Gandara, the most powerful
junta member, Colonel Aurelio Naranjo, the Minister of Defence and
Colonel Luis Mora Bowen, the Minister of Government. With Gandara he
is using as bait the weekly Latin American and world intelligence
summaries (cryptonym PBBAND) that are received from headquarters each
Friday, translated over the weekend and passed to Gandara on Monday.
Already Gandara has given approval in principle to a joint telephone-
tapping operation in which we will provide the equipment and the
transcribers and he will arrange the connections in the telephone exchanges
and provide cover for the LP. Tentatively they have agreed to set up the LP
at the Military Academy. What Dean wants is a telephone-tapping operation
to rival the one in Mexico City where, he said, the station can monitor thirty
lines simultaneously. After this operation gets going we'll save Rafael
Bucheli for monitoring sensitive political lines without the knowledge of
the junta.
Gil Saudade has been transferred to Curitiba, Brazil (a one-man base in the
Consulate) and his replacement, Loren Walsh doesn't speak Spanish. Walsh,
who transferred to WH from the Far East Division after a tour in Karachi,
had to cut short his Spanish course in order to take the interdepartmental
course in counter-insurgency that is required now for every officer going
out as Chief or Deputy Chief of Station. What this means to me is that I've
got to take over most of Saudade's operations: Wilson Almeida and Voz
Universitaria; the CEOSL labour operation with Matias Ulloa Coppiano,
Ricardo Vazquez Diaz and Carlos Vallejo Baez; and the media operation
built around Antonio Ulloa Coppiano, the Quito correspondent of Agencia
Orbe Latinoamericano. Most of these agents are also leaders of the Popular
Revolutionary Liberal Party and Antonio Ulloa runs the PLPR radio-station
that we bought through him and Juan Yepez del Pozo, Jr. as a media outlet.
This development is more than a little aggravating because the new deputy
won't be able to take over any of these operations as none of the agents
speaks good English. Dean said relief will come soon because he got three
new Embassy slots; two will be filled in coming months and one early next
year. All I can do with these new agents is hold their hands until somebody
with time can really work with them. Right now there are about 125
political prisoners in Quito, including not only communists but Velasquistas
and members of the Concentration of Popular Forces. The junta policy is to
allow them to go into exile, although some will be able to stay in Ecuador
depending on their political antecedents – judgement of which, in most
cases, is based on information we're passing to Colonel Luis Mora Bowen,
the Minister of Government. Processing these prisoners, and others in
Guayaquil and elsewhere is going to take a long time because of
interrogations and follow-up. Although Dean is working closely with the
Minister of Government in processing the prisoners, he hopes to use these
cases to start a new unit in the Ministry of Defence that will be solely
dedicated to anti-communist intelligence collection – basically this is what
we had previously set up in the police. In fact the Ministry of Defence will
be better because politics sooner or later will come back into the Ministry of
Government and the police, while the military unit should be able to remain
aloof from normal politics, concentrating on the extreme left.
First on the junta's programme of reforms are the universities and the
national cultural foundation called the Casa de la Cultura, both of which
have long traditions as centres of leftist and communist agitation and
recruitment. Several station and base operations are focused on giving
encouragement to the junta for university reform including agents
controlled through Alberto Alarcon in Guayaquil and the student
publication Voz Universitaria published by Wilson Almeida. According to
Gandara the first university reform decree will be issued in a few days with
the important provision that student participation in university
administration will be greatly reduced.
Quito 30 August 1963
Labour operations always seem to be in turmoil but now and then they
produce a redeeming flash of brilliance. Ricardo Vazquez Diaz, one of the
labour agents I took over from Gil Saudade, told me the other day that his
mistress is the official shorthand transcriber of all the important meetings of
the Cabinet and the junta and that she has been giving him copies so that he
can be well-informed for his CEOSL work. He gave me samples and after
Dean saw them he told me to start paying her a salary through Vazquez.
From now on we'll be getting copies of the record of these meetings even
before the participants. In the Embassy we'll make them available just to the
Ambassador and the Minister Counsellor, and in Washington short
summaries will be given limited distribution with the entire Spanish text
available on special request. The Ambassador, according to Dean, is most
interested in seeing how the junta and Cabinet members react to their
meetings with him and in using these reports to plan his meetings with
them. Eventually we'll try to recruit Vazquez's mistress, ECSIGH-1,
directly, but for the moment I'll have to work this very carefully in order not
to jeopardise the CEOSL operation. Vazquez claims he's told no one of the
reports, which I believe, because, if he told anyone, it would be one of the
other CEOSL agents who probably would have mentioned it to me. These
reports are jewels of political intelligence – just the sort of intelligence that
covert action operations should produce.
(There has been a change, incidentally, in terminology: the operations that
used to be called PP operations – labour, youth and students, media,
paramilitary, political action – are now called covert action, or CA,
operations. In headquarters this change in terminology was made at the
same time the old PP staff was merged with International Organisations
Division to form what is now called the Covert Action Staff.)
In labour operations themselves we've had serious problems with the new
government, partly as a result of the junta's arbitrariness – the right to strike,
for example, is suspended. In this respect the junta tends to treat the CEOSL
trade-union movement much in the same fashion as it treats the CTE. This
general trend is aggravated by the Minister of Economy, Enrique Amador
Marquez, who is one of the former labour agents of the Guayaquil base
terminated last year for regionalism. Amador is doing all he can to promote
decisions favourable to his old CROCLE and COG friends and detrimental
to CEOSL.
Right now the most serious case involves the junta's attempts to reorganise
the railways which are one of the many inefficient government autonomous
agencies that together spend about 65 per cent of public revenues. The
lieutenant-colonel appointed to run the railways is favouring the CEDOC
(Catholic) railway union which is backed by COG and CROCLE against
the other railway union which is part of CEOSL and is an affiliate of the
International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) in London.
I arranged for Jack Otero, the Assistant Inter-American Representative of
the ITF and one of our contract labour agents, to come to Quito from Rio de
Janeiro to help defend the CEOSL railway union. He is here now but
instead of following my instructions to approach the matter with restraint he
started threatening an ITF boycott of Ecuadorean products. The spectre of
boatloads of rotten Ecuadorean bananas sitting in ports around the world
provoked counter-threats from the junta and we've had to cut Otero's visit
short. The ITF railway union may have to suffer for a while but we're going
to get action now from Washington, probably from someone like Andrew
McClellan who replaced Serafino Romualdi as the AFL-CIO Inter-
American Representative when Romualdi set up the AIFLD. What the junta
needs is a little education on the difference between the free trade-union
movement and the CTE, but this may not be easy with Amador working
behind the scenes for CEOSL's rivals.
The Minister of Government is very cooperative in following our advice
over the matter of the political prisoners. We have a special interrogation
team here now from the US Army Special Forces unit in the Canal Zone:
they're from the counter-guerrilla school there and are helping process the
interrogation reports and prepare follow-up leads. The results aren't
especially startling but they are providing excellent file information. As a
result the prisoners are being released in a very slow trickle and most are
choosing exile in Chile. Araujo is one of the big fish that was able to hide,
but, a few days ago he and six others got asylum in the Bolivian Embassy.
Chances are he'll be there a long time before the junta gives him a safe
conduct.
University reform continues. Already the universities in Loja and
Guayaquil have been taken over and Central University here in Quito is due
next. What this means is the firing of communists and other extreme leftists
in the university administrations and faculties. The same process is under
way in the primary and secondary schools and is in charge of the military
governors of each province.
Reforms in the government administration are also widening. Already the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Economy are being
reorganized. So far the junta's not doing so badly – tomorrow Teodoro
Moscoso, the Coordinator of the Alliance for Progress, arrives to negotiate
new aid agreements.
Quito 8 September 1963
These labour operations are so messy they're forcing me to put practically
all my other operations on ice for lack of time. No wonder Saudade had so
few agents: they talk on and on so that one agent-meeting can fill up most
of an afternoon or morning. Our call for help from McClellan backfired. He
sent a telegram to the junta threatening AFL-CIO efforts to stop Alliance
for Progress funds and appeals to the OAS and UN if the junta doesn't stop
its repression of trade unions. Three days ago the Secretary-General of the
Administration denounced McClellan's telegram and showed newsmen
documents from CROCLE and COG backing the junta and the colonel in
charge of the railways. Now the junta is going to suspend the railway
workers' right to organise completely. Somehow we have to reverse this
trend and we asked for a visit from some other high-level labour figure from
Washington, hopefully William Doherty, the former PTTI Latin American
Representative and now with the AIFLD. Doherty is considered to be one
of our more effective labour agents and Dean thinks he might be able to
change the junta's attitude towards our organisations.
Not long ago the CA staff sent two operations officers to the Panama station
to assist in labour operations throughout the hemisphere much as the
Technical Services Division officers in Panama cover the area. They came
for a short visit to Quito, more for orientation than anything else, but they're
going to get ORIT to send someone to see the junta about these problems.
Recently, according to Bill Brown who is one of the labour officers, the
Secretary-General of ORIT, Arturo Jauregui, was fully recruited so that now
he can be guided more effectively. Before, our control of ORIT in Mexico
City was exercised through Morris Paladino, the Assistant Secretary-
General and the principal AFL-CIO representative on the staff. Possibly we
will get Jauregui himself to intervene.
We've also had two polygraph operators here for the past week testing
agents. I decided finally to meet Atahualpa Basantes, one of our PCE
penetration agents who has been reporting since 1960 but who had never
been met directly by a station officer, using the polygraph as the excuse.
The interview with Basantes was interesting because it showed how useful
the LCFLUTTER is for things other than determining honesty in reporting
and use of funds. In the case of Basantes, which· is not unusual according to
the operator, the polygraph brought out a flood of remarks about his
motivation and his feeling towards us and his comrades in the party. He's
certainly a confused man, drawn to us by money yet still convinced that
capitalism is destructive to his country. Why does he work for us? Partly the
money, but he rationalizes that the PCE leadership is rotten. From now on
I'll try to see him at least once a month. His reporting has fallen off during
the last six months, mostly because Dr Ovalle is such a poor agent handler,
so I'm now looking for a new cutout. Instead of a raise in pay, which could
be insecure, I've agreed to pay the premium on a new life-insurance policy
for Basantes – it's expensive because he's in his late forties and his health is
poor, but it'll be one more control factor.
The polygraph operator who worked with me on the Basantes case is Les
Fannin. Fannin was arrested in Singapore in 1960 while he was testing a
local liaison collaborator whom the station was trying to recruit as a
penetration agent of the Singapore police. The Agency offered the
Singapore Prime Minister some three million dollars as a ransom for Fannin
and Secretary of State Rusk even wrote a letter of apology in the hope of
getting Fannin out. Nevertheless, he spent months in the Singapore jail
before being released. He told me the Agency analysis of the case suggested
that the British MI-6, which controlled the Singapore service at the time
because Singapore was still a British colony, had been aware of the
attempted recruitment from the beginning. In a strong reaction to this
violation of the long-standing agreement that the CIA refrains from
recruitments in British areas except when prior permission is granted, MI-6,
according to Fannin, arranged for the Singapore security official to play
along, and then at the moment of the polygraph they had Fannin arrested.
One of Saudade's agents whom he sent to Cuba has just been arrested on his
return to Guayaquil and nobody seems to know what to do about him. The
agent is Cristobal Mogrovejo, the same Loja agent whom we used to front
for the near-disaster audio installation in the Loja Club beneath Rafael
Echeverria's apartment. Dean is taking a hard line on Mogrovejo because
the agent was told not to return to Ecuador when he was met by officers
from the Miami (ex-Havana) station after leaving Cuba. We had sent that
instruction precisely to protect Mogrovejo, but since he refused to comply,
Dean isn't anxious to spring him loose. He was arrested because he had
Cuban propaganda material in his baggage (incredibly stupid) on his arrival.
Already the arrest is causing wide comment in Loja where Mogrovejo is
President of the University of Loja law student association and well known
as a staunch Catholic.
For the time being the audio operations against Echeverria's apartment and
Flores's apartment are suspended. Sooner or later Flores will go into exile
and Echeverria is still hiding. The audio-photo operation at the PCE
bookstore is also suspended since the junta closed the bookstore right after
the coup. Now we'll have to take out the audio equipment with more
pounding and squealing of spikes.
Quito 20 September 1963
This has been a month of constant movement of people: agents, visitors and
new station personnel. The first of the new station operations officers has
arrived – he's Morton (Pete) Palmer and his cover is in the Embassy
economic section. Unquestionably he'll be an excellent addition to the
station and I'm already beginning to unload some of the covert action
operations on him.
Dean appointed me to look after another visitor: Ted Shannon, the former
Chief of Station in Panama and now Chief of the section of the CI staff in
headquarters responsible for CIA officers under AID Public Safety cover.
Shannon was the founder of the Inter-American Police Academy in Panama
(which, incidentally, will be moving next year to Washington with a new
name: the International Police Academy) and he was rather upset that we
haven't been fully using our Public Safety cover officer, John Burke. Dean
explained to Shannon his fears about Burke's getting into trouble through
his over-eagerness, but after Shannon left Dean told me to start thinking
about what operations we can give to Burke. Dean is worried about
criticism in headquarters that he's not using his people, but in fact there's
lots of work Burke can do. The first thing will be to integrate him with the
Special Forces interrogation team working on the political prisoners.
Reinaldo Varea returned to Ecuador yesterday but his troubles are far from
over. Immediately after the coup the junta cancelled the impeachment case
against Varea but announced that he would have to stand trial if he ever
returned. His return means that his trial begins again, and he has also agreed
to refrain from political activity. From Panama he had gone to Houston
where a headquarters' officer gave him termination pay, but if Dean needs to
see him he can establish contact through Otto Kladensky.
Manuel Naranjo was replaced as Ecuador's UN Ambassador and has also
returned. Headquarters was highly impressed with his work for us at the
UN, and Dean feels the same – in fact he's going to nominate Naranjo, who
is now back at work in the Socialist Party, for Career Agent status which
would mean considerable income, fringe benefits, job tenure and retirement
pay.
Juan Sevilla, Arosemena's Minister of the Treasury, is the only one of our
political-action assets in the old government to get a new job with the junta.
Probably because of his firm action during the months before the junta took
over, he's been named by the junta as Ecuador's new Ambassador to West
Germany. We're forwarding the file to the Bonn station and making contact
arrangements in case they want to use him in Germany. A few weeks ago I
gave Sevilla money for Carlos Rendon, his private secretary, who caught
Roura and made the plant on Flores. Apparently Rendon has been
threatened and is going to leave the country for a few months.
Lieutenant-Colonel Federico Gortaire was reassigned from Army
commander in Manabi province to Military Governor of Chimborazo
Province. For the time being we'll communicate with him through Jorge
Gortaire in order to save time, but Dean wants to have one of the new
officers begin going directly to Riobamba to see Colonel Gortaire as soon
as possible.
Dean still refuses to intercede with the Minister of Government, Colonel
Luis Mora Bowen, on behalf of Cristobal Mogrovejo. Mogrovejo told the
police that he went to Cuba on our behalf, and his mother even came to see
the Ambassador but Dean is playing real dumb. I think he ought to help the
poor guy out of that stinking, miserable jail.
The country's honeymoon with the junta is fading fairly fast. The traditional
political parties are getting worried that the junta may stay in power longer
than they've admitted, and their massive promotions of military officers
haven't been very popular. Especially since among the first to be promoted
were the junta members themselves: now they are one colonel, one admiral
and two generals.
Quito 15 October 1963
Labour operations are still unsettled because of the junta's arbitrary actions.
Since last month, a new national traffic law has been in preparation but the
junta refuses to consult the national drivers' federation (taxi, truck and bus
drivers), which will be the organisation most affected by the law. Everyone
understands the need to stop the general traffic chaos and the carnage that
so frequently occurs on the roads, especially when overcrowded buses roll
off the mountainside because of their poor mechanical condition:
traditionally, the driver, if he's alive and can move, flies from the scene as
fast as he can go. But the drivers' federation is our top priority to woo away
from the CTE and eventually into the CEOSL. So we called Jack Otero
back from Rio de Janeiro to see if he could intercede with the junta on the
traffic law question, even though the drivers' federation isn't affiliated with
the ITF. Something may come from the effort, perhaps not with the junta
but with the drivers' federation. Even the AIFLD operation is beset with
problems. The country programme chief here isn't an agent and so we can't
guide him (except through Washington) so that his programme harmonizes
nicely with ours. Doherty finally came to help straighten out the AIFLD
programme for us, but this isn't the end of it. He's going to arrange to have
Emilio Garza, the AIFLD man in Bogota who is a recruited and controlled
agent, come here for as long as is needed to make sure the AIFLD
programme is run the way Dean wants it run. Mostly it's a question of
personnel assignments through which we want to favour our agents. Sooner
or later all the AIFLD programmes will be run closely by the stations –
until now the expansion has been so fast that in many cases non-agents have
been sent as AIFLD chiefs and can only be controlled through cumbersome
arrangements of the kind we've had here.
Political prisoners are being released to go into exile as their cases are
reviewed. There are still well over one hundred of them – Flores and Roura
are both going to Chile in exile. Araujo finally got a safe conduct and left
for Bolivia a week ago. Echeverria is still in hiding, rejecting the bait we set
with the Vargas Land Rover. Cardenas, Vargas, Basantes and our other
penetration agents have somehow managed to avoid arrest.
For a few days last week our Popular Revolutionary Liberal Party agents
were also taken as political prisoners. They held a meeting in violation of
the government's prohibition of all political meetings without prior
permission, and among those arrested were Juan Yepez del Pozo, Jr., Carlos
Vallejo Baez and Antonio Ulloa Coppiano. They were only held for a
couple of days and later Vallejo and Ulloa admitted to me that they staged
the whole thing for publicity. Pete Palmer is going to take over these agents
so that next time they will discuss this sort of caper with us first – otherwise
they can't expect us to bail them out if the junta is slow in letting them go.
Another new station officer arrived: Jim Wall, an old friend who went
through the training programme with me at Camp Peary. Wall has just
finished two years under non-official cover in Santiago, Chile, as a
university student. He's going to take over some of my operations too –
probably the ECACTOR political-action agents His cover will be in the
Embassy economic section, along with Palmer.
The polygraph operators are now in Buenos Aires and Dean wants to be
sure that Medardo Toro is 'fluttered'. Our impression is that the Buenos
Aires station isn't taking this case very seriously – undoubtedly they have
plenty of Argentine problems to worry about. In order to see why
production from the operation is not better, Dean asked me to go to Buenos
Aires to interpret for the polygraph examination of Toro. I'll also go to
Montevideo because Toro is taking the treatment for his back there and has
made contact on behalf of Velasco with an officer of the Cuban Embassy in
Montevideo.
Moscoso's visit brought good news for the Ecuadoreans – ten million
dollars in new loans from the Inter-American Development Bank have been
announced this month.
Quito 7 November 1963
It was a strange trip, disappointing on the Toro case but very encouraging
for my coming assignment in Montevideo. In Buenos Aires the station
considers the Toro case something less than marginal, just as we had
suspected. About all we can hope for is to have an officer from the station
meet Toro occasionally to receive his reports and pay his salary. In
Montevideo it's worse – the Chief of Station there, Ned Holman, doesn't
want anything to do with Velasco. Holman was Noland's predecessor as
Chief of Station in Quito so he's had plenty of chance to get soured by
Velasco. Even so, the case is interesting because Velasco is opening a
channel to the Cubans through Toro who has already met Ricardo Gutierrez
two or three times. Gutierrez is carried by the Montevideo station as the
Chief of the Cuban intelligence operation which the station believes is
targeted in large part towards Argentina and the guerrilla operations now
going on there. It will be interesting to see whether Velasco gets money
from the Cubans – it wouldn't be too unlikely, if he were to become a
candidate again for President, because he refused to break with Cuba and
has often spoken highly of Castro.
In Buenos Aires, besides interpreting on the Toro case I interpreted on two
other cases: one was a labour leader who is one of the station's best
penetrations of the Peronist movement and the other was an Argentine
Naval intelligence officer and his wife who are working together as a
penetration of the Naval intelligence service.
Quito 10 November 1963
On 31 October, the national drivers' federation was required by the
government to undergo 'fiscal analysis', which means they're going to bring
under control the one organisation that can stop the country completely. It'll
be a long time before this union can be brought into the ITF. In fact it's not
really a union because many of its members are owners of taxis, trucks and
buses and even gasoline stations. Its orientation, then, is middle class rather
than working class but for our long-range planning it's the most important
of the organised trade groups to be brought under greater influence and
control.
Bill Doherty arranged for Emilio Garza, the Bogota AIFLD agent, to come
to help us smooth out the problems between our CEOSL agents and the
AIFLD operation. The agent was an excellent choice and I've already
recommended that he be transferred to Ecuador when his assignment in
Bogota ends. He's the most effective of the career labour agents that I've
worked with.
For the past six weeks there have been regular terrorist bombings, mostly
against government buildings. They started in Quito – five occurred in one
week in mid-October – but now they've spread to Guayaquil. None of our
agents seems to know what group is behind the bombings and Dean's
getting jittery. It's embarrassing because the bombings make the junta look
inept in spite of all the arrests and forced exiles.
The day after tomorrow I'm going to try to recruit Jose Maria Roura who's
been rotting away in the Garcia Moreno prison since May. He's being
allowed to leave the country and will fly to Guayaquil, then to Lima, La
Paz, and eventually to Chile.
Colonel Lugo has been in Quito for the past few weeks and he told me that
the police interrogators report that Roura is very depressed, even
disillusioned, about his political past. He is also extremely concerned about
his family which is completely destitute and living on the charity of friends.
This information coincides with what we've learned from the interrogation
reports received through other sources and from information on Roura's
family obtained through the PCE penetration agents. Lugo suggested to me
that Roura may be ripe for a recruitment approach but he doesn't think it
should be made in the prison.
After discussing the possibilities, Dean asked me take the same Guayaquil-
Lima flight as Roura and to try my luck on the plane. We've arranged for
ECBLISS-1 the Braniff manager in Guayaquil, who is an American and a
base support agent, to have me seated next to Roura. Headquarters' approval
just came in and the Lima station is going to get the police to allow Roura
to stay over for a few days if he wants because he only has about two hours
between arrival from Guayaquil and departure for La Paz. For our purposes
any possible follow-up after the flight should be in Lima rather than La Paz.
When I talk to him I'll invite him to stay in Lima at my expense. After all
these months in one of the world's gloomiest prisons he might just accept.
In any case it's worth the risk of a scene on the plane – Roura is known to
be extremely volatile – because we need a penetration of the exile
community in Santiago and Roura would be an excellent source when he
eventually returns here.
Quito 13 November 1962
It didn't go perfectly, but it wasn't a disaster either. I took the noon flight to
Guayaquil and to my surprise Roura was on the same flight under police
guard. Colonel Lugo had told me that Roura was going on the morning
flight and the last thing I wanted was to be seen in Quito by Roura or in any
connection with him at all. Arrangements by the base with the Braniff
manager were perfect – he was waiting for me at the airport at three o'clock
this morning and gave me the seat right next to Roura who would be
released from his police guard when he boarded the aircraft.
When I walked on the plane I was shocked to see that there were only about
ten passengers in the whole cabin. The stewardess conducted me to the seat
next to Roura, who was already there, and my planned introduction and
cover story began to crumble. I had wanted to begin the conversation as
some anonymous traveller striking up a conversation with another
anonymous traveller. And I wanted the seat next to Roura in case the flight
were crowded – so that someone else wouldn't be sitting in that seat. But
now it was too obvious.
A seemingly endless silence followed after I sat down next to Roura. I tried
desperately to think of some new excuse to ease into a conversation –
somebody had to say something because I was clearly there for a purpose.
Suddenly the stewardess returned and suggested that I might like to move to
where I could sleep since row after row was vacant. Time for recovery and
a new plan. I went forward to a different seat, maybe ten rows ahead and
began to get depressed.
We rolled down the runway and into the air. As the minutes began to go by,
five, ten, twenty; I felt more and more glued to my seat. I was going into a
freeze and beginning to think up excuses, like bad security, to offer later for
not having talked to Roura. But somehow I had to break the ice and I finally
stood up and began walking back to Roura's seat, in mild shock as when
walking into a cold sea.
I introduced myself, using an alias and Roura agreed nonchalantly as I
asked if I could speak with him. I sat down and went into my new
introductory routine, relaxing a bit as I went on. I was an American
journalist who had spent the past few weeks in Ecuador studying the
problems of illiteracy, disease and poverty for a series of articles. At the
airport before the flight, I learned to my happy surprise that he was going to
be on the same flight and I wondered if he would mind discussing
Ecuadorean problems with me from the point of view of a communist
revolutionary. I added that I knew of his arrest earlier in the year and I
expressed wonderment that such arbitrary and unfair proceedings could
occur.
Over coffee we passed the flight discussing Ecuador. Roura spoke openly
and relaxedly and we seemed to be developing a little empathy. About
twenty minutes before we were to land in Lima I shifted the conversation to
Roura's personal situation. He told me that he was taking a connecting flight
to La Paz and after a few days would proceed to Santiago. He was
bewildered over what to do about his family and was expecting hard times
in exile.
Now I had to make my proposal, ever so gently, but clear enough for Roura
to understand. I said I would be seeing friends in Lima who are in the same
profession, more or less, as I am. They too would probably like to speak
with him and I was certain that they would offer him a fee for an interview
since they represent a large enterprise. He was interested, but said he had
permission from the Peruvians only to remain in the airport until the
connecting flight. I said my friends could probably arrange permission for
him to remain a few days and that he should ask the immigration authorities
if he could spend at least the day in Lima and proceed to La Paz on a later
flight perhaps tonight or tomorrow. Who knows, I said, whether some kind
of permanent financial support might be arranged for him in Santiago and
for his family in Quito. Perhaps, even, he could arrange for the family to go
to Santiago to live with him. I sensed he was taking the bait and was
beginning to understand.
When the 'fasten seat belt' light came on I took out a piece of paper with my
alias typed on it and the number of a post-office box in Washington. I said I
would be staying in Lima at the Crillon Hotel and if he was able to stay for
a few days he could call me at the hotel and we would continue talking. If
not, he could always reach me through the post-office box. He didn't say he
would ask the airport authorities for permission to stay, but he didn't say no
either. I thought he was deciding to stay. As a final touch, something I
hoped would convince him I was knowledgeable, in fact I now hoped he
realised I was CIA, I bade farewell pointedly calling him 'Pepito', which is
the name his PCE comrades call him. I returned to my other seat for the
landing.
At the terminal building I walked down the steps and headed for the
entrance where I was met by the Lima station officer who is in charge of
liaison with immigration authorities. He had arranged for permission to be
granted if asked by Roura, and indeed offered if Roura didn't ask – without,
of course, creating suspicion that we were trying to recruit Roura. From just
inside the terminal building we watched the Braniff aircraft because Roura
had delayed inside. Eventually he appeared, descended the steps, but
suddenly turned and rushed back up the steps and into the aircraft. At that
moment about ten uniformed police who had been striding swiftly,
practically rushing, towards the aircraft arrived at the steps. The leader
boarded the aircraft and a long delay followed. The Lima station officer
went to see his airport police and immigration contacts to find out what
happened, and I went to the station offices in the Embassy to await news
from the airport. If Roura stayed, I would check into the Crillon and wait
for his call. If he proceeded to La Paz I would take the noon Avianca flight
back to Quito.
When I reached the Embassy they gave me the bad news. Roura had been
frightened by the police when they rushed towards him and thought
something terrible might happen. In the aircraft he refused to descend to the
terminal until the flight continued. Then he was extremely nervous in the
terminal and interested only in being sure he didn't miss the flight to La Paz
which he took as planned.
The Lima Chief of Station; Bob Davis, apologised for the over-enthusiasm
of their liaison service – the police approaching the aircraft were only trying
to give him a warm welcome in preparation for immigration's offer of
permission to stay for a few days. The Lima station botched the operation –
I am convinced that Roura would have stayed – and now we can only wait
for a telegram or letter to the post-box. On the other hand Dean is thinking
of a follow-up visit to Roura once he gets to Santiago.
At the Lima station I asked how the penetration operation of the MIR is
progressing – the one I had started in Guayaquil with the recruitment of
Enrique Amaya Quintana. The Deputy Chief of Station, Clark Simmons, is
one of my former instructors at Camp Peary and is in charge of the case. He
told me that Amaya's information is pure gold. He has pinpointed about ten
base-camps and caching sites plus identification of much of the urban
infrastructure with full details of each phase of their training and planning.
The Lima station has a notebook with maps, names and addresses,
photographs and everything else of importance on the MIR which the
station considers to be the most important insurgency threat in Peru. The
notebook is in Spanish and is constantly updated so that just at the right
moment it can be turned over to the Peruvian military.
At the Lima station I sent a cable on the Roura recruitment to headquarters
with information copies to Quito and La Paz. Dean had already seen the
cable when I got back this afternoon and he's elated even though we can't be
sure yet that Roura has accepted. Tomorrow I'll get Bolivian and Chilean
visas for quick departure when Roura sends a telegram to the Washington
post-box.
Quito 17 November 1963
It didn't take long to resolve the Roura recruitment. This morning we had a
cable from the La Paz station with the special RYBAT sensitivity indicator,
reporting that Roura was in a secret meeting with two of the leading
Bolivian communists. At the meeting he told them of my attempt to recruit
him and he said if he ever sees me again he'll kill me. One of the two
Bolivians is an agent of the La Paz station, it would seem, although possibly
the source is an audio operation. I won't need the visas now, but Dean still
thinks Roura may change his mind in six months or a year or two. At least
he knows we're interested and he has the post-box number.
I only have about three more weeks before leaving and as I turn over
operations to the three new officers I am also terminating a number of the
marginal cases – with provision, of course, for picking them up again if
needed.
Among those I've terminated is Dr Philip Ovalle, Velasco's personal
physician and the cutout to Atahualpa Basantes, the PC E penetration agent.
Ovalle is getting senile and is probably the main reason why Basantes's
reporting has been in such a slide. Before termination I was able to get the
Ambassador to have Ovalle placed back on the list of approved physicians
for visas (the consular section had thrown him off because he sent some
people with syphilis to the US), or otherwise he might have been difficult.
The chances of Velasco's coming back are now so slight that there's no
reason to waste time seeing Ovalle for information on the Velasquistas. I
recruited a new cutout for Basantes who I think can get the agent's reporting
jacked up. He's Gonzalo Fernandez, a former Ecuadorean Air Force colonel
who was military attache in London until he was forced to retire for
political reasons. As Basantes is also a former military officer the chances
are that they will work well together.
I also terminated the letter intercepts which I had taken back when the
administrative assistant left a couple of months ago. The agents were pretty
rattled at first but after I explained that we just don't have time for opening,
reading, photography, closing, plus the two meetings for pick-up and return
– they seemed to accept it. They liked the termination bonus and we made
arrangements for meetings every two or three months to pay for propaganda
they've burned. Not too bad at a couple of hundred dollars a ton. These
postal intercepts are a waste of time, in my opinion, and only the
headquarters desks that are ready to take anything, like the Cuban branch,
will waste effort poring over letters and testing for SW.
Tampa 10 December 1963
On the flight home I compared the existing situation in Ecuador with what I
met when I first arrived there. Noland practically wouldn't recognise the
place with all the growth. In the Quito station we now have eight officers,
including Gabe Lowe who will arrive in the spring to fill the last new slot,
as opposed to five when I arrived, plus two additional secretaries, several
new working wives and an additional communications officer. In Guayaquil
we still have only two officers inside the Consulate but have added one
officer outside. Now Dean plans to add even more officers under non-
official cover, particularly in Guayaquil. The station budget has also risen
dramatically – from about 500,000 dollars in 1960, to almost 800,000
dollars now.
Operations are better now, too. The counter-insurgency programme has
improved, helped along by all the arrests, the exiling and the general
repression undertaken by the junta. We have some new operations under
way – particularly the new telephone tapping and military intelligence unit
that Dean is setting up. Many of these activities are carried out in
cooperation with the junta which, in turn, we have managed to penetrate
through police and military officers and the junta's chief stenographer
whom we have on our payroll. It looks as if operations in the student field
are going to improve, and in our labour operations, both CEOSL and the
AIFLD are well established in spite of all the problems they have had to
face. The best of our PCE penetration agents have survived and we have
added several more, including those of the Guayaquil base.
So far as the general political situation is concerned the position is even
more favourable. When I arrived in Ecuador, Araujo was Minister of
Government and for two and a half years the traditional parties made a mess
of things, thus encouraging the people to look for extremist solutions. All
politicians, Velasco and his followers, the Conservatives, the Social
Christians, the Liberals and the Socialists, had struggled for narrow
sectarian interests, sometimes under the leadership of our agents and close
liaison contacts. But they failed to establish through the democratic process
the reforms to which they all paid at least lip service. Now, at last, these
reforms can be imposed by decree and it seems certain that the order
imposed by the junta will speed economic growth. Land reform is still the
greatest need. In a report published earlier this year, the UN Food and
Agricultural Organisation noted that some 800,000 Ecuadorean families
(over three million people) live in precarious poverty while 1,000 rich
families (900 landowners and 100 in business and commerce) enjoy
inordinate wealth.
Notes:
[1] Wall against which people are executed by the firing-squad.
Part Three
Washington DC 8 February 1964
One can't help being impressed on a first visit to the new headquarters
building out in Virginia. It's a twenty- or thirty-minute drive up the Potomac
River from Washington – very beautiful parkway along the cliffs with the
headquarters exit marked 'Bureau of Public Roads' as if to fool someone.
The building itself is enormous, about seven storeys with a somewhat 'H'
shape, surrounded by high fence and woods – extremely complicated to
orient oneself on the inside. I read that it was built for ten thousand
employees and from the numbers of cars in the vast parking lots it seems
that number may already have been passed.
I spent two days with the Ecuadorean desk officer filling in the items that
never get into formal reporting and catching up somewhat on the changes in
the headquarters' bureaucracy. The most important change is the recent
establishment of a new Deputy Directorate, the DDS & T (for Science and
Technology), which was formed by merging the old Office of Scientific
Intelligence and Office of Research and Reports, both of the DDI, with
several other offices. This new unit has taken over all the processing of
information and setting of requirements on progress around the world in the
different key fields of science and technology with special emphasis, not
surprisingly, on Soviet weapons-related developments. It is also responsible
for developing new technical collection systems. The Deputy Directorate
for Coordination has been eliminated.
The other major change is in the DDP[1] where the old International
Organisations Division and the Psychological and Paramilitary Staff
merged and adopted the new name: Covert Action Staff. Headquarters'
coordination and guidance for all CA operations (formerly known as PP
operations) now centres in this staff.
The people in the new CA staff, perhaps because many are veterans of the
traditional friction between IO Division and the geographical area divisions
over activities of IOD agents in the field, have developed a new
terminology that provokes no little humour in headquarters' halls. Instead of
calling their agents agents anymore, they now insist in their memoranda
and other documents on calling them 'covert associates'. Problems relating
to agent control – the old IOD wound that would never heal – seem now to
have diminished simply by not calling CA operatives agents anymore.
Another change in the DDP that will take effect shortly is the merging of
the Soviet Russia Division with the Eastern Europe Division – except that
Greece will pass to the Near East Division. Now all the communist
countries in Europe will be in the same area division which will be called
Soviet Bloc Division. The communications indicator for action by SB
Division is also changing: from REDWOOD to REDTOP.
Also, there is a completely new DDP division called the Domestic
Operations Division (DOD) which is responsible for CIA intelligence
collection within the US (on foreign targets, of course). DOD engages
mostly in recruiting Americans for operations, e.g. recruitment of scientists
and scholars for work at international conferences. DOD has a 'station' in
downtown Washington DC and offices in several other cities.
In WH Division the big news is that Colonel J. C. King is finally on his way
out as Division Chief. His power has gradually been chipped away since the
Bay of Pigs invasion by separating Cuban affairs from regular Division
decision-making and by surrounding King with various advisers such as
Dave McLean, who was Acting Chief of Station in Quito when the junta
took over, and Bill Hood, who has had the newly created job of Chief of
Operations for the past year. King is being replaced as Division Chief by
one of the senior officers who were brought into the Division after the Bay
of Pigs from the Far East Division. He is Desmond Fitzgerald, Deputy
Chief of WH Division for Cuban Affairs – also a newly created job after the
Cuban invasion. The regular Deputy Division Chief, Ray Herbert, continues
to handle personnel assignments and matters not related directly to
operations against Cuba.
Washington DC 10 February 1964
I spent a night out at Jim Noland's house. They live in McLean not far from
headquarters – everyone seems to have moved out that way. After return to
headquarters Noland was assigned as Chief of the Brazil Branch in WH
Division – a key job, with Brazil's continuing slide to the left under Goulart.
Noland made several trips to Brazil last year and from what he says Brazil
is the most serious problem for us in Latin America – more serious in fact
than Cuba since the missile crisis.
Operations in Brazil haven't been helped by a Brazilian parliamentary
investigation into the massive 1962 electoral operation; this investigation
began last May and is still continuing in the courts. The investigation
revealed that one of the Rio station's main political-action operations, the
Brazilian Institute for Democratic Action (IBAD) and a related organisation
called Popular Democratic Action (ADEP), spent during the 1962 electoral
campaign at least the equivalent of some twelve million dollars financing
anticommunist candidates, and possibly as much as twenty million. Funds
of foreign origin were provided in eight of the eleven state gubernatorial
races, for fifteen candidates for federal senators, 250 candidates for federal
deputies and about 600 candidates for state legislatures. Results of the
elections were mixed, with station-supported candidates elected governors
in Silo Paulo and Rio Grande, both key states, but a leftist supporter of
Goulart was elected governor in the critical north-east state of Pernambuco.
In the Chamber of Deputies the balance among the three main parties
stayed about the same which in some ways was seen as a victory.
The parliamentary investigating commission was controlled somewhat –
five of its nine members were themselves recipients of IBAD and ADEP
funds – but only the refusal of the First National City Bank, the Bank of
Boston and the Royal Bank of Canada to reveal the foreign source of funds
deposited for IBAD and ADEP kept the lid from blowing off. At the end of
August last year President Goulart decreed the closing of both ADEP and
IBAD, and the parliamentary report issued in November concluded that
IBAD and ADEP had illegally tried to influence the 1962 elections.
Washington DC 12 February 1964
For the past few days I've been shuttling between the Uruguayan desk and
the Cuban branch getting briefed on operational priorities against the
Cubans, as my primary responsibility in Montevideo will be Cuban
operations. Only five Latin American countries still have diplomatic
relations with Cuba, and in Montevideo operations against the Cubans are
the highest priority on the Station Related Missions Directive – the only
station in the hemisphere where operations against a Soviet Embassy are in
second place on the priorities list. The reason is that communist strength in
Uruguay is growing considerably, particularly in the trade-union field, and
is undoubtedly assisted by the Cuban Embassy there. Moreover, there have
been strong indications that current guerrilla and terrorist activities in the
north of Argentina are being supported from the Cuban Embassy in
Montevideo.
Right now there are two main objectives for Cuban operations in
Montevideo. First, in order to promote a break in relations, we are using all
appropriate operations to support the Venezuelan case against Cuba for
intervention and aggression based on the arms cache discovery on the
Venezuelan coast last November. The arms have since been traced to a
Belgian manufacturer who claimed to have sold them to Cuba. The purpose
of the Venezuelan case is eventually to get a motion through the OAS
calling on all Latin American countries with diplomatic relations with Cuba
to break them. The hope is that such a motion, coming from Venezuela and
not the US, would have sufficient momentum to get adopted by the OAS,
particularly if enough propaganda of non-US-origin can be generated over
the coming months. For the sake of discretion I haven't asked, but the whole
campaign built around the arms cache has looked to me like a Caracas
station operation from the beginning. I suspect the arms were planted by the
station, perhaps as a joint operation with the local service, and then
'discovered'.
While our overall objective in Uruguay is to effect a break in diplomatic
relations with Cuba, we must meanwhile penetrate their Cuban mission in
Montevideo either technically or by recruiting an agent, in order to obtain
better intelligence about their activities. We already have a number of
valuable operations going against the Cuban Embassy, but so far we haven't
been able to penetrate it technically or to recruit any of its officers.
Not that the station hasn't tried. Last year several cold recruitment
approaches were made and there was the unsolicited defection of Rolando
Santana. Unfortunately, in the case of Santana, he had been in Montevideo
only a short while and had not had access to sensitive information because
he wasn't an intelligence officer. The case served nevertheless for
propaganda operations.
On another occasion we very nearly recruited the officer believed to be the
Chief of Cuban Intelligence in Montevideo. This officer, Earle Perez
Freeman, had spurned a cold street approach for recruitment last December
in Montevideo just before he was due to return to Cuba after some three
years in Uruguay. In Mexico, where he was awaiting a flight to Havana, he
suddenly appeared in the US Embassy and in discussions with station
officers agreed to take asylum in the US. The officer in charge was Bob
Shaw, one of my former instructors at ISOLATION, and headquarters' halls
are still reverberating over his carelessness. After making all the
arrangements to evacuate Perez in a military aircraft from the Mexico City
airport, Shaw took Perez in a car to the airport. On the way to the airport
Perez panicked, jumped out of Shaw's car and disappeared in a crowd. No
one yet can understand how Shaw failed to follow the first rule in cases like
these: to place Perez in the back seat with other officers by the doors on
either side. Had he changed his mind before leaving Mexico City,
conversations in a controlled situation could perhaps have convinced him to
come. At least a sudden panic and loss of contact would have been avoided.
Perez returned to Havana and there has been no sign that his short contact
with the Mexico City station became known to the Cubans, but opinion is
unanimous in headquarters that the Mexico City station did a remarkably
inept job on the case – not even an initial debriefing on Cuban operations in
Montevideo.
On agent recruitment priorities in Montevideo the Cuban branch is most
interested in the code clerk whom the station has identified as Roberto
Hernandez. According to Division D officers in charge of Cuban
communications matters, the Soviets are supplying the Cubans with
cryptographic materials that are used for their diplomatic and intelligence
traffic – impossible to break and read. If I could get the code clerk recruited,
they said, arrangements could be made to have a headquarters technician
copy the materials ('one-time' pads) for safe return to the code-room. Traffic
afterwards, and perhaps traffic before – now stored by the National Security
Agency for eventual breakthrough – could be read.
Miami 14 March 1964
We divided our home leave between Janet's parents' home in Michigan and
mine here in Florida. Two weeks ago another son was born, right on the day
calculated by the doctor many months ago. Such joy – again everything
went perfectly. When the new baby is able to travel in a few weeks, Janet
and the children will fly to Montevideo, but I'm going now because the
officer I'm replacing is in a rush to leave.
On my way down to Montevideo I've stopped off here and spent most of
today discussing ways the JMWAVE (Miami) station can help our
programme against the Cubans in Montevideo. Charlie McKay, the
JMWAVE officer who met me at the airport, suggested we spend the day
discussing matters at the beach instead of at the station offices at
Homestead Air Force Base so we relaxed in the sun until he finally brought
me back to the airport. He was just the right person for these discussions
because he was assigned to the Montevideo station in the early 1960s and is
familiar with the operations there.
Miami CIA operations are vast but mainly, it seems, concerned with refugee
debriefings, storage and retrieval of information, and paramilitary
infiltration-exfiltration operations into Cuba. They have both case officers
and Cuban exile agents who can assist hemisphere stations on temporary
assignments for recruitments, transcribing of audio operations and many
other tasks. Just recently the Montevideo station proposed that JMWAVE
attempt to locate a woman who could be dangled before the Cuban code
clerk, who is exceptionally active in amorous adventures. According to
McKay they have just come up with the candidate – a stunning Cuban
beauty who has done this sort of work before. Next week he will forward
biographical data and an operational history on her, together with the
photograph he showed me, to the Montevideo station.
The main Miami operation related to Uruguay, however, is the AMHALF
project involving three Uruguayan diplomats assigned in Havana. They are
the Charge d'Affaires, Zuleik Ayala Cabeda, and two diplomats: German
Roosen, the Second Secretary, and Hamlet Goncalves, the First Secretary.
No one of them is supposed to know that the others are working for the CIA
but the Miami station suspects they have been talking to each other. Their
tasks in Havana include arranging for asylum for certain Cubans, loading
and unloading dead drops used by other agents, currency purchase and
visual observation of certain port and military movements. Communications
to the agents from Miami are through the One-Way-Voice-Link (radio) but
every week or two at least one of them goes to Nassau or Miami on other
tasks unrelated to the CIA, such as bringing out hard currency and jewels
left behind by Cuban exiles. Such contraband serves as cover for their CIA
work but adds to the sensitivity of this operation – already extreme because
of the implications of using diplomats against the country to which they're
accredited. The Department of State would have no easy time making
excuses to the Uruguayan government if this operation were to blow.
Montevideo 15 March 1964
This is a marvellous city – no wonder it's considered one of the plums of
WH Division. Gerry O'Grady, the Deputy Chief of Station, met me at the
airport and took me to the Hotel Lancaster in the Plaza de la Libertad where
I stayed when I came last year. We then went over to his apartment, a large
seventh-floor spread above the Rambla overlooking Pocitos beach, where
we passed the afternoon exchanging experiences. O'Grady came in January
but his family won't be down until after the children finish school in June.
He's another of the transfers from the Far East Division – previous
assignments in Taipei and Bangkok. Very friendly guy.
Montevideo 18 March 1964
Moving from the next-to-the smallest country in South America to the
smallest is nevertheless taking several giant steps forward in national
development, for contrast, not similarity, is most evident. Indeed Uruguay is
the exception to most of the generalities about Latin America, with its
surface appearance of an integrated society organised around a modern,
benevolent welfare state. Here there is no marginalised Indian mass bogged
down in terrible poverty, no natural geographic contradictions between
coastal plantations and sierra farming, no continuum of crises and political
instabilities, no illiterate masses, no militarism, no inordinate birth-rate. In
Uruguay I immediately perceive many of the benefits that I hope will derive
from the junta's reform programme in Ecuador.
Everything seems to be in favour of prosperity in Uruguay. The per capita
income is one of the highest in Latin America at about 700 dollars. Ninety
per cent of the population is literate with over ten daily newspapers
published in Montevideo alone. The country is heavily urban (85 per cent)
with over half the 2.6 million population residing in Montevideo. Health
care and diet are satisfactory while social-security and retirement
programmes are advanced by any standards. Population density is only
about one third of the Latin American average and population growth is the
lowest – only 1.3 per cent. Most important, Uruguay's remarkable
geography allows for 88 per cent land utilisation, most of which is
dedicated to livestock grazing. Here we have a model of political stability,
almost no military intervention in politics in this century, and well-earned
distinction as the 'Switzerland of America'.
Uruguay's happy situation dates from the election in 1903 of Jose Batlle y
Ordonez, certainly one of the greatest and most effective of Western liberal
reformers, who put an end to the violent urban-rural struggle that plagued
Uruguay, as in much of Latin America, during the nineteenth century. To
Batlle, Uruguayans owe social legislation that was as advanced as any of its
time; eight-hour day; mandatory days of rest with pay each week; workers'
accident compensation; minimum wage; retirement and social security
benefits; free, secular, state-supported education. In order to set the pace in
workers' benefits and to check concentration of economic power in the
hands of private foreign and national interests, Batlle established
government monopolies in utilities; finance and certain commercial and
industrial activities. And in the political order Batlle established the
principle of co-participation wherein the minority Blanco Party (also known
as the National Party) could share power with Batlle's own Colorado Party
through a collegiate executive that would include members of both parties.
Through this mechanism patronage would be shared, fringe parties
excluded and bloody struggles for political control ended. It is to Batlle,
then, that Uruguayans attribute their political stability, their social
integration, and an incomes redistribution policy effected through subsidies,
the social welfare system, and the government commercial, financial and
utility monopolies.
However, since about 1954 the standard of living in Uruguay has been
falling, the GDP has failed to grow, productivity and per capita income
have fallen, and industrial growth has fallen below the very low population
growth rate. Investment is only about 11 per cent of GDP, an indication,
perhaps, of Uruguayans' resistance to lowering their accustomed levels of
consumption. Nevertheless, declining standards of living of the middle and
lower classes have produced constant agitation and turmoil reflected in the
frequent, widespread and crippling strikes that have come to dominate
national life.
What has happened in this most utopic of modern democracies? The
economic problem since the mid-1950s has been how to offset the decline
of world prices for Uruguay's principal exports: beef, hides and wool.
Because export earnings have fallen – they're below the levels of thirty
years ago – Uruguay's imports have been squeezed severely with rising
prices of manufactured and intermediate goods used in the substitution
industries established during the Depression and the 1945-55 prosperity.
Result: inflation, balance-of-payments deficits, economic stagnation, rising
unemployment (now 12 per cent), currency devaluation.
In part Uruguay's problems are inevitable because recent prosperity was
based on the unusual seller's market during World War II and the Korean
War. However, the problems have been aggravated by certain government
policies, particularly the creation of new jobs in the government and its
enterprises in order to alleviate unemployment and to generate political
support. Because of the 'three-two system' for distribution of government
jobs (three to majority party appointees and two to minority appointees)
established during the 1930s, one could fairly say that both parties are at
fault for the current top-heavy administration. Indeed government
employees grew from 58,000 in 1938 to 170,000 in 1955 to about 200,000
now. Because of attractive retirement and fringe benefits the belief prevails
that everyone has a right to a government job – although salaries trail so far
behind inflation that most government employees need more than one job to
survive. But the overall result has been deficit financing for a public
administration often criticised for ineptitude, slow action, interminable
paper-work, high absenteeism, poor management, low technical preparation
and general corruption.
Uruguay's system of paying for its state-employment welfare system is to
retain a portion of export earnings through the use of multiple currency-
exchange rates. Thus the exporter is paid in pesos by the central bank at a
rate inferior to the free market value of his products with the retention being
used by the bank for government operations. This system of retentions is at
once a means for income redistribution and the equivalent of an export tax
damaging to the competitiveness of the country's products in international
markets. Retentions also serve as a disincentive to the primary producing
sector, the cattle and sheep ranchers, who resist taxation to support the
Montevideo government bureaucracy and the welfare system. The result in
recent years has frequently been for ranchers to withhold wool and cattle
from the market or to sell their products contraband – usually across the
unguarded border to southern Brazil.
The contradiction between rural and urban interests, aggravated by decline
in export earnings, resulted in Uruguay's falling productivity and declining
standard of living. In 1958, after almost 100 years in opposition, the Blanco
Party won the national elections in coalition with a rural pressure group
known as the Federal League for Ruralist Action or Ruralistas. This
coalition instituted programmes to favour exports of ranching products but
with little success at first. In 1959 major international credit was needed for
balance-of-payments relief, and at the insistence of the International
Monetary Fund fiscal reforms were adopted in the hope of stabilising
inflation, balancing trade and stimulating exports. The peso was devalued,
retentions on exports lightened, import controls established and consumer
and other subsidies curtailed. The recovery programme failed, however,
partly because industrial import prices continued to rise while inflation and
other ills have also continued. The peso, which was devalued from 1.5 to
6.5 per dollar in 1959, has continued to fall and is now down to about 18
per dollar. The cost-of-living increase, a not extreme 15 per cent in 1962,
went up by 33·5 per cent in 1963. In spite of continued economic decline,
however, the Blancos were able to retain control of the executive in the
1962 elections, largely because of new government jobs created before the
elections.
Perhaps more fundamental than the disincentives to ranchers and other
contradictions in the income redistribution policies is the dilution of
Uruguayan political power. The collegiate executive, conceived as a power-
sharing arrangement between the two major parties and as a safeguard
against usurpation of excessive authority, consists of nine members, six
from the majority party and three from the minority party. In practice,
however, the National Council of Government has many of the appearances
of a third legislative chamber because of the factionalism in the major
parties promoted by the electoral system. The current NCG, for example,
consists of three members from one Blanco faction, two from another and
one from a third faction. The Colorado minority members are similarly
divided: two from one faction and one from another. Thus five separate
factions are represented on the executive, each with its own programme and
political organisation. Ability of the executive to lead and to make decisions
is considerably limited and conditioned by fluctuating alignments of the
factions, often across party lines, on different issues.
The Legislature is similarly atomised and moreover self-serving. A special
law allows each senator and deputy to import free of duty a new foreign
automobile each year which at inflated Uruguayan prices means an
automatic double or triple increase in value. Legislation in 1961 similarly
favoured politicians, providing for privileged retirement benefits for
political officeholders, special government loans for legislators and
exceptionally generous arrangements for financing legislators' homes.
What are some of the solutions to this country's problems when already
they have so much going in their favour? Some degree of austerity is
necessary, but reforms are also needed in the government enterprises, the
ranches, and, most of all, in the executive.
The twenty-eight government enterprises, commonly known as the
autonomous agencies and decentralised services, are noted for inefficiency,
corruption and waste. For such a small country the scope of their operations
is vast: railways, airlines, trucking, bus lines, petroleum refining and
distribution, cement production, alcohol production and importation, meat
packing, insurance, mortgage and commercial banking, maritime shipping,
administration of the port of Montevideo, electricity, telephones and
telegraphs, water and sewerage services. Improved management and
elimination of waste and corruption in the Central Administration – the
various ministries as opposed to the autonomous agencies and decentralised
services – is without doubt equally important.
In the ranching sector two major problems must be solved: concentration of
land and income, and low capital and technology. On land concentration,
some 5 per cent of the units hold about 60 per cent of the land while about
75 per cent of the units hold less than 10 per cent of the land – the
latifundia-minifundia problem escaped Batlle's attention. Over 40 per cent
of the land, moreover, is exploited through some form of precarious tenure
with the corresponding disincentive to capitalize. Clearly the large
landholdings must be redistributed in order to intensify land use both for
production and employment.
As for the executive, commentary has started on constitutional reform such
as a return to the one-man presidency or perhaps retention of the collegiate
system but with all members elected from the same party.
No one seems to know just how Uruguay will solve these problems but all
agree that the country is in an economic, political and moral crisis.
Montevideo 21 March 1964
The Montevideo station is about medium-sized as WH stations go. Besides
the Chief of Station, Ned Holman, and O'Grady, we have four operations
officers (one each for Soviet operations, communist party and related
groups, covert-action operations and Cuban operations), a station
administrative assistant, two communications officers and three secretaries
– all under cover in the Embassy political section. On the outside under
non-official cover we have two US citizen contract agents who serve as
case officers for certain FI and CA operations.
Uruguay's advanced state of development, as compared with Ecuador, is
clearly reflected in the station's analysis of the operational environment
which is much more sophisticated and hostile than in poor and backward
surroundings. Although there are similarities in the stations' targets the
differences are mostly the greater capability of the enemy here.
The Communist Party of Uruguay (PCU)
In contrast to the divided, weak and faction-ridden Communist Party of
Ecuador, the PCU is a well-organised and disciplined party with influence
far beyond its vote-getting ability. Thanks in part to the electoral system
(the ley de lemas) the PCU has only minimal participation in the national
legislature: three seats of a total of 130. The party's strength is growing,
however, largely because of the deteriorating economic situation. Whereas
in the 1958 elections the PCU received 27,000 votes (2.6 per cent), in 1962
they received 41,000 (3.5 per cent). Station estimates of PCU are also
rising: from an estimated 3000 members in 1962 to about 6000 at the
present – still less than the PCU claim of membership in excess of 10,000.
The PCU's political activities are largely channelled through its political
front: the Leftist Liberation Front, better known as FIDEL (for Frente
Izquierda de Liberacion). Besides the PCU, FIDEL includes the Uruguayan
Revolutionary Movement (MRO) and several small leftist splinter groups.
Ariel Collazo, the principal leader of the MRO, holds a seat in the Chamber
of Deputies which, with the three PCU seats, brings FIDEL congressional
representation to four.
Uruguay's exceptionally permissive political atmosphere allows free reign
for the PCU's activities in labour and student organisations as well as in the
political front. The party's newspaper, El Popular, is published daily and
sold throughout Montevideo – a fairly effective propaganda vehicle for the
PCU's campaigns against 'North American imperialism' and the corruption
of the traditional Uruguayan bourgeois parties. While many communist
parties are increasingly rocked with splits along the Soviet-Chinese model,
the PCU is only minimally troubled and maintains unwavering support for
the Soviets. Support for the Cuban revolution and opposition to any break
in relations with Cuba are principal PCU policies.
The Uruguayan Workers Confederation (CTU)
Throughout its forty-odd years of existence the PCU has been active in the
Uruguayan labour movement, peaking in 1947 when the party controlled
the General Union of Workers which represented about 60 per cent of
organised labour. Following the death of Stalin, however, ideological
division led to a decline in PCU trade-union influence while the rival
Uruguayan Labour Confederation (CSU), backed by the Montevideo
station, became the predominant organisation. The CSU affiliated with
ORIT and the ICFTU, but began to decline when the Uruguayan Socialist
Party withdrew support and the PCU renewed its organisational efforts. In
the early 1960s under PCU leadership the CTU was formed, and it has now
become by far the largest and most important Uruguayan trade-union
organisation. Besides PCU leadership in the CTU, left-wing socialists are
also influential.
Major policies of the CTU are support for the Cuban revolution and
opposition to government economic policies, particularly the reform
measures adopted at the insistence of the International Monetary Fund
(devaluation, austerity) that hurt the lower-middle and low income groups.
While only a small percentage of the workers are communists (most
workingmen vote for the traditional parties), the PCU and other extreme-
left influence in the CTU allows for mobilisation of up to several hundred
thousand workers, perhaps half the entire labour force, what with the
prevalence of legitimate grievances. Action may range from sitdown or
slowdown strikes of an hour or two, to all-out prolonged strikes paralysing
important sectors of the economy. As should be expected, the CTU is an
affiliate of the Prague-based World Federation of Trade Unions.
The Federation of University Students of Uruguay (FEUU)
The situation in the national student union is similar to the labour
movement: communists are a small minority of the student population but
control the federation. There are two institutions of higher learning in
Uruguay, the University of the Republic with an enrolment of about 14,000
and the National Technical School (Universidad de Trabajo) with about
18,000, both in Montevideo. FEUU activities, however, are concentrated at
the University of the Republic but extend into the secondary system. A
PCU member is Secretary General of FEUU, and, when a cause is
presented, large numbers of students can be mobilised for militant street
action and student strikes. Campaigns of the FEUU include support for the
Cuban revolution and CTU demands, and attacks against 'North American
imperialism'.
The Socialist Party of Uruguay (PSU)
Although the pro-Castro PSU is waning as a political force in Uruguay – in
the 1962 elections they were shut out of national office for the first time in
many years – it retains some influence among intellectuals, writers and
trade unionists. A considerable part of the Socialists' problem is internal
dissention over peaceful versus violent political action. A portion of PSU
militants under Raul Sendic, the leader of the sugar workers from Bella
Union in northern Uruguay, have broken away and formed a small, activist
revolutionary organisation. They continue to be weak, however, and Sendic
is a fugitive believed to be hiding in Argentina.
The Uruguayan Revolutionary Movement (MRO)
Although the MRO participates in FIDEL with the PCU, it retains its
independence and a much more militant political posture than the PCU.
Because it is dedicated to armed insurrection it is considered dangerous, but
it is thought to have no more than a few hundred members which
considerably limits its influence.
Trotskyist and Anarchists
The Revolutionary Workers Party (POR) under Luis Naguil is the
Trotskyist group aligned with the Posadas faction of the Fourth
International. They number less than one hundred and their influence is
marginal. A similarly small number of anarchists led by the Gatti brothers,
Mauricio and Gerardo, operate in Montevideo, but they too merit only
occasional station coverage.
Argentine Exiles
Uruguay, with its benevolent and permissive political climate, is a
traditional refuge for political exiles from other countries, especially
Argentina and Paraguay. Since the overthrow of Peron in 1955 Montevideo
has been a safe haven for Peronists whose activities in Argentina suffer
from periods of severe repression. The Buenos Aires station is considered
rather weak in penetration operations against the Peronists particularly
those on the extreme left. The Montevideo station, therefore, has
undertaken several successful operations against Peronist targets in
Uruguay through which Cuban support to Peronists has been discovered.
One operation, an audio penetration of the apartment of Julio Gallego Soto,
an exiled Peronist journalist, revealed a clandestine relationship between
Gallego and the former chief of Cuban intelligence in Montevideo, Earle
Perez Freeman – the would-be defector in Mexico City. Our station, in fact,
has made the most important analysis of the complicated arrangement of
groups within Peronism – those of CIA interest are termed 'Left-Wing
Peronists and Argentine Terrorists' – but current signs are that the Argentine
government is to allow Peronists to return, and much Argentine
revolutionary activity will soon begin moving back to Buenos Aires.
Paraguayan Exiles
To an even greater extent than the Argentine extremists, the Communist
Party of Paraguay (PCP) is forced to operate almost entirely outside its own
country. Based mainly in Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Sao Paulo, the
PCP is largely ineffectual with only about 500 of its three to four thousand
members living in Paraguay. Harassment and prison for PCP activists under
the Stroessner government is most effective. Nevertheless, the PCP has
formed a political front, the United Front for National Liberation (FULNA),
which includes some non-communist participation – mainly from the left
wing of the Paraguayan Liberal Party and from the Febrerista movement,
neither of which is allowed to operate in Paraguay. FULNA headquarters is
in Montevideo.
The Soviet Mission
The Soviet Mission in Montevideo consists of the Legation, the
Commercial Office and the Tass representative. About twenty officers are
assigned to the Legation of whom only eight are on the diplomatic list of
the Uruguayan Foreign Ministry with the rest listed as administrative and
support officials. Of the twenty officers in the Embassy, twelve are known
or suspected to be intelligence officers: six known and two suspect KGB
(state security), and two known and two suspect GRU (military
intelligence). The Commercial Office, located in a separate building that is
also used for Soviet Mission housing, consists of five officers of whom two
are known and one is suspect KGB. The Tass representative is known KGB.
Thus of twenty-six Soviets in Montevideo sixteen are known or suspected
intelligence officers, about the average for Soviet missions in Latin
America.
Targets for Soviet intelligence operations in Uruguay, other than the US
Embassy and the CIA station, are fairly obvious although station operations
have failed to turn up hard evidence except in rare circumstances. Thought
to be high on the Soviet priority list are support to the PCU and CTU,
penetration of the Uruguayan government and the leftist factions of
traditional political parties through their 'agents of influence' programmes,
propaganda publishing and distribution throughout Latin America through
the firm Ediciones Pueblos Unidos among others, cultural penetration
through various organisations including the Soviet-Uruguayan Friendship
Society, travel support through the Montevideo office of Scandinavian
Airlines System, and support for 'illegal' intelligence officers sent out under
false nationalities and identities.
The Cuban Mission
Like the Soviets, the Cubans have an Embassy and separate Commercial
Office, but Prensa Latina, the Cuban wire service, is operated by
Uruguayans and Argentines. The Embassy is headed by a Charge d'Affaires
with four diplomats, all either known or suspected intelligence officers. The
Commercial Office is operated by a Commercial Counsellor and his wife,
both of whom are thought to be intelligence officers. Contrary to Agency
operations against the Soviets, however, there is no known framework for
classifying Cuban intelligence operations, and practically nothing is known
about the organisational structure of Cuban intelligence.
Nevertheless, the Montevideo station has collected valuable information on
Cuban involvement with Argentine revolutionaries, and strong indications
exist that the Cubans are providing support from their Montevideo Embassy
to current guerrilla operations in northern Argentina. Other Cuban activities
relate to the PCU, CTU, FEUU, artists, intellectuals, writers and leftist
leaders of the traditional parties.
Other Communist Diplomatic Missions
Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia also
have diplomatic missions in Montevideo. The Czechs are considered the
most important from a counter-intelligence viewpoint, but station personnel
limitations preclude meaningful operations against any of these other
communist missions.
There is also an East German trade mission. Because of the higher
priorities, we don't cover their activities closely and the Chief of Station is
trying through the Minister of the Interior to have them expelled.
As I read the files and briefing materials on Uruguay it becomes clear that
the operational climate here, with the Soviet, Cuban and Czech intelligence
services, and a sophisticated local political opposition in the PCU and
related organisations, is rather less relaxed than in Ecuador. Care will have
to be taken in operational security, especially in agent meetings and
communications. Nevertheless, as Uruguayans are generally well disposed
to the US, and because the station has a close relationship with the police
and other security forces, the operational climate is generally favourable.
Montevideo 22 March 1964
Until about a year ago the Montevideo station had the typical anti-
communist political operations found at other hemisphere stations, the most
important of which were effected through Benito Nardone, leader of the
Federal League for Ruralist Action, and President of Uruguay in 1960-61.
Other operations were designed to take control of the streets away from
communists and other leftists, and our squads, often with the participation
of off-duty policemen, would break up their meetings and generally
terrorise them. Torture of communists and other extreme leftists was used in
interrogations by our liaison agents in the police. An outstanding success
among these operations was the expulsion, in January 1961, just before
Nardone's term as NCG President ended, of the Cuban Ambassador, Mario
Garcia Inchaustegui, together with a Soviet Embassy First Secretary, for
supposedly meddling in Uruguayan affairs. The station's goal, of course,
had been a break in diplomatic relations but resistance was too strong
among other members of the NCG.
These operations had been expanded, much as the ECACTOR operations in
Ecuador, under Tom Flores who arrived in 1960 as Chief of Station.
However, when Ambassador Wymberly Coerr arrived in 1962, he insisted
that Flores put an end to political intervention with Nardone and to the
militant action operations which had caused several deaths and given the
communists convenient victims for their propaganda campaigns against the
'fascist' Blanco government. Flores resisted, and in 1963 Ambassador Coerr
arranged to have him transferred and the objectionable operations ended.
Holman was sent to replace Flores, but he has maintained a discreet
communication with Nardone, only for intelligence collection and without
political-action implications. At this moment Nardone is in the terminal
stages of cancer and for all practical purposes operations with him have
ended. The rest of the station operational programme, however, covers all
areas. First the Related Missions Directive:
PRIORITY A
Collect and report intelligence on the strength and intentions of communist
and other political organisations hostile to the US, including their
international sources of support and guidance.
Objective 1: Establish operations designed to effect agent and/or technical
penetrations of the Cuban, Soviet and other communist missions in
Uruguay.
Objective 2: Effect agent and/or technical penetrations at the highest
possible level of the Communist Party of Uruguay, the Communist Youth of
Uruguay, the Leftist Liberation Front (FIDEL), the Uruguayan Workers'
Confederation, the Socialist Party of Uruguay (revolutionary branch), the
Federation of University Students of Uruguay, the Uruguayan
Revolutionary Movement (MRO) and related organisations.
Objective 3: Effect agent and/or technical penetrations of the Argentine
terrorist and leftist Peronist organisations operating in Uruguay, the
Communist Party of Paraguay, the Paraguayan United Front for National
Liberation (FULNA) and other similar third-country organisations
operating in Uruguay.
PRIORITY B
Maintain liaison relations with the Uruguayan security services, principally
the Military Intelligence Service and the Montevideo Police Department.
Objective 1: Through liaison services maintain intelligence collection
capabilities to supplement station unilateral operations and to collect
information on Uruguayan government policies as related to US
government policies and to the communist movement in Uruguay.
Objective 2: Maintain an intelligence exchange programme with liaison
services in order to provide information on communist and related political
movements in Uruguay to the Uruguayan government, including when
possible information from unilateral sources. Objective 3: Engage in joint
operations with Uruguayan security services in order to supplement station
unilateral operations and to improve the intelligence collection capabilities
of the services.
Objective 4: Through training, guidance and financial support attempt to
improve the overall capabilities of the Uruguayan security services for
collection of intelligence on the communist movement in Uruguay.
PRIORITY C
Through covert-action operations: (1) disseminate information and opinion
designed to counteract anti-US or pro-communist propaganda; (2)
neutralise communist or extreme-leftist influence in principal mass
organisations or assist in establishing and maintaining alternative
organisations under non-communist leadership.
Objective 1: Place appropriate propaganda through the most effective local
media, including press, radio and television.
Objective 2: Support democratic leaders of labour, student and youth
organisations, particularly in areas where communist influence is strongest
(the Federation of University Students of Uruguay, the Uruguayan Workers'
Confederation) and where democratic leaders may be encouraged to combat
communist subversion.
Foreign Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence Operations (FI-CI)
AVCAVE. Of the four agent penetrations of the Communist Party of
Uruguay, AVCAVE-1 is the most important, classified as 'middle-level'
while the others are 'low-level'. The station's very limited success in running
agents into the PCU in comparison with other countries, Ecuador, for
example, is due in large part to the higher standard of living and welfare
system: Uruguayan communists simply are not as destitute and harassed as
their colleagues in poorer countries and thus are less susceptible to
recruitment on mercenary terms. Of equal if not greater importance are the
higher level of political sophistication in Uruguay, superior party
leadership, minimal internal party dissension and the growth the party has
experienced in recent years – there may even be a flicker of revolutionary
hope given the mess the traditional parties are making of the country.
Not that the station hasn't tried to get a 'high-level' agent. Periodic letter
recruitment campaigns and approaches by 'cold pitch' in the streets have
been undertaken regularly but without success. AVCAVE-1's access derives
from his membership of one of Montevideo's district committees and his
close relation with an incipient pro-Chinese faction. His position enables
the station to anticipate some PCU policies but he is far from the power
locus of the Secretariat. Of some interest, however, is AVCAVE-1's guard
duty at PCU headquarters.
AVPEARL. For many months Paul Burns, the case officer in charge of
operations against the PCU, has been studying ways to bug the conference
room at PCU headquarters where meetings of the Secretariat and other
sensitive conversations are held. Through AVOIDANCE-9, one of the low-
level penetration agents who is occasionally posted to guard duty at PCU
headquarters, the station has obtained clay impressions of the keys to the
conference room from which duplicate keys have been made. However, the
twenty-four-hour guard service at PCU headquarters renders an audio
installation in the conference room almost impossible by surreptitious entry.
AVOIDANCE-9 has also photographed the electrical installations in the
conference room, which the guards check on their rounds of the building,
and the station pouched to Washington identical electrical sockets of the
bulbous, protruding type used in Uruguay. The Technical Services Division
in headquarters is casting bugs (microphone, carrier-current transmitter and
switches all subminiaturized) into identical porcelain wall sockets of their
own manufacture. The Minox photographs of the conference-room sockets
were also needed so that the slightest details of painted edges and drops can
be duplicated on the bugs being cast at headquarters. Installation will
consist simply in removing the current sockets and replacing them with
those cast by TSD. If successfully installed the stereo audio signal will be
transmitted down the electric power line as far as the first of the large
transformers usually located on utility poles. A study of the power lines has
also been made in order to determine which apartments and houses are
between the target building and the first transformer. One of these locations
will have to be acquired as Listening Post because radio frequency (RF)
signals cannot pass through the transformer. Several agents already tested in
support operations are being considered for manning the LP. AVOIDANCE-
9, however, has been kept as unaware as possible of the true nature of this
operation because he is extremely mercenary, and there is some concern
that he might use his knowledge of the installation, if he made it, to
blackmail the station later. Thus AVCAVE-1, whose loyalty is of a higher
type, was instructed to volunteer for guard duty and he too is now spending
one or two nights per month in a position to make the AVPEARL
installation. At this moment the station is awaiting the devices from
headquarters for testing before installation.
AVBASK. The station's only penetration of the Uruguayan Revolutionary
Movement (MRO) is Anibal Mercader, a young bank employee developed
and recruited by Michael Berger, the officer whom I am replacing. The
agent's information is generally low-to-middle-level because he is some
distance from the MRO leadership. He is well motivated, however, and
there is some hope that he could rise within this relatively small
organisation. Nevertheless, as the MRO is terrorist-oriented there may be a
problem over how far the agent should go, even if willing, in carrying out
really damaging activities for his organisation. The agent, moreover, is torn
between emigrating to the US (where his banking talents could provide a
decent income) and remaining in Uruguay where he faces only turmoil and
strain.
AVBUTTE. This is the support and administrative project for all matters to
do with a US citizen who is working under contract as an operations officer.
