The Family Jewels (23 page)

With U.S. intelligence preoccupied with Russia's supposed capability to “brainwash” people, during 1950 Colonel Edwards had participated in the CIA's decision to launch Project Bluebird, the use of drugs on detainees under interrogation. A few years later, with the agency tampering with the U.S. mail, Colonel Edwards agreed to have his Office of Security do the actual illegal letter opening. In 1958, when the CIA's Far East Division wanted to smear Indonesian leader Achmed Sukarno by making him appear to be the male actor in a pornographic film, Edwards prevailed on the police commissioner of Los Angeles to procure a supply of porn movies from which to select a template. The following year the colonel's operatives illegally wiretapped an American journalist (see
Chapter 7
). The Office of Security had had a hand in polishing several Family Jewels.

Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that when the idea of assassinating Fidel Castro came up, spooks thought of Shef Edwards. When the CIA Inspector General reviewed this history in 1967, he concluded the idea came from J. C. King, chief of the agency's Western Hemisphere Division, who took it to clandestine service chief Richard Bissell. The concept was to act through the Mafia, whose gambling interests in Cuba were being dismantled by the Castro regime. Bissell summoned Colonel Edwards in late September 1960. Edwards told Rockefeller and Church interviewers that both Bissell and CIA Director Allen W. Dulles knew of the plan, and that it had high-level approval, though no written evidence of
the latter has ever been found. Based on his understanding, the colonel asked his chief of support to identify a suitable intermediary with Mafia links who could be the go-between. That person, Robert A. Maheu, a private detective and former FBI operative, had done several previous jobs for the security office. Maheu connected with Mafia don Johnny Rosselli and other mafiosi the latter recruited. Office of Security deputy James O'Connell became the case officer, though Shef Edwards once met with Rosselli himself.

The details of the sordid plots to kill Fidel Castro are intricate. The core point is that this was a real initiative, carried out over a period of years, involving identifiable agency officers and acknowledged by the CIA. Events are documented by David Belin's report, an agency IG investigation, the Church Committee's assassination inquiry, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (1979), and a mass of documents declassified by the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board in the 1990s. There were at least six major plots. The Mafia plot failed in this initial phase, but was revived after the disastrous botch of the CIA's Bay of Pigs invasion. Another scheme aimed to kill Castro with poisoned skin-diving gear. There were multiple plans for a sniper to assassinate the Cuban leader and one to engineer a military coup to overthrow him. Execution was taken away from Edwards and handed to a task force conducting operations against Cuba, then its successor. The agency's Office of Technical Services developed poison pills for the Mafia plot. As John F. Kennedy traveled to Dallas for his own fateful encounter with an assassin, a senior CIA officer was in Paris to meet one of the Cuban operatives recruited to kill Castro. Every scheme to get Castro miscarried.

Church investigators examined other CIA initiatives also. While delving into covert operations, the committee discovered that in Chile—a natural target of the inquiry since claims of CIA involvement there were already swarming in
public—there had been two tracks to the policy ordered by Richard Nixon. As Tom Karamessines told his interlocutors, from his perspective as Langley's director of operations, the supersecret “Track II” had never ended. That facet had involved assassinations, and the CIA had latched onto a plot by certain Chilean officers to murder the general who barred the way to a military coup against elected president Salvador Allende. The agency supplied money and guns to the plotters, though the general had been eliminated by another cabal instead. His demise cleared the way for the coup that overthrew Allende. Rumors of CIA participation in that September 1973 coup, during which Allende died by his own hand, could not be resolved based on the evidence the committee was able to elicit.

Another extensive record of CIA activity the Church Committee established was of CIA's role in the November 1963 coup against South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem, during the course of which Diem was assassinated. There was explicit evidence of CIA participation over a period of months right up to and during the day of the coup, but none of agency complicity in or even advance awareness of the murder itself. The Diem case was also unique in demonstrating close participation by top levels of the United States government—President Kennedy and his top advisors—who met repeatedly to consider coup prospects and U.S. backing.

In the cases of Castro, Chile, Diem, and the Congo, the Church Committee could talk to CIA officers who had actually carried out the actions. The CIA's record in the Congo was clear: when headquarters ordered officers to eliminate Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, some had refused. Others traveled from Washington to the Congo to further the plot, recruited agents to do the deed, and moved snake venom and rifles for purposes of the assassination. But the trail of authority—the directive from on high—remained obscure. Agency instructions to its station in the Congo
coincided in one case with talk at the “Special Group” that managed covert operations, and in another with a discussion at the National Security Council, but White House staff could not recall—or refused to affirm—President Dwight D. Eisenhower issuing such an order. And the CIA did not actually kill Lumumba. As in the Chilean case, a different set of plotters, now established to have been led by Belgians, murdered him. Yet CIA's conspiracy had been a real one, and the agency was not excused.

One more case explored was the assassination of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo on May 30, 1961. Church investigators found that the Special Group had considered a covert operation in the Dominican Republic in February 1960 and that a couple of months later President Eisenhower had approved a plan to move against Trujillo if conditions deteriorated any further. In May 1960 Dominican dissidents asked for weapons, and the CIA supplied them. Many other requests followed at various times, and CIA headquarters contributed plans of its own for shipments, with more weapons actually shipped to Santo Domingo but never delivered. The Special Group approved certain weapons shipments on the very eve of Eisenhower's leaving office. The incoming Kennedy administration had doubts and took some measures to discourage the Dominican plotters, who nevertheless moved ahead and killed Trujillo.

