HOW TO SPOT A SPOOK

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP78-04722A000300030018-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 6, 2001
• Sequence Number: 18
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

lease 2001/08/31 : CIA-RDP78-0472 000300030018-3
by John Marks
Several times in the last few years,
this magazine has suggested that the
quickest single way to improve the
conduct of American foreign policy.
would be to get rid of the covert
agents and clandestine operators in
the CIA. In the spirit of practicing
what we preach, we priwrit the fol-
lowing article, which tells how to
identify a great number of the
Agency's "secret". operators. Our
purpose is to hasten the day when our
intelligence organizations concentrate
on their real work-collecting and
analyzing inforination from open
sources-and to cut the ground away
from the James Bonds and the
Gordon Liddys of the world before
they get us all in any more trouble.
Both the Soviet ' and American
intelligence establishments seem to
share the. obsession that the other side
is always trying to bug them.. Since
the other side is, in fact, usually
trying, our technicians and their
technicians are constantly sweeping
military installations and embassies to
make sure no enemy,. real or imagined,
has succeeded. One night about ten
years ago, a State. Department security
officer, prowling through the Ameri-
can embassy in Santiago, Chile, in
search of communist microphones,
found a listening device carefully
hidden in the office of a senior
"political officer." The security man,
John Marks is an associate of the Center for
National Security Studies and co-author of
The CIA and the Cult of intelligence.
along with everyone else in the
embassy, knew that this particular
"political officer" was actually the
Central Intelligence Agency's "station
chief," or principal operative in Chile.
Bugging his office would have indeed
been a major coup for the opposition.
Triumphantly' I -the security man
ripped the microphone out of the
wall-only to discover later that it had
been installed by the CIA station chief
himself.
The reason the CIA office was
located in the embassy-as it is in
most of the other countries in the
world-is that by presidential order
the State Department is responsible
for hiding and housing the CIA. Like
the intelligence services of most other
countries, the CIA has been unwilling
to set up foreign offices under its own
name, so American embassies-and,"
less frequerrtly, military bases-
provide the,. needed cover.. State
confers respe-tability on the*Agency's
operatives, dressing them up -with the
same titles and calling cards that give
legitimate diplomats entree into for-
eign governnieiit circles. Protected by
diplomatic immunity, the operatives
recruit local officials as CIA agents to
supply secret intelligence and, espe-
cially in the Third World, to help in
the Agency's manipulation of a
country's internal affairs.
The CIA moves its men off the
diplomatic lists only in Germany,
Japan, and other countries where large
numbers of American soldiers are
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stationed. In those countries, the
CIA's command post is still in the
U.S. embassy, but most of the CIA
personnel are under military cover.
With nearly 500,000 U.S. troops
scattered around the world, the CIA
"units" buried among them do not
attract undue attention.
In contrast, it is difficult for the
CIA to dwell inconspicuously within
the American diplomatic corps, since
more than a ?quarter.,.of the 5,435
employees who purportedly work for
State overseas are actually. with the
CIA: It places such On Argentina,
Bolivia, Burma, and Giii ana, where
the Agency has special interests and
projects, there are about as many CIA
operatives under cover. of substantive.
embassy jobs as there are legitimate
State employees. The CIA also places
smaller contingents in the ranks of
other U.S. government agencies which
operate overseas, particularly AID's
police training program in Latin
America.
What is surprising is that the CIA
even bothers to camouflage its agents,
since they are still easily identifiable.
Let us see why the embassy cover is so
transparent:
The CIA usually has a separate
set of offices in the embassy, often
with an exotic-looking cipher lock on
the outside door. In Madrid, for
example, a State Department source
reports that the Agency occupied the
whole sixth floor of the embassy.
About 30 people worked there; half
were disguised as "Air Force per-
sonnel" and half as State "political
officers." The source says that all the
local Spanish employees knew who
worked onlvhat floor of the embassy
and that visitors could figure out the
same thing.
MCIA personnel usually stick to-
gether. When they go to lunch or to a
cocktail party or meet a plane from
Washington, they are much more
likely to go with each other than with
legitimate diplomats. Once you have
identified one, you can quickly figure
out the rest.
insurance plan from the State Depart-
ment. The premium records, which
are unclassified and usually available
to local employees, are a dead
giveaway.
