The Colonel’s Corner Safe For Democracy Part 15 (16)

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0:00 All right. I see SR. Hopefully, Bridget will be along shortly. Thursday. Crazy day. Let me make sure SR gets up here as co-host. And there's Miss Bridget. Okay. All right. We're ready to rock. All right. We're picking up on page 180 in Safe for Democracy. All right.

0:41 The advent of Richard Bissell's changed many things for the Directorate of Operations, but one stayed the same. The worries of the president's watchdogs again expressed within a few short months. Reporting at the end of October, they made veiled references to Frank Wisner's departure.

1:05 This unfortunate situation highlights the necessity for reviewing and perhaps recasting some of the virtually autonomous functions presently assigned. Virtually autonomous. They're beckoning back to the Hall board, which we already talked about. Jim Killian's place as chairman, now taken by retired General John Hall.

1:37 especially objected to the director of operations, which is covert operations, being solely responsible for the review of their own activity. Imagine that. This evaluation function, which also applied to the review of covert action proposals before they went to the 5412 group, made the CIA the arbiter of what covert operations were suitable and how to carry them out. Thus, effectively,

2:08 judging how well they do their job. General Hall and others made these points to President Eisenhower when the Presidential Intelligence Board met with him on December 16, 1958. They urged Ike to take the function away from the CIA, especially for political, psychological, and paramilitary operations.

2:39 Project Hake served as an example of how things could go wrong. Robert Lovett, co-author of the board's previous covert study, pressed Eisenhower to transfer review authority to the 5412 group. Gordon Gray, the guy that we talked about earlier, which is suspect in and of himself, recently named the National Security Advisor.

3:09 Noted that the group had not been very active in accommodating the reviewers' critiques. Eisenhower insisted that the 5412 group should meet as a court, implying a capacity that they could review and potentially veto operations.

3:39 He then told Gray to study the entire relationship between the CIA and the 5412 group. What happened next had less to do with Indonesia than with the president's desire to fine-tune his own staff. Although angry about the Haig fiasco, Eisenhower had changes in the works. Lyman Kirkpatrick and the new director of operations, Bissell,

4:09 instituted a broad re-examination of their mission. They abolished its internal inspection and review staff. In February of 1959, a memo Director Dulles maintained in a memo, he maintained that his people took into account all available intelligence before starting a project, including the intelligence that they made up.

4:36 thus guarding against self-serving data. Right. Dulles argued that the hall board had an exaggerated notion of what the DO was doing and their perceived autonomy. The last point is interesting in that one of its members, Jimmy Doolittle, had expressly advocated expanded operations for a few years. Dulles held out Bissell's survey.

5:07 as a response to the hall board, asking the president to wait and see what became of their effort. By July, Bissell had finished his inquiry, and in response, Dulles made a few changes. Based on the survey's observation that actions to overthrow governments required constant liaison with the White House and State Department, Dulles relocated approval authority at a higher level in the DO. What?

5:39 Why would the DO have approval? That's the director of operations of the CIA, not the director. Actions might also necessitate clandestine logistics, air support, and paramilitary effort beyond what was capable internally. So the survey advocated the use of a task force for such activities. A task force already existing within the Western Hemisphere Division.

6:09 for the Caribbean, but this arrangement the survey viewed as inadequate. Bissell appointed as assistant DO just for psychological operations in paramilitary areas. The staff for these activities were regrouped into an operational services unit. The work of the DO inspection staff, he transferred to the CIA inspector general. Tracy Barnes returned from Germany to be the assistant

6:40 director of operations. John Brose, a friend of Bissell's since their prep school days, became special assistant in the reorganization. Bissell also inaugurated a formal planning staff. The hall board withheld judgment. Later, the CIA split up its old Near East and African division, making African one of their own divisions.

7:12 They reformed the Near East and the South Asia Division. By May of 1960, the board nonetheless told Eisenhower that they could be found to organize the DO in a much more efficient way. So they weren't impressed. They're basically realigning the deck chairs on the Titanic. Eisenhower's watchdogs were dissatisfied with arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

7:44 White House National Security Official Carl Harr, H-A-R-R, later said, we used to say, well, Alan Dulles, he's not a good administrator or a bad administrator. He's an innocent administrator. He's innocent of administration, meaning he doesn't do any at all. Executive control had become even more important rather than shrinking after the

8:11 Korean War, the directorate operations grew, actually exponentially. On Dulles' watch, the DO added 1,000 people plus an equal number of support staff. Other operations in the CIA grew too. The Cold War unit spent 54% of the CIA's money.

8:37 So more than half of the money in the CIA doesn't go to collect intelligence, which is what the real mission is. It goes to conduct covert operations. By 1958, there were also 7,000 military personnel outside the CIA's whose job was to assist in CIA activities. 7,000.

9:10 military people involved in CIA operations. Such operations as Project Hague required close coordination with the military. The Pentagon CIA link ran through the 5412 group, whose staff the CIA provided. So just so you guys know, just imagine in

9:38 a conference room, there's a table, and all of the heads of the State Department, the CIA, the Pentagon, they sit at the table. There's an entire staff that line the walls of the conference room. And there's a back shop staff that prepares for each meeting. That's the combination of that entire group. It isn't just the people that sit at the table. There's an entire

10:09 back shop, and people that line the room. Everything was centered around the 5412 group. Gordon Gray made the 541 group his special concern. Having once hoped to become the CIA director, Gray had seen his chances expire at the end of Truman's administration. But he came back. He made himself indispensable to Eisenhower and impressed Eisenhower tremendously with his calm,

10:44 demeanor, efficiency, and discretion. In 1953, he took the political heat for the Oppenheimer security clearance cancellation. At the Office of Defense Mobilization, Gray had supervised the Gaither Report in 1957, when Robert Cutler, Eisenhower's Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, which is the guy that liaisons for plausible deniability with the group.

