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[10]HALPERN, SAM
[11]Interview by Brian Latell, Michael Warner
[12]7 APRIL 1998
[14]MW: This is the interview with Sam Halpern, done by Brian
[16]Latell and Michael Warner in the spaces of the Center
[17]for the Study of Intelligence on the 7th of April,
[18]1998.
[20]BL: Sam, you told me that you read recently the IG report
[21]on the Bay of Pigs.
[23]SH: I did, and the responses....
[25]BL: Which were recently declassified by the Agency, and you
[26]told me that. you had never seen it before, and that had
[27]you seen it when you were running Operation Mongoose
[28]you would have learned some critical lessons. You said
[29]that it-was a shame that you had not séen it.
[31]SH: That's right. Neither did Bissell; I mean, neither did
[32]Harvey and neither did Ted Shackley. Harvey's dead so
[33]I couldn't ask him, but I asked Ted the other day
[34]whether he had ever seen the report, and he. said no he
[35]had never seen it and nobody had ever talked to him
[36]about it. .So here you have the man in charge of a new
[37]Cuban Bay of Pigs SIC Operation, although we weren't
[38]going to send in 1,000 troops. And you have the guy in
[39]charge of the whole thing, Bill Harvey, and of course
[40]the DDP himself, Dick Helms. Helms by that
[41]time....When we were. doing Mongoose, none of the three
[42]people, none of the three'senior people ever saw the
[43]damn thing. I think McCone was wrong not to let those
[44]three people, at least those three people, see the
[45]thing, because the sections dealing with the
[46]organization and management of the whole Bay of Pigs
[47]Operation had lessons for what we were doing in
[48]Mongoose, and we were running the same kind of
[49]operation in terms of trying to overthrow a foreign
[50]government.
[52]BL: What, in particular, would you have done differently?
[53]What specifically, what lesson specifically applied to
[54]Mongoose?
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[67]I think one of the biggest things was a Governmental
[68]structure and: what and how. it was done, and how it was
[69]done under Mongoose. Fortunately under Mongoose CIA
[71]was not the main target of the Government structure.
[73]We were part of a Government-wide operation, as opposed
[74]to the Bay of Pigs. The Bay of Pigs as I read the
[75]report was basically a CIA operation supported to some
[76]extent by the Defense Department and politically by the
[77]State Department. In Mongoose it was totally different
[78]in that directions - all directions - came from the
[80]. White House, basically Bobby Kennedy, through the voice
[82]of a fellow called General Edward Landsdale. But in
[83]terms of the management of the thing, one of the best
[84]things that ever happened in Mongoose was that the
[85]three senior people who were involved in this, namely
[86]John A. McCone as DCI, Dean Rusk as Secretary of State,
[87]and Bob McNamara as Secretary of Defense, refused, flat
[88]out, to follow the original concept of Mongoose, which
[89]was that Ed Lansdale would be set up as Chief of
[90]Operations reporting to Bobby Kennedy, the Attorney
[91]General. All the other agencies of Government - the
[92]three I mentioned plus Commerce, Treasury, USIA, and
[93]God knows how many other pieces - would all have
[94]detailed men, money, and material to Lansdale, in
[95]effect creating a brand new agency. The three senior
[96]members of the cabinet that I mentioned, except for the
[97]Director, three senior members said “no, we can't do
[98]that. Congress appropriates the money to us and we're
[99]responsible for the money and the manpower and the
[100]material. We'll put our shoulders to the wheel, we'll
[101]follow all your orders, but only through command
[102]channels.” That's what made Mongoose different than
[103]the Bay of Pigs. In the Bay of Pigs the CIA stood out
[104]like a sore thumb, and in Mongoose CIA was subdued in
[105]terms of just being part of a whole series of people
[106]that were involved. In terms of the organizational
[107]structure, and the management of the thing, I think
[108]that with Harvey, particularly, in charge, and with
[109]Helms as his boss as DDP, we avoided one problem
[110]automatically in there were two senior men who
[111]organized our part of Mongoose the way we in the Agency
[112]had always done in terms of headquarters and the field
[113]station. We regarded Miami, which was headed by Ted
[114]Shackley, as almost the equivalent of headquarters. It
[115]was JMWAVE. He had more people under his command than
[116]we had in the branch, or in the task force up in
[117]Washington. I think he ended up with about 600
[118]staffers including commo and logistics and God knows
[119]what else.
[121]So you did solve that problem?
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[137]We solved that problem.
[139]Because the IG report criticized the Bay of Pigs
[140]Operation because of the poor
[141]coordination/communication between Miami and
[142]Headquarters. :
[144]We did it without knowing that. We set up our
[145]organization without knowing what way they had done it
[146]before. It was sheer luck. You had Harvey and you had
[147]Helms. Two old hands in the DDP business, and that's
[148]the way we set it up. But I think if we had known what
[149]the problem was inthe Bay of Pigs operation I think we
[150]would have been helped a bit, in terms of at least
[151]watching out for that because there could have been a
[152]real problem if somebody had said it back here, “Hey
[153]you're doing it all wrong you know; you can't have a
[154]station in the United States.” Well, in this case we
[155]didn't even ask anybody, and we didn't ask Landsdale,
[156]and we didn't the President, and we didn't ask Bobby,
[157]we just did it our way, and with the support of a guy’
[158]called Larry Houston, CIA's General Counsel, who said,
[159]“Set it up any way you want to,” in effect. “You guys
[160]are responsible and you are reporting to the President;
[161]go, and go with God.” And we did. But I think we
[162]would have felt a lot more, at least I would have felt
[163]more comfortable, in knowing that we weren't going to
[164]face some of the problems that Jake Esterline had ~
[165]faced. One of the things we didn't have to worry
[166]about, and Jake did have to worry about, is this
[167]business of the air support. We weren't worrying about
[168]air support, because we weren't operating in Air Branch
[169]or anything like that. Jake's problem, for example -
[170]which Bissell thought he had solved by that memorandum
[171]that he wrote in October of 1960 where he set up the
[172]command relationship between DPD and Branch 4....It's
[173]fine on a piece of paper, but I asked Jake specifically
[174]“How'd it work?” He said it didn't. Those things just
[175]don't happen, the way you write them on a piece of paper
[176]and dictate in a memorandum.
[178]Development Plans Division, DPD, acted as an .
[179]independent entity and basically answered to the DDCI
[180]Cabell. ;
[182]Well, first they answered to a guy called Bissell. It
[183]was Bissell's private air force, and he ran it as his
[185]private air force. Fortunately we didn't have to worry .
[187]about that one, but Jake did, and all the memorandums
[188]in the world didn't help any on that one. Listening to
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[196]Jake on that - in terms of trying to get air support -
[197]it was basically on a person-to-person basis. It's
[198]what you can wheedle out of somebody and get them to do
[199]it the right way instead of being able to command them
[200]and not having to spend your time massaging a guy's»
[201]back. That's one of the key problems I thought, and
[202]also Jake's relationship, or Washington's relationship
[203]with Miami, was obviously, if you read the report, and
[204]even the rebuttal, I thought it was very confusing.