His name is Ralph Hatry and he is involved in FI operations. His cover is
that of Montevideo representative for Thomas H. Miner and Associates, a
Chicago-based public relations and marketing firm. Hatry, who is about
sixty years old, has a long history of work with US intelligence, including
an assignment in the Far East under cover of an American oil company. The
immediate background to his assignment to Montevideo was a difficult
contract negotiating period, in which Gerry O'Grady, the Deputy Chief of
Station, was involved, and which revealed Hatry to be a very difficult
person but with important sponsor. The Assistant DDP, Thomas
Karamessines, gave instructions to find Hatry a job somewhere and his file
was circulated, eventually landing on the Uruguayan desk.
Hatry came to Montevideo last year and has been causing problems
continuously, for the most part related to his personal finances and his
efforts to increase fringe benefits. Holman, the Chief of Station, is trying to
keep as much distance as possible between Hatry and himself – the opposite
of Hatry's efforts. Because Berger is the junior officer in the station he was
assigned to incorporate Hatry into his operations and to handle his needs in
the station, and as is often the case with officers under nonofficial cover, the
time involved in solving his problems inside the station practically wipes
out the advantage of having him in the field. Nevertheless, Hatry is
handling four operations: a letter intercept, an exiled Paraguayan leader,
several penetration agents of the Paraguayan Communist Party and
FULNA, and an observation post at the Cuban Embassy.
AVBALM. The contact in this operation is Epifanio Mendez Fleitas, the
exiled leader of the Paraguayan Colorado Party. Although the Colorado
Party provides the political base for the Stroessner dictatorship, Mendez
Fleitas' past efforts to promote reform and to unite Colorados against
Stroessner have earned him a position of leadership in the exile community.
He is chiefly dedicated to writing and to keeping together his Popular
Colorado Movement (MOPOCO) which he formed several years ago. We
keep this operation going in Montevideo in order to assist the Asuncion
station and headquarters in following plotting by Paraguayan exiles against
General Stroessner.
AVCASK. This operation is also targeted against Paraguayan exiles,
specifically the Communist Party of Paraguay (PCP) and FULNA, The
principal agent, AVCASK-1, is active in a leftist group within the
Paraguayan Liberal Party, and he reports on leftist trends within the party
while serving as cutout and agent-handler for two lesser agents, AYCASK-
2 and AYCASK-3. AVCASK-2 is also a Liberal Party member but he works
in FULNA and reports to AVCASK-1 on FULNA and PCP work in
FULNA. AVCASK-3 is a PCP member who is currently moving into a
paramilitary wing that is preparing for armed action against the Stroessner
government. Only AVCASK-1, of these three agents, knows that CIA is the
sponsor of the operation and he uses his own Liberal Party work as cover
for the instructions and salaries he pays the other two. Yearly cost of this
project is about five thousand dollars. Hatry meets with AVCASK-1 and
reports back to Michael Berger.
AVIDITY. The station letter intercept provides correspondence from the
Soviet bloc, Cuba, Communist China and certain other countries according
to local addressee. The principal agent is AVANDANA, an elderly man of
many years' service going back to Europe during World War II. He receives
the letters, which come from AVIDITY-9 and AVIDITY-16, both of whom
are employees of Montevideo's central post office. AVANDANA meets one
of the sub-agents each day, receiving and returning the correspondence.
Payment is made on the basis of the numbers of letters accepted.
The letters are processed by AVANDANA at his home, where he has photo
equipment and a flat-bed steam table. He writes summaries of the letters of
interest which he passes with microfilm to Hatry who passes them to
Berger. This operation costs about 10,000 dollars per year.
AVBLINKER. When the station decided to set up an observation post in
front of the Cuban Embassy it was decided to man the OP with
AVENGEFUL-7, who is the wife of AVANDANA, his assistant in the
AVIDITY letter intercept, and an occasional transcriber for the
AVENGEFUL telephone-tapping operation. The OP is in a large house
across the street from the Embassy in the elegant Carrasco section of
Montevideo. The station pays the rent for AVBLINKER-1 and 2, an
American couple who live in the OP house (the husband is employed by an
Uruguayan subsidiary of an American company) and AVENGEFUL-7
spends each day in an upstairs front-room taking photographs of persons
entering and leaving, and maintaining a log with times of entry and exit and
other comment that she reconciles with the photographs which are
processed by AVANDANA. AVENGEFUL-7's work with US intelligence
also goes back to World War II days when she worked behind enemy lines
in Europe.
In addition to the logs and photographs, AVENGEFUL-7 also serves as a
radio base for the AVENIN surveillance team which works most of the time
on Cuban targets. From the 0p she signals by radio when the subject to be
followed leaves the Embassy – with different signals if by foot, by car, or
by one street or another. The team waits in vehicles four or five blocks away
and picks up the subject. The logs and photographs are passed to Hatry who
also passes back instructions on surveillance targets.
AVENIN. The station has two surveillance teams, the oldest and most
effective being the AVENIN team directed by Roberto Musso. The team
consists of seven surveillance agents, one agent in the state-owned electric
company, and one agent in the telegraph company who provides copies of
encoded telegrams sent and received by the Soviet bloc missions through
commercial wire facilities. Most of the surveillance agents, like Musso, are
employees of the Montevideo municipal government, and communications
and instructions are passed by Paul Burns, the case officer in charge, at a
safe office site a block from the municipal palace.
The team is well trained and considered to be one of the best unilateral
surveillance teams in WH Division. Vehicles include two sedans and a
Volkswagen van equipped with a periscope photography rig with a 360-
degree viewing capability for taking pictures and observations through the
roof vent. Concealed radio equipment is also used for communication
between the vehicles, between the vehicles and the OP at the Cuban
Embassy, and between the vehicles and the people on foot. These carry
small battery-operated transmitter-receivers under their clothing and can
communicate with each other as well as with the vehicles. They are also
trained and equipped for clandestine street photography using 35-mm
automatic Robot cameras wrapped to form innocuous packages.
The AVENIN team was formed in the mid-1950s with the original nucleus
of agents coming from part-time police investigators. Until last year, when a
new, separate team was formed, the AVENIN team was almost constantly
assigned to follow Soviet intelligence officers or related targets. Their most
sensational discovery was a series of clandestine meetings between an
official of the Uruguayan Foreign Ministry and a Soviet KGB officer in
which all the clandestine paraphernalia of signals and dead drops had been
used. Photographs and other evidence passed by the station to Uruguayan
authorities led to expulsion of the Soviet officer and considerable
propaganda benefit. Last year, however, the AVENIN team was taken off
Soviet targets and assigned to the Cubans, partly because of increasing
importance of the Cubans and partly because the team was considered to be
fairly well blown to the Soviets.
The AVENIN agent in the electric company is valuable because he has
access to lists of persons who are registered for electric service at any
address in Montevideo. Not only are the lists helpful in identifying the
apartments or offices where surveillance subjects are followed, but the lists
are also used to check building security of potential safe sites. The same
agent also provides on request the architect's plans for any building served
by the electric company and these plans are used for planning audio
installations or surreptitious entries for other purposes. The same agent,
moreover, can be called upon to make routine electrical inspection visits,
ostensibly for the electric company, which gives him access to practically
any office, apartment or house in Montevideo for inside casings.
AVENGEFUL. The station telephone-tapping operation is effected through
the AVALANCHE liaison service (the Montevideo Police Department) with
a history dating back to World War II when the FBI was in charge of
counter-intelligence in South America. This is currently the most important
joint operation underway between the station and an Uruguayan service.
Connections are made in telephone company exchanges by company
engineers at the request of the police department. A thirty-pair cable runs
from the main downtown exchange to police headquarters where, on the top
floor, the listening post is located.
The chief technician, Jacobo de Anda, and the assistant technician and
courier, Juan Torres, man the LP, which has tables with actuators and tape-
recorders for each of the thirty pairs. Torres arranges for lines to be
connected by the telephone company engineers and he delivers the tapes
each day to another courier, AVOIDANCE, who takes them around to the
transcribers who work either at home or in safe site offices. This courier
also picks up the transcriptions and old tapes from the transcribers and
passes them to Torres who sends them to the station each day with yet
another courier who works for the Intelligence Department of the police.
The police department thus arranges for connections and operates the LP.
The courier AVOIDANCE is a station agent known only to Torres among
the police department personnel involved. Each of the transcribers is
unknown to the police department but copies of all the transcriptions,
except in special cases, are provided by the station to the police intelligence
department. Each operations officer in the station who receives telephone
coverage of targets of interest to him is responsible for handling the
transcribers of his lines: thus the Soviet operations officer, Russell Phipps,
is in charge of the two elderly Russian emigres who transcribe (in English)
the Soviet lines; the CP officer, Paul Burns, is in charge of the transcriber of
the PCU line; and the Cuban operations officer is in charge of the
transcribers of the Cuban lines. Most of the transcribers are kept apart from
one another as well as from the police department.
The station, which provides technical equipment and financing for the
operation, deals directly with the Chief of the Guardia Metropolitana, who
is the police department official in overall charge of the telephone-tapping
operation. He is usually an Army colonel or lieutenant-colonel detailed to
run the Guardia Metropolitana, the paramilitary shock force of the police.
Currently he is Colonel Roberto Ramirez. Usually he assigns lines to be
tapped as part of his operations against contraband operations which also
provides cover for the station lines which are political in nature. Torres and
de Anda work under the supervision of the Chief of the Guardia
Metropolitana although approval in principle for the operation comes from
the Minister of the Interior (internal security) and the Chief of the
Montevideo Police Department. The station encourages the use of
telephone tapping against contraband activities not only because it's good
cover but also because police contraband operations are lucrative to them
and such operations tend to offset fears of political scandal depending upon
who happens to be Minister of the Interior at any particular time.
Only seven lines are being monitored right now. They include three lines on
Soviet targets (one on the Embassy, one on the Consulate and another that
alternates between a second Embassy telephone and the Soviet Commercial
Office), two on Cuban targets (one on the Embassy and one on the
Commercial Office), one on a revolutionary Argentine with close
associations with the Cubans, and one line assigned to the headquarters of
the Communist Party of Uruguay.
Security is a serious problem with the AVENGEFUL operation because so
many people know of it: former ministers and their subordinates, former
police chiefs and their subordinates, current officers in the Guardia
Metropolitana and the Criminal Investigations and Intelligence
Departments. Copies of the transcriptions prepared for the police
intelligence department are considered very insecure because of the poor
physical security of the department despite continuous station efforts to
encourage tightening. Regular denunciations of telephone tapping by the
police appear in the PCU newspaper, El Popular, but without the detail that
might require shutting down the operation.
Telephone tapping in Montevideo, then, is very shaky with many
possibilities for serious scandal.
AVBARON. The station's only agent penetration of the Cuban mission is a
local employee who began working for the station as a low-level
penetration of the PCU. He is Warner, the Cuban Embassy chauffeur, whose
mother works at the Embassy as a cook. About two months ago the Cubans
fired their chauffeur and the station instructed this agent to try, through his
mother, to get hired by the Cubans as their new chauffeur. Paul Burns, the
station officer in charge, arranged for a crash course in driving lessons and
suddenly this agent became a very important addition to the operational
programme against the Cubans. Through his mother's pleading he was
hired, and in spite of an accident the first day he was out with the Embassy
car, he has gained steadily in their confidence. Although he does not have
access to documents or sensitive information on Cuban support to
revolutionaries, he is reporting valuable personality data on Cuban officials
as well as intelligence on security and other procedures designed to protect
the Embassy and the Commercial Department. Meetings are held directly
between the station officer and the agent, usually in a safe apartment site or
an automobile.
ECFLUTE. The only potential double-agent case against the Cuban
intelligence service here is Medardo Toro, the Ecuadorean sent to Buenos
Aires by the Quito station to report on exiled former President Velasco.
Although Toro claims to have established a channel from Velasco to the
Cuban government through Ricardo Gutierrez Torrens, a Cuban diplomat
believed to be their chief of intelligence in Montevideo, and the Quito
station and headquarters as well are extremely interested in monitoring the
channel for signs of possible Cuban support to Velasco, Ned Holman, the
Montevideo Chief of Station, continues to avoid handling the case in
Montevideo. His reasoning is that we already have more than enough work
to do and he is afraid to open the door to still more coverage of exiles. For
the time being Toro's meetings with Gutierrez will be monitored through
reports sent by pouch from Buenos Aires.
AVBUSY/ZRKNICK. The most important counter-intelligence case
against the Cubans in Montevideo consists of the monitoring of the mail of
a known Cuban intelligence support agent. The case started in 1962 when
encoded radio messages began from Havana to a Cuban agent believed to
be located either in Lima or La Paz. The National Security Agency is able
to decrypt the messages which contain interesting information but fail to
reveal the identity of the agent who receives them. In one of the messages
Havana control gave the name and address of an accommodation address in
Montevideo to which the agent should write if necessary, including a
special signal on the envelope to indicate operational correspondence. The
addressee in Montevideo is Jorge Castillo, a bank employee active in the
FIDEL political front, and the signal is the underlining of Edificio
Panamericano, where Castillo lives. Operational correspondence is
expected to be written in secret writing.
In order to monitor this communications channel, should it be activated, the
station has recruited the letter carrier who serves Castillo. Because the letter
carrier, AVBUSY-1, cannot be told of the special signal on the envelope
(since it came from a sensitive decrypting process) the station officer has to
review all the mail sent to Castillo – a very time-consuming process. So far
no operational correspondence has been intercepted, but headquarters
correspondence indicates that successful identification has been made of
Cuban agents in similar ZRKNICK cases. (ZKRNICK is the cryptonym
used for the entire communications monitoring operation against Cuban
agents in Latin America.)
AVBLIMP. The Soviet Embassy here is a large mansion surrounded by a
garden and high walls. In order to monitor the comings and goings of
Soviet personnel, especially the intelligence officers, the station operates an
observation post in a high-rise apartment building about a block away and
in front of the Embassy. The OP operators are a married couple who live in
the o P as their apartment and divide the work: keeping a log of entries and
exits of Soviet personnel, photographing visitors and the Soviets themselves
from time to time, photographing the licence plates of cars used by visitors,
signalling the AVBANDY surveillance team by radio in the same manner as
the OP signals the AVENIN team at the Cuban Embassy. The AVBLIMP op
also serves for special observation of the superior-inferior relationships
among Soviet personnel, which requires long training sessions with the
Soviet operations officer. Such relationships are vital for identifying the
hierarchy within the KGB and GRU offices. The apartment is owned by a
station support agent who ostensibly rents it to the OP couple as their
living-quarters.
AVBANDY. The new (1963) surveillance team formed to operate against
the Soviets and Soviet-related targets consists of a team chief who is an
Army major and five other agents. The team has two sedans and
communications equipment similar to that used by the AVENIN team, with
coordination when appropriate with the AVBLIMP observation post. The
team chief, AVBANDY-1, originally came to the attention of the station
through the liaison operations with the Uruguayan military intelligence
service, and after a period of development he was recruited to lead the new
team without the knowledge of his Army chiefs. The team is currently
undergoing intensive training by Eziquiel Ramirez, a training officer from
headquarters who specializes in training surveillance teams. His period with
the AVBANDY team will total about eight weeks by the time he is finished
next month.
AVERT. For some years the station has owned, through AVERT-1, a
support agent, the house that is joined by a common wall to the Soviet
Consulate. The Consulate and the AVERT house are the opposite sides of
the same three-storey building that is divided down the middle. The
building is situated next to the Soviet Embassy property and backs up to the
Embassy backyard garden. In the Consulate, in addition to offices, two
Soviet families are housed, including the Consul who is a known KGB
officer. The AVERT house has been vacant for several years and has been
used operationally only for occasional visits by technicians with their
sophisticated equipment for capturing radiations from Soviet
communications equipment in the Embassy. When successful such
electronic operations can enable encoded communications to be read but we
haven't been successful so far in Montevideo.
Recently there has been considerable indecision about what to do with the
AVERT property: whether to use it as an additional OP, since it allows for
observation of the garden where Soviet officers are known to have
discussions; whether to use it to bug the Consulate offices and living-
quarters; whether to sell it; or whether to retain it for some unknown future
use. For the time being it is being retained for possible future use although
the station strongly suspects that the Soviets are aware that it is under our
control. They have, in fact, probably bugged our side as a routine matter of
protection.
SOVIET ACCESS AGENTS
The weakest aspect of Soviet operations in Montevideo is the access agent
programme – Uruguayans or others who can develop personal relationships
with Soviet officials in order to report personality information, and, if
appropriate, to recruit or induce defection. Although three or four station
agents are in contact with Soviet officers their relationships are weak and
their reporting scanty.
AVDANDY. Part of the station programme against the Cubans, Soviets and
other communist diplomatic missions in Montevideo is keeping up-to-date
photographs and biographical data on all their personnel. Although the
observation posts against the Cubans and Soviets provide good
photographs, their use is limited because of the necessity to protect the OPs.
The Uruguayan Foreign Ministry, on the other hand, obtains identification
photographs on all foreign personnel assigned to diplomatic missions in
order to issue the identity card that each is supposed to carry. AVDANDY-1,
is a medium-level official of the Foreign Ministry who gives copies of all
these photographs to the Chief of Station as well as titbits of information.
Although efforts have been made to obtain passports of communist
diplomatic personnel for a period long enough to photograph them, this
agent has been reluctant to take the added risk of lending the passports
when they are sent with the application. Nevertheless his willingness to turn
over the Foreign Ministry Protocol Office files for copying in the station is a
valuable, if routine, support function.
ZRBEACH. One of the activities of the CIA in support of the National
Security Agency's code-cracking task is to maintain teams of radio monitors
in certain US embassies. Often but not only where Soviet diplomatic
missions exist, CIA stations include a contingent of monitors who scan
frequencies with sophisticated equipment and record radio communications
which are passed to NSA for processing. The programme is called
ZRBEACH. Such a team has been operating for some years in the
Montevideo station. The monitors also place mobile stations as close as
possible to target-encrypting machines for capturing radiations – as in the
use of the AVERT house next to the Soviet Embassy here. ZRBEACH
teams work under the direction of Division D of the DDP although locally
they are supervised by the Chief of Station.
When Ned Holman arrived in Montevideo he recommended that the
ZRBEACH team be withdrawn for lack of production. Gradually their
activities were curtailed and in recent weeks they have been packing
equipment. Several have already departed for other stations and soon Fred
Morehouse, the ZRBEACH team chief, will leave for his new assignment in
Caracas.
AVBALSA. Liaison with the Uruguayan military intelligence service is in
charge of Gerry O'Grady, the Deputy Chief of Station, who meets regularly
with Lieutenant-Colonel Zipitria, the deputy chief of the service. Holman
also occasionally meets Zipitria and when necessary Colonel Carvajal, the
military intelligence service chief. For some years the Montevideo station
has tried to build up the capabilities of his liaison service through training,
equipment donation and funding but with very little success. Even now,
their main collection activity is clipping from the local leftist press. The
main problem with this service is the Uruguayan military tradition of
keeping aloof from politics, as is shown by Carvajal's reluctance to engage
the service in operations against the PCU and other extreme-left political
groups. On the other hand the Deputy Chief, Zipitria, is a rabid anti-
communist whose ideas border on fascist-style repression and who is
constantly held in check by Carvajal. For the time being the station is using
the Deputy Chief as a source of intelligence on government policy towards
the extreme left and on rumblings within the military against the civilian
government. Hopefully Zipitria will some day be chief of the service.
AVALANCHE. The main public security force in Uruguay is the
Montevideo Police Department – cryptonym AVALANCHE – with which
liaison relations date to just before World War II when the FBI was
monitoring the considerable pro-Nazi tendencies in Uruguay and Argentina.
In the late 1940s, when the CIA station was opened, a number of joint
operations were taken over from the FBI including the telephone-tapping
project. Although police departments exist in the interior departments of
Uruguay, the technical superiority and other capabilities of the Montevideo
police almost always produce decisions by Ministers of the Interior that
important cases be handled by AVALANCHE even when outside
Montevideo.
As in Ecuador, the Minister of the Interior is in charge of the police, and
station liaison with civilian security forces begins with the Minister,
currently a Blanco politician named Felipe Gil whom Holman meets
regularly. Holman also meets regularly, or whenever necessary, Colonel
Ventura Rodriguez, Chief of the Montevideo Police; Carlos Martin, Deputy
Chief; Inspector Guillermo Copello, Chief of Investigations; Inspector Juan
Jose Braga, Deputy Chief of Investigations; Commissioner Alejandro
Otero, Chief of the Intelligence and Liaison Department; Colonel Roberto
Ramirez, Chief of the Guardia Metropolitana (the anti-riot shock force);
Lieutenant-Colonel Mario Barbe, Chief of the Guardia Republicana (the
paramilitary police cavalry); and others. Of these the most important are the
Minister, Chief of Police, Chief of Intelligence and Liaison and Chief of the
Guardia Metropolitana, who supervises the telephone-tapping operation.
As in Argentina, the political sensitivity of an AID Public Safety Mission
for improving police capabilities has precluded such a Mission in Uruguay
and restricted police assistance to what overall demands on station
manpower allow. But whereas in Argentina a non-official cover operations
officer has for some years been ostensibly contracted by the Argentine
Federal Police to run telephone-tapping and other joint operations, in
Uruguay these tasks have been handled by station officers under official
cover in the Embassy. Until January all the tasks relating to AVALANCHE
were handled by the Deputy Chief of Station, but Holman took over these
duties when Wiley Gilstrap, the Deputy, was transferred to become Chief of
Station in San Salvador and replaced by O'Grady, whose Spanish is very
limited. The station long-range plans continue to be the establishment of an
AID Public Safety Mission that would include a CIA officer in order to
release station officers in the Embassy for other tasks. However, such a
development will have to wait until a strong Minister of the Interior who
will fight for the Public Safety Mission appears on the scene. On the other
hand Uruguayan police officers are being sent by the station for training at
the Police Academy, which has changed its name to the International Police
Academy and is moving from Panama to Washington.
Of the activities undertaken by the police on behalf of the station, the most
important is the AVENGEFUL telephone-tapping operation. Other activities
are designed to supplement the station unilateral collection programme and
to keep the police from discovering these operations. Apart from telephone
tapping these other activities are effected through the Department of
Intelligence and Liaison.
Travel Control. Each day the station receives from the police the passenger
lists of all arrivals and departures at the Montevideo airport and the port
where nightly passenger boats shuttle to Buenos Aires. These are
accompanied by a special daily list of important people compiled by I&E
personnel, including those travelling on diplomatic passports, important
political figures, communists and leftists and leaders of the Peronist
movement. On request we can also obtain the lists of travellers who enter or
leave at Colonia, another important transit point between Montevideo and
Buenos Aires. Daily guest lists from the hotels and lodgings in Montevideo
are also available. The main weakness in travel control is at the Carrasco
airport, which is the main airport for Montevideo but is in the Department
of Canelones just outside the Department of Montevideo, and there is
considerable rivalry between the Montevideo and the Canelones police.
More important, however, is the lucrative contraband movement at the
airport which jealous customs officials protect by hampering any
improvement of police control. Thus station efforts to set up a watch list
and a document photography operation at the airport have been
unsuccessful.
Name Checks. As a service to the Embassy visa office, information is
requested constantly from the police department, usually on Uruguayans
who apply for US visas. Data from the intelligence and criminal
investigations files is then passed by the station to the visa office for use in
determining whether visas should be granted or denied.
Biographical Data and Photographs. Uruguay has a national voter
registration that is effectively an identification card system. From the
AVALANCHE service we obtain full name, date and place of birth, parents'
names, address, place of work, etc., and identification photos of practically
any Uruguayan or permanent resident alien. This material is valuable for
surveillance operations of the AVENIN and AVBANDY teams, for the
Subversive Control Watch List and for a variety of other purposes.
Licence Plate Data. A further help to station analysis of visitors to the
Soviet and Cuban embassies are the names and addresses of owners of cars
whose licence plate numbers are photographed or copied at the observation
posts. The police make this information available without knowing the real
reason. The same data is also used to supplement reporting by the two
surveillance teams.
Reporting. The Intelligence and Liaison Department of the Montevideo
Police Department is the government's (and the station's) principal source of
information on strikes and street demonstrations. This type of information
has been increasing in importance during the past few years as the PCU-
dominated labour unions have stepped up their campaigns of strikes and
demonstrations in protest against government economic policies. When
strikes and demonstrations occur, information is telephoned to the station
from I&E as the events progress. It includes numbers of people involved,
degree of violence, locations, government orders for repression, and
estimates of effectiveness, all of which is processed for inclusion in station
reporting to headquarters, the Southern and Atlantic military commands,
etc. At the end of each month I&E also prepares a round-up report on
strikes and civil disturbances of which the station receives a copy.
While contact between the various officers in the police department and the
station is no secret to the Chief of Police – they are described as 'official'
liaison – the station also maintains a discreet contact with a former I&E
chief who was promoted out of the job and now is the fourth- or fifth-
ranking officer in Investigations. This officer, Inspector Antonio Piriz
Castagnet, is paid a salary as the station penetration of the police
department, and he is highly cooperative in performing tasks unknown to
his superiors. The station thus calls on this agent for more sensitive tasks
where station interest is not to be known by the police chief or others. Piriz
also provides valuable information on government plans with respect to
strikes and civil disorder, personnel movements within the police and
possible shifts in policy.
The overall cost of the AVALANCHE project, apart from AVENGEFUL
telephone tapping, is about 25,000 dollars per year.
SMOTH. The British Intelligence Service (MI-6), known in the CIA by the
cryptonym SMOTH, has long been active in the River Plate area in keeping
with British economic and political interests here. The station receives
regularly copies of SMOTH reports via headquarters but they are of very
marginal quality. Because of budget cutbacks the British are soon closing
their one-man office in Montevideo but before returning to England the
SMOTH officer will introduce Holman to the Buenos Aires Station
Commander who will be in charge of MI-6 interests in Montevideo.
Basically a courtesy arrangement between colleagues of like mind, the
SMOTH liaison is of little importance to the Montevideo operational
programme.
ODENVY. The FBI (cryptonym ODENVY) has an office in the Embassy
in Rio de Janeiro (Legal Attache cover) whose chief is in charge of looking
after FBI interests in Uruguay and Argentina. Occasionally the FBI chief
comes to Montevideo for visits to the police department and he usually
makes a courtesy call on the Montevideo Chief of Station. Soon, however,
the FBI will be opening an office in the Embassy in Buenos Aires which
will take over FBI interests in Uruguay.
Covert Action (CA) Operations
AVCHIP. Apart from Ralph Hatry the other non-official cover contract
officer is a young ex-Marine who is ostensibly the Montevideo
representative for several US export firms. The cover of this officer, Brooks
Read, has held up well during the three or four years that he has been in
Montevideo, mainly because he has socialised mostly with the British
crowd he met as a leader of the English-speaking theatre group in
Montevideo. Although he originally worked in the station FI programme,
during the past year he was transferred to the CA side as cutout and
intermediate case officer for media and student operations. Although time-
consuming, handling Read's affairs inside the station is a joy for O'Grady,
the inside officer in charge, by comparison with the plethora of problems
constantly caused by Hatry.
AVBUZZ. Because of the large number of morning and afternoon
newspapers in Montevideo, press media operations are centralised in
AVBUZZ-1, who is responsible for placing propaganda in various dailies.
As each newspaper of the non-communist press is either owned by or
responds to one of the main political factions of the principal political
parties, articles can be placed more easily in some newspapers than in
others depending upon content and slant. AVBUZZ-1 has access to all the
liberal press but he uses most frequently the two dailies of the Union Blanca
Democratica faction of the Blanco Party (El Pais and El Plata), the
morning newspaper of the Colorado Party List 14 (El Dia), and the morning
newspaper of the Union Colorada y Batllista (La Manana) to a lesser
extent. AVBUZZ-1 pays editors on newspapers on a space-used basis and
the articles are usually published as unsigned editorials of the newspapers
themselves. O'Grady is in charge of this operation which he works through
Brooks Read who deals directly with AVBUZZ-1. All told the station can
count on two or three articles per day. Clips are mailed to headquarters and
to other stations for replay.
AVBUZZ-1 also writes occasional fly-sheets at station direction, usually, on
anti-communist themes, and he operates a small distribution team to get
them on the streets after they are secretly printed in a friendly print shop.
Television and radio are also used by AVBUZZ-1, although much less than
newspapers because they carry less political comment.
AVBLOOM. Student operations have had very limited success in recent
years in spite of generous promotion of non-communist leaders for FEUU
offices. Recently the station recommended, and headquarters agreed, that
student operations be refocused to concentrate on the secondary level rather
than at the University – on the theory that anti-communist indoctrination at
a lower level may bring better results later when the students go on to the
University. Brooks Read works with several teams of anti-communist
student leaders whom he finances for work in organisation and propaganda.
O'Grady is also the station officer in charge of student operations.
AVCHARM. Labour operations for some years have been designed to
strengthen the Uruguayan Labour Confederation (CSU), which is affiliated
with the ORIT-ICFTU structure, but we have been unsuccessful in
reversing its decline in recent years. A crucial decision on whether to
continue support to the CSU must soon be made. If the CSU is to be
salvaged the station will have to replace the present ineffectual leaders, not
a pleasant prospect because of their predictable resistance, and begin again
practically from the beginning. The fact is that the CSU is largely
discredited, and organised labour is overwhelmingly aligned either inside,
or in cooperation with, the CTU and the extreme left. Apart from the CSU,
station labour operations are targeted at selected unions that can be assisted
and influenced, perhaps eventually controlled, through the International
Trade Secretariats that operate in Latin America, such as the International
Transport Workers Federation.
The most important new activity in labour operations is the establishment
last November of the Montevideo office of the American Institute for Free
Labor Development. This office is called the Uruguayan Institute of Trade
Union Education and its director, Jack Goodwyn, is a US citizen contract
agent and the Montevideo AIFLD representative. Alexander Zeffer, the
station officer in charge of labour operations, meets Goodwyn under
discreet conditions for planning, reporting and other matters. In addition to
training locally at the AIFLD institute, Uruguayans are also sent to the
ORIT school in Mexico and to the AIFLD school in Washington.
AVALON. This agent, A. Fernandez Chavez, has for many years been used
for placing propaganda material and as a source of intelligence on political
matters. At times when AVBUZZ-1 cannot place things the station wants in
the papers, Fernandez may be successful because of his very wide range of
friends in political and press circles. He is the Montevideo correspondent of
ANSA, the Italian wire service, and of the Santiago station-controlled
feature news service Agencia Orbe Latinoamericano. Although he
occasionally meets Holman, his usual station contact is Paul Burns, the CP
officer.
AVID. Although the political-action operations formerly effected through
Benito Nardone have largely ended, Holman continues to see Nardone,
Nardone's wife Olga Clerici de Nardone, who is very active in the Ruralist
movement, and Juan Jose Gari, Nardone's chief political lieutenant. Gari
has the major political plum assigned to the Ruralists in the current Blanco
government – he's President of the State Mortgage Bank. Should a policy
change occur and the station return to political and militant action, one
place we would start is with Mrs Nardone and Gari – even if Nardone
himself fails to survive his struggle with cancer.
AVIATOR. Holman recently turned over to O'Grady the responsibility for
keeping up the developmental contact with Juan Carlos Quagliotti, a very
wealthy right-wing lawyer and rancher. This man is the leader of a group of
similarly well-to-do Uruguayans concerned with the decline in
governmental effectiveness and in the gains made by the extreme left in
recent years. He is active in trying to persuade military leaders to intervene
in political affairs, and would clearly favour a strong military government,
or military-dominated government, over the current weak and divided
executive. Although the station does not finance or encourage him, an
attempt .is made to monitor his activities for collecting intelligence on
tendencies in military circles to seek unconventional solutions to
Uruguayan difficulties. Should the need arise for station operations
designed to promote military intervention, Quagliotti would be an obvious
person through whom to operate.
SUPPORT AGENTS
As in other stations we have a fairly large number of support agents who
own and rent vehicles or property for use in station operations. These
agents, mainly social acquaintances of station officers, are usually given
whisky or other expensive and hard-to-get items that can be brought in with
diplomatic free-entry, rather than salaries. Tito Banks, a wool dealer of
British extraction, is one of the more effective of these agents.
As in Ecuador, the station in Montevideo is getting no small mileage from a
relatively small number of officers. The station budget is a little over one
million dollars per year. Major improvement is needed in the access agent
programme against the Soviets, direct recruitment against the Cubans,
higher-level penetrations of the PCU, improvement in the capabilities of
police intelligence, and greater effectiveness in labour and student
operations.
Next week I begin to take over all the operations targeted against the
Cubans, not all of which are being handled at present by the officer I am
replacing, Michael Berger. This officer has had difficulty in learning
Spanish and on the whole has been able to work only with English-speaking
agents. He's being married to an Uruguayan girl next weekend and
afterwards will depart for a honeymoon, home leave and reassignment to
the Dominican Republic. The operations I'm taking over are the following:
the AVCASK operations against the Paraguayans; the AVIDITY letter
intercept; Ralph Hatry and his problems (unfortunately); the telephone-tap
transcriber AVENGEFUL-9; AVANDANA; the chauffeur at the Cuban
Embassy; the observation post at the Cuban Embassy; the AVENIN
surveillance team; the AVBASK penetration of the MRO; the Foreign
Ministry protocol official who provides photographs and other data on
communist diplomats; and the postman who delivers letters to the
ZRKNICK Cuban intelligence support agent. I'm also temporarily (I hope)
taking over Holman's contacts with Inspector Antonio Piriz, our main
penetration of the Montevideo Police Department, and with Commissioner
Alejandro Otero, the Chief of the Intelligence and Liaison Department.
Montevideo 26 March 1964
The ruling Blanco Party is in a deepening crisis right now that illustrates
both the complexity and the fragmentation of Uruguayan politics – and the
effect these conditions have on our operations.
In January the Chief of Police of Canelones, the interior department that
borders on Montevideo, was involved in a bizarre bank robbery in which
the two robbers were gunned down by police just as they were leaving the
bank. Press reporting revealed that there was a third member of the gang
who had been working for the Canelones Police Chief and had previously
advised which bank was to be robbed, the day and time of the robbery and
the hideouts to be used by the robbers afterwards. The Police Chief
provided weapons for the robbers that had been altered so that they would
not fire. In the fusillade of bullets fired by the police ambush, a policeman
and a passer-by were wounded, but the Police Chief defended such
exaggerated firepower, on the grounds that the robbers had first fired several
shots at the police. The most ironic note for the murdered robbers was that
the Montevideo press had carried several articles during the week before the
robbery that unusual police movements in Canelones at that time were due
to a tip-off on a probable robbery. Had the robbers read the newspapers they
would have known they were betrayed.
An uproar followed this irregular police procedure, producing an
investigation in the Ministry of the Interior and a movement to fire the
Police Chief and prosecute him for not having prevented the robbery. Lines
are now drawn in the Blanco Party between those supporting the Police
Chief, who comes from one Blanco faction, and those supporting Felipe
Gil, the Minister of the Interior, who comes from another Blanco faction
and who is leading the movement against the Police Chief. Supporters of
the Chief, in fact, are charging that the Chief had kept the Minister fully
informed on the case and that the Minister is to blame for any unethical
procedures.
Benito Nardone died yesterday but almost until the end he was making
radio broadcasts in support of the Canelones Police Chief. According to
reports from Juan Jose Gari there is no quick solution in sight, and so the
Blancos continue to weaken – a process that reaches right up to the Blanco
NCG majority. The Colorados aren't sitting idly by. The day after I arrived
they got a Colorado elected President of the Chamber of Deputies by taking
advantage of Blanco splits. Meanwhile Holman's chief project with the
Minister, establishment of an AID Public Safety Mission in the police,
continues in abeyance pending a decision by Gil.
Montevideo 1 April 1964
It's all over for Goulart in Brazil much faster and easier than most expected.
He gave the military and the opposition political leaders the final pretext
they needed: a speech to the Army Sergeants' Association implying that he
backed the non-commissioned officers against the officer corps. Coming
right after acts of insubordination by low-ranking sailors and marines, the
speech couldn't have been better timed for our purposes. The Rio station
advised that Goulart is probably coming to Uruguay which means Holman's
fears about new exile problems were real. US recognition of the new
military government is practically immediate, not very discreet but
indicative, I suppose, of the euphoria in Washington now that two and a half
years of operations to prevent Brazil's slide to the left under Goulart have
suddenly bloomed.
Our campaign against him took much the same line as the ones against
communist infiltration in the Velasco and Arosemena governments two and
three years ago in Ecuador. According to Holman the Rio station and its
larger bases were financing the mass urban demonstrations against the
Goulart government, proving the old themes of God, country, family and
liberty to be effective as ever. Goulart's fall is without doubt largely due to
the careful planning and consistent propaganda campaigns dating at least
back to the 1962 election operation. Holman's worry is a new flood of exiles
to add to the Paraguayans and Argentines we already have to cover.
Montevideo 3 April 1964
My first Cuban recruitment looks successful. A trade mission arrived from
Brazil and will be here until sometime next week. An agent of the Rio
station had reported that Raul Alonzo Olive, a member of the mission and
perhaps the most important because he's a high-level official in the sugar
industry, seemed to be disaffected with the revolution. In order to protect
the Rio agent against provocation and because of the confusion in Brazil
this past week, the Rio station suggested that a recruitment approach be
made here or in Madrid which is their last stop before return to Havana. The
AVENIN surveillance team followed him after arrival and at the first chance
when he was alone they delivered a note from me asking for a meeting. The
note was worded so that he would know it came from the CIA. After
reading it he followed the instructions to walk along a certain street where I
picked him up and took him to a safe place to talk. Headquarters had sent a
list of questions for him, mostly dealing with this year's sugar harvest,
efforts to mechanise cane cutting, and anyone else he might know was
dissatisfied. We spoke for about two hours because he had to rejoin his
delegation, but we'll meet again several times before he leaves for Madrid.
Contact instructions just arrived from the Madrid station.
He said sugar production from this year's harvest should be about five
million tons and he rambled on at length about the problems with the cane-
cutting machines, mostly caused when used on sloping or inclined surfaces.
What was surprising was that he knows so many government leaders well
even though he wasn't particularly active in the struggle against Batista.
I recorded the meeting, which he didn't particularly like, and reported by
cable the essentials of what he said. He thinks he will be in Madrid for most
of next week, or perhaps longer, so communications training can be done
there. Strange he agreed so readily to return to Cuba and for his salary to be
kept safe for him by the CIA, but he seemed honest enough. In Madrid he'll
get the polygraph, which should help to resolve his bona fides.
Montevideo 5 April 1964
Goulart arrived here yesterday and was greeted with a surprising amount of
enthusiasm. The military takeover, in fact, has been rather badly received
here in Uruguay because Goulart was popularly elected and a strong
Brazilian military government may mean difficulties for Uruguay over
exiles. Already officials of Goulart's government are beginning to arrive,
and the Rio station is sending one cable after another asking that we speed
up reporting arrivals. Our only source for this information is Commissioner
Otero, whose Intelligence and Liaison Department is in charge of
processing the exiles. It's clear that the Rio station is going an out to support
the military government, and the key to snuffing out any counter-coup or
insurgency is in either capturing or forcing into exile Leonel Brizola,
Goulart's far-left brother-in-law who is the Federal Deputy for Guanabara
(Rio de Janeiro) and is now in hiding. Headquarters has begun to generate
hemisphere-wide propaganda in support of the new Brazilian government
and to discredit Goulart. For example, Arturo Jauregui, Secretary-General
of ORIT, has sent a telegram pledging ORIT support for the new Brazilian
government. This may provoke a negative reaction in places like Venezuela
because the CIA's policy before was to have ORIT oppose military
takeovers of freely elected governments – not very realistic in view of the
way events are moving.
Through AVBUZZ we're currently promoting opinion favourable to the
Venezuelan case against Cuba in the OAS based on the arms cache
discovered last year. One of our placements was a half-page paid
advertisement in the Colorado daily La Manana that came out yesterday. It
was ostensibly written and signed by Hada Rosete, the representative here
of the Cuban Revolutionary Council and one of the propaganda agents of
the AVBUZZ project. In fact it was written by O'Grady and Brooks Read
and based on information from headquarters and from station files. The
statement relates the arms cache to overall Soviet and Cuban penetration of
the hemisphere, including allegations attributed to Rolando Santana, last
year's Cuban defector here. Current insurgent movements in Venezuela,
Honduras, Peru, Colombia, Argentina, Panama and Bolivia are described as
being directed from Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City, Buenos
Aires and Montevideo, not to exclude the Chinese communists who were
also mentioned.
Montevideo 18 April 1964
Holman returned from a Chiefs of Station conference with the grudging
acknowledgement that we'll have to devote more attention to the Brazilian
exiles. The decision was made, apparently by President Johnson himself,
that an all-out effort must be made not only to prevent a counter-coup and
insurgency in the short run in Brazil, but also to build up their security
forces as fast and as effectively as possible for the long run. Never again
can Brazil be permitted to slide off to the left where the communists and
others become a threat to take things over or at least become a strong
influence on them.
Here in Montevideo this policy means that we will have to assist the Rio
station by increasing collection of information about the exiles. This will
have to be through police intelligence for the time being and will be my
responsibility since Holman, as I suspected, wants me to continue to work
with Otero, Piriz, de Anda, Torres and others while he maintains the high-
level contacts with the Minister of the Interior, Felipe Gil, and the Chief of
Police, Colonel Ventura Rodriguez. As a start I have gotten Otero to place
his officers at the residences of Goulart and three or four of the most
important exiles, according to the Rio station's criteria, and these officers
will keep logs of visitors while posing as personal security officers for the
exiles. We'll forward highlights of the reports to Rio by cable along with
information on new arrivals with full copies following by pouch.
The political currents here are running against the new military government
in Brazil and making favourable editorial comment very difficult to
generate. The Brazilian government, nevertheless, has begun to pressure the
Uruguayans in different ways so that Goulart and his supporters in exile
here will be forbidden to engage in political activities.
Promoting sentiment in favour of a break in relations with Cuba is almost as
difficult here as promoting favourable comment towards Brazil. Not that
Uruguayans are fond of communism or well-disposed towards the Cuban
revolution. The corner stone of Uruguayan foreign policy is strict non-
intervention because of the country's vulnerability to pressures from its two
giant neighbours. Since sanctions or collective action against Cuba can
easily be interpreted as intervention in Cuba's internal affairs, the station
programme to promote a break in relations runs counter to Uruguayan
traditional policies.
Even so, we are keeping up media coverage of Cuban themes in the hope
that Venezuelan attempts to convoke an OAS Foreign Ministers conference
over the arms cache will result not only in the conference but in a resolution
for all OAS countries to break with Cuba. A few days ago the former
Venezuelan Foreign Minister under Betancourt, Marcos Falcon Briseno,
was here trying to drum up support for the conference but he couldn't
convince the Uruguayans to join actively in the campaign.
Montevideo 24 April 1964
We've just had a visit from the new WH Division Chief, Desmond
FitzGerald, who is making the rounds of field stations. Holman gave a
buffet for all the station personnel and wives, and in the office each of us
had a short session with FitzGerald to describe our operations. He was
pleased with the Cuban recruitment but suspects he may have been a
provocation because of his high estimate of the sugar harvest. Instead of
five million tons, according to FitzGerald, production this year will
probably be less than four million. He also encouraged me to concentrate on
making an acceptable recruitment approach to the Cuban code clerk here.
When we told him that one of our station offices has a common wall with
an uncontrolled apartment in the building next door, he ordered that a large
sign be immediately placed on the wall reading: 'This Room is Bugged!'
Rank has its privileges in the CIA too.
FitzGerald was very insistent that the Montevideo station devote attention
to supporting the new Brazilian military government through intelligence
collection and propaganda operations. Holman has given O'Grady the
overall responsibility for Brazilian problems, and the Rio station is going to
help by sending down one of its liaison contacts as military attache in the
Brazilian Embassy. He is Colonel Camara Sena, and he is due to arrive any
day. O'Grady will be meeting with him and will assist him in developing
operations to penetrate the exile community.
In spite of Goulart's popularity here, the NCG voted yesterday to recognise
the Brazilian government which should serve to ease tensions. Also,
Goulart has been declared a political asylee rather than a refugee which is a
looser status that would have allowed him more freedom for political
activities.
Montevideo 2 May 1964
Headquarters has approved my plan for recruitment of Roberto Hernandez,
the Cuban code clerk, and we shall see if luck prevails. I'm using Ezequiel
Ramirez, the training officer from headquarters who's just finished training
the AVBANDY surveillance team, to make the initial contact. He can pass
for a Spaniard or Latin American and will be less dangerous for Hernandez
(if he accepts) until we can establish a clandestine meeting arrangement.
Today Ramirez begins working with the AVENIN surveillance team to
follow Hernandez from the Embassy to wherever in town the first approach
can be made.
It's very hard to tell what the chances are, although reporting from Warner,
the Cuban Embassy chauffeur, has been excellent in providing insight into
Hernandez's personality. He not only is having problems with his wife, who
has just had a baby, but he seems to be more than casually involved with
Mirta, his Uruguayan girlfriend. Because of Mirta I rejected the girl offered
by the Miami station and will concentrate on interesting Hernandez in
eventual resettlement, possibly in Buenos Aires. In addition to his duties as
code clerk he is the Embassy technical officer with proficiency in
photography. Perhaps resettlement could include setting him up with a
commercial photography shop. For the moment, however, we will offer
him, per headquarters instructions, thirty thousand dollars for a straight
debriefing on what he knows of Cuban intelligence operations; fifty
thousand dollars for the debriefing and provision and replacement of the
code pads; and three thousand dollars for each month he will work for us
while continuing to work in the Embassy. I have a safe apartment all ready
to use if Hernandez agrees and will take over from Ramirez as quickly as
possible.
The other day I cornered Holman and proposed that I could do more with
the police work and Cuban operations if I weren't bogged down with the
Paraguayans, the letter intercept and Ralph Hatry. It was a dirty move
because I suggested that Alex Zeffer, the labour officer, could probably take
over these operations. Holman agreed and then told Zeffer who hasn't
spoken to me since. He knows all about Hatry's problems and of the
drudgery involved in the letter intercept.
I'll continue to go occasionally at night to AVANDANA's house in order to
discuss problems of the Cuban Embassy observation post with his wife. I
wouldn't want to miss that experience – the house is a low bungalow set far
back off the street in a sparsely populated section on the edge of town and
surrounded by thick woods, almost jungle. The house is protected by a high
chain-link fence and perhaps a half-dozen fiercely barking dogs. Such
isolation in this addamsesque setting is convenient in that AVANDANA is
almost completely deaf and operational discussions are necessarily but
insecurely loud when not screaming. Each time I have visited the home I
have gone with Hatry, and the picture of these two ageing men yelling
furtively over their spy work is an interesting study in contradiction.
Another operation that I took over has resolved itself. Anibal Mercader, the
MRO penetration, decided to seek employment in the US. He was hired by
a Miami bank and is leaving shortly – I arranged to keep his MRO
membership off the station memorandum on his visa application.
I don't envy Alex Zeffer for his labour operations. He is going to have to
start again, practically from scratch, because the decision was finally made
to withdraw support from the Uruguayan Labour Confederation (CSU).
Last month the CSU held a congress and the leadership was unable to
overcome the personality conflicts that have resulted in continuing
withdrawals of member unions and refusals of others to pay dues. The real
problem is leadership and when Andrew McClellan, the AFL-CIO Inter-
American Representative, and Bill Doherty, the AIFLD social projects chief
arrived last week they advised CSU leaders that subsidies channelled
through the ICFTU, ORIT and the ITS are to be discontinued.
The situation is rather awkward because the CSU has just formed a workers'
housing cooperative and expected to receive AIFLD funds for construction.
These funds will also be withheld from the Cs u and may be channelled
through another noncommunist union organisation. Next week Serafino
Romualdi, AIFLD Executive Director, will be here for more conversations
on how to promote the AIFLD programme while letting the CSU die. One
thing is certain: it will take several years before a new crop of labour
leaders can be trained through the AIFLD programme and, from them
recruitments made of new agents who can set up another national
confederation to affiliate with ORIT and the ICFTU.
Montevideo 5 May 1964
None of us can quite believe what is happening. Just as planned, Ramirez,
and the surveillance team followed Hernandez downtown, and at the right
moment he walked up to Hernandez in the street and told him the US
government is interested in helping him. Hernandez agreed to talk but only
had about fifteen minutes before he had to get back to the Embassy. He was
a pale bundle of nerves but he agreed in principle to the debriefing and to
providing the pads. Another meeting is set for tomorrow afternoon.
I sent a cable advising headquarters of the meeting and suggesting that they
send down the Division D technician right away so that he can work on the
pads on a moment's notice. If this recruitment works, as it seems to be
working, we'll have the first important penetration of Cuban operations in
this region.
More anti-Cuban propaganda. Representatives of the Revolutionary Student
Directorate in Exile (DRE), an organisation financed and controlled by the
Miami station, arrived today. They're on a tour of South America
hammering away at the Cuban economic disaster. We don't have a
permanent representative of the DRE in Montevideo so arrangements were
made by Hada Rosete and AVBUZZ-1. Also through AVBUZZ-1 we're
generating propaganda on the trial in Cuba of Marcos Rodriguez, a leader
of the Revolutionary Student Directorate in the struggle against Batista.
Rodriguez is accused of having betrayed 26 of July members to the Batista
police, and our false line is that he was really a communist and was
instructed to betray to 26 of July people by the Cuban Communist Party.
Purpose: exacerbate differences between the old-line communists and the
26 of July people. We're also playing up the Anibal Escalante purge. Both
cases are causing serious divisions in Cuba where, according to AVBUZZ-
1, 'the repression is comparable to that under Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin as
the revolution devours its own'.
The internal crisis in the Blanco Party over the Canelones police case
continues to grow. What is at stake, besides the reputations of the
principals, is the division of spoils among the Blanco factions – a very
delicate balance negotiated with difficulty and easily upset by internal
struggle. Rumours abound of an impending Cabinet crisis.
Montevideo 10 May 1964
All is not well on the Hernandez recruitment. He made the second meeting
with Ramirez, but refused to talk about Cuban operations until he actually
saw the money. He doesn't trust us an inch. Zeke set up a third meeting and
I went with fifteen thousand dollars – practically all the cash we have right
now in the station. Holman was nervous about me taking out all that money,
but if we're going to get Hernandez to talk we have to at least show him the
money and maybe even give him a little. O'Grady also came along for extra
security, but Hernandez didn't show.
My plan was to give Hernandez up to one thousand dollars if he would
begin talking and then try to convince him to let me keep everything for
him in an Agency account until we finally arrange for him to 'disappear'.
Otherwise he might be discovered with large sums of money he can't
explain. For four nights now I've been waiting for him and if he doesn't
show up tonight I'll get Zeke back into action with the surveillance team.
Yesterday the Division D technician arrived. He says he only needs the code
pads for a few hours in order to open, photograph and reseal them. That's
going to be a neat trick: the pads have adhesive sealers on all four edges so
it's only possible to see the top page. But if we get them copied we'll be able
to read all their traffic for as long as the pads last. For me the most
important thing is the debriefing on their intelligence operations. Hernandez
told Zeke that he knows absolutely everything they're doing here and I
believe him. Tonight he's got to show.
Leonel Brizola, leader of the far-left in the Goulart government and
Goulart's brother-in-law, arrived here in exile and the Brazilian government
has asked that both he and Goulart be interned. If interned they will have to
live in an interior city without freedom of movement around the country
which would make control much easier. As the most dangerous political
leader in the old government, Brizola's leaving Brazil is a favourable
development. He had been in hiding since the fall of Goulart. The Rio
station wants close coverage of him.
Montevideo 15 May 1964
Something is definitely going wrong on the Hernandez recruitment. From
the observation post at the Cuban Embassy I know Hernandez practically
hasn't left the Embassy since the second meeting with Zeke Ramirez. For
four days the surveillance team and Zeke have been waiting for the signal
from the OP in order to intercept Hernandez again for another try.
According to the telephone tap on the Embassy Hernandez isn't taking
many calls either, and the chauffeur reported today that Hernandez hasn't
spoken to him lately. I can't give him special instructions because I don't
want him to suspect we have a recruitment going on. Nothing to do but just
be patient and keep on trying.
Another nuisance assignment. The Santiago station has a really big
operation going to keep Salvador Allende from being elected President. He
was almost elected at the last elections in 1958, and this time nobody's
taking any chances. The trouble is that the Office of Finance in headquarters
couldn't get enough Chilean escudos from the New York banks so they had
to set up regional purchasing offices in Lima and Rio. But even these
offices can't satisfy the requirements so we have been asked to help.
The purchasing agent for currency in this area is the First National City
Bank, but the Buenos Aires station usually handles currency matters
because they have a 'Class A' finance office empowered to purchase
currency. As a 'Class B' station we are restricted to emergencies for
exchanging dollars for local currency. Nevertheless, headquarters sent down
a cheque drawn on an account in the New York City Bank office which I
took over to Jack Hennessy, who is the senior US citizen officer at the
Montevideo Citibank. He is cleared by headquarters for currency purchases
and had already been informed by Citibank in New York to expect the
cheque. I gave him the cheque and he sent his buyers over to Santiago for
discreet purchase. In a couple of days they were back – according to
Hennessy they usually bring the money back in suitcases paying bribes to
customs officials not to inspect – and Paul Burns and I went down to see
Hennessy for the pick-up. When we got back to the station we had to spend
the rest of the day counting it – over one hundred thousand dollars' worth.
Now we'll send it to the Santiago station in the diplomatic pouch. They
must be spending millions if they have to resort to this system and New
York, Lima and Rio de Janeiro together can't meet the demand.
Montevideo 20 May 1964
The Hernandez recruitment has failed – for the time being anyway. Today
he finally left the Embassy and with the surveillance team Zeke Ramirez
caught him downtown. Hernandez refused to speak to Ramirez or even to
acknowledge him. The key to the operation now is whether Hernandez told
anyone in the Embassy of his first conversations with Ramirez and all the
signs are negative. Today, in fact, Hernandez turned pale when Zeke
approached him. If he had reported the recruitment he wouldn't be so
panicky because his position in the Embassy would be firm. Undoubtedly
his fright derives from failure to report the first conversations with Zeke –
meaning that his initial acceptance was genuine. Ramirez will return to
Washington tomorrow and we'll let Hernandez get back into his old habits
before approaching him again. According to his first conversations with
Ramirez, Hernandez's political and cultural orientation is towards Argentina
or Brazil rather than the US. Perhaps we will enlist help from the Buenos
Aires or Rio stations with a security service penetration agent who could
make the next approach in the name of the Brazilian or Argentine
government.
Montevideo 23 May 1964
Hernandez has panicked but we'll probably get him after all. This morning I
had an emergency call from the Cuban Embassy chauffeur and when we
met he reported that when he arrived this morning at the Embassy
everything was in an uproar. Hernandez left the Embassy – he lives there
with his family – sometime during last night leaving behind his wedding-
ring and a note for his wife. The Cubans believed he has defected and that
he's with us, either in hiding here or on his way to the US. From the worry
and gloom at the Embassy the chances are that he took the code pads with
him.
I told the chauffeur to stick around the Embassy all day, if possible – he
doesn't usually work on Saturday afternoons – and to offer to work
tomorrow. Then I got the Cuban Embassy observation post going – we
usually close down on weekends – and with Holman, O'Grady and Burns
we tried to decide what to do. What we can't figure out is where Hernandez
is and why he hasn't come to the Embassy. We arranged for the front door to
be left open so that Hernandez can walk right in instead of waiting after
ringing the bell, and tonight (in case he's waiting for darkness) we'll have a
station officer sitting in the light just inside the front door. Somehow we
have to give Hernandez the confidence to walk on in. Sooner or later he's
got to appear.
Montevideo 24 May 1964
Hernandez is out of his mind. The chauffeur called for another emergency
meeting and reported that Hernandez arrived back at the Embassy sometime
after daybreak. He's being kept upstairs under custody. Several times
yesterday and today the Charge went over to the Soviet Embassy, probably
because the Soviets are having to handle the Cuban's encoded
communications with Havana about Hernandez. What possibly could have
possessed Hernandez to change his mind again?
Montevideo 26 May 1964
According to the chauffeur, Hernandez is going to be taken back to Cuba
under special custody – Ricardo Gutierrez and Eduardo Hernandez, both
intelligence officers, will be the escorts. They leave Friday on a Swissair
flight to Geneva where they transfer to a flight to Prague.
The chauffeur also learned from Hernandez that when he disappeared from
the Embassy last Saturday he went to see his friend Ruben Pazos and they
drove together to the Brazilian border. Hernandez had the code pads with
him and planned to defect to the Brazilian Consul in Rivera, but the Consul
was out of town for the weekend. After waiting a while Hernandez changed
his mind again and decided to take his chances with revolutionary justice –
he told AVBARON-1, the chauffeur, that he'll probably have to do about
five years on a correctional farm. I wonder.
We've decided to make the case public for propaganda purposes and also to
try to spring Hernandez loose on the trip home. The decision to publish
came after the Minister of the Interior, Felipe Gil, refused to get the Foreign
Ministry or the NCG involved – Holman told him that Hernandez had been
caught trying to defect to us and asked for official efforts to save him. The
most the Minister would agree to was a police interview at the airport, in
which Hernandez will be separated, by force, if necessary, from his escorts.
Through AVBUZZ-1, meanwhile, we'll expose the case as a sensational
kidnapping within the Cuban Embassy of a defector trying to flee from
communist tyranny.
Montevideo 28 May 1964
The story of Hernandez's kidnapping is splashed all over the newspapers
and is provoking just the reaction we wanted. AVBUZZ-1 sent several
reporters to the Embassy seeking an interview with Hernandez and they
were turned away, adding to speculation that perhaps only Hernandez's
corpse will eventually appear.
I've alerted each of the stations where Hernandez's flight will stop on the
way to Geneva. So far the stations in Rio de Janeiro, Madrid and Berne are
going to take action. Rio and Madrid will arrange for police liaison services
to speak with Hernandez and the Geneva base will arrange for uniformed
Swiss police to be in evidence while Hernandez is in transit, although
forcing an interview is too sensitive for the Swiss.
We hope Hernandez won't get that far. Through the Chief of Police, Colonel
Ventura Rodriguez, we have the interview arranged at the airport tomorrow
before the flight leaves. Inspector Antonio Piriz and Commissioner
Alejandro Otero will both be there, and Hernandez will be separated for a
private interview in which our police agents will try to convince him to stay
rather than face punishment on return. I'll also be at the airport to speak
with him if he shows signs of agreeing to political asylum in Uruguay.
Montevideo 29 May 1964
More propaganda but Hernandez couldn't be convinced. At the airport,
Gutierrez, one of the escorts, tried to resist having Hernandez separated for
the police interview. During the scuffle he pulled out a pistol and was
forcibly disarmed. Hernandez, however, insisted that he was returning of his
own will and eventually he and his wife and child boarded the flight with
the two escorts. So far no news from stations along the way.
This morning before his departure the Cubans recovered somewhat from
the adverse propaganda by inviting the press to the Embassy for an
interview with Hernandez. Hernandez said he was returning to Cuba
because he feared reprisals against his wife and son from certain persons
(unidentified) who were trying to get him to betray his country. For the past
twenty days, he admitted, certain persons whose nationality he couldn't
place were accosting him in the street. They had first offered him five
thousand dollars and later as high as fifty thousand. Even with this
interview, however, press coverage makes it clear that Hernandez is being
returned as a security risk, especially in view of the escorts.
The recruitment may have failed but we have certainly damaged the
Cubans' operational capabilities here. The only officers they have left now
are the Commercial Counsellor and his wife, and the Charge who we don't
believe is engaged in intelligence work. Suddenly they're cut from five to
two officers and must use Soviet Embassy communications facilities until
they can get a new code clerk. The propaganda, moreover, may have
improved the climate here for a break in relations if the Venezuelan case in
the OAS prospers. If we didn't get the pads and debriefing, at least we got
good media play and disruption.
Perhaps indirectly related to the Hernandez case – we won't know for some
time – are two very favourable recent developments relating to Cuban
intelligence defections. In Canada, a Cuban intelligence officer, Vladimir
Rodriguez, defected a few weeks ago and is beginning to give the first
details of the General Intelligence Directorate (DGI) which is housed within
the Ministry of the Interior. Headquarters is keeping us up to date on the
highlights of debriefings, which must be similar to the first KGB defector
because nothing was known until now – not even the existence of the DGI.
More closely related to Cuban operations in Uruguay is another attempt to
defect by Earle Perez Freeman, their former intelligence chief in
Montevideo, who had defected and then changed his mind in Mexico this
past January. Perez has just obtained asylum in the Uruguayan Embassy in
Havana where three of the four diplomats (the AMHALF agents) are
working for the Miami station. One of these, the Charge d'Affaires, is being
replaced, but through the other two, German Roosent and Hamlet
Goncalves, the Miami station will try for a debriefing on Cuban operations
in Montevideo. Over the weekend I'll compile a list of questions based on
what we already know and forward it to Miami for use with the AMHALF
agents.
Montevideo 6 June 1964
The struggle within the Blanco Party has reached a new crisis just as labour
unrest also approaches a peak. Beginning on 21 May the Cabinet ministers
began to resign, one by one, with the Minister of Defence resigning on 30
May and Felipe Gil, the Minister of the Interior, today. From initial concern
over the Canelones police case, the Blancos have turned to fighting over
assignment of government jobs, and rumours are getting stronger by the day
that Blanco military officers are organising a coup against the Blanco
political leadership. So far the rumours are unfounded but we're sending
regular negative reports to headquarters based mostly on reports from Gari
and Colonel Ventura Rodriguez who are closely connected with the military
officers said to be involved in the planning. Holman is hoping to get a new
Minister of the Interior who will be strong enough to push through the
Public Safety Mission for the police.
As the government grinds to a halt the unions of the autonomous agencies
and decentralised services are getting more militant. Two days ago they
struck for twenty-four hours for a 45 per cent increase in the budget for the
government enterprises, and a twenty-four-hour general strike is already
being organised by these unions and the CTU in protest against inflation.
Hernandez returned to Cuba although police agents of the Rio station had
another scuffle with Gutierrez when they separated him for an interview
alone with Hernandez. Cuban sugar production for this year's harvest was
announced (much lower than my Cuban sugar official, Alonzo, told me) so
FitzGerald was probably right. Now I'll have to terminate the safe
apartment I used with him. No indication from Madrid yet on results of the
polygraph. Miami station reported that getting information from Perez in
Havana may be more complicated than expected because they want to keep
Goncalves and Roosen from working together on the case. For the time
being they'll use only Roosen, and he only comes out to Miami or Nassau
about once a month.
Montevideo 17 June 1964
The Blancos finally solved their crisis. New ministers were announced and
other jobs were realigned among the different disputing factions. The new
Minister of the Interior is Adolfo Tejera whom the Montevideo Police
Chief, Rodriguez, describes favourably. Through the Chief, Holman will
make an early contact with the new Minister using the AVENGEFUL
telephone-tapping operation as the excuse and following with the AID
Public Safety programme later.
Today practically all economic activity is stopped thanks to a twenty-four-
hour general strike, organized by the CTU and the unions of the
government autonomous agencies and decentralized services, on account of
inflation and other economic ills that adversely affect the workers. Last
night, as the strike was about to start, Colonel Rodriguez, Montevideo
Police Chief and the government's top security official, issued a statement
denouncing the wave of rumours of a military takeover as completely
unfounded.
How different from Ecuador where a general strike is enough to bring down
the government. Here traffic circulates freely and almost everyone, it seems,
goes to the beach even if it's too cold to swim. Holman, in commenting on
the Sunday-like atmosphere, said that Uruguayans are nothing more than
water-watchers – content to sip their mate quietly and watch the waves roll
in.
The Brazilian government is keeping up the pressure for action against
political activities by Goulart, Brizola and other exiles. Although they have
begun to allow some of the asylees in the Uruguayan Embassy to come out,
which has temporarily relieved tension, they have also sent a Deputy here
for a press conference to try to stimulate action for control of the exiles. But
the Deputy's remarks were counter-productive because in addition to
accusing supporters of Goulart and Brizola of conspiring against the
military government through student, labour and governmental
organisations in Brazil, he also said that Uruguay is infiltrated by
communists and as such is a danger for the rest of the continent. The
Uruguayan Foreign Minister answered later by acknowledging that the
Communist Party is legal in Uruguay, but he added that the country is
hardly dominated by them. Brazilian pressures may create negative
reactions in the short run but sooner or later the Uruguayans will have to
take a similar hard line on communism because the country's just too small
to resist Brazil's pressure. As an answer, I suppose, to Holman's resistance
on covering the exiles, the Rio station has decided to send two more of its
agents to the Brazilian Embassy here – in addition to the military attache,
Colonel Camara Sena. One is a high-level penetration of the Brazilian
Foreign Ministry, Manuel Pio Correa, who is coming as Ambassador, and
the other is Lyle Fontoura, a protege of Pio, who will be a new First
Secretary. Until last month Pio was Brazil's Ambassador to Mexico where,
according to the background forwarded by the Rio station, he was very
effective in operational tasks for the Mexico City station. However, because
Mexico hadn't recognised the new military government, Pio was recalled,
and the Rio station arranged to have him reassigned to Montevideo which at
the moment is the Brazilian government's diplomatic hot spot. When they
arrive Holman will handle the contact with Pio while O'Grady works with
Fontoura. One way or another the Rio station is determined to generate
operations against the exiles, and Pio apparently is the persistent type who
will keep up pressure on the Uruguayan government.
Montevideo 28 June 1964
The Miami station is having trouble getting information out of Earle Perez
Freeman, the Cuban intelligence officer who is in asylum in the Uruguayan
Embassy in Havana. After several attempts at elicitation by German
Roosen, one of the Uruguayan diplomats working for the Miami station,
Perez accused him of working for the CIA and demanded that the CIA
arrange to get him out of Cuba. He told Roosen that he will not reveal
anything of Cuban operations in Uruguay until he is safely out of Cuba.
One of Roosen's problems is that he is unable to pressure Perez very
effectively without instructions from the Foreign Ministry here. He denied,
of course, Perez's accusation of his connections with us, but is reluctant to
proceed without some instructions from his government. Holman agreed
that I propose to Inspector Piriz that he go to Miami to provide official
guidance to Roosen – but without Roosen knowing that Piriz is in contact
with us. When I spoke to Piriz he liked the idea but cautioned that Colonel
Rodriguez, the Chief of Police, should authorise his trip and coordinate with
the Foreign Ministry. Holman proposed to Rodriguez that he send one of his
best officers to Miami to work with Uruguayan diplomats who are in
contact with Perez in the Embassy, but without revealing either our contacts
with Piriz or Roosen. As expected Rodriguez accepted the idea, obtained
Foreign Ministry endorsement, and nominated Piriz. In a few days now,
Piriz will go to Miami to give official guidance both to Roosen and to
Goncalves, the other Uruguayan diplomat in Havana working for the Miami
station (Ayala Cabeda had previously been transferred from Havana and
was no longer used by the Agency). The Miami officer in charge will be
meeting Roosen, Goncalves and Piriz separately, all of which seems
cumbersome and inefficient, but we must protect the contact we have with
each from being known by the others. In any case Roosen and Goncalves
will have official encouragement for pressure against the Cuban intelligence
officer. We've got to get information from him before any break in relations
removes the diplomat-agents from Havana.
The campaign for isolating Cuba is another step closer to success. The OAS
announced that sufficient votes have been obtained for a Conference of
Foreign Ministers to consider the arms cache case and the Venezuelan
motion that all OAS members still having relations with Cuba break them.
Still no sign, however, that Uruguay will support the motion or break even
if the motion is passed.
Propaganda against Cuba continues through the AVBUZZ media project.
Among the many current placements are those of the canned propaganda
operation, Editors Press Service, which is based in New York and turns out
quantities of articles against the Castro government and communism in
general, much of which is written by Cuban exiles like Guillermo Martinez
Marquez.
Montevideo 15 July 1964
The coup rumours have subsided since the general strike last month but
several strikes have continued. Headquarters sent down a strange dispatch
that Holman believes is a prelude to getting back into political-action
operations. According to him the dispatch, although signed as usual by the
Division Chief, was actually written by Ray Herbert who is Deputy
Division Chief and an old colleague of Holman's from their days in the FBI.
In rather ambiguous terms this dispatch instructs us to expand our contacts
in the political field to obtain intelligence about political stability,
government policy concerning activities of the extreme left, and possible
solutions to current problems such as constitutional reform. Holman
believes that Herbert deliberately did not mentioned political-action
operations (as opposed to political-intelligence collection) but that the
message to prepare for renewal of these operations was clearly implied.
For preliminary organisation Holman has given me the responsibility for
reporting progress and for developing new political contacts. He will
increase somewhat his meetings with Mrs. Nardone and with Gari and soon
will introduce me to yet another Ruralista leader, Wilson Elso, who is a
Federal Deputy. We will not make contact with the other principal Ruralista
leader, Senator Juan Maria Bordaberry, because he is already in regular
contact with Ambassador Coerr, and Holman wants no problems with him.
The importance of the Ruralistas is that they have already announced
support for constitutional reform in order to return Uruguay to a strong one-
man presidency. The other parties are openly opposed to such reform.
***
In addition to the Ruralistas, Holman asked me to arrange with one of the
legitimate political section officers to begin meeting some of the more
liberal leaders of the Colorado Party, mainly of the List 15 and the List 99.
These two factions will be in the thick of the elections coming up in 1966,
and they also constitute an attractive potential for access agents in the
Soviet operations programme.
For purposes of political reporting Holman will also have his new contact
with Adolfo Tejera, the Minister of the Interior with Colonel Ventura
Rodriguez, the Chief of Police, and with Colonel Carvajal, Chief of
Military Intelligence. For the time being he will refrain from reinitiating
contact with Colonel Mario Aguerrondo who was Rodriguez's predecessor
as Chief of Police and a close station liaison collaborator, because
Aguerrondo is usually at the centre of rumours of a move by Blanco
military officers against the government. Also O'Grady will meet more
regularly with Juan Carlos Quagliotti, the wealthy rancher and lawyer who
is active in promoting interventionist sympathies among military leaders.
In discussing expansion of political contacts Holman said we have to be
very careful to avoid giving the Ambassador any reason to suspect that
we're getting back into political-action operations. When the time comes, he
said, the decision will be made in Washington and the Ambassador will be
informed through department channels.
This is bad news. All the work with political leaders in Quito only
emphasised how venal and ineffectual they were and in Uruguay the
politicians seem to be even more so. I couldn't be less enthusiastic. I don't
want to cultivate senators and deputies – not even for the Director.
Montevideo 20 July 1964
Another purchase of Chilean currency at the Montevideo branch of the First
National City Bank for shipping by pouch to the Santiago station. This time
the Finance Officer who is in charge of the purchasing operations in Lima
and Rio came to Montevideo to assist in the pick-up from Hennessy and to
count the escudos afterwards. This one was also worth over 100,000 dollars
and, according to the Finance Officer, is only a drop in the bucket. He says
we are spending money in the Chilean election practically like we did in
Brazil two years ago.
We've had serious trouble in the AVENGEFUL/AVALANCHE telephone-
tapping operation. AVOIDANCE, the courier who takes the tapes around to
the transcribers, reported to Paul Burns, his case officer, that a briefcase full
of tapes was taken from the trunk of his car while he was on his rounds
making pick-ups and deliveries. AVOIDANCE has no idea whether the
tapes were taken by a common thief or by the enemy. Although he claims
he has been very careful to watch for surveillance (negative), the chances
are that the tapes will be listened to, even if only stolen by a thief, in order
to determine saleability.
After a discussion with Holman and Burns, I advised Commissioner Otero
and Colonel Ramirez, Chief of the Metropolitan Guard, that we had lost
some tapes and believe all the lines except the Cuban Embassy should be
disconnected. Ramirez agreed that the Cuban line should be retained
because of our coming OAS meeting and the possibility of a break in
relations with Cuba. He is also going to keep several of the contraband lines
in operation for cover, although there is no way of denying the targets of the
lost tapes.
