How to Spot a Spook
Marks, John
How tospot a Spook by John Marks Several times in the last few years, this magazine has suggested that the quickest single way to improve the conduct of American foreign poiicy would be to...
...The CIA also places smaller contingents in the ranks of other U.S...
...CIA officials must be especially concerned about Toon’s recommendations, since in countries where there are no U.S...
...Our purpose is to hasten the day when our in t ellige n ce organizations con cen tra te on their real work-collecting and analyzing information from open sources-and to cut the ground away from the James Bonds and the Gordon Liddys of the world before they get us all in any more trouble...
...Dept consult to sec of state 1/55...
...American corporations operating overseas have long cooperated in making jobs available to the CIA and would probably continue to do so...
...Once you have identified one, you can quickly figure out the rest...
...There is an exception to this rule: a comparatively few minority-group members who have been brought into the Foreign Service as Reserve Officers under a special program...
...Everything argues for having the intelligence agent in the embassyeverything, that is except the need to keep his existence secret...
...Bugging his office would have indeed been a major coup for the opposition...
...Similarly, the Register report on FSR Jenkins shows that he had a long career as an FSO before taking on the State Department’s special assignment in Peking as an FSR: Bruce, David KEA Md 2/21/98, m (Evangeline Bell...
...0 - 3 9/54...
...refusing to provide the specific figures, a source close to Kissinger says that Toon’s report calls for a substantial reduction in the number of CIA operatives abroad under State cover...
...As for political intelligence-which is actually an assessment of the intentions of foreign leaders-we don’t really need this kind of information from Third World countries unless we intend to muck about in their internal affairs...
...pol off 0.4 6.73 S.8 12-73 R.3 0-5 7-73 Horowitz Herbert Eugene...
...Unless their cover is blown, companies of this sort and operatives who work for them cannot be linked to the U.S...
...econlcml off 0.3 6.73 Morin Annabelle C...
...He is subject to local laws and has to pay local taxes...
...The time has come to abolish them...
...LIAISON OFFICE) (LO) Bruce David K E...
...dir Off of Asian Communist Aff 7/70, superior honor award 71, d i r f o r People’s Rep of China...
...Thank you very much...
...Two examples of this type are: * Robert Mullen and Company, the Washington-based public relations concern for which E. Howard Hunt worked after he left the CIA and before the break-in at Democratic National Headquarters...
...Note that there are no gaping holes in their career records, nor did either of these men serve long tours with nameless Pentagon agencies, nor did they regularly change their status from “R7 to “S” to “GS” (civil service...
...For confirmation, I called the State Department’s ranking China expert, Acting Assistant Secretary of State Arthur Hummel...
...A search of hundreds of names found no legitimate State Department personnel Listed as ever having held such a job...
...sec $7 7.73 Rope William Frederick...
...In an embassy like the one in Santo Domingo, the spooks in the political section outnumber the real FSOs by at least seven to three: Pollbcal Section Beyer Joel H pol ofl R 5 772 Brugger Frederick A pol off R7 972 Chafin Galy E pol ofl 0 6 813 Claflon Thomas A pol ofl R 3 571 Dwiggins loan H pol ofl R7 372 Fambrini Robert 1 pol on S2 673 Greig David N Jr pol off R S 871 Guell Janet E sec S8 1273 Markofl Stephanie M sec S0 673 Merriam Geraldine C clk typist S9 273 Mooney Robert C pol ofl R 6 872 Ryan Dondald G pol ofl R 8 073 Williams Albert N pol on 0 3 773 Eumpus James N POI on 0.4 7 72 Morris Margaret A clk typist s10 12 73 Pascoe Dorothy 1 set s 7 274 While Dondald Ryan is an “R” in the political section, there is not sufficent data published about him to verify his status...
...Another State official confirmed that the decision to send an operative to Peking was made in early 1973, but declared that making public the operative’s existence could “jeopardize” Chinese-American relations...
...Dept 7/70, GS-15 fgn aff off 4/71...
...How tospot a Spook by John Marks Several times in the last few years, this magazine has suggested that the quickest single way to improve the conduct of American foreign poiicy would be to get rid of the covert agents and clandestine operators in the CIA...
...Dept l0/60...
...The problem of getting good, accurate, reliable information from abroad is a complicated one, beyond the scope of this article, but, to paraphrase Mae West, covert has nothing to do withit...
...The firm had two “representatives” in Hong Kong, at least until June of this year...
...0-4 6/51...
...In contrast, it is difficult for the CIA to dwell inconspicuously within the American diplomatic corps, since more than a quarter of the 5,435 employees who purportedly work for State overseas are actually with the CIA, In places such as Argentina, Bolivia, Burma, and Guyana, where the Agency has special interests and projects, there are about as many CIA operatives under cover of substantive embassy jobs as there are legitimate State employees...
