BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN
McGehee, Ralph
Back in the Saddle Again A former CIA officer sees a new binge of illegal activity BY RALPH McGEHEE In 1975, I worked in the CIA's International Communism Branch as the East Asia Division...
...One university graduate student had an interesting story along these lines: She received a grant to conduct medical research in Central America...
...Employees worried aloud that they could be held legally responsible for participation in illegal operations...
...A U.S...
...operation, MHCHAOS, targeted political activity...
...We were instructed to destroy all files on U.S.-based groups, which we did...
...He concluded that they were working for the CIA...
...Hope hospital ship, which received much publicity for its international humanitarian missions, was a CIA project...
...In 1967, as antiwar protests intensified, the Agency's Office of Security initiated liaisons with every major metropolitan police department...
...The Agency also infiltrated labor, student, youth, and religious groups: it had thousands of college professors and administrators working for it on hundreds of campuses...
...The chief of the International Communism Branch expressed anxiety over further disclosures...
...In allowing the CIA to keep these names secret, the Supreme Court sent a powerful message to the intelligence community: You may violate the law and the highest court will protect you...
...I assumed that my information was passed up to higher levels, but I never heard anything more about the murder...
...she would have to pay back thousands of dollars...
...The CIA harassed outspoken opponents of the Vietnam war and even opened the mail of Senator Frank Church and Richard Nixon...
...Various professors in the United States have, in fact, told me that they were approached by CIA officials with requests to perform "directed research" and other assignments abroad...
...We were warned not to maintain files that might prove useful to Congressional investigators or persons using the Freedom of Information Act...
...at least 185 private researchers and eighty institutions had been involved...
...This episode is also absent from the Church Committee report...
...Philanthropic organizations were drawn into the network as well...
...This was assigned a priority equal to action against the Soviet Union...
...For the first time in my career, I saw the Agency substantially reduce its illegal operations...
...The CIA's inspector general, the officer responsible for keeping the Agency's nose clean, issued an internal report on MKULTRA: "Precautions must be taken," the inspector general wrote, "to protect operations from exposure to enemy forces but also to conceal those activities from the American public in general...
...Though some CIA abuses were never disclosed, the fear of being discovered and held criminally liable served as a restraint—the only effective one—on illegal activities...
...To avoid being surprised by an unanticipated revelation, we were all asked if we knew of any CIA involvement in assassinations—other than those conducted under the aegis of the Phoenix program in Vietnam...
...During my travels and speaking engagements, I met many people whose own paths had crossed the CIA's...
...A top Nicaraguan military commander, for example, remembered two Harvard professors who visited his country in 1982, ostensibly to talk his wife into entering Harvard graduate school...
...Back in the Saddle Again A former CIA officer sees a new binge of illegal activity BY RALPH McGEHEE In 1975, I worked in the CIA's International Communism Branch as the East Asia Division representative...
...Theoretically, individuals can still obtain files that pertain to illegal activities, but the CIA's poor record in responding to information requests does not give cause for optimism...
...law and the Agency's own charter...
...it worked to shape public opinion through some 450 individuals and publications...
...The Agency forged documents, planted evidence of weapons shipments, and doctored documents to justify U.S...
...MKULTRA was, of course, only one of the domestic programs that violated U.S...
...Government...
...One individual told me that the CIA had participated in a 1968 attack on eight South Vietnamese officials who were plotting to overthrow President Nguyen Van Thieu...
...The chief dismissed the rest of the staff, and I provided details...
...I actually knew of another incident, but it slipped my mind on the day of the chiefs inquiry...
...When I left the CIA, 1 wrote Deadly Deceits: My 25 Years in the CIA, a book about my experiences and the Agency's efforts to get us into the Vietnam war...
...That year, the Rockefeller Commission and both houses of Congress were investigating the CIA, the media were scrutinizing the Agency, and private citizens were making heavy use of the Freedom of Information Act...
...Now, the reins on the CIA have been removed...