Investigators also discovered that the agency had had a management unit in the 1950s nicknamed the “Health Alteration Committee,” that this had endorsed at least one plan, to incapacitate an Iraqi army officer, and that in 1961 the CIA had moved to create a standing unit for “executive action” using the cryptonym ZR/Rifle. Project Rifle was not known to have carried out any actual assassinations. The agency apparently succeeded in hiding the fact—now revealed in declassified documents—that during the covert operation that overthrew the Guatemalan government in 1954, the
CIA had created and maintained lists of Guatemalans who were to be killed or neutralized once the agency-backed rebel forces had triumphed. Evidence confirmed the CIA had provided weapons to potential assassins of Sukarno in Indonesia plus opponents of “Papa Doc” Duvalier in Haiti, but those things were not mentioned in the Church report. The Committee did not examine certain allegations, such as that CIA had considered the feasibility of killing China's Zhou Enlai and Egypt's Nasser.

Having asked the Church Committee to pursue this inquiry, President Ford attempted to suppress its result. Phil Buchen of the White House arranged for officials at CIA, the Pentagon, and State Department to read Church's draft report. All of them viewed the prospect of publication as a disaster. Scott D. Breckinridge produced the CIA audit of the draft. Breckinridge portrayed the Church product as confusing, listed names to be protected, objected to the disclosure of sources and methods, plus cryptonyms, and found the paper anything but crisp. Director Colby forwarded this review to President Ford, emphasizing (as did both of the other agencies) “grievous damage to our country.” CIA opposed release.
⁹
On Halloween Ford duly sent the committee a letter demanding its report be kept secret. Not trusting Frank Church to deal straightforwardly, Ford sent identical copies to every committee member. Vigorous debate ensued. Senator Church nearly resigned. The committee decided to send its assassinations report to the full Senate for a decision, with a recommendation it be released to the public. On television, reporters interviewing Church confronted him with the administration's expressed claim that publication would harm United States foreign relations.

“What are we talking about, here? Agencies of the government that are licensed to undertake murder,” Senator Church shot back. “Is the president of the United States going to be a glorified godfather?”
¹⁰

Behind the scenes the Central Intelligence Agency demanded that thirty names be deleted from the report, including those of some of its Chilean agents who had not only been exposed but convicted in a Chilean military court. The Church Committee agreed on most, substituting pseudonyms, but kept the rest. The agency went to court. Federal district judge Gerhard Gesell ruled that government officials whose personal conduct was being reviewed by Congress had no right of privacy. Bill Colby called a press conference—only the second in CIA history—to denounce the committee for naming names. Meanwhile, Langley appealed Gesell's decision over the identity of one senior scientist involved in the Lumumba plot. To avoid further delay, the committee agreed to redact the man's identity. On November 20 the matter of approval went before the full Senate. The chamber debated for hours, but could not bring itself to take a vote. That left the initiative to the committee itself. As the session ended, Church Committee staff began handing out copies of the assassinations report.

The republic was not destroyed by revelation of the Central Intelligence Agency's role as executioner. Rather, the deep crevasse of controversy immediately squelched debate. President Ford himself, in announcing that he was passing the assassination investigation along to the Senate committee, declared: “I am opposed to political assassinations. This administration has not and will not use such means as instruments of national policy.”
¹¹
Ford was actually building on existing CIA directives. Both Richard Helms, in March 1972, and William E. Colby, in August 1973, had ordered that no assassinations should be conducted, induced, or even suggested. Both Helms and Colby expressed themselves to the Church Committee as unalterably opposed to CIA participation in assassination plots.

The Church Committee took the same line as had David Belin. In fact, the senators went further, recommending that a prohibition on assassination be written into law. “Administrations change, CIA directors change, and some day in the future what was tried in the past may once again become a temptation.” The committee even supplied proposed language, making clear that the “foreign officials” who were to be off limits included even members of “an insurgent force, an unrecognized government, or a political party.”
¹²

Gerald Ford had no desire for a statute forbidding assassinations—thus tying his hands—or for that matter a law establishing a formal charter for intelligence agencies. Ford sought to obviate congressional action by means of presidential directive. The White House steering group dealing with the Year of Intelligence was already finishing work on an instrument of this kind. The text reached final form in January 1976 and appeared on February 18 as Executive Order 11905. Here President Ford codified his own proscription. Among its restrictions on intelligence agencies, the executive order provided that “No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination.”
¹³

Debate on intelligence reforms that had been ignited by the 1975 investigations extended into the presidency of Jimmy Carter. A statutory charter was actually debated, though it did not pass Congress. But the draft indeed outlawed assassinations. President Carter issued his own executive order on intelligence in May 1977. That directive left the Ford assassination prohibition in place verbatim. On January 24, 1978, Carter promulgated an extensively reworked replacement. With a few changes to wording, the Carter executive order
widened
the prohibition, extending it to persons working “in behalf” of the United States government, and getting rid of the qualifier “political” in describing the act of murder. Thus, President Carter's Executive Order 12036
prohibited anyone working for or in behalf of the United States from engaging or conspiring in
any
act of assassination whatever.
¹⁴

Ronald Reagan defeated Carter in the 1980 election and took office in January 1981. He too revised the presidential directive on intelligence activities. In the matter of assassinations, however, the Reagan executive order merely renumbered the Carter injunction, repeating it precisely.
¹⁵
President Reagan's executive order remains in place today. No person working for or in behalf of the United States may conspire or engage in assassination. In summary, there is an unbroken chain of regulation, though not in statute. The presidential commission and Senate committee that investigated CIA plots in 1975 both condemned assassination as a policy. President Ford repudiated it and then, by executive order, banned political murder. President Carter widened the prohibition to all such acts and every person working for or on behalf of the nation.
Five
presidents since Carter's time have continued that provision. But as the Church Committee said long ago, presidents and CIA directors change—and the senators ought to have added circumstances as well. In the war on terror, temptation proved to be too much.