Czechoslovakian fall into Communism, and food and grain assistance, the SPG undertook more covert operations. As Wyatt recalled:
We had bags of money that we delivered to selected politicians, to defray their political expenses, their campaign expenses, for posters, for pamphlets, what have you… And we did many things to assist those selected Christian Democrats, Republicans, and the other parties that were completely reliable — that could keep the secret of where their funds came from. They were talked to by CIA experts: ‘What do you say if all of a sudden you have in Turin the greatest extravaganza of propaganda? Who pays for it? Does the Fiat Corporation pay for it, or what? You’ve got to have some reason for your munificence at this time, and we don’t want an indication that it’s young Americans that are passing the money to you… [in] black bags.
It meant training the Italian politicians in tradecraft so that the money could be passed surreptitiously, but, perhaps to the surprise of some of the agents involved, it worked. The Christian Democrats won by a landslide — 48 per cent to 31 per cent for the Popular Democratic Front. How much of this can be ascribed to the CIA’s activities has been questioned over the years, but it was a rare victory for the early agents of the CIA to celebrate.
4
FIGHTING THE COLD WAR ON NEW FRONTS
With the Soviet Union proving that they had the atomic bomb in August 1949, it was evident that the escalation between the two opposing forces could result in a third world war, and the fifties would see many proxy conflicts between West and East. Eastern Europe and China were held by the Communists — even if everyone in power in the countries didn’t necessarily bow down before Josef Stalin, they were of similar mindset, and to the Western intelligence agencies, they were a common foe.
All three of the main agencies involved in that conflict — Britain’s MI6, the American CIA and the Russian KGB — would undergo major reorganization in the early years of the decade. The British had to reassess their entire set-up in the light of Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess’ defection to Russia — and MI5’s strong conviction that Kim Philby was the ‘Third Man’ who had persuaded them to leave. (Philby would continue to be a problem for MI6 until his eventual departure to Russia in 1963.) The death of Stalin in 1953 directly led to the restructuring of the Soviet State Security Service into the form in which it is best known. And the CIA had to deal with yet another failure of intelligence-gathering.
A lack of confidence in the reports coming from the CIA’s Office of Reports and Estimates had been expressed as early as Spring 1949, and it was criticized heavily for not putting together the pieces regarding the Soviet atomic test. However, it was its failure to predict the invasion of South Korea by the North Koreans of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in June 1950, and the involvement of the Chinese People’s Army in October that year that led to the departure of Hillenkoetter.
In January 1950, the CIA reported their analysis of the troop movements in North Korea:
The continuing southward movement of the expanding Korean People’s Army toward the [border at the] thirty-eighth parallel probably constitutes a defensive measure to offset the growing strength of the offensively minded South Korean Army… Despite this increase in North Korean military strength, the possibility of an invasion of South Korea is unlikely unless North Korean forces can develop a clear-cut superiority over the increasingly efficient South Korean Army.
They believed that the invasion would have to be ordered by Russia: ‘The DPRK is a firmly controlled Soviet satellite that exercises no independent initiative and depends entirely on the support of the USSR for existence,’ the CIA stated on 19 June, six days before the North Koreans did indeed act independently.
Once the war was under way, the CIA believed that the Chinese would not intervene in the situation, despite numerous coded and open warnings from the Chinese authorities. The authorities in Beijing made it clear that they would take action as they saw fit to protect their country as General MacArthur and his troops pushed the DPRK Army back towards the 38th Parallel and then across it, entering North Korean territory on 1 October. ‘While full- scale Chinese Communist intervention in Korea must be regarded as a continuing possibility, a consideration of all known factors leads to the conclusion that barring a Soviet decision for global war, such action is not probable in 1950,’ stated the CIA report on 12 October. The next day, the Communist Chinese army entered North Korea. By mid-November, they were in full operation.
In light of these errors — and even before the Chinese intervention in the Korean War was confirmed — in October 1950, President Truman appointed General Walter Bedell Smith to the post of DCI with instructions to shake up the three-year-old agency and make it fit for purpose.
Smith created three directorates — intelligence (CDI); plans (DP); and administration (DA) — and the Korean War became a baptism of fire for the newly reorganized CIA. Turf wars between them and the Army’s intelligence units continued, reaching as high as the President, who backed the CIA, although he required them to liaise with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Agency carried out a number of successful operations. Both they and the Army created units for special ops, and the CIA trained thousands of Koreans for infiltration into the DPRK for intelligence gathering and sabotage, as well as setting up escape and evasion networks. Missions, such as Operation Bluebell, were run by an operational arm known by the acronym JACK (Joint Advisory Commission, Korea), and, while the Agency acknowledged that some of the North Koreans and Chinese who volunteered for service were simply using them as a way of getting transport back home, many provided intelligence which helped the war effort.
In addition, the CIA also tried to continue its mission of subverting Communism by carrying out missions in China. The Agency created a cover airline, Civil Air Transport Co. Ltd (CAT), which was used to drop agents and supplies into China, not always successfully. America still officially backed the nationalist government of China, which had been replaced by the Communists in 1949 and had moved to Formosa, and the CIA’s Operation Paper supported invasion attempts from Burma by the Kuomintang, which it was hoped might draw some troops away from the Korean conflict.
Not every mission was a success, and misjudgements could have catastrophic consequences. Details of one such, in which agents John T. Downey and Richard G. Fecteau were shot down on their first mission over northern China in 1952, were only released under the Freedom of Information Act in 2011. Believing that they were extracting an undercover agent, they were actually walking into a trap. Their plane was shot down, and both men were captured alive, tortured and put on trial by the Chinese, and then held prisoner for the next twenty years. Although the CIA initially told their families that they had been lost in a CAT plane crash, back channel diplomacy would eventually lead to their release. Jack Downey refused to return to the Agency, pointing out, ‘I don’t think I’m cut out for this line of work!’ Both men were able to retire with full pensions from the CIA and were awarded the Director’s Medal for Extraordinary Fidelity at a special ceremony at CIA Headquarters in 1998.
While the CIA was concentrating on the conflict in south-east Asia, the FBI was having more success winding up Russian networks. The arrest in Britain of atomic scientist Klaus Fuchs as a result of the Venona project would lead to many more agents coming to light. Interrogated by MI5’s James Skardon, Fuchs tried to conceal his contacts’ identities, but Skardon did learn about a courier named ‘Raymond’, to whom Fuchs had passed top secret information about the atom bomb in June 1945, on the Castillo Street bridge over the river in the small town of Santa Fe near the Las Alamos base. ‘Raymond’ had made contact with Fuchs through the scientist’s sister and the descriptions given by her and Fuchs tallied with someone the FBI had already interrogated as a result of Elizabeth Bentley’s testimony: Harry Gold. Faced with evidence found at his own apartment that placed him in Santa Fe (which he had denied visiting), Gold confessed.
However, parts of Gold’s story didn’t add up, in particular why he had stopped in Albuquerque on one of his trips to Santa Fe. Eventually he admitted that he had visited a soldier who gave him technical drawings from Los Alamos — and this turned out to be Fuchs’ colleague, David Greenglass. In turn, Greenglass broke under interrogation, and confessed that his wife Ruth and brother-in-law Julius Rosenberg were spies. This tallied with