The Agency operative is taught
early in training that loud background
sounds interfere with bugging. You
can be pretty sure the CIA man in the
embassy is the one who leaves his
radio on all the time.
mlronically, despite the State De-
partment's total refusal to comment
on anything concerning the CIA, the
Department regularly publishes two
documents, the Foreign Service List
and the Biographic Register, which,
when cross-checked, yield the names
of most CIA operatives under embassy
cover. Here is how it -works:
America's real diplomats have
insisted on one thing in dealing with
the CIA: that the corps of Foreign
Service Officers (FSO) remain pure.
Although there are rumors of excep.?
tions, CIA personnel abroad are
always given the cover rank of Foreign
Service Reserve (FSR) or Staff (FSS)
officers-not FSO. Of course, there
are some legitimate officials from the
State Department, AID, and USIA
who hold. FSR and FSS ratings, so
care must ,'be-taken to avoid confusing
`these people with.the spooks.
To winnow out the spooks, you
start by looking up in the Foreign
Service List the country in question,
for example, China. The letters in the
third 'column from the left signify the
man or woman's personnel status and
the number denotes his` or her rank.
On the China list, David Bruce is an
"R-1," or Reserve Officer of class 1,
the highest rank. John Holdrid ;e is a
regular Foreign Service Officer (FSO)
of the same grade, and secretary
Barbara Brooks is a Staff Officer, class
4.
PEKING (U.S. LIAISON OFFICE) (1.0)
Bruce David K E.._............... chief USLO
Rd
5.73
Holdridpe John H.__ ............... dep chief USLO
0-1
5-73
Jenkins Alfred Les .................. depchief USLO
Brooks Barbara A ................... sec
R-I
S-4
5.73
McKinley Brinson-- ............ Spec asst
06
5-73
helit Luc!le .......................... sec
5.5
5-73
Anderson Donald M ................ pol oil
04
6.73
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The CIA has a different health
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Hunt Janice E ......................... sec S-8 12.73
tilley Janes R ........................ pal off R-3
Pascoe 8 l.}nn ....................... pal off . 0.5 7.73
Horowitz Hubert Eugene........ econ/cat off 0.3 6.73
Morin AnnabelieC ................. sec S-7 7.73
Rope hdliarn Frederick.......... ecan/cat off 0.4 4.73
Slac>tburn Robert R It............ edm off 0.3 4.73
Jtzrrera Delia t ....................... sec S.6 5.73
lambert William F..._ ........... eoms/ree off R?S 2.74
tueas Robert i ................. -.... eoms/raeaff S?2 7.73
Morin Emile F .......................... ten set off 0.6 3.72
Peterson Robert 0 .................. cons/rac off R?6 7.73
Riley Albert 0 ......................... cons/rte off S?S 5.73
Now Holdridge almost certainly
can be ruled out as an operative,
simply because he is an FSO. Not
much can be told one way or the
other about FSS Brooks because, as is
the case with most secretaries, the
State Department does not publish
much information about her. David
Bruce might be suspect because of his
"R" status, but a. quick glance at the
Biographic Register, ..w) ,i h gives?a
brief curriculum vitae of all State
Department person?.nel, shows him to
be one of the high-level political
appointees who' have "R" status
because they are.. not members of the
regular Foreign Service. Similarly, the
Register report on FSR Jenkins shows
that he had a long career as an FSO
before taking on the State Depart-
ment's special assignment in Peking as
an FSR:
Bruce, David KE..b Md 2/21/98, m (Evangeline
Dell). Princeton U AB 19. Mem Md bar. US
Army 17- 19, 42-45' col overseas. PRIVEXPER
priv law practice 21-26, mean State legis 24-
26. 39-42, with bank-priv bus 28-40, chief rep
Am Red Cross (England) 40-41. GOVTEXPER
with Off Strategic Sers 41-45, asst see ofCom
47-48, ECA Paris R-1 chief of mission 5/48.
STATE AEP to France 5/49. Dept under sec of
state 2/52, consult to sec of state 1/53. Paris
R-I pal off-US observer to Interim Comm of
EDC, also US rep to European Coal-SteelCom-
munity (Lu;,embourg) 2/53. Dept consulttosec
of state 1/55. Bonn AEP to Germany 3/57-
11/59. London AEP to Great Britian 2/61_3/
69. Dept R-I pens rep of Pres with pens rank
amb to hd US del at Paris meetings on Viet-
Nam 7/70-4/71. Peking chief liaison off 3/73.
Jenkins, Alfred 1eSesne-b Ga 9/14/16, an. Emory
U AD 38, Duke U MA 46. US Army 42-46 let
It. PRIV EXPER prin-supt pub schs 40-42.
