JFK: CIA, Vietnam & The Plot to Assassinate JFK Read online

  First of all, as stated so accurately in Leonard Lewin’s Report From Iron Mountain,1 “allegiance [to the State] requires a cause; a cause requires an enemy,” and “. . . the presumed power of the enemy sufficient to warrant an individual sense of allegiance to a society must be proportionate to the size and complexity of the society.”

  Therefore, on a global scale, the Cold War required the USSR and the United States to have been enemies by need and by definition. Ever since the Bravo detonation of the hydrogen bomb, the world’s political, economic, and military system has had to be bipolar. Those without massive weapons and the means to deliver them could not possibly take part effectively in such global warfare.

  It has been politically necessary for each major power to have an enemy, even though both major powers knew that they no longer had any way to benefit from a traditional “all-out” war. Neither one could control its own destiny or its own society without the “threat” of the other. On a lesser scale, as we shall see in the Spanish example, the existence of “insurgents” lent validity to the charge of a “Communist-supported” insurgency, even though the scope of the “conflict”—that is, the “mock invasion of the town”—was purely local.

  All leaders of all nations know that, as stated in Report From Iron Mountain, “The organization of a society for the possibility of war is its principal political stabilizer. It is ironic that this primary function of warfare has been generally recognized by historians only where it has been expressly acknowledged—in the pirate societies of the great conquerors.”

  That is the historical perspective. It has been the primary reason for the necessary prosecution of the Cold War—“necessary,” that is, in the minds of those who are unable to see, or who choose not to see, that there are other reasons than conflict for the existence of Earth and man.

  The Spanish application of this tactic of the secret war is interesting and threatens us all. In this case, the two army officers had been ordered to attack a town, with regular Spanish troops (albeit some of them disguised as natives), and to make it look and feel realistic. As undercover warriors, they were trained to do this. (No doubt, some were trained in the United States, where many of the weapons, activities, and techniques mentioned below are used in training.) Under other conditions at other times, these same trained men might have been told to hijack a civilian aircraft; they might have been told to set up a mock car-bombing; they might have been told to run a mock hostage operation. There is no difference. The only military objective of these battles, and of this type of global conflict, is to create the appearance of war itself.

  Now, the Spanish, for reasons of their own, had decided to teach this town a lesson. To initiate this campaign, a psychological-warfare propaganda team arrived in town. They put up posters, made inflammatory speeches in the village square, and showed propaganda films on the walls of buildings at night to stir up the village, warning of the existence and approach of a band of “terrorist-trained insurgents.” That night, as the movies were being shown before the assembled villagers, a firefight kit, prearranged to explode in sequence to resemble a true skirmish, was detonated on a nearby hillside. Flares and rockets filled the sky. A helicopter gunship or two joined the mock battle scenario. By the time this Special Forces PsyWar team left that town, the whole region had been alarmed by the presence of these “insurgents.” The stage was set for the “mock invasion of the town,” as ordered.

  A few nights later, these two Spanish army officers (was the CIA involved?) divided their regular force into two groups: (a) the pseudoinsurgents and (b) the loyal regular forces. The “insurgents” took off their uniforms and donned native garb, the uniform of the “Peoples’ Insurgents.” Then they faded into the darkness and began to attack the town. First there was sporadic gunfire. Then some buildings went up in flames. Several big explosions occurred, and a bridge was blown up. The “insurgents” attacked the town as the villagers fled into the night. There was more gunfire, more burning and explosions. The “terrorists” looted the town and fired into the woods where the townspeople were hiding.

  As the sun rose, an army unit in a convoy of trucks raced toward the town, entering it with guns ablaze. Above, a helicopter gunship added to the firepower. The “terrorists” were gunned down, left and right (all staged with blank ammunition). The others were rounded up and thrown into extra trucks under heavy guard. In short order, the victorious regular army captain had liberated the town. A loudspeaker in the helicopter called the villagers to return. All was safe! Fires were extinguished. Things returned to near normal.

