The Central Intelligence Agency is currently losing one of its most important assets - secrecy. In a number of well-documented books, substantiated articles, and through the personal testimony and revelations of highly-placed members of the United States' political hierarchy, the CIA is being exposed to public scrutiny, a position in which it must feel, at the least, distinctly uncomfortable.

Concerned no doubt that its freedom of action - to operate anywhere and in whatever manner is most expedient -may be impeded by the exposure of its organisations-techniques, and of the political and economic interests which it serves, the Agency has responded in a number of ways. One response has been the censoring and reviewing of books, prior to publication, which have described and analysed CIA activities in highly critical terms and with embarrassing accuracy. The principal objection raised to such disclosures as CIA support for the production and transportation of heroin in Southeast Asia is that of 'damage to the national interest'. As with the Pentagon Papers, however, reputations are the prime casualties of such disclosed 'secrets'. Nevertheless, the censoring continues. Marchetti and Marks' book The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence contains a number of empty spaces labelled Deleted, the result of court orders obtained by the CIA. These give the book a stepping-stone quality as one ends in mid-sentence, jumps an empty space, and then tries to pick up the threads of the authors' revelations in the following passage.

A third response of the Agency and its private armies may be the 'removal' of any pesky investigative reporter who comes too close to discovering the truth Thus Alfred McCoy, author of The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, was fired upon by soldiers of the CIA's Laotian mercenary army during his investigations in that country. General Edward Lansdale, Ngo Dinh Diem's top adviser on intelligence and counter-insurgency warfare when he was with the CIA, warned McCoy when he heard of his intention to research his book in Southeast Asia, that he would not return alive.

It is remarkable, therefore, that in spite of all the obstacles to revealing the truth about the CIA the past few years has seen the publication of a small but significant number of books doing just that. Four deserve special mention: OSS, a history of the organisation which preceded the CIA, by R Harris Smith; The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, by Victor Marchetti and John D Marks; The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, by Alfred W McCoy and Inside the Company-CIA Diary, by Phillip Agee. These books have been used as the basic sources for this article, along with a number of more specific books (e.g. My War With the CIA by Prince Norodom Sihanouk and Wilfred Burchett) and magazine articles.

A page from The CIA and the Cull of Intelligence. The passage in bold type was requested deleted by the CIA but was included by permission of a US court. The blank spaces are passages ordered deleted by the court. The authors have appealed against the courts decision.

OSS

The Office of Strategic Services was created by President Roosevelt nearly a year after the United States entered the Second World War. Its function was to 'plan and operate such special services as may be directed by the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff. The new organisation was headed by William Joseph Donovan, a 58-year-old millionaire Wall Street lawyer whose 'blend of Wall Street orthodoxy and sophisticated American nationalism appealed to Roosevelt. (1) (2)

General Willian Donovan, Director of OSS.

Despite his Republican affiliations Donovan's new organisation contained within its ranks both dedicated conservatives and ardent communists, along with 'a heterogenous mass of New Deal Democrats and Wilkie Republicans!' Donovan considered the skills of Marxist academics, men who had fought with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade for the Republican Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War and members of the Young Communist League to be of value to the OSS' It was on that basis that he defended their employment against the demands of the FBI for their removal. In the fields of guerilla warfare, the organisation of socialist trade union groups in the European underground, and in the Research and Analysis Branch, members of the political left performed valuable services for the OSS. Working in the Research and Analysis Branch were such prominent left-wing intellectuals as Herbert Marcuse, analysing German social structure and Marxist economist Paul Sweezy.

'While Donovan diligently sought left-wing intellectuals and activists for the operational and research branches, he saw no incongruity in appointing corporate attorneys and business executives as administrators.' Corporations were more than generous in loaning their executives and resources for OSS service. The J Walter Thompson Advertising Agency supplied the chief of the OSS Planning Staff, the head of the Morale Operations Branch in London, the executive officer of OSS in Cairo and a 'black propaganda' specialist in Casablanca. (3) The United Fruit Co, the Standard Oil Co,(4) Paramount Pictures, law, banking and investment firms, steel and railway corporations were all represented.

'Phosphorescent Foxes, Incendiary Bats'

Donovan was an irrespressible optimist, mobile and active, who 'offered a sympathetic ear to every eccentric schemer with a hair brained plan for secret operations (from phosphorescent foxes to-incendiary bats'). Informality was fostered by Donovan, who refused to be bothered with organisational detail. Administrative officers 'wouId walk into Donovan's office with dozens of charts, charts for the budget, charts for the administration, charts for the various divisions .... Donovan would glance at them, smile at them, approve them with a mild wave of the hand and then he would have another idea, and he would forget them completely.' Insubordination became a way of life for OSS officers who realised that their superiors avoided disciplinary actions even in cases of incompetence or corruption. When Donovan finally decided to court-martial-two overseas officers, aides protested that court-martial proceedings against any officer for any reason would be damaging to the secrecy and morale of the organisation.

