Shadow Warrior (75 page)

In
Lost Victory
, Colby would write of the Vietnam conflict that “the ultimate irony was that the people's war launched in 1959 had been defeated, but the soldier's war, which the United States had insisted on fighting during the 1960s with massive military forces, was finally won by the enemy.” It was, moreover, a clear-cut case of aggression, with a communist nation imposing its will by force of arms on a noncommunist one. “The political contest had been won,” he wrote, “the Communists offered no attraction whatsoever. The Thieu Government had designed a program of economic and political improvement that meant a better life for the Vietnamese people.”
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He was only partially right. The North Vietnamese Army had conquered South Vietnam by means of conventional warfare, but it had been able to do so because the South Vietnamese government and its supporters had failed to build a viable society, establish a separate identity, and capture the banner of Vietnamese nationalism. CORDS, working with select mid-level Vietnamese, had been able to bring a better life within reach of some rural Vietnamese, but their community-building efforts were no match for the relentless corruption and venality of the government in Saigon. The sickness that pervaded the regime in Saigon and the top levels of the ARVN was fully manifested during the final collapse. It was Thieu's “precipitous decisions and poor execution by his commanders,” Tom Polgar
cabled Langley, “poor leadership, poor morale, indiscipline, and selfishness[,] . . . that let the nation down and introduced a process of deterioration that led to results far in excess of what North Vietnamese military pressure would have been capable of during this time frame.”
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It was true that refugees fled mainly south rather than north to the communists, but there were areas in South Vietnam where Marxism-Leninism remained deeply rooted. In Hau Nghia west of Saigon, in Quang Ngai on the central coast, and in the Mekong Delta, communism had taken root in the early 1930s in response to relentless exploitation of the peasantry by absentee landlords and the Vietnamese lackeys who served their interests. The Peoples' Revolutionary Government largely ceased its military activities after Tet, but the Viet Cong remained and became increasingly active after the Easter Offensive of 1972. A Foreign Service Officer, James Nach, recalled driving through My Tho that summer. He was headed for a nearby district headquarters some 3 or 4 miles off of Highway 4. On maps in Saigon, the area was rated “A”—most secure. “I came to this rather sad looking town in the middle of the rice fields,” he said. He then drove to the American advisory compound and introduced himself to the senior district adviser, a US Army major. For the next hour the officer harangued Nach about everything that was wrong in his district. Government control did not exist beyond the town boundaries. “He was basically sitting there in his compound in a sea of red,” Nach recalled.
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In May, after CIA personnel were safely back from what had been South Vietnam, Colby presided over a welcome home and awards ceremony at Langley. To the enragement of many there, he announced that counterinsurgency and pacification had been a complete success, and that if the United States had not abandoned South Vietnam, victory could have been won. A number of those present had been reporting for years on the pervasive corruption, the authoritarian nature of military rule, incompetence within the ARVN, and the general hopelessness of the political and economic situation in South Vietnam. Several had had to leave friends and lovers behind. Frank Snepp stood up and told the DCI that he was wrong. But if the North Vietnamese Army had not invaded, . . . Colby began. That was precisely the point, Snepp said. After $150 billion, more than 55,000 American lives and the best pacification/counterinsurgency program history had ever seen, South Vietnam, with the fourth-largest military in the world, had not been able to defend itself.
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Colby the nation-builder could never admit that the dream of an independent, noncommunist South Vietnam was irreconcilable with the realities of Vietnamese culture, politics, and history. He had expected more of the South Vietnamese—and of the American people, for that matter—than they expected of themselves.

A
fter the fall of South Vietnam, a return to the “family jewels” crisis was almost a relief for DCI Colby. There was another good fight to be fought. The reputation and perhaps the very existence of the Agency to which he had devoted his life were in peril. If he had not been able to save South Vietnam, he could save the Agency. At least, the DCI believed, there was a chance. To succeed, however, Colby was going to have to change the very culture of intelligence in the United States and overcome powerful opposition from within the intelligence community as well as the White House.

