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I've been reading through the minutes of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board meeting of September 12-13, 1963.

 

My god. What a mess.

 

It's apparent we've been listening to the wrong CIA guy, 'cause this guy doesn't know anything about what we want to know about. p. 10

"The situation in Vietnam is so bad we may have to get out of the war." p. 18

"The CIA has no long-range plan for Cuba in the event of a coup." p. 21

 

What were these people thinking?

 

Steve Thomas

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Steve, I wrote about this disconnect in NEXUS in regard to the Cuba programs circa 1963.  Since about 1960 the FIB had been expressing negative opinions about the ability to overthrow Castro, about Cuba, about Viet Nam etc.  They became increasingly negative in 1963.  But you have to remember, the FIB was a composite organization with representatives from several intel groups and with input from analysts with different views than the CIA.  The FIB and its predecessor group had a long history of institutional jousting with the CIA as well.  Interestingly several years ago Professor John Williams presented his study of FIB meetings and intel tasking for several months following the assassination of JFK and it was very obvious that there was no serious national intelligence tasking on the subject beyond the work of the WC.

 

 

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12 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

Steve, I wrote about this disconnect in NEXUS in regard to the Cuba programs circa 1963.  Since about 1960 the FIB had been expressing negative opinions about the ability to overthrow Castro, about Cuba, about Viet Nam etc.  They became increasingly negative in 1963.  But you have to remember, the FIB was a composite organization with representatives from several intel groups and with input from analysts with different views than the CIA.  The FIB and its predecessor group had a long history of institutional jousting with the CIA as well.  Interestingly several years ago Professor John Williams presented his study of FIB meetings and intel tasking for several months following the assassination of JFK and it was very obvious that there was no serious national intelligence tasking on the subject beyond the work of the WC.

 

 

Larry,

 

I was just astounded in reading through these minutes. Mr. Murphy asks Fitzgerald if the CIA had anyone in mind as a replacement for Castro after Castro gets overthrown and Fitzgerald says no. He says that the CIA is working with three exile groups and wouldn't recommend any of them. He added that, "the CIA was not working with the State Department on a possible replacement and CIA prefers that no leader in exile be considered". page 16.

 

Man, I would hate to have been the President and get that kind of advice. I would have asked, "Then what the blankety blank are we doing there then"?

 

I'll have to go through those 1964 minutes.

 

PS: I loved the BOARD PANEL ON COVERT ACTION OPERATIONS

2) Report on the CIA support of infiltration operations in North Vietnam

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1975#relPageId=6&tab=page

 

"Not a great success. High losses of teams."

 

Yep, that'll do it alright.

 

Steve Thomas

 

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Steve, this really does illustrate a good point - we JFK types tend to get hung up on the CIA, in particular the Plans and Operations Directorate of the CIA because that's where some of our most familiar names connect - and where Cuban operations occurred.  But the intelligence world was a lot bigger than that (and is far more diverse now).  The Intelligence Board, which was preceded by the Intelligence Committee serves both the NSC and the Office of the President and is supposed to integrate what are often very conflicting analyses from different groups (during the 1950s Air Force intelligence and CIA intel were often adamantly in conflict). The fact that the CIA director served as Chairman and ultimately did the Presidential daily briefings obscured a lot of that disagreement and of course while the Dulles brothers were the primary drivers of foreign policy that did as well.

Its simply a fact that increasingly in 1963 a good number of analysts within the intel community were not sanguine about success in covert or political action action against Cuba. That could probably be said even for CIA operations, certainly Shackley thought the new 1963 initiatives pushed by RFK were doomed to fail, and said so. JFK and especially RFK wanted to keep pressure on Castro but that may have been more for leverage (on JFK's part) in possible negotiations than anything else.

The same could be said for operations against Vietnam which I go into in detail in Shadow Warfare.  The CIA had failed in those operations to the extent that it was being handed off to the Army and the Army's losses would be equally bad. Its true that some bad info on Vietnam was being fed back to DC but if you actually dig into both the Board's material and the State Department's material on both Cuba and Vietnam you find a great deal of the real story - and I suspect JFK actually had a pretty good view of the reality. But of course reality and public opinion often clash under the umbrella of politics.  So knowing the reality still presented him with a huge challenge in facing an upcoming election year.

