MEN TOO CLEVER FOR THEIR OWN GOOD

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01350R000200050021-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 17, 2004
• Sequence Number: 21
• Publication Date: October 7, 1979
• Content Type: NSPR

ARTICLE AI'PLARED BOSTON SUNDAY GLOBE
ON PAGEA ved For Release( AO/1139?ftIA-RDP88-O1350R00020
0clever
or tie!' own gooa
Understanding the CIA's foreign policy role
THE MAN WHO KEPT THE
SECRETS: RICHARD HELMS
AND THE CIA.
'>.::
By Thomas Powers.-Alfred A.
B Ward Tust decent, liberal society through successive
Y .
-- decent, liberaladministrations.
Of course there have been interludes In other words, there would be no acts
of public violence, Korea and Vietnam to of criminal violence against foreign poli-,
name the most conspicuous, but,. in. the ' ticians and. any suborning that might be
main the cold war has been fought under- - done would be done with discretion and a
ground, the two principal antagonists the minimum of inelegance and it went with-
Committee for State Security (KGB) and out saying that the CIA did not play on
A The domestic turf. There was no question that
ll
problem had its handle and that the CIA
could find a way to. reach it. They" tended
to be white Anglo-Saxon patricians from
old families with old money, at least in
the beginning, and they somehow inherit-
ed traditional British attitudes toward the
colored races of the world - not the puk-
ka sahib arrogance of the Indian Raj, but
the mixed fascination and condescension.
igence gency.
the Central Inte
-KGB, organized in the shadows of the at the top levels the agency employed men of men like T. E. Lawrence, who were en-
world's blackest oligarchy - in the. shad of exceptional character and intelligence, thusiastic partisans of the alien cultures
ows as it were - had the infinite advan- honorable men who sought to carry out into which they dipped for a time and
tage of the Soviet state itself, paranoid, the directives of the President of the rarely doubted their ability to.help, until
obsessive, surreptitious and possessing" ,United States. Its operations would be it was too late"
"assets" beyond the dreams of avarice.. ? kept secret, not just froin ;the New. York No one who has watched the CIA ur
CIA was another matter, operating in Times but from "inception to eternity." Indochina can doubt-the truth of that I
the sunshine of a benign 'democratic This is roughly what Thomas Powers statement, though I 'think, Powers
nation, though in the complacent .1950s it calls "the child's history of the world"'and ? stretches it when he adds that the agency,
was easy enough to keep the lid on, jour- it came apart with astonishing speed in . must be remembered "with a mixture of
nalists and others being anxious not to the early 1970s = collapsed, really, with regret" as well as bitterness by the put-of-=
compromise this singular American weap-
on in the cold war. It would be in no. way
patriotic to cause inconvenience to mer-
ican skymasters in the face of what was,
there was a public wink - a. recognition operators, the founding fathers' whd. set
that:The Firm was not the Boy Scouts and `. the style -A- men who were "gregarious,
occasionally there was disagreeable.busi- intrigued ' by possibilities, liked to do
with subtletly and restraint and would be shared the optimism of; stock market
within the vague grounds,defined by a plungers, and were convinced that every
the-suddenness of a teenager falling out the-way peoples "it encouraged out onto;
of love. And of course this child's history: shaky limbs, and then abandoned." It's,
of "the world is-not wholly false, merely quite a list_ Beyond the Cubans in Miami'
and that we can understand it and the Montagnards and Meos in Viet-
incomplete
,
no one could deny it,.t a? threat:. No one. at all, and understand the CIA's' role in nam and Laos there were the Khambas in
questioned the Soviet threat, nor theAmerican foreign policy since World War Tibet,. the-. Sumatran colonels in
ubiquity or. ruthlessness of the KGB,. so II, is due to this remarkable book.'-1`':-Indonesia_, the.. Nationalist Chinese in
when the ,CIA wound up.'the:'apparatus ; .. x .. ? ? .Burma, the Ukranians,in 13usssa; and the,
one official (Frank Wisner): called "my At the center, and by no means an un- Kurds in. Iraq, "who exercis si a special
mighty Wurlitzer" everybody.danced,.un- sympathetic figure, is the enigmatic Rich- fascination for Allen. Dulles." rat an ' derstanding r, there were two sets of p master Who superior
evidence of thisdbook' ? ' This book is too thorough, serious and
