12.
Spooks – U.S.
After the disastrous Iranian hostage operations, the Pentagon created a new intelligence/covert ops unit called Army Intelligence Support Activity (ISA), also known, apparently, as “the activity”. Augmenting both the CIA and the Pentagon’s own DIA, ISA existed for at least a year without Presidential/Congressional knowledge or approval. The unit is said to have operated in Central America, Italy (in the rescue of James Dozier) and in Africa, with a country “which doesn’t have diplomatic relations with the US”. (Libya?) IHT (12th May) report that some of its operations were run out of Fort Bragg, as an extension of the Army’s Special Forces; that the unit “has provided military equipment to foreign forces and deployed servicemen using false identities to collect intelligence”; that one member of the House of Representatives “on a trip to Central America . . . had asked the CIA operations chiefs in Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua (!?) whether or not they were aware of the special Pentagon operation, and that each said no.”
Robert Toth (Los Angeles Times Press Service, 15th May) reported a “former intelligence official from the Carter administration” as saying that “this kind of unit had been discussed at the Pentagon for a long time, but no decision was made on it until the Reagan administration took over.” The same article suggests that the impetus for ISA’s formation came from Robert Stilwell, Dep.Under Secretary of Defence, in 1981. Same report states that DCIA Casey has already given ISA two jobs to do, despite his denials of knowledge of ISA’s existence.
See also basic reports in: G. 12th and 16th May 1983 and IHT 21st May.
ISA first came to public attention after James Gritz, looking for POW’s in SE Asia, had referred to “parallel work by ‘the activity’.” (G. 16th May 1983) Gritz was sponsored by Soldier of Fortune mag and may also have been backed by ISA without government approval. (T. 1st June 1983)
13.
The report from Robert Toth (see 12 above) also mentions something called the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is responsible for conducting the govt.’s civil-security program against terrorism, sabotage and other civil disorders. FEMA is not officially part of the US intelligence “community” and thus not under the jurisdiction of DCIA Casey.
14.
Maj. Gen. Richard B. Collins, charged
IHT report (19th July 1983) on forthcoming trial of Maj. Gen. Richard B. Collins, charged with ripping-off a secret Air Force fund kept in Swiss banks to finance covert ops. Collins’ lawyer says Collins will detail the way the fund was used for military and CIA ops in SE Asia. (hoho) The story has since vanished. Presumably Collins’ offer was one the government discovered it couldn’t bring itself to refuse.
15.
U.S. Foreign Policy Towards Radical Change: Covert Operations in Guatemala 1950-54
Gordon Bowen (Latin American Perspectives, Winter 1983)
Survey of the literature with the assistance of recently declassified CIA, NSC and State Dept. documents from the time. Nothing startling: his new analysis merely confirms that previous, less well documented studies had got it right. His conclusions, for what they’re worth:
- “Guatemalan actions appear to have provided a model for later American covert action”. (no shit)
- “US policy supervised at the highest levels of the Eisenhower administration . . . . clandestine and diplomatic actors operated together.”
- “Geopolitical, rather than economic considerations appear to have been the foremost matters of concern to policy makers . . . efforts by the United Fruit Co. should be seen as complimentary.” This is dubious (and grossly naive) in my view. Ch.6 of the recent Bitter Fruit (Schlesinger and Kinzer, London 1982) makes it very clear that U.F.Co. launched a massive PR campaign in the US to persuade so-called “policy makers” of the “communist threat” to Guatemala. Without that campaign those “geopolitical considerations” would never have been perceived. And then as now, “geopolitical considerations” is merely a euphemism for “communist threat”, which, in turn is a euphemism for “threat to US investments”.
- “The permanent political lesson of the ‘Guatemala affair’ was that the US learned to rely on local militants to serve as the junior partners with US covert operations in the protection of US interests.”
(RR)
16.
The bodies continue to pile up around Edwin Wilson and Frank Terpil. IHT (30th April 1983) reports death “by apparent suicide” of Waldo Duberstein, senior DIA analyst, who had been indicted on charges of selling secret data to Wilson and Libyan intelligence.