11:14 left the White House to return to his Boston bank, the president turned to Gray, a Democrat, to fill this important post. Thus, Gordon Gray had suddenly catapulted over the CIA director's job, and now he was basically acting as Eisenhower's arm in charge of the CIA, or at least he thought he was.

11:44 As the president's special assistant, which now is a designated national security advisor, Gordon Gray is functioning as that before it was created. He became Eisenhower's voice in the 5412 group. Although Allen Dulles officially functioned only as advisor, Gray found that the special group exercised virtually no authority over him.

12:14 The special assistant openly raised his doubts in December 1958 in a meeting. After Christmas, Eisenhower met privately with both Gray and Dulles. They were now studying the CIA 5-4-1-2 group relationship. Eisenhower laid great stress on managing intelligence and clandestine operations with the Hall board and the 5-4-1-2 group reporting directly to him. The system had to work.

12:44 Because its purpose was to ensure there was no tendency for Congress to get involved. Alan Dulles made appropriate conciliatory comments, which he always does. We learned that in The Devil's Chessboard. He says whatever is necessary in meetings and in public. But Gordon Gray was not convinced.

13:13 The semi-annual covert operation review took place on 15 January 1959. Four days later, Gray sent a memo of random thoughts to Allen Dulles, the Secretary of State and the Pentagon representative on the 5412 group. Gray's criticisms were not random at all. They included the following issues. Only four or five of the projects mentioned had in the 5412 group.

13:44 had ever been discussed there within the preceding six months, there needed to be a better sense of mission. The criteria with which what matters were brought to the 5-4-1-2 group were ill-defined and they needed to be better defined. In other words, Alan Dulles didn't bring anything to the group that he thought they may say no to. He just did them anyway.

14:12 And there was no written criteria of what needed to be reviewed there and what didn't. The 5412 needed procedures to evaluate operations in addition to approving them. He went on to say, quote, I strongly believe that the president would expect some initiative, unquote, from the group. Eisenhower agreed. In an effort to deal with these problems.

14:38 On December 26, 1958, the president had asked the group to have regular weekly meetings in place of the twice-a-year meetings. At one of Gray's regular briefings to Eisenhower on June 22, 1959, quote, the president referred to one particular activity which he was disturbed about, but said that he assumed it had been approved by the 5412 group.

15:06 Gray reported that it had not been approved by the group. Within the last 11 months, it had never even been discussed. Finally, relations between the Pentagon and CIA remained a point of controversy. The CIA actually dealt with three different parts of the Pentagon. International Security Affairs Office represented the SECDEF. The Joint Chiefs of Staff provided military input.

15:35 and Eisenhower had made the chairman a 5-4-1-2 group member. Direct coordination and execution of military cover support, like when the CIA's pretending to be military, continued in the hands of the assistant to the SecDef for special operations. So there's three different bodies, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the special operations part of the SecDef staff.

16:06 and the International Security Affairs, which is another part of the SecDef staff. Not one person from the secretary, like the deputy that represented them all. Three different avenues that the CIA had to work with. Since the Truman period, the officer that handled the special operations part had been Lieutenant General Graves Erskine.

16:45 to whom the SecDep, Neil McElroy, had complete confidence. McElroy's successor, Thomas Gates Jr., in office in December 1959 and through the remainder of Ike's presidency, had been a Navy Reserve officer in Irojima in 1945. Graves Erskine had commanded the 3rd Marine Division there. Erskine had direct access to Eisenhower when necessary.

17:15 An officer on his staff, Air Force Colonel Fletcher Prouty, who we all know, recounts that a copy of the 541-2-2 memo filled with them contained the president's handwritten notation that equipment delivered to the CIA be limited to that which was absolutely necessary for a specific covert operation.

17:45 That had been approved. The Hall Board criticized many facets of the Pentagon's involvement and raised the possibility of a single focal point, preferably under the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Eisenhower said that this got the military into political matters. He resisted letting the 5412 group do anything as far as actual implementation.

18:17 So in effect, Eisenhower ended by defending the existing arrangements and not making any changes despite all of the mechanisms that were put in place and all the time wasted looking at them. Eisenhower continued with this dilemma of control versus security and plausible deniability. Ultimately, he solved none of it. But the 5412 group was definitely...

18:47 not the answer to any of it. Because again, the CIA did whatever they wanted to. Chapter 10, Desmond Fitzgerald. Enthusiasm became vital to the next big campaign. Not only did this one involve many of the same secret warriors again and again, as the failed adventure in Indonesia, the project cut across the boundaries of the CIA's own feudal.

19:18 setup. The locale this time was going to be Tibet. It was technically part of China. In the Director of Operations area, China belonged to Fitzgerald's barony, meaning he was all things China. It fell in the Far East Division. Technically, there was another guy that was assigned to that area by the name of Jim Critchfield, who we've also run across several times.

19:58 A project in Tibet depended on logistics and training bases that Fitzgerald ran, but the theater of activity could be reached over land, at least by the CIA, only from places where Critchfeld was in charge. This is a turf war. This could have triggered a tremendous infighting among the secret warriors, that it did not result partly from the affinity CIA

20:31 players had developed from the Tibetans, partly from operational necessity and also from new methods the CIA had put in place a couple of years earlier. In his efforts to cope with the global presence of Soviet spies and diplomat, Allen Dulles had earlier begun superimposing missions to counter the Russians on local CIA stations all over the world. They were looking for communists everywhere.

