The CIA’s paramilitary operations during the cold war: an assessment

Abstract

Using a representative sample of CIA paramilitary operations during the Cold War, this essay identifies continuities and discontinuities among administrations and analyses the responses of the US press and Congress to paramilitary operations. It wrestles with the meaning of success and failure. Success is defined, first, in a narrow sense – did the operations achieve the objectives set by the president of the United States? Then, it is defined more broadly: did the CIA’s paramilitary operations serve the national interests of the United States?

Notes

¹ All general histories of the CIA suffer from lack of documentation. With this proviso, see John Ranelagh, The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986); John Prados, Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2006); Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (New York: Doubleday, 2007).

² Roy Godson, Dirty Tricks or Trump Cards: US Covert Action and Counterintelligence (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2008), 158. For an excellent introduction to the agency’s paramilitary operations, see CIA historian Nicholas Dujmović, “Drastic Actions Short of War: The Origins and Application of CIA Covert Paramilitary Function in the Early Cold War,” Journal of Military History, 76 (July 2012): 775–808.

³ Nancy Mitchell, “The Cold War and Jimmy Carter,” in Cambridge History of the Cold War, ed. Melvyn Leffler and Odd Arne Westad, Vol. 3 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 67. There is a growing literature on the global Cold War. Nancy Mitchell’s Carter in Africa: Race and the Cold War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University/Wilson Center Press, 2016) is a tour de force based on impressive multiarchival research and interviews with key protagonists in three continents. Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006) is the first scholarly attempt to offer a comprehensive analysis of the Cold War throughout the Third World. See also Chen Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); Ilya Gaiduk, Confronting Vietnam: Soviet Policy toward the Indochina Conflict, 1954–1963 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003); Qiang Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950–1975 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000); Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington and Africa, 1959–1976 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); Piero Gleijeses, Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976–1991 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013).

⁴ H.W. Brands, The Devil We Knew: Americans and the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 60.

⁵ Interview with Richard Helms, Washington DC, 7 September 1989.

⁶ See Harry Rositzke, The CIA’s Secret Operations: Espionage, Counterespionage, and Covert Action (Boulder: Reader’s Digest Press, 1977), 18–50; Peter Grose, Operation Rollback: America’s Secret War Behind the Iron Curtain (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 121–89; Sarah-Jane Corke, US Covert Operations and Cold War Strategy: Truman, Secret Warfare, and the CIA 1945–53 (London: Routledge, 2007).

⁷ See Michael Dravis, “Storming Fortress Albania: American Covert Operations in Microcosm, 1949–54,” Intelligence and National Security 7, no. 4 (1992): 425–42; Stephen Dorril, MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service (New York: The Free Press, 2000), 355–403; Michael Burke, Outrageous Good Fortune: A Memoir (Boston: Little, Brown, 1984).

⁸ Robin Winks, Cloak and Gown: Scholars in the Secret War, 1939–1961 (New York: Quill, 1987), 399.

⁹ Kim Philby, My Silent War (London: Granada, 1969), 163.

¹⁰ See Kenton Clymer, A Delicate Relationship: The United States and Burma since 1945 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), 83–136; Richard Gibson with Wenhua Chen, The Secret Army: Chiang Kai-Shek and the Drug Warlords of the Golden Triangle (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2011); Bertil Lintner, Burma in Revolt: Opium and Insurgency since 1948, 2nd ed. (Bangkok: Silkworm Books, 1995), 96–162.

¹¹ Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA (New York: Knopf, 1987), 81. This is the best biography of a CIA officer.

¹² Joseph Smith, Portrait of a Cold Warrior: Second Thoughts of a Top CIA Agent (New York: Berkley Books, 1976), 67.

¹³ Memcon (President Eisenhower and General Doolittle), 19 October 1954, Whitman File, Adm. Series, box 13, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, KS (hereafter DDEL).

¹⁴ James Bill, The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 81. On the covert operation, see Mark Gasiorowski and Malcolm Byrne, eds., Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2004); Ervand Abrahamian, The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern US-Iranian Relations (New York: The New Press, 2013); Ali Rahnema, Behind the 1953 Coup in Iran: Thugs, Turncoats, Soldiers and Spooks (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Dorril, MI6, 558–99; Ray Takeyh, “What Really Happened in Iran: The CIA, the Ouster of Mosaddeq, and the Restoration of the Shah,” Foreign Affairs 93, no. 4 (July–August 2014): 2–12.

¹⁵ Mark Gasiorowski, in H-DIPLO/ISSF Forum on “What Really Happened: Solving the Cold War’s Cold Cases,” no. 7, 2015, 8.

¹⁶ See Nick Cullather, Secret History: The CIA’s Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala 1952–1954 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999); US Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954: Guatemala (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 2003).

¹⁷ The analysis that follows is based on my book, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944–1954 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991). For other perspectives, see Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1982) and Richard Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982).

¹⁸ Quotations from US Embassy, Guatemala, Joint Weeka 9, 5 March 1954, Record Group 59, 714.00 (W), National Archives, College Park, MD and US Embassy, Guatemala, “Economic and Financial Review – 1953,” 19 May 1954, Record Group 59, 814.00, NA.

