The hostage rescue had failed.

  Iranian authorities quickly dispersed the American hostages, who would not again be together. Although Washington prepared plans for Operation Honey Bear, an expanded rescue mission, the Carter administration never again thought the intelligence good enough and did not overcome its uncertainties regarding a military special operation carried out at such long range. Meanwhile quiet negotiations with the Iranian government led to the release of the hostages on January 20, 1981, the day of Ronald Reagan’s inauguration as President of the United States.

  * Created in 1951, this part of the CIA was known until 1973 as the Directorate for Plans in order to disguise its true function. Further, the unit’s abbreviation followed the job title of its chief, the deputy director for plans (DDP). In 1973 this unit was retitled the Directorate for Operations (DO), the identity it retains today, and is headed by the CIA’s deputy director for operations. To avoid confusion in this book, this element of the CIA will be called the Directorate for Operations throughout.

  2

  The Cold War Crucible

  THE MEN IN THE YARD carried submachine guns. But they didn’t threaten, just asked for food. The German farmer gave them some, and they left. No sooner were they gone than the farmer reported the incident to local authorities. The police at Wildenranna also received other reports of armed men in the woods along the Austrian border. Investigation quickly confirmed a band of some sort roaming the hills. Authorities at Wildenranna quickly asked central police headquarters at Passau to send reinforcements to help apprehend the intruders.

  Thus began a dilemma for the Passau police command. The time was September 1947 in a Germany under occupation by the victorious Allied Powers. Passau lay in the American sector; police there reported to U.S. military officers. The news of an armed band north of the Inn River might signal some sort of aggressive move by the Russians. In any case German police were under standing orders: anything to do with foreign nationals belonged in the province of the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) of the U.S. Army. After a Passau police official telephoned American regional headquarters at Munich, the CIC decided to organize a man-hunt in the hills. Agents drove to Waldkirchen and then fanned out toward the border, joining with German police who had, by now, also equipped themselves with submachine guns.

  At three o’clock in the morning on September 10, one of the CIC search parties heard the voices of men in the forest. Soon they found the band, indeed a large group—almost forty men, sitting around a campfire, most of them singing. They wore Russian uniforms. American security officers carefully surrounded their camp and moved in.

  The intruders put up no resistance. In fact they relaxed considerably when they learned the men apprehending them were Americans. Investigators discovered the band to be organized in military fashion. In addition to submachine guns the intruders had light machine guns and hand grenades. Like their uniforms, the equipment had been manufactured in the Soviet Union, and the men spoke what sounded like Russian. The strangers were disarmed and taken to Passau, then to a CIC base at Oberursel, outside Frankfurt. There the CIC brought in Russian intelligence specialists to work with the men. Thirty-five soldiers had been captured at the campsite. Four others, picked up in different places over the next few days, turned out to be from the same band. The U.S. Army put the affair under tight security.

  The press reported some facts and more rumors. Even at this time, with Europe inured to displaced persons and prisoner exchanges between East and West, armed bands in Bavaria were uncommon enough to merit notice. A United Press reporter went to Passau a few days after and got a garbled version of the truth: the prisoners had told the CIC they were anti-Soviet partisans from the Ukraine. But speculation abounded: the captured men were Russian deserters; Polish guerrillas; or simply well-armed bandits. Ukrainian activists in the West, such as the pseudonymous Roman Rakhmanny in Canada, also sought access and got somewhat better information as, for that matter, did the Counter Intelligence Corps.

  The CIC debriefed the men for more than three weeks. Interrogators satisfied themselves that the new arrivals were in fact Ukrainian partisans, their war against Russian forces still in progress in the Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, and southern Poland. The rebels provided considerable information about their movement, not to mention conditions in Eastern Europe. This intelligence CIC officers in Frankfurt worked into a report they circulated on October 5, 1947.

  Under a leader named Khrin, reputedly one of the finest Ukrainian commanders, that spring the band had ambushed an armed convoy of Polish troops fighting alongside the Russians, killing the Polish vice minister of defense, General Karol Swierczewski. Later the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council had ordered Khrin’s unit to make its way to the West in order to get the attention of the Allied intelligence services. Commander Khrin, wounded in both arms, did not make the long exodus, but his band succeeded in its mission.

  Detailed information on anti-Soviet partisan activities in Eastern Europe struck the Americans as an intelligence windfall. Washington, however, saw the data as more than merely an opportunity to update its political perceptions of the Soviet Union. Instead, to some U.S. officials, the advent of the Ukrainian partisans signaled a chance for secret military action against Russia. The Ukrainian movement offered the opening for an offensive move in the Cold War, a classic covert operation along lines made familiar during World War II. The United States was just then creating a capability to engage in secret missions of all kinds, including covert operations.