20:59 Soon, he had added people to cover the workload. Thus, a station working in the Far East Division, or for that matter, the Near East, would also be responding to things about the Soviet Union. In 1956, the CIA initiated a similar program to counter China, where there were populations of overseas Chinese residents, and that included India.

21:27 This routinized the special arrangements previously required for the Far East to carry out activities in the Near East. Jim Critchfield did not mind having some of the people act primarily in support of the Far East, and Desmond Fitzgerald took full advantage of it, especially in the areas of the Himalaya Mountains. Tibet had been a theocracy.

21:59 or basically a Chinese vassal state. Through the first half of the 20th century, Tibet preserved its status as quasi-independent, largely due to the inaccessibility. The communist takeover in China included new efforts to be in charge. In the early period, the CIA connections had already begun to figure.

22:28 In fact, the agency's first death in the line of duty, a combat death, if you will, was of Douglas MacIernan, M-A-C-K-I-E-R-N-A-N, Jr., an officer under State Department cover who had operated equipment to detect Soviet atomic tests in the Jiang province.

22:59 Late in 1948, McInernan began a journey into Tibet, but perished at its border in April of 1950. Given the fall of the Nationalists, U.S. desire to resist the Communists, and Tibetan appeals for aid, there is some question whether the trek originated as sort of a survey of military aid requirements.

23:28 He never reached the capital. The companion who survived, Frank Bezak, B-E-S-S-A-K, though apparently an agent contract officer, had no knowledge of their actual mission. Bezak eventually reached Calcutta, where the CIA base chief, Frederick Latrache, debriefed him on meetings that

23:59 they had with the Dalai Lama. Signs in the capital were ominous. A sacred object, a gilded wooden dragon, began to drip water from its mouth. The People's Liberation Army approached the area in the summer of 1950 and then eventually to Tibet. A belated effort to create an effective army with military aid from India

24:31 never had time to succeed. In August, the PLA 18th Army defeated a tiny Tibetan force that was futile in nature. A handful of ancient guns, the Dalai Lama's personal guard, and armed monks and farmers fled. Dalai Lama then agreed to Chinese administration. After Tibet's occupation by the lowland or Han Chinese,

25:02 The first question for the Americans was how to learn anything at all about that mountain land. India provided some information at first, but the advent of John Foster Dulles, the Indians became less and less cooperative. They didn't like him. Nestled in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas lays a village of Kalampung.

25:28 It's a dot on a map within a triangle formed by the junction of the borders of Nepal, Shishkim, and Bhutan. It's basically unknown to outsiders. Tourists coming to see the mountains visit the Nepal capital. If they venture anywhere near that area, it's usually to see another Indian town.

26:04 Darlene Jing, typically those who do reach the area are more interested in Tibet, for the village is a main point on the trail to the capital. After the Chinese takeover of Tibet, the CIA's interest was rather more direct. As early as 1951, the successor in Calcutta, Robert Lin, appeared seeking to speak with the Tibetans.

26:36 In 1953, Chinese road surveyors in the province of Kam, K-H-A-M, on the eastern Tibetan plateau began talking of reform. The Tibetan governor, I'm not even going to try to say his name, could find no support in the capital of Tibet. The Dalai Lama wished to avoid any confrontation with China.

27:04 A year later, when the Chinese began establishing cooperative farms, fighting began in Quampa. Fierce and skillful horsemen who became very effective partisans. In the spring of 55, pretending to be a tourist, an American came into the area. Not what he seemed. He was not what he seemed.

27:35 U.S. agency, the village had become a focus of dispute between India and China. Beijing complained that the area served as a base for resistance to communist rule in Tibet. Indian Prime Minister Nehru told his parliament as early as September 1953 that a nest of spies had taken root there.

28:04 Agents came from every country, said the prime minister. Sometimes I begin to doubt whether the greater part of the population in that city are not all foreign spies. The American of 1955 could have been a diplomat or a spy. He was not further identified by the man who tells the story, George N. Patterson. He was a Scottish missionary who worked in eastern Tibet.

28:33 spoke the language, and wrote several books about the country. He resided in that area. One of the small groups of Westerners who knew anything about Tibet, Patterson was enchanted with the country and was well known in Tibetan political circles, including those of the Dalai Lama. As Patterson tells it, the American came to him, mostly probably a spy, he said.

29:04 John Turner, the CIA's latest man in Calcutta, would have been the likely candidate. Turner had actually grown up in Darlington. He was quite familiar with the setup in that area. Patterson acted as a translator in several meetings over four days. This was not the first spy to attempt to reach Tibet through Patterson.

29:29 The preceding year, an Indian intelligence officer had appeared asking for contacts and wanting a translator to talk about anti-Chinese resistance. One of the Tibetan moderate politicians had outlined his difficulties for Indian officials much as he had for the CIA. The American sympathetic

29:56 stressed problems of supplying equipment over the Himalayans and said Indian cooperation would be essential. According to Patterson, the American went on to draw up a 10-year assistance program designed to overthrow the Chinese in Tibet. The American said a special U.S. agent would be sent who had no contact with the agency but would be in charge of the Tibetan affair.

30:26 One more situation where the secret warriors used local resistant movements to American advantage. This time, there would be no question of the U.S. supporting democracy. Tibet had always been a feudal theocracy for centuries. Tibet was quite happy with the Dalai Lama. The most that could be claimed for the U.S. action would be that it supported self-determination for Tibet, not a democracy.

