CENTER for the STUDY of INTELLIGENCE
BULLETIN
Spring 1999
Issue No. 9
- Vietnam and US Intelligence Estimates
- The U-2: A Revolution in Intelligence
- Berlin: The Intelligence War
In This issue:
CSI News
Historical Review Program
Symposiums and Conference
Featured Articles
Exhibit Center Receives Donovan Medals
Studies in Intelligence
CSI Staff
CSI News
The Center for the Study of Intelligence is under new management. Lloyd
D. Salvetti was appointed Director in August 1998, replacing Brian Latell,
who retired after four years of service at CSI's helm.
Mr. Salvetti came to CSI following a tour of duty at the National War
College, where he was a faculty member in the Department of National Security
Policy. A veteran of the Directorate of Operations (DO), he has served
in a number of staff and senior management positions in the United States
and abroad. He was chief of staff to the Deputy Director for Operations
prior to his War College assignment. Earlier, he served as director of
intelligence programs on the National Security Council Staff.
Before joining CIA in 1970, Mr. Salvetti managed a Congressional office for two years. He spent four years in the Air Force as an active-duty officer, after which he served as an intelligence specialist in a reserve unit. Mr. Salvetti is a graduate of Tufts University and has done postgraduate work at George Washington University, American University, and Harvard Business School.
Richard E. Schroeder became CSI's Deputy Director in May 1998, following
a three-year assignment with CIA's Office of Congressional Affairs. He
too is a DO veteran and has served here and in Europe. He has held management
positions in the DO as well as in the Directorate of Science and Technology.
Before joining the Agency, Dr. Schroeder served as a US Army intelligence
officer in Washington and
Vietnam. He graduated from Kent State University and holds a Ph.D. in
history from the University of Chicago.
Former CSI Director Brian Latell was awarded the Distinguished Intelligence Medal upon retirement last fall. The award citation lauds Dr. Latell's stewardship of the Center as well as his many accomplishments during his CIA career of more than 30 years. Dr. Latell took command of CSI in September 1994 with a mandate from the DCI at that time, James Woolsey, to expand CIA contacts with outside scholars and researchers. He also revitalized the Officer-in-Residence Program, and he oversaw the organization of a variety of conferences as well as the publication of a series of well-received monographs and articles by the History Staff and independent contractors. In addition, Dr. Latell built up the Historical Review Program (HRP), which reviewed, declassified, and released previously classified documents in record numbers and in record time. The citation for the Distinguished Intelligence Medal read in part:
From 1994 to 1998, Dr. Latell headed the Center for the Study of Intelligence. He initiated, developed, enhanced, and encouraged greater Agency outreach and openness policies. These programs actively promoted historical understanding and greater awareness of the Agency and its mission to scholars, the media, the American public. . . . Due in large part to Dr. Latell's actions, the Center is now widely recognized for its publications, conferences, and the judicial practices it established for the declassification of Agency records.
Dr. Latell is now teaching full-time in the Political Science Department of Georgetown University.
We welcome Lloyd Salvetti and Rick Schroeder and wish Brian Latell a happy and fulfilling retirement.
Historical Review Program
As noted in the previous CSI Bulletin, the Center's Historical Review Program was transferred in January 1998 to the Office of Information Management (OIM), putting under one bureaucratic roof all CIA records and declassification activities. The CSI Bulletin, however, is continuing to cover some of OIM's activities, especially its major programs to release formerly classified information on CIA covert action and analysis to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
Bay of Pigs. A case in point was the June 1998 release of some 3,200 pages of documents related to the ill-fated Bay of Pigs covert action in 1961. The bulk of the documents came from the operational files of the Directorate of Operations and the History Staff. The review process was long and arduous. Consultations were required with other government agencies, including the National Security Council, Navy, State Department, Air Force, National Security Agency, and Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The release included the following documents and records:
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Postmortem on the Bay of Pigs operation by CIA's Inspector General at that time.
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Response to the postmortem by the Directorate of Plans (Clandestine Service).
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CIA Clandestine Service History, Record of the Paramilitary Action Against the Castro Government of Cuba, 17 March 1960_May 1961.
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Michael Warner, "The CIA's Internal Probe of the Bay of Pigs Affair," Studies in Intelligence, Winter 1998-99 edition.
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Training records of the 2506th Brigade (in Spanish).
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Six diagrams and 560 photographs related to the 2506th Brigade's training activities.
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National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs), Special National Intelligence Estimates (SNIEs), and other finished intelligence related to the operation.
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Briefing notes for the Director of Central Intelligence for National Security Council meetings.