Some disgruntled OSS officers saw the composition of the organisation as a mistake. One officer charged that 'OSS top men are nearly all picked from the Red baiters.' Donovan, he said, 'had succeeded in collecting one of the fanciest groups of dilettante diplomats. Wall Street bankers and amateur detectives ever seen in Washington.' Another officer, who served behind the lines in Italy, was equally bitter. He railed at the 'rotund, happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care young Republican businessmen who sported themselves in the OSS enjoying the thought of sending packages or arms, money, food etc. by parachute, but who didn't really care if they got there during this or the next moon, while all the time poor devils in the mountains slaved at budding fires in the snow, waiting, hoping, night after night. . ."

Resistance, Revolution, Reaction

'The oppressed peoples must be encouraged to resist and to assist in Axis defeat, and this can be done by inciting them, by assisting them, and by training and organising them. Sabotage alone would not suffice. It must be accompanied by efforts to promote revolution.

The undercover agent must set up his machinery for building up an organisation dedicated in the beginning to passive resistance. If his task is successful, passive resistance will lead by natural steps to open violence and even - at the proper time - to armed rebellion.'

These tactics for liberation were not written by Lenin, Mao Tse-tung or Ho Chi Minh - they were both written by OSS officers, the first a Special Operations chief, steel corporation executive and Russian emigre, the second a freelance writer who later became an editor of Fortune and Time magazines. 'Even Donovan's executives realised that OSS was confronted with the task of political revolution . . . New social and ideological forces were clamouring for the overthrow of old regimes in Europe, and Asian nationalists were plotting the destruction of colonial rule, 'writes Smith. Robert Welch, founder of the John Birch Soceity, charged that OSS 'frequently the threw the weight of American supplies, arms, money, and prestige behind the Communist terrorist organisations of Europe and Asia.' There was some truth in this statement. But the full story of OSS relations with the resistance was a complex product of organisational struc-ture, the nature of guerilla warfare, the ideologies of the men behind the lines, and the competing political interests of America's allies. In China and Indo-China, for example, OSS field officers were in the ambiguous position of assisting or wanting to assist, the Chinese Communists and the Vict Minh in spite of the opposition of the former colonial powers and their local allies, such as the Kuomintang. OSS attempts to co-operate with the Communists in Yenan against the Japanese were repeatedly frustrated by Chiang Kai-shek and his 'completely trusted subordinate and guardian' Tai Li, the chief of a combined secret police and intelligence organisation said to control over 300.000 agents throughout China and abroad.

General Tax Li, the ruthless "Chinese Himmler" and US Navy officer Milton Miles who assisted him in sabotaging OSS attempts to cooperate with the Communists. Centre is one of the many warlords who supported Chiang Kai-shek.

Ho Chi Minh (third from right) and Vo Nguyen Gulp (in white suit at left) with American OSS officers. The American medic who saved Ho's life is at far left.

In Vietnam, co-operation between OSS and the Vict Minh, the strongest nationalist movement was more fruitful. The under underground Viet Minh organisation created in the northern provinces of Tonkin under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap supplied OSS with intelligence on the Japanese occupation forces and in return received arms, ammunition and training. In fact, in the relations between the Viet Minh and the OSS officers in Vietnam there was little to suggest the future imperialist role the United States would play that country. The OSS officers believed that Ho was a 'true patriot' and 'much more a nationalist that he was a communist'. An OSS lieutenant later recalled that Ho expressed a particular interest in the American Declaration of Independence and another remembers that 'he knew American history well and he would talk about American ideals and how he was sure America would be on his side.... He thought that the United States would help in throwing out the French and in establishing an independent country. . . "Was not Washington considered a revolutionary?' he once said to the OSS second-in-command. 'I, too, want to set my people free.' (5)

Ancestry

In this cursory summary of the OSS and its activities I have tried to place emphasis on the features of its ideology and practice which were incorporated into its post-war equivalent the Central Intelligence Agency. As Smith has written: The OSS was the direct lineal ancestor of today's CIA. The CIA is no aberrant mutation of 'Donovan's Dreamers', it is in many ways the mirror image of OSS' Edmond Taylor, the OSS man who fought Vichyism in Africa and colonialism in Asia, reflected in a recent memoir that the wartime activities of his organisation established 'a precedent, or a pattern, for United States intervention in the revolutionary struggles of the postwar age.' One feature which does not seem to have been retained, however, is the political heterogeneity of the staff. After the experience of McCarthyism and the Cold War there is now no room for Marxist academics or members of the Young Communist League.

Alān Welsh Dulles who later became director of the CIA. Since the war former OSS officers have represented the US as ambassadors in over twenty countries. Also included in the exclusive club of OSS veterans are Presidential advisers Arthur Schlestnger Jr. and Watt Rostow. and former CIA director Richard Helms.

Writing in the Chicago Tribune about a proposal in 1944 to create a permanent American intelligence service, journalist Walter Trohan claimed that the organisation proposed by Donovan would be an 'all-powerful intelligence service to spy on the post-war world and to pry into the lives of citizens at home.....The unit would operate under an independent budget and presumably have secret funds for work along the lines of bribery and luxury living described in the novels of E Phillips Oppenheim.' These words proved to be astonishingly prophetic.

(To be continued next week)

The post-war role which the United States did eventually assume in Vietnam was markedly different from that foreseen by Ho Chi Minh and only now is it coming to an end as the US military puppets fall in the face of Ho Chi Minh's successors.