30:57 Traditionally conservative, the Tibetans were both politically and culturally distinct from the Han Chinese, of whom communists were merely the latest political shading. The tragedy for Tibetans' independence lay in the relative strength of the Chinese communists and nationalists, whereas Chiang Kai-shek lacked the strength to be more than a warlord. Mao Zedong's movement

31:26 unified and determined to control every corner of China triumphed. The new Mandarins had a program, they had tremendous energy, and they also had the PLA. There was ultimately no way to keep the lowlanders out of Tibet, and the Han had no use for a barter economy. Once the Hans arrived, moreover, primitive Tibetans faced an enemy,

31:58 that had modern weapons. Tibet was scarcely prepared for modernization. The roof of the world, as it was known, was a land of monasteries, more than 3,000 of them. They were nomads by nature, basically with just very small towns scattered around. They had been ruled by a hierarchy of monks, nothing less than the godhead, the incarnation of Buddha.

32:30 Chosen as a child by wise monks after tests and signs and mediation, the Dalai Lama sat at the top. In a land, the policy followed him. Communist rule proved retching to the Tibetans. Friction between the Chinese Communist Party and the Tibetan theocracy was constant. The Chinese soon alienated the Tibetans by establishing work norms.

33:00 By attempts to place portions of Tibet within the provinces and by their forcing the mastering of several thousand Tibetan children for education in the lowlands, Tibetans' resistance grew. The major Chinese difficulty in Tibet was basically a lack of infrastructure. They had none. There were no railroads, roads, or airfields.

33:31 a condition that precluded economic development. It also prohibited military operations using modern equipment. The Chinese set out to remedy this with massive construction efforts, roads to the capital across the ancient Tibetan provinces, everywhere. This represented tremendous engineering feats. One road, the Kam Road, crossed four mountain ranges.

34:03 14 mountain ranges, sorry, and seven rivers, including the headwater of the Mekong and Yancey River at an average altitude of 13,000 feet. That's crazy. When the road reached the Tibetan capital in 1954, the price of tea declined 30% while a box of matches previously

34:32 deer enough to command a whole sheep, fell to just two pounds of raw wool. Such effects were unwanted changes to the Tibetans. Early in 1955, the Chinese attested one of their leaders who spoke against these new inequities. When a unit of 200 PLO troops arrived to restore order,

35:02 In one of the mountainous regions, tribesmen disarmed them, cut off their noses, and then sent them back as a warning. These people joined forces with a neighboring chief of more than 100,000 families, already fighting for several years. The PLA sent large detachments to eastern Tibet. One force of several regiments met the rebels.

35:32 routed, the Chinese lost 7,000 to 8,000 troops. Even today, it is not yet possible to provide a detailed analysis of the Washington's decision-making on Tibet. The records remain classified. Tibet remains buried in the lore of CIA as one of those quote-unquote successes that are not talked about. That's according to Fletcher Prouty.

36:04 He had managed secret air missions for General Erston's Office of Special Operations. Evidence indicate a steady growth in CIA interest in the area of Tibet. There were meetings recounted by George Patterson, former CIA officer, recalled that Sam Halpern, the Far East Division officer and executive assistant to the division, believed the impetus for the operation.

36:33 quickly dubbed Project ST Circus, came all most strongly from John Foster Dulles. Again, it, of course, was seconded by his brother. Also involved was Herbert Hoover Jr., who was the undersecretary for Dulles at the State Department. Halbern cites the intent as,

37:04 harassment of the Chinese communists. They really weren't interested in Tibet independence. They were very interested in harassing the Chinese. Thomas Parrott, who worked directly for the 5412 group as its CIA provided staff officer, adds that the State Department merely recorded its non-opposition to the operation, whereas Alan Dulles assisted upon an affirmation.

37:37 affirmative endorsement. That then followed from his brother. In late 1956, the chief of the Far East, the China branch, designated a full-time director of operations desk officer specifically for Tibet for the first time. That man, John Reagan, had worked in Japan with Fitzgerald on China actions. And before that,

38:07 had been a paramilitary veteran of Korea. CIA officer in Korea moves to Japan, works with Fitzgerald, and becomes the ops officer for the Tibet campaign. Not long afterwards, the wealthy Tibetan trader and now resistance leader, Gampo Tashi,

38:36 Renewed contacts with the Americans and selected Tibetans for CIA training outside their country. The Tibetans joined up in February of 1957. Headquarters' emphasis on Tibet shifted slightly when John Hart took over the Far East Division. But it was Hart who planned the active operation. Project Circus Task Force formed in July under Frank Holaber.

39:05 a key operative in Taiwan during the projects of Shanghai Sheks against mainland China. So they have an entire force arrayed around China attacking them, harassing them, and they just move musical chairs around. The first cost estimate came in at half a million dollars to set up a Tibetan unit.

39:36 approval from the 5412 group still cannot be pinpointed. The outcome, however, can. Rebel leaders were told that the United States was considering a move in Tibet, but the decision depended upon what the CIA learned through their initial scouts. Frank Wisner insisted that the first agents confine themselves to gathering intelligence. On August 21st, a CIA U-2 aircraft

40:05 took photos of Tibet for the very first time. Continued reluctance to reveal CIA operations in Tibet undoubtedly relates to the later improvement of U.S. relationship with the area. Today, it is thought indelicate to draw attention to the effort to stir up trouble in China. Refusal to open the record on Tibet

40:31 is ironic given the many failures that peppered the CIA paramilitary record there. Despite their hesitancy, a fair description of the dimensions of the Tibet operation is possible. In 1956, the American Society for a Free Asia, the ostensibly private lobby group, but like its European counterpart, was funded by the CIA.