[205]Case officers did not know really who their boss was.
[206]Maybe they should have looked at who was writing their
[207]fitness reports, I suppose is one way, but it was too
[208]haphazard. We tried to organize it, again it was sheer
[209]luck. We tried to organize it, as I say, as if Miami
[210]was a foreign station and Ted had all the rights and
[211]privileges of. a Chief of Station abroad. The fact that
[212]he was in the United States didn't bother us at all; we
[213]never thought of it that way. Largely because you've
[214]got a guy like Harvey in charge, who, despite the fact
[215]that he was a gruff SOB, had a heart of melted butter
[216]when it came to his own troops. He would never let
[217]anybody, at any level, blast at one of his troops
[218]‘without himself, in effect, taking out of his guns and
[219]shooting the SOB who did it.
[221]I'Il give you a perfect example of that. I was ona
[222]telephone call to J.C. King, and J.C. was chewing me
[223]out on the phone about something I wasn't. even involved
[224]in, but anyway he chewed me out. I. finished my
[225]conversation with him, if you want to call it that,
[226]hung up, and at that time Harvey buzzed me to come in
[227]and see him. So I came in and I must of had a hang-dog
[228]look on my face or something, and he looked up at me
[229]and he said, “What's the matter with you?” I said J.C.
[230]just chewed the ass out of me. He said, “For what?” I
[231]said, “Nothing, I wasn't even involved.” He didn't ask
[232]any questions. He picked up the phone and dialed to.
[233]J.C. Himself. Before I could say anything he started
[234]to read J.C. the riot act, in only his. language, which
[235]makes paratroop language look like a church meeting.
[237]In effect he said, “Look, if there is anybody that's
[238]going to chew out my troops, I!m going. to chew out my
[239]troops. Don't you ever do that again without checking
[240]with me first. If you've got trouble with some of my
[241]troops you talk to me and not to them.” Moves his arm
[242]as if he is slamming down the receiver. I think J.c.
[243]must have lost His ear then. It was awful. Ok, you
[244]got a guy like Bill Harvey in charge - Jake couldn't do
[245]that. But Jake for example, Jake and Col. Jack Hawkins
[246]both resigned from.the Bay of Pigs operation up in the
[247]Agency. Bissell took them to his house, on a Sunday
[248]morning, talks them into reneging and staying with the
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[274]Agency and staying with the operation. Both of them
[275]said “This isn't going to work, it's useless.”
[277]This was exactly when Sam?
[279]About a week before the invasion, I don't even know the
[280]date but it happened on a Sunday.
[282]What was the precipitating issue that caused them to
[283]reach that?
[285]Air.
[287]The air strikes?
[289]Yes, the cut on the air support.
[290]The reduction of the air strike?
[292]Yes, the reduction. It was quite clear, Jake says, and
[293]I've also talked to Hawkins now. He's a great guy, I
[294]don't know if you've ever met him? He's 80 something
[295]at the moment and hé's still sharp as a. tack. Anyway,
[296]it was the lack of air and Bissell said, in effect, “If
[297]you guys quit I'll just appoint two other people in —
[299]your place and we'll go on anyway so why don't you stay
[301]and see what you can do to help.” So he talked them
[302]back into the Agency and they stayed. But the whole
[303]point was that they are convinced - and I am now
[304]absolutely - that Bissell never told the President what
[305]the troops, Hawkins and Esterline, were saying, and
[306]what their opinions were in all this stuff. He never
[307]did.
[309]What's your view, Sam, about why Bissell did not?
[311]I think he was so imbued with the operation that he
[312]thought, as many people have said now, that he thought
[314]‘that Kennedy could never let it die and he'd send the
[315]troops in, he'd send the Marines in if it came to that.
[317]Plus, I think Bissell really thought he had a deal
[319]going on an assassination plot of some kind. It makes
[320]no sense that all of these things wouldn't bother him -
[321]including not talking to the President again, in Rusk's
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[332]office on the telephone, that whole story - makes no
[333]sense, makes no sense at all without an assassination
[334]plot in the background. And the worst thing to me, and
[335]looking at that damn report again, why they didn't say,
[336]when the President and Rusk said “Trinidad looks too
[337]professional, find some other place.”...At that point I
[338]would have just blown my stack. Bissell may not be the
[339]kind of person to blow his stack, but anyway I would
[340]have blown my stack. If you want a non-professional
[341]job, then go pick some people off the street and do a
[342]job. I mean, we're professionals. If you don't like
[343]what we are doing, fine; go get somebody else, but I
[344]would never have agreed to move from Trinidad to a
[345]place that has to have an airfield on it, that's going
[346]to take B-26's when everyone knows there is no such
[347]place on the bloody island. So they found a little
[348]spot of ground near the Bay of Pigs after spending four
[349]days looking at the maps. That's crazy. It makes no
[350]sense at all. And why Bissell went along with all this
[352]‘stuff. Again, from a purely management point of view
[354]and organizational point of view, Bissell never used
[355]Hawkins the way he should have as a staff officer for
[356]Christ's sakes. You take your staff officer to the
[357]meetings with you: You don't know the details - you
[358]are not the guy who knows military tactics or strategy,
[359]for God's sakes. Bissell may be great at U-2'S and SR-
[360]71's, and-he may have been able to put all the ships in
[361]his head during the war, but you don't know military
[362]tactics and strategy.
[364]Hawkins was at those meetings. Hawkins came out here
[365]about a month ago - Lee Strickland [CIA Information and
[366]Privacy Coordinator] had him out. Hawkins said he was
[367]at the meetings but he wasn't allowed to talk. He said
[368]it was agony because he just sat there and watched
[369]Bissell mangle the military aspects and he was
[370]wondering why.the Joint Chiefs, some of them who were
[371]there at the meetings, didn't speak up - why the
[372]Generals who were advising Secretary of Defense
[373]McNamara didn't speak up. He found out afterward from
[374]a classmate of his (because he was a Marine - and he
[375]had a classmate from some military class who was on the
[376]staff of General Shoup, the head of the Marine Corps)
[377]that McNamara wouldn't allow any of them to talk
[379]‘either. They were afraid; they were cowed, and they
[381]wouldn't speak up for fear they'd show up McNamara.
[382]It was worse than I thought it was. This is
[384]ridiculous. You don't run an operation that way.
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[401]Sam, another kind of key point in the IG report is that
[402]the DO's Chief of Operations - Dick Helms, I guess -
[403]was not involved in the Bay of Pigs planning.
[405]That's right.
[407]The report, rather pointedly, complains that Helms
[408]should have taken the opportunity to become involved,
[409]but that, on at least one, perhaps more than one
[410]occasion, he did not. He seemed to prefer not being
[411]involved. Is this a lesson that you all took to heart
[412]with Mongoose, and was that criticism of Helms fair?
[413]Was it accurate?