 

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1 hour ago, Larry Hancock said:

Larry,

 

Steve, this really does illustrate a good point - we JFK types tend to get hung up on the CIA, in particular the Plans and Operations Directorate of the CIA because that's where some of our most familiar names connect - and where Cuban operations occurred.  But the intelligence world was a lot bigger than that (and is far more diverse now).  The Intelligence Board, which was preceded by the Intelligence Committee serves both the NSC and the Office of the President and is supposed to integrate what are often very conflicting analyses from different groups (during the 1950s Air Force intelligence and CIA intel were often adamantly in conflict). The fact that the CIA director served as Chairman and ultimately did the Presidential daily briefings obscured a lot of that disagreement and of course while the Dulles brothers were the primary drivers of foreign policy that did as well.

Its simply a fact that increasingly in 1963 a good number of analysts within the intel community were not sanguine about success in covert or political action action against Cuba. That could probably be said even for CIA operations, certainly Shackley thought the new 1963 initiatives pushed by RFK were doomed to fail, and said so. JFK and especially RFK wanted to keep pressure on Castro but that may have been more for leverage (on JFK's part) in possible negotiations than anything else.

The same could be said for operations against Vietnam which I go into in detail in Shadow Warfare.  The CIA had failed in those operations to the extent that it was being handed off to the Army and the Army's losses would be equally bad. Its true that some bad info on Vietnam was being fed back to DC but if you actually dig into both the Board's material and the State Department's material on both Cuba and Vietnam you find a great deal of the real story - and I suspect JFK actually had a pretty good view of the reality. But of course reality and public opinion often clash under the umbrella of politics.  So knowing the reality still presented him with a huge challenge in facing an upcoming election year.

 

Yes, I mentioned to Paul Brancato on another thread the other day that I thought that so much focus has been put on the CIA and the FBI over the years is because there is a paper trail you can follow. With the military, there virtually is none, or at least none that's been made widely available.

 

I was reading through the minutes of the FIA Board meeting of January 30, 1964

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1961#relPageId=1&tab=page

and a couple of things jumped out at me:

 

1) Between 1961 and 1963, the Board made 170 recommendations to Kennedy, of which he acted on 125. "A large percentage of the recommendations made by President Kennedy's Board involved activities internal to the Department of Defense..." (p. 10)

2) On page 10 it says that 85% of the foreign intelligence dollar expenditures fall under the management and control of the Secretary of Defense, and yet on page 58 of those minutes, the Pentagon has gone to Johnson and complained that Defense is being shut out of the FIAB. (That move doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me.) Clifford responds that the Advisory Board would function better with a smaller membership. "The President indicated that the Joint Chiefs of Staff did not agree".

(I guess they wouldn't.) (ha ha ha)

Clifford also says that Defense already has their own newly established DIA to play with.

 

3) A number of those recommendations had to do with the CIA keeping the Ambassadors in various countries informed about what they were up to. It looks like CIA was keeping State in the dark. And on pp. 62-63, there's a letter from John McCone to Clark Clifford complaining that the State Department enjoys harassing the CIA in the press every chance they get. You can tell there is a real bureaucratic battle going on.

 

These guys in the bureaucracies do not really play well with others, do they?

You said, "So knowing the reality still presented him with a huge challenge in facing an upcoming election year."

You're absolutely right.

 

4) The military was really balking at the idea of not militarizing space.


5) The Dunlap case was a lot more serious than most of us know about. 

 

6) I have a question: Sprinkled throughout these minutes are references to three major SIGINT activities. One was called CORONA, a second one is consistently redacted, and the third was the U-2. I'll have to read up on Corona, but do you have any idea what the redacted program might have been? I have a hunch that it had to do with satellite reconnaissance, but that's just a guess on my part.

 

Steve Thomas

 

 

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Well Corona was definitely the satellite project, hidden within the Explorer program.  Not sure about the third, could you post a link so I can check the verbiage.  My guess is that it might have been signals intelligence in the Tonkin Gulf, we had ground based SIGNIT going in South Vietnam but a brand new project was to put a containerized unit onto a Navy destroyer and send it up and down the Tonkin Gulf to monitor signals in support of the covert naval missions increasingly going into North Vietnam - which of course ultimately led to the one actual attack on a destroyer patrol and the second non-attack and escalation, etc.  There was also an escalating signals intelligence project against Soviet missile launches, based in Turkey.  Those are the first two that come to mind.