For the time being AVOIDANCE will be eliminated from the operation
although he will go through the motions of a daily routine very similar to
normal while continuing to watch for surveillance. The tapes of the Cuban
line will be sent over to the station with the daily police intelligence
couriers and we will give them to Tomas Zafiriadis who is an Uruguayan
employee of the Embassy Commercial Section. He will serve as courier
between the station and his wife (AVENGEFUL-3) who transcribes the
Cuban Embassy line. His wife's sister (AVENGEFUL-5), the transcriber of
the PCU Headquarters line, will also help on the Cuban Embassy line since
her line is being disconnected. Using an Embassy employee like this is-
against the rules but Holman is willing to risk the Ambassador's wrath to
keep the Cuban Embassy line going.
Montevideo 25 July 1964
News is in that the OAS passed the motion that all members should break
diplomatic and commercial relations with Cuba and that except for
humanitarian purposes there should be no air or maritime traffic. It took
four years to get this motion passed – not only CIA operations but all our
Latin American foreign policy has been pointing to this goal. The countries
that still have relations, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay, voted against the
motion, while Bolivia abstained. Whether Uruguay or any other of these
countries honour the motion or not is another matter but headquarters'
propaganda guidance is certain to call for an all-out campaign to force
compliance with the motion.
Perhaps with the vote to break relations the AMHALF agents in the
Uruguayan Embassy in Havana, Roosen and Goncalves will be able to get
information out of Perez Freeman. Even with the assistance of Inspector
Piriz in Miami, the Uruguayan diplomats still were unable to exert enough
pressure to force Perez to begin talking about Cuban operations in
Montevideo. We need the information to support the campaign for a break
by Uruguay with Cuba through Perez's revelations of Cuban intervention
here. We could alternatively write our own document based on a little fact
and a lot of imagination and attribute it to Perez, whose presence in the
Embassy is public knowledge. Such a document could backfire, however, if
Perez had actually been sent by the Cubans to seek asylum – this suspicion
grows as he continues to refuse to talk – because after the document was
surfaced Perez could escape from the Embassy and issue a public denial
through the Cuban authorities. For the time being Inspector Piriz will return
and we will hold up the false document project until we see how our media
campaign progresses without it.
Station labour operations limp along with Jack Goodwyn and the AIFLD in
the lead. This week we had a visit from Joaquin (Jack) Otero, the
representative of the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) who
worked with me in Quito last year. Otero is now the chief ITF
representative for all of Latin America and the Caribbean, and he came to
assist in a boycott against meat exports by non-union packing plants. The
hope is that his assistance will help strengthen the democratic unions
involved.
Agency-sponsored trade-union education programmes through ORIT are
being expanded. Through the ICFTU International Solidarity Fund,
headquarters is pumping in almost 200,000 dollars to establish an ORIT
training school in Cuernavaca. Until now the ORIT courses have been
limited by the space made available in Mexico City by the Mexican
Workers' Confederation which is the most important ORIT affiliate after the
AFL-CIO. Opening of the Cuernavaca school is still a year or two away but
already the ORIT courses have become an effective combination with the
AIFLD programme in Washington.
As if we don't have enough problems with Argentines, Paraguayans and
Brazilians now we have Bolivians to worry about. A week or so ago the
new Bolivian Ambassador, Jose Antonio Arce, arrived and the La Paz
station asked that we keep up their relationship with him. He has been in
and out of various government jobs since the Bolivian revolution, most
recently as Minister of the Interior when he worked closely with the La Paz
station. Holman will be seeing him from time to time, probably no more
than is absolutely necessary, so that when he returns to La Paz this
important supporter of President Paz Estenssoro can be picked up again for
Bolivian operations.
Arce's main job here will be to watch the supporters of former Bolivian
President Hernan Siles Suazo, and Siles himself if he settles in exile in
Montevideo as is expected. Siles aspires to succeed current President Victor
Paz Estenssoro in keeping with their custom, since the revolution of 1952,
of alternating in the presidency. Paz, however, against the tradition, was re-
elected in May and must now contend with Siles's plots against him. The La
Paz station is anxious to prevent Siles from returning to the presidency in
Bolivia because of his recent leftward trends, and his friendly relationship
with the Soviets when he was Bolivian Ambassador in Montevideo during
1960-62. As an initial move to support the La Paz station I have asked
Commissioner Otero, Chief of Police Intelligence, to make discreet
inquiries about Siles' plans among his political friends and to watch for
signs that he will be settling here.
Montevideo 11 August 1964
Uruguayan compliance with the OAS resolution on Cuba looks very
doubtful. The Foreign Minister on his return from Washington announced
that the NCG will now have to decide whether the OAS resolution should
be passed to the UN Security Council for approval before it can be
considered binding. This is only a delaying manoeuvre to avoid a difficult
decision but the most damaging developments are that Mexico has
announced that it will ignore the resolution and Bolivia is undecided.
Unless Uruguay can be made to seem isolated in its refusal to break, the
chances are not good. Moreover, although we have intensified our
propaganda output on the Cuban issue through ABBUZZ-1 considerably,
it's no match for the campaign being waged by the extreme left against
breaking relations, which has been carefully combined with the campaign
against the government on economic issues.
Today the National Workers' Convention (CNT), formed only a week ago as
a loosely knit coordinating organisation of the CTU and the government
workers, is leading another general strike. Again most of the country's
economic activity has stopped: transport, bars, restaurants, port,
construction, wool, textiles, service stations, schools and many others. The
strike was called to show support for continued relations with Cuba,
admittedly a political purpose, but not unprecedented in Uruguay.
Apart from the strike today, the formation of the CNT is a very significant
step forward by the communist-influenced trade-union movement, because,
for the first time, government workers in the Central Administration (the
ministries and executive) and the autonomous agencies and decentralised
services are working in the same organisation as the private-sector unions
of the CTU. With continuing inflation and currency devaluation (the peso is
down to almost 23 per dollar now) the CNT will have plenty of legitimate
issues for agitation in coming months. Besides the Cuban issue the CNT
campaign is currently targeted on pay rises, fringe benefits and subsidies to
be included in the budget now being drawn up for next year.
Montevideo 21 August 1964
Through the AVBUZZ media operation we're getting editorials almost daily
calling for Uruguayan compliance with the OAS resolution to break with
Cuba. President Alessandri in Chile has done this already, instead of
waiting until after the elections. Today Bolivia announced it is breaking in
accordance with the resolution, leaving only Uruguay and Mexico still with
ties to Cuba.
The NCG will surely buckle under such isolation, but getting decisions here
is cumbersome. On important matters, the majority NCG members decide
their position only after prior decisions within each of the Blanco factions
represented on the NCG. Likewise the Colorado factions must decide.
Eventually the NCG meets to formalise the positions taken by each faction
earlier and a decision may emerge. In the case of Cuban relations the
Foreign Minister has yet to present his report on the OAS Conference and
related matters even with a month already passed since the Conference.
For additional propaganda, we have arranged for Juana Castro, Fidel's
sister, to make a statement favouring the break during a stopover next week
at the Montevideo airport. She defected in Mexico this June and is currently
on a propaganda tour of South America organised by the Miami station and
headquarters. We'll get wide coverage for her statement, and a few days
later still another Miami station agent will arrive: Isabel Siero Perez,
important in the International. Federation of Women Lawyers, another of
the CA staff's international organisations. She'll describe the Havana horror
show and emphasise the Soviets' use of Cuba as a base for penetration
throughout the hemisphere.
Montevideo 31 August 1964
The Montevideo association of foreign diplomats recently held their
monthly dinner and Janet and I went along with several others from the
Embassy. By chance we began a conversation with two of the Soviet
diplomats and later joined them for dinner. I wrote a memorandum for
headquarters on the conversation – one of the Soviets, Sergey Borisov, is a
known KGB officer – and Holman later asked me to keep up the contact
and see if Borisov is interested. Russell Phipps, our Soviet operations
officer, isn't the outgoing type and Holman is clearly not pleased with
Phipps's failure to recruit any decent new access agents.
I'll go to the diplomatic association meeting next month but I'm not keen on
getting deeply into Soviet operations. Just keeping the telephone transcripts
analysed and the files up to date is deadly dreary and requires far too much
desk work. We shall see if Borisov is interested in continuing the contact –
he's the Consul and lives in the Soviet side of the AVERT house.
I decided to try another Cuban recruitment with the possibility that the
spectre of a break in relations might help us. The target was Aldo Rodriguez
Camps, the Cuban Charge d'Affaires in Montevideo, whose father-in-law is
an exile living in Miami. Last year the Miami station sent the father-in-law,
AMPIG-1, down to Montevideo to discover the political views on Castro
and communism of the Charge and his wife. He felt from his conversation
that neither seemed to be particularly ardent communists although they
were clearly loyal to the Cuban revolution. At that time it was decided not
to try for the recruitment or defection of either Aldo or Ester but to wait for
a future date.
At my request the Miami station proposed to the father-in-law that he come
back to Montevideo as soon as possible for a more direct approach to his
daughter, who appeared to be the more susceptible of the two. If Ester had
agreed to defect we would have made arrangements to evacuate her to
Miami, but only after she had had a few days to work on Aldo. The key to
Aldo, the Charge, is their two young children, to whom he is very attached
and when confronted with their flight to Miami he just might have decided
to come along.
Unfortunately, this recruitment failed. The father-in-law came as planned
and made the initial meeting with his daughter but she cut him off at the
beginning and refused any discussion of defection. After two days he went
back to Miami, sad and broken, with no idea if he'll ever see his daughter
and grandchildren again.
Montevideo 4 September 1964
The main Blanco and Colorado newspapers are carrying a torrent of
AVBUZZ-sponsored articles and statements calling for the government to
heed the OAS resolution. However, manoeuvring among the different
Blanco and Colorado NCG members and their factions is causing the
outlook on the break with Cuba to change almost daily. In the past three
days there have been a meeting of the NCG Foreign Relations Commission
that was scheduled but didn't convene for lack of quorum, new scheduling
of debate by the full NCG for 10 September, and finally last night an NCG
decision to consider the OAS resolution at a special meeting on 8
September. So far only two of the NCG members have indicated how they'll
vote – one for and one against – and there is a good chance we'll lose.
Nevertheless, relations with Brazil are again at crisis point, and the thesis
that Uruguay must go along with the majority in order to assure protection
against pressures from Argentina or Brazil is gaining ground.
If they don't break relations this week, I'll write the 'Perez Freeman Report'
right away and we'll make it public either through Inspector Piriz or the
AMHALF agents, Roosen or Goncalves. The Foreign Minister, who is
against the break, is the first guy I'll burn as a Cuban agent – he probably is
anyway.
Returns from the elections in Chile today show Eduardo Frei an easy
winner over Allende. Chalk up another victory for election operations.
Allende won't be a threat again for another six years.
Montevideo 8 September 1964
A great victory. Forty-four days after the OAS resolution on Cuba the NCG
has voted to comply. How the vote would go wasn't known for sure until the
last minute when the N CG President changed his position and carried a
Counsellor from his faction with him. Final vote: six in favour of breaking
(five Blancos and one Colorado) and three against (one Blanco and two
Colorados).
While the Councillors were debating several thousand pro-Cuban
demonstrators gathered in Independence Plaza in front of Government
House where the N CG was meeting. When the vote was announced a riot
was on, and the crowd surged down the main street, 18 de Julio, breaking
store fronts and clashing with the anti-riot Metropolitan Guard and the
mounted Republican Guard. At least ten police were injured and twenty-six
demonstrators arrested before the water cannons and tear-gas dispersed the
mob. Somehow many of the demonstrators got back to the University
buildings further down 18 de Julio, and right now the battle is continuing
there with stones and firecrackers being hurled from the roof of the main
University building.
I'm spending the night in the station just in case anything drastic happens
that has to be reported to headquarters. Tomorrow we'll see if any of the
Cubans can be picked off before they leave for home.
Montevideo 10 September 1964
Rioting continues, mostly centred at the University of the Republic
buildings on 18 de Julio. Although some demonstrators abandoned the
University during the early morning hours yesterday at the urging of
Colonel Rodriguez, Chief of Police, and Adolfo Tejera, Minister of the
Interior, new riots began yesterday morning at about ten o'clock and have
continued since. The demonstrators' tactics include, besides the throwing of
stones from the University buildings, lightning street riots at different
places to throw the police off guard. Shop windows and cars parked at our
Embassy have also been stoned.
During the early hours of this morning, several US businesses were
attacked. A powerful bomb exploded outside the First National City Bank
shattering the huge plate-glass windows and causing the hanging ceiling in
the lobby to fall. Another bomb exploded at the Western Telegraph
Company while an incendiary device started a fire at the Moore-
McCormick Lines offices. General Electric's offices were also damaged.
The Cubans advised the Foreign Ministry that they'll be leaving on Saturday
for Madrid. Last night with Roberto Musso, the chief of the AVENIN
surveillance team, I tried to talk to the new code clerk by telephone. Musso,
using the name of someone we already know is in contact with the code
clerk, got him on the telephone and passed it to me. I said I was a friend of
Roberto Hernandez, his predecessor, and would like to make a similar offer
of assistance. He told me to kiss his ass and hung up, but I'll try again if I
have time after I've done the same with the other three – two of whom are
new arrivals since the Hernandez episode.
The Cubans may have made, a serious mistake yesterday, in their haste to
tie up loose ends before leaving. They sent the chauffeur, my agent, to send
a telegram to Tucuman, Argentina with the message, 'Return for your
cousin's wedding'. This can only be a code phrase and the urgency attached
to sending the telegram led the chauffeur to conclude that someone is being
called for a meeting before Saturday. I've passed the addressee and address
by cable to the Buenos Aires station for follow-up and will watch carefully
the air and riverboat passenger lists for this and other names of possible
Cuban agents. We know nothing about the person this was addressed to, but
he is probably involved in the guerrilla activity in the Tucuman area.
Montevideo 11 September 1964
Demonstrators continue to occupy the University and bombings have
occurred at the OAS offices, the Coca-Cola plant, newspapers that
promoted the break (El Dia, El Pais and El Plata), the homes of four
councillors who voted for the break, and several of the neighbourhood clubs
of the factions that favoured the break. At the University, which is still
sealed off by police, minors were allowed to leave and the Red Cross
entered with doctors to distribute blankets and examine the students, who
were suffering from cold and hunger. Any who decide to leave, however,
will have to be registered, identified and face possible arrest. Colonel
Rodriguez's plan is to trap all the non-students among the 400 or so people
occupying the University.
Not to be outdone by the students and political demonstrators, the
municipal-transit system workers struck for three hours this afternoon and
the workers of the autonomous agencies and decentralised services staged a
huge demonstration at the Legislative Palace. Again the issue was budget
benefits.
I've spoken to all but one of the Cubans and none has been willing to meet
me. One of them last night invited me to the Embassy for coffee but I
thought it prudent to decline in spite of the freezing wind howling through
the telephone booth. When they leave tomorrow I'll be at the airport just in
case – as will Otero, Piriz and other police officers who can take charge if a
last-minute defection occurs.
Montevideo 12 September 1964
This morning the demonstrators at the University surrendered and were
allowed to leave after fingerprints, identification photographs and
biographical data were taken. Forty-three nonstudents were arrested among
the 400 who came out.
At the airport this afternoon several thousand demonstrators came together
to bid the Cubans farewell. When the police began to force the
demonstrators back to a highway some distance from the main terminal
building another riot broke out followed by a pitched battle. The police won
easily, using the cavalry effectively in the open areas around the terminal
building, but many were injured on both sides.
All the Cubans left as scheduled. Only one remains behind: the Commercial
Counsellor, who is being allowed to stay on for a couple of weeks to close a
Cuban purchase of jerked beef.
Of all the Latin American and Caribbean countries only Mexico still has
relations with Cuba. If Mexico refuses to break, as seems likely, the
Mexican channel could be used for various operational ploys against Cuba
– it's even possible that the Mexican government was encouraged by the
station there not to break with Cuba. Here we've done our job, but poor
O'Grady will be working until the end of the year to send headquarters all
the clips on Cuba we've managed to place in the media.
Efforts by the Miami station to get information out of Earle Perez Freeman
through the Uruguayan diplomats, Roosen and Goncalves, have ended, as
these agents are returning to Montevideo. Although Switzerland is taking
charge of Uruguayan affairs in Havana the Uruguayan Charge is staying to
close the Embassy and to transfer the eight remaining asylees, including
Perez Freeman, to another Embassy. According to the Miami station
Goncalves is too insecure and frivolous to consider incorporating into other
operations so I've asked them to forward a contact plan for Roosen only.
Just possibly he could develop a relationship with a Soviet officer here, but
this will depend on a careful analysis of the possibility that he was known
by the Cubans to be working with us.
No sooner do we get the Cubans out than the Chinese communists try to
move in. Only yesterday the Foreign Minister told a reporter that the
Chicoms have asked permission to set up a trade mission in Montevideo
and that as far as he is concerned it would be all right. Holman gave
O'Grady the responsibility for following this one up but as in the case of the
Brazilians the details are mine because we'll use the police intelligence
office to get more information.
Manuel Pio Correa, the new Brazilian Ambassador, arrives tomorrow. He is
pointedly visiting Brazilian military units along the Uruguay-Brazil border
on his way here. Holman will establish contact with him next week.
Montevideo 16 September 1964
In spite of the intensity of station operations against the Cubans and other
matters like the Brazilians, and local communist gains in the trade-union
field we have a serious morale problem that's getting worse as weeks go by.
In most stations, I suppose, the day to day demands of work keep personal
dissentions to a minimum because one doesn't have the time or energy to
feud. But here the problem is with Holman and everyone in the station is
affected.
The problem is that Holman expects all the station officers to give
outstanding performances in their particular areas of responsibility but he's
not willing to exert very much effort himself. Besides that he is a great
player of favourites, and for better or worse he's chosen me as his favourite.
He invites me to lunch several days each week and practically insists that I
play golf on Saturday afternoons with his crowd out at the Cerro Club even
though I've made it clear I'm not enthusiastic. When we're alone he speaks
derisively of the other station officers, especially O'Grady, Phipps and
Zeffer. O'Grady, in fact, has turned into a bundle of nerves under Holman's
criticism, which he's sure is the cause of his increasingly frequent attacks of
hives. Usually Holman's criticisms are about shortcomings in language or
failure to make new recruitments but sometimes he even criticizes the
wives.
His attitude would be understandable, perhaps, if his own work habits were
more inspiring, but he avoids work as much as possible and requests from
other stations like Rio or La Paz or Buenos Aires seem like personal insults
to him. Just the other day when we were playing golf, Holman told me that
in fact he was rather relieved when the recruitment of Hernandez, the
Cuban code clerk, failed. He said he came to Montevideo for a relaxing last
four years before retiring and only hoped to keep operations to a minimum
and the Ambassador happy. If Hernandez had been recruited, headquarters
would have bothered us constantly with advice and probably would have
sent down 'experts' to tell us how to run the operation.
Holman is not only determined to keep operations to a minimum. At night
or on weekends when priority cables are received or have to be sent
Holman refuses to go to the station to take action. He either sends O'Grady
in to bring the cable out to his house in Carrasco – against all the rules of
security – or he has the communications officer bring it out to him. If
another officer has to take action he simply calls that officer to his house.
I'm not sure what to do since I'm the only officer Holman thinks is doing a
good job – nothing to be proud of, it could even be the kiss of death. Warren
Dean told me before leaving Quito that Holman isn't considered one of the
more outstanding Chiefs of Station in the Division, but he's apparently
protected by Ray Herbert, the Deputy Division Chief, who is Holman's best
friend.
Montevideo 25 September 1964
Today the Congress approved the new budgets for the state-owned banks
with provisions for a 30 per cent salary increase retroactive to January of
this year plus improved fringe benefits. Political motivation prevailed at the
last moment even though the NCG had previously rejected such generous
increases, which is not to say they aren't justified when inflation is taken
into account. The main problem is that this increase of 30 per cent will set
the standard for demands by all the other government employees which in
turn will accelerate inflation with new budget deficits.
The new National Workers' Convention, heavily influenced by the PCU, is
also intensifying its efforts to unify the government and private-sector
workers through a series of rallies and marches in coming weeks,
culminating in a mass meeting in early December to be called the Congress
of the People with representation from the trade unions and other popular
mass organisations. At the Congress of People they will formulate their own
solutions to the problems afflicting this country – not a bad idea what with
the mess they're in.
Relations between Uruguay and Brazil are back at boiling-point. Police in
Porto Alegre, the capital of the Brazilian state bordering Uruguay, have just
discovered a new plot by Goulart and his supporters to foment a
communist-oriented takeover. A written plan, supposedly found on a
university student, included the formation of terrorist commando units.
Earlier, another plot was discovered in Porto Alegre involving Army
officers loyal to Goulart. Here in Montevideo, the 300 Brazilian exiles have
formed an association to help those unable to get along financially.
However, at the first meeting considerable discussion was devoted to ways
in which the military government could be overthrown, and Brizola's wife,
who is Goulart's sister, was elected to the association's governing board.
In tracking down the possibility that the Chinese communists will establish
a trade mission here, we discovered that permission has in fact been
granted, not to the Chinese but to the North Koreans. They have just arrived
and are taking a house on the same street as the Soviet Legation. Holman
asked Tejera, the Minister of the Interior, what could be done to keep them
from staying permanently, but Tejera made no promises. Already head-
quarters is asking for a programme to get them thrown out.
Two recent developments of note have occurred in our otherwise stagnated
student operations. A new publication aimed at university and secondary
students is now coming out: it's called Combate and is published by Alberto
Roca. Also, at the Alfredo Vazquez Acevedo Institute, which is the
secondary school associated with the University and as such the most
important on that level, the student union supported by the station has just
defeated the FEUU-oriented candidates for the fifth straight time. Sooner or
later our work with this group, the Association of Preparatory Students, is
bound to be reflected in the FEUU.
Montevideo 29 September 1964
Montevideo was alive with new rumours this morning that senior Blanco
military officers are planning a coup against the government. Cause of the
rumours is a dinner given last night by Juan Jose Gari, the long-time station
agent in the Ruralist League and currently President of the State Mortgage
Bank, in honour of Mario Aguerrondo, former Montevideo Police Chief,
who was recently promoted from Colonel to General. Among the guests at
the dinner were other Ruralista leaders and practically all of the top military
commanders from the Minister of Defence down. Holman checked out the
rum ours with Gari and with Adolfo Tejera, the Minister of the Interior,
while I checked with Colonel Roberto Ramirez, Chief of the Metropolitan
Guard, who was also there. The dinner was simply an expression of homage
to Aguerrondo but the rumours, entirely unfounded, reveal just how
nervous people are that a military takeover may occur, what with the
increasing strength of the PCU-dominated unions and the government's
incapacity to slow inflation. New strikes are being planned.
Holman thinks he has at last got agreement from the Minister of the
Interior, Adolfo Tejera, for setting up a Public Safety mission for work with
the police under AID. For some time Colonel Rodriguez, the Chief of
Police, has wanted the programme but the delicate question of foreigners
working openly with the police has caused Tejera to delay his decision. No
wonder Tejera has now finally decided. He has just testified before the
Budget Commission of the Chamber of Deputies that his ministry is too
poor to buy paper, the police lack uniforms, arms, transport and
communication, and the fire departments lack hoses, chemicals, trucks and
other equipment.
It's not just a question of money and equipment for the police; they are also
very poorly trained. Not only are bank robberies frequent, for example, but
successful escapes often involve not only stolen cars but motor scooters,
bicycles, trucks, buses – even horses. In one recent robbery the getaway car
wouldn't start so the robbers simply walked down the street to the beach and
disappeared into the crowd. In August four thieves were caught robbing a
house on the coast near Punta del Este but escaped to the nearby hills, and
after a two-day gun battle they slipped through a .cordon of several hundred
police. Their escape car, however, got stuck in the sand and they walked
down the beach, robbed another house, were again discovered, but this time
escaped in a rowing-boat. For six days the police chased them in cars,
helicopters and on foot but they finally escaped completely – carrying their
loot on their backs as they rode their bicycles down the main highway into
Montevideo.
The competence of the AVALANCHE service is similarly limited in its
attempts to suppress terrorist activities. Undoubtedly some of the bombings
at the time relations with Cuba were broken were the work of the terrorist
group led by Raul Sendic. Last March Sendic returned from several months
in hiding in Argentina after an arms theft from a shooting club in Colonia.
He arrived in a light aircraft at a small airport near Montevideo, but when
discovered he simply rushed past the police guard and escaped in a waiting
truck. The following month 4000 sticks of dynamite were stolen from a
quarry and a few days later enough caps and fuses to explode it disappeared
from another site. All the police could report was that these thefts may have
been the work of the Sendic band.
Building up the police is like labour operations – we're still at the beginning
with a long road ahead requiring training, equipment, money and lots of
patience.
Montevideo 7 October 1964
This is the final day of the forty-eight-hour strike in the autonomous
agencies and decentralised services. Only the electric company and the state
banks have been operating although the banks have been stopping work for
one hour each shift in solidarity with the others. Yesterday the striking
government workers, CNT unions and FEUU held a demonstration at the
Legislative Palace to demand salary increases equivalent to the 30 per cent
won two weeks ago by the government bank workers.
Two days ago all the privately owned gasoline stations were closed
indefinitely in an owner's strike against the government for a higher profit
margin from the state-owned petroleum monopoly, ANCAP, which also has
a large number of gasoline stations. As the ANCAP workers are
participating in the forty-eight-hour government workers' strike, no stations
were open yesterday or today. More strikes and demonstrations coming up:
teachers, the ministries, postal workers and some unions in the private
sector.
Montevideo 17 October 1964
Commissioner Otero and others have had a stroke of luck against the
Sendic group of terrorists. Two leaders of the group, Jorge Manera, an
engineer in the electric company, and Julio Marenales, a professor in the
School of Fine Arts, were arrested in an unsuccessful bank robbery. They
confessed that their purpose was to aid the sugar-cane workers of Bella
Union and that the focal point for their activities is the School of Fine Arts.
Police seized arms and are searching for two other members of the group.
Otero's leads from these arrests are very important because this is the only
active armed group. If he can get good information from the interrogations
we may be able to target some recruitment operations against them. So far
they've been completely underground.
We've decided to hook up the AVENGEFUL lines again on the Soviets and
the PCU. I'll also put a line on Prensa Latina and another on the Czech
Embassy which has taken over the Cubans' affairs. If the transcribers can
manage I'll also put a tap on the telephone of Sara Youchak, a young
activist in the FIDEL political front who has all the marks of being a Cuban
intelligence agent.
Still no sign of who was behind the theft of the tapes from AVOIDANCE's
car. He'll now take over the courier duties again so that we can stop using
the Embassy employee. Colonel Ramirez, Chief of the Metropolitan Guard,
is really happy about AVENGEFUL. A few days ago his men, acting on
data from telephone taps, intercepted a truck containing 600 transistor
radios that had been off-loaded from a light aircraft running contraband
from Argentina. The 300,000 pesos that the haul is worth will be divided
among Ramirez and his men.
Meanwhile the government announced that they simply had no money to
start paying September salaries – even the police and the Army, always the
first to be paid – have received nothing for September. Nevertheless, the
NCG has just approved the 30 per cent increase for employees of the state-
owned telephone, electricity and petroleum monopolies.
Montevideo 25 October 1964
Perez Freeman has been killed trying to escape from the Uruguayan
Embassy in Havana! The story was carried in wire-service reports this
morning and said that he had been trying to hold the Uruguayan Charge,
who is still trying to arrange for another Embassy to take over the asylees,
as hostage. The Miami station is attempting to check the story but no
confirmation so far. If only the Mexico City station had handled his
defection correctly in January we would have all his information and he'd
be basking in the Miami sun.
Montevideo 31 October 1964
On the Perez Freeman case the Foreign Ministry received what is being
called the longest cable in its history – some 1300 groups in code from the
Embassy in Havana. The communications office of the Foreign Ministry,
however, was unable to decode it for 'technical' reasons – meaning,
probably, that too much effort was involved – so the Foreign Minister called
the Embassy by telephone to get the story the Charge had put in the cable.
Perez Freeman, according to the Charge, was the leader of a group of four
asylees who took the Charge hostage and escaped from the Embassy in the
Charge's car. Cuban security forces gave chase and when the escaping
group arrived at a roadblock Perez Freeman jumped out of the car and was
shot running away. The others were taken to the fortress where executions
are normally held. I've asked the Miami station to try to verify the Charge's
version.
Hernan Siles Suazo, the former Bolivian President, was caught plotting and
was deported by President Paz Estenssoro. He's arrived back in Montevideo
and we're supposed to report any signs that he may be returning to Bolivia.
Paz Estenssoro is in serious trouble right now, and the La Paz station wants
to head off any complications from Siles. Holman continues to meet with
Jose Arce, the Bolivian Ambassador, to pass titbits from police intelligence.
Yesterday Arce gave a press conference to assure everyone that the
rebellion now underway against Paz Estenssoro is communist-inspired and
doomed to failure. He emphasised that Paz has the full support of the
Bolivian people and that current problems have been blown all out of
proportion – adding that the minority groups opposing Paz are so few in
number that they could all be driven off together in a single bus. So far ex-
President Siles hasn't moved from Montevideo but Otero has posted a
special 'security' guard for Siles in order to watch him more closely.
Montevideo 6 November 1964
In Bolivia President Paz has been overthrown by the military and allowed
to go to Lima in exile. Ambassador Arce has resigned and has announced
that he plans to continue living in Montevideo for a while. Meanwhile ex-
President Siles has started to pack and will be leaving for Bolivia within a
few days. Holman's not very happy, though, because rumours are strong
that Paz Estenssoro is coming to live in Montevideo – meaning exile-
watching will continue, only with new targets.
Late tonight the Budget was finally passed by the Chamber of Deputies, ten
minutes before the final constitutional deadline and after forty hours of
continuous debate. Passage was made possible by a last-minute political
pact between the Blancos, who lack a majority in the Chamber, and the
Ruralistas, Christian Democrats and a splinter faction of the Colorados.
Opinion is unanimous, even among Blancos, that the Budget is unworkable
because of its enormous deficit and that not even the devaluation of the peso
included in the Budget exercise – the third devaluation since the Blancos
took over in 1959 – will allow for printing enough new money to cover the
deficit.
I've seen my Soviet friends at several recent diplomatic receptions and have
become acquainted with a couple of Romanians and Czechs as well.
Headquarters has reacted favourably and asked that I develop the
relationship further with the Soviet Consul, Borisov. Tomorrow night I go
to the Soviet Embassy as the Ambassador's representative for their
celebration of the October Revolution. Phipps tells me to expect plenty of
vodka, caviar and singing.
Montevideo 28 November 1964
Relations between Uruguay and Brazil are heating up again although
Goulart's importance is diminishing fast because he has heart trouble and
recently underwent an operation. Brizola is the centre of controversy now
because of recent declarations against the Brazilian government that were
published both here and in Brazil. Manuel Pio Correa, the Brazilian
Ambassador, has filed another official protest against Brizola's conduct.
Perhaps more important are the recent arrivals of two former high officials
in Goulart's government, Max de Costa Santos, formerly a Deputy, and
Almino Alfonso, former Minister of Labour. Both are far-left and Pio has
protested against their arrival here, claiming they entered Uruguay illegally
and cannot obtain asylum because they had already been granted asylum in
other countries following the military coup. The Minister of the Interior,
Adolfo Tejera, is studying the case and Holman is urging him to throw them
out.
In Brazil, the federal government has been forced to take over the state of
Goias, throwing out the state government because of what is being
described as communist subversion there. Yesterday the Brazilian Foreign
Minister blamed the intervention in Goias (the military government's worst
crisis yet) on the activities of exiles in Montevideo. Today President Castelo
Branco told the Brazilian Congress that he had ordered the takeover in
Goias in order to forestall a plot led by Brizola from Montevideo. New
protests from Pio Correa are certain.
Outright military intervention in Uruguay by Brazil is getting closer. We've
had several alarming reports lately through the communications intelligence
channel based on monitoring of the military traffic in southern Brazil.
According to these reports the Brazilian Army is ready at any time to
implement a plan to invade Uruguay and take over Montevideo in a matter
of hours.
Montevideo 2 December 1964
I have been trying in recent weeks to follow up some of the mass of leads
on probable agents and operations of the Cubans. Most of these leads have
come from telephone tapping, surveillance, letter intercepts and monitoring
of communications channels. Several of these cases have interesting
aspects.
I continue to receive the mail addressed to the Cuban intelligence support
agent, Jorge Castillo, through the postman AVBUSY-1. In May the Cubans
changed the cryptographic system of their network in Latin America (the
ZRKNICK agents), probably as a result of the near-recruitment of
Hernandez here and of the defection of the Cuban intelligence officer,
AMMUG-1, in Canada. Since then the National Security Agency has been
unable to decrypt the messages which continue, nevertheless, to be sent to
agents operating in several parts of Latin America. Although I haven't
intercepted any mail that would appear to be sent by the Cuban agent
believed to be working in Lima or La Paz, I have received some very
suspicious letters mailed from a provincial Uruguayan town.
Telephone tapping and surveillance of Sara Youchak, a frequent overt
contact of one of the Cuban intelligence officers before the break in
relations, revealed that she travels frequently to Buenos Aires, where she
sees her cousin, whom the Buenos Aires station has connected with
guerrilla activities in northern Argentina and with communist student
organising. Moreover, Sara has a first cousin (whom she has never seen)
who is a State Department Foreign Service officer. Soon I'll ask
headquarters to check with State Department security people to see if we
might use the cousin to place an agent next to Sara.
Through monitoring of airline reservation communications the National
Security Agency has discovered that the manager of the Montevideo office
of the Scandinavian Airlines System, Danilo Trelles, is in charge of
assigning pre-paid tickets for passengers from many Latin American
countries on the SAS flights that start several times each week in Santiago,
Chile, and arrive after a number of stops in Prague. The pre-paid tickets are
usually requested by the Prague office of Cubana Airlines and are intended
for Latin Americans travelling to Cuba. Because the pre-paid tickets are
sent as 'no-name', Trelles can assign them and assure that the identity of the
traveller is protected. What we are trying to discover is how Trelles is
advised of the identities of the travellers. The answer may be through the
Czech or Soviet embassies which Trelles's assistant, Flora Papo, often
visits. Papo in fact takes care of the details of this travel-support operation
and the A VENIN surveillance team has turned up interesting vulnerability
data on her.
AVENGEFUL telephone tapping on the Montevideo office of Prensa
Latina, the Cuban wire service, seems to reveal what I suspected – that PL
is serving as a support mechanism for Cuban intelligence operations now
that the Embassy is gone. The monthly subsidy for the office is about five
thousand dollars, which is wired to the Montevideo branch of the Bank of
London and Montreal from the Bank of Canada. The tap also revealed that
the total of all the salaries, rent, services of Press Wireless and other
expenses amount to only about half the subsidy. Headquarters is currently
processing clearance for an Assistant Manager of the Bank of London and
Montreal whom I already know rather well and whom I'll recruit for access
to cheques on the PL account. It would be interesting to discover the
recipients of the unaccounted half of the subsidy, but right now I can still
only suspect that it is used for intelligence operations.
We have a new case officer for operations against the Communist Party of
Uruguay and related organisations. He's Bob Riefe who was the chief
instructor in communism for the headquarters' portion of the JOT course
five years ago. Riefe has a Ph.D. and has spent his entire career in training,
but he was able to wangle an assignment in the DDP as part of the Office of
Training's 'cross-fertilisation' programme. A couple of years ago he was to
have been assigned to a WH station but a heart-attack delayed him.
Hopefully I can convince Riefe to take back the former Cuban Embassy
chauffeur, AVBARON-1, whom I've been unsuccessfully trying to push
back into PCU work since the Cubans left.
Riefe's predecessor, Paul Burns, is returning to headquarters rather
discouraged after four years here without getting a really high-level
penetration of the PCU. In recent months he has spent most of his time
struggling with the AVPEARL audio penetration of the PCU conference
room. The bugged porcelain electrical sockets arrived from headquarters
some months ago but when AYCAVE-1, the PCU penetration agent
assigned to make the installation, got his next guard duty he found that the
paint flecks were not quite exact. Back in the station the paint was corrected
by Frank Sherno, a TSD technician who is setting up a regional support
shop in the Buenos Aires station to service Uruguay and Chile as well as
Argentina. (This new shop will give us much faster service than the Panama
station regional support base for technical operations.)
At last a listening post has also been found – it's a tiny apartment in a
building behind the PCU headquarters but located where the carrier-current
transmitters in the sockets can be picked up. Then AVCAVE-1 got guard
duty again, Sherno came over from Buenos Aires again, and during the
course of guard duty the agent was able to replace the original sockets with
our bugged ones for testing. Sherno in the LP had transmitters to test the
switches (one frequency to turn them on and another frequency to turn them
off) and a receiver to test the RF and audio quality. Then AVCAVE-1
removed our sockets and replaced the original ones since there was no way
to get a message from Sherno back to him if they hadn't worked properly.
The testing operation was very risky, both for AVCAVE-1 and for Sherno in
the LP. Guard duty at PCU headquarters is always in pairs and for
AVCAVE-1 to slip loose from his colleague and install the bugged sockets
was difficult even though it only involved the use of a screwdriver. Getting
Sherno in and out of the LP with the transmitters and receivers was also
dangerous because almost all the people around the PCU headquarters are
party members and suspicious of strangers. Somehow both AVCAVE-1 and
Sherno came out undiscovered, and now Riefe will proceed with finding a
permanent LP-keeper and with the final installation by AVCAVE-1.
According to Sherno the signal is excellent.
Montevideo 4 December 1964
Pio Correa, the Brazilian Ambassador, is making a loud noise over the two
former Goulart government leaders, Max da Costa Santos and Almino
Alfonso. Adolfo Tejera, the Minister of the Interior, recommended to the
NCG ten days ago that they be expelled because they had indeed entered
Uruguay illegally. A week later the Foreign Minister announced that they
can remain in Uruguay because their documentation is, after all, in order –
according to a Ministry of the Interior investigation. Furious, Pio Correa has
filed another protest note asking for their expulsion and Brizola's internment
– complaining also that Brizola has several light aircraft at his disposal for
courier flights to and from Brazil.
The NCG has passed this latest protest back to the Ministers of the Interior
and Foreign Relations with an instruction to the latter that the Brazilian
government be asked for an explanation of the recent repeated violations of
the border by Brazilian military vehicles. Three aircraft belonging to
Brizola were also grounded. Commissioner Otero's Intelligence and Liaison
Department of the Montevideo Police, however, have arrested one of
Colonel Camara Sena's spies – a Navy sergeant who came posing as a
student but was caught surveilling one of the exiles. He was charged with
spying but set free when the Brazilian Embassy intervened.
According to Holman, Pio Correa is going to keep protesting until Brizola
either leaves Uruguay or is interned and until a favourable resolution of the
Alfonso and Santos cases. Otherwise we can expect Brazilian military
intervention.
Montevideo 18 December 1964
A new victory for the station at Georgetown, British Guiana, in its efforts to
throw out the leftist-nationalist Prime Minister and professed Marxist,
Cheddi Jagan. In elections a few days ago Jagan's Indian-based party lost
parliamentary control to a coalition of the black-based party and a splinter
group. The new Prime Minister, Forbes Burnham, is considered to be a
moderate and his ascension to power finally removes the fear that Jagan
would turn British Guiana into another Cuba. The victory is largely due to
CIA operations over the past five years to strengthen the anti-Jagan trade
unions, principally through the Public Service International which provided
the cover for financing public-employees' strikes. Jagan is protesting fraud –
earlier this year he expelled Gene Meakins, one of our main labour agents
in the operation, but it was no use.
Montevideo 25 December 1964
Christmas in Uruguay is like the 4th of July at home. It's hot and everybody
goes to the beach – and it's almost completely secular with the official
designation 'Family Day'. (Holy Week is similarly changed to 'Tourism
Week' and most of the country goes on vacation.) How different from
Ecuador where the Church is so powerful.
I stopped over at O'Grady's house this morning for a little Christmas cheer
but ended up commiserating with him over the latest Holman outburst. A
few days ago O'Grady and his wife gave a little cocktail party and buffet as
a welcome for the new CP operations officer, Bob Riefe. Holman didn't
hold his drinks very well that night and soon began to lash out at O'Grady
and then at Riefe and Riefe's wife. It was all pretty unpleasant and now
O'Grady's hives are back out in full bloom, in spite of the fact that we all
know now that Holman is coming out the real loser.
Apparently certain powers in headquarters are not entirely pleased with the
station's performance, particularly in the area of Soviet operations, and
Holman is to be transferred in about six months to Guatemala. His
replacement as Chief of Station will be a man named John Horton, who
came to WH Division from the Far East Division along with so many others
after the Bay of Pigs invasion. Holman has-only just got official notification
but he heard the change was coming, some time ago from his protector Ray
Herbert, the Deputy Division Chief. Although Herbert was able to salvage
the situation somewhat by arranging Holman's reassignment to Guatemala,
Holman's bitterness keeps growing. Russ Phipps, the Soviet operation
officer, is now almost up to O'Grady's level on Holman's list of persons to
blame, but Riefe was attacked because he's obviously part of the new crew
being assembled by Horton. Clearly Holman resents being edged aside by
newcomers from FE Division because his days in Latin America go back to
World War II.
What O'Grady and Phipps, and Alexander Zeffer too, are worried about is
that Holman's search for scapegoats will seriously damage their careers and
chances for future promotions and assignments. A couple of months ago I
chanced across the combination to Holman's safe-cabinet and out of
curiosity began to read some of the 'Secret-Informal Eyes Only' letters that
he exchanges more or less weekly with Des FitzGerald, the Division Chief.
I was so shocked at the knives he was putting into everyone but me that I
gave the combination to O'Grady. Now he's reading the letters – which only
makes his hives worse – and I think he's passed the combination on to
Zeffer and Phipps. The dangerous part is that Holman is not so damning in
the official fitness reports on the other officers, but that he cuts them so
badly in these letters that they aren't supposed to see. Reading these letters,
in fact, is highly dangerous, but all these officers are competent and
certainly harder workers than Holman. I wonder if we can hold together for
these next six months without rebellion.
Montevideo 15 January 1965
Some decisions on Brazilian affairs indicate the Blancos are persisting in
efforts to elude Brazilian pressures. The NCG voted not to give political
asylum to Almino Alfonso and Max da Costa Santos on the grounds that
they had come to Uruguay after having received asylum in other countries.
However, they were given ninety-day tourist visas which isn't going to
please Pio Correa. No decision on Brizola was needed because he promised
the Minister of the Interior that he'll be leaving Uruguay no later than 23
January. On the other hand Brizola will be allowed to return to Uruguay in
which case he can request political asylum again.
Two important new exiles are now here. One, a former Brazilian Air Force
officer and one of its most highly decorated men, escaped from a military
prison in Porto Alegre and made it across the border. The other is a former
deputy who was in exile in Bolivia until ex-President Paz was overthrown,
but came here recently for fear the new rightist regime in Bolivia would
expel him to Brazil. Both are important supporters of Brizola.
In a personal complaint to the NCG President, Pio Correa tried to get action
started on the fourteen recent requests he has made regarding the exiles.
This prompted several notes from the Uruguayan Foreign Ministry but
resistance continues. The Brazilian press, meanwhile, probably at the
government's instigation, has started a campaign to raise the tension by
speculating that relations are about to be broken and that commercial
pressures are being exerted on Uruguay. For their part the Uruguayan and
Brazilian Foreign Ministers have denied that relations are about to be
broken, while in the NCG a Colorado Councillor called for the Foreign
Minister's resignation for his inept handling of Brazilian problems.
These Brazilian affairs are a nuisance for me because I have constantly to
be checking rumours and requesting special reports from the police on the
exiles for Holman or O'Grady to use with Pio Correa, Fontoura and Camara
Sena. Who could believe a handful of exiles here could be a threat to the
Brazilian military government? Even so, headquarters keeps insisting that
we help the Rio station in their operations to support the military.
If the military in Brazil weren't so strongly anti-communist our support for
them would be embarrassing. In recent weeks the Brazilians have had an
internal crisis going over the question of whether the Navy or the Air Force
is to operate the aircraft of their only aircraft-carrier – a decrepit cow
discarded by the British. Two ministers of the Air Force have recently
resigned over decisions by the President to have the Navy fly the airplanes,
but he changed his mind again and yesterday the Minister of the Navy
resigned. Now, it seems, the Brazilian carrier strike force will have Air
Force pilots.
To make matters with Brazil worse, a few days ago the commercial offices
of the Brazilian Embassy were bombed, although little damage was done
because the bomb was poorly placed. However, written on a wall nearby
was the name 'Tupamaros' which appeared at several other recent
bombings. Commissioner Otero, Chief of Police Intelligence, is trying to
find out who these people are. He thinks they may be the Sendic group.
Raul Sendic, the revolutionary socialist leader, who had been arrested on a
contraband charge in an Argentine town near the border, was recently
released, and may have returned to Montevideo.
Inability to curb these bombings illustrates the difference between good
penetrations of the CP and related groups and bad ones. In Ecuador a group
like this would have been wiped up by now. Nevertheless, Riefe doesn't
take the bombings very seriously and seems intent on concentrating on the
strictly reformist PCU.
Montevideo 4 February 1965
At Headquarters' instruction I'm continuing to develop the relationship with
Sergey Borisov, the Soviet Consul and KGB officer.
Last Sunday Janet and I went with Borisov and his wife Nina to the beach.
First they came out to our house in Carrasco and then Borisov drove us out
to a beach near Solymar. His driving is very odd and made me nervous –
practically like a beginner. Not so his chess, of course, where he beat me
easily. Phipps tells me that Borisov knows I'm a CIA officer without any
doubt, so I wonder sometimes why I bother meeting him. Headquarters says
that's just the reason to keep the relationship going – on the chance that
Borisov could be disaffected and trying to 'build a bridge.'
Holman has asked me to take over complete responsibility for the satellite
missions, which include Czechs, Romanians, Bulgarians, Poles and
Yugoslavs. For East European countries we have no elaborate operational
procedure such as we do for the Soviets. Headquarters apparently has such
high-level penetrations in those countries that the painstaking work of
spotting and placing access agents next to them simply isn't justified.
Successes in the case of the satellites have come from CIA officers in direct
contact with them. As a start, however, I'm going to bring the files up to
date on the personnel of each mission and next week I'll try to get the
Foreign Ministry protocol files through AVDANDY-1 for that purpose.
Then I'll start a photographic album and get reports from headquarters on
the new arrivals. Right now I'm not even sure who they all are, because
Phipps has been concentrating on the Soviets and ignoring the Eastern
Europeans.
Last week I made my first visit to the AVENGEFUL telephone-tapping LP
at the Montevideo Police Headquarters. I took along a visiting TSD
technician who wanted to see how the equipment is being maintained – in
the operational files I couldn't find the last time it was visited by a station
officer, probably some years ago. The room is located right over the office
of the Deputy Police Chief on the same floor as Commissioner Otero's
Intelligence and Liaison Department. However, there is a locked steel door
between I&E and the LP – in fact the normal way to enter the LP section of
the floor is by an elevator from the underground garage for which a special
key is necessary. Off the same hallway as the LP are several rooms that I
was told are used by the Chief and Deputy Chief as rest quarters.
Deoanda and Torres, the technicians and LP operators, do an excellent job
in keeping up the equipment but they have an uncomfortable situation with
the heat. Those tube-operated Revere recorders give off so much heat that
the room is stifling in the summer. I promised to get them an air-conditioner
that they'll install either in a small high window to the inside hallway, or
else they'll have to make another opening. The LP has no windows to the
street and only the one small window to the hallway – good security but no
ventilation.
Montevideo 7 February 1965
Investigation of Prensa Latina (the Cuban wire service) has got more
interesting. Because of procedural agreements I had to postpone recruitment
of my friend at the Bank of London and Montreal until the, intelligence
chief of his country's service spoke to him and to his superior, the bank
manager – whom I also know from the Cerro Golf Club. This cumbersome
process completed, I started reviewing the Prensa Latina account. As
cheques are not returned to the account holder in Uruguay, it was easy to
discover that practically all the money is paid out in cash. Legitimate
expenses still total only about half of the monthly subsidy, so the rest of the
money is clearly going into 'other activities'. The next step is to check the
financial reports filed with government offices to see if we have a case for
shutting down Prensa Latina for falsifying financial reports or similar
irregular procedures inconsistent with the subsidy.
Montevideo 11 February 1965
At last the NCG voted to intern Brizola – an accomplishment that has taken
every ounce of Pio Correa's considerable energy and persistence. Typically,
however, the NCG decided to let Brizola pick the town where he wants to
live – any except Montevideo and no closer than 300 kilometres to the
Brazilian border. Now we can begin to relax about these messy Brazilian
operations.
Pio Correa has done an excellent job bringing the Uruguayans into line over
the exiles, which made possible the Foreign Minister's pleasant visit.
Brizola, incidentally, has chosen the beach resort of Atlantida as the town
where he'll be interned. Otero will continue the logs by 'security guards'
from police intelligence – it's only 35 kilometres from Montevideo where
Brizola could still be fairly active – and right at the limit on proximity to
Brazil: 301 kilometres.
Final approval for the AID Public Safety Mission was obtained by Holman
from Tejera, the Minister of the Interior, and last month the first Chief of
Public Safety arrived. For the time being we will refrain from putting one of
our officers under Public Safety cover, and I'll continue to handle the police
intelligence operation. After the Mission gets established through straight
police assistance (vehicles, arms, communications equipment, training)
we'll bring down an officer to work full-time with Otero's intelligence
department. About the best I can do part-time is to keep AVENGEFUL
going and increase Otero's subsidy for intelligence expenses.
These Montevideo police are getting the Public Safety assistance none too
soon. In another bank robbery just three days ago the policeman on guard
got excited and fatally shot one of the customers – mistaking the customer
for one of the robbers. Seeing this, the robbers, a man and a woman, rushed
out of the bank leaving the money behind. They walked for several blocks
and hailed a taxi which took them to the other side of the city. Since they
had no money to pay the fare, the robber gave his pistol to the taxi driver in
payment. The driver, however, heard of the robbery on the radio and turned
the pistol over to the police. On checking the weapon the police discovered
that it was the service revolver of one of their own policemen. He was
arrested at home and admitted forcing his wife to go along with him on the
robbery. The last time that particular bank had been robbed was in 1963 by
two women (or men?) dressed as nuns who were never caught.
New strikes: Montevideo buses and trolleys for payment of subsidies and
salaries; port workers for last year's Christmas bonus; city employees for
retroactive fringe benefits. Inflation during 1964 was almost 45 per cent and
last month reached the 3 per cent per month rate. The Blancos are trying to
put through another devaluation, while the peso is unsteady and has now
slipped to 30.
Montevideo 25 February 1965
I got an important hit on the postal intercept operation against Jorge
Castillo, the Cuban intelligence support agent used as an accommodation
address for Agent 101 in Lima or La Paz. The letter-carrier, AVBUSY-1,
offered me a large brown manila envelope the other day but it was
addressed not to Castillo but to Raul Trajtenberg who lives in the same huge
apartment building as Castillo. I took the envelope because it was sent from
Havana and the words Edificio Panamericano in the address were
underlined just as they were to have been underlined in correspondence to
Castillo.
I arranged with AVBUSY-1 to keep the envelope for several days in case
headquarters wanted to send down a secret-writing technician to test the
contents. Inside were Cuban press releases and clippings from Havana
newspapers. Headquarters answered my cable by sending a technician
immediately from Panama (the Buenos Aires regional support technician is
a specialist in audio and photo rather than SW techniques) and he was going
to try to 'lift' secret writing from the contents. However, we couldn't find a
letter press fast enough so I had to return the envelope to AVBUSY-1
without the test.
On checking station files on Trajtenberg I found a letter that he had written
from Havana two years ago that was intercepted through the AVIDITY
operation. Strangely, the handwriting on the manila envelope was exactly
the same as that of the Trajtenberg letter written from Havana – meaning,
probably, that Trajtenberg addressed the envelope to himself and, along
with other self-addressed envelopes, gave it to a Cuban intelligence officer
for later use. Trajtenberg's mail will also be given to me regularly by
AVBUSY-1 although Trajtenberg is leaving soon to study at the University
of Paris. So far other Trajtenberg intercepts reveal that his father (he lives
with his parents) is manipulating large sums of money in a numbered Swiss
bank account. The Berne station advised that the Swiss security service will
provide data from numbered accounts but insist on all the details and
reasons – which headquarters doesn't want to give right now because of the
sensitivity of other cases in this same Cuban network.
Montevideo 18 March 1965
Washington Beltran, the new NCG President, has had plenty of labour
unrest in spite of the recent carnival distractions: railway workers striking
for the 1964 retroactive pay increases, the interprovincial buses stopped
again for back salaries and subsidies, the Montevideo bus and trolley
employees also striking for salaries and subsidies, and public-health clinics
and hospitals struck by employees demanding their January salaries. Today
there is no public transportation in Montevideo except taxis, and the Sub-
Secretary of the Treasury just announced that government receipts amount
to only half the daily cost of the central administration. We've been trying to
find a little relief from the gloomy atmosphere of dissention in the station.
Holman's letters to Fitzgerald are getting even worse if that's possible and
each time O'Grady reads the file his hives start up again. Bob Riefe, the CP
officer, has a way of reading the news of each day's mismanagement by the
Uruguayan government with loud rhetorical questioning broken by equally
loud and contemptuous guffaws and cackles. His approval of the strikes and
other agitation by his target group are shared by all of us, though perhaps
for different reasons, as we watch political partisanship prevail over the
reforms (land, fiscal) and austerity needed to stop the country's slide. Russ
Phipps, who sits on the other side of me from Riefe, pores over his
surveillance reports, telephone transcripts and observation post logs,
muttering from time to time that's it not the PCU but the Soviets who
deserve the honour of putting this country straight.
***
Riefe and Phipps always catch me in the middle because I'm supposed to be
building up the police intelligence department and developing political
contacts. When things get bad I usually call over beyond Riefe to Alex
Zeffer but his morale is so low he can rarely summon more than an
agonising oath. Then I have to call on O'Grady for support because he
works with military intelligence, such as it is, and is the most terrorised of
all by Holman. The five of us then discuss solutions. Usually Holman is
selected to save Uruguay – one plan is to send Phipps over to the KGB
Chief to request that they defect Holman, with our help if they want it, but
if they turn him down, as is likely, well, there's always AVALANCHE.
Officers from the Inspector-General's staff were just here on a routine
inspection. This was the time to get the word back to headquarters about
Holman's incompetence, but I don't think anyone opened his mouth.
Montevideo 31 March 1965
The AVPEARL audio penetration of the PCU headquarters conference
room is another step closer. AVCAVE-1, again on guard duty, permanently
installed the two electrical sockets and final tests by Frank Sherno in the LP
were successful. Now the problem is to find a good LP-keeper who can
monitor the installation and record the meetings. Ideally this person could
also transcribe, but chances are that transcribing will have to be done at first
by AVENGEFUL-5, transcriber of the PCU telephone tap, who already
knows the names and voices.
Montevideo 6 April 1965
The general strike today is very effective: Otero's office estimates that 90
per cent of organised labour is participating. No government offices are
open, there are no taxis or buses, no restaurants, no newspapers. The theme
is protest against government economic policies and marches have been
loud and impressive although no violence is reported. Speakers have called
for radical solutions to the country's problems – solutions that will attack
the privileged classes, where the problems begin.
The strike is also being used to promote coming CNT programmes,
including the preparatory meeting for the Congress of the People that was
postponed from last December and the annual protest march of the sugar-
cane workers from Artigas in the far north to Montevideo. Recent statistics
support the protests: the OAS reported this month that inflation in Uruguay
during 1962-4 was 59.7 per cent – higher than Chile (36.6), Argentina
(24.4) and even Brazil (58.4).
The government is getting uneasy about the CNT's successes of late. Adolfo
Tejera, the Minister of the Interior, made a radio speech last night on the
rights and duties of citizens in the context of today's general strike.
Holman keeps insisting that I develop more political contacts but I'm
keeping the activity to a minimum. Even if we reached a level of
effectiveness in political action similar to what we had in Ecuador, we
would simply have better weapons to use against the PCU, CNT and others
of the extreme left. What's needed here is intensification of land use, both
for increasing export production and creating more jobs, but this can never
happen without land reform. If we were to have a political-action
programme to promote land reform, as well as action against the extreme
left, some justification might be found in the balance. But these Uruguayan
politicians are interested in other things than land reform.
Montevideo 14 April 1965
The government has taken a first step towards suppressing agitation
organised by the extreme left. Last week the NCG designated an emergency
commission with special executive powers to deal with the drought, now
some months old, which is seriously endangering livestock. The
commission includes the Ministers of Defence and Interior and similar
commissions have been established in each department under the local
police chief with representatives of the Ministry of Defence, a regional
agronomist and a veterinarian. The same day the NCG also decreed special
powers for the Minister of the Interior to limit public gatherings to twenty-
four hours. This second decree, which the Minister later admitted is to be
used against the march of the sugar-cane workers, was enacted in a manner
designed to confuse it with the special drought measures and with the hope
that it might pass without much comment.
The CNT immediately denounced the measure as directed against the sugar-
workers' march, which prompted the Minister's admission; and the
Colorado minority NCG Councillors unsuccessfully tried to rescind it.
Because these decrees allow for restriction of civil liberties they were
presented to the Legislature for approval. The Blancos, however, knowing
that the Colorados and others would rescind the decree aimed at the
marchers, have prevented a quorum from being constituted each day by
simply staying away.
In passing the decrees the NCG clarified that they were not adopting
emergency security measures as defined in the Constitution (equivalent to a
state of siege) and Tejera has given assurances that his special powers will
be used with reason. However, in a public statement two days ago he
accused the marchers of taking along women and children as hostages, of
not having proper health and educational facilities for children, and of
allowing promiscuity dangerous to collective morals. Clearly we have a
confrontation building up, aided by press reports coming from the Ministry
of the Interior that the march will be broken up before it reaches
Montevideo. Right now the marchers are in San Jose, only a few days away,
where police are registering them by taking biographical data, fingerprints
and photographs for Otero's intelligence files. If Tejera gives orders for the
march to be broken up not too many people will notice because this is
tourism week and most of the country is on vacation. From our viewpoint
he ought to do just that because the sugar-cane workers are led by Raul
Sendic, now a fugitive and believed to be the organizer of most of the
terrorist bombings in the past year.
Montevideo 25 April 1965
The march of the sugar-cane workers arrived in Montevideo yesterday –
almost unnoticed and with no danger of intervention by the government.
Something much bigger has suddenly attracted everyone's attention: one of
Uruguay's major banks has failed and been taken over by the Bank of the
Republic. The sensation is causing mild panic and fear that other banks may
go under, which might not be a bad thing. In this small country there are
about fifty private banks even though the government banks do about 65 per
cent of commercial business. The peso has slipped to 39.
Montevideo 27 April 1965
Inspector Piriz was assigned to handle investigations into fraud and other
crimes related to the bank failure. So far eleven of the officers and directors
have been jailed. Today, however, two more private banks were taken over
by the Bank of the Republic, and for fear of a run on banks in general a
holiday was decreed for all private banks. The holiday doesn't make much
difference, though, because all the private banks have been closed since the
first failure six days ago, when the unions struck to demand job security for
employees of the bank that failed. Almost unnoticed today was the NCG's
lifting of the emergency drought decree of 8 April although the special
decree on limiting public gatherings was retained.
Montevideo 28 April 1965
I don't quite understand this invasion of the Dominican Republic. Bosch
was elected in 1962 thanks to the peasant vote organised by Sacha Volman.
Volman earlier set up the Institute of Political Education in Costa Rica
(cryptonym ZREAGER) where we sent young liberal political hopefuls for
training. Bosch is from the same cut as Munoz Marin, Betancourt and Haya
de la Torre. He stands for the reforms that will allow for redistribution of
income and integration. Rightist opposition to his land reform and
nationalistic economic policies brought on his overthrow by the military in
1963 after only seven months in power. This was another chance for him to
turn the balance towards marginalised peasants and to channel income from
industry, mostly sugar, into education and social projects.
Now, just as the Constitutionalists have the upper hand to restore Bosch to
power, we send in the Marines to keep him out. Nobody's going to believe
Johnson's story of another Cuba-style revolution in the making. There has
to be more to the problem than this – for some reason people in Washington
just don't want Bosch back in. Uruguayans don't understand either. People
here think Bosch stands for the kind of liberal reform that brought social
integration to Uruguay. Already the street demonstrations against the US
have started. Very depressing. AVBUZZ-1 is going to look silly trying to
place propaganda – headquarters says we must justify the invasion because
of a danger to American and other foreigners' lives and a takeover of the
Constitutionalist movement by communists.
Montevideo 4 May 1965
Headquarters has sent about fifty operations officers to the Dominican
Republic to set up outposts in rural areas for reporting on popular support
for the Caamano forces. The officers were sent with communications
assistants and equipment for radioing reports straight back to the US. All
WH stations were notified to put certain officers on stand-by for immediate
travel, but Holman is not going to let me go – probably because he would
have to work a little harder. I would like to go and see for myself. Surely
the Constitutionalist movement hadn't fallen into the hands of the
communists. And this Johnson Doctrine! 'Revolutions that seek to create a
communist government cease to be an internal matter and require
hemisphere action.' Bullshit. They just don't want Bosch back in and the
'they' is probably US sugar interests.
We've had more protest demonstrations against the invasion, some violent.
Targets of the attacks: US Embassy, OAS, US businesses. Today four
demonstrators were wounded by gunfire when police broke up a street
march following a meeting at the University. The private banks are still
closed – fifteen days now – and there's no telling when government
employees' salaries for April will begin being paid. Today both the Minister
of Defence and the Minister of the Interior publicly denied the rumours of
an impending coup.
Montevideo 7 May 1965
Ambassador Harriman came to explain the Dominican invasion and to
propose Uruguayan participation in the multilateral peacekeeping force He
spoke to President Beltran yesterday and afterwards held a press conference
in which he blamed those fifty-eight trained communists for having taken
over the Bosch movement, thereby creating the need for intervention. He
admitted, though, that Caamano, the leader of the Bosch movement, isn't
one of the fifty-eight. Then he said the US government is not going to
permit the establishment of another communist government in the
hemisphere.
I can easily imagine the station in Santo Domingo in a panic compiling that
list of fifty-eight trained communists from their Subversive Control Watch
List. There were probably more than fifty-eight, but Caamano and the
Bosch people were in control, not trained communists. The movement was
put down not because it was communist but because it was nationalist. The
Uruguayans weren't convinced by Harriman – after he left, the NCG voted
not to participate in the peacekeeping force approved yesterday by the
OAS. 'Fifty-eight trained communists' is our new station password and the
answer is 'Ten thousand marines'.
Montevideo 12 May 1965
Protests, demonstrations and attacks against US businesses over the
Dominican invasion continue. The CNT, FEUU and other communist-
influenced organisations are most active in the demonstrations, but
opposition to the invasion is a popular issue going all the way up to the
NCG. All America Cables and IBM are among the businesses bombed.
The CNT is also leading protests against economic policies, and new
revelations of corruption in the banking sector are coming up almost daily.
Although the Congress passed a special law assuring jobs for the employees
of banks that have failed, tension continues, with three more banks taken
over by the Bank of the Republic yesterday. The bank workers' union voted
to return to work but today the government announced that the banks won't
open until 17 May. The reason is that they can't open until a shipment of
500 million new pesos arrives from London. Coup rumours continue and
yesterday Tejera told the NCG that he believes the 8 April decree limiting
public gatherings is unconstitutional. He complained that the only law
relating to public meetings dates from 1897, but he promised the NCG a
new constitutional decree on the subject for next week. Port workers struck
yesterday and judicial branch employees began partial work stoppages for
payment of April salaries.
Montevideo 20 May 1965
Financial corruption in Uruguay seems to have no end. Yesterday the NCG
fired the entire board of directors of the Bank of the Republic. Nineteen
officers and directors of banks taken over have been imprisoned and
investigations are continuing. After being closed for twenty-six days the
private banks have reopened but the falling peso – it's down to 41 –
suggests more scandal to come.
On the labour front, strike action for payment of April salaries has been
started by government employees in the judiciary, public schools, port,
petroleum monopoly, fishing enterprise, postal system, communications and
University. Other strikes are being planned or threatened.
Coup rumours are so strong that the Ministry of Defence yesterday issued a
denial. The latest rum ours relate to speculation in the Brazilian press that
Brazilian and Argentine military leaders are watching the increasing strikes
and banking scandals in Uruguay closely, and that perhaps Uruguay is
becoming a bad risk because of its opposition to intervention in the
Dominican Republic and its tolerance of exile activities. Meanwhile the
NCG is considering Pio Correa's latest protest on the exiles' meetings,
finances and infiltration from Uruguay back to Brazil.
The PCU has in recent months been planning to host an international pro-
Cuba conference to be called The Continental Congress of Solidarity with
Cuba – now scheduled for 18-20 June. Headquarters is anxious to prevent
the conference so Holman proposed to Tejera that it be prohibited because it
might reflect badly on Uruguay in the US (where emergency loans are
going to be sought for financial relief), and in Latin America. Tejera
immediately saw the connection with Brazilian problems, and promised to
take up the matter with the NCG.
Montevideo 29 May 1965
Suddenly we've had a flurry of security moves sparked by controversy over
the activities of one of O'Grady's people, Juan Carlos Quagliotti, and others
of his group. Last night extraordinary police control was established in
Montevideo and the interior departments, with special patrols, check points
and security guards at radio stations, the telephone company, waterworks,
railroad stations, bridges and crossroads. This morning Tejera said publicly
that these measures were taken to help the electric company promote
voluntary rationing of power, because of low generating capacity as a result
of the drought last summer. The Minister of Defence also denied any
special reasons for the police measures, but rumours are stronger than ever
of a military move against the government.
According to Commissioner Otero of police intelligence, what really
happened is that Quagliotti was arrested after Otero's investigation revealed
that he had arranged for the printing and distribution of a distorted version
of an article written in 1919 by President Beltran's father, on justification of
military intervention in politics. The judge who heard the case refused to
take jurisdiction, however, and Quagliotti was released pending action by
military courts. Quagliotti's release caused a wave of ill-feeling in the
police, while resentment also broke out in certain military circles against
the police for having made the investigation and arrest.
So far the Quagliotti case hasn't been connected with the special security
measures and for the time being O'Grady is going to avoid meeting him.
Similarly when Otero asked me several days ago what I knew about
Quagliotti I said nothing. Headquarters is very concerned that a breach is
opening up between police and military leaders, but we've reported that the
storm will probably pass. According to the Chief of Police, Colonel Ventura
Rodriguez, the crisis is being resolved.
At an NCG meeting yesterday before imposition of the special security
measures, Tejera asked for permission to ban the Continental Congress of
Solidarity with Cuba. Using a report we had prepared on the Congress as
his own, the Minister said the purpose of the Congress was to raise the
question of relations with Cuba once more and to promote foreign
ideologies that are incompatible with Uruguayan institutions. He said he
wishes to avoid the pernicious proselytising by trained communist elements
who promote infiltration by dangerous extremists, adding that Uruguay
already has enough problems without this Congress. The NCG postponed a
decision but chances are good that they'll prohibit the Congress in order to
avoid jeopardising their already difficult prospects for refinancing the Bank
of the Republic, which is bankrupt, owing some 18 million dollars to New
York banks. The President of the Bank has resigned, and the bank has been
taken over by the NCG. The peso is now down to 52, and the scandals are
moving into wool-exporting companies.
Montevideo 2 June 1965
Last night the NCG discussed the Quagliotti case with speeches from Tejera
and the Minister of Defence. Tejera admitted that the special security
measures of last week – which are still in force – were a result of
Quagliotti's agitation in military circles and of dissention over whether he
will be prosecuted or not. Today Quagliotti appeared before a military court
which refused to take jurisdiction because he hadn't actually entered any
military installation. It seems the crisis has passed for the time being thanks
to Quagliotti's friends among the senior military officers, but resentment
continues in the police over the failure to prosecute in both civil and
military courts.
Tejera's request to the NCG to ban the pro-Cuban Congress went through.
They voted to prohibit it on the principle of nonintervention. Headquarters
will be pleased.
Montevideo 4 June 1965
Only a few more weeks until Holman is transferred. What none of us can
imagine is why he is going to Guatemala, where one of the most serious
insurgency threats exists. Surely if he is bad enough to be transferred from
Montevideo after only two years, he's bad enough not to be sent as Chief of
Station where armed action is under way.
About the only success he can claim is getting the Public Safety programme
going. After the first AID officers arrived, Holman gave a couple of dinners
to introduce them to the Minister of the Interior and senior police officers.
As the station officer in charge of police liaison I had to go to Holman's
house for these dinners, and soon he'll be giving more parties to introduce
the new Chief of Station and say farewell. Strange man this Holman. Surely
he can sense his isolation at the station but he never mentions it. He just
keeps on denigrating the other officers. Holman has asked me to take over
another operation. This one is an effort, not yet off the ground, to make a
technical installation against the Embassy of the United Arab Republic on
the street behind our Embassy and on the floor above the AID offices.
Phipps had been handling this operation without enthusiasm, but
headquarters is getting anxious because if successful it will enable an
important UAR cryptographic circuit to be read. As part of planning they
asked for a floor plan of the Embassy, which I got through the AVENIN
electric company agent, and soon a Division D officer will be coming to
survey the place. As my office is in the back of our Embassy I can almost
look out into the windows of the UAR Embassy.
I still can't believe the reasons for the Dominican invasion that we're trying
to promote through AVBUZZ-1. Holman says it all goes back to the
Agency's assassination of Trujillo. He was Chief of the Caribbean branch in
headquarters at the time and was deeply involved in planning the
assassination, which was done by Cuban exiles from Miami using weapons
we sent through the diplomatic, pouch. The weapons were passed to the
assassins through a US citizen who was an agent of the Santo Domingo
station and owner of a supermarket. He had to be evacuated though, after
the assassination, because the investigation brought him under suspicion.
Why is it that the invasion seems so unjustifiable to me? It can't be that I'm
against intervention as such, because everything I do is in one way or
another intervention in the affairs of other countries. Partly, I suppose, it's
the immense scale of this invasion that shocks. Ob the other hand, full-scale
military invasion is the logical final step when all the other tools of counter-
insurgency fail. The Santo Domingo station just didn't or couldn't keep the
lid on. But what's really disturbing is that we've intervened on the wrong
side. I just don't believe 'fifty-eight trained communists' can take over a
movement of thousands that includes experienced political leaders. That's a
pretext. The real reason must be opposition to Bosch by US business with
investments in the Dominican Republic. Surely these investments could
have produced even while the land reform and other programmes moved
ahead.
Montevideo 17 June 1965
We almost just lost one of our principal police liaison officers, Carlos
Martin, the Deputy Chief of the Montevideo Police. Martin is an Army
colonel, as is the Chief, but he is also a chartered accountant and has been
supervising the police investigations that have uncovered so much
corruption since April. He resigned two days ago because a judge denied
his request to interrogate one of the convicted officers of the first bank to
fail about lists of payments to high government officials by that bank. The
lists are purposely cryptic notes that Martin wants clarified to aid the
investigation. Martin's resignation in protest against political suppression of
the investigations provoked such a row that the N CG agreed to take up the
matter of the lists, and today Martin withdrew his resignation. So far there
have been thirty-one convictions.
Montevideo 24 June 1965
The NCG now has the lists of political bribes paid by the first bank that
failed in April. Names include an important Blanco Senator, the Vice
President of the State Mortgage Bank, a Blanco leader who has just been
nominated as Uruguay's new Ambassador to the UN, two high officers of
the Ministry of the Treasury, the person in charge of investigating one of the
banks that failed, and a person known only by the initials J.J.G. This last
person can only be Juan Jose Gari, our Ruralista political contact from the
Nardone days and now the President of the State Mortgage Bank.
Meanwhile the Bank of the Republic debt has been determined at 358
million dollars, with 38 million dollars currently due. Gold from the Bank
of the Republic, perhaps as much as half the Bank's holdings will have to be
sent to the US as collateral for refinancing. Such an emotional and
humiliating requirement is sure to cost the Blancos heavily.
