Shadow Warrior (78 page)

On September 16, 1975, Colby and Rogovin appeared before the Church Committee in open session with the major networks televising the proceedings live. Colby calmly described the decision to retain the biological weapons and their subsequent discovery. The committee wanted the details of “Project Naomi,” of which the toxins and venom were only a part. Were there other poisons? Yes, Colby replied—strychnine, cyanide, and a compound labeled “BZ” that attacked the nervous system. How were these agents to be delivered? Again Colby was prepared. He produced several dart guns and a .45-caliber-sized electric pistol capable of silently firing poison pellets. To the mirth of all present—except, of course, the CIA people—Colby referred to the pistol as “a nondiscernable micro-bioinoculator.” Newspapers all across the country ran pictures of Church and Goldwater handling the dart guns. As Colby later wrote, “the overall impact was of the wildest hugger-mugger of the cloak-and-dagger world.” Church subsequently used the CIA's “Show and Tell,” as
Newsweek
dubbed it, to reinforce two points. The CIA was indeed in the business of assassination, and it was an Agency run amok, deliberately ignoring an order of the president. The
New York Times
agreed, terming the CIA handling of toxins and venom “the most reckless kind of insubordination.”
Times
columnist Tom Wicker declared that the existence of the poisons was “only
one more bit of evidence that this agency is a Frankenstein's monster that must be destroyed.”
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According to Colby, the incident was “the last straw” as far as the White House was concerned. “From the outset,” he later wrote, “I had been . . . aware that many in the administration did not approve of my cooperative approach to the investigations. I had been blamed for not categorically denying Hersh's story [concerning the CIA's role in spying on domestic radicals] at the very beginning; I had been criticized for turning material on Helms over to the Department of Justice; I had been chided for being too forthcoming to the Rockefeller Commission; I had been scolded for not stonewalling at every Congressional hearing.” The White House had wanted to get rid of Colby ever since his January 1975 visit to Deputy Attorney General Laurence Silberman, when he—without Ford's knowledge—had delivered a list of possible criminal activities by Agency operatives. But in the wake of Hersh's revelations and those coming out of the congressional committees, firing the DCI then would have been seen as a cover-up. By summer, Washington was full of rumors that Colby's time had come. On June 20, CBS News had reported that Rockefeller and Kissinger were pressing for his dismissal. The vice president was quoted as saying that Colby was “a weak person who lacks strength of character.” In the diary he wrote during the family jewels affair (later published in
Rolling Stone
), Dan Schorr speculated that “Kissinger is afraid that if Helms goes down, he'll be dragged down too.”
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In fact, Kissinger had already misled the Church Committee. In testimony before that body, he had declared that Track II of the Chilean operation had ended on October 15, 1970, after he and Alexander Haig had met at the White House with Thomas Karamessines, the CIA's deputy director of plans. He was reminded that the DDP had recently testified that “as far as I was concerned, Track II was really never ended.” Karamessines was misremembering, Kissinger replied. But the evidence said otherwise. Karamessines's cable to the CIA station in Chile, stating that “it is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup,” was dated October 16, 1970, the day after Track II had allegedly been terminated.
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Colby was not taking all this sitting down. On August 1, Mitch Rogovin told journalist Neil Sheehan that he and Colby had the goods on Kissinger. They had been able to obtain backchannel communications implicating him in the kidnapping and murder of Chilean general René Schneider.
“He's finished,” Rogovin said. Later, in his notes on the conversation, Sheehan observed, “I wonder if Ford can afford to fire Kissinger. Perhaps it will be Mitch and Colby who will be fired.”
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One Saturday morning in the early fall of 1975, Bill Colby, accompanied by two dark-suited security men, entered the back of a George Washington University auditorium. The distinguished classicist Bernard Knox, one of Colby's Jedburgh comrades-in-arms, was lecturing on Sophocles'
Antigone
. The title character was a young woman, the daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta, who defied the edict of her uncle, King Creon, by burying the body of her brother, who had led an enemy assault on his own city-state. In her eyes, she had done the honorable thing, but Creon condemned her to death. The gods sided with Antigone and reproached Creon. He, in turn, repented and went to free Antigone from prison, only to find that she had committed suicide. Creon's son, Haemon, who was in love with Antigone, then killed himself upon discovering her body. So, too, did his mother, appalled by the injustice of it all. The name Antigone was interpreted by many scholars to mean “unbending.” You picked the appropriate lecture to attend, Knox remarked to his old friend after class. “Oh, I knew what you were going to talk about,” Colby replied.
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On the evening of October 31, 1975, on
CBS Evening News
, Daniel Schorr revealed that the CIA, earlier in the year, with the Shah of Iran's approval, had been running a covert operation to help Kurdish tribesmen in their rebellion against the Iraqi government. “The operation had been described to the Pike committee only a few days before,” Colby wrote in
Honorable Men
, “so there was very little doubt in any one's mind where the press had got hold of it.”
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The next morning, he went by the White House to discuss with Jack Marsh and others stratagems for keeping the Church Committee from issuing its report on assassinations and to commiserate over the irresponsibility of the Pike Committee. Shortly thereafter, Colby caught a plane for Jacksonville, Florida, where he was to discuss intelligence matters with Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. Sadat was so enthralled with journalist Barbara Walters, however, that Colby never got his audience.

When Colby returned to Washington that night, there was a message from Marsh waiting for him. He was to be at the White House at 8:00 sharp the next morning. When he arrived, the West Wing was deserted; there was no sign of the foreign policy team Colby had expected to see.
He was ushered into the Oval Office. As soon as Ford mentioned his intention to shake up his national security team, Colby realized that his tenure as DCI was over. He immediately offered his resignation. Ford accepted it and offered Colby the post of ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He said he would have to talk to Barbara. Ford confided that he was bringing George H. W. Bush back from China, where he was serving as ambassador, to run the Agency.