...The Department’s top administrator, L. Dean Brown, who had urged the study be made in the first place, gave the job to Malcolm Toon, a career diplomat serving as U.S...
...STATE Manila R-6 7/50...
...troops scattered around the world, the CIA “units” buried among them do not attract undue attention...
...One night about ten years ago, a State Department security officer, prowling through the American embassy in Santiago, Chile, in search of communist microphones, found a listening device carefully hidden in the office of a senior “political officer...
...GOVTEXPER with Off Strategic Sers 41-45, asst sec ofCom 47-48...
...The source says that all the local Spanish employees knew who worked on what floor of the embassy and that visitors could figure out the same thing...
...FS insp 1/69...
...Mem Md bar...
...Both the Soviet and American intelligence establishments seem to share the obsession that the other side is always trying to bug them...
...He doesn’t have the right passport...
...The Agency operative is taught early in training that loud background sounds interfere with bugging...
...In those countries, the CIA’S command post is still in the U.S...
...So where an FSR does appear in the listing with a political job, it is most likely that the CIA is using the position for cover...
...Triumphantly, the security man ripped the microphone out of the wall-only to discover later that it had been installed by the CIA station chief himself...
...Although genuine FSRs frequently hold administrative and consular slots, they are almost never given the important .political jobs...
...Like the intelligence services of most other countries, the CIA has been unwilling to set up foreign offices under its own name, so American embassies-and, less frequently, military basesprovide the needed cover...
...Let us see why the embassy cover is so transparent : .The CIA usually has a separate set of offices in the embassy, often with an exotic-looking cipher lock on the outside door...
...Tientsin pol off 7/48, 0 - 5 4/49...
...Dept det Nat War Coll 8/51, 0 - 2 2/58...
...PRIVEXPER priv law practice 21-26, mem State legis 2426, 39-42, with bank-priv bus 28-40, chief rep Am Red Cross (England) 40-41...
...R-4 det lane trne FSI 7/12-4/73...
...Of course, there are some legitimate officials from the State Department, AID, and USIA who hold FSR and FSS ratings, so care must be taken to avoid confusing these people with the spooks...
...They are found exclusively in the junior ranks, and their biographic data is complete in the way the CIA people’s is not...
...According to a source who was present, Duckett said that even without further embassy cuts, the CIA, now doesn’t have enough people overseas...
...If you try to put him in an influential business job, you’ve got to go through all the arrangements with . the company...
...Of all the jobs real State Department representatives perform, political reporting is generally considered to be the most important...
...econlcml off 0.4 4-73 Blackburn Robert R Jr...
...S-2 4/68...
...Mongolia, Hong Kong-Macao aff 2/73...
...government was under no obligation to assign a CIA man there-or anywhere else for I that matter...
...dep chief mission 10/61, consaen3/62, 0 - 1 3/63...
...dep dir Off of SE Asian Aff 6/58, rea plan ad Bu of Far E Aff 8/59...
...comslrec off S.2 1.73 Morin Emilc F...
...Most of the military and economic intelligence we need we can get from our satellites and sensors (which already provide nearly all our information about Russia’s nuclear weaponry) and from reading the newspapers and the superabundant files of open reports...
...Dept 8/64...
...Just this spring, the State Department took official, if secret, notice of its declining presence overseas compared to the CIA when Secretary Henry Kissinger authorized a highlevel study of State-CIA staffing...
...In the spirit of practicing what we preach, we present the following article, which tells how to identify a great number of the Agency S ‘Secret” operators...
...In Madrid, for example, a State Department source reports that the Agency occupied the whole sixth floor of the embassy...
...Dept R- 1 pers rep of Pres with pers rank amb to hd US del at Paris meetings on VietNam 7/70-4/71...
...It was by studying these documents that I learned that the CIA has sent an operative to Pcking...
...But for the past 25 years we have relied on open sources and machine-collected intelligence because our agents have proven incapable of penetrating these closed societies...
...US Army 42-46 1st It...
...The question then becomes whether it is really that important to keep his existence secret-which, in turn, depends on how important his clandestine activities are...
...At a July 19 off-the-record session with key Democratic congressional aides, Carl Duckett, the CIA’S Deputy Director for Intelligence, complained about the reductions recommended by the Toon report...
...pen scr off 0.6 3.72 comslrec off R.6 7.13 Now Holdridge almost certainly can be ruled out as an operative, simply because he is an FSO...
...Dept under 8ec of state 2/52, consult to sec of state 1/53...
...m. Yale U BA 51...
...Psychological Assessment Associates, Inc., a Washington psychological consulting firm specializing in behavioral research and analysis...
...embassy, but most of the CIA personnel are under military cover...
...Toon returned to Washington to compile the top-secret report...