In an important policy decision on the labour front, the Blancos decided to
apply sanctions against the central administration employees for a strike on
17 June. Justification for the sanctions is that strikes by government
employees are illegal, although until now the government had been
reluctant to invoke illegality because of inflation and the obvious political
consequences. The decision was answered by another strike of central
administration employees – this one began yesterday and will end tonight.
The issues again are employees' benefits, agreed upon last year but still
unpaid, payment of salaries on, time, and now the sanctions. The strike is
complete, with even the .Montevideo airport and the government
communications system closed. Other strikes continue in the judiciary,
University and the huge Clinics Hospital. The peso is down to 69 and one
of the Colorado Councillors has called for the resignation of the Minister of
the Treasury.
Montevideo 7 July 1965
The Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) in Peru has finally gone
into action and seems to have had several initial successes against Peruvian
police. Three days ago the Peruvian government declared a state of siege
and the military services have been called in to supplement police
operations. Hundreds of leftists are being arrested all over the country but
the guerrilla operation seems to be located mostly in the eastern slopes of
the Andes towards the Brazilian border. Undoubtedly the Lima station's
notebook of intelligence from Enrique Amaya Quintana, the MIR walk-in
in Guayaquil two years ago, is now in the hands of Peruvian military liaison
officers.
The Continental Congress for Solidarity with Cuba was shifted to Santiago,
Chile, after we got the Uruguayans to ban it. Now the Santiago station has
gotten the Chilean government to ban it and they'll have to try still another
country. More likely it will be quietly forgotten.
Montevideo 16 July 1965
Holman is gone. No one from the station went to see him off at the airport
except John Horton, the new Chief of Station. Already the atmosphere in
the station has changed beyond recognition. O'Grady's hives are much
better although he got the bad news that he is going to be transferred so that
a new Deputy Chief with better Spanish can come. Horton speaks almost no
Spanish and has already told me he wants me to work closely with him on
the high-level liaison contacts like the Minister and the Chief of Police. I
suppose this means interpreting for him until he can get along, but anything
is better than Holman. Horton is such a contrast: very approachable, good
sense of humour, very anglophile from his years as Chief of Station in Hong
Kong. He's even running a car pool with his chauffeur and office vehicle,
picking us all up in the morning so that wives can get around easier.
Montevideo 23 July 1965
Financing for the new government employees' benefits was passed by the
Senate last night after days of increasing strike activity in the postal system,
University administration, central administration, judicial system and
public-health system. Even the Ministry of the Treasury tax collectors were
on strike. The financing measure calls for putting out 1.7 billion new pesos,
much less than the request of the Blanco NCG Councillors, which prompted
senators of the NCG President's faction to vote against the bill. This faction
had wanted five billion in new currency – almost double what is now in
circulation. Payments are progressing for June salaries and many of the
government employees on strike are now going back to work. The FEUU,
however, is organising lightning street demonstrations as a protest against
government refusal to deliver some 100 million pesos overdue to the
University. The next battle begins in a few days when the Chamber of
Deputies starts work on the budget review, in which the government
employees' unions will attempt to include salary increases for next year.
Inflation during January-June this year was 26.3 per cent, which is one of
the reasons why the government backed down on its threat to impose
sanctions.
Horton is anxious to build, up the capabilities of the police intelligence
department – making it a kind of Special Branch for political work along
the lines of British police practice. He wants me to spend more time
training Otero, Chief of Intelligence and Liaison, and to give him more
money for furniture, filing cabinets and office supplies. As soon as possible
Horton wants Otero put in for the International Police Academy and for
additional training by headquarters at the conclusion of the Academy
course. Before leaving Washington Horton obtained AID approval for a
CIA officer to be placed under Public Safety cover, and after we get
approval from the Chief of Police and get the officer down here we will
have him working full-time with Intelligence and Liaison.
Physical surveillance and travel control are the kinds of operations that we
plan to emphasise from the beginning. Expansion of AVENGEFUL will
come later, perhaps, along with recruitment operations against targets of the
extreme left, but these changes will follow Otero's training in Washington.
In travel control we will start by trying to set up the often-delayed passport
photography and watch-list operation at the Montevideo airport. The AID
Public Safety programme is moving along well. Vehicles, communications,
riot-control equipment and training are the main points of emphasis. Until
our Public Safety cover officer arrives, however, we plan to keep the police
intelligence work strictly in our office. It's going to be a long and difficult
job and I won't have time to do it adequately because of other work.
Somehow we have to make them start thinking seriously on basic things
like security and decent filing systems.
Headquarters is sending down a disguise technician in order to train the
station operations officers in its use. The technician is Joan Humphries, the
wife of the audio technician at the Mexico City station. Equipment will
include wigs, hair colouring, special shoes and clothing, special glasses,
moustaches, warts, moles and sets of false documentation.
Montevideo 15 August 1965
We have a new Soviet operations officer to replace Russ Phipps who has
been transferred back to headquarters. The new officer is Dick Conolly, a
West Point graduate with previous duty in Cairo and Tokyo. Because
Conolly can't handle Spanish yet, Horton asked me to help him on an
operation that Phipps got going during his final weeks here. The operation
is another chauffeur recruitment – this time it's AVAILABLE-1, the
chauffeur of the Soviet Commercial Office.
Although the agent has Soviet citizenship, he is considered a local
employee by the Soviet mission, because he was raised in Uruguay and is
the son of Russian emigres.
Phipps used one of the AVBANDY surveillance-team members for the
recruitment. This agent, AVBANDY-4, is the father of the team chief, an
Army major. He had some visiting cards printed, identifying himself as Dr.
Nikolich, a Buenos Aires import-export consultant. He approached the
chauffeur as if interested in assistance in his efforts to promote imports to
Argentina and Uruguay from the Soviet Union. In return for inside
information on the Soviet Commercial Office in Montevideo Dr. Nikolich
would pay the chauffeur a commission on all deals. Phipps's interest,
however, was to use the chauffeur as an access agent to the Soviets working
in the Commercial Office – two are known intelligence officers and one is
suspect.
As the recruitment was made just as Phipps was leaving, AVBANDY-4
turned the chauffeur over to me as a Canadian business colleague working
in Montevideo, claiming, as Dr. Nikolich, that he would return occasionally
from Buenos Aires and if possible would see him. Phipps also got a new
safe apartment site, a miserable basement room in a building on Avenida
Rivera a couple of blocks from the Montevideo zoo. The room has only a
small skylight and is extremely cold. Nevertheless, the chauffeur and I are
meeting one night each week. His information on the five commercial
officers and their families plus the secretary, all of whom live in the seven-
storey building housing the Commercial Office, is not earth-shaking but it's
better than anything we've had until now from the other access agents.
The Tupamaros terrorist group continues to be active, recently bombing the
Bayer Company offices and leaving behind a protest note against US
intervention in Vietnam. Riefe still doesn't think they're important enough
to justify a targeting and recruitment programme, so I have begun to
encourage Otero, Chief of Police Intelligence, to concentrate on them.
There's no doubt now that this is the group led since 1962 by Raul Sendic,
the far-left leader of sugar-cane workers who broke away from the Socialist
Party.
Montevideo 20 August 1965
The CNT-sponsored Congress of the People, postponed several times since
originally scheduled last year, has at last begun and shows signs of
considerable success. The PCU is playing the dominant role, of course, but
quite a lot of non-communist participation has been attracted. Practically all
the significant organisations in fields of labour, students, government
workers and pensioners are participating along with consumer cooperatives,
neighbourhood groups, provincial organisations and the leftist press.
Meetings continue in the University and at other sites where participants are
drafting solutions to the country's problems along leftist-nationalist lines.
Given the obvious failure of the traditional parties and Congress, this
Congress of the People is attracting much attention and will undoubtedly
provide the PCU and similar groups with new recruits as well as a
propaganda platform.
It is too successful to ignore so we have generated editorial comment
through AVBUZZ-1 exposing the Congress as an example of classic
communist united front tactics. In fact the Congress isn't the same as a
united front political mechanism, but our fear is that it might turn into one
and be used as such in next year's elections. Through AVBUZZ-1 we also
printed a black handbill signed by the Congress and calling on the
Uruguayan people to launch an insurrectional strike with immediate
occupation of their places of work. Thousands of the leaflets were
distributed today, provoking angry denials from the Congress organizers.
More editorial comment and articles against the Congress will follow in this
campaign to dissuade non-communists from participating.
One of the campaigns of the Congress of the People is for resistance to the
stabilisation programmes imposed by the International Monetary Fund,
because these measures hurt the low-and middle-income groups harder than
the rich. Right now a high-level group of Uruguayan political leaders is in
New York trying to get new loans in order to refinance the bankrupt Bank
of the Republic (Uruguay's central bank). The New York bankers, however,
are insisting on new financial reforms that will meet IMF approval as a
condition to granting the new loans – which may be as high as 150-200
million dollars.
At the NCG meeting last night, as the whole country awaited news from the
refinancing mission in New York, it was revealed that two days ago an
urgent confidential message from the mission arrived in Montevideo in the
Uruguayan diplomatic pouch. No one can explain why, but the pouch,
which for most countries is the government's most closely guarded system
of communications, wasn't retrieved at the airport. It got sent back to New
York on the next flight, and the NCG must wait until it's found and sent
again before they can make their decisions.
The Blancos continue to fight among themselves over how to finance
government employees. Yesterday the Acting Minister of the Treasury
advised the NCG that salaries for this month simply cannot be paid without
new resources, and he insisted on greater currency emission. Right now the
deficit for this year is set at 6.3 billion pesos, and coins of five and ten
centavos are disappearing because they're worth more as melted metal than
as money.
Montevideo 27 August 1965
One of Holman's last requests to the Minister of the Interior, Adolfo Tejera,
was to find a way to expel the North Korean trade mission that has been
here for almost a year. I have followed up with queries to the police on the
Koreans but without adequate reply. As an enticement to cooperate I've
taken the unusual step of obtaining support from the Miami station, and
perhaps others, in order to follow the movements of an aircraft that loaded
up in Miami with transistor radios and television sets for smuggling into
Uruguay. Information on this contraband ring was obtained by the police
through the AVENGEFUL telephone-tapping operation, but Colonel
Ramirez, Chief of the Metropolitan Guard, asked me if the aircraft's
movements in Miami could be watched. Ramirez and his colleagues were
anxious to snare this shipment because under the law they get the value of
all contraband they seize. The Miami station advised when it left, as did
Panama, Lima and Santiago where technical stops were made. A few nights
ago the aircraft made a secret landing on an interior airfield, unloaded arid
took off again. The Metropolitan Guard, however, intercepted the two
truckloads of television sets and transistor radios – initial value is set at 10
million pesos. Still no action on the Koreans but we will remind the police
chief on our next visit; he doesn't often get such valuable help as we have
just given him.
Uruguayan Air Force Base No. 1 has just been the scene of the delivery of
the first of eight new aircraft as part of our military aid programme.
Ambassador Hoyt made the presentation to the Uruguayan delegation
composed of the Minister of Defence, Commanding General of the Air
Force, Chief of Staff and other dignitaries. In his speech the Ambassador
recalled that that day was the fourth anniversary of the signing of the
Charter of Punta del Este beginning the Alliance for Progress. He cited
President Johnson's declaration that the Alliance for Progress constitutes a
change not only in the history of the free world but also in the long history
of liberty. After the Dominican invasion one has to wonder. The
photographs in the press yesterday show the Ambassador, the Minister and
the others – they practically block from view the little four-seat Cessna that
was the object of the ceremony.
Montevideo 10 September 1965
Strike activity is in full swing again after more than a month of relative
calm. The financing mission is back from New York. They got only 55
million dollars, enough to pay the 38 million dollars already overdue, but
gold will have to be shipped as collateral. New credit will be needed soon,
however, in order to prevent the Bank of the Republic from defaulting
again, and conditions imposed by the IMF will surely include cutbacks on
internal spending such as salaries to government employees and subsidies.
There is much pessimism, with general agreement that even harder times lie
ahead. The peso is down to 68. Internal struggle among the Blancos has
paralysed the naming of the new board of directors of the Bank of the
Republic. So much so that yesterday the Minister and Sub-Secretary of the
Treasury resigned – only to withdraw their irrevocable resignations today.
At issue is which Blanco factions will get seats on the board of directors.
Rationing of electricity continues although the drought earlier this year has
now turned to serious flooding and hundreds of families have had to be
evacuated along the Uruguay River. We're also in the midst of a rabies
epidemic – a disease believed to have been eradicated from Uruguay
several years ago. In the past year some 4000 people have been bitten by
dogs in Montevideo even though 10,000 stray dogs were picked up. Malaise
everywhere.
New rumblings from Brazil and Argentina on possible intervention in
Uruguay have provoked sharp reaction. During Brazilian Army Week the
Minister of War made a public statement widely publicised here which
praised the historic mission of the Brazilian Army: 'defence of democratic
institutions, not only within our frontiers but also in whatever part of
America we believe menaced by international communism'. A few days
later the Argentine Army Commander, General Juan Carlos Ongania, said
on returning from a trip to Brazil that the Argentine and Brazilian armies
have jointly agreed to combat communism in South America, particularly
of that of Cuban origin. Although he did not mention Uruguay by name his
statement comes at a time of continuing public comment in Argentina and
Brazil over economic and social problems in Uruguay. Ongania later denied
the press version of his speech, but here the original version sticks. Protests
by Uruguayan military officers have caused cancellation of an invitation to
the Brazilian military commander of the border zone, while the Uruguayan
Navy has withdrawn from joint exercises with US and Argentine units. A
conference to have been given in Montevideo by an Argentine military
leader was also boycotted by Uruguayan officers. The Foreign Ministry,
moreover, has issued a statement in the name of the NCG rejecting any
tutelary role in Uruguay by foreign-armed forces.
I can't seem to avoid getting sucked further into Soviet operations. Besides
Borisov (whom I continue to see occasionally) and Semenov (a First
Secretary whose intelligence affiliation, if any, is unknown) and the
Commercial Office chauffeur, we have a new lead involving the new KGB
chief, Khalturin. Through AVENGEFUL we learned that Khalturin was
searching for an apartment – any Soviet who lives outside the community
compounds is surely an intelligence officer because all the rest must live
under controlled circumstances. The apartment Khalturin wanted is owned
by Carlos Salguero, the head of Latin American sales for the Philip Morris
Co. and a naturalised American of Colombian origin. Salguero lives in a
large mansion in Carrasco where he moved with his family just before I
took over his previous house. Salguero's apartment, which is an investment
property, is located in a modern building overlooking the beach in Pocitos.
Conolly asked me to speak to Salguero about the possibility of obtaining
access to his apartment before Khalturin moved in.
Khalturin took the apartment, and at a 'recruitment luncheon' at the golf-
club, Salguero agreed to give us access prior to Khalturin's moving in. I
turned Salguero over to Conolly, the Soviet operations officer, who will
organise the audio installation with Frank Sheroo, the technician stationed
in Buenos Aires.
One reason for this audio operation is that Khalturin seems to be having a
love-affair with Nina Borisova, the wife of my friend the Consul – also a
KGB officer. Borisova works in the Embassy, possibly with classified
documents, and might have interesting discussions with Khalturin if he
takes her to the apartment. So far Khalturin's wife hasn't arrived although he
has said on the telephone that he expects her soon. There is also a chance
that Khalturin might use the apartment for entertainment of prospective
agents or even for agent meetings.
Montevideo 23 September 1965
Strikes intensifying: municipal workers, state banks, autonomous agencies
and decentralised services. Yesterday the Blanco NCG Councillors and
Directors of state enterprises decided to use police to eject employees of the
state banks which have been paralysed by work to rule for the past ten days.
Any employees who fail to respond to calls to work will be dismissed –
harsh measures by Uruguayan standards. Today work to rule continues but
the Bank of the Republic and the State Mortgage Bank closed in lock-outs,
while workers in the private banks are stopping for thirty minutes in the
morning and thirty in the afternoon in solidarity with the state bank
employees.
Blanco NCG Councillors and Directors of state enterprises meeting today
decided to grant only 25 per cent increases for workers in all the
autonomous agencies and decentralised services and without negotiations.
Unions, however, persist in demanding 48 per cent increases for 1966,
citing the government's own statistics for January-August inflation: 33.8 per
cent. Blanco leaders are determined to hold the line, however, because of
the critical need for IMF backing. This will require suppressing the bank
workers, who also opened the floodgates for overall government salary
increases at this time last year.
There are no signs of relenting on the union side. The peso is now down to
74. The Minister and Sub-Secretary of the Treasury resigned again, this
time accepted by the NCG.
The 20 September resolution by the House of Representatives in
Washington is causing an outrage here and in other parts of Latin America.
The resolution attributes to the US or any other American state the right to
unilateral military intervention in other American states if necessary to keep
communism out of the Western Hemisphere. Here the resolution is viewed
as an encouragement to the interventionist-minded in Brazil and Argentina.
If this resolution is meant to be a show of support for the Dominican
invasion, as it seems to be, I can only wonder how so many US political
leaders could have been convinced that fifty-eight trained communists took
over the Bosch movement.
Montevideo 27 September 1965
We've had a visit from John Hart, the new Deputy Chief of WH Division
for Cuban Affairs. He's a former Chief of Station in Bangkok and in Rabat
and is an old friend of Horton's. As the officer in charge of operations
against the Cubans I spent a lot of time with him briefing him on our
operations and listening to his plea for more work against the Cubans.
Hart said that the Agency has practically no agent sources reporting from
inside Cuba (although technical coverage through electronic collection and
aerial surveillance is adequate) and he is pushing recruitment of agents by
mail. The system is to monitor mail from Cuba very closely in order to
watch for signs of discontent. If records at headquarters and the JMWAVE
station in Miami do not rule out the disaffected writer as a prospective
agent, the station concerned or another WH station can write back a letter
on an innocuous subject to the Cuban, with instructions to save the letter. If
the Cuban replies to the given accommodation address, a second letter will
be written instructing him how to develop secret writing contained on the
first letter. The developed message will be a recruitment proposal and, if
answered, secret-writing carbon sheets can be sent to the Cuban and regular
correspondence established. Here in Montevideo we would use the
AVIDITY intercept operation to monitor mail for possible agents.
Although I nodded politely and tried to show enthusiasm for this search for
needles in a haystack, I thought to myself that this man must be mad to
think we have time for such games. I can scarcely make a quick scan of
letters from Cuba, much less begin a recruitment campaign with all that
implies.
Hart's other pet project is to find Che Guevara. Guevara disappeared about
six months ago and although there were signs of him in Africa nobody
knows where he is right now. Hart thinks he may be in a hospital in the
Soviet Union with a mental breakdown caused by spoilage of asthma
medicine kept unrefrigerated. He asked us to watch passenger lists closely
and promised to send a photograph now being prepared of how Guevara
would look without his beard – an artist's conception because no photos of a
beardless Guevara have been found. Hart also asked that we continue the
campaign already underway to generate unfavourable press speculation
over Guevara's disappearance, in the hope that he'll reappear to end it. Other
stations are doing the same.
Hart's visit came at an opportune time for me because he liked the work I'm
doing against the Cubans and in six months I'm going to be looking for a
job in headquarters, if indeed I don't resign from the Agency. Right now I'm
not sure exactly what I'll do but I told Horton that I plan to return to
headquarters in March when my two years here are finished.
There are two problems, I suppose, and each seems to reinforce the other.
At home the situation is worse than ever: no common interests except the
children, no conversation, increasing resentment at being trapped in
loneliness. I told Janet that I'm leaving when we get back to Washington –
she seems not to believe me – and in fact would have insisted that she
return some time ago but for being separated from the children which is a
prospect I can't accept. This is a hellish situation and no good for anyone.
The other problem is even worse. The Dominican invasion started me
thinking about what we are really doing here in Latin America. On the one
hand the spread of the Cuban revolution has been stopped and the counter-
insurgency programmes are successful in most places. Communist
subversion at least is being controlled. But the other side, the positive side
of reforming the injustices that make communism attractive, just isn't
making progress. Here the problem is a small number of landholders who
produce for export and whose interests clash with those of most of the rest
of the country. Until Uruguay has a land reform there can be no fair
distribution of either the benefits or the burdens of the country's production.
There will be no encouragement to the landholders to produce and export
legally. Even if export prices were to rise dramatically the benefits would
mostly go to the same handful of people who have the land – the same
handful who are suffering the least during these hard times. For certain the
landholders will resist, here as in other countries, but somehow the Alliance
for Progress will have to stimulate land reform if other reforms are to be
successful.
The more I think about the Dominican invasion the more I wonder whether
the politicians in Washington really want to see reforms in Latin America.
Maybe participation by the communists wouldn't be such a bad thing
because that way they could be controlled better. But to think that fifty-eight
trained communists participating in a popular movement for liberal reform
can take control is to show so little confidence in reform itself. The worst of
this is that the more we work to build up the security forces like the police
and military, particularly the intelligence services, the less urgency, it
seems, attaches to the reforms. What's the benefit in eliminating subversion
if the injustices continue? I don't think the Alliance for Progress is working,
and I think I may not have chosen the right career after all.
I'll need to keep working when I separate from Janet after we return to
Washington because she'll need money for the children and she probably
won't want to work. The object would be to find another job without a
period of seriously reduced income or none at all. I told Hart I'd like to
work in Cuban affairs when I get back. Maybe Riefe's kind of cynicism is
the best way to stay with the Agency and assuage one's conscience.
Montevideo 1 October 1965
The bugging of Khalturin's apartment was successful – transmitters inside
the bed and inside a sofa. The batteries will last for six months or more
because the transmitters have radio-operated switches. Now Conolly must
find a listening post close enough for operating the switches and for
recording. Then an L p operator and a transcriber. These audio operations
are messy.
Montevideo 3 October 1965
Strikes by the government employees, particularly the bank workers,
continue and there are strong rumours circulating that the government is
going to declare a state of siege in order to break the strikes. So far the only
government action has been lock-outs at the banks and threats to impose
economic sanctions against any employees engaging in new strikes.
However, the unions of the autonomous agencies and decentralised
services, which just completed a two-day walk-out, have announced a
three-day walk-out for 13-15 October.
Colonel Ventura Rodriguez, Chief of the Montevideo Police and the
country's top security official, had gone to Miami for the US police chiefs'
convention, but he was recalled suddenly. Although the reasons for his
recall were not related to the current strikes, his return created new
rumours. Nevertheless, he told us that the decision on a state of siege hasn't
yet been made. Headquarters is getting nervous and has asked for
continuous reporting on the situation.
In Peru the state of siege was finally lifted. The MIR guerrilla movement is
defeated and only mopping up remains. A recent visitor who went through
Lima told me that the station there opened an outpost in the mountain
village where the Peruvian military command had been set up. During the
crucial months of July-September the outpost served for intelligence
collection on successes and failures of the military campaign and for
passing intelligence to the Peruvian military obtained from Lima station
sources. During the roll-up of the MIR urban organisation, the main
penetration agent, Enrique Amaya Quintana, was arrested and during police
interrogation he revealed his work for us. Eventually the station got him
released and now he's been resettled in Mexico with, I'm sure, a generous
retirement bonus.
Suppression of the MIR will be regarded as a classic case of counter-
insurgency effectiveness when good intelligence is collected during the
crucial period of organisation and training prior to commencement of
guerrilla operations. Given their large numbers and training in Cuba,
suppression would have been difficult and lengthy without a penetration
agent like Amaya.
Montevideo 7 October 1965
This afternoon the NCG voted to enact a state of siege (six Blancos in
favour, three Colorados opposed) which in Uruguayan law is called 'prompt
security measures'. Adolfo Tejera, the Minister of the Interior, made the
proposal which he justified on the need to end labour unrest. The decree
prohibits all strikes and all meetings for the promotion of strikes and related
propaganda. Enforcement of the state of siege was given to the Ministers of
the Interior and Defence.
This had in fact been decided secretly yesterday, because the whole country
is on strike, in the government banks, judiciary and other key areas – the
main issues being salaries, inflation, sanctions, fringe benefits. The police
and Army have been paid their September salaries in preparation for action.
Colonel Ventura Rodriguez, who had gone to the US police chiefs'
convention in Miami, has been recalled, and Commissioner Otero and
Inspector Piriz have been to tell me that the police have been some days at
the ready. Headquarters wants daily reports on strikes and violence while
the siege is on.
Nobody was surprised – yesterday's 'secret' decision by the Blancos was in
this morning's newspapers – but the CNT went ahead with its plans for a
street rally and march this afternoon from the Legislative Palace to
Independence Plaza. At the moment of the NCG voting the demonstrators
were massed in the Plaza in front of the NCG offices, but as soon as the
vote was taken police moved in to break up the demonstration. So far
tonight thirty-four workers have been arrested, all from the electric
company, except two who are leaders of the bank employees' union.
Montevideo 8 October 1965
Arrests have risen to over one hundred but practically all the important
union leaders are in hiding. This afternoon sit-down strikes in the
government banks continued but ejections and arrests followed. Lightning
street demonstrations against the state of siege have been occurring in
different parts of the city.
As required by the Constitution the decree imposing the state of siege was
sent to the Legislature for approval. The Blancos, however, knowing that
the Colorados and splinter groups will try to repeal it, are staying away in
order to prevent a quorum. The CNT has called a general strike for 13
October and the autonomous agencies and decentralised services will begin
that day a three-day walk-out. The government is in trouble.
Montevideo 15 October 1965
The police are no match for the well-organised unions. The general strike
was a big success with over 200,000 government workers and most of the
private organised workers out. Newspapers, public transport, wool, textiles,
public health, schools, practically every activity stopped. Today is the last
of the three-day strike in the autonomous agencies and decentralised
services. Lightning street demonstrations have been frequent with much
pro-strike wall-painting and hand bill distribution.
Police have made several hundred more arrests but the important leaders are
still free. The PCU radio outlet, Radio Nacional, was closed for seventy-
two hours for broadcasting strike news while an entire issue of Epoca, a
leftist daily newspaper, was confiscated yesterday. In protest, however, the
press association and press unions struck again and no newspapers appeared
today. Tejera has publicly blamed the communist leadership of the
government employees' unions for the state of unrest, and Blanco leaders
are hardening. The directors of the four government banks announced the
firing of eighteen employees for strike leadership, while the autonomous
agencies and decentralised services have announced sanctions of wage
discounts equalling two days for the first day of the current strike, three
days for yesterday and five days for today. Dismissals will follow if strikes
continue. Final arrangements are being made for the arbitrary 25 per cent
salary increases although the unions are still insisting on 48 per cent and
inflation for this year is now up to 50 per cent.
The PCU, according to our agents, plans to continue the street
demonstrations and other agitation in order to force the government to back
down on the firings and sanctions. Two of our agents, AVCAVE-1 and
AVOIDANCE-9, are on the highly secret PCU 'self-defence' squads
engaged in the lightning demonstrations and propaganda distribution. Their
reporting has been excellent but they've been unable to get to know the
hiding-places of certain of the union leaders which, if we knew, we would
inform the police for arrests.
The police, in fact, may have given the communists and others a convenient
victim for their campaign against the government. The story is out today of
the torture of a young waterworks engineer, Julio Arizaga, who was arrested
several days ago. Today he went berserk in his cell at AVALANCHE
headquarters and had to be taken to the military hospital. There he attacked
his guard and managed to wound the guard with the guard's own weapon.
He was subdued, however, and his conduct is being attributed to torture by
the police. I'll check with Commissioner Otero on this because usually the
police don't engage in torture of political prisoners.
Arizaga is a member of the pro-Chinese Movement of the Revolutionary
Left (MIR) and former member of the PCU. He is also a former leader of
the FEUU, but he has never been very active in union activity. In recent
months Riefe has been guiding AVCAVE-1 as close to the MIR as possible
while retaining good standing in the PCU. However, because the MIR
favours rural action, including guerrillas, over trade-union organising,
AVCAVE-1 may be instructed to leave the PCU altogether and join the
MIR. Meanwhile he is reporting good intelligence from former PCU
colleagues like Arizaga who have joined the MIR, as well as information on
the PCU.
Montevideo 19 October 1965
Yesterday the NCG (Colorados abstaining) adopted an economic
stabilisation programme that will enable the government to obtain an IMF
stand-by credit which in turn will open the door to new private and official
loans. Most observers agree that the state of siege was enacted not only to
break the strikes but also to preclude violent opposition to these new
economic measures that will be unpopular with the unions.
Latest problem: the Ministry of the Treasury has assigned one million pesos
to the Ministry of the Interior for expenses relating to the stage of siege, but
there's a severe shortage of banknotes. The British firm that prints
Uruguayan money is holding up delivery because the Bank of the Republic
can't pay for it – arrears amount to £100,000.
Montevideo 22 October 1965
Commissioner Otero was vague about the torture of Julio Arizaga, the MIR
activist and waterworks engineer, which was his way of confirming the
story. On Monday Arizaga was taken before a judge for a hearing on the
shooting of his guard, and his condition was so bad and the torture so
evident that the judge ordered him to be freed. The police refused and he
was returned to the military hospital where he is still incommunicado.
I asked Inspector Antonio Piriz about the case and he said Inspector Juan
Jose Braga, Sub-Director of Investigations, was the officer who ordered and
supervised the torture. The purpose was to obtain information on the MIR
and on the Tupamaros, whose identity and organisational structure are still
unknown. He explained that the torture room is on the same corridor as the
AVENGEFUL listening post in the isolated section above the offices of the
Chief and the Deputy Chief of Police. I noticed the other rooms down the
hall when I visited the LP, but I was told that those rooms are only used by
Colonel Rodriguez and Colonel Martin during rest periods. Usually,
according to Antonio, the subject of the interrogation is hooded and tied to
a bed with the picana (a hand-cranked electric generator is attached to his
genitals. Since Tom Flores's counter-terrorist operations with police ended,
and General Aguerrondo was replaced as Chief of Police, torture of
political prisoners has been rare. However, the picana was still used on
criminals (which is why thieves and robbers so often been rare. However,
the picana was still used on criminals (which is why thieves and robbers so
often wound themselves before surrender – so that their first days under
arrest will be in hospitals), and perhaps torture of Arizaga was an exception
because of Braga's frustration over the inability to stop the Tupamaro
bombings.
Montevideo 28 October 1965
Until today the Blanco leadership was firm in resisting union demands on
salary increases and sanctions, but the union leaders began cultivating
support from Colorado legislators on the sanctions issue. Today the
Blancos, fearing political gains by the Colorados, announced that only half
the sanctions will be discounted from October salaries with the other half
coming in November. They also let it be known that pay and benefits
increases beyond 25 per cent may be possible but not until next June.
The security situation has eased so strikingly that it is difficult to imagine
we're still in a state of siege. Practically all those arrested during the early
days have been released, and the CNT even held a mass rally on the no-
sanctions issue without interference from police. The only strike still in
effect is the municipal workers' walk-out and today the Army began
collecting garbage that's been piling up in the streets for the past week.
The only reason the state of siege hasn't been lifted is that Arizaga's
condition is still too bad – if he were released the torture would be obvious.
Blanco leaders are thus being forced to retain the state of siege in order to
protect the Chief of Police, Ventura Rodriguez and the Minister of the
Interior, Adolfo Tejera. The Arizaga case, in fact, is causing serious friction
between the two, and the Colorados have seized it as a political issue.
Tejera is conducting an in-house 'investigation'.
Through the Public Safety mission I've put in Commissioner Otero, Chief
of Police Intelligence, for an International Police Academy course
beginning in January in Washington. After about twelve weeks at the
Academy, Otero will be given special training in intelligence operations by
headquarters. I've asked that the Office of Training concentrate on physical
surveillance and on penetration operations against communist parties –
targeting, spotting, recruitments, agent-handling. Maybe with enough
training for officers like Otero the police will be able to recruit agents and
pay for information instead of having to resort to torture.
God knows he needs this training. He's been bogged down in the Cukurs
case since March (the kidnapping of an ex-Nazi that went awry) for the
sake of publicity and a little travel. Cukurs was finally cremated and a few
days ago Otero turned his ashes over to his son together with a dental
bridge. The son and the Cukurs family dentist, however, told reporters that
the dead man never wore a bridge so now Otero's looking for another body.
Montevideo 4 November 1965
Today the state of siege was lifted – Arizaga's condition improved enough
for him to be released. The Colorados continue to attack the government
over torture but Tejera claims the Ministry is continuing the investigation.
Nothing will come of it, of course, because the Chief of Police won't allow
it. If pushed he can summon support from the Army command and the
Blancos don't want to lose power to the military over a sordid case of
torture. Neither do the Colorados so there's no danger to the torturers.
Throughout the state of siege the Blanco senators and deputies, by staying
away from sessions called to consider the emergency decree, were able to
prevent a quorum and a Colorado vote to lift the siege. On the negotiations,
however, the Colorados are forcing the Blancos into a more compromising
position. Yesterday the Colorado-dominated Senate passed an amnesty bill
annulling all firings and sanctions against workers engaged in strikes.
Similar action is expected in Deputies.
Montevideo 10 November 1965
Negotiations have broken down, strikes are again under way and the state of
siege may be reinstated. Although municipal workers throughout the
country struck again, and the Montevideo transport system is striking for
October salaries, the main attack now is back with the central
administration unions. They rejected the proposed salary increases for next
July and are striking for forty-eight hours today and tomorrow, seventy-two
hours next week and an indefinite period the week after. Negotiations
between the government and the unions of the autonomous agencies and
decentralised services continue but without progress. The Chamber of
Deputies passed the amnesty bill today, in spite of the strikes, and it now
goes to the NCG, where anything less than a veto would indicate complete
collapse of the dominant Blanco faction. The amnesty bill must have
constitutional incongruities if strikes by government employees are illegal;
but everything here seems so incongruous that an unconstitutional law
would only be normal.
The Colorados are also taking up the Arizaga case in the Chamber of
Deputies – certain of them want to make political gain by feigning shock
and surprise – but a Deputies investigation stands no more chance of
making headway in AVALANCHE than the Minister's investigation.
Montevideo 16 November 1965
Otero and the police in general have pulled off another stunning bungle.
Secretary of State Rusk is here on an official visit and this morning he laid a
wreath at the monument to Jose Artigas, the father of Uruguayan
independence, in Independence Plaza. For a week I've been insisting with
Otero, who is in charge of security preparations, that all precautions be
taken to avoid any incidents related to Rusk's visit. This morning Otero and
about 300 other policemen were forming a cordon around the wreath-laying
site when suddenly a young man slipped through the cordon and ran all the
way up to Rusk, expelling an enormous wad of spittle in the Secretary's
face. Otero was standing right next to Rusk in a stupor, but he recovered
and with other police carried off the attacker while Rusk wiped his face dry
and laid the wreath. Tonight Colonel Rodriguez and other government
officials formally called on the Embassy to apologize. The attacker, a
member of the PCU youth organisation, is in the hospital where he was
taken after a police beating and is reported to be in a coma.
Montevideo 19 November 1965
Several days ago an important student conference began here under
sponsorship of the FEUU and the Prague-based International Union of
Students. The conference is called the Seminar on Latin American Social
and Economic Integration and has drawn about sixty student delegations
from all over the hemisphere. Through AVBUZZ-1 we have put out adverse
editorial comment in the Montevideo press, exposing the Seminar as
organized, financed and directed by the Soviets through the IUS front and
through PCU control of the FEUU. We also arranged for handbills on the
same theme to be distributed, as well as a humorous facsimile of an
Uruguayan 100-peso note labelled as the roubles with which the Soviets are
financing the Seminar. We have also ordered from TSD copies of official
letterhead stationery of the Seminar with the signature of the Seminar's
Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Daniel Waksman, reproduced at various
levels in order to coincide with whatever length of letter we decide to
attribute to Waksman. If it comes soon we will have a black letter to add to
the other propaganda against the Seminar. Waksman is a leader of the
FEUU.
The breakthrough with the Bank of the Republic union failed and new
strikes are spreading in protest against the NCG's veto of the amnesty bill.
The central administration has been joined by government banks, the
Clinics Hospital, primary and secondary schools, the University and the
judicial system. Today and tomorrow the civil aviation workers are closing
the airports. Other strikes to follow.
Only a week remains until the constitutional deadline for increasing
government employees' salaries because elections are scheduled for 27
November 1966. As no increases can be granted during the year before
elections, the coming week is sure to be agitated.
Montevideo 27 November 1965
The past week stands as another large question-mark for Uruguayan
democracy. Beginning with the civil aviation strike on 19-20 November and
ending with the passage by Congress of the bill for salary increases last
night, not a day has passed without an important strike by government
employees. Schools, banks, the University, the postal and
telecommunications systems, printers, port workers, the central
administration and others struck with increasing intensity until the entire
country was paralysed on 25 November by a CNT-organised general strike.
The port of Montevideo was closed, the airports closed again, and no
newspapers appeared on 25 or 26 November. Street marches and other
demonstrations by thousands of workers were almost daily occurrences,
usually ending at the Legislative Palace for speeches demanding benefits to
offset inflation. Yesterday, the final day for salary increases for a year, the
demonstrations culminated.
With the magic hour at midnight, the NCG convened at 7 p.m. while all the
Blanco ministers were called to Government House and told to wait in an
office adjacent to the NCG meeting-room. At 7:20 the seventy-two-page
document consisting of 195 articles arrived at the NCG from the Chamber
of Deputies. (The bill contains many provisions on government finances in
addition to salary increases.) After a swift review it was approved. The
Colorado Councillors were forced to vote for it without even having seen
the text, and the Blanco ministers who also had not seen it (except the
Treasury Minister) were also required to approve and sign it. At 8:55 the
Minister of the Treasury arrived with the document back at the Chamber of
Deputies where it was debated until finally approved at 11:34. Waiting just
outside the Deputies' Chamber was the elderly President of the Senate who
rushed the document over to the Senate, arriving at seventeen minutes
before midnight. Although several Senators took the floor, there was no
time even to read the document and at one minute to midnight the Senate
voted approval.
The bill provides for significant salary increases for government employees,
although not all that was demanded, together with new taxes on agricultural
and livestock activities, wool exporters and the banking system. Even so the
opposition has already denounced the bill as very inflationary. Today almost
all the strikers have returned to work – the waterworks being the notable
exception. Conflicts, however, haven't ended because the sanctions issue
persists. Since the NCG veto of the amnesty bill, the Blanco legislators
have prevented a quorum, and the Blanco NCG Counsellors are calling for
new sanctions for the most recent strikes. Peace between the government
and its workers is still remote.
Montevideo 3 December 1965
For the Khalturin audio operation an apartment just above and to the side of
the Salguero apartment was obtained for a listening post. My secretary was
glad to move in for the time being, but the problem of an LP keeper hasn't
been solved. According to the AVENGEFUL telephone tap on the Soviet
Embassy Khalturin regularly spends Saturday afternoons at the apartment.
His liaison with Borisova continues, but now his wife has arrived –
although she is not happy and has hinted she may soon return to the Soviet
Union.
Until a full-time LP keeper can be obtained this operation will be only
marginal, although Conolly, the Soviet operations officer, goes to the LP on
Saturdays and sometimes on Sundays to switch on the transmitters and, if
Khalturin is there, to record what is said. Last Saturday I went with him
after lunch. The transmitters for the switches are housed in grey Samsonite
suitcases of the two-suit size. After opening them flat and setting up the
antenna, taking care that it points in the direction of Khalturin's apartment,
the operator pushes the transmitter button for five seconds. If the switch
doesn't work the process is repeated until it does, though not too often
because the transmitter can overheat. Included in the suitcase is a lead apron
so that operators can avoid unwanted sterilisation. Maybe Khalturin would
like an apron, too, but Conolly didn't take my point. Another grey
Samsonite suitcase contains the receiver-recorder and is similarly opened
flat with special antenna raised. These technical operations are boring – no
decent production from this one yet.
Montevideo 6 December 1965
The Blancos on the NCG insist the sanctions remain and be increased with
any new strike activity. Discounts from salary payments are to be made at
the rate of four days per month until all sanctions are collected which in
some cases now total eighteen days. Partial work stoppages have already
started in the autonomous agencies and decentralised services and in the
Ministry of the Treasury the union called for the Minister's resignation. The
income tax collection office of the same Ministry paid him a similar
compliment in declaring him persona non grata. The central administration
employees joined the others in announcing new strikes and staged a march
to the Ministry of the Treasury demanding a dialogue with the Minister on
sanctions. Police broke up the march with considerable force.
The state of siege is going back into effect tomorrow. I've had calls both
from Antonio Piriz and from Alejandro Otero advising that police tonight
will start rounding up as many important labour leaders as possible. They
are hoping that they will catch a number of important leaders by starting
tonight instead of waiting until the NCG votes to reinstate the state of siege
tomorrow.
According to the same police agents the Blanco leaders want to arrest the
government union leaders before word gets around of the new stage of
siege – wishful thinking the way secrets are spread in this country.
Nevertheless the Minister of the Treasury announced tonight that the latest
plan by central administration employees for easing the sanctions had been
rejected by the NCG – while he inferred that negotiations will continue
tomorrow. Odds are good that the union leaders have already gone back into
hiding.
Montevideo 7 December 1965
As expected, practically all the government workers union leaders learned
of the new state of siege and evaded police arrest. This morning, just as the
street march by the central administration employees reached Independence
Plaza in front of Government House, the Blanco NCG Councillors voted to
reimpose the state of siege. Adolfo Tejera, Minister of the Interior, made the
request on the grounds of preventing subversion of the national economy by
organised labour. The decree was passed to the Legislature but again the
Blancos are staying away from the meetings in order to prevent a quorum.
The police, especially Otero's department, looked pretty bad, although the
demonstration outside the NCG offices this morning was broken up without
violence. Only fifteen arrests have been made in spite of their early start,
and already the PCU 'self-defence' squads are back in action distributing
propaganda and generally defying the state of siege. In order to help Otero
and the police to save face, Horton agreed that I should pass to Otero the
name and address of one of the leaders of the 'self-defence' squads, Oscar
Bonaudi, for preventive detention. As there are only three squads,
AVCAVE-1 being on one and AVOIDANCE-9 being on another, the arrest
of Bonaudi will cause a spy scare, and probably make the PCU decide to
curb the squads' propaganda activities for a while. Riefe doesn't want
Bonaudi arrested because he's afraid his agents will be jeopardized, but
Horton wants to help the police, particularly Otero, to improve their image.
Montevideo 10 December 1965
Big news! Alberto Heber, the Blanco NCG Councillor who will take over
as NCG President in March, today proposed that Uruguay break diplomatic
relations with the Soviet Union because of Soviet interference in
Uruguayan labour troubles. We don't have direct access to Heber but can
check with Colonel Rodriguez. I have no means of seeing the Soviet
chauffeur until next week to discover their reaction, but Conolly is
concentrating on the AVENGEFUL tapes. Headquarters is delighted and
confirms that we should support the break in any way we can. Already Lee
Smith, the new covert-action operations officer, who recently, replaced Alex
Zeffer, is preparing a black letter linking the Soviet cultural attache with
leftist student activities. Lee is using the stationery with the letterhead of the
Seminar on Latin American Social and Economic Integration that the TSD
prepared for us last month.
My police are looking better than ever. Yesterday the newspaper printers'
union had just voted not to strike when police broke into the union hall and
arrested over 100 people. These were later released, however, but another
vote was taken, this time the strike was on, and today and tomorrow
Montevideo has no newspapers.
Montevideo 11 December 1965
We have worked all day preparing a report for NCG Councillor Alberto
Heber that will justify both a break in diplomatic relations with the Soviets
and the outlawing of the PCU. We began the project last night when John
Cassidy, who replaced O'Grady as Deputy Chief of Station, got an urgent
call from one of his contacts in the Uruguayan military intelligence service.
They had been asked by Heber earlier yesterday for a report on the Soviets,
but since they had nothing, they called on the station for assistance. This
morning all the station officers met to discuss the problems of trying to
write the Heber report. After we decided to write it on a crash basis,
Conolly chose the names of four Russians to be in charge of their labour
operations, and then went through his files to find concrete information to
give weight to this fantasy report. Similarly Riefe selected certain key CNT
and government union leaders as the Uruguayan counterparts of the Soviets,
together with appropriate true background information that could be
sprinkled into the report, such as trips by PCU leaders to Prague and
Moscow in recent months. Cassidy, Conolly, Riefe and I then wrote the
final version which Cassidy and I translated into Spanish. Tonight Cassidy
took it out to AVBUZZ-1 for correction and improvement of the Spanish,
and tomorrow he'll turn it over to the military intelligence service
(cryptonym AVBALSA). For a one-day job the twenty-page report is not
bad. Certainly it includes enough information that can be confirmed to
make the entire report appear plausible.
We prepared this report with media operations in mind, apart from
justifying the break with the Soviets and outlawing the PCU. Heber has
already said publicly that he has strong evidence to support the break,
though without the details which he hasn't yet got, but if the break is not
made we can publish the report anyway and attribute it to Heber – he is
unlikely to deny it. In that case it will cause a sensation and prepare the way
for the later decisions we want, and also provide material for putting to the
media by other stations, such as Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro.
According to Heber, the Blanco NCG Councillors will meet tomorrow
(Sunday) to decide on the break, and formal NCG action will follow on
Monday or Tuesday. The Minister of Defence, meanwhile, has suggested
outlawing the PCU and closing propaganda outlets such as El Popular.
The black letter connecting the Soviet cultural attache with the Seminar on
Social and Economic Integration will be put out in El Plata, the afternoon
daily belonging to the Blanco faction led by the N CG President. The letter
is a statement of appreciation for technical advice, and refers to instructions
relating to the Seminar and brought by a colleague who recently returned to
Montevideo. Thanks are also given for 'other assistance'. Although the letter
is vague, Soviet financing and control of the Seminar is easily inferred. The
forged signature is that of Daniel Waksman, the Seminar Secretary for
Foreign Relations.
Tension on the labour front is higher than ever with mass arrests of workers
(over 200 arrested at the Bank of the Republic and over 200 more at a tyre
company), and a call by the CNT for another general strike on 14
December. Lightning street demonstrations against the government
continue and several residences of government leaders and political clubs of
the traditional parties have been bombed. Our estimate is that if the new
general strike is not called off, the Blancos will break relations with the
Soviets, to be followed by strong measures against the PCU and leftist
labour leaders.
Montevideo 12 December 1965
This morning before Cassidy turned over the Heber report to military
intelligence, Horton decided first to show it to Colonel Ventura Rodriguez,
the Chief of Police, as the top military officer in public security. We took it
over to Rodriguez's office, where we sat around the conference table with
Rodriguez and Colonel Roberto Ramirez, Chief of the Guardia
Metropolitana, who was listening to a soccer game on his little transistor
radio.
As Rodriguez read the report, I began to hear a strange low sound which, as
it gradually became louder, I recognised as the moan of a human voice. I
thought it might be a street vendor trying to sell something, until Rodriguez
told Ramirez to turn up the radio. The moaning grew in intensity, turning
into screams, while several more times Rodriguez told Ramirez to turn up
the soccer game. By then I knew we were listening to someone being
tortured in the rooms next to the AVENGEFUL listening post above
Rodriguez's office. Rodriguez at last finished reading the report, told us he
thought it would be effective and Horton and I headed back for the
Embassy.
On the way back Horton agreed that we had been listening to a torture
session and I explained to him the location of the torture room with relation
to the AVENGEFUL LP and Rodriguez's office. I wondered out loud if the
victim could be Bonaudi, whose name I had given to Otero for preventive
detention. Tomorrow I'll ask Otero, and if it was Bonaudi I'm not sure what
I'll do. I don't know what to do about these police anyway – they're so crude
and ineffectual. I ought to have known not to give any names to the police
after the Arizaga case last month, without a full discussion, with the Chief if
necessary, of what action the police would take.
Hearing that voice, whoever it was, made me feel terrified and helpless. All
I wanted to do was to get away from the voice and away from the police
headquarters. Why didn't Horton or I say anything to Rodriguez? We just
sat there embarrassed and shocked. I'm going to be hearing that voice for a
long time.
Back at the Embassy the Ambassador told Horton that the NCG President
had just this morning asked him if he had any information that might be
used to justify breaking relations with the Soviets. Horton showed him the
Heber report and the Ambassador suggested he should give it to
Washington Beltran, the NCG President. The Ambassador took the original
out to Beltran's house while a copy went to the military intelligence service,
with the warning that if it were passed to Heber he should be advised that
Beltran already has a copy.
Giving the report to the Ambassador for Beltran has certain advantages but
Heber may be reluctant to use it now. Too bad, because Heber is the
councillor who convinced the others to reinstate the state of siege, the one
who suggested the break, and will moreover be the NCG President in less
than three months' time.
Montevideo 13 December 1965
The impasse is broken and the break with the Soviets is off for the time
being. Last night the government and bank unions reached agreement that
the firings of previous months would be cancelled and that sanctions against
strikers will be spread out over many months as painlessly as possible. The
agreement was followed last night by the release of all the bank workers
who had been arrested late last week. Early this morning similar agreements
were reached with central administration unions. Communist and other
militant leaders of the CNT had no choice, as the government unions
accepted these solutions, but to cancel the general strike scheduled for
tomorrow.
With the general strike broken and agreements with unions being made, the
government has dropped the threat of breaking relations with the Soviets.
The report prepared for Heber will not be brought out by the government
for the time being – we can do so later. The state of siege will continue until
firm agreements with all the government unions are reached. The leftist
daily Epoca is still closed for inflammatory propaganda, and almost 300 are
still under arrest.
Somewhat anti-climactic but useful, our black-letter operation against the
FEUU and the Soviet cultural attache caused a sensation when it was
published by El Plata this afternoon. Banner headlines announce
'Documents for the Break with Russia' and similar treatment will be given
in tomorrow morning's papers. Denials from Daniel Waksman, the FEUU
leader to whom the letter is attributed, were immediate, but they will be
given scant coverage except in the extreme-leftist press. AVBUZZ-1 has
arranged for Alberto Roca, publisher of the station-financed student
newspaper Combate, to take responsibility for the black letter in order to
relieve El Plata of liability.
Through AVBUZZ-1 we'll place new propaganda, in the form of editorial
comment, using the unions' 'capitulation' to avoid the break with the Soviets
as proof of Soviet influence over the unions (although in fact the
government conceded quite a lot more than the unions).
Montevideo 14 December 1965
More unexpected developments. Adolfo Tejera, the Minister of the Interior,
tried to manoeuvre Colonel Rodriguez, the Chief of Police, into a position
where the Chief would be forced to resign. The ploy backfired, forcing the
Minister to offer his resignation, as yet unaccepted, to the NCG. It's all so
complicated and bizarre that not even after explanations by Otero and Piriz
am I completely sure of what happened.
The episode began not long after midnight when Otero called to advise me
that the Ministry of the Interior had just announced that certain union
leaders were in the Soviet Embassy and that the Embassy was surrounded
by police to prevent their escape. Otero said the report about union leaders
having taken refuge in the Embassy is false, although police had indeed
been ordered to surround the Embassy. We arranged to meet this morning
for clarification.
This morning the sensational story of the union leaders' refuge in the Soviet
Embassy is carried in the press. According to the Director-General of the
Ministry of the Interior, who released the story to the press just before
Otero's call last night, police had followed certain union leaders who are on
their arrest list after a negotiating session between them and the Minister.
The police reported that the union leaders had entered the Soviet Embassy
which was then surrounded by police.
This morning Otero told me that police had not followed the union leaders
after their meeting with the Minister, but that the Director-General of the
Ministry had followed them. The Director-General lost them in the general
vicinity of the Soviet Embassy and later, probably in consultation with the
Minister, decided to order police to surround the Embassy and attribute the
report of their being there to the police. The Director-General gave the
order to the precinct involved rather than through the police headquarters,
in order to have the Embassy surrounded before the story was checked. The
purpose of the manoeuvre was to make the police look ridiculous, because
Colonel Rodriguez has protested within his Blanco faction that the Minister
has been negotiating directly with union leaders who are on the police arrest
list.
Later today the police department issued a statement, authorised by
Rodriguez, denying that the police gave any report to the Ministry of the
Interior about persons seeking refuge in the Soviet Embassy, and also
denying that police had followed union leaders after a meeting with the
Minister. Also later today the police arrested one of the union leaders in
question even though the Minister ordered that he be left alone, and only
the intervention of two NCG Councillors obtained his release.
Otero told me the screams Horton and I heard were indeed Bonaudi's.
Braga, the Deputy Chief of Investigations, ordered the torture, which lasted
for three days during which Bonaudi refused to answer any questions. Otero
said Braga and others were surprised at Bonaudi's resistance. That's the last
name I pass to the police as long as Braga remains.
Montevideo 16 December 1965
The Blancos have accepted the resignations of both the Minister and the
Chief of Police. The Ministry of the Interior now passes to the Blanco
faction led by Alberto Heber, who is due to become NCG President in
March. The new Minister is Nicolas Storace, and the new Police Chief is
Rogelio Ubach, another Army colonel who is currently Uruguayan military
attache in Asuncion, Paraguay.
For some time yesterday it seemed as if the solidarity with Rodriguez
expressed by senior military officers would result in only Tejera's dismissal,
but first reports on Ubach from the Embassy military attache office are
favourable. Horton and I will call on him officially after he takes over,
probably next week. Station files also reflect favourable information on
Storace from a previous period as Minister of the Interior in the early
1960s. Next week we will also call on Storace, and in the meantime perhaps
the police department will come out of the paralysis of the past three days
and get on with enforcing the state of siege. Besides Rodriguez, the rest of
the military officers who form the police hierarchy have also resigned or
will resign shortly – meaning we will have a new Chief of the Guardia
Metropolitana as police supervisor for AVENGEFUL telephone tapping.
There are no indications that problems will arise over continuing this
operation.
We have had a short visit from the new Deputy Chief of WH Division, Jake
Esterline. He has replaced Ray Herbert who is retiring. He told me that I
won't be able to return to Washington in three months as I had planned
because my replacement will be delayed some six months. A
disappointment as the situation at home is difficult, but I agreed to stay on
as long as necessary.
Horton gave a buffet supper for Esterline and all the station personnel.
During a heated conversation on why Holman was sent to a trouble-spot
like Guatemala, Esterline admitted that he had tried to change Holman's
assignment because news of Holman's incompetence in Montevideo had
gradually gotten back to headquarters. However, Des FitzGerald who took
over as DDP from Helms, was reluctant to change the assignment because
agreement had already been obtained from the State Department. Esterline
added, however, that he and the new Chief of WH Division, Bill Broe, are
making sure that Holman's criticism of station officers is offset by special
memoranda for the personnel files.
I would have liked to talk to Esterline about matters of principle related to
counter-insurgency – such as how we can justify our operations to support
the police and beat down the PCU, FEUU and other leftists when this only
serves to strengthen this miserable, corrupt and ineffectual Uruguayan
government. If we in the CIA, and the other US programmes as well, seek
to strengthen this and other similarly clique-serving governments only
because they are anti-communists, then we're reduced to promoting one
type of injustice in order to avoid another.
I didn't mention this to Jake for the same reason, I suppose, that none of us
in the station discusses the problem really seriously, although cynicism and
ridicule of the Blancos, Colorados, police, Army and others whom we
support is stronger than ever in the station halls – ample proof that we all
see the dilemma. But serious questioning of principles could imply
ideological weakening and a whole train of problems with polygraphs,
security clearance, career, personal security. For all of us the discussions
remain at the level of irony.
Montevideo 24 December 1965
Yesterday the state of siege was lifted by the NCG while the Bank of the
Republic began delivering 500 million pesos to the various government
offices for payment of Christmas bonuses. Today seven of the bankers
imprisoned for the frauds discovered in April were released – not exactly
harsh punishment considering all the savings lost.
Media promotion of the break with the Soviets continues through
AVBUZZ-1 in the form of announcements by real and fictitious
organisations backing the break. One typical announcement was made a
few days ago by the National Feminist Movement for the Defence of
Liberty which tied the break in relations with 'the great work of national
recuperation'.
The break is off for the foreseeable future, nevertheless, as Storace, the new
Minister of the Interior, told Horton and me on our first visit. He is anxious
to keep AVENGEFUL going and has so instructed the new Chief of Police.
Storace is the government's chief negotiator with the unions. In order to
keep up closely with the new Immigration Director, Luis Vargas
Garmendia, who is developing a new plan relating to communist diplomatic
missions in Montevideo, Horton asked me to be in charge of working with
Vargas whom we met at our second meeting with Storace.
Horton and I have also called on the new Chief of Police, Rogelio Ubach,
who presented us to Lieutenant-Colonel Amaury Prantl, the new Chief of
the Metropolitan Guard and supervisor of the AVENGEFUL listening post.
Ubach wants to continue and expand the AID Public Safety programme
which is just now completing its first year. Emphasis is still on
communications systems but special attention is now being given to the
Metropolitan Guard, the anti-riot shock troops, for whom tear-gas,
ammunition, helmets and gas-masks have been provided. In addition to
training by Public Safety AID officers in Montevideo, ten police officers
have been sent to the International Police Academy in Washington. Cost so
far: about 300,000 dollars.
Another important weapons robbery occurred the other night – possibly the
work of the Tupamaros. They got away with eighty-six revolvers, forty-
seven shotguns, five rifles and ammunition, all taken from a Montevideo
gun shop. Commissioner Otero leaves in three weeks for Washington.
Headquarters decided to train him at the International Police Services
School, which is a headquarters training facility under commercial cover,
instead of at the AID-administered International Police Academy. AID
cover for the training, however, is retained.
Montevideo 3 January 1966
Principal labour unrest since the general strike was broken last month has
been in the Montevideo transport system. That dispute was solved but
inflation is worse than ever which guarantees more labour trouble.
According to government figures the cost of living went up 16.6 per cent in
December alone, while inflation for all of 1965 was 85.5 per cent – twice
the rate for 1964. The School of Economics of the University of the
Republic, however, puts 1965 inflation at 99.6 per cent. No wonder the U I
put the Uruguayan social and economic crisis among the ten most important
news stories of the year.
The main reason for the jump in inflation in November and December was
the economic reforms adopted in October, particularly the freeing of the
peso for imports which caused it to go from the old official rate of 24 up to
about 60. These reforms were necessary for the Bank of the Republic to
obtain refinancing, and cleared the way for the interim credit of 48 million
dollars signed on 1 December. But more reforms will be needed for the IMF
stamp of approval because another 50 million dollars' credit will be needed
this year. Without IMF backing, credit can't be obtained except under shady
or usurious conditions. Already the Minister of the Treasury has made
another trip to Washington for meetings with the IMF. Trouble is that while
the IMF-imposed reforms are supposed to stimulate exports, the immediate
impact of stabilisation falls on the lower middle class and the poor who can
least cope.
For the Blancos this means trouble in this year's elections. Because of
opposition by rural producers, mainly the sheep and wool ranchers, the new
taxes created in November are inadequate to cover the salary and benefits
increases for government employees. This means still more deficit and more
inflation, and although rural producers were the most favoured by the
October measures, contraband exports to Brazil are expected to continue.
Salvation for the Blancos may be in constitutional reform, the movement
for which continued to grow all last year. The Ruralistas are still leading the
reform movement (today Juan Jose Gari resigned as President of the State
Mortgage Bank in protest over failure of his allied Blanco faction to declare
for reform) but the movement is growing both in Blanco and Colorado
circles. Chief among reforms would be the return to a one-man executive in
order to facilitate decision-making. The ominous sign in the reform
movement, however, is the predominance therein of rural producers. A
Colorado newspaper in a recent editorial against return to the one-man
presidency pointed out that practically all of the 200 families that own 75-
80 per cent of Uruguay's rural lands are in favour of a one-man executive. It
seems that if better decision-making is attained, land reform will only get
further away. Happily for me, Horton agreed that I could drop the political-
contact work altogether.
Stations all over the hemisphere are engaged in a propaganda campaign
against the Tri-Continental Conference that opened yesterday in Havana.
It's a meeting of over 500 delegates from seventy-seven countries – some
delegates represent governments and some represent extreme-left political
organisations. Themes of the Conference are not surprising: anti-
imperialism; anti-colonialism; anti-neo-colonialism; solidarity with the
struggles in Vietnam, Dominican Republic and Rhodesia; promotion of
solidarity on the economic, social and cultural levels. It is a major event of
the communist bloc and is supposed to last until 12 January.
For some months headquarters has been preparing the propaganda
campaign and asked long ago for stations to try to place agents in the
delegations. We had no agent in a position to go to the Conference, but
AVBUZZ-1 is turning out plenty of material for the media. Our themes are
two: exposure of the Conference as an instrument of Soviet subversion
controlled by the KGB, and frank admission that the danger posed by the
Conference calls for political, diplomatic and military counter-measures.
Since the purpose of the Conference is to create unity among the different
dis-united revolutionary organisations, propaganda operations are also
being directed at these organisations – mainly capitalising on resistance to
dominance by the Soviet line and Soviet-lining parties. The more we can
promote independence and splits among revolutionary organisations the
weaker they'll be, easier to penetrate, easier to defeat.
Luis Vargas, the Director of Immigration, has agreed to review the case of
the North Koreans who came temporarily and have been here for almost a
year-and-a-half. For months we thought Tejera might take action, but
nothing ever happened. Hopefully Vargas and Storace, the Minister of the
Interior, will now be willing to ask them to leave.
Montevideo 7 January 1966
The Soviets at the Tri-Continental Conference have given our propaganda
operations perfect ammunition in a speech yesterday by S. P. Rashidov,
Chief of the Soviet delegation who is a member of the Presidium and Vice-
Prime Minister. Rashidov affirmed the resolution of the Soviet Union to
give maximum support in money, arms and munitions to insurrectional
movements organised to promote social revolution. He said that right now
the Soviets are backing liberation movements in Guatemala, Peru, the
Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Guyana and Venezuela.
The speech is carried by the wire services and headquarters wants
prominent display in local newspapers. In countries maintaining diplomatic
relations with the Soviet Union we are to make sure appropriate
government officials get copies or resumes of the Rashidov speech, and
editorial comment is to be produced calling for re-examination of relations
with the Soviets in the light of the Rashidov admissions.
Khalturin's wife has decided to return to the Soviet Union because she can't
stand the summer heat here. Although Dick Conolly, the Soviet operations
officer, has been able to monitor the audio installation in Khalturin's
apartment only sporadically, he has come up with several meetings and
occasional visits to the apartment by Nina Borisova. Because of
transcribing difficulties the tapes are being pouched to headquarters and so
far I've heard of no startling information. Khalturin, meanwhile, has begun
to show interest in the wife of Carlos Salguero, the owner of his apartment,
and Conolly is working closely with them as access agents to Khalturin.
After thinking over how I might use my acquaintance with Borisov, the
Soviet Consul and husband of Borisova, to exploit the triangle, I proposed
to Conolly and Horton that I tell Borisov of his wife's infidelity more or less
'as one man to another'. The purpose would be to place Borisov in the
difficult position of either not reporting something important that I tell him
– dishonesty in reporting might be-a first step to defection – or reporting
that a CIA officer has told him that his wife is sleeping with his chief.
Although sexual behaviour is fairly relaxed among Soviets, the fact that the
CIA is monitoring a liaison within the KGB office might make reporting
difficult for Khalturin as well as Borisov. Possibly, if an honest report went
to Moscow, either Borisov or Khalturin or both might be recalled with the
attendant disruption and possible reluctance of either to return under a
cloud. At Horton's instruction I made the proposal in writing to
headquarters – both he and Conolly think it's a good idea.
Montevideo 13 January 1966
Otero left today for training at the International Police Services School in
Washington. Horton and I went to police headquarters to bid farewell and
we took advantage of the meeting with Colonel Ubach, the Chief of Police,
to propose bringing down one of our officers to work full-time with police
intelligence, using the AID Public Safety mission as cover. Ubach isn't
terribly quick mentally, but he agreed, as he does to everything else we
propose. Now we'll get approval from Storace, the Minister of the Interior,
and advise headquarters to select someone. Once this matter is settled we'll
begin working on the Minister, the Chief, and others in order to take the
intelligence department out of the Investigations Division, preferably on an
equal bureaucratic level as Investigations or at least with some autonomy. If
approved we'll try to manoeuvre Inspector Piriz in as Intelligence Chief
because he's much more experienced, mature and capable than Otero who
suffers from impatience and is disliked by colleagues. Piriz, moreover, has
already been on the payroll for some years and his loyalty and spirit of
cooperation are excellent. While Otero is away I'll work closely with his
deputy, Sub-Commissioner Pablo Fontana.
Montevideo 20 January 1966
AVBUZZ-1 has been pounding away at the Tri-Continental Conference,
which ended a few days ago, but he may have overplayed his hand a little.
He arranged for a statement to be published in the name of an organisation
he calls the Plenary of Democratic Civic Organisations of Uruguay. The
statement was perfect because it tied the Tri-Continental with the Congress
of the People, the CNT and the waves of strikes during late last year. The
problem was his vivid imagination in naming signatory organisations to
demonstrate mass backing: the National Feminist Movement for the
Defence of Liberty, the Uruguayan Committee for Free Determination of
Peoples, the Sentinels of Liberty, the Association of Friends of Venezuela,
the Uruguayan Committee for the Liberation of Cuba, the Anti-Totalitarian
Youth Movement, the Labour Committee for Democratic Action, the
National Board for the Defence of Sovereignty and Continental Solidarity,
the Anti-Totalitarian Board of Solidarity with the People of Vietnam, the
Alliance for Anti-Totalitarian Education, the Anti-Communist Liberation
Movement, the Free Africa Organisation of Coloured People, the Student
Movement for Democratic Action, the Movement for Integral University
Action. Vargas, the Director of Immigration, is very excited about
promoting action against communist bloc diplomatic and commercial
missions in Montevideo. He showed me the Heber report of last month,
without telling me how he got it – probably from Heber himself, and asked
if I would use it and any other information we have in order to justify the
expulsion of key Soviets instead of a break in diplomatic relations. He and
Storace (and presumably Heber) now want us to prepare a report naming
whichever Soviets we want as those responsible for meddling in Uruguayan
labour and student organisations. At the appropriate moment the report will
be used for declaring those Soviets persona non grata. Conolly, Riefe,
Cassidy and I have already started on this new report. We will have to work
fast to take advantage of the resentment caused by the Rashidov speech and
the Tri-Continental and of Heber's clear intention to use expulsions and the
threat of expulsions as a tool against: the unions. Vargas is also going to
begin action against the non-diplomatic personnel of communist missions,
especially those who are here as officials of the commercial missions,
which would include Soviets, Czechs, East Germans and the North
Koreans. He's going to start with the North Koreans. He has discovered
several ways in which he is going to prepare expulsions of Soviet bloc
diplomatic and commercial officers. These expulsions will be mainly on
technicalities he has found in the 1947 immigration law that forbids entry to
persons who advocate the violent overthrow of the government, on
irregularities in the issue of visas, and on interpretations of the status of
Soviet bloc commercial officers. Little by little he hopes to cut down the
official communist representation here by expelling the Koreans, East
Germans and certain Czechs and Soviets – none of whom have diplomatic
status – and by the persona non grata procedure where diplomatic officials
are concerned.
I am encouraging Vargas to bring the approval authority for all visas to
diplomats and others representing communist countries under his control.
According to the current regulations he is supposed to have power of
approval over all visas except diplomatic ones, but in recent years the
Director of Immigration's office hasn't exercised this function. In order to
obtain control of diplomatic visas, Vargas will prepare an instruction which
Storace will get approved by the NCG. All this will take time but at least
we're beginning to move. Our purpose is to get prior advice on visa requests
and to give Vargas information about persons for whom the visas are
requested. We will be able to delay the visas and to, get visas refused where
desirable – all of which will help to cut back the size of the communist
missions, the numbers of intelligence officers in them, and the damage they
can do.
In Havana yesterday it was announced that a new organisation is being
formed to coordinate revolutionary activities in Latin America. It will be a
'solidarity' organisation to channel assistance to liberation movements, and
in the announcement Castro was quoted as praising the leadership of the
revolutionary movement in Uruguay. Ambassador Hoyt asked us to prepare
a report on these latest developments as well as on the Rashidov speech and
other matters related to the Tri-Continental. He plans to give this material to
the Foreign Minister because he says the NCG is going to take some kind of
action.
Montevideo 29 January 1966
Our use of the Rashidov speech and the Tri-Continental propaganda has
produced a surprising show of strength by the Uruguayan government.
Today the Foreign Minister called in Soviet Ambassador Kolosovsky and
asked for an explanation of Soviet participation in the Conference, since
Conference speeches and documents are flagrant violations of the principles
of self-determination and non-intervention as expressed in the UN Charter.
The Foreign Minister pointedly asked Kolosovsky if Rashidov, as Chief of
the Soviet delegation, had been speaking on his own account or as a
representative of the Soviet government. Kolosovsky answered that he will
request clarification from Moscow. These exchanges have been reported in
the media, especially Kolosovsky's failure to respond. Cables have gone to
other WH stations for replay.
Other diplomatic moves include a statement by Venezuela that it will
examine its diplomatic relations with countries represented at the
Conference. In the OAS, Peru presented a resolution condemning the
Conference, and ORIT headquarters in Mexico, together with member
organisations in various countries, have sent telegrams to the OAS backing
the Peruvian resolution. The US representative in the OAS, speaking for the
Peruvian resolution, said that the Alliance for Progress will make Latin
America a lost cause for communism – he can't have spent much time in
Latin America lately. Manuel Pio Correa, the Brazilian Ambassador sent by
the military government to suppress exile plotting, returned permanently to
Brazil last week. He has been rewarded for his work here by appointment as
Secretary-General of the Brazilian Foreign Ministry – the number two post,
equivalent to Under Secretary. After he got back, a spokesman for the
Brazilian Foreign Ministry commented that when Pio Correa made his final
call at the Foreign Ministry here to bid farewell, he failed to deliver another
protest note over the exiles.
Before leaving Montevideo Pio Correa told Horton that if things in Uruguay
don't improve, sooner or later Brazil will intervene – perhaps not militarily
but in whatever way is necessary to prevent its weak neighbour from falling
victim to communist subversion. Well, at least we won't have to send troops
as we did ~with the Dominican Republic – the Brazilians will take care of
those fifty-eight trained Uruguayan communists when the time comes.
Montevideo 2 February 1966
Expulsion of the North Koreans was approved yesterday by Storace and
will be ordered by Vargas in a matter of hours. Vargas's investigation
revealed that former Interior Minister Tejera had ordered them to detail
their commercial activities in August last year, but the Koreans refused and
Tejera asked in November for a report from the Bank of the Republic which
was never made. Vargas's new query to the Bank of the Republic brought a
reply that the North Koreans' only transaction since they arrived in 1964
was a small purchase of hides about a year ago. As their tourist visas
expired long ago and they are making no commercial transactions,
expulsion will provoke little opposition. What the North Koreans were
doing all this time is a mystery; most likely intelligence support for the
Soviets.
The Blanco NCG Councillors are keeping up the heat against the Soviets
over the Tri-Continental and Rashidov's speech. In a well-publicised
meeting yesterday they received from the Foreign Minister a group of
documents on the Tri-Continental, including those we prepared for the
Ambassador. A copy of Rashidov's speech was one of the documents and
we are trying to get a recording of the speech to pass to the Foreign
Minister through the Ambassador – hopefully the Miami station monitored
the speech if it was broadcast: Although no decisions were reached, the
meeting served to stimulate new speculation about a possible break in
relations. This weekend the Argentine Foreign Minister will be in Punta del
Este, and we are also creating press speculation that he and the Uruguayan
Foreign Minister will be discussing the significance of Soviet diplomatic
presence in the River Plate in the light of the Tri-Continental.
Today we helped to increase the tension even more by getting the military
intelligence service to inspect a shipment of some thirty crates that recently
arrived in the port from the Soviet Union. Through the AVENGEFUL
telephone tap we learned about the crates and when the Army opened them
today the Soviets protested loudly. They contained only tractors and parts
but the incident contributed nicely to the current propaganda campaign.