[415]I think it was accurate from what I know, being
[416]somebody on the sidelines during the operation, since I
[417]was enjoying life in Tokyo at the time. When it all
[418]came through and Jake was knocking his ass off here, I
[419]know...But yes, I think Dick probably did the right
[420]thing, for a very simple reason. Somebody had to take
[421]care of the rest of the world, from a command point of
[422]view. If Bissell was spending his time on the Bay of
[423]Pigs, plus the U-2, plus SR-71, plus Corona, there
[424]isn't much time left for Bissell to worry about the
[425]rest of the world. Secondly, Helms knew his troops,
[426]the personnel more or less, in the Clandestine Service.
[428]‘He knew the good ones from the bad ones or the mediocre
[430]ones. That's one thing that I fault him on, in that he
[431]knew that the Division Chiefs' protective association,
[432]and the Staff Chiefs' protective association, were
[433]sending off to the Bay of Pigs operation, which they
[434]all knew about, obviously, but they were sending off
[435]their second-best, their has-beens, the guys who had
[436]stacked arms, and just kind of washing their hands of
[437]the whole thing. That's.one thing, which is not in the
[438]report itself, but that's one thing that I knew, as
[439]just a case officer and having my own ears and fingers
[440]out in the wind. When we started on Mongoose, that's
[441]one thing I knew - at least I wasn't going to be
[442]involved in - is letting the Division Chiefs and the
[443]Staff Chiefs palm off on us all the cast-offs. I went
[444]to Des Fitzgerald, whom I knew very well, because I had
[445]been his Executive Officer, and I said to Des “You and
[446]the other Division and Staff Chiefs ought to be ashamed
[447]of yourselves in what you did.” I said “I don't know __.
[448]the troops in the other Divisions and Staffs, but I do
[449]know something about the Far East Division Staffers,
[450]and you did the wrong thing. You didn't send the best
[451]troops you had. And I'm not saying you had to give
[452]them all your best troops,” because there's another big
[453]world out there in addition to Cuba, there's still the
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[461]Soviet Union, there's still China, etc....When Bill
[462]Harvey came.aboard I have him the same story and the
[463]same pitch, and I said “Bill, we're going to have to
[464]come up with better people and the way to do this is
[466]‘ you go to Dan Debartele”- who was then the Clandestine
[467]Service Personnel Officer, the big wheel at “Career
[468]Manglement” as we called it in those days. I said “Get
[469]from Dan, at each appropriate GS level, GS 9's, 10's,
[470]11's, 12's, and so on, right up the line, and get from:
[471]him from each component of the CS, Staffs and
[472]Divisions, get from him the promotion list from each
[473]component, including those that made it and those that
[474]didn't quite make it but they're near the middle - are
[475]near the top - and they might make it the next time ,
[476]around. It's from those lists that we're going to pick
[477]our people. I think we can get anybody we want to but
[478]bearing in mind there's still a big world out there and
[479]‘the Soviet Union comes first, regardless of what the
[480]President says about Cuba.” Harvey looked at me and
[481]listened, didn't say a bloody word, and I left. The
[482]next day when I came back into his office he was
[483]stacked high with personnel jackets which he had gotten
[484]from Dan in terms of what I had said. You go and get
[485]the top lists of who was recommended for what, and you
[486]pick from those. In addition to that, obviously Harvey
[487]knew he wanted Ted Shackley down in Miami. He was only
[488]a GS-14, I think, at the time he was sent down. I
[489]think he may have been a GS-13 for all I know. Ted
[490]knew some of the good people from the Eastern European
[491]Division, the old EE. That's how we built a different
[492]kind of a cadre than Jake was forced to take. He had
[493]some good people, there's no question about that, and
[494]that, shown in the DDP's rebuttal to the IG report. are
[495]some of the senior officers they had, but they also had
[496]some guys who were not top notch. I don't have the
[497]list in front of me now, but I remember when I showed
[498]Dick Helms....From the beginning of the’ Mongoose
[499]nonsense, Dick Helms came over to take a look at what
[500]we had, and this was in December of 1961, when he
[501]suddenly found. himself being told by McCone, the new
[502]DCI, that he, Helms, was now McCone's man on Cuba.
[504]That was told to him, by McCone, at a morning staff
[505]meeting up in the Director's office. At which, my
[506]boss, Goshen Zogby (we were still Branch 4 but it was
[507]Cuba and all the Caribbean Islands and Zog was there)
[508]our Branch Chief at a morning DCI staff meéting, was
[509]most unusual. But anyway, he was there and he told me
[510]the story about how Helms looked like a thunderbolt had
[511]hit him when McCone said, “By the way you're my man on
[512]Cuba.” Just like that. Helms, who had stayed away
[513]from the Bay of Pigs (I'm still on your question) and
[514]he was right to do that, I think, because he wasn't
[515]going to get anywhere with Bissell in charge, he knew
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[528]that. Bissell was a one-man operator and Helms knew
[529]exactly what to expect from Tracy Barnes.
[531]But the complaint is that, I think, in the IG report,
[532]Kirkpatrick's complaint about Helms is that Helm's did
[533]not ring the alarm bells.
[535]He should have. Yes, I saw that, but I don't think you
[536]can blame Helms, because he did stay away from it so he
[537]didn't know what alarm bells to ring. Is it personnel?
[539]. Is it your operational approach? Is it the air field?
[541]Is it the air support? Is it the troops on the ground?
[542]What is it you want him to ring alarm bells about? He
[543]didn't know. He had no idea. I'm not trying to defend
[544]him from that point of view; maybe he should have
[545]forced his way in, which would have meant a real
[546]confrontation with Bissell. And with Allen Dulles
[547]looking the other way, Helms might not have found
[548]himself in any position to argue with anybody - he
[549]might have been out. .So I think you've got: to
[550]give....I think Kirk, CIA Inspector General Lyman
[551]Kirkpatrick, was wrong in that particular aspect. Yes,
[552]the guy who's third in line should maybe say something
[553]to the guy who's second in line, but not when it's a
[554]closed corporation. -I know people who argue both ways
[555]on this one, and I have too, but I think in the end you
[556]come down, saying that somebody had to watch the rest
[557]of the world, number one. And number two, no matter
[558]what Helms would have said to Bissell about the quality
[559]of the personnel....As I was about to say, when Helms
[560]came over to Quarters I, where we were in Branch 4 for
[561]Mongoose, and I showed him the roster of the people who
[562]had been on the Bay of Pigs, literally he went down the
[563]list saying, “hhhmmm, oh no, no, NO, hhmm, no it
[565]couldn't be.” I just didn't say a word. There were
[567]three people in the room, Zog and me (and Zog is dead
[568]unfortunately), and Helms. And he's going down the
[569]list of people, including those we have left, in
[570]Mongoose. Of course, why do we have them left -
[571]because nobody wanted them. Nobody wanted those extra
[572]people. And Helms said, “Is this what you have left to
[573]work with?” Zog said, “Yes sir. That's what we have
[574]left.” That's when he picked up the phone. I'1l1 tell
[575]you, it's the funniest thing. He picked up the phone,
[576]called J.C. King and said, “As of now Cuba is no longer
[577]part of WH Division. You have all the rest of the
[578]islands but Cuba is separate reporting to me.” Boom.
