The two agencies frequently clashed over field versus Washington initiatives, or ends and means. There were also fights within agencies. For example, when the field proposed that the CIA recruit rebel Holden Roberto in Portuguese Angola, Langley came together on the opportunity but the State Department split, its Africa Bureau supporting the idea strongly while Europeanists opposed it. Four distinct proposals to fund Roberto were tabled during 1964, but the Special Group finally deferred action at John McCone’s request. Yet the CIA and Africanists ultimately won; Roberto went on the payroll. Although the Congo absorbed much of the Africa Division’s capability, tentacles soon reached many other places. Angola was one. Another, political action in Somalia, the Special Group approved in February 1964. The project lasted three years. The Special Group reportedly considered a State Department proposal to supply arms to certain groups in Tanzania, where secret-war wizards saw President Julius Nyerere as a problem, in the summer of 1964. There is no current evidence on process or outcome.

  Like Nyerere, Washington viewed Ghana’s leader Kwame Nkrumah as a troublemaker. The CIA’s role in Ghana seems to have flowed from both Washington and the field. A nationalist hero and first president of independent Ghana, Nkrumah had an uneasy relationship with the United States. Educated in missionary schools and in the segregationist America of the thirties and forties, he learned his Marxism there, influenced by the racial attitudes of the day. He was no Moscow puppet. Nkrumah called his program “African Socialism.” Turbulent Ghanaian politics soured Nkrumah, who became increasingly dictatorial after assassination attempts in 1962 and 1964. He introduced press censorship, dismissed the supreme court, and imprisoned many opponents. Ghana’s economy went into deficit as prices for its cocoa plunged. Nkrumah attributed the hardship to the former colonial power, Great Britain, and to the United States. Washington blamed Nkrumah for anti-American agitation in Ghana. American aid for a dam on the Upper Volta River and to develop new economic resources in aluminum hung in the balance.

  Nkrumah attributed the January 1964 assassination attempt to the CIA. The Johnson administration stepped carefully around this thorny question, with U.S. Ambassador William P. Mahoney assuring LBJ that his country team—including CIA—was fully under control, and the CIA denying any role. In February 1964 Nkrumah sent Johnson a letter asserting that there were “two conflicting establishments” representing the United States, the diplomatic mission and the CIA, which “seems to devote all its attention to fomenting ill-will, misunderstanding and even clandestine and subversive activities among our people, to the impairment of the good relations which exist between our two governments.” Johnson conveyed reassurances on the CIA both in his response and through Ambassador Mahoney, who reportedly told Nkrumah that the five CIA officers in the station at Accra were under his strict supervision.

  But Washington’s record was not entirely innocent. As early as February 6, 1964, Dean Rusk asked John McCone about suitable candidates to head a post-Nkrumah government, and they discussed the very general who was eventually to move against the Ghanaian. The two men speculated on the possibility of concocting a covert operation in concert with the British. When the State Department proposed an action program it had the explicit purpose of slowing Nkrumah’s leftward political evolution. The proposal was to actively undermine him by threatening to halt aid to the Volta River project, recognizing opponents, and using psychological warfare and other means to diminish his support. President Johnson deliberated on this program at the exact moment Nkrumah sent his letter protesting CIA subversion.

  LBJ went ahead with the Volta dam aid, but he may well have approved undermining Nkrumah. During a home visit in March 1965 Ambassador Mahoney met with Director McCone and AF Division deputy chief John Waller. They specifically discussed a coup plot in Ghana hatched by police and military figures, including Gen. Joseph A. Ankrah, the same man McCone and Rusk had considered a year earlier. Evidence indicates the Ghanaian military’s plans were well known to the CIA, which reported on them more than half a dozen times in 1965. As yet there is no evidence of direct CIA involvement from documents. What we do have is a series of confident predictions of a coup from both the ambassador—who accurately foresaw that Nkrumah would be replaced by a military junta within a year—and NSC staffer Robert W. Komer. That summer Nkrumah detected the coup plot and cashiered Ankrah. The Ghanaian generals, their peripatetic plots more than a year old, were temporarily stymied.