USSR National Estimates and Finished Intelligence. OIM continues working on review and release of National Intelligence Estimates and Special National Intelligence Estimates on the Soviet Union. A second effort involves review and release of finished intelligence on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe published by the Directorate of Intelligence (and its predecessors) from 1948 to 1973. CIA has now released more than 500 NIEs, SNIEs, and related Interagency Memorandums. Some 2,100 pages of new material were released in 1998. Most of the newly released records concern Soviet military affairs; a smattering are on other subjects. During 1998, OIM released 14,000 pages of new material from the DI declassification project. This was the second release in this program. It included 366 intelligence reports and memorandums from the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s. Most deal with economic issues, while others concern foreign relations. Some 25,000 pages of records have been released under this program. Two more "tranches" of material, totaling about 7,000, are to be released in early 1999.
1954 Guatemala Covert Action. CIA in 1997 released 1,800 pages of material on the 1954 covert action operation in Guatemala (see CSI Newsletter 7, Winter-Spring 1997). OIM anticipates releasing another 17,000 pages soon. It also is reviewing an additional 100,000 pages of records related to Guatemala and hopes to complete this effort by the end of 1999.
New FRUS Volume on Intelligence Planned. The State Department's Office of the Historian and CIA's History Staff are jointly compiling a Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) volume on the organization and management of the Intelligence Community in the 1950s. The volume will be a sequel to the 1996 FRUS volume entitled Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945-1950, and will document the intelligence policies of the Truman and Eisenhower administrations. This joint project is a first for State and CIA; historians from both agencies will be listed as co-editors on the published volume. Compilation and annotation of the volume should be completed this year. Publication is to follow declassification of the documents.
JFK Assassination Records Project Completed. This five-year program was completed in 1998. HRP processed upwards of 14,000 CIA documents and transferred more than 100,000 redacted pages to NARA for the JFK Collection. The Assassination Review Board's report of 30 September 1998—the official termination date—noted that the Review Board "considered the CIA's compliance with the JFK Act . . . to be one of [its] highest priorities." The Board fully accepted CIA's Declaration of Compliance and reported favorably on the Agency's effort, which required an estimated 100 person-years. The Review Board, which was created under the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 and began its work in 1994 (see Bulletin 8, Spring 1998, page 1), originally was scheduled to complete its mission in 1997, but President Clinton extended its tenure through September 1998. Although most of CIA's obligations in this program have been fulfilled, the Agency will continue transferring records to NARA under terms of a memorandum of agreement signed by CIA and the JFK Board.
Records of the Office of the Director of Central Intelligence (O/DCI). This is a new project that involves review and declassification of records from the early days of the Office of the Director of Central Intelligence. It will include historically important records predating the formal creation of the DCI's office under the National Security Act of September 1947. Some of the records were associated with Gen. William Donovan and the Office of Strategic Services, which he headed during World War II, as well as the Strategic Services Unit and the Central Intelligence Group. The project will also review the records of the O/DCI during the tenures of Adm. Sidney Souers, Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg, Adm. Roscoe Hillenkoetter, and Gen. Walter Bedell Smith—the DCIs from 1946 to 1953. Some 18,000 pages of records have been identified for review. The review process is expected to take two years, and the declassified records will be released to NARA.
Symposiums and Conference
Vietnam and US Intelligence Estimates
The Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University
and the Center for the Study of Intelligence cosponsored a half-day public
symposium on US Government decisionmaking in the Vietnam war. The symposium
was held 9 June 1998 at Copley Hall on the Georgetown campus.
The focus of this event was Harold Ford's new book, CIA and the Vietnam Policymakers: Three Episodes, 1962-1968. Dr. Ford was among CIA's most knowledgeable and accomplished Vietnam analysts during the long American involvement in that conflict. His views and insights as drafter of many National Intelligence Estimates throughout that highly stressful period in US history have withstood the test of time. He discusses how US policymakers at times pressed analysts to treat controversial aspects of the problem in ways that would have been more favorable to Administration war aims. Ford's book pulls no punches; it is a candid and thorough appraisal of key developments and players. He argues persuasively that, for the most part, the Agency's analysis proved remarkably accurate.
The symposium began with Dr. Ford's overview of his book. He was followed by Chester L. Cooper, former National Security Council staff officer for Vietnamese affairs; Stanley Karnow, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and historian; Thomas Hughes, President Emeritus of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former Director of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research; and Edward Keefer, Director of the Far East Division in the Office of the Historian, Department of State.
On 19 March, the Society for History in the Federal Government (SHFG) awarded its George Pendleton Prize to Dr. Ford for his book, which the Society selected as the best major manuscript on a US Government program, activity, or organization. The Pendleton prize is among the SHFG's most prestigious awards.
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CIA and Vietnam Policymakers |
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9 June 1998 |
The U-2: A Revolution in Intelligence
On 17 September 1998, more than 400 people attended a daylong
symposium on the U-2 aircraft and aerial reconnaissance program held at
Fort McNair in Washington, DC. CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence
and the National Defense University, in conjunction with the US Air Force,
the Department of Defense, the National Reconnaissance Office, Lockheed
Martin, Eastman Kodak, and Raytheon, organized the gathering. Three panels,
comprising pilots, engineers, analysts, policymakers, and scholars, examined
the development, operations, and policy impact of the U-2 reconnaissance
aircraft—one of America's most remarkable intelligence achievements.