  Meanwhile, the captain remained with his interrogators, questioning the prisoners. Two “insurgent” leaders were discovered with false “terrorist” papers in their pockets and led back to the village square in chains. Charges were read against them, and the villagers observed them backed against the wall and shot! No sooner had the bodies hit the ground than they were picked up and tossed into the nearest truck. Justice had been done.

  All trucks moved down the road. The battle was over. Before leaving, the captain turned to the town’s mayor and warned him against further terrorism. The townspeople cheered the heroic captain as he left the town in command of the convoy. The forces of justice had been victorious. They drove on a few more miles, and the whole gang—loyal army and “terrorists”—had breakfast together. The “dead” men joined the feast.

  This was the “mock battle.” Although I have added technical details to the Spanish scenario, I have been to such training programs at U.S. military bases where identical tactics are taught to Americans as well as foreigners. It is all the same. As we shall see later, these are the same tactics that were exploited by CIA superagent Edward G. Lansdale and his men in the Philippines and Indochina.

  This is an example of the intelligence service’s “Fun and Games.” Actually, it is as old as history; but lately it has been refined, out of necessity, into a major tool of clandestine warfare.

  Lest anyone think that this is an isolated case, be assured that it was not. Such “mock battles” and “mock attacks on native villages” were staged countless times in Indochina for the benefit of, or the orientation of, visiting dignitaries, such as John McCone when he first visited Vietnam as the Kennedy-appointed director of central intelligence. Such distinguished visitors usually observed the action from a helicopter, at “a safe distance.” A new secretary of defense, such as Robert McNamara, who had never seen combat, especially combat in Southeast Asia, would be given the treatment. It was evident to other, more experienced observers that the tracks through the fields had been made by the “Vietcong” during many rehearsals of the “attack.” The war makers of Vietnam vintage left nothing to chance.

  During the 1952—54 time period, when I flew into the Philippines, I spent many hours talking with Ed Lansdale, his many Filipino friends, such as Juan C. “Johnny” Orendain, Col. Napoleon D. Valeriano, and members of his CIA “anti-Quirino” team and heard them tell these same stories. They all worked with Ramon Magsaysay in those days and related how he would divide his Special Forces into the “Communist HUKs” and the loyal military and then attack villages in the manner described above. Before long Ramon Magsaysay had been “elected” president of the Philippines, and President Quirino was on his way out. Later, when I worked in the same office with Lansdale in the Pentagon, he would relate how he and his Saigon Military Mission teammates applied similar tactics in Indochina, both North and South.

  Not long after the CIA had been created, limited by law “to coordinate intelligence,” the National Security Council authorized the supersecret Office of Policy Coordination, under the wartime OSS station chief in Romania, Frank Wisner, to carry out certain covert operations of a similar nature. This is the organization Ed Lansdale was assigned to in November 1949. There he worked under an experienced Far East hand, Col. Richard G. Stilwell, in the Far East/Plans division. The clandestine warfare in Greece and Bulgaria, which occurred at about the same time, is another exam
ple of OPC’s undercover work.

  During the late forties, the CIA organized itself and grew. In these same years the OPC grew faster, and when Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, General Eisenhower’s chief of staff during WWII, returned from Moscow, where he had been the U.S. ambassador, to become the director of central intelligence, one of his first official acts was to have the OPC removed from the secretary of state and the secretary of defense and to have it placed directly under his control in the CIA. Although there was no lawful basis for this momentous move, it was done without formal protest. Everyone involved knew that the real reason for the creation of the CIA was to be the lead brigade of U.S. forces during the Cold War period.

  Then, with the election of President Eisenhower in 1952, Allen W. Dulles was made the director of central intelligence, General Smith became the deputy secretary of state, and John Foster Dulles was made secretary of state. The high command for the Cold War was in place, and the stage was set for the CIA’s dominant role in the invisible war. The Korean War, which had begun in 1950, had served to cover the CIA’s rapid expansion into that field.