Other propaganda on the Soviets and the Tri-Continental consists largely of
press replay of significant articles published elsewhere – right now, in fact,
stations all over the hemisphere are putting out a coordinated campaign to
demonstrate that the channel for communist subversion begins in Moscow
with the KGB and flows out through the Cubans and organisations like the
Tri-Continental to the local organisations. Central to this campaign is a Le
Monde article of 20 January on formation of the Latin American solidarity
organisation. Cleverer, perhaps, is the publication of a 'secret' document
through agents of the Caracas station in the Accion Democratica Party. The
document, supposedly obtained at the Tri-Continental, purports to detail the
formation of a Latin American solidarity organisation and is being put out
by various stations. Here we decided to use A. Fernandez Chavez, one of
our media agents and also the representative of ANSA, the Italian press
service. In Fernandez's version the programme of the solidarity organisation
is said to have been elaborated at a series of meetings in Montevideo,
Rivera (on the Brazilian border) and Porto Alegre (capital of the Brazilian
state bordering Uruguay). Officers of the Uruguayan-Soviet Cultural
Institute were said to have participated.
Montevideo 4 February 1966
The NCG President has raised suddenly the spectre of a move against the
Soviet mission again. Today he told newsmen at Government House that
the Minister of the Interior, Storace, is preparing a new report on infiltration
by communist diplomats in Uruguayan labour and student organisations. He
also said that from what his own sources tell him, and from what Storace
told him orally, there can be no doubt of illegal intervention by communist
diplomats. He added that Storace's report will be presented to the NCG next
week and will lead to an announcement of great moment.
The 'Storace report' is the one we wrote for Storace and Vargas two weeks
ago to justify the expulsion of eight Soviet and two Czech diplomats. This
report is already in Storace's hands and if all goes well we should have
some sensational expulsions next week. The Soviets were selected very
carefully in order to produce the desired effects. Both Khalturin, the KGB
chief, and Borisov, the Consul and a KGB officer, were left off the
expulsion list, so that we can continue to monitor the liaison between
Khalturin and Borisova. We included on the list, however, Khalturin's most
effective and hard-working subordinates, including the cultural attache
whom we made trouble for in the spurious Waksman letter last year, so that
Khalturin will have to take on an even greater work load. Reports from
Salgueros and from the AVBLIMP observation post reveal that Khalturin is
working extremely long hours and appears to be under severe strain. By
forcing still more work on him we might trigger some kind of breakdown.
We also included the Embassy zavhoz (administrative officer) because his
departure will cause irritating problems in the Soviet mission's
housekeeping function. I added the two Czechs in order to demonstrate
KGB use of satellite diplomats for their own operations and in order to get
rid of the most active Czech intelligence officers.
Closely related to the new move against the Soviets was the decision by the
NCG yesterday to instruct the Uruguayan mission at the OAS to support the
Peruvian motion condemning the Tri-Continental and Soviet participation
in it. The motion has passed the OAS and will be sent now to the UN
Security Council. The Soviets know what's coming, because AVAILABLE-
1 my Soviet chauffeur, told me the whole mission is waiting under great
tension to see how many and who are sent home.
Montevideo 11 February 1966
The North Koreans are out but the Soviet expulsion is postponed. Vargas
couldn't get the Koreans to go to his office to be advised, so he sent police
to bring them in by force. The three officials and their families left today.
Expulsion of the Soviets is postponed for the time being because
Washington Beltran, the outgoing NCG President, wants Alberto Heber,
who comes in as NCG President on 1 March, to make the expulsion.
Storace's presentation of our report to the NCG is also postponed but Vargas
assured me that action will be taken sooner or later. At the moment he is
going to proceed with progressive harassment and expulsion – if politically
acceptable – of the East German trade mission, the Czech commercial
office and the Soviet commercial office. Because officials of these offices
haven't got diplomatic status, Vargas can assert control without interference
from the Foreign Ministry. He is also proceeding on the new decree
granting the Ministry of the Interior and the Immigration Department equal
voice with the Foreign Ministry for approval of all visas, diplomatic
included, for communist country nationals.
Too bad about the expulsions because today Soviet Ambassador
Kolosovsky replied to the Foreign Minister on the Rashidov speech. He
said Rashidov was speaking at the Tri-Continental in the name of certain
Soviet social organisations and not in the name of the Soviet government.
Appropriate media coverage is following in order to ridicule Kolosovsky's
answer and to applaud the North Korean expulsion.
Montevideo 17 February 1966
Station labour operations continue to be centred on the Uruguayan Institute
of Trade Union Education, which is the Montevideo office of the AIFLD.
Jack Goodwyn, Director of the Institute, is working closely with Lee Smith,
the station covert-action officer, in order to develop a pool of anti-CNT
labour leaders through the training programmes of the Institute. The most
effective programme, of course, is the one in which trainees are paid a
generous salary by the Institute for nine months after completion of the
training course, during which time they work exclusively in union-
organising under Goodwyn's direction. It is this organisational work that is
the real purpose of the AIFLD, so that eventually our trade unions can take
national leadership away from the CNT. Goodwyn's job, in addition to the
training programme, is to watch carefully for prospective agents who can be
recruited by Smith under arrangements that will protect Goodwyn.
The goals will take a long time to reach and progress often seems very slow.
Nevertheless Goodwyn has already achieved several notable successes in
the social projects field, which are showcase public-relations projects such
as housing and consumer cooperatives. Using a four-million-dollar housing
loan offer from the AFL-CIO, to be guaranteed by AID, Goodwyn has
brought together a small number of unions to form the Labour Unity
Committee for Housing. Some of these same unions have also formed what
they call the Permanent Confederation, which is the embryo of a future
national labour centre that will affiliate with ORIT and the ICFTU. Another
housing project, also for about four million dollars, is being negotiated with
the National Association of Public Functionaries – one of the two large
unions of central administration employees. Goodwyn has also formed a
consumer cooperative for sugar workers in Bella Union – the same region
where the important revolutionary socialist leader, Raul Sendic, gets his
support.
Station propaganda operations are now high-lighting the recent
imprisonment by the Soviets of dissident writers Yuli Daniel and Andrei
Sinyavsky as well as the Tri-Continental. Today the NCG discussed the
Daniel and Sinyavsky cases and instructed the Foreign Minister to make a
formal protest in UNESCO. NCG Councillors also harshly criticised
Kolosovsky's reply that Rashidov was not speaking at the Tri-Continental
for the Soviet government.
Montevideo 25 February 1966
My little technical operation against the codes of the UAR Embassy is
beginning to monopolise my time. For over a week two Division D
technical officers, Donald Schroeder and Alvin Benefield, have been here
planning the installation, and I've had to take them from shop to shop
buying special glues, masking-tape and other hard-to-find items. Schroeder
was here late last year for a short visit and at his request I sent the electric
company inspector who is part of the AVENIN surveillance team into the
Embassy for an inside casing. After his visit there was no doubt where the
code-room is located – right over the office of Frank Stuart, the Director of
AID.
Some time ago Stuart received an instruction from AID headquarters in
Washington to lend whatever cooperation is necessary to the station –
although he doesn't seem to know exactly what is to happen. He's just
nervous that some heavy instrument will come crashing down on his desk
through the modern, hanging, acoustic-tile ceiling of the AID offices. I have
arranged with him to get the keys to AID and for him to send away his
watchman when we make the entry a few nights from now.
The installation will consist of two special contact microphones ('contact'
meaning it is made to pick up direct vibrations instead of air vibrations, as
in the case of a normal voice microphone) connected to small FM
transmitters powered by batteries. Schroeder and Benefield will install the
equipment right against the ceiling, as close as possible to the spot where
the UAR code clerk has his desk. From my Embassy office which is across
the street from the UAR Embassy and the AID offices, we will monitor the
transmitter in order to record vibrations from the machine.
The UAR uses a portable Swiss-built encrypting machine which is like a
combination typewriter and adding machine. Inside it has a number of discs
that are specially set every two or three months. The code clerk, in order to
encrypt a secret message, writes the message into the machine in clear text
in five letter groups. Each time he completes five letters he pulls a crank
which sets the inner discs whirling. When they stop the jumbled letters that
appear represent the encrypted group. When the whole message is encoded
the resulting five letter groups are sent via commercial telegraph facilities to
Cairo.
The National Security Agency cannot break this code system
mathematically but they can do so if sensitive recordings can be obtained of
the vibrations of the encrypting machine when the discs clack to a stop. The
recordings are processed through an oscilloscope and other machines which
reveal the disc settings. Knowing the settings, NSA can put the encoded
messages, which are intercepted through the commercial companies, into
their own identical machines with identical settings, and the clear text
message comes out. Although the Swiss manufacturer when selling the
machine emphasizes the need to use it inside a sound-proof room on a table
isolated by foam rubber, we hope this particular code .clerk is careless. If
we can discover the settings on this machine in Montevideo, NSA will be
able to read the encrypted UAR messages on the entire circuit to which
their Montevideo Embassy pertains. This circuit includes London and
Moscow, which is why we have been pressured to get the operation going
here. If successful, we will record vibrations from the machine every time
the settings are changed in future. By reading these secret UAR messages,
policymakers in Washington will be able to anticipate UAR diplomatic and
military moves, and also to obtain an accurate reaction to US initiatives.
In another day or two Schroeder and Benefield will have all their equipment
ready. Our plan is to drive up Paraguay Street about 9 p.m. and enter
normally through the front door of the AID offices, using Stuart's key. After
checking security and closing blinds, I'll park the car just down Paraguay
Street from AID for emergency getaway. While Schroeder and Benefield
make the installation, I'll go up to my office in our Embassy and watch over
the UAR Embassy and the AID office from my window. Horton also plans
to be in the station when we make the installation. We'll have handie-talkies
for communication between Schroeder and Benefield and Horton and me in
the station. Very little risk in this one but plenty of advantage.
Montevideo 1 March 1966
The technical installation under the UAR code-room took most of the night
– Horton told Schroeder and Benefield that no matter what happens that
equipment must not come loose and fall on to Stuart's desk. So they took
their time and made it safe. Already we have recordings of the machine and
after playing them through the oscilloscope of our communications room,
Schroeder and Benefield are certain they will work. We pouched the tapes
to headquarters for passage to NSA, who will advise on whether they can
be used.
The sensitivity of the microphones is remarkable. Every time a toilet
flushes, or the elevator goes up or down, even the structural creaks – every
sound in this twelve-storey building is picked up.
Montevideo 7 March 1966
Alberto Heber took over as President of the NCG and was greeted by the
CNT with a call for another general strike for 16 March, in protest against
continuing inflation and unemployment. The Montevideo transport strike is
now three weeks old. Storace continues as chief government negotiator with
the unions, and, with elections only nine months away, labour peace must
be bought even at the price of still more concessions.
So today he settled the Montevideo transport strike. He also put to rest the
sanctions issue. The unions of the autonomous agencies and decentralised
services accepted his formula whereby all sanctions discounted for last
year's strikes will be repaid to the workers and all other sanctions cancelled.
The CNT then announced that the general strike called for 16 March is
postponed until 31 March. Our PCU penetration agents believe this was
part of the bargain with Storace over sanctions and that the strike will
probably not be held at all.
Montevideo 12 March 1966
Luis Vargas, the Director of Immigration, has a new plan for reducing the
numbers of commercial officers from the communist countries. These
officers are more vulnerable than their colleagues with diplomatic status
(although cover in the commercial departments is frequently used for
intelligence officers) because Uruguayan law does not recognise 'official'
status for foreigners not having diplomatic passports. As almost all the
Soviet, Czech and other communist trade officers carry service or special
passports, which for them is between ordinary and diplomatic status, Vargas
is going to apply the law which requires that foreigners who have
completed the temporary residence period for purposes of commerce must
solicit permanent residence in order to remain in Uruguay. As the request
for permanent residence includes a statement of intention to become an
Uruguayan citizen, Vargas is certain, as am I, that those officers affected
will have to be transferred. By long delays of approval of visa requests for
replacements, the numbers of officers in the commercial missions can be
considerably reduced without outright expulsion. The first communist
mission to feel this new procedure will be the East Germans whose four-
man trade mission is functioning just like an embassy. Our Ambassador, in
fact, is often embarrassed at diplomatic functions when the chief of the East
German mission is present, and some time ago he asked us to see what
could be done to get them thrown out.
Although I've also been trying to keep up pressure on Vargas and Storace
for the expulsion operation against the Soviet officers, they have both said
they want to hold this move in reserve to use when the unions start trouble
again. Meanwhile, Vargas is proceeding with the special decree giving him
and Storace approval power for all visas, including diplomatic, for nationals
of the communist countries. The Foreign Ministry is opposed to giving the
Interior Ministry a veto power on diplomatic visas, but Storace and Vargas,
as men in Heber's confidence, are going to win.
Headquarters tell us that NSA is able to determine the code-machine
settings with the tapes. We're going to leave the installation in place and
when the settings are changed we will be advised and I will make some
recordings in my office to be forwarded by pouch. At last I'll have these two
Division D friends off my back. Benefield now goes to Africa for an
operation against a newly-established Communist Chinese mission and
Schroeder goes to Mexico City where he has been working for some time
on an operation against the French code system.
Montevideo 20 March 1966
Work with the police continues but with little real progress. Storace
approved bringing down one of our officers under Public Safety cover and
headquarters finally located an officer for the assignment: Bill Cantrell,
formerly with the Secret Service then in the Far East Division after coming
with the Agency. Unfortunately Cantrell will not arrive until September
because he has to study Spanish, so I suppose I'll be working with police
intelligence until I leave – with luck at the end of August.
Our efforts to convince Colonel Ubach to establish an intelligence division
on a par with, or apart from, the ordinary Criminal Investigations Division
haven't been successful. Horton, however, is determined to turn police
intelligence into a British-style 'special branch' like the one he dealt with in
Hong Kong. I'm not sure whether he thinks this is needed because it will
work better or because it's the British way – he seems even more anglophile
than before: country walks, bird-watching, tennis, tea-time and quantities of
well-worn tweeds that he wears in the hottest weather.
Establishing an autonomous 'special branch' under Inspector Piriz wouldn't
be possible just now in any case because Piriz is still working on fraud
cases and the other financial crimes that have continued since the first bank
failures in April of last year. Heber on taking over as NCG President
established a special Treasury Police under Storace with representation
from the Bank of the Republic, the Ministry of the Treasury and the
Montevideo Police Department. Piriz is the senior police officer in this new
unit and it would be difficult to pry him away because his work on these
cases has been excellent. As he is rather isolated from police headquarters
his value as an intelligence source has come down, but I'm continuing his
salary, in fact I've given him several rises to keep up with inflation, because
of his long-range potential.
Frank Sherno, the regional technical officer stationed in Buenos Aires, sent
us a portable Recordak document-copying machine which I hope to set up
at the Montevideo airport as part of an improved travel-control operation.
With this machine we can photograph all the passports from communist
countries and that of anyone else on our watch list. Recently I've begun to
work on this with Jaureguiza, another Police Commissioner who is in
charge of general travel control and the Montevideo non-domiciled
population. Jaureguiza has agreed to obtain a convenient room at the
Montevideo airport near the immigration counters to install the machine.
When this is settled Sherno will come to set it up and train the operators.
Hopefully we can get this done before Otero gets back from his training in
Washington because he'll want to control it and his abrasive personality
would hinder getting it started. By now he has finished the police training
course at the International Police Services School and is undergoing special
intelligence training by headquarters' OTR officers.
No wonder this passport photography has taken so long. Yesterday the
Metropolitan Guard seized a large quantity of contraband at the airport and
customs officers were revealed to be running a lucrative trade. Smuggling
in fact is the reason why I've been delayed so often, because Piriz tells me
the airport police are also in the business. Any tighter controls out there
threaten their livelihood.
Montevideo 30 March 1966
Headquarters thinks the operation against the UAR codes is so important
that they asked that we buy or take a long lease on the apartment above the
UAR Embassy. The reasoning is that in a couple of years we will be
moving into the new Embassy now under construction on the Rambla and
AID will also probably move at that time. As this operation could go on for
many years, headquarters wants to be assured of access to the building and
close proximity for a listening post. Bad news. Now I'll have to find
someone to buy the apartment from the elderly couple living there, then
someone to live in it as LP keeper. The apartment is enormous, as there is
only one per floor in this building, so I'll need a family with some ostensible
affluence.
Rio de Janeiro 6 April 1966
Even from travel posters it's impossible to imagine the beauty of this city –
mountains right in the middle of town, sparkling bays, wide, sandy beaches.
The combination is simply spectacular.
All the case officers in charge of Cuban operations at the South American
stations are here for a conference. The purpose is to stimulate new interest
in recruiting agents who can go to Cuba to live, in recruitment operations
against Cuban government officials who travel abroad, and in operations to
penetrate Cuban intelligence activities in our countries of assignment. Tom
Flores, former Chief of Station in Montevideo, is now in charge of all
Cuban affairs in headquarters and is running the conference – he held
another one last week in Mexico City for Cuban operations officers in
Central America, the Caribbean and Mexico.
In his introductory remarks, Flores lamented that the Agency still has
practically no living agents reporting from within Cuba. Technical coverage
from electronics and communications intercept ships like the USS Oxford,
and from satellites and aerial reconnaissance, is good but not enough. Not
surprisingly he carried on with the old theme of recruitment by secret
writing through the mails. Then we had a full day on the structure and
function of the Cuban intelligence service – more of the same information
sent almost two years ago after the defection in Canada. Very boring.
Yesterday and today each of us has had a turn at describing our local
operations against the Cubans – mine are still bogged down in following up
the interminable leads on the counterintelligence cases and in trying to get
the government to take action against the Montevideo Prensa Latina office.
It was interesting, though, to hear of operations in Quito and Caracas. Fred
Morehouse, the former chief of the ZRBEACH communications monitoring
team in Montevideo was transferred to Caracas and there he managed to
locate and identify two people who were operating clandestine radio
communications circuits with Cuba. It wasn't said whether either of them
was recruited, but in any case both circuits were neutralized.
Representing the Quito station is none other than old boss Warren Dean –
the conference is for operations officers, but Dean wanted a few days'
vacation in Rio. He explained that Rafael Echeverria went to Cuba after the
military junta took over in 1963 and there he had an operation for a brain
tumour. After recovery he was trained as a Cuban intelligence agent and he
returned to Quito and was unmolested by the junta. Through Mario
Cardenas, the Quito PCE penetration agent, Echeverria was discovered to
have a secret-writing system for sending messages to Cuba and a radio
signal plan for receiving them. The Office of Communications installed a
transmitter in the radio Echeverria used to receive short-wave messages
from Cuba, so that the station could record the messages in the apartment
across the street where I had placed Luis Sandoval under commercial
photography cover before Arosemena was overthrown. The station also
copied Echeverria's cryptographic pads and thus was able to monitor his
communications with the Cuban service in Havana. The Quito station's best
new recruitment is Jorge Arellano Gallegos, a PCE leader from years back
on whom vulnerability data for recruitment has been collected for a long
time.
We'll have another day or two here before the conference ends. Nobody is
very excited except Cuban operations officers from headquarters such as
Flores – the rest of us are increasingly absent at the beaches. When we
finish I'll take a week off for fishing in the Caribbean with my father – then
back to Montevideo to wait for my replacement. I am still uncertain about
resigning when I return to Washington. I'll definitely separate from Janet
but I'll have to find another job before resigning from the CIA.
Montevideo 18 April 1966
The movement for constitutional reform has picked up surprising strength
in recent months. The Ruralistas still are the most important group pushing
for a strong, one-man executive but important Blancos and Colorados are
joining the campaign. Some people, however, believe the problem of
decision-making can be solved by retention of the collegiate executive but
with all members from the same party. A one-man executive, many fear,
would inevitably degenerate into some variety of dictatorship, as so much
of Uruguayan and Latin American history suggests.
The PCU, through its political front, FIDEL, is conducting its own reform
campaign – not for the one-man presidency because they know they'll be
the first group suppressed when it degenerates. Their signature campaign is
for a constitutional reform that would retain the weak executive, but
provide for land reform and the nationalisation of banking, foreign
commerce, and the important industries still in private hands. They have no
chance of winning, of course, but land reform is still the most important
need in Uruguay. In the last census it was revealed that of the total rural
population of 390,000 only about 3000 – less than 1 per cent – own some
70 per cent of the lands. If the rich ranchers pushing the Ruralista reform
are successful, land reform will be as far away as ever under a one-man
executive. The Blancos' main problem is still inflation (13.6 per cent in
January-March) and the ever-worsening economy. More IMF-dictated
stabilisation measures are coming up soon which will be unpopular and hurt
the Blancos' electoral chances.
I have just finished one of the more disagreeable operations of my short
career as a spy. Several months ago headquarters replied to one of my
reports on the Yugoslav mission here – I had sent up to date information on
all the mission personnel from the Foreign Ministry files – by proposing a
recruitment. One of the attaches in the Yugoslav Embassy is an old personal
acquaintance of DMHAMMER-1, a high-level defector of some years ago.
The defector, now in his sixties, was the equivalent to the chief of
administration in the Yugoslav Foreign Ministry and had provided excellent
intelligence. In recent years he has been shuttled around the world making
recruitment approaches to former colleagues – not all of them unsuccessful.
Soon headquarters is going to retire him to pasture, but it was desired that
he come to Montevideo for one last recruitment approach because the
attache is the code clerk.
Horton agreed and the headquarters' officer in charge came down to plan
the approach with me. The AVENIN surveillance team established our
target's daily routine, which involved a walk of several blocks from his
apartment to the Embassy. He makes this walk in the morning, to home and
back at lunchtime, and then again in the evening. The headquarters' officer
brought the defector, a tall, handsome man with flowing white mane, over
from Buenos Aires for the 'chance' street encounter which would be on
Boulevard Espana just a few blocks towards the beach from the Soviet
Embassy.
As good fortune would have it, our target appeared right on time and the
encounter, although lasting only about fifteen minutes, was very warm and
animated. Our defector told the target that he was visiting Montevideo and
Buenos Aires on a business trip from Paris where he now lives, and he
invited the target to dinner the same day or the next. The attache accepted
the invitation for the following day, and we thought we might have a hit.
We decided to use the same security precautions as on the first day, i.e. the
headquarters officer and I on counter-surveillance in the street with Tito
Musso, the AVENIN team chief, nearby in an escape vehicle.
The defector went to the elegant Aguila Restaurant the following night as
agreed, but the attache failed to appear. Although we suspected that the
target had decided not to see our friend again – since the defector's
unsuccessful recruitments are undoubtedly known to the Yugoslav service –
we decided to arrange anther street encounter just in case. This time the
target simply told our defector that he understood and wanted nothing of the
plan. He refused to speak more and continued on his way.
It was sad, almost pitiful, to see this very distinguished man lurking in the
streets before pouncing on our target. The headquarters officer told me they
have nothing more for him to do, and at his age he can scarcely learn
another job, but they'll have to terminate his salary soon. He's now a US
citizen and will get some social security, but his last years are going to be
difficult. No wonder most defectors either become alcoholics or suffer
mental illness or both. Once they've been milked for all they're worth to us
they're thrown away like old rags.
Montevideo 25 April 1966
The Director of Immigration, Luis Vargas, has landed a blow on the East
German commercial mission. He gave them the choice of requesting
permanent residence or leaving with thirty days to decide. After a violent
verbal encounter with the chief of the mission, Von Saher, he threw him out
of his office and was about to start deportation proceedings when suddenly
Von Saher and another officer of the mission, Spinder, returned to East
Germany. The other two East Germans, Kuhne and Vogler, have
surprisingly requested permanent residence. They are still on their
temporary permission, however, and as soon as that expires in a few months
Vargas will deny the request for permanent residence.
One of my former agents has suddenly made much publicity in the
newspapers. It's Anibal Mercader, formerly AVBASK-1, who worked for us
as a penetration agent of the Uruguayan Revolutionary Movement (MRO).
Only a month or two after I arrived in Montevideo Mercader moved to
Miami where he was employed in a bank. Now, two years later, he has
disappeared with 240,000 dollars and is believed to be hiding in Buenos
Aires with his wife, children and the money. This is a novel way to raise
funds for the revolution, but maybe he was on the MRO's side all along.
The FBI can figure this one out – we don't know him.
Montevideo 12 May 1966
The PCU signature campaign on constitutional reform has been achieving
considerable success – largely because the Party has drawn the CNT into
the campaign. Through AVBUZZ-1, we have been trying to expose PCU
use of organised labour for political ends. Yesterday his Plenary of
Democratic Civic Organisations issued a 'press statement' in which the
leftist labour movement in Uruguay is denounced as an agent of
international communism and the foreign conspiracy that has thrown itself
into the political field in a confrontation, as equals, with the traditional
democratic political parties over the constitutional reform issue. Because
communists have been allowed to dominate the labour movement, the
statement concludes, they have become a power among the powers of the
state in a situation of 'total subversion'. I suppose AVBUZZ-1 knows his
audience but sometimes he's embarrassing.
Commissioner Otero is back from the training course and is more
enthusiastic than I've ever seen him. Reports from headquarters on his
performance are very favourable. I was just able to get the airport
photography operation started before he returned, but Otero is going to take
care of the developing and printing work. As soon as possible Frank Sherno
will come back and will rearrange the police intelligence darkroom and
order new equipment. I'm not sure how soon that will be because Sherno is
spending almost all his time these days in Santiago, Chile where he and
Larry Martin are honeycombing a new building of the Soviet Mission with
listening devices.
At the airport Sherno spent four days training the police officers who work
with the immigration inspectors. Normally it takes a couple of hours to
learn how to use this machine, but these men are special. I also arranged for
a police courier to take the exposed film to Otero's office, and for the
negatives and our prints to be sent over with the daily couriers from police
headquarters. Such efficiency has its price, of course, and I've started
monthly 'expense' payments to the airport crew calculated on the numbers
of passports and other travel documents photographed. It's as close to
piecework incentive as I can get without calling it that, but without it the
Recordak would just sit out there collecting dust. I also set up a travel watch
list – simple at first to get them used to it – consisting of general categories
of documents to photograph like the Soviets and satellites. Finally, I gave
each of them a personal copy of the beardless Che Guevara photograph and
asked that they imprint that face as deeply in their heads as possible. That
won't be very deep, I'm afraid – these guys wouldn't recognise Che if he
walked through with beard, beret, fatigues and automatic rifle.
The new police radio communications network is beginning to operate.
Gradually the Public Safety mission technicians will expand it to the
interior departments. The other day I got the frequencies from the Public
Safety chief and we're getting our own receivers so that we can monitor the
police frequencies.
Next week I'll give Otero a generous salary increase. While he was away I
hooked Fontana, his deputy, on the payroll but he doesn't want Otero to
know – nor do I. From now on these people have got to concentrate on
penetrating the Tupamaros, who seem to be the only organisation following
the 'armed struggle' line right now. This would be like the Echeverria group
in Quito, much more dangerous than the Soviet-line PCU, though nobody
else in the station agrees with me on this. Otero, however, agrees to
concentrate on the Tupamaros and somehow I've got to get him started on
agent recruitments for intelligence so that the police won't have to resort to
torture.
Montevideo 19 May 1966
Headquarters turned down the suggestion that I speak to Borisov about the
relationship between his wife and his chief. The affair goes on, however,
and several times Horton has written nasty cables asking for
reconsideration. The matter came to a head this week with the visit of the
Chief of the Soviet Bloc Division, Dave Murphy, and his deputy, Pete
Bagley. They're making the rounds of stations where there are Soviet
missions. Between Conolly, the Soviet operations officer here, and Bagley
the bad blood goes back many years and naturally there was a terrible scene
of tempers. Although there were threats to get Conolly transferred back to
headquarters, he's probably safe because Murphy and Bagley are already
looking for a new Soviet operations officer for the Buenos Aires station.
They were over there before coming here, and when they asked the Soviet
operations officer to take them on a drive by the Soviet Embassy he couldn't
find it. That was enough for his transfer.
Murphy wouldn't relent on the Borisov proposal. He's afraid Borisov would
get violent and doesn't think a quick escape-route to avoid a fight is
possible. I suppose he should know – he had beer thrown in his face a few
years ago by a Soviet he was trying to recruit, and he still hasn't lived down
the scandal.
Montevideo 9 June 1966
Vargas has turned his attention to the Czech commercial mission and the
Soviet Tass correspondent who is a KGB officer. When he called in the
Czech commercial officers, the Consul, Franktisek Ludwig, came instead –
insisting that the commercial officers belong to the Embassy mission and
are subject to the Foreign Ministry rather than the Ministry of the Interior.
Vargas would have none of it and told Ludwig that he would send the police
for the commercial officers just as he had with the North Koreans if they
refuse to appear. Ludwig protested, another violent argument followed, and
afterwards Vargas began expulsion proceedings against Ludwig in the
Foreign Ministry. Ludwig, however, returned quickly to Czechoslovakia
before being ordered out. Perhaps he will return, perhaps not, but he was
one of the two Czechs I put on the list for expulsion with the Soviets. I
know him well from the diplomatic association. The commercial officers
finally came to Vargas's office and requested permanent residence – to be
denied by Vargas in due course.
Vargas insists that the Soviet diplomatic officers will be expelled as
planned, but Heber wants to proceed slowly and save the Soviet expulsions
for use against the unions. Meanwhile Vargas has required the Tass
representative to seek permanent residence, but has allowed him a delay for
decision.
We doubt if the Tass correspondent will seek permanent residence because
he has been here for over five years and should be transferring home
shortly. Even so, Vargas will deny the request if it is made.
Jack Goodwyn has arranged for one of his AIFLD people to be named as
the Uruguayan representative at the conference this month of the
International Labour Organisation in Geneva. The prestige appointment was
made by the government, and Goodwyn's man is going as representative of
the Uruguayan Labour Confederation (CSU). The PCU and other leftists are
squealing because the CSU is completely defunct and the CNT in any case
represents 90-95 per cent of organised labour. The appointment is indicative
of how the government increasingly sees the advantage of cooperation and
even promotion of the AIFLD and related trade-union programmes. Private
industry is similarly well disposed.
In Washington the Agency has arranged with Joseph Beirne, President of
the Communications Workers of America (CWA), to have the CWA's
training school at Front Royal, Virginia turned over to the AIFLD. This
school has been used for years as the main centre of the Post, Telegraph and
Telephone, Workers' International (PTTI) for training labour leaders from
other countries. Now the school will be the home for the AIFLD courses
which until now have been held in Washington. Not a bad arrangement:
seventy-six acres on the Shenandoah River where the isolation and control
will allow for really close assessment of the students for future use in
Agency labour operations. Also this year the AIFLD is starting a year-long
university-level course in 'labour economics' which will be given at Loyola
University in New Orleans. AIFLD hasn't been exactly cheap: this year its
cumulative cost will pass the 15 million dollar mark with almost 90 per cent
paid by the US government through AID and the rest from US labour
organisations and US business. Since 1962 the annual AIFLD budget has
grown from 640,000 dollars to almost 5 million dollars while the ORIT
budget has remained at about 325,000 dollars per year. Millions more have
been channelled through A I FL D in the form of loans for its housing
programmes and other social projects.
Montevideo 24 June 1966
Vargas and Storace finally got the new procedure for issuing visas to
nationals of communist countries approved by Heber and sent by the
Foreign Ministry to all consular posts. The new procedure requires prior
approval of all visas requested by citizens of communist countries.
Approval procedure requires the Immigration Department and the Ministry
of the Interior to check traces on the applicants with appropriate security
offices – police and military intelligence – and none can be approved by the
Foreign Ministry without prior approval in Immigration and Interior.
This is a very considerable victory because it opens the door to denials,
delays and manoeuvres that will harass and disrupt the Soviet and other
communist missions here. In addition we will have plenty of time to get
reports on visa applicants from headquarters and other stations, and we can
influence decisions by preparing false reports. In order to protect himself
Vargas asked me to channel our reports through military intelligence where
he will initiate requests – he knows we are in regular contact with Colonel
Zipitria.
Montevideo 30 June 1966
I brought over Fred Houser from the Buenos Aires station to serve as
purchasing agent for the UAR code-room operation. As luck would have it
the elderly couple had been thinking for some time of selling, and after a
little negotiation we agreed on the equivalent of 35,000 dollars. The
apartment is owned by a dummy corporation called Diner, S.A., and Houser
simply purchased all the bearer shares of this company and the apartment
was ours. I've got the shares locked up in my safe where they'll probably
stay until the UAR gets another Embassy. Houser was perfect for the task
because he has both US and Argentine citizenship and easily passed as an
Argentine in the purchasing operation. Now we are going to move in Derek
Jones and his family for cover. Jones is an old friend of Cassidy's and has
British as well as Uruguayan citizenship. As soon as they move in and our
access is assured, Schroeder and Benefield will return to make a permanent
installation of the microphone – possibly in the AID offices with a wire to
the apartment but more probably directly from the apartment.
Montevideo 3 July 1966
Yesterday the President of the Bank of the Republic and his re-financing
team returned from the US with a bundle of new sweets: postponement
until December 1967 of payments totalling 47 million dollars that had been
due to private New York banks before the end of this year; a new credit line
of 22 million dollars from New York banks; a US government stabilisation
loan of 7.5 million dollars; a 3-million-dollar loan for fertilizer from AID; a
1.5-million-dollar loan from the Inter-American Development Bank for
economic development studies.
Thanks to the latest stabilisation measures adopted, as a result of pressure
from the IMF, in May, inflation in June was 14 per cent for a total cost-of-
living increase during January-June of 36.3 per cent. As expected, the
unions are making ever-more-ominous threats of new strikes while the
Blancos are offering only the minimal increases provided for in the budget
exercise of last year. Storace continues to be the government's chief
negotiator but chances for averting another round of crippling strikes are
very slight without substantial new benefits for the workers.
The PCU Congress is going to be held about the middle of next month and
we have started a major propaganda campaign against it. The Party
Congress, held only every few years, is the PCU's big event this year and
they've invited a fraternal delegation from the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union. Through Vargas I am trying to have the visas denied, but if
this is impossible, as it now appears, we will hammer away at Soviet
participation in the Congress as interference in Uruguayan politics.
Montevideo 14 July 1966
Dominant factions of both the Colorados and the Blancos are now
committed to a constitutional reform to return the country to the one-man
presidency, although significant opposition continues in certain circles of
both parties. Proponents of reform in the two parties are meeting regularly
in order to agree on one constitutional reform project that will be approved
in the Legislature and presented to the country by referendum. By agreeing
on a joint reform pact the traditional parties will ensure that their version of
reform will be the only one with a chance for adoption. Thus if voters reject
the joint Colorado-Blanco project, which is unlikely, Uruguay will remain
with the current collegiate system. The effect is to completely eliminate any
possibility that the PCU reform project might be adopted, and the CNT has
already denounced the Blanco-Colorado pact establishing a strong
executive.
Meanwhile strikes are beginning again. The government employees' unions
are asking for new benefits in the form of 'loans' – in order to circumvent
the constitutional prohibition of government salary increases before
elections.
Montevideo 27 July 1966
Storace was able to get a postponement of a government employees strike
set for 21 July and of another strike in the Montevideo transport system that
would have occurred today. Nevertheless municipal workers continue one-
hour sitdowns per shift and tension is increasing over the 'loans' and how
the government can finance them.
In a secret meeting our proposals to deny visas to the Soviet fraternal
delegation to the PCU Congress next month were discussed by Storace and
the Blanco NCG Councillors. It was decided, rightly I think, not to deny the
visas but to use Soviet participation in the Congress as justification for
action against the Soviet mission afterwards. Additionally, the government
right now is studying a Soviet credit offer of 20 million dollars for purchase
of Soviet machinery which can be repaid in nontraditional Uruguayan
exports.
Don Schroeder and Al Benefield are back to improve the technical
operation against the UAR code-room. By chance their trip has coincided
with another change of the settings on the machine. From behind a screen
they had built in our new apartment in the room above, and across a light
well from the code-room, they were able to watch the code clerk making
the new settings and to photograph him in the act. They don't even need the
recordings now. The code clerk doesn't draw curtains or lower the blind. He
couldn't make it much easier for us.
Montevideo 10 August 1966
At last my replacement is here and I'll be able to leave by the end of the
month. He is Juan Noriega, a former Navy pilot, who recently finished his
first tour at the Managua station where he was responsible for training the
bodyguards for the President and the Somoza family.
Noriega got here just in time to see Uruguayan democracy hit another new
low. All last week President Heber was out on his own protest strike – not
against inflation but against his fellow Blanco NCG Councillors who were
blocking certain of his military assignments. Several key assignments of
strong military leaders by Heber, including the designation in June of
General Aguerrondo as Commander of the First Military Zone
(Montevideo), had provoked rumours and speculation that Heber is
planning a coup against his own government if the one-man executive is not
adopted. We have no substantive reports to support this view, but Heber is
definitely advancing strong, anticommunist officers into important
positions. The NCG functioned without him until today, when he ended his
strike and went on television to explain his actions.
Montevideo 24 August 1966
I've turned over all my operations to Noriega and in a few days will be
flying home. In two and a half years our station budget has gone up to
almost a million and a half dollars while several new additions have been
made to the station case officer complement. In a couple of weeks Bill
Cantrell arrives to work full-time with Otero's police intelligence
department. Also due to arrive shortly is another non-official cover officer
for operations against the PCU and related revolutionary organisations. This
officer has been long-delayed in arriving – his cover was arranged by
Holman with Alex Perry, one of Holman's golfing companions, who is
General Manager of the Uruguayan Portland Cement Co. a subsidiary of
Lone Star Cement Corporation. Approval from Lone Star headquarters was
obtained last year also but many delays followed in finding the officer to fill
the slot. Still another non-official cover officer is programmed for Soviet
operations.
What sharp contrast I feel on leaving compared to the excitement, optimism
and confidence of that Sunday of arrival, watching the Pocitos crowd from
O'Grady's apartment. While here, I've had another promotion and good
fitness reports, but my sense of identification with the work and people of
the CIA has certainly faded.
Holman's attitude and my deteriorating domestic situation have caused
some hardening, perhaps even embitterment, but the more I see of this
government the more urgent become the questions of whether and why we
support such things.
Consider the new buses and trolleys for the Montevideo municipal transport
system. When I went to the port to receive my car a few weeks after I
arrived, I noticed a very large number of bright new blue and red vehicles
parked ready to leave the port for service in the city's very crowded and
over-taxed transport system. There were 124 of the buses and trolleys
ordered in 1960 by Nardone, then NCG President, from Italy at a cost of
several million dollars. They arrived at the end of 1963 but the Colorado-
controlled municipal government was unable to pay the exorbitant
unloading and customs costs levied by the Blanco-controlled port authority
and customs administration. Because the Blancos resisted the political gain
that would accrue to the Colorados when the buses and trolleys were put
into service, even though they had been purchased by a Blanco
administration, they sat in the port for seventeen months until the first group
of four buses was released in May 1965. During that time they were sitting
out of doors, deteriorating from the salt air and frequently stripped of parts
and trimmings by vandals. Because of slow payment by the Blanco national
government of the Montevideo transport subsidy with which the customs
and unloading charges would be paid, together with other red tape and slow
paperwork, 104 of these units are still rusting in the port right now. Such
subordination of the public interest to partisan political goals is not at all
inconsistent with the rest of Colorado-Blanco governing in recent years.
Uruguay, the model for enlightened democratic reforms, is the model of
corruption and incapacity.
Notes:
[1] See Chart 6.
Part Four
Washington DC 15 September 1966
My assignment in headquarters is to the Mexico branch as officer in charge
of support for operations against the Soviets in Mexico City. This first
week, however, I'm making visits to arrange cover and other details. I'm
keeping State Department cover, incidentally, and will ostensibly be
assigned to the Research Assignments Office of the Bureau of Intelligence
and Research. Central Cover Division still has that telephone system for
cover calls and they gave me the usual two names that I'll use as my
immediate superiors. The telephone number starts with DU-3, as all State
Department numbers, but it rings in central cover in Langley.
I asked Jake Esterline, the Deputy Division Chief, what the possibilities are
that I'll be sent to Vietnam since all the divisions are being forced to meet a
quota every three months for Vietnam officers. Jake said not to worry about
it and he confirmed indirectly the general belief that most divisions are
sending 'expendables' to Vietnam. I wonder if I'd go if asked. With the
special allowances most officers can save practically all their salary, and
when the tour is up in eighteen months I'd have a little bundle to last until I
find a new job. No, I've had all the counter-insurgency I want.
The Clandestine Services Career Panel also called me in for an interview.
They told me I've been accepted in the Agency's new retirement programme
– meaning I can retire at age fifty with a handsome annuity. At thirty-one
that seems like a long way off but it's nice to know you're in the most
generous programme. Yet not even this retirement programme can keep me
doing this same work for nineteen more years.
The officer I'm replacing on the Mexico branch is the same person who
replaced me when I left Quito. He's being allowed to resign under a cloud
because on the polygraph he wasn't able to resolve certain questions about
finances in Quito. It's pretty sad because he's in his forties with a family to
support and no job to enter. It makes me realise I'd better be careful about
whom I discuss my doubts with – and I'd better get another job lined up
before I start talking about anything.
Washington DC 4 October 1966
The headquarters organisation of WH Division hasn't changed much from
six years ago. In the executive offices, in addition to Bill Broe, the Division
Chief, and Jake Esterline, there are support officers for personnel, training,
security and records. We have a Foreign Intelligence staff consisting of five
officers, headed by Tom Polgar, and a Covert-Action staff of four officers,
headed by Jerry Droller, the famous 'Mr. Bender' of the Bay of Pigs
invasion. These staffs review projects and other documents from field
stations that require division approval for funds and operational decisions.
They also coordinate such matters with other headquarters offices outside
WH Division.
The regional branches consist of the large Cuban branch with about thirty
officers headed by Tom Flores, and smaller branches for Mexico, Central
America, the Caribbean, the Bolivarian countries, Brazil, and the cono sur
(Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina and Chile). Altogether we have about 100
officers of the division at headquarters as opposed to a little over 200
officers at the stations. The division budget is about 37 million dollars for
the financial year 1967 – 5.5 million dollars being spent in Mexico.
In the Mexico branch (WH/1) we are responsible for headquarters support
to the vast and complicated operations of the Mexico City station. Our
Chief, Walter J. Kaufman, and our Deputy Chief, Joe Fisher, head a team of
about ten officers, each with responsibility for a different operational
function at the station. Because of certain DDP office shifts in headquarters,
our branch and the Cuban branch are temporarily being housed in the Ames
building, one of several of the new high-rise office buildings in Rosslyn
occupied by the Agency. Working just across the Potomac from Washington
in many ways is more convenient than out in Langley, but the traffic
coming and going is a disaster.
Joe Fisher, gave me a briefing on the operations of the Mexico City station
and I can understand why this station has the dubious reputation of too
much bone and too little muscle. Operations are heavily weighted towards
liaison (which rests on the unusually close relationship between Gustavo
Diaz Ordaz, the President of Mexico and Winston Scott, the Chief of
Station) and operational support (surveillance, observation posts, travel
control, postal intercepts, telephone tapping). Badly lacking are good agent
penetrations of the station's main targets: the Soviets, Cubans, local
revolutionary organisations, and the Mexican government and political
structure. The operations are dull because there are almost no political
operations such as those we have in Ecuador and most Latin American
countries. The reason is that the Mexican security services are so effective
in stamping out the extreme left that we don't have to worry. If the
government were less effective we would, of course, get going to promote
repression. My duties in support of the station Soviet/satellite section are to
coordinate and process cases, which comes down to just keeping the paper
moving. In some cases I have the action responsibility which I coordinate
with the Soviet Bloc Division, and in others the SB Division has action
responsibility and they coordinate with me. The operations leading into the
target missions, but not dealing with an actual penetration or recruitment of
target personnel, are generally my responsibility, whereas recruitments,
provocations and more sensitive operations get SB Division action. In all
cases we coordinate with each other. Telephone tapping, observation posts,
surveillance teams, travel control, access agents and double-agent cases are
my responsibility, but any operations to recruit or defect a Soviet would be
handled by the Operations Branch, Western Hemisphere Office of Soviet
Bloc Division (SB/O/WH). Satellite branches, e.g. SB/Poland,
SB/Czechoslovakia, are the action or coordinating SB office for their
particular countries. Happily for me, the SB Division people are responsible
for compilation and updating of the SPRs (Soviet Personality Records)
which is the very detailed analysis maintained on every Soviet of interest.
Usually the information for the SPR is obtained over long periods of
observation while the Soviet is assigned to a foreign mission. It includes his
work habits, leisure activities, friends, personality, likes and dislikes, wife
and family, health, vulnerabilities.
In the Mexico branch all the liaison and most of the support operations are
under Charlotte Bustos who has been in the branch for ten years and knows
every detail of these complicated activities. Thus I only have to have a
peripheral interest in these operations, even though they are targeted against
the Soviets and satellites, because they are often used against many other
targets. Nevertheless I look after the requirements related to the three
observation posts overlooking the Soviet Embassy, together with the five or
six houses we own on property next to it. There are also fifteen or twenty
access agents, Mexicans and foreigners living in Mexico, who maintain
personal relationships with the Soviets under one or another pretext, for
whom I process operational approvals, name checks and other paper-work.
License-plate numbers of vehicles from the U.S., together with photographs
of their occupants, are taken by the observation posts at the Soviet, satellite
and Cuban embassies and forwarded to headquarters for additional
investigation. The Office of Security obtains the names and other data from
state office registration files and we forward to the FBI memoranda when
the information involves U.S. citizens or foreigners resident in the U.S.
There are also a number of counter-intelligence cases involving U.S.
citizens with known or suspected connections to Soviet or satellite
intelligence operations in Mexico City. In some cases U.S. citizens were
recruited while travelling in the Soviet Union and were given instructions
for contact in Mexico City or some other city in Mexico. Usually in these
cases the participants are considered to be under the control of the Soviets,
or the satellite intelligence service as the case may be, as opposed to
double-agent cases where control is supposed to be ours. One particularly
complicated and lurid case came very close to home because it involved a
sensitive experiment in cover.
About two years ago when Des FitzGerald was Chief of WH Division, he
decided to make an experiment to see just how productive a group of CIA
officers could be if they worked from a commercial cover office with very
little direct contact with the CIA station under State cover in the Embassy.
The experiment could have had a profound influence on the future of CIA
use of State cover, which is the main type of cover used in countries where
large U.S. military installations do not exist. Because the problem with non-
official cover is that officers under official cover in embassies so often have
to devote inordinate amounts of time to support of the non-official cover
officers (security, communications, finance, reporting, name checks, etc.),
non-official cover tends to be counter-productive. The experiment in
Mexico City was to establish several officers under commercial cover with
direct communication to headquarters and as little burden on the station as
possible.
The LILINK office – cryptonyms for Mexico begin with LI – was set up for
three operations officers under cover as import representatives. The Office
of Communications designed a special cryptographic machine that looks
like an ordinary teletype and that transmits and receives encoded messages
via a line-of-sight infra-red beam. The LILINK office is located in an office
building that provides line-of-sight to a station office in the Embassy where
similar transmitting and receiving gear is located. Secure communications
exist without the need for personal meetings between the inside and outside
officers. The LILINK office can also be hooked into the regular station
communications system for direct communication with headquarters. Thus
support duties for officers inside the Embassy have been reduced to the
absolute minimum. The experiment has been only partially successful. Our
officers have had difficulties getting sufficient commercial representations
to justify their cover, on the one hand, while station support for them has
not been reduced as much as had been thought possible. The counter-
intelligence case that I have inherited involved one of the officers of the
LILINK office and led to the recent decision to close the office completely.
The officer in question has a serious drinking problem and was engaged in a
liaison with a girl who was a clerk in the U.S. Embassy communications
and records unit – not the station but the regular State Department unit. It
was discovered that they had taken photographs and films of themselves
and other couples in pornographic scenes, sometimes with the use of
animals. One of the participants was a character of doubtful nationality who
was connected with a combined Soviet-Polish espionage case in the U.S.
several years ago but who had dropped out of sight.
When the photographs and films became known, along with the
participation of the Soviet-Polish agent, headquarters decided to allow the
officer to resign – a decision also taken by the State Department when
advised of participation by their communications and records clerk. The
other party – the ringer – again disappeared and the station has been vainly
trying to locate him and the films. Neither our LILINK officer nor the girl
were willing to discuss the matter prior to resignation and they have
apparently floated off together to California. My job is now to coordinate
the station investigation with the headquarters CI staff which handles the
case with State Department security. No one has determined yet whether the
Polish-Soviet agent recruited our officer or the girl – which is the main
reason why LILINK is being closed. Already Arthur Ladenburg, the junior
officer under LILINK cover, has returned to headquarters.
In my dealings with the Counter-Intelligence staff on these sensitive cases I
have discovered the solution to a seldom-discussed mystery in
headquarters. During the weeks of study of the headquarters bureaucracy
during formal training in 1959, there was never any mention of an Israeli
branch or desk in the Near East Division. When someone once asked about
this the instructor gave one of those evasive answers that suggests the
question was indiscreet. Now I find that the Israeli branch is tucked away
within the Counter-Intelligence staff so that its secrets are more secure from
Israeli intelligence than they would be if the branch were in 'open' view in
the Near East Division. One of my CI staff contacts said that this is
unfortunately necessary because of possible divided loyalties of Jewish
employees of the Agency.
Washington DC 5 October 1966
At last I've found a small apartment and moved away from Janet. The strain
of the moment of leaving the children was even worse than I'd expected –
but I'll be going to see them regularly. With Janet I think I'm in for a long
and bitter struggle. Leaving the children with her is going to take all the
emotional control that I can muster – there simply is no way that I could
obtain their custody in the face of tradition. Moreover, I don't want to create
the kind of domestic fuss that will cause headquarters' security and cover
people to worry. Better that I sacrifice some equity for the time being.
Washington DC 6 October 1966
This headquarters work is deadly – all I do is route paper for people to
initial. But the truth is that it's not just boredom. Sooner or later things are
bound to get worse. If I resign now I'll have to find a job in this wretched
city, if only to be able to see my sons – and now Janet tells me she wants to
wait a year or even longer for the divorce. What I would really like to do is
go back to California to work, but then I would almost never see the
children. If I don't resign I'll just stay bogged down in miserable work – and
eventually I'll be assigned back to Latin America and be separated from the
boys. Any way I look at it I get bad news.
But I'm going to resign from the CIA. I no longer believe in what the
Agency does. I'm going to finish writing the resume, advise Jake or Broe
that I'm looking for another job, and then quit when something decent
appears. I won't say exactly why I'm quitting, because if the truth were
known my security clearance would be cancelled and I would simply be
released. I'll give 'personal' reasons and relate them to my domestic
situation. Otherwise I won't have an income while I look for another job.
The question is not whether, but when, to resign. I wonder what the reaction
would be if I wrote out a resignation telling them what I really think.
Something like this: Dear Mr. Helms, I respectfully submit my resignation
from the Central Intelligence Agency for the following reasons:
I joined the Agency because I thought I would be protecting the security of
my country by fighting against communism and Soviet expansion while at
the same time helping other countries to preserve their freedom. Six years
in Latin America have taught me that the injustices forced by small ruling
minorities on the mass of the people cannot be eased sufficiently by reform
movements such as the Alliance for Progress. The ruling class will never
willingly give up its special privileges and comforts. This is class warfare
and is the reason why communism appeals to the masses in the first place.
We call this the 'free world'; but the only freedom under these
circumstances is the rich people's freedom to exploit the poor.
Economic growth in Latin America might broaden the benefits in some
countries but in most places the structural contradictions and population
growth preclude meaningful increased income for most of the people.
Worse still, the value of private investment and loans and everything else
sent by the U.S. into Latin America is far exceeded year after year by what
is taken out – profits, interest, royalties, loan repayments – all sent back to
the U.S.. The income left over in Latin America is sucked up by the ruling
minority who are determined to live by our standards of wealth.
Agency operations cannot be separated from these conditions. Our
training and support for police and military forces, particularly the
intelligence services, combined with other U.S. support through
military assistance missions and Public Safety programmes, give the
ruling minorities ever stronger tools to keep themselves in power and to
retain their disproportionate share of the national income. Our
operations to penetrate and suppress the extreme left also serve to
strengthen the ruling minorities by eliminating the main danger to
their power.
American business and government are bound up with the ruling
minorities in Latin America – with the rural and industrial property
holders. Our interests and their interests – stability, return on
investment – are the same. Meanwhile the masses of the people keep on
suffering because they lack even minimal educational facilities,
healthcare, housing, and diet. They could have these benefits if national
income were not so unevenly distributed. To me what is important is to
see that what little there is to go around goes around fairly. A communist
hospital can cure just like a capitalist hospital and if communism is the
likely alternative to what I've seen in Latin America, then it's up to the Latin
Americans to decide. Our only alternatives are to continue supporting
injustice or to withdraw and let the cards fall by themselves.
And the Soviets? Does KGB terror come packaged of necessity with
socialism and communism? Perhaps so, perhaps not, but for most of the
people in Latin America the situation couldn't be much worse – they've got
more pressing matters than the opportunity to read dissident writers. For
them it's a question of day-by-day survival.
No, I can't answer the dilemma of Soviet expansion, their pledge to 'bury'
us, and socialism in Latin America. Uruguay, however, is proof enough that
conventional reform does not work, and to me it is clear that the only real
solutions are those advocated by the communists and others of the extreme
left. The trouble is that they're on the Soviet side, or the Chinese side or the
Cuban side – all our enemies.
I could go on with this letter but it's no use. The only real alternative to
injustice in Latin America is socialism and no matter which shade of red a
revolutionary wears, he's allied with forces that want to destroy the United
States. What I have to do is to look out for myself first and put questions of
principle to rest. I'll finish the resume and find another job before saying
what I really think.
Washington DC 7 October 1966
This morning at the Uruguay desk there was a celebration. The government
at last expelled some Soviets – four left yesterday – and now the
Montevideo press is speculating on whether the NCG will cancel a recent
invitation to Gromyko to visit Uruguay. The expulsions are the result of
Luis Vargas's persistence – when I said farewell he told me that when the
government unions started agitating again before the elections, the Soviets
would suffer. (Before leaving Montevideo I wrote a memorandum
recommending that Vargas be given a tourist trip to the U.S. as a reward if
he finally got any thrown out, and it'll be small compensation since I never
paid him a salary.)
The expulsion order was based on the same false report we prepared for
Storace last January, with minor updating, and it accuses the Soviets of
meddling in Uruguayan labour, cultural and student affairs. Only four
Soviets are being expelled right now because the cultural attache and one
other on the original list are on home leave in Moscow and their visa
renewals can be stopped by Vargas. The other two not included in the
expulsion are commercial officers and they will be expelled, according to
Vargas, as soon as these four with diplomatic status leave.
The Montevideo station and others will be using the expulsions for a new
media campaign against the Soviets. Our report for Storace ties the most
recent wave of strikes to the PCU Congress in August and to the Soviet
participation therein, together with the usual allegations of Soviet-directed
subversion through the KGB, GRU and local communist parties. Proof of
the authenticity of the subversion plan outlined in the report, according to
Storace, are the eleven different strikes occurring in Uruguay at this
moment. The Soviets were given forty-eight hours to leave Uruguay.
Recently, too, the decree expelling the two remaining East Germans, Vogler
and Kuhne, was approved. They were given thirty days to clear out. The
gambit on Soviet expulsions may have worked against the unions last year
but not this time. Strikes are spreading and the station reports street fighting
between police and the strikers. Yesterday the Montevideo transport system,
the banking system and many government offices were struck, while the
CNT described Storace's report as an insult to the trade-union movement
and pledged to continue the struggle against the government's economic
policies – mainly the IMF-pressured reforms of the past year.
The pressure is showing again on President Heber. Last night in the NCG
meeting he exchanged words with one of the Colorado Councillors who left
the meeting but returned shortly to challenge Heber to a duel. The NCG
meeting broke up as seconds were named, but later agreement was reached
that the honour of neither man had been wounded. The seconds signed a
document to that effect and the duel was cancelled. What provoked the
challenge was Heber's loss of temper when the Colorado Counsellor
reminded him that last year, two days before the first bank failed, Heber
withdrew some 800,000 pesos from it.
Washington 15 October 1966
A curious cable from the Mexico City station started me thinking again.
Kaufman gave me the action – it has the RYBAT indicator for special
sensitivity – because it is a proposal for a CIA officer to be named as the
U.S. Embassy Olympic attache for the Games in 1968. For some time the
station has been reporting on the increasing number of coaches from
communist countries contracted by the Mexican Olympic Committee to
help prepare Mexican athletes for the Games. Six coaches from the U.S.
were also contracted but they are outnumbered by the fourteen or fifteen
communists – all of whom come from the Eastern European satellites. A
little cold war is going on between several of the Americans and their
communist colleagues, particularly in track and field, but the cold war
chauvinism is really a degeneration of professional rivalry. The Embassy in
Mexico City is involved because the USIS cultural section has given
Specialist Grants to the Americans under the Educational Exchange
Programme. These grants supplement their salaries from the Mexican
Olympic Committee and in several cases have been used as incentives to
keep several coaches there who otherwise would have quit.
The station has also been reporting on the assignment of intelligence
officers from the communist embassies to handle duties relating to
preparations for the Olympics. These activities bring them into contact with
a wide range of Mexican officialdom working on the Olympic Committee
and the sports federations preparing the Mexican teams, and with an even
larger number of people in the Olympic Games Organising Committee
preparing the Games themselves. The attraction to the communist
intelligence services in using the Olympic Games as a vehicle for
expanding operational potential among such a large group of government,
business, professional and cultural leaders is obvious.
The cable from the Mexico City station describes a recent suggestion by the
Ambassador, Fulton Freeman, that the CIA provide an officer to fulfil the
duties as U.S. Embassy Olympic attache. Such an assignment, the
Ambassador reasons, would be logical since the CIA officer could keep an
eye on the communist intelligence officers through the regular meetings of
Olympic attaches – some of whom are private citizens resident in Mexico
City while others are officers of diplomatic missions. The CIA officer
would also be able to watch the communist Olympic attaches because his
work with the Mexican Olympic Committee and the Organising Committee
would overlap with the communists. If the Agency is unable to provide an
appropriate officer as Olympic attache, the Ambassador will choose from
among several possibilities he already has in mind, because increasing
requests from the Mexicans to the Embassy on Olympic-related matters,
together with the expected large influx of Americans for the Games,
justifies an officer working full-time in the Olympics. The Chief of Station,
Win Scott, comments in the cable that assigning an officer to this job would
be advantageous to the station for a number of reasons. First, the station is
handicapped because only three of its fifteen or twenty officers under
Embassy cover are allowed to be placed on the diplomatic list. Such
exclusion, a policy of successive Ambassadors, limits the mobility of
station officers among the Diplomatic Corps, the governing (and only
important) Mexican political party, the Foreign Ministry and other
government offices, and professional organisations – all of which are
important station targets for penetration and covert-action operations. An
officer under Olympic cover would have ready access to these targets for
spotting, assessment and recruitment of new agent assets in all these fields
through his Olympic cover duties. Secondly, the officer would be close
enough to monitor at least some of the communist Olympic attaches' more
interesting developmental contacts as well as engaging them in direct
personal relationships – right now practically no station officer has any
direct personal relationship with communist counterparts. Thirdly, the
station Olympics officer would be able to obtain information on the
communist coaches training Mexican athletes, through the American
coaches who already are beholden to the Embassy because of their
Specialist Grants. The Chief of Station adds in the cable that the Olympic
officer will have a separate office in the Embassy and will operate as an
extension of the Ambassador's office – having of necessity a very discreet
contact with the station.
I've ordered the files on past Olympics from Records Integration. It would
be an exciting job.
Washington DC 25 October 1966
I've reviewed the files on operations connected with past Olympics – we've
been in every Olympics since the Soviets appeared in Helsinki in 1952.
Melbourne, Rome, Tokyo – and now Mexico City. Provocations, defections,
propaganda, recruitment of American athletes for Olympic Village
operations, Winter Games and Summer Games – all the way with CIA.
I've written a memorandum to Bill Broe and to Dave Murphy, t Chief of the
Soviet Bloc Division, recommending approval of the Mexico City station's
proposal. In my memorandum I said I might qualify to be the Ambassador's
Olympic attache as I have always been a great athlete – albeit in fantasy. I
was only half serious and I thought they would laugh, but Murphy is
interested. Broe was Chief of Station in Tokyo during the Olympics in 1964
and he's not too enthusiastic. But I sent another cable back to Mexico City,
telling them that the proposal is approved in principle and that headquarters
will discuss with the State Department and look for a candidate. Kaufman
says I've got better than a fifty-fifty chance of going. I think I'll postpone
that resignation – maybe in the Olympics I could make a connection for a
new job. Tonight I'll do some push-ups and maybe run around the block.
They say Mexico City is a great place to live.
The other day a RYBAT cable arrived from Mexico City showing how the
system works there. The Chief of Station advised that Luis Echeverria, the
Minister of Government (internal security), told him he has just been
secretly selected as the next Mexican President. Echeverria is now the
famous tapado (covered one) whom the top inner circle of the ruling party,
the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI), select well in advance to be the
next president. Although Echeverria said it in a somewhat indirect manner,
the Chief of Station has no doubt that he was intentionally being let in on
the secret – even though the elections won't be held until 1970.
The information in the cable is extremely sensitive, not so much because it's
a secret but because presidential succession in Mexico is supposedly a
decision made by a broad representation within the PRI. For years leaders
of the PRI have been denying that presidential succession is determined
secretly by the incumbent, ex-presidents, and a few other PRI leaders – they
even have a nominating convention and all the appearances of mass
participation. The Mexico branch Reports Officer sent a 'blue stripe' report
(very limited distribution) over to the White House and the State
Department on Echeverria's good news.
Washington DC 1 December 1966
In last Sunday's elections in Uruguay the Blanco-Colorado constitutional-
reform pact was adopted, and the Colorados won the presidency – it'll be
General Gestido who resigned from the NCG last April to campaign for
reform. The Colorados will also control the legislature so there will be no
more excuses for lack of action. The PCU political front, FIDEL, made
considerable gains. They won six seats in the legislature on 70,000 votes
(5.7 per cent of the total) reflecting a gain from 41,000 votes (3.5 per cent)
in 1962 and 27,000 votes (2.6 per cent) in 1958 when the Blancos took
over. During these eight years the PCU has more than doubled its
percentage of the vote and tripled its representation in the legislature.
Heber and Storace didn't fare very well. They were running together, Heber
for President and Storace for Vice-President, and among Blanco lists they
came in a distant third with only 83,000 of the over one million votes cast.
Yesterday Heber decided to take a two-month vacation – his term as NCG
President has only three months left – and Luis Vargas resigned as Director
of Immigration.
It is unlikely that any additional action against the Soviets, East Germans or
others will be taken, but the record for expulsions during the eleven months
since we started working with Storace and Vargas is impressive: six Soviets,
three North Koreans, two East Germans, and one Czech.
Washington DC 5 December 1966
My assignment to the Mexico City station under Olympic cover is still
hopeful although there have been several delays caused by consultations
between the station and the Ambassador and between headquarters and the
department. Meanwhile I've embarked on a reading programme that reveals
Mexico to be just as interesting as Ecuador and Uruguay – perhaps more so
because of the terrible failures of its violent movements for social justice.
As in Ecuador and other Latin American countries, Mexico had its 'liberal
revolution' during the nineteenth century, but here too it served mainly to
curtail power of the Catholic Church. By the time the Revolution broke out
in 1910, ending thirty-five years of dictatorship, over three-quarters of total
investment in Mexico was in foreign hands, with U.S.-owned capital valued
at close to one billion dollars. Not surprisingly, then, the two main forces in
the 1910-20 Revolution were agrarian reform and economic nationalism,
the latter of increasing importance after U.S. military occupation of
Veracruz in support of the side seeking a return to pre-1910 conditions.
However, struggles over the degree and immediacy of implementing the
Revolution's goals produced a civil war that claimed over a million lives,
perhaps two million, by the time it ended in the 1920s. Many of the
Revolution's leaders were among its victims.
Most of the nationalist and agrarian ideals of the Mexican Revolution are
embodied in the 1917 Constitution which is still in effect today. Specific
implementation of the Constitution's principles, however, was left for later
state and federal laws – what amounted to a gradualist approach that would
allow for postponement and negotiations in the short run and major change
in emphasis in the long run.
From the beginning of the Revolution, agrarian reform was considered as
the basis for all other social and economic change, although there was
plenty of disagreement over the degree and speed of land redistribution.
The dominant theme was backward looking: revindication for land
deprivation of peasants caused by prior patterns of concentration.
Possession of the land by peasants, it was thought; would increase
production and above all would lead to dignity, the rural dignity that would
serve as the foundation for the new sense of nationality, as the Revolution
reversed the habit of exalting foreign things while denigrating things
Mexican. Although private landholdings rose in number after redistribution
began, the dominant institutional pattern for agrarian reform was the ejido:
the communal lands owned by a village and divided among the peasants
who could alienate their parcels only with great difficulty. The ejido, then,
was in theory a return to the pre-Reform a tenure that was eliminated by the
Constitution of 1857.
Agrarian reform proceeded slowly at first, restricted mainly to the
'legitimising' of land seizures made during the years of civil war. But in the
late 1920s expropriations and redistribution accelerated, reaching a zenith
during the presidency of Lazaro Cardenas (1934-40) who distributed over
forty million acres that affected more than two million people. Presidents
who followed Cardenas continued to redistribute land, although on a
reduced level, while persistent mass rural poverty provoked criticism and
allegations of failure in this most fundamental of the Revolution's
programmes.
In addition to being the high point for land redistribution, the Cardenas
regime is also considered to be the culmination of the Revolution's goal to
recover industry and natural resources from foreign control. Nationalisation
of the American and British-owned petroleum industry in 1938 is the best-
known of Cardenas's applications of the 1917 Constitution's provisions for
nationalist economic policies. World War II brought Mexico and the U.S.
closer together again, and for many observers the original agrarian and
nationalist drives ended during this period.
During the government of Miguel Aleman in 1946-52 foreign capital was
invited back to Mexico and has been increasing steadily in spite of a
'mexicanisation' programme requiring 51 per cent Mexican ownership of
important firms. Aleman and the governments that followed channelled new
investment into major mining and manufacturing industries as well as
agriculture, irrigation, electric power and tourism. By 1965 foreign
investment in Mexico had grown to 1.75 billion dollars, 80 per cent of
which pertained to the hundreds of U.S. companies operating there. Also,
since World War II, the Mexican government has constructed thousands of
miles of roads, hundreds of new schools, and many social overhead projects
such as potable water systems. By 1965 the coefficient of investment was
up to 18.9 per cent following an average GDP growth rate during 1961-65
of 6.6 per cent, equivalent to 3 per cent per capita. Mexico's diversified
exports (coffee, cotton, sugar, wheat, corn, fruits, sulphur, precious metals)
rose in value an average of 8.5 per cent annually during the same period.
At first glance this would appear to be an optimistic situation with the land
in the hands of the peasants and high agricultural and industrial growth
rates. Surely the faster industry grows, the more resources will become
available for investment in rural projects like irrigation and transportation,
and in social overhead like education, housing and medical services. But a
closer examination reveals the uneven nature of post-World War II
developments in Mexico and lends credence to the view that the original
goals of social justice and equitable distribution of income disappeared
following the Cardenas regime.
The central problem is similar to much of the rest of Latin American
development: the emergence of a capital-intensive modern sector that
provides employment for only a relatively small portion of the labour force
– in the case of Mexico about 15 per cent. In spite of rapid expansion the
modern sector seems unable to absorb a greater portion of the workers,
leaving the vast majority bogged down in the primitive sector of
unemployed and marginally employed, subsistence farming and menial
services. Perhaps the best illustration of Mexico's uneven growth is found in
the way its average per capita income of 475 dollars – slightly higher than
the general Latin American average – is distributed.
According to the Inter-American Development Bank the poorer half of
Mexico's population receives only about 15 per cent of the total personal
income – averaging about twelve dollars per person per month.
According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America,
[1]
the 15 per cent of national income received by the lower-income 50 per
cent of the population is less than is received by the same group in almost
all the other countries of Latin America. In Mexico the poorest 20 per cent
of the population receives only 3.6 per cent of total national income – lower
than the comparable amount for El Salvador, Costa Rica and Colombia. The
poorest 10 per cent of the Mexican population, who number some 4.2
million persons receive an average income of only about five dollars per
month. Moreover, both the shares of the poorest 20 per cent and the lower
50 per cent of the population have declined between 1950 and 1965 – and
the absolute value of the income of the poorest 20 per cent has also
declined. Clearly the poor in Mexico have been getting poorer despite near-
boom conditions in agriculture and industry.
What groups, then, has the Mexican government favoured during the period
since World War II? According to the same ECLA data, the high 5 per cent
of the Mexican income scale receives almost 26 per cent of the national
income – although the share of this group has fallen from about 33 per cent
since 1950. The other 45 per cent of the top half of the population has
increased its share and is now receiving about 55 per cent of the national
income. In conclusion, ECLA reports that there is little indication of change
in Mexican income distribution since 1950 except that the poor are
somewhat worse off and the high 5 per cent has yielded some of its share
while retaining over a quarter of the national income.
What to think about this disproportionate income distribution – an average
per capita annual income of 475 dollars yet with half the population
receiving only about 150 dollars a year. Or put another way, the richest 20
per cent of the Mexican population receives about 55 per cent of national
income whereas the poorest 20 per cent receives less than 4 per cent. Never
mind material incentives and creation of internal markets – the Mexican
Revolution, if it ever moved towards social justice, is clearly serving
minority interests today.
Washington DC 10 December 1966
The more I learn of Mexico, the more the Mexican Revolution appears as
empty rhetoric, or, at best, a badly deformed movement taken over by
entrepreneurs and bureaucrats. For the decisions that have allowed such
grossly out of proportion income distribution to develop have been brought
about by the single political organisation that evolved on the winning side
during the Revolution and that became the umbrella for attracting the
diverse sectors of Mexican society into the 'revolutionary process'. This
party, now called the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI), has exercised
a one-party dictatorship since the 1920s. The PRI is a curious institution
both because of its long monopoly of power and because of its
heterogeneous composition. Theoretically it consists of three sectors, each
embodied in a mass organisation: the peasant sector in the National
Campesino Confederation (CNC), the workers' sector in the Mexican
Workers' Confederation (CTM) and the popular (middle class) sector in the
National Confederation of Popular Organisations (CNOP). Each of the mass
organisations has its own national, state and local bureaucratic structures
that participate in the corresponding national, state and local PRI
bureaucracy, lobbying for political decisions favourable to its interests. In
reality, however, decisions of importance, including the naming of
candidates for office, are usually made by the PRI headquarters in Mexico
City, which is headed by a seven-man executive committee, often with
participation by the Ministry of Government (internal security) or the
Presidency. Lobbying by the mass organisations and the local PRI
organisations assists in the decision-making process, but the direction of the
process is clearly from the top down.
The PRI's effective use of its three mass organisations and its internal
system of democratic centralism has enabled it to make good its claim to a
monopoly on interpreting the goals and executing the programmes of the
Revolution. Advantages accruing from this success are political stability
since the 1920s and the attractive climate for foreign investment since
World War II. Efficiency has also been high inasmuch as the legislature and
the judiciary are subordinate to the executive and under PRI control
anyway. Suppression of the political opposition, especially communists and
other Marxists, has been easy and effective whenever necessary.
Such political opposition that appears from time to time is still treated by
the PRI in the traditional manner. First, an attempt is made to bring the
opposition group into some form of inclusion or cooperation with the PRI
itself. If this fails a close watch is maintained until the right moment arrives
for repression. One recent example of the first method was the straying by
former President Cardenas in 1961 when he became a leader of the newly-
formed and extreme-left National Liberation Movement (MLN). By 1964,
after public attacks against him by PRI leaders, Cardenas returned to the
fold and supported the official PRI candidate for President – causing a
serious split in the MLN. Another example was the Independent Campesino
Confederation (CCI) set up in the early 1960s as a rival to the PRI's CNC.
The CCI was led by Alfonso Garzon, a former CNC leader, and had a
strong following with a radical agrarian programme. A combination of
government repression of the CCI and overtures to Garzon to return to the
PRI succeeded in obtaining renewed support for the PRI by Garzon.
Meanwhile Garzon caused a split in the CCI by trying to expel its
communist leaders, who nevertheless continued active in the branch of the
CCI they controlled.