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3 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

Well Corona was definitely the satellite project, hidden within the Explorer program.  Not sure about the third, could you post a link so I can check the verbiage.  My guess is that it might have been signals intelligence in the Tonkin Gulf, we had ground based SIGNIT going in South Vietnam but a brand new project was to put a containerized unit onto a Navy destroyer and send it up and down the Tonkin Gulf to monitor signals in support of the covert naval missions increasingly going into North Vietnam - which of course ultimately led to the one actual attack on a destroyer patrol and the second non-attack and escalation, etc.  There was also an escalating signals intelligence project against Soviet missile launches, based in Turkey.  Those are the first two that come to mind.

Larry,

 

see MINUTES OF MEETING OF JANUARY 30, 1964

 

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1961

 

See pp. 9 (bullet# 3), recommendations 28 and 29 on p. 25, recommendation# 33 on p. 26-27, and pp. 39-40.

They use the words, “pilots” and “ satellite” and National Reconnaissance Office in the same paragraph or context. Whatever it was, it was pretty sensitive. General Doolittle was tasked with presenting information on these programs to President Johnson scheduled for later in the day on the 30th. (see p. 40) The signals effort in Turkey merited its own separate recommendation.

 

The more I read through these minutes, the more astounding they become. It's like a road map of U.S. Intelligence efforts – where they're going, what they want to emphasize, who's in and who's out. Iran, Turkey, Greece, etc. I think this January 30th meeting is the first time they met after JFK's assassination.

 

I was very sad to read Recommendation# 42, authorizing airborne defoliation efforts in South Vietnam.

 

Steve Thomas

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Steve, it looks to me like there are two redacted programs....not sure why they would still be redacted but the Oxcart/A12 could certainly be one because it was still in test and development.  Given that they mention drones - which is really early given this date - the only other thing I can think of is the drone project which was kicking off for reconnaissance over North Vietnam, using the Ryan Firebee variants.  I don't recall the name of the classified project but I have a book on it.  Anyway, those two might do it even though I don't seen the need for redaction. There were also a couple of military space programs in the works and either Dynasoar or the Air Force MOL manned orbiting lab/recon platform could be a possibility.  I don't think the Corona follow on projects were in the pipeline that early but that's another option.

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9 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

Steve, it looks to me like there are two redacted programs....not sure why they would still be redacted but the Oxcart/A12 could certainly be one because it was still in test and development.  Given that they mention drones - which is really early given this date - the only other thing I can think of is the drone project which was kicking off for reconnaissance over North Vietnam, using the Ryan Firebee variants.  I don't recall the name of the classified project but I have a book on it.  Anyway, those two might do it even though I don't seen the need for redaction. There were also a couple of military space programs in the works and either Dynasoar or the Air Force MOL manned orbiting lab/recon platform could be a possibility.  I don't think the Corona follow on projects were in the pipeline that early but that's another option.

Larry,

 

Yes, my eyebrows went up when I saw the references to drones. I didn't know they had been developed this early.

The redactions at this late a date are really frustrating. If I read it right, the last time the reviewers looked these were in 1998, and it seems kind of silly to keep them top secret 35 years after the fact.

 

Did you happen to look at the document, 

CONSIDERATION OF COVERT ACTION MATTERS BY PRESIDENT KENNEDY'S FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE ADVISORY BOARD

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1976

from pages 9+ or so?

I like the dog wagging the tail analogy. It looks like people were getting frustrated with the CIA's covert action for covert action's sake. It makes you wonder who stood the most to lose by removing covert actions from the CIA.     Helms?

I appreciate you taking the time to talk. You've been very helpful.

 

Steve Thomas

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The subject of drones is a very interesting one and most folks don't realize that the US used drones extensively in SE Asia not only over North Vietnam but over China.  Of course the drones were quite large, they were really autonomous aircraft in that respect.  But they were just one facet of the tools developed during that conflict and then dropped afterwards as the military returned to its comfort zone and wiped out its institutional memory of how to deal with asymmetric warfare - something it had to totally and painfully learn a few decades later. That's a big part of the story in Shadow Warfare and its an important one since we are just about to go through the same cycle again as we move back into Cold War 2.0 and the big forces agenda of the Trump administration (if  you missed the seventies and early eighties the first time around, no problem,  you get to see it all again).

The document you linked to is a fascinating one and I've seen reference to parts of but not the whole document.  Its a wonderful summary of exactly what was going to change under JFK as the FIB helped reveal what was going on - and it certainly would have played a part in his directives to move covert military operations over to the military (well that and the fiascos of Indonesia, the BOP and covert ops into North Vietnam). I think its also important in showing that the CIA was not without some level of oversight; to the FIB and to the NSC covert ops oversight committee it was just an agency that needed managing.  Its also noteworthy that groups like State were as much concerned over covert political action as covert military action....we tend to focus strictly on the paramilitary side but globally it was only part of the picture.