All of Henry Kissinger's worst fears were coming to pass in the late spring and early summer of 1975. There was not only the fall of Saigon and the accompanying humiliation, but the damned mess with the CIA to dog him. Both situations were undermining America's position in the world. A growing segment of the international community now saw the United States as the evil empire or a laughingstock—or both. And then there was always his personal reputation to worry about. Not only was there the Track II Chilean thing, but Kissinger had chaired the 40 Committee since he had come on board as national security adviser in 1969. Every covert operation initiated by the CIA since then had been undertaken with his personal approval. Perhaps his former patron, Nelson Rockefeller, could staunch the flow of damaging information. He tried in his own way to do just that. After one of Colby's appearances before the Rockefeller Commission, the vice president drew Colby aside. “Bill,” he said, “do you really have to present all this material to us? We realize that there are secrets that
you fellows need to keep.” Not surprisingly, Rockefeller wanted nothing to do with the assassinations issue—but others with presidential ambitions, including President Ford and commission member Ronald Reagan, insisted on pursuing the matter. And so it was that the White House announced that the blue-ribbon panel's mandate was being extended two months so it could look into alleged plots to kill foreign leaders.
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David Belin, the Rockefeller Commission's executive director, took the commission's new charge seriously. He immediately requested all pertinent documents from the CIA, no matter how sensitive. Colby resisted. He could see no good whatsoever coming from this line of inquiry, he said. It would not matter that the CIA had never assassinated a foreign leader; it was clearly implicated in at least one plot—against Castro—and revelations concerning Mongoose would be enough to destroy the good name of not only the Agency but the United States. But he protested in vain. The commission, he was told, was part of the executive branch, and thus there was no reason to withhold anything from it, including information about sources and methods. Belin and his staff duly uncovered the Agency's involvement with Operation Mongoose, including attempts to enlist the Mafia, its connection to the deaths of Patrice Lumumba and Rafael Trujillo in 1961, and the abortive coup against President Sukarno of Indonesia in 1958. In April, Helms, called back once again from Tehran, testified before the commission in closed session for more than four hours. Exiting the committee room, he spotted Daniel Schorr, who had reported extensively on the assassination allegations, loitering with other reporters. “You son-of-a-bitch!” he yelled. “You killer! You cocksucker! Killer Schorr! That's what they should call you.” On May 20, news of the plot against Castro and the Mafia connection hit the front pages.
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Belin and his staff had completed their work by the first week in June. Their draft report included an eighty-six-page section on CIA schemes to eliminate foreign leaders. “President Ford has firmly announced that assassination is not and should never be a tool of United States policy,” read its conclusion. But that section would not see the light of day for some time.
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On June 5, the White House discussed what in the Rockefeller Commission report should be released and what should not. Belin and his staff pushed strongly for inclusion of the assassination material: “The omission of these findings will be viewed as a cover-up and will cast doubt upon the
rest of the report.” But Kissinger was adamant in his opposition to any mention in the report of plans to kill foreign leaders. A presidential commission admitting to assassination plots would be a disaster for US foreign policy, he declared. “Not since I have been here,” he said, “has there been anything even thought of. There was the killing of the Chilean Chief of Staff, but we had dissociated from that group when we heard they were plotting to kidnap him.” The assassinations were a “phenomenon of the Kennedys,” he asserted, and advised Ford to “cover-up a little for Kennedy.” Ford was persuaded. “I am not going to second guess my predecessors,” he declared. “If Church wants to, let him. The Kennedys will get him.”
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The report of the Rockefeller Commission was released on June 10. To the surprise of many observers, it was not a whitewash. The
Times
editorial board called the report “a trenchant, factual and plain-spoken document.” “The Rockefeller Report is in,” declared
Newsweek
, “and [it] found the agency guilty of nearly every serious allegation against it.” There was nothing, however, on assassinations. “The Commission staff began the required inquiry,” the document said, “but time did not permit a full investigation before this report was due.” At a press conference the day before the release, President Ford announced that he was ordering all of the commission's assassination materials turned over to the Church Committee.
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Perhaps the most sensational family jewel exposed by the Rockefeller Commission was that concerning the drug experiments the CIA had conducted on individuals without their knowledge or permission in the 1950s. On July 17, a week after the commission issued its report, the surviving family of Dr. Frank Olson notified Colby that it was filing a wrongful-death suit against the Agency. Olson, a biochemist, had been a civilian employee of the US Army working on a cooperative effort with the CIA at Fort Detrick, Maryland. The task assigned to the team was to investigate the effects of mind-altering drugs on human behavior. On November 19, 1953, CIA personnel slipped a large dose of LSD into the drinks of Olson and other members of the group without their knowledge. By the time he was informed some twenty minutes later, Olson was hallucinating—experiencing “side-effects,” as the CIA report on the matter termed them. He was rushed to New York for treatment by Dr. Harold Abramson, “a consultant to the agency on drug-related matters.” Abramson prescribed hospitalization, but before Olson could be admitted, the terrified biochemist crashed through the closed window of his upper-floor hotel room and plunged to his death.

The CIA general counsel subsequently ruled that Olson had died from “circumstances arising out of an experiment undertaken in the course of his official duties for the U.S. Government.” From 1953 through 1975, the family received survivor's benefits, but his family was never told the truth concerning his death. Colby recalled that he knew of a fatality connected to the drug research program, but he was “shocked and shamed” to learn of the circumstances. President Ford met with the family at the White House and issued a public apology. Colby followed suit and at the president's direction had the CIA's lawyers settle the family's claims. The press pounced on the story.
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In the early summer of 1975, in anticipation of his private confrontation with the White House over whether to cooperate with Congress, as well as his public one with the Church and Nedzi Committees over which CIA activities should be kept secret and which should not, Colby hired a personal lawyer. His choice was inspired—Mitchell Rogovin of the powerhouse Arnold and Porter law firm in Washington. The genius of the selection was that Rogovin had made his name as a civil liberties lawyer; for the previous twenty-five years, he had waged an almost constant war against the political establishment. A good friend of journalist Seymour Hersh, Rogovin had helped Common Cause successfully sue the Committee to Reelect the President, forcing the disclosure of Richard Nixon's campaign financing schemes. When John Warner, CIA's chief counsel, contacted Rogovin, he was representing the Institute for Policy Studies in its suit against former Nixon administration officials, including Kissinger, for wiretapping. Larry Silberman, whom Colby consulted, thoroughly approved: “Bill wanted a Democratic lawyer. He was a savvy operator.” Rogovin was struck with Colby's sincerity; it seemed to him that the DCI was battling a corrupt political establishment, that Colby genuinely wanted an intelligence agency that conformed to the Constitution and obeyed the law. Throughout the summer and fall, the short, stocky forty-four-year-old attorney would be constantly at the DCI's side, advising him and mediating between him and committee staffs.
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On May 13, 1975, Kissinger and Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger met with Colby to set the ground rules for dealing with the Church Committee. Kissinger quoted Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson: “The golden word of intelligence is silence. More can be lost by saying too much, too
soon, than by saying too little, too slowly.” In regard to past covert actions, the DCI should brief Church and Tower only in order to get them to appreciate the extreme sensitivity of much of the information. The purpose of this initial limited briefing “will be to induce the Chairman and Ranking Minority Member to impose limitations on the further investigation of the subjects covered.”The national security adviser seemed oblivious to the fact that most of the cat was already out of the bag.
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