STATE Dept FSO unclass 6/46. Peiping Chin
Lang-area trainee 9/46, 0-6 11/46. Tientsin
pot off 7/48, O-5 4/49. Hong Kong chief pol
sect 7/49. Taipei pal off 7/50. 0-4 6/51. Dept
3/5Z. 0-3 9/54. Jidda couns, dep chief mis-
oe on 2/55. Dept det Nat War Coll 8/57, O-2
2/58, dep dir Off ,of SE Asian Aft 6/58, reg
plan ad Bu of Far E Aff 8/59. Stockholm
couns, dep chief mission 10/61, cons gen3/62,
O- 1 3/63, Dept FS insp 8/65, det Nat Security
Counc 7/66, FS insp 1/69, dir Off of Asian
Communist Aff 7/70, superior honor award 71,
dir for People's Rep of China, Mongolia,
Hong Kong-Macao aff 2/73. Peking dep chief
liaison off 4/73, Lang Ger. (w-Martha Lip-
piatt),
Note that there are no gaping holes
in their career records,ta3or did either
of these men serve long tours with
nameless Pentagon agencies, nor did
they regularly change their status
from "R" to ".S." to "GS" ' (civil
service).
Now, for purposes of comparison,
examine the record of the CIA's man
in Peking, a "political officer" named
James R. Lilley:
Litley, James R-b China Am parents 1/15/28,
on. Yale.i,1;RJ1,JVI%US Army 46-47. GOVT EX-
PER anal Dent of Armv 51-58. STATE Manila
R-6 7/58. Dept 10/60. Phnom Penh 9/61, R-5
3/63. Bangkok 4/63. Dept 8/64. Vientiane pal
off 6/65. R-4 5/66, S-2 4/68. Hong Kong 5/
68, R-4 5/69. Dept 7/70, GS-15 fgn aff off
4/71. R-4 det larg trng PSI 7/72-4/73, Lang
Fr, Rom. (w-Sally Booth).
The Foreign Service List provides
another clue, in the form of diplo-
mats' official assignments. Of all the
jobs real State Department representa-
tives perform, political reporting is
generally considered to be the most
important. Although genuine FSRs
frequently hold administrative and
consular slots, they are almost never
given the irriportant political jobs. So
where an FSR does appear in the
listing witj a political job,..it is most
likely that' the CIA is Busing the
position' :for cover. There is an
exception to this rule: a compara-
tively few - minority-group members
who have been brought into the
Foreign Service as Reserve Officers
under a special program. They are
found exclusively in the junior ranks,
and their biographic data is complete
in the way the CIA people's is not.
Finally there is another almost
certain tip-off. If an agent is listed in
the Biographic Register as having been
an "analyst" for the Department of
the Army (or Navy or Air Force), you
can bet that he or she is really
working for the CIA. A search of
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hundreds of names found no legit-
imate State Department personnel
listed as ever having held such a job.
In an embassy like the one. in
Santo Domingo, the spooks in the
political section outnumber the real
FSOs by at least seven to three:
Political SactUcn
Beyer icel H ....... ?...._.~ .> ... pal off R-5 7-72
BrugaerFrederick A...-__..-. pal off R?1 9.72
Bumpus James H__.. 1.72
pal off 0-4
Chafin Gary E._.__ ............. pal off 0-6 03
Clayton Thomas pal off R-3 5.71
Dwiggins Joan H..._.?_ ..>..> pal off R-1 3.72
Fambrini Robert t..-.>._.>. pal off S-2 6.73
Greig David N Jr _- .. _ > pal off R-5 8-7)
Gueli Janet E.._>...._...._>. sec S4 12.73
MarkoftStephanie Msec 5.8 S-7
Merriam Geraldine clk-typist S19 I:
Mooney Robert C_ .> pal off R-6 Morris MargaretA._> elk-typist S10 12-ts
Pascoe Dorothy L.._. _._._'. sec : $-7 2-74
Ryan Doridald G...._.__..._... pal off R-8 8-73
Williams Albert N__ .. ?_, pal off 0-3 7-73
While Dondald Ryan is an "R" in
the political section, there is not
sufficent data published about him to
verify his status.
It was by studying these docu-
ments that I learned that the CIA has
sent an operative, to Peking. For
confirmation, I ? 'called the State
Department's rariking China expert,
Acting Assistant Secretary of State
'Arthur Hummel. After I identified
myself as a reporter working on a
magazine article and explained where
I had gotten my information, Hummel
shouted, "I know what you're up t'-
and I don't want to contribute. Thal,;
you very much!" and slammed down
the phone.