...The public explanation was that a rocket had gone astray...
...The decision dealt with the Agency's MKULTRA program, in which researchers tested LSD, knock-out drugs, and other mind-altering substances on unwitting Americans...
...The number of people damaged by these unlawful and immoral activities is incalculable...
...The CIA's intrusion into the foundation field in the 1960s can only be described as massive," the Church Committee found...
...One major U.S...
...It appears nowhere in the Senate's 1975 Church Committee report on CIA assassinations...
...The CIA commonly uses such information to compile "enemy" lists for local security services...
...military intervention...
...The Agency made no changes or deletions...
...And in Central America, passing the names of suspected leftists to the official police agency is the same as giving a hit list to the Death Squads...
...I then traveled to the Caribbean and Central America, and when I returned, I spoke to college audiences and civic groups...
...Shielded from public scrutiny, the CIA will step up its involvement in activities that violate rights at home and destroy liberty abroad—all in the name of preserving and protecting freedom and democracy...
...A group of plaintiffs had sought the names of institutions that performed experiments under MKULTRA...
...Once she got there, an American contacted her and said he represented the U.S...
...To comply with his contractual secrecy obligations to the Agency, McGehee submitted this article to the CIA for clearance...
...helicopter flying over Cholon, the Chinese sector of Saigon, fired three rockets, killing seven of the plotters and wounding one...
...Another source told me that the U.S.S...
...If the past is prologue, the MKULTRA operation may be instructive...
...Patients were required to fill out biographical forms before receiving assistance...
...The knowledge that the Agency is engaging in unethical and illicit activities would have serious repercussions in political and diplomatic circles and would be detrimental to the accomplishment of its mission...
...She refused...
...Last April, the Supreme Court ruled that the CIA does not have to reveal the identity of participants in clearly illegal operations...
...The professors talked to him at length, and he believed that they were sizing him up as a possible candidate to lead a coup against the Sandinista government...
...I said I did...
...The CHAOS element of the Agency worked with the Domestic Contact Service to watch black militants, youth activists, draft-resistance groups, and underground newspapers, which the Agency tried to destroy...
...Ralph McGehee served from 1952 to 1977 as a CIA case officer in paramilitary, covert, and intelligence operations...
...These developments caused serious concern—institutional and personal—within the CIA...
...Her grant was immediately canceled, and upon returning to the United States, she was advised that the grant had been a mistake in the first place...
...To make matters worse, Congress recently relieved the CIA of the obligation to comply with most provisions of the Freedom of Information Act...
...In the MKULTRA program, physicians, toxicologists, other specialists, and CIA personnel without medical training conducted intensive tests on human subjects without telling the victims or Congress or the executive branch...
...Because of the recent Supreme Court ruling and the protections afforded the CIA by Congress, we may never get to know the full details of these and other Agency exploits...
...He worked in Asia and won a variety of honors, including the prestigious Career Intelligence Medal...
...My job was to monitor the activities of pro-Maoist communist parties around the world, and in the performance of that duty, I maintained files on foreign and U.S.-based Maoist groups...
...Each Thursday, my office held staff meetings to pass down details of various investigations...
...With carte blanche from the Supreme Court, with a Congressional license to keep secrets, with a Presidential order authorizing the Agency to conduct domestic covert operations, with Director "Wild Bill" Casey in the saddle, with the largest budget in Agency history, we should anticipate gross violations of the law and renewed attempts to build the powers of a police state...
...He offered to pay her to review all of her research notes—which contained detailed biographies of individuals participating in her studies...
...Agency employees would visit restaurants, bars, and beaches, slipping LSD into the drinks of unsuspecting individuals...
...MHCHAOS spied on about 1,000 domestic organizations and thousands of Americans, including Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Bella Abzug, and Representative Ron Dellums...
...And the Agency routinely stonewalls Congressional oversight committees that could ensure disclosure of illegalities...
...In one scenario...
Vol. 49 • August 1985 • No. 8