  Kwame Nkrumah strove for a role on the world stage, trying to be a peacemaker and help end the Vietnam War. This annoyed Washington, especially when Nkrumah tried to intercede between the British and Guyana’s Cheddi Jagan. He also made unwelcome overtures in the Middle East. In the summer of 1965 Nkrumah sent diplomatic envoys to North Vietnam, suggesting that he himself visit early the following year. He tacked on visits to Burma and the People’s Republic of China. According to CIA political operative Miles Copeland, under whom the agency had begun an effort to plant astrologers on world leaders known to favor the occult, a CIA occult agent may have had a role in convincing Nkrumah to plan this trip.

  In 1965 Nkrumah published a book, Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism, which must have raised hackles in Washington. Then came an overt move toward Moscow—Nkrumah accepted Soviet arms and training for his presidential guard. The last straw may have come when the CIA reported that a Soviet arms shipment was on its way to Ghana.

  William Mahoney left Accra for good in the summer of 1965, and for eight months there was no U.S. ambassador. Station chief Howard T. Bane had a much freer hand. Bane proposed the CIA sponsor a coup. The views of Africa Division chief Glen Fields are not known, but he had been amenable to the Congo, and his deputy John Waller had made his mark in the 1953 CIA coup in Iran. The Special Group turned them down. Bane thought that shortsighted, and as a colleague later put it, he had “no patience for management of which he was not a part.”

  Howard Bane, another man who came to Africa from the DO Far East Division, had an affinity for the military and determination to go with it. A knuckle-dragger, in Korea he had run a net to rescue downed fliers. In India he had backstopped the Tibet project, insulating it from the jaundiced Harry Rositzke. He wet his teeth in Africa heading the CIA station in Kenya. Not phased by the Special Group’s rejection, the tobacco-chewing, cigar-smoking Bane took advantage of his instructions to keep a close watch on the Ghanaian military. With a complement variously reported at ten or up to three dozen case officers, Bane exploited his military contacts.

  A few winks and nods from Bane betokened U.S. support to Ghanaian soldiers. With just a pair of brigades, both based in Accra, there were not that many to convince. Bane had time to suggest that Langley send a few officers from the CIA Special Operations Division, who could not only concretize the impression of support but use the coup to purloin documents and code materials from the Chinese embassy in Accra, a unilateral operation under cover of the coup. Headquarters spurned him again. But in mid-January 1966 Bane reported that a rash of coups elsewhere in Africa had reenthused Ghanaian officers, and on February 17 came concrete indications of a plot, Operation Cold Chop. Twenty-four hours before the coup, Bane reported the military planned it for the time Nkrumah was out of the country. President Nkrumah left Ghana on February 22, the coup occurred on the 24th. General Ankrah returned to head the resulting junta.

  That the coup actually surprised Washington is suggested by Bob Komer’s memo to LBJ a month later, in which he suggested to Johnson that “The coup in Ghana is another example of a fortuitous windfall.” Walt Rostow later told historian David Rooney that the CIA knew the plotters, but “We did not throw a match in the haystack.” Yet Langley credited Accra station with an assist. Howard Bane wound up as chief of operations for the AF Division.

  In Tanzania, meanwhile, Che Guevara tarried for months after leaving the Congo. There he turned his diaries into a narrative, seeking to understand what had gone wrong. He stayed in Dar-es-Salaam until early 1966, when a top DGI official came to give Guevara the latest assessment of prospects for revolution in each Latin American country. Guevara really wanted to fight in Argentina, but security services there had suppressed dissident networks. In Peru the CIA and the government had foreclosed the option. That left Bolivia as the major prospect. Che’s hope lay in what he called a foco, literally a focus or a lighthouse, in practice an exemplar activity that could lead the masses to rally to the revolution, much as Castro’s small July 26th Movement had brought the end of Batista.

  Guevara’s ploy confronted a transformed Western Hemisphere Division at CIA. By 1966 it had shrunk to become smaller than the Miami station during Mongoose. About a hundred officers served at Langley and twice that many in the field. Its largest station, Mexico City under long-service boss Winston Scott, single-handedly absorbed 15 percent of the division budget. The largest branch continued to be that for Cuba, but this had shrunk to just thirty officers. Division chief William V. Broe, a Far East specialist, had been drafted after a tour as station chief in Tokyo. Jake Esterline had now risen to deputy chief of division. Still on board after all these years was Gerry Droller, chief of the covert action staff. Thomas Polgar, a European expert and most recently CIA’s boss in Vienna, headed the Foreign Intelligence Staff. They had $37 million to play with in the fiscal 1967 budget.