[579]This is before Harvey comes along. This was well
[580]before. So Zog and I find ourselves a task force
[581]without calling ourselves a task force. The word
[582]Mongoose didn't come along until much later.
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[597]What was the impression about IG report at the time?
[598]In the trenches? There must have been rumors. What
[599]did you know about it?
[601]We didn't see it. All we knew about it was that it was
[602]a bad report; that Kirk had taken the knives out and
[603]was really murdering Bissell and Jake. Nobody
[604]mentioned J.C. J.C. was off on the sidelines as far as
[605]everybody was concerned. Everybody in the room was :
[606]Jake (lost words)... and I don't think Hawkins' name
[607]was kicked around much, but Bissell's name sure as hell .
[608]was, and Tracy Barnes' name was kicked around as the
[609]two masterminds, with Jake getting most of the blame
[610]because he's the guy doing the work. Theoretically
[611]that's what we thought anyway. And remember that I had
[612]just gotten back from Saigon when all of this thing
[613]hit. The rumors where....sure they were there, but
[614]nobody had any facts. All we had was rumors. The
[615]rumors mostly came from the WH Division. So you had to
[616]sort of figure out whether they were really telling you
[617]what the report said, or whether they were making it up
[618]or what have you. And everyone knew there was no love
[619]loss between Kirk and Bissell in the first place.
[621]Sam, another. of the points the IG report makes is that
[622]the DDP did not consult with the analysts - especially
[623]with regard to Castro's survivability, his popularity,
[624]the effectiveness of his security forces, and so on -
[625]and they recommended that that become a standard ;
[626]practice before covert actions were implemented in the
[627]future. Did you all have a lot of consultation with
[628]the DI, or with ONE, through Mongoose?
[630]Oh yes. There was no.problem on that. Yes we did.
[631]And as a matter of fact we like to think that Sherman
[632]Kent's September 1962:estimate, the famous September
[633]NIE, when he was sure that the Soviets were not going
[634]to put missiles into Cuba, came about as a result of
[635]our prodding the DDI side of the house in terms of
[636]doing some kind of an estimate because things down
[637]there looked pretty strange. We didn't know what the
[638]Hell was going on. We said so frankly “We're getting
[640]‘all these crazy reports.” Ted and his people were
[642]doing a fine job in providing us with all this crazy
[643]stuff that's going on in the island, and the OpaLocka -
[644]the Caribbean Admissions Center - was doing a fine job
[646]with providing us the stuff from all the refugees
[648]coming out. Everything looked like there was something
[650]“screwy going on but we don't know what, literally. I
[652]don't know who it was who got a hold of DDI Ray Cline,
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[667]to say “how about an estimate of some kind.” Ray was
[668]the wrong guy because Ray and Sherman didn't see eye to
[669]eye on anything. But anyway the word got around, and I
[670]think we can take credit for prodding Sherman and his
[671]staff to do an. estimate on all of these crazy reports
[672]that nobody could figure out what the hell's happening.
[674]- You mean the many reports from Cubans coming out of
[676]Cuba about missiles being seen here or there and
[677]everything else.
[679]Yes, there was all kinds of stuff coming out. They
[680]were seeing planes when no planes had arrived yet. The
[681]reports were confusing to say the least. And somebody,
[682]without an ax to grind, like the DDI's supposed to be,
[683]had to put it together.
[685]Were there cleared DI officers who knew about Mongoose,
[686]who knew why (overlapping sound) going on?
[688]1
[690]I don't know if we kept a record of that, but obviously
[691]the DDI knew; Sherman Kent knew, and I think the Cuban
[692]desk officers knew. There were enough. We weren't
[693]playing that kind of a game. The Pentagon did. I know
[694]that for a fact. The Pentagon really had Mongoose -
[695]cleared officers to do things. Colonel Wright, for
[696]example (the guy who actually pushed through the report
[697]that’ targeted the U-2), he's the guy who presented the
[698](lost word??). We did it on the grounds that it's in
[699]our report and it would look bad if we did it. Nobody
[700]listened to us, so we had Colonel Wright do it. He was
[701]very happy to do it, and he later took credit for the
[702]whole damned thing. He never mentioned CIA in his own
[703]biography that he wrote about what he had done. The
[704]report came in - he never knew where the report came
[705]from ~- but a report came in! Anyway, no, we kept our
[706]DDI counterparts pretty well informed on what the hell,
[707]not what we were doing, but in terms of what the U.S.
[708]Government was doing,.so that everybody was putting
[709]their shoulder to the wheel - that kind of thing. We
[710]didn't get into the details. We later did, when, after
[711]the Cuban. Missile Crisis, and Des Fitzgerald took over,
[712]Des actually brought down, I forget the guy's name - he
[713]was a very, very senior elder statesman of the DDI, and
[714]Des went out of channels without so much as a “By your
[715]leave to anybody, and a lot of the troops objected, and
[716]Des - made available to this gentleman the true
[717]~identities, plus the source descriptions we used for
[718]the assets.
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[741]This was a DI person? Milton Brown?
[743]No, it wasn't Milt. I know Milt. No it was somebody
[744]else. Gray-haired gentleman. Elderly statesman kind
[745]of thing. ,
[747]But a Cuban expert?
[749]Not really, no. He was just a good analyst and a good
[750]estimator. Anyway, Des made available everything, °
[751]against every single solitary rule or procedure you can
[752]imagine. He just brought him down and said “Look, here
[753]are all :of our sources, true names, ranks, positions,
[754]everything. And this is the kind of by-lines we are
[755]using for these people. You’ sit and look at this stuff
[756]and see if it's worth disseminating. See if it's worth
[757]putting out. We've been putting it out, but tell us.
[758]What do you think when you see it? Des did this to
[759]avoid this constant nonsense we used to get from the
[761]‘DDI types, which was “You can't tell us the source, so
[763]we can't really understand the information without
[764]knowing who the source was.”
[766]Was it Archer Bush?
[767]No, that doesn't sound right.
[768]When was .this; when did this happen?
[770]Right after Des came aboard in early 1963. After the
[771]Missile Crisis.
[773]So he wanted a real (cut off)
[775]He wanted a totally honest appraisal from somebody
[776]without an ax to grind. If we did it in-house and the
[777]Task Force - or the SAS, we were suddenly called - or
[778]in Miami, nobody would listen to it. You can't do it
[779]that way. And if we did it to the DDI asa
[780]whole....There are lots of arguments back and forth
[781]between DDI and DDP types, and that wasn't fair. So
[782]pick one guy who's an honest fellow - and everyone
[783]knows he's honest, he's not going to be swayed one way
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[798]or the other - and literally stick him in a room and
[799]say, “Here, everything, and tell me what it's like.”
