Paul Simpson - A Brief History of the Spy

Hillenkoetter’s job at the CIA was made much harder by the lack of cooperation that he received from other intelligence agencies. As he told President Truman, ‘The [military] services withhold planning and operational information from the CIA and this hampers the CIA in fulfilling its mission.’ The FBI could be obstructive, and the military sections overestimated Soviet capabilities in their own fields to ensure their own departments received the necessary support.

It wasn’t all bad news: the CIA were able to prevent a Communist party victory in the 1948 Italian elections. This wasn’t the spy work of the Second World War, sneaking behind enemy lines. However, for an American government seriously worried about the spread of Communism, it was equally important, and for the agents actively involved in passing money to contacts and other clandestine activities, it wasn’t that different in reality.

Former CIA operative F. Mark Wyatt was one of those involved in this new form of spying. As he told CNN in 1995:

The run-of-the-mill operative in the [CIA] was hopeful that we could get into a [covert] operation… My colleagues in the CIA, in 1946–47, when I was involved, were gung-ho. We had been in the war; we didn’t question authority — ‘Should we do it this way, should we not?’ We definitely knew that the Soviet empire was, as Reagan said, the Evil Empire, and that was it. And when we were stationed abroad… whether we were in Sri Lanka or we were in Iceland, we knew what our target was: it was the Soviet target. We were interested in what was going on in that country, and the connections of that country with the pervasive expansionist Soviet power.

DCI Hillenkoetter wasn’t convinced that the CIA had the authority to take an active role in the Italian election and was advised by the agency’s general counsel, Lawrence Houston, that he needed a specific mandate. This he received from the National Security Council in NSC directive 4a, which ordered the CIA ‘[to] initiate steps looking toward the conduct of covert psychological operations designed to counteract Soviet and Soviet-inspired activities’. The Special Procedures Group (SPG) was tasked with finding a way to do this.

In reality, this meant working with the Christian Democrats to defeat the Popular Democratic Front, a coalition formed by the Italian Communist and Socialist Parties. In addition to letter-writing campaigns by Italian-Americans, propaganda broadcasts by the Voice of America warning of the dangers of a rerun of the 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.

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.