Another State official confirmed
that the decision to send an operative
to Peking was made in early 1973, but
declared that making public the
operative's existence could "jeopard-
ize" Chinese-Arrierican relations.
Neither this official nor any of his
colleagues seemed willing to consider
the notion that the U.S. government
was under no obligation to assign a
CIA man there-or anywhere else for
that matter. The first American
mission to China since 1949 certainly
could have been staffed exclusively
P A-1 were fern about
4Z,4MOS364-yern
?h_ Tn
 have excluded the Agency from
Pelting, ii~~ v~r v I
against a 'pia i axi om1 ee l/0
World War It foreign policy establish-
y The Chinese government'is presum-
ably clever enough to identify the
operative by sifting through the public
documents available. In fact his arrival
may well have been cleared with the
Chinese, who probably wanted recip-
rocal privileges for their secret service
in Washington. Such are the arrange-
ments the world's spooks are so fond
of working out with each other-the
Soviet KGB and the CIA even
exchange names of intelligence ana-.
lysts assigned to the other's capital.
Sacrificing `State'
Much to the alarm of a few high
State Department. officials, the pro-
portion of CIA to State personnel
abroad has been steadily rising i?l
recent years. The precise figures are
zealously guarded,,,. but several State
sources confirm the trend. They cite
as the main reason for this tilt toward
the CIA a series of government-wide
cutbacks that have hit State pro-
portionately harder than the CIA.
What troubles State is not, as one
career diplomat put it, "the principle"
that State should provide the CIA
with cover. That is unquestioned, he
says. Rather, most legitimate diplo-
mats do not like being a minority
within their own profession or having
the rest of the world confuse them
with the CIA's dirty tricksters. They
generally regard themselves as working
at a higher calling.
While the State Department has
been comparatively honest in accept-
ing the personnel cuts ordered by the
Johnson and Nixon administrations,
two sources familiar with the CIA
budget report that the Agency has
done everything possible to escape the
reductions. Traditionally, when out-
siders-even Presidents-have tried to
meddle with the Agency's personnel
allotment, the CIA has resisted on
"national security" grounds. And
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when that argument failed, the CIA
resorted to bureaucratic ruses: cutting
out a job and then replacing the
person eliminated with a "contract"
or "local" employee, who would not
show up on the personnel roster; or
sending home a clandestine support
officer-a specialist in things like
renting "safe houses," "laundering"
money, and installing phone taps-and
then having the same work done by
experts sent out from Washington on
"temporary duty."
Just this spring, the State Depart-
ment topk official, if secret, notice of
its declining -presence orseas com-
pared to the CIA writ Secretary
Henry Kissinger authotized a high-
level study of State-cIA staffing. The
Department's top adrrunistrator, L.
Dean Brown, who had urged the study
be made in the first place, gave the job
to Malcolm Toon, a career diplomat
serving as U. S. ambassador to Yugo-
slavia. Toon returned to Washington
to compile the top-secret report.
Asking not to be named and
Not only does the State Depart-
ment provide the CIA with cover,
but the Senate-and especially its
Foreign Relations Committee-
encourages the current practice of
sending over 25 pdrn'tt of our
"diplomatic" corps abroad under
false. pretenses. -Every year the
Foreign Relations Committee rou-
tinely approves and sends to the
full Senate for its advice and
consent lists of "Foreign Service
Reserve Officers to be consular
officers and secretaries in the
Diplomatic Service of the United
States of America." In 1973, of the
121 namersubmitted by the State
Department, more than 70 were
CIA operatives. According to a
knowledgeable source, the com-
mittee is informally told the
number of CIA people on the lists
but "not who they are." No senator
in memory has publicly objected to
being an accomplice to this cover-
building for the CIA.
refusing to provide the specific fib
tires, a source close to Kissinger says
that Toon's report calls for a
substantial reduction in the number of
CIA operatives abroad under State
cover. The source adds that Kissinger
has not made up his mind on the
issue.
Kissinger has always acted very
carefully where the CIA is concerned.
One of his former aides notes that the.