  Since that day in 1947, American secret wars have been carried out on almost every continent. These covert operations have involved tens of thousands of dead and wounded, thousands of native fighters, significant numbers of American clandestine agents, and even regular U.S. military forces. U.S. involvement has run the gamut from advice to arms, from support for invasions of independent nations to secret bombing in clandestine military operations; to the subsidizing of political parties, associations, or individuals; to the planting of misinformation by clandestine means. The techniques for international coercion are not new, nor were they first developed by the United States. But American participation in World War II opened many eyes in Washington to the potential of special operations and provided a nucleus of personnel well versed in clandestine methods. The Cold War became the catalyst that brought methods and men together on missions that have been sometimes spectacular, often unfortunate, and occasionally surprising.

  Early American intelligence officers benefited from the British example. During World War II the United States created an Office of Strategic Services (OSS) to perform all kinds of tasks. Under the irrepressible William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan, OSS functioned globally, with major commands in the Mediterranean, northern Europe, Burma, and China. OSS teams parachuted into France, Norway, the former Yugoslavia, and elsewhere; blew up bridges in the Balkans; worked with partisans in Italy; and led bands of tribesmen against the Japanese in Burma. The agency’s psychological warfare experts crafted messages for enemy populations. OSS officers spied out the land and supplied incisive intelligence analyses to American commanders.

  The U.S. military also acquired experience with secret operations during the war. Most often the military assisted operations, for example by covertly landing additional agents or supplies. The navy did this using submarines and PT boats, the air force with planes. The army actually ran guerrilla forces fighting the Japanese in the Philippines. The army and the Marine Corps established elite units for commando missions. The army’s 5,307th Composite Unit, better known as Merrill’s Marauders, played an important part in the Burma campaign, working closely with the OSS there. American psychological warfare units aimed to erode the morale of the enemy military.

  The Burma campaign illustrates standard procedures for later secret wars in embryonic form. An OSS formation called Service Unit Detachment 101, sent to establish a base in India, began burrowing into areas occupied by the Japanese Empire. Agents from Detachment 101 infiltrated the Burmese hill country beginning in 1944, forged links with local Kachin tribesmen, and created a guerrilla movement against the Japanese. Weapons, supplies, and OSS officers parachuted into the jungle or were flown in by the planes of the “air commando groups” formed by the army air force. Radio broadcasts by Allied propaganda experts tried to spark hatred for Japan and hope for liberation by Allied forces working in tandem with the OSS and its brethren Allied agencies.

  The OSS slowly built up the Kachin from local spy networks to roving patrols of fighters to organized guerrilla units. By 1944 the Kachin were fighting in conjunction with Merrill’s Marauders and British Chindit brigades. More than ten thousand Kachin were fighting a year later, including a field force of seven battalions, each of almost five hundred fighters, led by the OSS. Legendary U.S. intelligence officers like Carl Eiffler and Joe Lazarsky got their starts in this very effort. Dozens of spies deep in the Japanese rear, plus about four hundred agents surveying nearby enemy positions, helped the Kachin units plan their missions. The Kachin in turn helped trap two powerful Japanese divisions during the final Allied offensives in Burma, a brilliant climax to a very energetic campaign, the product of the efforts of just a few hundred Americans.

  This became a remarkable achievement. Detachment 101 mobilized a military force more than thirty times its size, and used that capability to execute highly successful operations. Awarded a Presidential Unit Citation by the United States, the only OSS element so honored, Detachment 101 entered the lists of wartime legends.

  Several features of the OSS tribal program are worth noting. Among them are the creation of formal units within the overall guerrilla force; the clearing of zones within the operating area to serve as local bases; the use of espionage nets to shield guerrillas and to find targets for them later; the use of outside bases for specialized training and major support; and the use of clandestine air supply and communication between local and outside bases. These techniques became essential features of secret warfare tactics. This type of clandestine operation came to be called paramilitary.

  OSS also participated in the European theater under the patrician David K. E. Bruce. Teams assisted the escape of Allied airmen downed over the Continent, carried out commando raids, and cooperated with resistance fighters. One of the biggest OSS operations of the war came with the Normandy invasion of 1944. There the intelligence portion of the invasion plan, under the code name Sussex, called for special teams to be parachuted into France to supplement the resistance. The OSS, British Special Operations Executive (SOE), and French intelligence each contributed agents to form three-man “Jedburgh” teams sent to specific resistance networks. The Jedburghs parachuted in uniform but carried civilian clothes. They were backed up by Operational Groups, thirty-two-man strike teams for commando missions. More than five hundred OSS people went to the Continent in this campaign, including two future directors of the Central Intelligence Agency. Bill Colby led one of the ninety Jedburgh teams in France and later an Operational Group in Norway. William J. Casey masterminded the overall OSS effort to infiltrate Germany. There were also spy networks that produced other future CIA chieftains. In Switzerland the OSS nets were under Allen W. Dulles. Richard M. Helms spearheaded work in the Balkans. In later years Dulles and Helms also led the Central Intelligence Agency.