President Eisenhower approved the U-2 project in 1954 after his advisers convinced him that only unconventional aircraft could provide hard intelligence on the growing Soviet strategic threat. The aircraft mated newly available engine and camera technologies in a way that was beguiling in its simplicity and breathtaking in its boldness. The U-2 was fragile—yet for a time invulnerable when flying at an unprecedented cruising altitude of 70,000 feet. Although U-2s overflew the USSR just 24 times, they obtained precious data that unmasked the strengths and especially the weaknesses of Soviet military deployments and weaponry and may have saved America billions of dollars in unneeded defense expenditures. Even after the Soviet shootdown of Francis Gary Powers' U-2 over Russian territory on 1 May 1960 brought the flights over the USSR to a halt, the aircraft continued to fly missions over trouble spots around the world. An improved version of the U-2 is still in production today. The aircraft remains a key intelligence collector in the US inventory.
The conference commemorated the service of all who worked on this project from its inception nearly 45 years ago; among the highlights was a special memorial tribute held at noon to honor the 45 pilots and support personnel who made the ultimate sacrifice while participating in U-2 development, testing, and flights. Deputy Director of Central Intelligence for Community Management Joan Dempsey and Maj. Gen. Pat Halloran, USAF (Ret.), presented memorial medallions to family members of those who perished. To commemorate the U-2 and the symposium, CSI published a declassified version of CIA's official history of the program's first 20 years. On display at the symposium were samples of declassified U-2 imagery, selected in part from the 1.5 million images recently released by the Intelligence Community to the National Archives in College Park, Maryland.
DCI Relates U-2's History and Achievements. In his introductory remarks, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet told the audience, "The U-2 was, indeed, one of the CIA's greatest intelligence achievements. In fact, it may be one of the greatest achievements of any intelligence service of any nation. It was a triumph of government, great industrial partners, and courageous men—a triumph which must be replicated again and again if we are to protect our country. We are fortunate to have this great legacy to build on."
Mr. Tenet noted that, in the grim context of the Cold War, "President
Eisenhower asked the Central Intelligence Agency to pull together and
direct the U-2 program. Then-DCI Allen Dulles put his special assistant,
Richard Bissell, in charge. Bissell pulled together brilliant talent from
academia, from industry, and from the military—inspired talent such
as MIT's James Killian and Harvard's James Baker, who is with us this
morning; Polaroid's Edwin Land; Lockheed's Kelly Johnson, America's foremost
aeronautical engineer; and Trevor Gardner, another gifted engineer from
the private sector who had come into government as Assistant to the Secretary
of the Air Force for R&D.
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The U-2: A Revolution in Intelligence |
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Ambassador Daniel Simpson Brig. Gen. Leo Geary, USAF (Ret.); Gen. Andrew Goodpaster, USA (Ret.); Donald Welzenbach, CIA historian (Ret.) |
Greeting |
The mission was daunting: to design, build, and fly a photographic reconnaissance plane that could traverse the Soviet Union at a higher altitude than any plane had ever flown before. They also would have to develop high-acuity cameras to peer deep into the Soviet Union and establish a photointerpretation center to analyze the imagery that was captured. A worldwide covert operation would have to be orchestrated to support the overflights. And last, but not least, they would have to hire and train pilots to fly these totally new planes through hostile airspace. . . .
Kelly Johnson and his Skunk Works crew began by cleaning out an old hangar at Lockheed. Eighty-eight days later, they had a prototype. The U-2 Project came in on time and under budget. . . .
The U-2 program . . . instantly became a major source of our intelligence about the Soviet Union.It constituted nothing less than a revolution in intelligence."
The DCI went on to observe that "from the U-2 data captured by our overflights—data that were corroborated by intelligence obtained by other means—President Eisenhower could confidently resist the fierce domestic pressure to engage in a massive arms buildup. He knew for certain—for certain—that we had no bomber gap and no missile gap with the Soviet Union, all Soviet boasting to the contrary. By any measure, that was an intelligence triumph. The men and women who worked long and hard—and often took great risks—for the U-2's early successes can be forever proud of that."
Other Speakers. Other distinguished panelists and speakers at the conference included Maj. Gen. John Casciano, USAF; Lockheed Martin Skunk Works President Jack Gordon; a former aide to President Eisenhower, Gen. Andrew Goodpaster, USA (Ret.); and Russia's Col. Alexander Semenovich Orlov (Ret.), who provided his own perspectives on the
U-2's overflights of the USSR and Soviet efforts to down the aircraft—efforts in which he was a key player. A number of former U-2 pilots, engineers, historians, and intelligence analysts also spoke. An overflight by a US Air Force U-2 during the memorial service was among the highlights of the day. The symposium attracted national and international media coverage and was showcased on ABC's evening news program.