As to your question on who was going to lose more, the answer is pretty clearly that the Plans and Operations Directorate would be the loser and most specifically the folks in P/P, paramilitary and political action. Which circa 63 meant people like Shackley, Fitzgerald and most specifically like the folks at JM/WAVE - Morales, Robertson, Jenkins et al.  They would have at best become trainers rather than actual operators - or possibly retained for totally deniable actions such as in the Congo in 1964.  Its interesting to note that Russia is reviving the CIA's deniablity tactics of that era to a new level today.; Putin is releasing troops and hiring contractors and sending them to the Ukraine and now to Egypt/Libya - but in doing so he can stand up and claim that no Russian military are involved.  Its the same old game...we repeatedly played it and now Putin has opened up the book once more.

 

 

 

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2 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

That's a big part of the story in Shadow Warfare and its an important one since we are just about to go through the same cycle again as we move back into Cold War 2.0 and the big forces agenda of the Trump administration (if  you missed the seventies and early eighties the first time around, no problem,  you get to see it all again).

The document you linked to is a fascinating one and I've seen reference to parts of but not the whole document.  Its a wonderful summary of exactly what was going to change under JFK as the FIB helped reveal what was going on - and it certainly would have played a part in his directives to move covert military operations over to the military (well that and the fiascos of Indonesia, the BOP and covert ops into North Vietnam).

As to your question on who was going to lose more, the answer is pretty clearly that the Plans and Operations Directorate would be the loser and most specifically the folks in P/P, paramilitary and political action. Which circa 63 meant people like Shackley, Fitzgerald and most specifically like the folks at JM/WAVE - Morales, Robertson, Jenkins et al.  They would have at best become trainers rather than actual operators - or possibly retained for totally deniable actions such as in the Congo in 1964.  Its interesting to note that Russia is reviving the CIA's deniablity tactics of that era to a new level today.; Putin is releasing troops and hiring contractors and sending them to the Ukraine and now to Egypt/Libya - but in doing so he can stand up and claim that no Russian military are involved.  Its the same old game...we repeatedly played it and now Putin has opened up the book once more.

 

 

 

Ah yes, surrogates. "It's deja vu all over again"

 

I was reading through the first couple of minutes after the Cuban Missile Crisis. They were angry that they had been frozen out of any policy advice regarding Cuba. Cuba had been assigned to somebody else in the government. There are a lot of side comments about just what their relationship was to the 5412/2 Committee and who was responsible for what. I can't decide just yet if Kennedy himself was freezing them out or not. And, if so, why.

 

Steve Thomas

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Well then you can understand how desperate that both the FBI and CIA were to keep the huge secret that we had the Russian and Cuban embassies under photo surveillance in 1963 and - gasp - might have attempted to bug them.

Oh wait, there is that CIA station history document saying both the Russians and Cubans were worried about being bugged and it was a constant race to plant new listening devices and taps when ones were found.  

Consternation indeed..... 

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On the Cuban missile crisis related FIB concerns, its important to remember that the FIB was one of a series of similar groups established over time to allow brainstorming and even contentious discussion of how America was responding to the existential world communist threat - all of them  designed to thrash issues around and give the President an education before he personally engaged in final decision making.  That was a conceptual approach begun under President Truman and continued under Eisenhower - during an era before the emergence of what has been called the "operational presidency" where communications and access to information tended to demand less dialog and more military like decision making by Presidents.  It was the Cuban Missile Crisis which actually demonstrated that all the structured brainstorming and dialog on policy might become moot under certain circumstances.

Following the BOP, JFK and of course RFK treated the challenge of Castro and Cuba as something very special, almost a personal challenge. To that extent certain of the existing policy groups were minimized and special groups focused on Cuba or Cuba and Laos (from a covert operations perspective) came to be in the drivers seat. Given operational security the FIB was probably frozen out but during the next couple of decades a number of the practices of the immediate post-war period were going to change.  Its amazing when you study the Guatemala project and compare it to the new Cuba projects (AMTRUNK, AMLASH,AMWORLD of 1963/64).

Things would change even more in the future...take a look at the Wiki on the FIB and see what happened to it beginning under George Bush. And of course take a look at today's headlines to see how far such practices can ultimately fall.

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