  The European operations proved highly successful. The OSS alone had five hundred French and almost four hundred American agents in France by the time of the invasion. More than half the Americans with Jedburgh teams received decorations. Resistance operations are credited with slowing the German response to the Normandy landings and furnishing the Allies with vital intelligence. Casey’s campaign got as many as two hundred agents directly into Germany, where they engaged almost entirely in espionage.

  In addition to the OSS, the army’s CIC had a parallel program on enemy territory through a much smaller network. This CIC activity had been under way since 1942. These army agents proved especially useful in Italy, where they helped identify Nazi efforts to penetrate pro-Allied Italian partisan groups.

  World War II not only provided experience for the Americans, it formed and reinforced a certain way of thinking. The issues were black and white—to fight Hitler and Tojo, or not. Not to fight would have been an abdication of responsibility in the face of foreign aggression. Democracy hung in the balance against totalitarian dictatorship; President Franklin Delano Roosevelt made America the Arsenal of Democracy. After the war it became easy to transfer that Manichean hostility—and, for the intelligence types, their clandestine methods—to a newly perceived adversary. The target became the Soviet Union, or more formally, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—erstwhile ally recast as enemy due to ideological differences that had existed since the origins of that state in 1917.

  This evolving hostility between the United States and the USSR did not matter at first. The surrender of Japan in August 1945 brought a scramble to demobilize the armies, one that extended to the intelligence service. The OSS had built up a strength of about thirteen thousand when President Harry Truman ordered its dissolution on September 20, 1945. Under the new arrangement, the parts of OSS that had dealt with analytical intelligence moved to the State Department. The detachments of clandestine officers went to the War Department as a new Strategic Services Unit (SSU) under Brig. Gen. John Magruder, the former OSS special warfare chief.

  By early 1946 General Magruder’s mandate—not so much to preserve or enlarge the SSU but mainly to liquidate it—had largely been accomplished. Former OSS officers who had served with the Jedburghs, the Kachin, and elsewhere went back to their homes, to law practices, to school, to the army. But Magruder also was responsible for producing fresh intelligence data. He and his deputies virtually begged army senior commanders to make use of their capabilities but were largely ignored. When Col. William W. Quinn took over the SSU in 1946, it had been reduced to fewer than two hundred persons working out of seven field stations in foreign countries.

  In addition to the SSU, the army’s Counter Intelligence Corps remained as a clandestine operations entity. Military Intelligence, or G-2, controlled the CIC. Given its role as the official intelligence branch of the army, G-2 was well situated to act in Eastern Europe and against the Soviet Union because of the army’s presence in Germany, Austria, and Japan as part of the military occupation of those countries. The first American links with anti-Soviet Russian emigrés were forged by G-2. In a climate in which OSS verged on being dismantled, G-2 substituted for it and the CIC assumed a steadily more active role in what it called “positive intelligence” operations.

  The 430th CIC Detachment, stationed in Austria, noted the shift in early 1947 when it recorded a change in emphasis from “denazification” to positive intelligence. In Austria the CIC operated “rat lines,” clandestine transportation systems to spirit out of the country individuals of interest to U.S. intelligence. The CIC also had its own spy networks in Russian-occupied areas, including Austria, Czechoslovakia, and eastern Germany. It screened refugees, prepared cover stories to support its agents, and maintained relationships with other services. Al Ulmer, the SSU station chief for Vienna, had been with OSS. Once a new U.S. intelligence service emerged, the Central Intelligence Group, its first Vienna station chief, John H. Richardson, would be a former CIC man. Both were avid recruits for the Cold War crusade.

  The same functions were carried out by the 970th (later the Sixty-sixth) CIC Detachment, with headquarters at Frankfurt in the American Occupation Zone of Germany. As agents this unit used certain notorious former Nazis in Germany such as Klaus Barbie. The shift in American priorities could be encapsulated in the life of netmaster Gordon Stewart, who headed the CIA station in 1948. A former OSS man, Stewart had come to Heidelberg to help in denazification but quickly began trolling Displaced Persons camps for sources to use against the Russians. He rode the rising wave of hostility to high office. A “Department of the Army Detachment,” formed to handle interagency activities, eventually furnished cover for Stewart and his officers, who took over Barbie. It was the 970th CIC that handled the band of Ukrainian partisans.

  On one level the partisans were identical to the masses of refugees, Displaced Persons (DPs), throughout Europe. By the fall of 1945 as many as seven million people were on the move, fleeing Soviet domination or driven from their homes by war damage. An equal number could be found in the Soviet Union or Russian-occupied Eastern Europe, and smaller numbers in the Mediterranean countries. Millions of former German soldiers joined the flow as they emerged from prisoner-of-war camps. Most were simply looking to settle somewhere safe, but many had nowhere to go and a major task for the United Nations during its early years was to house these DPs. Like the Ukrainian partisans, significant numbers of them came from lands swept by war and occupation and had information important to intelligence services, not least those of the United States. Screening DPs really meant identifying who was worth debriefing and, equally important, finding angry men and women who could be harnessed for clandestine missions. The Ukrainian partisans were prime candidates.