[801]The degree of communication between the DDP and DDI on
[802]Mongoose is apparently a lot more that it was during
[803]the Bay of Pigs Operation.
[805]Oh, much more.
[807]Years ago, when I started amassing the documents that
[808]we put together into the Bay of Pigs collection, I
[809]wanted to know if there was anything left in the branch
[810]over in the DI. So I called up whoever was the Cuban
[811]analyst - this would have been, probably, early 1993.
[813]I don't remember the analyst's name (I could probably
[814]look it up), but he told me - and I don't know if this
[815]is true or not. The folklore in the branch was that
[816]whoever it was that had been one of the Cuban analysts
[817]was called in the Saturday before the invasion because
[818]there were all these news stories about Cuban defector
[819]pilots having bombed the air field in Havana and then
[820]flown to Key West and here they are, they have their
[821]planes on the ground and now they are defecting to the
[822]United States and this is a big news story. He came in
[823]and wrote it up for the current publications at the
[824]time and gave it to his editors, and at the last minute
[825]somebody came over from the DDP and said “Wait guys,
[826]that's a covert action. Those are our planes, those
[827]are our pilots, those are B-26's we painted with Cuban
[828]markings. This is all a big hoax. You don't néed to
[829]be reporting this to the President or you're going to
[830]look silly.” So apparently this has been handed down
[831]at the Cuban desk by word of mouth.
[833]It sounds true.
[835]I don't know it that's true or not. You probably know
[836]better than I do.
[838]It sounds true. Those things have happened. That's
[839]one thing we made sure in Mongoose we didn't do. I can
[840]go.back to another operation that I was involved in
[841]long before we had things like Mongoose and Bays of
[842]Pigs and what have you. fhis is the Indonesian}
[843]operation in support of the Sumatra colonéls in “1957
[844]aand~T958. —I_personally,..on my own authority........I_never}
[845]checked_with Al Ulmer, who_was_my Division_Chief, or
[847]~anybody else.” “IT happened to know the DDI/OCI person on}
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[864]the desk_on_ Indonesia, Jéanette Marr.._._I_ knew_her aay
[865]Qss~days- _ T-used-to< call +her.up_and_y we double- talked)
[867]| Suddéfily appear én the. horizon without “going into thé
[869]details of our operation or anything I like that. She
[870]wrote - the President's Daily Brief sections on_ Indonesia
[871]and a_guy called Cabell insisted ‘on calling the )
[872]Sumatran colonéls— “patriots.” Everyone else in the}
[873]Government called them “rebels .’%
[875](This was the DDCI?
[877]Gabell, yes. “He was known as “Rice_and Beans” Cabel}.
[878]-Samé_guy. ~_He insisted on the PDB using the word \
[880]‘pat Fiots. Jeanette hated it. She couldn't do-anything
[881]‘about _it obviously, - Cabell insisted. Look at the ord 7
[882]PDB's and you'11 see that they have_patriots, not
[883]@ebels: We _could_double-talk_because_ of. patriots_and)
[884]it-worked fines When Mongoose came along there was no
[885]fines
[886]question in my mind....at least, I would have done the
[887]same thing unless Bill Harvey had said “Don't talk to
[888]them,” but he never did. Bruce Cheever, who was Bill's
[889]deputy, thought you had to bring them in, too, to let
[890]them know what's going on. You don't go into details
[891]of an operation, you don't go into details of your
[892]sources. The only guy that ever did that was Des.
[893]That was 1963. His final report to Des was simply,
[894]“You guys are shooting yourselves in the foot. This
[895]information is very good, not just good but very good
[896]and you are masking it all with all these crazy by-
[897]lines. I know you can't give the true name but you can
[898]at least change the by-line somehow. This is what Des
[899]used later when he became DDP for a couple of years, to
[901]‘change all the by-line systems throughout the whole
[903]DDP. We started to give better descriptions of the
[904]sources. Some of these things, had some benefits. But
[905]coming back to this crazy report, let me come back a
[906]second.
[908]The IG report....
[910]In the IG report, the thing that bothered me, too, ‘in
[911]there, in reading the IG report was the fact that so
[912]many of the case officers - if it's correct - seemed to
[913]be confused as to just what the hell they were doing
[914]and why they were doing what they were doing. I don't
[915]think we ever had that in the Mongoose show. We had Ed
[916]Marelius up here in Washington ‘as the Chief of the FI
[917]Branch. We had Seymour Bolten as head of the Covert
[919]. Action Branch, PP, Psychological Warfare Branch. We
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[930]had Art Maloney as head of the PM Branch. Hal Swensen
[931]as head of the CI Branch. . These were all very senior
[932]guys who were wéll regarded by everyone, and they were
[933]honest as the day is long, and they wouldn't take any
[934]horseshit from anybody, and ran a very tight ship. So
[935]the case officers here at this end, and we had case
[936]officers working against Cuban targets in from
[937]Washington, but they never ran across the Cuban case
[938]officers that Ted was running down in Miami. They each
[939]knew their fields. They each worked with each other.
[940]They kept each other informed so they didn't cross each
[941]others trails. That's something I think we did, I
[942]think from second nature, but it would have been nice
[943]to know, in that, from that report, that we were at
[944]least not doing something that we were wrong in doing,
[945]or doing something that. we shouldn't have done. That
[946]report makes it clear that we did just the right thing.
[947]That everybody knew what the hell their piece was. I
[948]don't know if that's correct. The DDP's rebuttal
[949]doesn't really face that particular question about the
[950]case officers and where they looked for their guidance.
[951]It kind of sloughs it off more or less. To me it made
[952]no sense for, as I say, for the three senior guys in
[953]the Mongoose thing not to have seen that report so that
[954]they could be sure that they weren't making some of the
[956]‘game mistakes. McCone, I know, and Cabell, were trying
[958]to hide the whole thing. Within limits I agree with
[959]them, but not....You don't have to put it on the
[960]bulletin board like they've done now. It's on the
[961]internet.
[963](Conversation in progress)..... poisonous pesticide and
[964]it was available in any hardware store you wanted to go
[965]to or Sears or what have you, and it was available in
[966]Havana or other parts of Cuba. It was done all over
[967]the world and the little bottles that it used to come
[968]in actually had a skull and crossbones, the old symbol
[969]for poison. The idea was the needle would be so fine
[970]that it would be just like a little tiny scratch and if
[971]AMLASH would get close enough to Fidel to use that to
[972]scratch him and at the same time have the Black Leaf 40
[973]enter the bloodstream. How much you have to put in, or
[974]what have you, I never found out. Never asked. Manny
[975]Gunn gave all the technical details to Nestor Sanchez
[976]to pass on to AMLASH. When Nestor offered the ball-
[977]point pen to AMLASH he looked at it very disdainfully,
[978]and he said when Nestor tried to explain about the
[979]Black Leaf 40, AMLASH, who was a medical doctor in his
[980]own right, said “I know all about that. You don't have
[981]to tell me all. about that.” He said, “Come on, you
[982]fellows can come up with something better than that.”
