THE CIA'S APPRENTICES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00498R000100100068-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Sequence Number: 68
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2007/06/28: CIA-RDP99-00498R000100100068-9 STAT
ARTJCTE A}' 8 D
ON PAGE 7-21-
The C ,'.s Apprentices . -
THE NATION
25 June 1977
The rustling behind the curtain of the American "in-
telligence community" suggests that an intense -bureau-
cratic struggle-is going on back there for control of the
$6 billion monster. Admiral Stansfield Turner, the new
Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, has begun
a fight to put the whole works under his thumb. It would
mean, if he won the engagement, that Turner would rule
even the enormous roost called the Defense Intelligence
Agency whose. spies in the skies and on the ground and
under the seas are said to be able to listen to every
word spoken on this planet. There is predictable resist-
ance to this attempted grab, pf course, on the ground
that there is safety in numbers (of spy outfits) and that
the horrendous mistakes -of one can be corrected by the
countervailing errors- of another. -
Bureaucratic power struggles often have their strongly.
comic aspects, as the participants hand-wrestle each other
in ways that sometimes lack dignity, but this one is no
joke. Something Like the national -sanity is at stake,. not
to say what the founders called "a decent respect to the
opinions of mankind."- The CIA has proven itself a
dangerously irresponsible organization, and the idea that
our government's knowledge of the world and its various
dangers should come entirely from this one body is un:
thinkable, even as it is solemnly considered.
Admiral Turner has made his reach for intelligence
power at a peculiarly inauspicious time. Lately there has
been a veritable shower of light (and dirt) on the agency.
Even the clumsy Russians know bow to exploit its world-
wide disrepute. President Carter was forced, at his `June
13th press conference,. to deny, after he had "inquired
deeply within the State Department and within the CIA,'".
that the Soviet dissident Anatoly Shcharansky, arrested
for treason, had ever "to our knowledge"- had any con-
nection with the CIA. ? - .
The phrase "to our knowledge" tells it all. The evident
and. abundantly proven truth is that Presidents have as
often been ignorant of the dark operational side of the
CIA as'.they have been aware of it. Sometimes their
ignorance has been deliberate, in the interest of that
magisterial fora) of lying known as "deniability`=-"get
rid of X but don't tell me how;." At other times the CIA
has decided on its own to do its deeds without the
knowledge of the President. The word for that is "rogue,"
meaning that the agency is stampeding out of control.
We are now supposed to believe that the rampant ele-
phant of intelligence is back in harness, obedient to
supervisory boards and to the- "oversight" of more vig -
!ant Con- essional committees. It would be wise not to
:ake that tranquilizing assertion on faith. -_
-In three areas of the world-Cuba, Chile and Korea
-the harmful effects of the CIA's work have lately been
:xposed, and we propose to examine the facts of these
)perations along with their domestic consequences. First:
of Fidel Castro. That attitude has reigned in Washington
at least since the successful Cuban revolutionary made
his first visit to this country in 1959 and spent two hours
talking to Eisenhower's Vice President, Richard M. Nixon
(who then recommended to his chief a policy of all-out
opposition to Castro). What has. not been- so evident is
the' obsessive nature of that hostility and the extraordi-
nary means this country has employed to "get rid of" i
Castro. The Cuban leader now tells people that he was
always a Communist, even before he led his little-band
up into the Sierra Maestra. It seems more likely that, in
the beginning, he-was another kind of radical or Marxist
and that he now claims this original virtue because of
the way he has since been forced to go-specifically %
because of his million-dollar-a-day dependence on the
Soviet Union' for* everything that, the American trade {
embargo has denied his island-.state.
All of this, and much more; was pulled together in a
remarkable television documentary, The CIA's Secret
Army, broadcast by CBS New., on June 10. Much of
the information in this . program, with Bill Moyers as
the correspondent; was known to students of the quite
awful story, but television concentrated and focused its
impact. The broadcast. was -notable for the strong con=
elusions it forced upon the viewer.
The main judgment from it must be that the effort to
topple Castro (and replace hiim with what?) left this
country with a secret army of embittered Cuban exiles?
organized and trained by the CIA, and now looking for
ways to practice - the terrorism it had taught them. In
the new climate that President Carter is sensibly. trying
to create with- Cuba, one that seems to be leading tow. and
normal relations, these angry- and violent men will be-
come even more extreme in their attitudes and actions,
and their targets will change. They will turn inward to-
ward the country that has been their frustrating refuge.
At the same time,' the whole hemisphere will become the
ground for their' violent games and it will be almost
impossible to check them in their mad, anti-Communist
career.
For this terrible.effect of those years- of "get Castro" i
we have mainly the Kennedys, John and Robert, to
thank. Moyers builds a compelling case for the conclusion
that the real CIA war against Castro began after and as
a result of. the failure of the. Bay of Pigs. President
Kennedy lacked the courage - to cancel that - operation
(having inherited this half-grown aberration from Eisen-
hower) or to carry it;out.with full vigor, to use one
of his favorite words.
Castro believed, and with good reason, as the Moyers'
broadcast documents, that Kennedy was determined to
bring him down by whatever dreadful means, including -
the use of gangsters and every refinement of the_assassin's
art. Hence the installation of the Russian missiles-to
protect Cuba against the invasion that to Castro seemed'
inevitable. That famous "finest hour" widely attributed
to Kennedy's facing down of Khrushchev over' the re-
tioval of the missiles (and poisi o the world on the
nuclear brink) was thus the result of Kennedy''s own -,
The -Cuban Connection bungled attempts, through_ the CIA, to eliminate. Fidelt
Approved For Release 2007/06/28: CIA-RDP99-00498R000100100068-9 ' epnri ,:,: