Association of Former Intellegence Officers Videotapes

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Summary: Schultz speaks of the four functions of intelligence: the collection of information, counter-intelligence, covert action, and the analysis of information. He examines these in light of three factors which lead governments to approach these functions in different ways: the nature of the political system, the specific situation or circumstances, and the nature of the bureaucracy involved. He uses historical examples from the intelligence community, and notes that all four functions are important and interdependent. He remarks that aspects of these functions were severely curtailed in the United States after disillusionment over Vietnam and detente, but that over the last six years, the administration has attempted to re-establish its capabilities, especially in covert action, counter-intelligence, and human collection (spying).

Note: This tape begins in mid-sentence, and the speaker is in shadow throughout.

Biography: Levchenko graduated in 1964 from the Institute of Asia and Africa of Moscow State University with a degree in Japanese language, literature, and history. He pursued post-graduate study at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Science of the USSR, majoring in the modern history of Japan. During the mid-1960′s, he served in several Soviet front organizations of the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, where he became an authority on national liberation movements and pro-Soviet organizations of the third world. In 1971, he became a staff operations officer of the KGB Foreign Intelligence Service. In 1975, he was sent to Japan under cover of a bureau chief of the Soviet Magazine New Times. There, he gathered political information and implemented large-scale Soviet covert action in Japan and throughout the Far East. In 1979, he was promoted to the rank of major in the KGB and became chief of the Covert Action Group in the Tokyo office. In October of 1979, he asked the United States government for political asylum.

Summary: Levchenko traces the history of the KGB, “the largest oppressive mechanism in the history of the world.” He covers its basic organization and tells why it has been so successful: its age provides it with institutional memory; it recruits the best from a nation where foreign language is important; it has an excellent training system; it is highly centralized, efficient, and enormous with strongly motivated officers, all within a system of strict military discipline.

Note: Apparently, this session included another speaker discussing the CIA, but this material is not included on the tape.

Biographies: Codevilla is a Hoover Institution Senior Research Fellow at Stanford University, with a B.A. from Rutgers, M.A. from Notre Dame, and Ph.D. from Claremont. After some time with the Foreign Service, he served from 1977 (when the permanent House and Senate committees on Intelligence were established) to 1985 as a senior staff member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He left there to assume his position at Stanford. He is the principal author of Intelligence Requirements of the 1980s and author of Arms Control Delusion and While Others Build. He is a frequent contributor to Commentary, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

Engelberg holds a B.A. in History from Princeton. Formerly the Washington correspondent for the Dallas Morning News, he had been with the Washington bureau of The New York Times for three years at the time of this symposium, with major reporting on the Iran-Contra Affair and general matters of Intelligence.

Summary: Engelberg divides his discussion of covert action into three areas: what it is, how it works, and a discussion of some of the moral issues that relate to it. Though covert action is a small part of the CIA’s efforts, both in budget and personnel, it is a basis of controversy, seemingly at odds with the political culture in which it exists. He discusses congressional oversight, the concept of prior restraint, and situations that may require covert action.

Codevilla says the issue is not so much covertness per se as it is substance–how the United States should deal with other nations. His main discussion concerns political warfare, “the forceful political expression of policy abroad”; a delineation of what its parameters should be; and the ramifications of its abuse. He claims that “search and support for the moderate faction has become the Holy Grail of American foreign policy,” and that lack of effectiveness as well as abuse are based not just in operational and political incompetence, but worse, in moral illiteracy.

Biography: De Borchgrave was editor and foreign correspondent for Newsweek for thirty years. After a stint at Georgetown University, he became (in 1985) editor-in-chief of The Washington Times.

Summary: De Borchgrave mentions ways in which both the United States and the Soviet Union have used disinformation. But the bulk of his discussion covers the arena in which covert actions have been conducted by the government and reported by the media in recent years. He says that owing to leaks from congressional oversight committees and an unfriendly press eager to publish sensitive material, the executive branch has become increasingly secretive which can lead, and has led to abuse. The result is that no one of these three players trusts the others. He feels it is unfortunate indeed that the media have become players rather than observers in the game of international politics and international relations. Further, foreign policy has degenerated into a defensive and reactive operational basis. In the end, de Borchgrave sees no purpose for disinformation in a democratic society, where, he says, the most effective weapon is truth.

Biographies: Powers took his B.A. at Yale, and has been a journalist and writer for over twenty years, winning a Pulitzer Prize for Journalism in 1971. He is the author of four books, including The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA, and over 200 magazine articles. He was working on a history of strategic weapons at the time of this presentation.

Simmons was an operations officer for the CIA from 1969 to 1979, and staff director for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence from 1981 to 1985. At the time of this symposium, he was a major in the Army Reserves, and also teaching a course at Yale involving Intelligence issues.

Summary: Powers discusses the conflict of secrecy and democracy in the United States and the collision of values and goals that can result. Citing the example of Nicaragua, he explains that the Reagan administration valued a policy whose goal was the overthrow of the Sandanistas, while the public valued the policy of informed consent with the goal of staying out of war. In both Vietnam and Nicaragua, Powers says the government valued keeping those countries from becoming allied with communism, but the conflict arose because the public did not share that concern. The result was the government’s decision to operate in secret. This should not be a basis for secret operations.

Simmons bases his presentation on the public’s right to know versus the government’s need for secrecy in developing intelligence networks. He relates the background for the formation of the permanent congressional committees on Intelligence, in 1976 and 1977, and oversight by the other branches of government in regard to Intelligence: the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board and the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, as well as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in the judiciary branch. These, in addition to the strong role the media plays, form a strong basis for representative oversight on the public’s behalf, and, he says, provide the public a form of accountability while maintaining the necessary secrecy.

Summary: This is an informal video record of a visit to England by the Association of Former Intelligence Officers New England Chapter. Included are a bus tour of London and visits to various sites connected with British Intelligence activities of World War II, including a visit to Bletchley Hall, site of the work on Ultra, the communications intelligence used by Britain and the United States during that period. Several receptions and interviews are also recorded.

Note: Since the approach is very informal, many of the sites and virtually all the speakers are unidentified. The tape is copyrighted by the David Atlee Phillips Chapter of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.

Biography: McCargar entered the Foreign Service in the last class before World War II, with his initial assignment in Vladivostok. In 1944, he was commissioned in Naval Intelligence and transferred to the Aleutian Islands. He returned to the Foreign Service in 1946 and was assigned to the legation in Budapest. Shortly after his arrival there, he became the Pond officer. (The Pond was a secret intelligence service formed in World War II under the orders of General George C. Marshall and under the direction of Colonel John Brombeck. It operated in conjunction with the State Department, actually the Foreign Service.) In late 1948, he moved to the Office of Policy Coordination, another secret organization being formed in the CIA. He was in charge of Southeast European affairs, including Albania. In 1955, having left the Foreign Service, he became Director of Political Operations of the Free Europe Committee, a position he held until 1958. In 1963, McCargar related his experiences in a book, A Short Course in the Secret War, published under the name Christopher Felix. A second edition was issued in 1988, with the true name of the author revealed: Foreign Service Officer James McCargar. He has been called the unsung hero of the Foreign Service.

Summary: In speaking of his career, McCargar covers the formation and operation of such Intelligence organizations as the Pond, the CIA, the Office of Policy Coordination, and the Free Europe Committee. He devotes quite some time to his experiences with, and assessment of, Harold Adrian Russell (Kim) Philby, the British Intelligence officer who disappeared from Beirut in 1963, and subsequently fled to Moscow. He also gives his view of the need, place, and value of covert political operations, now and in the future.

Biography: After graduating from West Point, Gillespie attended Yale, then took his Ph.D. in Chinese Studies from American University. He studied Chinese in the old language detachment on Taiwan, and was in the attache system in Hong Kong before the United States became involved in Beijing. He retired from the military system as Director of Foreign Intelligence on the Army staff. After this first retirement, he became associated with the US/China Business Council taking business people on tours of China. For his last ten years there, he served as vice president of the organization. After retiring again in August of 1989, he became a private consultant in the same line of work.

Summary: Gillespie provides a background for the political developments in China which led to a shift of the party from running business to running government. This growing economic reform and development led to an open door for business and warm relations in general until the Tiananmen Square suppression of June 3-4, 1989. He speaks of the political, military, and economic results of this incident, and the ramification of possible United States sanctions, keeping in view the importance of continued relations with China.

Summary: Bort discusses the intelligence cycle of direction, collection, processing, and dissemination and use, along with the dilemma and suggested solutions of the intelligence versus the operational components of military operations.

Note: This is a fragment of a presentation, beginning and ending in mid-sentence.

Biography: At the time of this speech, Melman was anticipating the American publication of his book, Every Spy a Prince. He served the requisite three years in the Israeli army in a reconnaissance unit, where he received basic field tactical intelligence training. Immediately after his military service, he studied Journalism at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In 1980, he was sent to London as a correspondent for an Israeli daily newspaper and an Israeli radio station. While there, he met and interviewed David Cornwall, author of fictional books on British Intelligence. Cornwall, Melman says, introduced him to “the secret world of intelligence and espionage.” At the time of this presentation, Melman was a Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard.

Summary: Melman speaks of Intelligence as a microcosm of society at large, and says this is especially true of the Israeli intelligence community. Not only does it manifest the traditional components of domestic security, foreign espionage, and military intelligence, it also includes a component that supports the immigration of Jews to Israel, and that also assists Jews in peril, wherever they may be. Melman further illustrates his thesis with examples of Israeli intelligence activities since the country’s inception in 1948.