¹⁹ Clemente Marroquín Rojas, “Y usted: ?Qué deduce, señor ministro?” La Hora (Guatemala City), 14 January 1954, 1.

²⁰ See Michael Warner, “The CIA’s Internal Probe of the Bay of Pigs Affair,” Studies in Intelligence 42, no. 5 (Winter 1998–99): 93–101; Piero Gleijeses, “Ships in the Night: The CIA, the White House and the Bay of Pigs,” Journal of Latin American Studies, February 1995, 1–42. For sources on the US covert war against Cuba, see Piero Gleijeses, “The United States and Castro’s Cuba in the Cold War,” in Ben Winson, ed., Oxford Bibliographies on Line in Latin American Studies (Oxford University Press, 2013): www.oxfordbibliographies.com

²¹ Edwin Guthman and Jeffrey Shulma, Robert Kennedy in His Own Words (New York: Bantham, 1988), 240. Asked whether Robert Kennedy’s statement was correct, Bissell replied, ‘Yes, I think it is, to the best of my recollection’ (Interview with Bissell, Farmington, CT, 8 November 1991).

²² Interview with Bissell; interview with Jacob Esterline, Hendersonville, NC, 18–19 November 1992.

²³ “Excerpts from Kennedy Talk on Cuba,” New York Times, 7 October 1960, 20.

²⁴ “Kennedy Steps Up Attacks on Nixon,” New York Times, 16 October 1960, 52.

²⁵ Assistant to the head of the CIA unit working on Cuban operations quoted in US Senate, Select Committee, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders (Washington DC: GPO, 1975), 141.

²⁶ Arthur Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times (New York: Ballantine, 1979), 516.

²⁷ Interview with Helms.

²⁸ Most of the relevant documents remain classified, but see James Hershberg and Peter Kornbluh, eds., Brazil Marks 50^th Anniversary of Military Coup, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book, no. 465, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/

²⁹ See Stephen Rabe’s pathbreaking US Intervention in British Guiana: A Cold War Story (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 89, 75–76, 91 quoted.

³⁰ Ibid., 9.

³¹ US Senate, Select Committee, Alleged Assassination Plots, 225–54.

³² Peter Kornbluh, The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability, rev. ed. (New York: The New Press, 2013), 114. On the US role see also Lubna Qureshi, Nixon, Kissinger and Allende: US Involvement in the 1973 Coup in Chile (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009); Kristian Gustafson, Hostile Intent: US Covert Operations in Chile, 1964–1974 (Washington DC: Potomac, 2007); Jonathan Haslam, The Nixon Administration and the Death of Allende’s Chile: A Case of Assisted Suicide (London: Verso, 2005).

³³ Memo TelCon, Nixon and Kissinger, 16 September 1973, The Declassified Record, National Security Archive, Washington DC.

³⁴ In this essay I do not examine operations launched in Indochina because they were ancillary to the larger war effort in Vietnam.

³⁵ Herter quoted in National Security Council meeting, 24 March 1960, Whitman File, National Security Council Ser., box 12, DDEL.

³⁶ See Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959–1976 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 57–184; Jeffrey Michaels, “Breaking the Rules: The CIA and Counterinsurgency in the Congo 1964–1965,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 25, no. 1 (2012): 130–59; Klaas Voss, Washingtons Söldner: Verdeckte US-Interventionen im Kalten Krieg und ihre Folgen (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2014), 33–196.

³⁷ National Intelligence Estimate, “Probable Developments in Colonial Africa,” 11 April 1961, National Security Files, National Intelligence Estimate, box 8, Lyndon B. Johnson Library, Austin, TX (hereafter LBJL).

³⁸ National Intelligence Estimate, “The Liberation Movements of Southern Africa,” 24 November 1967, National Security Files, National Intelligence Estimate, box 8, LBJL..

³⁹ My discussion of the Angolan operation is based on Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions, 230–396. For other perspectives, see Henry Kissinger, Years of Renewal (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), 791–833; F.J. du Toit Spies, Operasie Savannah. Angola 1975–1976 (Pretoria: S.A. Weermag, 1989); Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 207–49.

⁴⁰ “Indicaciones concretas del Comandante en Jefe que guiarán la actuación de la delegación cubana a las conversaciones en Luanda y las negociaciones en Londres (23–4–88),” Centro de Información de las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias, Havana.

⁴¹ Kissinger, Years of Renewal, 785.

⁴² Goodpaster to Harlow, 2 January 1959, White House Office, Office of the Staff Secretary, Subject Ser., Alphabetical Subser., box 7, DDEL.

⁴³ Senator Richard Russell to Senator Francis Green, 16 January 1956, quoted in David Barrett, The CIA and Congress: The Untold Story from Truman to Kennedy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005), 225.

⁴⁴ On Congress and the CIA see ibid.; Frank Smist, Congress Oversees the United States Intelligence Community, 1947–1989 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990); Britt Snider, The Agency and the Hill: CIA’s Relationship with Congress, 1946–2004 (Washington DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, 2008).