or, , rather, a single set. The assumption tion by the
was that the KGB did not abide, by any lived too intimately with too many secrets intelligent to summarize in a review. _
rules. ? _ and who in the end suffered excruciating Each reader will have a favorite part
However, there was a price.It'was ab- 'conflicts of loyalties. Powers carefully Mine is the account of the assassination
solutely necessary to convmce`the public, conducts the reader through the-history,'; Plots against Fidel Castro, whose expo
and not merely the credulous voter but the OSS with its heavy dependence on the sure gave rise to the notion that the CIA
members of. Congress and the national British secret service, the early amateur- was a rogue elephant on a helter-skelter
press as well,. that the CIA bore no resew- ? . ishness of. the gentlemen spies recruited rampage. Powers sets the scene wonder-
blance to its opposite number. It differed.:.: by Allen W. Dulles, the triumphs of the U- ;fully, the Senate Committee dimwittedly
from `the KGB as the checked and bal-? :2, the successful coups, in Iran and Gua- ' ,attempting to find the end of the string -
anced American government differed '"tamla,, and finally the last, confused 15 who ordered the rub-out? Kennedy people'
from the Politburo. The CIA played, by years the Bay of Pigs, the clumsy assas- like McNamara, Maxwell Taylor, Richard'
more br Mess democratic rules and here, sination schemes against Castro and Goodwin, Sorensen and Bundy "had been
1.'1 CIA ff 1 h d `~
a
Lumumba, the Phoenix program in V iet- strangely quiet w i e o icia s
_ k
-
gprt~ a q1' eas~iapQ4/t~(1iavblG~r9efi2[ P a340 Q1t o m0 i 4Bst like amnesia vie
filar j;/ tts blest Loo es onar, ?s.
Power, Riches, Fame opal the Love of and the demoralized agency of today. tims' for the source of orders to' kill`s
Women.- ~. ,.,, Powers. is superb on the early covert-,.,Castro... The Senate . Intelligence Commit-:
 tee; headed by the egregious Frank monstrous acts without expli'cit.authori-
&tpMvedlFc d Releader29@4/t13y. OhWIMM 4366 `O b O5 021-6
plot could not be pinned down. But - " know. Where is the piece of paper which
Could anyone believe that the Kennedy says, Do it? More than once Helms found
people would all have been chewing on
pencils and murmuring disbelief if the
CIA had been truly off on its own where
Castro was concerned. They would have
raised the roof. Could anyone believe that
the CIA as an institution much cared who
ruled Cuba? Could anyone doubt the re-
sponse of the Kennedy people, and very
likely the Senate Intelligence Committee
itself, if some CIA official had risked the
complete absence of a single piece of pa-
per to back him up and said: "Well, who
do you think ordered Castro's assassina-
tion, the office -boy? It was John F. Ken-
nedy and his brother Bobby."
In Power's opinion (and now mine, so
strong is his argument) Helms could have
said exactly that, but didn't. He was the
himself with an almost irresistible urge to
fire back; Senator, how can you be so.god-
damned dumb? You don't order a thing
like that in writing."
There is much, much more in this book
a story not of a rogue elephant out of
control, but of men who were often too
clever for their own good, and whose ob- i
session with the Soviets and their clients
blinded them to other, equally ominous
forces. Misused by successive administra-
tions, the men at the top of the agency too
often cooperated in their own misuse, ar-
guing - as Helms did that he only
worked for one President at a time. The
the trouble with. that statement is that it's
absolutely true and therein lies the exqui-
man who kept the secrets; who was sworn site paradox: to refuse an assignment of a.
to keep them (it went with the job), so he President is, in this context, the very defi-
said nothing. Powers's account of., the nition of a rogue elephant: Powers points:
cupidity, hypocrisy and posturing of the no way out of this dilemma for the very
Church committee - Washington at its sound reason that there isn't any, except
smarmiest - is brilliant. The committee of course; resignation, simply resign the-
was pretending not to know"the way the job rather than trot off to kill Castro-or,
world worked. "Their questions seemed supply Howard Hunt with a wig. This
(to Helms) aimed purely''at the public course seems not to'have occurred to the
record. The committee members kept ask- top people, these honorable men, who
ing how the CIA could undertake such gave such loyalty to'their institution.
Approved For Release 2004/10/13 : CIA-RDP88-01350R000200050021-6