[983]And as far as I know he never took the pen. Although
[984]if he had been a double agent I think he would have
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[993]taken the pen to use at some kind of public trial, so
[994]he could show the evidence. that the United States was
[995]behind it. The fact that he never took the pen, to me,
[996]is pretty good evidence that he was not a double agent.
[997]I don't think to this day that he ever was. In
[999]_ addition to that particular one thing that I know I. was
[1001]involved with Nestor, on and with Manny Gunn. The one
[1002]thing that I don't- know enough about is when we had to
[1003]assign an officer to Bobby Kennedy, to be used by Bobby
[1004]Kennedy to make contact with Mafia types in this
[1005]country and in Canada. That Bobby Kennedy would pick
[1006]and set the appointment time and place and our case
[1007]officer would then go and meet whoever this person was
[1008]and come back and report to Bobby Kennedy. The theory
[1009]behind this apparently was that Bobby had some bright
[1010]idea that the Mafia must have left some kind of stay-
[1011]behind network in Cuba because of all of their |
[1012]interests that they had in Cuba when Fidel came in:
[1013]prostitution, gambling, drug running and whatever else
[1014]was involved. He said they must have had a good stay-
[1015]behind network and we could get some decent information
[1016]to what's going on. Well just to give you the QED of
[1017]this, we never got any information that was worth
[1018]disseminating. I never saw any information at all from
[1019]it. The case officer I picked....Apparently the way
[1020]the request came was from Bobby to General Marshall
[1021]Carter, who was then DDCI, to Bill Harvey, Bill Harvey
[1022]to me, to pick a case officer to assign to Bobby. I
[1023]sat with Bruce Cheever and then, of course, with Bill
[1024]himself and we decided on a guy named Charles Ford,
[1025]Charley Ford. Charley was a huge man. Very stocky,
[1026]make a very good lineman on any football team, and he
[1028]‘know how to handle himself in any kind of problem. We
[1030]figured he was the best kind of guy. Charley and I sat
[1031]and we figured out he's got to have some kind of name
[1032]to use - we can't use Charley Ford. But Charley also
[1033]had some handkerchiefs and some shirts with CF on it,
[1034]and rather than risk an exposure of some kind, Charley
[1035]and I sat in my office, the ground floor of the
[1036]building, and we said “How about Charley Rocky
[1037]Fiscalini.” And ever since then, I always called
[1038]Charley, til he died, “Rocky.” We came up with
[1039]Fiscalini. There are two different ways of spelling
[1041]_it. I spelled it FISCALINI and Angie Novella, Bobby
[1042]Kennedy's secretary, spelled it on her appointment log,
[1044]FISCOLLINI, which is probably more ethnic than mine.
[1045]But anyway, Fiscalini is the way you pronounce it. So
[1046]Charley went off and he made several trips in the
[1047]United States, and I know he made at least one if not
[1048]more in Canada - I think it was Toronto. All at the
[1049]behest cf Bobby. Either Bobby himself would talk to
[1050]Charley on the phone, or Angie Novella would call
[1051]Charley on what we euphemistically called a secure
[1052]phone - nothing more than an outside line that we had
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[1063]in the front office of Task Force W - it was a big
[1064]bullpen where we had four or five secretaries. Bill
[1065]Harvey's office here [motions with his hands]. Bruce
[1066]Cheever's office here. Mine over here, and the
[1067]secretaries out in what we called the bullpen. There
[1068]was a big section in here where we had a bunch of |
[1069]special assistants, and Charley Ford was one of those
[1070]who sat in here. There were about four or five guys in
[1071]there doing all kinds of different things. Charley
[1072]never, as far as I know, never spoke. I know he never
[1073]spoke to me about who he saw - what they talked about -
[1074]and I never never saw any intelligence information to
[1075]disseminate, and as far as I know Charley never had any
[1076]intelligence information to disseminate. To us it was
[1077]a waste of time and effort, plus we were putting a man
[1078]in real danger,.since, from pure tradecraft point of
[1079]view we wanted to control, the meeting time and the
[1080]meeting place. We wanted to set it up, and we don't
[1081]want to walk into a hornet's nest without .knowing who
[1082]or what we're seeing. I have mentioned this to several
[1083]people, without mentioning Charley Ford's name until
[1084]recently, and I'll tell you why in a minute. I
[1085]mentioned it to Scott Breckenridge, and Scott mentioned
[1086]it in his last book that he put out. I mentioned it to
[1087]a fellow by the name of Goldfarb, who was an attorney
[1088]on Kennedy's staff at the Justice Department, and
[1089]Goldfarb wrote a book in which he quotes me on this,
[1090]and then he also says he doesn't believe me and he
[1091]doesn't know why I'm making these kinds.of stories up.
[1093]He's defending Bobby Kennedy.
[1095]Oh, absolutely, no question about that. I mentioned it
[1096]to other people along the way and I even mentioned it
[1097]to Seymour Hersh when he was putting his book together
[1098]“The Dark Side of Camelot.” If you look at, I forget
[1099]what page it is, there's a footnote there. Sy was the
[1100]one who found, in doing his researches, he found, as a
[1101]result of the Kennedy Assassination Records Review
[1102]Board, and all the documents that were produced as a
[1103]result of that, Angie Novella, in her log - her
[1104]appointment and telephone log for 1962 - puts down
[1105]General Carter, Charles Ford (Fiscalini), for a date,
[1106]for a meeting with Bobby Kennedy. I've got documentary
[1107]proof now. I'd like to shove it under Goldfarb's nose,
[1108]but anyway....Hersh puts that as a footnote in his book
[1109]in which he says until he, Hersh, was able to show me
[1110]the log. I had always refused to mention the name of
[1111]the individual who was the case officer. The fact that
[1112]Kennedy was involved in trying to work with the Mafia
[1113]at the same time....He, Goldfarb, couldn't believe that
[1114]Kennedy would be working with the Mafia at the same
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[1123]time he's trying to. send them to jail. “He's your
[1125]“boss” I would say to Goldfarb, “he wasn't my boss, I
[1127]can't figure him out any better than you can.” Now I'm
[1128]told by Chuck Briggs that in the pile of paper that
[1129]he's looking at now - as a result of the AARB nonsense
[1130]- they have found two memorandums from the Church
[1131]Committee - the Schwieker subcommittee of the Church
[1132]Committee. I had forgotten that I had testified before
[1133]the Schwieker Subcommittee. Chuck now tells me that
[1134]not only did I testify - and he's looking at my
[1135]transcript of my testimony - but he also has Charley
[1136]Ford's testimony. Where Charley....I don't know what
[1137]he says - Chuck hasn't shown it to me - but he says
[1138]“That is there, it's in great detail, it's longer than
[1139]yours, so obviously Charley must. have told the
[1140]Schwieker committee what I'm telling you now.” That he
[1141]actually was assigned to Bobby and did what Bobby had
[1142]asked him to do. Which is to go meet Mafia types.