⁴⁵ Interview with Pat Holt, Bethesda, Md., 19 February 1992.

⁴⁶ Solarz, 26 February 1976, in US House, Committee on International Relations, Subcommittee on International Resources, Food and Energy, Disaster Assistance in Angola, 94^th Cong. (Washington DC: GPO, 1976), 43; Helms to Ford, 19 December 1975, 1, White House Central Files, Subject File, box 22, Gerald R. Ford Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

⁴⁷ Robert Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 251.

⁴⁸ The best analysis of Carter’s foreign policy is Mitchell’s “The Cold War,” 66–88.

⁴⁹ CIA, “World Comment on the Guatenalan Revolution,” 25 June 1954, in Gleijeses, Shattered Hope, 370.

⁵⁰ Interview with CIA inspector general Lyman Kirkpatrick, Middleburg, VA, 2 June 1989.

⁵¹ Kennedy to newspaper publishers, 27 April 1961, quoted by Neal Houghton, “The Cuban Invasion of 1961 and the U.S. Press, in Retrospect,” Journalism Quarterly (Summer 1965), 426.

⁵² Joseph Alsop, with Adam Platt, ‘I’ve Seen the Best of It’: Memoirs (New York: Norton, 1992), 443.

⁵³ John Pitman, ‘Who Will Call Hand of US in Guatemala?’ Daily Worker (New York), 21 June 1954, 5.

⁵⁴ Interview with CIA station chief Lawrence Devlin, Washington DC, 18 June 1992. For the press’ silence during Operation Paper, see Joseph and Stewart Alsop, “Matter of Fact,” Washington Post, 11 February 1953, 13; for Guatemala, Gleijeses, Shattered Hope, 258–62, 367–70; for Indonesia, Audrey Kahin and George Kahin, Subversion as Foreign Policy: The Secret Eisenhower and Dulles Debacle in Indonesia (New York: New Press, 1995), esp. 158, and interview with Sam Halpern, a CIA officer who participated in the 1957–58 operation against Indonesia, St Simons Island, GA, 1 June 1996; for the Bay of Pigs, Victor Bernstein and Jesse Gordon, “The Press and the Bay of Pigs,” Columbia University Forum, Fall 1967, 5–18, and James Aronson, The Press and the Cold War (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970), 153–69; for the former Belgian Congo, Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions, 128–32.

⁵⁵ See Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions, 362–65.

⁵⁶ Howard Jones, Indonesia: The Possible Dream (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), 145. My reading of The Times of Indonesia (Djakarta) and The Deli Times (Medan) for the period confirms the silence of the Indonesian government on the US role. On the operation in Indonesia see Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison, Feet to the Fire: CIA Covert Operations in Indonesia, 1957–1958 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1999); Kahin and Kahin, Subversion as Foreign Policy.

⁵⁷ “For Ways That Are Dark,” New York Times, Editorial, 19 August 1958, 26.

⁵⁸ Mohammad Yousaf, Afghanistan: The Bear Trap (Havertown, PA: Casemate, 2001); Charles Cogan, “Partners in Time: The CIA and Afghanistan,” Wold Policy Journal 10, no. 2 (Summer 1993): 73–82; Artemy Kalinovsky, A Long Goodbye: The Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2011).

⁵⁹ On the United States and Angola in the Reagan years, see Chester Crocker, High Noon in Southern Africa: Making Peace in a Rough Neighborhood (New York: Norton, 1992); Gleijeses, Visions of Freedom.

⁶⁰ An intriguing question about the Angolan operation is, when did it start? Until October 1985, covert operations in Angola were prohibited by the US Congress, but two US documents as well as South African sources suggest that, despite the strictures of Congress, aid to Savimbi began under Carter (Gleijeses, Visions of Freedom, 51–53).

⁶¹ Interview with Stephen Weissman, Washington DC, 20 April 2006.

⁶² CIA, “Angola Cuba: Some Strains but No New Developments,” 9 April 1979, Central Intelligence Agency Records Search Tool, National Archives, College Park, MD.

⁶³ The best book on Reagan and Nicaragua is William Leogrande, Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977–1992 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998). See also Robert Kagan, A Twilight Struggle: American Power and Nicaragua, 1977–1990 (New York: The Free Press, 1996).

⁶⁴ “US Role in Mining Nicaraguan Harbors Reportedly Is Larger Than First Thought,” Wall Street Journal (New York), 6 April 1984, 6.

⁶⁵ Interview with Esterline.

⁶⁶ Penados del Barrio et al., “El clamor por la tierra,” Pastoral Letter of the Guatemalan bishops (Guatemala City, n.p., 1988), 1.

⁶⁷ Fred Bridgland, “Savimbi et l’exercise du pouvoir,” Politique Africaine, March 1995, 95. Bridgland is the only authoritative biographer of Savimbi.

⁶⁸ Anthony Hodges, Angola: Anathomy of an Oil State (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 19.

⁶⁹ Marrack Goulding, Peacemonger (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 193.