  The top of the agency had been transformed also. Two directors had come and gone—John McCone over disputes with the president, William F. Raborn perhaps for lack of them. But in 1965, when President Johnson appointed Admiral Raborn, he simultaneously made Richard Helms deputy director of central intelligence. His departure for the Seventh Floor left the Directorate of Operations in need of a chief. Raborn let Helms choose. For DO boss the selection was between Helms’s longtime associate Thomas Karamessines and Desmond FitzGerald. When Des saw what had happened, he marched into Helms’s office to bid for the job. Karamessines did nothing. Helms chose FitzGerald, who thus arrived to head the CIA’s clandestine service. Helms exacted the promise that FitzGerald would weed out useless covert operations. Cuba projects took another hit.

  Subtle change came to the Special Group. Lyndon Johnson made this his own in June 1964 with an NSAM that retitled the unit. Now it became the 303 Committee, named for its establishing directive. The committee met weekly or more frequently if necessary. Occasionally projects were approved in a telephone conference. The CIA sent papers in advance, and members arrived prepared to discuss them. The primacy of the national security adviser as chairman had become established. Until February 1966 this would be Mac Bundy, for a month or so after that Robert Komer, then the chairman became Walt W. Rostow.

  The chairman informed President Johnson to an extent that only the two of them knew. But if the 303 Committee could not agree, or an operation involved great risks, LBJ would convene their seniors—McNamara, Rusk, and the CIA director—to discuss the matter directly. Deputy Undersecretary of State U. Alexis Johnson represented the State Department during some of this period, and writes that he always tried to put himself in the shoes of the president. For his efforts he acquired the nickname “Dr. No.” But the State Department backed many projects, and the 303 Commmittee approved a large share of the proposals laid before it. Alex Johnson writes, “I would say we reached a firm decision in all but a few cases.”

  Bolivia would be one of the easy ones. During the Kennedy years Washington gradually began mixing itself into the politics of this Andean country. A paper prepared for the Special Group (CI) in September 1962 acknowledged the leftist politics of La Paz and viewed any threat as arising primarily from local leaders wanting to maximize power in the style of Chinese warlords. In 1963 intelligence reports found Bolivia to be one of the most highly armed Latin nations, where many had guns at home and the government handed out weapons to various labor and peasant groups. Where Washington took umbrage at the Venezuelan case, it did nothing about Bolivia.

  Nothing except political action, that is. In August 1963 the Special Group approved secret funds for Washington’s favorite party in Bolivia’s 1964 elections. Between 1963 and 1965 the CIA spent $1.2 million to support peasant organizations and youth groups, and for propaganda. The leftists won, but not by enough to avoid a coalition that included the American favorites, the MNR (Movimiento nacional revolucionario). Then in November 1964 Gen. Rene Barrientos Ortuño, a vice president in the coalition, launched a military coup that swept away the leftists. Two months later the 303 Committee approved more cash for Barrientos to fulfill election promises. Records indicate that the general was aware of the CIA source of the money. Then, in the face of political opposition, Barrientos jailed opponents and canceled elections. The 303 Committee nevertheless authorized more payments in July 1965 and again in March 1966, before a new election in which Barrientos triumphed. All this kept Gerry Droller very busy. Not only the Cubans were engaged in Bolivia.

  It is fair to say that by this time the Central Intelligence Agency had a fixation on Che Guevara. Slow to appreciate emerging differences between Fidel and Che, the CIA produced analyses of economic policy disputes between the two in the fall of 1965 when Guevara had already gone to Africa. The paper, by analyst Brian Latell, caught the flavor of the disputes, but the agency would not accept what its Africa field officers and their Cuban exile operators were saying—that Che fought against them. There were other “Che sightings” too, resulting in Langley’s determination to get him at all costs. But not everyone believed—as late as May 1967 Des FitzGerald told the visiting U.S. ambassador to Bolivia that Guevara was dead and buried in an unmarked grave in the Dominican Republic.