41:01 sponsored a U.S. lecture tour by a man, Thubten Norbu. He was an associate of the Dalai Lama's elder brother. Norbu made more visits over the next few years to speak about a rebellion. That February, simultaneous attacks occurred in several points in Tibet.

41:31 so widely separated that coordination was absolutely necessary. Chinese propaganda charges of American meddling in Tibet were immediate, and some observers put the initial U.S. air deliveries during that period at tremendous. They noted accounts of CIA veterans and the dates of the inception of the operation later.

42:01 Frank Holaber recalls the agency had already began annual subsidies of approximately 200,000 inside of Tibet, but the money went for political, not paramilitary action, according to him. At the time, the Dalai Lama remained in India, still being wooed by Chinese officials to induce him to return. That return marked the occasion for the kickoff of Project Circus.

42:33 That secret location, a number of young Tibetans were agitating for national resistance. Cultivated again by the CIA, John Hoskin came to the village and took the men Tashi had selected, eight, to be smuggled out through East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. John Reagan came to India to supervise it.

43:03 marked planes through Taiwan to Saipan. There they went full CIA training. Roger McCarthy, one of the Saipan inspectors, recalls that CIA teams had precise things that they wanted to train them in and very little time. Eli Popovich found the Tibetans a challenge.

43:35 Tough and strong, but an odd mixture of warrior and mystic. The Dalai Lama's brother, Norbus, attended part of the training and impressed the agencies. Harry Mustakuku and his concerns for the lives of... They were concerned about ants in the bathroom. They didn't want to kill them. So obviously there was a lot of ants in the bathroom.

44:07 and they were adamantly opposed to killing the ants, that that would be an ominous sign. That had to have been interesting. The same Tibetans who agonized over ants would be fierce fighters and kill people. They demanded sophisticated weapons from the CIA. They won the hearts of the agency people in their beguiling combination of simplistic determination and precision.

44:39 A succession of Tibetan trainees followed the first group. Recruits often took a month to negotiate the trails to that area to be whisked out of Tibet for training. These were the same trails they were going to use to smuggle the arms back in. They had a well-established network, including a warehouse, suddenly being used for these stay-behind units.

45:13 Recruits traveled to Calcutta by train, where the link was a contact address. Civil Air Transport planes flew to Taiwan for refueling. Sometimes they landed in Bangkok. Sometimes they landed in Hong Kong. They were all black CIA aircraft. In the camp, the recruits from Tibet.

45:46 We're shown a new world of weapons and devices unknown to the interior of Tibet. And because of that, you know, just from an OPSEC standpoint, Tibet gets flooded with these new weapons. And the CIA is not at all concerned up to this point that that's going to be a little odd because the Chinese is going to engage with these resistant units.

46:17 And they're going to be well-equipped. That's not going to be like an anonymous group of people. Crazy people. Most Tibetans did not even have a word for cavalry. It says skilled horsemen. The Tibetans had 30 different words for parts of the horse's harness, but none for the actual harness. The language had different words.

46:53 specific species, but none for the generic word tree. There were scores of terms for depth of trance and meditation, but they didn't have a single word for the word sleep. The new military objects Tibetans encountered led to words like skyboat for airplane and sky cloth for a parachute. Some recruits transcended their lack of experience of Western technology.

47:25 and became radio specialists. Men who hardly knew what electricity was, was learning how to broadcast. They were learning how to encrypt messages and send Morse code. I wouldn't even want to try to interpret that Morse code. Others became weapons experts or air-ground coordinators who could mark drop zones for supplies. Their recruits were eventually divided into three groups.

47:54 One to retrace its steps and become unit leaders with the partisans. One, they're actually guerrillas, but the CIA doesn't want to use that term. And one was given for special missions and another for trainers. From early 1959, the CIA moved its program to the United States and they stepped up.

48:21 They used an old World War II base. We've come across this a couple of different times at Camp Hell, where they flew into Colorado Springs and trucked them up to the mountains. So they were in accommodations that they're used to being in, which is high altitude. The Tibet operation occurred within the larger framework of a secret war against China. In this conflict, Taipei,

48:49 was an important CIA station with a broad range of activities. Its centrality re-emphasized after the Taiwan Strait crisis of 54 and 55. Chiang Kai-shek still dreamed of returning to China. The Nationalists infiltrated agents at a rate of one or two a month throughout this entire period. The CIA tried to keep Project Circus separate from

49:19 other China operations because Chiang Kai-shek also coveted Tibet. Thus, though the CIA had well-trained nationalist air crews, it could not touch them to use in Tibet because then Chiang Kai-shek would know what they were doing. When a fresh CIA project was proposed to initiate resistance in China's provinces,

49:47 That became coordinated with the Tibetans. The initiative had to be rejected due to the problems between the Tibetans and the use of Han Chinese as basically traitors because they hate each other. So any initiative from Tibet, the Han Chinese, and the nationalists all had to be compartmentalized because none of them liked each other.

50:18 During the 1958 crisis, Rear Admiral Roland Smoot, S-M-O-O-T, commander of the U.S. military mission in Taiwan, observed the Nationalist training of special forces, some 5,000 of them. Shanghai Ka, Shang-Shing-Ku, which is the sun, described an amphibious plan to land troops into the mainland coast.