Conference Announced
Berlin: The Intelligence War
On 10-12 September 1999, the Center for the Study of Intelligence
and Berlin's Alliierten Museum will jointly host a conference on Cold
War intelligence operations in the divided city during the early years
of the Cold War. The conference, which will be held in a vacated US facility
on Berlin's Teufelsberg, will focus on the intelligence dimensions of
the East-West confrontation in Berlin. It will feature panels and roundtable
presentations by scholars and intelligence veterans from both sides of
the former Iron Curtain. Participants in the conference will include historian
Christopher Andrew, former CIA intelligence officer and scholar Raymond
Garthoff, and former KGB officer Oleg Kalugin. Ambassador Vernon Walters
will close the conference with his perspective on the end of the Cold
War in Berlin. CSI simultaneously will release a collection of intelligence
documents on Berlin.
Featured Articles
The Japanese Ambassador Who Knew Too Much
In May 1998, the National Archives completed a two-year program to
release hundreds of Japanese cables intercepted and decrypted by US Army
intelligence during World War II. The messages were sent by Lt. Gen. Oshima
Hiroshi (1886-1975), Tokyo's wartime ambassador in Nazi Germany, to the
Japanese Foreign Ministry.1
This was no ordinary collection of diplomatic correspondence. The United States and Britain used information from Oshima's cables to make strategic and tactical decisions in operations against the German military. Oshima, a retired senior Japanese Army officer and former military attache, was an astute observer of the German scene. In an "eyes only" letter written in September 1944, US Army Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Marshall stated: "Our main basis of information regarding Hitler's intentions in Europe was obtained from Oshima's messages from Berlin." The decrypts were disseminated only to the President, the Secretary of State, and eight senior military officers. The documents carried a "burn after reading" caveat. (When a decrypted message was found in a White House trash can, the Army temporarily removed President Roosevelt from its dissemination list.) The War Department kept file copies, however, which were transferred to NARA after the war.
The US Signal Intelligence Service, located in the old Munitions Building in downtown Washington, was responsible for a remarkable feat in cryptoanalysis that made it possible to read Oshima's cable traffic. By September 1940, a team under the direction of renowned American cryptographer William Friedman and headed by Frank Rowlett managed to reproduce a highly sophisticated Japanese encryption device (codenamed Purple) and then decrypt virtually all communications between the Foreign Ministry and its diplomatic posts abroad, including Berlin. The intercepted messages were codenamed Magic and then were subsumed under the codeword Ultra and shared with Britain.
Oshima was already a fixture on the German scene when the Nazis came to power. As Japan's military attache, he struck up a friendship with Hitler in 1934 and remained in Berlin until the Red Army arrived in 1945. Oshima was named Japanese Ambassador to Germany in 1938, replaced in 1940, and reappointed in 1941. Fluent in German and an admirer of German culture, he developed a wide circle of friends and contacts in political, military, and industrial circles. He was variously called the Germans' "pet" and "Hitler's confidant."2 Top-level people trusted and confided in him, giving his reports a "from-the-horse's-mouth" quality. Neither the United States nor the United Kingdom had such a well-placed source inside the Third Reich. Oshima also was a skilled analyst, adept at interpreting what he heard and saw. In 1944, for example, he correctly predicted that the 20 July attempt on Hitler's life would not lead to either a military coup or a popular revolt, even though Western analysts took the opposite view.
Oshima was more than an observer of events; he was a player as well. In the wake of Germany's defeat at Stalingrad in February 1943, he attempted, unsuccessfully, to mediate a peace agreement between Stalin and Hitler. The peacemaking effort was Oshima's idea, but Hitler was interested, telling the Japanese diplomat that he would make peace if Moscow ceded the Ukraine. Oshima's goal was to help free up German forces that could then be used to defeat the Western Allies. A Russo-German peace, moreover, would have enabled Tokyo to ship badly needed materiel from Europe across Siberia and thereby escape the wrath of US submarine attacks that were taking an enormous toll on Japanese shipping.
Oshima's messages were especially important in the Western Allies' planning for the invasion of Normandy. In November 1943, he and his naval attache made a four-day tour of the "Atlantic Wall," Germany's coastal defense system against a cross-channel invasion.3 He recorded his observations in detail, accounting for every German division, its troop strength, and its level of weaponry. He also described the arrangement of gun positions that would have been used to create an annihilating fusillade. (These positions were heavily bombed and shelled 24 hours a day before the largest amphibious assault in history began.) The messages from Berlin revealed everything from strategy to tactics. The Allies learned that the Germans planned to defend their positions at the beachline in the event of an invasion and use their Panzer tank reserve to smash through the Allied beachhead. They also learned that the Germans had installed underwater obstacles designed to damage incoming landing craft. Equally important, Oshima's messages showed that Berlin was in the dark about Allied invasion plans and had been deceived by concealment and deception measures.