Because the challenge to the PRI's leadership of the Revolution must
obviously come from the left, both ideologically and in terms of specific
social and economic programmes, the PRI shows the least tolerance
towards leftist groups that refuse to cooperate. Repression is regular and
punishment is severe. A recent example is the jailing in 1964 of Ramon
Danzos Palomino, leader of the pro-communist branch of the CCI, who
campaigned for the presidency that year even though his communist-backed
electoral organisation was not allowed to be officially registered. His
effectiveness in creating a following, however, led to the PRI decision to
put him away for a while. Usually, the offence for undesirable opposition
political activities is 'social dissolution' of one kind or another.
The PRI, then, has its own version of democratic centralism and
transmission belts through mass organisations. Political opposition that can
be controlled or co-opted is tolerated, in fact encouraged, while adamant
opposition is kept well in check through heavy-handed repression. Civil
liberties are commensurate with toleration of dissent, variable from time to
time, and public-information media are well trained in self-censorship.
Prudence suggests working within the system in Mexico, and PRI slogans,
not surprisingly, are coined on the themes of 'social peace' and 'national
unity'.
The seemingly simple questions cannot be avoided: if the PRI represents
the campesinos, workers and popular classes as its mass organisations and
propaganda would have them believe, how then has it allowed the business,
industrial and professional leaders to corner such an inordinate share of the
national income? Can it be that the PRI leaders themselves aspire to enter
that top 5 per cent through their political activities? Or, perhaps more
accurately, is not the PRI – and the revolutionary process earlier – simply
the instrument of the industrial, professional and business communities and
the servant of the top 5 per cent? Why, finally, are the supposed
beneficiaries of the Mexican Revolution still the most deprived some fifty
years after the fighting ended in victory?
Washington DC 15 December 1966
The Mexico and Cuba branches have returned to headquarters from the
Ames building, which makes meetings with colleagues from the Soviet
Bloc Division easier, but the daily routine involved in keeping paper
moving is heavy and uninspiring. Reading the intelligence reports and the
daily cable and dispatch correspondence between headquarters and the
Mexico City station, and the operational files as well, reveals the same basic
counter-insurgency approach as in Montevideo, Quito and other WH
stations. We prop up the good guys, our friends, while we monitor carefully
the bad guys, our enemies, and beat them down as often as possible.
In Mexico the government keeps our common enemy rather well controlled
with our help – and what the government fails to do, the station can usually
do by itself. The operational environment, then, is friendly even though the
enemy is considerable in size, dangerous in intent and sensitive in its close
proximity to the United States. The enemy in Mexico:
The Popular Socialist Party (PPS)
The largest of several extreme-left political groups is the PPS with an
estimate membership of about 40,000. Founded in the late 1940s by Vicente
Lombardo Toledano, who had reorganised Mexican labour into the Mexican
Workers' Confederation (CTM) during the Cardenas presidency, the PPS is
the only communist party recognised by the Mexican government. During
the transitional government following Cardenas and preceding Aleman –
the World War II years – Lombardo was eased aside as leader of the PRI
labour sector, and during the years that followed he built the PPS into one
of the largest Marxist parties in the Western Hemisphere. He was also the
President of the Latin American Labour Confederation (CTAL), the
regional affiliate of the Prague-based World Federation of Trade Unions
(WFTU), until the CTAL was disbanded in 1964.
Although for CIA purposes the PPS sis considered a communist party, it is
unorthodox because of its local character and autonomy, both features
resulting from the forceful, caudillo-like personality of Lombardo.
Nevertheless, it supports Soviet foreign policy and Marxist solutions to
national problems while disdaining violent revolution for gradualist,
peaceful tactics. It is strongly opposed to U.S. investment in Mexico and to
the close ties between the Mexican and the U.S. governments.
The odd PPS autonomy in the international context is confused by its
cooperative, though limited, support for the PRI at home. Thus the PPS is
perhaps the best example of the PRI policy of allowing a controlled
opposition to operate in order for dissidents to be attracted to the
submissive opposition instead of to the uncompromising groups. Since the
1958 elections, for example, the PPS has publically supported the PRI
presidential candidates while running its own congressional candidates.
The PPS receives corresponding support from the PRI in several ways,
apart from simply being allowed to operate. Mexican law requires 75,000
signatures for a political party to be registered officially for elections.
Although the PPS membership is far below the required number, the PRI
allows the fiction to exist that the PPS is entitled to registration. As a result,
in the 1964 elections the PPS increased its representation in the Chamber of
Deputies from one to ten, taking advantage of the new electoral law
providing for special deputies seats for minority parties. These ten seats of
the PPS constitute 5 per cent of the Chamber's seats although the PPS
polled less than 1 per cent of the votes. It is common belief, moreover, that
the PPS receives a direct financial subsidy from the PRI although good
intelligence on the subject is lacking.
The PPS has a youth wing, Juventud Popular, which has two to three
thousand members and exerts some influence in the two main Mexican
student organisations: The National Federation of Technical Students
(FNET) and the University Student Federation (FEU). The PPS has
supported the frequent student demonstrations this year although with care
not to promote revolutionary violence.
The principal front work of the PPS is concentrated in the General Union of
Workers and Peasants (UGOCM) formed by Jacinto Lopez, former leader
of the CNC which is the PRI campesino front. The UGOCM has an
estimated membership of 20,000, mostly campesinos, and is affiliated with
the WFTU. With major strength in the state of Sonora, the UGOCM has
sponsored land invasions by peasants but with little government repression
– an indication of PRI tolerance and use of its controlled opposition. Lopez
himself, although a defector from the PRI, was elected to the Chamber of
Deputies in 1964 and is generally considered to be the PPS number-two
man. He too is a gradualist and clear beneficiary of working-within-the-
system. In spite of its tactical successes the PPS is considerably troubled by
factionalism on the left. Recently a 'leftist' PPS group led by Rafael Estrada
Villa split from the PPS and took the name National Revolutionary
Directorate (DNR). Estrada continues as a PPS Deputy although the DNR
leans towards the more militant Chinese line.
The PPS, then, is the approved watering-hole on the left for those who find
the PRI too moderate. Its voter attraction is slight, almost negligible, and in
the PRI's eyes its function is tolerable as long as the PPS follows the rules.
The PRI makes a few rewards available to keep the PPS leadership bought
off – like the ten Deputies' seats – and the only danger is in the PPS's
condition of unwilling gestator of dangerous factions such as the Estrada
group.
The Communist Party of Mexico (PCM)
Although operating in Mexico since the 1920s, the PCM has never been
able to attract a numerous membership – now estimated at about 5000,
mostly from rural and urban lower middle and lower classes. The PCM also
includes some professionals, intellectuals and cultural leaders, most notably
the muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros, but for lack of members the PCM has
never been able to register officially for elections.
The PCM closely follows the Soviet line with main emphasis on the legal
struggle, leaving armed action for specific tactical purposes. Its domestic
programmes are founded on anti-U.S. nationalism while its foreign policy
supports positions of the Soviet Union and defence of the Cuban revolution.
Although party activities are seriously hampered by a lack of funds, the
PCM manages to keep open a bookstore and to publish a weekly
newspaper, La Voz de Mexico.
The party's youth wing, the Communist Youth of Mexico, has only about
500 members but exerts considerable influence in the important student
organisation, the National Center of Democratic Students (CNEO), and in
the colleges of law, political science and economics of the National
University in Mexico City. Like the PPS, the PCM has supported the
student protest demonstrations this year but is careful not to advocate
violent revolutionary solutions publically.
Until recently the PCM has been fairly successful in penetrating the
petroleum workers', railway workers' and teachers' unions. However, PRI
repression through the government of the PCM leaders of the petroleum and
railway workers' strikes in 1958 has removed much of their influence from
these two important unions. The party's influence in the National Union of
Education Workers (SNET), an affiliate of the WFTU, remains.
In peasants' organisations the PCM has also been successful. In 1963 the
party, together with the MLN and a peasant organisation led by ex-PRI
leader Alfonso Garzon, formed the Independent Campesino Confederation
(CCI). When Garzon broke with the PCM later, the PCM leaders of the CCI
under Ramon Danzos Palomino retained control of one CCI faction.
Also in 1963 the PCM, with the CCI and the faction of the MLN it
controlled, formed the People's Electoral Front (FEP) in order to run
candidates in the 1964 elections. The PRI, however, did not allow the FEP
to register but Danzos obtained about 20,000 write-in votes in spite of the
FEP ban. Not long after the elections, Danzos, who was uncompromising
and hostile to the PRI, was arrested and he remains in jail today.
Government repression of the PCM, the FEP and the PCM -controlled
faction of the CCI continues, and the movement is kept well in hand. The
repression itself, however, is indicative of PRI worry over PCM influence
among the poverty-bound peasant masses.
The National Liberation Movement (MLN)
The MLN was formed at the Latin American Conference for National
Sovereignty, Economic Emancipation and Peace held in Mexico City in
1961. Former President Lazaro Cardenas, who headed the Conference, also
became one of the leaders of the MLN. The idea behind the MLN was to
form a political movement dedicated to extreme-left causes that would
transcend the ideological differences then separating the established parties,
like the PPS and the PCM, and independents.
Under Cardenas the MLN had considerable initial success in uniting
Marxists of many shades in its programme of promoting Mexican
nationalism, support for the Cuban revolution, denunciation of U.S.
imperialism, freedom for political prisoners, redistribution of wealth,
socialisation of the land and similar causes. But in 1962 Vicente Lombardo
Toledano, unable to control the MLN in his accustomed manner, withdrew
the PPS from the MLN. Then in 1964 Cardenas himself withered under PRI
attacks and that year supported the PRI presidential candidate instead of
Danzos Palomino who was running the 'illegal' campaign of the People's
Electoral Front with PCM and MLN support. Dissention over the FEP
electoral campaign started a decline in the MLN although the Mexican
delegation to the Tri-Continental Conference in Havana was headed by an
MLN leader.
The semi-official journal of the MLN, Politica, continues to be published
under the direction of Manuel Marcue Pardinas, formerly one of the
intellectual leaders of the PPS. Partly because of Cardenas's participation in
the MLN, the PRI has not yet mounted really serious measures against it.
Nevertheless, some MLN leaders come under regular fire from the PRI as a
result of government repression against the PCM, FEP and CCI.
The Bolshevik Communist Party of Mexico (PCBM)
Some four splinter communist parties follow the Chinese line of which the
PCBM is the most important. However, it is not thought to have more than
a few hundred members.
The People's Revolutionary Movement (MRP)
Of three Trotskyist groups, the MRP is the most important although several
of its leaders, including Victor Rico Galan, have been jailed this year for
agitating in peasant communities. With Rico Galan out of action the MRP
has started to decline.
The Soviet Mission
The Soviets have their largest mission in Latin America (not counting
Cuba) in Mexico City with twenty-five diplomatic officials and about an
equal number serving in administrative trade, press and other non-
diplomatic capacities. Of these approximately fifty officers, some thirty-five
are known or suspected intelligence officers (about twenty-five KGB to ten
GRU) which is a rather higher ratio of intelligence officers than the Latin
American average for the Soviets. Both the KGB and the GRU missions are
believed to have multiple-purpose programmes, including penetration of the
U.S. Embassy and the CIA station and intelligence collection on U.S.
military installations in the south-west and western us. An unusual number
of Soviet intelligence officers in Mexico City have served in the Soviet
missions in Washington or New York prior to their Mexican assignments,
and they are thought to be continuing to work against U.S. targets from
their new vantage-points.
Additionally, the Soviet intelligence missions are also thought to be active
in penetration operations against the PRI and the Mexican government
through their 'agents of influence' programmes, in liaison and support for
Mexican and Central American communist parties, propaganda, and the
usual friendship and cultural societies.
The Czechoslovakian Mission
There are eight Czech diplomats and four or five others, of whom three are
known and two are suspected intelligence officers. This intelligence mission
is also thought to be targeted against the U.S. Embassy and against
objectives in the U.S. proper. As elsewhere they are considered to be an
auxiliary service of the Soviets, even though they engage in operations of
their own peculiar interest such as the cultural exchange and friendship
society programmes.
The Polish Mission
The Poles have six diplomats and five non-diplomatic personnel. About half
are known or suspected intelligence officers, and their functions are similar
to the Soviet and Czech officers although they seem to be more active
among Polish emigres and other foreigners resident in Mexico City.
The Yugoslav Mission
There are also six Yugoslav diplomats and several additional officials.
Three intelligence officers are in the mission and their operations, which are
independent of the other communist intelligence services, are directed
towards penetration of the local Yugoslav emigre community. U.S. targets
are also on their list as are the Soviets, Poles and Czechs.
The Cuban Mission
The only Cuban diplomatic mission in Latin America is in Mexico City.
They have thirteen diplomatic officials and an equal number of non-
diplomatic personnel. Over half the officers in the mission are known or
suspected intelligence officers. The main Cuban target is penetration of the
Cuban exile communities in Mexico and Central America, but they also
have operations in Mexico City designed to penetrate the exile communities
in the U.S., particularly Miami.
Other Cuban intelligence operations are for propaganda and support to the
revolutionary organisations of their liking in Mexico and Central America.
Traditionally, moreover, the Cuban mission in Mexico City supports the
travel of revolutionaries from all over Latin America and the U.S. through
the frequent Cubana Airlines flights between Mexico City and Havana.
The New China News Agency (NCNA)
The Chinese communists have had an NCNA office in Mexico City for
several years. However, last month the three Chinese officials were expelled
through station liaison operations on the grounds that they were engaged in
political activities. The Chinese had, in fact, been using the NCNA office
for propaganda and support to pro-Chinese revolutionary organisations in
Mexico and Central America.
Central American Exiles
Mexico has traditionally been a haven for political exiles from Central
American countries including communists and other extreme leftists.
Several Central American parties, including the Guatemalans, maintain
liaison sections in Mexico City in order to keep lines open to the Soviets,
Cubans and others. They operate semi-clandestinely for the most part in
order to avoid repression from the Mexican government.
Washington DC 20 December 1966
Because of the strategic importance of Mexico to the U.S., its size and
proximity, and the abundance of enemy activities, the Mexico City station is
the largest in the hemisphere. Altogether the station has some fifteen
operations officers under State Department cover in the Embassy political
section, plus about twelve more officers under assorted non-official covers
outside the Embassy. In addition, a sizeable support staff of
communications officers, technical services, intelligence assistants, records
clerks and secretaries bring the overall station personnel total to around
fifty.
Liaison Operations
Dominating the station operational programme is the LITEMPO project
which is administered by Winston Scott, the Chief of Station in Mexico
City since 1956, with the assistance of Annie Goodpasture, a case officer
who has also been at the station for some years. This project embraces a
complicated series of operational support programmes to the various
Mexican civilian security forces for the purpose of intelligence exchange,
joint operations and constant upgrading of Mexican internal intelligence
collection and public security functions.
At the top of the LITEMPO operation is the Mexican President, Gustavo
Diaz Ordaz, who has worked extremely closely with the station since he
became Minister of Government in the previous administration of Adolfo
Lopez Mateos (1958-64) with whom Scott had developed a very close
working relationship. Scott has problems, however, with Luis Echeverria,
the current Minister of Government, who is generally unenthusiastic and
reluctant in the relationship with the station. Scott fears that Echeverria is
following Diaz Ordaz's orders to maintain joint operations with the station
only under protest and that the current happy situation may end when
Echeverria becomes President in 1970.
Scott's chummy relationship with Diaz Ordaz none the less has its
problems. In 1964 Fulton Freeman went to Mexico City as Ambassador to
crown a, Foreign Service career that had started in the same Embassy in the
1930s. He is expected to retire after the 1968 Olympic Games. At the time
of his assignment to Mexico City Freeman's expectations of meaningful
diplomatic relations with Diaz Ordaz collided with the President's
preference for dealing with Scott, and Freeman was relegated to protocol
contacts with the President while his diplomatic talents focused on the
Foreign Minister. The problem of who would deal with the President was
confused somewhat by the Ambassador's insistence, not long after arrival,
on a detailed briefing about the station operational programme, which Scott
refused. Eventually both Scott and the Ambassador visited the White
House, where President Johnson settled matters according to the wishes of
the Agency and of his friend Diaz Ordaz. Scott continued, of course, to
work with the President and the Ambassador never got the full briefing he
had demanded. Since then the relations between Scott and the Ambassador
have warmed, but the Ambassador forbids any station operations directed
against the Mexican Foreign Ministry.
While Scott frequently meets the President and the Minister of Government,
two non-official cover case officers handle the day-to-day contact with the
chiefs of the security services subordinate to Echeverria. One of these
officers is a former FBI agent who worked in the legal attache's office in the
Mexico City Embassy – the legal attache is usually the FBI office in an
American embassy. The FBI officer had left the FBI to come with the
station, but pains have been taken to conceal his CIA employment in order
to avoid the bad blood that would result from the CIA's 'stealing' of an FBI
officer. The two non-official cover officers are the equivalent of an AID
Public Safety mission but in Mexico this function is performed secretly by
the station in deference to Mexican nationalist sensitivities – as is the case
in Argentina. Through the LITEMPO project we are currently providing
advice and equipment for a new secret communications network to function
between Diaz Ordaz's office and principal cities in the rest of the country.
Other joint operations with the Mexican security services include travel
control, telephone tapping and repressive action.
The station also prepares a daily intelligence summary for Diaz Ordaz with
a section on activities of Mexican revolutionary organisations and
communist diplomatic missions and a section on international
developments based on information from headquarters. Other reports, often
relating to a single subject, are passed to Diaz Ordaz, Echeverria and top
security officials. These reports, like the daily round-up, include
information from station unilateral penetration agents with due
camouflaging to protect the identity of the sources. The station is much
better than are the Mexican services, and is thus of great assistance to the
authorities in planning for raids, arrests and other repressive action. Liaison
between Scott and the Mexican military intelligence services consists
mainly of exchange of information, in order to keep a foot in the door for
future eventualities. The U.S. military attaches, moreover, are in constant
contact with their Mexican military intelligence counterparts and their
reports are received regularly by the station.
Stan Watson, the Mexico City Deputy Chief of Station, has been meeting
with a South Korean CIA officer who was recently sent under diplomatic
cover to monitor North Korean soundings for establishment of missions in
Mexico and Central America.
Communist Party Operations
The station CP section consists of two case officers, Wade Thomas and Ben
Ramirez, both under Embassy cover, plus two case officers outside the
station under non-official cover: Bob Driscoll, a retired operations officer
now working under contract, and Julian Zambianco who was transferred
from Guayaquil to Mexico City about a year ago. These officers are in
charge of agent and technical penetrations against the revolutionary
organisations of importance. The quality of this intelligence is high,
although not as high as it was before 1963. In late 1962 Carlos Manuel
Pellecer, the station's most important communist party penetration-agent,
broke openly with communism by publishing a book. He was a leader of
the Guatemalan Communist Party (PGT) arid had been Minister of Labour
in the Arbenz government during the 1950s. However, after the Agency-
sponsored overthrow of the Arbenz government Pellecer made his way to
Mexico City where for years he was the station's best source (cryptonym
LINLUCK) on all the revolutionary organisations in Mexico, not just the
Guatemalan exiles. His book, of course, was financed by the station and
distributed by the Agency all over Latin America. Pellecer is still being
used by the Mexico City station as a propaganda agent, as with other former
penetration agents who formally break with communism without revealing
their years of work as spies – Eudocio Ravines, the well-known Peruvian
defector from communism is a parallel case. Another book by Pellecer, also
financed by the station, has just appeared. This book is a continuation of
CIA exploitation of the Marcos Rodriguez and Joaquin Ordoqui cases in
Cuba, and is aimed at denigration of the Cuban Revolution. The station also
collects information about communists from the U.S. living in Mexico.
Many of them arrived during the McCarthy period and some have
subsequently become Mexican citizens. Information about them is mainly
of interest to the FBI, which calls them the American Communist Group in
Mexico City (ACGMC). Information collected about them includes that
obtained through the LIENVOY telephone-tapping operation described
below.
The station also receives copies of reports from FBI penetration operations
against Mexican revolutionary organisations. Mexico is the only country in
Latin America, except Puerto Rico, where the FBI continued operations
against the local left when the CIA took over in 1947. The FBI intelligence
is of high quality.
Soviet/ Satellite Operations
The largest section in the station is that covering Soviet/satellite operations.
It has four case officers, three intelligence assistants and a secretary, all
under Embassy cover, and four case officers under non-official cover. It is
headed by Paul Dillon and the other official cover case officers are Donald
Vogel, Cynthia Hausman and Robert Steele. A number of sensitive
operations are underway.
The station has two observation posts in front of the Soviet Embassy, which
cover the entrances, plus a third observation post in the back of the
Embassy to provide coverage of the gardens. The LICALL A observation
post in the back is the closest of five houses bordering the Embassy
property – all five are owned by the station. Several years ago films were
made of Soviets conversing in the garden, but attempts by Russian lip-
readers to discover their conversations were unsuccessful. From one of the
front OPs, radio contact is maintained with the LIEMBRACE surveillance
team for signalling when a particular Soviet surveillance target leaves the
Embassy, his route and other data. Photos are regularly taken from all the
OPs of Soviets and their families and all visitors to the Embassy. When
visitors use vehicles, photographs are taken of their license plates for
tracing. Occasionally the LICALLA OP is used for electronic monitoring,
since it is close to the Embassy, but so far attempts to pick up radiations
from Soviet cryptographic equipment have been unsuccessful.
In addition to the LIEMBRACE surveillance team, several other support
operations include coverage of the Soviets. Through the LIENVOY
operation, Soviet telephones are constantly monitored, and through the
LIFIRE travel-control operation photographs of travel documents are
obtained along with data on arrivals and departures. Monitoring of Mexican
diplomatic communications reveals requests for Mexican visas by Soviet
officials, including the diplomatic couriers. In addition, NSA is also
monitoring several communications systems involving 'burst' transmissions
from the USSR to as yet unidentified agents believed to be in Mexico –
possibly Soviet intelligence officers assigned abroad as 'illegals', with false
identity and non-official cover.
The station runs between fifteen and twenty access agents against the
Soviets with varying degrees of effectiveness and reliability. Several of
these agents are suspected of having been recruited by the Soviets for use as
double agents against the station. Two of the most important of the current
access-agents are Katherine Manjarrez, Secretary of the Foreign Press
Association, and her husband – both of whom are targeted against the
Soviet press attache and the Tass correspondent. Others are LICOWL-1 and
LIOVAL-1.
LICOWL-1 is the owner of a tiny grocery store situated in front of the
Soviet Embassy where the Soviets buy odds and ends including their soft
drinks – TSD is studying ways of bugging a wooden soft-drink case or the
bottles themselves. More important, LICOWL-1 is involved at the moment
in an operation against the Embassy zavhoz (administrative officer), who
spends considerable time chatting with the agent. Because Silnikov, the
zavhoz, has been on the prowl for a lover – or so he said to LICOWL-1 –
the station decided to recruit a young Mexican girl as bait. An appropriate
girl was obtained through BESABER, an agent who is normally targeted
against Polish intelligence officers and who runs a ceramics business
specialising in souvenirs. By loitering at LICOWL-1's store the girl
attracted Silnikov's attention, and a hot necking session in a back room at
the store led to several serious afternoon sessions at the girl's apartment
nearby – obtained especially for this operation. Silnikov's virility is
astonishing both the girl and the station, which is recording and
photographing the sessions without the knowledge of the girl. Although
promiscuity among Soviets is not abnormal, relationships with local girls
are forbidden. Eventually it will be decided whether to try blackmail against
Silnikov or to provoke disruption by sending tapes and photos to the
Embassy if the blackmail is refused.
LIOVAL-1 is not as interesting a case but is more important. The agent is
an American who teaches English in Mexico City and is an ardent
fisherman. Through fishing he became acquainted with Pavel Yatskov, the
Soviet Consul and a known senior KGB officer – possibly the Mexico City
rezident (KGB chief). Yatskov and the agent spend one or two weekends
per month off in the mountains fishing and have developed a very close
friendship. When Yatskov is transferred back to Moscow – he has already
been in Mexico for some years – we shall decide whether to try to defect
him through LIOVAL-1. There is some talk of offering him $500,000 to
defect. The Company is also willing to set him up with an elaborate cover
as the owner of an income-producing fishing lodge in Canada. Recently
Peter Deriabin, the well-known KGB defector from the 1950s who is now a
U.S. citizen and fulltime CIA employee, went to Mexico City to study the
voluminous reports on Yatskov written by LIOVAL-1. He concluded that
there is a strong possibility that LIOVAL-l has been recruited by Yatskov
and is reporting on Paul Dillon, the station officer in charge of this case.
Nevertheless, the operation continues while the counterintelligence aspects
are studied further.
The station double-agent cases against the Soviets, LICOZY-1, LICOZY-3
and LICOZY-5, are all being wound up for lack of productivity or problems
of control. One of these agents, LICOZY-3, is an American living in
Philadelphia who was recruited by the Soviets while a student in Mexico,
but who reported the recruitment and worked for the Mexico City station.
He worked for the FBI after returning to the U.S. – the Soviet case officer
was a UN official at one time – but recently Soviet interest in him has fallen
off and the FBI turned the case back over to the Agency for termination.
Against the Czechs and the Poles many of the same types of operation are
targeted. Access agents, observation posts, telephone tapping, surveillance
and travel control are continuous although with somewhat less intensity
than against the Soviets. In the Yugoslav Embassy the code clerk has been
recruited by the CIA as has one of the Embassy's secretaries.
Until the New China News Agency (NCNA) office was closed last month by
the Mexican government, the Soviet/satellite section of the station was
responsible for following the movements of the Chinese communists.
Telephone intercepts through LIENVOY and occasional surveillance by the
LIRICE team were directed against them, but the most important
intelligence collected against them was from the bugging of their offices.
The audio operation was supported by the Far East Division in
headquarters, who sent an operations officer and transcribers to Mexico
City. Now that the NCNA offices are closed, the audio equipment will be
removed and the station will continue to follow up the many leads coming
from the bugging operation.
Cuban Operations
The Cuban operations section consists of two case officers, Francis Sherry
and Joe Piccolo, and a secretary under Embassy cover and one case officer
under non-official cover. An observation post for photographic coverage
and radio contact with the LIEMBRACE surveillance team is functioning,
as well as LIENVOY telephone monitoring and LIFIRE airport travel
control. Through the LIFIRE team the station obtains regular clandestine
access to the Prensa Latina pouch from Havana, and copies of
correspondence between PL headquarters in Havana and its correspondents
throughout the hemisphere are forwarded to the stations concerned.
Through the LITEMPO liaison operation the Mexican immigration service
provides special coverage of all travellers to and from Havana on the
frequent Cubana flights. Each traveller is photographed and his passport is
stamped with arrival or departure cachets indicating Havana travel. The
purpose is to frustrate the Cuban practice of issuing visas on separate slips
of paper instead of in the passport so as to obscure travel. Prior to each
Cubana departure the station is notified of all passengers so that name
checks can be made. In the case of U.S. citizens, the Mexican service
obliges by preventing departure when requested by the station.
The most important current operation targeted against the Cuban mission is
an attempted audio penetration using the telephone system. Telephone
company engineers working in the LIDENY tapping operation will
eventually install new wall-boxes for the Embassy telephones in which sub-
miniature transmitters with switches will have been cast by TSD. At the
moment, however, the engineers are causing deliberate interference in
Embassy telephones by technical means in the exchange. Each time the
Embassy calls the telephone company to complain of interference on the
lines, the engineers report back that everything in the exchange is in order.
Eventually, as the interference continues, the engineers will check street
connections and finally arrive to check the instruments in the Embassy.
They will find the wall-boxes 'defective' and will replace them with the
bugged boxes cast by TSD. Right now, however, this operation (cryptonym:
LISAMPAN) is still in the 'interference-complaint-testing' stage.
Another important operation directed against the Cubans is a sophisticated
provocation that won the CIA Intelligence Medal for Stan Archenhold, the
case officer who conceived it. The operation consisted of a series of letters
sent to the Cuban intelligence service in their Mexico City Embassy from a
person who purported to be a CIA officer trying to help them. The letters
purport to implicate Joaquin Ordoqui, a respected, old-guard leader of the
Cuban Communist Party and a high-ranking military leader, as a CIA agent.
I haven't learned all the details of this operation, but my impression is that
Ordoqui may have been an informant during the 1950s when exiled in
Mexico, but that he refused to continue and was subsequently 'burned' by
the Agency to the Cubans. The letters continue to be sent to Cuban
intelligence although Ordoqui was arrested in 1964, and the desired
controversy and dissension in the Cuban revolutionary leadership followed.
As the cover of Sherry, the chief of the Cuban operations section, is in the
Embassy consular section, he has been able to meet several of the Cuban
consular officers directly. However, his main agent for direct assessment of
the Cubans is Leander Vourvoulias, Consul of Greece and President of the
Consular Corps.
Support Operations
The support operations must also be detailed. The joint operation for
telephone tapping, LIENVOY, is effected in cooperation with the Mexican
authorities and has a capacity for about forty lines. The station provides the
equipment, the technical assistance, couriers and transcribers, while the
Mexicans make the connections in the exchanges and maintain the listening
posts. In addition to monitoring the lines of the communist diplomatic
missions and those of Mexican revolutionary groups, LIENVOY also
covers special cases. For years the telephones of ex-President Cardenas and
his daughter have been tapped, and recently tapping has started on that of
Luis Quintanilla, a Mexican intellectual who is planning a trip to Hanoi
with the publisher of the Miami News and with a fellow of the Center for
the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara. Reports on plans for
this trip are sent immediately to the White House.
The station also has its own unilateral telephone-tapping operation which is
limited to special cases where the involvement of the Mexicans is thought
to be undesirable. Connections for this operation are made outside the
exchanges by telephone company engineers who work as station agents, as
in the case of the bugging of the Cuban Embassy (LISAMPAN). However
this is restricted as far as possible in order to avoid damaging relations with
the Mexicans in the event of discovery.
Travel control, general investigations and occasional surveillance are the
duties of a six-man team called LIFIRE. They obtain flight-travel lists from
the airport, which are passed daily to the station and take photographs of
passengers to and from communist countries and of their passports as they
pass through immigration.
Another eight-man surveillance team, known as LIEMBRACE, has
vehicles (including a Volkswagen photo-van) and radio-communications
equipment and is mainly concerned with Soviet/ satellite and Cuban targets.
It is administered by Jim Anderson, who also controls another eight-man
team (LIRICE), similarly equipped, which deals with the Mexican
revolutionaries and other miscellaneous targets.
Postal interception is mainly directed towards the mail from communist
countries, but can occasionally be used to get correspondence from selected
Mexican addresses.
As in every station, a variety of people assist in support tasks which they
perform in the course of their ordinary jobs. For processing the immigration
papers for station non-official cover personnel, for example, Judd Austin,
one of the U.S. lawyers in Goodrich, Dalton, Little and Riquelme (the
principal law firm serving American subsidiaries) is used. The Executive
Vice-President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Mexico City, Al
Wichtrich, channels political information to the station that he picks up in
his normal work with American and Mexican businessmen. For technical
support the station has an officer of TSD under Embassy cover with a
workshop and qualifications in audio, flaps and seals, and photography.
Covert-Action Operations
The station covert-action operations section consists of Stanley Watson, the
Deputy Chief of Station, and two case officers under Embassy cover plus
one case officer under non-official cover. Operations underway provide for
placing propaganda in the major Mexico City dailies, several magazines
and television. Student operations are centred mostly in the National
University of Mexico (UNAM), while labour operations are concentrated
on support for and guidance of the Mexico City headquarters of ORIT.
Station labour operations also include agents at the new ORIT school in
Cuernavaca (built with CIA funds) for spotting and assessment of trainees
for use in labour operations after they return to their country of origin. The
Mexico programmes of the American Institute for Free Labor Development
(AIFLD) are also under station direction.
Although the LITEMPO operation and others provide constant political
intelligence on the Mexican situation, the station has one official cover case
officer, Bob Feldman, working full-time on LICOBRA, which is the
operation for penetrating the PRI and the Mexican government. This officer
works closely with the legitimate political section of the Embassy and is
currently cultivating several PRI legislators for recruitment. Another
LICOBRA target is an office in the Ministry of Government called the
Department of Political and Social Investigations. This office, although part
of a government ministry, is the main repository of the PRI for information
on political officialdom (PRI and opposition) throughout the country. Still
another LICOBRA target is the Foreign Ministry, where operations are now
stalled because of the Ambassador's insistence that the station refrain from
operations against this Ministry. It is in LICOBRA operations that the
station and headquarters believe the Olympic attache cover would be
especially useful. By a determined effort at recruitment of unilateral
penetrations of the PRI and the Mexican government, a better balance can
be obtained between the excellent liaison operations and controlled agent
sources. Rafael Fusoni, an agent who has been in the LICOBRA
programme for some time, is already working as an agent in the Olympic
Organising Committee, as Assistant Director of Public Relations.
The Mexico City station, in spite of its wide-ranging operational activities
and numerous personnel, is well known for its excellent administration.
Two administrative officers and a secretary handle finances and property,
but Win Scott, the Chief of Station, is exceptional in his attention to
administrative details as well as to operations. Each officer in the station is
required on leaving to advise the receptionist where he is going and when
he will be back. Morning tardiness is not tolerated, cables and dispatches
are answered promptly, and project renewals and operational progress
reports are expected to be submitted on time. Considered altogether, the
Mexico City station is a tight operation – it has to be with fifty employees
and a budget of 5.5 million dollars.
The station also has a reports section that consists of one senior reports
officer and an assistant. This office processes all information received by
the station that can possibly be of interest to headquarters customers or
other stations, writes the reports, and keeps appropriate files.
The records section is the largest and most efficient of any station in the
hemisphere and is said to be Scott's pride. It contains detailed personality
files on thousands of Mexicans and foreigners resident in Mexico, in
addition to intelligence subject files, project files and extensive index files.
The records section is administered by a qualified records officer with two
full-time assistants and four working wives.
Such a large station obviously cannot get many more than half the
employees integrated as State Department employees. Some of the
secretaries and intelligence assistants who work in the station go to Mexico
ostensibly as tourists and are taken on the Embassy payroll as 'local hire'.
Others work in the station without 'normalisation' as Embassy employees.
Still others, who do not work in the Embassy, use cover as tourists, public
relations representatives, businessmen, even retired people. Adequate cover
is a continuing problem but solutions can usually be found. The nearness of
Mexico to the U.S., the exceptional relations between the station and the
Mexican government, and abundant U.S. tourism allow thin solutions that
would be impossible in other countries.
Washington DC 15 January 1967
Still more delay on whether and when I'll go to Mexico City under Olympic
cover. For the time being, unfortunately, attention in WH Division has
turned to the Montevideo station where preparations have started for the
conference of OAS Presidents to be held in Punta del Este in April, to
which President Johnson will be going. In WH Division a special group has
been formed to assign additional personnel to Montevideo, to set up a
special base in Punta del Este, and to establish special liaison procedures
with the Secret Service White House Detail. John Hanke, the officer in
charge of the headquarters task force, told me that the Montevideo station
has asked that I go back to work with the police. Old bureaucrat Kaufman,
however, doesn't want my desk empty any longer than necessary so he's
going to delay my departure as long as he can. I'm not terribly cheered by
the idea of working again with Otero and company but just getting back to
Montevideo would be a joy compared with this headquarters work.
Before going I'll have to finish the paper-work on two new officers going to
Mexico City under non-official cover to work on Soviet operations. One is a
contract agent who formerly trained infiltration-exfiltration teams for
maritime operations against Cuba – he ran a special base on an island not
far from Miami. The other is Jack Kindschi, a staff officer who is being
reassigned to Mexico City from the Stockholm station. Conveniently his
cover as a public relations expert for the Robert Mullen Co. will be the
same in Mexico as in Sweden. While I'm away, my work will be handled by
Bruce Berckmans, a recent graduate of the Career Training Program, the
new name given to the old JOT Program. Berckmans is an ex-Marine and
will be going to Mexico City in a few months for communist party
penetration-operations, which is his area of responsibility now in the
branch. He'll have nonofficial cover as a marketing and agri-business
consultant.
Montevideo 1 March 1967
If Johnson gets assassinated it won't be for lack of protection. Our task
force here has grown to about sixty people from headquarters and from
other WH stations. Every nook and cranny in the station offices is filled
with a desk or typing table. In Punta del Este we've set up a base in a house
not far from where Johnson will stay which is almost next to the hotel
where the conference sessions will be held.
The Secret Service advance party has set up an office in the station for
quick passage of intelligence reports, which we are receiving from many
other stations as well as from our own sources here. The object is to follow
up all the leads on possible assassination attempts that turn up here or in
other countries – all WH stations are reporting the travel of extreme-leftists
or their sudden dropping out of sight. Two sections of the task force are
doing most of the work in following up these leads and in other
preparations with Uruguayan security people.
The station CP section under Bob Riefe is combing files on every important
Uruguayan resident of far-left tendencies who might be involved in action
against Johnson or other presidents. Taking pains to avoid passing
information that might jeopardise sources, reports for police intelligence are
being prepared along with a master check-list for use at the control points
separating the different security zones that increase in intensity from
Montevideo to Punta del Este. The Liaison section, in which I am working,
is in charge of writing these reports in Spanish and getting them over to
Otero at police headquarters. Under normal circumstances we would not
pass information from unilateral sources of high quality to the police,
because there is high probability that the reports will seep out to the enemy
through poor police security, but we're taking chances given the high stakes.
Argentines, Paraguayans, Brazilians and others not resident in Uruguay but
possible threats are included in this report procedure, and Otero's files are
growing as never before. By the end of the month several hundred of these
individual reports will have been passed along with many special leads
from sources in Montevideo and other stations.
Montevideo 2 April 1967
Each day, it seems, another wild story reaches the station on a terrorist plan
to assault, bomb, poison or simply hex the conference. Checking these
stories out has brought me into the homes of an array of weird people,
sometimes with an over-eager Secret Service agent anxious to try
thumbscrews to get the whole truth. One story, however, couldn't be taken
lightly and for the past week I've been spending day and night trying to
resolve it.
The original report came from BIDAFFY-1, a penetration agent of the
Buenos Aires station who is on the fringes of the terrorist group of John
William Cooke. Cooke is a well-known extreme left-wing Peronist with
close ties to Cuban intelligence. The report from BIDAFFY-1 alleged that
Cooke and an unknown number of his followers are coming to Montevideo
before the Conference in order to infiltrate the restricted Punta del Este area
for bomb attacks and such other terrorism as they can mount. The agent
does not know the names of persons to accompany Cooke but the plan is
first to operate from an apartment owned by Cooke in the Rambla Hotel, a
twenty-storey decaying building on the beachfront in Pocitos.
Rather than pass this data to the police, which might jeopardise BIDAFFY-
1, we decided to try to verify the report and call in the police after Cooke is
here. Through the AVENIN surveillance team I obtained a hotel room on
the same floor as Cooke's apartment and called over Frank Sherno, the
regional technical support officer stationed in Buenos Aires. For two long
nights Sherno tried unsuccessfully to open the lock to Cooke's apartment,
using the battery-operated handgun vibrator with assorted picks. Then he
made a key for the door – by the time it would work three more nights had
passed. By this time our repeated trips between our room and the Cooke
apartment had aroused the suspicions of the elevator operators, while the
lobby employees were wondering out loud what three men were doing night
after night in a room for two. My fear has been growing that the hotel
manager might advise the police, which could reveal one or two of the
AVENIN agents to Otero.
Last night, nevertheless, Sherno finally got Cooke's apartment open. On our
first entry, after checking carefully for booby traps, we found a large
wooden crate in the main room – just about the right length for rifles or
other shoulder weapons. It was nailed shut and banded but the panelling
was broken towards one of the corners and inside I could see books,
magazines and other printed matter – possible filler or cover for more
important objects underneath. I decided to leave the crate alone but we
installed two battery-operated radio transmitters – one in the bedsprings and
one above a curtain box. In our room we left receivers and recording
equipment for the AVENIN agents who will alternate on monitoring duties.
This morning a cable arrived from Buenos Aires with another BIDAFFY-1
report: Cooke's daughter is coming today and will probably stay at the
apartment – possibly others of the group will follow shortly. I discussed the
crate with the Secret Service chief who offered to lend us a portable X-ray
machine that the Service uses on gifts given to President Johnson. Tonight
the Secret Service agent who operates the machine will accompany me with
the machine to our hotel room where we will stand by for a surreptitious
entry. This afternoon Cooke's daughter did indeed arrive – with her lover.
The AVENIN team will follow them when they leave the building and will
advise us by radio when they begin to return. Meanwhile we will slip into
the Cooke apartment and take X-ray pictures of the crate. I hope the
elevator in the hotel will be able to lift this 'portable' machine, never mind
our wrestling it clandestinely down the hall. Anybody who interferes with
us gets enough radiation to fry his bone marrow.
Montevideo 4 April 1967
After a night and a morning of listening to regular concerts from the
bedsprings, we finally heard Cooke's daughter and boyfriend leave the
apartment. With great effort we got the X-ray machine into place, donned
lead aprons and turned on the juice. With each picture – we had to take
several because the crate was much larger than the X-ray negative – the
lights dimmed and I thought we would blow the electrical system, but we
were back in our room with the machine quite soon. The X-ray operator and
I took the machine back to the station where he developed the film –
fortunately nothing showed up except nails. This afternoon the couple
returned to Buenos Aires without having made one remark about other
people coming or even of the conference. They had a quiet little visit, our
monitors learned a new trick or two, and in my report I'll recommend
BIDAFFY-1 for a special bonus on account of his imaginative reporting.
Getting the reports and check lists to the police security force has been
consuming more time during this final period. Now we have started to
organise the procedures for Johnson's security on arrival at the Montevideo
airport and for the helicopter flight to Punta del Este. John Horton, the Chief
of Station, will be at the aircraft parking site beside the terminal building
with Secret Service agents while ten other CIA officers will be at strategic
locations in the terminal building. Each of us will be responsible for
watching certain windows and making certain that they are not opened. My
post will be on the roof of the terminal building, just below the control
tower. Each of us will have walkie-talkie communications with the rest of
the airport team, and I will have a second, higher-powered walkie-talkie to
report each detail to the station. Instantaneous reports will be sent by the
station to Washington based on my indications of when Johnson's aircraft
comes in sight, the moment of touch-down, parking, Johnson's descent and
reception, his boarding of the helicopter, lift-off and disappearance. Other
reports will follow from officers in cars on the highway to Punta del Este –
Johnson's helicopters, in fact, will never be out of sight of CIA officers from
before landing in Montevideo to the helicopter pad in Punta del Este,
seventy miles away. Once Johnson is in Punta del Este, security will be less
of a problem because of zonal restriction of movement in that area, the use
of special badges and other precautions. As Johnson will be one of the last
presidents to arrive, we will be able to practice on his colleagues during the
two days before he gets here.
Montevideo 14 April 1967
Both for Johnson's arrival three days ago and his departure today everything
went perfectly. Back in the station during the party Horton handed me a
cable from headquarters telling me that I should return immediately in order
to prepare to go to Mexico City for the Olympic assignment. Tonight I'll try
for a seat on one of the Air Force cargo planes flying back to Washington.
Results of the Conference? Well, they finally put to rest the original
concerns of the Alliance for Progress for agrarian reform, income
redistribution and social and economic integration. Just as well, I suppose,
since none of the governments seem to have had a very serious concern for
these matters anyway. Now the emphasis is on regional economic growth.
Presumably economic growth alone will take care of the marginalised
majority, and reform, in any case, will be easier to accept when there is
more to spread around – meaning the privileged will be able to avoid
significant cuts in consumption. Foreign aid will be channelled principally
to education and agriculture which, in the absence of agrarian reform,
means the development of high-productivity commercial farm operations.
Those of the modern sectors should rejoice, for their increasing share of
national income is sure to continue increasing. Forget the reforms – the
pressure's off thanks to counter-insurgency.
Washington DC 30 April 1967
While I was in Montevideo several decisions on the Olympic cover job
were made, both in the Agency and in the Department of State. Bill Broe,
the WH Division Chief, had got lukewarm about sending me down because
he had been Chief of Station in Tokyo during the 1964 Olympic Games and
he believes the softening of political attitudes inherent in a cultural event
like this will impede recruitments. Only if I stay on in the Mexico City
station after the Games does Broe think I'll be able to justify the time spent
between now and late next year on strictly Olympic cover matters. On the
other hand Dave Murphy, Chief of the Soviet Bloc Division, believes that
the bland political atmosphere will help me move in circles that might
otherwise be closed to a U.S. government official. Besides, the Mexico City
station has no contact operations under way between officers of the station
and their Soviet counterparts. Since I am already known to the Soviets from
Montevideo I'll be able to develop personal relationships with Soviet and
satellite intelligence officers assigned to Olympic duties in their embassies.
Murphy's opinion was shared by the Mexico City station which is anxious
to use the Olympic job to develop agents for the LICOBRA targets: the PRI
and the Mexican government.
The differences were resolved in my favour but then another problem arose.
The Ambassador made it a condition of my assignment that I had never
been exposed as a CIA officer to Latin American police officials. Kaufman,
the Mexico Branch Chief, resolved this one by telling me to write a
memorandum for Broe's signature assuring the State Department that I'm
not known to any police. Kaufman reasoned that we could stretch the truth
a little by claiming, if it's ever necessary, that any police officers who know
me as a CIA officer are paid intelligence agents first and policemen second.
The most encouraging development is that the Ambassador has decided he
wants two Olympic attaches – the other one will be Dave Carrasco, former
basketball coach at the American University and now head of the Peace
Corps sports programme in Ecuador (who of course, has no connection
whatsoever with the Agency). Ostensibly I'll be his assistant, which will
help me considerably because he has really legitimate sports credentials.
Moreover he was born on the Mexican border, and has had friends for many
years in Mexican sports circles. Next month Carrasco will come to
Washington for discussions at the Department and with Kaufman and me.
Barring other delays we should be opening the Embassy Olympic Games
office in June.
Luis Vargas, my old Immigration Director in Montevideo, is here now on a
trip with his wife financed by the station. It's the reward I recommended last
year for his help in the expulsions and other action against the Soviets, East
Germans, Czechs and North Koreans. As headquarters control officer for
the visit I've taken them over to Senator Montoya's office for a chat, then
out to Raymond Warren's house for a cocktail party – he's Chief of the WH
branch that includes Uruguay – then to the White House for a special tour
conducted by Secret Service friends. In New York yesterday we watched
the Loyalty Day Parade. Vargas was impressed at the magnitude of support
demonstrated for the Vietnam War effort, as was I. If only these marchers
knew the effects of counter-insurgency in Latin America.
Washington DC 5 June 1967
We have decided that Dave Carrasco should arrive in Mexico City a week
or two before me, so while he arranges his personal affairs I have returned
to paper shuffling at the Mexico branch. I have also just finished the Soviet
Operations Course, a two-week full-time programme ostensibly under the
Office of Training but in fact controlled by the Soviet Bloc Division. I was
to have taken the course last year but was able to plead personnel shortages
at the Mexico branch. This time there was no begging off. SB Division has
been notably successful in peddling this course – they have, in fact,
prevailed on the DDP to make the course compulsory for all Chiefs and
Deputy Chiefs of Station being assigned to countries having Soviet
missions, in addition to operations officers who will be engaging in Soviet
operations. As I will probably be developing personal relationships with
Soviet intelligence officers there was no way I could escape. However I was
lucky because Jim Noland, my former Chief of Station in Quito, is back
from an abbreviated tour in Santiago, Chile, and was also taking the course
-= prior to taking over the SB Division office that coordinates Soviet
matters with the Western Hemisphere Division.
The Soviet Operations Course is the last word in the Agency on recruitment
and defection of Soviets. It is based largely on the opinions and theories of
Dave Murphy, SB Division Chief, which are highly controversial because
of the dogmatic attitudes of Murphy and his subordinates, and the lack of
demonstrated success. The majority of the officers taking the course were
from area divisions other than SB, but most of us simply refrained from
public dissent, knowing that SB would take note of dissidents and, given
SB's weight within the DDP, such heresy would sooner or later reflect back
on us.
Notably absent from the course are lectures and readings on Marx, Lenin
and other communist theoreticians and leaders, although a thick paperback
history of Russia was placed in our course kits for retention. What this
course deals with are contemporary Soviet realities and how to use them to
our advantage – how to get Soviets to commit treason by spying on their
country.
But how to get to these Soviets, the most interesting of whom will be CPSU
members? The most accessible and most vulnerable are those working in
some capacity in the free world – more than 25,000 of them and still others
who travel abroad on temporary assignments. Usually the accessible ones
are on the staff of diplomatic, trade and technical assistance missions,
including military personnel, but of special importance are Soviet scientists
who attend conferences and congresses abroad. Of the Soviets stationed in a
mission abroad for several years, the diplomats and intelligence officers are
the most accessible and of these the most desirable recruitment, after the
Ambassador, is a GRU officer – because of his military connections. Next
in desirability would be a KGB officer because of his state security
background.
The focus of the Soviet Operations Course, then, while taking into account
the inestimable value of a recruitment of someone who is prepared to return
to the Soviet Union, concentrates on the organisation of Soviet communities
in the non-communist countries and on the CIA operational programmes to
discover the vulnerable and disaffected. The theory is that the pressures
built into the rigidly conformist routine for Soviets abroad, largely for
internal security reasons, generates a natural disaffection by serving as a
contrast with the relatively greater freedom of thought, movement and
association that they usually see about them. Somewhere, the theory goes,
there are Soviets who are already along the road to defection, and the CIA
goal is to identify them and bring it about. The longer such a person can be
persuaded to keep working (before 'disappearing' and coming to the U.S.),
best of all to return to the Soviet Union, the greater the possibilities for
exploitation. But first to identify the candidates.
Most of the theory and doctrine for operations against Soviets has come
from actual defectors as they have described their personal histories and the
forces that brought them to defect. We studied, then, in considerable detail,
the officially prescribed organisation of both the professional and the leisure
routines of the members of a Soviet mission. There usually is not much
variation from one mission to another. First there is the overt diplomatic and
administrative function of the mission, headed by the Ambassador, with
sections dedicated to political, economic and cultural matters – normal in
all respects. The administrative section under the zavhoz (chief) and his
komendants (assistants) performs the housekeeping chores and attends to
Embassy reception and other security functions. The commercial offices
include representatives of Soviet enterprises peddling books, films,
machinery and other goods, while arranging for imports of the host
country's products.
More important is the other level of functions – the use of these overt
positions as cover slots for KGB and GRU intelligence personnel. We
reviewed the various techniques used to identify the rezident (intelligence
chief) and his subordinates in each of the services. Of much interest also is
the location of the restricted area where all classified documents are kept
and where the cryptographic and radio communications activities take
place. Identification of personnel in this section is obviously high priority.
From the point of view of recruitment operations, however, prospects are
limited because only designated persons in a Soviet mission are allowed to
have personal relationships with foreigners, particularly non-communist
foreigners, and each meeting with such people requires a full written report.
Usually permission for such relationships is restricted to intelligence
operations officers, diplomats and others such as the zavhoz who have
legitimate need to deal with outsiders.
The restrictions on contact with the outside world by most members of
Soviet missions require rigid internal organisation. The Komsomol, or
communist youth organisation, usually operates under 'sports club' cover
while the CPSU uses the cover of 'trade union organisation'. The real trade-
union organisation is called the mestkom, or local committee, and the SK, or
community security officer, is responsible for personnel security in each
mission. Additionally, each mission has a club with a programme of games,
films, political studies and lectures, and social affairs – all centred around a
designated clubroom. Participation in club activities is assigned and
compulsory, and is designed to keep the group together and avoid
wandering into temptations in the decadent bourgeois surroundings.
Personal conflicts, gossiping, petty jealousies and backbiting are the usual
product of such mental and emotional inbreeding as is, according to SB
doctrine, the need to break out of it all.
Most CIA operations against the Soviet community abroad are designed to
provide an orderly and complete body of working knowledge about the
Soviet presence in the country of concern. Systematic organisation is the
theme, so that the extensive detail required can be effectively managed.
Standard operations in the non-communist world are the kind we have in
Mexico and Uruguay: travel control for arrivals and departures and for
passport biographical data and photographs; observation posts for
additional photographs, analysis of relationships within the community and
support to surveillance teams; surveillance for discovery of overt and
clandestine activities; telephone tapping for analysis of relationships and
general information; audio penetrations for general information and secrets.
The better the access agent can cultivate a close personal relationship with
the Soviet, the more the station can assess his vulnerability. Some of the
best access agents are satellite officials serving in the same city as the target
Soviet – often recruited to work against the Soviets for nationalistic
motives. Still others are third-country diplomats, local politicians and
government officials, and persons having the same hobby as a Soviet.
Double agents, while primarily used to reveal Soviet intelligence
requirements and modus operandi, and to occupy their time, also reveal the
identities of intelligence officers and provide data on their professional
competence and personality. The access agent programme is designed to
provide disaffected Soviets with 'channels for defection' – bridges to the
other side – that they can build little by little while making up their minds.
Access agents are people a Soviet can confide in, assuming the internal
pressures create such a need. After a while, hours, months or even years, the
access agents can initiate political discussions. The first rule of this game is
never to denigrate Russia or things Russian. The key is to distinguish in the
target's mind between Russia the homeland and Russia the subjected
territory of the CPSU – to separate government from people and country.
As most Soviet bureaucrats are thought to harbour some cynicism towards
the CPSU bureaucracy, the good access agent can foment patriotic balances
against the fostering of doubts towards the Party. One obvious and effective
method is to combine praise for Russian cultural traditions with dismay
over treatment of dissident writers and artists.
Covert-action operations against the Soviets are also varied: the Agency is
deeply involved in the samizdat system of clandestine publishing in order to
get dissident literature out of the Soviet Union for publication and to make
books by banned writers available in the USSR. Major emphasis is also
given to exposing Soviet subversive activities abroad and to circulating
anti-Soviet propaganda to make them feel oppressed and disliked by the
local community. Expulsions are constantly promoted in order to 'prove' the
Soviets are subversives.
The course also included a review of the procedures for keeping the
Defector Committee of the U.S. mission in readiness, together with the
rules for handling defectors: first efforts to get the Soviet to continue in his
job as if nothing had happened, in order to make audio installations and rifle
files; pre-planned safe places for keeping him hidden before departure for
the U.S.; anticipation of violent reaction by the Soviet mission, with charges
that the defector stole the cash-box; anticipation of procedures for letting
the defector be interviewed by Soviet mission officials; initial debriefing
requirements; military aircraft evacuation procedures.
Most of us took the course with some scepticism because SB lecturers
refused to state the number of Soviets who have been snared through this
vast effort. Surely there is some truth to the old saying that nobody recruits
a Soviet – if they come over they recruit themselves, and this they can do
without channels, bridges, OPS, surveillance teams, passport photography
and insidious access agents. And what happens when the dream agent
comes along? Might not a Soviet so compromise their security that the
CPSU would be obliged to take serious action? SB Division lecturers also
avoided comment on how the recruitment of Colonel Oleg Penkovsky
might have been related to the Cuban missile crisis. Here was a man
embittered against the CPSU leadership who passed on information of great
value about Soviet missiles: numbers, locations, accuracy, megatonnage,
readiness factors. The Agency got valuable intelligence, Penkovsky
eventually got the firing squad – but did the Soviets send missiles to Cuba
because they needed desperately to balance back from the damage caused
by this intelligence breakthrough? Perhaps October 1962 was the price of
that intelligence success.
If I were honest I would pull back from the Olympic cover assignment and
ask for leave to find a new job. Working in the Olympics office with
Carrasco, however, I'll be able to avoid close control by the station and
concentrate on cover work. At the same time I'll also be watching for job
opportunities after the Olympics – almost a year and a half from now and a
lot can happen. And Mexico is just too attractive to refuse. I'll drive down
during the first week of July.
Mexico City 15 July 1967
This Olympics cover is extraordinary. Dave and I have been making the
rounds together calling on the leaders of the different organisations
involved in the Olympic preparations: the Organising Committee, the
Mexican Olympic Committee and its vast new training centre for Mexican
athletes, the Mexican Sports Confederation and the individual sports
federations. Each of these organisations seems to have some special needs
that the U.S. Embassy Olympic Games office might help to fulfil. The
Organising Committee wants odds and ends related to putting on the sports
events and major assistance in arranging for U.S. participation in the
Olympic cultural programme. The Mexican Olympic Committee, which is
responsible for preparing the Mexican teams, needs help in getting several
more coaches and additional State Department Specialist Grants for
American coaches already here. After only five days on the job, access to an
exceedingly large and varied range of people has suddenly opened up.
The officers in the station, from Win Scott down, are all excited about how
my Olympic entree can help them in their particular areas of responsibility.
For his part, Scott told me first to concentrate on meeting as many people as
possible and to establish my Olympic cover firmly. In the Soviet operations
section, where I arranged for a desk and typewriter, the chief interest is on
spotting and assessment of new access agents and on my establishing direct
contact operations with the Soviet and satellite intelligence officers who are
handling Olympic duties. The CP section wants me to spot possible
recruitments for infiltration into revolutionary organisations, while the CA
section wants assessment data on press officers of the Organising
Committee for use as media placement agents. The liaison section wants
information on the Soviet and satellite Olympic attaches that can be passed
to the Mexican services while the LICOBRA section wants me to spot
possible agents for use in penetrating the PRI and the Mexican government.
The Cuban operations section, probably the most destitute in agent material,
wants personal data on the Cuban Olympic attache, on leftists within the
Olympic milieu who might eventually travel to Cuba, and on anyone at all
who might be of interest to the Cubans. All these officers see my Olympic
cover as promising for their operational goals.
No way to deny that this job could be valuable to the station. General
practice is to exchange calling cards with a new Olympic acquaintance, and
so far a very high percentage of the people I've met have significant reports
in station files. I've begun my own card file and am writing short
memoranda on the people I meet. Perhaps if I keep producing memoranda
to circulate among the different sections I can avoid making any
recruitments for some considerable time – possibly right up to the
Olympics. No problem getting discreetly up to the station from the Olympic
office on the second floor, because the station's entrance is just to the side of
the elevator in the back of the Embassy and not many people go up to the
top floor.
New York 13 December 1967
Events have taken several unexpected turns in recent months. Dave has
assumed responsibility for Embassy support to the Olympic cultural
programme, which the Mexicans hope will add a dimension almost equal in
importance to the sports programme. The view in the Organising
Committee is that Mexico, in spite of sizeable efforts under way in recent
years to prepare teams, will be far down the list in national medal
accumulation. Partly to overcome this deficit, and partly to excel in a
different area, the Organising Committee is putting on an impressive year-
long Cultural Programme of twenty events to correspond to the twenty
sports events – although non-competitive. Officially the Organising
Committee has invited all the national Olympic committees to participate in
the events in the Cultural Programme, but many national committees,
including the USOC, are not set up for such varied cultural activity.
Response has therefore been slight, and the Organising Committee has
turned to the embassies in Mexico City to seek official support.
In our Embassy the cultural section has failed to become more than
peripherally interested in the Cultural Programme, so the Organising
Committee appointed a special representative to work with Dave and me on
promoting wider participation by the U.S., especially the U.S. government,
in the Cultural Programme. I never thought I would be doing cultural
attache's work but Dave asked me to take responsibility for the Cultural
Programme, and since then I have been trying to generate interest in
Washington and elsewhere for bringing participants to such events as a
poets' encounter, theatre and the performing arts, a folk arts festival, a
stamp collectors' exhibit, a monumental sculpture programme, a film
festival, youth camp, atomic energy and space exploration exhibits, a
children's painting festival, a popular arts and crafts exhibits, and other
similar events.
I didn't like Dave asking me to work on the Cultural Programme because it
can easily take up all one's time, but after checking the names of Cultural
Programme officials in station files I immediately saw the advantage: the
cultural section of the Organising Committee is just loaded with people of
established leftist credentials who would be very difficult for an American
official to cultivate without suspicion. But in the Olympic atmosphere of
peace and brotherhood, and given the Organising Committee's dire need for
U.S. government backing, I now have an open door to many more people of
interest to different sections of the station. Moreover, by assuming these
new, very time-consuming duties, I will have all the excuses needed for not
making any recruitments. Up to now the station is very pleased, because
I've also been regularly meeting Provorov and Belov, the Soviet Olympic
officers (GRU and KGB, respectively) as well as the Czech, Pole and
Yugoslav Olympic officers. My only problem is to keep away from
DNNEBULA-1, the Korean CIA officer who is also handling Olympic
duties, and who corners me at every meeting, Generally, though, I'm only
keeping up appearances with the station because I have no interest in
developing operations. The other unexpected development is a serious and
deepening relationship with a woman I met on the Organising Committee. I
took a chance and told her I had worked for the CIA before, but in spite of
her strong reaction she agreed to keep seeing me. She is one of the many
leftists in the Cultural Programme and she believes, with great bitterness, as
do many other people, that the Agency was responsible for Che Guevara's
execution.
Mexico City 20 June 1968
One more CIA career comes to an end. It was a little earlier than I had
expected, but Paul Dillon invited me for coffee the other day and told me
Scott had asked him to make a proposal. He said that the station is very
pleased with my work and that Scott would like me to transfer to the
political section in the station after the Olympics, so that in the coming two
or three years I will be able to make the recruitments and take part in other
station operations for which I've been preparing since arrival last year. They
especially want me to begin recruitments of some of the PRI bureaucrats
I've met, such as Alejandro Ortega San Vicente, the Secretary General of
the Olympic Organising Committee and former chief of the Ministry of
Government's Department of Political and Social Investigations, which is
really the PRI's information centre on its own people. Scott said he will
arrange for me to get another promotion and that the Ambassador has
approved this plan.
I told Dillon that I appreciated the offer but that I planned to resign after the
Olympics, to remarry, and remain in Mexico. He was startled, of course,
because I hadn't mentioned this to anyone in the station yet. Later I spoke to
Scott and wrote a memorandum for headquarters outlining my intentions. I
was careful to cite my personal reasons as the only motive behind my
decision, lest someone pounce on me as a security risk.
The sense of relief is very strong now that I have formally announced my
intention to resign. Perhaps I should have done this on returning from
Montevideo, because I have felt very strained beneath the surface since
coming to Mexico – like being dishonest in a dishonest situation, except
that the two negatives don't make a positive. The truth is that Bill Brae was
right: the Olympics aren't conducive to cold war politics. Working in the
Cultural Programme, moreover, has driven still another wedge between the
rationale for counter-insurgency and the reality of its effects. It isn't just
'them and us' but 'all of us'.
The cultural work has bridged many gaps; even though I've only been
organising rather than creating, the experience has been enough to ease the
pains of increasing separation, of feeling a fraud, of isolation. Who knows if
without it I could have given up all the security and comfort of continued
CIA work? Headquarters and stations alike are peppered, as we all know,
with officers who long ago ceased to believe in what they're doing – only to
continue until retirement as cynical, bitter men anxious to avoid
responsibilities and effort. I'll at least avoid joining them, no matter what
happens.
Mexico City 1 August 1968
This past week has seen a sudden flare-up of confrontation between
students and university leaders and the government. It began with some
confusion on 26 July when a street demonstration celebrating the
anniversary of the Cuban Revolution clashed with a rival demonstration and
then turned into a protest against the Mexican government. Two days later
police entered buildings of the National University of Mexico (UNAM),
and next day there was rioting in the streets by students and severe police
repression. Three days ago another violent confrontation occurred in the
streets and yesterday rioting spread to provincial university towns of
Villahermosa and Jalapa. Today in Mexico City a peaceful protest march
numbered at least 50,000 and was headed by the Rector of UNAM.
The original confused issues have broadened into more basic political
demands, led on the student side by a national strike committee strongly
influenced by former leaders of the National Liberation Movement (MLN)
and the National Center of Democratic Students (CNED) – both influenced
in turn by the Communist Party of, Mexico. Even so, the movement is a
spontaneous popular demonstration against police violence with clear
tendencies towards protest against the PRI's power monopoly and
traditional service to the privileged. Demands formulated by the strike
committee are impossible for the government to meet but are nevertheless
popular: resignation of the police chiefs, disbanding of the riot police,
repeal of the crime of 'social dissolution' and compensation for the wounded
and families of the dead – since 26 July, at least eight students have been
killed, 400 injured and over 1,000 arrested. The government for its part has
had to call in military forces several times when police have been unable to
cope. Luis Echeverria is responsible as Minister of Government for re-
establishing order but so far he has only made matters worse. He has
publically blamed the CNED and the PCM youth wing for the violence,
which is only partly true – other demonstrators and the police too are to
blame – while also claiming that five 'riot coaches' from France, and other
communist agitators had plotted the insurrection from outside the country.
No one believes such trash which makes the government look ridiculous
and makes compromise more difficult. If Echeverria doesn't stop
overreacting the situation will get even worse.
Last month I made a trip to Washington and New York for some final
details on Cultural Programme participation sponsored by the State
Department. In Washington, not only would Janet not agree that I bring the
boys here for the Olympics, she also made my seeing them very difficult. I
decided to bring them anyway and had my lawyer telephone her to advise
after we were on the flight. An uproar followed between headquarters and
the State Department and between the Ambassador and Scott – all of whom
have ordered me to send them back because Janet is threatening to expose
me as a CIA officer. I have refused and told them to fire me if they want but
that I believe I have a right to have my children in my home, whether in
Mexico City or any other place. Besides, I'm sure the threat of exposure is
only a bluff.
Mexico City 1 September 1968
Throughout the greater part of August the government had taken a fairly
gentle line about the massive demonstrations taking place. Then on 27
August a huge demonstration of some 200,000 marchers turned out to
protest against the cost of the Olympics to Mexico which will be at least
175 million dollars. The turning-point in government policy came early the
following morning when the considerable concentration of demonstrators
that remained in the main downtown plaza was forcibly broken up. On the
29th another 3000 demonstrators turned up and were driven off. Today Diaz
Ordaz, in his annual message to the country, pledged the use of the armed
forces to ensure that the Games will be held. However he also promised to
consider changing the penal code on 'social dissolution'. The strike
committee has added to its demands the release of all political prisoners,
and in this speech Diaz Ordaz took the trouble to claim that in Mexico there
are no political prisoners – a claim so widely known to be false that it is
ridiculous.
In the station the CP section is very busy getting information from agents
on planning by the strike committee and on positions taken by the
communists and other far-left groups. Highlights of this intelligence are
being passed to Diaz Ordaz and Echeverria for use by the security forces.
It's almost like being in Ecuador or Uruguay again – but I'm glad I'm not
working on the government's side this time.
Mexico City 19 September 1968
So far the only significant demonstration this month was a silent march of
protest on the day that Diaz Ordaz opened the new Olympic sports
installations. Protesters are increasingly saying that the police have burned
the bodies of those students killed in repressive action and that the students'
families have been frightened into silence. Student brigades have been
going daily to factories, offices and homes to explain the student position
and have been doing so with considerable effect. Last night, as a result of
this activity, the government seized the National University in violation of
the University's traditional autonomy. Echeverria justified this invasion by
saying that the University has been used for political rather than for
educational purposes.
Thousands of troops with tanks and armoured cars were employed in the
takeover of the University and although hundreds of people were arrested,
the student strike leaders all escaped. The student brigades exposing
government policies to serve minority interests have now made their
headquarters in the Polytechnic Institute, where a battle is now going on
between students and police.
Two of the big exhibits for the Olympic Cultural Programme are being
delayed because of the violence. At the National University we had a huge
Jupiter Missile set up for the space exhibit, but it had to be taken down
rather quickly before it got torn down by the demonstrators. The Organising
Committee is now looking for somewhere else to put it. Similarly the
atomic energy exhibit at the Polytechnic has had to be put off while another
site is found. The space exhibit was to be opened yesterday by Michael
Collins, an Air Force astronaut, but I have had to cancel much of his
programme.
Mexico City 25 September 1968
Each day since the UNAM was invaded has been filled with violence. Some
ten to twenty more students have been killed and over 100 wounded in riots
which have broken out in different parts of Mexico City but are now most
frequent in the Plaza of the Three Cultures in the Tlatelolco section, where
one of the main vocational schools of the Polytechnic Institute is located.
Yesterday a pitched battle lasted about twelve hours as students defended
the Polytechnic and the vocational school at the Plaza, but finally both were
occupied by the Army and police. All street demonstrations are now being
suppressed with much violence.
After a PRI campaign against him of several weeks, the Rector of UNAM
resigned, but the professors association voted to resign with him if his
resignation was accepted. Today the UNAM governing council refused the
resignation and the Rector is expected to withdraw it. Increasingly the
protest is turning towards the cost of the Olympic Games. Parents and
teachers have joined the students, while vigilante groups controlled by the
government have begun night raids on schools to intimidate the occupying
students.
This afternoon I went up to the station offices to read the intelligence
reports sent to headquarters over the past week. One report was on a
meeting between Scott and President Diaz Ordaz in which Scott got the
strong impression that the President is confused and disoriented, without a
plan or decision on what to do next.
Mexico City 3 October 1968
In one savage display of firepower at the Plaza of the Three Cultures, the
government wiped out the protest movement and probably several hundred
lives. The massacre yesterday afternoon came as a surprise, because for
almost a week both the government and the strike committee had been
backing off from confrontation and nearly everyone believed the crisis was
passing. The Army had even evacuated the UNAM and the Rector
withdrew his resignation.
Nevertheless, yesterday about 5 p.m. some 3000 people – students,
teachers, parents and some workers and peasants – gathered at the Plaza of
the Three Cultures for a march in protest against continued government
occupation of the Polytechnic Institute and several of its vocational schools.
The first speaker at the rally, however, called off the march because of a
concentration of about 1,000 troops with armoured vehicles and jeep-
mounted machine-guns along the route. The rally continued peacefully but
the military units surrounded the Plaza. Just after 6 p.m. the Army opened
fire on the crowd and on the surrounding buildings believed to be sheltering
sympathizers. Not until an hour later did the Army stop firing. Officially the
toll is set at twenty-eight dead and 200 wounded, but several hundred were
probably killed and many more wounded. Over 1,500 were taken prisoner.
Today mass confusion reigned as thousands of parents and relatives sought
to find the bodies – already disappeared – of those unable to be located in
hospitals or jails.
This morning the International Olympic Committee under Avery Brundage
held a secret emergency meeting on whether to call off the Games. The IOC
decision, according to a U.S. Olympic Committee member, was only one
vote short of cancellation. Afterwards Brundage announced that the Games
will proceed as scheduled and that local student problems have no
connection with the Olympics.
Mexico City 28 October 1968
Suddenly it's all over – capped by the gushing of colour and sound from
what must have been history's most spectacular display of fireworks. As of
today we can all begin again to weigh whether this two-week circus was
really worth all the bloodshed, and whether Mexico lost more prestige by
killing protesters than it gained by putting on the Games.
My resignation will be effective early next year, although for practical
purposes my service with the Agency is ending now. Perhaps I've been
foolish dedicating all my time in recent months to the Olympics instead of
finding a new job. But I have money saved that will allow time to find work
although it won't be easy because combining two families and continuing to
live like this will take a hefty income. My sons have asked to continue
living here with me instead of returning to Washington, which didn't
surprise me, so the legal measures I've taken will be useful. All the fuss by
the Ambassador and Scott and headquarters was foolish because Janet's
threat was only a bluff.
I try not to show it, but I feel unsure about finding satisfying work inside
the same system I rejected long ago as a university student. The difficult
admission is that I became the servant of the capitalism I rejected. I became
one of its secret policemen. The CIA, after all, is nothing more than the
secret police of American capitalism, plugging up leaks in the political dam
night and day so that shareholders of U.S. companies operating in poor
countries can continue enjoying the rip-off. The key to CIA success is the 2
or 3 per cent of the population in poor countries that get most of the cream
– that in most places get even more now than in 1960, while the
marginalised 50, 60 or 70 per cent are getting a lesser share.
There is a contradiction in what I'm doing but I don't have much choice
given the plans we have and our need for income. One has to take the
realistic view: in order to fulfil responsibilities you have to compromise
with the system knowing full well that the system doesn't work for
everybody. This means everybody has to get what he can within decency's
limits – which can be stretched when needed to assure a little more security.
What I have to do now is get mine, inside the system, and forget I ever
worked for the CIA. No, there's no use trying to change the system. What
happened at the Plaza of the Three Cultures is happening all over the world
to people trying to change the system. Life is too short and has too many
delights that might be missed. At thirty-three I've got half a lifetime to
enjoy them.