50:47 While the Americans refused to help this effort, they did support boat and midget submarine landings of their commandos, anywhere from a dozen to 20 men at a time. Boat groups usually left from Kowloon. The submarines usually left from Taiwan. The CIA station chief in Taiwan from early 58 to 62 was Ray Klein. He became a close friend.

51:17 of both Chiang Kai-shek and his son. They talked dozens of times about nationalist units and agents in the mainland, about 200 in all during those years. But Ralph McGeehee, an officer in Klein Station, had no recollection of a single exchange regarding Tibet operations. The accomplishments of the agents, largely replaced in 1960,

51:47 with overhead reconnaissance paled next to the product of nationalist pilots trained to fly U-2s under the military aid program. The photographic evidence came back to the CIA for interpretation. The station's Tibetan involvement remained restricted to training, even though the state was considered part of China.

52:16 The Tibetan project went forward under the direct control of the CIA station in India. So they don't want to cross-pollinate this because they want containment of focused efforts into China. So that's crazy. We're going to stop there tonight. That's just crazy. Okay. And again, like I say, every program.

52:55 I'm fascinated. I've not ever heard the name of this Operation Circus. We've read about it a lot. We've talked about it a lot. But this book's details are simply amazing to me. So it may become one of my authoritarian books.

53:20 I have a place for the ones that I use a lot, like Paul Williams and Danielle Ganser. This is definitely gonna be one of them. Just because there's so many people in here, it has a fabulous index and would make finding these people a whole lot easier to cross correlate the different operations because there's so much in-depth knowledge here. So Bridget, did you have anything, SR?

53:51 I'm listening to what's going on and I couldn't help but get a chuckle out of, ah, we're going to send a message. Keep your nose out of our business. Yeah. But along with that, what I'm thinking about is they were so involved at this point with Tibet that they were not going to give up on Tibet no matter what it took down to actually teaching people.

54:23 and focusing on items that they had never seen in their lives. Yeah. To understand what they were really about just blew my mind. I'm sitting here thinking, you know, if teachers today taught our kids in that manner, we might be a lot further along. Yeah. Wouldn't that be nice?

54:44 It's like taking, and I don't mean this as a slight to the Tibetans involved, but it'd be like taking a caveman and putting a computer in front of them and saying, I'm going to teach you how to use this. Because literally these people had never been out of their villages. They had, like you said, no roads, no nothing, completely.

55:11 backwards from any standard of the 1950s, isolated, and we're just gonna take them out. We're gonna train them how to be assassins and we're gonna insert them back in to be a pain in the ass to China. And again, because all of this is classified, we don't know anything about the use of Nepal, the use of the Tibetans. We don't know anything about the real story in our history books of Taiwan.

55:40 and the 40 years of attacks against mainland China by any of this. It cannot be found in regular history books. It's certainly not taught in professional military education at all, because I've been to all of it. The only program I didn't attend was Senior NCO Academy, but it's...

56:09 a derivative of all of the rest of them, and I've been to all of the other ones. So I can emphatically say this history is not taught to the American military, and it's certainly not taught in our education system, both at the college level and at the high school level. We have no idea we did this. And most of it... Sorry, Colonel. Go ahead. The other thing I found interesting was...

56:39 Chiang Kai-shek, you said this was, if I understood correctly, he was kept out of this altogether? He wasn't aware of what was really going on? He was not aware of the Tibet operation because he coveted Tibet. So the CIA is doing this under their own accord, under the direction of the people in Washington.

57:07 And they wanted Chiang Kai-shek stayed focused on the attacks from Taiwan. What you read in other books is their fear was that he himself, because now we've given him his own Navy and his own Air Force, that he would take advantage and basically out the operation prematurely. So they wanted him strictly focused on his operation against mainland China and not

57:36 be aware of the fact that there are other, not competing, but cohesive attacks on other fronts. Does that make sense? Absolutely, Colonel. Absolutely makes sense. Because I'm sitting here thinking out of everything Chiang Kai-shek did and what was going on there in Formosa in Taiwan.

58:04 The whole deal behind him was he wanted back on mainland China. Yes. I'm sure he had island fever like nobody's business. Yes. Good way of putting it. Yes. He wanted the whole enchilada. And if he thought that he could add value with his massive KMT army in Tibet, it may have taken on a life of its own that would have then been outside of the CIA's control. And they didn't want that to happen. Yeah.

58:39 Okay. With that said, we're going to finish a little early today. So not a bad thing. All right. You guys take care. We will be back tomorrow and I will be doing.

59:02 I've got like four things to do tomorrow. So tomorrow is going to be a very busy day. I will be appearing on a Tommy podcast with General Holt in the morning. Warhamster and I have our show. And then I will be recording with Drea for intro to Operation Gladio that I have no idea when it'll be released. But I will let you know when that happens. And then we'll have our four o'clock show.

59:31 So tomorrow's going to be full. Okay, you guys take care and I will talk to you tomorrow.