  By 1952 it had been decided that the time had come to replace Quirino as president of the Philippines. Since he was, ostensibly, a good friend of the United States and avowedly an anti-Communist, it would require some delicate diplomacy to bring that about. The reasons for the forced removal of a national leader do not always follow ideological or political lines. It is more likely, as in the case of Quirino, that he had relaxed his business priorities with the United States in favor of other countries, thus reducing American exports to the Philippines. And that could be sufficient grounds for the removal of a leader in the big power game of the nation-states.

  While the United States maintained the customary diplomatic relations with the Quirino government and had a strong ambassador in Manila, that ambassador had on his staff a strong CIA station chief, one George Aurell. This cloak of normalcy could not be changed. The ambassador urged Quirino to hold an election. Elections would be good for Quirino and would serve to quell the opposition, said to consist of a Communist-supported HUK rebellion. Other than that, Quirino saw no opposition and no problems with an election. An election was scheduled—for later.

  Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the ambassador and Aurell, the CIA slipped into the Philippines an undercover team headed by one of its superagents, Edward G. Lansdale. Although the true reason for his presence in Manila was not divulged to these senior Americans, this agent had access to certain anti-Quirino Filipinos. His ostensible role was to train selected Filipino army troops in PsyWar and other paramilitary tactics; his primary role, in fact, was to oust Quirino and to install Ramon Magsaysay in the office of president. The men selected for duty with Lansdale were put on regular training schedules with the U.S. Army and were trained outside of the Philippines. Then they were slipped back later into the Philippines and into their usual army units.

  At the same time, all throughout the islands, the “HUK insurgency” was escalated by secret operations. News began to surface about the growing HUK insurgency. The HUKs were beginning to be found everywhere. There were reports of “HUK detachments” on all the islands. The rise of this notional “Communist” influence gave President Quirino what he thought was a strong platform. The Cold War “make war” tactic was well under way. Then the CIA made its move.

  Lansdale had selected a handsome young Philippine congressman, Ramon Magsaysay, to play the role we have seen in the above scenario from Spain. He was to stage “mock attacks” and “mock liberations” on countless villages throughout the islands. Villages were attacked and destroyed by the “HUKs.” Captain Magsaysay and his loyal band charged into town after town, killing and capturing the “HUKs” and liberating each village. This CIA agent had been equipped with the equivalent of a bookfull of blank checks that he used to finance the entire campaign. The CIA pumped out a flood of news releases, produced and projected propaganda movies, and held huge rallies—all to build up the reputation of the new “Robin Hood,” Ramon Magsaysay. The plot was a success, and soon Magsaysay was made secretary of defense. Then, when the election campaign began, he ran for president against Quirino. Quirino was stunned by the entry of the “HUK Killer” hero into the campaign. But the president had one more ace up his sleeve: He had the traditional power to control the ballot boxes and to count the votes. An honest election was quite impossible in the Philippines.

  The election was held. Magsaysay was certainly more popular than Quirino. Just prior to the election, the “HUKs” stirred themselves and rekindled Filipinos’ memories of the gallant captain who had liberated their villages with a hot machine gun slung across his arm. The votes for Magsaysay poured in from all the islands. Then, from his office in the army, he sent out a command. He ordered his own loyal army troops to guard every voting site. Army men sealed and loaded the ballot boxes into trucks and drove them to Manila, where all the votes were counted, in public. As they said on the streets, “Under those conditions a monkey could have won against Quirino.” Quirino was outmaneuvered by this new tactic. Magsaysay won easily and became president of the Philippines.

  In Manila, Quirino was not the only man stunned by these events. So was the American ambassador and, even more so, his CIA station chief, George Aurell. They finally realized that the CIA had kept them in the dark by concealing the true role of one of its most powerful undercover teams. The CIA had quietly pulled off the deal, right under their noses. Another battle in the Cold War had been won over “the forces of communism”—or so they were led to believe.