Notes:
[1] La Distribucion del Ingreso en America Latina, Naciones Unidas, New
York, 1910, based on official Mexican statistics of the mid-1960s.
Part Five
Mexico City January 1970
I begin again after a year of great disappointment and sense of failure. My
hopes for a new start and a future in Mexico were clouded with the failure
of my marriage plans, and I am unsure of my direction. The reasons are a
complex series of mistakes, perhaps even unrealistic hopes from the
beginning, but with results too damaging to overcome. For now I continue
to pick up the pieces and try to arrange them in a stable pattern.
I am also unsure of the work I chose although I had the good fortune of
joining with a new company started by friends whom I met in the
Olympics. From the point of view of finances I've had to retrench
considerably, a distasteful process but one with definite blessings. The
prospects in this new company, which processes and markets an entirely
new product, are very encouraging and I've been given the opportunity to
buy shares. My relationships with the owners and the general manager, who
is my good friend, are excellent.
Working in commerce, however, is still as lacking in satisfaction as it was
years ago, and I have decided to enter the National University of Mexico
for an advanced degree. Perhaps I will return to the U.S. to seek a teaching
career. Over the Christmas and New Year's break I also began working on
an outline for a book on the CIA. This would have been impossible if my
plans had succeeded, but the way is now clear and may well lead to my
being forced to leave Mexico. A book describing CIA operations might
help to illustrate the principles of foreign policy that got us into Vietnam
and may well get us into similar situations. Secret CIA operations constitute
the usually unseen efforts to shore up unjust, unpopular, minority
governments, always with the hope that overt military intervention (as in
Vietnam and the Dominican Republic) will not be necessary. The more
successful CIA operations are, the more remote overt intervention becomes
– and the more remote become reforms. Latin America in the 1960s is all
the proof one needs.
A book on the CIA could also illustrate how the interests of the privileged
minorities in poor countries lead back to, and are identified with, the
interests of the rich and powerful who control the U.S. Counter-insurgency
doctrine tries to blur these international class lines by appeals to nationalism
and patriotism and by falsely relating movements against the capitalist
minorities to Soviet expansionism. But what counter-insurgency really
comes down to is the protection of the capitalists back in America, their
property and their privileges. U.S. national security, as preached by U.S.
leaders, is the security of the capitalist class in the U.S., not the security of
the rest of the people – certainly not the security of the poor except by way
of reinforcing poverty. It is from the class interests in the U.S. that our
counter-insurgency programmes flow, together with that most fundamental
of American foreign policy principles; that any government, no matter how
bad, is better than a communist one – than a government of workers,
peasants and ordinary people. Our government's support for corruption and
injustice in Latin America flows directly from the determination of the rich
and powerful in the U.S., the capitalists, to retain and expand these riches
and power.
I must be careful to speak little of my ideas for the book. Jim Noland
replaced Win Scott as Chief of Station here when Scott retired last
September. Scott opened an office – in his old profession as an actuary. I
imagine that he continues to work for the Agency though now on contract,
because his knowledge and experience in Mexico, and his vast range of
friends, are too valuable to lose. This is not the time for the Agency to learn
of my intentions.
Mexico City June 1970
Another failure which is difficult to understand. Last week I spoke to four
editors in New York in the hope of getting a publishing contract and an
advance to finish the book on the CIA. Unfortunately those editors mostly
wanted a sensationalist expose approach – divorced from the more difficult
political and economic realities that give the operations meaning.
I'm not sure what to do now except begin again, reorganising the material
and-trying to write more clearly. Perhaps I should try more modestly with a
magazine or newspaper article on our operations to keep Allende out of the
Chilean Presidency in 1964 – he's running again right now and maybe
exposure of the 1964 operations could help him. The trouble is that people
may not believe me – in New York I felt the editors weren't really certain
that I'm who I say I am.
The bad part of the New York trip is that I left copies of my material there,
and despite assurances by the editors I'm afraid the Agency may learn of my
plans for a book. One word by the station to the Mexican service and I get
the one-way ride to Toluca – except it's a lonely way to go, disappearing
down one of those canyons. In a few weeks the classes at the National
University begin and I'll just have to hope no one finds out about me –
neither the Agency nor the UNAM people. It's discouraging to be isolated
like this but the renewed bombing in North Vietnam and the inability of the
Nixon administration to admit defeat, coupled with the Cambodian
invasion, have strengthened my determination to start again. The killings at
Kent State and Jackson State show clearly enough that sooner or later our
counter-insurgency methods would be applied at home.
Mexico City January 1971
Recent months have brought important decisions and perhaps at last I am
finding the proper course. Behind these decisions have been the
continuation of the Vietnam War and the Vietnamisation programme. Now
more than ever exposure of CIA methods could help American people
understand how we got into Vietnam and how our other Vietnams are
germinating wherever the CIA is at work.
I have resigned from my friends' company, and my sons are back in
Washington – although I continue at the University. I sent the children for
Christmas only but feared Janet would go back on her agreement that they
return. When she did just that I relented without much choice – in any case
they will have a better school and will learn English for a change. I, too,
may leave Mexico if I can get financial support because my new plan for
the book requires research materials unobtainable here.
I have decided now to name all the names and organisations connected with
CIA operations and to reconstruct as accurately as possible the events in
which I participated. No more hiding behind theory and hypothetical cases
to protect the tools of CIA adventures. The problem now will be
documentation. I have also decided to seek ways of getting useful
information on the CIA to revolutionary organisations that could use it to
defend themselves better.
The key to adopting increasingly radical views has been my fuller
comprehension of the class divisions of capitalist society based on property
or the lack of it. The divisions were always there, of course, for me to see,
but until recently I simply failed to grasp their meaning and consequences:
adversary relationships, exploitation, labour as a market-place commodity,
etc. But by getting behind the liberal concept of society, that concept that
attempts to paint out the irreconcilable class conflicts, I think I have grasped
an understanding of why liberal reform programmes in Latin America have
failed. At the same time I have seen more clearly the identity of interests of
the classes in Latin America (and other underdeveloped areas) with the
corresponding classes in the U.S. (and other developed areas).
The result of this class conception, of seeing that class identity comes
before nationality, leads to rejection of liberal reform as the continuous
renovating process leading step by step to the better society. Reform may
indeed represent improvement, but it is fundamentally a manoeuvre by the
ruling class in capitalist society, the capitalists, to allow exploitation to
continue, to give a little in order to avoid losing everything. The Alliance
for Progress was just this kind of fraud – although it was heralded as a
Marshall Plan for Latin America that would permit, indeed encourage, a
Latin American New Deal to sweep through the region behind the
leadership of liberals like Betancourt, Haya de la Torre, Kubichek and
Munoz Marin.
But the Alliance for Progress failed as a social reform programme, and it
failed also to stimulate sufficient per capita economic growth, partly
because of high population growth and partly because of slow growth in the
value of the region's exports. These two factors, combined with rising
consumption by upper and middle classes, provided less for the investments
on which growth must be founded.
Result? The division in Latin American society widened between the
modern core, dependent largely on the external sector, and the marginalised
majority. By 1969 over half the people in the labour market were
unemployed or underemployed. Where progress occurred in education,
health care and housing it accrued mostly to the core societies in cities.
Flight to cities by rural unemployed continued with the cities unable to
absorb them productively. The vicious circle of small internal markets and
lack of internal growth momentum also continued.
Particularly in countries like Brazil, where economies have grown rapidly,
wealth and income have tended to even greater concentration. Latest figures
of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) show that the
poorest 20 per cent of the Latin American population now receive only 3.1
per cent of total income and that the entire lower 50 per cent receives only
13.4 per cent of total income. The upper 5 per cent income bracket, on the
other hand, receives 33.4 per cent of total income. The contrast between the
high 5 per cent and the lower 50 per cent of the population according to
ECLA rests on the dominance of the entrepreneurial class – the capitalists –
in the upper 5 per cent whose extraordinary income results largely from
distribution of profits which could be reinvested instead of being consumed.
In Mexico, for example, 60 per cent of the income of the top 5 per cent is
dividends, in El Salvador 80 per cent, in Argentina 85 per cent. Most
important, income of the high 5 per cent is growing more rapidly than the
middle- and lower-income levels – thus aggravating income imbalance still
more. The assumption, therefore, that economic growth under the Alliance
for Progress would result in higher standards of living for the poorer half of
the population is now demonstrated to have been false.
Land-reform programmes have also failed. During the 1960s virtually every
country in Latin America began some programme to reform restrictive,
precarious and uneconomical tenure systems – long accepted as the most
serious structural cause of imbalance in wealth and income. But with the
exceptions of Cuba, Peru and Chile the impulse has been lost and little
progress made where the bulk of the potential income-producing resources
lies. Concentration continues: the upper 1.8 per cent of the rural income
scale holds more than 50 per cent of the farmland while the small
landholders who number 25 per cent of the farm population hold only 2.4
per cent of farmland.
During these past ten years, while Latin American countries failed to
establish more equitable distribution of land, wealth and income,
considerable success could be claimed in counterinsurgency – including
propaganda to attract people away from the Cuban solution as well as
repression. As part of the counterinsurgency campaign, the Alliance for
Progress in the short run did indeed raise many hopes and capture many
imaginations in favour of the peaceful reform solutions that would not
fundamentally jeopardise the dominance of the ruling capitalist minorities
and their system. Since the 1960s however, as the psychological appeal of
peaceful reform diminished in the face of failure, compensatory measures
have been increasingly needed: repression and special programmes, as in
the field of organised labour, to divide the victims and neutralise their
leaders. These measures constitute the four most important counter-
insurgency programmes through which the U.S. government strengthens the
ruling minorities in Latin America: CIA operations, military assistance and
training missions, AID Public Safety programmes to help police, and trade-
union operations through ORIT, the International Trade Secretariats and the
AIFLD – all largely controlled by the CIA. Taken together these are the
crutches given by the capitalist rulers of the U.S. to their counterparts in
Latin America in order to obtain reciprocal support against threats to
American capitalism. Never mind all those marginals – what's good for
capitalists in Latin America is good for capitalists in the USA. A liberal
reform programme like the Alliance for Progress is a safety-valve for
capitalist injustice and exploitation – as the frontier served for release and
escape from oppression in American cities during the last century. Such a
programme is only what the ruling-class will allow by way of redistribution
during a time of danger to the system as a whole – something that runs
against the current and the inherent drive to concentrate wealth and political
power in ever fewer hands. Once the sense of urgency and danger fades, so
also the pressure on the safety-valve declines and the natural forces for
accumulation recuperate, soon wiping out the relative gains that the
exploited obtained through reform. Reforms are temporary palliatives that
can never eliminate the exploitative relationship on which capitalism is
based.
Increasingly, as the oppressed in capitalist society comprehend the myth of
liberal reform, their ruling minorities have no choice but to increase
repression in Order to avert socialist revolution. Eliminate CIA stations,
U.S. military missions, AID Public Safety missions and the 'free' trade-
union programmes and those minorities would disappear, faster perhaps,
than they themselves would imagine.
My security situation is the same, although I am puzzled that the CIA does
not seem to have discovered that I am writing, or if they know, why they
haven't visited me. John Horton is now Chief of Station here, and others
with whom I served at other stations have been assigned here although they
have shown no interest in me. Through friends I have sent copies of my
new outline to a publisher in Paris – perhaps at last I will get some
encouragement.
Mexico City March 1971
A quick trip to Montreal for conversations with a publisher's representative
has given me new hope for both financial and research support. Although
my outline and written material are acceptable, the problem remains where
to find the information needed to reconstruct the events in which I
participated in order to show precisely how the Agency operates. We
discussed Paris or Brussels after agreeing that for security reasons
anywhere in the U.S. would be unwise. We also discussed Cuba, where
possibly the research materials could be found and even research assistance
arranged.
I said I would be fearful of going to Cuba for several reasons: my past work
against Cuba and communism, possible Soviet pressures, my reluctance to
engage in sessions for counter-intelligence ploys, problems with the CIA
afterwards. Mostly, I suppose, I am fearful that if the CIA learned that I had
gone to Cuba they would begin a campaign to denigrate me as a traitor. As
my hope is to return as quickly as possible to the U.S. after finishing, I
would be increasing the odds for prosecution for publishing secrets if I had
gone to Cuba.
There are some advantages, however, in going there. First, the security
situation vis-a-vis CIA would be better and if the research materials are
available I could work more calmly and faster. Moreover, in Havana I could
arrange to get information on the CIA to interested Latin American
revolutionary organisations through their representatives – efficiently and
securely. Then, too, I would have the chance to see first-hand what the
Cuban Revolution has meant to the people and what their problems are.
Such a trip is something I thought would be possible only after I finished.
After sleeping on the idea I agreed that I would go to Cuba if the trip can be
arranged. Presumably the book will have to be politically acceptable to the
Cubans and the research materials available. If I do not go to Cuba I will go
to Paris to finish so my security situation will be improved in any case. At
present I will say nothing, and hope that the CIA doesn't get wind of these
plans.
Paris August 1971
Great leaps of progress but so much work remains. In May I went to
Havana to discuss the research materials needed, and they agreed to assist
with what they have available – which appears to be a good deal. They also
invited me to stay there to finish as much as possible, which I accepted.
However, as I was committed to visit my sons in Washington, I returned to
Paris for conversations with the publisher and then went to the U.S. for two
weeks with the boys. I have returned to check availability of research
materials here and will proceed shortly to Havana.
While in Cuba I travelled for several weeks around the island visiting a
variety of development projects in agriculture, livestock, housing, health
and education. The sense of pride and purpose evident in the Cubans is
impressive. My worries about going to Cuba were unfounded and were
more than replaced by fears of returning to the U.S. to see my sons. I
shouldn't have returned, because I had gone to Cuba openly, but strangely I
must have eluded the travel control – or the system failed to identify me in
time. I wonder if my luck will make the Cubans suspicious.
Havana October 1971
I begin to wonder whether writing this book was such a good idea. I have
found considerable material to refresh my memory and to reconstruct
events, and I have written a respectable number of pages. Trouble is that I'm
running far afield into matters that are peripheral to my CIA work. At the
same time the material here is more limited than I had thought, and I may
have to risk returning to Mexico and South America to continue the
research. In any case I will return next month to Paris to continue there. My
mood is gloomy as I feel disorganised and still quite far from having a
presentable book. The events I want to describe get further into history each
day – and each day the sense of urgency to finish quickly gets stronger.
Aside from specific information for reconstructing events, I have found here
a number of excellent economic reports and essays on Latin American
problems and their roots in U.S. exploitation of the region. One report by
the Organisation of American States describes clearly how the real
beneficiary of the Alliance for Progress was the U.S. economy rather than
the Latin American economies. This report[1] recognizes the failure to make
substantial beginnings in land reform and income redistribution – similarly
the failure of foreign aid and private investment to stimulate accelerated
economic growth which the report projects as the key to integration of the
masses.
The functioning of the external sectors of Latin American economies
(excepting Venezuela as a special case) during these ten years demonstrates
how these economies have supported the U.S. standard of living to the
detriment of the Latin American people: Americans, in other words, can
thank Latin American workers for having contributed to our ease and
comfort. It is the external sector that counts because exports and foreign aid
determine how much machinery and technology can be imported for
economic growth, and during the past ten years the external sectors of Latin
American economies failed to generate adequate growth.
From 1961 to 1970 Latin America paid out to other regions, mostly to the
U.S., a little over 20 billion dollars, practically all in financial services
(royalties, interest and repatriated profits to foreign capital). About 30 per
cent of this potential deficit was offset by export surpluses, while the
remaining 70 per cent was paid through new indebtedness, new private
foreign investment and other capital movements. The new indebtedness,
representing as it does new costs for financial services, raised still higher
the proportion of export earnings required for repatriation of royalties,
interest and profits to foreigners, mostly U.S., thus decreasing amounts
available for investment.
During these ten years private foreign capital provided new investment of
only 5.5 billion dollars while taking out 20 billion dollars. The lion's share
went to U.S. investors whose investment, which averaged about 12 billion
dollars in value, returned about 13 billion dollars to the U.S. Without the
loans and grants from the U.S. under the Alliance for Progress, Latin
America would have had to devote about 10 per cent more of its export
earnings to the services account so that 'fair return' on investment could be
satisfied. Otherwise a moratorium or some other extreme measure would
have been necessary – hardly conducive to new credit and investment.
The Alliance for Progress has been, in effect, a subsidy programme for U.S.
exporters and private investors – in many cases the same firms. For Latin
America this has meant a deficit in the external sector of about 6 billion
dollars that limited the importation of equipment and technology needed for
faster economic growth – the deficit compensated by new indebtedness. For
the United States this has meant a return to private investors of about five
dollars for every dollar sent from the U.S. to Latin America during the
period, plus a favourable trade balance, plus billions of dollars in loans that
are earning interest and will someday be repaid. In other words Latin
America through the Alliance for Progress has contributed to the economic
development of the United States and has gone into debt to do it. No
wonder we prop up these governments and put down the revolutionaries.
In contrast to the myth of the Alliance for Progress, which ensures that the
gap between the U.S. and Latin American economies will grow, the
interesting alternative does not assume that economic growth is the
determinant for integration of the marginalised majority. Based on a
distinction between economic growth and social development, the
revolutionary solution begins with integration. The Cuban position paper
for this year's sessions of ECLA, entitled Latin America and the Second
United Nations Decade for Development, views social integration through
structural changes in institutions – revolutionary change rather than reform
– as the condition for development. Economic growth alone, with benefits
concentrated in the modern core minority, cannot be considered as national
development because the whole society doesn't participate. Institutional
change, social integration and economic growth is the revolutionary order
of priorities rather than economic growth, reform and eventual extension of
benefits to the marginals – little by little so as not to affect the wealthy.
The institutional changes: first, the land tenure system must be altered to
break the injustices and low productivity resulting from the latifundia-
minifundia problem. Second, the foreign economic enterprises must be
nationalised so that the product of labour is used for national development
instead of being channelled to shareholders in a highly-developed, capital-
exporting country. Third, the most important national economic activities
must come under state control and be subjected to overall development
planning with new criteria for marketing, expansion and general operations.
Fourth, personal income must be redistributed in order to give purchasing
power to the previously marginalized. Fifth, a real working union between
government and people must be nurtured so that the sacrifices ahead can be
endured and national unity strengthened.
During this early period of institutional change, attained with few
exceptions, in the Cuban view, through armed struggle, the basic problems
of priorities emerge: immediate development of social overhead projects in
health and education v. expansion of consumption of the formerly
marginalised v. investment in infrastructure. The redistribution of income,
new costs of social projects, and increased internal consumption leave even
less productive capacity for re-investment than before. High demand causes
inflationary pressures and black markets, while rationing is necessary to
assure equity in distribution.
The only source of relief to offset the investment deficit, according to the
Cubans, is foreign aid. Aggravating the development problem is the exodus
of managers and professionals who join the overthrown landed gentry and
upper middle classes in seeking to avoid participation in national
development by fleeing to 'free' countries. Another drain on investment is
the obvious need to maintain oversized military forces to defeat domestic
and foreign counter-revolutionary forces.
The romantic stage of the revolution ends, then, as the realities of the long
struggle for national development take root. Internally the revolution calls
for ever-greater productivity, particularly in exports, so that dependence on
external financing can be kept as low as possible. Nevertheless, years will
pass before economic growth will reach the point of decreasing reliance on
foreign aid. Sacrifice and greater effort are the order of the day, and neither
can possibly result if the producers – the workers, peasants and others – fail
to identify in the closest union with the revolutionary government. Mistakes
will be made, as every Cuban is quick to admit, but there can be no doubt
that national development here is well underway and accelerating.
In Cuba the people have education, health care and adequate diet, while
long strides are being made in housing. When one considers that over half
the population of Latin America, over 150 million people, are still deprived
of participation in these minimal benefits of modern culture and technology,
it becomes clear that the only country that has really attained the social
goals of the Alliance for Progress is Cuba.
I still have no indication that the CIA knows I am writing this book or that I
have come to Cuba. During recent months I have tried to follow the growth
of the Frente Amplio in Uruguay in preparation for the national elections
next month. The situation is so ready for election operations by the
Montevideo station that I have yielded to the compulsion to denounce this
possibility. I wrote a letter to Marcha in Montevideo describing some of the
standard covert-action operations and suggesting that the Agency may well
be involved right now in operations against the Frente and in support of
candidates of the traditional parties. If Marcha publishes even part of it, any
doubts about my intentions on the part of the CIA must disappear.
Paris January 1972
The letter to Marcha was a mistake. A couple of days after Christmas,
while resting before dinner with my sons – they came for the vacation
period – we had a knock at the door and who should appear but Keith
Gardiner, an old JOT and OCS colleague who spent some years in Brazil
during the 1960s. I was unprepared for a visit from the CIA and I agreed,
because my children live near him and play with his children, to accompany
him to dinner. On leaving our hotel he disappeared for a few moments in
order, he said, to release a colleague who was standing by in case I had
received him in an unfriendly manner.
After dinner I agreed to speak privately to him. He surprised me with a
machine copy of what Marcha had published of my letter, adding that Mr.
Helms wants to know just what I think I am doing. Not yet knowing that
my letter to Marcha has been published, I decided to develop a bluff that
might convince the Agency that there is nothing they can do to stop
publication of the book. I told Keith that I have completed an over-sized
draft that I am now editing down to appropriate size – the truth being that I
have completed less than one-third of my research.
Gardiner admitted that the Paris station (Dave Murphy, former Chief of the
Soviet Bloc Division, is Chief of Station here now) located me through the
French liaison service. Pointedly suggesting that I am being manipulated by
the Soviets through my publisher, he said the Agency's chief concern is
exactly what I have revealed in material already submitted or discussed –
which I refused to talk about. I assured Keith, however, that I will be
making no damaging revelations and will submit the final draft for approval
before publication. On the Marcha letter he denied that the Montevideo
station had engaged in any election operation, but he said the Bordaberry
campaign (Bordaberry, a former Ruralista leader, won, running as a
Colorado) received large infusions of Brazilian money – the role of the
Brazilian military dictatorship as surrogate for U.S. imperialism in South
America was also evident in the Bolivian rightist military coup a few
months ago.
Gardiner told me that in September of this year he will enter the University
of Wisconsin for a Master's Degree in Latin American studies – the first
time a DDP operations officer has been sent for higher university study that
either of us can remember. Then, again pointedly, he asked if I might reveal
his name so as to expose him at the university. I assured him I wouldn't and
suggested that while studying he keep in mind the possibility of joining the
fight against the CIA and American imperialism. After all, why be a secret
policeman for U.S. capitalists when the system itself is disappearing?
Not knowing to what ends the French service will go to please the Agency,
I feared after meeting Keith that I might be deported under some pretext on
a flight having New York as its first stop. So the next day I took the boys to
Spain for the final week before their return to school. Now I continue here,
and I must be careful to avoid provocation while finishing as fast as I can. I
don't know if my bluff will work or whether the French service or the
Agency will take action against me. I shouldn't have written the letter to
Marcha.
Paris August 1972
Events in the past three months have taken unfavourable turns, and I am
fearful that the CIA is now closing in. My money has run out and I am
living on small donations from friends, street surveillance has forced me to
live in hiding, research still pending in Cuba was cancelled, I still cannot
find the information I need, and people \Who have befriended me and on
whom I am depending show frequent signs of being infiltrators.
In May I went to Havana again for discussions on research left from last
year, and on additional needs that have arisen since. For reasons I fail to
understand there is a lack of confidence in my intentions about the book's
political content. As a result, research I left pending with them last year has
not been done – the same as cancellation if I have to do it myself. Very
disappointing although understandable – the Cubans wouldn't want to be
embarrassed by a politically unacceptable book, and political content is
something that must come at the end, after the research is finished.
In June my publisher's advance ran out, and in order to get another advance
I would have had to amend the contract to allow for publication first in
France. It may be chauvinism, but as I am seriously criticising American
institutions, I'm determined to make every effort for publication there first,
or at least simultaneously with publication elsewhere. I couldn't accept the
amendment and I am depending on a few friends for sustenance.
A few days after returning from Cuba I suddenly began to recognise street
surveillances in Paris, which I suspect may be the French service – possibly
at CIA request. But being unsure of the sponsorship and purpose of the
surveillance, I went to live secretly at the studio of a friend, Catherine, who
agreed that I could stay there until the problem is resolved.
About the same time as the surveillance began I was befriended by several
Americans, two of whom display excessive curiosity and other indications
that suggest they may be CIA agents trying to get close to me for different
purposes. One of these, a supposed freelance journalist named Sal Ferrera,
claims to write for College Press Service, Alternative Features Service and
other 'underground' organisations in the U.S. As a means to get some
financial relief I agreed to an 'interview' with Salon my work in the CIA
which he will try to sell. Meanwhile he gives me small loans and tries to
find out where I am living. With Sal I met Leslie Donegan who claims to be
a Venezuelan heiress, graduate of Boston University and currently studying
at the University of Geneva. At Sal's suggestion I discussed the book and
my financial situation with Leslie and allowed her to keep copies of the
manuscript to read over a weekend. She agreed to finance me until I finish –
right now I am rushing to prepare what I have written so far, for
presentation to an American publisher who will be here in early October.
Sal is also helping – he obtained a typewriter for me when I had to turn in
my hired one for the deposit. Strangely, he refused to tell me where he got it
– only that it's borrowed and that I may have to give it back quickly when
the owner returns from London.
I shouldn't have allowed Leslie to read the manuscript, nor should I
continue associating with either her or Sal. However, I need the 'loans' they
are giving me in order to survive until getting the contract with the
American publisher in October. If indeed they are working for the CIA,
relatively little harm is done because the cryptonyms and pseudonyms I
have used will confuse, and I have assured them both that I do not intend to
reveal true names – just as I did with Gardiner. I have also hidden away
copies and preserved my notes so that the unfinished portions could be
finished by someone else.
Leslie tried to persuade me to accompany her to Spain, but I begged off in
order to work with Therese – another friend who is typing the manuscript
for presentation to the American publisher, and who is being paid by Leslie.
I certainly wouldn't go to Spain at Leslie's invitation. If she is working for
the CIA they may have planned a dope plant with the cooperation of the
Spanish service to get me put on ice for a few years. Under Spanish-style
justice prisoners can probably be kept from writing books. If my suspicions
about these two are ever confirmed, it will be ironic that the CIA, while
trying to follow my writing and set a trap, actually financed me through the
most difficult period.
Of all these recent problems the worst is that I haven't had the money for
the boys to come for the summer. By Christmas, when they have their next
vacation, a year will have passed without seeing them. Nevertheless, I'm
sure that in October I'll get new financial support so that they can come in
December. On no account can I return to the U.S. until I finish. After
meeting with the publisher in October I'll go to London for final research at
the British Museum newspaper library – they have all the newspapers from
Quito, Montevideo and Mexico City for the periods when I was at those
stations, and I will be able to reconstruct the most important operational
episodes accurately. These weeks are black. I am very unsure of what may
happen.
Paris 6 October 1972
How is it possible? I cannot believe that somewhere in the five or six
hundred pages I've written, this editor couldn't see a book. Or if he could,
perhaps he thinks I'm a bad risk. What he wants is drama, romance and
glorification of what I did. When he left two days ago for Orly he barely
showed any interest.
One can force a positive attitude at times, but to hit a new low after three
years has its effects. Nevertheless I continue. Yesterday I began to record on
tape the essential information that I can remember on what remains of the
book in this version. These are descriptions of operations that I knew of or
participated in and that will serve as illustrations. This is easily the most
important part and will include eighty to ninety episodes that I will
reconstruct from press reports in London, adding our role. By the end of
next week the tapes will be finished, and I'll store copies in a safe place. The
following week I'll go to Brussels for a short visit with my father who will
be running through, and from there to London.
The CIA has been active in recent months trying to bring pressure. In
September the General Counsel visited my father in Florida, and also Janet,
to express Helms's concern over the book and my trips to Cuba. He also left
copies of the recent court decision holding former CIA employees to the
secrecy agreement and requiring submission of manuscripts for approval
prior to publication. Sorry, but the national security for me lies in socialism,
not in protection of CIA operations and agents.
Just after the General Counsel's visit to Janet I received a letter from my
oldest son – almost eleven now – telling me of the visit:
Hi,
I wanted to tell you that a man from the government came to talk to mom
about you, but she did not say anything except your address. What they told
her is that they wanted to pay you money to stop and that they would offer
another job (the job I'm not certain about).
I went to a telephone at the University of Paris where everyone calls
overseas without paying – my son told me he had overheard the
conversation while hiding after having been told to go away. The address
doesn't matter because it's Sal's – he's been getting my mail since May so
that I can keep Catherine's studio secret. In order to keep money coming
from Leslie and Sal during these final weeks I have kept up the fiction of
following through with a team effort in London. They have both agreed to
accompany me there – Sal will transcribe the tapes and Leslie will help with
newspaper research at the British Museum. If I can get support in London
I'll break with them completely but meanwhile I need their help. Today at a
previously arranged meeting Leslie brought me a used typewriter that she
bought only minutes before to replace the one Salient me last July.
Apparently the owner of the borrowed typewriter called at Sal's and angrily
demanded the immediate return of his machine. So I had to rush back to
Catherine's studio for the borrowed typewriter which I returned right away
to Sal. I don't need the one Leslie bought because I'm making the
recordings, so I left it at Therese's apartment there in the Latin Quarter
where Leslie gave it to me.
Little things about Sal and Leslie keep me suspicious. Often after pre-
planned meetings with them I pick up surveillance and they continue to
press me about where I'm living. I must hurry to finish the tapes – anyone
would be able to use them to finish the research and the book. Things can
only get better from now on.
Paris 14 October 1972
Today my doubts about Sal and Leslie were resolved in the case of Leslie,
completely, and in the case of Sal, almost. It began two days ago over pizza
when Leslie gave me money for the trip to Brussels and London. When she
asked how I like the typewriter she bought me, I told her I haven't used it
because of the recordings – adding that I left it at Therese's apartment. She
seemed hurt that I had left it there, particularly as Therese never locks her
apartment. Afterwards when Sal and I were alone, he said Leslie was very
angry that I had left the typewriter with Therese, and, that if it disappears
(Therese has already had several intrusions), Leslie will stop financing me.
Without reflecting properly I took the typewriter from Therese's apartment
to Catherine's studio, although as usual I went through my counter-
surveillance routine. I placed it under the table where I work and this
afternoon after finishing the last tape I went out to buy a bottle of beer.
When I returned I noticed a man and woman standing in front of Catherine's
door, looking as if they had just knocked. As I approached the door,
however, they backed away and began to embrace. I knocked and Catherine
opened, laughing as she noticed the embrace in the dark hallway.
On glancing back at the couple with their full coats and large travel bags, I
suddenly realised what was happening. After closing the door I took
Catherine aside and whispered that the man and woman were probably
monitors of a bugging operation to discover where I am living. She said she
saw a hearing-aid in the ear of the man, which suggested that the irritating
beeps causing interference on my radio over the past two days were the
signal being monitored.
Catherine followed the couple down the steps to see where they went, and
in their confusion they went all the way to the ground floor where the
doorway is always locked with a key. This building, only a block from the
Seine, has its regular entrance on the side away from the river and up the
slope – corresponding to the third or fourth floor up from the ground floor
where the monitors went. As they had no key they stood around for a
moment, embraced again as Catherine passed, said nothing, and began to
walk back up the stairs. Catherine, who had been watching them from the
garbage-room, came back to the studio and told me that they seemed to
have portable radios or cases beneath their coats.
Now it was clear. Since bringing the typewriter that Leslie bought for me to
Catherine's studio, I have been hearing a beeping sound on my own portable
FM radio. I paid little attention, however, because of the nearness to ORTF
and the frequent other interference I get. I reached under the table, raised
the typewriter case with the machine inside, and began to turn it. As I
turned it the beeping sound on my radio got louder and softer in direct
relation to the turning. Catherine carried it out of the building and the
beeping completely disappeared. When she returned it began again. Later I
tore open the lining of the inside roof of the case and found an elaborate
installation of transistors, batteries, circuits, wiring and antennas – also a
tiny microphone for picking up voices. The objects were all very small,
mounted in spaces cut out of a piece of 1/4-inch plywood cut exactly the
size of the case and glued against the roof. Not only was the object designed
to discover where I live through direction-finding, it appears also made for
transmitting conversations.
I shall leave for Brussels in three days and Catherine will go to the country
for a few days – there is certainly nothing they can do to her. Before leaving
I shall stay in cheap hotels in Montmartre, changing each morning so that
the police cannot find me through their registry slips. From London I will
write to Sal and Leslie telling them that I prefer to work alone from now on
– I can find some source of support for the two or three months until I
finish, Leslie is a spy, and I will know for certain about Sal when I ask him
where he got the first typewriter he lent me. Obviously that first machine
was lent as a stand-in until the bugged typewriter was ready and they could
effect a sudden switch. Leslie's feigned resentment when I left the
typewriter at Therese's apartment was the ploy to get me to take the
typewriter to where I live.
The damage may have been slight, but I've been foolish. From now on I
take no chances.
London 24 October 1972
Today, Tuesday, I arrived in London on the train from Paris. In order to
avoid carrying the manuscript and other materials to Brussels – where the
CIA might have tried to talk to me in my father's presence – I went back to
Paris to get them a d to proceed here. At the Gare du Nord this morning a
friend was waiting to tell me that on Friday Therese was arrested and taken
to an interrogation centre at the Ministry of the Interior. For several hours
she was questioned about me and the book – they know of my CIA
background and said the U.S. government considers me an enemy of the
state. They were most interested in discovering where I lived in Paris, but as
Therese didn't know she couldn't tell them. Apparently she played dumb
and was finally released. Tomorrow I will call to reassure her and to see if
there are more details.
What is interesting about the arrest is that the French have continued to help
the CIA – the surveillance and the crude opening of my correspondence
sent c/o Sal were probably done by the French. However, by Friday – the
day Therese was arrested – the CIA had known for a week where I was
living. If the French service didn't know, it was only because the station
hadn't told them – probably in order to avoid admitting that I caught the
monitors and discovered the installation in the typewriter case. After having
helped the Paris station, the French service might not like being kept on
chasing around for my hideaway for days after it was known to the CIA.
Tonight by telephone Sal also told me of Therese's arrest, adding that Leslie
'panicked' and went to Spain on Saturday. I feigned concern that she hadn't
come here as planned, but Sal said he too was going to Spain – tomorrow if
he can – in order to let things 'cool off'. I don't want them to know for sure
that I am breaking with them, not yet anyway, so I protested to Sal that he
must come here to help as planned. He insisted try at he go to Spain in order
to convince Leslie to come to London, and he will call by telephone later
this week after seeing her.
The British service was well prepared for my arrival. My name was on the
immigration check-list on the ship crossing the Channel, which caused me a
long interview and then a longer wait. I can take no chances on jeopardising
my status here. Tomorrow I must begin looking for support, as I have
money for only a few days.
London 7 December 1972
Relief at last. After calling at the International Commission for Peace and
Disarmament, a group that channels protest against U.S. crimes in Vietnam,
I was sent to several other possible sources of support, finally to the editor
who will help me finish. I now have a contract to publish here, with an
advance sufficient to carry me through to the end as well as transcription
service and other important support.
At the British Museum, moreover, I began reading the newspapers and
discovered that here is the pot of gold I've been chasing for the past three
years. In less than one week I discovered so many events in which we
participated that I have decided to read all the newspapers, day by day, from
the time I went to Ecuador until I returned to Washington from Uruguay.
The Mexico City papers will also be valuable for selected events there. The
editor accepts the added delay – this places completion from a few months
to a year or more away – but it will be worth the effort. Sometimes I feel
that I am reading the CIA files themselves, so much of what the Agency
does is reflected in actual events. I may, in fact, be able to piece together a
diary presentation to make the operations more readable.
I tried at first to live under an assumed name, more or less secretly as I had
done in Paris. But each night as I left the Museum I was trailed by
surveillance teams, and fatigue led me to give up the effort to conceal where
I was living. My mail is again being opened, quite obviously, and meetings
arranged by telephone have generated immediate surveillance once more.
At times I wonder if the surveillance is mainly for harassment, as it is so
clumsy and indiscreet, but if the British service does nothing more serious, I
shall be able to finish in calm.
In telephone conversations with Sal and Leslie in Spain, she again tried to
convince me to go there but she also refused to send me money. Sal
eventually came to London to continue helping me – not knowing, perhaps,
that I've solved the problem of support – but at our first meeting I refused
his help unless he gave me certain information. Making it clear I thought
Leslie was a spy, but without revealing how I found out, I asked Sal a series
of questions on his university background and his connections with the
underground press in the U.S. Eventually we came around to the first
typewriter he lent me, and when he continued refusing to reveal who gave it
to him (just as he had refused earlier in July) I told him we could go no
further. I can only conclude that the CIA failed to establish a proper cover
story for the first typewriter, since Sal could neither explain where it came
from nor why he refused to explain. There is a remote possibility that Sal is
the victim of an amazing chain of coincidences, but I can have nothing
more to do with him.
In spite of the recent good news there is also a gloomy side. As soon as I
had oral agreement on the new contract I telephoned the boys to tell them I
have the money for them to come at Christmas. To my dismay Janet said
she would not let them come, insisting that I go there to see them. She
knows perfectly well that I cannot risk a trip to the U.S. until I have finished
the book, so she must be cooperating with the CIA to ensure that in my
desperation to see my sons I will risk a trip back now. It won't work.
London October 1973
I hurry to finish, now more confident than ever that I really will see this
project to the end. The coup in Chile, terrible as it is, has been like a spur
for even faster work. Signs of preparations for the coup were clear all along.
While economic assistance to Chile plummeted after Allende's election,
military aid continued: in 1972 military aid to the Chilean generals and
admirals was the highest to any country in Latin America; the growth of the
CIA station since 1970 under the Chief of Station, Ray Warren; the murder
of General Schneider; the militancy of well-heeled 'patriotic' organisations
such as Patria y Libertad; the economic sabotage; the truckers' strike of
1972 with the famous 'dollar-per-day' to keep the strikers from working;
and the truckers' strike of this past June – both strikes probably were
financed by the CIA, perhaps through the International Transport Workers'
Federation (ITF), perhaps through the AIFLD which had already trained
some 9000 Chilean workers. Perhaps through Brazil. So many possible
ways. Finally the Plan Z: so like our Flores document in Quito, our
evidence against the Soviets in Montevideo, so typical of CIA black
documents. Was it placed in the Minister's office by an agent in the
Ministry? More likely the Chilean generals simply asked the station to write
Plan Z, just as our Uruguayan liaison collaborators asked us to write the
scenario for proof of Soviet intervention with trade unions in 1965 and
1966.
Brazilian participation in preparations for the coup and follow-up repression
clearly demonstrates Brazil's subordinate but key role in the U.S.
government's determination to retain capitalist hegemony in Latin America.
Brazilian exiles arrested in Chile are recognising their former torturers from
Brazilian jails, as now they are again forced to submit to such horror. What
we see in Chile today is still another flowering of Brazilian fascism.
Only a few more months and ten years will have passed since that 31 March
when the cables arrived in the Montevideo station reporting Goulart's
overthrow. Such joy and relief! Such a regime we created. Not just through
the CIA organisation and training of the military regime's intelligence
services; not just through the military assistance programmes – good for
165 million dollars in grants, credit sales and surplus equipment since 1964
plus special training in the U.S. for thousands; not just through the AID
police-assistance programme worth over 8 million dollars and training for
more than 100,000 Brazilian policemen; not just the rest of the U.S.
economic assistance programme – worth over 300 million dollars in 1972
alone and over 4 billion dollars in the last twenty-five years. Not just the
multi-lateral economic assistance programmes where U.S. influence is
strong – worth over 2.5 billion dollars since 1946 and over 700 million
dollars in 1972. Most important, every one of the hundreds of millions
of private U.S. dollars invested in Brazil is a dollar in support of
fascism.
All this to support a regime in which the destitute, marginalised half of the
population – some fifty million people – are getting still poorer while the
small ruling elite and their military puppets get an ever larger share. All this
to support a regime under which the income of the high 5 per cent of the
income scale now gets almost 40 per cent of total income, while half the
population has to struggle for survival on 15 per cent of total income. All
this to create a facade of 'economic miracle' where per capita income is still
only about 450 dollars per year – still behind Nicaragua, Peru and nine
other Latin American countries – and where even the UN Economic
Commission for Latin America reports that the 'economic miracle' has been
of no benefit to the vast majority of the population. All this for a regime that
has to clamour for export markets because creation of an internal market
would imply reforms such as redistribution of income and a slackening of
repression – possibly even a weakening of the dictatorship. All this to
support a regime denounced the world over for the barbaric torture and
inhuman treatment inflicted as a matter of routine on its thousands of
political prisoners – including priests, nuns and many non-Marxists – many
of whom fail to survive the brutality or are murdered outright. Repression in
Brazil even includes cases of the torture of children, before their parents'
eyes, in order to force the parents to give information. This is what the CIA,
police assistance, military training and economic aid programmes have
brought to the Brazilian people. And the Brazilian regime is spreading it
around: Bolivia in 1971, Uruguay in February of this year and now Chile.
Ecuador, too, has seen some remarkable events since I left. The reform
programme begun by the military junta in 1963 eventually led to the junta's
own overthrow in 1966 the early relief of the ruling class because of the
junta's repression of the left gave way to alarm over economic reforms and
finally a combined opposition from left and right, similar to the forces that
led to Velasco's overthrow in 1961. After a few months' provisional
government, a Constituent Assembly convened to form a government and
to write a new Constitution – Ecuador's seventeenth – which was
promulgated in 1967. The 1968 election provided in the new Constitution
developed into a new struggle between Camilo Ponce, on the right, and yes,
Velasco, on the ... well, wherever he happened to be. Velasco was elected
President for the fifth time, but largely because he was supported by Carlos
Julio Arosemena who had managed to recoup a considerable political
following after his overthrow.
Velasco's fifth presidency began with the familiar spate of firings of
government employees to make way for his own supporters, followed in
1970 by his closure of the Congress and assumption of dictatorial powers.
Ecuador's seventeenth Constitution had a short life, although Velasco
promised that elections would occur on schedule in 1972. Trouble was that
Asaad Bucaram, the presidential candidate everyone knew would win, is
too honest and too well known to favour the common people. (Carlos
Arizaga Vega[2] was the leading Conservative Party candidate.) After
Velasco failed to force Bucaram to stay in exile, or to prove through an
elaborate campaign that Bucaram was not really born in Ecuador (both
campaigns only strengthened Bucaram) all the traditional parties and
economic elites – and eighty-year-old Velasco himself – combined to
promote chaos and military intervention once again. In February 1972, a
few months before the elections, the Ecuadorean military leaders took over
and Velasco was overthrown for the fourth time in his five presidencies.
During the years since I left there have been no meaningful reforms to ease
the extreme injustices that prevailed when I first arrived in 1960.
Ecuador, however, after all these generations of political tragicomedy and
popular suffering has suddenly become the centre of very great international
attention. Petroleum! Ecuador this year became a major oil exporter, thanks
to discoveries in the Amazonian jungles east of the Andes. Not that these
discoveries were really so recent. It is now known that the oil was
discovered by the cartel in explorations beginning in 1920, but was kept
secret to avoid oversupply on the world market. By 1949 the petroleum
companies had been so successful in keeping the fabulous reserves secret
that Gala Plaza, then Ecuadorean President, diverted national attention from
the eastern region by describing traditional hopes for oil or other resources
in the Oriente as one great myth. At the same time, under Plaza's leadership,
Ecuador became the banana republic that it is – not surprising since Plaza
had worked for United Fruit which, with Standard Fruit, became the
dominant power for production and marketing of Ecuadorean bananas.
Meanwhile the oil companies made millions by importing petroleum.
In March 1964, just after I left Ecuador, the military junta contracted for
new exploration with the Texaco-Gulf consortium and subsequent contracts
under other governments followed. But discoveries in the late 1960s could
not be kept secret as in the past, and soon Ecuadorean reserves were being
described as equal to or greater than those of Venezuela. By 1971 all the
Oriente region and all the coastal and offshore areas had been contracted for
exploration and exploitation – in almost all cases with terms exceedingly
prejudicial to Ecuador but with undoubted benefits to the government
officials involved. All seven of the big companies got contracts, as did a
number of smaller companies, and even Japanese concerns. By mid-1972
the pipeline from the Oriente basin over the Andes and down to the Pacific
port of Esmeraldas was completed, and oil started to flow – just a few
months after the latest military takeover from Velasco. This year
Ecuadorean income from oil exports is approaching the value of all the
country's exports in 1972 when they were still dominated by bananas,
coffee and cacao. Prospects for increased production and income (800,000
to 1,000,000 barrels daily) are almost beyond imagination.
First indications from the new military government created hope that a
leftist nationalism of the Peruvian brand might channel benefits from
petroleum exports to the masses of poor most in need of help. There was
even talk of land reform and social justice and equal opportunity – familiar
themes. Soon, however, a Brazilian-lining faction within the military
leadership began to grow and struggles continue between these reactionary
forces and the progressives who favour the Peruvian model. Nevertheless
quite significant steps were taken to recover control of the petroleum
industry and to reverse the shameful sell-outs made by the military junta in
1964 and by succeeding governments.
Several former government officials were even tried for their participation
in the vast corruption connected with petroleum contracts between 1964
and 1972.
But so far the reactionary forces in the Ecuadorean government have been
able to avoid agrarian reform, while military institutions take half of all the
petroleum income – the other half being invested in electrification. Benefits
from petroleum so far are best described by AID: 'Initially, the beneficial
effects of oil are being felt mainly in the more prosperous sectors of
Ecuadorean society, while the poor half of the population remains virtually
isolated from the economic mainstream. The rural and urban poor, with an
average annual per capita income of less than eighty dollars, provide an
inadequate market to stimulate the growth of the modern sector.'
From a distance one can only imagine the struggle now under way between
left and right within the context of Ecuadorean nationalism. Some of the
forces involved, however, are evident. Brazilian support to reactionaries is
part of larger efforts to get into active exploitation of Ecuador's petroleum –
not surprising as Brazil must import 80 per cent of its oil. On the U.S. side,
while military aid was suspended because of the tuna war, the Public Safety
programme goes on – worth about four million dollars in organisation,
training and equipment. The 1972 Public Safety project for Ecuador
describes the programme's purpose: 'To assist the Government of Ecuador
to develop and maintain an atmosphere conducive to increasing domestic
and foreign investment, and the law and order necessary for a stable
democratic society, by working through the National Police.' The logic
seems odd: the military government has declared its intention to remain in
power indefinitely. The National Police enforces military rule. Therefore,
strengthening the National Police will lead to a 'stable, democratic society'.
The CIA station also continues – now larger than ever with at least seven
operations officers under Embassy cover in Quito (Paul Harwood; is now
Chief of Station) and four operations officers in the Guayaquil Consulate
(Keith Schofield is Chief of Base). By this year the AIFLD has trained
almost 20,000 Ecuadorean workers while CEOSL; continues to make
inroads against CTE dominance in the trade-union movement. In 1971
CEOSL and the International Federation of Petroleum and Chemical
Workers; established the National Federation of Petroleum and Chemical
Workers with none other than Matias Ulloa Coppiano[3] as one of the main
organizers. No question about the importance of Ecuador's petroleum
workers now.
Perhaps in months to come the military government using petroleum
income, will commit itself to fairer distribution of income, and to
programmes that will benefit the mass of the population. The reforms –
agrarian, economic and administrative – remain to be realized. Without
doubt the chance that progressive forces will prevail underlies the policy of
the Communist Party of Ecuador to support the current military
government. Perhaps the government will fall under complete domination
of its Brazilian-line faction. Perhaps it will continue without clear definition
beyond continued favouring of the already wealthy class – allowing the
petroleum bonanza to trigger extreme inflation and distorted economic
development, as in Venezuela. But if it is to take a progressive path it will
have to overcome not only the pro-Brazilians within its ranks, but also the
U.S. government programmes, not the least of which are put out by the
CIA, including AIFLD, CEOSL and other reactionary organisations. In any
case, events since I left demonstrate increasingly the triumph of those
revolutionary ideas we fought so hard to destroy. Today Ecuador is
immensely closer to the inevitable revolutionary structural changes than
when I arrived.
Events in Uruguay since 1966 have been no less interesting than in Ecuador
and considerably more revealing of the Brazilian military regime's readiness
to fulfil the role of sub-imperialist power in South America – remaining
within and supporting continued U.S. hegemony.
In March 1967, Uruguay returned to the one-man executive as approved in
the November 1966 elections. Nine months later, however, the moderate
Colorado President died and was replaced by the rightist Vice-President,
Jorge Pacheco Areco. Pacheco's four years in office were marked by
continuing inflation, continuing financial and governmental corruption, no
reforms, and failure to repress the Tupamaro movement in spite of widening
use of torture, right-wing civilian terror organisations (of the type financed
by the Montevideo station in the early 1960s), and police death-squads on
the well-known Brazilian model. The full flowering of the Tupamaro
movement during the Pacheco presidency brought long periods of state of
siege and suppression of constitutional liberties but with little success.
Brazilian official policy of strengthening conservative influence in Uruguay
– begun in 1964 by Manuel Pio Correa – resulted in the formation during
the Pacheco presidency of Brazilian-line factions, both in military
institutions and in the traditional political parties.
In the November 1971 elections Pacheco was defeated in his attempt at re-
election through constitutional amendment, but the winner was Juan Mana
Bordaberry, Pacheco's next choice after himself. There was wide belief that
the chief Blanco contender had actually won the close election, but through
fraud the presidency was given to Bordaberry – an admitted advocate of
'Brazilian-style solutions' and a prominent landowner. (In the early 1960s
Bordaberry had been a leader of the Federal League for Ruralist Action
dominated by Benito Nardone. He resigned his Senate seat in 1965 and in
1971 was running as a Colorado.)
Results of the 1971 elections indicate the remarkable growth of leftist
sentiment in recent years. In 1958 the electoral front of the Communist
Party of Uruguay received 2.6 per cent (27,000) of the total vote, in 1962
3.5 per cent (41,000), in 1966 5.7 per cent (70,000), and in 1971 –
strengthened with other groups in the Frente Amplio – 18.4 per cent
(304,000). CIA estimates of PC U membership (published by the
Department of State in World Strength of Communist Organisations) also
grew correspondingly from 3000 in 1962 to 6000 in 1964 to 20,000 in
1969. With all this and the Tupamaros, too, something had to be done.
On taking office in March 1972 Bordaberry reportedly intensified the use of
torture on Tupamaro prisoners which, in combination with errors by the
Tupamaros themselves, led to severe setbacks for the movement. By
September 1972 the Tupamaros were forced into a period of reorganisation.
Successes against the Tupamaros, however, created greater consciousness
within the Uruguayan military of the injustices and corruption against
which the Tupamaros had been fighting. Interrogations of Tupamaros led
the military to uncover more stunning corruption than ever, and the trail
began to lead back through the Pacheco regime to Pacheco himself and to
Bordaberry who had been one of Pacheco's ministers. Investigations led to
the arrest of some eighty business leaders in late 1972, and to an increasing
tendency for military intervention in the civilian government.
In February 1973 the military finally took over but kept Bordaberry in
office as chief executive, establishing a National Security Council as the
mechanism for controlling the government. The Uruguayan military
justified their intervention as necessary for rooting out corruption and
effecting agrarian, tax and credit reforms. Combating Marxism-Leninism
was another justification offered by the military – which was itself divided
among those under Brazilian influence, those favouring a leftist nationalism
of the Peruvian variety, and those favouring closer relations with Argentina
to preserve independence from Brazil. In June the Congress was closed and
Brazilian-line military leaders were clearly in control.
With the ascendancy of Brazilian influence in Uruguay during the Pacheco
and Bordaberry military governments, repression of the entire left has
reached previously unimaginable proportions. Leftist parties have been
proscribed, the National Workers' Convention outlawed, prisons overflow
with political prisoners, freedom of the press has been eliminated, and left-
wingers have been rooted out of the entire educational system. For having
covered the Chilean coup three newspapers and one radio station were
closed. The University of the Republic has been closed and the Rector and
deans of all the faculties are facing military courts. Torture of political
prisoners, already widespread under Pacheco, now seems to be equalling
Brazilian proportions.
Meanwhile, since I left Uruguay in 1966, the economic crisis has deepened
even more. Per capita economic growth during 1960-71 was zero. Inflation,
according to the government's own figures, was 47 per cent in 1971, 96 per
cent in 1972, and will reach 100 per cent this year – for 1962-72 inflation
was near 6500 per cent. The peso, in the 70s when I left, is now down to
750 officially, and to over 900 on the black market. Purchasing power of the
ordinary Uruguayan has declined 60-80 per cent in the past six years. Little
wonder that latest polls indicate that 40 per cent of the population would
emigrate if they could. In March this year it was revealed that Bordaberry
had secretly sold 20 per cent of the country's gold reserves in order to pay
foreign creditors, and he continues to pursue his admitted economic goal of
integration with the Brazilian economy.
Assistance by the U.S. government to the Pacheco and the Bordaberry/
military regime has of course not been lacking. Military aid to Uruguay
during 1967-71 (grants, surplus equipment and credit sales) totalled 10.3
million dollars and for the financial year 1972 was just over 4 million
dollars – equivalent to almost one and a half dollars for each Uruguayan.
Training of the Uruguayan military also continues with a total of over 2000
trained since 1950. Economic assistance to Uruguay through AID and other
official U.S. agencies rose from 6.5 million in 1971 to 10 million dollars
last year. The Public Safety programme also continues – worth 225,000
dollars last year with a cumulative total, since it was started by Ned
Holman; in 1964, of 2.5 million dollars. About 120 Uruguayan policemen
have been trained in the U.S., and over 700 in Uruguay, in riot control,
communications and 'investigative procedures'.
CIA support? Montevideo station officers under Embassy cover grew from
six to eight between 1966 and 1973, not to mention increases under non-
official cover or within the AID Public Safety mission. Significantly, the
Chief of Station since early this year, Gardner Hathaway, served in the Rio
de Janeiro station during 1962-5 when the Goulart government was brought
down and the military regime was cemented in power. Similarly, the Deputy
Chief of Station, Fisher Ames, served in the Dominican Republic during the
repression following U.S. military invasion. Prominent among leaders of
the Bordaberry / military government is Juan Jose Gari,[4] the old Ruralista
political-action agent who is one of Bordaberry's chief advisors and, with
Bordaberry, one of the leading opponents of the reforms mentioned but not
yet started by military leaders. Important too is Mario Aguerrondo,[5] close
liaison collaborator of the station when he was Montevideo Chief of Police
in 1958-62. He's now a retired Army general and was a leader of the
military coup in February.
Progress can also be noted in station labour operations. Since starting the
AIFLD operation in Uruguay in 1963, over 7500 workers have been
trained. This programme enabled the station to form a new national trade-
union confederation, finally replacing the old Uruguayan Labour
Confederation (CSU) that was scrapped in 1967. The new organisation,
called the Uruguayan Confederation of Workers (CUT), was formed in
1970 and is safely inside the fold of ORIT, ICFTU and the ITS. The pattern
for formation of the CUT is almost a carbon copy of the formation of the
CEOSL in Ecuador.
For the time being power lies with the Brazilian-line reactionary elements
in the Uruguayan military. As in Ecuador the chance exists that those
military officers who prefer a nationalist and progressive solution will
eventually triumph, so that some of the reforms so drastically needed can be
imposed. But as in Chile and in Brazil itself, this terrible repression only
raises the people's consciousness of the injustices and can only speed the
day for revolutionary structural transformation.
Events in Mexico have been less spectacular than in Ecuador and Uruguay
– the one-party dictatorship of necessity lacks the violent lurches of
political free-for-all and military coup – but no less indicative of rising
revolutionary consciousness. While the country's remarkable per capita
income growth (an average 3.2 per cent increase annually during 1960-71)
reached just under 800 dollars last year, the benefits continue to be enjoyed
by very few. The poorer half of the population gets only about 15 per cent
of the total income and according to the Bank, of Mexico half of the
economically active population lack job security and earn under 80 dollars
per month. A study by the National University revealed that of Mexico's
twenty-four million people of working age, 9.6 million (40 per cent) are
unemployed. As in the case of Brazil, Mexico's lack of an internal market
because of income concentration in the privileged minority has forced the
country to scramble for export markets in order to continue its economic
growth and to meet payments on its enormous foreign debt contracted for
development projects.
Surprise and alarm spread through Mexico's wealthy elite when Luis
Echeverria[6] campaigned for the presidency in 1970 on a programme for
redistribution of income, so that workers and peasants would receive a
fairer share. His intensive campaign throughout the country seemed
designed for a candidate fighting an uphill battle against an overwhelming
opposition – not altogether misleading since the opposition was the people's
apathy rather than another candidate. His reformist policies were strongly
opposed by Mexican business and industrial interests, and his new attempt
to introduce democratic procedures within the P R I intensified divisions
within the party. Although new statutes providing for greater internal
democracy were adopted at the PRI convention in 1972, Echeverria has had
scant success in trying to get a redistribution of income. Fears within the
privileged minority that reforms might dangerously weaken the whole PRI
power structure, together with resistance to the economic effect of
redistribution, have effectively prevented significant reforms from starting.
Faced with the prospect of continuing injustice and failure of reform,
Mexicans are increasingly turning to revolutionary action – and as
revolutionary consciousness and action has grown, so too has the level of
repression. The guerrilla movement in the Guerrero Mountains continues to
operate successfully against the discredited Mexican Army, in spite of the
death of its principal leader, Genaro Rojas. Bank expropriations, executions,
kidnappings and other direct action grow in intensity as urban guerrilla
movements appear in the main Mexican cities. The student movement, too,
gains new strength in spite of regular right-wing violence. Just two months
after I left Mexico another Tlatelolco-style massacre occurred when a
peaceful student march of 8,000 was attacked by some 500 plain-clothes
para-police armed with machine-guns, pistols, chains, clubs and other
weapons. The number killed was kept secret. Regular police forces were
prevented from intervening even afterwards when the thugs invaded
hospitals to prevent treatment to the injured students – roughing up doctors
and breaking into operating rooms. Reaction to this carefully planned and
officially sponsored attack caused the resignations of the Mexico City
police chief and mayor, but Echeverria's promised investigation was
predictably unsuccessful in finding those responsible.
One year later, in June 1972, dozens of students were injured when police
attacked a demonstration commemorating companions killed at the Corpus
Christi massacre. Since then repression of the student movement has been
attempted alternately by the regular police forces and by the government-
sponsored rightwing terror squads, with killings of students in August 1972
and February, May and August of this year. Two months ago the new right-
wing rector of the National University in Mexico City called in the police to
take over the campus, in order to enforce his programme to 'de-politicize'
the University. Continuing student demands for justice have brought clashes
in other university cities.
Meanwhile U.S. official support to the Mexican government and military
continues. The CIA station in Mexico City remains the largest in Latin
America. Strange that Jim Noland lasted only one year as Chief of Station
and that John Horton lasted only two – replaced by Richard Sampson (who
in 1968 replaced Horton in Montevideo and who was transferred back to
Washington not long after the Mitrione execution). Perhaps Echeverria has
refused to have any contact with the station. ORIT continues with its
headquarters in Mexico City and with the Inter-American Labour College in
Cuernavaca. Programmes in Mexico of the AIFLD also continue, and one
can assume the station's support to Mexican security services is as strong as
ever.
The gap between rich and poor grows in developed countries as well as in
poor countries and between the developed and underdeveloped countries. A
considerable proportion of the developed world's prosperity rests on paying
the lowest possible prices for the poor countries' primary products and on
exporting high-cost capital and finished goods to those countries.
Continuation of this kind of prosperity requires continuation of the relative
gap between developed and underdeveloped countries – it means keeping
poor people poor. Within the underdeveloped countries the distorted,
irrational growth dependent on the demands and vagaries of foreign
markets precludes national integration, with increasing marginalisation of
the masses. Even the increasing nationalism of countries like Peru,
Venezuela and Mexico only yield ambiguous programmes for liberating
dependent economies while allowing privileged minorities to persist.
Increasingly, the impoverished masses are understanding that the prosperity
of the developed countries and of the privileged minorities in their own
countries is founded on their poverty. This understanding is bringing even
greater determination to take revolutionary, action and to renew the
revolutionary movements where, as in Chile, reverses have occurred.
Increasingly, the underprivileged and oppressed minorities in developed
countries, particularly the U.S., perceive the identity of their own struggle
with that of the marginalised masses in poor countries.
The U.S. government's defeat in Vietnam and in Cuba inspires exploited
peoples everywhere to take action for their liberation. Not the CIA, police
training, military assistance, 'democratic' trade unions, not even outright
military intervention can forever postpone the revolutionary structural
changes that mean the end of capitalist imperialism and the building of
socialist society. Perhaps this is the reason why policymakers in the U.S.
and their puppets in Latin America are unable to launch reform
programmes. They realise that reform might lead even faster to
revolutionary awareness and action and their only alternative is escalating
repression and increasing injustice. Their time, however, is running out.
London January 1974
Six months to finish the research and six months to write this diary. If it is
successful I shall be able to support other current and former CIA
employees who want to describe their experiences and to open more
windows on this activity. There must be many other CIA diaries to be
written, and I pledge my support and experience to make them possible.
Had I found the advice and support I needed at the beginning, I might have
finished in two years rather than four, and many problems might have been
avoided. The CIA is still hoping to make me go back to the U.S. before
publishing the diary, and I now find that my desperation to see the children
was indeed what they thought might lure me back. Janet now admits that
the Agency has been asking her for a long time not to send the children so
that I would have to go there to see them. Although she refused to cooperate
and sent them here last summer, she again refused to send them for the
Christmas vacation while suggesting that I go there. Perhaps only when the
children are no longer children will my seeing them become unravelled
from the CIA.
For those who were unaware of the U.S. government's secret tools of
foreign policy, perhaps this diary will help answer some of the questions on
American domestic political motivations and practices that have arisen
since the first Watergate arrests. In the CIA we justified our penetration,
disruption and sabotage of the left in Latin America – around the world for
that matter – because we felt morality changed on crossing national
frontiers. Little would we have considered applying these methods inside
our own country. Now, however, we see that the FBI was employing these
methods against the left in the U.S. in a planned, coordinated programme to
disrupt, sabotage and repress the political organisations to the left of
Democratic and Republican liberals. The murders at Kent and Jackson
State, domestic activities of U.S. military intelligence, and now the
President's own intelligence plan and 'plumbers' unit – ample demonstration
that CIA methods were really brought home. Prior restraints on using these
methods against the 'respectable' opposition were bound to crumble. In the
early 1960s when the CIA moved to its new headquarters in Virginia,
Watergate methods obtained final institutional status.
How fitting that over the rubble of the CIA's old temporary buildings back
in Washington, the new building that rose was called 'Watergate'.
When the Watergate trials end and the whole episode begins to fade, there
will be a movement for national renewal, for reform of electoral practices,
and perhaps even for reform of the FBI and the CIA. But the return to our
cosy self-righteous traditions should lure no one into believing that the
problem has been removed. Reforms attack symptoms rather than the
disease, and 110 other proof is needed than the Vietnam War and Watergate
to demonstrate that the disease is our economic system and its motivational
patterns.
Reforms of the FBI and the CIA, even removal of the President from office,
cannot remove the problem. American capitalism, based as it is on
exploitation of the poor, with its fundamental motivation in personal greed,
simply cannot survive without force – without a secret police force. The
argument is with capitalism and it is capitalism that must be opposed, with
its CIA, FBI and other security agencies understood as logical, necessary
manifestations of a ruling class's determination to retain power and
privilege.
Now, more than ever, indifference to injustice at home and abroad is
impossible. Now, more clearly than ever, the extremes of poverty and
wealth demonstrate the irreconcilable class conflicts that only socialist
revolution can resolve. Now, more than ever, each of us is forced to make a
conscious choice whether to support the system of minority comfort and
privilege with all its security apparatus and repression, or whether to
struggle for real equality of opportunity and fair distribution of benefits for
all of society, in the domestic as well as the international order. It's harder
now not to realise that there are two sides, harder not to understand each,
and harder not to recognise that like it or not we contribute day in and day
out either to the one side or to the other.
London May 1975
After a year of increasing doubt whether this diary would ever be published
in the U.S. the way now looks clear. Had not Rep. Michael Harrington and
Seymour Hersh and others made startling revelations in the year past, the
political climate might not have permitted publication in the U.S. even now.
Not that the CIA hasn't tried to delay and suppress this work: spurious leaks
to discredit me, threats to enjoin publication, hints of expensive litigations.
Yet in the end it is the CIA that gives way as its very institutional survival is
brought into question. We already know enough of what the CIA does to
resolve to oppose it. The CIA is one of the great forces promoting political
repression in countries with minority regimes that serve a privileged and
powerful elite. One way to neutralise the CIA's support to repression is to
expose its officers so that their presence in foreign countries becomes
untenable. Already significant revelations have begun and I will continue to
assist those who are interested in identifying and exposing the CIA people
in their countries.
Probably at no time since World War II have the American people had such
an opportunity as now to examine how and why succeeding U.S.
administrations have chosen, as in Vietnam, to back minority, oppressive
and doomed regimes. The Congressional investigating committees can, if
they want, illuminate a whole dark world of foreign Watergates covering
the past thirty years, and these can be related to the dynamics within our
society from which they emerged. The key question is to pass beyond the
facts of CIA's operations to the reasons they were established – which
inexorably will lead to economic questions: preservation of property
relations and other institutions on which rest the interests of our own
wealthy and privileged minority. This, not the CIA, is the critical issue.
Notes:
[1] Analysis of the Economic and Social Evolution of Latin America Since
the Beginnings of the Alliance for Progress, Washington, 3 August, 1971.
[2] The author has no knowledge that this person is in any way connected
with the Agency at present.
[3] The author has no knowledge that this person is in any way connected
with the Agency at present.
[4] The author has no knowledge that this person is in any way connected
with the Agency at present.
[5] The author has no knowledge that this person is in any way connected
with the Agency at present.
[6] The author has no knowledge that this person is in any way connected
with the Agency at present.
 Appendix 1: Alphabetical list of individuals
An alphabetical list of individuals who were employees, agents, liaison
contacts or were otherwise used by or involved with the CIA or its
operations; and of organisations financed, influenced or controlled by the
CIA, as of the date or dates at which they are referred to in the main text,
unless otherwise indicated. In some cases, the individuals referred to may
have been "unwitting" of the CIA's sponsorship of their activities. The
CIA's involvement with the organisations whose names follow was
generally effected through key leaders of the organisation or through other
organisations controlled or influenced by the Agency. Thus only a very few
members or leaders (sometimes none) of these organisations actually knew
of their connection with the Agency. Moreover, many of the organisations
listed were publicly revealed as having connections with the CIA and some
have since severed relations with the Agency as a result. For example, the
International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) has stated that, in 1967, on
becoming aware of the ultimate source of some of its funding it took steps
to insure that no further support from the Agency was accepted. Therefore
the author wishes to underscore that none of the material in this Appendix
and in the main text should be understood as referring to the present status
of these individuals or organisations.
ACOSTA VELASCO, JORGE. Nephew of Ecuadorean President, Jose
Maria Velasco. Minister of the Treasury and Minister of Government.
Informant and political-action agent of the Quito station. 110, 127, 133,
138, 139, 170, 185, 199, 201, 203-5, 215
AGENCIA ORBE LATINOAMERICANO. Feature news service serving
most of Latin America. Financed and controlled by the CIA through the
Santiago, Chile, station. 151, 235, 358
AGRIBUSINESS DEVELOPMENT INC. (LAAD). Provided cover for
CIA officer Bruce Berckmans, q.v. 536
AGUERRONDO, MARIO. Uruguayan Army colonel and former
Montevideo Chief of Police. Liaison contact. 382, 396, 444, 492, 592
AIR AMERICA. CIA-owned airline for paramilitary operations, mainly
in the Far East. 84
ALARCON, ALBERTO. Guayaquil businessman and Liberal Party
activist. Principal agent for CIA student operations in Ecuador.
Cryptonym: ECLOSE. 130, 142, 173, 187, 208, 213, 246, 261, 299
ALBORNOZ, ALFREDO. Ecuadorean Minister of Government
(internal security). Liaison contact of the Quito station. 230, 231, 241
ALLEN, JOHN. CIA operations officer at Camp Peary training base,
formerly assigned in the Near East. 46
ALLIANCE FOR ANTI-TOTALITARIAN EDUCATION. Propaganda
mechanism of the Montevideo station. 466
ALMEIDA, WILSON. Publisher and editor of Voz Universitaria, q.v., a
university student newspaper. Propaganda agent for the Quito station.
128, 154, 298, 299
ALONZO OLIVE, RAUL. Cuban engineer in sugar industry. Member
of commercial delegation to Brazil and Uruguay. Recruited by the CIA
in Montevideo before return to Cuba. 377
AMADOR MARQUEZ, ENRIQUE. Labour and political-action agent of
Guayaquil base. Minister of Economy. 129, 141, 214, 300
AMAYA QUINTANA, ENRIQUE. Leader of the Peruvian Movement of
the Revolutionary Left (MIR), recruited in Guayaquil as a penetration
agent. Resettled by the CIA in Mexico. 268, 427, 440
AMERICAN FEDERATION OF STATE, COUNTY AND MUNICIPAL
EMPLOYEES. The US member of the Public Service International (PSI)
q.v., which is the International Trade Secretariat for government employees.
The CIA use of the PSI effected through the AFSCME.76, 293, 406
AMERICAN INSTITUTE FOR FREE LABOR DEVELOPMENT
(AIFLD). CIA-controlled labour centre financed through AID.
Programmes in adult education and social projects used as front for
covering trade-union organising activity, George Meany, q.v., President.
244-245, 251, 261, 301, 302, 306, 307, 309, 315, 358, 368, 369, 385, 473,
488, 534, 566, 592, 595
AMERICAN NEWSPAPER GUILD. Cover mechanism for funding the
Inter-American Federation of Working Newspapermen (IFWN) q.v. 169
AMES, FISHER. CIA Deputy Chief of Station in Uruguay. 592
AMPIG-1. Father-in-law of Aldo Rodriguez Camps, Cuban Charge
d'Affaires in Montevideo. CIA agent used in recruitment operation
against Rodriguez Camps. Last name: Chinea. 388
ANDERSON, JAMES E. CIA operations officer in charge of
surveillance teams in Mexico City. 533
ANDINO, JORGE. Quito hotel operator and Quito station support
agent. 270, 294
ANTI-COMMUNIST CHRISTIAN FRONT. Political-action and
propaganda organisation in Cuenca, Ecuador, financed by the Quito
station through Rafael Arizaga, q.v. 163
ANTI-COMMUNIST FRONT. Organisation financed by the Quito
station in Ambato, Ecuador, through Jorge Gortaire, q.v. 299, 236, 242
ANTI-COMMUNIST LIBERATION MOVEMENT. Propaganda
mechanism of the Montevideo station. 466
ANTI-TOTALITARIAN BOARD OF SOLIDARITY WITH THE PEOPLE
OF VIETNAM. Propaganda mechanism of the Montevideo station. 466
ANTI-TOTALITARIAN YOUTH MOVEMENT. Propaganda mechanism
of the Montevideo station. 466
ARCE, JOSE ANTONIO. Bolivian Ambassador to Montevideo and
former Minister of the Interior. Liaison contact of the La Paz station for
which routine contact established by the Montevideo station. 385, 400, 401
ARCHENHOLD, STANLEY. CIA headquarters' officer in charge of
covert action operations against Cuba. Awarded Intelligence Medal. 532
ARELLANO GALLEGOS, JORGE. Penetration agent of the Quito
station against the Communist Party of Ecuador. 481
ARGENTINE FEDERAL POLICE. Principal liaison service of the
Buenos Aires station and used for telephone-tapping and other joint
operations. Cryptonym: BIOGENESIS. 353
ARIZAGA VEGA, CARLOS. Conservative Party Deputy from Cuenca.
Quito station political-action agent. 126, 163, 175, 218, 222, 226, 239,
242, 249, 250, 257, 586
ARIZAGA, RAFAEL. Leader of the Conservative Party in Cuenca.