Oshima's correspondence touched on key episodes throughout the war. For example, it:
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Convinced Washington and London that, contrary to conventional wisdom, Hitler was planning to invade the USSR in summer 1941—a warning Churchill passed to Stalin, who rejected it as a provocation.
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Revealed that Tokyo had rejected Hitler's request to attack the USSR after Stalingrad, which convinced Churchill that the Red Army could hold out and would ultimately prevail over the German Army.
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Provided critical information on German war production, morale, and weaponry as well as the results of the US-UK bombing offensive.
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Predicted that Hitler would launch a final counteroffensive against the Western Allies—which materialized in December 1944 as what the Germans called the Ardennes Offensive and the United States referred to as the Battle of the Bulge. Hitler's objective apparently was to neutralize the threat from the West so that he could divert what was left of his forces on that front to the struggle against the USSR.
Targeted by Soviet Intelligence
There is more to the Oshima story. The pro-German diplomat also was
an invaluable (and unwitting) source for Soviet intelligence—at least
before the outbreak of World War II.
Walter Krivitsky—a GRU officer who was to become the most important prewar Soviet intelligence defector to the West—became involved in the Oshima case in 1934, shortly after taking up an assignment as chief of Soviet illegals in the Netherlands. Krivitsky learned from one of his sources that Oshima, then still a military attache, was engaged in back-channel negotiations with Joachim Ribbentrop, Hitler's personal envoy (and later foreign minister), without the knowledge of their respective foreign offices. Tokyo wanted to obtain German antiaircraft guns, among other things, but Stalin feared, correctly, that the talks also involved broader issues of German-Japanese cooperation. In late 1935, the Soviet dictator decided to spike the talks by leaking the fact that he knew about them. Soviet Foreign Minister V. M. Molotov even referred to the Oshima-Ribbentrop secret sessions in a public address.
Krivitsky's assignment, a difficult one, was to delve more deeply and find out what Oshima and Ribbentrop were discussing. Then, through a stroke of luck, his agent discovered that German intelligence was intercepting Oshima's cables. The Germans could not decrypt them, but this was not a problem for the Soviets; they already had access to Japanese ciphers. In time, Krivitsky's agent was able to purloin the German intercepts, and Moscow began reading Oshima's cable traffic.
The messages caused no little concern in the Kremlin. Tokyo and Berlin were engaged in an effort to coordinate their diplomatic and military moves in Europe and the Far East in a pincer-like envelopment of the USSR. On 25 November 1936 they signed the so-called Anti-Comintern Pact, which, in its published version, contained nothing more than an innocuous agreement to exchange information on Moscow-backed Communist parties. Thanks to Krivitsky's efforts, however, the Kremlin learned that a secret protocol stipulated that each signatory agreed to remain neutral in the event the other found itself at war with the USSR. (Hitler had sought a stronger anti-Soviet commitment, but Japan did not want to get involved in a European war and signed the accord only after Moscow entered into a treaty with Outer Mongolia directed at Japanese interests.)
With Krivitsky's report in hand, Stalin reacted in two ways. Once again, he authorized "leaks" to undermine German-Japanese plans. But he also, according to Krivitsky, redoubled his efforts to reach an understanding with Hitler. Krivitsky's prediction that Stalin and Hitler would come to terms should have made him look like a seer in the West. Instead, it exposed him to ridicule—until 23 August 1939, when the infamous Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact that shook the world was actually signed.4
In early 1937 Krivitsky, who was running a bookstore and art gallery in The Hague as a cover for his intelligence operations, received a cable ordering him to return to Moscow. He knew instantly that it was an invitation to his own execution. His good friend, senior GRU officer Ignace Reiss, had already been hunted down and machine-gunned in Switzerland. Reiss had broken with Stalin and Communism, reportedly after learning that the Soviet dictator was seeking an alliance with Hitler.5
Krivitsky fled to France in September 1937 and then went on to the United States. He testified before Congress, outlining in detail the scope and magnitude of Soviet intelligence operations in the West. With the help of a ghostwriter, he published a best seller, In Stalin's Secret Service, which became an intelligence classic.6 The book contained many revelations but did not cover everything Krivitsky knew. Despite debriefings by US, French, and British counterintelligence, the ex-GRU officer never revealed that he knew of the so-called Cambridge ring of spies and could have identified Kim Philby. On 9 February 1941, a maid found Krivitsky's body in a hotel room on Capitol Hill. District police ruled the death a suicide, but Krivitsky had told several close friends that Stalin would arrange his assassination and make it look like suicide.
After the war, Oshima returned to Japan, where he was arrested and imprisoned. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (1946-48), the Japanese equivalent of the Nuremberg trials, found him guilty of "conspiracy against peace" and sentenced him to life imprisonment. He was paroled in 1955 and died 20 years later at age 89, never realizing the unwitting role he had played in turning the Axis victory he had worked so hard for into defeat.7
Ben Fischer
CIA History Staff
World War II Artifacts Donated to Exhibit Center
The CIA Museum has received a generous donation of World War II artifacts, including a rare German SS officer's Totenkopf (Death's Head) ring, from Joseph Luongo, a retired civilian military intelligence officer.