Entities here

Tibet50 China32 CIA24 5412 Group18 Dwight D. Eisenhower14 Allen Dulles13 Gordon Gray11 India11 Chiang Kai-shek10 Dalai Lama9 Directorate of Operations6 Richard M. Bissell Jr.6 George N. Patterson6 People's Liberation Army5 Kuomintang5 Presidential Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities5 Project Cirrus5 Calcutta4 Desmond Fitzgerald4 Pentagon4 Far East Division4 James Critchfield3 Project Hake3 Douglas MacIernan Jr.3 Graves Erskine3 Kalampung3 Frank Holaber3 Frank Wisner2 U.S. State Department2 Jennifer Fitzgerald2 Fletcher Prouty2 Saipan2 John Hall2 Near East and African Division2 John Reagan2 Gampo Tashi2 Thubten Norbu2 Jean Kirkpatrick1 Harry Mustakuku1 Hong Kong1

Claims made here

Richard M. Bissell Jr. headed Directorate of Operations book_quoted ▶ 0:41

“The advent of Richard Bissell's changed many things for the Directorate of Operations, but one stayed the same. The worries of the president's watchdogs again expressed within a few short months. Repo…”

Presidential Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities headed John Hall book_quoted ▶ 1:05

“This unfortunate situation highlights the necessity for reviewing and perhaps recasting some of the virtually autonomous functions presently assigned. Virtually autonomous. They're beckoning back to t…”

John Hall succeeded James Killian book_quoted ▶ 1:05

Robert Lovett member_of Presidential Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities book_quoted ▶ 2:39

“Project Hake served as an example of how things could go wrong. Robert Lovett, co-author of the board's previous covert study, pressed Eisenhower to transfer review authority to the 5412 group. Gordon…”

Directorate of Operations carried_out_attack Project Hake book_quoted ▶ 2:39

Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered_assassination_of J. Robert Oppenheimer book_quoted ▶ 10:44

“demeanor, efficiency, and discretion. In 1953, he took the political heat for the Oppenheimer security clearance cancellation. At the Office of Defense Mobilization, Gray had supervised the Gaither Re…”

Allen Dulles member_of 5412 Group book_quoted ▶ 11:44

“As the president's special assistant, which now is a designated national security advisor, Gordon Gray is functioning as that before it was created. He became Eisenhower's voice in the 5412 group. Alt…”

Gordon Gray member_of 5412 Group book_quoted ▶ 11:44

Graves Erskine member_of 5412 Group book_quoted ▶ 15:35

“and Eisenhower had made the chairman a 5-4-1-2 group member. Direct coordination and execution of military cover support, like when the CIA's pretending to be military, continued in the hands of the a…”

Thomas Gates Jr. succeeded Neil McElroy book_quoted ▶ 16:45

“to whom the SecDep, Neil McElroy, had complete confidence. McElroy's successor, Thomas Gates Jr., in office in December 1959 and through the remainder of Ike's presidency, had been a Navy Reserve offi…”

Desmond Fitzgerald headed Far East Division book_quoted ▶ 19:18

“setup. The locale this time was going to be Tibet. It was technically part of China. In the Director of Operations area, China belonged to Fitzgerald's barony, meaning he was all things China. It fell…”

Douglas MacIernan Jr. carried_out_attack Tibet book_quoted ▶ 22:59

“Late in 1948, McInernan began a journey into Tibet, but perished at its border in April of 1950. Given the fall of the Nationalists, U.S. desire to resist the Communists, and Tibetan appeals for aid, …”

People's Liberation Army carried_out_attack Tibet book_quoted ▶ 23:59

“they had with the Dalai Lama. Signs in the capital were ominous. A sacred object, a gilded wooden dragon, began to drip water from its mouth. The People's Liberation Army approached the area in the su…”

Dalai Lama installed China book_quoted ▶ 24:31

“never had time to succeed. In August, the PLA 18th Army defeated a tiny Tibetan force that was futile in nature. A handful of ancient guns, the Dalai Lama's personal guard, and armed monks and farmers…”

People's Liberation Army carried_out_attack Tibet book_quoted ▶ 24:31

John Turner carried_out_attack Tibet book_quoted ▶ 29:04

“John Turner, the CIA's latest man in Calcutta, would have been the likely candidate. Turner had actually grown up in Darlington. He was quite familiar with the setup in that area. Patterson acted as a…”

People's Liberation Army carried_out_attack Tibet book_quoted ▶ 35:02

“In one of the mountainous regions, tribesmen disarmed them, cut off their noses, and then sent them back as a warning. These people joined forces with a neighboring chief of more than 100,000 families…”

Sam Halpern member_of Far East Division book_quoted ▶ 36:04

“He had managed secret air missions for General Erston's Office of Special Operations. Evidence indicate a steady growth in CIA interest in the area of Tibet. There were meetings recounted by George Pa…”

Fletcher Prouty member_of Graves Erskine book_quoted ▶ 36:04

Herbert Hoover member_of U.S. State Department book_quoted ▶ 36:33

“quickly dubbed Project ST Circus, came all most strongly from John Foster Dulles. Again, it, of course, was seconded by his brother. Also involved was Herbert Hoover Jr., who was the undersecretary fo…”

Allen Dulles funded Project Cirrus book_quoted ▶ 36:33

Thomas Parrott member_of 5412 Group book_quoted ▶ 37:04

“harassment of the Chinese communists. They really weren't interested in Tibet independence. They were very interested in harassing the Chinese. Thomas Parrott, who worked directly for the 5412 group a…”

U.S. State Department funded Project Cirrus book_quoted ▶ 37:04

John Reagan member_of CIA book_quoted ▶ 37:37

“affirmative endorsement. That then followed from his brother. In late 1956, the chief of the Far East, the China branch, designated a full-time director of operations desk officer specifically for Tib…”

Gampo Tashi recruited Tibet book_quoted ▶ 38:07

“had been a paramilitary veteran of Korea. CIA officer in Korea moves to Japan, works with Fitzgerald, and becomes the ops officer for the Tibet campaign. Not long afterwards, the wealthy Tibetan trade…”

John Hart headed Project Cirrus book_quoted ▶ 38:36

“Renewed contacts with the Americans and selected Tibetans for CIA training outside their country. The Tibetans joined up in February of 1957. Headquarters' emphasis on Tibet shifted slightly when John…”