...Also, the Agency would probably have to make more use of smaller firms where fewer people would know of the clandestine connection...
...The question of how much cover State should provide the CIA, however, is chiefly a bureaucratic one, and is not basic to Kissinger’s foreign policy...
...Stockholm couns...
...The first American E mission to China since 1949 certainly 0 could have been staffed exclusively -E, dwaimtha greinagl dreiplalotimonast s wife rceo nscoe rhni gahb...
...military bases, the only alternative to embassy cover is “deep,” or non-official, cover...
...Princeton U AB 19...
...sec s-4 5-73 McKinley Brunson...
...The security man, John Marks is an associate of the Center for National Security Studies and co-author of The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence...
...Jenkins, Alfred IeSerne-b Ga 9/14/16, m. Emory U AB 38, Duke U MA 46...
...2/55...
...On the China list, David Bruce is an “R-I,” or Reserve Officer of class 1, the highest rank...
...The reason the CIA office was located in the embassy-as it is in most of the other countries in the world-is that by presidential order the State Department is responsible for hiding and housing the CIA...
...According to a knowledgeable source, the committee is informally told the number of CIA people on the lists but “not who they are...
...Peking chief liaison off 3/73...
...dep chief US10 0.1 5.73 Jenkins Alfred les...
...Although there are rumors of exceptions, CIA personnel abroad are always given the cover rank of Foreign Service Reserve (FSR) or Staff (FSS) officers-not FSO...
...R-5 3/63...
...R-4 5/66...
...Dept 3/52...
...Finally there is another almost certain tip-off...
...Jidda couns...
...By the admission of its president John Gittinger, most of the company’s business since it was founded in 1957 by three ex-CIA psychologists has come from Agency contracts...
...STATE AEP to France 5/49...
...Vientiane DO^ off 6/65...
...GOVT EXPER anal DeDt of Armv 51-58...
...With the Soviet Union or Chinacountries powerful enough to really threaten our national security-timely political intelligence could be a great help...
...Here is how it works: America’s real diplomats have insisted on one thing in dealing with the CIA: that the corps of Foreign Service Officers (FSO) remain pure...
...Bonn AEP to Germany 3/5111/59...
...Lang Ger...
...spec asst 0.6 5.73 Zaelil Lucille...
...Mullen provided CIA operatives with cover in Stockholm, Mexico City, and Singapore, and in 1971 set up a subsidiary in cooperation with the CIA called Interprogres, Ltd...
...The letters in the third column from the left signify the man or woman’s personnel status and the number denotes his or her rank...
...According to a secret Agency document released with the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment evidence, “At least two [CIA] overseas assets have tangential tasks of promoting the acceptance of this company as a Mullen subsidiary...
...The CIA has lost no time in launching its counteroffensive...
...To winnow out the spooks, you start by looking up in the Foreign Service List the country in question, for example, China...
...Lang Fr, Rom...
...US Army 46-47...
...Phnom Penh 9/61...
...Peking dep chief liaison off 4/13...
...As a “private” citizen, the operative is not automatically exposed to the host country’s key officials and to foreign diplomats, nor does he have direct access to the CIA communications and support facilities which are normally housed in embassies...
...The premium records, which are unclassified and usually available to local employees, are a dead giveaway...
...Not much can be told one way or the other about FSS Brooks because, as is the case with most secretaries, the State Department does not publish much information about her...
...The Foreign Service Lirjt provides another clue, in the form of diplomats’ official assignments...
...If an agent is listed in the Biographic Register as having been an “analyst” for the Department of the Army (or Navy or Air Force), you can bet that he or she is really working for the CIA...
...Kissinger has always acted very carefully where the CIA is concerned...
...The CIA has a different health insurance plan from the State Department...
...When they go to lunch or to a cocktail party or meet a plane from Washington, they are much more likely to go with each other than with legitimate diplomats...
...half were disguised as “Air Force personnel” and half as State “political officers...
...State confers respectability on the Agency’s operatives, dressing them up with the same titles and calling cards that give legitimate diplomats entree into foreign government circles...
...det Nat Security Counc 1/66...
...No senator in memory has publicly objected to being an accomplice to this coverbuilding for the CIA...
...After 1 identified myself as a reporter working on a magazine article and explained wherc I had gotten my information, Hummel shouted, “1 know what you’re up to and I don’t want to contribute...
...government agencies which operate overseas, particularly AIDS police training program in Latin America...
...With nearly 500,000 U.S...
...Protected by diplomatic immunity, the operatives recruit local officials as CIA agents to supply secret intelligence and, especially in the Third World, to help in the Agency’s manipulation of a country’s internal affairs...
...PRIV EXPER prin-supt pub schs 40-42...
...Who Needs Gumshoes...