Mr. Luongo was a US Army infantryman in 1944 when he was assigned to the 88th Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) Detachment. An Italian speaker, he interrogated more than 600 Italian civilians and identified 13 pro-German spies, who were subsequently arrested, after the 88th Infantry Division occupied the area around Gaeta, on Italy's Mediterranean coast. The arrests of the spies revealed a large stay-behind network behind Allied lines and resulted in the capture of radio networks, frequencies, and codes to support it. Luongo's unit also recovered priceless religious artifacts stolen by Nazi forces and, in one case, returned items looted from a Roman synagogue.
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SS Death's Head Ring The Death's Head (or Honor) ring was among the most-sought-after accoutrements of the elite Schutzstaffel (SS) headed by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, even though the ring was not an official national or military decoration. Himmler himself awarded it for personal achievement, devotion to duty, and loyalty to Adolph Hitler. The rings were cast in silver and then finished by hand by specially commissioned jewelers at the Munich firm Gahr. The company made about 14,000 rings, but examples in good condition, such as Hass's ring, are rare. The rings, like all SS symbols and rituals, were rooted in Nazi fascination with Teutonic pagan mythology. The Germanic god Thor, according to legend, wore a silver ring on which people could swear oaths. In addition to the Death's Head, the rings were decorated with various runes (Nordic symbols). When an SS officer fell in battle, his ring was returned to the SS and then displayed at a memorial in Wewelsburg Castle, a 17th-century fortress Himmler converted into a weird reproduction of King Arthur's court with a round table and seats for the SS leader and 12 of his trusted lieutenants. All manufacturing and awarding of the rings were canceled in October 1944 as German military losses mounted. In the spring of 1945, on Himmler's order, all memorial rings were blast-sealed into a mountainside near Wewelsburg. The site was kept secret and has not been found to this day. |
In May 1945, Luongo was transferred to the 430th CIC Detachment as part of the Army's occupation forces in Austria. This unit protected US forces from a resurgent Nazi underground (the Werwolf movement) in occupied Austria. The 430th arrested hundreds of Nazi war criminals and collaborators, including Pierre Laval, the former prime minister of the Vichy France government. The Gallic Quisling, who had handed over French Jews to the Nazis and encouraged his countrymen to support the German war effort, first sought refuge in Spain. Madrid, however, rejected his request for asylum, asserting that it did not welcome war criminals. "But," Laval protested, "I am a peace criminal!" From there he flew to Linz, Austria, Hitler's hometown, looking for a safehaven. Instead of finding sanctuary, Laval was arrested by US intelligence officers and returned to French authorities (and later executed for treason). The artifacts Luongo donated include an arrival card (Ankunftskarte) that Laval filled out upon arriving in the American Zone of Austria on 31 July. The card gives details of Laval's flight.
In addition to Laval, the 430th CIC Detachment interrogated SS Sturmbahnführer (Major) Karl Hass. Hass had handled Nazi counterintelligence in Italy, where he ran stay-behind and anti-Communist operations. In the course of Hass's interrogation, Loungo took the prisoner's SS ring. The ring, presented to Hass by Heinrich Himmler on 21 December 1943, is inscribed with Hass's and Himmler's names and the date of presentation.
Hass made international news in 1998 when he and another ex-SS officer, Erick Priebke, who had been living in Argentina since the end of the war, were arrested by Italian authorities. Charged with executing 355 Italian civilians in the Ardeatine caves near Rome in 1944 in retribution for an attack by Italian partisans on German soldiers in Rome, the two former SS officers were sentenced to life imprisonment in 1998 after a lengthy and controversial trial.
Mr. Luongo continued to serve with US Army military intelligence in Austria, Italy, West Germany, and the United States until his retirement in 1977. He is a member of the Military Intelligence Civilian Excepted Career Program, and in 1944 he was elected to the Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona. Mr. Luongo graciously decided to donate his World War II memorabilia to the Exhibit Center after being interviewed by Dr. Kevin C. Ruffner of the CIA's History Staff on the role of the Counter Intelligence Corps during and after World War II.
Kevin C. Ruffner
History Staff
Exhibit Center Receives Donovan Medals
Several generations of family members of Gen. William Donovan—regarded by many as the father of modern American intelligence—along with dozens of OSS veterans and numerous Agency and Intelligence Community officers joined DCI George Tenet in celebrating the presentation of the General's medals and war room maps to the Agency on 5 November. The items, which will be put on permanent display, include the Medal of Honor; the Distinguished Service Cross; the Distinguished Service Medal; the Purple Heart with two Oak Leaf Clusters; the National Security Medal; and decorations from Belgium, Italy, Denmark, France, the United Kingdom, Greece, the Vatican, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, and Thailand.