[1144]What they said, unless Charley says in his testimony -
[1145]and all this is underoath - I don't know what Charley
[1146]said, but you guys go ahead and look at it. I haven't
[1147]got the clearances yet until it's declassified. Can't
[1148]even look at my own testimony. Oddly enough, I told
[1149]this to Chuck when he called me and gave me the date.
[1151]I looked at my old calendars - I keep all my old
[1152]calendars. I never had any calendar that I kept while I
[1153]was working but ever since I left the job, over 20
[1154]years ago, I've been keeping good records ‘on my
[1155]calendar. Anyway, there it is, April something, 1976.
[1156]Written right in the little box, Schwieker
[1157]Subcommittee. I called Chuck back and I said, “you're
[1158]right, I did testify.” People have said that, as a
[1159]result of this, that Charley and Bobby must have been
[1160]working on using the Mafia in some kind of
[1161]assassination plots. Check what Charley says in his
[1162]testimony; I don't know what they did. They never
[1163]said. Charley never talked to me about that. He would
[1164]always stick his head in before he left on another
[1165]trip, “I'm off again, Sam. Bye.” The reason I know he
[1166]went to Canada - I think it was Toronto - was because
[1168]- he came in for the first time and said, “I'm leaving
[1170]the country.” I said “Where the Hell are you going?”
[1171]He says “Canada.” Charley was a damn fine officer, and
[1172]I'm awfully sorry he died so early.
[1174]In terms of talking about assassination platting, it
[1175]gets kind of hairy after a while. It's hard to know
[1176]when to stop, and you don't even know when you start
[1178]_ something. I remember under Des; when Des came in on
[1180]that Monday morning for example, on this crazy business
[1181]of the sea shallots had been all over
[1183]-everywhere....Again it was a Monday morning and he had
[1185]just come in from driving his VW with his foot through.
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[1194]the floorboards.: When he got on those highways he was
[1195]murder. This is what always made me think somewhere
[1196]during those weekends he must have séen Bobby, because
[1197]he came in all charged up. I asked him over and over
[1198]again, not just once but several times, where the heck
[1199]is this pressure coming from? I don't see it myself
[1200]except through you. He said “It's coming from high
[1202]“places.” He never said Bobby. It's coming from
[1203]outside the agency, and Des is an honest guy, I can't
[1204]say he's making this up. Why would he be doing that? |
[1205]So I have to assume he's getting it from somebody who's
[1206]got the authority to tell him, without going through
[1207]the chain of command. It's a surmise on my part; I
[1208]can't prove it. ,
[1210]BL: Who up the chain of command knew about Charley and
[1211]Bobby? . ;
[1213]SH: Carter. ‘Marshall Carter, the DDCI.
[1215]BL: And that was all?
[1217]SH: As. far as I know. Helms never knew. I know that much.
[1218]MW: Fitzgerald?
[1220]SH: No. It was all over by then. Charley's activities
[1221]stopped after the Missile Crisis.
[1223]MW: Ok, ok. Fitzgerald didn't come in until 1963.
[1224]SH: January 1963.
[1228]SH: Unless Carter told him.
[1230]MW: Why would Carter be in the loop and not McCone?
[1232]SH: I don't know. I'm looking at Angie Novella's logs,
[1233]that's the only way I know Carter’ s in the loop. It
[1234]says Carter, right there.
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[1251]You sure it's our Carter?
[1253]Yes, Marshall Carter. Take a look at the page. I've
[1254]got a copy of the page at home, I should have brought
[1255]it.
[1257]Send us a fax.
[1259]All right, I'll dig it up. You may have to remind me
[1260]again. I got it through the courtesy of Sy Hersh. It
[1261]is now available as a.public document. When I saw
[1262]that, as a matter of fact I hadn't yet gotten it....Sy
[1263]once called me when he was still doing his research on
[1264]the book, and we had talked about -a guy working for
[1265]Bobby, and he kept on asking me, who? who? who? I said
[1266]“Not me, I'm not going to tell you the name.” He
[1267]called me on the phone one morning and he said, “How
[1268]does Fiscalini strike you?” I said, “where in the
[1269]goddamned hell did’ you. ever get that name?” He told
[1270]me. He said “It's from Angie Novella's appointment
[1271]logs.” I said run that by me again, slowly. Well
[1272]because it's got Ford and Fiscalini but it could be
[1273]Ford. He gave me Fiscalini. There were only two guys
[1274]in the world that I knew of that had that name. We
[1275]never told Harvey, we never told Bruce Cheever... Didn't
[1276]need to. Theoretically we were professionals.
[1278]You just had it because you had to clear it. You
[1279]basically had to sign his vouchers and make sure his
[1280]travel was getting paid for and everything.
[1282]That's all we did. If you've got the finance records
[1283]you can find out where he went and every time he went,
[1284]but if I know Charley he probably fixed it up in such a
[1285]way. I'm trying to remember the vouchers. He fixed it
[1286]up in such a way that that didn't really show. He
[1287]wouldn't ask for stuff: When Sy said “Fiscalini”, I
[1289]said “You got me hands down.” I said “It's the only
[1291]time I ever lied to you.” It was true. It was the
[1293]only time I ever held anything back. When I start
[1295]talking I know my limits.
[1297]Did you lie to him or you just didn't tell him?
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[1314]I hadn't told him. I must. have never told him the
[1315]name. He's got a note to that effect; a footnote on
[1316]that same page where he talks about this operation in
[1317]the book. If you've got the book around I'1l show you.
[1318]In terms of assassination plots, first of all they're
[1319]few and far between. In terms of getting involved in
[1320]one of these things. Being in the business we were in,
[1321]with the old rules and regulations that we had - and we
[1322]didn't have to worry about. a Senate Intelligence
[1323]Committee and a House Intelligence Committee - we did
[1324]lots of things just by feel, by gosh and by golly. As
[1325]Larry Houston told me when the Church committee started
[1326]to expose lots of things, Larry said, “Sam, I told you.
[1327]You should have talked to me about a lot of these
[1328]things. We wouldn't be here today.” I said, “Yeah,
[1329]Larry, and you know why we didn't talk to you in those
[1330]days? Because you would have stopped a lot of us from
[1331]doing things.” He says, “Very right.” That's the way
[1332]life was, and I'm sure that there are other
[1333]officers.... I'm just one of many who were involved in
[1334]different parts of the world, doing a whole variety of
[1335]things, with almost no way to pin down somebody saying,
[1336]“I authorized X, Y, or Z.” That goes even for State
[1337]intelligence collection, because some of the
[1338]intelligence collection was done by some screwball
[1339]ideas.
[1341]Sam, you've just talked about Bobby Kennedy and CIA and
[1342]Mafia assassination plotting against Castro. Many
[1343]scholars have concluded, though on just circumstantial
[1344]evidence, that Jack Kennedy was also fully witting, if
[1345]not involved in assassination plotting against Castro.