Frank Holaber headed Project Cirrus book_quoted ▶ 38:36

CIA funded Project Cirrus book_quoted ▶ 39:05

“a key operative in Taiwan during the projects of Shanghai Sheks against mainland China. So they have an entire force arrayed around China attacking them, harassing them, and they just move musical cha…”

Frank Holaber member_of CIA book_quoted ▶ 39:05

Frank Wisner ordered_assassination_of Tibet book_quoted ▶ 39:36

“approval from the 5412 group still cannot be pinpointed. The outcome, however, can. Rebel leaders were told that the United States was considering a move in Tibet, but the decision depended upon what …”

CIA spied_on Tibet documented ▶ 40:05

“took photos of Tibet for the very first time. Continued reluctance to reveal CIA operations in Tibet undoubtedly relates to the later improvement of U.S. relationship with the area. Today, it is thoug…”

CIA funded American Society for a Free Asia book_quoted ▶ 40:31

“is ironic given the many failures that peppered the CIA paramilitary record there. Despite their hesitancy, a fair description of the dimensions of the Tibet operation is possible. In 1956, the Americ…”

American Society for a Free Asia funded Thubten Norbu book_quoted ▶ 41:01

“sponsored a U.S. lecture tour by a man, Thubten Norbu. He was an associate of the Dalai Lama's elder brother. Norbu made more visits over the next few years to speak about a rebellion. That February, …”

Thubten Norbu member_of Dalai Lama book_quoted ▶ 41:01

Frank Holaber funded Tibet book_quoted ▶ 42:01

“Frank Holaber recalls the agency had already began annual subsidies of approximately 200,000 inside of Tibet, but the money went for political, not paramilitary action, according to him. At the time, …”

John Reagan trained Gampo Tashi book_quoted ▶ 42:33

“That secret location, a number of young Tibetans were agitating for national resistance. Cultivated again by the CIA, John Hoskin came to the village and took the men Tashi had selected, eight, to be …”

John Hoskin trained Gampo Tashi book_quoted ▶ 42:33

Eli Popovich member_of CIA book_quoted ▶ 43:03

“marked planes through Taiwan to Saipan. There they went full CIA training. Roger McCarthy, one of the Saipan inspectors, recalls that CIA teams had precise things that they wanted to train them in and…”

Roger McCarthy member_of CIA book_quoted ▶ 43:03

CIA trained Tibet book_quoted ▶ 43:03

CIA supplied_arms_to Tibet book_quoted ▶ 44:07

“and they were adamantly opposed to killing the ants, that that would be an ominous sign. That had to have been interesting. The same Tibetans who agonized over ants would be fierce fighters and kill p…”

Air America supplied_arms_to Tibet book_quoted ▶ 45:13

“Recruits traveled to Calcutta by train, where the link was a contact address. Civil Air Transport planes flew to Taiwan for refueling. Sometimes they landed in Bangkok. Sometimes they landed in Hong K…”

CIA trained Tibet book_quoted ▶ 48:21

“They used an old World War II base. We've come across this a couple of different times at Camp Hell, where they flew into Colorado Springs and trucked them up to the mountains. So they were in accommo…”

Chiang Kai-shek targeted_for_regime_change China book_quoted ▶ 48:49

“was an important CIA station with a broad range of activities. Its centrality re-emphasized after the Taiwan Strait crisis of 54 and 55. Chiang Kai-shek still dreamed of returning to China. The Nation…”

Kuomintang carried_out_attack China book_quoted ▶ 48:49

CIA covered_up Project Cirrus book_quoted ▶ 49:19

“other China operations because Chiang Kai-shek also coveted Tibet. Thus, though the CIA had well-trained nationalist air crews, it could not touch them to use in Tibet because then Chiang Kai-shek wou…”

Roland Smoot member_of China book_quoted ▶ 50:18

“During the 1958 crisis, Rear Admiral Roland Smoot, S-M-O-O-T, commander of the U.S. military mission in Taiwan, observed the Nationalist training of special forces, some 5,000 of them. Shanghai Ka, Sh…”

Chiang Kai-shek carried_out_attack China book_quoted ▶ 50:18

CIA funded Kuomintang book_quoted ▶ 50:47

“While the Americans refused to help this effort, they did support boat and midget submarine landings of their commandos, anywhere from a dozen to 20 men at a time. Boat groups usually left from Kowloo…”

Ray Cline member_of CIA book_quoted ▶ 50:47

Ray Cline member_of China book_quoted ▶ 50:47

Ralph McGehee member_of CIA book_quoted ▶ 51:17

“of both Chiang Kai-shek and his son. They talked dozens of times about nationalist units and agents in the mainland, about 200 in all during those years. But Ralph McGeehee, an officer in Klein Statio…”

CIA trained Kuomintang book_quoted ▶ 51:47

“with overhead reconnaissance paled next to the product of nationalist pilots trained to fly U-2s under the military aid program. The photographic evidence came back to the CIA for interpretation. The …”

CIA headed Project Cirrus book_quoted ▶ 52:16

“The Tibetan project went forward under the direct control of the CIA station in India. So they don't want to cross-pollinate this because they want containment of focused efforts into China. So that's…”

Chiang Kai-shek covered_up Project Cirrus book_quoted ▶ 56:39

“Chiang Kai-shek, you said this was, if I understood correctly, he was kept out of this altogether? He wasn't aware of what was really going on? He was not aware of the Tibet operation because he covet…”