Secretary has regularly treated the
Agency with great deference at
government meetings although he has
often. been privately scornful of it
afterwards. In any case, Kissinger is
unquestionably a believer in the need
for the CIA to intervene covertly in
other countries' internal affairs-he
was the prime mover behind the
Agency's work against Salvador Al-
lende in Chile. The question of how
much cover State should provide the
CIA, however, is chiefly a bureau-
cratic one, and is not basic to
Kissingers foreign policy. The Sec-
retary therefore will probably not
take a definite position until he sees
how much opposition the CIA will be
able to stir up in the White House and
in the congressional subcommittees
that supposedly, oversee the Agency.
The CIA has lost no time in
.launching.;-its counteroffensive. At a
`July 19- off-the-record session with
key Democratic congressional aides,
Carl Duckett, the CIA's Deputy
Director for Intelligence, complained
about the reductions recommended
by the Toon report. According to a
source who was present,. Duckett said
that even without further. embassy
cuts, the CIA now doesn't ? have
enough people overseas.
CIA officials must be especially
concerned about Toon's recommenda-
tions, since in countries where there
are no U.S. military bases, the only
alternative to embassy cover is
"deep," or non-official, cover.. Ameri-
can corporations operating overseas
have long cooperated in making jobs
available to the CIA and would
probably continue to do so. Also, the
Agency would probably have to make
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more use ofsmaller firms where fewer
people would know of the clandestine
connection. Two examples of this
type are:
Robert Mullen and Company,
the Washington-based public relations
concern for which E. Howard Hunt
worked after he left the CIA and
before the break-in at Democratic
National Headquarters. Mullen pro-
vided CIA operatives with cover in
Stockholm, Mexico City, and Singa-
pore, and in 1971 set up a subsidiary
in cooperation with the CIA called
Interprogres, Ltd, According to a
secret Agency document released with
the House Judiciary Committee's
impeachment evidence, "At least two
[CIA] overseas assets have tangential
tasks of promoting the acceptance of
this company as a Mullen subsidiary."
Psychological Assessment Assc>?
ciates, Inc., a Washington psycho;
logical consulting firm specializing in
behavioral research '.and analysis. By
the admission of its president John
Gitticger, most of the company's
business since it was founded in 1957
by three ex-CIA psychologists has
come from Agency contracts. The
firm had two "representatives" in
Hong Kong, at least until June of this
year.
Unless their cover is blown, com-
panies of this sort and operatives who
work for them cannot be linked to the
U.S. government. But the Agency has
learned over the years that it is much
more difficult and expensive to set up
an operative as a businessman (or as a
missionary or newsman) than to put
him in an embassy. As a "private"
citizen, the operative is not auto-
matically exposed to the host coun-
try's key officials and to foreign
diplomats, nor does he have direct
access to the CIA communications
and support facilities which are
normally housed in embassies. More-
over, as an ex-CIA official explains,
"The deep cover guy has no mobility.
He doesn't have the right passport. He
is subject to local laws and has to pay
local taxes. If you try to put him in an
influential business job, you've got to
go through all the arrangements with
the company."
Who Needs Gumshoes?
Everything argues for having the
intelligence agent in the embassy-
everything, that is except the need to
keep his existence secret. The ques-
tion then becomes whether it is really
that important to keep his existence
secret-which, in turn,'-depends on
how important his clandestine activi-
ties are.
Could any rational person, after
surveying the history of the last 20
years, from Guatemala to Cuba to
Vietnam-and now Chile-contend
that the CIA's clandestine activities
have yielded anything but a steady
stream of disaster? The time has come
to abolish them. Most of the military
and ecortM jc intelligence we need
we can get from our satellites and
sensors (which already provide nearly
all our information about Russia's
nuclear weaponry) and from reading
the newspapers and the super-
abundant files of open reports. As for
political intelligence-which is actually
an assessment of the intentions of
foreign leaders-we don't really need
this kind of information from Third
World countries unless we intend to
muck about in their internal affairs.
With the Soviet Union or China
countries powerful enough to really
threaten our national security-timely
political intelligence could be a great
help. But fbr the past 25 years we
have relied'.`" on open sources and
machine-eo1'1`ected intelligence' because
our agents have proven incapable of
penetrating these closed societies.
There is not enough practical benefit
.gained from the CIA's ' espionage
activities to compensate for our
nation's moral and legal liability in
maintaining thousands of highly
trained bribers, subverters, and bur-
glars overseas as "representatives" of
our government. The problem of
getting good, accurate, reliable in-
formation from abroad is a complicat-
ed one, beyond the scope of this
article, but, to paraphrase Mae West,
covert has nothing to do with it. to
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