THE LIFE AND DEATH OF AN INTELLIGENCE MAN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000402650016-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 8, 2012
• Sequence Number: 16
• Publication Date: May 11, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402650016-1
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He was an average young man who struggled through school, had
modest ambitions, but who worked hard and had a realistic view of
himself and the world in which he lived. One day, he became a spy
The life and death of
an intelligence man
^ As congressional hearings into the
Iran-Contra affair get under way this
week and the Central Intelligence Agen-
cy braces for what could be some highly
embarrassing testimony, a small Massa-
chusetts town is remembering one of its
own, a quiet young man who went off to
work for the agency and who died just a
few weeks ago in the course of doing his
job. Richard Krobock was killed on
March 26 in a vador when the heli-
copter that was carrying him and four
others crashed in a remote area southeast
of the capital, San Salvador. Krobock
was 31 at the time of his death, and he
had been with the CIA as an intelligence
officer for only three months. Friends
describe him as dedicated, smart and
sober-minded-a regular guy neither
unbalanced nor bedazzled by the sup-
posed glitter of the spy game. In short,
Richard Krobock was just the kind of
person the CIA employs legions of psy-
chologists to pick out of the usually
crowded field of applicants. For that rea-
son, and at a time when zealots and
ideologues have done so much to compro-
mise American intelligence, the story of
Richard Krobock, notwithstanding his
tragic death, is an oddly reassuring one.
Five days after his death, a cold,
gray drizzle fell on the matted grass,
and a crack of soldiers' rifles shattered
the stillness as Krobock's remains were
interred at Massachusetts National
Cemetery in Bourne, just a short drive
from the tiny seaside town of Scituate,
where he was raised. Krobock was 7, a
freckle-faced redhead, when he moved
to the town in 1963 with his older twin
brothers, Joseph and John, and his
mother, Nancy. His parents had re-
cently separated, and after several years
of shuttling around the Western United
States, Scituate seemed a good place for
a small boy to find his feet. "I can still
see him coming around the corner of
the house to knock at the open back
door," says Brian Shillue, who lived
two houses down from the Krobocks'
rented house at 33 Damon Road. "He
had those big jug ears, and he walked
like a stump jumper."
On to West Point
Though he seldom talked about it
while growing up, and though he had
not lived with his father since he was 6
years old, Krobock was determined to
follow in his footsteps to West Point.
Once there, however, Krobock tasted
discipline as he had never known it.
His mother had imposed few rules at
home. But rules were legion at the
academy. Classwork was tough, though
it wasn't all a grind. During his third
year, 3.2 percent-alcohol beer was in-
troduced for the first time on campus-
served on Saturday nights only. While
some cadets played strategy board
games on Saturday nights, Rick and a
buddy would go to Eisenhower Hall to
drink beer and talk. "Kro kept a
thoughtful concern for those
around him," said the 1979
West Point yearbook, "and a
watchful eye to the future."
Soon after graduation,
Krobock's future with the
Army was thrust upon him,
determined by his middling
class rank. Krobock became
a second lieutenant and was
placed in charge of a support
platoon servicing M-60 tanks
Ex-Scituate man
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at Fort Hood, Tex. It was at a time
when fewer than half of all Army re-
cruits had completed high school, and
Krobock was soon dismayed by the low
quality of many of the soldiers he was
assigned to lead. "Dirt bags," he la-
beled some of his charges, and his frus-
tration mounted as the limits of his new
command became evident. Fed up, he
began looking for a way out.
Keeping in touch
Even as he was serving his stint with
the tank soldiers and weighing his op-
tions, Krobock returned regularly to
Scituate, often driving cross-country in
the foreign sports cars he had grown to
love. Just short of town, Krobock would
pull off Route 3A at Cohasset Liquors
to catch up on news of old friends with a
few fellow Scituate High graduates who
worked behind the counter. Things
were fine, Krobock always said, elabo-
rating little. The Army was moving him
quickly from base to base, program to
program. No, he'd grin shyly, he wasn't
married just yet. Maybe someday.
The easy facade belied inner change.
Just as West Point and the Army had
transformed his lanky teenage saunter
into the purposeful gait of a soldier,
they also had disciplined his mind and
broadened his perceptions of the world.