[1346]Do you have a view about that?
[1348]Yes, I agree with the people who say the same thing
[1349]because I can't imagine Bobby on his own without
[1350]telling Brother Jack some of the things he's done, and
[1351]including probably Jack being the inspiration for some
[1352]of the things that Bobby finally did. I think they
[1353]were so close together. There's a new book out, it's
[1354]not new anymore this is now 1998, this came out in the
[1356]Fall of 1997 - it's Robert Kennedy: Brother Protector.
[1357]You got it? .
[1359]No.
[1361]The author is a fellow by the.name of Hilty.
[1362]University of Tennessee Press. It's got some of the
[1363]weirdest stuff in it that you can think of. I only
[1364]read the parts that I know something about, namely
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[1379]Mongoose and its antecedent follow-on. He's got so
[1380]Many mistakes in there it's not even funny. On the
[1381]first 24 pages there are 19 errors. Most of them
[1382]serious ones. Including calling AMLASH a double agent.
[1383]He doesn't know the language; he doesn't know what he's
[1384]talking about. AMLASH was never a double agent by
[1385]anybody's stretch of tHe imagination. A lot of other
[1386]stuff, but even he says he's partially protecting the
[1388]Kennedy image as well as everybody else. Even he says
[1390]in there the same thing, that based on his researches
[1391]there's no question that what one knew the other knew.
[1392]They always worked in tandem on all subjects. The
[1393]problem that Goldfarb had, for example - because he was
[1394]one of the Lawyers attacking the Mafia, trying to put
[1395]them in jail - and he just couldn't....He was sitting
[1396]in my living room and he just couldn't understand, and
[1397]he kept on saying, “how could Bobby tell me to put the
[1398]Mafia in jail when he's working with them?” I said, “I
[1399]don't know how he could do that. You worked for him,
[1400]you tell me.” But he did. I couldn't prove it then,
[1401]but if you guys ever release those Charley Ford memo's
[1402]and my memo, at least we've got two statements done
[1404]‘under oath before the Senate Intelligence Committee, or
[1406]the Church Committee really, where at least it's being
[1407]discussed. I don't see how anybody, on any of this
[1408]stuff, particularly after the Bay of Pigs Operation,
[1409]dealing with the Agency, I don't think anything was
[1411]said or done between the two guys that the other one
[1413]didn't know. They had to. Bobby may have stayed away
[1414]from the Agency up before the Bay of Pigs, but after
[1415]the Bay of Pigs he was always Johnny at the rathole on
[1416]everything. Didn't understand what he was doing
[1417]either, in many cases.
[1419]Sam, is there anything else before we adjourn?
[1420]I don't know. You guys ask and I'1l try and answer.
[1421]I've exhausted my....I've fired my shots.
[1423]I still like reading those two reports, and I agree
[1424]completely, by the way, between the Kirkpatrick report
[1425]and the Bissell rebuttal. I think McCone was right to
[1426]say that. the truth is somewhere in-between. I honestly
[1427]think if I had been a case officer, or been involved
[1428]like Jake was, if the President said “Don't go to
[1429]Trinidad find some stupid place to go,” I would have,
[1430]really, I would have said “Not me sir, find somebody
[1431]else to do it.” That's number one, and that's an
[1432]important one. Because for example, I'm the guy who
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[1443]told General Carter to tell somebody, and I didn't know
[1444]who the hell it was, he was not supposed to tell until
[1445]I found out later, it was Ike, Eisenhower, in our
[1446]Sumatra operation... We-were involved in all kinds of}
[1447]cerdzy nonsense, including air, by the way. Cabell
[1448]didn't get_ involved in that, ‘thank™ “the “Lord. It’ “was
[1449](Civil Air-Transport “planes we were “using. A “suggest ion-~
[1450]cgamé=to me, -hrough Cabel's officé, "to me, about
[1451](something. going t tobe done, I. forget" exactly wk what” “ity
[1452]fas7 but~something | jought to be done in the fietdt “tos
[1453]ymakecthings easier for the rebels. ii, call “them
[1454]Rebels. It madé no sensé at atl. “Actually had no
[1455]qrélation to reality in the field. I didn't even bothers
[1456]“checking “with ‘anybody, I just decided on my own. It)
[1457]qwon't. ‘work, it doesn't” make any, sense and tthe he_peoples
[1458]out-there will ‘think we aré crazy. Cabell said, it
[1460]finally got _te ‘to ._ Cabell talking: to me, “Ok~Sam, whatever
[1462]you say is fine.” I find out later ‘that thé suggest ton—
[1463]came n not from Cabell. but from Ike, through .Gordon n Grayi~
[1464]who=was Ehen_1 ‘the National | Security Council guy, through
[1465]‘the Agency and down ‘to me. I was the Exec. Why y they)
[1466]jdidi't call AI Ulmer I don't know - maybe he wasn’ t}
[1467]“Ehere - but a anyway I get™ thedraft. If t. they had said)
[1468]the President. wants you to do such and su such I T_might>~
[1469]ghave given him.a_different. answer. Ike's got a ta good}
[1470]military_background, better than_mine.,—for_God's_sakes.}
[1471]That's the one nice thing I liked about this Agency,
[1473]and always have. I hope it's around, you can really
[1474]speak your mind.
[1476]Sometimes.
[1478]Well, all right. Things may have changed. I've been
[1479]out 20 years, but in my day we screamed bloody murder
[1480]and we screamed bloody murder about Mongoose. We
[1481]“screamed bloody murder about other things, believe me,
[1482]over the years, and when it didn't make sense we said
[1483]so. So help me, Trinidad and then the cutting 80% of
[1484]the air support, I don't know if Bissell really
[1485]understood the meaning. He may have thought that by
[1486]the time they would land Castro would be dead. That's
[1487]fine, but if you're running a vest pocket operation
[1488]like that, you had better be sure, and you don't take
[1489]the chance with 1,500 men or 1,400 men whatever hit the
[1490]beaches. Bissell was no kind of a guy to - let alone
[1491]Tracy Barnes - to be involved in assassination
[1492]plotting. They didn't know what the hell they were
[1493]doing. Tracy wouldn't know. The record is clear, and
[1494]it's even in the Church Committee report, for Christ's
[1495]sake, that a message came from headquarters to the
[1496]Havana station, when it was still there, talking about
[1497]assassination. The very next morning, when someone saw
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[1508]the confirmation copy, a flash went out saying “Ignore
[1510]‘the message.” Who the hell wrote the message, Tracy.
[1512]I mean that is the silliest thing I've ever seen. The
[1513]last thing in the world you want on paper. Just like
[1514]when Lansdale talked about elimination of leaders in
[1515]the August 10, 1962 meeting of the Special Group
[1516](Augmented). Puts it in writing and Harvey goes
[1517]through the roof. It's all out there now, but that's
[1518]the kind of people.who don't know what the hell it's
[1519]all about. They never tried.
[1521]Sam, thanks so much. We appreciate you coming in.
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