Summary: Two officers from the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. discuss their role in supplying intelligence support for war games. Their office handles about 50 war games per year, requiring them to provide expertise over a wide range of political, economic, social issues affecting military outcomes. The games are not an effort to actually defeat one country or another; rather the process is paramount. The goal is to instill in military planners ways of approaching contingencies. Examples of recent war game scenarios included: Civil wars, evacuations under hostile conditions, possible outbreak of hostilities in N.Korea, Iran and Iraq. Although traditional war games were divided in “Blue” teams (U.S. and its allies) and “Red” teams (the enemy), newer scenarios include “Greens,” other regional actors who can influence outcomes. The war game support office functions in conjunction with directives on the seven most prominent threats to U.S. National Security: terrorism, evacuations, Bosnia, Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance. The future of war-gaming would appear to lie with computer simulations.

Biography: Formerly a correspondent for The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, Kessler is the author of numerous books dealing with intelligence activities. His works include: Escape from the CIA, Moscow Station, The Spy in the Russian Club, and Spy vs. Spy.

Summary: Kessler speaks in reference to his book, The FBI: Inside the World’s Most Powerful Law Enforcement Organization, which examines the history and operations of that organization. Although not the main focus of the book, it does contain some accounts of abuses, excesses, and bunglings of the FBI. In reaction to that, the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI office in Boston refused to allow an agent to participate in this discussion, as requested by AFIO/NE. Kessler briefly mentions the FBI under Hoover, and how it has changed under various directors. He also touches on certain notable events such as the World Trade Center bombing, the Yurchenko defection, and the Aldrich Ames case.

Note: This tape begins in mid-sentence and has lapses in the speech at the beginning. Most of the tape consists of questions to the speaker.

One of four programs on the tape whose total running time 108 minutes. This is included on Tape 1 of 2 and is one of four programs on the tape whose total running time is 108 minutes.

Biography: Rupert Allason (whose pen name is Nigel West) is a military historian and journalist specializing in intelligence matters. He has researched books for a number of authors and is an acknowledged expert on his subject. He has worked on several television programs, including the BBC Spy! and Escape! series. He is the author of MI5: 1909-1945 (1981), A Matter of Trust: MI5 1945-1972 (1982), MI6: British Secret Intelligence Service Operations 1909-1945 (1983), Mole Hunt: Searching for Soviet Spies in MI5 (1987), Seven Spies Who Changed the World (1991), Secret War: The Story of SOE, Britain’s Wartime Sabotage Organization (1992), and The Secret War for the Falklands: The SAS, MI6, and the War Whitehall Nearly Lost (1997). Allason was a British MP and continues to be an avid student of intelligence issues surrounding WWII.

Summary: Contains discussion of the Venona Project. VENONA was the codename used for the U.S. Signals Intelligence effort to collect and decrypt the text of Soviet KGB and GRU messages from the 1940s. Allason contends that the codebreaking triumph was essential to Allied success in WWII and continued to give the Allies intelligence advantages during the Cold War. He attributes the conviction of the Rosenbergs directly to intelligence derived through Venona. Only very few were aware of Venona and its capabilities, and that secrecy continued until just a few years ago. “Venona” was linked to the “Enigma” and “Ultra” systems developed at Bletchley Park. The session is one of AFIO’s most lively, and a most interesting Q & A period follows Allason/West’s talk.

Note: The beginning of the tape is marred by tracking problems for approximately the first 10 minutes (H. Bradford Westerfield’s introduction and Allason’s introduction by a female AFIO member). The audio is substandard throughout.

Biography: Waller is a former Inspector General of the CIA

Summary: Discusses teaching espionage and history over his 30 years at UNH. He includes examples from his various courses.

Summary: Thomas Trout of University of New Hampshire’s Political Science Dept. discusses “Bad Intelligence or Bad Policy?: Teaching Students About the Role of Intelligence.” His talk is based both on his academic experience and his experience as a military intelligence officer.

Note: The tape begins with a book presentation by Dan Halpin of Cloak and Dagger Books to William Ross, Head of Milne Special Collections.

Summary: Introduction by Burton Hersh, author of Old Boys: The American Elite and the Origins of the CIA. Author Ted Morgan discusses his book on Jay Lovestone, the AFL-CIO senior official charged with directing anti-communist activities. His contact in the CIA was Mr. Wisner for over twenty years. The CIA funded Lovestone’s efforts to root out communist influence in overseas labor organizations. References to his work are found in Richard Bissell’s memoirs. In China he worked with Willis Etter. He also had a relationship with the Dulles brothers. There is a review of the James Angleton (CIA)-Lovestone alliance, referred to as a “hidden power center.” Lovestone was eventually fired by William Colby, Angleton’s successor. Lovestone was instrumental in bringing Solzenhitsyn to the US. His papers are held by the Hoover Institute.

Note: The tape begins at 7:44 minutes.

Summary: “Remote Viewing” is a broad term for a variety of techniques or protocols employed to produce and control extra-sensory perception (ESP). These techniques were originally developed by researchers at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) as part of a US-government-sponsored program that ran from the early 1970s to the mid 1990s. Thompson’s presentation