  Magsaysay had become president as a result of the application, many times over, of the same scenario that those two officers in Spain had used in their mock attack. With Magsaysay president, the city was too small for the U.S. ambassador, CIA station chief, and CIA secret agent—the Magsaysay creator, with his Madison Avenue—type warfare and election campaign. Also, quite magically, it seemed that the HUKs had vanished. Cecil B. deMille could not have staged it any better.2

  These are examples of the new intelligence methods that are actually “make war” tactics. The Spanish incident and the Magsaysay “election campaign” serve to illustrate how they work. The incidents recounted below will serve to broaden the reader’s understanding of the CIA’s worldwide operations.

  During the late forties, there was trouble in Greece, and the fledgling CIA got a foothold there and began to develop a major empire in that region. Greece became a base for overflight reconnaissance aircraft. Secret airfields were used in Greece and in Turkey; and from the time of the murder of Premier Muhammad Mossadegh of Iran, in 1953, the CIA was the most potent force behind the shaky throne of the Shah of Iran.

  Foreign nationals from all over the world were trained in the methods of secret operations—that is, the use of high explosives, sabotage, communications, etc.—at military bases in the United States under CIA sponsorship. The CIA developed many of its own facilities around the world, but in most cases the agency concealed its presence on military facilities in one guise or another. Many of the skilled saboteurs and terrorists of today are CIA students of yesterday. Many skilled terrorists in Iran have gone to CIA schools and other training facilities and have become experts with the weapons and tactics of the trade. The first aerial hijackings were publicly solicited by the United States in return for big cash awards, plus sanctuary. Chuck Yeager, that grand old man with “The Right Stuff,” was sent to Okinawa in 1953 to fly a MiG fighter plane that had been flown there by a Chinese pilot in return for a large cash reward. It’s all part of the undercover game.

  In the state of Virginia, CIA saboteur and explosives training at a secret facility, not too far from Colonial Williamsburg, created so much noise that wealthy neighbors complained to their senators. So the CIA had that training site moved to a more remote area in North Carolina, and it was used later for the Bay of Pigs operations.

  This is no small business, and by the end of 1953 all signs pointed to Indochina: Vietnam, Laos,
and Cambodia, a region of great wealth. It was freeing itself from Japanese occupation and French control and appeared to be “threatened” by Communists, so it was ripe for the application of the tactics of the CIA’s invisible war.

  The inconclusive Korean War had ground to a halt. The battleground of the Cold War was being moved from one region to another. As we mentioned earlier, more than one-half of all the military matériel once stockpiled on Okinawa for the planned invasion of Japan had been reloaded in September 1945 and transshipped to Haiphong, the port of Hanoi, Vietnam’s capital. This stockpile had amounted to what the army called a 145,000 “man-pack” of supplies, that is, enough of everything required during combat to arm and supply that many men for war.

  Once in Haiphong Harbor, this enormous shipment of arms was transferred under the direction of Brig. Gen. Philip E. Gallagher, who was supporting the OSS, and his associate, Ho Chi Minh. They had come from China to mop up the remnants of the defeated Japanese army. Ho’s military commander Col. Vo Nguyen Giap, quickly moved this equipment into hiding for the day when it would be needed. By 1954, that time had come.

  The Vietnamese Independence League (Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi) or Vietminh, well armed with all this new American-made equipment, were waging a relentless guerrilla-type war against the French, who had no idea that these rebels were so well armed or where such a vast store of arms had come from. In 1946, the French, thinking they would easily have their way, had reneged on giving the Vietnamese their freedom and independence. The British had withdrawn from India and Burma and the Dutch had left Indonesia, but the French had refused to leave Indochina. By 1954, sporadic guerrilla warfare had escalated and the French forces were in deep trouble. They had gotten themselves trapped in a small valley at Dien Bien Phu and were seeking more direct aid from the United States. The Cold War rumbled on, while the H-bombs remained in storage, gathering dust.