...government...
...Could any rational person, after surveying the history of the last 20 years, from Guatemala to Cuba to Vietnam-and now Chile-contend that the CIA’s clandestine activities have yielded anything but a steady stream of disaster...
...The source adds that Kissinger has not made up his mind on the issue...
...w-Sally Booth...
...But the Agency has learned over the years that it is much more difficult and expensive to set up an operative as a businessman (or as a missionary or newsman) than to put him in an embassy...
...About 30 people worked there...
...In 1973, of the 121 names submitted by the State Department, more than 70 were CIA operatives...
...Bangkok 4/63...
...along with everyone else in the embassy, knew that this particular “political officer” was actually the Central Intelligence Agency’s “station chief,” or principal operative in Chile...
...or sending home a clandestine support officer-a specialist in things like renting “safe houses,” “laundering” money, and installing phone taps-and then having the same work done by experts sent out from Washington on “temporary duty...
...David Bruce might be suspect because of his “R’ status, but a quick glance at the Biographic Register, which gives a brief curriculum vitae of all State Department personnel, shows him to be one of the high-level political appointees who have “R’ status because they are not members of the regular Foreign Service...
...STATE Dept FSO unclass 6/46, Peiving Chin lang-area trainee 9/46, 0 - 6 11/46...
...The Secretary therefore will probably not take a definite position until he sees how much opposition the CIA will be able to stir up in the White House and in the congressional subcommittees that supposedly oversee the Agency...
...ECA Paris R-1 chief of mission 5/48...
...Hong Kong chief pol sect 7/49...
...Paris R-1 pol off-US observer to Interim Comm of EDC, also US reptoEuropeancoal-SteelCommunity (Lwemboura) 2/53...
...Ironically, despite the State Department’s total refusal to comment on anything concerning the CIA, the Department regularly publishes two documents, the Foreign Service List and the Biographic Register, which, when cross-checked, yield the names of most CIA operatives under embassy cover...
...adm off 0.3 4.73 $6 5-13 R.6 2.74 Lucas RoberlT...
...w-Martha Lippiatt...
...US Army 17- 19, 42-45 coloverseas...
...TaiDei p01 off 7/50...
...Since the other side is, in fact, usually trying, our technicians and their technicians are constantly sweeping military installations and embassies to make sure no enemy, real or imagined, has succeeded...
...One of his former aides notes that the Secretary has regularly treated the Agency with great deference at government meetings although he has often been privately scornful of it afterwards...
...There is not enough practical benefit gained from the CIA’s espionage activities to compensate for our nation’s moral and legal liability in maintaining thousands of highly trained bribers, subverters, and burglars overseas as “representatives” of our government...
...sec s.5 5.73 Anderson Donald M...
...Neither this official nor any of his colleagwes seemed willing to consider the notion that the U.S...
...The CIA moves its men off the diplomatic lists only in Germany, Japan, and other countries where large numbers of American soldiers are stationed...
...Every year the Foreign Relations Committee routinely approves and sends to the full Senate for its advice and consent lists of “Foreign Service Reserve Officers to be consular officers and secretaries in the Diplomatic Service of the United States of America...
...London AEP to Great Britian 2/61-3/ 69...
...dep chief miseion...
...You can be pretty sure the CIA man in the embassy is the one who leaves his radio on all the time...
...dep chief US10 Brooks Barbara A...
...Dept FS insp 8/65...
...In any case, Kissinger is unquestionably a believer in the need for the CIA to intervene covertly in other countries’ internal affairs-he was the prime mover behind the Agency’s work against Salvador Allende in Chile...
...CIA personnel usually stick together...
...ambassador to Yugoslavia...
...Now, for purposes of comparison, examine the record of the CIA’S man in Peking, a “political officer” named James R. Lilley: Lilley, James R-b China Am parents 1/15/28...
...Moreover, as an ex-CIA official explains, “The deep cover guy has no mobility...
...and slammed down the phone...
...oTuO when that argument failed, the CIA resorted to bureaucratic ruses: cutting out a job and then replacing the person eliminated with a “contract” or “local” employee, who would not show up on the personnel roster...
...John Holdridge is a regular Foreign Service Officer (FSO) of the same grade, and secretary Barbara Brooks is a Staff Officer, class 4. PEKIN6 (U.S...
...What is surprising is that the CIA even bothers to camouflage its agents, since they are still easily identifiable...
...Asking not to be named and Not only does the State Department provide the CIA with cover, but the Senate-and especially its Foreign Relations Committeeencourages the current practice of sending over 25 per cent of our “diplomatic” corps abroad under false pretenses...
...Hone Kone 5/ 68, R - 4 5/69...
...chief US10 R.1 5-73 Holdridge John H...
Vol. 6 • November 1974 • No. 9