Geoffrey Jones, President of the Donovan Memorial Foundation and leader of the OSS Veterans Association, told the audience that former President George Bush has agreed to become the Foundation's Honorary Chair. Ambassador Frank Wisner, who recently retired after 36 years with the State Department, will serve as the group's Acting Chairman. Jones noted that the medals and maps had been on display in Donovan's law firm, which was recently liquidated. The map case was originally situated in Donovan's office in the Q Building of OSS Headquarters. It consists of 18 pull-down maps of various areas, all produced by the National Geographic Society. Donovan created a Map Division in the OSS Research and Analysis Section, the predecessor to the Intelligence Community's mapping efforts. The medals were awarded to Donovan for his service in both World Wars and during his ambassadorship to Thailand. Jones observed that the handing over of the medals to the Agency is symbolic of the "ancestral bonds" between the OSS and CIA.
DCI George Tenet noted that the General "recognized sooner than most and more clearly than anyone America's need for a central intelligence organization. He made that call before Pearl Harbor, the tragedy that underscored for everyone else that the dangers of a piecemeal approach to intelligence would cause a catastrophe for our country. Starting from the premise—as valid today as ever—that good intelligence work saves lives, he fashioned the OSS, America's first full-scale foreign intelligence service."
Studies in Intelligence
The Winter 1998-99 edition of the Intelligence Community's professional journal Studies in Intelligence will appear soon. It will also be available at the Center's Internet home page (http://www.cia.gov/csi). This edition will include the following articles:
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Studies in Intelligence Feature Articles A "Hot" Front in the Cold War Historical Perspectives Looking for a Rogue Elephant Intelligence Today and Tomorrow |
Copies of Studies in Intelligence and other CSI publications are available from:
Library of Congress
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Phone: 202-707-9527
or
Library of Congress
Photoduplication Service (for individual copies)
Washington, DC 20504
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CSI Monograph: SIGINT and Planning for an Invasion of Japan, 1945
The Center for the Study of Intelligence recently published a monograph titled The Final Months of the War with Japan: Signals Intelligence, US Invasion Planning, and the A-Bomb Decision. The author is Douglas J. MacEachin, who retired from the CIA in 1997 and is now a Senior Fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. During his 32-year CIA career, Mr. MacEachin held a series of increasingly senior posts, most of them involving Soviet and European security affairs. From March 1993 to June 1995 he was the Agency's Deputy Director for Intelligence.
A major purpose of Mr. MacEachin's study is to examine the crucial role of SIGINT in US military planning during the final stages of the war with Japan in 1945. (The term "SIGINT"—Signals Intelligence—is used in this monograph, and in contemporary intelligence parlance more generally, to refer to a broad range of intercepted communications.) During the final months of World War II in the Pacific, US leaders were confronting the prospect of a ground invasion of the Japanese homeland, which military planners had concluded would be necessary to force an unconditional Japanese surrender. Intercepted communications—now declassified—indicated in spring-summer 1945 that the Japanese had correctly identified Kyushu Island as the probable site of a US invasion and were dramatically expanding their defensive forces there. Kyushu is generally viewed as a gateway to neighboring Honshu (the largest and most important Japanese island) and ultimately to Tokyo. The Japanese buildup virtually ensured heavy US casualties—a particular concern of President Truman—if a ground invasion materialized on Kyushu.
The main players in the continuing deliberations over whether and when to implement Operation OLYMPIC (the US codename for the Kyushu invasion plan) included, in addition to the President, such luminaries as Generals George C. Marshall and Douglas MacArthur, Adm. Chester Nimitz, and Secretary of War Henry Stimson, along with other military and civilian leaders. At the beginning of August 1945, when the full extent of the Japanese buildup on Kyushu became known, US military planners contemplated the need to examine alternatives to OLYMPIC. The ideas put forward included a shift of the invasion's venue to a less heavily defended Japanese site, and/or an intensified and prolonged bomb-and-blockade campaign aimed at battering Japan into surrendering unconditionally without the need for a US invasion. US leaders generally recognized that adopting either of these options almost certainly would delay an invasion beyond 1 November 1945, the target date that military planners strongly preferred for Operation OLYMPIC and which President Truman had endorsed. There also was concern that a prolongation of the war in the Pacific could result in a much stronger Soviet postwar role in shaping the future of East Asia. For example, the Soviets—who opportunistically declared war against Japan on 8 August—at a minimum would probably have occupied all of the Korean Peninsula.
US leaders were spared the problem of having to reexamine their plans in reaction to the Japanese buildup when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 (5 August in the US) and on Nagasaki three days later, resulting in Japan's unconditional surrender on 14 August. As Mr. MacEachin notes in the monograph's Foreword, "The study's basic objective is not to pass judgment on the decisions that were made [including the decision to use the atomic bomb] but rather to examine the intelligence that was available at the time and to weigh the role intelligence played or might have played in the deliberations on an invasion."