Quito station political-action agent and father of Carlos Arizaga Vega,
q.v. 126, 163, 177
ASSOCIATION OF FRIENDS OF VENEZUELA. Propaganda
mechanism of the Montevideo station. 466
ASSOCIATION OF PREPARATORY STUDENTS. Montevideo
secondary students organisation used by the station in student
operations. 396
AUSTIN, JUDD. U.S. citizen, lawyer in Mexico City. Processed
immigration papers of non-official cover operation officers for Mexico
City station. 535 AVAILABLE-1. Chauffeur of the Commercial
Department of the Soviet Embassy, Montevideo. Recruited by the
Montevideo station. True name and cryptonym forgotten. 430, 472
AVANDANA. Principal agent of the Montevideo station in postal
intercept operation. True name forgotten. 343, 360, 368
AVBANDY-1. An Uruguayan Army major who works for the Montevideo
station as chief of the AVBANDY surveillance team assigned to Soviet-
related targets. True name unknown. 349, 351, 354, 430
AVBANDY-4. Member of the AVBANDY surveillance team in
Montevideo and father of the team chief, also used in recruitment
operations. True name forgotten. 430
AVBLIMP-2 and 2. A husband/wife team who operate the observation
post against the Soviet Embassy in Montevideo. True names unknown.
349, 471
AVBLINKER-1 and 2. An American businessman and his wife in
Montevideo who live in the station's observation post against the Cuban
Embassy. True names and true cryptonym forgotten. 343
AVBUSY-1. Letter carrier in Montevideo. CIA agent for letter intercept
against Cuban intelligence agent. True name forgotten. 348, 402, 413, 414
AVBUZZ-1. Principal Montevideo station agent for propaganda
operations. True name forgotten. 356-58, 364, 374, 375, 380, 386, 389,
419, 425, 431, 432, 448, 457, 461, 463, 466, 485
AVCASK-1. Montevideo station penetration agent against the
Paraguayan leftist exile community. True name forgotten. 342, 343, 360
AVCASK-2. Penetration agent of the Montevideo station against the
Paraguayan United Front for National Liberation (FULNA). True name
forgotten. 342, 360
AVCASK-3. Penetration agent of the Montevideo station against the
Communist Party of Paraguay. True name forgotten. 342, 360
AVCAVE-1. Penetration agent of the Montevideo station against the
Communist Party of Uruguay. True name forgotten. 339, 341, 404, 405,
443, 452
AVDANDY-1. Montevideo station agent in the Uruguayan Foreign
Ministry. True name and cryptonym forgotten. 350, 351, 410
AVENGEFUL-5. Transcriber of the AVENGEFUL telephone-tapping
operation of the Montevideo station and sister of Mrs. Tomas
Zafiriadis, q.v. Name forgotten. 383, 399, 403, 411, 412, 416, 433, 435,
444, 450, 453, 455, 461, 470
AVENGEFUL-7. Wife of AVANDANA q.v., and Montevideo station agent
manning observation post against Cuban Embassy. U.S. citizen with OSS
service. True name forgotten. 343, 345, 382, 399, 403, 411, 412, 433, 435,
444, 450, 453, 455, 459, 461, 470
AVENGEFUL-9. Transcriber for telephone-tapping operation in
Montevideo. First name: Hana. 347, 353, 355, 360, 378, 382, 399, 403,
411, 412, 433, 435, 444, 450, 453, 455, 459, 470
AVERT-1. Montevideo station support agent who fronts for station
ownership of house next to Soviet Embassy and Consulate. True name
and cryptonym unknown. 350, 351, 388
AVIDITY-9. Employee of the Montevideo post office. CIA agent in letter
intercept operation. True name forgotten. 343, 360, 414, 437
AVIDITY-16. Employee of the Montevideo post office. CIA agent in
postal intercept operation. True name forgotten. 343, 360, 414, 437
AVOIDANCE. Courier for the Montevideo station telephone-tapping
operation. True name forgotten. 345, 346, 382, 383, 399, 443
AVOIDANCE-9. Penetration agent of the Montevideo station against
the Communist Party of Uruguay. True name forgotten. 340, 443, 452
AYALA CABEDA, ZULEIK. Minister Counsellor, Uruguayan Embassy
in Havana. Also Charge d'Affaires. CIA agent targeted against the
Cuban government. 325
BACON, JOHN. Quito Station reports officer also in charge of
Communist Party penetration agents and propaganda operations. 115,
117, 121, 124, 125, 148, 150, 157, 159, 160, 163, 177, 246, 247, 279, 280,
293
BAGLEY, TENNANT (PETE). Deputy Chief, Soviet Bloc Division, later
Chief of Station, Brussels. 486, 487
BAIRD, COLONEL MATT. CIA Director of Training. 27, 32
BANK OF BOSTON. Used by CIA as funding mechanism in Brazil. 321
BANKS, TITO. Montevideo wool dealer and support agent of the
Montevideo station. 359
BAQUERO DE LA CALLE, JOSE. Rightist Velasquista leader, Minister
of Labour and Social Welfare. Quito station agent for intelligence and
political action. 127, 134, 142, 170, 199, 235, 238
BARBE, MARIO. Uruguayan Army lieutenant-colonel and Chief of the
Republican Guard (cavalry forces) of the Montevideo Police
Department. Liaison contact of the Montevideo station. 353
BASANTES LARREA, ATAHUALPA. Penetration agent of the Quito
station against the Communist Party of Ecuador. Cryptonym: ECFONE-
3. 117, 145, 150, 165, 172, 212, 302, 303, 307, 314
BEIRNE, JOSEPH. President of the Communications Workers of
America (CWA) and Director of the American Institute for Free Labor
Development. Important collaborator in CIA labour operations
through the AIFLD and the Post, Telegraph and Telephone Workers
International (PTTI), q.v. 244
BENEFIELD, ALVIN. CIA technical officer specialising in operations
against foreign diplomatic codes. 474, 475, 476, 492
BERCKMANS, BRUCE. CIA operations officer in Mexico City under
non-official cover. 536
BERGER, MICHAEL. CIA operations officer in Montevideo. 341, 343,
359
BESABER. Agent of the Mexico City station targeted against Polish
intelligence officers under diplomatic cover. Owner of ceramics and
tourist trinket business in Cuernavaca, Polish extraction. Name
forgotten. 529
BIDAFFY-1. Penetration agent of the Buenos Aires station against the
revolutionary group of John William Cooke. True name and cryptonym
forgotten. 538, 539, 540
BRAGA, JUAN JOSE. Deputy Chief of Investigations of the Montevideo
Police Department. Close liaison collaborator of the Montevideo station.
Torturer. 352, 444, 458, 459
BRAZILIAN INSTITUTE FOR DEMOCRATIC ACTION (IBAD). Anti-
communist political-action organisation of the Rio de Janeiro station.
Used for financing and controlling politicians. 321
BRESLIN, ED. U.S. Army major and intelligence adviser to the
Ecuadorean Army. Close collaborator with the Quito station. 232, 234,
243
BROE, WILLIAM V. Chief, Western Hemisphere Division. Former Chief
of Station, Tokyo. 498, 503, 509, 541, 552
BROWN, BILL. CIA staff operations officer, specialist in labour
operations, assigned to the Panama station at Fort Amador, Canal Zone.
302 BROWN, IRVING. European representative of the American
Federation of Labor and principal CIA agent for control of the
International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), q.v. 75
BUCHELI, RAFAEL. Telephone company engineer in charge of the
Quito exchanges. Quito station agent in charge of making telephone-
tap connections. Cryptonym: ECWHEAT-1. 184, 190, 240, 264, 298
BURBANO DE LARA, MIGUEL (MIKE). Airport manager of Pan
American-Grace Airways working for the Quito station as cutout to
Luis Vargas, q.v. Cryptonym: ECACCENT.116, 246, 280
BURKE, JOHN. Quito station officer under AID Public Safety cover.
261, 262, 304, 305
BURNS, PAUL. CIA operations officer in Montevideo. Specialist in CP
penetration operations. 340, 344, 346, 347, 358, 372, 373, 383, 404
BUSTOS, CHARLOTTE. CIA officer in charge of headquarters support to
liaison and support operations in Mexico City. 499
CABEZA DEVACA, MARIO. Quito milk producer working as Quito
station agent. Cutout to Mario Cardenas, q.v. Later used for funding and
control of the Center for Economic and Social Reform Studies (CERES),
q.v. 116, 246, 247
CAMACHO, EDGAR. Stepson of Colonel Oswaldo Lugo of the
Ecuadorean National Police. Quito station agent as cutout to Lugo.
Later a transcriber for telephone-tapping operations. 212, 240, 265
CAMARA SENA, -. Brazilian Army colonel sent to Brazilian Embassy
in Montevideo as military attache: liaison contact. 366, 379, 406, 409
CANTRELL, WILLIAM. CIA operations officer in Montevideo under
cover of the AID Public Safety Office. 478, 493
CARDENAS, MARIO. Penetration agent of the Quito station against
the Communist Party of Ecuador. Cryptonym: ECSIGIL-1. 116, 117,
246, 269, 272, 280, 286, 307, 481
CARVAJAL, -. Uruguayan Army colonel and chief of military
intelligence. Liaison contact. 352, 382
CASSIDY, JOHN. Deputy Chief of Station. Montevideo. 453-55, 466
CASTRO, JUANA. Sister of Fidel Castro, used by CIA for propaganda.
387
CATHOLIC LABOR CENTER (CEDOC). Labour organisation in
Ecuador supported by the Quito station. See JOSE BAQUERO DE LA
CALLE, AURELIO DAVILA CAJAS and ISABEL ROBALINO
BOLLO.127, 235, 275, 300
CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY YOUTH ORGANIZATION. Group used for
propaganda through Aurelio Davila Cajas, q.v. 159, 166, 213
CENTER FOR ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL REFORM STUDIES
(CERES). Reformist businessman's organisation financed and
controlled by the Quito station. 246, 247
CENTER OF STUDIES AND SOCIAL ACTION (CEAS). Reformist
organisation financed and controlled by the Bogota station. 247
CHIRIBOGA. OSWALDO. Velasquista political leader who recruited
Atahualpa Basantes using 'false flag' technique. Cryptonym: ECFONE.
Later Ecuadorean Charge d'Affaires in The Hague. 117, 145, 238
CIVIL AIR TRANSPORT (CAT). CIA-controlled airline used for
paramilitary operations, mainly in the Far East. 84
CLERICI DE NARDONE, OLGA. Wife of Uruguayan President Benito
Nardone. On death of Nardone continued as leader of the Federal
League of Ruralist Action. Political contact of the Montevideo station.
358, 381
Combate. Student publication of the Montevideo station financed and
controlled through Alberto Roca, q.v. 396, 457
COMMITTEE FOR LIBERTY OF PEOPLES. An organisation used for
propaganda by the Quito station. 235
COMMUNICATIONS WORKERS OF AMERICA (CWA). U.S. trade
union used by the CIA for operations through the Post, Telegraph and
Telephone Workers International (PTTI), q.v. 76, 244, 488
CONOLLY, RICHARD L. Jr. CIA operations officer. Specialist in Soviet
operations. 430, 439, 450, 451, 453, 454, 464-66
CONTRERAS ZUNIGA, VICTOR. Labour operations and political-
action agent of the Guayaquil base. First President of the Ecuadorean
Confederation of Free Trade Union Organisations (CEOSL), q.v. 129,
141, 236, 260
COORDINATING COMMITTEE OF FREE TRADE UNIONISTS OF
ECUADOR. Formative body which eventually led to the Ecuadorean
Confederation of Free Trade Union Organisations (CEOSL), q.v., which
was financed and controlled by the Quito station. This Committee set up
by ICA labour division with assistance from ORIT, q.v. 141
COORDINATING SECRETARIAT OF NATIONAL UNIONS OF
STUDENTS (COSEC), later known as the INTERNATIONAL STUDENT
CONFERENCE. CIA-controlled and financed international student
front set up to oppose the International Union of Students.
Headquarters: Leyden. 73-74, 130, 173
COPELLO, GUILLERMO. Chief of Investigations (plain-clothes) of the
Montevideo Police Department. Liaison contact of the Montevideo
station. 352
CORDOVA GALARZA, MANUEL. Leader of the Radical Liberal Party
and Ecuadorean Sub-Secretary of Government (internal security).
Liaison contact of the Quito station. 252, 253, 264, 266, 269, 271, 274,
284, 285, 291
COURAGE, BURT. CIA training officer, specialist in judo, karate,
unarmed combat. 49
CUBAN REVOLUTIONARY COUNCIL (CRC). CIA-controlled exile
organisation whose representative in Montevideo was Hada Rosete, q.v.
364
DAVALOS, -. Quito station agent for propaganda and political action in
Riobamba. Financed through the ECACTOR project. 221
DAVALOS, ERNESTO. Ecuadorean government employee and agent of
the Quito station. 263, 272
DAVILA, CAJAS, AURELIO. Conservative Party leader. President of
the Chamber of Deputies. Quito station political-action agent.
Cryptonym: ECACTOR. 125, 127, 142-44, 155, 156, 159, 160, 166, 168,
177, 185, 200, 209, 210, 213, 215, 218, 221, 224, 231, 236, 242, 247, 257,
329
DAVIS, ROBERT. Chief of Station, Lima. 313
DEANDA, JACOBO. Technician in charge of the AVENGEFUL
telephone-tapping operation of the Montevideo station. 345, 346, 365,
411
DEAN, WARREN L. Deputy Chief of Station, Mexico City; Chief of
Station, Quito; Chief of Station, Oslo. 254, 258, 259, 261-66, 270, 271, 274,
277, 279-81, 284-86, 288, 297-99, 304, 305, 307, 310, 313-15, 394, 481
DEL HIERRO, JAIME. National Director of the Radical Liberal Party
and Ecuadorean Minister of Government (internal security). Liaison
contact of the Quito station. 253, 264, 266, 269, 271, 273, 277, 278, 284,
285, 286, 289, 291
DELOS REYES, PACIFICO. Major in the Ecuadorean National Police.
Chief of Police Intelligence and later Chief of Criminal Investigations
for the Province of Pichincha (Quito). Quito station agent. 214, 234,
248, 259, 265, 276, 284, 290, 295, 297
DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTIONARY FRONT (FRD). Cuban exile
organisation financed and controlled by the CIA. 163
DERIABIN, PETER. KGB defector in the 1950s who became a U.S.
citizen and CIA employee. 34, 530
DIAZ ORDAZ, GUSTAVO. President of Mexico and liaison contact of
the Mexico City station. Cryptonym: LITEMPO-8. 266, 274, 499, 525,
526, 554, 555, 556
DILLON, PAUL. CIA officer in charge of Soviet section in Mexico City
station. 528, 530, 551, 552
DMDIAMOND-1. Secretary-typist of the Yugoslav Embassy in Mexico
City. CIA agent. True name and cryptonym forgotten. 530
DMHAMMER-1. Yugoslav government official who defected and later
made attempts to recruit former colleagues under direction of the CIA.
True name and and cryptonym forgotten. 483
DMSLASH-1. Code clerk of Yugoslav Embassy in Mexico City. CIA
agent. True name and cryptonym unknown. 530
DNNEBULA-1. Representative of Korean CIA in Mexico City under
Korean Embassy cover. True name forgotten. Liaison collaborator of
Mexico City station. 555
DOHERTY, WILLIAM. Inter-American Representative of the Post,
Telegraph and Telephone Workers International (PTTI), q.v., and CIA
agent in labour operations. Executive Director of the American
Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), q.v. 141, 302, 306, 368
DONEGAN, LESLIE. Gave money to author in Paris in return for
access to manuscript, presumably at CIA's behest. 576, 578-82
DRISCOLL, BOB. CIA operations officer who continued working after
retirement on contract arrangement with the Mexico City station. 527
DROLLER, JERRY. Chief of the Covert Action Staff of the Western
Hemisphere Division, 498
DUFFIN, C. HARLOW, Chief of the Venezuelan Desk of Western
Hemisphere Division. A specialist on Brazil. 103, 105-106
DULLES, ALLEN. CIA Director. 23, 32
ECALIBY-1. Chauffeur of the Cuban Embassy in Quito. Quito station
agent. True name and real cryptonym forgotten. 131 ECBLlSS-1. Manager
of Braniff Airways in Guayaquil and support agent of the Guayaquil
base. Name and true cryptonym forgotten. 310
ECCLES, DR. Chief of the Junior Officer Training Program. 17, 19, 20
ECELDER. Secret printing operation for propaganda operations of the
Quito station. See JORGE, PATRICIO, MARCELO, RODRIGO and
RAMIRO RIVADENEIRA. True cryptonym forgotten.
ECHEVERRIA, LUIS. Mexican Minister of Government (internal
security) and later President. Liaison contact of the Mexico City
station. Cryptonym: LITEMPO-14. 509, 525, 526, 553, 554, 593
ECHINOCARUS-1. A penetration agent of the Guayaquil base against
the Communist Party of Ecuador. True name unknown. 128
ECJOB. Leader of a team of Quito station agents used for distribution
of station-printed political handbills and for wall-painting. True name
unknown. 125
ECLAT. A retired Ecuadorean Army officer and leader of a surveillance
and investigative team for the Guayaquil base. True name forgotten. 128
ECOLIVE-1. A penetration agent of the Quito station against the
Revolutionary Union of Ecuadorean Youth. Name forgotten. Planned to
have been infiltrated into the Communist Party of Ecuador. 117
ECOTTER-1 and ECOTTER-2. Travel-control agents of the Quito
station. True names forgotten. 122
ECSIGH-1. Mistress of Ricardo Vazquez Diaz, q.v., and chief
stenographer of the Ecuadorean military junta. Recruited by the Quito
station for political intelligence against the junta through Vazquez. True
name and true cryptonym forgotten. 300
ECSTACY-1 and ECSTACY-2. Agents of the Quito station who provided
mail for monitoring. True names forgotten as well as original cryptonyms.
121-22, 148, 216
ECUADOREAN ANTI-COMMUNIST ACTION. Name of fictitious
organisation used as ostensible sponsor of Quito station propaganda.
163
ECUADOREAN ANTI-COMMUNIST FRONT. Name used as ostensible
sponsor of Quito station propaganda. 157, 160, 163
ECUADOREAN CONFEDERATION OF FREE TRADE UNION
ORGANIZATIONS (CEOSL). National trade-union organisation
established and controlled by the Quito station. 214, 236, 237, 250, 251,
256, 260, 261, 275, 298, 300, 301, 306, 309
EDITORS PRESS SERVICE. CIA-controlled propaganda outlet based
in New York. Material placed through CIA propaganda agents in Latin
America. 380
EGAS, JOSE MARIA. Leader of the Social Christian Movement. Quito
station agent. 239, 240, 255, 259
ELSO, WILSON. Uruguayan Deputy. Leader of the Federal League for
Ruralist Action. Under development by the Montevideo station for
possible use as political-action agent. 381
Ensayos. An intellectual journal financed and controlled by the Quito
station through Carlos Vallejo Baez, q.v., and Juan Yepez del Pozo, Sr,
q.v. 169
ESTERLINE, JAKE. Deputy Chief of Western Hemisphere Division.
459, 460 497, 498
ESTRADA ICAZA, EMILIO. General Manager of one of Ecuador's
largest banks, collector of pre-Hispanic art. Guayaquil base political-
action agent. 129, 212
EUROPEAN ASSEMBLY OF CAPTIVE NATIONS. A CIA propaganda
operation. 235
FANNIN (or FANNON), LES. CIA polygraph operator. Caught in
Singapore in 1960 by local police. Ransom attempted by the CIA but
spurned by Singapore Prime Minister. 303
FEDERATION OF FREE WORKERS OF GUAYAS (FETLIG). Provincial
affiliate of the Ecuadorean Confederation of Free Trade Union
Organisations (CEOSL), q.v., and controlled by the Quito station. 275
FELDMAN, ROBERT. Mexico City station officer in charge of
penetration operations against the Institutional Revolutionary Party
(PRI) and the Mexican Foreign Ministry. 534
FENETEL. The Ecuadorean national federation of communications
workers affiliated with the PTTI and supported by the Quito station.
142, 251
FERGUSON, JIM. Training officer in the CIA Junior Officer Training
Program (JOTP, later called the Career Training Program). 17, 19, 20, 21,
27-32, 34, 97, 101
FERNANDEZ CHAVEZ, A. Montevideo correspondent of Agencia
Orbe Latinoamericano, q.v., and ANSA, the Italian wire service.
Montevideo station propaganda agent. 358, 470 FERNANDEZ,
GONZALO. Retired Ecuadorean Air Force colonel, and former attache
in London. Quito station agent as cutout to CP penetration agent. 314
FERRERA, SAL. Made efforts to divert author in Paris, believed by
author to be at CIA's behest. 575, 578-83
FIGUERES, JOSE. President of Costa Rica. Front man for CIA
operations such as the American Institute for Free Labor Development,
q.v., and the Institute of Political Education, q.v. 244
FIRST NATIONAL CITY BANK. Used by the CIA for clandestine
funding and for purchase of foreign currency. 321, 371, 382, 390
FISHER, JOSIAH (JOE). Deputy Chief, Mexico branch of Western
Hemisphere Division. 498, 499
FITZGERALD, DESMOND. Chief of Western Hemisphere Division,
later Deputy Director, Plans. 320, 366, 377, 408, 415, 460, 498, 500
FLORES, TOM. Chief of Station, Montevideo. Chief of Cuban branch in
headquarters. 337, 444, 481, 498
FONTANA, PABLO. Sub-Commissioner of the Montevideo Police and
liaison agent of the Montevideo station. 466, 486
FONTOURA, LYLE. First Secretary of the Brazilian Embassy in
Montevideo. CIA agent. 379, 409
FREE AFRICA ORGANIZATION OF COLORED PEOPLE. Propaganda
mechanism of the Montevideo station. 466
FUSONI, RAFAEL. Assistant Director of Public Relations for the
Olympic Organising Committee in Mexico City. CIA agent. 534
GANDARA, MARCOS. Ecuadorean Army colonel and member of
ruling military junta. Liaison contact of the Quito station. 295-97, 299
GARDINER, KEITH. CIA operations officer. 573, 574, 576
GARI, JUAN JOSE. Leader of the Federal League for Ruralist Action
(Ruralistas) and political advisor to Benito Nardone. Montevideo
station political-action agent. 361, 377, 381, 396, 426, 462, 592
GARZA, EMILIO. Representative in Bogota of the American Institute
for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), q.v. CIA agent for labour
operations. 306
GIL, FELIPE. Uruguayan Minister of the Interior. Liaison contact of
the Montevideo station. 361, 365, 374, 377 GILSTRAP, COMER
(WILEY). Deputy Chief of Station, Montevideo; Chief of Station, San
Salvador. 353
GOMEZ, RUDOLPH. Deputy Chief of Western Hemisphere Division;
Chief of Station, Santiago, Chile, in early 1960s, later Chief of Station,
Lisbon. 106
GONCALVES, HAMLET. First Secretary, Uruguayan Embassy in
Havana. CIA agent targeted against the Cuban government. 325, 376,
377, 380, 384, 389, 393
GOODPASTURE, ANNIE. Operations officer at Mexico City station and
assistant to Chief of Station for liaison operations. 524
GOODWYN, JACK. Director of the Uruguayan Institute of Trade
Union Education (IUES), q.v., and representative of the American Institute
for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), q.v. CIA agent. 358, 473, 488
GORTAIRE, FEDERICO. Ecuadorean Army lieutenant-colonel. Liaison
contact recruited by the Quito station through his brother, Jorge Gortaire,
q.v. 265, 288, 305 .
GORTAIRE, JORGE. Retired Ecuadorean Army colonel. Advisor to
former President Ponce and former Ecuadorean representative on the
Inter-American Defence Board in Washington. Quito station agent for
political action in Ambato. 126, 127, 174, 176, 177, 235, 236, 242, 252,
277, 288, 293, 305
GRACE, J. PETER. Chairman of W. R. Grace and Co., multi-national
company with large investments in Latin America. Chairman of the
Board of the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD),
q.v. 244
GUAYAS WORKERS CONFEDERATION (COG). Labour organisation
used by the Guayaquil base but rejected when new organisation formed
(CROCLE), q.v. 141, 260, 300
GUS. A CIA recruiting officer from the Office of Personnel, of Greek
extraction but last name forgotten. Recruited the author. 13, 14, 17
HANKE, JOHN. CIA operations officer in charge of headquarters support
for security at Punta del Este, April 1967. 536
HART, JOHN. Chief of operations against Cuba in CIA headquarters.
Former Chief of Station, Rabat. 437
HARWOOD, PAUL. CIA Chief of Station in Quito. 588
HASKINS, LLOYD. Executive Secretary of the International
Federation of Petroleum and Chemical Workers (IFPCW), q.v. CIA
agent in charge of this union. 136 HATRY, RALPH. CIA contract
operations officer in Montevideo under nonofficial cover: Thomas H.
Miner and Associates, a Chicago marketing firm. 341-43, 356, 360, 367,
368
HAUSMAN, CYNTHIA. CIA operations officer in Soviet/satellite section
in Mexico City station. 528
HELMS, RICHARD. CIA Deputy Director for Plans, later Director. 10,
503, 573
HENNESSY, JACK. Assistant Manager of the First National City Bank
(q.v.) branch in Montevideo. Used by the CIA to procure operational
currency. 372, 382
HERBERT, RAY. Deputy Chief, Western Hemisphere Division. 320, 381,
407, 459
HISTADRUT. The Israeli labour confederation, used by the CIA in
labour operations. 76
HOLMAN, NED P. Chief of Station in Montevideo, later Chief of Station
in Guatemala City. 308, 330, 342, 348, 351, 355, 358, 362, 364-M, 373,
374, 377-79, 381, 383, 387, 393-96, 400, 401, 406-9, 412, 415, 416, 424
HOOD, WILLIAM J. Chief of Operations, Western Hemisphere Division.
320
HORTON, JOHN. Chief of Station, Montevideo, later Chief of Station,
Mexico City. 407, 428, 429, 438, 452, 455, 456, 460, 461, 465, 476, 478,
483, 540, 594
HOUSER, FRED. CIA agent of dual U.S./Argentine citizenship
employed by Buenos Aires station but used for support in Montevideo
operation against the UAR Embassy. 489
HUMPHRIES, JOAN. CIA disguise technician. 430
INSTITUTE OF POLITICAL EDUCATION. Political training school for
young reformist hopefuls in Latin America run by the San Jose station.
See SACHA VOLMAN; see also JOSE FIGUERES. 419
INTER-AMERICAN FEDERATION OF WORKING NEWSPAPERMEN
(IFWN) Journalists' trade union controlled by the CIA and financed
through the American Newspaper Guild. 169
INTER-AMERICAN LABOR COLLEGE. Training school of the Inter-
American Regional Labour Organisation (ORIT) in Cuernavaca,
Mexico. Financed and controlled by the CIA. 237 INTER-AMERICAN
POLICE ACADEMY. Police training school at Fort Davis, C.Z. founded
by the Panama station. Moved to Washington DC where renamed
International Police Academy. Funded by AID but controlled by the
CIA. 262, 304
THE INTER-AMERICAN REGIONAL LABOR ORGANIZATION
(ORIT). The regional organisation of the ICFTU for the Western
Hemisphere with headquarters in Mexico City. Founded by Serafino
Romualdi, q.v., and a principal mechanism for CIA labour operations in
Latin America. 75, 76, 130, 135, 236, 237, 243, 244, 295, 302, 332, 357,
358, 364, 368, 369, 384, 385, 468, 473, 534, 566, 592, 594
INTERNATIONAL CATHOLIC YOUTH FEDERATION. Youth
organisation of the Catholic Church used by the CIA for youth and
student operations. 73
INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION OF JURISTS (ICJ). An international
association of lawyers in part indirectly financed by the CIA in the first
decade of its existence, which the Agency hoped to use against the
International Association of Democratic Lawyers. 79, 169, 238
THE INTERNATIONAL CONFEDERATION OF FREE TRADE
UNIONS (ICFTU). Labour centre set up and controlled by the CIA to
oppose the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU). Headquarters
in Brussels. 75, 76, 135, 141, 236, 237, 244, 332, 357, 368, 369, 384, 473,
592
THE INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF CHRISTIAN TRADE
UNIONS (IFCTU, later known as THE WORLD CONFEDERATION OF
LABOR). The international Catholic trade-union organisation used as a
mechanism for CIA labour operations. 76
THE INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF CLERICAL AND
TECHNICAL EMPLOYEES (IFCTE). The ITS for white-collar workers
used by the CIA for labour operations. 76
INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF JOURNALISTS. CIA-influenced
organisation used for propaganda operations. Headquarters in
Brussels. Established to combat the International Organisation of
Journalists. 78
INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF PETROLEUM AND CHEMICAL
WORKERS (IFPCW). The ITS for this industry set up originally by the
CIA through the U.S. Oil Workers International Union. 76, 136
INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF PLANTATION, AGRICULTURAL
AND ALLIED WORKERS (IFPAAW). The international trade
secretariat for rural workers. Used by the CIA for labour operations.
136, 176
INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF WOMEN LAWYERS.
Organisation used by the CIA for propaganda operations. 387
INTERNATIONAL POLICE ACADEMY. CIA-controlled police training
school under AID cover in Washington D.C. Formerly the Inter-
American Police Academy founded in Panama by the Panama station. 304,
429, 461
INTERNATIONAL POLICE SERVICES SCHOOL. CIA training school
for police in Washington under commercial cover. 461, 465, 479
INTERN ATIONAL STUDENT CONFERENCE (ISC). See
COORDINATING SECRETARIAT OF NATIONAL UNIONS OF
STUDENTS (COSEC). 73
INTERNATIONAL TRADE SECRETARIATS. A generic description of
the international trade-union organisations having as members the national
unions of workers in a particular industry. There are 15-20 ITS's most of
which have been used by the CIA for labour operations. Some have
headquarters in Europe, others in the U.S. but close relations maintained
with the ICFTU in Brussels. 75, 76, 236, 251, 358, 566
INTERNATIONAL TRANSPORT WORKERS FEDERATION (ITF). The
international trade secretariat for transport industries. Used by the
CIA for labour operations. See JOAQUIN (JACK) OTERO. 300, 301,
358, 384, 583
JACOME, FRANCINE. American married to Ecuadorean. Quito agent
who wrote cover letters to Luis Toroella, q.v., and served as transcriber and
courier for telephone-tap operation. Cryptonym: ECDOXY. 123, 145, 184,
240, 248, 265
JARAMILLO, JAIME. Velasquista leader and Quito station penetration
agent. 262, 270
JAUREGUI, ARTURO. Secretary-General of the Inter-American
Regional Labour Organisation (ORIT), q.v., in Mexico City. CIA agent.
237, 302, 364
JAUREGUIZA, -. Montevideo police commissioner in charge of
movements of non-domiciled population. Montevideo station liaison
contact. 479
JONES, DEREK. Used by Montevideo Station as support agent in
operation to break the code system of the Embassy of the United Arab
Republic (Egypt). 490
KARAMESSINES, THOMAS. Assistant Deputy Director for Plans and
later Deputy Director for Plans. 341
KAUFMAN, WALTER J. Chief of Mexico branch of Western Hemisphere
Division. 498, 506, 509, 536, 542
KINDSCHI, JACK. CIA operations officer in Stockholm using non-
official cover of Washington D.C. public relations firm Robert Mullen
Co. Assigned to Mexico City with same cover. 536
KING, COLONEL, J. C. Chief of the Western Hemisphere Division of
the DDP. 102, 106, 288, 320
KLADENSKY, OTTO. Quito Oldsmobile dealer and station agent for
intelligence on the Czech diplomatic mission. Also the cutout to Reinaldo
Varea Donoso, Ecuadorean Vice-President, q.v. Cryptonym: ECTOSOME
later DICTOSOME.122-23, 147, 162, 193, 305
LABOR COMMITTEE FOR DEMOCRATIC ACTION. Propaganda
mechanism of the Montevideo station. 466
LADD, RAYMOND. Quito station administrative officer also in charge
of certain operations. 215, 216, 240, 258, 260
LADENBURG, ARTHUR. CIA operations officer in Mexico City under
non-official cover. Later assigned to Santiago, Chile. 502
LICALLA. One of three observation posts overlooking the Soviet Embassy
in Mexico City. Names of agents forgotten. 528
LICOBRA. Cryptonym for operations targeted by Mexico City station
against the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the
Mexican Foreign Ministry and Ministry of Government. 534, 542, 549
LICOWL-1. Owner of small grocery store near Soviet Embassy, Mexico
City. CIA agent. True name forgotten. 529
LICOZY-1. Double-agent of Mexico City station against the KGB. True
name forgotten. 530
LICOZY-3. Double-agent of Mexico City station against the KGB. True
name forgotten. 530
LICOZY-5. Double-agent of the Mexico City station against the KGB. True
name forgotten. 530 LIDENY. Mexico City station unilateral telephone-
tapping operation. True cryptonym and true names of agents unknown. 531
LIEMBRACE. Mexico City station surveillance team. Names of team
members unknown. 528, 531, 533
LIENVOY. Joint telephone-tapping operation between Mexico City station
and Mexican security service. Names of agents unknown. 527, 528, 530-32
LIFIRE. Mexico City station travel control and general investigations team.
True names unknown. 528, 531, 533
LILINK. An operation in Mexico City to provide non-official cover for
CIA officers with infra-red communications system to the CIA station
in the Embassy. True name of cover business forgotten. 502
LIOVAL-1. English teacher in Mexico City. U.S. citizen. CIA agent.
True name forgotten. 529, 530
LIRICE. Mexico City station surveillance team. True names of members
unknown. 530, 533
LISAMPAN. Mexico City station bugging operation against the Cuban
Embassy. 532, 533
LITEMPO. Cryptonym for all liaison operations with Mexican government.
525, 531, 534
LONE STAR CEMENT CORPORATION. U.S. company whose
Uruguayan subsidiary provided cover for CIA operations officer in
Montevideo. 493
LOPEZ MATEOS, ADOLFO. President of Mexico and close
collaborator of the Mexico City station. Cryptonym: LIENVOY-2. 266,
525
LOPEZ MICHELSON, ALFONSO. Leader of the Revolutionary Liberal
Movement of Colombia which was supported by the Bogota station.
Elected President of Colombia in 1974. 192
LOVESTONE, JAY. Foreign Affairs Chief of AFL-CIO, supporter of
international labor operations used by CIA. 75
LOWE, GABE. Quito station operations officer. 315
LUGO, WILFREDO OSWALDO. Colonel in the Ecuadorean National
Police. Chief of Personnel, Chief of the Southern Zone (Cuenca) and
Chief of the Coastal Zone. Quito station agent. 119, 120, 167, 212, 214,
225, 248, 261, 265, 271, 273, 274, 288, 289, 291, 295, 297, 309, 310
MALDONADO, PABLO. Ecuadorean Director of Immigration. Quito
station liaison contact for travel control and political action. 249, 252,
253, 264, 266, 276
MANJARREZ, KATHERINE. Secretary of the Foreign Press
Association, Mexico City. Agent of the Mexico City station. 527
MARTIN, CARLOS. Uruguayan Army colonel and Deputy Chief of the
Montevideo Police Department. Liaison contact of the Montevideo
station. 352, 426, 444
MARTIN, LARRY. CIA specialist in technical operations, chiefly audio
(bugging). Stationed at the technical support base at Fort Amador, C.Z. 190,
270, 272, 273, 282, 485
MARTINEZ MARQUEZ, GUILLERMO. Cuban exile. Writer for Editors
Press Service, q.v. 380
MCCABE, WILLIAM. International Representative of the Public Service
International (PSI), q.v.176
MCCLELLAN, ANDREW. CIA attempted to use him in connection with
International labor operations. 30 1, 302, 368
MCCONE, JOHN. Director of the CIA. 265
MCKAY, CHARLES. CIA operations officer. 324, 325
MCLEAN, DAVE. Special Assistant to Colonel J. C. King, Chief of CIA
Western Hemisphere Division. Acting Chief of Station, Quito. 288, 320,
321
MEAKINS, GENE. One of the principal agents in labour operations in
British Guiana in 1963-4 which resulted in the overthrow of Marxist Prime
Minister Cheddi Jagan. See PUBLIC SERVICE INTERNATIONAL (PSI).
406
MEANY, GEORGE. President of the AFL-CIO which was used by the
CIA for international labor operations. 75, 136, 244
MEDINA, ENRIQUE. Leader of the Revolutionary Union of
Ecuadorean Youth (URJE) and penetration agent of the Guayaquil
base. 259
MENDEZ FLEITAS, EPIFANIO. Exiled leader of the Paraguayan
Liberal Party. Political contact. 342
MERCADER, ANIBAL. Penetration agent of the Montevideo station
against the Uruguayan Revolutionary Movement (MRO). 341, 368, 484
MEXICAN WORKERS CONFEDERATION (CTM). The labour sector
of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and participant in
CIA labour operations. 385 MEYER, CORD. CIA operations officer in
charge of International Organisations Division. Chief of Station, London, in
1974. 135
MINER AND ASSOCIATES, THOMASH. Chicago-based marketing
firm that provided non-official cover for a CIA operations officer. 341
MIRANDA GIRON, ADALBERTO. Political-action and labour
operations agent of the Guayaquil base. Elected Senator. 129, 141, 176,
214, 237, 251
MIRO CARDONA, JOSE. Cuban exile leader. Agent of the Miami
station. 151
MOELLER, JUAN. Quito station agent for control and support to the
Ecuadorean affiliate of the World Assembly of Youth (WAY), q.v. 219
MOFFET, BLAIR. Chief of Base, Guayaquil, commended by
headquarters for operation to defeat Pedro Saad, Secretary-General of
the Communist Party of Ecuador, in elections for Functional Senator
for Labour from the coast. 130-31, 138-39, 144, 147
MOGROVEJO, CRISTOBAL. Agent of the Quito station in Loja. 282,
303, 304, 306
MOLESTINA, JOSE. Quito service-station operator and used-car
dealer. Quito station support agent. 263, 282, 293
MOLINA, ENRIQUE. Leader of the Conservative Party youth
organisation in Tulcan, Ecuador. Quito station agent for propaganda
and political action. 201-2
MORA BOWEN, LUIS AUGUSTIN. Ecuadorean Army colonel and
close liaison contact of the Quito station. Minister of Government
(internal security). 296, 297, 298, 305
MOREHOUSE, FRED. Chief of the radio monitoring team in the
Montevideo station. 351, 481
MOVEMENT FOR INTEGRAL UNIVERSITY ACTION. Propaganda
mechanism of the Montevideo station. 466
MULLEN CO., ROBERT. Public-relations firm based in Washington
D.C. which provided cover for CIA officers overseas. 536
MURPHY, DAVID E. Chief of Soviet Bloc Division. Later Chief of
Station, Paris. 486, 487, 509, 542, 543, 574
MUSSO, ROBERTO (TITO). Chief of the AVENIN surveillance team in
Montevideo. Cryptonym: AVENIN-7. 344, 345, 349; 367, 391, 483, 539
NARANJO, AURELIO. Ecuadorean Army colonel and Minister of
Defence. Liaison contact of the Quito station. 295
NARANJO, MANUEL. Secretary-General of the Ecuadorean Socialist
Party, Minister of the Treasury, Ecuadorean Ambassador to the United
Nations. Quito station agent for political action. 127, 154, 166, 196, 207,
220, 222, 228, 250, 254, 305
NARDONE, BENITO. President of Uruguay. Liaison contact of the
Montevideo station. 337, 358, 361, 427, 493, 590
NATIONAL BOARD FOR DEFENSE OF SOVEREIGNTY AND
CONTINENTAL SOLIDARITY. Propaganda mechanism of the
Montevideo station. 466
NATIONAL CATHOLIC ACTION BOARD. Ecuadorean Catholic
organisation influenced by the Quito station through Aurelio Davila
Cajas, q.v. 144
NATIONAL DEFENSE FRONT. An anti-communist political-action
organisation financed and controlled by the Quito station through
Aurelio Davila Cajas, q.v., and Renato Perez Drouet, q.v. 158-61, 163, 166,
168, 171, 175, 190, 216, 220
NATIONAL FEMINIST MOVEMENT FOR THE DEFENSE OF
LIBERTY. Propaganda mechanism of the Montevideo station. 466
NATIONAL STUDENTS ASSOCIATION (NSA). The U.S. national
student union through which CIA controlled and financed the COSEC
and ISC. Headquarters in Washington D.C. 74
NATIONAL UNION OF JOURNALISTS. Ecuadorean press association
used by the Quito station for propaganda operations. 170
NATIONAL YOUTH COUNCIL. Ecuadorean affiliate of the World
Assembly of Youth (WAY), q.v., 219
NOLAND, JAMES B. Chief of Station, Quito, Ecuador; Santiago, Chile,
and Mexico City. Chief of Brazil branch in Western Hemisphere Division.
106, 110, 115, Jl7, 119, 123-28, 133, 139, 142, 145, 153-55, 158, 162, 163,
165, 167, 171, 172, 174, 181, 184, 185, 189, 194, 200, 201, 208, 209, 212,
214, 215, 221, 226, 230, 231, 236, 247, 248, 250, 252-54, 256, 258, 264,
270, 287, 308, 315, 321, 543, 594
NORIEGA, JUAN. CIA operations officer in Managua, later Montevideo.
492, 493.
O'GRADY, GERALD. Deputy Chief of Station, Montevideo. 325, 330,
341, 351, 353, 356, 357, 359, 364, 366, 373, 379, 382, 392-94, 407-9, 415,
422, 423, 453, 493
THE OIL WORKERS INTERNATIONAL UNION. The U.S. union in the
petroleum industry through which the CIA established the
International Federation of Petroleum and Chemical Workers
(IFPCW), on the international level. 76
OTERO, ALEJANDRO. Montevideo Police Commissioner and Chief of
police intelligence. Montevideo station agent. 360, 375, 385, 392, 398,
406, 412, 416, 423, 429, 431, 441, 444, 446, 447, 451, 452, 455, 457-59,
461, 465, 466, 479, 485, 486, 538
OTERO, JOAQUIN (JACK). Inter-American Representative of the
International Transport Workers Federation (ITF); q.v., and CIA
agent for labour operations. U.S. citizen. 300, 301, 306, 364, 383, 384
OVALLE, DR. FELIPE. Personal physician to President Velasco and
Quito station agent for intelligence on Velasco. Also cutout for Atahualpa
Basantes. Cryptonym: ECCENTRIC. 118, 145, 150, 165, 303, 314
PALADINO, MORRIS. Principal CIA agent for control of the Inter-
American Regional Labour Organisation (ORIT), q.v. ORIT Director of
Education, Director of Organisation, and Assistant Secretary-General. From
July 1964 Deputy Executive Director of the American Institute for Free
Labor Development (AIFLD), q.v. 237, 302
PALMER, MORTON (PETE). Quito station operations officer. 304, 307
PAREDES, ROGER. Lieutenant-colonel in the Ecuadorean Army and
Chief of the Eucadorean Military Intelligence Service. 120, 121, 123,
153, 196, 231, 232, 240, 247
PARKER, FRED. U.S. citizen resident in Quito. Furniture
manufacturer. Quito station support agent. 272
PAX ROMANA. International youth organisation of the Catholic
Church used by the CIA for student and youth operations. 73
PELLECER, CARLOS MANUEL. CIA penetration agent of the
Guatemalan Communist Party (PGT) and of the communist and related
movements in Mexico City. Cryptonym: LINLUCK. 527, 532
PENKOVSKY, OLEG. Soviet Army colonel who spied for the CIA and
British intelligence. 547 PEREZ DROUET, RENATO. Quito travel agent
and Secretary-General of the Ponce Administration. A leader of the
Social Christian Movement. Quito station political-action agent. 125,
177, 220, 221, 226, 236, 239, 242, 258
PEREZ FREEMAN, EARLE. Chief of Cuban intelligence in Montevideo.
Defected in Mexico City, then redefected. 323, 376, 379, 380, 384, 389,
393, 399, 400
PERRY, ALEX (or ALEC). General Manager of Uruguayan Portland
Cement Co. (subsidiary of Lone Star Cement Corporation) in
Montevideo. Permitted CIA operations officer to be covered in his
company. 493
PHIPPS, RUSSELL. Montevideo station operations officer in-charge of
Soviet operations. 346, 388, 394, 407, 408, 415, 430
PICCOLO, JOSEPH. CIA officer in charge of operations against Cuba in
Mexico City station. 531
PILGRIM, VIRGINIA. Friend of author's family who recommended
him for CIA employment. A CIA employee. 13, 16, 27
PIO CORREA, MANUEL. Brazilian Ambassador to Mexico and to
Uruguay, later Sub-Secretary of Foreign Affairs. CIA agent. 379, 393,
402, 405, 406, 408, 409, 412, 468, 469, 589
PIRIZ CASTAGNET, ANTONIO. Montevideo police inspector. Agent of
the Montevideo station. Cryptonym: AVALANCHE-6.360, 365, 375, 380,
384, 392, 418, 441, 444, 451, 457, 465, 478, 479
PLENARY OF DEMOCRATIC CIVIC ORGANIZATIONS OF
URUGUAY. Propaganda mechanism of the Montevideo station. 466,
485
POLGAR, TOM. Chief of Foreign Intelligence Staff of Western
Hemisphere Division, later assigned as Chief of Station, Buenos Aires and
to the CIA station in Saigon. 498.
PONCE YEPEZ, JAIME. Quito distributor for the Shell Oil Company.
Quito station agent for control and funding of the Center for Economic
and Social Reform Studies (CERES), q.v. 246, 247
PONCE, MODESTO. Ecuadorean Postmaster-General and the Quito
station agent for postal intercept operation. 240
PONCE, PATRICIO. Quito station agent in travel-control operation. 216
POPULAR DEMOCRATIC ACTION (AOEP). Political-action and
electoral mechanism of the Rio de Janeiro station. 143, 150, 169, 176,
188, 189, 228, 245, 256, 260, 263, 307, 321
THE POPULAR REVOLUTIONARY LIBERAL PARTY (PLPR). A left-
wing offshoot of the Radical Liberal Party's youth wing. Brought under
control of the Quito station agents such as Juan Yepez del Pozo, q.v.
POST, TELEGRAPH AND TELEPHONE WORKERS INTERNATIONAL
(PTTI). The international trade secretariat for the communications
industry. Used by the CIA in labour operations: principal agents in
PTTI, Joseph Beirne, President of the Communications Workers of
America and William Doherty, q.v. 76, 134, 141, 244, 251, 302, 488
PRANTL, AMAURY. Uruguayan Army lieutenant-colonel and liaison
of the Montevideo station. Chief of the Guardia Metropolitana (anti-
riot force) of the Montevideo police. 461
PUBLIC SERVICE INTERNATIONAL (PSI). The international trade
secretariat for government employees used by the CIA for labour
operations. (See AMERICAN FEDERATION OF STATE, COUNTY
AND MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEES.) 76, 176, 293, 406
QUAGLIOTTI AMEGLIO, JUAN CARLOS. Wealthy Uruguayan lawyer
and rancher. Political contact of the Montevideo station. 359, 382, 423,
424
RADIO FREE EUROPE (RFE). CIA propaganda operation aimed at
Eastern Europe. 72
RADIO LIBERTY. CIA propaganda operation aimed at the Soviet Union.
72
RAMIREZ, BEN. Mexico City station operations officer in charge of CP
penetration operations. 526
RAMIREZ, EZEQUIEL. CIA training officer specialising in surveillance
teams. 349, 367, 369-72
RAMIREZ, ROBERTO. Uruguayan Army colonel and Chief of the
Guardia Metropolitana (anti-riot troops) of the Montevideo Police
Department. Liaison contact of the Montevideo station. 346, 352, 383,
396, 397, 399, 433, 455
RAVINES, EUDOCIO. Peruvian communist who defected from
communism to publish book. CIA agent. 527
READ, BROOKS. Non-official cover contact operations officer of the
Montevideo station. 356, 357
REED, AL. U.S. citizen, businessman in Guayaquil. Agent of the
Guayaquil base. 129 REGIONAL CONFEDERATION OF
ECUADOREAN COASTAL TRADE UNIONS (CROCLE). Labour
organisation formed and controlled by the Guayaquil base. 141, 176,
189, 196, 212, 2/4, 220, 236, 250, 251, 260, 275, 300
RENDON CHIRIBOGA, CARLOS. Private Secretary of Juan Sevilla,
q.v., Ecuadorean Minister of the Treasury. Involved in important
political action for the Quito station. 269, 277, 281, 283, 305
RETAIL CLERKS INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION. The U.S. affiliate
of the International Federation of Clerical and Technical Employees,
an ITS through which CIA operations with white-collar workers were
undertaken. 76
REVOLUTIONARY DEMOCRATIC FRONT (FRD). Cuban exile
political organisation controlled by the Miami station. 163
REVOLUTIONARY LIBERAL MOVEMENT (MLR). Reformist
offshoot of the Colombian Liberal Party and led by Alfonso Lopez
Michelson, q.v. Supported by the Bogota station. 192
REVOLUTIONARY STUDENT DIRECTORATE IN EXILE (DRE).
Cuban exile student organisation controlled and financed by the Miami
station with representatives in various Latin American countries. 369
RIEFE, ROBERT. CIA operations officer in Montevideo station.
Specialist in CP penetration operations. 404, 407, 415, 431, 439; 452, 454,
466, 537
RIVADENEIRA, JORGE. Agent of the Quito station in clandestine
printing operation. Also a writer for El Comercio and occasionally used
for propaganda placement. 124, 171, 172, 182, 231, 233, 255, 259-61,
276, 285, 290
RIVADENEIRA, MARCELO. Agent of the Quito station in clandestine
printing operation. 124
RIVADENEIRA, PATRICIO. Agent of the Quito station in clandestine
printing operation. 124
RIVADENEIRA, RAMIRO. Agent of the Quito station in clandestine
printing operation. 124, 272
RIVADENEIRA, RODRIGO. Agent of the Quito station in clandestine
printing operation. Also used as transcriber for telephone-tap operation.
124, 248, 265, 272, 285, 286
ROBALINO BOLLO, ISABEL. Agent of the Quito station used for
labour operations with the Catholic Labour Center (CEDOC), q.v., and
for propaganda operations through the Committee for Liberty of
Peoples, q.v. 235
ROCA, ALBERTO. Propaganda agent of the Montevideo station and
publisher of Combate, a publication aimed at university students. 396,
457
RODRIGUEZ, ALFONSO. Telephone company engineer in charge of
the Quito network of telephone lines. Quito station agent in telephone-
tapping operation. Cryptonym: ECWHEAT-2. 184, 240
RODRIGUEZ, VENTURA. Uruguayan Army colonel and Chief of the
Montevideo Police Department. Liaison contact of the Montevideo
station. 352, 365, 375, 377, 378, 380, 382, 389, 391, 423, 440, 441, 444,
445, 448, 453, 456-59
RODRIGUEZ, VLADIMIR LATTERA. First important defector from
the Cuban intelligence service (DGI). Cryptonym: AMMUG-L 403
ROGGIERO, CARLOS. Retired Ecuadorean Army captain and leader
of the Social Christian Movement. Quito station agent in charge of
militant action squads. 239, 255
ROMUALDI, SERAFINO. AFL representative for Latin America and
principal CIA agent for labour operations in Latin America. 75, 136,
214, 244, 301; 368
ROOSEN, GERMAN. Second Secretary, Uruguayan Embassy, Havana
CIA agent targeted against the Cuban government. 325, 376, '377, 379,
380, 384, 389, 393
ROSETE, HADA. Leader of Cuban exile community in Montevideo and
agent of the Montevideo station. 364, 369
ROYAL BANK OF CANADA. Used by CIA as funding mechanism in
Brazil. 321
SALGADO, GUSTAVO. Ecuadorean journalist and principal Quito
station propaganda agent. Regular columnist of El Comercio and
provincial newspapers. True cryptonym forgotten, but ECURGE used for
convenience. 124, 151, 157, 177, 182
SALGUERO, CARLOS. Montevideo Station support agent. 435, 464,
471
SAMPSON, RICHARD. CIA Chief of Station, Mexico City. 594
SANDOVAL, LUIS. Lieutenant in the Ecuadorean National Police and
chief technician of the police intelligence service. Quito station agent.
119, 171, 212, 214, 248, 273, 471 SANTANA, ROLANDO. Cuban
diplomat in Montevideo. Defected to the CIA. 323, 364
SAUDADE, GIL. Deputy Chief of Station in Quito. 150, 164, 169, 170,
176, 188, 189, 192, 199, 215, 219, 228, 235, 237, '241, 245, 246, 251, 256,
260, 275, 282, 288, 298, 299, 302, 303
SCHOFIELD, KEITH. Chief of Base for CIA in Guayaquil. 588
SCHROEDER, DONALD. CIA operations officer, specialist in operations
against foreign diplomatic codes. 474-76, 478, 492
SCOTT, WINSTON, Chief of Station, Mexico City. 266, 499, 508, 524-26,
535, 548, 549, 552, 553, 556, 562
SEEHAFER, RALPH. Chief of Base, Quayaquil. 266-68
SENTINELS OF LIBERTY. Propaganda mechanism of the Montevideo
station. 466
SEVILLA, JUAN. Ecuadorean Minister of Labour, later Minister of the
Treasury, later Ambassador to the German Federal Republic. Quito
station agent for political action and propaganda. 241, 269, 278-9, 281,
283, 284, 286-88, 292, 305
SHANNON, TED. Chief of Station, Panama, later involved in CIA
police-training programmes. 304
SHAW, ROBERT. CIA operations officer. 323
SHERNO, FRANK. CIA technical operations specialist, expert in audio
(bugging) operations. Assigned to Buenos Aires station. 404, 405, 416, 435,
479, 485, 538
SHERRY, FRANCIS. CIA officer in charge of operations against Cuba in
Mexico City station. 531
SIERO PEREZ, ISABEL. Cuban exile. Leader of the International
Federation of Women Lawyers (IFWL). CIA propaganda agent. 387
SIMMONS, CLARK. Deputy Chief of Station, Lima. 313
SINCLAIR, WILLIAM. Inter-American Representative of the Public
Service International (PSI), q.v., CIA agent for Iabour operations. 176
SMITH, WILLIAM L. (LEE). CIA operations officer in Montevideo
station. 473
SNYDER, JOHN. Assistant Inter-American Representative of the Post,
Telegraph and Telephone Workers International (PTTI), q.v. Agent of
the Quito station in labour operations. 134, 141 STEELE, ROBERT.
CIA operations officer in the Soviet/satellite section in Mexico City
station. 528
STORACE, NICOLAS. Uruguayan Minister of the Interior and liaison
contact of Montevideo station. 459, 464, 465, 472, 477-79, 489, 491, 505,
510
STUART, FRANK. Director of AID in Montevideo. 474, 475
STUDENT MOVEMENT FOR DEMOCRATIC ACTION. Propaganda
mechanism of the Montevideo station. 466
SVEGLE, BARBARA. Secretary-typist in the Quito station during the
early 1960s. Served as courier to Aurelio Davila Cajas, q.v. 126
TEJERA, ADOLFO. Uruguayan Minister of the Interior (internal
security). Liaison contact of the Montevideo station. 378, 382, 390, 395,
396,
397, 402, 405, 416, 417, 421, 422, 441, 442, 445, 446, 452, 457, 459, 464,
469
TERRELL, EDWIN. Chief of the 'Bolivarian' branch of Western
Hemisphere Division. 106
THOMAS, WADE. CIA operations officer, specialist in CP penetration
operations. 526
THORON, CHRISTOPHER. CIA operations officer assigned under
State Department cover to the United Nations during 1960-65.
Remained under State Department cover until 1969 when named
President of American University in Cairo, which is possibly a CIA
cover position. 106
TORO, MEDARDO. Quito Station penetration agent of the Velasquista
political movement. 256, 270, 287, 307, 308, 348
TOROELLA, LUIS. Cuban arrested and executed for assassination
attempt against Fidel Castro. Agent of the Miami Operations Base of
the CIA and correspondent in secret writing with the Quito station.
Cryptonym for convenience: AMBLOOD-1. 123, 168, 195
TORRES, JUAN. Courier and assistant technician in the listening-post of
the AVENGEFUL telephone-tapping operation. 345, 346, 365, 411
UBACH, ROGELIO. Uruguayan Army colonel and Montevideo Chief
of Police. Liaison contact. 459, 461, 465, 478
ULLOA COPPIANO, ANTONIO. Quito station political-action agent
and leader of the Popular Revolutionary Liberal Party, q.v. 150, 188,
298, 307
ULLOA COPPIANO, MATIAS. Quito station labour operations agent.
Secretary-General of the Ecuadorean Confederation of Free Trade
Union Organisations (CEOSL), q.v.189, 215, 236, 237, 260, 275, 298
URUGUAYAN COMMITTEE FOR FREE DETERMINATION OF
PEOPLES. Propaganda mechanism of the Montevideo station. 466
URUGUAYAN COMMITTEE FOR THE LIBERATION OF CUBA.
Propaganda mechanism of the Montevideo station. 466
URUGUAYAN CONFEDERATION OF WORKERS (CUT). National
trade-union confederation formed in 1970 within the framework of ORIT,
q.v., ICFTU, q.v., and the ITS, q.v. 592
URUGUAYAN INSTITUTE OF TRADE UNION EDUCATION (lUES).
Montevideo office of the American Institute for Free Labor
Development (AIFLD), q.v. Controlled by the Montevideo station. 358,
473
URUGUAYAN LABOR CONFEDERATION (CSU). National labour
organisation controlled and financed by the Montevideo station. 237,
332, 357, 368, 369, 488, 592
URUGUAYAN PORTLAND CEMENT CO. Subsidiary of Lone Star
Cement Corporation and provider of non-official cover for CIA
operations officer in Montevideo. 493
VALLEJO BAEZ, CARLOS. Lawyer and writer used by the Quito
station for propaganda and labour operations. 169, 188, 245, 261, 275,
298, 307
VAREA DONOSO, REINALDO. Retired Ecuadorean Army lieutenant-
colonel and agent of the Quito station. Senator and Vice-President.
Cryptonym: ECOXBOW-1. 122-23, 133, 162, 191, 207-11, 224-225, 229,
242, 249, 252, 256, 257, 277, 290, 291, 295, 305
VARGAS GARMENDIA, LUIS. Uruguayan Director of Immigration
and liaison contact of the Montevideo station. 461, 464, 466, -467, 469,
472, 477, 484, 487-90, 505, 510, 542
VARGAS, LUIS. Penetration agent of the Quito station against the
Communist Party of Ecuador. Cryptonym: ECSIGIL-2; 116, 171, 212,
247, 280, 286, 293, 307
VARGAS VACACELA, JOSE. A captain in the Ecuadorean National
Police and Chief of Police Intelligence. Liaison agent of the Quito
Station. Cryptonym: ECAMORous-2. 118, 119, 167, 171, 193, 201, 211,
212, 214, 232
VARONA, MANUEL DE. Cuban exile leader. Agent of the Miami
station. 151
VAZQUEZ DIAZ, RICARDO. Quito station agent for labour operations
and leader of the Ecuadorean office of the American Institute for Free
Labor Development (AIFLD), q.v. 189, 236, 237, 245, 251, 260, 275, 298-
300
VELEZ MORAN, PEDRO. Ecuadorean Army lieutenant-colonel and
liaison contact of the Guayaquil base. 232
VILLACRES, ALFREDO. Cutout of the Guayaquil base to a PCE
penetration agent. 266, 267
VOGEL, DONALD. CIA operations officer in Soviet/satellite section of
the Mexico City station. 528
VOLMAN, SACHA. CIA contract operations officer who organised the
Institute of Political Education for the San Jose, Costa Rica station. 419
VOURVOULIASL, EANDER. Consul of Greece and President of the
Mexico City Consular Corps. CIA agent. 532
Voz Universitaria. Propaganda organ of the Quito station directed at
university students. 128, 213, 298, 299
WALL, JIM. Quito station operations officer. 307
WALSH, LOREN (BEN). Deputy Chief of Station, Quito. 298
WARNER. Chauffeur for the Cuban Embassy in Montevideo.
Montevideo station agent. Last name forgotten; true cryptonym:
AVBARON-1. Also used as penetration agent of the Communist Party of
Uruguay. 307, 367, 374, 404
WARREN, RAYMOND. Chief of the cono sur branch of Western
Hemisphere Division. Later Chief of Station, Santiago, Chile, during
Allende administration. 543, 583
WATSON, STANLEY. Officer in charge of Covert Action operation,
Mexico City station, and later Deputy Chief of Station. 526, 534
WEATHERWAX, ROBERT. CIA operations officer under ICA
(predecessor of AID) Public Safety cover, Quito. 110, 116, 119, 139, 147
WHEELER, RICHARD. Chief of the Guayaquil base. 116
WICHTRICH, AL. Executive Vice-President of the American Chamber
of Commerce, Mexico City, furnished political information to Mexico
City station. 533
WORLD ASSEMBLY OF YOUTH (WAY). CIA financed international
youth front used to oppose the World Federation of Democratic Youth
(WFDY). Headquarters in Brussels. 73, 74, 219
WORLD CONFEDERATION OF LABOR. See International Federation of
Christian Trade Unions (IFCTU). 76 YEPEZ DEL POZO, JR, JUAN.
Quito station political-action agent and leader of the Popular
Revolutionary Liberal Party, q.v. 150, 164, 188, 189, 192, 228, 307
YEPEZ DEL POZO, SR, JUAN. Quito station political-action and
propaganda agent. Leader of the Popular Revolutionary Liberal Party
(PLPR), q.v., and of the Ecuadorean affiliate of the International
Commission of Jurists (ICJ), q.v.150, 169, 188, 238
ZAFIRIADIS, MRS. TOMAS. Transcriber, along with her sister, of the
AVENGEFUL telephone-tapping operation of the Montevideo station.
Husband employed by the U.S. Embassy and served as courier. 383
ZAFIRIADIS, TOMAS. Employee of commercial section of the U.S.
Embassy in Montevideo. Used as courier for AVENGEFUL telephone-
tapping operation. (See MRS. TOMAS ZAFIRIADIS.) 383
ZAMBIANCO, JULIAN. U.S. citizen; CIA contract operations officer
recruited in Cuba, escaped after Bay of Pigs in fishing-boat. Assigned to
Guayaquil base under non-official cover. Transferred to Mexico City. 263,
269, 270, 282, 287, 288, 527
ZEFFER, ALEXANDER. Montevideo station operations officer in
charge of labour operations. 358, 367, 368, 394, 408, 415, 453
ZIPITRIA, -. Lieutenant-colonel in Uruguayan Army and liaison
contact of Montevideo station. Cryptonym. AVBALSA-10. 351, 352, 485
Appendix 2: Alphabetical index of abbreviations. * indicates CIA use of
organisations described in Appendix 1.
 Appendix 2: Abbreviations
* indicates CIA use of organisations described in Appendix 1.
A and E Assessment and Evaluation Staff of the Office of Training
ACGMC American Communist Group in Mexico City
ADEP Popular Democratic Action AEC Atomic Energy Commission AF
Africa Division
AFL American Federation of Labor
AID Agency for International Development
*AIFLD American Institute for Free Labor Development
ANCAP National Administration of Petroleum, Alcohol and Cement
ANSA Italian wire service
ARNE Ecuadorean Nationalist Revolutionary Action
CA Covert Action
CCI Independent Campesino Confederation
*CEAS Center of Studies and Social Action
*CEDOC Catholic Labour Center
*CEOSL Ecuadorean Confederation of Free Trade Union Organisations
*CERES Center for Economic and Social Reform Studies
CFP Concentration of Popular Forces
CI Counter-Intelligence
CIA Central Intelligence Agency
CI/ICD Counter-Intelligence Staff, International Communism Division
CI/OA Counter-Intelligence Staff, Operational Approval Branch
CIO Congress of Industrial Organisations CNC National Campesino
Confederation CNED National Center of Democratic Students
CNOP National Confederation of Popular Organisations
CNT National Workers Convention
*COG Guayas Workers Confederation
COS Chief of Station
*COSEC Coordinating Secretariat of National Unions of Students
CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union
CP Communist Party
*CROCLE Regional Confederation of Ecuadorean Coastal Trade Unions
CS Clandestine Services (same as Deputy Directorate, Plans – DDP)
*CSU Uruguayan Labour Confederation
CT Career Training Program
CTAL Latin American Labour Confederation
CTE Ecuadorean Workers Confederation
*CTM Mexican Workers Confederation
CTU Uruguayan Workers Confederation
*CUT Uruguayan Confederation of Workers CWA Communications
Workers of America DCI Director of Central Intelligence
DCID Director of Central Intelligence Directive
DDC Deputy Directorate, Coordination
DDI Deputy Directorate, Intelligence
DDP Deputy Directorate, Plans (same as Clandestine Services – CS) DDS
Deputy Directorate, Support
DDS & T Deputy Directorate, Science and Technology
DOD Domestic Operations Division
DRE Revolutionary Student Directorate in Exile
ECLA United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America
EE Eastern Europe Division
FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation
FBIS Foreign Broadcast Information Service
FE Far East Division
FENETEL Ecuadorean Federation of Telecommunications Workers
FEP People's Electoral Front
FETLIG Federation of Flee Workers of the Guayas Coast
FEU University Student Federation
*FEUE Ecuadorean Federation of University Students FEUU Federation of
University Students of Uruguay FI Foreign Intelligence
FIDEL Leftish Liberation Front
FIR Field Information Report
FNET National Federation of Technical Students
*FRD Revolutionary Democratic Front
F and S Flaps and Seals
FULNA United Front for National Liberation GRU Chief Intelligence
Directorate of the Soviet General Staff (Soviet
Military intelligence organisations) IAC Intelligence Advisory Committee
IADL International Association of Democratic Lawyers
*IBAD Brazilian Institute for Democratic Action
ICA International Cooperation Administration (predecessor of the Agency
for International Development)
*ICFTU International Confederation of Free Trade Unions
*ICJ International Commission of Jurists
I&E Intelligence and Liaison Department of the Montevideo Police
*IFCTU International Federation of Christian Trade Unions
*IFJ International Federation of Journalists
*IFPAAW International Federation of Plantation, Agricultural and Allied
Workers
*IFPCW International Federation of Petroleum and Chemical Workers
*IFWN Inter-American Federation of Working Newspapermen
IMF International Monetary Fund
INR Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Department of State
IO International Organisations Division
IOJ International Organisation of Journalists
*ISC International Student Conference
*ITF International Transport Workers Federation
*ITS International Trade Secretariats IUS International Union of Students
JCE Communist Youth of Ecuador JCSJ oint Chiefs of Staff
JOT Junior Officer Trainee
KGB Committee for State Security (Soviet intelligence and security
service)
LP Listening Post (for audio operations) MAAG Military Assistance
Advisory Group MIR Movement of the Revolutionary Left MLN National
Liberation Movement
MLR Revolutionary Liberal Movement (of Colombia)
MRO Uruguayan Revolutionary Movement MRP People's Revolutionary
Movement NCG National Council of Government NCNA New China News
Agency (Hsinhua) NE Near East Division
NIS National Intelligence Survey
NPIC National Photographic Interpretation Center
NSA National Security Agency
*NSA National Students Association (US) NSC National Security Council
NSCID National Security Council Intelligence Directive
NSD National Security Directorate
OA Operational Approval
OAS Organisation of American States
OBI Office of Basic Intelligence
OC Office of Communications (of the DDS) OCB Operations Coordination
Board
OCI Office of Current Intelligence
OCR Office of Central Reference
OCS Officer Candidate School
OF Officer of Finance (of the DDS) OL Office of Logistics (of the DDS)
ONE Office of National Estimates
OO Office of Operations
OP Office of Personnel (of the Deputy Directorate, Support) OP
Observation post
ORIT Inter-American Regional Labour Organisation of the ICFTU ORR
Office of Research and Reports
ORTF French Radio and Television Service
OS Office of Security (of the DDS) OSI Office of Scientific Intelligence
OSS Office of Strategic Services OTR Office of Training (of the DDS)
OWVL One way voice link (radio communications)
PCBM Bolshevik Communist Party of Mexico
PCE Communist Party of Ecuador
PCM Communist Party of Mexico PCP Communist Party of Paraguay
PCU Communist Party of Uruguay
*PLPR Popular Revolutionary Liberal Party POA Provisional Operational
Approval POR Revolutionary Workers Party
PP Psychological and· Paramilitary
PPS Popular Socialist Party
PRI Revolutionary Institutional Party PRQ Personal Record Questionnaire
PSE Socialist Party of Ecuador
PSI Public Service International
PSR Revolutionary Socialist Party (of Ecuador) PSU Socialist Party of
Uruguay
*PTTI Post, Telegraph and Telephone Workers International
*RFE Radio Free Europe
RF Radio frequency
RID Records Integration Division RMD Related Missions Directive SAS
Scandinavian Airlines System
SATT Strategic Analysis Targeting Team
SB Soviet Bloc Division
SCWL Subversive Control Watch List
SIME Ecuadorean Military Intelligence Service
SK Security Officer in a Soviet Community abroad
SNET National Union of Education Workers
SPR Soviet Personality Record SR Soviet Russia Division SW Secret
writing
Tass Soviet wire service
TSD Technical Services Division TUC Trade Unions Council (Britain)
UAR United Arab Republic (Egypt)
UGOCM General Union of Workers and Peasants
UNAM National Autonomous University of Mexico
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation
UPI United Press International URJE Revolutionary Union of Ecuadorean
Youth
USIA United States Information Agency
USIS United States Information Service (overseas offices of USIA) USOC
United States Olympic Committee
USOM United States Operations Mission (of ICA)
*WAY World Assembly of Youth
WE Western Europe Division
WFDY World Federation of Democratic Youth
WFTU World Federation of Trade Unions WH Western Hemisphere
Division WPC World Peace Council
Appendix 3: Charts showing the bureaucratic
structure of the CIA
 Acknowledgements
Many people have helped in the search for the factual details needed to
reconstruct the events in which CIA operations described herein occurred.
Often they did not know the true purpose of the assistance they were
providing. Others helped through moral encouragement and political
orientation. I would now like to thank all those who helped and mention
several in particular.
The libraries of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico and the
Colegio de Mexico, both in Mexico City, were valuable for early orientation
and historical materials. During this period my professors in the Centro de
Estudios Latinoamericanos of UNAM provided the inspiration needed to
avoid early abandonment of the idea of writing this book. Encouragement
and financial support from my father at this time was also very important.
Also during this early period, Francois Maspero helped me realise that I
would have to leave Mexico to find adequate research materials. His advice
was also of special value for the general focus and for the decision to
concentrate on specific operations rather than types.
In Havana, the Biblioteca Nacional Jose Marti and the Casa de las Americas
provided special assistance for research and helped find data available only
from government documentation. Representatives of the Communist Party
of Cuba also gave me important encouragement at a time when I doubted
that I would be able to find the additional information I needed.
Several documentation centres in Paris gave me access to valuable research
materials: the Bibliotheque Nationale, the Benjamin Franklin Library and
the American Library, as well as the Institute d'Hautes Etudes de
L'Amerique Latine and the Bibliotheque de Documentation Internationale
Contemporarie of the Universite de Paris, Nanterre.
In London the British Museum Newspaper Library provided invaluable
documentation. Other material was obtained at the Hispanic and Luso
Brazilian Council, Canning House.
Among the people who especially helped, I wish to mention Robin
Blackburn and his colleagues at the New Left Review, London. Neil
Middleton of Penguin Books gave the support and guidance needed for
completion, and Laurence Bright, O.P., had the difficult task of reducing
almost 500 diary entries totalling over 300,000 words to this edition –
perhaps still too long but far superior to the early draft. John Gerassi and
Nicole Szulc obtained vital research materials in New York and
Washington, D.C. Grateful thanks to Playboy Magazine for allowing the
author to adapt certain portions of an interview for use in this edition.
Finally, I wish to thank Catherine Beaumont who helped me through a very
difficult period in Paris.
Without these people and institutions this diary would be far more
incomplete than the present form and probably still unwritten.