  Despite FitzGerald’s observation to Ambassador Douglas Henderson, the CIA’s secret war against Guevara came to a head in Bolivia, and in 1967. Che had arrived in the country late the preceding year, heavily disguised and using an Uruguayan passport. For all his theorizing on revolution, Guevara chose badly in establishing this foco. Yes, Bolivia featured great poverty; yes, the country suffered from adverse economic conditions—its tin exports, the main cash source, were greatly affected by falling global prices; yes, the high Andes seemed a secondary issue to Washington. But all that failed to translate into readiness for revolution. Three major weaknesses crippled Guevara’s effort. First, in planting his guerrilla band in the countryside, Che never forged links with dissidents in La Paz and other cities. Second, in the jungle Che cut himself off from the restive tin miners. Finally, in Che’s countryside the peasantry proved sparse and, worse, afraid to commit to revolutionary activity. Che’s Bolivian diaries repeatedly note peasants as terrified or terrorized; few of them joined. Tactical errors abounded too—Che knew much less about the wilderness where he operated than demanded in his own theories for revolution. He remained far too optimistic, and when compañeros made these points or wished to leave, Che would not have it.

  The latent weaknesses did not prevent Che Guevara from enjoying a period of success. General Barrientos remained ignorant of the threat. Vague rumors floated into La Paz of partisans in the jungle. The CIA station under John Tilton perked up, among the first to believe the tales of Cubans, and then of Che, but beyond Broe at WH Division it seemed hard to convince anyone at Langley.

  Through the first half of 1967 Guevara’s small band (only about sixty men) feared hunger more than Bolivian troops, and their attacks succeeded. Toward the end of March they ambushed a Bolivian patrol and inflicted severe casualties. Then La Paz began to pay attention. Barrientos called in Ambassador Henderson and handed him a request for U.S. supplies. On April 28 the Bolivian military signed an agreement with the U.S. mission in La Paz to permit a Special Forces mobile training team to instruct the Bolivian Second Ranger Battalion. In early July Che captured a village and its army garrison, a high point in his campaign.

  The key intelligence breakthroughs came in mid-March when two Bolivians deserted Che’s band, giving the army details on the Guevara unit, and on April 20 when security services picked up French journalist Regis Debray and an American photographer named George Roth. This incident rose to the level of a Bolivian military triumph when reported to LBJ in his President’s Daily Brief: “Troops have scored their first victories against the guerrillas. Twice last week army patrols hit guerrilla bands, inflicting casualties and taking prisoners.” The prisoners were Debray and Roth. In a way the reported success was real, for under hostile interrogation both men gave up more data. CIA officers intervened with the Bolivians to moderate the treatment of Debray. A mysterious woman, Tania, variously reported as an East German, Russian, or Cuban agent, or a revolutionary groupie, had originally conveyed Debray to Che and stayed on with Guevara’s band. Debray, a French Communist and revolutionary theoretician in his own right, later wrote at length about Che in Bolivia, and something of a cottage industry has developed around the question of who betrayed Guevara. In the mythologies that surround these events, Debray, Debray’s Bolivian lawyer, Tania, La Paz Communist cells, Castro, Cuban agents, and Bolivian deserters have all been charged with the crucial betrayal, similar to theories of the Kennedy assassination.

  Meanwhile the Washington merry-go-round continued. On May 11 Walt Rostow told LBJ—likely based on Debray’s interrogations—that Che could really be in Bolivia and not dead, “as the intelligence community, with the passage of time, has been more and more inclined to believe.” On May 25 CIA cables added that Castro could open a new front where the borders of Bolivia, Peru, and Brazil met. Days later Rostow pitched his note to Johnson as if Che had been in Bolivia but had left. The CIA report on June 14 stated, “Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara [deleted] is personally directing Bolivian guerrilla activities and has been physically present with the guerrillas.” But a DIA report stated that Guevara had recently been executed in Cuba. As of mid-July the La Paz embassy itself remained uncertain, making the reluctance at senior levels of the Central Intelligence Agency more understandable.