In researching and writing this study, Mr. MacEachin found sufficient declassified SIGINT and other unclassified material to tell this story in considerable detail on an unclassified basis. An annex to the monograph contains verbatim copies of many of the key declassified source materials: minutes of meetings, decision memorandums, planning papers, US military directives, reports and maps showing the Japanese buildup on Kyushu, estimates of US casualties if that island were invaded, and handwritten notes from President Truman. One such note—handwritten by the President on the back of a message from Stimson on 31 July 1945—constituted Truman's official approval of plans for dropping the first atomic bomb. Some of the documents contain handwritten notes or comments by other US officials. For example, an unidentified person scribbled enigmatically, "Sec'y told we non-concur" on a copy of a report by the Joint War Plans Committee concerning alternatives to OLYMPIC.
This comprehensive yet succinct monograph, published in January 1999, has already prompted at least one US local civic organization to sponsor presentations by Mr. MacEachin based on this study. The monograph will be available to the public through CSI's Internet homepage at http://www.cia.gov/csi.
Henry Appelbaum
Center for the Study of Intelligence
Publications and Videos
The following CSI publications and videos are available from the National
Technical Information Service (NTIS) of the Department of Commerce:
CIA Documents on the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962
NTIS Order Number: PB 92 927 906 $77.50
Selected Estimates on the Soviet Union, 1950-1959
NTIS Order Number: PB 93 928 112 $28.50
The CIA Under Harry S. Truman
NTIS Order Number: PB 94 928 005 $36.00
The Origin and Development of the CIA in the Administration of Harry S.
Truman:
A Conference Report
NTIS Order Number: PB 95 928 006 $27.00
Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 36, No. 5
NTIS Order Number: PB 93 928 013 $41.00
Studies in Intelligence Index, 1955-1992
NTIS Order Number: PB 93 928 014 $31.50
Molehunters: A Review of Counterintelligence Literature, 1977-1992
NTIS Order Number: PB 93 928 019 $26.00
Symposium on the Cuban Missile Crisis (video)
NTIS Order Number: PB 94 780 186 $22.50
Symposium on Teaching Intelligence, October 1-2, 1993: A Report
NTIS Order Number: PB 94 928 008 $20.00
Intentions and Capabilities: Estimates on Soviet Strategic Forces,
1950-1983
NTIS Order Number: PB 96 928 101 $67.00
CORONA: America's First Satellite Program
NTIS Order Number: PB 95 928 007 $62.00
Sharing Secrets with Lawmakers: Congress as a User of Intelligence
NTIS Order Number: PB 97 28 002 $27.00
Assessing the Soviet Threat: The Early Cold War Years
NTIS Order Number: PB 97 928 101 $71.50
Okhrana: The Paris Operations of the Imperial Russian Police
NTIS Order Number: PB 98 928 101 $36.00
CIA and the Vietnam Policymakers: Three Episodes 1962-1968
NTIS Order Number: PB 98 928 001 $44.00
CIA and the U-2 Program 1954-1974
NTIS Order Number: PB 98 928 005 $45.00
The Final Months of the War With Japan
NTIS Order Number: PB 99 928 001 $44.00
Footnotes
1. Charles Fenyvesi, "Japan's Unwitting D-Day Spy; Berlin Envoy's Intercepted Cables Provided Crucial Intelligence," Washington Post, 26 May 1998.
2. See Carl Boyd, Hitler's Japanese Confidant: General Oshima Hiroshi and MAGIC Intelligence, 1941-1945 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1993).
3. The coastal defense system stretched from the North Sea coasts of Belgium and the Netherlands through Brittany in France to the Spanish border. It was built in 1942-44, using 13 million metric tons of concrete and 1.2 million tons of steel. The system featured heavy fortifications and artillery at major ports and strongpoints erected between port areas. The Germans employed some 175,000 workers in the effort to build this "Atlantic Wall," which was not completed because of manpower shortages caused by losses on the Eastern front.
4. The pact set off the first seismic shocks in the international Communist movement, leading many true believers to abandon the cause.
5. Krivitsky, whose real name was Samuel Ginzburg, and Reiss were from the same shtetl (village) in Galicia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Both had joined the underground Communist movement before World War I, largely in reaction to official and unofficial anti-Semitism. Stalin's intention to seek a deal with Hitler probably convinced Krivitsky and Reiss that the Soviet Union's official policy of opposing anti-Semitism was about to change, with consequent implications for their careers.
6. W. G. Krivitsky, In Stalin's Secret Service: An Exposé of Russia's Secret Policies by the Former Chief of Soviet Intelligence in Western Europe (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1995). Krivitsky was not the "chief of Soviet intelligence in Western Europe" but a captain in military intelligence. His collaborator, journalist Isaac Don Levine, enhanced Krivitsky's status to boost sales of the book.
7. "Verdict modere au Nuremberg japonais," Le Monde, 13 November 1998.