Though he had never been an idealist,
his observations of the men he com-
manded and the organizations of which
he was a part sometimes troubled him.
Moreover, friends say, he wanted con-
trol of his own life and some small
measure of influence over the world
around him. "I know he didn't go to El
Salvador thinking he was going to save
the world from Communism," says
Brendan Flanagan, a West Point class-
mate who remained close to Krobock.
"He was no zealot. He was not moti-
vated by tremendous idealism or flag-
waving patriotism, though there was
some of that in him, too. He would
have seen it as a job...."
Inside the 1960s-vintage M-60 Army
tank, Krobock felt the lack of control
most acutely. He felt, he confided to a
friend, "like a sitting duck." So he de-
cided to do something about it. In the
spring of 1981, Krobock, then a first
lieutenant, applied on a whim and was
accepted by the Army's aviation
branch. Helicopters, Krobock learned
at Fort Rucker, Ala., were everything
tanks were not. They were fast and
responsive and, most important, they
gave the pilot a sense of control. Heli-
Continued
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402650016-1
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for
copier training commutea KronOCK to
an additional four years with the Army,
however, and he shipped out to South
Korea, where he flew the Army's OH-1
scout helicopters over the Demilitarized
Zone between North and South Korea.
The ways of war
It was during his stay in Korea that
Krobock's most intensive intellectual
development seems to have occurred.
During the long hours of isolation near
the DMZ, he devoured the writings of
Winston Churchill and the World War
II German generals and delighted in
reading spy thrillers. In long telephone
conversations with his father, John,
Krobock mused about how certain com-
manders would have fought a modern-
day war. Ready to train on the Army's
new AH-1 Cobra attack helicopter,
Krobock took the unusual step of ex-
tending his tour in Korea. But by the
time he returned to the U.S. to spend
Christmas with his family in 1983, Rich-
ard Krobock had become a restless
young man who made few commitments
and eschewed any step that would en-
cumber his free movement. For the time
being, at least, he would let the Army
direct where he went and what he did.
Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402650016-1
After Christmas, Krobock went on
to Fort Ord, Calif., where he joined
the Army's rapid-deployment force
and, havipg been promoted to captain,
took command of a group of Cobra
pilots. Krobock loved California. But
he also knew that the next rung of the
Army ladder would put him behind a
desk. By late 1985, he was thinking
seriously of getting out. When his re-
quest for a transfer to Army intelli-
gence was denied, he approached the
CIA, where the recruiters presumably
recognized in the mature and thought-
ful soldier the qualities of a successful
intelligence operative. He was offered
a position, and when his Army tour
ended, Richard Krobock joined the
elite ranks of what is still, for all its
current problems, an intelligence agen-
cy some call second to none.
The agency will not comment on
Krobock or about his activities, but it is
known that shortly after New Year's
Day, 1987, a handsome norteamericano
appeared on the sidewalks of San Sal-
vador speaking heavily accented but
fluent Spanish. Richard Krobock had
arrived.
His responsibilities in El Salvador,
inasmuch as they can be determined,
involved keeping tabs on U.S. aid mon-
ey to the Salvadoran government and
serving as a military adviser. It must
have been a ticklish and somewhat
thankless task, and once in early March
he telephoned his father in Sacramento,
saying he was bored and homesick. It
was his last conversation with a mem-
ber of his family.
A small reminder
On March 26, the U.S.-made UH-1
Huey helicopter went down 5 kilome-
ters outside a town called Chinameca,
killing Krobock and the four Salvador-
an soldiers aboard. In Krobock's
memory, the CIA has chiseled a 2-
inch star in the marble wall of the
echoing entry foyer at its headquarters
in Langley, Va. For their part, Kro-
bock's friends plan a different sort of
ceremony. About 200 got together re-
cently at St. Mary of the Nativity
Catholic Church, where Krobock had
served as an altar boy, and they plan
to meet again on August 1, in accor-
dance with Krobock's wishes, for a big
party awash in beer and memories.
Long after that's over, it may be Rich-
ard Krobock's most enduring legacy
that, at least among a small group of
friends in Scituate, he shored up the
stock of the much maligned CIA. "He
made the CIA a good point on our
part," says Cathy Collins, an old
friend. "You never hear anything good
about it any more." ^
a.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402650016-1