On his way out, Colby ran into James Schlesinger going in. He wasn't the only one being fired that day. Kissinger and Ford had had enough of the defense secretary's plotting against SALT II and his criticism of détente. The press later referred to the twin firings as the “Halloween Massacre.” To undercut speculation that he was nothing more than Kissinger's lap dog, Ford announced that he was relieving Kissinger of his duties as national security adviser, though he would still be secretary of state. Kissinger's replacement would be Brent Scowcroft, his longtime deputy.

The first thing Bill did was call Barbara. The couple was scheduled to attend Mass at a Benedictine church where their sons had gone to school; instead, they received Communion at the parish church nearest their house and then began calling family and friends to break the news. Jenonne Walker later said that Colby knew from the outset of the family jewels crisis that he could not survive as DCI. Nevertheless, he was hurt and angry. “There goes twenty-five years just like that,” he remarked to his wife when he arrived home. “He was pissed,” Christine Colby, who was still in high school, later recalled.
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Bill and Barbara quickly decided that the NATO job was a dead end. He had the White House operator patch him through to Air Force One and so informed Ford, who was on his way to Miami for a dinner with Sadat. Dan Schorr called to check whether rumors he had heard of the twin firings were true. They were, Colby replied. “Colby, on the phone,” Schorr subsequently wrote, “sounds as shaken as I've ever heard him.” Late in the day, the Colbys paid a visit to the Schlesingers to commiserate. The newly ousted defense chief smiled at Bill and remarked, “It looks like Dick Helms outlasted both of us.”
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Colby's firing precipitated a minor firestorm on Capitol Hill. Church called a press conference and, his voice quavering, declared that the decision to dismiss the DCI was just another part of a Watergate-style cover-up. “There seems to be a whole pattern developing of trying to thwart the
committee's work and suppress its findings.” At the time, the Church Committee was preparing its report on assassinations, and the White House was pulling every string to see that it was not made public. Church told reporters that there was no chance that the document would be suppressed. Other critics accused Ford of trying to politicize the CIA's top spot. Wasn't the president ignoring “the requirement that this be a non-partisan position?” a reporter subsequently asked White House press secretary Ronald Nessen, pointing out that George Bush was a former chair of the Republican National Committee.
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Kissinger and Ford had not thought matters out very well. It would be weeks, if not months, before Bush was ready to take over at Langley. Ford was scheduled to make a four-day visit to Beijing in December, and he wanted no changing of the guard at the American embassy there until after his trip. Even after Bush returned home, it would take time to have him confirmed. If Colby departed immediately, Vernon Walters would become acting DCI. The confrontations between the executive branch and the select committees were reaching a climax, and the White House did not want a man who had been tainted by the Watergate scandal to be chief spokesman for the intelligence community. According to Colby, it was Vernon Walters who pointed out the dilemma to the White House. This was probably not the case, but Walters did act as a go-between during the ensuing negotiations. Colby said he would agree to stay on, but he was scheduled to testify before various committees for at least the next six weeks, and he did not intend to be a mere pawn. Walters conveyed the message, and on Wednesday, November 5, Ford called Colby to the Oval Office once again.

Gracious as always, Colby took the initiative. “Mr. President, I don't want to make this in any way difficult. I am fully prepared to stay on until George Bush can get here, but the DCI serves at the pleasure of the President. In order to be effective he must have the President's full authority to act.” Ford readily concurred and asked Colby if he wanted him to put it in writing. Colby said no. In his subsequent press release announcing that Colby would stay on, the president emphasized that during this period the DCI would act with “the full authority” of the President.
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The Halloween Massacre unfolded in the midst of the Ford administration's increasingly frantic effort to block publication of the Church Committee's report on assassinations, an effort in which Bill Colby played
a leading role. On October 21, Colby had written to Ford arguing that release of the report would do irreparable damage to the foreign policy of the United States and threaten “the lives and livelihood of a number of officers of this Agency.”

The Church Committee document examined in detail five alleged CIA plots to assassinate foreign leaders, in some cases naming names and in others re-creating scenarios that would enable foreign intelligence agencies to easily identify individuals. If the Church Committee were allowed to publish the results of the assassination investigation and its related probe into covert action, the CIA would in the future find it almost impossible to persuade citizens of foreign countries to cooperate with it, the DCI said. Some ten days later, Colby and Kissinger refused to testify at a public hearing that the Senate select committee had scheduled on Chile. Frustrated, Church reminded the White House that it was the president who had ordered the Rockefeller Commission's assassination materials to be turned over to the Senate committee. Yes, Ford replied, but not with the intention of having them made public. On November 2, just hours before Colby's firing, the Church Committee voted unanimously to approve the assassination report. But when members balked at making it public, Church threatened to resign. The committee then compromised by deciding to let the Senate as a whole decide.
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On November 19, Colby held only the second open press conference by a DCI in the CIA's history. He outlined the dire consequences to follow if the assassination report was released. Behind the scenes, the Agency pleaded for the deletion of eleven names. The committee agreed to only one—Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, who had been involved in the preparation of the poison designed to do away with Lumumba—but only because he had gone to court. Schorr learned the identity of some of the people whom Colby had hoped to shield from exposure, among them Robert Maheu and Johnny Roselli. “When you work with the Mafia and promise to try to protect them,” Schorr observed in his diary, “I guess you have to go down the line with them.” On the 20th in a closed-door session, the Senate refused to block the assassination report's release, but it would not approve its publication, either. That same day, on his own authority, Church released the results of the investigation, nine months after Dan Schorr had reported on the matter and six months after the Rockefeller Commission had suppressed its conclusions.
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